Canada's 'Mad Max' stokes anti-vax rage - and could help Trudeau

2021/9/14
©Reuters


By Rod Nickel and Steve Scherer

WINNIPEG, Manitoba/CANDIAC, Quebec (Reuters) - Maxime Bernier, a former cabinet minister nicknamed "Mad Max", is channelling anger against mandatory vaccines into surprising support for his populist People's Party of Canada (PPC) in the country's tight election race.

His efforts may end up helping the man he calls a "fascist psychopath": Liberal Prime Minister Justin Trudeau.

Bernier, 58, who quit the main opposition Conservatives in 2018 after losing a leadership race, was previously most famous for leaving classified documents in a former girlfriend's apartment, leading to his resignation as foreign minister in 2008.

Now, amid fatigue over successive coronavirus lockdowns and simmering anger over mandatory masking and vaccine rules, his right-wing party is rising in polls.

The PPC, which Bernier founded, has 9% support nationally, according to an EKOS poll, up from 1.6% in the 2019 election. That is higher than the Green Party though well below Trudeau's Liberals and the Conservatives, who are hovering around 30%.

But PPC support may draw votes away from the Conservatives in close district races, helping the Liberals eke out a win.Poll tracker https://graphics.reuters.com/CANADA-ELECTION/POLL/zgvommlbqvd Graphics https://graphics.reuters.com/CANADA-ELECTION/zjvqkjkomvx/index.html

Bernier's rallies have swelled as provinces began requiring proof of COVID-19 inoculation for activities like dining in restaurants or sporting events. Trudeau plans to make vaccinations mandatory for domestic air and train travel, and for government workers.

The PPC supports repealing vaccine mandates and passports, saying the issue is about freedom of choice.

Bernier's support has also grown as his speeches echoed former U.S. President Donald Trump's charged rhetoric.

On Sept. 5, he told a British Columbia rally that "when tyranny becomes law, revolution becomes our duty."

PPC supporters have heckled and shouted profanities at Trudeau's campaign stops, forcing the Liberals to cancel one event last month due to safety concerns. The PPC expelled a local official on Thursday over allegations he threw gravel at Trudeau.

"They're responsible for their own actions," Bernier told Reuters, referring to the protestors that turn up to Trudeau campaign events.

"We need to have an ideological revolution ... I'm not asking anyone to be violent. I'm asking people to stand up and speak out."

Bernier, who is from the predominantly French-speaking province of Quebec, was himself hit with an egg in Saskatchewan on Sept. 2.

At a Trudeau stop in Candiac, Quebec on Sunday, a lone protester with a purple PPC sign tucked under his arm thrust his middle finger in the air as the prime minister spoke.

"Bernier is the only politician advocating for the end of lockdowns, the end of masking, the end of mandatory vaccination," said the man, who said his name was Marcus but declined to give his last name. "That's all I care about."

The PPC holds no parliamentary seats and Bernier himself lost his seat in 2019.

Even a few hundred PPC votes could influence the outcomes of at least half a dozen parliamentary constituency races to the detriment of the Conservatives, said Paul Thomas, professor emeritus of political studies at University of Manitoba, adding that he does not expect the PPC to win any constituencies https://www.reuters.com/world/americas/parties-focus-key-battlegrounds-tight-canadian-election-2021-09-07.

Bernier denies that he is snatching support mainly from the Conservatives. The platforms of Trudeau and Conservative Leader Erin O'Toole are so similar, it makes little difference which one wins, he said.

"They're the same. I call them the Lib-Con party, with one leader, Justin O'Toole."

Bernier said his goal is to win 4% of the popular vote, pointing out that organizers did not allow him to participate in nationally televised leaders debates.

Canada has rarely seen Bernier's combination of inflamed rhetoric and substantial support in a politician. Trump's term in the White House created a "cultural spillover" to Canada that emboldened those who have flocked to the PPC, Thomas said.

Bernier’s famous "Mad Max" nickname - after the Mel Gibson movie character - dates back to his losing effort for the Conservative leadership. In a Facebook post with his head photoshopped onto Gibson’s body, Bernier listed things he was "mad about" including government waste and "politics as usual."

In June, Manitoba police arrested Bernier for violating public health orders, including refusing to self-isolate upon entering the province.

"He's now taken on a kind of martyr complex and he's almost daring people to arrest him," Thomas said. "That's what he desperately wants."

(Reporting by Rod Nickel in Winnipeg and Steve Scherer in Candiac, Quebec; Editing by Alistair Bell)

Trump's unique brand of American fascism is still haunting us

Bill Blum,

 Independent Media Institute
September 14, 2021

WILKES-BARRE, PA - AUGUST 2, 2018:

Donald Trump, President of the United States pauses in concentration while delivering a speech at a campaign rally held at the Mohegan Sun Arena.

Donald Trump was no ordinary conservative American president. Far from it.

But how should we describe his presidency and the Make America Great Again political movement he spawned? Is it sufficient to refer to Trump and his MAGA supporters as anti-democratic or authoritarian, as many in the liberal mainstream press have written for the past five years?

I don't think so.

I believe that is a wholly inadequate and ultimately self-defeating response. We cannot afford to label Trump as just another demagogue or to refer to the MAGA movement as just another rightwing populist upsurge if we hope to preserve American democracy.

It's past time to call Trump and his movement what they are: fascist.

Trump was the first American fascist president. And he remains a fascist to this day.

I was among the first opinion writers to expose the unique dangers Trump posed to democracy and the rule of law. I was among the first to refer to him explicitly as a fascist. I was also among the first commentators to report on the views of leading mental health-experts who described Trump as a malignant narcissist.
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I sounded these warnings in opinion columns, beginning in 2015, published by such outlets as Truthdig, The Progressive Magazine, AlterNet, Raw Story, Salon, The National Memo, Bill Moyers.com, and many others.

What is Fascism?

Any rational discussion has to begin with a definition, and when it comes to fascism, there are many to examine.

Although it is an emotionally loaded and often misused term, fascism is as real today as a political and cultural force, a set of core beliefs and a mode of governance as it was when Benito Mussolini founded the Italian Fascist Party in 1919 and declared himself dictator six years later.

As the celebrated Marxist playwright Bertolt Brecht wrote in 1935, fascism "is a historic phase of capitalism … the nakedest, most shameless, most oppressive and most treacherous form of capitalism." Trumpism, along with its international analogs in Brazil, India and Western Europe, neatly accords with Brecht's description.

Another instructive definition is the one proffered by political scientist Robert Paxton in his classic study " The Anatomy of Fascism" (Harvard University Press, 2004):

"Fascism may be defined as a form of political behavior marked by obsessive preoccupation with community decline, humiliation, or victimhood and by compensatory cults of unity, energy, and purity, in which a mass-based party of committed nationalist militants, working in uneasy but effective collaboration with traditional elites, abandons democratic liberties and pursues with redemptive violence and without ethical or legal restraints goals of internal cleansing and external expansion."

Trump and Trumpism similarly embody the 14 common factors of fascism identified by the great writer Umberto Eco in his 1995 essay, Ur Fascism.

A cult of traditionalism.
A rejection of modernism (cultural, rather than technological).
A cult of action for its own sake and a distrust of intellectualism.
A framing of disagreement or opposition as treasonous.
A fear of difference. … Fascism is racist by definition.
An appeal to a frustrated middle class—either due to economic or political pressures from both above and below.
An obsession with the plots and machinations of the movement's identified enemies.
A requirement that said enemies be simultaneously seen as omnipotent and weak, conniving and cowardly.
A rejection of pacifism. Life is permanent warfare.
Contempt for weakness.
A cult of heroism.
Hypermasculinity.
A selective populism, relying on chauvinist definitions of "the people" that it claims to speak for.
A heavy usage of Newspeak—impoverished vocabulary, elementary syntax and a resistance to complex and critical reasoning.

Nor is fascism a foreign phenomenon restricted to South American banana republics or failed European states. As University of London professor Sarah Churchwell explained in a June 22, 2020 essay published in the New York Review of Books, fascism has deep roots in the United States, spanning the decades from the resurgence of the Ku Klux Klan in the 1920s to the rise of the German-American Bund in the 1930s, the ascendance of Depression-era demagogues like Huey Long, and the election of Trump in 2016.

Churchwell's article is aptly titled, "American Fascism: It Has Happened Here." In it, she offers a working definition of fascism, noting that fascist movements, both past and present in America and abroad, are united by "conspicuous features [that] are recognizably shared." These include:

"[N]ostalgia for a purer, mythic, often rural past; cults of tradition and cultural regeneration; paramilitary groups; the delegitimizing of political opponents and demonization of critics; the universalizing of some groups as authentically national, while dehumanizing all other groups; hostility to intellectualism and attacks on a free press; anti-modernism; fetishized patriarchal masculinity; and a distressed sense of victimhood and collective grievance. Fascist mythologies often incorporate a notion of cleansing, an exclusionary defense against racial or cultural contamination, and related eugenicist preferences for certain 'bloodlines' over others."

Trump's Unique Brand of American Fascism

Looking back on the anti-immigrant rhetoric and scapegoating Trump used in the 2016 presidential campaign, we can see these features at work. We can also see them in his desperate efforts to retain power after losing the 2020 presidential election, in the January 6 insurrection and in his continued adherence to the "big lie" of the stolen election. These are only some of the most obvious signposts of a new American form of fascism.

The good news is that more and more influential voices have come to realize and recognize Trump as a fascist.

In a January 2021 Newsweek article, Professor Paxton wrote:

"I resisted for a long time applying the fascist label to Donald J. Trump. He did indeed display some telltale signs. In 2016, a newsreel clip of Trump's plane taxiing up to a hangar where cheering supporters awaited reminded me eerily of Adolf Hitler's electoral campaign in Germany in July 1932, the first airborne campaign in history, where the arrival of the Führer's plane electrified the crowd. Once the rally began, with Hitler and Mussolini, Trump mastered the art of back-and-forth exchanges with his enraptured listeners. There was the threat of physical violence ("lock her up!"), sometimes leading to the forceful ejection of hecklers. The Proud Boys stood in convincingly for Hitler's Storm Troopers and Mussolini's squadristi. The MAGA hats even provided a bit of uniform. The America First" message and the leader's arrogant swagger fit the fascist model….

"Trump's incitement of the invasion of the Capitol on January 6, 2020 removes my objection to the fascist label. His open encouragement of civic violence to overturn an election crosses a red line. The label now seems not just acceptable but necessary."

In a July 2021 article in The Atlantic, David Frum, a longtime Republican and former speechwriter for George W. Bush, put it this way:

"Trump's no Hitler, obviously. But they share some ways of thinking. The past never repeats itself. But it offers warnings. It's time to start using the F-word again, not to defame—but to diagnose."

Psychologist Mary Trump, the disgraced ex-president's niece, unabashedly uses the fascist label to describe her uncle, referring him as such in a September 2021 interview with Business Insider:

"He is a fascist. But he probably doesn't know what fascist means.

"He thinks he deserves all the power in the world just because of who he is. In his mind, he's always at the center of the universe and thinks he should be deferred to even though he's ignorant, the weakest, and the least intellectually curious person I've ever met."

It's time for more of us to recognize, denounce and reject Trump and his most ardent and violent MAGA acolytes for what they: a fascist plague that threatens everything we hold near and dear.

World’s longest cave just got even longer after discovery at Kentucky national park


Chacour Koop

Mon, September 13, 2021

The longest cave in the world just got even longer — at least officially speaking.

Mammoth Cave National Park in Kentucky said researchers found another 8 miles of passages while mapping the immense underground geological marvel. The new discovery by the Cave Research Foundation brings the total length to 420 miles, officials said.

“When it comes to discoveries in Mammoth Cave, there truly is no end in sight!” the park posted on Facebook.

According to the U.S. Department of the Interior, the park estimates up to 600 miles of cave remain undiscovered. Plus, more than 200 miles of disconnected parts of the main cave system exist in the park.

Steven Bishop, an enslaved Black man, was a guide and among the first in modern history to map the cave in the 1840s, discovering new passageways in the “dark labyrinth,” according to the park.

The cave system continues to grow in official size as explorers from the Cave Research Foundation visit for mapping.

Mammoth Cave National Park is about 130 miles southwest of Lexington.

How Delta Air Lines mandated employee vaccinations without losing workers

REUTERS/MIKE BLAKE/FILE PHOTO

A Delta Airlines passenger jet approaches to land at LAX during the outbreak of the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) in Los Angeles, California, U.S., April 7, 2021.

By Courtney Vinopal
Breaking news reporter
Published September 14, 2021

US president Joe Biden’s Sept. 9 order directing companies with more than 100 workers to require Covid-19 vaccinations or weekly testing has caused concern among some business owners, who worry workers will quit as a result of the mandate.

But at least one company found a way to boost vaccination without losing employees. Delta Air Lines announced on Aug. 25 it would charge employees for their healthcare plans if they aren’t vaccinated against Covid-19 by November.

“The average hospital stay for Covid-19 has cost Delta $50,000 per person,” CEO Ed Bastian wrote in a memo. “This surcharge will be necessary to address the financial risk the decision to not vaccinate is creating for our company.”
Penalty appears to be working in Delta’s favor

The financial penalty appears to have boosted vaccinations among Delta Air Lines employees who were reluctant to get the jab.

In a media briefing on Sept. 9, the airline’s chief health officer, Henry Ting, announced that 20% of unvaccinated employees received their shots in the two weeks after Delta announced the surcharge, bringing the company’s overall vaccination rate to 78%. Additionally, Ting said that no employees resigned as a result of the new policy.

“We’ve seen no employee turnover, resignations—in fact, we’re seeing 5,000 new hires joining Delta Air Lines in the last two months,” he said, adding that the surcharge was effective in “shifting the group that was most reluctant” to get vaccinated.

Vaccine mandates for employers are tricky. Recent research by the firm Qualtrics showed that 44% of US workers would consider leaving their jobs if their workplaces made vaccination necessary, but the same survey found that 38% of workers would consider leaving if their employer did not institute a vaccine mandate. The early success of Delta’s policy suggests that employers may not see mass resignations as they adopt tighter vaccine protocols.

Will more employers look to surcharges rather than incentives?

Given the success of Delta’s approach, other companies may consider similar policies as they think about how to keep employees and customers safe.

A premium surcharge has been one of the less popular approaches taken by business owners to push their employees to get vaccinated thus far. A recent survey of US employers conducted by Willis Towers Watson found that while 17% of organizations offered financial incentives for workers to get vaccinated, just 2% imposed a surcharge on unvaccinated employees, or offered discounts for vaccinated ones. Cash payments from $100 to $199 were the most common financial incentive among organizations surveyed.

Jeffrey Smith, a partner at the workplace law firm Fisher Phillips, told Quartz he believes more companies are starting to consider surcharges now because most have a calendar-year health plan that kicks off in January. Smith said business leaders may be thinking about ways to reduce or eliminate potential group health plan expenses that could be avoided if more employees were vaccinated—an option that wasn’t on the table at the beginning of last year.

Employers looking to adopt a model similar to Delta may have to navigate complex legal questions surrounding such regulations. Smith noted that federal HIPAA rules bar US employers from discriminating against individuals based upon on a health factor—such as whether an employee can get a vaccine—but there is an exception for certain types of wellness programs.

Smith encouraged employers to consider options with “multiple facets” as they think about how to address both vaccination rates and health plan cost concerns.

“An employer should not use the health plan surcharge solely for the purpose of trying to increase workplace vaccination rates,” Smith said, adding that companies should consider both incentives—whether through health plans or cash payments—as well as education campaigns to convince their workers about the importance of vaccination.

AOC SENDS GOP INTO FAUX OUTRAGE

 Who designed AOC's "tax the rich" dress? 

While House Democrats in Washington debate over a corporate tax hike, New York representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez was in her hometown wearing a “tax the rich” dress for her first-ever Met Gala appearance on Sept. 13.

Brooklyn-based Aurora James, founder of the label Brother Vellies and a winner of the 2015 CDFA/Vogue Fashion Fund, made the dress. On Instagram, Ocasio-Cortez said she was proud to work with James, a “sustainably focused, Black woman immigrant designer” who first started selling her garments at a Brooklyn flea market.

Fires shut Sequoia National Park, could threaten huge trees

 

California Wildfires

In this Sunday, Sept. 12, 2021 photo released by the KNP Complex Fire Incident Command, smoke plumes rise from the Paradise Fire in Sequoia National Park, Calif. In the southern Sierra Nevada, two fires ignited by lightning are burning in Sequoia National Park. 

KNP Complex Fire Incident Command via AP

Tue, September 14, 2021

SEQUOIA NATIONAL PARK, Calif. (AP) — Sequoia National Park was shut down and its namesake gigantic trees were potentially threatened Tuesday as two forest fires burned in steep and dangerous terrain in California’s Sierra Nevada.

Both fires were projected to advance in the direction of Giant Forest, home to more than 2,000 giant sequoias including the General Sherman Tree, the largest tree on Earth by volume.

The massive sequoias grow on the western slope of the Sierra Nevada. The General Sherman Tree stands 275 feet (83.8 meters) and is over 36 feet (11 meters) in diameter at the base, according to the U.S. National Park Service.

“There’s no imminent threat to Giant Forest but that is a potential,” said Mark Ruggiero, fire information officer for Sequoia and Kings Canyon national parks.

Ruggiero estimated that the closest flames were about a mile (1.6 kilometers) from the grove. Sequoia headquarters personnel, about 75 people, were being evacuated, he said.

The Colony and Paradise fires, named for locations where they started, were ignited by lightning last week and were being battled collectively under the name of the KNP Complex. Their combined sizes grew to more than 4.7 square miles (12 square kilometers).

All park facilities were already closed and wilderness trailhead permits had been canceled. The Silver City retreat and the summer cabins of Cabin Cove were under evacuation orders. Part of the community of Three Rivers outside the park entrance was under an evacuation warning.

Kings Canyon National Park, to the north of Sequoia, remained open.

The potential threat to the giant sequoias came just a year after a disastrous complex of fires in the same region.

Part of the wildfire complex known as the Castle Fire destroyed 10% of the population of sequoias, Ruggiero said.

Sequoias rely on fire for such processes as releasing seeds from cones and making clearings in the forest that allow seedlings to grow. The record of burns in the rings of trees thousands of years old demonstrates their relationship to fire.

But changing climate has intensified forest fires and their impact on sequoias.

“Sequoia trees are a fire-adaptive tree,” Ruggiero said. “It’s important to have fire to have sequoias thrive, but when we get such intense fires even the sequoias can’t stand up to them.”

Giant sequoias are closely related to the towering, slender redwoods that grow along the Northern California coast and have the same relationship with fire.

That interaction was tested last year when a huge fire tore through almost all of Big Basin Redwoods State Park on the coast between San Francisco and Monterey Bay.

A week after the fire, an Associated Press reporter and photographer hiked the renowned Redwood Trail and confirmed that most of the ancient redwoods, about 2,000 years old, had survived. Months later there were signs of new growth.

California has had more than 7,400 wildfires so far this year, scorching more than 3,500 square miles (9,065 square kilometers).

California’s second-largest fire on record, the Dixie Fire, remained 75% contained after burning 1,500 square miles in the northern Sierra and southern Cascades region. Near Lake Tahoe, containment of the 342-square-mile (885-square- kilometer) Caldor Fire increased to 68%.

Medicare to repeal medical device rule pushed by Trump administration



Bob Herman
Tue, September 14, 2021, 

The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services is proposing to kill a regulation the agency finalized earlier this year under the Trump administration that would have required Medicare to pay for any medical device deemed as a "breakthrough" by the FDA.

Driving the news: After receiving public feedback, CMS determined the rule was "not in the best interest of Medicare beneficiaries because the rule may provide coverage without adequate evidence that the breakthrough device would be a reasonable and necessary treatment."

Between the lines: The rule would have been a gift to the medical device industry, which supported the rule.

It would have guaranteed four years of Medicare coverage for all devices designated as "breakthroughs" — i.e., new technologies that attempt to improve care for people with life-threatening conditions.

However, these kinds of devices often do not prove any clinical benefit and have safety risks.

The rule also did not require device manufacturers to conduct follow-up studies to show their devices specifically helped Medicare patients — that was completely voluntary.

CMS ultimately said the rule could be a disaster since the agency would automatically pay for devices, "even in the absence of data demonstrating that the device is reasonable and necessary for Medicare patients."

What to watch: This is still a proposal with another 30 days of public comment. Medical device lobbyists will be in full force.

U.S. officials, Native American leaders to meet on returning lands


FILE PHOTO: Native American Jeff Horinek, a member of the Cowboys and Indian Alliance, participates in protests against the Keystone XL pipeline in front of the U.S. Capitol in Washington

Tue, September 14, 2021, 


By Tyler Clifford

(Reuters) -Federal officials will meet with Native American tribes next month to gather recommendations as the federal government seeks to move ahead with efforts to protect and restore tribal homelands, the U.S. Department of the Interior said on Tuesday.

Tribal leaders will be asked for advice on several topics, including the process to take land back into trust, leasing and treaty rights, among other issues under the Biden administration's initiative to streamline steps allowing tribes to regain their land.

Federal land trust policies allow tribes to re-acquire historic land and aim to remedy practices going back more than a century that took away Native American tribes’ lands across the present-day United States.

In recent years, tribes have faced delays and high costs to develop housing projects, manage law enforcement agencies, develop energy projects and other economic development activities because of a patchwork of landholdings within existing reservation boundaries.

"We have an obligation to work with Tribes to protect their lands and ensure that each community has a homeland where its citizens can live together to lead safe and fulfilling lives,” Assistant Secretary for Indian Affairs Bryan Newland said. "These important actions are a step in the right direction to restore homelands that will strengthen Tribal communities."

The virtual sessions are scheduled for Oct. 18, 21, 25 and 26.

The department in April allowed regional Bureau of Indian Affairs directors to review and approve applications, a reversal of a Trump-era order that gave jurisdiction to the department's headquarters and triggered delays.

A department official said 560,000 acres of land were placed in trust for tribes during the Obama administration, followed by 75,000 acres of land under the Trump administration.

Interior Department Secretary Deb Haaland, a former U.S. representative from New Mexico, is the first Native American to lead a Cabinet agency. She oversees the U.S. government's relationship with nearly 600 federally recognized tribal nations as well as policies guiding use of 500 million acres of federal and tribal land, a fifth of the nation's surface.

(Reporting by Tyler Clifford and Valerie Volcovici; Editing by Dan Grebler and Susan Heavey)

Trump aides aim to build GOP opposition to Afghan refugees

NASTY EVIL LITTLE MAN

FILE - In this Oct. 30, 2020, file photo, then-President Donald Trump's White House senior adviser Stephen Miller walks on the South Lawn of the White House in Washington. Tens of thousands of Afghan refugees fleeing the Taliban are arriving in the U.S., and a handful of former Trump administration officials are working to turn Republicans against them.

AP Photo/Patrick Semansky, 

JILL COLVIN
Tue, September 14, 2021

WASHINGTON (AP) — As tens of thousands of Afghan refugees fleeing the Taliban arrive in the U.S., a handful of former Trump administration officials are working to turn Republicans against them.

The former officials are writing position papers, appearing on conservative television outlets and meeting privately with GOP lawmakers — all in an effort to turn the collapse of Afghanistan into another opportunity to push a hard-line immigration agenda.

“It is a collaboration based on mutual conviction,” said Stephen Miller, the architect of President Donald Trump’s most conservative immigration policies and among those engaged on the issue. “My emphasis has been in talking to members of Congress to build support for opposing the Biden administration's overall refugee plans."

The approach isn’t embraced by all Republican leaders, with some calling it mean-spirited and at odds with Christian teachings that are important to the white evangelicals who play a critical role in the party’s base. The strategy relies on tactics that were commonplace during Trump’s tenure and that turned off many voters, including racist tropes, fear-mongering and false allegations.

And the hard-liners pay little heed to the human reality unfolding in Afghanistan, where those who worked with Americans during the war are desperate to flee for fear they could be killed by the new Taliban regime.

But the Republicans pushing the issue are betting they can open a new front in the culture wars they have been fighting since President Joe Biden's election by combining the anti-immigrant sentiment that helped fuel Trump’s political rise with widespread dissatisfaction with the Afghan withdrawal. That, they hope, could keep GOP voters motivated heading into next year’s midterms, when control of Congress is at stake.

“From a political standpoint, cultural issues are the most important issues that are on the mind of the American people,” said Russ Vought, Trump’s former budget chief and president of the Center for Renewing America, a nonprofit group that has been working on building opposition to Afghan refugee settlement in the U.S. along with other hot-button issues, like critical race theory, which considers American history through the lens of racism.

His group is working, he said, to “kind of punch through this unanimity that has existed” that the withdrawal was chaotic, but that Afghan refugees deserve to come to the U.S.

Officials insist that every Afghan headed for the country is subject to extensive vetting that includes thorough biometric and biographic screenings conducted by intelligence, law enforcement and counterterrorism personnel. At a pair of hearings this week, Secretary of State Antony Blinken said those “rigorous security checks” begin in transit countries before refugees arrive in the U.S. and continue at U.S. military bases before anyone is resettled. Checks then continue as refugees await further processing.

But Trump and his allies, who worked to sharply curtain refugee admissions while they were in office, insist the refugees pose a threat.

“Who are all of the people coming into our Country?” Trump asked in a recent statement. “How many terrorists are among them?”

With the U.S. confronting a host of challenges, it's unclear whether voters will consider immigration a leading priority next year. It was a key motivator for voters in the 2018 midterm elections, with 4 in 10 Republicans identifying it as the top issue facing the country, according to AP VoteCast data. But it became far less salient two years later, when only 3% of 2020 voters — including 5% of Republicans — named it as the No. 1 issue facing the country amid the COVID-19 pandemic and related economic woes.

When it comes to refugees, 68% of Americans say they support the U.S. taking in those fleeing Afghanistan after security screening, according to a Washington Post/ABC News poll in late August and early September. That includes a majority — 56% — of Republicans.

The party's leaders are far from united. Dozens of Republican lawmakers and their offices have been working tirelessly to try to help Afghans flee the country. And some, like Sen. Thom Tillis, R-N.C., have admonished those in his party who have suggested the Afghans pose a security risk.

Some of the skepticism voiced by the right has been exacerbated by the Biden administration's refusal to date to provide an accounting of who was able to leave Afghanistan during the U.S.'s chaotic evacuation campaign from Kabul's airport.

The State Department has said that more than 23,800 Afghans arrived in the U.S. between Aug. 17-31. Thousands more remain at U.S. military sites overseas for screening and other processing. But officials have said they are still working to compile the breakdown of how many are applicants to the Special Immigrant Visa program designed to help Afghan interpreters and others who served side-by-side with Americans, how many are considered other “Afghans at risk,” like journalists and human rights workers, and how many fall into other categories.

The organization War Time Allies estimates as many as 20,000 special visa applicants remain in the country, not counting their families and others eligible to come to the U.S.

Ken Cuccinelli, who served as Trump's acting deputy secretary of the Department of Homeland Security and is now a senior fellow at the Center for Renewing America, says he doesn't believe the refugees have faced sufficient review.

“It’s unachievable as a simple administrative matter,” he said of the process. While Cuccinelli, like Miller, believes that SIVs should be allowed to come to the U.S., he argues that the other refugees should be resettled in the region, closer to home.

The "mass importation of potentially hundreds of thousands of people who do not share American cultural, political, or ideological commonalities poses serious risks to both national security and broader social cohesion," he wrote in a recent position paper on the group’s website that cites Pew Research Center polling on beliefs about Sharia law and suicide bombings.

Other former administration officials strongly disagree with such inflammatory language.

“Some of the people who’ve always been immigration hard-liners are seeing this wrongly as an opportunity ahead of the midterms to, lack a better term, stoke fear of, ‘I don’t want these people in my country,’” said Alyssa Farah, a former Pentagon press secretary who also served as White House communications director under Trump.

Farah said she has been working to “politely shift Republican sentiment” away from arguments that she sees as both factually false and politically questionable. The Republican Party, she noted, includes a majority of veterans — many of whom worked closely alongside Afghans on the ground and have led the push to help their former colleagues escape — as well as evangelical Christians, who have historically welcomed refugees with open arms.

“It's totally misreading public sentiment to think that Republicans should not be for relocating Afghan refugees who served along side the U.S.," she said. “The Christian community is there. The veterans community is for it.”

___ Associated Press writers Hannah Fingerhut in Washington, Julie Watson in San Diego and Ellen Knickmeyer in Oklahoma City contributed to this report.

Lawyer dressed as Michael Myers arrested after roaming Texas beach as prank, cops say

Metzger said in a Facebook post Monday night he was “still fuzzy on what exactly was illegal.”



Mike Stunson
Tue, September 14, 2021, 6:58 AM·2 min read


A lawyer dressed as a horror movie character on a Texas beach said his eccentric actions were just a prank to make people smile.

But it also led to the arrest of Mark Metzger, the Galveston attorney some people saw roaming a local beach in a Michael Myers costume. He was cited for disorderly conduct and released by Galveston police, KTRK reported.

Police received a call Monday about a masked man holding what appeared to be a bloody knife while walking on the beach ahead of Tropical Storm Nicholas, according to The Daily News in Galveston.


Officers found Metzger dressed as the serial killer from the “Halloween” movies and put him in handcuffs before determining the blood and knife were fake, the newspaper reported.

Metzger said in a Facebook post Monday night he was “still fuzzy on what exactly was illegal.”

“Bringing positive vibes to the gloom and doom out there, generating some laughter, helping people crack a smile, and restoring our faith in humanity through humor is 100% what I’m about,” Metzger said. “It’s all I’ve been about my entire life. My methods might not work for everyone, but I guarantee I’ll please more than I’ll piss off.”

Interviewed by KTRK, he compared his arrest to a scene out of another popular franchise — this one a little more kid-friendly.

“It felt like a scene out of ‘Scooby-Doo’ after they handcuffed me and pulled the mask off, like, ‘I would have gotten away with it if wasn’t for those meddling Karens, you know?” he told the station.

He said in his Facebook post he would pull the prank again “all day every day.”

Philippines' Pacquiao sues influential evangelist over graft accusation


FILE PHOTO: Philippine Senator and boxing champion Manny Pacquiao reads his briefing materials as he prepares for the Senate session in Pasay city, Metro Manila

Tue, September 14, 2021, 

In this article:

Manny Pacquiao
Senator of the Philippines

Apollo Quiboloy
Filipino self-declared messiah

Rodrigo Duterte
Filipino politician and the 16th President of the Philippines

MANILA (Reuters) - Boxer Manny Pacquiao on Tuesday sued for libel an influential celebrity evangelist followed by millions of Filipinos, after he accused the eight-division world champion of embezzling funds intended for a $70 million sports complex.

Pastor Apollo Quiboloy, a self-proclaimed "Owner of the Universe" and "Appointed Son of God", is a longtime friend and spiritual adviser of Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte, with whom Pacquiao has recently locked horns.

The popular Pacquiao is considering running for president next year and has alleged corruption in Duterte's government and criticised his cosy relationship with China https://www.reuters.com/world/china/philippine-president-spars-with-pacquiao-over-south-china-sea-2021-06-09

"He used this deliberate falsehood to brainwash the minds of the Filipino public," Pacquiao said of Quiboloy, in announcing his lawsuit seeking $2 million in damages.

Church leaders are highly influential in Philippine elections and their endorsements can be worth a huge number of votes.

Quiboloy's group, Kingdom of Jesus Christ, says it has at least 4 million followers in the Philippines and another 2 million overseas.

Calls to Quiboloy's church and messages to the group's Facebook and web pages were unanswered. His office said he would respond in his television programme later on Tuesday.

Pacquiao, a senator, leads a rival faction in the ruling political party that did not back Duterte's bid to run for vice president in 2022. Duterte is prevented by the constitution from running for a second term as president.

(Reporting by Neil Jerome Morales; Editing by Martin Petty and Alex Richardson)

China Lays Out What’s Allowed on a Marxist ‘Civilized’ Internet

WE KNOW; Marxists Internet Archive


Bloomberg News
Tue, September 14, 2021,

(Bloomberg) -- China is laying down the law on what behavior is -- and isn’t -- allowed on a “civilized,” Marxist internet, in a sweeping set of guidelines for governing what is already one of the world’s most-heavily policed digital spheres.

The upcoming regulations, many based on previous draft guidelines, span greater protection for minors against online bullying to combating fake news and verifying online accounts. The over-arching idea is to ensure online content abides by “the guiding status of Marxism in the ideological cyberspace sphere,” the official Xinhua News Agency reported, citing an online summary posted by the State Council.

The new guidelines potentially provide a framework to further tighten the government’s grip on internet giants from Tencent Holdings Ltd. to ByteDance Ltd. and the vast amounts of content and data they generate. They coincide with a broad campaign to influence online norms, from suppressing what Beijing calls “fan culture” to forcing giants to open up their closed ecosystems by linking to rival services.

It’s unclear when the final regulations will be published. In its summary, the State Council said more regulation was needed to improve ethics and behavior. To that end, a nationwide platform will be established to curb online rumors and fake information, while amplifying propaganda about the Communist Party’s achievements, Xinhua said.

“The country plans to better regulate the production, publication and distribution of online content, classify the management of online accounts and build a national mechanism to stop and prevent disinformation,” the news agency reported. “Campaigns will be launched to fight online crimes, and efforts will be made to protect personal information and data security.”

Beijing’s renewed scrutiny of online content comes after a months-long effort to rein in the growing influence of its internet titans and press them to share the enormous wealth they’ve amassed during a decade-long tech boom. Xi Jinping is pushing a philosophy of “common prosperity” that, beyond tightening supervision of once free-wheeling tech giants, also includes prodding the nation’s youth toward more productive pursuits and eradicating content the Party considers counter to that ambition.

Other points in the summary included:

A call to foster a “common” ideology online between the Party and people

A broad effort to raise “ethical standards” of internet users.

Better protection for personal information and data security

Funding for local governments and relevant departments to support the drive

Egypt opens ancient tomb of King Djoser after restoration

MOHAMED WAGDY
Tue, September 14, 2021, 

SAQQARA, Egypt (AP) — Egypt on Tuesday showcased an ancient tomb structure belonging to the cemetery complex of King Djoser, a pharaoh who lived more than 4,500 years ago, following extensive restorations of the site.

The structure — known as the Southern Tomb — is largely underground and includes a labyrinth of corridors, decorated with hieroglyphic carvings and tiles. A central funeral shaft houses a massive granite-clad sarcophagus from Egypt’s Third Dynasty.

However, the pharaoh was not actually buried there but in the famed Step Pyramid nearby. The two structures make up part of the Saqqara complex near Cairo — one of the country’s richest archeological sites. The Step Pyramid is the oldest known pyramid and one of the first examples of monumental architecture from the ancient world, according to UNESCO. It is believed to have been the inspiration for the Pyramids at Giza.


Egypt's Ministry of Antiquities and Tourism said the opening this week of the tomb structure marked the completion of restoration work that started in 2006 and included reinforcing of the underground corridors, refurbishing the carvings and the tiled walls, and installing lighting. As of Tuesday, the tomb opened to the public.

In addition to the Southern Tomb, the Saqqara plateau hosts at least 11 pyramids, including the Step Pyramid, as well as hundreds of tombs of ancient officials and other sites that range from the 1st Dynasty (2920 B.C.-2770 B.C.) to the Coptic period (395-642).

The Saqqara site is part of the necropolis of Egypt’s ancient capital of Memphis that includes the famed Giza Pyramids, as well as smaller pyramids at Abu Sir, Dahshur and Abu Ruwaysh. The ruins of Memphis were designated a UNESCO World Heritage site in 1970s.

Egypt has publicized a string of recent archaeological finds over the past year in an effort to revive its key tourism sector, which was badly hit by the turmoil that followed the 2011 uprising. The sector was also dealt a further blow by the global coronavirus pandemic.

Egypt Antiquities

Inscriptions adorn the wall of the southern cemetery of King Djoser, after its restoration, near the famed Step Pyramid, in Saqqara, south of Cairo, Egypt, Tuesday, Sept. 14, 2021. (AP Photo/Nariman El-Mofty

CRIMINAL CAPITALI$T

Hushpuppi - the Instagram influencer and international fraudster

Helen Clifton & Princess Abumere - File on 4 & BBC Africa
Tue, September 14, 2021

Ramon Abbas - known to his 2.5 million Instagram followers as Hushpuppi - is considered by the FBI to be one of the world's most high-profile fraudsters and faces a prison sentence of up to 20 years in the US after pleading guilty to money laundering.

The BBC has used newly available court documents to uncover the man behind cyber heists that have cost his victims millions, from his humble beginnings as a "Yahoo Boy" hustler in Nigeria to a so-called "Billionaire Gucci Master" living a life of luxury in Dubai before his arrest last year.

The 37-year-old began his career in Oworonshoki, a poor coastal area in the north-east of Lagos, Nigeria's commercial capital.

Local driver Seye told the BBC that he remembered Abbas as a young boy working alongside his mother in the Olojojo market. His father was a taxi driver.

As he grew older, Seye says, Abbas liked to splash his cash: "He was generous. He used to buy beer for everyone around."

But everyone knew the source of his mysterious wealth - cybercrime; he was a "Yahoo", Seye says.

Hushpuppi's former home, 9 Ogunyomi Street, in the Oworonshoki area of Lagos

"Yahoo Boys" are romance scammers who took their name from the first free email available in Nigeria.

"They came up with the idea of stealing identities. And then with that identity theft, they went into dating [scams]," explains Dr Adedeji Oyenuga, a cybercrime expert at Lagos State University.

Once a relationship is established via a false identity, romance scammers wheedle money from their online lovers.

Like many Yahoo Boys, Abbas broadened his criminal horizons. Many went to Malaysia - and Abbas followed them, ending up in Kuala Lumpur around 2014, then Dubai in 2017.
North Korean hackers

This is when his Instagram posts - and crimes - went to another level.

In February 2019, he attempted to launder 13m euros (£11m; $15m) stolen by a gang of North Korean hackers from the Maltese Bank of Valletta.

Hushpuppi's Instagram posts about his luxurious lifestyle attracted hundreds of thousands of likes

Abigail Mamo, chief executive of the Maltese chamber of small and medium enterprises, says the heist plunged the holiday island into "chaos".

Shopping trolleys filled with goods were abandoned at checkouts as payment systems shut down.

"We received calls from our members telling us they were sending money using Bank of Valletta's platform to their foreign suppliers," says Ms Mamo.

"Their foreign suppliers did not receive the money... We're talking about thousands of euros."

The bank said it managed to recover 10m euros.

"Damn," Abbas said in a text to a fellow scammer at the time in messages obtained by the FBI.

The reply shows the next heist was being planned: "Next one is in few weeks; will let you know when it's ready. Too bad they caught on, or it would have been a nice pay out."
Premiership scam scuppered

In May 2019, Abbas was tasked with setting up a bank account in Mexico.

It was to receive £100m from a Premier League Football Club, and £200m from a UK firm. Neither are named in the court documents.

The scams were to be carried out via Business Email Compromise (BEC).

Terrifyingly simple, BEC works by intercepting payments via fake emails that appear to come from an address that is almost exactly the same as the supplier's. Only a single letter or number will be different.

In that email the scammers - posing as a supplier awaiting payment - typically say they've switched banks, so the payment will need to be wired to a different account; the details for which they will provide.

The accounts clerk is fooled into thinking it is a legitimate request from the supplier - and, with a single click of a mouse, vast sums of money are lost.

But the Premiership scam fell apart when the UK banks refused to pay into the Mexican account. "Brother I can't send from UK to Mexico," Abbas's sidekick messaged him. "They keep finding out."

None of the Premiership clubs would confirm whether or not they were the intended victim.
'Professionals shamed'

Jon Shilland, fraud lead with the UK's National Crime Agency, says it can be difficult tracking down criminal networks based in multiple jurisdictions.

A fact known all too well by Dubai-based lawyer Barney Almazar.

He represents around 25 people - including eight UK citizens - in the United Arab Emirates (UAE), all of whom believe they are victims of one of Hushpuppi's BEC scams.

Investigators say it is difficult to track down scammers when those in a network are based all over the world

"We cannot say with 100% certainty that Hushpuppi is behind it," Mr Almazar says.

"But if you look at the bank accounts that police have traced, they all belong to the records obtained by the police in their raids [on Hushpuppi's home in Dubai]."

One UK victim, who wanted to remain anonymous, says he lost £500,000, has been forced to leave the UAE - and is himself facing criminal proceedings in Dubai because of the debt he has incurred as a result of the fraud.

"His clients understand that he was victimised," Mr Almazar explains.

"But they also have to cover their losses, so right now he doesn't know how he can get back to the UAE. He has spent his life in the UAE. His family are still in the UAE. He fears that he might get apprehended at immigration immediately."

Mr Almazar says shame prevents many more of Hushpuppi's victims coming forward.

"The scam was very sophisticated. Professionals were victimised. Some are hesitant to admit what has happened."
Qatari school fraud

Abbas's final big scam before his arrest in Dubai in June 2020 was straight-up identity theft, borrowed from the Yahoo Boy romance scams of his youth.

He assumed the identity of a New York banker to entrap his victim, a Qatari businessperson seeking a $15m loan to build a new school in the Gulf state.

Between December 2019 and February 2020, Abbas and a gang of alleged middlemen in Kenya, Nigeria and the US groomed and conned the victim out of more than a million dollars.

Some of it was laundered via the purchase of a watch worth a staggering $230,000.

https://www.instagram.com/p/B918wDMJUNP/

But soon, the cracks between the gang started to show.

One member threatened to blow the whole scam wide open as he was unhappy about the money he was getting.

Abbas was determined to shut him up.

He texted his contact - Nigerian police officer Abba Kyari - saying: "I want him to go through serious beating of his life.

"I want to spend money to send this boy to jail, let him go for a very long time."

It is alleged that Mr Kyari then falsely arrested and detained the middleman for a month in a squalid Nigerian cell.

Abba Kyari, who has a reputation in Nigeria as a "super cop", has been suspended and is wanted in the US

And now Mr Kyari too is wanted in the US on charges of fraud, money laundering and identity theft. He has previously denied having any criminal involvement with Abbas - and has not responded to the BBC's requests for comment.
Still attracting followers

BEC fraud is a huge issue across the world. According to the FBI, in 2020 BEC fraud resulted in losses of $1.8bn.

Court documents allege Abbas's crimes cost victims almost $24m in total. But some believe the actual total could be much higher.

On Instagram, he dropped the "Billionaire Gucci Master" moniker for "Real Estate Developer" about eight months before his arrest and subsequent transfer to the US to stand trial.

"I have seen parents who have taken their children to learn how to become Yahoo boys"", Source: Adedeji Oyenuga, Source description: Lagos State University cybercrime expert, Image:

Despite him pleading guilty in April to money laundering, Hushpuppi's social media is still live and attracting followers.

We contacted Instagram to ask why his account was still open. The social media platform told the BBC that it had carried out an investigation into his account - but had decided not to close it.

Just days after we put the same question to Snapchat, which deleted Hushpuppi's account.

Dr Oyenuga says Hushpuppi's influence endures as he is still regarded as a role model: "We're in a country where a lot of young people are suffering. They see another young person who was once like them become that great.

"I have seen parents who have taken their children to learn how to become Yahoo boys."

Seye says everyone knows Hushpuppi has committed a crime, but it is understandable: "No-one prays to be poor. So when you see someone who is rich, you will pray to God to give you his kind of wealth."

Stop funding coal abroad, NGO group tells top investor Bank of China


FILE PHOTO: Bank of China logo in Beijing

David Stanway
Mon, September 13, 2021

SHANGHAI (Reuters) -Bank of China (BoC), a top global investor in coal- power plants, must end the financing of such projects outside the mainland and support clean and renewable energy instead, an alliance of 35 non-governmental organisations said on Tuesday.

The comments, made in an open letter to state-controlled BoC's chairman Liu Liange and signed by groups from 13 countries in Asia, Africa and Europe, add to the growing criticism of China for financing coal-fired power stations overseas, especially as part of its Belt and Road Initiative.

While China has said that it would respect the right of local communities to decide what sort of energy they needed, the letter, which has been signed by organisations from several Belt and Road countries, indicates growing opposition to coal even in developing nations.

Bank of China's total overseas financing of coal-based power projects since the Paris climate agreement in 2015 stands at more than $35 billion, the most by any investor globally, and is "out of step with China's climate change ambition", the letter said.

It said more than 130 financial institutions have already decided to restrict fossil fuel investments, and urged Bank of China to follow suit.

Bank of China declined to comment on the letter. Its President Liu Jin said at the end of August that the bank would "gradually reduce" the share of total credit extended to coal projects during the 2021-2025 period, but would also issue more loans for technical upgrades in the sector.

GRADUAL SHIFT

Julien Vincent, executive director of Market Forces, an Australian organisation that campaigns against fossil fuel finance, said dozens of coal-fired power plants around the world would not go ahead without the bank's support.

"The narrative on coal from Chinese business and finance leaders is clearly shifting, but what really counts is action," he told Reuters.

Chinese financial institutions have been gradually shifting away from coal. Industrial and Commercial Bank of China, the world's biggest bank by assets, has already pledged to draw up a "road map" to pull out of coal.

In recommendations published last week, a government advisory body also called on China to "restrict and gradually stop" the use of public funds in overseas coal power investment, and encourage state banks to make similar commitments.

According to research released on Tuesday by European think-tank E3G, 44 countries have already committed to "no new coal", with 1,175 gigawatts of coal-power capacity cancelled since 2015.

It said a similar pledge by China would remove 55% of all of the world's proposed new coal-fired power projects.

(Reporting by David Stanway, Additional reporting by Cheng Leng in Beijing; Editing by Muralikumar Anantharaman)

Canada's ‘hospitals are building barricades’: COVID-19 pandemic reaches ugly heights with anti-vaxx protests

Elisabetta Bianchini

Mon, September 13, 2021,

On Monday, Canadin healtcare workers and patients faced a number of anti-vaxxer protesters outside hospitals, including University Health Network's Toronto General Hospital.

While the protests took place, Justin Trudeau announced that if the Liberals are re-elected, the government would move forward with legislation to make it a criminal offence to obstruct access to any health services locations, including hospitals, and also make it a criminal offence to "intimidate or threaten any healthcare professional carrying out their professional duties."

I am deeply disturbed by anti-vaxxer gatherings outside of hospitals and health care sites in the last few weeks. These people are intimidating our health care heroes and putting Canadians seeking health services at risk.Justin Trudeau, Leader of Liberal party of Canada

"I will not accept this. That’s why we’re going to take strong action to ensure everyone has access to the care they need and keep our front-line health care workers safe. Only our Liberal team will finish this fight against COVID-19 and keep our communities safe and healthy."

Other federal party leaders also commented on the protests.

NDP Leader Jagmeet Singh, who previous announced a plan to make it a Criminal Code offence to harass or block someone from accessing healthcare, or assault healthcare workers, condemned the protests on Monday.                      

"There is no space at all for protests that are threatening healthcare workers and patients. It's wrong," a statement from Singh reads. "That's not the place to protest."

"We would make it an aggravating element of a sentence if someone was in any way threatening a healthcare worker, threatening patients, getting in the way of their ability to access care. That’s 100 per cent not on."

Conservative Leader Erin O'Toole also joined the conversation, saying that "no one should be permitted to obstruct access to a hospital."

On Monday, Mayors and Chairs from the Greater Toronto and Hamilton Area released a statement on the hospital protests.

"Throughout the pandemic, we have all relied on our frontline healthcare heroes to save lives and help people," the statement reads. "People go to hospitals because they need medical help - they also don't deserve to be harassed or intimidated by protests.

"The Mayors and Chairs strongly condemn protests intentionally targeting hospitals and support our enforcement officials in taking any action they deem necessary to protect our hospitals and keeping patients and healthcare workers safe."

Speaking to reporters, Toronto Mayor John Tory responded to a question about why police and city staff are able to remove encampments at parks but it's seemingly more difficult to remove anti-vaxxers in front of local hospitals. Tory called that an "unfair comparison."

"The police understand that they have the discretion and the responsibility to enforce the law and to decide where the line is between harassment and peaceful protest," the Toronto Mayor said.

Several Canadians, including healthcare workers, have taken to social media to respond to the protests.