RealClearInvestigations' Picks of the Week
RealClearInvestigations' Picks of the Week
Jan. 5 to Jan. 11, 2020
Featured Investigation:
Not American, but He's Got a Rich Footprint
In U.S. Environmental Politics
Amid wide alarm about foreign meddling in American politics, British hedge fund billionaire Sir Christopher Hohn is quietly bankrolling Extinction Rebellion, a global environmental organization advocating an uprising against the U.S. government.
Beyond that, Jeff Patch reports for RealClearInvestigations, Hohn is a billion-dollar non-plastic straw stirring a global network of climate policy influence through an opaque network of investment and philanthropic funds. Patch reports:
- Hohn is Extinction Rebellion’s largest disclosed individual donor to date through personal contributions and a hybrid hedge fund/charity.
- Since its founding in 2018, the environmental collective, abbreviated as XR, has organized an escalating series of anarchical protests, including in New York, Washington, and London.
- Hohn illustrates the reach of politically driven philanthropy and the potential of wealthy foreigners to sidestep U.S. lobbying laws using complex financial arrangements to pursue both civic and self-interested goals.
- A distinction of Hohn’s operation: its apparent investment hedges in both green businesses and fossil fuels.
- He has big stakes in commercial aviation -- even though XR vociferously opposes it.
- He was a big investor in Coal India -- even though coal is anathema to green campaigners.
- Hohn’s funds are at the vanguard of activist institutional investors pressuring American companies to adopt progressive policy goals.
- Thus, without fanfare, Hohn arguably has achieved an influence on American climate policy comparable with prominent left-leaning American billionaire presidential candidates Michael Bloomberg and Tom Steyer.
The Trump Investigations: Top Articles
Watchdog Report Shows Mueller Replicated FBI Abuses, The Federalist
Suit: Rosenstein Led Task Force That Spied on Reporter, AmGreatness
State Dept. Handler Sent Steele's Info Via Own Email, on the QT, JW, DC
DoJ's Clinton-Uranium One Probe Finds Little Amiss, Washington Post
Other Noteworthy Articles and Series
Informants in Iraq and Syria Helped U.S. Kill Iran's Soleimani
Reuters
It is hard to know how to assess the news in this article – that Iran has “strong indications that a network of spies inside Baghdad Airport were involved in leaking sensitive security details” to the United States about Iranian Gen. Qassem Soleimani’s movements before the general was killed by an American drone. No doubt the Iranians are looking for someone to blame. Reuters reports that Iranian investigators are focusing on two security staffers at the Baghdad airport and two employees of Syria’s Cham Wings Airlines. Iranian investigators believe the four suspects worked as part of a wider group of people feeding information to the U.S. military. But none of the four has been arrested yet and it is hard to know if they are spies or scapegoats. In a separate article, the Daily Beast, among others, reports that even though Iran quickly blamed an airline crash that killed 176 people near Tehran on mechanical failure, it now appears that it was shot down mistakenly by the Iranians.
In Curbing Migrants, EU Funds Forced Labor in Eritrea
New York Times
The European Union spent about 20 million euros last year in Eritrea, hoping to help stem an exodus from the repressive African country. The money, about $22 million, bought equipment and materials to build a road, a seemingly uncontroversial task. The catch? Many workers on the construction site are forced conscripts, and the European Union has no real means of monitoring the project. The decision caused outrage in human-rights circles. But that did not stop the bloc in December from deciding to give Eritrea tens of millions more, funding a system that the United Nations has described as “tantamount to enslavement.” The additional aid, of 95 million euros, has not been previously reported. It's a jarring example of the quandary facing Europe as it scrambles to drastically curb migration.
Did Jeffrey Epstein Kill Himself?
"60 Minutes"
The jury’s still out on whether Jeffrey Epstein committed suicide or was murdered in a Manhattan jail, according to this report, which presents evidence on both sides. While the government claims the sex predator’s injuries were consistent with suicide by hanging, a pathologist hired by Epstein’s family says they were not. Epstein was directing money to be deposited in other inmates' commissary accounts in exchange for protection, sources say, because he feared for his life. But the government says Epstein was suicidal and made his first, failed suicide attempt weeks after he arrived at jail. Epstein claimed his cellmate, 52-year-old former police officer Nick Tartaglione, attacked him, which Tartaglione, accused of murdering four men, denied. Later Epstein was taken off suicide watch and "required to have an assigned cellmate." He was alone the night he died. The two guards on duty should have checked his cell throughout the night, but did not look in on him for eight hours. And now prosecutors say the video taken outside the cell, once said to be merely misplaced, "no longer exists" because of "technical errors."
The Sex Slaves of Colombia's FARC Guerrillas
The Telegraph
During Colombia’s bloody civil conflict spanning more than 50 years, almost 17,000 child soldiers were robbed of their youth, innocence, and in many cases lives, by Marxist guerrillas in the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC. And they were not just cannon fodder. Young girls, and sometimes boys, were recruited to become sex slaves. “It was as if I was a new toy,” says Yamile Noscué, who was abducted from her home by insurgents in 2005 when she was just 15. “I basically became their whore in camouflage,” she says. This article focuses on the war crimes tribunal investigating at least 214 cases of girls who were “subject to rape, forced sterilization, forced abortion, and other forms of sexual violence.” The insurgents reportedly arranged an estimated 1,000 abortions each year.
Gun-Control March's Hefty Secret Funding
Washington Free Beacon
The left assails "dark money" and the uber-wealthy – except on the left side of the political spectrum. Little surprise then that there has been almost no reporting on the fact that the gun control group responsible for a 2018 March on Washington raised the vast majority of its funds from large, undisclosed donations. This article says tax records show that of the nearly $18 million raised by the March For Our Lives Action Fund, less than $1 million came from “grassroots” donations from the fabled “people.” All the rest came from the kind of people able to write checks in excess of $100,000. The March For Our Lives is not required to disclose its donors under federal law – so it hasn’t. Some wealthy contributors have gone public, including Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff and billionaire businessman Eli Broad, two of six donors who gave at least $1 million.
New York City's Recycling Failure
Politico
Two consecutive New York City mayors, Michael Bloomberg and Bill DeBlasio, launched their presidential bids last year on a promise of combating climate change, yet neither was able to stem the tide of garbage flooding the nation’s largest metropolis and contributing to greenhouse gas emissions. De Blasio, the current mayor, whose national campaign lasted four months, and Bloomberg, who began his White House bid in November, both fell short of ambitious recycling and waste reduction goals that other major American cities have realized. If New Yorkers recycled at their maximum potential, about 68 percent of the 3 million or so tons of trash produced in the city's homes, municipal buildings and schools each year would be diverted from landfills. Yet the residential recycling rate stands at 18 percent – a shortcoming owed to a public housing system that mixes virtually all its garbage; a stalled program to recover food scraps; and a lack of financial incentives to reform behavior. For nearly two decades, New York City has entirely outsourced its trash burden to other communities across the country. The result: Year after year, New Yorkers rely on rail, barge and fossil fuel powered trucks to ship trash to methane-producing landfills and toxin-emitting incinerators. This article is the first in a series on New York City's rotten management of refuse.
Almond Milk's Sting: Billions of Dead Pollinating Bees
The Guardian
The law of unintended consequences strikes again. Widespread efforts to improve our health and save the planet by consuming almonds may be killing off honeybees. Commercial beekeepers who send their hives to California’s almond farms are seeing their bees die in record numbers, and nothing they do seems to stop the decline. A recent survey of commercial beekeepers showed that 50 billion bees – more than seven times the world’s human population – were wiped out in a few months during winter 2018-19. This is more than one-third of commercial U.S. bee colonies. Beekeepers attributed the high mortality rate to pesticide exposure, diseases from parasites and habitat loss. However, environmentalists and organic beekeepers maintain that the real culprit is something more systemic: America’s reliance on industrial agriculture methods, especially those used by the almond industry, which demands a large-scale mechanization of one of nature’s most delicate natural processes.
The Big Money in Unused Gift Cards: What Happens to It?
The Hustle
The most desired item on wish lists this past holiday season wasn’t a pair of Airpods, a Nintendo Switch, or a Baby Yoda plush toy. For the 13th straight year, the present of choice was the gift card. In 2019, Americans purchased an estimated $171 billion worth of these plastic cash substitutes, ranging from $500 prepaid Visa cards to grandma’s annual $25 Cheesecake Factory “nibble.” Gift cards are so popular that they account for 55% of the average shopper’s entire annual gift budget. This article reports that while most gift cards are used in the first months of purchase, about 6 percent are never used – roughly a $10 billion gift to businesses! Amazon alone has reported unused gift cards worth $2.8 billion. Which raises the question: What’s in your wallet?
