Google settles over firing of workers protesting immigration cloud deal

By Paresh Dave and Julia Love

© Reuters/PARESH DAVE 

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.

© Provided by CNBC 

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

© Provided by CNBC 

A Soyuz 2 rocket launches 36 OneWeb satellites on March 25, 2020 from Vostochny Cosmodrome, Russia.

Shortly after Russia invaded Ukraine, it began retaliating to sanctions through Roscosmos — with the suspension of OneWeb internet satellite launches earlier this month one of the country's first actions.

Quilty outlined Russia's space retaliation in four categories:

Soyuz rockets withdrawn from the European launch market

Termination of rocket engine sales to the U.S.

Threatened disbandment of the International Space Station partnership

A cyber attack that disabled Viasat broadband service in Ukraine and other parts of Europe

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.

U.S. companies

© Provided by CNBC 

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.

Paradoxically, however, some researchers have previously reported average or even higher levels of some aspects of empathy in some people with dark traits.

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.

Oil and gas: UK and US among rich nations that must end drilling by 2034, report finds

The UK, US, Norway, Canada, Australia and the United Arab Emirates are among a list of high-income countries that must end production of oil and gas in the next 12 years to avoid the worst impacts of climate change, a new report has found.

By Ilona Amos
Tuesday, 22nd March 2022

Meanwhile, the world's poorest nations should be given until 2050 to end production but will also need significant financial support to transform their economies to ensure citizens are not unfairly penalised, it recommends.

The findings come from a new study from the University of Manchester which proposes different phase-out dates for oil and gas producing countries, in line with the Paris Agreement’s goals to limit global warming to 1.5C above pre-industrial levels and ensure a fair transition to a low-carbon world.

It warns that there is no room for any nation to increase production, with all required to make significant cuts this decade.


The UK and US are among 19 of the world's richest countries which must end oil and gas production by 2034 to help reach global climate targets, a new report from the university of Manchester recommends. Picture: Getty Images

The richest, which produce over a third of the world’s oil and gas, must cut output by 74 per cent by 2030.

Giant floating wind farm and green gas scheme in Scotland could be UK's 'biggest emissions abatement project to date'

The poorest, which supply just one ninth of global demand, must cut back by 14 per cent over the same period.

The research, commissioned by the International Institute for Sustainable Development, notes that some developing nations are so reliant on revenues from fossil fuels that rapidly removing this could threaten their political stability.

Countries like South Sudan, Congo-Brazzaville and Gabon, despite having low production levels, have little other income streams.

Conversely, the report states: “Wealthy nations that are major producers typically remain wealthy even once the oil and gas revenue is removed.”

Kevin Anderson, professor of energy and climate change at the University of Manchester and a leading researcher at the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research, said: “Responding to the ongoing climate emergency requires a rapid shift away from a fossil fuel economy, but this must be done fairly.

“There are huge differences in the ability of countries to end oil and gas production while maintaining vibrant economies and delivering a just transition for their citizens.

“We have developed a schedule for phasing out oil and gas production that – with sufficient support for developing countries – meets our very challenging climate commitments and does so in a fair way.”

The research was completed prior to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, but the researchers say the current instability in the international energy market highlights the need to end reliance on fossil fuels.

“Our first thoughts are with the Ukrainian people and indeed with all of those caught up in the war,” he said.

“But the rocketing oil and gas prices only serve to strengthen the case we make in our report.


Major oil rig recycling and offshore energy construction hub planned for port in...

“Had we spent the last 20 years establishing an efficient and sensible use of energy alongside a massive roll-out of renewables we would not now be scrabbling around for alternative oil and gas supplies and facing the impacts of volatile prices.

“Now is exactly the time we should be planning for a renewable 21st century rather than reliving the oil-based 20th.”

A flagship report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change warned last month that failing to limit global warming to 1.5C would have devastating global impacts.

Projections suggest the world will exceed 1.5C of warming as early as 2030 to 2035 if current levels of greenhouse gas emissions continue.

ARYAN SETTLER COLONIALISM
Why Australia’s Indigenous People Fear the Police

Thirty years after a landmark report on inequality, Australia’s justice system remains plagued by structural racism.

By Dechlan Brennan
March 22, 2022

Protesters march in Sydney, Saturday, June 6, 2020, to support the movement of U.S. protests over the death of George Floyd. Black Lives Matter protests across Australia saw thousands of demonstrators in state capitals honor the memory of George Floyd and protest the deaths of Indigenous Australians in custody.

Credit: AP Photo/Rick Rycroft

March 21 was the International Day for the Elimination of Racial Discrimination, which marks the anniversary of a horrific massacre in apartheid South Africa in 1960, in which 69 innocent civilians were killed whilst protesting in Sharpeville. It is a widely recognized day that seeks to shape a more equal world, free from discrimination.

In Australia however, March 21 is only known as Harmony Day. Some in the media have argued that this is because acknowledging “the elimination of racial discrimination” would actually mean accepting its presence in the first place.

When it comes to the Australian justice system, the prevalence of systemic racism is hard to ignore. Cheryl Axleby, co-chair of Indigenous justice group Change the Record, is blunt in saying that the justice system openly discriminates against Indigenous people.

“Every year, Aboriginal people suffer racist or violent mistreatment and abuse by police,” Axleby, a Narungga woman, told The Diplomat. “They don’t report it for fear of reprisal. For those who do, complaints often take months, sometimes even over a year, to be investigated and resolved.”

The Top-End and Struggles With Justice

The Northern Territory (NT) exemplifies Axleby’s comments. A large, sprawling, and isolated expanse at the top of Australia, the NT makes up just over 1 percent of the Australian population. Of its 230,000 inhabitants, the majority live in the port city of Darwin.

Whilst the Indigenous population in Australia sits at below 3 percent, in the NT, members of the world’s oldest civilization make up just over 25 percent of residents. It is no coincidence that NT is also home to some of the most gruesome parts of Australia’s bloody history.

Guardian Australia recently published “The Killing Times,” an interactive map documenting the deaths of Indigenous people at the hand of Australian settlers. Dotted throughout the Northern Territory are tales of murder. In 1924, 20 Indigenous people were murdered for unknown reasons in the Victoria River District. A survivor later told of how his people “were run down and shot like dogs.”

Four years later, at Coniston, a “reprisal” by colonizers left up to 200 Indigenous people dead. Many Warlpiri and Yanmatjiri Aboriginal people were hunted down and murdered by police expeditions.

These incidents aren’t isolated in Australia’s history, but form a pattern that continues to repeat today. In 1991, the Royal Commission into Aboriginal Deaths in Custody (RCIADIC) was deemed to be a landmark moment in the relationship between Indigenous Australians and the justice system, but since that time, over 500 Aboriginal people have died while in custody. No one has been found guilty or faced prison time over these deaths.

Axleby is devastated by this. “It is hard to feel justice,” she told The Diplomat, “when time and time again Aboriginal people are killed in custody, but no one is held accountable.”

One Indigenous person, who requested not to be named, noted that an inherent fear of the police has been ingrained into many in the Northern Territory.

“I don’t talk to the cops, it’s a very scary thing to do,” she told The Diplomat. “I avoid it all costs. Even my children are afraid of the police.”

She noted that police are often stationed at liquor stores, checking the IDs of Indigenous patrons and subjecting them to further questions, sometimes including their address. All of this results in an ingrained anxiety.

Cases like the recent trial of Zachary Rolfe, which ended with the police officer being acquitted for the murder of an Indigenous teenager, have emphasized to people like Cheryl Axleby the stark contrast in justice for police as opposed to Indigenous people.

When an Indigenous person dies, “too often findings are ‘inconclusive’ due to insufficient evidence.” But at the same time, “Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples who are the victims of police misconduct face huge barriers to justice.”

Another Indigenous activist told The Diplomat that “our people have always been criminalized because of the color of our skin.”

The reality of the systemic racism faced by Indigenous people in the justice system is highlighted by former Chief Justice of Western Australia, the Hon. Wayne Martin 

Aboriginal people are much more likely to be questioned by police than non-Aboriginal people. When questioned they are more likely to be arrested. If they are arrested, they are much more likely to be remanded in custody than given bail. Aboriginal people are much more likely to plead guilty than go to trial, and if they go to trial, they are much more likely to be convicted. If convicted, they are much more likely to be imprisoned than non-Aboriginal people, and at the end of their term of imprisonment they are much less likely to get parole than non-Aboriginal people.5

Is Change Happening?

In 2008, the Australian government released a framework, titled “Closing the Gap.” The report alluded to the large discrepancies in key factors such as life expectancy, incarceration rates, and health issues between Indigenous and non-Indigenous people.

This year, the Law Council to Australia released a statement clarifying that a lot of these aspirations had yet to be fulfilled.

“It is now more important than ever to grapple with what Closing the Gap will mean in practice,” said Law Council of Australia President Tass Liveris. “Because whether as accused people, offenders or victims, outcomes for First Nations peoples in the criminal justice context clearly continue to worsen,”

It is widely accepted that the forced removal of children from their families under a government mandated movement now known as “The Stolen Generation,” has resulted in long-lasting trauma, which has heavily contributed to Indigenous over-representation in the Australian prison system.

In the Northern Territory, home to the highest percentage of prisoners in the country, Aboriginal people make up 84 percent of the inmates, despite representing around a quarter of the total population in NT. One of the key recommendations from the RCIADIC was that the dramatic and unique trauma that was inflicted on the Indigenous population needed to be taken into account when sentencing.

Too often, this simply isn’t done. The Law Council of Australia has implored the federal government to work with First Nations groups directly to progress reforms such as Closing the Gap, noting that currently the plight of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples in the justice system “is a national tragedy.”

Any progress has been notoriously slow, however, and is often mired in debates around merit.

The Uluru Statement from the Heart, a campaign led by many prominent Indigenous leaders, has called for a dedicated Aboriginal voice in Parliament. They say this will allow the first people on the land to have a direct, political say in the way Aboriginal people are supported in the various communities. Laws that directly and often only impact Aboriginal people would be, the first time, be reviewed and recommendations given by a dedicated Aboriginal representative. “We seek constitutional reforms to empower our people and take a rightful place in our own country,” the statement said.

Such a reform, however, has been consistently opposed by most members of the current government.

Change the Record has called for more funding for Indigenous health care groups, especially for Indigenous women, who are 32 times more likely to than non-Indigenous women to be hospitalized as a result of domestic violence.

Change the Record’s report made 12 recommendations, including an Indigenous research group to look at systemic racism in health systems.

Other recommendations included an increase in the welfare rate, which was refused by the federal government, and more access to housing, with overcrowding becoming a serious issue throughout the country.

Sadly, most of these changes have not been implemented. And to many activists, the limited reforms that have been made do not have any lasting impact on the everyday safety of ordinary Indigenous people.

For Cheryl Axleby, real change needs to come from the top and be universal. “Governments need to start addressing the underlying drivers of inequality and injustice in our communities instead of just throwing money at police to respond,” she said.

When asked why there doesn’t seem to be much tangible change, she doesn’t mince her words: “There is still not the political will or leadership to end the injustice, discrimination, and disadvantage that hurts our people.”

Until this happens, discrimination and injustice will continue unabated for many of Australia’s original inhabitants.


GUEST AUTHOR
Dechlan Brennan is a freelance writer from Melbourne.

How to Save Thailand and Malaysia From Rising Sea Levels

A recent meeting between the nations’ leaders was a missed opportunity to address one of the most pressing challenges of the coming century.

By Piyali Banergee
March 22, 2022

An aerial view of the Strait of Malacca, which runs between peninsular Malaysia and the Indonesian island of Sumatra.

Credit: Depositphotos

When Malaysia’s Prime Minister Ismail Sabri Yaakob met with his Thai counterpart Prayut Chan-o-cha in late February in Bangkok to discuss, among other things, closer crossborder ties, the two leaders might also have considered coordinating efforts to address the deleterious impact of rising sea levels on their vulnerable coastlines and inland areas.

Predictions about when coastlines will be threatened by rising oceans and by exactly how many millimeters seas in Southeast Asia will rise may be rough, but it’s safe to assume, based on new evidence that initial estimates put forward by the U.N.’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) in 2007 were grossly underestimated.

Back then climate science was just finding its footing. For instance, the IPCC’s 2007 Special Report on Emission Scenarios estimated that in the 20th century, global average sea level rose at a rate of about 1.7 millimeters per year. It also initially concluded that by the mid-2090s, global sea levels would rise to 0.22 to 0.44 meters above 1990 levels – or around 4 millimeters per year, about twice 20th-century levels. Those estimates were worrisome but not catastrophic.

Importantly, the authors acknowledged that “thermal expansion” would contribute to more than half of the rise; it also forecast that “land ice will lose mass increasingly rapidly as the century progresses.” This is the red warning light that has been flashing worldwide ever since. Yet the projections of exactly how high sea levels will rise have been the subject of some speculation.

That is, until now.

Those who wrote the 2007 IPCC report conditioned their estimates about the rapidity of sea rise by stating that “an important uncertainty relates to whether [the] discharge of ice from the ice sheets will continue to increase as a consequence of accelerated ice flow.”

In 2018, a study published in Science Advances determined that “freshwater melting of glaciers in some regions of Antarctica caused a layer of cold, freshwater to float above warmer, saltier water, both slowing ocean circulation and melting lower parts of the ice sheets.”

Here the authors describe the so-called “feedback loop,” which posits exactly that: that the underbellies of the Antarctic’s vast ice shelves are being exposed to this warmer water and melting more quickly as a result.ADVERTISEMENT


This, of course, leads to the ice shelves eventually breaking away from the frozen mainland, which, in turn, exposes the mainland ice to liquefaction. This then will result in rapid – and aggressive – sea level rises that will have a devastating impact on the low-lying coastlines of many nations, including Thailand and Malaysia.

Then, in 2019, Climate Central issued a report stating that over the course of the 21st century, “global sea levels are projected to rise between about 2 and 7 feet… and possibly more.” It further noted that the threat was “concentrated in coastal Asia and could have profound economic and political consequences within the lifetimes of people alive today.”

Climate Central’s interactive threat maps forewarn unimaginable levels of coastal flooding in Thailand and Malaysia between 2030 and 2050. The Thai capital Bangkok, it is predicted, will be more or less submerged as global sea levels rise, given that it sits only 1.5 meters above sea level in the Gulf of Thailand.

Below are Climate Central’s most updated projections, made on February 28, which forecast the severe flooding in Bangkok and along Malaysia’s coastlines that is now projected to occur as soon as 2030.



Almost certainly, between 2030 and 2050, peninsular Malaysia’s western and eastern shores will be inundated by the waters of the Malacca Straits and the South China Sea, perhaps submerging as much as 12,000 square kilometers of coastal property, or up to 1.7 million hectares of agricultural and urban landmass.

These losses would be truly devastating.

But back to the latest science. In 2021, scientists presenting before the American Geophysical Union said they anticipated that within the next five to ten years the Thwaites Glacier in Western Antarctica will collapse, much earlier than expected. According to the scientists, the Thwaites Glacier is a behemoth: one of Antarctic’s largest glaciers, about the size of Florida. They maintain that its meltwater “alone is responsible for 4 percent of global sea level rise.”

According to an article published by Columbia Climate School, if the Thwaites Glacier were to dissolve, “then global sea levels would rise by 65 centimeters or about two feet.” If, however, not only the Thwaites Glacier but also several of the surrounding glaciers, including Pine Island Glacier, melt and “cannot hold back the West Antarctic Ice Sheet, which holds the equivalent of 3.3 meters (10.8 feet) in sea level, then it could affect coastlines across the world.”

In other words, Thailand and Malaysia can reasonably expect to begin to experience the catastrophic impact of sea rise starting in the early 2030s. And depending on whether or not global temperatures are kept below the target level of 1.5 degrees, these levels could rise dramatically going forward.

Accordingly, it makes sense for the two countries to partner on ways to combat their mutual vulnerabilities. How could they prepare?

One idea to consider is building national networks of coastal sea walls or dykes to fend off the menacing rising tides. Certainly, Bangkok will need defending, with over 120 kilometers of low-lying southern shoreline. But also Malaysia, which has up to 1,000 kilometers of low-lying coastlines exposed to rising seas.

There is a precedent for this. In 1530, a storm surge wiped out nearly 100,000 people living in the Netherlands after overrunning an early system of dykes and storm surge barriers. Since then, the low-lying European nation has had hundreds of years of experience building coastal barriers to hold back the powerful forces of Mother Nature.

Another idea, gaining currency in the Netherlands, is to use more natural solutions to protect against the hazards of impending sea rise. The Dutch are experimenting with a solution they call “De Zandmotor” or “sand motor.” This would involve the creation of huge peninsulas composed of sand to help keep the sea at bay and away from coastlines and local cities. In appropriate places, “sand motors” could contribute to a wholesale solution for both Malaysia and Thailand.

Whatever these two important Southeast Asian countries decide to do to protect their people, they need to begin planning a steady course of action. The science is irrefutable. The tides will not wait. The sea is rising. They can hope for the best, but need to prepare for the worst.

GUEST AUTHOR
Piyali Banergee is an environmental issues writer in Southeast Asia and the executive director of Nature Watch.

With walkout threat, Disney finds itself in balancing act

Mon, March 21, 2022



ORLANDO, Fla. (AP) — With some workers across the U.S. threatening a walkout Tuesday, The Walt Disney Co. finds itself in a balancing act between the expectations of a diverse workforce and demands from an increasingly polarized, politicized marketplace.

On the one side are LGBTQ advocates and Disney employees calling for a walkout in protest of CEO Bob Chapek's slow response in publicly criticizing Florida legislation that critics have dubbed the “Don’t Say Gay” bill. The legislation bars instruction on sexual orientation or gender identity in kindergarten through third grade.

On the other are politicians like Republican Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, who accuse the entertainment conglomerate of bending to cancel culture after a Disney decision to temporarily suspend political contributions in the state. According to Disney's conservative critics, the company should be in the business of making profits instead of pushing an agenda.

Evan Power, chairman of the Leon County Republican Party, said he believes a strident minority of Disney employees are pushing the issue and DeSantis has more to gain by taking the side of parents who want more control over education and “sexual conversations” in early grades at school. DeSantis is viewed as a likely Republican presidential candidate in 2024.

“I think it pays dividends with parents across the state of Florida regardless of political divisions,” Power said.

Officials for the unions that represent tens of thousands of workers at Disney theme parks in Florida and Anaheim, California — including the hundreds of costumed performers who portray Mickey Mouse, Cinderella and Stitch at Walt Disney World — said there didn’t appear to be any momentum for a walkout.

“We are not in support of that,” Romualdas Dulskis, a Teamsters official in Orlando whose local represents costumed characters, bus drivers and other Disney workers, said Monday. “That’s just not the way we are going to go about this.”

Union leaders said they had advised their members not to participate because their contract prohibits work stoppages or disruptions.

“I don’t want to downplay anyone’s efforts, if someone feels what they are doing is the right way to make an impact,” said Eric Clinton, president of Unite Here! Local 362, which represents custodians, housekeepers and other Disney World theme park workers. “We aren’t part of that. It would violate our contract if members of our union participated, though we are concerned about the issue, of course.”

One of the organizers of the walkout, a New York-based employee, said they were expecting more participation from Disney workers in production, marketing, IT and other desk jobs than those in hourly, union jobs. The worker spoke on condition of anonymity out of fear of being targeted online and because organizers didn’t want a single organizer taking the spotlight.

Part of the goal of the walkout is for those workers with the “privilege” to be able to protest to stand up for those who can’t, the New York employee said.

Workers participating in the walkout plan to meet up with each other at locations in Orlando, New York City, Anaheim and Burbank, California, where the company is headquartered. A Disney spokesman didn’t respond to an email seeking comment.

Disney, whose movies and properties shaped generations of children around the world, has spoken out several times in recent years about contentious social and political situations.

It was one of a slew of U.S. companies that in January 2021 said it would suspend political donations to lawmakers who voted against certifying President Joe Biden’s electoral victory. It also spoke out early against a 2016 anti-gay bill in Georgia, threatening to pull its business from the state, which has become a favorite of movie and TV studios. The bill was vetoed by Georgia’s then-governor.

And the company has not been immune to changing societal expectations. It has said it would revamp the Jungle Cruise, Pirates of the Caribbean and Splash Mountain rides at its theme parks to remove racist and sexist elements and put short warnings in front of some of its classic movies on its streaming service, Disney+, warning of “outdated cultural depictions.”

This time, company CEO Chapek has drawn fire for speaking out about the gender identity bill only after it passed the Florida Legislature.

Republican lawmakers pushing the Florida legislation had argued that parents, not teachers, should be the ones talking to their children about gender issues during their early formative years.

The legislation attracted scrutiny from Biden, who called it “hateful,” as well as other Democrats who argue it demonizes LGBTQ people. It has been sent to DeSantis, who was expected to sign it into law.

Earlier this month, Chapek apologized for not coming out more forcibly and publicly against the bill, saying Disney officials had been working behind the scenes to stop it. Chapek, who became CEO in 2020, also announced it was pausing all political donations in Florida and increasing support for advocacy groups fighting similar legislation in other states. Chapek reiterated those points during a company-wide discussion with employees on Monday.

Disney has long been influential in Florida politics, tending to be conservative and supporting Republicans who have been in control of Tallahassee, the state capital, for two decades, but also being more open on social issues, said Patricia Campos-Medina, co-director of the Worker Institute at Cornell University. “That’s why people felt surprised that they wanted to say quiet on this issue,” she said.

Organizers of the walkout maintain that withholding political contributions isn't enough.

On a website calling for the walkout, the group says that until the legislation is repealed, Disney leaders need to stop investments in Florida, including the relocation of 2,000 mostly professional jobs from its California headquarters to Orlando. They also say Disney needs to develop an LGBTQ brand similar to the Onyx Collective, an initiative aimed at developing content by and for people of color.

Power, the GOP official in Tallahassee, said he was confident that Disney and Florida Republicans would get past this flashpoint and restore their relationship, eventually.

“It’s good that we’re pushing back, because the purpose of a publicly traded company is not to push an agenda,” Power said. “The people at Disney know they need to work with the Legislature and the governor, and they’ll come back around.”

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Farrington reported from Tallahassee. AP writers Tali Arbel in New York and Amy Taxin in Orange County, California, contributed to this report.

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Follow Mike Schneider on Twitter at https://twitter.com/MikeSchneiderAP

Mike Schneider And Brendan Farrington, The Associated Press