Daily Archives: January 3, 2022

from the great-work-if-you-can-plausibly-deny-it dept

Pretty much exactly a year ago, the Washington Post obtained documents that showed Chinese tech giant Huawei was working with the government to create facial recognition on steroids: a system capable of not just recognizing faces, but also certain ethnicities.

There's only one reason for developing ethnicity recognition in China. The government's war on its Muslim Uighur population continues with no sign of letting up. Huawei's tech would enable the government to identify and track its most undesirable citizens, most likely to find any reason at all to disappear them into the country's many prisons and reeducation camps.

Huawei denied involvement in this project. It did not deny the documents seen by the Washington Post were legitimate, however. Instead, it claimed the documents referred to a test project that had not been deployed. According to its spokesperson, the company would never provide the powerful Chinese government with tools developed for the purpose of targeting Uighur citizens.

It was a pretty weak denial, considering Huawei's disadvantaged position. If it wishes to maintain its healthy market share in China, it will have to comply with the government's demands. That's how it works in China and that's how it's worked for years. And, no matter where they're located, companies don't often spend money on test runs of products they don't intend to sell or deploy in the future. Some testing may be done to see if something is feasible. But if the product works well enough to put on the market (or sell to governments), it will eventually result in real-world applications.

One year later and it's the Washington Post again obtaining documents about Huawei's relationship with the Chinese government. Huawei has suggested it's not working directly with the government to create surveillance gear, claiming it's nothing more than a provider of apolitical networking hardware and software.

But the documents seen by the Post strongly suggest otherwise.

A review by The Washington Post of more than 100 Huawei PowerPoint presentations, many marked confidential, suggests that the company has had a broader role in tracking Chinas populace than it has acknowledged.

These marketing presentations, posted to a public-facing Huawei website before the company removed them late last year, show Huawei pitching how its technologies can help government authorities identify individuals by voice, monitor political individuals of interest, manage ideological reeducation and labor schedules for prisoners, and help retailers track shoppers using facial recognition.

Pretty disturbing stuff. Also, sadly, pretty normal stuff for the Chinese government, which has shoved thousands of people into hard labor/reeducation camps and subjected its more "free" residents to always-on monitoring of pretty much everything they do.

Huawei, of course, denies this. It told the Post that it "had no knowledge" of the documents referred to in the article. This is a strange statement to make considering the documents were posted on Huawei's site and contain a Huawei watermark.

It also said this:

Privacy protection is our top priority, the company said.

Well, clearly it isn't. It's top priority is whatever sells. And it appears to have a lot of products in the pipeline that may prove lucrative if and when it decides these are ready to go live.

The Post reviewed more than 3,000 PowerPoint slides Huawei apparently inadvertently left exposed on its site. The presentations appear to be legitimate and created by the company. However, it's unclear whether these pitches have been made to government agencies. But some of the presentations appear to have been specifically created with the Chinese government in mind.

The Post could not confirm whom the Chinese-language presentations were shown to, or when. Some of the slides showcase surveillance functions specific to police or government agencies, suggesting that Chinese government authorities may have been the intended audience. Many of the PowerPoints have a creation timestamp of Sept. 23, 2014, with the latest modifications to the files made in 2019 or 2020, according to the presentations metadata.

That echoing noise you hear is Huawei's claiming ringing hollow. The government's statements in support of Huawei don't actually deny its interest in buying more surveillance gear that can be used to target Uighurs, government critics, and other undesirables. The statement from the government refers only to Huawei's "no back door" agreement, which is really a shot at the US government's blacklisting of Huawei products, rather than a clarification on the products and services discussed in the presentations.

One presentation describes voiceprint analysis developed by Huawei and iFlytek. The latter company has been sanctioned by the US Commerce Department for its human rights violations against the Uighur population. Supposedly, this tech would be used for "national security" purposes -- a purpose heavily exploited by the Chinese government to do everything from imprison Uighur Muslims to imprison protesters fighting its premature takeover of Hong Kong.

Other documents posted by the Post are clearly government-oriented. There's a "smart prison" platform for managing inmates and their reeducation. There's a location tracking system for "political persons of interest." And there's a "Xinjiang surveillance system" that targets the region of the country where most Uighur residents are located.

Huawei's denials are pretty weak in the face of this evidence. It would clearly like to sell surveillance tech to the Chinese government -- tech that will enhance its oppression of minorities and political opponents. That's not going to get it excused from any blacklists, though, so weak denials it is. The Chinese government has long since stopped caring what anyone thinks of it, so it's likely hoping these new and exciting oppression enhancers will be on the market sooner, rather than later.

Thank you for reading this Techdirt post. With so many things competing for everyones attention these days, we really appreciate you giving us your time. We work hard every day to put quality content out there for our community.

Techdirt is one of the few remaining truly independent media outlets. We do not have a giant corporation behind us, and we rely heavily on our community to support us, in an age when advertisers are increasingly uninterested in sponsoring small, independent sites especially a site like ours that is unwilling to pull punches in its reporting and analysis.

While other websites have resorted to paywalls, registration requirements, and increasingly annoying/intrusive advertising, we have always kept Techdirt open and available to anyone. But in order to continue doing so, we need your support. We offer a variety of ways for our readers to support us, from direct donations to special subscriptions and cool merchandise and every little bit helps. Thank you.

The Techdirt Team

Filed Under: china, facial recognition, privacy, surveillanceCompanies: huawei

See original here:

Internal Documents Show Huawei Is Staying On The Cutting Edge Of Oppression Tech - Techdirt

Chi Myong Gwan, a scholar who exposed the oppression suffered by South Korea's pro-democracy movement in the 1970s and 1980s through his writings in a Japanese magazine, died of a stroke at a hospital near Seoul on Saturday, his family said. He was 97.

While living in Japan, Chi penned a series of pieces for the Sekai (The World) monthly between 1973 and 1988 under the pseudonym "T.K Sei," using materials brought out of South Korea by Christians to inform the world of human rights abuses under military dictatorships and of the pro-democracy movement challenging them.

File photo shows Chi Myong Gwan (L) being decorated with Japan's Order of the Rising Sun, Gold and Silver Star in June 2007 in Seoul. (Kyodo)

After returning to South Korea, Chi was deeply involved in the lifting under the government of President Kim Dae Jung from 1998 to 2003 of the country's decades-old ban on the import of Japanese popular culture.

Chi was born in what is now North Korea's North Pyongan Province in 1924. He became a scholar of religious philosophy after completing his studies at Seoul National University's graduate school. He moved to Japan in 1972 and in 1986 became a professor at Tokyo Woman's Christian University.

While his pieces in Sekai, under the title "Communication from South Korea," brought attention to the state of the pro-democracy movement there, he remained anonymous throughout. It was only in 2003 that he acknowledged being T.K Sei.

Chi returned to South Korea in 1993. Under the Kim government, he served as chairman of a policy advisory committee that considered the lifting of a ban on Japanese popular culture. He advocated the deregulation at a time when there was still unease regarding Japanese culture among the South Korean public following Japan's 35-year colonial rule of the Korean Peninsula until 1945.

Back in South Korea, Chi served as professor at Hallym University until 2004. He also served as chairman of public broadcaster KBS as well as South Korea's representative in a joint history research project with Japan.

Related coverage:

Japan's Iizuka, ex-head of North Korea abductee kin group, dies at 83

Younger brother of North Korea's founder Kim Il Sung dies

Masayuki Uemura, creator of NES, SNES game consoles, dies at 78

Read the rest here:

Chi Myong Gwan, who informed world of oppression in South Korea, dies - Kyodo News Plus

A US-based author and political commentator says Irans top anti-terror commanderLieutenant General Qassem Soleimaniwill continue to inspire people to resist injustice and oppression long after his cowardly US-ordered assassination in the Iraqi capital.

Like such historical figures as Imam Hussein, Malcolm X, and Che Guevara, General Qassem Soleimani will continue to inspire resistance to injustice and oppression long after his death, Kevin Barret said while speaking in an exclusive interview with Press TV on Sunday.

General Soleimanis martyrdom has galvanized not only the Iranian nation, but also the forces of resistance to Zionism and imperialism throughout the region and beyond, the analyst said, adding, His killers were apparently too arrogantly stupid to realize that they were creating a martyr who would create even more problems for them dead than alive.

The expert noted that the real revenge for this cowardly and dastardly crime will be the complete expulsion of the Anglo-Zionist empire from the region, which may very precipitate its final downfall.

Answering a question about why the West has remained silent on the assassination of Irans top general, Barrett said, The West has been hypnotized by a false narrative about terrorism at least since the false flag events of September 11, 2001.

Western leaders and their psychological operations experts have brainwashed the public to hysterically fear the very terrorism that those leaders and experts have created, armed, funded, and directed, he noted.

Barrett added that the leaders of the West never truly appreciated Gen. Soleimanis heroic victories over the Daesh terrorists, because Daesh terrorists were actually organized and unleashed by those Western leaders themselves in service to the [Zionists'] Oded Yinon plan to Balkanize the region along ethnic and sectarian lines.

He expressed hope that the United Nations General Assembly will finally adopt a resolution condemning the assassination of Gen. Soleimani, adding, In July 2020 the UN Rapporteur for Extrajudicial Killing issued a report stating that the assassination was unlawful and in violation of the UN charter. So there is no obvious reason why the General Assembly would not pass a resolution agreeing with its own Rapporteur.

According to Barrett, the US will pressure UN members to oppose any resolution condemning the assassination, because the current US government, despite its apparent hostility to the previous Trump regime, does not want to call attention to the US governments criminal history in its relations with Iran.

General Soleimani was assassinated along with his Iraqi trenchmate Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis, the deputy head of the Popular Mobilization Units, in a US drone strike ordered by ex-President Donald Trump near the Baghdad International Airport on January 3, 2020. Both commanders were highly popular because of the key role they played in eliminating the Daeshterrorist group in the region, particularly in Iraq and Syria.

Early on January 8, Irans Islamic Revolution Guards Corps (IRGC) targeted the US-run Ain al-Assad air base in Iraqs western province of Anbar with a barrage of missiles in revenge.

Iran stresses that its retaliation is not over, with Iranian officials and commanders occasionally citing the expulsion of all American forces from the region as the ultimate revenge for General Soleimanis blood.

In a statement released on Saturday, the Legal Department of the Iranian presidents office called on the United Nations General Assembly to issue a resolution condemning the US assassination of General Soleimani to safeguard international peace and uphold human rights.

It said the UN General Assembly should take all legal initiatives within its authority, including the adoption of a resolution condemning the assassination of government and diplomatic officials by [another] government [and] take measures to prevent such crimes in the future.

Follow this link:

Analyst to Press TV: General Soleimani will continue to inspire resistance to injustice, oppression - Press TV

On our first day of orientation in college we are repeatedly told that medicine is an esteemed field.Sadly, it doesnt stop there: Everywhere we go from the moment we get our NEET percentiles, we are constantly reminded of our nobility and standing in society. Predictably, we get used to the celebrity adjacent treatment. I have always said that only a doctor could stand next to probably Meryl Streep and still have the nerve to feel superior.

Isnt there an entire genre of television entertainment made after us?

Were constantly told that were the crme de la crme of the nation and that a 99.96 percentile in NEET must mean that you are the pinnacle of human intelligence.

Does it get to our heads? Do you see our egos reflecting in our little interactions with patients? Do you see how our posture suddenly changes when a light-skinned English speaking patient turns up in the emergency? Do we know enough about trans folks to even decide the correct sample collection room to send them to?We study demographics as a part of community medicine for seven semesters and yet we forget how many homeless people turn up at our hospitals when we so casually accuse them of wanting muft ka ilaaj?

In the age of late stage capitalism, doctors are known more for how much money they make, and the neighbourhoods they live in, instead of their role in patient care.Yes, we do not control how the society sees us, but how many times are we not ourselves enamoured by the glamour and power that comes with being a doctor?

Also read: Pandemic Strains Rural Healthcare, Exacerbates Maternal Health In Rural Maharashtra

When the world is constantly reminding you that you are the smartest lot of the country, you start feeling content in all that you already know. Thats where the indifference begins.

BJ Miller, a well-known US palliative care physician, said in his TED talk that healthcare was designed with diseases, not people at its centre. Which is to say, of course, it was badly designed. We mug up the causes of pancytopenia, without realising that since a vitamin deficiency is its most common cause in India, we also need to treat poverty and hunger first.

BJ Miller, a well-known US palliative care physician, said in his TED talk that healthcare was designed with diseases, not people at its centre. Which is to say, of course, it was badly designed. We mug up the causes of pancytopenia, without realising that since a vitamin deficiency is its most common cause in India, we also need to treat poverty and hunger first.

We keep giving this excuse of not having enough time to read up, which, for the sake of the argument, I am ready to accept. Fine, we probably do not have enough time to read up. But how many of us demand an education in humanities during our course of 5.5 years? There is no medicine without humanities. And the lack of humanities in our education is particularly the reason why we have gotten to this point where neither sides want to empathise with each other.

Doctors have changed the world. India could not even dare to dream about winning the battle against polio had Dr Jonas Salk patented one of the biggest inventions in the history of mankind.Che Guevara learned about poverty as a medical student.The people most directly affected by the system are the marginalised, who do not have alternatives to access healthcare and who seek healthcare later into their ailments, with lower frequency and with much moretrepidation. Very often, we end up alienating those who need our help the most even if we do not do it out of malice.

And it is also not hard to understand why the same marginalised groups are hesitating today before giving us the support they have been begging from us for the past three years.A third wave of COVID-19 looms over our already broken healthcare system. We have remained grossly understaffed due to the delay in counselling.

Our first year post graduate students (will be referred to as PG1s hereafter) are so overworked, it has led to a type of burnout that we have never seen before in government medical setups. Post graduate students from surgical branches suffer even more because during every COVID-19 wave, all government hospitals shut down their operation theatres. They have three years to learn how to perform surgeries and we can now see operation theatres being shut down for months at stretch for the third time in two years now.

An internal medicine PG1 in GTB hospital manages an average of 30 immensely sick ward patients, all at the same time (besides OPD patients) on their own per week. In such a scenario, how can one expect a doctor deprived of sleep, social and personal life to take optimum care of everyone that shows up at the hospital doorstep? It is almost like we feel entitled to the mental health of government medical doctors.

Today, we feel abandoned by the country in our most desperate time of need. Junior government doctors are exploited and constantly shat upon by their seniors. Even as an intern who is constantly exploited, the thought of being a PG1 in medicine in a government hospital sends shivers down my spine.

This poses another question: How much of this pressure is the fault of the people?

Also read: On The Gendered Experience Of Interning As A Cis Woman Doctor

Even in the absence of PG1s, it is important that the protesting doctors reflect on this: Why cannot the senior doctors pitch in a little bit and make it somewhat easier for you? Why have we bought into our own oppression so much? And how many of us, who complain about this today, will become comfortable contributors to the system the moment our PG1s arrive?

It is important that the protesting doctors reflect on this: Why cannot the senior doctors pitch in a little bit and make it somewhat easier for you? Why have we bought into our own oppression so much? And how many of us, who complain about this today, will become comfortable contributors to the system the moment our PG1s arrive?

Now that our movement is finally getting some mainstream attention, we find ourselves at a crossroads. We can go back to being the same apolitical apathetic crowd that we were yesterday or we can re-evaluate our system as a whole. The choice is ours.

Healthcare has always been political so it is only necessary that we are too.

Implicit bias in healthcare professionals: a systematic review, written by Chlo FitzGerald and Samia Hurst:

Unhealthy Attitudes: The treatment of LGBT people within health and social care services, written by Catherine Somerville Survey by YouGov Plc.

The Devil is in the Third Year: A Longitudinal Study of Erosion of Empathy in Medical School, by Hojat, Mohammadreza PhD; Vergare, Michael J. MD; Maxwell, Kaye; Brainard, George PhD; Herrine, Steven K. MD; Isenberg, Gerald A. MD; Veloski, Jon MS; Gonnella, Joseph S. MD

Tackling poverty through medical educationby Matthew J. To Colin Van Zoost

The intersections of gender and class in health status and health care, by A Iyeret al. Glob Public Health. 2008.

Health Disparities By Race And Class: Why Both Matter, by Ichiro Kawachi,Norman Daniels, andDean E. Robinson

Sana Khanam is an MBBS student, currently working as an intern at University College of Medical Sciences and GTB hospital.

Featured image source: India.com

Get premium content, exclusive benefits and help us remain independent, free and accessible.

BECOME AN FII MEMBER

Choose Your Plan!

Read more here:

Can Healthcare Be Apolitical? Of The Privilege, Apathy & Oppression Of Doctors - Feminism in India

NewsSean Douglas23 Minutes AgoDr Roodal Moonilal -

OROPOUCHE East MP Dr Roodal Moonilal said despite restrictions on expression owing to covid19, the Opposition had succeeded in keeping Government on a back foot in holding them to account, giving Newsday his views on Sunday on how the UNC had performed over the past year both in and out of Parliament. He reckoned the Government could collapse within 12 months.

Moonilal said 2021 had been "an extremely challenging year" for political activism and parties in the Caribbean but the UNC had successfully chartered those very difficult waters.

"We have been able to keep the Government on a back foot, even on the ropes in some of these matters, notwithstanding the illegal and unconstitutional smothering of the democratic system, the oppression of the people, the restrictions on freedom of speech and assembly.

"The UNC has had a record year in terms of our advocacy for our rights and equality and transparency, particularly as it relates to the management of covid, matters of corruption, matters of crime and so on. The UNC has been on the vanguard to defend the Constitution and the rights of citizens."

He listed the UNC's exposes on the alleged mismanagement of the pandemic, the dbcle of the Police Service Commission and Commissioner of Police and allegedly poor governance in several ministries.

"We have also exposed the Prime Minister and others in issues of acquisition and procurement of private property in Tobago."

Moonilal boasted of the UNC's virtual meetings on Mondays and two news briefings weekly, all advocating for justice and against discrimination.

"It's been a very successful year for the UNC notwithstanding the limitations the Government has imposed under the guise of managing the pandemic."

He said next year, the UNC must keep up the pressure, in demanding the Government provide complete transparency, accountability and justice.

"The Government is unravelling at a very, very quick pace.

"The matters involving the Attorney General now and the allegations of interference in what is clearly a police and criminal matter are very serious allegations.

"The ongoing saga in Tobago is where the new THA is unearthing an avalanche of corruption issues."

Moonilal alleged a continuing mismanagement of the covid19 crisis.

"The Government had begun its vaccination programme too late, it was completely ill-conceived and today they can't get the medication to manage the covid disease. Next year the UNC will intensify its actions to hold the Government to account to expose the injustices and inequalities in the society."

Moonilal described the NFM's recent rise in the price of flour as "a criminal act."

He said, "I do not give this Government just 12 months. I think it has entered the final year in office. It's a race between covid and the end of the PNM.

"Given the draconian measures Dr Rowley has announced such as mandatory vaccination and his management of the economy, we believe he should return to the polls for a mandate.

"I think in the aftermath of the calamity in Tobago (that is, THA elections), I think the last thing in the world he would want is a general election."

He said the UNC had been the first to raise covid19 in Parliament and the first to distribute masks, with UNC leader Kamla Persad-Bissessar being the first to write abroad to seek vaccines.

By contrast he said the Government had initially just asked people to simply cover their face with a rag known as a saphi.

Asked about the Government's mandatory vaccination plan, Moonilal said such a measure had no WHO approval but was just a knee-jerk reaction.

He said instead the Government should have built public confidence in the vaccine, advising, "It is not a medical and scientific issue but a social and cultural one."

He said the country needed a national mobilisation strategy, including perhaps paying a $200 vaccination incentive.

Moonilal insisted on the public's right to know which vaccines were weakest, to even let people start over their vaccination regime with more efficacious brands.

"You have to think outside the box. The Government must come clean."

Moonilal offered his condolences on the deaths of two calypsonians - Kenwrick Kenny J Joseph and Clifton Mighty Bomber Ryan.

"Today I want to extend condolences to the family, friends and fans of Kenny J, a very proud son of Barrackpore which is in our constituency. He has been a great entertainer and a personal friend of mine for many years. I am deeply, deeply saddened by his passing.

"I understand the calypsonian Scrunter (Irwin Reyes Johnson) is also hospitalised. We want to wish him a recovery as well.

"We have also lost Bomber another calypsonian."

Read this article:

Moonilal: UNC kept Government on the ropes in 2021 - TT Newsday

Russia entered 1922 with a shaky government ruling largely by martial law, a civil war still raging, a famine spreading across the Volga region, parts of the country still occupied by foreign intervention forces and isolated as an international pariah.

But by the end of the year, the Bolsheviks had marked the fifth anniversary of the 1917 coup known as the October Revolution, had all but ended the civil war against so-called White monarchist and capitalist forces, largely pushed out the foreign troops, and signed their first peacetime international treaty -- with Weimar Germany.

And on December 30, 1922, representatives of the Soviet governments of Russia, Ukraine, Belarus, and the Transcaucasian Republic took to the stage of Moscow's Bolshoi Theater to proclaim the formation of a new country that within less than two generations would become a global superpower -- the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics.

But with the 20/20 hindsight of a century's distance, 1922 emerges as a fateful year for the peoples of Russia and its neighborhood, a year in which the country broke decisively with its past. In terms of politics, foreign affairs, and culture, events transpired and decisions were made that laid the rails for decades of institutionalized totalitarian oppression.

This year will see many centennial anniversaries that Russian President Vladimir Putin and others who argue that the collapse of the Soviet Union was a geopolitical catastrophe might prefer not to remember.

"This is the first year that we have had the opportunity of devoting our efforts to the real, main, and fundamental tasks of socialist construction," revolutionary leader and Soviet founder Vladimir Lenin told the closing session of the 11th congress of the Bolshevik party in Moscow on April 2, 1922, in a speech focused on his economic plans.

"Over the past year we showed quite clearly that we cannot run the economy," Lenin conceded. "Either we prove the opposite in the coming year or Soviet power will not be able to exist."

But in retrospect, the most portentous decision of the congress was the appointment of a new party general secretary: Josef Stalin, a 43-year-old former seminary student turned revolutionary.

"This was one of the most fateful moments of the Russian Revolution and, indeed, of the 20th century," English cultural historian Kevin Jackson wrote in his 2012 book Constellation Of Genius: 1922 Modernism Year One. Although the post was still far from the total power Stalin would wield in later years, it positioned him to control the bureaucracy that would increasingly dominate the country.

The decision to name Stalin general secretary was one Lenin would live to regret -- even though he would be dead less than two years later.

Already experiencing poor health in 1921, Lenin suffered a stroke in May 1922 and a second in December. That month, Stalin took over personal control of Lenin's care and of who had access to him. In the final weeks of 1922 and the early days of the new year, Lenin dictated a final testament in which he famously urged his comrades to "think about a way of removing Stalin" from his post.

The call for Stalin's removal was the only concrete proposal in Lenin's entire testament.

"This circumstance may appear to be a negligible detailbut it is a detail that could assume decisive importance," he wrote.

"Stalin was a sociopath," said Princeton University historian and Stalin biographer Stephen Kotkin in a 2017 interview with RFE/RL. [H]e did not demonstrate even elementary compassion or doubts in his policies."

On February 2, 1922, the notorious All-Russian Extraordinary Commission -- abbreviated as ChK, or Cheka -- was transformed into the State Political Directorate (GPU) under the People's Commissariat of Internal Affairs (NKVD).

Under the ruthless Feliks Dzerzhinsky, the Cheka secret police had enforced Lenin's policy of "Red Terror," which was proclaimed in September 1918.

"We are not fighting against single individuals," wrote Bolshevik revolutionary and Cheka officer Martin Latsis in the journal Red Terror in November 1918. "We are exterminating the bourgeoisie as a class. This is the essence of the Red Terror."

Ostensibly, the move to transform the Cheka into the GPU was part of an overall drive to establish stable institutions and political control over government agencies. Already, however, complaining about the booming bureaucracy was becoming so prominent that it spawned an entire Soviet satirical genre, beginning with Vladimir Mayakovsky's 1922 poem Conference-Crazy (Prozasedavshikhsya).

The reorganization of the Cheka could have reined in the Red Terror. Instead, however, it institutionalized many of the campaigns most egregious practices, including the targeted persecution of political opponents.

"The ChK was transformed into the GPU, which put it under some degree of political control, meaning a reduction in the terror," St. Petersburg historian Boris Kolonsky told RFE/RL's Russian Service in 2021. "On the other hand, the terror became more organized.

In 1922, they held the trial of the Social Revolutionaries, Kolonsky said, referring to the Bolsheviks' main remaining political rival. And one of the major tightenings of the screws was the restriction on free discussion and factionalism within the Bolshevik party itself."

As the threat posed by the White armies in the civil war waned, this new structure turned inward. The reform meant that the Cheka's authority to carry out extrajudicial executions was temporarily eliminated, but the GPU quickly expanded the practice of sending political and economic "enemies" into exile in Siberia and the Far North.

The first camp in what grew into the gulag system was opened on the Solovetsky Islands in the White Sea in 1923.

One year later, GPU agents were again authorized to carry out executions "under certain circumstances."

By far the most horrific event in Russia and the world in 1922 was the ongoing famine throughout the Volga region and beyond. It is estimated that at least 5 million people died in what at the time was one of the worst nonmilitary catastrophes in Europe since the Middle Ages.

"In 1921-22 we saw a massive famine with a horrific number of victims," Russian historian Viktor Kondrashin told RFE/RL in September. "It was something reminiscent of the early 17th century, the famine of the Time of Troubles, both in terms of the number of people in the affected region and the number of the dead."

The famine was caused by a perfect storm of events -- a major drought struck a country already depleted by World War I and the Civil War. On top of that, the Bolsheviks -- deprived by the White armies of access to food-producing regions in Ukraine and Siberia -- carried out inhumane grain requisitions in the region.

"Horrific facts have been documented," Kondrashin said. "Cannibalism, mass graves, and the suicide of whole families driven by hunger."

In 1918, Lenin sent Stalin to the southern city of Tsaritsyn -- later called Stalingrad and now Volgograd -- to requisition food. His order: Be merciless.

"Be assured our hand will not tremble," Stalin replied. "We won't show mercy to anyone."

In July 1921, writer Maksim Gorky issued an appeal "to all honest people" seeking famine relief. The appeal landed on the desk of U.S. Commerce Secretary Herbert Hoover, who wrote back that he was ready to create a program of the American Relief Administration (ARA) in Russia if the Soviet government requested it formally and with the understanding that the assistance did not mean American recognition of the Bolshevik government.

The offer was extremely controversial in the United States, where many on the right argued that the famine might bring an end to Bolshevism in Russia. Hoover, however, insisted that "we must make some distinction between the Russian people and the group who have seized the government."

Many in the Soviet government, particularly firebrand Leon Trotsky, also opposed the plan, arguing the aid was the thin edge of a wedge that would soon see American businesses and banks setting up in Russia, according to The Russian Job: The Forgotten Story Of How America Saved The Soviet Union From Ruin, a 2019 monograph by Douglas Smith.

The Soviets, nevertheless, accepted Hoover's conditions immediately. An agreement was signed in August 1921 and the U.S. Congress allocated $20 million for the program. Counting the Russian government's $18 million contribution and private donations, Hoover collected about $78 million for the effort.

In 1922, the ARA was feeding 10 million people per day, bringing in at least 768 million tons of food. The program also employed 125,000 Russians in the affected areas. The ARA also provided clothes, shoes, and medicine. It aided some 16,000 hospitals treating more than half a million people daily. The project improved sanitation and prevented outbreaks of cholera and other diseases in the region. It also brought in thousands of tons of seed grain that contributed to bumper crops -- and lucrative export profits for the Soviet government -- in 1922 and 1923.

"The government of the Russian nation will never forget the generous help afforded them in the terrible calamity and dangers visited upon them," Bolshevik leader Lev Kamenev, the deputy chairman of the Russian famine relief effort, wrote in a letter to ARA representative William Haskell.

In February 1923, with the ARA estimating that 8 million Russians still needed famine aid, the Soviet government announced plans to resume grain exports. Western support for the ARA Russia program was further eroded in March when the Soviet government put a dozen Russian Orthodox clergymen and one Catholic priest, Konstantin Budkevich, on trial for organizing peaceful protests against the state seizure of church property. All the defendants were sentenced to long prison terms except for Budkevich, who was executed on Catholic Easter weekend and buried in a mass grave.

The ARA decided to wrap up its operation.

"Mr. Hoover said that he had never been so glad to finish a job as this Russian job," a State Department official reported. "[H]e was completely disgusted with the Bolsheviks and did not believe that a practical government could ever be worked out under their leadership."

Under Stalin in the 1930s and beyond, "the history of the ARA was being expunged or distorted beyond recognition," Smith wrote in his book. Officials and ordinary Russians who had participated in the project were purged and persecuted into the 1950s. The 1950 edition of the Great Soviet Encyclopedia wrote that the ARA was intended "to create an apparatus in Soviet Russia for spying and wrecking activities and for supporting counterrevolutionary elements." A 1962 school textbook said the purpose of the ARA was "to secretly organize an insurrectionary force," adding that the purported plot was thwarted by the GPU.

The ARA effort was comparable, Smith argued, to the assistance provided by Europe and the United States to former Soviet countries after the collapse of the Soviet Union.

"Between 1992 and 2007, the U.S. government provided $28 billion in assistance to the countries of the former Soviet Union," Smith wrote. "In 1999 alone, Russia requested 5 million tons of food aid from the United States, worth nearly $2 billion. For 1999-2000, U.S. and European food aid to Russia surpassed that given to the entire continent of Africa."

On April 16, 1922, Soviet Russia broke through its total international isolation by signing the Treaty of Rapallo with Weimar Germany. Following World War I and the Treaty of Versailles, both countries were diplomatically isolated pariahs.

The Rapallo Treaty reestablished diplomatic relations between the two countries and paved the way for boosted economic cooperation. Although the pact contained no military provisions, it opened the way for intense collaboration -- in violation of the Versailles treaty -- that was initiated in a series of secret meetings in the summer of 1922. Over the next few years, Germany opened an aviation school, a chemical weapons plant, and a tank-warfare testing ground in the Soviet Union.

"These bases helped to modernize the Red Army and played a central role in developing the military technologies that would enable the rebirth of the German military under Hitler," analyst Ian Johnson wrote in the War On The Rocks blog in 2016.

In Germany, the signing of the Treaty of Rapallo was seen by some as an indication of a looming "Jewish-Bolshevik threat" to their country. It led to increased activity by the extreme right and those who financed them. In June 1922, just two months after he signed the treaty, German Foreign Minister Walther Rathenau was assassinated by a right-wing terrorist group. In one of his first major speeches in Munich in August 1922, Adolf Hitler warned of the approaching Jewish Bolshevism under the protection of the republic at a rally where his storm troopers made their first appearance in their notorious brown shirts. In Italy, fascist leader Benito Mussolini became prime minister that October.

1922 was also a fateful year for Russia culturally. Comparing the contours of Russian culture in 1920 -- from the visual arts to literature to music to dance to the applied arts and beyond -- with those found just 15 years later, one is struck by the drastic transformation that took place in such a short span.

Art historian Camilla Gray, in her study The Russian Experiment In Art: 1863-1922, considered 1922 the cutoff year for one of the most remarkable cultural explosions in history.

In 1922, Boris Pilnyak published The Naked Year, an impressionistic masterpiece that is the first Russian novel written entirely after the October 1917 coup.

On April 21, 1938, he was convicted of plotting to kill Stalin and, on the same day, shot in the back of the head and buried in a mass grave at the Kommunarka shooting range in Moscow.

Also in 1922, Yevgeny Zamyatin was holding private readings of his dystopian novel We, which hed completed the previous year -- the same year in which he wrote a prophetic essay titled I Am Afraid, which argued that there seemed to be no space in the Bolshevik state for madmen, hermits, heretics, dreamers, rebels, and skeptics.

Zamyatin died in exile, in Paris, in 1937.

Although the novel We was published in New York in English in 1924 and finally in Russian in 1952, it was not published in the Soviet Union until 1988, three years before its collapse. In 1967, Russian-born emigre critic Mirra Ginsburg wrote: Like [Mikhail] Bulgakov and [Isaak] Babel, Zamyatin gives us a glimpse of what postrevolutionary Russian literature might have become had independence, daring, and individuality not been stamped out so ruthlessly by the dictatorship.

As the Bolsheviks secured power with the waning of the civil war, the leadership increasingly turned its attention to remaking society. In 1921, the government set its sights on the Russian Orthodox Church. Initially, the purpose of the campaign was to confiscate as much church property as possible, but by 1922 Lenin had more ambitious plans.

In a memo dated March 19, 1922, Lenin called for a secret meeting between political leaders and the heads of the GPU and the Peoples Commissariat of Justice. A secret resolution would be adopted, he wrote, ordering the complete dispossession of the church to be carried out with ruthless resolution, leaving nothing in doubt, and in the very shortest time.

The greater the number of the reactionary clergy and the reactionary bourgeoisie that we succeed in shooting on this occasion, the better, because this audience must precisely now be taught a lesson in such a way that they will not dare to think about any resistance whatsoever for several decades, the Bolshevik leader wrote.

St. Petersburg historian Aleksandr Margolis told RFE/RL in a 2016 interview that the campaign against the church was carried out in the most barbaric fashion.

Of course, the clergy tried to stop it somehow, he said. But the answer was clear: The more of them we hang, the better.

On the night of August 12-13, Bolsheviks shaved the beards of Petrograd Metropolitan Veniamin and several other senior clergymen from the city and dressed them in rags. The subterfuge was necessary so that the soldiers in the firing squad would not know that they were executing clergymen. They were executed on the outskirts of the city and buried in a mass grave.

In 1992, a few months after the Soviet Union ceased to exist, Veniamin and several of those executed with him were canonized as Russian Orthodox saints and a cenotaph was erected for them in St. Petersburgs Aleksandr Nevsky Lavra. The canonization decree orders that their precious remains, should they ever be found, shall be considered holy relics.

Lenin had similar plans for Russias intellectual elite.

In an article published on March 12, 1922, and titled On The Significance Of Militant Materialism, Lenin denounced intellectuals as graduated flunkies of clericalism and democracy as nothing but the freedom to preach whatever is to the advantage of the bourgeoisie, to preach, namely, the most reactionary ideas, religion, obscurantism, defense of the exploiters, and so on.

The campaign culminated in September-November 1922, when three ships sailed from Petrograd to the West. On board, GPU agents had bundled many of the countrys most prominent thinkers and their families, largely dispossessed and sent into exile. The so-called Philosopher Ships carried away philosophers Nikolai Lossky, Yuly Aikhenvald, Nikolai Berdyayev, Sergei Bulgakov, and Semyon Frank.

They also took away Ivan Ilyin, a fascist thinker who wrote a 1933 article titled National Socialism: A New Spirit. Ilyin has been praised by Putin and, in 2005, Putin was personally involved in the effort to have Ilyins remains reinterred in Moscow. He consecrated the grave in 2009.

Not all of the nearly 300 intellectuals who were shipped out of the country in 1922 were famous. They included doctors, lawyers, educators, economists, and others.

Russian filmmaker Aleksei Denisov, whose 2002 documentary Russian Exodus chronicled the first wave of Russian emigration, said in 2012 that, all told, it is estimated that the Russians exiled from the country between 1922 and 1939 published more than 13,000 academic works after leaving the Soviet Union.

In May 1922, a group of artists in Moscow formed the Association of Artists of Revolutionary Russia (AKhRR). It was the direct forerunner of the Union of Artists of the Soviet Union, which was created in 1932. The groups ideology was that the didactic content of a work of art was far more important than its aesthetic merits.

Art must be comprehensible to the masses, was the groups mantra, as was heroic realism. Artists should choose their themes on the basis of the needs of society and the party.

The Great Soviet Encyclopedia of 1950 says the group was the most advanced artistic organization of the period and that it marked the beginning of the decisive victory of realism in Soviet art.

Read more:

1922: The Year That Sealed The Fate Of Russia And Its Neighborhood - Radio Free Europe / Radio Liberty

Fighter-General, Ernesto Yeboah

Founder and leader of the Economist Fighters League Ernesto Yeboah has admonished members of the group not to forget the sacrifices of those who lost their lives in 2021 fighting injustice, oppression and bad governance.

In his message for the new year, he said the death of Kaaka and the other protestors who stood for justice and accountability must not be in vain.

This is no small feat, and as we celebrate it we must remember the valuable lives we lost to our struggle for a New Ghana, most memorably that of Fighter Muhammad Kaaka and the #JusticeForKaaka protestors murdered by the state in Ejura. When we think of Kaaka we must be reminded that we cannot betray the People, and we cannot betray the revolution. We cannot make a mockery of Kaakas death; his sacrifice and that of his loved ones must not be in vain.

He urged the members to enter the new year staying committed to the vision of a new Ghana.

As we enter into the New Year, we must recommit ourselves to the vision for a new Ghana. We must demand and move to build a Ghana in which the People are the rock on which the nation stands. The voice of the People must be heard not only in the streets, but in the halls of governance, and in all the decision-making spaces that define the path of our motherland.

Read the full statement below

Greetings Fighters and all Comrades,

Greetings in the name of revolution and growth; in the name of movement and mobilisation. Greetings in the name of reclamation, greetings in the name of Power returned to the People. After what has been yet another year of bad governance and rotten systems, police repression and oppression in the courts and in the streets, we have finally made it to the end of 2021.

This is no small feat, and as we celebrate it we must remember the valuable lives we lost to our struggle for a New Ghana, most memorably that of Fighter Muhammad Kaaka and the #JusticeForKaaka protestors murdered by the state in Ejura. When we think of Kaaka we must be reminded that we cannot betray the People, and we cannot betray the revolution. We cannot make a mockery of Kaakas death; his sacrifice and that of his loved ones must not be in vain.

As we enter into the New Year, we must recommit ourselves to the vision for a new Ghana. We must demand and move to build a Ghana in which the People are the rock on which the nation stands. The voice of the People must be heard not only in the streets, but in the halls of governance, and in all the decision-making spaces that define the path of our motherland.

In this regard the Economic Fighters League will continue to provide a platform for legitimate confrontation against government. This rotten system and its beneficiaries must face the wrath of the People and relinquish the illegitimate hold they have over our nation.

For thirty years now, the 1992 Sakawa Constitution has been tried and found wanting in the court of public opinion. As such the abolition of this constitution and its replacement with one defined BY and designed FOR the People must remain at the top of our radical agenda to transform Ghana.

As we fight to rebuild our nation, the Economic Fighters League is declaring 2022 a year of popular accountability. With the People of Ghana we will be monitoring the actions of those in government, holding their feet to the fire whenever they are found wanting. We will increase pressure on them in government and in their constituencies and in every action that they take on behalf of the People of Ghana. We will not allow for poor governance to go unchallenged. In this regard we shall intensify our cooperation and working relations with all progressive movements.

Even as we do this, the Economic Fighters League will be expanding our action front, working to build a coalition platform that provides a legitimate opportunity for citizen participation in governance. This force will become the foundation of the alternative we so sorely need in our motherland, an opportunity to reclaim and secure Power for the People of Ghana.

The Economic Fighters League has stood firm in the face of opposition, our integrity and our clarity shining through the dark forces that wished to engulf us. It is now time we are Marching to reclaim Power for the People. And so as we enter 2022, we encourage Ghanaians to stand tall and firm, in the knowledge that this is the beginning of the reclamation.

The alternative is coming. We are Fighters.

Towards the empowerment of the Youth.Towards a reclamation of Power for the People.Towards social justice.Towards full ownership of our resources.Towards Economic Democracy in our lifetime!Towards a new Ghana, and a united Africa.

Afehyia Pa! Happy New Year.

Read the original post:

Kaaka died fighting oppression, injustice, let's not his death be in vain - Ernesto to EFL members - GhanaWeb

No, I am not unretiring.

When you last heard from me in September it was my farewell column as editorial page editor. As planned, I did retire from that position on my 65th birthday, Sept. 26. I'm told the search for my permanent replacement continues.

I haven't missed the responsibility for filling the opinion pages of The Day in print and online, or sorting through and editing letters, or dealing with the myriad interruptions, complaints and added tasks that intruded on getting those basics done.

I have missed the writing and hearing from readers. So, when the opportunity arose to pen a couple of columns monthly, I agreed.

Naively perhaps, I still believe this republic, this 246-year-old experiment in self-rule, holds out the greatest promise for humanity. I still believe we can debate and disagree without being disagreeable.

But no longer can we assume our self-governance will persist. There is no ignoring the reality that our politics have become toxic and angry. In 2020, our record of having of peaceful transition of power ended. People can't agree on the same facts and reality, never mind reach consensus on policy.

Needed is agreement on some core principles.

Don't view those you disagree with as enemies or un-American. People have dramatically different views about what should be the role of government and how to make their community, state and country better and provide opportunities for all. We need to remember that most people have the right motives, as much as we may be convinced their priorities are wrong and even bad for the country.

Don't settle for stereotypes. Talk to many conservatives, and they dismiss liberals as wanting government to do everything for people and make them beholden to that government. Conservatives cringe about what they see as an anything-goes morality that, for the sake of inclusion and diversity, refuses to draw any lines. They are convinced that proposals to allow undocumented immigrants to gain legal status are motivated by the desire to swell liberal ranks.

Talk to many liberals, and they dismiss conservatives as lacking fundamental moral compassion, especially for groups that have faced a history of oppression. They see the conservative opposition to business regulation, programs to assist the impoverished, and a push for stringent immigration control as efforts to assure the rich get richer and a history of white supremacy is never challenged.

Of course, liberals see themselves as promoting a more inclusive, fair and tolerant society. Conservatives say their emphasis is on individual opportunity and responsibility.

We must move past one-dimensional, negative caricatures that fuel distrust and hostility and that make compromise a bridge too far. Unfortunately, much of social media, cable news, and the political parties to raise funds and secure support feed such stereotypes. Make liberals and conservatives, Democrats and Republicans, argue policy points.

Welcome participation in our democracy as a good thing. Yes, states must assure there are safeguards to prevent voter fraud, but don't put up needless barriers to voter participation. Instead, compete for those voters. The fact is voter fraud is rare and the instances of it deciding elections rarer still.

Next November, Connecticut voters will have the opportunity to approve a state constitutional amendment that would allow the General Assembly to pass laws providing for early in-person. Voters should approve it and both parties should back a process that would at least allow voting in the week before Election Day.

Accept election results. Liberals have decried the U.S. Supreme Court's refusal to block gerrymandering that distorts voting district boundaries to the benefit of one party and its Citizens United ruling that tossed rules restricting corporate campaign funding. Conservatives are convinced that easing absentee voting provisions, in the interest of allowing greater participation in the pandemic-plagued 2020 election, went too far and opened a door for abuse.

But once votes are counted and the courts have spoken, the legitimacy of election winners must be accepted. Nothing could be more poisonous to our democracy than it becoming routine for the losing party and candidate and their supporters to refuse to accept election results.

The world is watching. China is making the case for oligarchy, or rule by the few. Under Vladimir Putin, Russia has moved backward to a watered-down form of totalitarianism. Americans must recognize that what they share in common as Americans the freedoms and rule of law provided by our constitutional, liberal democracy must take precedent over what divides them.

Paul Choiniere is the former editorial page editor of The Day, now retired.Reach him at p.choiniere@yahoo.com.

Read more from the original source:

Core principles to strain toxins from our politics - theday.com

The recent abduction of AAC governorship candidate in the previous Imo governorship election, Mr. Uche Nwosu has been condemned by Mr. Carl Umegboro, a public affairs analyst stating that it was shocking that up till now, no strong explanation has been given to warrant such ill-treatment likened to a military junta.In a statement on Friday in Abuja, the public affairs analyst said that the actions of the Nigerian Police at the Anglican church in Imo state looked like that of kidnappers, bandits and criminals adding that it was a national embarrassment and disgrace for the Police to act the way it did, and impudently owned up.He said that no matter the political squabbles going on in Imo state, it is unjustifiable for a public institution as delicate as Police to become a tool of oppression for settling political scores, and wondered why the Imo State Commissioner of Police has not been queried and sanctioned accordingly including immediate redeployment.Umegboro said that the excuse by the Inspector General of Police Usman Alkali Baba of having no knowledge is flimsy, absurd and inconsequential considering the volume of embarrassment the Police under his watch brought to the nation by the silly act even when federal government was marketing the nation in the international arenas.Mr. Umegboro argued that irrespective of what may have transpired in the state during Rochas Okorochas administration as alleged, that they do not justify the Police intimidation and excesses witnessed in the state recently which may escalate to a worse situation if not controlled. He added that oppression and intimidation are not part of benefits offered to a state that belongs to a ruling party.He therefore appealed to President Muhammadu Buhari to watch the video to see how his Police played a role of political thugs in a broad day which initially, was accurately reported in the media as kidnapping.The nation is no longer in a military era where oppression and intimidation against perceived enemies used to be the order of the day. Obviously, what Nigerian Police did in Imo state during a church service is a national embarrassment.In fact, President Muhammadu Buhari should watch the video to see how the Police under his watch bullied a citizen of the country convincingly to settle scores. If a citizens attention is needed by the Police, there are procedures to fetch the fellow, and not acting as witnessed which was similar to that of scripts in the Animal Farm by George Orwell, the analyst fumed.He queried the rationale for the traumatic action during a church service which put many including elderly people into severe fear even without any Police invitation extended to the victim earlier which showed that it was merely to cause embarrassments to the victim in the presence of his invitees and to frustrate the occasion.The question begging for answer is when has a church become the ideal place to arrest a citizen, sadly, one that was neither invited nor a warrant of arrest issued against, and then during a thanksgiving service in the church in honour of his deceased mother. From stories, nothing showed that Nwosu was at large, hence, unacceptable.Whatever issues going on between Senator Rochas Okorocha, the victims father in-law and the present government cannot justify the barbaric Police actions during a church service except the nation is going backwards. There are avenues to demand for stewardship from a former public officeholder, and not bullying. If not controlled, the ugly pattern could resuscitate, and who knows who will be the next target or victim, thereby destroying the gains of democracy. This is not about Rochas Okorocha but civility and nationalism.Essentially, we cannot be condemning bullying in secondary schools when those in authority openly promote and exhibit the same vices against political enemies. Recently, five ELAN engineers working on the AfDB project in Ebonyi state went missing only to hear from the Ebonyi State government that they were killed and buried, and nothing has been said about such barbarism. These are heights of irresponsibility, Umegboro lamentably said.

See more here:

Ondo People Will Soon Evict Akeredolu From Govt House Over Looting -PDP - The Tide

One of the driving forces behind the Prospect, our managing editor Jonathan Guyer, left us for Vox this year. (If you want his job, click here.) We couldnt do a Best of 2021 without showcasing not only his writing, but the foreign-policy coverage he really led.

Jonathans own work took aim at the unexplored dynamic of the revolving door and how it shapes President Bidens approach to the world. He took a critical eye to Biden foreign-policy and national-security appointees, their severely under-covered corporate backgrounds, and how personnel determines policy in insidious ways. Here are some of the standouts.

Nominally, this was about national-security adviser Jake Sullivan, but you could put this frame on practically everyone in the foreign-policy world sometimes known as the Blob. Every former policymaker in Washington is simultaneously an academic, a researcher, and an adviser to big business. This piece sums up a lot of Jonathans work at the Prospect.

Rebellion Defense was generally an unknown startup, which somehow landed multiple plum slots on the Biden transitions agency review teams, thanks to contacts inside the Pentagon and a critical benefactor, former Google CEO Eric Schmidt. This also features one of the Prospects best images of the year.

One of Jonathans best attributes involves connecting dots that few other people notice at first glance. This story is about the Biden administrations report on the murder of Jamal Khashoggi, but also the partnership of WestExec Advisors, a landing spot for much of the Biden administration foreign-policy team when Democrats were out of power, and Teneo, a global consulting firm. Teneo is intertwined on a major business project with the same Saudi government the administration was reluctant to sanction after the damning Khashoggi report.

Few reporters went beneath the surface to investigate the corporate ties of people like U.S. ambassador to China Nicholas Burns, or Mideast adviser Brett McGurk. Jonathan did this year.

He also uncovered administration officials links to an Israeli spyware group accused of hacking the data of journalists.

In 2016, a small office in the Defense Department initiated a review of its substandard database for tracking military sexual assault cases. It was an example of government coming to terms with its inadequacies and working to fix themuntil senior officials nixed the report. This deeply reported investigative piece shows the resistance at the highest levels of the Pentagon to safeguard its own troops.

Jonathan also anchored the Prospects international coverage, and in 2021 much of it focused on the end of Americas longest war. The articles he commissioned on the withdrawal from Afghanistan were original and agenda-setting.

By Emran Feroz

This striking piece blows holes in the notion of Afghanistan as the good war that saved the population from the Taliban. It forces Americans to reckon with how our presence in the country differs from our ideals.

By Rozina Ali

This review of two books on the war on terror makes the case that the tragedy is how it was conducted legally, where the law was used to perpetuate oppression.

By Zack Kopplin

The immediate fleeing of Afghan president Ashraf Ghani with loads of cash reveals the blind spot U.S. foreign-policy officials had toward a Western-educated and -installed leader whose corruption was always visible to anyone who looked closely.

By Marya Hannun

The plight of Afghan women has been front and center in U.S. media for decades, but its complicated by complex realities on the ground, whether Afghan women needed saving even before the war, and how the presence of U.S. forces made women less safe.

Read the rest here:

Corporate Ties and Drawdown: Foreign Policy in 2021 - The American Prospect