Monday, March 20, 2023

The $17 billion wipeout of Credit Suisse bondholders has not gone down well in Europe

PUBLISHED MON, MAR 20 2023

CNBC

The Swiss regulator FINMA announced Sunday that the so-called additional tier-one bonds, which are widely regarded as relatively risky investments, will be written to zero as part of the deal.

The move has angered Credit Suisse AT1 bondholders as their investments have seemingly been lost.

Credit Suisse’s takeover deal, worth $3.2 billion, by rival Swiss bank UBS was agreed Sunday with the help of Swiss authorities.

A branch of Swiss banking giant Credit Suisse behind a window under the rain, in Basel. (Photo by FABRICE COFFRINI / AFP) (Photo by FABRICE COFFRINI/AFP via Getty Images)
Fabrice Coffrini | Afp | Getty Images

One section of Credit Suisse’s bondholders is set to be wiped out following the struggling bank’s takeover by UBS, causing them to see investments worth 16 billion Swiss francs ($17 billion) become worthless.

The Swiss regulator FINMA announced Sunday that the so-called additional tier-one bonds, which are widely regarded as relatively risky investments, will be written to zero as part of the deal.

The move has angered Credit Suisse AT1 bondholders as their investments have seemingly been lost, while shareholders will receive payouts as part of the takeover. Usually, equity investments would be classed as secondary to AT1 bonds.

Therefore, the decision “can be interpreted as an effective subordination of AT1 bondholders to shareholders,” Goldman Sachs’ credit strategists said in a research note published Sunday.

“It also represents the largest loss ever inflicted to AT1 investors since the birth of the asset class post-global financial crisis,” they added.

However, FINMA’s move should not come as a shock, Elisabeth Rudman, global head of financial institutions at DBRS Morningstar, told CNBC’s “Squawk Box Europe” on Monday.

“AT1s are there to absorb losses, so it’s not a surprise,” she said. “They’ve done what they were supposed to do.”

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VIDEO04:15
UBS’ takeover of Credit Suisse is probably the ‘smoothest option,’ analyst says

AT1 bonds, also known as contingent convertibles or “CoCos,” are a type of debt that is considered part of a bank’s regulatory capital. Holders can convert them into equity or write them down in certain situations – for example when a bank’s capital ratio falls below a previously agreed threshold.

AT1s were created in the aftermath of the financial crisis as a way of shifting risks away from taxpayers in crisis situations. Due to their elevated risk factor, they often have higher yields than other bonds.

Credit Suisse’s takeover deal, worth $3.2 billion, by rival Swiss bank UBS was agreed to Sunday with the help of Swiss authorities.

After years of losses and difficulties, Credit Suisse’s struggles came to a head last week after its biggest investor, Saudi National Bank, said it could not offer any more support to the Swiss bank financially due to regulatory restrictions. This came just days after the collapse of Silicon Valley Bank and Signature Bank in the U.S. sent shock waves through the banking sector.

The Swiss National Bank, the country’s central bank, then said it would support Credit Suisse with up to 50 billion francs ($54 billion), but investor concerns remained and the situation became untenable.

The development also sparked concerns about how this could impact global credit markets and AT1 bonds from other major financial institutions.

We need consolidation across Europe’s banking sector, portfolio manager says

Rudman says it may impact investor’s views of the bonds and how much they are willing to pay for them.

“I don’t think it’s a risk that they will be written down. There would be risks attached to the pricing and how investors, perhaps some investors reassess the yield they are looking for,” she highlighted.

Meanwhile, Goldman Sachs notes that FINMA’s decision “greatly weakens the case to add risk.”

“Whether investors treat this decision as a one-off or whether they rethink the asymmetry of their risk-reward at times of elevated financial distress remains to be seen,” the firm’s strategists say.

“It has become harder to assess the attractiveness of the current historically large spread pick-up provided by AT1 bonds vs. their HY [high-yield corporate counterparts],” Goldman explained, concluding that this will likely lead to a reduced appetite for AT1 bonds.
Other regulators distance themselves

Meanwhile, banking regulators in the European Union, which Switzerland is not a part of, indicated on Monday that they would follow a different approach if similar situations arose within their remit.

While they said they welcomed the steps taken by Swiss authorities to resolve the situation, they also noted that there is a specific order in which “shareholders and creditors of a troubled bank should bear losses.”

“In particular, common equity instruments are the first ones to absorb losses, and only after their full use would Additional Tier 1 be required to be written down. This approach has been consistently applied in past cases and will continue to guide the actions of the SRB [Single Resolution Board] and ECB [European Central Bank] banking supervision in crisis interventions,” their statement read.

The statement may ease investor concerns slightly, which BofA Global Research analysts noted Monday.

“The actions of the Swiss authority will remain, in our view, a factor for the market. We still fear the market is very fragile. However, we also believe that we are already seeing confidence building measures from the European authorities to support the market,” they said.

Vítor Constâncio, who was the vice president of the ECB from 2010 to 2018, commented on FINMA’s announcement on Twitter, saying it was a “a mistake with consequences” that could lead to legal action

The Bank of England has also distanced itself from FINMA’s decision, stating that the U.K. “has a clear statutory order” detailing which shareholders and creditors were expected to take on losses. AT1 bonds “rank ahead” of equity investments, the statement noted, adding that they had followed this process in the unwinding of SVB UK.

Amazon to lay off 9,000 more workers in addition to earlier cuts

PUBLISHED MON, MAR 20 2023

Annie Palmer @ANNIERPALMER

KEY POINTS

Amazon will lay off 9,000 more employees in the coming weeks, CEO Andy Jassy said in a memo to staff Monday.

The cuts follow an earlier round of layoffs that began in November and extended into January, which affected more than 18,000 staffers.

The latest round is expected to impact Amazon’s cloud computing, advertising, human resources and Twitch units.

Amazon will lay off 9,000 more employees in the coming weeks, CEO Andy Jassy said in a memo to staff on Monday.

The cuts are on top of the previously announced layoffs that began in November and extended into January. That round totaled more than 18,000 employees, and primarily affected staffers in its retail, devices, recruiting and human resources groups.

Amazon made the decision to lay off more employees as it looks to streamline costs. It took into account the economy, as well as the “uncertainty that exists in the near future,” Jassy said. The company just wrapped up the second phase of its annual budgeting process, referred to internally as “OP2.”

“The overriding tenet of our annual planning this year was to be leaner while doing so in a way that enables us to still invest robustly in the key long-term customer experiences that we believe can meaningfully improve customers’ lives and Amazon as a whole,” Jassy said.

Andy Jassy, chief executive officer of Amazon.Com Inc., during the GeekWire Summit in Seattle, Washington, U.S., on Tuesday, Oct. 5, 2021.
David Ryder | Bloomberg | Getty Images

The latest round will primarily impact Amazon’s cloud computing, human resources, advertising and Twitch livestreaming businesses, Jassy said in the memo. Twitch CEO Dan Clancy said approximately 400 people would be let go as part of Amazon’s latest round of job cts. Clancy pointed to the economic downturn, and said Twitch’s user and revenue growth hasn’t “kept pace with our expectations.”

Amazon is undergoing the largest layoffs in company history after it went on a hiring spree during the Covid pandemic. The company’s global workforce swelled to more than 1.6 million by the end of 2021, up from 798,000 in the fourth quarter of 2019.

Jassy is also taking on a broad overview of the company’s expenses as it reckons with an economic downturn and slowing growth in its core retail business. Amazon froze hiring in its corporate workforce, axed some experimental projects and slowed warehouse expansion.

While the company aims to operate leaner this year, Jassy said he remains optimistic about the company’s “largest businesses,” retail and Amazon Web Services, as well as other, new divisions that continue to warrant investment.

Amazon shares closed down 1% on Monday.

Here’s the full memo from Jassy:

As we’ve just concluded the second phase of our operating plan (“OP2”) this past week, I’m writing to share that we intend to eliminate about 9,000 more positions in the next few weeks—mostly in AWS, PXT, Advertising, and Twitch. This was a difficult decision, but one that we think is best for the company long term.

Let me share some additional context.

As part of our annual planning process, leaders across the company work with their teams to decide what investments they want to make for the future, prioritizing what matters most to customers and the long-term health of our businesses. For several years leading up to this one, most of our businesses added a significant amount of headcount. This made sense given what was happening in our businesses and the economy as a whole. However, given the uncertain economy in which we reside, and the uncertainty that exists in the near future, we have chosen to be more streamlined in our costs and headcount. The overriding tenet of our annual planning this year was to be leaner while doing so in a way that enables us to still invest robustly in the key long-term customer experiences that we believe can meaningfully improve customers’ lives and Amazon as a whole.

As our internal businesses evaluated what customers most care about, they made re-prioritization decisions that sometimes led to role reductions, sometimes led to moving people from one initiative to another, and sometimes led to new openings where we don’t have the right skills match from our existing team members. This initially led us to eliminate 18,000 positions (which we shared in January); and, as we completed the second phase of our planning this month, it led us to these additional 9,000 role reductions (though you will see limited hiring in some of our businesses in strategic areas where we’ve prioritized allocating more resources).

Some may ask why we didn’t announce these role reductions with the ones we announced a couple months ago. The short answer is that not all of the teams were done with their analyses in the late fall; and rather than rush through these assessments without the appropriate diligence, we chose to share these decisions as we’ve made them so people had the information as soon as possible. The same is true for this note as the impacted teams are not yet finished making final decisions on precisely which roles will be impacted. Once those decisions have been made (our goal is to have this complete by mid to late April), we will communicate with the impacted employees (or where applicable in Europe, with employee representative bodies). We will, of course, support those we have to let go, and will provide packages that include a separation payment, transitional health insurance benefits, and external job placement support.

If I go back to our tenet—being leaner while doing so in a way that enables us to still invest robustly in the key long-term customer experiences that we believe can meaningfully improve customers’ lives and Amazon as a whole—I believe the result of this year’s planning cycle is a plan that accomplishes this objective. I remain very optimistic about the future and the myriad of opportunities we have, both in our largest businesses, Stores and AWS, and our newer customer experiences and businesses in which we’re investing.

To those ultimately impacted by these reductions, I want to thank you for the work you have done on behalf of customers and the company. It’s never easy to say goodbye to our teammates, and you will be missed. To those who will continue with us, I look forward to partnering with you as we make life easier for customers every day and relentlessly inventing to do so.

Andy

Elizabeth Warren says Jerome Powell has ‘failed’ as Federal Reserve chair

"I don’t think he should be chairman of the Federal Reserve," the Massachusetts Democrat said in an interview on NBC News' "Meet the Press."

March 19, 2023,
By Summer Concepcion

Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., slammed Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell in an interview Sunday on NBC News' "Meet the Press," saying he "has failed" and shouldn't be in his role.

"He has had two jobs. One is to deal with monetary policy. One is to deal with regulation. He has failed at both," she said.

"Look, I don't think he should be chairman of the Federal Reserve. I have said it as publicly as I know how to say it. I've said it to everyone," said Warren, who is on the Senate Banking Committee.

Powell, first nominated by President Donald Trump in 2017, has faced criticism over his handling of banking regulations after the collapse of Silicon Valley Bank.

Warren, who has been pressing for stricter banking regulations, said Powell “took a flamethrower to the regulations” when Trump was in office, adding that Trump gave Congress the “authority to lighten the regulations even more.”

"And then the CEOs of the banks did exactly what we expected. They loaded up on risk that boosted their short-term profits. They gave themselves huge bonuses and salaries and exploded their banks," Warren said.

In a letter Saturday, Warren urged the inspectors general at the Treasury Department, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. and the Fed Board of Governors to immediately open a "thorough independent investigation" to determine the causes of the bank management and regulatory issues that led to the collapse of SVB and Signature Bank.

“The bank’s executives, who took unnecessary risks or failed to hedge against entirely foreseeable threats, must be held accountable for these failures,” Warren wrote, asking for preliminary findings of the probe to be delivered to Congress within 30 days.

A group of Democrats led by Warren and Rep. Katie Porter of California announced legislation last week to restore bank regulations that were undone in 2018, during the Trump administration — an effort they say would address the cause of SVB's collapse.

At the time, Republicans in Congress pushed a bill — with the support of some centrist Democrats — that eased Dodd-Frank financial regulations on midsize banks, raising the “too big to fail” threshold from $50 billion in assets to $250 billion. The Warren-Porter bill, first reported by NBC News, would repeal that measure, but it faces a tough road to passage in Congress.

Some Democrats who voted for the 2018 bill are standing by their votes, joining Republicans in resisting more scrutiny for banks and arguing that the U.S. still has ways under existing law to tackle the issue.

President Joe Biden renominated Powell as Federal Reserve chairman in November 2021. The decision was met with pushback from some progressives, and certain Democrats had argued that Powell was too hands-off as a banking regulator.

Around that time, Warren was a leading opponent of Powell, calling him a "dangerous man" who had led an effort to weaken the nation's banking system at a hearing in late 2021.

Warren urged Powell to recuse himself from an internal probe into SVB last week, saying his actions "directly contributed to these bank failures."

“I’ve opposed him because of his views on regulation," Warren said Sunday on "Meet the Press," "and what he was already doing to weaken regulation."

ESG
Biden issues his first veto, nixing measure blocking new investment rule

PUBLISHED MON, MAR 20 2023
Zoë Richards

U.S. President Joe Biden speaks during the annual Friends of Ireland luncheon in honor of Ireland’s Prime Minister (Taoiseach) Leo Varadkar at the U.S. Capitol in Washington, U.S., March 17, 2023.
Evelyn Hockstein | Reuters

President Joe Biden on Monday issued his first veto since taking office, rejecting a bipartisan measure that would nullify a new administration rule for retirement plans.

“I just signed this veto because the legislation passed by the Congress would put at risk the retirement savings of individuals across the country,” Biden said in a video posted on his Twitter account. “They couldn’t take into consideration investments that would be impacted by climate, impacted by overpaying executives and that’s why I decided to veto it.”

The veto comes after the Senate voted 50-46 on March 1 to pass a resolution blocking a Labor Department rule allowing for certain retirement plans to weigh environmental, social and corporate governance factors when selecting investments, instead of making decisions based solely on the best rate of return.

In the Senate vote, Democratic Sens. Joe Manchin of West Virginia and Jon Tester of Montana joined Republicans to pass the measure.

The House passed it on Feb. 28 in a 216-204 vote, with Rep. Jared Golden of Maine bucking his party to vote with Republicans.

A two-thirds majority is needed in each chamber to override a veto.

Rep. Andy Barr, R-Ky., introduced the measure in February, about two months after the Labor Department issued the investment rule. Following the Senate vote, Barr tweeted: “President Biden should abandon the radical climate activists and join us in putting middle-class savers ahead of politics.”

In a statement of administration policy before Congress voted, the White House warned that Biden would veto the resolution if it were to reach his desk.

“The 2022 Biden-Harris Administration rule makes clear that...fiduciaries can consider factors such as corporate accountability and transparency, climate, and liability risks if they find them relevant to the analysis of an investment’s risk and return, in the same way that they would prudently consider other relevant factors,” the White House said.

Biden’s veto comes under a newly divided Congress, after two years of unified Democratic control.

Former President Donald Trump’s first veto came in March 2019, following two years of Republican majorities in Congress. By the end of his presidency, Trump had issued 10 vetoes.

US: Joe Biden uses veto for first time

The US president has overturned a Republican bill that would have prevented investment fund managers from taking factors like climate change into account.

https://p.dw.com/p/4OxMW

US President Joe Biden used his veto power for the first time on Monday.

The move overrides an investment bill proposed by Republicans. The bill would have prevented investment fund managers from taking factors like such as climate change, social impacts or pending lawsuits into account, known as ESG investing.

Biden tweeted that the bill would threaten "retirement savings by making it illegal to consider risk factors MAGA House Republicans don't like."

"Your plan manager should be able to protect your hard-earned savings — whether Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene likes it or not," Biden said, referring to a Republican lawmaker that championed the bill.

To override the veto, supporters of the bill would need to garner a two thirds majority both in the House of Representatives and the Senate.

What is the Republican-led ESG bill?

The bill overturned a Labor Department rule making it easier for fund managers to consider ESG factors for investments and in proxy voting. The Labor Department reinstated the ESG rule in November, undoing a push by former President Donald Trump to penalize investment fund managers for considering climate change.

Two Democratic senators voted with the Republicans, allowing the bill to pass. The Democrats hold a thin majority in the Senate.

Republicans claim the rule would politicize investing in a way that would hurt financial performance.

Democrats argue that the rule does not prescribe how ESG factors should be considered, as long as the fund is meeting its obligations to its beneficiaries. Biden has also framed the rule as a financial boost to investors concerned about climate risk.

Republicans accuse Biden of 'far-left' agenda

"It is clear that President Biden wants Wall Street to use your hard-earned money not to grow your savings, but to fund a far-left political agenda. That will hurt seniors and workers," Republican House of Representatives speaker Kevin McCarthy said.

Democratic Senator Joe Manchin, who voted with Republics on the bill, said that the Biden administration was pushing a "radical policy agenda."

"Despite a clear and bipartisan rejection of the rule from Congress, President Biden is choosing to put his administration's progressive agenda above the well-being of the American people," Manchin said.

During a debate on the bill, Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer accused Republics of "forcing their own views down the throats of every company and every investor."

sdi/rt (Reuters, AFP, AP)

US aid worker and French journalist freed after years held hostage in Africa

Jeffery Woodke and Olivier Dubois, who had been kidnapped by jihadists in the Sahel, were released in Niger

Staff and agencies in Niamey

Mon 20 Mar 2023 15.52 GMT

A US aid worker and a French journalist who had been kidnapped by jihadists in the Sahel and held for years have been released.

American aid worker Jeffery Woodke and French freelancer Olivier Dubois emerged from a plane that landed on Monday at an airport in Niamey, the capital of Niger.

Woodke was abducted in Niger in 2016, while Dubois, 48, was kidnapped in Mali in 2021.

Woodke was seized at gunpoint in October 2016 from his home in Abalak in the Tahoua region of Niger, about 350km (220 miles) from Niamey.

The 61-year-old, who was leaning on a stick after his release, had served as a missionary and humanitarian aid worker in Niger for 32 years, according to a supporter’s website.

Before his abduction, Woodke had run an aid group in Abalak called Jemet since 1992, helping the local Tuareg community.

Local residents said he spoke the local language Tamasheq fluently as well as Fula and Arabic.

Dubois is a freelance journalist who has contributed to Libération and the news weekly Le Point.

He himself announced his abduction in a video posted on social networks on 5 May 2021. In it, he said he had been kidnapped in the northern city of Gao by the Support Group for Islam and Muslims (GSIM), the main jihadist alliance in the Sahel which is linked to Al-Qaida.

“I feel tired, but I’m fine,” said Dubois, smiling but visibly overwhelmed, dressed in a white shirt, T-shirt and beige trousers.

“It’s amazing for me to be here, to be free,” he said, speaking to a small group of journalists.

“I want to pay tribute to Niger for its skills in this delicate mission and pay tribute to France, to all those who have helped me to be here today.”

Hamadou Souley, Niger’s interior minister who was at the airport, said “the hostages were picked up safe and sound by the Nigerien authorities before being handed over to the French and American authorities”.

Jake Sullivan, US national security adviser, tweeted he was “gratified & relieved” at Woodke’s release.

“The US thanks Niger for its help in bringing him home to all who miss & love him.”

France’s foreign ministry did not immediately comment on the release. The conditions of Dubois’s release, including whether it involved a ransom, were not disclosed.

“We feel joy and immense relief,” Reporters Without Borders, also known by its French acronym RSF, said in a statement.

It thanked French authorities for “having implemented the necessary means to obtain his release”, without elaborating.

The Sahel has been ravaged by a jihadist campaign that began in northern Mali in 2012.

In 2015, the insurgency swept into neighbouring Burkina Faso and south-western Niger, a deeply poor nation that was already battling jihadist violence spilling into its south-east from Nigeria.

Across the region, thousands of civilians, police and soldiers have been killed and millions have fled their homes.

US aid worker and French journalist freed in West Africa

By DALATOU MAMANE, ERIC TUCKER and KRISTA LARSON

1 of 11
French journalist Olivier Dubois, left, and American aid worker Jeffery Woodke, center, arrive at the VIP lounge at the airport in Niamey, Niger, Monday March 20, 2023. Woodke was held by Islamic extremists in West Africa for more than six years and Dubois was abducted almost two years ago. The two men were the highest-profile foreigners known to be held in the region, and their release was the largest since a French woman and two Italian men were freed together in Mali back in Oct. 2020.

(AP Photo/Judith Besnard)

NIAMEY, Niger (AP) — An American aid worker and a French journalist kidnapped and held by Islamist extremists were freed and flown to Niger’s capital Monday, four days after U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken visited the country.

U.S. officials said no ransom was paid for aid worker Jeffery Woodke, who was held for more than six years, and praised Niger’s government for helping secure his release. The French government did not comment on how freedom was won for journalist Olivier Dubois, who was abducted almost two years ago in neighboring Mali.

“I thank God first of all. And after God, I thank the government of Niger, the U.S. government and France. Long live France!” said Woodke, his long gray hair pulled back in a ponytail as he used a walking stick.

“I’m very happy to be back in Niamey again, in Niger, my second country, and I’ve nothing more to say apart from, ‘Hello to my family.’ That’s all,” he said.

Dubois beamed as he greeted well-wishers, telling journalists that he was tired but otherwise fine.

“It’s amazing for me to be here, to be free,” the 48-year-old journalist said. “I didn’t expect it at all. I would like to pay tribute to Niger, and to its knowledge of these types of delicate missions. And to pay tribute to France and to all those who made it possible to be here today.”

Blinken visited the region last week and on Thursday spoke to the press in Niger, where he announced $150 million in direct assistance to the Sahel region.

“I’m very pleased we are now seeing that come to fruition today,” Blinken said, thanking his team, and Niger, for their efforts.

Woodke lived in Niger for three decades and had been kidnapped from his home in the town of Abalak in October 2016. Gunmen ambushed and killed his guards, then forced him at gunpoint into their truck, where he was driven north toward Mali’s border.

At a 2021 news conference in Washington, Els Woodke said she believed her husband was being held by an al-Qaida-linked militant group known as JNIM and that his captors had sought a multimillion-dollar ransom.

Dubois also was being held by JNIM militants, though it was unclear how much time the two foreign hostages had spent in captivity together, said Laith Alkhouri, CEO of Intelonyx Intelligence Advisory.

Officials in Niger unexpectedly announced Monday morning that the two men had taken a special flight to the country’s capital but provided no details. U.S. officials said the American hostage was not freed in Niger but in the surrounding region that includes Mali, where Dubois was abducted in 2021.

MORE ON WOODKE'S CAPTIVITY– Wife of US hostage in Africa reveals captors' ransom demand

Also on Monday, the International Committee of the Red Cross announced that two of its employees were freed in Mali. The organization would not disclose the employees’ identities or the circumstances of their abductions, and it could not be confirmed if there was any connection to the other hostages who were released.

White House National Security Council spokesman John Kirby said efforts to free Woodke were headed by U.S. military, law enforcement and intelligence agencies , working closely with the French.

“It was a team effort to get him out, and there were no concessions made,” Kirby said. “There were no swaps here. This was just hard, grueling, deliberate work by diplomats and other experts directly with the government of Niger to get him home.”

Woodke and Debois were the highest-profile foreigners known to be held in the region, and their release was the largest since a French woman and two Italian men were freed together in Mali in October 2020.

French President Emmanuel Macron wrote that he had spoken with Dubois on Monday.

“Immense relief for the nation, for his relatives and fellow journalists,” Macron tweeted. “Deep gratitude to Niger for this release.”

Although it remained unclear what led to the releases, “it might not be a coincidence” that the hostages’ freedom came after Blinken visited Niger and offered millions of dollars in aid, Alkhouri said.

The aid “could have oiled the Niger government to use its intelligence apparatus in negotiating their release,” Alkhouri said.

A senior U.S. administration official, speaking on background, said Woodke was the second American to be freed in the last six months and that the topic had come up last week during Blinken’s visit to Niamey. The identity of the other hostage freed in Niger was not made public.

Groups have long abducted hostages for ransom in the Sahel, the vast, semi-arid expanse below the Sahara Desert. Previously released captives have described being moved frequently from site to site in harrowing conditions and sweltering temperatures. The extremists aim to use ransom money to fund their jihadi operations, though not all countries engage in payment negotiations.

The Biden administration official did not identify the specific group believed responsible for holding Woodke, saying overlapping networks operated in that part of West Africa.

At least 25 foreigners and untold numbers of locals have been kidnapped in the Sahel since 2015, according to the Armed Conflict Location & Event Data Project. In 2020, Swiss authorities said Christian missionary Beatrice Stoeckli was killed by her militant captors.

Militants with links to al-Qaida and the Islamic State group are still believed to be holding captives, including a German priest. The Rev. Hans-Joachim Lohre was preparing to celebrate Mass in Mali’s capital when he was abducted in November.

Last year an Italian couple and their child were abducted with a household employee in southern Mali. Other hostages taken in West Africa include Ken Elliott, an Australian doctor abducted in 2016, and Romanian citizen Julian Ghergut, who was seized near a mining site in 2015.

___

Tucker reported from Washington, and Larson reported from Dakar, Senegal. Associated Press writers Sam Mednick in Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso; Ellen Knickmeyer and Aamer Madhani in Washington; Angela Charlton in Paris; and Baba Ahmed in Bamako, Mali contributed to this report.

Iraq war 20 years on: How invasion plunged country into decades of chaos

The fence is lined with photos of people killed by the Islamic State group

By Jeremy Bowen
BBC News

The invasion of March 2003 was a catastrophe for Iraq and its people.

More proof of that, measured in broken lives, was at a suspected site of a mass grave in the desert outside Sinjar, not far from the border with Syria.

Survivors of one of Iraq's damaged communities, the Yazidis, looked on as the earth in a marble quarry was excavated. On a wire fence around the site were photos of dozens of people, mostly men, who had been killed by jihadists from the Islamic State group. They were from Zile-li, a village near the quarry, where 1,800 men were taken and killed on 3 August 2014.

The Yazidis revere both the Quran and the Bible; their religion is influenced by both Christianity and Islam. Islamic State considered them to be infidels and carried out a genocidal assault. It happened after the Americans and British had ended their occupation, but a direct line links the massacre to the invasion, and the disastrous years that followed.

Among those watching the excavation was Naif Jasso, the Sheikh of Kocho, a Yazidi community that suffered an even worse attack than Zile-li. He said that in Kocho, 517 people out of a population of 1,250 were killed by jihadists from IS, also known as ISIS or Daesh.

In Zile-li, men were separated from their families at gunpoint and shot dead at the quarry. Sofian Saleh, who was 16 at the time, was among the crowd at the excavation. He is one of only two men from Zile-li who survived. As he waited for death with his father, brother and 20 to 30 other men, he saw another group shot dead. Their bodies tumbled down a cliff into the quarry. Then it was their turn.

"They tied our hands from behind before the shooting. They took us and threw us on the ground," he said.

Sofian's father and brother were killed, but he survived because bodies fell on him, covering him up.
Why did the US and UK really go to war in Iraq and what is the legacy?

Sofian Saleh is one of only two men who survived

Islamic State was using its favourite tactic. First, they killed the men, then took the women as slaves. Children were removed from their mothers to be indoctrinated as IS recruits. A mother sitting near the suspected grave wept as she remembered the baby ripped from her and given to a jihadist family.

Next to the wire fence around the site, Suad Daoud Chatto, a woman in her 20s, stood with a poster. On it were the faces of nine men from her extended family who were killed, and two missing female relatives. She said jihadists captured her in 2014 when she was 16, along with many other women and girls, and held her in Syria. She remained until 2019, when she was rescued as the Caliphate collapsed.

Suad Daoud Chatto holds a poster showing nine of her relatives who were killed

"They were like barbarians, they kept us in handcuffs for a long time. Our hands were still tied even during the meals," she said.

"They married me off many times… they were marrying the slaves. They did not spare anyone. We were all raped. They were killing people before our eyes. They killed all the Yazidi men - they killed eight of my uncles. They destroyed many families."

In the end, only a few bags of human bones were found at the site. Dozens of others are still to excavated.

By the time IS rampaged through Iraq in the summer of 2014, the US and the UK had ended their occupation. Jihadist ideology existed long before the invasion, and had inspired the 9/11 attacks.

But far from destroying the ideology of Osama Bin Laden and the jihadist extremists, the years of chaos and brutality set off in 2003 turbo-charged murderous jihadist violence. Al-Qaeda, broken for a while by an alliance between the Americans and Sunni tribes, regenerated into the even more barbarous IS.

Iraq is more stable so far this year than it has been for a long while. Baghdad, Mosul and other cities are much safer. But Iraqis feel the results of the invasion every day. Its consequences have shaped and blighted millions of lives and changed their country profoundly.

It is a grim irony that the invasion has dropped out of political and public debate in the US, which conceived and led it, and in the UK, its closest ally in the coalition. The Americans and British bear a heavy responsibility for what happened after the invasion, and its consequences also affect them.

Iraq's tyrant, Saddam Hussein, was well worth overthrowing - he had imprisoned and killed thousands of Iraqis, even using chemical weapons against rebellious Kurds. The problem was how it was done, the way the US and UK ignored international law, and the violence that gripped Iraq after the Bush administration failed to make a plan to fill the power vacuum created by regime change.

The past 20 years since the invasion, coming on top of Saddam's dictatorship, add up to almost half a century of torture for the Iraqi people.

Even for those who were there, it is hard to recreate the febrile atmosphere of "fear, power and hubris", as one historian put it recently, that gripped the US in the 18 months between al-Qaeda's 9/11 attacks in 2001 and the invasion of Iraq.

I was in New York a few days after the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center were destroyed, as F-15 jets patrolled above Manhattan. It was a visible demonstration of American force, as the biggest military power on the planet worked out how to respond.

The shock of the attacks swiftly produced George W Bush's declaration of "war on terror" against al-Qaeda and its jihadist fellow travellers. UK Prime Minister Tony Blair chartered Concorde to cross the Atlantic to offer support. He believed Britain's best guarantee of influence in the world was to stay close to the White House.

WAR CRIMINALS

US President George W Bush and British Prime Minister Tony Blair at the White House in November 2001

They moved fast against al-Qaeda's network in Afghanistan. Before the end of the year, a US-led coalition removed the Taliban regime from power when it refused to give up al-Qaeda's leader, Osama Bin Laden. Kabul was not enough for America.

President Bush and his advisors saw a global threat to the US. They thought states that opposed them could make deadly alliances with al-Qaeda and its imitators. The biggest target in their sights was Iraq. Saddam Hussein had been a thorn in America's side ever since he sent his army into Kuwait in 1990. Without any evidence, the Americans tried to manufacture a link between Saddam and al-Qaeda when none existed. In reality the Iraqi leader, a secular dictator, saw religious extremists as a threat.

The president's father, George HW Bush, decided not to remove Saddam from power in Baghdad after the Iraqi occupiers were driven out of Kuwait by an international coalition assembled by the US in 1991. The first President Bush and his advisors saw trouble ahead if they continued to Baghdad. A long, belligerent occupation of Iraq looked like a morass and they had no UN authorisation to topple the regime.

I was in Baghdad when the ceasefire was declared. Regime officials I knew could not believe that Saddam's dictatorship had survived.

Twelve years later, by 2003, America's rage and arrogance of power blinded the second President Bush to the realities that had constrained his father. When the US and UK could not persuade the UN Security Council to pass a resolution explicitly authorising invasion and regime change, Messrs Bush and Blair claimed earlier resolutions gave them the authority they needed.

Among many who did not buy their argument was the UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan. In a BBC interview 18 months after the invasion, he said it was "not in conformity" with the UN Charter - in other words, illegal. France and other Nato allies refused to join the invasion. Tony Blair ignored huge protests in the UK. His decision to go to war dogged the rest of his political career.

No president or prime minister faces a bigger decision than going to war. George Bush and Tony Blair embarked on a war of choice that killed hundreds of thousands of people. The justifications for the invasion were soon shown to be untrue. The weapons of mass destruction that Tony Blair insisted, eloquently, made Saddam a clear and present danger, turned out not to exist. It was a failure not just of intelligence but of leadership.

US Marines from the 1st Marine Division get set to deploy close to Baghdad in April 2003

The Americans called the huge air raids that started their offensive "shock and awe". Neo-conservatives around George W Bush deluded themselves that democracy, and regional stability, could be imposed through the barrel of a gun. Overwhelming US force would not just safeguard America, it would stabilise the Middle East too, and democracy would spread through Syria, Iran and beyond, like a good virus.

US troops topple a statue of Saddam Hussein in Baghdad

Saddam was removed within weeks. Iraqis were in no mood to be grateful. In Saddam's last decade as leader, the vast majority of them had been impoverished by sanctions authorised by the UN, but driven hardest by the US and UK. The Americans, the British and their allies were unable to bring peace to the streets. Nightmarish years started with wholesale looting, revenge attacks and crime.

Iraqi Sunni Muslim insurgents in front of a burning US convoy on the outskirts of Fallujah in 2004

An insurgency against the occupation turned into a sectarian civil war. Iraqis turned against each other as the Americans imposed a system of government that split power along ethnic and sectarian lines - between the country's three main groups, Shia Muslims, Kurds and Sunni Muslims. Armed militias fought each other, the occupiers, and killed each other's civilians.

Jihadist groups moved in to exploit the chaos and kill foreigners. Before the Americans managed to kill him, a brutal Sunni extremist from Jordan, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, targeted attacks to turn the insurgency against the occupation into a sectarian civil war. Shia death squads retaliated with their own reign of terror.

No-one knows exactly how many Iraqis have died as a result of the 2003 invasion. Estimates are all in the hundreds of thousands. The tide of violent sectarianism continues to rumble around the Middle East.

The geopolitical legacy of the invasion is still shaping events. Unwittingly, the Americans turned the balance of power in Iraq in Iran's favour by overthrowing Saddam Hussein, who was considered a Sunni bulwark against the Islamic Republic. Removing him empowered Shia politicians who were close to Tehran. Militias armed and trained by Iran are among the most powerful forces in Iraq and have representatives in government.

The US and UK's fear of causing another disaster hamstrung their response to the Arab uprisings of 2011, and especially the war against his own people launched by President Bashar al-Assad in Syria.

Disorder in Iraq, where the population is growing fast, fuels the trade in people-smuggling to Europe. According to the British Home Office, Iraqis are the fourth largest national group crossing the English Channel in small boats. The UK Refugee Council says the vast majority whose cases have been processed are granted asylum as refugees.

American and British leaders do not dwell on the invasion these days, but others have not forgotten. One reason why much of the global south stayed neutral after Russia invaded Ukraine, ignoring appeals to uphold international law, was the memory of how the US, the UK and Western allies who joined the coalition ignored it as they steamrollered opposition to their invasion of Iraq.

It is a sign of how bad the past 20 years have been that Saddam nostalgia is well established in Iraq, not just among his own Sunni community. People complain that at least you knew where you were with the old dictator. He was an equal opportunities killer of anyone he saw as an enemy, including his own son-in-law.

In a queue for diesel in a camp near Mosul, a 48-year-old Sunni named Mohammed, raged against the Shia-led government in Baghdad and against the years of sectarian killing that followed the invasion.

"We wish that Saddam's rule could come back, even for one day. Saddam was a dictator, and it was one man's rule - correct. But he was not killing the people based on whether they were Shia, Sunni, Kurdish, or Yazidi."

Iraq has signs of hope. Parts of towns and villages are still in ruins, but they feel safer, even though Iraqis still face threats that would be considered a national crisis in the West. Well-trained anti-terrorist units are containing IS jihadist cells, who still manage to carry out bombings and ambushes. Even so, shopkeepers are hoping for a bumper Ramadan, their busiest time of the year.

Longer term, the biggest legacy of the invasion for Iraq might be the political system that the Americans instigated, which divides power along ethnic and sectarian lines. As developed by Iraqi politicians, it has offered prodigious chances for corruption.

Estimates of the amount stolen since 2003 range from $150bn (£124bn) to $320bn (£264bn). Most Iraqis, of all sects, who have not benefited from the bonanza of theft, face constant power cuts, bad water, and inadequate medical care, in hospitals that were once considered to be as good as ones in Europe. Walk down most streets and you will see children working or begging, instead of going to school. Iraq used to have one of the best educational systems in the Middle East.

Iraq's latest prime minister, Mohammed Shia al-Sudani, has promised a new start. His biggest challenge is keeping his promise to tackle corruption, the cancer that is eating the country from within. He even did a broadcast surrounded by piles of confiscated banknotes that were being returned to Iraq's treasury.

But the people that matter most are the innocent victims. Not just the dead, but millions of Iraqis, and others in the Middle East whose lives were made much worse because of the invasion and its consequences.

Farhad Barakat

At the mass grave near Sinjar, Yazidi activists appealed for international protection. Survivors said that the IS jihadists who carried out the genocidal massacres in 2014 had Iraqi accents, some from Tel Afar, a nearby town.

Farhad Barakat, a 25-year-old Yazidi activist who survived because he managed to escape to Mount Sinjar, said they were still scared of their neighbours. The killers, he said, were from their "surrounding clans or tribes, Arab clans. So how it that possible? The ones who killed us, raped the Yazidi women, they were Iraqis."

Shock And War: Iraq 20 Years On
The BBC's security correspondent Gordon Corera seeks to find new answers to why the Iraq war happened, what it meant, and its legacy today, download all 10 episodes on BBC Sounds

US grapples with forces unleashed by Iraq invasion 20 years later • FRANCE 24 English

Mar 20, 2023

From an empowered Iran and eroded US influence to the cost of keeping US troops in Iraq and Syria to combat Islamic State fighters, the United States still contends with the consequences of invading Iraq 20 years ago, current and former officials say. FRANCE 24's Kethevane Gorjestani reports from Washington.

Opinion

From Iraq to Ukraine: Reflections on imperial hubris

The US and Russia continue to repeat the same grave mistakes, sowing death, destruction and instability.

Marwan Bishara
Senior political analyst at Al Jazeera.
20 Mar 2023

Russian President Vladimir Putin and then-US President George Bush walk at Putin's Black Sea summer retreat, Bocharov Ruchey, in Sochi on April 6, 2008 [File: Ria Novosti via Reuters/Vladimir Rodionov]

Twenty years ago, as the United States prepared to wage war on Iraq, then-Democratic Senator Joe Biden voted in favour of President George Bush’s reckless adventure. On the other side of the world, in Moscow, Russian President Vladimir Putin opposed it, denouncing it as a mistake and a major escalation that would destabilise the international system.

Today, it is the savvier and more seasoned Putin who is waging an imperial war in Ukraine – a blunder that now-President Biden has pounced on, warning of its destabilising implications for the world.

Over these two decades, I have written extensively about the savage, arrogant and reckless wars the Kremlin and the White House have waged in a relentless show of imperial hubris, whether in Ukraine, Iraq, Afghanistan or elsewhere.

I have exposed the pretexts for the Iraq war and warned repeatedly against the dangers of Washington’s Middle East adventures well before and after the invasion, as I have later done for Moscow’s attack on Ukraine.

As we mark the 20th anniversary of the Iraq war, instead of writing with hindsight or introspection, as many have done in the past few days, I would like to revisit some basic ideas exactly as I wrote them years ago and over the past year. They reveal how these imperial wars of choice are destined to fail and why they bring about destruction instead of democracy, chaos instead of stability and humiliation instead of victory.

Here are excerpts from three articles I wrote for the International New York Times (previously known as the International Herald Tribune) about the invasion of Iraq and three I wrote for Al Jazeera English about the invasion of Ukraine.

Targeting Iraq: Waging war seldom leads to lasting peace
September 18, 2002

Those who advocate an attack on Iraq have short memories. Since World War II, the use of force by the United States has consistently failed to neutralize its adversaries beyond the short term. And in the Middle East, wars and covert operations have only produced further conflict.

[…]

Washington’s logic of force has failed in the Middle East and elsewhere. All three major American wars of the last half a century – in Korea, Vietnam and the Gulf – ended in stalemate or defeat.

A global response to Sept. 11 could usher in a new era of multilateral cooperation and revamped international law to deal with the new transnational threats. An attack on Iraq would do exactly the opposite. The immediate threat to world stability is coming not from the Iraqi dictator but rather from the democratically elected government of the world’s superpower. Americans, the ball is in your court.

War and the Arab world: Not in the name of democracy
February 27, 2003

The Bush administration should be careful when it talks about democracy in the Middle East. The idea is too valuable, and too vital, to be used as cynical camouflage for other agendas, whether those are based on oil interests, or Israel’s, or the desire to have a solid military beachhead in a volatile region.

[…]

It’s time for democrats – Westerners, Arabs and others – to confront warmongering politicians with a geo-ethics, to oppose war with the same unwavering opposition they oppose dictators. Democrats the world over, foremost among them American democrats, must put their values above their interests, their humanity above their fear, to help create coalitions across continents and religions to make peace and democracy possible for all.

Fighting fire with fire: The Israelization of American policy
June 27, 2003

For the past few months I have watched with bewilderment as America has adopted Israel’s mistaken strategy in the Middle East. Will America take as long as Israel to realize that starting a war is nothing like finishing it, and that military occupation does not bring about peace or security?

[…]

Attaining national security in a transnational world means accepting and respecting interdependence. Once security is understood as a universal right, interdependence becomes a sign of wisdom, not weakness.

If America must draw on another tradition, why not look to the long history of Jewish tolerance and survival – or to America’s own constitutional tradition? It is time to dust off those great documents sitting on the White House shelves.

Ukraine: To war or not to war?
January 27, 2022

The much-anticipated war in Ukraine may have not started, but it has already achieved most of its objectives. Which begs the question: why persist on the path to war, a bloody destructive war with assured blowbacks, when diplomacy could finish the job?

The main protagonists, Russia and the United States, are cynically using the good old Cold War playbook to advance their national interests at the expense of Ukrainian, indeed European, and international security.

[…]

The Biden administration could certainly accommodate the Russian red line since Ukraine is not even on the path for NATO membership. In return, Russia may provide the necessary assurance and commitment to an independent and free Ukraine.

Presidents Putin and Biden have shown clever brinkmanship; they should not let it get out of control because of personal and national pride. It is high time to reject warmongering and embrace appeasement; yes appeasement; mutual strategic appeasement to avoid another devastating European war and dreadful world crisis.

Putin’s five fatal mistakes in Ukraine
October 6, 2022

Russia’s justifications for its invasion of Ukraine, like the United States’ excuses for its invasion of Iraq two decades earlier, prove that world powers have failed to learn the lessons of imperial hubris – theirs and others. From the ancient Greeks and Romans through to the more recent French, German and British powers, geopolitical arrogance is notorious for breeding fatal political stupidity.

[…]

So why then do world powers continue to make the same costly mistakes, expecting different results? Does arrogance breed madness too?

Remember, the smart learn from their own mistakes, the wise learn from the mistakes of others, but only the foolish learn from neither, as we see in Ukraine today.

The world after the Ukraine war
February 20, 2023

Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine has been catastrophic. It has led to the loss of tens of thousands of precious lives, the displacement of millions of people, and the destruction of countless homes, civilian buildings and infrastructure.

It has also unravelled Russia’s moral and strategic standing in the world, as it has become clear just how badly prepared the Russian army really is and how exaggerated Russian economic might has been.

The war has also been disastrous for the rest of the world. Not only has it destabilised energy markets, fuelled inflation and disrupted the supply of foods and commodities, but it has also exposed and aggravated the poor state of world affairs, accelerating nuclear proliferation, fuelling an arms race, crippling the United Nations, and undermining international law, multilateral cooperation, and humanitarian assistance.

[…]

Although we have made major strides forward as a human civilisation, culminating in healthier, richer, better-educated generations, we seem attracted, if not addicted, to destructive conflicts that could set us back generations.

History teaches us that great powers decline or perish because of reckless wars, but to no avail. For decades, Russia and America have followed in each other’s footsteps, fighting wars they could not finish except in humiliation and massive destruction.

And then came Ukraine, alas. Stupid, indeed.

Marwan Bishara
Senior political analyst at Al Jazeera.
Marwan Bishara is an author who writes extensively on global politics and is widely regarded as a leading authority on US foreign policy, the Middle East and international strategic affairs. He was previously a professor of International Relations at the American University of Paris.

Why did the US and allies invade Iraq, 20 years ago?

The 2003 invasion of Iraq toppled President Saddam Hussein

On 20 March 2003, US and allied forces invaded Iraq and toppled Saddam Hussein's regime.

The US said Iraq had weapons of mass destruction and was a threat to international peace, but most countries refused to support military action against it.

Why did the US want to invade Iraq?

In the Gulf War of 1990-1991, the US had led a multinational coalition which forced invading Iraqi forces out of Kuwait.

Afterwards, the UN Security Council passed Resolution 687 ordering Iraq to destroy all its weapons of mass destruction (WMDs) - a term used to describe nuclear, biological and chemical weapons, and long-range ballistic missiles.

In 1998, Iraq suspended cooperation with UN weapons inspectors, and the US and UK responded with air strikes.

After al-Qaeda's 11 September 2001 attacks on the World Trade Center in New York and the Pentagon in Washington, President George W Bush's administration started making plans to invade Iraq.

President Bush claimed Saddam was continuing to stockpile and manufacture WMDs and that Iraq was part of an international "axis of evil", along with Iran and North Korea.

In October 2002, the US Congress authorised the use of military force against Iraq.

"Many people in Washington believed that there was significant evidence that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction, and that it posed a genuine threat," says Dr Leslie Vinjamuri, director of the US and Americas Programme at Chatham House, a foreign affairs think tank in London.

In February 2003, then-US Secretary of State Colin Powell asked the UN Security Council to give the go-ahead for military action against Iraq, saying it was violating previous resolutions with its alleged WMD programme.

However, he did not persuade the Council. Most of its members wanted weapons inspectors from the UN and International Energy Authority - who had gone to Iraq in 2002 - to carry out more work there to find evidence of WMDs.

The US said it would not wait for the inspectors to report, and assembled a "coalition of the willing" against Iraq.

Who supported the war?

Of the 30 countries in the coalition, the UK, Australia and Poland participated in the invasion.

The UK sent 45,000 troops, Australia sent 2,000 troops and Poland sent 194 special forces members.

Kuwait allowed the invasion to be launched from its territory.

Spain and Italy gave diplomatic support to the US-led coalition, along with several east European nations in the "Vilnius Group", who said they believed that Iraq had a WMD programme and was violating UN resolutions.

What allegations did the US and UK make against Iraq?

US Secretary of State Colin Powell told the UN in 2003 that Iraq had "mobile labs" for producing biological weapons.

However, he acknowledged in 2004 that the evidence for this "appears not to be... that solid".

US Secretary of State Colin Powell told the UN that Iraq was producing weapons of mass destructions

The UK government made public an intelligence dossier claiming that Iraqi missiles could be readied within 45 minutes to hit UK targets in the eastern Mediterranean.

The UK's then-Prime Minister, Tony Blair, said it was "beyond doubt" that Saddam Hussein was continuing to produce WMD.

The two countries relied heavily on the claims of two Iraqi defectors - a chemical engineer called Rafid Ahmed Alwan al-Janabi and an intelligence officer called Maj Muhammad Harith - who said they had first-hand knowledge of Iraq's WMD programme.

Both men later said they had fabricated their evidence because they wanted the allies to invade and oust Saddam.

Who refused to support the war?

Two neighbours of the US, Canada and Mexico, refused to support it.

Germany and France, two key US allies in Europe, also refused support.

French foreign minister Dominique de Villepin said military intervention would be "the worst possible solution".

Turkey - a fellow Nato member and neighbour of Iraq - refused to let the US and allies use its airbases.

Middle Eastern countries which had supported the US against Iraq in the 1990-91 Gulf War, such as Saudi Arabia, did not support its invasion in 2003.

"The Gulf Arab states thought the plan was crazy," says Professor Gilbert Achcar, an expert in Middle Eastern politics at University of London SOAS.

"They were worried about Iran getting control of Iraq after the fall of Saddam's regime."

What happened in the war?

At dawn on 20 March 2003, Operation Iraqi Freedom began with 295,000 US and allied troops invading Iraq across its border with Kuwait.

70,000 members of the Kurdish Peshmerga militia fought Iraqi forces in the north of the country.

By May, Iraq's army had been defeated and its regime overthrown. Saddam Hussein was later captured, tried and executed.

However, no weapons of mass destruction were found in Iraq.

In 2004, the country was engulfed by a sectarian insurgency. In later years, a civil war broke out between Iraq's Sunni and Shi'a Muslim factions.

US troops withdrew from Iraq in 2011.

It is estimated that 461,000 people died in Iraq from war-related causes between 2003 and 2011 and that the war cost the US $3 trillion.

"America lost a lot of credibility from this war," says Dr Karin von Hippel, director-general of the Royal United Services Institute think tank.

"You still hear people saying, twenty years later: why do we want to believe American intelligence?"

Shock And War: Iraq 20 Years On
The BBC's security correspondent Gordon Corera seeks to find new answers to why the Iraq war happened, what it meant, and its legacy today.
Download all 10 episodes on BBC Sounds

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Monday, March 20, 2023

From Iraq to Ukraine: Reflections on imperial hubris

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