‘The Taliban passed a death sentence on my mother’

Dominic Cavendish
Tue, October 5, 2021

Géhane Strehler plays Fariba in The Boy with Two Hearts - Jorge Lizalde Cano

When Afghan women were filmed demanding their rights on the streets of Kabul in August after the Taliban swept in to take power, many watched with detached admiration. But for one man those scenes stirred very personal memories of a lone woman’s courage in the face of Taliban oppression years ago.

Hamed Amiri was 10 when, in 2000, his mother – Fariba – incurred the wrath of the Taliban by speaking out in favour of women’s equality.

Her speech, in a school playground in Herat, Afghanistan’s third largest city, in front of hundreds of women, changed his life. The occasion features in a memoir he wrote, published last year, which describes in heart-stopping detail his family’s ensuing journey, lasting more than a year, to reach the UK. His mother, father, younger brother Hessam, and older brother Hussein all made it here safely.


It was a case of flee or face the worst – a death sentence was swiftly pronounced on his mother by the local mullah, whom the family dubbed “the executioner” – “He had turned our local football pitch into a place of execution.”

What was her “crime”? “There was nothing aggressive about what she said,” he tells me. “She said that women should have a career, and be able to go out on their own. Education was non-existent for girls and that frustrated mum. She mentored girls, and tried to tell them to follow their aspirations, but they went on to get married at a young age and she got more and more frustrated. Eventually she said: ‘enough is enough. I’m going to talk about it.’ The audience that day dared defiance, clapping and cheering.”

Meeting me in his adoptive hometown of Cardiff, now 31 but still quite baby-faced, Amiri reflects – understandably cautiously, given that he still has family in Afghanistan – on the parallels between events today, and those of a generation ago. “I had the feeling ‘That’s what my mum did’. I think her speech 20 years ago may have had a long-lasting impact. Here were women again standing up for freedom and for equal rights.”

Fariba (Géhane Strehler) demands freedom for Afghan women in The Boy with Two Hearts - Jorge Lizalde Cano

The Boy with Two Hearts, the memoir Amiri penned while successfully working in the IT sector, reached a wider audience through Radio 4’s Book of the Week. It has now been turned into a play, premiering this week at the Wales Millennium Centre.

Which means that during rehearsals, and for the duration of the run, Amiri is able to watch an actor play his younger self, and other cast-members bring to life his close family: including crucially his older brother Hussein – who gave the book its title. The first heart is Hussein’s defective one, which fatally gave up in 2018, the second the figurative heart of gold that Amiri hopes to build a positive legacy from.

“It’s bizarre seeing the younger version of me. I do feel as if my brother’s essence is in the room. Perhaps it’s part of the grieving process but I feel he’s up there smiling, and I hope he’s proud of me introducing him to people.” He and his brother Hessam have been “in pieces”, he says, watching rehearsals; his mother and father – a former owner of a pharmacy – are weighing whether they can handle coming to see the show.

Such was the esteem in which the stoical, good-natured Hussein was held that when he died, some 40 hospital staff visited the bedside to pay him their respects. The book honours him and the bond between the three brothers (played here by actors of Afghan origin), showing it strengthened by adversity. But its main achievement is to put you in the shoes of a child facing constant peril and uncertainty, the family at the mercy of human traffickers and having more close shaves than the average Bond film.

Such ordeals as being robbed of all their money twice, getting stuffed into car-boots, and confined to containers and lorries for hours become nightmarishly real. It’s the kind of journey many will be risking in the wake of the Taliban takeover. “We could be telling a story that’s happening right now,” Amiri says. “And I hope people will better understand the journeys that refugees who’ve made it here have gone on.”

The Amiri family's journey as told on stage - Jorge Lizalde Cano

After they reached the UK – going the extra mile at the risk of life and limb on account of Hussein’s particular medical needs – it took years for Amiri to learn to trust people; it was the kindness that NHS staff showed his brother which brought him out of that state.

“I was so defensive I got into trouble at school. I never wanted anyone to help me. That was the impact of being on that journey and losing faith in humanity.” Of the many hair-raising moments he faced as the family went to Moscow, then on to Austria via Ukraine and Poland, winding up in a migrant camp in Calais, it was the attempt to get into a Channel-bound lorry through a hole cut in its roof that stays with him most.

“There was a moment when the lorry started moving away and I thought I was going to fall off the roof and die. You hear people say that your life flashes in front of your eyes at such times. As I was falling backwards I had the sensation that in my head I was saying goodbye to them, ‘I hope you get to the UK, carry on’. I can’t explain it but it was as if at the age of 10 I had made peace with saying goodbye to my family.” In the nick of time, his father reached up, grabbed him by the foot and pulled him inside.

Hamed Amiri at the Millennium Centre in Cardiff

He keeps an eye on the situation but shies away from blaming the return of the Taliban and humanitarian crisis on the UK or US. “It was mishandled and could have been planned better. But I’m not saying it was betrayal or abandonment. The Afghan government had years to make sure the right structures were in place.”

His relatives give him updates. “I asked my uncle for his thoughts. He said: ‘I was here when they were here the first time, I’m still going to stay here.’ Though it’s 20 years on, Amiri can remember what it was like as a child under Taliban rule.

“When you grow up in that environment, you realise how life is – you’ve got to be careful who to speak to, the guys with the AK47s are the rulers and you can’t argue with them. You develop coping mechanisms, otherwise you’d lose your mind.”

All the same, when asked to contemplate what lies ahead for Afghanistan he tries to accentuate the positives – as he knows his older brother would have done. “I’ve got to have hope that there will be some peace and prosperity and that it won’t be like last time. And this play is finally a story of family, hope and unity. I want people to watch it and walk away feeling some of that.”

The Boy with Two Hearts runs at the Wales Millennium Centre until October 23. Info: wmc.org.uk

Botticelli portrait of Christ expected to fetch $40M at auction


Sandro Botticelli's late 15th century portrait of Christ -- "The Man of Sorrows" -- is expected to fetch more than $40 million at auction in January. Image courtesy of Sotheby's


Oct. 6 (UPI) -- For the second time in a year, a rare painting by Italian Renaissance artist Sandro Botticelli will head to auction in what Sotheby's is describing as a "once-in-a-generation phenomenon."

The portrait of a resurrected Christ titled The Man of Sorrows is expected to fetch upwards of $40 million in the January auction in Sotheby's annual Masters Week in New York City.

It is one of only three works from Botticelli's late period -- post-1492 -- still held in private hands, the auction house said.

The last Botticelli artwork to go to auction, Young Man Holding a Roundel, set a new record for the artist, fetching $92.2 million in January.

"To bring to auction a work by Botticelli of this quality is a major event in the world of Old Masters -- but to do so a year after the landmark sale of Botticelli's Young Man Holding a Roundel is a once-in-a-generation phenomenon," said George Wachter, Sotheby's chairman and co-worldwide head of Old Master Paintings.

"This extraordinary painting is a prime example of what makes Botticelli such a captivating artist: a bold visual style coupled with a singularly human approach to portraiture. In taking what is a rather difficult and somber subject matter of Christ following his persecution, Botticelli creates a deeply complex and moving portrait that is truly timeless.

Sotheby's said Botticelli was inspired by the fanatical preaching of Dominican friar Girolamo Savonarola when painting The Man of Sorrows, which depicts Jesus with crucifixion wounds, a crown of thorns and a halo of tiny angels. Savonarola preached against sin and encouraged the burning of artworks considered to be a luxury or idolatrous.

The auction house described the painting as a "stunningly modern and human portrayal of Christ."

Christopher Apostle, Sotheby's head of Old Master Paintings in New York, said Botticelli's later style was markedly different from his early years.

"The Man of Sorrows is a remarkably realistic portrayal of Christ symbolizing his suffering and death, but with an astounding degree of humanity that is the hallmark of Botticelli's portraiture, and showcases Christ's divinity with a stunning psychological depth," Apostle said. "The painting spotlights Botticelli's intense spirituality that greatly influenced his later period work and life, and presents a unique insight into Botticelli the man and Botticelli the artist."

The Man of Sorrows will be on public view Thursday through Monday in Hong Kong before going on a global tour to Los Angeles, London, Dubai and New York City.

Fisk Jubilee Singers celebrate 150 years since first tour

By KRISTIN M. HALL

The Fisk Jubilee Singers perform at the Americana Honors & Awards show Wednesday, Sept. 22, 2021, in Nashville, Tenn. (AP Photo/Mark Zaleski)


Nashville, Tenn. (AP) — The Fisk Jubilee Singers’ first tour wasn’t an immediate success, but their perseverance through financial hardship to find an audience took them around the world and kept their school afloat.

Fisk University in Nashville, Tennessee, celebrated the singing group’s 150th anniversary on Wednesday and reflected on a legacy that was built with their performances of slave spirituals, which kept alive not only the university but also a musical tradition. Poet, author and educator Nikki Giovanni, who is a Fisk alumna, talked about that first tour during her keynote speech during Jubilee Day, their annual event.

“We’re here today celebrating,” Giovanni said. “But when we look at how we carried those songs, and we carry those songs now, and we still lean on the everlasting arms.”

Opened as a liberal arts school for freed Black slaves in 1866, Fisk University was financially struggling just a few years later. Giovanni explained that one of the students, Ella Sheppard, who was born a slave, offered to help. She was a piano player.

Nine students, some of those former slaves or descendants of slaves, set off on a tour on Oct. 6, 1871, singing mostly European songs, such as those by Gilbert and Sullivan, to white audiences, Giovanni said.

They got little response and barely made enough money to feed themselves, but still managed to donate money to victims of the deadly Chicago fire of 1871. The turning point was when they started singing the songs their ancestors had brought with them to America: spirituals.

“Everybody was shocked,” Giovanni said. “They’d never heard anything like that.”

The songs they performed, such as “Steal Away,” were a musical bond to their ancestors who were brought over from African nations.

“We were put on a block and we were bought and we were sold and we were bought and we were sold,” Giovanni said. “And the only language we still had was the music that had been passed down from Jesus to Mary Magdalene.”

Soon the word spread of their performances and they were invited to sing at the White House by President Ulysses S. Grant. Then they toured internationally, singing for Queen Victoria and others. Their work helped Fisk build Jubilee Hall, the oldest building on campus and one of the oldest academic buildings continuously dedicated to educating Black students.

In addition to their anniversary, they earned their first Grammy Award for best roots gospel album this year and started a new endowment.

__

Online:

http://fiskjubileesingers.org/

HACKED

Hacker breaches Twitch data, exposes sensitive information online

Oct. 6 (UPI) -- Video game streaming platform Twitch suffered a data breach Wednesday, and hackers shared sensitive information on online chat forum 4chan.

Twitch confirmed the breach on Twitter.

"Our teams are working with urgency to understand the extent of this," the tweet reads. "We will update the community as soon as additional information is available."

A person claiming responsibility for the hack posted to 4chan, claiming to have access to Twitch source code, internal security tools and creator payouts.

The files shared online include apparent payment information for hundreds of thousands of streamers, NBC News reported.

The user said they carried out the attack to hurt Twitch's business.

"Their community is also a disgusting toxic cesspool, so to foster more disruption and competition in the online video streaming space, we have completely pwned them," the user posted.

Amazon bought Twitch in 2014 for $970 million. Previously known as Justin.tv, the platform averages more than 2.5 million viewers at any given time, and more than 7 million creators stream live videos each month, the company said.

The 4chan user posed a photo of Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos along with the message, "Jeff Bezos paid $970 million for this, we're giving it away FOR FREE."

Twitch streamer Scott Hellyer told the Wall Street Journal that information about his payouts was exposed.

"I really hope that no major personal info (Full names, emails, address, phone number, banking info) gets out in the rumored next part of the leak," Hellyer wrote in a message to the WSJ. "I'll take the heat if people are surprised about how much I make in the coming days, and try to have an open dialog about it."

British court rules Dubai ruler used Israeli spyware to hack princess' phone




The British High Court of Justice ruled that agents of Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid al-Maktoum carried out "unlawful surveillance" of his ex-wife, Princess Haya, using powerful Israeli spyware. File Photo by Mohammed Tawil/UPI | License Photo

Oct. 6 (UPI) -- Dubai's leader used a powerful Israeli surveillance program to hack the phones of his estranged wife and her closest associates, a British court ruling released Wednesday states.

The ruling by the British High Court of Justice found that agents of Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid al-Maktoum carried out "unlawful surveillance" of his ex-wife, Princess Haya, her personal assistant, two of her lawyers and two members of her security team using the NSO Group's Pegasus spyware after she fled to London with her two children.

The Pegasus spyware allows operatives to take over a phone without needing its owner to click a link and can covertly send data including call logs, emails, GPS coordinates, text messages and recordings from a phone's cameras and microphones, according to The Washington Post.

NSO officials have said Pegasus is exclusively licensed to governments for use in tracking terrorists and criminals and that it can revoke contracts if investigations show the tool's surveillance powers are being abused.

The NSO Group said in a statement to The New York Times that it is committed to human rights and cooperated in the court's investigation although it does not recognize its 

"Whenever a suspicion of misuse arises, NSO investigates, NSO alerts, NSO terminates," the company said.

Haya's phone was hacked 11 times during the summer of 2020 on Sheikh Mohammed's "express or implied" orders as she was preparing for custody hearings related to the long-term care of herself and her children, the ruling stated.

Court documents also showed that more than 250 megabytes of her data were "covertly extracted" from her phone, potentially including mass amounts of photos, video, audio records, text messages or emails.

According to the ruling, Cherie Blair, the wife of former British Prime Minister Tony Blair and an adviser for NSO, was notified of the hack and informed Haya's attorneys.

Sheikh Mohammed also attempted to purchase a 77-acre estate that was so close to Haya's London home that it would have been in "prime position for direct or electronic surveillance."

Haya's legal team told the court she "has been living in fear of her life, frankly, and in fear of the children's security" since she left Dubai in April 2019.

"It feels as if I am being stalked, that there is literally nowhere for me to go to be safe," she said.

Sheikh Mohammed denied the allegations, saying the matters that led to the surveillance concern "supposed operations of state security" adding the ruling was an "incomplete picture" as it was based on evidence that was not disclosed to him or his advisers.

He also argued that it was not appropriate for him as head of a government to provide evidence as part of private family proceedings in a foreign court but Judge Andre McFarlane noted the sheikh had submitted witness statements and ordered his legal team not to engage in the proceedings.

"At no stage has the father offered any sign of concern for the mother, who is caring for their children, on the basis that her phones have been hacked and her security infiltrated," McFarlane wrote. "Instead he has marshaled a formidable forensic team to challenge the findings ... and to fight the case against her on every point."

Watch This Video and See How Deep Oceans Really Go


Matthew Hart
Mon, October 4, 2021, 

Despite the fact that we’re all inundated with stories of oceans and lakes both adventurous and horrific, “the depths,” so to speak, all tend to blend together. In a new video, animator and YouTuber MetaBallStudios helps to tease apart the dark waters of the world. And if you think you know how deep the ocean really is, you may need to think again.

MetaBallStudios (or MBS), a Spanish animator whose real is name is Alvaro Gracia Montoya, recently posted the above video to his channel. For those unfamiliar, MBS has cranked out countless animated comparison videos before. The animator has, for example, compared the sizes of various spaceships from Star Wars. As well as how big various comets in our solar system are.

In this comparison, MBS goes for depth instead of his usual size angle. The video begins with the Sea of Azov, which is in Eastern Europe and has an average depth of only 23 feet. From there, MBS slowly works down into deeper and deeper bodies of water, providing familiar structures and event sites as references. At about 90 seconds in, for example, MBS shows that the average depth of the Timor Sea is 270 feet deeper than the Eiffel Tower is tall. (That would be over 1,060 feet.)

A visualization of the depths of various bodies of water referenced with well-known structures, such as the Eiffel Tower.
MetaBallStudios

As the comparison continues, the depths become more and more dizzying. The average depths of the Argentine Sea, the Arctic Ocean, and the Black Sea all cluster around 4,000 feet deep. Which seems deep, until the animation pulls back, revealing depths that grow to tens of thousands of feet. With the Mediterranean really bringing the “abyss staring into you” factor to 11 with a depth of more than 17,000 feet.

The Atlantic Ocean crushes that depth, however, deepening in(?) at a whopping 27,000 feet deep. For reference, that’s approximately as deep as Mount Everest is tall.

A visualization of how deep various bodies of water are, with familiar structures used as references.
MetaBallStudios

The deepest floor of any ocean on Earth, however, is the Mariana Trench, which is in the western Pacific Ocean. The trench, which is home to alien crustaceans and sounds that will send chills down your spine, is an astounding 36,000 feet deep. What’s just as astounding, however, is that explorers have visited there and sadly found plastic waste.

The post Watch This Video and See How Deep Oceans Really Go appeared first on Nerdist.

  

Largest underwater eruption on record spawned a new volcano


Largest underwater eruption on record spawned a new volcano

Cheryl Santa Maria
Wed, October 6, 2021, 12:43 PM·1 min read

Largest underwater eruption on record spawned a new volcano

On May 10, 2018, seismic rumbles began between the East African and Madagascar rifts, culminating in a magnitude 5.8 earthquake five days later.

Shortly after, researchers became aware that a volcanic event had occurred 50 kilometres off the eastern coast of the French territory Mayotte, situated between Africa's east coast and northern Madagascar.

A research team investigated a few months later - and they found a new volcano, one that hadn't been there before the earthquake.


"This is the largest active submarine eruption ever documented," the paper says - and the seismic activity is what spawned the new mountain, which rises 820 metres from the seafloor.

The new feature will help scientists better understand what happens deep in the earth.

The mountain isn't the only thing the French team discovered. When they began their survey in early 2019, several seismometers and sonar were used to take measurements. Between February 25 and May 6, 2019, 17,000 seismic events ranging in depth from 20 to 50 km below the seafloor were recorded. This is unusual, the researchers say, because most earthquakes are shallower than that.

The data helped the scientists paint a picture of how the new volcano may have come to be. The findings suggest a magma reservoir in the asthenosphere was drained up through the crust after tectonic processes damaged the layer above the asthenosphere, which is called the lithosphere.

A 3-D westward view of submarine volcanic features located east of Mayotte. (Feuillet et al./Nature Geoscience

This event likely caused "swarms" of earthquakes.

As of May 2019, the volume of the new volcanic feature is between 30 and 1,000 times larger than what's believed to be in other deep-sea eruptions.

The findings are detailed in a new paper published in the journal Nature Geoscience.

A Blue Origin executive described his company as 'kind of lazy compared to SpaceX' in a 2018 internal memo, reports say

Kate Duffy
Tue, October 5, 2021

Blue Origin founder Jeff Bezos and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk. REUTERS/Joshua Roberts


A Blue Origin exec said in a 2018 memo that his company was "kind of lazy compared to SpaceX," reports say.


In the memo, executives also discussed rival SpaceX's "very long" working hours, according to The Verge and Ars Technica.


Jeff Bezos' Blue Origin and Elon Musk's SpaceX are fierce rivals in the modern space race.


A Blue Origin executive said in a 2018 internal memo that the spaceflight company was "kind of lazy" compared with its rival SpaceX, according to reports Monday.

A section of the Blue Origin memo noted the "very long hours" expected at SpaceX, saying that burnout was "part of their labor strategy" and "people are expected to work on vacations or not take them," according to The Verge.

Jeff Bezos' Blue Origin and Elon Musk's SpaceX are the world's preeminent commercial spaceflight companies. The 2018 memo was compiled for Blue Origin CEO Ben Smith as part of an assessment of the strengths and weaknesses of SpaceX, according to Ars Technica.

Another Blue Origin executive suggested in the memo that the company's standard 40-hour work week wouldn't be enough to meet its ambitions, according to The Verge and Ars Technica.

Per The Verge, a Blue Origin executive said in the memo: "Blue is kind of lazy compared to SpaceX."

According to Ars Technica, another executive said in the memo: "We need to talk about the time and effort personnel are spending to achieve our mission," adding: "If we expect greater than 40 hours, let's clearly communicate that and evaluate personnel based on that guidance."

SpaceX's Musk has said that "nobody ever changed the world on 40 hours a week" and suggested that people would need to clock around 80 to more that 100 hours a week if they did.

Former SpaceX employee Josh Boehm wrote in a post on Quora in 2017 that his workday was frequently more than 12 hours long.

Per Ars Technica, a different executive said in the 2018 Blue Origin memo: "We need to get more out of our employees. The lack of effort over weekends to meet deadlines is not a culture I am accustomed to in an operations outfit."

In an open letter to Blue Origin published September 30, 2021, some 21 current and former employees accused the company of sacrificing safety in an effort to win the billionaire space race and fostering a toxic and sexist work culture. Blue Origin said it had "no tolerance for discrimination or harassment of any kind" and stood by its safety record.

Blue Origin and SpaceX didn't immediately respond to Insider's requests for comment.

Nuns Raped Girls With Crucifixes as Female Pedophilia Was Covered Up by the Church

BENEDETTA CANNES WINNER 2021

COVERING UP FOR THE FAILURE OF THEIR PRIME IDEOLOGY; 

CELEBACY

Barbie Latza Nadeau

Tue, October 5, 2021, 

ROME—“Marie” was placed in a French Catholic boarding school for “young girls from good families” when she was in the fifth grade. She remembers a nun who would come to her class every day to choose a student to help her with Mass. But the nun wasn’t looking for someone to help her. She was looking for a victim.

“I was 11 and looked 9. She would choose me once every two or three times,” she recalls. “She would take me to her office, lock the door, and then draw the curtains. After which she would put me on her knees to make me read the gospel according to Saint Paul or another saint, while she squeezed me with one hand to her chest and pulled down my panties with the other hand. We were of course in pleated skirts and not in pants. It terrified me and paralyzed.”

“Marie” couldn’t talk to her devout Catholic parents about the abuse until a friend convinced her to do so. The result, she says, was catastrophic. “You are really a pervert, a vicious liar. How dare you say such things?” her parents told her. In fact, her parents had told the nuns that she was being sent to boarding school because she needed to be tamed. “I was truly [a gift] for this nun... because she knew full well that she did not risk anything.” 

The abuse lasted the whole year. At the age of 35, “Marie” told her mother again about the abuse. “My mother blissfully told me that it was impossible for a nun to whom she entrusted her daughter to abuse a girl,” she says. “Female pedophilia exists and unfortunately the media never talk about it.”

“Marie” was certainly not alone. Dozens of other victims of priests, nuns, and Catholic school personnel in France form the basis of a 2,500-page report released Tuesday by a special commission led by Jean-Marc Sauvé. While 80 percent of the victims were young boys between the ages of 10 and 13, many young girls were abused as well, and not only by priests. Nuns used crucifixes to rape little girls or forced boys to have sex with them, too. 

German Nuns Sold Orphaned Children to Sexual Predators: Report

The commission spent nearly three years combing through complaints and press reports and interviewing victims going back to the 1950s. Of the 3,000 abusers identified by the commission, two-thirds are priests. They found that priests and nuns alone abused around 216,000 children, but that the number climbs to 330,000 when they counted abuse at the hands of non-clergy who worked in Catholic schools and other institutions. The report only covers minors; the authors, who include scholars, psychologists, and law enforcement officials, say there could be many young men and women over the age of 18 who were also victims.

Their summary is damning, determining that the Catholic Church in France showed “a deep, cruel indifference toward victims.”

Olivier Savignac was another of those victims. He wanted to believe the priest in his home parish in France was a devout man. But when the priest asked him to take off his clothes and lie on the bed in a room at a Catholic summer camp when he was 13 years old, he knew something wasn’t right. “I perceived this priest as someone who was good, a caring person who would not harm me,” said Savignac, who now heads a group for victims of clerical sex abuse. “But it was when I found myself on that bed half-naked and he was touching me that I realized something was wrong.” 

Savignac says the abuse, which went on for years, damaged him for life: “It’s like a growing cyst, it’s like gangrene inside the victim’s body and the victim’s psyche.”

Only 22 of the thousands of cases of criminal pedophilia qualify under French law for legal action. More than 40 cases that are past the statutes of limitations have been forwarded to the French Catholic Church in hopes that the perpetrators will be punished. On average, each perpetrator abused 70 children. The president of the French Conference of Bishops, Eric de Moulins-Beaufort, said the church is “appalled” by the report. “I wish on that day to ask for pardon, pardon to each of you,” he told the victims. Pope Francis also expressed “sorrow” over the findings, saying he will pray for those affected. “His first thoughts are with the victims, with great sadness for their wounds,” Francis said in a statement through his press office, adding that he hoped the French church would now “undertake a way of redemption.”

Survivor Francois Devaux, who founded the victims' group La Parole Liberee, attended the presentation of the report. “You are a disgrace to our humanity,” he said, addressing the church as a whole. “In this hell, there have been abominable mass crimes... but there has been even worse: betrayal of trust, betrayal of morale, betrayal of children.”

Read more at The Daily Beast.

Captured, Killed or Compromised: CIA Admits to Losing Dozens of Informants

Julian E. Barnes and Adam Goldman

Tue, October 5, 2021

Members of the Taliban at the former CIA Eagle Base in Kabul on Sept. 6, 2021. (Victor J. Blue/The New York Times)

WASHINGTON — Top American counterintelligence officials warned every CIA station and base around the world last week about troubling numbers of informants recruited from other countries to spy for the United States being captured or killed, people familiar with the matter said.

The message, in an unusual top-secret cable, said that the CIA’s counterintelligence mission center had looked at dozens of cases in the last several years involving foreign informants who had been killed, arrested or most likely compromised. Although brief, the cable laid out the specific number of agents executed by rival intelligence agencies — a closely held detail that counterintelligence officials typically do not share in such cables.

The cable highlighted the struggle the spy agency is having as it works to recruit spies around the world in difficult operating environments. In recent years, adversarial intelligence services in countries such as Russia, China, Iran and Pakistan have been hunting down the CIA’s sources and in some cases turning them into double agents.

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Acknowledging that recruiting spies is a high-risk business, the cable raised issues that have plagued the agency in recent years, including poor tradecraft, being too trusting of sources, underestimating foreign intelligence agencies and moving too quickly to recruit informants while not paying enough attention to potential counterintelligence risks — a problem the cable called placing “mission over security.”

The large number of compromised informants in recent years also demonstrated the growing prowess of other countries in employing innovations like biometric scans, facial recognition, artificial intelligence and hacking tools to track the movements of CIA officers in order to discover their sources.

While the CIA has many ways to collect intelligence for its analysts to craft into briefings for policymakers, networks of trusted human informants around the world remain the centerpiece of its efforts, the kind of intelligence that the agency is supposed to be the best in the world at collecting and analyzing.

Recruiting new informants, former officials said, is how the CIA’s case officers — its front-line spies — earn promotions. Case officers are not typically promoted for running good counterintelligence operations, such as figuring out if an informant is really working for another country.

The agency has devoted much of its attention for the last two decades to terrorist threats and the conflicts in Afghanistan, Iraq and Syria, but improving intelligence collection on adversarial powers both great and small is once again a centerpiece of the CIA’s agenda, particularly as policymakers demand more insight into China and Russia.

The loss of informants, former officials said, is not a new problem. But the cable demonstrated the issue is more urgent than is publicly understood.

The warning, according to those who have read it, was primarily aimed at front-line agency officers, the people involved most directly in the recruiting and vetting of sources. The cable reminded CIA case officers to focus not just on recruiting sources but also on security issues including vetting informants and evading adversarial intelligence services.

Among the reasons for the cable, according to people familiar with the document, was to prod CIA case officers to think about steps they can take on their own do a better job managing informants.

Former officials said that there has to be more focus on security and counterintelligence, among both senior leaders and front-line personnel, especially when it comes to recruiting informants, which CIA officers call agents.

“No one at the end of the day is being held responsible when things go south with an agent,” said Douglas London, a former agency operative. “Sometimes there are things beyond our control, but there are also occasions of sloppiness and neglect, and people in senior positions are never held responsible.”

London said he was unaware of the cable. But his new book, “The Recruiter: Spying and the Lost Art of American Intelligence,” argues that the CIA’s shift toward covert action and paramilitary operations undermined traditional espionage that relies on securely recruiting and handling agents.

Worldwide messages to CIA stations and bases that note troubling trends or problems, or even warnings about counterintelligence problems, are not unheard-of, according to former officials. Still, the memo outlining a specific number of informants arrested or killed by adversarial powers is an unusual level of detail, one that signals the importance of the current problems. Former officials said that counterintelligence officials typically like to keep such details secret even from the broad CIA workforce.

Asked about the memo, a CIA spokesperson declined to comment.

Sheetal T. Patel, who last year became the CIA’s assistant director for counterintelligence and leads that mission center, has not been reluctant to send out broad warnings to the CIA community of current and former officers.

In January, Patel sent a letter to retired CIA officers warning against working for foreign governments who are trying to build up spying capabilities by hiring retired intelligence officials. (The letter, promptly leaked, also included warnings about talking to journalists.)

Former officials say the broadsides are a way of pushing CIA officers to become more serious about counterintelligence.

The memo sent last week suggested that the agency underestimated its adversaries — the belief that its officers and tradecraft were better than other intelligence services. But the results of the study showed that countries being targeted by the U.S. are also skilled at hunting down informants.

Some former officials believe that the agency’s skills at thwarting adversarial intelligence services have grown rusty after decades of focusing on terrorism threats and relying on risky covert communications. Developing, training and directing informants spying on foreign governments differs in some ways from developing sources inside terrorist networks.

While the memo identified specific numbers of informants that were arrested or killed, it said the number turned against the United States was not fully known. Sometimes, informants who are discovered by adversarial intelligence services are not arrested but instead are turned into double agents who feed disinformation to the CIA, which can have devastating effects on intelligence collection and analysis. Pakistanis have been particularly effective in this sphere, former officials said.

The collapse of the U.S.-backed government in Afghanistan means that learning more about Pakistan’s ties to the Taliban government and extremist organizations in the region is going to become ever more important. As a result, the pressure is once again on the CIA to build and maintain networks of informants in Pakistan, a country with a record of discovering and breaking those networks.

Similarly, the focus by successive administrations on great power competition and the challenges of China and Russia has meant that building up spy networks and protecting those sources are more important than ever.

In those countries, technology has also become a problem, former officials said. Artificial intelligence, biometric scans, facial recognition and other technology has made it far easier for governments to track American intelligence officers operating in their country. That has made meeting and communicating with sources far more difficult.

A breach of the classified communications system, or “covcom,” used by the CIA helped to expose the agency’s networks in China and in Iran, according to former officials. In both cases informants were executed. Others had to be extracted and resettled by the agency.

In Iran and China, some intelligence officials believe that Americans provided information to the adversarial agencies that could have helped expose informants. Monica Elfriede Witt, a former Air Force sergeant who defected to Iran, was indicted on a charge of providing information to Iran in 2019. The Iranians leveraged her knowledge only after determining she could be trusted. Later that year, Jerry Chun Shing Lee, a former CIA officer, was sentenced to 19 years in prison for providing secrets to the Chinese government.

Former officials say there is no shortage of examples of where the agency has been so focused on the mission that security measures were not given proper consideration. And in some cases a turned agent can have deadly consequences.

The 2009 bombing at a CIA base in Khost, Afghanistan, that killed seven agency employees was a good example of mission over security, London said. In that suicide attack, a Jordanian doctor the CIA thought it had persuaded to penetrate al-Qaida had in fact been turned against the United States.

“We were in such a rush to make such a big score,” London said. “Those were tradecraft mistakes.”

He added it is important to remind the CIA’s workforce of the damage that can happen when tradecraft lapses.

“Do your job and don’t be lazy,” he said. “It’s a willingness to say we are not as perfect as we think we are. That’s a positive thing.”

© 2021 The New York Times Company

THE BOURGEOISIE TREMBLE

Left-Wing Rage Threatens a Wall Street Haven in Latin America



THE IMPERIALISTS TREMBLE
Left-Wing Rage Threatens a Wall Street Haven in Latin America

Eduardo Thomson, Valentina Fuentes, Matthew Malinowski and Ethan Bronner
Tue, October 5, 2021,

(Bloomberg Markets) -- One evening in August, Gabriel Boric sat outdoors on a bench, listening and taking notes. A light jacket covered the tattoos on his forearms, but his thick beard and full head of unruly hair betrayed him as the rabble-rousing student protester he was not long ago. In a working-class neighborhood of Santiago, the capital of Chile, he represented the vanguard of a fast-­rising left-wing political movement.

At 35 years old, Boric has become the front-runner in the race to become president of Chile. His ascent, part of a broader shift to the left across Latin America, is rattling international corporations and investment firms, which have long favored Chile as perhaps the most market-friendly developing economy in the world.

One of the voters flocking to see Boric that day complained of long waits and poor care at public hospitals. Boric, who can be bookish, looked down, gathering his thoughts. Then he released them, like steam from a kettle. “This has to fill us with rage,” he said, clenching a fist. “And transform that rage into action.”

Rage helps explain why Boric consistently polls at or near the top of the seven candidates vying to lead Chile. It’s rage over inequality, as is evident from the hammer-and-sickle Communist Party flags that flutter nearby in solidarity with his movement, Frente Amplio, or Broad Front. As the name suggests, the rage also derives from something bigger, a growing generational shift in cultural attitudes about gender and sexuality along with economic views on wealth and taxes.

The political choices of the 19 million inhabitants of Chile—a country with a $253 billion gross domestic product, roughly the size of South Carolina’s—have an outsize influence on world commerce. For half a century, Chile has been the poster child for how free markets can spur growth and lift people out of poverty—an approach sometimes described as neoliberalism, a term the left tends to hurl as an epithet.

Chile’s business-friendly climate dates back to the 1970s, when the dictator General Augusto Pinochet reduced trade barriers and slashed regulation to stimulate foreign ­investment. As Chile turned toward democracy after 1990, courts documented the torture, extrajudicial killings, and other human-rights abuses under Pinochet. Yet his economic approach survived leaders and parties of all political leanings.

Many economists credit these pro-market policies with what has been called the Chilean Miracle. Chile has Latin America’s highest credit rating and attracts more direct foreign investment as a percentage of GDP than such powerhouses as Brazil and Mexico. Chile’s central bank projects that the economy this year will grow as much as 11.5%, more than any developed or emerging-­market country tracked by Bloomberg. Chile reigns as the world’s biggest copper producer and a major supplier of lithium, essential for smartphones and electric cars. From 1990 through 2000, average incomes doubled, poverty fell in half, and the country’s stock market soared fourteenfold.

Recent investment results have been less robust, in part because of rising production costs for copper. In gritty neighborhoods where stray dogs fight for scraps next to tire repair shops, Chile’s success story can feel like a cruel joke. Despite years of steady economic growth, the country has one of the biggest gaps between rich and poor among nations in the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), whose members are 38 democracies with market-based economies. In other words, much of Chile has benefited little from its status as an investor favorite. Now, Boric and his movement argue that there’s been, in a sense, no change in the country’s economic fabric since the dictatorship.

In late 2019, street demonstrations exploded over a minor increase in public transit prices. Participants trashed major subway stations and demanded changes in national priorities, including the treatment of Indigenous groups, the distribution of water, and the management of pensions.

The Covid-19 pandemic then further exposed, and intensified, societal inequality. In May the country voted for representatives who will rewrite its constitution, left over from the Pinochet dictatorship. Those elected for the task lean heavily left.

Today, in a head-spinning shift, Boric is running to succeed a pillar of neoliberalism: the conservative billionaire Sebastián Piñera, a Harvard-educated economist who made his fortune in credit cards and airlines.

A new generation, bucking the country’s traditional cultural views, dominates public discourse. At the August campaign event, a voter who said he was transgender described violence and discrimination at work and home. Boric recounted a conversation he’d had with a gay Chilean poet and essayist who railed against the strictures of a society that discriminated against people like him.

One of Boric’s closest rivals, center-right candidate Sebastián Sichel, is, like Boric, young and tattooed. The 44-year-old lawyer opposes upending the current economic order. But Sichel favors same-sex marriage and increasing aid to the poor.

Boric’s coalition is calling out economic inequality and supporting gender fluidity, green industries, minority rights, and the creation of a tax-and-spend state where market forces are no longer revered. As Boric has said on more than one occasion, “If Chile was the birthplace of neoliberalism, it will also be its grave.”

With almost 660 million inhabitants and several dozen ­countries, Latin America can’t be easily categorized. But there are patterns, and it has swung in waves from left to right.

Two decades ago, what’s often described as a pink tide swept into power leftists such as Hugo Chávez in Venezuela and Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva in Brazil. Lula in particular seemed to offer an alternative model for development, fueled by a commodity-price boom and more social spending. Like the market-based approach, it pulled tens of millions from poverty.

Another pink tide now seems to be under way. A likely reason: The right had the bad luck to be in power when Covid crushed the region’s health system and killed more than a million people. Latin America has 8% of the world’s population and 20% of its deaths. In 2020, Latin America’s household wealth per adult dropped 11.4%, more than any other region in the world, according to Credit Suisse Group AG.

The current pink tide swept first into Peru. Pedro Castillo, a rural teacher and union activist from a Marxist party, squeaked past the pro-business candidate on a campaign promise of “no more poor people in a rich country.” Investors ran for the exits, and Peru’s currency plunged more than any other, except Afghanistan’s.

Colombia has elections next year. Its markets-friendly president, Iván Duque, can’t run again because of term limits and is deeply unpopular, posing a challenge for his party’s successor. Leftist Gustavo Petro, who promises a “green economy,” leads the polls.

In Brazil, President Jair Bolsonaro, a right-wing populist, is expected to face a stiff challenge from ex-President Lula of the previous left-wing wave. The victors in this round will face a tougher ­challenge than 15 years ago because of empty coffers and steeper ­government debts.

Some analysts reject the concept of a pink tide, saying it reduces the complexities of countries with their own stories. “Boric is clearly a product of very particular circumstances in Chile,” says Michael Shifter, president of the Inter-American Dialogue, a Washington-based policy organization promoting democracy and social equity in Latin America and the Caribbean. “Any comparison with other leaders is difficult. I don’t think he’d be particularly close to Castillo in Peru.”

Much of what Boric is proposing isn’t entirely different from the approach of many European social democracies or even what Democrats are advocating in the U.S. He says he would redistribute wealth to fight poverty and push for workers’ rights, such as mandating shorter workweeks and promoting collective bargaining.

Boric calls for raising taxes on large fortunes and incomes and cracking down on tax evasion. He’s also proposed a levy on mining royalties and “green taxes” on fuel and industrial emissions. Overall he’d raise taxes, as a percentage of GDP, to 29.5% from 21% over the next decade. That would be closer to the 34% average of OECD countries, and 5 percentage points higher than the U.S.

“We need a new model of development,” Boric says during a 45-minute interview via Zoom in August, “where the creation of wealth is not limited to extraction, the distribution of wealth is not based on trickle-down.”

Beatriz Sanchez, a journalist and former Broad Front presidential candidate, says Boric represents a return to the values of Salvador Allende, Chile’s first socialist president, who was elected in 1970 and overthrown by the Pinochet-led military coup three years later. “Allende is someone who marks a path of change and social justice for Boric and the Broad Front,” she says.

This comparison with Allende, who nationalized the copper industry, alarms some businesses, which are already pulling back. Consider Lundin Mining Corp., a publicly traded company based in Toronto with operations around the world. After spending $1 billion upgrading its copper operations in Chile, Lundin is holding off on more.

“We’re going to wait and see before we put too much money into it, and I’m sure everybody else is doing the same,” says Chairman Lukas Lundin. “If there is too much uncertainty in the next year, year and a half, obviously we won’t push the button.”

Australian mining and oil giant BHP Group Plc owns three copper mines in Chile, including Escondida, the world’s biggest. BHP executive Carlos Avila has testified in the Senate against new mining royalties proposed by several left-wing lawmakers, an approach Boric strongly supports. Avila said the levies would derail projects and Chilean mining would be less competitive.

Inmobiliaria Oriente, a family-owned real estate firm, halted two residential projects and a strip mall in the north of Chile and put a commercial center in Santiago on hold. Chief Executive Officer Javier Chadud says Boric’s plans “may affect the local investment environment and make it difficult for us to find new opportunities and clients.”

Wall Street is skittish, too. In June, UBS AG analysts recommended that investors reduce their exposure to Chilean stocks before the November election. In September, Bank of America Corp. suggested no holdings at all. Guido Chamorro, a portfolio manager at Pictet Asset Management in London specializing in emerging-market debt, said Chile’s region-­topping credit rating—single-A from S&P Global Ratings—could be at risk. New mining taxes from a leftist government, he says, “would erode the long-standing positive international sentiment that has been built up over many years.”

Boric grew up in Patagonia at Chile’s southern tip, a rugged windswept area of sheep farming and glaciers. A tattoo on one of his forearms represents “a lonely lighthouse” set “among the stormy and mysterious seas of Southern Patagonia,” he once wrote on Instagram. “There I’m going to live one day. But for now, it lives with me.” His invocation of the country’s periphery, rather than the capital, has added to his appeal as an outsider unafraid to take on the moneyed urban elite. His father, who supports the center-left Christian Democrats, is a chemical engineer. Boric attended law school in Santiago. While helping to lead student protests over the cost and quality of education, he was elected president of the student federation.

Boric, who’s unmarried, lives in a Santiago apartment, surrounded by well-worn, graduate-student-style shelving and books. Those volumes, especially works of political science and literature, left an impression on a politician who describes himself as “part of a tradition of the Latin American left.” He cites Alvaro García Linera, a Marxist sociologist and former vice president of Bolivia often described as one of that country’s leading intellectuals. He also has European influences, including the Italian Marxist Antonio Gramsci, known for his theories of how the capitalist class stays in power through cultural hegemony rather than violence. Boric, who speaks fluent English, reads history books on the British welfare state and at times sounds as much like a Northern European social democrat as a Latin American firebrand.

In his view, society has two choices: remedy inequality or devolve into chaos or extinction. “We’ll save ourselves together or sink separately,” he says. “The climate crisis is the best evidence of this, as is the pandemic.”

Boric’s natural allies include supermarket workers on strike at a major grocery chain, demanding better pay and health coverage. “The fact that he’s taken the time to speak about the strike, to draw attention to what’s going on up north, that means he’s very human. That means that, yes, he has the potential to be a great president,” says Priscilla Fernandez, a union official. He also has academics’ support. “You can’t create a new society without changing the economic model,” says Manuel Antonio Garretón, a Chilean sociologist.

But bankers, business leaders, and even some former left-wing government officials are pushing back. Sergio Lehmann, chief economist at Banco de Crédito e Inversiones in Santiago, says Boric’s plans could trim the longer-term annual economic growth rate to about 1%, from 2.5%. René Cortázar, a former minister under the center-left presidencies of Michelle Bachelet and Patricio Aylwin, says higher taxes will drive away investors.

“Neither foreign nor domestic investors are obligated to bring their resources to Chile,” Cortázar wrote in the El Mercurio newspaper. “When they decide where to put their money, they analyze the rules of the game in each country to see where it’s most convenient to go.”

In an interview, Sichel, Boric’s center-right opponent, describes both populism and proposals to overhaul the nation’s economic model as “cancers” that he intends to excise. He’s also condemned the conduct of street protesters, whom Boric supports. “You shouldn’t give up one of the government’s main obligations, which is maintaining order and controlling violence,” he says.

Neither candidate embodies Chile’s extremes. A former social development minister under President Piñera, Sichel’s running as an independent, though representing Piñera’s right-wing coalition, Chile Podemos Más (Chile We Can Do More).

Along with supporting gay marriage, Sichel, like Boric, attacks Chile’s tradition of cultural secrecy that has long hurt the disadvantaged. In an unusual decision for a politician in Chile, he’s spoken openly of his own struggles. He was raised by a single mother, who got pregnant at 17 by a father who disowned them. In a Sábado magazine column, he wrote of his mother’s psychiatric challenges and alcoholism and of living at times without water and electricity. In his late 20s, Sichel searched for his father and met him. In a poll this week, Sichel slipped to No. 3, behind Jose Antonio Kast of the right-wing Republican Party.

For his part, Boric defeated a communist and seeks to distance himself from the socialist policies of Nicolás Maduro, the president of Venezuela. In his view, they’re authoritarian and benefit only the government’s allies. He also wants to reassure international investors.

“Those willing to pursue a model of development that is environmentally sustainable, with good labor practices, and that generates technology transfer and a fairer distribution of wealth will be more than welcome,” he says.

Boric acknowledges the concerns of business leaders that his victory could damage investment in Chile, hurting the economy. “Of course, I’m worried,” he says. “But I believe that everybody understands—even the investors—that if you have a broken society, there are no expectations of having long-term investments. Public faith is lost, and you end up killing the goose that laid the golden egg.” If he wins, he’ll have to solve the riddle of fighting inequality without ending the Chilean miracle.

Thomson is bureau chief for Bloomberg News in Santiago, where Fuentes is a reporter and Malinowski is an editor. Bronner is a senior editor in New York.

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Fire retardant could be 'game-changer' in fighting wildfires

Wildfires-Retardant ProtectionFILE - In this Sept. 23, 2021, file photo, flames consume a house near Old Oregon Trail as the Fawn Fire burns north of Redding in Shasta County, Calif. U.S. officials have approved a long-lasting fire retardant that could significantly aid in fighting increasingly destructive wildfires. The U.S. Forest Service on Tuesday, Oct. 5, 2021, approved Perimeter Solutions' fire retardant that's intended to be used as a preventative measure and can last for months. (AP Photo/Ethan Swope, File)More

KEITH RIDLER
Tue, October 5, 2021

BOISE, Idaho (AP) — U.S. officials on Tuesday approved a long-lasting fire retardant that could significantly aid in fighting increasingly destructive wildfires by stopping them before they ever start.

The U.S. Forest Service approved Perimeter Solutions’ fire retardant that is intended to be used as a preventative measure and can last for months.

It’s similar to the company’s red-dyed retardant dropped from aircraft while fighting active wildfires, but it’s clear and sprayed by ground-based workers and equipment.


“The real game-changer here is once you treat it, you can forget it,” said Edward Goldberg, chief executive officer of St. Louis, Missouri-based Perimeter Solutions. “It’s there for the whole year.”

The company said its primary use will be by industrial customers such as utility companies and railroads, but it can also be used to protect residential and commercial properties. It’s intended to be sprayed on vegetation, not homes themselves, but can be sprayed on such things as wood fences.

The company’s existing retardant is also used for that purpose, but can be problematic because it’s only effective until rain washes it away. Goldberg said the new product will remain effective even after a couple inches of rain, making the one-and-done application less expensive.

Cost, Goldberg said, depends on the topography and ranges from $7,000 to $15,000 per mile (1.6 kilometers) covering a 20-foot (6-meter) -wide strip.

Goldberg said the product will likely be most effective in the drier climate of the U.S. West, and could be applied in the spring to offer fire protection throughout the wildfire season. In July, it was applied to the grounds at former President Ronald Reagan’s coastal mountain ranch in the Santa Ynez mountains in California near Santa Barbara.

The company also said the new fire retardant had been applied at the start of the wildfire season along a fire-prone, 4-mile (6.5-kilometer) stretch of California’s Route 118. That resulted in no fires that season, the company said, after the previous fire season saw 37 fires start along the same stretch of road.

Stanton Florea, a spokesman for the U.S. Forest Service based at the National Interagency Fire Center in Boise, said the agency had no comment about it’s approval of the Perimeter Solutions’ fire retardant.

Goldberg said the new retardant has the potential to reduce the overall number of wildfires, freeing up firefighters that have been in short supply in recent years.

The fire center on its website said that so far this year, about 46,500 wildfires have burned 10,000 square miles (26,000 square kilometers). Those numbers are at roughly the 10-year average for number of wildfires and area burned.

Currenlty, there are 52 large wildfires, 18 of them in Idaho, nine in California and nine more in Montana.

The center is currently at National Preparedness Level 3, having dropped down from the maximum level 5 earlier this year when resources for fighting wildfires were hard to come by.

The center said that cooler, more favorable weather will pass through much of the Western U.S. in the next several days, but that drought conditions still leave the region open for continued wildfire potential.