It’s possible that I shall make an ass of myself. But in that case one can always get out of it with a little dialectic. I have, of course, so worded my proposition as to be right either way (K.Marx, Letter to F.Engels on the Indian Mutiny)
Friday, September 23, 2022
Microsoft executives say it's 'wrong' for managers to spy on remote employees' mouse clicks and keystrokes: 'That's measuring heat rather than outcome'
Microsoft Corporation chief executive Satya Nadella speaks during the VivaTech (Viva Technology) trade fair in Paris, on May 24, 2018.GERARD JULIEN/AFP via Getty Images
Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella said managers are plagued by "productivity paranoia" amid remote work.
Microsoft vice president Jared Spataro said worker surveillance measures "heat rather than outcome."
NYT previously reported some companies are measuring key strokes and mouse click to spy on staff.
Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella says remote work has spurred "productivity paranoia" among managers, leading to efforts to spy on employees.
"Leaders think their employees are not productive, whereas employees think they are being productive and in many cases even feel burnt out," Nadella said in an interview with Bloomberg TV on Thursday.
The publication reported that Microsoft held a corporate survey that polled 20,000 people across 11 countries on productivity during the era of remote and hybrid work. The survey found that 85% of managers are concerned that workers aren't being productive and 87% of employees say they are working effectively — a disconnect between workers and managers that Microsoft aims to fix.
Nadella said better communication tools can help bridge the gap. But, Microsoft vice president Jared Spataro said he worries executives are turning more toward worker surveillance instead.
"There's a growing debate about employee surveillance, and we have a really strong stance — we just think that's wrong," Spataro told Bloomberg. "We don't think that employers should be surveilling and taking note of the activity of keystrokes and mouse clicks and those types of things because, in so many ways, we feel like that's measuring heat rather than outcome."
Last month, The New York Times reported that companies are increasingly turning to worker surveillance measures amid the office landscape which has become focused on remote and hybrid work environments. The publication detailed multiple methods companies had employed to measure workers' productivity, from tracking mouse clicks and keystrokes to having staff take random photos to insure the workers were at their computers.
Even as Nadella says managers should resist productivity fears, Microsoft has not given up on its efforts to bring workers back into the office — though it has faced several setbacks. Earlier this year, the company initiated a policy that employees should be in the office at least 50% of the time. In June, the company said "a back-to-office 'normal' may not happen this year." The Wall Street Journal previously reported that workers have been turning down raises in favor of working from home.
Summer of historic climate change impacts draws to a close
Thursday marked the first day of autumn in the Northern Hemisphere, and for many that probably brings a sigh of relief: Summer, the season in which climate change is most readily apparent and uncomfortable, has finally ended.
This summer once again proved a busy time for climate reporters and a dangerous one for those who are vulnerable to the impacts of climate change, including extreme heat, drought, wildfires, severe rainfall events and hurricanes.
Even before the official first day of summer, temperatures were breaking records across much of the Western United States. An unusually hot spring, combined with an ongoing megadrought in the parched Southwest, brought raging wildfires to New Mexico in April, before the start of the traditional wildfire season. Tourist towns like Taos were draped in smoke, roads were closed and some 6,000 residents were evacuated.
A firefighter works on putting out a hot spot from a wildfire in Mora, N.M.. in May. (Matt McClain/Washington Post via Getty Images)
In early May, the hot, dry weather caused Lake Mead, near Las Vegas, to drop to its lowest point in decades, revealing long-missing dead bodies in the process.
By early June, the drought had forced the water authority in Southern California to tighten emergency restrictions on usage. And by the middle of that month, the two largest reservoirs on the Colorado River, Lake Mead and Lake Powell, had dropped so low that Bureau of Reclamation Commissioner Camille Calimlim Touton warned a Senate hearing that maintaining “critical levels” in them would require significant cuts in water deliveries to the seven states that rely on the Colorado for their water supply.
“A warmer, drier West is what we are seeing today,” Touton said. “And the challenges we are seeing today are unlike anything we have seen in our history.”
The water kept going down, and by early August the United Nations was warning of the potential for water shortages and power outages if the reservoirs dropped so low that the water would stop flowing and their hydroelectric dams would no longer work.
Meanwhile, a scorching heat wave engulfed Western Europe. The months of June, July and August set a new record for the hottest average temperatures ever recorded there, measuring 0.4 degrees Celsius (0.72 degrees Fahrenheit) higher than the previous all-time record, set in 2021.
A landscape of parched brown grass in Brockwell Park in London on Aug. 15. (Richard Baker/In Pictures via Getty Images)
In August, a study by the European Commission determined that Europe was facing its worst drought in 500 years, with two-thirds of the continent under a "warning" or "alert.”
As temperatures passed 100°F in parts of France, Spain and Portugal during the same brutal mid-July stretch, more records were shattered, and deaths due to heat-related causes topped 2,000 in Spain and Portugal.
Wildfires are an inevitable result of heat waves and droughts, even in a continent such as Europe that isn’t historically known for them. More than 1.6 million acres — equal to one-fifth of the land mass of Belgium — burned in Europe by mid-August, leaving the continent on pace to break its all-time record for wildfires this year.
Previously uncommon extreme heat waves also plagued the Pacific Northwest, causing Seattle residents to rush to buy air conditioning.
The heat didn’t let up on much of the West Coast. Earlier this month. Sacramento, Calif., set its all-time high temperature at 116°F, and it recorded its 42nd day over 100°F, setting another record.
A temperature sign at a bank in Sacramento, Calif., on Sept. 6. (David Paul Morris/Bloomberg via Getty Images)
The heat and drought caused water levels to drop in lakes and rivers, exposing ancient artifacts and weapons from long-ago wars everywhere from the Rocky Mountain West to Eastern Europe to Iraq to China.
The heat also caused an unusually large amount of melting in Pakistan’s glaciers, filling its rivers and setting the stage for the massive flooding that has since accompanied record-setting monsoon rains. The country now must contend with over 95,000 square miles being submerged, a death toll in excess of 1,300 people, 1.2 million homes destroyed and property damage that is expected to reach $10 billion. Climate change experts warn that this is a window into the injustice of climate change, in which poor countries will suffer the worst effects of a problem caused by fossil fuel consumption in the developed world.
Another example of that phenomenon hit closer to home late last week, when Puerto Rico was hit by Hurricane Fiona. Parts of the island received 30 inches of rain, causing landslides and overflowing rivers. Most of Puerto Rico is now without power. The hurricane gained strength, rising to a Category 4 and moving on to the Dominican Republic. It is now headed for Bermuda.
Climate change makes hurricanes more intense, in part because warmer ocean temperatures provide more energy, creating heavier rains and stronger winds.
But it's not just hurricanes. Because warmer air holds more moisture, even regular rainstorms have become heavier. In late July and early August, three different U.S. regions were hit with “1-in-1,000-year rains” in one week: Southern Illinois received eight to 12 inches of rain in 12 hours, six to 10 inches fell in seven hours in St. Louis, and up to 14 inches were recorded in eastern Kentucky, causing 39 deaths.
A worker moves water toward a storm drain in Lake Bluff, Ill., on July 23 after heavy rain. (John J. Kim/Chicago Tribune/Tribune News Service via Getty Images)
“In recent years, a larger percentage of precipitation has come in the form of intense single-day events,” the Environmental Protection Agency has noted. “Nine of the top 10 years for extreme one-day precipitation events have occurred since 1996."
After the summer of 2022, autumn may feel like a reprieve in some parts of the U.S. In California, however, yet another heat wave is on tap, with temperatures in the southern part of the state expected to hit triple digits yet again.
Soon it will be winter, but even that cooler weather will be impacted by climate change. As the Arctic is warming faster than regions closer to the equator, the jet stream has begun to dip farther south and the polar vortex, a band of cold air, has become stretched out. The result is more extreme bursts of cold air and snowstorms in Southern states, some of which, as was experienced in 2021 across Texas, have energy grids that are totally unprepared for it.
THE DEVILS HOLE
Mexico earthquake triggers 'desert tsunami' 1,500 miles away in Death Valley cave
Grace Toohey - Yesterday
About five minutes after the 7.6 magnitude earthquake hit near Mexico's southwest coast Monday, typically calm water deep in a Death Valley National Park cave started sloshing against the surrounding limestone rock.
Michael Schwimm, a U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service senior fish biologist, climbs down into Devils Hole on April 29 in Ash Meadows National Wildlife Refuge in Nevada.
The reverberations from the earthquake more than 1,500 miles away created what experts have called a "desert tsunami," which on Monday made waves erupt up to 4 feet high in the cave known as Devils Hole, a pool of water about 10 feet wide, 70 feet long and more than 500 feet deep, in Amargosa Valley, Nev.
The water in the partially filled cave has become an “unusual indicator of seismic activity” across the world, with earthquakes across the globe — as far as Japan, Indonesia and Chile — causing the water to splash up Devils Hole, according to the National Park Service website.
Interestingly, the 6.8 magnitude earthquake that also hit Mexico's southwest coast early Thursday — not far from Monday's epicenter — did not agitate the water or create any waves in Devils Hole, said Kevin Wilson, National Park Service aquatic ecologist. Thursday’s earthquake struck outside Aguililla, a small town in the western state of Michoacán, just after 1 a.m., and caused at least two deaths. Two people also died in Monday's earthquake, the epicenter also in Michoacán, though farther east.
"It depends on the depth, magnitude and location around the world," Wilson said. He said typically earthquakes along the Pacific's "Ring of Fire" that reach at or above a magnitude 7 will register in Devils Hole.
Related video: At Least 1 Dead After Devastating Earthquake Shakes Mexico
Devils Hole is home to the endangered pupfish, a unique breed that can face short-term challenges following the geological phenomenon, technically called a seiche. The waves in the cave stir sediment and splash away the algae growing on a shallow shelf, which the pupfish rely on to feed, and can also smash some pupfish eggs, Wilson said.
But, he said, in the long term, the movement from earthquakes helps remove the buildup of organic matter, which over time, can suck oxygen from the unique ecosystem.
"This kind of resets the system," Wilson said. He said the waves Monday lasted about 30 minutes before calming down.
Wilson said it's rare for the grown pupfish to die in these events, but said park rangers will continue to provide supplemental feedings for the fish, which have seen resurgence in its population in recent years. In March, officials recorded 175 of the Devils Hole pupfish — up from 35 about a decade ago — and Wilson said the fall count is planned for this weekend. The geothermal pool in the cave, which stays at around 93 degrees year-round, coupled with its low oxygen levels, makes Devils Hole an "extreme" environment, Wilson said — not to mention the infrequent but repeated earthquake aftershocks.
“The pupfish have survived several of these events in recent years,” Wilson said. “We didn’t find any dead fish after the waves stopped.”
The last such "desert tsunami" was recorded in July 2019, when waves rose up to 15 feet, according to National Park Service officials, after a 7.1-magnitude earthquake hit near Ridgecrest.
‘Give workers an equal seat’: pressure builds for Levi’s to protect factory employees
Activists say that the company’s own audits have been ineffective and workers receive inadequate safety protections
A protest in front of the Levi's store in New York City’s Times Square asked the company to sign a safety agreement for garment workers in Bangladesh and Pakistan.
Workers and activists have been campaigning to push Levi’s, one of the world’s largest clothing brands, to sign on to an international accord for workers’ health and safety in Bangladesh and Pakistan.
On 24 April 2013, the Rana Plaza building in Dhaka, Bangladesh, which housed five garment clothing factories, collapsed, killing 1,134 people and injuring approximately 2,500, in the deadliest disaster in the garment industry’s history.
In the wake of the incident, fashion brands signed on to an international accord that legally bound them to pay for safety inspections in the Bangladeshi garment industry, which is the second largest exporter of clothing in the world, behind China. But since 2013, numerous top clothing brands have held out on signing on to the accord and subsequent extensions.
In 2021, an expanded international accord was developed to include more safety and worker health provisions beyond fire, electrical and structural inspections and repairs of factories. It covers garment factories in Pakistan as well as Bangladesh.
The worker health and safety provisions include covering complaints of excessive overtime, lack of maternity leave, regular breaks, access to clean water and bathrooms, and workplace accidents such as heat exhaustion and injuries. It also provides a worker complaint mechanism where employees can confidentially report violations and bind signatories to supporting the complaint process.
The garment sector accounts for 84% of Bangladesh’s exports, yet workers still face a dearth of safety protections.
Over 170 fashion brands have signed on to the accord, including Adidas, American Eagle, Fruit of the Loom, H&M, Zara, Hugo Boss, Puma, Primark, and PVH which owns the brands Calvin Klein and Tommy Hilfiger.
The US-based non-profit Remake, in partnership with the Sommilito Garments Sramik Federation, which represents 70,000 female garment workers in Bangladesh, the Labour Education Foundation in Pakistan, the US-based Service Employees International Union affiliate Workers United and Netherlands-based Clean Clothes Campaign, which includes 235 worker organizations, have formed a partnership to pressure Levi’s to sign on to the accord.
Private auditing programs ... [have] not been effective.
“The newly expanded international accord looks beyond building safety. So it is really a lifeline and a way for workers to share any wellbeing or workplace concerns,” said Ayesha Barenblat, founder and CEO of Remake.
She explained workers had singled out Levi’s due to its sizable presence in Pakistan and Bangladesh, which has more than 20 factories.
“We abjectly push back on the alleged effectiveness of Levi’s own safety program. The reason being that garment workers themselves have said – through Covid-19 [and] against the backdrop of the economic slowdown – their lives, and their wellbeing have simply been threatened and they do not have a direct line to the brands,” Barenblat said.
She added: “The accord gives workers an equal seat at the table. Private auditing programs do not do that and they have simply, in the last 30 years, not been effective.”
Bangladeshi garment workers complain about inadequate safety measures and a lack of access to water and medical care.
As part of the campaign, activists have deliveredletters, sent hundreds of emails to the Levi’s board of directors, and held actions at Levi’s stores earlier this month in Chicago, Philadelphia, Washington DC, London, Delhi, Bengaluru, Dhaka and several other cities.
In testimonies provided anonymously for fear of retaliation, workers in Bangladesh who make clothing for Levi’s raised issues such as heat exhaustion, abuse from managers and forced overtime.
“We do not have much in terms of safety measures. We are not given machine guards. We do not have access to clean or cold water. It is so hot but we still have to drink hot water. People often faint due to the heat. We have no access to medical care,” said a machine operator who makes clothing for Levi’s and other brands.
They added: “We are made to work forced overtime. If there is no overtime available we are forced to work from one to one and a half hours unpaid. Our supervisors and managers treat us very badly. They verbally assault us. If we protest or push back, we are told we will be fired.”
The groups have also accused Levi’s of free-riding off the accord by using factories that are covered under the accord without signing on to it, as brands compensate for the safety inspections and oversight of the factories through the accord.
Levi’s denied and disputed all complaints from the campaign and allegations of worker safety and health issues, citing several internal programs and efforts. A Levi’s spokesperson characterized the campaign as a social media engagement ploy.
A spokesperson for Levi’s said in an email: “We agree with the intent and the spirit of the international accord and applaud the progress it has made. But it is not the only way to support workers in Bangladesh or anywhere else. We believe our programs, with their checks and balances, help us go further and give us greater agility to implement new learnings and expand our systems in other countries (which we are actively doing).”
They added: “Recognizing that there is always room for improvement, we continue to augment and expand our programs, and when we hear of facilities that are not where they should be or workers reporting grievances, we investigate those instances, mandate that our suppliers address any issues that are found, and track their progress closely to ensure compliance.”
‘It’s a miracle’: Gran Abuelo in Chile could be world’s oldest living tree
100ft alerce has estimated age of 5,484, more than 600 years older than Methuselah in California
The Gran Abuelo tree in Alerce Costero national park, Chile.
Buried alerce trunks can hold carbon for more than 4,000 years.
In a secluded valley in southern Chile, a lone alerce tree stands above the canopy of an ancient forest.
Green shoots sprout from the crevices in its thick, dark trunks, huddled like the pipes of a great cathedral organ, and water streams down its lichen-streaked bark on to the forest floor from bulbous knots in the wood.
Barichivich grew up in Alerce Costero national park, 500 miles (800km) south of the capital, Santiago. It is home to hundreds of alerces, Fitzroya cupressoides, slow-growing conifers native to the cold, wet valleys of the southern Andes.
“I never thought about how old the Gran Abuelo could be,” he said. “Records don’t really interest me.” However, Barichivich’s groundbreaking study has shown the 100ft (30-metre) giant could be the world’s oldest living tree.
In January 2020, he visited the Gran Abuelo with his mentor and friend, the dendrochronologist Antonio Lara, to take a core sample from the trunk.
They were able to reach only 40% into the tree as its centre is likely to be rotten, making a complete core unattainable. Yet that sample yielded a finding of about 2,400 years.
Undeterred, Barichivich set about devising a model that could estimate the Gran Abuelo’s age. Taking the known ages of other alerces in the forest and factoring in climate and natural variation, he calibrated a model that simulated a range of possible ages, producing an astounding estimate of 5,484 years old.
That would make it more than six centuries senior to Methuselah, a bristlecone pine in eastern California recognised as the world’s oldest non-clonal tree – a plant that does not share a common root system. Some clonal trees live longer, such as Norway’s Old Tjikko, thought to be 9,558 years old.
Barichivich takes a core sample from a tree stump.
Photograph: Salomón Henríquez
Barichivich believes there is an 80% chance the tree has lived for more than 5,000 years – but some colleagues have poured scorn on the findings. They assert that complete, countable tree ring cores are the only true way of determining age.
The climate scientist hopes to publish his research early next year. He will continue to refine his model but waves away the “colonialism” present in the field.
The Gran Abuelo isn’t just old, it’s a time capsule with a message about the future
Jonathan Barichivich
“Some colleagues are sceptical and cannot understand why we have revealed the finding before formally publishing it,” he said. “But this is post-normal science. We have very little time to act – we cannot wait one or two years, it could already be too late.”
Barichivich believes ancient trees may help experts understand how forests interact with the climate.
“The Gran Abuelo isn’t just old, it’s a time capsule with a message about the future,” he said. “We have a 5,000-year record of life in this tree alone, and we can see the response of an ancient being to the changes we have made to the planet.”
In January, Barichivich, who works at the Laboratory for Climate and Environment Sciences and Environment in Paris, won a €1.5m European Research Council starting grant he describes as the “holy grail” for a scientist.
He has embarked on a five-year project to assess the future capacity of forests to capture carbon, hoping to add tree-ring data from thousands of sites around the world into climate simulations for the first time.
More than a third of the planet’s vegetated surface is covered by forests, capturing carbon dioxide during photosynthesis, but current models are only able to make estimates for 20 or 30 years into the future.
By adding data for xylogenesis, the formation of wood, Barichivich believes he could provide 100-year predictions for climate change – and revolutionise our ability to understand and mitigate its effects.
“If tree rings are a book, then for 40 years everyone’s just been looking at the cover,” he said.
‘Bit by bit, the tree is dying’
Barichivich poses with Gran Abuelo. The climate scientist has embarked on a five-year project to assess the future capacity of forests to capture carbon.
Photograph: Salomón Henríquez/the Guardian
In an office surrounded by varnished samples, fragile cores and wood shavings, Barichivich’s mentor Antonio Lara, 66, has spent his career working to reconstruct temperature, precipitation and watershed levels throughout history.
Lara, a professor at the Faculty of Forest Sciences and Natural Resources at Chile’s Austral University in the southern city of Valdivia, has been able to prove that alerces can absorb carbon from the atmosphere and trap it for between 1,500 and 2,000 years in standing dead trees. Buried alerce trunks can hold carbon for more than 4,000 years.
He has also pinpointed exact climatic events by translating tree rings into numbers, which can then be read like a barcode. “The great-grandfather tree is a miracle for three reasons – that it grew, that it survived, and then that it was found by Jonathan’s grandfather,” Lara said.
In the mid-1940s, Barichivich’s grandfather, Aníbal Henríquez, arrived from the southern city of Lautaro to work for the forestry companies felling the lahuan, as the alerces are known in the Indigenous language Mapudungun, his native tongue.
He went on to become the park’s first warden, but many giant alerce trees had already fallen victim to loggers before Chile made it illegal to cut them down in 1976.
Alerce shingle was used as currency by local populations throughout the 1700s and 1800s and the wood was commonly used in construction. The famous Unesco-protected wooden churches on the island of Chiloé are built from alerce trunks.
Henríquez happened upon Gran Abuelo while out on a patrol in the early 1970s. Although he was reluctant to disclose the find at first, word soon got out and people began to arrive: now, more than 10,000 tourists trek down to the small wooden viewing platform next to the tree each summer.
Alerce shingle was used as currency by local populations throughout the 1700s and 1800s.
Photograph: Krystyna Szulecka Photography/Alamy
Other alerces in the valley fell victim to loggers or forest fires, leaving the gnarled tree standing alone. “Bit by bit, the tree is dying,” said Marcelo Delgado, Barichivich’s cousin who works in the park as one of five full-time rangers. “People jump down from the platform to peel off bark to take as a souvenir.”
Footfall around the base of the tree has also damaged the thin layer of bark on its roots, affecting nutrient uptake. After 29 other trees were vandalised by tourists, Chile’s national forestry corporation, which manages the country’s national parks, closed the trail indefinitely.
Barichivich hopes that by showing that Gran Abuelo is the world’s oldest tree, he could raise the alarm about the urgency with which we must protect the natural world. While the scope of his research is far broader, Barichivich insists the national park in which he grew up is where he belongs.
When he was eight years old, his grandfather disappeared on a routine patrol out in the snow. His body was found two days later. Another uncle, also a park ranger, later died in the park.
“It seems like it’s a family tradition,” Barichivich said. “The same fate probably awaits me, dying with my boots on out in the forest. But first I want to unlock its secrets.”
Māori tribe secures landmark apology and compensation over colonial atrocities
Settlement is the culmination of more than 30 years of fighting for reparations
02:22Joy, singing and haka in NZ parliament as Maniapoto claims settlement bill passed – video
It took decades of fighting for reparations but a Māori tribe has finally secured a long-awaited apology and millions of dollars in redress for atrocities committed by the crown, including for its “indiscriminate” killings and “massive” alienation of tribal land.
On Wednesday, a charter train wound its way down the spine of New Zealand’s North Island, picking up hundreds of Ngāti Maniapoto iwi (tribe) members. The iwi travelled for nine hours until they reached Wellington where, the next day, they joined many more members in the parliament’s public gallery to witness the Maniapoto claims settlement bill become law.
The gallery erupted into waiata (song) and haka (ceremonial dance) as the House unanimously voted to pass the law. As well as an apology, the Waikato-based iwi of nearly 46,000 members received NZ$177m in financial redress – New Zealand’s fifth-largest sum of its kind – and the return of 36 sites of cultural significance.
Following the event, Dr Tom Roa, an iwi kaumātua (elder) and academic, said the settlement marked “a new chapter in the history book” of the iwi and the crown.
“This legislation will see the growing of oneness with the crown,” he told Waatea News, but hastened to add that what happened next “will be really critical for Ngāti Maniapoto”.
The settlement is the culmination of more than 30 years of fighting for reparations over the crown’s breach of its duties to Māori under the Treaty of Waitangi.
New Zealand has established processes where indigenous people can seek reparations for the atrocities committed through colonisation. The settlement system was set up in 1975 to remedy the crown’s breaches of the country’s founding document between the British crown and Māori, the Treaty of Waitangi. As of 2022, 97 deeds of settlement have been signed and another 73 have passed into law. There are approximately 40 remaining settlements to go.
Elsewhere in the world, many indigenous populations are in the midst of a renewed push for colonisers to pay reparations for past wrongs, including in Jamaica, the US and other parts of the Carribean.
In 1840, Ngāti Maniapoto was a strong independent iwi with expanding trade connections among the growing Pākehā (New Zealand European) population. But in the decades following, their tribal structures were eroded as the crown confiscated land, grossly underpaid the iwi for purchased land and deprived the iwi of their tūrangawaewae (foundation) through compulsory acquisitions for public works.
The crown acknowledged it had indiscriminately killed women and children during the Waikato wars and looted and destroyed iwi property for no reason. It said the iwi had suffered for too long from “inadequate healthcare, housing and education, as well as reduced employment opportunities”. Aotearoa or New Zealand: has the moment come to change the country’s name?
Many ministers and MPs, including those who whakapapa (have genealogical ties) to Ngāti Maniapoto, were visibly moved as the bill became law. The foreign affairs minister, Nanaia Mahuta, who once led the negotiations for the iwi, shed tears as she delivered her speech.
“This moment, as I’ve acknowledged many times before, has taken a long and turbulent path,” she said.
Mahuta acknowledged those who had travelled to parliament to bear witness to the crown’s statements, “so that in five years’ time, when we do the health check on the settlement, everyone will know whether or not it’s delivered what we anticipated it would deliver”.
“I have high hopes,” she said.
The minister said she stood proudly on the legacy left by previous generations of her iwi, and promised not to falter “because that legacy is for our kids, their kids, and those kids that we don’t even know yet, and they will be proudly Maniapoto”.
Swiss to vote in national poll on banning factory farming
This weekend’s ballot could see Switzerland also giving farm animals the constitutional right ‘not to be intensively farmed’
Campaign posters in Zurich. On the left it reads: ‘Get out of factory farming – yes.’
On the right it says: ‘More imports instead of regional food? No.’
Swiss voters will vote on Sunday on whether to ban factory farming as unconstitutional and end imports of intensively farmed meat.
The latest polling shows 52% of voters oppose a ban, and 47% support one. If the factory-farming ballot initiative is passed, Switzerland’s constitution, which already protects the “welfare and dignity of animals”, would be modified to include an animal’s right “not to be intensively farmed”, and new laws would lower animal stocking rates to meet organic standards.
Under current Swiss law, “you can keep 27,000 chickens in one barn and their room to move is about the size of an A4 sheet of paper,” said Silvano Lieger, managing director of the animal protection group Sentience Politics, which proposed the vote in 2018.
“Pigs are kept in barns too, up to 1,500 per farm, with 10 pigs sharing the space of an average parking spot. It is not possible to treat animals in a dignified way in those conditions,” he said.
Groups supporting the ban include Switzerland’s Small Farmers’ Association, Greenpeace, Les Vertes (The Green party) and animal protection groups. The only political party in government to support the ban is the Parti Socialiste Suisse (Social Democratic party).
A ban would protect the environment by reducing reliance on soya-based animal feed linked to deforestation, said Lieger, who also pointed to the need to reduce the consumption of animal proteins.
His team calculates that only 5% of farms would be affected by the potential ban. Although no exact figures exist for the proportion of small farms in the country, the overall number of Swiss farms is declining while farm size is increasing, according to the national statistics office.
A campaign against the ban, spearheaded by the Swiss Farmers’ Union (SBV), argues that existing laws limiting farm animal numbers mean intensive farming in Switzerland does not exist.
Swiss farmers can keep up to 18,000 laying hens and 27,000 meat chickens, said the SBV’s head of production, market and ecology, Michel Darbellay. If the ban is approved, the maximum number would be 4,000 laying hens and 500 meat chickens, while changes to pig standards would mean a 50% drop in pork production, he said.
For pigs and cows, Lieger said, the maximum limits have yet to be defined but animals would be kept in small groups, have indoor and outside space, and the opportunity to play.
Opponents of the ban say it will fail to prevent cheaper imports of factory-farmed meat.
Swiss welfare laws were already “among the strictest in the world”, said Darbellay, who pointed to existing bans on caged hens and limits on the time pigs can be kept in pens (or logettes, as the Swiss call them), to 10 days compared with several weeks in other countries.
However, only 3% of consumers in Switzerland wanted higher-welfare organic poultry and pork, Darbellay claimed. Although a ban would significantly reduce Swiss chicken, egg and pork production, it would not prevent imports nor reduce consumption, he said.
In 2020, the Swiss ate less meat than the average for the EU, at almost 51kg a head, while consumption of milk and dairy products was higher at 301kg. The latest available data shows average EU meat consumption in 2018 was 69.8kg per capita, while milk and dairy consumption was 600g a day in 2019, or 219kg a year.
The lower consumption is meat is largely because it is comparatively much more expensive in Switzerland than the rest of Europe. Import rules make it prohibitively expensive to import large amounts of meat, but consumers can buy small amounts of cheaper meat from neighbouring Germany.
Iran restricts internet amid growing anti-regime protests
Sep 22, 2022
CBC News
Iran's government is reportedly restricting access to the internet amid growing anti-regime protests. 'The most immediate need of Iranians is free internet … Iranians need free flow of information,' says Maziar Bahari, founder and editor of IranWire.
Pro-government rallies held in Iran amid mass protests
The Associated Press
DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (AP) — Iranian counterprotesters gathered across the country on Friday in a show of support for authorities after nearly a week of anti-government protests and unrest over the death of a young woman who was being held by the morality police.
Thousands attended a rally in the capital, Tehran, where they waved Iranian flags, and similar demonstrations were held in other cities. The government claimed the demonstrations of support were spontaneous. Similar rallies have been held during past periods of widespread protests.
The pro-government demonstrators chanted against America and Israel, according to state media, reflecting the official line that blames the latest unrest on hostile foreign countries.
State TV suggested late on Friday that the death toll from this week's unrest could be as high as 35, raising an earlier estimate of 26. Anti-government protesters and security forces have clashed in several major cities in the most severe political violence since 2019, when rights groups say hundreds were killed amid demonstrations against a hike in state-controlled gasoline prices.
Iran has also disrupted internet access and tightened restrictions on popular platforms like Instagram and WhatsApp, which can be used to organize rallies.
In response, the U.S. Treasury Department said it would allow American tech firms to expand their business in Iran to boost internet access for the Iranian people. Iran is under heavy U.S. and international sanctions.
A state TV newswoman said late Friday that 35 protesters and policemen had been killed since the protests erupted last Saturday after the funeral of the 22-year-old Mahsa Amini, without elaborating. She said official statistics would be released later, but authorities have not provided a full accounting of deaths and injuries during past unrest.
A tally by The Associated Press, based on statements from state-run and semiofficial media, shows that at least 11 people have been killed. Most recently, the deputy governor of Qazvin, Abolhasan Kabiri, said that a citizen and paramilitary officer had been killed there.
The crisis unfolding in Iran began as a public outpouring of anger over the the death of Amini, a young woman who was arrested by the morality police in Tehran last week for allegedly wearing her Islamic headscarf too loosely. The police said she died of a heart attack and was not mistreated, but her family has cast doubt on that account.
Amini's death has sparked sharp condemnation from Western countries and the United Nations. Iranians across at least 13 cities from the capital, Tehran, to Amini's northwest Kurdish hometown of Saqez have poured into the streets, voicing pent-up anger over social and political repression.
“The death has tapped into broader antigovernment sentiment in the Islamic Republic and especially the frustration of women,” wrote political risk firm Eurasia Group. It noted that Iran’s hard-liners have intensified their crackdown on women’s clothing over the past year since former judiciary chief Ebrahim Raisi became president.
“The prospect of the leadership offering concessions to Iranian women is minimal,” it said. “In the cold calculus of Iranian leaders, the protests have likely gone far enough and a more forceful response is required to quell the unrest.”
“We have announced many times that if anyone has a fair comment, we will listen to it. But anarchy? Disturbing national security? The security of people? No one will succumb to this,” he said.
Videos on social media show protesters in Tehran torching a police car and confronting officers. Others show gunfire ringing out as protesters bolt from riot police, shouting: “They are shooting at people! Oh my God, they're killing people!”
In the northwestern city of Neyshabur, protesters cheered over an overturned police car. Footage from Tehran and Mashhad shows women waving their obligatory headscarves, known as hijab, in the air like flags while chanting, “Freedom!"
Separately, hackers have targeted a number of government websites in recent days, taking some of them down at least briefly. On Friday, hackers interrupted Iran's Channel 3 on a popular streaming website and played videos in support of the protests. Normal programming was restored a couple of minutes later.
The protests have grown into an open challenge to the theocracy established after the 1979 Islamic Revolution. The chants have been scathing, with some chanting “Death to the dictator!” and “Mullahs must be gone!”
Local officials have announced the arrest of dozens of protesters. Hasan Hosseinpour, deputy police chief in the northern Gilan province, reported 211 people detained there on Thursday. The government of the western Hamadan province said 58 demonstrators had been arrested.
The New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists said Friday that at least 10 reporters have been arrested since the start of the protests, many of them during late night raids on their homes by security forces who did not identify themselves.
London-based watchdog Amnesty International has accused security forces of beating protesters with batons and firing metal pellets at close range. Videos show police and paramilitary officers using live fire, tear gas and water cannons to disperse demonstrators.
Iran has grappled with waves of protests in the recent past, mainly over a long-running economic crisis exacerbated by American sanctions linked to its nuclear program. In November 2019, the country saw the deadliest violence since the revolution, as protests erupted over gas price hikes.
Economic hardship remains a major source of anger today as the prices of basic necessities soar and the Iranian currency declines in value.
The Biden administration and European allies have been working to revive the 2015 nuclear accord, in which Iran curbed its nuclear activities in exchange for sanctions relief, but the talks have stalled for months.
The Eurasia Group said the protests make any immediate return to the agreement less likely, as Iran's government will be more hesitant to make concessions at a time of domestic unrest and the United States will be reluctant to sign a deal as Iran violently cracks down on dissent.
Pro-government rallies have taken place in several cities across Iran in an attempt to counter a week of mounting unrest triggered by the death of a woman in police custody.
Marchers called for anti-government protesters to be executed, while the army signalled that it was prepared to crush dissent by telling Iranians that it would confront “the enemies” behind the unrest.
Demonstrators condemned the anti-government protesters as “Israel’s soldiers”, live state television coverage showed. They also shouted “Death to America” and “Death to Israel”, common slogans the country’s clerical rulers use to try and stir up support for authorities, who claimed the demonstrations of support were spontaneous. “Offenders of the Qur’an must be executed,” the crowds chanted.
01:17 Anti-regime protests intensify after death of Mahsa Amini in Iran – video
A state TV anchor said the death toll in the protests that erupted last Saturday after the funeral of 22-year-old Mahsa Amini could be as high as 26, without elaborating on how that figure was reached. Anti-government protesters voicing pent-up anger over social and political repression have taken to the streets in several major cities in the most severe political unrest since 2019, when rights groups say hundreds were killed amid demonstrations against a hike in state-controlled petrol prices.
Videos on social media show protesters in Tehran torching a police car and confronting officers at close range. Elsewhere in the capital, videos show gunfire sounding out as protesters bolt from riot police, shouting: “They are shooting at people! Oh my God, they’re killing people!”
In the north-western city of Neyshabur, protesters cheered over an overturned police car. Footage from Tehran and Mashhad shows women waving their obligatory headscarves, known as hijab, in the air like flags while chanting: “Freedom!”
Amini was pronounced dead on 16 September, three days after being arrested by Tehran’s “morality police”. Her family and protesters say she died from injuries sustained in a beating by police. Iranian authorities say an initial coroner’s investigation showed she died from heart failure or a stroke.
“The death has tapped into broader anti-government sentiment in the Islamic republic and especially the frustration of women,” the political risk firm Eurasia Group wrote, noting that Iran’s hardliners had intensified their crackdown on women’s clothing over the past year since the former judiciary chief Ebrahim Raisi became president.
“The prospect of the leadership offering concessions to Iranian women is minimal,” it said. “In the cold calculus of Iranian leaders, the protests have likely gone far enough and a more forceful response is required to quell the unrest.”
A pro-government rally in Tehran on Friday.
Photograph: Abedin Taherkenareh/EPA
Raisi, who on Friday told Iranian TV that the pro-government marches showed the power of the Islamic republic, on Thursday told a news conference on the sidelines of the UN general assembly in New York that Amini’s death “must be steadfastly investigated”.
“Our utmost preoccupation is the safeguarding of the rights of every citizen,” Raisi said. “If her death was due to negligence, it will definitely be investigated, and I promise to follow up on the issue regardless of whether the international forums take a stand or not.”
Raisi said Iran would not tolerate “acts of chaos”, referring to the six nights of protests, and sought to turn the tables on the country he was visiting by asking about police shootings in the US. “Did all these deaths get investigated?” he said.
The Iranian judiciary has ordered the courts to take a tough line with protesters, claiming the demonstrators were being led by foreign agents and stirred by anti-Iranian social media – a familiar accusation levelled by the regime when dissent breaks out.
The US announced on Friday it was easing export restrictions to improve Iranians’ access to the internet, which the Tehran government has severely hampered since Amini’s death in what the US said was a bid “to prevent the world from watching its violent crackdown on peaceful protesters”.
“In the face of these steps, we are going to help make sure the Iranian people are not kept isolated and in the dark,” the US secretary of state, Antony Blinken, said. “This is a concrete step to provide meaningful support to Iranians demanding that their basic rights be respected.”
Amini was detained for allegedly wearing a hijab in an “improper” way. As part of the protest action, Iranian women have taken to the streets and the internet, burning their headscarves and cutting their hair.
Reuters and Agence France-Presse contributed to this report
