It’s possible that I shall make an ass of myself. But in that case one can always get out of it with a little dialectic. I have, of course, so worded my proposition as to be right either way (K.Marx, Letter to F.Engels on the Indian Mutiny)
Tuesday, November 02, 2021
The anchor-outs: San Francisco’s bohemian boat dwellers fight for their way of life
Erin McCormick in Sausalito Sun, October 31, 2021,
Photos by Hardy Wilson PHOTO ESSAY AT THE GUARDIAN
Since the 1950s, Marin county waters have been home to a community of mariners. Now local authorities say they have to leave
Top: Anchor-out boats sit in Richardson Bay in Sausalito, California, last month. Bottom: Jeff Jacob Chase looks out the window of a friend’s boat.
For decades, a group known as the “anchor-outs” enjoyed a relatively peaceful existence in a corner of the San Francisco Bay. The mariners carved out an affordable, bohemian community on the water, in a county where the median home price recently hit $1.8m.
But their haven could be coming to an end – and with it, a rapidly disappearing way of life.
The anchor-outs live aboard semi-derelict boats abutting the town of Sausalito, an upscale enclave just north of the Golden Gate Bridge in Marin county where mansions boast floor-to-ceiling windows overlooking the water. Tourists arrive by ferry from the city on weekends, strolling the promenade of restaurants, wine bars, art galleries and boutiques.
The agency that oversees the local waterway known as the Richardson Bay has in recent months begun a fervent crackdown on the boat dwellers, who they say are here illegally and pose a threat to safety and the marine environment. Determined to clear the waters, a hardline harbormaster has even begun confiscating and destroying boats that overstay their welcome.
The anchor-outs, meanwhile, are fighting back, staging protests and clashing with authorities who they say are in effect rendering them homeless.
On a recent afternoon, the sounds of a tractor’s hydraulic arm crushing a fiberglass sailboat carried on the wind. The noise lingered over a homeless encampment that has grown near the waterfront. “Camp Cormorant”, as boaters nicknamed it, has become the political base of the anchor-outs’ protest movement.
For the 50 or so people camped in neat rows of tents, the frequent whir, crunch and crack of the crusher represents their way of life being torn to bits. Many say they were forced to decamp here after their vessels were destroyed.
“They want to take our homes and shut the anchorage down,” says Jeff Jacob Chase, a 20-year anchor-out with a trademark pirate swagger, a long, salt-and-pepper beard, spectacles and floppy hat. “They basically want to eradicate a culture.” The houseboat community in Sausalito in the late 1960s. Photograph: Underwood Archives/Getty Images The houseboat community in Sausalito in the late 1960s.
In a region dominated by water, boats have been used as a cheap source of housing since the Gold Rush, when miners lived aboard vessels. In the 1950s, a community of bohemians and artists grew along the Sausalito shoreline, with residents building wildly creative floating constructions that offered shelter and inspiration to Beat writers and artists such as Allen Ginsberg and Shel Silverstein. It transformed into a hippy music scene in the 1960s, but in the mid-1970s, residents of those houseboats were mostly pushed out in a series of local enforcement actions known as “the houseboat wars”.
Despite its beatnik origins, today the Richardson Bay hosts a unique waterfront class system.
At the top are the authorized houseboat marinas where floating, luxury homes with shingle siding, plumbing and electricity can sell for over $1m. Other boaters, known as live-aboards, can pay a monthly fee to dwell on their sailboats and cabin cruisers in a marina slip, but the number of spots is tightly controlled and authorities say there is a long waiting list. Finally there are the anchor-outs, whom some see as the last of a dying breed of free spirits who eschew the world of rent deposits, credit checks and bills. Many anchor-outs now live in a homeless encampment.
The anchor-outs get by with minimal resources, hauling their own water and generating power from tiny solar panels. They brave the bay’s famous winds to travel to and from the shore in rowboats or motorized dinghies.
Housing advocates say the battle over their way of life is just the latest chapter in a crisis that has seen living options for low-income residents all but vanish.
Chase still has his sailboat, a sloop named the Jubilee, but he also spends time in Camp Cormorant, organizing his fellow boaters to protest against the evictions as an officer of the local chapter of the California Homeless Union.
“What they’re doing is criminalizing this entire community,” said Chase. Waterfront patrols and crushed boats
Curtis Havel, the harbormaster, would be the first to call himself the villain of this story.
It’s a breezy Wednesday morning and Havel is out patrolling the waters. He stands on the bow of his aluminum patrol boat and gestures at the spectacular scenery around him.
“For a long time, people regarded Richardson’s Bay as this sort of bohemian live-and-let-live situation and the vessel count continued to increase,” he says. “Now it’s time for us to enforce our rules.”
The state agency that oversees the San Francisco Bay had been building pressure on local authorities to act, and Havel says clearing the harbor of illegal anchoring was the primary mission he was given when hired two years ago.
Citing a long-unenforced rule that says boats can anchor for no more than 72 hours, Havel has been confiscating boats, dragging them into a shipyard and crushing them into chunks. Of the 190 boats out here when he took over, Havel says he has gotten rid of all but 86 vessels – about 70 of which are now occupied by full-time residents.
Havel argues boats and their occupants can cause a laundry list of problems and environmental concerns. Their anchors drag along the bottom and destroy the eelgrass, an important habitat for marine life. Boats break loose from their anchors during storms, endangering those aboard and others along the shore. The residents dump sewage and leave abandoned boats and parts polluting the bay. And there have been complaints about drug use and crime.
Havel says his enforcement has made him unpopular, but he’s willing to take some flak in order to get the job done.
His patrol boat edges up to the side of a rusting, metal-hulled craft, piled with plywood and corrugated metal, which appears to have become home to a flock of seagulls. Havel had already plastered a note on the side of the boat, warning that it would be disposed of if not removed within 10 days.
“I hate to even call this a boat; at this point it’s just a shell,” he says, adding that he hasn’t seen occupants aboard the vessel for several months. “That’s a dead boat you’re looking at.”
Havel recently announced plans to leave his role at the end of the month, and while his agency appears undeterred in its mission, he says they are trying to find long-term solutions. The state has agreed to extend the timeline for clearing the bay by a few years, and for those still living aboard, Havel says, the county plans to send outreach workers to help find other housing.
But around the anchorage, signs of rebellion abound. Some boats fly upside down American flags, the maritime signal for distress. Occupants of a boat named Evolution have taped up a big, hand-stenciled “R”, rebranding it the “REvolution”.
As Havel patrols, a metal dinghy motors up behind him. The driver, a boat-dweller with a white megaphone, starts shouting at Havel, peppering his taunts with expletives. “Tell them how you’ve been crushing people’s homes, sir,” yells the man. Havel, however, appears unflustered.
“It’s always been politically charged; it’s just getting heightened because we’re doing something.”
‘I’m not homeless, I’m houseless’
Authorities say they have only been seizing abandoned and derelict boats, but around Camp Cormorant, numerous residents claim to have lost their homes to the crusher.
Michael Adams and his wife lived in the anchorage for decades, raising two kids. The couple had recently become afraid to leave their boat, a historic 1928 pleasure cruiser named the Marlin, for fear it would get destroyed.
“I went off one morning and he crushed it,” says Adams as he paints a mural on the plywood patio he built in front of the tent he and his wife now call home.
Robyn Kelly, a former skincare technician, moved into the anchorage after giving up her apartment and job to care for her sick mother, and ended up living on a 28ft power boat for a decade. She says it made an excellent home, until one day in 2019 she found it had been confiscated by the harbormaster.
“I went away for 24 hours and I came back and it was gone,” said Kelly, who has since filed a lawsuit against the authorities for destroying her boat and possessions.
Kelly and her two pups, Hank and Nacho, are currently staying on a friend’s boat; she’d like to move back to shore but her small income isn’t enough to make the deposit for an apartment and her arthritis is starting to give her trouble. “I couldn’t afford an apartment now,” she said. “I’d love one.”
Kelly’s friend, Billy McClean, is a fourth-generation Marin county resident. He can look across the water from where his Dutch cruiser is anchored and see stately houses constructed nearly a century ago by his grandfather, a local builder.
He recalls growing up seeing people living freely on the water. “When I was a teenager I used to come down here to the boats and buy pot from what I called ‘the hippies’,” he says. “Now I live here.”
McClean says people like him have been priced out of the region by an influx of tech workers making six-figure salaries. McClean couldn’t afford a decent apartment at his previous job working for a fencing company – so he bought a cheap motorboat and moved into the anchorage in 2009.
His vessel has a TV, DVD player and a small refrigerator, all powered by a generator. He doesn’t have much space inside, but from his white decks he can see green waters and California hillsides all around him.
“It’s nice out here – and then it’s not,” he said. “It’s a lot of work – and in the winter, it can be downright life threatening.”
Top: Brian Doris, left, the homeless coordinator Robbie Powelson, center, and Jeff Jacob Chase, right, talk in Doris’s boat. Bottom: Doris on his boat.
A short skiff ride across the anchorage from McClean, Brian Doris is fixing up an old pleasure yacht named Marlia that he bought for $1 after it was abandoned. The outside of his boat is still cluttered with toolboxes and boat repair supplies, but he’s transformed the interior with sumptuous Turkish rugs and plants.
“I’m not homeless, I’m houseless,” says Doris, who says he can no longer sleep on land because he misses the rocking of the waves.
Like many anchorage residents, Doris scoffs at the idea of being placed into shelter housing. “This is my home,” he says, adding if they want to take his boat, they should “bring a body bag”. The last of a dying breed
Jennifer Friedenbach, the executive director of the San Francisco-based Coalition on Homelessness, says living on a boat was one of many “very-low-income housing options” that used to exist in California alongside residential hotels and live-work spaces in warehouses. But these types of marginal housing have vanished.
“Once gentrification came, those options disappeared, and that puts pressure on homelessness,” says Friedenbach.
Timothy Logan, a boat owner descended from three generations of California travelers, bought his houseboat cruiser the SS Patio nine years ago to serve as his primary residence. But since then, he has been kicked out of one harbor after another. TRAVELERS NON ROMA GYPSIES
He started as a resident of a marina in Sacramento, living along river waters that eventually feed into the San Francisco Bay. That marina closed for development, so he moved his boat to other harbors, including ones in Antioch and Oakland, only to see boaters kicked out of those places too.
“Out of the blue, the whole state of California was like: ‘You can’t live on the water,’”he says.
While the SS Patio is still anchored out in Richardson Bay, Logan fears his boat will eventually end up being crushed like many of his friends’.
Havel, the harbormaster, and authorities governing both Richardson Bay and the state of California say they are determined that within five years, the last of the anchor-outs will be gone. For their part, the anchor-outs don’t intend to go quietly.
“We are a community; we’re trying to stick together,” says Logan.
BETTER A CONFEDERATION OF REGIONS THEN A COUNTRY
Tigrayan and Oromo forces say they have seized towns on Ethiopian highway
Sun, October 31, 2021
ADDIS ABABA/NAIROBI (Reuters) - Two different groups fighting Ethiopia's central government said they had seized control of towns on Sunday as the prime minister appealed for citizens to take up arms.
The spreading conflict threatens to further destabilise Africa's second most populous nation, once considered a stable Western ally in a volatile region.
Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed urged citizens to join the fight against the Tigray People's Liberation Front (TPLF), the party in control of the rebellious northern region of Tigray, after Tigrayan forces said they took another town on a highway linking the capital of the landlocked nation to the port of Djibouti.
"Our people should march...with any weapon and resources they have to defend, repulse and bury the terrorist TPLF," Abiy said in a Facebook post on Sunday night. CLAIMS OF GAINS
TPLF spokesperson Getachew Reda said Tigrayan forces have seized the town of Kombolcha and its airport in the Amhara region. He spoke to Reuters by phone from an unknown location.
On Sunday night, insurgents from Oromiya, Ethiopia's most populous region, said they had also seized the town of Kemise, 53 km (33 miles) south of Kombolcha on the same highway to the capital Addis Ababa.
Odaa Tarbii, a spokesperson for the Oromo Liberation Army (OLA), said the group had taken Kemise, 325 km (200 miles) from Addis Ababa, and were engaging government forces.
The OLA is an outlawed splinter group of the Oromo Liberation Front, a formerly banned opposition group that returned from exile after Abiy took office in 2018. The Oromo are Ethiopia's largest ethnic group; many of their political leaders have been imprisoned under Abiy's government.
In August the OLA and the TPLF announced a military alliance https://www.reuters.com/world/ethiopias-tigray-forces-seek-new-military-alliance-2021-08-11, heaping pressure on the central government.
Central government spokesperson Legesse Tulu, Ethiopian military spokesperson Col. Getnet Adane and Amhara regional spokesperson Gizachew Muluneh did not immediately respond requests for comment on the TPLF and the OLA's claims.
Reuters could not independently verify Getachew's claim as phone lines in Kombolcha appeared to be down on Sunday. Reuters could not reach anyone in Kemise.
On Sunday, the Amhara regional government said in a statement "all government institutions must suspend their regular activities and should direct their budget and all their resources to the survival campaign....officials on every level should mobilise and lead...to the front."
They announced a curfew of 8 p.m. and urged citizens to provide private vehicles to support the campaign.
YEAR-LONG WAR
War broke nearly a year ago between federal troops and the TPLF, which dominated Ethiopian politics for nearly three decades before Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed was appointed in 2018. The conflict has killed thousands of civilians and forced more than two million people to flee their homes.
Tigrayan forces were initially beaten back, but recaptured most of Tigray in July. They then pushed into the neighbouring Amhara and Afar regions, displacing hundreds of thousands https://www.reuters.com/world/africa/ethiopian-families-fleeing-fighting-describe-hunger-rape-amhara-2021-10-18 more civilians.
Regional forces from Amhara have fought alongside the military in Tigray. The two regions of Amhara and Tigray have a long-running boundary dispute over farmland in Western Tigray, currently under the control of the Amhara administration.
In mid-October, the Tigrayan forces said the military had mounted an offensive to push them out of Amhara. The military has accused the Tigrayan forces of starting the recent round of fighting.
Tigrayan forces have said they will keep fighting until Amhara forces leave the heavily fortified area of Western Tigray, and until the government permits the free movement of aid into the rest of Tigray.
The United Nations has previously accused the government of a de facto blockade of Tigray, where the U.N. says around 400,000 people are living in famine conditions. The government denies blocking aid.
(Reporting by Addis Ababa and Nairobi newsrooms; editing by David Evans and Angus MacSwan)
Ethiopia: Tigrayan forces claim control of major northern towns
Ethiopian authorities called on people to join the armed struggle against the Tigrayan insurgents. Amhara government officials declared a state of emergency in the region.
The claimed takeover would be a major advance by the TPLF into central Ethiopia
The Ethiopian government on Sunday appealed for citizens to take arms against insurgent groups that claimed to have taken control of key towns in the year-long conflict.
The Tigray People's Liberation Front (TPLF) claimed it had captured the town of Kombolcha on the main road that links landlocked Ethiopia to the port in Djibouti.
Additionally, insurgents from the Oromo Liberation Army (OLA) also claimed they defeated government forces in Kemise, 325 kilometers (200 miles) from the capital Addis Ababa.
What have the TPLF said?
TPLF spokesperson Getachew Reda said in a post on Twitter that Tigrayan forces were "firmly in control of Kombolcha" and its airport on Sunday.
If confirmed, it would be a major advance by the TPLF into central Ethiopia after it took most of Tigray from government forces in June. Kombolcha is located 375 kilometers from the Ethiopian capital Addis Ababa.
Independent confirmation of the reports was hard to come by during a media blackout in the north of the country.
Odaa Tarbii, OLA spokesperson, said the group had taken nearby Kemise 53 km (33 miles) south of Kombolcha.
OLA is an outlawed splinter group from the Oromo Liberation Front, which formed an alliance with the TPLF in August. What was the government's response?
The Ethiopian government has so far denied losing Kombolcha to the insurgents, insisting that it is still fighting for the key town.
Government spokesperson Legesse Tulu said that Ethiopian forces were in gun battles with the TPLF in Kombolocha and in the nearby town of Dessie, which are both in the Amhara region.
But Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed in a Facebook post told Ethiopians to use "any types of weapons... to block the destructive TPLF, to overturn it and bury it."
Ethiopian air forces on Sunday bombed a "military training facility (that) served as a recruiting and training center," an Ethiopian government spokesperson said on Twitter.
Ethiopian government aerial attacks like this one have hit hard at the heart of Tigray
The Amhara Regional State Council declared a state of emergency, imposing an 8 p.m. curfew and ordering all government institutions to "direct their budget and all their resources to the survival campaign."
It ordered officials to "mobilize and lead... to the front" and urged citizens to provide private vehicles to help out in the campaign. United States 'alarmed'
US Secretary of State Antony Blinken expressed concern over reports of Tigrayan forces taking over the two cities.
"Continued fighting prolongs the dire humanitarian crisis in northern Ethiopia. All parties must stop military operations and begin ceasefire negotiations without preconditions," Blinken said Monday.
Washington has previously called on Tigrayan fighters to withdraw from the Amhara and Afar regions in northern Ethiopia and urged "all parties to the conflict to allow and facilitate unhindered humanitarian access," he added.
Meanwhile, the United Nations has accused the government of carrying out a de facto blockade of Tigray.
The UN says around 400,000 people are living in famine conditions in the Tigray region. The government has denied blocking aid.
jc/aw (Reuters, AFP, dpa)
SAUDI'S ARE SUNNI HEZBOLLAH ARE SHITES NUFF SAID EXPLAINER: Why frustrated Saudi is lashing out at Lebanon
Lebanese hold Saudi Arabia flags during a protest in support of the kingdom against comments made by a Lebanese minister over the war in Yemen, in front of the Saudi Arabia Embassy in Beirut, Lebanon, Oct. 30, 2021. Televised comments by George Kordahi, a Lebanon Cabinet minister about the war in Yemen exposed the depth of the crisis with Saudi Arabia, once a strong ally that poured millions and offered unwavering political support in this small Mediterranean nation. The crisis over veered into diplomatic isolation of Lebanon and threatens to split a new coalition government tasked with halting the country’s economic meltdown. (AP Photo/Bilal Hussein, File)
BEIRUT (AP) — A televised remark by a game show host turned Cabinet minister in Lebanon about the war in Yemen has taken the country’s crisis with Saudi Arabia to new depths.
Anger over George Kordahi’s comments led to steps by Gulf Arab countries that further isolate Lebanon and threaten to split its new coalition government, tasked with halting the country’s economic meltdown.
Punitive measures from Saudi Arabia, once an important ally that poured millions of dollars into Lebanon, could cause more economic pain. The kingdom has banned all Lebanese imports, a major blow to a country whose main trading partners are in the Persian Gulf.
It is the latest escalation in the rivalry that has long played out in Lebanon between Saudi Arabia and Iran. Tensions have dragged on for years over the dominant role in Lebanon of the Iranian-backed militant Hezbollah group.
Now Saudi officials insist it is pointless to deal with the government in Beirut after so much drift toward Iran.
But what is really behind Saudi’s angry response, and what does it mean for the already embattled Lebanon?
WHAT WAS THE SPARK?
The immediate spark were comments by Kordahi, who had gained popularity in the Arab world for hosting “Who Wants to Be a Millionaire” on a Saudi-owned TV network.
During a recent mock parliament recorded and streamed online, Kordahi fielded questions from an audience of young people from the region. In one answer, he called the war in Yemen “absurd” and said the Iran-backed Houthi rebels have attacked no one and have the right to defend themselves.
The online program was recorded about a month before Kordahi was named information minister in the government of Prime Minister Najib Mikati, formed in September. Kordahi was named by a mainly Christian party allied to Hezbollah.
Saudi officials blasted his remarks as “offensive” and biased toward the Houthis. Since 2015, a Saudi-led coalition has been fighting the Houthis, who a year earlier took control of the capital of Sanaa and northern parts of Yemen.
Most commentators have said they believe Kordahi’s comments were a pretext for the Saudis to vent their frustration at Iran’s influence in Lebanon.
WHAT DO THE SAUDIS WANT?
The Saudis know what they don’t want — growing Iranian influence in Lebanon — but they don’t know what to do about it, said Joseph Bahout, research director at the American University of Beirut.
Saudi Arabia has long been a close ally of politicians in Lebanon’s Sunni Muslim community, which chooses the prime minister under the country’s sectarian system. But the kingdom never forged the divided community into a strong political proxy the way the Shiite Hezbollah — with its powerful armed force — became Iran’s stalwart ally in Lebanon.
Particularly since the 2005 assassination of its most powerful ally, former Prime Minister Rafik Hariri, the kingdom lost its tools of influence.
Under Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman — notorious for his assertive, some say brash, foreign policy — Saudi Arabia took sporadic action trying to impose its will but failed to develop a cohesive strategy or find new well-rooted allies. It could only watch as Hezbollah and its allies came to dominate most recent Lebanese governments.
Saudi Arabia’s most drastic move came in 2017, when it forced then-Prime Minister Saad Hariri to announce his resignation, citing Hezbollah’s domination, in a televised statement from a brief visit to the kingdom, where he was apparently held against his will.
The incident backfired. Hariri returned home and revoked his resignation, supported by Hezbollah and its allies. He lost Saudi backing.
Relations have been chilly since. Last spring, Saudi authorities banned imports of all Lebanese produce over allegations they were used for drug smuggling.
Most recently, Riyadh refused to back Mikati as prime minister because of his coalition with Hezbollah. The Saudis found themselves alone when Washington and Paris expressed support for Mikati, hoping for some sort of leadership after more than a year without a government in Lebanon.
Frustrated, the Saudis appear to have gone for a strong move over Kordahi’s comments. Saudi Arabia, as well as the United Arab Emirates, Kuwait and Bahrain, withdrew their ambassadors from Lebanon and expelled Lebanese envoys to the kingdom. IMPACT ON LEBANON
The Saudi measures are a huge blow to Mikati’s new government.
The import ban means the loss of millions of dollars in desperately needed foreign currency. Any further escalation could undermine jobs of more than 350,000 Lebanese in Gulf Arab states who send home millions in remittances.
Mikati and other officials have appealed to Kordahi to resign from the Cabinet, but it’s uncertain that would resolve the rift.
Hezbollah has stood firmly behind the minister, saying his resignation won’t resolve what they called “extortion” to force Lebanon to change its foreign policy.
It all portends more internal divisions in a government already paralyzed over the investigation into last year’s massive Beirut port explosion that killed more than 200 people. Hezbollah has demanded the chief investigating judge’s removal. A recent burst of street violence, the worst in years, raised the specter of social tensions ahead of crucial parliamentary elections in March that are expected to be a test for Hezbollah and its allies.
In a WhatsApp message to his Cabinet read on local TV stations, Mikati said the country is “at the edge of a precipice.”
He flew to Glasgow to seek French and U.S. mediation but his options are limited.
“We know they are upset. We know that they don’t want a government with Hezbollah as strong,” Bahout said of the Saudis. “We know that they know that we can’t have a government without Hezbollah.”
“It is kind of a completely blocked and stalemated situation,” he added.
___
This story has been corrected to show that the Saudi-led coalition entered the war in Yemen in 2015, not 2014.
The awkward truth of Zuckerberg's metaverse: sitting in a chair with goggles
Scott Rosenberg Mon, November 1, 2021
The cavalcade of wonders in Mark Zuckerberg's metaverse show last week left out one crucial screenshot: what your body actually looks like while your mind has gone meta.
The catch: The real you is just sitting in a chair wearing goggles.
The video mock-ups of the metaverse Zuckerberg unveiled showed us what remote-presence wizardry might look like from within the 3D dimension. But they omitted the prosaic reality of most current VR.
Today's headsets mostly block out the "real world" — and sometimes induce wooziness, headaches and even nausea.
Why it matters: If you fear screen time atrophies your flesh and cramps your soul or find Zoom drains your energy, wait till you experience metaverse overload.
The big picture: Facebook's metaverse project aims to bring productivity to the remote workplace and fun to after-hours online frolics by moving more of our lives to a 3D game world.
The vision is to liberate our digital existence from the confines of the screen, restore our freedom of movement on a more "embodied" internet and enable deeper interpersonal connections in a social environment where we can see and interact with other people.
"When you're in a meeting in the metaverse," Zuckerberg said, "it'll feel like you're right in the room together, making eye contact, having a shared sense of space and not just looking at a grid of faces on a screen."
Yes, but: Right now, the metaverse isn't "embodied" at all. It's an out-of-body experience where your senses take you somewhere else and leave your body behind on a chair or couch or standing like a blindfolded prisoner.
Mixed reality and augmented reality tech and techniques promise to heal that rift and make 3D work and play a more mobile physical experience.
There are fledgling efforts in this direction — like some fitness apps, the "Beat Saber" game Zuckerberg praised in his talk and the experimental pass-through video features, mixing real and digital fields of vision, that Oculus introduced last summer.
Of note: Safety will always be a concern. Remember those videos of Wii users smashing their TVs? That's just a preview of what can go wrong when our bodies are moving around real objects while our minds are in virtual space.
What's next: AR glasses of the future could help offer the promise of more seamlessly blending the real world and the metaverse. But the hardware holy grail of lightweight, affordable glasses with all-day battery life is many years off — as is so much of Zuckerberg's vision.
In the meantime, observers expect a metaverse that's delivered to the public piecemeal.
Aspects of it will turn up first in gaming worlds like Roblox and Fornite and crypto-based products like NFTs rather than 3D virtual offices and parties.
Zuckerberg says he envisions people accessing the metaverse sometimes in full 3D, sometimes through AR glasses, and sometimes just through "computers and phones" — which could be nifty but won't be any more "embodied" than today's internet.
Between the lines: Facebook/Meta — along with the rest of today's VR industry — promises to roll out the new 3D internet with due care toward privacy, safety and ethics.
But virtual-world makers will feel the same incentives to boost engagement and hold onto users' eyeballs in the metaverse that they have on today's social platforms.
That could leave us all nostalgic for our current era of screen-blurred vision, misinformation-filled newsfeeds and privacy compromises.
If there's some way to prevent the combination of an ad-driven economy and virtual-engagement metrics from reproducing all of Facebook's drawbacks in the metaverse, Zuckerberg and his team have yet to lay it out.
Be smart: From VR's invention 30 years ago, its makers have always dreamed of repairing the Cartesian mind/body split that so many tech products promote.
They're inspired by the liberating vision of "Star Trek's" holodeck — but they keep ending up with"Matrix"-style pods instead.
The bottom line: It's possible to imagine an "at-best" scenario in which VR — powered by more fluid tech, innovative fitness applications and passthrough features that mix real and digital fields of vision — becomes truly embodied.
But the business realities of the social internet and the likelihood of slow incremental improvements in today's hardware make the worst case look like a much better bet.
Facebook says it just uncovered one of the largest troll farms ever - run by the government of Nicaragua
Charles Davis Mon, November 1, 2021 The Spanish word for "Murderer"(ASSASSIN) covers a mural of Nicaragua's President Daniel Ortega, as part of anti-government protests demanding his resignation in Managua, Nicaragua.
Esteban Felix/AP
Facebook announced it uncovered one of the largest troll farms, run by the government of Nicaragua.
The troll operation involved state employees working out of Nicaragua's postal service, Facebook said.
The company said the effort violated its policy against "Coordinated Inauthentic Behavior."
One of the most sweeping state-run "troll" operations was taken down this week after researchers uncovered hundreds of accounts linked to the Nicaraguan government that were focused on slandering its political opposition, Facebook announced on Monday.
In a report on "coordinated inauthentic behavior," researchers said that at least 1,300 accounts on Facebook and Instagram had been removed for being part of an operation targeting critics of President Daniel Ortega and the ruling Sandinista National Liberation Front. The propaganda campaign - which attracted just under 785,000 followers - appears to have launched in April 2018, according to the researchers, coinciding with a broad protest movement against Ortega's handling of the environment and cuts in social spending.
"This was one of the most cross-governmental troll operations we've disrupted to date,"the report said, though it appears to have been primarily operated by state employees "working from the headquarters of the postal service in Managua."
These government workers did not just stick to platforms run by Facebook, either, with researchers also finding their "media brands" on Tiktok, YouTube, Blogspot, and Telegram. The campaign involved a large number of such brands, some more explicitly partisan than others - "an attempt to flood the Nicaraguan information space with pro-government content, creating the appearance of a vibrant and diverse public debate," the report said.
One of the websites central to this operation, "Redvolución," purported to expose "fake news" spread by opponents of the government. However, as this reporter previously covered at The Daily Beast, it spread false stories itself.
In an effort to slander Ortega's political opposition, the website was one of several linked to the Nicaraguan government that published a purported "confession" from a popular student protester, Valeska Alemán Sandoval, who had been arrested following a deadly government raid on a church where she and others had sought protection. In the jarringly edited video, Sandoval, clearly under duress, denounces her fellow protesters as thieves, sex workers, and drug addicts.
Although the campaign revealed Monday was largely aimed at a domestic, Nicaraguan audience, it had an international reach. The student protester's false confession, for example, was circulated by a British supporter of the government, John Perry, who adopted a fake identity to publish commentary on the episode at The Grayzone, a US-based fringe website that has promoted the Ortega government's line on social unrest in the Central American country.
Sandoval, who renounced her prison confession in an interview with this reporter, later fled Nicaragua to seek asylum in the United States. The Trump administration deported her.
The takedown of the government influence operations comes comes ahead of a November 7 presidential election in Nicaragua. Despite a September poll finding his disapproval rating to be 69%, Ortega is all but certain to remain in office, since his leading critics were barred from running against him. Several were arrested and subject to criminal investigation in the lead-up to the vote.
A one-time revolutionary militant, Ortega first came to power in 1979 as part of a broad coalition, led by the left-wing FSLN, that overthrew a US-backed dictatorship. He was voted out of office in 1990 following a decade-long civil war fueled by the Reagan administration.
In 2006, Ortega returned to power as a new man: avowedly Catholic and with a running mate who had once led the Contras, the US-backed insurgent group that had waged war against his government in the 1980s. He has since consolidated power, eliminating presidential term limits and naming his wife, Rosario Murillo, vice president.
TAKE NAMES,GET ADDRESSES
'Alarming finding': 30 percent of Republicans say violence may be needed to save U.S., poll shows
Almost one-third of Republicans say they think violence may be necessary to solve the problems facing the United States, according to a new national survey by the nonprofit Public Religion Research Institute. The finding is part of PRRI’s 12th annual American Values Survey released Monday which, among other things, highlights the continued impact of the same falsehoods and conspiracy theories that fueled the violent Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol nearly one year later.
The survey was conducted between Sept. 16 and Sept. 29 through online interviews with a random sample of 2,508 adults living in all 50 states. Nearly one in five, or 18 percent, of overall respondents said they agreed with the statement: “Because things have gotten so far off track, true American patriots may have to resort to violence in order to save our country,” including 30 percent of Republicans, 11 percent of Democrats and 17 percent of independents.
“It is an alarming finding,” said Robert Jones, CEO and founder of PRRI. “I’ve been doing this a while, for decades, and it’s not the kind of finding that as a sociologist, a public opinion pollster, that you’re used to seeing.”
Overall, the responses to this question illustrate the “significant and rapidly increasing polarization in the United States,” he said.
Protesters at the state Capitol building in Frankfort, Ky., in January 2021, during a nationwide protest called by far-right groups supporting Donald Trump’s claims of election fraud.
(Jeff Dean/AFP via Getty Images)
Mark Pitcavage, a senior research fellow at the Anti-Defamation League’s Center on Extremism, said that it’s “extremely disturbing” that “nearly a third of the Republicans measured in this poll are getting comfortable with the idea of political violence.” And, he said, the much smaller percentages of Democrats and independents who expressed support for this idea are also “enough to be concerning.”
Jones said the substantial showing of support for political violence among Republicans is “a direct result of former President Trump calling into question the election,” pointing to another stark finding from the PRRI poll: More than two-thirds of Republicans, or 68 percent, continue to believe the 2020 presidential election was stolen from Donald Trump, compared to 26 percent of independents and just 6 percent of Democrats.
According to the survey, Americans who believe Trump won the 2020 election are roughly four times as likely than those who don’t to agree that violence may be necessary “to save our country,” by a measure of 39 percent to 10 percent. Since he lost the election a year ago, Trump has spread false conspiracy theories claiming that the election was rigged and that President Biden’s win was illegitimate.
The findings also seem to demonstrate a clear correlation between people’s views and their preferred news sources. Among Republicans who trust Fox News above other outlets, 82 percent said they believe the election was stolen from Trump. Ninety-seven percent of those who rely mostly on far-right news sources like Newsmax and One America News (OAN) said the same, compared to less than half, 44 percent, of Republicans who trust mainstream news outlets.
“A large chunk of the Republican Party has been essentially radicalized,” said Heidi Beirich, co-founder of the Global Project Against Hate and Extremism. Beirich said she thinks “a lot of responsibility lies with Republican leadership” for failing to push back on the former president’s election fraud claims and efforts to downplay the violence of Jan. 6.
A protester reaches for his rifle while walking past the state capitol on Jan. 6, 2021 in Salem, Ore. (Nathan Howard/Getty Images)
She noted that the few Republicans who have spoken out against these harmful narratives, like Wyoming Rep. Liz Cheney, who serves as vice chair of the House Select Committee investigating Jan. 6, have faced political backlash.
“It’s very sad, actually, and very dangerous,” said Beirich. She suggested that conservative media figures might be more effective at dispelling conspiracy theories and denouncing violence; she said religious leaders could also serve that role, noting the large presence of evangelical Christians within the GOP. According to the PRRI study, a majority of white evangelicals, 60 percent, said they believe the election was stolen from Trump. White evangelicals were also the religious group most likely to think that “true American patriots might have to resort to violence in order to save our country,” with 26 percent saying they agree.
Pitcavage, a historian and authority on extremism in the United States, explained that political violence in America has traditionally come from the fringes of society. But, he said, the more society becomes polarized “the more there is a chance that political violence will not only come from extremists, but will come from really angry, agitated people in the mainstream as well.”
Pitcavage pointed to the more than 650 people who’ve been arrested so far in relation to the Jan. 6 storming of the Capitol as an example of this.
“About a quarter of them have previous ties to known extremist groups or movements, from the militia movement to White supremacists, to conspiracy theorists,” said Pitcavage. “The bulk of them did not.”
“The nightmare scenario is that this polarization will continue and there will be more and more instances where there could be mob violence or other types of violence ranging from volatile lone wolves acting out to people actually organizing and committing terrorist acts,” Pitcavage said.
FBI Director Christopher Wray. (Greg Nash/Pool/Getty Images)
In response to a request for comment on the findings of the latest PRRI survey, a spokesperson for the FBI referred Yahoo News to previous congressional testimony by FBI officials addressing domestic extremism.
In testimony given last month before the Senate Homeland Security Committee, FBI Director Christopher Wray said that since spring of 2020, the FBI has more than doubled its number of domestic terrorism investigations, to about 2,700 open cases.
“To meet that evolving threat, the FBI has surged resources to our domestic terrorism investigations in the last year, increasing personnel by 260 personnel,” Wray told senators at the time.
A spokesperson for the Department of Homeland Security similarly pointed to previous comments made by Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas about domestic terrorism. The spokesperson further cited a number of actions DHS has taken during the Biden presidency to address this threat, including the February designation of domestic violent extremism as a “National Priority Area” for the first time in FEMA grant programs; the creation in May of a new Center for Prevention Programs and Partnership to improve the agency’s capacity to prevent terrorist violence; and the issuing of National Terrorism Advisory System bulletins in January, May and August of this year that highlighted the threat of domestic violent extremists.
Jones noted that, in addition to the most recent September survey, PRRI asked the same question about political violence on three earlier polls conducted this year in March, June, and August. He and his colleagues expected to see greater support for political violence “in the heat of the moment, right after Jan. 6,” but they predicted that people would back away from those views over the course of the year.
Instead, the responses have remained fairly consistent since March, when 15 percent of respondents agreed that “true American patriots may have to resort to violence,” including 28 percent of Republicans, 13 percent of Independents and 7 percent of Democrats.
“As we've gotten some distance [from Jan. 6], one might hope cooler heads would prevail, but we really haven’t seen that,” said Jones. “If anything, it looks like people are doubling down and views are getting kind of locked in.”
Biden's EU tariff deal 'big win' for Harley-Davidson; may provide relief for other manufacturers
Jochen Zeitz HARLEY-DAVIDSON
By Rich Kirchen – Senior Reporter, Milwaukee Business Journal Oct 30, 2021
An announcement by President Joe Biden’s administration about a deal with the European Union on steel tariffs could provide relief to Wisconsin manufacturers that use steel and would allow Harley-Davidson Inc. to avoid a potential total tariff rate of 56% in Europe — eliciting plaudits from Harley's CEO and a Milwaukee-based manufacturing group.
The United States and European Union have agreed to end a dispute over U.S. steel and aluminum tariffs imposed by former President Donald Trump in 2018, according to reports from Reuters and other international news organizations.
U.S. Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo said the agreement deal will maintain U.S. "Section 232" tariffs of 25% on steel and 10%on aluminum, but will allow "limited volumes" of EU-produced metals into the United States duty-free.
In return, the EU will drop retail tariffs it threatened to assess starting in December against high-profile American industries as a retaliatory move, NPR reported. Harley-Davidson was among the industries that would have been impacted, thus making its motorcycle prices uncompetitive in Europe.
Harley-Davidson (NYSE: HOG) issued a press release Saturday extending its thanks to the Biden administration for reaching a solution to the tariff dispute.
"Today's news is a big win for Harley-Davidson and our customers, employees and dealers in Europe,” said Harley’s chairman president and CEO Jochen Zeitz. “Our thanks go out to President Biden, Secretary Raimundo and the U.S. Administration, for their efforts in this negotiation. We are excited that this brings an end to a conflict that was not of our making, and in which Harley-Davidson had no place.”
Zeitz called the agreement “an important course correction in U.S.-EU trade relations, that will allow us to further Harley-Davidson's position as the most desirable motorcycle brand in the world."
A West Allis-based industry group that includes John Deere, Caterpillar, Komatsu Mining and CNH Industrial has been urging Biden to reverse former Trump’s steel-tariff policy. Other southeast Wisconsin members of the AEM include Husco, Milwaukee Tool, Briggs & Stratton, Badger Meter, Twin Disc, Weasler, Enerpac, Caterpillar Mining, Kohler and Wacker.
The Association of Equipment Manufacturers’ (AEM) Dennis Slater told the Milwaukee Business Journal in August that the tariffs caused price of steel throughout the U.S. to increase very quickly. That caused costs to increase for American manufacturers that use steel and made them less competitive with manufacturers in other countries, Slater said.
The new agreement will help address steel shortages and soaring prices that have hurt equipment manufacturers, while also addressing overcapacity from China and preventing leakage of Chinese steel into the U.S. market, the AEM said in a statement issued Saturday night. The organization hopes that both sides will build on the momentum from the agreement to remove the remaining obstacles to free and fair trade, Slater said.
“President Biden deserves a lot of credit for getting back to the negotiating table with our European partners and reaching an agreement that, while not perfect, goes a long way in restoring free and fair trade across the Atlantic," Slater said. "The tariffs on steel and aluminum have increased the cost of production of U.S. agriculture and construction equipment, cost our industry thousands of jobs, and hurt the U.S. economy."
EXPROPRIATE
PG&E Expects a $1.15 Billion Loss From the Dixie Fire
Mark Chediak Mon, November 1, 2021
(Bloomberg) -- PG&E Corp., the California utility giant driven into bankruptcy after its equipment caused deadly blazes, said federal prosecutors are investigating its role in a massive fire this summer and expects to incur a $1.15 billion loss from the inferno.
The Dixie Fire, which is suspected to have been sparked when tree fell on a PG&E power line, became the second-largest wildfire in California history, torching nearly 1 million acres in the northern Sierra mountain range. The blaze destroyed about 1,300 structures, leveled most of the gold-rush era town of Greenville and killed one person.
The loss estimate is based on expected damage claims by property owners, business losses and the fire’s impact on private timber operations, PG&E executives said during a conference call Monday. The utility emerged from bankruptcy protection last year.
The company also received a subpoena from the U.S. attorney’s office for the Eastern District of California in connection with the blaze, according to a filing. PG&E shares fell 2.5% to $11.31 at 2:07 p.m. in New York and have declined 9.2% this year. The bonds fell, too, with 4.95% senior notes maturing in 2050 falling 0.731 cents on the dollar to 110.356 cents at 3:46 p.m., according to Trace data.
The impending loss and federal probe are the latest blows for embattled PG&E. The company incurred a $1.09 billion third-quarter loss because of bankruptcy costs, state-mandated contributions to a wildfire-insurance fund, prior fire-season damages and other costs, according to a statement.
Adjusting for those extraordinary costs, profit rose to 24 cents a share from 22 cents a year earlier, according to a statement. The result was 2 cents shy of the average estimate from analysts.
Five county district attorneys are also investigating the company’s role in the Dixie Fire. In addition, a federal judge overseeing the company’s criminal probation is looking into its initial response to the start of the blaze in a canyon north of Sacramento.
PG&E expects to recover costs of the fire from insurance, customer rates and a fund established by the state, it said in the filing. The loss estimate excludes potential claims for fire-fighting costs from federal, state and local agencies. More than $630 million of costs had been incurred in suppressing the Dixie fire, according to a National Interagency Coordination Center Incident Management Situation report, the company said.
PG&E CEO Patricia Poppe said the company is confident that they will be found to have acted prudently in respect to the Dixie fire, allowing the utility to recover costs under state rules.
“Our actions around Dixie were those of a reasonable operator,” Poppe said during the investor call.
Most Read from Bloomberg Businessweek
THE NEW FRONTIER Oil Majors Are Eyeing Big Payouts In Africa
Editor OilPrice.com Sun, October 31, 2021
The optimistic response to a recent discovery in the Ivory Coast by Italian oil giant Eni, the first big find in the country in two decades, suggests that many African states are not yet ready to give up on fossil fuels and make the shift to renewables.
In September, Côte d’Ivoire announced a major offshore oil and gas discovery, following initial exploration success in 2014. The positive outlook led several international oil firms to battle over the country’s oil reserves. A 2019 licensing round saw the government sell exploration blocks for a total of $185 million, with Italy’s Eni taking a major stake, with two exploration blocks- CI-501 and CI-504, as well as France’s Total taking on exploration and production activities in the country. Britain’s Tullow Oil had previously won licenses in the region in 2017.
Oil major Eni stated last month that it had discovered up to 2 billion barrels of oil and an additional 2.4 trillion cubic feet of associated gas from the Baleine well, located about 60km off the coast. The well offers the first deepwater commercial discovery in over 20 years.
The discovery adds to the Ivory Coast’s proven reserves, which previously stood at around just 100 million barrels. Eni shares the newfound reserves with the state government, which holds a 10 percent stake. While the country’s output is significantly lower than Africa’s biggest oil producers, at just 50,000 bpd, the discovery offers optimism around potential new finds in unexplored areas.
Several major international players have shown interest in the West African region, hoping to develop the region’s oil industry before the global demand for oil decreases. West Africa’s upstream oil and gas market is expected to achieve a CAGR of around 6.7 percent between 2020 and 2025. Underexplored oilfields and low production costs are two of the main drivers for oil firms investing in the region.
It’s not just the Ivory Coast that we’re seeing develop its oil and gas industry, as several countries across the continent are going full steam ahead with oil projects this year, attempting to strike while the iron is still hot.
Another West African country looking to luck out on recent discoveries in Senegal. Between 2014 and 2017, several major oil and gas finds were made in region, with discoveries of 1 billion barrels of oil and over 40,000 billion cubic feet of gas.
Within the same region, BP is expected to commence drilling operations in the Mauritania, Senegal, The Gambia, Guinea-Bissau, and Guinea-Conakry (MSGBC) basin at the beginning of 2022. BP hopes to develop its Greater Tortue Ahmeyim LNG gas project, expecting to produce 2.5 million tonnes of LNG annually. Australian firm Woodside Energy will commence output of both oil and gas in the region’s Sangomar oilfield by 2023.
This month, Norwegian firm BW Energy also announced ventures in West Africa, gaining two blocks near its Dussafu asset in Gabon's 12th licensing round, which has been repeatedly delayed since 2019 due to the pandemic. BW will work in partnership with Vaalco Energy and Panoro Energy as the operator of the G12-13 and H12-13 blocks for an exploration period of eight years. At present, Gabon is thought to have 2 billion barrels of proven oil reserves, but once again, there is significant potential in the exploration of underdeveloped oilfields.
Beyond West Africa, Tanzania in the east of the continent is racing to develop its natural gas reserves. Following the halting of talks with international companies in 2019, President Samia Suluhu Hassan aims to start development on the country’s LNG industry by 2023. With an estimated 57 trillion cubic feet of gas reserves, Tanzania is eager to commence operations before the global demand for oil and gas begins to wane as the energy transition picks up momentum.
Not forgetting the East African state of Uganda’s modern success story, with its first commercially viable oil discoveries in the Lake Albert Rift Basin taking place in 2006 and 2009, the country has gradually developed its national oil and gas industry. It is now expecting to boast a major oil pipeline, the East African Crude Oil Pipeline (EACOP), which will be capable of transporting 210,000 bpd from two national oilfields, operated by TotalEnergies and CNOOC, to the Tanga port in Tanzania for export. Despite several hold-ups, Uganda hopes the EACOP will be operational by 2025
While many African countries need to attract the investment of international oil majors to develop their burgeoning oil sectors, these emerging economies will nevertheless reap the rewards of a newly developed oil and gas industry, at a time when many western states are turning their backs on fossil fuels and where demand is still high. The untapped oil and gas potential of several African oil regions and the low-cost production prospective is winning the favor of several major international players, who are shifting their focus to Africa and the Caribbean.
By Felicity Bradstock for Oilprice.com
Kuwaiti Conglomerate Explores Stake Sale in Starbucks Franchise Nicolas Parasie Mon, November 1, 2021
(Bloomberg) -- Kuwaiti conglomerate Alshaya Group is considering selling a minority stake in its Starbucks Corp. franchise that extends from the Gulf region to Russia, according to people familiar with the matter.
Family-run Alshaya is working with JPMorgan Chase & Co. on a potential transaction, the people said, asking not to be named because the information is private. No final decision has been made and the owners could still decide against pursuing any deal, they said.
A spokesperson for the Kuwait-headquartered company declined to comment on any specifics but said “we constantly look at potential strategic initiatives across the business, in line with Alshaya’s continued strong performance.” JPMorgan declined to comment.
Raising cash through a private placement would help Alshaya move past a period of unprecedented disruption that saw the retail and food industry suffer from lockdowns during the global pandemic. While the sector has rebounded this year thanks in part to a shift to e-commerce and growing delivery sales, economic concerns remain a drag on consumer spending.
Established in 1890 and believed to be Kuwait’s oldest company, Alshaya is one of the Middle East’s largest operators of popular retail brands such as Victoria’s Secret and the Cheesecake Factory.
The Seattle-based coffee chain is Alshaya’s biggest franchise with around 1,700 outlets, a large number of which are in Turkey.
Alshaya opened its first Starbucks in Kuwait in 1999 and later expanded the brand to Turkey in 2003 and Russia in 2007. It now offers Starbucks in 14 markets and expects to be operating 1,750 stores by end-2021.
The group runs over 4,000 stores across the region from Dubai with its cavernous malls to Turkey and Russia, boasting a total of nearly 70 brands. Its digital footprint also includes more than 100 websites and apps.
The company employs more than 50,000 people and counts H&M, P.F. Chang’s and The Body Shop in its regional portfolio, according to its website.
