Israel's security service Shin Bet announced on Thursday that it had
foiled a large transnational Hamas terror network that was plotting to
carry out multiple attacks in Jerusalem, including on the city's
soccer stadium.
More than 30 Palestinians, two Jordanians and a
Kuwaiti were arrested in connection with planning shooting, bombing and
kidnapping attacks against Israelis in a September sting operation, the
Shin Bet said. Police confiscated M16 rifles, ammunition and explosive
devices during the bust. Jerusalem's light rail system was also among
the cell's targets.
According to the Shin Bet statement, the terror network's operation stretched across the Middle East.
The
security service reported that the terror cell's nerve center and
recruitment hub was in Turkey but planned to launch attacks from West
Bank and Jordan. Operatives were said to be trained in terrain
navigation, conducting clandestine operations and weapons handling in
Syria and Gaza, with the latter entered by the terror recruits via
smuggling tunnels.
If true, the busted plot reveals a
concerning strengthening of Hamas' international reach, experts say.
"It's very worrying that these kind of plots can be planned without the
security services in the countries where they are operating stopping
them. Not in Turkey, not in Jordan, not in Syria. Either because they
don't mind them doing it, or because of the mess that the Middle East is
in, it is possible to get away with it without being detected,"
Professor Yossi Mekelberg, an Middle East associate fellow with the UK
think-tank Chatham House told VICE News.
During a recent trip to the US, Israeli Defense Minister Moshe Ya'alon reportedly
complained about a new Hamas headquarters opening in Istanbul. "Turkey
is playing a cynical game. Hamas is sponsored by Turkey and Qatar, the
former is a NATO member. It's inconceivable that this terror group
should have headquarters in the Gaza Strip and Istanbul," Ya'alon said
in a meeting with then-US Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel.
On
Thursday, speaking during a visit to Sde Boker Kibbutz, the burial
ground of Israel's Zionist founder David Ben-Gurion, Israeli Prime
Minister Benjamin Netanyahu thanked the Shin Bet and the army for
"foiling very dangerous terrorist actions that could have claimed many
victims in our country" but alluded to more terror attacks being plotted
against Israel.
"We are operating day and night in order to
maintain the security of Israel's citizens... This is one operation that
has been published but there are many more that remain secret," he
added.
Thursday's announcement of the arrests -— which were made
more than two months ago — comes as Netanyahu faces mounting pressure
both at home and abroad, sparking speculation that the release of
information about the successful terror bust was politically motivated.
Israel
has faced substantial international criticism after a bloody 7-week war
in Gaza that killed more than 2,100 Palestinians, most of them
civilians. Its heavy-handed response to a recent spate of Palestinian
terror attacks, including the revival of the controversial policy of
demolishing the family homes of terror suspects and proposals to revoke
the residency permits of their relatives, has also prompted widespread
condemnation by human rights groups.
'A Darkness in His Heart': Terror, Martyrs, Rubble and Repetition as Israel Resumes Home Demolitions. Read more here.
"There
is an obvious political capital in making this announcement at a time
when Israel is under attack for its handling of the current situation,"
Mekelberg told VICE News. "Now Netanyahu can say: We're not just taking
harsh measures against the Palestinians, we don't just decide to
demolish houses. They are plotting against us."
News of the
arrests will also help Netanyahu on a domestic front, where the prime
minister is courting the country's powerful right ahead of rumored early
elections and under mounting pressure from the public to act to end a
wave of terror attacks.
Centered on Jerusalem, stabbing, shooting
and hit-and-run attacks by Palestinians have killed at least 11 Israeli
citizens in the last month.
Several of the suspects and
perpetrators behind the recent series of attacks, including three men
allegedly caught plotting to assassinate Israeli Foreign Minister
Avigdor Lieberman with a rocket-propelled grenade, were West Bank
Palestinians with ties to Hamas.
The spurt in Hamas activity
beyond its Gaza stronghold suggests that group, deemed a terrorist
organization by the US and European Union, may be attempting to
destabilize its political opponents in the West Bank as well as carrying
out violent "resistance" against Israeli occupation.
Hamas took
over Gaza after an electoral battle with the leader of the Palestinian
Authority (PA) Mahmoud Abbas in June 2007 and set up its own government
in the the strip while Abbas continued to lead Palestinians in West
Bank.
Following a seven-year rift, the two divided Palestinian
factions briefly reunited under the auspices of a national conciliation
government in June this year. However the affair quickly descended into
mutual finger pointing, with Hamas accusing the PA of getting into bed
with the Israeli state and the PA in turn accusing Hamas of undermining
its authority .
Terror attacks launched from the West Bank "would
also serve Hamas by keeping the spotlight off the Strip.. [and are]
intended to drag Israel into a severe response and bring about the
collapse of the Palestinian Authority," warned the Shin Bet.
A
growth in influence of Hamas — widely considered more radical than the
Palestinian Liberation Organization, the dominant force in the PA — in
the West Bank is concerning for Israel. While Abbas publicly condemned a
recent terror attack on a synagogue that killed four rabbis, Hamas
celebrated it, praising the perpetrators as "martyrs." It has also
called for more "revenge attacks" against "Israeli occupiers."
"Right
now, there is no love lost between Hamas and Fatah and in the very
twisted way of the Middle East the war in Gaza has strengthened Hamas
giving them a lot of credibility on the streets at a time when the PLO,
Fatah are not seen as being able to achieve anything for the
Palestinians," Mekelberg told VICE News.
"Israel's actions
combined with no viable peace process creates space for
radicalization... and of course they [Hamas] would love to have more
power in the West Bank. Now with the current weakness of Abbas they hope
there is a chance to achieve this," he added.
Friday, November 28, 2014
Police Arrest Group Running Islamic State Online Shop in Sleepy French Town
French police have arrested a group selling Islamic State
paraphernalia during a raid on a sleepy French village, after they were
apparently alerted by residents who recognized their neighborhood on an
undercover TV show.
Officers made the arrests on Wednesday night, according to the local newspaper Le Progrès. They also seized a large quantity of books, DVDs and flags, according to a statement released by the Interior Ministry.
The number of detained people remains unknown but sources close to the investigation told AFP that a couple seen a few days before on TV was among them.
The police were reportedly alerted by residents of Ambérieu-en-Bugey, near Lyon, in eastern France who recognized their neighborhood in Enquête Exclusive, a French TV broadcast, on Sunday evening. This episode of the show, known for its hidden camera investigations, centered on the issue of the Islamic State's French recruits.
The program included a segment in which a couple was shown bragging about being the last remaining sellers of Islamic State flags in France, after their main competitor was put in jail.
The woman was seen explaining that before devoting herself to this online business, she was "in a computer service company," and that her husband was "staying at home, bored to death". She said that they have been shipping flags not only to different parts of France, but also to the United Kingdom, the Netherlands, the United States, and Australia.
They were filmed using a hidden camera and their faces were blurred. Some of the streets shown of the quiet town - which has just 14,000 inhabitants - were also blurred for the broadcast. However, residents still apparently managed to identify the couple's location and alerted French authorities.
"We took all the necessary measures to blur the images, we respected these people's anonymity," a source who works at M6, the private TV channel which broadcasts the show told VICE News.
The source, who asked to remain anonymous, explained that the journalists "found the website very easily, after a quick search. Meeting the people was as simple." She added that they heard of the arrests on the radio on Thursday morning.
The members of the group risk up to seven years of prison and a 100,000 euro fine according to the new anti-terror bill passed by the French parliament earlier this month, which is meant to combat "apology for and incitement to terrorism." This is the first time individuals are to face the new charge, part of a wider law targeting lone wolves planning "individual terrorist undertakings."
France is the western country that provides the Islamic State with the highest number of jihadists. The French government says that 1,136 French citizens are currently fighting in Iraq and Syria, or are planning on going there.
Officers made the arrests on Wednesday night, according to the local newspaper Le Progrès. They also seized a large quantity of books, DVDs and flags, according to a statement released by the Interior Ministry.
The number of detained people remains unknown but sources close to the investigation told AFP that a couple seen a few days before on TV was among them.
The police were reportedly alerted by residents of Ambérieu-en-Bugey, near Lyon, in eastern France who recognized their neighborhood in Enquête Exclusive, a French TV broadcast, on Sunday evening. This episode of the show, known for its hidden camera investigations, centered on the issue of the Islamic State's French recruits.
The program included a segment in which a couple was shown bragging about being the last remaining sellers of Islamic State flags in France, after their main competitor was put in jail.
The woman was seen explaining that before devoting herself to this online business, she was "in a computer service company," and that her husband was "staying at home, bored to death". She said that they have been shipping flags not only to different parts of France, but also to the United Kingdom, the Netherlands, the United States, and Australia.
They were filmed using a hidden camera and their faces were blurred. Some of the streets shown of the quiet town - which has just 14,000 inhabitants - were also blurred for the broadcast. However, residents still apparently managed to identify the couple's location and alerted French authorities.
"We took all the necessary measures to blur the images, we respected these people's anonymity," a source who works at M6, the private TV channel which broadcasts the show told VICE News.
The source, who asked to remain anonymous, explained that the journalists "found the website very easily, after a quick search. Meeting the people was as simple." She added that they heard of the arrests on the radio on Thursday morning.
The members of the group risk up to seven years of prison and a 100,000 euro fine according to the new anti-terror bill passed by the French parliament earlier this month, which is meant to combat "apology for and incitement to terrorism." This is the first time individuals are to face the new charge, part of a wider law targeting lone wolves planning "individual terrorist undertakings."
France is the western country that provides the Islamic State with the highest number of jihadists. The French government says that 1,136 French citizens are currently fighting in Iraq and Syria, or are planning on going there.
Egyptian Military Targeted in Deadly Attacks as Islamists Mount Anti-Government Protests
Three army officers and three protesters were killed in Egypt on
Friday as Islamist plans for massive anti-government rallies fell apart
in the face of a nationwide military deployment.
Military sources said gunmen in a license plate-less vehicle shot and killed a brigadier general and injured two soldiers in Cairo on Friday, AFP reported. Officials told the Associated Press two other officers had also been killed.
Three people were also reportedly killed in protests in the eastern Cairo district of Matareya, though the deaths could not be independently confirmed. By mid-afternoon, the demonstrations largely remained restricted to outlying neighborhoods, while central Cairo was quiet, though tense, amid a heavy military and police presence.
An ultraconservative Salafi group had called for an uprising on Friday to topple the government of President Abdel-Fattah el-Sisi, the former military chief who let the ouster of elected Islamist President Mohamed Morsi in July 2013. The Islamist call for protests, articulated in a video released on YouTube, accused the current government of betraying Egypt's Muslim "identity." Since Morsi's removal, Egypt's security forces have killed more than a thousand people and detained thousands of others in a crackdown on Islamists and other political opponents.
In the northern port city of Alexandria, thousands of protesters took to the streets, many of them women, holding up four fingers in the symbol of the Rabaa massacre of August 2013, when security forces killed at least 800 Muslim Brotherhood supporters protesting the overthrow of their president Mohamed Morsi. Some reportedly chanted: "Sisi, you are Mubarak's dog. Execution is waiting for you," referring to the former general and now president Abdelfatteh el-Sisi who led the coup.
The Salafi Front spearheaded the planned action, which it called the "Muslim Youth Uprising," and said protesters should brandish Qu'rans. The Islamist Anti Coup Alliance coalition urged Egyptians to join "a thundering week of revolutionary protests" in a statement, but warned its supporters not to get involved in violent clashes with security forces. Adding to the sense of anxiety, a court is expected on Saturday to issue a verdict in a re-trail of former President Hosni Mubarak on charges over the killings of more than 900 protesters.
But it was the first major protests planned in months that worried authorities, with parts of the city center on virtual military lockdown. In the neighborhood of Aguza, soldiers in a tan army personnel carrier trailed a convoy of military jeeps, sirens wailing, in a patrol along the Nile corniche. A military helicopter thumped overhead.
In Tahrir Square, ground zero of the 2011 uprising that ejected dictator Mubarak, several dozen anti-Islamist protesters waved Egyptian flags and held portraits of president Abdelfattah el-Sisi. Concertina wire partially closed each entrance to the square, while uniformed soldiers perched atop rows of APCs. One man wearing plainclothes and carrying a submachine gun against his chest led one group of young men down a side street.
"It's a festival!" said one man wearing glasses and a leather jacket, smiling as he strode toward the crowd. Another man, seated on the metal fence that rings the square muttered "The Brotherhood, they'll kill them."
Moments later a convoy of vehicles from the Central Security Forces, Egypt's riot police, rolled through Tahrir, prompting more cheers from the crowd.
In a shift from previous protests, the Islamists' rhetoric focused more on religion and religious identity. In the past, the Muslim Brotherhood and its allies stressed their demand for Morsi's reinstatement.
Nevertheless Maha Azzam, head of opposition coalition the Egyptian Revolutionary Council, told VICE News that other anti-government protesters might take part too. "It was called for by a particular part of the opposition that is Salafi and is strongly religious, but that doesn't mean that that is the only part of the opposition. The call for Muslim youth to come out to the streets is very much part of the same sort of protests that have already been going on... so it doesn't mean that other groups won't be joining."
Troops were deployed throughout the country ahead of the demonstrations and the Interior Ministry threatened that dissent would be met with "lethal force." In a statement, the Interior Ministry also announced that police arrested 224 people throughout the country for shooting firearms, blocking roads, and other charges, while authorities defused 10 improvised explosive devices.
Azzam said that security forces could use the demonstrations as an excuse to hit opposition groups hard and make it clear that any form of protest would not be tolerated. However, she added that this would be a reflection of official concerns. "The security situation is very precarious and the regime is very uncertain of its own security, so will come out in huge numbers to suppress protest," she said. "The huge security presence is telling... it's not indicative of strength of the opposition, so much as the weakness of the regime."
The coalition leader said that she expected renewed calls for demonstrations to follow. Since Morsi's ouster, security forces have cracked down hard on supporters of the former president and his Muslim Brotherhood, killing hundreds and arresting tens of thousands.
The Egyptian cabinet approved a new terrorism bill on Wednesday with a wide ranging definition of "terrorist entities" including anyone who occupies private or public buildings or disrupts the work of authorities. Penalties had already been increased for terrorist acts in an April penal code amendment. In February the brotherhood were designated a terrorist organization.
Meanwhile, a juvenile court in Alexandria sentenced 78 children aged 13-17 to between two and five years in prison on Wednesday for being members of the Muslim Brotherhood and taking part in unauthorized protests, local media said. The detainees have complained of a number of violations whilst in custody.
An insurgency has raged in the Sinai peninsula since Morsi's ouster and security chiefs have been rattled by an upswell in attacks on police officers and troops that have killed scores in a matter of weeks. These include an assault on an Egyptian army checkpoint in late October that left 31 troops dead and prompted officials to declare a state of emergency in several parts of the Sinai. This was followed earlier this month by an unprecedented sea-borne attack on an Egyptian navy ship conducting a training mission off the coast of northeastern Damietta.
Egypt's most active extremist militant group, al-Qaeda-inspired Ansar Beit al Maqdis — which roughly translates to "Partisans of the Holy House," a reference to Jerusalem — claimed responsibility for the checkpoint attack as well as a number of others. The group also pledged allegiance to the Islamic State on November 10 and urged attacks on authorities.
Military sources said gunmen in a license plate-less vehicle shot and killed a brigadier general and injured two soldiers in Cairo on Friday, AFP reported. Officials told the Associated Press two other officers had also been killed.
Three people were also reportedly killed in protests in the eastern Cairo district of Matareya, though the deaths could not be independently confirmed. By mid-afternoon, the demonstrations largely remained restricted to outlying neighborhoods, while central Cairo was quiet, though tense, amid a heavy military and police presence.
An ultraconservative Salafi group had called for an uprising on Friday to topple the government of President Abdel-Fattah el-Sisi, the former military chief who let the ouster of elected Islamist President Mohamed Morsi in July 2013. The Islamist call for protests, articulated in a video released on YouTube, accused the current government of betraying Egypt's Muslim "identity." Since Morsi's removal, Egypt's security forces have killed more than a thousand people and detained thousands of others in a crackdown on Islamists and other political opponents.
In the northern port city of Alexandria, thousands of protesters took to the streets, many of them women, holding up four fingers in the symbol of the Rabaa massacre of August 2013, when security forces killed at least 800 Muslim Brotherhood supporters protesting the overthrow of their president Mohamed Morsi. Some reportedly chanted: "Sisi, you are Mubarak's dog. Execution is waiting for you," referring to the former general and now president Abdelfatteh el-Sisi who led the coup.
The Salafi Front spearheaded the planned action, which it called the "Muslim Youth Uprising," and said protesters should brandish Qu'rans. The Islamist Anti Coup Alliance coalition urged Egyptians to join "a thundering week of revolutionary protests" in a statement, but warned its supporters not to get involved in violent clashes with security forces. Adding to the sense of anxiety, a court is expected on Saturday to issue a verdict in a re-trail of former President Hosni Mubarak on charges over the killings of more than 900 protesters.
But it was the first major protests planned in months that worried authorities, with parts of the city center on virtual military lockdown. In the neighborhood of Aguza, soldiers in a tan army personnel carrier trailed a convoy of military jeeps, sirens wailing, in a patrol along the Nile corniche. A military helicopter thumped overhead.
In Tahrir Square, ground zero of the 2011 uprising that ejected dictator Mubarak, several dozen anti-Islamist protesters waved Egyptian flags and held portraits of president Abdelfattah el-Sisi. Concertina wire partially closed each entrance to the square, while uniformed soldiers perched atop rows of APCs. One man wearing plainclothes and carrying a submachine gun against his chest led one group of young men down a side street.
"It's a festival!" said one man wearing glasses and a leather jacket, smiling as he strode toward the crowd. Another man, seated on the metal fence that rings the square muttered "The Brotherhood, they'll kill them."
Moments later a convoy of vehicles from the Central Security Forces, Egypt's riot police, rolled through Tahrir, prompting more cheers from the crowd.
In a shift from previous protests, the Islamists' rhetoric focused more on religion and religious identity. In the past, the Muslim Brotherhood and its allies stressed their demand for Morsi's reinstatement.
Nevertheless Maha Azzam, head of opposition coalition the Egyptian Revolutionary Council, told VICE News that other anti-government protesters might take part too. "It was called for by a particular part of the opposition that is Salafi and is strongly religious, but that doesn't mean that that is the only part of the opposition. The call for Muslim youth to come out to the streets is very much part of the same sort of protests that have already been going on... so it doesn't mean that other groups won't be joining."
Troops were deployed throughout the country ahead of the demonstrations and the Interior Ministry threatened that dissent would be met with "lethal force." In a statement, the Interior Ministry also announced that police arrested 224 people throughout the country for shooting firearms, blocking roads, and other charges, while authorities defused 10 improvised explosive devices.
Azzam said that security forces could use the demonstrations as an excuse to hit opposition groups hard and make it clear that any form of protest would not be tolerated. However, she added that this would be a reflection of official concerns. "The security situation is very precarious and the regime is very uncertain of its own security, so will come out in huge numbers to suppress protest," she said. "The huge security presence is telling... it's not indicative of strength of the opposition, so much as the weakness of the regime."
The coalition leader said that she expected renewed calls for demonstrations to follow. Since Morsi's ouster, security forces have cracked down hard on supporters of the former president and his Muslim Brotherhood, killing hundreds and arresting tens of thousands.
The Egyptian cabinet approved a new terrorism bill on Wednesday with a wide ranging definition of "terrorist entities" including anyone who occupies private or public buildings or disrupts the work of authorities. Penalties had already been increased for terrorist acts in an April penal code amendment. In February the brotherhood were designated a terrorist organization.
Meanwhile, a juvenile court in Alexandria sentenced 78 children aged 13-17 to between two and five years in prison on Wednesday for being members of the Muslim Brotherhood and taking part in unauthorized protests, local media said. The detainees have complained of a number of violations whilst in custody.
An insurgency has raged in the Sinai peninsula since Morsi's ouster and security chiefs have been rattled by an upswell in attacks on police officers and troops that have killed scores in a matter of weeks. These include an assault on an Egyptian army checkpoint in late October that left 31 troops dead and prompted officials to declare a state of emergency in several parts of the Sinai. This was followed earlier this month by an unprecedented sea-borne attack on an Egyptian navy ship conducting a training mission off the coast of northeastern Damietta.
Egypt's most active extremist militant group, al-Qaeda-inspired Ansar Beit al Maqdis — which roughly translates to "Partisans of the Holy House," a reference to Jerusalem — claimed responsibility for the checkpoint attack as well as a number of others. The group also pledged allegiance to the Islamic State on November 10 and urged attacks on authorities.
A Qaddafi-Related Scandal Could Ruin Nicolas Sarkozy's Political Comeback in France
Former French President Nicolas Sarkozy announced in September that he would be coming out of political retirement
to run for head of the country's UMP conservative party. Sarkozy is the
clear favorite to win the November 29 election, the first step toward
declaring his candidacy for the 2017 presidential elections.
Sarkozy was elected in 2007, then beaten in 2012 by socialist party candidate François Hollande, becoming the first French president since 1981 to lose a reelection campaign. His recent political comeback has been clouded by deep divisions within the UMP party, and no fewer than nine legal disputes, the most controversial of which concerns the alleged secret financing of Sarkozy's 2007 presidential campaign by late Libyan dictator Muammar Qaddafi.
The allegations were first revealed by Mediapart, a left-leaning French news site known for high-profile investigations of political and financial scandals. VICE News spoke to Fabrice Arfi, the Mediapart journalist who broke the Qaddafi-Sarkozy story in 2011.
Nicolas Sarkozy's comeback under threat over kickback scandal. Read more here.
"For us, it started in the spring of 2011, when we got hold of thousands of documents — and I mean thousands — from the archive of a businessman and arms dealer called Ziad Takieddine," Arfi said.
Takieddine is a French-Lebanese businessman who specialized in major international arms contracts. Much to the delight of French journalists, Takieddine is also George Clooney's wife's uncle. He was an alleged middleman in the Karachi affair, a series of kickbacks connected to submarine contracts between France and Pakistan. The contracts allegedly financed the 1995 presidential campaign of former prime minister Édouard Balladur. Sarkozy was budget minister and Balladur's spokesman at the time of the Karachi affair, and was investigated for his role in the affair.
Arfi described Takieddine as a businessman leaving behind numerous traces of unofficial dealings between France and Libya.
"What we discovered is that the man we thought was tied to one era and one scandal — the Balladur era and the Karachi scandal — became more and more professional as time went on," Arfi said. "From the mid '90s to the Sarkozy presidential election, he became the common thread [through all the scandals] that exposed the dark side of Sarkozyism."
In 2011, Takieddine involved former president Jacques Chirac in a massive 1995 arms deal in Saudi Arabia, a scandal that came to be known as the Miksa contract. Sarkozy served as interior minister in Chirac's cabinet at the time. According to Mediapart, some of Sarkozy's relatives played a role in brokering the Miksa contract.
Libya: A Broken State. Watch the VICE News documentary here.
"Mr. Takieddine was supposed to receive 350 million euros in secret commission fees," Arfi told VICE News. "But Chirac stopped the deal from going ahead, prompting the need for a new business El Dorado… which turned out to be Libya."
According to Mediapart, members of the Chirac administration — including Sarkozy's team — helped Takieddine "win contracts with the Libyan regime," then under the control of Qaddafi.
"The relationship [with Libya] went deep, very early on," Arfi said.
Mediapart's subsequent reporting detailed the business, military and diplomatic relations between France and Libya. The story was largely ignored by other French news outlets until April 2012, when the site published an official Libyan document that detailed a plan for Qaddafi to fund Sarkozy's 2007 presidential campaign.
Mediapart came under fire over the authenticity of the document, and a scandal was born within the scandal. In April 2012, Sarkozy filed an official complaint against the site, claiming the document was forged. Arfi suggested that Sarkozy went with the forgery allegation rather than defamation — typically the go-to legal recourse in France in a case of this kind — in attempt to trigger an investigation that would reveal the source of the document.
"We are dealing with an international scandal, which could have tremendous diplomatic repercussions, and implicate highest-level state officials, in France and also in an authoritarian state such as Libya," Arfi said. "Informers are putting themselves at risk."
The disputed document is a letter dated December 10, 2006, and written by Moussa Koussa, a former member of Qaddafi's inner circle, who at the time headed the Libyan intelligence agency. The note describes Gaddafi's instruction to his chief of staff to finance Sarkozy's 2007 campaign to the tune of 50 million euros.
VICE News Archives: The Rebels of Libya. Watch here.
Doubts about the authenticity of the document boiled down to one question: Did the signature on the letter really belong to Koussa?
After a lengthy investigation, Koussa was finally brought in for questioning, and on November 6, 2014, three expert graphologists confirmed that his signature on the document was legitimate. On November 14, Mediapart published an article confirming the authentication of their evidence. The news was also reported by French daily Liberation, which pointed out that the ongoing investigation has not yet proved that Qaddafi's regime actually delivered the payment as planned. Other French news outlets have largely ignored the ruling, with a few exceptions.
In response to the lack of media attention, Mediapart editor-in-chief Edwy Penel decided to waive the site's subscription fee, and provide free access to the judicial report in full, under the contentious headline "Sarkozy-Gaddafi: The Truth They Want to Stifle."
"This is without doubt one of Mediapart's most emblematic investigations," wrote Plenel. "And in response to this unjustifiable indifference, we are publishing in full the document ignored by the majority of the media."
UN adds Libyan al Qaeda affiliates to terror blacklist. Read more here.
News agency AFP, which was singled out by Plenel over its silence, spoke to VICE News about its decision not to publish the document.
"Our decision not to publish this information is strictly editorial, and belongs entirely to us," Didier Lauras, AFP's editor-in-chief in France, said. "We regularly pick up our colleagues's stories, including Mediapart's. In this case, we decided that, according to our policy on processing information, we would not report on the developments at this stage in the case. We have, in fact, written widely about this case, from the moment Mediapart brought it to light in 2012. There is, of course, no stifling going on."
Looking forward, Arfi said he is "in a rush for this latest farce to end, so that we can get to the bottom of things from a legal standpoint. When the public understands the astonishing extent of these backroom deals with Qaddafi's regime, they will be profoundly shocked."
The ongoing investigation into the alleged payment from Qaddafi to Sarkozy is complicated by the fact that a number of key players and a vast amount of archival evidence disappeared over the course of the Libyan civil war, which started as a civilian uprising against Qaddafi in 2011. In March 2011, a multi-state coalition — including France — launched a military intervention in Libya. Qaddafi was captured and killed by rebels in October 2011. Since the toppling of the dictator's regime, Libya has devolved into lawlessness and Islamic State-linked extremism.
Sarkozy was elected in 2007, then beaten in 2012 by socialist party candidate François Hollande, becoming the first French president since 1981 to lose a reelection campaign. His recent political comeback has been clouded by deep divisions within the UMP party, and no fewer than nine legal disputes, the most controversial of which concerns the alleged secret financing of Sarkozy's 2007 presidential campaign by late Libyan dictator Muammar Qaddafi.
The allegations were first revealed by Mediapart, a left-leaning French news site known for high-profile investigations of political and financial scandals. VICE News spoke to Fabrice Arfi, the Mediapart journalist who broke the Qaddafi-Sarkozy story in 2011.
Nicolas Sarkozy's comeback under threat over kickback scandal. Read more here.
"For us, it started in the spring of 2011, when we got hold of thousands of documents — and I mean thousands — from the archive of a businessman and arms dealer called Ziad Takieddine," Arfi said.
Takieddine is a French-Lebanese businessman who specialized in major international arms contracts. Much to the delight of French journalists, Takieddine is also George Clooney's wife's uncle. He was an alleged middleman in the Karachi affair, a series of kickbacks connected to submarine contracts between France and Pakistan. The contracts allegedly financed the 1995 presidential campaign of former prime minister Édouard Balladur. Sarkozy was budget minister and Balladur's spokesman at the time of the Karachi affair, and was investigated for his role in the affair.
Arfi described Takieddine as a businessman leaving behind numerous traces of unofficial dealings between France and Libya.
"What we discovered is that the man we thought was tied to one era and one scandal — the Balladur era and the Karachi scandal — became more and more professional as time went on," Arfi said. "From the mid '90s to the Sarkozy presidential election, he became the common thread [through all the scandals] that exposed the dark side of Sarkozyism."
In 2011, Takieddine involved former president Jacques Chirac in a massive 1995 arms deal in Saudi Arabia, a scandal that came to be known as the Miksa contract. Sarkozy served as interior minister in Chirac's cabinet at the time. According to Mediapart, some of Sarkozy's relatives played a role in brokering the Miksa contract.
Libya: A Broken State. Watch the VICE News documentary here.
"Mr. Takieddine was supposed to receive 350 million euros in secret commission fees," Arfi told VICE News. "But Chirac stopped the deal from going ahead, prompting the need for a new business El Dorado… which turned out to be Libya."
According to Mediapart, members of the Chirac administration — including Sarkozy's team — helped Takieddine "win contracts with the Libyan regime," then under the control of Qaddafi.
"The relationship [with Libya] went deep, very early on," Arfi said.
Mediapart's subsequent reporting detailed the business, military and diplomatic relations between France and Libya. The story was largely ignored by other French news outlets until April 2012, when the site published an official Libyan document that detailed a plan for Qaddafi to fund Sarkozy's 2007 presidential campaign.
Mediapart came under fire over the authenticity of the document, and a scandal was born within the scandal. In April 2012, Sarkozy filed an official complaint against the site, claiming the document was forged. Arfi suggested that Sarkozy went with the forgery allegation rather than defamation — typically the go-to legal recourse in France in a case of this kind — in attempt to trigger an investigation that would reveal the source of the document.
"We are dealing with an international scandal, which could have tremendous diplomatic repercussions, and implicate highest-level state officials, in France and also in an authoritarian state such as Libya," Arfi said. "Informers are putting themselves at risk."
The disputed document is a letter dated December 10, 2006, and written by Moussa Koussa, a former member of Qaddafi's inner circle, who at the time headed the Libyan intelligence agency. The note describes Gaddafi's instruction to his chief of staff to finance Sarkozy's 2007 campaign to the tune of 50 million euros.
VICE News Archives: The Rebels of Libya. Watch here.
Doubts about the authenticity of the document boiled down to one question: Did the signature on the letter really belong to Koussa?
After a lengthy investigation, Koussa was finally brought in for questioning, and on November 6, 2014, three expert graphologists confirmed that his signature on the document was legitimate. On November 14, Mediapart published an article confirming the authentication of their evidence. The news was also reported by French daily Liberation, which pointed out that the ongoing investigation has not yet proved that Qaddafi's regime actually delivered the payment as planned. Other French news outlets have largely ignored the ruling, with a few exceptions.
In response to the lack of media attention, Mediapart editor-in-chief Edwy Penel decided to waive the site's subscription fee, and provide free access to the judicial report in full, under the contentious headline "Sarkozy-Gaddafi: The Truth They Want to Stifle."
"This is without doubt one of Mediapart's most emblematic investigations," wrote Plenel. "And in response to this unjustifiable indifference, we are publishing in full the document ignored by the majority of the media."
UN adds Libyan al Qaeda affiliates to terror blacklist. Read more here.
News agency AFP, which was singled out by Plenel over its silence, spoke to VICE News about its decision not to publish the document.
"Our decision not to publish this information is strictly editorial, and belongs entirely to us," Didier Lauras, AFP's editor-in-chief in France, said. "We regularly pick up our colleagues's stories, including Mediapart's. In this case, we decided that, according to our policy on processing information, we would not report on the developments at this stage in the case. We have, in fact, written widely about this case, from the moment Mediapart brought it to light in 2012. There is, of course, no stifling going on."
Looking forward, Arfi said he is "in a rush for this latest farce to end, so that we can get to the bottom of things from a legal standpoint. When the public understands the astonishing extent of these backroom deals with Qaddafi's regime, they will be profoundly shocked."
The ongoing investigation into the alleged payment from Qaddafi to Sarkozy is complicated by the fact that a number of key players and a vast amount of archival evidence disappeared over the course of the Libyan civil war, which started as a civilian uprising against Qaddafi in 2011. In March 2011, a multi-state coalition — including France — launched a military intervention in Libya. Qaddafi was captured and killed by rebels in October 2011. Since the toppling of the dictator's regime, Libya has devolved into lawlessness and Islamic State-linked extremism.
The Environmental Protection Agency Just Proposed Smog Rules That Could Save Thousands of Lives
The US Environmental Protection Agency released a draft rule on
Wednesday that would reduce the allowable amount of emitted ozone, a
chemical that contributes to the formation of smog and can cause
premature death, irritation of the lungs, asthma, and low birth weight
in babies.
It's the latest in a series of Clean Air Act regulations President Barack Obama has proposed to curb pollution that compromises public health or contributes to climate change. Environmentalists, public health organizations, and Democrats have celebrated the proposed rule, while business groups and Republicans argue that the costs of compliance are excessively burdensome on the economy.
"The EPA's proposal to strengthen the standard is a step forward in the fight to protect all Americans from the dangers of breathing ozone pollution, especially to protect our children, our older adults, and those living with lung or heart disease," Harold Wimmer, president and CEO of the American Lung Association, said in a statement. "To that end, we will focus on ensuring that the final ozone standard provides the most protection possible to the American people, especially the most vulnerable."
Current allowable levels of ozone are 75 parts per million (ppm) at ground level. The EPA has recommended that level be reduced to 65-70 ppm, and is considering a cap as low as 60 ppm.
"Fulfilling the promise of the Clean Air Act has always been EPA's responsibility," EPA Administrator Gina McCarthy said. "Our health protections have endured because they're engineered to evolve, so that's why we're using the latest science to update air quality standards — to fulfill the law's promise, and defend each and every person's right to clean air."
Once the proposed rules are published in the Federal Register, the public has 90 days to comment. The agency plans to hold three public hearings on the rules, and aims to issue its final ozone standards by October 1, 2015.
According to EPA estimates, the reduction in illnesses, infirmity, and premature deaths amount to a return of three dollars in health benefits for every dollar that it costs to implement the new standards. The agency estimates the costs to oil refineries, power plants, and other types of industry to be in the range of $3.9 and $15 billion annually in 2025 — a price tag disputed by industry groups.
The National Association of Manufacturers (NAM) puts the price tag much higher, calling the proposed rule, if implemented, "the most expensive regulation ever imposed on the American public." In a July study, NAM concluded that the lower cap on ozone would shrink the economy by $270 billion per year, result in 2.9 million fewer jobs per year through 2040, cost the average US household $1,570 per year in lost consumption, and increase electricity costs for manufacturers and households.
"This new standard comes at the same time dozens of other new EPA regulations are being imposed that collectively place increased costs, burdens and delays on manufacturers, threaten our international competitiveness and make it nearly impossible to grow jobs," NAM president and CEO Jay Timmons said in a statement issued Wednesday.
The Obama administration's string of air quality amendments, however, are precisely the type of aggressive action that environmentalists and Democrats have long sought. Facing persistent Congressional opposition to laws aimed at combating climate change or protecting the public from harmful air pollution, Obama has used executive authority to limit greenhouse gas emissions for vehicle tailpipes as well as from new and existing power plants.
"The US can, and must, continue the progress we have already made in reducing emissions from power plants, vehicles and other sources of pollution," the Coalition for Clean Air said in a statement Wednesday. "We have solutions available, including energy efficiency, renewable power, electric vehicles, public transit, and improved land use planning."
It's the latest in a series of Clean Air Act regulations President Barack Obama has proposed to curb pollution that compromises public health or contributes to climate change. Environmentalists, public health organizations, and Democrats have celebrated the proposed rule, while business groups and Republicans argue that the costs of compliance are excessively burdensome on the economy.
"The EPA's proposal to strengthen the standard is a step forward in the fight to protect all Americans from the dangers of breathing ozone pollution, especially to protect our children, our older adults, and those living with lung or heart disease," Harold Wimmer, president and CEO of the American Lung Association, said in a statement. "To that end, we will focus on ensuring that the final ozone standard provides the most protection possible to the American people, especially the most vulnerable."
Current allowable levels of ozone are 75 parts per million (ppm) at ground level. The EPA has recommended that level be reduced to 65-70 ppm, and is considering a cap as low as 60 ppm.
"Fulfilling the promise of the Clean Air Act has always been EPA's responsibility," EPA Administrator Gina McCarthy said. "Our health protections have endured because they're engineered to evolve, so that's why we're using the latest science to update air quality standards — to fulfill the law's promise, and defend each and every person's right to clean air."
Once the proposed rules are published in the Federal Register, the public has 90 days to comment. The agency plans to hold three public hearings on the rules, and aims to issue its final ozone standards by October 1, 2015.
According to EPA estimates, the reduction in illnesses, infirmity, and premature deaths amount to a return of three dollars in health benefits for every dollar that it costs to implement the new standards. The agency estimates the costs to oil refineries, power plants, and other types of industry to be in the range of $3.9 and $15 billion annually in 2025 — a price tag disputed by industry groups.
The National Association of Manufacturers (NAM) puts the price tag much higher, calling the proposed rule, if implemented, "the most expensive regulation ever imposed on the American public." In a July study, NAM concluded that the lower cap on ozone would shrink the economy by $270 billion per year, result in 2.9 million fewer jobs per year through 2040, cost the average US household $1,570 per year in lost consumption, and increase electricity costs for manufacturers and households.
"This new standard comes at the same time dozens of other new EPA regulations are being imposed that collectively place increased costs, burdens and delays on manufacturers, threaten our international competitiveness and make it nearly impossible to grow jobs," NAM president and CEO Jay Timmons said in a statement issued Wednesday.
The Obama administration's string of air quality amendments, however, are precisely the type of aggressive action that environmentalists and Democrats have long sought. Facing persistent Congressional opposition to laws aimed at combating climate change or protecting the public from harmful air pollution, Obama has used executive authority to limit greenhouse gas emissions for vehicle tailpipes as well as from new and existing power plants.
"The US can, and must, continue the progress we have already made in reducing emissions from power plants, vehicles and other sources of pollution," the Coalition for Clean Air said in a statement Wednesday. "We have solutions available, including energy efficiency, renewable power, electric vehicles, public transit, and improved land use planning."
Experimental Ebola Vaccine Successful in First Human Trials
There have been more than 20 separate outbreaks in the nearly 40
years since the Ebola virus was discovered in 1976, but the current
spread of the hemorrhagic fever might be the first to finally prompt a
fully approved vaccine, according to results from the first set of human
trials for one of many experimental treatments being expeditiously
tested.
Findings published on Wednesday in the New England Journal of Medicine indicate that a vaccine for the Sudan and Zaire strains — the ones responsible for infecting more than 15,000 people in Liberia, Sierra Leone, and Guinea in the past year — was safe when tested in humans and could potentially support the immune system in fighting off Ebola.
"On safety and on the ability to produce an appropriate immune response we can call this trial an unqualified success, even though it was an early Phase One trial," Dr. Anthony Fauci, head of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, told the BBC.
"Based on these positive results from the first human trial of this candidate vaccine, we are continuing our accelerated plan for larger trials to determine if the vaccine is efficacious in preventing Ebola infection," he remarked to CNN.
WHO experts decide it is ethical to offer patients experimental Ebola treatments. Read more here.
After quickly pushing the drug through the first phase of clinical testing, National Institutes of Health researchers vaccinated 20 American volunteers with the gene-based treatment, which had already been tested on primates.
All of the vaccines generated antibodies in each of the volunteers, and results indicated that the gene-based vaccine's efficacy is related to dosage. A higher dose proved essential in generating a "more vigorous immune response," according to an article published in the New England Journal of Medicine about the findings.
Despite the promise the research offers, the journal concluded that the study wasn't enough to provide conclusive results.
"There were no major adverse effects, but the sample size (10 persons at each dose level) is too small to draw firm conclusions in this regard," noted the journal article.
Other details such as duration of the vaccine's protection and the role that natural immunity might play are also unclear.
The NIH human trial is one among several underway as a result of calls from the World Health Organization in August for industry players, as well as health agencies and individual countries, to mobilize efforts to develop an Ebola vaccine. Another vaccine targeting the Zaire strain is undergoing trials in Britain, Switzerland, and Mali, a country that has reported eight cases since October.
The experimental vaccine used in the NIH trial was developed by the pharmaceutical company GlaxoSmithKline and fast-tracked in recent months, but the same researchers had put three early-generation potential vaccines through clinical trials between 2003 and 2009. Like many other drugmakers, attempts to develop an Ebola vaccine have often been stalled or shelved. As the West African Ebola outbreak continues to spread, experts have widely attributed the lack of a pre-existing vaccine to the fact that there is little market incentive for a company to take a product like this one through the trial and approval process.
Looking towards a serum from Ebola survivors to aid in outbreak treatment efforts. Read more here.
"There's no money in it and there's a huge liability," Jonathan Moreno, a biomedical ethics professor at the University of Pennsylvania, told VICE News in August. "If you're a drug company, there's no reason, from a market standpoint, to go into a disease like this."
Moreno explained that government subsidies and liability coverage can compensate for the lack of action in the pharmaceutical industry and incentivize drug development.
University of Queensland virologist Dr. Ian Mackay previously told VICE News that we don't have a very responsive vaccine system, instead "we have something that plays chase or catch-up with an outbreak."
"But now we've seen the scale of a particular virus, where a lot of people died and quickly, we had the ability to treat or maybe prevent those infections sitting in a cupboard," Mackay said. "But because there weren't enough people or there wasn't enough money involved earlier on, they didn't get scaled up."
While it's concerning to think of what other potential treatments might be collecting dust in a research lab, the focus of the international community's energy on developing vaccines and treatments could be the only silver lining to develop out of the deadliest Ebola outbreak ever.
Ebola has done what rare infectious diseases in far away countries rarely do — catch the public's attention.
"Ebola was one of a large number of rare and scary diseases, and drug companies can't focus on everything at the same time. This is good because it is focusing the entire scientific and public health community on one disease," University of Reading virologist Dr. Ben Neuman told VICE News. "With all that focus, somebody is probably going to find a way to cramp this one. If it can be done, it will be done."
Findings published on Wednesday in the New England Journal of Medicine indicate that a vaccine for the Sudan and Zaire strains — the ones responsible for infecting more than 15,000 people in Liberia, Sierra Leone, and Guinea in the past year — was safe when tested in humans and could potentially support the immune system in fighting off Ebola.
"On safety and on the ability to produce an appropriate immune response we can call this trial an unqualified success, even though it was an early Phase One trial," Dr. Anthony Fauci, head of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, told the BBC.
"Based on these positive results from the first human trial of this candidate vaccine, we are continuing our accelerated plan for larger trials to determine if the vaccine is efficacious in preventing Ebola infection," he remarked to CNN.
WHO experts decide it is ethical to offer patients experimental Ebola treatments. Read more here.
After quickly pushing the drug through the first phase of clinical testing, National Institutes of Health researchers vaccinated 20 American volunteers with the gene-based treatment, which had already been tested on primates.
All of the vaccines generated antibodies in each of the volunteers, and results indicated that the gene-based vaccine's efficacy is related to dosage. A higher dose proved essential in generating a "more vigorous immune response," according to an article published in the New England Journal of Medicine about the findings.
Despite the promise the research offers, the journal concluded that the study wasn't enough to provide conclusive results.
"There were no major adverse effects, but the sample size (10 persons at each dose level) is too small to draw firm conclusions in this regard," noted the journal article.
Other details such as duration of the vaccine's protection and the role that natural immunity might play are also unclear.
The NIH human trial is one among several underway as a result of calls from the World Health Organization in August for industry players, as well as health agencies and individual countries, to mobilize efforts to develop an Ebola vaccine. Another vaccine targeting the Zaire strain is undergoing trials in Britain, Switzerland, and Mali, a country that has reported eight cases since October.
The experimental vaccine used in the NIH trial was developed by the pharmaceutical company GlaxoSmithKline and fast-tracked in recent months, but the same researchers had put three early-generation potential vaccines through clinical trials between 2003 and 2009. Like many other drugmakers, attempts to develop an Ebola vaccine have often been stalled or shelved. As the West African Ebola outbreak continues to spread, experts have widely attributed the lack of a pre-existing vaccine to the fact that there is little market incentive for a company to take a product like this one through the trial and approval process.
Looking towards a serum from Ebola survivors to aid in outbreak treatment efforts. Read more here.
"There's no money in it and there's a huge liability," Jonathan Moreno, a biomedical ethics professor at the University of Pennsylvania, told VICE News in August. "If you're a drug company, there's no reason, from a market standpoint, to go into a disease like this."
Moreno explained that government subsidies and liability coverage can compensate for the lack of action in the pharmaceutical industry and incentivize drug development.
University of Queensland virologist Dr. Ian Mackay previously told VICE News that we don't have a very responsive vaccine system, instead "we have something that plays chase or catch-up with an outbreak."
"But now we've seen the scale of a particular virus, where a lot of people died and quickly, we had the ability to treat or maybe prevent those infections sitting in a cupboard," Mackay said. "But because there weren't enough people or there wasn't enough money involved earlier on, they didn't get scaled up."
While it's concerning to think of what other potential treatments might be collecting dust in a research lab, the focus of the international community's energy on developing vaccines and treatments could be the only silver lining to develop out of the deadliest Ebola outbreak ever.
Ebola has done what rare infectious diseases in far away countries rarely do — catch the public's attention.
"Ebola was one of a large number of rare and scary diseases, and drug companies can't focus on everything at the same time. This is good because it is focusing the entire scientific and public health community on one disease," University of Reading virologist Dr. Ben Neuman told VICE News. "With all that focus, somebody is probably going to find a way to cramp this one. If it can be done, it will be done."
'It Must Be Stopped': Indonesia's New President Vows to End the World's Worst Deforestation
The worst assault on rainforests anywhere in the world has, for
several years, been taking place in Sumatra. But on Wednesday, the tide
may have finally turned with a visit from Indonesia's populist new
president, Joko Widodo.
Known colloquially as Jokowi, the new Indonesian president has been in the job two months. On Thursday, he travelled to remote Sumatra by helicopter to personally inspect the devastation caused by illegal logging that authorities have turned a blind eye to for 17 years after receiving a petition from the local community.
"It must be stopped, we mustn't allow our tropical rainforest to disappear because of monoculture plantations like oil palm," he told the assembled local media.
Abdul Manan, a villager from Sungai Tohor on the east coast of Sumatra where clearing is at its worst, had started a petition on Change.org to bring the Widodo to see the issue for himself. 28,000 signatures later, and the president of Indonesia was indeed in Manan's town, having flown over charred and cleared rainforest to get there.
In a gesture that local communities and activists could have only dreamed of a few years ago, Widodo then took part in damming up a canal, used by illegal loggers to drain away water and prepare the rainforest and peatland for burning.
Sumatra has overtaken the Amazon as the site of the fastest deforestation anywhere in the world, and 80 percent of it is completely illegal. But the Indonesian government has long let it go on unchecked. As is the case in so many developing countries, fast economic growth has taken precedence over the environment and quality of life for small communities in resource rich areas.
Longgena Ginting, chairman of Greenpeace in Indonesia, told VICE News that the group had in previous years carried out such damming as a campaign action. "Then, the authorities, the police, were stopping us from doing it because they were supporting the clearances. That can give you some idea of how far we've come."
Ginting was one of several activists invited to ride in the president's helicopter and accompany him as he inspected the damage that had been done to the forests.
"He kept saying, as he looked at it, this is what happens when the state is absent, when it is left up to business," said Ginting. "He is a forester himself, so he understands how the forest is managed."
One wonders what the president, a graduate of the Gadjah Mada Forestry School ,made of the way land is cleared near Sungai Tohor is cleared. After illegal loggers drain the peatlands and rain forests of water, they burn it. According to Greenpeace, this year's dry season saw 1,000 different fires burning across 12,000 hectares. The fires are set to clear the forest for palm oil plantations. Indonesia is the world's biggest palm oil producer.
The haze of smog is so thick that for six months of the year many in Sumatra live with it constantly. This year it has been so severe that visibility has been as low as 50 meters and 58,000 locals have been treated for respiratory illnesses and eye or skin conditions.
The scale of the fires is such that smoke regularly crosses the Strait of Malacca to Singapore and Malaysia. Earlier this month smoke from Sumatra was so dense in Singapore that air quality was too poor for outdoor physical activity, according to the Singaporean government.
During the president's visit, he met with Environment and Forestry Minister Siti Nurbaya, acting Riau Governor Arsyadjuliandi Rachman, and Riau police chief Brig. Gen. Dolly Bambang Hermawan, and brought local community activists and environmentalists into the room to present their solutions.
Woro Supartinah, a local activist with the community, said she was happy to have spoken with the delegation.
"Jokowi said to us, to keep him informed, to let him know how things progress," she told VICE News. "That was the best thing, I feel he understands how to take action, he kept speaking about how everyone knew what had to be done. These are not new solutions. It just takes the willpower. Now that he has seen it, I believe he will act."
Widodo announced to gathered reporters: "I have told the minister of environment and forestry to review the licenses of the companies that have converted peatlands into monoculture plantations if they are found damaging the ecosystem."
"Laws around forestry are very weak here because corruption is rife," said Ginting, "A lot of business is done with local authorities and business under the table, so it is important that these things are investigated fully."
The forest fires go to the heart of Widodo's challenge as president. With his populist platform, and policy of collaborating with communities to solve Indonesia's problems, his election has generated great hope among his supporters. His governing style is a departure from the traditional dynamic of Indonesian politics: he has ordered staff to eat local street food at meetings, and last week flew economy to his son's graduation ceremony in Singapore.
But Indonesia's systemic problems will prove difficult to overcome, especially for an outsider with no background in the security forces. Many populist leaders have failed to deliver the action to back up their symbolism. But in Sungai Tohor, there were no cynics.
Known colloquially as Jokowi, the new Indonesian president has been in the job two months. On Thursday, he travelled to remote Sumatra by helicopter to personally inspect the devastation caused by illegal logging that authorities have turned a blind eye to for 17 years after receiving a petition from the local community.
"It must be stopped, we mustn't allow our tropical rainforest to disappear because of monoculture plantations like oil palm," he told the assembled local media.
Abdul Manan, a villager from Sungai Tohor on the east coast of Sumatra where clearing is at its worst, had started a petition on Change.org to bring the Widodo to see the issue for himself. 28,000 signatures later, and the president of Indonesia was indeed in Manan's town, having flown over charred and cleared rainforest to get there.
In a gesture that local communities and activists could have only dreamed of a few years ago, Widodo then took part in damming up a canal, used by illegal loggers to drain away water and prepare the rainforest and peatland for burning.
Sumatra has overtaken the Amazon as the site of the fastest deforestation anywhere in the world, and 80 percent of it is completely illegal. But the Indonesian government has long let it go on unchecked. As is the case in so many developing countries, fast economic growth has taken precedence over the environment and quality of life for small communities in resource rich areas.
Longgena Ginting, chairman of Greenpeace in Indonesia, told VICE News that the group had in previous years carried out such damming as a campaign action. "Then, the authorities, the police, were stopping us from doing it because they were supporting the clearances. That can give you some idea of how far we've come."
Ginting was one of several activists invited to ride in the president's helicopter and accompany him as he inspected the damage that had been done to the forests.
"He kept saying, as he looked at it, this is what happens when the state is absent, when it is left up to business," said Ginting. "He is a forester himself, so he understands how the forest is managed."
One wonders what the president, a graduate of the Gadjah Mada Forestry School ,made of the way land is cleared near Sungai Tohor is cleared. After illegal loggers drain the peatlands and rain forests of water, they burn it. According to Greenpeace, this year's dry season saw 1,000 different fires burning across 12,000 hectares. The fires are set to clear the forest for palm oil plantations. Indonesia is the world's biggest palm oil producer.
The haze of smog is so thick that for six months of the year many in Sumatra live with it constantly. This year it has been so severe that visibility has been as low as 50 meters and 58,000 locals have been treated for respiratory illnesses and eye or skin conditions.
The scale of the fires is such that smoke regularly crosses the Strait of Malacca to Singapore and Malaysia. Earlier this month smoke from Sumatra was so dense in Singapore that air quality was too poor for outdoor physical activity, according to the Singaporean government.
During the president's visit, he met with Environment and Forestry Minister Siti Nurbaya, acting Riau Governor Arsyadjuliandi Rachman, and Riau police chief Brig. Gen. Dolly Bambang Hermawan, and brought local community activists and environmentalists into the room to present their solutions.
Woro Supartinah, a local activist with the community, said she was happy to have spoken with the delegation.
"Jokowi said to us, to keep him informed, to let him know how things progress," she told VICE News. "That was the best thing, I feel he understands how to take action, he kept speaking about how everyone knew what had to be done. These are not new solutions. It just takes the willpower. Now that he has seen it, I believe he will act."
Widodo announced to gathered reporters: "I have told the minister of environment and forestry to review the licenses of the companies that have converted peatlands into monoculture plantations if they are found damaging the ecosystem."
"Laws around forestry are very weak here because corruption is rife," said Ginting, "A lot of business is done with local authorities and business under the table, so it is important that these things are investigated fully."
The forest fires go to the heart of Widodo's challenge as president. With his populist platform, and policy of collaborating with communities to solve Indonesia's problems, his election has generated great hope among his supporters. His governing style is a departure from the traditional dynamic of Indonesian politics: he has ordered staff to eat local street food at meetings, and last week flew economy to his son's graduation ceremony in Singapore.
But Indonesia's systemic problems will prove difficult to overcome, especially for an outsider with no background in the security forces. Many populist leaders have failed to deliver the action to back up their symbolism. But in Sungai Tohor, there were no cynics.
Here's How the US Could Pretty Much Eliminate Carbon Dioxide Pollution
A common refrain heard from boosters of the fossil fuel industry
states that converting the US economy to run on renewables would be too
costly and rely too heavily on unproven technologies. Why risk tanking
the nation's economy, they ask, when coal, oil, and natural gas have
powered our vehicles and heated our homes for over 150 years?
It's a line of argument the green movement has struggled to counter, even as solar and wind prices plummet and nations such as Germany, Denmark, and even China have steeply ramped up their renewable energy production rates.
Help has arrived for clean energy advocates, however, in a new UN study that says the US can cut its greenhouse gas emissions by 80 percent from 1990 levels, using existing technologies and with little or no consequence to the national economy, by 2050.
"This US Deep Decarbonization Pathways Report shows that an 80 percent reduction of emissions by 2050 is fully feasible, and indeed can be achieved with many alternative approaches. This reports shows how to do it," Jeffrey Sachs, director of the Earth Institute at Columbia University and the UN Sustainable Development Solutions Network, which commissioned the report, said in a statement. "I believe that the report provides a solid basis for negotiating a strong climate treaty in Paris in December 2015."
First, the energy efficiency of everything from automobiles and power plants to residential and commercial buildings must be improved. The fuel efficiency of vehicles, for example, would need to reach 100 miles per gallon by 2050, and buildings will require retrofits of their heating and lighting systems.
Next, the government would need to invest in wind, solar and nuclear sources, as well as in technologies that capture carbon dioxide from smokestacks and store it in the ground — commonly known as carbon capture and sequestration — to reduce carbons from electricity production. The amount of renewable energy generation than exists today needs to be beefed up by much as 30 times to meet growing demand and reduce carbon pollutions, says the report.
Finally, technologies that are fueled by gasoline will need to be adapted so they can be powered by electric or hydrogen. The report says 300 million alternative fuel vehicles are needed by 2050 in order to achieve the emissions reduction goal.
Scientists at the US Department of Energy's Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL), Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, and San Francisco-based consulting firm Energy and Environmental Economics, Inc. prepared the report.
2014 is increasingly likely to be the hottest year on record. Read more here.
The researchers modeled four different scenarios: high renewable energy generation; high nuclear power generation; high use of carbon capture and sequestration; and a mix of each of these approaches.
"All four scenarios we tested assumed economic growth," said co-author Margaret Torn of LBNL. "All of our scenarios deliver the energy services that strong economic growth demands."
The impact of converting to a clean energy economy would be only a 1 percent reduction in GDP, although the authors concede there's a high degree of uncertainty about the actual amount due to the difficulty of forecasting levels of consumption and the price of fossil fuels 35 years into the future. The researchers didn't, however, consider the possible cost savings of reducing fossil fuel consumption, such as fewer illnesses and deaths associated with air pollution or less damage to infrastructure from frequent, extreme weather events.
"If you bet on America's ability to develop and commercialize new technologies, then the net cost of transforming the energy system could be very low, even negative, when you take fuel savings into account," said Jim Williams, chief scientist at E3 and lead author on the report. "And that is not counting the potential economic benefits of a low-carbon energy system for climate change and public health."
Eliminating most greenhouse gas emissions by mid-century is crucial for achieving the internationally recognized goal of keeping temperature rise to no more than two degrees Celsius above pre-Industrial Age levels. As the world's leading per capita emitter of carbon pollution, the US must achieve steep reductions in the amount of greenhouse gases it spews into the atmosphere for there to be any chance of keeping temperature rise to a minimum.
Here's why China's climate pledge might not be such a great leap forward. Read more here.
It is "critical" for the government to regulate energy production and consumption and for market institutions to support innovation and investment in clean energy, the report states.
President Obama pledged in November to cut US emissions by 26-28 percent from 2005 levels by 2025. The UN report demonstrates that Obama's pledge can be achieved on the path to longer-term cuts.
From Monday, international climate negotiators will meet in Lima, Peru for a week and a half of climate negotiations. Diplomats have pledged to adopt an international climate change agreement by the end of next year, and the Lima meeting is seen as crucial to keep negotiations on track.
"For years, global climate meetings were the place where countries would say to each other: 'you go first, you know this issue is important,'" wrote Daniel Mittler, the Political Director of Greenpeace International. "Now we are moving to a different world. Now countries say: 'I can act, if you can act.' This is a major mental shift. This thinking makes collective action a possibility."
It's a line of argument the green movement has struggled to counter, even as solar and wind prices plummet and nations such as Germany, Denmark, and even China have steeply ramped up their renewable energy production rates.
Help has arrived for clean energy advocates, however, in a new UN study that says the US can cut its greenhouse gas emissions by 80 percent from 1990 levels, using existing technologies and with little or no consequence to the national economy, by 2050.
"This US Deep Decarbonization Pathways Report shows that an 80 percent reduction of emissions by 2050 is fully feasible, and indeed can be achieved with many alternative approaches. This reports shows how to do it," Jeffrey Sachs, director of the Earth Institute at Columbia University and the UN Sustainable Development Solutions Network, which commissioned the report, said in a statement. "I believe that the report provides a solid basis for negotiating a strong climate treaty in Paris in December 2015."
Nearly eliminating greenhouse gas emissions by mid-century is crucial for achieving the internationally recognized goal of keeping temperature rise to no more than two degrees Celsius above pre-Industrial Age levels.Ridding the US economy of greenhouse gas emissions requires three fundamental transformations, according to the report.
First, the energy efficiency of everything from automobiles and power plants to residential and commercial buildings must be improved. The fuel efficiency of vehicles, for example, would need to reach 100 miles per gallon by 2050, and buildings will require retrofits of their heating and lighting systems.
Next, the government would need to invest in wind, solar and nuclear sources, as well as in technologies that capture carbon dioxide from smokestacks and store it in the ground — commonly known as carbon capture and sequestration — to reduce carbons from electricity production. The amount of renewable energy generation than exists today needs to be beefed up by much as 30 times to meet growing demand and reduce carbon pollutions, says the report.
Finally, technologies that are fueled by gasoline will need to be adapted so they can be powered by electric or hydrogen. The report says 300 million alternative fuel vehicles are needed by 2050 in order to achieve the emissions reduction goal.
Scientists at the US Department of Energy's Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL), Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, and San Francisco-based consulting firm Energy and Environmental Economics, Inc. prepared the report.
2014 is increasingly likely to be the hottest year on record. Read more here.
The researchers modeled four different scenarios: high renewable energy generation; high nuclear power generation; high use of carbon capture and sequestration; and a mix of each of these approaches.
"All four scenarios we tested assumed economic growth," said co-author Margaret Torn of LBNL. "All of our scenarios deliver the energy services that strong economic growth demands."
The impact of converting to a clean energy economy would be only a 1 percent reduction in GDP, although the authors concede there's a high degree of uncertainty about the actual amount due to the difficulty of forecasting levels of consumption and the price of fossil fuels 35 years into the future. The researchers didn't, however, consider the possible cost savings of reducing fossil fuel consumption, such as fewer illnesses and deaths associated with air pollution or less damage to infrastructure from frequent, extreme weather events.
"If you bet on America's ability to develop and commercialize new technologies, then the net cost of transforming the energy system could be very low, even negative, when you take fuel savings into account," said Jim Williams, chief scientist at E3 and lead author on the report. "And that is not counting the potential economic benefits of a low-carbon energy system for climate change and public health."
Eliminating most greenhouse gas emissions by mid-century is crucial for achieving the internationally recognized goal of keeping temperature rise to no more than two degrees Celsius above pre-Industrial Age levels. As the world's leading per capita emitter of carbon pollution, the US must achieve steep reductions in the amount of greenhouse gases it spews into the atmosphere for there to be any chance of keeping temperature rise to a minimum.
Here's why China's climate pledge might not be such a great leap forward. Read more here.
It is "critical" for the government to regulate energy production and consumption and for market institutions to support innovation and investment in clean energy, the report states.
President Obama pledged in November to cut US emissions by 26-28 percent from 2005 levels by 2025. The UN report demonstrates that Obama's pledge can be achieved on the path to longer-term cuts.
From Monday, international climate negotiators will meet in Lima, Peru for a week and a half of climate negotiations. Diplomats have pledged to adopt an international climate change agreement by the end of next year, and the Lima meeting is seen as crucial to keep negotiations on track.
"For years, global climate meetings were the place where countries would say to each other: 'you go first, you know this issue is important,'" wrote Daniel Mittler, the Political Director of Greenpeace International. "Now we are moving to a different world. Now countries say: 'I can act, if you can act.' This is a major mental shift. This thinking makes collective action a possibility."
Officials Say the 43 Students Missing In Mexico Were Incinerated
The 43 teaching students missing in Mexico since a September police
ambush in Iguala, Guerrero, were likely killed by drug cartel
executioners and incinerated in a remote dump in the neighboring town of
Cocula the same night that they went missing, officials said Friday.
In taped testimonies, men identified as suspected of carrying out the mass murder said they took a group of "43 or 44" young students to the dump and used diesel, gasoline, and tires to burn the students in a fire that lasted from midnight, September 26, until at least 2pm the next day.
They said the young men were delivered to them by police from Iguala and Cocula, on orders from the ex-mayor Jose Luis Abarca, because the students were "going after" his wife Maria de los Angeles Pineda.
The 43 students from the Ayotzinapa Normal School are still formally considered "disappeared" because it will be nearly impossible to identify the remains found in Cocula, said Mexican Attorney General Jesus Murillo Karam.
Only teeth and bits of bones remained. But he said he met with the parents of the missing students Friday morning in Guerrero and shared the information with them, following rounds of previous meetings that the campesino mothers and fathers said were growing increasingly frustrating.
The parents later said they would not accept Murillo Karam's statements, saying that they would not believe the young men were dead until they saw "proof."
Inside the Mexican College Where 43 Students Vanished. Read more here.
The Ayotzinapa student massacre has shaken Mexico, leading to massive protests in many cities and other cities worldwide. The case seemed to strike a nerve in a country where at least 80,000 have died in the ongoing drug war and at least 20,000 are called missing since former President Felipe Calderon sent military units to the streets in December 2006.
In their confessions, alleged members of the Guerreros Unidos drug gang told authorities that they carried the students from Iguala to Cocula in trucks. When they arrived at the dump, 15 students were already dead by asphyxiation.
They said they interrogated the students before killing them, asking if they belonged to any "group," in a sign that the men may have thought they were dealing with rival narcos.
"We are students, we are students," the detained men said the Ayotzinapa victims responded.
Murillo Karam said Friday that there were zero indications that the students had links or belonged to any sort of criminal organization. They were enrolled at a rural normal school, a teachers college in a system developed after the Mexican Revolution but which has largely fallen into neglect.
The night of the Iguala attacks, in which six people were killed, including one student who had his face torn off, the 43 young men were rounded up after the ambush on their buses from police gunfire. At the Iguala municipal plaza, in the meantime, the mayor and his wife were at a party meant to bolster her political ambitions.
The students were delivered to the Guerreros Unidos hitmen, who then drove the young men about 14 miles to Cocula, a rural next-door municipality described as firmly under cartel control.
Ayotzinapa: A Timeline of the mass disappearance that has shaken Mexico.
After the incineration, the three men who appear in the taped testimonies said they picked up the bones and ashes that were left, placed them in plastic bags, and dumped them in the San Juan river nearby. Two bodies were dumped in more complete form, the prosecutor said.
The case has added fuel to long-simmering public clamor over the lack of rule of law in Mexico, and the entrenched, violent control of drug gangs over large regions of the country and over the political class.
Mayor Abarca was arrested on Tuesday, along with his wife, in a poor borough of Mexico City. Angel Aguirre, Guerrero's former governor, resigned in the aftermath of the Iguala attacks. Protests as recent as Wednesday's demonstration in Mexico City have called for the resignation of all authorities responsible for the massacre, and for the students to be returned alive.
When asked by a reporter if Mexico's justice system will be forced to change after the Ayotzinapa massacre, the attorney general said that such change takes time. He said the investigation was still ongoing.
"I am part of the society," Murillo Karam said Friday. "And I am truly indignant, sad, and I suppose that's how the society feels as well."
At the Ayotzinapa campus, students and parents held their own press conference in response, in which they rejected Murillo Karam's statements and said they would wait for the results of the investigation by forensics workers from Argentina who were invited to the case by Mexico's government.
Daniel Velasquez, member of the Ayotzinapa student committee, said they would not accept the government's results delivered today, and that the students could still be alive.
"We don't see the prosecutor's actions today as prudent," Velasquez said. "Now, tomorrow, how will they kill our compañeros again? We think they are playing with us, playing with our situation."
In taped testimonies, men identified as suspected of carrying out the mass murder said they took a group of "43 or 44" young students to the dump and used diesel, gasoline, and tires to burn the students in a fire that lasted from midnight, September 26, until at least 2pm the next day.
They said the young men were delivered to them by police from Iguala and Cocula, on orders from the ex-mayor Jose Luis Abarca, because the students were "going after" his wife Maria de los Angeles Pineda.
The 43 students from the Ayotzinapa Normal School are still formally considered "disappeared" because it will be nearly impossible to identify the remains found in Cocula, said Mexican Attorney General Jesus Murillo Karam.
Only teeth and bits of bones remained. But he said he met with the parents of the missing students Friday morning in Guerrero and shared the information with them, following rounds of previous meetings that the campesino mothers and fathers said were growing increasingly frustrating.
The parents later said they would not accept Murillo Karam's statements, saying that they would not believe the young men were dead until they saw "proof."
Inside the Mexican College Where 43 Students Vanished. Read more here.
The Ayotzinapa student massacre has shaken Mexico, leading to massive protests in many cities and other cities worldwide. The case seemed to strike a nerve in a country where at least 80,000 have died in the ongoing drug war and at least 20,000 are called missing since former President Felipe Calderon sent military units to the streets in December 2006.
In their confessions, alleged members of the Guerreros Unidos drug gang told authorities that they carried the students from Iguala to Cocula in trucks. When they arrived at the dump, 15 students were already dead by asphyxiation.
They said they interrogated the students before killing them, asking if they belonged to any "group," in a sign that the men may have thought they were dealing with rival narcos.
"We are students, we are students," the detained men said the Ayotzinapa victims responded.
Murillo Karam said Friday that there were zero indications that the students had links or belonged to any sort of criminal organization. They were enrolled at a rural normal school, a teachers college in a system developed after the Mexican Revolution but which has largely fallen into neglect.
The night of the Iguala attacks, in which six people were killed, including one student who had his face torn off, the 43 young men were rounded up after the ambush on their buses from police gunfire. At the Iguala municipal plaza, in the meantime, the mayor and his wife were at a party meant to bolster her political ambitions.
The students were delivered to the Guerreros Unidos hitmen, who then drove the young men about 14 miles to Cocula, a rural next-door municipality described as firmly under cartel control.
Ayotzinapa: A Timeline of the mass disappearance that has shaken Mexico.
Ayotzinapa
students, parents, and supporters march from their campus to
Chilpancingo, in one of many demonstrations that have gripped Guerrero
state. (Photo by Hans-Maximo Musielik)
The students were
incinerated, although Karam did not say whether they were shot dead
first, or thrown into the ditch alive, as Father Alejandro Solalinde suggested in controversial statements in October. After the incineration, the three men who appear in the taped testimonies said they picked up the bones and ashes that were left, placed them in plastic bags, and dumped them in the San Juan river nearby. Two bodies were dumped in more complete form, the prosecutor said.
The case has added fuel to long-simmering public clamor over the lack of rule of law in Mexico, and the entrenched, violent control of drug gangs over large regions of the country and over the political class.
Mayor Abarca was arrested on Tuesday, along with his wife, in a poor borough of Mexico City. Angel Aguirre, Guerrero's former governor, resigned in the aftermath of the Iguala attacks. Protests as recent as Wednesday's demonstration in Mexico City have called for the resignation of all authorities responsible for the massacre, and for the students to be returned alive.
When asked by a reporter if Mexico's justice system will be forced to change after the Ayotzinapa massacre, the attorney general said that such change takes time. He said the investigation was still ongoing.
"I am part of the society," Murillo Karam said Friday. "And I am truly indignant, sad, and I suppose that's how the society feels as well."
At the Ayotzinapa campus, students and parents held their own press conference in response, in which they rejected Murillo Karam's statements and said they would wait for the results of the investigation by forensics workers from Argentina who were invited to the case by Mexico's government.
Daniel Velasquez, member of the Ayotzinapa student committee, said they would not accept the government's results delivered today, and that the students could still be alive.
"We don't see the prosecutor's actions today as prudent," Velasquez said. "Now, tomorrow, how will they kill our compañeros again? We think they are playing with us, playing with our situation."
The Missing 43: Mexico's Disappeared Students (Full Length)
On September 26, students from the Teachers College of Ayotzinapa in Mexico en route to a protest in Iguala were intercepted by police forces. In the ensuing clash, six students were fatally shot and 43 were abducted. Investigations over the following weeks led to the startling allegations that the police had acted at the behest of the local mayor, and had turned over the abducted students to members of the Guerreros Unidos cartel. All 43 students are now feared dead.
The case has come to represent the negative feeling of the Mexican public toward the state of justice and the rule of law in Mexico. The events have now galvanized the survivors of the attack and the disappeared students' parents. Nationwide demonstrations have increased in intensity, and recently led to government buildings in the state of Guerrero to be set on fire.
VICE News travels to Guerrero, ground-zero for the protest movement that has erupted since the disappearance of the students. We meet with survivors of the Iguala police attack and parents of the missing students, accompany volunteer search parties, and watch as protests against the government and president reach boiling point.
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