Chris Hedges's Blog, page 107

Bolivian President Evo Morales’ Removal Denounced as Coup

Bolivia’s socialist President Evo Morales was forced to resign Sunday under threat from the nation’s military, police forces, and violent right-wing protestors who have burned and ransacked the homes of members of Morales’ party, assaulted supporters of the president, and kidnapped a Bolivian mayor.

Political leaders and activists around the world immediately denounced Morales’ ouster as a military coup that leaves Bolivia without a constitutionally elected government. Williams Kaliman, the chief commander of the Bolivian armed forces, pressured Morales to resign earlier Sunday.

“The coup mongers are destroying the rule of law,” Morales, Bolivia’s first indigenous president, tweeted hours after announcing his resignation in a televised address.

Morales said he and his vice president, Álvaro García Linera, resigned because they “don’t want to see any more families attacked” under orders from right-wing former president Carlos Mesa and opposition leader Luis Fernando Camacho.

“This is not a betrayal to social movements,” Morales added. “The fight continues. We are the people, and thanks to this political union, we have freed Bolivia. We leave this homeland freed.”

Morales’ resignation came following his announcement early Sunday that he would hold new elections after the U.S.-dominated Organization of American States (OAS) questioned Morales’ October victory and claimed the vote was fraught with irregularities. Trump administration officials and Republican lawmakers like Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) were quick to parrot the OAS.

Mark Weisbrot, co-director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research (CEPR), tweeted Sunday that OAS “never did find any evidence of fraud in the October 20th election, but the media repeated the allegation so many times that it became ‘true,’ in this post-truth world.”

The latest OAS “audit”, repeats a major falsehood from their previous reports, pretending that there was an “unusual” jump in Evo’s vote margin towards the end of the quick count. But the change was in fact gradual, as later-reporting areas were more pro-Evo than earlier ones: pic.twitter.com/oFiUFFAl5H

— Mark Weisbrot (@MarkWeisbrot) November 10, 2019

Former Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, who was freed from prison Friday after spending more than a year behind bars on politically motivated charges, was among those who denounced the coup in Bolivia late Sunday.

“There was a coup in Bolivia and comrade Evo Morales was forced to resign,” Lula tweeted. “It is unfortunate that Latin America has an economic elite that does not know how to live with democracy and the social inclusion of the poorest.”

A chorus of political leaders in Latin America and across the globe echoed Lula.

Jeremy Corbyn, the U.K. Labour leader, said Sunday that to see Evo Morales who, along with a powerful movement, has brought so much social progress forced from office by the military is appalling.”

“I condemn this coup against the Bolivian people,” said Corbyn, “and stand with them for democracy, social justice, and independence.”

U.S. Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.) tweeted Sunday: “There’s a word for the president of a country being pushed out by the military. Its called a coup.”

There’s a word for the President of a country being pushed out by the military. It’s called a coup.

We must unequivocally oppose political violence in Bolivia. Bolivians deserve free and fair elections.

— Ilhan Omar (@IlhanMN) November 11, 2019

Morales’ resignation did not bring a halt to right-wing violence, the Washington Post reported.

“Socialist officials denounced the ransacking of Morales’ home late Sunday,” according to the Post. “The former head of Bolivia’s electoral tribunal, Maria Eugenia Choque, was detained, police said.”

Amid widespread chaos and concerns for Morales’ safety, the government of Mexico said it would grant the ousted Bolivian president asylum upon request.

“In Bolivia there is an ongoing military operation, we reject it, it is similar to those tragic events that bloodied Latin America in the last century,” Marcelo Ebrard, Mexico’s foreign minister, tweeted late Sunday. “Mexico will maintain its position of respect for democracy and institutions. Coups, no.”

Bolivia President Resigns Amid Military, Public Pressure

LA PAZ, Bolivia — Bolivian President Evo Morales announced his resignation Sunday under mounting pressure from the military and the public after his re-election victory triggered weeks of fraud allegations and deadly protests.

The decision came after a day of fast-moving developments, including an offer from Morales to hold a new election. But the crisis deepened dramatically when the country’s military chief went on national television to call on him to step down.

“I am sending my resignation letter to the Legislative Assembly of Bolivia,” the 60-year-old socialist leader said in a statement.

Morales’ claim to have won a fourth term last month plunged the country into the biggest crisis of his nearly 14 years in power. The unrest left three people dead and over 100 injured in clashes between his supporters and opponents.

Earlier in the day Sunday, the Organization of American States said in a preliminary report that it had found a “heap of observed irregularities” in the Oct. 20 election and that a new vote should be held.

Morale agreed to that. But within hours, military chief Gen. Williams Kaliman made it clear that would not be sufficient.

“After analyzing the situation of internal conflict, we ask the president to resign, allowing peace to be restored and stability to be maintained for the good of our Bolivia,” Kaliman said.

The leadership crisis escalated in the hours leading up to the resignation announcement. Two government ministers in charge of mines and hydrocarbons, the Chamber of Deputies president and three other pro-government legislators announced their resignations. Some said opposition supporters had threatened their families.

In addition, the head of Bolivia’s Supreme Electoral Tribunal stepped down after the OAS findings were released. Also, the attorney general’s office said it will investigate judges on the tribunal for alleged fraud.

Morales in 1996 became the first president from Bolivia’s indigenous population, and he went on to preside over a commodities-fed economic boom in South America’s poorest country. The former leader of a coca growers union, he paved roads, sent Bolivia’s first satellite into space and curbed inflation.

But many who were once excited by his fairy-tale rise have grown wary of his reluctance to leave power.

He ran for a fourth term after refusing to abide by the results of a referendum that upheld term limits for the president. He was able to run because Bolivia’s constitutional court disallowed such limits.

After the Oct. 20 vote, Morales declared himself the outright winner even before official results indicated he obtained just enough support to avoid a runoff with opposition leader and former President Carlos Mesa. A 24-hour lapse in releasing results fueled suspicions of vote-rigging.

The OAS sent a team to conduct what it called a binding audit of the election. Its preliminary recommendations included holding new elections with a new electoral body.

“Mindful of the heap of observed irregularities, it’s not possible to guarantee the integrity of the numbers and give certainty of the results,” the OAS said in a statement.

During the unrest since the election, protesters have torched the headquarters of local electoral tribunal offices and set up roadblocks that paralyzed parts of Bolivia.

Pressure on Morales increased ominously on Saturday when police on guard outside Bolivia’s presidential palace abandoned their posts and police retreated to their barracks in at least three cities.

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Associated Press writer Luis Andres Henao in Buenos Aires, Argentina, contributed to this report.

Iran Discovers New Oil Field That Could Boost Its Reserves by 33%

TEHRAN, Iran — Iran has discovered a new oil field in the country’s south with over 50 billion barrels of crude, its president said Sunday, a find that could boost the country’s proven reserves by a third as it struggles to sell energy abroad over U.S. sanctions.

The announcement by Hassan Rouhani comes as Iran faces crushing American sanctions after the U.S. pulled out of its nuclear deal with world powers last year.

Rouhani made the announcement in a speech in the desert city of Yazd. He said the field was located in Iran’s southern Khuzestan province, home to its crucial oil industry.

Some 53 billion barrels would be added to Iran’s proven reserves of roughly 150 billion, he said.

“I am telling the White House that in the days when you sanctioned the sale of Iranian oil and pressured our nation, the country’s dear workers and engineers were able to discover 53 billion barrels of oil in a big field,” Rouhani said.

Oil reserves refer to crude that’s economically feasible to extract. Figures can vary wildly by country due to differing standards, though it remains a yardstick of comparison among oil-producing nations.

Iran currently has the world’s fourth-largest proven deposits of crude oil and the world’s second-largest deposits of natural gas. It shares a massive offshore field in the Persian Gulf with Qatar.

The new oil field could become Iran’s second-largest field after one containing 65 billion barrels in Ahvaz. The field is 2,400 square kilometers (925 square miles), with the deposit some 80 meters (260 feet) deep, Rouhani said.

Since the U.S. withdrew from the 2015 nuclear deal, the other countries involved — Germany, France, Britain, Russia and China — have been struggling to save it. However, they’ve offered no means by which Iran can sell its oil abroad.

Any company or government that buys Iran’s oil faces harsh U.S. sanctions, the threat of which also stopped billions of dollars in business deals and sharply depreciated Iran’s currency, the rial.

Iran has since gone beyond the deal’s stockpile and enrichment limits, as well as started using advanced centrifuges barred by the deal. It also just began injecting uranium gas into centrifuges at an underground facility.

The collapse of the nuclear deal coincided with a tense summer of mysterious attacks on oil tankers and Saudi oil facilities that the U.S. blamed on Iran. Tehran denied the allegation, though it did seize oil tankers and shoot down a U.S. military surveillance drone.

NRA Turmoil Creates Rift Among Some Big Donors

Joe Olson was once such a passionate supporter of the National Rifle Association that he pledged to bequeath several million dollars from his estate to the gun organization upon his death.

But the steady drip of investigations and misspending allegations and a shakeup at the top ranks of the NRA compelled him to alter his will. The NRA will no longer get his money.

“The rot had gotten worse and I simply decided: No, I’m not giving those people my money,” Olson said.

Olson reflects what has become a new challenge for the NRA as its legal and financial issues stack up: the loss of big donors.

The NRA attributes much of its success and power to rank-and-file members who contribute a few dollars here and there throughout the year, but it’s the big-ticket donors who fuel the organization’s finances. They also play a role in who serves on the board of directors and are active on the NRA social and fundraising scene, whether it’s at galas or hunting trips.

And there are signs that some of them are growing uneasy over the NRA’s troubles.

One of them went so far to as to file a lawsuit against the NRA claiming misuse of funds and started a website that seeks changes to the NRA — from the ouster of longtime CEO Wayne LaPierre, to halving the size of the 76-member board of directors.

The donor, David Dell’Aquila, also claims that he has gotten others like him to withhold millions of dollars.

Over the years, Dell’Aquila has given about $100,000 and he and his wife pledged to bequeath several million dollars from an estate he amassed after a career as a technology consultant.

Large donors have long been a reliable source of money for the NRA, helping fuel the clout that it wields in American politics.

In 2017, the NRA received seven donations of more than $1 million, including one for more than $18 million, according to tax records. The NRA’s 2018 records are not available yet, meaning it’s too early to know how the recent turmoil engulfing the group affected contributions.

Despite the handful of million-dollar-plus donors, the group saw its overall contributions plummet from $124 million in 2016 to $98 million in 2017.

An NRA member for about 20 years, Dell’Aquila became more heavily involved after attending an annual meeting for the first time in 2015 in Nashville, Tennessee, where he lives. A longtime hunter, Dell’Aquila said it was after that meeting that he decided to contribute big sums to the NRA, seeing it as an organization that would help preserve gun rights.

He went in with gusto, becoming a member of the Charlton Heston Society, an elite group of NRA faithful. Then, earlier this year, Dell’Aquila started to hear the rumors and see media reports of excessive spending by NRA leaders. He witnessed the showdown that spilled out in the public during this year’s annual meeting, when then-President Oliver North was denied a second term after seeking LaPierre’s resignation.

When Dell’Aquila asked some NRA directors and others at headquarters for more information on how donations were being spent, he said he didn’t get sufficient answers.

“I was just getting lip service,” he said.

A few months ago, he filed a lawsuit against the NRA claiming it has engaged in fraud and financial misconduct. The lawsuit cites many of the allegations that have emerged in other legal cases in recent months, including that LaPierre expensed hundreds of thousands of dollars in wardrobe purchases at a high-end clothier.

Carolyn Meadows, the NRA’s new president, called the lawsuit “a misguided and frivolous pursuit.”

“Here’s all you need to know: This lawsuit parrots claims from an individual who has worked for anti-NRA organizations and openly campaigned against our cause and our Association. End of story,” Meadows said.

While some big donors such as Olson and Dell’Aquila have pulled back, other big donors have doubled down.

Janet Nyce, a longtime member who along with her husband has contributed hundreds of thousands of dollars over the years, said she called up NRA headquarters and felt they were open and honest about the challenges facing the organization, assuring her that the donations were being well spent.

When she got a call one day from another NRA member asking if she wanted to participate in a movement to withhold donations, she and her husband instead pulled out their wallets and wrote out checks to the NRA.

“We are supporting the NRA, there’s just no two ways about it,” she said.

Joe Gregory, who is the CEO of an investment firm and founder of the NRA’s Golden Ring of Freedom — a group of NRA donors who have contributed or pledged at least $1 million — chalked up the turmoil to internal politics and defended LaPierre’s expenses as a necessary part of being a CEO.

The demands pushed by Dell’Aquila, he said, “border on being unrealistic and not serious.”

He’s especially disappointed to see some of his fellow big donors start to abandon the NRA, particularly as the 2020 presidential election approaches and the NRA’s influence in preserving the Second Amendment is at stake.

“It’s important that we stick together,” he said.

For Dell’Aquila’s part, he’s not ready to back down from his fight.

He’s even planning to attend next year’s annual meeting, which will again be held in Nashville. He said he wants to see if LaPierre and others in the inner circle will talk with him.

“I’m not one to back down,” he said.

Climate ‘Is the Election Priority’ for the UK

The real issue facing the United Kingdom in next month’s general election is not whether to choose Brexit, to stay in the European Union or leave it, a prominent lawyer says, because the climate “is the election priority” for the UK.

With Britain due to host the November 2020 United Nations climate talks, she told a London conference, it is vital that the new government elected on 12 December takes the lead by enacting policies to tackle the climate emergency.

Farhana Yamin, an international climate change lawyer, said that currently the world was failing to tackle the climate and ecological disaster facing the planet. The UK posed as a climate leader but was “way, way behind” what was needed and did not have the policies in place to reach its own target of net zero emissions by 2050.

“Nothing less than a green industrial revolution is required to turn the situation around. A war-like mobilisation of society to stop nature being destroyed needs to be in place by next year when the climate talks are being held in Glasgow”, she said. British voters had an opportunity to choose a government that could lead the world by example.

“The fact is we already know that normal life is going to be disrupted. Change is coming, whether you like it or not. The electorate has a chance to shape that change.

Inadequate Paris Agreement

“This is going to be a climate and ecological election. The future will be very different depending on the decisions taken in the next five years – and it depends on which direction the new government wants to take,” she said.

This was because it was already clear that the commitments made in Paris in 2015 to cut greenhouse gas emissions were nowhere near enough to hold global temperature rise to safe levels. The whole pack of nations was failing, and needed to make new commitments at the Glasgow talks a year from now.

Yamin, from Pakistan, lives in Britain and is an advocate and adviser to the Marshall Islands. She has represented many members of the Alliance of Small Island States (AOSIS) which are most threatened by climate change, particularly sea level rise.

Talking to an audience of senior business executives and heads of environmental groups at the conference of the Fit for the Future network, she said the horrors of climate change were already apparent.

The 20 million people in Delhi suffering from toxic air pollution, and those in the Marshall Islands which she champions who are facing inundation by the sea, were just two examples of the problem, and 2020 was a crucial year to try to turn the problem round.

Yamin told the Climate News Network she feared that in the UK election Brexit would crowd out the much more important issue of climate change. This was not to suggest how people should vote, but she asked people to cast aside other considerations and look at the parties’ climate policies.

“Whatever government is elected now will take decisions that will have a fundamental effect on the future of the planet. Take the right decisions in this four-year term of office, and there is still a chance of turning things around,” she said.

The co-leader of the UK Green Party, Sian Berry, said at the launch of the Greens’ campaign yesterday: “Some things are even bigger than Brexit. This must be the climate election.”

Yamin took part in London’s Extinction Rebellion protests and is one of the 1,300 people arrested there: she superglued herself to the entrance of the Shell oil giant’s London HQ. That had been necessary to raise public awareness of the problem, she said.

“For me it is the most historic and meaningful election I can remember. The environmental movement is all about social justice, so people now have the opportunity to vote to live and work in an equal society,” she said

Justices Take Up High-Profile DACA Case Over Young Immigrants

WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court is taking up the Trump administration’s plan to end legal protections that shield 660,000 immigrants from deportation, a case with strong political overtones amid the 2020 presidential election campaign.

All eyes will be on Chief Justice John Roberts when the court hears arguments Tuesday. Roberts is the conservative justice closest to the court’s center who also is keenly aware of public perceptions of an ideologically divided court.

It’s the third time in three years that the administration is asking the justices to rescue a controversial policy that has been blocked by several lower courts.

The court sided with President Donald Trump in allowing him to enforce the travel ban on visitors from some majority Muslim countries, but it blocked the administration from adding a citizenship question to the 2020 census.

Roberts was the only member of the court in the majority both times, siding with four conservatives on the travel ban and four liberals in the census case. His vote could be decisive a third time, as well.

The program before the court is Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, an Obama-era program that aimed to bring out of the shadows people who have been in the United States since they were children and are in the country illegally. In some cases, they have no memory of any home other than the U.S.

With Congress at an impasse over a comprehensive immigration bill, President Barack Obama decided to formally protect people from deportation while also allowing them to work legally in the U.S.

But Trump made tough talk on immigration a central part of his campaign and less than eight months after taking office, he announced in September 2017 that he would end DACA.

Immigrants, civil rights groups, universities and Democratic-led states quickly sued, and courts put the administration’s plan on hold.

There are two questions before the Supreme Court: whether federal judges can even review the decision to end the program and, if they can, whether the way the administration has gone about winding down DACA is legal.

In that sense, the case resembles the dispute over the census citizenship question, which focused on the process the administration used in trying to add the question to the 2020 census. In the end, Roberts wrote that the reason the administration gave for wanting the question “seems to have been contrived.”

There also are similarities to the travel ban case, in which the administration argued that courts had no role to play and that the executive branch has vast discretion over immigration, certainly enough to justify Trump’s ban. In the Supreme Court decision, Roberts wrote that immigration law gives the president “broad discretion to suspend the entry of aliens into the United States. The President lawfully exercised that discretion.”

The Supreme Court fight over DACA has played out in a kind of legal slow motion. The administration first wanted the justices to hear and decide the case by June 2018. The justices said no. The justice Department returned to the court a year ago, but the justices did nothing for more than seven months before agreeing to hear arguments.

The delay has bought DACA recipients at least two extra years because a decision now isn’t expected until June 2020, which also could thrust the issue into the presidential campaign.

In part the court’s slow pace can be explained by a preference to have Congress legislate a lasting resolution of the issue. But Trump and Congress failed to strike a deal on DACA.

Janet Napolitano, the University of California president who served as Obama’s homeland security secretary when DACA was created, said the administration seems to recognize that ending DACA protections would be unpopular.

“And so perhaps they think it better that they be ordered by the court to do it as opposed to doing it correctly on their own,” Napolitano said in an interview with The Associated Press. She is a named plaintiff in the litigation.

Solicitor General Noel Francisco, who is arguing the administration’s case at the Supreme Court, pushed back against that criticism.

“We think the way we did it is entirely appropriate and lawful. If we did it in a different way, it would be subject to challenge,” Francisco said at a Smithsonian Institution event exploring the current Supreme Court term.

The Trump administration has said it moved to cut off the program under the threat of a lawsuit from Texas and other states, raising the prospect of a chaotic end.

Then-Attorney General Jeff Sessions determined DACA to be unlawful because Obama did not have the authority to adopt it in the first place. Sessions cited an expansion of the DACA program and a similar effort to protect undocumented immigrants who are parents of American children that were struck down by federal courts. A 4-4 Supreme Court tie in 2016 affirmed the lower court rulings.

Texas and other Republican-led states eventually did sue and won a partial victory in a federal court in Texas.

The administration’s best argument is a simple one, said Josh Blackman, a professor at South Texas College of Law in Houston: “The Supreme Court should allow the Trump Administration to wind down a policy it found to be unlawful, even if reasonable judges disagree about DACA’s legality.”

Trump has said he favors legislation on DACA, but that it will take a Supreme Court ruling for the administration to spur Congress to act.

On at least one point, Trump and his DACA critics agree.

“Only legislation can bring a permanent sense of stability for all of these people,” said Microsoft president Brad Smith. Microsoft joined the challenge to the administration because, Smith said, 66 employees are protected by DACA.

The Department of Homeland Security is continuing to process two-year DACA renewals so that in June 2020, hundreds of thousands of DACA recipients will have protections stretching beyond the election and even into 2022.

If the high court rules for the administration, it is unclear how quickly the program would end or Congress might act.

Trump Wants to Charge Asylum Fees for Refugees Fleeing Hardship

The Trump administration this coming week will formalize a proposal that could make it one of just four countries in the world that charge asylum-seekers for entry.

As the New York Times reported late Friday, the administration plans to publish in the Federal Register a proposal to require a $50 application fee for asylum-seekers as well as a $490 charge for work permits.

“It’s an unprecedented weaponization of government fees,” Doug Rand of the immigrant assistance company Boundless Immigration told the Times.

Currently, the only countries in the world that charge asylum-seekers—who are often fleeing war, persecution or violence in their home countries—are Iran, Fiji and Australia.

Also included in the plan, proposed on Friday by Ken Cuccinnelli, head of U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS), were significant increases in fees for renewal of DACA protections and citizenship.

Young people protected by the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program, which is the subject of a Supreme Court case beginning Tuesday, will be required to pay $765 for renewal rather than $495.

Citizenship fees could go up 60 percent, from $725 to $1,170.

Cuccinnelli claimed Friday that the charges are needed to help confront his agencies $1.3 billion deficit. By contrast, the total U.S. deficit approached $1 trillion in 2019 under President Donald Trump—yet the president has requested more spending on the military and his proposed border wall.

The immigrant rights group United We Dream denounced the plan to impose financial burdens of young undocumented immigrants and asylum-seekers as “outrageous.”

Germany, Allies Celebrate 30 Years Since Berlin Wall Fell

BERLIN—Germany marked the 30th anniversary Saturday of the opening of the Berlin Wall, a pivotal moment in the events that brought down Communism in eastern Europe.

Leaders from Germany, Poland, Hungary, Slovakia and the Czech Republic attended a ceremony at Bernauer Strasse — where one of the last parts of the Berlin Wall remains — before placing roses in the once-fearsome barrier that divided the city for 28 years.

“The Berlin Wall, ladies and gentlemen, is history,” German Chancellor Angela Merkel said later at a memorial service inside a small chapel near where the Wall once stood. “It teaches us: No wall that keeps people out and restricts freedom is so high or so wide that it can’t be broken down.”

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Noting the cruelty of the East German regime — which had torn down a previous church on the former death strip site so snipers could get a better shot at people fleeing to the West — Merkel paid tribute to those who were killed or imprisoned during the Communist dictatorship and insisted that the fight for freedom worldwide isn’t over.

“We are bereft of excuses, challenged to do our part for freedom and democracy,” she said.

In a statement issued by his office, U.S. President Donald Trump congratulated Germany on its anniversary, saying that “courageous men and women from both East and West Germany united to tear down a wall that stood as a symbol of oppression and failed socialism for more than a quarter of a century.”

“The United States and our allies and partners remain steadfast in our unwavering allegiance to advancing the principles of individual liberty and freedom that have sustained peace and spawned unparalleled prosperity,” he added.

Speaking to European leaders at Bernauer Strasse, head of the Berlin Wall memorial site, Axel Klausmeier, recalled the images of delirious Berliners from East and West crying tears of joy as they hugged each other on the evening of Nov. 9, 1989 .

The collapse of the Berlin Wall was brought about largely by peaceful protests and a stream of people fleeing East Germany that piled pressure on the country’s Communist government to open its borders to the West and ultimately end the nation’s post-war division.

Thirty years on, Germany has become the most powerful economic and political force on the continent, but there remain deep misgivings among some in the country about how the transition from socialism to capitalism was managed.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel acknowledged this in a recent interview with daily Sueddeutsche Zeitung, saying that “with some things, where one might have thought that East and West would have aligned, one can see today that it might rather take half a century or more.”

She also recalled that Nov. 9 remains a fraught date in German history, as it also marks the anniversary of the so-called Night of Broken Glass, an anti-Jewish pogrom in 1938 that foreshadowed the Nazi’s Holocaust.

Light installations, concerts and public debates were planned throughout the city and other parts of Germany to mark the fall of the Wall, including a concert at Berlin’s iconic Brandenburg Gate.

Among those who had come to Berlin to celebrate were members of the Trabant Club Middle Hesse, an association that promotes the old East German car affectionately known as the Trabi.

Jens Schmidt, who fled East Germany before the fall of the Wall by driving his Trabi to Hungary and then across the open border to the West, said the club has many young members for whom learning to repair the simple but sturdy vehicles can be a lesson in history and civics, too.

“The team spirit,” he said. “It was stronger back then.”

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Follow AP’s coverage of the 30th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall at https://www.apnews.com/FalloftheBerlinWall

Pot or Not? Busts Highlight Growing Confusion Over Hemp

NEW YORK (AP)—The CBD craze might be leaving the war on drugs a bit dazed and confused.

The extract that’s been showing up in everything from candy to coffee is legally derived from hemp plants, which look and smell an awful lot like that other cannabis—marijuana. They’re so similar, police officers and the field tests they use on suspected drugs sometimes can’t tell the difference.

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Case in point, New York City police boasted on social media this week about what seemed like a significant drug bust: 106 pounds (48 kilograms) of funky, green plants that officers thought sure seemed like marijuana.

But the Vermont farm that grew the plants and the Brooklyn CBD shop that ordered them insisted they’re actually industrial hemp, and perfectly legal. And, they said, they have paperwork to prove it.

Nevertheless, when the shop’s owner brother went to the police station to straighten things out, he was arrested. Police said a field test had come back positive for marijuana.

Shop owner Oren Levy said that’s likely because hemp often tests positive for a permissible, trace amount of THC, or tetrahydrocannabinol, which is the chemical in cannabis that causes people to get high.

Field tests used by law enforcement officers can detect THC but aren’t sophisticated enough to specify whether a shipment is legal hemp or low-grade illegal pot, and drug-sniffing dogs will alert on both.

“He was a hungry cop. He thought he had the bust of the day,” said Levy, whose Green Angel CBD NYC sells oils, teas and other products containing the extract. He said he fears the seizure could force him out of business.

CBD, or cannabidiol, is also found in marijuana but does not have an intoxicating effect. Some people say it provides them with pain and anxiety relief.

“I can’t believe I’m going through this for a legal business,” Levy said. “I can’t believe my poor brother got locked up.”

Oren and Ronen Levy are not alone.

Since the U.S. government removed industrial hemp last year from the list of illegal drugs, a number of similar cases have cropped up across the country.

In July, a man who said he was delivering 300 pounds (136 kilograms) of hemp to a Minnesota CBD-oil processing company was arrested in South Dakota after authorities there said it tested positive for THC. The substance “looked and smelled like raw marijuana,” a state trooper said.

In January, Idaho authorities arrested a truck driver and seized nearly 7,000 pounds (3,175 kilograms) of what they believed to be marijuana, even though the company shipping the material said accompanying paperwork made clear it was industrial hemp.

At least two other truckers and two security guards involved in transporting what they said was industrial hemp have been arrested and charged with felony drug trafficking. In May, the U.S. Agriculture Department sent a memorandum instructing states not to block the transportation of hemp that contains 0.3% or less THC.

The Nov. 2 Brooklyn bust that landed Ronen Levy in handcuffs stemmed from a tip from a FedEx worker who suspected the load of plants on their way from Fox Holler Farms in Fair Haven, Vermont to Levy’s shop were marijuana, New York City police said.

“We got information about a large package of drugs. We got it in here. We field tested it as marijuana, called the individual in. He was placed under arrest,” said NYPD Chief of Department Terence Monahan.

“It is currently at the lab at this point to make a final determination, was it hemp?” Monahan said. “The individual had no bill of lading justifying its delivery.”

Ronen Levy, who runs his own CBD business catering to pets, pleaded not guilty to multiple counts of felony criminal possession of marijuana. He was released on his own recognizance and is due back in court on Nov. 19.

The police department drew attention to the bust by posting pictures on its official Facebook and Twitter accounts showing the officers in a room full of the seized plants. Oren Levy and the farm fought back with posts of their own.

Fox Holler Farms said in a statement posted on its Facebook page that the shipment bound for Levy’s shop was fully compliant with Vermont, New York and federal laws.

The farm’s lawyer, Timothy Fair, said that before the hemp shipment left Vermont, it was tested at FedEx’s request by a local police department. The level of THC was less than half the allowable threshold, he said.

A FedEx spokeswoman said even if the plants were hemp, they should not have been shipped using its service. The company’s service guide lists hemp plants, leaves, oil and CBD derived from hemp among its prohibited items.

Oren Levy said he would’ve gone to the police station himself but couldn’t because he was recovering from a recent surgery. Soon enough, Oren Levy said, Ronen texted him: “I think I’m getting arrested.”

“They treated him like a drug dealer,” Oren Levy said. “He’s never been to jail in his whole life. He still hasn’t slept. He’s paranoid.”

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Jennifer Peltz in New York and Wilson Ring in Montpelier, Vermont, contributed reporting.

Iran Offers Clue to Fate of Ex-FBI Agent Robert Levinson, Missing for 12 Years

DUBAI, United Arab Emirates—Iran is acknowledging for the first time it has an open case before its Revolutionary Court over the 2007 disappearance of a former FBI agent on an unauthorized CIA mission to the country, renewing questions over what happened to him.

In a filing to the United Nations, Iran said the case over Robert Levinson was “on going,” without elaborating.

It wasn’t immediately clear how long the case had been open, nor the circumstances by which it started. However, it comes amid a renewed push to find him with an offer of $20 million for information from the Trump administration amid heightened tensions between Iran and the U.S. over Tehran’s collapsing nuclear deal with world powers. That’s in addition to $5 million earlier offered by the FBI.

The Associated Press on Saturday obtained the text of Iran’s filing to the U.N.’s Working Group on Enforced or Involuntary Disappearances.

“According to the last statement of Tehran’s Justice Department, Mr. Robert Alan Levinson has an on going case in the Public Prosecution and Revolutionary Court of Tehran,” the filing said.

It did not elaborate. Iran’s Revolutionary Court typically handles espionage cases and others involving smuggling, blasphemy and attempts to overthrow its Islamic government. Westerners and Iranian dual nationals with ties to the West often find themselves tried and convicted in closed-door trials in these courts, only later to be used as bargaining chips in negotiations.

Iran’s mission to the U.N. did not immediately respond to a request for comment, and its state media has not acknowledged the case. The U.S. State Department did not respond to a request for comment about Iran’s acknowledgement.

The Washington Post first reported on the ongoing case.

Levinson disappeared from Iran’s Kish Island on March 9, 2007. For years, U.S. officials would only say that Levinson, a meticulous FBI investigator credited with busting Russian and Italian mobsters, was working for a private firm on his trip.

In December 2013, the AP revealed Levinson in fact had been on a mission for CIA analysts who had no authority to run spy operations. Levinson’s family had received a $2.5 million annuity from the CIA in order to stop a lawsuit revealing details of his work, while the agency forced out three veteran analysts and disciplined seven others.

Since his disappearance, the only photos and video of Levinson emerged in 2010 and 2011. He appeared gaunt and bearded with long hair, and was wearing an orange jumpsuit similar to those worn by detainees at the U.S. prison at Guantanamo Bay.

The video, with a Pashtun wedding song popular in Afghanistan playing in the background, showed Levinson complaining of poor health.

Rumors about him have circulated for years, with one account claiming he was locked up in a Tehran prison run by Iran’s paramilitary Revolutionary Guard and U.S. officials suggesting he may not be in Iran at all. Dawud Salahuddin, an American fugitive living in Iran who is wanted for the assassination of a former Iranian diplomat in Maryland in 1980, is the last known person to have seen Levinson before his disappearance. Iran has offered a series of contradictory statements about Levinson in the time since. It asked the U.N. group to close its investigation into Levinson in February, saying “no proof has been presented by the claimant in this case to prove the presence of the aforesaid in Iran’s detention centres.”