Florida manatee deaths: EPA sued over Indian River Lagoon water quality by Earthjustice

Max Chesnes, Treasure Coast Newspapers
Mon, December 20, 2021

Three conservation groups Monday announced their plan to sue the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency over degrading water quality in the Indian River Lagoon that's contributed to a record 1,056 manatees deaths so far this year.

The nonprofits want the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to reinitiate a review of water-quality standards with the EPA, according to a notice announcing their intent to sue. They warn manatee deaths will continue until human-caused pollution is reduced.

The Center for Biological Diversity joined Maitland-based nonprofit Save the Manatee Club and the Defenders of Wildlife in filing the 60-day notice of their intent to sue the federal agency. The coalition is represented by nonprofit environmental law firm Earthjustice.

"We feel this needs to happen so they can set new water-quality standards for the Indian River Lagoon," said Pat Rose, an aquatic biologist and executive director of Save the Manatee Club. "It's just not going to be possible, in our opinion, to recover the situation without higher standards."

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Nutrient pollution is the focus

The nonprofits want the federal government to use the Clean Water Act and the Endangered Species Act to strengthen water-quality measures, and they claim there's little enforcement and no accounting for legacy pollution.

"It's going to have to come with stronger enforcement provisions and assurances on compliance," Rose told TCPalm. "They don't mean anything if you have better standards but they're not adhered to."

The groups want the EPA to revisit Florida's water-quality criteria for nitrogen, phosphorus and dissolved oxygen, according to the notice. Pollution from fertilizer runoff, wastewater discharges and leaking septic systems spark algal blooms that choke out seagrass, a key food source for manatees.

Brevard County's stretch of the 156-mile-long lagoon has fared the worst this year. At least 345 manatees have died there since January, according to Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission data.

Earlier this month, wildlife officials approved a limited feeding trial at a Cape Canaveral power plant to help starving and malnourished manatees survive the winter months. It's an unprecedented attempt at a temporary solution, Rose said.

“The Indian River Lagoon is an ecological wonder that supports not just manatees, but green sea turtles, snook, tarpon and a stunning diversity of marine life," Jaclyn Lopez, Florida director at the Center for Biological Diversity, wrote in a prepared statement.

"The mass death of these manatees, which was completely preventable, makes it clear just how critical it is that the EPA take swift action to protect the vibrant ecosystem they live in before it’s too late."

A dead manatee was found floating on its back in a canal at the Mariner Cay Marina in Stuart on Monday, March 29, 2021, by resident Julia Sansevere, who reported it to the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission. Its cause of death is unknown.

Max Chesnes is a TCPalm environment reporter focusing on issues facing the Indian River Lagoon, St. Lucie River and Lake Okeechobee. You can keep up with Max on Twitter @MaxChesnes, email him at max.chesnes@tcpalm.com 

Read more of Max's stories.

Conservation groups to sue EPA over manatee deaths


In this Dec. 28, 2010, file photo, a group of manatees are in a canal where discharge from a nearby Florida Power & Light plant warms the water in Fort Lauderdale, Fla. Normally giving food to wild animals is considered off limits, but the dire situation in Florida with more than 1,000 manatees dying from starvation due to manmade pollution is leading officials to consider an unprecedented feeding plan. (AP Photo/Lynne Sladky, File)


Mon, December 20, 2021

FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. (AP) — Three conservation groups filed a formal notice on Monday of their intent to sue the Environmental Protection Agency if it doesn't take steps to protect manatees from water pollution in Florida.

Pollution-fueled algae blooms are cited as the cause of over half of the more than 1,000 manatee deaths in Florida this year, according to a news release from the Center for Biological Diversity, Defenders of Wildlife and Save the Manatee Club.

The algae blooms killed thousands of acres of seagrass in the Indian River Lagoon, which highlights the inadequacy of Florida's federally approved water quality standards, the groups said in the notice letter.

They are asking the EPA to reinitiate consultation with Fish and Wildlife Service to reassess the standards. Monday's notice gives the agencies 60 days to address violations alleged in the letter before the groups file a lawsuit.

“It’s disgraceful that hundreds of manatees have died as a direct result of regulators’ failure to protect our water quality,” Jaclyn Lopez, Florida director of the Center for Biologial Diversity, said in a news release.

The Indian River Lagoon is an “ecological wonder that supports not just manatees, but green sea turtles, snook, tarpon and a stunning diversity of marine life," Lopez noted.

“The mass death of these manatees, which was completely preventable, makes it clear just how critical it is that the EPA take swift action to protect the vibrant ecosystem they live in before it’s too late," Lopez said.

The Indian River Lagoon includes important warm-water habitat for slow-moving mammals and supports more species of plants and animals than any other estuary in North America, the groups said in the news release.

They claim that despite “extensive evidence of that harmful pollution and Florida’s failure to address it," the EPA approved the state's water-quality criteria for nitrogen, phosphorous and dissolved oxygen.

“Until Florida is forced to rein in its rampant pollution, manatees will continue to die slow, agonizing deaths by starvation every winter,” Lindsay Dubin, staff attorney at Defenders of Wildlife, said in the release. “The EPA must act immediately to improve water-quality standards lest it further jeopardize the future of this iconic species.”

Last week, wildlife officials announced a pilot feeding plan that could save many manatees from starvation. However officials said manatees will still face the long-term threat of manmade water pollution stifling their food supply.

Florida Power & Light, the state’s largest electric utility, is putting up $700,000 for a “temporary field response station” to feed the manatees at its plant in Cape Canaveral on the East Coast. The money is also for rescue and rehabilitation of distressed manatees, the company said in a news release.

The program has not been tried before.

Manatee deaths in Florida this year are more than double the average annual death rate over five years, officials said. The deaths represent 19% of the Atlantic population of Florida manatees, and 12% of all manatees in Florida.

Manatees were downlisted from “endangered” to “threatened” in 2017, but since then they have suffered significant setbacks from habitat degradation, red tide, unusually cold winters and now potential starvation from the seagrass die-off.

Exclusive: Brazil shuts illegal timber schemes, sheds light on Amazon logging





Brazilian Army soldiers are pictured in a forest of wood extraction in the Amazon rainforest

Tue, December 21, 2021
By Jake Spring

BRASILIA (Reuters) - Brazilian environmental agents this week shut down schemes involving hundreds of companies the agents said were covering up illegal logging in the Amazon rainforest, according to government documents reviewed by Reuters.

The operation conducted by the main federal environmental enforcement agency Ibama provides a rare glimpse into how illegally cut Amazon wood is inserted into legal timber supply chains, using shell companies and faking shipments.

The enforcement operation is one of the most complete ever conducted by the environmental agency, because it caught so many of the people hiding behind or doing business with the shell companies, one Ibama agent told Reuters.

Ibama identified more than 220 companies and 21 logging concessions involved in various schemes disguising the origin of illegal wood, according to the documents seen by Reuters.

The environmental agency will place embargoes on the companies this week to prevent them from selling wood and will hand out more than 50 million reais ($8.76 million) in fines, the documents said.

Ibama has also passed on the findings to public prosecutors and police for further criminal investigation, the documents said.

Ibama did not respond to a request for comment.

The agency can issue administrative penalties like fines and embargoes but cannot make arrests or issue criminal charges. The companies and people involved can appeal the decisions with Ibama.

Under President Jair Bolsonaro, Brazil's Amazon deforestation in 2021 surged to the highest level in 15 years, according to official government statistics.

Bolsonaro has rolled back environmental protections and sought to introduce more mining and farming to the Amazon, saying it is needed to alleviate poverty.

Brazil permits legal logging, handing out a limited number of concessions that allow only a proportion of trees to be cut in a specific area, and sets quotas capping the harvest.

Those quotas are given out as credits that then accompany the wood as it is sold and resold, certifying its legal origins until it is made into a "finished product" like furniture or flooring.

But under the schemes, companies were selling the credits without the wood, the documents said.

Buyers would then attach the woodless credits to illegally sourced wood with origins such as protected nature reserves or tribal lands.

In some cases, the companies involved were shell companies that only existed on paper in order to funnel the credits, which could change hands many times before being used, the documents said.

The scheme involved more than 102,000 cubic meters of illegally cut wood from Para, Rondonia and Mato Grosso states. That amount represents the harvest of about 97 square kilometers of forest, an area larger than Manhattan, which still pales in comparison to more than 13,000 square kilometers of deforestation officially recorded in the 12 months through July.

"That's a drop in the ocean," said Raoni Rajao, a land use expert at the Federal University of Minas Gerais, when asked about the discovery.

The Ibama operation provides an example of the most common way which illegal loggers sell their wood into the legal system, according to Rajao.

"It's certainly very widespread," he said.

Most of the illegally harvested wood was sold into Brazil's domestic market for a variety of uses, said the Ibama agent, on condition of anonymity.

The final manufacturer or consumer generally has no way of knowing the wood is illegal as the timber appears to be legitimate in the government system, the agent said. Therefore, they cannot be held liable, the person said.

Selective logging to extract valuable timber is often the first step in deforestation, with the remaining forest then burned to clear land for agriculture.

($1 = 5.7052 reais)

(Reporting by Jake Spring; Editing by David Gregorio)

EPA reviews Bayer herbicide blamed for widespread U.S. crop damage

Tue, December 21, 2021
By Tom Polansek

CHICAGO, Dec 21 (Reuters) - The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency is assessing whether the herbicide dicamba can be sprayed on soybean and cotton plants genetically engineered to resist the chemical, without the procedure posing "unreasonable risks" to other crops, an agency official said on Tuesday.

Farmers and scientists have reported problems with dicamba drifting away from where it is sprayed on fields, causing damage to plants whose genes have not been modified to resist the weed killer.

The EPA said it received about 3,500 reports this year indicating that more than one million acres of non-dicamba-tolerant soybean crops were allegedly damaged when the chemical drifted from where it was applied. Trees and crops like rice and grapes also suffered damage, the agency said.

The number, severity and geographic extent of the incidents was similar to 2020, when the EPA tightened restrictions on dicamba use after complaints about dicamba drifting from farmers and scientists, the agency said.

"Right now we don't know whether over-the-top dicamba can be used in a manner that doesn't pose unreasonable risks to non-target crops and other plants," said Michal Freedhoff, assistant administrator for the EPA'S Office of Chemical Safety and Pollution Prevention.

The EPA is evaluating all its options for addressing future dicamba-related incidents, Freedhoff said.

Further restrictions on use would be a blow to Bayer AG , which sells dicamba and seeds to grow crops engineered to tolerate it. The company has settled lawsuits brought by land owners who say their crops were damaged by neighbors using dicamba.

Some farmers and seed companies have called for regulators to limit spraying to the spring season, before crops are planted.

Regulatory changes will probably not be fully implemented by the 2022 growing season, the EPA said. The agency said it will work with states that want to impose further restrictions.

In June 2020, a U.S. appeals court blocked dicamba sales and ruled the EPA had substantially understated risks related to its use.

In October, 2020, the EPA under former President Donald Trump re-authorized the use of dicamba-based weedkillers, invalidating the court ruling. (Reporting by Tom Polansek; Editing by David Gregorio)

Student protest leader to president-elect: Gabriel Boric caps rise of Chile's left


Chileans vote in presidential elections in Punta Arenas

Sun, December 19, 2021
By Fabian Cambero

SANTIAGO (Reuters) - Ten years after leading student protests demanding better education, Gabriel Boric is set to become Chile's youngest-ever president, capping a remarkable rise for the Andean nation's progressive left.

The former law student who has pledged to bury Chile's "neoliberal" economic model convincingly defeated far-right rival Jose Antonio Kast in the country's presidential runoff on Sunday.

"I am going to be a president of all Chileans, whether you voted for me or not," Boric, 35, said in a call with current President Sebastian Pinera on Sunday night. "I am going to do my best to get on top of this tremendous challenge."

Boric, who will take office in March, has tapped into public anger at Chile's market-oriented economic model, widely considered to have helped drive decades of rapid economic growth but stoking inequality.

That imbalance sparked widespread angry social uprisings in 2019, lighting the fuse for the political rise of the progressive left and the redrafting of the country's dictatorship-era constitution.

"If Chile was the cradle of neoliberalism, it will also be its grave," Boric said when he won the candidacy of his leftist bloc. "Do not be afraid of the youth changing this country."

A native of Punta Arenas, in Chile's far south, Boric as a student led the Federation of Students at the University of Chile in Santiago. He rose to prominence leading protests in 2011 demanding improved and cheaper education.

By 2014, still in his 20s, he had joined the national Congress as a lower-house lawmaker, representing Chile's vast and sparsely populated southernmost region of Magallanes.

With thick black hair and a trimmed beard, he is more groomed now than in his student leader days. Although a known face of the left in Chile, Boric was initially a dark-horse candidate for the presidency.

He just reached the threshold of 35,000 signatures needed to be a candidate. But then he beat out the popular Santiago-region mayor, Daniel Jadue, of the Communist Party, to lead the leftist alliance.

Boric has since looked to distance himself from some of the more extreme views of far-left groups in his alliance, including support from the Communist Party for the Venezuelan government of President Nicolas Maduro.

Buoyed by youthful supporters, there has been a deluge of online memes backing him. High-profile supporters include Chilean-American actor Pedro Pascal from "The Mandalorian" and Mexican actor Gael Garcia Bernal.

Former two-term Chilean President Michelle Bachelet, now the U.N. high commissioner for human rights, backed Boric, saying he would put Chile on a "path of progress for all, of greater freedom, equality and human rights."

Leftists around the region flocked to congratulate Boric.

"I congratulate @gabrielboric for his election as president of Chile," said Brazilian former President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, a leftist who is looking to make a comeback in elections next year.

"I'm happy for another victory of a democratic and progressive candidate in our Latin America."

(Reporting by Fabian Cambero; Editing by Adam Jourdan, Rosalba O'Brien and Peter Cooney)

Chileans hail new leftist leader, but markets balk




Mariëtte Le Roux
Mon, December 20, 2021

Investors reacted nervously on Monday after leftist millennial Gabriel Boric was elected Chile's youngest-ever president, beating out his far-right rival with promises of creating a "welfare state."

Boric, who at 35 is one of the youngest presidents in world history, made his first official appearance on Monday, meeting center-right President Sebastian Pinera.

Painted by his detractors as a "communist," Boric succeeded in mobilizing record turnout Sunday and garnered nearly 56 percent of votes cast, compared to 44 percent for ultra-conservative, neoliberal Jose Antonio Kast.

The streets of Santiago and other cities erupted in celebrations at the former student activist leaders' victory, which closed a polarizing runoff race.

But the market reception Monday was frosty.

The SP IPSA index closed 6.18 percent down, while the Chilean peso ceded 3.4 percent to the US dollar to reach an historic rate of 876.

Analyst Nikhil Sanghani of Capital Economics said Boric's victory was "another sign that the country is moving towards greater state intervention in the economy."

"The public debt-to-GDP ratio looks set to rise much further under the new government," he added, which will contribute to keeping "local financial markets under pressure."

In November, the IPSA index gained more than nine percent when pro-free market Kast came out on top in the first election round, and the peso rebounded by 3.5 percent to 800 to the dollar.

- 'Viva Chile!' -

On Sunday night, tens of thousands of Chileans took to the streets to celebrate Boric's victory, honking car horns in approval, brandishing pro-Boric placards, waving the rainbow LGBTQ flag and shouting: "Viva Chile!"

Fireworks lit the skies for hours on end.

On Monday, workers with a banner reading: "Hope won over fear. Civil servants welcome you president," met Boric at the La Moneda presidential palace ahead of his sit-down with Pinera.

Boric had campaigned on the promise of increasing taxes and social spending to tackle Chile's yawning gap between rich and poor, to improve the pension and healthcare systems, create jobs and green the economy.

He is riding a wave of public support for a more progressive social system, sparked by an anti-inequality social uprising in 2019 that left dozens dead and rocked the economy and political establishment.

But his alliance with Chile's Communist Party made many uneasy in a country deeply suspicious of far-left economic doctrine since the hardships suffered under Marxist President Salvador Allende, partly due to a US blockade.

Boric vowed in his first official address Sunday to "expand social rights" in Chile, but to do so with "fiscal responsibility."

"We will do it protecting our macro-economy," he said.

On Monday, he announced he would announce a cabinet as soon as possible to "give certainty" to the markets.

"We are aware that it is important for the country to give certainties, which some may like and others not, but it is important to have certainty about what is coming," he said after his meeting with Pinera, who he is due to officially replace next March.

- 'President of all Chileans' -

Chile inherited from its brutal dictator Augusto Pinochet a neo-liberal economic model credited with its relative wealth but blamed for deep-rooted social inequality that Boric has vowed to redress.

Boric's Frente Amplio (Broad Front), which is part of an alliance that includes Chile's Communist Party, has never been in government.

According to Chile's Servel election body, Sunday's turnout was more than 55 percent of Chile's 15 million eligible voters -- a record since voting became voluntary in 2012.

"Boric managed to mobilize the segment that is more difficult to mobilize, which is the segment of young people," Claudia Heiss of the University of Chile told AFP.

"All (Kast's) anti-rights, anti-women, anti-gay speech, I think it helped mobilize that young segment," she said.

The new president faces the difficult task of healing a society reeling from an antagonistic campaign between two polar opposite political outsiders in a country that traditionally votes for the center.

Chile is going through profound change after voting overwhelmingly last year in favor of replacing the Pinochet-era constitution.

The 2020 referendum was in response to the 2019 anti-inequality uprising.

The drafting process, in the hands of a largely left-leaning body elected in May, must yield a constitution for approval next year, on the new president's watch.

bur-mlr/jh

Chile's Boric says will oppose controversial Dominga copper-iron mine

Sun, December 19, 2021, 6:22 PM

SANTIAGO, Dec 19 (Reuters) - Chilean President-elect Gabriel Boric said on Sunday he will oppose mining initiatives that "destroy" the natural environment, including the controversial $2.5 billion Dominga iron, copper and gold mining project.

During a speech after his electoral victory, he said his government will also expand social rights but will do so with fiscal responsibility and taking care of the economy in the world's top copper producing nation.

"Destroying the world is destroying ourselves. We do not want more 'sacrifice zones', we do not want projects that destroy our country, that destroy communities and we exemplify this in a case that has been symbolic: No to Dominga," he said.

A regional Chilean environmental commission in August had approved Andes Iron's Dominga project after years of wrangling in the country's courts and after the body had previously rejected the proposal.

The mining project would be located about 500 km (310 miles) north of the capital Santiago, and near ecological reserves.

Critics say its proximity to environmentally sensitive areas would cause undue damage. Andes Iron, a privately held Chilean company, has long rejected that assertion.

(Reporting by Anthony Esposito and Fabian Cambero)

Chile mining firms call for moderation after Boric election win

Fabian Cambero
Sun, December 19, 2021

By Fabian Cambero

SANTIAGO, Dec 19 (Reuters) - Chile's mining sector congratulated leftist Gabriel Boric on Sunday after he secured victory in the country's presidential election and called for moderation and dialogue to safeguard the industry in the world's largest copper producing nation.

Boric comfortably beat right-wing rival José Antonio Kast, who conceded defeat on Sunday evening after a divisive election race. Both candidates were from outside the mainstream political parties, though mining firms had been more wary of Boric.

The National Mining Society (Sonami) said in a statement that voters have "sent a clear message" about the need to maintain Chile's economic and social development.

"We trust that the spirit of programmatic convergence, moderation and openness to dialogue shown during the last week of the campaign will prevail," it added.

Boric has pledged to overhaul Chile's market-orientated economic model that dates back to the dictatorship of General Augusto Pinochet, credited for driving decades of growth but also fostering inequality.

The country is also rewriting its constitution, which could see environmental regulations tightened, and lawmakers are looking to raise taxation on mining firms, who are currently benefiting from record high global metals prices.

Boric has said that he would look to create a state lithium firm and criticized privatization of the sector, where Albemarle and SQM are currently the main two players.

State-owned Codelco is the world largest copper miner, but there are many large multinationals in Chile's copper sector including BHP, Glencore, Anglo American and Antofagasta. (Reporting by Fabian Cambero; Editing by Adam Jourdan and Sam Holmes)

I Joined A Far-Right Group Of Moms. What I Witnessed Was Frightening.

Phoebe Cohen
Tue, December 21, 2021


“Look out for the trigger words,” the woman says. She’s perched on a chair in front of the room. She’s well-dressed yet funky with elegant boots, a demure sweater and some colorful jewelry. “‘Equality,’ ‘diversity,’ ‘inclusion,’ ‘marginalization,’... These words are CRT. If you see these words in your kids’ homework, you need to speak out.”

I am in a meeting held by a local right-wing mom’s group. It’s an organization catering to mothers who are bent on protesting at school board meetings to stop the supposedly evil critical race theory agenda from being taught in public schools and address other typically conservative concerns.

Critical race theory is not currently being taught in public schools.

There are about 20 of us. We are all maskless, all (apparently) white, mostly women and all on the younger side. I’m in my early 40s and I seem to be the oldest person in the room. A group of children, including my son, the only one in a mask, are scampering merrily in a play area down the hall while a young woman with a baby in her front carrier keeps an eye on them. On the wall by the door of our seminar room is a sign. It says: “Children should be: Heard. Respected. Encouraged. Loved. Appreciated. Guided with Compassion. Given Freedom to Learn Without Coercion.”

What exactly that last phrase means is ominously vague.

For several years now I have been worried about the increasing right-wing views that I have noticed in my demographic (white suburban women). Before 2016, I always thought of Nazis as mainly historical villains that belonged in Indiana Jones movies or old news reels or the sad stories my grandfather told me. Now, however, as the last Holocaust survivors are dying, I am aware that fascism is creeping back into the world at large in terrifying ways.

I wanted to know how I could fight against the appallingly stupid yet dangerously widespread disinformation that is entrancing many of my friends and neighbors. Basic facts about COVID-19 are being dismissed by whole states as part of the “liberal mainstream corporate media.” Bodies from COVID victims were stacking up in ICUs and filling the morgues back in 2020, yet I was still called a “child abuser” by people on the street because I made my son wear a mask. Why are people going nuts? Why are people dismissing science and history in favor of conspiracy theories? And, most importantly, how could we nudge the nation in a saner direction?

I was especially curious about activist groups that specifically target suburban women. These groups seemed intent on making life more dangerous for my child. According to my local right-wing women’s group, masks should not be allowed in school. They told us to stop worrying about kids dying of COVID. They were also vocal about not wanting racism and its deep, formative history in the United States to be taught. Some of these people literally do not believe white privilege exists because, according to them, the Union soldiers who fought in the Civil War were overwhelmingly white. (No, I don’t understand that argument either.) Others feel parts of our country’s history shouldn’t be included in curriculums if it makes people ― namely white people ― uncomfortable.

Every teacher I knew was struggling with COVID restrictions and dealing with students venting their post-pandemic trauma through increasingly disruptive behavior. School districts across the country were dealing with staffing shortages due to teachers burning out from stress. Why add to teachers’ difficulties by threatening school instructors who dared to teach topics like Jim Crow laws, the civil rights movement and the repercussions of slavery in America?

Some of these people literally do not believe white privilege exists because, according to them, the Union soldiers who fought in the Civil War were overwhelmingly white. (No, I don’t understand that argument either.)

To learn more, I joined a local right-wing Facebook group for moms. It’s a private group that requires aspiring members to answer some questions before they’re granted entry. One question was “Why do you want to join?” I replied, “I want to be more involved with my kids’ school.” A week passed and then a moderator for the group contacted me privately. “Can you be more specific about what issue most concerns you?”

Yikes. Security was apparently very tight with this group. They weren’t going to let just any mom glide in using a few generic answers.

“I’m mostly interested in issues that involve keeping kids physically in school,” I messaged back. “Zoom school was devastating for my kid and I don’t want that to happen again.” I wasn’t lying about any of that. It’s one of the few opinions I share with many conservative parents.

The moderator sent me a thumbs-up emoji and let me into the group.

Once inside, I found the members were all stripes of Republican and I was pleasantly surprised to see opinion was not monolithic in the group. Several moms argued against the more far-right posters. One woman posted an objection to children reading “To Kill a Mockingbird” in class. “Divisive Concepts,” she wrote with a broken heart emoji. Underneath was a screenshot of a direct message from someone who appeared to be a student that read, “I’m in English right now. We’re currently reading ‘To Kill a Mockingbird.’ There’s a part where Calpurnia brings the kids to church with her and another black woman is being extremely racist towards Scout and Jem. My teacher was saying it was not racism because white people have a higher power over black people in society and that black people can’t be racist.”

There were several indignant emoji reactions in response to this post. One mom, however, pushed back. “Well,” she commented, “the woman at the church complained that Calpurnia had brought white children to the Black church, possibly one of the few places Black people felt any sense of freedom and safety. It’s a little absurd to call the woman racist, given the context.” This comment got a couple “likes” and no pushback.

Another surprise I found in the Facebook group was that some huge media outlets were giving them a platform. One of the founders of the group posted that she had done an interview with The New York Times as part of a story on parental rights.

The New York Times! I was dumbfounded. None of the women who ran the pro-Democrat “Indivisible” groups in my town had even managed to get an interview with the local paper!

I scanned the comments and my eyes nearly popped out of my head.

“It’ll be fine,” another mom wrote after the initial poster expressed concern about The New York Times possibly misquoting her. “It’s a lesson I learned the hard way after the BBC screwed me.”

The BBC! The BBC was talking to these women?

I had to know more.

Unfortunately a few of the moms may have become suspicious of me. Perhaps I had “liked” too many comments by moms pushing back against the anti-CRT posts. Perhaps some moderators had found the very liberal comments that I had posted on other public news articles. In any case, when I expressed interest in joining an in-person roundtable discussion event, I saw that the location of the event suddenly disappeared. I messaged the group moderator about the event location.

“Just a heads up,” she messaged back, “I think most people will not be masking. Is that something you’ll be comfortable with?”

I wondered if she was trying to frighten me off. “Yes, that’s fine,” I replied.

I never received the location, but luckily I had written it down before it disappeared from the event post.

I drove to the meeting with my son. The group moderator had been right. When I joined the meeting, I saw that nobody in the packed room was masked. I gritted my teeth and sat down anyway. I was fully vaccinated and my son wore a mask. He was the only one.

I listened to the speakers at the meeting while they discussed how to run for, campaign and pressure school boards. Many parents bemoaned how they had to pull their kids from public schools over mask mandates and instead enroll them in private schools. It was a common story. I got the impression that most of these families had income levels that allowed them to pay thousands in private school fees because they wanted to take a stand on masks. I was probably the poorest person there.

There was a lot of anger directed at teachers. “Rat out these teachers,” one mother instructed. “Find a lawyer who can challenge these teachers.” Another woman disdainfully noted that teachers “don’t even know what they’re doing half the time. They just pull it off the internet.” A third woman said, “There is no discipline for teachers outside of taking away their credentials.” The battle lines were clearly drawn.

I raised my hand. “What do you say to people who are like, ‘Oh, you’re gonna put bounties on teachers’ heads. You’re marching outside of school board members’ homes with guns. School board members are getting death threats and feeling terrorized’?”

I could see several women visibly flinch at the word “bounty.” One woman said she disliked the term “bounty” but she could see the need for “monetary compensation” for those who turn in teachers that were doing things parents found unacceptable. “There are no repercussions for teachers who break the law,” she said. “If we have to offer monetary compensation for people to report teachers, I see no problem with that. It’s an incentive for people to wake up.”

It wasn’t clear what laws these teachers were supposedly breaking. As far as I could tell, teachers ― like everyone else ― got punished if they broke laws.

Another woman raised her hand. “Look, I know we want to change school boards,” she said, “but elections aren’t until 2023. What do we do until then? We just can’t sit around and let them attack our kids. We have to do SOMETHING.”

I caught a gleam in the woman’s eye I didn’t like. Was there some flirtation with insurrection being suggested here? What, exactly, was she saying?

Another woman nodded. “Listen, we’ve tried playing nice. But they just dig in their heels and dig in their heels. We have to start being not so nice.”

One woman said she disliked the term 'bounty' but she could see the need for 'monetary compensation' for those who turn in teachers that were doing things parents found unacceptable. ... 'If we have to offer monetary compensation for people to report teachers, I see no problem with that. It’s an incentive for people to wake up.'

I didn’t like where the discussion was going. The moderator guided the topic back to safer ground. “Be pleasantly persistent,” she smiled. “Be annoying. Be the woman at the school board meetings who always shows up. Be the person who, when the meeting organizers see you, say, ‘Oh, God, her again.’ Be that person. And please try to get people to vote in municipal elections.”

Fair enough. A lot of the roundtable debate felt like a Republican version of a Run for Something meeting. Run for Something was a movement started after Donald Trump won the presidency that was meant to encourage young progressives to start their own campaigns for local political office. This right-wing women’s group seemed to be following the same model, but there was an undercurrent of rage among the group members that I had never seen in a Run for Something meeting.

Despite my uneasiness, I couldn’t help but find myself liking the women in the room. They were charismatic. They were energetic. They had no problem letting my low-functioning autistic son play with their children, which is unfortunately rare among a lot of the other mothers I’ve encountered. But this made me even more uneasy. I realized these women were dangerous precisely because they were so friendly. Their condemnation of history lessons about Ruby Bridges and Jim Crow laws and Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was repulsive. They were trying to suppress the truth by labeling the unassailable facts of racism in the U.S. as “divisive.” “Equality,” “diversity” and “inclusion” were not virtues to be celebrated but “trigger words” with a poisonous intent. This nefariously clever bit of relabeling disgusted me. There was a very clear far-right agenda at work here.

Groups like the one I joined often appeal to mothers. The pandemic has hit moms especially hard. Lack of child care has resulted in a “she-cession” with thousands of women leaving the workforce to take care of their children. Lonely, frustrated, financially stressed people tend to be prime targets for radical groups. These right-wing women’s groups offer a sense of community and friendship to women who are isolated at home with their kids. It can be frighteningly easy for some people to start nodding along with all the rhetoric about the evils of critical race theory and COVID conspiracy theories if the women espousing them are also offering you coffee and friendship and child care ― and making you feel seen and heard.

I am currently still a member of this local right-wing women’s Facebook group. It has helped me to understand where these people are coming from ― and just how motivated they are. My membership could end up being rescinded, however, as I plan to attend a few upcoming school board meetings to defend the accurate and honest teaching of all parts of American history, especially in regard to racism and what it has meant and means to be Black in this country.

I can’t stop thinking about the gleam in that woman’s eye as she said, “We just can’t sit around and let them attack our kids. We have to do something.” Though some people think merely tweeting our outrage or frustration is productive (it’s not), those of us fighting against the far right need to be more aware of how energetic and organized they’re becoming and the lengths they’re willing to go to in order to get their way. Right-wing activists are attending school board meetings in hopes of transforming our children’s education, and, ultimately, their lives and the future of the United States. It’s time for us to be just as active to ensure this doesn’t happen. We must fight for our children’s safety and their right to learn our nation’s history ― even the ugly parts. Especially the ugly parts.

After all, when ugly history gets ignored, it tends to get repeated.

Phoebe Cohen has walked many paths in life, including living in the Gobi Desert as a Peace Corps volunteer and working as a paramedic in several states. Cohen’s work has been featured in Graphic Medicine, Mutha Magazine and BorderX. She regularly posts on her website Merry Misandrist. Cohen is a part-time cartoonist, writer and nursing student. She has been known to go up to five hours without coffee.

This article originally appeared on HuffPost and has been updated.

I Embedded With Trump-Supporting 'Stop The Steal' Protesters. Here's What I Learned.

"I wanted to get as close as I could to find out how these individuals view themselves and the world they are fighting for."



Megan Kang, Guest Writer
01/19/2021 


A placard reading "Stop the steal" is seen during a protest after media announced that Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden had won the election.
GORAN TOMASEVIC/REUTERS

The intersection is unremarkable on most days. It sits at the cross of two major thoroughfares in a suburban town in Florida. It’s located on the edge of a large parking lot in a strip mall with a Starbucks, Supercuts, Publix grocery store, FedEx, and some local businesses.

But each Saturday from 10 a.m. to noon, this intersection transforms into a political battleground. Since July, a group of Republicans have gathered there with signs supporting Donald Trump, flags, music, and attire. The demonstrators are met with honking, waving, swearing, flicking off, fist pumping, and occasionally, they get into shouting matches with the drivers passing by. Months after the presidential election resulted in a victory for Joe Biden in November 2020, this group of demonstrators continues to show up every Saturday in support of Trump and his claims that the election was stolen from him.

Their efforts are a part of a larger social movement known as “Stop the Steal,” which swept the country in the final months of 2020. It became one of the fastest growing groups on Facebook in early November, amassing 320,000 users in its first 22 hours before Facebook shut it down for trying to incite violence. Despite this, the slogan caught on like wildfire as testimonials alleging voter fraud made their way across social media and onto right-wing sites. The message was fueled by President Trump himself, who claimed the election was stolen on Twitter and official White House platforms. As of early December, one poll found that three out of four registered Republicans said they did not trust the 2020 election outcomes. By that time, “Stop the Steal” demonstrations were taking place on the steps of state capitols, outside of elected officials’ homes, and on local street intersections. On Jan. 6, 2021, the day Congress met to certify the Electoral College votes, “Stop the Steal” followers and other Trump supporters staged an armed insurrection at the country’s Capitol. As a result of the attack, five people died and many more were injured. Footage of rioters destroying parts of the building, sitting inside the Senate chambers, and defacing legislators’ offices offered a shocking display of how far the movement had come.

In effort to try to understand those who are sympathetic to Trump’s efforts to undo the election results, I decided to join them. As a sociology graduate student, my lessons in ethnography have taught me to unravel problems by standing in or near other people’s shoes in the hope of explaining something seemingly inexplicable. Unlike those who study people’s beliefs or behaviors without this context, ethnographers try to capture people within their natural setting by participating in their lives. This is how I found myself spending my last four Saturday mornings at this intersection alongside these protesters. I wanted to get as close as I could to observe and learn how these individuals view themselves and the world they were fighting for, as well as uncover more about their beliefs and motivations.

I was nervous about whether I would be able to gain entree into their group and how I might be treated. How would these people react to a 20-something Asian woman who found herself spending an extended winter break in their town asking to join their ranks? How would these white and Hispanic middle-aged to elderly Floridians decked out in MAGA hats, bright red, white and blue apparel, and carrying pro-Trump signs feel about a California native who has spent her adult years living in bastions of progressivism like Berkeley, Detroit, Chicago and Princeton?

“I was nervous about whether I would be able to gain entree into their group and how I might be treated. How would these people react to a 20-something Asian woman who found herself spending an extended winter break in their town asking to join their ranks?”

I would also be wearing a mask among a group that believed COVID-19 mask mandates were the ultimate symbol of government overreach. Each time I joined the protesters, I was one of two people out of 15-20 wearing a mask. The other mask-wearer was Susie, a white woman in her 60s. She was soft-spoken and always carried a little red megaphone slung over her shoulder (though I never saw her use it). She was known for her shirts and flags decorated with provocative statements. Her favorite T-shirt read, “Socialism shits on the faces of soldiers who died for our freedom.”

Shortly after her arrival each Saturday morning, Susie taped up signs on nearby surfaces, including a laminated sign with a Chinese flag with an image of Biden’s face that she posted on an electric switch box at the center of the intersection. During my first Saturday morning at the intersection, she noticed that I didn’t have a flag or sign and offered her Trump Train flag to me. I respectfully declined but appreciated the gesture.

Jake is a white man in his mid-50s with a white-collar job who wore the same navy blue Ron Paul shirt each time I saw him. He brought a portable speaker to blast a diverse playlist ranging from the 1990s radio hit “C’mon N’ Ride It (The Train)” to the more recent YouTube hit “God Bless Trump and the USA.” When I asked him how he selected songs for these events, he shrugged his shoulders and said, “I go on YouTube and find whatever I like. Just for Trump alone this year, there’s probably been 20 different songs made for him, which is pretty nice.”

Jake was the first person to introduce himself to me when I arrived at the intersection over a month ago. I noticed that he and Connor, another member of the group, always made a point of saying hello to new people. They served an essential role in creating a sense of solidarity among the group of strangers brought together by their loyalty to Trump, and they also eased my worries about whether I’d be accepted into the group.

I explained to Jake that I had passed by the group a few days earlier and wanted to learn more about their cause. He asked if I wanted to join the protesters’ WhatsApp chat group and told me about other upcoming events. I accepted the invitation and learned that some of these demonstrators, including Jake and Connor, planned to trek north to attend the big “Stop the Steal” protest in D.C. planned on Jan. 6.

Jake had a long list of talking points that he read in an authoritative voice into his microphone, which was connected to portable speakers. His favorite topics were criticizing mainstream media, describing how Biden would ruin this country, and citing all the ways in which the election was stolen from President Trump.

“Every single thing points to a Donald Trump landslide,” his voice boomed. “Statistics show that Donald Trump won. You’re not going to hear any of this on the mainstream media. Guys, the truth is most of the people driving by that are pro-Biden or anti-President Trump are very surface thinkers, they’re very directed by the mass media. They don’t have any clue about some of the things I mentioned today.”

Distrust in mainstream media was a central theme in the conversations I had with the demonstrators. Madeline is an elderly white woman who enjoyed sharing a wide array of opinions and bits of information on current events. She was a lifelong Democrat until Obama’s second term when he became, in her eyes, too lenient on “terrorists and illegal immigrants.” Now, Madeline gets most of her news from YouTube, which she believes is more reliable than mainstream news platforms because you can see things “firsthand.”

When Trump entered the scene, Madeline says she found a candidate who was able to put words to her worries about the direction America was heading. “Trump said it as it is,” she told me. She has been participating in the flag waving demonstrations at the intersection since July and believed this was the least she could do to “protect Americans’ freedom.”

When I asked Madeline which rights she felt would be most threatened under a Biden administration, she said she was worried Americans would be forced to wear masks, get vaccinated, and that small businesses would be shut down.

Connor is in his 60s, works a white-collar day job and spends his time off helping to coordinate the demonstrations at the intersection and trying to increase membership in the county’s Republican group. He also turned his back on the mainstream media. When I asked him why he had showed up at the intersection every Saturday for the last five months, he told me, “I’m a Trump supporter. I’m not going to give up. I do believe [the Democrats] cheated like hell, and I don’t know how people can’t see that. But when somebody hates someone, it overtakes them. And that’s what happened here. The news media hates him and then a lot of people just go along with the program.”

Connor’s loyalty to Trump was central to how he processed information. He told me that anything that was critical of Trump was the same as being biased against Trump. For example, Connor’s main source of news for most of his life had been the Wall Street Journal. But when the publication began publishing articles critical of Trump during his campaign in 2015, Connor unsubscribed and moved to other news sources that he felt were fairer to Trump. Now, Connor gets most of his news from OAN (a far-right pro-Trump cable channel known for promoting conspiracy theories) and Epoch Times.

Connor believes that Trump is an antidote to the radical left, which he says increasingly dominates the mainstream media and the nation’s universities. “A lot of what we have is an educational system that has told people, ‘You’re white and you come from this background and these other people didn’t have that opportunity so we should give up something and we should feel guilty,’” he told me. “Then students think, ‘Maybe you’re right, you’re the college professor and my parents are sending me to go to school here.’ The communication is manipulative. And that’s how we have all these bleeding hearts who want to guilt white people, take their money, and give it to Black people. Now you have a generation of lazy, in debt, college graduates who work at Starbucks but still have a $1,000 iPhone and want Bernie Sanders to forgive all their debt.”

In addition to the misinformation they believed and their allegiance to Trump that brought them together, the camaraderie and pride they shared also kept these individuals coming back to the intersection each week. “Trump supporters know how to have a good time!” Madeline told me. “Once we had five ladies in wheelchairs here. We were all having so much fun.” Each time a car honked in support of the protesters, everyone raised their flags a bit higher, smiles appeared, and a feeling of unity swept over the group. Even I found myself returning smiles to those who honked and waved at me and I felt the elation that my compatriots felt beside me. It was contagious.

“In addition to the misinformation they believed and their allegiance to Trump that brought them together, the camaraderie and pride they shared also kept these individuals coming back to the intersection each week. 'Trump supporters know how to have a good time!' Madeline told me.”

During the month I spent with these demonstrators, I learned that the “Stop the Steal” movement is comprised of individuals who are deeply misinformed by lies spread by President Trump and others. Each person had their own reason for being there. Jake believed he was helping to inform people about the truth of what is really happening in the United States. Madeline saw attending the “Stop the Steal” protests as a civic duty to defend Americans’ freedom. Connor felt compelled to fight what he believed to be the full-frontal assault of President Trump that is being waged “by the establishment.” When I asked him what the long-term strategy for the demonstrations was, he told me, “When Trump says it’s over, there’s a good chance we’ll stop.”

When I began this project, my partner asked me, “Is there a chance that writing about the perspectives of this group might validate their views? Don’t you think there are some perspectives that we shouldn’t be empathetic to?” I continued to grapple with these questions over the past month and I still am even as I write this now.

One answer that I gravitate toward comes from Arlie Hochschild, the Berkeley sociologist who published a book based on her interviews with Tea Party supporters in Louisiana in 2015. Hochschild suggests that to address the major issues of our day ― from protecting the environment to ending homelessness ― we need to understand those who oppose the state’s role in these efforts. This requires what Hochschild describes as scaling an “empathy wall” to try to grasp the stories of people who are different from us.

It’s unclear what the outcome of the “Stop the Steal” movement will be, or what stage it’s currently at. It is clear, however, that the kind of thinking that motivated “Stop the Steal” has moved beyond the realm of mere rhetoric and into very real and dangerous action.

In light of the events of Jan. 6, Hochschild’s vision of social progress may seem more like an idealistic plea rather than a serious blueprint for change. Still, it is precisely these moments in which violence and destruction occur ― and further threats of both loom ― that developing a clear-eyed understanding of the ideas that inspire and fuel them is most important.

When engaging in a process of understanding, we should be open to the likelihood that the ideas that emerge will seem deplorable to us. In these instances, it’s especially important to remember that it is the ideas ― and the mediums that transmit them ― that we must concentrate on. That certainly doesn’t mean that we don’t hold these individuals accountable for their actions but, ultimately, if we hope to change them, we must be able to reach them. And that can only happen if we understand their motivations and struggles.

At the close of the Second World War, the UNESCO signatories ratified a constitution that opened with, “Since wars begin in the minds of men, it is in the minds of men that the defenses of peace must be constructed.” Recognizing what the harmful ideas are, where they come from, and why they take such hold is how we will begin to construct the best defenses against them. It is through this sort of understanding that we may hopefully begin to dismantle the destructive narratives and construct a new one together.

Note: All names of individuals described in this essay have been changed.


Megan Kang is a Sociology Ph.D. student at Princeton. Her work aims to make sense of issues around crime and criminal justice by providing a perspective that’s hard to access through conventional data. Follow her on Twitter at @kang_megan.

Kellogg strike to end as workers vote in favor of new contract - union president


Bernie Sanders shows up to support striking Kellogg workers

Tue, December 21, 2021
By Praveen Paramasivam

(Reuters) - A majority of workers at Kellogg Co's breakfast cereal plants voted in favor of a new contract that offers better terms for transitional employees as well as wage increases, Daniel Osborn, president of the local union in Omaha, said on Tuesday.

The new five-year deal ends months-long stalemate between Kellogg and its factory workers in Michigan, Nebraska, Pennsylvania and Tennessee that had prompted the company to warn of permanently replacing striking workers, drawing criticism from President Joe Biden.


The union representing around 1,400 workers said last week the latest tentative deal had showed some progress on a few key issues from the previous proposal, including increases in the cost of living wages and removal of the term "legacy employee."

A union leader had said they could return to work two days after Christmas, nearly three months from when they went on a strike.

Kellogg had said the latest deal offered its lower-tier workers, known as transitional employees, "an accelerated, defined path to legacy wages and benefits as compared to the current contract".

(Reporting by Praveen Paramasivam in Bengaluru; Editing by Anil D'Silva)

Kellogg's, union reach deal to end cereal plant strikes


Signs are held during a rally where US Senator Bernie Sanders spoke to striking Kellogg's workers in Battle Creek, Michigan, on December 17, 2021 (AFP/SETH HERALD)


Tue, December 21, 2021


Kellogg's workers have agreed to end strikes at US cereal plants that had attracted attention from the White House and other politicians amid a wave of labor actions in the country, the company announced Tuesday.

The strike began October 5 at Kellogg's cereal plants in Michigan, Pennsylvania, Nebraska and Tennessee, with workers objecting to the company's two-tiered wage structure, among other grievances.

The firm known best for its breakfast cereals drew intense criticism including from President Joe Biden after it threatened to replace striking workers.

But the company said workers voted in favor of the deal reached last week with the Bakery, Confectionary, Tobacco Workers and Grain Millers International Union (BCTGM) that covers about 1,400 workers and will see wage increases and improved benefits.

"We are pleased that we have reached an agreement that brings our cereal employees back to work," Kellogg's Chairman and CEO Steve Cahillane said in a statement.

"We look forward to their return and continuing to produce our beloved cereal brands for our customers and consumers."

BCTGM International President Anthony Shelton welcomed the deal, saying, "Our striking members at Kellogg's ready-to-eat cereal production facilities courageously stood their ground and sacrificed so much in order to achieve a fair contract."

The Kellogg's dispute came amid a wave of threatened and actual strikes across American businesses in recent months, which have seen workers at businesses ranging from hospitals to factories threaten to walk off the job.

The action at the cereal factories drew the attention of prominent Washington Democrats after Kellogg's moved to replace striking workers, with Biden saying he was "deeply troubled" by the decision.

Progressive Senator Bernie Sanders attended a rally with striking workers in Michigan last week, cheering their stand against what he called "corporate greed."

cs/hs

Strike at Kellogg comes to a close; workers to return Monday


Striking Kellogg's workers stand outside the company's cereal plant in Omaha, Neb., Thursday, Dec. 2, 2021. The company and the union announced a tentative agreement Thursday that could end the strike that began Oct. 5. (AP Photo/ Josh Funk)

The Associated Press
Mon, December 20, 2021

NEW YORK (AP) — A strike at Kellogg that has gone on since early October has ended after workers voted to ratify a new labor contract at the company's four U.S. cereal plants.

The contract covers approximately 1,400 workers represented by the union at plants in Michigan, Nebraska, Pennsylvania and Tennessee.

Kellogg said Tuesday that the new contract provides immediate, across the board wage increases and enhanced benefits for all. It also provides an accelerated, defined path to top-tier wages, a major sticking point for workers, and benefits for transitional employees.


“We are pleased that we have reached an agreement that brings our cereal employees back to work,” CEO Steve Cahillane said in a prepared statement.

Workers that have been on strike since Oct. 5 will return to work on Monday, Kellogg said, after the holiday.

The Bakery, Confectionery, Tobacco Workers and Grain Millers International Union said the contract is a win for workers.

“This agreement makes gains and does not include any concessions,” union President Anthony Shelton said in a prepared statement.

Members of the Bakery, Confectionary, Tobacco Workers and Grain Millers International Union voted on the new offer over the weekend. The offer includes cost-of-living adjustments and a $1.10 per hour raise for all employees.

Earlier this month, an overwhelming majority of workers voted down a five-year offer that would have provided 3% raises and cost of living adjustments in coming years to most, but not all of the workers.

Workers have been on strike at plants in Battle Creek, Michigan; Omaha, Nebraska; Lancaster, Pennsylvania; and Memphis, Tennessee. They make all of the company’s well-known brands of cereal, including Apple Jacks and Frosted Flakes.

Kellogg’s said most workers at its cereal plants earned an average of $120,000 last year, though union members have said they work more than 80 hours a week to earn that, and those wages are only available to longtime workers. Under the two-tiered pay system the company uses, newer workers are paid less and receive fewer benefits.

That pay system has been a sticking point during the negotiations, and Kellogg’s offer didn’t change on that part of the contract. The company has said it will allow all workers with at least four years of experience move up to the higher legacy pay level as part of this contract. Union officials previously said that plan wouldn’t let other workers move up quickly enough. The company has also proposed eliminating the current 30% cap on the number of workers at each plant who receive the lower wages.

The workers remained unified during the strike amid worker shortages across the country, which may have given them more leverage in negotiations. And the said raises were overdue after workers kept the plants running throughout the coronavirus pandemic.

Throughout the strike Kellogg has been trying to keep its plants operating with salaried employees and outside workers, and the company said late last month that it planned to start hiring permanent replacements for the striking workers.

President Joe Biden sharply criticized Kellogg’s for threatening to permanently replace workers, saying that doing that would undermine the collective bargaining process.

Shares of Kellogg Co., based in Battle Creek, Michigan, fell more than 2% Tuesday.

Facebook's internal assessment of EU-US data transfers shows it has no legal leg to stand on, says noyb

Natasha Lomas
Mon, December 20, 2021


In its latest (and last) pre-Christmas document reveal, European privacy advocacy group noyb has published details of an 86-page internal assessment by Facebook of its (continued) transfers of European's personal data to the U.S. -- and the resulting conclusion can be best summed up as "The Emperor, Mark Zuckerberg, Has No Clothes".

The convoluted backstory here is that Facebook's transfers of EU users' data to the U.S. remain ongoing -- in spite of two rulings by the bloc's top court finding the U.S. is a risky jurisdiction for such data (aka Schrems I and Schrems II); and a preliminary order by Facebook's lead EU DPA, over a year ago, saying it must suspend EU-U.S. transfers in the wake of the aforementioned Schrems II ruling.

And if that wasn't enough, it's also almost a year since Facebook's lead EU DPA, the Irish Data Protection Commission (DPC), settled a legal challenge from noyb -- agreeing last January to "swiftly" finalize the complaint in question.


Yet there's still no final decision from Ireland on the legality of Facebook's EU-U.S. data transfers -- some 8.5 years after the complaint was first filed by noyb founder and chair, Max Schrems (noyb didn't even exist when he filed this complaint!).

Asked whether a decision on Facebook's data transfers will -- at long, long last -- be issued this year, the DPC's deputy commissioner, Graham Doyle, told us the inquiry is "fairly well progressed at this stage" but he admitted it will not be finalized in the next few weeks.

Asked if a decision will be issued in January, Doyle ducked specifying a time frame -- saying that the DPC is unsure "exactly when" the decision will be made.

So perhaps 2022 will -- finally -- be the year of reckoning for Facebook.

Facebook’s EU-US data transfers face their final countdown

But, if not, 2022 may well be a year of substantial reckoning for the Irish DPC, which is now facing intense scrutiny over the sedate pace and convoluted form of its enforcements in major cases against tech giants like Facebook.

The European Commission warned earlier this month that unless "effective" enforcement arrives soon it will step in and move the bloc toward a system of centralized oversight.

So the message from EU lawmakers to DPAs such as Ireland (and, really, especially to Ireland) is simple: Use your enforcement powers soon -- or you'll lose them.

Returning to Facebook, if an EU data transfer suspension order does ever actually get enforced, the tech giant faces having to make drastic changes to its infrastructure and/or its business model.

Or it could even shut down service in Europe -- a possibility Facebook has floated in an earlier legal submission -- although its chief spin doctor, Nick Clegg, quickly denied it would ever actually do that.

Facebook and Clegg have preferred to resort to economic scare tactics to lobby the bloc's lawmakers against enforcing the rule of law against the national-state-sized data-mining empire -- suggesting that any suspension order against Facebook's data flows would wreak economic damage against European SMEs that use its ad tools to target consumers.

It's a classic Big Tech tactic to lobby against tighter regulation of its own market power by claiming that limits on its operations will be far more damaging for the smaller businesses that rely on powerful platforms to reach potential buyers.

The adtech industry also likes to imply that you can either have privacy or competition, not both.

However, on that front, regional competition authorities are becoming increasingly sophisticated in their assessment of adtech platform power -- including understanding how data abuse by tech giants can itself be a lever to lock in market power. (See, for example Germany's Federal Cartel Office's antitrust case against Facebook's consentless superprofiling of users.)

So how much runway such self-serving framing has left, as the bloc hastens to pass ex ante rules to boss tech giants, is up for debate.

Facebook has managed to use the courts to defer a final countdown on its data transfers issues for years. But its business model is now under attack on multiple fronts -- with the European Parliament, for example, pushing for tighter restrictions on behavioral ads and an outright ban on dark patterns in the Digital Markets Act.

In recent weeks, noyb has also been shining more disinfecting sunlight onto the EU's enforcement failures -- where Facebook is concerned -- by protesting at being removed from an ongoing procedure against it by the Irish DPC, after the regulator tried to get it to sign a gag order in exchange for remaining a party to the proceeding.

The DPC has been accused of acting in Facebook's interests in trying to keep procedural documents confidential without a valid legal basis for ordering third parties not to publish information related to ongoing procedures.

(And other pre-Christmas document-reveals by noyb have made especially awkward reading for the DPC -- which can be seen apparently trying to insert a notorious Facebook GDPR consent bypass tactic into European Data Protection Board (EDPB) guidance -- by arguing for allowing T&Cs to be laundered via contract clause -- and getting roundly slapped back by other EU DPAs.)

Last month, the not-for-profit also took the further step of filing a complaint of criminal corruption against the DPC -- in another sign of how frustrated European privacy campaigners have gotten at inaction against rights-trampling tech giants.

Facebook’s lead EU privacy supervisor hit with corruption complaint

As noted above, despite a complaint that dates back to the Snowden disclosures, two landmark CJEU rulings and countless court challenges, Facebook continues to pass Europeans' data to the U.S. -- as if the rule of law can't touch it.

Yet, back in May, the company lost in the Irish High Court after trying (and failing) to challenge the DPC's procedure; including by arguing the DPC was being too hasty and did not properly investigate before it sent the preliminary suspension order. (NB: The original complaint dates back to June 2013 so it's fast approaching a decade old at this point.)

Details of Facebook's Transfer Impact Assessment (TIA) revealed by noyb yesterday are long on claimed justifications for Facebook to ignore the CJEU -- and short on substantive arguments to stand up Facebook's claim that it's totally not a problem for it to continue to take European's data to the U.S. for processing despite the CJEU ruling that there are huge legal implications if you do that.

The CJEU has -- not once, but twice -- struck down flagship transfer agreements between the EU and the U.S. on the grounds that U.S. surveillance law is in fatal conflict with European privacy rights.

And while, back in July 2020, the court did allow the possibility that data can be legally moved out of the EU to third countries, it made it clear that DPAs must step in and suspend data flows where they suspect people's information is going somewhere where it's at risk.

Given the court simultaneously struck down the EU-U.S. Privacy Shield, the U.S. was clearly identified as a problem third country.

Add to that, Facebook has the additional problem of its data processing being subject to U.S. surveillance law (via NSA programs like PRISM). So there's no easy fix for Facebook's EU data transfers, as we've said before.

However, having a friendly regulator that doesn't rush to do anything about really obvious problems is sure to help, though...

Europe puts out advice on fixing international data transfers that’s cold comfort for Facebook

In a statement accompanying its publication of details of Facebook's TIA, Schrems said: "Facebook has been ignoring EU law for 8.5 years now. The newly released documents show that they simply take the view that the Court of Justice is wrong -- and Facebook is right. It is an unbelievable ignorance of the rule of law, supported by the lack of enforcement action by the Irish DPC. No wonder that Facebook wants to keep this document confidential. However, it also shows that Facebook has no serious legal defence when continuing to ship European's data to the US."

Noyb details the contents of the TIA via a number of videos -- including several where Schrems summarizes the contents of the document in detail. (In some locations in Europe it also provides data from the TIA itself but notes that it is withholding this content from the U.K. and Ireland on account of the legal risk of Facebook and/or the DPC bringing baseless SLAPP suits against it to try to exhaust its limited resources.)

Per its analysis, one of Facebook's tactics to try to deny/evade legal reality is to seize on newer developments, such as the Commission's updated Standard Contractual Clauses (SCCs) or the adequacy decision recently granted to the U.K. (despite that country's own surveillance practices) -- to claim as new evidence that the earlier CJEU ruling no longer applies.

That means Facebook has variously sought to argue that the DPC was too quick to come to a conclusion vis-à-vis the legality of its data flows; and that circumstances on the ground have changed in a way that means its flows are now totally fine anyway.

All of which serves to underline how delaying enforcement is itself a key strategy for Facebook to evade the application of EU law.

That, in turn, directly implicates its lead EU regulator -- because, by taking such a painstakingly long time over investigations the regulator generates ample time and space for Facebook to come up with fresh lines to cynically reboot its arguments against any enforcement taking place.

In short, it allows for a perpetual game of regulatory whack-a-mole that gives Facebook a thumbs up to carry on with data-mining business as usual in the meanwhile. While EU people's fundamental rights exist only on paper.

The DPC declined to comment on noyb's fourth Advent Reading when we reached out.

But here's Schrems' assessment again: "The Irish DPC is extremely slow and is not in control of this procedures. Facebook constantly moves to another argument, while the DPC has not even decided on the decision from 2013. Facebook is dominating this procedure -- instead of the DPC."

Per noyb, Facebook's TIA also details what it claims as "supplementary measures" to boost protection for the data -- something the EDPB has said may be possible for data controllers to apply to transfers to risky third countries to make such flows achieve compliance with EU standards.

For example, robust, end-to-end encryption may, in theory, be applied to prevent access to data in a readable form when it's in the U.S.

However, Facebook's business model is based on profiling users via its big data analysis of their information so it's certainly not in a position to lock its own business out of people's data. Not without a radical change of business model.

Unsurprisingly, then, noyb found the TIA's section on claimed "supplementary measures" contained nothing more than a (long) list of industry standard policies and procedures. So no extra steps at all, then.

"According to the documents we received, absolutely no new or relevant measures were taken by Facebook on foot of the CJEU judgment of 16.6.2020," noyb notes.

We reached out to the EDPB for a view on the sorts of policies and procedures Facebook's TIA lists as "supplementary measures" -- and will update this post with any response. Update: The EDPB secretariat said:

"[T]he GDPR introduces the new cross-functional principle of accountability. This means that each organisation must analyze its own situation and implement the organizational and technical measures necessary in its specific case. This is a case by case analysis, depending on the risk presented by the processing of personal data by the organisation.

The same principle applies to the Recommendations on measures that supplement transfer tools, which can be found here."

Asked for its response to noyb's assessment of its TIA, Facebook sent this statement -- attributed to a Meta spokesperson:

Like other companies, we have followed the rules and relied on international transfer mechanisms to transfer data in a safe and secure way. Businesses need clear, global rules, underpinned by the strong rule of law, to protect transatlantic data flows over the long term.

Legal clouds gather over US cloud services, after CJEU ruling

Rio Tinto names outgoing Canadian ambassador to China as chairman

* Dominic Barton to start as chairman on May 5, join board in April

* Was managing director of McKinsey for 9 years

Dec 20 (Reuters) - Rio Tinto on Monday tapped Canada's outgoing ambassador to China as its chairman, hoping the veteran consultant's links to its biggest market will help the global miner as it looks to move on from the scandal over its destruction of ancient rock shelters in Australia.

Dominic Barton will take over as chairman of Rio from Simon Thompson, who decided to step down https://www.reuters.com/business/rio-tinto-chairman-becomes-latest-high-profile-departure-after-caves-blast-2021-03-02 to take responsibility for the destruction of the 46,000-year-old Juukan Gorge rock shelters in Western Australia in May 2020.

The Anglo-Australian company faced public and investor uproar following the cave blasts, which led to the resignations https://www.reuters.com/article/rio-tinto-ceo-int-idUSKBN2613OD of its then-chief executive and two other senior executives.

The Ugandan-born Barton, 59, will join Rio's board on April 4 before becoming chairman on May 5, the company said. Jakob Stausholm has been CEO for almost a year.

Barton, who spent nine years leading McKinsey & Co and was previously its Asia chairman based out of Shanghai, is leaving https://www.reuters.com/article/us-canada-china-idCAKBN2IL15Y his two-year assignment as Canada's ambassador to China where he helped secure the release of two detained Canadian citizens amid icy relations between Ottawa and Beijing.

China accounts for more than half of Rio's revenue, according to the company's latest annual report, largely due to the appetite in the world's second-largest economy for iron ore, a steelmaking ingredient essential to the country's infrastructure push.

That demand helped lift iron ore prices this year, which in turn saw Rio post record profits https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/rio-tinto-first-half-earnings-more-than-doubles-2021-07-28 in the first half, although prices have since cooled.

Barton is set to leave his role as ambassador at the end of the year and as Rio chairman will have to contend with rising tensions between Canberra and Beijing, which has slapped tariffs on Australian wine and barley, as well as severely limiting imports of coal.

Also on his plate will be helping Rio push through several growth projects, including the Oyu Tolgoi copper-gold project in Mongolia and the $2.4 billion Jadar lithium mine in Serbia.

He served as managing director of McKinsey when its work in South Africa https://www.reuters.com/article/us-mckinsey-safrica-idUSKBN1CL316 with utility firm Eskom drew the management consultancy into political scandal.

 (Reporting by Nikhil Kurian Nainan in Bengaluru; Editing by Paul Simao and Peter Cooney)

Support for Black Lives Matter movement is declining, AMONG WHITE AMERICANS  according to new poll



Claretta Bellamy
Mon, December 20, 2021

A new poll found a decline in support among Americans for the Black Lives Matter movement, a year and a half after the killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis and other high-profile deaths of Black people in encounters with police sparked a global outcry.

According to a national poll conducted by Civiqs, a nonpartisan online survey firm affiliated with the progressive media group Daily Kos, 44 percent of respondents, overall, said they support the Black Lives Matter movement. Another 43 said they oppose it, while 11 percent said they neither support nor oppose it. The survey has tracked respondents’ viewpoints at multiple moments from April 2017 to this month. Civiqs did not provide a margin of error.

According to the poll, support for the Black Lives Matter movement peaked in June 2020 at 52 percent, a month after Floyd was killed. At the height of the movement, protesters marched across the country to express their outrage at Floyd’s death, which was seen by millions in disturbing video showing Floyd losing consciousness as a white police officer knelt on his neck for almost 10 minutes.

Since then, public support to Black Lives Matter has continue to decline, including after the shooting of Jacob Blake, a Black man, by police officers in Kenosha, Wisconsin, in August 2020 and the conviction in April of former police officer Derek Chauvin in the murder of Floyd.

While 82 percent of Black respondents said they support the Black Lives Matter movement, 53 percent of white respondents said they opposed the movement, reflecting a pattern of public opinion when it comes to racial justice movements, said Vida Robertson, the director of the Center for Critical Race Studies at the University of Houston-Downtown.

Robertson said the findings reveal the historical phenomenon of the liberation struggles of Black Americans and civil rights movements, from the Harlem Renaissance to the Black Power movement.

“These polls are quite representative of America’s approach,” Robertson said. “There’s no historical evidence whatsoever that America has ever been interested in Black liberation and building an equitable society. We are simply coming to grips with our romantic ideals that are running up against our political realities. And the fact stands that America has constantly and will constantly struggle with the liberation of Black bodies, because we are endemically a racist society.”

Black Lives Matter, founded in 2013 after the acquittal of George Zimmerman in the killing of a Black teenager, Trayvon Martin, began as a hashtag and grew into a global organization. In a previous interview, Alicia Garza, a co-founder of Black Lives Matter, said her organization has been adapting its focus toward more structural reforms.

Robertson said he believes far more people became aware of issues affecting the Black community, such as police brutality, during the Covid-19 pandemic, which allowed the country to focus on problems that would otherwise have been ignored. However, as the pandemic shifts, so does support for movements like Black Lives Matter.

“Our country is simply going back to default,” Robertson said. “Our job is to reconstruct the game, so that we can actually move beyond winning them over to becoming the American Dream that we longed for.”

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