Donald Trump Murdered Qassim Suleimani

James Risen January 9 2020, 


President Donald Trump departs after addressing the nation
 from the White House on Jan. 8, 2020. 
Photo: Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post via Getty Images


DONALD TRUMP HAS DRAGGED America into a moral abyss. And yet Congress, the press, and the public are unwilling to admit that we are now standing in blood. The nation is enabling a murderous demagogue, and we are all complicit.

The president of the United States has murdered a high-ranking official of a foreign government. The assassination last week of Iranian Maj. Gen. Qassim Suleimani was a state-sponsored murder.

But no one in the Washington establishment seems prepared to come out and say the hard truth: Donald Trump is a murderer.

This criminal moment has been a long time coming.

The United States has an assassination ban. The ban was put in place following disclosures by the Church Committee in the 1970s, which revealed that the CIA had secretly attempted to kill a series of foreign leaders, most notably Cuba’s Fidel Castro.

At the time of the Senate committee’s investigation, no one in the American government or media publicly defended assassination as a tool of a modern nation-state. It was simply not the accepted practice of a democracy that wanted to serve as a role model for the world.

But the reform-minded 1970s now seem quaint in a nation whose greatest military innovation in the 21st century has been the targeted killing of individuals by remote control.


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With Suleimani Assassination, Trump Is Doing the Bidding of Washington’s Most Vile Cabal


For the last two decades, both Republican and Democratic presidents have worked quietly to skirt the assassination ban in order to take advantage of new aviation, missile guidance, and surveillance technologies to find and kill individuals all over the world. To launch targeted killings without violating the assassination ban, presidents have counted on compliant government lawyers to issue secret legal opinions that rubber-stamped their actions.

The Clinton administration started this process in 1998, in the wake of the bombings of two U.S. embassies in East Africa by Al Qaeda. In response, the White House decided to launch cruise missile strikes against what they claimed were terrorist training camps near Khost, Afghanistan. The primary target was Osama bin Laden.

At the time, I was covering national security and intelligence for the New York Times. I asked White House officials whether the action had violated the assassination ban. They responded that it had not because the target was the “command and control infrastructure” of Al Qaeda. When I asked them what they meant by “command and control infrastructure,” they reluctantly admitted that the “command and control infrastructure” of Al Qaeda was its leadership, meaning bin Laden. I realized that the Clinton administration’s lawyers had prepared a euphemism-laden opinion to provide legal cover for Bill Clinton and his advisers. That was the beginning of what has become a very long pattern.

After 9/11, political concerns about the assassination ban went by the boards because there was such overwhelming public support for the new, so-called global war on terror. But the government’s lawyers still worried about the assassination ban and other rules and regulations governing the use of state-sponsored violence.

That’s why the congressional legislation known as the Authorization for Use of Military Force has been so important to government lawyers. The AUMF, passed by Congress just days after 9/11, has provided the basic legal authorization for counterterrorism strikes ever since.

Armed with the AUMF and other legal backstops, the Bush and Obama administrations began to kill at will. The killing has never stopped. It has been a vicious campaign that has claimed countless innocent lives, destabilized nations, and been almost entirely counterproductive. It has made Americans numb to endless war.

But the United States gained public and legal support for targeted killings only for what it described as the asymmetric fight against terrorism. It targeted suspected terrorists: “non-state actors.”

That is where Trump has now crossed a clear line. He conducted a drone strike to murder the official who served as Iran’s viceroy in Iraq. Qassim Suleimani was most definitely not a “non-state actor.”

Suleimani was the head of the Quds Force, the elite external operations arm of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, which operated with impunity throughout Iraq under his leadership. He ran Iran’s ground campaign against ISIS in Iraq, in parallel to the American air campaign, and employed Shia militias and their ruthless tactics to defeat the cult-like group. The United States has been happy to take credit for the victory over ISIS in Iraq, without admitting that it relied heavily upon Suleimani’s horrific paramilitary actions and his strategic acumen.

But he was much more than a special forces commander or spymaster; he was Iran’s most important envoy, and he served as Tehran’s intimidating political fixer throughout the Middle East. 

Read Our Complete CoverageTargeting Iran

He dominated the political landscape in Baghdad. In November, The Intercept and the New York Times reported on leaked Iranian intelligence cables that publicly documented Iran’s deep influence in Iraq from Iran’s perspective for the first time. What jumped off the pages in the leaked cables was Suleimani’s personal political power in Iraq and his hold on many of Iraq’s top political, military, and security officials.

Last October, Suleimani intervened at the highest levels of Iraqi politics to keep Iraqi Prime Minister Adil Abdul-Mahdi in office amid massive protests and calls for his resignation. American officials serving in Iraq always thought they heard Suleimani’s footsteps.

In April 2019, the Trump administration designated the Revolutionary Guards, and Suleimani’s Quds Force, terrorist organizations. It was the first time the United States had ever designated a unit of another government a terrorist group.

At the time, the long-debated action was broadly portrayed as just another step in Trump’s reckless campaign to ratchet up economic sanctions on Iran and Iranian leaders. But I believe that the terrorist designation was Suleimani’s death warrant. I would not be surprised if the drone strike against Suleimani was supported by a secret legal opinion claiming that since he was the leader of a designated terrorist organization, he was a legitimate target in the war on terror under the AUMF and other counterterrorism legal guidelines. I’m sure that the lawyers at the National Security Council, the White House, and the Justice Department are sleeping well, knowing that they found a quick legal fix to allow Donald Trump to murder a foreign government official.

If we had a real Congress, there would be a congressional investigation into whatever lame, paper-thin legal rationalizations have been written by government lawyers to back up this murder. Instead, we are left with the nagging realization that Trump has just found a new loophole to circumvent the assassination ban.

But such actions prompt responses. Iran’s parliament has passed a bill designating all U.S. military forces terrorists.

The threat of retaliation has always been one of the most potent arguments against the use of assassination as a national security tool: It can prompt other countries to target Americans for assassination. And if international strictures against assassination are eliminated, we will be one step closer to the abandonment of the laws of war.

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TRUMP ADMINISTRATION FAILED TO CONVINCE MEMBERS OF CONGRESS ITS ASSASSINATION OF SULEIMANI WAS JUSTIFIED

Alex Emmons January 8 2020


FOLLOWING CLASSIFIED BRIEFINGS in the House and Senate, members of Congress said the Trump administration had failed to present evidence that the assassination of Iranian Maj. Gen. Qassim Suleimani had averted an “imminent threat” to Americans in the Middle East.

“We did not get information inside that briefing that there was a specific, imminent threat that we were halting through the operation conducted last Thursday night,” Sen. Chris Murphy, D-Conn., told reporters. “And I can say I was surprised and saddened to not have that information before us, I think it is likely because it doesn’t exist.”

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer told reporters that 97 senators attended the briefing, and 15 got to ask questions. “There were so many important questions that they did not answer,” said Schumer of Wednesday’s briefers, Defense Secretary Mark Esper, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, CIA director Gina Haspel, and Gen. Mark Milley, the chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

“As the questions began to get tough, they walked out,” Schumer said. “I’ve asked for a commitment that they all come back within a week; we have not gotten that commitment.”

This was the Trump administration’s first briefing to all members of Congress on the operation, which was carried out last Thursday. It comes after Iran retaliated Tuesday night by firing ballistic missiles at an Iraqi military base, which houses some U.S. military personnel. President Donald Trump announced in remarks Wednesday morning that no Americans or Iraqis had been killed in the Iranian strike. The Pentagon suspects that the Iranians intentionally avoided killing people, according to news reports.

The claim that the assassination was in response to a forthcoming “imminent threat” to American troops or diplomats in the region has been central to forming the Trump administration’s legal justification for the operation.

After the operation last week, Pompeo told CNN that Suleimani was plotting an action that would put “dozens if not hundreds of America lives at risk.” Esper told reporters this week that it was “more fair to say” that the threat was “days,” as opposed to weeks, away. But when asked for details this week about what the imminent threat was, Pompeo sidestepped the question by referring to a previous December 27 rocket attack by an Iranian-backed militia in Iraq that killed an American contractor.

Reactions from Democrats in the House were similarly critical of the lack of evidence Trump apparently had before ordering the assassination.

“Every time we were told, ‘Absolutely, there was an imminent threat you should just see the information, it’s really imminent.’ And nothing was shown to us,” said Rep. Mark Pocan, D-Wis., at a news conference following the House briefing. “Over and over and over the question was asked. And nothing more was given to us about this.”

Following the House briefing, Rep. Pramila Jayapal, D-Wash., said Trump “had no evidence of an imminent threat or attack, and we say that coming from a classified briefing. Where again, there was no raw evidence presented that there was an imminent threat.”

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi announced on Wednesday that the House will vote on a war powers resolution that would direct Trump to terminate any hostilities by U.S. armed forces against Iran, unless Congress authorizes them.

Even some Republican senators, most prominently Utah Republican Mike Lee, said they were open to a war powers resolution after the briefing, which Lee found infuriating in its lack of specifics. “I walked into the briefing undecided; I walked out decided,” said Lee. “Specifically because of what happened in that briefing.”

Fox News cut away from Lee as he told reporters that the briefing was “probably the worst [briefing] I’ve seen, at least on a military issue, in the nine years I’ve served in the U.S. Senate.”

“What we were told over and over and over again was, ‘Look, this action was necessary, this was a bad guy, we had to do it, and we can’t have division, we can’t have dissension within our ranks, within our government, or it sends the wrong signal to the Iranians,’ and I think that’s completely wrong,” Lee told reporters.

Read Our Complete CoverageTargeting Iran


Hawkish members of the Republican Party stood by the reasoning presented by the Trump administration. Speaking to reporters afterward, Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., cited a “string of intelligence that shows there was ‘near-term planning’ at a different level than what we have seen in the past.”

“Combined with recent in events, just in the last couple months, an increase not just in the volume of attacks but in the lethality of the weapons they chose to use, combined with that string of intelligence, combined with the fact that he was traveling across the region, all of it put together combined with the fact they had just tried to storm our embassy, you put all of that together and you reach the reasonable conclusion that something really bad could happen in the near term, and if we don’t act now, dozens if not hundreds of Americans could die,” Rubio said.

Members of Congress also said that the briefers invoked the 2002 Authorization for the Use of Military Force Resolution as the legal basis for the strike. The resolution, originally passed 17 years ago, was meant to sanction military force against Saddam Hussein’s government, and the text of it only authorizes force to defend “against the continuing threat posed by Iraq.”

Rep. Barbara Lee, D-Calif., told reporters following the briefing that it was unacceptable for the 2002 AUMF to serve as the legal basis for the strike against Suleimani. “First of all, probably less than 25 percent of members of Congress here today were here in 2002,” Lee said. “Which means they have not had the opportunity to voice their opinion or cast their vote for any authorizations to use military force for their constituents.”

The Search for Clean Air Amid Australia’s Smoky Fires

Eric Byler January 15 2020


THE BACKGROUND DIN of sadness drones loudest when the air in Canberra is safe to breathe. The first two weeks of 2020 have been a pendulum swing between fighting and fleeing from smoke, and a near-perfect likeness of the idyllic life we had before fire season. With the sadness, there is also relief on the good days and hope that the worst is over. And then the city is blanketed in smoke again. We see it. We smell it. This fog of death, loss, terror, and suffering stretching for miles in every direction. How long will it stay this time? And beneath it all, another uncertainty: What is all this smoke doing to my children?

To measure the health risks of air pollution, the Australian Capital Territory (ACT) uses an Air Quality Index (AQI) based on measurements of the concentration of particulate matter. An AQI of 67 to 99 is considered “fair,” 100 to 149 is “poor,” 150 to 200 is “very poor,” and 200+ is “hazardous.”




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The AQI hit 4,650 on New Year’s Day in Canberra, the capital city of Australia. That was the day that fires chased us home from the beach. When we got to our house, I stuffed paper towels in the crevices of the doors, but it was wasn’t enough. That night, I didn’t sleep. It was sweltering. And every breath tasted like sticky tar.

It got better for a few days. Then on January 4, soaring temperatures and high winds meant another stretch of losing battles for our firefighters. In came the smoke, and the AQI reached 4,400 on January 5.

The workers who cooked our fish and chips were wearing breathing masks. We’d left ours in the car.


Our kindly landlord had fitted all of our doors with foam sealing, and he’d told us of a DIY air-filtration technique: hanging wet towels over fans. But our house could not withstand the onslaught. We fled. Old Parliament House and the science museum, our favorite places to take Audrey, age 4, and Julian, age 2, on bad weather days, had shut their doors due to air quality. As I drove past new Parliament House, I asked my wife, Ariane, to shoot video on her phone. She could barely see it through the smoke.

We ended up at Canberra Outlet Centre, an indoor mall that looks exactly like you would imagine it. It was a lot better than outside, but the smoke had permeated every inch of it. More than half of the stores had closed. We fed the children and left. The workers who cooked their fish and chips were wearing breathing masks. We’d left ours in the car.

From there, we drove to the Crowne Plaza Hotel. Its soaring lobby, too, was filled with smoke. I realized that any building with a door would suffer the same fate, especially hotels and malls with doors that are used by many. But our room on the second floor smelled clean. We’d found our haven for the night.

The air was still bad the next morning. It was Monday. The Department of Home Affairs, which is responsible for emergency management, had told staff to stay home due to the hazardous air. The National Gallery of Australia sealed its doors, not only to protect staff and patrons, but also the priceless paintings on display.

When we got home, the house smelled OK. Maybe I was just used to it. I put a TV show on for my daughter. My son began playing with the toys from which he’d briefly been separated. The towels I’d hung over the fans were of course dry by now. The blades of the fans were coated with fine, black powder. The eastern-facing doors had been rammed by high winds overnight. When I opened the main entrance, dirt and debris fell to the floor.

A few days later, our air purifier was delivered. As glad as I was to have it, my heart sank when the ring circling the control panel showed red. This meant our house’s air quality was “poor.” But it smelled fine.

When I related this to our landlord, he said, “Yeah, when it’s really thick like that, those fine particles find a way in no matter what you do.”

The fine particles, known as PM2.5, contain toxins linked to respiratory ailments, cancer, and heart disease. They are small enough to penetrate the blood system and the body’s tissues. They have no odor, and health experts say they are harmful in particular to the infirm, the elderly, and children.

An elderly woman had died from respiratory distress upon setting foot on the smoke-filled tarmac at the Canberra airport. An asthmatic teenager had died after bushfire smoke inundated Glenn Innes, New South Wales.

Air purifiers remain sold out everywhere in town, but my wife had found one online. Now, our little air-cleaning robot was puffing up a storm. Before long, the light turned from red to orange (fair). Then yellow (good). Then blue (very good).

With a blue ring of light atop its knee-high, cylindrical frame, the air purifier reminded me of R2D2, who saved Luke Skywalker’s life countless times. We’ve turned the corner, I thought. R2 is here. From then on, if I saw blue, we were winning. Any other color, we were losing, or at least that became my view and, soon, my preoccupation.


Eric Byler’s air purifier glows with an orange light, which signifies “fair” air quality on Jan. 11 2020.  Photo: Eric Byler for The Intercept


“IT’S FUNNY the things you get used to,” I said.

“Yeah,” said Bill, a baseball coach and longtime player for the Ainslie Gungahlin Bears. We were on the ball field at Madura Oval, looking at our phones to check the air quality before a round of batting practice.

“What app do you use?”

“It’s called Air Matters.”

“Mine is CanberraAir,” I said.

I downloaded Air Matters and later found that it allowed me to monitor air quality in other cities in Australia and around the world on a single dashboard. For the next few days, I periodically compared Canberra’s air quality to that of the notoriously polluted city of Delhi, India. Ours usually was worse, and not by a little.

At the National Arboretum, I befriended a man named Chris, who, like me, was stupid enough to accompany his children through narrow tunnels made of rope that climb steeply up to a corkscrew-shaped slide. It was a good-air day.

Chris told me that he had extended family members now living with him because they had lost their homes, or abandoned them hoping that they can still be saved. To rescue stranded relatives, he’d driven four hours through some of the most-affected, coastal areas of New South Wales in a pickup truck loaded with fuel containers.

“It’s like this only once every 20 years,” he said.

It had been 17 years since bushfires engulfed the mountains on which we stood. On January 18, 2003, three fires combined into one and roared into Canberra’s suburbs, destroying nearly 500 homes, killing four people and injuring 470. Fire experts said it was the fastest-moving bushfire ever documented, advancing 20 kilometers per hour on a panicked and unprepared city thanks to 80 kilometer-per-hour winds.

When the kids were asleep, I positioned R2 in the hallway, equidistant from their bedroom doors. I let it run for hours. I re-taped the doors and taped up some windows I hadn’t done before.


January 10, 2020 was a good-air day. Our day care center was open, and, even better, the air was safe enough for the children to play outside. As normal as things looked, we couldn’t forget that 150 bushfires were still burning and that the weekend forecast included very hot temperatures and swift wind currents. And of course, we followed the news reports. Twenty-seven people had lost their lives, all the lost homes, the wildlife, the farm animals. What can I say? It’s mind-numbing.

“Blue!” I announced as we entered the house after bringing the kids home from the pool. We’d left just as the smoke was rolling in.

When the kids were asleep, I positioned R2 in the hallway, equidistant from their bedroom doors. I let it run for hours, then moved it to other parts of the house, just briefly, to check the air quality. It was yellow in places: “good” as opposed to “very good.” I re-taped the doors and taped up some windows that I hadn’t done before.

Ariane awakened me at 9:30 a.m. She needed me to watch the kids as she was off to the farmers market. I checked my phone and said, “Are you sure? It’s 172 [unhealthy].”

“Yeah, it’s OK, I won’t be long.”

I noticed that R2 was still in the hall and had been switched off, perhaps by my son who loves to push buttons.

I moved it into the room where the kids were: the TV room, which is the largest in the house.

The air quality indicator glowed red.

I texted Ariane: “Air purifier has had a red light for the last 20 minutes. I plugged it in behind where the kids are sitting.”

As the air quality outside worsened and the red light persisted, I got more and more anxious. This was the first time the AQI had reached “very unhealthy” since R2 had arrived. I had already closed two doors: the one to the hallway and the one to the kitchen. The other egress was a wide entryway that had no door. It led to the dining room and the only door we currently use to exit the house.

I began blocking the dining room’s entryway with anything I could find. For the bottom third, I used a quilted blanket draped over two chairs. The top two-thirds: a mosaic of the children’s artwork, including a giant treasure map that Audrey felt was too important for non-treasure-hunting use.

“I need to keep it there to help make the air better,” I explained.

R2 was reading orange: “fair.”

The light turned yellow when I was 95 percent finished with my wall. Audrey said, “How will we eat?”

“We can get to the dining room through the kitchen,” I said. The light soon turned blue.

“What is all this?” Ariane said when she came home from the farmers market.

“It was the only way I could turn things around. It was stuck on red.”

“Did you have to use the kids’ artwork?”

“And some of it is not the right way,” Audrey said, pointing to a drawing of hers that was turned on its side. She’d objected and I’d refused to fix it.

“But Audrey, I think your artwork looks beautiful in this context, while also showing its utility,” I said.

“You can just get a mattress bag,” Ariane said. “It will work a lot better.”

“Guess what, kids? We’re having a picnic!” I said. We’d be eating in the parlor with the kitchen door closed.


By dinnertime, the AQI had reached 550. Worse than Delhi. Ariane wanted us to eat like a normal family at the dining room table.

“It’s right by the door, the air is bad there,” I said.

“Well, put the thing in there for 10 minutes,” she said, referring to R2.

I did, but R2 did not move off red.

“Guess what, kids? We’re having a picnic!” I said. We’d be eating in the parlor with the kitchen door closed.

When I powered up R2 in the parlor, it was red there too. It had only been away for 10 minutes.

As the children ate and the air quality gradually improved, Ariane and I reopened the discussion we’d had about flying to Brisbane for the weekend. It would cost us $2,000, and I didn’t think it was worth the expense.

After dinner, we piled everyone into the master bedroom with R2.

“Oh shit,” I said, when I switched it on. Red.

But that improved over the next 20 minutes, during which I left to borrow a ladder so I could tape plastic over an inward-blowing fan on the ceiling above the toilet. I also rewet the towels and draped them over the fans. When I returned to the bedroom, Ariane informed me that Audrey had repeated my “Oh shit” thrice.

A light-rail station is shrouded in bushfire smoke in Canberra, Australia, on Jan. 5, 2020.
Photo: Chu Chen/Xinhua via Getty Images

MONDAY WAS ANOTHER bad-air day. During a five-minute drive to interview climate scientist William Steffen, I thought briefly about canceling. The AQI was approaching 400 and I’d just dropped off my children with a relative who hadn’t sealed up her house. Sometimes I feel like I’m being a paranoid alarmist — other times, I feel like I’m failing to protect my family from danger.

“For the common good,” I thought to myself and kept driving.

The day before, Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison had made big news by publicly recognizing the reality of climate change. Professor Steffen was not impressed. “Acknowledgment needs to be followed up with action, of course. And we’ll see what happens there. I’m not optimistic.”

He said Australia needs to increase its targets for the reduction of carbon dioxide emissions, and take steps to meet them. Since 1997, seven prime ministers had suffered defeats after trying to do that. Australia had signed the 2016 Paris Agreement, promising to reduce emissions by 26 percent by 2030. But emissions have gone up each year since then.

I asked Steffen if he embraced the sentiment expressed by novelist Richard Flanagan in his op-ed, “Australia Is Committing Climate Suicide.”

Steffen agreed with Flanagan’s condemnation of their government’s failure on climate policy — and said that Australia might be “one of the first countries that really comes apart as the climate shifts.” But the word “suicide,” he said, was just a way of saying things have gotten out of hand.

I quoted the prime minister, who had said Australia is responsible for only 1.23 percent of global emissions, and that if Australia shut down its fossil fuel industries tomorrow, China would make up for that in about nine days.

“It’s a collective action problem,” he said. “Just like in any civilized country, you have an income tax. So, if you look at my share of the Australian revenue, my income tax that I pay, it’s tiny. So based on the prime minister’s argument, I should write to the Australian Tax Authority and say I want to no longer pay my income tax. It’s too small to matter.”

I laughed.

“We have one planet, one climate, and we’re one species,” he said. “We’ve got to get over this stupid nationalistic crap that’s out there stopping us from taking action,” he said.

“It’s really too late to prevent a 2-degree [Celsius] increase?” I asked, referring to global temperature averages.

“No, I think we can just make 2. It’s too late to prevent 1.5.”

My next question assumed that a 2-degree increase would bring bushfires twice as bad as what we have now, with a 1.1-degree increase. Steffen interrupted. “I think it’s going to be three or four times as bad.” He explained that regions with climates similar to Australia’s will be dealing with worsening fires, while other regions will suffer from hurricanes, cyclones, and floods of increasing severity.

“Wherever you are in the world, the climate you are used to is changing.”

As I packed up my video gear, we chatted about the smoke. Steffen said he had gone out jogging that morning, when the AQI was 150. “But once it was up to 350, 400, when I took the dog for a walk, I had my mask.”

“Why is it better in the early morning?” I asked.

“Typically, because it’s calmer. So the wind hasn’t come in yet. And the fires aren’t immediately at our doorstep, so most of the smoke is being blown in from some distance.”

He said the AQI is generally at its lowest around dawn, “unless there is a front and it just blows through the night and the day, so you just have to check it all the time.”

Ariane sent me two text messages: “Air at hazard level now. Better to come home.” Then: “Can you bring Audrey home.”


The AQI had been 78 (moderate) the morning before. We were at a birthday party for a family friend, outdoors, at a tennis club across the street from our house. For the first time, little Julian understood the drill. When he saw that candles were being placed on the cake, he said, “Sing ‘Happy Birthday.’” He and I practiced quietly a few times, and when the real thing came, he landed most of the song in tune.

The CanberraAir app revised its figures in the late morning, and it had only gone up a little, still in the moderate range. I jumped into a doubles tennis match.

Ariane took Julian home for his nap, while Audrey sat on a bench next to the court eating popcorn and watching Netflix on my phone. Shortly after noon, Ariane sent me two text messages:


Air at hazard level now. Better to come home.

Can you bring Audrey home.

I didn’t see them, so Ariane came back for Audrey. As I said my goodbyes, I offered our house to the remaining guests, including three grandparents and four children. No one came. The grandmothers each thanked me but said they’d be going soon anyway. The grandfather grabbed a racquet and took my place on the court.

When I got home, I did not like the state of things. Ariane and Audrey were in the parlor with R2, who was orange. Julian was in the master bedroom still napping.

“How’s the air for Julian?” I asked.

I moved R2 into the bedroom in order to check. Orange there as well. “We’re going back to submarine mode,” I announced. With the constant creep of smoke-poisoned air, there were some rooms we couldn’t afford to protect.

A second air purifier will be delivered to our home soon.

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THE WAR ON THE WAR ON CANCER

Trump’s Gutting of Toxics Regulations Will Mean Higher Profits for Polluters and Higher Cancer Rates for the American People

FEATURE ARTICLE LONG READ

A Polluter’s Paradise

There may be no better place to see the consequences of the unraveling of chemical regulation than in Texas. Home to roughly two-thirds of the nation’s petrochemical industry and a fast-growing number of factories that make plastic and its feedstocks, Texas is a hub for the production of carcinogenic compounds as well as a leader in the movement to weaken regulations of them. For years, Texas has been a polluter’s paradise. As the oil, gas, and petrochemical industries have exploded throughout the state, the TCEQ’s Honeycutt has presided over an easing of restrictions on their emissions even as his staff has been reduced.

With 1.7 million new cases estimated for 2019 in the United States, cancer is a particular problem in Freeport, Texas. Rates of Hodgkin lymphoma are elevated in this small town on the Gulf Coast, as are cancers of the liver and bile duct, lung, stomach, and nasal cavity and middle ear, according to a report that the Texas Department of State Health Services quietly released in 2018.

The report makes no mention of pollution as a possible cause of the elevated number of cancer cases, yet Freeport is home to the largest chemical production facility in the western hemisphere: 12,800 acres of holding tanks, machinery, canals, deep-water ports, and pipelines, owned by Dow. Alongside it are chemical production facilities owned by other companies, including BASF, Shintech, Huntsman, and the Olin Corporation, the largest chlor-alkali producer in the world, which bought part of its Freeport manufacturing site from Dow in 2015.

Dow’s Freeport plant produces more than 40 billion pounds of chemicals and other products, including the components of much of the world’s plastics. In the process, the plant emits hundreds of toxic chemicals. The facility released more than 200 air pollutants in 2017 and has violated its permits in every quarter of the past three years, making it a high-priority violator of the Clean Air Act. Between 2015 and 2018, the complex emitted more than 3 million pounds of unpermitted air pollution on top of what it was allowed to release, according to a report by the Environmental Integrity Project.

On-site manufacturing releases of 18 of the 19 carcinogens currently being reviewed by the EPA under the revised 2016 Toxic Substances Control Act. All data drawn from the EPA’s Toxics Release Inventory, 2014 – 2018, as reported by manufacturers. Locations include facilities within 50 miles. Data does not include releases at waste disposal/recycling facilities or on-site underground injection wells.

 

Graphic: Soohee Cho/The Intercept

Among the pollutants being released by Dow in Freeport are 11 carcinogens that are now being assessed or considered for assessment by the EPA under the new toxic chemicals law, according to EPA data. Of those chemicals, five have been shown to increase levels of the very cancers that are elevated in Freeport. Over the past five years, the Dow plant released more than 221,000 pounds of these five chemicals, including 1,2-dichloropropane, which causes bile duct cancer and is a probable cause of cancer of the nasal cavity and inner ear; 1,3-butadiene, which has been shown to increase rates of stomach cancers (and was recently released in an explosion at another chemical plant on the Texas coast); 1,1,2-trichloroethane and 1,1-dichloroethane, both of which have been linked to liver cancer in mice; and 1,2-dichloroethane, a probable carcinogen that has been linked to stomach, liver, and lung cancers.

But initial reports that the EPA recently released on the chemicals it’s investigating omit information that the agency has in its own databases about where and in what quantities these chemicals are produced, which companies make them, and how they’re used. As a result, most people in Freeport — and other polluted communities — do not realize that the industrial facilities near them are releasing dangerous amounts of these carcinogens. Also, because they omit this critical information, the assessments themselves may not reflect the true dangers posed by these substances.

Dow has done little to address the prevalence of cancer in the area, though the company did sponsor a “Sparkles and Spurs” fundraiser in 2018 to help buy a CT scanner for the CHI St. Luke’s Health cancer center in Brazosport, Texas, which is just a 15-minute drive from the Dow Chemical plant. Some residents call it the “Dow Cancer Center” because it was built on land donated by the giant chemical company. The evening of food, fun, and “foot stompin’” country music helped the center purchase the CT scanner, which the hospital is still using to diagnose new cancer cases.

Although they are more likely to get certain cancers, residents of Freeport — where the median household income is less than $37,000 a year — may have a difficult time getting care at the local hospital. “The Dow cancer center won’t take indigent patients,” said Melanie Oldham, a Freeport resident and physical therapist who said that she has worked with hundreds of clients in the area who have had cancer. “People who don’t have good insurance end up having to drive back and forth to either Galveston or to MD Anderson, which is an hour away.” Many of them are workers at the Dow plant, according to Oldham. “These are great jobs until you’re 50 or so,” she said. “That’s when a lot of my patients develop cancer.”

EXCERPT READ THE WHOLE ARTICLE HERE 

Trump isn’t just lying about the Suleimani threat — he’s covering up the fact that the strike was illegal: law professor

Published on January 16, 2020 By Matthew Chapman


President Donald Trump has frequently changed his story on the nature of the “imminent threat” posed by Iranian general Qassim Suleimani that led him to order a strike to take him out, leading many to believe that his justification is based on lies.

But that betrays something much more fundamental, wrote NYU Law professor Rebecca Ingber in the Washington Post. Trump is trying to cover up the fact that he had no legal justification to order the strike in the first place.

“The question of imminence is crucial under both domestic and international law,” wrote Ingber. “Under the U.N. Charter, the president’s authority to kill Soleimani required that the United States was facing an armed attack — as well as that the use of force was necessary to repel or prevent it. The United States has long understood that doctrine to also permit force necessary to stop an imminent attack. Whether an attack was truly imminent is also key to the domestic legal question, because U.S. law does not permit the president to use force unilaterally (that is, without congressional authorization) outside of the most exigent circumstances.”
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“These legal questions are no mere technicalities,” continued Ingber. “The purpose behind the law is to limit unnecessary war to the greatest possible extent. U.S. presidents have at times pushed the limits of such laws, but doing so has dire consequences — including unnecessary conflict, civilian casualties and the lost trust of our allies, as well as of the U.S. public.”

Many in the Trump administration have tried to argue the strike was justified by past threats from Iran, with Ambassador Kelly Craft listing a series of cases in which Quds-backed Iran forces attacked U.S. military targets in the region.

However, wrote Ingber, “Even were each of the acts listed in the letter both attributable to Iran and properly characterized as armed attacks — a stretch for various reasons, including that the U.S. drone was itself unmanned and that Iran claimed it shot it down in Iranian airspace — the use of force in response must still be necessary to stop an ongoing attack or prevent one. Soleimani’s history, and Iran’s, provide context for analyzing the nature of any current threat. But the use of force as retaliation or punishment for a past wrong is strictly prohibited under international law; the narrow exceptions the charter permits do not include revenge. So we are back to the original question: whether Soleimani posed an immediate threat for which the use of force was necessary.”

“Finally, even were an attack against Iran itself justified, the fact that the Soleimani strike took place in Iraq makes the question of imminence even more important,” wrote Ingber. “Iraq, of course, did not itself attack us. A crucial step in determining whether it is necessary to use force on the territory of a state that did not itself attack us — the long-standing U.S. approach, dating to the Caroline incident, increasingly adopted by other states — has been to, first, establish the imminence of a forthcoming attack and then to analyze whether that state is itself unwilling or unable to prevent or stop the attack. The administration has not put forward evidence on either question — and has not even addressed the issue of Iraqi sovereignty.”

“The most significant check on a president who has little inherent interest in law or norms is a political one,” concluded Ingber. “Elections matter. Law can constrain the president, but only if we care, sufficiently and in sufficient numbers, when he violates it.”

You can read more here.

Virgin Islands allege Jeffrey Epstein trafficked girls as young as 12 as recently as 2018






BY DANIEL CHANG AND KEVIN G. HALL JANUARY 15, 2020









Perversion of Justice: A Miami Herald Investigation


OCTOBER 16, 2019 The Miami Herald is partnering with the Miami Foundation to launch the Investigative Journalism Fund. With your donations, we can do more projects like Perversion of Justice, our series on Jeffrey Epstein. BY EMILY MICHOT







A lawsuit filed Wednesday by the top law enforcement officer in the U.S. Virgin Islands alleges that multimillionaire financier Jeffrey Epstein sexually trafficked hundreds of young women and girls on his private island, some as recently as 2018, aided by a web of shell companies to carry out and conceal his crimes.


The allegations, if validated, broaden the scope of Epstein’s sexual trafficking, and shed new light on the tactics Epstein used to hide his illicit activities.

The lawsuit seeks forfeiture of the islands, valued by managers of Epstein’s estate at more than $86 million, because of their use in alleged crimes.

“This lawsuit focuses on conduct that happened here in the Virgin Islands in violation of Virgin Islands law,” Attorney General Denise George said during a news conference. “The conduct described in our complaint ... betrays the deepest principles and values of the government and the people of the Virgin Islands.”

Epstein, who was found dead in a Manhattan jail cell last Aug. 10, allegedly brought girls as young as 11 to his private island, known as Little St. James, and maintained a database to track their availability and movements, the lawsuit said.

George, who became attorney general of the U.S. Virgin Islands last April, alleged that Epstein used “a complex web” of shell companies to hold properties, including Little St. James and Great St. James, at which the former financier engaged in human trafficking, forced labor, sexual servitude and other criminal behavior.

Through at least six corporate entities, Epstein “carried out and concealed his criminal conduct,” she said, adding that a toll-free, 24-hour hotline had been established (800-998-7559) for victims and the public to report on Epstein’s activities.

“We do need your help to see that justice is done now,” she said.





GVI v. Estate of Jeffrey E.... by Casey Frank on Scribd



Most of the Virgin Island companies were created in 2011 and 2012, soon after Epstein registered as a sex offender in the Virgin Islands following his 2008 guilty plea to state prostitution charges in Palm Beach County, the lawsuit said.

That 2008 plea came about after Epstein received a controversial non-prosecution agreement from then-U.S. Attorney Alexander Acosta. The deal shelved a federal sex trafficking indictment that could have put Epstein away for life. Instead he served a year in the Palm Beach County stockade, enjoying liberal work release privileges.

The lawsuit adds to the criminal allegations against Epstein, who had been charged by Manhattan prosecutors in July with sexually exploiting dozens of women and girls in New York and Florida.

In August, Epstein was found dead in the Metropolitan Correctional Center, where he had been awaiting trial on the same allegations that had been sidetracked a decade earlier. It was categorized as a suicide by hanging. While napping and shopping online, corrections officers failed to check on Epstein regularly on the night he died, and then allegedly lied about their own negligence. Two officers have been criminally charged.


Read Next
LOCAL How the law, the press and his victims finally caught up with Jeffrey Epstein DECEMBER 19, 2019





Prior to his death, Epstein and his attorneys had denied the criminal charges. Epstein’s attorneys had said previously that he had not broken the law since his 2008 conviction in Florida. In an interview with the Herald in November, Mark Epstein said he believed his older brother did not kill himself nor had he engaged in sex trafficking since the 2008 conviction, and since had relations only with women 18 or older.

But the lawsuit filed Wednesday alleged that Epstein not only sexually trafficked women and young girls after his Florida conviction — he intended to expand his illicit operation in the Virgin Islands for years to come by purchasing Great St. James, the island closest to Little St. James, to conceal his conduct from public view and to evade oversight by the police.

Using Little St. James, the lawsuit said, “Epstein and his associates could avoid detection of their illegal activity from Virgin Islands and federal law enforcement and prevent these young women and underage girls from leaving freely and escaping the abuse.”

Epstein’s shell companies also were used to hold private airplanes and helicopters that Epstein used to transport young women and girls to and from the Virgin Islands, the lawsuit said.

“The Epstein case highlights how sex traffickers — like all organized criminal enterprises — thrive on the secrecy provided by anonymous shell companies,” said Clark Gascoigne, executive director of the Financial Accountability and Corporate Transparency (FACT) Coalition, a group calling for greater transparency about true owners of shell companies. “Opaque ownership structures make it difficult — if not impossible — for law enforcement to track individuals” behind human trafficking.

George said she was “early in the stage of what we are going to be doing” and would not disclose if the alleged victims in the Virgin Islands were brought from South Florida or elsewhere to the Epstein properties. Her focus, she said, was that crimes were committed on Epstein’s islands.

It’s unclear why George chose now to bring the civil enforcement action, and why her suit leaves out important details in the Epstein saga. His company, Southern Trust, was able to win a huge 10-year tax break from the island’s Economic Development Commission in February 2013. It was after he was required to report his travel plans as a sex offender, and in exchange he promised to hire locally and create a huge data-mining operation for the pharmaceutical industry.

There is no proof that those conditions ever were met, though the head of the Economic Development Authority, Kamal Latham, told the Herald late last year that Epstein was audited annually and confirmed a site visit in 2018. Latham declined to make public any audits or records.

Flight logs and other sources cited in the lawsuit established that between 2001 and 2018, Epstein’s companies were used to transport underage girls and young women to the Virgin Islands, then take them via helicopter or private boat to Little St. James, where they would be abused and trafficked, the lawsuit said.

Girls between the ages of 12 and 17 years old were lured and recruited on the pretext of modeling opportunities, careers and contracts, the lawsuit said.

As recently as 2018, air traffic controllers and airport workers reported seeing Epstein leave his plane with young girls, some of whom appeared to be between the ages of 11 and 18 years old, according to the allegations.

One 15-year-old victim was forced to have sex with Epstein and others and then tried to escape by swimming off Little St. James, the lawsuit said, but Epstein and others organized a search party and found the girl.

They kept the girl captive and confiscated her passport, the lawsuit said.

Another victim, first hired to give massages to Epstein, was forced to perform sex acts at Little St. James, the lawsuit said. When she attempted to escape the private island, Epstein and a search party found her, returned her to his house and suggested they would physically restrain her if she did not cooperate, the lawsuit said.

Little St. James, which Epstein’s companies bought in 1998, is described in the lawsuit as the “perfect hideaway and haven for trafficking young women and underage girls for sexual servitude, child abuse and sexual assault.”

The secluded private island is about two miles from St. Thomas and has no other residents. It can be visited only by private boat or helicopter as there is no public or commercial transportation available or bridge to allow public access.

In 2016, the lawsuit alleges, Epstein’s companies used a straw buyer to cloak the former financier’s identity and purchase Great St. James for more than $20 million. By then, Epstein was a convicted sex offender. Recent reporting by McClatchy and the Miami Herald details how Epstein used trickery in its purchase.

Buying Great St. James afforded Epstein privacy for his illicit activities, and prevented those held against their will on Little St. James from escaping or finding help, the lawsuit said.

The two islands owned by Epstein’s estate are also considered environmentally sensitive, with native coral and protected wildlife. Virgin Islands authorities repeatedly issued citations and assessed thousands of dollars of fines for violations of the U.S. territory’s construction code and environmental protection laws, the lawsuit said, but the fines had little effect in curbing or stopping Epstein’s illicit conduct.

Epstein “flagrantly disregarded the law,” the attorney general said.

The lawsuit said Epstein’s estate continues to attempt to prevent or limit Virgin Islands authorities from conducting random inspections on Little St. James and Great St. James, and that employees of Epstein’s companies were required to sign confidentiality agreements that prohibited them from cooperating with law enforcement.

Epstein estate executor Darren Indyke, his longtime attorney, did not respond to a request for comment.

Monitoring a registered sex offender with his own private islands and the resources to fly victims in and out on private planes and helicopters also posed a challenge for Virgin Islands law enforcement, the lawsuit said.

Registered sex offenders in the Virgin Islands are required to make periodic personal appearances to verify and update their information, the lawsuit states.

At his last verification in July 2018, the lawsuit said, Epstein refused to allow Virgin Islands investigators, accompanied by U.S. Marshals, from entering Little St. James beyond its dock — claiming that the dock was his “front door.” Instead, the lawsuit said, Epstein arranged to meet with investigators at his office on St. Thomas.

The lawsuit charges Epstein’s estate, his companies and other individuals identified only as John and Jane Does with eight counts of human trafficking; two counts of child abuse and neglect; two counts of aggravated rape; two counts of second-degree rape; two counts of unlawful sexual contact; two counts of prostitution and keeping a house of prostitution; one count of sex offender registry violation; two counts of fraudulent conveyance; and one count of civil conspiracy.

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Jeffrey Epstein abused girls as young as 11 on secluded private island, lawsuit says

Convicted sex offender ‘kept a computerised database of women and girls’
Clark Mindock New York @ClarkMindock

Little St James Island, one of the properties of financier

 Jeffrey Epstein, is seen in an aerial view in July ( REUTERS )

Convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein trafficked girls in the Caribbean as young as 11 years old up until 2018, according to a new lawsuit.

The lawsuit filed by US Virgin Islands attorney general Denise George claims that Epstein had brought girls as young as 11 and 12 to his secluded estate there, and kept a computerised database that tracked the availability of women and girls. The lawsuit could ultimately reduce the amount of money available to victims who have come forward as a part of claims against the estate in the United States, according to Reuters.

“Epstein clearly used the Virgin Islands and his residence in the US Virgin Islands at Little Saint James as a way to be able to conceal and to be able to expand his activity here,” Ms George said.

The lawsuit against Epstein, who died by suicide last year in a New York City jail cell while awaiting trial on sex trafficking charges, marks a broadening of the accusations against the financier who is known in part for his powerful social circle that at various times included Prince Andrew, Donald Trump and Bill Clinton.

The latest accusations would suggest his exploitation did not stop following his previous convictions in 2008 for soliciting prostitution from an underage girl. That case against him began in 2005 when Florida police received a complaint from parents that the financier had abused their 14-year-old daughter. Charges in New York and Florida only alleged trafficking as recently as 2005.

Jeffrey Epstein: Controversies surrounding paedophile billionaire
Show all 9





Epstein later served 13 months in jail, receiving a contentious and extensive work release allowance that let him leave the jail for much of his sentence.

He was also only forced to plead guilty two two of the crimes he originally faced, even though federal officials had identified dozens of girls he had sexually abused.
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The new lawsuit was filed against Epstein’s estate, and seeks the forfeiture of the Little Saint James residence where the alleged abuse occurred. It also seeks forfeiture of Epstein’s second private island, Great Saint James, and the dissolution of numerous shell companies that officials say acted as fronts for the sex trafficking efforts.

Government policy on the Virgin Islands has determined that the assets could be distributed between the women and girls who were victimised in the region, according to Ms George.

In the weeks leading up to his death, Epstein and his estate vigorously denied that he had engaged in sex trafficking.

It is unclear how Epstein’s $500 million worth of assets will be allocated, and legal experts have noted that there is relatively little precedent to help the courts determine how to proceed.

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China’s manufacturing exodus set to continue in 2020, despite prospect of trade war deal

China’s rising costs, tricky regulations and increasingly unstable geopolitical situation are forcing more manufacturers to move production elsewhere

First and second wave of leavers underway, with more to follow, despite the prospect of a minor US-China trade truce


Finbarr Bermingham Published: 9 Jan, 2020

Many foreign firms are considering shifting production from China due to rising costs and the unpredictability of exporting from the country. Photo: AP

Weeks after switching on the machines of a new production line near Bangkok, veteran manufacturer Larry Sloven has a quip for the stream of companies leaving China: “Elvis has left the building.”

After three decades of building up manufacturing bases in China, Sloven helped Capstone International Hong Kong, of which he is managing director, wind one down. Costs were rising before the trade war, but a 25 per cent tariff on the lighting products the company exports back to the United States helped accelerate a shift that was set in motion 18 months ago – moving its production base to Thailand.

Now, despite the fact that lead time to hit the shelves in US stores can take up to 40 days from Thailand, almost twice as long as from China, few retailers are willing to pay the premium price that needs to be charged to keep production in Guangdong.

“Even if the tariffs went away tomorrow, most people are not coming back,” he said. “But I do not believe that most retailers in America understand this process of what a supplier must go through. Nobody will pay the price.”

Even if the tariffs went away tomorrow, most people are not coming back. But I do not believe that most retailers in America understand this process of what a supplier must go through. Nobody will pay the priceLarry Sloven

This is a situation playing out in boardrooms around the world, as international companies accept the reality that the US-China phase one trade deal will not materially improve the lay of the land for their Chinese-based operations.

Rising labour and environmental costs, a head-spinning regulatory environment, the ever-looming threat of more and higher tariffs, along with a sharp increase in the perception of risk associated with living and working in China mean that the
manufacturing exodus that began at the tail end of the last decade will continue well into this one.

There is acceptance that the “Goldilocks Zone” provided by China’s industrial heartlands for the last 30 years – in which the mixture of costs, quality, human resources and infrastructure was just right – will not be matched in India, Indonesia, Malaysia, Mexico, Thailand, Vietnam or anywhere else.

“This is the right stepping stone, just the start,” Sloven said of Thailand. “I believe that Vietnam is already full, it's like having a ticket at a bakery, you have to wait in line. Right now, there's no line in Thailand, but it will get full.”

As a direct result of trade war tariffs, China has fallen behind Mexico and Canada to become the US’ third largest trading partner. Before the trade war, it was number one.

Tariffs saw China’s trade in goods surplus with the US fall by 7.9 per cent in November, according to data released by the US Census Bureau on Tuesday. This was amid a 20.84 per cent fall in Chinese exports to the US from a year earlier, including items like cellphones. US purchases of Chinese goods are now at their lowest point since March 2013.

At the same time, the US has been buying more goods from the countries to which Chinese-based manufacturers are most commonly fleeing.
Compared with June 2018, the month before the trade war began, US imports of
goods from Vietnam have soared 51.6 per cent, Thailand 19.7 per cent, Malaysia 11.3 per cent, Indonesia 14.6 per cent, Taiwan 30 per cent and Mexico 12.7 per cent, according to South China Morning Post calculations based on US Census Bureau data for November.

If there were any new year optimism about the US-China trading relationship, it is in scarce supply among foreign manufacturers in China.

“For companies exporting to the US, the entire time span of the trade war has sent the message that this isn't going to go away and that they need to rethink things,” said John Evans, managing director at Tractus Asia. Evans, who advises firms on relocating from China, said that even with the announcement of a phase-one deal, he has been getting more calls.

“There were still a number of companies sitting on the sidelines, even into the last quarter of last year, thinking there'll be a grand resolution. But in reality, it’s more of a new normal.”

This so-called new normal has helped drive a long list of big-name companies out of China, with others choosing to keep a presence but scale back operations to continue selling to the domestic market.

But for every Hasbro, Samsung, Sonos, Sharp, GoPro, Sony or Nintendo, there are a host of small suppliers being forced out due to costs, or because they are pressured to follow their major customers.

For every foreign company that left China in 2019, there were two to three more seriously contemplating doing so and we expect more companies to leave China in 2020 than in 2019 Dan Harris

“For every foreign company that left China in 2019, there were two to three more seriously contemplating doing so and we expect more companies to leave China in 2020 than in 2019,” wrote Dan Harris, founder of Harris Bricken, an international law firm working extensively in China, in a blog post.

A director at a company supplying accessories to Apple – who spoke anonymously because of the sensitivity of the topic – said the US tech giant had told them that they should plan to leave China if they were to be kept on as a supplier, forcing them to scout for new production sites in Southeast Asia.

Other exporters that have yet to face US trade war tariffs are making contingency plans due to rising costs and the unpredictability of exporting from China. They are not just American firms, but companies from all over the world.

Allar Peetma is the CEO of Estonian manufacturer Gerardo’s Toys, which makes rocking horses near Shanghai using moulds made in the European Union. His biggest export market is the US, and his products were due to face a 15 per cent tariff on December 15. 

This was postponed indefinitely with the announcement of the phase-one trade deal, but Peetma does not seem comforted by the truce.


US and China reach ‘phase-one’ trade deal

“Our costs are going up, but our customers want the same price, and they don’t understand that the costs are rising,” he said. “Our plan is to produce in the EU. We can use automation which can allow us to keep the costs and prices about the same. And it’s higher quality than being handmade in China. Our biggest market is the US, so tariffs are of course a worry, but other countries have high [import] taxes for China too, like Brazil and Turkey.”

Similarly, Tsutomu Aoi – a manager in the Hong Kong division of Japanese magnetic toymaker Sumaku – said that costs in their plant in the eastern port city of Ningbo have ratcheted up. For some products like action figures, the company has automated processes such as mould injection and spraying at a separate plant in Jiangmen, across the border from Macau. But should the postponed US tariffs eventually hit, production would be quickly switched to Indonesia.

“The labour costs are low, but the process is slow. Currently the US forms a small part of our exports but it is a target to grow there this year,” said Aoi. “The 25 per cent [tariff] would be expensive, that’s one of the reasons we have set up in Indonesia, to export to the US from there.”

The 25 per cent [tariff] would be expensive, that’s one of the reasons we have set up in Indonesia, to export to the US from thereTsutomu Aoi

French scooter manufacturer Globber, meanwhile, is experiencing “15 to 30 per cent higher costs” at its Dongguan plant, in southern China, compared to its previous production base near Hangzhou in the country’s east. New tariffs would make it more expensive to export to the US.

“December 15 was good news for us,” said CEO Pascal Comte, but he is already thinking of what might come next. “In the short term, you can’t do anything [about tariffs], you have to pay the costs and it affects sales. Long term for sure, or medium term, the best option is Vietnam. It takes a while to transfer tooling, and to find operations and manpower.”

Rarely, however, is the divorce from China a clean one. Sloven at Capstone moved to a new base in Thailand with the help of a Chinese manufacturing partner that still provides many of the components used in their products. It can be a delicate balance, working with a Thai manufacturing partner to ensure that enough of the finished product is made of local content, to qualify for a low-tariff “Made in Thailand” label.

“We’ve worked out a formula that’s good for both of them so they both can stay in business,” he said. “It’s difficult to get out of China without the help of your Chinese partner.”

A year of the US-China trade war

The company needs to ship a particular form of glue from China that cannot be sourced in Thailand and will also import packaging from there.

“You would be amazed at the things that you find out. It’s cheaper to produce your packaging in China, put it on a boat, ship it to Thailand than to have a factory in Thailand produce that packaging,” Sloven said “My point is you can’t do this overnight. This is a two year process.”

Consultant Evans said that the “first wave” of companies leaving China started moving 12 to 18 months ago, while the “second wave started mid-2019”.

A brief period of armistice in the US-China relationship is unlikely to stop more waves in the future, as foreign companies continue to wean themselves off the Chinese manufacturing dream that has helped shape the global economy for the past 30 years.


Finbarr Bermingham has been reporting on Asian trade since 2014. Prior to this, he covered global trade and economics in London. He joined the Post in 2018, before which he was Asia Editor at Global Trade Review and Trade Correspondent for the International Business Times.

We don’t know how many mountain gorillas live in the wild. Here’s why

January 14, 2020 

Mountain gorillas in Bwindi Impenetrable Forest. Shutterstock/Claire E Carter

A new census – carried out by the Greater Virunga Transboundary Collaboration (a coalition of governments, non-profits and conservationists) in 2018 – shows that the population of mountain gorillas in Uganda’s Bwindi Impenetrable Forest National Park is now at 459, up from 400 in 2011. This could bring the total number count for the subspecies to 1,069 gorillas. Katerina Guschanski explains that while this is great news, these figures may still not be accurate.

How important are the mountain gorillas of Uganda’s Bwindi Impenetrable Forest National Park to global populations?

Mountain gorillas are one of the two subspecies of eastern gorillas. They are divided into just two populations: one in the Virunga Massif that spans the borders of Uganda, Rwanda and the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) and one population that lives in the Bwindi Impenetrable National Park in Uganda and the adjacent Sarambwe Nature Reserve in DRC.

The Bwindi population holds a bit less than half of all mountain gorillas in the world, thus its importance for the global survival of these great apes cannot be overstated.

Mountain gorillas receive admirable conservation attention but they’re vulnerable due to habitat encroachment, potential disease transmission from humans, poaching and civil unrest.

Because there are only about 1,000 mountain gorillas left, it’s important that their population size be continuously monitored to evaluate whether, and which, conservation tactics work.

Their populations must keep growing because mountain gorillas have very low genetic diversity. This reduces their ability to adapt to future changes in the environment. For instance, if faced with new diseases, they are extremely susceptible because they don’t have genetic variants that would give them more resistance. Low genetic diversity was implicated in the extinction of some mammals, such as the mammoth.

Continued population growth is also needed to make them less vulnerable to random events, such as habitat destruction through extreme weather events, which could wipe out an entire population.

What can account for a rise in the number of gorillas?

One of the main factors that explains the higher detected number of gorillas is the change in the census technique used. During mountain gorilla censuses researchers collect faecal samples from gorilla nests (where they sleep at night) to genetically identify individuals. Gorillas that are used to human presence can be directly counted.

The teams in the latest census conducted two full systematic sweeps through the forest. They covered the entire region twice from east to west. This is a physically and logistically demanding method, but it’s very thorough.

The previous census, carried out in 2011, also covered the area twice, but only one of these attempts was a full sweep – meaning it started at one end of the forest and systematically progressed towards the other end. The other sweep was disjointed, in terms of how it covered the area and the timing, allowing gorilla groups to easily move and avoid detection.

In Bwindi, from the estimated 459 individuals, 196 are in groups that are used to people and can easily be counted. This means that population estimates are largely based on genetic profiles generated from night nests and so can’t be fully accurate because some will be missed.

Censuses of Virunga mountain gorillas are more accurate because more of their gorillas are used to human presence. In the most recent census, there’s been a rise in their population. It shows an increase from 458 individuals in 2010 to 604 in 2016. Most of these gorillas – 418 out of 604 – belong to groups that are used to human presence, they can be followed daily and easily counted.

The population increases in the Virunga gorillas is strongly attributed to active conservation. This includes continuous monitoring and veterinary attention, such as the removal of snares and treatment of respiratory diseases.

Is this rise a significant number and how accurate do you think it is?

The Bwindi census results were made publicly available in a somewhat unusual way. Scientific studies generally undergo a thorough peer-review before they are published, which has not yet happened for these findings. This means the findings haven’t yet been properly scrutinised and leaves the question about the gorilla’s population size open.

In addition, as mentioned above, the larger number of individuals detected in the 2018 census could be the result of the changed survey method. We therefore can’t make reliable comparisons to previous estimates from the 2011 and the 2006 censuses.

Consider that in the latest census, of the 33 gorilla groups – which weren’t used to the presence of people – only 14 (or 42%) were detected during both sweeps. Similarly, only one of 13 solitary individuals was detected in both sweeps. So, even with full, systematic sweeps, more than half the groups and solitary individuals were missed every time.

This shows we still do not have a good understanding of the actual population size of Bwindi mountain gorillas. The previous surveys are likely to have missed multiple groups and individuals so we can’t derive conclusions about population size changes. If another sweep were to be conducted, researchers could find more individuals, but that doesn’t necessarily mean that the population has grown.

What we can say is that there are more mountain gorillas than we thought, which is great news.

What can be done to improve census methods?

Using the results of the two census sweeps in Bwindi, researchers will estimate the likely number of gorillas. The accuracy and precision of the estimate depends strongly on how many gorilla groups and individuals were detected in both sweeps.

To make census figures more concrete, more sweeps need to be included so that more individuals are confirmed. This would make the population size estimates more accurate with less uncertainty.

Author
Katerina Guschanski
Associate professor, Uppsala University
Disclosure statement
Katerina Guschanski receives funding from the Swedish Research Council FORMAS, The Royal Physiographic Society of Lund, and the Carl Tryggers Foundation.
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