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Defamation to Georgia voting: the top Trump legal cases
Trump is out of the White House, paving the way for legal challenges against him to continue in earnest
Victoria Bekiempis
Tue 8 Jun 2021 02.00 EDT
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2021/jun/08/trump-legal-cases-defamation-manhattan-georgia-voting
When Donald Trump was president, his lawyers repeatedly claimed that presidential immunity shielded him from civil litigation unrelated to his official duties, among other legal actions. Court after court rejected that position, with various judges ruling “no one is above the law” – though his numerous appeals delayed litigation.
Trump is out of the White House, paving the way for legal action against him to continue in earnest. Here are some of the top legal proceedings involving Trump.
Manhattan grand jury
On 25 May, The Washington Post reported that Manhattan prosecutors had “convened the grand jury that is expected to decide whether to indict former president Donald Trump, other executives at his company or the business itself, should prosecutors present the panel with criminal charges.”
Vance’s office is exploring whether the valuation of any real estate in his company was gamed to cheat insurers or banks, and whether any value manipulation enabled illegal tax breaks. The New York attorney general has also intensified its inquiry from a civil probe, saying: “We are now actively investigating the Trump Organization in a criminal capacity, along with the Manhattan DA.”
E Jean Carroll
Advice columnist E Jean Carroll, who has alleged that Trump raped her in the mid-1990s, sued him in November 2019 after he denied the allegations. Trump claimed that Carroll had fabricated the allegation to sell her book, and remarked: “She’s not my type.”
The US Department of Justice, which is representing Trump, had claimed that he should be considered a regular federal employee and that his statements fell within the parameters of his employment. As such, the DOJ contended, Trump was protected by the “federal tort claims act”–meaning its lawyers could represent him.
The judge in the case did not agree that Trump was a regular federal worker, nor that these statements were part of his work. The DoJ appealed this ruling prior to Biden assuming office. Roberta Kaplan, who represents Carroll, said they are “confident” the appeals court will rule in their favor and that the case will ultimately be set for trial.
Summer Zervos
Former Apprentice contestant Summer Zervos claimed in October 2016 that Trump groped her. Trump, who was on the campaign trail at the time of these allegations, said that her claims were false and fabricated. Zervos filed suit against him in 2017, saying his denials defamed her.
Trump had tried to halt the case, citing presidential protection from the legal action. Trump’s legal team appealed to New York’s highest court after suffering prior legal defeats related to the immunity issue. On 30 March, the court ultimately rejected this appeal, saying “the issues presented have become moot” given that he’s no longer president. This enables Zervos’ lawsuit to proceed.
Georgia voting
According to multiple reports, Georgia prosecutors are probing Trump’s efforts to overturn the state’s 2020 election results. Fani Willis, Fulton County district attorney, asked state officials to preserve documents, such as documentation involving Trump’s call to Georgia’s secretary of state, Brad Raffensperger, urging him to “find” more ballots in his favor.
The letter said that “particular care” needed to be “given to set aside and preserve those that may be evidence of attempts to influence the actions of persons who were administering that election,” Reuters quoted the 10 February correspondence as saying.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2021/jun/08/trump-legal-cases-defamation-manhattan-georgia-voting
Trump teases 2024 run but legal threat rises as investigations ramp up
As the president hints at running for president once again, his future could lie in the courtroom, not the Oval Office
Victoria Bekiempis
Tue 8 Jun 2021 02.00 EDT
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2021/jun/08/trump-legal-threat-investigations-courts
He’s Teflon Don no more, at least when it comes to court.
Donald Trump, no longer insulated by claims of presidential protections, faces a host of increasingly serious legal problems in some of the US’s most high-profile courts, including both criminal investigation and civil litigation.
So even as Trump maintains his grip on the Republican party and teases ambitions to run again for president in 2024 – his legal woes could render all that debate meaningless: Trump’s future could lie in the courtroom, not the Oval Office.
Trump “can face criminal charges for activities that took place before he was president, after he was president, and while he was president – as long as they were not part of his duties while he was president of the United States,” said attorney David S Weinstein, partner at Jones Walker LLP’s Miami office.
Trump has not been charged with any crimes, and he has repeatedly denied wrongdoing personally and in his business dealings. His attorneys did not respond to requests for comment. A request for comment through his website received an automatic response of: “Thank you for your inquiry. Our staff is currently reviewing your request.”
But the exact impact of this on Trump’s political future is unclear. Political science experts say that legal actions against Trump might not pose problems, as even if he were found to have committed wrongdoing, his loyalists might stick with him.
The most threatening legal investigation, which involves potential for jail either for Trump or his associates if it proceeded and resulted in conviction, does not relate to his presidential duties.
The Washington Post reported on 25 May that Manhattan prosecutors had convened the grand jury that is “expected to decide whether to indict Donald Trump, other executives at his company or the business itself, should prosecutors present the panel with criminal charges”.
This development suggests that Manhattan prosecutors’ inquiry into Trump and his business concerns have hit an “advanced stage” after proceeding for more than two years. More, it indicates that Manhattan prosecutors believe they have discovered evidence of a crime. This potential evidence could be against Trump, an executive at his company, or his business.
This inquiry is broad-ranging, involving Trump’s business dealings prior to his presidency. The investigation is exploring whether the value of some real estate in his company’s portfolio were manipulated in a manner that defrauded insurance companies and banks. The investigation is also seeking to determine whether questionable assessment of property values might have resulted in unlawful tax breaks, per the Washington Post.
The Manhattan district attorney’s office declined to comment.
Meanwhile, the New York state attorney general has ramped up its investigation. “We have informed the Trump Organization that our investigation into the organization is no longer purely civil in nature. We are now actively investigating the Trump Organization in a criminal capacity, along with the Manhattan DA. We have no additional comment at this time,” a spokesman for the office said in an email to the Guardian.
Fani Willis, district attorney of Fulton County, Georgia, said in February that there were plans to investigate Trump’s call to the Georgia secretary of state, in which he urged him to “find” sufficient votes to allow him to win. Willis also announced plans to probe other “attempts to influence the administration of the 2020 Georgia general election,” the Post said.
In New York, Trump faces several major civil suits. Two women who accused Trump of sexual assault, ex-Apprentice contestant Summer Zervos and advice columnist E Jean Carroll, have filed defamation actions against him for statements he made about their allegations. He also faces a lawsuit filed by Efrain Galicia, an activist, over allegedly being attacked by Trump’s security during a 2015 protest outside Trump Tower.
Something like criminal proceedings involving taxes could firm up support, as Trump could ramp up his claims of victimhood, playing to aggrieved voters who think the system is rigged against them. Plus, experts said, some of Trump’s base is attracted to his boorish, bullying behavior.
“The majority of the evidence that we have on hand says that people who like Trump don’t care what he does – it just doesn’t matter if he breaks the law,” said Francisco I Pedraza, a political scientist at University of California Riverside. For those voters, “he can do no wrong”.
“We know from a lot of social science research that people who back Trump also register very high on validated and reliable indexes of racial resentment, for example, he serves that and offers a kind of politics that responds to that flavor of politics,” Pedraza said. “Anything else doesn’t matter as long as he continues to be a champion for racist [sentiments].”
Several experts said, however, that Trump could lose some support if allegations offended economically disadvantaged persons in his base – if he cheated the proverbial little guy, for example, those who feel cheated by the system might turn on him.
Samuel Popkin, a research professor at the University of California San Diego and author of Crackup: The Republican Implosion and the Future of Presidential Politics, said: “If he gets nailed on stuff that is very complicated and hard to decipher and just looks like taxes are too high and everybody gets screwed, ‘I’m just another businessman trying to [give] the government no more than they deserve.’ It will not hurt him.
“If there’s a conviction that has to deal with real theft, and stealing and scamming people, like the business with Trump University but on a massive scale, then it could hurt him.”
“It really depends on which charges.”
Susan MacManus, professor emerita of political science at the University of South Florida, similarly said: “If it’s taxes, people are less likely to see that as big an issue” compared to something more serious, such as security.
However, “any kind of conviction of some kind of criminal offense could definitely sway” a number of Republicans, MacManus said.
“The question is when you start looking at the fringes of the base, and you start looking at independent voters, not Republicans,” said Thomas Patterson, a professor at Harvard Kennedy School. With that group, legal action could carry the “possibility of erosion” in supporting Trump.
Regardless of whether Trump, his employees, or company are prosecuted, it’s all but guaranteed to result in unprecedented attention and controversy, exacerbated by the ex-president’s notorious recalcitrance.
One New York courts insider told the Guardian that the frenzy would make the Harvey Weinstein case “look like somebody with training wheels”.
“I can only imagine what a circus it would be,” the insider said.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2021/jun/08/trump-legal-threat-investigations-courts
Senators reveal further Capitol riot security failures in bipartisan report
A bipartisan group of senators released Congress' first report addressing security failures on Jan. 6, faulting the Capitol Police and multiple federal agencies.
By NICHOLAS WU
06/08/2021 05:00 AM EDT
https://www.politico.com/news/2021/06/08/capitol-riot-security-failures-report-492070
Capitol security officials tracking threats of violence on Jan. 6 saw social media posts as early as late December 2020 about a plot to breach the complex — complete with maps of the building's tunnels and explicit threats of violence against members of Congress.
“Surround every building with a tunnel entrance/exit. They better dig a tunnel all the way to China if they want to escape,” wrote one user on a pro-Trump blog.
“Bring guns. It’s now or never,” another user wrote.
Those posts were spotted and written up by the Capitol Police’s intelligence division. But as revealed in a new bipartisan report cataloging failures ahead of the insurrection, now-acting Capitol Police Chief Yogananda Pittman told congressional investigators that data on the social media posts was sent only to “command staff” and never reached the department's highest level. Even as the pro-riot chatter continued and tips came into the intelligence division, the full body of knowledge about what would become a deadly threat was not conveyed to the rest of Capitol Police leadership, rank-and-file officers or other law enforcement partners.
The intelligence failures are only one facet of the first official congressional accounting of the Jan. 6 insurrection, a nearly 100-page report released Tuesday morning by a bipartisan duo of Senate committee leaders. The report raps the Capitol Police and federal agencies for security lapses leading up to and during the attack.
The report faults Pittman, among other officials, for the “discrepancy” between her division’s reports on Trump supporters' public, online threats of violence and a more widely-circulated security assessment issued in late December. That assessment concluded there was “no information” on specific disruptions or civil disobedience and declared that actions by individuals or small groups weren’t “generally broadcast publicly” and were “impossible to detect.”
In a statement, the Capitol Police said they welcomed the assessment by the Senate committees and agreed improvements were needed, but reiterated its position that the information they had available did not indicate an attack on the Capitol.
There was “no specific, credible intelligence about such an attack,” the department said. “The USCP consumes intelligence from every federal agency. At no point prior to the 6th did it receive actionable intelligence about a large-scale attack.”
But despite the immense effort put into the report — including newly unearthed documents and interviews with top officials and more than 50 Capitol Police officers — its circumscribed scope limited its investigation. Senators and staffers focused on security, preparation and response to the attack rather than addressing bigger themes that might have fallen to the since-failed 9/11-style outside commission on the assault, such as the White House’s role or groups that participated.
The report concludes that “reforms to [the Capitol Police] and the Capitol Police Board are necessary to ensure events like January 6 are never repeated” without passing any judgment on the causes of the attack.
Sen. Gary Peters (D-Mich.), who chairs the Homeland Security Committee, called the security and emergency breakdowns “unacceptable” and “widespread” in a statement. He also said their report showed how the insurrection was “frankly planned in plain sight.” Sen. Roy Blunt (R-Mo.), the top Republican on the Rules Committee, said the Senate should focus on “immediately implementing” the report’s recommendations.
The senators leading the report declined to comment on the search for the next Capitol Police chief, instead deferring to the Capitol Police Board, the three-member panel tasked with finding a permanent replacement. But Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.), chair of the Rules Committee, said their report detailed their “united concern about the leadership of the Capitol Police,” rather than individual officers.
The Senate report cited Donald Trump’s speech on Jan. 6 to a massive crowd of supporters that then marched to the Capitol, in an apparent attempt at balance, but did not conduct any thorough analysis of the former president's involvement.
The report will still likely cause consternation on the Hill. The No. 2 Capitol Police official and overseer of most of its uniformed officers, Chad Thomas, resigned Monday ahead of the review’s release. Senators' findings also put more pressure on Pittman, who led the department’s intelligence division during the attack.
No officers recalled hearing then-Chief Steven Sund on the radio during the attack, and they heard now-acting Chief Pittman only once, according to interviews with officers. Pittman said that an insufficient number of Capitol Police personnel were authorized to use less-lethal munitions like pepperballs and grenade launchers — officials have conceded those could have made a difference that day, but few officers were trained to use the equipment.
Some senators involved in the report still defended the Capitol Police, however.
"Capitol Hill police were put in an impossible situation without adequate intelligence, training and equipment because they didn’t have the tools they needed to protect the Capitol," said Sen. Rob Portman (R-Ohio), adding their report should be “informing” the debate over the emergency security funding.
Sund, the former chief, had faulted federal agencies for their intelligence blunders leading up to the attack, and the report agreed that the federal intelligence community failed to warn of the potential for violence on Jan. 6 despite social media chatter. Neither the Department of Homeland Security nor the FBI released any threat assessment before Jan. 6, and federal law enforcement deemed social media posts calling for violence at the Capitol to be noncredible.
However, the report said that the Capitol Police “also failed to prepare a department-wide operational plan for the Joint Session.”
The report showed that top Pentagon officials raised concerns in the days before the insurrection as well, which went ignored.
As late as Jan. 4, Chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Mark Milley and then-acting Defense Secretary Christopher Miller asked in a conference call with the Cabinet if there was a way to revoke permits for the protesters who would later assemble on Capitol grounds, Miller told the committees. They also suggested locking down D.C. on Jan. 6. The Department of the Interior and D.C. officials assured them that the protests were constitutionally protected, and law enforcement told them there was no need to shut down the city, according to Miller, who said he then “felt comfortable” about their planning.
Although most agencies complied with the committees’ requests, they met some obstacles, according to the report. The Departments of Justice and Homeland Security and the House Sergeant at Arms did not comply with the committees’ requests for information, and a USCP Deputy Chief of Police declined to sit for an interview with the committee.
Lawmakers hailed the report’s bipartisan list of recommendations to rectify many of the intelligence and security breakdowns, including changes to the Capitol Police’s training, the clarification of statutes governing emergency assistance or the streamlining of their intelligence gathering. It is unclear how many of them can be implemented without additional funding or congressional action.
Senate Republicans last month blocked a bipartisan House-passed bill that would have established an independent Jan. 6 commission, and a nearly $2 billion emergency funding bill to plug security gaps, already passed by the Democrat-controlled House, looks headed for a similar outcome in the upper chamber.
But some senators were hopeful the report could help break the logjam over Congress’ response to the insurrection. Klobuchar expressed confidence in the Senate’s ability to pass legislation streamlining requests for the National Guard, saying she and Blunt would be introducing legislation to simplify the process. “We have to change that law immediately,” she said.
FILED UNDER: NATIONAL GUARD, ROY BLUNT, SENATE, ROB PORTMAN, AMY KLOB
https://www.politico.com/news/2021/06/08/capitol-riot-security-failures-report-492070
The Lincoln Project @ProjectLincoln When Newsmax has higher standards than @GOPLeader Kevin McCarthy…
June 7, 2021
9:57 PM BST
Media & Telecom
Newsmax turned down embattled Republican Matt Gaetz for a job -spokesperson
Mark Hosenball
https://www.reuters.com/world/us/newsmax-turned-down-embattled-republican-matt-gaetz-job-spokesperson-2021-06-07/
1:33 AM · Jun 8, 2021·Twitter for iPhone
THREAD
When Newsmax has higher standards than @GOPLeader Kevin McCarthy… https://t.co/vKB8ZGNi55
— The Lincoln Project (@ProjectLincoln) June 8, 2021
New tech cheaply produces lithium and H2, while desalinating seawater
By Loz Blain
June 07, 2021
https://newatlas.com/materials/kaust-lithium-phosphate-llto-hydrogen-desalination/
With the rise of the lithium-based battery, demand for this soft, silvery-white metal – the lightest solid element in the periodic table – has exploded. With the race to zero carbon by 2050 gathering steam, forcing the electrification of transport, lithium will be an even more valuable asset in the next 30 years.
The supply of raw materials for batteries could even end up being a national security issue, too; China's global leadership on high-volume EV production has put it ahead of the game, and while the majority of ground-based lithium reserves are in the "lithium triangle" of Chile, Bolivia and Argentina, China controls more than half's the world's supply simply through investments and ownership. It has shown in the past that it's not afraid to wield commodity supplies as a weapon.
But as with other metals like uranium, land-based lithium reserves pale in comparison to what's out there in the sea. According to researchers at Saudi Arabia's King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST), there's about 5,000 times as much lithium in the oceans as there is in land deposits, and a newly developed technology could start extracting it cheaply enough to make the big time – while producing hydrogen gas, chlorine gas and desalinated water as a bonus.
The process relies on an electrochemical cell containing a ceramic membrane made from lithium lanthanum titanium oxide (LLTO), with pores just wide enough to let lithium ions through while blocking larger metal ions. “LLTO membranes have never been used to extract and concentrate lithium ions before,” says post-doctorate researcher Zhen Li, who developed the cell.
...
MUCH MORE
https://newatlas.com/materials/kaust-lithium-phosphate-llto-hydrogen-desalination/
ANOM: Hundreds arrested in massive global crime sting
Published 1 hour ago
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-57394831
Law enforcement agencies say they have arrested hundreds of criminals around the world in a three-year operation, using a secure messaging app run by the American FBI.
The operation, jointly conceived by Australia and the FBI, saw the app ANOM secretly distributed among criminals, allowing police to monitor their conversations without their knowledge.
It has led to arrests in 18 countries.
They include suspects linked to the mafia and organised criminal groups.
Drugs, weapons and cash have also been seized.
Australia said it had arrested 224 people as a result of the operation, and had acted on 20 "threats to kill", potentially saving the lives of a "significant number of innocent bystanders".
The country's prime minister called the sting a "watershed" operation that had hit criminal gangs globally.
"[It] has struck a heavy blow against organised crime - not just in this country, but one that will echo around organised crime around the world," Scott Morrison said in a press conference.
New Zealand, which detained 35 people, called the operation the "world's most sophisticated law enforcement action against organised crime to date".
The FBI and Europol will present more details later on Tuesday.
How did ANOM work?
New Zealand police said that after the FBI had dismantled two other encryption services, it began operating its own encrypted device company called ANOM.
Devices with the chat app were distributed in the criminal underworld.
Australian police said the devices were initially used by alleged senior crime figures, giving other criminals the confidence to use the platform.
Fugitive Australian drug trafficker Hakan Ayik was key to the sting, having unwittingly recommended the app to criminal associates after being given a handset by undercover officers, they said.
"You had to know a criminal to get hold of one of these customised phones. The phones couldn't ring or email. You could only communicate with someone on the same platform," the police explained.
Officers were able to read millions of messages in "real time" describing murder plots, mass drug import plans and other schemes.
"All they talk about is drugs, violence, hits on each other, innocent people who are going to be murdered, a whole range of things," said Australian Federal Police commissioner Reece Kershaw.
Commissioner Kershaw said Ayik was a marked man and should turn himself in.
What did the authorities uncover?
Commissioner Kershaw said that in Australia, police had been able to intercept drug operations and prevent incidents such as mass shootings.
Qantas 'disturbed' by claims of gang infiltration
The more than 200 arrests in the country included members of outlaw motorcycle gangs, Australian mafia groups, Asian crime syndicates and serious and organised crime groups.
Australian police have also seized three tonnes of drugs and A$45m (£25m; $35m) in cash and assets.
Authorities said their sting, which they called Operation Ironside, was the nation's largest police operation and involved 4,000 police officers.
Some 9,000 police officers were involved worldwide.
"Knocking out their communications has been a key part of us disrupting the organised crime," Commissioner Kershaw said.
He said the app access had given law enforcement "an edge that it had never had before", but added the platform was just one of many messaging apps favoured by organised crime gangs.
New Zealand police said they had laid more than 900 charges in relation to the 35 people arrested.
About NZ$3.7m (£1.9m, $2.7m) of assets were seized.
"We believe the termination of these operations will have a significant impact on New Zealand's organised crime scene," National Organised Crime Group Director Detective Superintendent Greg Williams said.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-57394831
Down Under criminals tricked into using FBI-run message app
By NICK PERRY
today
https://apnews.com/article/europe-technology-a6ac691e26be2efc6e2f4a6974117536
1 of 4
In this undated photo supplied by the New Zealand police, a box containing a large amounts of cash is seen after being discovered during a police raid as part of Operation Trojan. Authorities in Australia and New Zealand Tuesday, June 8, 2021, say they’ve dealt a huge blow against organized crime after hundreds of criminals were tricked into using a messaging app that was being secretly run by the FBI. (New Zealand Police via AP)
WELLINGTON, New Zealand (AP) — Authorities in Australia and New Zealand said Tuesday they’ve dealt a huge blow to organized crime after hundreds of criminals were tricked into using a messaging app that was being secretly run by the FBI.
Police said criminal gangs thought the encrypted app called ANOM was safe from snooping when, in fact, authorities for months had been monitoring millions of messages about drug smuggling, money laundering and even planned killings.
The app was part of a worldwide sting called operation Trojan Shield, which was led by the FBI and involved the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration, the European Union police agency Europol and law enforcement agencies in more than a dozen countries. European and U.S. authorities planned their own announcements later Tuesday.
Authorities in Australia said the app was installed on stripped-back mobile phones and its popularity grew organically in criminal circles after it was vouched for by some high-profile underworld figures, described as “criminal influencers.”
Australian authorities said they arrested 224 people and seized more than four tons of drugs and $35 million in an ongoing operation that dates back three years. New Zealand police said they had arrested 35 people and seized drugs and assets worth millions of dollars.
Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison told reporters it was a watershed moment that would keep the nation’s communities safer.
“Today, the Australian government, as part of a global operation, has struck a heavy blow against organized crime,” Morrison said. “Not just in this country, but one that will echo around organized crime around the world.”
Australian Federal Police Commissioner Reece Kershaw said the sting, called Operation Ironside in Australia, was borne from a longstanding partnership between his agency and the FBI. He said they had shut down six clandestine laboratories and stopped 21 death threats, including saving a family of five.
“We have arrested the alleged kingmakers behind these crimes, prevented mass shootings in suburbs and frustrated serious and organized crime by seizing their ill-gotten wealth,” Kershaw said.
Det. Superintendent Greg Williams, who leads a New Zealand police group fighting organized crime, said the sting was conceived in 2018 after the FBI took down a previous secure app favored by criminals, Phantom Secure.
Williams said that left a void in the market that authorities helped fill with the ANOM app.
“We just can’t speak highly enough of the FBI and the work they have done in the background here,” Williams said.
He said New Zealand was a small country and relied on the intelligence-gathering capabilities of its Five Eyes partners, which include the U.S., Australia, Canada and Britain.
https://apnews.com/article/europe-technology-a6ac691e26be2efc6e2f4a6974117536
Global crackdown on organised crime after high-tech U.S.-Australia sting
By Reuters
June 8, 2021, at 3:03 a.m.
By Colin Packham
https://www.usnews.com/news/world/articles/2021-06-08/global-crackdown-on-organised-crime-after-high-tech-us-australia-sting
CANBERRA (Reuters) - U.S. and Australian agencies hacked into an app used by criminals and read millions of encrypted messages, leading to hundreds of arrests of suspected organised crime figures in 18 countries, Australian officials said on Tuesday.
The operation by Australian police and the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation ensnared suspects in Australia, Asia, South America and the Middle East involved in the global narcotics trade, the officials said.
Named Operation Trojan Shield by the FBI, it was one of the biggest infiltrations and takeovers of a specialised encrypted network.
Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison said the operation "struck a heavy blow against organised crime – not just in this country, but one that will echo ... around the world".
"This is a watershed moment in Australian law enforcement history," Morrison told reporters in Sydney.
Australian Federal Police Commissioner Reece Kershaw said police raids in 18 countries netted hundreds of suspects. Europol and the FBI said on social media they would hold news conferences later on Tuesday.
Australia said it had arrested 224 people, including members of outlawed motorcycle gangs, while New Zealand said it had detained 35 people.
The operation, which was conceived by Australian police and the FBI in 2018, saw officials in the United States take control of the An0m messaging app used by organised crime networks.
When an Australian underworld figure began distributing customised phones containing the app to his associates as a secure means to communicate, police could monitor their messages. The gangs believed the system was secure because the phones did not have any other capabilities - no voice or camera functions were loaded - and the app was encrypted.
"We have been in the back pockets of organised crime," Kershaw said at the same media briefing. "All they talk about is drugs, violence, hits on each other, innocent people who are going to be murdered."
The messages were brazen and there was no attempt to hide behind any kind of code, he said.
"It was there to be seen, including 'we’ll have a speedboat meet you at this point', 'this is who will do this' and so on."
MARKED MAN
Kershaw said the Australian underworld figure, who had absconded from the country, had "essentially set up his own colleagues" by distributing the phones and was a marked man.
"The sooner he hands himself in, the better for him and his family," he said.
One murder plot that authorities got to know of involved plans to attack a cafe with a machine gun, while a family of five was also targeted. Authorities said they were able to prevent these attacks.
Executing Australia's largest number of search warrants in one day, police on Monday seized 104 firearms, including a military-grade sniper rifle, as well as almost A$45 million ($34.9 million) in cash. Around A$7 million was found in one safe buried beneath a garden shed in a Sydney suburb.
A total of 525 charges have been laid but authorities expect more in the coming weeks.
($1 = 1.2893 Australian dollars)
(Reporting by Colin Packham, Additional reporting by Joseph Menn; Writing by Raju Gopalakrishnan; Editing by Stephen Coates)
https://www.usnews.com/news/world/articles/2021-06-08/global-crackdown-on-organised-crime-after-high-tech-us-australia-sting
Justice Department to Defend Trump in Lawsuit Over Rape Claim
Journalist E. Jean Carroll sued former president for defamation after he denied raping her in the 1990s
By Byron Tau
June 8, 2021 1:26 am ET
https://www.wsj.com/articles/justice-department-to-defend-trump-in-lawsuit-over-rape-claim-11623129987?mod=politics_lead_pos5
The Justice Department will move forward with its defense of former President Donald Trump in a defamation suit brought by a journalist over allegations that the former president raped her in the 1990s.
In a filing in New York federal court on Monday, the Justice Department signaled that it wouldn’t change position in the case, despite President Biden’s appointees taking control of the department in January.
The dispute was sparked after E. Jean Carroll, a longtime advice columnist for Elle magazine, made the allegation in an article published in New York Magazine in 2019. She wrote that in the mid-1990s Mr. Trump pushed her against a dressing-room wall at Bergdorf Goodman in New York and assaulted her.
After her allegations appeared in print, Mr. Trump replied: “Number one, she’s not my type. Number two, it never happened.” In response, Ms. Carroll sued the then-president in November 2019, saying he lied earlier that year when he denied raping her.
The Justice Department under Mr. Trump intervened last September, asking that the U.S. government be named as the plaintiff rather than Mr. Trump personally. Under existing law, the federal government can’t be sued for defamation, and the Justice Department argued that Mr. Trump was acting within the scope of his duties as president when he denied the allegation.
A New York district court judge disagreed and denied the attempt to substitute the U.S. government for Mr. Trump, which would have brought the case to a halt. The case then went to the Second Circuit Court of Appeals, which must now consider the matter.
The Justice Department maintained that position in a new brief filed Monday, saying that the suit against Mr. Trump should be dismissed because as a federal employee at the time of the allegations in question, he is immune from such suits.
“Then-President Trump’s response to Ms. Carroll’s serious allegations of sexual assault included statements that questioned her credibility in terms that were crude and disrespectful. But this case does not concern whether Mr. Trump’s response was appropriate,” the department told the New York-based federal appeals court that will consider the matter.
“Speaking to the public and the press on matters of public concern is undoubtedly part of an elected official’s job. Courts have thus consistently and repeatedly held that allegedly defamatory statements made in that context are within the scope of elected officials’ employment—including when the statements were prompted by press inquiries about the official’s private life,” the department maintained.
“It is truly shocking that the current Department of Justice would allow Donald Trump to get away with lying about it, thereby depriving our client of her day in court. The DOJ’s position is not only legally wrong, it is morally wrong since it would give federal officials free license to cover up private sexual misconduct by publicly brutalizing any woman who has the courage to come forward,” Roberta Kaplan, a lawyer for Ms. Carroll said.
Mr. Trump’s legal team and a Justice Department spokesperson didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.
It is uncommon for the Justice Department to abruptly switch litigation positions between administrations. Department leaders often prefer consistency and institutional considerations over political ones. Establishing a precedent that Mr. Trump can be sued for defamation over a statement he made while in office could bog future presidents down in litigation, for example.
However, Mr. Biden had pointedly criticized the Justice Department’s handling of the Carroll matter during the 2020 presidential election, saying that Mr. Trump had abused the department by forcing it to defend him personally in lawsuits like the one brought by Ms. Carroll as well as extended litigation over Mr. Trump’s tax returns that involved the department.
Mr. Biden has also said that he doesn’t want to be involved in Justice Department decisions.
Write to Byron Tau at byron.tau@wsj.com
Copyright ©2020 Dow Jones & Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved. 87990cbe856818d5eddac44c7b1cdeb8
Appeared in the June 8, 2021, print edition as 'DOJ to Defend Trump in Lawsuit.'
https://www.wsj.com/articles/justice-department-to-defend-trump-in-lawsuit-over-rape-claim-11623129987?mod=politics_lead_pos5
Audio shows how Giuliani pressured Ukraine officials to announce Biden inquiry
Lawyer pushed officials on the call to investigate baseless allegations about Trump’s rival, CNN reported
Guardian staff and agency
Tue 8 Jun 2021 02.36 BST
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2021/jun/07/rudy-giuliani-ukraine-officials-audio-joe-biden
Newly revealed audio from a 2019 phone call has shown how Rudy Giuliani pressured Ukrainian officials to investigate baseless allegations about Joe Biden, CNN reported on Monday. https://www.cnn.com/2021/06/07/politics/rudy-giuliani-ukraine-call-investigate-biden/index.html
In the call Giuliani, then working as a lawyer for Donald Trump, pushes the Ukrainian officials on the call to publicly announce an investigation into Trump’s 2020 rival.
“All we need from the president [Zelenskiy] is to say, I’m gonna put an honest prosecutor in charge, he’s gonna investigate and dig up the evidence that presently exists and is there any other evidence about involvement of the 2016 election, and then the Biden thing has to be run out,” Giuliani said, according to the audio that was obtained by CNN.
https://www.cnn.com/2021/06/07/politics/rudy-giuliani-ukraine-call-investigate-biden/index.html
The US diplomat Kurt Volker, and Andriy Yermak, a senior adviser to the Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, were also on the call. Some details of the roughly 40 minute conversation have already been made public in a transcript, obtained by Time Magazine earlier this year.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2021/feb/10/giuliani-pressured-ukraine-investigation-into-biden-family-new-transcript-reveals
Giuliani also reportedly promised that if the Ukrainians complied with his request it would “clear the air really well” and that he would talk to Trump to make sure “misunderstandings are put aside”. He also added that it “could be a good thing for having a much better relationship”.
The call occurred prior to the now infamous conversation between Trump and Zelenskiy, during which Trump hinted that US military aid might depend on the Ukrainian president’s willingness to “do us a favour” by announcing an investigation into Joe Biden and his son Hunter Biden.
That call ultimately formed the heart of the first impeachment case against the US president. The Democratic-led House of Representatives voted to impeach Trump in December 2019, but he was acquitted by the then-Republican-dominated Senate early in 2020.
Giuliani is currently under investigation for his involvement in the Ukraine controversy, including claims that he violated lobbying laws in attempts to get information about the Bidens.
In April, federal prosecutors investigating Giuliani’s business dealings in Ukraine at the time he was serving as Trump’s lawyer raided his home and office, seizing cellphones and computers.
Giuliani, a former New York City mayor, has not been charged. He has denied wrongdoing and said after the raids that his conduct had been “absolutely legal and ethical”.
Giuliani began representing Trump in April 2018 in connection with then-special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 US presidential election.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2021/jun/07/rudy-giuliani-ukraine-officials-audio-joe-biden
U.S. Report Found It Plausible Covid-19 Leaked From Wuhan Lab
The 2020 lab report was used by the State Department in its own inquiry during Trump administration
By Michael R. Gordon and Warren P. Strobel
Updated June 8, 2021 1:24 am ET
https://www.wsj.com/articles/u-s-report-concluded-covid-19-may-have-leaked-from-wuhan-lab-11623106982
WASHINGTON—A report on the origins of Covid-19 by a U.S. government national laboratory concluded that the hypothesis claiming the virus leaked from a Chinese lab in Wuhan is plausible and deserves further investigation, according to people familiar with the classified document.
The study was prepared in May 2020 by the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California and was drawn on by the State Department when it conducted an inquiry into the pandemic’s origins during the final months of the Trump administration.
It is attracting fresh interest in Congress now that President Biden has ordered that U.S. intelligence agencies report to him within weeks on how the virus emerged. Mr. Biden said that U.S. intelligence has focused on two scenarios—whether the coronavirus came from human contact with an infected animal or from a laboratory accident.
People familiar with the study said that it was prepared by Lawrence Livermore’s “Z Division,” which is its intelligence arm. Lawrence Livermore has considerable expertise on biological issues. Its assessment drew on genomic analysis of the SARS-COV-2 virus, which causes Covid-19, they said.
Scientists analyze the genetic makeup of viruses to try to determine how they evolved and spread in the population. Proponents on both sides of the debate over the origins of Covid-19 have cited such analysis to try to make their case.
A spokeswoman for Lawrence Livermore declined to comment on the report, which remains secret.
The assessment is said to have been among the first U.S. government efforts to seriously explore the hypothesis that the virus leaked from China’s Wuhan Institute of Virology along with the dominant hypothesis that the virus spread naturally from animals to humans. Although some prominent scientists have called for a fuller probe of the lab hypothesis in recent months, many scientists still insist a natural spillover remains the most likely explanation.
China’s government has repeatedly denied that the virus escaped from a Chinese laboratory and said it is cooperating fully with international efforts to find the pandemic’s origins. Many scientists and officials from other countries dispute that Beijing has provided sufficient access and transparency in the investigation. The Wuhan Institute of Virology has also denied that the virus leaked from its facilities and said that none of its staff have tested positive for Covid-19.
One person who read the document, which is dated May 27, 2020, said it made a strong case for further inquiry into the possibility the virus seeped out of the lab.
The study also had a major influence on the State Department’s probe into Covid-19’s origins. State Department officials received the study in late October 2020 and asked for more information, according to a timeline by the agency’s arms control and verification bureau, which was reviewed by The Wall Street Journal.
The study was important because it came from a respected national laboratory and differed from the dominant view in spring 2020 that the virus almost certainly was first transmitted to humans via an infected animal, a former official involved in the State Department inquiry said.
The State Department’s findings, which were vetted by U.S. intelligence agencies, were made public in a Jan. 15 fact sheet that listed a series of circumstantial reasons why the Covid-19 outbreak might have originated as a result of a lab accident. They include the assertion that “the U.S. government has reason to believe that several researchers inside the WIV became sick in autumn 2019” with symptoms that were consistent with Covid-19 or a seasonal flu.
The Journal reported last month that this assertion was based, at least in part, on a U.S. intelligence report, that three WIV researchers became sick enough in November 2019 that they sought hospital care.
White House spokeswoman Jen Psaki has said that the information on the three researchers came from a foreign entity and that additional corroboration is needed. Biden administration officials also have noted that the State Department’s Jan. 15 fact sheet acknowledges that the U.S. government doesn’t know precisely where, when and how the virus was first transmitted to humans.
The existence of the Lawrence Livermore study was reported by the Sinclair Broadcast Group last month and was noted in a recent article by Vanity Fair.
In his statement on May 26 calling for a fresh intelligence investigation, Mr. Biden didn’t reference the classified Lawrence Livermore report, but he said that U.S. national laboratories, overseen by the Energy Department, would augment the spy agencies’ work.
After the initial public reports about the Lawrence Livermore study, Republicans on the House Energy and Commerce Committee—who are conducting their own investigations into Covid-19’s origins—wrote the lab’s director, Dr. Kimberly Budil, requesting a classified briefing on the issue.
Secretary of State Antony Blinken said in a recent interview with Axios that was broadcast on HBO Max that the U.S. needs to get to the bottom of what happened to prevent or mitigate the effects of future pandemics.
The Chinese government, he added, hasn’t provided sufficient access or information to advance international probes into Covid-19 origins.
“What the government didn’t do in the early days and still hasn’t done is given us the transparency we need,” Mr. Blinken told Axios.
Write to Michael R. Gordon at michael.gordon@wsj.com and Warren P. Strobel at Warren.Strobel@wsj.com
Copyright ©2020 Dow Jones & Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved. 87990cbe856818d5eddac44c7b1cdeb8
Appeared in the June 8, 2021, print edition as 'Report Backs Virus-Leak Theory.'
https://www.wsj.com/articles/u-s-report-concluded-covid-19-may-have-leaked-from-wuhan-lab-11623106982
FBI @FBI · 7m Justice Department Seizes $2.3 Million in Cryptocurrency Paid to Ransomware Extortionists:
@TheJusticeDept today announced that it has seized 63.7 bitcoins that allegedly represent the proceeds of a May 8 ransom payment to DarkSide cyber actors.
http://ow.ly/UaXC50F4Xc1
8:57 PM · Jun 7, 2021·Twitter Web App
THREAD
Justice Department Seizes $2.3 Million in Cryptocurrency Paid to Ransomware Extortionists: @TheJusticeDept today announced that it has seized 63.7 bitcoins that allegedly represent the proceeds of a May 8 ransom payment to DarkSide cyber actors. https://t.co/qnCAN8oibW pic.twitter.com/brNopjSN3E
— FBI (@FBI) June 7, 2021
Nicholas Weaver @ncweaver Replying to @ericgeller and @emptywheel - That is just recapturing the trace that really is "Just use Chainalysis". The interesting question is how did they get the private key...
8:50 PM · Jun 7, 2021·Twitter Web App
@ericgeller
and
@emptywheel
Yep. That is exactly the million dollar question. How did they get the private key?
Either way, this is great news on all fronts and also helps further the store of value use case for BTC.
The censorship resistance use case for BTC though just took a massive hit
8:50 PM · Jun 7, 2021·Twitter Web App
THREAD
https://twitter.com/ncweaver/status/1401989918939701250
Eric Geller @ericgeller Replying to @ericgeller Here's the seizure warrant that let DOJ recover $2.26 million of the $4.3 million that Colonial paid:
https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.cand.379840/gov.uscourts.cand.379840.2.0.pdf
8:43 PM · Jun 7, 2021·TweetDeck
THREAD
Here's the seizure warrant that let DOJ recover $2.26 million of the $4.3 million that Colonial paid: https://t.co/PFuTDmjBAp pic.twitter.com/AXFyOdZ7qE
— Eric Geller (@ericgeller) June 7, 2021
The Boeing Company @Boeing Aviation history! The #MQ25 T1 test asset transferred fuel to a @USNavy F/A-18 #SuperHornet during a flight last week. This is the first time an unmanned aircraft has ever refueled another aircraft.
VIDEO
Aviation history! The #MQ25 T1 test asset transferred fuel to a @USNavy F/A-18 #SuperHornet during a flight last week. This is the first time an unmanned aircraft has ever refueled another aircraft. pic.twitter.com/LgIxsoxxdd
— The Boeing Company (@Boeing) June 7, 2021
Aviation history! The #MQ25 T1 test asset transferred fuel to a @USNavy F/A-18 #SuperHornet during a flight last week. This is the first time an unmanned aircraft has ever refueled another aircraft. pic.twitter.com/LgIxsoxxdd
— The Boeing Company (@Boeing) June 7, 2021
The best way for Garland to protect the Justice Department is to stop defending his predecessor
Opinion by Paul Butler
Contributing columnist focused on issues of policing, criminal justice and race
June 7, 2021 at 7:47 p.m. GMT+1
Attorney General Merrick Garland is not the new William P. Barr — not by a long shot. But the Justice Department is still fighting transparency and accountability in a way that must delight the former attorney general, who led the department into the abyss during the Trump administration. The Justice Department is now defending two of the most controversial acts of the previous administration — using arguments cribbed from Donald Trump himself.
DOJ lawyers are fighting to keep secret a memo that Barr cited to justify his decision not to charge Trump with obstruction of justice during the investigation by special counsel Robert S. Mueller III. In another case, Justice lawyers suggested that the gassing of lawful protesters by police last year in Washington’s Lafayette Square was appropriate for the safety of the president.
One question that kept coming up during the presidential transition was how vigorously the new administration would pursue corruption investigations against people in the former administration. Now it seems the better question may be to what lengths the Justice Department will go to defend the Trump administration’s abuse of power — with its primary concern being preserving that power for the Biden administration and beyond.
As attorney general, Barr never grasped that he was supposed to be serving the people of the United States, as opposed to acting as Trump’s defense attorney. One of Barr’s most egregious acts was trying to protect his boss from serious legal and political consequences by mischaracterizing the findings of the Mueller report before the public was allowed to see it.
Barr prepared a four-page letter purportedly describing the report’s “principal conclusions” that the Trump campaign did not collude with Russia and that Mueller would not charge Trump with obstruction of justice. Barr added that the facts contained in the report provided insufficient evidence of obstruction, and that in reaching this conclusion he had consulted with DOJ’s Office of Legal Counsel.
In response to a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit seeking the materials that Barr relied on, federal District Judge Amy Berman Jackson issued an opinion finding that Barr had been “disingenuous” when describing Mueller’s findings and ordered the release of the Office of Legal Counsel memo. Justice Department lawyers, under Barr, had objected to releasing the document on the basis of attorney-client privilege, but Jackson found that memo contained “strategic, as opposed to legal advice,” designed to support Barr’s determination to absolve Trump.
The judge characterized the Justice Department arguments against release as “so inconsistent with evidence in the record, they are not worthy of credence.” That’s actually a cogent description of the Trump administration’s approach to many issues; one might have expected the new sheriff in town to support the judge’s rebuke of the corrupt old regime. But Garland’s DOJ is standing by Barr’s DOJ — it released a heavily redacted version of the memo and is appealing Jackson’s order to provide the entire document to the public.
There is a fine line between protecting the confidentiality of important records and shielding corrupt officials. Garland is walking on the wrong side of that line. Nine Democratic senators recently wrote to him asking for the release the memo “to help rebuild the nation’s trust in DOJ’s independence after four years of turmoil.”
Instead, the Justice Department doubled down. Recently, its lawyers asked a judge to dismiss a lawsuit against Trump and Barr for their actions in clearing Black Lives Matter protesters from a park across the street from the White House. Even though the demonstrators were peaceful, military and various police agencies used smoke bombs, tear gas, batons and horses to force them to retreat from the park so Trump, Barr and other senior officials could walk to a nearby church.
Before he was president, Biden criticized this use of force, saying Trump “deployed the U.S. military, tear gassing peaceful protesters in pursuit of a photo opportunity in the service of his reelection.” But now his administration wants the case thrown out because it was necessary for presidential security — which is what Barr had said when he justified the use of force at the time.
Trump had also made it clear that the law enforcement violence was about politics, not presidential security. In response to last summer’s widespread protests following the death of George Floyd, the then-president had called on police to use “overwhelming force” to put down the “THUGS.” The day after the demonstrators at Lafayette Square were attacked, Trump tweeted: “D.C. had no problems last night. Many arrests. Great job done by all. Overwhelming force. Domination.”
Justice Department lawyers also asked the judge to throw out the case because Trump is no longer president, and there is no reason to be concerned that the state violence at Lafayette Square will be repeated. But keeping important records secret, and shielding high-level officials, sounds like the same old, same old.
As a proud Justice Department alumnus, I respect that Garland is an institutionalist. The most important way he can restore confidence in the institution is not with platitudes about how much more integrity Biden has than Trump, true as that is. Garland should uphold the values of the Justice Department by exposing the misdeeds of the previous administration and ensuring accountability.
Paul Butler, a Washington Post contributing columnist, writes on issues at the intersection of criminal justice and race. Butler is the Albert Brick Professor in Law at Georgetown University Law Center and an MSNBC legal analyst. Twitter
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2021/06/07/best-way-garland-protect-justice-department-is-stop-defending-his-predecessor/
Natasha Bertrand @NatashaBertrand 31m Breaking: US investigators have recovered millions of dollars in cryptocurrency paid in ransom to hackers whose attack prompted the shutdown of Colonial Pipeline. DOJ today is expected to announce details of the operation led by the FBI. via evanperez
First on CNN: US recovers millions in cryptocurrency paid to Colonial Pipeline ransomware hackers
By Evan Perez, Zachary Cohen and Alex Marquardt, CNN
Updated 1852 GMT (0252 HKT) June 7, 2021
https://edition.cnn.com/2021/06/07/politics/colonial-pipeline-ransomware-recovered/index.html
THREAD
Breaking: US investigators have recovered millions of dollars in cryptocurrency paid in ransom to hackers whose attack prompted the shutdown of Colonial Pipeline. DOJ today is expected to announce details of the operation led by the FBI. via @evanperez https://t.co/tgYx9Xui3w
— Natasha Bertrand (@NatashaBertrand) June 7, 2021
The rats flee the sinking ship
Bill Palmer | 9:09 am EDT June 7, 2021
Palmer Report » Analysis
https://www.palmerreport.com/analysis/the-rats-flee-the-sinking-ship/39403/
Just how embarrassingly damaging was Donald Trump’s public performance over the weekend? The only real debate was why his pants looked so weird; there was no debating the fact that he came across as a half dead and three quarter senile shadow of himself on his last legs.
It was immediately clear why his remaining handlers put off letting him hold a rally until now; it was better for the media and the public to merely ask questions about why he was in hiding, rather than to see his depleted condition and figure out precisely why he’d been in hiding. That broken sad sack loser is somehow going to magically make a political comeback in 2024? Heh.
In a sign of how poorly Saturday’s public appearance went for Donald Trump, his longtime loyalist Corey Lewandowski promptly went on a Sunday morning show and admitted that Trump lost the 2020 election fair and square. Lewandowski told some other lies on Sunday; he deserves no credit for anything. But it was a sign that Trump is such a sunken (not sinking, but sunken) ship, there’s really nothing left for even an opportunist clinger like Lewandowski to stick around for. It’s time for him to opportunistically move on from Trump’s ghost and try to find some other thing to latch onto, and he knows it.
We’ll see more of this. Not all at once, of course. Trump’s clingers are each going to make their own calculations about when it’s finally time to move on from his ghost and try to find a new and dishonest career path. The fact that Jason Miller is still hanging in there with Trump is a sign of just how few career opportunities are open to him these days beyond screwing up Trump’s pants.
But the rats will keep gradually leaving Trump’s side, because there’s just nothing left to hang around for. Even those “Trump loyalists” who still want to bathe themselves in Trumpism, and inherit Trump’s deranged base, are well aware that they have to move beyond Trump himself. Standing next to that sad senile blob won’t get them anywhere – particularly now that he’s facing criminal indictment.
Why does this matter? Because it’s not Donald Trump we have to worry about in 2024. It’s the opportunistic con artists in the political realm who latched onto him in 2016 to try to juice their own corrupt careers, and who will now move on to either try take Trump’s place, or try to prop up the next Trump-like figure. We have to be more vigilant than ever about the next right wing fascist candidate who emerges and doesn’t have Trump’s accumulated baggage. As always, we’ll do our best to fight and win.
https://www.palmerreport.com/analysis/the-rats-flee-the-sinking-ship/39403/
Rick Wilson @TheRickWilson This ad contains the word "fuck" a LOT.
AND I APPROVE.
The Building Trades
@NABTU
Build Back Better, baby ??
#TheTimeIsNow #NABTULegConf2021 #1u
VIDEO
Build Back Better, baby 😎#TheTimeIsNow #NABTULegConf2021 #1u pic.twitter.com/1q56nNGV9J
— The Building Trades (@NABTU) June 7, 2021
This ad contains the word "fuck" a LOT.
— Rick Wilson (@TheRickWilson) June 7, 2021
AND I APPROVE. https://t.co/bQGeo0Xs5t
I agree - the sooner the better...
Trump's August election reinstatement theory is even worse than it looks
Trump’s embrace of this new, delusional conspiracy shows how the right’s doom loop of craziness works.
June 6, 2021, 4:30 AM CDT
By Charlie Sykes, MSNBC Opinion Columnist
https://www.msnbc.com/opinion/trump-s-august-election-reinstatement-theory-even-worse-it-looks-n1269716
I’m afraid this is even worse than it looks.
The National Review is now confirming that Donald J. Trump, the former president of the United States (and probable Republican nominee in 2024) does indeed believe quite genuinely that he — along with former Sens. David Perdue and Martha McSally — will be “reinstated” later this summer.
That, of course, is not going to happen. It is, in fact, weapons-grade lunacy to imagine that it is even possible.
That, of course, is not going to happen. It is, in fact, weapons-grade lunacy to imagine that it is even possible.
But Trump’s embrace of the story shows how the right’s doom loop of craziness works — and how it is accelerating narratives that began in the fevered imaginations of his hardcore true believers.
It should also remind us that even though an idea is fake, the consequences of a new Big Lie can be very real, and even deadly.
Delegitimizing our democracy is now central to Trump’s agenda and his hopes for a political comeback. And polls suggest that his lies about the election have influenced tens of millions of voters.
A Reuters/Ipsos poll from May found that a quarter of Americans — and 53 percent of Republicans — actually believe Trump is the "true president" of the United States.
In this alternative reality, it’s only a small step to believe their “true president” might really return.
The idea of just such a magical, extra-constitutional Trumpian reinstatement was floated just last week at a QAnon conference. MAGA lawyer Sidney Powell said, without providing any evidence or details, that Trump “can simply be reinstated, but a new inauguration date is set, and Biden is told to move out of the White House, and President Trump should be moved back in.”
The same idea has been amplified by Mike Lindell, the MyPillow guy, whose baseless charges of election fraud bought him a $1.3 billion defamation suit from Dominion Voting Systems. (He is countersuing for $1.6 billion.)
For months, Lindell has been insisting that he would present evidence that would overturn Joe Biden’s victory. In April, during his two-day "Frankathon" he announced he had produced a documentary called “Absolute Interference” that would “change our world forever.” He promised “proof and evidence that China was attacking our country, and you're gonna know that this election was flipped.”
He followed up “Absolute Interference” with another documentary he called “Absolutely 9-0” in which he promised that a unanimous Supreme Court would throw out Biden’s victory and reinstall Trump.
Lindell also declared on Steve Bannon’s podcast that Trump would be “back in office in August.” The evidence, which he compared to “blood DNA at a crime scene,” would be so overwhelming, he promised, that even Rachel Maddow would accept Biden’s ouster.
"So when we get there and they do take this down and look at it, when that vote comes out 9 to 0, they're going to have more trust that it's 9 to 0," he insisted. "Wow, even the liberal judges did this. And we will get that case before the court."
This is delusional. But now, the former president appears to believe it. Or at least pretends to.
Days after Trump’s former national security adviser Michael Flynn suggested the possibility of a military coup (he has since denied doing so despite it being captured on tape), New York Times reporter Maggie Haberman tweeted that “Trump has been telling a number of people he’s in contact with that he expects he will get reinstated by August.”
The Daily Beast heard the same thing: “In the past few weeks, two people close to Trump told The Daily Beast, the ex-president had begun increasingly quizzing confidants about a potential August return to power. What’s more, he claimed that a lot of ‘highly respected’ people — who Trump did not name — have been saying it’s possible.”
Lindell is pretty sure he knows where Trump got that idea. “If Trump is saying August,” the CEO told The Daily Beast, “that is probably because he heard me say it publicly.” (Lindell's August date, by the way, is similarly based on guesswork and conspiratorial theories tied to nonexistent election fraud in Arizona and a delusional hope that the Supreme Court will invalidate the election.)
Wherever he heard it, Trump appears obsessed with relitigating the election he lost. The Washington Post reported that the former president is “increasingly consumed with the notion that ballot reviews pushed by his supporters around the country could prove that he won, according to people familiar with his comments.”
It’s impossible to know whether Trump genuinely believes that he can move back into the White House this summer. But that’s not the point; the story works for him as long as other people believe it.
So don’t be surprised if this notion gathers momentum in the right’s feedback loop, especially if Trump continues to stoke false hopes. Lindell may be loony, but he is far from isolated in the right-wing media ecosystem. Look at the lineup for his rally in my home state of Wisconsin.
Not only is Trump himself scheduled to make an appearance at Lindell’s event, he will be joined by influencers like Turning Point USA President Charlie Kirk and Trumpist loyalists like former Sheriff David Clarke, Dinesh D’Souza and Diamond and Silk. Can Marjorie Taylor Greene be far behind?
So far, most Republicans have maintained a studied strategic silence on Trump’s musings.
But it won’t take much for the idea to get traction in the MAGAverse — or for belief in the righteousness of the Trumpian restoration to become a new litmus test for GOP loyalty.
We’ve seen this pattern before: denial followed by heavy doses of whataboutism and the emergence of anti-anti-coup commentary. This commentary never exactly endorses reinstalling Trump, but instead it tries to refocus attention on over-the-top progressive or never-Trump reaction. Rationalization morphs into acquiescence and even complicity.
Meanwhile, belief in Trump’s return will spread among members of the base, sparking anger, suspicion and outrage when the promised restoration fails to materialize.
In other words, it’s a new twist on the same Big Lie that fueled the Jan. 6 insurrection and continues to fuel threats of political violence. That makes it even worse than it looks.
https://www.msnbc.com/opinion/trump-s-august-election-reinstatement-theory-even-worse-it-looks-n1269716
Trump's August election reinstatement theory is even worse than it looks
Trump’s embrace of this new, delusional conspiracy shows how the right’s doom loop of craziness works.
June 6, 2021, 4:30 AM CDT
By Charlie Sykes, MSNBC Opinion Columnist
https://www.msnbc.com/opinion/trump-s-august-election-reinstatement-theory-even-worse-it-looks-n1269716
I’m afraid this is even worse than it looks.
The National Review is now confirming that Donald J. Trump, the former president of the United States (and probable Republican nominee in 2024) does indeed believe quite genuinely that he — along with former Sens. David Perdue and Martha McSally — will be “reinstated” later this summer.
That, of course, is not going to happen. It is, in fact, weapons-grade lunacy to imagine that it is even possible.
That, of course, is not going to happen. It is, in fact, weapons-grade lunacy to imagine that it is even possible.
But Trump’s embrace of the story shows how the right’s doom loop of craziness works — and how it is accelerating narratives that began in the fevered imaginations of his hardcore true believers.
It should also remind us that even though an idea is fake, the consequences of a new Big Lie can be very real, and even deadly.
Delegitimizing our democracy is now central to Trump’s agenda and his hopes for a political comeback. And polls suggest that his lies about the election have influenced tens of millions of voters.
A Reuters/Ipsos poll from May found that a quarter of Americans — and 53 percent of Republicans — actually believe Trump is the "true president" of the United States.
In this alternative reality, it’s only a small step to believe their “true president” might really return.
The idea of just such a magical, extra-constitutional Trumpian reinstatement was floated just last week at a QAnon conference. MAGA lawyer Sidney Powell said, without providing any evidence or details, that Trump “can simply be reinstated, but a new inauguration date is set, and Biden is told to move out of the White House, and President Trump should be moved back in.”
The same idea has been amplified by Mike Lindell, the MyPillow guy, whose baseless charges of election fraud bought him a $1.3 billion defamation suit from Dominion Voting Systems. (He is countersuing for $1.6 billion.)
For months, Lindell has been insisting that he would present evidence that would overturn Joe Biden’s victory. In April, during his two-day "Frankathon" he announced he had produced a documentary called “Absolute Interference” that would “change our world forever.” He promised “proof and evidence that China was attacking our country, and you're gonna know that this election was flipped.”
He followed up “Absolute Interference” with another documentary he called “Absolutely 9-0” in which he promised that a unanimous Supreme Court would throw out Biden’s victory and reinstall Trump.
Lindell also declared on Steve Bannon’s podcast that Trump would be “back in office in August.” The evidence, which he compared to “blood DNA at a crime scene,” would be so overwhelming, he promised, that even Rachel Maddow would accept Biden’s ouster.
"So when we get there and they do take this down and look at it, when that vote comes out 9 to 0, they're going to have more trust that it's 9 to 0," he insisted. "Wow, even the liberal judges did this. And we will get that case before the court."
This is delusional. But now, the former president appears to believe it. Or at least pretends to.
Days after Trump’s former national security adviser Michael Flynn suggested the possibility of a military coup (he has since denied doing so despite it being captured on tape), New York Times reporter Maggie Haberman tweeted that “Trump has been telling a number of people he’s in contact with that he expects he will get reinstated by August.”
The Daily Beast heard the same thing: “In the past few weeks, two people close to Trump told The Daily Beast, the ex-president had begun increasingly quizzing confidants about a potential August return to power. What’s more, he claimed that a lot of ‘highly respected’ people — who Trump did not name — have been saying it’s possible.”
Lindell is pretty sure he knows where Trump got that idea. “If Trump is saying August,” the CEO told The Daily Beast, “that is probably because he heard me say it publicly.” (Lindell's August date, by the way, is similarly based on guesswork and conspiratorial theories tied to nonexistent election fraud in Arizona and a delusional hope that the Supreme Court will invalidate the election.)
Wherever he heard it, Trump appears obsessed with relitigating the election he lost. The Washington Post reported that the former president is “increasingly consumed with the notion that ballot reviews pushed by his supporters around the country could prove that he won, according to people familiar with his comments.”
It’s impossible to know whether Trump genuinely believes that he can move back into the White House this summer. But that’s not the point; the story works for him as long as other people believe it.
So don’t be surprised if this notion gathers momentum in the right’s feedback loop, especially if Trump continues to stoke false hopes. Lindell may be loony, but he is far from isolated in the right-wing media ecosystem. Look at the lineup for his rally in my home state of Wisconsin.
Not only is Trump himself scheduled to make an appearance at Lindell’s event, he will be joined by influencers like Turning Point USA President Charlie Kirk and Trumpist loyalists like former Sheriff David Clarke, Dinesh D’Souza and Diamond and Silk. Can Marjorie Taylor Greene be far behind?
So far, most Republicans have maintained a studied strategic silence on Trump’s musings.
But it won’t take much for the idea to get traction in the MAGAverse — or for belief in the righteousness of the Trumpian restoration to become a new litmus test for GOP loyalty.
We’ve seen this pattern before: denial followed by heavy doses of whataboutism and the emergence of anti-anti-coup commentary. This commentary never exactly endorses reinstalling Trump, but instead it tries to refocus attention on over-the-top progressive or never-Trump reaction. Rationalization morphs into acquiescence and even complicity.
Meanwhile, belief in Trump’s return will spread among members of the base, sparking anger, suspicion and outrage when the promised restoration fails to materialize.
In other words, it’s a new twist on the same Big Lie that fueled the Jan. 6 insurrection and continues to fuel threats of political violence. That makes it even worse than it looks.
https://www.msnbc.com/opinion/trump-s-august-election-reinstatement-theory-even-worse-it-looks-n1269716
What Were They Thinking About Insurrection?
The hopes and fears of the participants in the Capitol attack, government officials, and Donald Trump.
by AMANDA CARPENTER JUNE 7, 2021 5:30 AM
https://thebulwark.com/what-were-they-thinking-about-insurrection/O
On January 6, 2021, members of the Oath Keepers, high on conspiracies and disinformation, went to Washington, D.C. to support then-President Donald Trump. They anticipated that they would be providing “security” for “patriots” attending his Stop the Steal rally and, should the need present itself, that they would put down an insurrection.
In reality, their group, which explicitly recruits former military service members and law enforcement officers, helped spur an insurrection of its own. And today, some of the Oath Keepers are defendants at the center of the largest criminal investigation in U.S. history.
What were they thinking? And who came up with this deranged plan in the first place? Why didn’t anyone stop them?
The only way to answer those questions to the public’s satisfaction would be via an independent commission empowered to conduct a full investigation of what happened on January 6—as well as of the lies and incitement that led up to that day. But short of that, Department of Justice court filings for the various arrestees offer crucial insights into what the participants in the insurrection hoped would happen. Read in conjunction with contemporaneous public statements from Trump and his allies, as well as comments from Pentagon officials, it is possible to assemble a rough timeline of what the various players on January 6 had in mind.
As it turns out, they were all talking and thinking quite a lot about insurrection long before it happened.
To understand January 6, 2021, we must first look back to June 1, 2020.
That was the day Donald Trump delivered a terse Rose Garden speech threatening to deploy the U.S. military to any city or state that “refuses to take the actions that are necessary to defend the life and property of their residents.” The speech was prompted by the protests that began on May 26 in Minneapolis and spread throughout the country after George Floyd was killed by police. Trump’s staff argued that the threatened military deployment would have been permitted under the Insurrection Act of 1807, which empowers the president to deploy federal troops for domestic law enforcement under certain circumstances.
As Trump spoke, federal law enforcement officers, joined by officers from other local jurisdictions, clashed with protesters near Lafayette Square, just north of the White House. Officers outfitted in riot gear pushed protesters away from the square, firing rubber bullets at them. Tear gas was used. Army helicopters buzzed the crowds. Trump then marched across the square, flanked by officials and aides, including Secretary of Defense Mark Esper and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Mark Milley. All so Trump could have a photo op in front of St. John’s Church.
The message was clear. Trump had a military and was willing to use it. But the backlash from the military community came quickly. Admiral Mike Mullen, a former chairman of the Joint Chiefs, said he was “sickened” to “see security personnel—including members of the National Guard—forcibly and violently clear a path through Lafayette Square to accommodate the president’s visit outside St. John’s Church.” Gen. James Mattis, the respected Marine general who had preceded Esper as Trump’s defense secretary, said he was “angry and appalled.”
Secretary Esper soon distanced himself from Trump, albeit after the fact. He told reporters at a June 3 Pentagon briefing, “The option to use active-duty forces in a law enforcement role should only be used as a matter of last resort, and only in the most urgent and dire of situations. We are not in one of those situations now. I do not support invoking the Insurrection Act.” Gen. Milley later reportedly got into a “heated discussion” with Trump over whether to send active-duty troops to the streets, and in July he publicly apologized, saying, “I should not have been there” for Trump’s photo op.
But Republican politicians and conservative commentators supported Trump’s move. Sen. Tom Cotton wrote an op-ed for the New York Times titled “Send in the Troops”; it was so controversial that the paper later said it should never have been published and one of the responsible editors resigned.
Through it all, Trump never let go of the idea. And as summer changed into fall, talk on the right of an “insurrection” that might be met with a military response shifted from the George Floyd protests and civil unrest to the 2020 election. The same terms and the same proposed action, just a new target.
In a Fox News appearance in September, host Jeanine Pirro asked Trump how he would react if he won the 2020 election and Democrats rioted. “We’ll put them down very quickly if they do that. We have the right to do that. We have the power to do that if we want,” Trump said. “Look, it’s called ‘insurrection.’ We just send in, and we do it, very easy. I mean, it’s very easy.” That same month, in an appearance on conspiracy theorist Alex Jones’s InfoWars program, Trump’s longtime ally Roger Stone—who would later be pardoned by Trump for witness tampering in the Russia investigation and lying to Congress—also talked up the idea of Trump invoking the Insurrection Act.
Although Trump and his allies were in disagreement with the military community about the Insurrection Act, Trump seemed to have other ideas about whom he could call for backup.
During the September 29 debate, Fox News anchor Chris Wallace asked Trump whether he was willing to “condemn white supremacists and militia groups and . . . say that they need to stand down.” Trump replied “sure” but then said the Proud Boys groups should “stand back and stand by” for the election.
“But I’ll tell you what,” Trump continued, “somebody’s got to do something about Antifa and the left because this is not a right-wing problem.”
After the press called the election for Joe Biden on November 7, Trump quickly fired Esper, who had openly opposed invoking the Insurrection Act, and installed Christopher Miller as acting defense secretary. And, as “Stop the Steal” efforts gained steam through November and December, Trump’s allies Sidney Powell, Lin Wood, and Michael Flynn often advocated using the Insurrection Act as a catch-all solution to any number of problems Trump faced. One disturbing Politico headline makes the point: “MAGA leaders call for the troops to keep Trump in office.”
If anyone was primed to take marching orders about insurrection from Commander-in-Chief Trump, it was Oath Keepers founder Stewart Rhodes. To him, it must have sounded like a bugle call directly in his ears.
Rhodes, who founded the group in 2009, has been talking about insurrection for years. And the combination of COVID lockdowns and BLM protests apparently triggered his militant aspirations more than ever. He wrote on Facebook in August 2020 that “Civil war is here, right now” and warned there would be “open warfare with Marxist insurrectionists by Election Day.” Shortly after the media called the election for Biden, Rhodes said in a livestreamed speech that viewers should “stand up now and call on the president to suppress the insurrection.”
He meant it.
Court filings from the Department of Justice containing communications from Oath Keeper militants—some of whom are said to have acted as personal security for Roger Stone at “Stop the Steal” rallies, including on the eve of the January 6 insurrection—show how clear Rhodes’s thinking was about it.
According to prosecutors, Rhodes held a planning meeting for the attack on November 9, 2020. During it, he said:
“We’re going to defend the president, the duly elected president, and we call on him to do what needs to be done to save our country. Because if you don’t guys, you’re going to be in a bloody, bloody civil war, and a bloody—you can call it an insurrection or you can call it a war or fight.”
He told his followers they needed to be prepared to fight Antifa, which he characterized as a group of individuals with whom “if the fight comes, let the fight come. Let Antifa—if they go kinetic on us, then we’ll go kinetic back on them. I’m willing to sacrifice myself for that. Let the fight start there. That will give President Trump what he needs, frankly. If things go kinetic, good. If they throw bombs at us and shoot us, great, because that brings the president his reason and rationale for dropping the Insurrection Act.”
He continued, “I do want some Oath Keepers to stay on the outside, and to stay fully armed and prepared to go in armed, if they have to. . . . So our posture’s gonna be that we’re posted outside of D.C., um, awaiting the president’s orders. . . . We hope he will give us the orders. We want him to declare an insurrection, and to call us up as the militia” (emphasis added).
Similarly, the head of the Florida Oath Keepers, Kelly Meggs claimed in a December 19 Facebook post that he had organized an “alliance between Oath Keepers, Florida 3%ers [Three Percenters], and Proud Boys. We have decided to work together and shut this shit down” on January 6.
On December 26, Meggs told someone on Facebook that “Trumps staying in, he’s Gonna use the emergency broadcast system on cell phones to broadcast to the American people. Then he will claim the insurrection act.” Meggs’s Facebook interlocutor asked when this would take place. Meggs said “next week” and to “wait for the 6th when we are all in DC to insurrection.”
On January 3, Meggs told another person that more than two hundred Oath Keepers were “called” to the nation’s capital because recent action taken by Vice President Mike Pence “checks all the boxes.” The January 6 event, Meggs warned, was not going to be a “rally.”
As the Oath Keepers secretly made their pre-January 6 preparations, the military community was growing increasingly worried that Trump might use the armed forces to interfere with the certification of the election that he was claiming had been stolen.
All ten living former defense secretaries, including Mark Esper, made a dramatic statement in a January 3 Washington Post opinion piece warning that “efforts to involve the U.S. armed forces in resolving election disputes would take us into dangerous, unlawful and unconstitutional territory” and any civilian or military officials who helped carry out such measures could face criminal penalties.
Esper’s successor, Acting Defense Secretary Christopher Miller, later said that this opinion piece and many other warnings about military use for political purposes—including those that came out after the Lafayette Square incident—influenced his decision to keep troops away from the Capitol on January 6. As a result, the attack by the pro-Trump mob went on for more than three hours before the National Guard was deployed to assist Capitol Police and the D.C. Metropolitan Police.
Miller told Congress in May that:
My concerns regarding the appropriate and limited use of the military in domestic matters were heightened by commentary in the media about the possibility of a military coup or that advisors to the President were advocating the declaration of martial law. I was also cognizant of the fears promulgated by many about the prior use of the military in the June 2020 response to protests near the White House and fears that the President would invoke the Insurrection Act to politicize the military in an anti-democratic manner. And, just before the Electoral College certification, ten former Secretaries of Defense signed an Op-Ed piece published in the Washington Post warning of the dangers of politicizing and using inappropriately the military. No such thing was going to occur on my watch but these concerns, and hysteria about them, nonetheless factored into my decisions regarding the appropriate and limited use of our Armed Forces to support civilian law enforcement during the Electoral College certification.
What about Trump? Well, he made it clear to Miller on January 5 that he wanted boots on the ground:
I also want to address questions that have been raised in regard to the President’s involvement in the response. He had none with respect to the Department of Defense efforts on January 6. . . . On the afternoon of January 5, I received a call from the President in connection with a rally by his supporters that day at Freedom Plaza. The President asked if I was watching the event on television. I replied that I had seen coverage of the event. He then commented that “they” were going to need 10,000 troops the following day. The call lasted fewer than thirty seconds and I did not respond substantively, and there was no elaboration. I took his comment to mean that a large force would be required to maintain order the following day.
Who was “they”? And why did Trump believe there would be such a need for troops—because he expected the troops would have to fend off Antifa, or because he anticipated that his own supporters would cause trouble? Miller said he didn’t follow up on the request because, “At the time, I had been advised by our domestic law enforcement partners that based on their experience with protests and crowd control, as well as their intelligence information, that they were confident that they had sufficient personnel assigned to maintain order.”
The fight that the self-appointed militia of Proud Boys and Oath Keepers apparently expected to have with Antifa on January 6 never materialized. Ironically, their actions as part of the mob attack on the Capitol offered a defensible reason for invoking the Insurrection Act—but Donald Trump didn’t invoke it against his own supporters. Meanwhile, the Defense Department appeared paralyzed with concern over what to do if Trump did invoke the act.
The contrast between Trump’s behavior on June 1 and January 6 is telling. Last summer, he was enthusiastic about using force to put down his political opposition and he relished the chance to do it again. When his supporters were the ones causing mayhem, however, Trump reportedly watched “with pleasure.”
Very little is otherwise known about Trump’s mindset on January 6 and his involvement in the events that led to the violence that resulted in five deaths, 140 injured police officers, and $1.5 million in damage to the U.S. Capitol. More than 460 arrests have been made in connection to the attack, and the ensuing trials will presumably take years to complete.
Sixteen Oath Keepers have been charged with federal conspiracy, among other offenses, for their actions that day. Prosecutors have started discussing plea deals with some Oath Keeper members, which will presumably lead to more information about who else was involved in their activities. Absent an independent commission or the creation of a serious congressional investigation, that may be the only hope of finding out how high and wide the planning for this entire operation went.
Amanda Carpenter
Bulwark political columnist Amanda Carpenter is a CNN contributor, author, and former communications director to Sen. Ted Cruz and speechwriter to Sen. Jim DeMint.
https://thebulwark.com/what-were-they-thinking-about-insurrection/
APPLE EVENT - LIVE: IOS 15 AND MORE EXPECTED AS COMPANY TO REVEAL FUTURE OF ITS DEVICES
Andrew Griffin @_andrew_griffin
8 minutes ago
https://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/gadgets-and-tech/apple-event-live-wwdc-when-ios-15-b1860864.html
Apple is about to hold one of its biggest events of the year: the Worldwide Developers Conference.
The conference – and the keynote that kicks it off – serves as its annual reveal of all of the software updates it has been working on.
As such, there will be a new iOS 15 for the iPhone, updates for the Mac, and new features on the Watch. WWDC is unusual among Apple events in that every one of its software platforms gets an update of some kind, and that they are available to download for free.
But Apple is rumoured to be potentially bringing new products to buy, too. Rumours have suggested that new versions of the MacBook Pro could be on their way, including a more powerful version of the company’s already powerful M1 chip.
The event starts at 10am local pacific time, or 6pm in the UK. As with every Apple event over the last year, it will be held entirely virtually, with the keynote available to stream on Apple’s website.
...
MUCH MORE
https://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/gadgets-and-tech/apple-event-live-wwdc-when-ios-15-b1860864.html
US approves first new Alzheimer's drug in 20 years
Published25 minutes ago
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-57383763
The first new treatment for Alzheimer's disease for nearly 20 years has been approved by regulators in the United States, paving the way for its use in the UK.
Aducanumab targets the underlying cause of Alzheimer's, the most common form of dementia, rather than its symptoms.
At least 100,000 people in the UK with a mild form of the disease could be suitable for the drug.
But approval from the UK regulator could take more than a year.
The US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) said there was "substantial evidence that aducanumab reduces amyloid beta plaques in the brain" and that this "is reasonably likely to predict important benefits to patients".
Charities have welcomed the news of a new therapy for the condition - but scientists are divided over its potential impact because of uncertainty over the trial results.
In March 2019, late-stage international trials of aducanumab, involving about 3,000 patients, were halted when analysis showed the drug, given as a monthly infusion, was not better at slowing the deterioration of memory and thinking problems than a dummy drug.
But later that year, the US manufacturer Biogen analysed more data and concluded the drug did work, as long as it was given in higher doses. The company also said it significantly slowed cognitive decline.
Aducanumab targets amyloid, a protein that forms abnormal clumps in the brains of people with Alzheimer's that can damage cells and trigger dementia, including:
memory and thinking problems
communication issues
confusion
'Heading in right direction'
Aldo Ceresa, who took part in the trial, first noticed problems differentiating between left and right 10 years ago.
After his diagnosis, the 68-year-old, who is originally from Glasgow and now lives in Oxfordshire, close to his family, had to give up his job as a surgeon.
Mr Ceresa took aducanumab for two years before the trial was halted - and then had to wait almost as long for another trial, at the National Hospital for Neurology and Neurosurgery, in London, to begin.
"I'm quite happy to volunteer," he says.
"I really, really enjoy this journey that I'm going through - and obviously the benefits I'm getting from it, which I'm very, very grateful for.
He is convinced the drug has helped him.
"I feel like I'm not quite as confused. Although it's still there, it's not quite as bad.
"And I'm just getting that bit more confident now."
Mr Ceresa says his family has notice improvements too.
"Before, if I was going to get something, I couldn't remember, you know, where to find things in the kitchen.
"That has become less of a problem," he says.
"And so, you know, it's not 100% there - but I'm getting better at it.
"I haven't caught up to the level that I was before - but I'm heading in the right direction."
More than 30 million people around the world are thought to have Alzheimer's, with most aged over 65.
For around 500,000 people affected in the UK, those eligible for aducanumab will:
probably require a definitive diagnosis, involving a detailed 3D brain scan
be mostly in their in their 60s or 70s and at an early stage
In the past decade, more than 100 potential Alzheimer's treatments have flopped.
And although aducanumab is not a miracle drug, and many doctors are doubtful of its benefits, its US approval will be a huge boost to dementia research, traditionally underfunded compared with cancer or heart disease.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-57383763
First New Alzheimer’s Drug in Nearly Two Decades Is Approved by FDA
Biogen drug approved after facing doubts over whether it slows progression of memory-robbing disease
By Joseph Walker Updated June 7, 2021 11:56 am ET
https://www.wsj.com/articles/first-alzheimers-drug-to-slow-disease-is-approved-by-fda-11623078912?mod=e2tw
The first drug promising to slow the memory-robbing march of Alzheimer’s disease was approved by U.S. health regulators, a watershed after years of research and billions of dollars in investment.
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration said it approved the drug, which has the molecular name aducanumab and will be sold as Aduhelm, based on evidence it reduces a sticky substance in the brain called amyloid that is associated with Alzheimer’s.
The drug’s sale offers hope to millions of people dealing with Alzheimer’s and their caregivers, given the lack of good options for treatment. Yet aducanumab’s impact may be limited. Doctors who say they will prescribe the drug caution it won’t help all patients, particularly those with more advanced disease. Some patients eligible for treatment may face $10,000 or more in annual out-of-pocket costs, health insurer Cigna Corp. estimates.
In addition, some doctors say the evidence supporting the drug’s efficacy is limited and recommended against its approval.
The drug is a potential blockbuster for its maker Biogen Inc. BIIB 0.10% Its approval comes at a critical time for the biotech, which is coping with declining sales and the loss of patent protection for its biggest-selling drug, Tecfidera, a pill for multiple sclerosis.
New Treatment for Alzheimer’s
Biogen's drug aducanumab may help slow damage to the brain caused by the degenerative disease.
How Alzheimer’s affects the brain
Biogen has said it expects aducanumab sales to be modest this year as it launches the drug, and to start growing thereafter. Analysts polled by FactSet project sales of $62.7 million in 2021, $603.2 million in 2022 and $1.6 billion in 2023.
The drug’s list price wasn’t immediately available.
A preliminary analysis conducted by the Institute for Clinical and Economic Review, a nonprofit research and advisory group, said the drug could be cost-effective at a per-patient price of $2,500 to $8,300 a year.
Alzheimer’s is a progressive degenerative disease that slowly robs people of their memory and the ability to care for themselves.
About six million people suffer from Alzheimer’s in the U.S. Of those, as many as 1.4 million could be eligible to take aducanumab, according to estimates by Cigna.
There were 121,499 deaths from Alzheimer’s in the U.S. in 2019, up 54% from a decade earlier, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. After accounting for age and population growth, per capita deaths grew 23% over the period.
Despite considerable effort and investment, researchers have struggled to find drugs that prove to treat Alzheimer’s. One drug after another aiming to slow the progression of the disease has failed in testing.
The FDA last approved a new Alzheimer’s drug in 2003. Approved treatments, including the drugs Namenda and Aricept, can help reduce symptoms temporarily, but don’t change the underlying course of disease, according to regulators.
The FDA approved aducanumab to treat people with mild cases of cognitive impairment or dementia whose brains have accumulated beta amyloid, which many researchers believe plays a significant role in Alzheimer’s disease for many patients.
Aducanumab works by clearing amyloid from the brain.
Doctors said they expect strong demand for the medicine.
“I will no doubt field dozens, if not hundreds, of phone calls within the first day or week,” said Richard Isaacson, director of the Alzheimer’s Prevention Clinic at Weill Cornell Medicine and New York-Presbyterian hospital.
Biogen faces hurdles getting the drug to all the patients interested in taking it, says Dr. Isaacson, who is also a paid consultant to the company.
Before prescribing it, doctors will want to first make sure their patient’s brain has amyloid buildup, which typically requires an imaging scan or spinal tap that usually aren’t covered by medical insurance, Dr. Isaacson said.
Unlike other Alzheimer’s drugs delivered in pills that can be picked up at a pharmacy, aducanumab requires monthly infusions at a clinic. Patients will require monitoring with magnetic resonance imaging, or an MRI, to guard against small brain bleeds, a potential side effect of the drug, Dr. Isaacson said.
“There’s going to be a lot of education required, and a lot of logistical roadblocks,” he said.
The drug also faces skepticism from some doctors over its unusual and controversial path to approval.
In 2019, Biogen halted two studies of the drug after determining that they were unlikely to be successful, only to reverse course several months later after reviewing additional data.
The company said it would seek approval based on the discontinued studies after discussing the matter with the FDA.
In one of the two studies, patients taking aducanumab had a 22% reduction in cognitive decline compared with patients taking placebos. The drug failed to show a benefit in the second study, but a detailed breakdown of the results indicated the drug was effective when given at the highest dose for extended periods, Biogen said.
Some FDA officials appeared to agree with Biogen’s analysis, giving a positive medical review of the drug during a meeting of independent experts convened by the agency to discuss whether the agency should approve the drug. The agency’s statistical expert gave a more downbeat review, citing conflicting trial data.
The outside panel of experts rejected supporting the drug. They said Biogen should conduct another large study to prove the drug’s benefit before it was approved.
“There is no persuasive evidence to support approval of aducanumab at this time,” wrote three of the FDA’s independent experts in the Journal of the American Medical Association in March.
Jason Karlawish, an Alzheimer’s specialist at the University of Pennsylvania, said he thinks the FDA shouldn’t have approved the drug because of the lack of convincing evidence.
Yet he said he would still prescribe the drug to patients who want it after discussing with them its risks and benefits.
“I’ve chatted already with some of my patients, and some are interested and others say it doesn’t sound like something I’d want to do,” said Dr. Karlawish, co-director of the Penn Memory Center.
Cigna will likely cover the drug for people who match the patients studied in Biogen’s clinical trials—those with early-stage Alzheimer’s and amyloid buildup in their brains—said Steve Miller, Cigna’s chief clinical officer.
Most Alzheimer’s patients are covered by Medicare, and their out-of-pocket costs could be significant, depending on their coverage, because of so-called coinsurance payments that require patients to cover a percentage of certain health costs, Dr. Miller said.
“The out-of-pocket testing costs could be a real barrier for those patients who lack the financial means,” said Dr. Miller.
Cigna estimates that patients with traditional Medicare insurance could be on the hook for more than $10,000 a year in coinsurance and copayments for the drug and amyloid testing, Dr. Miller said. Additional costs for people with supplemental Medigap insurance or commercial coverage through Medicare Advantage could reach up to $4,000 annually.
Dr. Miller said patients may be eligible for financial assistance to cover the extra costs through nonprofit foundations, which are often funded by drugmakers.
Biogen’s first-quarter revenue was $2.7 billion, down 24% from $3.5 billion in the same quarter a year earlier, driven largely by a 56% decline in Tecfidera sales. Net income was $404.6 million, down 71% from $1.4 billion a year earlier.
Biogen has been laying the groundwork to launch the drug immediately upon approval by helping clinics set themselves up to treat patients. In April, Chief Executive Michel Vounatsos said the company expected there to be 600 U.S. sites ready to treat patients, with many more to come.
“We anticipate that there will be, if approved, a very large influx of patients,” Mr. Vounatsos told analysts on the company’s first-quarter earnings call in April. “We know that the availability of specialists and diagnosis capabilities are a bottleneck, so we had to prepare the sites of care.”
Write to Joseph Walker at joseph.walker@wsj.com
https://www.wsj.com/articles/first-alzheimers-drug-to-slow-disease-is-approved-by-fda-11623078912?mod=e2tw
Scholar learns remains of Japan war criminals "scattered" in Pacific
KYODO NEWS KYODO NEWS - 18 hours ago - 07:01 | All, Japan
https://english.kyodonews.net/news/2021/06/9c3845adf9fb-scholar-learns-remains-of-japan-war-criminals-scattered-in-pacific.html?phrase=tigers%20balloons&words=
A Japanese researcher has found official U.S. documents detailing how the American military scattered the cremated remains of Japan's wartime Prime Minister Hideki Tojo and six other executed Class-A war criminals in the Pacific Ocean, shedding light on decades of mystery over their whereabouts.
The declassified documents, discovered by Hiroaki Takazawa, associate professor at Nihon University College of Industrial Technology, at the U.S. National Archives and Records Administration, contain a statement that a U.S. Army major "personally scattered the cremated remains" of the criminals over the Pacific Ocean.
A U.S. military truck carrying seven bodies of executed Japanese Class-A war criminals, including wartime Prime Minister Hideki Tojo, departs Sugamo Prison in Tokyo for a crematorium in Yokohama on Dec. 23, 1948. (File Photo)(Kyodo)
It is the first time that details over the final disposition of the Class-A criminals' remains were found in official documents. While speculation and hearsay have circulated that their remains were scattered in the Pacific Ocean or Tokyo Bay, there had never been any official documents to back the claims.
Tojo was among 28 Class-A war criminals comprising Japanese political and military leaders who were indicted for crimes against peace after World War II, and seven, including the former premier, were hanged.
Major Luther Frierson wrote in one of the documents by the Eighth Army dated Jan. 4, 1949, that the paper is "a detailed account of the activities of the undersigned in connection with the execution and final disposition of remains of seven war criminals executed 23 December 1948."
Frierson was present at the scene of the execution of the criminals after midnight on Dec. 22, 1948, at Sugamo Prison in Tokyo, according to the document. A truck carrying the bodies departed the prison at 2:10 a.m. on Dec. 23 and arrived at the area occupied by the U.S. military's 108th Quartermaster Graves Registration Platoon in Yokohama at 3:40 a.m.
At 7:25 a.m., the truck left the area arriving at a crematorium in Yokohama 30 minutes later. The bodies were moved directly from the truck into the incinerators by 8:05 a.m.
After the cremation, the remains were placed in separate urns and transported to the Eighth Army Liaison Air Strip and put aboard a liaison plane piloted by one of the Eighth Army pilots, with Frierson as a passenger.
"We proceeded to a point approximately 30 miles over the Pacific Ocean east of Yokohama where I personally scattered the cremated remains over a wide area," Frierson wrote in the document.
According to the Yokohama municipal government, the airstrip was located two kilometers from the crematorium.
The document indicates that the dispersion of the remains occurred on the day of the execution, but it did not specify the exact location or time of the scattering.
"If the remains were returned to nature, that is better than being abandoned somewhere else," said Hidetoshi Tojo, 48, great-grandchild of the executed former prime minister.
"I had no idea (what happened to the remains) as there was somehow no talk about it," he said. "It is disappointing that we cannot pinpoint the location in the Pacific. It was made difficult to know the exact location by scattering them in the sea, and it is my understanding that the U.S. military was making a thorough effort to ensure that they not be deified."
Yoshinobu Higurashi, professor at Teikyo University, said the U.S. military scattered the remains in the ocean to prevent the deification of war criminals just as the remains of executed criminals of Nazi Germany convicted at the Nuremberg trials were dispersed in a river.
"The discovered documents are highly significant for writing in detail about how the remains of the executed Class-A war criminals were disposed of," he said.
Regarding the disposals of the remains, William Sebald, chief of the Diplomatic Section at the General Headquarters of the Allied Powers, which occupied Japan after the war, wrote in his book that the cremated remains would be scattered as their graves could have been deified. Sebald was also present at the executions of the Class-A war criminals.
Jun 7, 2021 | KYODO NEWS
https://english.kyodonews.net/news/2021/06/9c3845adf9fb-scholar-learns-remains-of-japan-war-criminals-scattered-in-pacific.html?phrase=tigers%20balloons&words=
Mystery over missing remains of seven biggest Japanese war criminals finally solved
World War Two prime minister Hideki Tojo and six other leaders were executed in 1948 - but no one knew what happened to their cremated ashes
By Julian Ryall
TOKYO 7 June 2021 • 1:37pm
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2021/06/07/mystery-missing-remains-seven-biggest-japanese-war-criminals/?utm_content=world%20news&utm_medium=Social&utm_campaign=Echobox&utm_source=Twitter#Echobox=1623073056
Koa Kannon temple in Atami was previously rumoured to be one of the places where the war criminals' cremated remains were interred - and became an shrine for nationalists as a result
A decades-old mystery surrounding the location of the remains of Japan's most senior war criminals has finally been solved after researchers discovered declassified information about their disposal after World War Two.
Documents unearthed in the US show that after Hideki Tojo, Japan’s wartime prime minister, and six other high-level leaders convicted of war crimes were hanged in December 1948, their bodies were cremated and the ashes placed into seven urns.
They were then put onto a plane in Yokohama, flown out to sea and dumped at an unspecified point, according to declassified files in the US National Archives and Records Administration. The discovery was made by a Japanese academic, according to Kyodo News.
In one document dated January 4, 1949 - 12 days after the seven men were secretly hanged at Tokyo’s Sugamo Prison - Major Luther Frierson writes: “We proceeded to a point approximately 30 miles over the Pacific Ocean east of Yokohama where I personally scattered the cremated remains over a wide area”.
The secrecy and extra precautions taken by the Allies who occupied Japan after Tokyo‘s surrender in September 1945 was to avoid creating any graves or memorials to the nation’s controversial former leaders that could be turned into rallying points for nationalists, much like what was done with Al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden.
As a result, there have long been conflicting reports about what happened to the remains of the men who led Japan into war in Asia and then expanded the conflict to encompass the United States and European powers.
There have been suggestions that Tojo’s remains were secretly interred at Yasukuni Shrine in central Tokyo, considered the last resting place of the spirits of millions of Japanese who died in service, or in the rural Koa Kannon temple, 90 miles southwest of Tokyo, which has become a point of pilgrimage for a new generation of nationalists.
There have also been rumours that the ashes were scattered over the grounds of a horse racing track in Yokohama that was taken over by the US military, dumped in a car park elsewhere in the city, or tipped into Tokyo Bay.
“I had no idea what happened to the remains [of Tojo] as there was no discussion of the matter," Hidetoshi Tojo, the great-grandson of the wartime leader, told Kyodo. “It is disappointing that we cannot pinpoint the exact location in the Pacific.
“It was made difficult to know the exact location by scattering them in the sea and it is my understanding that the US military was making a thorough effort to ensure that they could not be deified."
“If the remains were returned to nature, that is better than being abandoned somewhere else,” he added.
A career military officer, Tojo was an outspoken advocate of a pre-emptive attack against the US forces at Pearl Harbour and British and other European colonies in the Far East, including Hong Kong and Singapore.
Named prime minister in October 1941, he stepped down in July 1944 as the tide of the conflict turned against Japan.
Former Army General and Prime Minister Hideki Tojo (centre) at a military trial in 1946
After his arrest, Tojo was tried for a range of war crimes, including waging wars of aggression, war in violation of international law and ordering, authorising and permitting the inhumane treatment of prisoners of war.
Historians estimate the Japanese military was responsible for the deaths of as many as 5 million civilians and prisoners of war during the two years and nine months that Tojo was prime minister as a result of massacres, starvation, forced labour and human experimentation.
Millions more servicemen were killed during the same timeframe.
Tojo was the most famous Japanese leader found guilty in the Tokyo trials, with six other military leaders similarly found guilty of war crimes and crimes against humanity.
At the time of his arrest - when he made a botched suicide attempt - an unrepentant Tojo told Japanese reporters, "The Greater East Asia War was justified and righteous. I am very sorry for the nation and all the races of the Greater Asiatic powers. I wait for the righteous judgement of history. I wished to commit suicide, but sometimes that fails."
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2021/06/07/mystery-missing-remains-seven-biggest-japanese-war-criminals/?utm_content=world%20news&utm_medium=Social&utm_campaign=Echobox&utm_source=Twitter#Echobox=1623073056
Despite pandemic, level of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere hits historic levels
"If we want to avoid catastrophic climate change, the highest priority must be to reduce CO2 pollution to zero at the earliest possible date,” one top scientist says.
By Brady Dennis and Steven Mufson
June 7, 2021 at 3:00 p.m. GMT+1
https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/2021/06/07/atmospheric-carbon-dioxide-hits-record-levels/?%20environment_1
Economies worldwide nearly ground to a halt over the 15 months of the coronavirus pandemic, leading to a startling drop in global greenhouse gas emissions.
But that did little to slow the steady accumulation of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, which reached the highest levels since accurate measurements began 63 years ago, scientists said Monday.
“Fossil fuel burning is really at the heart of this. If we don’t tackle fossil fuel burning, the problem is not going to go away,” Ralph Keeling, a geochemist at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography, said in an interview, adding that the world ultimately will have to make emissions cuts that are “much larger and sustained” than anything that happened during the pandemic.
Scientists from Scripps and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration said on Monday that levels of atmospheric carbon dioxide peaked in May, reaching a monthly average of nearly 419 parts per million.
That represents an increase from the May 2020 mean of 417 parts per million, and it marks the highest level since measurements began 63 years ago at the NOAA observatory in Mauna Loa, Hawaii. Twice in 2021, daily levels recorded at the observatory have exceeded 420 parts per million, researchers said.
“It’s not significant in the sense that we are surprised. It was fully expected,” Pieter Tans, a senior scientist with NOAA’s Global Monitoring Laboratory, said in an interview. “It’s significant in that it shows we are still fully on the wrong track.”
Tans noted that humans continue to add about 40 billion metric tons of carbon dioxide pollution to the atmosphere each year, and that avoiding catastrophic changes to the climate will require reducing that number to zero as quickly as possible.
“The fact that CO2 concentrations at Mauna Loa data are already so high and are keep going up so fast is disturbing but not surprising because the emissions of CO2 continue to be incredibly high,” said Corinne Le Quéré, research professor of climate change science at the University of East Anglia. “The concentrations of CO2 in the atmosphere will stop rising when the emissions approach zero.”
Carbon dioxide, a key greenhouse gas, traps heat from the planet’s surface that would otherwise escape into space. Much of the carbon dioxide breaks down after about 100 years, but the current global rate of emissions is enough to offset that rate and further increase the atmospheric concentration of the gas, causing the planet to warm steadily.
The highest monthly mean levels of carbon dioxide typically occur each May, just before plants in the Northern Hemisphere start to remove large amounts of CO2 from the atmosphere during the growing season. In the northern fall, winter and early spring, plants and soil give off CO2, causing levels to rise.
Even as international borders closed and global economic activity took a massive hit throughout much of 2020, researchers have found that human-caused emissions rebounded fairly quickly after decreasing sharply early in the pandemic.
In 2020, primary energy demand decreased nearly 4 percent, and global energy-related carbon dioxide emissions fell by 5.8 percent, according to the International Energy Agency — the largest annual percentage decline since World War II.
In absolute terms, the decline in emissions of almost 2 billion tons of CO2 is “without precedent in human history,” the IEA said. “Broadly speaking, this is the equivalent of removing all of the European Union’s emissions from the global total.” The agency said that demand for fossil fuels was hardest hit in 2020 — especially oil, which plunged 8.6 percent, and coal, which dropped by 4 percent.
But in the broader sense, the pandemic could prove to be little more than a blip in the world’s efforts to combat climate change.
Energy-related carbon dioxide emissions during 2020 dropped to about the same level of global emissions that prevailed in 2012 — not nearly low enough to change the world’s current trajectory. That reality offers the latest evidence of the stubbornness of human-related emissions, and the difficulty the world faces in making the kind of far-reaching, long-lasting cuts necessary to slow Earth’s warming and avoid the most catastrophic effects of climate change.
Already, the IEA has said it expects global carbon emissions to surge this year as parts of the world rebound from the coronavirus pandemic. The group projected in April that emissions are on track to reach the second-largest annual rise on record.
Global energy demand is already set to surpass 2019 levels, alongside continued growth in alternative energies, the Paris-based organization found.
As levels of atmospheric carbon dioxide continue to surge, leaders around the world face mounting pressure to commit to more aggressive, more urgent plans to reduce greenhouse gas pollution. Some countries have begun to outline more ambitious targets ahead of a key U.N. climate conference in the fall. Among them is the United States, which under President Biden has vowed to cut its overall emissions in half by the end of the decade.
Still, analyses by the United Nations and other organizations have found that a grim gap remains between the world’s current path and the significant shifts needed keep Earth’s warming to “well below” 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 Fahrenheit) above preindustrial levels — a central goal of the Paris agreement. In short, the existing promises aren’t enough, and most countries have not lived up to the inadequate promises they have made.
Keeling said he is optimistic that major changes lie ahead as renewable energy and other technologies take root and multiply. But they won’t happen overnight. “I do expect we will see significant changes in the years ahead. The political will has shifted,” he said. “What we need to do is see a sustained move toward moving away from fossil fuels.”
Tans also holds out hope that the world will be able to put itself on a better path. The science of how to do that exists, he said, but what remains unclear is whether societies can muster the kind of action that has yet to materialize.
“The goals so far are themselves insufficient, even after having been beefed up,” he said. “We’re running out of time. The longer we wait, the harder it gets.”
By Brady Dennis
Brady Dennis is a Pulitzer Prize-winning national reporter for The Washington Post, focusing on the environment and public health. He previously spent years covering the nation’s economy. Twitter
Image without a caption
By Steven Mufson
Steven Mufson covers the business of climate change for The Washington Post. Since joining The Post in 1989, he has covered economic policy, China, diplomacy, energy and the White House. Earlier, he worked for The Wall Street Journal. In 2020, he shared the Pulitzer Prize for a climate change series "2C: Beyond the Limit." Twitter
https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/2021/06/07/atmospheric-carbon-dioxide-hits-record-levels/?%20environment_1
Apple under pressure to close loopholes in new privacy rules
Experts warn thousands of apps are continuing to collect data from users who opt out of tracking
Patrick McGee in San Francisco AN HOUR AGO
https://www.ft.com/content/9cb52394-f95f-4b07-a624-89c47439aa16
Apple has come under pressure to tighten its new privacy rules ahead of its annual developers’ conference on Monday, after experts warned that thousands of apps were continuing to collect data from users who had opted out of tracking.
The new rules, which came into effect in April as part of the iPhone’s iOS 14.5 software update, force apps to get consent from users to track their behaviour in order to target them with advertising.
However, many third parties are continuing to use workaround methods to identify users who do not consent, which critics argue has created confusion over what Apple’s new policies allow.
The result is that the amount of data being collected from many iPhone users may be unchanged even after they choose not to be tracked, according to Eric Seufert, a marketing strategy consultant.
“Anyone opting out of tracking right now is basically having the same level of data collected as they were before,” said Seufert. “Apple hasn’t actually deterred the behaviour that they have called out as being so reprehensible, so they are kind of complicit in it happening.”
Sean O’Brien, founder of the Yale Privacy Lab, said Apple was being “extremely disingenuous” by marketing its privacy efforts without properly enforcing them to protect users.
In an email seen by the Financial Times, one vendor told its clients it had managed to continue collecting data on more than 95 per cent of its iOS users by gathering device and network information such as IP addresses to determine who a user is — a surreptitious tactic known as “fingerprinting”.
Apple bans fingerprinting, telling developers they “may not derive data from a device for the purpose of uniquely identifying it”, but experts say the policy is not being enforced.
Moreover, some adtech groups, whose developer clients number in the tens of thousands, believe that looser “probabilistic” methods of identification are acceptable, because they rely on temporary, aggregated data rather than by creating unique or permanent device IDs.
“The problem comes when you start matching this individual user based on this individual data point from the device, and then you try to find the connection directly,” said Paul Mueller, chief executive of Adjust, a “mobile measurement partner” that helps thousands of apps run their smartphone ad campaigns. “But if you group users by behaviour and then match these groups, that is something that we believe is within the spirit of these rules.”
Critics said Apple’s privacy push may backfire if it continues to allow such practices. “It’s becoming clear that iOS14 was much more a marketing promotion than an actual privacy initiative, sadly,” said Alex Austin, chief executive of Branch, a mobile marketing platform.
Apple said in a statement: “We believe strongly that users should be asked for their permission before being tracked. Apps that are found to disregard the user’s choice will be rejected.”
It declined to comment on whether it makes a distinction between fingerprinting and “probabilistic matching”.
Seufert predicts Apple will provide clarity shortly — perhaps coinciding with its annual developers conference on Monday — which could lead to a wave of app rejections during the app review process this month.
If Apple waits much longer, it risks coming under legal fire over the gap between reality and its marketing rhetoric, which has suggested that third parties’ ability to track users is entirely blocked when users ask them to stop, said O’Brien.
He drew a comparison with Google, which faced several lawsuits after it was discovered in 2018 that it had been tracking the locations of its users even after they expressly told it not to.
“Apple may find this out the hard way, as Google has in the past, if the company is hit with lawsuits for misleading customers in regard to privacy,” he said. “Just as it was discovered that Google’s location history was never actually turned off in 2018, I think we will find that Apple still allows apps to peer into the windows of consumers’ lives.”
https://www.ft.com/content/9cb52394-f95f-4b07-a624-89c47439aa16
Mo Brooks Finally Served With Lawsuit Accusing Him of Inciting Capitol Riot
GAME’S UP
Jamie Ross
News Correspondent
Published Jun. 07, 2021 5:25AM ET
https://www.thedailybeast.com/mo-brooks-finally-served-with-lawsuit-accusing-him-of-inciting-capitol-riot?via=newsletter&source=CSAMedition
After three months of trying, Rep. Mo Brooks (R-AL) has finally been served with the lawsuit that accuses him of helping to incite the Jan 6. Capitol insurrection. Rep. Eric Swalwell (D-CA) has been attempting to serve the MAGA congressman with the papers since March, but he proved impossible to track down—even after Swalwell brought in the help of private investigators. Then, on Sunday, Brooks confirmed the lawsuit had been served, though he didn’t sound happy about it. Brooks wrote: “Well, Swalwell FINALLY did his job, served complaint (on my WIFE). HORRIBLE Swalwell’s team committed a CRIME by unlawfully sneaking INTO MY HOUSE & accosting my wife!” Philip Andonian, an attorney for Swalwell, disputed Brooks’ story, saying: “No one entered or even attempted to enter the Brooks' house. That allegation is completely untrue... The important thing is the complaint has been served and Mo Brooks can now be held accountable for his role in inciting the deadly insurrection at the Capitol.”
Read it at CNN
https://www.cnn.com/2021/06/06/politics/mo-brooks-eric-swalwell-lawsuit-capitol-insurrection/index.html
https://www.thedailybeast.com/mo-brooks-finally-served-with-lawsuit-accusing-him-of-inciting-capitol-riot?via=newsletter&source=CSAMedition
Aaron Rupar @atrupar Replying to @atrupar Trump's solution to cyberattacks is to stop using computers
VIDEO
Trump's solution to cyberattacks is to stop using computers pic.twitter.com/txRp0jgE1I
— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) June 7, 2021
Trump's solution to cyberattacks is to stop using computers pic.twitter.com/txRp0jgE1I
— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) June 7, 2021
Trump's solution to cyberattacks is to stop using computers pic.twitter.com/txRp0jgE1I
— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) June 7, 2021
Cheney: Trump inciting January 6 riot 'the most dangerous thing' a president has done
By Caroline Kelly
Updated 1305 GMT (2105 HKT) June 7, 2021
https://edition.cnn.com/2021/06/06/politics/cheney-trump-dangerous-thing-axe-files/index.html
(CNN)Wyoming Republican Rep. Liz Cheney accused former President Donald Trump of having committed the worst violation of a president's oath of office by inciting the January 6 Capitol insurrection -- and taking a jab at House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy over his subsequent visit to Trump at Mar-a-Lago.
"I was stunned. I could not imagine any justification for doing that," Cheney said of McCarthy's visit to Trump during an episode of David Axelrod's "The Axe Files" podcast, which was taped Saturday afternoon as part of a University of Chicago alumni weekend event. "And I asked him why he had done it, and he said, well, he had just been in the neighborhood, essentially."
House Republicans ousted Cheney from her leadership position last month over her public rejection of Trump's lie that he won the election -- an ouster that McCarthy supported. Cheney, the daughter of former Vice President Dick Cheney, has repeatedly clashed with McCarthy, who has tried to align himself with Trump, and subsequently the Republican base, going into the 2022 midterms.
Cheney's Saturday remarks underscored her commitment to decrying Trump's baseless claims of election fraud and characterizations of the riot, despite losing her place in leadership over her stance. Trump continued to advance falsehoods about the election Saturday night when speaking to the North Carolina Republican Party, crushing the hopes of Republicans who want him to keep a stricter policy focus as Republicans go on offense in 2022.
"As I said, I think what Donald Trump did is the most dangerous thing, the most egregious violation of an oath of office of any president in our history," Cheney said earlier Saturday. "And so the idea that a few weeks after he did that, the leader of the Republicans in the House would be at Mar-a-Lago, essentially, you know, pleading with him to to somehow come back into the fold, or whatever it was he was doing, to me was was inexcusable."
Cheney also compared Trump's rhetoric to that of the Chinese Communist Party, arguing that his casting doubt on the federal election system was comparable to efforts by the group to discredit American democracy.
"When you listen to Donald Trump talk now, when you hear the language he's using now, it is essentially the same things that the Chinese Communist Party, for example, says about the United States and our democracy," she said.
"When he says that our system doesn't work ... when he suggests that it's, you know, incapable of conveying the will of the people, you know, that somehow it's failed -- those are the same things that the Chinese government says about us," Cheney continued. "And and it's very dangerous and damaging ... and it's not true."
McCarthy has changed his tune regarding Trump's accountability for the January 6 riot, which resulted in more than 100 police officers injured, halted Congress' counting of the Electoral College votes for more than five hours, and forced lawmakers into lockdown when pro-Trump rioters overran the US Capitol Police. A week after the riot, McCarthy said that while he didn't support impeaching Trump, he "bears responsibility for Wednesday's attack on Congress by mob rioters."
But about two weeks later, the California Republican visited Trump at Mar-a-Lago, where the two Republicans discussed strategy for winning the House majority in next year's midterms, according to a readout of the meeting provided by Trump's Political Action Committee Save America. CNN reported at the time that Trump was focusing his political energy on targeting Cheney.
In May, McCarthy announced his opposition to forming a bipartisan commission to investigate the January 6 attack, an effort that failed in the Senate later that month when Senate Republicans blocked it.
While McCarthy backed Cheney in her first leadership vote in February after her vote to impeach Trump, their relationship crumbled as Cheney continued to speak out against the former President's grip on the GOP. McCarthy backed her opponent, Rep. Elise Stefanik of New York, who ultimately beat Cheney in the vote for House Republican conference chair last month.
CNN's Hannah Rabinowitz, Marshall Cohen, Jeremy Herb, Michael Warren, Devon M. Sayers, Jamie Gangel, Ryan Nobles, Manu Raju, Annie Grayer and Lauren Fox contributed to this report.
https://edition.cnn.com/2021/06/06/politics/cheney-trump-dangerous-thing-axe-files/index.html
Texas bakery sells out of goods after backlash for its Pride rainbow cookies
Confections saw a surge of support after bakery lost orders for posting a message in support of LGBTQ
Adam Gabbatt
@adamgabbatt
Mon 7 Jun 2021 14.22 BST
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2021/jun/07/texas-bakery-pride-rainbow-cookies-backlash-then-support
A small Texas bakery which lost orders and Facebook followers after posting a message in support of the LGBTQ community sold out its inventory two days in a row over the weekend, after a surge of support from around the world.
Confections, in Lufkin, east Texas, said it had suffered a backlash after posting a photo on 2 June of a rainbow-decorated cookie in the shape of a heart, accompanied by the message: “More LOVE. Less hate. Happy Pride to all our LGBTQ friends! All lovers of cookies and happiness are welcome here.”
https://www.facebook.com/permalink.php?story_fbid=5550671291672769&id=157581020981850
The message, marking Pride month which runs through June, was followed up by a more solemn post the next day.
“Today has been hard. Really hard,” Confections wrote. “We lost a significant amount of followers because of a rainbow heart cookie we posted.
“We received a very hateful message on our business page canceling a large order (5dz) of summer themed cookies for tomorrow morning (that we just finished decorating) because of a rainbow heart cookie we posted.”
“My heart is heavy. Honestly I never thought a post that literally said more love less hate would result in this kind of backlash to a very small business that is struggling to stay afloat and spread a little cheer through baked goods.”
The bakery added that it now had “an over abundance” of cookies available for sale, but could hardly have expected what happened next. The post attracted more than 11,000 likes, from people around the world, with people more local to east Texas promising to visit the bakery.
Many duly did attend, and a photo posted by Confections showed a line of customers stretching down the street outside the business. On Saturday, Confections returned to Facebook to share some good news.
“We’ve sold out,” the bakery wrote, adding that the team were “just so humbled and grateful and moved by this outpouring of love”.
Confections said after it sold out of its baked goods, some customers had lingered and donated money, which it said would go towards local animal rescues.
As the company scrambled to respond to the thousands of goodwill messages sent across Facebook and Instagram, co-owner Miranda Dolder wrote a comment to those who had shown support.
“Thank you!” Dolder wrote.
“More love, less hate. Always.”
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2021/jun/07/texas-bakery-pride-rainbow-cookies-backlash-then-support
We are running out of time to reach deal to save natural world, says UN talks chair
Warning comes amid fears of further delays to Kunming summit, which aims to agree on curbing destruction of ecosystems
Patrick Greenfield
@pgreenfielduk
Mon 7 Jun 2021 08.00 BST
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2021/jun/07/age-of-extinction-running-out-of-time-to-reach-deal-to-save-natural-world-says-un-talks-chair
The world is running out of time to reach an ambitious deal to stem the destruction of the natural world, the co-chair of negotiations for a crucial UN wildlife summit has warned, amid fears of a third delay to the talks.
Negotiators are scheduled to meet in Kunming, China, in October for Cop15, the biggest biodiversity summit in a decade, to reach a hoped-for Paris-style agreement on preventing wildlife extinctions and the human-driven destruction of the planet’s ecosystems.
The summit was meant to take place in October last year but has been delayed twice due to the coronavirus pandemic.
Basile van Havre, a co-chair for the UN convention on biological diversity (CBD) negotiations, has raised the prospect of a third delay to the Kunming summit, which he fears would threaten the ambition of the biodiversity targets for this decade.
Van Havre said countries must meet in person for preparatory talks for at least two weeks if the biodiversity summit is to go ahead in China. He warned the talks were unlikely without a major push on vaccinations for delegates in developing countries and, given China’s restrictive travel policy, also called for another country to step up and host preparatory talks to help the process stick to the current schedule.
“In my view, the time has come to roll up our sleeves and put a practical plan on the table or face another delay. We need a proper plan,” Van Havre said. “If we need to delay by a few months, fine – everyone can understand that. But let’s give ourselves a full plan that enables us to meet the deadline and not wait for things to magically happen.
“If we’re not going to get together in the short term, we cannot have an ambitious agreement.”
Negotiators are approaching the end of gruelling virtual scientific and financial discussions for the agreement, which have been held six days a week for three hours. Timezone clashes have meant that some negotiators have been participating in talks in the early hours.
“I really feel for people that come from small island states in the Pacific where the negotiation is taking place at night. The lady representing Palau said she was negotiating at night and doing her job during the day, which is not what we had in mind,” Van Havre said, emphasising the importance of meeting in person.
A decision is expected on the next steps for the Kunming summit in mid-June.
Li Shuo, a policy adviser for Greenpeace China who has been following biodiversity negotiations closely, said it was clear decisions had to be made face to face, not online.
“The virtual talks are not flawless; they have helped advance the discussion. The problem is there is just so much work. They are only doing three hours a day – it is simply not enough time,” Li said.
“It is not likely that China will allow thousands of diplomats to come with the pandemic. What if someone tested positive on the second day of the Cop? A normal Cop15 in October that completes all its major tasks are difficult.”
Resource extraction, agricultural production and pollution are driving what some scientists believe is the sixth mass extinction of life on Earth, with 1 million species at risk of disappearing largely as the result of human activity. The world has never met a single UN target to prevent the destruction of nature.
Find more age of extinction coverage here, and follow biodiversity reporters Phoebe Weston and Patrick Greenfield on Twitter for all the latest news and features
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2021/jun/07/age-of-extinction-running-out-of-time-to-reach-deal-to-save-natural-world-says-un-talks-chair
The stone age didn’t end for the lack of stones and the oil age won’t end for the lack of oil.
Gernot Wagner
Gernot Wagner is a climate economist. His research, writing, and teaching focus on climate risks and climate policy.
https://gwagner.com/bio/
Republicans pledge allegiance to fossil fuels like it’s still the 1950s
Republican-led states are threatening retaliation against banks that refuse to lend to coal, oil and gas companies in effort to delay transition to clean energy
Oliver Milman @olliemilman
Mon 7 Jun 2021 10.00 BST
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2021/jun/07/republicans-fossil-fuels-coal
Joe Biden may be pressing for 2021 to be a transformational year in tackling the climate crisis, but Republicans arrayed in opposition to his agenda have dug in around a unifying rallying theme – that the fossil fuel industry should be protected at almost any cost.
For many experts and environmentalists, the Republican stance is a shockingly retrograde move that flies in the face of efforts to fight global heating and resembles a head in the sand approach to the realities of a changing American economy.
In a recent letter sent to John Kerry, Biden’s climate envoy, more than a dozen Republican state treasurers accused the administration of pressuring banks to not lend to coal, oil and gas companies, adding that such a move would “eliminate the fossil fuel industry in our country” in order to appease the US president’s “radical political preferences”.
The letter raised the extraordinary possibility of Republican-led states penalizing banks that refuse to fund projects that worsen the climate crisis by pulling assets from them. Riley Moore, treasurer of the coal heartland state of West Virginia, said “undue pressure” was being put on banks by the Biden administration that could end financing of fossil fuels and “devastate West Virginia and put thousands of families out of work”.
“If a bank or lending institution says it is going to do something that could cause significant economic harm to our state … then I need to take that into account when I consider what banks we do business with,” Moore, who has assets of about $18bn under his purview, told the Guardian. “If they are going to attack our industries, jobs, economy and way of life, then I am going to fight back.”
The shunning of banks in this way would almost certainly face a hefty legal response but the threat is just the latest eye-catching Republican gambit aimed at propping up a fossil fuel industry that will have to be radically pared back if the US is to slash its planet-heating emissions in half this decade, as Biden has vowed.
In Louisiana, Republicans have embarked upon a quixotic and probably doomed attempt to make the state a “fossil fuel sanctuary” jurisdiction that does not follow federal pollution rules.
In Texas, the Republican governor, Greg Abbott, has instructed his agencies to challenge the “hostile attack” launched by Biden against the state’s oil and gas industries while Republicans in Wyoming have even set up a legal fund to sue other states that refuse to take its coal.
The messaging appears to be filtering down to the Republican electorate, with new polling by Yale showing support for clean energy among GOP voters has dropped dramatically over the past 18 months.
The stone age didn’t end for the lack of stones and the oil age won’t end for the lack of oil.
Gernot Wagner
But critics say Republicans are engaged in a futile attempt to resurrect an economic vision more at home in the 1950s, rather than deal with a contemporary reality where the plummeting cost of wind and solar is propelling record growth in renewables and a cavalcade of countries are striving to cut emissions to net zero and, in the case of some including the UK and Germany, completely eliminate coal.
“We are seeing desperate attempts to delay the inevitable, to squeeze one more drop of oil or lump of coal out of the ground before this transition,” said Gernot Wagner, a climate economist at New York University. “They are looking to go back to a prior time, but the trend if absolutely clear. The stone age didn’t end for the lack of stones and the oil age won’t end for the lack of oil.”
The Republican backlash is characterized by a large dose of political posturing, according to Wagner. “If you have aspirations of higher office in some states, you just want to signal you will sue those hippie liberals,” he said. “These are delay tactics and some of them are very ham-fisted.”
The US emerged from the second world war with more than half a million coalminers but this workforce has since dwindled to barely 40,000 people, amid mass automation and utilities switching to cheap sources of gas. Large quantities of jobs are set to be created in renewable energy, but some places built upon fossil fuels risk being left behind.
Biden has proposed a huge infrastructure plan which would, the president says, help retrain and retool regions of the US long economically dependent upon mining and drilling. The administration has promised a glut of high-paying jobs in expanding the clean energy sector and plugging abandoned oil and gas wells, all while avoiding the current ruinous health impacts of air pollution and conditions like black lung.
But unions have expressed wariness over this transition, with Republicans also highly skeptical. The promise to retrain miners is a “patronizing pipe dream of the liberal elites completely devoid from reality”, said Moore, who added that previous promises of renewable energy jobs have not materialized. “And now they are trying to sell us on the same failed idea again.”
However the shift to cleaner energy happens, it’s clear the transition is under way – last year renewable energy consumption eclipsed coal for the first time in 130 years and US government projections show renewables’ overall share doubling by the middle of the century. A key question is whether the completion of this switch will be delayed long enough to risk triggering the worst impacts of disastrous global heating.
“The Republican response is predictable and pathetic. It is from a very old playbook,” said Judith Enck, who was a regional administrator for the Environmental Protection Agency under Barack Obama. “The party will cling to fossil fuels to the bitter end. It’s so sad because so many Republican voters are damaged by climate change, if you look at deaths from the heat or wildfires we are seeing in California. But the party right now is just completely beholden to the fossil fuel industry.”
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2021/jun/07/republicans-fossil-fuels-coal
Boko Haram leader killed on direct orders of Islamic State
Isis ordered death of Abubakar Shekau over concerns about indiscriminate targeting of ‘believers’
Jason Burke Africa correspondent
Mon 7 Jun 2021 10.01 BST
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/jun/07/boko-haram-leader-abubakar-shekau-killed-on-direct-orders-of-islamic-state
The death of the leader of the Nigerian militant Islamist group Boko Haram has been confirmed by a rival extremist faction that said it carried out the killing on the direct orders of Islamic State’s leadership thousands of miles away in the Middle East.
Abubakar Shekau, one of the most infamous leaders of Islamic militant groups anywhere in the world, died last month after detonating an explosive device while being pursued by fighters from the Islamic State West African Province (Iswap). The Iswap fighters had stormed the Sambisa forest, a swath of strategically important dense forest in Nigeria’s north-east, which was Shekau’s base.
His death both delighted and embarrassed Nigerian and international security services, who spent a decade devoting huge resources on hunting down Shekau.
That the operation against Shekau was launched on the direct orders of the leadership of Isis in the Middle East, which is concerned by Boko Haram’s indiscriminate targeting of “believers”, underlines the continuing global reach of the group through its affiliates and the possibility of further expansion in Africa.
Islamic extremist factions across the Sahel have intensified attacks in recent months, bringing fresh levels of violence in some regions. More than 120 villagers died in an attack in Burkina Faso last week in one of the bloodiest such massacres yet recorded. No group has claimed responsibility.
On an audio tape obtained by Humangle, a respected local news website with strong contacts among insurgents and counter-terrorist agencies, the Iswap leader, Abu Musab al-Barnawi, can be heard telling followers that the death of Shekau came in response to orders from the new leader of Islamic State, Abu Ibrahim al-Hashimi al-Qurashi.
“[Shekau] was someone who committed unimaginable terrorism. How many has he wasted? How many has he killed? How many has he terrorised? But Allah left him alone and prolonged his life. When it was time, Allah set out brave soldiers after receiving orders from the leader of the believers,” he said, according to a report on the Humangle website.
Barnawi’s faction broke away from Boko Haram in 2016 following personal, religious and strategic disputes. The faction was adopted later by Islamic State’s leadership in Iraq and Syria as its affiliate in the area after Shekau proved impossible to control.
Barnawi, who is seen as a relative moderate among extremist leaders in the region, had been given the leadership role by an “auditing mission” sent from the Middle East by Isis earlier this year, said Vincent Fouche, an expert in Islamist extremism in Nigeria with the International Crisis Group.
Shekau initially escaped the attack on the Sambisa forest, hiding from Iswap fighters for five days, Barnawi said in his statement.
When found, Shekau escaped again, was caught once more and then refused an offer to surrender. Though most of his followers are thought to have either disbanded or switched allegiance, at least one of the various factions that made up Boko Haram is resisting Barnawi’s authority.
Shekau was responsible for using young women and girls as suicide bombers as well as the abduction of 300 female students from a college in 2014, in an incident that made global headlines. His unpredictability and tendency towards the most extreme and violent strategies explain the orders given for his elimination.
The death of the former street boy leaves Iswap as the unrivalled Islamic extremist group in the Lake Chad basin region.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/jun/07/boko-haram-leader-abubakar-shekau-killed-on-direct-orders-of-islamic-state
The Life and Death of Your Jeans
A new book enters that category known as “fashion horror stories.” Something to consider before you shop.
By Vanessa Friedman
June 3, 2021
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/06/03/style/jeans-fashion-sustainability-.html
Early on in “Unraveled,” a new book about the dark underbelly of fashion, the author, Maxine Bédat, describes walking through a factory in Guangdong, China, that specializes in acid-washing jeans, picking her way over dark puddles of “iridescent, bubbling content” that had spilled from industrial washing machines and was sloshing around on the floor.
This is a hundred pages or so before she is warned not to wear makeup to a landfill in Kpone, an area in Ghana where 2.8 million items of castoff clothing are added per week, because “the chemicals in the landfill would make mascara congeal on my eyelashes.”
The book is the latest entry in a growing genre of nonfiction: the consumption horror story. It’s as scary as any adult tale Roald Dahl ever wrote. (Indeed, if he were alive today, he might well imagine a fashionista who got swallowed by a mountain of discarded finery.)
But as we prepare for the re-emergence, and how and where we shop once again becomes a topic of conversation, is it scary enough?
Subtitled “The Life and Death of a Garment,” “Unraveled” purports to trace the story of a pair of jeans from the farm where the cotton is grown through its spinning, dyeing, cutting, sewing, shipping and, ultimately, disposal.
It’s a journey that, according to Ms. Bédat, crisscrosses the world from America to Asia and back again before ending in Africa, and involves side trips into advocacy, the history of labor unions, marketing psychology and economic policy.
Really, though, “jeans” are more of a symbol in the book. The author doesn’t actually deconstruct the life of, say, your 501s, but rather uses denim as a quasi-synonym for “piece of clothing most people own” and a tool to illustrate how surprisingly hard it is to answer the seemingly innocuous questions: Where and how are my clothes made? How do they get to me? What happens when I’m done with them? Not to mention the pretty awful reality of the response when it finally comes.
In this, it joins Lucy Siegle’s “To Die For: Is Fashion Wearing Out the World?,” Elizabeth Cline’s “Overdressed: The Shockingly High Cost of Cheap Fashion” and, most recently, Dana Thomas’s “Fashionopolis: The Price of Fast Fashion and the Future of Clothes” (along with documentaries like “The True Cost”).
All of which illuminate the damage being done to both humans and the environment by the ever-churning cycle of cheap shirts and skirts and slip dresses; the growing addiction to the promise of different and better embodied by an outfit fresh from the box; and the tendency to toss the old in the trash. Or the donation bin.
Yet at this point, it’s not really news to anyone that fashion is a major contributor to climate change. For years one of the biggest pieces of online news was the data point (now largely disavowed yet somehow still being parroted by many) that fashion was the second greatest polluter on the planet.
Ever since the Rana Plaza garment district disaster in 2013, there has been increased scrutiny on the exploitation of cheap labor by global fashion brands. Over the same period, brands both high and mass have become fluent in (and florid with) the language of sustainability, each vying to be more carbon neutral than the next.
And that was before the pandemic, which caused the fashion world to go into free fall. Stores were closed, ateliers darkened, fabric mills shuttered, orders for fall clothes canceled and spring shipments turned away at department store loading bays. With so much tragedy and fear in the world, with people hunkered down in their homes, clothes were the absolute least of the matter.
At the same time, stories leaked about garment workers in faraway countries in desperate straits as the losses were passed down the supply chain.
Predictions were made that this was finally the moment the industry would grapple with the system it had created; that a reset was on the way. Designers and retailers and editors convened. Maybe, they said, this is our wake-up call. We couldn’t change our patterns of overproduction and overconsumption and markdowns and waste, so nature has changed them for us. Maybe we should seize the day and reboot the system in a more rational way.
There were calls for President Biden to install a fashion czar to corral the industry. (So far, that has come to naught.) High-end designers began to discuss the joys of upcycling and using their own dead stock. Much was made of the booming resale market and Gen Z’s migration to used clothes and away from fast fashion.
These days, however, all anyone can talk about is the Great Unmasking, when we will all be partying like it’s 1921 and dressing for it. The brief hubbub about reforming sales and seasons has gone quiet. All that pent-up social energy is also, apparently, potential shopping energy. How it is wielded will determine whether any of this really sticks.
Because now, much in the way a sale price tag can seduce us into thinking we should buy a garment we might otherwise pass up, the fact that a dress is made from, say, recycled polyester or orange peel has become part of its allure.
Just as the opportunity to recycle an old garment becomes part of the rationale for replacing it, because in doing so you will not be adding to your closet — even though, as Ms. Bédat makes clear, you will still be adding to the volume of clothes in the world, which adds to the problem. Personal math and public math don’t always equate.
And one of the unforeseen, ironic results of the genuinely valuable conversation and consciousness raising that books like “Unraveled” have spurred is that sustainability itself has been transformed into a selling point.
That may be the most horrifying development of all.
Vanessa Friedman is The Times's fashion director and chief fashion critic. She was previously the fashion editor of the Financial Times. @VVFriedman
A version of this article appears in print on June 3, 2021, Section D, Page 3 of the New York edition with the headline: Jeans Are the Villain of a Horror Story. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/06/03/style/jeans-fashion-sustainability-.html
Tasked to Fight Climate Change, a Secretive U.N. Agency Does the Opposite
Behind closed doors, shipbuilders and miners can speak on behalf of governments while regulating an industry that pollutes as much as all of America’s coal plants.
By Matt Apuzzo and Sarah Hurtes
June 3, 2021
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/06/03/world/europe/climate-change-un-international-maritime-organization.html
LONDON — During a contentious meeting over proposed climate regulations last fall, a Saudi diplomat to the obscure but powerful International Maritime Organization switched on his microphone to make an angry complaint: One of his colleagues was revealing the proceedings on Twitter as they happened.
It was a breach of the secrecy at the heart of the I.M.O., a clubby United Nations agency on the banks of the Thames that regulates international shipping and is charged with reducing emissions in an industry that burns an oil so thick it might otherwise be turned into asphalt. Shipping produces as much carbon dioxide as all of America’s coal plants combined.
Internal documents, recordings and dozens of interviews reveal what has gone on for years behind closed doors: The organization has repeatedly delayed and watered down climate regulations, even as emissions from commercial shipping continue to rise, a trend that threatens to undermine the goals of the 2016 Paris climate accord.
One reason for the lack of progress is that the I.M.O. is a regulatory body that is run in concert with the industry it regulates. Shipbuilders, oil companies, miners, chemical manufacturers and others with huge financial stakes in commercial shipping are among the delegates appointed by many member nations. They sometimes even speak on behalf of governments, knowing that public records are sparse, and that even when the organization allows journalists into its meetings, it typically prohibits them from quoting people by name.
An agency lawyer underscored that point last fall in addressing the Saudi complaint. “This is a private meeting,” warned the lawyer, Frederick J. Kenney.
Next week, the organization is scheduled to enact its first greenhouse gas rules since Paris — regulations that do not cut emissions, have no enforcement mechanism and leave key details shrouded in secrecy. No additional proposals are far along in the rule-making process, meaning additional regulations are likely five years or more away.
Image A container ship sailing out of Hong Kong last year. The industry burns an oil so thick it might otherwise be turned into asphalt.
The reason, records show, is that some of the same countries that signed the Paris accords have repeatedly diluted efforts to rein in shipping emissions — with industry representatives in their ears at every step. Shippers aligned themselves with developing nations like Brazil and India against setting emissions caps. China, home to four of the five busiest ports in the world, argued for years that it was too soon to make changes or even set targets.
Often, what politicians say publicly does not match their closed-door posture. In 2019, for example, when the Chilean president, Sebastián Piñera, urged world leaders to make “more ambitious climate commitments,” his diplomats in London worked to defeat shipping speed limits, a measure that would have reduced carbon emissions.
The stakes are high. Shipping, unlike other industries, is not easily regulated nation-by-nation. A Japanese-built tanker, for instance, might be owned by a Greek company and sailed by an Indian crew from China to Australia — all under the flag of Panama. That’s why, when world leaders omitted international shipping from the Paris agreement, responsibility fell to the I.M.O., which has standardized the rules since 1948.
So if the I.M.O. does not curb shipping emissions, it is unclear who will. And for now, the agency is not rushing to change.
“They have gone out of their way to try to block or water down or discourage real conversation,” said Albon Ishoda, a Marshall Islands diplomat.
His tiny Pacific island nation is among those that have benefited from, and perpetuated, the industry’s hold on the agency. The country effectively sold its diplomatic seat in London to a private American company decades ago.
But global warming changed things. Seas are rising. Homes are washing away. Much of the nation could become unlivable in the coming decade.
Now, the Marshall Islands are putting forward a moonshot environmental plan, a carbon tax that would penalize polluters. It is a shot across the bow of the I.M.O.’s industrial and political forces.
And the Marshallese are moving to reclaim their diplomatic seat and speak for themselves.
“My voice is coming from my ancestors, who saw the ocean as something that brought us wealth,” Kitlang Kabua, the Marshallese minister leading the effort. “Today we’re seeing it as something that will bring our ultimate death.”
Watered Down from the Get-Go
The Marshallese are unlikely disrupters at the maritime organization.
In 1990, the nation’s first president signed a deal with a company, International Registries Inc., to create a tax-friendly, low-cost way for ships to sail under the Marshall Islands flag.
The company, based in Virginia, did all the work and, on paper, the Marshall Islands became home to one of the world’s largest fleets. The government shared in the revenue — roughly $8 million a year as of recently, one official said.
Things got thorny, however, when the foreign minister, Tony de Brum, traveled to the I.M.O. in 2015. His stories of his vanishing homeland had given urgency to the Paris talks and he expected a similar reception in London.
He and his team had no idea what they were walking into.
When Mr. Ishoda arrived in island business attire — floral shirt, trousers and a suit jacket — he said security sent him back to his hotel for a tie.
“The I.M.O. is effectively a closed-door gathering of old male sailors,” said Thom Woodroofe, an analyst who accompanied Mr. de Brum to London. “It’s surprising it doesn’t still allow smoking.”
Mr. de Brum, too, was almost denied a seat. International Registries, which represented the Marshall Islands on the I.M.O., initially refused to yield to the foreign minister, Mr. Woodroofe recalled.
At United Nations climate meetings, countries are typically represented by senior politicians and delegations of government officials. At the maritime organization’s environmental committee, however, one in four delegates comes from industry, according to separate analyses by The New York Times and the nonprofit group Influence Map.
Representatives of the Brazilian mining company Vale, one of the industry’s heaviest carbon polluters and a major sea-based exporter, sit as government advisers. So does the French oil giant Total, along with many shipowner associations. These arrangements allow companies to influence policy and speak on behalf of governments.
Connections can be hard to spot. Luiz Gylvan Meira Filho sat on the Brazilian delegation in 2017 and 2018 as a University of Sao Paulo scientist. But he also worked at a Vale-funded research organization and, during his second year, was a paid Vale consultant. In an interview, he described his role as mutually beneficial: Brazilian officials relied on his expertise, and Vale covered his costs.
“Sometimes you cannot tell the difference. Is this actually the position of a nation or the position of the industry?” said David Paul, a Marshallese senator who attended an I.M.O. meeting in 2018.
Hundreds of other industry representatives are accredited observers and can speak at meetings. Their numbers far exceed those of the approved environmental groups. The agency rejected an accreditation request by the Environmental Defense Fund in 2018.
Industry officials and the maritime organization say such arrangements give a voice to the experts. “If you don’t involve the people who are actually going to have to deliver, then you’re going to get a poor outcome,” said Guy Platten, secretary general of the International Chamber of Shipping.
Mr. de Brum tried to persuade these industry officials and diplomats to set ambitious emissions targets over the following eight months.
“Time is short, and it is not our friend,” he told delegates in 2015, according to notes from the meeting. (The Times independently obtained meeting records and never agreed not to quote people.)
But I.M.O.’s secretary general at the time, Koji Sekimizu of Japan, openly opposed strict emissions regulation as a hindrance to economic growth. And an informal bloc of countries and industry groups helped drag out the goal-setting process for three years.
Documents show that China, Brazil and India, in particular, threw up repeated roadblocks: In 2015, it was too soon to consider a strategy. In 2016, it was premature to discuss setting targets. In 2017, they lacked the data to discuss long-term goals.
The question of data comes up often. Adm. Luiz Henrique Caroli, Brazil’s senior I.M.O. representative, said he does not believe the studies showing rising emissions. Brazil wants to cut emissions, he said, but not before further study on the economic effect.
“We want to do that, this reduction, in a controlled way,” he said in an interview.
The Cook Islands, another Pacific archipelago, make a similar argument. Like the Marshalls, they face rising seas and an uncertain future. But the more immediate concerns are jobs and cost of living, said Joshua Mitchell, of the country’s foreign office. “Existential questions have to be balanced against the priorities of the country in the moment,” he said.
Megan Darby, a journalist for Climate Home News, said she was suspended from maritime meetings after quoting a Cook Islands diplomat.
The I.M.O. almost never puts environmental policies to a vote, favoring instead an informal consensus-building. That effectively gives vocal opponents blocking power, and even some of the agency’s defenders acknowledge that it favors minimally acceptable steps over decisive action.
So, when delegates finally set goals in 2018, Mr. de Brum’s ambition had been whittled away.
The Marshall Islands suggested a target of zero emissions “by the second half of the century” — meaning by 2050. Industry representatives offered a slightly different goal: Decarbonization should occur “within” the second half of the century, a one-word difference that amounted to a 50-year extension.
Soon, though, the delegates agreed, without a vote, to eliminate zero-emissions targets entirely.
What remained were two key goals:
First, the industry would try to improve fuel efficiency by at least 40 percent. This was largely a mirage. The target was set so low that, by some calculations, it was reached nearly the moment it was announced.
Second, the agency aimed to cut emissions at least in half by 2050. But even this watered-down goal is proving unreachable. The agency’s own data say emissions may rise by 30 percent.
Compromised Away
When delegates met last October — five years after Mr. de Brum’s speech — the organization had not taken any action. Proposals like speed limits had been debated and rejected.
What remained was what several delegates called the “refrigerator rating” — a score that, like those on American appliances, identified the clean and dirty ships.
European delegates insisted that, for the system to work, low-scoring ships must eventually be prohibited from sailing.
China and its allies wanted no such consequence.
So Sveinung Oftedal of Norway, the group’s chairman, told France and China to meet separately and compromise.
Delegates worked across time zones, meeting over teleconferences because of the Covid-19 pandemic. Shipping industry officials said they weighed in through the night.
The Marshallese were locked out.
“We’re always being told ‘We hear you,’” Mr. Ishoda said. “But when it comes to the details of the conversation, we’re told ‘We don’t need you to contribute.’”
Ultimately, France ceded to nearly all of China’s requests, records show. The dirtiest ships would not be grounded. Shipowners would file plans saying they intended to improve, would not be required to actually improve.
German delegates were so upset that they threatened to oppose the deal, likely triggering a cascade of defections, according to three people involved in the talks. But European Union officials rallied countries behind the compromise, arguing that Europe could not be seen as standing in the way of even limited progress.
“At I.M.O., that is as always the choice,” said Damien Chevallier, the French negotiator. “We have the choice to have nothing, or just to have a first step.”
All of this happened in secret. The I.M.O.’s summary of the meeting called it a “major step forward.” Natasha Brown, a spokeswoman, said it would empower customers and advocacy groups. “We know from consumer goods that the rating system works,” she said.
But the regulation includes another caveat: The I.M.O. will not publish the scores, letting shipping companies decide whether to say how dirty their ships are.
A Storm on the Horizon
Ms. Kabua, the Marshallese minister, is under no illusions that reclaiming the diplomatic seat will lead to a climate breakthrough.
But if it works, she said, it might inspire other countries with private registries to do the same. Countries could speak for themselves rather than through a corporate filter.
Regardless of the outcome, the political winds are shifting. The European Union is moving to include shipping in its emissions-trading system. The United States, after years of being minor players at the agency, is re-engaging under President Biden and recently suggested it may tackle shipping emissions itself.
Both would be huge blows to the I.M.O., which has long insisted that it alone regulate shipping.
Suddenly, industry officials say they are eager to consider things like fuel taxes or carbon.
“There’s much more of a sense of momentum and crisis,” said Mr. Platten, the industry representative. “You can argue about, ‘Are we late to it,’ and all the rest. But it is palpable.”
Behind closed doors, though, resistance remains. At a climate meeting last winter, recordings show that the mere suggestion that shipping should become sustainable sparked an angry response.
“Such statements show a lack of respect for the industry,” said Kostas G. Gkonis, the director of the trade group Intercargo.
And just last week, delegates met in secret to debate what should constitute a passing grade under the new rating system. Under pressure from China, Brazil and others, the delegates set the bar so low that emissions can continue to rise — at roughly the same pace as if there had been no regulation at all.
Delegates agreed to revisit the issue in five years.
Matt Apuzzo is a two-time Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter based in Brussels. He has covered law enforcement and security matters for more than a decade and is the co-author of the book “Enemies Within.” @mattapuzzo
A version of this article appears in print on June 4, 2021, Section A, Page 1 of the New York edition with the headline: Industry Ducks Efforts to Set Climate Rules. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe
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https://www.nytimes.com/2021/06/03/world/europe/climate-change-un-international-maritime-organization.html