From Cotton to Brinjal: Fraudulent GMO Project in India Sustained by Deception

by COLIN TODHUNTER
SEPTEMBER 1, 2020

Insecticidal Bt (Bacillus thuringiensis) cotton is the first and only GM (genetically modified) crop that has been approved in India. It has been cultivated in the country for more than 20 years. In a formal statement to the Supreme Court of India, the Indian government has asserted that hybrid Bt cotton is an outstanding success. It therefore argues that Bt cotton is a template for the introduction of GM food crops.

However, over the last week, two important webinars took place that challenged the government’s stance. The first was on Bt cotton and involved a panel of internationally renowned scientists who conclusively debunked the myth of Bt cotton success in India. The webinar, organised by the Centre for Sustainable Agriculture and Jatan, focused on an evidence-based evaluation of 18 years of approved Bt cotton cultivation in India.

The second webinar discussed the case of Bt brinjal, which the country’s apex regulatory body, the Genetic Engineering Appraisal Committee (GEAC), has brought to the brink of commercialisation. The webinar highlighted deep-seated problems with regulatory processes in India and outlined how the GEAC is dogged by secrecy, conflicts of interest and (scientific) fraud: participants outlined how the GEAC has been colluding with crop developers and seed companies to drive GM crops into agriculture.

Bt cotton failure

The panel for the Bt cotton webinar (YouTube: Bt Cotton in India: Myths & Realities – An Evidence-Based Evaluation) on 24 August included Dr Andrew Paul Gutierrez, senior emeritus professor in the College of Natural Resources at the University of California at Berkeley; Dr Keshav Kranthi, former director of Central Institute for Cotton Research in India; Dr Peter Kenmore, former FAO representative in India, and Dr Hans Herren, World Food Prize Laureate.

Dr Herren said that “the failure of Bt cotton” is a classic representation of what an unsound science of plant protection and faulty direction of agricultural development can lead to.

He explained:

“Bt hybrid technology in India represents an error-driven policy that has led to the denial and non-implementation of the real solutions for the revival of cotton in India, which lie in HDSS (high density short season) planting of non-Bt/GMO cotton in pure line varieties of native desi species and American cotton species.”

He argued that a transformation of agriculture and the food system is required; one that entails a shift to agroecology, which includes regenerative, organic, biodynamic, permaculture and natural farming practices.

Dr Kenmore said that Bt cotton is an aging pest control technology:

“It follows the same path worn down by generations of insecticide molecules from arsenic to DDT to BHC to endosulfan to monocrotophos to carbaryl to imidacloprid. In-house research aims for each molecule to be packaged biochemically, legally and commercially before it is released and promoted. Corporate and public policy actors then claim yield increases but deliver no more than temporary pest suppression, secondary pest release and pest resistance.”

Recurrent cycles of crises have sparked public action and ecological field research which creates locally adapted agroecological strategies.

He added that this agroecology:

“… now gathers global support from citizens’ groups, governments and UN-FAO. Their robust local solutions in Indian cotton do not require any new molecules, including endo-toxins like in Bt cotton”.

Prof Gutierrez presented the ecological reasons as to why hybrid Bt cotton failed in India: long season Bt cotton introduced in India was incorporated into hybrids that trapped farmers into biotech and insecticide treadmills that benefited GMO seed manufacturers.

He noted:

“The cultivation of long-season hybrid Bt cotton in rainfed areas is unique to India. It is a value capture mechanism that does not contribute to yield, is a major contributor to low yield stagnation and contributes to increasing production costs”.

Prof Gutierrez asserted that increases in cotton farmer suicides are related to the resulting economic distress.

He argued:

“A viable solution to the current GM hybrid system is adoption of improved non-GM high-density short-season fertile cotton varieties.”

Presenting data on yields, insecticide usage, irrigation, fertiliser usage and pest incidence and resistance, Dr Keshav Kranthi said that a critical analysis of official statistics (eands.dacnet.nic.in and cotcorp.gov.in) shows that Bt hybrid technology has not been providing any tangible benefits in India either in yield or insecticide usage.

He said that cotton yields are the lowest in the world in Maharashtra, despite being saturated with Bt hybrids and the highest use of fertilisers. Yields in Maharashtra are less than in rainfed Africa where there is hardly any usage of technologies such as Bt, hybrids, fertilisers, pesticides or irrigation.

It is revealing that Indian cotton yields rank 36th in the world and have been stagnant in the past 15 years and insecticide usage has been constantly increasing after 2005, despite an increase in area under Bt cotton.

Dr Kranthi argued that research also shows that the Bt hybrid technology has failed the test of sustainability with resistance in pink bollworm to Bt cotton, increasing sucking pest infestation, increasing trends in insecticide and fertiliser usage, increasing costs and negative net returns in 2014 and 2015.

Dr Herren said that GMOs exemplify the case of a technology searching for an application:

“It is essentially about treating symptoms, rather than taking a systems approach to create resilient, productive and bio-diverse food systems in the widest sense and to provide sustainable and affordable solutions in it’s social, environmental and economic dimensions”.

He went on to argue that the failure of Bt cotton is a classic representation of what an unsound science of plant protection and a faulty direction of agricultural development can lead to:

“We need to push aside the vested interests blocking the transformation with the baseless arguments of ‘the world needs more food’ and design and implement policies that are forward looking… We have all the needed scientific and practical evidence that the agroecological approaches to food and nutrition security work successfully”.

Bt brinjal – the danger is back

The government’s attempt to use a failed technology as a template for driving GMOs into agriculture has been exposed. Nevertheless, the GEAC has been moving forward with late-stage trials of Bt brinjal, while ignoring the issues and arguments against its commercialisation that were forwarded a decade ago.

In February 2010, the Indian government placed an indefinite moratorium on the release of Bt brinjal after numerous independent scientific experts from India and abroad had pointed out safety concerns based on data and reports in the biosafety dossier that Mahyco, the crop developer, had submitted to the regulators.

The then Minister of the Ministry of Environment and Forests Jairam Ramesh had instituted a unique four-month scientific enquiry and public hearings. His decision to reject the commercialisation of Bt brinjal was supported by advice from the renowned scientists. Their collective appraisals demonstrated serious environmental and biosafety concerns.

Jairam Ramesh pronounced a moratorium on Bt brinjal in February 2010 by stating:

“it is my duty to adopt a cautious, precautionary principle-based approach and impose a moratorium on the release of Bt brinjal, till such time independent scientific studies establish, to the satisfaction of both the public and professionals, the safety of the product from the point of view of its long-term impact on human health and environment, including the rich genetic wealth existing in brinjal in our country.”

The moratorium has not been lifted and the conditions he set out have still not been met. Moreover, five high-level reports have advised against the adoption of GM crops in India. Appointed by the Supreme Court, the ‘Technical Expert Committee (TEC) Final Report’ (2013) was scathing about the prevailing regulatory system and highlighted its inadequacies. The TEC went a step further by recommending a 10-year moratorium on the commercial release of all GM crops.

The regulatory process was shown to lack competency, possessed endemic conflicts of interest and demonstrated a lack of expertise in GMO risk assessment protocols, including food safety assessment and the assessment of environmental impacts.

Ten years on and regulators have done nothing to address this woeful state of affairs. As we have seen with the relentless push to get GM mustard commercialised, the problems persist. Through numerous submissions to the Supreme Court, Aruna Rodrigues has described how GM mustard is being forced through with flawed tests (or no tests) and a lack of public scrutiny. Regulators are seriously conflicted: they promote GMOs openly, fund them and then regulate them.

And this is precisely what the webinar ‘Bt brinjal – the danger is back’ (watch on YouTube) discussed on 27 August. Organised by the Coalition for a GM-Free India, the webinar was arranged because the regulators have again brought to the brink of commercialisation a new Bt brinjal ‘event’ – a different Bt brinjal than the 2010 version. Also included in the webinar were the experiences of Bt brinjal introduction in Bangladesh.

Dr Ramanjaneyulu (Centre for Sustainable Agriculture) highlighted how need has never been established for Bt brinjal of which India is a recognised centre of diversity. The argument for Bt brinjal in the run-up to Jairam Ramesh’s moratorium was that pesticide use is a problem in containing the brinjal fruit and shoot borer. He noted that Bt brinjal was promoted by Monsanto, USAID and Cornell University, but serious protocol violations, environmental contamination concerns and potential adverse health impacts were discovered.

He outlined simple non-pesticidal, agroecological management practises that can and are being used to deal with the brinjal fruit and shoot borer.

Farida Akhter of UBINIG (Policy Research for Development Alternative) outlined how the introduction of Bt brinjal in Bangladesh was not needed but imposed on the country, which has 248 varieties of brinjal. Where pesticide use is problematic, she argued that it concerns hybrid varieties rather than traditional cultivars of which 24 varieties are resistant to fruit and shoot borer.

Akhter said that poor quality brinjal and financial losses for farmers have been major issues. Many have abandoned Bt brinjal, but farmers have received incentives to cultivate and where they have done so, fertiliser use has increased and there have been many pest attacks, with 35 different types of pesticides applied.

The Bill Gates-funded Cornell Alliance for Science, a public relations entity that promotes GM agriculture, and USAID, which serves the interests of the GMO biotech sector, tried to sell Bt brinjal on the basis it would ‘save’ people from the overuse of pesticides and related illnesses. But Akhter argued that Bangladesh was targeted because the Philippines and India had rejected Bt brinjal. Again, protocol violations occurred leading to its introduction and Akhter concluded that there was no scientific basis for Bt brinjal: its introduction was political.

As for India, event EE1, the initial Bt brinjal, has now been replaced by event 142, a different Bt brinjal. Kavitha Kuruganti (Alliance for Sustainable and Holistic Agriculture) explained this in the webinar and notes that the GEAC, immediately after the 2010 moratorium was announced, went straight ahead and sanctioned new trials for this Bt brinjal. The GEAC basically stated that the moratorium did not apply to this version, while ignoring all the criticisms about lack of competence, conflicts of interest, non-transparency and protocol violations. It was effectively business as usual!

With event EE1, Kuruganti implied that the GEAC acted more like a servant for Mayco and its Monsanto master. Nothing has changed. She noted the ongoing revolving door between crop developers (even patent holders) and regulators. As before, developers-cum-lobbyists were actually sitting on regulatory bodies as event 142 was proceeding.

Under public-private-partnership arrangements, event 142 has been licensed to private companies for biosafety testing/commercialisation. Despite major concerns, the GEAC has pressed ahead with various trials. In May 2020, under lockdown, Kuruganti notes that the GEAC held a virtual meeting and sanctioned what were effectively final trials prior to commercialisation. She explains that important information and vital data is not in the public domain.

According to Kuruganti, the regulator sits with the crop developer and the companies and grant biosafety clearance, claiming all tests (soil, pollen flow, toxicity, etc) are complete. What is also disturbing is that these licensed companies have closed and opened under new names (with the same people in charge), thereby making accountability and liability fixing very difficult if something were to go wrong further down the line.

She concludes that the story of event 142 is even worse than event EE1:

“Once again, they are certainly hiding things that they don’t want conscientious scientists and aware citizens to see and know.”

Taken together, the two webinars highlighted how hybrid Bt cotton is being deceptively used as a template for rolling out GM food crops: a fraud being used to promote another fraud in order to force unnecessary GMOs into Indian agriculture

Colin Todhunter is an extensively published independent writer and former social policy researcher based in the UK and India.

Towards Wakanda – Chadwick Boseman’s passing and the power and limits of Afrofuturism

Black Panther

September 1, 2020

Both Black Panther and Beyoncé’s Black is King represent a utopian vision of empowerment and connection to Africa.

The Conversation


If you’re not a comics fan, you may have been surprised at the extent of the heartfelt grief expressed following the death of actor Chadwick Boseman.

One explanation lies in the extraordinary power of the 2018 movie Black Panther, in which Boseman starred as T’Challa/Black Panther, to address racist stereotypes about Africa and Africans.

Boseman’s character was heir to the hidden kingdom of Wakanda, a mythical African nation free of European colonisation. The film’s subtext explores African Americans’ varying identifications, past and present, with Africa and a global Black diaspora.
Dark continent

Westerners’ ideas about Africa are steeped in myth. The United States, wrote German philosopher Georg Hegel in 1830, was “the land of the future”. Africa, by contrast, was “the land of childhood” where history was meaningless. European powers dubbed it the “Dark Continent”, as if its people could never make progress.

Fields of science emerged to classify human beings, relying on simplistic notions of evolution and psychology. They all agreed “black” people inhabited the ladder’s bottom rung.‘We must find a way to look after one another … as if we were one single tribe.’

From explorer Henry Morton Stanley’s tales of impenetrable jungles to the Tarzan novels and early “talkie” films, entertainment portrayed Africa as irredeemably backward.

These (pseudo) scientific and cultural stereotypes underpinned colonisation. They served Western extraction of Africa’s natural resources, enslavement of Africans and of their descendants all over the Americas.
Breaking chains and forging links

Such ideas meant that when Black Americans broke slavery’s chains, starting in the 1820s in northern US states and ending in 1865, it was not straightforward to claim African allegiance. The Atlantic and internal slave trades had devastated ties between families and communities on either side of the Atlantic Ocean.

Black Americans had, instead, forged ties between themselves in the United States. This meant few people (roughly 12,000) were keen to migrate to Liberia, established by the American Colonization Society in 1816.



Read more:
From Louisiana to Queensland: how American slave owners started again in Australia

By the 1920s, with memories of enslavement the preserve of older people, Black Americans began once again to forge links to Africa. Marcus Garvey’s Universal Negro Improvement Association suggested a global black United States of Africa. When Italy invaded Ethiopia in 1935, African Americans were incensed.

Colourised portrait of activist and academic Angela Davis. Original black and white negative by Bernard Gotfryd (1974).
US Library of Congress/Unsplash, CC BY

In the 1960s–70s era of Black Power, accelerated by film and television, ties to Africa became more prominent again.

Activists changed their names: Stokely Carmichael became Kwame Ture; Cassius Clay chose Muhammad Ali; and JoAnne Byron’s rebirth was as Assata Shakur. More widespread was the adoption of dashikis and “natural” hairstyles.

Interest in Africa spiked dramatically with Alex Haley’s Roots: the Saga of an American Family. The book (1976) and the miniseries (1977) told the story of Haley’s “furtherest-back ancestor”, Kunta Kinte, and his generations of American descendants.

In more recent decades, Black American tourism to Africa has soared as people seek out their own roots.

Read more:
Growing Up African in Australia: racism, resilience and the right to belong


A different world

In Black Panther, Chadwick Boseman – along with a host of other wonderful actors, and director and screenwriters Ryan Coogler and Joe Robert Cole – brought to life a “splendidly black” utopian vision. The film, which reverses stereotypes about Africa, delighted many African American fans.

In Wakanda, the fictional metal vibranium is the bedrock of a society in which wealth is distributed so justly that both men and women thrive and King T’Challa can stroll the city streets unnoticed.

Comics from the Black Panther series.
Alicia Quan/Unsplash, CC BY

Vibranium represents the resources of the 54 countries of Africa, whose extraction has not, on the whole, benefited Africans. It is mahogany, ivory, rubber, diamonds, salt, gold, copper, and uranium.

Black Panther draws on an artistic movement known as Afrofuturism, in which knowledge about past violence and injustice inform an imagined future built on equality. Afrofuturists have included novelists Sutton E. Griggs and George Schuyler in the early days, and later Octavia Butler, Samuel Delaney, and Ishmael Reed, and now N. K. Jemisin and Colson Whitehead.

Afrofuturist musicians include Sun Ra, George Clinton and P-Funk, and recently Janelle Monáe.
Black is King

Beyoncé’s new visual album Black Is King also draws on the Afrofuturist tradition.

It has been criticised for prioritising aesthetics over politics. In particular, Beyoncé’s effort to reclaim colonial stereotypes linking Africans to flora and fauna by donning couture animal prints has drawn mixed responses.

Beyoncé’s Black is King is a lush aesthetic exploration.
Travis Matthews/Disney Plus via AP

Dedicated to her son, Black Is King falls into a long tradition of romanticising black ancestors as kings and queens. Criticising this tendency, historian Clarence Walker has asked: “If Everybody Was a King, Who Built the Pyramids?”

But kingship is also a metaphor for the power of history, properly told. “History is your future,” Beyoncé tells the film’s young king. An exchange following the track Brown Skinned Girl starts with a male voice saying, “Systematically, we’ve had so much taken from us”. A second voice responds:


Being a king is taking what’s yours. But not just for selfish reasons, but to actually build up your community.

King T’Challa comes to the same realisation and at the end of Black Panther, we see him leave his tech-whizz sister at the helm of a new Wakandan outreach centre in Oakland, California.

In both Black Is King and Black Panther, global connections underpin a reimagined future universe – a marvellous one, even – where disadvantage and injustice stemming from racism are overcome. Wakanda forever.


Clare Corbould, Associate Professor, Deakin University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Trump’s Fox News Meltdown Over ‘People In Dark Shadows’ Lights Up Twitter

Trump kicked off a strange new conspiracy theory.

By Ed Mazza, HuffPost US

President Donald Trump sat down with Laura Ingraham for a lengthy interview on Fox News Monday and his critics couldn’t decide on the wildest part.

Trump attacked Black Lives Matter, saying the name alone was “bad for Black people” and compared the police officer who shot a Black man in the back seven times to a golfer who missed an easy putt.

He also presented a series of conspiracy theories, claiming “people that are in the dark shadows” control both “the streets” and former Vice President Joe Biden. And he spun a conspiracy theory about an airplane:

“We had somebody get on a plane from a certain city this weekend. And in the plane, it was almost completely loaded with thugs, wearing these dark uniforms, black uniforms, with gear and this and that.”



Trump claimed the people on the plane wanted to “do big damage” to the Republican National Convention, yet offered no other details. 

The president’s claims were so wild that Ingraham jumped in to try and save him several times.

The strange interview was all the talk on Twitter:

All of you idiots making fun of Donald and ignoring the VERY CLEAR information he’s trying to convey — people in the dark shadows who are getting on planes in black uniforms and flying to cities. Shadow People Dressed In Black On Airplanes. WAKE UP. https://t.co/ZhW5hX2HRV— Patton Oswalt (@pattonoswalt) September 1, 2020

You know things are bad when Laura Ingraham has to save President Trump from saying stupid things. https://t.co/jBBp9x7e4U— Chuck Schumer (@SenSchumer) September 1, 2020

I'm sorry, but Trump's Laura Ingraham interview is comedy gold... If only the fate the free world weren't at stake.— Randi Mayem Singer (@rmayemsinger) September 1, 2020

Is this dude ok? https://t.co/pq9vKRJHe8— Joy Reid (@JoyAnnReid) September 1, 2020

Trump should just keep doing TV all the time because it's going great for him.— Schooley (@Rschooley) September 1, 2020

When you need to be saved by Laura Ingraham, it’s not good. https://t.co/FOpiTPihE1— Kara Swisher (@karaswisher) September 1, 2020

you know you’ve got a problem when you can’t even interview with laura ingraham and not just machine gun your own feet the whole time— kilgore trout, non ass-talker (@KT_So_It_Goes) September 1, 2020

Trump says "people are pulling Biden's strings."
When pressed who, he says. "people that you've never heard of."
Trump is off the deep end folks! https://t.co/hO4h8c8QCH— Amy Siskind 🏳️‍🌈 (@Amy_Siskind) September 1, 2020

If that was the part of the Laura Ingraham interview of Donald Trump that the editors decided was good to put on the air, what the hell did they edit out?— JRehling (@JRehling) September 1, 2020

Tonight Trump talked about people in the dark shadows controlling Biden and a plane full of people wearing black uniforms and more. And a lot of people are saying he's nuts.

He's not. This is a deliberate appealing to QAnon. Stop underestimating him. That's what got us here.— Joshua Potash (@JoshuaPotash) September 1, 2020

She missed the follow up here; Dark Shadows the original TV show or the movie?— Joyce Alene (@JoyceWhiteVance) September 1, 2020

Dark Shadows is trending? Barnabas is pleased. pic.twitter.com/FaEPSAyNNo— V-Revolticon (@VRevolticon) September 1, 2020

I’d maybe just run this as a 30-second ad https://t.co/K9TmBjTauI— Jon Favreau (@jonfavs) September 1, 2020

Oh my. “Dark shadows” and “people wearing black uniforms.” How much is it worth to you that this unwell man is not president? $1? $10? $100? Step up and save America from this lunatic. Elect @JoeBiden at: https://t.co/8cqOQN2Ny3https://t.co/JhW4LjK0kF— Eric Swalwell (@ericswalwell) September 1, 2020

The cops "CHOKED"?!? Trump saying the Cops in Kenosha that just SHOT an Unarmed African-American man 7 times in the back "CHOKED...like in Golf" . Trump's so bad EVEN Laura Ingraham herself stopped him & Cut Trump off for damage control!🤬🤦🏼‍♂️ pic.twitter.com/gLWjACFfpg— DanielNewmaη (@DanielNewman) September 1, 2020

Trump couldn't even get through a softball, super-friendly Laura Ingraham interview tonight without spiking himself multiple times and Laura having to repeatedly interject in an effort to save Trump from himself.

But Biden's supposedly the one fearing the debates.— Justin Baragona (@justinbaragona) September 1, 2020

This is batshit, unhinged lunacy. Trump claims that “dark, shadowy forces” are controlling Biden, and that literall plane loads of Antifa folks dressed in black and riot gear are flying around the country fomenting mayhem. https://t.co/ypMBpHhx75— Brad Simpson (@bradleyrsimpson) September 1, 2020

Dark Shadows pic.twitter.com/GapTJLSj1o— Robert Bose (Very Apologetic Ex Trump Voter) (@RobertBose1) September 1, 2020

Trump Just Went Full QAnon in a Wild Fox News Interview

Even Laura Ingraham called Trump's claims a "conspiracy theory."

DG

By David Gilbert

September 1, 2020, 

FOX NEWS

President Donald Trump’s latest unfounded claims were so unhinged that even a Fox News host called them a “conspiracy theory.”

In an interview with Laura Ingraham broadcast on Monday night, Trump made multiple baseless claims about his opponent Joe Biden being controlled by a shadowy group of people who were funding the protests that have rocked the U.S. in recent months.

And experts believe that Trump’s wild claims, which lack any level of detail, will fuel multiple conspiracy theories, including QAnon

Speaking about law and order, a topic that has become central to his re-election bid, Trump said that Biden was weak and that he was being “controlled like a puppet” by a group he referred to cryptically as “they.”

Trump said that Biden was being controlled by "people that you've never heard of. People that are in the dark shadows. They're people that are in the streets, they're people that are controlling the streets.”

Trump claimed the unrest in Portland, where protesters have demonstrated and clashed with police for more than three months, was being fomented by protesters who were being paid by this shadowy group.

The president added that funding for a “revolution” is coming from “very stupid rich people that have no idea that if their thing ever succeeded, which it won't, they would be thrown to the wolves like never before.”

The baseless claims were so wild that even Ingraham, who’s a staunch supporter of the president, responded: “That sounds like a conspiracy theory.”

But that didn’t deter Trump. He went on to allege that a planeload of “thugs” had been flown to an unspecified location to cause trouble.

“We had somebody get on a plane from a certain city this weekend. And in the plane, it was almost completely loaded with thugs, wearing these dark uniforms, black uniforms, with gear and this and that,“ Trump said, adding: “A lot of the people were on the plane to do big damage.

A very similar conspiracy theory about antifa was being shared on social media months ago.

When asked for more details about the plane, Trump declined to comment, saying the situation was under investigation. “I’ll tell you sometime,” Trump said.

Trump also said that the people who were funding groups like Black Lives Matter — which he called “a Marxist organization” — were “just stupid foolish people that made a lot of money.”

Trump has long embraced and boosted various conspiracy theories, most recently giving tacit approval of the QAnon conspiracy.

Following Trump’s comments on Monday night, some QAnon believers hailed his comments as further proof their theory that a shadowy group of elites is working to undermine the U.S. president was true.

But conspiracy theory researcher Travis View pointed out that Trump’s comments were vague enough to appeal to those following all manner of conspiracy theories.

“He's a hairsbreadth away from just pushing Illuminati, Freemasonry, and Rothschild conspiracy theories,” View tweeted. “Trump kept the identity of the ‘shadowy’ enemy vague, so conspiracy theorists can fill it with their favorite villain. Some choose China, the Deep State, or ‘Elites.’ Though some prefer the stronger antisemitic twang of ‘banking families.’”

Earlier on Monday, Trump defended Kyle Rittenhouse, who allegedly shot two protesters to death in Kenosha, Wisconsin by suggesting the 17-year-old Trump supporter was just acting in self-defense.

And in his interview with Ingraham, the president offered an excuse for why a police officer shot Jacob Blake in the back seven times, comparing the act to missing a putt in golf.

“Shooting the guy in the back many times, I mean, couldn't you have done something different, couldn't you have wrestled him?" Trump said. "In the meantime, he could have been going for a weapon and, you know, there's a whole big thing there but in the meantime, they choke. Just like in a golf tournament, they miss a 3-foot putt."

Feds Cite ‘Voluminous’ Info Seized In We Build The Wall Case Against Bannon

NEW YORK, NY - AUGUST 20: Former White House Chief Strategist Steve Bannon exits the Manhattan Federal Court on August 20, 2020 in the Manhattan borough of New York City. Bannon and three other defendants have been indicted  

By Josh Kovensky and Matt Shuham
|
August 31, 2020

Federal prosecutors have seized “voluminous” amounts of information in the We Build The Wall case against Steve Bannon, Brian Kolfage and two others, telling a federal judge on Monday that the government has been executing search warrants through August.

Assistant U.S. Attorney Alison Moe said at Monday’s hearing that the feds had executed search warrants on electronic devices in July and August, and were still in the process of gaining access to the email accounts within.

The disclosure comes after Manhattan federal prosecutors charged Bannon, Kolfage, and two others with conspiracy to commit wire fraud and conspiracy to commit money laundering over an alleged scheme to siphon money out of a project to raise private donations to build a wall along the southern border.

Bannon pleaded not guilty to the charges in an Aug. 20 arraignment. Kolfage and the two other defendants — Timothy Shea and Andrew Badolato — also entered pleas of not guilty at Monday’s hearing, held remotely before U.S. District Judge Analisa Torres for the Southern District of New York.

Moe said that prosecutors had obtained a search warrant for email accounts in the case in January 2020, and agreed to produce an initial “wave” of evidence by September 29.
Running to the teacher

Brian Kolfage took the opportunity at the Monday hearing to air out a dispute with federal prosecutors over his aggressive social media posts, which prosecutors flagged in a letter to the court Friday.

Among other things, Kolfage has accused prosecutors of wanting to seize We Build The Wall donors’ information and target them for political purposes.

“That deeply concerned the government,” Moe said Monday, stressing that prosecutors weren’t yet asking for a gag order, merely that Judge Torres remind Kolfage of the court’s rule against statements that could bias a jury pool, which she did on Monday.

But Kolfage’s attorney Harvey Steinberg wasn’t going to let the government have the last word: In a several-minute statement, he accused prosecutors of breaking the same rule by referring to Kolfage as a “fraudster” who was living a “lavish” lifestyle in a press release announcing the charges against the We Build The Wall leader.

“It reminds me of the bully who picks on, if you will, the person he perceives to be the weakest — and then when the weakest hits him back, he runs to the teacher,” Steinberg said, referring to the prosecutors’ letter to the court.

Kolfage referenced the DOJ press release in a Facebook message to TPM Friday. Projecting his lawyer’s moves, he said, “Someone is going to get ripped Monday and it won’t be me.”

Torres didn’t “rip” anyone. Instead she said that both sides understood court’s rule, and that “My expectation is that there will not be violations of the rule.”

“If I have to hold an additional proceeding to determine whether the rules have been violated, well, we shall see,” she added.
Conflict?

One morsel left over from Bannon’s Aug. 20 arraignment was the question of a potential conflict of interest in the case. Prosecutors had said that they were concerned by a conflict present in Bannon’s legal team, helmed by former Bush White House official Bill Burck of Quinn Emanuel.

On Monday, Moe said that the law firm had represented We Build The Wall last year, creating a potential conflict in its representation of Bannon.

Burck downplayed the issue, saying that a partner and associate at the firm had spent a combined “fourteen hours” on a project for We Build the Wall last fall. It wasn’t clear what the nature of the project was.

Judge Torres set a preliminary trial date in the case for May 24, 2021.


Josh Kovensky is an investigative reporter for Talking Points Memo, based in New York. He previously worked for the Kyiv Post in Ukraine, covering politics, business, and corruption there.

Matt Shuham (@mattshuham) is a reporter in TPM’s New York office covering corruption, extremism and other beats. Prior to joining TPM, he was associate editor of The National Memo and an editorial intern at Rolling Stone.

Facebook rejects Australia's pay-for-news plan, proposes its own idea: How about no more articles at all, sunshine?

The toys are maintaining a constant horizontal velocity from the pram

Tue 1 Sep 2020 // 03:26 UTC28  GOT TIPS?

Simon Sharwood, APAC Editor BIO EMAIL TWITTER

+Comment Facebook has announced it will "reluctantly stop allowing publishers and people in Australia from sharing local and international news on Facebook and Instagram" if Australia's pay-for-news plan becomes reality.

By plan we mean a mandatory code of conduct that's been in a public consultation phase. Under these proposed rules, drawn up by Australia's Competition and Consumer Commission, publishers can negotiate primarily with Facebook and Google so that news outlets are paid a fee for having their articles shared and read on the aforementioned web platforms. If the negotiations fail, an independent arbitrator will decide the final offer from those put forward.

A post today by Facebook's managing director for Australia and New Zealand, Will Easton, said the draft code of conduct "misunderstands the dynamics of the internet and will do damage to the very news organisations the government is trying to protect" and that the commission "presumes that Facebook benefits most in its relationship with publishers, when in fact the reverse is true".

A choice of either removing news entirely or accepting a system that lets publishers charge us for as much content as they want

Easton said Facebook is open to working with Australian publishers, and has even contemplated introducing to the nation the Facebook News service it operates in America, in which it pays news publishers for linking to their content.

But Facebook's antipodean boss described Australia's proposal as "overcooked". Presumably the arbitration part is too much for the US giant to swallow. Indeed, we're told the code of conduct leaves Facebook "with a choice of either removing news entirely or accepting a system that lets publishers charge us for as much content as they want at a price with no clear limits. Unfortunately, no business can operate that way."

As such, Facebook will pull the plug on sharing news in Australia unless it has its own way.

Easton's justification for his argument is that "news represents a fraction of what people see in their News Feed and is not a significant source of revenue for us".

Google says Australian pay-for-news code means it can’t quit the country

READ MORE

Facebook wants to support journalism, it is alleged, and does so by providing tools that help publishers find an audience. Those efforts, Easton wrote, turned into 2.3 billion clicks of traffic in the first five months of 2020 alone. Facebook valued that traffic at AU$200m and suggested it allowed publishers "to sell more subscriptions and advertising".

"Facebook products and services in Australia that allow family and friends to connect will not be impacted by this decision," Easton said. "Our global commitment to quality news around the world will not change either. And we will continue to work with governments and regulators who rightly hold our feet to the fire. But successful regulation, like the best journalism, will be grounded in and built on facts. In this instance, it is not."

Reg comment

Easton's argument misrepresents the arbitration process Australia proposes, while also proposing regulatory capture.

The misrepresentation is expressed in his assertion that publishers will be able to "charge us for as much content as they want at a price they want". The reality of the situation is that an independent arbitrator will be involved to set prices if bargaining breaks down, and that negotiation will be possible beforehand.

"If the news businesses and the digital platforms cannot strike a deal through a formal three-month negotiation and mediation process," the competition commission explained in July, "then an independent arbitrator would choose which of the two parties' final offer is the most reasonable within 45 business days."

That Facebook intends regulatory capture is evident in Easton's assertion that Facebook is happy to use its own pay-for-news scheme it operates elsewhere while rejecting Australia's proposed model.

The core of Australia's model is an attempt to balance the bargaining power between local media and web giants Google and Facebook.

As Facebook demonstrates in this post, its bargaining position is either to set all the rules itself or to take itself off the board and out of reach of the commission. Which to your humble hack's mind shows just how much power Facebook has, just as Google has shown its hand by plastering its properties with warnings about the implications of Australia's plans. ®

Bootnote

The Register is not eligible to receive payment under Australia's planned code of conduct – while we have staff in Australia and the Asia-Pacific region, we do not operate primarily in Australia for the purpose of serving Australian audiences – and reports this story as it is potentially a global precedent for how governments, publishers, and web giants interact.

The fleeting facade of amateurism in college sports

Dion Rabouin, Kendall Baker


Illustration: Sarah Grillo/Axios


If football and men's basketball players at Power 5 colleges were paid under collective bargaining agreements like their professional peers in the NFL and NBA, they would earn annual salaries of $360,000 and $500,000, respectively.

Driving the news: That's according to a new study released by the National Bureau of Economic Research, which also estimates that high-profile athletes like quarterbacks ($2.4 million per year on average) and every starting player on a basketball team (between $800,000 and $1.2 million per year) would earn significantly more.

Why it matters: The study finds that college athletics' amateurism rules create a system that transfers money away from poorer, largely Black students to wealthier, mostly white students, coaches and administrators.

By the numbers: Less than 7% of the revenue generated by football and men's basketball at FBS schools is paid to its athletes in the form of scholarships and stipends for living expenses.

By comparison, NFL and NBA players receive approximately 50% of the revenue generated by their athletic activities as salary, even though college athletics have generated more in ticket sales since 1999.

The combined revenue of Power 5 conferences increased by nearly 260% from 2008 to 2018, while over the same time period, revenues for the NFL and NBA grew by approximately 90% and 110%.

Between the lines: FBS schools typically field men's and women's teams in roughly 20 different sports, but 58% of total revenue comes from football and men's basketball.
That money goes to coaching staffs and athletic departments, and supports non-revenue sports, whose athletes often come from wealthier backgrounds.
Non-revenue-generating athletes come from neighborhoods with average incomes 37% higher than college football and basketball players, according to the study.

The big picture: College football's pandemic response has catalyzed the #WeAreUnited movement, with athletes threatening to withdraw their labor and laying out plans to create a players' association.

What to watch: While no legislation has been passed to pay college athletes directly, multiple states have passed bills that will soon allow them to profit off their name, image and likeness.
So, while a star QB in Florida won't earn millions of dollars in salary, he could earn hundreds of thousands of dollars through sponsored social media posts alone starting in July.

The bottom line: "While intercollegiate sports are often described as student activities undertaken by amateurs, the economic reality is that athletic departments have developed into complex commercial enterprises that look far more like professional sports organizations than extracurricular endeavors."

Scientists see downsides to top COVID-19 vaccines from Russia, China

Allison Martell, Julie Steenhuysen

TORONTO/CHICAGO (Reuters) - High-profile COVID-19 vaccines developed in Russia and China share a potential shortcoming: They are based on a common cold virus that many people have been exposed to, potentially limiting their effectiveness, some experts say.

CanSino Biologics’ (6185.HK) vaccine, approved for military use in China, is a modified form of adenovirus type 5, or Ad5. The company is in talks to get emergency approval in several countries before completing large-scale trials, the Wall Street Journal reported last week.

A vaccine developed by Moscow’s Gamaleya Institute, approved in Russia earlier this month despite limited testing, is based on Ad5 and a second less common adenovirus.

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Explainer: How common cold viruses are being used in vaccines from Russia, China

“The Ad5 concerns me just because a lot of people have immunity,” said Anna Durbin, a vaccine researcher at Johns Hopkins University. “I’m not sure what their strategy is ... maybe it won’t have 70% efficacy. It might have 40% efficacy, and that’s better than nothing, until something else comes along.”

Vaccines are seen as essential to ending the pandemic that has claimed over 845,000 lives worldwide. Gamaleya has said its two-virus approach will address Ad5 immunity issues.

Both developers have years of experience and approved Ebola vaccines based on Ad5. Neither CanSino nor Gamaleya responded to requests for comment.

Researchers have experimented with Ad5-based vaccines against a variety of infections for decades, but none are widely used. They employ harmless viruses as “vectors” to ferry genes from the target virus – in this case the novel coronavirus - into human cells, prompting an immune response to fight the actual virus.

But many people already have antibodies against Ad5, which could cause the immune system to attack the vector instead of responding to the coronavirus, making these vaccines less effective.

Several researchers have chosen alternative adenoviruses or delivery mechanisms. Oxford University and AstraZeneca (AZN.L) based their COVID-19 vaccine on a chimpanzee adenovirus, avoiding the Ad5 issue. Johnson & Johnson’s (JNJ.N) candidate uses Ad26, a comparatively rare strain.

Dr. Zhou Xing, from Canada’s McMaster University, worked with CanSino on its first Ad5-based vaccine, for tuberculosis, in 2011. His team is developing an inhaled Ad5 COVID-19 vaccine, theorizing it could circumvent pre-existing immunity issues.


FILE PHOTO: A logo of China's vaccine specialist CanSino Biologics Inc is pictured on the company's headquarters in Tianjin, following an outbreak of the coronavirus disease (COVID-19), China August 17, 2020. REUTERS/Thomas Peter/File Photo

“The Oxford vaccine candidate has quite an advantage” over the injected CanSino vaccine, he said.

Xing also worries that high doses of the Ad5 vector in the CanSino vaccine could induce fever, fueling vaccine skepticism.

“I think they will get good immunity in people that don’t have antibodies to the vaccine, but a lot of people do,” said Dr. Hildegund Ertl, director of the Wistar Institute Vaccine Center in Philadelphia.

In China and the United States, about 40% of people have high levels of antibodies from prior Ad5 exposure. In Africa, it could be has high as 80%, experts said.

HIV RISK

Some scientists also worry an Ad5-based vaccine could increase chances of contracting HIV.

In a 2004 trial of a Merck & Co (MRK.N) Ad5-based HIV vaccine, people with pre-existing immunity became more, not less, susceptible to the virus that causes AIDS.

Researchers, including top U.S. infectious diseases expert Dr. Anthony Fauci, in a 2015 paper, said the side effect was likely unique to HIV vaccines. But they cautioned that HIV incidence should be monitored during and after trials of all Ad5-based vaccines in at-risk populations.



FILE PHOTO: A scientist works inside a laboratory of the Gamaleya Research Institute of Epidemiology and Microbiology during the production and laboratory testing of a vaccine against the coronavirus disease (COVID-19), in Moscow, Russia August 6, 2020. The Russian Direct Investment Fund (RDIF)/Handout via REUTERS

“I would be worried about the use of those vaccines in any country or any population that was at risk of HIV, and I put our country as one of them,” said Dr. Larry Corey, co-leader of the U.S. Coronavirus Vaccine Prevention Network, who was a lead researcher on the Merck trial.

Gamaleya’s vaccine will be administered in two doses: The first based on Ad26, similar to J&J’s candidate, and the second on Ad5.

Alexander Gintsburg, Gamaleya’s director, has said the two-vector approach addresses the immunity issue. Ertl said it might work well enough in individuals who have been exposed to one of the two adenoviruses.

Many experts expressed skepticism about the Russian vaccine after the government declared its intention to give it to high-risk groups in October without data from large pivotal trials.

“Demonstrating safety and efficacy of a vaccine is very important,” said Dr. Dan Barouch, a Harvard vaccine researcher who helped design J&J’s COVID-19 vaccine. Often, he noted, large-scale trials “do not give the result that is expected or required.”


Additional reporting by Christine Soares in New York, Kate Kelland in London, Polina Ivanova in Moscow and Roxanne Liu in Beijing; Editing by Caroline Humer and Bill Berkrot
Our Standards:The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.