‘Trying to Get Free’
A conversation about the radical politics of looting with Vicky Osterweil.


A broken store window in Chicago, 2020. (Photo by Ashlee Rezin Garcia /Chicago Sun-Times via AP)


The looter, like most American figures, exists in a state of mythical distortion. When looters emerge from social movements, the press depicts them as opportunists and outsiders; when looters destroy property in response to police violence or the silent horrors of capitalism, they are deemed lawless aggressors. Talking heads and commentators cast looters as mindless and apolitical, as if looting were not a risky, calculated act. Vicky Osterweil’s In Defense of Looting corrects those misconceptions, reclaiming looters as conscious actors and heirs of a radical tradition stretching back to chattel slavery.

Expanded from a 2014 New Inquiry essay published during the Ferguson riots, the book robustly defends looting and compounds its definition. Osterweil’s looters are fugitive slaves and beleaguered workers, victims of police violence and armed black militias. Looting is for anyone trying to get free, in other words, and as Osterweil’s defense moves deftly through American history—from the colonial era, through the Civil War and Reconstruction, and all the way to this year of insurrection and plague—liberation becomes material and tactile, always tied to bodies and contexts rather than philosophical ideals.

In this interview, which has been edited for length and clarity, we discuss how the book developed, the many thinkers and texts that helped Osterweil scale up her essay, and the legacy of Ferguson.—Stephen Kearse

STEPHEN KEARSE: The book feels more like a manifesto and a call to arms than your 2014 essay did. During the writing of the book, how did tone and form factor into how you were shaping your argument?

VICKY OSTERWEIL: I’m a writer who, through researching and thinking through things, can in a way discover the form and the mode that the writing will take. I have had to consider not only the incredible violence against predominantly Black communities by the police and the prison system, but also the climate crisis. We desperately need to be making radical changes to the way our society is organized. So I think that truth may play into the urgency or the “manifesto-y” nature of the book.

SK: One of the main goals of your book, one of many, is to show that looting is a conscious political choice, whether looters are radicals or reactionaries. Why is the looter such an important political figure to reclaim?

VO: They are conscious political actors. And I think they are important because the figure of the looter has emerged somewhat spontaneously through the last, well, we can say 50 years of struggle. I trace the looter back to the Civil War and Reconstruction, and I frame the slave revolts and the general strike of the enslaved as W.E.B. Du Bois does. There’s a Sylvia Wynter quote in the introduction, where she says, and I’m paraphrasing, “It’s necessary that we think through things with these classes of people that are rising up against and resisting the system as it exists.”

That’s what inspires this work: people moving to get free or, indeed, just moving politically in the street—they know what they’re doing. So rather than starting from a theory of what revolutions should look like, and then trying to fit movements into that, post facto, I think it’s very important that we look at the way that people are moving now and did in the past and take it seriously.

A big part of the book is my indebtedness to the rebels in Ferguson, who made this all visible and possible for me. These were thoughts that were already percolating around the UK riots in 2011, but the way in which the rebels in Ferguson combined a certain form of holding space, attacking the things that oppressed them, and of looting and then sharing the goods in order to flourish and to have fun as well, was the basis for all my understanding.

SK: When you wrote the essay, Ferguson was on the national stage and in the national discourse. As it has faded from the spotlight, how has your relationship to Ferguson changed?

VO: Well, there’s been some frustration as Ferguson has faded, and you know, it wasn’t just Ferguson. It was also Charlotte, North Carolina. and Minneapolis. There were a number of big, big moments of rebellion and one thing that has happened, I think since the election of Trump, there has been a big explosion of the electoral socialist left. The DSA [Democratic Socialists of America], which when I was in the process of being radicalized in 2010 was a tiny organization that was largely about endorsing Democratic candidates, bloomed into this massive organizing force. And we’ve also had the Bernie Sanders movements of 2016 and 2019.
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Some people in those movements, I have noticed, seem to want to erase the role of Ferguson. You hear them say, “Oh, you know, there isn’t really any rebellion on the left. There was Occupy and then Bernie Sanders.” They draw this line that cuts out not only Black Lives Matter, but also Standing Rock, both of which have been incredibly important. But there are still sectors of the left, people clustered around mostly cultural production, podcasts, and magazines, who are still insisting that race is the wrong thing to look at. And in this moment, a lot of those people have been silent. Because their analysis is not just racist; it’s incorrect.

SK: It’s also often not actionable for people looking at the streets and wanting to mobilize and seize the moment. A lot of these liberal modes don’t really provide any way forward other than voting.


VO: Yes, there have been a tremendous number of Wildcat strikes and a lot of labor action involved in this as well. But I think there are some people who fantasize that a movement has to directly call itself a labor movement to have any revolutionary validity. And I think that doesn’t square with the history of even the successful revolutions. Cedric Robinson, in Black Marxism, talks about the ways the most successful revolutions of the 20th century were largely peasant-led, anti-colonial uprisings, including in Russia. They weren’t industrial-proletariat movements.

There is still a certain kind of classical Marxism, as well as a kind of social democratic liberal electoralism, that imagines that the only route to power is through the shop floor. And in order to say that, and argue that, you have to erase the last decade of struggle, which has seen incredible movements, from Occupy to Black Lives Matter. There were also the prison strikes and riots of 2016, the largest prison movement in American history, as well as the Standing Rock indigenous blockades and the massive militant antifascist organizing. All of these forms of revolutionary struggle have reemerged in the last two months and been innovated on. It’s as Keeanga Yamahtta-Taylor says in From #BlackLivesMatter to Black Liberation: when the Black movement goes into motion, it upsets all of American politics. And I think we’re really seeing that.

SK: I’m interested in the composition and drafting of the book and how you scaled up from the essay to the book, because Ferguson was the catalyst for the essay, but in the book, you write of Ferguson only toward the end. That sequencing really escalates the stakes of Ferguson.

VO: W.E.B. Du Bois’s Black Reconstruction is incredibly important for talking about this: The way that he cracks open that timeline, the way that he shows that there was a revolutionary moment that has largely been ignored and removed from history and how we’re really living in its shadow, really changed me. So I guess, at that point, it became a practical question: How do I tell the story? How do I get from the general strike of the enslaved to now? How do I get from the figure of the fugitive and Harriet Tubman to the struggle for Mike Brown? And, what things do I need to say on the journey there?

One thing that was very important to me in this book was the part—two chapters—about the formation of the police and white race riots. I really think there is a certain tendency among a very small group of ultra-left or anarchist commentators to do the same thing that nonviolence people do, but in reverse, where if there is looting and rioting it’s considered [inherently] good. And I really wanted to think about the ways in which looting and rioting have functioned in our history, often in the area of reactionary politics and, much less often, liberatory politics. For example, right now in India, race rioting is one of the key tactics of the fascist movement. So I really don’t want to romanticize what is in my opinion a tactic. And that relates to the other main thread of the book. I wanted to resist the idea that nonviolent tactics can be considered in the abstract outside of context and judged morally good or bad. We should be keeping our toolbox as big and varied as possible, and not falling into these moral traps concerning tactics.

SK: In your chapter on the civil rights movement’s under-acknowledged use of armed self-defense, you use the term “not nonviolence” a lot. And that term also appears in the original essay. What is the value of the term for you in regard to carving out an area between violence and nonviolence?

VO: “Violence” and “nonviolence” are a lot like the terms in the “pro-life” versus “pro-choice” debate, which is to say, in the framing of it; the argument that I want to make is already lost. I don’t want to oppose nonviolence to violence; I don’t think it’s a very helpful way to think about the world. If you can describe both the murder of Mike Brown and the breaking of a cop car window in response as “violent,” then that is a meaningless word, or certainly morally meaningless, right? So for me, “not nonviolence,” which is a clunky phrase I picked up from the work of Lorenzo Raymond, who’s an activist historian from New York, points to the idea that this nonviolence is actually an ideological container for a certain kind of action without submitting to the moral blackmail of having to call yourself “violent,” which is a loaded word.

One thing I talk about in the book is the moment when the Brooklyn Congress on Racial Equality, CORE, wanted to have a stall-in on the BQE at the 1964 World’s Fair. They wanted to just stall out a bunch of junk cars on the highway and cause a massive traffic jam that would force the people coming to the World’s Fair, mostly from Manhattan or from the suburbs, to look directly off the highway into the ghettos that had been carved out for the highway. And critics called this action “violent” for weeks. They really tried to take down this action by calling it that. And a traffic jam is a completely normal part of everyday life. So I just want to reject the violence/ nonviolence dichotomy in general. So “not nonviolent” is a term that successfully threads that needle.

SK: As you recount in your book, the police and also proto-police like slave catchers and city guards play crucial roles in protecting property during and outside of riots. How would you describe the looter’s relationship to property outside the riot zone?

VO: That’s an interesting question. In the vast majority of cases the looters’ relationship to property is probably that they don’t have much of it and they have to spend their whole life scraping together what little bit of money they can. Many of them are probably deep in debt: rent, medical, credit card, student debt, some form of debt. They have to work maybe 40 hours a week, maybe more. Or if they don’t have work, they have to either commit crime or live on benefits. In short, they are dispossessed of property, and their daily life is a constant reenactment of that dispossession.

In the case of Black people in America, there’s an even deeper relation of propertylessness. As Cheryl Harris argues in her incredibly important essay “Whiteness as Property,” whiteness is the ur form of property from which all other forms of property come. So you have to have whiteness to really own property. And if you own property then you likely have some proximity to whiteness. So when people attack property and loot, they are precisely attacking that connection between white supremacy, anti-Blackness, and the police, which is the core argument of the book. But in our discourse, property has been the unnamed but implicit part of that equation.

SK: You describe looting as as “femme” and “reproductive,” and throughout the book you highlight women and queer people’s participation in looting and political organization. Why was it important to you to decenter the image of the angry male mob?

VO: The main reason is that it’s true. Riots are largely carnival spaces where people find it easier to reproduce their lives and where people care for one another and are having fun and are expressing grief and rage and exhaustion and all of these feelings. Femme versus masc is hardly a great way to think about the world, but things like social reproduction and emotion are coded as feminine even though they are the way that this struggle happens—through rioting and through looting. A common slander of militant activity in general is that it’s macho, that it’s “bro-y,” that it’s patriarchal. For me, that is a really damaging myth because there’s no way queers and women, and certainly not black queer women and black trans women, are going to get free without being able to have all of these tactics available to them. So it’s both practically slanderous and incorrect, but it’s also untrue.

SK: One thing that really stood out to me in the book is that once we start thinking of fugitive slaves as looters, Harriet Tubman’s legacy is changed in some sense.

VO: I had a whole huge section on her that didn’t end up making it into the final book. She’s incredibly important to me and American history. One thing that I think we’re seeing right now is that the current uprising has been so widespread and so many people have participated, that there has been some shift in the way people who support the movement talk about looting and rioting. There has been an increase in people who are willing to say, “I don’t think it was wrong.” But the way that they seem to revert to defending property is by saying, “Just attack the box store. Don’t attack small businesses. Don’t attack mom and pop businesses.” One thing that’s very liberatory for genuinely understanding the incredible power of the fugitives is that the idea of a small slave owner is ridiculous. The notion that this person would be more deserving of their property than a plantation owner is obscene, right? There were many slave owners in the South who enslaved one or two people, who, if their slave were to go fugitive, they’d be ruined.

I think once you really start to understand property, private property and business, as a continuation of those slave owning systems by different means, in the form of prison labor, through the chain gangs of the Jim Crow era and the pre–Jim Crow era, and in colonies across the globe, you understand that slavery is a constant form of relation in our society. You begin to be free from these ideas that are really frankly Republican talking points about small businesses and about entrepreneurs, and about job creators and all this shit that has become really common discourse in the last 15 years.

SK: It’s interesting you mention that, because you start off the book by taking down these common talking points and showing how they serve this hegemonic understanding of property. That really sets the stage for the rest of the book, because you can’t actually see looting as political if you hold those beliefs.

VO: All those slanders come down to the idea that people who are rioting don’t know what they’re doing. I think when people look at a movement and they say, “Those people don’t know what they’re doing,” they’re telling on themselves. So I wanted to really demonstrate the racist, classist, and just historically misinformed nature of these slanders. All of this stuff really reveals contempt more than it reveals anything true about the people acting.

SK: You have written extensively about video games and movies, but the arts aren’t mentioned that much in the book. Did fictional portrayals of looting inform your argument in any way? You mentioned All Involved by Ryan Gaddis in a footnote.

VO: Yes, I was very upset, that book was so terrible. I was excited. I used Terry Bisson’s Fire on the Mountain as well. As someone who has watched movies pretty widely, I’ve found that there just isn’t much fictional portrayal of revolutionary direct action. Most of the films about riots are either some sort of documentary, many of which, in my opinion aren’t very useful, or riots are like a side note or it’s something happening off to the side. I’ve watched a lot of those movies, and I’ve liked a lot of them, from Eisenstein’s Strike up to the 2018 Suspiria remake, which is arguably about the German Autumn in the ’70s. I love movies. [Watching movies] is my favorite hobby. And I read a lot of novels as well, and play video games. But ultimately I felt like I had enough on my plate just looking at the history.

SK: Are there any works that attempt to capture the essence of looting or speak to politics of rioting and fail? I’m thinking about movies like Selma, Detroit, and Queen & Slim. And even Dark Knight Rises. Those movies have representations of protests, but they tend to present protesters as noble and almost weirdly apolitical.

VO: I did myself a favor. I love Kathryn Bigelow’s early movies, but I didn’t even watch Detroit because I knew I would just have an aneurysm. Maybe that makes me a bad researcher, but I was just being nice to myself. Fun fact about Dark Knight Rises: They were filming it when Occupy was literally in the streets. And they were filming in the financial district. Occupy Wall Street marched through their set.

SK: Every trope you mentioned about looters has appeared this year in the media, in response to the protests against police brutality, and as we discussed earlier, sometimes among protesters. What do you imagine your book says to people who believe they’re against looting, but they’re also anti-police. You mentioned the idea of small-business slave owners earlier. Do you think your book pushes them toward—

VO: Toward accepting the role of looters in the movement? Small-business owners have a vested interest in not seeing the value of looting, so they’d be hard to convert. But I think that in some ways this book really is written for them. It is for people who have sympathy for looters but haven’t really thought about it. It’s also for my comrades and accomplices and people in the street, to feel supported and seen. It is a thank-you to the rebels of Ferguson for everything that they showed us and sacrificed. Many of them have been murdered, probably by the police or vigilantes, in the last five years, since that uprising. It’s been horrible. A lot of really visible activists have been murdered in Ferguson, and it isn’t talked about much. So it’s an act of grief and thanks to them.

Why Every Job in the Renewable Energy Industry Must Be a Union Job
We need millions of union jobs that are good for both workers and the climate.
MINDY ISSER SEPTEMBER 3, 2020


Following a rally in Brooklyn's Cadman Plaza Park, hundreds of union members march across the Brooklyn Bridge in support of IBEW Local 3 on September 18, 2017 in New York City.DREW ANGERER/GETTY IMAGES

The renewable energy industry in the United States is booming. Prior to the start of the Covid-19 pandemic, which has put millions out of work, over 3 million people worked in clean energy—far more than those who worked in the fossil fuel industry. And though the decline of fossil fuel jobs appears unstoppable, the unions that represent those workers are very protective of their members’ jobs. Similarly, they’ve also been resistant to legislation like the Green New Deal, which would create more green jobs while also transitioning away from work in extractive industries. Environmental activists believe that green jobs are the future—for both workers and our world—but unionization rates in the renewable energy industry are extremely low. In order to get unions on board with green jobs, the environmental movement will have to fight for those jobs to be union. And unions will have to loosen their grip on fossil fuels in an effort to embrace renewables.

Fossil fuel jobs can pay well (both oil rig and refinery workers can take home around $100,000 per year), but due to automation and decreased demand, the number of jobs is shrinking. And so are the unions that represent them. At its peak, the United Mine Workers of America boasted 800,000 members, but hundreds of thousands of workers have been laid off in the last few decades. Now UMWA is mostly a retirees’ organization and only organizes a few thousand workers in the manufacturing and health care industries, as well as workers across the Navajo Nation. When a union like UMWA hemorrhages members, many see it as an insular problem that doesn’t concern anybody else—environmentalists may even celebrate the closure of mines and refineries, potentially paying lip service to lost jobs, without doing much to create new ones.

“An injury to one is an injury to all” is not just a slogan in the labor movement because it sounds good, but because it’s true. When union density is low and unions are weak, the jobs that are created are more likely to have low pay, lack benefits, and be unsafe. And because union density in this country is already so low (33.6% in the public sector, 6.2% in the private), every time an employer of union labor outsources or shuts down, it affects not only those newly unemployed workers, but all workers, union and not. When oil refineries and other fossil fuel employers close their doors, union members and other workers lose their jobs. And while that may feel like a win for environmentalists, it’s also a loss for all working people, even those concerned about climate change. Unions are one of the only ways working people have power in this country—without them, there will be very few organizations equipped to fight for the programs and services we deserve, including ones that are tasked with fighting climate change. These kinds of contradictions have caused tension between both movements, and corroded trust between them. And while there have been some inroads made in the last few years—including unions endorsing the Green New Deal—there’s still a long way to go until unions eschew fossil fuels.

Upton Sinclair once said that “it is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends upon his not understanding it.” When you’re able to feed your family on wages paid for by fossil fuels, it’s hard to see those same fossil fuels as a direct threat to your life. Most of us can understand why fossil fuel workers want to hold onto their jobs. And we can also understand why a majority of Americans want to significantly reduce the use of fossil fuels.

But between these two conflicting needs is a real opportunity: green jobs. The Bureau of Labor Statistics predicts that the two fastest growing jobs through 2028 will both be in the renewable energy sector. While an economic downturn due to Covid-19 could slow job growth, pre-pandemic reports showed that solar installers and wind turbine technicians were set to grow by 63%. None of the 20 jobs projected to grow over 20% in the next eight years are in the fossil fuel industry. But the opening created by the renewable industry for a partnership between the environmental and labor movements is being squandered: Unions aren’t engaging in enough new organizing, and environmentalists aren’t encouraging them. There are, of course, some heartening examples of unions and greens working together, like the Reversing Inequality, Combating Climate Change report out of the Worker Institute at Cornell University, which convened unions and policy experts to develop recommendations for new union jobs which would also fight climate change. But most of the green jobs being created are not union: Only 6% of workers in both wind power generation and solar power concentrating system work are unionized, and 4% of workers in photovoltaics, which create solar cells to convert light to electricity.

There are currently nearly 335,000 solar workers in the country, representing a huge opportunity for the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers (IBEW), which admits that “a disturbingly small percentage of the electrical workers who install residential solar panels in North America belong to a union.” Workers on solar farms are more likely to be unionized than rooftop solar installers, who can make as little as $12 per hour doing a dangerous job and risking electrocution or a deadly fall.

In These Times spoke with a former solar installer, J., at Solar States, a solar installer and educator in Philadelphia. Installers there start at $16 an hour and are offered paid time off, retirement and health care benefits. Most are Black and brown, and according to J., there’s a mandate for 50% of installers to live in the city limits. Lead installers can go up to $22 to $25, but that’s about the highest they can make on residential jobs. This is why, according to J., solar installers try to get commercial work on large buildings owned by the city, state or businesses, because it pays more and the jobs are longer—and they often work alongside union members.

On a recent installation job on a city-owned building, which triggered the prevailing wage provision, Solar States installers worked next to members of IBEW Local 98, laying the solar panels while the union electricians wired them. J. (who still works in the industry and wants to remain anonymous) told In These Times that “there’s a lot of bad blood with the union, but I tried to tell my co-workers that the only reason we get prevailing wage is because of them.” According to him, the tension stems from interpersonal issues when they work closely together, and the differences in their wages—IBEW can members make $72 an hour. Relatedly, the union is predominately white, and workers at Solar States are mostly people of color, which has also caused tension between the two groups.

According to residential solar installers, Local 98 also hasn’t expressed any interest in bringing these workers into their union. (Local 98 didn’t return a request for comment.) J. told In These Times, “They don’t care about new organizing. They want to make sure that all the white men that have been in IBEW forever continue to command a high wage. They have never once tried to reach out to us, and we work side by side!” This may be because there is no cohesive mandate from the international union. In fact, different IBEW locals in California have had conflicting opinions on green jobs: Local 18 has slammed the Green New Deal, while Local 428 has embraced job opportunities in the renewable sector. And while unions struggle internally over these issues, many environmentalists remain indifferent or uninterested in solar workers’ labor conditions. J. said that “especially customers who are wealthy, they don’t really think about it at all. Their question is not how much installers get paid, but how much is my carbon footprint offset.”

If environmentalists are truly concerned about offsetting carbon footprints and growing the renewable sector, they’ll have to fight for government intervention—and to do so successfully, they’ll need unions on their side. In Philadelphia, a Solar States customer can pay an average of anywhere between $21,000 and $26,000 for solar installation on their home. Without rebates, tax breaks and other incentives, residential solar is financially out of reach for most people, making it seem more like a hobby for the wealthy and less like an important step to fight climate change. The Green New Deal, which calls for “meeting 100% of the power demand in the United States through clean, renewable, and zero-emission energy sources,” could close this access gap. And with more than 12.5 million members, the AFL-CIO (the country’s largest labor federation) is well poised to get more moderate Democrats on board with the legislation, which, if passed, would create millions of jobs and expand unions’ ranks. But most unions see the Green New Deal as an attack on union jobs, rather than an opportunity to create more. And yet if renewable energy got the same kinds of subsidies fossil fuel companies have, members of building trades unions would be clamoring to install solar panels or wind turbines.

In the meantime, if there’s a shared agreement between both the environmental movement and the labor movement that creating millions of union jobs is a priority, both need to actually prioritize it. Jobs that are good for the environment aren’t necessarily good for workers, and jobs that are good for workers aren’t necessarily good for the environment. We need jobs that are good for both, and to get there we need unions and environmental organizations fighting for investment, incentives and jobs—together. This could involve tying subsidies to a certain percentage of union jobs, or fighting for project labor agreements at every potential green job site. Whatever form it takes, this coalition must begin at the premise that a loss of union jobs is detrimental to all working people in this country—and if we want to fight climate change, the labor movement must take the lead, before it’s too late.


MINDY ISS­ER works in the labor move­ment and lives in Philadelphia.

Anti-capitalists who started the Occupy Wall Street demonstrations in 2011 have vowed to 'draw wind' from BLM protests tearing through the country and 'lay siege to the White House' for 50 days

Adbusters called on activists to lay siege to the White House on 17 September

The organization kicked off the Occupy movement near Wall Street during 2011 

The activists say: '#Whitehousesiege will electrify the U.S. election season [...] Drawing wind from #BLM, #MeToo, and #ExtinctionRebellion and protests against Trump's lethal bungling of coronavirus'

By RYAN FAHEY FOR DAILYMAIL.COM

PUBLISHED: 3 September 2020

An anti-capitalist organization who started the Occupy movement in 2011 have vowed to 'draw wind' from BLM protests tearing through the country and 'lay siege to the White House' for 50 days.

Adbusters, a non-profit environmentalist organization based in Canada - who are known for spurring the Occupy Wall Street movement in 2011 - have announced plans to 'lay siege' to the White House from September 17 until November 3.

The group describe themselves as 'a global network of artists, activists, writers, pranksters, students, educators and entrepreneurs' whose goals involve advancing a 'new social activist movement'.


In a post on their website titled '#WhiteHouseSiege – Tactical Briefing #1', the activists say: 'It's time again for dramatic, decisive action.

'Which is why, on September 17th, in the original and enduring spirit of Occupy, we and tens of thousands of our fellow citizens will stream into Lafayette Square, in Washington. D.C.'

Adbusters posted this image with their 'tactical briefing', which details a plan to 'lay siege' to the White House on 17 Sept


Who are Adbusters?

Adbusters Media Foundation is a non-profit organization based in British Columbia, Canada.

It describes itself as a 'a global network of artists, activists, writers, pranksters, students, educators and entrepreneurs who want to advance the new social activist movement of the information age.'

Since 1989, it has published a bi-monthly issue of the consumerism-challenging magazine 'Adbusters'.

The organization has sparked numerous campaigns including Occupy Wall Street.

In mid-2011 they sent out an email to their subscriber list suggesting a peaceful occupation of Wall Street.

Their goal was to challenge corporate influence, wealth disparities, and the failure of officials to hold those responsible for the 2008 financial crisis to account.

The group said the date was chosen to coincide with the ninth anniversary of Occupy Wall Street, when thousands of protesters occupied NYC's Zuccotti Park to demonstrate against economic inequality.

It is due to finish on the same day as the Presidential election.

The movement set off a chain reaction with similar demonstrations carried out across the globe.

Adbusters named BLM in their call to action, who are currently embroiled in protests across the US.

'#Whitehousesiege will electrify the U.S. election season — and it doesn't stop there. Drawing wind from #BLM, #MeToo, and #ExtinctionRebellion and protests against Trump's lethal bungling of coronavirus, we'll inspire a global movement of systemic change — a Global Spring — a cultural heave towards a true world order.'

The Canada-based activists claim that 'inequality has soared' and that 'not a single Wall Street CEO spent a night in jail for his role in the 2008 financial meltdown' in the years since 2011.

The focus of their campaign, however, is US President Donald Trump, who they call a 'howling void of a president' with 'sins too many to name [...] sitting smugly atop a corona death-toll that may surpass two-hundred thousand Americans by Christmas'.

According to their website, the group hopes their movement - which they say will be nonviolent - will go global.

'A siege only works if it is sustained,' their post reads.

Occupy Wall Street members stage a protest march near Wall Street in New York, on October 12, 2011

'We witnessed this — the multiplying power of a strategic occupation — nine years ago. You dig in, hold your ground, and the tension accumulates, amplifies, goes global.'

Adbusters kicked off the Occupy movement in 2011 by proposing the peaceful protest near Wall Street through their email subscriber list.

However, they are not in control of the movement, which is now represented worldwide.
Occupy Wall Street protesters reflect on the movement in 2012

 

Arrest of Australia anti-lockdown activist sparks outcry BY AFP  Australian police on Thursday defended arresting a pregnant woman in her home for a Facebook post promoting a rally against virus lockdowns, as footage of the incident went viral and triggered a civil liberties debate. The livestreamed video shows officers handcuffing the woman in front of her two children and has racked up millions of views online. The woman Zoe Buhler, told local media Thursday that she had posted the protest plans without knowing it was illegal in the locked-down state of Victoria, which is battling a major outbreak of Covid-19. Buhler, whose Facebook page is awash with posts arguing against lockdowns and some even labelling the virus a hoax, described her actions as a "bimbo" moment. "I am just a passionate person and I am sick of the lockdowns," Buhler said. Australia has moved to arrest activists who organise demonstrations defying a ban on mass gatherings to try to control the spread of the virus. Victoria is currently trying to bring its second wave of Covid-19 infections under control with a mix of lockdowns and stay-at-home orders. The video shows police telling the incredulous and distraught woman -- who is still in her pyjamas -- that she is under arrest "in relation to incitement". "Excuse me, incitement for what? What the... what on Earth?" she asks the officers, instructing someone to film what is happening. "I have an ultrasound in an hour," she remonstrates, as she is read her rights and becomes tearful. The footage has prompted a civil liberties debate in Australia, with critics from across the political spectrum voicing concerns about the balance between rights and obligations. Amnesty International Australia said police were guilty of overreach while rights group Liberty Victoria called the arrest disturbing. "The prospect of pre-emptive arrest and the laying of criminal charges to prevent engagement in peaceful protest is a disturbing development," Liberty Victoria said. Conservative pundits, politicians and conspiracy theorists -- who have continually criticised virus restrictions in the country -- seized on the video as evidence of what they called a "police state" in Victoria. The arrest is the latest in a string of confrontations between police and anti-lockdown activists ahead of a planned protest in Melbourne, which remains under lockdown. Victoria Police assistant commissioner Luke Cornelius stood by the officers' actions and said authorities had been clear about their ban on public protests. "I mean the optics of arresting someone who's pregnant is terrible," Cornelius said. But Australians inciting protests during a pandemic were being selfish and their actions threatened the state's recovery, he added. People would "have to have been on Mars" not to know the rules were in place, the assistant commissioner said.

French journalist recounts police violence, racism as undercover officer

BY GUILLAUME DAUDIN, TIPHAINE LE LIBOUX (AFP) 10 HOURS AGO IN WORLD

Racial or homophobic insults, gratuitous violence, a colleague's suicide: a journalist on Thursday detailed his undercover experience in France's police force where he said abuse was commonplace, if only among a handful of officers.

In his new book "Flic" (Cop), Valentin Gendrot recounts two years as a junior officer in the capital's northeast, which has several rough neighbourhoods where crime and drug use is rife.

Its publication comes as French police are facing growing calls for reform after years of claims of systematic abuse, in particular against the country's black and Arab minorities.

"The violence is recurrent -- it's not a daily thing, I wouldn't go that far, but in any case it is recurrent," Gendrot told AFP in an interview.

The 32-year-old, who has made a career of infiltrating tough jobs such as a factory line or supermarket worker, says he was given only a cursory three months of training after applying to the national police force -- using his real name -- in 2017.

"At no point did they do an internet search of my name, at no point did they dig a little deeper into my background," he said.

He eventually joined a police station in the 19th district of Paris in March 2019, just as the force was being roiled by claims of heavy-handed tactics against the "yellow vest" protesters staging weekly rallies against the government.

- 'Absolutely stunned' -

Gendrot spent much of his time on neighbourhood patrols, where he says he was "absolutely stunned" from the start.

On his first day, he said, "an officer struck a man in custody for questioning" because he was making too much noise, and a woman was sent home when she tried to file a complaint over "death threats" by her husband.

Valentin Gendrot says his book is not "against the police" but takes on the "big police taboos."
JOEL SAGET, AFP

Yet he also recounts the daily strains for officers dealing with ageing cars and decrepit locales, and facing an often hostile population during long workdays -- and how one of his colleagues committed suicide.

In one of the book's most explosive incidents, Gendrot recalls a confrontation that quickly escalates with a group of youths playing loud music in front of an apartment block.

An officer who begins by tapping one person on the face eventually starts punching him several times before bringing him to the station for an ID check.

After the teenager files a complaint, Gendrot admits that he helped falsify an internal report exonerating the officer, so as not to blow his cover.

"I saw plenty of violent and racist behaviour, but it was always on the part of a minority. In my brigade, the J3, there were 32 of us, and maybe four, five or six who acted this way," he said.

"But the most shocking thing is that the majority of officers cover up this behaviour."

The Paris Police Department said in a statement it had informed prosecutors of Gendrot's claims as well as its own internal investigations division, "in order to establish the veracity of the incidents recounted in this book."

"The inquiry should also determine why these alleged incidents were not reported to prosecutors immediately," it said.

 

Pakistan plans hemp production with eye on global cannabis market    Pakistan has unveiled plans to allow the industrial production of hemp, spurring hopes farmers and businesses in the conservative Islamic country will be able to tap into the lucrative global cannabis market. The move comes as Prime Minister Imran Khan's government struggles to boost the country's foreign exchange coffers that have been drained by a struggling economy, fiscal deficits and inflation. "This hemp market could provide Pakistan with some $1 billion in the next three years and we are in a process of making a full-fledged plan for this purpose," science and technology minister Fawad Chaudhry told reporters Wednesday. Hemp is a type of cannabis plant containing cannabidiol (CBD) which advocates say has numerous medicinal and relaxing properties. It does not contain signficant quantities of high-inducing tetrahydrocannabinol (THC). Chaudhry said the industrial hemp market was worth some $25 billion globally and several countries were relaxing laws targeting cannabis-based products such as CBD oils. Initially, the government will control hemp production, Chaudry said, but private businesses and farmers will be allowed to enter the market at a later date. He added that with cotton production in Pakistan declining due to various factors, hemp provided farmers with a viable alternative. A Pakistani smoker holding a match to a clump of hashish to soften it before mixing it with cigarette tobacco ABDUL MAJEED, AFP In conservative Pakistan, where the consumption of alcohol is strictly forbidden for Muslims, many people are surprisingly open to using cannabis, with the spongy, black hash made from marijuana grown in the country's tribal belt and neighbouring Afghanistan the preferred variant of the drug. Across the subcontinent people have been cultivating cannabis and smoking hash for centuries. The plant predates the arrival of Islam in the region, with reference to cannabis appearing in the sacred Hindu Atharva Veda text describing its medicinal and ritual uses. Hemp grows almost as a weed in parts of Pakistan -- including in great abundance in the capital, where huge bushes can be seen sprouting at traffic roundabouts.

Warships join fight to put out fire on oil tanker off Sri Lanka

AMAL JAYASINGHE (AFP)

Indian warships on Thursday aided Sri Lanka's navy to extinguish a fire on a massive oil tanker off the island's eastern coast, officials said.

Sri Lankan authorities said there was no immediate danger to the coastline should there be a leak from the New Diamond, which was carrying 270,000 tonnes of crude and 1,700 tonnes of diesel, but they remain concerned about the possibility.

The vessel -- which had a crew of 18 Filipinos and five Greek nationals -- issued a distress call Thursday after an engine room explosion, navy spokesman Captain Indika de Silva said.

One Filipino crew member was missing, another was injured, and the rest were rescued from the Panama-flagged vessel, the navy said.

The ship's third officer, also a Filipino, had suffered serious burn injuries and was taken to the Kalmunai hospital, 360 kilometres (225 miles) east of the capital Colombo.

"An Indian coast guard vessel and one of our ships are now in the process of dousing the flames that have spread to the deck of the tanker's service area," de Silva told AFP.

The goal was to keep the fire from reaching the cargo.

He said two Russian anti-submarine ships, Admiral Tributs and Admiral Vinogradov, had also reached the stricken vessel, but later withdrew as they could not effectively battle the fire.

Two tugboats from Sri Lanka's southern port of Hambantota, loaded with firefighting equipment, were expected at the scene to join the battle against the fire.

- Fears of a spill -

One crew member suffered serious injuries in the tanker fire
Handout, Sri Lanka Navy/AFP

Disaster management officials said computer simulations based on current weather conditions showed no immediate threat to Sri Lanka's coastline in case of a major oil spill.

The New Diamond is classified as a very large crude carrier (VLCC), and is about 330 metres (1,080 feet) long.

The stricken vessel is a third larger than the Japanese bulk carrier MV Wakashio, which crashed into a reef in Mauritius last month leaking over 1,000 tonnes of oil into the island nation's picturesque waters.

Sri Lankan officials said they were hopeful of containing the New Diamond fire and eventually putting it out.

But they warned they could need help if a major spill were to occur, as they lack the proper equipment to deal with that.

Neighbouring India was sending three navy vessels and two more coast guard vessels in addition to providing aerial reconnaissance to deal with the fire and possible marine pollution.

The New Diamond had been travelling from Kuwait to the Indian port of Paradip.

Warships join fight to put out blaze on oil tanker off Sri Lanka

New Diamond, travelling from Kuwait to Paradip, is carrying cargo of 270,000 tonnes of crude and 1,700 tonnes of diesel.



The New Diamond was some 60km off Sri Lanka's eastern coast where it reported a fire inside the engine room [Sri Lankan Air Force/AFP]

A new fire broke out on a supertanker carrying about two million barrels of oil in the Indian Ocean off Sri Lanka's eastern coast as Russian and Indian warships joined the battle to put out the blaze.

The New Diamond, travelling from Kuwait to the Indian port of Paradip with a cargo of 270,000 tonnes of crude and 1,700 tonnes of diesel, issued a distress call on Thursday, navy spokesman Captain Indika de Silva said.

The vessel had a crew of 18 Filipinos and five Greeks. One crew member was missing, another was injured, and the rest were rescued from the Panama-flagged vessel, according to the navy.

"An Indian coastguard vessel and one of our ships are now in the process of dousing the flames that have spread to the deck of the tanker's service area," de Silva told AFP news agency.

There was no immediate danger of a leak from the stricken vessel, he added, which was 60km (38 miles) from the coastal town of Sangamankandi Point.


Three vessels from Indian cost guard including Indian aircraft and two Russian war ships which was berth at Hambantota Port left to help with recuse operations of New Diamond oil tanker has caught fire 38 Nautical Miles off the coast of Sri Lanka. pic.twitter.com/tfGr0kRuo5— Yasiru Ranaraja (@YRanaraja) September 3, 2020

Photographs taken by Sri Lanka's air force showed extensive damage to the tanker's funnel, and thick black smoke and flames coming from the bridge, which is just behind the cargo area.

Two Russian warships, which were at Sri Lanka's southern port of Hambantota to take on food and water, were now headed to the New Diamond's location to help with the rescue.

India was sending three navy vessels and two more coastguard vessels in addition to providing aerial reconnaissance.

De Silva said rescuers were trying to prevent the fire from spreading to the cargo area and ensuring there was no leak.

Sri Lanka's Marine Protection Authority said it would take measures to prevent any possible oil leak.

Such a spill could cause an "environmental disaster" Ashok Sharma, managing director of shipbroker BRS Baxi in Singapore, told Reuters news agency.

Thursday's incident happened just over a month after a state of "environmental emergency" was triggered by the spill of about 1,000 tonnes of fuel oil from a Japanese bulk carrier, MV Wakashio, when it ran aground on a reef in Mauritius.


SOURCE: NEWS AGENCIES

Philippines delays release of US marine in transgender killing

AFP 

A US marine convicted of killing a transgender woman will stay in detention in the Philippines while a court reviews its earlier ruling to free him halfway into his 10-year jail term, officials said Thursday.

Lance Corporal Joseph Scott Pemberton has been in prison since the October 2014 killing of Jennifer Laude, whom he met at a bar while on a break from military exercises in the northern city of Olongapo.

An Olongapo court ruled on Tuesday that Pemberton qualified for early release due to good behaviour while detained in a special jail at the Philippine military headquarters in Manila.

He has served half of a 10-year sentence for homicide.

His release has now been suspended after a sister of the victim challenged the ruling in a filing that asked the court to reconsider, Bureau of Corrections spokesman Gabriel Chaclag said.

Pemberton's lawyer Rowena Flores pressed for his immediate release.

"Every day that he stays in jail is a violation of his constitutional right," Flores told AFP.

Presidential spokesperson Harry Roque, a lawyer who represented the Laude family during the trial, said the court had committed "judicial overreach".

"Do not release him yet. The decision is not yet final and executory," Roque said.

Pemberton's conviction fell under the Philippines and United States' Visiting Forces Agreement (VFA), which covers the legal liability of US troops taking part in military operations in the Southeast Asian country.

President Rodrigo Duterte has shifted away from the US to pursue greater economic cooperation with China since assuming power in 2016. In February, he notified Washington that the Philippines would terminate the VFA for alleged US interference in his war on drugs.

But Manila later put the abrogation on hold, citing "political and other developments in the region".

France leads criticism of US 'attack' on ICC
BY VALÉRIE LEROUX AND ADAM PLOWRIGHT (AFP) 

France led criticism of US sanctions on the chief prosecutor of the International Criminal Court on Thursday, saying Washington had launched a "serious attack" on the global body.

The ICC, a special multilateral court set up to try genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity cases, has become the latest issue to split Europe and United States under President Donald Trump.

Since its creation, the US has never recognised the court's authority, but the Trump adminstration took the unprecedented step of sanctioning its chief prosecutor, Fatou Bensouda, on Wednesday along with another senior ICC official.

"The measures announced on September 2 amount to a serious attack on the court and signatory states of the Treaty of Rome and, beyond this, a challenge to multilateralism and the independence of the judiciary," French Foreign Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian said Thursday.

The International Criminal Court was set up in The Hague in 2002 to prosecute the world's worst crimes
VINCENT JANNINK, AFP/File

A total of 120 states signed up to the Treaty of Rome in 1998 which laid the basis for the creation of the ICC four years later.

The US was not among them, unlike its Western partners, putting it alongside a handful of states such as Russia, China and Israel which refused the ICC's authority.

Reacting to the US sanctions on Thursday, the European Union said it would defend the court against attempts to undermine it.

"The International Criminal Court is facing persistent external challenges and the European Union stands firm against all attempts to undermine the international system of criminal justice by hindering the work of its core institutions," Peter Stano, spokesman for EU diplomatic chief Josep Borrell, told reporters.

Human Rights Watch said that the Trump administration’s action showed "an egregious disregard for victims of the world’s worst crimes."

- Afghanistan probe -

The United States placed sanctions on International Criminal Court prosecutor Fatou Bensouda (L)
EVA PLEVIER, POOL/AFP/File

At the heart of the dispute are efforts by prosecutor Bensouda to pursue an investigation into alleged war crimes committed in Afghanistan, which could implicate US soldiers.

Afghanistan is a signatory to the ICC which has the power to investigate the most serious human rights abuses when member countries are unable or unwilling to bring perpetrators to justice themselves.

Trump had authorised sanctions on the ICC on June 11.

US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, who called the institution a "kangaroo court" at the time, announced that the sanctions in the form of asset freezes would be enacted.

The court, which has been criticised for concentrating its efforts on African countries in the past, has opened investigations into alleged atrocities in 12 countries, including Myanmar and Afghanistan more recently.

It has also angered Israel by mooting an investigation into alleged war crimes in the Palestinian territories.

In a statement on Wednesday, the ICC slammed the US sanctions as "coercive acts" which it said were an attack on "international criminal justice, and the rule of law more generally."

In 2002, the US Congress passed the so-called "Hague Invasion Act" allowing the US president to authorise military force to free any US personnel held by the ICC, in theory making an invasion of the Dutch city that is home to the ICC a possibility.

Trump's "America First" nationalism and opposition to multilateral institutions have led to tensions with the European Union on a host of issues from trade to the Iran nuclear programme, climate change, and the role of the NATO defence alliance.

Kremlin rejects claims Navalny poisoned with Novichok

 MICHAEL MAINVILLE (AFP) 10 HOURS AGO IN WORLD

The Kremlin on Thursday rejected claims that Moscow was behind the poisoning of opposition leader Alexei Navalny, as calls mounted for international action after Germany said he had been dosed with Novichok.

Western leaders are demanding answers from Moscow after Berlin said Wednesday there was "unequivocal evidence" that the 44-year-old Kremlin critic had been afflicted by the infamous nerve agent.

Navalny, one of President Vladimir Putin's fiercest critics, fell ill on a flight last month and was treated in a Siberian hospital before being evacuated to Berlin.

Germany's claim that he was exposed to Novichok -- the same substance used against Russian ex-double agent Sergei Skripal and his daughter in the English town of Salisbury two years ago -- prompted widespread condemnation and demands for an investigation.

Recent high-profile poisonings or attempted poisonings of politicians, dissidents or spies
Alain BOMMENEL, Sophie RAMIS, AFP

Russia denies there is any evidence that Navalny was poisoned and Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said Thursday that Berlin had not provided Moscow with proof.

"There is no reason to accuse the Russian state," Peskov said, rejecting talk of economic sanctions and urging the West not to "rush to judgement".

Already suffering from wide-ranging Western sanctions imposed over its 2014 annexation of Crimea, as well as the effects of the coronavirus pandemic and the drop in oil prices, Moscow will be anxious to avoid any further pressure on its economy.

- 'Poisoned relations with West' -

Germany's announcement on Wednesday sent the ruble plunging to its lowest level against the euro since 2016 and Moscow's RTS stock exchange fell more than three percent.

"Russia's relations with the West have once again been poisoned by Novichok," wrote business daily Kommersant, adding it was clear that the European Union and United States were seriously considering new sanctions.

Berlin's announcement that Navalny was poisoned with Novichok sent the ruble plunging to its lowest level since the height of Russia's coronavirus epidemic in the spring
Dimitar DILKOFF, AFP

"The main question is, how far will they decide to go?" it said.

A new crisis in relations with the West could also threaten Russia's Nord Stream 2 project, a 10 billion-euro ($11 billion) pipeline near completion beneath the Baltic Sea which is set to double Russian natural gas shipments to Germany.

The project has been delayed for months after Washington moved to impose new sanctions on companies involved in Nord Stream 2, over fears of growing Russian influence.

Germany voiced anger over the US moves, saying Washington was interfering in its internal affairs.

But the country's biggest newspaper Bild on Thursday called for the project to be suspended, saying that "if the (German) government does not stop the construction of Nord Stream 2, we will soon be financing Putin's Novichok attacks".

Peskov rejected such calls as "emotional statements," saying the project "is in the interests of Russia, Germany and the entire European continent."

- 'Only Russia can answer' -

German Chancellor Angela Merkel said the Novichok findings raised "some very serious questions that only Russia can and must answer", while the United States, Britain, France, the EU and NATO all expressed shock.

Navalny is still in intensive care at Berlin's renowned Charite hospital
Odd ANDERSEN, AFP/File

The nerve agent, whose name means "newcomer" in Russian, is a poison developed by the Soviet government towards the end of the Cold War that can be deployed in an ultra-fine powder, liquid or vapour.

It was famously used against Skripal in Britain in 2018, an assassination attempt that the West believes was ordered by the Kremlin, but which Russia denies.

Navalny fell ill after boarding a plane in Siberia last month, with aides saying they suspect he drank a cup of spiked tea at the airport.

He was initially treated in a local hospital, where doctors said they were unable to find any toxic substances in his blood, before he was flown to Berlin for specialised treatment on August 22.

The charismatic Yale-educated lawyer, who has been Russia's leading opposition politician for around a decade, is still in the intensive care unit and remains on a ventilator.

'It’s possible that I created it myself’ Chemical weapons experts explain who is capable of making ‘Novichok’ poisons and why their lethality makes them weapons to kill, not maim

September 3, 2020 Source: Meduza

Chemical weapons stored for destruction at a facility in Gornyi in Russia’s Saratov region, May 20, 2020 AP / Scanpix / LETA

On September 2, the German government announced that Russian opposition figure Alexey Navalny was poisoned with a Novichok-type nerve agent. At a press conference on Wednesday, Chancellor Angela Merkel stated unequivocally that Navalny is the victim of a crime, and added that she believes someone tried to “silence” him. As the Kremlin insists that the West is jumping to conclusions, the public response has turned to questions about responsibility for the attack. Does the use of a nerve agent mean that Russia’s intelligence community is to blame? Meduza asked three chemical weapons experts what they think.

OPCW BIOCHEMIST
Marc-Michael Blum

Of course, it’s impossible to say who did this simply by identifying the [poison’s] chemical compound. But we can say you wouldn’t be able to create this substance in your kitchen or even in a typical university laboratory. You’d need to be able to synthesize a highly toxic material and it takes a lot of experience.

But does that automatically mean it was the intelligence services, even if it seems very likely? It’s not entirely clear. For example, there might be a chemist who used to work in a program creating such substances and he wants to sell his knowledge, and there might be people who want to use it. I agree, though, that there’s definitely a legitimate suspicion that this [substance] is from a professional lab.

You can’t just go out and buy substances like this. You need somebody with a lot of experience creating very toxic compounds. There aren’t many people in the world who can do this. Mainly, this is probably people from programs for creating chemical weapons and the specialized labs where they actually create them. So either one of these people decided to earn some money [by creating this poison] or it was one of the state-supported labs.

I was a bit shocked that it turned out to be a substance from the Novichok group — especially because I don’t understand why anyone would use it after what happened in 2018 [when the Skripals were attacked in England]. Even if it’s not the exact same compound, the class of the substance is the same. It’s certainly exotic.

If Navalny hadn’t ended up in Germany, he probably would have died and no one would have known why. So the usual argument that “this was a signal for everyone else” doesn’t really work here. It could be that it all comes down to the fact that certain people simply like this poison. Because there are cases where it doesn’t work, though maybe there are undisclosed cases where it worked well.

Was this an attempted murder? Absolutely yes. This wasn’t just a warning. These substances are so toxic that Navalny is lucky to be alive, but they absolutely wanted to kill him. When poisoned like this, there’s a very small window between being hospitalized and being killed.

MORE FROM DR. BLUM
‘There are better poisons if you really want to kill someone’ The chemical weapons expert who led the OPCW’s mission to Salisbury after the Novichok attack on the Skripals explains Alexey Navalny’s situation
ASSOCIATE ADJUNCT PROFESSOR, SCHOOL OF PHARMACY AND PHARMACEUTICAL SCIENCE, UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, SAN DIEGO

Zoran Radic

I don’t have the information needed to give an exact answer [about the potential involvement of Russia’s intelligence services], but I think it would be very difficult even for an experienced chemist to synthesize this type of nerve agent safely outside of a well-equipped and authorized laboratory. There’s also the possibility of the black market [for stolen substances created at authorized laboratories]. Compared to other nerve agents, “Novichok” powder can be stored relatively easily in a well-insulated container.

One reason for using a Novichok-class substance could be that its detection protocols aren’t as well known, accepted, or widely standardized as they are for other nerve agents. And that could mean the poison wouldn’t be detected.

Most likely, this was an attempt to cause serious harm or to kill. After all, some types of “Novichok” are among the most toxic substances humanity has ever manufactured.
ONE OF NOVICHOK’S ORIGINAL DEVELOPERS
Vladimir Uglev

It’s impossible to use Novichok to “rattle” somebody. If they’d only wanted to scare Navalny, they could have done it simply with [the nervous system blockers] atropine or scopolamine. Novichok isn’t the kind of thing you use to scare someone.

[Thinking about Navalny’s poisoning], I’ve laid awake at night, going over it again and again. Why did I rule out Novichok initially? Because Navalny showed certain signs: he became inexplicably ill, he collapsed, and he fell into a coma. That doesn’t happen with Novichok. If, for example, the substance gets on the skin, it fibrillates at the point of contact, then there’s sweating, convulsions, then involuntary defecation and urination, paralysis, and death. But there’s no coma! I’ve never once been able to speak to anyone who’s come into contact with it — it’s been fatal everywhere. After contact, people have even gone home, but they didn’t slip into comas.

If these were [the liquid forms of “Novichok”] А-230, А-232, А-234, then other people [around Navalny] would have suffered. I’ve been thinking some about the solid form: A-242. It was created primarily for submunitions. The substance was applied to these arrows that you’d fire at someone. Ten minutes later and it was all over.

A-242 is a solid substance. Its melting point is 95–96 degrees Celsius [about 204 degrees Fahrenheit]. Therefore, if scattered on a tabletop, it will have no effect. At the same time, A-242 is highly soluble in water. Imagine that an A-242 solution was applied to Navalny’s clothes and they added something like [the sedative] clonidine. The clonidine would manifest first: Alexey would fall into a coma, and signs of A-242 poisoning would be secondary by then. Members of his entourage and the paramedics might not see them at all.

I myself was once exposed to A-242: I was recrystallizing the substance in a solvent when it boiled over and splashed onto my hand. So I dunked my hand in hydrochloric acid and held it there, before washing it under the tap and treating it with a sanitary solution. Still, for years to come, my hand would sweat and serious effects remained.

In any case, this substance was made in a lab. It’s possible that [the poisoners] may have used old supplies — maybe even reserves that I created myself.

Meduza: Does the use of a Novichok-class nerve agent mean the involvement of Russia’s intelligence community?

Well, [Navalny] didn’t stumble upon it himself like that madam in Amesbury. Navalny was investigating local municipal deputies [in Siberia] — maybe they manufactured the substance or got it somewhere? As they say in Shrek: “Like that’s ever going to happen. What a load of sh—.”


Interviews by Farida Rustamova and Andrey Pertsev

Translation by Kevin Rothrock

‘There are better poisons if you really want to kill someone’

 The chemical weapons expert who led the OPCW’s mission to Salisbury after the Novichok attack on the Skripals explains Alexey Navalny’s situation

September 2, 2020
Source: Meduza

An ambulance brings Alexey Navalny to the airport in Omsk for medical evacuation to Berlin, August 22, 2020
Anastasia Malgavko / Reuters / Scanpix / LETA

Russia’s most prominent opposition figure, Alexey Navalny, has been in a coma for more than two weeks. On August 20, his flight home to Moscow was forced to make an emergency landing in Omsk after he became violently ill. Russian doctors treated Navalny for roughly two days before he was transferred abroad in an air ambulance to the Charité Clinic in Berlin, where specialists found evidence that he’d been poisoned with cholinesterase inhibitors. Physicians have been unable to identify the exact substance responsible for Navalny’s condition, but German officials announced on September 2 that experts have collected “unequivocal evidence” that he was poisoned with a substance similar in composition to the nerve agent Novichok. To understand more about Navalny’s poisoning, Meduza science editor Alexander Ershov spoke to Marc-Michael Blum, a biochemist who studies decontamination, countermeasures, and mitigation of chemical warfare agents. In 2018, following the Novichok poisoning of Sergey and Yulia Skirpal in England, Dr. Blum led the team sent by the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons to Salisbury and Amesbury.


We currently know very little for certain about what happened to Alexey Navalny. Perhaps the most substantive information comes from the Charité Clinic’s press release on August 24: “Clinical findings indicate poisoning with a substance from the group of cholinesterase inhibitors. The specific substance involved remains unknown, and a further series of comprehensive testing has been initiated.” Can you explain what that means? How is it possible to detect that someone was poisoned without identifying the poison itself?

Yes, it’s possible. You take a blood sample and in the blood you have cholinesterase. And there are tests where you can check if they work. Cholinesterase is an enzyme — it helps to speed up a certain chemical reaction [vital for the transmission of nerve impulses] — and there is a test where you are not using acetylcholine but acetylthiocholine (very similar) and the cholinesterases work on that, as well. What you get is a product that you can react with something else and it creates a yellow color. That’s a classical test for activity. With that, you measure the activity of the cholinesterase in the blood plasma. What they [at the Charité Clinic] probably saw was significantly reduced activity level.


It’s only when you get to almost zero levels that your symptoms become severe. With the symptoms Navalny showed and the fact that they had to put him in an induced coma and the fact that they probably tested the cholinesterase in his blood and probably saw very low levels, that triggered the press release saying: we see it as a cholinesterase inhibitor, but we don’t know which one. Because they just tested the enzyme activity. Now, in the second step, you’re looking for the poison.

It’s very hard to say, of course, but what’s the likelihood in your view that the exact substance will be identified?

If your cholinesterases are in fact inhibited and most of it is inhibited, it means something is sitting inside or on that enzyme. It’s still there because, if it’s not there, then it would be active. When you measure blood that shows big inhibition of the cholinesterases, the poison is there. If the poison were already gone, the activity would return. That’s a good sign that the poison can be found. There is a cholinesterase in blood that we mainly look at called butyrylcholinesterase that’s soluble and easy to work with. If you have an inhibitor, it will inhibit that cholinesterase, as well. Then you look at it and there are two possibilities: some of the inhibitors are actually reversible, meaning that they stick like glue but can come off again, and some others like nerve agents actually bind to the enzymes and you cannot break that anymore. It’s really just like super glue. It’s irreversible.

Then you look for the fragments from these poisons that sit on the enzyme. So you take the enzyme, you cut it into small, little pieces, and there’s a very characteristic piece and, on this piece, you expect to find something sitting on it. Then you use mass spectrometry [an analytical technique that measures the mass-to-charge ratio of ions] and you know the mass of the fragment if it’s normal and then you expect that fragment also to be heavier because something is on it. And from these exact masses, you can deduce what’s on it. Once you think you’ve found something, ideally, if you have that poison available, you take some blood plasma from somebody else, and in the test tube you add it and you also measure this. If it looks identical, you have confirmation that you found the poison.

The doctors who treated Navalny in Russia say they tested him for poisoning with cholinesterase inhibitors but couldn’t get confirmation. Is there any rational, scientific explanation for the disparity between what Russian and German doctors have said? Maybe the physicians in Omsk didn’t have sensitive enough mass spectrometers? Is that possible?

I don’t think so. The first step is testing for cholinesterase activity — quite a simple test. You take the plasma, you have your acetylthiocholine, and you do that in a little glass cuvette and it creates color. All you need is a photometer, which is very ordinary lab equipment. You have that everywhere. You don’t need super-sophisticated technology for that. With that, you can do the test. If they found cholinesterase inhibitors [in Berlin], it should have been found in Russia, as well.

What you hear now is speculation, on Twitter and so on, that maybe he was poisoned on the way [to Berlin] on top of this metabolic condition he had. Of course, that’s a possibility, but how likely is that? He was severely ill when he was found and taken off that airplane.

A question I ask myself is that the Russian hospital said he got atropine [a medication used as an antidote to certain types of nerve agent and pesticide poisonings] but they also say he had very low blood sugar. When you have very low blood sugar, normally your heartbeat goes very fast and you sweat. But atropine is given if your heartbeat is very low — you don’t give it if it’s really high. It’s very unusual. If they gave him atropine, there must have been a reason to give it, and I think they have not yet explained why they gave him atropine. You’re not just giving atropine to somebody who is severely ill just as a precaution. There must be a clear indication of why you’re giving a certain antidote or why you think you need that emergency medicine to stabilize the patient. I haven’t read anything saying why he received atropine. There’s no good explanation at this moment.

For a long time, Navalny’s transfer to Germany wasn’t permitted. The air ambulance that came to Omsk for him was stuck on the tarmac for hours and hours. As a result, some of Navalny’s supporters theorize that he was kept in Russia as long as possible to give the poison in his body time to disintegrate, making detection impossible. How plausible is that theory and how quickly do poisons break down inside the human body?

Some of these compounds hydrolyze quite fast in the body. The nerve agent sarin, for example, hydrolyzes very quickly. But it attaches to the enzyme permanently and you can always measure that. The body is remaking cholinesterases. If you’ve knocked out the cholinesterases, it takes about two months to get back to normal. Effectively, you can take samples three or four weeks after exposure and you’ll still find it. What goes quite fast are the metabolites in the urine — only two or three days and then it’s gone. But what sits on the protein, on the enzyme, that stays for a very long time. If it had been hydrolyzed and completely gone, Charité would not have measures inhibited cholinesterases.

So keeping him there just for the poison to disappear doesn’t really work in the case of this poison group. There are other poisons where waiting for a couple of hours is quite effective. Everyone says he was poisoned by drinking a cup of tea, but that is not proven. He could have had contact with a poison somewhere else: earlier on in his hotel, on the way to the airport, in the airport, or wherever. People focus on the tea, but we’ve recently had other poisonings like Sergey Skripal, for example. Yes, he went to town with his daughter and they had a pint of beer in a pub, yet the poisoning occurred somewhere else. For me, it’s not totally clear that it was the tea. It depends on what they will find in the end — if the tea theory is plausible or if it’s more likely that it happened somewhere else.

But if it happened somewhere else and he came in contact through the skin, then, of course, it’s also quite dangerous for everybody around him because he’s contaminated and he could potentially spread that contamination to other objects and people he touches.

Now that German specialists have determined that Navalny was poisoned by cholinesterase inhibitors, is there any chance they will be unable to identify the exact substance responsible?

Is it possible they won’t be able to identify the poison? Yes. Because there’s such a wide range of possibilities here and the concentrations you look at are very small, which means you have to look for every single possibility. First, you go through the usual suspects, the usual nerve agents, the most-used pesticides, and so on, and it can be quite a long list. Also, you would look to see if there’s still something in his urine or some hydrolysis product in the blood — a small molecule or a metabolite. Maybe they’d take skin samples to see if anything’s still there that might help support the analysis of the cholinesterase in the blood.

You’re looking from a lot of different angles. I’m still quite confident that they’ll find what it was, or at least the general class. One issue is that it isn’t the whole poison molecule that attaches to the cholinesterase. A part is lost. With sarin, for example, the fluorine is lost. So they might say the poison was something that looks like sarin, but instead of fluorine, there was cyanide or something. Or bromine — another possibility. You don’t know because that part of the molecule is lost, but the rest looks like sarin and it was powerful enough to attach to the cholinesterase, so you know it’s definitely a nerve agent. I’m actually quite confident that it will be found because his condition indicated quite severe poisoning, which means he probably ingested or absorbed quite a high dose.

In order to identify a poison, do you need to know more than its chemical formula? Or do you need to have a sample of the substance itself? How long might it take to complete all this analysis?

You can do some interpretation of the spectra you find. Ideally, once you know what you think it is, either you have it in your stocks and you can take it from the drawer and use it, or alternatively, if you don’t have it, there’s the possibility of making it — synthesizing it in very small amounts. Just enough to carry out your tests. That would take a few days extra, of course.

In principle, the whole thing is a three-step process: the first step is screening. You just screen to see what it might be. The second step is identification. Of course, because this is a very high-profile case, you want to be sure for the third step, which is confirmation. You confirm with another method, you use a reference chemical, and only when you have that are you probably confident enough to put it in a report. I would guess that we’ll see it this week or maybe next week.

Marc-Michael Blum’s personal archive

So, by next week, we should know exactly what kind of poison we’re talking about?

At the latest. If we don’t hear by then, it’s more likely that we will not know what it was. Also, I don’t know who makes the decision to make that information public. Once the chemical is identified, I’m very sure the information will be given to the treating doctors because it might affect his therapy, and they will also probably tell his wife. By that time, it will probably be made public, I would guess. But it’s unknown how they’ll go about this. The laboratory talks to the Charité, but there might be some consultations about when to make it public because it’s a political case.

UPDATE
Germany confirms that Russian opposition figure Alexey Navalny was poisoned with substance from ‘Novichok’ group of nerve agents

At this point, though, we can at least be certain that we’re looking at a chemical warfare agent that’s difficult to obtain and not an ordinary pesticide that acts in some similar way?

Some of the pesticides are organophosphorus compounds, just like the nerve agents — a bit different in structure, but the big difference between them is the toxicity. You need to ingest a lot more of the pesticide to have these severe toxic effects. Let’s take something very poisonous: VX. A little drop on your skin could kill you. If you take one of the usual pesticides, a drop will not kill you. The difference in toxicity might easily be a thousandfold. There are really big differences.

If you look back in history at how the nerve agents were discovered, it was normally work on new pesticides and insecticides. Some of these turned out to be very effective but unfortunately too toxic for use because they were really toxic to humans. Those developments would then go to military use. They’d say, “Ah, this is probably a very good warfare agent.” And those that are effective against insects and not that toxic to humans would go for civilian use and become pesticides.

There are also some other cholinesterase inhibitors. For example, there are even some medicine therapeutics used against Alzheimer’s, and there are carbamates — a nonphosphorus class of inhibitors. All these substances can also have such effects. That’s why it’s hard to find — you have to look at so many different classes of chemicals. At the moment, given what we know, it’s really very difficult to speculate. If it was a normal pesticide, you’d think there must have been a lot in that tea! (If the tea hypothesis is right.) It wouldn’t be enough just to touch some surface contaminated with a pesticide — that wouldn’t be enough to kill you.

That said, there are ways to enhance chemicals’ penetration through your skin. That’s also a possibility. There are still so many unknowns. I think the next thing to do is to wait for the identification. Once we have an identification of what the chemical is, then we go forward and ask if it’s still likely that the tea was the source of the poisoning. Between the tea and the moment he really dropped down on the airplane, there was a bit more than an hour. Is that realistic [if the tea theory is correct]? Even a lot of pesticides act faster. After 10 or 15 minutes, especially on an empty stomach, people would start to show symptoms.

But what we need to know now is the identity of the chemical.

Why does Navalny remain in a medically induced coma if his condition is stable? What are the doctors waiting for?

In principle, they want to see his cholinesterase levels go up again. If you’re really knocked out on the cholinesterase symptoms you show, even with atropine, there will be the typical symptoms: you cannot control your muscles, you need ventilation, you cannot breathe on your own, and being intubated for the whole time is quite harsh on the patient if he is conscious.

Normally, you sedate people and put them in a shallow coma. Without pain, they can tolerate the ventilation much better. Also, you don’t take them out of the coma abruptly, they just slowly stop administering the medicine responsible for the coma. And you monitor the patient’s reaction. If you see that he’s in a lot of pain or he’s getting spasms, you’ll keep him in the coma, measuring his cholinesterase in parallel. If he’s back to 10 or 15 percent, you can start taking him out again. In the end, that decision lies with the treating physician — they’re the guys who really know. Basically, it’s about reducing pain. Being ventilated is not a very pleasant experience, so it makes sense to keep the body down. [Navalny’s] coma might easily last for a couple more weeks.

They’ve said his condition is improving, that it’s severe but stable, which means it’s not life-threatening anymore. But “severe” probably means we’re keeping him in that coma for the time being.

That amount of time is roughly what the body needs to synthesize enough cholinesterase to fulfill its function as neurotransmitters?

Yes, the body has to remake it. Atropine doesn’t help with the blocked enzyme. It only helps by working against the symptoms. There’s a second class of therapeutics called oximes (pralidoxime, obidoxime) and some organophosphate compounds that can reactivate the cholinesterase. If that works, they can help get you out of that condition, but it only works with certain compounds and not with others. If it doesn’t work, you simply have to wait until (a) all the poison is gone from your body and cannot inhibit the newly made cholinesterase, and (b) your body reproduces [the cholinesterase], which can take several weeks.

With each of these failed poisonings, we see theories that the culprits wanted only to frighten their victims, not assassinate them. Is it possible to administer poisons in concentrations calculated exactly to bring people close to death without killing them?

Assuming it’s a military nerve agent, I would say it’s definitely an attempt to kill. You can’t fine-tune it. With these kinds of compounds, you basically have a curve where you start seeing effects at a certain dose and then they die at the next dose. With the nerve agents, this window is extremely small. Between the first symptoms and death, the window is very narrow. It’s wider with the pesticides. You’ll see symptoms, but you’ll still need a lot more of the stuff to actually kill you. That’s also true for some other inhibitors. That’s why I say it’s important to see which poison was used.

If this was a military nerve agent, you would say it was, in all likelihood, a real attempt to kill him. If it was something else, you could still speculate that maybe it was just a warning. On the other hand, it doesn’t really look like a warning, given the severe condition he was in.

If the use of chemical warfare agents is always attempted murder, why have these attempts failed time and again? It brings to mind, of course, the most striking recent example: the attack against the Skripals in England.

It’s very cynical to say this, but there are better poisons if you really want to poison a single person and kill him. There are poisons that are much harder to detect and faster to act. Just because something is used as a chemical warfare agent, where you think about battlefield use and using it in grenades — the poison there is different from the perfect poison to assassinate somebody, where you need a different profile. [Navalny’s poisoning] is very exotic. You could also say, if you want to kill somebody, people might just disappear, have a car accident, whatever — or just they’re just shot. By using poison, there’s probably an additional message to bring attention to the case.

In the case of the Skripals, one has to say that both he and his daughter were extremely lucky that the ambulance arrived as fast as it did when they collapsed, and gave them treatment and moved them to the ICU so quickly. There are numbers out there saying that they probably would be dead if the ambulance had arrived 10 minutes later.

Of course, we’ve also had very exotic poisonings that succeeded: [former KGB and FSB officer Alexander] Litvinenko with the polonium — again, very exotic. Why go through all the hassle of using polonium, which is very hard to get? If you simply want to kill somebody, there are probably easier ways.

It’s very hard to say. Maybe it’s also — and this is pure speculation — that someone wants to carry out an assassination but if he or she survives, at least the message has been sent. It might also be simply a lack of experience on the operator’s part. Whoever did it — the people who actually gave him the poison or put it somewhere — are probably not the experts in its poisonous properties. They were probably told what to do and they used a bit too much or a bit too little.


I think it’s always very difficult when using a contact poison — something you have to touch. You never know what will happen next. The person touches it with his hand and, for some reason, he thinks: I should wash my hands. Then most of the poison is off again. Or others might simply not notice [the contact point] and miss it entirely. It’s very unpredictable. If you put something in a drink and you know the person will drink it completely, then that’s a bit easier.

But all that is pure speculation. We should wait to find out what it is. That might enlighten the situation a bit about what’s behind it. Chemical analysis alone will never be able to show who the perpetrator is. You need police work for that. Even if you find small amounts of poison in his body, the concentrations are so low that it doesn’t have a fingerprint or signature where you can say: oh, based on these properties or impurities, it was probably made in this or that way. That might be possible if you have a lot and you can analyze the pure substance, but that’s implausible in a person.

Interview by Alexander Ershov

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