Chris Hedges's Blog, page 351

Russia and Putin Mark 75 Years Since WWII Siege of Leningrad

ST. PETERSBURG, Russia — The Russian city of St. Petersburg marked the 75th anniversary of the end of the devastating World War II siege by Nazi forces with a large military parade Sunday in the city’s sprawling Palace Square.

Russian President Vladimir Putin later laid flowers at a monument in Piskarevskoye Cemetery, where hundreds of thousands of siege victims are buried.

The siege of the city, then called Leningrad, lasted nearly 2½ years until the Soviet Army drove the Nazis away on Jan. 27, 1944.

Estimates of the death toll vary, but historians agree that more than 1 million Leningrad residents died from hunger or air and artillery bombardments during the siege.

On Sunday, more than 2,500 soldiers and 80 units of military equipment paraded as snow fell and temperatures hovered around minus-18 degrees Celsius (0 Fahrenheit). The vehicles included a T-34 tank; such tanks played a key role in defeating the Nazis and became a widely revered symbol of the nation’s wartime valor and suffering.

During the siege, most Leningrad residents had to survive on rations of just 125 grams (less than 0.3 pounds) of bread a day and whatever other food they could buy or exchange at local markets after selling their belongings.

Among those who succumbed to the deprivations of the siege was Putin’s 1-year-old brother. Putin himself was born after the siege, in 1952.

The Russian president did not attend the parade, which some civic groups had objected to as inappropriate, saying the day should commemorate the victims rather than flaunt military strength.

The Kremlin also announced Sunday that Putin had signed an order allocating 150 million rubles ($2.3 million) for creating new exhibits at the state museum of the siege.

“Today we mourn those who died defending Leningrad, who at the cost of their lives broke through the blockade. We recall those who worked in the besieged city, who, risking themselves, delivered bread and medicine along the Road of Life,” Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev wrote on social media.

Medvedev was referring to the ice road across Lake Ladoga that was the only conduit for supplies and evacuations during much of the siege.

Tamara Chernykh, 81, told The Associated Press that she still can’t forget the tiny pieces of bread that her granny used to put under her pillow as a night treat for a starving four-year-old girl in besieged Leningrad during the deadly winter of 1941-1942.

In the daytime, Chernykh said she and her baby cousin mostly stayed put under several blankets in the darkness. There was no heating during the first and the coldest winter of the siege, when temperatures outside sometimes plunged to -40 degrees Celsius (-40 degrees Fahrenheit).

Chernykh’s grandmother, who gave the bread out of her own scant food ration, said the crumbs would bring good dreams. She died from starvation before the siege ended.

Germany has allocated 12 million euros ($13.5 million) to modernize a Russian hospital for veterans of the war and to create a center in St. Petersburg where Germans and Russians can meet, the German and Russian foreign ministers said Sunday.

“We are sure that this voluntary action will improve the life quality of the victims of the siege who are still alive and also serve the historical reconciliation of the peoples of both countries,” ministers Heiko Maas and Sergey Lavrov said in the statement.

Suspect in Louisiana Shooting Deaths Caught in Virginia

GONZALES, La. — A 21-year-old man suspected of killing his parents and three other people — including a girl he was dating — was arrested Sunday when he showed up at his grandmother’s house in Virginia, a sheriff there said.

On Saturday, Dakota Theriot shot and killed three people — the woman believed to be his girlfriend, her brother and father — in Louisiana’s Livingston Parish before taking her father’s truck, driving to neighboring Ascension Parish, and shooting his parents, authorities said.

At a trailer where the parents lived, drops of blood trailed out to the front steps from the bedroom where Keith and Elizabeth Theriot were shot. In the bedroom, blood soaked pillows were strewn on the bed, and patches of what appeared to be dried blood were on the floor. Dozens of stuffed animals decorated the room.

Kim Mincks and Jacob Chastant also lived in the trailer and were friends with the Theriots. Mincks was in the house when the shooting happened but didn’t hear anything. Law enforcement officers came into her room and woke her Saturday morning.

“They said something terrible happened here. Get up, get dressed and walk outside,” she said.

They said Dakota Theriot had struggled with drugs over the years, had violent outbursts, and had recently been kicked out of the trailer.

“We know he had a drug problem. He got kicked out last Monday because of the drug problem. His dad kicked him out of here. He did have a violent streak,” Mincks said.

Theriot’s grandmother, who lives in Warsaw, Virginia, had checked into a hotel Saturday night because she feared he might show up at her house, Richmond County Sheriff Stephan B. Smith said in a phone interview. The woman asked authorities to check her home Sunday morning to make sure it was safe before she returned.

While deputies were there, Smith said, Theriot drove up. He had a gun on him but he dropped it and was taken into custody without incident, Smith said.

Theriot will be brought back to Ascension Parish to be booked on two counts of first-degree murder, home invasion, and illegal use of weapons, according to a statement by Ascension Parish Sheriff Bobby Webre and Livingston Parish Sheriff Jason Ard.

Smith said he believes the truck Theriot was driving when he arrived at his grandmother’s house was the one taken in Louisiana.

Authorities have identified the victims in Livingston Parish as Billy Ernest, 43; Tanner Ernest, 17; and Summer Ernest, 20. Ard said Summer Ernest and Dakota Theriot were in a relationship and that Theriot had been living with her family for a few weeks.

Authorities said earlier that Keith Theriot survived the shooting long enough to let them know who shot him. Before the father died, Webre said, authorities were able to get a “dying declaration from him, and only enough information to let us know that it was his son that committed this act.”

Mincks and Chastant only returned to the trailer Sunday morning, worried that Dakota Theriot might come back.

Mincks said she’d known Keith and Elizabeth Theriot for about two years and described them as wonderful people. Keith Theriot was a disabled veteran who played a wicked guitar, and Elizabeth Theriot worked at a nearby Dollar General Store, they said. Keith Theriot had four children, all boys, they said.

“Give you the shirt off their back. They loved everybody. Never met a stranger. Loved each other. Just a happy couple,” she said.

But the relationship between Dakota Theriot and his parents, especially his father, was troubled. She and Chastant described an incident in which Chastant had to pull Dakota Theriot off his parents during a physical altercation.

Minks said Dakota Theriot and his mother seemed much closer. They’d laugh and joke and tell each other “I love you.” But even that relationship had problems. Mincks and Chastant said at one point Dakota Theriot pulled a gun on his mother who called Chastant for help.

“I think just the drugs took over,” Mincks said.

Chastant and Mincks said Dakota Theriot had just met Summer Ernest about three weeks ago at Chastant’s sister’s funeral. Summer Ernest was there as a friend to Jacob Chastant’s 20-year-old daughter, Sierra.

Sierra sayid she warned her friend to stay away from Dakota, calling him “trouble.” But she never expected anything like what unfolded Saturday morning.

Summer Ernest had an outgoing personality and plans to return soon to college, Sierra said.

“She was bubbly, always friendly. She wasn’t mean or anything. She’s just a great person,” she said.

“If you asked me what his motive was…. I don’t know what it would be,” she said. “It’s just unbelievable.”

___

Associated Press writers Kate Brumback in Atlanta and Jonathan Drew in Raleigh, North Carolina, contributed to this report.

Fears That 2nd Dam Could Breach in Brazil Prompt Evacuations

BRUMADINHO, Brazil — Brazilian officials on Sunday suspended the search for potential survivors of a dam collapse that has killed at least 40 people amid fears that another nearby dam owned by the same company was also at risk of breaching.

Authorities were evacuating several neighborhoods in the southeastern city of Brumadinho that were within range of the B6 dam owned by the Brazilian mining company Vale. There was no immediate word on how many people were evacuated.

“Leave here, this is at risk!” police officials told firefighters in a lower-lying area. “Within a little while, more mud will fall.”

The firefighters had been working to extract a cow found alive in the mud, but they pulled back on the order of police, leaving the animal.

While the ground search was stopped, helicopters continued to fly over the area, possibly so they would not be hit if another collapse happened.

Caroline Steifeld, who was evacuated, said she heard warning sirens on Sunday, but no such alert came on Friday, when the first dam collapsed.

“I only heard shouting, people saying to get out. I had to run with my family to get to higher ground, but there was no siren,” she said, adding that a cousin was still unaccounted for.

Even before the latest setbacks, hope that loved ones had survived a tsunami of iron ore mine waste from Friday’s dam collapse in the area was turning to anguish and anger over the increasing likelihood that many of the hundreds of people missing had died.

Company employees at the mining complex were eating lunch Friday afternoon when the first dam gave way. By Saturday night, when authorities called off rescue efforts until daybreak, the dam break toll stood at 40 dead with up to 300 people estimated to be missing.

All day Saturday, helicopters flew low over areas encased by a river of mud and mining waste as firefighters dug frantically to get into buried structures.

“I’m angry. There is no way I can stay calm,” said Sonia Fatima da Silva, as she tried to get information about her son, who had worked at Vale for 20 years. “My hope is that they be honest. I want news, even if it’s bad.”

Da Silva said she last spoke to her son before he went to work on Friday, when around midday a dam holding back mine waste collapsed, sending waves of mud for kilometers (miles) and burying much in its path.

She was one of scores of relatives in Brumadinho who desperately awaited word on their loved ones. Romeu Zema, the governor of Minas Gerais state, said by now most recovery efforts will entail pulling out bodies.

The flow of waste reached the nearby community of Vila Ferteco and an occupied Vale administrative office. It buried buildings to their rooftops and an extensive field of the mud cut off roads.

Some residents barely escaped with their lives.

“I saw all the mud coming down the hill, snapping the trees as it descended. It was a tremendous noise,” said a tearful Simone Pedrosa, from the neighborhood of Parque Cachoeira, 5 miles (8 kilometers) from where the dam collapsed.

Pedrosa, 45, and her parents dashed to their car and drove to the highest point in the neighborhood.

“If we had gone down the other direction, we would have died,” Pedrosa said.

“I cannot get that noise out of my head,” she said. “It’s a trauma … I’ll never forget.”

In addition to the 40 bodies recovered as of Saturday night, 23 people were hospitalized, according to the Minas Gerais fire department. There had been some signs of hope earlier Saturday when authorities found 43 more people alive.

The company said Saturday that while 100 workers were accounted for, more than 200 workers were still missing. Fire officials at one point estimated the total number at close to 300.

Vale CEO Fabio Schvartsman said he did not know what caused the collapse.

For many, hope was evaporating.

“I don’t think he is alive,” said Joao Bosco, speaking of his cousin, Jorge Luis Ferreira, who worked for Vale. “Right now, I can only hope for a miracle.”

Vanilza Sueli Oliveira described the wait for news of her nephew as “distressing, maddening.”

“Time is passing,” she said. “It’s been 24 hours already. … I just don’t want to think that he is under the mud.”

The rivers of mining waste also raised fears of widespread environmental contamination and degradation.

According to Vale’s website, the waste, often called tailings, is composed mostly of sand and is non-toxic. However, a U.N. report found that the waste from a similar disaster in 2015 “contained high levels of toxic heavy metals.”

Over the weekend, state courts and the justice ministry in the state of Minas Gerais froze about $1.5 billion from Vale assets for state emergency services and told the company to report on how they would help the victims.

Brazil’s Attorney General Raquel Dodge promised to investigate the mining dam collapse, saying “someone is definitely at fault.” Dodge noted there are 600 mines in the state of Minas Gerais alone that are classified as being at risk of rupture.

Another dam administered by Vale and Australian mining company BHP Billiton collapsed in 2015 in the city of Mariana in the same state of Minas Gerais, resulting in 19 deaths and forcing hundreds from their homes. Considered the worst environmental disaster in Brazilian history, it left 250,000 people without drinking water and killed thousands of fish. An estimated 60 million cubic meters of waste flooded nearby rivers and eventually flowed into the Atlantic Ocean.

Sueli de Oliveira Costa, who hadn’t heard from her husband since Friday, had harsh words for the mining company.

“Vale destroyed Mariana and now they’ve destroyed Brumadinho,” she said.

The Folia de S.Paulo newspaper reported Saturday that the dam’s mining complex was issued an expedited license to expand in December due to “decreased risk.” Conservation groups in the area alleged that the approval was unlawful.

On Twitter, new Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro said his government would do everything it could to “prevent more tragedies” like Mariana and now Brumadinho.

The far-right leader campaigned on promises to jump-start Brazil’s economy, in part by deregulating mining and other industries.

Environmental groups and activists said the latest spill underscored the lack of environmental regulation in Brazil, and many promised to fight any further deregulation.

Marina Silva, a former environmental minister and presidential candidate, toured the area on Sunday. She said such tragedies should be deemed “heinous crimes,” and that Congress should bear part of the blame for not toughening regulations and enforcement.

“All the warnings have been given. We are repeating history with this tragedy,” she told The Associated Press. “Brazil can’t become a specialist in rescuing victims and consoling widows. Measures need to be taken to avoid prevent this from happening again.”

___

Peter Prengaman reported from Arraial do Cabo, Brazil.

The U.S. Is Paying for What It Did to Russia in Afghanistan

As I approach 75, I’m having a commonplace experience for my age. I live with a brain that’s beginning to dump previously secure memories — names, the contents of books I read long ago (or all too recently), events, whatever. If you’re of a certain age yourself, you know the story.

Recently, however, I realized that this experience of loss, like so much else in our world, is more complex than I imagined. What I mean is that such loss also involves gain. It’s turned my mind to, and made me something of an instant expert on, one aspect of twenty-first-century America: the memory hole that’s swallowed up parts of our all-too-recent history. In fact, I’ve been wondering whether aging imperial powers, like old men and women, have a tendency to discard what once had been oh-so-familiar. There’s a difference, though, when it comes to the elites of the aging empire I live in at least. They don’t just dump things relatively randomly as I seem to be doing. Instead, they conveniently obliterate all memory of their country’s — that is, their own — follies and misdeeds.

Let me give you an example. But you need to bear with me here because I’m about to jump into the disordered mind of a man who, though two years younger than me, has what might be called — given present-day controversies — a borderline personality.  I’m thinking of President Donald Trump, or rather of a particular moment in his chaotic recent mental life. As the New Year dawned, he chaired what now passes for a “cabinet meeting.” That mainly means an event in which those present grovel before, fawn over, and outrageously praise him in front of the cameras. Otherwise, Trump, a man who doesn’t seem to know the meaning of advice or of a meeting, held a 95-minute presidential ramble through the brambles in front of a Game of Thrones-style “[Iran] Sanctions Are Coming” poster of… well, him. The media typically ate it up, even while critiquing the president’s understanding of that HBO TV series. And so it goes in the Washington of 2019.

Excuse me if I seem to be wandering off subject (another attribute of the aging mind), but I’m about to plunge into history and our president is neither a historian, nor particularly coherent. Read any transcript of his and not only does he flip from subject to subject, sentence by sentence, but even — no small trick — within sentences. In other words, he presents a translation problem. Fortunately, he’s surrounded by a bevy of translators (still called “reporters” or “pundits”) and, unlike the translators in the president’s meetings with Russian President Vladimir Putin, we have their notes.

So here, as a start, is a much-quoted passage of his on this country’s never-ending Afghan War from that cabinet meeting, which reporters and pundits jumped on with alacrity and criticized him roundly for:

“We’re going to do something that’s right. We are talking to the Taliban. We’re talking to a lot of different people. But here’s the thing — because mentioned India: India is there. Russia is there. Russia used to be the Soviet Union. Afghanistan made it Russia, because they went bankrupt fighting in Afghanistan. Russia. So you take a look at other countries. Pakistan is there; they should be fighting. But Russia should be fighting.

“The reason Russia was in Afghanistan was because terrorists were going into Russia. They were right to be there. The problem is it was a tough fight. And literally, they went bankrupt. They went into being called Russia again, as opposed to the Soviet Union. You know, a lot [of] these places you’re reading about now are no longer a part of Russia because of Afghanistan.”

As I said, Donald Trump is no historian. So it’s true that the Red Army didn’t move into Afghanistan in 1979 thanks to a terrorist presence in Russia. And yes, every stray pen or talking head in Washington seemed to skewer the president for his ignorance of that reality, including the Atlantic’s eminent neocon pundit David Frum who basically claimed that the president was simply pushing the latest dish of pasta Putinesca our way. (“It’s amazing enough that any U.S. president would retrospectively endorse the Soviet invasion. What’s even more amazing is that he would do so using the very same falsehoods originally invoked by the Soviets themselves: ‘terrorists’ and ‘bandit elements.’ It has been an important ideological project of the Putin regime to rehabilitate and justify the Soviet invasion and occupation of Afghanistan…”)

While critics like Frum did begrudgingly admit that the Soviet fiasco in Afghanistan might have had just a teensy-weensy something or other to do with the implosion of the Soviet Union in 1991, less than two years after the Red Army limped home, the president, they insisted, basically got that wrong, too. The Soviet Union bankrupted by Afghanistan? Not in your dreams, buddy, or as the Washington Post‘s Aaron Blake wrote in a piece headlined “Trump’s Bizarre History Lesson on the Soviet Union, Russia, and Afghanistan”:

“The overlap between the fall of the Soviet Union and its foray into Afghanistan is obvious. The USSR invaded in 1979 and left a decade later, in 1989. The superpower dissolved shortly thereafter in 1991. But correlation is not causation… It was perhaps among the many reasons the USSR collapsed. But it was not the reason.”

And then, of course, came the next presidential tweet, and everyone — except me — moved on with alacrity. I was left alone, still dredging through my memories of that ancient conflict, which, these days, no one but the president would even think of bringing up in the context of the ongoing U.S. war in Afghanistan. And yet here’s the curious thing when it comes to an aging empire that prefers not to remember the history of its folly: Donald Trump was right that Russia’s Afghan misadventure is a remarkably logical place to start when considering the present American debacle in that same country.

Two Empires Trapped in Afghanistan

Let me mention one thing no one’s likely to emphasize these days when it comes to the Russian decision to enter that Afghan quagmire in 1979. At the highest levels of the Carter and then the Reagan administrations, top American officials were working assiduously to embroil the Soviets in Afghanistan and would then invest staggering sums in a CIA campaign to fund Islamic extremist guerrillas to keep them there. Not that anyone in Washington is likely to play this up in 2019, but the U.S. began aiding those Mujahidin guerrillas not after the Red Army moved in to support a pro-Soviet regime in Kabul, but six months before.

Here’s how President Carter’s national security advisor, Zbigniew Brzezinski, would describe the situation almost two decades later:

“According to the official version of history, CIA aid to the mujahidin began during 1980, that’s to say, after the Soviet army invaded Afghanistan. But the reality, kept secret until now, is completely different: on 3 July 1979 President Carter signed the first directive for secret aid to the opponents of the pro-Soviet regime in Kabul. And on the same day, I wrote a note to the president in which I explained that in my opinion this aid would lead to a Soviet military intervention.”

Asked if he had any regrets, Brzezinski responded:

“Regret what? The secret operation was an excellent idea. It drew the Russians into the Afghan trap and you want me to regret it? On the day that the Soviets officially crossed the border, I wrote to President Carter, saying, in essence: ‘We now have the opportunity of giving to the USSR its Vietnam War.'”

Think about that largely missing bit of history for a moment. Top U.S. officials wanted to give the Soviet Union a version of their own disastrous Vietnam experience and so invested billions of dollars and much effort in that proxy war — and it worked. The Soviet leadership continued to pour money into their military misadventure in Afghanistan when their country was already going bankrupt and the society they had built was beginning to collapse around them. They were indeed suffering from what General Secretary Mikhail Gorbachev came to call “the bleeding wound.” And if that isn’t the language of disaster (or bankruptcy or, perhaps more accurately, implosion), what is? Yes, Afghanistan, that “graveyard of empires,” wasn’t the only thing that took their world down, but the way their much-vaunted army finally limped home a decade later was certainly a significant factor in its collapse.

Now, let me tax your memory (and especially elite Washington’s) just a bit more. Think again about the history that led up to the American war President Trump was fretting about in that cabinet meeting. Under the circumstances, it wouldn’t be an exaggeration to say that Brzezinski and his successors were just a tad too successful — or, to put it another way, that they lured not one but two empires into their trap; the second being, of course, the American one.

After all, in that 10-year Afghan proxy war (1979-1989), they laid the foundations for the creation by a rich young Saudi named Osama bin Laden of a resistance outfit of Arab fighters. You know, “al-Qaeda,” or “the base.” They also funded other extremist Islamic figures and groups like Gulbuddin Hekmatyar or the Haqqani network that would, more than a decade after the Soviets straggled home, go to war against… well, us. And through their investment in that brutal quagmire, they also helped lay the foundations for the destruction and destitution of significant parts of Afghanistan, and so for the brutal civil war that followed in the early 1990s amid the ruins. Out of that, of course, came another group whose name might still ring a bell or two: the Taliban.

In other words, Brzezinski & Co. laid the foundations for what would become a nearly 30-year American quagmire war (with a decade off between its two parts) in a land that, in 1979, few Americans other than a bunch of hippies had ever heard of. Here, then, is a small hint for the president: you might consider starting to refer to Afghanistan — and I assure you this would be historically accurate (even if you were roundly criticized for it by the Washington punditariat) — as America’s “bleeding wound.”

No matter how many years it goes on, one thing seems probable: like the Red Army, the U.S. military will finally limp out of that country in defeat and will also, in some way, bring that defeat home with them. It may not be what finally bankrupts or implodes the great(er) and far wealthier imperial power of the Cold War era, but as with Russia it will surely lend a helping hand.

There’s No Success Like Failure in Washington

In a country in which implosive elements are already being mixed into its politics, President Trump had his finger on something when he brought up the Russian war in Afghanistan. However historically and syntactically mixed up he might have been, his brain was still far more on target than those of most of the wise men and women of the present Washington establishment.

Take David Frum. Who today thinks much about his role in the history of American folly? As a speechwriter for George W. Bush, however, he was memorably ordered to produce “in a sentence or two our best case for going after Iraq.” In other words, he was to make a case for the invasion of that country in the president’s 2002 State of the Union address. At that time, with America’s superpower enemy, the Soviet Union, long gone and the U.S. seemingly unopposed on planet Earth, he somehow found three weak countries — Iraq, Iran, and North Korea — to turn into a World War II-style “axis of evil.” In doing so, he produced this memorable passage for the president:

“States like these, and their terrorist allies, constitute an axis of evil, arming to threaten the peace of the world. By seeking weapons of mass destruction, these regimes pose a grave and growing danger. They could provide these arms to terrorists, giving them the means to match their hatred. They could attack our allies or attempt to blackmail the United States. In any of these cases, the price of indifference would be catastrophic.”

Mission accomplished! No matter that neither Iraq, nor the other two countries were anywhere near having nukes.

Donald Trump has often been accused of megalomania as if that were a unique trait of his, but that’s because we’ve blotted out Washington’s other megalomaniacs of this century. I’m thinking of the neocon officials of the Bush administration with their urge to turn this planet into an American possession and their disastrous invasion of Iraq. Because of that sense of amnesia, David Frum, Mr. Axis of Evil, like the rest of his neocon companions has, a decade and a half later, risen again in Washington. Like him, many of them are now critics of the Trump administration, while others, like National Security Advisor John Bolton, are ascendant in that very administration.

In the end, when it comes to history and memory, it all seems to prove one thing: if you want to ensure your success in twenty-first-century Washington, there’s no way you can be too wrong. (The key figures in that city these days are evidently only familiar with the first of those two famed lines in Bob Dylan’s “Love Minus Zero”: “She knows there’s no success like failure/And that failure’s no success at all.”)

You now have 60 seconds (and the clock’s already ticking) to answer a question: Who, in or out of the administration, critic, pundit, or official, was against the invasion of Iraq once upon a time? I think you know the answer to that one. If you were against the single most disastrous, megalomaniac foreign policy act of this century, there’s no place for you in present-day Washington, not in the administration, either party in Congress, or even in memory. You are not worth listening to, writing about, thinking about, or remembering in any way. You are the anti-Frum and have been deposited in the proverbial dustbin of history along with all those other embarrassing memories like… to mention just one more… the myriad elections in other countries that the U.S. interfered with before we were shocked (shocked!) to discover that some country might have meddled with one of ours.

Think of those neocons, the ones who have yet again made it into positions of power or influence and respect in Washington, as the gang who helped pave the way for Donald Trump to become president. Think of them as the imploders. Think of them as our domestic bleeding wound and (when it comes to taking down the system) the truest pasta Putinesca around.

What Might Have Been?

And now that I’ve left you with a completely bad taste in your mouth, let me bring up another small forgotten memory, one that might qualify — in an alternate universe of memories at least — as utopian, rather than dystopian. I’m thinking about “the peace dividend.” You don’t remember it? Well, that’s not surprising. But after the Soviet Union disappeared in 1991 (something official Washington hadn’t faintly expected and initially greeted in a kind of stunned silence), it briefly seemed as if the great-power struggles that had preoccupied history since perhaps the fifteenth century were finally over. The U.S. was the lone superpower left on planet Earth. Enemies were beyond scarce. A judgment of some sort had been rendered and, for a brief moment, even in Washington, people began talking about that most miraculous of things: a peace dividend.

The staggering sums that had gone into the Pentagon and the rest of the national security state in the Cold War years were visibly no longer necessary. So it was time to bring it all — billions and billions of dollars that had long been invested in the militarization of our American world — home. There was, after all, nothing left to build up military power against and so that money could now be put into what wouldn’t for another decade be called “the homeland.”

In fact, though modest cuts were made in U.S. forces and military spending in those years, they would prove to be anything but a dividend and would soon enough simply evaporate in the face of the military-industrial complex and, of course, that “axis of evil.”

In the years that followed, the very idea of a peace dividend, even the phrase itself, would simply vanish. Still, just for a moment, in a country whose infrastructure is now crumbling, whose teachers are underpaid, whose health care system is under siege, it was possible to dream about a world in which the bleeding wounds of the planet might begin to be staunched. Imagine that and think about what the future might have been.

Robert Reich: 3 Signs Trump Is Becoming a Dictator

This post originally appeared on RobertReich.org.

The “rule of law” distinguishes democracies from dictatorships. It’s based on three fundamental principles. Trump is violating every one of them.

The first principle is that no person is above the law, not even a president. Which means a president cannot stop an investigation into his alleged illegal acts.

Yet Trump has done everything he can to stop the Mueller investigation, even making Matthew Whitaker acting Attorney General – whose only distinction to date has been loud and public condemnation of that investigation.

The second principle is that a president cannot prosecute political opponents.  Decisions about whom to prosecute for alleged criminal wrongdoing must be made by prosecutors who are independent of politics.

Yet Trump has repeatedly pushed the Justice Department to bring charges against Hillary Clinton, his 2016 rival, for using a private email server when she was Secretary of State, in alleged violation of the Presidential Records Act.

The third principle is that a president must be respectful of the independence of the judiciary.  Yet Trump has openly ridiculed judges who disagree with him in order to fuel public distrust of them.

He recently referred to the judge who halted Trump’s plan for refusing to consider asylum applications an “Obama judge,” and railed against the entire ninth circuit in which that judge serves.

John Roberts, the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, condemned Trump’s attack. “We do not have Obama judges or Trump judges,” Roberts said. An “independent judiciary is something we should all be thankful for.”

Almost a half-century ago, I watched as another president violated these three basic principles of the rule of law, although not as blatantly as Trump. The nation rose up in outrage against Richard Nixon, who resigned before Congress impeached him.

The question is whether this generation of Americans will have the strength and wisdom to do the same.

Republican Islamophobia Is Leading Us Toward a Major Massacre

Three extremist white nationalists who plotted to blow up a Somali-American apartment complex in Kansas have been sentenced to 25 years in prison. The men made and tested explosives to use on the Somali immigrants, whom they called “cockroaches” and other terms that CNN couldn’t repeat. Somalis are Sunni Muslims. If it hadn’t been for an informant who warned the FBI, the men could well have carried out a major atrocity.

Informed Comment wrote when the terrorists were arrested:

One of the Somali-American women, toward whom those alleged terrorists had hurdled abuse, was profiled in the press recently: “This is my home. I want to become American,” said Abshiro Warsame, a Somali woman who works the late shift at the nearby Tyson beef packing plant.” Warsame came to the U.S. seven years ago, after her husband was murdered. A U.S. flag hangs in her small, shared flat. She’s studying English and Spanish.”

And she was marked for murder in our society just as her husband had been marked for murder in East Africa.

But let me just underline another point. Like the Norwegian terrorist Anders Breivik, whose favorite reading was Islamophobes like Pamela Geller and Daniel Pipes, these creeps initially were apparently going to attack other white Americans with whom they disagreed.

They considered assassinating local public officials! That sounds like terrorism to me. In fact, since they clearly had a political motive in wanting to shape public policy, and since they clearly intended to harm innocent civilians and even local or state officials, they fit the textbook definition of terrorism. (They weren’t charged with terrorism, because the law is written to make it hard to lay that charge against domestic terrorists; but they were charged with intent to use a weapon of mass destruction.)

They considered blowing up a Sunday church service of white Christians who were following Jesus’ teachings, e.g. Matthew 25:41 . . .

‘Then he will say to those at his left hand, ‘You that are accursed, depart from me into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels; 42 for I was hungry and you gave me no food, I was thirsty and you gave me nothing to drink, 43 I was a stranger and you did not welcome me, naked and you did not give me clothing, sick and in prison and you did not visit me.’ 44 Then they also will answer, ‘Lord, when was it that we saw you hungry or thirsty or a stranger or naked or sick or in prison, and did not take care of you?’ 45 Then he will answer them, ‘Truly I tell you, just as you did not do it to one of the least of these, you did not do it to me.’ 46 And these will go away into eternal punishment, but the righteous into eternal life.’ ”

What with being a hate group and all, I guess they skimmed over that passage.

The polarized and hyper-racial atmosphere in the US being created by Trump’s rhetoric is a public safety and public health concern. There are about 3.5 million Muslim-Americans, and hate speech and hateful actions against them have multiplied, especially under Trump.

Then there are the three angry young men who stockpiled weapons and plotted an attack on the small New York village of “Islamberg,” home for decades to a Black Muslim group. The Islamberg residents are nice people and entirely nonviolent.

A big problem is that television news covers a similar plot by a Muslim 357 times more than it covers plots by the Western far right wing.

Trump’s rhetoric of hatred hasn’t caused these threats. But it has created an atmosphere in which they are more likely to thrive and take practical effect.

20 Dead as Bombs Target Sunday Mass in Philippine Cathedral

JOLO, Philippines — Two bombs minutes apart tore through a Roman Catholic cathedral on a southern Philippine island where Muslim militants are active, killing at least 20 people and wounding 111 others during a Sunday Mass, officials said.

Witnesses said the first blast inside the Jolo cathedral in the provincial capital sent churchgoers, some of them wounded, to stampede out of the main door. Army troops and police posted outside were rushing in when the second bomb went off about one minute later near the main entrance, causing more deaths and injuries. The military was checking a report that the second explosive device may have been attached to a parked motorcycle.

The initial explosion scattered the wooden pews inside the main hall and blasted window glass panels, and the second bomb hurled human remains and debris across a town square fronting the Cathedral of Our Lady of Mount Carmel, witnesses said. Cellphone signal was cut off in the first hours after the attack. The witnesses who spoke to The Associated Press refused to give their names or were busy at the scene of the blasts.

Police said at least 20 people died and 111 were wounded, correcting an earlier toll due to double counting. The fatalities included 15 civilians and five troops. Among the wounded were 17 troops, two police, two coast guard and 90 civilians.

Troops in armored carriers sealed off the main road leading to the church while vehicles transported the dead and wounded to the town hospital. Some casualties were evacuated by air to nearby Zamboanga city.

“I have directed our troops to heighten their alert level, secure all places of worships and public places at once, and initiate pro-active security measures to thwart hostile plans,” said Defense Secretary Delfin Lorenzana in a statement.

“We will pursue to the ends of the earth the ruthless perpetrators behind this dastardly crime until every killer is brought to justice and put behind bars. The law will give them no mercy,” the office of President Rodrigo Duterte said in Manila.

It said that “the enemies of the state boldly challenged the government’s capability to secure the safety of citizens in that region. The (Armed Forces of the Philippines) will rise to the challenge and crush these godless criminals.”

Jolo island has long been troubled by the presence of Abu Sayyaf militants, who are blacklisted by the United States and the Philippines as a terrorist organization because of years of bombings, kidnappings and beheadings. A Catholic bishop, Benjamin de Jesus, was gunned down by suspected militants outside the cathedral in 1997.

No one has immediately claimed responsibility for the latest attack.

It came nearly a week after minority Muslims in the predominantly Roman Catholic nation endorsed a new autonomous region in the southern Philippines in hopes of ending nearly five decades of a separatist rebellion that has left 150,000 people dead. Although most of the Muslim areas approved the autonomy deal, voters in Sulu province, where Jolo is located, rejected it. The province is home to a rival rebel faction that’s opposed to the deal as well as smaller militant cells that not part of any peace process.

Western governments have welcomed the autonomy pact. They worry that small numbers of Islamic State-linked militants from the Middle East and Southeast Asia could forge an alliance with Filipino insurgents and turn the south into a breeding ground for extremists.

“This bomb attack was done in a place of peace and worship, and it comes at a time when we are preparing for another stage of the peace process in Mindanao,” said Gov. Mujiv Hataman of the Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao. “Human lives are irreplaceable,” he added, calling on Jolo residents to cooperate with authorities to find the perpetrators of this “atrocity.”

Security officials were looking “at different threat groups and they still can’t say if this has something to do with the just concluded plebiscite,” Oscar Albayalde, the national police chief, told ABS-CBN TV network. Hermogenes Esperon, the national security adviser, said that the new autonomous region, called Bangsamoro, “signifies the end of war for secession. It stands for peace in Mindanao.”

Aside from the small but brutal Abu Sayyaf group, other militant groups in Sulu include a small band of young jihadis aligned with the Islamic State group, which has also carried out assaults, including ransom kidnappings and beheadings.

Abu Sayyaf militants are still holding at least five hostages — a Dutch national, two Malaysians, an Indonesian and a Filipino — in their jungle bases mostly near Sulu’s Patikul town, not far from Jolo.

Government forces have pressed on sporadic offensives to crush the militants, including those in Jolo, a poverty-wracked island of more than 700,000 people. A few thousand Catholics live mostly in the capital of Jolo.

There have been speculations that the bombings may be a diversionary move by Muslim militants after troops recently carried out an offensive that killed a number of IS-linked extremists in an encampment in the hinterlands of Lanao del Sur province, also in the south. The area is near Marawi, a Muslim city that was besieged for five months by hundreds of IS-aligned militants, including foreign fighters, in 2017. Troops quelled the insurrection, which left more 1,100 mostly militants dead and the heartland of the mosque-studded city in ruins.

Duterte declared martial law in the entire southern third of the country to deal with the Marawi siege, his worst security crisis. His martial law declaration has been extended to allow troops to finish off radical Muslim groups and other insurgents but bombings and other attacks have continued.

___

Associated Press writer Jim Gomez in Manila, Philippines, contributed to this report.

At U.N., U.S. Urges All Nations to End Venezuela’s ‘Nightmare’

UNITED NATIONS—The United States urged all nations Saturday to end Venezuela’s “nightmare” and support opposition leader Juan Guaido while Russia accused the Trump administration of attempting “to engineer a coup d’etat” against President Nicolas Maduro — a reflection of the world’s deep divisions over the crisis in the South American country.

U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo told the U.N. Security Council at a meeting called by Washington that it’s beyond time to back the Venezuelan people as they try to free themselves from what he called Maduro’s “illegitimate mafia state” and support Guaido. The young opposition leader has declared himself the country’s interim president, arguing that Maduro’s re-election was fraudulent.

But Russia’s U.N. Ambassador Vassily Nebenzia said Venezuela doesn’t threaten international peace and security and accused “extremist opponents” of Maduro’s legitimate government of choosing “maximum confrontation,” including the artificial creation of a parallel government. He urged Pompeo to say whether the U.S. will use military force.

Pompeo later told reporters who asked for a response, “I am not going to speculate or hypothesize on what the U.S. will do next.”

What has played out in Venezuela and the world’s media between supporters and opponents of the Maduro government played out face-to-face in the chamber of the U.N.’s most powerful body, which has failed to take action on the Venezuelan crisis because of deep divisions. The Security Council’s five veto-wielding permanent members could not unite behind a statement on Venezuela, presenting widely differing texts.

The leaders of two of those council nations — France and Britain — joined Spain and Germany to turn up the pressure on Maduro Saturday, saying they would follow the U.S. and others in recognizing Guaido unless Venezuela calls new presidential elections within eight days.

European Union foreign policy chief Federica Mogherini said if there is no announcement of new elections in the next days the 28-nation bloc “will take further actions, including on the issue of recognition of the country’s leadership.”

Venezuela’s Foreign Minister Jorge Arreaza dismissed the deadline.

“Europe is giving us eight days?” he asked the council. “Where do you get that you have the power to establish a deadline or an ultimatum to a sovereign people. It’s almost childlike.”

Arreaza said Venezuela “will not allow anyone to impose on us any decision or order” and demanded that someone show him where in the country’s constitution it states that an individual can proclaim himself president.

As for possible military action to oust Maduro, Arreaza said, “we will not allow any government or any country to violate our sovereignty, and to give a pretext for Donald Trump to start a war.”

The opposition to Guaido was also reflected in the initial procedural vote on whether the 15-member Security Council should even discuss the crisis in Venezuela, which is not on its official agenda.

The United States barely survived the vote to go ahead with the meeting, receiving the minimum nine “yes” votes from the council’s six Western nations along with Kuwait, Peru and the Dominican Republic. China, South Africa and Equatorial Guinea joined Russia in voting “no” while Indonesia and Ivory Coast abstained.

Pompeo went after Russia and China, accusing them of trying “to prop up Maduro while he is in dire straits … in the hopes of recovering billions of dollars in ill-considered investments and assistance made over the years.”

But he saved his sharpest attack for Cuba, saying no country has done more to sustain “the nightmarish condition of the Venezuelan people.” He said Cuba has sent “security and intelligence thugs” to sustain Maduro’s “illegitimate rule.”

“Now is the time for every other national to pick a side,” Pompeo said. “No more delays, no more games. Either you stand with the forces of freedom, or you’re in league with Maduro and his mayhem.”

China’s U.N. Ambassador Ma Zhaoxu said his government “firmly opposed” the U.S. accusations and doesn’t interfere in the internal affairs of other countries.

“We hope the country that accuses others can do likewise itself,” Ma told the council.

Russia’s Nebenzia also rejected Pompeo’s claims.

Cuba’s U.N. Ambassador Anayansi Rodriguez went further, rejecting “the deliberate” and “fake news” cast on the country not only by Pompeo but by Elliot Abrams, the new chief of U.S. policy on Venezuela who sat in the council after the secretary of state left.

Abrams called Venezuela “a satellite of Cuba and Russia” — which the three countries vehemently denied — and said Saturday’s meeting “is not about foreign intervention in Venezuela” but “about the right of Venezuelans to direct their own internal affairs and choose the future of their own country democratically.”

The Security Council meeting came a day after Guaido vowed to remain on the streets until his country has a transitional government, while Maduro dug in and accused his opponents of orchestrating a coup.

In rival press conferences, Guaido urged his followers to stage another mass protest next week, while Maduro pushed his call for dialogue.

The standoff could set the scene for more violence and has plunged troubled Venezuela into a new chapter of political turmoil that rights groups say has already left more than two dozen dead as thousands take to the street demanding Maduro step down.

Guaido took a symbolic oath of office Wednesday proclaiming himself the nation’s constitutional leader on grounds that Maduro’s re-election last year was fraudulent — an allegation supported by the U.S., the European Union and many other nations.

The Trump administration announced it was recognizing the 35-year-old leader of the opposition-controlled National Assembly quickly after his oath, leading Maduro to say that he was breaking all diplomatic ties with the United States and expelling U.S. diplomats. Guaido told the Americans to stay.

Pompeo told the Security Council: “Let me be 100 percent clear — President Trump and I fully expect that our diplomats will continue to receive protections provided under the Vienna Convention. Do not test the United States on our resolve to protect our people.”

On Saturday, Venezuela’s government backtracked on an earlier 72-hour deadline for U.S. Embassy personnel to leave the country.

Venezuela’s Foreign Affairs Ministry said it is negotiating the establishment of a U.S. Interests Office and will allow U.S. Embassy personnel to remain in the country while talks take place. It said that talks about an interest section will have a 30-day limit and if no agreement is reached embassy personnel will then have to leave. The Trump administration had refused to obey the directive and Saturday’s decision puts off a potential conflict between both countries.

Recognition of Guaido by the U.S., Venezuela’s biggest trade partner, threatens to heap more misery on the country’s crisis-stricken economy, and a similar move by European nations would complicate matters further.

Directives sent Friday by the State Department to the Federal Reserve will make it harder for Maduro to gain access to the government’s sizable overseas assets, including revenue from oil sales and profits by Houston-based Citgo, a unit of the state-owned oil giant PDVSA.

Guaido’s move is the most direct challenge to Maduro’s rule despite years of protests at home and international efforts to isolate the regime amid a growing humanitarian crisis fueled by falling oil prices and government mismanagement.

Maduro is accusing the opposition of working with the U.S. to overthrow him. Though over a dozen nations are recognizing Guaido as president, Maduro still has the support of the military and powerful, longtime allies like Russia and China. He said he is still willing to talk with the opposition.

Both sides attempted dialogue last year, but it fell apart as Maduro pushed forward with an early election that Venezuela’s most popular opposition leaders were barred from running in. Many in the international community condemned that vote and now consider the National Assembly, which Maduro has stripped of its power, the only legitimate institution.

Russia’s Nebenzia, who opposed Saturday’s meeting, said it was useful because it showed Washington that a majority of countries favor Venezuela’s sovereignty, territorial independence, and non-interference in its internal affairs.

“Let’s not escalate tensions around Venezuela,” he said at the end of the council meeting.

___

Smith reported from Caracas, Venezuela.

How Facebook Cashed In on Tricking Kids

This story was originally published by Reveal from The Center for Investigative Reporting, a nonprofit news organization based in the San Francisco Bay Area. Learn more at revealnews.org and subscribe to the Reveal podcast, produced with PRX, at revealnews.org/podcast.

Facebook orchestrated a multiyear effort that duped children and their parents out of money, in some cases hundreds or even thousands of dollars, and then often refused to give the money back, according to court documents unsealed tonight in response to a Reveal legal action.

The records are part of a class-action lawsuit focused on how Facebook targeted children in an effort to expand revenue for online games, such as Angry Birds, PetVille and Ninja Saga.

The more than 135 pages of unsealed documents, which include internal Facebook memos, secret strategies and employee emails, paint a troubling picture of how the social media giant conducted business.

Facebook encouraged game developers to let children spend money without their parents’ permission–something the social media giant called “friendly fraud”–in an effort to maximize revenues, according to a document detailing the company’s game strategy.

Sometimes the children did not even know they were spending money, according to another internal Facebook report. Facebook employees knew this. Their own reports showed underage users did not realize their parents’ credit cards were connected to their Facebook accounts and they were spending real money in the games, according to the unsealed documents.

For years, the company ignored warnings from its own employees that it was bamboozling children.

A team of Facebook employees even developed a method that would have reduced the problem of children being hoodwinked into spending money, but the company did not implement it, and instead told game developers that the social media giant was focused on maximizing revenues.

When parents found out how much their children had spent–one 15-year-old racked up $6,500 in charges in about two weeks playing games on Facebook–the company denied requests for refunds. Facebook employees referred to these children as “whales”–a term borrowed from the casino industry to describe profligate spenders. A child could spend hundreds of dollars a day on in-game features such as arming their character with a flaming sword or a new magic spell to defeat an enemy–even if they didn’t realize it until the credit card bill arrived.

Outraged parents were forced to turn to the Better Business Bureau, their credit card companies or even the courts to get their money back.

The revenue Facebook earned off children had such large chargeback rates–a process in which the credit card company is forced to step in and claw back money on behalf of parents–that it far exceeded what the Federal Trade Commission has said is a red flag for deceptive business practices.

Despite the many warning signs, which continued for years, Facebook made a clear decision. It pursued a goal of increasing its revenues at the expense of children and their parents.

U.S. District Judge Beth Freeman ordered the documents unsealed on Jan. 14 after Reveal from The Center for Investigative Reporting intervened last year, arguing the public had a right to know how Facebook targeted children. The judge gave Facebook until Jan. 24 to unseal the documents, although she allowed the company to keep a few of the records sealed or partially redacted. The documents span a time period of 2010 to 2014.

Facebook, once a darling of Silicon Valley, has faced heavy scrutiny over the last year as users and lawmakers take aim at its questionable handling of user data and the spread of fake news. These new documents raise even more questions for the company and its CEO, Mark Zuckerberg, about the methods employees used to make it one of the wealthiest tech companies in the world.

The company continues to deal with the consequences of their push for revenue growth.

Facebook officials declined to answer specific questions for this story. In a statement, the company said: “we routinely examine our own practices, and in 2016 agreed to update our terms and provide dedicated resources for refund requests related to purchased made by minors on Facebook.”

Facebook Found a Solution but It Ignored It

Early in the afternoon of July 8, 2011, Tara Stewart sent out a message to her colleagues at Facebook. It was full of internal jargon.

“If the devs are really concerned about the cbs and not refunds it could make sense to start refunding for blatant FF-minor,” she wrote.

Stewart was suggesting to her colleagues that maybe Facebook should just refund money to parents when their kids clearly used their credit card without permission.

“Devs” meant game developers, and “cbs” meant chargebacks. “FF-minor” was Facebook’s term for “friendly fraud” involving a minor. Stewart was deeply involved in Facebook’s efforts to increase its game revenues.

A couple of months earlier, she had launched a project to help Facebook reduce chargebacks from the credit card companies, who were forcing the social media giant to return money spent by children on games after hearing from outraged parents who said they were duped.

Chargebacks were often the last resort for disgruntled parents, short of filing a lawsuit.

The problem seemed especially bad with certain games, and Stewart mentioned a few to her colleagues: “PetVille, Happy Aquarium, Wild Ones, Barn Buddy and any Ninja game.”

She and her colleagues began working on a solution to curb children from spending money without their parents’ permission.

An internal Facebook survey of users found that many parents did not even realize Facebook was storing their credit card information, according to an unsealed document. And parents also did not know their children could use their credit card without re-entering a password or some other form of verification.

Perhaps even worse, the children didn’t even realize they were spending real money within the game, because as Stewart would later write, “It doesn’t necessarily look like ‘real’ money to a minor.”

So as a test, Stewart and her colleagues tried requiring children to re-enter the first six digits of the credit card number on certain games before they could spend money. Stewart called it a “good first step.” It worked, according to the unsealed documents. It lowered the number of refund and chargeback requests from children.

“It forces the minor to prove he is in possession of the credit card,” she wrote. “Often refunds/cbs occur because a parent permits his child to spend at a small denomination and doesn’t realize that the CC info will be stored.”

One of her colleagues agreed, responding a few hours later, “It should keep kids from running rampant with their parents CCs.”

“CCs” stood for credit cards.

But Stewart’s study had uncovered a downside of protecting children from unwittingly spending money. It would likely hurt Facebook’s revenue.

So despite their monthslong efforts, and results showing they could reduce the problem, and the fact that tech companies such as Apple were already using some similar form of authorization, Facebook decided to go in another direction. It would not try to block children from unwittingly spending hundreds or even thousands of dollars on its games.

Fixing the Problem Would Have Hurt Revenue

The problem Stewart tried to fix was not a small one.

A few months before she launched her project in mid-2011, Facebook had uncovered some troubling data about the children playing its games. They were requesting refunds and demanding chargebacks at extraordinarily high rates.

The company had analyzed data on game revenue from children for the time period Oct. 12, 2010, through Jan. 12, 2011. The children had “spent a whopping $3.6 million” during the three-month period, according to the report.

But the company had discovered that more than 9 percent of the money it made from children was being clawed back by the credit card companies.

In comparison, the average chargeback rate for businesses is 0.5 percent, according to the Merchant Risk Council, a nonprofit that helps businesses manage risk.

A chargeback rate of 1 percent is considered high, and credit card companies such as Visa and Mastercard will put businesses on probation programs for rates consistently that high.

The Federal Trade Commission said in an unrelated fraud case in 2016 that a 2 percent chargeback rate was a “red flag” of a “deceptive” business.

The makers of Angry Birds, one of the top games during that time, were also worried about Facebook’s high rates, according to an email the game maker Rovio sent to Facebook.

“We have been seeing refund rates of 5-10 percent in terms of credits spent so far on Angry Birds. This seems quite high to me, but it might just be normal for games on Facebook,” a Rovio employee wrote to his counterpart at Facebook.

Facebook launched an analysis to determine what was happening with Angry Birds. It found that in nearly all cases, about 93 percent of the time, the refunds were a result of credit card holders not realizing the game was charging their account.

“In nearly all cases the parent knew their child was playing Angry Birds, but didn’t think the child would be allowed to buy anything without their password or authorization first (Like in iOS),” a Facebook employee wrote.

The average age of those playing Angry Birds was 5 years old, according to Facebook’s analysis.

Then the employee wrote what is a common theme throughout the unsealed documents: “if we were to build risk models to reduce it, we would most likely block good TPV.”

“TPV” is total purchase value, also called revenue.

If Facebook tried to stop children and their parents from unwittingly spending money, it would hurt the company’s revenue.

‘Friendly Fraud – What It Is, Why It’s Challenging’

Facebook made a decision. Company policy was to tell game developers to let children spend money without their parents’ permission, according to an internal memo circulated within the company.

The memo stated, “Friendly Fraud – what it is, why it’s challenging, and why you shouldn’t try to block it.” “Friendly fraud” is the term Facebook used when children spent money on games without their parents’ permission.

Facebook made clear that game developers should let children spend money even without their parents’ permission.

The company was focused on revenue, not blocking friendly fraud. Its stated philosophy on chargebacks was “maximizing revenue,” according to the memo.

“There is a huge need to educate developers,” Elizabeth Williges, a Facebook employee wrote in the memo. It was sent to the head of Facebook’s payment operations and other employees, including Tara Stewart.

Rather than trying to stop children from making costly mistakes, the document stated that developers should just give free virtual items to users who complain, things such as flaming swords, extra lives and other in-game enhancements.

This was better than refunding money to kids because, as the Facebook employee said in her message, “Virtual goods bear no cost.”

And for those customers who turned to their credit cards for help, Facebook was devising another strategy. It would design a program that automatically disputed customer’s chargeback requests, without even bothering to review the merits of those requests, according to another unsealed document.

At the time the document was written, Facebook was waiting to see if it would win enough chargeback disputes to make it worth automating the process. It is unclear from the documents if Facebook won enough disputes and went ahead with its plan.

A 12-Year-Old Racks Up Hundreds in Charges

Glynnis Bohannon’s 12-year-old son asked if he could use her Wells Fargo credit card to buy $20 in virtual goods for his favorite game on Facebook, Ninja Saga.

The weather in Phoenix, where they lived, had been unseasonably hot that October in 2011. He wanted to play inside on his computer. His mom said yes, handing him the credit card, and in exchange he handed her a $20 bill he earned doing chores.

As he started playing, he had no idea Facebook had stored his mom’s credit card information, he would later tell his attorneys. He also didn’t realize that as he played, Facebook continued to charge his mom’s credit card far beyond the original $20. He thought he was only using fake coins that were just part of the free game, he said.

Facebook’s Tara Stewart had foreseen this exact problem a few months earlier. She even noted that Ninja games were especially problematic, and had developed a method that would have stopped Bohannon’s 12-year-old son from unwittingly spending money. But Facebook had not implemented her recommendation. And as he sat there, avoiding the dry heat of the Arizona desert, the 12-year-old boy was duped into spending several hundred dollars on his mom’s charge card.

When Bohannon came home later, her husband said, “The bank called.” So she went online to check their accounts.

“I saw all these $19 charges from Facebook,” she said. “It added up to nearly $1,000.”

She asked her son why he would do that. But he was flabbergasted by the charges too. So Bohannon asked her son to play the game so she could watch what he was doing wrong.

As he played, he occasionally clicked on a corner of the screen that gave him more abilities, such as magical items, or new ninja attacks for his character. It didn’t ask if he wanted to pay for it, or let him know that his mom’s credit card was being charged.

“There was no indication he was spending money,” Bohannon said. “So, 20 minutes later, I rechecked my credit card statement online. And sure enough, there was another $19.99 charge from Facebook.”

She went to Facebook’s website to dispute the charges. She thought there would be a form or an email, some way to contact Facebook for a refund. After searching for hours, she gave up.

“It was like driving into a brick wall,” she said. “It was just a dead end.”

Bohannon’s experience trying to get direct help from Facebook was not unique. The company knew customers were having problems reaching it.

The same month that the Bohannon family lost several hundred dollars playing Ninja Saga, Facebook employees discussed the problem. Their system that was supposed to let users report problems was itself riddled with issues, according to the unsealed documents.

“I was stuck in an infinite-loop of questions just today,” wrote an employee testing it. “It feels like the form is this Frankenstein beast that we’ve bolted together over the last 6 months or so.”

Another employee responded, “This makes us think – how many users give up.”

And that wasn’t the only problem. Only about 50 percent of Facebook’s customers were receiving receipts for their transactions, according to another unsealed document.

“I felt it was all very deceitful,” said Bohannon, who also never received a receipt.

So in April 2012, she and her son filed a lawsuit against Facebook to get their money back.

But now they had to deal directly with Facebook’s attorneys who wanted to depose Bohannon’s 12-year-old son.

“Facebook’s lawyers were extremely aggressive, and treated him terribly,” Parker said.

Bohannon said she felt awful watching her son being interrogated.

In 2013, more than two years after Stewart designed a solution that would have helped the company avoid duping children, and more than a year after Bohannon filed a lawsuit, an underage girl wrote to Facebook requesting a refund.

Seemingly, little had changed at the social media giant.

The girl told Facebook that the charges on her account were a mistake, according to an unsealed document. Two Facebook employees discussing her request referred to the child as a “whale.”

Gillian: Would you refund this whale ticket? User is disputing ALL charges …

Michael: What’s the user’s total/lifetime spend?

Gillian: It’s $6,545 – but card was just added on Sept. 2. They are disputing all of it I believe. That user looks underage as well. Well, maybe not under 13.

Michael: Is the user writing in a parent, or is this user a 13ish year old.

Gillian: It’s a 13ish yr old. Says its 15. Looks a bit younger. She* not its. Lol.

Michael: … I wouldn’t refund

Gillian: Oh that’s fine. Cool. Agreed. Just double checking.

The Lawsuit Grows

In August 2014, the Bohannons’ lawsuit grew in stature. John R. Parker Jr. and the team of attorneys representing the Bohannon family had filed for class certification, meaning other children and parents would be represented too.

But Facebook successfully fought to get most of the records in the case sealed, saying public access to the documents would hurt its business. So the trove of behind-the-scenes strategies and messages that Parker and his team had uncovered remained hidden from public view, until Reveal intervened in the case last year.

Among those sealed documents was one that showed Facebook’s problems had not gone away.

As of 2014, children and their parents were still clawing back money from Facebook at extremely high rates. About 9 percent of the revenue Facebook made off kids was eventually charged back by the credit card companies as recently as March 2014. That is nearly identical to the extraordinary rates Facebook first noticed more than three years earlier. In effect, the company had done nothing to change it.

In 2016, Facebook decided to settle the case, and agreed “to dedicate an internal queue to refund requests for in-app purchases made by U.S. minors.”

Facebook issued this statement in response to a request for an interview:

“We were contacted by the Center for Investigative Reporting last year, and we voluntarily unsealed documents related to a 2012 case about our refund policies for in-app purchases that parents believe were made in error by their minor children. We intend to release additional documents as instructed by the court. Facebook works with parents and experts to offer tools for families navigating Facebook and the web. As part of that work, we routinely examine our own practices, and in 2016 agreed to update our terms and provide dedicated resources for refund requests related to purchased made by minors on Facebook.”

Climate Change Can Help Create Refugees, Researchers Say

Austrian researchers have made it simpler to identify climate refugees, claiming to have established a direct causal link between climate change, conflict and the numbers of migrants.

They are not the first to confirm that there is a statistical association between the likelihood of drought, or heat extremes, and violence. Evidence of cause for any civil or international conflict is always complex and often disputed.

But researchers now say that mathematical techniques provide an indirect connection between formally established drought conditions and recorded levels of applications for asylum.

The link is conflict, of the kind observed in Tunisia, Libya, Yemen and Syria.

“Climate change will not cause conflict and subsequent asylum-seeking flows everywhere,” said Jesus Crespona Cuaresma of the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis. “But in a context of poor governance and a medium level of democracy, severe climate conditions can create conflict over scarce resources.”

Specific Conditions

He and colleagues report in the journal Global Environmental Change that they looked at data from the UN High Commissioner for Refugees of asylum applications from 157 countries between 2006 and 2015.

They then matched the patterns of asylum bids against conditions in their parent countries, using a measure that scientists call the Standardised Precipitation-Evapotranspiration Index, which provides a guide to the gap between rainfall and heat and drought.

They next assembled a tally measure of battle-related deaths collected by the Uppsala Conflict Data Programme in Sweden. Then they modeled other factors, such as the distance between the countries of origin and destination, the sizes of populations, the migrant networks, the political status of the drought-stressed countries and the known divisions into ethnic and religious groups.

And they found that – in specific circumstances – climatic conditions do lead to increased migration as a consequence of conflict exacerbated by the more severe droughts.

Hard to Establish

All conclusions about human behavior at the political level are difficult to establish. Archaeologists and climate scientists have repeatedly linked the collapse of ancient civilizations to climate change but in most such cases the evidence is circumstantial and incomplete.

But there is often little or no direct testimony from the faraway past, and no surviving voice to offer a challenge. The connection between climate conditions and human response is less certain in a disputed world.

Researchers have systematically found associations between climate and violence and between climate and the conditions for civil inequality.

Urgent Prospect

Some have found an association between drought and the conflict in Syria, but others have disputed the conclusion. Researchers have warned that future climate change could create large numbers of migrants and climate refugees and that both issues are urgent.

But it remains more difficult to establish that climate is the only or even the most pressing factor in any individual case.

So the IIASA finding is a cautious one, backed, the scientists say, by statistical rigor. This identifies climate change, and migration flow, and finds conflict as the causal mediator which links the two, most obviously in the events in the Middle East and North Africa since 2006.

“Our results suggest that climatic conditions, by affecting drought severity and the likelihood of armed conflict, play a statistically significant role as an explanatory factor for asylum-seeking exclusively for countries that were affected by the Arab Spring,” they write.