Affluent and Black, and Still Trapped by Segregation

Abstract: MILWAUKEE — Their daughter was sick and they needed family around to help care for her, so JoAnne and Maanaan Sabir took an unexpected detour. They had spent years blowing past mileposts: earning advanced degrees and six-figure incomes, buying a 2,500-square-foot Victorian with hardwood floors. Yet here they were, both 37, moving to a corner of town pocked by empty lots, cramming into an apartment above Ms. Sabir’s mother, in the very duplex that Ms. Sabir’s grandparents had bought six decades earlier. Their new dwelling was in a part of the Lindsay Heights neighborhood where more than one in three families lives in poverty; gunshots were too often a part of the nighttime soundtrack. They planned to leave once their daughter, Ameera, was healthy. But then, reminding them of why they feel at home in communities like this one, their new neighbors started frequently checking on Ameera: Is she doing O.K.? And on their son, Taj: When’s his next basketball game? Mr. Sabir’s car stalled in the middle of the street one night, and it was the young men too often stereotyped as suspicious who helped him push it home. So many welcoming black faces like their own, they thought. “It felt like that’s where we should be,” Ms. Sabir said. Now, two years later, Ameera, 14, is healthy. And the Sabirs have not left. They have, in fact, only strengthened their resolve to stay after a fatal police shooting last weekend led to fiery unrest that was also fueled by frustrations over race and segregation. Rooted where they are, the Sabirs point to a broad yet little explored fact of American segregation: Affluent black families, freed from the restrictions of low income, often end up living in poor and segregated communities anyway. It is a national phenomenon challenging the popular assumption that segregation is more about class than about race, that when black families earn more money, some ideal of post-racial integration will inevitably be reached. In fact, a New York Times analysis of 2014 census figures shows that income alone cannot explain, nor would it likely end, the segregation that has defined American cities and suburbs for generations. The choices that black families make today are inevitably constrained by a legacy of racism that prevented their ancestors from buying quality housing and then passing down wealth that might have allowed today’s generation to move into more stable communities. And even when black households try to cross color boundaries, they are not always met with open arms: Studies have shown that white people prefer to live in communities where there are fewer black people, regardless of their income. The result: Nationally, black and white families of similar incomes still live in separate worlds. In many of America’s largest metropolitan areas, including New York, Chicago and Los Angeles, black families making $100,000 or more are more likely to live in poorer neighborhoods than even white households making less than $25,000. This is particularly true in areas with a long history of residential segregation, like metropolitan Milwaukee. In one neighborhood on Milwaukee’s predominantly black north side, that means the appearance of a new 4,000-square-foot home owned by a black energy executive and her husband, who host political fund-raisers with valet parking. Nearby, a financial adviser and his wife are stuck in the starter home they bought about 10 years ago, because it lost value and they couldn’t sell it. Up the street, there’s an engineer, living with her family, who said she stayed in the city for its amenities and to send the message, “We didn’t want to run away.” The Sabirs share that mix of civic-minded motivation, and limitations. They are successful small-business owners with college degrees, yet even their choices have been circumscribed. The Victorian home they bought a decade ago, which they are now renting out, is in a majority black neighborhood where poverty has increased, damaging their investment. Their current neighborhood, where the duplex is, has a median household income of just $34,000 a year, or around $20,000 less than what’s typical for the region. It’s one of many ways that living around people whom they best relate to means wrestling day and night with the cumulative effects of racism. Decades of Hostility The burning cars and buildings, the people throwing rocks and bottles at police officers in riot gear — it was all happening last Saturday as Maanaan and JoAnne Sabir were settling in for the night just a few miles down the road. The 23-year-old man who had been shot by a black officer had ignored orders to drop a gun as he fled on foot after being pulled over in his car, the police said. As his wife flicked through accounts of the raucous uprising on social media, Mr. Sabir could not help but think that the public response was years in the making . It was Milwaukee’s — America’s — history and maintenance of racist policies, through housing discrimination, divestment of black communities, and policing, all coming to a head. “You’re asking us to do the impossible, which is to tolerate a systemic demoralization of our own livelihood,” Mr. Sabir said. Image A 4-year-old in a North Side neighborhood of Milwaukee. His mother said she was trying to educate him about violence and what it meant to be street smart. Credit Ruddy Roye for The New York Times Black families in Milwaukee have been confronting hostility for decades. Zeddie Quitman Hyler directly challenged housing segregation in 1955 when he began laying the foundation for a house on an open patch of land in the white western suburb of Wauwatosa. A postal worker and World War II veteran from rural Mississippi, Mr. Hyler was the first black man to try to build there, and his efforts were not appreciated. He returned to his construction site one day to find the frame damaged. He fixed it, but when he came back again, it had burned. So he enlisted several friends to camp out with him at the construction site one evening, rifles in hand, ready to turn away intruders. The vandals never returned, and Mr. Hyler finished building his house, which he lived in for nearly half a century until his death in 2004. While Mr. Hyler was branching out, Ms. Sabir’s grandparents found themselves falling into the familiar cycle of segregation. Migrants from the South, they spent about 10 years trying to buy a house at a time when black families were overtly steered to particular blocks. Eventually, a family member who was a real estate agent worked her connections, and they landed the duplex on the corner of North 17th Street and North Avenue in the mid-1950s. The neighborhood was evolving from one that had been flush with synagogues and restaurants selling matzo ball soup. They were caught in the middle of white flight. The census tract where Ms. Sabir’s grandparents settled was entirely white in 1950 except for the two people that the census listed as black and the six listed as “other.” By 1960, however, 2,344 black people called the area home, accounting for 65 percent of its population. Within a few years, Milwaukee’s economy would start tanking. Tens of thousands of manufacturing jobs in the city were eliminated. Property values fell, while housing policies made it nearly impossible for black families to obtain loans and move to the suburbs, where many jobs were being relocated. That same pattern of redlining , in which banks choke off lending to minorities and minority communities, has shaped New York, Chicago and other cities, but the impact in Milwaukee proved especially severe, in part because black migrants began arriving in droves just as the economic structure that was supposed to buoy them was disappearing. The shifts ensured that no enclave for affluent black people was ever developed here. Black residents and leaders tried to fight back. In 1962, Vel Phillips , the city’s first black alderwoman, proposed a fair housing ordinance. Her colleagues voted unanimously against it four times in the 1960s. Image A car and home in the Lindsay Heights neighborhood of Milwaukee, where, according to some residents, 16th Street is a known “dope and prostitution street.” Credit Ruddy Roye for The New York Times Image Luther Barnett, 96, at the Lindsay Heights home he bought in 1982. Mr. Barnett, who came to Milwaukee in 1952 and sold life insurance, said he has seen the community change a lot, but still felt safe there. Credit Ruddy Roye for The New York Times Activists took to the streets in the summer of 1967 for 200 consecutive days of fair housing protests , and were sometimes greeted with racial slurs, eggs and rocks as they crossed the Menomonee River, via the 16th Street Viaduct, into the white South Side. The Common Council eventually ratified a fair housing law in 1968, weeks after the federal government passed its landmark measure . The racial dividing lines were already drawn, however, and barriers to black upward mobility remained. Even the neighborhood where the baseball slugger Hank Aaron moved in the late 1950s could not avoid a downward spiral. While the black population in the Rufus King area grew from 0.4 percent in 1960 to 89 percent in 1980, its median home value dropped from 9 percent above the city’s median to 23 percent below it, according to “Milwaukee: City of Neighborhoods,” a book by John Gurda. Those historic dynamics of race and housing have not disappeared, either. As recently as 2006, a city government report found that affluent, nonwhite Milwaukeeans were 2.7 times likelier to be denied home loans than white people with similar incomes. Many black people here still view the suburbs as hostile toward them. Just six years ago, the New Berlin mayor’s initial support for an affordable housing project in the nearly 93 percent white suburb was met with threats, including a sign in his yard that read, “ nigger lover .” New Berlin blocked the housing development, and was sued by the federal government , which accused the city of racial bias. Few people around here are surprised, then, that only 11.1 percent of African-Americans in the region live in the suburbs, the lowest rate of black suburbanization among the 50 largest metropolitan areas in the country, according to a soon-to-be released study by Marc V. Levine, a professor at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. Milwaukee itself, which is nearly two-thirds nonwhite, has never elected a black mayor. As for Wauwatosa, the suburb that Mr. Hyler changed a generation ago, it is still 90 percent white. Where to Feel at Home? The Sabirs are trying to help their children maneuver through this complicated racial landscape. Taj and Ameera go to a Catholic private school in Milwaukee where most of the students are white, but return to a Muslim household in a neighborhood where most people look like them. Both environments present difficulties. At school, the Sabir children have heard a teacher play down slavery, and classmates stereotype black neighborhoods as bad and drug infested. On their block, where the sidewalks are cracked and some empty lots have been turned into gardens, they occasionally see drugs and fights. They often find their worldviews out of sync with those around them. When Taj was visiting a white classmate in Wauwatosa in May, the friend wanted to go outside to play with Nerf guns. But Taj recalled the police killing another black boy with a toy gun — 12-year-old Tamir Rice in Cleveland — and said that he had to be cautious about what he did outside. The police did not always have his best interests at heart, Taj explained, prompting his friend’s mother to respond that the police were good. It’s at times like those when JoAnne and Maanaan Sabir are happy that their children can come home, see the nuance of the black struggle and work to change it — as when Ameera helped petition to prevent a liquor store from opening in the neighborhood. Or when the children volunteer at a food bank down the block. Image Children awaiting the arrival of a Salvation Army food truck, which passes through with ham sandwiches, fruit and milk. Credit Ruddy Roye for The New York Times Image A man who gave his name as Lafi, with a group of his friends on 17th Street. He said he had tried out for parts in a few movies, but most of his life has been spent on the stoop and picking up his three children in the afternoon. Credit Ruddy Roye for The New York Times Still, their parents can’t help but flirt with the possibilities of another life. That’s what they were doing one evening in late June as they cruised through the plush suburbs, partaking in a semiregular ritual of soaking in the Lake Michigan mansions and manicured lawns and wondering about life there. They rolled past children riding their bicycles alone at around 9 p.m., and Ms. Sabir marveled that they could do that. She thought back to when Taj, 12, had confronted her a few days earlier. He had asked for permission to ride his eight-speed bike around the block. Ms. Sabir could not go out to supervise him, so she said no. “Are you finally going to admit that we live in a dangerous community?” he said. Ms. Sabir pondered the question. She is trained for these moments, with a bachelor’s degree in psychology and a master’s in administrative social work, but she struggled. “We have challenges like every other community has challenges,” she told him, adding, “You’re going to have to figure out the best way to negotiate those challenges.” A Sense of Otherness Image X’antony Brookens, seated, with his wife, Latisha Spence-Brookens and their children, X’antony Jr., above right, and Zaria, at their home in Milwaukee’s North Side. Credit Ruddy Roye for The New York Times Managing sometimes means moving on. And in Milwaukee’s circle of affluent black professionals, that sometimes means decamping for majority white areas in the city or the suburbs. That’s where Latisha Spence-Brookens and X’antony Brookens Sr. found themselves five years ago after their North Milwaukee neighborhood rapidly deteriorated during the housing crash. They rolled into their new bungalow-style rental house in the village of Whitefish Bay, a suburb perched on Lake Michigan with a population so white (90 percent) that it has earned the moniker Whitefolks Bay. And then they looked around in amazement. People were walking. Everywhere. Some strolled past the two-story homes with red, white and blue bunting on the balconies. Others strolled along the main thoroughfare with a Starbucks, a sidewalk cafe, a store selling handblown glass, and a supermarket featuring live lobster, a full-service florist and Champagne caper vinaigrette. The Milwaukee neighborhood they had left behind, which was nearly 93 percent black, wasn’t much for this kind of leisure. After they bought a two-bedroom home in 2008 for $98,000, the effects of the housing market collapse spread through the area. Homes were abandoned. Crime took over. Their son, X’antony Jr., now 18, was walking home one afternoon, toting a plastic Walmart bag with a Barbie he had just bought for his little sister, Zaria, when a man approached him with a large rock in his hand. “Give me all your money or I’m going to bash your head in with this rock,” the man told him. X’antony Jr. hesitated. “I didn’t know what to do,” he recalled. “This was my first time being robbed.” So he offered $5 to the robber, who took it and let X’antony Jr. keep the Barbie. For X’antony Sr., 48, the last straw came when a neighbor was held up at gunpoint as she came home with her two toddlers. It was too dangerous to stay, he thought. Their home value had plummeted by some 75 percent by then. They had no equity to buy up. So they walked away from the mortgage and rented a house in Whitefish Bay for $1,450 a month, nearly one and a half times what they had been paying for the home they owned. But finally, they thought, Zaria could ride her bicycle freely. X’antony Jr. could enroll in a high-performing school district. Image Where X’antony Brookens and his family used to live in the Milwaukee suburb of Whitefish Bay, which is 90 percent white. Early on, he was routinely stopped by the police, Mr. Brookens said. Credit Ruddy Roye for The New York Times Over the years, the Brookenses genuinely enjoyed their time in Whitefish Bay. Ms. Spence-Brookens, 39, worked as a college administrator and Mr. Brookens as a job counselor for food stamp recipients, and they sometimes would make it a point to get home early from work so they could spend time in the community. But it was hard to shake that feeling of otherness — especially for X’antony Sr. About a week after the family moved there, a police officer pulled him over as he rolled up in his red 1994 Mercedes-Benz to the family’s modest clapboard. He was pulled over, the officer said, because of the plastic cover over his license plate. Back in his old neighborhood, Mr. Brookens said, people often stole license plates, so the cover was for security. Here it was illegal, the officer told him. He let Mr. Brookens off with a warning, but not before asking if he lived around there. “Yeah, this is my house right here,” Mr. Brookens told him. The stops were a routine occurrence early on — about once a week for a month and a half, Mr. Brookens said. He called it getting registered. “They’re going to keep doing that until they become comfortable with who you are and why you’re here,” said Mr. Brookens, more resigned than angry. He had more disgust, however, when he took Zaria around the block on her bicycle and a mother rushed her white children inside as they approached. Mr. Brookens and his wife also worried about Zaria’s sense of self. She always wanted to straighten her hair. She once bawled when her hair got wet in the bathtub and became frizzy. Zaria’s school friends called her their black friend. Her musical tastes gravitated toward Justin Bieber and Taylor Swift. “I thought she was getting lost,” Mr. Brookens said. That was not necessarily in the front of the Brookenses’ minds when, two years ago, a friend asked them to rent her cream-colored brick home in Milwaukee. It was surrounded by quiet bungalows and curved streets. It was bigger than their Whitefish Bay rental, and the rent was $350 cheaper. They thought of how the savings would allow them to do more of the things they like, such as travel. Although the house was in a neighborhood with a poverty rate 12 times higher and a median home value about one-third of that in their suburban neighborhood, they saw it as a place they could call home. So they returned to Milwaukee, to a different black neighborhood, joining the cluster of families like their own on the city’s north side. Some of the old challenges re-emerged. About a month after moving there in 2014, Mr. Brookens forgot to lock his car door, and his charger and computer hard drive were stolen. Still, like many black families who have made similar choices, they say they feel more comfortable. Zaria, who recently turned 9, relishes seeing more children at school who look like her, and has come to embrace her blackness, going so far as to get dreadlocks. X’antony Jr. has spent the summer working for an activist organization. The Brookenses now interact more frequently with their neighbors. They host cookouts regularly in their backyard, and they have decorated their shelves with plaques reminding them: “Hope is believing” and “Faith is endless.” Faith in the Neighborhood Hope and faith, and determination, drive the Sabirs, too. That’s what brought JoAnne Sabir’s ancestors up here from Tennessee and Arkansas. It’s why Mr. Sabir, a fourth-degree black belt in karate, is constantly pushing to help the young men he sees roaming the streets — “You got that résumé?” he asks — and it’s why the family is staking its business interests just a block from their apartment. They bet on the neighborhood by opening the Juice Kitchen in October. They both work there, often rising before 6 a.m., because they want to be a beacon of black success and help prevent drugs, alcohol and poverty from consuming the community. Last Tuesday morning, after a weekend of destructive protests, Ms. Sabir posted a message on the cafe’s Facebook page , encouraging a collective black uplift. “Strategically placed on North 17th Street,” she wrote. “Strategically available to love and nurture.” Image Maanaan Sabir served juice at his Juice Kitchen in Milwaukee. His family’s resolve to stay in their neighborhood was only strengthened after a police shooting that led to fiery unrest. Credit Ruddy Roye for The New York Times A few hours later, she herded her children into her black sport-utility vehicle and slowly rolled past the remnants of the two nights of clashes between protesters and the police. Past the BP gas station, melted into an ashy heap. “It’s horrible,” Taj said. Past the people barbecuing on a grassy knoll. “That’s the young man’s brother over there that was killed,” Ms. Sabir said. Past a boarded-up bank. “They broke in this bank and then set it on fire,” she said. “My initial thought,” Ms. Sabir told her children, “was that on this evening, all these young people were so powerful.” But imagine, she added, if they could channel that anger in a positive direction, “if we took that power and that energy and put it toward our greater good.” Everyone in the car fell silent. Focusing on the bigger picture can be difficult. The following evening, on Wednesday night, as Mr. Sabir reclined on his front stoop, he shook his head as car after car whizzed through red lights at the corner. He mentioned a man from the neighborhood who was left in a vegetative state when an S.U.V. plowed into his car a few weeks earlier. “It aches,” Mr. Sabir said. He rolled his eyes when a car pulled up to a house across the street at about 10:30 p.m. and started honking loudly. “Every night,” Mr. Sabir said. And he just looked away when a man strolling in front of his house ditched a knife behind a parked car, only to be confronted by two police officers, with Tasers drawn, who arrested him. “Mass incarceration,” Mr. Sabir said. But just as it seemed that the burdens of living here were converging, Mr. Sabir’s phone buzzed with a reminder of why it was all worth it. The alderman representing the area where most of the past week’s vandalism had occurred wrote that his battered neighborhood could really use a Juice Kitchen. “Help us,” the alderman wrote, “be the Phoenix that rises from the ashes.”

Segregation
Milwaukee
Poverty
US
Suburb
Housing
Discrimination
Real Estate
Black People,African-Americans
Social Trends


Aggressiveness of Bike Chases Stirs Questions for the Police

Abstract: The patrol guidelines for the Police Department strongly urge officers to be careful when chasing suspects with cars, and national studies show that accidents involving police vehicles result in one death nearly every day. Yet since August 2004, the New York police have regularly conducted aggressive pursuits in the heart of the most crowded city in the country. Police vehicles have driven the wrong way down busy Midtown streets and have cut at sharp, brake-screeching angles across Greenwich Village avenues, videotapes show. They have climbed onto sidewalks to skirt traffic jams near Grand Central Terminal, according to witnesses. Officers have been filmed driving a large sport utility vehicle along the Hudson River bicycle and jogging path. On all these occasions, police officers in vehicles have been chasing bicycle riders who throng the streets on the last Friday of every month in a group ride known as Critical Mass. The dispute over the terms of the ride has swelled into bitter court fights and what have been, by New York standards, street chases of startling character. The police and the city say public safety is at stake because the bicycles block traffic and the riders will not agree to a route. Many riders say the stakes are free movement on public streets for people who should not have to get police permission simply because they are not in cars. Earlier this month, a state judge rejected the city's request to shut down the event and counseled "mutual de-escalation of rhetoric and conduct." At last month's ride, two police officers on lightweight motorcycles were injured as they maneuvered into position to cut off the bicycle riders on Third Avenue. "One of the motorcycles made an abrupt 90-degree turn, and the one behind just T-boned him -- hit him perpendicularly," said Luke Son, a bicycle rider who said he saw the crash happening from a few feet away. "A really violent collision. The officer in front went flying." Mr. Son, 23, a student at Columbia University and an emergency medical technician, began treatment of one of the officers. Paul J. Browne, the Police Department's chief spokesman, said that the officers were not seriously hurt and that the accident was provoked by bicycle riders who were breaking the law. It "would not have occurred if Critical Mass participants observed the law," Mr. Browne said. A number of riders said the crash touched off an especially forceful effort by the police to round up cyclists. Later that night, witnesses say, police officers in two black sport utility vehicles chased 12 to 20 riders near Grand Central Terminal. One of them, Mark W. Read, said that the police drove against traffic on a one-way street, most likely Vanderbilt Avenue, and that as bicycles moved west along 45th Street, one S.U.V. followed them. "The S.U.V. went up onto the sidewalk and drove on the sidewalk for 15 or 20 feet, then dropped back onto the street," said Mr. Read, 38, a filmmaker and adjunct instructor at New York University, whose account was first reported in The Village Voice. "It was unbelievable -- a high-speed chase, something you think would be reserved for serious criminals, for people fleeing a murder scene or bank robbery." Mr. Read was later arrested on 43rd Street and Broadway and charged with parading without a permit. Mr. Browne declined to comment on any specific chase, saying in general that the descriptions "are the exaggerated, self-serving statements of individuals engaged in breaking the law or opposed to police enforcement of it." Asked about videotapes that show the chases, he said that he stood by his comments. The department's guidelines say that before starting a pursuit, officers should consider the nature of the offense and how crowded the area is. The guidelines also include an instruction, highlighted in bold type, that says, "Department policy requires that a vehicle pursuit be terminated whenever the risks to uniformed members of the service and the public outweigh the danger to the community if suspect is not immediately apprehended." One police spokesman said that applies to the pursuit of motor vehicles, not to bicycles; Mr. Browne would not comment on that interpretation. The bicycle riders generally are charged with offenses like parading without a permit that are violations of the city's administrative code, which are not included in the state's penal code of felonies and misdemeanors. At a Critical Mass ride on Sept. 30, bikers rode up Second Avenue, and turned east onto 14th Street, followed by two police S.U.V.'s. On a videotape, some of the bikers can be seen riding east in the westbound lanes, against oncoming traffic; the two police S.U.V.'s also can be seen driving in that lane, for part of 14th Street between Second and First Avenues. John Hamilton, an in-line skater who videotaped the chase, said the sight of the S.U.V.'s driving the wrong way down 14th Street was vivid. "It was a very dangerous situation, and I certainly felt it," Mr. Hamilton said. Mr. Hamilton also filmed a chase on March 25, 2005, in which a police S.U.V. drove across a pedestrian island on West Street and followed the cyclists onto the Hudson River bicycle path for about a mile. "The S.U.V. ultimately had to stop because there were metal posts or cones on the path," he said. Shortly after the motorcycle collision, on Jan. 27, Rebecca Heinegg, 23, arrived and recognized one of the injured officers. "He was my arresting officer last February, and was as nice as someone arresting you can be," said Ms. Heinegg, a law student. "This incident is really sad, an entirely predictable result of the unsafe maneuvers." Mr. Browne said the Police Department had tried to make the ride safe. "If they provide their route in advance and want our assistance in expediting the ride each month, the Police Department will be happy to assist," he said.

POLICE
POLICE DEPARTMENT
CRITICAL MASS
NEW YORK CITY
BROWNE PAUL J
POLICE BRUTALITY AND MISCONDUCT
BICYCLES AND BICYCLING
LAW AND LEGISLATION
DEMONSTRATIONS AND RIOTS


Louis Scarcella’s Ex-Partner Is Coming Under Scrutiny in Brooklyn Cases

Abstract: Behind his back, Stephen W. Chmil was called Robin — the quiet sidekick to his more handsome, daring and celebrated partner. Batman was Louis Scarcella, a star detective known for making arrests and getting convictions in the crime-plagued Brooklyn of the 1980s and ’90s. He and Detective Chmil spent a dozen years together as part of a roving homicide unit in Brooklyn North that investigated more than 500 murders a year. “I don’t know who loved being a detective more — him or me,” Mr. Chmil recalled. Their legacy was deeply tarnished in March when they were accused of lying and cheating to make a high-profile case stick. At the Brooklyn district attorney’s request, a judge ruled that the man convicted in that case, who spent 23 years in prison, should go free. That, and misconduct allegations found in other cases, prompted District Attorney Charles J. Hynes to reopen the cases of 56 people arrested by Detective Scarcella who were convicted at trial. Even in scandal, Mr. Scarcella stole the spotlight. Despite at least a half-dozen claims of innocence from men Detective Chmil (pronounced Ch-MILL) investigated, his cases were not included in the highly unusual review by the district attorney’s office. But court records and interviews show the same pattern of cajoled and inconsistent witnesses appeared in Detective Chmil’s work as in Detective Scarcella’s. The Exoneration Initiative , a nonprofit group in Manhattan, has documented at least five cases of Detective Chmil’s that raise significant questions; no other New York City detective’s name appears more frequently than Mr. Chmil’s in the Initiative’s caseload of 300 convictions that are deemed probably wrongful. Witnesses and convicts have said they believe Detective Chmil invented confessions, coached witnesses and persuaded others to change their descriptions of perpetrators to match the suspect in custody — even in cases he worked without Detective Scarcella. Image Detectives Louis Scarcella, left, and Stephen W. Chmil in 1990. Dozens of Mr. Scarcella’s cases are under review by Brooklyn prosecutors. Credit Alan Zale for The New York Times Mr. Chmil, who is 64 and retired, forcefully defended his work and his partner’s. At the same time, he was more apt to concede mistakes than Mr. Scarcella has been in interviews, saying the crush of murders made it nearly impossible to avoid occasional sloppiness. “They can look at all my cases,” Mr. Chmil said in one of a series of interviews this year. “I don’t see them finding anything that was done wrong. I sleep at night. I’m a Christian. I never intentionally locked up the wrong person.” He said he and Detective Scarcella were busy enough with the guilty people that they had no cause to lock up the innocent. If they were lax with cases, it was the ones that received scant attention and went unsolved, because the death rate kept rising, he said. A native of Staten Island, Mr. Chmil joined the Police Department in 1968. He was assigned to the Brooklyn North homicide squad in the late 1980s. He was paired with Detective Scarcella, and the two became fast friends. Detective Scarcella, a runner, encouraged the plumper Detective Chmil to take up marathons. They ran, solved cases and took vacations together. “He was the best partner I ever had,” Mr. Chmil said. “One thing was, Louis is a good-looking guy. Louis got more confessions and statements out of women. Me, I’m frumpy and balding. People trusted Louis.” In their 12 years together they gained reputations as detectives who worked hard and brought in suspects, but were willing to bend the rules. If they did not want prosecutors or defense lawyers to know about a particular suspect, for example, they would not turn in any reports for weeks, an investigation by the district attorney’s office showed. In 1992, they were caught on video letting a jailhouse informant out of custody to meet his girlfriend, go shopping and dine in restaurants. Image Mr. Cruz, 32, at Green Haven Correctional Facility. He was arrested at age 16 for murder. He insists he was not at the crime scene. Credit Suzanne DeChillo/The New York Times “We shouldn’t have done it. It was improper,” Mr. Chmil said. “We were reprimanded.” The defendant in that murder case was David Ranta, a drug addict who was accused of killing a rabbi for his car. Mr. Ranta’s lawyer, Michael F. Baum, remembers running into Detectives Scarcella and Chmil at a bar shortly after the 1992 conviction and accusing them of knowingly jailing an innocent man. “Chmil said to me, ‘If he didn’t do this, he did something else.’ ” Mr. Baum recalled. Mr. Ranta was released in March after 23 years in prison after it was revealed that one of the two detectives — it was unclear who — told a witness whom to pick in the lineup. “These two guys were out of control,” Mr. Baum said. “They were slapping around witnesses, bringing in junkies, paying for testimony with crack. This reminds me of cases from ‘Prince of the City,’ ” he said, referring to the 1981 film about corrupt New York City police officers. The detectives investigated four of Mr. Baum’s clients, who all were subsequently cleared after trial. Given a Script Mr. Baum also represented a crack-cocaine addict named Jeffrey Campbell, who was arrested in late 1985 for robbing a shoe store on Fulton Street. Mr. Campbell told Mr. Baum that earlier that summer, when he had been caught running from a murder scene, detectives had pressured him to testify against their suspect. “They told him that unless he testified, they were going to set him up on a phony charge,” Mr. Baum said. Mr. Baum thought Mr. Campbell was paranoid. But then he interviewed the shoe salesman who was robbed. He heard a different version of the same story: the salesman said the police had coerced him into implicating Mr. Campbell, who had not committed the crime. Image Among the cases in which Detective Chmil was the lead detective was the one against Mr. Cruz. The salesman refused to testify, and the charge against Mr. Campbell was dropped. But he was arrested again two months later in a different case. That time, records show, Mr. Campbell got out of jail by helping the police solve the drug-related homicide of a man named Michael Jennings in August 1985. The suspect in that case was Valance Cole, a Guyanese social club owner. Mr. Cole was convicted, but not before encountering Detective Chmil. “I remember riding in the police car with Chmil and another guy and them talking about how they were closing all these cases so fast and other officers were not closing cases,” Mr. Cole, 67, said in a telephone interview from Buffalo, where he was being held in immigration custody. In 1994, Mr. Campbell, dying of AIDS, suddenly recanted. He said prosecutors had promised to drop charges if he falsely blamed Mr. Cole for the murder. Detective Chmil, he said in a sworn statement, gave him a script. “They gave me a piece of paper with what to say,” he wrote in large, childlike cursive. “The name of the detective who gave me the piece of paper I mentioned in my statement was pronounced as Camill.” Detective Scarcella played no role in this investigation. Mr. Campbell’s bid for freedom failed. A judge did not find the recantation credible and rejected Mr. Cole’s request for a new trial. Years later, another judge acknowledged that Mr. Cole was “probably innocent” but refused to overturn his conviction. Mr. Chmil declined to discuss the case with The New York Times, but in a recent article in New York magazine, he denied wrongdoing in it. He compared Mr. Campbell to another witness used by Detective Scarcella in several other cases, Teresa Gomez. Ms. Gomez, a crack-cocaine addict who has since died, claimed to have seen several unrelated murders. “Campbell was a lot like her,” Mr. Chmil told the magazine. “He was a street guy. I know I dealt with him a few times. Sometimes he’d tell you the truth, sometimes he wouldn’t.” Image The gun at the scene where the killing occurred in East New York, Brooklyn. ‘As Much a Red Flag’ Among the cases in which Detective Chmil was the lead detective while working with Detective Scarcella was one against a man named Nelson I. Cruz, who was 16 when he was convicted of the 1998 killing of a man in East New York, Brooklyn. Mr. Cruz met Detective Chmil in the interrogation room after he was arrested; the detective had a confession ready. “Chmil said, ‘Sign it and you go home,’ ” Mr. Cruz said in a telephone interview from Green Haven Correctional Facility. Mr. Cruz refused. The detective crumpled the paper and threw it in the suspect’s face. Detective Chmil claimed later that the defendant made a “spontaneous” confession on the way out of the police station after his lawyer had left. Mr. Cruz’s lawyer poked holes in Mr. Chmil’s account, and the judge did not allow the confession at trial, records show. A police officer told Detective Chmil that he saw someone else firing a gun at the scene; Mr. Cruz insists that he was not there. Mr. Cruz, now 32, has been in prison since he was in 10th grade. “I think Chmil is just as much a red flag,” Mr. Cruz’s lawyer, Rebecca E. Freedman, said. “What Scarcella was doing, Chmil was doing.” The Legal Aid Society, which represents 20 of the people whose cases were reopened by the Brooklyn district attorney’s office, is concerned that the prosecutors’ review is too narrow, because it is limited to cases in which Detective Scarcella testified in court. “There are literally hundreds of cases that could be affected,” said Steven Banks, attorney-in-chief of the Legal Aid Society. “It stands to reason that these 50 are just the tip of the iceberg. There’s enough evidence that Scarcella may not have acted alone. A fair look would require a much broader inquiry.” Image An image of the gun from Mr. Cruz's evidence file. Mr. Hynes’s office said it had added about five cases to the review since it was announced in May. The office declined to comment on any cases or say whether consideration was ever given to reviewing Detective Chmil’s investigations. Mr. Hynes lost his re-election bid in November. The incoming district attorney, Kenneth P. Thompson, suggested during the race that he would be open to widening the scope of the review. Mr. Chmil said the detectives had received harsh treatment from the news media. In several interviews this year, he and Mr. Scarcella were emphatic: They said they never framed anyone, manufactured confessions or coerced false testimony. Mr. Chmil said they might have raised their voices, banged tables and used deception when appropriate, but had never used force against suspects. Drug addicts and recanting witnesses, he said, were a fact of life in the 1980s and ’90s. “We weren’t a bunch of cowboys out there,” he said. “The bottom line is, you got to go with what you got.” Mr. Chmil said there were 10 to 12 civilian review board complaints against him during his 33 years on the police force and at least one suit charging false arrest. Mr. Chmil left the department in 2001 and later joined two police departments in Virginia, where he is now retired. “We had an unbelievable reputation for getting things done,” Mr. Chmil said. “I’m not saying we didn’t make mistakes.”

Police Brutality,Police Misconduct,Police Shootings


Bush Backs Fed’s Actions, but Critics Quickly Find Fault

Abstract: WASHINGTON — President Bush on Monday welcomed the Federal Reserve’s sweeping intervention in the nation’s financial markets as his administration faced accusations that it had supported the bailout of a prestigious investment bank while doing little to address the hardships of Americans facing foreclosures on their homes. Meeting with his economic aides at the White House in the morning in the first of two meetings on the economy, Mr. Bush again sought to project optimism at a time of financial turbulence after the Fed’s brokering of the takeover of Bear Stearns by JPMorgan Chase . Mr. Bush singled out Treasury Secretary Henry M. Paulson Jr. for praise, saying he had shown “the country and the world that the United States is on top of the situation,” an assertion that was broadly disputed by the president’s critics. “I want to thank you, Mr. Secretary, for working over the weekend,” Mr. Bush said in brief remarks in the Roosevelt Room. The president’s remarks and his schedule underscored the growing political concern about the economy on a day that would otherwise have been devoted to traditional St. Patrick’s Day meetings and events. The issue also spilled into the presidential campaign, drawing reactions from both Democratic contenders and the presumptive Republican candidate, underscoring how much the economy has overshadowed the war in Iraq, even as the fifth anniversary of the start of that war approaches on Wednesday. Mr. Bush, between an Irish-American lunch on Capitol Hill and a dinner at the White House, met with a group of advisers and regulators that included Ben S. Bernanke, the chairman of the Federal Reserve, who has orchestrated a series of moves intended to rescue the nation’s financial markets from what officials feared could have been a chain reaction of defaults. Mr. Bush’s handling of the economy has vaulted to the top of the political agenda, where the White House would clearly it rather not be. He stood accused on one hand of violating his own ideological opposition to government intervention and on the other of not doing enough to protect the nation’s economy from the disarray in the markets. “Now that the president has shown his willingness to bail out Wall Street at taxpayer expense, I hope he will drop his opposition to proposals designed to help ordinary homeowners,” Senator Harry Reid, Democrat of Nevada and the majority leader, said in a statement. Senator Barack Obama of Illinois declared the economy “in shambles,” but he and his rival for the Democratic presidential nomination, Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton, trod carefully, expressing concern about the broader market and, in Mrs. Clinton’s case, for the employees of Bear Stearns, based in her home state, New York. “There is no doubt that we are teetering on a potential crisis on Wall Street that could have ramifications all across the country,” Mr. Obama said at a news conference after meeting with voters during a campaign stop in Monaca, Pa., a town near the Ohio border. “We have a credit market that is locked up.” Mrs. Clinton said that Main Street was as important as Wall Street, but like many Democrats, she did not directly criticize the government’s intervention in the sale of Bear Stearns. In a statement, she noted that she had spoken with Mr. Paulson and the president of the New York Federal Reserve Bank, Timothy F. Geithner. She urged that the administration do more. “We have blown it,” she said at a news conference in Washington in which she linked the economic turmoil in part to Iraq. “And one of the reasons why we must end the war in Iraq is we cannot afford it. We have got to get control of our economic destiny. There are so many danger signs on the horizon.” Senator John McCain’s campaign issued a statement expressing confidence in the Federal Reserve and Mr. Bernanke, but pointedly excluding any reference to the president. “John McCain understands the federal government’s responsibility to ensure the stability of the U.S. financial system and is equally committed to protecting the pocketbooks of hardworking American families,” the campaign said in a statement by Doug Holtz-Eakin, a senior policy adviser. The Fed’s intervention in the case of Bear Stearns intensified calls for the administration to reverse Mr. Bush’s well-known embrace of laissez-faire economic policies. Mr. Bush’s aides have argued that he has acted aggressively since August to address a financial crisis that was already on the horizon, pointing to the $168 billion economic stimulus package that he had negotiated with Congress this year. The Internal Revenue Service announced on Monday that the first of 130 million rebates — typically $600 a person or $1,200 for most married couples — would be sent electronically by the first week of May and later by mail until the end of July. Mr. Bush’s senior aides have said that they hoped the economy can withstand any further buffeting until the effects of those rebates are felt during the spring and summer of the year. The relative stability of Wall Street on Monday raised those hopes. But the speed of Bear Stearns’s collapse pointed to the danger that the administration and the Fed could be forced to act again soon. A senior Treasury official, explaining Mr. Paulson’s role, said the secretary was first alerted to a potential crisis at Bear Stearns Thursday afternoon. Mr. Paulson kept Mr. Bush abreast personally on discussions about the problem, giving him a heads-up Friday morning before the president left for a speech to the Economic Club of New York, that some sort of rescue was imminent, and then speaking to him on Sunday afternoon. By all accounts the crisis brought Mr. Paulson, Mr. Bernanke and Mr. Geithner into an unusually cooperative working relationship that, the senior official said largely excluded Mr. Bush’s team of economic advisers. Mr. Paulson has been cautious about predicting the future of the markets and the possible necessity of further action to stabilize them. But since the beginning of the market turmoil last August, he has often mentioned that there would be failures of one or more institutions before things got better. Associates say he has taken a pragmatic approach and an attitude that the administration would do what it had to do to stabilize the broader markets. Mr. Paulson dismissed questions of whether the administration was bailing out a financial giant while homeowners faced foreclosure, noting that Bear Stearns shareholders received only $2 a share for stocks that not long ago had been worth $170. ‘This was an easy decision,” Mr. Paulson said outside the White House after the president’s second meeting with advisers and regulators. “This is the right outcome. And again, in terms of the moral hazard, look at what happened to the Bear Stearns shareholders.” Many Democrats have called on the administration to do more to support legislative initiatives already on the agenda. Senator Christopher J. Dodd, the Connecticut Democrat who is chairman of the Banking Committee, said on Monday in a conference call from Brussels that Mr. Bernanke and Mr. Paulson now might be more willing to back his plan to let the Federal Housing Administration guarantee mortgages if they have been modified by lenders. In his remarks at the White House, Mr. Bush suggested he would support additional measures. “We obviously will continue to monitor the situation and when need be, will act decisively, in a way that continues to bring order to the financial markets,” he said in the morning meeting. One prominent Republican, Representative Adam H. Putnam of Florida, chairman of the House Republican Conference, said the administration’s response has been proper, balancing the need to react to economic uncertainty without having the government intervene excessively in the market. “I think they appropriately hugged that line,” Mr. Putnam said in a telephone interview.

Mormons (Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints)


Ireland Takes Over Allied Irish as Bailout Bill Rises

Abstract: LONDON — The Irish government said on Thursday that it expected to inject billions more euros into two of the largest banks in the country, underscoring the extent to which they continued to jeopardize Ireland’s economic condition. The move is meant to regain the confidence of nervous investors as euro zone economies come under increasing fiscal duress. The French budget submitted Wednesday was one of the most restrictive ever, and a downgrade of the Spanish economy Thursday by the ratings agency Moody’s highlighted problems in the region. Still, in a neighborhood of stubbornly high budget deficits and expanding debt burdens, Ireland stands out. It now looks as if the cost to the government just for supporting its banks could reach up to 50 billion euros, or $68 billion. That is by far the biggest bill that any country, outside of Iceland, has had to pay, relative to its size, as a result of the financial crisis . According to Brian Lenihan, the country’s finance minister, Ireland will report a budget deficit of 32 percent of gross domestic product in 2010, after accounting for the government’s investments in its failing banks. While the figure is a one-time charge — stripping out the banks, the deficit shrinks to 11 percent of G.D.P. — it remains shocking and is the largest fiscal deficit recorded by a major European country. Driving the record figure was the government’s decision to take control of what was once the biggest bank in Ireland, Allied Irish, by investing as much as $6.8 billion to shore it up. The share offering would be state-guaranteed. With $237 billion in assets, Allied Irish has a branch network that extends throughout the country. It is also considerably larger than Anglo Irish, the failed lender that has come to epitomize the banking bust in Ireland. Still, the decision to nationalize Allied Irish represents the government’s acceptance of a stark reality — that banking problems in Ireland did not lie just with Anglo Irish, but had contaminated the sector as a whole, so much so that there was no other recourse but for the state to step in. The government also said Thursday that Anglo Irish might now require as much as $48 billion, a figure that equals an earlier forecast by the rating service Standard & Poor’s and one that was initially questioned by government officials. Some Irish analysts said that the ultimate bill for Anglo could be even higher. “They are getting there, but I still think that the embedded losses in Anglo Irish are 40 billion euros,” said Peter Mathews, an independent banking consultant based in Dublin. “They have not fully addressed areas like mortgage lending and loans to small businesses.” Under the best case, the government’s cost for bailing out Anglo Irish would rise to $40 billion by the end of the year, officials said. For weeks, the Irish government — the first in Europe to impose a harsh austerity program — has been assailed by opposition parties, as well as international investors, for failing to acknowledge that the cost of bailing out the country’s stricken banks was going to be significantly higher than official estimates. As a result, the yields on benchmark 10-year bonds have soared to a recent high of 6.8 percent, causing concern that Ireland may be the first country that needs to tap Europe’s $600 billion rescue fund. The government has strongly insisted that it has no such plans to do so, arguing that it has raised enough money from the bond market to last until the second quarter of next year. On Thursday, Ireland canceled bond auctions scheduled for October and November — sure to have been at elevated rates — and said it would return to the markets next year. For the moment, investors have shown their approval. Yields on Irish 10-year bonds slipped nearly a quarter of a percentage point, to 6.37 percent, Thursday, and the cost of insuring the country’s debt also decreased. Both Anglo Irish and Allied Irish, along with most other Irish banks, indulged in a lending spree of epic proportions over the last decade, financing a real estate boom that went bust in 2007, with no sign of recovery in the market. The government guaranteed all banking liabilities, including the senior and junior debt of the banks, a promise that has fed a slow burn of anger in Ireland among the many who feel that bondholders, as well as Irish taxpayers, should pay for the bank’s excesses. On Thursday, Mr. Lenihan said for the first time that junior bondholders in Anglo Irish would be expected to make a “significant contribution to meeting the costs of Anglo.” But during an interview with the Irish national broadcaster RTE, Mr. Lenihan said the state was leery of scaring markets by defaulting on Anglo’s senior debt, which takes priority over other creditors for repayment in the event of a bankruptcy. “We have to get bondholders from overseas to fund the Irish state, and to fund the substantial deficit,” he said. “You can’t go to your bank manager and say, ‘I want to default,’ and at the same time, ‘I want more loans.’ If that’s the underlying message coming out of Ireland, we’re not going to flourish as a country.” Compounding the government’s difficulties is the economy’s continued stagnation, making it all the more difficult for the banks to collect on their loans. If Ireland’s economy shrinks again this year, as expected, it will become the only major European economy to experience three consecutive years of contraction.

Ireland
Politics and Government
Economic Conditions and Trends


Trump Poised to Lift Ban on C.I.A. ‘Black Site’ Prisons

Abstract: WASHINGTON — The Trump administration is preparing a sweeping executive order that would clear the way for the C.I.A. to reopen overseas “black site” prisons, like those where it detained and tortured terrorism suspects before former President Barack Obama shut them down. President Trump’s three-page draft order , titled “Detention and Interrogation of Enemy Combatants” and obtained by The New York Times, would also undo many of the other restrictions on handling detainees that Mr. Obama put in place in response to policies of the George W. Bush administration. If Mr. Trump signs the draft order, he would also revoke Mr. Obama’s directive to give the International Committee of the Red Cross access to all detainees in American custody. That would be another step toward reopening secret prisons outside of the normal wartime rules established by the Geneva Conventions, although statutory obstacles would remain. Mr. Obama tried to close the prison at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, and refused to send new detainees there, but the draft order directs the Pentagon to continue using the site “for the detention and trial of newly captured” detainees — including not just more people suspected of being members of Al Qaeda or the Taliban, like the 41 remaining detainees , but also Islamic State detainees. It does not address legal problems that might raise. Trump’s Draft Executive Order on Detention and Interrogation The Trump administration has developed this draft executive order that would roll back a series of restrictions that President Obama imposed on the handling of detainees captured in the war against Al Qaeda, including lifting a ban on CIA prisons and directing the Pentagon to bring newly captured detainees to the Guantanamo Bay prison. The draft order does not direct any immediate reopening of C.I.A. prisons or revival of torture tactics, which are now banned by statute. But it sets up high-level policy reviews to make further recommendations in both areas to Mr. Trump, who vowed during the campaign to bring back waterboarding and a “hell of a lot worse” — not only because “torture works,” but because even “if it doesn’t work, they deserve it anyway.” Elisa Massimino, the director of Human Rights First, denounced the draft order as “flirting with a return to the ‘enhanced interrogation program’ and the environment that gave rise to it.” She noted that numerous retired military leaders have rejected torture as “illegal, immoral and damaging to national security,” and she said that many of Mr. Trump’s cabinet nominees had seemed to share that view in their confirmation testimony. “It would be surprising and extremely troubling if the national security cabinet officials were to acquiesce in an order like that after the assurances that they gave in their confirmation hearings,” she said. A White House spokesman did not immediately respond to an email inquiring about the draft order, including when Mr. Trump may intend to sign it. But the order was accompanied by a one-page statement that criticized the Obama administration for having “refrained from exercising certain authorities” about detainees it said were critical to defending the country from “radical Islamism.” Specifically, the draft order would revoke two executive orders about detainees that Mr. Obama issued in January 2009, shortly after his inauguration. One was Mr. Obama’s directive to close the Guantánamo prison and the other was his directive to end C.I.A. prisons, grant Red Cross access to all detainees and limit interrogators to the Army Field Manual techniques. In their place, Mr. Trump’s draft order would resurrect a 2007 executive order issued by President Bush. It responded to a 2006 Supreme Court ruling about the Geneva Conventions that had put C.I.A. interrogators at risk of prosecution for war crimes, leading to a temporary halt of the agency’s “enhanced” interrogations program. Mr. Bush’s 2007 order enabled the agency to resume a form of the program by specifically listing what sorts of prisoner abuses counted as war crimes. That made it safe for interrogators to use other tactics, like extended sleep deprivation , that were not on the list. Mr. Obama revoked that order as part of his 2009 overhaul of detention legal policy. One of the Obama orders Mr. Trump’s draft order would revoke also limited interrogators to using techniques listed in the Army Field Manual. But in 2015, Congress enacted a statute locking down that rule as a matter of law , as well as a requirement to let the Red Cross visit detainees. Those limits would remain in place for the time being. Still, the draft order says high-level Trump administration officials should conduct several reviews and make recommendations to Mr. Trump. One was whether to change the field manual, to the extent permitted by law. Another was “whether to reinitiate a program of interrogation of high-value alien terrorists to be operated outside the United States” by the C.I.A., including any “legislative proposals” necessary to permit the resumption of such a program. It was not clear whether the C.I.A. would be enthusiastic about resuming a role in detaining and interrogating terrorism suspects after its scorching experience over the past decade. In written answers to questions by the Senate Intelligence Committee, Mr. Trump’s C.I.A. director, Mike Pompeo , said he would review whether a rewrite of the field manual was needed and left the door open to seeking a change in the law “if experts believed current law was an impediment to gathering vital intelligence to protect the country.” Mr. Trump’s order says no detainee should be tortured or otherwise subjected to cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment “as prescribed by U.S. law,” but it makes no mention of international law commitments binding the United States to adhere to humane standards even if Congress were to relax domestic legal limits on interrogations, such as the Convention Against Torture or the Geneva Conventions. Another core national security legal principle for Mr. Obama was to use civilian courts, not military commissions, whenever possible in terrorism cases — and to exclusively use civilian law enforcement agencies and procedures, not the military, to handle cases arising on domestic soil. The draft order also signals that the Trump administration may shift that approach as well. In 2012, after Congress enacted a statute mandating that the military initially take custody of all foreign Qaeda suspects, Mr. Obama issued a directive that pre-emptively waived that rule for most domestic circumstances , such as if the F.B.I. had arrested the suspect and was already in the process of an interrogation. But Mr. Trump’s draft order calls for the attorney general, in consultation with other national-security officials, to review that directive and recommend modifications to it within 120 days. Many Republicans — including Senator Jeff Sessions, Mr. Trump’s attorney general nominee — criticized the Obama administration’s approach as weak, even though the civilian court system has regularly convicted terrorists at trial while the military commissions system has proved to be dysfunctional . During the campaign, Mr. Trump said he would prefer to prosecute terrorism suspects at Guantánamo — including American citizens, although the law currently limits the commissions system to foreign defendants. Against that backdrop, Mr. Trump’s draft order would direct Defense Secretary James N. Mattis, along with the attorney general and the director of national intelligence, to “review the military commissions system and recommend to the president how best to employ the system going forward to provide for the swift and just trial and punishment of unlawful enemy combatants detained in the armed conflict with violent Islamist extremists.” Tom Malinowski, who was assistant secretary of state for human rights in the Obama administration, said the draft order showed that everyone who thought the office of the presidency or the advice of cabinet secretaries like Mr. Mattis would temper Mr. Trump “is being shown wrong again.” “He’ll listen to his worst instincts over his best advisers unless restrained by law,” Mr. Malinowski said.


U.S. Completes Its Plan to Auction Slots at Airports

Abstract: The federal government settled on rules on Thursday for a controversial plan to auction flight slots at the three largest airports in the New York region in a final attempt by the Bush administration to alleviate chronic air traffic congestion. The plan has been strongly opposed by airlines, some lawmakers and the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey , which runs the airports and which promised on Thursday to seek an injunction from the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia to block the auctions. Under the administration’s plan, the Department of Transportation would retire dozens of slots at the airports to reduce congestion. At the same time, it would take about 10 percent of the remaining slots from the airlines and auction them off over five years. In all, 90 slots at Kennedy International Airport , 90 slots at Newark Liberty International Airport and 113 slots at La Guardia Airport would be auctioned. One-fifth of those slots would be auctioned on Jan. 12 of next year. The airlines would pick half of the slots to be auctioned and the government would choose the remainder. Transportation officials said the auctions at the three airports could raise about $150 million, which would be reinvested to expand runways and other measures. “The auctions are not large enough to disrupt service but will allow new entrants to come in,” D. J. Gribbin, the general counsel at the Department of Transportation, said during a conference call with reporters. “We are looking for stability, competition and we want to create incentives for airlines to fly larger airplanes.” Also on Thursday, Transportation Secretary Mary E. Peters said the federal government would commit $89 million to expand capacity at Kennedy Airport. The money, though, will do little to soothe the frayed relations between the federal government and the Port Authority, airlines and other groups that see the auctions as a misplaced way to ease congestion in the New York area. Domestic airlines, already having trouble with high fuel prices and falling demand, consider the auctions unfair because they have invested in airport terminals that they may not be able to fully use if slots are taken away from them. The Port Authority relented on its opposition to the federal government’s decision earlier this year to cap the number of flights per hour at the Kennedy and Newark airports. The authority, however, still opposes auctioning slots because it believes the auctions would cripple airlines that are unable to buy back their slots and would make it more likely that the airlines will stop serving smaller cities. “Who’s got money to buy slots? The finance markets are closed,” said William R. DeCota, the authority’s director of aviation. “They keep saying an auction stimulates competition. I have more direct flights to more airports than anywhere in the world.” Mr. DeCota added that if airlines that do not already fly into New York bought some of the auctioned slots, there are questions about where the new arrivals would park their planes since all of the existing terminals are leased to other airlines. Mr. DeCota noted that delays increased after the cap system was put in place at Kennedy in March and in Newark in May. Other opponents of the administration’s plan point to a Sept. 30 opinion by the Government Accountability Office that said the federal government did not have authority to auction slots. “It is simply shocking that the D.O.T. is unabashedly continuing this ideological battle despite the staunch opposition from the entire aviation community and the independent finding that the D.O.T. lacks the power under the law to implement the proposal in the first place,” Senator Charles E. Schumer said in a statement.

Newark Liberty International Airport (NJ)


Jeb Bush Won’t Attend Immigration Critic’s Event in Iowa

Abstract: Separating himself from much of the emerging Republican presidential field, former Gov. Jeb Bush of Florida has declined an invitation to speak at a Jan. 24 political event organized by one of the most strident immigration critics in Congress. More than a half-dozen potential contenders, including Gov. Chris Christie of New Jersey, have said they will attend the event, the Iowa Freedom Summit, organized by the critic, Representative Steve King, a Republican from Iowa. An aide said Wednesday that Mr. Bush, an advocate for immigration changes, had a scheduling conflict. Mr. King has become a conservative power broker, and Iowa is the home of the first presidential caucuses.

Jeb Bush
Immigration
Iowa
Republicans
Steve King
2016 Presidential Election


Arizona: Sanction Lifted for University of Phoenix

Abstract: The Department of Defense on Friday lifted its suspension of recruitment by the University of Phoenix over concerns about improper use of military logos and other government inquiries. The department three months ago barred the Phoenix-based for-profit institution from recruiting students on its bases and from tapping new funds from a tuition assistance program. The university maintained it was unfairly punished for unrelated, pending investigations by the Federal Trade Commission and the state of California.

Arizona
University of Phoenix
College
US Military
Pentagon


Belgium Commemorates Waterloo With a Coin, and France Is Not Pleased

Abstract: LONDON — Perhaps befitting a battle that ended French hegemony in Europe, Paris, it seems, has been outflanked once again. After it objected to a decision in March by Belgium to introduce a new 2 euro coin to commemorate the 200th anniversary of Napoleon ’s defeat at Waterloo, the Belgians retreated, scrapping 180,000 coins they had already minted. But victory for France is proving elusive. This week, Belgium decided to circumvent French resistance by invoking a little-known European Union rule that allows countries to issue euro coins of their choice, provided they are in an irregular denomination. That led to the unveiling of a €2.50 coin — a first in Belgium — and 70,000 of them have now been minted. The coins, which can only be spent inside Belgium, display a monument of a lion atop a cone-shaped hill on the site of France’s humiliation, as well as lines indicating where troops were positioned when forces led by Britain and Prussia defeated Napoleon in the countryside near Brussels. Johan Van Overtveldt, the Belgian finance minister, insisted on Monday that the new coins were not meant to provoke Gallic anger. “The goal is not to revive old quarrels in a modern Europe — and there are more important things to sort out,” he was quoted as saying by Agence France-Presse. “But there’s been no battle in recent history as important as Waterloo, or indeed one that captures the imagination in the same way.” There is no doubt that the European Union has bigger struggles to wage at the moment. But in its small way, the skirmish has signaled the challenges facing European integration, and the limits of Europe’s open borders at overcoming old nationalist impulses. Video Johan Van Overtveldt, the Belgian finance minister, spoke on Monday about the minting — even after France’s opposition — of a new 2.50 coin that commemorates the Battle of Waterloo. Credit Credit Olivier Hoslet/European Pressphoto Agency Tensions among the 19 countries that use the euro have mounted as Greece teeters perilously close to defaulting on its debt. Yet history has its own currency in Europe, which even a common currency has yet to overcome. Back in March, officials in Paris wrote a letter to the European authorities insisting that the Battle of Waterloo, which took place on June 18, 1815, and altered the shape of European history, had a deep and damaging resonance in the collective French consciousness. France protested Belgium’s plans for its original coin by saying that basking in France’s defeat threatened to undermine European unity, troubled enough already. The €2 coin, it said, could spur an “unfavorable reaction in France.” In Belgium, the victory embodied in the €2.50 coin is being lauded as if the tiny country had itself triumphed on the battlefield. “Belgium creativity at its best!” Jean-Yves Jault, the Brussels-based head of corporate communications for Toyota Europe, boasted on Twitter . Nevertheless, the move has inspired no little annoyance in France. An article on the website of Bfmtv, the French broadcaster, noted that 200 years later, the defeat of Napoleon was “still hard to swallow.” The article asked whether France was a “poor loser,” even as it stressed that the €2.50 coin would not be legal tender outside of Belgium, where it is to be sold in plastic bags at a cost of €6. In Britain, where the 19th-century poet laureate Robert Southey called the Battle of Waterloo “the greatest deliverance that civilized society has experienced” since Charles Martel repelled an Islamic conquest of Europe in 732, the new €2.50 coin aroused similar adulation. “Well done Belgium beat the French at their own game of finding ways around EU rules, the English should take note!!” Michael Dunn, from Stratford-upon-Avon, wrote on Twitter . Others were less impressed. On Facebook, Manuel Di Pietrantonio suggested that the value of the dispute was about €2.50.

Belgium
France
Euro
Numismatics
Napoleon Bonaparte
Waterloo (Belgium)


Offering Snowden Aid, WikiLeaks Gets Back in the Game

Abstract: WikiLeaks once again seized the global spotlight on Sunday by assisting Edward J. Snowden in his daring flight from Hong Kong, mounting a bold defense of the culture of national security disclosures that it has championed and that has bedeviled the United States and other governments. Accompanying Mr. Snowden on the Aeroflot airliner that carried him on Sunday from Hong Kong to Moscow — continuing a global cat-and-mouse chase that might have been borrowed from a Hollywood screenplay — was a British WikiLeaks activist, Sarah Harrison. The group’s founder, Julian Assange, who has been given refuge for the last year in Ecuador’s embassy in London, met last week with Ecuador’s foreign minister to support Mr. Snowden’s asylum request. And Baltasar Gárzon, the legal director of WikiLeaks and a former Spanish judge, is leading a volunteer legal team advising him on how to stay out of an American prison. “Mr. Snowden requested our expertise and assistance,” Mr. Assange said in a telephone interview from London on Sunday night. “We’ve been involved in very similar legal and diplomatic and geopolitical struggles to preserve the organization and its ability to publish.” By Mr. Assange’s account, the group helped obtain and deliver a special refugee travel document to Mr. Snowden in Hong Kong that, with his American passport revoked, may now be crucial in his bid to travel onward from Moscow. More broadly, WikiLeaks brought to global attention the model that Mr. Snowden has wholeheartedly embraced: that of the conscience-stricken national security worker who takes his concerns not to his boss or other official channels but to the public. The group’s assistance for Mr. Snowden shows that despite its shoestring staff, limited fund-raising from a boycott by major financial firms, and defections prompted by Mr. Assange’s personal troubles and abrasive style, it remains a force to be reckoned with on the global stage. Image Julian Assange, the founder of WikiLeaks, left, at Ecuador’s embassy in London. Credit Chris Helgren/Reuters “As an act of international, quasi-diplomatic intrigue, it’s impressive,” Steven Aftergood, director of the Project on Government Secrecy at the Federation of American Scientists, said of WikiLeaks’ role in Mr. Snowden’s flight. “It’s an extraordinary turn of events.” The antisecrecy advocates are themselves secretive — Mr. Assange said he could not reveal the number of paid staffers at WikiLeaks because of “assassination threats” or its budget because of the “banking blockade” — but the group has dedicated volunteers in several countries, notably Britain and Iceland, and a large number of supporters. Since publishing the military and diplomatic documents in 2009 and 2010 that made it famous, the group has released several lower-profile collections: documents on commercial spying equipment; internal e-mails of an American security consulting company, Stratfor; millions of e-mails sent by Syrian government and business officials; and a library of cables to and from Henry Kissinger, the former secretary of state, though most of those were already public. Mr. Assange said that WikiLeaks, which he started in 2006, has a “seven-year history of publishing documents from every country in the world.” He added: “We’ve documented hundreds of thousands of deaths and assassinations, billions of dollars of corruption. We’ve affected elections and prompted reforms.” WikiLeaks played no role in Mr. Snowden’s disclosures of classified documents he took from his job as a National Security Agency contractor. But since joining forces with him, WikiLeaks has used his case to boost its profile; its Twitter feed on Sunday made an appeal for donations along with news about Mr. Snowden’s flight. Even as Mr. Snowden’s odyssey continued, the source whose disclosures brought WikiLeaks to broad public attention, Pfc. Bradley Manning, was in a military cell in the fourth week of his court-martial at Fort Meade, Md. Private Manning, who became disillusioned as an intelligence analyst in Iraq, has admitted that he gave WikiLeaks roughly 700,000 confidential government documents. He faces a possible sentence of life in prison if convicted of charges that include espionage and aiding the enemy. In a statement on Saturday, Mr. Assange suggested that President Obama was the real “traitor,” for betraying the hopes of a generation of idealists represented by both Private Manning and Mr. Snowden. Image Sarah Harrison, who accompanied Edward J. Snowden on his flight to Moscow on Sunday. Credit Olivia Harris/Reuters “They are young, technically minded people from the generation that Barack Obama betrayed,” Mr. Assange wrote on the WikiLeaks Web site. “They are the generation that grew up on the Internet, and were shaped by it. The U.S. government is always going to need intelligence analysts and systems administrators, and they are going to have to hire them from this generation and the ones that follow it.” Mr. Assange added a warning to the government: “By trying to crush these young whistle-blowers with espionage charges, the U.S. government is taking on a generation, and that is a battle it is going to lose.” The claim sounded like bravado. But Mr. Snowden is the seventh person to be prosecuted by the Obama administration in its unprecedented campaign against leaks. And while by many accounts the threat of prosecution has distinctly chilled conventional national security reporting, Mr. Snowden has said he was inspired to leak by several high-profile, self-described whistle-blowers who have faced criminal charges since 2010: Private Manning; Thomas Drake, a former N.S.A. official; and John Kiriakou, a former C.I.A. officer now serving a prison term. Instead of waiting on American soil to be arrested, Mr. Snowden headed to Hong Kong before going public and sought help from WikiLeaks more than a week ago. Explaining his decision to leave the United States, he said in an online question-and-answer session with The Guardian that it made no sense to “volunteer” for prosecution at home “if you can do more good outside of prison than in it.” Though in one initial comment Mr. Snowden appeared to distance himself from WikiLeaks and Private Manning — suggesting that he had deliberately been more selective in his leaks than the soldier had been — he later said that was a misimpression. “WikiLeaks is a legitimate journalistic outlet,” he wrote on The Guardian site on June 17, “and they carefully redacted all of their releases in accordance with a judgment of public interest.” Diplomatic cables were later released without redactions, and Mr. Assange and a British journalist have disputed who was to blame, but claims that Private Manning was responsible were a “smear,” Mr. Snowden wrote. Even among advocates of greater government openness, WikiLeaks evokes mixed feelings. Mr. Aftergood, of the Federation of American Scientists, called it “an adolescent phenomenon of rebellion against authority.” Video The Times’s Ellen Barry reports on the scene in Moscow after former N.S.A. contractor Edward J. Snowden reportedly landed in the country from Hong Kong. Credit Credit James Hill for The New York Times “WikiLeaks and Mr. Snowden have elevated issues that have been neglected in public discourse,” he said. “But they don’t offer solutions to the problems they’ve raised.” Yochai Benkler, a law professor at Harvard who has written extensively on WikiLeaks and is a possible defense witness at the Manning trial, said he found it “tragic” that the interaction of both WikiLeaks and Mr. Snowden with the United States government had become so adversarial. WikiLeaks began as an innovative media venture, he said, but the government’s overreaction has turned it into more of an activist venture. “It was so easy to portray Assange as an unpleasant weirdo,” he said. Mr. Benkler noted that a federal grand jury in Alexandria, Va., is believed to still be looking into the possibility of prosecuting WikiLeaks and Mr. Assange for publishing Private Manning’s leaked documents, a development he said would be dangerous to democracy. Government employees who leak classified information may deserve modest penalties, he said, but the Obama administration needs to make clear that reporting or publishing classified information will not be prosecuted. “It’s a big policy decision about relative threats: on the one hand, occasional leaks of classified information; on the other hand, shutting down the Fourth Estate’s oversight of national security,” Mr. Benkler said. Mr. Assange, from his embassy lair, said the Obama administration appeared intent on criminalizing national security journalism but promised that WikiLeaks would keep revealing secrets. For naysayers who say that since 2010 the group has never come close to publishing anything with the impact of the Manning documents, he offered a riposte. “As Joseph Heller said when people said he hadn’t published anything as good as ‘Catch 22’: ‘Neither has anyone else.’ ”

WikiLeaks
Classified Information
Edward Snowden
Julian P Assange
Government Surveillance


U.S. to Ease Pressure Tactic Over Legal Help for Employees

Abstract: WASHINGTON — The Justice Department on Thursday will roll back a controversial set of rules that penalized companies if they insisted on paying employees’ legal fees or protecting their confidential communications with corporate lawyers. The long-awaited new guidelines, officials said, will no longer allow federal prosecutors to indict a company that takes such measures with its employees. Deputy Attorney General Mark Filip is scheduled to announce the new policy on Thursday at the New York Stock Exchange, a site of strong symbolic importance because Wall Street firms and their lawyers have attacked the old restrictions as onerous and unconstitutional. “Penalizing a company for paying the legal fees of its employees is simply outrageous,” said Mercer Bullard, a securities law professor at the University of Mississippi Law School. “In cases where they say ‘we are going to bring down your company unless you waive attorney-client privilege,’ that has to stop.” The Justice Department imposed the tough corporate fraud guidelines in 2003 after the collapse of Enron and a subsequent wave of corporate fraud scandals. Justice Department officials maintained at the time that the aggressive tactics were meant to encourage executives to cooperate in investigations into possible wrongdoing rather than risk seeing their companies indicted — often a death knell for a corporation. A company’s willingness to cooperate in an investigation is one of the factors prosecutors weigh in deciding whether the company itself should be indicted. But the measures quickly drew fire not only from Wall Street lawyers but from politicians and judges as well. In the most significant case that grew out of the policy, Judge Lewis A. Kaplan of the United States District Court in Manhattan dismissed criminal charges in 2006 against 13 of the defendants in a major tax-shelter prosecution against KPMG, saying that prosecutors had violated their constitutional rights by pressuring KPMG to cut off their legal fees. The judge wrote that KPMG had refused to pay the defendants’ legal expenses “because the government held the proverbial gun to its head,” and he said the government had “let its zeal get in the way of its judgment.” In the face of the attacks, the Justice Department eased the rules in late 2006, with then-Deputy Attorney General Paul McNulty issuing new guidelines that said prosecutors could seek to have a company waive the attorney-client privilege only when there is a “legitimate need.” But the changes did not go far enough in the view of many corporate lawyers and their clients. Leading lawmakers in Washington took up the cause as well, holding hearings on the issue and proposing legislation to curb the tactics and override the Justice Department guidelines. A bill to strengthen a company’s right to safeguard attorney communications has already been approved by the House, and a similar measure proposed by Senator Arlen Specter, Republican of Pennsylvania, is pending in the Senate. It appears to have support from both Democrats and Republicans. The new guidelines are partly an effort to head off action by Congress. Mr. Filip, the deputy attorney general, acknowledged as much in a letter last month to Mr. Specter and Senator Patrick J. Leahy, the Vermont Democrat who leads the judiciary committee, when he asked them to give the Justice Department time to enact new guidelines and review their effect before taking up legislation. In the letter, Mr. Filip set out general principles that he said the Justice Department was likely to follow in formulating the new policy. Among them, he said that a company’s “cooperation” in a federal investigation should be judged not by whether the company waives the attorney-client privilege, but by the extent to which it disclosed relevant facts and evidence to the government. Also, the government would no longer demand that a company turn over confidential attorney-client documents as a condition of its cooperation, he said. And a company will not be penalized, as in the case of KPMG, for paying its employees’ legal fees. In his letter, Mr. Filip acknowledged “the foundational role that the attorney-client privilege plays in our legal system.” Justice Department officials said Mr. Filip is expected to stick to the same basic outline that he laid out in his letter last month while filling in key details about how the policy would be implemented. Mr. Specter, for one, said he found the principles set out by Mr. Filip to be troublingly vague in some areas, like the disclosure of confidential legal documents. The Justice Department has been meeting in recent weeks with lawmakers and key interest groups, including the Chamber of Commerce, in advance of Thursday’s announcement. But several officials said that while they were eager to see the final details of the policy, they expected that Congress was still likely to move ahead with its own legislative remedy to give attorney-client confidentiality the weight of law.

Justice Department
Corporations
Law and Legislation
United States Politics and Government
Enron Corp
Filip Mark R
small business audience


In One Shutout, Lundqvist Hits Two Landmarks

Abstract: The idea occurred to Henrik Lundqvist during the second intermission, with the Rangers counting on him to help preserve a 1-0 lead. “I started thinking about it after two periods — why not go for a doughnut in this game and reach 300 wins?” he said after stopping all 30 shots in a 3-0 victory over the Detroit Red Wings at Madison Square Garden on Sunday afternoon. Lundqvist accomplished both goals in the victory. The “doughnut” was his 49th career shutout, tying Eddie Giacomin, who last played for the Rangers in the 1975-76 season, for the team record. The victory was Lundqvist’s 300th, one behind the club record set by Mike Richter, who last played for the Rangers in 2002-3. “It’s a great feeling to be up there with those guys,” said Lundqvist, who is in his ninth N.H.L. season. “This organization has been around for so long, so to be up there with them, it’s very special. I’m proud just thinking about it.” Chris Kreider, who scored twice in the third period to cement the victory for Lundqvist, said: “He’s the best goalie in the world, the best around the league, and we’re lucky to have him on our team. “It’s kind of his style to get a shutout for his 300th win. We’re all extremely, extremely happy for him.” At the final horn, defenseman Dan Girardi skated the length of the ice to retrieve the game puck, skated back and dropped it into Lundqvist’s glove. “I’ve kept all the shutout pucks,” Lundqvist said, wearing the Broadway Hat, given to the team’s most outstanding player after each victory. “Probably after my career I’ll do something with them. Hopefully I can keep collecting a few more.” The victory was more than a double landmark for Lundqvist. It was the Rangers’ second win in a row, and it lifted them into second place in the Metropolitan Division, a point ahead of the idle Philadelphia Flyers, who have played one game fewer than the Rangers. Despite an 8-3-1 record in their last 12 games, the Rangers’ hold on a playoff spot is precarious, with four teams in their division trailing them by 5 points or fewer. Image Lundqvist has 49 shutouts, fifth among active N.H.L. goalies. Credit Barton Silverman/The New York Times The victory gave the Rangers a season sweep of their three games with the Red Wings, who are without Pavel Datsyuk and Henrik Zetterberg, both injured, and fighting for a wild-card spot in the Eastern Conference. Brian Boyle opened the scoring at 5 minutes 14 seconds of the first period with his fifth goal of the season, deflecting a shot off a Detroit defenseman’s skate and past goalie Jimmy Howard. Kreider’s goals, at 14 seconds and 12:11 of the third period, were his 15th and 16th of the season, fourth among N.H.L. rookies. Ryan McDonagh and Derek Stepan assisted on both. That helped Lundqvist earn his second consecutive shutout of Detroit. The last time the Rangers blanked the Red Wings twice in a season was in 1970-71. Lundqvist made several lead-preserving saves, including a point-blank stop on Todd Bertuzzi and two on Tomas Tatar. He has slumped at a couple of points this season, and he seemed tired immediately after returning from the Olympics, where he won a silver medal with Sweden. But he looked sharp again in a 4-2 victory at Carolina on Friday night and again on Sunday afternoon. “I think the last two games, especially, I’ve been playing my game,” he said. “My focus has been better, catching up on a lot of different things coming back from the Olympics. I feel like I’m playing the way I want to play.” With the victory, Lundqvist, already ensconced among the Rangers goaltending greats, became the 29th goalie to win 300 games in the N.H.L. Only six active goalies have won 300, including Martin Brodeur of the Devils, the career leader with 685. Lundqvist’s 49 shutouts put him at No. 27 on the N.H.L. career list, and fifth among active goalies. Brodeur, 41, is the career leader in that category, too, with 124. But Lundqvist is 32, with many years left to add to his already impressive numbers. On Sunday, he was thinking about the milestones set by Richter and Giacomin, and his chance of reaching them. “It’s been on my mind — it’s a big deal for me to be able to reach that,” he said. “I’ve been lucky. I’ve been able to be here for almost nine years and play with great defensemen in front of me.” He smiled, happy to be a winner again. “As long as I do my part,” he said, “I’m going to be in good shape.”

Henrik Lundqvist
Rangers
Red Wings
Mike Richter
Chris Kreider
Ice hockey


Leading Militant Killed in Mali, Military Officials Say

Abstract: DAKAR, Senegal — A leading jihadist militant close to top figures in the West African affiliate of Al Qaeda has been killed in Mali’s desert north, two senior Malian military officials said Friday. The militant, Oumar Ould Hamaha, known for his flowing red beard, his bloodthirsty statements to the news media, and his role in kidnapping a Canadian diplomat in 2008, was killed on March 8 by French special forces in the Timetrine area, northeast of Timbuktu, the officials said. Surprised in an ambush, Mr. Hamaha was shot dead along with two bodyguards, one of the officials said. The French military has so far not confirmed his death. But on Friday, one of the Malian military officials said in a telephone interview from Mali’s capital, Bamako: “In fact, he’s dead. This is confirmed. I’ve seen the photographs with my own eyes. It’s clear. There is absolutely no doubt.” Mr. Hamaha’s distinctive red beard and chiseled physiognomy, visible in a number of online harangues, made the identification of his body all the easier, the official said. Mr. Hamaha, related by marriage to the most wanted of all the West African jihadists, Mokhtar Belmokhtar, became known as the leading proselytizer for the jihadist takeover of northern Mali in 2012. In telephone interviews with journalists that year, he boasted about the amputations and monument desecrations carried out by the jihadists in their eight-month reign of terror in northern Mali, and he vowed that his men would repulse any Western assault on the jihadist strongholds. “We have launched a global appeal, and the whole desert will be a field where death will triumph, the death of Westerners,” he said in a telephone interview from somewhere in Mali in November 2012, two months before the French military drove the jihadists out of the region’s towns. “If the Western armies come here, it will only make our job easier,” he said at the time. “You are not fighting the mujahedeen, you are fighting the divinity of Allah.” He played a direct role in the kidnapping of the Canadian diplomat, Robert R. Fowler, who was later released, and was depicted by him in a subsequent memoir as ruthless and fanatical about his religion and as one of the most hardened of the Qaeda-allied militants roaming the Malian desert. Their numbers have now been sharply reduced by French strikes, and despite occasional, mostly ineffectual attacks around the towns of Mali’s desert north, it is not clear that they retain significant military capacity. Mr. Hamaha’s death is sure to be a further blow. “He was hit by the French special forces,” said a second Mali military official, this one in the country’s north. “They tracked him down and killed him. Certainly, it was an ambush.”

Mali
Al Qaeda
Oumar Ould Hamaha
Mokhtar Belmokhtar
Terrorism
France
Targeted Killings


MSNBC as Fox’s Liberal Evil Twin

Abstract: You can agree with everything that Rachel Maddow or Ed Schultz say on MSNBC and still oppose their right to say it. Especially when they and their hyped-up panelists shout that Republican claims are “lies,” or Chris Matthews says that Republicans view welfare recipients as “looters.” MSNBC panelists gave Mitt Romney his due on Thursday but mocked his audience. Mr. Matthews noted that when Mr. Romney called for Americans to give the poor a helping hand, Mr. Matthews said, “He got zero applause,” adding, “I think that’s so telling about tonight.” MSNBC has pumped up its ratings by recasting itself as a left-leaning riposte to Fox News, and that’s fine. Fox long ago proved that a lot of viewers like to hear cable anchors echo what they already think; MSNBC is just playing catch-up. Fox is still well ahead, especially during a Republican convention, but on Tuesday, there were times when MSNBC drew significantly more convention viewers than CNN. That’s because MSNBC offers counterprogramming, not coverage. All that arch sarcasm and partisan brio may rev up the cable channel’s fans, but it constrains — and stains — NBC News, its corporate sibling, which is still the country’s No. 1 source in the evening. NBC and the other broadcast networks cut their live convention coverage to an hour during prime time this year, which leaves barely time to show the main speeches, let alone analyze them. Yet NBC’s chief anchor, Brian Williams, has conspicuously avoided the most fractious MSNBC discussion panels. Those anchors who do make dutiful appearances, like David Gregory and Tom Brokaw, are badly needed but don’t stay long or join the fray — like piano players in a brothel, they don’t go upstairs. And that leaves fewer choices for viewers who like their election coverage with informed commentary without a twist of bias. They have to D.I.Y. either on the Internet or C-Span, or turn to PBS or CNN. And, unfortunately, because CNN’s ratings are so low, there is a danger it will disappear or turn to a more marketable model. Fox News doesn’t have a network news division, and its star anchors can be as defiantly partisan as they like. They favor Republicans, but even more they like to goad Republican candidates into criticizing the liberal media and President Obama. Both Fox News and MSNBC have experienced reporters in the field who stay neutral even when their anchors let loose. The NBC network’s anchors keep their opinions to themselves, and so do its star reporters, like Andrea Mitchell and Chuck Todd, who appear on both cable and network shows, and somehow skillfully navigate past the rockier shoals. Ms. Maddow made her mark by breaking with the mindless Ping-Pong between two opposing views that sometimes passes for objectivity — and that is routinely mocked by Jon Stewart on “The Daily Show.” MSNBC’s stridency is certainly a reaction to the ratings success of Fox News. But it’s also inspired by Mr. Stewart’s satirical commentary. The smugness is easier to copy than the wit. MSNBC has a growing cast of anchor-bloviators — hosts like Martin Bashir, Tamron Hall and, of course, Al Sharpton, who rant and then invite like-minded guest commentators to assure them that they are right. Chris Matthews, who hosts a Sunday talk show syndicated by NBC and a daily MSNBC show, seemed determined during this convention to outflank his most outspoken rivals, including Mr. Sharpton. He started with a bruising harangue against Reince Priebus, the Republican National Committee Chairman, that made even his hosts on “Morning Joe” wince. Mr. Matthews looked almost thuggish on Wednesday night when the Arizona governor, Jan Brewer, 67, speaking from the din of the convention floor, complained she couldn’t hear his question. “You can’t hear me?” he said. “Well, that’s convenient.” On Thursday, Mr. Matthews fulminated against Paul Ryan’s — admittedly misleading — assertion that Mr. Obama did nothing to prevent the closing of a GM plant in 2008. Then Fox News attacked media figures who attacked Mr. Ryan. CNN took the harder course of parsing the entire issue: The correspondent Tom Foreman gave a long, industrious analysis that explained where and how Mr. Ryan finessed the facts. MSNBC talk shows are to network newscasts what blogs are to newspaper columns, shaggier and often less considered. And increasingly, viewers, like readers, have a hard time distinguishing one from the other. But it’s all that attitude on MSNBC that raises eyebrows. Virginia’s governor, Bob McDonnell, who backed, then rescinded, a state bill that would require women seeking an abortion to first have an invasive ultrasound, is a favorite target. After his convention speech, the MSNBC host Melissa Harris-Perry said sarcastically that Republicans might be nervous “standing next to a governor who represents a vision of small government that is small enough to put on the end of a transvaginal probe .” No wonder Brian Williams stays away.

MSNBC
News and News Media
Fox Broadcasting Co
Presidential Election of 2012