11 November 22
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That these forces are ascendant is newsworthy. And it is vital they are considered thus. That these forces exist, however, is not news. Neither is the fact that they are being stoked, winked at, and normalized by the previous president. And neither is how most of the Republican Party leadership is silent, supportive, or insufficiently disapproving.
To say all this is not a political criticism. It is about confronting a grave threat to our nation and the world. Politics should be about a competition for ideas that fall within the realm of civilized discourse. What these people are peddling is not policy, but prejudice.
Repeating these sentiments should not diminish the importance of the message. The need for us all to confront this with the frequency that we are is evidence of the salience of the mission. And let’s be clear: It is of extra importance for those not directly targeted to speak the loudest. Silence is complicity. To speak softly is cowardice.
The latest outrage swirls around an occasion at Mar-a-Lago in which the former president dined with avowed antisemites. But we do a disservice to history and the dangers we face by bundling recriminations under the banners of combatting “MAGA” or “Trumpism.” The former president may have built his political power by tapping into a well of hate, but the reservoir was already there. Others are eager to draw from its waters as well.
Discrimination, often enforced with violence, has been a hallmark of our country since its founding. White supremacy is embedded in our Constitution. And the biases and bigotries of the American electorate have shaped some of our national narrative ever since.
To be sure, there is a powerful counter-narrative. It begins with the noble words of our founding documents, which laid out a vision of equality and justice unimaginable at the time of their writing. Over the centuries, countless activists and dreamers have leaned on the courage of their convictions to wrest the nation toward a path of greater inclusion and enlightenment. Most who signed up for service in this army of conscience are not famous, but we are lucky to live in a world made better by their mettle. They have helped to make the nation better and now keep hopes alive that it can and will be getting better, a lot better, still.
We have undoubtedly made progress, but the undercurrents of hatred have never been fully expunged. It takes very little for them to resurge. Far more energy and commitment are required in combating them than in fomenting them.
We should find hope in the journey our nation has taken before. The bigotry we are now decrying was once largely accepted political discourse, in both parties. This is not ancient history. Many of us were of memory age when antisemitic, homophobic, and racist statements were spoken without a second thought. Our country was a weaker place because of it. Our struggle now is to be vigilant in making sure we do not return to that darkness.
We know we have shared these sentiments in this space before. And we know we will almost assuredly have ample reason to do so again. That is the reality. And that is all the more reason this needs to be said. By all of us. Often.
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Reps. Nancy Pelosi and Hakeem Jeffries in March at the House Democrats’ annual retreat in Philadelphia. (photo: Alex Wong/Getty)
House Democrats met behind closed doors Wednesday morning on Capitol Hill to make their decision.
Jeffries ran unopposed as leader, with Massachusetts Rep. Katherine Clark, current assistant speaker, running as whip and California Rep. Peter Aguilar, previously vice chair of the caucus, and was expected to win the spot to lead the House Democratic caucus.
Republicans have the majority in the next Congress, so Jeffries, Clark and Aguilar will all lead in a Democratic minority, the first in two terms.
At 52, Jeffries will represent a generational change from the current triumvirate of House Democratic leaders, who are three decades older than him. He became the chairman of the Democratic caucus in 2019, making him the youngest member serving in leadership.
His rise in leadership comes after Pelosi, House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer and House Majority Whip Jim Clyburn announced they would be stepping down from their current leadership positions. Clyburn is expected to become assistant leader in the new Congress.
Pelosi – who was designated “Speaker Emerita” in a unanimous vote by the House Democratic Steering and Policy Committee Tuesday night – blessed the new trio of leaders expected to succeed them in a statement when she announced she would step down and return to being a rank-and-file member in the new Congress.
“A new day is dawning — and I am confident that these new leaders will capably lead our Caucus and the Congress,” Pelosi said.
For months, Democratic lawmakers have whispered that Pelosi’s potential exit from Congress could pave the way for Jeffries.
Jeffries said he hopes to “lead an effort that centers our communication strategy around the messaging principle that values unite, issues divide.” He also praised the past leadership but said “more must be done to combat inflation, defend our democracy, secure reproductive freedom, welcome new Americans, promote equal protection under the law and improve public safety throughout this country.”
Kari Lake speaks to the media after voting in Phoenix, Arizona, on November 8. (photo: John Moore/Getty)
The Republican candidate for governor is still refusing to concede the race that made her a MAGA star.
Most other election-denier candidates, who lost up and down the ballot and across the country in 2022, have conceded their races with little fanfare. But Lake is an almost singular voice calling her state’s contests one of the “most dishonest elections in the history of Arizona” in a video posted on Trump’s social media network Truth Social on Monday.
“This botched election should not be certified,” she added.
Monday was the county-level deadline to certify the results. All did, with the exception of Cochise County, where the Republican majority on the Board of Supervisors delayed certification until Friday, citing concerns about voting machines. Current Arizona Secretary of State Katie Hobbs, the Democrat who won the gubernatorial race, consequently sued the county, arguing that its decision could “potentially disenfranchise” some 47,000 voters.
The AP called the race on November 14, and the results weren’t within the half a percentage point margin required to trigger a recount. In the now complete vote count, Hobbs won the gubernatorial election by 17,116 votes.
That hasn’t stopped Lake from questioning the results. She has boosted accounts from supporters who claim they had trouble voting, argued that Hobbs cannot certify her own election as governor due to conflicts of interest, and filed a lawsuit asking Maricopa County, the largest county in Arizona, to hand over various election records before the statewide canvass of the results, which is scheduled to happen on December 5.
Those documents include ones that could help identify people who may have not been able to cast a ballot, including those who checked in at more than one polling location or who submitted a mail ballot and sought to vote in person. Lake also is seeking details on counted and uncounted ballots that were mistakenly mixed. It’s unlikely that these ballots affected the results — mixing up counted and uncounted ballots is a routine problem in elections that county officials have confirmed happened at a few vote centers this year, but that they can rectify.
Lake is getting help in her quest from Trump, who posted on Truth Social Monday that Lake “should be installed as governor of Arizona” and baselessly claimed that she was the victim of a “criminal voting operation” involving broken voting machines in Republican districts, drawing a parallel to his false claims about his own 2020 loss. Lake became a key Trump ally during her campaign, and she has been floated as a potential 2024 running mate for Trump, who announced his candidacy just weeks ago.
“This is almost as bad as the 2020 Presidential Election, which the Unselect Committee refuses to touch because they know it was Fraudulent!” he wrote.
As to whether she’s planning on abandoning her claims anytime soon, Lake seemed to suggest she won’t. She wrote Monday that “the Fake News ignores our Fake Elections and expects us to just ‘move on.’ We won’t.”
Lake has long suggested she would challenge her loss
It was obvious well before Election Day that Lake intended to challenge the results if she lost.
Ahead of Election Day, Lake repeatedly dodged questions about whether she would concede the governor’s race if she lost, saying, “I’m going to win the election, and I will accept that result,” and that she’d only accept a “fair, honest and transparent” result. During the primary, she said she would challenge the results if she lost because it would have indicated “there’s some cheating going on.” And before the race was called, she suggested that Arizona election officials were intentionally dragging their feet on releasing the results while still declaring, “I am 100% going to win.”
Her comments were in line with her history of election denialism. Lake has said that, had she been governor at the time, she wouldn’t have certified the 2020 vote for Biden, saying that it was “Corrupt, Rotten & Rigged.” She even filed a lawsuit, which has since been dismissed by a federal judge, that made false claims about issues with vote-counting machines, and sought to require Arizona officials to tabulate 2022 ballots by hand.
Other election-denying candidates, such as the Arizona GOP’s secretary of state nominee Mark Finchem, similarly set up the expectation that they would challenge the election results. Almost all of them ended up losing. Abraham Hamadeh, the GOP nominee for Arizona attorney general, has argued that the election was “afflicted with certain errors and inaccuracies,” but his race is heading to a recount. Finchem has also yet to concede, arguing as recently as Monday that the election should be recalled and that there should be a “new election.”
Lake’s refusal to concede could be strategic
The Arizona governor’s race made Lake a GOP star. It’s possible that her attempts to prolong the certification of the election in Arizona are just a ploy to maintain her national profile and create a launching pad for the next phase of her career, political or otherwise.
She ran an unconventional campaign, eschewing traditional ad buys for viral campaign videos full of controversial statements that grabbed national headlines, including comments that appeared to make light of the violent attack on House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s husband. All of that won her Trump’s admiration (and endorsement) and praise from other prominent Republicans, though she still proved a divisive figure within the party and might be even more so now that she’s lost what seemed to be a winnable race.
Kenneth L. Khachigian, Ronald Reagan’s former chief speechwriter, waxed poetic in the Wall Street Journal last month: “What makes Ms. Lake’s message different is its simplicity and fearlessness. It’s unapologetic and sincere, not clothed in code words.” Trump reportedly sees something of himself in Lake. Even the current term-limited Gov. Doug Ducey, who accused Lake of “misleading voters” when he was backing Taylor Robson during the primary, eventually warmed to her, though he hasn’t entertained her refusal to concede and called Hobbs to offer his congratulations.
All the adulation from Republicans — and speculation that she might be a potential running mate for Trump, even though she didn’t win the governorship — suggests a future in the GOP. By keeping her supporters, and Trump’s, engaged, she puts herself in a strong position to help Trump mount a tough challenge to Biden come 2024, and to attempt to fulfill any other political aspirations, whatever they may be.
Musk has welcomed neo-Nazis back onto the platform, engaged with them on his timeline, and posted multiple tweets that appeal directly to them. (photo: Jim Watson/AFP)
Musk has welcomed neo-Nazis back onto the platform, engaged with them on his timeline, and posted multiple tweets that appeal directly to them.
In recent days, the platform’s new CEO has reactivated the accounts of known neo-Nazis; shared a picture of a white supremacist who said he’d like Trump to be more like Hitler; failed to prevent users from posting videos of the Christchurch massacre; tweeted a popular alt-right meme; used a known antisemitic trope; and, inadvertently or not, shared a dogwhistle that white supremacists interpreted as praise for Hitler.
Musk’s apparent embrace of the white supremacist community has already led to a rise in hate speech on the platform, and it’s about to get even darker. In far-right forums, extremists of all stripes are salivating at the prospect of being able to share their hateful ideologies on a platform with much greater reach when Musk reinstates accounts that were banned for spreading hate speech.
“As soon as he took over Twitter, we saw extremists trying to exploit the platform, we’ve seen hate of all kinds increase, so these messages that he’s sending have to be understood in the context of what is happening to that platform,” Oren Segal, vice president of the Anti-Defamation League’s Center on Extremism, told VICE News. “As it’s becoming a hellscape for antisemitism and racism and bigotry, it just so happens that he is putting out the type of language that is appreciated by those who are doing that.”
Musk’s pattern of normalizing far-right content stretches back to well before his takeover of Twitter. Last February, Musk tweeted a meme that compared Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau to Hitler. The tweet, which he deleted within 12 hours of being posted, showed support for the truckers who were protesting vaccine mandates.
But since he took control of Twitter late last month, Musk has welcomed white supremacists back onto the platform, engaged with them on his timeline, and over the last few days, he’s posted multiple tweets that appeal directly to them.
On Saturday Musk responded to a random account with the username @Rainmaker1973 that tweeted that the unique biodiversity of Madagascar is the result of being isolated from other land masses for 88 million years,
Musk, who hadn’t been tagged in the post, responded by asking: “I wonder what Earth will be like 88 million years from now.”
While it’s unclear if Musk knows that in extremist circles, 88 is a well-known code for “Heil Hitler” (H being the 8th letter of the alphabet), his followers certainly took his use of the number as a sign he was speaking to them.
The use of the number 14 in many of the replies to Musk’s tweet is a reference to the so-called “14 Words,” a white-supremacist slogan that reads: “We must secure the existence of our people and a future for white children.”
But Musk’s use of the figure 88 was just one of multiple recent instances of his posts exciting Twitter’s white supremacist userbase.
The next day, Musk got into a Twitter dispute with retired Army Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman, who had posted a message criticizing Musk’s management of the platform. In response, Musk called Vindman “both puppet & puppeteer.” As the Anti-Defamation League pointed out last month: “Even if no antisemitic insinuation is intended, casting a Jewish individual as a puppet master who manipulates national events perpetuates antisemitic tropes.”
On Monday, Musk tweeted a picture of Anthime Gionet, a notorious far-right troll and white supremacist known online as Baked Alaska, saluting a McDonald’s flag. Once someone pointed out to Musk who was in the picture, he deleted the tweet.
Gionet has said he wished Trump had been more like Hitler and took part in the deadly Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville in 2017. He also took part in the Jan. 6 riot at the U.S. Capitol and will be sentenced next year.
Here’s Gionet explaining what the phrase “14 words” and the number 88 signify to white supremacists:
Hours after Musk deleted the picture of Gionet, he posted a Pepe the Frog meme which suggested a “psy-op” was underway to undermine his control of Twitter. Pepe the Frog is a character that was created in an online cartoon in 2005, but in recent years it has been coopted by the alt-right as a hate symbol used in racist and antisemitic memes.
Though, Musk could argue that he didn’t realize what he was posting, Segal argues that even if it’s not intentional, Musk should still be aware of what he’s doing—just by looking at his replies.
“When we’re trying to assess whether he knows what he’s doing, is he truly trying to send dog whistles or messages to the extremist, we have to also look at the context there,” Segal said.“The only context we have is that now there is a pattern of memes and numeric symbols, and tropes, that extremists are excited about online. And at minimum, he should know that, he just has to look at his Twitter feed. And if he knows that, then you would think maybe he might want to stop if he doesn’t support that type of content.”
And now that Musk controls Twitter, white supremacists have been allowed back onto the platform and seem to view it as their personal playground.
Over the weekend multiple users uploaded copies of the video filmed by the Australian white supremacist as he murdered 51 Muslim worshippers at two mosques in Christchurch in 2019. The video, which is illegal to share in New Zealand, was not caught by Twitter’s automatic moderation tools, and was only removed after the New Zealand government alerted Twitter to the problem.
Musk has said he will grant a general amnesty to banned accounts as long as they haven’t broken the law, and the process of reinstating these accounts has already begun, according to Platformer which reported Monday that 62,000 accounts with over 10,000 followers have already been assessed for reinstatement.
But Musk’s Twitter has alreadyalso reinstated some known white supremacist accounts and given them added authority by giving them a blue check mark by letting them sign up for the $8-a-month Twitter Blue subscription service. Among those who have blue checks are white nationalist Jason Kessler, organizer of the Unite the Right rally, and Richard Spencer, another well-known white nationalist, who like Kessler was found guilty of engaging in a conspiracy to commit racially motivated violence related to the Charlottesville rally.
Among the accounts already back on Twitter since Musk took control is Brett Stevens, a far-right racist who praised the 2011 mass murder of 77 people in Norway by a convicted terrorist who gave a Nazi salute in court earlier this year.
Since returning to the platform, Stevens has been openly advocating for genocide against non-white ethnic groups.
And in another example of how white supremacists view Twitter under Musk as a place to do and say whatever they like, there is now an account using the screen name “Day of the Rope,” which is a white supremacist concept taken from The Turner Diaries, a fictionalized blueprint for a white supremacist revolution written in 1978 by neo-Nazi leader William Pierce. Twitter says the account does not violate their policies.
For experts who track hate speech online, the most concerning aspect of Musk’s behavior is not whether he is doing all of this intentionally, but that extremists who lionize him believe he is now firmly on their side.
“ It’s unclear whether Musk is consciously nodding toward extremists,” Jared Holt, senior research manager at the Institute for Strategic Dialogue, told VICE News. “What is clear is that extremists think he is. Since Musk purchased and took over Twitter, far-right communities have celebrated Musk’s perceived sympathies to their causes. Musk has done little to dissuade these impressions. Rather, he has spent his time engaging with far-right personalities, recycling their tropes, and entertaining their grievances.”
After being banned from Twitter and other mainstream platforms, many extremist communities were relegated to smaller platforms with less reach like Gab and Telegram.
But the thought of getting back on Twitter has excited these communities in recent weeks.
“Musk’s statements indicating he may reinstate previously banned accounts has also energized far-right communities, who have interpreted Musk’s tweets as a hall pass to engage in more intense trolling and hate,” Holt said. “Whether Musk is consciously doing this or not, it has the same end effect: agitating and exciting toxic internet subcultures.”
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Activists protest in support of abortion rights in Doylestown, Pennsylvania, in September. (photo: Angela Weiss/AFP)
Exclusive: a study shows the company has a long way to go in upholding its pledge to protect users
Google responds to tens of thousands of requests each year from law enforcement agencies seeking access to the vast troves of data collected on its users. In one six-month period in 2021, the most recent data publicly available, Google received nearly 47,000 law enforcement requests, affecting more than 100,000 accounts, and responded with some amount of data to 80% of them. The Dobbs decision sparked concerns that such data could be used to prosecute people seeking abortions in states where it is banned – for instance, if they searched for or traveled to an abortion clinic.
Google responded to those concerns by saying it would delete entries for locations deemed “personal”, including “medical facilities like counseling centers, domestic violence shelters, abortion clinics, fertility centers, addiction treatment facilities, weight loss clinics, cosmetic surgery clinics”. The company did not indicate how long after a user visited a “personal” location it would delete the data.
“If our systems identify that someone has visited one of these places, we will delete these entries from Location History soon after they visit,” the company said in July, pledging to make the change “in the coming weeks”.
The tech advocacy group Accountable Tech conducted an experiment in August and October to test Google’s pledge. Using a brand new Android device, researchers with the group analyzed their Google activity timeline, where the company shows what information is logged about an account holder’s actions. This activity helps make Google’s services “more useful” to users, according to the company – for instance, by “helping you rediscover the things that you’ve searched for, read and watched”. However, any information collected by Google is potentially subject to law enforcement requests, including the data logged in “My Activity”.
The group found that searches for directions to abortion clinics on Google Maps, as well as the routes taken to visit two Planned Parenthood locations, were stored in their Google activity timeline for weeks after it occurred. At the time of this article’s publication, the information was still stored and available at myactivity.google.com.
The research, shared exclusively with the Guardian, raises questions about Google’s commitment to implementing its promised changes, the group contends. Furthermore, a Guardian analysis shows that additional data stored on Android phones can still create a detailed portrait of a user’s journey to seek an abortion, even if the location of abortion clinics visited are properly masked.
A Google spokesperson, Winnie King, said “protecting user privacy” was a top priority for the company and that the search giant had launched the promised changes to location history “earlier this year”.
“Separate from Location History, which saves the places visited, users can manage their searches and activity on Google sites and apps through the Web & App Activity setting, which includes Maps searches and directions,” King said. “Users can turn Web & App Activity off at any time, delete all or part of their data manually, or choose to automatically delete the data on a rolling basis.”
Testing Google’s location policy
As of Monday, abortion was banned in at least 12 states. Accountable Tech’s research was designed to mimic the steps someone seeking an abortion might take.
In one experiment, Giliann Karon, a researcher at the organization, traveled from Ohio to Pennsylvania and visited a Planned Parenthood on 18 August. At the time, Ohio prohibited abortions after six weeks of pregnancy. After arriving in Pennsylvania using Google Maps, Karon again used Google Maps to direct her to a Planned Parenthood clinic down the street. Karon accepted all the default privacy settings on the phone, which meant location tracking was off. While her location information was not stored, the searches for Planned Parenthood clinics she conducted while she was in Ohio, as well as the fact that she used Google Maps to find directions to the clinic, were logged. Months later, Karon’s searches for a Planned Parenthood, and the query for directions to the clinic, remain logged in her activity page.
In a second case, another researcher, Aditi Ramesh, turned on location tracking on a new Android device. She then traveled to two Planned Parenthood locations in Los Angeles in October. In both cases, screenshots show that while the exact address wasn’t stored in her Google timeline, the routes were retained and, in one case, the route included a pin at the exact location of the Planned Parenthood. On 22 November, the information was still stored in Ramesh’s activity timeline.
Google would not say exactly when it had implemented its policy of deleting locations after a user visited an abortion clinic. However, in the second experiment, King said, location history did not detect that Ramesh had visited a Planned Parenthood. If it had, she said, it would have deleted the visit. It instead detected that she visited businesses around the clinic, according to King. Screenshots show, however, that when Ramesh visited the second clinic, Planned Parenthood was among the locations suggested to her regarding where she might be.
Other experts are not surprised by the findings.
“Despite the promises of well-intentioned technologists, it is entirely unsurprising that new experiments are showing that sensitive information connected to abortion is being collected and retained by the advertising giant,” wrote Jackie Singh, the director of technology and operations at the Surveillance Technology Oversight Project (Stop), in messages to the Guardian.
Other privacy advocates testing Google’s location tracking system also found similar results. Tom Kemp, a Silicon Valley-based entrepreneur and investor, performed a comparable experiment in August. Kemp searched phrases such as “I need an abortion”, then searched for Planned Parenthood clinics near him and drove to a location using Google Maps for directions. A review of Kemp’s activity shows that more than three months later, the search queries as well as the fact that he was directed to the clinic remain stored in his timeline.
“They’re operating under the mindset of: ‘We need to collect as much information as possible to facilitate advertising,’” Kemp said. “But they have a business model that can be perverted by foreign actors and other people that want to weaponize that behavioral information.”
Abortion-related search histories
Location data is not the only activity Google stores that could be used against someone seeking an abortion.
In order to help the Guardian test what other information is being retained, Kemp also conducted searches such as “get an abortion near me”. On 22 November, he scheduled a calendar event entitled “Get an abortion”, with a location tag for the nearest clinic. He also searched for and downloaded a period-tracking app called Clue in the Google Play store.
All of this was stored in his activity timeline in considerable detail. A Guardian review of his activity shows that, at 10.12am on 22 November, he received a notification from Google Assistant telling him:“Time to leave for Get an abortion.” It also shows he “visited Clue Period & Cycle Tracker” on the Google Play store, searched for “abortion pill” at 10.03am and searched for “get an abortion near me” a minute later.
As of November, searches for “abortion” from his August experiment also remained stored in his activity timeline.
Taken together, the information paints a fairly detailed picture of whether and how someone sought an abortion.
Beyond its pledge to delete location data,Google has said little about how it would protect users in the wake of Dobbs. Instead, the company has reiterated its commitment to limiting how data is shared and collected by other companies and app developers. The company also said it made it easy for users to delete data from Google-owned Fitbit products and Google Fit.
“The truth is we cannot expect an advertising giant like Google, who has become powerful by monetizing the collection of our data, to neatly tailor its many complex systems to avoid surveilling particular populations of people, such as those seeking information about abortion,” wrote Singh, who formerly served as a cybersecurity staffer on the Joe Biden campaign. “Unfortunately, the nature of surveillance and the complexities of the data broker ecosystem form a broad harm which we can only solve with legislation.”
While many tech companies have made commitments to mask, delete or stop collecting abortion and health-related data, experts say the very business model of collecting private data for profit should be questioned.
“The best way to protect people who are seeking abortions is to stop collecting the data entirely,” concluded Ramesh.
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Reports of widespread labor exploitation and safety hazards cast a dark shadow over the 2022 World Cup in Qatar. (photo: Stuart Franklin/Getty)
Reports of widespread labor exploitation and safety hazards cast a dark shadow over the 2022 World Cup in Qatar.
Criticizing the West, and Europe in particular, for migration policies, corporate profiteering off of Gulf oil, and “what we Europeans have been doing for 3,000 years around the world,” Infantino tried to draw attention away from multiple controversies plaguing the 2022 World Cup.
FIFA, the governing body for world soccer, is expected to bring in $6.5 billion in revenue from this year’s World Cup, a 25% jump from the 2018 games. Infantino himself made $3.2 million in 2019 alone.
Meanwhile, over 6,500 workers have reportedly died in construction for the games since the World Cup was awarded in 2010 to Qatar, reflecting widespread safety hazards and labor abuses. Migrant laborers have been forced to pay billions of dollars in fees since 2011 to “recruitment agencies” in order to secure jobs at companies contracted to build the stadiums in which national teams will compete over the course of the tournament.
According to numerous human rights observers, workers have faced nonpayment of wages for up to a year, wage theft, severe mental health issues, 14-hour workdays, and a range of other abuses and poor conditions.
“Who in the world aside from billionaires can afford not being paid for 10 months or a year?” said Namrata Raju, the India Director for Equidem, a London-based human rights organization that has issued several critical reports on labor conditions in the Gulf.
Among the findings of Equidem’s most recent report, titled “If we complain, we are fired,” are reports of forced labor, workplace violence, health-and-safety issues and nationality-based discrimination. The report is based on conversations with about 1,000 workers conducted over the past three years, including 60 in-depth interviews.
One anonymous Kenyan worker cited in the report says, “Supervisors would hit us in front of other workers to pressure us to work faster and complete our work on time. This physical abuse was never addressed. You could report, but nothing would happen because the perpetrators were our supervisors.”
An unnamed Nepalese worker says, “In the summer season, it is very hot. The company provided rest shelters in some of the locations, but it is not enough space for all of us to take rest… Qatar nationals, Egyptian and Pakistani workers are provided air-conditioned rest areas by the company.” Temperatures can exceed 110 degrees between May and September in Qatar.
Conditions in Qatar’s leadup to the World Cup have been under fire for years since the country was awarded the games in 2010, and are part of a more general set of labor problems under the Gulf’s kafala system. This labor regime closely ties the low-wage migrant workers that the region’s economy depends on to their employers and leaves them with almost no voice and subject to massive abuses.
Human rights groups have reported that up to 10,000 migrant workers from South Asia, the Philippines, and other countries die in the Gulf each year.
After international pressure, the Qatari government has undertaken reforms since 2017 to mitigate the worst of the abuses, entering into an agreement with the International Labor Organization.
The reforms included a minimum wage increase, an end to requiring “exit permits” for migrant workers to leave Qatar, and the ability to change jobs without permission from the employer. The ILO reports mixed results, but abuses are reportedly continuing even as the World Cup gets underway.
Equidem’s Raju says the situation remains “dire” for migrant workers in the country. She describes the reforms as “lip service” because of a lack of enforcement and notes that labor unions remain illegal for migrant workers in the country. Strikes and protests by migrant workers are also illegal in Qatar.
Equidem is urging Qatar to set up a migrant workers’ center to allow workers an avenue to complain without being “terrified of some kind of punitive action,” in Raju’s words. The “first step [is] for workers to feel safe,” she says.
Qatar’s government has argued that the criticisms it has faced are the product of anti-Arab racism, with the country being targeted on issues ranging from the freedom of the press to LGBTQ+ rights.
At least one former World Cup migrant worker who In These Times spoke with agreed that Qatar has been selectively targeted, even though the anti-worker abuses are real.
Md. Emran Khan reported having worked 14-hour-days in Qatar as a technical assistant making and testing concrete for Qatari contractor Advance Construction Technology Services from 2016 to 2018.
“If it was in the U.S. or Europe, would the media be paying this much attention to worker abuses like these?” he asked in Bengali.
Khan now works for the Awaj Foundation in Bangladesh assisting prospective, current, and former migrants. He argues that Qatar is the best migration destination in the Gulf for South Asian migrants.
But Raju at Equidem argues that if Qatar were serious about racism, it would address the racism inherent in its labor system.
“I would ask them, if [they understand] what racism means, why do they have a two-tier labor system?” she asked. In the Gulf, different labor rules apply to migrants, who are predominantly African, South Asian and Filipino workers, leaving them in a much worse position than nationals and citizens of other Arab countries. For example, Qataris are allowed to form trade unions, while migrant workers are not.
Nationality-based discrimination and migrant worker abuses are a major issue in the region. Half of the total population of the Gulf and 85 percent of Qatar’s three million people are citizens of South Asian countries, the Philippines, and other Asian and African countries. This includes 98% of Qatar’s private sector workforce. The issue also has consequences for countries of origin, given the importance of remittance income for families of migrant workers.
Raju says, “We’re asking [FIFA] to compensate all of these workers [in Qatar]. So many workers have not been paid.”
A returned Nepali migrant worker pseudonymously titled “Hari” in a video released by Human Rights Watch describes how he worked in Lusail, Qatar’s second largest city, where, he says, “there wasn’t a single building anywhere” when he arrived.
“Now there are towers everywhere. We built those towers,” says Hari.
Equidem’s report also notes “a pattern of egregious worker rights abuses during the 2014 World Cup in Brazil and the 2018 World Cup in Russia.” For example, workers in Brazil worked 84-hour weeks and there were also thousands of evictions of working-class residents to make way for construction.
FIFA, Qatar’s government, and Qatar’s body in charge of its World Cup preparations, the Supreme Committee for Delivery & Legacy, did not respond to requests for comment.
Rolling Stone, which first covered Equidem’s report, received a statement from FIFA stating the soccer body would consult with its Qatari counterparts on the findings. The magazine also reported that Qatar’s government responded by touting its labor reforms, labor inspections, and awareness campaigns, resulting in a “year-on-year” reduction in labor offenses.
The Supreme Committee for Delivery & Legacy, meanwhile, said that it eliminates substandard contractors and subjects all contractors to due diligence. It blamed abuses on “bad-faith contractors.”
But an Indian construction worker quoted by Equidem who also worked in Lusail says, “If we protest, they threaten to cut our salaries or they fire us. Supervisors shout, abuse, and sometimes even beat workers. This is why no one protests. If I complain I will be abused, threatened with dismissal, and the duty will be made stricter for me.”
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Federal agencies continue to move dozens of logging projects forward in federal forests across the United States. (photo: Francis Eatherington)
Federal agencies continue to move dozens of logging projects forward in federal forests across the United States.
It came as a major relief to advocates, after four years of conservation rollbacks and climate science manipulation under President Donald Trump, which encouraged aggressive logging. Mature and old-growth trees provide essential ecosystems for the many organisms living within and beneath them, and protect the water quality of nearby communities, lakes, and streams by preventing erosion. They also fix nitrogen, which improves soil quality and ensures the health of the whole forest.
Due to centuries of logging, most of these older trees are now only found on federal lands. Executive Order 14072 directed the Department of Interior and the Department of Agriculture to define and inventory mature and old-growth forests on federal lands — those having taken generations to develop — and then to craft new policies to protect them.
But in spite of Biden’s recent commitment, federal agencies continue to move dozens of logging projects forward in federal forests across the United States, putting over 300,000 acres at risk, according to a recent report by non-profit group, Climate Forests. Lauren Anderson, climate forest program manager for the conservation group Oregon Wild, said that’s in part due to a glaring omission in the Biden administration’s executive order. “It did not highlight logging as a threat,” Anderson said.
As a result, chopping and hauling out mature and old-growth trees in critical ecosystems across the U.S. continues while the federal government works on counting what’s growing where. Swaths of bigleaf maples and Douglas firs in Oregon’s Rogue-Umpqua Divide, are among those recently axed, or marked to be logged any day now. The Bureau of Land Management (BLM) Poor Windy Project in southwest Oregon contains 4,573 acres of mature and old-growth stands held in public trust—that are now being sold to timber companies. They’re some of the most carbon rich forests in the world, home to black bears and northern spotted owls.
Joseph Vaile, climate program director at Klamath Siskiyou Wildlands Center, says protecting these remaining elders couldn’t be more urgent. “In a lot of places, they’re [already] gone,” Vaile says.
BLM’s support for logging in these kinds of forests dates back to the 1930’s. The Oregon and California Revested Lands Sustained Yield Management Act placed over two million acres under the agency’s control, with the aim of ensuring the perpetual flow of timber for wood products.
But Vaile says the law’s objective, and the agency culture it codified, is outdated. “Since then, our economy and our social structures have completely transitioned away from an old-growth logging economy to a more diversified economy,” he says. “Instead of going after old-growth trees, what we should be doing is protecting people from fire, adapting these forests to climate change, and protecting water sources.”
It’s a nationwide problem. Timber sales are also underway in a 12,000 acre patch of the Chequamegon-Nicolet National Forest known as the Fourmile Vegetation Project, in Wisconsin’s Northwoods. Here, lichen-draped upland hardwoods mingle with red pines and aspens, creating a rich habitat for moose and endangered gray wolves. Though much of the landscape is still recovering from continuous logging, over half of the trees are 80 years and older; and a third are centenarians.
These mature and old-growth trees store more carbon than younger trees, so it’s imperative that we protect them, says Carolyn RamÃrez, staff scientist with the Natural Resources Defense Council. “We can’t just cut them down and replant them and expect to have a net-zero carbon impact. It will take decades for that carbon to be restored in these forests, as well as all the myriad ecological benefits that leaving the trees provides,” RamÃrez says. One mature tree can remove over 48 pounds of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere over the course of a year. The majority of that carbon-sequestering capacity occurs in the second half of a tree’s life, researchers have learned.
RamÃrez visited Chequamegon-Nicolet National Forest in October, where further timber sales are currently underway. The difference in ecological diversity and surface temperature between areas where mature trees still grew, and others where the Forest Service had recently logged was “jarring,” RamÃrez said. In addition to other ecosystem services, forests provide cooler microclimates for those nearby, which is significant in and of itself in a rapidly-warming world.
In response to a 2021 request by environmental groups to suspend and review operations at the Fourmile Vegetation Project on the grounds that continued logging there was at odds with national objectives on the climate crisis, Forest Service Chief Randy Moore wrote that the project would: “maintain or enhance existing forest research studies; contribute toward fulfilling demand for wood products; provide a safe and effective road system; increase public safety related to wildfire potential; and maintain or enhance recreation experiences.”
But Andy Olsen, a senior policy advocate for the Environmental Law & Policy Center, said those arguments don’t add up. For instance, the old trees harvested from the area are currently slated to be sold as pulpwood, for things like paper and plywood. In other words, mature and old-growth trees logged as part of this project will be ground down into a low-value timber product that could just as easily be produced by younger trees, grown on plantations that store less carbon and don’t serve as keystones to their ecosystems—which the Forest Service has plenty of, Olsen says. “They’re choosing to rush forward with these sales of very important lands. Why these forests, why now?” he said.
Other elements of the Forest Service’s justification are problematic as well. For example, older trees are actually more resistant to wildfires than younger ones. The ongoing timber sales are also at odds with the Biden administration’s global climate commitments, Olsen added, such as seeking to protect 30 percent of U.S. lands and waters by 2030.
Federal agencies have until Earth Day 2023 to define mature and old-growth forests, and to complete their inventory. As of this writing, over 130,000 people have submitted public comments urging the Department of Interior and the Department of Agriculture to set this definition at “80 years and older;” and a coalition of environmental groups is pushing for those agencies to propose what some advocates refer to as a “golden rule” for logging—one that would explicitly prohibit the logging of trees defined as mature and old-growth, given their unique carbon-capturing and biodiversity-protecting powers.
In the meantime, in an attempt to protect thousands of acres of majestic trees, groups including the Great Lakes Indian Fish & Wildlife Commission (GLIFWC) are also urging the Biden administration to pause logging in areas of concern—many of which are on tribal lands—until the inventory is complete. As Michael J. Isham, executive administrator for the GLIFWC wrote to the Forest Service in August 2022, doing so would help “to ensure that future generations of Ojibwe people can continue their Treaty protected relationship with all natural beings.”
Earlier this year, academic researchers published the first study to comprehensively map mature and old-growth forests in the U.S. Advocates say these maps, in support of the government’s inventory could usher in a new approach to forestry—one where trees are treated as venerable colleagues in the fight against the climate crisis.
Anderson, of Oregon Wild, added that currently, there’s no technology capable of pulling carbon out of the atmosphere at the scale that mature and old-growth trees can. “Getting forest managers to really think about old-growth trees the same way that other states think about [renewable technologies like] solar panels and wind turbines is the culture shift that needs to happen,” she said.
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