DEMOCRACY NOW!

US-China Tensions Escalate Amid Mutual Accusations of Surveillance

TRANSCRIPT

This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.

AMY GOODMAN: We’re beginning today’s show looking at U.S.-China relations, 10 days after the U.S. shot down a suspected high-altitude Chinese surveillance balloon off the coast of South Carolina, after it had flown across Alaska, across Canada, and then across the United States. According to the U.S. military’s Northern Command, divers’ crews have been able to recover “significant debris” from the site, including sensor and electronic pieces from the structure.

Meanwhile, China has accused the U.S. of flying surveillance balloons into Chinese airspace at least 10 times over the past year, a claim the Biden administration has rejected. This is Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Wang Wenbin.

WANG WENBIN: [translated] The illegal intrusion of airspace of other countries by U.S. balloons is also commonplace. Just since last year, the U.S.’s high-altitude balloons illegally entered Chinese airspace more than 10 times without the approval of the relevant Chinese authorities. The first thing the U.S. side should do is start with a clean slate, undergo some self-reflection, instead of smearing and accusing China.

AMY GOODMAN: In recent days, the U.S. has also shot down three additional objects flying at a lower altitude — one in northern Alaska, one over Lake Huron and one over central Yukon in Canada. The Biden administration has said little about the three objects, leading to rampant speculation. On Sunday, a reporter asked the NORAD commander — that’s the Air Force General Glen VanHerck — if the military has ruled out aliens or extraterrestrials. VanHerck responded by saying, “I haven’t ruled out anything at this point.” That led to the White House briefing on Monday where they said, “No indication of aliens or extraterrestrial activity.” Democratic Congressmember Jim Himes appeared on Meet the Press Sunday and called on the Biden administration to release more information.

REP. JIM HIMES: You know, the one thing, Chuck, that is troubling me here, I sort of see a pattern. As I looked at social media this morning, you know, all of a sudden, massive speculation about alien invasions and, you know, additional Chinese action —

CHUCK TODD: Yeah.

REP. JIM HIMES: — or Russian action. In the absence of information, people’s anxiety leads them into a potentially destructive area. So I do hope that very soon the administration has a lot more information for all of us on what’s going on.

AMY GOODMAN: U.S. senators are scheduled to receive a classified briefing today.

We’re joined now by Jake Werner, a historian of modern China, research fellow at the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft. His new piece for The Nation with Bill Hartung is headlined “War With China Is Preventable, Not Inevitable.”

Welcome to Democracy Now!, Jake. I mean, what we are seeing in this last week, the — you know, you have these jet fighter planes that are taking down, exploding these surveillance objects in the sky. Even people like Congressmember Himes are saying, “What are we doing?” They not only don’t pose military threat, they don’t pose a civilian threat. Like, when was the last time a balloon took down a civilian plane? But the reason this is all happening is because of this increased anti-China fervor in the United States. Can you just talk about everything in context?

JAKE WERNER: Yeah. What this really shows is that as the sense of threat around China increases, then American leaders are looking for threats everywhere, in places that they weren’t looking before, and they’re finding things that they hadn’t paid any attention to and identifying those as potential threats and taking preemptive — excuse me — preemptive action on them. So now we’re shooting down objects that previously would have been ignored, that previously the surveillance capabilities of the United States would have filtered out. With the intrusion of the Chinese spy balloon into U.S. airspace, now people are looking for threats everywhere. And that’s not just around surveillance. It’s not just around balloons or unidentified flying objects. It’s around everything. People are seeing threats from China everywhere they go, and responding in ways that will often be very counterproductive.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And, Jake Werner, why do you think this is happening? I mean, this whole thing about the balloons, when so many governments have satellite systems that are doing reconnaissance on an almost daily basis of countries around the world, why this sudden fixation on balloons has arisen?

JAKE WERNER: I think — I think it’s actually unwanted on the part of the Biden administration. They were looking to improve the relationship with China, as the Chinese government was looking to improve the relationship with the United States. Unfortunately, the wandering of this balloon into the public consciousness gave space to people who are looking — who are looking very hard for places to attack both the administration and China on in U.S. politics. That gave them an opening, and there was just a massive kind of freak-out around the balloon.

But you’re right: Surveillance is something that major countries do to each other on an everyday basis. It’s one of the most banal facts of international relations. The U.S. is spying on China. China is spying on the United States. The U.S. is spying on allies even. There was a scandal less than 10 years ago about the U.S. spying on the chancellor of Germany, Merkel. So this is something that is just a part of international relations. It can be healthy, because if major countries know what they’re doing, there is less room for miscalculation when it comes to tension and conflict. That doesn’t mean that countries shouldn’t take prudent steps to guard against it, but it really is all part of the game, and it shouldn’t be — it shouldn’t be the occasion for massive overreaction or for demonizing other countries around. And that goes for China, as well. Of course, China is sort of hitting back at the United States, but this is something that the United States — as everybody knows, the United States has been spying on China for many years and is doing so probably more effectively with satellite surveillance than with balloons.

So, I think the important thing here is to not lose sight of how crucial it is that the two most powerful countries in the world avoid a trajectory towards really serious conflict, that they were on, and that the meeting between Xi Jinping and Joe Biden last November seemed to give a respite from that. It’s important to return to that possibility of cooling tensions.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: But you say that President Biden is committed to trying to tamp down conflicts between the United States and China, but yet, at the same time, he is remaining extremely ambiguous over the long-standing One China policy of the United States. Could you talk about how the Biden administration has been dealing with the issue of Taiwan as a sore point in U.S.-China relations?

JAKE WERNER: Yeah.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And what should be done by the administration?

JAKE WERNER: Yeah, on Taiwan, and on a lot of issues, honestly, there’s a bit of a contradiction within the administration, I think. On the one part, they genuinely want to avoid conflict with China. On the other hand, they increasingly are pursuing a policy path that is almost guaranteed to create conflict with China.

The most explosive potential flashpoint is around Taiwan. Taiwan is — the claim that mainland China makes on Taiwan is a bedrock part of Chinese nationalism. The Chinese government will not give it up, and it will go to war if it feels that Taiwan is being permanently separated from China. The United States definitely does not want that. But at the same time, as distrust has really come to characterize everything about the relationship, the U.S. is pursuing a one-sided deterrence policy against China, trying to convince China not to make any aggressive moves towards Taiwan on the basis of simply strengthening the military deterrent on the U.S. side and the Taiwanese side and allied countries in the region.

But, quite predictably, this is giving the Chinese leadership the sense that they are increasingly encircled and besieged by the most powerful country in the world and the rest of the most powerful countries in the world, that all the major powers are kind of ganging up on China. And increasingly, China is pursuing its own deterrence measures aimed to convince the United States and its allies not to infringe Chinese interests. And this is leading to a kind of escalatory spiral, where both sides feel like they are looking out for their own security, they’re both trying to prevent the other side from taking aggressive actions, and the result is to exacerbate nationalism on both sides, exacerbate distrust on both sides, and lead to a militarization of the relationship that eventually, if the trajectory is not changed, eventually will likely lead to major conflict.

AMY GOODMAN: I mean, it is frightening when you see this kind of monolithic force pushing toward militarization against China. You’ve got the Republicans and Democrats essentially agreeing. You know, the Republicans are saying, “Shoot down that balloon,” and then the Biden administration and Democrats are in agreement. And the media — and I’m not just talking Fox, I’m talking CNN, MSNBC — couldn’t be more aggressive when coming to dealing with China and these, for example, spy satellites, when you have China saying, “Hey, you know, we’ve been watching your spy satellites over us, for the last year at least 10 of them, and we haven’t raised this as an issue.” But I wanted to ask: What about the corporate view of this? I mean, going back to last year, bilateral trade between the U.S. and China reaches a record-breaking $690 billion. I mean, you can’t have places like Apple and other corporations that use China for its cheap labor wanting the U.S. to go to war with China.

JAKE WERNER: No, they don’t. They certainly don’t want conflict. They also don’t want to be cut out of the Chinese market, which is one of the fastest-growing markets in the world. There’s a lot of profits to be made in the China market. There are a lot of cost advantages to sourcing production from China. A lot of manufacturers in the United States rely on low-cost Chinese imports to remain competitive. So, the business community as a whole is very uneasy about this.

But they also have — they have really gotten a clear signal from policymakers in D.C. that if they stand up and say something, that they are going to become the targets for withering attack from people who are charging them with being unpatriotic, with selling out the country. And so, what they’re doing instead is keeping this very quiet, sort of indicating in private, “We would prefer that the restriction — we understand the need for restrictions, but the restrictions shouldn’t be too tight.”

So they’re trying to kind of make movement on the edges rather than trying to change the overall foundation of the relationship. The problem with that approach is, of course, that as the relationship deteriorates, deteriorates, deteriorates, if you’re just trying to make adjustments on the margins, you’re not doing anything to the overall trajectory.

And the political logic of conflict in D.C. right now is so powerful. It’s so easy to make hay over the issue by accusing your opponent of being weak on China, and there is no political incentive for people in D.C. to stand up and say, “We don’t want international conflict.”

It’s important for the two most powerful countries in the world to have a constructive relationship and work on these hugely important issues of shared concern between the two countries, between the two peoples. Right now the forces that have an interest in cooperation between the U.S. and China are not articulating that interest effectively in D.C., and so people don’t feel like there’s a political upside to pushing back against the incitement of international conflict that is really dominant right now.

AMY GOODMAN: Well, Jake Werner, we want to thank you for being with us, historian of modern China, research fellow at the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft. We’ll link to your piece in The Nation with Bill Hartung, “War With China Is Preventable, Not Inevitable.”

In our next segment, we’re staying with China. We’re going to speak with David Vine, author of Base Nation: How U.S. Military Bases Abroad Harm America and the World. Stay with us.

(break)

AMY GOODMAN: “War,” performed by Edwin Starr. The protest anthem was written by Motown legend Barrett Strong, who died in January at the age of 81.

AMY GOODMAN
Amy Goodman is the host and executive producer of Democracy Now!, a national, daily, independent, award-winning news program airing on more than 1,100 public television and radio stations worldwide. Time Magazine named Democracy Now! its “Pick of the Podcasts,” along with NBC’s “Meet the Press.”

JUAN GONZÁLEZ
Juan González co-hosts Democracy Now! with Amy Goodman. González has been a professional journalist for more than 30 years and a staff columnist at the New York Daily News since 1987. He is a two-time recipient of the George Polk Award.

Ruling out aliens? Senior U.S. general says not ruling out anything yet

A cluster of young stars resembles an aerial burst

Sun, February 12, 2023 
By Phil Stewart and Idrees Ali

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. Air Force general overseeing North American airspace said on Sunday after a series of shoot-downs of unidentified objects that he would not rule out aliens or any other explanation yet, deferring to U.S. intelligence experts.

Asked whether he had ruled out an extraterrestrial origin for three airborne objects shot down by U.S. warplanes in as many days, General Glen VanHerck said: "I'll let the intel community and the counterintelligence community figure that out. I haven't ruled out anything."

"At this point we continue to assess every threat or potential threat, unknown, that approaches North America with an attempt to identify it," said VanHerck, head of U.S. North American Aerospace Defense Command and Northern Command.

VanHerck's comments came during a Pentagon briefing on Sunday after a U.S. F-16 fighter jet shot down an octagonal-shaped object over Lake Huron on the U.S.-Canada border.

The incidents over the past three days follow the Feb. 4 downing of a Chinese balloon that put North American air defenses on high alert. U.S. officials said that balloon was being used for surveillance.Another U.S. defense official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the military had seen no evidence suggesting any of the objects in question were of extraterrestrial origin.

VanHerck said the military was unable to immediately determine the means by which any of the three latest objects were kept aloft or where they were coming from.

"We're calling them objects, not balloons, for a reason, said VanHerck.

The incidents come as the Pentagon has undertaken a new push in recent years to investigate military sightings of UFOs - rebranded in official government parlance as "unidentified aerial phenomena," or UAPs.

The government's effort to investigate anomalous, unidentified objects - whether they are in space, the skies or even underwater - has led to hundreds of documented reports that are being investigated, senior military leaders have said.

But the Pentagon says it has not found evidence to indicate Earthly visits from intelligent alien life.

Analysis of military sightings are conducted by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence in conjunction with a newly created Pentagon bureau known as AARO, short for the cryptically named All Domain Anomaly Resolution Office.

Their first report to Congress in June 2021 examined 144 sightings by U.S. military aviators dating to 2004.

That study attributed one incident to a large, deflating balloon but found the rest were beyond the government's ability to explain without further analysis.

A report from the Office of the Director of National Intelligence issued last month cited 366 additional sightings, mostly things like balloons, drones, birds or airborne clutter. But 171 remained officially unexplained.

"Some of these uncharacterized UAP appear to have demonstrated unusual flight characteristics or performance capabilities, and require further analysis," the office said in the report.

Sill, Ronald Moultrie, under secretary of defense for intelligence and security, told reporters in December that he had not seen anything in the files to indicate intelligent alien life.

"I have not seen anything in those holdings to date that would suggest that there has been an alien visitation, an alien crash or anything like that," Moultrie said.

(Reporting by Phil Stewart and Idrees Ali in Washington; Additional reporting by Joey Roulette in Washington and Steve Gorman in Los Angeles; Editing by Lisa Shumaker and Tim Ahmann)

‘Object’ downed over Canada was small metallic balloon with payload, Pentagon memo says


Memo says ‘recovery/exploitation’ efforts underway to retrieve ‘object’ shot down in Yukon

Sravasti Dasgupta
Tuesday 14 February 2023 

The unidentified object shot down over Canada on Saturday was a metallic balloon with a payload, according to a memo sent by the Pentagon.

This comes as intrigue has grown over some “objects”, as officials have come to call them, that were shot down after being spotted flying over US and Canadian airspace.

The intrigue over the objects came after the US identified a Chinese balloon it said was used for surveillance and shot it down off the South Carolina coast.

Subsequently, three other “objects” were identified across US and Canadian airspace and downed over the weekend.

An “object” was shot down near Deadhorse, Alaska on Friday, while another one was destroyed over the Yukon on Saturday. On Sunday, the US shot down what it called an octagonal object flying Lake Huron in the Great Lakes region.

The “object” downed in Canadian airspace on Saturday, however, appeared to be a “small, metallic balloon with a tethered payload below it,” reported CNN, citing the Pentagon memo sent to lawmakers on Monday.

It had was previously described as a “cylindrical object” that crossed near “US sensitive sites” before being downed, reported the news network.

The object shot down over Lake Huron in Michigan on Sunday “subsequently slowly descended” into the water after impact, according to defence officials writing the memo.


It added that “recovery/exploitation” efforts were underway to retrieve the object shot down in Yukon.

It said officials in US and Canada are attempting to identify debris.

The memo stated that the FBI is embedded with Canadian officials who are leading the investigation.

“It should not be assumed that the events of the past few days are connected,” said the memo.

On Monday, Canada’s prime minister Justin Trudeau claimed there appeared to be “some sort of a pattern” with the downing of the “objects”.

US National Security Council spokesperson John Kirby said on Monday, however, that there was no reason yet to believe the three flying “objects” were in any way connected to the Chinese “spy” balloon shot down by the US on 4 February.

Trudeau says flying objects brought down over the past week may be linked

Mon, February 13, 2023 

Military aircraft take part in a search for wreckage from an aerial object downed over Yukon at the Whitehorse airport on Monday. (Evan Mitsui/CBC - image credit)

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said Monday the four mysterious flying objects brought down over North America over the past week may be somehow related to one another.

Speaking to reporters after meeting with Canadian Armed Forces (CAF) and RCMP personnel in Yukon, Trudeau said there's reason to believe it's not a coincidence that the four objects have been spotted over such a short time period.

"Obviously, there is some sort of pattern in there. The fact we are seeing this in significant degree over the past week is a cause for interest and close attention, which is exactly what we're doing," he said.

Trudeau said this is "a very serious situation" and promised both Canada and the U.S. are taking steps to defend territorial integrity from possible threats.

U.S. military personnel shot down an alleged Chinese spy balloon that drifted across the continent earlier this month.

That was followed by the discovery of an unidentified object in the sky over Alaska, which was neutralized by the U.S. on Friday.

On Saturday, the U.S. Air Force, working with its Canadian counterparts as part of a NORAD mission, brought down another object that was flying in Canadian airspace over Yukon. And on Sunday, another unidentified object was shot down in the area around Lake Huron, which straddles Michigan and Ontario.

The U.S. and Canada have not publicly identified the source of the three latter objects.

Speaking to reporters at the White House, John Kirby, the U.S. National Security Council coordinator for strategic communications, said the first object discovered was clearly a Chinese spy balloon — and the balloon's path showed it was interested in monitoring sensitive U.S. military sites.

"These other three — they didn't have propulsion and they weren't being manoeuvred. We don't know for sure whether they had a surveillance aspect to them," Kirby said.

Officials have not said if the Chinese regime in Beijing is responsible for launching the objects that were identified over the weekend.

Now, questions are being asked about whether there are more such objects in North American airspace, what their purpose might be and what the military has learned from the ones that have been recovered so far.

Submitted by Chad Fish/The Associated Press

Trudeau said the CAF and the RCMP are leading a joint mission to the area where the Yukon object was brought down.

Trudeau said wintry weather in the northern territory is making the search for debris difficult.

The unidentified object was taken down over sparsely populated territory, he said, and whatever is recovered could pose a safety risk.

It's crucial to recover as much as possible to know what exactly breached Canada's airspace, he said.

"There is much analysis going on at the highest levels of NORAD," Trudeau said, adding that "the very best resources" of the CAF and the RCMP have been deployed to deal with the recovery efforts.

Canadian Coast Guard deployed to Lake Huron

Fisheries Minister Joyce Murray, who is also the minister responsible for the Canadian Coast Guard, said CCGS Griffon will soon be in Lake Huron to help recover debris in a "key search area."

The vessel is carrying drone equipment and a drone operator, she said, and two Coast Guard helicopters based out of Parry Sound, Ont. are also on standby, ready to be deployed to help search the lake.

"We will do our very best to secure this material so we can understand better what the purpose and the operations are about," she said.

Canadian officials told reporters Monday that the object shot down over Lake Huron was first detected over Alberta.

Officials said they couldn't definitively state what the objects are, but Maj.-Gen. Paul Prévost said that one is a "suspected balloon." He said locating the objects is the first step toward determining their purpose.

RCMP spokesperson Sean McGillis said there's a chance search teams won't be able to find them.

"We are working very hard to locate them, but there's no guarantee that we will," McGillis said, noting that the winter conditions in both search areas are making the job more difficult.

Evan Mitsui/CBC

Trudeau said the U.S. Air Force brought down the object over the Yukon because their aircraft were closer — not because Canada was incapable of downing the craft itself.

Trudeau said the Americans took it down quickly so that the object was not left to drift in darkness.

"NORAD is one of the only joint commands for territorial defence in the world," Trudeau said.

"We'll continue to work in a seamless, integrated way. We're not concerned about who's getting credit. We're more concerned about the results we're seeking."

Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre called the airspace intrusion "an unequivocal violation of our national sovereignty" and said it should be "a wake-up call" for the federal Liberal government.

Pointing to the role played by the U.S. in shooting down the object over Yukon, Poilievre said "after eight years of Justin Trudeau, Canada cannot defend itself."

"With his failure to counter foreign interference and properly resource our military over eight years, the prime minister has made us more vulnerable to foreign aggression," he said.

The government has made some investments in the military in recent months.

In the last federal budget, Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland pledged roughly $4.9 billion over six years to modernize NORAD and replace the aging northern warning system that is used to detect airborne threats. That money will help Canada and the U.S. build a a new "Northern Approaches" surveillance system.

Last month, Canada also signed off on the final contract to buy F-35 jet fighters to replace the air force's aging CF-18s. Canada is buying 88 of the warplanes, with deliveries expected to start sometime in 2026.

High-tech jets take on balloon, other objects in N.America skies

W.G. Dunlop
Mon, February 13, 2023

The stealthy, highly maneuverable F-22 fighter jet raced to 58,000 feet over the Atlantic Ocean and launched a missile at... a huge balloon.

The balloon -- allegedly sent by China to surveil secret US sites -- is an unlikely first aerial "kill" for a warplane designed to dominate combat against enemy planes, and it was not the last.

F-22s were again in action in the following days, shooting down an unidentified object near Alaska and another over Canada, while a fourth object was downed by an F-16 jet over Lake Huron.

The flurry of objects recently marked for destruction in American and Canadian airspace have provided rare opportunities to engage targets for both the F-22 -- one of the most expensive aircraft in the US arsenal -- and the military commands responsible for North American security.


"I believe this is the first time within United States or America airspace that NORAD or United States Northern Command has taken kinetic action against an airborne object," General Glen VanHerck, who leads both commands, told journalists.

NORAD -- a joint US-Canada air defense command -- dates to the height of the Cold War and is perhaps best known to the public for its yearly program tracking the progress of Santa Claus as he distributes presents around the world.

NORTHCOM, which is responsible for the defense of the United States, is much newer and was established after the September 11, 2001, attacks.

While the balloon and other objects have dominated headlines this month, a more common function for North America-based fighter aircraft is intercepting Russian planes that get near American air space.

- Designed for aerial combat -

The F-22 is the supercar of American jets, featuring stealth technology to shield it from enemy radar, the ability to fly above the speed of sound without the use of afterburners and "thrust vectoring" nozzles on its engines to make it highly maneuverable.

All these features were designed to make the jet all but unbeatable in air-to-air combat with enemy warplanes, making a slow-moving object like a balloon easy prey.

The jets stemmed from a 1980s-era program but did not enter initial production until 2001 and were only made in small numbers -- fewer than 200 -- at a cost of $143 million apiece, according to the US Air Force.

It has been an aircraft in search of a war -- large-scale air-to-air combat against enemy planes is a situation that has yet to emerge since the US plane gained initial operating capability in 2005.

The F-22 first saw combat in 2014 during the war against the Islamic State group in the Middle East, carrying out strikes against the jihadists.

In the recent drama, the warplanes that shot down the balloon and the three unidentified objects all employed another piece of advanced technology: the AIM-9X, a new variant of the Sidewinder missile, which features an infrared guidance system.

VanHerck said using a missile that requires a radar track would have had a "lower probability of success" due to the difficulty of tracking smaller objects, while using a cannon on a plane would have risked flying into debris.

Therefore, AIM-9Xs have been "the weapons of choice against the objects... we've been seeing."

wd/sw/dw

Yemen model jailed for five years on appeal

Mon, 13 February 2023 


An appeals court in Yemen's Huthi rebel-held capital Sanaa has confirmed a five-year jail sentence for a model accused of "prostitution", her lawyer said Monday, denouncing a political verdict.

The Iran-backed Huthis took over Sanaa in 2014 and have been enforcing a morality campaign, particularly against women.

Entisar al-Hammadi, 21, was arrested in February 2021 in Sanaa at a checkpoint while on her way to a photo shoot with a friend.

Last year the two women were sentenced to five years in jail by a lower court for "prostitution", "fornication" and "drug abuse".

Rights groups and her lawyer, Khaled al-Kamal, have dismissed the charges as lies and branded them an attack against the freedom of women.

Human Rights Watch has said the trial was riddled with "irregularities and abuse".

On Sunday an appeals court confirmed the earlier verdict, Kamal told AFP, adding that he will take the case to the supreme court.

"She was optimistic and hoped the verdict would be favourable to her," Kamal said.

"She was shocked by the verdict and began to shout and cry," he said, denouncing the ruling as politically motivated.

Hammadi, born to an Ethiopian mother and Yemeni father, has posted dozens of pictures on social media of her dressed in traditional costume, jeans or leather jacket, both with and without a headscarf.

She has thousands of followers on Instagram and Facebook.

Violence against women, especially in Huthi-controlled areas, has been on the rise since Yemen plunged into a civil war in 2014 that the United Nations says has created the world's worst humanitarian crisis.

The Huthis control much of the north of the country, while the internationally-recognised government based in the southern city of Aden is backed by a Saudi-led military coalition.

 

Houthi court upholds five-year sentence for Yemeni actress Intisar Al Hammadi

Al Hammadi was convicted of committing an indecent act and drug possession in 2021

Yemeni model Intisar Al Hammadi in a picture posted on her Facebook page. AFP

The National

Feb 14, 2023

A Houthi-run court has upheld a five-year sentence for jailed Yemeni actress Intisar Al Hammadi, who was convicted of committing an indecent act and drug possession, her lawyer said.

Al Hammadi was arrested along with three other women three years ago. Legal proceedings against the accused have been widely criticised by international rights groups.

The case has mirrored widespread Houthi repression and a crackdown on women in areas they control in war-torn Yemen.

READ MORE

Amnesty International call on Houthis to halt ‘virginity test’ on model

Al Hammadi's lawyer Khaled Al Kamal had previously told The National that his client had attempted to commit suicide shortly after she was jailed. He called the charges "baseless".

Born to a Yemeni father and Ethiopian mother, Al Hammadi was arrested while riding in a car with friends in Sanaa. She was the sole breadwinner for her four-member family, which includes her blind father and disabled brother.

Human Rights Watch has criticised the court proceedings as “marred with irregularities and abuse”. It said the Houthis confiscated Al Hammadi’s phone and “her modelling photos were treated like an act of indecency”.

Yemeni model Intisar Al Hammadi. SAM Organisation via Twitter

Al Hammadi and one of the women were first sentenced in November 2021 to five years. The other two were handed one and three years in prison, respectively.

The Court of Appeals in the Houthi-held capital of Sanaa upheld the sentences against Al Hammadi and Yousra Al Nashri, who was also handed a five-year sentence, according to lawyer Khalid Al Kamal, who represents all four women.

Yemen is now in its eighth year of war since the Iran-backed Houthis took over the capital Sanaa and a Saudi-led coalition intervened to restore the internationally recognised government to power.

In the Houthi-held areas, women who dare dissent, or even enter the public sphere, have become targets in an escalating crackdown by the Iran-backed rebels.

Updated: February 14, 2023,

Ennahda leader arrested as Tunisia cracks down on opposition

Noureddine Bhiri was taken into custody in the capital, Tunis, on suspicion of being part of a “conspiracy against the country’s security” .

The crackdown — targeting Tunisian opposition figures, the president’s critics and opponents in the media, judiciary and economic community — comes after a disastrous parliamentary election last month in which only 11 percent of the voters cast their ballots. (Reuters)

Tunisian authorities have arrested the leader of the Ennahda opposition movement in a crackdown on rival politicians and critics of the North African country's increasingly authoritarian president Kais Saied, according to lawyers.

Noureddine Bhiri, a senior Ennahda leader, was taken into custody by armed police at his home in the capital, Tunis, late Monday on suspicion of being part of a “conspiracy against the country’s security,” the movement’s lawyer, Ines Harrathi, said in a Facebook post on Tuesday.

Lazhar Akremi, a lawyer and critic of Saied, and Noureddine Bouttar, the director general of an independent radio station, Mosaïque, were also arrested by the security forces overnight Tuesday, according to Bouttar’s lawyer, Dalila Msaddek.

Authorities have not released any information on the wave of arrests that started over the weekend.

The crackdown — targeting Tunisian opposition figures, the president’s critics and opponents in the media, judiciary and economic community — comes after a disastrous parliamentary election last month in which only 11 percent of the voters cast their ballots.

The vote was organised by Saied, who is determined to reshape the country’s political system and replace a legislature that he had dissolved in 2021.

Tunisia is going through a major economic crisis, with soaring inflation and unemployment, particularly among the country’s youth. Critics of Saied's leadership and political elites accuse them of bringing the country's economy to the brink of bankruptcy.

READ MORE: Low turnout hobbles Tunisia’s second round of parliamentary polls

 

Tunisia arrests senior Ennahda figure, radio boss

The New Arab Staff & Agencies
14 February, 2023

A senior figure in Tunisia's Ennahda movement party and the head of a popular radio station have been arrested in the North African country.


Ennahda's Bhiri was detained for more than eight weeks early last year 

Tunisian police have detained a senior figure in the Islamist-inspired Ennahda party and the head of an independent radio station, the party and Tunisian media reported.

The arrests of former justice minister Noureddine Bhiri and Mosaique FM director Noureddine Boutar on Monday night were the latest in a crackdown that has targeted activists, former lawyers and a prominent businessman.

Dozens of police officers raided Bhiri's house in Tunis and "took him to an unknown location," Ennahda spokesman Abdelfattah Taghouti told AFP.

Bhiri, 64, had been detained for more than eight weeks early last year, a few months after President Kais Saied froze the Ennahda-dominated parliament in a power grab his opponents have described as a coup.

During his detention, Bhiri staged a hunger strike, stopped taking medicines and was hospitalised before agreeing to be fed by drip.

He was later released but remains under investigation on charges related to "terrorism", according to authorities.

Mosaique FM, a popular news station, reported that police had also detained Boutar without indicating what he was accused of.

The arrests came two days after the arrest of tycoon Kamel Eltaief, former top Ennahda figure Abdelhamid Jelassi and political activist Khayam Turki.

Many Tunisians saw Eltaief, a former confidant of ousted president Zine El Abidine Ben Ali, as a symbol of corruption in the North African nation.

But his arrest comes amid a spike in prosecutions against politicians, journalists and other rivals of Saied, often in military courts, since the president's dramatic move against parliament and the Ennahda-backed government in July 2021.

Since then, Saied's opponents have accused him of bringing back authoritarian rule in the birthplace of the 2011 Arab Spring uprisings.

Several Tunisian media outlets have reported that those arrested at the weekend were suspected of "plotting against state security".

Jerusalem's Christians complain of growing harassment, vandalism

"A variety of police patrols" was taking part in "stepped-up operations around the Old City, said the Israeli police.

Tuesday 14/02/2023

A priest cleans the scene after a wooden statue of Jesus was pulled down and damaged in the Church of the Condemnation, where Christians believe Jesus was flogged and sentenced to death, in Jerusalems Old City, February 2, 2023.  (AFP)

JERUSALEM-

For several weeks, members of the small Christian community in Jerusalem's Old City say they have felt themselves under pressure from what they say is growing harassment and intimidation by violent Jewish ultranationalists.

Earlier this month, a man later identified by church authorities as a Jewish radical, was wrestled to the ground and detained after he allegedly vandalised a statue of Jesus in the Church of the Flagellation. The church stands at the place where Christ is held to have taken the cross after being condemned to death by crucifixion.

"This is the church commemorating the suffering of Jesus, and exactly here, doing that is something very bad, very bad," said Father Eugenio Alliata, responsible for the archaeological collections at Terra Sancta Museum.

That incident followed a series of others, including one in which graffiti reading "Death to Armenians" and "Death to Christians" were scrawled in Hebrew on the walls of the Armenian Convent of Saint James, early in January.

"In the past two months, I would say, since the beginning of the new government, attacks like this are becoming very, very usual," said Miran Krikorian, a restaurant owner in the Old City. "And the problem is that we are feeling that there's nothing we can do about it."

Israeli police say they have stepped up patrols around Christian sites in Jerusalem as churches report abuse by Jews following the swearing-in of Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu's hard-right government.

As well as the statue defacement, the Latin Patriarchate of Jerusalem, the office of the Latin rite Roman Catholic Archbishop of Jerusalem, said there had been at least four other reported incidents of vandalism or violent harassment.

In one, a group of religious Jews had thrown chairs and tables around an area near the headquarters of the Custody of the Holy Land, creating a "battleground" in the Christian quarter. In another, a Christian cemetery in Jerusalem was vandalised, it said.

No comment was available from a spokesman for Itamar Ben-Gvir, the ultranationalist Jewish settler in charge of police in Netanyahu's six-week-old coalition, though both men have pledged to safeguard all citizens.

"When there is no strict reaction from the government, it is not only encouraging these people to behave in the same way, but it also gives us the feeling that the government wants to behave to the Christian minorities in this way," said Father Aghan Gogchian, chancellor of the Armenian Patriarchate of Jerusalem.

The cramped warren of alleyways that makes up the Old City surrounds some of the holiest sites for Jews, Christians and Muslims and the local communities have long developed ways of living together.

Police said an American suspect had been sent for psychiatric evaluation ahead of his likely deportation over the vandalism of the statue.

Queried by Reuters, police did not directly address the allegations that anti-Christian incidents were on the rise. But they said arrests had been carried out and some indictments filed, in all of the cases cited.

"A variety of police patrols" was taking part in "stepped-up operations around the Old City, houses of worship and sacred sites with a view to preserving security, public order and freedom of religion for all," the police statement said.

 

UPDATE

Ford to cut one in nine jobs in Europe in electric revamp

Variety
2023-02-14 

Ford (F.N) plans to cut one in nine jobs in product development and administration across Europe as part of a global drive to cut costs and be competitive in the electric vehicle market, the US automaker said on Tuesday.

Around 3,800 jobs will be cut in total, including 2,300 at the carmaker's Cologne and Aachen sites in Germany, 1,300 in the UK and 200 in the rest of Europe, the company said, adding it intended to achieve the reductions through voluntary programs.

The news comes as a blow to unions who said in late January the worst-case scenario was 2,500 job cuts in Europe in product development and a further 700 in administration.

The cuts were needed to "revitalize business in Europe", Ford said in a statement.

Ford is spending $50 billion on electrifying its product range, pivoting to a slimmer lineup with higher prices to compensate for rising costs of producing electric cars.

Chief Financial Officer John Lawler warned in early February that the American carmaker faced $5 billion in higher costs this year and said the company would be "very aggressive" in reducing expenses in its manufacturing and supply chain operations.

Lawler also said at the time that productivity of engineers in Europe was 25-30 percent lower than it should be.

The US group will retain around 3,400 engineers in the region who will build on core technology provided by their US counterparts and adapt it to European customers, European passenger electric vehicle (EV) chief and head of Ford Germany Martin Sander said on a press call.

Cuts in the UK, which amount to one in five of the workforce there, will be mostly at the carmaker's research center in Dunton, southeast England.

"There is significantly less work to be done on drivetrains moving out of combustion engines. We are moving into a world with less global platforms where less engineering work is necessary. This is why we have to make the adjustments," Sander said.

Nothing has changed in the carmaker's electrification strategy, Sander added, with the goal of offering an all-electric passenger car lineup by 2030 and an all-electric fleet in Europe by 2035 still in place.

Ford is due to launch its first EV in Europe built on Volkswagen's MEB platform in Cologne later this year and is considering bringing a Ford platform to Europe, possibly to its plant in Valencia, Sander said.

Still, the Dearborn, Michigan-based company also said last March that its EV business would not be profitable until the next-generation models begin production in 2025.

Ford's European staff last saw a wave of job cuts in 2019 and 2020 as the carmaker pursued a 6 percent operating margin in the region, a goal thrown off course by the pandemic, with pretax profit margins in Europe in the first nine months of 2022 at just 2.2 percent of sales.

COMMON SENSE ECONOMICS

Survey Says Americans Prepare for A Recession by Paying Off Debt


TEHRAN (FNA)- While 81% of middle-income survey respondents said they expected a recession this year, 62% said they are planning to or have already taken measures to face these challenging economic times, according to a recent survey.

For many that has meant taking control of their debt, Primerica’s fourth quarter 2022 Middle-Income Financial Security Monitor said. Thirty-nine percent of respondents said their top goal for this year was to pay off debt and 37% said they wanted to keep debt manageable, Fox News reported.

Despite concerns over inflation and a pending recession, 53% of respondents said they felt optimistic about their finances heading into 2023. Only 15% said they expected their finances or the US economy to improve by next year.

"As middle-income families prepare for a possible recession this year, it’s more vital than ever that they take control of their personal finances by addressing debt, setting a budget and keeping spending in check," Glenn J. Williams, CEO of Primerica, said in a statement.

If you are struggling to pay off debt, you could consider using a personal loan to consolidate your payments at a lower interest rate, saving you money each month. You can visit Credible to find your personalized interest rate without affecting your credit score.

Inflation and rising costs have made it more challenging for Americans to cut back on debt, the survey said.

Inflation dropped 0.1% in December to register a 6.5% increase, the first outright monthly decline since May 2020. The positive inflation data is expected to ease the pace of interest rate hikes the Federal Reserve is expected to undertake this year, which has helped soften mortgage rates.

However, there are signs that consumers, struggling with rising costs, have increasingly relied on debt to make ends meet.

Thirty-six percent of survey respondents said they used their credit cards more often in the past year, up from 27% saying the same a year ago. Further, 37% said their credit card debt has increased in the past three months, up eight percentage points from December 2021.

"Credit card debt is at the highest point in Monitor history as it continues to increase quarter to quarter," the survey said.

Additionally, of the 59% who said they had an emergency fund to cover an expense of $1,000 or more, half (51%) said they had to use it in the past 12 months.

"Three-quarters (74%) of middle-income families report not being able to save for their future, up from 66% a year ago," Amy Crews Cutts, Ph.D., an economic consultant to Primerica, said in a statement, adding, "Inflation over the past year, especially in non-discretionary items like food and gasoline, has hurt the financial security of families as it was impossible to avoid."