BESIDES CHINA MANY COUNTRIES HAVE SLAVE LABOR
A new U.S. forced-labour law is about to test our consumption habits

CHOCOLATE EXPORTERS COME TO MIND

LONG READ

Alexander Panetta - CBC

Here's an uncomfortable thought experiment for the next time you're standing before your wardrobe, running your fingertips through your garments.

Count five items containing cotton. Stop at the fifth garment. Now imagine an enslaved human being. Because by this point, you're statistically likely to own their work.

Rayhan Asat thinks about this constantly. She's a U.S.-based lawyer who comes from an oppressed minority region of China where forced labour is systemic and which produces one-fifth of the world's cotton.

Asat hasn't seen her brother in six years. And when she looks at clothing, she remembers people like him in forced detention and wonders if it was spawned from their suffering.

"I often think about it," said Asat, a fellow at Yale Law and the Atlantic Council in Washington, D.C.

"Every time I'm mindful: Is this made in China? Does it mean it's tainted with forced labour? Is it one of my family members?"

Soon, we'll all be confronted more directly with this reality, courtesy of U.S. lawmakers. Our clothing and our conscience are on a collision course this month.

There's a mounting pile of detailed evidence of human rights abuses against ethnic Uyghurs in China's Muslim region of Xinjiang, a hub for cotton, tomato paste and solar-panel production.


© Jeenah Moon/ReutersU.S.-based lawyer Rayhan Asat hasn't seen her brother in six years and says he's suffering in a Chinese detention centre.

And there's a specific date when things are supposed to change: June 21.

That's the day a new U.S. law takes effect, aimed at reordering international supply chains by altering the behaviour of any company that sells goods to the U.S.

Critics of the measure warn it will cause economic chaos.
What happens June 21

The Forced Labor Prevention Act would penalize importers and seize their goods by toughening older forced-labour laws with unprecedented new measures.

It reverses the burden of proof: guilty until proven innocent.

From now on, if you're shipping anything into the U.S., and if U.S. officials find out that any of it — even a bit of it — comes from Xinjiang or from any entity on a future watchlist, it'll be seized unless you can prove there was no forced labour involved.

Needless to say, it won't be easy.

Importers call it a logistical nightmare and have been pleading with the U.S. government to delay implementation.


© Leah Millis/ReutersSeen here is a protest last year outside the Canadian embassy in Washington, D.C., where people demanded that countries label China's actions in Xinjiang as a genocide.

Companies say there's no clarity about how this will work; warn it could raise costs and worsen inflation; and say it's mind-bogglingly complex to weed out every forbidden fibre from fabrics that get sold, and re-sold, across several countries before becoming a final product.

One firm that tracks these illicit goods says its artificial intelligence software counts millions of buyer-seller relationships around the world involving entities linked to forced labour in Xinjiang.

The firm's co-founder says his software sees nearly one million direct business-to-business connections with forced labour, and seven million second-hand connections.

"It's in everything," said Evan Smith, whose company, Altana, works with government agencies and companies to map those networks. "Your razor blades, your T-shirts, your antibiotics, your spice rack, your diapers. This stuff is really touching so much of the everyday economy."
Spillover effect on Canada

Make no mistake: this change will have a spillover effect in Canada. Partly because we operate in a trade area with so many cross-border businesses.

This country also has legal obligations under the new North American trade deal: it's committed to stopping forced-labour imports, and the deal also created a forced-labour task force to monitor the issue in the U.S.

Canada enters this era lagging behind; it has not prevented a single shipment since the new North American trade pact took effect, according to a report in The Globe and Mail.

Canada is now looking to tighten its rules with a bill that's nearly passed through Parliament that would force companies to produce annual reports on their supply chains.


© Octavio Jones/ReutersThe Forced Labor Prevention Act passed through the U.S. Congress last year with support from both parties. Republican Sen. Marco Rubio, seen here, was one of its co-sponsors. The law's toughest provision takes effect this month.

The United States has had a forced-labour law on the books for nearly a century — since 1930. It's progressively toughened that law, and has been stopping or seizing hundreds of shipments in recent years.


But importers sound panicked about the newest change. Some voiced their worries last week at a U.S. briefing session for industry.
U.S. Customs deluged with panicked questions

CBC News listened in on an online briefing where businesses flooded U.S. Customs officials with far more questions than could be answered in the allotted time.

More than 700 people participated in the briefing, typing out questions like: What proof of innocence is sufficient? How do you define a Xinjiang product — with an address? Will there be DNA testing on cotton fibres? Will companies be liable for the actions of their suppliers' supplier? And what happens to seized goods — can companies get them back and sell them elsewhere?

Some participants expressed frustration. One said supply chain problems are already a major drag on the U.S. economy and that this could worsen shipping delays.


© Thomas Peter/ReutersSecurity guards stand at the gates of what is officially known as a vocational skills education centre in Xinjiang, China, in 2018. The region's forced-labour camps and re-education facilities are aimed at diluting the Uyghur identity.

Others vented about the reversed burden of proof: "Proving a negative is nearly impossible. How would someone prove that all presenters [in this briefing] are NOT forced to be here?"

U.S. officials promised more specific guidance will be released on June 21, the day the new law takes effect. Officials insisted the new law will be applied immediately.

Compounding the complication is pressure from China.

That pressure includes threats. Companies that raise concerns about rights abuses are hit with boycotts in China. H&M was forced to close numerous stores.

China also has a new law allowing it to punish companies deemed to interfere in its internal affairs — the consequences include possible asset seizures; denial of entry into China; and a ban on Chinese citizens working with the company.

"[These competing U.S.-Chinese threats] have companies in an impossible situation," said Eric Miller, a Canadian-born, U.S.-based trade consultant who has clients in the clothing industry.
China fights back

The Chinese government position: That claims of genocide are a fabricated scandal, being used by the West as an economic weapon to hurt China.

In Beijing's description, its crackdown on Uyghur identity, with suspected nationalists sent to re-education and work camps, is an effort to bring national unity following past separatist terrorism. And it calls the U.S. a hypocrite given its own use of prison labour in various states.

China is also making it harder to trace products to Xinjiang.

For example, Uyghur prisoners are being moved to work in factories elsewhere in China: one Australian study found more than 80,000 Uyghurs were transferred out of Xinjiang between 2017 and 2019, and other reports say those forced transfers keep happening.

Mapping transactions was challenging even before this change. Miller counts 101 steps to make a simple T-shirt, from gathering the cotton to shipping the final product, across multiple factories, in different countries with different legal systems.

All this helps explain why Xinjiang cotton keeps showing up even in products of companies that say they've changed their practices. It's reportedly happened to Adidas, Puma and Hugo Boss.


© Thomas Peter/ReutersA guard stands in a watchtower of Kashgar prison in Kashgar, Xinjiang, last year.

According to several surveys on hundreds of U.S. fashion products by the forensic analysis company Oritain, around 16 per cent contained traces of what appeared to be Xinjiang cotton.

The head of a Canadian industry lobby group said the U.S. policy is creating maximum confusion.

"Lots of doomsday scenarios," is how Bob Kirke, executive director of the Canadian Apparel Federation, described the industry mood. "We're now less than a month away. And we have no guidance."
'It really upsets me'

Rayhan Asat, however, has little patience for complaints about how complex this will be. She said the challenge for companies pales in comparison to what her people face — being forced into re-education camps; tortured in so-called tiger chairs; enslaved; and having their culture beaten out of them.

"For these companies to cite difficulty? Let me tell you what's difficult," she said in an interview with CBC News.

She said that after his years in solitary confinement, her brother Ekpar looks like a shadow of the buoyant tech entrepreneur she once knew.

Asat said he's only granted a video or phone call a few times a year. The calls typically last a minute, and if he hasn't said goodbye at 59 seconds, he gets cut off with no farewell.


© Parliament of Canada Rayhan Asat is seen testifying before the Canadian House of Commons in a 2020 virtual hearing. Pictured in the background is her imprisoned brother Ekpar Asat.

"It really upsets me, to be honest. … The difficulty of doing due diligence is nothing compared to the human suffering taking place in the Uyghur region."

Asat said international companies have been on notice for years that the Uyghur region is awash in forced labour, and they could have acted sooner if they cared.
New law could create a new industry

New technologies could be part of the solution.

Oritain, for example, does DNA analysis. Altana, which maps out supply chain relationships and warns clients if they're working with a firm linked to forced labour, was co-founded by Alan Bersin, a former U.S. customs commissioner under Barack Obama, with the specific goal of cracking down on forced labour.

Bersin's partner, Evan Smith, describes one encounter a few weeks ago with a major apparel brand Altana has begun working with.

He said the company believed it had weeded forced-labour goods out of its supply chain. But it was stunned to hear that a Sri Lankan garment mill it worked with had a Vietnamese supplier working with a Chinese company partnered with a Xinjiang entity.

An executive called the Sri Lankan mill, which, Smith said, at first insisted it had broken off any Xinjiang ties — then admitted there might have been an exception.

This sort of tracking will carry new costs for companies. Smith's firm charges six-figure fees for now, and will add less pricey services eventually.

He said companies better get used to this new reality.


© Lindsey Wasson/Reuters Protesters held a sign against China's Uyghur camps outside the Vancouver home of Huawei executive Meng Wanzhou during her detention in Canada in 2020.

Smith compares it to the post-9/11 moment when the U.S. toughened financial-disclosure laws for banks as part of its anti-terrorism efforts.

"It's hard. But it's possible," he said.

"And the private sector should assume it will have no choice. … This is going to become the norm, and not the exception. … All things are pointing to a new paradigm: Thou shalt know your supply chain."

NOT WHITE BABIES

Birth alerts have ended but babies still being apprehended in Manitoba: data

WINNIPEG — Manitoba’s families minister has touted a significant drop in the number of newborns seized by social services since the province ended the controversial practice of birth alerts, but government data shows hundreds of babies are still being taken into care every year.


© Provided by The Canadian PressBirth alerts have ended but babies still being apprehended in Manitoba: data

“We have reduced … childbirth apprehensions by 75 per cent since that policy was implemented," Rochelle Squires said during question period on Tuesday.

Data obtained by The Canadian Press through freedom-of-information requests shows, on average, a baby is still seized in Manitoba nearly every day.

Birth alerts were used to notify hospitals and child-welfare agencies that a more thoroughassessment was needed before a newborn was discharged to a parent deemed high-risk.

The province stopped the practice in 2020 after a review found it discouraged pregnant women and their families from reaching out for prenatal support.

The province clarified the minister's numbers later in the week. It said there had been a decrease in newborn apprehensions, but it was not what the minister reported. There were 101 babies up to three days old seized in 2020-21, a 46 per cent decrease from 186 newborns the year before.

The province said the minister had been including children up to a year old who had been taken into care.

The data obtained by the news agency shows there has been a gradual decrease of apprehensions involving babies under a year old, but it doesn't match what the minister said.

In 2019, 496 babies were apprehended. That dropped to 386 babies the following year when birth alerts ended. Last year, 339 were apprehended.

That's a decrease of 32 per cent from the year before and after birth alerts stopped.

The minister’s office further clarified that newborn apprehensions decreased by 65 per cent since the Progressive Conservatives took office in 2016. And, it said in an email, a 75 per cent reduction is expected this year.

“Those are staggering numbers of babies being apprehended," said Cora Morgan, First Nations family advocate for the Assembly of Manitoba Chiefs.

Morgan said ending birth alerts was the right move.

The practice has long been criticized by Indigenous leaders who say birth alerts are stacked against families. The final report of the National Inquiry into Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls said the alerts are “racist and discriminatory and are a gross violation of the rights of the child, the mother and the community.”

There are about 10,000 children in care in Manitoba and about 90 per cent are Indigenous.

Morgan said it's clear ending birth alerts has not stopped babies from being seized. She said mothers are still telling her they are scared to get prenatal support and she hears of babies and children being apprehended regularly.

“I still believe that they are still flagging mothers.”

The province needs to do more to support women who are pregnant or who have just given birth to keep families together, Morgan said.

Squires said in the legislature that “there has been a lot of damage done stemming back decades” around child welfare. She said all levels of government must move forward together.

Bernadette Smith, a legislature member for the Opposition NDP, said babies should not be seized unless there’s a threat to the child.

“We do more harm than good by apprehending kids,” she said.

Smith agrees ending birth alerts was a good decision. But, she pointed out, it means the number of babies being taken into care should have been closer to zero.

A bill Smith introduced in 2018 amended the province’s apprehension laws so that no child could be seized solely because of poverty. Smith explained that when she was a teenager she was placed in care because her mom couldn’t afford the supports needed to help her.

With more than 300 babies seized a year, it's clear there are other families who need help, she said.

“Moms should get the support before, during and after they have their children."

This report by The Canadian Press was first published June 4, 2022.

Kelly Geraldine Malone, The Canadian Press

BIBLE BELT ALBERTA = UCP
'Barely surviving': Wait times, limited information keeping trans Albertans from health care

Brittany Gervais - Yesterday- CALGARY HERALD


Before he could get his surgery, Lindsay Peace would put her son Ace to bed at night and wonder if he would still be alive in the morning.


© Provided by Calgary Herald

Lindsay Peace, executive director of Skipping Stones, poses for a portrait at her office in downtown Calgary on Thursday, May 26, 2022.

Ace was 16 years old when he came out as transgender. He told Lindsay top surgery to remove breast tissue was one of the medical procedures he needed to feel comfortable in his body.

When Lindsay and her son began exploring options through Alberta Health, they quickly hit a wall.

“There was no information, no phone number, no email, no waitlist, other than, maybe you’ll get it in four years,” Lindsay said. “It sounds dramatic, but he didn’t have four years. He couldn’t have done it.”

There are more transgender people living in Alberta than the national average, with at least 12,480 transgender or non-binary people having lived in the province, according to unprecedented data released from Statistics Canada in April. In Calgary, that includes about 5,000 people, or 0.39 per cent of the population.

However, advocates and health professionals say patients are struggling to access health care due to limited information, long waiting lists, travel and a lack of training. Thousands of people in Alberta are waiting anywhere from two to five years for surgeries, including breast augmentation or mastectomy, phalloplasty, metoidioplasty and vaginoplasty.

Lindsay said she knew her son’s mental health would deteriorate if they had to wait years. The family decided to forgo Alberta’s funded plan and paid $20,000 for top surgery in Ontario instead.

The difference she saw in her now-22-year-old son after the surgery was dramatic, she said.

“After the surgery, he’s leading the Pride parade without a shirt on. I have this picture of him carrying this banner, and he’s smiling. It was incredible,” she said. “Three years before that, we couldn’t get him out of his bedroom.”


Pictured is a photo of Ace Peace leading the Calgary Pride parade in in 2019 in his mother Lindsay Peace’s office, executive director of Skipping Stones on Thursday, May 26, 2022. Photographed photo is by Benjamin Laird.

Long process

All provinces and territories offer varying levels of care for transgender and non-binary people . Right now, Albertans are able to get top or bottom surgeries covered by the province through the Alberta gender surgery program with a referral from a physician or family doctor.

Patients must be diagnosed with gender dysphoria for coverage — for bottom surgery, patients are required to get two diagnoses from two physicians who have expertise in gender dysphoria. Advocates and medical professionals say few physicians, including only five psychiatrists in the province, are able to do this.

There are no medical facilities in Alberta that provide gender-affirming bottom surgeries, meaning patients are sent to a private hospital in Montreal instead. Though publicly funded, the gender surgery program does not cover personal expenses or medical supplies for recovery.

Dr. Joe Raiche, psychiatrist and clinical lead at the adult gender clinic at Foothills Medical Centre, said the clinic currently has a waiting list of two years for health-care referrals, with between 1,500 and 2,000 active patients at any time.

“That’s pretty abysmal for health care,” he said. “It just feels like there’s this never-ending supply of patients and an inability to catch up, even if we could hire five new physicians tomorrow.”

There is $2 million allocated for the gender surgery program for 2022-23 according to the province, but Raiche said that won’t be enough to alleviate delays. Instead, Raiche said medical professionals have advocated for a surgical centre in Alberta to deal with the bottleneck.

“We have the necessary clinicians, the surgical specialists, gynecologists, plastic surgeons, urologists … but the lacking piece has been the institutional buy-in from AHS or Alberta Health, so we’ve been stuck with this broken system,” he said.

“For a province the size of over four million people, there should be something here.”

In an emailed response to Postmedia, Alberta Health spokesperson Chris Bourdeau said bottom surgery requires “specific surgical expertise not available in Alberta or other provinces outside of the Montreal clinic, with the exception of B.C.”

“As with some other specialist procedures, provinces do send patients to other provinces to receive these procedures,” Bourdeau said.

Alberta Health did not respond to specific questions about whether the province will consider reviewing the current system, or how the province plans to make gender-affirming surgery more accessible to Albertans.

Trans and non-binary people in Canada were more likely to experience unmet general and mental health care needs during the first seven months of the COVID-19 pandemic, according to a report from Trans Pulse Canada.

For comparison, about four per cent of the general population and 45 per cent of trans and non-binary people reported an unmet health care need pre-pandemic, the report reads.
‘This is about our survival’

Kim Fuery, 52, said she was told it would take two years before she could see a psychiatrist at the gender clinic at Foothills Medical Centre for a referral. She estimates it would take another two years before the actual surgery.

“The treatment is available, and it’s covered but the waiting seems interminable. It’s like being able to see water but not drink it and the longer it goes on the worse it gets.”

Fuery said she knew she was a woman at the age of 15. She didn’t have the words to describe it at the time but knew her body did not match who she was.

“That realization was followed very quickly by me trying to end my own life. Being a queer kid in the suburbs in the mid-’80s, in southern Alberta, was not safe or healthy. In my head, I really did not see any kind of future or place for myself.”

Fuery kept her identity hidden for decades, policing herself to fit in with what society expected of her. She struggled with multiple addictions from early adolescence, but her alcoholism rose to dangerous levels during the pandemic, she said.

Near the end of 2020, she said to herself “anything but this.”

“I let myself unfold, to think what I thought, and feel what I felt, and do what I wanted to do.”


Lindsay Peace, executive director of Skipping Stones, shows her tattoo, which she had changed after her son came out as transgender, at her office in downtown Calgary on Thursday, May 26, 2022. Peace has tattoos of her three children on her arm and the one of her son Ace used to be wearing a pink dress. She had the tattoo changed by the help of her husband Steve Peace who is a tattoo artist.

Now 16 months sober, Fuery still remembers the first piece of clothing she bought for herself — a bright magenta tank top.

Fuery emphasized not all gender and sexually diverse people need to access medical procedures to transition. However, she said she struggles with gender dysphoria and needs bottom surgery for her own journey.

“The physical dysphoria is a major mental health issue. I’m speaking in my own context, but having that mismatch between brain and body is punishing,” she said.

“No one who needs top or bottom surgery does this frivolously. We don’t do this because we’re bored. We do this because this is about our survival.”

Other surgeries, including breast augmentation and mastectomy, are also covered under the provincial program. These procedures can be done locally, but not every surgeon is willing to include transgender health care in their scope of practice.

Mag Benard, 30, is non-binary and on the two-year waiting list for top surgery consultation. They said there has been no word on their referral since it was sent to a surgeon in Calgary last June.

“I’m probably going to be waiting for over another year, minimum. A lot of folks who are in my space right now are often hoping that there’s a cancellation,” they said.

Benard said it’s frustrating to be forced to wait for relief from gender dysphoria. Having to bind their chest every day as a temporary fix is exhausting, they said.

“I feel like I can’t fully authentically express myself and be comfortable with myself,” they said. “When I look in the mirror, I don’t see myself. I have to cover up that part of me because it makes me physically ill to my stomach.

“Gender affirming surgery is life-saving surgery, because when you are stuck living in a prison where you feel so disconnected from your physical self, it takes a toll on your mental health and well-being. … Nobody wants to live every single day barely surviving.”

Bourdeau said in an email wait times for the province’s two gender clinics in Edmonton and Calgary vary from six to 24 months, “generally similar to, or shorter than, before the pandemic.”

“The wait list for a referral from an Alberta licensed physician depends on the physician’s appointment schedule,” the email reads, adding wait times for surgery depend on the surgeon’s availability at the time.

Along with long wait lists, traditional health-care spaces in the province are not seen as safe for transgender or gender-diverse people. When Benard had their appendix taken out this year, none of the doctors or nurses asked them for their pronouns or what name they wanted to use.

“There needs to be more opportunities for professional development so more professionals are trained and experienced to actually support and help people who are transgender.”
Limited information

Benard, Fuery and Lindsay said it was extremely difficult to find information about transgender health care in the province.

Information about applying for the program is currently limited to one page on AHS’ website . The link for an application for lower surgeries includes a health bulletin dated back to 2012 .

“People shouldn’t have to be stumbling through and figuring out how to get the care that they need. It should be easily available to them in a process that is well-defined with credible sources, supported by Alberta Health and AHS,” said family physician Dr. James Makokis from the Saddle Lake Cree Nation.

He said the biggest change needed is for the province to have a co-ordinated network that aligns all practitioners in the province working in trans health care.

Physicians used to be able to list their practice on the College of Physicians and Surgeons of Alberta website, so patients could search for physicians with a trans health care background, he explained. He said the college removed that search function two years ago.

“My trans patients can never find a family doctor who does this. Usually, it’s by word of mouth, or researching on social media.”

Other provinces like B.C. or Ontario have a province-wide system navigator specifically for trans and gender-diverse people. For example, the Rainbow Health Ontario website has a service provider directory, education and training for health-care providers, and research.

“I think that we have the ability to have credible information where people and families don’t have to be navigating in the dark to access life-saving care.”

Training and education in transgender health care is not mandatory for physicians, but Makokis said he highly encourages other family doctors to open up their scope. There are “huge gaps” for trans health care physicians across the province, including Fort McMurray, Grande Prairie, Edmonton and Calgary, which can add on to wait-times for patients, he said.

“We need more family doctors doing that type of medicine. There’s nothing to be fearful of, and you will definitely change, and probably save, someone’s life by doing this medicine.”

A Trans PULSE Canada survey published in 2020 found one in three trans, two-spirit or non-binary people considered suicide in the last year. One in 20 respondents said they had attempted suicide.

Transgender health care varies by province

Gender-affirming health care is recognized as medically necessary and life-saving by international medical experts, with standards of care set out by the World Professional Association for Transgender Health.

While Alberta stalls on reviewing policy, other provinces and territories have made improvements to access and delivery of gender-affirming health care.

In 2021, the Yukon government expanded health-care insurance coverage to include a wider list of surgeries and other procedures, including voice training and facial feminization surgery. The territory now has the most comprehensive coverage in Canada for gender-diverse residents by aligning with WPATH standards.

Trans Care BC works with partners and stakeholders, including the Ministry of Health, transgender communities, individuals, non-profits, regional health authorities and the First Nations Health Authority for a provincial network of services.

In Ontario, the government-funded Rainbow Health program creates opportunities for the health-care system to better serve LGBTQ+ communities by training health-care providers, providing information and spurring research.

Lindsay is also the executive director of Skipping Stone in Calgary, a non-profit offering support for transgender and gender-diverse people. She said the non-profit has two support groups specifically for people waiting for top surgery.

“It is so frustrating to see other provinces are moving forward. They’re listening, and in many of those provinces, they’re working with community organizations,” she said.

“We’ve had a few conversations, and people just pass the buck. There’s a ton of that between Alberta Health and AHS. Nobody will take responsibility to do this.”

Twitter: @BrittGervaisAB

CANADA

‘We are absolutely destroyed’: Health workers facing burnout, even as COVID levels ease

Dr. Laura Hawryluck was seized with a sense of overwhelming panic so great she couldn’t focus, couldn’t sleep.

© Submitted photo.Dr. Laura Hawryluck at Toronto Western Hospital, where she has spent the last two-and-a-half years treating waves of COVID-19 cases.

Teresa Wright - GLOBAL NEWS


This time, the cause wasn’t the faces of the many patients she has witnessed take their last laboured breaths in the intensive care unit at Toronto Western Hospital, where she has spent the last two-and-a-half years treating waves of COVID-19 cases. This time, it was a deadline keeping her awake.

She had been asked by a colleague to edit some teaching materials. A routine task for her any other time. But suddenly, she began to realize the toll the pandemic’s grinding workload has taken on her.

“That sense of overwhelming anxiety of being asked to do one more thing was the near sense of panic that I've never felt before,” she said.

Read more:
Health workers call for radical changes to health care to treat pandemic burnout

This episode made Hawryluck realize she would have to step back from some of her commitments. It wasn’t an easy decision, but the burnout she was feeling was just too much.

“I had to give up on some projects that I love doing,” she said. “But, you know, if I didn't, I realized that I was not going to be able to get through this.”

Life may be back to normal for many Canadians now that COVID-19 cases are on the decline, but the same is not true for many health care workers who are still dealing with hospital outbreaks and COVID-19 patients.

Now, after two years of extreme pandemic workloads, doctors and nurses say they are experiencing more burnout and emotional exhaustion than ever before – and it’s leading some, like Hawryluck, to re-think their commitments and career options.

Dr. Darren Markland, an Edmonton physician who also works in the ICU, recently made the difficult decision to close his practice as a kidney specialist after experiencing what he calls a “crisis situation.”

One day, he published a tweet saying he had just finished working 36 hours straight managing a dialysis shift while also covering the ICU for critical care.

“I was proud of that. That was just me with absolutely no insight. And when you lose your insight as a physician, you become a dangerous one.”

Markland says he ended up making a few “profound” mistakes, which made him realize he couldn’t continue working at that pace.

Read more:
Doctor closes specialty clinic in year 3 of pandemic to focus on critical care: ‘I had to make a choice’

Physician burnout has never been higher in Canada, according to the Canadian Medical Association (CMA).

More than half of physicians report high levels of burnout—nearly double pre-pandemic levels and nearly half say they are likely to reduce clinical hours in the next 24 months, CMA president Dr. Katharine Smart told a federal committee studying Canada’s health workforce in February.

Even though the rate of COVID-19 case numbers have started to ease in hospitals across the country, the workload and stress facing health-care workers hasn’t abated. Because even though there are fewer patients, the ones who do need care are sicker, after two years of being unable or fearful to seek medical care for non-COVID ailments.

This is now coupled with another challenging reality in many hospitals, clinics and family practices: many health-care workers are leaving the profession entirely, due to burnout and exhaustion, according to the CMA.

That means there are more critically-ill patients who need more care but fewer people to care for them.

Video: Peterborough health officials say workplace burnout is becoming more common

“We are absolutely destroyed,” Markland said.

“We are literally seeing people with chronic illnesses who have not seen a primary caregiver for years and now are presenting with end-stage, third-world type manifestations of diabetes or high blood pressure or renal failure. We're seeing young people having strokes because of a combination of unmanaged stress and substance abuse.”

Read more:
‘A pandemic of its own’: How COVID-19 is impacting mental health

It’s a crisis that has hit the health-care system so rapidly, Markland believes many are unprepared to deal with it.

“You combine that with just the mental and emotional stress of being worked to the literal bone, and it generates an environment that's tricky – I’ll say tricky because I often try not to think too hard about what's going on in the hospital.”

Nurses across Canada are also experiencing burnout to such an extreme degree they are at a “breaking point,” Canadian Nurses Association CEO Tim Guest told the same federal standing committee last month.

“This is an urgent national issue,” he said.

He also noted that many hospitals and primary health centres are experiencing an exodus of nurses leaving their jobs for other, higher-paying positions in other provinces or leaving the profession entirely because of unsustainable working conditions.

A report from Statistics Canada released Friday found one in four nurses surveyed between September to November 2021 said they intended to leave their job or change jobs in the next three years. Over 70 per cent of nurses who plan to leave cited job stress or burnout as a major factor, the study found.

Read more:

Hospitals grapple with ‘historical’ staff absences, burnout amid 6th COVID wave

Rachel Muir, a front-line nurse in Ottawa and bargaining unit president for the Ontario Nurses Association, says burnout “doesn’t even begin to describe” how she and her colleagues have been feeling.

“We were burned out before this all started because we were short-staffed. We were making do. And then the extra stressors and expectations, the disrespect we've been shown, have all compounded.”

Muir says she’s heard from nurses who have told her they sit in their cars before going into work, chanting, “You can do this, it’s only 12 hours, you just have to get out of the car.”

She echoed the concerns of physicians about patients who are sicker and needed more arduous care.

“For the nurses and the health-care providers on the front line, the care that they're providing is not only more intense and more acute and more mentally difficult because these patients are more critical – there are more of these patients,” Muir said.

Video: Pandemic health-care burnout not deterring nursing students

Nurses who may have had to care for four-to-six patients two years ago are now caring for six to 10, she said.

“When somebody is critically ill, that's a big number. And when it's not just one of your patients who is critically ill, it's two or three of them, and you are supposed to provide the care that you are trained and want to give – not only is it causing (nurses) to be burnt out, it's a moral injury to us.”

National associations that represent doctors and nurses have called on federal and provincial governments to take immediate, medium and long-term steps to address critical gaps in the health sector across Canada, and have submitted their ideas about what needs to be done. These include calls for more investments in recruitment and retention, training and education and for an expansion of support for community health care so more Canadians have access to family physicians and other primary care providers.

Read more:

Rate of doctor burnout in Canada has doubled since before pandemic: survey

But burnout levels among health workers should also remain a top priority for governments and health agencies to address, says David Gratzer, an attending psychiatrist at the Center for Addiction and Mental Health in Toronto.

Many health professionals don’t like to admit when they’re feeling overwhelmed or unable to cope because they prioritize their patients’ needs, Grazter said, whose patients include doctors and nurses.

“Over time, this could have consequences … people being less available to listen to patients; more mistakes have been found in some studies.”

Solutions like more flexible work hours, offering better quality work and career options and ensuring health workers are getting adequate vacation time are areas that should also be explored, he added.

“The most important thing is for us to remember burnout is something that's going on that we need to address it. And certainly at the hospital level, on the clinic level, making resources available to people who feel burnt out to get care is extraordinarily important,” Grazter said.

“We need a vibrant and healthy workforce because otherwise we’ll all pay the price.”

IMPERIALISM THE HIGHEST STAGE OF CAPITALI$M 

In Latin America, China steps in where US has stepped out



Howard LaFranchi
Fri, June 3, 2022


To a large extent, China’s rise to economic dominance and deepening political influence in Latin America has been a quiet affair.

Even the United States – first preoccupied with wars in the Middle East and then turning inward to the tune of “America First” – seemed to hardly notice over the past two decades as its chief economic competitor and geopolitical rival dethroned Uncle Sam as top trading partner and go-to investor in much of his own backyard. At least until recently.

But for Miriam Arce Pinta, China’s arrival in her picturesque fishing village on Peru’s Pacific coast has been anything but tranquil.

More like a bang.

“The frequent construction blasts rattle our houses, leave cracks in the walls, and put everyone on edge,” says Ms. Arce, a lifelong Chancay resident and artist who has become the face of local opposition to China’s local megaport project.

When completed, the mammoth installation will transform the quaint fishing harbor and resort town, with its key resting spot for migrating bird species, into a bustling beachhead. It will become a hub for exporting the region’s prized raw materials and food back to China and importing Chinese products into South America.

It will certainly change the view from Ms. Arce’s hillside home, which might have inspired Monet or Matisse: Close-knit houses on slopes cascade down to a beach where an armada of pastel-hued skiffs jostles for space with food carts shaded by umbrellas. Two old piers with whitewashed railings carry tourists out over the placid bay, while amateur anglers cast lines into the surf.

The adjacent commercial fishing pier is mostly quiet, many of the local boat captains having accepted buyouts from the port builders or cash incentives to move elsewhere. Already, construction has put extensive tracts of the sea off-limits to Chancay’s fishing fleets.

“As if the explosions at all hours weren’t enough, the big trucks transporting earth to the new roads and beachfront they are constructing operate around the clock in day and night shifts,” Ms. Arce says. “It’s constant noise, and the trucks leave an inescapable dust in what before was refreshing sea air.”

She and the band of unhappy residents, environmentalists, and local merchants she has galvanized to oppose the megaport have become a minor nuisance to Cosco Shipping, the Chinese state-owned company behind the project.

But even Ms. Arce acknowledges that the prospects for halting the operation are dim. The Peruvian government is keen to see the megaport completed, and such trade infrastructure is considered crucial to Beijing.

“The Chancay port is a prime example of how China seeks to secure, from end to end, the supply chains that underpin its economic growth and its aspirations to upgrade its economy,” says Margaret Myers, director of the Asia & Latin America Program at the Inter-American Dialogue in Washington.

At the same time, if China is hearing any cries from Latin America, it’s much more the entreaties of governments and companies from São Paulo to Panama City that all want the Asian colossus to come in: They’re eager to have Beijing assist the region in modernizing its infrastructure and diversifying its economy.

And just as it has done in Africa and Central and Southeast Asia, China has been eager to fill a void left in Latin America by the hemisphere’s declining and distracted superpower to the north.

In a matter of a few years, China has supplanted the U.S. as the top trading partner for all of South America except Colombia, Ecuador, and Paraguay – and trends suggest those countries could soon follow. A similar pattern is emerging in Central America and the Caribbean, except for Mexico.

Twenty countries have joined Beijing’s Belt and Road Initiative, underscoring China’s rising challenge to the U.S. as Latin America’s No. 1 source of foreign investment. And in recent months, one new president after the other has taken office pledging to prioritize economic and even political relations with China – sometimes as a pointed rebuff to the U.S.

In February Argentine President Alberto Fernández raised eyebrows in Washington when he was one of the few world leaders – along with Ecuador’s Guillermo Lasso – to travel to Beijing for the Olympic Games.

Mr. Fernández used the occasion to sign up Argentina for the Belt and Road Initiative and to deepen China’s involvement in Argentina’s electrical power industry – including nuclear plants. Accords were penned strengthening Argentina’s place as an exporter of food products, from soybeans to beef, to China.

Beijing is also zeroing in on South America’s reserves of rare earth and other minerals required for high-tech industries – including the “white gold” of the future, lithium. China is increasingly active in the “Lithium Triangle” made up of Argentina, Bolivia, and above all, Chile.

All of this economic activity has inevitably led to closer political and even security ties, with China enticing Latin America’s growing number of leftist-led governments with talk of mutually beneficial “south-south relations.”

One result: A region that was once one of the world’s friendliest toward Taiwan has shifted toward Beijing. Several countries have recently decided to recognize the People’s Republic of China, instead of Taiwan, as Ecuador did in December.

For some experts on Latin America, it is no coincidence that the Biden administration has invited the hemisphere’s democracies to the Summit of the Americas in Los Angeles June 6-10 – only the second time the U.S. is hosting the event since the inaugural summit in Miami in 1994.

But if Washington has any thoughts of using the gathering to slow China’s rise in the region, some Latin America specialists have a message: Don’t bother. It’s too late.

“Many countries – including Brazil, Chile, Argentina, and Uruguay – now export more to China than to the U.S. and the European Union combined, while economic relations in many cases have matured beyond natural resource exports to infrastructure development and other investment,” says Jorge Heine, a former Chilean ambassador to Beijing who is now a research professor specializing in the international politics of the Global South at Boston University. “These are countries that need the trade. They need modern infrastructure. They don’t see the U.S. very active in these roles, so they’re not about to push the Chinese back.”

Across Chile’s Atacama Desert, where vast salt flats hug the base of the Andes Mountains, checkerboards of electric yellow, aquamarine, and lizard green salt ponds garishly announce the presence of Chile’s lithium mining operations.

Surrounded by a vast moonscape that at first seems lifeless – the sudden movement of a pair of guanacos off in the salt flats suggests otherwise – the lakes offer an astounding scene: It could be a science fiction setting of futuristic farms on some distant planet producing psychedelic-hued liquid nutrition for humans back on Earth.

Yet while Chile’s lithium ponds may indeed be about future energy sources, their origins are in distant geological epochs. Countless millennia of Andes erosion have left vast deposits of lithium in the soupy brines deep below the salt flats. The viscous matter is pumped up and spread across the ponds to evaporate in the intense desert sun. This concentrates the salts that contain potassium for producing fertilizers – and lithium.

There are no phalanxes of headlamp-clad miners at these operations. Instead, workers in protective gear tend the ponds and gauge the brines for the right concentration of elements. When a worker launches a rowboat out into a lemon-colored lake to take depth measurements, the scene is reminiscent of the Beatles song “Lucy in the Sky With Diamonds”: The only things missing are tangerine trees and marmalade skies.

The workers process the salts and extract the lithium for export – mostly to China and South Korea, where it is an essential component in the batteries that power everything from cellphones to electric cars. Chile is the world’s second-largest exporter of lithium after Australia, and its deposits make it a prime investment target for China.

In 2018, the Chinese company Tianqi bought a 24% stake in the Santiago-based SQM mining and fertilizer corporation, Chile’s second-largest producer of lithium after the American company Albemarle. In January, the Chinese electric vehicle company BYD won a contract to produce 80,000 metric tons of lithium over 20 years, despite the objections of then-President-elect Gabriel Boric.

The socialist Mr. Boric, who took office in April, had called on the outgoing conservative government to suspend awarding new lithium and other mining contracts to allow his government to develop new resource extraction policies. Mr. Boric wants to promote more domestic uses of the country’s mineral wealth – something past governments have attempted, with little success.

Yet despite cries of “China, hands off our lithium!” from leftist voices in Santiago and some Indigenous groups in Atacama, China’s growing role in Chile’s industry seems to raise few alarms.

“I haven’t seen any pressure from our Chinese investors to lower our standards or change our focus on sustainability, but it’s negligible the influence Tianqi could have in that way even if they wanted to,” says Alejandro Bucher, vice president for community relations at SQM’s Atacama operations.

SQM was hampered in the past with a less-than-stellar reputation for maintaining environmental standards and working with local communities, Mr. Bucher acknowledges. But he says the company has done a turnabout in recent years, now implementing environmental standards above those required by the Chilean government and working closely with local Indigenous communities on water, housing, and employment issues.

“Our Chinese investors came in after we set our new course, so it seems they are on board with the shift to sustainability and transparency,” he says.

For many countries, the common description of the region’s big new player is that of an economic giant pursuing its own interests, a partner that is more pragmatic than ideological. They depict China as less interventionist in national affairs than the U.S. was when it dominated the region.

“The idea we are hearing more now – that China poses more risks to us than other big powers – is not convincing to me,” says Andrés Rebolledo, a Chilean trade diplomat who helped negotiate free trade accords with both the U.S. and China. “My perspective is that as such a small part of the global economy, a country like Chile has to trade with everyone while understanding that the big economic powers are all going to defend their interests and act like the bigger partner.”

“My advice for Chile and Latin America is the same,” Ambassador Rebolledo says. “Be the sweethearts of everybody, but married to no one.”

Still, as China’s influence grows, that harmless portrait is being challenged.

A recent “China in the World” study released by Chile’s Instituto Desafíos de la Democracia and the Taiwan-based Doublethink Lab finds that China is becoming more assertive in regional affairs. Moreover, the report places Chile among the world’s top 15 countries most influenced by China – not just economically but also politically.

A debate is brewing in academic and diplomatic circles about Beijing’s deepening footprint, too. “What I’m seeing are two groups that interpret the growing influence of China from two different and increasingly distinct perspectives: one group that says China’s only interest is our natural resources and not our development, and which is growing more suspicious and distrustful of China; and another group that responds to China’s rising influence with a ‘So what?’ and says if we want value-added economies, that’s our job and not China’s responsibility,” says Dorotea López Giral, director of the University of Chile’s Institute of International Studies.

Perhaps not surprisingly, Dr. López says, the first group is more attached to the U.S., is more likely to invoke values of democracy and free markets and human rights in discussions of China, and is more often from the old guard of Chilean academia and diplomacy. The second group, she says, is more pragmatic, prefers a foreign policy “autonomous” from any great power, and is generally younger.

And she believes the second group is prevailing. “It used to be that the young rising academics all sought scholarships to the U.S., but we don’t even have a U.S. studies center anymore. We had to close it,” says Dr. López, noting that a China studies program was established two years ago.

“Now the Chinese are offering 20,000 scholarships ... and everyone wants to go to China,” she adds. “For China we are the cool friend, and Chilean students are responding to that.”

When China announced plans to build a series of megafarms for pigs in Argentina’s northern Chaco region, the provincial governor heralded the project. He saw it as an opportunity for an impoverished Chaco to dip into the enticing and growing pool of Chinese investments in Argentina and Latin America.

After all, Argentina had already been supplying China with agricultural goods – soybeans beginning in the 1990s, then beef for a growing middle class, and even wines for diversifying Chinese palates. Shipping pork to China would be no different.

If anything, the pig farms offered even greater promise, officials argued. The operations would bring value-added industries to underdeveloped Chaco in the form of skilled butchering and state-of-the-art packaging, freezing, and transport.

But not everyone shares the governor’s enthusiasm. A coalition of opponents quickly formed among environmentalists, critics of neoliberal economics, and Indigenous groups. Questioning the safety and long-term viability of such intensive farming, critics note that if China is looking to produce pork far from home, it is because of a 2018-19 African swine fever outbreak that forced the country to destroy half of its national pig herd and turn to expensive imports. Critics contend the megafarms risk repeating such public health disasters in Chaco.

Beyond that, opponents say it is no mere coincidence that China chose Chaco – a marginalized region hungry for economic development – for the farms.

“Argentina is in a very deep economic crisis – so already at a national level, any promise of jobs and dollars, they will go with it,” says Enrique Viale, a prominent environmental lawyer in Buenos Aires. “Chaco is even more desperate for investment, with the added advantage for some investors of being outside the national spotlight where it might be easier to try cutting corners on standards.”

Indeed, for some experts, it’s the economic fragility of so many Latin American countries that partially explains China’s growing presence in the region.

“In Argentina, it’s the country’s weakness that leads to China being the increasingly important partner,” says Juan Luis Bour, chief economist at the Foundation for Latin American Economic Research in Buenos Aires. “Argentina needs loans to build dams and roads and other infrastructure, but after decades of financial crises it has no international credit. So it turns to the only lender out there, China, even if it has to accept terms that are substantially in the lender’s interest.”

This imbalance can leave a country like Argentina with little leverage. One example Professor Bour cites is a Chinese satellite-
tracking station built in a remote part of Patagonia under favorable terms to China. Some worry that Beijing could be using the facility for spying and surveillance activities.

“The real problem is the combination of the Chinese state and Chinese companies makes their style very predatory,” says Evan Ellis, Latin America research professor at the U.S. Army War College’s Strategic Studies Institute in Carlisle, Pennsylvania. “You can benefit from a predatory partner, but you have to be on top of your game, and that’s much harder if you’re the much weaker partner.”

At the Qom Indigenous reserve in Espinillo, a small outpost on the edge of Chaco’s Impenetrable region – a thick, semiarid forest of spiny trees and prickly bushes – most residents have heard the rumors about Chinese investments in their lands. Many don’t like it.

“The worst part is that we started hearing about big pig farms and we saw the picture of the town administrator with visiting Chinese people, but we could never get a straight story,” says Angel Meza, a Qom leader who favors jobs for local youth but is dubious of big projects on Indigenous lands. “We have held assemblies to discuss these rumors about the Chinese coming here, but we have no solid information.”

Outside town, Horacio Garcia sits in the shade on his family’s 120-acre plot and explains why he worries about talk of Chinese investment in the area.

“I never thought too much about the pig farms, but then we heard the Chinese might put in big citrus groves, and that worried me because my neighbors say they would favor that kind of thing,” he says. “It would be hard to stand up to big investors like the Chinese.”

In Resistencia, Chaco’s capital, provincial officials believe concerns over the proposed pig farms have been overblown. They insist opposition to Chinese investment is primarily from local forces who would be against any change.

“We are no longer talking about megafarms, but smaller operations with 600 or 1,000 sows, a very safe and sanitary option,” says Sebastián Bravo, undersecretary for livestock affairs. Noting Chaco has the technical know-how and local feed production to develop the farms and create thousands of jobs, he adds, “The fact it’s the Chinese behind the project makes no difference. It could be Europeans or anyone else, and we would insist on the same high standards to go forward.”

Just outside town at the 370-acre La Felicidad farm, Eduardo Corcia shows off his 250-mother-pig operation. He has a big personality and pivots easily from the micro of the proposed Chaco pig farms to the macro of China’s investment in Latin America.

“[People] talk of local pork producers teaming up with these new farms, but I’m not sure it makes much sense to me,” he says. “I’d be afraid I’d be left with a lot of excess production capacity once the Chinese get their domestic production back on track.”

Despite that, Mr. Corcia says he understands the need for significant foreign investment in infrastructure and value-added enterprises if Chaco, Argentina, and even Latin America are to boost prosperity.

“I like the idea of foreign business partners, why not?” says the doctor-turned-farmer, who is expanding his operation to include on-site butchering and a refrigeration plant. “But would I want to go in with the Chinese? I don’t know; they have their ways that are different.”

Mr. Corcia says he’d be more comfortable working with Americans, and he senses that’s probably true of many Argentines. “The problem we face in Argentina is that the Americans aren’t around, but the Chinese are,” he says.

And as it goes in much of life, he adds, you dance with those who show up at your party.

Former U.S. ambassador points finger in Qatar lobbying probe


U.S. Special Representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan Richard Olson testifies on Capitol Hill in Washington on Dec. 16, 2015. Olson, who has signed a plea deal with prosecutors in January, is pushing federal prosecutors explain why he’s facing criminal charges for illegal foreign lobbying on behalf of Qatar while a retired four-star general who worked with him on the effort is not.

(AP Photo/Susan Walsh, File)


ALAN SUDERMAN and JIM MUSTIAN
Fri, June 3, 2022

A former high-ranking U.S. ambassador admitted Friday to illegal foreign lobbying on behalf of Qatar after demanding that prosecutors tell him why a retired four-star general who worked with him on the effort has not also been charged.

The dispute involving two Washington power players has highlighted the often-ambiguous boundaries of foreign lobbying laws as well as what prosecutors say were high-level, behind-the-scenes influence dealings with the wealthy Persian Gulf country.

Richard G. Olson, former ambassador to the United Arab Emirates and Pakistan, pleaded guilty Friday in Washington on federal charges that include improperly helping Qatar influence U.S. policy in 2017 -- when a diplomatic crisis erupted between the gas-rich monarchy and its neighbors over the country’s alleged ties to terror groups and other issues.

Olson had recently argued he’s entitled to learn why prosecutors aren’t also bringing charges against someone he says he worked side by side with on Qatar: retired Marine Gen. John Allen, who led U.S. and NATO forces in Afghanistan before being tapped in late 2017 to lead the influential Brookings Institution think tank.

Allen has denied ever working as a Qatari agent and said his efforts on Qatar in 2017 were motivated to prevent a war from breaking out in the Gulf that would put U.S. troops at risk. A statement from his spokesman to The Associated Press on Thursday said Allen has “voluntarily cooperated with the government’s investigation."

Olson’s lawyers said in court papers that since 2020 he has been seeking to get a lighter sentencing recommendation by extensively cooperating with prosecutors “with the express goal” of bringing charges against Allen. Olson’s lawyers said prosecutors “reiterated their belief in the strength of their case against” Allen only to apparently drop their pursuit.

But federal prosecutor Evan Turgeon said at a hearing last week that the government has not “made a prosecutorial decision as to other persons” and disputed how Olson’s attorney characterized past discussions. The Justice Department declined to comment on its internal deliberations on Allen.

Olson’s lawyers had previously pushed prosecutors to provide copies of Allen’s communications with U.S. government officials related to his actions involving Qatar. Friday, Olson’s attorney Mike Hannon said prosecutors had provided the requested information — the contents of which are not public — and his client was now ready to plead guilty.

Recent filings in Olson’s case provide new details about Allen’s role and what actions prosecutors might view as possible crimes. Allen is not named in those filings but identified as “the General” or “Person 3.”

U.S. law prohibits individuals from helping a foreign entity influence U.S. policy without registering with the Justice Department. The law, known as the Foreign Agents Registration Act or FARA, was largely unenforced until prosecutors began taking more aggressive action in recent years.

Typically, FARA violations by themselves do not lead to significant prison time but the law’s critics say there are too many unsettled questions about what may constitute a prosecutable offense.

“FARA is an exceptionally broad and vague law that ... sets snares for the unwary, even capturing some of the most sophisticated of Washington players,” David Keating of the Institute for Free Speech said in comments to the Justice Department earlier this year.

Notably, Olson pleaded guilty to a violation of State Department policy regarding working for a foreign government within a year of leaving government service, not a FARA violation.

Olson’s lawyer said in court last week that federal prosecutors made clear that they were pursing a FARA case against Allen.

Olson recruited Allen to join him “in providing aid and advice to Qatari government officials with the intent to influence U.S. foreign policy” shortly after the Gulf diplomatic crisis erupted in June 2017, prosecutors said in court filings.

That crisis sparked a heavy spending war between Qatar and rivals Saudi Arabia and the UAE in a battle to win influence in Washington during much of President Donald Trump’s administration.

Olson was being paid $20,000 a month by Imaad Zuberi, a one-time political donor who is currently serving a 12-year prison sentence on corruption charges and who prosecutors say illegally lobbied for Qatar.

Zuberi also agreed to pay Allen an undisclosed fee for his efforts, prosecutors said in Olson’s plea deal. Allen’s spokesman said the general was never paid.

In mid June 2017, Allen met with Olson and Zuberi at a Washington hotel to explain “how he would conduct the lobbying and public relations campaign,” prosecutors said.

A few days later, Olson and Allen flew to Qatar -- at Zuberi’s expense -- to meet with the Qatari’s ruling emir and other government officials, where the pair explained that they were not representing the U.S. government but “noted that they had the connections with U.S. government officials that placed them in a position to help Qatar,” prosecutors wrote.

Allen advised the Qataris on what steps to take, including signing a pending deal to purchase F-15 fighter jets and using e a major U.S. military base in Qatar “as leverage to exert influence over U.S. government officials,” prosecutors wrote.

Qatar signed a deal to purchase the jets four days after that meeting.

After returning to the U.S., Allen sought the help of then-National Security Advisor H.R. McMaster and his staff to support Qatar’s position in the diplomatic crisis, prosecutors said in court filings.

Allen previously said through a spokesman that McMaster had approved of Allen going to Qatar and “offered the assistance of his staff in preparation.”

McMaster has not responded to multiple requests for comment.

Olson, Allen and a Qatari government representative also met with members of Congress “for the purpose of convincing the U.S. lawmakers to support Qatar rather than its regional rivals,” prosecutors wrote in court records.

Allen’s spokesman said previously that the general’s work on Qatari issues only lasted three weeks and that it had nothing to do with Brookings.

Qatar has been one of Brookings' biggest donors for the last several years, according to annual reports that don't offer specific figures. A Brookings spokeswoman said Allen decided in 2019 to no longer accept new Qatari funding.

Olson is set to be sentenced Sept. 13.

___

Suderman reported from Richmond, Virginia. Eric Tucker in Washington contributed to this report.

___

Contact AP’s global investigative team at Investigative@ap.org or https://www.ap.org/tips/

CRIMINAL CRYPTO CAPITALI$M

FTC says victims of crypto scams have lost more than $1 billion since 2021

Dado Ruvic / reuters

Amrita Khalid

·Contributing Writer

Fri, June 3, 2022

The world of crypto continues to draw scam artists and fraud. People have reported losing a combined total of over $1 billion due to crypto scams since the beginning of 2021, according to an FTC report released today. From January 2021 through March of this year, more than 46,000 individuals filed a crypto-related fraud report with the agency. The median individual reported loss in these reports was $2,600.

Perhaps ironically, the most common coins used in scams are also the most widely used, as well as a top stablecoin. A total of 70 percent of scams used Bitcoin as the payment method, followed by Tether (10 percent) and Ether (9 percent). Ether is the prime currency of choice for NFTs, a relatively new crypto market where fraudsters and hackers have thrived.

Crypto investment scams were the most common type of scam reported to the FTC, accounting for an estimated $575 million in losses. Normally these scams target amateur investors by promising them large returns in exchange for an initial investment.

“Investment scammers claim they can quickly and easily get huge returns for investors. But those crypto 'investments' go straight to a scammer’s wallet,” wrote the FTC’s Emma Fletcher in a blog post.

Romance scams also account for a large slice of reported scams, totaling $185 million in losses. Many of these scammers reach individuals by social media or dating apps. A type of dating app scam known as “pig slaughtering” — where criminals build a fake relationship with a victim in order to con them into investing in crypto — has become more common, reported CoinTelegraph.

It’s important to note that the FTC report is only a small snapshot of how much crypto fraud has truly occurred, since the agency is relying on direct reports submitted by victims. An FTC paper estimated that less than five percent of fraud victims reported it to a government entity, and likely an even smaller number report to the FTC. As crypto becomes more popular, the number of scams have also increased. Blockchain platform Chainanalysis estimated that illicit addresses received over $14 billion in crypto last year, nearly twice the amount in 2020.

Companies that exited Russia after its invasion of Ukraine are being rewarded with outsize stock-market returns, Yale study finds — and those that stayed are not

The almost 1,000 companies that have opted to pull out of Russia following its unprovoked invasion of Ukraine are not just benefiting from a reputational boost. They are also being rewarded by financial markets, while those who remain behind are being punished.


© MarketWatch photo illustration/iStockphoto

Ciara Linnane - Friday
MarketWatch

That’s according to a new report from Yale Professor Jeffrey Sonnenfeld and his research team at the Yale School of Management. The team has been monitoring almost 1,300 companies that do business in Russia and has kept a list to highlight the decisions companies have made about staying or leaving since the start of the war on Feb. 24.


“We find that equity markets are actually rewarding companies for leaving Russia while punishing those that remain behind, with divergent stock performance generally corresponding with the degree of Russian exit — which holds true across regions, sectors and company sizes,” reads the Yale report.

What’s more, the focus on asset write-downs and lost revenue from Russia is misplaced. “We demonstrate that the shareholder wealth created through equity gains have already far surpassed the cost of one-time impairments for companies that have written down the value of their Russian assets,” asserts the report.
‘Clearly, doing well has not been antithetical to doing good — at least when it comes to withdrawing from Russia.’ — Jeffrey A. Sonnenfeld, Yale School of Management

The Yale list is divided into five categories assigned grades A to F, with the latter letter being attached to companies that are “digging in,” or defying public calls to exit. There are now 29 U.S. companies in that category, although the situation remains highly fluid as corporate executives offer updates on their plans.

Background: Yale professor monitoring companies still doing business in Russia ups the ante by highlighting those that are now ‘digging in’

The other four categories are A, the grade for “withdraw,” which describes those companies making a clean break from Russia; B for “suspension,” for companies that are temporarily curtailing activities, while keeping their return options open; C for “scaling back,” or reducing some activities while continuing others; and D for “buying time,” for companies that are holding off on new investments in Russia, and in many cases closely aligned Belarus, while continuing most business there.

For the full list of companies: Visit the Yale School of Management website

The report measures total shareholder returns at those companies that have exited Russia relative to those that have stayed. Researchers used Feb. 23 as their start date as that, in the U.S., marked Russia’s launch of its overnight, full-scale invasion.

The Yale team used two end dates. The first was market close on Aril 8, as that offered a cutoff point before the start of first-quarter earnings season. That allowed the report to exclude the many other macro factors that were showing up in earnings, such as supply-chain snags and inflation, issues that led many companies to lower their analyst guidance.

The second was through market close on April 19, to provide the data set a full eight weeks from the start of the invasion. As an extra check, the report measured a third time period of Feb. 23 to March 14, to track the steep selloff that came immediately after Russia invaded.

Companies were organized based on the five categories of the list and were measured using a market-capitalization-weighted method, and an equal-weighted method, as the following tables illustrate:

The findings indicate that those companies with higher grades are clearly faring better than those with grades D and F. The market-cap weighting is likely a more accurate representation of category performance, as it reflects actual financial markets more closely, giving larger companies a greater weighting than smaller ones, the researchers noted.

“The pattern of F companies underperforming generally aligns with our anecdotal observations from updating the list in real-time,” they wrote.

From the time the list had its first airing on CNBC on March 7, many of the companies that had been identified as remaining in Russia suffered stock declines of 15% to 30%, even as key market indices were down just 2% to 3%.

See also: Opinion: Globalization failed for emerging markets. And now deglobalization will be put to the test

On the other side of the equation, the report also found that asset write-downs and lost revenue from pulling out of Russia were far exceeded by market-cap gains — including in some of the biggest cases.

At least six multinationals that booked significant write-downs — Heineken Shell Exxon Carlsberg AB InBev and Société Générale — have seen far more wealth created than has been destroyed in aggregate.

“Perhaps even more surprisingly, each of these companies had positive stock performance after the announcements of their exits from Russia and the values of their asset write-downs — after their stocks initially tanked in the period leading up to their announcement in most cases, as shown by the negative ‘war returns,’ ” the report states.

Those six companies incurred asset write-downs of over $14 billion but have generated nearly $39 billion in subsequent equity gains.

The report found that the gains enjoyed by companies that have curtailed their activities in Russia extend beyond public equity markets into credit markets, as measured by longer-dated corporate bond prices, credit spreads and related derivatives.

“Our sweeping analysis of global capital flows demonstrates the importance investors attribute to the decision to withdraw from Russia — and that investors believe the global reputational risk incurred by remaining in Russia at a time when nearly 1,000 major global corporations have exited far outweigh the costs of leaving,” says the report.

“Clearly, doing well has not been antithetical to doing good — at least when it comes to withdrawing from Russia.”

The Yale list has acted as a catalyst spurring companies into action, starting with about 12 that announced plans to fully withdraw from Russia immediately after the invasion of Ukraine. That number jumped to 70 over a single weekend in March. Since then, the list of leavers has steadily climbed to almost 1,000 in late May, and includes McDonald’s Corp. which has sold its entire Russia business to a local investor.

See: McDonald’s exit from Russia puts growth plans in disarray, analyst says

“The McDonald’s move was both symbolic and substantive,” Sonnenfeld told MarketWatch. “It was there since 1990 as almost a first anchor tenant, and a real flagship because of the global branding value.”

The fast-food giant’s exit “sent shock waves over the bow and surprised the big beverages companies, because McDonald’s is a leader,” he said.

Sonnenfeld has argued that sanctions are designed to bring the Russian economy to a standstill, as a way of helping Russians understand that their government’s attack on Ukraine is making the country an international pariah, and to spur them to push for change. Such measures require that companies voluntarily add their support to shore up efforts made by governments and international bodies.

There’s also the risk to companies that have not exited Russia operations of being boycotted by younger people, who as both prospective customers and employees are carefully attuned to corporate values and are quick to take action when they are disappointed.

“Business leaders are rewarded for speaking out,” Sonnenfeld said. “They’re the most ascendant set of institutional leaders in the world. Military leaders don’t have a voice.”