Oath Keepers founder got 'white glove treatment' from FBI during arrest: report

John Wright
January 13, 2022

Stewart Rhodes in his booking photo from Thursday (Collin County Jail)

The founder of the extremist Oath Keepers group, Stewart Rhodes, reportedly got "white glove treatment" from FBI agents during his arrest Thursday after being indicted for seditious conspiracy in connection with the Capitol insurrection.

Rhodes was on the phone with an attorney, Jonathan Moseley, at the time of his arrest, according to BuzzFeed News' Ken Bensinger.

Bensinger said he spoke with Moseley on Thursday night.

Rhodes and Moseley reportedly were discussing whether the Oath Keepers founder would answer questions from the House Select Committee investigating the Capitol insurrection, when the FBI called on the other line.

"Unlike typical FBI arrests, which tend to happen at 6 a.m. and often involve battering rams and dogs, Rhodes appeared to get the white glove treatment," Bensinger reported. "He was asked politely to come outside and given time to dress, Moseley said."

According to a 2020 report in The Atlantic, about two-thirds of Oath Keepers members "had a background in the military or law enforcement."

Moseley told Bensinger that when the FBI called, Rhodes "clicked over the line then added him to the call with the FBI special agent and that he helped negotiate the surrender while Rhodes got ready."

While Moseley isn't Rhodes' attorney, he does represent another Oath Keeper charged in the insurrection, Kelly Meggs.

"The FBI called at roughly 11:40 a.m. CT, while Moseley was discussing Rhodes' options w/ the Select Committee, before which he was due to appear on Feb. 2," Bensinger reported. "Moseley noted that the FBI seized many of the documents Congress subpoenaed. 'So that complicates things!' he added."

The Dallas Morning News' Jamie Landers reported that FBI agents searched the house where Rhodes was staying, in Dallas the suburb of Little Elm.

"FBI agents were seen searching the garage, the black Suburban in the driveway and taking boxes of evidence out of the house," Landers reported. "It is unclear why Rhodes, who is from Granbury, was staying here. The homeowners and their dogs are still inside, but haven’t answered the door.

Multiple Dallas police officers arrived just now. They tried to enter the house again, but no one responded."

Rhodes is scheduled to appear in court on Friday.

Read the full threads from Bensinger and Landers below.

 

Hundreds of doctors petition Spotify to address Joe Rogan’s ‘history of broadcasting misinformation’

2022/1/13 
© New York Daily News

A collection of 270 medical professionals reportedly signed an open letter to Spotify asking the media platform to rein in Joe Rogan, its most listened to podcaster, whom they accuse of promoting junk science with regards to the COVID pandemic.

Their chief complaint is aimed at a Dec. 31 episode of “The Joe Rogan Experience” featuring right-wing media darling Dr. Robert Malone, who is a COVID-vaccine skeptic.

The group behind the letter — first published by Rolling Stone — describes itself as a “coalition of scientists, medical professionals, professors, and science communicators spanning a wide range of fields such as microbiology, immunology, epidemiology, and neuroscience.”

Their concerns include that year-ending program with Malone, which has “been criticized for promoting baseless conspiracy theories” on a podcast those experts accuse of having a “concerning history of broadcasting misinformation.”

Among the things Malone asserted during his visit with Rogan was that “mass formation psychosis” is leading people to get vaccinated against the deadly and highly contagious coronavirus, which has killed more than 800,000 Americans since early 2020. Malone, who did not have a hand in developing COVID vaccines, was involved in early research of mRNA technology more that 20 years ago. mRNA technology is at the core of Pfizer and Moderna’s tested and effective vaccination shots.

“Though Spotify has a responsibility to mitigate the spread of misinformation on its platform, the company presently has no misinformation policy,” the team of medical experts writes in its letter.

Malone was suspended from Twitter earlier this month for violating its rules regarding the dissemination of misinformation. YouTube removed a clip of his interview with Rogan for the same reason.

“The average age of (The Joe Rogan Experience) listeners is 24 years old and according to data from Washington State, unvaccinated 12-34 year olds are 12 times more likely to be hospitalized with COVID than those who are fully vaccinated,” Rogan’s critics state in their missive.

The medical experts charge that the spreading of bad science is a “sociological issue of devastating proportions” and blames Spotify for giving bogus information a home. They call on the platform to “immediately establish a clear and public policy to moderate misinformation on its platform.”

Spotify did not respond to a Daily News request for comment about the letter from the 270 medical professionals.

Speaking on his own behalf, Rogan told listeners last year that they should not come to him for medical advice.

“I’m not a doctor, I’m a f---ing moron,” he said during in April podcast. “I’m not a respected source of information, even for me.”

The 54-year-old podcaster admitted to his 11 million listeners that he doesn’t usually think about what he’s going to say before he speaks. Rogan is described on his website as a “stand up comic, mixed martial arts fanatic, psychedelic adventurer, host of the ‘Joe Rogan Experience’ podcast.”

'To defy Trump's wishes is to defy God's plan': The scary truth about modern right-wing misinformation

John Stoehr
January 13, 2022

U.S. President Donald Trump appears on stage at a rally in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, U.S. April 29, 2017. REUTERS/Carlo Allegri

Death threats will change a person. During previous testimony before a Senate panel, the nation’s top infectious disease expert was calm and deferential. This week marked a break from the past. Enough is enough, apparently. Dr. Anthony Fauci was no longer in the mood.

Senator Roger Marshall of Kansas kept pressing the question of financial disclosures, implying that Fauci was benefiting from the effort to vaccinate the country against the covid pandemic.

Fauci, as head of the White House pandemic response, is a public servant. By law, he must disclose financial information. So of course he didn’t understand Marshall’s question, because his “financial disclosure is public knowledge” and has been for more than three decades.

Two things. Marshall knew this and was pretending not to or he didn’t know this, which should be embarrassing for a sitting senator. Either way, Marshall said his staff could not find the document. Well, it’s here. Ultimately, he was pandering to believers of rightwing misinformation.

After a heated exchange in which Marshall kept insisting Fauci was hiding something and Fauci kept insisting he’s not – “all you have to do is ask” for the disclosure – Fauci said, “What a moron! Jesus Christ!” (He said this to himself, obviously, not realizing his mic was still on.)

Is Fauci showing us how to handle rightwingers? That’s what I asked Sara Aniano on Wednesday. She’s a Monmouth University graduate student studying rightwing rhetoric and conspiracy theories on social media. She co-authored a new report for the Global Network on Extremism and Technology analyzing QAnon trends a year after J6.

She said Fauci’s pushback felt good, but in the end, it probably doesn’t help. “The reality is pretty dire,” she said. Propaganda, conspiracy theory and misinformation have “already infected the population.” It’s too late even for the Washington press corps to do much about it.

The way Anthony Fauci talked to the Republicans is how everyone should talk to rightwing extremists. Am I on to something?

Absolutely. For a lot of people on the left, Fauci's pushback was refreshing. People are tired of the pandering, and of watching misinformation be lumped into the category of “free speech.”

While Fauci’s “moron” comment was indeed a great moment of transparency, we should also consider his ability to humanize the situation with the anecdote about his own harassment.

The left is often considered "soft” in contrast with the alleged "hard truth" attitude of the GOP. While Fauci's position is not about partisanship, anti-vaxx movements have unfortunately aligned with the right and the far-right. So it feels like Fauci is speaking for us, even though he's really speaking on behalf of everyone.

It seems to me speaking for everyone is often interpreted as soft. In other words, acting for the benefit of the common good immediately marks you as an enemy by rightwingers.

For a party that increasingly demonizes collectivism, it's in their best interest to continue promoting "individual responsibility,” as it works for their messaging politically. But for the extreme far-right, it's more sinister. In their minds, there is a war going on between good and evil. And if you're not on their side, their black-and-white thinking places you into the "enemy" category.

The irony is that they are actually collectivists, too, no?

I hear that a lot. In comparison to other countries, America is not a collectivist culture. In my opinion, anyone who pushes extreme nationalism here is also pushing extreme individualism.

As a leftist researcher of far-right misinformation, I admit to a certain level of bias. But January 6 marked a clear turning point in how we view partisanship, I think, and we can't discard that.

Why is it a turning point? We turned from what to what?

For a lot of us studying far-right extremism and misinformation, we couldn't help but feel this collective "we told you so" when January 6 happened. For the first time, we had a visual manifestation of far-right conspiracism that wasn't limited to social media or fringe news programs. In other words, everyone saw people act on the ideologies that misinformation researchers sift through every day.

Of course, how people interpret what they saw is what's shaping their opinion now.

Which is where misinformation comes back, right?

Here's something I tweeted on the anniversary of the insurrection: “By the end of January 6, 2021, Americans were left with the most damaging relic of all: Yet another unfathomable event, born of hate and delusion, for far-right conspiracy theorists to contort into a self-serving narrative that unfairly demonizes the innocent.”

I want to cry.

A lot of us can relate to that.

To what extent is anti-vaccination about purity of blood? To what extent is anti-vaccination cover for plain old white supremacy?

It's interesting, because even if anti-vaxxers don't realize it, the "pure blood" characterization of the unvaccinated has roots to eugenics, which of course has roots to white supremacy.

But to go back to the idea of "infiltration," I think vaccine skepticism ties into that too.

Please go on.

I've been thinking about what types of infiltration the far-right finds most threatening. So far I've come up with three categories: 1) member infiltration, 2) spiritual infiltration and 3) bodily infiltration.

Member infiltration seems to stem from a fear of the "other" hiding in plain sight, trying to live among them but with heinous intentions. We see that a lot with paranoia about Antifa, the feds, Jews or journalists "posing" as patriots.

Spiritual infiltration has a lot to do with "demonic forces" among us. Satanic panic stuff. With QAnon, we see allegations of Satanic rituals in Hollywood or even reptilians wearing skinsuits to pass as humans.

Physical infiltration is a lot about co-opting "my body my choice" messaging to push back against the vaccine, which many think is the mark of the beast or a 5G transmitter or radioactive or a microchip. A lot of crossover with pseudo-science.

There is so much overlap that it's hard to make exclusive categories, but you get the idea.

We haven't talked about religion. What does your research say?

Yes, religion or spirituality is inextricable from far-right narratives overall. My thesis, currently in progress, focuses on QAnon Instagram comments in the week leading up to J6.

Rhetoric that pushes a higher power is always mixed in with far-right narratives, and overwhelmingly, that's Christianity. A lot of people who believe election fraud theories in QAnon circles genuinely think that Donald Trump was anointed by God – he is the chosen leader to usher in "the storm" and defeat the evil Democrats, once and for all.

In their minds, to defy Trump's wishes is to defy God's plan. I wouldn't say that this is ubiquitous across the right, to be clear. That's a pretty extreme version. But religion presents itself across far-right rhetoric in general, even when it doesn't involve Donald Trump.

Trump abruptly hung up on Steve Inskeep after the host of NPR’s “Morning Edition” challenged him repeatedly on the big lie? Are such challenges what a democratic republic needs?

I think Inskeep did a great job, although many were upset with NPR for bringing Trump on in the first place. Your question is a hard one. People asked the same thing during and after the 2020 election when Trump alleged fraud on TV before the ballot counting was even complete. Some networks cut his speech off, while others aired it.

Any time we platform misinformation, especially when we can see it coming, we must provide context and a good reason for showcasing it. If we can shut it down in the meantime, then yes, we should.

But if I'm being honest, I think that ship has sailed.

I don't know if it matters anymore if we cut off conspiratorial rhetoric from Trump and others when it's already infected the population.

Are you suggesting the press can’t really mitigate the spread?

Once Trump normalized discourse that was hateful, xenophobic, conspiratorial and sexist, he made it more mainstream. People who previously self-censored those thoughts felt free to not only think them, but say them – particularly on social media, where anonymity removes accountability. That hasn't really changed.

I guess my point is – the press should do what it can to mitigate misinformation, of course, but the reality is pretty dire.

There's a serious epistemological crisis going on, and that's gonna require systemic change.

Again, I want to cry.

John Stoehr is a fellow at the Yale Journalism Initiative; a contributing writer for the Washington Monthly; a contributing editor for Religion Dispatches; and senior editor at Alternet. Follow him @johnastoehr.

College Football Coaches Making $25,000 a Day? Let’s Sideline This Lunacy!

The gridiron game has a penalty for illegal holding. We need one for hoarding.

JANUARY 12, 2022
by Sam Pizzigati

This past Monday, in the waning moments of Georgia’s upset victory in the college football national championship game, TV cameras panned to a frail old man in a stadium suite. The aged onlooker had a big grin on his face, as well he should. Just over four decades earlier, this smiling onlooker — the 89-year-old football legend Vince Dooley — had coached Georgia to its last national championship.

Dooley likely saw plenty of parallels on Monday night between his 1980 triumph and this year’s success of Georgia’s current coach, Kirby Smart. Both coaches had started their seasons off with only an outside shot at the national title. Both nurtured teams that showed grit and perseverance. Both now enjoy the adulation of an entire state.

And the differences between the two coaches? Only one stands out. Compensation.

For his championship-year labors, the current Georgia coach Kirby Smart will pocket $7.13 million. Vince Dooley’s annual pay never came anywhere remotely close to that.

Dooley started his Georgia coaching career in 1964, back in a time when big-time college coaches earned about the same as big-time college profs. The nation’s top celebrity college coach back then, Notre Dame’s Ara Parseghian, pocketed just $20,000 in salary, the equivalent of just under $180,000 in today’s dollars.

By the early 1980s, the dawning of the Reagan era, the coaching pay picture had begun to change. In 1982, Dooley was still basking in his national championship spotlight — and collecting $100,000 annually for his coaching prowess, about $288,000 today. Dooley retired from coaching in 1988. Seven years later, Florida State signed Bobby Bowden to a million-dollar annual guarantee.

The bottom line here: Even after adjusting for inflation, current Georgia coach Kirby Smart has earned significantly more just in the past year than Dooley made over the course of his entire 24-year Georgia coaching career. Even more remarkable: Kirby Smart has “cause” to feel underpaid. The long-term pay deal he signed with Georgia after the 2017 season has left him trailing his biggest coaching rivals.

In 2018, the year after Smart signed his current contract, Texas A & M committed $75 million over 10 years to Jimbo Fisher. The next year, Clemson pledged $92 million for ten years of Dabo Swinney’s gridiron genius. This past year gave us a windfall trifecta: Michigan State inked its coach to $95 million over the next decade, Louisiana State University commited $100 million for the same span, and Southern Cal upped the college football’s ten-year ante to $110 million.

And, oh yes, LSU’s end-of-the-year wheeling and dealing just happened to include a $16.9-million severance package for the departing coach.

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soaring CEO pay at Pentagon contractors

Kirby Smart’s paycheck at Georgia currently ranks as only the fifth-highest in his football conference, one of the ten conferences that compete in major college football. Overall, reports USA Today, 21 college football coaches now make at least $5 million a year, and 37 other sideline prowlers are grabbing more than $4 million.

“These days,” sums up Washington Post reporter Kent Babb, “every major college program has a corporate, win-now mentality while engaging in arms races for the biggest stadium, poshest locker room, richest coach.”

Defenders of this insanity consider successful college football coaches worth every penny in their paychecks. LSU’s national championship team two years ago, they point out, brought in $95 million in revenue and turned a profit over $53 million.

“I hear people say all the time, ‘Well, you make a lot of money,’” Alabama football coaching giant Nick Saban told the New York Times this past August. “Yeah, but I create a lot of value.”

Where’s all this “value” in college football going? Not into the desperately poor communities that ring many of college football’s biggest stadiums. Not far from LSU’s Tiger Stadium, in North Baton Rouge, the poverty-stricken streets have 46 payday lending offices and zero grocery stores. The state legislative district that includes North Baton Rouge has a median income of $24,865 a year. LSU’s new football coach, writes the Post’s Kent Babb, will be making “no less than $24,657 a day.”

The payoff from paying multiple millions to college football coaches also isn’t doing much to help the college students who most need help. The U.S. student debt burden, now nearing $2 trillion, continues to swell, soaring ever faster and higher than any punt.

Some big-time football universities, to be sure, are pumping “value” back into student affairs. One major state university, for instance, has spent big on student amenities like a “state-of-the-art recreation center with a climbing wall” and a campus dining hall with “steak cooked to order.” Amenities like these make state schools more attractive to out-of-state affluent families that can afford to pay higher tuition. This particular cook-to-order state school just happens to be Nick Saban’s Alabama.

But let’s not blame football for all this “enrollment management.” The concentration of wealth we see on our gridiron turf reflects a much broader concentration of wealth within higher education writ large.

“Increasingly, more and more universities operate like hedge funds, looking to maximize profit centers. And with executive salaries to match,” observes Brandeis economist and American Prospect co-editor Robert Kuttner, “What has suffered is teaching. The number of actual professors has scarcely grown. What has grown is armies of adjuncts, often not even making minimum wage.”

Football, to be sure, plays a key role within higher education’s widening internal economic divide. Outrageous coaching salaries, University of Colorado law prof Paul Campos argued earlier this week in the Chronicle of Higher Education, can serve to justify academe’s “administrative overpay.”

“By a kind of perverse psychological effect,” explains Campos, “paying a college football coach $10 million per year makes paying a university president $1.5 million, a provost $800,000, and various vice provosts and vice chancellors $500,000 each seem positively parsimonious by comparison.”

So what can we do to restore sanity not just to college football, but to the overall academic world? Kuttner has some thoughts. For starters, he notes, we could legislate some egalitarian “strings” into federal aid for higher education. We could, for instance, deny or limit federal support for universities with outrageously large pay gaps between their highest- and lowest-paid employees.

A college football coach making $10 million a year is making 500 times more than a $20,000-a-year university custodian. Back in the 1960s, only a handful of major U.S. corporate CEOs made over 30 times what their lowest-paid employees were making.

Sam Pizzigati co-edits Inequality.org. His latest books include The Case for a Maximum Wage and The Rich Don’t Always Win: The Forgotten Triumph over Plutocracy that Created the American Middle Class, 1900-1970. Follow him at @Too_Much_Online.

Billionaire’s Star Rises as She Takes Bold Stance on Racism in Brazil

Luiza Trajano turned a small family store into a retail giant. Now, a company policy limiting its executive training program to Black applicants is drawing praise, outrage and much soul-searching.

Luiza Trajano says her company, Magazine Luiza, is taking overdue steps to diversify its senior ranks and to atone for the brutal legacy of racism in Brazil.

Credit...Victor Moriyama for The New York Times


By Ernesto Londoño
Jan. 7, 2022


SÃO PAULO, Brazil — It was a casual conversation that led Luiza Trajano, one of Brazil’s wealthiest women, to ponder her country’s racism, to recognize her part in it — and to do something about it.

A few years back, she said, she had heard a young, accomplished Black businesswoman mention that she never attended happy hours with colleagues unless her boss explicitly asked her to join. Years of feeling the rejection that many Black Brazilians experience in predominantly white settings had taught her to seek clear invitations, the woman explained.

Ms. Trajano, who is white, felt a pang of sadness. Then an uncomfortable thought crossed her mind.

“At my birthday parties, there aren’t any Black women,” Ms. Trajano remembered thinking. “That’s structural racism that, in my case, is not born out of rejection, but out of failing to seek them out.”

That moment of introspection for Ms. Trajano, who had turned a small family business into a retail behemoth, helped plant the seeds for a bold corporate affirmative action initiative, which has drawn praise, outrage and plenty of soul searching in Brazil.

For the past two years, the public company, called Magazine Luiza, or Magalu, has limited its executive trainee program for recent college graduates — a pipeline to well-paying, senior roles — to Black applicants.

The announcement, in September 2020, generated a deluge of news coverage and commentary. Much of it was critical.

The hashtag #MagaluRacista — which means racist Magalu — trended on Twitter for days. A lawmaker close to Jair Bolsonaro, Brazil’s conservative president, urged federal prosecutors to open an investigation into the company, arguing that the program violated constitutional protections.

But Magazine Luiza called it a necessary and overdue step to diversify its senior ranks and to atone for the brutal legacy of racism in Brazil, where slavery was not abolished until 1888.

Ms. Trajano emerged as the most visible and vocal defender of her company’s policy.

“Beyond the economic and social aspects, slavery left a very strong emotional mark, which is a society of colonizers and the colonized,” Ms. Trajano, 70, said. “Many people have never felt that this is their country.”

Ms. Trajano has made waves far beyond corporate spheres by speaking bluntly about issues like race, inequality, domestic violence and the failings of the political system. Parties across the political spectrum have begged her to run for office — seeing in her a rare blend of pragmatism, charisma and smarts.

“In a world where billionaires burn their fortunes on space adventures and yachts, Luiza is dedicated to a different kind of odyssey,” former President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva wrote last September in Time magazine, which selected Ms. Trajano as one of the 100 most influential people in the world. “She has taken on the challenge of building a commercial giant while constructing a better Brazil.”



Ms. Trajano’s corporate affirmative action initiative has drawn praise, outrage and plenty of soul searching in Brazil.

Credit...Victor Moriyama for The New York Times

Ms. Trajano was born an only child in Franca, a midsize city in the highlands of São Paulo state, where an aunt who shares her name opened a small gift store in 1957.

As the business was expanding into a small cluster of retail shops, Ms. Trajano took a job as a salesperson at one of the stores as a teenager. The experience made her passionate about customer service and workplace culture.

“When I was 17 or 18 I came up with small revolutions to make more of an investment in employees,” she said. “I began bringing in a psychologist to the store.”

Ever since then, she said has been fascinated by the factors that make employees motivated and dedicated — and those that did the opposite.

She took the helm of the business in 1991 and oversaw a huge nationwide expansion driven by the corporate mantra: “Make available to many what has been a privilege for a few.”

As Magazine Luiza — which sells a bit of everything, including household goods, electronics, clothing and beauty products — grew into a behemoth with 1,400 stores, Ms. Trajano said she worked hard to build a culture in which workers were committed to the brand’s success.

On Monday mornings, employees at all Magazine Luiza sites gather in the morning to sing the national anthem, replicating a school tradition that Ms. Trajano cherished as a child.

“You need rituals to maintain a strong culture,” Ms. Trajano said during an interview in her glass-encased office in the company’s headquarters in São Paulo.

As retail sales started to shift online, Ms. Trajano invested heavily in creating a digital marketplace and a distribution system as she groomed her son Frederico Trajano to take over day-to-day management of the business in 2016 as chief executive. She remains president of the board and its most visible figure.

Mr. Trajano, 45, said he learned from his mother to be a risk taker and to trust his intuition.

“She likes to say, ‘play in the band,’ don’t just watch it march on,” he said. “That means learning to become the protagonist of my own story.”

Ms. Trajano credited her son with coming up with the Blacks-only trainee program in 2020, but noted that it followed years of her pointing out that trainee classes were overwhelmingly white. The program has drawn neither lawsuits nor any government action.


Ms. Trajano has made waves far beyond corporate spheres by speaking bluntly about issues like race, inequality, domestic violence and the failings of the political system.

Credit...Victor Moriyama for The New York Times

Ana Paula Pessoa, a Brazilian business executive who served as the chief financial officer of the 2016 Olympic Games in Rio de Janeiro, said the controversy sparked by the program led to uncomfortable conversations among her peers.

“Every single company talked about it and everyone had an opinion on it,” she said. “Opening this discussion is essential because in Brazil we tend to throw things under the table and keep these huge elephants in the room that no one talks about.”

The company doubled down on the initiative by releasing a 23-minute documentary about the selection process that feels more reality show than corporate promotion. It features applicants talking about the barriers they faced in getting their careers off the ground and shows some breaking down in tears when they learn they were accepted into the program.

Raíssa Aryadne de Andrade Lima, 31, a sustainability analyst from the state of Alagoas who was admitted to the inaugural trainee class for Black professionals, said the job was transformational for her personally and professionally.

“The best thing about the program was it opened my eyes to the number of opportunities that were possible for me,” she said.

Ms. Trajano’s profile rose in 2019 after Forbes magazine first included her in its list of billionaires. She took to the label uncomfortably, Ms. Trajano said, noting that fortunes like hers can rise and fall based on stock performance.

“I enjoy making business deals and when you do that you win and you lose sometimes,” she said.

Ms. Trajano has said emphatically that she does not intend to run for office. But she has become increasingly active in shifting political debates through a group for women leaders she founded in 2013 with the aim of advancing gender parity in all spheres of power. Today, the group has more than 101,000 members.

Group leaders are drafting long-term policy plans to address chronic problems in health care, education, housing and the labor market. They also advocate gender parity in electoral politics, which Ms. Trajano says would transform Brazil’s dysfunctional and polarized system.

In early 2021, as Brazil’s government was struggling to acquire Covid-19 vaccines and Mr. Bolsonaro sowed doubts about their efficacy, Ms. Trajano became a relentless champion for inoculations, mobilizing her network of women leaders to pressure the government to act quickly and to dispel misinformation about the shots.

There has been fervent speculation online that Ms. Trajano could be a wild card in this year’s presidential elections, perhaps as a running mate of Mr. da Silva, the front-runner in the race. While she has categorically ruled out playing such a role, it’s clear Mr. Bolsonaro has come to see her as a threat to his re-election prospects.

In November, he seemed to relish that the company’s stock price had fallen in recent months amid speculation of a political partnership between Mr. da Silva and Ms. Trajano, whom the president referred to as a “socialist.”

Later that day, when Ms. Trajano was asked about the president’s remark, she said she didn’t find the label offensive.

“I think social inequality must be confronted,” she said. “If that’s being a socialist, then I’m a socialist.”


Ernesto Londoño is the Brazil bureau chief, based in Rio de Janeiro. He was previously an editorial writer and, before joining The Times in 2014, reported for The Washington Post. @londonoe • Facebook

A version of this article appears in print on Jan. 8, 2022, Section A, Page 4 of the New York edition with the headline: Billionaire Takes Stance On Racism, Roiling Brazil.

FEMICIDE

With This Company’s Support, Women Are Escaping Their Abusers

Brazil’s largest retailer takes extraordinary steps to help employees impacted by domestic violence.

By: MaryLou Costa
January 13, 2022

After nearly 10 years of harassment, threats and beatings from her husband — including a blow to the head while she was holding their then one-year-old daughter — Adriana (not her real name) finally mustered up the courage to take action.

But when she did, it wasn’t friends or family she turned to for help. It was her employer, Brazil’s largest retailer, Magazine Luiza, better known locally as Magalu.

Adriana, now a company secretary with Magalu, was the first employee to contact the company’s Canal Mulher (Women’s Channel) hotline. The hotline was set up in 2017 after the murder of 37-year-old Denise Neves dos Anjos, a Magalu store manager who was stabbed to death by her husband.

Few companies have such a hotline, and at those that do, an employee might expect a referral to social services. But Magalu’s model goes far deeper. Upon learning about her case, the company immediately got to work helping Adriana find a new apartment in Sao Paulo so she could get away from her husband. Magalu also took care of Adriana’s rental payments — no reimbursement was expected — and acted as the guarantor for her rental contract. It provided additional mental health therapy and legal support.

“For the first time I felt I wasn’t by myself –– that I would get some help with the whole process of freeing myself from my abusive husband,” the 42-year-old employee told Reasons to Be Cheerful via a translator.

Adriana was the first of nearly 700 female employees that Magalu has helped to extract from abusive relationships over the past four years. During this time, the company has paid to relocate over 100 of these women and supported almost all of them legally, financially and emotionally. It’s an extraordinary level of involvement from a corporate entity in a matter most companies view as too complex and legally dicey to intervene in.

Coordinating these efforts is a dedicated team of specialists led by a senior company officer in Magalu’s compliance division. This rapid-response squad is staffed with psychologists, social workers and other professionals equipped to quickly intervene and support women and their children suffering from domestic violence. As in Adriana’s case, this often means getting involved directly, with relocation assistance, legal guidance, financial help and mental health services. Magalu currently has 100 cases open, 60 of which are considered high risk in that the women are still in close contact with their abusers.

For Adriana, this intervention has meant the difference between life and death.

“Once he knew Magalu was intervening, he knew he was no match for a big company like that, and that played a big role in him stepping back,” she says. “All the support and information I got has stopped me from becoming a femicide statistic.”

Those statistics are indeed grim. In Brazil, a country of 213 million, a woman dies of domestic terror every two hours. The Covid-19 pandemic has seen a two percent rise in women’s suicide rates.

Yet there is no legislation in Brazil compelling employers to provide any form of domestic violence support. In other countries, governments and companies are just beginning to assume a level of responsibility in such situations.

The government of New Zealand mandated paid domestic violence leave in 2018. In neighboring Australia, paid government support is available, and activists are calling for employer mandates as well. In the U.S., at a minimum, most states require employers to provide a period of unpaid leave for employees experiencing domestic violence.

Internal estimates indicate that around two percent of all women working at Magalu suffer from some form of domestic violence, a rate the company feels reflects the wider problem in Brazilian society. Magalu’s chairwoman, Luiza Trajano, has made supporting affected employees a priority, and was named one of Time Magazine’s 100 Most Influential People of 2021 for her work in advancing women’s issues.

Trajano and Magalu’s success at creating a public platform for the issue of domestic violence is one of the reasons behind the company’s high intervention rate. Magalu uses its internal television station, TV Luiza, to regularly encourage affected employees and concerned colleagues to come forward. (The company has 50,000 workers, half of whom are women.). After a broadcast, there is usually an uptick in calls to the Women’s Channel as affected employees are reminded they have somewhere to turn, despite Brazil’s highly religious culture where suffering in silence is the norm.

Even with all the resources Magalu has poured into helping domestic violence victims, the company can only do so much, notes its corporate reputation and sustainability manager Ana Luiza Herzog.

“We can do everything and still not be successful,” says Herzog. “We help financially, even moving a victim from one state to another, and when we check in, we might find things are going just fine, or we might find they are moving back in with their abusive partner.”

“And then there’s nothing we can do,” she says. “It’s no easy issue. Let’s not pretend that.”

Adriana’s case illustrates this — and also shows how the persistence of a corporate ally can lead to a positive outcome. She was eventually able to divorce her husband in late 2017, but he continued to follow and harass her for six months afterwards. That was when Magalu’s domestic violence support team threatened to escalate the case to the high-profile Brazilian prosecutor, Gabriela Manssur, known for championing women’s rights. He retreated.

Today, Adriana’s only connection to him is through their two school-aged daughters, who he sees locally on weekends. Adriana doesn’t allow him to take them on long-distance trips and the children must keep their cell phones on at all times.

At Magalu, the death of Denise Neves dos Anjos continues to cast a shadow. An investigation revealed she had been badly beaten by her husband just six months prior to her murder.

“We could have prevented Denise’s death, but at the time, we knew nothing about this issue,” laments Herzog.

Yet there is some solace to be found in Adriana’s success story.

“I might not be here if I hadn’t gotten help from Magalu,” she says. “That could have been me. I’m very grateful.”

Read the UN’s report on the “shadow pandemic” of domestic violence during Covid.

Sometimes stopping abuse requires creativity. One online “cosmetics shop” allows women to report domestic violence.

MaryLou Costa

MaryLou Costa is a freelance writer fascinated by the future of work, especially changes that advance women in the workplace. She also covers sustainability, innovation, technology, startups, marketing and more. Her work has featured in The Guardian, The Observer, Business Insider, Raconteur, Sifted, Digiday, Marketing Week and others, plus she has appeared on Times Radio, BBC and Sky News.

As things fall apart, the super-rich spend $2m on whisky. We need a wealth tax

All that frittered wealth could be used to help with the economic recovery from the pandemic instead

‘It’s not just expensive bottles of whisky attracting the wallets of the thriving mega-rich.’ A selection of vintage Macallan whiskeys. 

Photograph: Rex Features/REX FEATURES

Owen Jones

Thu 13 Jan 2022 

You may need a stiff drink to believe this. Last October, a new record was set: a cask of Macallan 1991 whisky sold for a cool $2.33m. At least this was an entire cask of premium liquor: earlier last year, a luxury case of 30-year-old Irish malt featuring a gold Fabergé egg was auctioned off for $2m, only slightly more than a single bottle of scotch at the end of 2019.

Is whisky really worth 2m big ones? As any economist will tell you, the value of something is determined by how much someone is prepared to pay for it, and all that money sloshing around at the top has to go somewhere. The crises of our time have been kind to the uber-rich: while British workers have suffered a near unprecedented squeeze in their wages, the richest 1,000 people saw their fortunes double in the first seven years after the financial crash. Covid has proved little different: Britain produced a record number of new billionaires in the pandemic, while their US counterparts enjoyed almost a two-thirds jump in their wealth during the first 18 months of the crisis. At $4.8tn, the combined fortunes of US billionaires are almost equivalent to the size of the entire Japanese economy.

It’s not just expensive bottles of whisky attracting the wallets of the thriving mega-rich. When the Chinese billionaire Cheung Chung-kiu snapped up a 62,000 sq ft mansion in Hyde Park for a cool $275m back in 2020, he understandably wanted to make sure it was just right, so last year he commenced a renovation estimated to cost nearly as much as the original asking price. Last year, 11 Picassos were auctioned off in Las Vegas for $100m, while a 1958 Ferrari found a new home in exchange for $6m.

Perhaps such ludicrously expensive items will provoke baffled shrugs.Wealthy people splash their seemingly limitless fortunes on frivolous items with extortionate price tags – so what? Sure, it’s a symptom of the growth in wealth inequality since the 1980s, encouraged by the decline in progressive taxation, the deregulation of finance, the shattered power of trade unions, diluted antitrust legislation, and the rise of large quasi-monopolistic businesses such as Facebook and Amazon. No, a hyperactive work ethic and dazzling entrepreneurial acumen does not explain the explosion in billionaires’ wealth during the pandemic: no-strings government help for businesses and quantitative easing policies that drove up asset prices are more plausible explanations. And, yes, watching the wealth collectively produced by the hard graft of billions of people hoovered up by a select few is undoubtedly a moral affront. But does it matter?

The simple answer is yes. Buying whisky for $2m doesn’t simply underline an inverse correlation between money and sense on the part of the super-rich: it represents the red lights flashing on the dashboard of an entire economic model. Gary Stevenson should know: formerly Citibank’s most profitable trader, he made millions betting against economic recovery after Lehman Brothers detonated in the heart of the financial sector. Among the bigwigs of big finance, the consensus was that near-zero interest rates were an extraordinary measure that would be soon reversed as the economy recovered.

But Stevenson was a dissenter: he believed the continued parlous state of the economy would halt any interest rate hikes. The reason? Because when ordinary people receive money, they spend it, stimulating the economy, while the wealthy tend to save it. But our economic model promotes the concentration of wealth among a select few at the expense of everybody else’s living standards. If working-class people don’t have the money to spend, they won’t; and as they’re plunged into debt simply to cover their families’ cost of living, consumer demand is sucked out of an economy based upon it. In an amusing paradox, Stevenson’s belief that inequality was crippling the economy literally made him millions.

As Stevenson emphasised, the super-rich tend not to invest all that hoovered up wealth into productive parts of the economy: they instead throw it at property or, yes, $2m bottles of whisky, driving up asset prices. “What you have to understand is that saving is not the same as investing,” the chartered accountant Richard Murphy says. “Investment is the creation of new capacity to undertake economic activity, which is almost universally funded by new bank loans. It’s very rarely funded by share capital, except generally with very small microbusinesses.” The entire economy has been designed to funnel wealth generated by the team effort of millions into the bank accounts of a tiny few, whose whims and hobby horses have no social value whatsoever.

While many people have experienced bereavement, loneliness and insecurity during the pandemic, Covid-19 has proved just the latest lucrative boon for billionaires’ wealth portfolios. And that’s why an economic case – rather than simply a moral case – for a wealth tax desperately needs to be made. All that wealth could play a pivotal role in the post-Covid recovery. It could be put towards drastically expanding the capacity of the NHS, ventilating all schools and businesses, and funding the transition to a green economy. Instead, a tiny elite are clocking up many more billions just by sitting on their assets, frittering wealth away on $2m bottles of whisky featuring gold Fabergé eggs. It’s not simply immoral: it’s utterly irrational.

Owen Jones is a Guardian columnist

The Florida Financiers Buying Up Europe’s Soccer Teams

David Hellier, Bloomberg News

Joshua Harris, co-founder of Apollo Global Management LLC, speaks during the Milken Institute Global Conference in Beverly Hills, California, U.S., on Monday, May 1, 2017. The conference is a unique setting that convenes individuals with the capital, power and influence to move the world forward meet face-to-face with those whose expertise and creativity are reinventing industry, philanthropy and media. , Bloomberg

(Bloomberg) -- European soccer ownership is today just as likely to be thrashed out at a Miami Beach steakhouse as in the plush restaurants of London, Milan or Paris.

Florida’s sunshine and business-friendly policies have been drawing financiers and entrepreneurs, including a group pouring money into the world’s favorite sport. Among them is John Textor, who’s just completed the purchase of 80% of Belgian club RWD Molenbeek through his sports investment vehicle Eagle Football LLC. 

Other soccer-mad investors based in South Florida are Paul Conway and Chien Lee, founders of Pacific Media Group LLC, Josh Wander, managing partner at 777 Partners LLC, and Randy Frankel, co-owner of the Tampa Bay Rays baseball team.

“More and more professional investors have moved to South Florida, and they love football,” Lee said in an interview. “Football is an attractive and good asset class investment.” 

Conway, who meets his contacts to discuss the evolution of soccer at Miami Beach spots including celebrity-favorite steak restaurant Prime 112 or nearby Joe’s Stone Crab, also played a part in the RWD Molenbeek deal. 

“He’s acted like a friend,” said Jupiter Island resident Textor. “He’s a terrific resource and even flew to Belgium with me to introduce me to the owners of the team.”

Conway, Lee and Textor champion the multiclub ownership model that’s grown in popularity as a way of developing stars of the game without the need for hefty transfer fees. Pacific Media has spent recent years buying stakes in teams across Europe, while Textor is already invested in Crystal Palace FC of the U.K. Premier League.

“Americans are going to be owning more and more of European football,” said Conway. “A lot will go through a multiclub arrangement, where when one club struggles, the others might be able to help them.”

There are about 60 multiclub groups globally, nearly two-thirds of which have emerged since 2018, according to the International Centre for Sports Studies (CIES). Proponents of the strategy point to cost synergies and the potential to strike more lucrative sponsorship deals. Critics, including fans’ body Supporters Direct Europe, say it stifles competition and creates feeder teams with no real prospect of success.

Here’s a closer look at the main U.S. investors buying up European soccer. 

John Textor, founder of Eagle Football LLC

Dubbed a “virtual-reality guru” by Forbes Magazine in 2016, Textor is chief executive officer of digital likeness and human animation company Facebank Inc. He shot to prominence in the European soccer world in 2021 by taking a stake in Crystal Palace. 

The south London team are slowly carving out a reputation for exciting football under the coaching of Frenchman Patrick Vieira, the former World Cup winner installed last summer, and could now stand to benefit from talent developed at RWD Molenbeek.

“If you want to pursue a multiclub strategy you need to have the global footprint for talent identification from a market respected by the U.K.,” said Textor. “There is a very high level of play in Belgium, which is only two hours outside London.”

Named in part for Crystal Palace’s club emblem, Textor’s Eagle vehicle is also in talks to buy a minority stake in Lisbon, Portugal-based soccer giant SL Benfica, said Textor. Outside Europe, Eagle now holds 90% of Brazil’s Botafogo via a $330 million deal that completed this week, he said.

Paul Conway and Chien Lee, co-founders of Pacific Media Group

Pacific Media’s soccer stable includes stakes in AS Nancy of France, Barnsley FC in the U.K., Denmark’s Esbjerg fB, FC Thun of Switzerland and KV Oostende in Belgium.

A former Oppenheimer & Co. banker, Conway advocates the high-pressing style that’s become popular in Europe’s top leagues. Ensuring a common approach to playing this way means it’s easy to move players around his clubs if and when the need arises.

His teams rely heavily on data analysis when recruiting and developing young talent. Billy Beane, the ex-U.S. baseball player who pioneered a similar model during his time managing California’s Oakland Athletics -- a story later retold in Michael Lewis’s 2003 book “Moneyball” -- sits on Barnsley’s board. 

Barnsley qualified for the Championship play-offs last season, taking them to within touching distance of the lucrative Premier League. They were unsuccessful in that attempt and are now in a battle to avoid relegation from the second-tier of English football. Nancy and Oostende have also been struggling, with both in the bottom halves of their respective tables in France and Belgium. 

Conway is being patient. “There are highs and lows throughout each season,” he said. “Our goal is to grow a club in a sustainable way, while also being a good custodian for the local community.”

Josh Wander, co-founder of 777 Partners

Wander’s 777 has built a portfolio of sports assets that includes streaming services and investments in British basketball. The firm targets undervalued businesses with deep connections to fan bases, according to its website, and for soccer bets Wander has so far picked two of Europe’s most historic clubs. 

In September, 777 acquired ownership of Italy’s oldest soccer team, Genoa Cricket and Football Club, commonly known as Genoa. It already held a minority stake in Sevilla FC, one of Spain’s most successful outfits.

Wander knows Conway and Jim Pallotta, the former owner of Italian soccer club AS Roma, from living in Miami. He said he’s having multiple conversations about buying more soccer teams in Europe and elsewhere. 

“Having smart and honest people investing in football globally is good for the leagues,” he said.

Although Ukrainian footballing legend Andriy Shevchenko was appointed coach of Genoa last year, the team has won just one game in the current league campaign and risks being relegated from Serie A at the end of the season.

Randy Frankel, Josh Harris

Miami local Frankel has been dipping into European soccer via investments alongside Conway. Through Partners Path Capital, run by former Tampa Bay Rays executive Michael Kalt, Frankel has been involved in Pacific Media deals including Nancy and Oostende.

“Right now, us and Pacific Media are good partners,” he said. Goldman Sachs Group Inc. alumnus Frankel, who has “no shortage” of people wanting to team up for more European soccer deals, also likes the multiclub model, which he said lets an investor learn things from different countries and their peoples.

Josh Harris, a co-founder of private equity giant Apollo Global Management Inc., bought a $32 million Miami mansion last year. Like Textor, he sits on the board at Crystal Palace. Harris called time on three decades at Apollo in 2021 after missing out on the top job at the firm. He is co-founder of Harris Blitzer Sports & Entertainment, which he runs with Blackstone Inc. dealmaker David Blitzer.

©2022 Bloomberg L.P.

Indian national charged with money laundering, wire fraud in US

Ravi Kumar of India and Anthony Munigety of Texas have been charged with committing various fraud schemes targeting primarily elderly victims and netting nearly $600,000.

Press Trust of India New York

January 13, 2022


An Indian national has been charged along with a US citizen for committing various fraud schemes targeting primarily elderly victims throughout the United States and netting nearly $600,000 from them.

Ravi Kumar of India and Anthony Munigety of Texas have been charged in a 20-count indictment. Kumar is believed to be in India and considered a fugitive. A warrant remains outstanding for his arrest, the US Justice Department said Tuesday.

Munigety has been taken into custody on charges of obtaining over $600,000 from elderly victims throughout the country, US Attorney Jennifer Lowery.

Munigety and Kumar are charged with conspiracy to commit money laundering, 13 counts of wire fraud and six counts of money laundering. If convicted, they face up to 20 years on each count as well as a possible $250,000 maximum fine.

According to the allegations, the fraud ring operated out of the Conroe area in Texas and other locations in the United States and India. Munigety, Kumar and others allegedly committed various fraud schemes targeting primarily elderly victims throughout the United States.

The primary objective, according to the indictment, was to deceive victims by telling them a technical support company or other entities were purportedly helping them with their computers.

They would allegedly trick victims into believing they had been erroneously refunded or overpaid and needed to return the overpayment. The indictment alleges they were able to gain access to a victim’s computer which enabled Munigety, Kumar and others to move funds between or wire transfer monies out of their accounts, according to the charges.

Once that occurred, Munigety and others would keep a portion of the money and wire the remainder to Kumar in India, according to the charges.

As a result of their scheme, Munigety and others allegedly received over $600,000 from elderly victims.

BONGBONG MARCOS
Marcos Jr. continues to evade $353-million contempt judgment of US court

JAN 13, 2022 2:45 PM PHT
LIAN BUAN


Bongbong Marcos and mother Imelda settled with the Philippine government in 1992 and 1993, dividing their assets so they could be exonerated. But US courts maintain these violate a standing injunction.

MANILA, Philippines – Presidential aspirant Ferdinand “Bongbong” Marcos Jr. is yet to face a contempt judgment issued by a United States court in 1995 in connection with a human rights class suit against his late dictator-father, documents obtained by Rappler show. The amount involved for continuous contempt already reached $353 million in 2011.

Records from the United States District Court and Court of Appeals show that Marcos is being held in contempt for “contumacious conduct causing direct harm to [a class of human rights victims].” Based on the exchange rate on Thursday, January 13, the $353 million is already equivalent to about P18 billion.

The contempt judgment specifically names Bongbong and his mother Imelda as representative of the late dictator’s estate. The patriarch died in exile in Hawaii in 1989. His remains were brought home to Batac, Ilocos Norte, in September 1993. Despite protests, President Rodrigo Duterte granted him a hero’s burial in November 2016 – armed with a decision from the Supreme Court that favored the move.

“The judgment is entered personally against Imelda R. Marcos and Ferdinand R. Marcos. Since they served as executors of the Estate of Ferdinand E. Marcos, and their contemptuous acts were on behalf of the Estate, the Estate is in privity with them and subject to the judgment herein,” Judge Manuel Real of the District Court of Hawaii said in the judgment dated January 25, 2011.

This was affirmed by the US Court of Appeals Ninth Circuit in October 2012, that said “we hold that the $353,600,000 contempt judgment is properly enforceable by Hilao.” Hilao is Celsa Hilao, mother of student activist Liliosa Hilao, who was tortured and killed during Martial Law, and is the lead in the historic class suit against the late dictator.

In August 2019, a new judge, Derrick Watson, extended the judgment on contempt to January 25, 2031, or nine years from now.

SOURCE. A page from the docket records of the US District Court of Hawaii for the case of Estate of Ferdinand E. Marcos Human Rights Litigation

Why does this matter?

Marcos Jr. is running for president in May 2022. At least P125 billion of his father’s estate is still under litigation as part of protracted efforts to recover the Marcoses’ ill-gotten funds and distribute them to Filipinos. The presidential aspirant continues to deny any wrongdoing by his father.

Even the tax of this estate is in dispute and cited by petitioners challenging Marcos’ candidacy before the Commission on Elections (Comelec). The petition of civic leaders, now up for resolution, says: “The failure of the Marcos family to pay the estate taxes is to the detriment of the Filipino people, as it represents once again a ‘Ferdinand Marcos,’ but this time his Junior, depriving the country and its people of money properly belonging to them.”

If Bongbong Marcos becomes president and goes to the US, it would trigger moves to enforce the judgment, even a request for a subpoena to face the court and explain, according to Robert Swift, the American lawyer working to recover assets to distribute to Martial Law victims. The same goes for Imelda.

If they still refuse to pay or snub a subpoena while in the US, “the US Court could hold them in criminal contempt and imprison them until they purge their contempt by answering questions about their assets,” Swift told Rappler in an email Thursday.

Bongbong settled with PH government, in contempt of US court

On November 20, 1991, the US District Court of Hawaii issued a preliminary injunction barring the family from touching their US assets. “The Court entered a permanent injunction on February 3, 1995, as part of the final judgment in the class action,” court records said.

Despite this, Imelda and Bongbong entered into two agreements with the Philippine government in June 1992 to “split and divide with the Republic all assets belonging to the Estate of Ferdinand E. Marcos.” Artworks in the United States were sold, and proceeds were divided between Imelda and the Philippine government.

Imelda and Bongbong entered into two additional agreements in December 1993, details of which were discovered by the American attorneys of the human rights victims only because they were disclosed in a Philippine court filing.

The 1993 agreements, the US court noted in its 1995 decision, “delineate with more specificity how the Estate’s assets are to be divided with the Republic of the Philippines and provide that the wife and children of Ferdinand E. Marcos are to receive 25% of the Estate’s assets tax free together with the dismissal of all criminal charges against them.”

“Two agreements were used instead of one in an apparent subterfuge to gain control over more than $365 million located in Switzerland,” said the court.

The agreements were held in violation of the US court’s injunction on the assets. Part of the 1995 judgment says Imelda and Bongbong must pay, renounce their settlements, deposit to the Court the proceeds from the artworks’ sale, and pay a fine of $100,000 per day to coerce them into complying.

The Marcoses appealed the decision to the US Court of Appeals, arguing that the sanctions were coercive and unenforceable.

Affirming the contempt judgment, the US Court of Appeals in 2012 said “even if Marcos is correct that the contempt sanction was coercive, it was also clearly compensatory.”

“Additionally, the district court explained that the $100,000 per day amount was necessary and appropriate because Marcos’s contumacious conduct was causing direct harm to Hilao, including $55,000 per day from lost interest and additional losses due to Marcos’s dilatory tactics,” said the US Court of Appeals when it ruled in 2012 that the contempt judgment was “properly enforceable.”

A Hawaii court had also awarded human rights victims $2 billion in damages, but the Philippine Court of Appeals in 2017 junked the enforcement petition based on lack of jurisdiction.


Rappler.com