Scientists Want to Replace Pesticides With Bacteria
Indigo’s microbes could change Big Agriculture forever.
By
April 16, 2018, 7:00 PM GMT+10
Healthy microbiomes are increasingly recognized as critical to our overall health. SOURCE: INDIGO AG
Fresh snow coats the sidewalks outside Indigo Ag Inc.’s Boston offices, but inside the temperature is calibrated to mimic spring in the Midwest. Hundreds of almost identical soy seedlings sit beneath high-intensity arc lamps, basking in the artificially sunny 60F weather.
The plants aren’t destined to stay identical for long. “We haven’t imposed the stress yet,” says Geoffrey von Maltzahn, the company’s lanky 37-year-old co-founder. The MIT-trained microbiologist gestures toward photos showing what happens when you apply Indigo’s signature product—a coating of carefully chosen microbes—to some seeds but not others before planting, then dial back the water supply: One shows a tall, flourishing stalk; the other, what looks like a tangle of shriveled leaves.
In humans, a healthy microbiome—the universe of bacteria, fungi, and viruses that lives inside all of us—is increasingly recognized as critical to overall health. The same is true of the plant world, and Indigo is among the dozen or so agricultural technology startups trying to take advantage of the growing scientific consensus. Their work is enabled by advances in machine learning and a steep reduction in the cost of genetic sequencing, used by companies to determine which microbes are present. Approaches vary: AgBiome LLC, with funding from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, is studying how microbes can help control sweet potato weevils in Africa, while Ginkgo Bioworks Inc. announced a $100 million joint venture with Bayer AG to explore how microbes can encourage plants to produce their own nitrogen.
The grow room at Indigo Ag.SOURCE: INDIGO AG
Indigo is the best-funded of the bunch, having raised more than $400 million. To develop its microbial cocktails, Indigo agronomists comb through normal fields in dry conditions to see which plants seem healthier than average. They take samples of the thriving plants and “fingerprint” their microbiomes using genetic sequencing; once they’ve done this with thousands of samples, they use statistical methods to pick out which microbes occur most often in the healthiest plants. These proceed to testing, then large-scale field trials.
The company’s first commercial products are focused on improving drought tolerance, one of the most difficult traits to address through genetic modification. “It’s like a symphony,” founder von Maltzahn says of a plant’s reaction to water stress, “and GMOs are like slamming down on one note on one instrument.” Drought conditions are likely to become a greater threat to agriculture because of global warming. Indigo is also investing heavily in research and development efforts to see how microbes influence factors such as nitrogen use and pest resistance, aiming to reduce or even eliminate the use of synthetic pesticides and fertilizers as well as genetically modified seeds. With the general public rejecting chemical treatments and GMOs in favor of “natural” foods, Indigo is counting on a potentially multibillion-dollar market. So far, its microbe coatings have boosted cotton yields by an average of 14 percent in full-scale commercial trials in Texas and wheat yields by as much as 15 percent in Kansas.
Indigo’s microbe coatings have boosted cotton yields by an average of 14 percent in commercial trials in Texas.SOURCE: INDIGO AG
Indigo Chief Executive Officer David Perry doesn’t want to just market a suite of seed treatments, however. He wants to reshape the structure of the agriculture industry completely, competing not only with chemical companies such as Monsanto and Dow Chemical, but also with agricultural distributors like Cargill and Archer Daniels Midland. Perry, a biochemist who grew up on a small farm in rural Arkansas, founded two pharma-related companies, a drugmaker he eventually sold for multiple billions of dollars and an online marketplace for research supplies that went public in 1999. After joining Indigo in 2015, Perry quickly zeroed in on a fundamental business challenge: Most farmers have no choice but to sell their harvest at commodity prices. Without the opportunity to earn more for using environmentally sustainable methods, they have little incentive to alter their ways.
For farmers to adopt Indigo technology, they’d need a buyer willing to pay a premium for non-GMO, pesticide-free products. So, Perry reasoned, Indigo would facilitate the sale. Today the company contracts upfront with hundreds of farmers to buy their entire harvest of, say, Indigo Wheat, at a hefty premium. “Now you’re growing a value-added product, and that starts to go directly to farm profitability,” he says. Indigo then sells the wheat to end users such as breweries, flour mills, and food companies, which have become more interested in transparency and control when it comes to the origin of their grains. Perry says he’s betting on a long-term shift away from commodity agriculture and toward specialty markets, as the coffee and cocoa industries are seeing.
While the science behind microbiome treatments is promising, Indigo has a long road ahead. Its success depends on proving that microbes can meaningfully influence more than just drought tolerance while at the same time scaling up to the kind of sprawling, complex operation that can buy and sell millions of bushels of grain from tens of thousands of farms.
Michael Dean, chief investment officer for the venture capital investment platform AgFunder Inc., sees Indigo’s technologies as potentially disruptive but suggests that one of the biggest challenges the company will face is persuading farmers to turn their back on comfortable relationships with Big Ag. “Farmers have tended to buy seed from the guy their dad bought from, and sold it to the same grain elevator,” Dean says. “This is going to make waves, and not everyone will be happy about it.”
BOTTOM LINE - Leveraging the plant microbiome to improve crop yields is more and more promising, but any upstarts will have a hard time getting between farmers and Monsanto.
Monday, April 16, 2018
IMF chief: Global trade system 'in danger of being torn apart' - CNN Money
IMF chief: Global trade system 'in danger of being torn apart'
by Jethro Mullen @CNNMoney
April 11, 2018: 5:52 AM ET
Kudlow on what a trade war looks like: 'I don't know. You tell me.'
Escalating tensions are putting the global trading system at risk, the head of the International Monetary Fund warned Wednesday.
Calling on countries to steer clear of protectionism, IMF Managing Director Christine Lagarde said in a speech that the "system of open trade based on rules and shared responsibility is now in danger of being torn apart."
Her comments in Hong Kong come as the United States and China are locked in a tense trade dispute in which they have threatened to slap tariffs on tens of billions of dollars of each other's exports.
Lagarde didn't pin the blame for the current crisis on any particular countries, saying that the splintering of the global trading systems would be "an inexcusable, collective policy failure."
She urged countries to "reduce trade barriers and resolve disagreements without using exceptional measures."
That appeared to be a veiled reference to recent moves by the Trump administration to impose tariffs outside of the World Trade Organization process. Experts have warned that the US moves are already undermining the system.
Related: How did China end up posing as the defender of global trade?
But Lagarde's speech also reflected some of the United States' grievances about China.
"Each country has a responsibility to improve the trade system by looking at its own practices and by committing to a level playing field where all countries will be following the rules," she said. "This includes ... better protection of intellectual property [and] reducing the distortions of policies that favor state enterprises."
Trump has cited alleged Chinese intellectual property theft as a reason for proposed tariffs on $50 billion on Chinese goods. China has rejected the US allegations but also promised to step up its efforts to strengthen intellectual property protection.
Richard Quest: The US-China trade war has begun
Lagarde warned that measures like tariffs "hurt everyone, especially poorer consumers."
"Not only do they lead to more expensive products and more limited choices, but they also prevent trade from playing its essential role of boosting productivity and spreading new technologies," she said.
If the United States wants to reduce its huge trade deficit with China and other countries -- as Trump has repeatedly said he intends to -- Lagarde said it would be better off using "policies that affect the economy as a whole."
She suggested the US government should, for example, try to reduce its massive budget deficit by gradually reining in spending and increasing the amount of revenue its brings in (which governments usually do by raising taxes).
The United States is currently moving in the opposite direction, though.
Following the recent tax cuts and an agreement to raise federal spending, the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office now projects that annual US budget deficits will cross the trillion-dollar mark in 2020, two years sooner than previously forecast.
CNNMoney (Hong Kong)
First published April 11, 2018: 5:52 AM ET
by Jethro Mullen @CNNMoney
April 11, 2018: 5:52 AM ET
Kudlow on what a trade war looks like: 'I don't know. You tell me.'
Escalating tensions are putting the global trading system at risk, the head of the International Monetary Fund warned Wednesday.
Calling on countries to steer clear of protectionism, IMF Managing Director Christine Lagarde said in a speech that the "system of open trade based on rules and shared responsibility is now in danger of being torn apart."
Her comments in Hong Kong come as the United States and China are locked in a tense trade dispute in which they have threatened to slap tariffs on tens of billions of dollars of each other's exports.
Lagarde didn't pin the blame for the current crisis on any particular countries, saying that the splintering of the global trading systems would be "an inexcusable, collective policy failure."
She urged countries to "reduce trade barriers and resolve disagreements without using exceptional measures."
That appeared to be a veiled reference to recent moves by the Trump administration to impose tariffs outside of the World Trade Organization process. Experts have warned that the US moves are already undermining the system.
Related: How did China end up posing as the defender of global trade?
But Lagarde's speech also reflected some of the United States' grievances about China.
"Each country has a responsibility to improve the trade system by looking at its own practices and by committing to a level playing field where all countries will be following the rules," she said. "This includes ... better protection of intellectual property [and] reducing the distortions of policies that favor state enterprises."
Trump has cited alleged Chinese intellectual property theft as a reason for proposed tariffs on $50 billion on Chinese goods. China has rejected the US allegations but also promised to step up its efforts to strengthen intellectual property protection.
Richard Quest: The US-China trade war has begun
Lagarde warned that measures like tariffs "hurt everyone, especially poorer consumers."
"Not only do they lead to more expensive products and more limited choices, but they also prevent trade from playing its essential role of boosting productivity and spreading new technologies," she said.
If the United States wants to reduce its huge trade deficit with China and other countries -- as Trump has repeatedly said he intends to -- Lagarde said it would be better off using "policies that affect the economy as a whole."
She suggested the US government should, for example, try to reduce its massive budget deficit by gradually reining in spending and increasing the amount of revenue its brings in (which governments usually do by raising taxes).
The United States is currently moving in the opposite direction, though.
Following the recent tax cuts and an agreement to raise federal spending, the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office now projects that annual US budget deficits will cross the trillion-dollar mark in 2020, two years sooner than previously forecast.
CNNMoney (Hong Kong)
First published April 11, 2018: 5:52 AM ET
Facebook shuts down white supremacist Richard Spencer's pages - Independent
April 15, 2018
Facebook shuts down white supremacist Richard Spencer's pages
The two pages on the social media site belonged to Spencer’s National Policy Institute and his website altright.com
Maya Oppenheim @mayaoppenheim
The provocateur who is credited with coining the term 'alt-right' helped organise the 'Unite the Right' rally in Charlottesville AP
Facebook has taken down two pages associated with white supremacist Richard Spencer.
The two pages on the social media site belonged to Spencer’s National Policy Institute and his website altright.com - both of which are listed on the far-right leader’s Twitter bio.
Links to both pages - which had less than 15,000 followers in total - now show error messages.
Facebook told Buzzfeed News on Friday the pages were shut down and said the platform does not allow hate groups on their site.
The move comes after Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg's testimony before Congress earlier this week about his firm’s privacy policies and the recent Cambridge Analytica scandal. The tech titan said Facebook does not support hate groups using their platform.
READ MORE
White supremacist Richard Spencer 'banned from 26 European countries'
Richard Spencer dismissed as 'ridiculous man' in explosive interview
White supremacist Richard Spencer challenged by reporter
White supermacist Richard Spencer's fans arrested for attempted murder
"We do not allow hate groups on Facebook, overall. So if there's a group that their primary purpose, or a large part of what they do, is spreading hate, we will ban them from the platform overall,” Mr Zuckerberg said.
He also said Facebook had not done enough to ban hate speech, using his opening statement to say: "It is clear now that we didn't do enough to prevent these tools from being used for harm as well. That goes for fake news, for foreign interference and hate speech.”
The Twitter profile belonging to Mr Spencer - who has over 80,000 followers on the site - remains active. Nevertheless, he has been subject to clampdowns in the past and in 2016 Twitter took down the National Policy Institute's Twitter page as well as his.
Mr Spencer’s account was later reinstated but he had his blue verification tick revoked in 2017 due to Twitter launching a crackdown on far-right figures.
The provocateur, who is credited with coining the term “alt-right”, helped organise the “Unite the Right” rally in Charlottesville last summer which saw neo-Nazis, KKK members and “alt-right” supporters descend on the ordinarily quiet university town.
Tensions between fascists and counter-protestors turned deadly after a 20-year-old man, who officials say had Nazi sympathies, deliberately ploughed his car into the crowd of peaceful anti-fascist demonstrators and killed a female civil rights activist.
Mr Spencer’s arrival on university campuses for talks in the months that followed the Charlottesville violence attracted a slew of protests and cancellations. In Florida, governor Rick Scott declared a state of emergency ahead of a planned speech at the University of Florida.
Protesters yelled "Go home Spencer, go home," "Say it loud, say it clear, Nazis are not welcome here" and "Go home, Nazis, go home" while armed guards kept a watch on the speech.
Mr Spencer, who had his gym membership revoked last May after a university professor accused him of being a neo-Nazi mid-workout, sparked outrage when he made a number of allusions to Nazi ideology during a speech at a conference in Washington in November 2016.
“Hail Trump! Hail our people! Hail victory!” he declared, prompting audience members to leap to their feet in applause, with several appearing to make drawn-out Heil Hitler salutes.
The Independent contacted a representative of Facebook for comment.
Facebook shuts down white supremacist Richard Spencer's pages
The two pages on the social media site belonged to Spencer’s National Policy Institute and his website altright.com
Maya Oppenheim @mayaoppenheim
The provocateur who is credited with coining the term 'alt-right' helped organise the 'Unite the Right' rally in Charlottesville AP
Facebook has taken down two pages associated with white supremacist Richard Spencer.
The two pages on the social media site belonged to Spencer’s National Policy Institute and his website altright.com - both of which are listed on the far-right leader’s Twitter bio.
Links to both pages - which had less than 15,000 followers in total - now show error messages.
Facebook told Buzzfeed News on Friday the pages were shut down and said the platform does not allow hate groups on their site.
The move comes after Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg's testimony before Congress earlier this week about his firm’s privacy policies and the recent Cambridge Analytica scandal. The tech titan said Facebook does not support hate groups using their platform.
READ MORE
White supremacist Richard Spencer 'banned from 26 European countries'
Richard Spencer dismissed as 'ridiculous man' in explosive interview
White supremacist Richard Spencer challenged by reporter
White supermacist Richard Spencer's fans arrested for attempted murder
"We do not allow hate groups on Facebook, overall. So if there's a group that their primary purpose, or a large part of what they do, is spreading hate, we will ban them from the platform overall,” Mr Zuckerberg said.
He also said Facebook had not done enough to ban hate speech, using his opening statement to say: "It is clear now that we didn't do enough to prevent these tools from being used for harm as well. That goes for fake news, for foreign interference and hate speech.”
The Twitter profile belonging to Mr Spencer - who has over 80,000 followers on the site - remains active. Nevertheless, he has been subject to clampdowns in the past and in 2016 Twitter took down the National Policy Institute's Twitter page as well as his.
Mr Spencer’s account was later reinstated but he had his blue verification tick revoked in 2017 due to Twitter launching a crackdown on far-right figures.
The provocateur, who is credited with coining the term “alt-right”, helped organise the “Unite the Right” rally in Charlottesville last summer which saw neo-Nazis, KKK members and “alt-right” supporters descend on the ordinarily quiet university town.
Tensions between fascists and counter-protestors turned deadly after a 20-year-old man, who officials say had Nazi sympathies, deliberately ploughed his car into the crowd of peaceful anti-fascist demonstrators and killed a female civil rights activist.
Mr Spencer’s arrival on university campuses for talks in the months that followed the Charlottesville violence attracted a slew of protests and cancellations. In Florida, governor Rick Scott declared a state of emergency ahead of a planned speech at the University of Florida.
Protesters yelled "Go home Spencer, go home," "Say it loud, say it clear, Nazis are not welcome here" and "Go home, Nazis, go home" while armed guards kept a watch on the speech.
Mr Spencer, who had his gym membership revoked last May after a university professor accused him of being a neo-Nazi mid-workout, sparked outrage when he made a number of allusions to Nazi ideology during a speech at a conference in Washington in November 2016.
“Hail Trump! Hail our people! Hail victory!” he declared, prompting audience members to leap to their feet in applause, with several appearing to make drawn-out Heil Hitler salutes.
The Independent contacted a representative of Facebook for comment.
As Hong Kong’s crackdown on dissent continues, is independence the secret dream in many hearts? - Hong Kong Free Press
As Hong Kong’s crackdown on dissent continues, is independence the secret dream in many hearts?
16 April 2018 10:45 Kong Tsung-gan
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Outside, there are some five dozen pro-independence advocates, gathered on the pavement between the Legislative Council building and Tim Mei Avenue.
Inside, there are 2,000 to 3,000 at the rally organized by the pro-democracy movement to support Benny Tai, who for nearly two weeks has been under sustained attack by the Communist Party, the Hong Kong government and their allies for having done something he didn’t do – advocate independence – though if he had done it, he had a perfect right to.
People are angry. The chants are loud. Rarely seen in public these days, the Reverend Chu Yiu-ming appears in support of his Occupy Central with Love and Peace co-founder.
Long Hair and Lee Cheuk-yan give well-received fiery speeches. The loudest chants of the night are in response to Lee’s call to “end one-party dictatorship”, a classic pro-democracy slogan and a gesture in defiance of recent suggestions by Party allies that people who make that call will no longer be allowed to enter Legco.
The rally is held in the designated Legco protest area on a Saturday evening. (I want to protest against the designated Legco protest area. Something in me recoils at the idea of protesting where the government tells you to.) Legco is dark; there is no one inside; the same for the surrounding government buildings.
And all of adjacent Tamar Park is empty too, except for the young lovers, who aren’t distracted from their common purpose. I wonder about the point of shouting at an empty building and think of the koan, “If a tree falls in a forest and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound?”
The crowd is full of pro-democracy stalwarts, familiar faces I’ve seen for years; its average age makes me feel almost like a youngster. There are probably more young people among the five dozen pro-independence advocates outside than among the thousands gathered inside.
I turn to a woman of long acquaintance, someone who was one of the 1,000 arrested in the Umbrella Movement, the 250 prosecuted and the 90-some convicted, in her case of obstructing police by sitting on the pavement just around the corner from where we now stand. She’s a middle-aged professional who as recently as last year expected to die of cancer.
I ask, “What do you think of them?” gesturing toward the pro-independence group.
“I agree with them,” she says.
I am surprised. She’s been in the pro-democracy movement for years and even belongs to one of the traditional pro-democracy parties which certainly does not espouse independence.
“They’re right,” she continued. “It’s all we have left. We have nowhere else to go.”
There is a pause. A silence hangs between us. I’m waiting for her to tell me more.
“You know Gwangju?” she asks hesitantly.
“You mean Gwangju, Korea?”
“Yes.”
And then it is as if she doesn’t dare say more, or doesn’t know quite how to say it, as if saying it might make it happen and she isn’t sure whether she wants that or not.
It takes me a moment to follow her unspoken train of thought. On May 18, 1980, the people of Gwangju rose up against dictatorship. It was not a peaceful uprising. They stole arms from police stations and armories. Hundreds were massacred by the South Korean military, but the uprising inspired a movement that went on less than a decade later to set the country irreversibly on the path to democracy.
I’m not shocked by her intimation that it might take outright rebellion and a violent crackdown to catalyze the next stage of the freedom struggle. Since last summer, I’ve come across others who have spoken of armed uprising. It’s easy to dismiss this kind of thinking as crazy, deluded, wishful, irresponsible, but the very fact that such ideas are in the air says something about the political climate in Hong Kong these days.
And these people have done their homework: hers is the first allusion to Gwangju I’ve come across, but several others have compared Catalonia’s nonviolent struggle for independence negatively to Euskadi Ta Askatasuna’s violent fight for a Basque country, arguing the latter got more from Spain for the Basques than the former has for the Catalans.
But most of the people I’ve spoken to who are thinking along these lines are localists or independence advocates. I am so struck by the thoughts of this woman whom I thought I knew so well that I decide to pose the same question—what do you make of the independence advocates?—to others who’d come for the main rally inside.
The traditional pan-democratic political parties and many of their supporters have given the pro-independence types a wide berth. They either disagree with them in principle, suspect they’ve been infiltrated by Communist agents who are driving their agenda, or are afraid of being smeared with the separatist label themselves, which ironically is just what’s happening now with the tarring of Benny Tai, of all people, as a separatist.
Prior to the Umbrella Movement, Benny would often joke about how ironic it was that such a staunch moderate as himself ended up leading the most “radical” organization yet in Hong Kong, but only in the sense that it advocated civil disobedience; it never objected to the Communist Party’s assertion that Hong Kong is “an inalienable part of China”.
As recently as the annual January 1 pro-democracy march, when a pro-independence group appeared in the marchers’ midst, big gaps opened up both before and after it—none of the traditional pro-democracy people wanted to be associated with them, almost as if they were toxic.
At the march on November 6, 2016 against the Party’s impending interpretation of the Basic law on oath-taking, subsequently used to disqualify six democratically elected Legco representatives, many in the crowd went out of their way to say they were protesting against the Basic Law interpretation; they did not support the actions of representatives who displayed banners reading, “Hong Kong is not China” while taking their oaths.
baggio-rejected
Sixtus “Baggio” Leung, one of the three whose oaths were rejected. Photo: Stanley Leung/HKFP.
I end up asking nine others. They range in age from their mid-30s to mid-50s. All are veterans of the pro-democracy movement, from before the time when even the idea of an independent Hong Kong occurred to most people. All are acquaintances. They feel comfortable talking with me and might say something quite different to strangers.
In all, of the ten people I ask, all separately from one another, six express sympathy with the independence advocates demonstrating outside and four are critical.
Of those four, two seem simply to have a visceral reaction against them. I don’t get the impression they’ve thought carefully about the issue. When I ask them if they have anything against Hong Kong being part of China, they don’t answer directly but instead say they support democracy in both Hong Kong and China.
To me, they represent the traditional pan-democrats whose thinking really hasn’t changed much since the Umbrella Movement, who’ve refused to consider the many issues that have since arisen regarding the strategy, purpose and goals of the pro-democracy movement.
The two others disagree with calling for independence on grounds of strategy: Yes, “one country, two systems” is broken beyond repair, but advocating independence plays into the Party’s hands, presenting it with a justification for taking full control of Hong Kong before the end of the “one country, two systems” period in 2047.
Notably, none of the four opposes independence on the grounds that they feel Chinese and want to be part of China. In the pro-democracy movement these days, you’d be hard pressed to find many who identify with China.
The days when the pro-democracy movement was led by people like Szeto Wah– who co-founded the first pro-democracy party as well as the Hong Kong Alliance in Support of Patriotic Democratic Movements in China , believing deeply in both democracy and being Chinese– are well and truly over.
Of the six who sympathize with the independence advocates, I don’t get the sense any are fervently committed to that cause. Rather, their sympathy is related to a lack of faith that the Party will ever abide by the terms of “one, country, two systems”, which would mean genuine universal suffrage and real autonomy.
They simply don’t think anything good can come of Party rule over Hong Kong. In fact, the idea makes them despair. So, like the first woman I spoke with, they feel backed into a corner with no way out.
All ten express deep pessimism about the direction Hong Kong is going. One says, “If the Party and Hong Kong government really wanted to stamp out calls for independence, the most effective thing they could do is to ensure affordable housing and decent-paying jobs for young people. The problem now is that people, especially young people, see no future for either themselves or Hong Kong, and they see their personal fate and the political fate of their city as closely related.”
A professional woman in her mid-30s says, “Of course I agree with them. I think most everyone of my generation shares that sentiment—they think Hong Kong would be better off independent. That’s where their heart lies.”
“Where their heart lies….” The phrase keeps returning to me. As much as anything else, the sympathy with the independence advocates comes out of a feeling of heartache for Hong Kong. When you feel you can do nothing else, you still have your heart, and what is within your heart – if you haven’t relinquished it, if it hasn’t been possessed by demons.
These informal interviews, in addition to much else that I’ve heard and seen since last summer, lead me to wonder about the extent to which resistance to Party control of Hong Kong is being driven underground. More than ever before, authorities are declaring a range of political beliefs “illegal” and unacceptable.
As a result of these exclusions and attacks, people are discouraged from expressing their political views. It’s always safer not to. But those views don’t disappear. Instead, they remain in the heart and mind; they go underground. And what happens when a substantial part of political life drops out of public view? What are the implications of this resistance of the heart?
These closet independentists make my own self-determinationist position seem like watered-down agnosticism. I advocate self-determination because I see it as a basic human right, enshrined in the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, the International Covenant on Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights, and, through Basic Law Article 39, in Hong Kong law.
I insist on Hong Kong people’s right to decide their own political status, a right that they have never enjoyed, and I am willing to go along with whatever Hong Kong people decide, as long as they do so freely and fairly. But isn’t this an intellectual position? What is really in my heart? If Hong Kong people could exercise their right of self-determination and hold a referendum on Hong Kong’s political status, what would I vote for?
Isn’t the choice almost made for me by the process of elimination? Full assimilation into a China ruled by the Communist Party? No way. Maintaining a “one country, two systems” arrangement which the Party already refuses to honour and is steadily eroding? Only for dupes. So…?
Is the Party right after all that self-determination is just a veiled form of independence? If Hong Kong people could follow their hearts, would they choose independence? Is that why the Party is attempting to nip any talk of independence in the bud now, before it festers? I still think most people would be satisfied with genuine universal suffrage and real autonomy. But they think that’s impossible, and where does that leave them to go?
The dynamics of a political crackdown: Freedoms eroding, the resistance driven underground
But if these six sympathize with the independence advocates, why don’t they join them? Two cannot appear to advocate independence publicly because of their jobs. For the others, doing so would represent a decisive step they simply are not ready to make. Some are undecided exactly what they think.
It’s also a matter of difference: The cultures of the independence advocates and the pro-democracy movement are different. No pro-independence leaders have yet arisen who make it seem like the “respectable” thing to do. They are seen as angry young men.
That taking the leap to advocating independence should be perceived as so decisive, a bit like coming out, a point from which there is no turning back, is also a symptom of the climate which Party propaganda and intimidation has brought to Hong Kong. Are you ready to make yourself a target?
After all, Benny Tai became a target simply for hypothetically mentioning the idea of independence. By contrast, millions flooded the streets of Catalonia last year to support the independence referendum, and they did not appear to fear losing their jobs or otherwise suffering retaliation.
Observing the independence advocates, I can’t help but observe the police as well: they are filming them the whole time, as I have seen them do on multiple occasions.
Anyone who has attended pro-democracy protests in Hong Kong is probably familiar with police filming them. It is an abuse of civil liberties that Human Rights Watch and the United Nations Human Rights Committee have repeatedly criticized, though most people in Hong Kong don’t seem bothered.
The police say they have a right to film in any public place. But in practice, they tend to film those they suspect of being engaged in unlawful activity. For example, whenever they declare a protest “unlawful”, the cameras come out.
Even this use of cameras is questionable. Though the police must have hundreds of hours of video footage of them by now, no one has ever been prosecuted in Hong Kong for advocating independence, in spite of the fact that the Hong Kong government has repeatedly said it is “illegal” and “against the Basic Law”.
Yet the police continue to film them continuously, without pause, whenever they come out to the street. (Here are some of my photos of police filming independence advocates at the January 1 march.)
Kong Tsung-gan / 江松澗
@KongTsungGan
2 Jan
Disturbing trend: #HK police are increasingly targeting specific protesters for constant video surveillance during protests. This thread documents 2 cases from the 1 January pro-democracy march.
Kong Tsung-gan / 江松澗
@KongTsungGan
Here, 2 cops follow & video Koo Sze-yiu, who's carrying an #HK flag w writing on it. They followed him for the whole demonstration tho' I told them they should arrest him if he's committing a crime or leave him alone, not constantly video him. pic.twitter.com/Pnsg0kg4Uk
12:15 - 2 Jan 2018
Kong Tsung-gan / 江松澗
@KongTsungGan
Replying to @KongTsungGan
The other case involves police video surveillance of a group waving #HK independence banners. This police group is bigger. Like the other, they followed & videoed the protesters for the whole march tho I told them to arrest them if they're committing a crime or leave them alone.
12:19 PM - Jan 2, 2018
Whenever I see police filming protesters, I talk with them about it. Most refuse to engage with me, but on this evening, a polite and earnest officer is willing to entertain my questions. Like colleagues of his I’ve spoken to before, he begins by invoking the police’s right to film in public.
I reply that this overlooks the fact that the police are different from ordinary citizens, and police filming of people exercising their right to freedom of expression and assembly can be intimidating. “Can you imagine how it would make you feel if the police followed you around pointing a camera at you, and what it might make others think of you?”
He then tells me they’re engaged in “crime prevention”, to which I respond, “What crime are you preventing, and how?”At that point, the officer says he has given me his explanation.
“But wait,” I say, “now let me give you mine: What you are doing has little to nothing to do with law enforcement. Your bosses are ordering you to carry out the political agenda of the government, and your filming amounts to intimidation. You should either arrest these people and charge them with a recognizable crime or stop pointing your cameras at them.” He pretends he hasn’t heard me.
No one knows what the police do with the video footage. Are they conducting facial recognition studies of it? Are they building a database of independence advocates? Are they compiling a dossier for the government? Could they be sharing it with mainland authorities? There is no independent oversight of or accountability for this.
In that light, it isn’t difficult to see why people with pro-independence sympathies might think twice about voicing them. The use of the police to carry out the regime’s political tasks is one aspect of the deterioration of the political climate. When freedom erodes, it is hard to contain the erosion; it tends to occur in small ways in multiple places at the same time.
We are far along that slippery slope, and the goalposts of the permissible keep moving.
In February 2016, the then Hong Kong Indigenous leader Edward Leung (now in prison awaiting trial on riot charges) was allowed to run in a Legco by-election. He did well and was expected to win a seat in the general Legco elections of September that year but was disqualified. First move of the goalposts.
Edward Leung Tin-kei
Edward Leung Tin-kei. File Photo: Stand News.
His ally, Baggio Leung, was elected in his stead. Then Baggio and his Youngspiration party fellow Yau Wai-ching were kicked out of Legco. Second move of the goalposts.
That effectively put an end to pro-independence involvement in formal electoral politics in Hong Kong.
But the Party was not done there. It began to equate independence and self-determination. The two are very different concepts with very different implications for Hong Kong but the regime makes no distinction.
So, four more elected pro-democracy Legco representatives were kicked out. Two of them, Nathan Law and Lau Siu-lai were self-determinationists, one was a long-time “radical” thorn in the government’s side (Long Hair), and one simply happened to occupy a seat that Party allies wanted back (Edward Yiu). Third move of the goalposts.
When Nathan Law’s Demosistō party fellow Agnes Chow attempted to run in the March 2018 by-election to fill his vacant seat, she was barred on grounds that her party advocated self-determination, though Nathan had been allowed to run a year and a half before. Fourth move of the goalposts.
From that point on, not only independence advocates but self-determinationists are effectively and arbitrarily barred from holding public office, though courts have never ruled on whether independence or self-determination advocacy is “illegal” or “against the Basic Law”.
Now, for the first time, the Party is going after a traditional pan-democrat, Benny Tai, alleging ludicrously that he advocates independence. Fifth move of the goalposts, and a clear warning to other traditional pan-democrats that they had better watch their step.
But why Benny Tai, who’s never said anything that could remotely be construed as “against the Basic Law”? Precisely that: to scare everyone else who thought they were safe, to make everyone think twice about what they say, how they say it, where they say it, and to whom.
The campaign against Tai is orchestrated. It’s the first time I can remember the Hong Kong government singling out a particular individual for political criticism, something which is in itself chilling and simply unacceptable. It appears that the fact he gave the speech in Taiwan particularly incensed the Party.
Tai has long been a target. After the Umbrella Movement, the governing council of the University of Hong Kong, dominated by Party allies, forced the university to discipline him for alleged improprieties involving donations to OCLP that passed through the university.
It also rejected vice-chancellor Peter Mathieson’s nomination of Johannes Chan, pro-democracy head of the law faculty where Tai works, to pro-vice-chancellor. Lunatic Party allies like Junius Ho (independence advocates should be “killed mercilessly”) have tried to get Tai fired.
See also: Interview: Labelled a ‘threat to China,’ Hong Kong law scholar Benny Tai says Beijing is trying to brainwash Hongkongers
Besides restricting academic freedom, the Party is also cleansing public institutions such as Legco and universities of “hostile elements”.
Some speculate the attacks on Tai are paving the way for introduction of draconian Article 23 “national security” legislation, but the Party doesn’t need to attack Tai to do that. Its constant anti-independence propaganda is sufficient. It’s likely, though, the Party is using the attack to test the waters: how much resistance might there be this time around to a more draconian slate of laws than what was tabled, and defeated, in 2003?
The attacks on Tai are also part of a Communist-style campaign to replace truth with proclamation: Henceforth, whatever the Party says is the truth, no evidence needed. This corruption of language and disregard for accuracy are part of the mainlandization of Hong Kong’s political climate.
But at its root, this is the Party’s fight against any kind of speech which even mentions considering political arrangements for Hong Kong other than the status quo. The Party simply doesn’t want Hong Kong people to think about the future of Hong Kong, especially not out loud, in public.
It is implacably hostile to the idea that Hong Kong people should have any say at all in deciding their political fate. Accordingly, the Party is steadily constricting political space, ringfencing a very small circle of “acceptable” opposition groups that will be allowed to participate in formal politics, and excluding an ever wider range of other groups.
I’m often reminded of the Martin Niemöller ditty: First they came for the independence advocates, and I did not speak out, because I was not an independence advocate. Then they came for the self-determinationists, and I did not speak out, because I was not a self-determinationist. Then they came for Benny Tai, and I did not speak out, because I was not a moderate. Who’s next?
If you’re talking localists, independence advocates, self-determinationists, and anyone whom the Party and Hong Kong government arbitrarily decide to label as such, that’s a substantial part of the population, perhaps upwards of 25 percent, effectively disenfranchised from participation in the few and highly circumscribed free and fair elections Hong Kong has had.
These are now so compromised as to pose a dilemma to the pro-democracy movement: how much is it worth to participate in such an illegitimate process?
One of the main effects of all this is to silence people. They lie low and retreat to the resistance of the heart.
Even the outspoken have had to negotiate this thicket of accusation and denunciation. Self-determinationists, though they advocate a right enshrined in the Basic Law, have been de-emphasizing this key political aspiration in order to continue to participate in the increasingly narrowing formal political sphere.
By late 2016, there were burgeoning discussions of self-determination. After his election victory, having received the most votes ever for a Legco candidate, self-determinationist Eddie Chu Hoi-dick said the goal was to eventually make the self-determinationist camp the largest pro-democracy camp in Legco.
Now, he is the only self-determinationist remaining in Legco, Nathan Law and Lau Siu-lai having been kicked out, and recently he has downplayed self-determination. The same goes for Demosistō. When Agnes Chow began campaigning to fill Nathan Law’s seat in January 2018, she played down the party’s call for self-determination. It barely featured in her campaign.
Demosistō feared the government might use that as grounds to bar her and also, even if it allowed her to run, would smear her as pro-independence. In the end she was disqualified anyway.
As the Party constricts political space and the resistance submerges, reality becomes harder to discern
These are the dynamics of political crackdown. With the dozens of prosecutions of pro-democracy leaders and activists, with the exclusion from elected office of an ever-expanding range of groups and individuals, with attacks on freedom of speech, resistance is being driven underground, and exactly what is happening becomes harder to discern, even for those involved in it.
Yes, a crackdown frightens people away from political participation. But can you scare people into submission as successfully in a semi-free place like Hong Kong as in an unfree society like the mainland?
What are the risks to the Party in alienating ever more people from its rule? Does it believe that it can eventually isolate and contain its political enemies while the majority of the population will more or less go along with whatever it decides to impose on the city? Is that objective attainable?
independence national day democracy march rally protest
Photo: Catherine Lai/HKFP.
Or is the increasingly hidden political life of Hong Kong a sign that the crackdown is merely germinating the seeds of the next uprising, whatever form that might take?
Is the resistance weakening, or lying low while deepening and transforming? What is the worth of a resistance that, at least for the time being, remains largely within the secrecy of the heart?
What happens when you drive a people into a corner, with nowhere else to turn, or, as People’s Daily puts it in typically bombastic and violent language, apply a “sledge hammer” to them?
The intention is that they surrender, are obliterated, disappear. But there are other possibilities too. Are those five dozen independence advocates who appear to be a tiny minority really only the tip of the iceberg?
16 April 2018 10:45 Kong Tsung-gan
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Outside, there are some five dozen pro-independence advocates, gathered on the pavement between the Legislative Council building and Tim Mei Avenue.
Inside, there are 2,000 to 3,000 at the rally organized by the pro-democracy movement to support Benny Tai, who for nearly two weeks has been under sustained attack by the Communist Party, the Hong Kong government and their allies for having done something he didn’t do – advocate independence – though if he had done it, he had a perfect right to.
People are angry. The chants are loud. Rarely seen in public these days, the Reverend Chu Yiu-ming appears in support of his Occupy Central with Love and Peace co-founder.
Long Hair and Lee Cheuk-yan give well-received fiery speeches. The loudest chants of the night are in response to Lee’s call to “end one-party dictatorship”, a classic pro-democracy slogan and a gesture in defiance of recent suggestions by Party allies that people who make that call will no longer be allowed to enter Legco.
The rally is held in the designated Legco protest area on a Saturday evening. (I want to protest against the designated Legco protest area. Something in me recoils at the idea of protesting where the government tells you to.) Legco is dark; there is no one inside; the same for the surrounding government buildings.
And all of adjacent Tamar Park is empty too, except for the young lovers, who aren’t distracted from their common purpose. I wonder about the point of shouting at an empty building and think of the koan, “If a tree falls in a forest and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound?”
The crowd is full of pro-democracy stalwarts, familiar faces I’ve seen for years; its average age makes me feel almost like a youngster. There are probably more young people among the five dozen pro-independence advocates outside than among the thousands gathered inside.
I turn to a woman of long acquaintance, someone who was one of the 1,000 arrested in the Umbrella Movement, the 250 prosecuted and the 90-some convicted, in her case of obstructing police by sitting on the pavement just around the corner from where we now stand. She’s a middle-aged professional who as recently as last year expected to die of cancer.
I ask, “What do you think of them?” gesturing toward the pro-independence group.
“I agree with them,” she says.
I am surprised. She’s been in the pro-democracy movement for years and even belongs to one of the traditional pro-democracy parties which certainly does not espouse independence.
“They’re right,” she continued. “It’s all we have left. We have nowhere else to go.”
There is a pause. A silence hangs between us. I’m waiting for her to tell me more.
“You know Gwangju?” she asks hesitantly.
“You mean Gwangju, Korea?”
“Yes.”
And then it is as if she doesn’t dare say more, or doesn’t know quite how to say it, as if saying it might make it happen and she isn’t sure whether she wants that or not.
It takes me a moment to follow her unspoken train of thought. On May 18, 1980, the people of Gwangju rose up against dictatorship. It was not a peaceful uprising. They stole arms from police stations and armories. Hundreds were massacred by the South Korean military, but the uprising inspired a movement that went on less than a decade later to set the country irreversibly on the path to democracy.
I’m not shocked by her intimation that it might take outright rebellion and a violent crackdown to catalyze the next stage of the freedom struggle. Since last summer, I’ve come across others who have spoken of armed uprising. It’s easy to dismiss this kind of thinking as crazy, deluded, wishful, irresponsible, but the very fact that such ideas are in the air says something about the political climate in Hong Kong these days.
And these people have done their homework: hers is the first allusion to Gwangju I’ve come across, but several others have compared Catalonia’s nonviolent struggle for independence negatively to Euskadi Ta Askatasuna’s violent fight for a Basque country, arguing the latter got more from Spain for the Basques than the former has for the Catalans.
But most of the people I’ve spoken to who are thinking along these lines are localists or independence advocates. I am so struck by the thoughts of this woman whom I thought I knew so well that I decide to pose the same question—what do you make of the independence advocates?—to others who’d come for the main rally inside.
The traditional pan-democratic political parties and many of their supporters have given the pro-independence types a wide berth. They either disagree with them in principle, suspect they’ve been infiltrated by Communist agents who are driving their agenda, or are afraid of being smeared with the separatist label themselves, which ironically is just what’s happening now with the tarring of Benny Tai, of all people, as a separatist.
Prior to the Umbrella Movement, Benny would often joke about how ironic it was that such a staunch moderate as himself ended up leading the most “radical” organization yet in Hong Kong, but only in the sense that it advocated civil disobedience; it never objected to the Communist Party’s assertion that Hong Kong is “an inalienable part of China”.
As recently as the annual January 1 pro-democracy march, when a pro-independence group appeared in the marchers’ midst, big gaps opened up both before and after it—none of the traditional pro-democracy people wanted to be associated with them, almost as if they were toxic.
At the march on November 6, 2016 against the Party’s impending interpretation of the Basic law on oath-taking, subsequently used to disqualify six democratically elected Legco representatives, many in the crowd went out of their way to say they were protesting against the Basic Law interpretation; they did not support the actions of representatives who displayed banners reading, “Hong Kong is not China” while taking their oaths.
baggio-rejected
Sixtus “Baggio” Leung, one of the three whose oaths were rejected. Photo: Stanley Leung/HKFP.
I end up asking nine others. They range in age from their mid-30s to mid-50s. All are veterans of the pro-democracy movement, from before the time when even the idea of an independent Hong Kong occurred to most people. All are acquaintances. They feel comfortable talking with me and might say something quite different to strangers.
In all, of the ten people I ask, all separately from one another, six express sympathy with the independence advocates demonstrating outside and four are critical.
Of those four, two seem simply to have a visceral reaction against them. I don’t get the impression they’ve thought carefully about the issue. When I ask them if they have anything against Hong Kong being part of China, they don’t answer directly but instead say they support democracy in both Hong Kong and China.
To me, they represent the traditional pan-democrats whose thinking really hasn’t changed much since the Umbrella Movement, who’ve refused to consider the many issues that have since arisen regarding the strategy, purpose and goals of the pro-democracy movement.
The two others disagree with calling for independence on grounds of strategy: Yes, “one country, two systems” is broken beyond repair, but advocating independence plays into the Party’s hands, presenting it with a justification for taking full control of Hong Kong before the end of the “one country, two systems” period in 2047.
Notably, none of the four opposes independence on the grounds that they feel Chinese and want to be part of China. In the pro-democracy movement these days, you’d be hard pressed to find many who identify with China.
The days when the pro-democracy movement was led by people like Szeto Wah– who co-founded the first pro-democracy party as well as the Hong Kong Alliance in Support of Patriotic Democratic Movements in China , believing deeply in both democracy and being Chinese– are well and truly over.
Of the six who sympathize with the independence advocates, I don’t get the sense any are fervently committed to that cause. Rather, their sympathy is related to a lack of faith that the Party will ever abide by the terms of “one, country, two systems”, which would mean genuine universal suffrage and real autonomy.
They simply don’t think anything good can come of Party rule over Hong Kong. In fact, the idea makes them despair. So, like the first woman I spoke with, they feel backed into a corner with no way out.
All ten express deep pessimism about the direction Hong Kong is going. One says, “If the Party and Hong Kong government really wanted to stamp out calls for independence, the most effective thing they could do is to ensure affordable housing and decent-paying jobs for young people. The problem now is that people, especially young people, see no future for either themselves or Hong Kong, and they see their personal fate and the political fate of their city as closely related.”
A professional woman in her mid-30s says, “Of course I agree with them. I think most everyone of my generation shares that sentiment—they think Hong Kong would be better off independent. That’s where their heart lies.”
“Where their heart lies….” The phrase keeps returning to me. As much as anything else, the sympathy with the independence advocates comes out of a feeling of heartache for Hong Kong. When you feel you can do nothing else, you still have your heart, and what is within your heart – if you haven’t relinquished it, if it hasn’t been possessed by demons.
These informal interviews, in addition to much else that I’ve heard and seen since last summer, lead me to wonder about the extent to which resistance to Party control of Hong Kong is being driven underground. More than ever before, authorities are declaring a range of political beliefs “illegal” and unacceptable.
As a result of these exclusions and attacks, people are discouraged from expressing their political views. It’s always safer not to. But those views don’t disappear. Instead, they remain in the heart and mind; they go underground. And what happens when a substantial part of political life drops out of public view? What are the implications of this resistance of the heart?
These closet independentists make my own self-determinationist position seem like watered-down agnosticism. I advocate self-determination because I see it as a basic human right, enshrined in the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, the International Covenant on Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights, and, through Basic Law Article 39, in Hong Kong law.
I insist on Hong Kong people’s right to decide their own political status, a right that they have never enjoyed, and I am willing to go along with whatever Hong Kong people decide, as long as they do so freely and fairly. But isn’t this an intellectual position? What is really in my heart? If Hong Kong people could exercise their right of self-determination and hold a referendum on Hong Kong’s political status, what would I vote for?
Isn’t the choice almost made for me by the process of elimination? Full assimilation into a China ruled by the Communist Party? No way. Maintaining a “one country, two systems” arrangement which the Party already refuses to honour and is steadily eroding? Only for dupes. So…?
Is the Party right after all that self-determination is just a veiled form of independence? If Hong Kong people could follow their hearts, would they choose independence? Is that why the Party is attempting to nip any talk of independence in the bud now, before it festers? I still think most people would be satisfied with genuine universal suffrage and real autonomy. But they think that’s impossible, and where does that leave them to go?
The dynamics of a political crackdown: Freedoms eroding, the resistance driven underground
But if these six sympathize with the independence advocates, why don’t they join them? Two cannot appear to advocate independence publicly because of their jobs. For the others, doing so would represent a decisive step they simply are not ready to make. Some are undecided exactly what they think.
It’s also a matter of difference: The cultures of the independence advocates and the pro-democracy movement are different. No pro-independence leaders have yet arisen who make it seem like the “respectable” thing to do. They are seen as angry young men.
That taking the leap to advocating independence should be perceived as so decisive, a bit like coming out, a point from which there is no turning back, is also a symptom of the climate which Party propaganda and intimidation has brought to Hong Kong. Are you ready to make yourself a target?
After all, Benny Tai became a target simply for hypothetically mentioning the idea of independence. By contrast, millions flooded the streets of Catalonia last year to support the independence referendum, and they did not appear to fear losing their jobs or otherwise suffering retaliation.
Observing the independence advocates, I can’t help but observe the police as well: they are filming them the whole time, as I have seen them do on multiple occasions.
Anyone who has attended pro-democracy protests in Hong Kong is probably familiar with police filming them. It is an abuse of civil liberties that Human Rights Watch and the United Nations Human Rights Committee have repeatedly criticized, though most people in Hong Kong don’t seem bothered.
The police say they have a right to film in any public place. But in practice, they tend to film those they suspect of being engaged in unlawful activity. For example, whenever they declare a protest “unlawful”, the cameras come out.
Even this use of cameras is questionable. Though the police must have hundreds of hours of video footage of them by now, no one has ever been prosecuted in Hong Kong for advocating independence, in spite of the fact that the Hong Kong government has repeatedly said it is “illegal” and “against the Basic Law”.
Yet the police continue to film them continuously, without pause, whenever they come out to the street. (Here are some of my photos of police filming independence advocates at the January 1 march.)
Kong Tsung-gan / 江松澗
@KongTsungGan
2 Jan
Disturbing trend: #HK police are increasingly targeting specific protesters for constant video surveillance during protests. This thread documents 2 cases from the 1 January pro-democracy march.
Kong Tsung-gan / 江松澗
@KongTsungGan
Here, 2 cops follow & video Koo Sze-yiu, who's carrying an #HK flag w writing on it. They followed him for the whole demonstration tho' I told them they should arrest him if he's committing a crime or leave him alone, not constantly video him. pic.twitter.com/Pnsg0kg4Uk
12:15 - 2 Jan 2018
Kong Tsung-gan / 江松澗
@KongTsungGan
Replying to @KongTsungGan
The other case involves police video surveillance of a group waving #HK independence banners. This police group is bigger. Like the other, they followed & videoed the protesters for the whole march tho I told them to arrest them if they're committing a crime or leave them alone.
12:19 PM - Jan 2, 2018
Whenever I see police filming protesters, I talk with them about it. Most refuse to engage with me, but on this evening, a polite and earnest officer is willing to entertain my questions. Like colleagues of his I’ve spoken to before, he begins by invoking the police’s right to film in public.
I reply that this overlooks the fact that the police are different from ordinary citizens, and police filming of people exercising their right to freedom of expression and assembly can be intimidating. “Can you imagine how it would make you feel if the police followed you around pointing a camera at you, and what it might make others think of you?”
He then tells me they’re engaged in “crime prevention”, to which I respond, “What crime are you preventing, and how?”At that point, the officer says he has given me his explanation.
“But wait,” I say, “now let me give you mine: What you are doing has little to nothing to do with law enforcement. Your bosses are ordering you to carry out the political agenda of the government, and your filming amounts to intimidation. You should either arrest these people and charge them with a recognizable crime or stop pointing your cameras at them.” He pretends he hasn’t heard me.
No one knows what the police do with the video footage. Are they conducting facial recognition studies of it? Are they building a database of independence advocates? Are they compiling a dossier for the government? Could they be sharing it with mainland authorities? There is no independent oversight of or accountability for this.
In that light, it isn’t difficult to see why people with pro-independence sympathies might think twice about voicing them. The use of the police to carry out the regime’s political tasks is one aspect of the deterioration of the political climate. When freedom erodes, it is hard to contain the erosion; it tends to occur in small ways in multiple places at the same time.
We are far along that slippery slope, and the goalposts of the permissible keep moving.
In February 2016, the then Hong Kong Indigenous leader Edward Leung (now in prison awaiting trial on riot charges) was allowed to run in a Legco by-election. He did well and was expected to win a seat in the general Legco elections of September that year but was disqualified. First move of the goalposts.
Edward Leung Tin-kei
Edward Leung Tin-kei. File Photo: Stand News.
His ally, Baggio Leung, was elected in his stead. Then Baggio and his Youngspiration party fellow Yau Wai-ching were kicked out of Legco. Second move of the goalposts.
That effectively put an end to pro-independence involvement in formal electoral politics in Hong Kong.
But the Party was not done there. It began to equate independence and self-determination. The two are very different concepts with very different implications for Hong Kong but the regime makes no distinction.
So, four more elected pro-democracy Legco representatives were kicked out. Two of them, Nathan Law and Lau Siu-lai were self-determinationists, one was a long-time “radical” thorn in the government’s side (Long Hair), and one simply happened to occupy a seat that Party allies wanted back (Edward Yiu). Third move of the goalposts.
When Nathan Law’s Demosistō party fellow Agnes Chow attempted to run in the March 2018 by-election to fill his vacant seat, she was barred on grounds that her party advocated self-determination, though Nathan had been allowed to run a year and a half before. Fourth move of the goalposts.
From that point on, not only independence advocates but self-determinationists are effectively and arbitrarily barred from holding public office, though courts have never ruled on whether independence or self-determination advocacy is “illegal” or “against the Basic Law”.
Now, for the first time, the Party is going after a traditional pan-democrat, Benny Tai, alleging ludicrously that he advocates independence. Fifth move of the goalposts, and a clear warning to other traditional pan-democrats that they had better watch their step.
But why Benny Tai, who’s never said anything that could remotely be construed as “against the Basic Law”? Precisely that: to scare everyone else who thought they were safe, to make everyone think twice about what they say, how they say it, where they say it, and to whom.
The campaign against Tai is orchestrated. It’s the first time I can remember the Hong Kong government singling out a particular individual for political criticism, something which is in itself chilling and simply unacceptable. It appears that the fact he gave the speech in Taiwan particularly incensed the Party.
Tai has long been a target. After the Umbrella Movement, the governing council of the University of Hong Kong, dominated by Party allies, forced the university to discipline him for alleged improprieties involving donations to OCLP that passed through the university.
It also rejected vice-chancellor Peter Mathieson’s nomination of Johannes Chan, pro-democracy head of the law faculty where Tai works, to pro-vice-chancellor. Lunatic Party allies like Junius Ho (independence advocates should be “killed mercilessly”) have tried to get Tai fired.
See also: Interview: Labelled a ‘threat to China,’ Hong Kong law scholar Benny Tai says Beijing is trying to brainwash Hongkongers
Besides restricting academic freedom, the Party is also cleansing public institutions such as Legco and universities of “hostile elements”.
Some speculate the attacks on Tai are paving the way for introduction of draconian Article 23 “national security” legislation, but the Party doesn’t need to attack Tai to do that. Its constant anti-independence propaganda is sufficient. It’s likely, though, the Party is using the attack to test the waters: how much resistance might there be this time around to a more draconian slate of laws than what was tabled, and defeated, in 2003?
The attacks on Tai are also part of a Communist-style campaign to replace truth with proclamation: Henceforth, whatever the Party says is the truth, no evidence needed. This corruption of language and disregard for accuracy are part of the mainlandization of Hong Kong’s political climate.
But at its root, this is the Party’s fight against any kind of speech which even mentions considering political arrangements for Hong Kong other than the status quo. The Party simply doesn’t want Hong Kong people to think about the future of Hong Kong, especially not out loud, in public.
It is implacably hostile to the idea that Hong Kong people should have any say at all in deciding their political fate. Accordingly, the Party is steadily constricting political space, ringfencing a very small circle of “acceptable” opposition groups that will be allowed to participate in formal politics, and excluding an ever wider range of other groups.
I’m often reminded of the Martin Niemöller ditty: First they came for the independence advocates, and I did not speak out, because I was not an independence advocate. Then they came for the self-determinationists, and I did not speak out, because I was not a self-determinationist. Then they came for Benny Tai, and I did not speak out, because I was not a moderate. Who’s next?
If you’re talking localists, independence advocates, self-determinationists, and anyone whom the Party and Hong Kong government arbitrarily decide to label as such, that’s a substantial part of the population, perhaps upwards of 25 percent, effectively disenfranchised from participation in the few and highly circumscribed free and fair elections Hong Kong has had.
These are now so compromised as to pose a dilemma to the pro-democracy movement: how much is it worth to participate in such an illegitimate process?
One of the main effects of all this is to silence people. They lie low and retreat to the resistance of the heart.
Even the outspoken have had to negotiate this thicket of accusation and denunciation. Self-determinationists, though they advocate a right enshrined in the Basic Law, have been de-emphasizing this key political aspiration in order to continue to participate in the increasingly narrowing formal political sphere.
By late 2016, there were burgeoning discussions of self-determination. After his election victory, having received the most votes ever for a Legco candidate, self-determinationist Eddie Chu Hoi-dick said the goal was to eventually make the self-determinationist camp the largest pro-democracy camp in Legco.
Now, he is the only self-determinationist remaining in Legco, Nathan Law and Lau Siu-lai having been kicked out, and recently he has downplayed self-determination. The same goes for Demosistō. When Agnes Chow began campaigning to fill Nathan Law’s seat in January 2018, she played down the party’s call for self-determination. It barely featured in her campaign.
Demosistō feared the government might use that as grounds to bar her and also, even if it allowed her to run, would smear her as pro-independence. In the end she was disqualified anyway.
As the Party constricts political space and the resistance submerges, reality becomes harder to discern
These are the dynamics of political crackdown. With the dozens of prosecutions of pro-democracy leaders and activists, with the exclusion from elected office of an ever-expanding range of groups and individuals, with attacks on freedom of speech, resistance is being driven underground, and exactly what is happening becomes harder to discern, even for those involved in it.
Yes, a crackdown frightens people away from political participation. But can you scare people into submission as successfully in a semi-free place like Hong Kong as in an unfree society like the mainland?
What are the risks to the Party in alienating ever more people from its rule? Does it believe that it can eventually isolate and contain its political enemies while the majority of the population will more or less go along with whatever it decides to impose on the city? Is that objective attainable?
independence national day democracy march rally protest
Photo: Catherine Lai/HKFP.
Or is the increasingly hidden political life of Hong Kong a sign that the crackdown is merely germinating the seeds of the next uprising, whatever form that might take?
Is the resistance weakening, or lying low while deepening and transforming? What is the worth of a resistance that, at least for the time being, remains largely within the secrecy of the heart?
What happens when you drive a people into a corner, with nowhere else to turn, or, as People’s Daily puts it in typically bombastic and violent language, apply a “sledge hammer” to them?
The intention is that they surrender, are obliterated, disappear. But there are other possibilities too. Are those five dozen independence advocates who appear to be a tiny minority really only the tip of the iceberg?
James Comey: "I think he's morally unfit to be president" - CBS News
April 16, 2018, 12:28 AM
James Comey: "I think he's morally unfit to be president"
In his first media interview since being fired in May 2017, former FBI director James Comey said he believes President Trump is "morally unfit" to be president.
Comey made the statement in an interview with George Stephanopoulos that aired Sunday night on ABC's 20/20. "A person who sees moral equivalence in Charlottesville, who talks about and treats women like they're pieces of meat, who lies constantly about matters big and small and insists the American people believe it, that person's not fit to be president of the United States, on moral grounds."
Comey also told Stephanopoulos he can not say for certain whether Mr. Trump is compromised by the Russians. "It always struck me and still strikes me as unlikely, and I would have been able to say with high confidence about any other president I dealt with, but I can't. It's possible," he said.
When asked if Mr. Trump obstructed justice with respect to his fired National Security Adviser Michael Flynn, Comey said "possibly." He continued: "I mean, it's certainly some evidence of obstruction of justice. It would depend and -- and I'm just a witness in this case, not the investigator or prosecutor, it would depend upon other things that reflected on his intent," he said.
Comey's interview comes ahead of the publication of his book "A Higher Loyalty: Truth, Lies and Leadership"-- a title he says was influenced by a conversation with Mr. Trump when he was invited to dine at the White House in January 2017.
Over the meal, Comey says he was asked to take a pledge of loyalty to the president. "He said, again, 'I need loyalty.' And I said, 'You will always get honesty from me,'" Comey recalled telling Mr. Trump. "And he paused and then he said, 'Honest loyalty,' as if he was proposing some compromise or a deal. And I paused and said, 'You'll get that from me.'"
When asked if he thinks Mr. Trump should be impeached, Comey did not give an immediately clear answer.
"Impeachment is -- is a question of law and fact and politics. And so that'll be determined by people gather," he initially responded.
He then added that impeaching Mr. Trump "would let the American people off the hook... people in this country need to stand up and go to the voting booth and vote their values."
"We'll fight about guns. We'll fight about taxes. We'll fight about all those other things down the road. But you cannot have, as president of the United States, someone who does not reflect the values that I believe Republicans treasure and Democrats treasure and Independents treasure," Comey said. "That is the core of this country. That's our foundation. And so impeachment, in a way, would short circuit that."
Comey described his conversation with Mr. Trump at Trump Tower regarding the allegations in the unverified dossier authored by former British spy Christopher Steele. He recalled Mr. Trump asking him to look into claims that a so-called "pee tape" existed from 2013 showing Mr. Trump and prostituted engaging in the alleged sexual act.
"I honestly never thought these words would come out of my mouth, but I don't know whether the current president of the United States was with prostitutes peeing on each other in Moscow in 2013," Comey said. "It's possible, but I don't know."
The president fired Comey as head of the FBI on May 9, 2017. The firing ultimately led to the appointment of Robert Mueller to direct a special counsel inquiry into Russian meddling in the 2016 U.S. presidential election and potential collusion between the Trump campaign and the Kremlin.
In the upcoming book, which will be published Tuesday, Comey characterizes Mr. Trump's leadership as "ego driven and about personal loyalty." He criticizes Mr. Trump as "unethical, and untethered to truth" and compares him to a mob boss. CBS News has seen an early copy of the book.
Comey also revealed his assumption that Hillary Clinton was going to win the election. This assumption, Comey says, influenced his decision to send a letter to Congress in October, just before the election, in which he revealed that new emails had surfaced that "appear to be pertinent" to the FBI's closed investigation of Clinton's use of a private email server.
"I don't remember consciously thinking about that, but it must have been," Comey told Stephanopoulos. "Because I was operating in a world where Hillary Clinton was going to beat Donald Trump. And so I'm sure that it was a factor. Like I said, I don't remember spelling it out, but it had to have been, that she's going to be elected president and if I hide this from the American people, she'll be illegitimate the moment she's elected, the moment this comes out."
Despite this, Comey told Stephanopoulos that he does not regret sending the letter.
Just ahead of Comey's interview, Mr. Trump fired off a series of tweets Sunday morning labeling Comey a "slimeball" and "WORST FBI Director in history, by far," while the president also said he "hardly even knew this guy." The rant was five tweets and spanned slightly longer than an hour:
Donald J. Trump
✔
@realDonaldTrump
Unbelievably, James Comey states that Polls, where Crooked Hillary was leading, were a factor in the handling (stupidly) of the Clinton Email probe. In other words, he was making decisions based on the fact that he thought she was going to win, and he wanted a job. Slimeball!
9:42 PM - Apr 15, 2018
Donald J. Trump
✔
@realDonaldTrump
The big questions in Comey’s badly reviewed book aren’t answered like, how come he gave up Classified Information (jail), why did he lie to Congress (jail), why did the DNC refuse to give Server to the FBI (why didn’t they TAKE it), why the phony memos, McCabe’s $700,000 & more?
9:57 PM - Apr 15, 2018
Donald J. Trump
✔
@realDonaldTrump
Comey throws AG Lynch “under the bus!” Why can’t we all find out what happened on the tarmac in the back of the plane with Wild Bill and Lynch? Was she promised a Supreme Court seat, or AG, in order to lay off Hillary. No golf and grandkids talk (give us all a break)!
10:08 PM - Apr 15, 2018
87.1K
39.4K people are talking about this
Twitter Ads info and privacy
Donald J. Trump
✔
@realDonaldTrump
I never asked Comey for Personal Loyalty. I hardly even knew this guy. Just another of his many lies. His “memos” are self serving and FAKE!
10:32 PM - Apr 15, 2018
Donald J. Trump
✔
@realDonaldTrump
Slippery James Comey, a man who always ends up badly and out of whack (he is not smart!), will go down as the WORST FBI Director in history, by far!
11:07 PM - Apr 15, 2018
80.8K
61K people are talking about this
Billionaire Warren Buffett: Doubling your net worth won't make you happier - CNBC News
Billionaire Warren Buffett: Doubling your net worth won't make you happier
Zameena Mejia 3:57 PM ET Tue, 27 Feb 2018
Buffett: It is crazy to borrow money on securities Buffett: It is crazy to borrow money on securities
Although Berkshire Hathaway CEO Warren Buffett is currently worth $91.1 billion, he recently said that having more money isn't the key to happiness. In fact, the business mogul admitted he enjoyed the days when he had a mere fraction of his current net worth.
"I wasn't unhappy when I had $10,000 when I got out of school," Buffett said during an interview with Becky Quick on CNBC's "Squawk Box" on Monday. "I was having a lot of fun."
Buffett said people tend to think that having more money will make them happier. He gave this example: If you have $100,000 and you're an unhappy person and you think "$1 million is going to make you happy, it is not going to happen."
Even if you earned that million dollars, your happiness will disappear when you "look around" and "see people with $2 million," Buffett added. "You will not be way happier if you double your net worth."
Warren Buffett is worth $75 billion but says he would be 'very happy' with way less Warren Buffett is worth $75 billion but says he would be 'very happy' with way less
Instead of letting your happiness be defined by what you don't have or how quickly you make money, Buffett said "you can have a lot of fun while you're getting rich."
Echoing Buffett's sentiment, research shows that people assume having and spending money will make them happier, University of British Columbia psychology professor Elizabeth Dunn explained to CNBC Make It.
In a study Dunn co-authored and published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, researchers found that "time is the new essential currency for many people."
"In terms of our happiness, time is really the fundamental currency," Dunn added.
"People do not have unlimited money, so buying one thing means not being able to pay for something else," she added. "Shifting the focus to not just say 'let me make more income' but let me just spend my money in ways that are actually making me happy is a really promising strategy."
In 2017, Buffett said he would be content making $100,000 a year partly because he already has an investment that's made him happy: a house he bought in 1958, which he still lives in.
"If I could spend $100 million on a house that would make me a lot happier, I would do it. But, for me, that's the happiest house In the world. And it's because it's got memories, and people come back, and all that sort of thing," Buffett told PBS Newshour.
"The truth is, I have got a lot of wealth, little pieces of paper [that say] Berkshire Hathaway on it. They are claim checks on all kinds of goods and services in the world. They can buy anything. I can buy 400-foot yachts and have 20 homes and all that," Buffett said. "I wouldn't be happier."
Zameena Mejia 3:57 PM ET Tue, 27 Feb 2018
Buffett: It is crazy to borrow money on securities Buffett: It is crazy to borrow money on securities
Although Berkshire Hathaway CEO Warren Buffett is currently worth $91.1 billion, he recently said that having more money isn't the key to happiness. In fact, the business mogul admitted he enjoyed the days when he had a mere fraction of his current net worth.
"I wasn't unhappy when I had $10,000 when I got out of school," Buffett said during an interview with Becky Quick on CNBC's "Squawk Box" on Monday. "I was having a lot of fun."
Buffett said people tend to think that having more money will make them happier. He gave this example: If you have $100,000 and you're an unhappy person and you think "$1 million is going to make you happy, it is not going to happen."
Even if you earned that million dollars, your happiness will disappear when you "look around" and "see people with $2 million," Buffett added. "You will not be way happier if you double your net worth."
Warren Buffett is worth $75 billion but says he would be 'very happy' with way less Warren Buffett is worth $75 billion but says he would be 'very happy' with way less
Instead of letting your happiness be defined by what you don't have or how quickly you make money, Buffett said "you can have a lot of fun while you're getting rich."
Echoing Buffett's sentiment, research shows that people assume having and spending money will make them happier, University of British Columbia psychology professor Elizabeth Dunn explained to CNBC Make It.
In a study Dunn co-authored and published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, researchers found that "time is the new essential currency for many people."
"In terms of our happiness, time is really the fundamental currency," Dunn added.
"People do not have unlimited money, so buying one thing means not being able to pay for something else," she added. "Shifting the focus to not just say 'let me make more income' but let me just spend my money in ways that are actually making me happy is a really promising strategy."
In 2017, Buffett said he would be content making $100,000 a year partly because he already has an investment that's made him happy: a house he bought in 1958, which he still lives in.
"If I could spend $100 million on a house that would make me a lot happier, I would do it. But, for me, that's the happiest house In the world. And it's because it's got memories, and people come back, and all that sort of thing," Buffett told PBS Newshour.
"The truth is, I have got a lot of wealth, little pieces of paper [that say] Berkshire Hathaway on it. They are claim checks on all kinds of goods and services in the world. They can buy anything. I can buy 400-foot yachts and have 20 homes and all that," Buffett said. "I wouldn't be happier."
China’s Xi Jinping says he is opposed to life-long rule - Financial Times
April 16, 2018
China’s Xi Jinping says he is opposed to life-long rule
President insists term extension is necessary to align government and party posts
Xi Jinping delivers a speech at the Bo'ao Forum for Asia last week © EPA
Tom Mitchell in Beijing
Chinese President Xi Jinping has said that he is “personally opposed” to life-long rule, adding that foreign observers have “misinterpreted” a recent constitutional amendment that revoked the two-term limit on the presidency.
Mr Xi expressed his views at three recent meetings with foreign dignitaries and Chinese officials, according to people who either attended the meetings or were briefed on the discussions.
They added that Mr Xi justified the decision in terms of needing to align the country’s three top government and Communist party jobs. Mr Xi’s two more powerful posts — party general secretary and chairmanship of the party’s Central Military Commission — are not subject to term limits.
Two people said Mr Xi had surprised his guests by raising the issue himself. “President Xi said he was ‘personally opposed’ to [lifetime rule] and the outside world had ‘misinterpreted’ the amendment,” one of the people said.
Mr Xi did not say at the meetings whether he intended to serve as president, party general secretary and CMC chairman for three or more terms.
On February 25, the official Xinhua news agency announced that the Communist party’s Central Committee had recommended scrapping the two-term limit on China’s presidency, paving the way for Mr Xi to remain president for life if he wishes.
The Central Committee’s “recommendation” to revoke the presidential term limit was taken at a closed-door meeting in mid-January but kept secret for more than a month.
The amendment has stirred unease among many urban elites, including college graduates, intellectuals and civil servants, who worry about a return to the excesses of one-man rule that tarnished Mao Zedong’s 27-year reign.
Mao’s successor, Deng Xiaoping, had term limits written into China’s constitution in an effort to bring more predictability to leadership transitions in the world’s most populous country. “The amendment sends a terrible signal about institutional rule,” said one former Chinese government official.
A senior executive at a large listed Chinese state-owned enterprise added that he had been forced to answer awkward questions from investors ever since the amendment was announced. “Investors have been asking lots of questions about it,” the executive said. “It doesn’t look good.”
The amendment was formally passed in March by China’s rubber-stamp parliament, the National People’s Congress, with 2,958 votes in favour and just two opposed. Mr Xi was then unanimously re-elected to a second five-year term as state president.
Chinese politics & policy
Xi Jinping promises more assertive Chinese foreign policy
Defenders of the amendment argue that streamlining the technically separate party and government administrative structures will help Mr Xi tackle difficult financial and economic reforms on which his administration made little headway during his first term in office.
“There isn’t really a line between the party and government,” said one Chinese government official. “That separation was always very superficial and unnecessary.”
After the amendment was first announced in February, a commentary in the People’s Daily newspaper argued that it did not mean Mr Xi would rule for life, as party leaders would still have to step down if incapacitated by illness or advanced age. But Mr Xi himself has not commented publicly on the issue.
Mr Xi also remains genuinely popular across China because of the success of his anti-corruption campaign and nationalist foreign policies, with many people welcoming the prospect of him remaining in office for three or more terms.
Yanmei Xie, an analyst at Gavekal Dragonomics in Beijing, said that one Chinese business contact angrily dismissed overseas criticism that Mr Xi’s power grab was similar to Vladimir Putin’s machinations in Russia. “These foreigners don’t understand that China needs a strong ruler,” Ms Xie quoted the businessman as saying. “Xi isn’t Putin, he’s Peter the Great.”
In addition to Mr Xi’s grip on both the party and presidency, two other members of the party’s most powerful body — the seven-man Politburo Standing Committee — simultaneously serve as state premier and NPC chairman.
In 2004 one of Mr Xi’s predecessors, Jiang Zemin, said that the Chinese party-state’s “trinity-style leadership structure is not only necessary but also appropriate for a big party and country like ours”.
But Mr Jiang, who succeeded Deng in 1989, is the only Chinese “paramount leader” since then to have fractured this trinity. He stayed on as CMC chairman, giving him control over China’s armed forces, for the first two years of Hu Jintao’s tenure as party general secretary and state president.
China’s Xi Jinping says he is opposed to life-long rule
President insists term extension is necessary to align government and party posts
Xi Jinping delivers a speech at the Bo'ao Forum for Asia last week © EPA
Tom Mitchell in Beijing
Chinese President Xi Jinping has said that he is “personally opposed” to life-long rule, adding that foreign observers have “misinterpreted” a recent constitutional amendment that revoked the two-term limit on the presidency.
Mr Xi expressed his views at three recent meetings with foreign dignitaries and Chinese officials, according to people who either attended the meetings or were briefed on the discussions.
They added that Mr Xi justified the decision in terms of needing to align the country’s three top government and Communist party jobs. Mr Xi’s two more powerful posts — party general secretary and chairmanship of the party’s Central Military Commission — are not subject to term limits.
Two people said Mr Xi had surprised his guests by raising the issue himself. “President Xi said he was ‘personally opposed’ to [lifetime rule] and the outside world had ‘misinterpreted’ the amendment,” one of the people said.
Mr Xi did not say at the meetings whether he intended to serve as president, party general secretary and CMC chairman for three or more terms.
On February 25, the official Xinhua news agency announced that the Communist party’s Central Committee had recommended scrapping the two-term limit on China’s presidency, paving the way for Mr Xi to remain president for life if he wishes.
The Central Committee’s “recommendation” to revoke the presidential term limit was taken at a closed-door meeting in mid-January but kept secret for more than a month.
The amendment has stirred unease among many urban elites, including college graduates, intellectuals and civil servants, who worry about a return to the excesses of one-man rule that tarnished Mao Zedong’s 27-year reign.
Mao’s successor, Deng Xiaoping, had term limits written into China’s constitution in an effort to bring more predictability to leadership transitions in the world’s most populous country. “The amendment sends a terrible signal about institutional rule,” said one former Chinese government official.
A senior executive at a large listed Chinese state-owned enterprise added that he had been forced to answer awkward questions from investors ever since the amendment was announced. “Investors have been asking lots of questions about it,” the executive said. “It doesn’t look good.”
The amendment was formally passed in March by China’s rubber-stamp parliament, the National People’s Congress, with 2,958 votes in favour and just two opposed. Mr Xi was then unanimously re-elected to a second five-year term as state president.
Chinese politics & policy
Xi Jinping promises more assertive Chinese foreign policy
Defenders of the amendment argue that streamlining the technically separate party and government administrative structures will help Mr Xi tackle difficult financial and economic reforms on which his administration made little headway during his first term in office.
“There isn’t really a line between the party and government,” said one Chinese government official. “That separation was always very superficial and unnecessary.”
After the amendment was first announced in February, a commentary in the People’s Daily newspaper argued that it did not mean Mr Xi would rule for life, as party leaders would still have to step down if incapacitated by illness or advanced age. But Mr Xi himself has not commented publicly on the issue.
Mr Xi also remains genuinely popular across China because of the success of his anti-corruption campaign and nationalist foreign policies, with many people welcoming the prospect of him remaining in office for three or more terms.
Yanmei Xie, an analyst at Gavekal Dragonomics in Beijing, said that one Chinese business contact angrily dismissed overseas criticism that Mr Xi’s power grab was similar to Vladimir Putin’s machinations in Russia. “These foreigners don’t understand that China needs a strong ruler,” Ms Xie quoted the businessman as saying. “Xi isn’t Putin, he’s Peter the Great.”
In addition to Mr Xi’s grip on both the party and presidency, two other members of the party’s most powerful body — the seven-man Politburo Standing Committee — simultaneously serve as state premier and NPC chairman.
In 2004 one of Mr Xi’s predecessors, Jiang Zemin, said that the Chinese party-state’s “trinity-style leadership structure is not only necessary but also appropriate for a big party and country like ours”.
But Mr Jiang, who succeeded Deng in 1989, is the only Chinese “paramount leader” since then to have fractured this trinity. He stayed on as CMC chairman, giving him control over China’s armed forces, for the first two years of Hu Jintao’s tenure as party general secretary and state president.
Canada's Liberal party considers decriminalization of all illicit drugs - Guardian
Canada's Liberal party considers decriminalization of all illicit drugs
The push towards decriminalization comes as the opioid crisis continues to claim thousands of lives on both sides of the 49th parallel
Ashifa Kassam in Toronto
@ashifa_k
Mon 16 Apr 2018 19.00 AEST
Members of the country’s Liberal party, led federally by Justin Trudeau, are calling on their government to decriminalize possession and consumption of all illicit drugs.
Members of the country’s Liberal party, led federally by Justin Trudeau, are calling on their government to decriminalize possession and consumption of all illicit drugs. Photograph: Chris Wattie/Reuters
With months left before Canada becomes the first country in the G7 to fully legalise marijuana, members of the country’s Liberal party, led federally by Justin Trudeau, are calling on their government to go one step further and decriminalise the possession and consumption of all illicit drugs.
The internal push to embrace the idea is one of more than two dozen resolutions set to be debated this week as the political party gathers for their national convention in the east coast city of Halifax. The resolution is one of three put forward by the national caucus, suggesting widespread support among Liberal MPs.
“It’s one of the few issues where we’re taught from a young age, that drugs are bad and that it’s normal to throw people in jail for using drugs,” said Nathaniel Erskine-Smith, a Liberal MP who has championed decriminalisation since he was elected in 2015.
“Yet when you actually start looking underneath those claims and at the actual evidence and hear from people who have study or lived this issue, this isn’t the right approach.”
Canadian province gambles future on marijuana's 'extreme growth potential'
Framing drug use as a criminal justice issue rather than one of health has simply served to fuel a lucrative black market, divert resources from law enforcement and marginalise those who are often already on the margins of society, he argued.
The push towards decriminalisation comes as the opioid crisis continues to claim thousands of lives on both sides of the 49th parallel. An estimated 4,000 Canadians died last year due to opioids, according to the Public Health Agency of Canada – more than the number of Canadians who died due to motor vehicle accidents and homicides combined.
In British Columbia, the western Canadian province where officials declared the opioid crisis a public health emergency in 2016, an average of four people die of overdoses each day.
The federal Liberal government has taken steps to address the crisis; expediting the approval of supervised injection sites and permitting physicians to prescribe heroin in cases of severe addiction. These are important steps, said Erskine-Smith. “But obviously if we want to save lives we need to do more.”
That could mean adopting an idea that is gaining steam across Canada as the number of opioid deaths continue to swell. Earlier this year, Canada’s New Democratic Party became the first major political party in Canada to officially champion the idea.
Weeks later the City of Vancouver recommended that the federal government immediately decriminalise personal possession of illicit drugs. “We are witnessing a horrific and preventable loss of life as a poisoned drug supply continues to kill our neighbours, friends, and family,” Gregor Robertson, Vancouver’s mayor, said in a statement.
Their stance is backed by prominent organisations, from the Global Commission on Drug Policy to the World Health Organization. Many of them point to the experience of Portugal, which in 2001 did away with criminal penalties for simple possession and consumption of illicit drugs.
The move was coupled with an expansion of treatment and harm reduction services such as safe injection sites. In Portugal, those caught with drugs appear before dissuasion commissions, which can refer people to treatment or impose monetary fines.
Portugal’s radical drugs policy is working. Why hasn’t the world copied it?
Statistics suggest the approach is working; Portugal has seen dramatic drops in overdose deaths, HIV infection rates and drug-related crimes, while the number of drug users seeking treatment has increased.
Should the Liberals approve their resolution this week, decriminalisation would be backed by two of Canada’s three major parties. But even so, there is little guarantee that the idea will make its way into the Liberal platform in the upcoming 2019 federal election. Trudeau, who leads the party, has repeatedly said his government is not considering legalising any other drugs besides marijuana.
Erskine-Smith stressed the difference between the two issues. The federal government’s efforts to end marijuana prohibition aim to halt the flow of profits to organised crime, given that Canadians spent an estimated C$5.7 billion on marijuana last year.
But when it comes to decriminalisation, said Erskine-Smith, “we’re not talking removing the criminal sanction for sale, we’re not talking removing the criminal sanction for production, as we did with cannabis.”
The change in approach comes with political risks, he acknowledged. Canada’s Conservative party remains staunchly opposed to the idea and have shown themselves willing to exploit fears over the proposal to gain votes.
Last year the party’s leader Andrew Scheer attacked Trudeau on Twitter, alleging that his government was considering decriminalisation drugs beside marijuana.
“It’s funny. When you talk to conservative members of Parliament one-on-one, I think they’re open to the idea,” said Erskine-Smith. “But my hope is – especially when confronted with the numbers of Canadians who have lost their lives, and we’re talking Canadians of all backgrounds, Canadians of all political parties – I really do hope we’re all able to get past the politics of it and follow the evidence.”
The push towards decriminalization comes as the opioid crisis continues to claim thousands of lives on both sides of the 49th parallel
Ashifa Kassam in Toronto
@ashifa_k
Mon 16 Apr 2018 19.00 AEST
Members of the country’s Liberal party, led federally by Justin Trudeau, are calling on their government to decriminalize possession and consumption of all illicit drugs.
Members of the country’s Liberal party, led federally by Justin Trudeau, are calling on their government to decriminalize possession and consumption of all illicit drugs. Photograph: Chris Wattie/Reuters
With months left before Canada becomes the first country in the G7 to fully legalise marijuana, members of the country’s Liberal party, led federally by Justin Trudeau, are calling on their government to go one step further and decriminalise the possession and consumption of all illicit drugs.
The internal push to embrace the idea is one of more than two dozen resolutions set to be debated this week as the political party gathers for their national convention in the east coast city of Halifax. The resolution is one of three put forward by the national caucus, suggesting widespread support among Liberal MPs.
“It’s one of the few issues where we’re taught from a young age, that drugs are bad and that it’s normal to throw people in jail for using drugs,” said Nathaniel Erskine-Smith, a Liberal MP who has championed decriminalisation since he was elected in 2015.
“Yet when you actually start looking underneath those claims and at the actual evidence and hear from people who have study or lived this issue, this isn’t the right approach.”
Canadian province gambles future on marijuana's 'extreme growth potential'
Framing drug use as a criminal justice issue rather than one of health has simply served to fuel a lucrative black market, divert resources from law enforcement and marginalise those who are often already on the margins of society, he argued.
The push towards decriminalisation comes as the opioid crisis continues to claim thousands of lives on both sides of the 49th parallel. An estimated 4,000 Canadians died last year due to opioids, according to the Public Health Agency of Canada – more than the number of Canadians who died due to motor vehicle accidents and homicides combined.
In British Columbia, the western Canadian province where officials declared the opioid crisis a public health emergency in 2016, an average of four people die of overdoses each day.
The federal Liberal government has taken steps to address the crisis; expediting the approval of supervised injection sites and permitting physicians to prescribe heroin in cases of severe addiction. These are important steps, said Erskine-Smith. “But obviously if we want to save lives we need to do more.”
That could mean adopting an idea that is gaining steam across Canada as the number of opioid deaths continue to swell. Earlier this year, Canada’s New Democratic Party became the first major political party in Canada to officially champion the idea.
Weeks later the City of Vancouver recommended that the federal government immediately decriminalise personal possession of illicit drugs. “We are witnessing a horrific and preventable loss of life as a poisoned drug supply continues to kill our neighbours, friends, and family,” Gregor Robertson, Vancouver’s mayor, said in a statement.
Their stance is backed by prominent organisations, from the Global Commission on Drug Policy to the World Health Organization. Many of them point to the experience of Portugal, which in 2001 did away with criminal penalties for simple possession and consumption of illicit drugs.
The move was coupled with an expansion of treatment and harm reduction services such as safe injection sites. In Portugal, those caught with drugs appear before dissuasion commissions, which can refer people to treatment or impose monetary fines.
Portugal’s radical drugs policy is working. Why hasn’t the world copied it?
Statistics suggest the approach is working; Portugal has seen dramatic drops in overdose deaths, HIV infection rates and drug-related crimes, while the number of drug users seeking treatment has increased.
Should the Liberals approve their resolution this week, decriminalisation would be backed by two of Canada’s three major parties. But even so, there is little guarantee that the idea will make its way into the Liberal platform in the upcoming 2019 federal election. Trudeau, who leads the party, has repeatedly said his government is not considering legalising any other drugs besides marijuana.
Erskine-Smith stressed the difference between the two issues. The federal government’s efforts to end marijuana prohibition aim to halt the flow of profits to organised crime, given that Canadians spent an estimated C$5.7 billion on marijuana last year.
But when it comes to decriminalisation, said Erskine-Smith, “we’re not talking removing the criminal sanction for sale, we’re not talking removing the criminal sanction for production, as we did with cannabis.”
The change in approach comes with political risks, he acknowledged. Canada’s Conservative party remains staunchly opposed to the idea and have shown themselves willing to exploit fears over the proposal to gain votes.
Last year the party’s leader Andrew Scheer attacked Trudeau on Twitter, alleging that his government was considering decriminalisation drugs beside marijuana.
“It’s funny. When you talk to conservative members of Parliament one-on-one, I think they’re open to the idea,” said Erskine-Smith. “But my hope is – especially when confronted with the numbers of Canadians who have lost their lives, and we’re talking Canadians of all backgrounds, Canadians of all political parties – I really do hope we’re all able to get past the politics of it and follow the evidence.”
Syria air strikes: Macron says he convinced Trump not to pull out troops - BBC News
April 16, 2018
Syria air strikes: Macron says he convinced Trump not to pull out troops
Watch the key moments over 12 hours - in two minutes
French President Emmanuel Macron has said he convinced US President Donald Trump not to withdraw troops from Syria and instead commit "for the long term".
Earlier this month, Mr Trump declared that the US would "be coming out of Syria very soon".
On Saturday, joint US, UK and French strikes targeted Syrian government sites in response to an alleged chemical weapons attack.
Mr Macron said he also persuaded Mr Trump to keep the strikes limited.
The pair, who are reported to have a friendly relationship, spoke several times in the days before the military action was taken.
But after Mr Macron's comments, White House spokeswoman Sarah Sanders said: "The US mission has not changed - the president has been clear that he wants US forces to come home as quickly as possible".
But she added that the US was "determined to completely crush" the Islamic State group and prevent its return.
Announcing the strikes in an address to the nation on Friday evening in Washington, Mr Trump insisted: "America does not seek an indefinite presence in Syria - under no circumstances."
The US has about 2,000 personnel on the ground in eastern Syria supporting an alliance of Kurdish and Arab militias called the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF).
Catch up on the strikes:
What was targeted?
UK PM faces 'almighty row' over strikes
Were the Syria air strikes legal?
Can Trump walk away?
What did Mr Macron say?
Speaking in a live TV interview, during which he was grilled on several subjects, Mr Macron said: "Ten days ago, President Trump was saying 'the United States should withdraw from Syria'. We convinced him it was necessary to stay for the long term."
Emmanuel Macron defended the strikes in a lengthy TV interview
In telephone calls with Mr Trump, he also said he "persuaded him that we needed to limit the strikes to chemical weapons [sites], after things got a little carried away over tweets".
A tweet from Mr Trump last week about US missile strikes on Syria had read: "Get ready, Russia, because they will be coming, nice and new and 'smart'. You shouldn't be partners with a Gas Killing Animal who kills his people and enjoys it!"
The French president appears to have struck up a strong relationship with his US counterpart and this month will be afforded the first formal White House state visit of the Trump presidency.
Emmanuel Macron has developed a strong relationship with Donald Trump
An unlikely (and calculated) friendship is born
Mr Macron insisted the Western allies had "complete international legitimacy to act" in Syria. He said the allies had clear proof there had been a chemical attack in the town of Douma near Damascus on 7 April and that the Syrian government was responsible. Syria vehemently denies this.
Mr Macron said he told Russian President Vladimir Putin directly that Russia - which backs the Syrian government militarily - was complicit.
"They have not used chlorine themselves but they have methodically built the international community's inability to act through diplomatic channels to stop the use of chemical weapons," he said.
The wave of strikes had represented the most significant attack against President Bashar al-Assad's government by Western powers in seven years of Syria's civil war.
Mr Macron said he still wanted dialogue with all parties, including Russia, to try to find a political solution and would go ahead with a planned trip to Moscow next month.
The French parliament will be holding an urgent debate on the country's military action at 17:00 local time (15:00 GMT).
MPs in the UK parliament are also due to question PM Theresa May on the air strikes. The opposition believes Mrs May should have consulted parliament before launching them.
What's happening on the ground in Syria?
Inspectors from the independent Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) are now in the country.
UK publishes legal case for Syria action
Syria 'chemical attack': What we know
What Trump said
The inspectors will investigate the site of the alleged chemical attack in Douma, which the Western allies believe killed dozens of people with the use of chlorine gas and possibly Sarin.
The inspectors had been expected to travel to Douma over the weekend but there is no news they have arrived there yet.
Masa, survivor of suspected chemical attack: "Instead of breathing air, we breathed the smell of blood"
The Russians say there is no trace of any chemicals and questioned why the allies carried out strikes before the inspectors had reported.
Russia says the attack in Douma was staged, accusing the UK of orchestrating it.
The OPCW will not seek to establish, or publicly announce, who was responsible for the attack. An urgent meeting of the OPCW at its headquarters in The Hague is also getting under way.
The French and Russian ambassadors to the Netherlands are reported to be among those attending.
What are the latest diplomatic moves?
Speaking on TV, US envoy to the UN Nikki Haley said new sanctions would be announced on Monday against Russian companies with links to President Assad.
Syria air strikes: Will they work?
This would be the second tranche of sanctions against Russian firms in a month, partly related to Russia's support for Syria.
Ms Haley also ruled out any direct talks with Mr Assad.
British Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson said no further strikes were planned, but that this would be reassessed if more chemical attacks took place.
President Putin spoke to Iranian counterpart Hassan Rouhani by phone on Sunday, telling him that any new Western strikes on Syria would spark "international chaos".
Syria is also high on the agenda of an EU foreign ministers' meeting taking place in Luxembourg.
The future of the Syrian war:
Can Trump move on?
Will the West's attack sway Assad?
Fall of Eastern Ghouta - a pivotal moment for Assad
What was targeted by the US, UK and France?
Three sites. Firstly, the Barzeh complex, which the US says is a centre for development, production and testing of chemical and biological weapons, although Syria denies this.
The other two were suspected chemical weapons facilities at Him Shinshar near Homs.
The Barzeh complex appears completely destroyed
The US said 105 missiles were launched and it believed none were intercepted by Syrian defences. It said Syria's chemical weapons programme had been set back years.
The Russians said 71 missiles were shot down by Syrian systems.
Syria air strikes: Macron says he convinced Trump not to pull out troops
Watch the key moments over 12 hours - in two minutes
French President Emmanuel Macron has said he convinced US President Donald Trump not to withdraw troops from Syria and instead commit "for the long term".
Earlier this month, Mr Trump declared that the US would "be coming out of Syria very soon".
On Saturday, joint US, UK and French strikes targeted Syrian government sites in response to an alleged chemical weapons attack.
Mr Macron said he also persuaded Mr Trump to keep the strikes limited.
The pair, who are reported to have a friendly relationship, spoke several times in the days before the military action was taken.
But after Mr Macron's comments, White House spokeswoman Sarah Sanders said: "The US mission has not changed - the president has been clear that he wants US forces to come home as quickly as possible".
But she added that the US was "determined to completely crush" the Islamic State group and prevent its return.
Announcing the strikes in an address to the nation on Friday evening in Washington, Mr Trump insisted: "America does not seek an indefinite presence in Syria - under no circumstances."
The US has about 2,000 personnel on the ground in eastern Syria supporting an alliance of Kurdish and Arab militias called the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF).
Catch up on the strikes:
What was targeted?
UK PM faces 'almighty row' over strikes
Were the Syria air strikes legal?
Can Trump walk away?
What did Mr Macron say?
Speaking in a live TV interview, during which he was grilled on several subjects, Mr Macron said: "Ten days ago, President Trump was saying 'the United States should withdraw from Syria'. We convinced him it was necessary to stay for the long term."
Emmanuel Macron defended the strikes in a lengthy TV interview
In telephone calls with Mr Trump, he also said he "persuaded him that we needed to limit the strikes to chemical weapons [sites], after things got a little carried away over tweets".
A tweet from Mr Trump last week about US missile strikes on Syria had read: "Get ready, Russia, because they will be coming, nice and new and 'smart'. You shouldn't be partners with a Gas Killing Animal who kills his people and enjoys it!"
The French president appears to have struck up a strong relationship with his US counterpart and this month will be afforded the first formal White House state visit of the Trump presidency.
Emmanuel Macron has developed a strong relationship with Donald Trump
An unlikely (and calculated) friendship is born
Mr Macron insisted the Western allies had "complete international legitimacy to act" in Syria. He said the allies had clear proof there had been a chemical attack in the town of Douma near Damascus on 7 April and that the Syrian government was responsible. Syria vehemently denies this.
Mr Macron said he told Russian President Vladimir Putin directly that Russia - which backs the Syrian government militarily - was complicit.
"They have not used chlorine themselves but they have methodically built the international community's inability to act through diplomatic channels to stop the use of chemical weapons," he said.
The wave of strikes had represented the most significant attack against President Bashar al-Assad's government by Western powers in seven years of Syria's civil war.
Mr Macron said he still wanted dialogue with all parties, including Russia, to try to find a political solution and would go ahead with a planned trip to Moscow next month.
The French parliament will be holding an urgent debate on the country's military action at 17:00 local time (15:00 GMT).
MPs in the UK parliament are also due to question PM Theresa May on the air strikes. The opposition believes Mrs May should have consulted parliament before launching them.
What's happening on the ground in Syria?
Inspectors from the independent Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) are now in the country.
UK publishes legal case for Syria action
Syria 'chemical attack': What we know
What Trump said
The inspectors will investigate the site of the alleged chemical attack in Douma, which the Western allies believe killed dozens of people with the use of chlorine gas and possibly Sarin.
The inspectors had been expected to travel to Douma over the weekend but there is no news they have arrived there yet.
Masa, survivor of suspected chemical attack: "Instead of breathing air, we breathed the smell of blood"
The Russians say there is no trace of any chemicals and questioned why the allies carried out strikes before the inspectors had reported.
Russia says the attack in Douma was staged, accusing the UK of orchestrating it.
The OPCW will not seek to establish, or publicly announce, who was responsible for the attack. An urgent meeting of the OPCW at its headquarters in The Hague is also getting under way.
The French and Russian ambassadors to the Netherlands are reported to be among those attending.
What are the latest diplomatic moves?
Speaking on TV, US envoy to the UN Nikki Haley said new sanctions would be announced on Monday against Russian companies with links to President Assad.
Syria air strikes: Will they work?
This would be the second tranche of sanctions against Russian firms in a month, partly related to Russia's support for Syria.
Ms Haley also ruled out any direct talks with Mr Assad.
British Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson said no further strikes were planned, but that this would be reassessed if more chemical attacks took place.
President Putin spoke to Iranian counterpart Hassan Rouhani by phone on Sunday, telling him that any new Western strikes on Syria would spark "international chaos".
Syria is also high on the agenda of an EU foreign ministers' meeting taking place in Luxembourg.
The future of the Syrian war:
Can Trump move on?
Will the West's attack sway Assad?
Fall of Eastern Ghouta - a pivotal moment for Assad
What was targeted by the US, UK and France?
Three sites. Firstly, the Barzeh complex, which the US says is a centre for development, production and testing of chemical and biological weapons, although Syria denies this.
The other two were suspected chemical weapons facilities at Him Shinshar near Homs.
The Barzeh complex appears completely destroyed
The US said 105 missiles were launched and it believed none were intercepted by Syrian defences. It said Syria's chemical weapons programme had been set back years.
The Russians said 71 missiles were shot down by Syrian systems.
Ex-FBI chief James Comey says Trump 'morally unfit to be president' - BBC News
April 16, 2018
Ex-FBI chief James Comey says Trump 'morally unfit to be president'
James Comey has infuriated President Trump as he promotes a new book
Former FBI director James Comey has said Donald Trump is "morally unfit to be president", who treats women like "pieces of meat".
Mr Comey was giving his first major television interview since he was fired by President Trump last year.
He told ABC News that Mr Trump lies constantly and may have obstructed justice.
Hours before the interview aired, the president went on the offensive, accusing Mr Comey of "many lies".
Mr Comey told ABC's 20/20 programme on Sunday night: "I don't buy this stuff about him being mentally incompetent or early stages of dementia."
"I don't think he's medically unfit to be president. I think he's morally unfit to be president.
"Our president must embody respect and adhere to the values that are at the core of this country. The most important being truth. This president is not able to do that," Mr Comey said.
ABC News
✔
@ABC
.@GStephanopoulos: “Is Donald Trump unfit to be president?”
@Comey: “Yes, but not in the way I often hear people talk about it...I don't think he's medically unfit to be president. I think he's morally unfit to be president.” https://abcn.ws/2IXDbIg #Comey
12:32 PM - Apr 16, 2018
After the interview aired, Mr Trump's party - via the Republican National Committee - released a statement saying Mr Comey's publicity tour for his new book showed "his true higher loyalty is to himself".
Six claims about Trump in Comey book
Ways Comey could hurt Trump - or himself
Trump's allies trash 'lyin' FBI memoir
"The only thing worse than Comey's history of misconduct is his willingness to say anything to sell books," it said.
How did we get here?
It is the latest development in a long-standing feud between the two men, further fuelled by the upcoming publication of Mr Comey's memoir A Higher Loyalty: Truth, Lies and Leadership.
The ex-FBI chief is on a publicity blitz for the book.
President Trump has said the" badly reviewed book" raises "big questions". He also suggested Mr Comey should be imprisoned, and in recent days began referring to him as a "slime ball".
Donald J. Trump
✔
@realDonaldTrump
The big questions in Comey’s badly reviewed book aren’t answered like, how come he gave up Classified Information (jail), why did he lie to Congress (jail), why did the DNC refuse to give Server to the FBI (why didn’t they TAKE it), why the phony memos, McCabe’s $700,000 & more?
9:57 PM - Apr 15, 2018
The story dates back to the 2016 presidential election, when Mr Comey was FBI director, and the investigation into Democrat candidate Hillary Clinton's handling of classified emails on a private server while Secretary of State.
In July 2016, he said that she had been "extremely careless" in her handling of the emails, but the FBI would not press charges.
However, in October, days before the vote, he sent a letter to Congress telling them the FBI was reopening an investigation after finding more emails. The letter went public - and Mrs Clinton says it handed Donald Trump the election.
On 6 November, the FBI said it had completed its review into the new trove of emails and there would, again, be no charges.
Once Mr Trump became president, Mr Comey says he tried to extract a pledge of personal loyalty from him - something the president fiercely denies.
Media captionTrump's love-hate relationship with Comey over a tumultuous year
In March 2017, when alleged links between Mr Trump's campaign and Russia were being investigated by the FBI, Mr Trump allegedly pressured Mr Comey to publicly declare that the president was not personally being investigated - something the then director says he declined to do.
Some Democrats blamed Mr Comey for costing Mrs Clinton the election, while Trump supporters felt he was targeting the president with the Russia investigation.
Before revealing the new Clinton investigation, one staff member asked Mr Comey: "Should you consider that what you're about do to may help elect Donald Trump president?"
Mr Comey said he responded: "Down that path lies the death of the FBI as an independent force"
On the Clinton probe more generally, he said: "The FBI drove this investigation and we did it in a competent and independent way. I would bet my life on that"
He was fired by President Trump in May, finding out about his dismissal from TV news.
FBI boss who went from 'respect' to 'nut'
The Trump-Russia saga in 200 words
What about obstruction of justice?
ABC News has released a full 42,000-word transcript of the interview between Mr Comey and chief anchor George Stephanopoulos.
A chunk of the interview deals with the sacking of National Security Advisor Michael Flynn on 13 February 2017 for lying about contacts with the Russian ambassador.
A day later, Mr Comey is sitting in the Oval Office with Mr Trump alone - the vice-president and the attorney-general have been asked to leave.
The former FBI head asserts in the interview that Mr Trump tried to pressure him into dropping any investigation in Mr Flynn.
"I took it as a direction," he told Mr Stephanopoulos. "He's - his words were, though, 'I hope you can let it go'."
Mr Comey says he let the comment pass, but concedes he should perhaps have suggested to the president that it would amount to obstruction of justice.
"It's certainly some evidence of obstruction of justice. It would depend and - and I'm just a witness in this case, not the investigator or prosecutor, it would depend upon other things that reflected on his intent."
Mr Trump strongly denies Mr Comey's account.
Getting out alive?
Analysis by the BBC's Anthony Zurcher
James Comey thinks Donald Trump is a serial liar who degrades women and is "morally unfit" to be president.
He says it's "possible" but "unlikely" that Russia has compromised the president, and that he may have obstructed the collusion investigation.
He also believes the American people can't do anything about it until the November 2020 presidential election.
That's just one of the contradictions that emerged in Mr Comey's interview. He said he strove to make non-political decisions about the highly political 2016 investigations into Hillary Clinton and the Trump campaign. He spoke of integrity and honour, but confessed that he may not have had the "guts" to confront the president.
The former director gave a complex interview reflecting a man challenged to draw meaning from his place at the centre of the biggest political stories of a lifetime. It made for gripping television. Now Trump loyalists will pick apart his remarks and return fire.
"Nobody gets out alive," Mr Comey quipped in the early days of the Clinton investigation.
It wasn't really a joke then. And it certainly isn't now.
What else did Mr Comey say?
In the prime-time TV interview, Mr Comey suggested that the president had surrounded himself with people loyal to him - comparing Mr Trump to mob bosses he had investigated as a younger man.
"The loyalty oaths, the boss as the dominant centre of everything, it's all about how do you serve the boss, what's in the boss' interests," he said.
Asked if those around the president were "enabling bad behaviour", Mr Comey said: "The challenge of this president is that he will stain everyone around him."
Mr Obama during Mr Comey's swearing in ceremony at the FBI in 2013
Mr Comey, however, said he did not believe President Trump should be impeached.
"I hope not because I think impeaching and removing Donald Trump from office would let the American people off the hook," he said.
Instead, he said, it was something the American people were "duty-bound to do directly" at the voting booth.
During the extensive interview, Mr Comey also said:
"A person who sees moral equivalence in Charlottesville, who talks about and treats women like they're pieces of meat, who lies constantly about matters big and small and insists the American people believe it - that person's not fit to be president of the United States, on moral grounds"
Talking about himself in connection with the Clinton investigation, Mr Comey described himself as "a deeply flawed human surrounded by other flawed humans trying to make decisions with an eye, not on politics, but on those higher values"
Readers of his book "may still walk out of this thinking I'm an idiot, but I'm an honest idiot"
Ex-FBI chief James Comey says Trump 'morally unfit to be president'
James Comey has infuriated President Trump as he promotes a new book
Former FBI director James Comey has said Donald Trump is "morally unfit to be president", who treats women like "pieces of meat".
Mr Comey was giving his first major television interview since he was fired by President Trump last year.
He told ABC News that Mr Trump lies constantly and may have obstructed justice.
Hours before the interview aired, the president went on the offensive, accusing Mr Comey of "many lies".
Mr Comey told ABC's 20/20 programme on Sunday night: "I don't buy this stuff about him being mentally incompetent or early stages of dementia."
"I don't think he's medically unfit to be president. I think he's morally unfit to be president.
"Our president must embody respect and adhere to the values that are at the core of this country. The most important being truth. This president is not able to do that," Mr Comey said.
ABC News
✔
@ABC
.@GStephanopoulos: “Is Donald Trump unfit to be president?”
@Comey: “Yes, but not in the way I often hear people talk about it...I don't think he's medically unfit to be president. I think he's morally unfit to be president.” https://abcn.ws/2IXDbIg #Comey
12:32 PM - Apr 16, 2018
After the interview aired, Mr Trump's party - via the Republican National Committee - released a statement saying Mr Comey's publicity tour for his new book showed "his true higher loyalty is to himself".
Six claims about Trump in Comey book
Ways Comey could hurt Trump - or himself
Trump's allies trash 'lyin' FBI memoir
"The only thing worse than Comey's history of misconduct is his willingness to say anything to sell books," it said.
How did we get here?
It is the latest development in a long-standing feud between the two men, further fuelled by the upcoming publication of Mr Comey's memoir A Higher Loyalty: Truth, Lies and Leadership.
The ex-FBI chief is on a publicity blitz for the book.
President Trump has said the" badly reviewed book" raises "big questions". He also suggested Mr Comey should be imprisoned, and in recent days began referring to him as a "slime ball".
Donald J. Trump
✔
@realDonaldTrump
The big questions in Comey’s badly reviewed book aren’t answered like, how come he gave up Classified Information (jail), why did he lie to Congress (jail), why did the DNC refuse to give Server to the FBI (why didn’t they TAKE it), why the phony memos, McCabe’s $700,000 & more?
9:57 PM - Apr 15, 2018
The story dates back to the 2016 presidential election, when Mr Comey was FBI director, and the investigation into Democrat candidate Hillary Clinton's handling of classified emails on a private server while Secretary of State.
In July 2016, he said that she had been "extremely careless" in her handling of the emails, but the FBI would not press charges.
However, in October, days before the vote, he sent a letter to Congress telling them the FBI was reopening an investigation after finding more emails. The letter went public - and Mrs Clinton says it handed Donald Trump the election.
On 6 November, the FBI said it had completed its review into the new trove of emails and there would, again, be no charges.
Once Mr Trump became president, Mr Comey says he tried to extract a pledge of personal loyalty from him - something the president fiercely denies.
Media captionTrump's love-hate relationship with Comey over a tumultuous year
In March 2017, when alleged links between Mr Trump's campaign and Russia were being investigated by the FBI, Mr Trump allegedly pressured Mr Comey to publicly declare that the president was not personally being investigated - something the then director says he declined to do.
Some Democrats blamed Mr Comey for costing Mrs Clinton the election, while Trump supporters felt he was targeting the president with the Russia investigation.
Before revealing the new Clinton investigation, one staff member asked Mr Comey: "Should you consider that what you're about do to may help elect Donald Trump president?"
Mr Comey said he responded: "Down that path lies the death of the FBI as an independent force"
On the Clinton probe more generally, he said: "The FBI drove this investigation and we did it in a competent and independent way. I would bet my life on that"
He was fired by President Trump in May, finding out about his dismissal from TV news.
FBI boss who went from 'respect' to 'nut'
The Trump-Russia saga in 200 words
What about obstruction of justice?
ABC News has released a full 42,000-word transcript of the interview between Mr Comey and chief anchor George Stephanopoulos.
A chunk of the interview deals with the sacking of National Security Advisor Michael Flynn on 13 February 2017 for lying about contacts with the Russian ambassador.
A day later, Mr Comey is sitting in the Oval Office with Mr Trump alone - the vice-president and the attorney-general have been asked to leave.
The former FBI head asserts in the interview that Mr Trump tried to pressure him into dropping any investigation in Mr Flynn.
"I took it as a direction," he told Mr Stephanopoulos. "He's - his words were, though, 'I hope you can let it go'."
Mr Comey says he let the comment pass, but concedes he should perhaps have suggested to the president that it would amount to obstruction of justice.
"It's certainly some evidence of obstruction of justice. It would depend and - and I'm just a witness in this case, not the investigator or prosecutor, it would depend upon other things that reflected on his intent."
Mr Trump strongly denies Mr Comey's account.
Getting out alive?
Analysis by the BBC's Anthony Zurcher
James Comey thinks Donald Trump is a serial liar who degrades women and is "morally unfit" to be president.
He says it's "possible" but "unlikely" that Russia has compromised the president, and that he may have obstructed the collusion investigation.
He also believes the American people can't do anything about it until the November 2020 presidential election.
That's just one of the contradictions that emerged in Mr Comey's interview. He said he strove to make non-political decisions about the highly political 2016 investigations into Hillary Clinton and the Trump campaign. He spoke of integrity and honour, but confessed that he may not have had the "guts" to confront the president.
The former director gave a complex interview reflecting a man challenged to draw meaning from his place at the centre of the biggest political stories of a lifetime. It made for gripping television. Now Trump loyalists will pick apart his remarks and return fire.
"Nobody gets out alive," Mr Comey quipped in the early days of the Clinton investigation.
It wasn't really a joke then. And it certainly isn't now.
What else did Mr Comey say?
In the prime-time TV interview, Mr Comey suggested that the president had surrounded himself with people loyal to him - comparing Mr Trump to mob bosses he had investigated as a younger man.
"The loyalty oaths, the boss as the dominant centre of everything, it's all about how do you serve the boss, what's in the boss' interests," he said.
Asked if those around the president were "enabling bad behaviour", Mr Comey said: "The challenge of this president is that he will stain everyone around him."
Mr Obama during Mr Comey's swearing in ceremony at the FBI in 2013
Mr Comey, however, said he did not believe President Trump should be impeached.
"I hope not because I think impeaching and removing Donald Trump from office would let the American people off the hook," he said.
Instead, he said, it was something the American people were "duty-bound to do directly" at the voting booth.
During the extensive interview, Mr Comey also said:
"A person who sees moral equivalence in Charlottesville, who talks about and treats women like they're pieces of meat, who lies constantly about matters big and small and insists the American people believe it - that person's not fit to be president of the United States, on moral grounds"
Talking about himself in connection with the Clinton investigation, Mr Comey described himself as "a deeply flawed human surrounded by other flawed humans trying to make decisions with an eye, not on politics, but on those higher values"
Readers of his book "may still walk out of this thinking I'm an idiot, but I'm an honest idiot"
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