'Traitors, filth, murderers': Turkish protesters berate accused in mass coup trial

Protesters throw nooses at line of 468 defendants, including 41 ranking officers, as they are led into first day of coup trial in Ankara

 

Suraj Sharma-Tuesday 1 August 2017

ISTANBUL, Turkey – Cries of "traitor" and "murderer" rang out and nooses were thrown in their path as 41 former high-ranking military officers were marched single file and in handcuffs to a custom-built courthouse on Tuesday, when one of the biggest trials in Turkish history got under way.

The 41 are the most high-ranking among 486 former military staff put on trial for their alleged role in a botched coup attempt carried out last July, which left 249 civilians dead and more than 2,000 wounded.

Most of the 486 on trial in Ankara’s Sincan district were based at the Akinci air force base located in the district, and which was the operations centre during the coup attempt. Others on trial are former officers from military bases in Adana and Incirlik where refuelling aircraft took off during the putsch.   

Flanked on both sides by gendarmes and also by fully armed crack units of the Turkish armed forces, the 41 suspects were marched single file to the 1,500 person-capacity courthouse built last year specifically for this trial.

Up front was Kemal Batmaz, a businessman known as the civilian imam at Akinci, followed by Akin Ozturk, a former four-star general. The defendants on Tuesday included pilots who bombed the capital Ankara last July.

General Akin Ozturk on 17 July, 2016 after his arrest (AA)

Adil Oksuz, a theology lecturer considered to be the primary Gulenist at the Akinci base, remains on the run. He was initially taken into custody right after the coup attempt but was subsequently released.

Authorities hold Fethullah Gulen and his followers embedded in various state institutions responsible for the coup attempt.

Gulen, a US-based Turkish Islamic preacher, denies the charge.

More than 50,000 people have so far been arrested for their involvement with Gulen, with more than 7,000 military personnel among them.

This trial, frequently called the Akinci trial, is expected to last for at least a year. The indictment alone prepared by the Ankara chief prosecutor’s office is 4,058 pages.

Metal fences were erected to keep hundreds of angry protesters from physically attacking the defendants. The protesters included relatives of those killed or wounded during the coup attempt.

Police had to stop protesters from attempting to scale the fences.

You cannot exist as long as our race exists. You can have no haven. You will drown in your own filth

- member of public in court

Along with the nooses thrown at the defendants amid cries of traitor, the crowd also waved orange jumpsuits protesting the civilian attire the defendants were allowed to wear.

The idea of Guantanamo Bay-style orange jumpsuits was first mooted by Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan on 15 July after one defendant in a related case appeared at a hearing wearing a t-shirt that had the word 'Hero' printed on the front.

Tensions carried over into the court itself as relatives of the victims traded barbs with the defendants’ lawyers.

One man believed to be a relative of a civilian who was killed shouted: "You cannot exist as long as our race exists. You can have no haven. You will drown in your own filth."

The lawyers of the defendants banged their desks in protest at such remarks.  

Protesters outside the court hold placards saying the AKP is watching the case (AFP)

Selfet Giray, the chief judge hearing the case, warned that he would have to eject some people from the room if calm was not maintained.

"We are judging here in the name of the Turkish nation and on the basis of the law of the republic of Turkey," he said.

"We understand your pain and rage but those unable of standing it should leave.

"Everyone should abide by the court’s rules for us to be able to conduct a healthy trial."

Of the 486 people on trial, 461 are currently incarcerated in nearby Sincan prison, 18 are being tried without being held and seven are fugitives.

More than 1,000 gendarmerie forces were assigned to provide security in the courthouse and the vicinity on Tuesday.

Air defence systems, snipers, sniffer dogs, drones, armoured vehicles and water cannon vehicles were also deployed.

Observers from the presidency, the ruling Justice and Development Party and the opposition Republican People’s Party were present at the hearing.

Families of the victims have been calling for the death sentence for the coup plotters. Erdogan has backed their demand, repeatedly saying he will sign off on a law restoring the death penalty if put in front of him.

Turkey abolished the death penalty in 2004.

The hearings for this batch of defendants are expected to continue until 29 August.

Trump dictated son’s misleading statement on meeting with Russian lawyer

 President Trump personally dictated a statement that was issued after revelations that Donald Trump Jr. met with a Russian lawyer during the 2016 election. The Washington Post's Philip Rucker and Carol D. Leonnig explain. (Bastien Inzaurralde/The Washington Post)

By Ashley Parker, Carol D. Leonnig, Philip Rucker and Tom HamburgerJuly 31 at 7:46 PM

On the sidelines of the Group of 20 summit in Germany last month, President Trump’s advisers discussed how to respond to a new revelation that Trump’s oldest son had met with a Russian lawyer during the 2016 campaign — a disclosure the advisers knew carried political and potentially legal peril.

The strategy, the advisers agreed, should be for Donald Trump Jr. to release a statement to get ahead of the story. They wanted to be truthful, so their account couldn’t be repudiated later if the full details emerged.

But within hours, at the president’s direction, the plan changed.

Flying home from Germany on July 8 aboard Air Force One, Trump personally dictated a statement in which Trump Jr. said that he and the Russian lawyer had “primarily discussed a program about the adoption of Russian children” when they met in June 2016, according to multiple people with knowledge of the deliberations. The statement, issued to the New York Times as it prepared an article, emphasized that the subject of the meeting was “not a campaign issue at the time.”
The claims were later shown to be misleading.

President-elect Donald Trump and his son Donald Trump Jr. at a news conference at Trump Tower in New York on Jan. 11. (Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post)

Over the next three days, multiple accounts of the meeting were provided to the news media as public pressure mounted, with Trump Jr. ultimately acknowledging that he had accepted the meeting after receiving an emailpromising damaging information about Hillary Clinton as part of a Russian government effort to help his father’s campaign.

The extent of the president’s personal intervention in his son’s response, the details of which have not previously been reported, adds to a series of actions that Trump has taken that some advisers fear could place him and some members of his inner circle in legal jeopardy.

As special counsel Robert S. Mueller III looks into potential obstruction of justice as part of his broader investigation of Russian interference in the 2016 election, these advisers worry that the president’s direct involvement leaves him needlessly vulnerable to allegations of a coverup.

“This was . . . unnecessary,” said one of the president’s advisers, who like most other people interviewed for this article spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive internal deliberations. “Now someone can claim he’s the one who attempted to mislead. Somebody can argue the president is saying he doesn’t want you to say the whole truth.”

Trump has already come under criticism for steps he has taken to challenge and undercut the Russia investigation.

He fired FBI Director James B. Comey on May 9 after a private meeting in which Comey said the president asked him if he could end the investigation of ousted national security adviser Michael Flynn.

Director of National Intelligence Daniel Coats told associates that Trump asked him in March if he could intervene with Comey to get the bureau to back off its focus on Flynn. In addition, Trump has repeatedly criticized Attorney General Jeff Sessions for recusing himself from overseeing the FBI’s Russian investigation — a decision that was one factor leading to the appointment of Mueller. And he has privately discussed his power to issue pardons, including for himself, and explored potential avenues for undercutting Mueller’s work.

President Trump and first lady Melania Trump board Air Force One in Hamburg after the Group of 20 summit on July 8. (Carlos Barria/Reuters)

[Top intelligence official told associates Trump asked him if he could intervene with Comey on FBI Russia probe]

Although misleading the public or the news media is not a crime, advisers to Trump and his family told The Washington Post that they fear any indication that Trump was seeking to hide information about contacts between his campaign and Russians almost inevitably would draw additional scrutiny from Mueller.

Trump, they say, is increasingly acting as his own lawyer, strategist and publicist, often disregarding the recommendations of the professionals he has hired.

“He refuses to sit still,” the presidential adviser said. “He doesn’t think he’s in any legal jeopardy, so he really views this as a political problem he is going to solve by himself.”

Trump has said that the Russia investigation is “the greatest witch hunt in political history,” calling it an elaborate hoax created by Democrats to explain why Clinton lost an election she should have won.
Because Trump believes he is innocent, some advisers explained, he therefore does not think he is at any legal risk for a coverup. In his mind, they said, there is nothing to conceal.

[Trump’s legal team faces tensions — and a client who often takes his own counsel]

The White House directed all questions for this article to the president’s legal team.

One of Trump’s attorneys, Jay Sekulow, declined to discuss the specifics of the president’s actions and his role in crafting his son’s statement about the Russian contact. Sekulow issued a one-sentence statement in response to a list of detailed questions from The Post.

“Apart from being of no consequence, the characterizations are misinformed, inaccurate, and not pertinent,” Sekulow’s statement read.

Trump Jr. did not respond to requests for comment. His attorney, Alan Futerfas, told The Post that he and his client “were fully prepared and absolutely prepared to make a fulsome statement” about the meeting, what led up to it and what was discussed.
Asked about Trump intervening, Futerfas said, “I have no evidence to support that theory.” He described the process of drafting a statement as “a communal situation that involved communications people and various lawyers.”

Peter Zeidenberg, the deputy special prosecutor who investigated the George W. Bush administration’s leak of CIA operative Valerie Plame’s identity, said Mueller will have to dig into the crafting of Trump Jr.’s statement aboard Air Force One.

Prosecutors typically assume that any misleading statement is an effort to throw investigators off the track, Zeidenberg said.

“The thing that really strikes me about this is the stupidity of involving the president,” Zeidenberg said. “They are still treating this like a family-run business and they have a PR problem. . . . What they don’t seem to understand is this is a criminal investigation involving all of them.”

Advocating for transparency

The debate about how to deal with the June 2016 Trump Tower meeting began weeks before any news organizations began to ask questions about it.

Kushner’s legal team first learned about the meeting when doing research to respond to congressional requests for information. Congressional investigators wanted to know about any contacts the president’s son-in-law and senior adviser had with Russian officials or business people.

Kushner’s lawyers came across what they immediately recognized would eventually become a problematic story. A string of emails showed Kushner attended a meeting with a Russian lawyer at Trump Tower in the midst of the campaign — one he had failed to disclose. Trump Jr. had arranged it, and then-campaign chairman Paul Manafort had also attended.

To compound what was, at best, a public relations fiasco, the emails, which had not yet surfaced publicly, showed Trump Jr. responding to the prospect of negative information on Clinton from Russia: “I love it.”

Lawyers and advisers for Trump, his son and son-in-law gamed out strategies for disclosing the information to try to minimize the fallout of these new links between the Trump family and Russia, according to people familiar with the deliberations.

[Trump Jr.’s Russia meeting: What we know and when we learned it]

Hope Hicks, the White House director of strategic communications and one of the president’s most trusted and loyal aides, and Josh Raffel, a White House spokesman who works closely with Kushner and his wife, Ivanka Trump, huddled with Kushner’s lawyers, and they advocated for a more transparent approach, according to people with knowledge of the conversations.

In one scenario, these people said, Kushner’s team talked about sharing everything, including the contents of the emails, with a mainstream news organization.

Hicks and Raffel declined to comment. Kushner attorney Abbe Lowell also declined to comment.
The president’s outside legal team, led by Marc Kasowitz, had suggested that the details be given to Circa, an online news organization that the Kasowitz team thought would be friendly to Trump. Circa had inquired in previous days about the meeting, according to people familiar with the discussions.

The president’s legal team planned to cast the June 2016 meeting as a potential setup by Democratic operatives hoping to entrap Trump Jr. and, by extension, the presumptive Republican nominee, according to people familiar with discussions.

Kasowitz declined to comment for this article, as did a Circa spokesman.

Consensus overruled

Circumstances changed when the New York Times began asking about the Trump Tower meeting, though advisers believed that the newspaper knew few of the details. While the president, Kushner and Ivanka Trump were attending the G-20 summit in Germany, the Times asked for White House comment on the impetus and reason for the meeting.

During breaks away from the summit, Kushner and Ivanka Trump gathered with Hicks and Raffel to discuss Kushner’s response to the inquiry, according to people with knowledge of the discussions. Kushner’s legal team joined at times by phone.

Hicks also spoke by phone with Trump Jr. Again, say people familiar with the conversations, Kushner’s team concluded that the best strategy would be to err on the side of transparency, because they believed the complete story would eventually emerge.

The discussions among the president’s advisers consumed much of the day, and they continued as they prepared to board Air Force One that evening for the flight home.

But before everyone boarded the plane, Trump had overruled the consensus, according to people with knowledge of the events.

It remains unclear exactly how much the president knew at the time of the flight about Trump Jr.’s meeting.

The president directed that Trump Jr.’s statement to the Times describe the meeting as unimportant. He wanted the statement to say that the meeting had been initiated by the Russian lawyer and primarily was about her pet issue — the adoption of Russian children.

Air Force One took off from Germany shortly after 6 p.m. — about noon in Washington. In a forward cabin, Trump was busy working on his son’s statement, according to people with knowledge of events. The president dictated the statement to Hicks, who served as a go-between with Trump Jr., who was not on the plane, sharing edits between the two men, according to people with knowledge of the discussions.

In the early afternoon, Eastern time, Trump Jr.’s team put out the statement to the Times. It was four sentences long, describing the encounter as a “short, introductory meeting.”

“We primarily discussed a program about the adoption of Russian children that was active and popular with American families years ago and was since ended by the Russian government, but it was not a campaign issue at the time and there was no follow up,” the statement read.

Trump Jr. went on to say: “I was asked to attend the meeting by an acquaintance, but was not told the name of the person I would be meeting with beforehand.”

Over the next hour, word spread through emails and calls to other Trump family advisers and lawyers about the statement that Trump Jr. had sent to the Times.

Some lawyers for the president and for Kushner were surprised and frustrated, advisers later learned. According to people briefed on the dispute, some lawyers tried to reach Futerfas and their clients and began asking why the president had been involved.

Also on the flight, Kushner worked with his team — including one of his lawyers, who called in to the plane.

His lawyers have said that Kushner’s initial omission of the meeting was an error, but that in an effort to be fully transparent, he had updated his government filing to include “this meeting with a Russian person, which he briefly attended at the request of his brother-in-law Donald Trump Jr.” Kushner’s legal team referred all questions about the meeting itself to Trump Jr.

The Times’ story revealing the existence of the June 2016 meeting was posted online about 4 p.m. Eastern time. Roughly four hours later, Air Force One touched down at Joint Base Andrews. Trump’s family members and advisers departed the plane, and they knew the problem they had once hoped to contain would soon grow bigger.

Alice Crites contributed to this report.

Tearing Up the Nuke Deal Now Would Hand Iran the Best of All Possible Worlds

BY WILLIAM TOBEY-JULY 31, 2017

The Iran nuclear deal is deeply flawed. Its duration is too short, and it fails to require of Tehran the universally agreed-upon minimum for effective verification — a complete and correct declaration of all relevant activities. Nonetheless, it would be a mistake for President Donald Trump to renounce it now, as he is reportedly contemplating.

First, the deal’s short duration is problematic. President Barack Obama himself warned, “[A] … relevant fear would be that in year 13, 14, 15, [Iran has] advanced centrifuges that enrich uranium fairly rapidly, and at that point, the breakout times would have shrunk almost down to zero.” Tearing up the deal now would only compound this problem. Trump should be seeking a longer deal, not a shorter one.

Worse, with the unfreezing of hundreds of billions of dollars in assets and approval of like amounts of investments and commercial transactions, Iran has already gained enormous benefits from the agreement, while the other parties have not. In real estate terms, walking away now would be like putting down a two-month deposit and six months of prepaid rent, and then abandoning an apartment after a few weeks.

Iran’s benefits from the deal were immediate and permanent, whereas those that may accrue to the other parties are deferred and temporary.

Iran’s benefits from the deal were immediate and permanent, whereas those that may accrue to the other parties are deferred and temporary.

Second, if the United States destroyed the Iran nuclear deal, it would be impossible to reassemble the international coalition necessary to impose effective sanctions. China and Russia would certainly press ahead with the commercial deals they have been busy signing. Their willingness to do business with Tehran alone, not to mention the vetoes they wield in the U.N. Security Council, would be enough to undermine fatally any attempt to re-impose sanctions. Thus, tearing up the deal now would give Iran the best of all worlds: freedom from sanctions and unlimited enrichment efforts.

Third, Britain, France, and Germany vigorously oppose ending the deal they helped to negotiate, and therefore doing so would deepen the fissures that already threaten North Atlantic alliances. Russian President Vladimir Putin’s primary strategic objective is to fracture NATO, and tearing up the Iran deal would hand Moscow an important victory in that campaign.

Lingering frustration over the Iran deal is understandable. It was badly oversold. While Obama said, “Every pathway to a nuclear weapon is cut off,” he knew that restrictions on enrichment capacity would fade away eight to 13 years from now. The administration promised anytime-anywhere inspections, but did not deliver. The deal was also rammed through Congress under jury-rigged procedures, despite opposition by a bipartisan majority of both houses. Moreover, Iran is almost daily salting these wounds with missile tests, aggressive regional policies, and continuing support for terrorism.

Frustration about the deal, however, would be best directed toward three positive actions.
First, the accord must be enforced rigorously, but has not been.

Second, the United States will need to map out and build a consensus for actions that will be necessary to deter Tehran from fulfilling its plans to deploy almost twenty times the enrichment capacity at which it was operating when the agreement was finalized. This will require a sophisticated, multiyear diplomatic campaign.

Third, Iran’s long-range missile program, which — given its inaccuracy — only makes sense when paired with nuclear weapons, must be curbed. Those are objectives that our allies can endorse and ones that we will need their help to achieve.

Absent those actions, Trump’s successor will face an Iran only days from the ability to produce enough fissile material for a nuclear weapon, unfettered by international sanctions and fortified by renewed oil revenues. Tearing up the deal now would only hasten that perilous day.

Photo credit: ATTA KENARE/AFP/Getty Images

Unconvincing Regulation for Presidential Election in Singapore

While several people in the world seem to be viewing Singapore as a governance model, the amendment to the regulation for Singapore presidential election stipulating the ethnicity of the candidate is surprising.

by N.S.Venkataraman- Jul 31, 2017

( July 31, 2017, Chennai, Sri Lanka Guardian) With Singapore now set to elect it’s next President and the present President Mr. Tony Tan Keng Yam announcing his decision not to seek a second term, the stage is set for holding Presidential poll in Singapore under new amendment in law.

More confusion than clarity:

Under the new amendment, there will be at least one Chinese, one Malay and one president who is either Indian or “other minority” within the course of six presidential terms, provided qualified candidates appear. After this amendment, the next President of Singapore should be of Malay ethnicity.

This above amendment with regard to the eligibility criteria based on ethnicity to contest in the Presidential poll is flawed and illogical . It is bound to provide more confusion than clarity and some may even think that this regulation may be viewed as laughing stock by observers around the world.

The lack of clarity in the amendment is highlighted by the fact that there is already animated discussions as to whether one of the candidates who wants to contest is “Malay enough,” since her father was Indian and mother Malay.

Singapore – Ultimate model of governance:

Singapore is now one of the wealthiest economies in the world and Singapore form of governance has many admirers around the world .

After seeing the chaotic democracies in practice in many countries in Asia and other regions where the democratic form of governance has created bitterness and division amongst people on various lines , the sort of controlled democracy now practiced in Singapore is applauded by many , as the ultimate model of quality and fair governance.

Some people think that Singapore is governed like a corporate undertaking rather than like a society inhabited by people of different value systems and priorities .Nevertheless, there is no doubt that Singapore form of controlled democratic governance has provided overall benefits and the happiness index may be much higher amongst citizens in Singapore than people living in several other countries , whether having democracy or dictatorship.

While several people in the world seem to be viewing Singapore as a governance model, the amendment to the regulation for Singapore presidential election stipulating the ethnicity of the candidate is surprising .

Unconvincing explanation:

Prime Minister of Singapore has refuted the criticism about this new amendment and insisted that the stipulation based on ethnicity of President is not wrong , as it would give a representation and opportunity to people of different ethnicity who are citizens of Singapore.

Prime Minister has further argued that there would be no dilution in the qualification criteria for anyone to become the President and by invoking this ethnicity based reservation, Singapore is only recognising the fact that 74% of the population is of Chinese ethnicity, while 13% have Malay ethnicity and the balance 9% constituting Indians and others.

Flaw in the amendment:

The flaw in the amendment and the gap in the explanation of Singapore Prime Minister is the fact that all citizens of Singapore are only Singaporeans and they cannot anymore be segmented as Chinese, Malays or Indians. A citizen of Singapore should have loyalty solely and exclusively for Singapore and must be emotionally involved with the cause and image of Singapore , clearly not being conscious of his ancestors belonging to some other country.

By unnecessarily and avoidably classifying citizens as of Chinese, Malay or Indian origin ,Singapore government has inadvertently introduced an element of conflict amongst the Singaporians by this short sighted classification.

Need to reverse the amendment:

By and large, Singapore has been a very coherent society now and the government of Singapore has been governing the city state with great and robust understanding of the fact that Singapore is a multi cultural society due to historical reasons. The freedom given to the people to practice their religious faith and value system are admirable and praise worthy , which has ensured a very peaceful and prosperous Singapore that every Singaporean is proud of.

While the conditions and ground realities in Singapore are so progressive , why should there be a reminder to the citizens of their ethnicity of several decades back , when they have all now become full fledged Singapore citizens?

Even as the Presidential poll is so near, it is time that the Singapore government should reconsider this criteria for electing President based on ethnicity.

It is gratifying to note that Mr. Tan Cheng Bok, a former PAP member of the Parliament in Singapore is challenging this decision to reserve the appointment of next President based on ethnicity.

It would be gracious on the part of the Singapore Prime Minister to listen to the challenging arguments of Mr. Tan Cheng Bok and reverse his decision.

Thai cops bust $3mn phone scam gang

Thai police have arrested hundreds of foreign criminals in a “good guys in, bad guys out” policy, as the kingdom looks to shake out crooks based in the country © AFP / MADAREE TOHLALA

July 24, 2017

By AGENCE FRANCE PRESSE, Bangkok, Thailand, Jul 24 – A gang of 44 people from China and Taiwan have been arrested in Thailand for running an elaborate phone scam that conned $3 million from scores of victims, police said Monday.

Raids on houses in the capital Bangkok and the sleazy resort town of Pattaya snared the well-organised gang, whose targets were mainly based in China.

Police seized homemade sound-proof booths used to call the victims, who were carefully selected for their vulnerability.

“There were about 120 victims of this fraud, which was worth about 100 million (baht) ($2.9 million),” an officer from immigration told AFP, requesting anonymity.

Nineteen of the suspects are from China and 25 from Taiwan.

Posing as police, bank officials or money laundering inspectors the suspects spun stories of financial irregularities linked to the victims’ bank accounts.

“They told victims their bank accounts had been frozen due to criminal activity such as drug dealing,” Immigration Police Chief Natthathorn Prousoontorn told reporters on Sunday.

They then persuaded the victims to transfer money to clear the cooked-up problems, through other ‘officials’ working with the gang.

“Each fraudster played a different role… some pretended to be bank officials… some pretended to be police.”

The victims lived alone and had no-one to consult before falling for the scam, Natthathorn added.

With porus borders, cheap living and large communities of ex-pats to hide amongst, Thailand has long been a regional hub for crime gangs.

Recently immigration police have arrested hundreds of foreign criminals in a “good guys in, bad guys out” policy, as the kingdom looks to shake out crooks based in the country. 

How China’s biggest bank became ensnared in a sprawling money laundering probe

DRAMA IN MADRID: A Spanish Civil Guard officer leads a hooded employee out of the Madrid branch of the Industrial and Commercial Bank of China in February last year. REUTERS/Juan Medina

Part 1: When Chinese residents of Spain needed to get piles of illicit cash back home, police allege, they found an accomplice in the Industrial and Commercial Bank of China. Confidential court filings, including wiretap transcripts, detail how the bank allegedly helped launder hundreds of millions of euros.

By ANGUS BERWICK and DAVID LAGUE-

Filed July 31, 2017, 11 a.m. GM

MADRID – A few minutes before 8 p.m. on Aug. 8, 2012, two Chinese living in Spain - a banker and her client - held a blunt phone conversation.

Wang Jing was a senior officer at the Madrid branch of the state-controlled Industrial and Commercial Bank of China. The client, Xu Kai, was an alleged top figure in an international money laundering group that was suspected of using the bank to transfer illegal income to China. The network was allegedly using multiple accounts in the name of Chinese residents of Spain, in some cases without their permission, to make the transfers. But there had been a hitch.

How China’s biggest bank became ensnared in a sprawling money laundering probe.docx by Thavam on Scribd

China: State media attack writer over controversial Beijing migrant essay

Children use an Ofo bike at a residential area for migrant workers in a village on the outskirts of Beijing on April 16, 2017. Source: Reuters/Jason Lee

1st August 2017

THE Chinese Communist Party’s official newspaper has slammed a little-known writer over his authoring of an essay which has sparked debate about the plight of the millions of rural migrants who flock to Beijing for work.

In an article entitled “Beijing Has 20 Million People Who are Faking Lives”, Zhang Wumao from the central Shaanxi province critiqued the economic disparity between Beijing natives and migrant workers.

The piece went viral after he posted it to his WeChat account on July 23, leading the government mouthpiece People’s Daily to claim Zhang had written “fantastically” to stir the emotion of readers.

SEE ALSO: China ‘elated’ by Philippines foreign policy under Duterte – state media

Zhang’s essay highlighted the tension between “old Beijingers”, or those with “hukou” household registrations in the capital, who can own multiple homes, and migrants kept off the property ladder by sky-high prices.

Beijing is being integrated with the neighbouring city of Tianjin and the surrounding province of Hebei, with plans to move downtown government offices to a suburban district.

Measures to revamp the city centre have also hit migrants, such as new population curbs and a drive to clean up the ancient hutong alleyways home to thousands of small migrant businesses.

Describing the speed of the city’s expansion, Zhang wrote:

“Beijing is a tumour, no one can control its growth.”

Some commentators applauded the essay’s sharp critique of Beijing and its portrayal of the migrants’ plight, but others derided it as “clickbait”, calling it exaggerated.

Zhang’s original essay is no longer accessible on WeChat, having violated the regulations of China’s Cyberspace Administration, a notice tells users who try to reach it.

WeChat’s operator Tencent Holdings could not immediately comment.

Additional reporting by Reuters

Millions of Women and Children for Sale for Sex, Slavery, Organs…

Credit: UN in Armenia

By Baher Kamal-Monday, July 31, 2017

ROME, Jul 28 2017 (IPS) - It is happening now. Millions of humans are forced to flee armed conflicts, climate change, inequalities, and extreme poverty. They fall easy prey to traffickers lurking anyone who can be subjected to sexual exploitation, forced labour and even sell their skin and organs.

Just as tragically, 79 per cent of all detected trafficking victims are women and children, according to the UN Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) Global Report on Trafficking in Persons.

The drama is immense. Every year, millions of children, women and men fall into the hands of traffickers, lured by fake promises and deceit, the United Nations reports once more, this time ahead of the World Day against Trafficking in Persons, marked every year on 30 July.

The “horrendous crime” is being committed now, while you are reading this article, and in public “salve markets”. See African Migrants Bought and Sold Openly in ‘Slave Markets’ in Libya

Buying and selling migrants is a big business. In fact, human trafficking has become a global multi-billion-dollar enterprise, affecting nearly every country in the world, according to UNODC’s executive director Yury Fedotov.

Stolen

“Today, there are millions of people whose liberty, dignity and essential human rights have been stolen. They are coerced into sexual exploitation, forced labour, domestic servitude, forced begging, stealing, online pornography, and even compelled to “sell” skin organs. “

Not for Sale. Credit: IOM Tunisia

This inhumane business is far from slowing down–from 2012-2014, more than 500 different trafficking flows were detected and countries in Western and Southern Europe detected victims of 137 different citizenships, according to UNODC. In short, “the crime of human trafficking is occurring almost everywhere.”

In terms of the different types of trafficking, sexual exploitation and forced labour are the most prominent, says the report, adding that trafficking can, however, have numerous other forms including: victims compelled to act as beggars, forced into sham marriages, benefit fraud, pornography production, organ removal, among others.

Many countries have criminalised most forms of trafficking as set out in the UN Trafficking in Persons Protocol. The number of countries doing this has increased from 33 in 2003 to 158 in 2016. Such an exponential increase is welcomed and it has helped to assist the victims and to prosecute the traffickers, said Fedotov.

“Unfortunately, the average number of convictions remains low. UNODC’s findings show that there is a close correlation between the length of time the trafficking law has been on the statute books and the conviction rate.”

What Is Human Trafficking All About

The UN defines human trafficking as a crime that exploits women, children and men for numerous purposes including forced labour and sex.

The International Labour Organization (ILO) estimates that 21 million people are victims of forced labour globally. This estimate also includes victims of human trafficking for labour and sexual exploitation. While it is not known how many of these victims were trafficked, the estimate implies that currently, there are millions of trafficking in persons victims in the world.

“Every country in the world is affected by human trafficking, whether as a country of origin, transit, or destination for victims. Children make up almost a third of all human trafficking victims worldwide, according to the Global Report on Trafficking in Persons.

Another important development is the UN Summit for Refugees and Migrants, which produced the groundbreakingNew York Declaration. Of the nineteen commitments adopted by countries in the Declaration, three are dedicated to concrete action against the crimes of human trafficking and migrant smuggling.

Protect, Assist Trafficked Persons

This year, UNODC has chosen ‘act to protect and assist trafficked persons’ as the focus of the World Day.

This topic highlights one of the most pressing issues of our time — the large mixed migration movements of refugees and migrants.

The theme puts the spotlight on the significant impact of conflict and natural disasters, as well as the resultant, multiple risks of human trafficking that many people face.

And it addresses the key issue concerning trafficking responses: that most people are never identified as trafficking victims and therefore cannot access most of the assistance or protection provided.
Counter Trafficking in Persons Since the 90s

Meantime, the leading UN agency dealing with migrants reminds that it has been working to counter trafficking in persons since the mid-nineties.

“Our primary aims are to prevent trafficking in persons and to protect victims, in ordinary time and in crisis, while offering them support on their path to recovery, including through safe and sustainable (re)integration, return support to their home countries, or, in some circumstances, through third country resettlement, says the UN International Organization for Migration (IOM).

Globally, it has so far assisted over 90,000 trafficked persons. “Ensuring freedom and a chance at a new life, IOM’s assistance includes safe accommodation, medical and psycho-social support, and assisted voluntary return and reintegration.”

For this, the UN agency works with governments, the private sector, civil society organisations, and other UN bodies “to protect victims of trafficking and associated forms of exploitation and abuse; to prevent such abuses from occurring; and to support the development and implementation of policies aimed at the prevention and prosecution of these crimes and the protection of victims.”

The agency’s approach is based on: respect for human rights; support for the physical, mental and social well-being of the individual and his or her community; and sustainability through capacity building and the facilitation of durable solutions for all beneficiaries.

'There are things worse than death': can a cancer cure lead to brutal bioweapons?

John Sotos, chief medical officer at Intel, paints a dark picture of technology turned to nefarious purposes, with tailored diseases rewriting genomes on the fly

 Sotos argued that the so-called cancer moonshot ‘is going to really drive new technologies to manipulate DNA, because cancer is a disease of DNA’. Photograph: Mariana Bazo/Reuters

Alex Hern in Las Vegas-Monday 31 July 2017

Splitting the atom brought humanity nuclear power and nuclear weapons. A cure for cancer could have the same potential for pushing humanity to new highs – or terrifying lows. According to John Sotos, the chief medical officer of Intel, the same technology that might someday allow us to defeat illness for good also poses the prospect of tailored diseases attacking individuals, families or even whole races and rewriting their genomes on the fly.

Sotos made his remarks at the DEF CON hacking conference in Las Vegas, a place where hackers gather to share tips and tricks for how to break into almost anything with a circuit board. But during a weekend when attacks were demonstrated against wind farms, voting machines and almost every major smartphone in one fell swoop, Sotos’ nightmare scenario still stood out as plausible and terrifying.

The Intel executive, best known for his work over six years as a consultant on the TV show House, argued that the eventual success of Joe Biden’s “cancer moonshot”, a US government-funded programme that’s aimed at finding vaccine-based treatments for cancer, would necessarily open up the potential for bioweapons of unimaginable destructive potential.

“The reason you haven’t heard much about bioweapons is that they’ve been held back by a pretty severe limitation, which is the potential for blowback,” Sotos said. It is hard for any attacker to use weaponised diseases because they spread beyond their initial distribution range: destroy your neighbouring nation and you destroy your own as well.

But, Sotos argued, “the cancer moonshot is going to really drive new technologies to manipulate DNA because cancer is a disease of DNA. [And] the same exquisite targeting that allows it to attack only your cancer cells also overcomes the blowback potential for bioweapons.”

In other words: if you can build a treatment that can be restricted to attack only cells with the genetic flag for cancer, you can build a bioweapon that can be restricted to attack only individuals with a particular genetic flag revealing their ancestry, gender or family.

The technology doesn’t exist yet, although a number of medical techniques such as Crispr – a genome-editing tool – show the potential of such biohacking. But Sotos argued that its eventual refinement “is inevitable. There are going to be thousands of people doing this sort of genetic manipulation down in the basements of hospitals.”

But a plausible attack doesn’t just mean mass fatalities. “There’s some stuff worse than dying,” Sotos said. “And I call that hell.”

What, for example, if groups spread their agenda in a very direct way, by literally rewriting DNA to make it impossible to live a life against their credo? Suppose militant vegans wanted to end meat eating: there’s a gene for that. Or imagine if radical misogynists wanted to force the veiling of all women: there’s a gene for sunlight intolerance, and the genetic functions of gender are already well-known.

Or, he suggested, attacks could be done on an individual level: targeting public figures by stealing their genetic code, or targeting their whole family by sequencing the genes of someone who’s closely related. And the attacks could be subtler than what’s expected: Sotos cited genes for intractable diarrhea, massive weight gain, total baldness and “an intense fishy body odour”.

But Sotos was suggesting a worst-case scenario, and other scientists criticised him for distracting from real problems in the present. “Creating noise & sounding alarms this way isn’t helpful to saving lives,” tweeted DJ Patil, the former chief data scientist of the US Office of Science and Technology Policy. “The risk is really small. It’s really hard to mass produce these. The real risk we should be focusing on is drug resistant TB and pandemics.”