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VIENNA It seemed like a miracle. For years, Austrias conservative party had languished far behind its rivals. Then in May 2017, the polls spectacularly reversed, giving the conservatives newfound credibility that helped them convince voters that they had a real chance of winning. Five months later, in elections, they did.

The man credited with the miracle was Sebastian Kurz. Only 31, well-dressed and well-mannered, with slick hair and even slicker social media slogans, he became Austrias youngest-ever chancellor and formed a government with the far right.

Elected the same year President Donald J. Trump took office, Mr. Kurz was quickly seen in Europe as the poster boy of an ascendant right for a new generation, a political Wunderkind who had salvaged conservatism by borrowing the far rights agenda, buffing it up and bringing it into the mainstream.

It seemed too good to be true. And, it turns out, it was.

Prosecutors now say that many polls before that election were falsified and that Mr. Kurz and a small cabal of allies with cultlike devotion to him paid off one of Austrias biggest tabloids to ensure favorable news coverage. Once in power, prosecutors say, he institutionalized the system, using taxpayers money to elevate the appearance of his own popularity and punish journalists and media outlets that criticized him.

What voters saw wasnt real, said Helmut Brandsttter, a former newspaper editor turned lawmaker who was bullied by Mr. Kurz and pressured to leave his job. It was a scheme to influence elections and undermine democracy.

The image of the perfect politician, it was all fake, Mr. Brandsttter said. The real Sebastian Kurz is someone far more sinister.

Mr. Kurz, who stepped down as chancellor on Oct. 9, has denied any wrongdoing and has not been charged with any crime, but he remains under investigation for bribery and embezzlement. His downfall has reverberated across Europe, where many of the traditional center-right parties he once inspired are now in crisis.

In a month when journalists won a Nobel Prize for holding governments to account, Austrias scandal has put a spotlight on the conspicuously symbiotic relationship between populist, right-wing leaders and sympathetic parts of the news media.

Mr. Kurz, prosecutors say, bought off Austrias third-largest tabloid with over a million euros in bribes disguised as classified advertising.

Kurz has used many of the same methods as other national populists, said Natascha Strobl, the author of Radicalized Conservatism, a book about the shift to the right of traditional conservatives. The corrupt collusion with friendly media and the attempt to silence critical journalists is part of the toolbox.

Prosecutors call Mr. Kurz the central figure in an elaborate scheme to manipulate public opinion that included several members of his inner circle, as well as two pollsters and two owners of the tabloid sterreich.

The case against him reads like a political thriller. In 104 pages, obtained by The New York Times, prosecutors meticulously document a secret plan to manipulate public opinion in order to win power and then cement their hold.

The subterranean tool of buying rigged opinion polling and media coverage is outlined in remarkable detail in chat exchanges recovered from the cellphone of one of Mr. Kurzs closest allies and friends, Thomas Schmid.

Mr. Schmid held a series of senior posts in the Finance Ministry and went hiking with Mr. Kurz. He was one of a handful of loyal supporters who called themselves the praetorians, after the elite guard of Roman emperors.

Their devotion was seemingly absolute. YOU ARE MY HERO! Mr. Schmid wrote to Mr. Kurz in one of their many exchanges, and in another, I am one of your praetorians who doesnt create problems but solves them.

The problem Mr. Kurz had in 2016 was that he was not the leader of his conservative Peoples Party. He was foreign minister in an unpopular coalition government led by the center-left Social Democrats. In order to become chancellor, he had to take over his own party first.

So he started scheming with the praetorians.

The plan they drew up was called Operation Ballhausplatz after the chancellerys address in Vienna. One document outlined from preparation to takeover how Mr. Kurzs rival atop the conservative party could be undermined with polls saying that everything is better with Mr. Kurz at the helm.

Given the reluctance inside the party, Sebastian Kurz had to pursue his plan covertly, prosecutors write, noting that the plan would incur considerable costs, and that also made a cover-up of the financing inevitable.

Mr. Schmid, in the Finance Ministry, had access to money. He made sure Mr. Kurzs media budget in the Foreign Ministry got a significant boost, and he found ways to invoice for the covert polling that did not show up in official accounts, prosecutors say.

The mechanism he devised was simple: With Mr. Kurzs help, Mr. Schmid recruited the conservative family minister, who had previously run a polling institute.

One of her former associates with close links to the owners of sterreich was put in charge of the polling. Mr. Kurzs allies dictated the questions to ask. They then selected favorable results and often tweaked them further in support of Mr. Kurzs leadership bid. sterreich was told when and how to write them up in return for regular placements of classified ads.

There were some early hiccups.

In June 2016, when Wolfgang and Helmuth Fellner, brothers whose family owns sterreich, failed to deliver an article about a favorable poll for Mr. Kurz, Mr. Schmid went ballistic: We are really mad!!!! Mega mad.

I understand completely, Wolfgang Fellner wrote back, am now doing a full double page about the poll Wednesday. Okay?

In December the same year, Mr. Schmid relayed some better news to Mr. Kurz in a chat message. Another poll had just hit the headlines showing the conservatives at a record low 18 percent, further undercutting Mr. Kurzs rival.

Thank you! Good poll, Mr. Kurz replied.

Over time, the system was perfected. In January 2017, sterreich published not just a poll but an interview with the pollster, Sabine Beinschab, and used one of her quotes as the headline: The conservatives would benefit from switching to Kurz.

It was a line that had been fed to her by the praetorians.

I told Beinschab yesterday what to say in the interview, Johannes Frischmann, the spokesman of the finance minister and another member of Mr. Kurzs inner circle, reported back to Mr. Schmid, who replied with a clapping emoji.

Ive never gone as far as were going, Mr. Schmid wrote. Brilliant investment. Fellner is a capitalist. If you pay, things get done. I love it.

By early May, the conservative leader had resigned and Mr. Kurz was swiftly designated his successor. Almost immediately his party took off in the polls, and in the space of three weeks, catapulted Mr. Kurz into lead position.

It was around this time that Mr. Kurz also actively sought out meetings to pressure more critical journalists. In June 2017, he had dinner with Mr. Brandsttter, then the editor in chief of Kurier, one of the broadsheet newspapers.

Why dont you like me? Mr. Kurz had asked repeatedly, Mr. Brandsttter recalled in an interview.

You have to decide whether you are my friend or my enemy, Mr. Kurz had said.

Mr. Kurz comfortably won the election in October 2017. He had run his campaign on immigration limits and Austrian identity, giving a youthful veneer to much of the agenda of the far right and then inviting it into the government.

In the 17 months that followed, he turned a blind eye to the many racist and antisemitic transgressions of his coalition partners. When journalists, like Mr. Brandsttter, reported on them, they got phone calls from Mr. Kurz or a member of his expansive communications team.

I got these calls all the time, Mr. Brandsttter recalled. Then he called the owners and then the owners called me.

A year after Mr. Kurz took office, his newspaper leaned on Mr. Brandsttter to move out of his job and become publisher instead, a role with no editorial control. He is now a lawmaker for the libertarian Neos party.

Meanwhile, prosecutors say, Mr. Schmid continued to pay for polls and placed government ads with sterreich in return for favorable coverage. From mid-2016 until the first quarter of 2018, prosecutors said, the value of those ads came to at least 1.1 million euros, or about $1.3 million.

Then in May 2019, one of Austrias biggest postwar scandals broke. An old video surfaced showing the most senior minister of the far-right Freedom Party in Mr. Kurzs coalition promising government contracts to a would-be Russian investor in return for securing favorable coverage in a well-known Austrian tabloid, the Kronen Zeitung.

It turned out to be a setup. But the video made plain what the far right was prepared to do. What Austrians did not know was that their conservative chancellor was actually doing it.

The investigation into the video would eventually put prosecutors on the trail of Mr. Kurz and his praetorians.

After the video scandal blew up, Mr. Kurz swiftly ended his coalition with the far right.

Enough is enough, he said. What is grave and problematic is the idea of abusing power, of using Austrian taxpayers money and of course the understanding of the media landscape in our country.

Mr. Kurz won re-election and this time entered a coalition with the progressive Greens, a change that offered him the chance to take out the stain of his association with the far right.

What did not change, however, was Mr. Kurzs elaborate system of message control.

Last June, after the Austrian magazine News wrote a critical article about Mr. Kurzs conservatives, the Finance Ministry canceled all of its classified ads not just in News, but across all 15 titles owned by the VGN publishing group.

The loss was around 200,000 euros, said Horst Pirker, VGNs chief executive.

All governments tried to get the important media onside, Mr. Pirker explained in an interview. But Kurz took it to a new dimension.

Mr. Kurz, who remains the conservative party leader, is still hoping to return as chancellor. He has lashed out at the justice system, accusing prosecutors of being politically motivated. Lawmakers loyal to him speak of red cells and leftist networks, a sort of deep state fighting conservatism.

Its straight out of the illiberal playbook, said Peter Pilz, the author of The Kurz Regime, a recently published book. He is badly damaged and unlikely to recover. But if he does, we should all worry.

See more here:
Fake Polls and Tabloid Coverage on Demand: The Dark Side of Sebastian Kurz - The New York Times

A commercial airline pilot slammed President Biden for his September edict mandating most U.S. employees receive an injection of the coronavirus vaccine to be able to keep their jobs, as Southwest Airlines continues to grapple with hundreds of canceled flights initially blamed on weather and other issues.

Joshua Yoder, co-founder of U.S. Freedom Flyers, told Fox News on Monday that pilots and other staff should not be forced to submit to an injection of unwanted pharmaceuticals at the order of their government.

"My motive for resisting it is primarily religious for myself. Among my friends I saw a need. Many of us dont want to take this. People were being coerced, I believe in freedom and Im here to support the freedom of my fellow employees and all people across this country. Im not going to take a mandate, Im not going to be forced to do something I dont believe in," he said on "Tucker Carlson Tonight."

Yoder warned that if the warning from the past weekend isn't heeded, the effect of thousands of American workers being fired en masse will have devastating and lasting effects on the U.S. economy as well as everyday life for all Americans:

"If you have flights reduced by 30% because 30% of pilots are fired because they wont take the vaccine, this is going to affect how your goods get here from overseas, how they are distributed to the store," he said.

"The same thing is happening with the truckers, its happening in the shipping industry. Those Amazon boxes that typically show up in two days, you might be looking at three weeks."

In that regard, host Tucker Carlson said this entire situation would've been avoidable had it not been for a "purge overseen by Susan Rice" of unvaccinated Americans: "[It] ha[s] nothing whatsoever to do with public health and everything to do with the accumulation of political power."

While Biden continues to act as if he has all of the power in this equation, Yoder said the opposite is true, as evidenced by the alleged mass sick-outs or walkouts.

"First of all, we have all the control, and the control comes from a simple word, and that is no," he said. "We just dont need to comply."

"As far as Im concerned I will never promote a sick-out or a work action that is illegal. With U.S. Freedom Flyers, the organization I'm with, we will never promote such a thing. With that being said, we also cannot control the actions of individuals. And I think that you will see massive disruptions in supply chain and in your travel if we just stand up and say no.

"If these companies fire us and they fire 30% of the workforce, aircraft are going to stop moving and its going to affect you. Its going to affect your air travel and its going to affect the economy."

Carlson noted Biden's habit to date is to criticize and target Americans who do not comply with his personal wishes pointing to a recent speech alongside Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker in which Biden attacked "the unvaccinated" as risking economic and medical turmoil.

"The unvaccinated patients are leaving no room for someone with a heart attack or in need of a cancer operation and so much more because they cant into the ICU. They cant get into the operating rooms," Biden claimed.

"The unvaccinated also put our economy at risk because people are reluctant to go out," Biden added, with Carlson commenting that no American president has ever spoken like this about his own people.

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Carlson went on to ask Yoder what he will think when Biden potentially blames him or others like him for the multifaceted repercussions of the walkouts if they were multiplied.

"It's his fault," replied Yoder. "It is squarely his fault."

"I think anyone with a critical mind can point towards the federal government of the companies that are enforcing these illegal mandates from the federal government and see that its the federal governments fault."

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Pilot rebuffs Biden's vax mandate amid Southwest turmoil: 'We have all the control' - Fox News

Authorities in the Chinese region of Xinjiang are using predictive policing and human surveillance to gather micro clues about Uyghurs and empower neighbourhood informants to ensure compliance at every level of society, according to a report.

The research by the Australian Strategic Policy Institute (ASPI) thinktank detailed Xinjiang authorities expansive use of grassroots committees, integrated with Chinas extensive surveillance technology, to police their Uyghur neighbours movements and emotions.

The findings shed further light on the extraordinary scope of the Chinese Communist partys grip on the largely Muslim and purportedly autonomous region, going beyond police crackdowns and mass arrests to ensure total control.

The report also revealed the identities of officials including two former visiting fellows at Harvard University and the organisations that make up the political architecture of the years-long crackdown by Beijing on Uyghurs, which rights organisations say has included the detention of an estimated 1 million people in re-education camps.

The report said the nominally voluntary local committees mirrored the Mao-era revolutionary neighbourhood committees, with daily meetings delegating home visits and investigations and assessing whether any individuals require re-education.

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However, according to ASPI, leaked police records showed the modern-day committees also received micro clues from Chinas predictive policing system, the integrated joint operations platform (IJOP). Such clues could include someone having an unexpected visitor or receiving an overseas phone call, and would prompt inspection visits modelled on neighbourly interactions.

Instruction manuals cited by ASPI showed committee workers in the city of Kashgar were advised to show warmth to their Uyghur relatives and give kids candy while observing the Uyghur targets.

Xinjiangs community-based control mechanisms are part of a national push to enhance grassroots governance, which seeks to mobilise the masses to help stamp out dissent and instability and to increase the partys domination in the lowest reaches of society, the report said.

It detailed the case of an 18-year-old Uyghur man, Anayit Abliz, in rmqi, who was sentenced to three years in a re-education camp after he was caught using a filesharing app that is used widely in China to share movies, music and other censored content. While he was detained, officials from the neighbourhood committee visited his family members six times in a single week, scrutinising the familys behaviours and observing whether they were emotionally stable, the report said.

The thinktank said the IJOP was managed by the political and legal affairs commission (PLAC). The PLAC, which the Chinese president, Xi Jinping, has called the partys knife handle, is Chinas overseer of the national law and order system reporting directly to the CCPs central committee. The report found it wielded vastly expanded operational and budgetary control in Xinjiang, an expansion seen before in mass political campaigns.

Xinjiangs bureaucratic inner workings in the last seven years fit a wider pattern of authoritarian rule in China, wrote the reports lead author, Vicky Xiuzhong Xu, saying some tactics used in the campaign were conceived elsewhere, while others used in Xinjiang were being replicated in other regions including Hong Kong.

ASPI also collected basic information of more than 440 principal and deputy county party secretaries in the Chinese region since 2014, unmasking the individual officials implementing the CCPs crackdown, including at least two who had been educated at Harvard as visiting fellows.

The report said the vast majority of county party secretaries the most senior local officials over the last seven years were of Han ethnicity. It said not a single Uyghur could be identified among secretaries in September, but they often served as a ceremonial second-in-command figure. ASPI said its findings showed the CCP promise of ethnic self-rule for the nominally autonomous region were a fig leaf.

The report also alleged that, in addition to mass internment and coercive labour assignments, residents in Chinas far-west Xinjiang region were also compelled to participate in Mao-era mass political campaigns.

Responding to the report, Chinas embassy in London denied the allegations and accused the ASPI of being an anti-China rumour-maker. It claimed its re-education centres were vocational training schools operating as part of its anti-terrorism efforts no different from the desistance and disengagement programme (DDP) of the UK or the deradicalisation centres in France.

The ASPI report funded partly by the UK, Australian and US governments adds to a growing body of evidence of Beijings crackdown in Xinjiang. Chinas government has been accused by Human Rights Watch and legal groups of committing crimes against humanity, while some western governments have formally declared the government to be conducting a genocide. China has denied all these accusations.

The report said Xinjiang authorities expected extreme and repressive practices of the 2017 re-education campaign to become the norm by the end of 2021, a stage the party state calls comprehensive stability. A recent media report from Xinjiang by Associated Press revealed a reduction in visible means of control and repression, but a continuing sense of fear among the population and ongoing surveillance.

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Chinese effort to gather micro clues on Uyghurs laid bare in report - The Guardian

A cartoon of his face, showing him looking off into the distance like a superhero, hangs on a gallery wall in Scholastic headquarters, near portraits of Harry Potter and Clifford. Ms. Lucchese said that when the office was redesigned a few years ago, Mr. Robinson hadnt wanted any pictures of himself displayed but Ms. Lucchese said she sneaked that one in.

Mr. Robinson made it no secret that he wished Scholastic to remain an independent company, even as consolidation within the publishing business sped up around him. Penguin Random House, itself the product of a 2013 merger, is in the process of trying to buy Simon & Schuster. If approved by federal regulators, that deal would create a colossus far larger than any other publisher in the country.

But the remaining large houses will want to bulk up to compete, especially by acquiring rich backlists, catalogs of older titles that are reliable, long-term money makers which is sure to make Scholastic an attractive target.

The companys new leadership team appears to share what was perhaps Mr. Robinsons most precious goal: Ms. Lucchese and Mr. Warwick expressed no interest in selling.

Weve got the resources ourselves to go forward at the pace that we want to go, Mr. Warwick said.

Given Mr. Robinsons devotion to Scholastic, it was fitting that his memorial service was held there last month. A virtual event with just a few people in attendance, it included a video eulogy delivered by his son Reece. We will cherish the memories of the holidays and weekends we spent with him during Covid when he wasnt working 12-hour days, Reece Robinson said of his familys relationship with his father.

The service had all the star power of a Hollywood collaboration, with video messages from Goldie Hawn, Bill Clinton and J.K. Rowling punctuating remarks from former employees and board members. The final speaker, Alec Baldwin, described the friendship he had developed with Mr. Robinson as neighbors in a downtown apartment building and expressed his condolences to Mr. Robinsons family, the Scholastic community and Ms. Lucchese. He was the only speaker who mentioned her name.

Mr. Wallack, the portfolio manager for the companys second-largest shareholder, had twice contacted investor relations at Scholastic to request information about Mr. Robinsons funeral, he said. But no one alerted him to the memorial service, he said. I was hopeful to have been invited to that, he said, or at least sent a link. (In response, a company spokeswoman said the event was publicized on social media and the companys website.)

Continued here:
Succession at Scholastic Seemed to Be a Shock, Even to the New Chairwoman - The New York Times

Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell testifies during a House Financial Services Committee hearing in Washington, D.C., on Sept. 30. Powell's term expires early next year, and President Biden must decide whether to reappoint him. // UPI/Bloomberg via Getty Images, Sarah Silbiger

The chair of the Federal Reserve has one of the most powerful economic jobs in the world, with the ability to move markets with a single phrase.

Under Jerome Powell's leadership, the Federal Reserve has been instrumental in steering the economy from the depths of the pandemic in a quest to claw back the 22 million jobs that were lost.

Now, President Biden has to decide whether Powell should keep his own job. It's a decision that has gotten more complicated as some progressives such as Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., wage a fight against his reappointment as a stock trading controversy dogs the Fed.

Here are some key questions as Biden decides what to do.

Powell's four-year term as Fed chairman is set to expire in February. Traditionally, U.S. presidents have not changed Fed leaders, even when the party in control of the White House changes.

That's meant to insulate the central bank from partisan politics. But former President Trump ignored that tradition when he dumped then-chair Janet Yellen and nominated Powell in 2017 (Yellen is now the country's Treasury secretary).

Before the pandemic, Powell was steering an economy near full employment. The Fed raised interest rates, a decision that made Powell a frequent punching bag for Trump, who worried it would slow down the economy and hurt the then-president's reelection prospects.

But once the pandemic struck, the Fed quickly slashed rates to near zero to support the economy. Powell launched a series of emergency lending programs and pumped trillions of dollars into the economy in an effort to avert a long recession and speed the recovery. He has been especially focused in recovering the lost jobs.

Some of those efforts fell short, but Powell has generally received high marks for his economic stewardship.

Lately, however, Powell has come under scrutiny as inflation continues to stay high. Powell has argued that the surge in price pressures will prove "transitory" as pandemic-related disruptions to the supply chain ease.

But some economists worry that inflation could prove harder to reverse.

Some of the arguments against Powell have less to do with interest rates and monetary policy than another vital function of the Fed: supervising banks.

Sen. Warren, who sits on the Senate Banking Committee, is one of Powell's most outspoken critics. She accuses him of watering down the banking regulations that Congress adopted after the financial crisis.

"Over and over, you have acted to make our banking system less safe," Warren told Powell during a committee hearing last month. "And that makes you a dangerous man, to head up the Fed."

Former Sen. Chris Dodd, D-Conn., and former Rep. Barney Frank, D-Mass., who authored the banking regulation law, have defended Powell and said he deserves a second term.

Still, Warren and other progressive Democrats want Biden to replace Powell with someone else. A top alternative candidate is Lael Brainard, a member of the Fed's board of governors who was appointed by former President Barack Obama.

Most recently, critics have also faulted Powell over allegations of unethical trading activity by other top Fed officials.

The Wall Street Journal and Bloomberg reported last month that two regional Fed bank presidents were actively trading stocks and other securities in 2020 while the Fed was heavily involved in financial markets.

In addition, a Fed vice chairman sold bonds and bought stocks worth at least $1 million just days before the Fed announced an emergency rate cut.

All three men have defended their trades as permissible under existing ethics rules. But Powell has acknowledged those rules need tightening, and he has ordered a review of the trades by the central bank's inspector general.

It's a critical time for the economy, and whether it's under Powell or somebody else, the Fed will be navigating a policy minefield.

Job growth has slowed sharply in the past two months as the delta variant of the coronavirus hit the economy after strong job gains over the summer.

Meanwhile, inflation is still running well above the Fed's long-term target of 2%.

Fed policymakers are preparing to gradually scale back the amount of money the central bank is pumping into the economy, but they don't want to move too quickly and see the recovery stall out.

As chairman, Powell has steered the central bank toward a policy that is more committed to full employment, even if that means tolerating somewhat higher inflation in the short run.

However, he has stressed that the Fed will use its tools (namely, higher interest rates) to crack down if prices appear to be spiraling out of control.

It's doubtful that an alternative nominee would be any more aggressive when it comes to promoting jobs or keeping interest rates low. Any policy differences are more likely to revolve around things like bank regulation and the Fed's role in battling climate change.

Powell would almost certainly win bipartisan backing in the Senate for a second term, while a more progressive-friendly nominee might face a tougher battle.

Biden has to weigh how much blowback he's willing to tolerate from the left wing of his party and how much political capital he wants to spend pushing a Fed nominee through the Senate.

Additionally, Biden is likely to take heat from Republicans over inflation next year if rapid price hikes continue through the midterm election.

Having a Republican like Powell in charge of the Fed which is the government's primary inflation watchdog could give the White House a measure of political cover at a time when Republicans are using surging prices as an attack line heading to the 2022 midterms.

Oddsmakers say Powell is still the prohibitive favorite to be nominated for a second term, but his chances are not quite so high as they were in early September.

The White House has not said when it will make a decision, but previous presidents have typically made the call no later than November, to allow time for Senate confirmation.

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What's at stake as Biden decides whether to stick with Jerome Powell as Fed chief | NPR - Houston Public Media