(date: 2024-09-15 10:44:49)
@Miguel de Icaza Mastondon feed (date: 2024-09-15, from: Miguel de Icaza Mastondon feed)
The European mind cannot comprehend this:
“The University of California just announced a list of military weaponry
it wants in order to escalate its warfare on its students:
3000
rounds of pepper munitions
500 rounds of 40mm impact
munitions
12 drones
9 grenade launchers
Read the full list here: https://regents.universityofcalifornia.edu/regmeet/sept24/c1.pdf “
https://mastodon.social/@Migueldeicaza/113142712459870354
@Dave Winer’s linkblog (date: 2024-09-15, from: Dave Winer’s linkblog)
I used to think of Twitter as a coral reef, but its role as a world wide notification system is fading, and we haven't replaced it with anything. I wrote this in 2007 when the utility of Twitter was just becoming apparent.
http://scripting.com/stories/2007/04/28/twitterAsCoralReef.html
@Miguel de Icaza Mastondon feed (date: 2024-09-15, from: Miguel de Icaza Mastondon feed)
Every argument for the Oxford comma relies on propaganda built on the framing construct.
If you need the Oxford comma to resolve and ambiguity, you can also rewrite your sentence to not introduce the ambiguity in the first place.
And avoids the ugly-ass looking trailing comma.
https://mastodon.social/@Migueldeicaza/113142500712692142
date: 2024-09-15, from: VOA News USA
BANGKOK — Military leaders from the U.S. and China met in Beijing for routine talks that only resumed in January after being suspended for two years as ties between the two countries soured. The meetings ended Sunday and officials discussed ongoing issues such as Taiwan, the Russia-Ukraine war and clashes in the South China Sea.
Michael Chase, deputy assistant secretary of defense for China, Taiwan and Mongolia led a delegation to engage in the bilateral Defense Policy Coordination Talks, which were last held in January. While the talks weren’t expected to resolve long-standing differences in stances over issues ranging from South China Sea claims to Taiwan, the U.S. has continued to push for the discussions to avoid conflict.
The meetings were held after Chase attended the Xiangshan forum in Beijing, a defense forum that is China’s answer to the Shangri-La Dialogue.
Communication between the two militaries broke off in 2021, as U.S.-China tensions ratcheted up over widening differences on issues such as Taiwan’s sovereignty, the origin of COVID-19 and economic issues.
Beijing has ignored U.S. requests to engage in the past, especially over intercepts between U.S. and Chinese aircraft and ships. While communications resumed after U.S. President Joe Biden and Chinese President Xi Jinping met in San Francisco last November, it is unclear whether the talks could continue as the U.S. is poised for a presidential election.
In the bilateral talks, the two sides discussed China’s support for Russia during the ongoing Ukraine war, as well as China’s actions in the South China Sea, said a U.S. senior defense official briefing reporters on the meetings. On Sunday, the Philippine ship at a disputed shoal, BRP Teresa Magbanua, had left to resupply and provide medical care to its crew members. The defense official said that they were “watching further developments there very closely.”
China’s claims over the South China Sea have become increasingly assertive, with increasing clashes with the Philippine coast guard. In August, both sides accused each other over a collision between their ships which left gaping holes in the Philippine ships.
The maritime claims have meant clashes at sea, such as at the Sabina Shoal, which both China and the Philippines claim. China had blocked attempts to resupply the BRP Teresa Magbanua, in August, with a force of 40 ships.
The Philippines said it would replace the ship immediately, but the departure of the ship raises questions of whether China would seize the shoal. Filipino scientists had previously found submerged piles of crushed corals in its shallows, leading to concern that China may be preparing to build a structure to stake its claim.
China confirmed the departure of the ship, which it said, “infringed on China’s territorial sovereignty.”
“During this period, China had taken control measures against the ship in accordance with the law and multiple attempts by the Philippine side to forcibly resupply the ship had failed,” China Coast Guard spokesperson Liu Dejun said in a statement.
date: 2024-09-15, from: Liliputing
Lexar has introduced a new SD card with theoretical read speeds up to 1,700 MB/s and write speeds as high as 1,000 MB/s. But the word “theoretical” is doing a lot in that sentence, because right now there are no compatible devices on the market that will let you use the card at those speeds… […]
The post Lexar’s SD 8.0 card support speeds up to 1700 MB/s, but there’s nothing to use it with appeared first on Liliputing.
@Dave Winer’s linkblog (date: 2024-09-15, from: Dave Winer’s linkblog)
"Well, as I said, you’re going to hear a bunch of lies. And that’s not actually a surprising fact." Exactly right. That's why Trump lying is not news in 2024.
https://www.emptywheel.net/2024/09/15/how-kamala-harris-dodged-the-two-truths-problem/
date: 2024-09-15, from: VOA News USA
Washington — The Federal Reserve is gearing up to announce its first interest rate cut for more than four years on Wednesday, with policymakers expected to debate how big a move to make less than two months before the U.S. presidential election.
Senior officials at the U.S. central bank including Fed chair Jerome Powell have in recent weeks indicated that a rate cut is coming this month, as inflation eases toward the bank’s long-term target of two percent, and the labor market continues to cool.
The Fed, which has a dual mandate from Congress to act independently to ensure both stable prices and maximum sustainable employment, has repeatedly stressed it will make its decision on rate cuts based solely on the economic data.
But a cut on Wednesday could still cause headaches for Powell, as it would land shortly before the election, in which former Republican president Donald Trump is running against the current Democratic vice president, Kamala Harris.
“As much as I think the Fed tries to say that they’re not a political animal, we are in a really wild cycle right now,” Alicia Modestino, an associate professor of economics at Northeastern University, told AFP.
How big a cut?
The debate among policymakers on Tuesday and Wednesday this week will likely center on whether to move by 25 or 50 basis points.
However, a rate cut of any size would be the Fed’s first since March 2020, when it slashed rates to near-zero in order to support the US economy through the Covid-19 pandemic.
The Fed started hiking rates in 2022 in response to a surge in inflation, fueled largely by a post-pandemic supply crunch and the war in Ukraine.
It has held its key lending rate at a two-decade high of between 5.25 and 5.50 percent for the past 14 months, waiting for economic conditions to improve.
Now, with inflation falling, the labor market cooling, and the US economy still growing, policymakers have decided that conditions are ripe for a cut.
Policymakers are left with a choice: making a small 25 basis point cut to ease into things, or a more aggressive cut of 50 basis points, which would be helpful for the labor market but could also risk reigniting inflation.
“I think that in advance of the November meeting, there’s not quite enough data to say we’re in jeopardy on the employment side,” said Modestino, who was previously a senior economist at the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston.
Analysts see the smaller cut as a safe bet.
“We expect the Fed to cut by 25bp [basis points],” economists at Bank of America wrote in a recent note to clients.
“The Fed likes predictability,” Modestino from Northeastern said. “It’s good for markets, good for consumers, good for workers.”
“So a 25 basis point cut now, followed up by another 25 basis point cut in November after the next round of economic data, offers a somewhat smoother glide path for the economy,” she added.
How many cuts?
While analysts overwhelmingly expect the Fed to start cutting in September, there is less clarity about what comes next.
Economists at some banks, including Goldman Sachs, expect cuts totaling 75 basis points over the last three meetings of the year, while others see more aggressive cuts, like economists at Citi, who have 125 basis points of easing as their base case.
“The continued softening of the labor market is likely to provoke larger-sized cuts if not at this FOMC meeting then in November and December,” the Citi economists wrote in a recent note to clients, referring to the rate-setting Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC).
The Fed will shed some light on the issue on Wednesday, when it publishes the updated economic forecasts of its 19-member FOMC — including their rate cut expectations.
In June, FOMC members sharply reduced the number of cuts they had penciled in for this year from a median of three down to just one amid a small uptick in inflation.
But as inflation has fallen and the labor market has weakened, expectations of more cuts have grown.
Traders also see a greater-than 99 percent chance of at least four more cuts in 2025, which would bring the Fed’s key lending rate down to between 3.5 and 3.75 percent — 175 basis points below current levels.
@Dave Winer’s linkblog (date: 2024-09-15, from: Dave Winer’s linkblog)
NYT piece on Trump as star of The Apprentice.
@Miguel de Icaza Mastondon feed (date: 2024-09-15, from: Miguel de Icaza Mastondon feed)
Short four minute version:
https://youtu.be/a7cgzz5W8uM?si=pfKhFMDljkLZptXf
A good short complement to the “Israelism” documentary:
https://mastodon.social/@Migueldeicaza/113141692649600328
@Dave Winer’s linkblog (date: 2024-09-15, from: Dave Winer’s linkblog)
“Our job was to make him look legitimate, to make him look like there was something behind it, even though we pretty much all knew that there wasn’t,” one producer said.
date: 2024-09-15, from: VOA News USA
date: 2024-09-15, from: VOA News USA
CAPE CANAVERAL, Florida — A billionaire spacewalker returned to Earth with his crew on Sunday, ending a five-day trip that lifted them higher than anyone has traveled since NASA’s moonwalkers.
SpaceX’s capsule splashed down in the Gulf of Mexico near Florida’s Dry Tortugas in the predawn darkness, carrying tech entrepreneur Jared Isaacman, two SpaceX engineers and a former Air Force Thunderbird pilot.
They pulled off the first private spacewalk while orbiting nearly 740 kilometers above Earth, higher than the International Space Station and Hubble Space Telescope. Their spacecraft hit a peak altitude of 1,408 kilometers following Tuesday’s liftoff.
Isaacman became only the 264th person to perform a spacewalk since the former Soviet Union scored the first in 1965, and SpaceX’s Sarah Gillis the 265th. Until now, all spacewalks were done by professional astronauts.
“We are mission complete,” Isaacman radioed as the capsule bobbed in the water, awaiting the recovery team. Within an hour, all four were out of their spacecraft, pumping their fists with joy as they emerged onto the ship’s deck.
It was the first time SpaceX aimed for a splashdown near the Dry Tortugas, a cluster of islands 113 kilometers west of Key West. To celebrate the new location, SpaceX employees brought a big, green turtle balloon to Mission Control at company headquarters in Hawthorne, California. The company usually targets closer to the Florida coast, but two weeks of poor weather forecasts prompted SpaceX to look elsewhere.
During Thursday’s commercial spacewalk, the Dragon capsule’s hatch was open barely a half-hour. Isaacman emerged only up to his waist to briefly test SpaceX’s brand-new spacesuit followed by Gillis, who was knee-high as she flexed her arms and legs for several minutes. Gillis, a classically trained violinist, also held a performance in orbit earlier in the week.
The spacewalk lasted less than two hours, considerably shorter than those at the International Space Station. Most of that time was needed to depressurize the entire capsule and then restore the cabin air. Even SpaceX’s Anna Menon and Scott “Kidd” Poteet, who remained strapped in, wore spacesuits.
SpaceX considers the brief exercise a starting point to test spacesuit technology for future, longer missions to Mars.
This was Isaacman’s second chartered flight with SpaceX, with two more still ahead under his personally financed space exploration program named Polaris after the North Star. He paid an undisclosed sum for his first spaceflight in 2021, taking along contest winners and a pediatric cancer survivor while raising more than $250 million for St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital.
For the just completed so-called Polaris Dawn mission, the founder and CEO of the Shift4 credit card-processing company shared the cost with SpaceX. Isaacman won’t divulge how much he spent.
date: 2024-09-15, from: VOA News USA
ALBUQUERQUE, New Mexico — A bag of Cheetos gets dropped and left on the floor. Seems inconsequential, right?
Hardly.
Rangers at Carlsbad Caverns National Park in southern New Mexico describe it as a “world-changing” event for the tiny microbes and insects that call this specialized subterranean environment home. The bag could have been there a day or two or maybe just hours, but those salty morsels of processed corn made soft by thick humidity triggered the growth of mold on the cavern floor and on nearby cave formations.
“To the ecosystem of the cave it had a huge impact,” the park noted in a social media post, explaining that cave crickets, mites, spiders and flies soon organized to eat and disperse the foreign mess, essentially spreading the contamination.
The bright orange bag was spotted off trail by a ranger during one of the regular sweeps that park staff make through the Big Room, the largest single cave chamber by volume in North America, at the end of each day. They are looking for straggling visitors and any litter or other waste that might have been left behind on the paved trail.
The Big Room is a popular spot at Carlsbad Caverns. It is a magical expanse filled with towering stalagmites, dainty stalactites and clusters of cave popcorn.
Tons of trash
From this underground wonderland in New Mexico to lake shores in Nevada, tributaries along the Grand Canyon and lagoons in Florida, park rangers and volunteers collect tons of trash left behind by visitors each year as part of an ongoing battle to keep unique ecosystems from being compromised while still allowing visitors access.
According to the National Park Service, more than 300 million people visit the national parks each year, bringing in and generating nearly 70 million tons of trash, most of which ends up where it belongs - in garbage bins and recycling containers.
But for the rest of the discarded snack bags and other debris, it often takes work to round up the waste, and organizations like Leave No Trace have been pushing their message at trailheads and online.
At Carlsbad Caverns, volunteers comb the caverns collecting lint. One five-day effort netted as much as 50 pounds (22.68 kilograms). Rangers also have sweep packs and spill kits for the more delicate and sometimes nasty work that can include cleaning up human waste along the trail.
“It’s such a dark area, sometimes people don’t notice that it’s there. So they walk through it and it tracks it throughout the entire cave,” said Joseph Ward, a park guide who is working specifically on getting the “leave no trace” message out to park visitors and classrooms.
The rangers’ kits can include gloves, trash bags, water, bleach mixtures for decontamination, vacuums and even bamboo toothbrushes and tweezers for those hard-to-reach spots.
As for the spilled Cheetos, Ward told The Associated Press that could have been avoided because the park doesn’t allow food beyond the confines of the historic underground lunchroom.
Cheetos response
After the bag was discovered in July, cave specialists at the park settled on the best way to clean it up. Most of the mess was scooped up, and a toothbrush was used to remove rings of mold and fungi that had spread to nearby cave formations. It was a 20-minute job.
Some jobs can take hours and involve several park employees, Ward said.
Robert Melnick, professor emeritus at the University of Oregon, has been studying the cultural landscape of Carlsbad Caverns, including features like a historic wooden staircase that has become another breeding ground for exotic mold and fungi. He and his team submitted a report to the park in recent days that details those resources and makes recommendations for how the park can manage them in the future.
The balancing act for park managers at Carlsbad and elsewhere, Melnick said, is meeting the dual mandate of preserving and protecting landscapes while also making them accessible.
“I don’t quite know how you would monitor it except to constantly remind people that the underground, the caves, are a very, very sensitive natural environment,” he said.
Pleas to treat the caverns with respect are plastered on signs throughout the park, rangers give orientations to visitors before they go underground, and reminders of the dos and don’ts are printed on the back of each ticket stub.
But sometimes there is a disconnect between awareness and personal responsibility, said JD Tanner, director of education and training at Leave No Trace.
Personal stake is vital
Many people may be aware of the need to “keep it pristine,” but Tanner said the message doesn’t always translate into action or there is a lack of understanding that small actions — even leaving a piece of trash — can have irreversible damage in a fragile ecosystem.
“If someone doesn’t feel a personal stake in the preservation of these environments, they may not take the rules seriously,” Tanner said.
Diana Northup, a microbiologist who has spent years studying cave environments around the world, once crawled up the main corridor at Carlsbad Caverns to log everything that humans left behind.
“So this is just one thing of very many,” she said of the Cheetos.
As many as 2,000 people go through the caverns on any given day during the busy season. With them come hair and skin fragments, and those fragments can have their own microbes on board.
“So it can be really, really bad or it can just be us and all the stuff we’re shedding,” Northup said of human contamination within cave environments. “But here’s the other side of the coin: The only way you can protect caves is for people to be able to see them and experience them.”
“The biggest thing,” she said, “is you have to get people to value and want to preserve the caves and let them know what they can do to have that happen.”
date: 2024-09-15, from: VOA News USA
https://www.voanews.com/a/apple-bolsters-global-manufacturing-with-expansion-in-india/7783792.html
date: 2024-09-15, from: VOA News USA
new york — It’s a practice that’s about as American as apple pie — accusing immigrant and minority communities of engaging in bizarre or disgusting behaviors when it comes to what and how they eat and drink, a kind of shorthand for saying they don’t belong.
The latest iteration came at Tuesday’s presidential debate, when former President Donald Trump spotlighted a false online tempest around the Haitian immigrant community of Springfield, Ohio. He repeated the groundless claim previously spread by his running mate, JD Vance, that the immigrants were stealing dogs and cats, the precious pets belonging to their American neighbors, and eating them. The furor got enough attention that officials had to step in to refute it, saying there was no credible evidence of any such thing.
But while it might be enough to turn your stomach, such food-based accusations are not new. Far from it.
Food-related scorn and insults were hurled at immigrant Chinese communities on the West Coast in the late 1800s as they started coming to the United States in larger numbers, and in later decades spread to other Asian and Pacific Islander communities like Thai or Vietnamese. As recently as last year, a Thai restaurant in California was hit with the stereotype, which caused such an outpouring of undeserved vitriol that the owner had to close and move to another location.
Behind it is the idea that “you’re engaging in something that is not just a matter of taste, but a violation of what it is to be human,” said Paul Freedman, a professor of history at Yale University. By tarring Chinese immigrants as those who would eat things Americans would refuse to, it made them the “other.”
Food as flashpoint
Other communities, while not being accused of eating pets, have been criticized for the perceived strangeness of what they were cooking when they were new arrivals, such as Italians using too much garlic or Indians too much curry powder. Minority groups with a longer presence in the country were and are still not exempt from racist stereotypes — think derogatory references to Mexicans and beans or insulting African Americans with remarks about fried chicken and watermelon.
“There’s a slur for almost every ethnicity based on some kind of food that they eat,” said Amy Bentley, professor of nutrition and food studies at New York University. “And so that’s a very good way of disparaging people.”
That’s because food isn’t just sustenance. Embedded in human eating habits are some of the very building blocks of culture — things that make different peoples distinct and can be commandeered as fodder for ethnic hatred or political polemics.
“We need it to survive, but it’s also highly ritualized and highly symbolic. So the birthday cake, the anniversary, the things are commemorated and celebrated with food and drink,” Bentley said. “It’s just so highly integrated in all parts of our lives.”
And because “there’s specific variations of how humans do those rituals, how they eat, how they have shaped their cuisines, how they eat their food,” she added, “It can be as a theme of commonality … or it can be a form of distinct division.”
It’s not just the what. Insults can come from the how as well — eating with hands or chopsticks instead of forks and knives, for example. It can be seen in class-based bias against poorer people who didn’t have the same access to elaborate table settings or couldn’t afford to eat the same way the rich did — and used different, perhaps unfamiliar ingredients out of necessity.
Such disparagement can extend directly into current events. During the Second Gulf War, for example, Americans angry at France’s opposition to the U.S. invasion of Iraq started calling french fries “freedom fries.” And a much-used insulting term in the United States for Germans during the first two world wars was “krauts” — a slam on a culture where sauerkraut was a traditional food.
“Just what was wrong with the way urban immigrants ate?” Donna R. Gabaccia wrote in her 1998 book, “We Are What We Eat: Ethnic Food and the Making of Americans.” In reviewing attitudes of the early 20th century and its demands for “100% Americanism,” she noted that “sauerkraut became ‘victory cabbage’” and one account complained of an Italian family “still eating spaghetti, not yet assimilated.”
More food culture, more fodder
Such stereotypes have persisted despite the fact that the American palate has significantly expanded in recent decades, thanks in part to the influx of those immigrant communities, with grocery stores carrying a wealth of ingredients that would baffle previous generations. The rise of restaurant culture has introduced many diners to authentic examples of cuisines they might have needed a passport to access in other eras.
After all, Bentley said, “when immigrants migrate to a different country, they bring their foodways with them and maintain them as they can. … It’s so reminiscent of family, community, home. They’re just really material, multisensory manifestations of who we are.”
Haitian food is just one example of that. Communities like those found in New York City and south Florida have added to the culinary landscape, using ingredients like goat, plantains and cassava.
So when Trump said that immigrants in Springfield — whom he called “the people that came in” — were eating dogs and cats and “the pets of the people that live there,” the echoes of his remarks played into not just food but culture itself.
And even though the American palate has broadened in recent decades, the persistence of food stereotypes — and outright insults, whether based in fact or completely made up — shows that just because Americans eat more broadly, it doesn’t mean that carries over into tolerance or nuance about other groups.
“It’s a fallacy to think that,” said Freedman. “It’s like the tourism fallacy that travel makes us more understanding of diversity. The best example right now is Mexican food. Lots and lots of people like Mexican food AND think that immigration needs to be stopped. There’s no link between enjoyment of a foreigner’s cuisine and that openness.”
date: 2024-09-15, from: VOA News USA
new york — Single mother Rebecca Wood, 45, was already dealing with high medical bills in 2020 when she noticed she was being charged a $2.49 “program fee” each time she loaded money onto her daughter’s school lunch account.
As more schools turn to cashless payment systems, more districts have contracted with processing companies that charge as much as $3.25 or 4% to 5% per transaction, according to a new report from the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. The report found that though legally schools must offer a fee-free option to pay by cash or check, there’s rarely transparency around it.
“It wouldn’t have been a big deal if I had hundreds of dollars to dump into her account at the beginning of the year,” Wood said. “I didn’t. I was paying as I went, which meant I was paying a fee every time. The $2.50 transaction fee was the price of a lunch. So I’d pay for six lunches, but only get five.”
The U.S. Department of Agriculture, which oversees the federal policy on fee-free school lunch, has mandated that districts inform families of their options since 2017, but even when parents are aware, having to pay by cash or check to avoid fees can be burdensome.
“It’s just massively inconvenient,” said Joanna Roa, 43, who works at Clemson University in South Carolina as a library specialist and has two school-aged children.
Roa said that when her son was in first grade and she saw the $3.25-per-transaction fee for lunch account transactions, she and her husband decided to send him to school with packed lunches instead.
“A dollar here and there, I expected,” she said. “But $3.25 per transaction, especially here in rural South Carolina where the cost of living is a lot lower — as are the salaries — is a lot.”
Roa said packing lunch for two kids every day, for two working parents, was an increased burden of time and effort. For the past two years, thanks to surplus funds, her school district has been providing free lunches in school, which has changed the equation, but Roa said that could end at any point.
In its review of the 300 largest public school districts in the U.S., the CFPB found that 87% of sampled districts contract with payment processors.
Within those districts, the companies charge an average of $2.37 or 4.4% of the total transaction, each time money is added to a child’s account. For families with lower incomes who can’t afford to load large sums in one go, those fees can hit weekly or even more frequently, increasing costs disproportionately. Families that qualify for free or reduced lunch pay as much as 60 cents per dollar in fees when paying for school lunches electronically, according to the report.
In Wood’s case, she researched the fees and learned about the USDA requirement to offer fee-free payment by cash or by check. When she pointed this out to the superintendent of her daughter’s Massachusetts school district, the administrator said the lack of transparency was an oversight. To protest, Wood had planned to pay for her daughter’s lunches in coins at the school office, together with other parents. But then the pandemic hit, changing, among other things, school lunch policy.
In subsequent years, Wood became part of a campaign that successfully pushed for universal free school lunches in the state, but she continues to protest school processing fees for families.
“Even if lunch itself is free, if you want to buy something a la carte, or an extra lunch, or some other transaction, you still have to pay that fee,” Wood said. “They take money from people who need it the most.”
While payment companies maintain that school districts have the chance to negotiate fees and rates when they form their contracts, the CFPB found that complex company structures “may insulate companies from competition and make school districts less likely to negotiate.” Just three companies — MySchoolBucks, SchoolCafe, and LINQ Connect — dominate the market, according to the report.
Without the ability to choose which company to work with, “families have fewer ways to avoid harmful practices,” the agency said, “including those that may violate federal consumer protection law.”
The companies named in the report did not respond to requests for comment.
I’m a parent facing these fees. What can I do?
Know that you always have a right to pay by cash or check, under federal policy. You can also request that your school district negotiate down the fees with their payment processing company, or request that the district cover the fees directly, which can give them leverage in negotiating a contract.
If your school is located in a low-income area, you may also check whether your district qualifies for the Community Eligibility Provision, which would allow the school to provide free breakfast and lunch to all enrolled students. More information on the CEP is available at the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s website.
date: 2024-09-15, from: VOA News USA
SEATTLE — A strike at Boeing “could go on for a while” as workers are confident they can get bigger wage increases and an improved pension, union leader Jon Holden said in an interview with National Public Radio on Saturday.
More than 30,000 members of the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers (IAM), who produce Boeing’s top-selling 737 MAX and other jets in the Seattle and Portland, began a strike Friday after overwhelmingly voting down a new contract.
Boeing and union negotiators are to return to the bargaining table next week, in talks overseen by U.S. federal mediators, after more than 94% of workers voted to reject an initial contract offer that Holden had endorsed.
Holden said the priorities for his members were a bigger wage increase and the restoration of a defined-benefit pension scheme that the union lost during a previous round of negotiations with Boeing a decade ago.
“We have the most leverage and the most power at the most opportune time that we’ve ever had in our history, and our members are expecting us to use it,” Holden told NPR.
“I know that our members are confident. They’re standing shoulder to shoulder and they’re ready. So it (the strike) could go on for a while,” he said.
The initial deal included a 25% pay raise spread over four years and a commitment by Boeing to build its next commercial jet in the Seattle region, if the plane program is launched within the four-year period of the contract.
Union members, venting frustration at years of stagnant wages and rising living costs, said removal of a performance bonus in the Boeing offer would erode half of the headline salary increase.
Boeing’s stock fell 3.7% on Friday. It has tumbled almost 40% so far this year, slashing the company’s market value by roughly $58 billion.
A long strike could further damage Boeing’s finances, already groaning because of $60 billion in debt. A lengthy pause on plane production would also weigh on airlines that fly Boeing jets and suppliers that manufacture parts.
date: 2024-09-15, from: Full Circle Magazine
Credits
https://fullcirclemagazine.org/podcasts/podcast-383/
@Dave Winer’s linkblog (date: 2024-09-14, from: Dave Winer’s linkblog)
Journalists: "He's lying again" isn't news.
https://www.threads.net/@kamalahq/post/C_6h2VHJ9tp
date: 2024-09-14, from: VOA News USA
Kyiv, Ukraine — U.S. President Joe Biden will use the remaining four months of his term “to put Ukraine in the best possible position to prevail,” a senior adviser said Saturday.
Speaking remotely to a forum in Kyiv, Ukraine, Jake Sullivan, the U.S. national security adviser, also said Biden will meet Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy in late September at the U.N. General Assembly in New York to discuss aid to Ukraine.
“President Zelenskyy has said that ultimately this war has to end through negotiations, and we need them to be strong in those negotiations,” Sullivan said, adding Ukraine would decide when to enter talks with Russia.
Biden will be replaced next January either by Vice President Kamala Harris, who has indicated she will continue his policies of backing Ukraine, or by former President Donald Trump, who would not say at a debate earlier this week whether he wanted Kyiv to win the war.
The announcement of the upcoming Biden-Zelenskyy meeting came after Moscow and Kyiv earlier Saturday swapped 103 prisoners of war each in a UAE-brokered deal, and as Russian forces continue to gain ground in their grinding offensive in east Ukraine.
Sullivan, in his comments by video link to the forum in Kyiv, said “difficult and complicated” logistics — rather than unwillingness — was delaying aid to Ukraine.
“It’s not a matter of political will,” Sullivan said. “But given what Ukraine is up against, we’ve got to do more, and we’ve got to do better.”
date: 2024-09-14, from: VOA News USA
BOGOTA, Colombia — Three Americans, two Spaniards and a Czech citizen were arrested Saturday after Venezuelan officials accused them of coming to the South American country to assassinate President Nicolas Maduro.
The arrests were announced on state television by Diosdado Cabello, the nation’s powerful interior minister. Cabello said the foreign citizens were part of a CIA-led plot to overthrow the Venezuelan government and kill several members of its leadership. In the television program, Cabello showed images of rifles that he said were confiscated from some of the plotters of the alleged plan.
The arrest of the American citizens included a member of the Navy, according to Cabello. Spain’s embassy in Venezuela did not reply to a request for comment.
The U.S. State Department late Saturday confirmed the detention of a U.S. military member and said it was aware of “unconfirmed reports of two additional U.S. citizens detained in Venezuela.”
“Any claims of U.S. involvement in a plot to overthrow Maduro are categorically false. The United States continues to support a democratic solution to the political crisis in Venezuela,” the statement said.
The announcement of the arrests comes two days after the U.S. Treasury imposed sanctions on 16 allies of Maduro who were accused by the U.S. government of obstructing voting during the disputed July 28 Venezuelan presidential election and carrying out human rights abuses.
Earlier this week, Spain’s parliament recognized opposition candidate Edmundo Gonzalez as the winner of the election, angering Maduro allies who called on the Venezuelan government to suspend commercial and diplomatic relations with Spain.
Tensions between Venezuela’s government and the U.S. have increased as well following the election, whose result sparked protests within Venezuela in which hundreds of opposition activists were arrested.
Venezuela’s Electoral Council, which is closely aligned with the Maduro administration, said Maduro won the election with 52% of the vote, but did not provide any proof of those results.
Opposition activists, however, surprised the government by collecting tally sheets from 80% of the nation’s voting machines. The tally sheets collected by the opposition were published online, and they indicate that Gonzalez won the election with twice as many votes as Maduro.
Despite international condemnation over the election’s lack of transparency, Venezuela’s supreme court, which has long backed Maduro, confirmed his victory in August. Venezuela’s attorney general then filed conspiracy charges against Gonzalez, who fled to Spain last week after it became clear he would be arrested.
Maduro has dismissed requests from several countries, including the leftist governments of Colombia and Brazil, to provide tally sheets that prove he won the election. Maduro, who has been in power since 2013, has long claimed the U.S. is trying to overthrow him through sanctions and covert operations.
The Maduro administration has previously used Americans imprisoned in Venezuela to gain concessions from the U.S. government.
In a deal conducted last year with the Biden administration, Maduro released 10 Americans and a fugitive wanted by the U.S. government to secure a presidential pardon for Alex Saab, a close Maduro ally who was held in Florida on money laundering charges. According to U.S. prosecutors, Saab had also helped Maduro to avoid U.S. Treasury sanctions through a complex network of shell companies.
https://www.voanews.com/a/7784547.html
@Miguel de Icaza Mastondon feed (date: 2024-09-14, from: Miguel de Icaza Mastondon feed)
Super cute, a GtkWidget that is a complete Wayland compositor, so you can embed remote sessions into your views:
https://blogs.gnome.org/xjuan/2024/09/13/introducing-casilda-wayland-compositor-widget/
https://mastodon.social/@Migueldeicaza/113137711355161862
date: 2024-09-14, from: VOA News USA
https://www.voanews.com/a/voa-immigration-weekly-recap-september-8-14/7784491.html
@Dave Winer’s linkblog (date: 2024-09-14, from: Dave Winer’s linkblog)
If Trump is GOP anomaly, why are the denunciations from Republican leaders so soft and mealy-mouthed?
date: 2024-09-14, from: Liliputing
The AOOSTAR GEM10 is a mini PC that launched earlier this year with support for up to an AMD Ryzen 9 7940HS “Phoenix” processor, dual 2.5 GbE Ethernet ports, and a 40 Gbps USB4 port, and a 63 Gbps OCuLink connector. Now AOOSTAR has introduced a new model that keeps the same basic features, but replaces the […]
The post AOOSTAR GEM10 370 is a mini PC with Ryzen AI9 HX 370 and OCuLink appeared first on Liliputing.
https://liliputing.com/aoostar-gem10-370-is-a-mini-pc-with-ryzen-ai9-hx-370-and-oculink/
@Dave Winer’s linkblog (date: 2024-09-14, from: Dave Winer’s linkblog)
Please be kind, but wtf is block-based design? Explain it slowly as a person who loves blogging and has been making software for blogging for almost 30 years. I don't know what you all mean. Also I'm a writer too. :-)
https://wptavern.com/five-for-the-future-site-relaunched-with-a-block-based-design
@Dave Winer’s linkblog (date: 2024-09-14, from: Dave Winer’s linkblog)
I agree we shouldn't demean Trump voters. As long as we're all Americans. We should help each other.
@Tomosino’s Mastodon feed (date: 2024-09-14, from: Tomosino’s Mastodon feed)
S02E08
This episode of #Solarpunk Prompts explores the role of tailors in a solarpunk world. How will they uniquely influence their future communities? How can their role as educator, artist, and innovator help sustainability and harmony with their environments, and also open the doors for personal expression?
https://podcast.tomasino.org/@SolarpunkPrompts/episodes/the-tailors
https://tilde.zone/@tomasino/113137317508244526
date: 2024-09-14, from: VOA News USA
TOKYO — Japan and the United States should avoid confrontation about the steel industry and work together amid competition from China, the world’s top steelmaker, leading prime ministerial candidate Shinjiro Koizumi said Saturday.
Sources told Reuters Friday that a powerful U.S. national security panel reviewing Nippon Steel’s $14.9 billion bid for U.S. Steel faces a September 23 deadline to recommend whether the White House should block the deal.
Koizumi, Japan’s former environment minister, said at a debate Saturday that Japan and the U.S. should not confront each other when it comes to the steel industry but to face together the “shared challenge” coming from China’s steel industry.
“If China, producing cheap steel without renewable or clean energy, floods the global market, it will most adversely affect us, the democratic countries playing by fair market rules,” Koizumi said.
Nippon Steel’s key negotiator on the deal, Vice Chairman Takahiro Mori, said last month that his company and other Japanese steelmakers were urging Tokyo to consider curbing cheap steel imports coming from China to protect the local market.
On Sunday, Nippon Steel and U.S. Steel sent a letter to U.S. President Joe Biden about their deal, as Biden, Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris and Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump have all opposed the merger.
“We are also in the midst of elections, just like the U.S., and during elections, various ideas may arise. Overreacting to each of these would, in my view, call into question diplomatic judgment,” Koizumi said when asked about the deal.
Sanae Takaichi, Japan’s minister in charge of economic security and another prime ministerial candidate, also defended the deal during the same debate attended by eight other Liberal Democratic Party’s, or LDP, leadership contenders Saturday.
“It appears they are using CFIUS to frame this as an economic security issue,” she said, referring to the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States. “However, Japan and the U.S. are allies, and the steel industry is about strengthening our combined resilience.”
The 43-year-old son of former Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi, the junior Koizumi, is seen as a leading contender in the September 27 race to pick the LDP’s new leader, who will become the next prime minister due to the party’s control of parliament.
Koizumi said Saturday that he would seek a dialog with the North Korean leadership to resolve the issue over the abduction of Japanese citizens kidnapped by North Korean agents in the 1970s and 1980s. The purported primary goal was to train North Korean agents to impersonate Japanese people.
“We want to explore new opportunities for dialog between people of the same generation, without being bound by conventional approaches, and without preconditions,” Koizumi said.
After admitting in 2002 that it had abducted 13 Japanese, North Korea apologized and allowed five to return home. It said eight others had died and denied that an additional four entered its territory. It promised to reinvestigate but has never announced the results.
Japan says North Korea has refused to send the others home because of concern that they might reveal inconvenient information about the country.
@Dave Winer’s linkblog (date: 2024-09-14, from: Dave Winer’s linkblog)
2024 Emmy Nominations: Full List of Nominees.
https://editorial.rottentomatoes.com/article/2024-emmy-nominations-full-list-of-nominees/
date: 2024-09-14, from: VOA News USA
FORT LAUDERDALE, Florida — Ballet dancer Michaela Mabinty DePrince, who came to the United States from an orphanage in war-ravaged Sierra Leone and performed on some of the world’s biggest stages, has died, her family said in a statement. She was 29.
“Michaela touched so many lives across the world, including ours. She was an unforgettable inspiration to everyone who knew her or heard her story,” her family said in a statement posted Friday on DePrince’s social media accounts. “From her early life in war-torn Africa, to stages and screens across the world, she achieved her dreams and so much more.”
A cause of death was not provided.
DePrince was adopted by an American couple and by age 17 she had been featured in a documentary film and had performed on the TV show “Dancing with the Stars.”
After graduating from high school and the American Ballet Theatre’s Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis School, she became a principal dancer with the Dance Theatre of Harlem. She then went to the Netherlands, where she danced with the Dutch National Ballet. She later returned to the U.S. and joined the Boston Ballet in 2021.
“We’re sending our love and support to the family of Michaela Mabinty DePrince at this time of loss,” the Boston Ballet said in a statement to The Associated Press on Saturday. “We were so fortunate to know her; she was a beautiful person, a wonderful dancer, and she will be greatly missed by us all.”
In her memoir, Taking Flight: From War Orphan to Star Ballerina, she shared her journey from the orphanage to the stage. She also wrote a children’s book, Ballerina Dreams.
DePrince suffered from a skin pigmentation disorder that had her labeled “the devil’s child” at the orphanage.
“I lost both my parents, so I was there [the orphanage] for about a year, and I wasn’t treated very well because I had vitiligo,” DePrince told the AP in a 2012 interview. “We were ranked as numbers, and number 27 was the least favorite and that was my number, so I got the least amount of food, the least amount of clothes and whatnot.”
She added that she remembered seeing a photo of an American ballet dancer on a magazine page that had blown against the gate of the orphanage during Sierra Leone’s civil war.
“All I remember is she looked really, really happy,” DePrince told the AP, adding that she wished “to become this exact person.”
She said she saw hope in that photo, “and I ripped the page out and I stuck it in my underwear because I didn’t have any place to put it,” she said.
Her passion helped inspire young Black dancers to pursue their dreams, her family said.
“We will miss her and her gorgeous smile forever and we know you will, too,” their statement said.
Her sister, Mia Mabinty DePrince, recalled in the statement that they slept on a shared mat in the orphanage and used to make up their own musical theater plays and ballets.
“When we got adopted, our parents quickly poured into our dreams and arose the beautiful, gracefully strong ballerina that so many of you knew her as today. She was an inspiration,” Mia DePrince wrote. “Whether she was leaping across the stage or getting on a plane and flying to third-world countries to provide orphans and children with dance classes, she was determined to conquer all her dreams in the arts and dance.”
date: 2024-09-14, from: VOA News USA
DUBAI — Iran’s foreign minister said that Tehran was open to diplomacy to solve disputes but not “threats and pressure,” state media reported on Saturday, after the U.S. and three European powers imposed sanctions against the country’s aviation sector.
Abbas Araqchi’s comments come a day after the European Union’s chief diplomat said the bloc is considering new sanctions targeting Iran’s aviation sector, in reaction to reports Tehran supplied Russia with ballistic missiles in its war against Ukraine.
“Iran continues on its own path with strength, although we have always been open to talks to resolve disputes … but dialogue should be based on mutual respect, not on threats and pressure,” Araqchi said, according to the official news agency IRNA.
Araqchi said on Wednesday that Tehran had not delivered any ballistic missiles to Russia and that sanctions imposed on Iran by the United States and three European powers would not solve any problems between them.
The United States, Germany, Britain and France on Tuesday imposed new sanctions on Iran, including measures against its national airline, Iran Air.
https://www.voanews.com/a/iran-says-it-is-open-to-talks-but-rejects-pressure-from-us-eu/7784405.html
date: 2024-09-14, from: Interesting, a blog on writing
Do we know what kind of story we’re in, and will it matter?
https://inneresting.substack.com/p/217-were-not-using-the-z-word
date: 2024-09-14, updated: 2024-09-14, from: Russell Graves, Syonyk’s Project Blog
https://www.sevarg.net/2024/09/14/km-krusher-rock-dust-chain-flail/
date: 2024-09-14, from: VOA News USA
When Kamala Harris and Donald Trump faced each other on the debate stage less than two months before Election Day, the two candidates were at odds on issues ranging from the economy to tariffs and Ukraine. But on immigration, their positions were especially different. VOA immigration reporter Aline Barros brings us the story.
date: 2024-09-14, from: VOA News USA
LONDON — Prince Harry was always something different.
From the moment he first appeared in public, snuggled in Princess Diana’s arms outside the London hospital where he was born in 1984, Harry was the ginger-haired scamp who stuck his tongue out at photographers. He grew to be a boisterous adolescent who was roundly criticized for wearing a Nazi uniform to a costume party, and then a young man who gave up the trappings of royal life and moved to Southern California with his American wife.
Through it all, there was a sense that Harry was rebelling against an accident of birth that made him, in the harsh calculus of the House of Windsor, just “the spare.” As the second son of the man who is now King Charles III, he was raised as a prince but wouldn’t inherit the throne unless brother William came to harm.
Now the angry young man is turning 40, the halfway point in many lives, providing a chance to either dwell on the past or look forward to what might still be achieved.
For the past four years, Harry has focused mainly on the past, making millions of dollars by airing his grievances in a wildly successful memoir and a Netflix docu-series. But he faces the likelihood that the royal aura so critical to his image may be fading, said Sally Bedell Smith, author of “Charles: The Passions and Paradoxes of an Improbable Life.”
“He is at a sort of crossroads,’’ Smith told The Associated Press. “And he appears to be struggling with how he wants to proceed.’’
How did we get here?
It wasn’t always this way.
Six years ago, Harry and his wife were among the most popular royals, a glamorous young couple who reflected the multicultural face of modern Britain and were expected to help revitalize the monarchy.
Their wedding on May 19, 2018, united a grandson of Queen Elizabeth II with the former Meghan Markle, a biracial American actress who had starred for seven years in the U.S. television drama “Suits.” George Clooney, Serena Williams and Elton John attended their wedding at Windsor Castle, after which the couple were formally known as the Duke and Duchess of Sussex.
But the optimism quickly faded amid allegations that Britain’s tabloid media and even members of the royal household treated Meghan unfairly because of racism.
By January 2020, the pressures of life in the gilded cage had become too much, and the couple announced they were giving up royal duties and moving to America, where they hoped to become “financially independent.” They signed lucrative deals with Netflix and Spotify as they settled into the wealthy enclave of Montecito, near Santa Barbara, California.
Since then, Harry has missed few opportunities to bare his soul, most famously in his memoir, aptly titled “Spare.”
In the ghostwritten book, Harry recounted his grief at the death of Princess Diana, a fight with Prince William and his unease with life in the royal shadow of his elder brother. From accounts of cocaine use and losing his virginity to raw family rifts, the book was rife with damning allegations about the royal family.
Among the most toxic was Harry’s description of how some family members leaked unflattering information about other royals in exchange for positive coverage of themselves. The prince singled out his father’s second wife, Queen Camilla, accusing her of feeding private conversations to the media as she sought to rehabilitate an image tarnished by her role in the breakup of Charles’ marriage to Diana.
The allegations were so venomous that there is little chance of a return to public duty, Smith said.
“He criticized the royal family in such a powerful and damaging way. You can’t un-say those things,” she said. “And you can’t unsee things like Meghan in that Netflix series doing a mock curtsey. It’s such a demeaning gesture to the queen.’’
Harry, who agreed not to use the honorific HRH, or “his royal highness,” after he stepped away from front-line royal duties, is now fifth in line to the British throne, behind his brother and William’s three children.
While he grew up in a palace and is said to be in line to inherit millions of dollars on his 40th birthday from a trust set up by his great-grandmother, applied developmental psychologist Deborah Heiser thinks that, in many ways, Harry is just like the rest of us.
Like anyone turning 40, he is likely to have learned a few lessons and has a good idea of who his real friends are, and that will help him chart the next phase of his life, said Heiser, who writes a blog called “The Right Side of 40” for Psychology Today.
“He has had a very public display of what a lot of people have gone through,” Heiser said. “I mean, most people are not princes, but … they have all kinds of issues within their families. He’s not alone. That’s why he’s so relatable.’’
Harry’s next chapter
Of course, Harry’s story isn’t just about the drama within the House of Windsor.
If he wants to write a new chapter, Harry can build on his 10 years of service in the British Army. Before retiring as a captain in 2015, the prince earned his wings as a helicopter pilot, served two tours in Afghanistan and shed the hard-partying reputation of his youth.
Harry also won accolades for establishing the Invictus Games in 2014, a Paralympic-style competition to inspire and aid in the rehabilitation of sick and wounded servicemembers and veterans.
Harry and Meghan made headlines this year with their two international trips to promote mental health and internet safety. While some in British media criticized them for accepting royal treatment in Nigeria and Colombia, the couple said they visited at the invitation of local officials.
Will Charles see the grandkids?
The prospects of reconciliation are unclear, although Harry did race home to see his father after Charles’ cancer diagnosis. And in what may be seen as a tentative olive branch, the paperback edition of “Spare” slated for October has no additions — so nothing new to stir the pot.
But plainly at this point, Harry is thinking about his family in California. He told the BBC about the importance of his two young children, Archie and Lilibet.
“Being a dad is one of life’s greatest joys and has only made me more driven and more committed to making this world a better place,” the prince said in a statement released by his spokesperson.
https://www.voanews.com/a/prince-harry-turns-40-as-the-royal-scamp-moves-to-middle-age/7784290.html
@Dave Winer’s linkblog (date: 2024-09-14, from: Dave Winer’s linkblog)
Could we agree that ChatGPT can ingest everything that's in Wikipedia? I particularly want the images. I'd like to ask for a picture of Chuck Berry, and be able to put him in a scene with the Wordle Kitty. That seems pretty harmless. The news industry could hardly object.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chuck_Berry
@Miguel de Icaza Mastondon feed (date: 2024-09-14, from: Miguel de Icaza Mastondon feed)
Since Apple won’t include stickers anymore with their iPhones, old stickers are like bitcoin, a finite resource that we can use as a store of value and currency.
Someone set up a proper trading market place for StickerCoin.
https://mastodon.social/@Migueldeicaza/113136217205821141
@Dave Winer’s linkblog (date: 2024-09-14, from: Dave Winer’s linkblog)
These two friends built a simple tool to transfer playlists between Apple Music and Spotify, and it works great.
@Dave Winer’s linkblog (date: 2024-09-14, from: Dave Winer’s linkblog)
How to avoid sanewashing Trump.
https://www.poynter.org/ethics-trust/2024/sanewashing-meaning-donald-trump-journalists/
date: 2024-09-14, from: The Lever News
Plus, mental health comes for the people, more states fight the big tax scam, and busting union busters makes workers feel good.
https://www.levernews.com/you-love-to-see-it-mother-earth-shares-her-power/
date: 2024-09-14, from: 404 Media Group
Welcome to The Abstract, a new weekly column from 404 Media about new, mind blowing scientific studies.
https://www.404media.co/neanderthals-would-rather-die-than-talk-to-you-3/
@Dave Winer’s linkblog (date: 2024-09-14, from: Dave Winer’s linkblog)
They should create their own AI systems the same way they should’ve made their own twitters. They keep letting tech own their distribution, and then appeal to government to save them. They could instead make the products people want.
https://www.status.news/p/news-executives-ai-capitol-hill
date: 2024-09-14, from: The Markup blog
A Republican presidency could require California to monitor abortions and send sensitive data to the CDC
date: 2024-09-14, updated: 2024-09-14, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
With less than a month to go before the Nobel Prizes are handed out for the most worthy scientific discoveries of the preceding year, it would be remiss of The Register not to observe the honors conferred by the gong’s bratty little brother, the Ig Nobel Prize.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/09/14/ig_nobel_prize_2024/
date: 2024-09-14, updated: 2024-09-14, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
Opinion The Open Source Initiative (OSI) and its allies are getting closer to a definition of open source AI. If all goes well, Stefano Maffulli, the OSI’s executive director, expects to announce the OSI open source AI definition at All Things Open in late October. But some open source leaders already want nothing to do with it.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/09/14/opinion_column_osi/
date: 2024-09-14, updated: 2024-09-14, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
Meta is going to resume scraping the personal public feeds of British Facebook and Instagram users for training AI after reaching an agreement with the UK’s Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO).…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/09/14/uk_meta_ai_facebook/
date: 2024-09-14, from: VOA News USA
NEW YORK — New York City lawmakers approved legislation Thursday to study the city’s significant role in slavery and consider reparations to descendants of enslaved people.
If signed into law, the package of bills passed by the City Council would follow in the footsteps of several other municipalities across the U.S. that have sought ways to address the country’s dark history, as well as a separate New York state commission that began working this year.
New York fully abolished slavery in 1827. But businesses, including the predecessors of some modern banks, continued to benefit financially from the slave trade — likely up until 1866. The lawmakers behind the proposals noted that the harms caused by the institution are still felt by Black Americans today.
“The reparations movement is often misunderstood as merely a call for compensation,” Council Member Farah Louis, a Democrat who sponsored one of the bills, told the City Council on Thursday. She explained that systemic forms of oppression are still impacting people through redlining, environmental racism and services in predominantly Black neighborhoods that are underfunded.
The bills still need to be signed by Democratic Mayor Eric Adams. City Hall signaled his support in a statement calling the legislation “another crucial step towards addressing systemic inequities, fostering reconciliation, and creating a more just and equitable future for all New Yorkers.”
The bills would direct the city’s Commission on Racial Equity to suggest remedies to the legacy of slavery, including reparations. It would also create a truth and reconciliation process to establish historical facts about slavery in the state.
One of the proposals would also require that the city install an informational sign on Wall Street in Manhattan to mark the site of New York’s first slave market, which operated between 1711 and 1762. A sign was placed nearby in 2015, but Public Advocate Jumaane D. Williams, a Democrat who sponsored the legislation, said its location is inaccurate.
The commission would work with the existing state commission, which is also considering the possibility of reparations. A report from the state panel, which held its first public meeting in late July, is expected in early 2025. The city effort wouldn’t need to produce recommendations until 2027.
The city’s commission was created out of a 2021 racial justice initiative during then-Mayor Bill de Blasio’s administration, which also recommended the city track data on the cost of living and add a commitment to remedy “past and continuing harms” to the city charter’s preamble.
“Your call and your ancestors’ call for reparations had not gone unheard,” Linda Tigani, executive director of the racial equity commission, said at a news conference ahead of the council vote.
A financial impact analysis of the bills estimated that the studies would cost $2.5 million.
New York is the latest city to study reparations. Tulsa, Oklahoma, where a notorious massacre of Black residents took place in 1921, announced a similar commission last month.
Evanston, Illinois, became the first city to offer reparations to Black residents and their descendants in 2021, including distributing some payments of $25,000 in 2023, according to PBS. The eligibility was based on harm suffered as a result of the city’s discriminatory housing policies or practices.
San Francisco approved reparations in February, but the mayor later cut the funds, saying that reparations should instead be carried out by the federal government. California budgeted $12 million for a reparations program that included helping Black residents research their ancestry, but it was defeated in the state’s Legislature this month.
date: 2024-09-14, from: VOA News USA
Washington — The United States Navy’s elite SEAL Team Six would likely have a limited role in defending Taiwan should China invade the self-governing and democratic island, say analysts responding to a Financial Times report that the unit has been training for it for more than one year.
Lyle J. Morris, senior fellow for foreign policy and national security at the Asia Society Policy Institute’s Center for China Analysis, tells VOA’s Mandarin Service that if the unit is indeed preparing for an attack by Beijing, it may indicate that the U.S. is more deeply involved in defending Taiwan than previously thought.
However, he stressed that the secret and precise combat characteristics of SEAL Team Six mean its role in resisting China’s invasion of Taiwan would be very limited and the focus would be on carrying out special tasks.
“As far as their sheer capability to repel an invasion. I think that’s more limited,” he says. “I think it’s in a very discreet, narrow way of coming in for a specific task that Taiwan might need, whether it’s helping to protect, let’s say, an airfield in Taiwan or protect a communication asset in Taiwan, in Taipei, they could come in and out very discreetly and very lethally to protect that asset.”
SEAL Team Six specializes in performing sensitive, highly difficult missions. In 2009, the unit rescued Richard Phillips, captain of the MV Maersk Alabama, who was taken hostage by Somali pirates.
The elite unit gained an international reputation after the successful raid on al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden’s compound in Pakistan in 2011.
It is one of the most highly regarded U.S. military units, along with the United States Army’s Delta Force, the 75th Ranger Regiment’s Regimental Reconnaissance Company, the Intelligence Support Activity, and the Air Force’s 24th Special Tactics Squadron, and part of the Joint Special Operations Command.
“Navy SEALs usually deployed from submarines or, most likely, small ships and are useful for targeting vulnerabilities in enemies’ presentation,” Richard D. Fisher Jr., senior fellow with the International Assessment and Strategy Center, tells VOA.
Analysts say the U.S. military likely revealed the SEAL Team Six training program to the Financial Times to send a warning to Beijing amid China’s increasingly assertive moves in the region.
“This is one way the U.S. is bolstering deterrence towards China, towards preventing a Chinese invasion of Taiwan,” says Morris. “So, I think this is just an added factor getting China to second guess or to reconsider what it will face if it were to invade Taiwan.”
Dennis Wilder, a senior fellow for the Initiative for U.S.-China Dialogue on Global Issues at Georgetown University and a former Central Intelligence Agency military analyst, posted on social media platform X, “It is sure to get under Beijing’s skin.”
In a written response to VOA’s Mandarin Service, Liu Pengyu, the spokesperson of the Chinese Embassy in Washington, said, “The Taiwan question is the very core of China’s core interests and the first red line that must not be crossed in the China-U.S. relationship.”
He urged “the U.S. to earnestly abide by the one-China principle and the three China-U.S. joint communiques, stop enhancing military contact with the Taiwan region or arming it by any means or under whatever pretext, stop creating factors that could heighten tensions in the Taiwan Strait, and stop conniving at and supporting the separatists’ attempt to seek ‘Taiwan independence’ by force.”
Taiwan split from China during the civil war that saw the Communist Party seize power in Beijing in 1949 and the Nationalist Party flee to the island, which developed into a flourishing democracy. But China’s one-party, authoritarian state never gave up its claim to Taiwan and considers it a renegade province that must one day reunite with the mainland, by force if necessary.
Admiral Philips Davidson, former commander of the U.S. Indo-Pacific Command, warned in 2021 that China could attack Taiwan within six years. President Joe Biden has repeatedly stressed that if China invades Taiwan, the U.S. will intervene militarily to defend it.
The U.S. Department of Defense declined to confirm or deny the Financial Times report. Pentagon spokesperson John Supple said in an email to VOA, “The DoD and our service members prepare and train for a wide range of contingencies. We will not comment on specifics, but will restate that we are committed to our longstanding one China policy, guided by the Taiwan Relations Act, the Three Joint Communiques, and the Six Assurances. As we have said before, conflict is neither imminent nor inevitable.”
America’s one-China policy is a strategically ambiguous agreement it made in 1972 to establish relations with China that recognizes Beijing as the only government of China and acknowledges, but does not endorse, Beijing’s claim that Taiwan is part of China.
Washington has unofficial relations with Taiwan defined through the Taiwan Relations Act, the Three Joint Communiques with Beijing, and the Six Assurances with Taipei, which underscore U.S. opposition to attempts to unilaterally alter the status quo and determination to help Taiwan defend itself through weapons sales.
There has been previous U.S. military training for Taiwan’s defense, both on the island and in the United States. Reuters reported last year the U.S. was set to expand the number of troops helping train Taiwanese forces on the island, and Taiwanese officials confirmed more of their troops would be training in the U.S.
https://www.voanews.com/a/limited-role-for-us-navy-seal-team-in-defense-of-taiwan/7784108.html
date: 2024-09-14, from: VOA News USA
AURORA, Colorado — She was eight months pregnant when she was forced to leave her Denver homeless shelter. It was November.
Ivanni Herrera took her 4-year-old son, Dylan, by the hand and led him into the chilly night, dragging a suitcase containing donated clothes and blankets away from the Microtel Inn & Suites. It was one of 10 hotels where Denver has housed more than 30,000 migrants, many of them Venezuelan, over the last two years.
First, they walked to Walmart. There, with money she and her husband earned begging on the street, they bought a tent.
They chose for their new home a grassy median along a busy thoroughfare in Aurora, the next town over, a suburb known for its immigrant population.
“We wanted to go somewhere where there were people,” Herrera, 28, said in Spanish. “It feels safer.”
That night, temperatures dipped to 32 degrees. And as she wrapped her body around her son’s, Ivanni Herrera cried.
Over the past two years, a record number of Venezuelans have come to the United States seeking a better life. Instead, they’ve found themselves in communities roiling over how much to help the newcomers — or whether to help at all.
Unable to legally work without filing expensive and complicated paperwork, some have found themselves sleeping on the streets — even those who are pregnant.
Herrera had found inspiration for her journey to the U.S. on social media. On Facebook and TikTok, young, smiling Venezuelan migrants in nice clothes stood in front of new cars. Some 320,000 Venezuelans have tried to cross the U.S. border since October 2022, according to U.S. Border Patrol reports — more than in the previous nine years combined.
Just weeks after arriving in Denver, Herrera began to wonder if the success she had seen was real.
She was seeing doctors and social workers at a Denver hospital where she planned to give birth because they served everyone, even those without insurance. They were alarmed their pregnant patient was now sleeping outside in the cold.
In Colorado’s third-largest city, Aurora, officials have turned down requests to help migrants. In February, the City Council passed a resolution telling other cities and nonprofits not to bring migrants into the community because it “does not currently have the financial capacity to fund new services.” Yet still they come, because of its lower cost of living and Spanish-speaking community.
Former President Donald Trump last week called attention to the city, suggesting a Venezuelan gang had taken over an apartment complex. Authorities say that hasn’t happened.
The doctors urged Herrera to sleep at the hospital. It wouldn’t cost anything, they assured her, just as her birth would be covered by emergency Medicaid.
Herrera refused.
“How,” she asked, “could I sleep in a warm place when my son is cold on the street?”
Denver struggled to keep up with the rush of migrants, many arriving on buses chartered by Texas to draw attention to the impact of immigration. All told, Denver officials say they have helped some 42,700 migrants since last year, either by giving them shelter or a bus fare to another city.
Initially, the city offered migrants with families six weeks in a hotel. But any migrants arriving since May have received only three days in a hotel. After that, some have found transportation to other cities, scrounged for a place to sleep or wandered into nearby towns like Aurora.
Today, fewer migrants are coming to the Denver area. But Candice Marley, founder of a nonprofit called All Souls, still receives dozens of outreaches per week from social service agencies looking to help homeless migrants. All Souls had run encampments for migrants, but Denver shut them down because they lacked a permit.
“It’s so frustrating that we can’t help them,” Marley said. “That leaves families camping on their own, unsupported, living in their cars. Kids can’t get into school. There’s no stability.”
When Herrera started feeling labor pains in early December, she waited until she couldn’t bear the pain anymore and could feel the baby getting close. She called an ambulance.
The paramedics didn’t speak Spanish but called an interpreter. They told Herrera they had to take her to the closest hospital, instead of the one in Denver, since her contractions were so close together.
Her son was born healthy at 7 pounds, 8 ounces. She took him to the tent the next day. A few days later the whole family, including the baby, had contracted chicken pox. “The baby was in a bad state,” said Emily Rodriguez, a close friend living with her family in a tent next to Herrera’s.
Herrera took him to the hospital, then returned to the tent before being offered a way out. An Aurora woman originally from Mexico invited the family to live with her — at first, for free. After a couple weeks, the family moved to a small room in the garage for $800 a month.
To earn rent and pay expenses, Herrera and Rodriguez have cleaned homes, painted houses and shoveled snow while their children waited in a car by themselves. Finding regular work and actually getting paid for it has been difficult. While their husbands can get semi-regular work in construction, the women’s most consistent income comes from standing outside with their children and begging. On a good day, each earns about $50.
Herrera and her husband recently became eligible to apply for work permits and legal residency for Venezuelans who arrived in the United States last year. But it will cost $800 each for a lawyer to file the paperwork, along with hundreds of dollars in government fees. They don’t have the money.
What’s worse, they’re deeply in debt. Despite what the hospital had said when she was pregnant, Herrera was never signed up for emergency Medicaid. She says she owes $18,000 for the ambulance ride and delivery of her baby. Now, she avoids going to the doctor or taking her children because she’s afraid her large debt will jeopardize her chances of staying in the U.S. “I’m afraid they’re going to deport me,” she says.
Herrera and Rodriguez now hold cardboard signs along a busy street in Denver and then knock on the doors of private homes, never returning to the same address. They type up their request for clothes, food or money on their phones and translate it to English using Google. They hand their phones to whoever answers the door.
Herrera recently sent $500 to her sister to make the monthslong trip from Venezuela to Aurora with Herrera’s 8-year-old daughter. “I’ll have my family back together,” she says. And she believes her sister will be able to watch her kids so Herrera can look for work.
The problem is, Herrera hasn’t told her family back in Venezuela how she spends her time. “They think I’m fixing up homes and selling chocolate and flowers,” she says. “I’m living a lie.”
Finally, her sister and daughter are waiting across the border in Mexico. When we come to America, her sister asks, could we fly to Denver? The tickets are $600.
Herrera has to come clean. Life is far more difficult than she has let on.
She texts back:
No.
date: 2024-09-14, from: VOA News USA
SPRINGFIELD, Ohio — Many cities have been reshaped by immigrants in the last few years without attracting much notice. Not Springfield, Ohio.
Its story of economic renewal and related growing pains has been thrust into the national conversation in a presidential election year — and maliciously distorted by false rumors that Haitian immigrants are eating their neighbors’ pets. Donald Trump amplified those lies during Tuesday’s nationally televised debate, exacerbating some residents’ fears about growing divisiveness in the predominantly white, blue-collar city of about 60,000.
At the city’s Haitian Community Help and Support Center on Wednesday, Rose-Thamar Joseph said many of the roughly 15,000 immigrants who arrived in the past few years were drawn by good jobs and the city’s relative affordability. But a rising sense of unease has crept in as longtime residents increasingly bristle at newcomers taking jobs at factories, driving up housing costs, worsening traffic and straining city services.
“Some of them are talking about living in fear. Some of them are scared for their life,” Joseph said.
A “Welcome To Our City” sign hangs from a parking garage downtown, where a coffee shop, bakery and boutique line Springfield’s main drag, North Fountain Street. A flag advertising “CultureFest,” the city’s annual celebration of unity through diversity, waves from a pole nearby.
Melanie Flax Wilt, a Republican commissioner in the county where Springfield is located, said she has been pushing for community and political leaders to “stop feeding the fear.”
“After the election and everybody’s done using Springfield, Ohio, as a talking point for immigration reform, we are going to be the ones here still living through the challenges and coming up with the solutions,” she said.
Ariel Dominique, executive director of the Haitian American Foundation for Democracy, said she laughed at first at the absurdity of the false claims. But seeing the comments repeated on national television by the former president was painful.
“It is so unfair and unjust and completely contrary to what we have contributed to the world, what we have contributed to this nation for so long,” Dominique said.
The falsehoods about Springfield’s Haitian immigrants were spread online by Trump’s running mate, JD Vance, on the eve of Tuesday’s debate between Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris. It’s part of a timeworn American political tradition of casting immigrants as outsiders.
“This is what’s happening in our country. And it’s a shame,” Trump said at the debate after repeating the falsehoods. When challenged by ABC News moderator David Muir over the false claims, Trump held firm, saying “people on television” said their dogs were eaten, but he offered no evidence.
Officials in Springfield have tried to tamp down the misinformation by saying there have been no credible or detailed reports of any pets being abducted or eaten. State leaders are trying to help address some of the real challenges facing the city.
Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine, a Republican, said Tuesday he would add more law enforcement and health care resources to an aid package the state has already provided to Springfield.
Many Haitians have come to the U.S. to flee poverty and violence. They have embraced President Joe Biden’s new and expanded legal pathways to enter, and have shunned illegal crossings, accounting for only 92 border arrests out of more than 56,000 in July, the latest data available.
The Biden administration recently announced an estimated 300,000 Haitians in the U.S. could remain in the country at least through February 2026, with eligibility for work authorization, under a law called Temporary Protected Status. The goal is to spare people from being deported to countries in turmoil.
Springfield, about 72 kilometers from the state capital of Columbus, suffered a steep decline in its manufacturing sector toward the end of the last century, and its population shrank as a result. But its downtown has been revitalized in recent years as more Haitians arrived and helped meet the rising demand for labor as the economy emerged from the pandemic. Officials say Haitians now account for about 15% of the population.
The city was shaken last year when a minivan slammed into a school bus, killing an 11-year-old boy. The driver was a Haitian man who recently settled in the area and was driving without a valid license. During a city commission meeting on Tuesday, the boy’s parents condemned politicians’ use of their son’s death to stoke hatred.
Last week, a post on the social media platform X shared what looked like a screengrab of a social media post apparently out of Springfield. The post claimed without evidence that the person’s “neighbor’s daughter’s friend” saw a cat hanging from a tree to be butchered and eaten, outside a house where it claimed Haitians lived. It was accompanied by a photo of a Black man carrying what appeared to be a goose by its feet.
On Monday, Vance posted on X: “Reports now show that people have had their pets abducted and eaten by people who shouldn’t be in this country.” The next day, he posted again, saying his office had received inquiries from Springfield residents who said “their neighbors’ pets or local wildlife were abducted by Haitian migrants.”
Longtime Springfield resident Chris Hazel, who knows the park and neighborhood where the pet and goose abductions were purported to have happened, called the claims “preposterous.”
“It reminds me of when people used to accuse others and outsiders as cannibals. It’s dehumanizing a community,” he said of the accusations against the city’s Haitian residents.
Sophia Pierrilus, the daughter of a former Haitian diplomat who moved to the Ohio capital of Columbus 15 years ago and is now an immigrant advocate, agreed, calling it all political.
“My view is that’s their way to use Haitians as a scapegoat to bring some kind of chaos in America,” she said.
With its rising population of immigrants, Springfield is hardly an outlier. So far this decade, immigration has accounted for almost three-quarters of U.S. population growth, with 2.5 million immigrants arriving in the United States between 2020 and 2023, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. Population growth is an important driver of economic growth.
“The Haitian immigrants who started moving to Springfield the last few years are the reason why the economy and the labor force has been revitalized there,” said Guerline Jozef, executive director of the Haitian Bridge Alliance, which provides legal and social services to immigrants across the U.S.
Now, she said, Haitians in Springfield have told her that, out of fear, they are considering leaving the city.
date: 2024-09-14, from: VOA News USA
date: 2024-09-14, from: VOA News USA
miami — The percentage of U.S. residents who were foreign-born last year grew to its highest level in more than a century, according to figures released Thursday from the most comprehensive survey of American life.
The share of people born outside the United States increased in 2023 to 14.3% from 13.9% in 2022, according to estimates from the U.S. Census Bureau’s annual American Community Survey, which tracks commuting times, internet access, family life, income, education levels, disabilities, military service and employment, among other topics.
International migrants have become a primary driver of population growth this decade, increasing their share of the overall population as fewer children are being born in the U.S. compared with numbers from years past. The rate of the foreign-born population in the United States hasn’t been this high since 1910, when it was 14.7%, driven by waves of people emigrating in search of a better life.
“We knew that here you can have savings, live well. Here you can have normal services such as water and electricity,” said Luciana Bracho, who moved legally to Miami from Venezuela as part of a humanitarian parole program with her boyfriend, parents and brother in April 2023. “I like Miami and the opportunities that I have had.”
In 2023, international migrants accounted for more than two-thirds of the population growth in the United States, and so far this decade they have made up almost three-quarters of U.S. growth.
The growth appears to have been driven by people coming from Latin America, whose share of the foreign-born population increased year-over-year to 51.2% from 50.3%, according to the estimates. Latin America was the only world region of origin to experience an increase among those U.S. residents born in another country, as the share of foreign-born residents from Europe and Asia dropped slightly.
Nicole Díaz, a Venezuelan opposition activist, left after receiving threats to her life and lived in Peru and Ecuador before moving to the Miami area legally in February 2023 with her husband and 9-year-old daughter. Díaz described herself as “100% happy” living in South Florida, where they pay $2,300 a month for a two-bedroom apartment.
“After being in different countries, working here is relaxed, despite the language,” Díaz said. “But housing is very expensive, and we have been evaluating moving to another state because here all the salary goes for the rent.”
Among the states with the largest year-over-year bumps in the foreign-born population was Delaware, going to 11.2% from 9.9%; Georgia, to 11.6% from 10.7%; and New Mexico, to 10.2% from 9.3% The share of the foreign-born population dropped slightly in Washington, D.C., Idaho, Iowa, Maine, Minnesota, Montana, North Dakota and Oregon.
The Census Bureau figures don’t distinguish whether people are in the United States legally or illegally. Illegal immigration has become a top issue in the 2024 presidential race, even as illegal border crossings from Mexico plunged this summer after reaching a record last December.
The share of U.S. residents who identify as Hispanic, no matter what race, rose last year to 19.4% from 19.1% in the previous year, according to the survey. At the same time, those who identify as non-Hispanic white alone dropped from 57.7% to 57.1%. The share of U.S. residents who identify as Black alone dropped slightly, from 12.2% to 12.1%, and it increased slightly for those who identify as Asian alone from 5.9% to 6%.
Residents in the United States continued to get older, with the median age increasing from 39 in 2022 to 39.2 in 2023. The nation’s aging is taking place as a majority of baby boomers have become senior citizens and millennials are entering middle age. While the share of children under age 18 remained steady at 21.7% year-over-year, the share of senior citizens age 65 and over increased to 17.7% from 17.3%.
Meanwhile, a post-pandemic bump in working from home continued its slide back to pre-COVID-19 times, as the share of employees working from home dropped last year to 13.8% from 15.2% in the previous year.
In 2021, the first full year after the pandemic’s start, almost 18% of employees were working from home, up from 5.7% in 2019. But return-to-office mandates in the past two years have reversed that trend and caused commute times to bump up slightly last year, growing on average to 26.8 minutes from 26.4 minutes.
The survey also showed that the median cost of renting, plus utilities and related expenses, grew faster than median home values in 2023 for the first time in a decade. The 3.8% jump in rental costs was the largest annual increase since at least 2011. Despite the spike in rental costs, the share of renter income spent on rent and utilities remained unchanged at 31% in 2023, suggesting that incomes kept pace with rent hikes, the Census Bureau said.
date: 2024-09-14, from: VOA News USA
BANGUI, Central African Republic — Hours after Russian mercenary leader Yevgeny Prigozhin rebelled against his country’s top military leaders, his private army’s biggest client in Africa panicked, turning for help to his foe in the West.
Officials from Central African Republic, where some 1,500 of Prigozhin’s Wagner Group mercenaries were stationed, wrote a letter that day, requesting to “rapidly” arrange a meeting with a private U.S. security firm to discuss collaboration.
Dated June 23, 2023, the day Prigozhin launched the armed rebellion, the letter sparked a series of meetings, culminating in a deal with the central African nation and Bancroft Global Development. That sparked backlash from Russian mercenaries, according to a dozen diplomats, locals, and analysts.
The tensions in Central African Republic are a window into a larger battle playing out across the continent as Moscow and Washington vie for influence.
The Russian mercenaries — using success in staving off rebels in this impoverished nation as a model for expansion — have long been accused by locals and rights groups of stripping natural resources such as minerals and timber and are linked to the torture and death of civilians. In the wake of Prigozhin’s rebellion and suspicious death in a plane crash, the Russians are recalibrating their Africa operations. The United States, which has been largely disengaged from the region for years, is attempting to maintain a presence and stymie Russian gains as it pushes African countries to distance themselves from the mercenaries.
U.S. officials blame Russia for anti-American sentiment in the region and say they’re trying to shift the narrative.
“If the U.S. can’t regain a foothold, it could give Russia greater economic and political leverage,” said Samuel Ramani of the Royal United Services Institute, a defense and security think tank. “If Russia loses Central African Republic, its flagship model on the continent, there could be a domino effect in other countries.”
Russia’s influence
In recent years, Russia has emerged as the security partner of choice for a growing number of governments in the region, displacing traditional allies such as France and the U.S.
Moscow expanded its military cooperation by using mercenaries like Wagner, which since around 2017 has operated in at least half a dozen countries by protecting African leaders and in some cases helping fight rebels and extremists.
They’re also plagued by their human rights record. Two years ago in Mali, Wagner and the army were accused of executing about 300 men — some suspected of being Islamist extremists, but most civilians — in what Human Rights Watch called the worst single atrocity reported in the country’s decade-long armed conflict. And in Central African Republic, mercenaries train the army on torture tactics, including how to tburn people alive, according to watchdog The Sentry.
Central African Republic
Central African Republic was one of the first places the mercenaries entered. The country has been in conflict since 2013, when predominantly Muslim rebels seized power and forced the president from office. Six of the 14 armed groups that signed a 2019 peace deal later left the agreement. Locals and the government credited Wagner with fighting back rebels who tried to overtake Bangui, the capital, in 2021. The Russians soon expanded to Burkina Faso and Niger, and have ambitions for further growth.
Russia is refurbishing a military base some 80 kilometers from Bangui. Alexander Bikantov, Russia’s ambassador to Central African Republic, said the base will improve the country’s security.
Fidele Gouandjika, adviser to President Faustin-Archange Touadera, said the base aims to have 10,000 fighters by 2030 to engage with more African nations.
Touadera’s office didn’t reply to written requests for comment for this story. His adviser to the country’s spy agency declined to be interviewed.
Pressure from United States
The U.S. had been pushing Central African Republic to find an alternative to Wagner for years. A more assertive U.S. approach came as it faced new setbacks and tried to rework agreements in the region. Its troops left Chad and Niger, where they were no longer welcome.
Still, the State Department said in a statement this year that it wasn’t involved in the decision to establish Bancroft Global Development’s presence in Central African Republic.
But Washington could deny such contracts if it wanted, said Sean McFate, a former contractor in Africa and author of “The New Rules of War.”
The U.S. has used private military companies to reduce American “boots on the ground” in Africa, McFate said, and companies like Bancroft have to play by Washington’s rules if they want future government work.
In response to AP questions, the U.S. official who spoke on condition of anonymity said it uses private contractors in Africa to help countries operate more effectively, with U.S. government oversight to ensure accountability. The official said the State Department has overseen Bancroft’s work in Somalia but not Central African Republic or elsewhere.
Bancroft’s background
Washington-based Bancroft is a nonprofit working in nine countries — five in Africa. Its involvement in Central African Republic has been shrouded in secrecy since signs emerged of its presence last fall.
During an AP visit months later, rumors swirled about Bancroft’s activities, fueling speculation the U.S was bringing its own Wagner to oust Russia.
But according to Bancroft founder Michael Stock, the group entered at Bangui’s behest.
Stock received the letter from the presidency within a day of Prigozhin’s mutiny, and the two signed a deal in September, he said.
Fewer than 30 Bancroft personnel work there, Stock said, helping Central African Republic with intelligence systems, interagency cooperation and law enforcement.
Bancroft has invested some $1.4 million there, Stock said.
Much of Bancroft’s funding has come from U.S. and United Nations grants. From 2018 to 2020, it received more than $43 million from the U.S., according to audits required as part of tax forms.
Amal Ali, a former U.S. intelligence analyst, is among critics who say that despite its yearslong presence in Somalia, Bancroft hasn’t contributed to any eradication of terrorism.
Stock dismissed such comments as uninformed and said the Somali and U.S. governments “agree Bancroft has done a great deal to damaging illegal armed groups and developing the capacity of the government to perform its national defense functions professionally.”
Backlash on the ground
Rights groups say a lack of transparency about Bancroft’s operations has fostered an atmosphere of distrust in a country already rampant with armed actors. Wagner, a U.N. peacekeeping mission and Rwandan troops are all on the ground to try to quell violence.
“Operating in a vague and nontransparent way in the Central African Republic only leads to suspicion,” said Lewis Mudge, of Human Rights Watch.
Stock defended Bancroft’s work and policies. “It is perfectly normal for a government not to publicize how it is defending the people and the state,” he told AP.
Unclear future
As the U.S. and Russia jockey for power, African governments say they want to make their own choices.
Central African Republic officials approached Bancroft, which shows that these governments haven’t become Russian puppets, said Jack Margolin, an expert on private military companies.
But, he added, Russia’s reaction to Bancroft could hurt Moscow’s standing with other nations.
After Prigozhin’s death, Russia moved quickly to take control of Wagner’s assets, and the defense ministry told countries where Wagner operated that it would take over. The country and its military intelligence arm have taken a more direct role in Africa operations, deploying more official detachments from its army.
In Central African Republic, it’s unclear how much sway the Russian state has with the mercenaries, who are beloved by many. For most people here, there’s little interest in squabbles among foreign nations.
“There are problems between the Americans and Russians, but that doesn’t matter to us,” said Jean Louis Yet, who works at Bangui’s market. “We are here working, trying our best to make a living. All we want is security.”
@Miguel de Icaza Mastondon feed (date: 2024-09-14, from: Miguel de Icaza Mastondon feed)
Ceasefire is October language.
We had time to digest, and the language is now right of return, reparations, one state, one person one vote, dismantling of apartheid regime, prison time for war criminals.
With sanctions, boycotts and divestment as a stepping stone.
https://mastodon.social/@Migueldeicaza/113133513581493805
@Miguel de Icaza Mastondon feed (date: 2024-09-14, from: Miguel de Icaza Mastondon feed)
Matt Nelson set himself on fire yesterday in front of the Israeli consulate in Boston protesting the genocide in Gaza.
https://mastodon.social/@Migueldeicaza/113133472950469996
@Dave Winer’s linkblog (date: 2024-09-14, from: Dave Winer’s linkblog)
We didn’t need to ask Redmond or Cupertino for permission to exist. No one was forcing any of us to use their server, their client, or their operating system.
https://cdibona.substack.com/p/my-eulogy-for-the-open-web-and-old
date: 2024-09-14, from: VOA News USA
washington — Recent moves by Pyongyang have focused attention on what will be one of the first major foreign policy challenges facing the next U.S. president: how to deal with North Korea’s rapidly developing nuclear threat.
In a set of rapid-fire developments on Friday:
— North Korean leader Kim Jong Un called for an “exponential increase” in the size of his nation’s nuclear arsenal, according to the state-run news agency KCNA. He made the same call in speeches on Tuesday and on the last day of 2022.
— State media released photos for the first time of the Nuclear Weapons Institute where North Korea processes uranium for the manufacture of nuclear weapons. The photos, which showed a sophisticated array of centrifuges, were made public as Kim toured the facility.
— North Korea announced that it had tested a new type of 600 mm multiple rocket launcher the previous day. South Korea said on Thursday that North Korea test-fired several short-range ballistic missiles into the waters off the eastern coast.
The developments came in the context of enhanced military cooperation between North Korea and Russia, which is believed to be helping Pyongyang to develop its weapons capabilities in exchange for munitions used in Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine.
“The threat from North Korea’s nuclear and missile programs has been growing steadily and virtually unchecked over the course of several U.S. administrations,” said Evans Revere, a former State Department official with extensive experience negotiating with North Korea.
“Whoever the next U.S. president is, she or he will face a more sophisticated and dangerous North Korean threat.”
Revere said in an interview that the winner of the U.S. election would have to find ways to weaken the link between Moscow and Pyongyang “and demonstrate to Beijing that its ‘partnership without limits’ with Russia is a dangerous and ill-advised path that will yield no benefits” for China.
Russian President Vladimir Putin and Chinese President Xi Jinping declared in May a “new era” in opposition to the U.S. and reaffirmed the “no limits” partnership that was first announced just days before Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.
While China has held back on providing Russia with arms for its war effort, the United States has accused it of delivering electronic components and other dual-use items that are keeping Moscow’s arms industry afloat.
Pyongyang, for its part, denies participating in any arms transfers to Russia, an act that would violate United Nations sanctions.
But a report this week by Conflict Armament Research, a U.K.-based group that tracks weapons in armed conflicts, said parts from four North Korean missiles have been found in Ukraine.
The missiles, examined by Kyiv, are either KN-23 or KN-24, known as Hwasong-11 short-range missile series, and thought to have been used in attacks in July and August, the report said.
Pyongyang-Moscow military ties have also been expanded to include tourism, trade, and economic and technical cooperation.
This makes the use of sanctions less effective as a policy tool to counter North Korea’s nuclear buildup, according to Gary Samore, former White House coordinator for arms control and weapons of mass destruction during the Obama administration.
“That’s not as much leverage now as it was before because of the Russian-North Korean relationship,” said Samore. “The U.S. doesn’t have very strong economic leverage that it can use with North Korea.”
With few obvious policy options available, the two presidential candidates – former President Donald Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris – have largely confined themselves to criticizing each other’s approach without laying out any specific plans to roll back the North Korean threat.
At Tuesday night’s televised debate, Harris criticized Trump for exchanging “love letters with Kim Jong Un” during his presidency while Trump disapproved of the current administration’s handling of the issue, saying, “Look at what’s going on in North Korea.”
During his presidency, Trump held three summits with Kim but the diplomatic effort ultimately failed when Trump refused Kim’s demand for sanctions relief in exchange for a partial rollback of his nuclear program.
There have been no formal talks between the two countries since, although the Biden administration insists it is open to negotiations without preconditions, a policy that Harris could be expected to continue if elected.
The Biden administration also maintains that its goal remains the complete denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula, even as many experts suggest it is time to acknowledge that Pyongyang will not give up its weapons and say the international community should focus on containment.
Samore predicted that a Harris administration would continue to say that “as an ultimate objective … the U.S. seeks denuclearization in the long term.”
A second Trump administration, he theorized, may say “denuclearization is no longer possible” and “accept North Korea as a nuclear power.”
Robert Rapson, who served as charge d’affaires and deputy chief of mission at the U.S. Embassy in Seoul from 2018 to 2021, said much would depend on how the winner of the election decides to work with regional allies South Korea and Japan.
“In the likely absence of any grand outreach towards Pyongyang, Harris will have to carefully manage the relationship with ally Seoul, with a focus for the foreseeable future on maintaining peace and stability on the peninsula,” he said.
He added that it was “uncertain at this moment” whether Trump would feel compelled to reach out to Kim and whether he would diminish the value of the alliances with South Korea and Japan.
Eunjung Cho contributed to this report.
https://www.voanews.com/a/mounting-north-korean-threats-await-next-us-president-/7784050.html
@Dave Winer’s linkblog (date: 2024-09-14, from: Dave Winer’s linkblog)
Laura Loomer.