Month: July 2019

The Islamic State terror group is adapting to the loss of its self-declared territorial caliphate by returning to its origins and becoming once again a more local, Iraq-focused insurgency, and is recruiting in remote border areas in Iraq’s western desert. But it still harbors ambitions to strike in the West, warn European officials and analysts.

Britain’s Security Minister Ben Wallace on Thursday warned that Islamic State and rival jihadists in al-Qaida remain a serious threat to the West. Exploiting the internet and social media platforms, IS can still recruit Westerners, and if not organize attacks itself at least inspire adherents to strike, he said.
 
“That means that everyone has potentially an ISIS problem in every country around the world,” he told Britain’s Sky News. “It is a different type of threat because at the moment it’s manifesting itself in lone actors.”
 
For security services the threat is unpredictable “because they have to watch one person who may be just literally talking to themselves on one day and the next day they’ll go and grab a knife or a truck.”
 
Still a threat

But IS has not lost the ambition to plot and organize terror attacks in the West itself.
 
In the current top IS leadership, two out of 12 members of al-Lajna al-Mufawada, the group’s Cabinet, are tasked with overseeing operations abroad. They are Sukru Tuncer, a Frenchman of Turkish origins, and Abu ‘Ammar al-Sa’udi, a Saudi. But analysts say Daesh, the group’s Arab acronym, has had to return to its roots as a mainly Iraq-based insurgency force and is undergoing a generational change. Nonetheless it has the capacity to reemerge, if it’s ignored.
 
“It still survives as result of the temporary lack of interest that various belligerents in the Syrian war show in the region in which Daesh remains,” say analysts Ronen Zeidel and Hisham al-Hashimi in a study of the group published in the latest edition of Perspectives on Terrorism, a peer-reviewed journal. “This lack of attention works in favor of the organization and is willing it to regroup,” they argue.

“In Iraq they maintain a clandestine presence in the Hamrin and Makhul hilly region between the provinces of Salah al-Din, Diyala and Kirkuk, in Sharqat and Qiyara south of Mosul and in the western desert. This presence is confined to uninhabited areas, but poses a daily threat to the population in the Sunni periphery,” they say. Among the prime goals of the leadership is to sow and reactivate “sleeper cells” in Iraq for attacks in bigger cities and to transfer fighters across border with Syria into Iraq in order to increase its presence there, they say.
 
Different strategies

In Syria, IS is training and recruiting in the desert areas south-west of the Euphrates, an area supposedly under control of the Syrian government of Bashir al-Assad, but neglected now as the Syrian army focuses on the last remaining enclave of anti-Assad rebels and al-Qaida-tied groups in north-west Syria. But the modes of IS operation differ between Iraq and Syria, where the threat of air strikes forces the group to be be defensive.

In Iraq the group’s commanders have more freedom to plan operations and attacks have increased in tempo steadily over the last year with government officials and local ‘collaborators’ targeted in the Sunni countryside. Executions in villages Mukhtars (local dignitaries) are filmed as a lesson to others.
 
“Defeat brought the organization back to its basic essence: a small, marginal Sunni-Iraqi terror/guerrilla force, capable of waging small wars, intimidating populations and carrying out terror attacks in peripheral areas, exploiting the geopolitical and governmental vacuum there. In fact, Daesh became a more practical, matter-of-fact organization. Its organizational changes are impressive. Apparently, this is the heritage of men who served in Saddam Hussein’s highly organized security services,” write authors Zeidel and al-Hashimi.
 
Generational change

The group, though, is undergoing a generational change and has become even more Iraqi in character. Ten out of twelve of the IS Cabinet are Iraqis; and of the 26 top field commanders 21 are Iraqis, three are Syrian. Of the remaining two one is Saudi and another European. It is estimated that just one out of 50 fighters comes from outside either Syria or Iraq.
 
“As long as the situation in Syria remains as it is and the lethargy of the Iraqi state in providing security to the peripheral Sunni areas continues, Daesh will enjoy more years of survival and might become a more threatening menace, especially to Iraq,” Zeidel, a researcher in the Moshe Dayan Center, Tel Aviv University, and al-Hashimi, an analyst at Al-Nahrayn Center for Security and Strategic Studies, Baghdad. But as an insurgency forces Daesh is not imperishable, they argue.

…

Las Vegas police learned from the deadliest mass shooting in modern U.S. history to secure high-rise buildings overseeing open-air crowds and train more officers with rifles to stop a shooter in an elevated position, Clark County Sheriff Joe Lombardo said Wednesday.
 
Among 93 recommendations in a newly released department “after-action review” are requirements to plan ahead with neighboring police, fire, hospital and coroner officials; to let responding officers remove reflective vests so they’re less of a target to a shooter; and to ensure more paramedics and trauma kits are available at large-scale events.
 
“We hope we never have to use these procedures that we are putting in place,” said Lombardo, who characterized the report as “our textbook on our response” to the October 2017 massacre that killed 58 people at an open-air music festival on the Las Vegas Strip. He said it’s now required reading for every Las Vegas police officer above the rank of sergeant.
 
Lombardo noted that report authors Capt. Kelly McMahill and Detective Stephanie Ward studied other mass casualty incidents around the country, and said he hoped the Las Vegas report would help others prepare.
 
The 158-page document acknowledged communications snags similar to those described in a separate August 2018 “after-action report” by the Federal Emergency Management Agency, Clark County Fire Department and Las Vegas police.
 
That 61-page document said communications were overwhelmed by 911 calls, the number of victims, and by false reports of active shooters at other Las Vegas Strip hotel-casinos and nearby McCarran International Airport.
 
Lombardo, the elected head of some 5,000 officers, said the new report focuses on internal department “preparedness, response and recovery.”
 
It comes almost a year after Las Vegas police closed the criminal investigation with a 187-page criminal investigation report and nearly six months after the FBI issued a three-page summary of its behavioral analysis of gunman Stephen Paddock.
 
Paddock, 64, a former accountant and high-stakes video poker player with homes in Reno and the southern Nevada resort community of Mesquite, killed himself before officers reached his hotel room.
 
The FBI said Paddock sought notoriety but that investigators found no “single or clear motivating factor” for the shooting.
 
Investigators said Paddock planned meticulously and acted alone amassing an arsenal of assault-style weapons before opening fire from a 32nd-floor suite at the Mandalay Bay resort into a crowd of 22,000 country music fans below. Authorities said more than 850 people were wounded or injured fleeing the gunfire.
 
Lombardo noted the NFL’s Oakland Raiders plan to move to Las Vegas and begin play in 2020 at a 65,000-seat Las Vegas Stadium being built just off the Las Vegas Strip.
 
He said policing changes will apply to scheduled events drawing at least 15,000 people, and the report listed more than 17 such events: New Year’s Eve fireworks on the Strip; conventions including the Consumer Electronics gadget show at the Las Vegas Convention Center; NASCAR races at Las Vegas Speedway; the Las Vegas Rock `n’ Roll Marathon; uncounted hotel “day club” pool parties; and 41 NHL Vegas Golden Knights hockey home games per year at T-Mobile Arena.
 
Lombardo noted that Las Vegas police already make presentations about what the department experienced in October 2017 to law enforcement officials in the U.S. and abroad. He said the department has already implemented 40% of the new report’s recommendations.
 
The release comes a week after Las Vegas police confirmed the firing in March of a veteran officer who froze in a hotel hallway one floor below while Paddock rained rapid gunfire into the concert crowd below.
 
Lombardo said an unspecified number of other officers received lesser discipline for turning off or failing to activate body-worn video cameras, and one for accidentally firing a three-round burst of gunfire inside Paddock’s suite.
 
Police union executive director Steve Grammas said the dismissed officer, Cordell Hendrex, was one of two officers disciplined following departmental reviews of their actions during the shooting. The union is fighting to get Hendrex reinstated.
 
Grammas said the only other officer he knew of who had been disciplined for actions during the shooting got his job back after an arbitrator reviewed his firing.
 
Grammas declined to identify that officer, but said he had at least seven years on the job.
 
The Las Vegas Police Protective Association official said the officer had been accused of making comments the department deemed unbecoming and of telling a woman to keep moving away from the scene of the shooting instead of investigating her complaint that she had been a victim of a crime.
 
 

…

U.S. President Donald Trump will host Pakistan’s prime minister, Imran Khan, at the White House on July 22 for official talks aimed at “creating conditions” for an “enduring partnership” and cooperation to secure a peaceful South Asia.  
 
The White House said Wednesday that that the two leaders would discuss such issues as counterterrorism, defense, energy and trade.  
 
Peace efforts in Afghanistan are expected to be high on the agenda.  
 
“The visit will focus on strengthening cooperation between the United States and Pakistan to bring peace, stability and economic prosperity to a region that has seen far too much conflict,” a White House statement said. 
 
Khan’s first interaction with Trump is seen in the region as signaling a thaw in the often acrimonious relationship between Washington and Islamabad.  
 
The acrimony stems from U.S. allegations that, despite having received billions of dollars in financial assistance as an ally in the war against terrorism, Pakistan has harbored Taliban leaders and fighters and other militants who plot deadly attacks against American and NATO troops in Afghanistan and rival India. Islamabad rejects the charges.  

Since taking office, Trump has suspended all military cooperation and assistance to Pakistan, alleging the country has “given us nothing but lies and deceit.”  
 
Khan took office nearly a year ago and argued with Trump on Twitter a few months later about the U.S. allegations. He defended Pakistan’s counterterrorism successes, saying the country had suffered tens of thousands of casualties and billions of dollars in losses to its national economy while fighting America’s war on terrorism. 
 
However, Islamabad has since helped arrange direct peace talks between the U.S. and the Taliban aimed at ending the 18-year Afghan war. The effort is credited with easing tensions, which prompted Trump to acknowledge in February that the two countries had recently “developed a much better relationship.” 
 
Analysts do not expect anything major to emerge from the Trump-Khan meeting, but they note it could still go a long way toward improving bilateral ties because both leaders dislike the status quo and have strong personalities. 
 
Trump has consistently been critical of U.S. involvement in foreign wars while Khan is known for leading anti-war campaigns and calling for seeking a politically negotiated settlement to the Afghan war, even when his party was in the opposition. 

…

A former Caribbean soccer official has been ordered to pay a $79 million penalty stemming from the FIFA bribery scandal.

A federal judge in New York City imposed the judgment against Jack Warner in a lawsuit brought by the Confederation of North, Central American and Caribbean Association Football.

The 2017 suit accused Warner of embezzling millions of dollars from the soccer association. It said he arranged kickbacks in connection with broadcasting rights for regional tournaments.

The civil allegations mirrored ones in a U.S. criminal investigation that has resulted in convictions of several top soccer officials.

Warner is still fighting extradition in Trinidad and Tobago, where he has denied any wrongdoing. There was no immediate response on Wednesday to an email sent to one of his extradition lawyers.

…

Ask about Jeffrey Epstein on St. Thomas and rooms go quiet. Some people leave. Those who share stories speak in barely audible tones.

The 66-year-old billionaire bought Little St. James Island off this U.S. Caribbean territory more than two decades ago and began to transform it — clearing the native vegetation, ringing the property with towering palm trees and planting two massive U.S. flags on either end. When guides took scuba divers to spots near the island, security guards would walk to the water’s edge.

It was off-putting to residents of St. Thomas — a lush tropical island east of Puerto Rico with winding roads through mountains dotted with dainty Danish colonial-era homes. Then, when Epstein pleaded guilty in a 2008 to soliciting and procuring a minor for prostitution, his need for privacy began to appear more sinister.

“Everybody called it `Pedophile Island,”’ said Kevin Goodrich, who is from St. Thomas and operates boat charters. “It’s our dark corner.”

Many people who worked for Epstein told The Associated Press this week that they had signed long non-disclosure agreements, and refused to talk. One former employee who declined to be identified said Epstein once had five boats, including a large ferry in which he transported up to 200 workers from St. Thomas to his island every day for construction work.

The man said he saw a handful of young women when he was on Epstein’s property but he believed they were older than 18.

“When he was there, it was keep to yourself and do your thing,” the man recalled, adding that Epstein paid well and would give away older machinery and surplus including lumber to his employees.

Epstein built a stone mansion with cream-colored walls and a bright turquoise roof surrounded by several other structures including the maids’ quarters and a massive, square-shaped white building on one end of the island. Workers told each other it was a music room fitted with a grand piano and acoustic walls. Its gold dome flew off during the deadly 2017 hurricane season.

Locals recalled seeing Epstein’s black helicopter flying back and forth from the tiny international airport in St. Thomas to his helipad on Little St. James Island, a roughly 75-acre retreat a little over a mile (about 2 kilometers) southeast of St. Thomas.

Epstein later bought neighboring Great St. James Island, which once was popular with locals and tourists for its main attraction, Christmas Cove, a place where you could hang out and order pizza and have it delivered via boat.

“He wasn’t well received,” recalled Spencer Consolvo, a St. Thomas native who runs a tourist shop near a large marina. “People think he’s too rich to be policed properly.”

Federal authorities consider the smaller of the two islands to be Epstein’s primary residence in the United States, a place where at least one alleged victim said in a court affidavit that she participated in an orgy, as well as had sex with Epstein and other people. She said she saw former U.S. President Bill Clinton on the island, but that she never saw him having sex with anyone. A Clinton spokesman issued a statement saying he never visited there.

A day after he pleaded not guilty in a New York courtroom to charges of sexually abusing dozens of underage girls, there was scant movement on the Caribbean island. Hurricane shutters covered the windows, locals hadn’t seen any lights at night and a lone worker drove a bright blue golf cart around the property.

At a nearby office that locals say Epstein owns in a seaside strip mall, a man in a T-shirt and sunglasses on his head opened the door a crack, shook his head vehemently when asked about Epstein and locked the door. The firm, Southern Trust Company Inc., hired Cecile de Jongh, wife of former Gov. John de Jongh, as its office manager, according to records with the U.S. Virgin Islands Economic Development Authority.

Meanwhile, Epstein’s arrest also prompted the U.S. Virgin Islands representative in Congress, Stacey Plaskett, to announce she would give the money Epstein had donated to her campaigns to charitable groups.

Now that Epstein has been arrested a second time, locals say tourists are increasingly asking about his islands when they visit St. Thomas. A woman who did not want to be identified for fear of losing her job running a charter company said she was elated when Epstein got arrested but is now vexed at tourists’ curiosity, saying she reluctantly shares whispered details of his case to prying adults if children are around.

Some of that fascination aggravates Vernon Morgan, a taxi driver and St. Thomas native.

“It brought some kind of notoriety to the Virgin Islands,” he said. “We would much rather that the Virgin Islands be seen in a different light.”

…

A U.S. court ruling that it is unconstitutional for President Donald Trump to block critics on Twitter has reignited criticism of politicians who ban detractors from their social media accounts. 

A three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals in New York ruled unanimously Tuesday that because Trump’s Twitter account is a “public forum,” he can’t block users who disagree with him. Since the earliest days of his administration, Trump has used Twitter to make on-the-fly policy, lash out at his critics and voice his opinion on virtually every subject. To many, his Twitter page has become the face of his presidency. 

“The First Amendment does not permit a public official who utilizes a social media account for all manner of official purposes to exclude persons from an otherwise-open online dialogue because they expressed views with which the official disagrees,” Judge Barrington Parker wrote on behalf of the panel. 

Lesson for politicians

While Parker stressed the ruling does not extend to all social media accounts operated by public officials, First Amendment advocates said the decision nonetheless serves as a lesson to politicians who block critics from “private” social media accounts that often double as communication platforms with the public. There are at least a half-dozen other lawsuits pending against U.S. politicians, from county officials to governors, who have sought to silence their critics on social media. 

“We hope that as a result of this decision, public officials will take note and recognize that they need to be able to withstand criticism from their constituents,” said Carrie DeCell, a staff attorney with the Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University, which two years ago filed the lawsuit that led to Tuesday’s ruling. 

Esha Bhandari, a staff attorney with the American Civil Liberties Union, which has filed similar lawsuits against public officials, said the ruling should remind politicians that “blocking critics from an official social media account is unconstitutional.” 

“Social media is the new town hall — once an official opens either up to the public, they can’t selectively exclude those whose views they disagree with,” Bhandari said. 

Trump has nearly 62 million followers on Twitter. His tweets are widely shared, sometimes hundreds of thousands of times, generating both deep praise and harsh criticism — all out on a free-for-all, no-holds-barred platform.

Despite the freewheeling nature of his Twitter page, Trump, who runs the account with the help of his social media director, Dan Scavino, is known to have banned several dozen followers in recent years. 

The lawsuit was brought in July 2017 on behalf of seven followers blocked by Trump and centered on whether the First Amendment applied to @realDonaldTrump Twitter account. 

Government lawyers representing Trump argued in court that it did not because Trump’s account was “private” and that he used it exclusively as “a vehicle for his own speech.”

But lawyers for the plaintiffs argued that the account is for all practical purposes a “public forum” and that Trump violated the seven individuals’ First Amendment rights by banning them from his page. 

Both a district court in May 2018 and the appeals court on Tuesday agreed with the plaintiffs. After the district court ruling, all seven plaintiffs were quietly unblocked from Trump’s Twitter account. In addition, the Knight Institute asked for the unblocking of 20 to 30 others who had been banned by Trump. Most of those, too, were unblocked, DeCell said.

Trump is not the only politician sued over blocking social media critics. The ACLU is suing officials in Kentucky, Maine, Maryland and Virginia on behalf of constituents who were blocked on social media. In addition, it has sent letters to politicians in Nebraska and New York to unblock users or face lawsuits.

Demanding to be unbanned

In April, the New York Civil Liberties Union sent a letter to Republican Congressman and Trump ally Peter King demanding that he “unban” dozens of constituents on Facebook.

King had argued that he had the right to block people from the “Congressman Peter King” Facebook page because it was a campaign account, and not one used for his congressional work. But the ACLU countered, “King wrapped the page in the trappings of his office and used it as a tool of governance.”

In response, King in May created a new, official Facebook page that will not ban users based on their views while continuing to use his original page for campaign purposes.

“We are pleased that the congressman agreed to launch a new Facebook page that will serve as his official government account from which he will not block users,” said Antony Gemmell, a staff attorney at the NYCLU.”Similar to [Tuesday’s] ruling on the president blocking people from his Twitter account, the congressman cannot block people from his official government Facebook page simply because he disagrees with their opinions.” 

The Justice Department said it was “disappointed” with the appeals court’s decision and was “exploring possible next steps.” 

“As we argued, President Trump’s decision to block users from his personal Twitter account does not violate the First Amendment,” DOJ spokesperson Kelly Laco said.

Hans von Spakovsky, a legal affairs fellow with the conservative Heritage Foundation, said the appeals court made “a very basic mistake of law and a basic factual mistake” and that the Justice Department should appeal the decision.

“The First Amendment only applies in a public forum such as a public park,” von Spakovsky said. “But Twitter is not a public forum. Twitter is a private company.”

…

Brazilian mining giant Vale SA has been hit with its first conviction for a rupture of a containment dam that sent a tidal wave of mining waste through a rural community, killing nearly 300 people in January.

A state court announced the conviction in a statement posted on its website Tuesday.

Judge Elton Pupo Nogueira ordered Vale to pay for repairing “all the damages caused by the tragedy.” He did not set a specific amount for the company to pay, but said the costs will be related to the deaths as well as damage to the environment and local economy.

The judge maintained a freeze on $2.9 billion in Vale assets. The court statement said Vale’s defense did not deny responsibility for the damages caused by the dam rupture.

…

The Trump administration is urging Turkey to stop oil-and-gas drilling off the coast of the divided island of Cyprus.

“This provocative step raises tensions in the region,” the State Department said late Tuesday. “We continue to believe the island’s oil-and-gas reserves, like all of its resources, should be equitably shared between both communities in the context of an overall settlement.”

There has been no comment so far from Turkey which sent a drilling ship to the Mediterranean off Cyprus Monday, sparking a protest by the Greek Cypriots.

Cyprus has been split between a Turkish Cypriot north and Greek Cypriot south since 1974 when Turkey sent troops to the island in response to a Greek military coup.

The Greek south has international recognition while only Turkey recognizes the government in the north.

Negotiations to reunify the island have been hung up over several issues, including sharing the energy resources and the presence of Turkish forces. 

…

The powerful Mojave Desert earthquakes that rocked California ended a years-long lull in major seismic activity and raised new interest in an early warning system being developed for the West Coast.

The ShakeAlert system is substantially built in California and overall is about 55% complete, with much of the remaining installation of seismic sensor stations to be done in the Pacific Northwest, said Robert de Groot of the U.S. Geological Survey.

Areas that have the appropriate number of sensors include Southern California, San Francisco Bay Area and the Seattle-Tacoma region, de Groot said.

The system does not predict earthquakes. Rather, it detects that an earthquake is occurring, rapidly calculates expected intensity levels and sends out alerts that may give warnings ranging from several seconds to perhaps a minute before potentially damaging shaking hits locations away from the epicenter.

Depending on the distance, that could be enough time to automatically slow trains, stop industrial machines, start generators, pull a surgical knife away from a patient or tell students to put the “drop, cover and hold” drill into action.

For alerts to be useful, delivery has to be timely, and that’s a problem with current cellphone technology. For cellphone delivery, the USGS ultimately intends to use the same system that delivers Amber Alerts, sending signals to everyone in reach of cellphone towers in defined areas where damaging shaking is expected. 

Pilot programs involving select users have been underway for several years. In October, the USGS announced the system was ready to be used broadly by businesses, utilities, schools and other entities following a software update that reduced problems such as false alerts typically caused by a big quake somewhere in the world being misidentified as a local quake.

Currently, the only mass public notification is possible through a mobile app developed for the city of Los Angeles and functional only within Los Angeles County. 

The ShakeAlertLA app did not send alerts for last week’s two big quakes, but officials said it functioned as designed because the expected level of shaking in the LA area – more than 100 miles from the epicenters- was below a trigger threshold.

Thresholds for alerting are important because California has daily earthquakes.

“Imagine getting 10 ShakeAlerts on your phone for really small earthquakes that may not affect you,” de Groot said. “If people get saturated with these messages it’s going to make people not care as much.”

In the Mojave Desert on Monday, rattled residents cleaned up and officials assessed damage in the aftermath of Thursday’s magnitude 6.4 earthquake and Friday’s magnitude 7.1 quake centered near Ridgecrest.

President Donald Trump on Monday declared an emergency exists in California because of the quakes, paving the way for federal aid. The declaration authorized the Federal Emergency Management Agency to coordinate disaster relief efforts.

It could be several more days before water service is restored to the small town of Trona, where officials trucked in portable toilets and showers, said San Bernardino County spokesman David Wert. 

Ten residences in Trona were red-tagged as uninhabitable and officials expect that number to increase as inspectors complete surveys. Wert said he’s seen homes that shifted 6 feet (nearly 2 meters) off their foundations. 

Electricity was restored to Trona over the weekend, allowing people to use much-needed air conditioners as daytime temperatures approached 100 degrees (38 Celsius). 

Teams will need several more days to finish assessments in nearby Ridgecrest, where the number of damaged buildings will likely be in the dozens, Kern County spokeswoman Megan Person said.

Person says officials are bringing in counselors to help residents still on edge as aftershocks rattle the area. 

“You can’t feel every single one, but you can feel a lot of them,” she said. “Those poor people have been dealing with shaking ground non-stop since Thursday.”

…

Hong Kong leader Carrie Lam said on Tuesday the extradition bill that sparked the territory’s biggest political crisis in decades was dead, admitting that the government’s work on the bill had been a “total failure.”

The bill, which would have allowed people in Hong Kong to be sent to mainland China to face trial, sparked huge and at times violent street protests and plunged the former British colony into turmoil.

In mid-June, Lam responded to huge protests by suspending the bill, but on Tuesday she said “there are still lingering doubts about the government’s sincerity or worries whether the government will restart the process in the legislative council.”

“So, I reiterate here, there is no such plan, the bill is dead,” she told a news conference.

Lam’s declaration appeared to be a win for opponents of the bill, but it was not immediately clear if it would be enough to satisfy them.

Demonstrators have also called for Lam to resign, for an independent investigation into police actions against protesters, and for the government to abandon the description of a violent protest on June 12 as a riot.

Hong Kong was returned to China from Britain in 1997 with the promise of a high degree of autonomy, but in recent years there has been growing concern about the erosion of those freedoms at the hands of Beijing.

The crisis over the extradition bill has been the biggest challenge Beijing has faced to its rule in the territory in the 22 years since it re-gained control over Hong Kong.

The planned bill triggered outrage across broad sections of Hong Kong society amid concerns it would threaten the much-cherished rule of law that underpins the city’s international financial status.

Lam’s appearance on Tuesday was her first since a rare pre-dawn news conference a week ago after protesters besieged and ransacked the legislative building in the heart of the city.

Hong Kong returned to Chinese rule in 1997 under a “one country, two systems” formula that allows freedoms not enjoyed in mainland China, including the right to protest and an independent judiciary.

Lawyers and rights groups say China’s justice system is marked by torture, forced confessions and arbitrary detention, claims that Beijing denies.

…

People packed the decks of the Japanese whale-watching boat, screaming in joy as a pod of orcas put on a show: splashing tails at each other, rolling over, and leaping out of the water.

In Kushiro, just 160 kilometers south of Rausu, where the four dozen people laughed and cheered, boats were setting off on Japan’s first commercial whale hunt in 31 years.

Killed that day were two minke whales, which the boats in Rausu also search for glimpses of – a situation that whale-watching boat captain Masato Hasegawa confessed had him worried.

“They won’t come into this area – it’s a national park – or there’d be big trouble,” the 57-year-old former pollock fisherman said. “And the whales we saw today, the sperm whales and orcas, aren’t things they hunt.”

“But we also watch minkes,” he added. “If they take a lot in the (nearby) Sea of Okhotsk, we could well see a change, and that would be too bad for whale watching.”

Whale-watching is a growing business around Japan, with popular spots from the southern Okinawa islands up to Rausu, a fishing village on the island of Hokkaido, so far north that it’s closer to Russia than to Tokyo.

The number of whale watchers around Japan has more than doubled between 1998 and 2015, the latest year for which national data is available. One company in Okinawa had 18,000 customers between January and March this year.

In Rausu, 33,451 people packed tour boats last year for whale and bird watching, up 2,000 from 2017 and more than 9,000 higher than 2016. Many stay in local hotels, eat in local restaurants, and buy local products such as sea urchins and seaweed.

“Of the tourist boat business, 65 percent is whale watching,” said Ikuyo Wakabayashi, executive director of the Shiretoko Rausu Tourism Association, who says the numbers grow substantially each year.

“You don’t just see one type of whale here, you see lots of them,” she said. “Whale-watching is a huge tourist resource for Rausu and this will continue, I hope.”

Wakabayashi was drawn to Rausu by whale-watching; a native of the western city of Osaka, she fell in love with the area after three trips there to see orcas.

“I thought this was an incredible place,” she said. “Winters are tough, but it’s so beautiful.”

Hasegawa, who says he has a waiting list of customers in high season, has ordered a second boat.

“Right now, the lifestyle we have is good,” Hasegawa said. “Better than it would have been with fishing.”

Small Industry

The five whaling vessels moored at Kushiro port on Sunday, the night before the hunt resumed, were well-used and well-maintained. Crew members came and went, carrying groceries or towels, heading for a public bath.

Barely 300 people are directly involved with whaling around Japan, and though the government maintains whale meat is an important part of food culture, the amount consumed annually has fallen to only 0.1 percent of total meat consumption.

Yet Japan, under Prime Minister Shinzo Abe – himself from a whaling district – left the International Whaling Commission (IWC) and returned to commercial whaling on July 1.

Whaling advocates, such as Yoshifumi Kai, head of the Japan Small-type Whaling Association, celebrated the hunt.

“We endured for 31 years, but now it’s all worth it,” he said in Kushiro on Monday night after the first minkes were brought in to be butchered. “They’ll be whaling for a week here, we may have more.”

Everybody acknowledges that rebuilding demand could be tough after decades of whale being a pricey, hard-to-find food.

Consumption was widespread after World War II, when an impoverished Japan needed cheap protein, but fell off after the early 1960s as other meat grew cheaper.

“Japan has so much to eat now that food is thrown out, so we don’t expect demand for whale will rise that fast,” said Kazuo Yamamura, president of the Japan Whaling Association.

“But looking to the future, if you don’t eat whale, you forget that it’s a food,” he said. “If you eat it in school lunches, you’ll remember that, you’ll remember that it’s good.”

Pro-whaling lawmaker Kiyoshi Ejima said that subsidies were unlikely, but that the government should be careful not to let the industry founder. About 5.1 billion yen ($47.31 million) was budgeted for whaling in 2019.

“If we pull away our hands too soon, a lot of companies will fail,” he added.

The goal of selling whale throughout Japan may be impractical, said Joji Morishita, Japan’s former IWC commissioner.

“The alternative … is to just limit the supply of whale meat to some of the major places in Japan that have a good tradition of whale eating,” Morishita said, adding that the meat is difficult to thaw and cook.

In areas for which whaling is a tradition, this niche market could promote tourism, which Abe has made a pillar of his economic plan.

“Whale eating in a sense is ideal – it’s different, it’s well-known, and for better or worse, it’s very famous,” Morishita said. “Taking advantage of this IWC withdrawal, I think there are business chances that are viable.”

Whales Up Close

For Rausu, on Hokkaido’s remote Shiretoko Peninsula, the viable business is whale watching.

Foxes run through the streets of the city’s downtown, which clings to a narrow strip of land below mountains and faces the Nemuro Strait. Summer often brings thick fog, while winter storms can leave waist-high drifts.

Though fishing was long Rausu’s economic backbone, the industry has taken a hit from declining fish stocks, which locals blame on Russian trawlers and falling prices. The population has dropped by several hundred annually, slipping below 5,000 this year.

Hasegawa, a fourth-generation fisherman, began his tour boat business in 2006. Though the first few years were a struggle, he is now happy with his choice as Rausu’s reputation grows globally.

On a recent weekday, customers packed the parking lot at a wharf lined with squid-fishing boats, waiting to board Hasegawa’s boat and those of three other companies. Hasegawa’s customers came from all over Japan and several foreign countries.

“Today there were more (whale) jumps than usual; it was fantastic,” said Kiyoko Ogi, a 47-year-old Tokyo bus driver who’s been whale-watching in Rausu three times. “I’m really opposed to commercial whaling; seeing whales close is so exciting.”

Whale hunting was never big in Rausu, and though Hasegawa said there once was “trouble” with people hunting small Baird’s beaked whales nearby, those fishermen now stay far from the tours and will tell him where to find orcas and sperm whales.

But he’s dubious about whether demand for whale meat will ever pick up. Restaurants and hotels in Rausu avoid serving it.

“We get a lot of kids in summer vacations. If you tell them on the boat that ‘this is the whale we ate last night,’ they’d cry,” he said.

“If they serve whale, nobody from overseas will come, especially Europeans,” he added. “Given that the national government is trying to woo overseas tourists so much, its thinking (on whaling) seems a bit wrong.”

($1 = 107.7900 yen)

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