It’s possible that I shall make an ass of myself. But in that case one can always get out of it with a little dialectic. I have, of course, so worded my proposition as to be right either way (K.Marx, Letter to F.Engels on the Indian Mutiny)
Thursday, March 21, 2024
WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange may reach a plea deal with the US government, according to The Wall Street Journal.
The US Department of Justice is considering whether to allow Julian Assange to plead guilty to reduced charges of mishandling classified information. WSJ writes Assange is embroiled in a protracted legal battle with the British government to avoid extradition to the US for future trial over the publication of thousands of confidential US military reports and diplomatic cables in 2010.
Currently, a British court is considering whether to allow the founder of WikiLeaks a last chance for appeal. After the US prosecutors charged him in 2019, he was arrested by UK law enforcement officials and has since been held in a London prison. WikiLeaks
WikiLeaks is an international non-profit organization that publishes secret information obtained from anonymous sources or through leaks of such information.
Founded in 2006 by the Sunshine Press organization, the founders claimed to possess a database of 1.2 million ocuments collected within the first year of the site's existence.
The organization has released a series of significant documents, resulting in widespread coverage in newspapers. Early publications included documents such as war expenditures in Afghanistan and a report on corruption in Kenya.
In April 2010, WikiLeaks published footage taken during the Baghdad airstrike on July 12, 2007, shog journalists from Reuters among others being killed in an attack by an AH-64 Apache helicopter.
Julian Assange's persecution by the US
The United States accuses Julian Assange on 18 counts, including theft of classified information, espionage, and conspiracy to hack computer networks. If convicted, he could face up to 175 years in prison.
For seven years, from 2012 to 2019, the WikiLeaks founder sought refuge in the Ecuadorian Embassy in the UK, which granted him asylum. This allowed him to evade extradition to Sweden, where he faced allegations of sexual assault.
In April 2019, a British court found Assange guilty of failing to appear in court in 2012. Ecuadorian authorities permitted British police to enter the embassy and arrest Assange.
In May 2019 and June 2020, the US government announced new charges against Assange, accusing him of violating the 1917 Espionage Act and alleging that he conspired with hackers.
What preceded
Recently, a former CIA employee Joshua Schulte, who several years ago leaked a large volume of classified documents about the Central Intelligence Agency's tools to WikiLeaks, was sentenced to 40 years in prison in the United States.
Last September, a court near Paris rejected a request from an association seeking to allow WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange to seek political asylum in the country.
EU's radical left targets social problems to beat the far right
Story by DPA International
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Walter Baier attends AFCO committee meeting in the European Union. The president of Europe's largest coalition of far-left parties Walter Baier has told the European Newsroom (enr) that fighting the far right will be a priority in the forthcoming European Parliament elections.
The president of Europe's largest coalition of far-left parties has told the European Newsroom (enr) that fighting the far right will be a priority in the forthcoming European Parliament elections.
“Fighting the far-right is a moral and a cultural obligation," Walter Baier told the enr in an interview this week. "There can be no compromises with the agenda of hatred, of anti-Semitism, of scapegoating the migrants," he said.
The 70-year-old Austrian has been president of the European Parliament's Party of the European Left (PEL) since December 2022. The PEL is the largest faction of the 37-member far-left bloc in the European Parliament, where pollsters predict a far-right surge in the elections to be held in June.
According to Baier, fighting the European far right requires strong social politics, respect for the interests of employees, the liberation of young people from economic insecurity and guaranteed access to decent housing.
The PEL's manifesto “is written from the perspective of the working class and young people,” said Baier, the former head of Austria’s communist party.
”It cannot be that large parts of our societies are worried about heating their homes during the winter or that they are afraid of the necessary ecological transformation,” he added.
Baier said that to combat the extreme right, it is essential to address the ”social interests of the working classes."
Climate change must also not be forgotten in the fight for social justice, he said. “Ecological reorganization must go hand in hand with the reduction of social inequalities,” Baier said.
Last month, the PEL chose Baier to be its so-called lead candidate in the elections. He will visit around ten EU member states to campaign, he said.
In principle, that makes him the faction's choice for president of the European Commission, an office currently held by German conservative Ursula von der Leyen.
But in practice, the elections won't decide who gets the top job.
Instead, the leaders of the EU's 27 member states will meet behind closed doors to choose a sole candidate - most likely von der Leyen - and then ask the parliament to confirm the appointment.
Last time, von der Leyen - who was no group's lead candidate in the 2019 elections - was confirmed by only the slimmest of margins.
This time, she is the lead candidate of the centre-right European People's Party, but she appears unlikely to win support from PEL representatives. Baier said “she is not the right person” to implement the social policies his group wants to see.
A RIGHT TO DECENT HOUSING
Baier wants to establish decent housing as "a fundamental right in the primary law of the European Union."
He said fulfilling that right means imposing limits on rents and creating a European fund to help municipalities and cooperatives build houses.
“We would like the European Union to invest in the housing sector." The PEL also wants "strict and rigid regulation" of platforms like Airbnb, Baier said.
In addition, the group wants an EU directive “that obliges member states to introduce legal limits on rents and to ban fixed-term tenancies and forced evictions from primary residences.”
TIME FOR UKRAINE TO NEGOTIATE
Baier echoed Pope Francis' call for Ukraine to negotiate an end to the war with Russia, which launched an all-out invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.
“I believe helping the Ukrainian people means now making attempts to end the war,” said Baier.
Baier underlined that his faction – whose 26 members include Germany’s Die Linke, France’s Communists and Greece’s Syriza – “absolutely condemned the Russian aggression” in its manifesto.
He wants the EU "to take diplomatic efforts to start negotiations to achieve a ceasefire and to achieve the withdrawal of the Russian troops,” Baier said.
“In this regard, I fully support what Pope Francis was saying. Now it’s the time to end the war, and now it’s the time to negotiate and stop killing,” he said.
In an interview broadcast earlier this month, the Argentine pontiff urged Kiev to “raise the white flag and negotiate.”
The Ukrainian government reacted with fury. The Vatican insisted the words “white flag” were intended to mean a cessation of hostilities, not a surrender.
LEFTISTS CAN BRING WESTERN BALKANS INTO THE EU
Baier also said leftists in the EU can help Western Balkan countries that want to join the bloc to meet the membership criteria.
He recalled the Copenhagen criteria, which were set in 1993 as basic conditions for EU accession, emphasizing the importance of respect for human rights and the rule of law.
“I would also add respect for trade union rights and labour rights. I think that the European Left Party, which is in contact with left forces in different countries of the Western Balkans, can play a constructive role in creating these conditions, which are laid down in the Copenhagen criteria,” Baier pointed out.
Scientists fired from Winnipeg lab over security fears rightly under probe: minister
OTTAWA — It's "extremely appropriate" that two scientists who lost their jobs due to dealings with China remain under investigation, Health Minister Mark Holland said Wednesday.
The National Microbiology Laboratory researchers were fired in early 2021 after their security clearances were revoked over questions about their loyalty and the potential for coercion by China.
Records tabled in Parliament late last month say the scientists, Xiangguo Qiu and her husband, Keding Cheng, played down their collaborations with Chinese government agencies.
The RCMP said Wednesday a national security investigation into the matter, which begain in May 2019, remains underway.
The Mounties started the probe following a referral from the Public Health Agency of Canada.
The Globe and Mail newspaper reported Wednesday the two scientists have been using pseudonyms as they build a new life in China.
Holland said he was "deeply disturbed" by the scientists' behaviour.
"They're under an investigation, and rightfully so," he said.
"That investigation is ongoing. It would be inappropriate for me to comment on the nature of that investigation. But I would say that it's extremely appropriate that the investigations are occurring."
The documents presented to Parliament show the Canadian Security Intelligence Service concluded that Qiu repeatedly lied about the extent of her work with institutions of the Chinese government.
Related video: Documents on fired Winnipeg scientists released (Global News)
The records also say she refused to admit involvement in various Chinese programs even when evidence was presented to her.
CSIS found that Qiu provided at least two employees of Chinese government institutions access to the microbiology laboratory, and consistently said she had very limited knowledge of these institutions' mandates, "despite an abundance of evidence that she was actually working with or for them."
Upon release of the records, the Public Health Agency said it had taken steps to bolster research security in response to the episode.
The microbiology laboratory has a "renewed, proactive security posture" that has reinforced the physical security of the building, the health agency said.
"Screening measures are strictly enforced for all staff and external visitors, including the requirement for visitors to be accompanied at all times and without exception."
The Public Health Agency needs to provide a fuller explanation of exactly what it has done, said Wesley Wark, a senior fellow with the Centre for International Governance Innovation.
Wark, a national security expert who has closely followed the issue, said the agency must be able to demonstrate concretely how it has changed the lab's practices with regard to security training, data protection and information technology.
"From my perspective, there's two things that we need to know," Wark said.
"One is the details of the changes. The other is, was there a review conducted in order to make those changes, to make sure that they were going to be adequate?"
A spokesman for the Public Health Agency did not have immediate answers Wednesday to questions about the security changes.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published March 20, 2024.
In April of this year the RCMP announced that they had uncovered a bio-terrorist threat involving two Canadian scientists working for the innocuous sounding: Canadian Food Inspection Agency (CFIA).
The two CFIA scientists were busted for attempting to sell Brucellis virus to China. In fact one of the scientists, herself Chinese, had gotten away to China.1They were under investigation for two years when it became known that they were trying to commercialize the bacteria they had developed with CFIA.
SWEAT SHOP ECONOMICS
Investment firms see 'blood in the water' at Gildan: analyst
BNN Bloomberg
A market analyst believes investors may have seen “blood in the water” at Gildan Activewear and decided to take advantage with a push to buy the company.
On Tuesday, Gildan revealed it was exploring a possible sale as the company has embroiled in a tense dispute between its main shareholders over the dismissal of former CEO Glenn Chamandy. Now, sources told Bloomberg News that private equity firm Sycamore Partners is considering a bid for the clothing brand.
David Swartz, senior equity analyst at Morningstar Research Services, told BNN Bloomberg that companies may be looking to bounce on the company tumult.
“It appears that this was a completely unsolicited offer, there's no indication that Gildan's board was actually trying to sell the company until apparently, someone came forward with an offer, probably smelling blood in the water with all the controversy between the board and the shareholders,” he said in a television interview on Wednesday.
“It seems like Gildan's board had to do a pretty big shift there and decide whether to pursue this acquisition, and it seems like the prices that are being discussed are strong enough that the board really couldn't ignore the offer and now they're going to have to pursue it.”
Browning West, an investment firm with a roughly five per cent stake in Gildan that’s trying to reinstate Chamandy, said it was “naturally concerned” to hear of the news, and that the “current ‘lame duck’ board” is not equipped to evaluate any sale offers.
Browning West also mentioned a rumoured price of US$42 per share, saying shareholders should be “dismayed” but the offer.
Meanwhile, Swartz believes the rumoured price is a “strong offer” and should give Browning West reason for optimism.
“That's well above my fair value estimates for the company,” he said. “I value Gildan right now at only US$31, so a US$42 take-out price, I believe that would be the all-time high.”
“If that comes to pass, then I think that's a good outcome and I don't know what Browning West is now complaining about it.”
Given the challenges between shareholders and executives, Swartz believes a sale may be the best option for all sides.
“This could be probably the best scenario, the best way out of this mess, because right now the board and the shareholders, especially Browning West, are at a complete impasse, and there doesn't seem to be any room for negotiation,” he said.
“A sale of the company would at least end the whole controversy over who's going to control Gildan.”
Robert McFarlane, a corporate governance director and former CFO of Telus, told BNN Bloomberg that the latest developments at Gildan were not a surprise.
“This has played out exactly as I expected,” he said. “Browning West … they would expect this to have been a possible outcome as well. So it’s been the activists’ playbook if you will.”
McFarlane added that Gildan is right to do its due diligence on any serious offers.
“If they received unsolicited offers, they need to get advice, which they’re doing, evaluate those and decide whether it’s in the best interest of shareholders and other stakeholders,” he said.
With files from Bloomberg News
Sycamore Partners explores bid for apparel maker Gildan activewear
Gillian Tan, Mathieu Dion and Derek Decloet, Bloomberg News
GILDAN ACTIVEWEAR INC (GIL:CT)
51.110.09 (0.18%)
As of: 03/21/24 9:37:58 am REAL-TIME QUOTE. Prices update every five seconds for TSX-listed stocks
Private equity firm Sycamore Partners is exploring an offer for Gildan Activewear Inc., the Canadian clothing manufacturer that owns the American Apparel brand, people familiar with the matter said.
The New York-based buyout firm has discussed financing options with potential lenders, according to one of the people, who requested anonymity to discuss confidential information.
Montreal-based Gildan — which is in the middle of an ugly dispute between its board and some of its largest shareholders — confirmed Tuesday that it has received a “confidential non-binding expression of interest to acquire” the company, and has set up a board committee to review the proposal and any alternative transaction.
The committee and Gildan’s financial advisers contacted a small number of potential buyers, “several” of which have expressed interest in a friendly takeover, the company said, without naming them. Still, “there can be no assurance any transaction will result from these discussions.”
A representative for Sycamore declined to comment. The firm focuses on retail and consumer investments, and has done deals in Canada before, buying the Canadian retail business of Lowe’s Cos. for about US$400 million in a transaction announced in 2022.
Gildan has hired Goldman Sachs Group Inc., RBC Capital Markets and Canaccord Genuity Group Inc. to give advise, according to a person familiar with the matter.
Shares of Gildan surged 10.8 per cent in Toronto trading on Tuesday — giving the company a market value of about $8.6 billion (US$6.3 billion) — before trading was halted. The Globe & Mail was the first to report the interest from possible buyers.
Gildan’s board has been fighting with several institutional shareholders and former Chief Executive Officer Glenn Chamandy, who was sacked in December over disagreements about the company’s succession plan and strategy. The board hired Vince Tyra, a former Fruit of the Loom executive, to replace him.
The dissident group of investors, which holds more than one third of Gildan’s shares, is led by Los Angeles-based investment firm Browning West LP. The money manager is seeking to reinstate Chamandy by electing a new board at the company’s annual meeting on May 28.
Browning West is now suing the company and its board, accusing them of disregarding the rights and interests of shareholders.
Major Canadian Gildan shareholder weighs in on dramatic boardroom saga
Jordan Fleguel, BNN Bloomberg
One of Gildan Activewear Inc.’s largest shareholders says the increasingly bitter feud between the company’s board of directors and its former CEO “never should have ended” in such dramatic fashion.
Evan J. Mancer, president and chief investment officer of Winnipeg-based Cardinal Capital Management, said his firm is one of a number of high-profile shareholders who would like to see Gildan’s ousted CEO and co-founder Glenn Chamandy reinstated.
“I'm not sure how they got to this… I think there's probably more ego involved than logic,” Mancer told BNN Bloomberg in a television interview Friday morning.
“I don't know who started it, between the board and (Chamandy); founders can be very passionate about their companies… but it never should have ended like this.”
Chamandy had served as head of the Montreal-based company for nearly 20 years before he was dismissed by Gildan’s board late last year and replaced by former Fruit of the Loom executive, Vince Tyra.
The board said at the time that they had lost faith in Chamandy’s ability to deliver long-term strategic objectives, but Chamandy maintains he was fired without cause, and said he had the backing of the company’s management team.
Mancer, whose firm is estimated to be Gildan’s twelfth largest shareholder, said he thinks Gildan was “extremely well managed” under Chamandy’s leadership, and that his past moves have set the company up for future success.
“It's extremely rare that a board would ever fire a successful CEO… even if there's some ego involved, at the end of the day, the job of the board is really to keep your successful CEO, not to let them go,” he said.
Activist investor Browning West
U.S. investment firm Browning West has been the most outspoken Gildan shareholder that wants to see Chamandy reinstated as CEO, and the firm has also said it will seek to replace eight of the 11 directors on Gildan’s board.
Mancer said that while he initially only wanted Chamandy reinstated, he can’t see how he and the board that ousted him could work together again, and said that Browning West’s proposed change of directors is “probably the only solution.”
“I think Browning West actually did a really good job with this new slate of directors that they're proposing,” he added.
“They're all industry heavyweights for one, but also, there's two or three of them that have got a lot of experience with succession, having worked with founders in the past, and obviously having come through what we just came through, that's very much needed at Gildan.”
