OKINAWA

Blood tests detect high levels of PFOS 

in residents near U.S. bases

By MIKA KUNIYOSHI /Staff Writer

October 16, 2022
  
Residents who live near U.S. military bases in Okinawa Prefecture announce the results of a survey about perfluorooctane sulfonic acid (PFOS) in blood samples at the prefectural government office on Oct. 15. They called on the central and prefectural governments to carry out a detailed investigation. (Mika Kuniyoshi)

High levels of a suspected carcinogen were found in blood samples of residents living near U.S. military bases in Okinawa Prefecture, triggering calls for authorities to conduct inspections of U.S. facilities to trace the cause of the problem.

A civic group on Oct. 15 released test results of samples collected from 387 residents in six municipalities. Levels of perfluorooctane sulfonic acid (PFOS), the chemical compound in question, were 1.5 to 3 times the national average.

Extremely high levels of PFOS were detected in rivers near the U.S. facilities. It was the first extensive survey to try to gauge the impact of PFOS contamination on humans living in the areas.

The group urged the central and prefectural governments to investigate possible health damage among residents and identify the source of the contamination.

It asked Koji Harada, an associate professor of health and environmental sciences at Kyoto University, to help analyze the survey results.

“Although it cannot be immediately determined whether (the compound) poses a health risk, high levels were detected. The results indicate the need for an extensive and detailed investigation,” Harada said.

Efforts to gain on-site access to U.S. military facilities believed to be the source of the contamination have proved fruitless.

Under the terms of the Japan-U.S. Status of Forces Agreement, consent must be given by the U.S. side, but none has been forthcoming.

Blood samples were collected in seven areas in Kadena, Chatan and Ginowan and three other municipalities from June to July this year. 

The areas receive their water from purification plants that draw water from rivers around the U.S. bases.

Blood samples were taken from people between the ages of 18 and 95.

The group said average levels of PFOS in the samples from the seven areas ranged from 5.8 to 12.2 nanograms per milliliter.

This is 1.5 to 3 times higher than the national average of 3.9 nanograms in a survey of 119 people conducted by the Environmental Ministry in 2021.

Japan has no PFOS standard to determine if there is a health risk based on levels of the compound in the blood.

But Harada noted that Germany regards 20 nanograms per milliliter of PFOS in blood as a health risk.

Of the 387 people, 27 exceeded this level.

“More than 300 people cooperated with the survey because they are anxious about it,” said Yoshiyasu Iha, 80, co-chairman of the civic group.

“We will request the central and prefectural governments to conduct a detailed investigation in the U.S. bases,” he added. “We are seeking to clarify the source of the contamination and take proper measures.”

Daughter of Sandy Hook victim rails against Alex Jones in op-ed

"Over time, I began to connect the dots and figured out who this Alex Jones guy was," she wrote

By MEAGHAN ELLIS
PUBLISHED OCTOBER 16, 2022

  

InfoWars founder Alex Jones speaks to the media outside Waterbury Superior Court during his trial on September 21, 2022 in Waterbury, Connecticut. (Joe Buglewicz/Getty Images)

This article originally appeared on AlterNet.

The daughter of the slain principal of Sandy Hook Elementary School has penned an op-ed shedding light on the impact of Alex Jones' perpetuation of conspiracy theories about the mass shooting.

In a piece published by Newsweek, Erica Lafferty, the daughter of Dawn Lafferty Hochsprung, recounted how it felt when conspiracy theorists like Jones began circulating claims about the shooting being a hoax. For Lafferty and family members of other victims, the shooting was anything but a hoax.

"Jones has been in my life for nearly a decade, but not by choice. I was in my late twenties when my mother, Dawn Lafferty Hochsprung, the principal of Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut, was killed on December 14, 2012," Lafferty wrote.

"Within days of the shooting, I heard people online saying it was a hoax; the whole thing had been staged and the families were acting. I just thought: 'How can people be saying this?'"
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After doing her own research, Lafferty was able to learn more about Jones' history of spreading misinformation. "Over time, I began to connect the dots and figured out who this Alex Jones guy was," she wrote. "I realized much of this rhetoric was stemming from the lies and the hate he was spewing to his audience."

She also shed light on the harassment she was subjected to by Jones far-right audience. "The frequency of this harassment depended on Jones and how often he spoke about Sandy Hook," she wrote, "Whenever he spread his conspiracy theories the abuse amped up. There was sometimes a day or two that I would have some peace.

"Then there were months on end where every single day I would be called an actress or accused of making up my own mom. I would be sent pictures of the school or these doctored photos claiming it wasn't even open on the day of the shooting, all of these crazy things. It was constant, I literally couldn't keep up."

To make matters worse, the former principal's bereaved daughter also explained how Jones' actions stifled her ability to grieve. According to Lafferty, the highly publicized nature of her mother's death complicated things but Jones' attempts to dismiss what transpired made things far worse.
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"It was the first time I had ever experienced anything like this. I had grown up in a small town and outside of sporting events I had never even been in the newspaper. So, to have to grieve the murder of my mom in such a public manner was a whole beast in itself. I was never given the opportunity to mourn her in my own way. I was forced to do it on this international platform."

Speaking about the lawsuit, Lafferty wrote, "I think taking legal action against Jones did further open ourselves up to his very extreme audience. I feel like we had to put ourselves out there and continue taking hits from him and his followers in order to take back our lives and stories, but also to protect other people, which I think is the best way I ever could have chosen to honor my mom."

We Should Try to Prevent Another Alex Jones

Oct. 16, 2022
OPINION
ZEYNEP TUFEKCI

Alex Jones outside the courthouse in Waterbury, Conn., in September.

Credit...Kirsten Luce for The New York Times

Opinion Columnist
Zeynep Tufekci's Latest: Dive deep into the internet, technology, politics and society with Zeynep Tufekci's 

Alex Jones achieved the epitome of despicability and now has been ordered to pay for it. His lies — that parents of children killed at Sandy Hook Elementary School in 2012 had been actors taking part in a government plot to manufacture a pretext for stricter gun control — were blatant. He did not subtly deceive through misleading framing or cherry-picked facts. He targeted parents of murdered little children, who faced a barrage threats; at least one family had to flee, moving away from where their child was buried.

Now a Connecticut jury has ordered Jones to pay $965 million in damages to several families for his egregious cruelty, adding to a Texas jury award of $49 million in August to another Sandy Hook family.

Defamation lawsuits can provide some relief to victims of horrendous lies, but they cannot fully repair the damage that has already been done.

For example, many Fox News hosts took to claiming voting machine fraud was a reason that President Biden had won the election. They also often invited guests like Rudy Giuliani or Sidney Powell who asserted the same. After Smartmatic, a company that provided voting systems to Los Angeles County during the 2020 election, sent a 20-page legal letter asking for a retraction of “false and defamatory statements,” some Fox News shows ran fact-checking segments, debunking their own lies. Since then, Smartmatic and other voting machine companies have begun defamation lawsuits against Fox News and others. Meanwhile, the lies are still accepted as fact by many supporters of Donald Trump.

Defamation and libel lawsuits can be misused: Companies or individuals with deep pockets can sue scientists who object to claims about their products or newspapers that expose their wrongdoing, for example. The costs of defending against such claims can have a deterrent and silencing effect. But that’s an argument for better protections against frivolous suits, not against holding liars accountable.

Defamation lawsuits are not an easy path to accountability. Plaintiffs must not just prove that statements were false, but also that they caused harm. In the case of public figures, plaintiffs must prove that the defendant either knew the statements were false or that they showed a reckless disregard for the truth.

But the key issue is, the current media ecology makes it lucrative to lie outrageously.

The extent of Alex Jones’s wealth is opaque, but a forensic economist who testified during Jones’s Texas trial estimated that his net worth, combined with that of Free Speech Systems (the parent company of his Infowars media network), is between $135 and $270 million. Jones put Free Speech Systems into Chapter 11 bankruptcy in August; the Sandy Hook families have challenged the legitimacy of that bankruptcy in court.

Jones got his start in talk radio peddling 9/11 conspiracies to great success. In later years, beyond his own webpage hosting his show, he found a home on platforms like YouTube and Facebook, where he could not only broaden his reach, but benefit from being recommended and amplified by the algorithms that prioritize “engagement” — which has often meant pushing inflammatory, tribalizing or conspiratorial content. Many supporters of Donald Trump were — and are — great fans. One comprehensive study from the Harvard Berkman Klein Center (where I’m a faculty associate) found that before the 2016 election, he was the 13th most shared source on Twitter among then-candidate Trump’s supporters. Between 2015 and 2018, his show averaged about $53 million in revenue annually.

In 2018, after outrage over the way social media sites amplified such content, Facebook, YouTube and Spotify, among other major sites, removed his show. But by then, his machinery was in place and, based on witness testimony and Free Speech Systems’ bankruptcy filing, his company continued making millions of dollars each year.

From what, you might wonder? In 2014, most of his then $20 million revenue came from selling supplements like “Super Male Vitality,” according to testimony Jones gave in a court case. After he was banned from major social media platforms in 2018, he expanded his sales, offering a 50 percent discount for at least one of his alleged testosterone boosters to “push back in the fight against globalist agenda” — a bargain at $34.95. Also available at the time was “Survival Shield X-2 — Nascent Iodine,” which Jones’s website describes as having been developed using “Thermodynamic Pressure Sensitive High Energy Sound Pulse Nano-Emulsion Technology.” A newer version of the product is described as derived from “ancient sea salts” found “thousands of feet below the Earth’s surface” and formulated “with our fellow patriots in mind.” Really, it’s a steal at $19.95, all major credit cards accepted.

During the Texas trial, a producer of his show testified that their online store generated over $165 million in revenue during a span of time encompassing a few months in 2015 and the period from 2016 through 2018, by selling survivalist gear, supplements, what-have-you. The trial also revealed that the families had pleaded with him for many years to stop airing lies about their murdered children, because they faced not just direct threats and confrontations, but people who said they’d defile their children’s graves. According to the families, Jones ignored them as those lies increased product and supplement sales.

One might think it’s just this one con man who found a lot of marks (a lawyer for Jones once called him a “performance artist” who is merely “playing a character”), but others have used the same approach.

Fox News required its workers in New York City to be vaccinated against Covid in the winter of 2021, and at least in the summer of 2021, even vaccinated workers were still required to put masks on in closed spaces with multiple people, You hardly would have realized that from watching all the antivaccine and antimasking content that was routine on Fox News.

Many viewers appear to have paid a huge price for that cynical disparagement of lifesaving vaccines.

A recent study in Nature found that areas with higher levels of Fox News viewership had lower Covid vaccination rates, which are associated with higher hospitalization and death rates. This impact of Fox News was independent of local health care capacity or even partisanship. Plus, much of this effect was concentrated on people younger than 65, who might have thought they were safer from Covid, the study authors noted, and perhaps more open to messages of vaccine hesitancy and refusal.

Even foot soldiers of the movement who sincerely bought into the antivax nonsense, suffered. According to a report from The Boston Globe, at least five conservative radio talk show hosts who campaigned against the vaccines died from Covid-19 over just a few months in 2021.

It’s become so easy to lucratively lie to so many people, and we have few realistic and effective defenses against the harms of deceptions like these, not just to individuals but to our society.

“Good speech” isn’t going to push out lies when viewership is so fragmented, nor is the solution “fact checks” of various levels of quality by institutions already not trusted by many.

There have been campaigns to get major social media platforms to act more aggressively to get rid of liars, but why should we trust them to decide who should be banned? What if political winds shift?

What’s the solution? No society can be constantly pulled at its seams like this and escape unscathed. The recent Jones verdict certainly did some damage to the industry of lucrative lying, and perhaps few are as deserving of this result than he is. But laws written for a different era cannot resolve the problems of our current media ecology.

There are no easy, quick solutions, but perhaps a starting point would be to make it harder and less lucrative to lie to huge audiences. Rather than pursuing legally dubious and inadvisable efforts to ban speech or define and target misinformation, regulations should target the incentives for and the speed with which lies can be spread, amplified and monetized.

One part of the solution might be to target reckless data surveillance online, by greatly limiting how much data can be collected, how long it can be retained, what it can be used for, and how it can be traded. Among other benefits, this could make chasing engagement less attractive as a business model.

There could also be new, careful versions of the “Fairness Doctrine” — which required mass broadcasters that essentially held a monopoly on the public sphere to present broader viewpoints on topics of public importance. It wasn’t a perfect solution, and it could be weaponized, but it recognized that “good speech” can confront bad speech only if there is access to the same audiences. Versions for the 21st century might involve a requirement that when blatant or harmful lies on issues of public importance are amplified, the people who are sent those lies are also sent corrections and further explanations.

But we should also work hard at making the rest of society work much better so that liars can’t do as much damage. I keep coming back to how people over 65 have higher rates of vaccination, despite higher Fox News viewership and some in that age group having a greater propensity to believe misinformation. That’s possibly because they are more motivated to brush off lies in light of the higher risk they face from Covid, but perhaps also because Medicare allows them to have medical providers they trust. Similarly, for example, regulating the supplement industry — a common vehicle for conspiracy and political grift — and having stricter standards on advertising claims might help, too.

The work of civilization is not just discovering and unleashing new and powerful technologies, it is also regulating and shaping them, and crafting norms and values through education and awareness, that make societies healthier and function better. We are late to grapple with all of this, but late is better than never.

More on Alex Jones

Opinion | Anna Merlan
Alex Jones Picked On the Wrong People

Oct. 14, 2022

The Sandy Hook Families’ Looming Battle for Alex Jones’s Millions
Oct. 13, 2022

Opinion | Farhad Manjoo
Alex Jones and the Wellness-Conspiracy Industrial Complex
Aug. 11, 2022

The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And here’s our email: letters@nytimes.com.

Zeynep Tufekci (@zeynep) is a professor at Columbia University, the author of “Twitter and Tear Gas: The Power and Fragility of Networked Protest” and a New York Times Opinion columnist. @zeynep • Facebook

You can be critical of America and still love it. 

Sen. Ron Johnson doesn't understand that.

Acknowledging cruelties does not make one un-American. Speaking out makes you a better American because it shows you want everyone to have a fair shot at the American dream.

https://www.uscourts.gov/educational-resources/educational-activities/facts-and-case-summary-texas-v-johnson

James E. Causey
Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

Ron Johnson just couldn't bring himself to do it. Given the chance to offer just an ounce of civility to what had been a heated debate with his opponent in the U.S. Senate race, Democratic Lt. Gov. Mandela Barnes, Johnson went low.

And it's his cheap shot toward the end of their encounter Thursday night that a lot of us will remember.

Asked the softest of softball questions — “What do you find admirable about your opponent?” — Barnes called Johnson a “family man,” saying, “I absolutely respect that.”

Johnson praised Barnes' parents for raising him but couldn't find anything positive to say about Barnes himself. And then came this kicker:

“I guess what puzzles me about that is with that upbringing, why has he turned on America, and why does he find America awful,” Wisconsin's senior senator said, drawing a chorus of boos from the crowd at Marquette University’s Varsity Theatre.

Boos that were richly deserved.

Wisconsin Senate debate:Ron Johnson said, 'The FBI set me up.' Here is what's behind the comment made during Wisconsin's Senate debate.

Ron Johnson, Mandela Barnes on the attack:Five takeaways from second Wisconsin U.S. Senate debate between Ron Johnson, Mandela Barnes
A flurry of racist ads supporting Sen. Ron Johnson

It’s not surprising that Johnson turned what was supposed to be a positive answer into a negative one; it's reflective of the ads that groups supporting him have been running for weeks.

Racist ads that have darkened Barnes' skin and tried to scare voters by claiming the lieutenant governor is soft on crime.

With less than a month to go before the election, it looks like those ads have been effective. In the latest Marquette University Law School Poll, Johnson holds a 6-point lead among likely voters. The race was a dead heat in the previous poll.

Racism is about power, not race:

You don't need to be a white supremacist to be racist. LA City Council conversation proves it.

I'm not sure what Johnson finds so un-American about Barnes. Maybe it's because Barnes has been outspoken on issues of race. He's said America is rich and powerful because of “forced labor on stolen land.” For years, Barnes has spoken out about the atrocities against Native Americans and African Americans in this country.

But acknowledging those cruelties does not make Barnes un-American. It makes him informed. Speaking out makes you a better American because it shows you want everyone to have a fair shot at the American dream.

Johnson either doesn't understand that or hopes that the people he's pandering to with his attacks don't.

I asked historian Reggie Jackson about what Barnes has said. Jackson is co-owner of Nurturing Diversity Partners and a Milwaukee historian. He's also a researcher with The Redress Movement, a national group whose mission is to begin the process of redressing the damage caused by decades of legal and illegal segregation policies and practices.

“I have traveled all across the country talking about these same things. We have to acknowledge the truth about America," Jackson said. "We have to be honest about our history, and just because you talk about the atrocities doesn’t mean you can’t love America. You can do both.”

Some people, like Johnson, would rather avoid the undeniable truths about our country.

“What good does that do?” Jackson asked.

I think the better question is where has it gotten us?

A polarized nation:Red and blue America don't trust each other. And that's driving us dangerously apart.

Do we live in two Americas?:Voters reward Republicans for economics, but culture wars pull us apart.

We should not be satisfied with the way things are

Milwaukee is known as one of the most segregated cities in the nation, and some studies have called it the worst place to raise a Black child.

Jackson hopes people research the history of segregation and agitate for change.

People who do that don't hate America. They just want the system to work better for everybody.

What bothered me the most by Johnson’s comment, is the fact that he seems to suggest Barnes should be satisfied with the way things are — that it was somehow unpatriotic to be critical of America's flaws.

But we all know equal opportunity is a myth. I live in a city where I constantly see people struggle against the odds to provide for their families. Working-class people have to have two or three jobs just to keep a roof over their heads.

People facing those odds are justifiably critical of a political system that does little to make their lives easier. They are constantly told to pull themselves up by the bootstraps when they don’t even have boots.

Why shouldn't they be critical of America?

With less than a month to go before the election, millions of dollars are pouring into Wisconsin in attack ads designed to shade the truth or outright lie to you.

The purpose of these ads? To discourage you from voting.

Don't fall for it.

Political campaign ads have become cruel:The campaign ads are vicious, but do midterm candidates really hate each other?

Exercise your right to vote.

I voted absentee two weeks ago, and it was an easy choice.

From his stance on the COVID vaccinations to his attempts to cast doubt on the 2020 presidential election, Johnson has been an embarrassment.

Johnson likes to point to his work with the Joseph Project, an anti-poverty program on Milwaukee’s north side, that helps get low-income people to work. I applaud him for that. But what else has he done to solve the nagging issues faced by the largest city in the state?

And now he seems to think it's un-American to talk about the problems facing people of color?

That's one of the most American things we could possibly do.

James E. Causey started reporting on life in his city while still at Marshall High School through a Milwaukee Sentinel high school internship. He's been covering his hometown ever since, writing and editing news stories, projects and opinion pieces on urban youth, mental health, employment, housing and incarceration. Most recently, he wrote "What happened to us?" which tracked the lives of his third-grade classmates, and "Cultivating a community," about the bonding that takes place around a neighborhood garden. Causey was a health fellow at the University of Southern California in 2018 and a Nieman Fellow at Harvard University in 2007.

Email him at jcausey@jrn.com and follow him on Twitter: @jecausey.

'Leftist propaganda': Ron Johnson blames higher education for debate laughter at FBI 'set up' claim

Brandon Gage, Alternet
October 16, 2022

Ron Johnson (Screen Grab)

When United States Senator Ron Johnson (R-Wisconsin) debated Democratic Senate nominee Mandela Barnes, Wisconsin's lieutenant governor, at Marquette University's Varsity Theater on Thursday night, he was met with laughter when he alleged that he was "set up" by Federal Bureau of Investigation during its investigation into Russian misinformation two years ago.

"Johnson was informed at an FBI briefing in 2020 that he was the target of Russian disinformation as part of a campaign to make him useful to the Kremlin, the senator confirmed to The Washington Post last year," Yahoo! News explained on Friday.

The crowd did not buy it. On Saturday, Johnson appeared on Fox News and was questioned why his audience refused to take him seriously.

READ MORE: Watch: Ron Johnson booed and mocked by audience during live debate

Host Brian Kilmeade noted to Johnson that "when you said you were set up by the FBI, the crowd laughed." He then asked the senator, "who was in that crowd, and have they been following the news? Do you want to put that in context?"

Johnson blamed higher education.

"Well I think they let in a bunch of college students. We were supposed to both get fifty audience members and the crowd was much larger than that. So, my guess, they're college students who, let's face it, our colleges today aren't exactly teaching history. They're really not talking about the relevant things that students really oughta learn in college," Johnson said. "They're being taught leftist propaganda, unfortunately."

Watch below or at this link.

Chinese-made flying car takes off for the first time in UAE

The two-seater vehicle made its first 90-minute flight in Dubai on Monday during Gitex 2022.

Farah AlSharif
13 October, 2022

Visitors stand next a concept flying car at the GITEX 2020 technology summit at the Dubai World Trade center on 8 December 2020. [Getty]

A Chinese-made unmanned flying car took off for its first-ever flight test in Dubai on Monday during the city's annual tech show Gitex 2022.

Electric vehicle manufacturer XPeng Aeroht, an affiliate of Xpeng Inc., created the eVTOL flying car X2 that soared over a Dubai crowd for a 90-minute flight at Skydive Dubai.

The X2 displayed its vertical take-off and landing abilities powered by its eight propellers - without the need for a human driver.

The two-seater vehicle emits no carbon dioxide and has a maximum flight speed of 130 km/h. It's also equipped with a flight control system, both manual autonomous flight mode, and an enclosed cockpit, all encased in a carbon fibre structure.

The X2 was designed to carry out low-altitude, short-haul city trips, including sightseeing and medical transportation.

XPeng Aeroht described the X2 as an "important base for the next generation of flying cars."

Immersive flight experience. Take a ride with X2 flying car in Dubai. #XPNEGAEROHT #GITEXGLOBAL #FlyingCar #Tech #Dubai pic.twitter.com/UQC1Vlq5Du — XPENG AEROHT (@XPENG_AEROHT) October 12, 2022

"First we selected Dubai city because Dubai is the most innovative city in the world," Minguan Qiu, general manager of Xpeng Aeroht, said to the media.

Xpeng Aeroht is currently working on launching the X2 on international markets according to Qiu. The X2 is the fifth and latest generation of flying cars developed independently by the Chinese company.

XPeng President Brian Gu said the Dubai flight test was a "major step" in the company's experimentation in the future of mobility.

With major developments in technology, flying vehicles are no longer becoming a thing of movies and comic books. According to a report by Morgan Stanley Research, accelerating technological advances and investment in autonomous aircraft could create a US$1.5 trillion market by 2040.

German startup Volocopter plans to launch electric air taxis in Singapore in 2024.

 

Burgeoning U.S. debt may jeopardize global economy

(Ecns.cn) 17:08, October 16, 2022

The U.S. Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell answers questions at a press conference, July 27, 2022. The Federal Reserve of the U.S. announced to increase the fed funds rate by 75 basis points, July 27, 2022. (Photo/China News Service)

Data released by the U.S. Treasury Department shows that public debt in the country has surpassed $31 trillion for the first time ever, far beyond its gross domestic product in 2021 of $23 trillion, and is close to reaching the $31.4 trillion debt ceiling.

According to the U.S. media Quartz, a trillion U.S. dollars of debt was added just in the last eight months. The barbaric growth of U.S. debt has caused global concern over another financial crisis.

The $31 trillion debt is equivalent to $236,000 per American household and $93,000 per person, according to the Peter G. Peterson Foundation. If every U.S. household paid $1,000 per month toward covering the debt, it would take 19 years to pay down the sum.

The country's radical move to increase interest rates is accumulating more interest payments. According to the Peter G. Peterson Foundation, higher rates could add an additional U.S. trillion dollars to what the federal government spends on interest payments this decade.

Stimulus packages have been adopted by the U.S. government in order to revive the economy. For example, former U.S. President Donald Trump signed into law a $2.3 trillion pandemic aid and spending package.

And the Biden administration’s American Rescue Plan, the Inflation Reduction Act, and CHIPS and Science Act have added a large amount of debt. A high defense budget has also increased the debt burden.

Raising the debt ceiling is often used by the country to cope with its fiscal predicament. However, the federal government is now trapped in a vicious circle in which it borrows money and pays interest, which causes more interest and more borrowing.

The two parties of the country are used to fighting over the debt ceiling issue, which has lowered the federal government’s ability to respond to financial challenges and triggered investors’ concern about the potential default of the U.S. debt.

If the U.S. defaults on its debt, the country will face multiple risks. For example, its credit rating will be lowered, the U.S. dollar’s position as the world's dominant reserve currency will be shaken, and there will be potentially more financial risks.

In addition, the rising debt will further limit the country to take actions in dealing with climate change, the next round of COVID-19, and building an inclusive economy.

Uncertainties caused by its debt crisis will spread to the rest of the world, bringing more instabilities to investment, trade and other fields, which will encumber the world’s economic recovery and may trigger another financial crisis.

(Web editor: Peng Yukai, Du Mingming)

Muslims suing over watch-list status say U.S. tactics block scrutiny

Those challenging the constitutionality of the “No-Fly List” and Terrorist Screening Database say that when they sue, they get removed, making it impossible to have their concerns heard in court.


By Rachel Weiner
October 16, 2022 

Saadiq Long was only allowed to visit his mother after FBI agents questioned her. He was strip-searched at an airport in Amsterdam and arrested when visiting Turkey. He was banned from two Gulf states and fired from a trucking company.

Nine years of such troubles, he came to believe, all arose from his placement on a list of suspected terrorists banned from air travel in the United States. Long, a veteran and Muslim convert, filed a lawsuit in federal court in Alexandria, Va. But as his lawsuit started moving forward in 2019, the government told him he had been removed from the list.

Advocates say the reversal is part of a pattern from the government to evade scrutiny of the Terrorist Screening Database, a secret, FBI-maintained list of known or suspected terrorists subject to heightened security screening at borders, and of the smaller No Fly List of those barred from U.S. airspace.

Hundreds of thousands of people have been placed on the lists since the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. For years, civil liberties groups have challenged the process of determining who is on the two lists as unconstitutional but say they’re often hampered by the government’s tactics.

“The Government removes people from their secret lists only when they fear that a court might impose restraint on their lawlessness,” said Gadeir Abbas, an attorney with the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) litigating Long’s case. “If the FBI has its way, delisting a person will become a kind of cheat code the federal government can use to deny people their day in court.”

The group has eight such examples, he said. The latest involves Abdulkadir Nur, a Somali-born U.S. citizen who lives in Virginia and says in court filings he had been subjected to extensive, intrusive searches at U.S. airports since 2008. That year, Nur was part of a United Nations relief convoy in Somalia that local insurgents raided; he was questioned in the subsequent investigation but never accused of wrongdoing.

The federal government is accused of taking certain people off watch lists to evade scrutiny of a secret, FBI-maintained database of known or suspected terrorists who are subject to heightened security screening at borders. (Yuri Gripas/Reuters)

Nur got no confirmation that he was ever on the terrorism watch list or taken off it. His attorneys say they can infer both from the scrutiny he consistently received at airports until this month, when he did not get searched or interrogated for the first time in 12 years.

“The Government ... merely has stopped violating the law against Nur, and only to wrangle out of a lawsuit it cannot win,” his attorneys wrote.

A spokeswoman for the Justice Department did not respond to a request for comment.

CAIR is arguing that Nur’s lawsuit should continue despite the apparent concession. But earlier this year, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit ruled that Long’s challenge to the No Fly List was moot because the government had taken him off. He can keep fighting his placement on the broader watch list.

Because of a 2015 ruling in another federal court, Long was able to learn that he was on the No Fly List. (Placement on the broader watch list remains a mystery.) He was told by the Department of Homeland Security that he was on the list because he had “participated in training that may make you a threat to U.S. national security,” and that an arrest in Turkey in 2015 was also “of concern to the U.S. Government,” according to court records.

Long says his only military training came from the U.S. government and that his arrest on a vacation in Turkey was a direct result of his placement on the No Fly List. Long served in the Air Force from 1987 to 1998. While stationed in Turkey, he converted to Islam and decided he could not be responsible for civilian deaths. Denied conscientious objector status, he ended up leaving the military with an “other than honorable discharge.” He stayed in the Middle East and became an English teacher.

The DHS letter said the government “withheld certain information” about Long’s placement because of “national security concerns.”

But in late 2020, when the case was before the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit, he was informed he had been removed from the No Fly List and would not be put back on, absent new information; the Department of Justice made a similar guarantee in court.

Long’s attorneys argued that his removal from the list shows “the Government is willing to place and maintain people on these lists even when they pose no national security threat.”

A panel of Fourth Circuit judges said they could not agree.

“While the government doesn’t concede constitutional error, we assume it removed Long from the list because, as he contends, he doesn’t belong on it,” the court ruled in June. “To say otherwise would be to suggest the government risked national security simply to moot a lawsuit. This we decline to do.”

The Ninth Circuit ruled differently a month earlier, keeping alive a lawsuit from a man named Yonas Fikre, who alleges he spent years on the list for refusing to become an informant, even after he was removed.

“The government has not explained why it added him to the No Fly List in the first place and why, years later, it spontaneously took him off of it,” that court wrote in 2018. “Nothing prevents the government from putting him back on the list.”

The government subsequently issued a declaration similar to the one given to Long, saying Fikre would not go back on the list based on “currently available information.” But the Ninth Circuit said that was not enough, because the government “has not ‘repudiated the decision’ to place Fikre on the list, nor has it identified any criteria for inclusion on the list that may have changed.” Without such disavowal, the court said in a unanimous decision this May, “Fikre remained stigmatized ‘as a known or suspected terrorist.’”

That was a “very powerful opinion,” said Jeffrey Kahn, a former Justice Department attorney who has studied the terrorism watch list as a law professor at Southern Methodist University. The goal of the government attorneys in these cases is “to end the case” before trial, he said, and just taking someone off the list “is an easy way to kill the lawsuit.” The government can track people in other ways and potentially put them back on the lists.

The same U.S. judge in the Eastern District of Virginia presiding over Nur’s case, Anthony J. Trenga, ruled in 2019 that the watch list system violates due process rights.

“The risk of erroneous deprivation of ... travel-related and reputational liberty interests is high,’” the George W. Bush appointee wrote in response to a suit filed by 23 Muslim Americans.

He noted that for an agency to nominate a name for the list requires only “reasonable suspicion” that someone is a “suspected terrorist,” which does not require any evidence of involvement or interest in criminal activity. Ninety-nine percent of nominations are accepted by the Terrorist Screening Center.

According to court filings, as of 2019 there are roughly 1.1 million people on the broader watch list, of which 81,000 are barred from flying.

“If there were that many terrorists in the world, we would be getting attacked all day long,” said Javed Ali, former senior director for counterterrorism at the National Security Council. “That’s not the way to use a tool like this — if people are in there in error, they should not be there in perpetuity.”

He suggested a court similar to the one that oversees secret surveillance orders could evaluate Americans’ placement on these lists.

The Fourth Circuit overturned Trenga’s decision last year, saying “the delays and burdens experienced by plaintiffs at the border and in airports, although regrettable, do not mandate a complete overhaul.”

5 years on, key #MeToo voices take stock of the movement

Actress Louisette Geiss speaks at a news conference by the “Silence Breakers,” a group of women who have spoken out about Hollywood producer Harvey Weinstein’s sexual misconduct, at Los Angeles City Hall, on Feb. 25, 2020. Geiss, a former actress and screenwriter who accused Weinstein in 2017, has written a musical stemming from her experiences with Weinstein, “The Right Girl,” which was waylaid by the pandemic but will be produced live onstage sometime in 2023.

(Chris Pizzello / Associated Press)

BY JOCELYN NOVECK AND MARYCLAIRE DALE
ASSOCIATED PRESS

OCT. 14, 2022 

Once again, disgraced mogul Harvey Weinstein sits in a courtroom, on trial in Los Angeles while the reckoning the accusations against him launched marks a significant milestone this month: It’s been five years since a brief hashtag — #MeToo — galvanized a broad social movement.

The Associated Press went back to Louisette Geiss and Andrea Constand, accusers in two of the #MeToo era’s most momentous cases — Weinstein, already convicted in a New York case, and Bill Cosby, once convicted and now free — to learn how their lives have changed, whether they have any regrets, and how hopeful they feel after a decidedly mixed bag of legal results.

And we spoke to the woman who originally coined the phrase — Tarana Burke, a longtime advocate for sexual violence survivors and a survivor herself — about her own journey, the movement’s resilience, and the challenges ahead.

LOUISETTE GEISS: A LAWSUIT AND A MUSICAL

All in all, Louisette Geiss considers herself one of the luckier ones: When she tried to run out of a hotel room to escape Weinstein’s alleged advances, the door opened. She was able to flee.

Geiss, a former actress and screenwriter who, in 2017, accused Weinstein of attempting to force her to watch him masturbate in a hotel bathroom in 2008, was the lead plaintiff in a class action lawsuit against his former studio.

But fighting through the justice system — an experience that has deeply frustrated her — was not the only means by which Geiss has attempted to cope. She’s also written a musical.

“The Right Girl” was waylaid by the pandemic but will be produced live onstage sometime in 2023. The show, with a high-profile production team that includes songwriter Diane Warren, tells the story of three women at various levels of power in a workplace plagued by a serial sexual predator.

“In the end, you see that the judicial system is still not in the right place to take him down,” Geiss said. “It’s really society that takes him down.”

It’s a reflection of Geiss’ view that the latter has moved faster than the former to absorb the lessons of #MeToo, albeit still imperfectly.

“I think the MeToo movement definitely gave predators pause to act on their inclinations,” she said. “I think that they have been warned. And so they are less likely to do it, but I do think they’re still doing it.”

At times, yes, she had regrets about coming forward. She worried about the effects on her children, now 7 and 5 — her youngest was only weeks old when the case exploded. But it was also her children that made her realize she had to fight.

“In the end, to make a bigger change for women and for children — for your child, and for my children — it was important that I step up and do it,” she said.

That’s also why Geiss, 48, continues to encourage younger survivors to speak out — even though she understands why they may not want to.

“You don’t want your name to be synonymous with Weinstein. Neither do I,” she said of her pitch to them. “But guess what? They’re not going to go away until we keep screaming about this.”

ANDREA CONSTAND: ‘IT WAS THE RIGHT THING TO DO’

For Andrea Constand, the chief accuser in Cosby’s criminal case, the past five years have been turbulent, to say nothing of the preceding decade.

Cosby’s lawyers loudly derided her as a “con artist” during the first celebrity trial of the #MeToo era, in 2018. Yet the jury nonetheless convicted the aging comedian of drugging and sexually assaulting her in 2005 and a judge sent him to prison. Then, a Pennsylvania appeals court freed Cosby last year.

Constand had gone to police a year after the encounter with Cosby, which he called consensual. A prosecutor declined to press charges, later saying he had secretly promised Cosby he’d never be charged — a hotly debated claim that ultimately undid the conviction. And the first jury to hear her case, in 2017, couldn’t reach a verdict.

Through the yearslong storm, Constand has remained serene. She believes these are just early days for the movement.

“I think it was a much needed time to be able to address the issue [of] just how profound sexual violence is — in boardrooms, in corporations, in the entertainment industry and just generally all over,” Constand, 49, said this month from her home near Toronto, a rural retreat that she says brings her solitude and peace.

“A lot of trauma was released,” she added. “Keeping secrets can really can make you sick.”

The AP does not name people who say they have been sexually assaulted, unless they come forward publicly.

She continues to work as a massage therapist, while pushing lawmakers to adopt a legal definition of consent. As jurors in both Cosby’s Pennsylvania trial and Weinstein’s in New York deliberated, they asked for the definition — but the law in both states was silent.

She has written a memoir, and started a foundation to help sexual assault survivors through their physical, spiritual and emotional recovery. She has also created a mobile app where survivors can seek trauma-informed services.

“I had everything to lose and nothing to gain. I was a loser, you know, really, going in,” Constand said of her 2006 police complaint.

But despite all the twists and turns, “it was the right thing to do,” she concluded, citing #MeToo movements around the world.

“You have ... everybody coming out of that shame and out of that silence,” she said.

TARANA BURKE: KEEPING THE MOMENTUM GOING

Harvey Weinstein. R. Kelly. Bill Cosby. Two are in prison, one has been freed.

And that’s exactly how not to measure the success of the #MeToo movement, says Tarana Burke — as a scorecard of high-profile “wins” and “losses,” and through the lens of celebrity.

Rather, says the advocate for sexual violence survivors, cultural change should be the key metric. And by that standard, she says, the movement has achieved an “awe-inspiring” amount in five years.

“Five and a half years ago, we could not have a sustained global conversation about sexual violence that was framed inside social justice. It was always framed inside crime and punishment, or celebrity gossip,” she said.

Burke, 49, had coined “Me Too” as part of her advocacy work more than a decade before a hashtagged tweet from actor Alyssa Milano, in the wake of the Weinstein allegations, saw the phrase explode.

Just six months earlier, Burke recalls, she had been on an organizing retreat in California, handing out T-shirts and dreaming aloud about how she could revitalize her work and raise enough money to tour Black colleges and universities to raise awareness. When the spotlight shifted to #MeToo later in 2017, her first worry was that the work behind her phrase would be coopted. But she soon realized she had an enormous opportunity.

“The kind of shift we need to see sustainable change, we’re still working toward. But the shift we’ve had in the last five years would have taken 20 years to happen [without #MeToo], and that’s incredible,” she said.

Burke has spent the last few years building an organization to promote the movement, and has published a raw memoir, “Unbound,” which includes an account of how she herself was raped at 7 years old.

Burke notes proudly that a new Pew study shows more than twice as many Americans support, rather than oppose, #MeToo. But, she says, struggles remain, especially in terms of bringing Black, Indigenous, trans and disabled women into the conversation, and in shoring up fundraising.

The goal now is to keep momentum going and restore the early enthusiasm.

Burke likes to remind people that within the first year, some 19 million people went on Twitter to say “me too,” attesting to their own experiences in a powerful collective reckoning.

“This is why we have a movement that cannot be ignored,” Burke says.

’24 hours of hell’: Israeli settler gangs terrorize Palestinian town under army protection

Huwwara has been under near constant attack since Thursday afternoon, when groups of armed settlers began attacking several points in the town, while escorted and enabled by the Israeli army.

BY YUMNA PATEL OCTOBER 14, 2022 
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ISRAELI SETTLERS AND SOLDIERS DURING THE ATTACK ON HUWWARA ON OCTOBER 13, 2022. (PHOTO: OREN ZIV/ACTIVESTILLS)

Israeli settlers continued their attack on the Palestinian town of Huwwara in the northern occupied West Bank for the second day in a row on Friday, vandalizing several storefronts, vehicles, and homes, while Israeli forces fired live ammunition at Palestinians in the town.

At around 1 p.m., as Friday prayers were ongoing in the town, groups of armed and masked Israeli settlers began attacking homes and storefronts off the main road of the town, that connects Huwwara and the surrounding villages with the city of Nablus to the north.

“They started throwing rocks at passing cars, breaking the windows of the stores and vandalizing them from the inside, vandalizing vehicles, trying to set them on fire, and attacking homes,” Salamah Saleem, 60, a local activist, told Mondoweiss.

“They did all this during prayer time, when most of the men in the village were in the mosque, and it was just the women and children who were at home alone,” Saleem said. “These are planned attacks, and they are getting worse with each day.”

Following Friday prayers, dozens of local youth from Huwwara took to the streets to confront the settlers and soldiers. Israeli soldiers fired live ammunition, rubber-coated steel bullets, sound grenades, and tear gas at locals, causing a number of injuries.

At least two Palestinians were injured with live ammunition, with one reported to be in serious condition, according to local sources.

Huwwara has been under near constant attack since Thursday afternoon, when groups of armed settlers began attacking several points in the town, primarily on the main road, vandalizing dozens of storefronts and vehicles. The settlers also burned olive trees, and attacked several homes, a local amusement park, and a cafe on the outskirts of the town.

A representative from the local council in Huwwara told Mondoweiss that at least eight young men were detained from the village since yesterday, four of whom have been released, and four who are still in Israeli custody.

“What’s happening right now in Huwwara is terrifying, and it’s a sign of what’s to come in the rest of the West Bank as the settlers continue their violent rampages on Palestinian towns like ours,” Saleem said.

The first attack

The first attack began shortly after 2:30 p.m. on Thursday afternoon, when a gang of masked and armed settlers arrived on the main road of Huwwara, and began attacking cars that were both passing by and parked on the road.

“It all happened suddenly. They started throwing large rocks at the cars, trying to break the windows of any Palestinian car that they saw around them,” Saleem said. “Then they started to attack the shops and storefronts.”

“They started breaking the windows and doors down, and entering the shops and breaking everything inside,” Saleem said, adding that the settlers were armed with bats, large sticks, rocks, knives, and guns. “There were teenagers with guns. We saw 15-year-old settlers with guns.”

He added that several store owners were injured when they were hit with rocks and broken glass.

While the settlers were attacking the shops and vehicles, Israel soldiers stationed in the area began firing tear gas, rubber bullets, and sound bombs at the Palestinian civilians in the area.

Videos taken on the scene were posted on social media, showing armed Israeli forces working in tandem with the settlers, pointing their guns and shooting towards the Palestinians in the area.

“The soldiers were there to protect the settlers. They did nothing to stop the settlers from their attack, they were only suppressing any Palestinians who were trying to defend themselves from the settlers,” he said.

At the same time that the settlers were attacking shops on the main road, another gang of settlers were coordinating an attack on the outskirts of Huwwara, around 1 kilometer away from the Israeli settlement of Yitzhar, which is home to notoriously violent settlers that frequently attack the Palestinian villages surrounding the settlement.

“I was at home when I got the call around 3 p.m. that my coffee shop up on the hill was on fire, and that the settlers were attacking the area,” Shadi Yaseen Odeh, 33, a resident of Huwwara told Mondoweiss.

But by the time Shadi got up to where his coffee shop was, it was too late. The entire shop had been burned to the ground. Nothing was salvageable. The local amusement park and a number of homes next door had also been vandalized, and Israeli settlers had set fire to a number of vehicles and olive trees in the area.

SHADI ODEH STANDS OUTSIDE THE REMAINS OF HIS COFFEE SHOP, WHICH WAS BURNT DOWN BY ISRAELI SETTLERS DURING AN ATTACK ON THE TOWN OF HUWWARA IN THE NORTHERN OCCUPIED WEST BANK ON OCTOBER 13TH. (PHOTO: YUMNA PATEL)

“I was speechless when I saw the state of the coffee shop. I couldn’t believe my eyes. Everything was gone,” he said. “I lost everything.”

Odeh said that a number of the neighbors and employees from the amusement park next door had attempted to defend the area from the settlers, and put out the fire that the settlers started, but they were stopped by a group of Israeli soldiers who were in the area.

“My entire source of living is gone. I don’t have the money to rebuild this place. I’ll have to go look for work in order to support my family,” he said.
24 hours of hell

The attack on Thursday afternoon was just the beginning of what turned into “24 hours of hell” for the people of Huwwara, as one resident described it.

A few hours after the first attack on the main road and the outskirts of Huwwara, another gang of armed and masked settlers returned, this time at around 9:30 p.m. on Thursday night.

Muhammad Dalal, 55, an owner of a car repair shop on the main road of Huwwara, was at his neighbor’s house in their apartment building when he got a frantic call from his wife, who was alone in their apartment with their 13-year-old daughter.

“She called me freaking out, saying the settlers and soldiers were attacking our home and our shop below, which is on the ground floor below us,” Dalal told Mondoweiss. His wife and 13-year-old daughter were alone at home.

“I didn’t hear anything else she said, I just ran. I could barely press the elevator button to go down because I was shaking so badly. I was scared for my wife and kids,” Dalal recounted.

“When I arrived and started trying to defend my home from the soldiers and settlers, the settlers threw rocks at our house and the soldiers fired tear gas at us,” he said, adding that the windows were broken by the settlers, and the house was slowly filling up with tear gas.

“My daughter fainted because she inhaled a large amount of tear gas, but we couldn’t get out of the house because the settlers were surrounding us,” he said.

“They were throwing stones at cars, windows, anything they saw,” he said.

After what felt like an eternity, the settlers moved on from Dalal’s house, and continued to wreak havoc on shops and homes down the street, as Israeli soldiers protected them. He was able to evacuate his daughter to the hospital, where she was treated along with several other Palestinians from the town for tear gas inhalation and other injuries.

“It was like a war zone,” Dalal said.

The attacks did not stop there.

At around 3 a.m., residents of Huwwara began posting on local Facebook and Whatsapp groups that the settlers had returned to the main road, this time further up north, and were vandalizing more shops.

“They started attacking people’s houses in the middle of the night while they were sleeping,” Salamah Saleem told Mondoweiss. “We just heard screams as stones broke through people’s windows. Some people reported that their shops were shot at.”

By 1 p.m. the next day, the settlers returned to Huwwara and launched another attack, in tandem with dozens of Israeli troops stationed in the area. Palestinians from the town confronted the settlers and soldiers, who violently suppressed the Palestinians using live ammunition.

The confrontations lasted into the evening in Huwwara.

“We still don’t know exactly how many people have been injured, or just how much damage has been done to people’s shops and houses in the town over the past 24 hours, because the attacks are still ongoing as we speak,” Saleem said.
Settler-state collusion

The attacks on Huwwara come amidst an intensification of Israeli military and settler violence in the West Bank, as Israel cracks down on growing armed resistance in the occupied territory.

At least 10 Palestinians have been killed since the beginning of October by Israeli forces, while dozens of instances of settler violence have been recorded. According to UN OCHA, by the end of September, more than 470 instances of settler violence had been recorded in the West Bank since the start of the year.

At the same time as the attack on Huwwara on Thursday, Israeli settlers were also invading Al-Tireh neighborhood in Ramallah. According to eyewitnesses, at least two buses of settlers arrived under the protection of Israeli military and border police during the attack.

On Thursday and Friday, settler attacks on Palestinians, their property, and olive groves were reported in Nablus City, the Jordan Valley, and the Nablus-area villages of Urif, Qusra Qariyot, and Azmut.

The Palestinians in Huwwara say that the attacks are an indication of worsening settler violence in the West Bank amid a culture of impunity for settlers, as well as the protection they receive from Israeli forces during their attacks.

“Yesterday was really bad, unlike anything I’ve seen before,” Shadi Odeh told Mondoweiss, sitting outside what remained of his burned down coffee shop.

THE BURNED REMAINS OF SHADI ODEH’S COFFEE SHOP. (PHOTO: YUMNA PATEL)

“We are frequently attacked by the settlers in the area, but things are getting worse. We can feel it,” he said. “It’s gotten to the point where you can’t even safely take a walk down the street, or you don’t feel safe in your own home.”

“The settlers and the soldiers are working together,” Mohammad Dallal said. “They are the same. When the soldier takes off his uniform, he is a settler.”

“The settlers and soldiers have traumatized our town, our children, our elderly,” he said. “If this attack and others like it happened without the support of the soldiers, it would not have escalated this far — the settlers wouldn’t have been as confident,” Dallal said.

Saleem echoed similar sentiments, saying “the moment you try to defend yourself or your family, the soldiers start attacking you. They point their guns at us, they shoot at us, etc, but not the settlers.”

The policy of “settler-state collusion,” where Israeli forces supervise, protect, and even work in tandem with settlers while attacking Palestinians and their property is well documented by human rights group B’Tselem.

“Settler violence against Palestinians is part of the strategy employed by Israel’s apartheid regime, which seeks to take over more and more West Bank land,” B’Tselem said in its report ‘Settler Violence = State Violence’.

“The state fully supports and assists these acts of violence, and its agents sometimes participate in them directly. As such, settler violence is a form of government policy, aided and abetted by official state authorities with their active participation,” the group said.

Palestinians like Odeh, Saleem, and Dallal all say that the state’s policy when it comes to settler violence is part of the larger attempts by the settlers, and Israel, to kick Palestinains off their land.

“These attacks are a form of ethnic cleansing,” Odeh told Mondoweiss. “The point of all of this,” he said, pointing to the debris of his shop, “is to scare us off, and make us leave our land so they can take it.”