The surprising ads once used to sell tours to deadly volcano - CNN

(CNN) — With hindsight, it looks embarrassingly inappropriate, but long before New Zealand's White Island volcano erupted killing at least 16 people this week, it was once humorously marketed as a fun destination for risk takers.

The volcano, also known as Whakaari, has for decades been an attraction for travelers visiting by boat or helicopter from the town of Whakatane on New Zealand's northern coast.

It's not the world's only active volcano to attract tourists -- countries from Indonesia to Iceland regularly host visitors willing to dice with danger in their efforts to glimpse the natural spectacle of a smoldering or lava-spewing peak.

"Handle with scare" -- a brochure used to promote tours of White Island.

John Malathronas

But Monday's tragic events have spotlighted the tourism industry that's built up around White Island and other volatile attractions.

Perhaps emblematic of the willingness of both tourist and tour company to dance around the potentially lethal risks involved, is some of the material that has been used to promote White Island in the past.

During a visit made by this writer in 2006, it was being heavily marketed on the perils that tourists would face via literature that now seems toe-curlingly bad, particularly in light of this week's deaths.

"Single White Female," reads the headline on a jokey advertorial promoting tours of the volcano that's written in the style of a lonely hearts column.

"Steamy, very active, 200,000-year-old seeking similar to increase alert level rating," the piece, credited to a local tour guide, said. "Dormant/extinct volcanoes need not apply."

It goes on: "My curvaceous andesite bumps and mounds roll voluptuously down to the water. I have the aroma of hot sulphur and I change my look with my mood. If I'm feeling active, I wear layers of slippery grey ash..."

The lonely hearts ad isn't what tourists to New Zealand would've seen just before Monday's eruption. It appears on the back of a 32-page brochure-slash-newspaper, Discover White Island, that was originally printed in 2003 but being distributed at the time of my visit.

'Handle with scare'

"Single White Female" -- a joke lonely hearts ad used to promote the volcano.

John Malathronas

White Islands Tours -- which ceased operations after the December 9 eruption -- wasn't downplaying the risk of visiting the island -- headlining the newspaper distributed in 2006 with bold red letters that screamed: "Volcano, handle with scare."

For backpackers and other thrill seekers touring New Zealand, this whiff of danger has placed White Island firmly on adventure itineraries alongside bungee jumping, jetboating and white water rafting.

It was only when I boarded the tour boat and signed a disclaimer that absolved anyone but myself of any responsibility that the reality of the trip's dangers hit home, but not enough to dissuade me or my fellow tourists from continuing.

Visitors were equipped with gas masks for a tour of the island.

John Malathronas

Although my visit was incident-free, it would've been more or less identical to that experienced by those caught up in this week's disaster, right up until the point when the volcano erupted.

En route to the island, a school of dolphins appeared in the swell alongside the boat as our guide distributed gas masks and hard hats.

We were then given some basic facts and figures about our destination. Its size -- 11 miles by 10 miles. And its history: bought by a man called George Buttle in 1936. The island is still a private reserve belonging to the Buttle Family Trust.

According to my notes from the trip, the guide stressed that the volcano was "very much alive," and that the terrain we would be crossing had been formed relatively recently during a period of near-continuous volcanic activity between 1975 and 2000.

"The activity level now stands at one," he said. "Three means there's constant emissions. Five signals disaster. But remember: We can never rule out an eruption."

"The danger comes from the main crater that's covered by a shallow lake. An eruption would lead to a steam explosion and scald us to death."

New Zealand monitoring service GeoNet operates a five-point alert system for volcanoes. One means minor volcanic unrest, five means major volcanic eruption. At the time of Monday's eruption, it was set to two -- minor to heightened volcanic unrest -- an acceptable level for tours to continue under existing safety guidelines.

Corrosive air

After a couple of hours sailing, our party landed at White Island's Crater Bay, where we were greeted by what looked like an alien landscape.

The sea was lemon yellow, the rocks cinnamon brown, the sand pitch black and the air thick with the smell of an open latrine.

What was eerie, though, was the silence. I was expecting a roar, at least a muted grumble, but no, the island was silent.

The island resembles an alien landscape.

John Malathronas

"Wrap everything, especially your camera, in plastic bags," the guide warned. "Take it out for a photo and put it back in again. The air is corrosive."

"What about us?" I asked.

"You are alive and have repair mechanisms in place. Your lenses don't."

The guide led us through the skeletal, rusty remains of a factory. Despite the risks, people have been mining sulfur here on and off since the 1880s.

"Back in September 1914 a sudden slag flow buried the living quarters and killed 10 miners," we were told. "Only their cat survived."

"Mining resumed in 1923 but was abandoned in the 1930s. It became too dangerous to continue."

At some point he showed us a rivulet running through the ground.

"It's been raining, so you'll see a lot of small streams," he said. "Step over them. They're pure battery acid. Stick to the path and follow me."

With pewter-gray ash and scoria covering much of the land; the scene could've been described as lunar if it weren't for the mist over the steam vents.

These vents came in every shade of yellow -- from banana to butterscotch and all variations in between.

"Don't go anywhere near the vents," our guide said. "The coolest ones clock 95 C (100 F). The superheated ones can reach 200 C (400 F). Some go deep down to 600 feet below sea level."

Some of the big vents have names, we were told. There was Gilliver, Rudolf and Donald Duck.

Others were large enough to be classified as craters, with names like Big John or Noisy Nellie.

'Everything rusts'

Writer John Malathronas on White Island.

John Malathronas

Our guide showed us debris from an eruption in 2000.

"It only lasted for 12 seconds but spewed out five-foot-long rocks hundreds of feet away," he said. "I was here three days later. The rocks were still warm and you could pry them apart like toffee."

At some point, we reached a white line painted on the ground and were told to stop.

"From here on, the crust is thin," the guide said. "Walk further and the ground might give in under your feet."

In front of us lay the main crater cloaked under a vapor cloud, a gate to the center of the Earth.

Boat trips have long carried visitors to White Island.

John Malathronas

We stood there silently, taking photos before slowly heading back, skirting the white line.

Back on the boat, the guide changed his sneakers. He used a separate pair just for White Island. "Plastic laces, holes with no metal eyelets; everything rusts there," he said.

On the return journey to Whakatane, we were served warm soup to soothe our stinging throats followed by a meal of rice and baked fish.

This time the entertainment came from above as a company of gannets nosedived into the sea with spectacular plunges.

"Despite the eruptions, this gannet colony is well established," the guide said. "Amazingly, it's on the safest part of the island. This is where the miners built their cabins when they returned in the 1920s."

Today, looking back at my diary of my 2006 trip, I'm struck by a quote I scribbled down that's attributed to the island's late owner, George Buttle.

He supposedly said: "Strange as it may seem, the island is unbelievably beautiful."

In its own extra-terrestrial kind of way, it was. And I'm glad I've been there.

But like so many visitors over the years, I know that I've played with fire for the fun of it.

Others weren't so lucky.

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2019-12-15 06:29:41Z
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Scuffles break out in Glendale as Rep. Adam Schiff speaks at town hall - Los Angeles Times

At a town hall event on Saturday where an Armenian organization was thanking U.S. government officials for their support of resolutions recognizing the Armenian genocide, scuffles broke out as Rep. Adam B. Schiff (D-Burbank), a co-sponsor of a resolution on the issue, spoke in the auditorium at the Glendale Central Library.

As Schiff began speaking, a man and two women held up signs reading,"Don’t Impeach.” When they were asked to take down the signs, they refused.

Then, about a dozen people scattered throughout the auditorium began yelling, “Liar.”

When some in the audience asked them to refrain from yelling, scuffles broke out throughout the room, and the audience members who were yelling at Schiff removed their jackets, revealing shirts supporting President Trump.

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After about 15 minutes, the scuffles settled down, and the event continued.

There were three Glendale police officers at the event who helped deal with the situation, according to the Police Department. No injuries were reported, police said.

The event was organized by the Armenian National Committee of America - Western Region to thank the U.S. House of Representatives for recently passing a resolution affirming its recognition of the Armenian genocide and celebrating the U.S. Senate’s unanimous recognition Thursday of the genocide.

Schiff said he appreciated the opportunity to take part in the event.

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“I was grateful for the opportunity to share in the community’s celebration of the historic passage of the Armenian Genocide resolution in both the House and Senate, and thankful for the recognition of the efforts of so many people who made this day possible,” he said in a statement.

“Unfortunately, some came to the event with the intent to disrupt, but the Armenian community has had to overcome far greater challenges along the road to recognition than to be deterred by a few angry voices,” said Schiff, who as chairman of the House Intelligence Committee has helped lead the Trump impeachment investigation.

In a statement, the Armenian committee said what made the act that much more “egregious” was that descendants of genocide survivors were in the room, many of them elderly, who had waited for the passage of such resolutions their entire lives and had attended the event to express their gratitude to all those who supported the cause for decades.

“While, as Americans, we value our right to freedom of speech, today’s actions by a select few were designed to disrupt an event that had no connection to recent political divisions and disrespected the memory of the victims of the Armenian Genocide,” the statement said.

“Though asked to leave, the disrupters instead remained and continued to behave in an appalling manner which lacked any semblance of human decency,” the statement added.

The committee said the issue transcends partisan politics in its appeal to properly honor and acknowledge the 1.5 million Armenians, Greeks and Assyrians who were massacred from 1915-23 under the Ottoman Empire, now modern-day Turkey.

“Our democracy deserves better than the disgraceful behavior of those who tried to disrupt a non-partisan, non-political event meant to express unity and gratitude on a purely humanitarian issue, and we strongly condemn any attempt to hijack its message,” the committee said.

Roa and Kellam write for Times Community News.

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2019-12-15 07:03:00Z
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Hong Kong protests test Beijing's 'foreign meddling' narrative - BBC News

A few months ago a Chinese official asked me if I thought foreign powers were fomenting Hong Kong's social unrest.

"To get so many people to come to the streets," he mused, "must take organisation, a big sum of money and political resources."

Since then, the protests sparked at the beginning of Hong Kong's hot summer have raged on through autumn and into winter.

The massive marches have continued, interspersed with increasingly violent pitched battles between smaller groups of more militant protesters and the police.

The toll is measured in a stark ledger of police figures that, even a short while ago, would have seemed impossible for one of the world's leading financial capitals and a bastion of social stability.

More than 6,000 arrests, 16,000 tear-gas rounds, 10,000 rubber bullets.

As the sense of political crisis has deepened and divisions have hardened, China has continued to see the sinister hand of foreign meddling behind every twist and turn.

The 'grey rhino'

In January, China's supreme political leader Xi Jinping convened a high-level Communist Party meeting focused on "major risk prevention".

He told the assembled senior officials to be on their guard for "black swans" - the unpredictable, unseen events that can plunge a system into crisis. But he also warned them about what he called "grey rhinoceroses" - the known risks that are ignored until it's too late.

While state media reports show the discussions ranging over issues from housing bubbles to food safety, there's no mention at all of Hong Kong.

And yet the seeds were already being sown for what has become the biggest challenge to Communist Party rule in a generation.

A few weeks after the meeting, the Hong Kong government, with the strong backing of Beijing, introduced a bill that would allow the extradition of suspects to mainland China.

Opposition to the bill was immediate, deep-seated and widespread, driven by the fear that it would allow China's legal system to reach deep inside Hong Kong.

Despite assurances that "political crimes" would not be covered, many saw it as a fundamental breach of the "one country, two systems" principle under which the territory is supposed to be governed.

It wasn't just human rights groups and legal experts expressing alarm, but the business community, multinational corporations and foreign governments too, worried that overseas nationals might also find themselves targeted by such a law.

And so, the first claims of "foreign meddling" began to be heard.

On 9 June, a massive and overwhelmingly peaceful rally against the bill was held, with organisers putting the attendance at more than a million.

The accusations made in person by officials, like the one mentioned earlier, were echoes of a narrative being taken up in earnest by China's Communist Party-controlled media.

The morning after the march, an English language editorial in the China Daily raised the spectre of "interference".

"Unfortunately, some Hong Kong residents have been hoodwinked by the opposition camp and their foreign allies into supporting the anti-extradition campaign," it said.

From the protesters' point of view, the dismissal of their grievances as externally driven explains, to a large extent, what happened next.

The city's political elite, backed by Beijing and insulated from ordinary Hong Kongers by a political system rigged in its favour, demonstrated a spectacular failure to accurately read the public mood.

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Three days after the march, with Hong Kong's leader, Chief Executive Carrie Lam, insisting she would not back down, thousands of people surrounded the Legislative Council building where the bill was being debated.

It was on the same spot just outside the chamber, less than five years earlier, that a phalanx of trucks with mechanical grabbers had begun scooping up rows of abandoned tents.

To the sound of the snapping of poles and the crunching of bamboo barricades - the detritus of weeks of protest and occupation - 2014's pro-democracy demonstrations finally ran out of steam.

Now the proposed law, one that may once have been seen as relatively inconsequential, was about to reignite the movement.

• What led to the first gunshot being fired?
• Most striking images from six months of anger

The protesters threw bricks and bottles, the police fired tear gas and by the evening of 12 June, Hong Kong had witnessed one of its worst outbreaks of violence in decades.

No-one could be in any doubt that the Umbrella Movement, with its demands for wider democratic reform, was back with a vengeance.

The few concessions - first the suspension and finally the withdrawal of the bill - came too late to stop the cycle of escalating violence from both the protesters and the police.

Beijing is right to point out that there are plenty of Hong Kongers who deplore the mask-clad militants building barricades, vandalising public property and setting fires.

Some of them are ardent supporters of Chinese rule, others are simply being pragmatic, believing that violence will only provoke the central government into intervening more strongly in Hong Kong's affairs.

But the authorities were stunned last month by a test of the true strength of those viewpoints, when - on a record turnout in local elections - the pro-democracy camp swept the board.

The poll gave its candidates almost 60% of the total share of the votes.

At first there was an astonished silence from mainland China, which had genuinely thought the pro-Beijing side would win.

The initial news reports mentioned only the conclusion of the voting, not the results, but then came a familiar refrain.

The state-run Xinhua news agency blamed "rioters" conspiring with "foreign forces".

"The politicians behind them who are anti-China and want to mess up Hong Kong reaped substantial political benefits," it said.

• Former UK consulate worker says China tortured him

As proof of interference, China cites cases of foreign politicians voicing support for democracy or raising concerns about its erosion under Chinese rule.

It has also blamed Washington for passing a law mandating an annual assessment of Hong Kong's political freedoms as a pre-condition for continuing the territory's special trading status.

Xinhua has denounced it as "a malicious political manipulation that seriously interferes with Hong Kong affairs".

But no evidence has been produced of any outside forces co-ordinating or directing the protests on the ground.

In reality, the young, radical protesters, with the ubiquitous use of the portmanteau "Chinazi" in their street graffiti, appear as much motivated by statements from Beijing as they are from Washington.

The very institutions - independent courts and a free press - that are supposed to be protected by the "one country, two systems" formula, are derided by the ruling Communist Party as dangerous, foreign constructs.

Where once Hong Kongers might have hoped that China's economic rise would bring political freedoms to the mainland and a closer alignment with their values, many now fear the opposite.

Mass detention camps in Xinjiang, a wider crackdown on civil society, and the abduction of Hong Kong citizens for perceived political crimes have all underlined the concern that their city is now ruled by political masters inherently hostile to the very things that make it special.

• China separating Muslim children from families
• China's Muslim 'crackdown' explained

And any appeal to universal values as underwriting Hong Kong's side of the "two systems", is anathema to Beijing, one that it rejects by conflating it with outside foreign meddling.

Despite earlier fears, the central government seems unlikely to send in the army - a move certain to provoke even more of an international outcry.

But nor can it offer a political solution.

Giving the pro-democracy movement any more of what the Communist Party strains every fibre of its organisational structure to deny to the mass of Chinese people is impossible.

Its values are stability and control, not freedom and democracy, and it struggles to understand how anyone would choose the latter over the former.

So Beijing finds itself bound by a sense of historical destiny to a territory with which it is - in large part - in deep ideological opposition.

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It is a tension that has not gone unnoticed elsewhere in the region, in particular, in Taiwan, the self-governing island that China considers a breakaway province.

Hong Kong's experience of one country, two systems, the Taiwanese President Tsai Ing-wen has suggested, has shown that authoritarianism and democracy cannot coexist.

Referring to the prospect of a similar formula being foisted on Taiwan she tweeted, in Chinese characters, the phrase bu ke neng - "Not a chance".

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2019-12-15 06:02:00Z
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After Brexit, Fractured EU Faces New Challenges - The Wall Street Journal

Boris Johnson at a European Union leaders summit in Brussels in October. Photo: Simon Dawson/Bloomberg News

By

Laurence Norman and

Laurence Norman
The Wall Street Journal
• Biography
• @laurnorman
• laurence.norman@wsj.com

Stephen Fidler

Stephen Fidler
The Wall Street Journal
• Biography
• @StephenFidler1
• stephen.fidler@wsj.com

Dec. 14, 2019 11:30 am ET

BRUSSELS—Boris Johnson’s general election victory, and the likely departure of Britain from the European Union next month, will bring relief to most European governments: Now they can focus on other pressing issues facing the bloc.

Yet Brexit was a rare point of unity for the remaining 27 members and life beyond it could expose divisions among them. It isn’t clear, for example, how cohesive those left in the bloc can be as they confront issues after Britain’s departure—including negotiating new trade relations with the U.K.

During divorce talks, the bloc’s shared interests enabled its members to speak unanimously on matters such as winning protections for EU citizens in Britain. Determining priorities in coming talks with its former member, from such issues as access to each other’s markets and the rights of European fleets to fish in British waters, will likely prove harder.

Those negotiations will present difficult trade-offs because both sides say they want close economic ties but have conflicting agendas. Prime Minister Johnson has said he wants to win Britain the freedom to diverge from EU rules and standards, giving him flexibility to reach trade deals around the world. The EU wants to keep the two economies more aligned.

EU leaders have already said a less-regulated U.K. could pose a competitive threat in coming years. That means they will insist that the U.K. broadly conforms to EU environmental, labor and other standards as the price for a close trading relationship.

“If Boris Johnson wants a very ambitious trade deal, there has to be very ambitious regulatory convergence. Be my guest,” said French President Emmanuel Macron on Friday.

His counterparts and other senior EU officials have said for months they want Brexit resolved so the bloc can focus on the future. But since October, when a preliminary Brexit deal that now looks likely to win British backing was clinched, the European mood has darkened.

Relations have soured between France and Germany, whose alignment had driven much of Europe’s integration over the past seven decades.

Mr. Macron has divided the bloc with criticisms of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, an attempted rapprochement with Moscow and a recent veto on enlarging the EU to incorporate countries in the Balkans.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel, whose government’s inaction in the face of political infighting at home has frustrated other leaders, has worried aloud about Britain—currently the bloc’s second largest economy—emerging as a new rival to the EU.

Now, as EU countries begin fractious debates over the bloc’s next multiyear budget, many governments are internally divided or unable to sustain parliamentary majorities, further complicating efforts to maintain unity.

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What do you think the future holds for the European Union without the U.K.? Join the conversation below.

For sure, the EU no longer feels the threat to its existence of 2016, when nationalist forces were ascendant in Europe. Now, a growing concern is that the EU’s decision-making machinery—always cumbersome—is no longer able to build consensus on even smaller issues.

There is a fear of sclerosis as Russia, China and the U.S. pose unprecedented economic and political challenges to the EU, which is now weakened by the U.K.’s likely departure.

U.K. stocks rose after Prime Minister Boris Johnson scored a decisive election victory on the promise of delivering Brexit. But despite investor optimism, the British government still faces a number of challenges. Photo: Jason Alden/Bloomberg News

The EU has traditionally exercised soft power, based largely on using economic incentives to promote democratic values. That flourished in a globalized world with widely accepted rules and an ethos that compromise could prove mutually beneficial. Now Europe appears adrift in the new reality of big-power politics. Even internally, the EU’s liberal democratic values are openly attacked by governments in Hungary and Poland.

“The fundamental reasons why there haven’t been any big reform pushes recently aren’t to do with Brexit,” said Pepijn Bergsen, a research fellow at Chatham House, a London-based think tank, and a former Dutch official. “It’s to do with fundamental disagreements among the member states on how to move forward.”

The bloc faces deep divisions over many of its big strategic challenges. A durable solution to the bloc’s migration rules remains elusive after four years of arguments. The problem encompasses both people arriving from unstable regions outside the EU and how to distribute them inside the bloc.

Separately, Mr. Macron has proposed fixing flaws in the euro’s structure by deepening economic and budget integration, but the proposal has barely advanced. Tempestuous relations with the U.S. under the Trump administration have sown doubt over the future of Europe’s American security umbrella. EU member states are at odds over how to deal with Beijing’s twin goals of economic cooperation and geopolitical influence.

The EU will feel the loss of Britain, which bolstered the bloc even while impeding other countries’ initiatives. For years, Britain opposed deeper European integration in areas including defense, objected to a hefty EU budget and was wary of common financial and labor regulations. Still, its security muscle lent the EU some heft in foreign policy and London’s close ties with Washington helped bridge the Atlantic.

The U.K. was a strong proponent of free-trade, EU enlargement and pragmatic cooperation to tackle security threats. It opposed a “fortress Europe” approach, pushing for a competitive and open economy.

Britain also became in recent years the EU’s second-biggest net funder. EU officials say the U.K.’s departure will leave an estimated €84 billion ($93 billion) hole in the bloc’s next seven-year budget.

Agreeing on the size and makeup of that €1 trillion-plus budget will be the first major post-Brexit fight. Efforts to cut the amount of money spent on the EU’s newer members in Central and Eastern Europe risk further embittering the bloc’s east-west relations, already scarred by fights over migration and democratic norms.

EU officials meanwhile are scrambling to assuage worries in the richest member states, such as Germany and the Netherlands, that their already hefty budget bills won’t soar to fill the British gap at a time when euroskeptic forces in both countries are rising again. Months of talks on this, which continued among EU leaders at a dinner Thursday evening, have so far gone nowhere.

Perhaps most worrying of late is the fading of a shared vision of the EU’s future in Berlin and Paris.

German officials were furious when Mr. Macron vetoed the start of EU enlargement talks with North Macedonia in October. French frustration with the slow pace of eurozone reform and the modest size of a new eurozone budget has been building for several years. Ms. Merkel warned Europe was unable to defend itself without NATO after Mr. Macron raised questions about the alliance’s future.

The Franco-German relationship is stuttering, rather than broken. The duo are pushing a revamp of the EU’s industrial policy, a strategic priority meant in part to address the challenges posed by China’s economic muscle. Berlin and Paris recently brokered a delicate compromise on the EU’s 2020 budget. Yet their common leadership, which led to the removal of borders across the continent and launch of the common currency, appears beyond reach.

To be sure, the bloc has gone through endless ups and downs in its more than 60-year history.

A new leadership team has taken office in Brussels, with sights fixed on rebuilding the EU’s cohesion and positioning the bloc as a more effective geopolitical player in an increasingly volatile world.

The EU’s single market—a common zone of harmonized economic regulation that speeds trade among member countries—remains a powerful asset that its members won’t want undermined by any trade deal with Britain. In recent years, Brussels has focused its energy on important challenges—from inking trade deals with countries such as Japan and Canada to expanding its single market into the digital economy and energy.

Still, some of Europe’s leaders warn the bloc will only be safe if its members further tighten their mutual ties. “We are in a world of powers,” Mr. Macron said in October. “We need to strengthen integration.”

Write to Laurence Norman at laurence.norman@wsj.com and Stephen Fidler at stephen.fidler@wsj.com

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2019-12-14 16:30:00Z
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Trump administration inches closer to massive trade deal with China - Fox News

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2019-12-14 15:43:48Z
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What did the UK elections teach us about 2020? Trust the polls - CNN

Maybe you think Republican President Donald Trump has reason to smile after his friend, Conservative Prime Minister Boris Johnson, won a big mandate.

Maybe you think the crushing defeat of Jeremy Corbyn's Labour Party shows the peril of the Democrats potentially nominating Bernie Sanders.

Those theories may prove to be true, but I think the clearest lesson is staring us right in the face: The polls are still pretty good as we head into the 2020 presidential election in the US.

Take a look at the average of polls for the four parties that have earned at least 10 seats each in the House of Commons (the UK Parliament's lower House). The average of the final UK polls had the Conservatives winning 43% of the vote, Labour 33%, the Liberal Democrats 12% and the Scottish Nationals 4%.

The actual result was Conservatives taking 43.6%, Labour 32.2%, the Liberal Democrats 11.6% and the Scottish Nationals 3.9%. In other words, each of these parties got within 1 point of its final polled vote share.

This remarkably accurate result was better than we'd expect based on history. The final 2019 polling average missed the margin between Conservative and Labour by about 1.9 points. Since the 1945 election (i.e. the prior 20 UK general elections), the average final poll had missed by 3.9 points.

Indeed, despite a lot of cries that the polls are broken, the UK elections taking place during the Trump administration show that isn't true. Beyond this year, the difference between the Conservatives and Labour margin in the final 2017 polling average and election result was 4 points. In other words, it's right in line with what we'd expect, given the historical polling accuracy rates.

The US's own polls have likewise been fairly accurate during the Trump era. The average House, Senate and governor's polls were about a point more accurate in 2018 than they had been in similar elections over the prior 20 years. The same was generally true for House special election polling in the 2017-2018 cycle and the three governor elections of 2019 (Kentucky, Louisiana and Mississippi).

Another key point is that just because one side outperformed in the polls in the last election doesn't mean the same party will outperform in the next one. I know some people were expecting (and a lot of Labourites were hoping) that because the polls underestimated Labour in 2017 they would do the same in 2019. It didn't happen. The Conservatives were actually slightly underestimated.

Again, we saw this same lesson play out in the US over the past few years. After the polling underestimated the Republicans almost across the board in 2016, there was less of a systematic error in 2018. The polls slightly underestimated the Democrats on average. Now, the polls weren't perfect in 2018 in the US, but they were better than average and correctly projected a strong Democratic year. Similarly, the polls, if anything, underestimated the Democrats in the gubernatorial elections of 2019 and special elections over the course of 2017 and 2018.

The direction of the polling errors is most often random. If something is methodologically amiss in surveys, good pollsters tend to figure out what's wrong before the next election.

None of this guarantees that the final polls will correctly gauge who is going to win or lose in 2020. There are still margins of error, so someone slightly ahead in the polls may end up losing. Likewise, someone slightly behind may end up winning.

But in an era with a lot of disinformation out there, the polls continue to do a very good job of separating the signal from the noise.

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2019-12-14 13:32:00Z
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Former Sudanese ruler Omar al-Bashir convicted of corruption, money laundering - The Washington Post

A court in Khartoum sentenced former Sudanese president Omar al-Bashir, 75, to two years in a reform facility on Dec. 14. Bashir was convicted of corruption and illicit possession of foreign currency.

CAIRO — A court in Sudan convicted the country’s former authoritarian ruler Omar al-Bashir of money laundering and corruption Saturday, delivering a verdict that few Sudanese expected a year ago when a massive populist revolt erupted.

But Bashir’s sentence of two years in a minimum-security lockup is unlikely to appease many of the victims of his brutal, three-decade-long rule, who are seeking justice for what they describe as atrocities committed by his security forces.

“While this trial is a positive step toward accountability for some of his alleged crimes, he remains wanted for heinous crimes committed against the Sudanese people,” said Joan Nyanyuki, Amnesty International’s Director for East Africa, the Horn and the Great Lakes in August.

Bashir’s prosecution — as well as other judicial cases against him — is seen as a test of whether Sudan can bring closure for the abuses endured by many citizens under his rule. It is also a test of whether the nation’s political transition can move forward, despite the presence of Bashir’s loyalists in the government bureaucracy and society.

On Saturday, hundreds of his supporters gathered in the streets near the presidential palace in the capital, Khartoum, ahead of the verdict. Troops and armored vehicles blocked roads and a heavy security presence was visible at the courthouse.

Inside, Bashir sat inside a metal cage for defendants, dressed in a traditional white turban and robe, as the judge read out the verdict.

“The convict, Omar al-Bashir, is consigned to a social reform facility for a period of two years,” the judge Al-Sadiq Abdelrahman said.

—

Afp Via Getty Images

Sudan's deposed military president Omar Hassan al-Bashir in a defendant's cage during his corruption trial at a court in Khartoum on Dec. 14, 2019.

The 75-year-old former dictator is also wanted by the International Criminal Court on charges of war crimes and genocide linked to government-backed attacks in Sudan’s western Darfur region in the 2000s. But Bashir remained untouched for more nearly a decade after the ICC arrest warrant was issued, often taunting the international community by traveling in African and Middle Eastern nations without being detained.

[Opinion: The International Criminal Court must do better]

During his rule, Bashir was also accused of sponsoring terrorism. That included harboring Osama bin Laden and playing a role in the 1998 U.S. embassy bombings in Kenya and Tanzania that killed 224 people, including 12 Americans, and the 2000 attack on the USS Cole in Aden, Yemen that killed 17 U.S. sailors and injured 40 others.

Sudan was slapped with U.S. sanctions, and remains on the State Department’s list of state-sponsoring terrorism.

Saturday’s verdict arrives a year after Sudanese protesters took the streets, staging massive demonstrations and sit-ins — against rising prices, food shortages and, by the end, Bashir’s iron-fisted rule. In April, Sudan’s military buckled to the pressure and ousted him. The uprising eventually led to the creation of power-sharing agreement between the military and civilians.

Sudanese law mandates that Bashir will spend his two-year sentence in a government correctional facility for elderly people convicted of non-death penalty crimes.

But the ex-president, who rose to power in a military coup in 1989, is set to remain in jail because he faces a separate trial on charges of incitement and playing a role in the killing of protesters before he was toppled. This week, Bashir was also questioned over his role in the 1989 coup.

On Saturday, some Sudanese took to social media to ridicule the verdict.

“Given his age, he will be placed in a rehabilitation center. This is a joke,” tweeted Mutasim Ali, a Sudanese law student at George Washington University. “The deep state is still exist particularly in our judiciary and to make reforms will take us decades. That’s why cooperation with the ICC to handover Bashir and others is due.”

[Newly united, Sudanese Americans push for civilian rule in their homeland]

Sudan’s transitional government has yet to publicly say whether they will hand Bashir over to the ICC at The Hague. But Sudan’s military, a partner in the current government, has said it would not extradite Bashir.

Bashir’s testimony during his corruption and money laundering trial offered some clues on the reluctance to hand him over to the ICC: he can potentially implicate other powerful Sudanese military commanders and politicians in war crimes and genocide charges. They have also depended on Bashir’s largesse over the years.

When he was arrested in April, millions of dollars, euros and other currencies were seized from his home. In August, Bashir told the court that the cash was mainly from $25 million given to him by Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Salman. Some of the cash was distributed to a military hospital and a university.

 But $5 million, said Bashir, was given to the Rapid Support Forces, a paramilitary unit made up of former members of the Janjaweed, the militia Bashir deployed and is accused of seeking to ethnically cleanse Darfur through the burning of villages and killings.

The head of the Rapid Support Forces, Gen. Mohammed Hamdan Dagalo, widely known as Hemedti, is on the transitional government’s ruling council. Hemedti’s unit is widely accused by pro-democracy protesters of leading the crackdown against them, killing dozens.

On Saturday, the judge also ordered the confiscation of the millions found in Bashir's home. But Bashir’s lawyer, Ahmed Ibrahim al-Tahir, said that the ex-president plans to appeal the verdict.

“The judge made the ruling based on political motives, but despite that we still have confidence in the Sudanese judiciary,” Tahir told reporters, according to the Reuters news agency.

Read more:

Sudan repeals law that let police flog women for wearing pants

Watch: Sudanese women demand a greater voice after Bashir’s fall

Today’s coverage from Post correspondents around the world

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2019-12-14 13:43:00Z
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