It was uncharted waters for the 72nd Emmy awards – the first major acting awards show held since the pandemic began, a strange and subdued ceremony in which stars accepted awards on Zoom.But unwelcome new methods (the telecast required more than 100 live feeds), and the end of former Emmys juggernauts Game of Thrones and Veep, ushered in a celebration of new series and talent: Canadian comedy Schitt’s Creek swept the comedy awards, HBO’s Succession dominated in drama and the evening’s most-nominated show, HBO’s prescient, eerie Watchmen, cleaned up in the limited series category.Jimmy Kimmel hosted the mostly virtual “Pandemmys” from a nearly empty Staples Center in Los Angeles, with some help from Jennifer Aniston, Ozark actor Jason Bateman and Black-ish star Anthony Anderson, as well as giant screens beaming into celebrities’ homes across the country. The safety protocols – masked camera operators, styrofoam cutouts of celebrities in the empty stands – were necessary, Kimmel said, because “this isn’t a Maga rally, it’s the Emmys”.A year after Fleabag dominated the comedy awards, a single program – Schitt’s Creek, a Canadian production which found a second life and a passionate fanbase on Netflix – swept the genre. The cast and crew, including father-son duo Eugene and Dan Levy, best actress Catherine O’Hara and best supporting actress Annie Murphy, accepted their awards together, wearing masks and sitting a Covid safety-compliant distance apart at a set in Canada.As widely predicted, Succession, the sharply written and brutally funny HBO drama about a media conglomerate family of scoundrels, racked up the drama awards, winning best writing, directing, best actor for Jeremy Strong and best series. The show’s British creator, Jesse Armstrong, flipped the script with a series of “un-thank yous” for things which have kept the cast and crew apart for over half a year: the virus, Donald Trump, Boris Johnson and “the media moguls who do so much for the people in power”.Other winners from the evening included Last Week Tonight with John Oliver for best variety series, RuPaul’s Drag Race for reality competition and The Morning Show’s Billy Crudup for supporting actor in a drama, which brought the Apple TV+ its only win of the evening.The nascent streamer’s disappointment was outpaced by Netflix, which entered the evening with a record 160 nominations but emerged with only two wins during the telecast (Ozark’s Julia Garner for supporting actress in a drama and Unorthodox’s Maria Schrader for directing in a limited series) and 21 wins overall. Awards stalwart HBO topped the evening with 30 awards in total, most notably best drama series for Succession and Watchmen for best limited series. Watchmen, based on a 1980s comic book series and which used the real-life 1921 Tulsa, Oklahoma, massacre of “Black Wall Street” as its origin story, took home 11 awards out of 26 nominations, the most of the evening.In a year of racial reckoning for the United States, when millions took to the streets to protest police brutality this summer, the television academy nominated their most diverse slate to date: a record 34.3% of nominated actors were black, up from 19.8% in 2019. The 2020 Emmys were “supposed to be the blackest Emmys ever”, said Anderson in a bit with Kimmel. “I’m still rooting for everybody black, because black stories, black performances and black lives matter,” he said, escalating in volume, loud enough “so that Mike Pence can hear it”.Though the host veered from many overt political statements – or, in a ceremony packed with 24 awards, many statements at all – several winners, including several black actors, demonstrated support for the Black Lives Matter movement and encouraged viewers to vote in the upcoming national election. Watchmen’s Regina King, accepting for best actress in a limited series, wore a shirt bearing the name of Breonna Taylor, whose killing by police officers in Louisville in March helped ignite America’s largest civil rights movement in half a century.Uzo Aduba pointed to her own Breonna Taylor shirt while accepting best supporting actress in a drama series for her role as Shirley Chisholm, the first black woman to run for president, in Mrs America: “Let’s go change the world.” Euphoria star Zendaya, who at 24 became the youngest person and only the second black woman to win for best drama actress, shouted out the protesters in the nation’s streets. “I see you, I admire, I respect you,” she said.Mark Ruffalo, the best actor winner for playing identical twins grappling with mental illness in HBO’s I Know This Much Is True, called on viewers to vote “for love, compassion and kindness”.“If you have privilege, you have to fight for those who are struggling,” he said.And Watchmen’s Yahya Abdul-Mateen II, who won for supporting actor in a limited series, dedicated to “all the black women in my life”.Watchmen’s creator, Damon Lindelof, accepted the best limited series win with a “Remember Tulsa ’21” shirt and dedicated the award to victims of the burning of Black Wall Street in Tulsa in 1921. “History is mystery – it’s broken in a million puzzle pieces and so many are missing,” he said. “We have to name it before we can repair it.” Topics Emmys 2020 Emmys Awards and prizes US television Television Succession news

The life of an Indian asylum seeker on hunger strike in US detention is at risk because of the “abysmal” treatment he is receiving from US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice), which began force-feeding him two weeks ago, a doctor warned in court documents filed this week.Dr Parveen Parmar, chief of the division of global emergency medicine at the University of Southern California, said in an affidavit that the 33-year-old asylum seeker, Ajay Kumar, is receiving “the worst medical care I have seen in my 10 years of practice”.Kumar is one of three Indian men on hunger strike in an El Paso immigration detention center who is currently being force-fed – an act medical bodies and human rights groups have argued represents a form of inhumane and degrading treatment.Three other men were also part of the hunger strike, which began on 8 July, but advocates do not know their current status because two of them were deported and a third was transferred to a detention facility in Florida. A seventh man has ended his strike.The men have been in detention for nearly a year, or longer. The prolonged detention, coupled with their fear of political persecution for their activism in India, prompted the hunger strike.It is only the second time advocates have documented force-feeding in Ice detention – the first was in January this year, when at least nine Indian men went on hunger strike.The cases have been shrouded in secrecy, but on Tuesday, a federal judge made Parmar’s signed affidavit public, revealing the doctor’s concerns.“As is clear from my review of his medical record, his health is at risk in Ice custody not solely from his hunger strike, but from the truly substandard medical care he is receiving in detention,” Parmar wrote.After Parmar reviewed “roughly 471 pages” of Ice medical records and court testimony from an unnamed Ice doctor, she concluded the Ice doctor does not fully understand the consequences of prolonged starvation and lacked knowledge about basic medical facts. In separate court documents, the doctor is identified as Michelle Iglesias.Ice did not respond to questions about its doctor or the hunger strikes.The attorney representing Kumar’s asylum case, Linda Corchado, said she spoke to a very thin and frail Kumar on Tuesday – 17 days after the feeding tube had been inserted. He weighed 143lb when he started striking and has now dropped to 115 lb, she said. “He speaks well, and every now and then he’ll have to stop himself, and he’ll look downward and start swallowing hard and stop, then start talking again,” she said.Corchado, director of legal services at Las Americas Immigrant Advocacy Center, represents two of the other hunger strikers in the El Paso Service Processing Center, including one who quit his protest when the feeding tube was inserted to his nose, causing bleeding and breathing problems that required the use of an oxygen mask.She said he had been hospitalized for three days for a severe throat and nose infection and that Ice began the force-feeding the same day he left the hospital. A fourth hunger striker in El Paso is being represented by another attorney. An excerpt of a letter written by an Indian detainee in the first few days of his hunger strike in an El Paso detention center. Photograph: Advocate Visitors with Immigrants in Detention (Avid)The force-feeding process in immigration detention is shrouded in secrecy. News of a hunger strike reaches advocates by word-of-mouth and court orders to allow force-feeding are usually under seal.The American Medical Association has repeatedly stated competent patients have a right to refuse medical interventions, even if they are lifesaving. When reports emerged of force-feeding in Ice detention earlier this year, the UN human rights office warned the US could be violating the UN convention against torture.The advocacy group Freedom for Immigrants has documented at least 1,396 people on hunger strike in 18 detention facilities since May 2015.In December and January, Ice force-fed at least six Indian men through plastic nasal tubes. Orders to allow force-feeding had been secured before, but there was no record of them being acted on until then. Four other detainees were also on hunger strike at the time in Miami, Phoenix, San Diego and San Francisco.A glimpse into the force-feeding process was available at a 16 August court hearing, when Iglesias, the Ice doctor, described the force-feeding process she had recommended.Iglesias said that at least 10 medical and detention center personnel were needed to conduct the procedure, according to Texas Monthly. She said six guards surround the detainee in case of resistance, an x-ray technician checks to be sure the tube was inserted correctly – a concern about force-feeding is the tube can accidentally be inserted into the lungs – and as many as five other detainees observe.Iglesias told the court, repeatedly, that force-feeding is medically unethical but it was required by Ice regulations. “There wouldn’t be anyone in a hospital who would do it,” Iglesias said.Iglesias also testified the feeding tube inserted into detainee’s noses was the same diameter as a plastic drinking straw, which would make them at least 1mm larger than the tubes used at the Guantánamo Bay detention facility, according to military standard operating procedure documents obtained by Al Jazeera in 2013.Parmar, who testified that she regularly cares for detained patients in Los Angeles, said the medical records showed the Ice physician did not have a conversation with Kumar about the risks, benefits and alternatives to forced hydration and feeding in his language.“This lack of appropriate attention to critically low blood pressure and astonishingly infrequent MD evaluations of a very ill patient, on whom treatments are being forced without their consent, would never be tolerated in any hospital and is, frankly, the worst medical care I have seen in my 10 years of practice,” Parmar said.Parmar ender her assessment by recommending Kumar be released from detention while his asylum case moves through the courts. ‘Now I have no solution of my problem. My hope is broken,’ wrote a migrant on hunger strike in an El Paso detention center. He is now being force-fed Photograph: Advocate Visitors with Immigrants in Detention (Avid)Margaret Brown Vega and Nathan Craig have been visiting the asylum seekers in El Paso once or twice a week since before the hunger strike began as part of their work with Advocate Visitors with Immigrants in Detention, a group that visits and corresponds with detained migrants.On Sunday, they spoke to the men through a glass partition using telephone receivers they said the men struggled to hold up. The men were brought into the visitation room in wheelchairs because they are so weak from the lack of food. “Sometimes these guys look like walking dead,” Craig said.One of the men, who is 5ft 9in, now weighs about 95lb. He crossed the southern border into the US to seek asylum after fleeing the Indian state of Punjab, where he said he was targeted for political activism.He started the hunger strike after a judge denied his request for bond. On Wednesday, his appeal to have his asylum case reconsidered was denied.Immigration judges have huge discretion in determining who can be released on bond, a legal right Donald Trump’s administration has worked to restrict. Efforts to limit bond, along with the Trump administration’s aggressive immigration clampdown, have seen detention rates skyrocket to an all-time high of more than 54,300 people.In July 2018, a federal judge ordered the government to conduct individual reviews of more than 1,000 asylum seekers’ cases after lawyers sued the government for denying nearly all parole request for asylum seekers in five field offices, including El Paso, since early 2017.Parole is only available to people who seek asylum at legal points of entry, while those who cross outside border checkpoints must apply for bond. Before Trump took office, parole was granted to more than nine out of 10 asylum seekers, according to the suit.“When you look at people like my clients, who have constantly been sent to hospital for emergency care and are a huge expense to the government because they are hunger strikers, what is Ice’s prerogative to keep them detained?” Corchado said.“It’s these desperate acts for release that are deeply troubling to me, but in my eyes it’s a symptom for something much deeper, which is the system we are operating now would rather keep an asylum seeker detained than release them into our country,” Corchado added.

Hong Kong was hit with another day of turmoil after a man was shot by a police officer and another set alight following a confrontation with protesters in one of the most dramatic days in over five months of protests. CNN'sPaula Hancocksreports from the Chinese University of Hong Kong where protesters appear to be doubling down.Source: CNN

He has held nearly a dozen events for New Jersey Congressional candidates this year, helping raise $400,000, according to an aide. Mr. Booker has held 10 events since June with Mr. Menendez. And with the new Democratic governor, Philip D. Murphy, still healing some interparty wounds after a bruising budget fight in June, Mr. Booker is one of the most popular and potent draws for candidates in New Jersey seeking to build excitement among voters.“It was quite a challenge speaking between my mom and Cory Booker,” said Tom Malinowski, a former official in the Obama administration and a Democratic challenger in a district in northern New Jersey. “He is someone who is very good to campaign with right now. He brings a lot of energy. He is both an inspiring and very thoughtful speaker. I think his presentations at my campaign events have captured the moral importance of the moment and its practical importance to New Jersey better than just about anybody.”The reliably Democratic crowds also serve as a testing ground for whatever national ambitions Mr. Booker may have. As he campaigned for four Democratic challengers on Saturday — Mr. Malinowski, Mikie Sherrill, Andy Kim and Josh Welle — Mr. Booker pulled from a stump speech that could be just as easily delivered at, say, a major Democratic fund-raising event in Iowa (where he will be in early October) or on the campaign train in South Carolina (he’ll be there in October, too).“Too many of us in this room have parents and grandparents who escaped oppression, who escaped the lack of freedom to come to this country and raise children who would grow up to be Congress people and mayors, business people and entrepreneurs,’’ Mr. Booker said while campaigning in Cranford, “for us to suddenly say not only will we shut down our borders to immigrants and those escaping oppression and fear but for those people that do show up, we’re going to rip apart their families, when we all can be one moral voice of conviction to say, ‘this is not who we are.’”

Mulvaney could become a star witness in the impeachment proceedings, if Democrats are able to secure his testimony. Representative Jamie Raskin, a Maryland Democrat who is involved in the inquiry and is a former constitutional-law professor, told us that Mulvaney “essentially confessed to the crime. He has given us the essential conclusion which settles the matter of law, but there are a number of other facts that he could fill in.” Summoning Mulvaney would undoubtedly set up a fight, with White House lawyers making the argument that he’s immune from having to testify about conversations with Trump.Trump has been told that he needs a more adept communications strategy to thwart the impeachment investigation, and he agrees it’s necessary, the person close to the president said. Different advisers have floated different alternatives, one of which would be designating a spokesperson to handle press inquiries along with a group of aides who would rebut the allegations that Democrats have surfaced.It’s already late to be setting up a war room. Even before the call summary’s release, House Democrats, responding to early reports on what it would reveal, appeared united in insisting that the president had abused the powers of his office, and that an impeachment inquiry was necessary.Legal efforts to quash the probe have failed. Earlier this month, White House Counsel Pat Cipollone said in a letter to House Democrats that the administration wouldn’t cooperate with the inquiry, and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo declared that the State Department would not make several officials available for testimony. Ignoring such pronouncements, a parade of administration officials have come forward anyway, delivering damning testimony of a quid pro quo undertaken by Trump. Cipollone’s letter sparked a backlash. Even his former classmates at the University of Chicago Law School balked, writing to him that his letter “flouts the tradition of rigor and intellectual honesty that we learned together.”Trump’s mantra has been that his call with his Ukrainian counterpart was “perfect.” But some Republicans believe that the one-word defense is inadequate. They want a credible, substantive explanation of what happened that they can relay to voters. So far, there’s been none.On Tuesday, after William Taylor, the U.S.’s top diplomat in Ukraine, offered testimony that contradicted the White House’s claim that there was no quid pro quo, Trump’s press office released a rare statement. The response was a single paragraph, and it boiled down to a vague attack on Taylor, referring to the Vietnam War veteran and other administration officials who have testified as “radical unelected bureaucrats.”Until this point, the White House has seemed confident that Trump’s Republican support in the Senate is a firewall that will ultimately prevent his removal from office. Should the House impeach Trump, the Republican-controlled Senate would hold a trial. Twenty Republicans would need to join with Democrats to force the president out. Under ordinary circumstances, that threshold would be impossible to meet. But nothing about this situation is ordinary. Elaina Plottis a former staff writer atThe Atlantic, where she covered the White House. Connect Twitter Peter Nicholasis a staff writer atThe Atlantic, where he covers the White House.

Amazon boxes stacked for delivery in New York, where it says it has more than 81,000 small merchants. Photo: mike segar/Reuters By May 3, 2018 6:00 am ET Amazon.com Inc. said more than one million small businesses in the U.S. sell their wares on its online marketplace, providing the number for the first time amid criticism from some politicians over its business practices and economic impact. The Seattle-based retailer has previously said that it had more than two million total third-party sellers world-wide, but hadn’t given a breakdown in the U.S. In its release on Thursday, it also listed the number of smaller merchants by state, saying California had the most with more... To Read the Full Story Subscribe Sign In Continue reading your article with a WSJ membership View Membership Options

The world’s richest man, Jeff Bezos, is taking on the world’s most powerful.Amazon on Friday filed a legal challenge to the Department of Defense’s surprise decision to award a hard-fought $10 billion cloud-computing contract to Microsoft last month, and notified the Court of Federal Claims that it plans to use two videos of President Trump’s comments about the deal to make a case of interference.The legal protest was filed under seal to protect trade secrets, but Amazon previously announced that it believed there was “political influence” and “unmistakable bias” involved in the decision. “We ... believe it’s critical for our country that the government and its elected leaders administer procurements objectively and in a manner that is free from political influence,” Amazon spokesman Drew Herdener said in a statement last week when the company first announced plans to challenge the decision. “Numerous aspects of the JEDI evaluation process contained clear deficiencies, errors, and unmistakable bias — and it’s important that these matters be examined and rectified.”The two videos include comments by Trump at a 2016 campaign rally in Texas and more recent ones from a press conference in July of this year. During the July event, Trump told reporters that he was looking “very seriously” at getting involved in the decision, according to the New York Times.“Great companies are complaining about it,” Trump said at the time, “so we’re going to take a look at it. We’ll take a very strong look at it.”Amazon’s cloud computing arm — Amazon Web Services — had been the favorite to land the huge Pentagon contract, both because of its market-leading position in cloud computing and its previous work with the Central Intelligence Agency.But the Pentagon ended up awarding the Joint Enterprise Defense Infrastructure contract — known in the industry as JEDI — to Amazon Web Services rival Microsoft instead. The deal is worth up to $10 billion over 10 years and could be a foothold for Microsoft to win more government business. “We have confidence in the qualified staff at the Department of Defense, and we believe the facts will show they ran a detailed, thorough and fair process in determining the needs of the warfighter were best met by Microsoft,” Janelle Poole, a spokeswoman for Microsoft, told the Washington Post.Amazon’s legal claim is just the latest chapter in a years-long contentious relationship between the Seattle tech giant and Trump. The president often criticizes Bezos and the Washington Post, which Bezos owns, accusing it of “fake news” and calling it the “Amazon Washington Post.” Trump has also often levied criticism at Amazon for its relationship with the United States Postal Service, accusing it of having a sweetheart deal and not paying enough for delivery services.

The former FBI director James Comey has joked – or not – that he will move to New Zealand if Donald Trump is re-elected in 2020.Comey was interviewed on C-Span and asked what he would do if Trump was returned to office. “From my new home in New Zealand, I still will believe in America,” Comey said, to laughter from the audience.The former FBI boss worked for the Obama administration and was fired by Trump in May 2017, fuelling concerns for the bureau’s investigation into links between the Trump campaign and Russia in the 2016 election. The comment was apparently made in jest but he joins a long line of prominent Americans to float the idea of emigrating to New Zealand as a way to escape Trump’s chaotic presidency.Relocating to the nation has become something of an obsession for Silicon Valley billionaires and preppers who fear the apocalypse is looming. Immigration to the country hit a record high in mid-2017 with many seeing the politically stable country as a refuge from the likes of Brexit and a divided America.In 2016 the supreme court justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg told the New York Times “Now it’s time for us to move to New Zealand” if Trump was elected. One week after Trump’s inauguration the New Yorker ran a piece that referred to New Zealand as a “favoured refuge in the event of a cataclysm” for the super-rich.After the Trump election and Brexit referendum the Immigration New Zealand website experienced unprecedented traffic. Typically the site receives 3,000 registrations a month from British nationals interested in moving to, working or investing in New Zealand. On the day of the Brexit referendum the website received 998 registrations from Britons, compared with 109 at the same time the year before.High-profile Americans who have bought property and sometimes live in New Zealand include the PayPal co-founder Peter Thiel and the disgraced NBC host Matt Lauer.Professor John Morgan, a British expat and academic at the University of Auckland, said there was an ingrained idea in the northern hemisphere that New Zealand was an undisturbed haven from the modern world. “There is this pervading idea that New Zealand is some sort of relic of 1950s Britain, a place to escape, a place to go back in time. That is not true, but it is generally true that New Zealand does avoid the worst trappings of modern, consumerist culture. There is a rush hour – but it is just an hour.” Topics New Zealand James Comey Donald Trump Asia Pacific news

Most of the particulars offered in support of these assertions are highly debatable, and it’s no accident that virtually none of them has come up in the current impeachment hearings. The sole exceptions are the Ukraine call, its inevitable obstruction pairing, and possible obstruction in the Mueller probe—each of which requires evidence of the corrupt intent for which it is being proffered in evidence.Consider how different the case was against Nixon. From the start of the impeachment push in 1973, there were allegations that the president was somehow connected to the Watergate burglary, was actively engaged in covering it up, and was using the CIA and clandestine tactics to both stymie the investigation and harass political opponents. If any of the allegations were true, Nixon was finished. But many Republicans in Congress simply didn’t believe them—at first. Then a smoking gun finally emerged: the secretly recorded audio tapes. With conclusive proof that the allegations were true, public support for the president nosedived, there was the “jailbreak” among Senate Republicans, removal became inevitable, and the president was forced to resign.Quite a different situation faced Bill Clinton. In that case, nobody was particularly surprised by the allegations. Even evidence that the president might have committed perjury and obstruction of justice—felonies—failed to move the needle. Most Democrats felt that Clinton had been cornered into doing whatever it was he had done by an unfair and politically motivated investigation into matters that were really none of anybody’s business. Yes, the president was a scoundrel, but he was a scoundrel with a kind heart, of a sort that Americans love in the movies. Democrats and more than a few Republicans seemed to hope that he would get away with it, like a real-life Daniel Ocean.In contrast with both Nixon and Clinton, Trump isn’t denying the basic allegations. Indeed, he continues to think that he acted within the bounds of legality, if not perfectly appropriately, at all times, and most Republicans agree.Perhaps the strongest argument for launching the impeachment proceeding was made in this magazine more than six months ago, when Yoni Appelbaum argued that it would “bring the debate about Trump’s fitness for office into Congress, where it belongs.” Impeachment certainly can accommodate the general charge of unfitness for office. But it seems that the more general the case for impeachment, the more important it is to have public consensus for impeachment at the outset, and the less the impeachment proceedings themselves matter. Conversely, the more specific the charges, the more process and evidence matter. Either way, the Democrats appear to have moved too soon.The House Democrats launched the impeachment proceedings because of their unshakable conviction that the president is corrupt and unfit for office. But that is just a character judgment, and Republicans don’t share it. After nearly three years, even some Republicans who were originally “Never Trump” seem to have concluded that despite his flaws, the president is basically a well-intentioned person trying to do what’s right for the country, and, whatever his flaws, they are far from the ghoulish caricature of Democrats’ imagining. To convict, Republicans will need more than the thin allegations and even thinner evidence the Democrats have to show for their three-year-long exercise in phantasmagoria. Mario Loyolais a senior fellow at the Competitive Enterprise Institute, and a program affiliate scholar at New York University School of Law’s Classical Liberal Institute. From 2017 to 2019 he was the associate director for regulatory reform at the White House Council on Environmental Quality.

There is no long-term, strategic policy thinking behind what Trump's doing, just damage.You sure about that?“I think there is a broad recognition in the Democratic Party that Trump was largely accurate in diagnosing China’s predatory practices,” Biden campaign advisor Kurt Campbell, a former Asia official in the State Department during the Obama administration, told the Journal. https://fortune.com/2020/09/10... [fortune.com] And some more, https://thediplomat.com/2020/0... [thediplomat.com] https://www.marketwatch.com/st... [marketwatch.com] Behind Trump is an army of advisors an economists. It's naive to think that this is one person's vendetta. The policy he's following started w/ Obama, and lots of folks on both sides agree with it. And it's likely to continue if Biden takes over.It's okay not to agree with it, a lot of folks don't, but acting like it's the actions of a raving lunatic is dishonest.Sadly, the "bigger" part is him giving nice presents to his rich friends.Uh, no that'

On Aug. 18, the Senate Intelligence Committee released a 1,300-page report characterizing the involvement of Russian intelligence operatives with officials of the 2016 Trump presidential campaign as an “aggressive, multifaceted effort to influence, or attempt to influence, the outcome of the 2016 presidential election.” The report detailed the longstanding relationship between Paul Manafort, Donald Trump’s campaign manager, and a Russian intelligence operative named Konstantin Kilimnik, while also describing the links of other Russian intelligence figures to Trump family members, notably Donald Jr. and Jared Kushner, and to such Trump confidants as Roger Stone and Michael Flynn, briefly the president’s national security adviser.As to be expected, President Trump immediately denounced the report as “a hoax” (never mind that it was authored by a Republican-controlled committee), while his inner circle adopted their usual stance on such matters, either staying mum or decrying the committee’s work as a tired retread of last year’s Mueller report. The real scandal, the president declaimed, was the deep state “witch hunt” against him that spurred these investigations in the first place.If this latest chapter in the four-year Russiagate drama is unlikely to change many minds, at least one person has examined the Senate’s findings with both great interest and alarm. His name is Peter Sichel and, at the age of 97, he is the last surviving member of the early CIA that faced off with the Soviets at the start of the Cold War.An escapee from Nazi Germany in the mid-1930s, Sichel served with the Office of Strategic Services (OSS), the United States’ wartime intelligence agency, during World War II. In October 1945, just months after war’s end, he was dispatched to Berlin to take charge of the local clandestine wing of an embryonic American intelligence outfit called the Strategic Services Unit, a precursor to the CIA. That posting placed Sichel at ground zero of the Cold War already beginning to take shape between the Soviet Union and its wartime Western allies, and gave him a front-row seat in observing precisely how the Soviets were taking over in Eastern Europe.“Most people have this idea that they came in and grabbed all those countries by force,” Sichel explained, “but that is not true. In almost every case, they worked within the structure of the prewar political parties and just gradually coopted them.”Through his contacts in Soviet-controlled eastern Germany, Sichel witnessed how the Soviets first coerced the local left and center-left political parties to join together, and to then accept the overall leadership of the embryonic German communist party. “They did this both by threats—if a political figure resisted, he could be threatened with arrest as a Nazi war criminal—and enticements. Remember, Germany was in absolute ruins at the time, so it didn’t take much—the offer of a car or an allotment of food—to bring people in line. Their ambition was to take over the political parties, but to pretend it was the will of the people.”Sichel’s early 1946 report on the methods the Soviets were using to coopt the eastern German political parties was the first detailed examination of the phenomenon, one soon emulated in the other Eastern European nations under their military control. Once they comprised a sizeable minority in the government, the communist-led coalitions would then start taking control of key ministries, notably the police and internal security services, until they could take over outright. One of the ultimate beneficiaries of this approach, a Hungarian communist leader named Matyas Rakosi, called it “salami tactics,” the process of joining the existing political system and then slicing away at it until there was nothing left.In this regard, one revelation in the Senate Intelligence Committee report stood out to Sichel. Contrary to most previous assumptions, Senate investigators found that the Russian intelligence campaign to gain influence with the Republican party began well before Trump emerged as a viable candidate, in keeping with Vladimir Putin’s scheme to help thwart a Hillary Clinton presidency however he could. This fit with the pattern the old CIA hand had seen in Eastern Europe.“One great advantage the Soviets always had over us,” Sichel explained, “is that they played the long game. We thought in terms of quarters, whereas they thought in terms of years or even decades. They were opportunistic, willing to let matters gradually develop until the right political faction or right leader to support had emerged.”“Scattered throughout the Senate report is a litany of instances in which Trump’s associates left themselves open to Russian blackmail.”This found echo in the years prior to 2016 in the series of ties that Putin, an old KGB man himself, fostered with right-wing political figures and fringe groups across the breadth of Europe. However much those ties may have appeared to run counter to Putin’s open nostalgia for the good old days of Soviet communist rule, they shared the common ground of ultra-nationalism.This paid great dividends for the Russian ruler, for these same nationalist groups were at the forefront in their respective countries in calling for the dissolution or weakening of NATO and the European Union, two long-term Putin goals. For the same reason, the Russian leadership could only have been thrilled by Trump’s steady climb toward the Republican nomination. Far more than with any other Republican running for president, Trump’s xenophobic, America First rhetoric dovetailed with Putin’s own version, while Trump’s promise of a diminished American role on the global stage was the stuff of Russian fantasy. Little wonder that Putin’s minions would do anything in their power to help propel the hotel magnate and reality show host into the White House.But of course, one can’t rely on jingoistic fraternity alone to achieve one’s goals, and limning the pages of the Senate Intelligence Committee report is the specter of another old KGB standby: kompromat, or blackmail. During his Cold War days in Berlin, Peter Sichel had to remain constantly vigilant against kompromat schemes targeting himself and his CIA colleagues, as well as western German political figures. “The KGB were absolute masters at it,” he recalled, “and they would use whatever they could get their hands on. A favorite was honey traps [or sexual entrapments], but bribes, favors, whatever they could find. And once they had their hooks into you, they owned you.”Scattered throughout the Senate report is a litany of instances in which Trump’s associates left themselves open to Russian blackmail: Manafort’s many dealings with Kilimnik; the June 2016 Trump Tower meeting at which Donald Jr., Jared Kushner, and Michael Flynn met with Russian intelligence operatives who promised dirt on Hillary Clinton; the backchannel communications between Flynn, by then Trump’s national security adviser-designate, and the Russian ambassador.“The past four years have been very, very good for Vladimir Putin.”“The key thing is that all of them then lied about it to investigators,” Sichel explained, “and that’s where the potential blackmail comes in. Imagine if the FBI hadn’t caught Flynn out, and he had remained in his post. The Russians knew he lied—I’m sure they taped all their communications with him—so they would have had him over a barrel forever.”In this way, the old spymaster contended, the various investigations into Russiagate have actually been of great service to Trump.“I know he doesn’t see it this way,” Sichel said, “but by having all this stuff brought out in public, it removes the blackmail threat. The smartest thing Trump could have done when all this started to break was to just come out and say, ‘Yes, it appears there was Russian involvement with my campaign, but that’s over with now, I’m the president, so let’s move on.’ But he didn’t do that, obviously. Perhaps there were reasons why he couldn’t.”Even long-retired intelligence officers tend to be circumspect by nature—Sichel left the CIA in 1960—and while he left that last comment to dangle, his allusion seemed fairly clear. After all, what to make of an American president whose foreign policy initiatives have included weakening NATO and urging on the fracturing of the European Union. Who has repeatedly tried to reinstate Russia into the G-8 council of industrialized of nations, over the strenuous objections of America’s European allies, and who defends Putin’s propensity for killing his political opponents by stating, “I think our country does plenty of killing also.” And it’s not as if Trump’s obeisance to his Russian friend is a thing of the past. On Aug. 20, two days after the release of the Senate Intelligence Committee report, Putin’s principal surviving political opponent, Alexei Navalny, was left near death by a poison almost certainly administered by Russian intelligence agents. Even as European leaders have lodged protests against the Kremlin and demanded an investigation, President Trump has yet to say a word on the matter. Hardly an original thought, but did Sichel think the president himself could be hostage to Russian kompromat?“Well, I couldn’t possibly say,” he replied, “because I think we’re still in the early stages of unlocking all that has gone on. What I can say is that the past four years have been very, very good for Vladimir Putin. And if Trump is reelected, the next four will be even better.”Scott Anderson is the author of The Quiet Americans: Four CIA Spies at the Dawn of the Cold War—A Tragedy in Three Acts. He is also the author of two novels and four other works of nonfiction, including Lawrence in Arabia, an international bestseller that was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award and a New York Times Notable Book. A veteran war correspondent, he is a contributing writer for The New York Times Magazine.

In an extremely contentious and heated interview with Meet the Press anchor Chuck Todd on Sunday, Sen. Ron Johnson (R-WI) declared that he does not trust the CIA or FBI while launching into a series of conspiratorial attacks on Democrats and intelligence officials regarding the Ukraine scandal.Johnson—who last week said he was told about a quid pro quo involving Ukrainian investigation into the 2016 election and that President Trump blocked him from telling Ukraine military aid was coming—immediately began his interview on the defensive, complaining that Todd was biased and the president was being sabotaged.The Republican senator then proceeded to accuse former members of the FBI and CIA of conspiring to set up the president after his election, claiming this has “everything to do with Ukraine.”“Why a Fox News conspiracy propaganda stuff is popping up on here, I have no idea,” an exasperated Todd noted at one point.“It is not, that is exactly, because this is going over the line, exactly why President Trump is upset and why his supporters are upset with the news media,” Johnson shouted, to which Todd exclaimed back: “Can we please answer the question that I asked you instead of trying to make Donald Trump feel better here that you are not criticizing him?!”Eventually, Johnson would tell Todd that the reason he “winced” when he heard about military aid being attached to Ukrainian investigations into the 2016 election is he didn’t want to see those two things connected, adding that Trump “adamantly denied” to him that was occurring. He would then go on to support a probe by Ukraine into the Democrats surrounding the last presidential election.“Ukrainian officials reportedly helped Clinton allies research Trump’s advisers,” he huffed. “There is potential interference in the 2016 campaign. That’s what Trump wants to get to the bottom of. But the press doesn’t want to.”Johnson added: “I’m being called a conspiracy theorist, John Solomon is, because the press is horribly biased and Trump and his supporters completely understand that.”Todd confronted Johnson on whether or not he believes former Trump campaign chief Paul Manafort was framed and if the Russians interfered in the 2016 election to benefit Trump. After saying he doesn’t think Manafort was framed and the Russian “absolutely” meddled in the election, Johnson pivoted back to supposed Ukrainian involvement during the 2016 campaign.“There are a lot of unanswered questions,” the senator exclaimed. “Chuck, I just want the truth. The American people want the truth.”“So do you not trust the FBI? Do you not trust the CIA?” Todd wondered, causing Johnson to yell back: “No, no, I don’t. Absolutely not. After Peter Strzok and Lisa Page, after James Comey?!”After Johnson said he didn’t trust anyone from the Obama administration, Todd asked him if he trusted the organizations now.“No, I didn’t trust them back then,” Johnson replied before listing off a series of former officials who have become favorite targets of the president's supporters.Todd, clearly out of patience with Johnson at the end, suggested Johnson was only interested in the truth that was “politically comfortable” for him before getting in one final parting shot.“I’m sorry that you chose to come on this way, senator.”

As Twitter, Facebook and YouTube shut down accounts spreading China’s narrative about the Hong Kong protests overseas, resourceful patriots are putting their videos on another extremely popular platform: the world’s biggest porn site.Shu Chang, a Chinese online commentator with over 3 million followers on Chinese social media platform Weibo, said in a post (link in Chinese) on Tuesday (Nov. 12) that she and other internet users had uploaded a number of propaganda videos on Pornhub after being unable to put them on YouTube.“YouTube would not allow us to upload those videos so we have no other way but to post the videos to Pornhub,” said Shu. While Shu did not identify the videos she and other users had uploaded, searches by Quartz on Wednesday (Nov. 13) for phrases like “Hong Kong rioters” found at least a dozen recently uploaded videos. Since Pornhub and other porn platforms are blocked in China amid a crackdown on “spiritual pollution,” users would need to use a virtual private network to leap the great firewall and access it.Six of them were from a channel named “CCYL_central” that joined three months ago, and has so far uploaded 11 videos in all. Its videos on Hong Kong ranged from Hong Kong citizens expressing their praise for Hong Kong police, to news clips from Chinese state broadcaster CCTV condemning the protesters for violent behavior. The channel describes its acronym as standing for the Chinese Communist Youth League—but it’s unlikely to be actually affiliated with the youth wing of the Communist Party. The channel, which said its favorite book is one written by Chinese president Xi Jinping on politics, has so far garnered 9,000 views and 32 subscribers.Another account shared six videos, mostly about how protesters are advocating for Hong Kong independence and praising Chinese students overseas for clashing with Hong Kong “separatists.”And a handle called “John97,”—an account that was only registered yesterday—reposted a single graphic video that had been earlier shared on YouTube by Nathan Rich, an American living in China who creates videos that counter criticism of China. The video has been viewed 3,000 times on the platform.The video titled “Rioters (Cockroach) in Hong Kong,”—a term Hong Kong police have been using for protesters—used a deeply tragic incident that occurred yesterday (Nov. 12) to condemn the Hong Kong movement. A video that circulated on Tuesday had shown a man being set on fire after arguing with protesters. Hong Kong police confirmed the attack, which drew criticism in the city and calls for the protesters to distance themselves from such actions.“Chinese people are at risk of being burned alive if they dare to disagree with the fascist right-wingers in Hong Kong,” said Rich in the video, calling the protesters “terrorists.”While there have been incidents of protesters attacking people perceived to be pro-China as months of peaceful protests took a more violent turn in recent months, they have been rare. The city has also seen a series of violent attacks on pro-democracy figures.It’s not the first time in the protests a porn site has played an unexpected role. Some of the suspended Twitter accounts believed to be part of a China influence campaign were earlier tweeting porn. And in June, Hong Kong porn site ThisAV urged its users to attend protests against the controversial bill.Update: Blake White, Pornhub’s vice president, said in a statement Nov. 14 that the site had “reviewed and removed the videos as soon as we were made aware of them for violating Pornhub’s Terms of Service.”

Enlarge this image David Braithwaite signs a document to get free naloxone from Hayley Eager on Thursday, when Pennsylvania gave away naloxone at almost 80 places across the state. Brett Sholtis/WITF hide caption toggle caption Brett Sholtis/WITF David Braithwaite signs a document to get free naloxone from Hayley Eager on Thursday, when Pennsylvania gave away naloxone at almost 80 places across the state. Brett Sholtis/WITF David Braithwaite was standing next to his pickup truck Thursday in a parking lot outside the Cumberland County health center in Carlisle, Pa.He's a chaplain for Carlisle Truck Stop Ministry. His hat even says it. Braithwaite said he and another chaplain minister to truck drivers, homeless people and anyone else who needs help at the truck stop seven days a week.Braithwaite was one of a half-dozen people who got to the health center before it opened. On Thursday, the state gave away the opioid reversal drug naloxone at nearly 80 places across Pennsylvania. The state made the medication available to anyone free of charge — no questions asked. It is part of Democratic Gov. Tom Wolf's effort to address the opioid crisis.Pennsylvania has allocated $5 million to the two-year opioid distribution program, part of a multidepartmental effort to curb opioid addiction in a state that lost over 5,400 people to overdoses in 2017.The 66-year-old retired postal service employee was friendly and talkative, but his cheerful demeanor changed when he started talking about drug addiction. "We have had a number of individuals who have passed away from overdose," he said. "Young people. It is so frustrating and so heart-wrenching."Braithwaite, a self-described conservative pragmatist, said he has mixed feelings about handing out naloxone to revive people who have had a drug overdose. He worries that without requirements for follow-up care, people who aren't ready to begin recovery will go right back to using heroin. However, he knows of at least one person at the truck stop who was revived by naloxone. And he said he wants to be ready to save someone's life if he has to.By the time he got to the front of the line, at least a dozen people were behind him, some streaming out the health center door.Some in line knew firsthand how hard it is to beat opioid addiction. Enlarge this image "People have to be alive to get the help that they need," said Brittney Webster, who got free naloxone at a health center in Carlisle, Pa. Brett Sholtis/WITF hide caption toggle caption Brett Sholtis/WITF "People have to be alive to get the help that they need," said Brittney Webster, who got free naloxone at a health center in Carlisle, Pa. Brett Sholtis/WITF Brittney Webster, 28, has been in recovery for six years. She spent 30 days at inpatient rehab and has attended 12-step meetings ever since. Now she works as a residential coordinator at the RASE Project, a nonprofit inspired by mental health advocacy groups that aims to help people who are recovering from addictions.Webster said she plans to give naloxone to people in the recovery community who she meets through the RASE Project.When asked about why she showed up, she started to tear up, thinking of the people she knew who have died from drug overdoses. It's been an emotional day, she said. Scrolling the comments section of Facebook didn't help. She said too many people don't understand how addiction works, or how important naloxone is for saving lives."People have to be alive to get the help that they need," she says. "So, that's what this is. It gives people a chance to choose recovery again."By 3 p.m., the state had distributed nearly 4,500 kits of naloxone, according to a news release. At least 42 locations had run out of naloxone. Pennsylvania Department of Health Secretary Rachel Levine noted that the state's standing order for naloxone means people are also able to pharmacies to get naloxone — no prescription needed, but they would have to pay or use their health insurance.This story is part of a reporting partnership with NPR, WITF's Transforming Health and Kaiser Health News.

How the commission chooses to respond to Facebook’s repeated abuses will determine whether it is willing or able to promote competition and protect consumers. If the commission does conclude that Facebook has violated the consent order, how it fixes this problem through a legal remedy will be a test of its effectiveness. The commission has the authority to impose substantial fines on Facebook. Given that the corporation had more than $55 billion in revenue in 2018 alone, even a fine in the low billions of dollars will amount to a slap on the wrist, a mere cost of doing business.Moreover, because Facebook is a repeat offender, it is critical that the commission’s response is strong enough to prevent future violations. America’s laws are not suggestions. When a company has repeatedly shown contempt for its legal commitments, the remedy must change how the company operates. Enforcement agencies can do this through deep reforms of the company’s structure. This includes removing members of the company’s board, or even top executives, along with other changes to the company’s business model to address dysfunction at the top.The F.T.C. can also pursue other ways to fix this problem. For example, after German antitrust enforcers found that Facebook abused its dominant market position, it required Facebook to stop combining different sources of its users’ data without their consent.But the commission should not stop there. There is also mounting evidence of anticompetitive conduct by Facebook that may warrant scrutiny by federal antitrust enforcers. For example, the social media goliath has reportedly systematically spied on its rivals, giving it valuable information on how people used competitive products.Facebook’s predatory acquisition strategy has also arguably resulted in fewer innovative services. When it bought TBH, a polling app popular with teenagers, Facebook announced that the app would still operate independently and under its own brand. Less than a year later, Facebook scuttled it due to “low usage.”Facebook also appears to have used its dominance to cripple other competitive threats by cutting them off from its massive network. In 2013, Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook’s chief executive, personally approved the company’s decision to block Vine, a fast-growing rival, from a critical Facebook feature, to the advantage of its own online video service.

President Trump is venturing onto increasingly shaky legal ground as officials reject new applications for the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, sidestepping a Supreme Court ruling reinstating DACA, legal experts and lawmakers say. The court ruled last month that the Trump administration hadn’t followed federal procedural law or justified terminating DACA in 2017, calling the rescission “arbitrary and capricious.” DACA grants protection from deportation to so-called Dreamers brought to the United States as children. The Obama-era program, which has bipartisan support, has given temporary relief to some 700,000 young immigrants, with nearly 200,000 DACA recipients in California. The court did not decide on Trump’s executive authority to rescind DACA, and offered the administration a road map for how to try to end it for good. But despite threatening another attempt to shut down the program, the president hasn’t tried. Monday — 25 days after the ruling — was the deadline for the administration to file for a rehearing, and it didn’t. But neither have officials moved to restore the program. In 2017, then-Atty. Gen. Jeff Sessions declared that DACA was unconstitutional. Lower courts issued orders that kept the program in place while the Trump administration appealed to the Supreme Court. The administration was then required to renew existing DACA cases, but has blocked tens of thousands from applying for DACA for the first time who became eligible when they turned 15. In the wake of the court’s ruling in June, the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services agency — which administers DACA — is still rejecting first-time applications, or is confirming receipt of the new applications but then not acting on them, according to lawyers.Jaclyn Kelley-Widmer, associate clinical professor at Cornell Law School and an immigration attorney, said USCIS is sending these new applicants notices saying the agency is “not accepting initial filings.”Meanwhile, other USCIS employees say they’ve received no guidance on the Supreme Court ruling or new DACA applications. The agency did not immediately respond to requests for comment Thursday.The White House’s refusal to either act or restart the program sets up a potential showdown with the court with little precedent, says Muneer Ahmad, clinical professor at Yale Law School, who was involved in a New York-based DACA suit against the administration.“The longer the administration refuses to accept and adjudicate new applications and declines to issue a new rescission order,” said Ahmad, “the more of a legal concern that becomes.”The White House declined to respond to requests for comment Thursday, and the Justice Department did not immediately respond.Immediately after the court ruled, Trump and his officials rejected the decision as “politically charged.”“The Supreme Court asked us to resubmit on DACA, nothing was lost or won,” Trump tweeted, trying to reframe the high-profile defeat on immigration, his signature campaign issue.The administration’s refusal to process first-timeDACA applications, advocates and lawmakers say, flies in the face of widespread legal opinion — including from Trump’s supporters and former officials — that slow-rolling the restart of the program violates the court’s order.On Tuesday, Democratic Sens. Kamala Harris of California and Dick Durbin of Illinois, as well as 31 other senators, wrote to the acting Homeland Security secretary demanding the department “immediately comply” with the court’s ruling and “fully reinstate DACA protections, as the Court’s decision unequivocally requires.”The administration has eschewed traditional policymaking and repeatedly sought to end-run Congress with immigration orders. Yet the president’s comments in recent days have only added to the confusion. Last Friday in an interview with Telemundo, he contradicted himself, saying he would be issuing an executive order on DACA, then saying instead he would sign a bill that would “give [Dreamers] a road to citizenship.” The White House followed up with a statement saying Trump supports a legislative solution for DACA, potentially including citizenship, but not “amnesty.” Then on Tuesday in a Rose Garden news conference, Trump said he’s working on DACA “because we want to make people happy.”“We’ll be taking care of people from DACA in a very Republican way,” he said. “I’ve spoken to many Republicans, and some would like to leave it out, but, really, they understand that it’s the right thing to do.”Yet, in a statement published the day after the Supreme Court ruling, the USCIS deputy director for policy, Joseph Edlow, said that the decision “merely delays the President’s lawful ability to end the illegal Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals amnesty program.”In early July, Democratic senators wrote to Ken Cuccinelli, the acting deputy Homeland Security secretary, demanding that USCIS take down the statement from its website, including the “egregiously false claim” that the Supreme Court ruling “has no basis in law” which they wrote “can only be read as a threat that USCIS will not comply with the Court’s order.” Cuccinelli has not responded, said Maria McElwain, a spokeswoman for Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.), one of the letter’s authors. The statement remains on the agency’s site.“We should not need to tell you that defying the Supreme Court is completely unacceptable,” the senators wrote. According to historians, a president defying the court has little precedent. Only a few cases come close. President Lincoln suspended habeas corpus to try to foil a potential takeover of Maryland’s government by Confederates, and when Chief Justice Roger B. Taney ruled that only Congress could suspend the writ, Lincoln defied the court, scholars say (others dispute that reading.) Before that, when the court sided with Native Americans in Georgia against white settlers who tried to kick them off their lands, President Andrew Jackson — infamous in his ruthless treatment of Native Americans — showed no eagerness to threaten the state into compliance, according to the historical record. But he ultimately acknowledged the court’s authority. With Congress eager to avoid the long-festering issue of immigration reform, the ultimate decision on DACA may come on election day. Former Vice President Joe Biden, Trump’s Democratic opponent, has pledged to make DACA permanent on “Day 1" of his potential administration, and to shield their families from removal as well. In November, Biden said in a statement following the court’s ruling that “we will reject the President who tried to rip so many of our family members, friends, and coworkers out of our lives.”

Where Conspiracy Reigns Paranoia never stopped haunting Brazilian politics. Now, with Jair Bolsonaro in charge, it’s as powerful as ever—and its practitioners have learned a lot from the American internet. Story by Vincent Bevins Illustrations by Eren Su Kibele YarmanAs the 20th century began, conspiracy was simply how Brazilian politics got done. Paranoia was everywhere, and often warranted. Secret plotting and military coups were routine across the political spectrum. And by the end of the Cold War, citizens in Brazil’s young democracy had inherited a world of deep-seated suspicions, and would have to look back on a dizzying set of contradictory narratives to understand their own history.In 1930, one of these putsches propelled a man named Getúlio Vargas to the presidency. Then conspiracies, both real and fake, helped lead the country to dictatorship. In 1935, a right-leaning newspaper published a story—entirely false—reporting that communists were planning an uprising that would eliminate “all non-communist officials.” But then leftists, worried about a fascist turn in the Vargas government, did attempt a real rebellion. It was quickly crushed, but not before Vargas used it to justify the consolidation of dictatorial powers.Two years later, right-wing forces came up with another fake conspiracy, one that would stoke paranoia for decades. Plano Cohen, or the “Cohen Plan,” was, supposedly, a dastardly Jewish-Communist plot to overthrow the government. It was a forgery, drawn up by the fascist General Olímpio Mourão Filho. But it was presented—and covered by the press—as if it were real, and Vargas used the invented crisis as justification to carry out a new coup and launch a full-fledged dictatorship.What happened over the next three decades provided even more fuel for Brazil’s culture of conspiracism. In 1962, with democracy restored, officials in Washington worried about President João “Jango” Goulart, a liberal reformer: In a recorded conversation, President John F. Kennedy and United States Ambassador Lincoln Gordon agreed they should discreetly inform the Brazilian military that it could take action “against the left,” if needed. The U.S. stepped up covert operations in Brazil, and Kennedy sent the military attaché Vernon Walters into the country. Brazil’s right-wing forces began to spread the accusation that a communist coup was brewing, even as they plotted themselves. When the U.S.-backed coup started on March 31, 1964, the charge on Rio de Janeiro was led by Mourão Filho—the same man who created Plano Cohen three decades earlier. The general that took over as the first “president” in the resulting dictatorship, Humberto Castelo Branco, had been roommates with Walters—JFK’s military man in Rio—back in the 1940s.It’s no wonder that Brazil is fertile ground for conspiracy theory. What you just read is the true story of how Brazilian power and political might whipsawed back and forth from democracy to dictatorship in the 20th century; or at least it’s the closest thing we have to the truth. But this account emerged only after years of research, after historians pored over thousands of declassified documents; for a long time, anyone guessing at the real truth would have been, by definition, a conspiracy theorist. That’s because powerful actors had indeed conspired behind closed doors—to smear the left, to align Brasília with Washington, to lie to the public—but without all the evidence, the best citizens could do was theorize about their nature.These episodes also point to a recurring pattern, and a dominant theme, in the politics of Brazilian conspiracy: The forces seeking to upend the social hierarchy in this stratified society usually lose, and those who win often weaponize conspiracy theory to justify their own movements. As a result, conspiracy theories in Brazil usually end up reinforcing the powers that be. Latin America’s largest country now offers a chilling reminder of the ways that rumor-mongering and disinformation can shore up elite power and subvert democracy.For the past 100 years, by far the most powerful of Brazilian conspiracy theories is the tale of an international communist plot to destroy the nation. “The red menace is the most powerful threat used to scare Brazilians—both in the past and today. It is a story that many of us thought would go away after the end of the 20th century, but it has come back in a big way,” Rodrigo Patto Sá Motta, a historian and the author of On Guard Against the Red Menace: Anti-Communism in Brazil, 1917-1964, told me. “Without a doubt, conspiracy theories have helped authoritarians, time and time again, in Brazil.”Recently, these traditions have coalesced once more, and helped deliver the country into the hands of Jair Bolsonaro. Making vigorous use of digital tools, and jumping headfirst into a political vacuum created by a huge corruption scandal, members of the Bolsonaro family deployed the fear of communist conspiracy to great effect. The ghosts of the Cold War haunt politics in the world’s fifth-most-populous country, and as another political crisis looms, the leadership is doubling down on conspiratorial thinking.Brazil is much more like the U.S. than many North Americans realize. It is a huge Western European settler colony that displaced the indigenous population, brought in enslaved Africans, and then welcomed European and Asian immigrants. Both countries have the same racial hierarchy, in which white people are clearly in charge (though in Brazil, they are a minority), darker-skinned citizens are far more likely to suffer from poverty or imprisonment, and indigenous peoples barely survive on the margins of society. Many English speakers know that the Amazon is being destroyed; what they don’t usually know is that the forest is often cleared for literal cattle ranchers, complete with big belt buckles and boots and cowboy hats. Brazil is also far more likely to look to the U.S. for cultural inspiration than to Spanish-speaking Latin America—and this is as true now, in the era of right-wing YouTube intellectuals, as it was in the 20th century.Just before that U.S.-backed coup in 1964, Brazil was grappling with societal changes very similar to those rocking society up north: Progressives were demanding that all Brazilians be given the right to vote, including the poor and the Black Brazilians excluded by literacy laws, and fighting to improve educational opportunities. But the military regime crushed democracy and froze the country’s social order in place, with the support of the white and privileged classes, always using the threat of communism to account for its crimes.The Brazilian dictatorship helped its Chilean counterparts overthrow Salvador Allende in 1973, and then participated in the creation of Operation Condor, a (U.S.-backed) cross-border state-terror network that tracked and executed perceived enemies of South American military regimes around the continent, and around the world. The leaders of these dictatorships saw devious communist plotting wherever they liked, and used the threat of revolution to justify mass murder. Argentine General Jorge Rafael Videla, the leader of the deadliest dictatorship on the continent, said that he was fighting a vast “conspiracy against Civilization”—and often lumped in Judaism, homosexuality, and Freudian psychoanalysis with communist subversion, according to the historian Federico Finchelstein.When that threat wasn’t powerful enough to keep the citizenry subdued, right-wing radicals fabricated events to support their fearmongering. Modern conspiracy theorists the world over are fond of dismissing mass shootings and other acts of violence as staged “false-flag” operations, but in Brazil, they really were routinely used by terrorists or the military to create the conditions for further crackdowns. The most famous of these is the Riocentro bombing: In 1981, military officers opposed to the re-democratization of Brazil planned to place explosives at a May Day concert taking place in the largest exhibition center in Latin America, then blame the left for the violence and prolong the dictatorship. But one of the bombs went off early, giving away the game.In the late 1980s, Brazilian media reported that a hot-headed right-winger had planned another bombing. The prominent magazine Veja alleged that a young army captain named Jair Bolsonaro had been scheming to plant explosives at a military academy outside of Rio, reportedly to protest low salaries for soldiers. (The plot was never carried out, and Bolsonaro has denied being involved.) Soon after, Bolsonaro left the military and entered politics, beginning a 30-year career in which he defended torture and said that change in Brazil will only come through political assassination and the mass murder of innocent civilians. He railed against homosexuality and political correctness as he celebrated anti-communist violence, while all around him, a new generation of conservative Brazilians took inspiration from the English-speaking internet.All of this positioned Bolsonaro to carry on a tradition of conspiracism. “Anti-communism has a long history in the country, and has been instrumentalized at different moments. That is one of the key links between our current moment and the 1964 coup,” Flávia Biroli, a political scientist at the University of Brasília, told me. “It’s important to remember that the idea of moral decay was behind anti-communism too—the threat to the family was mentioned then and is back now. Bolsonaro brings these two elements together, and he does it very well.”Over the past two decades, left-leaning politicians mostly governed Brazil. This was the era of the “pink tide,” on which a generation of leftist leaders won elections in Latin America, buoyed by the Chinese demand for these nations’ commodities. But in the background, a constellation of conservative thinkers, influenced by American internet culture and driven by conspiracy theory, were slowly rising to power, and considerable fame. They saw an international conspiracy behind left-wing success in the region, and the risk of totalitarianism—or a Venezuela-style collapse, or both—on the horizon. When Brazil hosted the World Cup in 2014, the Veja columnist Rodrigo Constantino looked at the soccer tournament’s logo—which had red in it, unlike Brazil’s flag—and said it was likely subliminal socialist propaganda.Constantino is deeply inspired by right-wing thought in the U.S.: He recently advertised an online class on the “radicalization” of the Democratic Party, drawing on thinkers such as Ann Coulter and Dinesh D’Souza. But the master guru of Brazilian conspiratorial thinking, the godfather of the anti-communist crusade, is Olavo de Carvalho. “Olavo,” as he is often called, is a former astrologer and obscure philosopher with a number of published books, though he is most famous for the YouTube videos, tweets, and Facebook posts he publishes from his home in Virginia, where he has lived since 2005. His essays include commonsense critiques of early-21st-century political correctness, and his online output contains the kind of wild provocations—he has claimed that Pepsi uses aborted fetuses as sweetener, and frequently references anal sex—that always garner traffic and attention.Like Constantino’s flag theory, and the fear of continental conspiracy, his ideas were mostly ignored or ridiculed by the mainstream media. But then a political explosion left a crater where the political establishment used to be. A crusading anti-corruption investigation, code-named “Car Wash,” revealed over the course of several agonizing years that Brazilian politicians routinely used bribes to run the economy and govern the country. This wasn’t a few bad apples—it was the whole machine that took form after the fall of the dictatorship.“The Brazilian people found out something they did not know that caused the system to implode, and you have not been able to restore stable government or trust in the country’s institutions,” Matias Spektor, an international-relations professor at the Fundação Getulio Vargas university in São Paulo, told me. And this lack of trust made Brazil, once more, a hotbed of wild speculation. “Conspiracy theories have become far more important in the last five years, because popular distrust in the political system has opened the door to extremists, crazies, and, above all, opportunists who resort to fake news to get elected into office,” he said.This collapse of systemic legitimacy happened at the same time that, around the world, the rise of social media was undermining a shared sense of reality in even the most stable democracies. In 2016, Brazil’s National Congress impeached President Dilma Rousseff, leaving in office the much more conservative Michel Temer. But the traditional center-right parties also had their reputations undermined by the ongoing corruption investigation, and by their support for the catastrophically unpopular Temer. So Bolsonaro stepped into the void, coming from far enough out on the right-wing political fringes that he could claim he was not part of the corrupt establishment.Violent anti-communism had always been Bolsonaro’s political banner, and now he claimed that he was saving the country from enemies at home and abroad. On the day he voted to impeach Rousseff, he told me that the country could become like North Korea if the Workers’ Party was not stopped. Associating himself with the most powerful country on Earth, he and his politician sons made a big show of supporting President Donald Trump.The 2018 election was strange. Usually, Brazilian politicians rely on television advertisements. Bolsonaro did not. His campaign was powered, to a large extent, by mass messages sent out on WhatsApp. Fake news was rampant; at one point, digital messaging accused his rival, Fernando Haddad, of attempting to indoctrinate the country’s youth into homosexuality. De Carvalho said that Haddad supported both Marxism and incest, which he conflated. After someone in the crowd at a campaign event stabbed Bolsonaro in the stomach, he ran his campaign from a hospital bed, and memes circulated alleging that the attacker, by all accounts a mentally disturbed man acting alone, was actually sent by powerful left-wing forces. Bolsonaro won easily—in part thanks to a movement made up of young radicals who came of age politically watching YouTube videos, and would not stop disseminating conspiracy theories in the service of their political project. Many, including Eduardo Bolsonaro, one of the president’s sons, are Olavista, or deeply inspired by de Carvalho.Less than two years into its existence, the Bolsonaro administration is constantly in a state of crisis, and it responds to this pressure by doubling down on conspiratorial accusations. The latest emergency is the novel coronavirus, which has now killed more than 115,000 Brazilians and infected 3.5 million more—including Bolsonaro himself—after the administration spent much of the spring and summer explicitly condemning social-distancing measures, downplaying the severity of the pandemic, and defying medical advice.In April, when Bolsonaro was reeling from the criticism of his handling of the virus, his foreign minister, Ernesto Araújo—apparently recommended by de Carvalho—posted a lengthy review of a Slavoj Žižek book on his personal blog. He said that “globalists” planned to use the pandemic to usher in world communism.“Coronavirus is making us wake up once more to the communist nightmare,” it began. “The Comunavirus has arrived.” Vincent Bevinshas worked as a correspondent in South America and Southeast Asia. His book,The Jakarta Method: Washington's Anticommunist Crusade and the Mass Murder Program that Shaped Our World, was published in May 2020.Connect Twitter

It would also order gear for its planned 5G network from the European suppliers instead of Huawei, according to the Nikkei report. Huawei declined to comment. SoftBank and Huawei have already experimented together with 5G technology, which the Japanese company wants to introduce commercially in 2020.SoftBank, Japan's third largest wireless network provider, is considering removing Huawei equipment from its networks.SoftBank's confirmation that it is reviewing its use of Huawei equipment comes after Japan's government on Monday agreed new procedures for official purchases of IT network gear. The government said it wants to prevent the use of parts that could introduce the risk of "malicious functions" such as cybertheft and interruptions of service. Some news reports have suggested the new measures effectively bar Chinese companies like Huawei and its smaller rival ZTE (ZTCOF) from Japanese government contracts. Japan's chief government spokesman Yoshihide Suga said Monday that the guidelines don't target any particular companies.Huawei has come under increased scrutiny in multiple countries around the world this year.Huawei's 5G ambitions suffer another big setback Last week, UK telecoms group BT (BT) said itwould not buy equipment from Huaweifor the core of its 5G wireless network. BT will also remove existing Huawei technology from the heart of its 4G network within two years.Governments in New Zealand and Australia have in recent months prevented wireless operators from using Huawei equipment for their 5G networks.The United States isreportedlyurging allies to stop using Huawei telecommunications equipment, saying it increases the risk of cyberattacks and could allow China to spy on communications or disable connections in the fast growing internet of things. Huawei has been treated with suspicion by US government officials for years and is largely shut out of the American market.Huawei's CFO is out on bail, but the crisis sparked by her arrest is snowballingDespite that, the Chinese company is the world's largest telecommunications equipment maker and also the second biggest seller of smartphones after Samsung. It says its equipment is trusted by customers in 170 countries and by 46 of the world's 50 largest telecommunications companies.Tensions between the US government and Huawei intensified this month after the company's chief financial officer, Meng Wanzhou, was arrested in Canada. US officials allege that Meng helped Huawei get around US sanctions on Iran and are seeking her extradition.Huawei says it complies with all applicable laws and regulations where it operates and is unaware of any wrongdoing by Meng, who is also the daughter of the company's founder.

SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — The Fitbits on our wrists collect our health and fitness data; Apple promises privacy but lots of iPhone apps can still share our personal information; and who really knows what they’re agreeing to when a website asks, “Do You Accept All Cookies?” Most people just click “OK” and hope for the best, says former Democratic presidential candidate Andrew Yang. “The amount of data we’re giving up is unprecedented in human history,” says Yang, who lives in New York but is helping lead the campaign for a data privacy initiative on California’s Nov. 3 ballot. “Don’t you think it’s time we did something about it?”ADVERTISEMENTYang is chairing the advisory board for Proposition 24, which he and other supporters see as a model for other states as the U.S. tries to catch up with protections that already exist in Europe. The California Privacy Rights Act of 2020 would expand the rights Californians were given to their personal data in a groundbreaking law approved two years ago, which took effect in January. The California Consumer Privacy Act of 2018 was intended to give residents more control over their personal information collected online. It limited how companies gather personal data and make money from it and gave consumers the right to know what a company has collected and have it deleted, as well as the right to opt out of the sale of their personal information.But between the time the law was passed and took effect, major companies have found ways to dodge requirements. Tech and business lobbyists are pressuring the Legislature to water it down further, with proposals to undo parts of the law, says Alastair Mactaggart, a San Francisco real estate developer who spearheaded support for the 2018 law and is behind the effort to amend it.“Business is actively seeking to undermine the protections that were just put in place,” says Mactaggart. He began advocating for consumer privacy after a dinner party conversation with a Google employee who told him people would be shocked by how much the company knows about them. As more time passes without restrictions, he said “these businesses, because of the nature of their power, will be too powerful to regulate.”To help research and draft the measure, Mactaggart said he hired Ashkan Soltani, former Federal Trade Commission chief technologist, and consulted with numerous other privacy experts. The measure is supported by Common Sense Media and Consumer Watchdog, along with several privacy experts and labor organizations that say the measure will strengthen the law and protect it from industry attempts to dilute it.ADVERTISEMENTThe pro-24 campaign has raised over $5.5 million, most of it from Mactaggart. The campaign to defeat the measure has raised just $50,000. Opponents say the 52-page initiative is so complicated that most voters won’t read it, or understand their rights if they do. Early voting begins Monday. Opponents include groups like the California Small Business Association, a handful of local chambers of commerce and the National Federation of Independent Business, which say it’s too soon to rewrite the law. They say the measure would further burden small businesses still trying to comply with the new law. “And now Prop. 24 would upend all of that for an even more stringent, onerous law,” the NFIB said in a statement. The ACLU of Northern California is also opposed, saying some updates would actually hurt consumers. “Overall, it is a step backward for privacy in California,” said Jacob Snow, a technology and civil liberties attorney at the ACLU of Northern California. He argues Proposition 24 would make it easier for businesses to charge customers higher prices — or “pay for privacy” — if they refuse the collection of their data, or downgrade service for those who don’t pay the fee, which could hurt low-income communities and those who can’t pay to protect themselves.“That’s not how privacy should work. It should not be a luxury that only rich people can afford,” he said.Mactaggart says these objections are a misrepresentation of the measure and that the “pay for privacy” provision is already part of the existing law.Proposition 24 would also create the California Privacy Protection Agency, with an annual budget of $10 million, to enforce the law and fine companies for violations.Now, only the state attorney general can bring enforcement actions, but Attorney General Xavier Becerra has said his office has limited resources and could only bring a handful of cases each year.It would also triple the fines on companies that violate kids’ privacy or illegally collect and sell their private information, while closing some of the loopholes that proponents say companies such as Facebook, Google and Spotify have exploited by saying they’re not selling personal information but “sharing” it with partners. Consumers could also opt out of data sharing and sales of private information about everything from their race and ethnicity to union membership or religion.“I think this is going to be an opportunity for us to set a national standard,” said Yang. “As soon as other states see that Californians have these data and privacy rights, they’re going to want the same thing.”

Enlarge this image A woman holds a poster in support of Swaiti Maliwal, chairperson of Delhi Commission for Women. Maliwal is demanding justice for victims and survivors of rape. In India in 2017, the most recent year for which data was available, there were nearly 33,000 cases of rape reported, according to national crime statistics. But most rape cases in India, as in many parts of the world, go unreported. Sonu Mehta/ Hindustan Times via Getty Images hide caption toggle caption Sonu Mehta/ Hindustan Times via Getty Images A woman holds a poster in support of Swaiti Maliwal, chairperson of Delhi Commission for Women. Maliwal is demanding justice for victims and survivors of rape. In India in 2017, the most recent year for which data was available, there were nearly 33,000 cases of rape reported, according to national crime statistics. But most rape cases in India, as in many parts of the world, go unreported. Sonu Mehta/ Hindustan Times via Getty Images On Nov. 27, a veterinarian in the southern Indian city of Hyderabad called her family to say she'd gotten a flat tire on the side of the road. A truck driver was helping her, and she'd be home soon, she told her sister.A few days later, police found her charred remains in a wooded area. Authorities believe four men deflated her tire, posed as good Samaritans to trick her, then gang-raped and murdered her. Police said they have DNA evidence connecting them to the crime.The story dominated the news cycle and sparked nationwide protests. For many citizens, the outrage felt like déjà vu. Seven years ago, a gang rape on a moving bus in New Delhi sparked massive demonstrations and panic over sexual violence in the country. Asia Protests Erupt In India After Alleged Rape And Killing Of A Female Veterinarian The attention paid to such high-profile cases involving urban, educated women attacked by strangers overlooks a crucial point about rape in India: Many victims are poor, marginalized women from lower castes, often living in rural areas, who know their rapists, according to Kalpana Sharma. She is the author of The Silence and The Storm: Narratives of Violence against Women in India and has been a journalist for nearly five decades, specializing in gender issues. Sharma says there is great outrage at the violence that takes place in public spaces in urban areas because they are familiar to many people.Days after the rape and murder in Hyderabad, police in the city issued safety tips for women. They advised women to "wait in crowded areas" and "talk loud when confronted" among other things. Social media users criticized the police for putting the onus on women to protect themselves against potential rapists."The focus on one or two incidents in bigger cities makes people believe that the major reason for violence against women is that women are out in the public space and are therefore unsafe and need to be protected from certain kinds of men," says Sharma.Sharma and others are also concerned about the way perpetrators are punished after being found guilty.Swati Maliwal is the chairperson of the Delhi Commission for Women. She spoke to NPR from a protest camp in New Delhi in early December. She was then on her fourth day of a hunger strike to demand action against sexual violence in the aftermath of the Hyderabad case. (Her strike lasted nearly 2 weeks.)She is demanding the government pass laws stipulating tougher punishment for rapists, including that they be hanged within 6 months of their conviction. Maliwal is frustrated that more than seven years after the 2012 Delhi rape, the four convicts who were sentenced for rape and murder are still alive. They're still on death row. Goats and Soda In Interviews With 122 Rapists, Student Pursues Not-So-Simple Question: Why? When a rape makes news headlines in India, it's almost always followed by urgent demands for retributive justice. Days after the Hyderabad murder, a politician in India's upper house of parliament said the accused should be lynched in public. (The four suspects were later killed by police who claim they acted in self-defense. A judicial inquiry is underway.)Only about a third of rape cases reported to the police result in a conviction. At the end of 2017, the most recent year for which data is available, Indian courts had a backlog of more than 100,000 rape cases."There should be pressure on the government but not pressure to bypass laws or to get stricter punishment but to actually get the criminal justice system to work," Sharma says.Sharma says the criminal justice system must work not just for one or two high-profile cases but also for the thousands of cases of poor women who can't even get their complaints registered with police.And then there are the women who are raped and do not report it to the police. According to India's National Family Health Survey, 80% of women who have experienced sexual violence never tell anyone about it.Nonprofit groups are working to encourage women who've faced domestic violence, including marital rape, to come forward. Social workers affiliated with Mumbai-based nonprofit SNEHA (Society for Nutrition, Education and Health Action) go door-to-door in Dharavi, one of Mumbai's largest slums, handing out leaflets with information on how to contact SNEHA for help, which includes counseling and access to legal and medical services.Nayreen Daruwalla is a social worker and director of SNEHA's prevention of violence against women and children program. She says many in this neighborhood, she says, were child brides. In such cases, the idea of consent and the definition of rape itself gets blurred."There is no question of consent. 'She is my wife! She is my property. So I have the right to just use her.' This is the thinking," Daruwalla says.Until that thinking changes, sexual violence will persist across India, she says.The government is trying to address this mindset.For example, all Indian colleges must now offer training to prevent sexual harassment. The program is designed to reach young people in many income levels, including students from poor socioeconomic backgrounds.Altamash Khan is one of the instructors. He's a gender studies expert who works with Mumbai-based nonprofit Men Against Violence and Abuse."It's a spectrum of violence," Khan says. "You begin with catcalling. You see domestic violence. You see films where the woman eventually falls in love [with her harasser]."Patriarchal values also cause men to act with impunity because they believe they have a certain privilege, he adds.Khan believes that if we can chip away at age-old patriarchal values, it could reduce sexual violence.