Quote of the week…

NYT The Editorial Board

The editorial board is a group of opinion journalists whose views are informed by expertise, research, debate and certain longstanding values. It is separate from the newsroom.

The war in Ukraine has entered a new, more deadly and fateful phase, and the one man who can stop it, Vladimir Putin, has shown no signs that he will do so.

What is Artificial Intelligency?

Artificial intelligence (AI) is the ability of a computer or a robot controlled by a computer to do tasks that are usually done by humans because they require human intelligence and discernment. Although there are no AIs that can perform the wide variety of tasks an ordinary human can do, some AIs can match humans in specific tasks.

Henry Kissinger Warns That AI Will Fundamentally Alter Human Consciousness

By George Dvorsky

Published, November 5, 2019

GIZMODO.com

Speaking in Washington, D.C. earlier today, former U.S. secretary of state Henry Kissinger said he’s convinced of AI’s potential to fundamentally alter human consciousness

—including changes in our self-perception and to our strategic decision-making. He also slammed AI developers for insufficiently thinking through the implications of their creations.

Kissinger, now 96, was speaking to an audience attending the “Strength Through Innovation” conference currently being held at the Liaison Washington Hotel in Washington, D.C. The conference is being run by the National Security Commission on Artificial Intelligence, which was set up by Congress to evaluate the future of AI in the U.S. as it pertains to national security.

Kissinger, who served under President Richard Nixon during the Vietnam War, is a controversial figure who many argue is an unconvicted war criminal. That he’s speaking at conferences and not spending his later years in a cold jail cell is understandably offensive to some observers.

“I’ve become convinced that AI and the surrounding disciplines are going to bring a change in human consciousness, like the Enlightenment.”

Moderator Nadia Schadlow, who in 2018 served in the Trump administration as the Assistant to the President and as Deputy National Security Advisor for Strategy, asked Kissinger about his take on powerful, militarized artificial intelligence and how it might affect global security and strategic decision-making.

“I don’t look at it as a technical person,” said Kissinger. “I am concerned with the historical, philosophical, strategic aspect of it, and I’ve become convinced that AI and the surrounding disciplines are going to bring a change in human consciousness, like the Enlightenment,” he said, adding: “That’s why I’m here.” His invocation of the 18th-century European Enlightenment was a reference to the paradigmatic intellectual shift that occurred during this important historical period, in which science, rationalism, and humanism largely replaced religious and faith-based thinking. 

Though Kissinger didn’t elaborate on this point, he may have been referring to a kind of philosophical or existential shift in our thinking once AI reaches a sufficiently advanced level of sophistication—a development that will irrevocably alter the way we engage with ourselves and our machines, not necessarily for the better.

Kissinger said he’s not “arguing against AI” and that it’s something that might even “save us,” without elaborating on the details.

The former national security advisor said he recently spoke to college students about the perils of AI and that he told them, “‘You work on the applications, I work on the implications.’” He said computer scientists aren’t doing enough to figure out what it will mean “if mankind is surrounded by automatic actions” that cannot be explained or fully understood by humans, a conundrum AI researchers refer to as the black box problem.

Artificial intelligence, he said, “is bound to change the nature of strategy and warfare,” but many stakeholders and decision-makers are still treating it as a “new technical departure.” They haven’t yet understood that AI “must bring a change in the philosophical perception of the world,” and that it will “fundamentally affect human perceptions.”

AI Could Dramatically Increase Risk of Nuclear War by 2040, Says New Report

The common conception of a technologically enabled apocalypse foresees a powerful artificial…

A primary concern articulated by Kissinger was in how militarized AI might cause diplomacy to break down. The secret and ephemeral nature of AI means it’s not something state actors can simply “put on the table” as an obvious threat, unlike conventional or nuclear weapons, said Kissinger. In the strategic field, “we are moving into an area where you can imagine an extraordinary capability” and the “enemy may not know where the threat came from for a while.”

Indeed, this confusion could cause undue chaos on a battlefield, or a country could mistake the source of an attack. Even scarier, a 2018 report from the RAND Corporation warned that AI could eventually heighten the risk of nuclear war. This means we’ll also have to “rethink the element of arms control” and “rethink even how the concept of arms control” might apply to this future world, said Kissinger.

Kissinger said he’s “sort of obsessed” with the work being done by Google’s DeepMind, and the development of AlphaGo and AlphaZero in particular—artificially intelligent systems capable of defeating the world’s best players at chess and Go. He was taken aback by how AlphaGo learned “a form of chess that no human being in all of history ever developed,” and how pre-existing chess-playing computers who played against this AlphaGo were “defenseless.” He said we need to know what this means in the larger scheme of things, and that we should study this concern—that we’re creating things we don’t really understand. “We’re not conscious of this yet as a society,” he said.

Kissinger is confident that AI algorithms will eventually become a part of the military’s decision-making process, but strategic planners will “have to test themselves in war games and even in actual situations to ensure the degree of reliability we can afford to these algorithms, while also having to think through the consequences.”

Kissinger said the situation may eventually be analogous to the onset of World War I, in which a series of logical steps led to a myriad of unanticipated and unwanted consequences.

AI will be the “philosophical challenge of the future.”

“If you don’t see through the implications of the technologies... including your emotional capacities to handle unpredictable consequences, then you’re going to fail on the strategic side,” said Kissinger. It’s not clear, he said, how state actors will be able to conduct diplomacy when they can’t be sure what the other side is thinking, or if they’ll even be able to reassure the other side “even if you wanted to,” he said. “This topic is very important to think about—as you develop weapons of great capacity...how do you talk about it, and how do you build restraint on their use?”

To which he added: “Your weapons in a way become your partner, and if they’re designed for a certain task, how can you modify them under certain conditions? These questions need to be answered.” AI will be the “philosophical challenge of the future,” said Kissinger, because we’ll be partnered with generally intelligent objects that have “never been conceived before, and the limitations are so vast.”

Scary words from a scary guy. The future looks to become a very precarious place.

A Brutal New Phase of Putin’s Terrible War in Ukraine

Jan. 21, 2023

NYT The Editorial Board

The editorial board is a group of opinion journalists whose views are informed by expertise, research, debate and certain longstanding values. It is separate from the newsroom.

The war in Ukraine has entered a new, more deadly and fateful phase, and the one man who can stop it, Vladimir Putin, has shown no signs that he will do so.

After 11 months during which Ukraine has won repeated and decisive victories against Russian forces, clawed back some of its lands and cities and withstood lethal assaults on its infrastructure, the war is at a stalemate.

Still, the fighting rages on, including a ferocious battle for the city of Bakhmut in the eastern Donetsk region. Cruel, seemingly random Russian missile strikes at civilian targets have become a regular horror: On Jan. 14, a Russian missile struck an apartment building in Dnipro, in central Ukraine. Among the at least 40 dead were small children, a pregnant woman and a 15-year-old dancer.

Both sides are now said to be bracing for a fierce new round of offensives in the late winter or spring. Russia has mobilized 300,000 new men to throw into the fray, and some arms factories are working around the clock. Ukraine’s Western arms suppliers, at the same time, are bolstering Kyiv’s arsenal with armor and air defense systems that until recently they were reluctant to deploy against Russia for fear of escalating this conflict into an all-in East-West war.

Over the past two months, the United States has pledged billions in new arms and equipment, including a roughly $2.5 billion package announced this week that, for the first time, includes Stryker armored combat vehicles. Other American weapons on their way to Ukraine include the Patriot, the most advanced American ground-based air defense system; Bradley fighting vehicles; armored personnel carriers; and artillery systems. NATO allies have thrown more weapons into the mix, including the first heavy tank pledged to Ukraine, the Challenger 2 heavy tank from Britain. Germany, historically reluctant to have its tanks used against Russia, is under heavy pressure to allow its allies to export its first-rate Leopard tank to Ukraine.

Germany did not make a decision at a meeting with Ukraine’s allies on Friday, in which countries reiterated their support for sending more advanced arms to Ukraine. U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin, who led the gathering, noted that this was “not a moment to slow down” but to “dig deeper.”

That means the broad, muddy fields of Ukraine will soon again witness full-scale tank-and-trench warfare, this time pitting Western arms against a desperate Russia. This was never supposed to happen again in Europe after the last world war.

Ukraine and its backers hope that the Western arms will be decisive, giving Ukraine a better chance to blunt a Russian offensive and drive the Russians back. How far back is another question. President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine talks of chasing Russia out of Ukraine altogether, including the territory seized by Russia in 2014 in Crimea and eastern Ukraine. The United States and its allies may prefer a less ambitious outcome, although U.S. officials are reportedly considering it as a possibility. But so long as Mr. Putin shows no readiness to talk, the question is moot. The job at hand is to persuade Russia that a negotiated peace is the only option.

This is why the coming fight is critical. But as Mr. Putin digs himself ever deeper into pursuing his delusions, it is also critical that the Russian people be aware of what is being done in their name, and how it is destroying their own future.

How much of this do Russians know or question? It is difficult to ascertain what Russians are privately saying or thinking, given how dangerous any open criticism of the “limited military operation” has become. Independent media have been stifled, thousands of protesters have been arrested, and many foreign correspondents, including those of The Times, were compelled to leave when it became illegal to dispute the official line about the war.

Still, at the very least, most Russians should be asking when and how this war will end. That is why this editorial is addressed in part to the Russian people: It is in their name that their president is waging this terrible and useless war; their sons, fathers and husbands are being killed, maimed or brutalized into committing atrocities; their lives are being mortgaged for generations to come in a state distrusted and disliked in many parts of the world.

The Kremlin’s propaganda machinery has been working full time churning out false narratives about a heroic Russian struggle against forces of fascism and debauchery, in which the Western arms are but more proof that Ukraine is a proxy war by the West to strip Russia of its destiny and greatness. Mr. Putin has concocted an elaborate mythology in which Ukraine is an indelible part of a “Russkiy mir,” a greater Russian world.

Isolated from anyone who would dare to speak truth to his power, Mr. Putin ordered an invasion of Ukraine last year, convinced that the Ukrainians would promptly shed their “fascist” government. The start of the war stunned Russians, but Mr. Putin seemed convinced that a West wasted by decadence and decline would squawk but take no action. He and his commanders were apparently unprepared for the extraordinary resistance they met in Ukraine, or for the speed with which the United States and its allies, horrified by the crude violation of the postwar order, came together in Ukraine’s defense.

Mr. Putin’s response has been to throw ever more lives, resources and cruelty at Ukraine. And with the deplorable support of the head of the Russian Orthodox Church, Patriarch Kirill, the president has elevated what he insists on calling his “limited military offensive” into an existential struggle between a spiritually ordained Great Russia and a corrupt and debauched West.

But Russians are aware that Ukraine was not widely perceived as an enemy, much less a mortal enemy, until Mr. Putin seized Crimea and stirred up a secessionist conflict in eastern Ukraine in 2014. Until then, Russians and Ukrainians traveled freely across their long border, and many of them had family, acquaintances or friends on the other side.

And after all the poverty, repression and isolation under Soviet rule, Russians need to remember that until Mr. Putin began trying to change Ukraine’s borders by force in 2014, they were finally enjoying what those in other industrialized countries had long considered normal — the opportunity to earn decent salaries, buy consumer goods and enjoy vastly expanded freedoms to travel abroad and speak their mind.

The West they visited was not the caricature of depravity presented by Mr. Putin or Patriarch Kirill. And their Russia was hardly a pure and spiritual model, with the alcoholism, corruption, drug abuse, homophobia and other sins so familiar to all Russians.

In the end, the question is whether any of Mr. Putin’s lectures on history really provide a justification for the death and destruction he has ordained. Russians know the horrors of all-out war; they must know that nothing Mr. Putin has concocted remotely validates the leveling of towns and cities, the murder, rape and pillaging, or the deliberate strikes against power and water supplies across Ukraine. Like the last great European war, this one is mostly one man’s madness.

If Ukraine was not an enemy before, Mr. Putin has ensured it is one now. Battling an invader is among the most potent methods of forging a national identity, and for Ukraine, Russia as its enemy and the West as its future have become indelible elements. And if the West was indeed divided and indecisive on how to deal with Russia or Ukraine before, Moscow’s invasion has unified the United States and much of Europe in relegating Russia to a threat and an outcast, and raising a heroic Ukraine to a friend and ally.

Claiming to champion Russian greatness, Mr. Putin has turned Russia into a pariah state in many parts of the world. He claims Russia has everything it needs to withstand the cost of the war and sanctions. But according to a report by the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, a think-tank, Russia faces decades of economic stagnation and regression even if the war ends soon. Industrial production, even military, is likely to continue falling because of its reliance on high-tech goods from the West that it can no longer get. Many Western companies have left, trade with the West has dwindled, and financing the war is draining the budget. Numerous foreign airlines have ceased service to Russia. Add to that the millions of Russia’s best and brightest who have fled, and the future is bleak.

The true scope of Russia’s casualties is also being kept from its people. Gen. Mark A. Milley, the chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff, said in November that Moscow’s casualties were “well over 100,000 Russian soldiers killed and wounded.” About 300,000 men have been pressed into cannon-fodder duty in the army and many more may follow.

It is possible that Mr. Putin might eventually seek a negotiated settlement, though that becomes ever more remote as the Ukrainians suffer ever greater destruction and loss, and as their determination not to cede an inch of their country deepens. For now, Mr. Putin seems to still believe he can bring Ukraine to its knees and dictate its fate, cost be damned.

In his public appearances, Mr. Putin still cultivates the image of a self-confident strongman. Where there are failures, it is the fault of underlings who do not obey his will. He played out that scene on Jan. 11, in his first televised meeting with government ministers in the new year, when he tore into Denis Manturov, deputy prime minister, over aircraft production figures Mr. Putin insisted were wrong and Mr. Manturov defended. Mr. Putin finally exploded, “What are you doing, really, playing the fool?” “Yest’,” Mr. Manturov finally said, the Russian equivalent of “Yes, sir.”

Russians have seen this act before in the Kremlin. They might do well to ponder whether, in this version, Mr. Putin is the omniscient czar and Mr. Manturov the bumbling functionary — the intended lesson — or whether they are being played for fools by Mr. Putin’s vanity, delusions and spitefulness.

White House Aims to Reflect the Environment in Economic Data

The Biden administration has set out to measure the economic value of ecosystems, offering new statistics to weigh in policy decisions.

NYT by Lydia DePillis

Jan. 20, 2023

Forests that keep hillsides from eroding and clean the air. Wetlands that protect coastal real estate from storm surges. Rivers and deep snows that attract tourists and create jobs in rural areas. All of those are natural assets of perhaps obvious value — but none are accounted for by traditional measurements of economic activity.

On Thursday, the Biden administration unveiled an effort to change that by creating a system for assessing the worth of healthy ecosystems to humanity. The results could inform governmental decisions like which industries to support, which natural resources to preserve and which regulations to pass.

The administration’s special envoy for climate change, John Kerry, announced the plan in a speech at the World Economic Forum, the annual gathering of political and business leaders in Davos, Switzerland. “With this plan, the U.S. will put nature on the national balance sheet,” he said.

The initiative will require the help of many corners of the executive branch to integrate the new methods into policy. The private sector is likely to take note as well, given rising awareness that extreme weather can wreak havoc on assets — and demand investment in renewable energy and sustainable agriculture.

In the past, such undertakings have been politically contentious, as conservatives and industry groups have fought data collection that they saw as an impetus to regulation.

A White House report said the effort would take about 15 years. When the standards are fully developed and phased in, researchers will still be able to use gross domestic product as currently defined — but they will also have expanded statistics that take into account a broader sweep of nature’s economic contribution, both tangible and intangible.

Those statistics will help more accurately measure the impact of a hurricane, for example. As currently measured, a huge storm can propel economic growth, even though it leaves behind muddied rivers and denuded coastlines — diminishing resources for fishing, transportation, tourism and other economic uses.

“You can look at the TV and know that we’ve lost beaches, we’ve lost lots of stuff that we really care about, that makes our lives better,” said Eli Fenichel, an assistant director at the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy. “And you get an economist to go on and say, ‘G.D.P.’s going to go up this quarter because we’re going to spend a lot of money rebuilding.’ Being able to have these kinds of data about our natural assets, we can say, ‘That’s nice, but we’ve also lost here, so let’s have a more informed conversation going forward.’”

Taking nature into economic calculations, known as natural capital accounting, is not a new concept. As early as the 1910s, economists began to think about how to put a number on the contribution of biodiversity, or the damage of air pollution. Prototype statistics emerged in the 1970s, and in 1994, the Commerce Department’s Bureau of Economic Analysis proposed a way to augment its accounting tools with measures of environmental health and output.

But Congress ordered the bureau to halt its efforts until an independent review could be completed. States whose economies depend on drilling, mining and other forms of natural resource extraction were particularly worried that the data could be used for more stringent regulation.

How Times reporters cover politics. We rely on our journalists to be independent observers. So while Times staff members may vote, they are not allowed to endorse or campaign for candidates or political causes. This includes participating in marches or rallies in support of a movement or giving money to, or raising money for, any political candidate or election cause.

“They thought that anything that measured the question of productivity of natural resources was inherently an environmental trick,” a Commerce Department official said afterward.

Five years later, that independent review was completed in a report for the National Academy of Sciences. The academy panel — led by the Yale economist William Nordhaus, who went on to win the Nobel Prize for his work on the economic impact of climate change — said the bureau should continue.

“Natural resources such as petroleum, minerals, clean water and fertile soils are assets of the economy in much the same way as are computers, homes and trucks,” the report read. “An important part of the economic picture is therefore missing if natural assets are omitted in creating the national balance sheet.”

While the United States lagged, other countries moved ahead with incorporating nature into their core accounting. The United Nations developed a framework for doing so over the last decade that supported decisions such as assessing the impact of shrinking peat land and protecting an endangered species of tree. Britain has been publishing environmental-economic statistics for several years as well. International groups like the Network for Greening the Financial System, which includes most of the world’s central banks, use some of these techniques for assessing systemic risk in the financial system.

Skepticism about including environmental considerations in economic and financial decision-making remains in the United States, where conservatives have disparaged investing guidelines that put a priority on a company’s performance along environmental, social and governance lines. The social cost of carbon, another measurement tool for assessing the economic impact of regulations through their effect on carbon emissions, was set close to zero during the Trump administration and has been increased significantly under President Biden.

Benjamin Zycher, a senior fellow at the right-leaning American Enterprise Institute, expressed concern Thursday that the new approach would introduce a degree of subjectivity.

“I think there’s a real danger that if in fact they’re trying to put environmental quality values into the national accounts, there’s no straightforward way to do that, and it’s impossible that it wouldn’t be politicized,” Dr. Zycher said in an interview. “That’s going to be a process deeply fraught with problems and dubious interpretations.”

Few economic statistics are a perfect representation of reality, however, and all of them have to be refined to make sure they are consistent and comparable over time. Measuring the value of nature is inherently tricky, since there is often no market price to consult, but other sources of information can be equally illuminating. The Bureau of Economic Analysis has undertaken other efforts to measure the value of services that are never sold, like household labor.

“That’s exactly why we need this sort of strategy,” said Nathaniel Keohane, president of the Center for Climate and Energy Solutions, a research and advocacy group. “To really develop the data we need so that it’s not subjective, and make sure we are really devoting the same quality control and focus on integrity that we do to other areas of economic statistics.”

The strategy does not pretend to cover every aspect of nature’s value, or solve problems of environmental justice simply by more fully incorporating nature’s contribution, particularly for Indigenous communities. Those concerns, said Rachelle Gould, an associate professor of environmental studies at the University of Vermont, will need to be prioritized separately.

“There are a lot of other ways nature matters that can’t be accounted for in monetary terms,” Dr. Gould said. “It’s appropriately cautious about what might be possible.”

France will lower gas reservoir levels to provide 'breathing room'

Gas reservoirs, which are historically high, will be reduced for technical reasons, while risk of shortages in the context of the Russian-Ukrainian war is declining.

Le Monde

Published on January 23, 2023

It's all a bit confusing. For months, gas reservoirs in France had to be filled at all costs, as quickly as possible, in order to compensate for the cessation of Russian gas supplies. Today, with that mission accomplished, with French underground gas stocks hovering at fill rates of around 79% (and 81% in Europe), industry experts are announcing that they will now have to lower the levels. The move is necessary in order to meet regulatory requirements and preserve the efficiency of their storage facilities.

The move is not surprising within the gas industry, which is used to carrying out this procedure – known as "underdrawing" – every year, especially between January and March. "This is part of the normal life of storage," said Thierry Trouvé, managing director of the transmission system provider GRTGaz, which, on Wednesday 18 January, outlined the outlook for the current winter. "Some storage facilities, namely aquifer formations, which are complicated to operate, require this kind of "breathing room" in order to maintain their performance for the coming winters," he said.

According to a spokesman for Storengy, Engie's storage-focused subsidiary, French reservoirs – currently at historically high levels – could see their rates drop to around 35% and 40%, by the end of this winter for aquifers, which represent three-quarters of French reservoirs. What is not subjected to the procedure, is the gas stored in the saline layers, which should be maintained at high levels of nearly 80%.

'Transported to neighboring countries'

What will happen to this gas if it cannot be fully used? "We are not going to burn it, nor put it in huge Butagaz bottles," one expert said ironically, pointing out that the winter is far from over. Moreover, imports could be reduced. "Shippers have the possibility to reduce the arrival of ships, which can be rerouted to other destinations," said Trouvé.

Another option is to "maintain deliveries and transport them to neighboring countries to contribute to the supply there. Along with Spain in particular, France took on the role of a "gateway" during the Russian crisis [following the invasion of Ukraine at the end of February 2022]," he added. After reaching record levels, in November and December 2022, deliveries of liquefied natural gas, which represents 75% of gas consumption in France as of January 15, have already begun to decline in 2023.

According to GRTGaz, the situation is therefore more serene than in September 2022, even if caution remains the order of the day. The same is true for electricity and its supply. "There is still a period (...), around the second half of February, [with] some risks, if we were to go through a significant and long cold snap, because the nuclear power plants will begin to decrease production," agreed Xavier Piechaczyk, chairman of the board of the electricity network manager RTE, on FranceInfo radio on Wednesday, January 18.

In Lima, police violently storm a campus hosting protesters

Two hundred people were arrested during a police raid of San Marcos University, which was hosting protesters demanding the resignation of Peruvian president, Dina Boluarte.

Le Monde by Amanda Chaparro (Lima (Peru) correspondent)

Published on January 23, 2023

On Saturday, January 21, a police armored vehicle smashed through the doors of the campus of the National University of San Marcos in Lima. Maria (her first name has been changed), a 17-year-old student, was preparing meals for protesters who had come from various regions of Peru, mostly from the Andes. They had been staying for three days on the university campus. They had come to participate in the protest convened on Thursday in the capital to demand the resignation of Dina Boluarte. Boluarte is the acting president who succeeded Pedro Castillo after he was ousted, on December 7th, 2022.

Maria then started to run. Behind her, a column of a hundred men entered. They were determined to expel the protesters. Maria heard screams and saw people falling, while others were being beaten. Luckily, she managed to escape through one of the gates. "We were very scared," she explained on the phone. She was still shocked by the brutality of the operation. "Police officers threw tear gas canisters, we heard gunfire, I saw a peasant woman being hit in the head with batons, there was a helicopter flying over the campus. It was completely excessive and a disproportionate amount of violence."

A few moments later, tens of people were spread out on the ground, face down and handcuffed with their hands behind them. Most of them were taken to the criminal police department in Lima's historic center. A mother and her eight-year-old daughter were among them. The protesters were detained for theft and damage to public property. A smaller group of about 30 people was sent to the anti-terrorism police department.

"San Marcos" is one of the oldest public universities in South America, a melting pot of intellectual debates. Currently, in the university gardens, there are tents, mattresses and mountains of food that the inhabitants of Lima have brought in solidarity with the movement. Near the wall's gate, torn banners lay on the ground. You could see the messages written by the students: "The blood that has been spilled will never be forgotten." Next to them were photos of the faces of the protesters who have died in the south of the country since the conflict began on December 7. There are now at least 46 of them, most of them shot dead by the police and army.

Excessive intervention and arbitrary arrests

The violent police action at San Marcos University is evidence of the authoritarian turn taken by Dina Boluarte's government, which does not hesitate to intimidate, arrest and criminalize the protesters and their supporters. The government is doing this with the complicity of the country's main media groups. "The aim is to break the morale of the protesters and to break the movement. The government is sending them a message: don't come to the capital, you have no place to stay, we are going to arrest you and prosecute you," explained Omar Coronel, a sociologist at the Pontifical Catholic University of Peru.

On Saturday, human rights organizations, including Amnesty International, denounced an excessive intervention without the presence of the Public Prosecutor's Office, arbitrary arrests (almost 200), and the lack of respect for the presence of lawyers and human rights violations. Some protesters have come from the south of the country on the Bolivian border and speak only Aymara. They have not had access to translators. Some women were forced to strip naked "to look for drugs in their private parts," said Jennie Dador of the National Coordination for Human Rights.

The intervention has sparked a wave of outrage in the country and may have the effect of increasing sympathy for the protest movement. According to the latest survey by the Institute of Peruvian Studies in January, 60% of the population said they understand the protesters. In Lima, only 52%, but "the urban middle classes of the capital" could take more action, said Omar Coronel.

On Saturday afternoon, another campus was the target of an operation of intimidation. Trucks full of police and military personnel were deployed in large numbers in front of the National University of Engineering, in the northeast of the city. This university has also been hosting protesters, students who have come from other regions. They were invited there by the rector himself, Pablo Alfonso Lopez-Cahu. The rector opened his arms to them as soon as they arrived in the capital on Wednesday. "You are welcome," he said. "This is your home, take care of it." Since then, a hundred young people have been sleeping on the premises every night.

'Democracy has been flouted'

Inside, volunteers were busy sorting the donations received and redistributing them: blankets, clothes and food. "It's crazy to see this solidarity," said Delia Valencia, a 21-year-old psychology student. "Look, this room is full, we're receiving food, cookies, drinks, and also first aid material, alcohol and bicarbonate" to treat the injured.

"The students come from Arequipa, Cusco and Puno," explained Leandro Gamez, a representative of the students from the National University of Engineering in Lima. These regions in the south of the country are the epicenter of the protests. "The police want to intimidate us to try and sabotage this impulse to give mutual aid," said the young woman, who explained that officers give traffic tickets to residents who stop in front of the building to leave their donations. These are maneuvers that do not frighten some people: "The protesters have come from far away and with very little stuff," explained an old lady who came to leave clothes. "Moreover, the police have confiscated some people's bags."

Victoria is holding her baby in one arm, a pack of water in the other. "It's the least we can do to help them," she said. "Dina Boluarte must resign. Democracy has been flouted. Where is the respect for human rights? Believe me, if I didn't have my baby and I had to die for my country, I would."

Saturday, in Lima, the protesters were at the city center for the third consecutive day. Some had gathered until late in the night in front of the premises of the criminal police department to demand the prisoners' release. But the protests show signs of running out of steam, and morale is down in the ranks. Some delegations are preparing to leave for the provinces to reorganize the troops and regain their strength.

In the south of the country, protests continue and the situation remains tense. A 62-year-old man was killed Friday evening in Ilave, in the region of Puno, where policemen were filmed shooting at protesters with pistols. Access to the Incan site of Machu Picchu has been closed until further notice, because the railroad was damaged there.

Dina Boluarte still refuses to resign. The majority right-wing Parliament supports her, while an investigation has been opened against her and three of her ministers for homicide.

Amanda Chaparro(Lima (Peru) correspondent)

To go or not to go? Von der Leyen’s COVID committee dilemma

A European Parliament session on vaccines would refocus attention on von der Leyen’s texts with Pfizer’s CEO.

POLITICO EU bY CARLO MARTUSCELLI

JANUARY 20, 2023

There won’t be any severed horses’ heads but the European Commission president may soon receive an offer that she can’t refuse — at least without causing an institutional dust-up.

Last week, the coordinators of the European Parliament’s special committee on COVID-19 voted to invite Ursula von der Leyen to appear in front of the panel to answer their questions on vaccine procurement. 

It’s not a courtesy call. EU lawmakers want to shine a light on exactly what happened during those hectic months at the height of the pandemic in 2021, when the bloc was frantically searching for vaccine doses to protect its population from the coronavirus.

The committee’s chair, Belgian MEP Kathleen Van Brempt has said she wants full transparency on the “preliminary negotations” leading up to vaccine purchases — a reference to the Commission president's unusual personal role in negotiating the EU's biggest vaccine contract, signed with Pfizer and its partner BioNTech. An appearance would refocus attention on von der Leyen's highly contentious undisclosed text messages with Pfizer's chief executive.

By Clea Caulcutt

It's a topic von der Leyen has so far fiercely resisted opening up about — but the COVI committee invite could put the Commission president in a sticky situation.

All bark, no bite? 

On the face of it, von der Leyen could just say no. European Parliament committees don’t have many formal powers. They have no rights to compel witnesses to appear or to get them to tell the truth — and there’s no recourse if someone refuses to appear or lies in front of the committee.

Indeed, Pfizer’s Chief Executive Albert Bourla — with whom von der Leyen is reported to have conducted personal negotiations via text message — thumbed his nose at the committee more than once, and sent one of his employees instead.

Even when the Parliament does reel in a big name, the performance can be lackluster — like in the case of Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg who agreed to show up but then avoided answering most questions. That’s a far cry from how the U.S. Senate’s commerce and judiciary committees grilled the tech titan for hours. 

And the Commission president has already shown a penchant for being evasive when it comes the Pfizer negotiations, earning the Commission a verdict of maladministration from the European Ombudsman for its lack of transparency.

However, the fact that von der Leyen is an inter-institutional figure gives the Parliament more bite than with external guests — and may help tip the balance in the committee’s favour.

First, there’s precedent. While the Commission President usually appears in front of all MEPs at a plenary session such as in the annual State of the European Union speech, Commission presidents have appeared in front of committees in the past. Von der Leyen’s predecessor, Jean-Claude Juncker, for example, appeared in front of a special committee to answer uncomfortable questions over his role in making Luxembourg a tax haven. 

Secondly, the European Parliament is tasked with overseeing the EU’s budget. With billions of euros spent in the joint purchase of the vaccines, and part of those funds coming straight from the EU’s pockets, it’s hard to argue that there aren’t important financial considerations at play, and ones that the elected representatives of the EU should be allowed to scrutinize.

Then there’s Article 13 of the EU’s founding treaty, which calls for “mutual sincere cooperation” between the EU’s institutions. It’s a point that’s repeated in an inter-institutional agreement between the Parliament and the Commission, which states that the EU’s executive should also provide lawmakers with confidential information when it’s requested — like, for example, the contents of certain text messages.

The Commission has so far been tight-lipped. When asked last week about Ursula von der Leyen’s upcoming invite to the COVID-19 committee, a Commission spokesperson said “No such invitation has been received.”

Don’t shoot the messenger 

And, in fact, it's now up to European Parliament president Roberta Metsola to decide whether the invite will ever reach von der Leyen’s hands. The request is on her desk and, per protocol, any invitation to appear must come from the president’s office.

Metsola, who belongs to the same political group as von der Leyen (the center-right European People’s Party), confirmed to POLITICO that she has received a letter from the COVI committee and “will look at it.” “I cannot pre-empt what my reply will be to that committee,” she said.

As long as proper form is followed, Metsola should "pass on the message," said Emilio De Capitani, a former civil servant who for 14 years was secretary of the European Parliament’s civil liberties committee (LIBE).

“The question isn’t abusive,” said De Capitani.  

In theory, von der Leyen, who was elected to her role by the Parliament, relies on its mandate to stay there.

“There’s nothing strange about meeting with an organ of the Parliament,” the former Parliamentary official added. “Then it will be up to von der Leyen to ask whether the hearing is in public or, behind closed doors. She could also choose to address it in plenary.” 

For political operatives such as Metsola and von der Leyen, the optics of their actions are likely to play a major role in any decision. And this invite comes at the same time as the biggest scandal in the European Parliament’s history.

An assistant for one of the MEPs in the COVI committee said the drive for transparency produced by the unfolding "Qatargate" influence scandal gave extra force to the invite.

“It wouldn't have had the same result without Qatargate,” said the assistant. “If she says no, it will only make the problem worse.” 

Not everyone agrees. Detractors say the Parliament has lost its moral standing. And that even if none of the MEPs in the COVID-19 committee are implicated, the institution is still weakened on the whole.

“I think this [Qatargate] will make it less likely for von der Leyen to cooperate with the Parliament,” said Camino Mortera-Martinez, head of the Brussels office at the think tank Centre for European Reform. She said the Commission president is riding high after weathering a pandemic, and now the war in Ukraine.

“The European Parliament in theory could force von der Leyen to appear by threatening to dismiss her — but how can they do that in the current climate?”

This article was updated Friday morning to include comment from Roberta Metsola.

Eddy Wax contributed repoclosing Documents Quickly

“I think you’re going to find there’s nothing there,” the president told a reporter who asked if he regretted not divulging that classified material was found at his office before the midterms.