Serial Collapses of Ancient Pueblo Societies Offer a Stark Warning For Today's World

Tessa Koumoundouros 

In the area where the Colorado, Utah, Arizona and New Mexican borders now meet, ancestral Pueblo societies thrived and then collapsed several times, over the span of 800 years.


© Daniela DuncanPuebloans Cliff Palace, Mesa Verde, Colorado.

Each time they recovered, their culture transformed. This shifting history can be seen in their pottery and the incredible stone and earth dwellings they created. During 300 of those years, some Pueblo peoples, who also used ink tattoos, were ruled by a matrilineal dynasty.

As in the collapse of other ancient civilizations, ancestral Pueblo social collapses align with periods of changing climate – but Pueblo farmers often persevered through droughts, suggesting that there was more to their collapses than just environmental conditions.

So last year archaeologists took a closer look at what was happening in these societies, before 1400 CE, leading up to their times of upheaval. Using tree-ring analyses of wood beams for building construction allowed the researchers to construct a time series of the Pueblo societies' productivity.

Peak construction periods were clustered around good maize growing seasons, even though these times, on average, were not climatically better for growing maize than when there was a lull in said construction.

The recent research found that while the societies often bounced back fairly quickly after construction lulled, there were distinct slow-downs in recovery that coincided with increased signs of violence.

This sort of system slowdown can be seen in other regional collapses of ancient societies like the Neolithic Europeans, that had no link to changing climates. It's also a feature of complex systems as diverse as the tropical rainforest and the human brain.

"Those warning signals turn out to be strikingly universal," said Wageningen University complexity scientist Marten Scheffer. "They are based on the fact that slowing down of recovery from small perturbations signals loss of resilience."

Scheffer and colleagues suspect slowly accumulating social tensions - like wealth inequality, racial injustice, and general unrest - wore away at social cohesion until all it took was a bit more pressure from another drought to tip them over the edge. This appears to have happened to the Pueblo peoples around 700, 900, and 1140 CE.

However, during the late 1200s, a combination of drought and external conflict spurred the ancestral Pueblo peoples to permanently leave the region.

"Societies that are cohesive can often find ways to overcome climate challenges," explained Washington State University archaeologist Tim Kohler back in 2021.

"But societies that are riven by internal social dynamics of any sort – which could be wealth differences, racial disparities or other divisions – are fragile because of those factors. Then climate challenges can easily become very serious."

The ancient Pueblo peoples did find a way to thrive elsewhere, possibly by dramatically transforming their culture once more, and today their descendants live on tribal lands surrounding the empty places that were once the center of the Pueblo world. Their history provides us with a significant warning.

"Today we face multiple social problems including rising wealth inequality along with deep political and racial divisions, just as climate change is no longer theoretical," Kohler said. "If we're not ready to face the challenges of changing climate as a cohesive society, there will be real trouble."

If we want to avoid repeating history, we'd better pay attention.

Their research was published in PNAS.

AN APPRAISAL

Remembering James Caan and His Potent Mix of Swagger and Delicacy

“The Godfather” helped open up a range of roles for the actor that allowed him to play against type and expectation in wonderful ways.

James Caan’s career may have risen and fallen, but he brought a greatness to it overall.

Credit...Jack Robinson/Hulton Archive, via Getty Images


By Manohla Dargis

July 8, 2022

I’m not sure who owned the book, but eventually it ended up in my sweaty young hands. Someone at school had told me about the scene in Mario Puzo’s “The Godfather,” the one in which Sonny Corleone, the reckless eldest son with a Cupid face and a massive endowment, steals off with one of his sister’s bridesmaids. I remember racing through the passage (“her legs were wrapped around his thighs”). It’s no wonder that when I saw Francis Ford Coppola’s film, I was more than ready for James Caan.

He was unforgettably perfect — carnal, wild, exciting. Caan may not be the actor you first think of in relation to “The Godfather,” with its astonishment of legends, but the film is impossible to imagine without his volatile, kinetic performance. Quick to anger, quick to fight, Sonny embodies his family’s terrifying violence in its purest, most unpredictable form, the kind that churns from inside, boiling up like magma. Sonny’s anger will be the death of him; it’s preordained: He must die so that his youngest brother, the deliberate, mercilessly disciplined Michael, can take over the family’s murder business.

Not every star finds as perfect a vessel as “The Godfather.” Talent counts, yes, and as an actor, Caan was more gifted and nuanced than suggested by his tough-guy persona. But the vagaries of both life and the movie business mean that few actors and fewer stars have long, creatively unimpeachable runs. Timing also matters as does taste, greed, grit and representation. Caan, who died on Wednesday at 82, has two supreme masterpieces in his filmography: “The Godfather” (1972) and Michael Mann’s “Thief” (1981). We can argue about the sweep of his career, but there’s no debating the greatness that he brought to it.

As Sonny, opposite Al Pacino’s more coolheaded Michael, Caan embodied the mob family’s most unpredictable violence.

Credit...Paramount Pictures, via Associated Press

Caan’s career emerged from the ashes of the old studio system. Following what was then a familiar career trajectory, he started in TV before moving into film, and was soon terrifying Olivia de Havilland in the schlocky 1964 thriller “Lady in a Cage.” Looking at the film now (don’t bother), their roles are almost comically emblematic of the era’s upheavals. De Havilland was classical Hollywood personified, an elegant emissary of the old studio system, while Caan would soon be among the upstarts who helped create and define that short-lived, creatively intoxicating miracle known as New Hollywood.

“Lady in a Cage” is ridiculous, but it helped set Caan’s career in motion. It would take a while for him to find material worthy of his gift, and the performance is less memorable than his outfit, which includes sandals, a tropical shirt that he later loses, exposing the rug that carpets his torso, and villainy’s de rigueur accessory: a women’s stocking pulled over his face. Notably, he’s also wearing snug-fitting jeans, which, like the sandals, were probably meant to signal his thug’s menacing nonconformity but mostly just draw attention to his body. Tight jeans, as attentive fans know, were a staple of Caan’s onscreen closet.

It was Howard Hawks, one of the geniuses of the old studio system, who shortly thereafter set Caan on his way by casting him first in “Red Line 7000” (1965) and then, more important, in “El Dorado,” a western headlined by John Wayne and Robert Mitchum. “I was this little punk working with Wayne and Mitchum,” Caan said later, recalling how, during the shoot, he and Wayne almost got into it on set. Mitchum brokered the peace, and the stars and the film came together beautifully. It opened in 1967, the same year that “Bonnie and Clyde” shook up the industry and audiences, and swept aside old Hollywood with its violence, daring and bad attitude.

By the time Caan made “The Godfather,” he had established his range in movies as different as Coppola’s directing debut, “The Rain People” (1969), and the 1971 made-for-TV movie “Brian’s Song,” a wildly popular melodrama in which he played the N.F.L. halfback Brian Piccolo, who died young of cancer. Caan also played a tragic football player in “The Rain People,” about a woman (Shirley Knight) who embarks on one of the era’s existential road trips. En route to self-discovery, she picks up Caan’s Kilgannon, a sweet, guileless, brain-damaged former player whose tragically inapt nickname is Killer.

Playing a brain-addled football player opposite Shirley Knight in “The Rain People.”

Credit...Warner Bros., via Alamy

With his thick neck and trapezoidal torso, Caan looked like the athlete he plays, but little about the performance in “The Rain People” is obvious. It’s a heavy role — Killer is the story’s sacrificial lamb — yet Caan, working with Coppola, imbues the part with a subtle, persuasive innocence that doesn’t patronize the character or sanctify his disability. As an actor, Caan certainly could go big and externalize a character’s inner workings (he does a lot around the eyebrows), and Kilgannon has his outsize moments. Yet what makes the character work is the poignant impassiveness that conveys just how brutally life has hollowed him out.

Caan’s ability to convey delicacies of feeling wasn’t a singular gift, but, in his finest roles, it worked contrapuntally with his swaggering physicality and the implied roughness telegraphed by his Bronx-and-Queens-cultivated accent. He sounded like a tough, a delinquent, a bad, potentially dangerous guy, even if his better characters were sometimes more complicated. As Caan’s reputation grew (he was a longtime favorite of this paper’s film critics) and a range of roles opened up to him, he played to and against type and expectation, becoming one of the defining faces of New Hollywood.

It may come as a surprise just how big Caan was in the 1970s, particularly if you’re really only familiar with “The Godfather.” Two years after Coppola’s film blew up, in an essay on “The Last Detail” that consecrated Jack Nicholson as a major star, The Times’s Vincent Canby also named Caan as one of the era’s other young notables alongside Al Pacino, Dustin Hoffman and Caan’s frequent co-star, Robert Duvall. There are different reasons Caan’s reputation dimmed in the ensuing decades; for one thing, while Nicholson was solidifying his fame as a sailor in “The Last Detail,” Caan was repping the Navy in “Cinderella Liberty” (1973).

I love “Cinderella Liberty,” but it hasn’t been canonized like “The Last Detail,” written by Robert Towne and directed by Hal Ashby. But “Cinderella” deserves love, partly because Caan is terrific in it as a sailor who, during an unplanned leave, suddenly becomes involved with a good-time broad (a glorious Marsha Mason). They’re loose and funny and sexy, and together create a raw, unpredictable, memorable romance. Given how aggressively male-dominated so many 1970s classics were, it’s worth remembering that Caan was good with women in more ways than were hinted at in “The Godfather.”

THIEF Credit...MGM, via Alamy

There are all sorts of reasons the decades that followed were not always kind to Caan, including the end of New Hollywood. He made good and forgettable movies, disappeared, re-emerged and matured into avuncular roles. He was discovered by newcomers like Wes Anderson (“Bottle Rocket”) and Christopher McQuarrie (“The Way of the Gun”). For me, though, the second half of Caan’s career is demarcated by “Thief,” the 1981 thriller in which he plays a master burglar. It’s an action film with guns and violence, blowtorches and lots of tough guys, but because this is quintessential Michael Mann, it’s also a romance.

When the film was released, some critics objected to what was seen as its softer, mushier side, which feels like critic-speak for the fact that it features a woman. When Caan’s character isn’t cracking safes or skulls, he is having a tender affair with Tuesday Weld’s skittish restaurant hostess. The two fall in love, have one of Mann’s signature soul-baring conversations across a table and adopt a baby. It’s complicated. It’s also beautiful and it gets me every time I watch it. And while the film doesn’t end happily — though maybe it does — it ends happily for any viewer who’s open to it, its deep humanity and to Caan’s transcendent performance.


Manohla Dargis has been the co-chief film critic of The Times since 2004. She started writing about movies professionally in 1987 while earning her M.A. in cinema studies at New York University, and her work has been anthologized in several books. @manohladargis

MY FAVOURITE CAAN FILM

 

FINISH KXL INSTEAD

Biden Administration Signals Support for Controversial Alaska Oil Project

The administration issued an environmental review that represents a key step toward starting the Willow project. Opponents say drilling would violate Biden’s pledge to rein in fossil fuels.

A ConocoPhillips test well in 2005 in the National Petroleum Reserve in Alaska.

Credit...Jim Wilson/The New York Times

By Lisa Friedman

New York Times
July 8, 2022

WASHINGTON — The Biden administration took a key step toward approving a huge oil drilling project in the North Slope of Alaska, angering environmental activists who said allowing it to go forward would make a mockery of President Biden’s climate-change promise to end new oil leases.

The ConocoPhillips project, known as Willow and located in the National Petroleum Reserve in Alaska, was initially approved under the Trump administration and was later supported by the Biden administration but was then was blocked by a judge who said the environmental review had not sufficiently considered its effects on climate change and wildlife.

On Friday, the Biden administration issued a new environmental analysis.

In that analysis, the Department of Interior said the multibillion-dollar plan would at its peak produce more than 180,000 barrels of crude oil a day and would emit at least 278 million metric tons of carbon dioxide emissions over its lifetime from the burning of the oil produced, as well as from construction and drilling activity at the site.

The oil company’s plan calls for five drill sites, a processing facility, hundreds of miles of pipelines, nearly 40 miles of new gravel roads, seven bridges, an airstrip and a gravel mine in a region that is home to polar bears, caribou and migratory birds. Project opponents have argued that the development would harm wildlife and produce dangerous new levels of greenhouse gases.

In a statement, the Interior Department said that the new analysis included several options, including a reduction in the number of drilling sites as well as an option for “no action” — or no drilling at all — and did not represent a final decision on the Willow project. The agency will take comments from the public for 45 days and is likely to make a final decision later this year.

The Biden Administration’s Environmental Agenda

President Biden is pushing stronger regulations, but faces a narrow path to achieving his goals in the fight against global warming.

Supreme Court Ruling: By limiting the Environmental Protection agency’s ability to regulate carbon emissions, the court made it much harder for the president to achieve his climate goals.

Nuclear Power: President Biden is among several political leaders who are taking a fresh look at nuclear energy, extending the life of existing reactors and building new ones.

Defining ‘Habitat’: The Biden administration is doing away with a Trump-era definition of the term that was at odds with the conservation purposes of the Endangered Species Act.

Electric Vehicles: The transportation secretary outlined proposed regulations that would require charging stations built with federal dollars to be located no more than 50 miles apart.

Sign up for the Climate Forward newsletter Your must-read guide to the climate crisis. Get it in your inbox.

Yet just by issuing the analysis, the Biden administration signaled its support for the project, opponents said. Willow is a priority for Senator Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, a moderate Republican who is frequently the most likely senator to break with her party and support Democratic appointees and some policy compromises.

Ms. Murkowski, in a statement, welcomed the move, calling it a “major announcement” and adding that she planned to hold the administration “accountable to their commitment to see this additional environmental review through so that construction can begin this winter.”

In a statement, ConocoPhillips said that the Willow project would “create employment opportunities for union labor and contribute local tax revenue that benefits communities on the North Slope, as well as significant state and federal tax revenue for many years.”

The announcement comes as Mr. Biden seeks to show voters that he is working to increase the domestic oil supply as prices surge in the wake of the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Just last week, the administration opened the door to more offshore oil and gas leasing in coastal waters over the next five years, all but ensuring significant new fossil fuel extraction.

Yet as a candidate, President Biden pledged to end new federal oil and gas leasing as he sought to assure younger voters and others concerned about climate change that he would pivot the country away from fossil fuels.

The burning of coal, oil and gas is responsible for putting vast amounts of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere, which is leading to dangerous increases in global temperatures.

“Totally furious that @DOI is one proforma step away from approving the ConocoPhillips Willow project,” Christy Goldfuss, the senior vice president for energy and environment policy at the Center for American Progress, a liberal think tank that is strongly supportive of the Biden administration, wrote on Twitter late Friday using the Department of the Interior’s initials.

“This oil and gas project will be a hub for development for DECADES in a place that climate change is rapidly MELTING,” she wrote.

Over the past 60 years, Alaska has warmed more than twice as fast as the rest of the United States. Arctic ecosystems are in disarray, sea ice is disappearing, sea levels are rising, and the ground is thawing. At one point, ConocoPhillips announced plans to install “chillers” into the permafrost — which is melting because of climate change — to keep it solid enough to support the equipment to drill for oil.

The federal judge who last year blocked the project, Sharon L. Gleason of the United States District Court for Alaska, had sent the decision back to the government to redo. There was no deadline for the Biden administration to reissue a new analysis.

The Willow project is in the northeastern portion of the National Petroleum Reserve-Alaska, an area the federal government set aside for oil and gas development. The initial discovery of oil in the Willow area was made by ConocoPhillips Alaska in 2017, and the company has said the project is expected to create more than 1,000 jobs during peak construction and more than 400 permanent jobs.

The new analysis includes a new alternative that Interior Department officials said would reduce the potential size of the project by removing two of the five proposed drill sites from consideration, including the elimination of the northernmost proposed drill site and associated infrastructure in the Teshekpuk Lake Special Area, important calving grounds for the Teshekpuk Lake caribou herd.

That alternative produces only slightly fewer emissions — 278 million metric tons of carbon dioxide emissions equivalent over the project’s 30-year lifetime — than ConocoPhillips’ preferred plan. According to the analysis, the oil company’s plan would create 284 million metric tons of emissions.

Lisa Friedman reports on federal climate and environmental policy from Washington. She has broken multiple stories about the Trump administration’s efforts to repeal climate change regulations and limit the use of science in policymaking. @LFFriedman

Suncor replaces CEO Mark Little after fatality at oil sands mine

Robert Tuttle, Bloomberg News

Suncor Energy Inc.’s chief executive officer stepped down on Friday after a series of fatalities at the company’s oil sands sites shook confidence in its management. 

Mark Little agreed to step down as president and CEO and resign from the board of directors “effective immediately,” the company said in a release. Kris Smith, executive vice president for downstream, has been named interim CEO.

Little’s resignation came a day after a worker was killed at Suncor’s Base Plant mine in northern Alberta, the latest in a series of accidents that has prompted calls for change. 

“Suncor is committed to achieving safety and operational excellence across our business, and we must acknowledge where we have fallen short and recognize the critical need for change,” Board Chair Michael Wilson said in the release.

In April, Suncor investor Elliott Investment Management LP called for five directors to be added to the producer’s board and sought a management review after operational mishaps and accidents at its oil-sands projects caused the company to miss production targets. Elliot Investment said in an email Friday that it had no comment. 

A truck accident in January killed a contractor and injured two others at the Base Plant mine. In June of last year, a person was killed at the Syncrude mine, and two deaths occurred in December 2020 at the Fort Hills mine. 

Suncor’s safety record has been a contributing factor to its poor investment returns. Over the past two years, the company’s share price has risen less than the four other major Canadian oil sands producers Cenovus Energy Inc., Canadian Natural Resources Ltd., Imperial Oil Ltd. and MEG Energy Corp.

Suncor’s board has formed a committee to carry out a global search for the next CEO, the company said. External and internal candidates will be considered for the role.

Little took over leadership of the Canadian energy giant three years ago, replacing Steve Williams. He steered the company through the pandemic, when oil demand collapsed and West Texas Intermediate futures prices briefly went negative. 

Covid-19 also posed unique operational challenges for oil sands producers such as Suncor, which struggled to stem the rapid spread of the virus among thousands of workers often living and working in close quarters in remote camps. 

Little also tried to improve his company’s image within the investment community by focusing, along with other oil sands producers, on reducing the industry’s carbon emissions.

Washington is on the clock as WNBA star Brittney Griner languishes in Russian custody

Fri, July 8, 2022 

WNBA star and two-time Olympic gold medallist Brittney Griner is escorted to a courtroom for a hearing, in Kimki, Russia, on Thursday. Griner faces up to 10 years in prison after pleading guilty to drug possession charges. (Alexander Zemlianichenko/The Associated Press - image credit)

This is a column by Morgan Campbell, who writes opinion for CBC Sports. For more information about CBC's Opinion section, please see the FAQ.

It's a point of fact that Brittney Griner is guilty of the drug charges levelled against her in Russia.

The WNBA star and two-time Olympic Gold medallist has spent every day since Feb. 17 in pretrial custody after Russian authorities found a small quantity of cannabis oil in her luggage at the Moscow Airport. Her trial was set to start this week, but instead the 31-year-old all-star power forward entered a guilty plea, and hinted at an explanation while requesting clemency from the famously austere Russian legal system.

"There was no intent," Griner reportedly told a Russian judge while entering her plea. "I didn't want to break the law."

Her lawyer, Alexander Boikov, explained that she had packed her suitcase in a hurry, and accidentally brought along the tainted cartridge.

It's also a point of common sense that Griner, who plays with UMMC Ekaterinburg during the WNBA off-season, is a pawn, caught between Russia and the U.S. during a particularly tense time in the relationship between the two superpowers. Even if Griner actually did what Russian authorities alleged, we should look skeptically at everything they're telling us.

Griner was charged with importing a "significant amount" of drugs into Russia. The cartridge in question contained 0.7 grams of cannabis.

WATCH | WNBA star Brittney Griner faces 10 years in prison fro drug charges in Russia:

This is the charge and the allegation Russia expects the rest of us to reconcile? A decade in a prison colony for a quantity of drugs that clearly qualifies as "for personal use"?

To paraphrase the old saying, many of us following Griner's case were born at night, but we weren't born last night. Russian cops could have charged Griner with something more in line with her alleged offence, threatened her with the local equivalent of a light sanction and moved on. But they pressed ahead with a process that defies any sense of proportion between potential punishment and alleged crime, while conveniently putting the U.S. in a sticky diplomatic position.

So where to from here?

U.S. president Joe Biden's administration said in a statement released earlier this week it will "pursue every avenue to bring Brittney home." But if those avenues don't lead to a prisoner swap that brings Griner home quickly, what are we even doing?

To recap, the Russian government has reportedly proposed freeing Griner in exchange for Viktor Bout, a convicted arms dealer, nicknamed "The Merchant of Death," currently serving 25 years in federal prison. Given Bout's resumé, any apprehension U.S. officials feel about a straight-up trade is understandable. Bout sold actual weapons that can kill and maim actual people. Griner had a little hash. Not even the most prudish anti-cannabis crusader would put those two offences in the same league.

Once released from prison, Bout might slide back into his old networks, old habits and old crimes.

Griner? She would — likely, hopefully — work her way back into a lead role in the WNBA, where she was named an honourary All-Star starter on Thursday morning.

WATCH | Brittney Griner won't get fair trial, expert says:

So if the Biden administration isn't already on the phone trying to arrange a swap, maybe they've deduced, reasonably, that the two people involved aren't of equal value. Maybe exchanging the wrongfully-detained Griner for the justifiably-imprisoned Bout looks like a win for a Russian regime that's been dealing in bad faith ever since Griner was first hauled into custody.

But the Russians also win if the U.S. lets her languish in custody.

The U.S. basketball community gets it, which is why they've worked so hard to keep Griner in the spotlight this season. Every WNBA player's jersey is adorned with a patch bearing Griner's number 42. Earlier this month, Dawn Staley, head coach of the women's team at the University of South Carolina, added a pointed Twitter message at President Biden to her long series of public statements in support of Griner.

"#FreeBrittneyGriner 138 days our friends and sister @brittneygriner has been wrongfully detained in a Russia prison," Staley tweeted. "@POTUS can you please read her recent cry to you and prioritize as if she was one of your kids…please."

Russian authorities, predictably, aren't impressed. Earlier this week, a Russian diplomat named Sergei A. Ryabkov accused the White House, along with Griner's supporters, of "fomenting hype," hoping to sway judicial opinion.

"The American side's attempts to … make noise in the public environment are understandable," Ryabkov told reporters in Russia. "But they don't help to practically resolve issues."

But the initial publicity, stirred up by Griner's supporters, wasn't for Russia's benefit. If the will of the American people could sway the Russian regime's behaviour, Vladimir Putin would never have sent troops into Ukraine, or co-signed on to the country's widespread interference in the 2016 U.S. presidential election.

@NBA/Twitter

That activism has always been aimed at a domestic audience. To raise awareness among sports fans that an elite American athlete is facing 10 years in prison for a crime that might trigger a fine in North America. To signal to the public that the quiet diplomacy U.S. officials pursued in the weeks immediately after Griner's arrest hadn't budged the Russians. And to jolt the U.S. government into action.

In late June, the U.S. Embassy in Moscow tried to arrange a phone call between Griner and her wife, Cherrelle. It would have been their first conversation since Griner's arrest, but the call dropped and they never spoke. A technical glitch, for sure, but hardly a sign that U.S. diplomats were treating this case with the urgency it deserved.

Public pressure isn't a miracle cure, but it helps in general, and has been useful in keeping Griner's plight front-of-mind.

Still, there's the process.

Russia wants to swap prisoners but has made clear it wouldn't negotiate until Griner's court case was settled. Griner and her lawyers could have undertaken a long and costly trial, but in a country where the odds of an acquittal are even more remote than they are in the U.S., fighting this case likely looked like a waste of several weeks and countless dollars. If a conviction was inevitable, a guilty plea serves the same purpose in less time, and fast-forwards us to this point.

Which point?

The point where the U.S. can call Russia's bluff, because they also have something Russia wants. If Bout is that valuable, Moscow can hand Griner over so she can recover from this trauma, rebuild her life, her marriage, and, hopefully, her basketball career.

We in the sports media like the idea of a trade. We understand those deals. We speak that language.

But it's also a little like a draft.

And Washington is on the clock.

‘We're with you’: Megan Rapinoe to Brittney Griner l ABCNL

 

ABC News’ Gio Benitez spoke with soccer star Megan Rapinoe about receiving the Presidential Medal of Freedom, Brittney Griner’s detainment, and her fiance Sue Bird's WNBA retirement.

Opinion | Take the Deal: Brittney Griner in Exchange for the ‘Merchant of Death’

Viktor Bout is responsible for unspeakable atrocities. But at this point, it’s not worth keeping him imprisoned if Biden can secure an innocent’s freedom.


In February 2022, Brittney Griner, the legendary WNBA basketball player,

 was arrested in Moscow for allegedly having illegal vape cartridges. 

| Mike Mattina/Getty Images


Opinion by DOUGLAS FARAH
07/08/2022 0
Douglas Farah is president of IBI Consultants, LLC, and co-author of Merchant of Death: Money, Guns, Planes and the Man Who Makes War Possible.

In November 2011, the notorious Russian weapons trafficker Viktor Bout was sentenced by a New York court to 25 years in prison for his crimes. In February 2022, Brittney Griner, the legendary WNBA basketball player, was arrested in Moscow for allegedly having illegal vape cartridges. Now Russia is reportedly asking for an exchange — the Merchant of Death for the All-Star.

Bout provided tons of guns and ammunition to some of the most vicious warlords in the world and empowered them to carry out unspeakable atrocities. He is responsible for enabling murderous groups to kidnap and train thousands of child soldiers; use rape as a systematic method of terror and control; torture through the mass amputations of arms, legs, ears and lips; slaughter civilians, and help the Taliban take power in Afghanistan. Griner may have been carrying vape cartridges that were banned in Russia but not in much of the world.

There is no parity in the negotiations or symmetry in the lives or actions of the two potential protagonists. But President Joe Biden should take the deal.

I covered the wars and victims of Bout’s weapons trade in Sierra Leone, Liberia and Democratic Republic of Congo as a correspondent for the Washington Post. The Nicolas Cage movie “Lord of War” was loosely based on Bout, and I co-wrote with Stephen Braun a non-fiction account of the savagery he enabled. There are no words to describe the human toll of Bout’s activities on thousands of people, from the armless child amputees in refugee camps to the scorched rural hamlets burned to the ground by marauding children traumatized into killing their own families.

White House on Brittney Griner: Using ‘everything in our disposal’ to bring her home

Bout ran an aviation and weapons empire from the fall of the Soviet Union until his arrest in Thailand in 2008. He built his business by ferrying lethal weapons by the ton to buyers in exchange for cash, diamonds and timber. He was acting, his brother said, as merely a taxi service — a chauffeur with no responsibility to know the contents of the passenger’s baggage he was carrying. But he knew exactly what he was doing.

In addition to arming the worst sectors of humanity, Bout made a fortune flying for the U.S. military in Iraq during the war there. Ultimately, he was arrested while attempting to sell weapons to undercover Drug Enforcement Administration informants posing as buyers for Colombia’s notorious FARC guerrillas. In the meeting before his arrest, Bout offered an array of sophisticated weapons, helpfully adding they could be used to kill U.S. military advisers in Colombia.

Griner, in contrast, was in Russia to play professional basketball just before Vladimir Putin launched his invasion of Ukraine. Having proven herself to be one of the best players of all time, the ill-fated timing of her trip transformed her into a terrified young woman illegally detained in brutal conditions for what at best would be a minor misdemeanor. And a pawn that the Russians immediately recognized the value of. (Griner pleaded guilty on Thursday to carrying cannabis oil, but her ultimate fate remains unclear.)

Brittney Griner pleads guilty in Russia drugs trial, Russian media reports

So why even consider the potential offer? First, Bout is a spent force who will be out of jail in a few years anyway. His business depended on personal relationships and trust among the parties. After being out of the business for more than a decade, Bout has neither of those left in the shadowy world in which he once operated. Second, Bout needed access to a global network stretching from Afghanistan to Europe, Africa and South America. That network has morphed through several generations of new actors, markets and gatekeepers. Bout has no currency in that world now.

Finally, Bout depended in the early years on the gross negligence of the former Soviet states to allow him to simply fly out aircraft and weapons in a spree of de facto privatization of one of the world’s most advanced arsenals. In his later years, he was reined in by the Russian state under Putin, no longer able to freelance at will and without unfettered access to massive caches of weapons. It is unlikely he would have any freedom of movement in the weapons trade unless he was in the direct service of the Russian intelligence services, and now he is burned beyond the ability to be useful in any significant capacity.

Many of those who carried out the operation to end Bout’s ability to enable crimes against humanity will not agree with me. The hunt for Bout was long and arduous, and the operation that led to his arrest was the stuff of the best spy thrillers. The diplomatic and Department of Justice efforts to get Bout to the U.S. to stand trial were a testament to how a whole of government approach can work when done well. And the trial showed the world at least a small piece of who Bout is and the monstrous nature of his crimes.

There should be no mercy for Bout and only his victims could offer forgiveness. But there is now a chance for an act of compassion for an innocent life; his low-risk release would be a fitting finale for someone who has caused so much harm. Bout has already lost what he most valued — his ability to move freely across the globe and act with impunity as an agent of chaos in the service of his Russian handlers and his own interests. His freedom could not restore that, and he will be forever known as the Merchant of Death, a stain he will never be able to remove.

If Griner regains her freedom, she regains the family fighting for her release, a spouse working tirelessly on her behalf, and, I hope, her rightful place among the basketball pantheon of great players. It may not be perfect justice, but it’s a closer version of it than having an innocent person wrongfully imprisoned simply to confine a guilty person who can no longer inflict much more damage.

Who is Brittney Griner and why is her case causing waves in Washington and the Kremlin?

By Gabriel Rule

Experts say tensions between the US and Russia have made Brittney Griner's situation worse.

(AP Photo: Alexander Zemlianichenko)

US basketballer Brittney Griner has pleaded guilty to a drugs charge in a Russian court.

Ms Grinner says she had "no intent" to break the law, and has appealed directly to President Joe Biden to step-up US efforts to bring her home.

The current political climate — where the US has imposed sanctions against Russia after its military invasion of Ukraine — has seen her transformed from a lucrative sports star to a potential bargaining chip in President Vladimir Putin's conflict with the West.

At the moment Ms Griner is facing up to 10 years in prison.

Here's what we know.

Who is Brittney Griner?

At 205 centimetres tall and with two Olympic gold medals under her belt, Ms Griner — or "BG" as she is known to basketball fans — is one of the most recognisable figures in American basketball. Currently, she plays centre in for Phoenix Mercury.

She's also a fierce advocate for LGBT rights.

Basketball journalist and author Tamryn Spruill said Ms Griner was an "icon" of the game whose openness about her sexuality had prompted lasting improvements in the sport's treatment of LGBT players.

Brittney Griner played for the US team at the 2020 Tokyo Olympics.(Reuters: Sergio Perez)

What happened to her?

For the past seven years, Ms Griner has flown to Russia during the US Women's National Basketball Association's (WNBA) off-season to play for a Russian team, which usually made her an additional $US1 million ($1.36 million) per season.

Earlier this year, she made her now annual trip overseas in search of her pay cheque. However, her trip didn't go as planned.

On March 6, Russian Customs officials said they had detained an athlete who arrived at Moscow's Sheremetyevo airport on a flight from New York on February 17.

The agency released a video showing what it said was a security screening of a "US citizen, two-times Olympic basketball champion".

It was Ms Griner.

In a statement, the Russians claimed vape cartridges containing "liquid with hashish oil", a substance illegal in Russia, were found in her luggage and that a criminal case had been opened. Ms Griner has been held in custody ever since.

Since then she's pleaded with Mr Biden to secure her release. She's even sent him a handwritten note.

"As I sit here in a Russian prison, alone with my thoughts and without the protection of my wife, family, friends, Olympic jersey, or any accomplishments, I'm terrified I might be here forever," she wrote in the letter.


"I realise you are dealing with so much, but please don't forget about me and the other American detainees. Please do all you can to bring us home".

Mr Biden said he was doing "everything in his power" to bring Ms Griner home.

Ms Griner faced a Russian court on July 6.

"I'd like to plead guilty, your honour," she told the judge.


"But there was no intent. I didn't want to break the law."
Why is this an international issue?

It's all about timing.

The Russians say Ms Griner was arrested less than a week before Russia invaded Ukraine, when tensions between Moscow and Washington reached boiling point. The US had imposed sweeping sanctions on Moscow, and Russia had raised the spectre of nuclear war as American weapons flooded into Ukraine.

Some experts are worried Ms Griner is now caught in a much broader geopolitical battle.

The fear is she might be a "pawn" for the Kremlin in a new cold war.

"It is an extremely serious situation," Tom Firestone — a Washington-based lawyer who spent eight years working for the Department of Justice at the US embassy in Moscow — told the ABC.

"The current political situation makes her situation much worse."

Mr Firestone said he was not sure whether Ms Griner's arrest was connected to the situation in Ukraine, especially if, as the Russians say, it occurred on February 17, before Russia's invasion on February 24.

He also said the current political atmosphere meant Ms Griner could be treated differently than other detainees.

"That may get special attention from law enforcement. They may be more reluctant to negotiate a plea agreement with her, or to dismiss the case, because she's an American," he said.

 

Brittney Griner is escorted before a court hearing on July 7. 

(Reuters: Evgenia Novozhenina)

What happens next?

That's still murky.

The next court hearing has been scheduled for July 14, when Ms Griner is likely to testify.

There is talk of a potential prisoner swap between the Kremlin and the US, but a top Russian official indicated no steps could be taken until the case was complete.

The Russian Foreign Ministry has said Ms Griner could appeal her sentence or apply for clemency once a verdict has been delivered.

In the meantime, the Phoenix Mercury say "they love and support Brittney" and are most concerned about securing her safe return home.



US basketballer Brittney Griner pleads guilty to drugs charge in Russian court

WARMING UP FOR 2024
Trump calls for drug dealers to be executed,

HE AIN'T TALKING ABOUT PERDUE

 says 'elderly women are being raped' and 'children are being knife stabbed' in somber campaign speech in Las Vegas

The former president is at Treasure Island Hotel and Casino to promote Adam Laxalt for Senate and Joe Lombardo for governor in Nevada

His rally appearance got off to an awkward start as his opening tribute to late Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe was drowned out by 'God Bless The USA'

 
Trump is immediately following his Las Vegas rally with an event in Alaska

There, he will campaign for former Alaska Governor Sarah Palin's House bid and Senate candidate Kelly Tshibaka's effort to primary Lisa Murkowski

By ELIZABETH ELKIND, POLITICS REPORTER FOR DAILYMAIL.COM
PUBLISHED: 8 July 2022

Donald Trump suggested convicted drug dealers should get the death penalty during a somber-toned speech in Las Vegas on Friday night.

He also revealed his former lawyer Rudy Giuliani is in the hospital with a 'heart problem' just days after being subpoenaed in Georgia prosecutors' election fraud investigation in Fulton County.

The former New York City mayor is 'getting well,' Trump said, adding: 'Can you believe it? What they put Rudy through.'

Speaking with his hands clenched firming on the podium, the ex-president called the United States a 'failing nation,' citing rising crime rates in big cities and a surge of migrants at the southern border.

He also painted a dark picture of rising crime in US cities, claiming 'elderly women are being raped' and children are being wantonly slaughtered in an unusually grim tone.

'To put it simply, we are a nation in decline. We are a failing nation,' Trump said.

'Our country has been knocked to its knees, humiliated before the world, yet we presume to lecture other people in other countries on their democracies.'

He followed with a statement that appeared at first to tease a 2024 bid.

'So this is a little controversial. And I will either get a standing ovation - and I don't care about the ovation, I care about the country - or people are going to walk out of the room for what I'm about to say. But it's time finally to say it,' the former president said.

'If you look at countries through all throughout the world...The only ones that don't have a drug problem are those that institute the death penalty for drug dealers.'

He added, 'They're the only ones they don't have any problem.'

The former president gave an unusually dark speech where he described 'blood' flowing in the streets of Democrat-run cities


Former President Trump is speaking at Treasure Island Hotel and Casino in Las Vegas
Trump says 'the Republican party, we proudly back the Blue'

'We just want to have, it's very simple, a great country again. And we have to have a safe country.'

Describing what he believes is the toll of rising crime in unusually dark detail, Trump claimed Democrat-run cities were full of rape and murder crimes. He was also quick to blame President Joe Biden's policies for fueling the wave of violence.

'The blood of these victims is almost exclusively in these Democrat strongholds. Babies are being killed, elderly women are being shot in the face and being raped,' Trump said.

'Elderly women are being raped. Children are being knife stabbed and disfigured. As a candidate, Joe Biden helped led his party's vile campaign against our police officers ,and then he carried the rioters' agenda straight into the White House.'

Trump opened his rally with a video montage that began with clips that falsely suggested defunding the police is a goal for mainstream national Democrats.

It ends with hopeful, cinematic music and Trump promising: 'We will succeed.'

But his rally appearance got off to an awkward start as the former president began with a tribute to recently assassinated ex-Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe - but was drowned out by his intro song, Lee Greenwood's 'God Bless the USA.'

 


Trump said his former lawyer Rudy Giuliani is in the hospital with a 'heart problem' days after he was subpoenaed by Georgia prosecutors in their ongoing election fraud probe

DISINFORMATION; GIULIANI IS HEARTLESS

Republicans see Nevada as rife with vulnerable blue seats that they can flip in the upcoming midterms.

Trump is in Las Vegas to campaign for Adam Laxalt, the former Nevada Attorney General who’s now running to unseat Democrat Senator Catherine Cortez Masto in November.

He’s also stumping for Nevada gubernatorial candidate Joe Lombardo. Lombardo, sheriff of Clark County, clinched the Republican nomination with Trump’s backing and is now set to face incumbent Democrat governor Steve Sisolak.

Both races are considered toss-ups. Lombardo is narrowly trailing Sisolak by just over two points in FiveThirtyEight’s polling average.

A Change Research poll from late June shows Cortez Masto holding onto a small three-percent lead.

Trump is immediately following his Las Vegas speech with a Save America rally in Alaska on Saturday.


It's the former president's first of two back-to-back rallies this weekend. He is speaking in Alaska on Saturday

Republican Nevada Senate candidate Adam Laxalt (3L) speaks on a panel discussion at a "America First Agenda" rally where former US President Donald Trump is slated to speak in Las Vegas, Nevada, July 8

There, the ex-president is whipping up support for Republican Senate candidate Kelly Tshibaka and House candidate Sarah Palin, Alaska’s former governor and a one-time vice presidential nominee.

While Palin is running to fill the seat of late longtime Rep. Don Young, who died this year, Tshibaka is looking to take down incumbent Senator Lisa Murkowski.

Murkowski is a fellow Republican who infuriated Trump by voting to convict him in his second impeachment trial.

The high-profile primary race will take place on August 16.

Trump’s back-to-back campaign appearances come on the heels of multiple reports that he’s looking to announce another presidential bid soon, as the House of Representatives’ January 6 committee investigation closes in on his current and former allies.

And in yet another hint that the former president wants to run for the White House in 2024, he announced on Wednesday night that his iconic ‘Trump Force One’ plane is back in service after being nearly unused since he took office in 2017.

The Boeing 757 jet was Trump’s favored method of transport during his 2016 presidential campaign.

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Elon Musk pulling out of $44 billion Twitter deal

Twitter says it will sue Musk to complete merger

Darren Lyn |09.07.2022


HOUSTON, Texas



Tesla CEO Elon Musk announced Friday that he is pulling out of his $44 billion deal to buy Twitter.

“Mr. Musk is terminating the Merger Agreement because Twitter is in material breach of multiple provisions of that Agreement,” Musk’s attorney Mike Ringler said in a Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) letter dated July 8.

“(Twitter) appears to have made false and misleading representations upon which Mr. Musk relied when entering into the Merger Agreement, and is likely to suffer a Company Material Adverse Effect,” it said.

The termination cited a lack of information on bot accounts.

“For nearly two months, Mr. Musk has sought the data and information necessary to ‘make an independent assessment of the prevalence of fake or spam accounts on Twitter’s platform,’” the letter goes on to say. “This information is fundamental to Twitter’s business and financial performance and is necessary to consummate the transactions contemplated by the Merger Agreement.”

“Twitter has failed or refused to provide this information,” Ringler said in the SEC filing. “Sometimes Twitter has ignored Mr. Musk’s requests, sometimes it has rejected them for reasons that appear to be unjustified, and sometimes it has claimed to comply while giving Mr. Musk incomplete or unusable information.”

Twitter’s chairman Bret Taylor sent out a tweet following Musk’s announcement.

“The Twitter Board is committed to closing the transaction on the price and terms agreed upon with Mr. Musk and plans to pursue legal action to enforce the merger agreement,” said Taylor. “We are confident we will prevail in the Delaware Court of Chancery.”

Depending on what the court decides, technically, under an acquisition agreement with Twitter, Musk at the very least is on the hook for a $1 billion termination fee if the deal is not completed.

Leading up to his unsolicited April 14 offer to buy the social media platform for $54.20 per share, Musk was a sharp critic of Twitter’s message-posting practices and described the platform as an important forum for free speech.

Twitter Reportedly Tells Employees Not to Post About Deal With Elon Musk

Tesla's CEO is trying to put an end to his agreement to buy Twitter for $44 billion. Twitter tells employees not to say anything.


Ian Sherr
July 8, 2022

Elon Musk is trying to pull out of his deal to buy Twitter for $44 billion.
Sarah Tew/CNET

Elon Musk is known as the bombastic CEO of Tesla and SpaceX, who constantly tweets seemingly everything on his mind. Twitter employees, though, are being asked to keep their hands off their own "tweet" buttons after he sent a letter informing the company he wanted to back out of his planned $44 billion takeover.

In a memo reportedly sent to employees Friday by Sean Edgett, Twitter's general counsel, the company said they should refrain from "Tweeting, Slacking or sharing any commentary about the merger agreement."

"We will continue to share information when we are able, but please know we are going to be very limited on what we can share in the meantime," he added, according to a copy of the memo published earlier by The Verge. "I know this is an uncertain time, and we appreciate your patience and ongoing commitment to the important work we have underway." A Twitter spokeswoman declined to comment.

Read more: Elon Musk Doesn't Want to Buy Twitter Anymore: What You Need to Know

In any normal time, this letter would be perfunctory, barely worth a mention. But in the age of social media, and specifically when it comes to Musk and Twitter, it takes on heightened significance. Twitter employees have increasingly been outspoken as Musk has attacked them, their work and their company over everything from content moderation to how it makes money.

Read more: Elon Musk Pulls Out of $44B Deal to Buy Twitter

Now that Twitter's board of directors has vowed to pursue legal action to enforce Musk's $44 billion offer, embarrassing company communications could become wrapped up in the suit.

Musk in the meantime hasn't tweeted since his letter backing out of the deal was published with the Securities and Exchange Commission Friday. His last tweet, on Thursday, was about his excitement over product development at Tesla.

'Don't let the door hit you': Elon Musk wants out of Twitter deal

Brett Wilkins,

 Common Dreams
July 08, 2022

Shutterstock.

Mega-billionaire Elon Musk, the world's richest person, on Friday officially moved to pull out of his bid to buy Twitter, claiming he was bailing on the $44 billion deal because the social media giant made "false and misleading claims" during negotiations and was in "material breach of multiple provisions" of the agreement.

"For nearly two months, Mr. Musk has sought the data and information necessary to 'make an independent assessment of the prevalence of fake or spam accounts on Twitter’s platform,'" Musk's team explained in a court filing. "Twitter has failed or refused to provide this information."

Response to the breaking news included rebuke from progressives like Rep. Chuy García (D-Ill.) who tweeted, "Hey Elon Musk, don't let the door hit you on your way out."

Musk had secured about $25 billion in debt financing tied to his stock in Tesla, where he is CEO. His withdrawal from the deal sets the stage for a lengthy legal battle with the tech titan.

"Elon Musk lost $70 billion this year. The market tanked, his sexual misconduct cost him billions, and he had to sell 10 million shares in his company to afford Twitter," political and communications strategist Sawyer Hackett tweeted. "Now Twitter is going to take him to court for reneging on the deal and will take even more."

Digital rights campaigners, media critics, and even public health experts had warned that the purchase of Twitter by Musk posed a direct threat to democracy and the common good by placing the highly influential social media platform—which is used by hundreds of millions of people worldwide—under the control of one man.

"From the outset, Elon Musk's attempt to take over Twitter was about advancing his own red-pilled ideological agenda. He was explicit about his intentions, which is why right-wing extremists celebrated the news," Angelo Carusone, president of the watchdog Media Matters for America, said in a statement. "If Musk was to acquire Twitter and follow through with even a fraction of what he had promised to do, Twitter would become a supercharged engine of radicalization."

"With the announcement today that Musk is bailing on the deal, this dark future is now one step closer to being prevented," Carusone added. "Despite what Musk may claim, this deal isn't ending because of Twitter bots or spam accounts. This deal is collapsing because of Elon Musk's own erratic behavior, embrace of extremists, and bad business decisions."

The Verge reports:
Twitter has gone to great lengths to show compliance with Musk's requests. In early June, the company opened up 'firehose' access to its service so that Musk could receive and analyze every tweet as it's posted. The company has also continuously tried to reassure the public that it has spam and bots under control. On Thursday, it told press that it was blocking over a million spam accounts per day, and in May its CEO wrote a long thread about how Twitter determines how many of its users are bots.
It's incumbent that Musk prove that Twitter has breached their agreement, as he can't just pull out the signed agreement because he feels like it. The deal was a potentially lucrative one for Twitter shareholders, offering $54.20 per share, up from the $36.81 it closed at today. There's also $1 billion on the line as a breakup fee that will be paid by the party at fault.


Reaction by Twitter employees was mixed, with one worker telling NBC News: "I guess it feels like we won. But it feels like the end of the movie, where the characters are bloodied and bedraggled with a Michael Bay explosion behind them. We could see this was coming, but in the meantime, he's fucking destroyed the company."

Elon Musk mocked for Twitter takeover flop: ‘literally the funniest thing in the history of corporate law’

Bob Brigham
July 08, 2022

The world's richest man was widely ridiculed on Friday after he attempted to end his attempt to take over Twitter.

"Elon Musk is terminating his $44 billion deal to buy Twitter, according to a filing the billionaire made with the Securities and Exchange Commission Friday," The Washington Post reported. "But legal experts say Musk can’t just walk away from the deal. His April agreement to buy the company included a commitment to go through with the acquisition unless there’s a major change to the business, and legal experts say nothing has happened to meet that threshold."

The situation immediately generated a great deal of commentary on the social networking platform.

"Billionaire puts money first, and it was never actually about 'free speech.' Who could have seen this coming?" asked MSNBC chief legal correspondent Ari Melber.

Attorney Dean Obeidallah wrote, "That sobbing is all the white supremacists, Neo-Nazis and other bigots who were counting on Elon to let them back on so they could help their beloved Donald Trump. Bye Bye Nazis!"

But Bret Taylor, the chairman of Twitter's board of directors, says the company will stick to the deal struck with Musk

"The Twitter Board is committed to closing the transaction on the price and terms agreed upon with Mr. Musk and plans to pursue legal action to enforce the merger agreement. We are confident we will prevail in the Delaware Court of Chancery," he wrote.

Here's what others were saying:

 

 

Trump touts Elon Musk's Twitter takeover tumult: 'LONG LIVE THE 'TRUTH''

Bob Brigham
July 08, 2022

Donald Trump celebrated the chaos as billionaire Elon Musk attempts to pull out of his deal to buy Twitter, the social media platform that the former president loved until his account was permanently suspended two days after the Jan. 6 Capitol attack "due to the risk of further incitement of violence."

"Elon Musk announced Friday that he will abandon his tumultuous $44 billion offer to buy Twitter after the company failed to provide enough information about the number of fake accounts. Twitter immediately fired back, saying it would sue the Tesla CEO to uphold the deal," The Washington Post reported. "The likely unraveling of the acquisition was just the latest twist in a saga between the world’s richest man and one of the most influential social media platforms, and it may portend a titanic legal battle ahead."

Trump seemed to think it would be good news for his Truth Social clone of Twitter.

"THE TWITTER DEAL IS DEAD, LONG LIVE THE 'TRUTH,'” Trump posted.

While the deal may help Trump financially, it may harm his expected 2024 comeback attempt.

"Musk not buying Twitter is big for the 2024 election. He surely would have reinstated Trump's Twitter. Trump not having Twitter deprives him of a critical megaphone that was really important for him," Touré noted.

On the day of the Jan. 6 attack, Trump had 88.6 million followers on Twitter, he currently has 3.4 million followers on Truth Social.