NY bank’s demise: Contagion or a problem with the business?

By GEOFF MULVIHILL

today
Covering state government issues nationally

geoffmulvihillgmulvihill@ap.org

Customers do business at a branch of Signature Bank in New York, Monday, March 13, 2023. President Joe Biden is telling Americans that the nation's financial systems are sound. This comes after the swift and stunning collapse of two banks that prompted fears of a broader upheaval.

 (AP Photo/Seth Wenig)


Signature Bank’s collapse came stunningly fast, leaving behind the question of whether there was a fundamental flaw in the way it did business — or if it was just a victim of the panic that spread after the failure of Silicon Valley Bank.

There were few outward signs that Signature Bank was crumbling before the New York Department of Financial Services on Sunday seized the bank’s assets and asked the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. take over its operations. The FDIC will run it as Signature Bridge Bank until it can be sold.

But leading up the the takeover, there were calls on social media warning depositors to get their funds out of the bank — and those were followed with a real-life frenzy of withdrawals. There hasn’t yet been a public accounting of exactly how much money was withdrawn from the bank with a history of being friendlier than most in the U.S. to the cryptocurrency industry.

“This is not about a particular sector in the case of Signature Bank,” Adrienne Harris, superintendent of the Department of Financial Services, said at a media briefing this week. “But we moved quickly to make sure depositors were protected.”

The department has described the New York-based financial institution as a “traditional commercial bank,” but its two-decade history was certainly unconventional.

Signature catered to privately held businesses and their owners and executives. It became one of the 20 largest banks in the country that way, based on deposits. By the same measure, it was also the third largest U.S. bank to fail, after Washington Mutual’s collapse in 2008 and Silicon Valley Bank’s demise last week.

Founded in 2001, it was a major lender to New York City apartment building owners. Clients included former President Donald Trump and the family of his son-in-law and former White House adviser, Jared Kushner. Trump’s daughter, Ivanka, who also became a key Trump administration adviser, was on the bank’s board of directors from 2011-13, before her father’s run for president.

She wasn’t the only high-profile member of the board. Over the years, two former members of Congress also served on it: Sen. Alfonse D’Amato, a New York Republican, and Rep. Barney Frank, a Massachusetts Democrat who was a co-author of the landmark 2010 legislation that overhauled regulation of the financial industry.

Signature also made loans to New York taxi drivers seeking medallions, a part of the business that struggled as ride-sharing services such as Uber and Lyft took off and the value of medallions fell.

Unlike most U.S. banks, it was also friendly to cryptocurrency businesses, becoming the first FDIC-insured bank to offer a blockchain-based digital payment platform in 2019.

Partly because of crypto, the bank’s deposits grew by 67% in 2021. But last year, as the crypto exchange FTX crashed and declared bankruptcy, Signature pulled back. Its deposits over the year declined by $17 billion, or nearly 17%. The bulk of that was because of what the bank called a “planned reduction” in crypto-related assets.

In a January earnings release, Joseph DePaolo, then Signature’s CEO, said the bank planned to expand geographically.

“We see growth on the horizon,” DePaolo said.

Even as he made the prediction, the bank’s stock was falling amid crypto struggles and a broader stock market slump. After hitting a high of $365 in early 2022, the bank’s stock plunged to less than one-third that value by late February of this year. The freefall began this month until trading was halted on March 10 with the stock sitting at $70.

Until it was shuttered, it had been a go-to bank for the crypto industry. Konstantin Shulga, co-founder and CEO of Cyprus-based Finery Markets, which connects cryptocurrency businesses with banks and other businesses, said that many of his firm’s clients banked with Signature or Silvergate Capital, which last week voluntarily shut down its bank, warning it could end up “less than well capitalized.”

Shulga said that having so few banks catering to the cryptocurrency industry is a problem.

“Because of this concentration, both parties failed,” he said. “The clients failed because they were only forced to operate within these two banks, and the banks failed because they were not able to pick up more business from other areas to diversify.”

The other problem, he said: Social media accelerated the run on Signature deposits.

Twice in March, Signature took the uncommon step of issuing financial updates as depositors fled Silicon Valley Bank, which was taken over by regulators two days before Signature was.

It said that as of March 8, 80% of its deposits came from “middle market” businesses including law and accounting firms, healthcare companies, manufacturers and real estate management firms.

But it also shared had one key characteristic with Silicon Valley Bank, which was a major player in financing the tech industry: a high portion of uninsured domestic deposits. Signature Bank was fourth in that category as of the end of 2021, with nearly 90% uninsured. Silicon Valley Bank was second. Uninsured deposits are amounts above the FDIC insurance limit of $250,000 per individual account. Only after the bank was taken over did the FDIC waive the insurance cap for depositors in both it and Silicon Valley Bank.

In the meantime, the bank’s reassurances did not slow the withdrawals, which picked up Friday and then continued into the weekend, until regulators stepped in.

Frank, the former congressman, called it “an unjustified total shutdown” and said he believed it came about because New York banking officials wanted to send a message to banks to stay away from the crypto business. He said that things were stabilizing.

The state regulatory agency that shut it down rejected that claim and pointed to what bank executives did as withdrawals continued to mount.

“The bank failed to provide reliable and consistent data, creating a significant crisis of confidence in the bank’s leadership,” an agency spokesperson said in an email.

A spokeswoman for the bank’s former leaders declined to respond, but Frank said that the numbers were changing because the situation was shifting.

An autopsy of the bank could play out in court.

This week, a shareholder filed a lawsuit in U.S. District Court in Brooklyn claiming the bank and its executives misrepresented the facts with its two assurances this month that the business was healthy.

“We intentionally maintain a high level of capital, strong liquidity profile and solid earnings,” Eric Howell, then Signature Bank’s president and chief operating officer, said in a statement March 9, three days before the bank in its old form ceased to exist, “which continues to differentiate us from competitors, especially during challenging times.”

Major oil project approval intensifies Alaska Natives’ rift

By MARK THIESSEN and MATTHEW BROWN

today

This 2019 photo provided by ConocoPhillips shows an exploratory drilling camp at the proposed site of the Willow oil project on Alaska's North Slope.The Biden administration's approval of the massive oil development in northern Alaska on Monday, March 13, 2023, commits the U.S. to yet another decades-long crude project even as scientists urgently warn that only a halt to more fossil fuel emissions can stem climate change. ConocoPhillips' Willow project was approved Monday and would result in at least 263 million tons of planet-warming gases over 30 years. 

(ConocoPhillips via AP)

ANCHORAGE, Alaska (AP) — The Biden administration’s approval this week of the biggest oil drilling project in Alaska in decades promises to widen a rift among Alaska Natives, with some saying that oil money can’t counter the damages caused by climate change and others defending the project as economically vital.

Two lawsuits filed almost immediately by environmentalists and one Alaska Native group are likely to exacerbate tensions that have built up over years of debate about ConocoPhillips Alaska’s Willow project.

Many communities on Alaska’s North Slope celebrated the project’s approval, citing new jobs and the influx of money that will help support schools, other public services and infrastructure investments in their isolated villages. Just a few decades ago, many villages had no running water, said Doreen Leavitt, director of natural resources for the Inupiat Community of the Arctic Slope. Housing shortages continues to be a problem, with multiple generations often living together, she said.

“We still have a long ways to go. We don’t want to go backwards,” Leavitt said.

She said 50 years of oil production on the petroleum-rich North Slope has shown that development can coexist with wildlife and the traditional, subsistence way of life.

But some Alaska Natives blasted the decision to greenlight the project, and they are supported by environmental groups challenging the approval in federal court.

The acrimony toward the project was underscored in a letter dated earlier this month written by three leaders in the Nuiqsut community, who described their remote village as “ground zero for industrialization of the Arctic.” They addressed the letter to Interior Secretary Deb Haaland, a member of New Mexico’s Laguna Pueblo and the first Native American to lead a Cabinet department.

They cited the threat that climate change poses to caribou migrations and to their ability to travel across once-frozen areas. Money from the ConocoPhillips project won’t be enough to mitigate those threats, they said. The community is about 36 miles (58 kilometers) from the Willow project.

“They are payoffs for the loss of our health and culture,” the Nuiqsut leaders wrote. “No dollar can replace what we risk....It is a matter of our survival.”

But Asisaun Toovak, the mayor of Utqiaġvik, the nation’s northernmost community on the Arctic Ocean, told the AP that she jumped for joy when she heard the Biden administration approved the Willow project.

“I could say that the majority of the people, the majority of our community and the majority of the people were excited about the Willow Project,” she said.

Willow is in the National Petroleum Reserve-Alaska, a vast region on Alaska’s resource-rich North Slope that is roughly the size of Maine. It would produce up to 180,000 barrels of oil a day, the use of which would result in at least 263 million tons (239 million metric tons) of greenhouse gas emissions over 30 years, according to a federal environmental review.

The Sovereign Iñupiat for a Living Arctic, Sierra Club and other groups that sued Tuesday said Interior officials ignored the fact that every ton of greenhouse gas emitted by the project would contribute to sea ice melt, which endangers polar bears and Alaska villages. A second lawsuit seeking to block the project was filed Wednesday by Greenpeace and other environmental groups.

For Alaska Natives to reconcile their points of view with one another, it will take discussions. “We just continue to try to sit at the table together, break bread and meet as a region,” said Leavitt, who also is the secretary for the tribal council representing eight North Slope villages.

“I will say the majority of the voices that we heard against Willow were from the Lower 48,” she said of the contiguous U.S. states, excluding Alaska and Hawaii.

ConocoPhillips Alaska said the $8 billion project would create up to 2,500 jobs during construction and 300 long-term jobs, and generate billions of dollars in royalties and other revenues to be split between the federal and state governments.

The project has had widespread support among lawmakers in the state. Alaska’s bipartisan congressional delegation met with Biden and his advisers in early March to plead their case for the project, and Alaska Native lawmakers also met with Haaland to urge support.

Haaland visited the North Slope last fall, just hours after state Rep. Josiah Aullaqsruaq Patkotak, a whaling captain along with his brother on their father’s whaling crew, harvested a roughly 40-ton (36-metric tons) bowhead whale and spent hours pulling it on the ice from the Arctic Ocean at Utqiaġvik. He left the ice around 7 a.m. to be ready to meet with Haaland just two hours later.

For him, the juxtaposition of those activities on the same day underscored the dual life led by Alaska Natives on the North Slope and highlights the choices that communities make every day for their survival.

“That’s the walk our leaders have to walk,” said Patkotak, an independent who supported Willow. “We maintain our culture and our lifestyle and our subsistence aspect where we’re one with the land and animals, and the very next hour you may be having to conduct yourself, you know, in a manner that you’re playing the Western world’s game.”

He invited Haaland to view the bowhead whale that they harvested, but when Patkotak couldn’t provide a street name of where she would go, her security didn’t allow it. “Well, it’s on the ice, there are no street names,” he said.

Patkotak met again with Haaland this month in Washington, D.C., where he extended an invitation to leaders in the White House to visit Utqiagvik, “because it’s our duty to tell our story so that we’re able to strike that balance of both worlds.

“That’s a reality for us,” he said.

___

Brown reported from Billings, Montana.

Students call for education reform in Hungary protest march

By JUSTIN SPIKE

1 of 15
People carry a huge Hungarian flag during a march, marking the 175th anniversary of a failed 1848 uprising, in Budapest, Hungary, Wednesday, March 15, 2023. A "freedom march" was organized by dozens of civic organizations who are calling for greater social solidarity and an end to what they call intimidation from Viktor Orban's government. (AP Photo/Denes Erdos)

BUDAPEST, Hungary (AP) — Thousands of students and other opponents of Hungary’s government marched in the capital Budapest on Wednesday to demand educational reforms and a change in the Central European country’s political culture.

The protest, dubbed a “freedom march” by organizers, was called by teachers unions and student groups who have spent months pressuring Hungary’s government to provide salary raises and better working conditions for educators. The groups have also demanded the repeal of legislation that limits teachers’ right to strike.

Marchers chanted slogans like “no teachers, no future” and “striking is a basic right” as they moved down one of Budapest’s main avenues. Student groups and teachers have engaged in strikes, walkouts and other acts of civil disobedience in recent months after the government didn’t fulfill their demands, resulting in several teacher firings.

Katalin Torley, a teacher that was fired from a Budapest high school after working there for 23 years, said at the demonstration that Hungary had become an “extremely centralized authoritarian system” which has taken away autonomy from those working in the public sphere.

“I think that this movement is not anti-government but against the system,” she said. “Those teachers who engaged in civil disobedience showed that a normal system must be restored.”

The March 15 demonstration came on a national holiday commemorating the 175th anniversary of Hungary’s failed 1848 revolution against Habsburg rule. One of Hungary’s most important national holidays, March 15 often features large patriotic demonstrations as well as protests in the capital.

Hungary’s populist prime minister, Viktor Orbán, broke with his tradition of giving an address in Budapest, instead speaking to supporters in the small town of Kiskoros, around two hours from the capital.

The address was given in front of the childhood home of Sandor Petofi, widely regarded as one of Hungary’s greatest poets who was instrumental in fomenting the Hungarian rebellion against the Austrian empire in 1848.

In his speech, Orbán spoke at length about Petofi’s contributions to Hungarian political culture, saying the poet had “created the dialect of Hungarian freedom.”

Although Petofi is thought to have been killed in 1849 as he fought in the revolution, Hungarians still feel his presence today when foreign forces attempt to impose their will on Hungary, Orbán said.

“He flashes before our eyes, whenever we hesitate, when we falter. We see him as he rebels when foreigners want to tell the Hungarians how to live. We see him turning against the great powers of the world who want to reintegrate Hungarians into a European superstate,” he said.

Hungary’s government is a frequent critic of the European Union, which has held up billions in funding to Budapest over concerns that Orbán has overseen widespread official corruption and violated the bloc’s rule-of-law standards.

Orbán has often referred to the EU as an “empire” that seeks to dominate Hungary, just as the Austrian Empire and Soviet Union had in the 19th and 20th centuries. He won his fourth-straight term in office in elections in 2022.

“We will never allow the flag of freedom to be wrenched from the hands of the Hungarians,” Orbán said Wednesday. “We will not allow it, and it will not succeed.”

Thousands of LA school district workers to hold 3-day strike

today

 A Los Angeles Unified School District bus driver walks past parked vehicles at a bus garage in Gardena, Calif., on Dec. 15, 2015. Tens of thousands of workers in the Los Angeles Unified School District will strike for three days next week over stalled contract talks and teachers will join them, likely shutting down the nation's second-largest school system, union leaders announced Wednesday, March 15, 2023.

 (AP Photo/Damian Dovarganes, File)


LOS ANGELES (AP) — Tens of thousands of workers in the Los Angeles Unified School District will strike for three days next week over stalled contract talks and teachers will join them, likely shutting down the nation’s second-largest school system, union leaders announced Wednesday.

The strike was set to begin Tuesday. It was announced at a rally by the Service Employees International Union, which represents about 30,000 teachers’ aides, bus drivers, custodians, cafeteria workers and other support staff.

United Teachers Los Angeles, the union representing 35,000 teachers, counselors and other staff, expressed solidarity.

“Educators will be joining our union siblings on the picket lines,” a UTLA tweet said.

Teachers waged a six-day strike in 2019 over pay and contract issues but schools remained open.

This time, schools would likely close and there wouldn’t be any access to virtual learning, Superintendent Alberto M. Carvalho said in an email to parents on Monday.

“We would simply have no way of ensuring a safe and secure environment where teaching can take place,” Carvalho said.

On Wednesday, Carvalho accused the union of refusing to negotiate and said that he was prepared to meet “day and night” to prevent a strike, which he said would harm students already struggling to regain academic ground lost when classrooms were closed and they were forced to learn remotely during the COVID-19 pandemic.

At a news conference, he said averting a strike “will avoid keeping kids home, will avoid kids from going hungry in our community without access to the food they get in school.”

“We are calling on them to come to the table for staff and students, right now,” he said in a later statement.

The SEIU says district support staffers earn, on average, about $25,000 per year and many live in poverty because of low pay or limited work hours while struggling with inflation and the high cost of housing in LA County. The union is asking for a 30% raise. Teachers want a 20% pay hike over two years.

The district has made what it called an historic offer to the SEIU of a $15 wage increase, some of it retroactive, and 9% in retention bonuses.

The strike has wide support among union members. Thousands of people, many dressed in red, rallied Wednesday outside City Hall, holding signs, chanting, and garnering support in the hours before the strike date was announced.

The district has more than 500,000 students. It serves Los Angeles and all or part of 25 other cities and unincorporated county areas.

SEIU members have been working without a contract since June 2020 and the contract for teachers expired in June 2022. The unions decided last week to stop accepting extensions to their contracts.

Dozens at big Nissan Tennessee plant will vote on own union

By JONATHAN MATTISE

today

Workers at the Nissan plant in Smyrna, Tenn., walk by a Nissan Altima sedan, May 15, 2012. A group of 75 employees out of the thousands who work at a Nissan assembly plant in Tennessee will finally vote Thursday, March 16, 2023, on whether to form a union. (AP Photo/Erik Schelzig, File)

NASHVILLE, Tenn. (AP) — Several dozen workers among thousands at a Nissan factory in Tennessee will hold a long-delayed vote on whether to unionize Thursday. Those leading the drive hope for an elusive win at a foreign-owned auto assembly plant in the traditionally anti-union South.

After years of legal wrangling that spanned two presidential administrations, organizers successfully argued that the group of 75 tool and die technicians are eligible for standalone representation because they have extremely specialized skills for a job that can’t be done by others at the facility. The Japan-based company has contended the employees are not sufficiently distinct from other plant workers to be eligible for their own unionized bloc.

Organizers have cited a variety of reasons to unionize at the Nissan plant in Smyrna, about 25 miles (40 kilometers) outside Nashville. Those include retirement, work-life balance and health care issues they want to negotiate.

Nationwide, several high-profile unionization campaigns — at Starbucks, Amazon, Apple and other companies — have given organized labor a renewed spotlight of late, even as the union membership rate reached an all-time low last year. The number of workers belonging to a union actually increased by 1.9% to 14.3 million, but that failed to keep pace with higher overall employment rates.

A federal ruling in 2021 nearly killed the union drive in Smyrna. After that decision was overturned this year, organizers said the election could now be a close call instead of an easy win, saying years of waiting have taken a toll on the campaign.

A National Labor Relations Board official sided with Nissan in June 2021, ruling that the smaller group of workers couldn’t vote to unionize without including thousands more employees at the plant. The union didn’t pursue the facility-wide vote.

But once the U.S. Senate completed its confirmations of new Biden administration appointees, control of the board switched from Republicans to Democrats. The panel overturned the previous ruling last month, giving the union a green light for the vote.

Since plant workers first reached out to the machinists union in 2020, some supporters have quit, others retired and some moved on to unionized workplaces elsewhere, said Tim Wright, grand lodge representative for southern territory with the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers.

“This two-year process, it chilled this campaign to the point to where this is going to be a close election, potentially,” Wright said in an interview Tuesday. He said he hopes the campaign can create a “buzz” with other workers as well.

A spokesperson for Nissan, which has about 7,000 employees at the Smyrna facility, has said the company believes its workplace is “stronger without the involvement of third-party unions” like the machinists union. Still, it emphasized that employees have the right to decide whether to join a union — a right that has been enshrined in federal law since the 1930s.

Unions have run into opposition from Republican politicians when they attempt to organize at foreign automakers in the South, including in Tennessee. Still, it doesn’t appear that GOP officials have sought to weigh in much on the campaign at Nissan.

Tennessee already has a big union presence at an American automaker: The General Motors plant in Spring Hill has thousands of production and skilled trades workers represented by the United Auto Workers union.

In a radio ad for the campaign — which featured former University of Tennessee and Pittsburgh Steelers football player Ramon Foster — the machinists union highlighted its representation of some workers at Trane Company, Tennessee Valley Authority, Arnold Air Force Base, Oak Ridge National Laboratory, NWI Aero and in the railroad industry.

Nissan does work with organized labor in the rest of the world, but votes to unionize broadly at the two Nissan plants in the U.S. have not been close. Workers in Smyrna rejected a plantwide union under the UAW in 2001 and 1989.

The automaker’s other U.S. assembly plant in Canton, Mississippi, rejected facility-wide representation by the UAW during a 2017 vote.

The margin was much closer in 2014 and 2019 votes at the Volkswagen plant in Chattanooga, Tennessee, where workers twice rejected a factory-wide union under the UAW.

The year after the 2014 vote failed, 160 Chattanooga maintenance workers won a vote to form a smaller union, but Volkswagen refused to bargain. The German automaker had argued the bargaining unit also needed to include production workers. As a result, the 2019 factory-wide vote followed.

There’s also an open question about whether workers will unionize at four sprawling new factories planned by Ford in Kentucky and Tennessee by 2025, with an aim of hiring nearly 11,000 workers. Three of the plants — two in Kentucky, one in Tennessee — will be built with Ford’s South Korean corporate partner, SK Innovation, to produce electric vehicle batteries. A fourth, in Tennessee, will make electric F-Series pickup trucks.

First Quantum resumes operations at Panama copper mine

Reuters | March 15, 2023

The Cobre Panama mine is located in Colon province, 120 km west of Panama City. Credit: First Quantum Minerals Ltd.

First Quantum Minerals, the operator of the Cobre Panama mine, has resumed operations to normal levels at the mine, gold-focused royalty and streaming company Franco-Nevada Corp said on Wednesday.


Franco-Nevada has contributed a total of $1.36 billion to the construction of Cobre Panama and the mine accounted for 18% of the company’s revenue in 2021. Copper miner First Quantum owns a 90% interest in the mine through its unit Minera Panama SA (MPSA).

First Quantum had suspended ore processing operations at the mine on Feb. 23 after a Panama government order halted its loading permissions at the port, limiting its capacity to store copper.

Last week, the government and the miner agreed on the final text for a contract to operate the key copper mine.

The new contract guarantees a minimum annual income of $375 million to the Central American government, and will be effective for 20 years with the option to renew it for 20 more.

On Tuesday, Panama’s Maritime Authority lifted the suspension on First Quantum Minerals’ operations at the port of Punta Rincon, which the Canadian company uses to export copper concentrate from the Cobre Panama mine.

(By Ankit Kumar; Editing by Maju Samuel and Devika Syamnath)

INTER-IMPERIALIST RIVALRY

French brewery attack flags Russia's tussle for influence in Africa


Barbara DEBOUT
Thu, 16 March 2023 


On a night in early March, arsonists attacked a brewery owned by the French drinks giant Castel in Bangui, the capital of the Central African Republic.

Hurling petrol bombs, they set fire to beer crates stacked inside the MOCAF brewery's fortified storage yard.

But this was not some random assault by firebugs.

Footage from security cameras, say sources familiar with the incident, shows a planned operation by four men wearing fatigues resembling those of the Russian mercenary group Wagner.

The attack, they say, bears the hallmarks of a ruthless campaign to carve out Russian influence in the CAR, a country poor but replete with valuable forests, gold and commercial minerals.

France and Russia have long been wrestling for influence in CAR, a country wracked by poverty and plagued by a nearly decade-long civil conflict.

But until this physical attack on French interests, the confrontation had been largely limited to anti-French trolling, seeking to poison relations between the CAR and its former colonial power.

In December 2020, Facebook removed troll "factories" and other sources of fake news allegedly controlled by entities linked to Wagner chief Yevgeny Prigozhin, as well as accounts reportedly linked to the French military.

Last December, France pulled its last troops out of CAR.

It ended a deployment that had continued since the country's independence in 1960 and helped to stabilise it after a civil war erupted along sectarian lines in 2013.

The pullout came on the heels of a French withdrawal from the Sahel state of Mali after its junta forged a close alliance with the Kremlin and brought in paramilitaries described by France as Wagner men.

But in an apparent sign of warming relations, CAR's President Faustin Archange Touadera met this month with Emmanuel Macron in Gabon during the French president's most recent Africa trip.

That meeting occurred just days before the Castel brewery attack on the night of March 5.

"The Russians are concerned about a possible rapprochement between Touadera and the West, and are going to do whatever they can to stop it," said Roland Marchal, an Africa specialist at Sciences Po university in Paris.

- Brewery target -

Earlier this year, Castel and MOCAF, a major local employer, were hit by smear campaigns on social media and in the streets.

Castel presented a favourable target.

French anti-terrorism prosecutors had opened a preliminary inquiry into "complicity in war crimes" over a suspected financial deal with CAR rebels to secure production sites of the firm's sugar refinery SUCAF.

Signs saying "Castel = Terrorism" or "If you buy Castel, you're paying your own murder" were carried by a few dozen protesters outside the brewery in mid-January.

A senior Castel executive in France, who requested anonymity to discuss the security risks, said there was an attempted intrusion before the March 5 attack.

"On January 30, during a curfew, three white men got out of an unmarked car and approached (the brewery) carrying a ladder before fleeing when security personnel approached."

"The same night, a drone flew over the brewery," the executive said.

- Lightning attack -

Video footage of the March 5 attack went viral on social media, and was confirmed to AFP by MOCAF, the French group's local subsidiary.

Ben Wilson Ngassan, a communications consultant for MOCAF, said "around 30" petrol bombs were thrown in "a premeditated operation, a lightning attack (that lasted) five minutes, tops."

A well-informed European source said the footage bore clear signs that the assailants were Wagner.

They had "quite an athletic build," had a military comportment, wore military fatigues -- a familiar sight in Bangui -- and had Kalashnikov assault rifles slung over their shoulders, the source said.

Russian paramilitaries have been in the country since 2018, when they were brought in to buttress CAR's beleaguered military.

Their numbers were increased by hundreds in 2020 to thwart rebels who advancing on the capital as a presidential election unfolded.

A UN rights expert as well as NGOs and Western capitals have accused Wagner mercenaries of carrying out crimes against civilians. The group also operates in Mali.

But France also suspects Touadera of buying Wagner's support against rebel insurgencies by providing it access to diamonds and the country's other natural riches.

- Intimidation? -

A diplomat in Bangui called the brewery bombing the latest attempt to intimidate Western businesses in the CAR.

It came as a rival beer called Africa Ti L'Or appeared in markets and bars across Bangui.

The new brand is brewed by a firm called the First Industrial Company, owned by Russia's cultural attache in Bangui, Dmitry Syty, according to the weekly Jeune Africa.

Syty is "one of the pillars of the Wagner network in CAR," according to the All Eyes on Wagner investigative consortium.

He was reportedly injured last year by a letter bomb, which Prigozhin blamed on France -- a claim that France dismissed as Russian "propaganda."

- Blame game -

Social networks and pro-Russia media outlets have attributed the brewery attack to Central Africans or disguised "mercenaries" paid by France to make it look like a Wagner attack.

The Ndjoni Sango news site, a staunch supporter of Russia's presence in the country, even announced the arrest of seven "suspects" and attributed the attack to the Fulani ethnic group.

The claim "is fake news," an official in CAR's security forces told AFP.

On March 9, police detained eight foreigners, including four French nationals, at a popular restaurant and hotel in Bangui while purportedly searching for the "inflammable liquid" used in the brewery attack.

All were released without charges a few hours later.

There are no signs of any progress in the inquiry into the brewery attack.

"We are examining all documents before making any arrest," Bangui's chief prosecutor Benoit Narcisse Foukpio told AFP on Tuesday.

bdl-gir/js/ri

US candidate for UN migration chief vows 'new vision'
Issued on: 16/03/2023 

International Organization for Migration (IOM) deputy director, Amy Pope, is running for the agency's top job against her own boss © Fabrice COFFRINI / AFP

Geneva (AFP) – The International Organization for Migration has an antiquated way of approaching its mission and desperately needs renewal, the UN agency's second-in-command with designs on the top job told AFP.

Amy Pope, the IOM deputy head acknowledged it was "a bit awkward" to be running to unseat her boss Antonio Vitorino.

"It's not ideal in some ways, but it's really about the future of the organisation," the 49-year-old American lawyer said this week.

IOM, which is due to hold leadership elections in mid-May, finds itself in the unusual situation for a United Nations agency of having a director-general challenged by a subordinate over what typically would have been a shoo-in second term.

Vitorino, who served as Portugal's deputy prime minister and defence minister in the mid-1990s, took the IOM reins in 2018, breaking decades of US leadership at the organisation.

Pope insisted that her decision to run against her 66-year-old boss -- only the second non-American to run IOM in its seven-decade history -- was not about putting Washington's pick back in charge.

No 'retirement job'

"I think the nationality matters less than the frame of mind and energy levels and strategic vision and willingness to work really hard," she said.

"This is not a retirement job."

Pope, who has spent most of her career focused on migration issues, including within the administration of former US president Barack Obama, only started working at IOM a year and a half ago.

She said she had been "really excited" when she landed the post as deputy IOM chief, in charge of management and reform.

But she said it soon became clear to her, and to Washington, that "if we were really going to make progress, there needed to be new leadership".

While the organisation, which serves the needs of an estimated 281 million migrants worldwide, is "very, very good at providing immediate support during humanitarian response," she said, in other areas, "There is just a lot of room for improvement."

Pope, who if she wins would be the first woman to lead IOM, called for finally "taking the organisation... into the 21st century".

'Stuck in old ways'

"We're still kind of stuck in old ways of looking at migration," she said, insisting "real vision" was required to bring about a much-needed culture change.

She called for a broader focus on the impacts of climate change on migration, which she dubbed "one of the most significant challenges for our generation".

In the face of such threats, she said IOM could do far more to leverage its massive amounts of data to detect and address problems before they spark large migration flows.

She pointed out, for instance, that drilling boreholes in search of water in communities regularly affected by drought or building more stable shelters to withstand storms help people remain in their communities.

"We need to flip the conversation," Pope said. "We can and we should begin to do interventions on the front end."

If you only look at the people trying to make dangerous crossings of the Mediterranean or the Channel, she warned, "You have missed about 10 interventions that could have happened along the way."

She said more work needed to be put into establishing regular migration channels, making it possible for people to move legally and safely.

'Value of migration'

Pope said communication especially needed to be dramatically improved at IOM, whose current chief has become notorious in Geneva for avoiding the media.

"There is a sense within the organisation that we need to be afraid of the story of migration," she said.

Instead of shying away from the issue, the response to the rampant anti-migrant sentiment seen in many countries should be leaning into the story, she insisted.

IOM should focus on telling stories "humanising" the people in need, she said, but also "telling the good news stories of migration".

"There is overwhelming evidence about the value of migration for economies, for rebuilding cities, for strengthening innovation and entrepreneurship," Pope said.

"I think it is critical that we as an organisation lead with that."

© 2023 AFP

BAD PRESS; IT WAS TROTSKY'S FAULT
70 years after Stalin’s death: How Western propaganda has rebranded the Soviet dictator from villain to hero, and back again

The Georgian Bolshevik has been portrayed as a mass murderer, a vital friend, and a dangerous tyrant, depending on the mood of the day

©  RT

Joseph Stalin died on the 5th of March 1953. The Soviet leader was one of the “big three” winners of World War II, and his life, political career, and the effects of his policies have been extensively researched by Russian and Western scholars. 70 years later, the Georgian remains a problematic political figure in Russia, and many other former Soviet states, and his legacy is frequently at the center of fierce debates. In the West, the condemnation of Stalin’s policies is now absolute, but that has not always been the case. 

The problem of Stalin’s legacy

The decades of Stalin’s rule over the largest country in the world were filled with terror that led to millions of deaths. After the Bolshevik revolution and the civil war, the Soviet power struggle went on for years and contributed to the subsequent instability of the country. Following the Ukrainian-born Leon Trotsky’s political defeat in 1927, Stalin consolidated his power. Trotsky had wanted a world revolution; whereas, Stalin intended to build socialism in one country. He introduced the collectivization of the agricultural sector, which involved the repression of kulaks (private farmers) and led to famine and the deaths of millions. 

The wave of political repression from 1936-1938, also known as the Great Terror, is one of the most significant elements of Stalin’s legacy. In the West, this period is usually seen through the prism of British historian Robert Conquest, who has been accused by others – such as American historian J. Arch Getty – of constant extrapolation of casualty figures and of omitting the beginning of the purges under Lenin. These figures are constantly reviewed by historians, but the West has focused more on this period than on anything else. Nonetheless, the fact remains that Stalin’s policies were extremely harsh.

He has also been held responsible for causing forced famines in Ukraine, southern Russia and Kazakhstan, which killed millions of people.  

The way in which Stalin conducted the war against Nazi Germany would also be a source of criticism, after the war’s conclusion. The leader had ruthlessly sent millions of soldiers to their deaths following his “not a step back!” proclamation in order to break Hitler’s war machine.

Soviet “not a step back!” poster ©  Wikipedia

His approach inflicted the greatest amount of damage on the Axis armies but at a tremendous cost. Such a sacrifice of life was anathema to Western leaders seeking reelection even during wartime. According to many historians, including Gil Meron, this was a major factor in the Allies continual postponement of opening a second front in Europe and one that enraged Stalin, as evidenced by his correspondence with Churchill. Essentially, the sacrifice made by the Soviets was both welcome and appalling from the Western point-of-view.

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Currently, Stalin is known in the West mostly for his brutality, and few academics and writers have taken the time to explore the man, the era, and the circumstances during his time in power. However, historians such as J. Arch Getty and Matthew E. Lenoe are more pragmatic in evaluating the leader’s role in the events of the 1930s and 1940s. Likewise, Karl Schlögel’s book ‘Moscow 1937’ provides a more complete picture of Stalin’s leadership of the Soviet Union. These researchers thoroughly describe the events of the purges and political oppression, but also note the unprecedented modernization and technological progress that occurred in tandem during the period. 

When Stalin won his political battle against Trotsky, the country was already completely shattered following the Bolsheviks’ merciless seizure of power, the subsequent civil war and Red Terror. The country had never been an industrial power and understanding that an important war was coming, Stalin famously explained the situation in a speech to industrial managers in 1931: “We are fifty or a hundred years behind the advanced countries. We must make good this distance in ten years. Either we do it, or we shall be crushed.” 

As a general rule, historians work without a moral bias and a political figure is usually analyzed according to the state of the country when he came to power versus when he left. The industrialization of the Soviet Union led to disastrous casualties among the population, however it did modernize the country. As Isaac Deutscher said, (though the quote is frequently attributed to Winston Churchill) “The core of Stalin's genuine historic achievement lies in the fact that he found Russia working with the wooden plough and left her equipped with atomic piles.”

FILE PHOTO. A reproduction photo of Joseph Stalin, General Secretary of the Central Committee of the

 All-Union Communist Party (Bolsheviks), in his office. ©  Sputnik

Stalin’s image before and after the war

What Western historians and journalists write today about Stalin is one thing, but one should not forget how the Soviet leader was seen at the time. For many in the West, the Russian Revolution and the “dictatorship of the proletariat” were a shining light in the East, a promise of better days, a real source of hope. And for a long time, Stalin was the incarnation of this light. Hence the nickname “Father of nations”, that Soviet propaganda and communists all over the world gave him. The weight of communist parties in countries such as France or Italy, controlled by the Communist International (Komintern) was a trump card in the hand of the USSR to propagate a favorable image of its leader among Western populations. The fascination was such that European communists were reluctant to engage in resistance against Hitler until Stalin gave a green light, following the beginning of Germany’s invasion of the USSR. But the masses were not the only ones to be fascinated by Stalin and what he incarnated. 

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The work of the genius German publisher and communist activist Willy Münzenberg had a supreme influence on intellectuals and poets all over Europe. Playing on the primordial fascination with this new economic model being built in the USSR, he monitored and/or created many “useful idiots” (or “fellow travelers”). Some, like André Gide or Arthur Koestler, went on to be quickly disillusioned, but it was not the majority. With the appearance of popular fronts in Europe and the turmoil of the Spanish civil war, many left-wing intellectuals maintained their position for a long time while enjoying an excellent reputation in elite circles. Louis Aragon, Jean-Paul Sartre, Louis Althusser, New York Times correspondent Walter Duranty, Pablo Neruda, Ernest Hemingway, André Malraux, Romain Rolland… quite a lot of respected voices. Because of their left-wing sensibility, anticolonial stance, pacifism or idealism, they fostered a positive image of Moscow, and, consequently, of Stalin. Arthur Koestler’s novel “Darkness at noon”, which depicts the politico-psychological process of the 1930’s purges, was not followed by many of these intellectuals. Jean-Paul Sarte, for example, later moved from Stalinism to Maoism. 

Furthermore, people, such as the “Cambridge five” or physicist Klaus Fuchs, actively spied for the USSR. And it was to fight for a cause, not for money. Their contribution to the reinforcement of Moscow’s power and the creation of the first Soviet atomic weapons can not be underestimated. On yet another level, Franklin D. Roosevelt and Winston Churchill had been sincerely impressed by the Soviet leader, with whom the American president had a courteous correspondence. An Ifop poll conducted at the end of World War II showed the majority of the French population believed that the Soviet Union had won the war, not Western powers. Stalin’s popularity was at its peak and he was arguably the most powerful man in the world.

FILE PHOTO. Winston Churchill, Franklin Delano Roosevelt and Joseph Stalin at the Yalta Conference, February 1945

. ©  Hulton Archive/Getty Images

In 1956, Nikita Khrushchev – who himself had an important role in the political oppression of the Great Terror – made a move which ultimately had an enormous influence on Stalin’s image. During the 20th Party congress, in order to consolidate his own power, the new leader of the USSR denounced the crimes of his former boss and the cult of personality he enjoyed during his reign. His speech and was a shock for communists in Europe who were now more divided than ever, but liberals could only rejoice. The USSR’s two main assets in Western Europe were subsequently fragmented. The Italian communist party sought domestic political integration, while the French communist party was paralyzed. The Congress triggered the beginning of a crisis of confidence regarding the Soviet Union. In a way, one can look at Krushchev’s political maneuver against Stalin’s image as the first blow to the entire Soviet structure.

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Stalin’s reputation would continue deteriorating as dissidents published books in the West, and his former Western intellectual admirers were denounced for their blindness. Furthermore, it is true that Stalin won a political victory over Trotsky, but the latter is better judged by history. Trotsky is now considered more as an intellectual and a victim, regardless of the atrocities he committed when in power – particularly in his Ukrainian homeland – and his ideas have not vanished. Irving Kristol, the “godfather of neoconservatism” in the USA, was a former Trotskyist, and the political views of the architects and proponents of globalized financial capitalism mesh with Trotsky’s internationalist views. Whereas Stalin, with the disappearance of communist parties as propaganda tools and the fall of the Soviet Union, has simply become another bogeyman. It is still possible to encounter Western Stalinists, but those are usually Marxist intellectuals with no influence on the broader public. 

Stalin and Western rhetoric towards Russian leaders

Ivan the Terrible has been considered a monster for many centuries, because of his ruthlessness in internal politics, but also down to how he conquered vast territories and became a threat to the West’s own imperialism. The fact that he was a very important reformer is somehow ignored. Peter the Great, was no softer, but on the contrary, he is considered an interesting personality mainly because he opened “a window to Europe” and incorporated Western elements into Russian civilization. When it comes to Stalin and Trotsky, Western views favor the internationalist. Gorbachev and Yeltsin, with their wish to adapt to Western standards, are also considered “good” Russian leaders. Currently, the Western position has moved in the other direction with Vladimir Putin in power, who stated with his Munich speech back in 2007, that the times of a weak Russia were over. 

FILE PHOTO. Josef Stalin, 1937, Moscow, Russia. ©  AFP PHOTO

The Georgian is maybe the only one who has managed to be the object of both praise and loathing from the West. Stalin had become a problem for liberal democratic propaganda during the war. Just as Soviet agitprop had to justify its sudden alliance with capitalist countries, the Anglo-Saxon media had to explain why Stalin was a great statesman and a good ally. Pro-Soviet movies were produced, on the personal request of the American president, and the feature film “Mission to Moscow” was created in order to justify the purges. Stalin was twice named Time magazine’s “Person of the year” within three years, and even the publication of George Orwell’s “Animal Farm” was postponed. A positively biased campaign was actively nurtured around him. 

Only progressively, during the Cold War, did the narrative change. However, it was very difficult to put Stalin in the same basket as Hitler, since the war had cost the USSR the death of roughly 27 million people and gave it a place at the table of victors. Traditionally, victors are the ones who write and rewrite history, but 70 years later, the West is more confident in its capacity to rewrite the story of the 20th century. And Stalin is more often now presented as an accomplice of Hitler who helped him organize chaos and terror in Europe.

Something which is clearly nonsense. 

This apparently incoherent attitude is better explained if we examine the power structures in liberal democracies. Since the beginning of the 20th century, the West has developed a system in which strong incarnations of power are not desired. By 1900, according to the American philosopher Sheldon Wolin, the US was already living under an “inverted totalitarianism”, that is to say a system where corporations and lobbyists rule while the government acts as a servant. In his famous 1928 book “Propaganda”, Edward Bernays explained: “The conscious and intelligent manipulation of the organized habits and opinions of the masses is an important element in democratic society. Those who manipulate this unseen mechanism of society constitute an invisible government which is the true ruling power of our country.”  

If Bernays’s conclusions are correct, it implies that the Western system doesn’t need statesmen and political reformers with a vision for specific nations but administrators and managers with short mandates. Angela Merkel’s 16 year tenure marks a notable exception in contemporary liberal democracies. However, Merkel has working as part of the European Union, with its sophisticated institutions, and heavy bureaucracy. This may explain why the length of her time in office has never been criticized, whereas the West frequently expresses its concern towards men like Putin or Xi remaining in office for long periods. 

However, as various crises have shown, liberal democracies temporarily embrace "strongmen" when it fits the political agenda. Pierre Conesa, a French specialist in geostrategy, is the author of ‘The fabrication of the enemy’ and ‘Hollywar: Hollywood, weapon of mass propaganda’. He explains how Western messaging resorts to a fickle cinematographic process of demonizing its enemy and presenting its side as heroic. Stalin fits this pattern, as he is the only man in the Kremlin who was ever treated as a dangerous man, then as a hero, and eventually rebranded as an incarnation of evil. 

By Matthieu Buge, who worked on Russia for the magazine l’Histoire, the Russian film magazine Séance, and as a columnist for Le Courrier de Russie. He is the author of the book Le Cauchemar russe ('The Russian Nightmare').