theintercept--2020-09-30--Five Years Later, Soldiers Convicted of Executing Women and Children in Cameroon

The footage , of executions that occurred in 2015 , was initially dismissed as “ fake news ” and “ an unfortunate attempt to distort actual facts and intoxicate the public ” by Cameroon ’ s communications minister .
At the time , the Pentagon told The Intercept that Cameroon was a “ vital partner ” and continued to fully support its armed forces .
Later , a forensic analysis established that the video was authentic and that the Cameroonian military was responsible for the executions .
The video , which circulated on social media in 2018 and was published @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to an investigation and trial that culminated last week with a military court in Cameroon sentencing four soldiers to 10 years in prison and another soldier to two years .
“ This is one of the very first times we have seen sentences of this kind in a country where it ’ s extremely rare for soldiers to go on trial for abuses , ” said Ilaria Allegrozzi , the senior Central Africa researcher at Human Rights Watch .
The cold-blooded video shows Cameroonian soldiers marching two women and two children down a @ @ @ @ @ @ @ kneel on the ground .
One of the soldiers gestures to a young girl and says , “ Yes .
Little girl , come here , ” directing her to stand next to her mother .
He then pulls the girl ’ s shirt over her head , blindfolding her .
Gunshots follow in fast succession .
While Allegrozzi noted that the closed-door nature of the trial undermined its potential impact in setting standards for accountability , she told The Intercept that the convictions did strike at Cameroon ’ s long-standing culture of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ sharp contrast to many atrocities committed by U.S. personnel who have regularly evaded meaningful punishments even in the face of overwhelming evidence of their crimes .
From the slaughter of around 230 Cheyenne and Arapaho at Sand Creek , Colorado , in 1864 to the massacre of more than 500 Vietnamese at the village of My Lai in South Vietnam in 1968 to the mass killing of at least 24 civilians , including women and children , in Haditha , Iraq , in 2005 , near-total impunity has often been the norm .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ granted clemency to three members of the armed forces who had been accused or convicted of committing war crimes in Iraq or Afghanistan .
Likewise , Cameroon has yet to take action in many other atrocity cases .
A year before the video of the executions of the four women and children surfaced , an investigation conducted by The Intercept and the London-based research firm Forensic Architecture found a Cameroonian military base that was home to American personnel and drones was also the scene of illegal imprisonment , brutal torture , and even @ @ @ @ @ @ @ 2018 , The Intercept also published graphic footage of a massacre carried out by Cameroonian troops .
More than two years later , there is no evidence that Cameroon ’ s military has taken any action to hold its forces accountable for the crime .
“ No investigation was ever announced , despite clear evidence of the execution of a dozen civilians , ” said Allegrozzi .
Cameroon ’ s embassy in Washington , D.C. , did not respond to The Intercept ’ s requests for an interview or details about investigations into @ @ @ @ @ @ @ s security forces .
“ We welcomed the efforts by the Cameroonian government to bring perpetrators of this crime to justice , ” a U.S. State Department spokesperson told The Intercept when asked about the five soldiers convicted in the executions .
The spokesperson noted that while its military continues to receive U.S. aid through numerous programs , “ security assistance to Cameroon has been reduced since 2017 because the government has not adequately responded to credible allegations of human rights violations.
” Much more needs to be done , according to Allegrozzi @ @ @ @ @ @ @ States to ensure Cameroon investigates other atrocity allegations .
“ Justice doesn ’ t end with these convictions , ” she said .
“ This is a first step , but there are so many other cases that have been documented by human rights organizations that have not been brought to trial .
The families of those victims are still awaiting justice .
This is one small victory over impunity , but impunity is still widespread .
”

The cold-blooded video shows Cameroonian soldiers marching two women and two children down a road. The soldiers make the women kneel on the ground. One of the soldiers gestures to a young girl and says, “Yes. Little girl, come here,” directing her to stand next to her mother. He then pulls the girl’s shirt over her head, blindfolding her. Gunshots follow in fast succession.
The video, which circulated on social media in 2018 and was published in full by The Intercept, led to an investigation and trial that culminated last week with a military court in Cameroon sentencing four soldiers to 10 years in prison and another soldier to two years. “This is one of the very first times we have seen sentences of this kind in a country where it’s extremely rare for soldiers to go on trial for abuses,” said Ilaria Allegrozzi, the senior Central Africa researcher at Human Rights Watch.
The footage, of executions that occurred in 2015, was initially dismissed as “fake news” and “an unfortunate attempt to distort actual facts and intoxicate the public” by Cameroon’s communications minister. At the time, the Pentagon told The Intercept that Cameroon was a “vital partner” and continued to fully support its armed forces. Later, a forensic analysis established that the video was authentic and that the Cameroonian military was responsible for the executions.
While Allegrozzi noted that the closed-door nature of the trial undermined its potential impact in setting standards for accountability, she told The Intercept that the convictions did strike at Cameroon’s long-standing culture of military impunity. The sentences stand in sharp contrast to many atrocities committed by U.S. personnel who have regularly evaded meaningful punishments even in the face of overwhelming evidence of their crimes. From the slaughter of around 230 Cheyenne and Arapaho at Sand Creek, Colorado, in 1864 to the massacre of more than 500 Vietnamese at the village of My Lai in South Vietnam in 1968 to the mass killing of at least 24 civilians, including women and children, in Haditha, Iraq, in 2005, near-total impunity has often been the norm. Just last year, President Donald Trump granted clemency to three members of the armed forces who had been accused or convicted of committing war crimes in Iraq or Afghanistan.
Likewise, Cameroon has yet to take action in many other atrocity cases. A year before the video of the executions of the four women and children surfaced, an investigation conducted by The Intercept and the London-based research firm Forensic Architecture found a Cameroonian military base that was home to American personnel and drones was also the scene of illegal imprisonment, brutal torture, and even killings by local forces.
In August 2018, The Intercept also published graphic footage of a massacre carried out by Cameroonian troops. More than two years later, there is no evidence that Cameroon’s military has taken any action to hold its forces accountable for the crime. “No investigation was ever announced, despite clear evidence of the execution of a dozen civilians,” said Allegrozzi.
Cameroon’s embassy in Washington, D.C., did not respond to The Intercept’s requests for an interview or details about investigations into abuses against noncombatants by the country’s security forces.
“We welcomed the efforts by the Cameroonian government to bring perpetrators of this crime to justice,” a U.S. State Department spokesperson told The Intercept when asked about the five soldiers convicted in the executions. The spokesperson noted that while its military continues to receive U.S. aid through numerous programs, “security assistance to Cameroon has been reduced since 2017 because the government has not adequately responded to credible allegations of human rights violations.”
Much more needs to be done, according to Allegrozzi, including additional pressure from the United States to ensure Cameroon investigates other atrocity allegations. “Justice doesn’t end with these convictions,” she said. “This is a first step, but there are so many other cases that have been documented by human rights organizations that have not been brought to trial. The families of those victims are still awaiting justice. This is one small victory over impunity, but impunity is still widespread.”


theintercept--2020-09-30--Neo-Fascist Proud Boys Exult Over Trump Telling Them to "Stand By," Not Stand Down

While the president ’ s reply struck some observers as more evidence of his inability to stem the torrent of half-digested thoughts and phrases that fly from his lips in an incoherent jumble , leaders of the neo-fascist group exulted on the social media platforms Telegram and Parler , seeing the answer as a call to inflict violence on left-wing antifascist activists and protesters .
“ Trump basically said to go fuck them up !
this makes me so happy , ” Joe Biggs , who organized a Proud Boys rally that drew an embarrassingly small crowd of a few @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , wrote .
Biggs had reason to be encouraged , since Trump did stop short of actually condemning the group , pivoting instead to say : “ But I ’ ll tell you what , I ’ ll tell you what , somebody ’ s got to do something about antifa and the left , because this is not a right-wing problem… this is a left-wing problem.
” In response to Trump ’ s comment , Biden noted that Christopher Wray , “ his own F.B.I .
director , said the threat comes @ @ @ @ @ @ @ an idea , not an organization.
” Wray told Congress two weeks ago that “ we look at antifa as more of an ideology or a movement than an organization.
” “ Oh come on , ” Trump replied , clearly shocked to hear the truth — that loosely affiliated antifascist groups dedicated to confronting white supremacists and neo-fascists like the Proud Boys are not a domestic terrorist organization .
“ Antifa is a dangerous , radical group , ” Trump insisted , echoing the core imaginary belief of the Proud Boys he @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Proud Boys founder , Gavin McInnes , has described what the Southern Poverty Law Center calls a hate group as a “ Western chauvinist ” fraternal order that promotes violence against left-wing protesters , and embraces anti-immigrant , anti-Muslim bigotry that dovetails with Trump ’ s own beliefs .
Trump ’ s failure to disavow the group echoed his refusal to condemn the white supremacists who marched with torches in Charlottesville in 2017 , chanting , “ Jew will not replace us !
” at the Unite the Right rally , which was @ @ @ @ @ @ @ member of the Proud Boys .
The group ’ s current chairman , Enrique Tarrio , a Cuban-American from Miami who attended the Charlottesville rally , boosted an excited comment about Trump ’ s apparent endorsement posted on Tuesday by another member , who describes himself as a “ 33rd Degree Proud Boy , ” as well as a “ right-wing death squad general , ” an “ ANTIFA Butcher , ” a “ Commie Killer ” and a “ BLM Skull Stomper.
” Tarrio , who spent a year in federal prison @ @ @ @ @ @ @ rebrand stolen diabetic test strip kits and sell them online , wrote on his own Parler account that he was “ extremely PROUD of my Presidents performance tonight , ” saying that Trump “ did an excellent job and was asked a VERY pointed question .
The question was in reference to WHITE SUPREMACY…which we are not.
” Despite Tarrio ’ s comments , photographs of the rally in Portland on Saturday showed him and other members making the O.K .
hand gesture , which has evolved in recent years from a 4chan @ @ @ @ @ @ @ into reporting that it meant “ white power ” on the internet — into a symbol actually embraced by racists in real life .
Even if they don ’ t consider themselves racist , it is quite clear that the Proud Boys are openly antagonistic to racial justice protesters in Portland and other cities .
As my colleague Ryan Devereaux reported from the rally on Saturday , it was largely dedicated to praising two new martyrs of the far-right : Aaron Jay Danielson , a supporter of the far-right group Patriot Prayer , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ self-described anti-fascist in Portland last month , and Kyle Rittenhouse , the 17-year-old Trump supporter who was charged with two counts of murder for killing two Black Lives Matter protesters and wounding a third in Kenosha , Wisconsin .
The debate moderator , Chris Wallace , had specifically referred to the way violent right-wing groups had stoked violence in both Kenosha and Portland .
Moments before he failed to condemn the Proud Boys in the debate , Trump had seemed to take credit for the police killing of Michael Reinoehl , the suspected @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Jay Danielson , a right-wing activist from a group allied to the Proud Boys , following a raucous pro-Trump caravan confronting Black Lives Matter protesters in downtown Portland .
“ I sent in the U.S .
Marshals to get the killer of a young man — in the middle of the street , they shot him , and for three days Portland wouldn ’ t do anything , ” Trump claimed .
“ They took care of business , ” he said with obvious satisfaction .
In fact , Portland ’ s district @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Reinoehl with murder and obtained a warrant for his arrest hours before he was shot and killed by police officers in Washington state working with the U.S .
Marshals Service to track down the fugitive .
While the police said Reinoehl had a handgun , one witness told The Oregonian that the officers had made no attempt to arrest the suspect , who did not seem to be armed .
Antifascist activists in Portland then accused law enforcement of carrying out an extrajudicial execution of a man who was wanted for killing a @ @ @ @ @ @ @ also seemed to be overstating what role , if any , he had played in the effort to detain Reinoehl .
In fact , on September 3 , the president tweeted a public complaint about the case — demanding that the Portland Police arrest the suspect — a full hour and 40 minutes after he had already been killed by the federal fugitive task force .
The president ’ s tweet was sent 13 minutes after the suspect ’ s death had been reported by The New York Times .
Trump ’ s @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the debate also echoed his own previous bloodthirsty remarks , in which he sounded more like a sectarian warlord than the president of a democracy .
“ U.S .
Marshals killed him , ” Trump said of the suspected left-wing gunman in an interview with the debate moderator ’ s Fox News colleague Jeanine Pirro .
“ And I ’ ll tell you something , that ’ s the way it has to be .
There has to be retribution , ” he added .
At a news conference last month , Trump @ @ @ @ @ @ @ provocative behavior of armed supporters like Rittenhouse , who was charged with six crimes based on evidence gathered by the Kenosha police department .
Suddenly skeptical of the police , the president said that video of the teen gunman being pursued by protesters before the second and third shootings , which was played without context in heavy rotation on Fox News , suggested to him that the young vigilante had acted in self-defense .
What the president left out of his description of the video that showed Rittenhouse , in his words , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ protesters who were chasing him , who then “ very violently attacked him , ” is that those three men were trying to disarm him because he had just shot another man in the head , minutes earlier .
“ I guess he was in very big trouble — he probably would ’ ve been killed , ” Trump claimed , ignoring the sequence of events laid out in clear detail in the police complaint charging Rittenhouse with murder .
That context was mostly absent from Tucker Carlson ’ s selective presentation of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ but it was carefully detailed in the indictment based on the work of three Kenosha homicide detectives .
It is not hard to imagine which source of information Trump had studied more carefully .
So when Trump excused the reckless killing of protesters by Rittenhouse , a young man who had been in the front row at one of the president ’ s rallies in January , the self-described “ law and order ” candidate was choosing to disregard the actual work of law enforcement carried out by Kenosha ’ s police department @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
At another point in the debate , Trump claimed that his provocative approach to the protests in Portland was endorsed by the city ’ s sheriff , “ who just came out today and said , ‘ I support President Trump . '
” While the city of Portland does not , in fact , have a sheriff , the county it is in , Multnomah , does .
Before the debate was over , Multnomah County Sheriff Mike Reese had tweeted to debunk the president .
“ I have never supported @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , ” Reese wrote .
“ Donald Trump has made my job a hell of a lot harder since he started talking about Portland , ” he added , “ but I never thought he ’ d try to turn my wife against me !
”

President Donald Trump thrilled members of the violent far-right gang known as the Proud Boys on Tuesday when he responded to a question from debate moderator Chris Wallace, about whether he would be willing to tell white supremacists and militia groups that support him to stand down, by instead telling that group to “stand back and stand by.”
Chris Wallace: "Are you willing, tonight, to condemn white supremacists and militia groups…?" President Trump: "Sure, I'm willing to do that…Proud Boys, stand back and stand by! But I'll tell you what…somebody's got to do something about Antifa and the left." pic.twitter.com/9gJ8qyO4hL — CSPAN (@cspan) September 30, 2020
While the president’s reply struck some observers as more evidence of his inability to stem the torrent of half-digested thoughts and phrases that fly from his lips in an incoherent jumble, leaders of the neo-fascist group exulted on the social media platforms Telegram and Parler, seeing the answer as a call to inflict violence on left-wing antifascist activists and protesters.
“Trump basically said to go fuck them up! this makes me so happy,” Joe Biggs, who organized a Proud Boys rally that drew an embarrassingly small crowd of a few hundred in Portland, Oregon on Saturday, wrote. Biggs had reason to be encouraged, since Trump did stop short of actually condemning the group, pivoting instead to say: “But I’ll tell you what, I’ll tell you what, somebody’s got to do something about antifa and the left, because this is not a right-wing problem… this is a left-wing problem.”
In response to Trump’s comment, Biden noted that Christopher Wray, “his own F.B.I. director, said the threat comes from white supremacists; antifa’s an idea, not an organization.” Wray told Congress two weeks ago that “we look at antifa as more of an ideology or a movement than an organization.”
“Oh come on,” Trump replied, clearly shocked to hear the truth — that loosely affiliated antifascist groups dedicated to confronting white supremacists and neo-fascists like the Proud Boys are not a domestic terrorist organization. “Antifa is a dangerous, radical group,” Trump insisted, echoing the core imaginary belief of the Proud Boys he was supposed to be condemning.
The Proud Boys founder, Gavin McInnes, who also co-founded Vice media, has described what the Southern Poverty Law Center calls a hate group as a “Western chauvinist” fraternal order that promotes violence against left-wing protesters, and embraces anti-immigrant, anti-Muslim bigotry that dovetails with Trump’s own beliefs.
Trump’s failure to disavow the group echoed his refusal to condemn the white supremacists who marched with torches in Charlottesville in 2017, chanting, “Jew will not replace us!” at the Unite the Right rally, which was organized by Jason Kessler, a former member of the Proud Boys.
On Wednesday afternoon, Trump tried to undo the damage by telling reporters at the White House that he really did not know what he was saying during the debate.
“I don’t know who the Proud Boys are — you’ll have to give me a definition, cause I really don’t know who they are,” Trump said.
President Trump: "I don't know who the Proud Boys are. You'll have to give me a definition…" pic.twitter.com/lpsBJnqLLQ — CSPAN (@cspan) September 30, 2020
“I can only say they have to stand down, let law enforcement do their work,” the president continued, apparently equating the violence inflicted on left-wing protesters by the Proud Boys to the work of the police.
He then continued to deflect a question about right-wing violence by his supporters with the suggestion that it was entirely justified by the behavior of protesters. “Law enforcement will do the work, more and more, as people see how bad this radical, liberal, Democrat movement is.”
On Tuesday night, however, the Proud Boys founder had posted video of himself watching Trump’s comments with excitement during a livestream.
The group’s current chairman, Enrique Tarrio, a Cuban-American from Miami who attended the Charlottesville rally, also boosted an excited comment about Trump’s apparent endorsement posted on Tuesday by another member, who describes himself as a “33rd Degree Proud Boy,” as well as a “right-wing death squad general,” an “ANTIFA Butcher,” a “Commie Killer” and a “BLM Skull Stomper.”
Tarrio, who spent a year in federal prison for his part in a scheme to rebrand stolen diabetic test strip kits and sell them online, wrote on his own Parler account that he was “extremely PROUD of my Presidents performance tonight,” saying that Trump “did an excellent job and was asked a VERY pointed question. The question was in reference to WHITE SUPREMACY…which we are not.”
Despite Tarrio’s comments, photographs of the rally in Portland on Saturday showed him and other members making the O.K. hand gesture, which has evolved in recent years from a 4chan hoax — intended to trick the media into reporting that it meant “white power” on the internet — into a symbol actually embraced by racists in real life.
Photo: Nathan Howard/Getty ImagesGetty Images
Even if they don’t consider themselves racist, it is quite clear that the Proud Boys are openly antagonistic to racial justice protesters in Portland and other cities.
As my colleague Ryan Devereaux reported from the rally on Saturday, it was largely dedicated to praising two new martyrs of the far-right: Aaron Jay Danielson, a supporter of the far-right group Patriot Prayer, who was shot and killed by a self-described anti-fascist in Portland last month, and Kyle Rittenhouse, the 17-year-old Trump supporter who was charged with two counts of murder for killing two Black Lives Matter protesters and wounding a third in Kenosha, Wisconsin.
“Kyle’s life matters” says one sign borrowing the Black Lives Matter style/font. pic.twitter.com/g2Cs2Sj735 — Ford Fischer (@FordFischer) September 26, 2020
The debate moderator, Chris Wallace, had specifically referred to the way violent right-wing groups had stoked violence in both Kenosha and Portland.
Moments before he failed to condemn the Proud Boys in the debate, Trump had seemed to take credit for the police killing of Michael Reinoehl, the suspected left-wing gunman who had fatally shot Aaron Jay Danielson, a right-wing activist from a group allied to the Proud Boys, following a raucous pro-Trump caravan confronting Black Lives Matter protesters in downtown Portland.
“I sent in the U.S. Marshals to get the killer of a young man — in the middle of the street, they shot him, and for three days Portland wouldn’t do anything,” Trump claimed. “They took care of business,” he said with obvious satisfaction.
In fact, the new, progressive district attorney for Portland, Mike Schmidt, had charged Reinoehl with murder and obtained a warrant for his arrest hours before he was shot and killed by police officers in Washington state working with the U.S. Marshals Service to track down the fugitive. While the police said Reinoehl had a handgun, one witness told The Oregonian that the officers had made no attempt to arrest the suspect, who did not seem to be armed. Antifascist activists in Portland then accused law enforcement of carrying out an extrajudicial execution of a man who was wanted for killing a member of a pro-police group.
Trump also seemed to be overstating what role, if any, he had played in the effort to detain Reinoehl. In fact, on September 3, the president tweeted a public complaint about the case — demanding that the Portland Police arrest the suspect — a full hour and 40 minutes after he had already been killed by the federal fugitive task force. The president’s tweet was sent 13 minutes after the suspect’s death had been reported by The New York Times.
On Wednesday, District Attorney Schmidt announced that a member of the Proud Boys, “50-year-old Alan Swinney is in custody and is being charged with multiple offenses for alleged crimes and assaults that involved weapons.” Swinney was charged with assault, the unlawful use of mace, threatening a protester in Portland with a gun and using a paintball gun to wound people at recent demonstrations in the city.
Trump’s praise of Reinoehl’s shooting in the debate also echoed his own previous bloodthirsty remarks, in which he sounded more like a sectarian warlord than the president of a democracy. “U.S. Marshals killed him,” Trump said of the suspected left-wing gunman in an interview with the debate moderator’s Fox News colleague Jeanine Pirro. “And I’ll tell you something, that’s the way it has to be. There has to be retribution,” he added.
So the President is admitting that federal authorities killed Michael Reinoehl for “retribution”? We are on our way to normalizing the execution of criminal suspects before arrest, trial or conviction. It’s that serious. https://t.co/E5DiwwjSwj — Sherrilyn Ifill (@SIfill_) September 13, 2020
Trump’s rush to declare the killing of the left-wing gunman from Portland perfectly justified contrasted with the staunch defense he has offered of Kyle Rittenhouse, the right-wing gunman who has become a hero to neo-fascists worldwide for bringing a rifle to a Black Lives Matter protest and provoking a confrontation that left two men dead.
I doubted this was real, but it is: Bulgarian soccer hooligans displayed a banner praising Kyle Rittenhouse during a Sept. 20 match at CSKA Sofia's stadium, as documented on Facebook and YouTube by the Sector G ultras grouphttps://t.co/T9Dt8eH74Bhttps://t.co/U9FI6pIldS pic.twitter.com/YLWbJHr5xQ — Robert Mackey (@RobertMackey) September 27, 2020
At a news conference last month, Trump was asked if he would disavow the provocative behavior of armed supporters like Rittenhouse, who was charged with six crimes based on evidence gathered by the Kenosha police department. Suddenly skeptical of the police, the president said that video of the teen gunman being pursued by protesters before the second and third shootings, which was played without context in heavy rotation on Fox News, suggested to him that the young vigilante had acted in self-defense.
Trump on Kyle Rittenhouse: He was trying to get away from them I guess.. and he fell and then they very violently attacked him… I guess he was in very big trouble. He probably would’ve been killed. pic.twitter.com/O4GxpkxU5v — Acyn (@Acyn) August 31, 2020
What the president left out of his description of the video that showed Rittenhouse, in his words, “trying to get away from” protesters who were chasing him, who then “very violently attacked him,” is that those three men were trying to disarm him because he had just shot another man in the head, minutes earlier.
“I guess he was in very big trouble — he probably would’ve been killed,” Trump claimed, ignoring the sequence of events laid out in clear detail in the police complaint charging Rittenhouse with murder.
That context was mostly absent from Tucker Carlson’s selective presentation of the facts of what Rittenhouse did, but it was carefully detailed in the indictment based on the work of three Kenosha homicide detectives. It is not hard to imagine which source of information Trump had studied more carefully. So when Trump excused the reckless killing of protesters by Rittenhouse, a young man who had been in the front row at one of the president’s rallies in January, the self-described “law and order” candidate was choosing to disregard the actual work of law enforcement carried out by Kenosha’s police department because it was politically inconvenient for him.
At another point in the debate, Trump claimed that his provocative approach to the protests in Portland was endorsed by the city’s sheriff, “who just came out today and said, ‘I support President Trump.'” While the city of Portland does not, in fact, have a sheriff, the county it is in, Multnomah, does. Before the debate was over, Multnomah County Sheriff Mike Reese had tweeted to debunk the president. “I have never supported Donald Trump and will never support him,” Reese wrote. “Donald Trump has made my job a hell of a lot harder since he started talking about Portland,” he added, “but I never thought he’d try to turn my wife against me!”
Updated: Wednesday, Sept. 30, 12:38 p.m. PDT
This article was updated with President Donald Trump’s comments to reporters on Wednesday, in which he claimed that he had no idea what he was saying during the debate the night before, and to report the arrest of a member of the Proud Boys who attacked racial justice protesters in Portland recently.


theintercept--2020-09-30--Excess Mortality Data Shows Trump Is Lying About Covid-19 Being More Deadly in Europe

At an ABC News town hall two weeks ago , Trump said the confirmed Covid-19 death toll , showing the U.S. harder hit than any nation , should be ignored because , “ There ’ s a chart that just came out a little while ago : excess mortality rate is compared to Europe , compared to other places , it ’ s about 25 percent better .
In one case , it ’ s over 60 percent better.
” He did not provide the chart .
The president has said four times that Europe has recorded 40 percent more @ @ @ @ @ @ @ said the figure was 33 percent twice .
He put the difference at 38 percent on one occasion .
A week later , he said it was 24 percent twice .
Trump ’ s false claim about the pandemic being worse in Europe has been central to his effort to deflect questions about why the U.S. leads the world in confirmed Covid-19 deaths since August 11 , when he first claimed that “ Europe has experienced a nearly 40 percent higher excess mortality rate than the United States ” during the pandemic .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ again in the weeks since , but never offered any explanation of how the statistic was calculated , or by whom , or why the percentage by which he claims the rise in deaths in Europe is higher than in the U.S. keeps changing .
Excess mortality is a measure used by epidemiologists to account for the real toll of a pandemic by comparing the total number of deaths from all causes each week to the average number of deaths in a typical , non-pandemic year in that country or region .
Reporters @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , because Americans have in fact died at a greater rate than Europeans since March , according to new data provided to The Intercept by Danish researchers who monitor excess mortality in Europe , and a separate analysis of deaths during the pandemic from Oxford University economists published on Tuesday .
Without once citing a source for the statistic , President Donald Trump has complained at least 20 times since early August about the media refusing to report his claim that the Covid-19 pandemic has been far more deadly in Europe than in @ @ @ @ @ @ @ presses Pres .
Trump on his claim that the U.S. is doing better in mortality when it comes to COVID-19 than other countries : “ We ’ re not at the top of the list.
” Trump defends U.S. mortality rate , saying “ we also have a very big country.
” https : //t.co/ztM30WXxPT pic.twitter.com/BwhwogrL5Q Four days after that , he said the gap with Europe was 30 percent .
Last week , he said it was 30 percent two more times , and then switched again , telling rally-goers in Pennsylvania @ @ @ @ @ @ @ campaign “ don ’ t want to tell you ” that “ Europe has had almost a 50 percent greater excess mortality rate than the United States.
” Not only were all of the president ’ s numbers wrong , but the true figures on deaths from all causes during the pandemic , compiled by researchers in Denmark and England , show that the U.S. has done significantly worse than Europe , not better , at keeping its citizens alive during the pandemic .
From February to September , excess deaths in Europe @ @ @ @ @ @ @ analysis carried out at the request of The Intercept by the European Mortality Monitoring Project , a team of Danish scientists who track mortality in 24 European nations or regions .
Lasse Vestergaard , the EuroMOMO project coordinator , and a senior medical officer in the Department of Infectious Disease Epidemiology and Prevention at Denmark ’ s Statens Serum Institut , said in an email that this figure can be compared to CDC data on excess deaths for the same period which shows that the spike in mortality in the U.S. was about @ @ @ @ @ @ @ analysis of the CDC ’ s excess death statistics for a slightly different time period — from March 15 to September 5 — arrived at a similar figure for the U.S. showing 266,900 more deaths than normal , which is an increase of 20 percent .
Data provided by Vestergaard showed that at the height of the pandemic in Europe , from March to June , excess deaths spiked by 25.6 percent .
What brought the overall figure down so much was a sharp and sustained drop in deaths across the region from @ @ @ @ @ @ @ just 2.2 percent above normal .
Although a September 12 Trump campaign statement claiming that “ Europe experienced a 24 % higher excess mortality rate than the United States ” linked to the EuroMOMO website as evidence , Vestergaard told me in a Skype interview that the idea that their data supported this claim was “ rubbish.
” A separate study of excess deaths in Europe and the U.S. released on Tuesday reached a similar conclusion .
The Oxford University economists Janine Aron and John Muellbauer , who compared the CDC data to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ from the Human Mortality Database , reported that “ Europe ’ s cumulative excess mortality rate from March to July is 28 percent lower than the US rate.
” Aron and Muellbauer found that excess deaths from the start of March to the end of July increased by 12.4 percent in the 28 European nations they tracked , compared to 17.2 percent in the U.S. during that period .
Since the region the economists looked at — including most of the European Union plus the United Kingdom , Iceland , Norway , and @ @ @ @ @ @ @ people in it than the U.S. their measure of the excess mortality rate corrects for population .
The economists , who were spurred to dive into the data by Trump ’ s patently false claims about excess mortality in the U.S. and Europe , observed last month in a previous study that the comparison is even more damning for the Trump administration when you consider that the pandemic hit Europe first and the continent has an older population than the U.S. living in more densely populated countries .
“ U.S .
policy-makers have @ @ @ @ @ @ @ such as Italy and Spain , in responding to the first wave of the Covid-19 pandemic .
First , there was more time to react , ” Aron and Muellbauer wrote in August .
“ Second , Europe is disadvantaged by having an older population than the U.S. and the population density is also far higher in Europe and the large cities in Europe have higher population densities than large cities in the U.S. ” In their August paper , which looked at excess mortality from March to June , Aron and Muellbauer @ @ @ @ @ @ @ than normal in the U.S. and 15.94 percent higher in Europe for the same period .
That means , despite Trump ’ s claims , excess mortality for the first part of the pandemic in the U.S. was 22 percent worse , not better , than in Europe .
While Trump has never mentioned where he got the incorrect excess mortality stats he ’ s been hawking , it seems likely that they came from Dr. Scott Atlas , the Fox News commentator the president added to his coronavirus task force the day @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to Europe .
Atlas has frequently cited the same metric in media interviews and claimed to have done the calculations himself .
In an interview published on the Wall Street Journal opinion page on September 4 , Atlas told Tunku Varadarajan , his colleague at the conservative Hoover Institution think tank at Stanford , that the U.S. was “ doing much better than Europe.
” “ By his own calculations , ” Varadarajan reported of Atlas , “ the U.S. has had 38 % fewer ‘ excess mortality deaths ’ — fatalities over @ @ @ @ @ @ @ in a nonpandemic year — for people over 65 than Europe .
( The data include most of the European Union plus Norway , Switzerland and the U.K. ) .
” In a press briefing two hours after that interview was published , Trump — who has never said that he was referring only to the deaths of people over 65 — told reporters that “ the nations of Europe have experienced a 38 percent greater excess mortality than the United States.
” Atlas , who is a radiologist , not an infectious @ @ @ @ @ @ @ defended Trump by telling the BBC that Europe had “ done 28 percent worse than the United States in excess mortality.
” In a subsequent White House briefing , Trump ’ s press secretary , Kayleigh McEnany , told another BBC reporter , who asked why the U.S. has “ 4 percent of the global population and 24 percent of the coronavirus deaths , ” that Europe “ has experienced a 28 percent higher excess mortality rate than the United States .
”

Without once citing a source for the statistic, President Donald Trump has complained at least 20 times since early August about the media refusing to report his claim that the Covid-19 pandemic has been far more deadly in Europe than in the United States.
Reporters were right not to trust the president, because Americans have in fact died at a greater rate than Europeans since March, according to new data provided to The Intercept by Danish researchers who monitor excess mortality in Europe, and a separate analysis of deaths during the pandemic from Oxford University economists published on Tuesday.
Excess mortality is a measure used by epidemiologists to account for the real toll of a pandemic by comparing the total number of deaths from all causes each week to the average number of deaths in a typical, non-pandemic year in that country or region.
Trump’s false claim about the pandemic being worse in Europe has been central to his effort to deflect questions about why the U.S. leads the world in confirmed Covid-19 deaths since August 11, when he first claimed that “Europe has experienced a nearly 40 percent higher excess mortality rate than the United States” during the pandemic. He has made the comparison again and again in the weeks since, but never offered any explanation of how the statistic was calculated, or by whom, or why the percentage by which he claims the rise in deaths in Europe is higher than in the U.S. keeps changing.
The president has said four times that Europe has recorded 40 percent more deaths than the U.S. He’s said the figure was 33 percent twice. He put the difference at 38 percent on one occasion. A week later, he said it was 24 percent twice.
At an ABC News town hall two weeks ago, Trump said the confirmed Covid-19 death toll, showing the U.S. harder hit than any nation, should be ignored because, “There’s a chart that just came out a little while ago: excess mortality rate is compared to Europe, compared to other places, it’s about 25 percent better. In one case, it’s over 60 percent better.” He did not provide the chart.
.@GStephanopoulos presses Pres. Trump on his claim that the U.S. is doing better in mortality when it comes to COVID-19 than other countries: “We’re not at the top of the list.” Trump defends U.S. mortality rate, saying “we also have a very big country.” https://t.co/ztM30WXxPT pic.twitter.com/BwhwogrL5Q — ABC News (@ABC) September 16, 2020
Four days after that, he said the gap with Europe was 30 percent. Last week, he said it was 30 percent two more times, and then switched again, telling rally-goers in Pennsylvania and Florida that the reporters covering his campaign “don’t want to tell you” that “Europe has had almost a 50 percent greater excess mortality rate than the United States.”
Not only were all of the president’s numbers wrong, but the true figures on deaths from all causes during the pandemic, compiled by researchers in Denmark and England, show that the U.S. has done significantly worse than Europe, not better, at keeping its citizens alive during the pandemic.
From February to September, excess deaths in Europe increased by 12 percent according to an analysis carried out at the request of The Intercept by the European Mortality Monitoring Project, a network of European public health experts who track mortality in 24 European nations or regions. Lasse Vestergaard, the EuroMOMO project coordinator, and a senior medical officer in the Department of Infectious Disease Epidemiology and Prevention at Denmark’s Statens Serum Institut, said in an email that this figure can be compared to CDC data on excess deaths for the same period which shows that the spike in mortality in the U.S. was about 19 percent.
A New York Times analysis of the CDC’s excess death statistics for a slightly different time period — from March 15 to September 5 — arrived at a similar figure for the U.S. showing 266,900 more deaths than normal, which is an increase of 20 percent.
Data provided by Vestergaard showed that at the height of the pandemic in Europe, from March to June, excess deaths spiked by 25.6 percent. What brought the overall figure down so much was a sharp and sustained drop in deaths across the region from June into September, when mortality was just 2.2 percent above normal.
Although a September 12 Trump campaign statement claiming that “Europe experienced a 24% higher excess mortality rate than the United States” linked to the EuroMOMO website as evidence, Vestergaard told me in a Skype interview that the idea that their data supported this claim was “incorrect.”
A separate study of excess deaths in Europe and the U.S. released on Tuesday reached a similar conclusion. The Oxford University economists Janine Aron and John Muellbauer, who compared the CDC data to data for a larger portion of Europe from the Human Mortality Database, reported that “Europe’s cumulative excess mortality rate from March to July is 28 percent lower than the US rate.”
Aron and Muellbauer found that excess deaths from the start of March to the end of July increased by 12.4 percent in the 28 European nations they tracked, compared to 17.2 percent in the U.S. during that period. Since the region the economists looked at — including most of the European Union plus the United Kingdom, Iceland, Norway, and Switzerland — has nearly 200 million more people in it than the U.S. their measure of the excess mortality rate corrects for population.
The economists, who were spurred to dive into the data by Trump’s patently false claims about excess mortality in the U.S. and Europe, observed last month in a previous study that the comparison is even more damning for the Trump administration when you consider that the pandemic hit Europe first and the continent has an older population than the U.S. living in more densely populated countries.
“U.S. policy-makers have had multiple advantages over European countries, such as Italy and Spain, in responding to the first wave of the Covid-19 pandemic. First, there was more time to react,” Aron and Muellbauer wrote in August. “Second, Europe is disadvantaged by having an older population than the U.S. and the population density is also far higher in Europe and the large cities in Europe have higher population densities than large cities in the U.S.”
In their August paper, which looked at excess mortality from March to June, Aron and Muellbauer found that it was 20.31 percent higher than normal in the U.S. and 15.94 percent higher in Europe for the same period. That means, despite Trump’s claims, excess mortality for the first part of the pandemic in the U.S. was 22 percent worse, not better, than in Europe.
While Trump has never mentioned where he got the incorrect excess mortality stats he’s been hawking, it seems likely that they came from Dr. Scott Atlas, the Fox News commentator the president added to his coronavirus task force the day before he started making the false comparison to Europe. Atlas has frequently cited the same metric in media interviews and claimed to have done the calculations himself.
In an interview published on the Wall Street Journal opinion page on September 4, Atlas told Tunku Varadarajan, his colleague at the conservative Hoover Institution think tank at Stanford, that the U.S. was “doing much better than Europe.”
“By his own calculations,” Varadarajan reported of Atlas, “the U.S. has had 38% fewer ‘excess mortality deaths’ — fatalities over and above those that would have occurred in a nonpandemic year — for people over 65 than Europe. (The data include most of the European Union plus Norway, Switzerland and the U.K.).”
In a press briefing two hours after that interview was published, Trump — who has never said that he was referring only to the deaths of people over 65 — told reporters that “the nations of Europe have experienced a 38 percent greater excess mortality than the United States.”
Atlas, who is a radiologist, not an infectious disease expert or an epidemiologist, then defended Trump by telling the BBC that Europe had “done 28 percent worse than the United States in excess mortality.” In a subsequent White House briefing, Trump’s press secretary, Kayleigh McEnany, told another BBC reporter, who asked why the U.S. has “4 percent of the global population and 24 percent of the coronavirus deaths,” that Europe “has experienced a 28 percent higher excess mortality rate than the United States.”
“On the great success story you talked about, about COVID, in the richest country in the world, you have 4% of the global population and 24% of the coronavirus deaths. How is that a success story?” pic.twitter.com/223Pgk6Krl — Pod Save America (@PodSaveAmerica) September 16, 2020
“Excess mortality is an indicator that takes into account the percent deaths above what would occur without a pandemic,” McEnany said. “You have to look at this holistically.”
Although Atlas failed to respond to multiple requests from The Intercept to explain what sources he was using, he seemed to suggest in a video interview with the Daily Caller last week that he used the EuroMOMO excess mortality data for Europe. Explaining his calculations, he told the interviewers that “the data is available for a set of 24 countries,” which matches the region tracked by the Danish team that runs the EuroMOMO project.
Atlas did not tell the Daily Caller what figure he was using for Europe, but he said that excess mortality in the U.S. during the pandemic was 19.9 percent higher than normal, which seems to indicate that he has been using CDC data correctly, but somehow distorting the figures for Europe.
The fact that Atlas appears to have been feeding Trump misleading or incorrect statistics on excess mortality echoes criticism of his role from the federal government’s most senior immunologist, Dr. Anthony Fauci, who told the AIDS activist Peter Staley on Friday that, “he’s a smart guy, no doubt about it, but he tends to cherry-pick data.”
The same day, an NBC journalist overheard the CDC director, Dr. Robert Redfield, criticizing Atlas in a phone call to a colleague. “Everything he says is false,” Redfield told his colleague.
Asked by CNN on Monday if he was worried about what Atlas was telling the president, Fauci said, “I’m concerned that sometimes things are said that are really taken either out of context or are actually incorrect.”
Fauci suggests there is an "outlier" on White House coronavirus task force when asked about CDC director Dr. Robert Redfield's concerns that Dr. Scott Atlas is sharing misleading information with President Trump on COVID-19 pic.twitter.com/YydIhtj4YE — Talking Points Memo (@TPM) September 28, 2020
Throughout the pandemic, Trump has used a series of misleading or incorrect statistics to deflect attention from his failure to respond to the outbreak as well as other leaders. In April, for instance, he repeatedly cited a misleading bar chart that compared the U.S. deaths per capita to just a handful of European nations that were, at that time, struggling to contain the virus.
After most European countries succeeded in bringing down infections and deaths in June, but the U.S. did not, Trump started dodging questions about the spiking U.S. mortality rate by insisting that reporters look instead at another metric: the case fatality rate, a largely irrelevant statistic measuring death from Covid as a percentage of confirmed cases.
Photo: Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images
That effort was first undermined when Trump demonstrated in an interview with Chris Wallace of Fox News that he did not understand the metric himself.
Two weeks later, Trump’s effort to distract attention from the mounting Covid-19 death toll by pointing to the case fatality rate had to be abandoned after he was humiliated by Jonathan Swan of Axios in a television interview that made the attempted sleigh-of-hand embarrassingly obvious.
.@jonathanvswan: “Oh, you’re doing death as a proportion of cases. I’m talking about death as a proportion of population. That’s where the U.S. is really bad. Much worse than South Korea, Germany, etc.”@realdonaldtrump: “You can’t do that.” Swan: “Why can’t I do that?” pic.twitter.com/MStySfkV39 — Axios (@axios) August 4, 2020
“Take a look at some of these charts,” Trump said to Swan during the most excruciating segment of the interview. “Here is one. Well, right here, the United States is lowest in… numerous categories. We’re lower than… the world.”
“Lower than the world?” Swan asked. “What does that mean?”
“We’re lower than Europe,” Trump continued.
“In what?” Swan asked.
“Take a look,” Trump said, handing Swan a chart of case fatality rates. “Right here. Here is case death.”
Taking the chart, Swan looked digested it quickly and said: “Oh, you’re doing death as a proportion of cases. I’m talking about death as a proportion of population. That’s where the U.S. is really bad, much worse than South Korea, Germany, et cetera.”
A stunned Trump’s only reply was: “You can’t do that.”
One week after that interview was broadcast, Trump introduced Scott Atlas at a White House briefing and started making his entirely false claims about excess mortality in the United States being far lower than in Europe.
At a rally in Duluth, Minnesota on Wednesday night, Trump made the false comparison for at least the 21st time. “Europe is almost a 50 per cent greater excess mortality rate than the United States,” Trump said, reading from his prepared remarks. Looking away from the teleprompter he complained to his supporters that this statistic was not being reported. “You don’t hear that,” he said.
Updated: Thursday, Oct. 1, 4:10 p.m. PDT
This article was updated to report that President Donald Trump lied to his supporters about excess mortality during the pandemic again on Wednesday.


theintercept--2020-09-30--New Arab Pro-Democracy Group Founded by Jamal Khashoggi Faces an Uphill Battle in D.C.

the human rights initiative Democracy in the Arab World Now reintroduced itself to the world .
On its face , the organization bears some resemblance to other such initiatives , touting a 10-person staff of seasoned advocates and regional experts .
Yet the origins of DAWN are unique : It is the rebooted brainchild of murdered Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi , slain two years ago this Friday by his own government .
DAWN can be read as a refusal of the silence sought by those who killed Khashoggi .
At the core of DAWN ’ s vision is the assertion @ @ @ @ @ @ @ final , posthumous piece , that the establishment of a free press in the Arab world is critical to the democratic cause .
In this pursuit , DAWN will face numerous , familiar challenges : from well-armed and ruthless authoritarians in the Middle East to an American system where profit and militarism too often supersede human rights .
These twin forces have long given comfort to the enemies of democracy in the Arab world , paving the way for the kind of repression that drove Khashoggi to flee — and so many others @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of his life , Khashoggi battled despair at the way his home country had turned on him , after a career built on a delicate balance of appeasement and chosen battles .
In an interview with me just a few months before his death , he spoke with real love and pain of the land he left behind .
After a lifetime of trying to “ work within the system , ” Khashoggi was coming to see the limits of this approach : “ The message became , if you ’ re not @ @ @ @ @ @ @ us.
” Those limits remain — and have perhaps strengthened , over the course of two more years of the Trump administration and the impunity it bestows on Saudi Arabia .
Like DAWN , Saudi ’ s Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman , whom international investigations have named as the person ultimately responsible for Khashoggi ’ s murder , undertook his own reboot since 2018 .
Bin Salman did this with the help of the kingdom ’ s well-tuned public relations industrial complex , from the launch of an aspirational Visit Saudi campaign @ @ @ @ @ @ @ influence in the West .
Meanwhile , those struggling for the causes of human rights and democracy in the Middle East have , on a whole , continued to face brutal crackdowns , in addition to war , unrest , and the Covid-19 pandemic .
It is far too easy to be pessimistic about the prospects of any organization seeking to promote human rights and accountability in the Middle East .
It is also far too easy to rely on analysis from one of the ubiquitous-yet-opaque think tanks that proliferate in Washington , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ’ s launch on Tuesday , the New York Times offered an interesting example of both tendencies , quoting a scholar from the Arab Gulf States Institute in Washington , which has been linked to funding from both the Saudi government and the United Arab Emirates .
The comments by the AGSIW scholar , Hussein Ibish , did little more than reflect the Washington status quo .
Ibish cast doubt on the efficacy of DAWN ’ s approach , according to the Times .
He cited realpolitik , arguing that U.S. policy in @ @ @ @ @ @ @ values.
” To the extent that such a critique is patently , if tragically , obvious , it also makes light of the impact of Khashoggi ’ s legacy .
After the journalist ’ s murder , Congress responded with a rare show of bipartisanship , including multiple calls for sanctions against the Saudi regime .
In Europe and elsewhere , the outrage over Khashoggi ’ s death prompted more drastic measures .
Across the world , a renewed sense of the importance of an independent press proliferated .
Ibish ’ s comments @ @ @ @ @ @ @ he ostensibly decried : dismissing a rights-based approach to advocacy by elevating a strictly pragmatic model of diplomacy .
At the very least , Ibish missed an opportunity to posit a more expansive vision , although he did admit that positive change was “ not impossible.
” Upon inquiry , the Arab Gulf States Institute in Washington told me that it receives a grant from the embassy of the UAE for its translation work , along with funding from the Abu Dhabi-based media company Al Majal — itself chaired by member of one @ @ @ @ @ @ @ and the U.S.-based Smith Richardson Foundation .
The Institute ’ s corporate sponsors include arms manufacturers that profit off sales to the Gulf autocracies , like Raytheon and Lockheed Martin , as well as the Saudi state-run oil company , Aramco — all of which are the sort of interests tipping the scales toward the realpolitik that Ibish says could doom DAWN .
( AGSIW denied currently receiving any funding directly from the Saudi government , although it acknowledged it had done so in 2015 . )
While it is spurious to tout @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Times , in giving a representative of AGSIW such a platform , ought to also have disclosed the think tank ’ s questionable funding .
Considering the paper ’ s past reporting on the role of think tanks in bolstering authoritarian Arab regimes , such an annotation would have been expected , and ethical .
Of course , academic and research institutions have a long history of questionable benefactors , and the total disentanglement of knowledge production from state and corporate influence may be ultimately impossible .
Even so , readers should be @ @ @ @ @ @ @ limitations for themselves .
In the end , Ibish ’ s concern — that the status quo in Washington leaves little room for dissident Arab voices — is well-founded .
But it doesn ’ t have to be .
At the very least , the Arab street deserves to speak before being put down .
American journalists will do best by Khashoggi ’ s memory through opening more spaces for a variety of Arab voices to rise — particularly those outside mainstream Washington — and doing due diligence to avoid reinforcing the entrenched @ @ @ @ @ @ @ corporate interests .
After all , if there ’ s anything more out of vogue in 2020 than hope , it ’ s cynicism .

Photo: Bulent Kilic/AFP/Getty Images
On Tuesday, the human rights initiative Democracy in the Arab World Now reintroduced itself to the world. On its face, the organization bears some resemblance to other such initiatives, touting a 10-person staff of seasoned advocates and regional experts.
Yet the origins of DAWN are unique: It is the rebooted brainchild of murdered Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi, slain two years ago this Friday by his own government. DAWN can be read as a refusal of the silence sought by those who killed Khashoggi. At the core of DAWN’s vision is the assertion, laid out by Khashoggi in his final, posthumous piece, that the establishment of a free press in the Arab world is critical to the democratic cause.
DAWN will face numerous, familiar challenges: from well-armed and ruthless authoritarians in the Middle East to an American system where profit and militarism too often supersede human rights.
In this pursuit, DAWN will face numerous, familiar challenges: from well-armed and ruthless authoritarians in the Middle East to an American system where profit and militarism too often supersede human rights. These twin forces have long given comfort to the enemies of democracy in the Arab world, paving the way for the kind of repression that drove Khashoggi to flee — and so many others into silence.
In the last months of his life, Khashoggi battled despair at the way his home country had turned on him, after a career built on a delicate balance of appeasement and chosen battles. In an interview with me just a few months before his death, he spoke with real love and pain of the land he left behind. After a lifetime of trying to “work within the system,” Khashoggi was coming to see the limits of this approach: “The message became, if you’re not with us, you’re against us.”
Those limits remain — and have perhaps strengthened, over the course of two more years of the Trump administration and the impunity it bestows on Saudi Arabia. Like DAWN, Saudi’s Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, whom international investigations have named as the person ultimately responsible for Khashoggi’s murder, undertook his own reboot since 2018.
Bin Salman did this with the help of the kingdom’s well-tuned public relations industrial complex, from the launch of an aspirational Visit Saudi campaign to dispensing millions in advertisements and soft-power influence in the West.
Meanwhile, those struggling for the causes of human rights and democracy in the Middle East have, on a whole, continued to face brutal crackdowns, in addition to war, unrest, and the Covid-19 pandemic.
It is far too easy to be pessimistic about the prospects of any organization seeking to promote human rights and accountability in the Middle East. It is also far too easy to rely on analysis from one of the ubiquitous-yet-opaque think tanks that proliferate in Washington, D.C.
In its coverage of DAWN’s launch on Tuesday, the New York Times offered an interesting example of both tendencies, quoting a scholar from the Arab Gulf States Institute in Washington, which has been linked to funding from both the Saudi government and the United Arab Emirates.
The comments by the AGSIW scholar, Hussein Ibish, did little more than reflect the Washington status quo. Ibish cast doubt on the efficacy of DAWN’s approach, according to the Times. He cited realpolitik, arguing that U.S. policy in the region places little stock in “values.”
To the extent that such a critique is patently, if tragically, obvious, it also makes light of the impact of Khashoggi’s legacy. After the journalist’s murder, Congress responded with a rare show of bipartisanship, including multiple calls for sanctions against the Saudi regime. In Europe and elsewhere, the outrage over Khashoggi’s death prompted more drastic measures. Across the world, a renewed sense of the importance of an independent press proliferated.
Ibish’s comments also serve to reinforce the very dynamic he ostensibly decried: dismissing a rights-based approach to advocacy by elevating a strictly pragmatic model of diplomacy. At the very least, Ibish missed an opportunity to posit a more expansive vision, although he did admit that positive change was “not impossible.”
Upon inquiry, the Arab Gulf States Institute in Washington told me that it receives a grant from the embassy of the UAE for its translation work, along with funding from the Abu Dhabi-based media company Al Majal — itself chaired by member of one of the Emirates’ ruling families — and the U.S.-based Smith Richardson Foundation.
The Institute’s corporate sponsors include arms manufacturers that profit off sales to the Gulf autocracies, like Raytheon and Lockheed Martin, as well as the Saudi state-run oil company, Aramco — all of which are the sort of interests tipping the scales toward the realpolitik that Ibish says could doom DAWN. (AGSIW denied currently receiving any funding directly from the Saudi government, although it acknowledged it had done so in 2015.)
The Times, in giving a representative of AGSIW such a platform, ought to also have disclosed the think tank’s questionable funding.
While it is spurious to tout Ibish as a Saudi propagandist, the Times, in giving a representative of AGSIW such a platform, ought to also have disclosed the think tank’s questionable funding. Considering the paper’s past reporting on the role of think tanks in bolstering authoritarian Arab regimes, such an annotation would have been expected, and ethical.
Of course, academic and research institutions have a long history of questionable benefactors, and the total disentanglement of knowledge production from state and corporate influence may be ultimately impossible. Even so, readers should be given every tool to determine such ethical limitations for themselves.
In the end, Ibish’s concern — that the status quo in Washington leaves little room for dissident Arab voices — is well-founded. But it doesn’t have to be.
At the very least, the Arab street deserves to speak before being put down. American journalists will do best by Khashoggi’s memory through opening more spaces for a variety of Arab voices to rise — particularly those outside mainstream Washington — and doing due diligence to avoid reinforcing the entrenched, asymmetrical power structure of state and corporate interests.
After all, if there’s anything more out of vogue in 2020 than hope, it’s cynicism.
Sarah Aziza’s reporting on Saudi Arabia was supported by the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting.


theintercept--2020-09-30--Trump Campaign Looks to Make Good On Poll-Watching Threat in Philadelphia

President Donald Trump called for his supporters to “ carefully watch ” voting sites , his presidential campaign requested that Philadelphia immediately allow them to appoint poll watchers at early-voting centers .
Early voting in Philadelphia began on Tuesday .
The city opened six early-voting sites at new satellite election offices and another at City Hall where voters can register , request , fill out , and submit mail-in ballots .
Unlike early-voting centers , traditional polling locations are only open on Election Day , and people can vote in person as opposed to delivering their mail ballots .
On @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Commissioners meeting , which is open for public comment , the Trump campaign ’ s Pennsylvania state director for Election Day operations , James Fitzpatrick , requested that the board allow the campaign to immediately appoint poll watchers at early-voting centers .
“ I am a qualified Philadelphia elector , and I represent Donald J. Trump for president , ” Fitzpatrick said .
“ Your office opened satellite offices around Philadelphia yesterday and has plans to open more , ” he said .
“ Because voting is occurring at these satellite offices , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ be able to appoint poll watchers to observe the voting at these satellite offices .
In the alternative , if these are satellite offices of the Board of Elections , we request the right to have our representatives observe the process from a public space within these satellite election officers .
Voters deserve transparency and accountability.
” Officials do not respond directly to public comments at such meetings .
Asked if the commissioners would allow the Trump campaign to appoint poll watchers , City Commissioner Lisa Deeley told reporters , “ They are @ @ @ @ @ @ @ only appointed at polling locations .
… It is a temporary election office where services are made available to citizens who would like to register to vote or request their mail-in ballot , and they vote their mail ballot there , or they can take it home and vote on it at their dining-room table , ” she said .
During the first presidential debate on Tuesday night , Trump made numerous false claims about mail-in voting fraud and said , “ I am urging my supporters to go into the polls and @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to poll watchers in Philadelphia , claiming that watchers were barred from observing early voting , failing to note that the satellite election offices are not actual polling locations .
“ As you know today there was a big problem .
In Philadelphia , they went into watch — they ’ re called poll watchers .
A very safe , very nice thing .
They were thrown out .
They weren ’ t allowed to watch .
You know why ?
’ Cause bad things happen in Philadelphia .
Bad things.
” Earlier @ @ @ @ @ @ @ “ Wow .
Won ’ t let Poll Watchers & Security into Philadelphia Voting Places .
There is only one reason why .
Corruption !
!
!
Must have a fair Election.
” One woman at an early-voting center in the city ’ s Overbrook neighborhood told a Philadelphia Inquirer reporter on Tuesday that she was hired by the Trump campaign to observe voting and was not allowed inside .
That ’ s because there are no polling locations currently open , and because the Trump campaign doesn ’ t have any poll @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , as the Inquirer reported .
Tuesday ’ s debate was not the first time that Trump encouraged his supporters to go to polling sites in an attempt to intimidate voters , a form of voter suppression that goes back to before the civil rights era .
He did the same in 2016 , along with David Duke and leaders of white nationalist groups .
In August , Trump told Fox News he would send sheriffs and other law enforcement to polling places on Election Day , which he likely does not have @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , Fitzpatrick referred reporters to a letter he said the campaign sent by email to the county ’ s three commissioners on Tuesday .
Deeley and her spokesperson said they had not yet received any letter and had no information on it .
In response to questions about concerns about voter intimidation and security at the satellite offices , Deeley said the city already had sheriffs stationed at some early-voting centers .
The city plans to open more locations in the coming weeks .
A Republican National Committee staffer , identified by Fitzpatrick @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the Wednesday meeting .
He would not speak to journalists and directed questions to Fitzpatrick , whom he left with .
Fitzpatrick and McCoy referred questions to another person helping field questions from the press , who said they did not work for the campaign .
Asked to comment , that person referred reporters to Trump campaign Deputy National Press Secretary Thea McDonald , who did not immediately respond to a request for comment .
Republicans are paying close attention to the polls in Pennsylvania , a crucial swing state that Trump won @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Paid staffers from the RNC observed vote counts in Philadelphia following the June primary , The Intercept reported .
The county was one of the slowest in the state to count ballots from the primary : The process took two weeks .

The morning after President Donald Trump called for his supporters to “carefully watch” voting sites, his presidential campaign requested that Philadelphia immediately allow them to appoint poll watchers at early-voting centers.
Early voting in Philadelphia began on Tuesday. The city opened six early-voting sites at new satellite election offices and another at City Hall where voters can register, request, fill out, and submit mail-in ballots. Unlike early-voting centers, traditional polling locations are only open on Election Day, and people can vote in person as opposed to delivering their mail ballots.
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The tactic of raising doubts about the integrity of the mail-in voting process is an effort to dissuade Democrats from using it, said Lt. Gov. John Fetterman. Absentee ballots, available to every Pennsylvania voter, can either be dropped off in person at election locations or set through the mail. But if a voter who requested an absentee ballot — more than 2 million have already done so, the overwhelming majority Democrats — decides instead they want to vote in person on Election Day, he warned, they’ll be turned away if they don’t bring their ballot — and the envelope it came in — with them to the polls. “That’s what they want,” he told The Intercept. “Let’s say half a million people out of 2 million say, ‘Oh my God, I don’t want to vote by mail anymore.’ Can you imagine that?” The simplest thing, he said, is to just follow the instructions on the ballot and vote by mail.
On Wednesday, at the weekly Philadelphia City Commissioners meeting, which is open for public comment, the Trump campaign’s Pennsylvania state director for Election Day operations, James Fitzpatrick, requested that the board allow the campaign to immediately appoint poll watchers at early-voting centers.
“I am a qualified Philadelphia elector, and I represent Donald J. Trump for president,” Fitzpatrick said. “Your office opened satellite offices around Philadelphia yesterday and has plans to open more,” he said. “Because voting is occurring at these satellite offices, the Trump campaign requests that we immediately be able to appoint poll watchers to observe the voting at these satellite offices. In the alternative, if these are satellite offices of the Board of Elections, we request the right to have our representatives observe the process from a public space within these satellite election officers. Voters deserve transparency and accountability.”
Officials do not respond directly to public comments at such meetings. Asked if the commissioners would allow the Trump campaign to appoint poll watchers, City Commissioner Lisa Deeley told reporters, “They are not polling locations. Poll watchers are only appointed at polling locations. … It is a temporary election office where services are made available to citizens who would like to register to vote or request their mail-in ballot, and they vote their mail ballot there, or they can take it home and vote on it at their dining-room table,” she said.
During the first presidential debate on Tuesday night, Trump made numerous false claims about mail-in voting fraud and said, “I am urging my supporters to go into the polls and watch very carefully.” He also referred to poll watchers in Philadelphia, claiming that watchers were barred from observing early voting, failing to note that the satellite election offices are not actual polling locations. “As you know today there was a big problem. In Philadelphia, they went into watch — they’re called poll watchers. A very safe, very nice thing. They were thrown out. They weren’t allowed to watch. You know why? ’Cause bad things happen in Philadelphia. Bad things.” Earlier in the day, Trump tweeted, “Wow. Won’t let Poll Watchers & Security into Philadelphia Voting Places. There is only one reason why. Corruption!!! Must have a fair Election.”
One woman at an early-voting center in the city’s Overbrook neighborhood told a Philadelphia Inquirer reporter on Tuesday that she was hired by the Trump campaign to observe voting and was not allowed inside. That’s because there are no polling locations currently open, and because the Trump campaign doesn’t have any poll watchers approved to work in the city, as the Inquirer reported. Also on Tuesday, a deputy sheriff removed Fitzpatrick from the satellite election office at City Hall, “where he was recording video on his cellphone, according to election and sheriff aides,” Politico reported. The Trump campaign has threatened legal action against Philadelphia County for denying admission to poll watchers at the satellite election sites.
Tuesday’s debate was not the first time that Trump encouraged his supporters to go to polling sites in an attempt to intimidate voters, a form of voter suppression that goes back to before the civil rights era. He did the same in 2016, along with David Duke and leaders of white nationalist groups. In August, Trump told Fox News he would send sheriffs and other law enforcement to polling places on Election Day, which he likely does not have authority to do.
Asked for comment, Fitzpatrick referred reporters to a letter he said the campaign sent by email to the county’s three commissioners on Tuesday. Deeley and her spokesperson said they had not yet received any letter and had no information on it.
In response to questions about concerns about voter intimidation and security at the satellite offices, Deeley said the city already had sheriffs stationed at some early-voting centers. The city plans to open more locations in the coming weeks.
A Republican National Committee staffer, identified by Fitzpatrick as Andre McCoy, was also at the Wednesday meeting. He would not speak to journalists and directed questions to Fitzpatrick, whom he left with. Fitzpatrick and McCoy referred questions to another person helping field questions from the press, who said they did not work for the campaign. Asked to comment, that person referred reporters to Trump campaign Deputy National Press Secretary Thea McDonald, who did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Republicans are paying close attention to the polls in Pennsylvania, a crucial swing state that Trump won by just 44,000 votes in 2016. Paid staffers from the RNC observed vote counts in Philadelphia following the June primary, The Intercept reported. The county was one of the slowest in the state to count ballots from the primary: The process took two weeks.
Update: Oct. 1, 2020
This article has been updated to include a legal threat from the Trump campaign against Philadelphia County and that Fitzpatrick had been removed from a satellite election office on Tuesday, as well as a comment from Fetterman.


theintercept--2020-09-30--Crumbling Case Against Assange Shows Weakness of "Hacking" Charges Related to Whistleblowing

the Obama administration had concluded that it could not charge WikiLeaks or Julian Assange with crimes related to publishing classified documents — documents that showed , among other things , evidence of U.S. war crimes in Iraq and Afghanistan — without criminalizing investigative journalism itself .
President Barack Obama ’ s Justice Department called this the “ New York Times problem , ” because if WikiLeaks and Assange were criminals for publishing classified information , the New York Times would be just as guilty .
Five years later , in 2018 , the Trump administration indicted Assange anyway .
But @ @ @ @ @ @ @ for publishing classified information , they charged him with a computer crime , later adding 17 counts of espionage in a superseding May 2019 indictment .
The computer charges claimed that , in 2010 , Assange conspired with his source , Chelsea Manning , to crack an account on a Windows computer in her military base , and that the “ primary purpose of the conspiracy was to facilitate Manning ’ s acquisition and transmission of classified information.
” The account enabled internet file transfers using a protocol known as FTP .
New @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ’ s extradition trial makes it increasingly clear that this hacking charge is incredibly flimsy .
The alleged hacking not only didn ’ t happen , according to expert testimony at Manning ’ s court martial hearing in 2013 and again at Assange ’ s extradition trial last week , but it also couldn ’ t have happened .
The new testimony , reported earlier this week by investigative news site Shadowproof , also shows that Manning already had authorized access to , and the ability to exfiltrate , all of the documents @ @ @ @ @ @ @ without receiving any technical help from WikiLeaks .
hacking case appears to be rooted entirely in a few offhand remarks in what it says are chat logs between Manning and Assange discussing password cracking — a topic that other soldiers at Forward Operating Base Hammer in Iraq , where Manning was stationed , were also actively interested in .
The indictment claims that around March 8 , 2010 , after Manning had already downloaded everything she leaked to WikiLeaks other than the State Department cables , the whistleblower provided Assange with part of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ FTP account and Assange agreed to try to help crack it .
A password hash is effectively an encrypted representation of a password from which , in some cases , it ’ s possible to recover the original .
Manning already had authorized access to all of the documents she was planning to leak to WikiLeaks , including the State Department cables , and cracking this password would not have given her any more access or otherwise helped her with her whistleblowing activities .
At most , it might have helped her hide @ @ @ @ @ @ @ not very likely .
I suspect she was just interested in password cracking .
Assange , however , never cracked the password .
That ’ s it .
That ’ s what the government ’ s entire computer crime case against Assange is based on : a brief discussion about cracking a password , which never actually happened , between a publisher and his source .
Therefore , the charge is not actually about hacking — it ’ s about establishing legal precedent to charge publishers with conspiring with their sources , something @ @ @ @ @ @ @ failed to do because of the First Amendment .
As Shadowproof points out : In June 2013 , at Manning ’ s court martial hearing , David Shaver , a special agent for the Army Computer Crimes Investigating Unit , testified that Manning only provided Assange with part of the password hash and that , with only that part , it ’ s not possible to recover the original password .
It would be like trying to make a cappuccino without any espresso ; Assange was missing a key ingredient .
at Assange @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , a former Command Digital Forensics Examiner at the U.S. Army Criminal Investigation Command , further discredited the computer crime charge , according to Shadowproof .
Eller confirmed Shaver ’ s 2013 testimony that Manning didn ’ t provide Assange with enough information to crack the password .
He pointed out , “ The only set of documents named in the indictment that Manning sent after the alleged password cracking attempt were the State Department cables , ” and that “ Manning had authorized access to these documents.
” Eller also said that @ @ @ @ @ @ @ base in Iraq were regularly trying to crack administrator passwords on military computers in order to install programs that they weren ’ t authorized to install .
“ While she ” — Manning — “ was discussing rainbow tables and password hashes in the Jabber chat ” — with Assange — “ she was also discussing the same topics with her colleagues .
This , and the other factors previously highlighted , may indicate that the hash cracking topic was unrelated to leaking documents.
” I ’ m not a fan of Julian @ @ @ @ @ @ @ and lies he ’ s told since the 2016 U.S. election .
But I am a proponent of a strong free press , and his case is critically important for the future of journalism in this country .
Journalists have relationships with their sources .
These relationships are not criminal conspiracies .
Even if a source ends up breaking a law by providing the journalist with classified information , the journalist did not commit a felony by receiving it and publishing it .
Whether or not you believe Assange is a journalist is @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Times just published groundbreaking revelations from two decades of Donald Trump ’ s taxes showing obscene tax avoidance , massive fraud , and hundreds of millions of dollars of debt .
Trump would like nothing more than to charge the New York Times itself , and individual journalists that reported that story , with felonies for conspiring with their source .
This is why the precedent in Assange ’ s case is so important : If Assange loses , the Justice Department will have established new legal tactics with which to go after @ @ @ @ @ @ @

By 2013, the Obama administration had concluded that it could not charge WikiLeaks or Julian Assange with crimes related to publishing classified documents — documents that showed, among other things, evidence of U.S. war crimes in Iraq and Afghanistan — without criminalizing investigative journalism itself. President Barack Obama’s Justice Department called this the “New York Times problem,” because if WikiLeaks and Assange were criminals for publishing classified information, the New York Times would be just as guilty.
Five years later, in 2018, the Trump administration indicted Assange anyway. But, rather than charging him with espionage for publishing classified information, they charged him with conspiracy to commit a computer crime, later adding 17 counts of espionage in a superseding May 2019 indictment and expanding on those charges in another superseding indictment in June 2020.
The alleged hacking not only didn’t happen, according to expert testimony, but it also couldn’t have happened.
The computer charges claimed that, in 2010, Assange conspired with his source, Chelsea Manning, to crack an account on a Windows computer in her military base, and that the “primary purpose of the conspiracy was to facilitate Manning’s acquisition and transmission of classified information.” The account enabled internet file transfers using a protocol known as FTP.
New testimony from the third week of Assange’s extradition trial makes it increasingly clear that this hacking charge is incredibly flimsy. The alleged hacking not only didn’t happen, according to expert testimony at Manning’s court martial hearing in 2013 and again at Assange’s extradition trial last week, but it also couldn’t have happened.
The new testimony, reported earlier this week by investigative news site Shadowproof, also shows that Manning already had authorized access to, and the ability to exfiltrate, all of the documents that she was accused of leaking — without receiving any technical help from WikiLeaks.
The government’s hacking case appears to be rooted entirely in a few offhand remarks in what it says are chat logs between Manning and Assange discussing password cracking — a topic that other soldiers at Forward Operating Base Hammer in Iraq, where Manning was stationed, were also actively interested in.
The indictment claims that around March 8, 2010, after Manning had already downloaded everything she leaked to WikiLeaks other than the State Department cables, the whistleblower provided Assange with part of a “password hash” for the FTP account and Assange agreed to try to help crack it. A password hash is effectively an encrypted representation of a password from which, in some cases, it’s possible to recover the original.
Manning already had authorized access to all of the documents she was planning to leak to WikiLeaks, including the State Department cables, and cracking this password would not have given her any more access or otherwise helped her with her whistleblowing activities. At most, it might have helped her hide her tracks, but even that is not very likely. I suspect she was just interested in password cracking.
Assange, however, never cracked the password.
That’s it. That’s what the government’s entire computer crime conspiracy case against Assange is based on: a brief discussion about cracking a password, which never actually happened, between a publisher and his source.
The government has, at various points, provided other, dubious evidence that Assange engaged in a hacking conspiracy with Manning. In the 2019 indictment, for example, it suggested that Assange induced Manning to commit computer crimes by encouraging her to provide further information to WikiLeaks — when in fact such back and forth between journalists and their sources is routine.
In the 2020 indictment, attempting to portray Assange as a hacker rather than a journalist, the government listed other instances of Assange allegedly directing hacking activity by people other than Manning — but did not add to the charges against him, prompting a discussion of whether the statute of limitations on the alleged new crimes had expired. Assange’s lawyers called the newest evidence “‘make weight’ allegations designed to bring all of this back within the limitation period.” It remains to be seen if the U.S. government will pursue this reaching strategy. At the moment it seems that these supplemental allegations are peripheral to the first, and only clearly chargeable, instance described by the government that could be conceived as a conspiracy to commit a computer crime — providing marginal support for a case which is, at its core, already weak.
Therefore, the charge is not actually about hacking — it’s about establishing legal precedent to charge publishers with conspiring with their sources, something that so far the U.S. government has failed to do because of the First Amendment.
As Shadowproof points out: In June 2013, at Manning’s court martial hearing, David Shaver, a special agent for the Army Computer Crimes Investigating Unit, testified that Manning only provided Assange with part of the password hash and that, with only that part, it’s not possible to recover the original password. It would be like trying to make a cappuccino without any espresso; Assange was missing a key ingredient.
Last week at Assange’s extradition trial, Patrick Eller, a former Command Digital Forensics Examiner at the U.S. Army Criminal Investigation Command, further discredited the computer crime conspiracy charge, according to Shadowproof.
Eller confirmed Shaver’s 2013 testimony that Manning didn’t provide Assange with enough information to crack the password. He pointed out, “The only set of documents named in the indictment that Manning sent after the alleged password cracking attempt were the State Department cables,” and that “Manning had authorized access to these documents.”
Eller also said that other soldiers at Manning’s Army base in Iraq were regularly trying to crack administrator passwords on military computers in order to install programs that they weren’t authorized to install. “While she” — Manning — “was discussing rainbow tables and password hashes in the Jabber chat” — with Assange — “she was also discussing the same topics with her colleagues. This, and the other factors previously highlighted, may indicate that the hash cracking topic was unrelated to leaking documents.”
Journalists have relationships with their sources. These relationships are not criminal conspiracies.
I’m not a fan of Julian Assange, particularly since his unethical actions and lies he’s told since the 2016 U.S. election. But I am a proponent of a strong free press, and his case is critically important for the future of journalism in this country.
Journalists have relationships with their sources. These relationships are not criminal conspiracies. Even if a source ends up breaking a law by providing the journalist with classified information, the journalist did not commit a felony by receiving it and publishing it.
Whether or not you believe Assange is a journalist is beside the point. The New York Times just published groundbreaking revelations from two decades of Donald Trump’s taxes showing obscene tax avoidance, massive fraud, and hundreds of millions of dollars of debt.
Trump would like nothing more than to charge the New York Times itself, and individual journalists that reported that story, with felonies for conspiring with their source. This is why the precedent in Assange’s case is so important: If Assange loses, the Justice Department will have established new legal tactics with which to go after publishers for conspiring with their sources.
Update: October 23, 2020
This story has been updated to address other allegations made by the government against Assange, including in a June 2020 superseding indictment.