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)
Sunday, May 05, 2024
How a few secret donors are fueling the new right-wing infrastructure
The Bradley Impact Fund helps finance the work of groups led by Michael Flynn and Stephen Miller. Most of the money can be traced to four undisclosed sources, documents show.
By Isabela Dias
Sunday, May 5, 2024 Photo: Shutterstock
In early 2021, Stephen Miller — former White House senior adviser to Donald Trump and architect of the 45th president’s hopeful second-term mass deportation agenda — announced his next venture: America First Legal (AFL).
Paraded as “the long-awaited answer to the ACLU,” AFL fights for Trumpist values in the legal system. And the group is prolific: In its three years of existence, AFL has taken on more than 100 legal actions—between lawsuits filed, complaints lodged with the US Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC), and court briefs written, according to the Washington Post.
The Supreme Court could help implement his plan to take billions from public school and give them to religious private and home schools.
While it has notably played a major role in stopping debt relief for Black farmers, Miller’s organization has been perhaps most famous for its aggressive publicity strategy of “lawfare.”
AFL targets so-called “woke” corporate and government programs, alleging employment discrimination against white, heterosexual men. It has challenged Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) in higher education and supposed “radical transgender ideology” in school districts. Typically, after filing a suit or complaint, Miller makes the rounds of the right-wing media circuit and fundraises off the attention. “Bogus suits,” securities law expert Benjamin Edwards explained in the Daily Beast, seem designed for a nonlegal goal: to issue “press releases” so AFL can “recruit more donors.” Miller’s group has reportedly spent more on ads than legal services. (AFL did not respond to questions from Mother Jones.)
The strategy has worked. In 2022, AFL brought in $44 million. Its revenue shot up by nearly 600% compared with the previous year. But less scrutinized has been how AFL has secured its haul. More than 60% of its funding came from a little-discussed entity: the Bradley Impact Fund. In 2022, Bradley doled out more than $27 million to AFL, according to the organization’s most recent available tax filing.
And AFL is far from the only culture-war donation the Bradley Impact Fund has dispensed.
That same year, according to tax filings, Bradley gave $7.8 million to Turning Point USA and $1.8 million to Project Veritas, the conservative outfit founded by provocateur James O’Keefe that mounts sting operations. The year prior, both organizations ranked at the top of the fund’s list of recipients, receiving $7.4 million and $2.1 million, respectively. (Before 2019, such contributions were limited to a few thousand dollars.) Another group to benefit from the fund has been America’s Future — led by Trump’s former national security adviser Michael Flynn — which received a $500,000 gift in 2022.
Over the last few years, the Bradley Impact Fund has experienced massive growth, emerging as one of the key bankrollers of the coterie of organizations and apparatchiks hoping to create institutions that carry out Trump’s ideological agenda. In the process, Bradley fuels the culture wars and undermines faith in democracy by stirring election denialism — all while keeping its donors secret.
More than 75% of contributions to the Bradley Impact Fund in 2022 came from just four sources.
Created in 2012, the Bradley Impact Fund is a donor-advised fund (DAF) “aligned” with the Milwaukee-based Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation, which has a long history of conservative influence and, of late, has become a source of money for organizations pushing Republicans to change election laws. Donor-advised funds, such as the Bradley Impact Fund, collect donations from various contributors and then make often untraceable gifts to other organizations. An increasingly popular charity tool—receiving a quarter of all individual giving in the United States — DAFs offer donors “multiple layers of anonymity,” explains Brendan Fischer, deputy executive director of the investigative watchdog Documented.
DAFs operate like private foundations but are classified as public charities. This allows the funds to give money without the same transparency requirements. And the donors, who can recommend where their contributions should go, are still awarded the publicly subsidized tax breaks associated with charitable giving.
Some of the largest US-based DAFs are funneling millions of dollars to groups pushing anti-LGBTQ agendas and working to restrict reproductive rights, as a recent OpenDemocracy investigation showed.
DAFs can essentially work as “slush funds for political engagement,” says Robert Maguire, research director at Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington. “It really is sort of a big wash for money.”
The Bradley Impact Fund has “quickly grown into a major player in the conservative space,” Fischer, an expert in campaign finance and government transparency issues, explains. Bradley is “shaping politics and policymaking in ways that will be felt for years to come,” Michael Beckel, research director with the political reform group Issue One, told the Guardian.
This work is being enabled by an extraordinarily small universe of donors. Bradley boasts about cultivating a network of contributors across 44 states. But more than 75% of contributions to the Bradley Impact Fund in 2022 came from just four sources, according to an audited financial statement filed with the California Department of Justice that the nonprofit research organization Accountable US shared with Mother Jones.
The Bradley Impact Fund received roughly $108 million in contributions and grants that year, including three donations of $36 million, $20 million, and $18 million, respectively. At least another $12 million came from a different donor-advised fund, DonorsTrust, the “dark money ATM” of the conservative movement. By its own admission, DonorsTrust is a convenient conduit for benefactors wishing to provide “gifts funding sensitive or controversial issues.” (In an email, Lawson Bader, president and CEO of DonorsTrust, declined to comment on the reasons behind the grant to the Bradley Impact Fund, saying the implementation of the gift is left to the recipient. “Grants from one DAF provider to another are infrequent and certainly not nefarious,” he added.)
“It shows how purposefully opaque these money flows are,” Caroline Ciccone, president of Accountable US, says. “They move through multiple different entities in a way that intentionally obscures sources.” The limited number of major funding sources to the Bradley Impact Fund, she adds, suggests that “they’re really only intended to work for a small elite group who doesn’t seem to be comfortable perhaps with the values that they are pushing across the country.”
In the fall of 2019, the Bradley Impact Fund held its ninth annual conference in Lake Geneva, a resort town in Wisconsin. Earlier that year, it had welcomed a new president, Gabriel Conger, previously an adviser to the president of the Heritage Foundation specializing in donor relations. Once a bastion of Reaganite orthodoxy, Heritage has, like much of the right, pivoted to something closer to MAGA populism. And the Bradley Impact Fund has seemed to follow suit.
The theme of the conference was “Disruptors: Principles in Action.” One of the talks, focused on “Disrupting the Leftwing Agenda,” featured former Vice President Dick Cheney, Federalist top editor Mollie Hemingway, and right-wing commentator . Wilfred McClay, now a chair in classical history and Western civilization at Hillsdale College, was invited to “discuss the importance of breaking the Left’s stranglehold on American history.” (He promoted his book Land of Hope: An Invitation to the Great American Story, an intended antidote to Howard Zinn’s A People’s History of the United States—which McClay described as a “‘comic-book melodrama in which ‘the people’ are constantly being abused by ‘the rulers.’”)
“The war we have to fight is the war of ideas,” Owens told attendees. “We need to stand up and say what we believe every day — it’s the only way we will save America.”
The event also included a panel with the Teneo Network, a group that describes itself as “the Silicon Valley of Conservatism.” It aims to expand on the yearslong crusade of Federalist Society’s Leonard Leo — who is a chair of Teneo’s board — to move US courts to the right.
After the conference, Conger warned in a newsletter that conservatives were “at a crossroads in this fight for our country’s future.” There was much work for the Bradley Impact Fund to do.
In short order, Conger assembled a massive war chest for this battle. After he took over as president, Bradley’s revenue, as well as grant-making, jumped by more than 650%. And the fund seemingly adjusted its giving priorities to meet the moment of the conservative movement. (The Bradley Impact Fund and Conger didn’t respond to an email with questions.)
In the last couple of years, Bradley has given not only to Project Veritas, Turning Point USA, and Miller’s AFL, but also to anti-critical Race Theory groups. The fund has funneled hundreds of thousands of dollars to parental rights groups such as Parents Defending Education and Moms for America. In February, Moms for America joined a “Take Our Border Back” convoy that drew a mix of conspiracy theorists, January 6 insurrectionists, and Christian nationalists.
The limited number of major funding sources to the Bradley Impact Fund suggests that “they’re really only intended to work for a small elite group.”
“The ramping up of giving to far-right and MAGA-aligned groups since 2020 is indicative of a broader evolution of the conservative movement,” Fischer says. Deep-pocketed donors, he adds, are channeling less money toward a first wave of traditionally conservative groups like the Heritage Foundation, ALEC, and the Federalist Society, and more toward a newer breed of institutions “providing the support to push politics even further to the right.”
The Bradley Impact Fund shares some board of directors with the somewhat low-profile but impactful Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation. Founded in 1942, the private foundation with assets of more than $900 million has dispersed upward of $1 billion to back conservative causes advancing school choice and welfare reform and to defund unions. More recently, the foundation has funded “election integrity” efforts. The Bradley Foundation, the New Yorker’s Jane Mayer wrote in 2021, “has become singularly preoccupied with wielding national political influence.” And it, too, has doubled down on building right-wing infrastructure. In the Bradley Foundation’s 2023 annual report, the organization disclosed donations of $250,000 to the Manhattan Institute for Policy Research, where anti-CRT activist Christopher Rufo is a senior fellow, to “support efforts to combat identity politics,” $30,000 to Leo’sTeneo Network, and $100,000 to the sprawling MAGA “nerve center” known as the Conservative Partnership Institute (CPI).
The Bradley Impact Fund has provided even more funding to CPI. It funneled more than $1 million in donations to CPI between 2020 and 2022.
CPI, as the New York Times reported, has become a policy incubator for a potential second Trump term. Launched in 2017, it serves as a refuge for Trump loyalists and aides-in-waiting, too. It is led by former South Carolina Sen. Jim DeMint (who got booted as president of the Heritage Foundation in 2017 amid concerns that the organization had become overly political) and Trump’s ex–chief of staff Mark Meadows, who was recently indicted by a state grand jury in Arizona on felony charges related to efforts to subvert the 2020 election.
The umbrella organization hosts a bevy of right-wing initiatives, including AFL and the Election Integrity Network, a project spearheaded by Cleta Mitchell — Trump’s former legal adviser who played a central role in the plot to overturn President Joe Biden’s 2020 victory. (Mitchell also sits on the board of the Bradley Foundation.) The Election Integrity Network aims to recruit “an army of citizen volunteers” to monitor elections.
In 2021, Trump’s Save America PAC donated $1 million to CPI, which, like its spin-off organizations, is involved in the Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025 — a roadmap for a future Trump administration to overhaul federal agencies and give unprecedented power to the president.
The nonprofit watchdog Campaign for Accountability recently filed a complaint with the IRS claiming CPI, a 501(c)(3), “indirectly engages in political campaign activity through a for-profit subsidiary that provides services to former President Donald Trump’s political campaign, as well as other Republican candidates, committees, and certain other partisan entities.” CPI did not respond to a request for comment.
As a hub for pro-MAGA groups, CPI aspires to be a breeding ground for the next generation of conservative leaders. The organization conducts “ideological vetting” and training of candidates for congressional staff positions. One such bootcamp in April 2023 featured Turning Point USA’s Charlie Kirk as a speaker on “how to communicate conservative goals to a younger audience.” In another session, Stephen Miller spoke on “best practices for constructive social media posting.” (In its 2021 annual report, CPI calls his group AFL “the sling that hardworking, patriotic Americans can use to fight back against the abusive Goliath of the Biden Administration’s Deep State.”)
“We are the only organization that exists solely to unite and serve the conservative movement,” the group’s report states.
CPI itself has turned into a fundraising powerhouse too, bringing in $36 million in 2022. Much of that money can be traced to a relatively little-known donor, Mike Rydin, the now-retired founder of a Texas-based construction software development company. Rydin has given more than $25 million to CPI since the January 6 invasion of the US capitol, according to the Daily Beast, and offered a “generous gift” to help the organization purchase property on Capitol Hill. In turn, CPI has named one of the townhouses in its expanding real estate “Patriots’ Row” campus for the far-right “The Rydin House,” which Newsmax has since used to film an apologist documentary about January 6 titled Day of Outrage. CPI’s 2,200-acre retreat on Maryland’s eastern shore also goes by “Camp Rydin.” Rydin, whose bio highlights his use of programming skills to design a dating website where he met his late wife, has a profile page on Kirk’s Turning Point USA website.
There isn’t any indication that Rydin, who previously said he wasn’t aware of CPI’s hiring of people involved in the January 6 invasion of the US Capitol, has donated to the Bradley Impact Fund. Rydin couldn’t be reached for comment. (While major donors to the Impact Fund have been disclosed in the past, they are currently not known.)
But Fischer sees a “corollary trend” in the development of the MAGA-aligned political infrastructure at large. “There appears to be an emerging new wave of far-right donors, many of them individuals with no political profile, who are ideologically motivated and seeking more than just deregulation or climate change denial,” he says.
And that’s where DAFs come in. By obscuring the identity of big donors behind an extraordinary amount of money passing through and to different groups fanning the flames of the culture wars, they make it hard to nail down where the flow starts and where it ends.
Crowds gather to celebrate Beltain with burning of 40ft wicker man
Celtic Fire Festival: Burning the Wicker man took place at Butser Ancient Farm in Hampshire.
PENTACLE DRUMMERS PERFORMED DURING THE TRADITIONAL CELTIC FIRE FESTIVAL (ANDREW MATTHEWS/PA)
PA WIRE
Crowds gathered to mark the coming of summer with a traditional Celtic fire festival held at Butser Ancient Farm in Hampshire.
The experimental archaeology site in Waterlooville hosted the burning of a 40ft wicker man at dusk to mark the pagan quarter-day farming celebration of Beltane or Beltain, which has connections to later May Day celebrations
The May Queen and Green Man wre in attendance, as were members of the Pentacle Drummers who performed in front of the burning wicker man.
Germany is burning through far more resources than is sustainableI
mage: S. Ziese/blickwinkel/IMAGO
Just over four months into the year, Germany has already exceeded sustainable consumption limits for the year, according to the US-based environment NGO Global Footprint Network.
According to its calculations, if everybody in the world behaved like the Germans, humanity would need three Earths to provide enough resources to sustainably accommodate their consumption.
So-called overshoot days occur when a country's demand for ecological resources and services in a given year exceeds what the planet can regenerate in that year.
The worst offenders, such as Qatar and Luxembourg, already exceeded their limits in February. Other countries, such as Cambodia and Madagascar, will likely stay well below their limits and not overshoot.
Last year, Germany overshot its limit on May 4 — one day later than 2024, taking into account the leap year difference.
Overshoot Day as a chance to reform
"The German Earth Overshoot Day is a reminder to change the underlying conditions in all sectors now so that sustainable behavior becomes the new normal," Aylin Lehnert, education officer at German environmental NGO Germanwatch, said in a press release. "We need a new debt brake, a debt brake in relation to the overloading of the Earth."
According to Greenwatch, meat production and consumption in Germany is one of the main drivers of its overuse of Earth's resources. About 60% of its agricultural land is used for animal feed production, and millions of tons are imported from overseas.
Germany's total imports led to the destruction of 138,000 hectares (341,005 acres) of tropical forest worldwide from 2016 to 2018, according to the international development agency GIZ.
The Global South, which largely lives within sustainable limits, shoulders much of the burden of overconsumption through environmental destruction and climate change damage.
On Tuesday, Friends of the Earth Germany (BUND) criticized the country's reckless use of soil, water and raw materials.
Meat consumption is one of the main factors behind Germany's sustainability overshoot
Image: INA FASSBENDER/AFP
BUND Chairman Olaf Bandt said in a statement, "Our Earth is overloaded. A country that consumes as many resources as we do is operating poorly and recklessly."
BUND is calling on the German government to introduce a resource protection law for soil and land, arable and pasture land, fishing grounds, ground and surface water, forests and wood.
More consumption does not mean more happiness
According to the Happy Planet Index (HPI) released on Thursday, all this overconsumption doesn't necessarily lead to better lives for its citizens.
The index, compiled by the Hot or Cool Institute, a Berlin-based public interest think tank, combines data on well-being, life expectancy and carbon footprint to assess how well countries are caring for their citizens without overtaxing the planet.
For example, Sweden and Germany have very similar levels of general well-being and life expectancy, but Sweden achieved that quality of life with 16% fewer emissions per capita than Germany and less than half the per capita footprint in the United States.
Costa Rica had comparable figures for life expectancy and well-being but almost half the environmental impact of Germany.
The index, which also breaks down income levels within countries, found that the top 10% of earners globally are responsible for nearly half of all emissions but have almost no gains in well-being and health over low-emitters.
A good example of this is air travel. People who fly a lot emit far more carbon than people who do not, but they do not show a significant increase in well-being compared to those who fly less. In the United States, a 2020 study revealed that wealthier homes have 25% larger energy footprints than low-income homes but equal levels of life satisfaction.
Lewis Akenji, managing director of the Hot or Cool Institute, called for countries to rethink their priorities.
"We need to focus on wasteful consumption and inequality, which is making the planetary crisis worse," Akenji said in a statement.
Edited by: Tamsin Walker
Dangerous Instagram? Iraqi LGBTQ+ community loses safe space
It was always double-edged, but in Iraq, social media was often a comparatively safe place where the local queer community could meet. Recent amendments to Iraqi law are changing all that.
Burning the rainbow flag: Conservative politicians in Iraq often describe LGBTQ+ rights as being "imported" from the decadent West
Image: Ameer Al-Mohammedawi/dpa/picture alliance
Social media has always been one of the only places where members of the LGBTQ+ community in Iraq could meet and be more open about their sexual identity.
"Before Instagram, members of the community created fake Facebook accounts and joined secret groups to get to know one another," Khalid, a 22-year-old student in the central Iraqi province of Babylon, told DW; he could not give his full name because doing so would expose him to danger. "Then with Instagram's 'close friends' story feature [launched in 2018], it became even easier for people to connect, and even to find love."
The country's conservative culture means that most queer locals have always hidden their sexuality. Surveys of attitudes toward homosexuality in Middle Eastern countries indicate that usually less than 10% of local populations "approve" of homosexuality.
"So social media has been the main platform of expression of any kind here, especially for those who do not have their own spaces," explained Ayaz Shalal Kado, executive director of the Iraqi human rights organization IraQueer. "That includes vulnerable groups, such as the LGBTQ+ community, disabled people and others. Social media was a way for these people to express themselves, connect and create communities," he told DW.
Many Middle Eastern countries have a queer scene but unlike in Lebanon
(pictured) it mostly remains hidden
Hassan Ammar/AP/picture alliance
While social media and digital platforms have offered an opportunity, they have also posed a danger, Human Rights Watch said earlier this year as it launched the campaign Secure Our Socials. Working with local rights groups, Human Rights Watch reported how digital activity was being used by authoritarian states against individuals suspected of being queer.
Dangers of digital life
This danger is now likely to increase for the LGBTQ+ community in Iraq.
Despite generally negative attitudes toward same-sex relationships, Iraq — unlike most other countries in the Middle East — never had a law explicitly criminalizing them. Instead, Iraqi officials used more vague anti-obscenity laws to punish and harass members of the LGBTQ+ community.
But in late April, the Iraqi government amended a pre-existing law on prostitution. The new amendments ban any sort of homosexuality or transsexuality, punishing these with up to 15 years in prison. Anybody seen to "promote" homosexuality could be fined up to 15 million Iraqi dinars ($11,220, €10,5050) or sentenced to jail for up to seven years.
This comes after the Iraqi Communications and Media Commission, which regulates local media, issued rules in August 2023 mandating that media in Iraq may no longer use the term "homosexuality" and should instead replace it with the phrase "sexual deviance." Media may also not talk about "gender."
According to the local media outlet Rudaw, Iraqi lawmakers insisted they needed the amendments "to preserve the entity of Iraqi society from moral degeneration," as the amendment text read.
"The truth is, this new law is not new at all," Babylon-based student Khalid complained. "We've always lived in fear and hiding." It's just that now there's even more thing to worry about, he told DW.
The United Nations Assistance Mission for Iraq said the law contradicts a number of human rights treaties ratified by Iraq. The US State Department argued the new rules could be used to "further hamper free speech and personal expression and inhibit the operations of [non-governmental organizations] across Iraq."
Iraqi NGOs are still working out exactly how to respond. One Iraqi rights organization, Gala for LGBTQ, posted advice on its Instagram page that included telling users to make their accounts private, unfollowing openly queer accounts and deleting digital material that could be seen as LGBTQ+-friendly.
"If you are in Iraq, it is better not to talk or publish about the LGBTQ+ community and leave this to people who are outside Iraq," the organization suggested.
"There are many ways to fight back and that's what the community is working on currently," IraQueer's Kado told DW. "Safety and security are the highest priority. But we will not give up. That is not an option."
Kado does worry that the online presence of Iraq's LGBTQ+ community is about to be reduced or even disappear altogether, as locals realize the dangers of using social media. But, he adds, there are even larger ramifications around freedom of expression in Iraq.
Wide-ranging impact on rights groups
"Banning words like 'homosexual' or 'gender' is a huge step backwards — and not just for queer people," he argued. "It's intersectional. It doesn't just affect my organization, but also all feminist organizations, all those who work for women's rights, and those who focus on gender and bodily rights in general."
There have also been other cases of social media becoming dangerous in Iraq.
The same weekend Iraqi authorities passed the new LGBTQ+ rules, a popular Iraqi influencer, Ghufran Mahdi Sawadi, known online as Um Fahad, was murdered by an unknown assailant outside her home, most likely because of her online persona.
"Every young person has the right to entertainment and to share content on their Snapchat account," Sawadi's brother Amir, told DW. "This is their personal life."
Over the past year, two other Iraqis who were well known on social media — a transgender person known as Simsim and Noor Alsaffar, who posted videos of himself in women's clothing — were also murdered.
As Kado argues, all this should be seen as connected. "History shows us that when one group is targeted, then another vulnerable group is bound to be next," he concluded. "Once you allow perpetrators [of human rights abuses] to take a step without accountability, they will take more steps. At some point it will be too late to stop them."
Edited by: Cristina Burack
CLIMATE CRISIS CARNIVALE
Race against time to rescue Brazil flood victims after dozens killed
AFP May 5, 2024 Aerial view of flooded streets at the Navegantes neighborhood in Porto Alegre, Rio da Grande do State, Brazil - Copyright AFP Carlos Fabal Carlos FABAL, Mauricio RABUFFETTI
Authorities were racing against time on Sunday to rescue people from raging floods and mudslides that have killed more than 50 and forced nearly 70,000 to flee their homes in southern Brazil.
Viewed from the air, Porto Alegre, the capital of Rio Grande do Sul state, is completely flooded, with streets waterlogged and the roofs of some houses barely visible.
The Guaiba River, which flows through the city of 1.4 million people, reached a record high level of 5.09 meters (16.9 feet), according to the local municipality, well above the historic peak of 4.76 meters that had stood as a record since devastating 1941 floods.
The water was still advancing into economically important Porto Alegre and around a hundred other localities, with increasingly dramatic consequences.
In addition to some 70,000 residents forced from their homes, Brazil’s civil defense agency also said more than a million people lacked access to potable water amid the flooding, describing the damage as incalculable.
The agency put the death toll at 55, although that did not include two people killed in an explosion at a flooded gas station in Porto Alegre that was witnessed by an AFP journalist.
At least 74 people are also missing, it said.
Rosana Custodio, a 37-year-old nurse, fled her flooded Porto Alegre home with her husband and three children.
“During the night on Thursday the waters began to rise very quickly,” she told AFP via a WhatsApp message.
“In a hurry, we went out to look for a safer place. But we couldn’t walk… My husband put our two little ones in a kayak and rowed with a bamboo. My son and I swam to the end of the street,” she said.
Her family was safe but “we’ve lost everything we had.” – ‘It’s terrifying’ –
The rainfall eased Saturday night but was expected to continue for the next 24-36 hours, with authorities warning of landslides.
Authorities scrambled to evacuate swamped neighborhoods as rescue workers used four-wheel-drive vehicles — and even jet skis — to maneuver through waist-deep water in search of the stranded.
Rio Grande do Sul Governor Eduardo Leite said his state, normally one of Brazil’s most prosperous, would need a “Marshall Plan” of heavy investment to rebuild after the catastrophe.
Long lines formed as people tried to board buses in many places, although bus services to and from the city center were canceled.
The Porto Alegre international airport suspended all flights on Friday for an undetermined period.
President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva posted a video of a helicopter depositing a soldier atop a house, who then used a brick to pound a hole in the roof and rescue a baby wrapped in a blanket.
The speed of the rising waters unnerved many.
“It’s terrifying because we saw the water rise in an absurd way, it rose at a very high speed,” said Greta Bittencourt, a 32-year-old professional poker player. – ‘Going to be much worse’ –
With waters starting to overtop a dike along another local river, the Gravatai, Mayor Sebastiao Melo issued a stern warning on social media platform X, saying, “Communities must leave!”
He urged people to ration water after four of the city’s six treatment plants had to be closed.
Leite, the governor, said in a live transmission on Instagram the situation was “absolutely unprecedented,” the worst in the history of the state, which is home to agroindustrial production of soy, rice, wheat and corn.
Residential areas were underwater as far as the eye could see, with roads destroyed and bridges swept away by powerful currents.
Rescuers faced a colossal task, with entire towns inaccessible.
At least 300 municipalities have suffered storm damage in Rio Grande do Sul since Monday, according to local officials.
– ‘Disastrous cocktail’ –
Roughly a third of the displaced have been taken to shelters set up in sports centers and schools.
The rains also affected the southern state of Santa Catarina.
Lula, who visited the region Thursday, blamed the disaster on climate change.
The devastating storms were the result of a “disastrous cocktail” of global warming and the El Nino weather phenomenon, climatologist Francisco Eliseu Aquino told AFP on Friday.
South America’s largest country has recently experienced a string of extreme weather events, including a cyclone in September that killed at least 31 people.
Brazil mounts frantic rescue effort as flooding kills 66
Porto Alegre (Brazil) (AFP) – Authorities in southern Brazil raced against the clock Sunday to rescue people from raging floods and mudslides that have killed at least 66 and forced more than 80,000 to flee their homes.
All over the city of Porto Alegre, the capital of Rio Grande do Sul state, people stood on rooftops hoping to be rescued as others in canoes or small boats navigated streets that have turned into rivers.
Civil defense officials said at least 101 people were missing in the latest of a string of catastrophic weather events in the South American giant.
Viewed from the air, Porto Alegre was completely flooded, with streets under water and the roofs of some houses barely visible.
The Guaiba River, which flows through the city of 1.4 million people, reached a record high level of 5.3 meters (17.4 feet), according to the local municipality, well above the historic peak of 4.76 meters that had stood as a record since devastating 1941 floods.
The water was still advancing into economically important Porto Alegre and hundreds of other localities, with increasingly dramatic consequences.
Rain was intermittent Sunday morning but expected to continue for another day or so, as the flood waters kept rising.
In addition to the tens of thousands forced from their homes, Brazil's civil defense agency said more than a million people lacked access to drinking water and it described the damage as incalculable. Some 15,000 people are now living in shelters.
Rosana Custodio, a 37-year-old nurse, fled her flooded Porto Alegre home with her husband and three children.
"During the night on Thursday the waters began to rise very quickly," she told AFP via a WhatsApp message.
"In a hurry, we went out to look for a safer place. But we couldn't walk... My husband put our two little ones in a kayak and rowed with a bamboo. My son and I swam to the end of the street," she said.
Her family was safe but "we've lost everything we had." 'It's terrifying'
Authorities scrambled to evacuate swamped neighborhoods as rescue workers used four-wheel-drive vehicles -- and even jet skis -- to maneuver through waist-deep water in search of the stranded.
Rio Grande do Sul Governor Eduardo Leite said his state, normally one of Brazil's most prosperous, would need a "Marshall Plan" of heavy investment to rebuild.
Sunday will be a key day for the rescue effort, said Paulo Pimenta, a senior communications official under President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva.
Long lines formed as people tried to board buses in many places, although bus services to and from the city center were canceled.
The Porto Alegre international airport suspended all flights on Friday for an undetermined period.
Lula posted a video of a helicopter depositing a soldier atop a house, who then used a brick to pound a hole in the roof and rescue a baby wrapped in a blanket.
"It's terrifying because we saw the water rise in an absurd way, it rose at a very high speed," said Greta Bittencourt, a 32-year-old professional poker player. 'Unprecedented'
Leite, the governor, said in a live transmission on Instagram the situation was "absolutely unprecedented," the worst in the history of the state, which is home to agroindustrial production of soy, rice, wheat and corn.
Residential areas were underwater as far as the eye could see, with roads destroyed and bridges swept away by powerful currents.
Rescuers faced a colossal task, with entire towns inaccessible.
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At least 300 municipalities have suffered storm damage in Rio Grande do Sul since Monday, according to local officials. 'Disastrous cocktail'
The rains also affected the southern state of Santa Catarina.
Lula, who visited the region Thursday, blamed the disaster on climate change.
The devastating storms were the result of a "disastrous cocktail" of global warming and the El Nino weather phenomenon, climatologist Francisco Eliseu Aquino told AFP on Friday.
South America's largest country has recently experienced a string of extreme weather events, including a cyclone in September that killed at least 31 people.
Deadly floods ravage southern Brazil, force tens of thousands to flee
Raging floods and mudslides have killed at least 55 people in southern Brazil and forced nearly 70,000 to flee their homes, the country's civil defense agency said on Saturday. At least 74 people were injured and another 67 missing from the catastrophic flooding, civil defense said.
Aerial view of people walking through a flooded street at the Navegantes neighborhood in Porto Alegre, Rio da Grande do State, Brazil -
Copyright AFP Lillian SUWANRUMPHA
The death toll from floods and mudslides triggered by torrential storms in southern Brazil has climbed to 56 people, with 74 injured and another 67 missing, the country’s civil defense agency said Saturday.
Fast-rising water levels in the state of Rio Grande do Sul were straining dams and threatening the metropolis of Porto Alegre, one of the largest cities in southern Brazil.
Authorities there were scrambling to evacuate some neighborhoods that had been submerged — in some cases using helicopters to rescue people stranded on roofs.
And heavy rains of “very high severity” are expected to continue into Sunday, Civil Defense authorities said.
The rapid rise of the Guaiba River, which runs through Porto Alegre, brought serious flooding to the city’s historic center. – ‘Going to be much worse’ –
With waters starting to overtop a dike along another local river, the Gravatai, Mayor Sebastiao Malo issued a stern warning on social media platform X, saying, “Communities must leave!”
That warning came a day after the Rio Grande del Sul governor, Eduardo Leite, warned on X that “in the metropolitan region it’s going to be much worse.”
Leite called it the worst disaster in the state’s history.
Residential areas found themselves underwater as far as the eye can see, with roads destroyed and bridges swept away by powerful currents.
Rescuers faced a colossal task, with entire towns — some left without electricity or drinking water — made inaccessible.
At least 300 municipalities have suffered storm damage in Rio Grande do Sul since Monday, according to local officials, displacing more than 24,600. – ‘Water up to my waist’ –
Roughly a third of the displaced have been brought to shelters set up in sports centers, schools and other facilities.
“When I left the house, I was in water up to my waist,” a haggard-looking Claudio Almiro, 55, told AFP in a cultural center converted to a shelter in a suburb north of Porto Alegre.
“I lost everything.”
The rains also affected the southern state of Santa Catarina, where one man died Friday when his car was swept away by raging floodwaters in the municipality of Ipira.
President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva visited the region Thursday, vowing “there will be no lack of human or material resources” in responding to the disaster, which he blamed on climate change. Climatologist Francisco Eliseu Aquino told AFP on Friday that the devastating storms were the result of a “disastrous cocktail” of global warming and the El Nino weather phenomenon.
South America’s largest country has recently experienced a string of extreme weather events, including a cyclone in September that claimed at least 31 lives.
Aquino said the region’s particular geography meant it was often confronted by the effects of tropical and polar air masses colliding — but these events have “intensified due to climate change.”
ublished September 20, 2023 last updated May 3, 2024
No dam is flood-proof, as flooding after days of heavy rains in southern Brazil has shown. But dam failure needn't be deadly. Here's what you need to know.
Dam failure is not just for war zones: After heavy rain in Norway, a dam at Braskereidfoss broke in August 2023. Communities down stream had been warned and evacuated.
Image: Cornelius Poppe/NTB Scanpix/AP/picture alliance
Dams are built to hold back water and put it to use for irrigation or creating electricity. But around the world, thousands of dams are in need of repair. Many have been too weak to protect local communities amid sustained heavy rains.
More than 300,000 people in Brazil's Rio Grande do Sul region, for example, were left without electricity when a dam at a hydroelectric power plant burst May 2, 2024.
In late April 2024, a dam collapsed north of the Kenyan capital Nairobi after heavy rains and flooding. Water levels had been described as a "historic high". Dams do collapse: The warning signs are there
It's becoming a regular occurrence. When the Abu Mansour and Derna dams collapsed during Storm Daniel's attack on Libya, the cries came fast: We've been warning about this for years, said the experts. If there's a flood, they said, it will be catastrophic for the residents living below. And so it was: Thousands were thought to be dead in the immediate aftermath.
The United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) expressed concerns about two further Libyan dams — the Jaza Dam, between Derna and Benghazi, and the Qattara Dam near Benghazi — citing "contradictory reports" over the dams' stability.
Contrary reports about the stability of dams is not unique to Libya. There were allegations of contrary reports in Brazil after a mining dam at Minas Gerais failed. It collapsed in January 2019, causing a toxic mudslide that killed 270 people — one year after a Brazilian subsidiary of a German risk assessment firm, TÜV SÜD, had certified the dam to be safe.
What is a dam and why do we build them?
A dam is a way to gather and store water. That can be natural water or wastewater from a nearby mine — if it's water from a mine, people talk of dams containing "mine tailings". Mine tailings can be a mix of materials, metals, chemicals and liquid waste leftover when ore is mined.
Dams can also be used to store up water for irrigation and as a supply of water for livestock, pollution control, energy generation and, if the water is safe, for recreation. How are dams made and how do they resist water pressure?
There are two main types of constructed, human-made dams: embankment and concrete dams.
Embankment dams are the most common and can be made with waste from mining or milling operations. But they are also made of natural soil and rock that is compacted to create a containment area, or reservoir, for the water.
Its ability to contain the water — or resist pressure from the water — depends on the mass weight, strength and type of materials used to build the dam.
Concrete dams are divided into three subtypes: gravity, buttress and arch dams.
Gravity dams are the most common concrete dams. They are made of vertical concrete blocks and sealed with flexible joints. The pressure of the water hits the dam wall and is forced downwards.
Buttress dams are similar to gravity dams in their shape, but they require less concrete. The forces of the water are diverted down to the foundation of the dam along sloping buttresses.
Arch dams look like a semi-circle or ellipse from above. The wall, which tends to be constructed with vertical slabs of concrete, can be relatively thin. The pressure of the water is carried sideways into abutments.
Dams can also be made with steel and timber.
How do you stop dams from overflowing?
That's the thing — sometimes dams do break and overflow, causing massive flooding, destruction and death. It can wipe out access to roads, food and vital services.
But it is possible to control "overtopped" dams, with outlet works and spillways.
Outlet works can allow a constant stream of water into a river below the dam, for instance, or into a hydroelectric power system, or release it for farm irrigation.
Spillways, meanwhile, are often open chutes or shafts where the water flows out when its level gets high enough to enter an opening.
Dams are human-made structures used to collect and control water, such as at Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam, a massive hydropower plant.
Image: Minasse Wondimu Hailu/AA/picture alliance
Why do dams fail?
One of the most common causes for dam failure — that's when the dam breaks in an uncontrolled way — is their age.
In 2021, the United Nations University published a report indicating that "tens of thousands of existing large dams have reached or exceeded an 'alert' age threshold of 50 years, and many others will soon approach 100 years."
The Brumadinho dam at Minas Gerais was built in 1976, which means it was approaching the end of its lifespan. And Libya's Abu Mansour and Derna dams were also built in the 1970s — so, while Storm Daniel triggered their failure, they may have been ready to fail, anyway.
But dams also fail due to poor design and irregular maintenance.
Overtopping can occur if a spillway design is inadequate and can't cope when there's heavy rainfall. The spillway may get blocked over time, too.
The older a dam gets, the more its foundation can experience a natural process called settling. Slopes surrounding the dam can become unstable, and if the original construction materials start to erode, it can cause seepage.
There are other natural causes of dam failure, including earthquakes, floods, extreme weather and landslides.
And then there are the effects of war — bombings and intentional sabotage. How do you prevent dam failure?
Here's the long answer: ensure regular maintenance and apply engineering advice and recommendations, but also design a good emergency strategy for the event of a dam failure in your area and make sure everyone knows about it.
Because, and this is the short answer as the US Federal Emergency Management Agency puts it, "no dam is flood-proof." Edited by: Carla Bleiker
This article was originally published September 20, 2023. It was last updated on May 3, 2024, to reflect developments in Brazil and Kenya, where dams collapsed after sustained heavy rains and flooding.
Zulfikar Abbany Senior editor fascinated by space, AI and the mind, and how science touches people
WWIII
Chinese fishing fleets in Indian Ocean accused of abuses
Yuchen Li in Taipei | Chia-Chun Yeh in Taipei
May 4, 2024 A recent investigation has revealed evidence that China's distant-water fishing fleet, the world's biggest in scale, commits environmental and labor abuses in the southwest Indian Ocean off the coast of East Africa.
Chinese distant-water fishing vessels, like this one seen near the Galapagos Islands, have drawn scrutiny around the world
Image: Peter Hammarstedt/Sea Shepherd via AP/picture alliance
"There was no such word as 'rest' on Chinese fishing vessels," explained a former crew member to a group of investigators from the Environmental Justice Foundation (EJF), a London-based NGO. "If there were a lot of fish, the work could be up to 22 hours long."
The testimony was part of a recently released report by the EJF accusing China's fishing fleets of environmental and human rights abuses in the southwestern Indian Ocean.
As a leading fishing nation, China's distant water fishing (DWF) industry is the world's largest in both catch volume and fleet size. And according to the Illegal, Unreported and Unregulated (IUU) Fishing Index, China ranks as the worst offender among 152 countries worldwide.
The EJF report provides the first comprehensive investigation of Chinese fishing activities off the East African coast.
China's DWF fleet has mainly faced scrutiny for illegal activities in Latin America and West Africa. However, the EJF report provides the first comprehensive investigation of Chinese fishing activities off the East African coast.
Chinese DWF vessels rely heavily on recruiting foreign fishermen, mostly from Indonesia and the Philippines.Image: Environmental Justice Foundation
China's 'systematic' illegal fishing
While China is not solely responsible for IUU fishing in the region, it is seen as one of the major culprits. East African countries, such as Madagascar and Mozambique, are among the hardest hit.
Callum Nolan, a senior researcher at the EJF who led much of the study, told DW that "there's real cause for concern" as the Chinese fleet's illegal fishing activity is "systematic."
"This isn't a handful of bad actors or captains. What we're seeing is a fleet-wide issue on the Chinese distant-water fleet," he added.
The report comes as China is developing fishery infrastructure in cooperation with East African coastal countries and sending fleets out to fishing grounds in the southwest Indian Ocean.
The EJF interviewed 44 fishermen who had worked on China's fleet in the Indian Ocean, the third-largest of the world's five oceanic divisions.
When quizzed about illegal activities aboard Chinese boats, 80% of them had reported shark finning — the act of removing fins from sharks and discarding the rest of the shark back into the ocean — and 59% reported the deliberate capture and/or injury of vulnerable marine megafauna, including manta rays, dolphins and sharks.
"The sharks were caught. They only took the fins and threw the bodies away," a fisherman told the EJF in a video interview.
Another common illegal behavior is entering a fishing zone reserved only for local fishers, Nolan said.
He said that Chinese trawlers often come into the zone at night, which has led to collisions between small skiffs and industrial vessels.
"That creates huge economic problems for local people," Nolan pointed out, adding that these fishers may have to suspend their work for weeks and months to repair the damage to their skiffs.
Small-scale fishermen in small skiffs are vulnerable to larger Chinese trawlers
Image: Wang Guansen/Xinhua/picture alliance
Forced to eat 'rotten' food and drink distilled sea water
Chinese DWF vessels rely heavily on recruiting foreign fishermen, mostly from Indonesia and the Philippines.
Dios Lumban Gaol, a coordinator at Indonesian migrant workers union SBMI, told DW that the EJF report vividly portrays exploitation, violence and harsh working conditions faced by Indonesian crew members on Chinese-flagged ships, a situation "which continues today."
Of 44 crew members interviewed by EJF, all of them reported abusive working and living conditions, 96% excessive overtime and 55% physical violence.
Between 2017 and 2023, four deaths were reported by interviewees on board Chinese tuna longliners.
Gaol said that there have been reports of Indonesian crew members on Chinese vessels being provided with poorly distilled sea water to drink and expired, canned, rotten foods for meals.
On top of that, interviewees reported that Chinese captains or crew members were provided with mineral water, while Indonesians were only given distilled sea water.
"Ironically, despite catching high-value fish … which are fresh and typically consumed by affluent international communities, the crew members face these dire living and food conditions aboard Chinese-flagged vessels," Gaol said.
Indonesians protest illegal and unregulated fishing practices in 2020 in front of China's embassy in Jakarta
Image: Dasril Roszandi/NurPhoto/picture alliance
China widens its net in the Indian Ocean
The EJF report also mentioned that via China's global infrastructure investment scheme, the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), its fishing fleet is given more access to the resources of East African countries receiving BRI investments that may "feel obligated" to cooperate.
Meanwhile, China's "nearly unparalleled" influence in the United Nations also plays a role in holding back criticism of China's activities in Africa, said Elizabeth Freund Larus, adjunct senior fellow at Pacific Forum, a US-based foreign policy think tank.
"The BRI literally buys China a lot of compliance," she said, indicating that member countries "are reticent or hesitant to criticize China" and would likely "carry the water" for the country. "So, no one should expect that the UN is going to take on this issue in any meaningful way."
Besides, it is challenging to scrutinize activities aboard remote Chinese vessels, and China's DWF industry in general usually lacks transparency, Nolan said.
For example, flags flown by vessels may not accurately represent their true ownership and observers on board may be bribed or threatened.
China denies any wrongdoing
The Chinese government has repeatedly denied any mismanagement in response to the accusations of illegal and unregulated fishing.
A 2023 government white paper on the development of distant-water fisheries said China holds a "zero tolerance" attitude towards illegal fishing and has "the world's strictest management measures and regulations" on DWF fleets.
China also claimed in the paper that it has made "notable progress" on critical issues and in priority areas by introducing policies such as closed seasons, a total allowable catch and regular company assessment.
A list of Chinese firms was also included in EJF's report, including "Shandong Zhonglu" and the "Zhejiang Ocean Family."
Their tuna fishing fleets are accused of being the top offenders of IUU fishing or human rights abuse cases in the southwest Indian Ocean as of 2023.
DW reached out to them for comments.
Shandong Zhonglu said it is currently verifying the relevant issues mentioned in the EJF report.
Zhejiang Ocean Family said it has launched an internal investigation but found the accusations in the report lacking "factual basis and rigor."
New boats, empty nets
42:36
DW correspondents Kate Hairsine and Levie Mulia Wardana contributed to the report
Edited by: Wesley Rahn
Why managing Africa's natural disasters is taking on urgency
Africa is particularly vulnerable to suffering natural disasters, such as floods, severe storms and droughts. These are not only crippling economies and people's livelihoods but also costing lives across the continent.
Kenya is the African nation country to be lashed by natural disasters
Image: Monicah Mwangi/REUTERS
After the worst drought in decades, East Africa is now being pounded by heavy rains. At least 180 people have died in floods and landslides in Kenya since the rainy season began in mid-March, with hundreds of thousands forced to leave their homes.
"The flooding in Kenya is absolutely out of control," reporter Andrew Wasike told DW's Africalink program. "The rains just won't stop. Whole villages across Kenya have just disappeared. And the worst part? Roads are gone, bridges are completely washed out, people are cut off. It's heartbreaking, and the forecast says this rain isn't going to let up anytime soon."
Tanzania and Somalia have also been hard hit by torrential rain and severe floods, displacing tens of thousands and inundating crop lands.
The reasons for Africa's propensity to suffering natural hazards are complex but include the reduced capacity of governments and institutions to protect communities from and respond to disasters.
The vast majority of Africans are also dependent on rain-fed agriculture for their food, making them especially vulnerable to suffering the negative effects of flooding and drought.
Recurring disasters, which can wipe out crops and cause massive displacement, often leave poor nations picking up the pieces of one event when they are being slammed by another.
For instance, in 2023 Malawi was lashed by Cyclone Freddy, which dumped six months of rainfall in six days and triggered mudslides and floods across the nation, killing more than 1,000 people. But Freddy came hard on the heels of two prior cyclones in 2022.
In total, Malawi, which is still one of the world's poorest countries, has experienced 16 major flooding events, five storm-related disasters and two severe droughts since 2010, according to the World Bank.
"This has left almost no time for the country to recover and has resulted in a severe erosion of food security at the national level," finds the World Bank.
Why are natural disasters particularly hard on Africa?
The likelihood of severe droughts, for instance, has increased 100-fold on the Horn of Africa. In southern Africa, the impacts of the El Nino climate phenomenon, which brings drier and warmer weather and low and erratic rainfall as well as floods, are becoming "more intense and prolonged" due to global warming, writes climate change expert Tadadzwanashe Mabhaudhi in a 2024 article for The Conversation.
At the same time, man-made changes to both rural and urban environments are also worsening the effects of natural disasters.
"Some of these disasters are caused by environmental degradation, loss of wetlands, loss of forests, and so any little amount of rain that comes causes floods," climate change expert Sosten Chiotha, told DW.
Factors such as increased settlements, deforestation, livestock grazing and clearing for crops are dramatically altering the landscape in many rural areas, making it susceptible to the effects of erosion after severe weather events.
In urban areas, on the other hand, the unchecked expansion of many of Africa's cities is seeing people building shelters along rivers and on wetlands, destroying natural buffers for floodwaters. Informal settlements also fill in green spaces, resulting in a lack of drainage to carry away floodwaters.
Drainage systems clogged with plastic pollution, a reality in many African towns and cities, also add to the growing flood risk.
What can Africa do to better prepare for natural disasters?
As with most issues, there is no single solution to address everything; however, certain approaches have come up repeatedly in public debates on Africa's levels of preparedness.
Improved evaluation of weather data is one way to be better prepared, says Chiotha, who is also the regional director for Southern and Eastern Africa at Regional Director at LEAD, a leadership non-profit.
"Let's enhance our monitoring and the collecting of long term data. Many of the disaster issues in Africa don't appear in the IPCC [Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change] reports because basically there is very little data," he said.
Improving on early warning systems would also help people on a continent where more than half the population aren't covered by such a system.
The damage caused by a disaster can be reduced by nearly one-third if an early warning is issued within 24 hours, according to the World Meteorological Organization. Last year, the organization launched an initiative to try to give more Africans access to an early warning system about impending disasters.
Nature-based solutions, such as preserving forests and wetlands to reduce flooding, are also being hotly discussed.
"But for that to happen, you need to ensure that the services that people derive from these forests and from these wetlands [such as wood for energy or clearing for agriculture] can be found elsewhere somehow," said Chiotha.
Josephine Mahachi contributed to this article.
Bundeswehr's classified meetings found online
The German military confirmed earlier reports of a vulnerability affecting the Webex software it uses for online meetings. In March, a leaked German military meeting was publicized by Russian media.
The security issue was first identified by Netzbegruenung, a group of cyber-activists
Image: Christoph Hardt/Panama Pictures/picture alliance
Germany's military has admitted on Saturday a flaw in the video-conferencing tool it uses left thousands of its meetings publicly accessible online.
Zeit Online reported accessing German Bundeswehr meetings by using simple search terms on the military's Webex system.
"More than 6,000 meetings could be found online," some of which were meant to be classified, it wrote.
The military said the bug was fixed within 24 hours after being made aware.
"It was not possible to participate in the video conferences without the knowledge of the participants or without authorization," a spokesperson for the military told French news agency AFP.
"No confidential content could therefore leave the conferences." What do we know about the latest incident?
The Bundeswehr is already on the defensive after audio of air force officials discussing giving Ukraine long-range missiles was leaked by Russians online in March. The incident is currently being investigated by federal prosecutors.
