| Rwanda genocide: 'I am a mother - I killed some children's parents' Posted: 14 Jun 2020 04:22 PM PDT  Female perpetrators of the Rwandan genocide speak about their crimes and desire for reconciliation.
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| UN ‘appalled’ by twin jihadist attacks in Nigeria Posted: 14 Jun 2020 12:53 PM PDT  Islamist militants have killed dozens in two raids in the north-east of the country.
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| Putin suggests he was key in Kosovo airport occupation Posted: 14 Jun 2020 12:06 PM PDT  Russian President Vladimir Putin is suggesting that he was a key figure in the takeover of Kosovo's airport by Russian troops at the end of the 1999 war. The occupation of the Slatina airport outside the capital Pristina produced one of the most tense standoffs between Russia and the West since the end of the Cold War. In an interview shown on state television Sunday, Putin said that as then-head of the country's security council he was approached about the plan by military general staff chief Gen. Anatoly Kvashnin.
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| Putin says Russia dealing better with virus than US Posted: 14 Jun 2020 11:24 AM PDT  President Vladimir Putin said in a televised interview Sunday that Russia had been more successful in dealing with the coronavirus than the United States. Russia on Sunday confirmed 8,835 new virus cases, taking the total to 528,964, the third highest in the world. The United States has the world's largest number of cases by far at 2.07 million.
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| Spain says UK visitors welcome from June 21 if Covid-19 situation remains stable Posted: 14 Jun 2020 11:21 AM PDT  British holidaymakers will be allowed to travel to Spain from June 21 so long as the Covid-19 situation allows, as the government seeks to salvage what's left of the summer tourism market. Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez announced on Sunday that the country would reopen to tourists from EU countries 10 days earlier than expected. Visitors will no longer need to undergo quarantine from midnight on June 20, when Spain's state of emergency is lifted. A government spokesperson confirmed to The Telegraph that the U.K. was considered an EU nation under the announcement, as it remains in the Brexit transition period. British tourists make up the biggest share of visitors to Spain each year. However, "this does not mean that there may not be another change if the epidemiological situation in Britain requires this," the spokesperson added. Spain had previously imposed a two-week quarantine period on all international visitors. Its border with Portugal will remain closed until July 1. Mr Sánchez said that EU states were working to draw up a list of third countries whose citizens will also be welcome from the start of July. "We have been able to corner the virus in our country and on the European continent... but the risk has not disappeared," Mr Sánchez told a news briefing after talks with regional leaders. "Tourism is a key sector for the economic recovery," he said. Travel within Spain will also be possible as of June 21. However, it will remain mandatory to wear masks in crowded public spaces until a cure or vaccine for COVID-19 is found. The coronavirus has so far killed more than 27,000 people in Spain but new infections have slowed and the country is now emerging from lockdown. In a small prelude to the wider opening of its borders, Spain will allow 11,000 German tourists to visit its Balearic Islands from Monday as part of a test programme. Also on Sunday, Mr Sanchez announced a €3.75 billion aid package to rescue Spain's automobile sector. Together, tourism and automobiles account for over 20% of Spain's gross domestic product.
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| Israel OKs plan for new Golan settlement named after Trump Posted: 14 Jun 2020 11:13 AM PDT  An Israeli cabinet minister on Sunday said the government approved plans to build a new settlement in the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights named after President Donald Trump. Settlements Minister Tzipi Hotovely wrote on Facebook that her ministry will start preparations for Ramat Trump — Hebrew for "Trump Heights" — to house 300 families. Israel captured the Golan Heights from Syria in the 1967 Mideast war and annexed it in 1981.
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| Drone strike kills 2 al-Qaida commanders in NW Syria Posted: 14 Jun 2020 11:02 AM PDT |
| Rethinking police: How Camden, NJ, reimagined its force Posted: 14 Jun 2020 09:44 AM PDT  To Scott Thomson, changing the culture of policing in America is a relatively simple process. Thomson led a tumultuous police department makeover in Camden, New Jersey — a poor city of mostly brown and black residents just across the river from Philadelphia — in 2013. After state officials disbanded the old department and started anew, Thomson transformed policing in Camden from the law-and-order, lock-'em-up approach of the 1990s to a holistic, do-no-harm philosophy that's put the long-maligned city in the spotlight during the national reckoning over race and police brutality.
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| Boris Johnson to tell EU leaders: I want a Brexit deal by autumn Posted: 14 Jun 2020 09:29 AM PDT  Boris Johnson will tell European Union leaders on Monday that they must conclude Brexit talks by autumn "at the latest" to give certainty to companies affected by the UK's exit from the European Union. The Prime Minister, his chief Brexit negotiator David Frost, and the Cabinet Office minister Michael Gove are due to hold "high-level talks" with Charles Michel, the President of the European Council, Ursula von der Leyen, the President of the European Commission, and David Sassoli, the President of the European Parliament. The Political Declaration agreed between the UK and EU last autumn set out that the high-level meeting must "take stock of progress with the aim of agreeing actions to move forward in negotiations on the future relationship". There will now be talks in each week of the five weeks between June 29 and July 27 to try to strike a deal. Number 10 sources said on Sunday that Mr Johnson "will make it clear that the negotiation now needs to be swiftly concluded, with certainty provided to the public and businesses by the autumn at the latest". That is later than a deadline of "the end of summer" that was being briefed by Number 10 late last week. Mr Johnson will use the meeting - held by video conference because of social distancing caused by the coronavirus pandemic - to press for a "high-quality Free Trade Agreement" (FTA) that is "consistent with others the EU have agreed, as part of a balanced overall outcome". The Prime Minister will make clear that the UK will be prepared to leave the EU "whatever happens" at the end of the 11-month implementation period on Dec 31, which followed the UK's exit on Jan 31 this year.
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| Trump moved Tulsa rally date after learning about Juneteenth Posted: 14 Jun 2020 09:13 AM PDT  President Donald Trump didn't know the significance to black Americans of the date and location he chose for his first campaign rally since the coronavirus pandemic more than three months ago, key Republican supporters of the president in Congress said Sunday. Trump had scheduled the rally for June 19, known as Juneteenth because it marks the end of slavery in the United States. Black community and political leaders denounced the move and called on Trump to reschedule.
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| Biden's Vice-Presidential Search Gathers Steam Posted: 14 Jun 2020 08:28 AM PDT  Joe Biden's advisers have conducted several rounds of interviews with a select group of vice-presidential candidates and are beginning to gather private documents from some of them, as they attempt to winnow a field that features the most diverse set of vice-presidential contenders in history.The search committee has been in touch with roughly a dozen women, and some eight or nine are already being vetted more intensively.Among that group are two contenders who have recently grown in prominence, Rep. Val Demings of Florida and Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms of Atlanta. One well-known candidate, Sen. Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota, has lost her perch as a front-runner. And some lower-profile candidates, like Sen. Tammy Baldwin of Wisconsin, are advancing steadily in the search process.The New York Times spoke to an array of people who are familiar with the vice-presidential search and the activities of the Biden team, and the interviews yielded the fullest picture yet of the list of candidates Biden is considering, who is advancing and who may be fading, and the dynamics at play.Biden's vice-presidential search has taken a bifurcated course so far, with one path unfolding in the open -- joint appearances on television or in virtual events with potential running mates -- and another in an environment of strict discretion. People involved in the confidential part described it on condition of anonymity, because they were not authorized to discuss a process that is designed to shield Biden's thinking and the participants' privacy.Some of the contenders who have advanced furthest in the process are well known, including Sens. Kamala Harris of California and Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts. But The Times confirmed that several other women -- whose names have been repeatedly floated but who have not publicly confirmed that they agreed to be vetted for the job -- are under active consideration as well.Harris and Warren have been interviewed at length by Biden's team, as has Baldwin, who was the first openly gay candidate ever elected to the Senate.Two women with distinctive national-defense credentials have also been interviewed and asked for documents: Sen. Tammy Duckworth of Illinois, an Iraq war combat veteran who is Asian American, and Susan Rice, the former national security adviser to President Barack Obama and the first black woman to serve as ambassador to the United Nations.As the vetting process advances to a newly intense phase, the political currents of the last few weeks are also leaving a mark on the Biden team's deliberations. The wave of demonstrations touched off by the killing in Minneapolis of George Floyd, a black man, at the hands of a white police officer there, has elevated a pair of black women long regarded as intriguing long-shot candidates: Demings and Bottoms.Though Demings and Bottoms are far less known to the national electorate than other figures on Biden's list, they have played crucial roles in a cascading civil rights crisis: Demings, a former police chief in Orlando, Florida, has become a major figure in the law-enforcement debate, while Bottoms' handling of chaotic demonstrations in her city earned her national acclaim.Both women have spoken with the vetting team, and Biden advisers have reached out to their allies to seek information about them.Rep. Charlie Crist of Florida, a supporter of Demings, said he had recently spoken about her with former Sen. Christopher Dodd, a member of Biden's search committee. Crist -- a former Republican who was vetted for vice president by John McCain in 2008 -- predicted that if Biden made Demings his running mate, it would lock down Florida's 29 Electoral College votes."She is ready for the task," Crist said of Demings, adding, "It would make a huge difference if you actually had a Floridian on the ticket."Biden insisted in an interview with CBS this past week that the last few tumultuous weeks had not meaningfully changed his thinking about the vice presidency, except to put "greater focus and urgency on the need to get someone who is totally simpatico with where I am.""I want someone strong," he said, "and someone who is ready to be president on Day 1."Rep. Dina Titus of Nevada, a prominent early supporter of Biden, counseled him to not be caught up in a momentary news cycle but rather make a sober-minded governing choice, someone to help him steer through turbulent years ahead."He needs to pick somebody who's serious, respected and has some policy chops," Titus said, "not just somebody who's a personality."Several state executives have also had conversations with members of the vetting team, including Gov. Gretchen Whitmer of Michigan, who clashed with President Donald Trump over his handling of the coronavirus, and Gov. Gina Raimondo of Rhode Island, a leader of her party's centrist wing. Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham of New Mexico, a former chair of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus, is one of the candidates from whom Biden advisers have requested private documents, a signal that she is regarded as a serious contender.It is not clear precisely where Stacey Abrams, the former candidate for governor in Georgia, stands in the process. In an appearance Wednesday on Stephen Colbert's CBS show, Abrams appeared to say she had not been contacted by the search committee, though several people insisted she was still in the mix.Harris, who was already a leading prospect, appears to have lifted herself further in recent weeks with her advocacy for policing reform. But three Democrats in regular contact with top Biden officials said they still frequently expressed unease about Harris because of her rocky turn as a presidential candidate and her blistering attack on Biden in the first debate last year.Klobuchar is also still under consideration, but she has receded amid criticism that she did not take on police misconduct as a district attorney in Hennepin County, home to Minneapolis. That may leave Warren as the most formidable white candidate in the running, in large part because of her popularity with liberals and her credibility as a messenger on the economy.Biden's decision has taken on outsize importance as the country faces an overlapping set of crises that are all but certain to last beyond Inauguration Day.At 77, Biden would be the oldest person ever elected to the White House, a distinction with actuarial implications that cannot be discounted. A moderate white man in a party fueled by the political energy of women, young liberals and people of color, Biden is facing demands from numerous quarters to complete his ticket with someone who represents racial, geographic, generational or ideological balance -- imperatives that no one running mate could satisfy in full.If Biden wins the November election, he might well take office under the darkest conditions of any president in half a century, with economic stagnation and a deadly pandemic shadowing his new administration.That unsettling reality has bolstered the view among many Democrats that Biden must choose a running mate who could be a full partner in governing rather than someone who is useful chiefly for tactical purposes in an election season.The selection process by now has become so delicate that some of Biden's senior aides are stepping gingerly. Steve Ricchetti, one of Biden's closest advisers, has told people he is trying to avoid contact with any of the prospects because he does not want to be seen as tipping his hand.The fact that someone has been interviewed for vice president does not necessarily mean she is among the top candidates, and it is somewhat customary for presidential candidates to put a few close allies on their shortlist as a kind of reward for their support. People briefed on the search also said it would be premature to assume anyone has been eliminated as a candidate simply because she may not have moved as far in the process as others.Jennifer Palmieri, who advised Hillary Clinton during her 2016 hunt for a running mate, said it made sense for the search committee to screen a large number of candidates to give Biden flexibility in his decision. The search, she said, should function "outside of the day-to-day political ecosystem" that thrives on fleeting conventional wisdom."Their job is to give Biden as many qualified options as possible," Palmieri said. "Somebody who does not make a lot of sense in June can make a great pick on Aug. 1."The search process has been carried out by a selection committee staffed by a team of lawyers and led by four close allies of Biden: Dodd, Rep. Lisa Blunt Rochester of Delaware, Mayor Eric Garcetti of Los Angeles and Cynthia Hogan, Biden's counsel when he was vice president himself.The process has unfolded in several stages, according to people familiar with the search. In April and May, advisers to Biden contacted more than a dozen Democratic women to ask whether they would be willing to be vetted for the vice presidency. Nearly everyone approached answered in the affirmative; a notable exception was Sen. Jeanne Shaheen of New Hampshire, who is running for reelection this year and declined to join a time-consuming vetting process that she believed was highly unlikely to end in her selection.A second senator, Catherine Cortez Masto of Nevada, did not immediately rebuff the Biden team but removed herself from consideration late last month. Sen. Maggie Hassan of New Hampshire also agreed to be vetted, but she has not been actively pursuing the job and is not seen as a major candidate.For those who agreed to move ahead, the next step was interviewing with members of Biden's screening committee. Those sessions involved a range of broad questions concerning the role of the vice presidency and the policy challenges facing a potential Biden administration, as well as aspects of the candidates' public records.Only in recent days has the process moved toward more intrusive scrutiny of the candidates' sensitive private matters.That stage of the process may be especially important for candidates like Bottoms and Demings, who have not undergone the kind of public examination that other women, like Harris and Warren, endured as presidential candidates.While Demings could help Biden in Florida, a similar argument could apply to Bottoms, given Georgia's status as an emerging political battleground. As mayor, she has managed the coronavirus response in the Southern metropolis and has regularly criticized Trump's rhetoric about reopening states.Some of Bottoms' fellow city leaders are enthusiastic about the idea of a mayor on the ticket. "She'd be strong and is very popular amongst her colleagues," said Mayor Steve Benjamin of Columbia, South Carolina.Benjamin, a former president of the U.S. Conference of Mayors, said he had shared his high opinion of Bottoms with the Biden camp.This article originally appeared in The New York Times.(C) 2020 The New York Times Company
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| Islamic extremists attack 3 towns in northeastern Nigeria Posted: 14 Jun 2020 06:54 AM PDT |
| As NYC awakens, navigating a strange new normal Posted: 14 Jun 2020 06:09 AM PDT  The New York City that was lingers everywhere in the New York City that is, like flashes of movement out of the corner of your eye. New Yorkers, more than in any other place in America, have always accepted as given a cheek-by-jowl existence, treating the streets and subways and parks, their favorite restaurants and bars, the physical geography of the city all as extensions of their own personal space. "New York City is a different style of life ... of density, of vitality, of 24/7, of no cultural agreement of when we should take a vacation or eat lunch," says Kenneth T. Jackson, recently retired Columbia University history professor and editor of "The Encyclopedia of New York City."
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| South African president's shame over surge in murders of women Posted: 14 Jun 2020 05:33 AM PDT  Cyril Ramaphosa's remarks come after several femicides amid the lifting of coronavirus restrictions.
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| US base namesakes include slaveholders, failed generals Posted: 14 Jun 2020 05:19 AM PDT  As much as President Donald Trump enjoys talking about winning and winners, the Confederate generals he vows will not have their names removed from U.S. military bases were not only on the losing side of rebellion against the United States, some weren't even considered good generals. The 10 generals include some who made costly battlefield blunders; others mistreated captured Union soldiers, some were slaveholders and one was linked to the Ku Klux Klan after the war. Trump has dug in his heels on renaming, saying the bases that trained and deployed heroes for two World Wars "have become part of a Great American Heritage, a history of Winning, Victory, and Freedom."
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| Pope Francis urges aid to migrants and end to Libya fighting Posted: 14 Jun 2020 04:47 AM PDT  Pope Francis on Sunday urged political and military leaders in Libya to end their hostilities and called on the international community to take "to heart" the plight of migrants trapped in the lawless nation. The Pope's comments came as forces allied with a U.N.-supported government in the capital Tripoli are preparing to launch an attack on rival forces led by military commander Khalifa Hifter in the strategic coastal city of Sirte. If successful, it could help them seize key oil fields and facilities in Libya's south.
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| Europe reopens many borders but not to Americans, Asians Posted: 14 Jun 2020 04:33 AM PDT  Europe is taking a big step toward a new normality as many countries open borders to fellow Europeans after three months of coronavirus lockdowns — but even though Europeans love their summer vacations, it's not clear how many are ready to travel again. Europe is expected to start opening up to some visitors from elsewhere next month, but details remain unclear. The European Union home affairs commissioner, Ylva Johansson, told member nations last week that they "should open up as soon as possible" and suggested Monday was a good date.
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| Trump rally called ‘dangerous move’ in age of coronavirus Posted: 14 Jun 2020 04:29 AM PDT  After months away from the campaign trail, President Donald Trump plans to rally his supporters next Saturday for the first time since most of the country was shuttered by the coronavirus. Trump will head to Tulsa, Oklahoma — a state that has seen relatively few COVID-19 cases. "I'm concerned about our ability to protect anyone who attends a large, indoor event, and I'm also concerned about our ability to ensure the president stays safe as well," Dr. Bruce Dart told the newspaper.
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| Iran daily virus deaths exceed 100 for first time in 2 months Posted: 14 Jun 2020 04:09 AM PDT  In televised remarks, health ministry spokeswoman Sima Sadat Lari announced 107 Covid-19 fatalities in the past 24 hours, raising the overall toll to 8,837. "It was very painful for us to announce the triple-digit figure," said Lari. There has been scepticism at home and abroad about Iran's official COVID-19 figures, with concerns the real toll could be much higher.
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| Egypt: Ethiopia rejecting 'fundamental issues' on Nile dam Posted: 14 Jun 2020 02:19 AM PDT  Egypt, Sudan and Ethiopia on Sunday said talks would continue later this week to resolve their dispute over a Nile dam Ethiopia is constructing, even as Cairo accused Addis Ababa of rejecting "fundamental issues" at the heart of the negotiations. Ethiopia wants to begin filling the dam's reservoir in the coming weeks, but Egypt has raised concerns that filing the reservoir too quickly and without a deal could significantly reduce the amount of Nile water available to Egypt.
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| Germany Confronted Its Past and Flourished. So Can the U.S. Posted: 14 Jun 2020 02:00 AM PDT  (Bloomberg Opinion) -- A cultural revolution is sweeping across Great Britain and the United States. Toppling statues of slave owners, protesters are demanding moral reparations — an acknowledgement that slavery and imperialism underpinned the wealth and power of two of the world's most prominent countries, condemning millions of people with darker skins to generations of poverty and indignity.The iconoclasts have shifted much public opinion in their favor, as can be witnessed in the truly incredible (if also slightly absurd) scene of Democratic lawmakers in Kente stoles kneeling in solidarity with victims of racist violence. A range of individuals and institutions have come out vigorously in favor of racial justice; those found in violation of it are being named and shamed.But a deeper, longer and harder battle is only just beginning — over the new national identity the U.S. and U.K. need, especially as they seek to emerge from the ruins of a devastating pandemic.Donald Trump is too obviously the reductio ad absurdum of a besieged white supremacism in an irreversibly diverse society. Simultaneously, the British cult of Winston Churchill has reached a risible culmination in the figure of his flailing understudy: Boris Johnson.Just as the self-evident truths of slave-owners no longer persuade a large number of people in the U.S., a sentimental attachment to empire and to fantasies of resurrecting British glory and power won't survive the ineptitude of a Tory government that seems to know only how to "get Brexit done" — and not even that.As they search for a post-racial, post-imperial identity, the U.S. and Britain would be wise to take lessons from their implacable enemy in two world wars: Germany.For while white supremacists unfurled swastika banners and chanted "blood and soil" and "Jews will not replace us" in Charlottesville, Virginia, and British politicians and journalists spread falsehoods about immigrants en route to Brexit, Germany hosted a "welcome culture" for more than one million refugees — what Susan Neiman in her timely book "Learning from the Germans" calls "the largest and broadest social movement in Germany since the war."Germany's most successful postwar far-right party, the Alternative for Germany (AfD), rose to subvert this German consensus. But it has failed repeatedly to broaden its small base and, presently afflicted by a civil war and a muddled coronavirus strategy, is being pushed back to the margins. Moreover, AfD's attempts to deny or minimize the country's Nazi past have served to consolidate anti-racist sentiment in the country.This broad and consistent recoiling from ethnic-racial supremacists confirms that Germany has achieved a high, if not perfect, degree of immunity to the kind of toxic politics that have ravaged Anglo-America in recent years.This didn't happen overnight. Neiman, a philosopher of Jewish origin who grew up in the segregationist American South and has long lived in Berlin, writes that it "took decades of hard work before those who committed what are arguably the greatest crimes in history could acknowledge those crimes, and begin to atone for them."De-Nazification, demanded initially by West Germany's American occupiers, was only partly accomplished. U.S. intelligence operatives found many Nazi criminals useful in the cold war against Soviet communism — indeed, the student revolt of the 1960s in Germany was largely provoked by a postwar dispensation in which government officials, industrialists, bankers and professors of the Nazi era managed to retain their influence.Many Germans saw themselves as victims, too. Still, over the decades, a strong culture of remembrance and commemoration flourished both inside and outside classrooms. Big and small monuments to the victims of Nazi crimes went up across the country, ranging from the Holocaust memorial in Berlin to "stumbling stones" in a local street that record the names and the dates of birth and deportation of the people who once lived there.In 1970, many older Germans recoiled at the sight of German Chancellor Willy Brandt kneeling before the memorial to the Warsaw ghetto in apology to the world for Nazi crimes. But the image was extraordinarily potent. In retrospect, it announced a society and culture that was being steadily renewed by moral introspection and historical inquiry.Contrast this with Anglo-American attitudes — for instance, the left-leaning British Prime Minister Gordon Brown declaring on a trip to East Africa in 2005 that "the days of Britain having to apologize for its colonial past are over." (Never mind that Britain never apologized).A German-style reckoning with the past couldn't come sooner in Anglo-America. For unrepentant racial supremacism, as represented by the rants of Trump and Fox's Tucker Carlson, can only deepen the political and socio-economic impasse that Britain and the U.S. find themselves in.Those in thrall to racial, national and imperialist myths will no doubt see weakness in any admission of crimes in their society's long past. Yet it seems irrefutable now, as Germany towers, morally as well as politically and economically, over its old Anglo-American rivals, that the willingness to confront shameful history is ultimately a source of great strength. This column does not necessarily reflect the opinion of the editorial board or Bloomberg LP and its owners.Pankaj Mishra is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist. His books include "Age of Anger: A History of the Present," "From the Ruins of Empire: The Intellectuals Who Remade Asia," and "Temptations of the West: How to Be Modern in India, Pakistan, Tibet and Beyond." For more articles like this, please visit us at bloomberg.com/opinionSubscribe now to stay ahead with the most trusted business news source.©2020 Bloomberg L.P.
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| The Saudis’ Preaching Inspired Terror, and Then It Turned on Them Posted: 14 Jun 2020 01:52 AM PDT  If you recognize the term "Wahhabi" or "Wahhabism," the conservative state religion of Saudi Arabia, it's probably because of 9/11. It was in the wake of that attack that institutions like Freedom House began to publish reports about "Wahhabi ideology" that seemed to provide some intellectual context for a senseless event. The same goes for Salafism, for which there wasn't even a standard spelling in 2001: The Guardian went with "Salafee" in one post-9/11 article.Trump Administration Preps New Weapons Sale To Saudi ArabiaThe terms still tend to be tossed around by non-Muslims, with renewed vigor after the rise of ISIS, as examples of a "fundamentalist Islam" promoted by Saudi Arabia, which vaguely corrupted the Muslim world and was often embraced by jihadi terrorists. But understanding Saudi religion, and what it did abroad, requires considerably more nuance. It's true that, for decades, the Saudis used their austere religious vision as a tool of soft power to promote their interests around the world among Arabs and also in Indonesia, in Nigeria, in Kosovo and almost anywhere else with a sizeable Muslim community. But over the course of six decades, the faith the Saudis spent so lavishly to spread had unpredictable effects on the ground, and its most violent apostles actually turned against the kingdom.The Saudi brand started to deteriorate during the Gulf War of 1990–1991, when non-Muslim U.S. troops were accepted on the holy soil of Arabia in order to protect it from Saddam Hussein. That move, and the perceived hypocrisy of the Saudi clerics who greenlit it, dented Saudi Arabia's cultivated image as a leader of Muslims everywhere. And it ended the golden age of Saudi dawa, which means literally "the call" or "invitation" to Islam, and refers more generally to proselytizing.But 9/11 was something else. Fifteen out of the 19 hijackers were Saudi nationals and popular opinion about the kingdom quickly soured. Just six months after the attack, 54 percent of Americans agreed that "the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia is a state that supports terrorism." The Gulf War was a blow to Saudi Arabia's bid for leadership of the Muslim world, but 9/11 brought it to its knees.The 838-page-long joint inquiry by the House and Senate Intelligence Committees into the 9/11 attacks published in 2002 contains a long-suppressed 28-page section on Saudi financing that was only declassified in 2016 and found that some of the hijackers "were in contact with, and received support or assistance from, individuals who may be connected to the Saudi Government."Something else happened while Saudi Arabia was in the spotlight: it experienced a 9/11 of its own. Al Qaeda, led by the ex-Saudi national Osama bin Laden, attacked major targets inside the kingdom, destroying a housing compound in Riyadh in 2003 and then Saudi oil fields in 2004.The stunned Saudi government set up a joint task force with the U.S. to investigate terrorist financing, and in May 2003, introduced banking regulations that temporarily stopped all private charities from sending funds abroad. These shock waves would be felt around the Muslim world, where Saudi charity had become an integral part of education and development. In 2003, the kingdom briefly considered recalling its religious attachés, diplomats under the Saudi Ministry of Religious Affairs, Dawa, and Guidance who oversaw dawa activities in about two dozen foreign countries. In 2004, a royal decree was issued to centralize all Islamic charities.Thus, 9/11 briefly imploded the transnational Saudi dawa apparatus. So when we talk about Saudi money today, it's essential to keep this dynamic in mind; it is no longer accurate to refer to some kind of all-powerful, centralized, ideologically coherent global project. We need to appreciate it at face value: piecemeal, diluted, opportunistic. DEFINING DEFINITIONSSaudi Arabia's mid-century ambitions to define orthodoxy in the Muslim world, fight revolutionary ideologies coming from Iran and Egypt, and support besieged Muslim minorities abroad stretched its global campaign, by the 1990s, into a project that frankly outpaced its capacities. For the eminent Saudi scholar Madawi al-Rasheed, who lives in self-imposed exile in London, the phenomenon of jihadis like Bin Laden, a Saudi citizen by birth, perfectly encapsulates the tension between the kingdom's rhetoric to "obey their current rulers at home while at the same time fostering the spirit of jihad abroad." That gets to the heart of why Saudi dawa has such chaotic effects outside the kingdom's borders.Wahhabism is an ultraconservative religious movement founded by the fiery 18th-century Arabian preacher Muhammad ibn Abd al-Wahhab. It focuses on removing idolatry and "deviations" in Islam, and after Ibn Abd al-Wahhab signed a pact with the royal House of Saud, it became the official religion of the family and their successive attempts to consolidate a state on the Arabian peninsula, the last of which came together in 1932 and is modern-day Saudi Arabia.Salafism, meanwhile, is a revivalist Sunni Islamic movement that seeks to return to the traditions of the salaf, the first three generations of Muslims in the seventh and eighth centuries. It came out of late 19th century Egypt, chiefly as a reaction to Western colonialism. In practice, Salafis and Wahhabis have a lot in common. Both religious currents tend to promote personal austerity as well as intolerance of other beliefs, not only those of Christians, Jews, Buddhists, but of Muslims who have not embraced what they consider the true faith. Shia Muslims are a particular target. Wahhabism is highly linked to Saudi royal authority, which makes little sense outside the Gulf, so Saudi dawa tends to create Salafi communities abroad.Inside Saudi Arabia, as proved most recently by Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman's brash moves to modernize civil society, the state can rein in the excesses of the Wahhabi clerics if it thinks that is necessary. Outside, Saudi-promoted Salafi movements are much harder to control.Does Saudi dawa actively create terrorists? Sometimes, but in very specific conditions, like the Afghan jihad, when it sponsored people including Abdullah Azzam and Osama bin Laden. Has Saudi dawa inspired terrorists, jihadists, and extremists? Much more broadly, yes. But they are a subset of a broader universe. "Salafi-jihadism," the strain of violent Salafism that includes al Qaeda, Boko Haram, ISIS, and others typically draws from a larger pool of nonviolent Salafis in a given region, and those broad communities often have direct connections to Saudi dawa. The most infamous Salafi-jihadist group, ISIS, rose to global prominence claiming to be the world's true Wahhabi state, and it set up its own printing press in Mosul in 2014 to publish Ibn Abd al-Wahhab's texts, much to Saudi Arabia's chagrin. The surprisingly widespread phenomenon of hardline Muslims destroying ancient holy sites, from Palmyra to Timbuktu, also follows a distinctly Wahhabi logic of eliminating occasions for "idolatry" and "polytheism" by razing shrines and tombs. ISIS is the worst offender, but non-jihadists do this, too: in Bale, Ethiopia, Saudi-affiliated fundamentalists destroyed more than 30 Sufi shrines in the early 2000s. The world's growing anti-Shia rhetoric, too, speaks in the distinctly Wahhabi language of "deviance" and "polytheism." And even blasphemy convictions often echo the Wahhabi logic of takfir, "excommunicating" improper Muslims. Even if Saudi officials occasionally decry the violent effects of past dawa, they are in an awkward position, given that these actions are completely in accordance with the ideas of the most famous Saudi preacher of all time.Nigeria is an instructive example. 'PRESERVING VIRTUE'In December 2015, Abdullahi Muhammad Musa crammed into a sedan with six relatives for the five hour drive from Nigeria's capital, Abuja, to the northern state of Zaria to celebrate Quds Day, the international expression of solidarity with Palestine. Abdullahi, 32, made it back to Abuja alive. But all the rest in that car, and at least 340 other civilians, were gunned down by the Nigerian military in what is now known as the Zaria Massacre. All were followers of an outspoken Shia group, the Islamic Movement in Nigeria, that has long been under attack by Sunnis, Salafis, and the state. As in many other parts of the Muslim world, this anti-Shia sentiment was fueled by Saudi-oriented Salafis. But in Nigeria, it's taken an especially deadly turn. It's estimated that roughly half of Nigeria's 191 million people are Muslim, although religious demographics are so contentious that the question has not been posed on the census since 1963. The country is a huge arena for global contests over Islamic dogma, and in such a volatile religious climate, the rise of Saudi-affiliated Salafism stirred things up, and then spiraled in unpredictable directions.Saudi Arabia started its outreach to West Africa shortly after Nigeria won independence from British rule in 1960. Within a decade, a generation of Salafis emerged in northern Nigeria, whose Muslims had, until then, been predominantly Sufi or non-denominational. Salafis created the Izala movement for "preserving virtue" and were influential in deciding the shape of sharia, Islamic law, which was implemented across the north of Nigeria starting in 1999. The most infamous Nigerians to identify as Salafis are the members of Boko Haram, the Salafi-jihadist group responsible for hundreds of terror attacks and the kidnapping of thousands of schoolchildren since 2009. At one point, in 2015, Boko Haram even surpassed ISIS as the world's deadliest terror group. But it did not emerge in a vacuum. The founder of Boko Haram, Muhammad Yusuf, studied with the most prominent Saudi-educated Salafi in Nigeria, Jafar Mahmud Adam, and even briefly sought refuge, like many Islamists under fire, in Saudi Arabia itself.The Salafi-jihadism of Boko Haram, although an extreme fringe, emerged from the rich Salafi tapestry that was woven in Nigeria over the previous half century. Since the 1960s, Saudi outreach cultivated deep personal contacts in the postcolonial nation and seeded opportunities to study in the kingdom. The resulting Salafis have clashed with both the reigning Sufi orders and the parallel, Iran-affiliated Shia movement. Some have been mainstreamed into government positions, while others laid the ideological groundwork for Boko Haram. BOKO HARAMIn April 2014, Boko Haram boldly kidnapped 276 female students from their school in Chibok, in the northeastern state of Borno. The event horrified observers inside Nigeria and around the world, who were stunned at the inability of the state to protect the girls or to negotiate effectively with the terrorist group (112 of the 276 girls are still missing). In more recent incidents, Boko Haram has kidnapped over 1,000 children since 2018 and, as recently as 2018, abducted 110 more girls from the town of Dapchi. Even during one of my visits in May 2019, a handful of staffers were kidnapped from a girls' school in Zamfara State. Easily the most infamous Islamic movement in northern Nigeria today, Boko Haram also has contributed to a devastating regional famine by preventing farmers from planting crops and blocking access to Lake Chad. Since Boko Haram styles itself as a Salafi-jihadist group, it begs the question of how closely it is linked with the greater Salafi movement in the region, and of whether that Salafi movement would have flourished in northern Nigeria without Saudi dawa. In a word, the answer is no. Saudi proselytizing has been integral to Salafism in northern Nigeria, and Boko Haram's ideology directly springs from the Salafi corpus spread there by Saudi-educated Nigerian preachers. But in an ironic twist, the majority of mainstream Nigerian Salafis oppose the jihadi group and have even tried to wage public debates with its leaders, albeit to little effect. The resulting situation is typical of what Saudi proselytizing often looks like in the wild, rife with unstable by-products. Boko Haram has praised al Qaeda and it pledged allegiance to ISIS in 2015, but it remains more a localized insurgency than a transnational jihadist group. In fact, it existed for six years as a nonviolent fundamentalist group and only turned violent in 2009, when its founder was killed. Its context is deeply local to Maiduguri, the northeastern state where it is headquartered. And Salafism would never have entered Maiduguri were it not for a preacher named Jafar Adam, the most popular and charismatic Saudi educated Salafi in modern Nigeria. He founded a group called Ahl Al-Sunna, which considered itself more purely Salafi, and less tainted with politics, than Izala had become by the new millennium. And Adam's star student was a young man named Muhammad Yusuf. Adam even appointed him to lead Ahl Al-Sunna's youth wing. But just as Adam branched off from Izala in a more hardline direction, so Yusuf did to Adam, whom he rejected as insufficiently Islamic.In 2007, Yusuf published the foundational manifesto of Boko Haram: "This is our creed and method of proclamation," which mostly consisted of quotations from Saudi Salafi texts. Boko Haram was not his own name for the group. He called it Jama'at Ahl as-Sunnah lid-Dawah wa'l Jihad, the Group of the People of the Sunnah for Preaching and Jihad. Nigerian media came up with the shorter cognomen, which captured Yusuf's central idea that Western education, or "Boko" in Hausa, was forbidden. This newer, even more charismatic breakaway movement drew hundreds of young people. Everyone in Maiduguri knew Yusuf and vice versa. "Once I met him in a gas station and he instantly recognized me and asked whether I was still part of the army of Satan," one resident told me. Yusuf eventually attracted thousands of followers across the northeastern states and even from neighboring Niger, Chad, and Cameroon. But within a few years, this volatile Salafi coterie headquartered in Maiduguri became an ouroboros, the snake that eats its own tail. In 2007, Jafar Adam, the most influential Saudi-educated nonviolent Salafi preacher of the decade, was assassinated under mysterious circumstances—most likely on the directive of Boko Haram. And then, in 2009, Boko Haram clashed with the Nigerian military amid allegations it was building bombs. One thousand people died, 700 in Maiduguri alone. Among them was Muhammad Yusuf, who was interrogated by police and then executed. The heavy-handed military confrontation was the proximate cause for Boko Haram's turn toward violence, but in the bigger picture, it's obvious that Boko Haram could not have formed as a group, nor attracted its popular base across multiple states without its ideological background and the charismatic Salafi preachers at its core. Boko Haram's material links to Saudi and Gulf actors are basically opportunistic. Around 2002, Osama bin Laden reportedly sent an aide to Nigeria with $3 million to distribute among local groups including Boko Haram. In 2015, Boko Haram switched allegiance to the Islamic State and restyled itself as the "Islamic State in West Africa." It's worth noting that, in its current, violent iteration, Boko Haram considers Saudi Arabia to be a state of unbelief. Under the leadership of Abubakar Shekau, who took over from Yusuf in 2009, Boko Haram declared its enmity toward literally every other Islamic group and entity imaginable, including the Sufis, Shia, Izala, the Nigerian government, and the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. In a video message filmed in December 2014, Shekau, holding a rifle that he periodically shot off to punctuate his address for emphasis, screamed, "The Saudi state is a state of unbelief, because it is a state that belongs to the Saud family, and they do not follow the Prophet … the Saudi Arabians, since you have altered Allah's religion, you will enter hellfire!" Saudi Arabia was the site of an attempted negotiation between Boko Haram and the Nigerian state in 2012 to 2013. Perhaps unsurprisingly, the peace talks held there did not make much headway.Given the persistent rifts and splintering among Nigerian Salafis, it's not surprising that Boko Haram experienced its own internal split in 2016, where a rival named Abu Musab al-Barnawi made a bid for leadership over Shekau and linked his faction more closely with ISIS. There's no chance Saudi Arabia foresaw any of these chaotic effects back in 1965, when its dawa outreach to Nigeria started. Indeed, it's likely that every successive splintering of Nigerian Salafism became more and more distant from the original Saudi soft power project, which was formed on close personal contacts between Nigerian and Saudi leaders, but became more localized over time. Spreading such a charged ideology abroad was like opening a can of worms. It's why so many jihadist groups today prize Wahhabi theology and revile the kingdom itself. Thus the central paradox today: even if Saudi Arabia is embarrassed by its reputation for spreading extremism and the unsavory effects of its campaign, it's not really a problem the Saudis can solve anymore.This excerpt is adapted from The Call: Inside the Global Saudi Religious Project, by Krithika Varagur.Read more at The Daily Beast.Get our top stories in your inbox every day. Sign up now!Daily Beast Membership: Beast Inside goes deeper on the stories that matter to you. Learn more.
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| Japan, New Zealand march to mourn George Floyd, seek change Posted: 14 Jun 2020 01:49 AM PDT  Holding handmade signs that read "Black Lives Matter," hundreds of people marched peacefully in Tokyo on Sunday, highlighting the outrage over the death of George Floyd even in a country often perceived as homogeneous and untouched by racial issues. Mitsuaki Shidara, standing in the crowd at Yoyogi Park, where the march began, said Japan has plenty of discrimination problems, but they're overlooked. "What's happening in the U.S. shows racism is going on, even after 400 years," said Shidara, who works for a food maker.
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| Yankee go home: What does moving troops out of Germany mean? Posted: 14 Jun 2020 01:26 AM PDT  After more than a year of thinly-veiled threats to start pulling U.S. troops out of Germany unless Berlin increases its defense spending, President Donald Trump appears to be proceeding with a hardball approach, planning to cut the U.S. military contingent by more than 25%. About 34,500 American troops are stationed in Germany — 50,000 including civilian Department of Defense employees — and the plan Trump reportedly signed off on last week envisions reducing active-duty personnel to 25,000 by September, with further cuts possible.
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| Russia's low virus death toll still raises questions in West Posted: 13 Jun 2020 11:35 PM PDT  When Leonid Shlykov's father, Sergei, died in a Moscow hospital last month after 11 days on a ventilator, the death certificate listed the coronavirus as an underlying condition but not the actual cause of death. The way Russia counts fatalities during the coronavirus pandemic could be one reason why its official death toll of 6,948 is far below many other countries, even as it has reported nearly 529,000 infections, behind only the United States and Brazil. The paradox also has led to allegations by critics and Western media that Russian authorities might have falsified the numbers for political purposes to play down the scale of the outbreak.
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| Experts hail swift moves in wake of Atlanta police shooting Posted: 13 Jun 2020 11:14 PM PDT  Atlanta police on Sunday quickly released body-camera and other footage that captured the shooting death of a black man by a white officer who was swiftly fired — moves that policing experts said could help defuse anti-racism protests that were reignited by the shooting. Atlanta police announced that an officer, Garrett Rolfe, had been fired after he fatally shot Rayshard Brooks, 27, on Friday night, and another officer, Devin Brosnan, had been placed on administrative duty. On Saturday, Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms had called for the immediate firing of the officer who opened fire on Brooks and announced that she had accepted the resignation of Police Chief Erika Shields.
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| The Latest: Interfaith group holds vigil outside St. John’s Posted: 13 Jun 2020 10:39 PM PDT  — A group of interfaith leaders held a prayer vigil outside St. John's Church near the White House. — The mother of Trayvon Martin joined hundreds of demonstrators at a rally in downtown Miami. — At least seven Minneapolis police officers have quit and another seven are in the process of resigning.
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| Atlanta officer fired after fatal shooting of black man Posted: 13 Jun 2020 10:17 PM PDT  An Atlanta police officer was fired following the fatal shooting of a black man and another officer was placed on administrative duty, the police department announced early Sunday. The moves follows the Saturday resignation of Atlanta Police Chief Erika Shields, who stepped down as the Friday night killing of Rayshard Brooks, 27, sparked a new wave of protests in Atlanta after turbulent demonstrations following the death of George Floyd at the hands of Minneapolis police had simmered down.
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| Thai entrepreneur connects Michelin bistros to those in need Posted: 13 Jun 2020 09:58 PM PDT  In bright blue T-shirts, she and her volunteers pressed boxes of spicy minced chicken and rice into the hands of residents. "It's just about getting together to try to feed people and make sure people have access to good food and that will make them feel good about themselves and help families that are in need," she said.
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| Manufacturing Gives Iran a Lifeline Posted: 13 Jun 2020 09:00 PM PDT |
| Accuracy still unknown for many coronavirus tests rushed out Posted: 13 Jun 2020 08:46 PM PDT  How accurate are the coronavirus tests used in the U.S.? Months into the outbreak, no one really knows how well many of the screening tests work, and experts at top medical centers say it is time to do the studies to find out. When the new virus began spreading, the Food and Drug Administration used its emergency powers to OK scores of quickly devised tests, based mainly on a small number of lab studies showing they could successfully detect the virus.
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| S Korea urges North to uphold deals amid rising animosities Posted: 13 Jun 2020 08:26 PM PDT  South Korea on Sunday convened an emergency security meeting and urged North Korea to uphold reconciliation agreements, hours after the North threatened to demolish a liaison office and take military action against its rival. There's concern that North Korea could turn to provocation to bolster its internal unity and wrest outside concessions as nuclear talks with the United States remain deadlocked. Observers say North Korea desperately needs sanctions relief in the face of harsh U.S.-led sanctions and the coronavirus pandemic.
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| Iran daily virus deaths exceed 100 for first time in 2 months Posted: 13 Jun 2020 05:20 PM PDT Iran Sunday reported over 100 deaths in a single day from the novel coronavirus for the first time in two months, with authorities saying a recent surge in confirmed cases is due to increased testing. Official figures have shown a rising trajectory in new confirmed cases since early May, when Iran hit a near two-month low in daily recorded infections. In televised remarks, health ministry spokeswoman Sima Sadat Lari announced 107 deaths from COVID-19 in the past 24 hours, raising the overall toll to 8,837.
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