Revealed: How ‘abortion pill reversal’ originating in the US has spread to Russia


openDemocracy’s work prompts Russian health ministry to discuss the dangers of unproven treatment backed by US Christian conservatives


Tatev HovhannisyanLiza Velyaminova
17 December 2021, 10.37am

Illustration: Inge Snip. All rights reserved

Russia’s health ministry has agreed for the first time to consider the dangers of a controversial ‘abortion reversal’ treatment, after openDemocracy revealed that it had spread into the country from the US.

The commitment came after we went undercover to show how easily the ‘treatment’ known as ‘abortion pill reversal’ (APR), developed and promoted by conservative Christian groups in the West, could be obtained in Russia – despite international health warnings against the procedure.

Russian women’s rights campaigners hope that “urgent concrete actions” will follow the response of the health ministry. Although Russia has one of the world’s most liberal abortion laws, last year President Vladimir Putin ordered the government to step up efforts to prevent abortion. “However, the ministry's reaction means that there are still officials among them who think about women’s health,” Alena Popova, human rights activist and founder of the Ethics and Technology think tank, told openDemocracy.

APR was first developed by a controversial Californian GP who now works as an adviser for the religious anti-abortion US charity Heartbeat International. It is an unproven procedure that supposedly halts and reverses the effect of a medical (rather than a surgical) abortion. It involves taking huge doses of the hormone progesterone, after having taken the first (mifepristone) of two pills used in a medical abortion.

But the only trial into APR, in the US in 2019, was halted after some participants ended up in hospital with severe bleeding.

What’s more, experts also doubt APR’s efficacy, explaining that most medical abortions do not work if the second abortion pill (misoprostol) is not taken. Anti-abortion doctors administer APR after the first abortion pill only – meaning that its supposed effects may be non-existent.

Undercover investigation

openDemocracy went undercover to investigate how ‘abortion pill reversal’ has spread to Russia. We contacted a 24-hour APR hotline run out of the US by Heartbeat International, who gave us information about Agari, a so-called “maternity home” in Russia.

We spoke to an American volunteer at Agari, who described it as a “shelter for immigrant women of Central Asia experiencing unplanned pregnancies”. She then directed us to their Russian “partner medical centre”, Agape, and also offered to cover the costs of APR treatment.

An online consultant at Agape said they would provide our reporter with an “abortion reversal” service.

The Heartbeat International hotline also gave us details of the Russian APR network, Peredumala.ru (Russian for ‘change my mind’), where a gynaecologist encouraged our reporter to take the “treatment” and claimed: “There is absolutely no harm from progesterone.”

When shown our evidence, the health ministry conceded the treatment was “controversial” and said it was being “discussed” internally.

Meanwhile, Russian politicians, doctors and human rights activists condemned the promotion of APR in Russia as “inhumane” and “very dangerous”.

“A doctor can’t guarantee that the pregnancy will proceed normally if a woman ‘reverses’ her abortion,” said Russian gynaecologist Olga Pustotina. For Russian women’s rights activist Zalina Marshenkulova, APR is “inhumane”.

Russia is using the most aggressive technologies of Western conservatives and anti-abortion fighters

“It can harm women and put their lives at risk,” Oxana Pushkina, a former Russian MP, told openDemocracy. She added: “Russia is using the most aggressive technologies of Western conservatives and anti-abortion fighters as a carbon copy.”

Popova from Ethics and Technology said that the spread of APR in Russia was connected to pressure “from pro-life organisations”: “They believe that the birth rate is more important than women’s health and the health of their children.”

In response to questions from openDemocracy, Heartbeat International said “the protocol used in the abortion pill reversal process is nothing new. [...] Progesterone has been used routinely and safely with pregnancy since the 1950s.”

“More than 2,500 lives have been saved thanks to the abortion pill reversal protocol,” the group claimed.

Growing APR network in Russia

Abortions are legal in Russia as an elective procedure, free of charge, up to the 12th week of pregnancy, and later under special circumstances. The country had the highest number of abortions per capita (37.4 per 1,000 women aged 15–44), according to data published in 2013 by the UN.

Now, almost 100 years after Soviet Russia became the first country in the world to legalise abortion, anti-abortion narratives are back.

President Putin is a well-known defender of “traditional values”. In October, Moscow joined the anti-abortion Geneva Consensus Declaration, initiated by the Donald Trump administration. On the same day, Republicans in the US Congress introduced resolutions insisting that there should be no international right to abortion.

According to articles on the websites of Pregnancy Help News (“powered by Heartbeat International”) and the National Catholic Register, Russia’s “growing” APR network is overseen by Dr. Alexey Fokin from St Petersburg, who promotes the method through Peredumala.ru, which he founded.

Fokin has been helping “reverse chemical abortions” for five years with the help of “three physicians and several registered nurses in multiple regions of Russia,” Pregnancy Help News claims.

Peredumala.ru encourages women to buy progesterone from a pharmacy, suggesting that they can avoid the need for a prescription by saying they were “told to buy it in the hospital”.

In 2017, Fokin founded Dve Poloski (Russian for ‘two lines’, in reference to a pregnancy test), a “regional public organisation […] to protect children, pregnant women and traditional family values.”

He is also linked to the website Postabort.ru, which provides references to books, articles, research and stories that describe the alleged negative psychological effects of abortion on women’s mental health.

Fokin described our findings as “absolutely stupid,” “mistakes” and “lies”, but did not comment more specifically.

The phone number for the APR hotline on Peredumala.ru is identical to the hotline listed on the website of the anti-abortion programme Spasi Zhizn (‘save a life’), where priests are listed as responders alongside doctors and lawyers. The programme was launched in 2017 by Za Zhizn! (‘for life’), a national ‘crisis pregnancy centre’ that is supported by the Russian Orthodox Church.

Za Zhizn! claims to “ensure the protection of children from conception to birth, approve traditional family values” and “solve demographic problems”. Its leader Sergey Chesnokov has called abortion “murder”. In 2017, he was told by President Putin: “What you are doing in terms of supporting pregnant women – to decide whether to leave a child or not – is absolutely right. […] I am ready to do everything in order to support you in this part of your work.”

MILITARY INDUSTRIAL COMPLEX

The Eternal Recurrence of Defense Contractor Price-Gouging

For the second time in three years, TransDigm has been caught ripping off the Pentagon for millions of dollars. Will there finally be some accountability?


BY DAVID DAYEN
DECEMBER 17, 2021

STAFF SGT. FRANK ROHRIG/U.S. AIR FORCE
U.S. Air Force F-16 Fighting Falcons fly in formation behind a KC-135 Stratotanker after aerial refueling, December 8, 2021.


Two years ago, the Defense Department’s inspector general released a report showing that TransDigm, a contractor that makes spare aviation and maritime parts, relentlessly ripped off the U.S. government in contracting negotiations. The IG found $16.1 million in overcharges on a sample of $29.7 million in contracts. After a contentious congressional hearing, TransDigm returned the money to the government.

That brings us to this week. The Pentagon IG released another report, looking at another sample of TransDigm contracts. This time, out of the $38.3 million in contracts, TransDigm received “excess profit” (defined as a profit margin above 15 percent) of $20.8 million. The IG again recommended that TransDigm return the money. TransDigm spokesperson Jaimie Stemen said the company is “reviewing” the audit report.

The future of military auditing, then, seems to be one of endless reports of endless TransDigm contracts showing endless rip-offs. “It’s pretty remarkable; we just scratched the surface with the initial $16 million,” said Rep. Ro Khanna (D-CA), who chaired the 2019 hearing on TransDigm in the House Oversight Committee and has been a leading critic of the company’s practices. “There’s nothing that angers the American public more than people making money on the backs of our military men and women who risk their lives in service. Arthur Miller wrote a whole play about it, All My Sons. Harry Truman ascended to the presidency because of his investigations into war profiteering.”

Khanna’s citations, going back 75 years, make clear that defense contractor swindling is an enduring feature of American life. In fact, this week’s IG report notes that it has issued nine other reports over the past 23 years that pinpoint the exact problem at issue in the TransDigm case, which allows them to mark up prices without government knowledge.

A majority of TransDigm’s net sales are derived from sole-source parts, where they are the only provider.

At a time of constant chatter about inflation, this is the enduring inflation story buried beneath the surface: consistent, outrageous charges on military equipment, inching up costs in the largest single line item in the U.S. budget. But in the report, the Pentagon reveals a novel solution to the TransDigm problem, which would involve taking them out of the supply chain entirely. Will the government finally exact some accountability for what they have painstakingly demonstrated as repeated fleecing?

TransDigm is a private equity–style firm with a business model of acquiring companies to corner the market on various spare parts. A majority of TransDigm’s net sales are derived from sole-source parts, where they are the only provider. Of the 107 TransDigm parts the IG studied, 94 of them were sole-source.

Sole-sourcing creates a sense of urgency among procurement officials. These spare parts keep planes in the air; they have to purchase them to continue operations. But TransDigm is the only supplier, and corporate-friendly contracting rules give the procurement officers no leverage to make a decent deal.

For contracts below a $2 million threshold (recently increased from $750,000 by the Truth in Negotiations Act, or TINA), contractors are not obligated to provide cost data (i.e., how much it actually costs to produce the parts) that officials can analyze to determine a fair and reasonable price. Procurement officials can ask contractors for cost data, but contractors are under no obligation to supply it. In the contracts studied, officials asked for cost data on 27 contracts; TransDigm provided that data for just two. In the vast majority of those other cases, TransDigm’s excess profit was well over 100 percent.

Without cost data, procurement officials are flying blind. They can use historical price comparisons, but if a company has been jacking up the price for years, those comparisons are ineffective; you’d just be comparing price-gouging to price-gouging. For example, the IG report looked at 46 TransDigm acquisitions of companies making spare parts. In 44 out of 46 cases, TransDigm immediately increased the price, as much as 247 percent in one case.

After the fact, the IG was able to obtain the cost data it needed from TransDigm, enabling the IG to see how much profit TransDigm was earning above a “reasonable” 15 percent level. Excess profits were found on 106 of the 107 spare parts studied. A contract for a check valve yielded a 1269.9 percent excess profit; a quick-disconnect coupling half earned 1697.7 percent. The highest markup was an astronomical 3850.6 percent.

“DoD will continue to pay higher prices on spare parts if contractors use market-based pricing in a sole-source environment when contract values are low and uncertified cost data is not provided,” the IG report states.

These spare parts will never add up to the cost of an F-35. More than 95 percent of TransDigm contracts in the time frame studied were under that TINA threshold, and the company works to keep it that way. In numerous cases, DOD had to buy the same parts from TransDigm over and over again. But while the Defense Logistics Agency (DLA) attempted to award multiyear or multipart contracts that would rise above the TINA threshold, TransDigm didn’t agree to the terms, preferring to fly below the radar.

TransDigm has taken issue with the report’s analysis. “TransDigm acted consistent with all laws and regulations, and in many other areas, the report contains flawed analysis and misleading conclusions,” spokesperson Jaimie Stemen told the Prospect.

Of course, this is what TransDigm said about the 2019 IG report, which it then tacitly acknowledged as accurate by repaying the $16.1 million. “Are they saying the men and women who serve in the Pentagon are biased?” Khanna asked. “There’s one institution in America that has public support, not Congress, not the White House or journalists. It’s the military. If you want to argue against the only institution with a 90 percent approval rating in America, go ahead.”

Khanna, who first became interested in TransDigm’s activities in 2017, told the Prospect that he is working with his staff on holding another Oversight Committee hearing about the company. He believes TransDigm should refund the additional $20.8 million in excess profits, issue an apology, and submit a plan to reform its practices.

But how many chances should TransDigm be given? How many reports need to come out about excess profits before the government says enough? Khanna said that “everything is on the table,” including removing TransDigm as a contractor, though he didn’t want to prejudge before a congressional inquiry.

The Defense Department submitted two legislative proposals last year mandating that procurement officials obtain cost data before negotiating a contract. Neither of them made it into the National Defense Authorization Act last year, or this year. Despite the Defense Department being relatively unquestioned on Capitol Hill, in this case the military is screaming for help from being continuously overcharged, and Congress gave them the brush-off.

Khanna chalked up the failure to the dearth of members who make procurement a high priority, though he promised to raise his colleagues’ awareness before next year’s NDAA comes before them. But the military is not inclined to wait. The IG revealed that the Defense Logistics Agency is working on two initiatives, both of which would be groundbreaking.

The first, a Reverse Engineering Initiative, would identify sole-source parts that the military can reverse engineer and make themselves, rather than relying on TransDigm and other price-gougers. Already, 394 aviation parts have been approved as candidates for reverse engineering. In a separate Strategic Supplier Alliance Initiative, DLA is encouraging 14 original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) to cancel their licensing agreements with TransDigm, and instead begin to manufacture the parts themselves.

It’s not every day in Washington that an agency announces a plan to engage in its own manufacturing. But it seems like the best way to deal with a monopoly, by encouraging competition, and the best way to deal with a rogue contractor, by cutting them out of the process. “It’s a drastic thing for DOD to call for; I haven’t seen it before,” Khanna said. “It should show that what TransDigm is doing is particularly egregious.”

Whether through legislation or the military just taking over production, there should be some urgency to avoid the need for another report in 2023, showing that TransDigm once again snookered the Defense Department for millions of dollars in markups. And another in 2025. And so on.


DAVID DAYEN
David Dayen is the Prospect’s executive editor. His work has appeared in The Intercept, The New Republic, HuffPost, The Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times, and more. His most recent book is ‘Monopolized: Life in the Age of Corporate Power.’

SEE 

LA REVUE GAUCHE - Left Comment: Search results for MILITARY INDUSTRIAL COMPLEX 

LA REVUE GAUCHE - Left Comment: Search results for PERMANENT ARMS ECONOMY 

Altercation: MSM Discovers Fox ‘News’ Isn’t News

Only 25 years after it became obvious

BY ERIC ALTERMAN
DECEMBER 17, 2021

MICHAEL BROCHSTEIN/SIPA USA VIA AP IMAGE
At a protest against Fox News outside the network’s New York offices, November 23, 2021


On the PBS NewsHour Tuesday night, anchor Judy Woodruff and NPR media correspondent David Folkenflik discussed the recent text messages sent by Fox News hosts to White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows during the January 6 violent insurrection. Woodruff wondered whether “in terms of what we knew about—we have known in the past they have spoken favorably of a former President Trump for years. But does this take it to a different level, do you think?” Folkenflik added, “And so I think that what you have here is a question of Fox News having that word ‘news’ appended to its name, but not operating like a news operation.”

I’ve been writing about Fox News since it first began broadcasting 25 years ago. The first story I remember had to do with the fact that New York’s then-mayor Rudy Giuliani, at the behest of Roger Ailes, used the power of his office to force Time Warner Cable to carry Fox in New York. It had originally been left off the dial and could not likely have survived without that market. That gives you a clue that maybe it was not a typical “news” station from moment one.

Those clues have been mounting on a daily basis ever since. I can’t count the number of times I’ve felt compelled, in different fora, to argue that what Fox does is not and has never been “news.” I think my clearest statement of this fact, and of the problem that everybody pretended that this was not case, came in a “Think Again” column I wrote in 2010 on the website of the Center for American Progress. 

The piece, headlined “Just What Exactly Is Fox News?” began with this:

Fox News Channel is often described as a cable news station. On occasion, the words “conservative” or “biased” are attached to that description. But few dispute the journalistic orientation of the overall enterprise.

This is a mistake. Fox is something new—something for which we do not yet have a word. It provides almost no actual journalism. Instead, it gives ideological guidance to the Republican Party and millions of its supporters, attacking its opponents and keeping its supporters in line. And it does so at a hefty profit, thereby turning itself into the political equivalent of a perpetual motion machine.

In the same column, I offered this (incomplete) thesis:

I’m not exactly sure what to call Fox. It has more in common with the integrated political/judicial/business/media empire that is making a mockery of Italian democracy under the rule of Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi than any American political or media machine of the past. And yet for a whole host of reasons, both financial and psychological, many in the media cannot admit this, thereby allowing Fox to benefit from the protections of journalism offered up by the First Amendment while simultaneously subverting their purpose.

I therefore have to chuckle quite a bit when someone like Jonah Goldberg writes that a reason he left Fox News after 13 years “was that I didn’t want to be complicit in so many lies.” How many lies was the right number, Jonah? A thousand? A million?

I can’t bear at this point to list all the times I’ve tried to make the point that “‘real’ journalists debase themselves and their profession by participating in the destructive and debilitating charade” of treating Fox “journalists” as their colleagues. Readers might recall that, at one point, the Obama administration tried to address Fox’s dishonesty by barring its officials from appearing on Fox’s Sunday shows. The administration was attacked—and Fox defended—by the likes of CNN’s Jake Tapper, and The Baltimore Sun’s David Zurawik, with assists from Maggie Haberman, the Times’ White House correspondent, NBC’s Jonathan Allen, the Associated Press’s Zeke Miller, and Politico’s Jack Shafer, and sadly, many, many others; thereby helping to enable Fox’s lies, and with them the systematic destruction of our democracy and our planet.

Now the curtain has been pulled back, and the wizard is naked before the world. Thanks to Liz Cheney’s dramatic reading of the text messages sent to Trump’s White House chief of staff by Laura Ingraham, Sean Hannity, and Brian Kilmeade, we have airtight evidence that not only are these Fox News hosts deliberately lying to their audience, they are acting as backstage players on the basis of what they know to be the truth.

What will now change? My guess is nothing. Fox will continue to make its owners, shareholders, and lying hosts richer and richer. Our democracy will continue to disintegrate, and our political reporters will forget all this and go back to focusing on the reporting that belongs on Page Six and The Sporting News.

And, oh yes, Chris Wallace will no longer be the “whataboutist” go-to for those who wish to pretend that Fox does any news at all. (I wonder what Fox pays out in nondisclosure agreements, given the fact that Wallace, Shepard Smith, and Juan Williams have all left so quietly.) Eric Boehlert has more on Wallace’s well-timed exit, so that I don’t have to think about it anymore.

DEFINE A CAPITALI$T STATE

Merrick Garland’s Department of Justice Is Perpetuating Climate Destruction

When the government’s lawyers defend fossil fuel interests, people and the planet pay the price.

BY DOROTHY SLATER, HANNAH STORY BROWN
DECEMBER 17, 2021

BRYAN OLIN DOZIER/NURPHOTO VIA AP
Environmental activists march to the U.S. Capitol on October 15, 2021, part of a week of protest actions to bring attention to climate change.

The Revolving Door Project, a Prospect partner, scrutinizes the executive branch and presidential power. Follow them at therevolvingdoorproject.org.

Anyone with an eye on the planet’s ticking clock should be growing frustrated with the Biden administration’s slow and sometimes backwards pace on climate action. It is increasingly difficult to assess whether the administration genuinely wants to address the climate crisis while being thwarted by political and judicial setbacks, or has simply decided that the planet’s livable future is worth auctioning off to the highest fossil fuel bidder.


Read more from the Revolving Door Project

Blame is not to be shared equally throughout the administration. The EPA is working on an ambitious new Clean Air Act rule to curb methane emissions, while the SEC has embarked on some promising climate financial risk assessments. But one of the biggest hindrances to climate policy is coming from an agency that isn’t traditionally thought of as “environmental”: Merrick Garland’s Department of Justice.

The DOJ functions as the federal government’s lawyer, which means it touches nearly every federal law and policy, from the Constitution to the Clean Air Act. Any enforcement action, lawsuit, or regulatory strategy has to have DOJ sign-on if the administration wants to fight for or against any climate-oriented policy. The fate of almost all of President Biden’s climate ambition will ultimately be decided in the octagon of legal challenge. Yet Garland’s DOJ has been effectively functioning as an ally to the fossil fuel industry, making the legal case for Biden to ignore his duty to both the American people and the planet.

It’s a pattern that transcends climate: From student debt to humane immigration policy, Garland’s DOJ has taken sides. To paraphrase Matt Stoller of the American Economic Liberties Project, one of the biggest problems in Biden’s administration is that he’s surrounded himself with lawyers who tell him why he can’t do things, instead of how he can do them. The consequences of Garland deliberately tying the administration’s hands at every turn will be most drastic for the climate in the long term.

The Trump administration, in its deregulatory zeal, did an almost unthinkable amount of damage to the already insufficient environmental regulation that was once on the books. Indefensibly, Biden’s DOJ is continuing to defend much of that damage in the name of continuity and stability, instead of reassessing the impact of Trump’s slash-and-burn and charting a new way forward. For one, Biden’s DOJ is defending a Trump-era decision to issue permits to pipeline company Enbridge to build and operate the Line 3 tar sands pipeline. Line 3, which became operational earlier this year, violates Ojibwe treaty rights and emits the equivalent of 50 coal plants’ worth of climate-warming emissions per year. When asked about how the pipeline could possibly square with the president’s goals to reduce emissions, White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki insisted the administration could not comment or intervene to stop the pipeline from going live because the issue was in “active litigation.”

Yet active litigation apparently wasn’t a sufficient reason for the administration to delay the nation’s largest offshore oil and gas lease sale in history. Biden started off the year strong in January when he announced a pause on new oil and gas drilling leases on federal lands. By June, however, a federal judge in Louisiana ruled in Louisiana v. Biden that Biden didn’t have the authority to implement a systematic stoppage. The administration appealed the Louisiana judge’s decision, and the DOJ itself issued a legal opinion that the court order did not require the Department of the Interior to move forward with this specific lease sale. Meanwhile, several environmental advocacy groups, led by Earthjustice, launched a lawsuit against the administration to stop the lease sale.

In other words, the pause’s legal standing was moving through the courts, the very same “ongoing litigation” invoked by Psaki regarding Line 3 that left the question of the authority to block public land leases up in the air. Yet none of it prevented the administration from selling off more public lands for oil production than ever before. In total, 1.7 million acres of federal waters were leased for drilling in November, out of 80 million total acres that have been made available to oil and gas companies.

Meanwhile, both the Earthjustice-led litigation and the federal government’s appeal of the Louisiana decision continue, with lawyers from the DOJ’s Environment and Natural Resources Division defending the government in both cases. The American Petroleum Institute and the State of Louisiana have successfully joined the government as defendants in the Earthjustice case, while Earthjustice lawyers have filed several amicus briefs in support of the government in the Louisiana case. Seeing the very same Biden administration on both sides of the issue highlights the self-sabotaging nature of Garland’s fence-sitting. Rather than leading the nation, the Biden administration is boldly proclaiming that it has no strong feelings one way or the other about the planet.

Indefensibly, Biden’s DOJ is continuing to defend much of the Trump administration’s damage in the name of continuity and stability.

The DOJ’s moral failure when it comes to the climate crisis is particularly visible in Juliana v. United States, where it continues to oppose teenagers asking the court to intervene in safeguarding the planet’s future. Six years ago, a group of 21 children and teenagers filed a lawsuit against the United States, alleging that the federal government’s continued support of fossil fuel exploitation and consumption violates their constitutional right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Today, Biden’s DOJ continues to defend the government against these young plaintiffs’ claims. In November of this year, nine senators and 39 U.S. representatives urged Biden to stop contesting the lawsuit, arguing that the position taken by DOJ lawyers on the United States’ behalf is misaligned with Biden’s stance on environmental justice. The myopia of the DOJ’s legal arguments astounds: A group of American youth argue for the benefits of a planet that sustains human life, while DOJ lawyers argue that the court should dismiss their complaint for lack of jurisdiction.

Another ongoing case about the health and future of American children has DOJ lawyers on the defensive. Last week, The Intercept reported on the EPA’s long-standing failure to regulate the phthalate DINP, a chemical used in plastic that causes a wide range of birth defects and cancers, and interferes with children’s sexual development. In 2000, the EPA proposed a rule that would add DINP to the toxics inventory, but never finalized it. In the 21 years since, DINP has become ubiquitous in American products, with hundreds of millions of pounds of DINP produced or imported each year. Not content to merely produce fossil fuels, Exxon is also a phthalate manufacturer, and has lobbied hard to keep the chemical in children’s toys. Earthjustice launched lawsuits against the EPA in September and the FDA in December for their continued failure to regulate. A DOJ lawyer is defending the EPA, and another will likely defend the FDA in this new case, meaning that DOJ lawyers will have a substantial say in whether this toxic chemical continues to wreak havoc on Americans’ health.

If there’s one bright spot, it’s in the department’s novel commitment to environmental justice—the DOJ Civil Rights Division has opened a first-of-its-kind “environmental justice investigation” into whether the Alabama health department’s practices put Black communities at higher risk of infectious-disease exposure. This week, the DOJ’s Environment and Natural Resources Division also expressed their commitment to “achieving the objectives for environmental justice” and enforcing corporate compliance with environmental regulation.

In some cases, course correction along these lines could be quite simple. The Biden DOJ originally defended a Trump-era approval for ConocoPhillips’s Alaska Willow project back in May, a project that would have produced more than 100,000 barrels of oil per day for the next 30 years. However, when a federal court in Alaska decided the Bureau of Land Management had failed to account for greenhouse gas emissions and vacated the approval, Biden’s DOJ allowed the clock to run out on their timeline to appeal, letting the Willow project die. Yet ConocoPhillips intends to proceed with the Willow project despite the court’s decision, and the DOJ should not lapse into inaction when future challenges to the project inevitably erupt.

Biden is, of course, the most powerful person in the country, so he has no excuse for employing anything but the very best legal team at his Department of Justice. And any good lawyer with the ability to recognize reality and “listen to the science,” as Biden has so often promised to do, should not throw up their hands in the face of opposition. DOJ lawyers should be endlessly creative in invoking America’s laws to help this country, and the global community, survive a climate apocalypse. Their mandate to defend the country’s interests requires nothing less.

Anyone who would argue that preserving a healthy and livable planet is in the United States’ interests should care about the DOJ’s next move. The DOJ can be a powerful ally or a powerful foe in the fight for our planet’s future—what it can’t do is split the difference. If it is going to choose the former, it will need to do so quickly.

DOROTHY SLATER is a senior researcher at the Revolving Door Project.

IINFLUENCE OF BIG BROTHER CHINA

Private sector overtakes state as North Korea's top economic actor under Kim - S.Korea

Hyonhee Shin
Wed., December 15, 2021

North Korean leader Kim Jong Un attends a ceremony to inaugurate the start of construction on the first phase of a project to eventually build 50,000 new apartments, in Pyongyang

By Hyonhee Shin

SEOUL (Reuters) - The private sector has overtaken state-led agents to become North Korea's biggest economic actor over the past decade, a sign of booming markets allowed by leader Kim Jong Un, South Korea's Unification Ministry said on Thursday.

The ministry, which handles North Korea affairs, released a report on political, economic and social changes during Kim's 10-year rule, based on data from South Korean and U.N. agencies as well as interviews with defectors.

While the isolated country suffered from coronavirus lockdowns and sanctions over its weapons programmes, private activity has grown from about 28% a decade ago to make up nearly 38% of the economy, the ministry said in the report.

Government-led programmes, meanwhile, have shrunk to make up 29% of the economy from 37%, and around 9% was from entities that work in both state and private sectors, up from 7%.

The number of merchants has also soared some fourfold to hit an all-time high at about 1,368 in 2018, from 338 in 2011, before sharply dropping amid economic hardships and the pandemic.

"As marketisation continues, the proportion of private economy is on a long-term upward trend," the ministry said. "People's activities are shaping into a dual way, state and private economy."

North Korea does not answer questions from foreign reporters and its government and state media rarely give insights into economic conditions.

Kim became leader in late 2011, upon the death of his father, Kim Jong Il.

The new leader's approval of markets previously abhorred by his father had helped improved livelihoods for many North Koreans, with its gross domestic product (GDP) rising 3.9% in 2016 - the fastest in 17 years.

But initial progress was overshadowed by sanctions imposed over nuclear and long-range missile tests, a ministry official said, even as Kim vowed to build a self-reliant economy after declaring completion of "state nuclear force" in 2017.

"After all, in order to achieve sustainable economic growth and substantively boost people's livelihoods, they need to shift policy toward denuclearisation and economic cooperation," the official said.

As the pandemic and natural disasters compounded the squeeze, North Korea's GDP suffered its biggest contraction in 23 years in 2020, while crop production hit its lowest level under Kim, at 4.4 million. North Korea's trade with top ally China has plunged more than 90% from its 2014 peak.

This month, Kim warned of a "very giant struggle" next year, and called in October for focusing on improving people's lives despite "grim" economic conditions.

North Korea has not confirmed any COVID-19 infections but shut its borders and tightly restricted public transport and inter-state movement.

(Reporting by Hyonhee Shin; Editing by Robert Birsel)

Warren Wants Big Oil Executive Pay Investigated

By Irina Slav - Dec 16, 2021

Senator Elizabeth Warren has asked the Securities and Exchange Commission to launch an investigation into the remuneration of executives at several oil companies, including Marathon Petroleum, Chevron, and Occidental Petroleum.

According to Warren, these companies "may be misleading investors and the public about their executive compensation by using loophole-ridden climate metrics tied to CEO pay," she said in a letter to SEC chairman Gary Gensler.

Citing a Washington Post report that made allegations oil companies were setting climate change goals but then using easily manipulated metrics to gauge success, Senator Warren said that "These potentially deceptive environmental, social, and governance (ESG) metrics pose a serious problem: they have the potential to mislead investors and the public on the terms and conditions under which executive bonuses are paid to top company officials. I am requesting that the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) investigate this matter." 

Marathon Petroleum, one of the "world's most egregious fossil fuel lobbying companies preventing policy-based climate action," paid its then-CEO $1.9 million between 2011 and 2020 for meeting environmental goals, awarding bonuses in nearly every year, even though a Marathon Petroleum pipeline released 1,400 barrels of diesel fuel into an Indiana creek in 2018," Senator Warren said in her letter.

Last month, Warren targeted natural gas exporters in a similar vein, accusing them of causing massive price increases for American consumers to enrich themselves.

"I am writing regarding my concern about rising natural gas prices for American consumers, the impact this will have for families struggling to pay their bills and keep their homes warm this winter, and the extent to which these price increases are being driven by energy companies' corporate greed and profiteering as they 'moved record amounts of U.S. gas out of the country,'" she said.

ROFLMAO

In response, the chief executive of EQT noted the reduction in emissions since the start of the shale gas boom, calling the U.S. LNG export industry the potentially largest green initiative in the world.

By Irina Slav for Oilprice.com

Chilean women, wary of rightist, may decide president’s race

By PATRICIA LUNA and JOSHUA GOODMAN

1 of 5

A follower of Chile's presidential candidate Jose Antonio Kast from the Partido Republicano, holds campaign flags during a rally in Santiago, Chile, Wednesday, Dec. 15, 2021. Chile votes in the runoff election on Dec. 19. (AP PhotoMatias Delacroix)

SANTIAGO, Chile (AP) — When Chileans went to the polls last month, Elizabeth Padilla, like more than half of eligible voters in the South American country, stayed home, not feeling represented by any of the seven candidates on the ballot.

But her apathy suddenly lifted when a politician she feared, José Antonio Kast finished first. In recent days, as Chileans gear up for a runoff pitting the far-right candidate against leftist lawmaker Gabriel Boric, the 45-year-old artist has been hanging campaign posters in her downtown Santiago neighborhood and warning friends of what she sees as a serious threat to women if Kast wins.

“We are four sisters and I have three nieces. I’m very worried about what could happen,” said Padilla, who has spent many a sleepless night contemplating a return of “fascism” in a country that until 1990 was governed by a military dictator, Gen. Augusto Pinochet, who Kast has defended. “The truth is I didn’t know there were so many people who think like this.”









Presidential candidate Gabriel Boric, of the Apruebo Dignidad coalition party, holds a gas tank covered by the Spanish message "Gas at a fair price" as he campaigns in Vina del Mar, Chile, Wednesday, Dec. 15, 2021. Chile heads to a presidential runoff on Dec. 19. (AP Photo/Esteban Felix)

It’s a sentiment shared widely by Chilean women, especially younger urban professionals, who are shaping up to be the clincher in a tight race between political extremes battling for Chile’s future.

Kast, the 55-year-old founder of the fledgling Republican Party, secured 28% of the vote on Nov. 21, edging out Boric by two points. Historically, every candidate in Chile who led in the first round of balloting went on to prevail in the head-to-head runoff.

Emerging from dictatorship, Chilean women voted in larger numbers and favored conservative candidates more consistently than their male compatriots, perhaps fearing a return of the turmoil seen during the 1970-1973 rule of the toppled socialist President Salvador Allende, when women, then mostly stuck in the kitchen, banged on pots and pans to protest food shortages.

But the gender gap abruptly closed with the election in 2005 of leftist Michelle Bachelet, which triggered a “pink wave” of presidential victories for women across the region.

Several opinion polls indicate that this time women are flocking in droves to Boric — a millennial who uses non-binary pronouns from the stump — as he capitalizes on Kast’s long record of sexist comments and policy goals seen as out of step with fast changing societal norms.

“Don’t vote for the Nazi. No, no, no,” a few thousand women shouted Wednesday at boisterous feminist rally in downtown Santiago against Kast, the son of a German immigrant who was recently revealed to be a card-carrying member of Adolf Hitler’s political party.

Giovanna Roa, who was in attendance, said that a Kast victory would be a major setback for women.


The two candidates right wing Kast (l), socialist Boric (r)

“Kast explicitly wants to move us back to a place we already left behind,” said the 34-year-old Roa, a member of the convention redrafting Pinochet’s constitution — the first such institution in the world where gender parity is mandatory. “He wants us hidden and out of the public arena.”

Chile, despite its reputation as one of Latin America’s most socially conservative countries, has always had a combative feminist movement that in recent years has made great strides passing laws that prohibit discrimination based on sexual orientation, loosen abortion restrictions and boost the representation of women in politics.

One sign of its strength is the feminist anthem “A Rapist in Your Path,” which has been adopted by activists across the world to denounce violence against women since first being performed during a wave of anti-government protests in 2019.

The rise of Kast, in the eyes of his critics, is a backlash against those gains and the emergence in Chile of a kind of identity politics that has roiled democracies across the world.

Polls show that he has made inroads with middle-class and rural voters who fear that Boric — a former student protest leader who doesn’t shy away from vindicating Allende — would disrupt three decades of economic and political stability that has made Chile the envy of many in Latin America.

Kast, who has donned Donald Trump’s “Make America Great Again” hat in television interviews, has recently started to walk back some of his past views to shore up support among women.

But courting the key voting bloc was made harder when a video surfaced days after the first round in which a key supporter, YouTuber-turned-congressman-elect Johannes Kaiser, can be heard mocking voting rights for women — which dates to 1949 — if its end result is that “schizophrenic” women keep supporting parties that welcome immigrants who threaten to rape women when they go jogging in the park.

As a lawmaker in 2004, Kast voted against legislation legalizing divorce — a position he reaffirmed as recently as 2010. In an interview during the campaign he said it was no longer an issue.

In a 2018 newspaper column, he attacked Chile’s most famous actress, Daniela Vega, referring to the transgender star of the Academy Award-winning film “A Fantastic Woman” as a man. His column opposed a bill — later passed — allowing individuals to select their gender identity on legal documents.

“I wouldn’t write (the newspaper column) in the same terms,” he said in a televised debate this week, adding that he would respect the existing legislation.

The campaign platform he presented ahead of the first round of voting opposes same-sex marriage — which Chile’s congress approved this month by a wide majority — and vows to tighten Chile’s already restrictive abortion laws, which allows a woman to terminate pregnancy only in the case of rape, when the fetus won’t survive or the mother’s health is at risk.

The 204-page document instead highlights “family-focused” policies such as marriage courses, incentives to have babies and health care subsidies for married women. The platform also calls for the elimination of the Ministry of Women — a position he has since abandoned.

“I want to confess that we made a mistake,” said Kast, surrounded by female supporters, at a campaign rally this month highlighting policies he said would promote women. “We ask for forgiveness. We changed positions and clearly we aren’t only going to keep the Ministry of Women but we are going to strengthen it.”

In sharp contrast, the 35-year-old Boric seems to embrace his portrayal by the far right as Chile’s first “woke” presidential candidate.

On the stump, he addresses supporters using gender-neutral terms popular with only a handful of fellow Chilean millennials and not found in traditional Spanish grammar. His unmarried partner, a fellow activist, said she’s not interested in serving as first lady, a traditional role she believes Chile has outlived.

Unlike Kast, Boric also refused to appear on the online “Bad Boys” program hosted by the surprise third place finisher, Franco Parisi, who garnered more than 13% of first round votes. In rejecting the invitation, Boric cited Parisi’s large child-support debt to his ex wife.

“Electorally it would be profitable. … However I believe that in elections as in life one has to be guided by principles,” he said.

Recent polls show that women and young voters overwhelmingly favor Boric, sometimes by as much as 20 points.

“In a tight race, a spike in votes from young women, who tend to skew more left wing and feel threatened by Kast’s conservative discourse, may make a big difference,” said Marcela Rios, a political scientist at the United Nations Development Program in Chile who has focused on gender issues. “It all depends on turnout.”

But outside the capital, where traditional gender roles have changed less, it’s unclear how deep support for Boric really is among women.

To be sure, Boric has not been exempt of criticism for his past behavior toward woman.

In July, following Boric’s victory in a primary, a fellow activist denounced what she said were “acts of violence” involving the leftist standard bearer in 2012, when he headed the student union at the University of Chile. It’s unclear what transpired but Boric, who she said acted like a “harassing pig,” recently apologized to the woman, who in turn has accused Kast of “ unscrupulous and violent ” promotion of the incident.

Boric’s mother says she’s partly to blame for any of her son’s lingering machismo.

“I raised him with basically a sexist mentality ... because that’s how I was taught too,” María Soledad Font said in an interview her home in southern Chile.

But over time, after Boric traveled to Santiago for college and expanded his horizons, he began to shed what she called the “old Gabriel.”

”He made it a goal to listen and understand,” said Font, showing her son’s childhood bedroom — replete with framed soccer jerseys, a photo of Cuban guerrilla leader Ernesto “Che” Guevara and spray-painted slogans from the French Revolution. “That’s when he began to see (men and women) are equal in values and talents.”

___

Goodman reported from Miami. Claudio Monge contributed to this report from Punta Arenas, Chile.

‘Very worrying’: is a far-right radical about to take over in Chile?

As election run-off looms, José Antonio Kast’s opponents sound the alarm

The ultra-conservative presidential candidate, José Antonio Kast, participates in an event. Photograph: Elvis Gonzalez/EPA

Tom Phillips and John Bartlett in Rancagua
Thu 16 Dec 2021 

María Irene Campos was a woman on a mission.

“I want to send the message that Chile will never again be communist,” the 74-year-old retiree proclaimed as she hit the streets last Friday to catch a glimpse of the man she believes can save her South American homeland from such a fate.

That man is José Antonio Kast – an ultra-conservative lawyer and father of nine, who some call Chile’s answer to Brazil’s radical leader, Jair Bolsonaro – and who is now just one step away from becoming his country’s next president.


Chile far-right candidate rides anti-migrant wave in presidential poll

Fifteen million Chileans will head to the polls on Sunday for the second, decisive round of Chile’s presidential election to choose between the far-right politician and his leftist rival, Gabriel Boric, who appears to hold a slender lead.

“He seems like a good person to me – somebody with conviction,” said Susana Guajardo, 61, another Kast supporter who had come to see the candidate during a campaign visit to Rancagua, a quiet city 50 miles south of Chile’s capital, Santiago.

But the prospect of a four-year Kast presidency has horrified many in Chile and across the region and fueled fears that one of South America’s most prosperous and stable democracies could be on the verge of being captured by Steve Bannon-style extremists.

“All of the progress we have made in terms of women’s rights, inclusion and human rights will be affected if Kast wins on Sunday,” warned Gaby Riquelme, a 35-year-old who has spent recent weeks pamphleting for Boric.

Riquelme feared Kast, whose Germany-born father was recently revealed to have been a member of the Nazi party, risked plunging Chile into “instability and disorder” by opposing the grassroots movement battling to address its many social problems after 2019’s historic protests.

“Kast will undoubtedly be a step backwards,” she said of the fervent Catholic who vehemently opposes same-sex marriage, recently legalized by Chile’s parliament.

On Tuesday, Chile’s moderate former president Michelle Bachelet threw her weight behind Boric, telling Chileans they faced a “fundamental” choice and urging them to back a leader who could lead the country “down the path of progress for all”.

Chile’s 2021 race has uncanny and disturbing echoes of the profoundly polarized 2018 vote that saw Jair Bolsonaro – like Kast long viewed as a political aberration – gain control of Latin America’s largest democracy.

While a more graceful orator than his notoriously blunt Brazilian counterpart, Kast has hoisted almost identical banners including law and order, opposition to “gender ideology” and a flag-waving antipathy toward the left and its alleged bid to deny citizens their “freedom”.

All of the progress we have made in terms of women’s rights, inclusion and human rights will be affected if Kast wins on SundayGaby Riquelme

“Communism is advancing”, Kast, who is 55, warned earlier this year. “Chile needs a political alternative that seeks to recover … the freedom we have lost.”

Boric, meanwhile, has promised “hope will prevail over fear” – a carbon copy of the pledge the leftist Brazilian Fernando Haddad made before losing to Bolsonaro in October 2018.

In the weeks since last month’s first-round vote, which he narrowly won, Kast has tried to soften his tone and play down his links to Bolsonaro in an apparent bid to attract moderate voters.

During the final presidential debate on Monday he rejected claims he was homophobic, claiming that several same-sex couples had attended his daughter’s wedding.

But Kast has not always been so coy.

On 18 October 2018, 10 days before Bolsonaro won power, the Chilean flew to Rio to meet Brazil’s future president. “Jair Bolsonaro represents the hope of freedom, security, development and social justice in a Brazil that was destroyed by the left,” Kast tweeted alongside a photograph of him delivering a bright red Chile football shirt. The jersey had been personalized with the number 17, then the symbol of Bolsonaro’s far-right candidacy.
What it shows is that Kast is part of a larger story of international networks … and a movement that is basically trying to be disruptiveRobert Funk

The two men stayed in touch after Bolsonaro took power, with the Brazilian newspaper O Globo recently revealing that a key connection was the German-Chilean businessman Sven von Storch. He is the husband of Beatrix von Storch, the deputy leader of the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) party and granddaughter of Hitler’s finance minister.

In December 2018, Kast gave a keynote speech at a conservative congress organized by Bolsonaro’s congressman son, Eduardo, in the Brazilian border city of Foz do Iguaçu.

He used part of his address to recast Augusto Pinochet’s September 1973 overthrow of Chile’s socialist leader Salvador Allende, just as Bolsonaro has sought to rewrite the history of the Brazilian military dictatorship.

“Allende was overthrown by the people,” insisted Kast who has praised Pinochet’s “economic legacy”. “We have to rewrite history from our point of view,” he told delegates.

After Kast’s first-round victory last month, Eduardo – Steve Bannon’s representative in Latin America – wished the Chilean candidate luck.

Eduardo, Bolsonaro’s son, and José Antonio Kast gesture as they meet in Santiago, Chile on December 13, 2018

 Photograph: Iván Alvarado/Reuters

“Kast is a patriot, internationally well-connected and a thorn in the side of the São Paulo Forum,” tweeted Bolsonaro, in reference to the leftist alliance that has become a bugbear for Latin America’s hard right.

Political scientist Robert Funk said insufficient attention was being paid to the links between Kast and the conspiracy-filled, anti-semitism-laced, anti-globalist hard-right “world of Steve Bannon”.

“I think it is very worrying and I’m amazed this has not received more play here,” said the University of Chile academic, calling Kast “part Pinochetista-right, part Catholic-conservatism and part Trumpist-Bolsonaro nationalist populist”.

“What it shows is that Kast is part of a larger story of international networks … and a movement that is basically trying to be disruptive … Kast is not the conservative candidate. He’s the disruptive candidate,” Funk added.

“The story of his contact and support with Bolsonaro, with [the Spanish far-right party] Vox, with AfD – [with] the world of Steve Bannon – is pretty worrying, and not only for Chile. It shows how far they have managed to get in politics around the world.”

Kast supporters dismiss claims their guru is a radical, just as Bolsonaristas consider their authoritarian-minded leader a paragon of democratic, Godly values.
Advertisement


“I don’t find him extreme in the slightest,” Guajardo said, as Kast strode past her during his visit to Rancagua, to cheers of “Viva Chile!” and “God bless you!”

Kast donned a poncho and hat at a rally in San Fernando. 

Photograph: Martin Bernetti/AFP/Getty Images

Later that evening Kast took to the stage amid flurries of white confetti to address a boisterous crowd in the nearby town of San Fernando.

He donned a poncho to dance cueca, Chile’s national dance, and led a solemn rendition of the national anthem while hundreds of Chilean flags fluttered above the crowd. “Each of us must go out into the streets and raise the Chilean flag, which represents all of us,” he declared, to rapturous applause.

Many of his supporters are convinced the right-winger could save Chile from being plunged back into what they describe as Venezuela-style socialist turmoil.

“I want democracy, peace and stability,” said Campos. “José Antonio Kast represents all of these things.”

BOURGEOIS PRESS 

Explainer: 'Communism vs fascism?' Chile braces for polarized presidential run-off
 
SANTIAGO (Reuters) - Chile is set to vote for a new president on Sunday, with a young former student leader Gabriel Boric on the left battling far-right conservative Jose Antonio Kast, in the most polarized election since the country's return to democracy in 1990.

An at times heated campaign has seen Kast play up Boric's alliance with the Andean country's Communist Party, while Kast himself has come under fire for his defense of the dictatorship of General Augusto Pinochet that ended three decades ago.

The run-off vote is the first presidential decider since Chile was rocked in 2019 by months of angry protests https://www.reuters.com/world/americas/chile-braces-protests-crossroads-election-nears-2021-10-18 against economic inequalities that eventually sparked a process https://www.reuters.com/world/americas/how-chile-is-rewriting-its-pinochet-era-constitution-2021-05-14 - still ongoing - to redraft its decades-old constitution.

"What we're seeing here is a debate stuck in the cold war trenches, of communism versus fascism," said Kenneth Bunker, director of consultancy Tresquintos, who said the "virulence and polarization" could put some voters off.

"It's the old left-right divide."

HOW WILL THE VOTE WORK?

The winner-takes-all Dec. 19 election will see Chileans vote for a new president after a fragmented first-round ballot in mid-November also chose members of Congress and regional councils.

The voting starts at 8 a.m. (1100 GMT) and ballot stations close around 6 p.m., with results expected to come in fairly quickly Sunday evening.

WHO IS RUNNING?

The two candidates going head-to-head are 55-year-old ultra-right former congressman Kast https://www.reuters.com/world/americas/chiles-kast-channels-pinochets-ghost-against-communist-left-2021-12-15, who is just behind in opinion polls against Boric https://www.reuters.com/world/americas/student-leader-president-chiles-boric-eyes-historic-election-win-2021-12-15, 35, a former leader student running for a leftist coalition.

There had been seven candidates in the November first round, with votes from the more centrist runners on the right and left seen as key to deciding which way the vote will go.

WHO'S THE FAVORITE?

Pollsters expect a close race, with Boric slightly ahead in pre-election polls since Kast came top in a fragmented first round vote. More moderate voters, the polls show, have swung to Boric more than Kast though the gap is narrowing.

However, history is potentially against Boric. Since 1999, the winner of the first round vote has always gone on to win the second round run-off.

WHAT ARE THE MAIN ISSUES?

Many Chileans support the free-market policies that propelled the copper-rich country to decades of growth and made it a bastion of economic stability in volatile Latin America. But an increasing number want change to address the deep inequalities.

Some of the loudest demands have stemmed from anger over paltry retirement payouts blamed by critics on Chile's highly privatized pension system, while others have criticized the high costs and sometimes dubious quality of privatized education, and gaps between public and private healthcare.

Conservative voters have raised questions about increased immigration, and there are law and order concerns sparked by the protests in the capital and violent clashes between police and Mapuche indigenous groups in the country's south.

Whoever wins the presidency will also have to handle a referendum to approve or reject the text of a new constitution during their first year in office. An assembly, dominated by leftist and independent representatives, is leading the constitution redraft.

SPLIT CONGRESS

Despite a polarized presidential race, markets took solace from the congressional result in November, with a fairly even balance between parties on the left and right likely to moderate the power of the executive branch and any radical reforms.

"(The winner) is going to have to face a Congress different from the current one, a more balanced congress, almost split in two halves," said Marco Moreno, director of the school of government from the Central University of Chile.

<^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

Chile was a regional role model. Now voters want change

Mind the Gap https://tmsnrt.rs/3ykKZi9

Mind the Gap (Interactive graphic) https://tmsnrt.rs/3dL3KSk

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^>

(Reporting by Fabian Cambero; Editing by Adam Jourdan, Rosalba O'Brien and Marguerita Choy)

A tale of two Chiles: polar opposites vie for presidency



A tale of two Chiles: polar opposites vie for presidencyJose Antonio Kast is an open admirer of Chile's former dictator Augusto Pinochet (AFP/Ernesto BENAVIDES)

Thu, December 16, 2021

Two political outsiders with polar opposite social and political views go head-to-head in a runoff election Sunday to become Chile's next president.

Who are they?

- Far-right -

Lawyer and ex-MP Jose Antonio Kast, 55, is an outspoken admirer of Chile's former dictator Augusto Pinochet and of his neoliberal economic model that has boosted private enterprise, critics say at the expense of the poor and working classes.

The law-and-order candidate came out on top in the first round of presidential elections on November 21, with 27.9 percent of the vote.

Kast, leader of the Republican Party he founded in 2019, has expressed kinship with other conservative leaders such as Brazil's Jair Bolsonaro, Donald Trump in the United States and Spain's far-right Vox party.

He protests when he is called "extreme right," and says he wants to be known as "a common-sense candidate."

This is Kast's second presidential contest -- in 2017, as an independent, he made it to fourth place with less than eight percent of the vote.

Married and a father to nine children, Kast is an active member of the Schoenstatt conservative Catholic movement. He is against gay marriage and abortion.

Kast hails from German immigrants who moved to Santiago in 1951 and became wealthy from sausage production and a restaurant chain. His father was a soldier in the Nazi military.

Kast's economic model proposes reducing public spending, cutting taxes and trimming the number of ministries.

He has softened his position on several points since November, reversing his proposal to scrap the ministry of women's affairs and backing down on his threat to undo Chile's already limited right to abortion, which is only allowed in cases of rape, if the fetus is unviable, or if the woman's life is at risk.

But he has not backed down on his plan to dig a border "trench" to keep out illegal immigrants, particularly from Venezuela.

Kast wants to retain Chile's system of private pensions, one of the main gripes of protesters who took to the streets in October 2019 to denounce deep-rooted social inequality.

And he has promised to restore order in a time of great political uncertainty, with many Chileans fearful of immigration and crime and angry about violence and arson committed by some anti-government protesters.

- Left -

At 35, lawmaker Gabriel Boric is Chile's youngest-ever presidential challenger -- only just meeting the required minimum age to participate.

The former student activist has vowed to relegate Chile's neoliberal economic policies, widely seen as sidelining the poor and working classes, "to the grave."

The millennial campaigned on introducing "a welfare state so that everyone has the same rights no matter how much money they have in their wallet."

Chile is one of the world's most socially unequal countries, where people pay wholly or in part for education and healthcare, and pensions are entirely made up of private savings.

Chile has one of the highest per capita incomes in Latin America and one of the highest concentrations of multimillionaires, but also "persistently high inequality" between rich and poor, according to the OECD.

The candidate for the Approve Dignity coalition that includes the left-wing Frente Amplio (Broad Front) and the Communist Party, ended up in a close second place with 25.8 percent of the vote in November's first round.

"If Chile was the cradle of neoliberalism in Latin America, it will also be its grave," he said on the campaign trail.

His alliance with the Communist Party instills fear in many voters in a country with a deep-seated distrust of socialism.

Boric backed the 2019 anti-government protests that resulted in a process to rewrite Chile's dictatorship-era constitution.

In 2011, he led student protests for free schooling.

His detractors say Boric is inexperienced in politics, and he himself has conceded he has "much to learn."

But supporters say his lack of ties to the ruling elite, increasingly viewed with hostility, counts in his favor.

He has received the backing of former president Michelle Bachelet, the UN's high commissioner for human rights.

Boric, of Croatian and Catalan descent, has abandoned the unkempt, long hair of his activist days, seeking to build a more consensual and moderate image. But while he has adopted jackets, he shuns ties and makes no attempt to hide his tattoos.

He supports gay marriage and abortion rights.

Boric was born in Punta Arenas, some 3,000 kilometers (1,860 miles) south of Santiago. He is the oldest of three brothers and moved to the capital to study law, though he never sat for his bar exam.

He is unmarried, has no children and is an avid reader of poetry and history.

bur-mlr/to