Qatari activist resurfaces on social media after speculation about her safety

A Qatari women's activist who had said she faced threats from her family and sought asylum in Britain has resurfaced on social media, four months after she disappeared from public view.

© Screen capture from Twitter

Noof al-Maadeed, who is in her early 20s, posted videos from an unknown location and on a new Twitter account, giving assurances she was safe and well.

"Noof is here. Noof is alive. Noof isn't dead," she said in one video, smiling and wearing a black hijab.

"I'm fine, I'm healthy and I'm safe. This video is to reassure everyone who showed their support," she added in another post, without explaining her absence.

The hashtag #WhereIsNoof started circulating after Maadeed stopped posting in October, following her return to Qatar after abandoning a bid for asylum in Britain.

Maadeed, who has criticised the treatment of women in her conservative Muslim homeland, had issued a series of tweets claiming her family tried to harm her.

Her case comes at a time of heightened focus on human rights in the gas-rich Gulf country, a year before it hosts football's World Cup.

Maadeed said she opened a new Twitter account because she had lost her password for the old one, which had more than 16,000 followers.

In one tweet, she posted a picture of balloons and birthday cakes – one of which said "Welcome home" – and thanked Qatar's social affairs and family minister, Mariam al-Misnad.

"I hope that this is a start of Qatari authorities taking steps to ensure that she can live an independent and free life," said Rothna Begum, senior women's rights researcher for Human Rights Watch.

"We are calling on the authorities to support her decisions about her safety and care, and respecting her freedom of association and expression."

Maadeed has used her social media accounts to denounce Qatar's guardianship laws, which require adult women to obtain male approval for everyday activities.

(AFP)

This will be South Sudan’s hungriest year ever, experts say

By SAM MEDNICK and DENG MACHO

1 of 12

Nyayiar Kuol holds her severely malnourished 1-year-old daughter Chuoder Wal in a hospital run by Medicines Sans Frontieres (Doctors Without Borders) in Old Fangak in Jonglei state, South Sudan Tuesday, Dec. 28, 2021. Aid groups say more people than ever in the country will face hunger this year, because of the worst floods in 60 years as well as conflict and the sluggish implementation of the peace agreement that has denied much of the country basic services. (AP Photo/Sam Mednick)


OLD FANGAK, South Sudan (AP) — Nyayiar Kuol cradled her severely malnourished 1-year-old daughter as they traveled for 16 hours on a crowded barge to the nearest hospital to their home in rural South Sudan. For months she had been feeding her four children just once a day, unable to cultivate because of disastrous flooding and without enough food assistance from the government or aid groups. She worries her daughter might die.

“I don’t want to think about what could happen,” she said.

Seated on her hospital bed in Old Fangak town in hard-hit Jonglei state, the 36-year-old Kuol tried to calm her daughter while blaming the government for not doing more. Nearly two years have passed since South Sudan formed a coalition government as part of a fragile peace deal to end a five-year civil war that plunged pockets of the country into famine, and yet Kuol said nothing has changed.

“If this country was really at peace, there wouldn’t be hunger like there is now,” she said.

More people will face hunger this year in South Sudan than ever, said aid groups. That’s because of the worst floods in 60 years, as well as conflict and the sluggish implementation of the peace agreement that has denied much of the country basic services.

“2021 was the worst year since independence in the 10 years of the life of this country and 2022 will be worse. Food insecurity is at horrific levels,” said Matthew Hollingworth, country representative for the World Food Program in South Sudan.

While the latest food security report by aid groups and the government has yet to be released, several aid officials familiar with the situation said preliminary data show that nearly 8.5 million people — out of the country’s 12 million — will face severe hunger, an 8% increase from last year. The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they weren’t authorized to speak to the media.

Aid officials say worst affected Fangak county is now as bad as Pibor county was this time last year, when global food security experts said some 30,000 Pibor residents were likely in famine.

During trips to three South Sudan states in December, some civilians and government officials expressed concern to The Associated Press that people were beginning to starve to death.

In October, a mother and her child died in Pulpham village because they didn’t have food, said Jeremiah Gatmai, the humanitarian representative for the government in Old Fangak.

Nearly 1 million people across South Sudan have been affected by the floods, according to the United Nations, which last year had to reduce food aid by half in most places because of funding constraints, affecting some 3 million people.

Two years of floods have prevented people from farming and killed more than 250,000 livestock in Jonglei state alone, according to the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization.

Some displaced families in Old Fangak said ground-up water lilies were their only daily meal. “We eat once a day in the morning and then sleep without food,” said Nyaluak Chuol. The 20-year-old like some others lost her fishing net in the floods. When she has enough money, she pays a boy to fish for her.

Many residents from Jonglei have fled to neighboring states for food and shelter but have found little respite. In Malakal town, some 3,000 displaced people were crammed into abandoned buildings or sheltered under trees with nothing to eat.

“We’re eating leaves and look like skeletons,” Tut Jaknyang told the AP. The 60-year-old has received food assistance just once since fleeing floods in Jonglei in July, he said. He and others said a sack of donated rice had to be shared among 20 people.

North of Malakal in the town of Wau Shilluk, health workers said the number of malnourished children coming into the medical center rose from 10 between January and July to 26 between August and December, according to Christina Dak, a health worker with the International Medical Corps.

While flooding is the main driver of hunger, it’s compounded by government deadlock as the country’s two main political parties try to share power.

Local officials in Malakal aligned with the opposition accused members of longtime President Salva Kiir’s party of undermining them by blocking political appointees and not letting them fire corrupt staff, making it hard to govern and provide services.

“We’re not working as one team. No one’s looking out for the people,” said Byinj Erngst, the health minister in Upper Nile state.

Adding to the political tensions is ongoing fighting between government and opposition-aligned militias in the country’s breadbasket in the southwest.

Government spokesman Michael Makuei said some relief such as medical services continues but there is only so much help that national authorities can give. “The floods have destroyed crops, what can the government do in that case?” he said.

Observers’ frustration is growing. In a speech to the U.N. Security Council in December, the head of the U.N. mission in South Sudan, Nicholas Haysom, warned of a collapse in the country’s peace deal if all parties didn’t renew their political will.

Jill Seaman, who works in Old Fangak with the South Sudan Medical Relief and has more than 30 years of local experience, concluded: “There are no resources, no harvest, and no cows, there’s no place to look for food.”

Islam, Sikhism and why immigration drives religion in Canada: ‘It’s the curriculum of our life’

Ashleigh Stewart 1 day ago

LONG READ

When Ushpreet Singh arrived in Whitehorse, Yukon, in late 2020, he was dismayed to find that the town of 33,000 people did not have a gurdwara — a place of worship for Sikhs like him.

At the time, there were about a dozen Sikh families in Whitehorse and a makeshift Sikh committee, but no meeting place.

So Singh set about trying to establish one himself.

“I asked where all the paperwork was and when I saw it, the total donation was $6,000 in 20 years,” the 23-year-old tells Global News.

“It was not enough to establish a temple, it was not enough for anything. I was really upset; this money couldn't help us. And no one wanted to help.”

One year and one monumental fundraising campaign later, Whitehorse is now home to a gurdwara for a Sikh community that now numbers between 300 and 400 people.

Singh is one of many new immigrants fuelling religious growth among minority groups in Canada.

As Christian religiosity falls to unprecedented levels (just 68 per cent reported a religious affiliation in Canada in 2019, according to new StatCan data), minority religions such as Sikhism, Islam, Buddhism and Hinduism continue to thrive, fuelled by immigration.

In fact, by 2036, StatCan predicts that the number of people affiliated with non-Christian religions could almost double.

In response, Global News has spent the past two months speaking to members of religious communities across the country and looking at historical data to determine why this is happening. This is the part two of that series.

Part One: Why some religions are declining in Canada faster than ever

Sikhism, which is both an ethnic group and religion, now represents 1.4 per cent of all Canadians. That number is up from 0.9 per cent in 2001 and 0.7 per cent in 1996. According to the World Sikh Organization of Canada, there are now approximately 500,000 Sikhs living in the country.

The religion, founded in the Punjab region of India in the 15th century, is built on three core tenets: devotion to God, truthful living and service to humanity. Men are identifiable by their turban, or dastar, worn to keep their hair, which should be unshaven, clean.

It is a “way of life,” Singh says. So when he moved to Whitehorse for work from Toronto due to spiralling living costs, not having a gurdwara was unthinkable.

Singh, helped by a workmate, set about talking to Punjabi news channels across the country to appeal for donations.

Eventually, with money raised from various communities across the country, the group had enough to rent a warehouse for $3,500 per month.

Singh flew to Vancouver to escort the Granth Sahib, the sacred scripture of Sikhism, on its 34-hour drive to its new home, and became the gurdwara’s new preacher.

By November 2021, the Whitehorse Sikh community had raised enough money to buy a permanent space for their gurdwara. Singh estimates they’ve spent close to $1 million on purchasing and renovating the building. It underlines the importance the community puts on maintaining their faith, despite being far from home.

“You cannot make a temple with just money, you need dedication. And without love or without dedication, religion is useless,” Singh says.

The Sikh community in Whitehorse is now growing “day by day,” he says. The gurdwara has become central to the community, where homeless people, of any religion, can come for a meal or for shelter. A Sikh service culminates in a shared meal.

The gurdwara is considered much more than just a place of worship, which is why COVID-19 hit the Sikh community hard.

On a Sunday afternoon in early December 2021, the Gursikh Sabha Canada in Scarborough, Toronto, is bustling. People move from room to room, listening to music performed by preachers flown in from India, while downstairs in the kitchen, small groups eat from metal plates on the floor.

“Whenever you have a crisis, it brings people together, it brings people back home,” says Gobinder Randhawa, a Sikh immigrant from India and former Ontario Sikhs and Gurdwara Council president.

Randhawa arrived in Toronto in 1972, when men wearing turbans were an uncommon sight. He applied for a job with the TTC, Toronto's public transit agency, and was met with confusion over its dress code.

“They asked me, ‘Well, what will you do with your turban?’ I said, ‘Well, I have kept it on for this long, I will keep it on,’” he recalls.

“I told them, ‘Listen, do you want to hire someone who you can trust?’ He said, ‘Yes.’ I said, ‘This is my religion. This is what I believe in. If I give up my religion, I give up my principles just to have a job. Would you trust me?’ He said, ‘No.’ I said, ‘Then, what's your problem?”

Read more:
‘We are all humans’ — Singh Katri murder highlights the need for education, group says

Randhawa says the TTC changed the uniform code to accommodate him. He worked there for 31 years.

All the while, the gurdwara was his place of “strength” in a community where “people look at us like, ‘This guy looks different.’”

But Randhawa says it was important to understand that Sikhs were important contributors to society — and thus, their religion plays an important role in 2022. For instance, Sikhism dictates that 10 per cent of earnings should be given to philanthropy.

“Our community is like one family. But it also doesn’t matter what religion you are. We'll burn our house to give heat to our neighbour,” Randhawa says.

Balpreet Singh Boparai, of the World Sikh Organization, says the community in Canada is being bolstered by a steady influx of young international students. For Sikhs, he says, Canada is the “top choice” for immigration.

“And the first thing people do once they arrive in a community is go and find their nearest gurdwara,” he says.

Between 1971 and 2011, immigration exploded in Canada, after the revising of the Immigration Act in 1976.

According to historic StatsCan data, in those four decades, 711,400 Muslims moved to Canada, as did 243,740 Buddhists, 340,875 Hindus, 71,448 Jews and 274,955 Sikhs. At the same time, most Christian denominations were in a state of steady decline after peaking in the 1960s and 1970s.

Nowadays, these minority religions are at the point of surpassing once major religions in Canada (Muslims account for 3.7 per cent of Canadians, while the United and Anglican churches account for 3.8 per cent). And they’re predominantly made up of immigrants.

Video: Celebrating B.C.’s Sikh community

Those born outside Canada were more likely than those born in Canada to report being Muslim (12 per cent versus one per cent), Hindu (six per cent versus 0.3 per cent), Sikh (four per cent versus 0.6 per cent), according to StatsCan.

They were also more likely to participate in a group religious activity at least once a month (36 per cent versus 19 per cent) or on their own at least once a week (42 per cent versus 28 per cent).

Younger immigrants were also more likely to be religious. People born outside Canada between 1980 and 1999 were more likely (71 per cent) than those born in Canada (59 per cent) to report having a religious affiliation. Among people born between 1940 and 1959, there was little difference.

Read more:
Canadians need to step up to tackle online hate — even with ‘crazy uncles’, says expert

But that hasn’t meant that safeguarding the future is easy.

Boparai says while affiliation may be high in younger generations, the second generation does not have the same interest in managing the gurdwaras.

“There hasn’t been a passing of the reins to the second generation as there has been in the past. They don’t have the same interest.

“One gurdwara tried to hand over to a younger youth group and that lasted a little while and that failed and they were asked to hand over control again.”

According to StatCan projections for Canada, by the year 2036, the number of people affiliated with non-Christian religions could almost double, to make up between 13 per cent and 16 per cent of Canada’s population, compared with nine per cent in 2011.

The Muslim, Sikh and Hindu faiths, in particular, “would see the number of their followers grow more quickly,” due to being “over-represented among immigrants compared to their demographic weight in the population as a whole.”

Abdie Kazemipur, a University of Calgary sociologist and the chair in ethnic studies, says the numbers reflect the fact that immigrants to Canada are coming from less developed, more religious countries. New immigrants then seek out places of worship as a way to connect with others.

“A lot of immigrants have gone to these religious communities in search of those lost connections that they had back in their countries of origin. And what is interesting here is that some of these, not very many, but some of these people are people that are not necessarily religious themselves,” Kazemipur says.

“Most of the studies that have been done recently, on Christianity even, show that most of the vitality in terms of religion is coming from the immigrant community, not necessarily the native-born population.”

He says this was particularly true for the Muslim community, who also had to deal with rising levels of Islamophobia and a “misperception” that Muslims have a stronger attachment to their faith.

“That perception has created an intellectual environment in which every time that someone wants to encounter a Muslim or wants to learn something, they think that they have to start from religion.

“All these other socio-demographic, socio-economic factors that are so powerfully present in everybody else’s lives, it seems in this perception that they are not relevant for Muslims.”

Because Muslim people were so frequently being asked about their faith, it also meant that those who were more loosely associated with it were more likely to go and learn about it, which also boosted religiosity, Kazemipur says.

Islam is now the largest non-Christian religious group and the fastest-growing religion in Canada, accounting for 3.7 per cent of Canadians. That’s up from 1.5 per cent in 2001 and 1.1 per cent in 1996.

Unlike churches nearby that sit nearly empty during weekend services, on a Friday at noon in mid-December 2021, Masjid Toronto is overflowing with people. Due to COVID-19 restrictions, people now have to book online for a space — which is especially important for Friday’s Jumah prayer, the most important of the week and the one men are required to attend.

Men in thobes and women in hijabs jostle for space in their respective rooms as the call to prayer sounds. The imam reiterates how important it is to book online, saying he’s turning people away when the mosque reaches capacity.

Afterwards, Rania Lawendy, national director of the Muslim Association of Canada, tells Global News there simply aren’t enough mosques to accommodate the city’s growing Muslim population. Religion “plays a huge role” in everyday life for Muslims, she says, and that hasn’t changed in the face of modern life.

“Islam is a way of life. And that's not just a statement, it really does encompass everything. It encompasses our resilience, our understanding of justice and our understanding of really being of benefit to others. It's not just worship, but it's your dealings, so your dealings with your neighbours and how you are at work,” Lawendy says.

“Religiosity doesn't just encompass going to the mosque and praying, but how are you in your everyday life? How are you with other people? What is your integrity? What do you feel your purpose is and are you a benefit, not only to Muslims, but to all of Canadian society.”

Tragedies such as the London attack, when a Muslim family was killed, have hit the community hard, she says. But faith has “kept us resilient.”

“When something bad happens, it’s perceived as a test and people are rewarded for it. So our viewpoint of things like the pandemic are very different,” she says.

“It's almost like if you didn't have your faith, what a miserable life you would have.”

Lawendy herself is a testament to that. She says her faith helped her through the toughest period of her life: when she was 25 and she lost her second child, her father and had a miscarriage all within six months.

“They brought me like a psychiatrist. And I'm like, ‘What is this for? And they're looking at my record saying, ‘You can't be OK. You're 25 years old.’ And I was like, ‘No, I'm OK.’ And I really was OK.”

That resilience, and the mosque community, helps new immigrants find their way in a new country, she says.

Video: Syrian immigrant talks about her experience as Muslim in Canada

Syrian immigrant Asmaa Ghadban, who moved to Vancouver Island from Jordan in late 2019 as a refugee, says when she and her family first arrived, their Christian sponsors accompanied them to the mosque and continued to do so for several weeks.

Her eldest daughter, who wears a hijab, was worried about attending school. But the school was accommodating.

“When I registered my kids, I told the principal and the office there my girls will pray. They told me, ‘OK, don’t worry, we will make them a special place or we will get them a room,’” Ghadban says.

Her three children now go to the mosque three times per week and learn Arabic.

“Religion is the curriculum of our life,” she says.

“I started growing those seeds in the heart of my kids, because maybe in the future, they will remember that.”

Kazemipur says because Islam provides a framework for how life should be lived, there’s “more room for religion” in Muslims’ everyday lives.

The community had also become more tight-knit than perhaps they would have been in their home countries due to a rise in Islamophobia after 9/11.

“(Muslims) have become more alert to the fact that religion is playing such a big role in their lives, and in the minds of people who are viewing them,” he says.

Tina Aseffa, from Ethiopia, converted to Islam while at university in Hamilton studying for a bachelor of science. She’d been raised Catholic, courtesy of her half-Italian mother, but her sister had grown interested in the key tenets of Islam and while initially against it, Aseffa then found herself identifying with it too.

“There came a time when I felt like I’d be living a lie. And you can lie to people, but how could you lie to yourself?”

The conversion caused ructions in her family and left her not speaking to her mother or father for two years. But the Muslim community stepped in to fill the void, teaching her Arabic, introducing her to friends and even helping to pay her rent.

Video: ‘It felt natural:’ Hamilton woman talks about converting to Islam

While she admits that she’s experienced plenty of Islamophobia — she’s been insulted on the street, yelled at to “go back to where you came from,” targeted for searches at airports, even insulted by a store worker while buying her very first skirt the weekend she converted — she says she’s never looked back.

“Is there discrimination? Yes. Is there Islamophobia? Yes. Do I feel targeted at times? Yes. But at the same time, there's the halal storage, there’s the schools, there's the mosques.

“Canada has allowed me to live my Islamic life.”

Desmond Tutu visited Edmonton in 1998. The man who invited him remembers his impact

When Desmond Tutu died, former Canadian citizenship court judge Gurcharan Bhatia’s thoughts returned to the cleric’s Edmonton visit 23 years ago, and the ripples — still felt today — left in his wake

.

© Provided by Edmonton Journal Gurcharan Bhatia holds a photo of Bishop Desmond Tutu at his home in Edmonton on January 4, 2022. Bhatia and his late wife Jiti were instrumental in bringing Tutu to Edmonton in 1998 to attend the International Human Rights Conference. Tutu died at the age of 90 on December 26, 2021.

“H e was a real promoter of human rights,” 90-year-old Bhatia said from his south Edmonton home. “He was always swimming against the current.”

In 1998, Bhatia, then-chair of a conference celebrating the 50th anniversary of the United Nations’ Universal Declaration of Human Rights, was seeking a keynote speaker for the November event, and looked to Tutu, whose anti-apartheid activism won a Nobel Peace Prize in 1984.

Thinking a personal invitation would help his case, Bhatia boarded a February flight for Cape Town, South Africa, with his wife Jiti to seek an audience with the former archbishop.

At the time, Tutu was busy helping his own country reckon with its past as chair of South Africa’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission — a process that documented human rights violations committed and suffered under apartheid. Tutu would present the first five volumes of the resulting report to South African President Nelson Mandela a month before Bhatia’s conference.

The Nobel laureate couldn’t commit to the visit at first, Bhatia said, but a spirited appeal from his better half might have helped seal the deal.

“Mr. Tutu said ‘I will pray that God makes your conference a success,'” Bhatia recalled. “And she said, ‘Look here: That prayer has to go to you. If you don’t come, it won’t happen.’”

Tutu laughed, Bhatia added, and the rest is history.

© File photo Nov. 27, 1998. Archbishop Desmond Tutu waves to school children from St. Richard Catholic Elementary who performed songs from the Lion King at City Hall. Tutu was in town for the UN Human rights conference on Nov. 27, 1998. While in town Tutu stayed at the Fairmont Hotel Macdonald.

News of Tutu’s upcoming Edmonton visit had the city buzzing months in advance, prompting organizers to accommodate growing interest in the event. About 700 delegates from more than 30 countries came for the three-day meeting, after which Tutu packed the Jubilee Auditorium by delivering the University of Alberta’s inaugural visiting lecture on human rights — an event the university continues to hold annually.

While in town, Tutu also spoke with then-Premier Ralph Klein, whose caucus had been dragging its heels over support for the UN’s Convention on the Rights of the Child, specifically around articles dealing with a child’s right to access written and visual material.

Until that point, Alberta had refused to endorse the document, but after speaking with Tutu, Klein said his caucus would revisit the issue. Alberta Hansard notes that Klein wrote Prime Minister Jean Chrétien the following January, lending the feds Alberta’s “qualified support” to ratify the convention so long as it “does not usurp or override the authority of parents.”

The conference also produced the Edmonton Rights Resolution, which called on countries the world over to protect the human rights of all citizens.

A clipping of the Edmonton Rights Resolution from the Edmonton Journal on Nov. 29, 1998.

The idea was to promote those values enshrined in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights around the world by cultivating a culture that doesn’t discriminate on the basis of gender, colour or creed, Bhatia said.

“Respect for every human being should be a natural behaviour,” he explained. “That’s a habit of the heart.”

However, Bhatia added, such a vision isn’t easily realized.

Remembering the meeting in Cape Town all those years ago, Bhatia said he asked Tutu to describe the effort it takes to fight for human rights given his experience in South Africa.

“He thought for a minute and said, ‘Have you ever gone in the river and swam against the current? It’s very difficult. You have to be very strong and a believer,'” Bhatia recalled.

With 2023 marking the diamond anniversary of the UN Human Rights Declaration, Bhatia hopes Edmonton can channel the energy of the last conference and host another to continue the cause.

— With files from Postmedia

#YEG

A Nurse Calls Out An 'Anti-Vaxxer' Who Led A Rally Weeks After She Gave Him His Second Dose

A nurse who has worked in COVID-19 wards and now administers vaccines is sharing a recent experience with a man she claims leads anti-vaccine rallies.

© Provided by Narcity

The nurse, who wanted to remain anonymous on her Edmonton Reddit post, said that while giving out second doses, she encountered a man who "was adamant the vaccine was deadly."

She said that despite the man's concerns about the vaccine, he still wanted to receive his second dose, because it "was being forced upon him."

She added: "I didn't ask questions though. I just let him rant. He then kept asking about his medical information being private and I assured him it was.

"I was sure that nobody cared about him being vaccinated to which he replied 'thousands will care if they find out.' He was very dramatic and trying hard to pique my interest."

Weeks later, the nurse said she was alerted by a friend to videos posted on social media from an anti-vaccination rally.

She said she recognized the man leading the rally as the same man she had recently given a second dose of a COVID-19 vaccine to.

She added: "The rest of the evening I watched him. He uses a pseudonym but it was 100% him. Not only does he claim he is anti-vaccine, but he actually shames others for getting vaccinated.

"The things he says are quite honestly, vile. And he seems to have a fairly large following… all I know is that he is double vaccinated and I was the one who administered the second shot."

Working was pointless at best and 'degrading, humiliating and exploitative' at worst, says Reddit moderator behind the influential 'antiwork'

sjones@insider.com (Stephen Jones)

© Provided by Business Insider The reasons driving the Great Resignation transcend much more than simply a desire to work less. SrdjanPav/Getty Images

The moderator of a viral, "anti-work" Reddit thread said most work is pointless, and humiliating.
Doreen Ford is a moderator of r/antiwork, which has gained 1.4 million users since October 2020.
"There's a lot of positions that just don't make any sense," Ford told the FT.

A moderator of a viral "anti-work" Reddit thread has said she left traditional employment because much of her work was "degrading, humiliating and exploitative."

The thread – r/antiwork – has nearly 1.6 million members and is part of a movement towards the "antiwork" rejection of the traditional idea of a nine-to-five job in favor of more leisure and fulfilment.

"I think there's a lot of positions that just don't make any sense, that do not have to exist," Doreen Ford, a moderator of the channel, told the FT.

"You're just pushing around papers for no good reason. It doesn't really help anybody," she said.

Ford, 30, spent 10 years working in retail, but left her job in 2017 after her grandmother advised her to follow her passion for dogs.

She now walks dogs part time and has never been happier, she told the FT.

"Usually, at best, [working was] pointless," said Ford. "And at worst it was degrading, humiliating and exploitative."

She added: "Most of us are just normal people. We have jobs that we don't like, which is the whole point of why we're in the movement to begin with."

The thread, whose the full name is "Antiwork: Unemployment for all, not just the rich!", was started in 2013.

For years its membership numbered in the low thousands, before growing exponentially since the onset of the pandemic, which fueled a reassessment of work and its value and prompted a "Great Resignation" of resignations.

The Reddit thread now receives an average of 1,500 posts a day, in which members – so-called "Idlers" – share accounts of bad bosses and encourage each other to quit, similar to the Tang ping movement in China.

 

© Subreddit Stats Membership of r/antiwork has grown exponentially since the beginning of the pandemic. Subreddit Stats

Insider's Hilary Hoffower reported how Gen Z and millennial workers were leading the way by trading in bad jobs for careers that offer greater purpose and meaning — while many older workers are choosing to switch to self-employment or early retirement.

A record 4.5 million Americans quit their job in November.

The reasons driving the great resignation transcend much more than simply a desire to work less.

Kentuckians, whose state is at the epicenter of America's Great Resignation, outlined fears over the Omicron variant, a dearth of accessible childcare and social inequalities as among the reasons to Insider's Juliana Kaplan, Hillary Hoffower, and Madison Hoff.

The Right To Be Lazy - The People
www.slp.org/pdf/others/lazy_pl.pdf · PDF file
The Right To Be Lazy BEING A REPUDIATION OF THE “RIGHT TO WORK” OF 1848 By Paul Lafargue Translated and adapted from the French by Dr. Harriet Lothrop. Published by the

By work we mean what Bob Black says in his classic essay, The Abolition of Work, “Work is production enforced by economic or political means, by the carrot or the stick.” In other words, we are against the notion that people should be structurally limited and optioned out of a better, more peaceful and playful life by the powers that be.
About - Abolish Work
abolishwork.com/about/

The Abolition of Work - The Anarchist Library

https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/bob-black-the-abolition-of-work

2020-11-28 · Bob Black The Abolition of Work No one should ever work. Work is the source of nearly all the misery in the world. Almost any evil you’d care to name comes from working or from

The Right to Be Greedy: Theses on the Practical Necessity of Demanding Everything

by For Ourselves: Council for Generalized Self-Management

Publication date 1974The Right To Be Greedy: Theses On The Practical Necessity Of Demanding Everything is a book published in 1974 by an American Situationist collective called "For Ourselves: Council for Generalized Self-Management". 

Post-left anarchist Bob Black describes it in its preface as an "audacious attempt to synthesize a collectivist social vision of left-wing origin with an individualistic (for lack of a better word) ethic usually articulated on the right".

Its authors say that "[t]he positive conception of egoism, the perspective of communist egoism, is the very heart and unity of our theoretical and practical coherence". It is highly influenced by the work of Max Stirner. A reprinting of the work in the eighties was done by Loompanics Unlimited with the involvement of Bob Black who also wrote the preface to it.

Most libertarians think of themselves as in some sense egoists. If they believe in rights, they believe these rights belong to them as individuals. If not, they nonetheless look to themselves and others as so many individuals possessed of power to be reckoned with. Either way, they assume that the opposite of egoism is altruism. The altruists, Christian or Maoist, agree. A cozy accomodation; and, I submit, a suspicious one. What if this antagonistic intedependence, this reciprocal reliance reflects and conceals an accord? Could egoism be altruism's loyal opposition? Yes, according to the authors of this text. What's more, they insist that an egoism which knows itself and refuses every limit to its own realization is communism.

Contents:
Preface by Bob Black
1. Wealth
2. Individualism and Collectivism
3. The Dialectic of Egoism
4. The Resonance of Egoisms
5. Communist Society
6. Radical Subjectivity
7. Pleasure
8. Sexuality
9. Authority
10. Morality
11. Revolution
Appendix: Preamble to The Founding Agreements of For Ourselves: Council for Generalized Self-Management

A Google exec reportedly said the tech giant's secret antiunion project was supposed to convince employees 'that unions suck'

insider@insider.com (Katie Canales) 

Sundar Pichai, CEO of Google and Alphabet, on January 20, 2020.

 REUTERS/Yves Herman/File Photo

A Google executive reportedly said the firm's "Project Vivian" was to convince employees "that unions suck."
The news surfaced as part of an NLRB court ruling.
The case kicked off after four Google employees were fired in 2019 after organizing.

New details have surfaced about Google's secret anti union campaign, dubbed Project Vivian.

The tech giant ran the project between late 2018 and early 2020 to convince employees not to unionize, per a new report from Vice, which viewed court documents not yet available to the public.

Google's director of employment law, Michael Pfyl, in the documents called the initiative an opportunity "to engage employees more positively and convince them that unions suck," Vice reported.

Another Google attorney also reportedly wrote that the company should select a "respected voice to publish an OpEd outlining what a unionized tech workplace would look like, and counseling employees of FB (Facebook), MSFT(Microsoft), Amazon, and google (sic) not to do it."

And Google's HR director, Kara Silverstein, said she supported the idea but said it would be best if "there would be no fingerprints" and wouldn't be "Google specific," per the report.

A Google spokesperson told Insider: "The underlying case here has nothing to do with unionization, it's about employees breaching clear security protocols to access confidential information and systems inappropriately."

Four Google employees, who were fired in 2019, filed a complaint with the NLRB alleging they were illegally terminated for organizing. In response, the company claimed the group — which came to be known as the "Thanksgiving Four" — was fired for violating security rules by sharing confidential information, which the former employees deny.

Google employees then discovered in 2019 that the company had hired a company called IRI Consultants that is known for helping employers squash organizing efforts. That decision wasn't made by Google's lawyers but by higher-ups like Silverstein and Danielle Brown, the company's vice president of employee engagement, Vice reported, citing court documents.

The series of court documents surfaced as part of a ruling last week involving the National Labor Relations Board and comes after an NLRB judge directed Google to hand over 180 pieces of internal material involving the project late last year. The tech giant, however, has since refused, citing attorney-client privilege, per Vice.

An NLRB judge, however, said that doesn't apply to some of the documents.

"Many of these documents are, or involve the development of, campaign materials in which IRI provides antiunion messaging and message amplification strategies and training tailored to [Google's] workforce and the news and social media environment," NLRB judge Paul Boas wrote in 2019.

Google pushed back on that argument at the time, telling Insider that the firm disagrees with the "characterization of the legally privileged materials referred to by the complainants."

Insurance isn't enough: Governments need to do better on natural disaster resilience

Anne E. Kleffner, Professor, Risk Management and Insurance, University of Calgary

 and Mary Kelly, Chair in Insurance and Professor, Finance, Wilfrid Laurier University 

The massive floods in British Columbia in November 2021 demonstrated the devastation that natural disasters can cause in Canada. Prior to 2010, it was rare for annual insured losses from natural disasters in Canada to exceed $1 billion, but now insured losses of $3 billion are not uncommon.

© THE CANADIAN PRESS/Darryl Dyck 

A woman and children who were stranded by high water due to flooding are rescued by a volunteer operating a boat in Abbotsford, B.C., in November 2021. The Insurance Institute of Canada forecasts that annual insured losses from natural disasters could increase to $5 billion within the next 10 years.

Canada is expected to become wetter, stormier, warmer and to experience more severe connective storms and wildfires. The Insurance Institute of Canada forecasts that annual insured losses could increase to $5 billion within the next 10 years.

Private insurance plays an essential role in supporting the resiliency of communities by providing financial compensation for losses that aid in recovery. Insurance company Munich Re notes that, after accounting for per capita income, countries with greater insurance coverage are more resilient to natural disasters.

However, insurance works best protecting households and communities against idiosyncratic low-frequency, high-severity events. As extreme weather events become more common, relying on insurance alone to protect Canadians against severe weather is not sustainable. It is critical that an integrated and holistic approach to mitigate and manage losses from natural disasters is developed.

Communities and property owners need to be partners in reducing losses by undertaking mitigation activities to reduce the severity of wind, water and wildfire events. However, the largest role falls upon all levels of government to protect Canadians against the impact of catastrophic weather events.
Land-use planning and mitigation

To create more resilient communities, governments need to invest in mitigation, adaptation and risk-prevention activities. Climate change, expanded development and population growth have resulted in the need for updated risk assessments, especially up-to-date flood maps.

© THE CANADIAN PRESS/Jonathan Hayward 

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau looks over maps as he surveys the damage left behind from the flood waters in Abbotsford, B.C. in November 2021. Governments need to invest in risk-prevention activities to create communities that are more resilient to natural disasters.

In high-risk areas, future development must be prohibited, and governments should buy out existing properties. Better flood maps will enable governments to purchase high-risk properties before a devastating flood, and the land could be transformed to help minimize flooding in adjacent areas.

To withstand future extreme weather events, building codes and standards need to be revised. Whether it’s new construction of buildings or infrastructure, retrofitting property or repairing property after a loss, building codes need to be forward-looking.
Insurance and disaster financial assistance

After an extreme weather event, a province or territory may declare the event to be eligible for disaster assistance, with funding available from the province via Disaster Financial Assistance (DFA). DFA is available to property owners and communities for losses that are not covered by insurance companies — DFA does not pay for losses for which insurance is “reasonably and readily” available.

Prior to the flooding events in both Calgary and Toronto in 2013, Canadian homeowners could not buy insurance for overland water damage, but now most insurers offer some level of flood insurance, except in very high-risk areas.

This introduces inequity among homeowners — those who live in the highest risk areas cannot purchase insurance and therefore can receive DFA after a loss, but those living in moderate to high-risk areas where insurance is “reasonably and readily” available may not be able to afford coverage and therefore not be eligible to receive DFA.

© THE CANADIAN PRESS 

A woman gets back into her flooded car on Lakeshore Boulevard, Toronto in July 2013. The floods from that year resulted in insurance companies offering overland flood insurance, in addition to standard sewer backup policies.

Because the term “reasonably and readily” is not well-defined, ambiguity exists regarding who can receive DFA and who cannot. If the limitations around DFA are not fully understood by property owners, or if governments do not clearly define “reasonably and readily,” the incentive to purchase flood insurance is reduced.

Property owners need information regarding the value of purchasing flood insurance and insurers can provide important information about how to mitigate losses from flooding.

Furthermore, owners need to be counselled very carefully on the consequences of not purchasing flood coverage, and the provincial and territorial governments need to remain committed to not pay DFA for losses that could have been insured.
Private-public partnerships

The private insurance market, which has an important role to play in financing losses from natural disasters, has its limitations. The risks associated with some properties exceed the appetite of insurers and some perils have the potential to cause losses too large for the Canadian insurance market to cover.

To achieve sustainable flood insurance coverage, a public-private partnership is needed, whereby the government’s role is to support an insurance risk-sharing pool for high-risk properties that, otherwise, would not be able to purchase coverage. This will help reduce the reliance on DFA and provide information to homeowners regarding the risk they face.

© THE CANADIAN PRESS/Jonathan Hayward 

A man walks through rising flood waters crossing into Canada from the United States in Abbotsford, B.C in November 2021.

Governments also have an important role in providing a safety net for very large losses. The industry guaranty fund, the Property and Casualty Insurance Compensation Corporation, has determined that a catastrophic loss exceeding $35 billion in insured losses would overwhelm the Canadian insurance industry and require government intervention. Such intervention could take the form of providing a layer of insurance coverage for catastrophic losses, or a liquidity or solvency backstop.

Ultimately, insurance and adaptation will not solve the problem of severe weather losses. We need to commit to sincere and strong action on climate change to reduce the frequency and severity of weather events. Some of the tools discussed here — insurance, strengthening building codes, effective mitigation and creating public private partnerships — can be leveraged to build a more resilient society.

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Anne E. Kleffner receives funding from SSHRC, Alberta Finance.

Mary Kelly receives funding from SSHRC and is a director at Heartland Farm Mutual Insurance Company.

Red Lobster staff say they work when they're ill because of a lack of paid sick leave and pressure from managers, according to report

gdean@insider.com (Grace Dean) 

In a Shift Project survey, just 12% of Red Lobster staff said they had access to paid sick leave. Alexi Rosenfeld/Getty Images

Some Red Lobster staff say they work while ill, Popular Information and More Perfect Union reported.

They say it's down to a lack of paid sick leave and pressure from managers.
In a Shift Project survey, just 12% of Red Lobster staff said they had access to paid sick leave.

Current and former staff at some Red Lobster restaurants say they've worked while they're ill during the COVID-19 epidemic – in some cases because of a lack of paid sick leave or because they were unable to meet management requests to find cover, according to a report by Popular Information and More Perfect Union.


James Swartz, a former Red Lobster bartender in Pennsylvania, said he told management he wasn't coming to work after he developed COVID-19 symptoms. He said that management told him he'd have to either work or find cover for the shift, otherwise he'd get written up.

Swartz said that ultimately he stayed at home for two weeks but had no paid time off.

He isn't alone – 12% of Red Lobster staff said they had access to paid sick leave, according to a fall 2021 survey by Harvard University's Shift Project, which collects data on work scheduling for hourly-paid service workers in the US. Popular Information and More Perfect Union shared data from the survey.

Having no paid sick leave has huge effects on the company's staff. Sixty-three percent of Red Lobster workers who said they've been sick in the past month said in the survey that they'd worked while sick. Of that group, two-thirds said it was because they didn't have paid sick leave and needed the income.

"If we don't work we don't get paid," one anonymous Red Lobster worker told the Shift Project. "I worry that co-workers who have been in contact with a confirmed COVID-19 family member would still come to work."

Average hourly income for Red Lobster staff in 2021 was $13 an hour, including tips, Popular Information and More Perfect Union reported. In Shift Project's fall survey, 29% of Red Lobster employees said they'd struggled to pay essential bills over the past month.

"We live paycheck to paycheck," the employee said. "We can't sit at home without pay."

"Managers let employees work sick and do not send them home," another Red Lobster worker told the Shift Project. "Managers also won't let an employee call out sick, they insist they come in unless they find a replacement."

As well as a lack of access to paid sick leave, survey respondents cited being unable to find cover for their shift, worries about getting in trouble, and pressure from supervisors as reasons for showing up to work while they were ill.

The publications reported the restaurant chain directs staff who have to take unpaid sick leave to the RL Cares Employee Emergency Assistance Fund. This is funded by the staff, rather than the company itself: "Our employees voluntarily donate to the fund," Red Lobster says.

Red Lobster didn't immediately respond to Insider's request for comment, but a spokesperson told Popular Information and More Perfect Union: "Red Lobster's paid time off policies are consistent with our industry, in which the vast majority of our workforce are hourly employees with flexible scheduling options. There are some states that have paid sick leave requirements, and where that is the case, we follow the law and honor and pay it.

"We take health and safety very seriously and have an Ill Employee Health Policy in place that is designed to keep both employees and our guests safe. No one is allowed to work sick. Employees who violate this policy are subject to disciplinary action, including termination of employment."

Survey finds oilsands environmental monitoring ineffective after 10 years

 Alberta doesn’t have a good grasp of the overall environmental impacts of the oilsands a decade after implementing monitoring that was supposed to provide it, internal government documents suggest.

© Provided by Edmonton Journal Suncor's base plant with upgraders in the oilsands in Fort McMurray, Alberta, on Monday June 13, 2017.

Bob Weber, The Canadian Press

EDMONTON

In July, Alberta Environment and Parks surveyed dozens of scientists and other participants in the Oilsands Monitoring Program, a joint federal-provincial program that has run under various names since 2012 and is funded by an annual $50-million levy from industry. A copy of that survey was obtained by The Canadian Press.

Of the 112 people surveyed, 26 responded. They expressed concerns from a lack of overall direction to poor communication to an arbitrary and inadequate funding cap being gradually nibbled away by inflation.

“We still have significant concerns with the … program’s ability to develop a robust, world-class monitoring program as intended,” said a response from the Alberta Environmental Network, which has delegates on several of the program’s technical committees.

It points out that funding has remained unchanged since 2012 despite inflation, amounting to a nearly nine-per-cent cut.

“We know of no independent analysis suggesting $50 million is adequate,” the network said.

As a result, it says, crucial questions are going unanswered.

Despite the fact wetlands cover about a quarter of the oilsands area, funding for wetlands research was more than halved in 2021-22 after being cut two-thirds the previous year. Terrestrial monitoring, which looks into the status of plants and animals, was cut by two-thirds for the coming year after a 50 per cent cut last year.

The network said no research has been funded into the risk posed by industry’s toxic tailings ponds.

No one from Alberta Environment and Parks responded to a request for comment on the survey.

Most survey respondents reported there was little communication and co-ordination between different scientific groups.

“Communication in the (program) sucks,” one respondent wrote.

“It is clear that members of committees have no clear direction on the purpose and priorities of the program,” wrote another.

Several said the program gathered useful data, but did nothing with it.

“There were a significant number of work plans that included monitoring activities, but no analysis,” said one.

Most respondents said decisions on which research would be funded were inconsistent and came too late to prepare for that year’s field season.

“To fund an employee’s position one year but not the next, but possibly the year after that is poor management,” said one comment.

The survey did not include numerical breakdowns of its responses.

Mandy Olsgard, who represents Indigenous communities on several program committees, said in an interview that no overall plan guides research decisions. Instead, funds are granted based on proposals from individual researchers.

“We see arbitrary cuts to work plans or technical components that aren’t based on science,” she said. “It’s just trying to get to that ($50 million) number.

“It’s not to say the data’s not there. It just hasn’t been brought together … to say what the effect on the environment is. We don’t understand the cumulative effects of oilsands mining right now, full stop.”

Kelman Wieder is a biologist from Pennsylvania’s Villanova University who has been studying oilsands region wetlands for decades and has published several papers showing how development has affected them. His funding has been entirely cut.

“The approach is, let’s go out and collect some data, bottle-dipping or bug-counting or whatever, put those data into notebooks, stick it on a shelf and call it good,” he said.

Alberta’s monitoring is set up backwards, said Wieder.

“My approach would be let’s design the best program and see what it’s going to cost and see if the money’s there. And if the money’s not there, let’s go back and take a look at the design and see what we can do.

“That doesn’t seem to be the approach.”

He said Alberta seems to be trying to monitor its environment on the cheap.

“I have heard repeatedly that the goal … is to have a monitoring program that is quick, easy and cheap and can be done by people with minimal expertise. That’s just a bizarre set of goals.”

Wieder was firm when asked if the industry’s environmental impact is well understood.

“Absolutely not,” he said. “Not even close.”

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Jan. 9, 2022.