Venezuela’s government orders arrests of 3 exiled former lawmakers in renewed efforts to unseat Nicolás Maduro
Venezuela’s socialist government has ordered the arrest of three exiled former lawmakers at the forefront of renewed efforts to unseat President Nicolás Maduro.
Dinorah Figuera leads an a ll-female team selected last week by fellow opposition politicians to lead the National Assembly that was voted into office in 2015. The opposition-controlled assembly is widely considered the South American nation’s last democratically elected institution, and although its five year mandate ended in late 2020, it continues to function as a symbolic shadow to Maduro’s rubber-stamping National Assembly.
On Monday, Maduro’s Attorney General Tarek William Saab announced that prosecutors had ordered the arrest of Figuera and her two deputies on charges of treason, money laundering and impersonating public officials.
However, the arrest order is unlikely to be carried out. All three women, like many of Maduro’s opponents, have fled Venezuela in recent years, fearing retaliation. Figuera, a surgeon by training, lives in Spain.
In January 2019, the National Assembly voted to stop recognizing Maduro as president after several top opponents were barred from running against him. It then appointed Juan Guaidó to be the nation’s “interim president,” in accordance with the order of succession outlined in Venezuela’s constitution. More than 60 countries quickly recognized him as Venezuela’s legitimate leader
Figuera was previously an unknown backbench lawmaker elected alongside Guaidó. She surged to the front of the opposition’s efforts to unseat Maduro as part of an internal putsch against the beleaguered Guaidó, whose failure to shake Maduro’s grip on power has frustrated many Venezuelans.
Maduro ally Jorge Rodríguez, the head of the pro-government National Assembly, celebrated the announcement of the arrest orders, calling the 2015 National Assembly a “band of thieves” for their attempts to win control of Venezuela’s extensive overseas oil assets, including Houston-based refinery Citgo.
Now approaching a decade in power with continued backing from Russia, China, Cuba and Iran, Maduro looks stronger than ever as he approaches the next presidential election, scheduled for 2024.
Venezuela’s leader derided the former legislative body — and the British insistence on continuing to recognize it — as components of a continuing campaign of “political, economic, financial, energy, and diplomatic aggression.”
Maduro Blasts ‘Ridiculous’ UK Move to Extend Recognition of Long-Expired 2015 Assembly
Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro is slamming Whitehall for its “laughable” claim that the National Assembly, which was elected in 2015, is the Caribbean country’s only legitimate institution.
Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro is slamming Whitehall for its “laughable” claim that the National Assembly, which was elected in 2015, is the Caribbean country’s only legitimate institution.
“It is laughable and ridiculous that at this point, they still resort to this farce and falsehood,” Maduro said Thursday in his annual message to the Venezuelan legislature.
Earlier on Thursday, Britain’s Foreign Office issued a statement reiterating it continues to “consider the National Assembly elected in 2015 as the last democratically elected National Assembly in Venezuela” after that group voted to dissolve the supposed ‘interim presidency’ of Venezuelan opposition figure Juan Guaido.
“The UK continues not to accept the legitimacy of the administration put in place by Nicolás Maduro,” it wrote.
Maduro dismissed that 2015 legislature – whose five-year mandate to legislate legally expired in 2020 – as little more than a cat’s paw in a Western-backed plot to “recolonize Venezuela.”
“The only exclusive and determining legislative body is the National Assembly elected by the people in 2020,” Maduro noted.
“Everything else is a farce mounted as part of a political, economic, financial, energy, and diplomatic aggression,” Maduro told lawmakers Thursday.
“We have been able to confront it and in 2023, we will have defeated it.”
London’s refusal to recognize the Venezuelan government could impact the ongoing UK-based court case determining whether the Bank of England will be forced to return over a billion dollars worth of gold to the Caribbean country.
Since 2020, the bank has refused to relinquish 32 tons of Venezuelan gold – valued at roughly $1.7 billion – to the Maduro administration, citing the British government’s decision to recognize Guaido rather than its elected leader.
Managing Director of IMF Kristalina Georgieva PHOTO BY TING SHEN /Photographer: Ting Shen/Bloomberg
The International Monetary Fund in October forecast US GDP growth for 2023 at 1%. The World Bank on January 10 projected US growth at half a percent for 2023.
IMF Managing Director Kristalina Georgieva said 2023 would be another "tough year" for the global economy, and inflation remained stubborn, but she did not expect another year of successive downgrades like those seen last year, barring unexpected developments.
"Growth continues to slow down in 2023," she told reporters at the IMF's headquarters in Washington. "The more positive piece of the picture is in the resilience of labor markets. As long as people are employed, even if prices are high, people spend... and that has helped the performance."
She added that the IMF does not expect any major downgrades. "That's the good news."
Georgieva said the IMF expected the slowdown in global growth to "bottom out" and "turn around towards the end of '23 and into '24."
Georgieva said there was much hope that China - which previously contributed some 35% to 40% of global growth, but had "disappointing" results last year - would once again contribute to global growth, likely from mid-2023. But that depended on Beijing not changing course and sticking to its plans to reverse its zero-Covid policies, she said.
She said the United States - the biggest economy in the world - was likely to see a soft landing, and would suffer only a mild recession, if it did enter a technical recession.
But Georgieva said great uncertainty remained, including a significant climate event, a major cyberattack or the danger of escalation in Russia's war in Ukraine, for instance through the use of nuclear weapons.
"We are now in a more shockprone world and we have to be open-minded that there could be risk turn that we are not even thinking about," she said. "That's the whole point of the last years. The unthinkable has happened twice."
She cited concerns about growing social unrest in Brazil, Peru and other countries, and the impact of tightening financial conditions remained unclear.
But inflation remained "stubborn" and central banks should continue to press for price stability, she added.
IMF chief says US may be able to avoid recession in 2023
International Monetary Fund Managing Director Kristalina Georgieva has said that there is mounting evidence that the United States can avoid recession this year and achieve a "soft landing" for its economy, Reuters reported on Thursday.
US labor markets remain resilient and consumer demand remains strong despite increases in interest rates to fight inflation, Georgieva told reporters, adding that there has been a healthy shift away from excess goods purchases, which had pressured prices, back toward services demand, and there were more diversified sources of growth in the economy.
"It gives some argumentation of an expectation that the US would avoid falling into recession," she said. "And actually, I would say even if it is in technical terms in recession, that will be a very mild recession," the IMF chief noted.
IMF Chief Urges China to Stay Course on Reopening Economy
Kristalina urged China to move forward with reopening its economy, calling the nation’s transition from a Covid Zero policy to more normal functioning likely the single most important factor for global growth in 2023.
The Washington-based financial institution believes that a world recession can be avoided, even as growth slows from an estimated 3.2% in 2022, Managing Director Kristalina Georgieva told reporters Thursday. If the US, the largest economy, goes into contraction, it will be a mild one, she said.
The fund doesn’t expect a major downgrade of its October forecast for a 2.7% expansion in global GDP when it updates its World Economic Outlook on Jan. 31 in Singapore, Georgieva said. Global growth is likely to bottom out toward the end of the year, with the pace picking up next year, she said.
Inflation remains stubborn, and the job of central banks to tame price increases is not yet finished, she said in a wide-ranging discussion that lasted more than an hour.
“What is most important is for China to stay the course, not to back off from that reopening,” said Georgieva, who visited the world’s second-largest economy last month for the first time since the start of the pandemic. “If they stay the course, by mid-year or there around, China will turn into a positive contributor to average global growth,” she said, calling the nation’s 2022 performance “very disappointing.”
A year after the Covid-19 omicron variant and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine slammed the brakes on the global economy, President Vladimir Putin’s war continues to be a negative factor for investor and consumer confidence, especially in Europe, she said. Potential of a spillover from the war is the risk that would have the biggest impact on economic expansion, although it’s a low-probability event, Georgieva said.
While the world’s lender of last resort sees no systemic debt crisis on the horizon, 60% of low-income nations are at or near distress.
The Group of 20 largest economies along with the IMF and World Bank will hold a global sovereign debt roundtable on the margins of a meeting of central bankers and finance ministers in India next month to bring together representatives from governments, borrowing nations and private lenders to discuss challenges.
Georgieva said that one risk the world is not yet prepared for but may surface later this year is the impact of tighter financial conditions on labor markets and employment. While governments have provided policy support to help workers deal with high energy prices, that ability is shrinking, and down the line people being out of a job amid faster inflation could lead to protests like those seen in nations from Lebanon to Chile in 2019, Georgieva said.
Andrey Bayevsky, a lawmaker at the legislature of the Donetsk People’s Republic and a colonel of the People’s Militia, on Thursday said on Solovyov Live television that the main benefit of capturing Soledar is the opportunity to open direct fire on Artyomovsk.
"Seizing control of Soledar means direct sight of the highway from Slavyansk to Artyomovsk and the opportunity to fire on it practically directly," he said.
Bayevsky also said control over Soledar was important from the perspective of isolating Artyomovsk. It means "the cutting of supply routes for the Artyomovsk grouping and the cutting off of all opportunities to provide it with personnel and ammunition."
The Ministry of Defense of the Russian Federation showed how the mobilized destroy Ukrainian camouflaged positions and artillery with the help of modernized Msta-SM2 self-propelled artillery mounts
He described Soledar as an important step in in the assault on Artyomovsk.
"Soledar opens the way for artillery fire toward Slavyansk, Kramatorsk and Konstantinovka, let alone Artyomovsk. The targets that will be defined by the command will be hit with artillery fire. It’s extremely important for the softening of the enemy’s defense," Bayevsky said.
That would make it possible to take control of these settlements with fewer losses and ram through Ukrainian defenses faster, he said.
According to Bayevsky, Soledar is generally under Russian control while fighting with the remnants of Ukrainian forces still goes on.
The First Slavic Brigade of the 1st Army Corps of the Russian Armed Forces shows footage of the use of "lighters" - ammunition that detonates over enemy positions and covers the area with a rain of military incendiary material
Businessman Yevgeny Prigozhin said Tuesday night into Wednesday morning that Soledar, which had been at the center of battles in recent days, was seized by the fighters of the Wagner private military company. Russian Defense Ministry Spokesman Lieutenant-General Igor Konashenkov said on Wednesday that Russian troops had blocked Soledar from the north and south and battles were raging inside the city.
Battle for Barkhmut according to Mark Sleboda, a veteran of the US military and international affairs and security analyst
All eyes are on Bakhmut (Artyomovsk), a Donbass city-turned-meat grinder for the Ukrainian Armed Forces, which are sustaining heavy losses there. Mark Sleboda, a US military veteran and international affairs and security analyst, has explained to Sputnik why the city is so important for both sides of the conflict.
“First of all, from a level of its significance, one of the Russian military priorities was to secure all the Donbass, to secure the liberation of the entirety there,” Mark Sleboda told Sputnik. “And that being kind of right in the center of the Donetsk region, Bakhmut has often been called the key to Donetsk. So, of course, all of that area has to be liberated (...) Bakhmut is also a major transport and logistical hub because it's got two highways that intersected and railroads that run north all the way to Moscow and then they go through south and then bend around down into Donetsk city.”
A resident of the liberated Soledar in the DPR spoke about the colossal Ukrainian losses in the city, according to him, everyone was taken "for meat" in a row - both mobilized and contract soldiers
Second, Bakhmut is the linchpin of the entire second line of defense of the Kiev regime, the US military veteran continued.
“After that, there's only one last defensive line in Donetsk of any major node between Slavyansk and Kramatorsk, further to the west,” Sleboda noted.
Third, taking Bakhmut threatens further advances and flanks in other directions due to its geographical location. Finally, it would allow greater control of the Donetsk-Seversky Canal, which provides water to Donetsk city, according to the analyst. Sleboda pointed out that the Kiev regime cut off the water supply to Donetsk five years ago. “They did it in Crimea as well,” the analyst added. “Cutting off water is what they do.”
Following the February 2014 regime change in Kiev, the breakaway Donetsk People’s Republic (DPR) established control over Bakhmut (known as Artyomovsk at that time). However, the Kiev military junta captured the town in July 2014.
The city is of utmost importance to both sides, and the entire conflict now is centered on what happens there. The Kiev regime has sent tens of thousands of reinforcements into Bakhmut, which are being methodically eliminated by the Russian forces, according to the analyst. Presently, the standoff over the city has escalated dramatically, he stressed.
Entire Front Around Bakhmut is Activated
“The entire front line, particularly to the area north and south of Bakhmut and Donetsk, is fully activated,” Sleboda said. “And everywhere along there, Russian units, particularly led by the private military company (PMC) Wagner (Group), are on the assault.”
The US military veteran explained that the Russian military forces are also advancing in Soledar, a small town which lies 18 km northeast of Bakhmut. On Monday, the Defense Staff of the Donetsk People's Republic (DPR) announced that Russian forces had taken control of the village of Bakhmutskoe near the town of Soledar. The developments could pave the way for the liberation of Donbass.
“Both Bakhmut and Soledar are both at the same time penetrated [by the Russian forces] and there is fighting within the city districts (...) Russia is making now quicker progress, I would say. There is fierce defense, there's no question about that, but it’s penetrating and enveloping at an increasingly faster rate,” Sleboda pointed out.
According to the analyst, there appears to be some general breakdown in the Kiev regime's ability to rotate forces and supply reinforcements at the rate they have been doing for the last few months.
“Also, their artillery has to a much higher degree been silenced,” the military veteran continued. “Russian counter-battery artillery fire has been extremely offensive. What was already a 9-to-1 advantage in terms of artillery is probably at this point greater.”
To cap it off, the Ukrainian forces have been sustaining heavy losses which are between 300 and 1,000 people a day as per western reports. Roughly 90% of Kiev regime casualties continue to be by Russian artillery strikes, according to Sleboda.
Bakhmut Defense: City Beneath City
The particularity of the fight over Bakhmut and adjusted areas is that they're very easy to defend and very hard to attack because of the height advantage. Those who control this height can see everything and fire down on approaching troops, explained the US military veteran.
“To get a scale, the Kiev regime just in the Bakhmut area has some 60,000 troops,” Sleboda said. “Now, a lot of them are conscripts in territorial defense, but they also have some of their best troops there. According to the head of Wagner (Yevgeny Prigozhin), they have erected some 500 defensive lines of trenches within the city.”
In addition, Bakhmut has an “unusual geography where it is split by a river and has bodies of water in it, which makes it more easily defendable,” according to the analyst.
“Then, there are extensive underground tunnels in Bakhmut that converge, it seems, at some point with the large salt mines of Soledar just to the north of it,” the veteran continued. “These were built as very extensive WW2-era bunker systems and fortifications by the Soviet Union. Some of these tunnels are reportedly big enough to drive tanks into and out of. So, there is a city beneath the city that is being fought in which makes the defense of it even better from a defensive position, and much harder to attack.”
However, despite all of the above, Russian forces are now advancing, Sleboda stressed, adding that just in the last two days, there was a breakthrough in Soledar, which will help threaten the Ukrainian military's entire defensive line there.
This is also important because in the north there is also a large Kiev offensive grouping in the direction of the small cities of Kremennaya and Svatovo, the analyst emphasized.
“The Kiev regime has been on an offensive there very quietly,” said Sleboda. “No one's talking a lot about that front to the north of this area in Bakhmut, and they have some 40,000 troops there, and they have been throwing them at Kremennaya. (They are) making some marginal gains and settlements, but suffering very high casualties and appears to have petered out there. If Soledar collapses the way it looks like it's going, then Seversk will essentially be undefendable to the north of it. And if Seversk is undefendable, that is the launching pad for much of the attack on Svatovo and Kremennaya. So, that means that the entire northern offensive grouping of the Kiev regime will be unsustainable.”
One could see that the whole Ukrainian military offensive is stalled there and may have to be pulled back to save them from being enveloped by a quick Russian surge if there is a greater breakthrough in the Kiev regime lines, according to the US military veteran.
Sleboda has also drawn attention to what appear to be active mobilizations in south Donetsk, in Ugledar, in Zaporozhye, and also further to the north and the west on the Belorussian-Ukrainian border. These activities have become possible because the ground is all getting frozen now and everyone is preparing for that "winter fighting weather," as per the analyst.
Russia-NATO Standoff is Escalating
Meanwhile, the overall conflict against Russia in Ukraine is escalating, with NATO member states stepping up their military supplies to Kiev. A new US military aid package for Kiev contains a long list of military equipment and ammunition, including 50 Bradley fighting vehicles with 500 TOW anti-tank missiles and 250,000 rounds of 25mm ammunition, 100 M113 Armored Personnel Carriers, Sea Sparrow RIM-7 missiles for air defense, additional ammunition for High Mobility Artillery Rocket Systems (HIMARS), and 100 M113 Armored Personnel Carriers.
French President Emmanuel Macron pledged an unspecified number of AMX-10 RC light tanks to Kiev, while Germany vowed to provide 40 Marder infantry fighting vehicles (IFVs) to the Ukrainian military. For their part, Polish and Finnish ministers are considering supplying some of their German-made Leopard 2 or US M1 Abrams tanks if the major western powers take the lead.
“The Western European countries are providing outdated infantry fighting vehicles,” said Sleboda. “They are not quite vintage. These are models that were just being phased out of use. So, they have them in stock and they're still fairly effective.”
Sleboda does not rule out that soon one may also see NATO member states sending main battle tanks to Kiev, even though previously it was largely seen as a “red line.” In addition to that, all the signs are that there's another Patriot battery now being promised by Germany, he remarked.
However, western supplies won’t become a dramatic game changer, given that Russia has been surging huge amounts of new state-of-the-art equipment to the front, either, according to him. Make no mistake, “this is all escalating,” the US military veteran said.
“If you thought the fighting in 2022 and the political divisions were significant, 2023 is right now they're just handing off their beer. Hold my beer, because 2023 is going to make 2022 look like a skirmish,” he concluded.
Special operation, January 12th. The main thing:
▪️Putin, in congratulating the prosecutors on their professional holiday, said that it is important to pay special attention to the observance of the rights of military personnel, mobilized and volunteers.
▪️ Peskov, commenting on the liberation of Soledar, said that these are heroic actions, but it’s not the time to stop and rub your hands, the main work is ahead;
▪️According to Peskov, the Kremlin assesses the situation around the ZNPP as alarming, Ukraine still considers it possible to shell the station;
▪️Moskalkova stated that she did not discuss the idea of a humanitarian corridor for the wounded in Ukraine with the Ukrainian Ombudsman at a meeting in Ankara;
▪️First Deputy Representative of the Russian Federation to the UN Dmitry Polyansky announced a meeting of the UN Security Council on Ukraine on January 17 at the initiative of Moscow.
▪️The Politico publication reported that the position of German Chancellor Scholz on the issue of supplying Leopard tanks to Ukraine is highly dependent on Biden;
▪️The Iranian Ambassador in Rome denied reports of losses in Ukraine of Iranian-made drones, which, according to media reports, are allegedly actively used by Russia;
▪️Germany promised Ukraine to supply 40 Marder infantry fighting vehicles in the first quarter of 2023;
▪️The Russian Ministry of Defense reported that Russian soldiers destroyed 5 Ukrainian DRGs in the Kharkiv region;
▪️According to the Russian Defense Ministry, more than 200 Ukrainian soldiers were destroyed in the main areas;
▪️Russian air defense systems destroyed five Ukrainian drones in a day, and also intercepted three HIMARS and Alder MLRS shells, the Russian Defense Ministry reported.
Joe Biden's lawyers discovered a second batch of classified documents from his vice presidency stint at a new location on January 11, US media reported, just a day after the US president was "surprised" when briefed about the first set of records related to Ukraine and Iran, among other security issues, found in his private office.
Former National Security Agency (NSA) contractor Edward Snowden offered some scathing comment on Joe Biden’s classified document scandal. The man who himself blew the lid on a widely-cast net of cyber espionage organized by the US ironized on his Twitter feed that the US President appeared to have "absconded with more classified documents than many whistleblowers."
He cited the case of US National Security Agency whistleblower Reality Winner, sentenced to five years in a federal prison in August 2018 for leaking a classified report about the Russiagate investigation.
The real scandal isn't that Biden had classified documents coming out of his socks, because sadly they've all been doing it.
The scandal is that the DOJ found out about it a week prior to the midterm elections and chose to suppress the story, conferring a partisan advantage. https://t.co/Zgx5FEpPeH
Meanwhile, Snowden wrote, "Biden, Trump, Clinton, Petraeus... these guys have dozens, hundreds [of documents]. No jail."
According to Snowden, the real scandal wasn't that the 46th POTUS had "classified documents coming out of his socks," but that the United States Department of Justice (DOJ) found out about it a week prior to the November 2022 midterm elections, but opted to "suppress the story."
Edward Snowden has every right to take a sardonic view of the situation regarding the Biden classified documents row. Back in June 2013, Snowden was charged by the US Justice Department with violating the Espionage Act of 1917 and government property theft, after he exposed classified data to the press.
The data in question showed that US intelligence services and their allies were spying on US citizens and foreign leaders on a grand scale. Following this, Snowden fled the US. As he was heading to South America, the whistleblower had his passport revoked, and was forced to spend a month in Moscow's Sheremetyevo International Airport until the Russian government granted him asylum. Edward Snowden in early December officially became a Russian citizen, taking an oath of allegiance and receiving a Russian passport, after a September decree by President Vladimir Putin granted him Russian citizenship.
Successive disclosures earlier in the week by US media revealed that several classified files had been found in Biden’s private offices dated 2013-2016 and hailing back to his vice presidency. Biden's lawyers ostensibly found the documents while clearing his office at the Penn Center, a Washington-based think tank, in November 2022, and other presumably unprotected locations.
According to the White House special counsel, they had immediately contacted the US National Archives who forwarded the information to the Justice Department.
Among the first batch of documents, now under the Justice Department's review, were purportedly classified materials related to Ukraine, Iran, and the UK, among other security issues. Despite confidants coming across the docs on the eve of the midterm elections in early November 2022, the US DOJ chose to remain silent about the story.
The scandal prompted conservative outlets to draw parallels between the current classified memo drama and the uproar over ex-POTUS Donald Trump keeping classified documents at his premises in Mar-a-Lago.
Last year, despite Trump voluntarily turning over a number of government files he had stored after leaving the Oval Office, the FBI carried out a raid on his residence on August 8, 2022 and seized 13,000 documents from the location. Just 103 of them turned out to be classified and 18 were marked "top secret." The 45th US president maintained that he had declassified the files before he left office. Attorney General Merrick Garland appointed a special counsel to oversee the case of Trump's classified documents, with Republicans recently calling on the AG to appoint a special counsel for Biden too.
With President Joe Biden now embroiled in his own classified documents controversy, partisan commentators will surely have a field day playing the tired old game of “no, you endangered national security.” Instead, I’d like to focus on the real issues: the overly broad and often-abused Espionage Act and the massive, draconian secrecy system that does far more harm than good in the United States.
Now, before someone accuses me of “both side-ing” the separate Trump and Biden scandals here: no, they are not the same. Trump had mountains of secret documents he purposefully absconded with that he both refused to give back and arguably lied to authorities about. Whereas it seems Biden’s team actually alerted the authorities that the president had them in his office and is fully cooperating in their return.
This should be yet another wake up call that both the classification system and the Espionage Act need a dramatic overhaul. The question is — as more secret documents are found at a second Biden location and Trump’s special prosecutor continues to work — will anyone listen?
But here’s the thing: that doesn’t mean Biden didn’t potentially violate the Espionage Act – at least according to some legal experts.
That’s because the Espionage Act is incredibly broad and spares no one. As I’ve explained before, even using the Espionage Act to go after Trump should not be cheered on by Democrats. Instead of actual spies, the hundred year-old law is usually abused to prosecute whistleblowers and threaten journalists. But it’s actually so broad that if you are a longtime reader of the Guardian, you’ve probably technically broken the law too!
“Whoever having unauthorized possession of, access to, or control over any document…relating to the national defense…willfully retains the same and fails to deliver it to the officer or employee of the United States entitled to receive it” is in violation of the statute.
Thankfully the First Amendment should ultimately protect both the Guardian and its readers from prosecution. (Ironically, first the Trump administration, and now the Biden administration may be trying to change that with its unprecedented and dangerous charges against WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange.)
Regardless, such an overly broad and dangerous law should not be on the books in the first place. The reason the Justice Department is able to potentially wield it over so many people is because the secrecy system itself is irrevocably broken.
The US government has a massive overclassification problem - and that’s not just my opinion as a transparency advocate. Even the people who have been in charge of administering the secrecy system often denounce it once they leave government.
Tens or hundreds of millions of documents are classified per year. A tiny fraction will ever see the light of day, despite the fact the vast majority never should have been given the “secret” stamp in the first place. Of all the money spent on the classification system, less than half of one percent is spent on de-classification.
The system is set up so the government has every incentive to claim any information is of the utmost sensitivity because they know anyone they prosecute cannot challenge their classification decisions. And it doesn’t matter that, time and again, they have been shown to grossly exaggerate or lie about the true nature of those supposed “secrets.”
No one is ever punished for overclassifying information, yet plenty of people go to prison for disclosing information to journalists that never should have been classified to begin in. Even efforts to reform the secrecy system end up classified themselves.
Take the reporting on the Biden controversy. CNN reported that the “classified materials included some top-secret files with the ‘sensitive compartmented information’ designation, also known as SCI, which is used for highly sensitive information obtained from intelligence sources.” They cited an anonymous source (almost certainly law enforcement). Yet CNN also said that a “White House official characterized the documents as ‘fewer than a dozen,’ … none of which are ‘particularly sensitive’ and ‘not of high interest to the intelligence community.’”
So which is it? Maybe somebody’s lying. Or maybe it’s all Top Secret and also basically nothing, because the US government classifies everything.
As journalist Jeremy Scahill pointed out, political elites constantly mishandle classified documents, but never receive the severe punishment lower level whistleblowers do when they commit same or similar crimes. It’s true there is a severe double standard that has ruined the lives of so many brave whistleblowers. But maybe, just maybe, now that the classification system has ensnared each of the last two presidents, people will start coming to their senses: tear down the US secrecy system before it tears down its next victim.
Three men in Egypt have been arrested after allegedly trying to steal a 10-tonne statue of the pharaoh Ramses II using a forklift.
The Public Prosecution in Egypt ordered on Tuesday the detainment of 3 suspects for 4 days pending investigations
Prosecutors said on Tuesday that the suspects snuck into a quarry in the Nile governorate of Aswan and — using "manual digging tools" as well as the forklift — tried to prise the 3-metre statue from its place.
The quarry itself is government property and is subject to Egypt's Antiquities Protection Law.
They are accused of attempting to steal a pharaonic statue in the southern quarry area in Aswan.
The committee formed by the Antiquities Authority in Aswan confirmed the value of the statue and attributed it to King Ramses II, with a weight of approximately ten tons.
Judicial sources stated that the site where the suspects excavated the statue is subject to the Antiquities Protection Law.
The site of the theft of the statue of Ramses II in Aswan. Source: Al Ahram
The Public Prosecution ordered the speedy investigation of others who participated with the detained suspects in the crime.
On January 8, the Public Prosecution Office received a notification from the police that three people were arrested and caught with manual digging tools and heavy equipment and a crane.
It was quite obvious that they tried to lift the statue of King Ramses II and were excavating antiquities in the aforementioned area.
The Public Prosecution office conducted investigations into the report, and inspected the site, which was found to be not fenced off.
The size of the area is 34 acres bordered by industrial zones and a museum (symposium).
It was revealed that there are some Roman basins in it, and the presence of the exact statue of King Ramses II inside the area, which is about three meters long and about one-meter-wide.
Traces of the excavation process were observed around it as well.
Other suspects are being investigated in connection with the attempted theft, prosecutors said.
"Upon examining their mobile phones, the Public Prosecution found video clips shared through social networking applications showing other excavation works," the authorities said.
The suspects will be detained for four days pending investigation.
Aswan is home to some of Egypt's most prized archaeological sites. These include the Roman-era Temple of Isis and other areas that have become tourist attractions. More discoveries are made regularly.
Illegal archaeological excavations are not uncommon in Egypt, especially along the Nile where there are many antiquity sites.
In 2021, prominent businessman Hassan Rateb was arrested for funding illegal excavation works and was eventually convicted.
