Chris Hedges's Blog, page 636

French Policeman Who Swapped Himself for a Hostage Dies

REBES, France—France’s top security official says a heroic officer who swapped himself for a hostage during an attack on a supermarket has died of his injuries.

Interior Minister Gerard Collomb wrote in a tweet early Saturday that Col. Arnaud Beltrame had “died for his country.”

Beltrame offered himself up unarmed to the 25-year-old attacker in exchange for a female hostage. He managed to surreptitiously leave his cellphone on so that police outside could hear what was going on inside the supermarket. Officials said once they heard shots inside the market they decided to storm it, killing the gunman.

Beltrame was grievously injured, and his death raises the toll from the attack to four.

The Islamic State group claimed responsibility for the attack, the deadliest since Emmanuel Macron became president last May.

School District Arms Teachers and Students With Rocks

A rural school district in Pennsylvania is arming teachers and students with buckets of rocks as a last resort should an armed intruder burst in, the superintendent said Friday.

Every classroom in the district about 90 miles (145 kilometers) northwest of Philadelphia has a 5-gallon bucket of river stones, said Blue Mountain School District Superintendent David Helsel.

“We always strive to find new ways to keep our students safe,” Helsel told The Associated Press in a telephone interview, adding that the rocks are one small part of the district’s overall security plan.

Throwing rocks is more effective than just crawling under desks and waiting, and it gives students and teachers a chance to defend themselves, he said. The district has about 2,700 students at three elementary schools, a middle school and a high school.

Staff and students in the Blue Mountain district have been trained in a program called “ALICE” which stands for alert, lockdown, inform, counter and evacuate. Helsel said the rocks are part of the “counter” portion of training, fighting back if the intruder makes his way into the classroom.

The buckets are kept in classroom closets.

Kenneth Trump, president of the Cleveland-based National School Safety and Security Services, a K-12 security consulting firm, calls the idea illogical and irrational and said it could possibly cost lives.

He said the efforts fill an emotional security need, but don’t actually enhance security.

One high school senior said he supports the plan, adding that throwing rocks is better than throwing books or pencils.

Parents also have been supportive of the measure, which was implemented in the fall.

“At this point, we have to get creative, we have to protect our kids first and foremost,” parent Dori Bornstein told WNEP-TV. “Throwing rocks, it’s an option.”

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De Groot reported from Philadelphia.

New Order Bans Most Transgender People From U.S. Military

PALM BEACH, Fla.—President Donald Trump released an order Friday night banning most transgender troops from serving in the military except under “limited circumstances,” following up on his calls last year to ban transgender individuals from serving.

The White House said retaining troops with a history or diagnosis of “gender dysphoria” — those who may require substantial medical treatment — “presents considerable risk to military effectiveness and lethality.”

Trump surprised the Pentagon’s leadership in a 2017 tweet when he declared he would reverse an Obama-era plan to allow transgender individuals to serve openly. His push for the ban has been blocked by several legal challenges, and four federal courts have ruled against the ban. The Pentagon responded by allowing those serving to stay in the military, and began allowing transgender individuals to enlist beginning Jan. 1.

California Attorney General Xavier Becerra said his state will continue its legal fight against the ban.

“California will take every measure available to prevent President Trump’s discriminatory action that harms or marginalizes transgender service members — or any other transgender Americans who wish to courageously defend our nation,” he said.

“This new policy will enable the military to apply well-established mental and physical health standards — including those regarding the use of medical drugs — equally to all individuals who want to join and fight for the best military force the world has ever seen,” White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said Friday.

The new policy was promptly assailed by congressional Democrats and civil rights groups. House Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi tweeted, “No one with the strength & bravery to serve in the U.S. military should be turned away because of who they are. This hateful ban is purpose-built to humiliate our brave transgender members of the military who serve with honor & dignity.”

The Human Rights Campaign, the nation’s largest LGBT civil rights organization, accused the Trump administration of pushing “anti-transgender prejudices onto the military.”

“There is simply no way to spin it, the Trump-Pence Administration is going all in on its discriminatory, unconstitutional and despicable ban on transgender troops,” said HRC President Chad Griffin.

Joshua Block, a senior staff attorney at the American Civil Liberties Union LGBT & HIV Project, said the policy “effectively coerces transgender people who wish to serve into choosing between their humanity and their country, and makes it clear that transgender service members are not welcome.”

Trump received recommendations from Defense Secretary Jim Mattis in February for dealing with transgender individuals serving in the military. The White House said Mattis and Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen agreed with the policy.

In Mattis’s Feb. 22 memo to Trump explaining his recommendation, which the Pentagon made public late Friday night, he cited exceptions to the ban.

“Currently serving service members who have been diagnosed with gender dysphoria since the previous administration’s policy took effect and prior to the effective date of this new policy, may continue to serve in their preferred gender and receive medically necessary treatment for gender dysphoria,” Mattis wrote.

Earlier Friday, Maj. David Eastburn, a Pentagon spokesman, said the announcement of a new policy would have no immediate practical effect on the military because the Pentagon is obliged to continue to recruit and retain transgender people in accordance with current law.

The issue has become mired in a complicated string of political statements, court decisions and policy reviews since Trump first stunned his administration with his tweets last July. It’s unclear how much impact the court decisions will have on Trump’s decision.

The Justice Department issued a statement Friday saying it will continue to defend the Pentagon’s “lawful authority to create and implement personnel policies they have determined are necessary to best defend our nation. Consistent with this new policy, we are asking the courts to lift all related preliminary injunctions.”

Activist groups had worried the administration could enact such strict enlistment and health care restrictions that it would become all but impossible for transgender troops to join or continue serving.

Under guidelines presented in December, the Pentagon could disqualify potential recruits with gender dysphoria, those with a history of medical treatments associated with gender transition and those who underwent reconstruction. Such recruits could be allowed in if a medical provider certified they’ve been clinically stable in the preferred sex for 18 months and are free of significant distress or impairment in social, occupational or other important areas.

Transgender individuals receiving hormone therapy must be stable on their medication for 18 months.

The requirements make it challenging for a transgender recruit to pass. But they mirror conditions laid out by President Barack Obama’s administration in 2016, when the Pentagon initially lifted its ban on transgender troops serving openly in the military.

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Follow Thomas on Twitter at https://twitter.com/KThomasDC

Korean War Games Are No Game

The remarkable recent diplomatic overtures from both North and South Korea present the United States with an extraordinary opportunity to step back from the nuclear precipice. And there’s one single act—or more precisely, the absence of an act—that Washington, D.C., can undertake to seize that opportunity.

In one of several surprising concessions, North Korean leader Kim Jong Un indicated to South Korean officials that he would “accept” the resumption this spring of the annual U.S./Republic of Korea joint military drills which the two countries have conducted together for many years. Nonetheless, the best way now to pursue an enduring Korean peace is to cancel these American and South Korean war games. Not just this spring. Forever.

During his meetings with South Korean officials, Kim offered to engage in a “heart-to-heart” dialogue about a normalization of relations with the U.S. He suggested that North Korea would be willing to freeze both its nuclear testing and its missile testing. He said that if the United States would remove its military threats and guarantee “the security of its system,” North Korea would then possess “no reason to retain” a nuclear arsenal at all. And finally, in what would be an unprecedented event, Kim offered to meet directly with the American president.

President Donald Trump immediately accepted that invitation. But the next day, predictably for this chaotic administration, White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said that such a meeting could take place only if North Korea first undertook unspecified “concrete and verifiable actions.” For those old enough to remember the Cold War, this concatenation calls to mind President Ronald Reagan’s agreement with Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev at Reykjavik in 1986 to eliminate all the world’s nuclear weapons by the year 2000—only to be frantically talked out of it by his horrified advisers.

Despite these game-changing initiatives, Washington and Seoul are still on course to launch their huge annual joint military drills in April—the largest in the world—known this year as “Key Resolve/Foal Eagle” (whatever that means). In the past, these war games have included the participation of more than 200,000 personnel, the dispatch of aircraft carriers, nuclear submarines and nuclear-capable strategic bombers to the region, and the simulation of “regime decapitation operations” directed specifically at Kim Jong Un.

But the fundamental fact to recognize about these particular drills is that they serve absolutely no military purpose. The U.S. possesses perhaps 1,000 times the conventional military capability of North Korea. Imagine a fifth-grader taunting a robust high school linebacker in the gym. Instead of sneering at the insolent brat or simply ignoring him, however, the linebacker is busily working the speed bag. Why? “Because I have to be on my toes in case this ever turns into a real fight.” No, high school linebacker, you don’t have to be on your toes. You don’t have to work the speed bag. You can take the fifth grader.

Just as the United States can take North Korea. One doesn’t have to be a retired American general or a CNN defense intellectual to understand that if any kind of shooting war starts, the United States could destroy the North Korean military and defeat the North Korean regime within the space of a week.

Now, yes, North Korea could inflict vast damage before that point is reached. Long before North Korea had secured the nuclear deterrent it now appears to possess, it fashioned for itself a decidedly low-tech “ordnance deterrent”—more than 10,000 artillery tubes and rocket launchers, just across the Korean Demilitarized Zone (DMZ) and pointed directly at Seoul and its 25 million inhabitants. It’s the largest artillery force in the world, and the North Koreans could start firing away seconds after hostilities commenced. North Korea also may possess both chemical and biological weapons arsenals. And, in the classic “use them or lose them” dilemma of the nuclear age, North Korea might successfully launch nuclear-tipped ballistic missiles toward South Korea, Japan, Guam, Hawaii and perhaps even the continental United States before the U.S. could take them out. These countries cannot, of course, accept the detonation on their territory of a single one.

The thing about those existing North Korean deterrents, however, is that joint military drills can do nothing to erode them. If it will take a week to militarily defeat North Korea, that damage will be inflicted before the end of the week. That retaliation will be launched. War games, no matter how sophisticated, can do nothing to diminish the opening salvos of a war.

But let’s consider a couple of things that war games can do.

First, joint military drills humiliate North Korea. If there’s any lesson that a self-assured and confident man like President John F. Kennedy left us in the Cuban missile crisis, it’s to avoid kicking an opponent while he’s down, to leave him with a face-saving off-ramp, to allow him to salvage some pride. Imagine if some hypothetical military adversary of the United States—which had leveled fully 80 percent of American cities a few decades earlier and which now maintained a vastly superior military capability—flew hundreds of warplanes and sailed dozens of warships and test-fired countless weapons just a few dozen miles off the coast of San Diego or Boston or Miami. Wouldn’t that be humiliating and degrading and emasculating—especially for thin-skinned leaders like the ones currently in charge in both Pyongyang and Washington?

Second, and more importantly, North Korea cannot know that war games aren’t in reality preparations for war. And that could lead to a repetition of one of most terrifying and unknown episodes of the Cold War—the Able Archer crisis of November 1983.

Relations between Moscow and Washington at the time were strained, to say the least. President Reagan that March had publicly declared the Soviet Union to be an “evil empire.” Then in September, the USSR shot down a wildly off-course civilian airliner that had strayed over Soviet airspace—killing all 269 aboard, including 69 Americans. Reagan defense cognoscenti Colin Gray and Keith Payne published an article in Foreign Policy magazine, called “Victory is Possible,” which maintained that the U.S. could fight and win a “protracted nuclear war.”

So it should come as little surprise that when the “Able Archer” NATO military exercises commenced on Nov. 7, 1983—simulating not just war with the USSR but nuclear war—Soviet leaders frantically tried to ascertain whether the massive military movements were, in fact, not an exercise, but preparations for launching a full-scale invasion and a nuclear first strike upon the Soviet Union. During that time Soviet officers moved their nuclear weapons from storage sites to delivery units, and placed the ICBM force on “raised combat alert.” Although the full story of the deliberations inside the Kremlin may never completely be known, it seems far from impossible to suppose that during those 72 perilous hours, the Soviet Politburo of Yuri Andropov seriously considered ordering a nuclear first strike upon the United States.

Which, in all likelihood, also would have been the last nuclear first strike by anyone.

It will be a long road ahead to achieve an enduring peace in Korea. The United States must acknowledge that North Korea has a right to protect its own national security—and that, in the face of external threats, nuclear weapons are its only tool to deter an incalculably more powerful adversary. Any talks between Trump and Kim must be directed, most fundamentally, at eliminating those threats in exchange for eliminating those weapons. Such a grand deal ideally would be expressed in the form of a peace treaty to formally end the Korean War. This agreement would renounce any future “regime change” (much as we all might loathe what that regime does to its own people), provide genuine and irreversible security guarantees to Pyongyang, and chart a course toward the eventual goal of a single, unified Korea. After all, said Albert Einstein, “the real cause of all international conflicts is the existence of separate competing sovereign nations.”

But the first step down that long road, one that is simultaneously the most urgent and the most important, is to put an end to war games that simulate war with North Korea. Because one of these years, much like during Able Archer, North Korea might decide that those war games are no games.

What if Mike Pompeo, confirmed as the new secretary of state, makes more public utterances like the one he made at the Aspen Security Forum last year, when he said: “The thing that is most dangerous … is the character who holds the control. … The North Korean people I’m sure are lovely people and would love to see him go.” What if John Bolton makes “the legal case for striking North Korea first” not just in the pages of The Wall Street Journal, but as the new White House national security adviser? What if the summit between President Trump and Chairman Kim doesn’t happen, or flops, or devolves into bragging about the size of their buttons? What better way to commence a military assault, North Korean defense planners might say to each other, than to array an armada of military assets just off the coast of North Korea—yet claim that those forces are just engaging in military exercises?

Someday, North Korea might conclude that the U.S. and South Korea are not just practicing for a future war with the north, but are preparing to launch an immediate attack—perhaps even a nuclear attack. If that conclusion does indeed come home to roost in Pyongyang, what will decision-makers in North Korea do? What would Yuri Andropov do? What would you do, if you were Kim Jong Un?

U.S., World Stocks Plunge on Trade Fears

NEW YORK—Stocks around the world plunged Friday as investors feared that a trade conflict between the U.S. and China, the biggest economies in the world, would escalate. A second day of big losses pushed U.S. stocks to their worst week in two years.

Investors fear that if China responds in kind to sanctions on $60 billion worth of Chinese imports the White House announced on Thursday, it will be a first step toward a full-blown trade war that could damage the global economy and slash profits at big U.S. exporters like Apple and Boeing.

The market’s two biggest sectors slumped the most. Technology stocks have made enormous gains over the past year, but since they do so much business outside the U.S., investors see them as particularly vulnerable in a trade dispute. The sector dropped 7.9 percent this week.

Banks also fell sharply. Amid the trade-war rumblings, investors fled to the safety of bonds and drove down yields, a potential negative for bank profits. That marked a reversal from earlier in the week, when banks rose as the Federal Reserve raised interest rates.

It wound up being the worst week for U.S. indexes since January 2016. The S&P 500 index sank 6 percent. Among notable decliners was Facebook, which lost 13.9 percent, or $68 billion in value, as outrage mounted over its handling of user data. That’s about as much as the company was worth in in 2012, the year of its initial public offering.

Stocks sagged at the start of this month after tariffs on aluminum and steel were announced, but they quickly recovered as the administration said the tariffs wouldn’t be as severe as they first looked. The losses this week were worse, and investors are hoping for hints the sanctions on China are more of a negotiating tactic.

“There could be a possibility of a bounce back if, as this progresses, both sides look like they’re negotiating,” said Lisa Erickson, chief investment officer at U.S. Bank Wealth Management. “There could be further decline if people get a sense there could be more trade restrictions in place.”

The S&P 500 index dropped 55.43 points, or 2.1 percent, to 2,588.26 on Friday. The Dow Jones industrial average lost 424.69 points, or 1.8 percent, to 23,533.20. The Nasdaq composite fell 174.01 points, or 2.4 percent, to 6,992.67.

Germany’s DAX lost 1.8 percent and the French CAC-40 fell 1.4 percent. The FTSE 100 in Britain dipped 0.4 percent. Japan’s benchmark Nikkei 225 index plunged 4.5 percent and South Korea’s Kospi tumbled 3.2 percent. Hong Kong’s Hang Seng lost 2.5 percent.

Big U.S. companies tend to get more of their revenue from foreign customers than small companies do, and that makes them more vulnerable to damage from a trade war. With nearly 1.4 billion people, China is a big market for the largest U.S. businesses.

Not every company breaks out how much of its revenue comes from abroad, but FactSet estimates that 30.5 percent of revenue at big companies in the S&P 500 comes from outside the United States. For the smaller companies in the S&P 600 index, it’s just 19.5 percent. Smaller companies are also getting a bigger benefit from the recent cut in corporate tax rates.

“We think a lot of the areas in the market with the greatest potential for earnings improvement this year are small- and mid-cap stocks, things that have the biggest benefit from tax reform and are less subject to trade wars,” said Eric Marshall, portfolio manager at Hodges mutual funds.

The Russell 2000 index of smaller-company stocks sank 33.79 points, or 2.2 percent, to 1,510.08, but it’s flat this month while the S&P 500 is down 4.6 percent.

Sales outside the U.S. are especially important for technology companies. Roughly $1 of every $5 in Apple’s sales came from China, Hong Kong and Taiwan in its last year. That doesn’t take into account how much of the manufacturing and assembly of Apple products is done in Chinese factories, which could be affected if trade restrictions start piling up. On Friday chipmakers fared especially badly.

Investors kept buying bonds, sending prices higher and yields lower. The yield on the 10-year Treasury note slipped to 2.81 percent from 2.83 percent.

In another sign investors are nervous, gold and silver prices jumped. Gold climbed $22.50, or 1.7 percent, to $1,349.90 an ounce and silver gained 20 cents, or 1.2 percent, to $16.58 an ounce. The dollar fell to 104.82 yen from 105.61 yen. The euro rose to $1.2367 from $1.2307.

Defense contractors including Raytheon and Lockheed Martin climbed after President Donald Trump signed a new government funding bill that provides increases in military spending. He had tweeted a threat to veto the measure.

The price of oil climbed $1.58, or 2.5 percent, to $65.88 a barrel in New York. Brent crude, the international standard for oil prices, added $1.54, or 2.2 percent, to $70.45 a barrel in London.

Wholesale gasoline rose 2 cents to $2.04 a gallon. Heating oil added 3 cents to $2.02 a gallon. Natural gas dipped 3 cents to $2.59 per 1,000 cubic feet.

Copper fell 3 cents to $2.99 a pound.

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Stan Choe contributed from New York. Kelvin Chan contributed from Hong Kong and Pan Pylas contributed from London.

Under the Media Radar, Trump Is Locking Up More Refugees

Lock them up and throw away the key. That sums up President Donald Trump’s efforts to stop immigrants from seeking asylum when threatened by gangs, abusive spouses or their own murderous homelands. Thanks to a preoccupied news media, Trump is getting away with it.

The Trump effort is revealed in a lawsuit filed by Freedom for Immigrants and several other pro-immigrant groups. The suit alleges that Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) field offices are denying parole or bond to immigrants asking for asylum and holding them in detention centers until they are granted hearings in chronically backlogged immigration courts. The process may take months or even years. In the past, many more were paroled or released on bond until their court hearings came up.

“We demand an immediate end to the arbitrary, prolonged, and indiscriminate detention of asylum seekers,” said Christina M. Fialho, co-founder and executive director of Freedom for Immigrants, in a letter to federal immigration officials. Fialho, writing on behalf of other organizations in the lawsuit, said:

“Denying parole or bond to families and individuals who are simply exercising their right to seek protection under international law and who in many cases have urgent humanitarian needs, including the right to family unity, is a gross injustice. The practice tears apart families and communities, and it has devastating impacts on an already traumatized population.”

This alleged denial of parole comes on top of another anti-immigrant ICE policy: arresting undocumented parents and sending them to detention centers far from their children. Such cases were cited in an American Civil Liberties Union lawsuit filed earlier this month accusing the U.S. government of separating immigrant families seeking asylum.

To be granted asylum, an immigrant must convince an immigration official and then a court that she or he has “a well-founded fear of persecution … on account of race, religion, nationality, membership in a particular social group, or political opinion.” Courts have ruled that threatened assault by criminal gangs fits that description.

The Trump administration’s intent in going after asylum seekers, according to a former federal immigration judge, is to deter them from coming to the United States.

“The theory is that detention, particularly under poor conditions with no access to lawyers, family, or friends, will grind down individuals so that they abandon their claims. …” retired immigration judge Paul Wickham Schmidt told a group of lawyers last year. “As they return to their countries and relate their unhappy experiences with the U.S. justice system, that supposedly will ‘deter’ other individuals from coming.”

The numbers of asylum-seeking immigrants is relatively small compared to the approximately 11 million unauthorized, undocumented immigrants in this country. The Trump administration considers asylum a loophole in the law, opening the door to more immigration.

In response to the worsening global humanitarian crisis in Central America and the Middle East, the Obama administration had increased the number of refugees the United States accepts annually, from 85,000 in fiscal 2016 to 110,000 in fiscal 2017. And that from a president who was attacked by immigrant advocates as “deporter in chief.”

Trump issued executive orders to cut refugee admissions to 50,000 and suspend the refugee resettlement program for 120 days, according to the Migration Policy Institute. A federal court has blocked these moves and more than 42,000 refugees have been resettled this year.

Still, large numbers of those seeking asylum are ending up in federal custody. The difference between the enforcement policies of Trump and Obama is illustrated by these figures from the TRAC Immigration Project of Syracuse University. Under Obama, 54 percent of immigrants seeking asylum were paroled while awaiting a court hearing. Under Trump, just 25 percent have been released, with the rest held in detention centers awaiting an immigration court hearing.

While the numbers of those seeking asylum are fairly small compared to the many millions of undocumented immigrants in the country, their plight illustrates important points about the immigration controversy.

One is the utter determination of the Justice Department and the Department of Homeland Security to crack down on immigrants. Rebuffed by the courts, the federal authorities have proceeded anyway. They are able to do this because immigration cops are focused on deportations and because the laws governing asylum are so complicated that only an experienced immigration lawyer can navigate them.

The overwhelming number of asylum seekers have no such representation, either when they are interviewed by immigration police or in court. Imagine the terror of a refugee trying to answer questions, knowing that prison or separation from his or her kids may await.

Another important point is the failure of much of the news media to cover the situation. I know, after wading through the asylum laws, that it is complicated. Trump’s porn stars and madman management style are more interesting and get more clicks, readers and cable TV viewers.

But the fate of the asylum seekers shows the contempt that Trump and his minions have for civil rights, not only for immigrants but also for anyone who challenges him.

Journalists, suffering from a short attention span, forget this. They’ve got to understand they may be Trump’s next target. The asylum cases are a warning for us all.

Maj. Danny Sjursen: Dissent Is Patriotic (Audio)

In this week’s episode of “Scheer Intelligence,” host and Truthdig Editor in Chief Robert Scheer meets with Truthdig columnist Maj. Danny Sjursen, a United States Army officer who served tours with reconnaissance units in Iraq and Afghanistan. Sjursen’s memoir, “Ghost Riders of Baghdad: Soldiers, Civilians, and the Myth of the Surge,” offers an incisive critique of the war in Iraq.

The two discuss how, although the military allows Sjursen’s dissenting opinions, few top-ranking officers will speak out against U.S. militarism.

“The sort of subversive things that I write … is not winning me friends in the military,” said Sjursen, who graduated from West Point. “If my goal was to be a general or to climb that greasy pole to the top of the military, this would be a bad idea.”

Sjursen says U.S. foreign policy “has been unmoored and drifting away from anything close to sober strategy for coming up on 17 years now. I think the post-9/11 wars have been an absolute tragedy, and probably the greatest foreign policy disaster since the Vietnam War. … I truly believe we are less safe because of American foreign policy and American militarism in the world since 9/11.”

Listen to the full interview in the player above, and find past episodes of “Scheer Intelligence” here.

—Posted by Emily Wells

Danny Sjursen’s views, expressed in an unofficial capacity, do not reflect the official policy or position of the Department of the Army, Department of Defense, or the U.S. government.

Spain Charges 13 Catalan Leaders With Rebellion

MADRID—A Spanish Supreme Court judge charged 13 Catalan separatist politicians with rebellion Friday for their attempts to make the region independent of Spain, dealing a heavy blow to the secessionist movement with an indictment that could put its political elite behind bars for decades.

Judge Pablo Llarena ordered five of the Catalan politicians who answered a court summons Friday to be held without bail. Another of the summoned politicians, the ERC party’s Marta Rovira, did not heed the order and announced in a letter that she was fleeing the country to live “in exile.” Spanish media reported that she went to Switzerland.

The judge also ordered that European and international arrest warrants be issued for six fugitive Catalan politicians, including former regional president Carles Puigdemont and Rovira.

The charges of rebellion stem from an illegal independence declaration by the Catalan parliament last October. Rebellion is punishable with up to 30 years in prison.

Spanish courts sought Puigdemont’s extradition from Brussels last year but canceled that petition amid concerns that Belgium might send him back but restrict the crimes with which he could be charged.

The jailings Friday are likely to cause outrage in Catalonia, where many supporters describe the Catalan officials in custody as “political prisoners.” The pro-independence civil society group ANC called for marches late Friday in towns across the region.

The separatist movement in Catalonia, a wealthy region of 7.5 million in northeast Spain, has ignited Spain’s biggest constitutional crisis in decades. The indictment Friday appeared to scotch hopes of breaking the political deadlock and installing a new Catalan government any time soon.

Pro-independence political parties and civic groups in Catalonia have defied the Spanish government for the past six months with efforts to secede from Spain and create a new republic. They have repeatedly fallen afoul of the courts and the Constitution, however.

Polls show Catalans are equally divided on the secession issue, although a vast majority support holding a legal referendum on the issue.

Legal and political constraints have prevented the slim separatist majority in Catalonia’s parliament from electing a regional president and government since a December election. The latest failure, on Thursday, started a two-month countdown for either a government to be formed or for another ballot in the restive region.

One of those jailed Friday was former Catalan government minister Jordi Turull, the third candidate since the December election to become Catalan president. Turull failed to gain enough votes from regional lawmakers on Thursday, but in theory had a second chance to be voted in Saturday by a simple majority.

It was unclear if Saturday’s parliamentary vote could go ahead without Turull’s physical presence.

Spanish Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy declined to comment on the legal issues but said he is not enthusiastic about calling another regional election in Catalonia. Rajoy said he doesn’t like repeat elections, explaining that “people vote and politicians have a duty to resolve problems and not create others.”

In his ruling, Llarena said 25 Catalan separatists in all will be tried for rebellion, embezzlement or disobedience.

Others charged with rebellion were former Catalan Vice President Oriol Junqueras, who is already in detention; seven other members of the ousted Catalan government; former Catalan parliament speaker Carme Forcadell and jailed separatist activists Jordi Sanchez and Jordi Cuixart.

Puigdemont appeared unshaken by the charges.

“Let’s see what happens tomorrow, what happens today. Every day things change,” Puigdemont said in Helsinki, where he was on a visit.

He also criticized the judge’s decision, suggesting Llarena was influenced by the political climate.

“It is not right for a judge to do politics,” Puigdemont said.

In explaining his decision to bring charges, Llarena said Catalan separatist politicians and groups had plotted ways of achieving Catalonia’s independence for the past six years.

Llarena described the case as “an attack on the constitutional State … of unusual gravity and persistence.”

His ruling also warned that the strategy to secede is “dormant and awaiting resumption” once separatists regain control of the regional Catalan government.

The semiautonomous region has been without a leader for nearly five months after central authorities in Madrid took control following October’s independence declaration.

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Hatton reported from Lisbon, Portugal. Renata Brito contributed from Barcelona, Spain.

China Targets $3 Billion of U.S. Goods in Tariff Spat

BEIJING — China announced a $3 billion list of U.S. goods for possible retaliation in a tariff dispute with President Donald Trump and girded Friday for a bigger battle over technology policy as financial markets sank on fears of global disruption.

The Commerce Ministry said higher duties on pork, apples, steel pipe and other goods would offset Chinese losses due to Trump’s tariff hike on steel and aluminum imports. It urged Washington to negotiate a settlement but set no deadline.

Trump said Friday that he was not concerned that the tariffs would be a drag on the stock market. He added: “China is going to end up treating us fairly.”

In a separate and potentially bigger dispute, the ministry criticized Trump’s decision Thursday to approve a possible tariff hike on Chinese imports worth up to $60 billion over Beijing’s technology policy. It gave no indication of a possible response but a foreign ministry spokeswoman said Beijing was “fully prepared to defend” its interests.

“We don’t want a trade war, but we are not afraid of it,” said the spokeswoman, Hua Chunying.

On Wall Street, stocks were mixed Friday, but Asian financial markets sank on concern the escalating tensions might disrupt the biggest global trading relationship or lead other nations to raise import barriers. [On Wall Street, the Dow was down 424.69 points, 1.77 percent, at the close Friday; the Nasdaq was down 174.01 points, 2.43 percent; and the S&P was off 55.43 points, 2.10 percent.]

Tokyo’s benchmark tumbled by an unusually large 5.1 percent while the Shanghai Composite Index closed down 3.4 percent.

The dollar dipped to 104.90 yen as investors shifted into the Japanese currency, which is viewed as a “safe haven” from risk.

China’s response Friday appeared to be aimed at increasing domestic U.S. pressure on Trump by making clear which exporters, including farm areas that voted for him in 2016, might be hurt.

“Beijing is extending an olive branch and urging the U.S. to resolve trade disputes through dialogue rather than tariffs,” said economist Vishnu Varathan of Mizuho Bank in a report. “Nevertheless, the first volley of shots and retaliatory response has been set off.”

The list announced Friday was linked to Trump’s steel and aluminum tariffs , but companies already were looking ahead to a battle over complaints Beijing steals or forces companies to hand over technology.

The tensions reflect the dueling nationalistic ambitions of Trump and his Chinese counterpart, Xi Jinping.

U.S. efforts to boost exports of technology-based goods, begun under Trump’s predecessor, Barack Obama, conflict with China’s plan for state-led development of global competitors in fields from robotics to electric cars. Foreign business groups complain Chinese regulators are trying to squeeze them out of promising industries.

The Commerce Ministry announcement Friday made no mention of jetliners, soybeans or other products that are the biggest U.S. exports to China by value. That leaves Beijing room to take more drastic steps.

Chinese officials are trying to figure out how to address U.S. concerns, said Jake Parker, vice president for China operations of the U.S.-China Business Council, which represents American companies that do business with China.

“Until the Trump administration articulates those concerns and how China can address them, it’s going to be very, very difficult for China to make those changes,” said Parker.

Washington doesn’t believe it needs to give Chinese leaders another list of requests because they already know what the United States wants, said a senior U.S. official, who briefed reporters on condition he not be identified further. He said Trump and Xi agreed last year on a 100-day agenda of trade-liberalization measures but Beijing failed to act on about half of them.

Instead, the Trump administration wants Chinese leaders to address more basic structural issues that interfere with market forces, said the official.

The official cited Beijing’s “Made in China 2025” plan as “hugely problematic.” It calls for creating Chinese competitors in electric cars, robots, artificial intelligence and other fields. Business groups complain it will hamper or outright block foreign access to those industries.

The latest proposed Chinese tariffs would add a 25 percent charge on pork and aluminum scrap, mirroring Trump’s 25 percent duty on steel, according to the Commerce Ministry. A second list of goods including wine, apples, ethanol and stainless steel pipe would be charged 15 percent.

Chinese purchases of those goods last year totaled $3 billion, the ministry said.

The U.S. steel and aluminum tariffs also have irked Japan, America’s closest ally in Asia.

“We have repeatedly told the U.S. side that steel and aluminum imports from its ally Japan will not adversely affect America’s national security, and that Japan should be excluded,” said Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga.

China’s top economic official, Premier Li Keqiang, appealed to Washington on Tuesday to “act rationally” and said, “we don’t want to see a trade war.”

The United States buys little Chinese steel or aluminum, but analysts have said Beijing would feel obligated to take action to avoid looking weak.

Beijing reported a trade surplus of $275.8 billion with the United States last year, or two-thirds of its global total. Washington reports different figures that put the gap at a record $375.2 billion.

Trump’s technology order is in response to “unfair and harmful acquisition of U.S. technology,” said a statement by the U.S. Trade Representative’s office. It said USTR would pursue a World Trade Organization case against Beijing’s “discriminatory technology licensing.”

A USTR statement said possible measures include a 25 percent tariff on Chinese-made aerospace, computer and information technology and machinery but gave no details.

China is unlikely to respond until Washington acts but might launch an investigation of imports of U.S. corn and soybeans “as a warning shot,” said Parker. He noted Beijing began a probe of U.S. sorghum in February after Trump announced the steel and aluminum tariffs.

On Tuesday, the Chinese premier promised at a news conference Beijing will “open even wider” to imports and investment as part of efforts to make its state-dominated economy more productive.

Li said Beijing would “fully open” manufacturing, with “no mandatory requirement for technology transfers.” However, Chinese officials already insist companies aren’t required to hand over technology, so it was unclear how policy might change.

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AP Writers Gillian Wong and researcher Yu Bing contributed. Mari Yamaguchi contributed from Tokyo.

Deal Reached to Evacuate Second Pocket of Syria’s Ghouta

BEIRUT — An agreement was reached Friday to evacuate the second of three pockets held by opposition fighters east of the capital Damascus hours after the main rebel group in the area declared a cease-fire to give negotiations with the Russians and the Syrian government a chance, state media and the armed opposition group said.

Shortly before the cease-fire went into effect at midnight Thursday, intense government attacks killed at least 37 people in an underground shelter, prompting the truce and later the agreement between Faylaq al-Rahman rebel group and the government to evacuate the area.

Friday’s agreement will mean the surrender of the second of three pockets in eastern Ghouta, where rebels have been holding up over the past years. On Thursday, hundreds streamed out of Harasta, the first pocket after a similar negotiated cease-fire and evacuation of armed fighters and civilians.

The rebel group Faylaq al-Rahman, which controls the second pocket, asked for the latest cease-fire after the intensified assault on territories it controls.

Faylaq al-Rahman, the second most powerful group in eastern Ghouta, said in a statement that it reached an agreement with the Russians over areas it controls in eastern Ghouta. It added that the deal will lead to the immediate evacuation of sick and wounded people for treatment and to allow aid to enter the besieged area.

The group added that opposition fighters and their relatives who decide to leave eastern Ghouta will head to rebel-held parts of northern Syria while civilians who decide to stay will be guaranteed safety.

It said that Russian military police will deploy in Faylaq al-Rahman-controlled areas including the suburbs of Arbeen, Zamalka, Ein Tarma and Jobar. A prisoner exchange will take place between the group and the government, the group added.

Rabieh Dibeh, correspondent for state-affiliated al-Ikhbariya TV said 7,000 civilians and Faylaq al-Rahman fighters will begin leaving the four suburbs as early as Saturday.

The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said it is not clear whether Faylaq al-Rahman members will head to the rebel-held northwestern province of Idlib or to northern regions controlled by Turkish troops and Turkey-backed opposition fighters.

In the worst violence Thursday, a single airstrike hit the shelter in the town of Arbeen, where dozens of residents were taking refuge. Rescue teams, known as the White Helmets, said 37 people were killed. Another medical group that supports health facilities operating in the area, the Syrian American Medical Society, put the toll at 47, saying many of them were burned to death and that number was likely to rise.

The strike came as government ground forces advanced into the town of Hazeh, south of Arbeen, the Observatory reported.

A similar deal with another rebel group, Ahrar al-Sham, led to the evacuation of hundreds of fighters and civilians from Harasta, an eastern Ghouta town in the north.

The Russian Defense Ministry said in a statement on Friday that 1,895 rebels and their family members left the town of Harasta on Thursday.

They headed to the northwestern Idlib province, one of a few remaining areas in the hands of the opposition.

Syrian state-run Al-Ikhbariya TV broadcast from the Harasta crossing area Friday, saying that a convoy of 32 buses carrying more than 2,061 people, including 671 Ahrar al-Sham fighters, was getting ready to leave Friday night.

The evacuation deal and territory surrender came after a long siege and bombing campaign of the enclave just miles outside of Damascus. Rebels had controlled eastern Ghouta since 2012, keeping the farming area a thorn in the government’s side during the years of conflict. The government imposed a siege on the area shortly after rebels controlled it, but failed to recapture eastern Ghouta.

The deal with Ahrar al-Sham in Harasta is likely to serve as a blueprint for the talks with Faylaq al-Rahman rebels.

In February, a concerted military offensive, backed by Russian airstrikes, squeezed the rebels and civilians in the area under an intense bombing campaign and tightened the siege. The U.N. estimated that nearly 400,000 people remained in the enclave before the latest offensive began.

The government assault triggered a mass movement of people trying to escape the violence in the Damascus suburbs. Some have moved deeper into the rebel-held enclave, while about 50,000 others have crossed the front lines toward government-controlled areas.

Over the last weeks, ground troops have cut the enclave into three areas, isolating them and keeping up the bombing.

On Friday, Syrian state media said more residents have left from Douma, one of the three pockets isolated by the offensive and where the bombing continues, through a crossing linking it to the capital Damascus. No cease-fire has been reached in Douma, the largest town in eastern Ghouta. Douma is controlled by the Army of Islam, the largest and most powerful rebel group in the region.

The government-controlled Central Military Media reported that rebels in Douma will release 3,500 people they are holding in return for allowing 3,000 “humanitarian cases” to be evacuated from the area. It did not elaborate but said it is part of an agreement between the government and rebels in Douma.

Al-Ikhbariya TV broadcast images Friday of hundreds of men, women and children streaming out on foot from the Wafideen crossing that links the rebel-controlled town of Douma to Damascus. Syrian state news agency SANA says over 4,000 left on Friday.

State media said more than 6,000 left the day before.

Syrian rescuer workers said Douma had come under intense airstrikes, counting at least 30 since late Thursday. Activists claimed incendiary bombs were used, as videos showed dark skies light up with white smoke and multiple fires raging on the ground.

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Associated Press writer Nataliya Vasilyeva in Moscow contributed to this report.