02 December 22
Live on the homepage now!
Reader Supported News
Trust Lab’s basic pitch is simple: Globe-spanning internet platforms like Facebook and YouTube so thoroughly and consistently botch their content moderation efforts that decisions about what speech to delete ought to be turned over to completely independent outside firms — firms like Trust Lab. In a June 2021 blog post, Trust Lab co-founder Tom Siegel described content moderation as “the Big Problem that Big Tech cannot solve.” The contention that Trust Lab can solve the unsolvable appears to have caught the attention of In-Q-Tel, a venture capital firm tasked with securing technology for the CIA’s thorniest challenges, not those of the global internet.
“I’m suspicious of startups pitching the status quo as innovation.”
The quiet October 29 announcement of the partnership is light on details, stating that Trust Lab and In-Q-Tel — which invests in and collaborates with firms it believes will advance the mission of the CIA — will work on “a long-term project that will help identify harmful content and actors in order to safeguard the internet.” Key terms like “harmful” and “safeguard” are unexplained, but the press release goes on to say that the company will work toward “pinpointing many types of online harmful content, including toxicity and misinformation.”
Though Trust Lab’s stated mission is sympathetic and grounded in reality — online content moderation is genuinely broken — it’s difficult to imagine how aligning the startup with the CIA is compatible with Siegel’s goal of bringing greater transparency and integrity to internet governance. What would it mean, for instance, to incubate counter-misinformation technology for an agency with a vast history of perpetuating misinformation? Placing the company within the CIA’s tech pipeline also raises questions about Trust Lab’s view of who or what might be a “harmful” online, a nebulous concept that will no doubt mean something very different to the U.S. intelligence community than it means elsewhere in the internet-using world.
No matter how provocative an In-Q-Tel deal may be, much of what Trust Lab is peddling sounds similar to what the likes of Facebook and YouTube already attempt in-house: deploying a mix of human and unspecified “machine learning” capabilities to detect and counter whatever is determined to be “harmful” content.
“I’m suspicious of startups pitching the status quo as innovation,” Ángel Díaz, a law professor at the University of Southern California and scholar of content moderation, wrote in a message to The Intercept. “There is little separating Trust Lab’s vision of content moderation from the tech giants’. They both want to expand use of automation, better transparency reports, and expanded partnerships with the government.”
How precisely Trust Lab will address the CIA’s needs is unclear. Neither In-Q-Tel nor the company responded to multiple requests for comment. They have not explained what sort of “harmful actors” Trust Lab might help the intelligence community “prevent” from spreading online content, as the October press release said.
Though details about what exactly Trust Lab sells or how its software product works are scant, the company appears to be in the business of social media analytics, algorithmically monitoring social media platforms on behalf of clients and alerting them to the proliferation of hot-button buzzwords. In a Bloomberg profile of Trust Lab, Siegel, who previously ran content moderation policy at Google, suggested that a federal internet safety agency would be preferable to Big Tech’s current approach to moderation, which consists mostly of opaque algorithms and thousands of outsourced contractors poring over posts and timelines. In his blog post, Siegel urges greater democratic oversight of online content: “Governments in the free world have side-stepped their responsibility to keep their citizens safe online.”
Even if Siegel’s vision of something like an Environmental Protection Agency for the web remains a pipe dream, Trust Lab’s murky partnership with In-Q-Tel suggests a step toward greater governmental oversight of online speech, albeit very much not in the democratic vein outlined in his blog post. “Our technology platform will allow IQT’s partners to see, on a single dashboard, malicious content that might go viral and gain prominence around the world,” Siegel is quoted as stating in the October press release, which omitted any information about the financial terms of the partnership.
Unlike typical venture capital firms, In-Q-Tel’s “partners” are the CIA and the broader U.S. intelligence community — entities not historically known for exemplifying Trust Lab’s corporate tenets of transparency, democratization, and truthfulness. Although In-Q-Tel is structured as an independent 501(c)3 nonprofit, its sole, explicit mission is to advance the interests and increase the capabilities of the CIA and fellow spy agencies.
Former CIA Director George Tenet, who spearheaded the creation of In-Q-Tel in 1999, described the CIA’s direct relationship with In-Q-Tel in plain terms: “CIA identifies pressing problems, and In-Q-Tel provides the technology to address them.” An official history of In-Q-Tel published on the CIA website says, “In-Q-Tel’s mission is to foster the development of new and emerging information technologies and pursue research and development (R…D) that produce solutions to some of the most difficult IT problems facing the CIA.”
Siegel has previously written that internet speech policy must be a “global priority,” but an In-Q-Tel partnership suggests some fealty to Western priorities, said Díaz — a fealty that could fail to take account of how these moderation policies affect billions of people in the non-Western world.
“Partnerships with Western governments perpetuate a racialized vision of which communities pose a threat and which are simply exercising their freedom of speech,” said Díaz. “Trust Lab’s mission statement, which purports to differentiate between ‘free world governments’ and ‘oppressive’ ones, is a worrying preview of what we can expect. What happens when a ‘free’ government treats discussion of anti-Black racism as foreign misinformation, or when social justice activists are labeled as ‘racially motived violent extremists’?”
READ MORE
Stewart Rhodes, founder Of Oath Keepers, on February 28, 2021 in Fort Worth, Texas. (photo: Getty)
“Everyone’s going to see serious time... seditious conspiracy is a big-ticket item that can lead to others who are connected to the marauders on Jan. 6.”
Stewart in the stir
A federal jury this week convicted Oath Keepers founder Stewart Rhodes and another militia member of seditious conspiracy for their plan to use force to stop Congress from certifying Joe Biden’s election on Jan. 6, 2021. Three others were found guilty of a mix of other felonies. Another group of Oath Keepers goes on trial next week, and a separate group of Proud Boys is set to stand trial for seditious conspiracy later this month.
I called up Harry Litman, a former federal prosecutor, assistant AG, and host of the Talking Feds podcast (check out their new YouTube channel!) to talk about the verdict and what it could mean for prosecuting the coup attempt.
In the scope of accountability for Jan. 6 and the broader coup attempt, how big of a deal is this verdict?
I think it's a really big deal. It’s a tough charge. DOJ rarely brings it. And they were aware of that before pulling the trigger. Everyone got convicted of serious charges. Everyone’s going to see serious time. And as a prosecutor, seditious conspiracy is a big-ticket item that can lead to others who are connected to the marauders on Jan. 6.
I think it’s bigger than that though, because I think it echoes in history. We’ve had pundits and politicians trivializing Jan. 6, calling it a political protest or free speech gone just a little too far. But 12 persons good and true looked at evidence presented over seven weeks and said this was a seditious conspiracy, an actual attempt to impede government by force. That’s a big friggin’ deal. And I think it just goes a long way to settling it as a social fact.
One question is a potential nexus between this conspiracy and the White House. Roger Stone was in DC with Oath Keepers on Jan. 6. He texted with Oath Keepers and Proud Boys. Cassidy Hutchinson testified in the January 6 committee that Trump ordered Meadows to call Stone on the evening of Jan. 5. Are prosecutors any closer to that nexus given what we heard in this trial?
We don’t know how close they were before. But I think there’s no doubt that their resolve is to get there, if there’s evidence. It’s always been the case that the apparent malfeasance of Trump, Meadows and the inner circle was indirect, through conduits. That’s what the Willard war room was. In legal terms a conspiracy is just an agreement to do something unlawful and an overt act in furtherance. If Stone agrees with Rhodes and Meadows agrees with Stone and Trump agrees with Meadows, that’s all one conspiracy where everyone shares criminal liability. If it gets to the White House I think it almost certainly goes through that crowd.
Does the fact that several Oath Keeper defendants got convicted on conspiracy to obstruct an official proceeding make it any more likely that Trump could have legal exposure on that charge? Is there a proof of concept here that matters?
It’s a really good and nuanced question.
Thanks. I always wanted to audit a law class.
A conspiracy can be sprawling and you can do different things, but it must be the same agreement. So for that charge, there’s already public evidence, starting at the Ellipse on Jan. 6 and including his indifference—his jubilation!—as the melee was going down. But did he make the same agreement to basically by force, deter or stop or impede the January 6 proceeding in Congress? That’s what Rhodes is on the hook for. But the short answer is, yes. Did Trump join it to be part of the same agreement, even through others?
Let’s talk about Fulton County, Georgia real quick. Experts we’ve talked to there put the chances of Trump getting charged better than 50/50. How about you?
More like 75%. DA Fani Willis says she wants to do it. It’s almost hard to imagine her not doing it.
But I will also say this: A local DA indicting a former president is a heavy thing. I think she’ll bring charges and I think they will be tied up in labyrinthian legal proceedings. I think the odds right now of her bringing them are higher than in Mar-a-Lago, but I think the odds of conviction in Fulton County are lower. Georgia state juries can be a wild card. So I think they are very close to the starting line and are going to charge, but pretty far from the finish line and may well not get there in Georgia.
Are you happy as a prosecutor that Trump is on tape asking for votes?
You can play that tape, and maybe Cassidy Hutchinson then says he knew they lost, then almost rest the case. It just doesn’t get better. What beautiful evidence.
My sup-precious
The good news is that Georgia has been smashing early-vote records before Tuesday’s Senate runoff between Sen. Raphael Warnock and Herschel Walker. The bad news is that eager voters are crammed into a much narrower voting window, thanks to the Georgia GOP’s 2021 voter suppression law.
T.W.I.S.™ Notes
One case of militia sedition down, and two more to go. Meanwhile, the courts and grand juries are humming, and it’s been a big This Week in Subpoenas.
- This one went to the 11th
Big news: The 11th Circuit Court of Appeals backed up DOJ and vacated the special master review Trump was using to slow down the Mar-a-Lago records case. Now the layer of protection Judge Aileen Cannon put in place to protect Trump from prosecutors is gone. Because literally no one else gets to challenge a search warrant during a criminal investigation! It has more than one expert predicting that with this impediment gone, Trump could soon be indicted.
A three-judge panel—all Republican appointees—eviscerated Judge Cannon’s ruling installing the special master and made it clear they’re not giving Trump the special treatment he expects.
- Manifestly Mark
Former Trump chief of staff Mark Meadows is going to have to testify in the criminal investigation into the 2020 coup attempt in Georgia. The Supreme Court in South Carolina, where Meadows now lives, unanimously turned down his appeals against appearing in the grand jury. “Manifestly without merit” is how the five South Carolina judges described Meadows’ attempt to quash his subpoena.
Meadows is all over Trump’s attempt to steal the Georgia election, and could be the most important and informed witness to testify. Willis has said she could start issuing indictments this month.
- The panned from uncle
Former Trump speech writer and unpopular nephew Stephen Miller testified this week in the federal grand jury investigating the coup attempt. Miller reportedly appeared on Tuesday, where he was surely asked about his conversations with Trump on the morning of Jan. 6.
Cement the steal
Democracy definitely kicked a little bit of ass recently, in criminal court and in the midterms. But can it survive the nine-headed, black-robed, rightward-careening final boss that is the conservative U.S. Supreme Court?
Pro-democracy analysts are sounding the alarm about Moore v Harper, the case testing “independent state legislature” doctrine coming up for oral arguments next Wednesday. The case could allow six conservative justices to strip state courts and governors of their ability to police legislatures trying to skew elections. Best case: SCOTUS gives state legislatures the sole authority to draw federal election maps and gerrymander the life out of their congressional elections. Worst case: Those same legislatures, drunk on partisanship and authoritarianism, get the power to ignore voters, overturn elections, and pick their own electors in presidential contests. (Imagine the “worst case” in a world where a presidential candidate is claiming widespread fraud after years of cleansing his party of anyone who’s not part of the ruse! You get the picture.)
Some analysts think the panic over Moore v Harper is overblown. But say you live in Wisconsin, where Democrats win statewide for governor and president, but the state legislature is already gerrymandered worse than three-to-two for Republicans. An unrestrained legislature free to make the rules for elections may not feel super-democratic. That would have a predictably bad effect on voters’ confidence. The case should be decided by spring, so stay tuned.
Maricop-ing with loss
Conspiracy dead-enders are whimpering toward next Monday’s election certification deadline in Arizona, after most election-denying GOP candidates lost last month. Maricopa County officials issued a report this week stating that election-day glitches didn’t rob any voters of access to the ballot box. One county supervisor had some choice words for losing GOP governor candidate Kari Lake, who’s keeping Trumpist bullshit alive by refusing to concede.
As sad as the scene is, the religious zeal of Arizona’s authoritarians should convince everyone that election conspiracies aren’t going away. One Trumpist warrior let Maricopa officials know their treachery was punishable by death.
Meanwhile, Secretary of State and governor-elect Katie Hobbs sued GOP officials in conservative Cochise County, where they’ve refused to certify election results. Late yesterday a judge ordered the officials to stop messing around and do their canvass.
Cochise Republicans tried to hire the often shoeless attorney who helped the Cyber Ninjas with their GOP review of 2020 results. He turned them down.
Luzerne, my religion
Lest you think Arizona is the only place where Trumpist election denialism is alive and well: Officials in Pennsylvania’s Luzerne County refused to certify their results, only relenting under threat of a lawsuit this week. Both Republicans on Luzerne’s elections board voted against certifying because paper shortages slowed down voting at some polling places.
And Luzerne is just one county in election deniers’ statewide effort to flood the courts with “nonsense” recount requests. Supporters of GOP governor candidate Doug Mastriano, who lost by nearly 15 points, have filed hundreds of actions in dozens of counties in an attempt to exploit arcane laws and force recounts. They have no chance of actually altering the results. Instead they clog courts and spread more doubt about an election that wasn’t close, which is obviously the point.
Rocky Mountain Lie — More trouble for Tina Peters. Another Mesa County defendant has pleaded guilty and agreed to testify against the Colorado conspiracist in her upcoming trial for multiple felony counts of election fraud, impersonation, and tampering.
Pirates of penance — Two infamous right-wing clowns got busted in a robo-call scheme to discourage Black people from voting in Cleveland. They pleaded guilty, and now a judge has sentenced them to 500 hours registering low-income voters in D.C. Jacob Wohl and Jack Burkman are notorious far-right doofuses, known for schemes like ginning up a fake sexual harassment scandal involving Robert Mueller. The 500-hour sentence has some poetry to it, but why should fraudsters who tried to disenfranchise voters in Ohio not do their reparations in Ohio?
Can’t bust it — You’ll be shocked to learn that state-level election crimes units set up by Republicans to sleuth widespread voter fraud have found… almost no voter fraud.
An Amtrak passenger train in Chicago. (photo: George Rose/Getty)
Or so the behavior of major U.S. rail companies seems to suggest.
Since last winter, railroad unions and the managers of America’s seven dominant freight-rail carriers have been struggling to come to an agreement on a new contract. The key points of contention in those talks have been scheduling in general and the provision of paid leave in particular. Unlike nearly 80 percent of U.S. laborers, railroad employees are not currently guaranteed a single paid sick day. Rather, if such workers wish to recuperate from an illness or make time to see a doctor about a nagging complaint, they need to use vacation time, which must be requested days in advance. In other words, if a worker wants to take time off to recover from the flu, they need to notify their employer of this days before actually catching the virus. Given that workers’ contracts do not include paid psychic benefits, this is a tall order.
When management refused to give ground on leave earlier this year, rail workers threatened to strike. If they went through with such a labor action, the rail workers would not merely erode their employers’ profits but also upend the broader U.S. economy. Rail lines remain key arteries of American commerce, carrying 40 percent of the nation’s annual freight. A single day without functioning freight rail would cost the U.S. economy an estimated $2 billion. And such costs could multiply overtime. When fertilizer goes undelivered, crop yields decline and the price of food rises. When retailers can’t access new goods shipments, shortages ensue, and so on.
Congress has long recognized the social costs of railway-labor disputes. In 1926, the federal government gave itself broad powers to impose labor settlements on the rail industry. In September, the Biden administration utilized such power to broker a tentative agreement between the leaders of a dozen unions and the railroads. Under that bargain, the companies agreed to a 24 percent pay increase by 2024, annual $1,000 bonuses, and a freeze on health-care costs. On the key point of leave, however, the railroads conceded only a single paid personal day, plus the removal of some disciplinary penalties for time missed as a result of a medical emergency.
When the deal was put to a vote before all members, four of the 12 unions declined to ratify the compromise. With multiple unions voting down the agreement — and others promising solidarity if their peers decide to walk off the job — the threat of an impending rail shutdown once again hangs over the U.S. economy.
In recent days, the Biden administration has sought to nullify that threat by asking Congress to impose the tentative agreement on the industry before the strike deadline of December 9. Progressives in the House and Senate are pushing to add seven paid sick days to the tentative agreement. But any legislative resolution to the crisis will need to overcome a Republican-led filibuster in the Senate, which means ten Republicans would need to join a unified Democratic caucus in imposing a settlement more pro-union than that which the Biden administration brokered. As of this writing, the odds that Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer can assemble such a coalition look long.
All of which invites the question: Why do these rail barons hate paid leave so much? Why would a company have no problem handing out 24 percent raises, $1,000 bonuses, and caps on health-care premiums but draw the line on providing a benefit as standard and ubiquitous throughout modern industry as paid sick days?
The answer, in short, is “P.S.R.” — or precision-scheduled railroading.
P.S.R. is an operational strategy that aims to minimize the ratio between railroads’ operating costs and their revenues through various cost-cutting and (ostensibly) efficiency-increasing measures. The basic idea is to transport more freight using fewer workers and railcars.
One way to do this is to make trains longer: A single 100-car train requires less track space than two 50-car ones since you need to maintain some distance between the latter. More critically, one very long train requires fewer crew members to run than two medium ones.
Another way to get more with less is to streamline scheduling so that trains are running at full capacity as often as possible.
All this has worked out poorly for rail workers writ large. Over the past six years, America’s major freight carriers have shed 30 percent of their employees. To compensate for this lost staffing, remaining workers must tolerate irregular schedules and little time off since the railroads don’t have much spare labor capacity left.
Of course, the railroads are in the business of moving freight, not creating jobs. In theory, if these firms could cut labor costs without degrading service, the broader economy could benefit. The railroads could pass on their savings to shippers in the form of lower rates, thereby putting downward pressure on a wide range of consumer prices. Furthermore, the more cost-competitive freight rail becomes relative to trucking, the lower the American economy’s carbon emissions will be.
Thus, according to the rail barons’ boosters, P.S.R. represents an innovation that is good for shippers, consumers, and the planet but bad for America’s least productive rail workers. The rail unions’ opposition to P.S.R. is therefore, in this account, myopically self-interested and contrary to the greater good.
Unfortunately, P.S.R. works better in theory than in practice — at least for every stakeholder besides the activist investors who imposed P.S.R. on the industry in the first place.
For shippers, the problems with P.S.R. are twofold. First, and most fundamentally, the dominant rail firms feel little need to pass on the fruits of their “efficiencies” to their customers. Decades of consolidation have left the U.S. with only seven Class I railroad companies. Four of those companies collectively control more than 83 percent of the freight market. And the vast majority of train stations in the U.S. are served by exactly one railroad.
Thus, most shippers can’t credibly threaten to take their business elsewhere. At the margin, rail customers could shift their transport needs toward trucking, but most are reliant on the inherent scale and efficiency of rail transport. So when freight carriers reduce their operating costs, they’re less inclined to pass on those savings in the form of improved customer service or lower rates than to simply shower their shareholders in dividends.
Last year, the seven dominant North American railways had a combined net income of $27 billion, nearly twice their margin a decade ago. In the interim, the railways have collectively doled out $146 billion in dividends and stock buybacks while investing only $116 billion into their businesses.
The second problem with P.S.R., from the shippers’ standpoint, is that its scheduling is less precise than advertised. Eliminating spare labor or train cars may render railroads more efficient mechanisms for translating investment into profits. But such fragile systems aren’t necessarily efficient for bringing freight from one place to another, especially in a world where natural disasters and public-health crises exist.
In early 2021, when the acute phase of the COVID pandemic ended and economic demand spiked, freight carriers’ operations were derailed by their own “efficiencies.” For a week last July, Union Pacific had to suspend service between Chicago and Los Angeles while it reopened shuttered rail ramps and reconfigured operations in order to keep pace with rising orders. Similar disruptions afflicted the other major carriers, as The American Prospect details.
By summer 2022, the freight carriers were still failing to meet customer expectations. In a July survey from the American Chemistry Council, 46 percent of chemical manufacturers said rail service was getting worse, while just 7 percent said it was getting better. “Freight rail has been a constant thorn in our side and been a significant challenge for our members for quite some time,” Chris Jahn, the council’s chief executive, told the New York Times in September.
And this is why the freight carriers won’t give ground on paid leave: Already understaffed and underperforming, the railroads cannot allow unanticipated absences to become significantly more prevalent without either pulling back from P.S.R. or suffering even more frequent disruptions and customer complaints.
And the track to a more resilient (if less “precise”) operating system is blocked by the company’s shareholders.
A decade ago, the activist investor Bill Ackman won a proxy battle at Canadian Pacific and proceeded to replace its management with a team led by Hunter Harrison, the railway executive who’d pioneered P.S.R. After imposing the gospel of “more with less” at Canadian Pacific, Harrison left to spread the good news to the freight giant CSX. At each firm, P.S.R. succeeded at generating higher returns. Pretty soon, major investors in other railroads started calling on their firms to imitate Harrison’s methods. Testifying to the government’s Surface Transportation Board about freight rail’s performance last spring, industry analyst Rick Paterson said, “Lurking in the background is the constant threat of shareholder activism if any of the railroads’ operating ratios become outliers on the high side.”
The freight carriers can afford to make concessions on pay. It isn’t that painful to increase wages by a sizable amount when you’ve recently slashed your head count by 30 percent (and hope to continue innovating your way to a smaller payroll in the years to come). But providing rail workers with ordinary time-off benefits would threaten the industry’s core business strategy, an operating procedure that has helped to nearly double its profits over the past decade.
That strategy is predicated on treating rail workers as if they were nearly indistinguishable from the railcars they drive. The typical railcar requires maintenance at predictable intervals and does not require an unanticipated day off to see a doctor about an unexplained pain or to visit a loved one in the hospital. But workers often do.
Last June, one middle-aged union engineer postponed a doctor’s visit for work then died of a heart attack on the job weeks later. A conductor who spoke with the Times began feeling rundown last year but declined to see a doctor for fear of being disciplined for taking an unplanned day off. Instead, he waited months for the next doctor’s appointment that aligned with a scheduled day off. He then learned he’d been suffering from an infection that could have been treated with medication weeks earlier but would now require surgery.
With a combined $27 billion in net income, the railroads can afford to give their workers paid leave and hire more staff to ensure the stability of their operations. Tolerating such slack might well improve customer service by rendering the railroads more resilient against disruptions.
But that would require the railroads’ owners to accept a cut in their passive income. They do not want to do that. And if all goes well on Capitol Hill in the next few days, they won’t have to.
READ MORE 
Residents distribute cases of water at Grove Park Community Center in Jackson, Mississippi, on Sept. 3, 2022. Major flooding starting in August disrupted the operation of a critical but aging water treatment plant. (photo: Seth Herald/Getty)
City and Mississippi health department sign order agreeing to federal oversight of the failing water system
On Tuesday, the city of Jackson and the Mississippi health department signed an order agreeing to federal oversight of the failing water system, in an attempt to restore clean and safe drinking water.
The justice department filed a complaint on behalf of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) against the city, for failing to comply with the Safe Drinking Water Act.
In a statement, the US attorney general, Merrick Garland, said he was “taking action in federal court to address longstanding failures in the city of Jackson’s public drinking water system.
“The Department of Justice takes seriously its responsibility to keep the American people safe and to protect their civil rights. Together with our partners at EPA, we will continue to seek justice for the residents of Jackson, Mississippi. And we will continue to prioritize cases in the communities most burdened by environmental harm.”
Several boil water notices have been issued to neighborhoods across Jackson, thanks to aging infrastructure and severe weather.
In August, the situation worsened after heavy flooding and power outages at well water facilities resulted in a water shortage.
In September, Derrick Johnson, the president of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) rang the alarm about racial inequity exacerbated by the water crisis, which predominantly affected Black residents.
Johnson said: “Somehow, in the year 2022, equality and justice remain out of reach for Black communities across America.
“The disparities facing our community are stark – just look at the catastrophe unfolding in my home town of Jackson, Mississippi. More than 100,000 people, the majority of whom are Black, are without safe access to drinking water for the foreseeable future.”
Johnson called the crisis a “direct result of the failures of politicians”.
City officials implemented months-long emergency distribution of bottled water.
In a statement to the Guardian on Wednesday, the mayor of Jackson, Chokwe Antar Lumumba, said the city was “pleased we have finally reached an agreement that represents a critical next step in our efforts to provide immediate and long-term solutions for Jackson’s water issues”.
Lumumba also said his city government would work with an appointed administrator to “make smart choices for the city’s drinking water system and ensure that we can provide safe, clean and sustainable drinking water for all”.
READ MORE 
Americans motivated by violent ideologies pose a “persistent and lethal threat,” a senior DHS official said . (photo: John Raoux/AP)
Americans motivated by violent ideologies pose a “persistent and lethal threat,” a senior DHS official said in a briefing about a new Terrorism Advisory System bulletin.
Americans motivated by violent ideologies pose a “persistent and lethal threat,” a senior DHS official told reporters in a briefing on the bulletin. Intelligence officials across the federal government have consistently highlighted the growing threat of American extremists in recent years, while explaining that foreign threats such as the Islamic State terrorist group and Al Qaeda are no longer as persistent as they once were.
The bulletin was the latest summary of national terrorism threats, a document that has been updated about every six months since the insurrection at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.
Some extremists have been inspired by recent attacks, including the shooting at the LGBTQ bar in Colorado Springs, Colorado, the bulletin said.
The report also highlighted an “enduring threat” to the Jewish community.
Asked if recent antisemitic remarks by Ye, the rapper formerly known as Kanye West, contributed to increased threats to Jewish people, a senior DHS official said any high-profile official or celebrity trafficking in conspiracy theories only serves to ignite violence among extremists.
“Certainly the Jewish community seems particularly targeted in recent days by that kind of activity in our discourse,” the official said.
The bulletin also said “potential changes in border enforcement policy, an increase in noncitizens attempting to enter the U.S. or other immigration-related developments” may heighten calls for violence.
In compliance with a court order, the DHS is preparing to lift Covid restrictions known as Title 42 on Dec. 21, which will allow many more migrants into the U.S. to claim asylum.
The previous National Terrorism Advisory System bulletin issued by the DHS in June raised concerns about potential violence surrounding the November midterm elections.
Wednesday’s advisory said such violence was “isolated." But it said the DHS did “observe general calls for violence targeting elected officials, candidates and drop box locations,” specifically mentioning the attack on House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s husband.
Julia Ainsley is homeland security correspondent for NBC News and covers the Department of Homeland Security and the Justice Department for the NBC News Investigative Unit.
Colombians mobilize for peace in 2016. (photo: John Vizcaino/Reuters)
The centerpiece of Petro’s "total peace," talks with the ELN will require considerable cooperation between Bogotá and Caracas.
Several signs bode well on the part of both the new administration and the ELN. Petro was himself a member of the leftist M19 guerrilla group and has put together a respected and ideologically heterodox peace delegation. Among the government’s negotiators are former guerrillas, civil society leaders, active military personnel and conservative Colombian Federation of Ranchers (FEDEGAN) president José Félix Lafaurie.
Colombians and observers alike are hopeful that the ELN may follow in the footsteps of the infamous Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) and demobilize as the latter guerrillas did in 2017. While smaller in overall manpower than the former FARC, the ELN is a markedly distinct organization both in its territorial scope and its organizational hierarchy.
Today the group is effectively a Colombo-Venezuelan guerrilla army, meaning that the role of both Colombian and Venezuelan authorities will be integral to successful peace talks.The ELN is unique in that it is perhaps the first and only Marxist guerrilla group with a significant foothold outside its country of origin, in neighboring Venezuela. Today the group is effectively a Colombo-Venezuelan guerrilla army, meaning that the role of both Colombian and Venezuelan authorities will be integral to successful peace talks.
Borderlands of Conflict
In a recent paper published in the Journal of Latin American Geography, we mapped over 2,100 violent incidents perpetrated by the ELN in both Colombia and Venezuela. Our findings show that fatalities and events attributed to the ELN in both countries have risen exponentially since 2017, with the demobilization of the FARC and Venezuela’s ongoing crisis being key to expansion. Of the 390 fatalities attributed to the ELN between 2017 and 2021, around a quarter took place in Venezuela.
Additionally, approximately one-third of the group’s 3000-4000 fighters are thought to be of Venezuelan origin, with fighters active in at least half of Venezuela’s 23 states. The group has also repeatedly expressed a commitment to the defense of the Bolivarian Revolution from enemies both foreign and domestic. While the advent of Colombia’s first leftist government represents a historic shift, the ELN will likely continue to have divergent ideological and transactional aims in Colombia and Venezuela.
The ELN’s activities in Venezuela have changed considerably since the late 1990s. Like neighboring Ecuador, attacks within Venezuela were largely rare and isolated incidents. For most of its history, the group used Venezuela’s borderlands as a safe haven for planning attacks and evading Colombian authorities. However porous, borders in Latin America remain effective deterrents against strikes by security forces, particularly when relations between neighboring states are unfavorable.
Prior to 1999, Venezuela and Colombia shared intelligence and engaged in joint military operations along the Colombo-Venezuelan border. After Hugo Chávez came to power in 1999, this was no longer the case, except for a brief period between 2002 and 2004. Under successive left-wing governments in Venezuela and respective right-wing administrations in Colombia, relations between the two countries increasingly deteriorated. It’s well known that the Venezuelan military supplied Colombian guerrillas with weapons and munitions throughout the 2000s and 2010s. Similarly, Colombian security and intelligence services are thought to have aided or condoned efforts by the Venezuelan opposition to depose Nicolas Maduro during 2020’s Operation Gideón.
Insurgency as Organized Crime
The ELN is actively involved in illicit economies such as coca cultivation and extortion. In practice, crime has become as much a means as an end for many within the ELN’s fronts. ELN activities in Venezuela, for instance, are prevalent along the Orinoco Basin as well as along the Colombian border. In recent years, Venezuela’s Orinoco has been devastated by a violent gold rush regulated by the ELN and other armed actors.
Peace between the Colombian government and the FARC was a boon for the group, as the guerrillas and other armed actors rushed to fill the void vacated by the FARC.Similarly in Colombia, ELN activities are prevalent, though not unique to, municipalities with high concentrations of coca crops. Peace between the Colombian government and the FARC was a boon for the group, as the guerrillas and other armed actors rushed to fill the void vacated by the FARC. For the ELN, this meant securing much of Venezuela’s borderlands, with the guerrillas now controlling at least a third of the Colombo-Venezuelan border.
Since 2014, the ELN also benefited from Venezuela’s ongoing humanitarian crisis. By 2019, the Maduro administration allegedly viewed the presence of Colombian guerrillas on Venezuelan soil as a useful bulwark against military intervention by Colombia and/or the United States. Three years later, Human Rights Watch reported that the Venezuelan military engaged in joint operations with ELN fighters against FARC dissidents in the war-torn state of Apure.
It’s a mistake, however, to presume that the guerrillas are pawns of the government in Caracas. The ELN has agency and its fighters have clashed just as often with Venezuelan forces as with other armed groups. Both ideological and transactional aims are key to the ELN’s goals. Broadly, the relationship between the Venezuelan state and groups like the ELN is both conflictive and sympathetic—not unlike that between right-wing paramilitaries and Colombian state.
Do They Want Peace? The Enigma of the ELN
The ELN is a far more decentralized guerrilla than the former FARC. On paper, the group is headed by a Central Command (Comando Central, COCE), with Eliécer Erlinto Chamorro, alias Antonio García, as top commander. The rest of the COCE is thought to be composed of five to seven commanders, some of which head regional blocs that oversee fronts of up to 100 combatants.
For this reason, there seems to be a disconnect between the COCE’s political leaders and the commanders of fronts on the ground. The COCE has shown that its authority remains influential given its continued ability to call and uphold national ceasefires. Nonetheless, bloc commanders—and especially Gustavo Aníbal Giraldo, alias Pablito, of the eastern Frente de Guerra Oriental (FGO)—are the primary drivers of military operations.
As of this writing, the bulk of the COCE (excluding Pablito) have not set foot in Colombia since the start of previous negotiations in 2017. Even after the suspension of talks in 2019, key leaders of the COCE such as Pablo Beltrán and alias Gabino stayed in Cuba as a show of good faith towards resuming negotiations.
During the same period, Pablito oversaw FGO operations on the ground in Arauca and Venezuela. The tragic car bombing of Bogotá’s Santander Police Academy in 2019 that killed 22 cadets was traced back to Pablito and the FGO, a clear and ultimately successful attempt at sabotaging negotiations.
Indeed, as negotiators met in Caracas last Monday, assailants lit eight freight trucks on fire near Cúcuta in Norte de Santander. The same day, high caliber explosives were defused at a rural children’s school in Arauca. The suspected perpetrators are the ELN’s Frente de Guerra Nororiental (FGN) in Norte de Santander and the FGO in Arauca.
It is telling and potentially damning that the ELN’s new peace delegation does not include the head of the guerrillas’ largest and most militarily powerful bloc, Pablito of the FGO. If last week’s attacks are any indication, it’s likely that we will see further—and more brutal—attempts by hardliners to derail peace talks.
At the same time, it’s promising that the delegation does not consist exclusively of political leaders such as Pablo Beltrán or Antonio Garcia. Figures such as Bernardo Tellez (FGN), Luz Amanda Pallares (FGN) and Juan de Dios Lizazaro (FGO) have storied backgrounds within their respective blocs and will be key to ensuring compliance from active fighters.
The Bolivarian Enigma
There’s reason to believe, however, that the Maduro administration may not be fully committed to the ELN’s demobilization.Like any authoritarian state, it can be difficult to interpret the inner machinations and motivations of the Venezuelan government. That said, it should be noted that under both Hugo Chávez and Nicolás Maduro, Venezuela has consistently backed prior negotiations with both the FARC and ELN. There’s reason to believe, however, that the Maduro administration may not be fully committed to the ELN’s demobilization.
Even with the advent of Colombia’s first leftist administration, Colombia remains the United States’ closest strategic partner in the region. While he has called for a reevaluation of U.S. drug policy, Petro has nonetheless pursued good relations with North America. Petro has maintained joint military exercises with U.S. forces and authorized the extradition of drug traffickers wanted by Washington. He has also thus far neglected a campaign promise to renegotiate Colombia’s disastrous free trade agreement with the United States.
Despite restoring diplomatic and even military relations, Colombia and Venezuela are likely to continue viewing one another with suspicion. In recent years Petro has become increasingly critical of Venezuela’s extractivism and track record on human rights. Petro also decisively rebuked a request by President Maduro to extradite dissidents living in Colombia.
Consequently, the calculus in Caracas may be that it is better if the ELN persists as one of many non-state actors committed to the defense of the Bolivarian regime. On the other hand, officials in Venezuela may be weary of increasingly expansionist Colombian guerrillas. Both the ELN and ex-FARC have subjected the Venezuelan military to stunning and humiliating defeats. While Venezuelan security forces in Apure can currently count on support from the ELN’s FGO, they are likely aware that an ally today could morph into an enemy tomorrow.
It’s encouraging that Venezuela was reincorporated as a guarantor and site for the first leg of peace talks. Moreover, in his recent visit to Venezuela, President Petro showed some savvy in offering to moderate negotiations between the Venezuelan government and the opposition. As relations between Venezuela and the West continue to thaw, the Petro administration could be vital in securing further concessions for Venezuela, a fact the Maduro administration no doubt recognizes.
La Paz Total
For peace talks to succeed, negotiators, security forces, and the Petro administration will need to take great pains to assess the interests of the ELN’s regional blocs.
Petro’s proposal for paz total or “total peace,” a move to negotiate peace and terms of surrender with Colombia’s myriad armed groups, is highly ambitious. Petro has expressed a desire to dialogue with armed groups on a regional level. Thus, it may be more fruitful for negotiators to seek agreements with specific ELN blocs given the apparent divide between hardliners and leaders active in peace talks.
Already, over ten armed groups have joined a national ceasefire with the government.Already, over ten armed groups have joined a national ceasefire with the government. Under the legal framework drafted by the government, individual surrender has been expanded such that multiple individuals can negotiate collectively with authorities. The modified Ley de Orden Público (Law for Public Order) also stipulates that drug traffickers within armed groups will receive legal benefits for revealing financial ties with superiors and legal enterprises that benefit from the drug trade.
Alternatively, groups such as the ELN and ex-FARC factions like the one headed by Ivan Márquez can engage in formal peace talks with the government. The latter point has generated controversy given that Márquez was a signatory of the 2016 Peace Agreement. Petro maintains—with some credibility—that Márquez’s 2019 drug trafficking charges were a set up by the DEA and former Attorney General Néstor Humberto Martínez. Nonetheless, Marquez’s case showcases the extremely thin line that exists between “criminal” and “political” armed groups.
Armed groups may also take advantage of a national ceasefire with security forces to fortify themselves militarily and combat rivals. During negotiations with the FARC (2012-2016), armed actors such as the ELN and AGC rushed to occupy and compete for territories vacated by the FARC. While this led to increased and ongoing violence in specific municipalities, attacks by the FARC itself declined throughout the course of negotiations and led to a substantial reduction in homicides nationally.
The Petro administration seems to have also learned valuable lessons from the extremely contentious peace process with the FARC. By incorporating the opposition into negotiations, any future agreement stands to benefit from greater legitimacy—and fewer attempts at sabotage—from the Colombian Right. The incorporation of FEDEGAN president Lafaurie, with backing from former president Álvaro Uribe, is a stunning development from a sector that once shunned negotiations at all costs.
Admittedly however, Colombians should be skeptical that total peace is realistically attainable in the near term. For every promising development, there have been equally troubling and gruesome acts committed by violent groups. Buenaventura went more than a month without a single homicide after the city’s two largest gangs announced a ceasefire in preparation for talks with the government. Conversely, fighting between FARC dissidents last weekend in Putumayo led to more than 20 deaths and hundreds of internally displaced.
Characterizations of the Petro administration’s approach toward security as improvised ignore the reality that military deployments against armed groups often follow similarly muddled security strategies. Both repression and negotiation are key aspects of armed conflict. Similarly, both require reassessment in light of changing circumstances.
Peace with the ELN, let alone other armed groups such as the AGC and ex-FARC, will require immense tact from the Petro administration and substantial support from Caracas. As Latin America’s oldest guerrilla army, successful negotiations will go a long way towards paving a lasting peace in Colombia.
The 85,000 capacity Lusail stadium, under construction in 2018 outside Doha, Qatar. (photo: Getty)
“We shouldn’t have air-conditioned stadiums in the middle of the desert,” Gilles Dufrasne from Carbon Market Watch said.
More than a million people have traveled to Qatar for one of the planet’s biggest sporting events. But as it hosts the soccer World Cup, controversy is also descending on the tiny Gulf kingdom.
Alongside concerns over human rights, anti-LGBTQ laws and the treatment of migrant workers — issues that have dogged the tournament for years — critics say Qatar 2022 will be one of the most environmentally damaging of modern times.
Ahead of the tournament, several ecologically minded professional players signed an open letter to FIFA early this month, urging soccer’s global organizing body to ditch its contested claim that the Qatar World Cup is carbon neutral and to review its plans for next year’s Women’s World Cup hosted by Australia and New Zealand.
“The tournament has been labeled as the first ‘fully carbon neutral FIFA World Cup tournament,’ meaning its overall impact on the planet should be zero,” the letter said. “But that’s not true.”
“In reality, FIFA’s sustainability strategy for the Qatar World Cup rests on flawed carbon calculations, questionable offsetting practices, and shifting the responsibility onto fans rather than shouldering it themselves,” it added.
FIFA has said it has in place a “comprehensive set of initiatives … to mitigate the tournament-related emissions.”
The environmental cost of the tournament has crystallized the eco-anxiety for many following a year of unusually extreme weather and climate events around the world, such as droughts, wildfires and floods. And this is hitting the World Cup brand where it hurts the most — its fans. Some bars and pubs in countries including Britain, France and Germany have announced they won’t show the games, due to a mixture of worries over environmental damage and human rights abuses.
Almost half the pubs polled by Morning Advertiser, Britain’s pub industry trade magazine, said they would not show live matches. The Mustard Pot in Leeds blamed Qatar’s “pretty horrific” human rights abuses for its boycott, while the Liverpool Arms in the city of Chester told the magazine it had taken the decision because of Qatar’s lack of LGBTQ rights.
German broadcaster Deutsche Welle reported that dozens of venues in the German city of Cologne would also boycott the tournament because of Qatar’s rights record.
And retired soccer player Kevin Grosskreutz, a member of Germany’s World Cup winning squad in 2014, also wrote in an Instagram post that Mit Schmackes, the pub he owns in Dortmund, would not show matches even if it meant losing money.
The issue has touched a nerve among more casual World Cup observers, too.
La Cite Fertile, a cultural space in northern Paris dedicated to environmental and social issues, will instead show a rerun of the final match of the 1998 tournament in France, when a famously gifted French team beat Brazil to win the trophy for the first time.
Valentine Serac, 29, who works for an events agency in the French capital, said she planned to attend the rerun, but not any events to do with this year’s tournament.
“This summer was one of the most devastating ever in the world,” she said in a telephone interview. “We saw terrible images from the four corners of the Earth, we’re all becoming eco-anxious while they’re living in a different dimension where global warming does not seem to exist.”
“I’m not sure why I should support this bull—- actually. That would be admitting that it’s not too bad.”
Paris and Berlin are among several European cities that have said they will not be organizing a “fan zone,” a fixture at several previous tournaments where supporters can gather to watch games on a large screen, due to fears over the treatment of LGBTQ people in Qatar, rights for migrant workers and the environmental impact.
Calling the tournament a “human and environmental disaster,” Marseille Mayor Benoît Payan said in a statement last month that his city in southern France would do likewise. He added that it was “incompatible with the values we want to see conveyed through sport and especially football.”
FIFA, which usually releases viewer numbers after tournaments are over, did not respond to questions about how many viewers were tuning in from around the world.
Staying cool
Qataris have always had to contend with stifling heat. Many others are not so comfortable with these conditions, however.
So, it is no surprise that the original plans to stage this year’s World Cup during the summer — when temperatures can reach over 104 degrees Fahrenheit — were eventually ditched. But with temperatures even in November reaching as high as 90 degrees, air conditioning has been used in stadiums throughout the tournament so far. Some fans and journalists have even complained of being too cold during night games as a result.
“We shouldn’t have air-conditioned stadiums in the middle of the desert,” said Gilles Dufrasne from Carbon Market Watch, a nonprofit group based in Brussels that tracks the price of carbon trading. The organization is one of several that has complained to European regulators about allegedly misleading and false carbon neutral claims.
He added that the carbon impact of this would pale in comparison to flying a million people to Qatar and building seven stadiums.
No choice but to fly
Travel will account for half of the World Cup’s entire carbon footprint, according to FIFA — a figure inflated by the fact that Qatar is too small to accommodate all the fans: some will have to stay in the neighboring United Arab Emirates, a short one-hour flight or a grueling 6-hour drive through the desert. The state-owned Qatar Airways has increased its shuttle flights between Qatar and the UAE.
“We have reduced and withdrawn from 18 destinations in order to make space at Hamad International for new airlines to come that will bring fans,” Qatar Airways CEO Akbar Al Baker told a press conference in October.
Julien Jreissati, a director at the Greenpeace campaign group, said it was unlikely that the increase in Qatar Airways flights was part of FIFA’s estimation of 3.6 megatons of carbon dioxide emitted during the championship, adding more uncertainty around the numbers released by the organizing body.
Representatives for FIFA, King Hamad Airport and Qatar Airways did not respond to multiple requests for comment on the carbon footprint that the increased number of flights were expected to produce during the tournament.
After winning the right to host the tournament, Qatar pledged to become the first carbon neutral World Cup host.
“A comprehensive set of initiatives have been implemented to mitigate the tournament-related emissions — including energy efficient stadiums and green-building certification of their design, construction and operations, low-emission transportation, and sustainable waste management practices,” FIFA said in a statement to NBC News in November.
But experts have questioned whether the tournament should be taking place in such an arid country that has had to build seven new stadiums and renovate one. The country has also built a new metro rail system and constructed hundreds of new hotels, according to FIFA.
FIFA has stated that the total greenhouse emissions from the tournament will be equivalent to 3.6 million tonnes (or 5.4 million tons) of carbon dioxide, which will be entirely offset and mitigated by “low-carbon solutions” in Qatar and the Gulf region.
But Dufrasne from Carbon Market Watch said the organizers’ carbon neutral claim stems from spreading emissions from the construction over the stadiums’ 60-year life span — essentially cheating the math.
“From the total emissions associated with the construction of these new stadiums, they take responsibility for a share that is one month divided by 60 years,” he said.
Others agree. In November a series of climate-focused think tanks and campaign groups submitted complaints to advertising regulators in five European countries, regarding what they called FIFA’s misleading and false carbon neutral claim.
The complaints, made by The New Weather Institute in Britain, Klima-Allianz Schweiz in Switzerland, Notre Affaire a Tous in France, Carbon Market Watch in Belgium and Fossil Free Football in the Netherlands, said the organizers had underreported the level of emissions and had made misleading claims.
One of the ways FIFA aims to offset the tournament’s carbon footprint is through buying carbon credits. Through its own agency, the Global Carbon Council, Qatar says it invests in sustainable projects to pay its environmental debt. So far, as part of its pledge, Qatar has inaugurated renewable energy projects in Turkey and Serbia.
But the carbon credit market is not strong enough for the World Cup organizers to offset the tournament’s emissions and campaigners are worried about the message the carbon neutral claims sends out, Dufrasne said.
“There is definitely a risk around incentives that this sends … [that] you can continue to fly all the way to Qatar and watch football matches in brand new stadiums in the middle of the desert without any impact on the climate,” he said.
Jreissati of Greenpace also pointed out the hypocrisy of a state whose wealth is almost solely based on fossil fuels investing in carbon reduction schemes elsewhere.
“Let’s be clear: their bread and butter, their main source of income, every quarter comes from oil and gas,” he said. “And if investing in renewable energy is not part of a very clear systemic change … where they would transition away gradually but completely away from fossil fuel, then yes, this is a problem.”
He added that oil-rich states such as Qatar could use green schemes to polish their images and grant themselves more moral licenses to keep expanding their oil and gas exploration — a process known as “greenwashing.”
While concerned with the climate impact, Jreissati said, he did not want to be a killjoy.
“Events like the World Cup, like the football World Cup or like the Olympics bring joy and happiness to millions of people, sometimes even billions of people, right?” he said.
However, he said, he wished the controversy around the environmental impact of the tournament could spark conversations leading to improvements for future events.
“The hope is that all the scandal it has generated should be a very strong signal for both the host country Qatar and FIFA to engage in real transformative, systemic change towards a future which is greener, more sustainable and more peaceful.”
Follow us on facebook and twitter!
PO Box 2043 / Citrus Heights, CA 95611
No comments:
Post a Comment
Note: Only a member of this blog may post a comment.