Several big U.S. cities see homicide rates surge
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Police collect evidence at the scene of a shooting on in Chicago, Illinois. Several major metros--including Baltimore, Chicago and New York--have experience an increase in homicides during the first half of 2015.(Photo: Scott Olson, Getty Images)
After seeing years of decline in violent crime, several major American cities experienced a dramatic surge in homicides during the first half of this year.
Milwaukee, which had one of its lowest annual homicide totals in city history last year, has recorded 80 murders so far this year, more than double the 39 it tallied at the same point last year.
Milwaukee police chief Edward Flynn said the mounting homicide toll in his city of 600,000 is being driven by Wisconsin's "absurdly weak" gun laws (carrying a concealed weapon without a state-issued concealed carry is a misdemeanor in the Badger State), a subculture within the city that affirms the use of deadly violence to achieve status, and growing distrust of police in some parts of the city.
Milwaukee is not alone.
Baltimore, New Orleans and St. Louis have also seen the number of murders jump 33% or more in 2015. Meanwhile, Chicago, the nation's third largest city, has seen the homicide toll climb by 19% and the number of shooting incidents increase in the city by 21% during the first half of the year.
In all the cities, the increased violence is disproportionately impacting poor and predominantly African-American and Latino neighborhoods. In parts of Milwaukee, the sound of gunfire has become so expected that about 80% of gunfire detected by ShotSpotter sensors aren't even called into police by residents, Flynn said.
"We've got folks out there living in neighborhoods, where . . . it's just part of the background noise," Flynn told USA TODAY. "That's what we're up against."
Criminologists are quick to note that the surge in murders in many big American cities come after years of declines in violent crime in major metros throughout the USA. Big cities saw homicides peak in the late 1980s and early 1990s as crack-cocaine wreaked havoc on many urban areas.
The homicide toll across the country — which reached a grim nadir in 1993 when more than 2,200 murders were counted in New York City — has declined in ebbs and flows for much of the last 20 years, noted , a professor of urban systems and operations research at in Pittsburgh. Several U.S. cities -- including Los Angeles, San Diego and Indianapolis -- have experienced a decrease in the number of murders so far this year.
Blumstein said the current surge in murders in some big cities could amount to no more than a blip.
"It could be 2015 represents us hitting a plateau, and by the end of the year, nationally, we'll see that murder rates are flat or there is a slight bump up," Blumstein said.
But other experts say the surge in killings suggests that the United States may be nearing a floor in reducing its murder rate as the federal, state and local governments increasingly are grappling with tighter budgets.
"Why is there a synchronicity among these cities?" said Peter Scharf, an assistant professor at the LSU School of Public Health whose research focuses on crime. "One reason may be is broke. Governors like are broke, and mayors like (New Orleans' Mitch) Landrieu are broke. You don't have the resources at any level of government to fund a proactive law enforcement."
Baltimore and Ferguson effect
So far this year, Baltimore has recorded 155 homicides, including three people who were killed late Tuesday evening near the campus. The 2015 homicide toll is 50 higher than it was at the same point last year.
On Wednesday, Mayor announced that she was firing Police Commissioner Anthony Batts, because of the spike in murders in the city.
The firing also came as the police union was set to release a report hammering the department's response to the unrest in Baltimore following the death of Freddie Gray, who died one week after sustaining a severe spinal cord injury while in Baltimore police custody. Gray's treatment was held up by protesters as an example of the endemic problem of police brutality in the city and beyond.
"We cannot grow Baltimore without making our city a safer place to live," Rawlings-Blake said. "We need a change. This was not an easy decision, but it is one that is in the best interest of the people of Baltimore. The people of Baltimore deserve better."
The Charm City, which is seeing some of the worst violence since the 1990s when it routinely tallied 300 murders annually, recorded 42 killings in May alone.
In St. Louis, there have been 93 homicides compared to 58 at the same point last year. The increased violence this year in St. Louis follows the city recording a more than 30% increase in murders in 2014, when police in the city saw a steep rise in violence following the shooting death last August of Michael Brown, a black teenager, in nearby Ferguson by a white police officer.
Police have made arrests in only 29 of the 2015 homicide cases, suggesting witnesses are increasingly showing a reluctance to come forward.
St. Louis police chief said that he's increasingly looking to federal authorities to get involved in cases in the city in the hopes of spurring witnesses to come forward. St. Louis Police and several federal agencies also plan to announce a new partnership next week aimed at reducing the violence in the city.
"Our clearance rates aren't where I'd like them to be," Dotson said in an interview. "We do have some things working with the feds that I think will start sending a very clear message (to the public) in the next three to four weeks.
New Orleans has recorded 98 homicides so far this year compared to 72 at the same point last year, according to a count kept by Scharf, the LSU analyst.
The bloody summer in New Orleans — the city of about 380,000 recently tallied seven murders in an eight-day period -- is shaping up to be one of the most brutal the city has seen in years, Scharf said.
7-year-old takes bullet meant for Dad
Chicago's homicide toll stood at 203 as of June 28, up from 171 at the same time last year, according to police stats. The city is still well below pace of 2012, when Chicago recorded more than 500 murders for the entire year.
The Windy City, which recorded more murders than any other municipality last year, experienced a bloody July 4 weekend in which 11 people were killed and more than 50 others were wounded. One of this weekend's victims was 7-year-old Amari Brown, who police said was struck by a bullet that was likely intended for his father, a high-ranking gang member.
The boy's father, Antonio Brown, had 45 arrests on his rap sheet—including an April arrest on a gun charge. Brown was out on bail at the time of his son's killing.
"If you think that putting more cops on the street would make a difference, then take a look at the fact that we put a third more manpower on the street for this weekend," Chicago police superintendent told reporters at the end of the bloody holiday weekend. "What's the result? We're getting more guns. Well, that's great. It's not stopping the violence."
In New York City, there were 161 homicides in the city for the first half of 2015, versus 145 during the first half of 2014. Shootings in the city rose to 542, from 511 in the same period last year.
New York recorded 328 homicides last year, the lowest annual murder toll for the city in more than 50 years.
"It's so phenomenally low that it can hardly go in any direction but up," said Blumstein, the Carnegie Mellon analyst.
Synthetic drug influx spurs killings in D.C.
The homicide toll has risen several other major U.S. cities in the first half of the year, albeit at less dramatic pace.
In Philadelphia, murders are up slightly, with the city recording 123 thus far this year compared to 117 at the same point last year. The murder rate, however, is far lower than it was in 2012, when the city had recorded a whopping 187 murders by July 7 of that year.
Dallas has tallied 68 murders so far this, up from 53 in 2014, according to police department statistics. San Antonio counted 53 homicides through June, compared to 43 last year.
Meanwhile, Houston Police reported 73 murders in the first quarter of 2015, compared to 46 during the same period last year. The police department for the fourth largest U.S. city has yet to release its murder tally for the second quarter of 2015.
Minneapolis had 22 murders in the first half of 2015, compared to 15 during the same period last year.
In ., the homicide count stands at 73 compared to 62 last year. Police and politicians in the nation's capital have connected the spike in murders to the influx of synthetic drugs, including K2, spice and others which are said to mimic the effects of marijuana.
Washington police chief Cathy Lanierexpressed confidence that the rate could be brought down. Non-fatal shootings and assaults in the district are down 17%, indicating violent incidents aren't more common this year, just deadlier.
"We experience spikes in violent crime every year," Lanier told WUSA9. "It's the when and where it happens that makes it different."
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WASHINGTON — The Obama administration announced an aggressive effort on Wednesday to reduce the racial segregation of residential neighborhoods. It unveiled a new requirement that cities and localities account for how they will use federal housing funds to reduce racial disparities, or face penalties if they fail.
The new rules are an effort to enforce the goals of the civil rights-era fair housing law that bans overt residential discrimination, but whose broader mandate for communities to actively foster integration has not been realized. They are part of President Obama’s attempt to address the racial imbalances and lack of opportunity that he says have contributed to unrest reminiscent of the turbulent 1960s in cities like Ferguson, Mo., and Baltimore, where African-Americans have clashed with police officers.
The requirement is likely to pose the greatest challenges for cities in the Northeast and the Rust Belt that have the highest levels of segregation according to the 2010 census, including Detroit, Milwaukee, New York and Newark.
More affluent minorities have diversified many predominantly white neighborhoods in those cities, but the segregation of less-wealthy minority families remains entrenched. The new effort aims to encourage affordable housing development in more desirable neighborhoods, and to improve the housing stock in lower-income areas.
Civil rights groups celebrated the announcement as a long-overdue response to the persistence of segregation in an increasingly diverse nation. Hilary O. Shelton, the director of the N.A.A.C.P. Washington bureau, called it “a crucial step forward in advancing fair housing and discrimination protection.”
But it has caused a backlash among conservatives, who denounced it as another directive from Washington to communities they say have long suffered from ill-conceived government housing initiatives. Some congressional Republicans are moving to deny funding for its implementation. The changes also could prompt some governments to follow the example of Westchester County, which has foregone some federal funding because of its refusal to comply with fair housing regulations.
Julián Castro, the secretary of Housing and Urban Development, said the measure should rise above politics, noting that both Democrats and Republicans supported the 1968 Fair Housing Act that undergirds it.
“A ZIP code should never prevent any person from reaching their aspirations,” Mr. Castro said in a conference call on Wednesday. While the 1968 law has always required communities to ensure equal opportunity in their neighborhoods, he added, “the fact is that federal efforts have often fallen short” when it came to enforcement.
Administration officials said that asking cities and localities to detail how they plan to use funds to reduce segregation would foster cooperation with the federal government. Housing and Urban Development will make available a trove of data that local officials can use in deciding how they will address segregation and racially concentrated areas of poverty, rather than being told how they must meet the new goals.
Mr. Castro said penalties for noncompliance, including the loss of federal housing funds, were a “last resort” that he did not anticipate using.
“We’re approaching this in a very collaborative spirit,” he said. “Enforcement is always a last resort — it is there, it is possible, but our preference is to work cooperatively and steadfastly with communities.”
The completion of the new requirement was first reported by The Washington Post.
Some local governments, like the Chicago suburb of Oak Park, have already created the kinds of fair housing plans the federal government will now require. Rob Breymaier, the executive director of the Oak Park Regional Housing Center, a nonprofit group that advocates “meaningful and lasting racial diversity,” said he hoped other communities would follow that example.
“This rule makes it clear that the fair housing obligation isn’t just being able to say, ‘I didn’t discriminate,’ ” Mr. Breymaier said. “It’s also saying, ‘I’m doing something proactively to promote an integrated or inclusive community.’ ”
Federal officials announced the new policy two weeks after the Supreme Court endorsed a broad interpretation of the fair housing statute, allowing suits under a legal theory that civil rights groups say is a crucial tool in fighting housing discrimination. It also builds on recent academic research documenting that lower-income children have much better prospects if they live in diverse neighborhoods.
“It’s significant, because it is a serious effort by the administration to, in effect, enforce one of the legacy civil rights laws,” said Marc H. Morial, the president of the National Urban League. “The country has to confront this, and it is my hope that this rule will help us change this paradigm, because this pattern of residential segregation, isolated pockets of poverty, is not just confined to the cities.”
The measure met with instant derision among Republicans who called it an executive overreach that would force Mr. Obama’s priorities upon neighborhoods across the nation.
Representative Paul D. Gosar, Republican of Arizona, called the rule Mr. Obama’s “most aggressive attempt yet to force his utopian ideology on American communities disguised under the banner of ‘fairness.’ ”
The House last month passed an amendment by Mr. Gosar to defund the rule.
“This is just the latest attempt by H.U.D. to social-engineer the American people,” said Edward J. Pinto, a housing specialist at the conservative American Enterprise Institute.
“The goal is to get the suburbs to look more like the cities,” he added. “It’s presumptuous for H.U.D. to think that someone in Washington, D.C., should decide all of this.”
Housing advocates, however cheered the move.
Debbie Goldberg, the vice president for housing policy at the National Fair Housing Alliance, noted a recent Census Bureau report saying that for the first time, most American children younger than 5 are members of minority groups. “If they don’t do well, the country doesn’t do well,” she said.
Ed Gramlich, a senior adviser at the National Low Income Housing Coalition, cautioned that change was likely to come slowly. Local governments that receive federal funding are required to draw up plans once every five years. For some jurisdictions, the new rules may not need to be addressed until 2020.
Still, he described the new requirement as “tremendous.” Until now, he said, local governments have basically had the freedom to decide for themselves whether they were complying with the 1968 law.
“Jurisdictions would say, ‘We put up a fair housing poster during Fair Housing Month,’ and that was it,” he said. “The whole concept was unenforceable and therefore meaningless.”
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Voices were raised at the Vienna nuclear talks Wednesday night against obdurate Iran
European Union Foreign Executive Federica Mogherini is quoted by debkafile’s intelligence sources as shouting Wednesday night, July 8, at Iran’s Foreign Minister Mohamed Javad Zarif: “If that’s where you stand it’s a pity to waste any more time!” Jarif is quoted as snapping back: “Don’t threaten us!” The US delegation led by Secretary of State John Kerry sat without moving a muscle. But Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov stepped in to cool tempers and urged everyone to go back to the matters at issue.
The shouting started amid the discussion of sanctions relief, after the second deadline for a final deal had slipped by. The Iranians stood by their demand for the immediate lifting of all sanctions – not just the penalties for its nuclear activities, but on the score of involvement in terrorism, which Iran has consistently denied.
Other sticking points between the six powers and Iran are still the UN embargo on Iranian arms sales, restrictions on ballistic missiles and the nature and powers of the mechanism for monitoring Iran’s nuclear activities.
The shouting started amid the discussion of sanctions relief, after the second deadline for a final deal had slipped by. The Iranians stood by their demand for the immediate lifting of all sanctions – not just the penalties for its nuclear activities, but on the score of involvement in terrorism, which Iran has consistently denied.
Other sticking points between the six powers and Iran are still the UN embargo on Iranian arms sales, restrictions on ballistic missiles and the nature and powers of the mechanism for monitoring Iran’s nuclear activities.
Even before this angry exchange, President Barack Obama remarked at a closed meeting on Capital Hill Tuesday night, “The chances of a deal at this point are below 50:50.” He was quoted by the top Democrat Sen. Dick Durbin of Illinois, the Assistant Democratic Leader and a close ally of Obama’s. “I think it’s an indication that this is crunch time and that he said he’s not going to accept a weak or bad deal. He knows what’s at stake here,” said Durbin.
But Obama did not seem to be ruling out letting the negotiations run on for another few days.
At another meeting with US lawmakers Tuesday, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Martin Dempsey spoke in particularly categorical terms against easing restrictions for Iran. "Under no circumstances should we relieve pressure on Iran relative to ballistic missile capabilities and arms trafficking,” he said.
In contrast to Obama, Iranian President Hassan Rouhani sounded upbeat Wednesday night, before setting out on a trip to Moscow. He said: “Negotiations with the P5+1 group are at a sensitive stage and the Islamic republic of Iran is preparing for [the period] post-negotiations and post-sanctions.”
In contrast to Obama, Iranian President Hassan Rouhani sounded upbeat Wednesday night, before setting out on a trip to Moscow. He said: “Negotiations with the P5+1 group are at a sensitive stage and the Islamic republic of Iran is preparing for [the period] post-negotiations and post-sanctions.”
debkafile’s sources agree that the rhetoric on both the American and Iranian sides is probably part and parcel of the bargaining tactics around the table in Vienna. It is therefore hard to judge whether their words are to be taken literally or maneuvers for stepping up pressure on the opposite side.
Our sources deny Israeli media reports claiming that Undersecretary of State Wendy Sherman, who leads the US negotiating team, tried to call Israel’s National Security Adviser Yossie Cohen for an update on the state of the negotiations, but that he avoided taking her calls. If Sherman had really phoned Cohen, our sources say, her call would have certainly been put through to him.
Our sources deny Israeli media reports claiming that Undersecretary of State Wendy Sherman, who leads the US negotiating team, tried to call Israel’s National Security Adviser Yossie Cohen for an update on the state of the negotiations, but that he avoided taking her calls. If Sherman had really phoned Cohen, our sources say, her call would have certainly been put through to him.
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A night view of the Palais Coburg Hotel, where the Iran nuclear talks meetings are being held, in Vienna. Talks toward a historic nuclear deal between Iran and major powers go into overtime after stumbling over what one Western diplomat called "very, very, very tough" remaining issues. (Joe Klamar/AFP/Getty Images)
VIENNA — Negotiators from the United States and Iran met Wednesday amid lingering tension over several spirited and acrimonious meetings earlier in the week, including one in which the Iranian foreign minister told his fellow top diplomats, “Never threaten an Iranian.”
Deputies among the two delegations met to discuss ways to close remaining differences before a new, extended deadline of Friday. But the day passed without a meeting between Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammed Javad Zarif and Secretary of State John F. Kerry.
Meanwhile, reports emerged in the Iranian and Russian news media about arguments erupting Monday at top-level meetings in the Coburg Palace, the expensive hotel where the talks are being held.
Six major world powers — the United States, China, Russia, Britain, France and Germany — are trying to seal a deal in which Iran would accept curbs on its nuclear program in exchange for sanctions being lifted.
Although many issues have been resolved, Iran is holding out for a parallel agreement to lift a U.N. embargo on conventional arms sales to Tehran, a concession which the United States is resisting.
White House on Iran: Never been closer to reaching nuclear deal(0:55)
White House press secretary Josh Earnest says “significant differences” still remain between negotiators in the Iran nuclear talks but that they’re “worth continuing.” (Reuters)
According to an account in Russia’s RIA Novosti news agency, one of the diplomats testily told the Iranians that if they didn’t want to negotiate, they could call off the talks, prompting Zarif’s reply.
Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov then piped up, “Nor the Russians.”
A diplomat speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss Monday’s closed meeting confirmed the remarks but said that Lavrov was joking, not siding with the Iranians.
The diplomat said nobody was making threats and characterized Zarif, known for being jocular but quick to anger, as speaking with “a rhetorical flourish.”
The atmosphere also was heated in another meeting Monday night between Zarif and Kerry. Discussing the remaining sticking points that have caused negotiators to extend their talks twice in the past week, the diplomats grew so agitated that a Kerry aide burst in and advised them to keep their voices down.
One diplomat acknowledged the lingering tension, explaining, “It’s tough.”
Wendy Sherman, the State Department’s undersecretary for political affairs, and Robert Malley, an adviser to President Obama, met Wednesday morning with Iran’s two deputy foreign ministers, Abbas Araghchi and Majid Takht Ravanchi.
Later in the day, Energy Secretary Ernest Moniz held talks with his counterpart, Ali Akbar Salehi, the head of Iran’s Atomic Energy Organization.
By all accounts, the two sides are closer than ever but remain divided on some fundamental issues. American officials in particular have dampened optimistic speculation, cautioning that a year and a half of intense talks could end in failure.
The delay in reaching a comprehensive agreement by Wednesday has already assured an extension to 60 days of the period Congress will have to review any agreement before Obama can act to waive sanctions.
Sen. Ben Sasse (R-Neb.), in a letter to Obama late Tuesday, questioned the ability of the United States, under terms reportedly being negotiated, to find Iran has violated the agreement and reinstate sanctions.
“If a dispute over Iran’s compliance arises, and the consequence is merely votes and referrals to the [U.N.] Security Council and more votes, then the burden of proof, for all practical purposes, will be on the United States to demonstrate Iran’s noncompliance,” Sasse wrote in the letter, which his office released Wednesday. “That is a recipe for failure.”
Carol Morello is the diplomatic correspondent for The Washington Post, covering the State Department.
Karen DeYoung is associate editor and senior national security correspondent for the Washington Post.
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LVIV, Ukraine—U.S. and Ukrainian officials are making plans to expand the training of Ukrainian military forces at a training base in the western part of the country, officials said Wednesday.
The U.S. is currently training Ukrainian national guardsmen at the training site, about 28 miles from Lviv, Ukraine. Members of the National Guard, part of the Ministry of Interior, aren’t front-line troops but are in charge of defending supply lines and operating check points.
Ukrainian military officials said Wednesday they want to bring their conventional army troops and special-operations forces to the training center to run through the course taught by U.S. soldiers from the 173rd Airborne Brigade, based in Italy.
The Ukrainians have selected mechanized and airborne units that would be part of an expanded training program.
U.S. officials have also begun planning for a potential expansion of the training, lining up funding and beginning planning for the expansion. But officials said a final decision on increasing the training is up to the White House. White House officials didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.
On a visit to the training base, Gen. Ray Odierno, the Army chief of staff, said it was clear the Ukrainian government wanted the U.S. to expand its training, but declined to say whether he would support stepped-up training.
Still, Gen. Odierno said he backed Ukrainian plans to expand the capability of the training base to handle larger units, saying the center is critical for Kiev to prepare and sustain their forces fighting Russia-backed separatists.
Soldiers of the 173rd said the National Guard has fought high intensity engagements against well-armed forces, including sustained barrages of artillery fire by Russian forces, a particular kind of attack that U.S. forces haven’t experienced for decades.
Gen. Odierno said that wartime experience meant U.S. forces are learning important lessons from Ukrainians even as they teach Kiev’s forces about basic combat.
“This training is shared training,” Gen. Odierno said. “It is American forces training Ukrainian forces, and it’s Ukrainian forces training American forces.”
A Wall Street Journal reporter accompanied Gen. Odierno on his visit to the base. As he toured the training ground, Gen. Odierno told the 173rd soldiers that it was important to learn from Ukrainians how the Russians and separatists were fighting.
“We haven’t faced something like this ourselves for a while,” Gen. Odierno said.
The U.S. also is teaching the Ukrainians how to disarm roadside bombs. The training is based on the kinds of mines being used in eastern Ukraine and on tactics that U.S. soldiers saw in Iraq and Afghanistan and believe are likely to migrate to Ukraine.
Soldiers from the 173rd also have brought lessons learned in Afghanistan and Iraq on battlefield medicine. At the training center, U.S. soldiers played the part of wounded civilians, complete with fake blood, dummy severed limbs and simulated chest wounds.
Staff Sgt. Brian Kociuruba, a battalion senior medic with the 173rd, said he was teaching the Ukrainians to work with limited supplies, emphasizing that all soldiers need to know how to administer first aid. He said that in recent weeks the units he has trained have quickly improved as medics.
“They have come a long way, I would fight with any of them, I would let any of them treat me,” Sgt. Kociuruba said.
Gen. Odierno asked one Ukrainian medic if he was going to be a doctor one day.
“No,” the Ukrainian officer responded. “I am going to be infantry”
“It is the same thing,” Gen. Odierno quipped.
Write to Julian E. Barnes at julian.barnes@wsj.com
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The lines are clearly drawn in Washington on President Obama’s plan for a nuclear deal with Iran. As negotiations for a final agreement continue well past their June 30 deadline, most Republicans oppose the deal and Democrats will not block it.
Many critics claim to believe that a “good deal,” which would permanently dismantle the clerical regime’s capacity to construct nuclear weapons, is still possible if Mr. Obama would augment diplomacy with the threat of more sanctions and the use of force. Although these critics accurately highlight the framework’s serious faults, they also make a mistake: More sanctions and threats of military raids now are unlikely to thwart the mullahs’ nuclear designs. We will never know whether more crippling sanctions and force could have cracked the clerical regime. We do know that the president sought the opposite path even before American and Iranian diplomats began negotiating in Europe.
But hawks who believe that airstrikes are the only possible option for stopping an Iranian nuke should welcome a deal perhaps more than anyone. This is because the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action is tailor-made to set Washington on a collision course with Tehran. The plan leaves the Islamic Republic as a threshold nuclear-weapons state and in the short-term insulates the mullahs’ regional behavior from serious American reproach.
To imagine such a deal working is to imagine the Islamic Republic without its revolutionary faith. So Mr. Obama’s deal-making is in effect establishing the necessary conditions for military action after January 2017, when a new president takes office.
No American president would destroy Iranian nuclear sites without first exhausting diplomacy. The efforts by Mr. Obama and Secretary of State John Kerry to compromise with Tehran—on uranium enrichment, verification and sanctions relief, among other concerns—are comprehensive, if nothing else. If the next president chose to strike after the Iranians stonewalled or repeatedly violated Mr. Obama’s agreement, however, the newcomer would be on much firmer political ground, at home and abroad, than if he tried without this failed accord.
Without a deal the past will probably repeat itself: Washington will incrementally increase sanctions while the Iranians incrementally advance their nuclear capabilities. Without a deal, diplomacy won’t die. Episodically it has continued since an Iranian opposition group revealed in 2002 the then-clandestine nuclear program. Via this meandering diplomatic route, Tehran has gotten the West to accept its nuclear progress.
Critics of the president who suggest that a much better agreement is within reach with more sanctions are making the same analytical error as Mr. Obama: They both assume that the Iranian regime will give priority to economics over religious ideology. The president wants to believe that Iran’s “supreme leader” Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and President Hasan Rouhani can be weaned from the bomb through commerce; equally war-weary sanctions enthusiasts fervently hope that economic pain alone can force the mullahs to set aside their faith. In their minds Iran is a nation that the U.S., or even Israel, can intimidate and contain.
The problem is that the Islamic Republic remains, as Iranian Foreign Minister Javad Zarif proudly acknowledges in his memoirs, a revolutionary Islamic movement. Such a regime by definition would never bend to America’s economic coercion and never gut the nuclear centerpiece of its military planning for 30 years and allow Westerners full and transparent access to its nuclear secrets and personnel. This is the revolutionary Islamic state that is replicating versions of the militant Lebanese Hezbollah among the Arab Shiites, ever fearful at home of seditious Western culture and prepared to use terrorism abroad.
Above all, the clerical regime cannot be understood without appreciating the centrality of anti-Americanism to its religious identity. The election of a Republican administration might reinvigorate Iranian fear of American military power, as the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003 did for a year or two. But it did not stop Iran’s nuclear march, and there is no reason to believe now that Mr. Khamenei and the Revolutionary Guards, who oversee the nuclear program, will betray all that they hold holy.
But a nuclear deal is not going to prevent conflict either. The presidency of the so-called pragmatic mullah Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani from 1989 to 1997 was an aggressive period of Iranian terrorism. If President Rouhani, Mr. Rafsanjani’s former right-hand man, can pull off a nuclear agreement, we are likely to see a variation of the 1990s Iranian aggression.
Such aggression has already begun. Revolutionary Guards are fighting in Syria and Iraq, and Iranian aid flows to the Shiite Houthis in Yemen. Wherever the Islamic Republic’s influence grows among Arab Shiites, Sunni-Shiite conflict grows worse. With greater internecine Muslim hostility, the clerical regime inevitably intensifies its anti-American propaganda and actions in an effort to compete with radical Sunnis and their competing claims to lead an anti-Western Muslim world.
Iranian adventurism, especially if it includes anti-American terrorism, will eventually provoke a more muscular U.S. response. The odds of Tehran respecting any nuclear deal while it pushes to increase its regional influence—unchecked by Washington—aren’t good.Mr. Obama may think he can snap back sanctions and a united Western front to counter nefarious Iranian nuclear behavior, but the odds aren’t good once European businesses start returning to the Islamic Republic. Washington has a weak track record of using extraterritorial sanctions against our richest and closest allies and trading partners. The French alone may join the Americans again to curtail Iran and European profits.
With a failed deal, no plausible peaceful alternatives, and Mr. Obama no longer in office, Republicans and Democrats can then debate, more seriously than before, whether military force remains an option. Odds are it will not be. When contemplating the possibility that preventive military strikes against the clerical regime won’t be a one-time affair, even a hawkish Republican president may well default to containment. But if Washington does strike, it will be because Mr. Obama showed that peaceful means don’t work against the clerics’ nuclear and regional ambitions.
Mr. Gerecht, a former Iranian-targets officer in the Central Intelligence Agency’s clandestine service, is a senior fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies. Mr. Dubowitz is the foundation’s executive director and heads its Center on Sanctions and Illicit Finance.
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For the first quarter of 2015, The New York Times Company reported a net loss of $14.4 million. TheTimes would have been profitable, last quarter, had it not incurred a $40.3 million pension settlement charge. This sizable settlement charge made me curious; so I went to The New York Times Company’s 2014 Annual Report and discovered, on page 10, the following statement: “Our qualified defined benefit pension plans were underfunded by approximately $264 million as of December 28, 2014.” On the same page, it was also mentioned that: “The underfunded status of our pension plans may adversely affect our operations, financial condition and liquidity.” When throwing in the Times’ participation in multiemployer pension plans, which subjects the Times to significant liabilities, then the Times is facing a financial double-whammy of declining print ad revenues and unsustainable pension liabilities.
What prompted me to dig deeper, into The New York Times Company’s pension woes, was a recentarticle written by Gary North. In this article, Dr. North stated the Times’ loss
…had to do with pensions and falling ad revenue. Pensions are inescapable sources of losses. You do not get rid of these. They just keep adding up. The more people you have on your staff, the more people who will retire, and the more people who retire, the greater are your losses. This is not some one-time write-off. This is a permanent condition. This is terminal cancer.
To be sure, falling ad revenue is a serious issue for the Times. On page 17 of the Times’ March 29, 2015 10-Q, management acknowledged: “We remain in a challenging environment, reflecting an increasingly competitive and fragmented landscape, and visibility remains limited.” Management further stated: “We expect advertising trends to remain challenging and subject to significant month-to-month volatility.” Along these lines, when Jeff Bezos purchased the Washington Post, in 2013, an August 5, 2013 Wall Street Journal article said the following about Bezos’ acquisition:
It comes as many newspapers are struggling to survive. Print newspaper ad revenues fell 55% between 2007 and 2012, according to the Newspaper Association of America, as advertisers and readers have defected to the Web. Some newspapers have been forced to slash costs and in some cases file for bankruptcy. Just three days ago the New York Times Co. sold the Boston Globe for $70 million, having paid $1.1 billion for it in 1993.
Although a declining trend in newspaper advertising revenue is a grave problem for the Times, the more immediate threat, to its financial health, pertains to the Times’ underfunded pensions. For example, at fiscal year-end December 28, 2014, the Times’ pensions were underfunded by $532.1 million (per page 80 of the 2014 Annual Report, qualified plans were underfunded by $264.3 million while non-qualified plan liabilities were $267.8 million). Keep in mind that these figures are carried on the balance sheet with $15.8 million accounted for as a current liability and $516.3 million as a long-term liability.
To give The New York Times Company’s pension liabilities some context, let’s look at the Times’ tangible equity position. At the end of the first quarter of 2015, the Times is reporting $829.7 million of equity. However, when applying some basic analysis to the Times’ balance sheet, tangible equity drops by over 50%. Deferred tax assets, for instance, are intangible and the Times has $315.7 million of such intangibles on its balance sheet. Goodwill is another type of intangible asset and theTimes is carrying $108.6 million of goodwill as a long-term asset. These intangible assets total to $424.3 million; which leaves the New York Times with tangible equity of $405.4 million at the quarter ending March 29, 2015—a troubling picture when considering the magnitude of the Times’ pension liabilities.
When a pension is underfunded, the benefit obligations exceed the fair value of the plan’s assets. At fiscal year-end 2014, the Times’ benefit obligations totaled to $2.369 billion while the fair value of its pension assets was $1.837 billion (which equals the above-mentioned underfunding figure of $532.1 million). All of the aforementioned assets are held in the Times’ qualified plans.
Per the Times’ 2014 10-K, the expected long-term rate of return on pension plan assets is 7.02%. The $1.837 billion of plan assets were allocated to multiple asset categories such as equities, mutual funds, corporate bonds, U.S. Treasuries, municipal bonds, private equity funds, hedge funds, along with cash of $128 million and annuities of $76 million; which means a little over $1.6 billion of assets are subject to market risk. With stock and bond markets at extreme valuations, presently, I believe a 7.02% expected rate of return is overly optimistic.
What I believe is more likely is for the Times’ pension assets to get hammered due to stocks and bonds being at bubbly valuations. As David Stockman conveys in his recent article Wall Street R.I.P——The Bubble Is Dying At The Zero Bound:
At 2X GDP in 1981, the financial market was valued at its multi-decade trend level. Since then, the market value of corporate equities has risen 17X and debt outstanding is up by 20X.Accordingly, financial markets today are capitalized at 5X national income. That’s an elephantine bubble by any other name.
Charles Hugh Smith is in agreement that stocks and bonds are in extreme bubble territory. In his May 19, 2015 article Stocks and Bonds Are Due for a Generational Crash of 75% Smith states the following:
Measured in GDP, stocks and bonds have reached extremes that make no sense except as the result of an unprecedented global credit bubble. Credit bubbles have a history of not being as permanent and durable as those living in the peak of the bubble expect.
He goes on to conclude:
By any reasonable measure, the current credit-bubble boom in stocks and bonds is getting long in the tooth after 34 years of relentless expansion, and the rise of securities to 400% of GDP is reaching extremes that are increasingly difficult to support, much less push higher.From the point of view of history, a reversion to generational lows is inevitable, and a valuation level around 50% of GDP for stocks is a fair target. This implies a 75% decline in both stocks and bonds within the next decade, if not sooner.
With what Smith and Stockman have asserted, it certainly appears The New York Times Companywill not only fail to achieve the 7.02% return on its pension plans’ assets, but will take a massive haircut in its pensions’ holdings when the financial markets head deeply southward.
This is where The New York Times Company’s financial fragility is revealed. Should the above-mentioned $1.6 billion of pension assets take a 25% haircut (which is $400 million), then the Times’ tangible equity will drop to $0; using the Times’ tangible net worth, at 3/29/15, as the basis (yes, I said $0). Remember, when determining the funding status, of a pension plan, the fair market value of the plan’s assets is used in the calculation.
Such financial fragility is self-inflicted. As I detailed in my February 25, 2009 essay, about the Times, this company’s executive management team was reckless in managing the company’s balance sheet. Between 2000 and the date I wrote that essay, the Times had executed stock buybacks totaling $1,951,727,000 and paid out dividends of $827,874,000. Had the Times’ management team been financially conservative, and retained this cash, The New York Times Company’s cash, working capital, and equity positions would all be higher to the tune of $2,779,601,000.
It has taken longer than I had expected for the Times to go bankrupt. Falling print ad revenue is going to continue taking its toll. Past financial mismanagement has already taken a heavy toll. Throw into the mix the Times’ cancerous pension woes, and we have a company heading for the financial graveyard.
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War-time suicide attempts are most common in newer enlisted soldiers who have not been deployed, according to a study billed as the most comprehensive analysis of a problem that has plagued the United States military in recent years. Officers are less likely to try to end their lives. And at both levels, attempts are more common among women and those without a high school diploma. The study analyzed records on nearly 10,000 suicide attempts among almost a million active-duty Army members during the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, from 2004 to 2009. Rates increased during that time. The study was published Wednesday in the journal JAMA Psychiatry.
In late June, a short-haired, 41-year-old Russian in a black shirt and brown jacket entered a courtroom in Bonn, Germany. His face and appearance were completely unremarkable, yet numerous reporters, most of them Russian, were there, eager to finally see Sergei Maksimov, the man who allegedly had been terrorizing the Russian blogosphere for years—possibly at the behest of the Kremlin.
The prosecution contends that Maksimov is Hacker Hell, a cybercriminal who, since the late 2000s, has been breaking into email and LiveJournal accounts of prominent Russian bloggers and opposition activists. After getting access to a blog, Hell would usually delete all of its contents and write posts in deliberately faulty Russian, full of obscene language and anti-Semitic and homophobic remarks. He also maintained a personal blog, called “Virtual Inquisition,” where he celebrated his achievements.
Since the government controls almost all the traditional media that matter in the country, the Internet has become the last area where real public debate can happen in Russia. It’s also become a battlefield, where hacks, data theft and other forms of cyberwarfare are used to expose, compromise and hurt enemies, both in the opposition and the government itself. Whether Hell was a pawn of the government or not, the case offers a rare glimpse inside the shadowy war between Russia’s internal hackers.
Hell made a lot of enemies over the years. He hacked popular bloggers and politicians, publicists and writers, and twice hacked the email and Twitter accounts of Alexei Navalny, a Russian opposition leader. Eventually, his enemies caught up with him. Two journalists who had been targeted by Hell took it upon themselves to find out who he was (and to publish their results in a blog, starting in 2010). Having pieced together various hints that Hell left in his posts (his degree from a Moscow university, his German residence, a physical altercation with another blogger that happened before his crusade started), they came to the conclusion that Hell was Maksimov, a Russian who moved to Germany in 1997. In 2012, Navalny hired a German lawyer who persuaded the local police to investigate Maksimov.
To do that, Navalny’s team had to provide evidence and, among other things, translate Hell’s posts into German. According to online newspaper Meduza’s account of the court case in Bonn, when police came to Maksimov’s house with a search warrant at the end of 2013, they found a notebook signed with the name “Hell” and a document called “Gospel According to Hell.” After inspecting his hard drive, they discovered thousands of emails written by Navalny and his wife. They also discovered that Maksimov had access to an email address that used the name Hell. The secret question to restore the password on this email account was “What’s my name?” The answer was “Maksimov,” according to a police agent’s testimony in court.
Maksimov is charged with counterfeiting, harassment and data theft. The maximum sentence he could receive is three years in prison.
Hell’s targets were mostly opposition bloggers and liberal politicians, which is why some think he was a tool of Russian President Vladimir Putin. When he broke into Navalny’s email and Twitter account for the second time, in June 2012, the hack came days after the politician’s laptop and mobile phone were confiscated by law enforcement officers during a search. Some of the facts mentioned in the emails published by Hell were later raised in lawsuits that Russian law enforcement brought against Navalny. Hell gave several interviews to pro-government publications, stating that he had acted on his own and wanted to prove that Navalny was “a fraud.”
No one has offered proof that Hell was working for the government, but such speculation is in line with a Newsweek investigation of Russian hackers and a recent New York Times report that said the Russian government keeps “factories” of Internet trolls on the payroll. “The Russian state is endlessly building itself up, and it strengthens not its schools and hospitals but the institutions that fight the enemies they made up themselves,” says Anton Nossik, a Russian Internet pioneer and one of the top industry experts. He says the Federal Security Service or FSB, the main successor to the KGB, is known for using the tools of cybercrime to attack the opposition. “One of their methods is just to pass the stuff that they obtained themselves to a dummy who then claims that he got it by hacking someone.” Nossik thinks that Hell was one such dummy and did most of his hacks with information he received from the government.
The Kremlin may have its pawns, but some hackers are fighting back. For the past 18 months, a vigilante hacker group has been steadily leaking information from the phones and email accounts of high-ranking Russian government officials. In August 2014, the group even hacked the Twitter account of Dmitry Medvedev, the Russian prime minister, and took control of it for 50 minutes, posting tweets such as “I resign. I’m ashamed of the government’s actions. I’m very sorry” and “Something I have wanted to say for a long time: Vova [Vladimir Putin, Russia’s president], you’re wrong.”
The group calls itself Anonimnyi Internatsional (Anonymous International), but it’s usually referred to as Shaltai Boltai (the Russian translation of Humpty Dumpty). This is what the name on the group’s contact email says, and even though the activists maintain it’s just an alias for one of its members, the name has stuck.
According to a group representative who prefers to be called “Lewis” and agreed to answerNewsweek’s questions via email, members of Anonymous International decided to use the names of characters in Lewis Carroll’s stories, because “the world of Through the Looking Glass seems appropriate to describe the current Russian reality.”
“There’s so much absurdity and incompetence that even Carroll with all his imagination wouldn’t be able to describe it,” Lewis says.
Nossik, the Internet expert, backs that up. “The people who provide the technology for the government are fantastically incompetent,” he says, adding while some organs of government are adept at cyberwar, others are not. For example, he says, 12 people are in charge of handling Medvedev’s social media accounts, and each one of them knows all the passwords, so “if somebody gets drunk at a party and leaves his laptop open, everyone at the party can get access.”
Anonymous International, which does not appear to be linked to the well-known hacker collective known as Anonymous, first came to prominence on December 31, 2014, when it published Putin’s New Year’s address to the nation several hours before it was broadcast. Since then, the group has been responsible for hacking Medvedev’s Twitter account and releasing the alleged correspondence of various Russian officials, from a deputy prime minister to the head of Roskomnadzor, the government organization overseeing the media. From the emails attributed to the officials and their subordinates, it could be inferred that they put pressure on the media over how to spin certain stories, closely followed every step of opposition leaders and spent hundreds of man-hours monitoring jokes about the government on Twitter. Some people whose correspondence was leaked confirmed that the emails were real; the officials themselves did not comment.
Lewis says Anonymous International is an independent “team of people united by common purposes, one of which is to change the reality.” In some previous interviews, he has said members of the group finance their operations from their personal funds; in others, he has said that undisclosed clients pay Anonymous International for information. “Both these statements are true,” he toldNewsweek. “And not all our clients know that we are Anonymous International. Far from all.”
Lewis says things his team does for money may also have a real impact. “We would be happy if investigations were launched after our publications,” he said. “But nothing has happened so far. We hope that this time eventually comes, but probably not very soon and after some big bloodshed. And some stuff we just leak for fun.”
The access Anonymous International appears to enjoy has led some to suggest it might be backed by somebody within the government using leaks for leverage in internal power struggles or for PR purposes. Oleg Kashin, a prominent Russian journalist, says he came to that conclusion after noticing how “filtered” the leaked correspondence of one administration official was. “He turns out to be a kind of positive character: He doesn’t steal, he doesn’t orchestrate crimes, he’s just a PR guy who does his job well,” Kashin told Newsweek. “I really think this is just a new way of spreading the word about the work of the Putin administration for people who don’t trust Russian TV.”
Lewis dismisses that theory. “We have obtained all the documents and information ourselves, but if somebody thinks that we work for the Kremlin, we don’t really care,” he says.
He also says he believes Maksimov was only one of the hackers who used the alias Hell. “There were others. He’s just the one who showed it off, and now he took all the heat. He is a simple cracker who used all the standard methods to hack simple email accounts.”
In Bonn, Maksimov told the judge he wasn’t responsible for the hacks and had just used the nickname “Hell” on several message boards. He also claimed that the real Hell helped him prepare for the trial, and that the reason he had Navalny’s correspondence on his computer was because he was doing research for the case.
Anonymous International, according to Lewis, is following the trial with “pity...this guy was just used and thrown out, like a condom.” As for the group members, they are aware that they could be arrested and prosecuted too, but “if it happens, it happens.”
“At least, unlike Hell, we won’t be ashamed of what we did.”
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Since India’s Supreme Court recriminalized sodomy in 2013, gays have increasingly become targets of robbery and extortion, a trend fueled by Internet dating, activists say.
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