It’s possible that I shall make an ass of myself. But in that case one can always get out of it with a little dialectic. I have, of course, so worded my proposition as to be right either way (K.Marx, Letter to F.Engels on the Indian Mutiny)
Tuesday, March 22, 2022
PUTIN'S ZOMBIE APOCALYPSE
Majority of Russians proud of war with Ukraine, experts say
2022.03.18
In late February and mid-March, independent Russian sociologists conducted two polls at once to survey Russians’ sentiments about the war with Ukraine. The results of the poll were obtained by Radio Liberty.
Unmarked military personnel. Bugas village, Ukraine. March 1, 2022. Photo: MP / Belsat
Nearly three-quarters of Russia’s population, or 71%, support war with Ukraine. Based on the results of two polls conducted in late February and mid-March by independent sociologists, the majority of Russians feel pride, joy, respect, trust, and hope over the attack on their neighbor.
The differences between the February and March polls show an increase in the number of Russians who support the “military operation” and the independence of the so-called DNR and LNR. But people are increasingly pessimistic about their financial situation due to Western sanctions.
The surveys also showed that three-quarters of the Russian population learn about the war from television. Of those who use the Internet to learn about the war, 37 percent do not know what a VPN is. YouTube is used by 11% of respondents and Telegram by 7%.
One-third of respondents said they firmly believe Putin is acting in their interests, and another 26% believe he is acting in their interests to some extent. Overall, the majority of Russians believe it would be better if Putin remained president as long as possible. This opinion is most common among television audiences.
Belarus no longer determines its fate, historian claims
LONG READ
The war in Ukraine has become a real trial not only for Ukrainians but for the whole world. What awaits Russia, and does it really need strict control with a firm hand in order not to fall apart? What is the position of Belarus in this war and what awaits us: the disappearance or a new window of opportunity? What role will Ukraine play in the new Europe? We talked about this with Alexander Friedman, Doctor of Historical Sciences (Institute for European Ethnology, University of Berlin, Germany).
Sample photo. Concert dedicated to the eighth anniversary of the annexation of Crimea. Saint-Petersburg, Russia. March 18, 2022. Photo: Peter Kovalev / TASS / Forum
“The war has sentenced Putin’s system to death”
Since the beginning of the war in Ukraine, voices are heard more and more loudly that the collapse of Russia is inevitable. It’s not just the intellectuals who say this. Putin, in his latest speeches last week, said that the goal of the West is to “dismember” Russia. At a recent concert in Luzhniki on the occasion of the anniversary of the annexation of Crimea, the slogan was heard many times: we will not allow the collapse of the country. Is the collapse of Russia because of the war possible?
The discussion that Russia will not exist within the territorial boundaries in which it currently exists, that it will begin to fall apart is eternal. It has been going on for many years in different contexts. And when big, terrible events like war happen, discussions about the breakup of Russia escalate again.
Today we do not see any serious separatist movement in the Russian Federation, at least on the surface. But what will definitely disappear as a result of these events is the Putin regime. What Russia will look like territorially, whether it will remain within its borders, what will be the fate of Crimea – these are all open questions. If we talk about it now, it will be speculation. But this war has definitely pronounced a death sentence on the Putin system. Neither politically, nor economically, nor ideologically, it will survive. What will come in its place may not be democratic, but it will definitely be better than what we have today.
Let’s look at the history of Russia in the 20th century: when there is a war, and it goes badly for the Russian side, it leads to the disappearance of the dominant system: the Russian Empire in the First World War or the Soviet Empire in 1991. The war factor is very strong and important. If the First World War had not happened, the Russian Empire, most likely, would have continued to exist. But the war is going on, everything is going very badly for Russia, the economic condition is deteriorating, and the result is known to us: the first and second revolutions, the monarchical system disappears, the empire actually disintegrates, the Bolsheviks come to power.
If we take the Soviet period, many researchers agree that the participation of the Soviet Union in the Afghan war greatly influenced the mood of the population, the contradictions within society. Nobody understood this war in the Soviet Union. This is not the main, but one of the strong factors that influenced the development of events in the second half of the 80s and early 90s: the Soviet Union was forced to adopt a policy of perestroika, the attitude of the population towards the regime worsened. As a result, the USSR collapsed.
Sample photo: Yegor Aleyev / TASS / Forum
And here we have this factor of war again. Inside Russia, there are contradictions between various ethnic and religious groups, which is understandable in conditions of dictatorship, authoritarianism, where all manifestations of freedom are suppressed and a great-power ideology reigns. Such contradictions intensify with the war, but at what level they are now, we do not know.
What we see for sure is that there is a war going on, it is developing unfavorably for Russia. The losses are great, after a certain time, they will be more than in 10 years in Afghanistan.
Unlike Afghanistan, the current war is “understandable” for Russians thanks to Russian propaganda. According to independent researchers, about 71% of Russian citizens support the war in Ukraine. Of course, one can argue whether one can trust the answers of people in an authoritarian country, but nevertheless, in Russia, an overwhelming minority of the population opposes the war.
Later, when the war is over, and I am sure that Ukraine will stand, it will be very difficult for Russians to say that it is Putin who is bad, that he unleashed the war, and the population was against it. This myth is very common in the West.
Undoubtedly, these events will push for changes in Russia. They are already happening, and these are changes for the worse so far. Putin launched these processes. I am sure that Russia in the form in which it existed before the war will not exist.
We may wake up tomorrow and suddenly find out that Vladimir Putin has passed away after a long illness, and this wording can mean anything. This can take weeks, months, in the worst case, years. But fate is predetermined.
“If democracy in Russia gets a new chance, the West must do everything possible to make it work for Russia this time”
You noted cases in history when the war became a trigger for the transition to a new political system in Russia. But often attempts to democratize the country led to the establishment of totalitarianism: let’s take the Bolsheviks and the totalitarian regime of Stalin or Putin’s regime after the collapse of the USSR. The fate of being a dictatorship, having a strong hand to rule – is it predetermined in the case of Russia so that it remains a state?
Democrats are not born, democrats are made. This also applies to Russian society and the state. The point of view that Russia cannot be a democratic country is very discriminatory. We then say that this society has no chance of democracy and cannot be democratic. You can’t say that. But indeed, attempts at liberal reforms, attempts at democratization were not successful in Russia. If you look at their historical experience, everything looks very bad: each such attempt ended in the establishment of dictatorial regimes. And today we are dealing with a regime that has atomic weapons and can start the Third World War.
But if it hasn’t happened yet, it doesn’t mean that it can’t happen at all. Let’s take German history as an example. Germany at the end of the 19th century and in the first third of the 20th century was a more advanced country than Russia. But if we look at democratic tendencies, the Germans also had big problems with this. The attempt to establish democracy in Germany ended in 1933 with the establishment of the Nazi dictatorship. After the Second World War, there were discussions that the Germans and democracy are incompatible. But look what happened in the end. Most Germans today are democratic. Not without difficulties, but the re-education of the majority of society succeeded. If it worked out with the Germans, why can’t it work out with the Russians?
Of course, in many respects, this is a different case. Russia will be very difficult. There is an opinion in the West that there is such a cruel tyrant Putin, who today has become an absolute evil, and there is a Russian population, which for the most part either does not understand this regime or rejects it. This is a very naive presentation. The fact that a large number of Russians remain under the influence of propaganda and do not understand what terrible crimes are now taking place in Ukraine is no excuse.
Putin decided to play all-in. Now, either we will get a world in which the values that the Russian state embodies will reign: contempt for the individual, violence, and so on, or this regime will go away. If Putin’s regime collapses, the question is what will happen after that. Will democracy in Russia get a new chance, will people with at least certain democratic values come to power? The West—Europe and the US—should do everything they can to make sure Russia succeeds this time. This is in the interests not only of Russia and its population but also of ours.
If this chance for democratization does not materialize, Russia will have an authoritarian regime, but not as aggressive as Putin’s. A light autocracy that will no longer go to war is bad but better than today’s regime.
“Lukashenko has no chance in any case. And Belarus will either disappear or become a free democratic country”
Lukashenka has repeatedly stated that without Russia there will be no Belarus, understanding Belarus as his own regime. Is it really true? How do you see the position of Belarus in this war?
Belarus in this war is a victim of Putin’s game. The situation is obvious: if Putin wins, Belarus will disappear, if Putin disappears, there will be a free and most likely democratic Belarus.
The fate of Lukashenka is determined. He has tied himself to Putin, and now he does not have good options. If Putin wins, Lukashenka with his ambitions and contradictions will definitely not be needed. In the new conditions, Putin in Belarus will need an absolutely loyal executor, with whom there will be no questions.
If Putin loses and changes begin in Russia, then Russia will start taking care of itself. If Putin’s regime collapses, Lukashenka’s regime also collapses, he simply has no chance. How this will happen is another question.
Sample photo: Belsat
As for Belarus, it is in a historical position – and a very bad one. There is a war going on in Ukraine, but Ukrainians decide their own fate, they can influence it. Belarus, unfortunately, no longer decides its fate. On the one hand, we have the repressive regime of Lukashenka, on the other hand, we have a Russian military presence on our territory, and it is clear that if processes begin to take place in Belarus that Russia does not like, it will take advantage of this military presence. In fact, this is an occupation.
If Putin wins and takes control of Ukraine, Belarus will simply disappear. The only question is whether any attributes of an independent state will be preserved here.
If Putin fails, a window of opportunity will open for Belarus. And completely new, more favorable. After all, Russia without Putin will be weak (at least at first), it will take care of itself, and if it still tries to influence something in other countries, it will be insignificant. We will return to the situation of 1991. If this historic opportunity is seized, serious decisions will need to be made very quickly, without useless arguments and discussions. This is the chance that Belarus lost in the early 1990s when democratic forces failed to come to power, make the necessary changes and escape from Moscow’s control. Watching the democratic forces in exile, I see that they understand this situation and are preparing for it.
After the war, what will be the attitude towards Belarus and Belarusians in the world?
The question is what else Lukashenka will have time to do. If the situation remains at the current level, this is, of course, bad, this is a stain in the history of Belarus, a very difficult time that will have to be comprehended in order to understand how it happened that Belarus ended up in such a situation. In Belarus, the mood is not the same as in Russia, the majority of Belarusians oppose the war. But why Belarus was used in such a way, how we can continue to build relations not only with the West but above all with the Ukrainians – this question will definitely arise, it will have to be dealt with.
But as Lukashenka himself emphasizes, the red line has not yet been crossed. This line is the participation of the Belarusian military in the war. But there should be no illusions. They are not there, not because Lukashenka does not want it, but because Russia has not yet decided to use them there.
We can only hope that Belarus will be lucky and there will be no Belarusians there. In this case, it will be easier to overcome, rethink this shame. If the Belarusian military goes to Ukraine, it will be a disaster.
“If today there is a real, valuable Europe, then this is Ukraine”
It is already obvious that the world after the war will not be the same. The question arose of the effectiveness of international structures (UN, NATO and others), which were supposed to provide security, but which could not do anything to prevent Russian aggression. Oleksiy Arestovych, Advisor to the Office of the President of Ukraine, said in one of his interviews that Ukraine has a chance to change the direction of civilization and will play a completely different role in Europe. What do you think the world will be like after the war? What questions will it ask itself?
The war will end, but the images of what happened will remain. The question is how Mariupol could take place in the 21st century. How did we get to the point where this was possible? From the western side: why didn’t they manage to prevent this? What is NATO, the UN, the European Union worth? From the Russian side: why do we commit such crimes? From the Ukrainian side: how did we endure it all, how to live on if Mariupol was in your life?
Mariupol is not only the tragedy of this city, it is the tragedy of Ukraine, Europe and the whole world. These moral questions will arise, but much will depend on how the war ends. Russia can win only if the Ukrainian cities and the Ukrainian people are destroyed.
Sample photo. Mariupol, Ukraine. March 18, 2022. Photo: Mikhail Tereshchenko / TASS / Forum
Today Russia has become a problem for the entire civilized world. But above all, it is a problem for the Russians themselves. Russia in the historical perspective is waiting for the fate of Germany after the war. For Ukrainians, Mariupol will be a symbol of tragedy and heroism. And for Russia – a symbol of shame. They will have to make excuses and learn to live with these crimes.
As for Ukraine, Arestovych is certainly right. Today Europe is changing. I watched with delight the speech of Volodymyr Zelensky in front of the Bundestag. This is a self-confident person speaking from a position of moral superiority. Today in Ukraine people are fighting for values, their Motherland, freedom, the democratic way. According to various polls, they have determined for themselves: either we will survive as a free Ukrainian state, or we will perish. If Lukashenka had ended up in this place, there would have been immediate capitulation on his part, because, for people like him and Putin, there are no values. Ukraine must endure because it is simply impossible to live with the idea that the ugly evil is winning.
In the Europe of the future, Ukraine will play a different role, it will be an example for everyone. If today there is a real, valuable Europe, then this is Ukraine. They have come a long way in these weeks.
After the war, the whole world will re-evaluate what happened. The life that was before the war will no longer be. But there is a chance that we will wake up after this tragedy and come to a better Europe, where there will be more democracy, freedom and values. Ukraine embodies this hope. Every person for whom democratic values mean something should ask themselves today: what I personally can do to make Ukraine win. After all, if Ukraine wins, we will all win. If Ukraine loses, then after a certain time we can lose democratic Europe.
UNHCR chief condemns discrimination and racism against Ukrainian refugees CGTN A mother who fled Ukraine comforts her child inside the train station in Krakow, Poland, March 18, 2022. /CFP
The head of the UN refugee agency United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), Filippo Grandi, on Monday condemned the "ugly reality" that some refugees fleeing Ukraine, including foreigners who had been studying or working there, have been subjected to racism and discrimination.
Grandi said that many citizens from countries neighboring Ukraine, such as Poland, Hungary, Moldova, Slovakia and Romania, had provided "overwhelming acts of welcome and compassion," opening their hearts and homes to Ukrainians.
But, he added: "We also bore witness to the ugly reality, that some Black and Brown people fleeing Ukraine – and other wars and conflicts around the world – have not received the same treatment as Ukrainian refugees."
"They reported disturbing incidents of discrimination, violence, and racism. These acts of discrimination are unacceptable," he said.
Grandi's statement came as the UN marked the International Day for the Elimination of Racial Discrimination, an annual event on March 21.
The UNHCR estimates that some three million people have fled Ukraine since the start of the conflict with Russia in the country. About 10 million have been forced to leave their homes, it has said.
"We can – and must – salute solidarity, while also resolutely condemning acts of discrimination and bias," Grandi said in his statement.
"We need to ensure that global responsibility sharing is strengthened for all refugees, no matter where they come from," he stressed.
WE OWN A MALL IN BRAZIL Canada's CPPIB reaches 10% stake in Brazil's BR Malls amid tie-up effort
SAO PAULO (Reuters) - Brazilian shopping mall operator BR Malls said on Monday that the Canada Pension Plan Investments Board (CPPIB), which is a major shareholder in rival Aliansce Sonae, has reached a 10.24% stake in the company.
Aliansce Sonae is currently pushing for a tie-up with BR Malls and had an offer rejected by the latter's board last week. The CPPIB-backed firm, however, is still expected to formally call a BR Malls shareholders' meeting for a voting on the matter as it continues to build a stake in the rival.
(Reporting by Gabriel Araujo)
Google settles over firing of workers protesting immigration cloud deal
A Google logo is seen outside of the Google Store in New York City
(Reuters) -Alphabet Inc's Google has settled with six current and former employees who had alleged the company unfairly stifled worker organizing in a case stemming from potential sales of its cloud technology to U.S. immigration authorities -- an abrupt ending to a trial that had been paused for several months.
The U.S. National Labor Relations Board had pursued the case on behalf of the workers and brought Google before an administrative law judge last year. Weeks of hearings were then stopped pending resolution of a dispute over whether the NLRB could force Google legal chief Kent Walker to testify.
Laurie Burgess, an attorney representing the workers, said they had grown emotionally exhausted from fighting Google. They had to weigh that against wanting to reveal additional "juicy" evidence about Project Vivian, Google's effort to quell worker activism, she said.
"We exposed enough, and it’s time for my clients to be able to move on with their lives," Burgess said.
The workers independently settled with Google last Wednesday, the NLRB did not object and the judge in San Francisco dismissed the case last Friday, legal filings show. The settlement was first reported on Monday by Vice.
Terms of the settlement were not disclosed. A parallel lawsuit in California state court also was dismissed.
The case had concerned Google's actions against workers who were among a larger group protesting the company's cloud technology relationship with U.S. immigration authorities in 2019.
Google interrogated workers and fired some of them, aiming to dissuade people from engaging in legally protected concerted activities, the government said.
The company denied wrongdoing, arguing that the employees it fired or suspended were accessing files they should not have and had no right to dictate with whom the company does business.
Google said on Monday it was pleased everyone avoided years of legal proceedings.
"We've always supported our employees' right to speak about working conditions, and we stand by our policies that protect the security of our systems and safeguard user, customer and employee data," Google said.
Worker activism across Silicon Valley has been on the rise for years. Hundreds of Google workers last year formed a small labor organization in hopes of better protecting their rights in future protests.
(Reporting by Paresh Dave and Julia Love; editing by Jonathan Oatis)
U.S. space companies poised to benefit as Russia cuts ties to industry, analyst says
Russia is rapidly cutting itself off from much of the global space industry in response to Western sanctions due to the invasion of Ukraine.
Space-focused research and investment firm Quilty Analytics sees U.S. companies as net beneficiaries, with Elon Musk's SpaceX "the clear winner" in the global launch marketplace.
Other companies providing space station services and developing new orbiting habitats are poised to benefit, Quilty noted, with Iridium as a likely gainer in satellite communications.
A Falcon 9 rocket carries 49 Starlink satellites toward orbit on Feb. 3, 2022.
Michael Sheetz
CNBC
Russia is rapidly cutting itself off from much of the global space industry in response to Western sanctions due to the invasion of Ukraine, and U.S. companies stand to benefit, according to an analyst report on Friday.
"Russia and Ukraine have for decades contributed significantly to the global space industry. Both are
powerhouses of rocket and propulsion expertise, supplying launch services and engine systems to customers the world over," Quilty Analytics, a boutique research and investment firm focused on space businesses, wrote in an industry briefing.
The Russian state-run Roscosmos space agency, with its Soyuz rockets, has long been one of the leading launch providers in the industry — delivering satellites, cargo and crew into orbit.
As Russia retaliates and withdraws its launch services for American and European organizations, Quilty sees U.S. companies as net beneficiaries, with a number of satellites now looking for rides to orbit. Elon Musk's SpaceX is "the clear winner" in the launch marketplace, the research firm's founder, Chris Quilty, told CNBC.
Already, SpaceX's Starlink competitor OneWeb announced on Monday it will move launches of its internet satellites to Musk's company, after terminating its launch agreement with Russia's Roscosmos. OneWeb says launches with SpaceX will start later this year.
"Russian launch activity is being withdrawn from the market at the exact moment that launch rates are hitting new historical records. Someone needs to absorb this demand, but Europe is not well positioned because of their top-down approach to the market," Quilty said.
Musk, in a response to CNBC, said that SpaceX does not expect to see a dramatic increase in the demand for launches to orbit this year. Prior to Russia's step back from the market, SpaceX expected to launch about 65% of all the world's spacecraft flying to orbit this year. Musk said that "incremental demand might take that to ~70%, so not a major change," Musk said.
Beyond SpaceX, other companies providing space station services and developing new orbiting habitats — such as Boeing, Axiom, Sierra Space, Northrop Grumman, Lockheed Martin and Voyager — are poised to benefit. Quilty also sees Iridium Communications likely gaining from providing satellite communications to Ukrainian and NATO forces. Russia's retaliation in space
In satellite and spacecraft manufacturing, Russian-based company EDB Fakel makes propulsion units and supplies electric thrusters to OneWeb, Quilty noted, as well as "several" makers of large geosynchronous satellites.
"EDB Fakel estimates it has roughly 10% of the global spacecraft market, a share they are likely to forfeit due to the Russian government's actions," Quilty wrote.
The impact of the withdrawal of Soyuz rockets from much of the global launch market also has serious ramifications. Soyuz has long filled an important role in the middle of the launch market and has been a staple for Roscosmos and the Russian space program.
Soyuz has also benefited significantly from Western demand for launches, with international civil customers accounting for 51% of Soyuz missions since 2000, Quilty said. Additionally, Russia's launch infrastructure, with three primary spaceports, have made up a quarter of global launch activity since 2010, the firm said.
"The loss of western customers and demand sources (like the ISS) will economically hurt," Quilty wrote.
Northrop Grumman's Antares rocket lifts off from NASA's Wallops Flight Facility in Virginia on Aug. 10, 2021 carrying a Cygnus spacecraft with cargo for the International Space Station.
There will be a need for other suppliers and eventually a new space station if Russia withdraws early from the ISS partnership, or at least doesn't extend its role beyond 2024, the firm said.
U.S. space companies would stand to benefit. Quilty found multiple companies as likely filling that gap in services — with SpaceX and Sierra Space for cargo delivery, Boeing and SpaceX for crew delivery, and the four private space stations in development: Axiom's, Northrop's, Starlab, and Orbital Reef.
Quilty also identified five satellite imagery companies – Maxar, Planet, ICEYE, Capella, and BlackSky – as gaining from the demand for same-day intelligence about the situation in Ukraine.
"A handful of companies have been at the forefront of providing optical, hyperspectral, and SAR imagery during the Russian-Ukraine conflict, but most (if not all) EO players will benefit from this unprecedented exposure," Quilty wrote.
In satellite communications, Quilty believes Iridium may see an increase in demand for its Certus broadband and push to talk devices and services.
"Iridium typically experiences demand spikes for its narrowband voice/data services at times of global crisis, including earthquakes, weather related events, and military conflicts," Quilty wrote.
But Quilty also cautioned that Iridium could "face some blowback in Russia," where the company provides services to "thousands of users, especially in the energy industry."
While United Launch Alliance, the rocket building joint venture of Boeing and Lockheed, uses Russian-built RD-180 engines to power its Atlas V rockets, the end of engine sales "is not a major loss for ULA" since the company already has the engines it needs as it phases out use of Atlas V. However, ULA does not stand to benefit from stranded Soyuz customers, Quilty noted, as the company's replacement Vulcan rocket series has yet to make its debut and the remaining Atlas V rockets are already booked.
Northrop Grumman, on the other hand, still purchases Russian-built RD-181 engines to power its Antares rockets. Additionally, the rockets' main body is manufactured by Ukrainian Yuzhmash State Enterprise, which makes Antares "heavily dependent" and arguably the "most compromised" U.S. rocket series by Russia's war. While Northrop Grumman has said it has what it needs to conduct two more Antares launches, which cover mission orders until early 2023, the rocket's future is in doubt.
"Without a resolution to the war, it is unclear how Antares will continue without an extensive redesign. NASA is Northrop Grumman's sole customer for the rocket," Quilty wrote.
Canada's Trudeau Strikes Surprise Deal to Keep Power Until 2025
By Reuters March 22, 2022 Liberal leader Justin Trudeau and NDP leader Jagmeet Singh shake hands following the Federal leaders French language debate in Gatineau, Quebec, Canada, October 10, 2019.
Adrian Wyld/Pool via REUTERS
By Steve Scherer and Ismail Shakil
OTTAWA (Reuters) -Canada's ruling Liberal Party and opposition New Democratic Party (NDP) have reached a surprise agreement that aims to keep the minority government in power until 2025, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said on Tuesday.
Governments with a minority of seats in parliament, like the one Trudeau now leads, tend to last an average of about two years, but this rare agreement could permit it to last the entire four-year term, Trudeau said.
"What this means is that during this uncertain time, the government can function with predictability and stability, present and implement budgets, and get things done for Canadians," Trudeau said.
The two parties published a list of priorities they had agreed upon.
The Liberals agreed to back a national dental-care program for low-income Canadians and to move forward on a national prescription-drug coverage program, both cornerstone campaign pledges for the NDP.
The Liberals and New Democrats also said they would develop a plan to phase out financing for the fossil fuel sector, starting in 2022.
Trudeau, who has been in power since 2015, will be able to deliver on his main campaign promises, like fighting climate change or addressing a national housing shortage.
"We have a document ... that will be used to analyze and verify the government's actions," New Democrat leader Jagmeet Singh told reporters. "We will use our power to help people."
Singh six months ago ruled out a deal to keep the minority Liberal government in power, but added he was willing to support Trudeau on a case-by-case basis.
Opposition Conservative leader Candice Bergen said Canadians had been "hoodwinked" and "deceived" by Trudeau.
"This is nothing more than a Justin Trudeau power grab," Bergen said, adding that it would lead to "the decimation" of the country's oil and gas sector. Bloc Quebecois leader Yves-Francois Blanchet called the deal a "false majority" that betrayed last year's vote.
In the House of Commons, the deal will give the government 184 total votes. A majority is 170 and the Liberals have 159 by themselves. Singh said the deal would stay in place as long as the Liberals lived up to their commitments.
Trudeau has failed to gain a majority of seats in parliament in the past two elections. So the left-leaning NDP has backed Trudeau in key votes since 2019, but this agreement formalizes future support.
While a so-called "supply and confidence agreement" is not unheard of in Canadian politics, it is unprecedented to have such an agreement in writing at the federal level.
In 2004, Conservative leader Stephen Harper sought to unite the opposition to bring down Paul Martin's Liberal government, but failed. However in 2017 an NDP government in British Columbia functioned with the informal support of the Green Party until 2020.
The deal does not create a formal coalition and the New Democrats will not be part of Trudeau's cabinet.
(Reporting by Steve Scherer in Ottawa and Ismail Shakil in Bengaluru, Rhea Binoy and Bhargav Acharya in Bengaluru, additional reporting by Julie Gordon in Ottawa;Editing by Nick Zieminski and Bernadette Baum)
Copyright 2022 Thomson Reuters.
‘Dark empaths’: how dangerous are psychopaths and narcissists with empathy?
You may have psychopathic traits, too. Shutterstock
Published: March 16, 2022
People with “dark personality traits”, such as psychopathy or narcissism, are more likely to be callous, disagreeable and antagonistic in their nature. Such traits exist on a continuum – we all have more or less of them, and this does not necessarily equate to being clinically diagnosed with a personality disorder.
Traditionally, people who are high in dark traits are considered to have empathy deficits, potentially making them more dangerous and aggressive than the rest of us. But we recently discovered something that challenges this idea. Our study, published in Personality and Individual Differences, identified a group of individuals with dark traits who report above-average empathic capacities – we call them “dark empaths”.
Since this study, the dark empath has earned a reputation as the most dangerous personality profile. But is this really the case?
Dark personality traits include psychopathy, machiavellianism and narcissism, collectively called the “dark triad”. More recently, it has been suggested that sadism be added, culminating in a “dark tetrad”.
Psychopathy is characterised by a superficial charm and callousness. People high in such traits often show an erratic lifestyle and antisocial behaviour. Machiavellianism derives from the writings of Niccolò Machiavelli, a Renaissance author, historian and philosopher. He described power games involving deception, treachery and crime. Thus, machiavellianism refers to an exploitative, cynical and manipulative nature. Narcissism is characterised by an exaggerated sense of entitlement, superiority and grandiose thinking, while sadism denotes a drive to inflict and enjoy pain in others.
The dark traits, particularly psychopathy and machiavellianism, have been consistently associated with aggressive and anti-social behaviour.
The empathy puzzle
Empathy can refer to the capacity to share feelings, namely “affective empathy” (if you are sad, I also feel sad). But it can also be the ability to understand other people’s minds, dubbed “cognitive empathy” (I know what you think and why you are feeling sad).
For example, the lack of (specifically affective) empathy is a well documented hallmark in clinical psychopathy used to explain their often persistent, instrumental violent behaviour. Our own work supports the notion that one of the reasons people with dark traits hurt other people or have difficulties in relationships is an underpinning lack of empathy.
This makes sense in a way, as to manipulate others for your own gain – or indeed enjoy the pain of others – you must have at least some capacity to understand them. Thus, we questioned whether dark traits and empathy were indeed mutually exclusive phenomena.
Dark empaths
We asked almost 1,000 people to complete assessments, based on questionnaires, on the dark triad and empathy. We then used a method called latent profile analysis that allows you to establish clusters of people with different profiles of certain trait combinations.
As expected, we found a traditional dark triad group with low scores in empathy (about 13% of the sample). We also found a group with lower to average levels across all traits (about 34% were “typicals”) and a group with low dark traits and high levels of empathy (about 33% were “empaths”). However, the fourth group of people, the “dark empaths”, was evident. They had higher scores on both dark traits and empathy (about 20% of our sample). Interestingly, this latter group scored higher on both cognitive and affective empathy than the “dark triad” and “typical” groups.
We then characterised these groups based on measures of aggression, general personality, psychological vulnerability and wellbeing. The dark empaths were not as aggressive as the traditional dark triad group – suggesting the latter are likely more dangerous. Nevertheless, the dark empaths were more aggressive than typicals and empaths, at least on a measure of indirect aggression - that is, hurting or manipulating people through social exclusion, malicious humour and guilt-induction. Thus, although the presence of empathy was limiting their level of aggression, it was not eliminating it completely.
In line with this notion, empaths were the most “agreeable” (a personality trait showing how nice or friendly you are), followed by typicals, then dark empaths, and last dark triads. Interestingly, dark empaths were more extroverted than the rest, a trait reflecting the tendency to be sociable, lively and active. Thus, the presence of empathy appears to encourage an enjoyment of being or interacting with people. But it may potentially also be motivated by a desire to dominate them.
Moreover, dark empaths were a little higher in neuroticism, a type of negative thinking, but did not score higher on depression, anxiety or stress. Instead, their neuroticism may reflect sub-traits such as anger, hostility or self-doubt. Indeed, the dark empaths reported judging themselves more harshly than those with dark triad personalities. So it seems they may have a conscience, perhaps even disliking their dark side. Alternatively, their negative emotions may be a response to their self-loathing.
Hidden dangers
Though the aggression reported by the dark empaths was not as high as the traditional dark triad group, the danger of this personality profile is that their empathy, and likely resulting social skills, make their darkness harder to spot. We believe that dark empaths have the capacity to be callous and ruthless, but are able to limit such aggression.
It is worth noting, however, that those clinically diagnosed with an antisocial personality disorder (often showing excessive levels of dark traits), most certainly lack empathy and are dangerous predators – and many of them are in prison. Our research is looking at people in the general population who have elevated levels of dark personality traits, rather than personality disorders.
Empathy may protect against aggression. Shutterstock
We are continuing our quest to find out more about the characteristics of the dark empaths in relation to other psychological outcomes. For example, we are interested in their risk taking, impulsivity or physically aggressive behaviour. We also want to understand how they process emotions or facial expressions, or how they perceive and react to threats.
We are currently replicating and extending some of our findings using the dark tetrad instead. Our results are yet to be published, but indicate there are two further profiles in addition to the four groups we’ve already identified. One is an “emotionally internalised group”, with high levels of affective empathy and average cognitive empathy, without elevated dark traits. The other shows a pattern similar to autistic traits – particularly, low cognitive empathy and average affective empathy in the absence of elevated dark traits.
We are hoping this research may be able to shift our understanding of empathy in the context of the dark traits.
Authors
Nadja Heym Senior Lecturer in Psychology, Nottingham Trent University
Alexander Sumich Associate Professor of Psychology, Nottingham Trent University
Texas governor brags about his border initiative but the data tells a much different story
Pro Publica March 21, 2022 Greg Abbott YouTube/screen grab By Lomi Kriel and Perla Trevizo, ProPublica and The Texas Tribune, and Andrew Rodriguez Calderón and Keri Blakinger, The Marshall Project ProPublica is a Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative newsroom.
LONG READ
Thomas King-Randall had been waiting for two hours to drop his daughters off at his ex-girlfriend’s apartment in Midland, Texas. It was 10:30 on a school night in August and it was her turn to care for the two girls.
The ex-girlfriend showed up drunk and was arguing with her new boyfriend in his truck, police later wrote in a report. King-Randall, who is Black, said in an interview that the woman’s Latino boyfriend called him a racial slur, which led to a fight.
By the end of the encounter, the woman’s boyfriend had a bloody nose and swollen eyes. King-Randall was gone, and local police issued an arrest warrant for the 26-year-old California native. A month later, Texas Department of Public Safety officers arrested King-Randall when he tried to renew his driver’s license.
King-Randall’s arrest was one of thousands used to bolster claims of success for Operation Lone Star. Texas Gov. Greg Abbott launched the initiative last March, citing an urgent need to stop the flow of drugs and undocumented immigrants into the state through Mexico.
But the alleged assault had nothing to do with the border. King-Randall, a U.S. citizen, was arrested more than 250 miles from the border with Mexico. Neither DPS nor the Texas Military Department, the state agencies carrying out Operation Lone Star, played a role in the investigation. And the family violence assault charge King-Randall faced wasn’t linked to border-related crime or illegal immigration.
Operation Lone Star has helped increase the state’s budget for border security to more than $3 billion through 2023 by deploying thousands of DPS troopers and National Guard members and allocating funding to build border barriers. As part of the operation, troopers are also arresting some immigrant men crossing into the U.S. on state criminal trespassing charges.
Abbott and DPS have repeatedly boasted in news conferences, on social media and during interviews on Fox News that the border operation has disrupted drug and human smuggling networks. A year into the operation, officials touted more than 11,000 criminal arrests, drug seizures that amount to millions of “lethal doses” and the referrals of tens of thousands of unauthorized immigrants to the federal government for deportation as signs that the program is effective.
But the state’s claim of success has been based on shifting metrics that included crimes with no connection to the border, work conducted by troopers stationed in targeted counties prior to the operation, and arrest and drug seizure efforts that do not clearly distinguish DPS’s role from that of other agencies, an investigation by ProPublica, The Texas Tribune and The Marshall Project found.
King-Randall’s charges were among more than 2,000, including some for cockfighting, sexual assault and stalking, that the agency stopped counting toward Operation Lone Star more than nine months into the exercise, after the news organizations began raising questions about the ties between the arrests and border security. Of those, about 270 charges were for violent crimes, which are defined by the FBI as murder, manslaughter, rape, robbery and aggravated assault.
King-Randall said in an interview that he was fighting the allegations. The case is pending, according to the Midland County district attorney’s office.
Claiming such arrests is “inherently flawed” and misrepresents the accomplishments of the operation, said Patrick O’Burke, a law enforcement consultant and a former DPS commander who retired in 2008.
“The problem could be simply related to crimes in those communities,” O’Burke said. “It’s not battling cross-border crime.”
Asked by the news organizations why such charges were not excluded from the operation’s metrics at the start, DPS officials said they are continuously improving how they collect and report the data “to better reflect the mission” of securing the border. The governor’s office maintained that “dangerous individuals, deadly drugs, and other illegal contraband have been taken off our streets or prevented from entering the State of Texas altogether thanks to the men and women of Operation Lone Star.”
But DPS and Abbott have provided little proof to substantiate such statements. A year into the initiative, Abbott, DPS and the Texas Military Department have fought two dozen public records requests from the news organizations that would provide a clearer picture of the operation’s accomplishments.
DPS, the only agency to release some records related to Operation Lone Star’s results, has made several significant revisions to the arrest data, including removing charges. The agency did not provide details that would help determine how the cases that remained are connected to the initiative’s goal of deterring border-related crime. The agency also failed to identify arrests and drug seizures that could have occurred without the additional personnel made available through the operation.
The absence of clear metrics for measuring its accomplishments points to a larger problem with the border operation and more than a dozen others launched by the state’s two governors during the past 17 years. Lawmakers have repeatedly increased state funding for border security while providing minimal oversight of the operations launched by Abbott and his predecessor, Gov. Rick Perry.
Over the years, some legislators have balked at state agencies’ calls for more accountability from border security efforts.
“It’s almost offensive to say, ‘What are the results?’” former state Rep. Dan Flynn, a Republican from East Texas, said during a hearing in 2018. At that hearing, the Texas Sunset Advisory Commission, which determines whether there’s a continuing need for state agencies and programs, raised concerns that DPS was not providing “sufficient information to the public and policymakers about the return on investment for border security.”
Texas, which shares a 1,200-mile border with Mexico, spends more money on border security than any other state. And at a cost to taxpayers of more than $2.5 million a week, Operation Lone Star is by far the most expensive of the state’s border operations, and the one with the broadest mandate and scope.
In South Texas’ Rio Grande Valley, which was at the center of last year’s immigrant influx, Hidalgo County Judge Richard Cortez said he doesn’t know what Operation Lone Star has accomplished beyond “arresting people and making them criminals.”
Cortez said the problem is not criminal activity, but the sheer number of immigrants seeking better opportunities who sometimes attempt to cross into his community at once, straining resources and overwhelming Border Patrol. The solution, he said, is a comprehensive approach to address the reasons people are trying to come to the U.S. and provide more legal avenues to do so.
“We’re spending millions and billions of dollars in trying to manage something,” Cortez said about Operation Lone Star. “But instead of getting me the plumber to stop the leak, they’re sending me people to mop up the floor.” Politics of Border Security
With DPS SUVs lined up behind him as if forming a wall, Abbott promoted his new initiative during a March 2021 news conference in Mission, a city in the Rio Grande Valley where more immigrants were crossing the border.
While federal officials started apprehending a greater number of immigrants during Donald Trump’s presidency, Abbott blamed newly inaugurated President Joe Biden for not doing enough to stem record levels of arrivals at the border.
During his first two months at the helm, Biden temporarily halted a policy that required people seeking asylum to wait in Mexico until their cases could be heard by U.S. immigration judges. A federal judge in Texas later ordered the administration to reinstate part of the policy. Under a Trump administration pandemic health order that Biden kept in place, more than three-fourths of immigrants apprehended at the border during that period were immediately turned away.
“If you were president in 2024, which some of us hope that you are, what’s the first thing that you would do to enact something down here?” asked a man in the crowd whom Abbott’s staff singled out for the final question.
“Secure the border. Period,” Abbott said.
With the presidential election in the distance, Abbott has made border security a cornerstone of his gubernatorial reelection campaign, playing offense against his primary opponents, attacking Biden and using the issue as a way to distinguish himself from his general election challenger, former U.S. Rep. Beto O’Rourke, a Democrat from the border city of El Paso.
The governor handily won the Republican primary early this month with Trump’s support. The former president’s success rallying the Republican base by pushing hard-line policies and promoting the construction of a border wall has become a model for Texas GOP candidates, who saw Trump make inroads with Latino voters in border counties in 2020.
The results emboldened Republicans, who doubled down on Trump’s rhetoric, pushing some of his more restrictive border measures, said James Henson, director of the Texas Politics Project at the University of Texas at Austin.
“It’s almost as if he gave permission for more straightforwardly nativist rhetoric, but he didn’t do that in a vacuum, certainly at least not here,” Henson said, pointing to anti-immigrant sentiment among Republican voters prior to Trump’s election.
In launching Operation Lone Star, Abbott went further than any other governor in recent history, attempting to curtail immigration by using state trespassing charges to directly target those who cross the border on private property.
The federal government has sole authority to enforce immigration laws, but Abbott increased trespassing penalties under a declaration that gave him more power akin to what he would have after a natural disaster.
In June, the governor shifted the operation’s emphasis from the Rio Grande Valley, where political leaders opposed some of his efforts, to a vast rural region of mostly private ranches around Val Verde County, about 170 miles west of San Antonio. Trump won the county by a 10-point margin in 2020. Until this year, Val Verde and Kinney were the only two counties prosecuting people crossing into the country through private property for trespassing.
The misdemeanor charge, punishable by up to a year in jail, makes up about 40% of the operation’s arrests from mid-July to Jan. 27, an analysis by ProPublica, the Tribune and the Marshall Project found.
The governor’s office said the operation is based on facts, not politics, and is geared to provide “maximum assistance to the counties greatest affected.” But federal statistics show some of the counties in the Rio Grande Valley that DPS shifted additional resources away from were among those experiencing the greatest influx of immigrants and drugs.
Command Sgt. Maj. Jason Featherston, a Texas Army National Guard veteran who helped oversee the guard’s deployment under the operation until his retirement in November, said he and his colleagues believed politics was the main driver for the mushrooming initiative. He said he recalls commanders saying things like, “We’re going back to the border, the governor is trying to get reelected.”
Federal and state Democratic lawmakers have urged investigations into the constitutionality of the trespassing arrests and the poor working conditions, pay delays and suicides among National Guard members assigned to Operation Lone Star, problems reported by the Tribune and the Army Times. And some state Democrats, led by the Mexican American Legislative Caucus, announced a task force early this month to investigate “many layers of grave concerns” about the operation, including alleged human rights violations and a lack of accountability. Abbott’s office has said the arrests and prosecutions under the operation “are fully constitutional.”
But the broader operation’s goals and results have received little scrutiny.
In July, DPS began counting toward Operation Lone Star a number of arrests and drug seizures from a 63-county region almost the size of Oregon that officials dubbed the area of interest. The area included counties that did not receive additional resources from the operation, and some of the newly credited actions included work already conducted by troopers stationed there before the governor’s initiative began.
Before then, DPS had been counting arrests and drug seizures from what the agency called the “more focused” area of operation, a smaller group of counties closer to the border.
The governor and DPS declined to answer questions about who ordered the change and whether all the counties in the larger area of interest received extra resources from the operation. DPS officials said the area of operation is fluid as the department is continuously monitoring the border and adjusting its use of resources as needed.
Abbott pointed to some of those arrests last year as he sought additional funding for border security efforts, bringing lawmakers back for a special legislative session. Abbott’s office received $1.3 billion of the $3 billion total, marking the first time that the governor’s allocation for border security was larger than that given to DPS.
The growing share of border security funding managed by the governor’s office raises questions about transparency, said Eva DeLuna Castro, a budget analyst for the progressive think tank Every Texan. She said such spending is harder to track because the governor’s office doesn’t report its expenditures with the same level of detail as DPS.
While the governor’s office argues that the agencies it funds have to report spending, DeLuna Castro said some are not subject to such rules.
In January, after increasing the number of National Guard members at the border to 10,000, the governor and a handful of the state’s Republican leaders moved nearly half a billion dollars from DPS, the Texas Department of Criminal Justice and the Texas Alcoholic Beverage Commission to help cover the increased costs.
“He’s just running up a tab that the Legislature, and taxpayers, will have to cover,” DeLuna Castro said. Trouble With the Numbers
Fentanyl seizures have become shorthand for Operation Lone Star’s success.
Abbott repeatedly highlights them in press conferences and on social media, boasting that the state is helping to stop Biden’s “open border policies.” He has used seizures of the synthetic opioid, which is 100 times stronger than morphine, as a way to attack O’Rourke, who is challenging him in the November gubernatorial election.
At a February event in Austin before the primary election, Abbott’s campaign handed out pill bottles with a fake label that read “Beto Biden open border” and pointed to 1,334 Texas fentanyl deaths in 2021.
Inside was a mock warning label that credited the seizure of 887 pounds of fentanyl, or what he called more than 201 million deadly doses, to Operation Lone Star. Days later, Abbott repeated similar claims in a press release from the governor’s office.
The figure reflects seizures across the state and contradicts the number DPS has given for what is attributable to Operation Lone Star. About 160 pounds of fentanyl were seized from March 2021 to January 2022 in the regions that DPS uses when reporting metrics from the operation.
Abbott’s office defended using statewide seizure numbers, saying they are directly tied to Operation Lone Star because the drug generally enters from Mexico.
“DPS can’t always seize fentanyl right at the border; but they will not stop until they find it, even if it is in North Texas,” Nan Tolson, Abbott’s spokesperson, wrote in an email.
Including statewide seizures is “just disingenuous,” said O’Burke, the former DPS commander.
“Chicago has a border nexus. Are we going to count drugs that were seized in Chicago? That’s just not transparent,” he said. “It’s just not a measure of success. It’s just conflating these statistics because it makes the general public feel safer.”
Instead, O’Burke said, Operation Lone Star’s results should only count actions in which its added resources were used.
That number comes with its own caveats. All but 12 of the 160 pounds of fentanyl were captured in El Paso County, which was not one of the ones listed by DPS officials in November as receiving additional troopers and National Guard members from the operation. The county was one of several that declined to sign on to the governor’s border disaster declaration.
Fentanyl seizure claims are not the only example of the difficulty of measuring the return on investment for taxpayers.
DPS has a history of taking credit for work, such as drug seizures, carried out by other agencies. As part of the operation, DPS and Texas Military Department officials reported apprehending more than 200,000 migrants in the past year and referring them to the federal government for deportation. That included eight migrants who were caught rafting across the Rio Grande by DPS troopers, National Guard members and Border Patrol agents in November. But while DPS counted the immigrants it referred to Border Patrol as part of its reporting for Operation Lone Star, that same group may also have been included in the National Guard’s tally, meaning both agencies could be getting credit for the same arrests. The Texas Military Department did not answer questions about the case.
U.S. Customs and Border Protection declined multiple interview requests. Officials did say that the federal agency “does not have a role or partner in any way” with DPS on the operation and that they don’t track the state’s referrals.
DPS officials acknowledged in an interview that more than one agency could be taking credit for some of the same detentions because the Texas Military Department does not share with DPS the details of immigrants it refers to the federal government, and such data is not publicly available.
Featherston, the retired Texas Army National Guard senior enlisted adviser, said he believes immigrant apprehensions are “double counted.”
In another case, DPS posted on its Facebook page in September that it encountered more than 700 gang members as part of the operation. But officials declined requests to provide records detailing such arrests, saying gang affiliation “was not a metric the Department is tracking.”
And despite removing more than 2,000 charges from the arrest data credited to Operation Lone Star, DPS still includes other charges without explaining how they align with the operation’s goal of capturing dangerous criminals. (DPS disputed this characterization of the removed charges; a full explanation of our rebuttal is described in the methods section at the end of this piece.) In May, for example, troopers arrested a 20-year-old woman in Coke County, about 200 miles from the border in West Texas.
The woman was driving 9 mph over the speed limit in a no-passing zone on a rural highway. After troopers stopped her for speeding, they discovered a Ziploc bag with “loose leaf marijuana in the glovebox,” according to the arrest report.
The woman, who could not be reached for comment, does not appear to have a prior criminal record. The arrest report doesn’t note her immigration status. She was charged with possession of less than 2 ounces of marijuana.
“The whole reason for all this, you know, playing with statistics, is for optics so that the governor could get reelected. And so from that perspective, has it worked? Yes. It's worked for him,” said Gary Hale, a former chief of intelligence in Houston for the Drug Enforcement Administration who is now at Rice University’s Baker Institute for Public Policy. “But what’s the net gain? I don’t think there’s any. Zero. We really haven’t had any significant impact on migrant smuggling or drug trafficking.” A Year Later
A year after Operation Lone Star launched, a panel of three Texas senators sought to better understand how to gauge the costly initiative’s accomplishments.
“What metrics are you using to measure success in terms of defining the arrests for which you’re responsible for, to make sure we’re using our DPS officers in an effective way?” state Sen. Juan “Chuy” Hinojosa, a Democrat from the border city of McAllen, asked DPS’ chief, Col. Steve McCraw, at a hearing on March 8.
Success could not be measured through arrest and seizure numbers alone, McCraw responded.
For the first time since the operation began, he offered a different metric: securing the border by stopping the flow of drugs and unauthorized immigrants in Texas’ 103 Border Patrol zones, one at a time. That is accomplished when each area has enough barriers, technology and law enforcement resources to “prevent transnational criminal activity,” according to DPS, which said it has met that goal in four zones that make up some parts of Hidalgo and Starr counties.
During the hearing, McCraw didn’t say how the agency knows it has secured a region. He also did not explain how DPS would be able to continue committing the resources needed to sustain that level of security. The senators didn’t ask.
“The challenge we have is when trying to decide what success looks like, is that if the numbers go up, do we claim success because we’re more efficient?” McCraw asked, adding that arrest and drug seizure statistics fluctuate. “You can’t have it both ways, you can’t be successful when the numbers go up and when the numbers go down.”
Since the start of the operation, DPS and Abbott have repeatedly touted success using arrests and drug seizure numbers. While continuing to cite the statistics, McCraw sought to minimize their significance, saying that what matters most is “not how much crime you’re enforcing. It’s the absence of it.”
By the end of that Senate hearing, lawmakers remained uncertain about the return on their multibillion-dollar investment.
“How do we know whether the amount of money was appropriate for what was needed?” state Sen. Bob Hall, a Republican from Rockwall, northeast of Dallas, asked the state’s financial analysts. “And how do we know when we’ve accomplished what we set out to do, so that we can figure out what to do next, other than just appropriate more money and then wonder what to do next?”
The question has plagued lawmakers since the first border security operation launched nearly two decades ago. About the Data: How We Analyzed Criminal Charges Linked to Operation Lone Star The Data
Beginning in June 2021, reporters from The Marshall Project, ProPublica and The Texas Tribune began making records requests to the Texas Department of Public Safety for data on arrests and charges associated with Operation Lone Star. The department was responsive to those requests and provided information over the course of several months, though the format and contents of the files they sent changed over time in notable ways.
DPS sent us two data releases, one in July and another in August 2021, with records of arrests and charges associated with Operation Lone Star. Those releases came as separate files from three branches of DPS. However, in November, agency officials said that these records were incomplete, only capturing one of two broad border regions. In December, they then said they had retroactively started removing charges that did not “reflect the mission” of Operation Lone Star.
From November 2021 to January 2022, DPS sent three data snapshots, each of which the department said represented the totality of its records of Operation Lone Star charges and arrests at the time the files were created. This data was organized with each charge on its own row. An arrest can include multiple charges. What We Found
DPS emphasized that it is continuously improving how it collects and reports data for Operation Lone Star. As such, we used the latest data snapshot, from January 2022, when describing the criminal charges that the agency attributes to the operation, including how many charges were related to trespassing and how the charges were distributed geographically.
We also examined the evolving nature of the department’s record-keeping by looking at changes between the data snapshots provided to us. In comparing the first and second complete data snapshots (one provided in November 2021, the other in December 2021), we found more than 2,000 charges that had been removed from the data. Vetting Our Findings
DPS said that our approach did not account for the fact that “each spreadsheet represents an extract from a live database, and information is subject to change.” The agency stated that our analysis “assumes that any row that does not appear exactly the same in each spreadsheet can be described as either ‘added’ or ‘removed.’”
We did not require rows to match exactly when identifying charges preserved or removed. Rows were matched using arrest IDs and charge descriptions, and we looked only at charges from dates covered in both files. For about half of the more than 2,000 charges we identified as being removed from the data, the arrest IDs for these charges were not included in the later data snapshots — for example, Thomas King-Randall’s arrest only appears in the first snapshot. For the other half, the arrest ID did appear in later data snapshots, but with fewer charges associated with it. Additionally, looking only at the number of charges in each dataset, we observed that for arrests that occured in the same time period, there were fewer charges in later data snapshots than there had been in the earlier snapshot. DPS declined to answer questions about why particular cases were removed and declined to answer many of our specific questions about the dataset.
The constantly changing nature of the database is not unique to Operation Lone Star. Methods for comparing datasets are commonly used and actively studied. It is valid to analyze changes in such databases (with the appropriate caveats) and to describe them as additions or removals. DPS itself told reporters the department “identified offenses that should be removed” in a December 2021 email about changes to Operation Lone Star data collection.
Owners reportedly dump dog at animal shelter because they thought he was 'gay'
MALE CATS AND DOGS ARE BISEXUAL
Sky Palma March 21, 2022 A dog was dumped at a North Carolina dog shelter because the owners were convinced it was gay after it tried to have sex with another male dog, WCCB reports.
The shelter is now asking for local shelters to step and take the dog, whose name is "Fezco."
As the The American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (ASPCA) points out, mounting or thrusting is normal play behavior for pets and doesn't necessarily indicate sexuality. That being said, homosexual behavior has been noted in over 1,500 animals species, according to Scientific American.
