Google workers protesting in California and New York

A total of 43 moderators who worked for outsourcing company Sama moderating Facebook content allege unlawful dismissal. A group of Facebook content moderators in Kenya is taking the platform’s parent company Meta and two outsourcing companies to court, a tech rights group said Monday. A total of 43 workers for outsourcing company Sama, who moderated Facebook content, are bringing the lawsuit for what they allege was unlawful dismissal under Kenyan law. Sama, which was hired by Meta to moderate Facebook content from Nairobi in 2019, informed 260 content moderators at the start of the year that were being laid off, according to Foxglove, a technology justice nonprofit that is supporting the lawsuit. It came after a TIME investigation found low pay, trauma and alleged union-busting at the hub and a former employee began legal proceedings against Meta and Sama for what he alleges was unfair dismissal for union organizing, among other claims. Foxglove says that Facebook is not eliminating the content moderation work, but has rather switched to another outsourcing firm, Majorel, at what it says is “a fraction of the pay and in worse living conditions.” Majorel currently handles TikTok’s moderation in Kenya, according to Foxglove. [time-brightcove not-tgx=”true”] Read More: Inside Facebook’s African Sweatshop Foxglove said that several of the moderators who had lost their jobs re-applied to vacant spots at Majorel for what appeared to be the same work, paying less than Sama did. They were unsuccessful and Foxglove alleges that Majorel’s recruiters indicated that they were instructed to not hire any of the moderators who had just been laid off from Sama. “The case brought today argues that the 260 moderators being fired—and denied future employment—are being punished for this and subsequent union organizing in violation of Kenyan law,” Foxglove said in a statement Monday. The content moderators are now bringing on a so-called constitutional petition in Kenya’s Employment and Labour Relations Court against Facebook, Sama, and Majorel on the grounds that retaliating against employees who were seeking better work conditions is unlawful discrimination. “This is a union-busting operation masquerading as a mass redundancy. You can’t just switch suppliers and tell recruiters not to hire your workers because they are ‘troublemakers’—that is, because they have the temerity to stand up for themselves,” said Cori Crider, co-director of Foxglove, in the statement. In the suit, the content moderators are asking a Kenyan court to end the layoff process and ensure that the jobs of existing Sama workers are protected. They are also requesting full compensation for the distress caused to workers and for Facebook, Sama and Majorel to formally acknowledge the right of moderators to organize. Sama said in a statement to TIME it had “not been served yet by any entity on this matter,” adding that “discontinuing the content moderation business was a difficult decision that we made when Sama shifted its focus to computer vision data annotation technology platform and solutions.” Meta declined to comment and representatives for Majorel did not respond to requests for comment in time for publication. Read More: Exclusive: OpenAI Used Kenyan Workers on Less Than $2 Per Hour to Make ChatGPT Less Toxic Last year, former Sama content moderator Daniel Motaung brought the initial lawsuit against Meta and Sama, alleging he was unlawfully fired for organizing a union of moderators protesting against working conditions. Motaung alleges both companies are guilty of multiple violations of Kenyan law. Meta has argued that the Kenyan court has no jurisdiction because it is not based in Kenya. A judge ruled last month that the company could still be sued in Kenya......»»

"I could have taken a day off and no one would have known," said ex-Meta employee Britney Levy, who said on TikTok she had to "fight to find work." Britney Levy said she didn't have much work to do at Meta.TikTok An ex-Meta worker said she was part of a group that didn't have work to do when hired. Britney Levy told Insider some people were frustrated and felt Meta was stalling their careers. A spokesperson for Meta did not respond to a request for comment ahead of publication. Britney Levy, a Meta worker who lost her job in the company's first round of layoffs, said recent comments that the social media giant paid employees to do "fake work" aren't exaggerated."I am one of those employees that was kind of hired into a really strange position where they immediately put me into a group of individuals that was not working," Levy said in a TikTok that was posted on Saturday. "You had to fight to find work."In the video that has since garnered over 870,000 views, Levy said she felt Meta was hiring people so other companies couldn't have them. @clearlythere #stitch with @roilysm #meta #metalayoffs #tech #techtok #techlayoffs #businessinsider #news #google #work #career #metaseverance #fyp #business ♬ original sound - Brit  "They were just kind of like hoarding us like Pokémon cards," she said in the video.Insider's Jason Lalljee previously reported that Levy was part of Meta's year-long diversity program which helps workers from underrepresented backgrounds work in tech recruiting. Levy was laid off after working for the company for about seven months. She told Insider that she is able to speak on her work at the company because she didn't sign Meta's severance agreement.A spokesperson for Meta did not respond to a request for comment ahead of publication.On Tuesday, Mark Zuckerberg announced the company was laying off another 10,000 workers, after cutting 13% of its workforce late last year. In the past, the CEO has emphasized Meta's plans to make 2023 the "Year of Efficiency," which means slashing headcount. In February, Zuckerberg asked some managers to move to roles as individual contributors or quit, Bloomberg reported.As a member of the Sourcer Development Program, Levy said she was able to talk to workers across the organization and found several employees were frustrated with the lack of work they were able to do at Meta, while other people grew more protective of their work as news of pending cuts spread."A lot of people felt they were being set up to be people who were laid off," Levy said. "People who were incredibly well qualified and had turned down amazing opportunities said they felt Meta was intentionally stalling their career. I mean they were telling people not to work on things, but at the same time there was a lot of work that needed to be done."Levy said that she faced several roadblocks in her work, including struggling to get permission from higher-ups to contact potential job candidates. She said that, instead of sitting around, she took the opportunity to read up on the company's policies and reach out to other workers about their experience at the company."I could have taken a day off and no one would have known," Levy said. "I think there were probably people who were just checking in and then doing nothing."While being paid to do little-to-no work might sound like a dream job to some, Levy said she feels there were very few people at Meta who were happy in that situation."This kind of experience gets me nowhere," she said. "I don't have metrics I can put on my resume. Right now, all I can say is that it was an educational opportunity."On Monday, billionaire tech CEO Thomas Siebel said he believes companies like Meta and Google over-hired so much they didn't have enough work for employees. He is one of several tech executive to express concern that employees aren't doing enough work. Earlier this month, Keith Rabois, a member of the so-called PayPal Mafia, said Google and Meta hired thousands of staff who do "fake work' — a view that has gained some traction with several Silicon Valley investors and founders.Do you work for Meta? Reach out to the reporter from a non-work device at gkay@insider.comRead the original article on Business Insider.....»»

"If you want to work from home, like four days of work in your pajamas, go to work for Facebook," C3.ai CEO Thomas Siebel told Insider. Billionaire tech CEO Thomas Siebel says it's 'weird' that Meta and Google over-hired and didn't have jobs for them to do.Courtesy of C3.ai C3.ai's CEO said Google and Meta over-hired employees and didn't have enough work for them to do. Thomas Siebel joked that if you want to work remote "in your pajamas," you should work at Facebook. Siebel is one of several executives to express concern about remote work. Billionaire tech CEO Thomas Siebel says the "craziness" has finally gone out of the market when it comes to over-hiring at companies like Meta and Google."This whole thing just has to clear itself out," Siebel told Insider, saying it's "weird" that Google and Meta hired employees when they "didn't have jobs for these people.""They really were doing nothing working from home," said Siebel, who runs the enterprise AI company C3.ai and has a net worth of $3.5 billion, according to Forbes.Companies like Meta and Google went on hiring sprees during the onset of the pandemic, but in more recent months the companies have laid off tens of thousands of workers amid fears of a recession.Siebel said his software company, which has a staff of about 1,00, takes a more cautious approach when it comes to bringing in new workers. He said that C3.ai subjects candidates to a highly competitive interview process, filtering potential hires by whether they fit the company's hard driving culture. Out of some 4,000 interview candidates over the last year, the company hired just 300 employees, he said. "I'm not suggesting that we're in any way superior in our work ethic, but there are people who like to work together in teams, and have a book in their hand, and like to work on really hard problems," Siebel said."That's who we are and if that's the kind of person you are, you'll like it at C3," he added. "If you want to work from home, like four days of work in your pajamas, go to work for Facebook." The billionaire joked that his company instituted a "voluntary" work from office policy in 2021."You're either voluntarily at your desk or you voluntarily went to work someplace else," Siebel said, referencing his company's firm return-to-office mandate.He took a veiled jab at Google, showing a picture he said was taken on Friday, February 24 at 3:30 p.m. that showed C3.ai's parking lot was full, while the parking lot for a high tech company he declined to name was virtually empty. Using Google Maps, Insider was able to identify the nearby parking lot as belonging to one of Google's offices in California.Spokespeople for Meta and Google did not respond to a request for comment ahead of publication.On Saturday, former Meta worker Britney Levy said in a TikTok that she was "put into a group of individuals that was not working" before she was laid off earlier this year."You had to fight to find work," Levy said. "It was a very strange environment and it kind of seemed like Meta was hiring us so other companies couldn't have us and then they were just kind of hoarding us like Pokemon cards." @clearlythere #stitch with @roilysm #meta #metalayoffs #tech #techtok #techlayoffs #businessinsider #news #google #work #career #metaseverance #fyp #business ♬ original sound - Brit  Siebel is far from the first executive to express concern that tech workers aren't doing enough work. Earlier this month, PayPal Mafia's Keith Rabois said Google and Meta hired thousands of staff who do "fake work' — a view which has gained some traction among some Silicon Valley investors and founders.Last year, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella warned that remote work has spurred "productivity paranoia" among managers."Leaders think their employees are not productive, whereas employees think they are being productive and in many cases even feel burnt out," Nadella said.The New York Times reported in August 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.Read the original article on Business Insider.....»»

A new legal filing from Dominion reveals internal messages from Tucker Carlson, Rupert Murdoch, Sean Hannity, Laura Ingraham, and more Fox News brass. Fox News host Tucker Carlson.Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images Internal messages show Fox News brass knew 2020 election fraud claims were bunk. They still tried to chase an audience fleeing to rival Newsmax, Dominion said in a court filing. A new Dominion filing revealed messages among Rupert Murdoch, Sean Hannity, Tucker Carlson, and more. After a mob stormed the US Capitol on January 6, 2021, Rupert Murdoch wondered whether Fox News was to blame.He asked Suzanne Scott, the CEO of Fox News, whether "high-profile Fox voices fed the story that the election was stolen" as rioters sought to force Congress to overturn the 2020 presidential election results. Murdoch sympathized with Sean Hannity, a Fox News opinion host who was upset his friend Donald Trump lost the election, but worried he gave his millions of viewers the wrong impression."All very well for Sean to tell you he was in despair about Trump but what did he tell his viewers?" he asked Scott.Hannity's support for Trump, on one level, was understandable. The Fox News audience were fervent supporters of Trump.When the network declared on November 5 that Biden won the crucial swing state of Arizona, its viewers rebelled. "Those fuckers are destroying our credibility. It enrages me," Tucker Carlson wrote in a text message to his producer Alex Pfeiffer. Carlson worried Trump would "destroy" the network."What [Trump]'s good at is destroying things," he told Pfeiffer. "He's the undisputed world champion of that. He could easily destroy us if we play it wrong."The communications from Murdoch, the chairperson of Fox Corporation, and Tucker Carlson, its highest-profile host — as well as messages from Hannity, Laura Ingraham, and numerous other Fox News hosts and producers — were cited in a 200-page motion made public Thursday in a lawsuit filed by Dominion Voting Systems, an election technology company at the center of conspiracy theories about the 2020 election.After Trump lost the election to now-President Joe Biden, he denied the results and tasked members of his legal team with overturning them.His two highest-profile lawyers at the time were Rudy Giuliani and Sidney Powell, who both pushed a false conspiracy theory that Dominion and a rival election technology company, Smartmatic, secretly worked together to flip votes from Trump to Biden.News Corporation founder Rupert Murdoch.Drew Angerer-Pool/Getty ImagesThe conspiracy theories were obviously false and were roundly rejected when Powell took her theory to the courts. In addition to suing Giuliani and Powell for defamation, Dominion also lodged a lawsuit against Fox News, asking for $1.6 billion in damages. It argued the media organization and individual hosts either perpetrated the false conspiracy theories or failed to tell viewers they were lies.In Thursday's motion, Dominion asked the judge overseeing the lawsuit, in a Delaware state court, to skip a trial and hand them an automatic victory."Normally defamation cases involve a single defamatory statement. Here, Fox defamed Dominion not once. Not twice. Not three times. But continually. Over a months-long timeframe," lawyers for Dominion wrote. "And while defamation cases often involve matters of public concern, the false statements here — in the words of Fox host Tucker Carlson — 'would amount to the single greatest crime in American history.'"Fox News and its parent company Fox Corporation have defended themselves, arguing it fairly reported on a massive news story: That the sitting president of the United States was making claims of widespread voter fraud.The $1.6 billion claim, Fox News said, was "pulled out of thin air" and has a chilling effect on free speech."Dominion's motion for summary judgment takes an extreme and unsupported view of defamation law and rests on an accounting of the facts that has no basis in the record," a Fox News spokesperson told Insider. "Dominion has mischaracterized the record, cherry-picked quotes stripped of key context, and spilled considerable ink on facts that are irrelevant under black-letter principles of defamation law."Fox News producers and hosts knew the election fraud claims were garbageCognizant of their rabid pro-Trump viewership, leaders at Fox News tried to figure out how to keep their audience while acknowledging he lost reelection.Murdoch was worried about Hannity siding with Trump and pushing election lies, Dominion's lawyers wrote in Thursday's filing."If Trump becomes a sore loser we should watch Sean especially and others don't sound the same," Murdoch wrote in a message to Suzanne Scott.The messages and deposition testimony obtained through the lawsuit's discovery process show Fox News brass always thought claims of election fraud were bunk, Dominion argued.Tucker Carlson said Powell was "lying" and called her a "fucking bitch." Laura Ingraham said in a group text with Carlson and Hannity that Powell was "a bit nuts." Hannity said he "did not believe it for one second" when he heard Powell's claims.A person protesting outside the Fox News headquarters in New York City.Michael M. Santiago/Getty ImagesDavid Clark, a Fox News executive, said he did not believe Jeanine Pirro — who Dominion said pushed falsehoods about the company on Fox News airwaves — was a "credible source of news," Dominion's lawyers wrote.Ron Mitchell, another executive, likened the allegations to "the Bill Gates/microchip angle to voter fraud" and called Powell and Rudy Giuliani "clowns," according to Dominion's filing.Carlson, Pirro, and other hosts and producers said in deposition excerpts cited in a different Thursday filing, from Fox Corporation, that they didn't take orders from Murdoch and came to their own conclusions independently.In the aftermath of Trump's election loss, Dominion sent 3,600 fact-checking messages to the company, which it said were widely circulated within the network.Clark "received Dominion's fact check so many times that on November 14 he wrote a colleague: 'I have it tattooed on my body at this point,'" Dominion lawyers wrote in the Thursday filing.After hearing host Lou Dobbs ran false information about election fraud, one producer responded, "Jesus Christ. Does anyone do a fucking simple google search or read emails?""Not a single Fox witness testified that they believe any of the allegations about Dominion are true," Dominion lawyers wrote. "Indeed, Fox witness after Fox witness declined to assert the allegations' truth or actually stated they do not believe them."Fox worried about the rise of NewsmaxAs Fox News called the 2020 election for Biden, Trump tweeted support for Newsmax and One America News, two conservative media organizations more entrenched in the right-wing fringe.Leadership at Fox News worried about Newsmax hoovering up their viewers. In the aftermath of the election, ratings for Fox News were down, Murdoch wrote in a message to Scott."Getting creamed by CNN! Guess our viewers don't want to watch it," Murdoch said.When Lauren Ingraham pushed fraud claims on her show and on Twitter — despite privately believing they weren't credible — her producer Tommy Firth complained that she needed to stop trying to get on Trump's good side."This dominion shit is going to give me a fucking aneurysm," Firth wrote in a text message obtained by Dominion.A Newsmax booth broadcasts as attendees try out the guns on display at the 2022 National Rifle Association (NRA) annual convention in Houston, Texas.REUTERS/Callaghan O'HareCarlson and Hannity fretted that Newsmax could pose a threat to Fox News's dominance of conservative media. (Dominion and Smartmatic have separate pending defamation lawsuits against Newsmax and One America News.) Hannity worried that Fox News declaring Biden's victory "destroyed a brand that took 25 years to build and the damage is incalculable.""Serious $$ with serious distribution could be a real problem. Imho they need to address but wtf do I know," Hannity wrote in a text message, referring to Newsmax."Do the executives understand how much credibility and trust we've lost with our audience? We're playing with fire, for real....an alternative like newsmax could be devastating to us," Carlson told his producer.When Carlson and Hannity saw a Fox News reporter Jacqui Heinrich fact-checking Trump's falsehoods about the election on Twitter, they tried to get her fired, messages obtained by Dominion show."Please get her fired. Seriously...What the fuck?" Carlson wrote in a text message. "I'm actually shocked...It needs to stop immediately, like tonight. It's measurably hurting the company. The stock price is down. Not a joke."Hannity sent Heinrich's tweets to Scott, and her tweet was deleted."She has serious nerve doing this and if this gets picked up, viewers are going to be further disgusted," Scott wrote.Some hosts pushed election lies they should have known were wrong, Dominion saysThe internal documents obtained by Dominion depict a particularly damning portrait of hosts Lou Dobbs and Maria Bartiromo, both of whom allowed Powell to take up significant airtime.The two of them spoke to Powell, the filing said, on the strength of an email she forwarded to them that claimed to present evidence of widespread election fraud.That email, Dominion's lawyers wrote, came from an unnamed author who claimed to be a beheaded ghost who talks to the wind.The email's author claimed that former Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia "was purposefully killed at the annual Bohemian Grove camp…during a weeklong human hunting expedition" and that former Fox News CEO Roger Ailes, who died in 2017, had almost-daily conversations with Murdoch "to determine how best to portray Mr. Trump as badly as possible."While the email should have been a blinding red flag that Powell couldn't trusted, Dobbs and Bartiromo persisted anyway, Dominion's lawyers said.Sean Hannity interviewing Donald Trump.Ethan Miller/Getty ImagesOn November 12, Dobbs invited Giuliani on his show for another serving of defamation, Dominion said, and endorsed his remarks."When Giuliani spewed lies about Dominion, Dobbs responded: 'It's stunning…they have no ability to audit meaningfully the votes that are cast because the servers are somewhere else….This looks to me like it is the end of what has been a four-and-a-half—the endgame to a four-and-a-half year-long effort to overthrow the president of the United States,'" Dominion's lawyers wrote.Carlson, too, tried and failed to "thread his own needle" where he'd denounce Powell but try to demonstrate he supported Trump, according to Dominion.But Carlson erred, Dominion said, in inviting Mike Lindell, who maintains a different set of false conspiracy theories about how Dominion rigged the 2020 election. (Dominion has yet another defamation lawsuit pending against Lindell.) "Carlson knew Lindell was making his Dominion machine fraud claims 'every single day of the year on his website and any interview that he does' and that 'it is universally known by people who know anything about Mike Lindell' that he holds these bogus beliefs," Dominion's lawyers wrote, quoting messages from Carlson.Fox News executives even tried to court Lindell after he criticized Fox News on Newsmax, sending him "a gift along with a handwritten note from Suzanne Scott" so as to not alienate him from the network, Dominion said.The notion that Fox News simply wanted to report on newsworthy events, Dominion argued, doesn't hold water.After the Capitol came under attack on January 6, 2021, Trump "dialed into Lou Dobbs' show attempting to get on air," Dominion's lawyers wrote. But Fox executives "vetoed that decision," according to Dominion."Why? Not because of a lack of newsworthiness. January 6 was an important event by any measure. President Trump not only was the sitting President, he was the key figure that day," Dominion's lawyers wrote. "But Fox refused to allow President Trump on air that evening because 'it would be irresponsible to put him on the air' and 'could impact a lot of people in a negative way.'"Read the original article on Business Insider.....»»

Walmart is boosting the minimum wage for all associates to $14 per hour from $12. Workers say the pay raise is a good start but could be better. Walmart workers have been protesting low wages for years.Joe Skipper / Reuters Walmart announced last month that it will increase its minimum wage from $12 an hour to $14 an hour. The move has been met with mixed reactions, with some saying it's a good start but not enough. The current federal minimum wage is $7.25 an hour, with some states setting higher minimums. Walmart is set to boost its minimum wage for workers to $14 an hour in the coming weeks.But the move is receiving mixed reactions from Walmart employees.Several workers told Insider or wrote on social media that the new minimum wage is not sufficient."It seems like Walmart executives are finally listening to what Walmart associates have been saying for years, that we need higher wages to make ends meet in today's economy," said Emily Francois, a Walmart worker in Texas who is a leader for retail-worker advocacy nonprofit United for Respect."But a higher poverty wage isn't enough." Francois has argued for a $25-an-hour wage. In response to critiques from workers, Walmart spokeswoman Anne Hatfield told Insider in an emailed statement that the company has been "continuously raising wages and is starting the new year by investing in higher pay for frontline associates — the average U.S. associate now makes more than $17.50/hour as a result."  The wage increase will be reflected in employees' March 2 paychecks, the retailer said. One Walmart worker from Kentucky, who asked to be anonymous for fear of retaliation, told Insider that he makes $16.53 an hour and his store has had a base pay of $14 an hour for more than a year."I live in a rural area with lower cost of living and it still is barely enough," he said. "The cost of living is higher than this, and it still makes it near impossible to live alone with the ($14 per hour) pay."But for employees making the company's current minimum wage of $12 per hour, the incoming boost to their pay is welcome news.A Walmart worker in Oklahoma told Insider they think the wage boost is enough "especially given the fact that some places around me still pay below $10."Up until the middle of last decade, Walmart's minimum wage matched the federal level at $7.25. The retailer's minimum rose to $9 per hour in 2015, to $11 an hour in 2018, and then to the current $12 an hour in 2021. Still, Walmart's starting wage falls below those of several of its competitors.Amazon raised its minimum wage for all US employees to $15 per hour in 2018. One year later, Target also announced it would be raising its minimum wage to $15 per hour. And in 2021, Costco announced that its employees would be paid a minimum of $17 per hour.And the move may have minimal impact on those who already make at least $14 per hour — which includes the vast majority of workers at some Walmart stores.A store manager in Texas told Insider that his store currently has a base pay of $13 per hour and only roughly 20% of his employees will directly benefit from the minimum wage increase. The manager asked not to be identified for fear of retaliation.The move is "a step in the right direction" but does not help "a wide swathe of associates," he said.Are you a Walmart associate? Reach out to the reporter Ben Tobin by email at btobin@insider.com to let him know what you think of the minimum wage increase.Read the original article on Business Insider.....»»

Some Google workers recently demonstrated in California and New York. On Thursday, they protested in the Big Apple over the big round of layoffs that affected 12,000......»»

After being suspended for almost a month, the oil and gas giant Shell (SHEL) has officially resumed LNG cargo operations at its Prelude FLNG facility. Shell SHEL recently announced the restart of liquefied natural gas LNG cargoes from its Prelude floating LNG FLNG facility offshore Australia, following a temporary fire-related technical outage in December.According to Shell, the fire was promptly put out and the area was declared safe; it also stated that no one was hurt and all of the facility's workers were safe and well.Following a small fire at the 3.6M metric tons/year facility, Prelude, the largest floating plant for natural gas liquefaction in the world, had paused its gas production last month due to an ongoing investigation.The most recent incident happened only a year after a similar fire forced the vessel to go down for nearly five months. The unit was also offline from June to September 2022 due to industrial action by the workers protesting for enhanced pay.Prelude FLNG has a minimum annual liquid production capacity of 5.3 million tons per annum (mtpa), which includes 3.6 mtpa of LNG, 1.3 mtpa of condensate, and 0.4 mtpa of liquefied petroleum gas. With a 67.5% ownership in the facility, Shell is the largest shareholder.Zacks Rank and Key PicksHeadquartered in London, Shell is one of the primary oil supermajors, a group of U.S. and Europe-based big energy multinationals with operations spanning worldwide.Currently, Shell carries a Zacks Rank #3 (Hold). Meanwhile, investors interested in the energy sector might look at stocks like Patterson-UTI Energy PTEN and Helmerich & Payne HP, both sporting a Zacks Rank #1 (Strong Buy) and RPC Inc. RES, holding a Zacks Rank #2 (Buy). You can see the complete list of today’s Zacks #1 Rank stocks here.Patterson-UTI Energy: PTEN beat the Zacks Consensus Estimate for earnings in three of the last four quarters. The company has a trailing four-quarter earnings surprise of roughly 169.23%, on average.Patterson-UTI is worth approximately $3.47 billion. Its shares have gained 63.4% in the past year.Helmerich & Payne: Helmerich & Payne is valued at around $4.95 billion. Over the past 60 days, the Zacks Consensus Estimate for HP's fiscal 2023 earnings has been revised 18.8% higher.Helmerich & Payne, headquartered in Tulsa, OK, has a trailing four-quarter earnings surprise of roughly 124.22%, on average. In the past year, the HP stock has increased by 67.1%.RPC: RPC Inc. beat earnings estimates in all the trailing four quarters, the average being around 62%. The market capitalization of RES is $1.87 billion.  In the past year, the RES stock has increased by 53.9%Digging into valuation, RPC currently has a Forward P/E ratio of 6.53. For comparison, its industry has an average Forward P/E of 22.57, which means RPC is trading at a discount to the group. Zacks Names "Single Best Pick to Double" From thousands of stocks, 5 Zacks experts each have chosen their favorite to skyrocket +100% or more in months to come. From those 5, Director of Research Sheraz Mian hand-picks one to have the most explosive upside of all. It’s a little-known chemical company that’s up 65% over last year, yet still dirt cheap. With unrelenting demand, soaring 2022 earnings estimates, and $1.5 billion for repurchasing shares, retail investors could jump in at any time. This company could rival or surpass other recent Zacks’ Stocks Set to Double like Boston Beer Company which shot up +143.0% in little more than 9 months and NVIDIA which boomed +175.9% in one year.Free: See Our Top Stock And 4 Runners UpWant the latest recommendations from Zacks Investment Research? Today, you can download 7 Best Stocks for the Next 30 Days. Click to get this free report PattersonUTI Energy, Inc. (PTEN): Free Stock Analysis Report Helmerich & Payne, Inc. (HP): Free Stock Analysis Report Cheniere Energy, Inc. (LNG): Free Stock Analysis Report RPC, Inc. (RES): Free Stock Analysis Report Flex LNG Ltd. (FLNG): Free Stock Analysis Report Shell PLC Unsponsored ADR (SHEL): Free Stock Analysis ReportTo read this article on Zacks.com click here.Zacks Investment Research.....»»

How Global Strikes Play Right Into The Great Reset's Hands Authored by Kit Knightly via Off-Guardian.org, For the past few months strikes have wrought havoc with the UK’s national infrastructure, and will likely continue to do so well into 2023. The run-up to Christmas saw postal strikes for the UK’s Royal Mail service. Throughout the second half of 2022, transport strikes were routine. There’s one happening today that has effectively shut down all train journeys. There’s a possibility of a teachers’ strike later this month, that would see kids sent home from school. Nurses went on strike in December, and will likely do so again this month It’s not just the UK either. Strikes in several sectors took place all across Western Europe in December and into early January so far. New York’s nurses are ready to go on strike next week, and Minnesota nurses only narrowly avoided a strike last month. It was only Joe Biden’s presidential overreach that prevented a nation-wide rail workers’ strike just before Christmas. A google trends search for the terms “strike” or “industrial action” have seen surging interest worldwide in the last few months. An admittedly crude measure, but certainly not meaningless. Strikes are suddenly becoming a high profile global phenomenon. Given the economic hardships currently being imposed this is not surprising of course. Corporations price fix and cut costs at every turn, and wages have stagnated for decades while profits soar. No wonder workers and their representatives are trying to redress this balance in any way they can. But in the New Normal world, what does that mean? And is it possible this perfectly just cause is being manipulated into furthering the great reset agenda? After all the Union model has a clear disadvantage in the current situation: It is built on the underlying assumption that bosses want their workers to work. But post-scamdemic is this any longer reliably the case? For almost three years we have seen the vast majority of the corporate-political structure dedicated to stopping workers from working. Covid and “lockdowns” have demonstrated that the establishment wants to: Stop people travelling Stop people working Breakdown healthcare and medical services Cripple supply chains Increase the cost of living Generally ruin the economy Governments around the world have shown us they want stagnation, disruption and misery. However just the cause, it’s also true that strikes further almost all of these goals. And of course they can easily be created by leveraging workers through inflation & price hikes into taking industrial action just to preserve a living wage. There’s also the handy bonus of shifting the blame at the same time. Just as the appalling state of the economy was blamed on the war in Ukraine in 2022, it will be blamed on striking unions in 2023. Another reason for repeating the mantra: “the system is broken, we need a new way of doing things.” …and then, of course, comes another step toward the Great Reset. What that specifically means in this instance is not yet clear, although some kind of Universal Basic Income system seems likely (it’s in the zeitgeist right now, as we predicted in our This Year in the New Normal post). Maybe more “public” ownership of utilities, or perhaps new legislation for a state-backed employment mandate where the unemployed are given digital busywork to do from home, like a cyber work camp. In the UK at least we won’t know for sure until we have a Labour government installed to “save the day”. Other “resets” could include higher “benefits” that accompany some kind of agreement to not unionise and never go on strike. A proto-social credit system. It might be sold as “the end of the need to strike”, and everyone will celebrate the new law that makes striking illegal, while anyone who points out the further reduction of our rights will be called old-fashioned and, of course, a “conspiracy theorist”. “We don’t need strikes with the new way of doing things, and people that want to go on strike will ruin it for everyone else,” could so easily be the line touted by all the usual suspects. That’s just speculation, of course. One possible future. Other knock-on effects could play a role in the GR as well. For example, if corporations are “forced” to increase their pay rates, they will naturally increase their prices to preserve profit margins – meaning strikes can be directly parlayed into exacerbating the cost of living crisis, even as they are called a “victory” for working people. Or maybe nursing strikes will mean we “lose control of the Covid situation”, and have to endure a new wave of masks and lockdowns. We can’t be sure what the exact next steps will be, but we can be aware of the high likelihood this current wave of “worker unrest” is being manipulated to further the aims of the globalist narrative-makers, that the government-corporate-union trifecta will guarantee strikes continue, and that it’s playing an important part in shaping our new normal future. Tyler Durden Sun, 01/08/2023 - 08:10.....»»

The MS-13 gang made El Salvador one of the most violent places not at war. The "world's coolest dictator" created a new layer of misery. Residents of the Bajo Lempa meet weekly at a retreat center to discuss the mass arrests.Fred Ramos for InsiderGang violence has made El Salvador one of the world's most violent places not at war. The crackdown by its "Bitcoin president" created a new layer of misery.SISIGUAYO, EL SALVADOR — On the morning that Walber Rodriguez was arrested last May, he was just two minutes from his home in Sisiguayo, El Salvador.Walber and his wife Estefany had worked the overnight shift at the shrimp cooperative, and then taken their six-year-old daughter Michelle to visit a relative. Walber was driving the family motorcycle, and Estefany and Michelle sat behind him. They were headed home.Walber was pulled over at "El Ceibo," a gathering place in Sisiguayo that's marked by a sturdy tree with an abundant canopy. Soon, Walber's sister, mother, and father had arrived, trying to reason with the officer, who knew them by name. They didn't understand why Walber was being handcuffed. Sisiguayo was a place that saw police and soldiers as allies. Back in 2015, when the MS-13 gang descended on the hamlet looking to recruit local teenagers, the cops had come down hard, even murdering some of the gang members, and Walber and his neighbors had raised money to build a new police station. Now, backup was arriving for the officer. Two navy soldiers showed up, including one who had been with Walber just the night before, watching a soccer game, and informed the others that Walber was "a working man." A patrol vehicle full of additional cops followed. No one named anything that Walber had done wrong. Yet the family's pleas didn't work. "Look," said the officer who led Walber off, flipping his wrist to the sky, "this comes from above." Within days of Walber's arrest, the Rodriguezes learned he was being accused of belonging to MS-13. "El Ceibo," a gathering place in Sisiguayo, is marked by a sturdy tree with an abundant canopy. It was here that Walber Rodriguez was arrested on May 1, 2022.Fred Ramos for InsiderScenes like this have been playing out across El Salvador since March, when President Nayib Bukele declared a "state of exception" and suspended certain constitutional rights, ostensibly to deal with MS-13 and two offshoots of the rival Barrio 18 gang, Barrio 18 Sureños and Barrio 18 Revolucionarios — all of which have terrorized El Salvador and made it one of the world's most violent places not at war. The declaration was meant to be temporary, lasting 30 days, but Bukele's administration has renewed it nine times. More than 60,000 people, mostly working-age men, have been arrested, while signs along roadways feature cinematic images of heavily-armed police ridding the country of "terrorists." Just as commercial fishermen trawl their way through columns of water to maximize their catch, Salvadoran authorities have rounded people up indiscriminately and with flimsy explanations.The 'world's coolest dictator' Even before authorities crushed in tens of thousands in a span of mere weeks, El Salvador's prisons were overcrowded and disease-ridden. It now tops the list of countries with the highest percentage of their populations behind bars, according to the World Prison Brief, a distinction that has been previously held by the United States. The supposed targets, MS-13 and Barrio 18, began in Los Angeles in the late twentieth century and arrived in El Salvador by way of gang members deported from the US. In 2018, then-President Donald Trump referenced MS-13 to say the US had allowed "animals" to cross into the country, and to justify draconian immigration policies. In El Salvador, the gangs have become one of the country's biggest employers, and they have cemented their power through backroom deals with elected leaders. That appears to have continued under Bukele, a former executive at a family public relations firm who was elected president in 2019 and has fashioned himself, in his ever-changing Twitter bio, as the "world's coolest dictator." Outside El Salvador, Bukele is best known for adopting Bitcoin as a national currency. A sign in the capital, San Salvador, announces the anti-gang crackdown.Fred Ramos for InsiderLast year, the US Treasury sanctioned two senior officials from Bukele's administration for cutting a deal with the gangs in exchange for support in the 2021 midterm elections — which saw Bukele's New Ideas party win a supermajority — and committing fewer homicides. What preceded the state of exception was a horrific weekend in which the gangs killed nearly 90 people. It, too, was allegedly a product of that deal: Salvadoran journalists at the investigative news outlet El Faro reported that the rampage was MS-13's retribution for a break-down in the agreement. The cooperation doesn't end there. Earlier this year, when the U.S. federal court of the Eastern District of New York requested the extradition of MS-13's leadership to stand trial on terrorism charges, Bukele-allied judges blocked some of the extraditions. The administration then released one of the wanted gang leaders from prison, and a senior official helped him flee to Guatemala. The administration denies all this, and, so far, things appear to be going Bukele's way. Tough-on-crime stances have historically been as popular in El Salvador as in the United States. And, as in the U.S., the public is primed to believe that anyone targeted by police is guilty until proven innocent. A Gallup poll released in October recorded Bukele's public approval at 86%. Police make an arrest in San Salvador on June 14th, 2022.Fred Ramos for InsiderThe word on the street, according to family members gathered at prisons for news of loved ones, is that while local gang cliques have gone quiet, they're still out there — hiding in full knowledge of the police, whose focus is elsewhere. According to the Passionist Social Services, nearly 40% of the murders in El Salvador since the beginning of the state of exception have been committed by police. Meanwhile, the administration has steadily eroded public access to information about who they are taking and why. El Faro obtained documents involving 690 arrests between March and April, and found that, overwhelmingly, the police are using criteria like "looking suspicious" or "acting nervous" to justify the arrests. Bukele, for his part, has breezily mentioned a margin of "one percent error." "This time, they're not coming out," he tweeted about the state of exception detainees in mid-April. The administration is building a new prison that Bukele says will house 40,000 "terrorists" who "will be cut off from the outside world." But, by terrorists, the president seems to mean people like Walber. 'Until we can embrace them'Once it became clear that Walber had been caught up in the crackdown, the Rodriguez family's hope for a quick release evaporated. By this point, they had discovered that they were not alone. All around them in Sisiguayo and the surrounding Bajo Lempa valley, people were arrested with no satisfactory explanation. The sons of two cousins who lived in a nearby community, Mario and Pablo, were among the first to be taken; their boys were handcuffed while drinking beers after a soccer game. Another neighbor was arrested even though he'd obtained and was carrying around his spotless police record, believing, wrongly, that such a thing would matter to police. He was detained holding his one-year-old in his arms.Residents of the Bajo Lempa who'd been touched by the arrests had begun meeting weekly at a nearby retreat center. There were only about a dozen attendees then, most of them trembling in fear and unable to tell their stories without crying. Now, Estefany, along with Walber's sister, Glenda, and Walber's parents, Tomas and Margarita, became the group's newest members. The group had started in April, launched by Rossy Iraheta Marinero and José Salvador Ruiz, known as Chamba  — two lay pastoral guides whose faith follows the tenets of Latin American liberation theology. They came from the same limited economic reality as their neighbors, and, in fact, they have full-time jobs and families. None of their own relatives had been detained. But they'd been stirred by the plight and compelled by their own theological solidarity practices to act. In the early days, they found that even civil society organizations that were traditionally fearless in denouncing state violence seemed reluctant to aid the so-called "terrorists." A handful of human rights organizations, principally one called Cristosal and a feminist collective in San Salvador, stepped up and, through them, the group has now filed 111 claims of habeas corpus  — a legal demand that prosecutors present their evidence against a detained person, or forfeit custody. "The families have hope that their loved ones are still alive, but they don't have certainty of that," Rossy told me. They also created a website where they posted photos of their imprisoned kin, and composed a song, "Until we can embrace them," that enshrines their suffering and their demands.   Few groups elsewhere in the country have coalesced in this way to lobby. Rossy evokes groups in Argentina and Mexico – and even in El Salvador itself – who never stopped agitating for justice on behalf of loved ones who had been disappeared by the state in earlier decades, leaving maps for others to follow. "A long battle" lies ahead, Rossy cautioned them in one meeting. "You have to be prepared."Outside MarionaWalber, and many of the others from the Bajo Lempa, had ended up at a prison informally known as Mariona, for the municipality where it's located. Under the state of exception, prisons were sealed off. Not even lawyers could get in. There was no protocol for finding out how Walber was doing, or if he was even alive. In El Salvador, it falls to families to help feed and clothe incarcerated relatives. Although the State provides meals to those in prison, Bukele has limited the men to two meager plates per day, as punishment. To leave supplemental food and other essentials, or to elicit a nugget of information from a bureaucrat at the prison's entrance, Estefany, Glenda, and others from Sisiguayo had no choice but to camp out outside Mariona. It's mostly men who have been arrested, and, in the first months of the crackdown, it was mostly women waiting outside prisons, by the thousands, for days at a time, sharing meals and makeshift cardboard mattresses. Everyone was taking on debt to afford the litany of expenses that follow an arrest, and some said they'd lost their jobs because they had spent so many days waiting. It was rumored that some police were offering to trade a man's freedom for sex or money.Glenda Rodriguez walks to the Mariona prison to get news of her brother, Walber Rodriguez, on June 20, 2022.Fred Ramos for Insider The jailings came so fast that Cristosal rushed to set up an online system where families could report arrests and sign up for support as they navigated the justice system. Families described traveling hours to a public defender's office and finding a line so long they lost hope of being seen. There's now about one public defender for every 200 arrests. Initial hearings include up to 500 defendants simultaneously, and Bukele has warned he'll be monitoring judges for "favoring delinquents."  If a name disappears from the register of detainees, it could mean they'd been moved to another prison, or to a hospital, or to a morgue. The country's major newspapers run regular reports of families being unceremoniously delivered the lifeless bodies of loved ones. One of the few men who'd been held at Izalco prison and then released told the Salvadoran outlet La Prensa Grafica that prisoners had been made to run barefoot in circles for hours. When one man fell from exhaustion, the guards broke his ribs, and he died eight days later, the man said. This is the kind of news the families of the Bajo Lempa live in terror of receiving. 'We fear each other again'Sisiguayo sits in the fertile valley where the Lempa river makes its final stretch through El Salvador before flowing out to the Pacific Ocean. Here, the air tastes salty and thick, a reminder of the mangrove forests and the ocean just beyond them. Homes are one-story cinderblock structures, painted in tropical greens and blues and surrounded by clotheslines, palm trees and outhouses. A communal speaker system broadcasts news and emergency alerts.A sunbaked dirt road connects Sisiguayo to the nearest highway, and along it, residents commute by bicycle or motorbike, bending around the cows, horses and dogs that loll about. Every year around November, the rainy season leaves behind deep potholes, so each family gives the share of money they can spare to pay for gas to power the construction equipment loaned from the mayor's office to fortify the road. Most young people work in shrimp cooperatives, where many tasks are nocturnal. It's a life of little sleep and hard manual labor. Night shifts start at around three in the morning. The workers return home for breakfast at about nine, and head off to a second job, like seasonal farming or bricklaying. Here, as everywhere else, the state of exception has been a financial drain. More than a dozen men from one of the shrimp cooperatives were netted in the crackdown, and what normally takes the cooperative two weeks to accomplish now takes two or three months. Roxana, another one of the Rodriguezes' neighbors, was hit especially hard by the arrests. Her two sons, a daughter-in-law and a brother-in-law were rounded up, as well as her boyfriend Jeremias' two nephews. Now, she spends much of her time running endless arrest-related errands. Her youngest daughter, who's 12, had to leave school to help run the family's corner store and care for Roxana's 5-year-old grandchild. Within the first six weeks, the costs ballooned to around $1000 — a small fortune that's twice the amount Roxana spent to open and fully stock her shop. By the late summer, Jeremias is usually out in the fields alongside Roxana's two boys and his two nephews, planting corn for the family to eat. With them in prison, he had to forgo the crop this year, because it's too much to handle alone.  The state of exception "has a human cost that we still can't fully see," said Noah Bullock, Executive Director of Cristosal. "There is the torture, the inhumane treatment, the more than eighty deaths in prisons, and that's only talking about the people who are detained. Life projects that people have built slowly over generations are suddenly paralyzed and collapsed. There's the loss of income and the simultaneous expenses. The social cost of being stigmatized as 'terrorists.'" The administration seems unperturbed by the volume of blameless people it has locked up. "There will always be victims in war," Vice President Felix Ulloa has said of the state of exception. Walber's father, Tomas, at home in Sisiguayo, on June 17, 2022.Fred Ramos for InsiderThe last time state security forces were targeting the people of the Bajo Lempa en masse and without explanation, it was in the middle of a civil war. From late 1979 until 1992, vicious US-backed government forces clashed with a leftist guerrilla movement. More than 75,000 Salvadorans died and thousands more were disappeared. A United Nations truth commission later found that 85% of the war kidnapping, torture and murder were committed by the government forces, including police and military. Walber's parents were among those fighting on the side of the guerrillas. In 1992, when they dropped their rifles after U.N.-brokered peace talks, they were given land as a way to return to civilian life. Margarita, Tomas and their neighbors came to inhabit Sisiguayo, with its rich coastal tracts, generous for fishing and farming. For Margarita, her son's senseless arrest reminded her of the state-sponsored kidnappings that had led her to take up arms. "That's what most hurts," she told me. "Now we fear each other again."  A photo of Walber Rodriguez's father, Tomas, from when he was a member of a guerrilla group during the Salvadoran civil war, hangs in his house.Fred Ramos for InsiderThe Bajo Lempa is also a flood plain, a condition that was exacerbated by poor government management of the hydroelectric dams that line the river. During repeated devastating floods in the past three decades, the people of the region, the Rodriguez family among them, lobbied and protested, even marching about sixty miles on foot to the capital to demand better dam administration. For Walber and his older sister Glenda, who were children at the time, this was an early education in democracy. The Bajo Lempa won. San Salvador committed to building the levies needed to ameliorate the annual floods, and to communicating its plans to discharge water from the dams, so the communities in harms' way could evacuate in time.Now, they are again under siege. Surf City Abroad, Bukele is best known for two things. First, his announcement, at the Bitcoin 2021 conference in Miami, that his government would "push humanity at least a tiny bit in the right direction" by adopting Bitcoin as a national currency. Second, his "Surf City" initiative along El Salvador's 190-mile Pacific coastline, where consistent eight-to-ten-foot waves in prime spots makes it one of the best surfing destinations in the Americas. Bukele's target audience for Surf City is Bitcoin enthusiasts and international surfers. And everyone knows that Surf City is his. After the apparent breakdown in negotiations between the administration and MS-13, the gangs left a message for Bukele in the form of a mangled cadaver on the highway that connects the beaches to the capital.By June 2022, Bloomberg estimated that Bukele's crypto gamble had cost El Salvador nearly $56 million. That same month, as thousands of Salvadorans were being locked up, Surf City was playing host to the World Surf League's Championship Tour at a beach called Punta Roca. "Eighty-two degree water, no wetsuits!" a voice thundered from the loudspeaker.Nearby, cameramen grumbled to a Salvadoran surfer that they couldn't pan without a uniformed man with a rifle coming into the image.  Locals, who in theory stand to benefit from all of this, were remarking that whitewashing the entrance wall to one beach, El Tunco, and stamping it with an English name left it looking like a drive-through bank. "It was good that he saw the potential in our waves," Enzo, who runs a couple of cafes in the area, told me one evening. Promised infrastructural improvements, like finally completing a waste-water treatment plant so that businesses aren't reliant on bottled water, haven't arrived. Meanwhile, new luxury apartments with a base price of $400,000 are being marketed to crypto enthusiasts, prompting worry that excessive development will smother the area's natural beauty and put everyone out of business. It's almost as if Surf City is Bukele's Potemkin Village, thrown up to boost his standing in a handful of elite circles as he loses legitimacy elsewhere. Bukele "wants to promote the country as a place that other people can buy," said Bullock of Cristosal. "But what is his plan for the middle-aged man who has sold coconuts in Punta Roca his whole life? El Tunco already has local commerce and its own identity. Why not honor that identity?"'Dad's not working, is he?'When Walber was jailed, Estefany told their six-year-old, Michelle, that Walber had gone out of town for a job. When Estefany and Glenda left for days camped outside the prison, she said they were studying. Michelle's questions became harder to escape. When he was away working, Walber usually sent a flood of adoring messages to his daughter on Estefany's phone, but this time, there were none to show. Before ten days had passed, Michelle cornered her mom: "Dad's not working, is he?"  At six, Michelle is absorbing that her life is built on shifting sands — a father in prison, a mother who might withhold the truth. Estefany tried to explain, saying, "The authorities make mistakes." But it's just another tectonic lesson for a child. Walber and Estefany have known each other since they were kids and they've been partners for years, but it was only last year that they finally got married. They were the first in the family to have a real wedding, and Glenda remembers how they both giggled when they asked her to save the date — Dec. 17. Graduation photos of Walber Rodriguez, left, and his sister, Glenda Rodriguez, right, at the family house in Sisiguayo.Fred Ramos for InsiderEstefany's dress, which Glenda and Margarita helped her choose, was the color of red wine and had a sparkling brooch at the bosom. Walber had splurged on a new oxford shirt, jeans, and white tennis shoes. He also surprised Estefany with a wedding ring, which he had secretly saved for months to buy. It was a luxury she had never imagined. The cake, a single-tier white sphere adorned with fruit, held the children rapt until it was time to dig in. When Glenda thinks about the politicians and the police who get to return home to their families at night, so easy in their freedom, it fills her with rage. They can't even begin to comprehend what they have stolen from their people.'No one else will defend him but us' The retreat center where the families met every week was a thirty-minute crawling drive down the potholed dirt road from where Walber was arrested. In late June, 54 days after Walber's arrest, three-dozen of them sat as they usually did, in a circle of plastic chairs in an open-air pavilion, roofed in ceramic tile and ringed in a garden of carefully-manicured green.Rossy stood in the middle of the circle, wearing flip-flops and a white tunic embroidered with flowers, calling on people to speak. Chamba kept a notebook propped between his thigh and the arm of his wheelchair. The families were debating: Should they stay the course, and pursue their habeas corpus claims in court? Or was it time to take to the streets? The habeas corpus route had been Rossy's idea. Back in 2020, right when COVID-19 upended global travel, Rossy was in Ecuador at a theological conference. Bukele was about to close the borders and implement some of the most restrictive pandemic measures in the world. She managed to get onto the last flight into the Salvadoran airport and ended up at a quarantine center for six weeks. Desperate for a way out, a lawyer friend advised her to file a habeas corpus claim. It worked – she was released. Now, it's a tactic that more than 1,800 other Salvadorans across the country have also used since March, but to little effect since the administration has wrenched the legal system into its orbit, forcing many judges to retire and intimidating the rest, along with flooding the system with many times more defendants than it can handle. Members of the group have been harassed by the police, and there was always concern that cops might show up in the middle of the meeting to arrest everyone. One woman who had started attending after her husband was arrested was then herself arrested. Now, the neighbors couldn't agree on what was best. The state of exception allowed the police to detain anyone for any reason. If they protested and ended up incarcerated alongside their loved ones, who would defend them then?  People clamored to speak. Rossy called on a gray-haired man in a cowboy hat. He was one of the many who had spent consecutive days and nights on the street outside Mariona, where his son was being held, and while there, he heard rumor that the guards take vengeance on prisoners whose families caused trouble out front. He rose slowly, and then stated his firm opposition to any public action. He reminded the group that it wasn't only themselves who would pay the price for protesting. When he took up arms in the civil war, he said, it was his own life he was putting at risk. But now, any action might put his son's life at risk. When he finished speaking, Glenda – who, at 28 years old, was among the youngest group members – raised her hand. "I may not have as much life experience as many of you. And I didn't live the war fighting in the mountains like many of you did," she began. But, she continued, she did know that all of El Salvador's civil rights victories, including democracy itself, were the product of struggles on the street. She too had camped outside Mariona, and she had learned that viral malicious rumors appeared on social media as part of an attempt to silence families. A meeting of the Bajo Lempa families on June 17, 2022.Fred Ramos for Insider"If the state is going to kill my brother, it will do so whether or not I speak out. If it will incarcerate me – the same is true," she reasoned. "No one else will defend him but us." Finally, there was simply the value of the truth: "The president wants to make this country look like a wonderland, like everything is Surf City," she said – but the world needed to know what was really happening in El Salvador.  The group ultimately decided that Glenda was right: it was time to take the streets. And just as each Bajo Lempa family had discovered that they were not alone when they found the group, now they saw there were hundreds of families around the country who, like them, were ready to march in San Salvador. They began regularly joining the others in the capital to protest and speak to the media, while continuing their habeas corpus petitions. Just before Christmas, the families of the Bajo Lempa packed a bridge on a main thoroughfare and demanded their loved ones be freed. For now, the Bukele administration remains unmoved. The group is now planning to sue their government in an international human rights court.One day last summer, before anyone comprehended how long this would last, Roxana told me something that multiple women in the Bajo Lempa echoed: Since her children were detained, she has been dreaming of them. In one dream, she was sitting at home in the dark, and one of her three sons walked through the front door. He paused in the threshold. She thought it was Cristian, the only one who has not yet been taken. But when he stepped out of the shadow, she saw that it was Javier, her youngest. He was dressed just as he had been on April 27, the night the police hauled him away. She called to him – and then the dream ended. "As a mother," she said, "you wake up to a nightmare."This reporting was supported by the International Women's Media Foundation's Howard G. Buffett Fund for Women Journalists.Read the original article on Business Insider.....»»

The MS-13 gang made El Salvador one of the most violent places not at war. The 'world's coolest dictator' created a new layer of misery. Residents of the Bajo Lempa meet weekly at a retreat center to discuss the mass arrests.Fred Ramos for InsiderGang violence has made El Salvador one of the world's most violent places not at war. The crackdown by its "Bitcoin president" created a new layer of misery.SISIGUAYO, EL SALVADOR — On the morning that Walber Rodriguez was arrested last May, he was just two minutes from his home in Sisiguayo, El Salvador.Walber and his wife Estefany had worked the overnight shift at the shrimp cooperative, and then taken their six-year-old daughter Michelle to visit a relative. Walber was driving the family motorcycle, and Estefany and Michelle sat behind him. They were headed home.Walber was pulled over at "El Ceibo," a gathering place in Sisiguayo that's marked by a sturdy tree with an abundant canopy. Soon, Walber's sister, mother, and father had arrived, trying to reason with the officer, who knew them by name. They didn't understand why Walber was being handcuffed. Sisiguayo was a place that saw police and soldiers as allies. Back in 2015, when the MS-13 gang descended on the hamlet looking to recruit local teenagers, the cops had come down hard, even murdering some of the gang members, and Walber and his neighbors had raised money to build a new police station. Now, backup was arriving for the officer. Two navy soldiers showed up, including one who had been with Walber just the night before, watching a soccer game, and informed the others that Walber was "a working man." A patrol vehicle full of additional cops followed. No one named anything that Walber had done wrong. Yet the family's pleas didn't work. "Look," said the officer who led Walber off, flipping his wrist to the sky, "this comes from above." Within days of Walber's arrest, the Rodriguezes learned he was being accused of belonging to MS-13. "El Ceibo," a gathering place in Sisiguayo, is marked by a sturdy tree with an abundant canopy. It was here that Walber Rodriguez was arrested on May 1, 2022.Fred Ramos for InsiderScenes like this have been playing out across El Salvador since March, when President Nayib Bukele declared a "state of exception" and suspended certain constitutional rights, ostensibly to deal with MS-13 and two offshoots of the rival Barrio 18 gang, Barrio 18 Sureños and Barrio 18 Revolucionarios — all of which have terrorized El Salvador and made it one of the world's most violent places not at war. The declaration was meant to be temporary, lasting 30 days, but Bukele's administration has renewed it nine times. More than 60,000 people, mostly working-age men, have been arrested, while signs along roadways feature cinematic images of heavily-armed police ridding the country of "terrorists." Just as commercial fishermen trawl their way through columns of water to maximize their catch, Salvadoran authorities have rounded people up indiscriminately and with flimsy explanations.The 'world's coolest dictator' Even before authorities crushed in tens of thousands in a span of mere weeks, El Salvador's prisons were overcrowded and disease-ridden. It now tops the list of countries with the highest percentage of their populations behind bars, according to the World Prison Brief, a distinction that has been previously held by the United States. The supposed targets, MS-13 and Barrio 18, began in Los Angeles in the late twentieth century and arrived in El Salvador by way of gang members deported from the US. In 2018, then-President Donald Trump referenced MS-13 to say the US had allowed "animals" to cross into the country, and to justify draconian immigration policies. In El Salvador, the gangs have become one of the country's biggest employers, and they have cemented their power through backroom deals with elected leaders. That appears to have continued under Bukele, a former executive at a family public relations firm who was elected president in 2019 and has fashioned himself, in his ever-changing Twitter bio, as the "world's coolest dictator." Outside El Salvador, Bukele is best known for adopting Bitcoin as a national currency. A sign in the capital, San Salvador, announces the anti-gang crackdown.Fred Ramos for InsiderLast year, the US Treasury sanctioned two senior officials from Bukele's administration for cutting a deal with the gangs in exchange for support in the 2021 midterm elections — which saw Bukele's New Ideas party win a supermajority — and committing fewer homicides. What preceded the state of exception was a horrific weekend in which the gangs killed nearly 90 people. It, too, was allegedly a product of that deal: Salvadoran journalists at the investigative news outlet El Faro reported that the rampage was MS-13's retribution for a break-down in the agreement. The cooperation doesn't end there. Earlier this year, when the U.S. federal court of the Eastern District of New York requested the extradition of MS-13's leadership to stand trial on terrorism charges, Bukele-allied judges blocked some of the extraditions. The administration then released one of the wanted gang leaders from prison, and a senior official helped him flee to Guatemala. The administration denies all this, and, so far, things appear to be going Bukele's way. Tough-on-crime stances have historically been as popular in El Salvador as in the United States. And, as in the U.S., the public is primed to believe that anyone targeted by police is guilty until proven innocent. A Gallup poll released in October recorded Bukele's public approval at 86%. Police make an arrest in San Salvador on June 14th, 2022.Fred Ramos for InsiderThe word on the street, according to family members gathered at prisons for news of loved ones, is that while local gang cliques have gone quiet, they're still out there — hiding in full knowledge of the police, whose focus is elsewhere. According to the Passionist Social Services, nearly 40% of the murders in El Salvador since the beginning of the state of exception have been committed by police. Meanwhile, the administration has steadily eroded public access to information about who they are taking and why. El Faro obtained documents involving 690 arrests between March and April, and found that, overwhelmingly, the police are using criteria like "looking suspicious" or "acting nervous" to justify the arrests. Bukele, for his part, has breezily mentioned a margin of "one percent error." "This time, they're not coming out," he tweeted about the state of exception detainees in mid-April. The administration is building a new prison that Bukele says will house 40,000 "terrorists" who "will be cut off from the outside world." But, by terrorists, the president seems to mean people like Walber. 'Until we can embrace them'Once it became clear that Walber had been caught up in the crackdown, the Rodriguez family's hope for a quick release evaporated. By this point, they had discovered that they were not alone. All around them in Sisiguayo and the surrounding Bajo Lempa valley, people were arrested with no satisfactory explanation. The sons of two cousins who lived in a nearby community, Mario and Pablo, were among the first to be taken; their boys were handcuffed while drinking beers after a soccer game. Another neighbor was arrested even though he'd obtained and was carrying around his spotless police record, believing, wrongly, that such a thing would matter to police. He was detained holding his one-year-old in his arms.Residents of the Bajo Lempa who'd been touched by the arrests had begun meeting weekly at a nearby retreat center. There were only about a dozen attendees then, most of them trembling in fear and unable to tell their stories without crying. Now, Estefany, along with Walber's sister, Glenda, and Walber's parents, Tomas and Margarita, became the group's newest members. The group had started in April, launched by Rossy Iraheta Marinero and José Salvador Ruiz, known as Chamba  — two lay pastoral guides whose faith follows the tenets of Latin American liberation theology. They came from the same limited economic reality as their neighbors, and, in fact, they have full-time jobs and families. None of their own relatives had been detained. But they'd been stirred by the plight and compelled by their own theological solidarity practices to act. In the early days, they found that even civil society organizations that were traditionally fearless in denouncing state violence seemed reluctant to aid the so-called "terrorists." A handful of human rights organizations, principally one called Cristosal and a feminist collective in San Salvador, stepped up and, through them, the group has now filed 111 claims of habeas corpus  — a legal demand that prosecutors present their evidence against a detained person, or forfeit custody. "The families have hope that their loved ones are still alive, but they don't have certainty of that," Rossy told me. They also created a website where they posted photos of their imprisoned kin, and composed a song, "Until we can embrace them," that enshrines their suffering and their demands.   Few groups elsewhere in the country have coalesced in this way to lobby. Rossy evokes groups in Argentina and Mexico – and even in El Salvador itself – who never stopped agitating for justice on behalf of loved ones who had been disappeared by the state in earlier decades, leaving maps for others to follow. "A long battle" lies ahead, Rossy cautioned them in one meeting. "You have to be prepared."Outside MarionaWalber, and many of the others from the Bajo Lempa, had ended up at a prison informally known as Mariona, for the municipality where it's located. Under the state of exception, prisons were sealed off. Not even lawyers could get in. There was no protocol for finding out how Walber was doing, or if he was even alive. In El Salvador, it falls to families to help feed and clothe incarcerated relatives. Although the State provides meals to those in prison, Bukele has limited the men to two meager plates per day, as punishment. To leave supplemental food and other essentials, or to elicit a nugget of information from a bureaucrat at the prison's entrance, Estefany, Glenda, and others from Sisiguayo had no choice but to camp out outside Mariona. It's mostly men who have been arrested, and, in the first months of the crackdown, it was mostly women waiting outside prisons, by the thousands, for days at a time, sharing meals and makeshift cardboard mattresses. Everyone was taking on debt to afford the litany of expenses that follow an arrest, and some said they'd lost their jobs because they had spent so many days waiting. It was rumored that some police were offering to trade a man's freedom for sex or money.Glenda Rodriguez walks to the Mariona prison to get news of her brother, Walber Rodriguez, on June 20, 2022.Fred Ramos for Insider The jailings came so fast that Cristosal rushed to set up an online system where families could report arrests and sign up for support as they navigated the justice system. Families described traveling hours to a public defender's office and finding a line so long they lost hope of being seen. There's now about one public defender for every 200 arrests. Initial hearings include up to 500 defendants simultaneously, and Bukele has warned he'll be monitoring judges for "favoring delinquents."  If a name disappears from the register of detainees, it could mean they'd been moved to another prison, or to a hospital, or to a morgue. The country's major newspapers run regular reports of families being unceremoniously delivered the lifeless bodies of loved ones. One of the few men who'd been held at Izalco prison and then released told the Salvadoran outlet La Prensa Grafica that prisoners had been made to run barefoot in circles for hours. When one man fell from exhaustion, the guards broke his ribs, and he died eight days later, the man said. This is the kind of news the families of the Bajo Lempa live in terror of receiving. 'We fear each other again'Sisiguayo sits in the fertile valley where the Lempa river makes its final stretch through El Salvador before flowing out to the Pacific Ocean. Here, the air tastes salty and thick, a reminder of the mangrove forests and the ocean just beyond them. Homes are one-story cinderblock structures, painted in tropical greens and blues and surrounded by clotheslines, palm trees and outhouses. A communal speaker system broadcasts news and emergency alerts.A sunbaked dirt road connects Sisiguayo to the nearest highway, and along it, residents commute by bicycle or motorbike, bending around the cows, horses and dogs that loll about. Every year around November, the rainy season leaves behind deep potholes, so each family gives the share of money they can spare to pay for gas to power the construction equipment loaned from the mayor's office to fortify the road. Most young people work in shrimp cooperatives, where many tasks are nocturnal. It's a life of little sleep and hard manual labor. Night shifts start at around three in the morning. The workers return home for breakfast at about nine, and head off to a second job, like seasonal farming or bricklaying. Here, as everywhere else, the state of exception has been a financial drain. More than a dozen men from one of the shrimp cooperatives were netted in the crackdown, and what normally takes the cooperative two weeks to accomplish now takes two or three months. Roxana, another one of the Rodriguezes' neighbors, was hit especially hard by the arrests. Her two sons, a daughter-in-law and a brother-in-law were rounded up, as well as her boyfriend Jeremias' two nephews. Now, she spends much of her time running endless arrest-related errands. Her youngest daughter, who's 12, had to leave school to help run the family's corner store and care for Roxana's 5-year-old grandchild. Within the first six weeks, the costs ballooned to around $1000 — a small fortune that's twice the amount Roxana spent to open and fully stock her shop. By the late summer Jeremias, is usually out in the fields alongside Roxana's two boys and his two nephews, planting corn for the family to eat. With them in prison, he had to forgo the crop this year, because it's too much to handle alone.  The state of exception "has a human cost that we still can't fully see," said Noah Bullock, Executive Director of Cristosal. "There is the torture, the inhumane treatment, the more than eighty deaths in prisons, and that's only talking about the people who are detained. Life projects that people have built slowly over generations are suddenly paralyzed and collapsed. There's the loss of income and the simultaneous expenses. The social cost of being stigmatized as 'terrorists.'" The administration seems unperturbed by the volume of blameless people it has locked up. "There will always be victims in war," Vice President Felix Ulloa has said of the state of exception. Walber's father, Tomas, at home in Sisiguayo, on June 17, 2022.Fred Ramos for InsiderThe last time state security forces were targeting the people of the Bajo Lempa en masse and without explanation, it was in the middle of a civil war. From late 1979 until 1992, vicious US-backed government forces clashed with a leftist guerrilla movement. More than 75,000 Salvadorans died and thousands more were disappeared. A United Nations truth commission later found that 85% of the war kidnapping, torture and murder were committed by the government forces, including police and military. Walber's parents were among those fighting on the side of the guerrillas. In 1992, when they dropped their rifles after U.N.-brokered peace talks, they were given land as a way to return to civilian life. Margarita, Tomas and their neighbors came to inhabit Sisiguayo, with its rich coastal tracts, generous for fishing and farming. For Margarita, her son's senseless arrest reminded her of the state-sponsored kidnappings that had led her to take up arms. "That's what most hurts," she told me. "Now we fear each other again."  A photo of Walber Rodriguez's father, Tomas, from when he was a member of a guerrilla group during the Salvadoran civil war, hangs in his house.Fred Ramos for InsiderThe Bajo Lempa is also a flood plain, a condition that was exacerbated by poor government management of the hydroelectric dams that line the river. During repeated devastating floods in the past three decades, the people of the region, the Rodriguez family among them, lobbied and protested, even marching about sixty miles on foot to the capital to demand better dam administration. For Walber and his older sister Glenda, who were children at the time, this was an early education in democracy. The Bajo Lempa won. San Salvador committed to building the levies needed to ameliorate the annual floods, and to communicating its plans to discharge water from the dams, so the communities in harms' way could evacuate in time.Now, they are again under siege. Surf City Abroad, Bukele is best known for two things. First, his announcement, at the Bitcoin 2021 conference in Miami, that his government would "push humanity at least a tiny bit in the right direction" by adopting Bitcoin as a national currency. Second, his "Surf City" initiative along El Salvador's 190-mile Pacific coastline, where consistent eight-to-ten-foot waves in prime spots makes it one of the best surfing destinations in the Americas. Bukele's target audience for Surf City is Bitcoin enthusiasts and international surfers. And everyone knows that Surf City is his. After the apparent breakdown in negotiations between the administration and MS-13, the gangs left a message for Bukele in the form of a mangled cadaver on the highway that connects the beaches to the capital.By June 2022, Bloomberg estimated that Bukele's crypto gamble had cost El Salvador nearly $56 million. That same month, as thousands of Salvadorans were being locked up, Surf City was playing host to the World Surf League's Championship Tour at a beach called Punta Roca. "Eighty-two degree water, no wetsuits!" a voice thundered from the loudspeaker.Nearby, cameramen grumbled to a Salvadoran surfer that they couldn't pan without a uniformed man with a rifle coming into the image.  Locals, who in theory stand to benefit from all of this, were remarking that whitewashing the entrance wall to one beach, El Tunco, and stamping it with an English name left it looking like a drive-through bank. "It was good that he saw the potential in our waves," Enzo, who runs a couple of cafes in the area, told me one evening. Promised infrastructural improvements, like finally completing a waste-water treatment plant so that businesses aren't reliant on bottled water, haven't arrived. Meanwhile, new luxury apartments with a base price of $400,000 are being marketed to crypto enthusiasts, prompting worry that excessive development will smother the area's natural beauty and put everyone out of business. It's almost as if Surf City is Bukele's Potemkin Village, thrown up to boost his standing in a handful of elite circles as he loses legitimacy elsewhere. Bukele "wants to promote the country as a place that other people can buy," said Bullock of Cristosal. "But what is his plan for the middle-aged man who has sold coconuts in Punta Roca his whole life? El Tunco already has local commerce and its own identity. Why not honor that identity?"'Dad's not working, is he?'When Walber was jailed, Estefany told their six-year-old, Michelle, that Walber had gone out of town for a job. When Estefany and Glenda left for days camped outside the prison, she said they were studying. Michelle's questions became harder to escape. When he was away working, Walber usually sent a flood of adoring messages to his daughter on Estefany's phone, but this time, there were none to show. Before ten days had passed, Michelle cornered her mom: "Dad's not working, is he?"  At six, Michelle is absorbing that her life is built on shifting sands — a father in prison, a mother who might withhold the truth. Estefany tried to explain, saying, "The authorities make mistakes." But it's just another tectonic lesson for a child. Walber and Estefany have known each other since they were kids and they've been partners for years, but it was only last year that they finally got married. They were the first in the family to have a real wedding, and Glenda remembers how they both giggled when they asked her to save the date — Dec. 17. Graduation photos of Walber Rodriguez, left, and his sister, Glenda Rodriguez, right, at the family house in Sisiguayo.Fred Ramos for InsiderEstefany's dress, which Glenda and Margarita helped her choose, was the color of red wine and had a sparkling brooch at the bosom. Walber had splurged on a new oxford shirt, jeans, and white tennis shoes. He also surprised Estefany with a wedding ring, which he had secretly saved for months to buy. It was a luxury she had never imagined. The cake, a single-tier white sphere adorned with fruit, held the children rapt until it was time to dig in. When Glenda thinks about the politicians and the police who get to return home to their families at night, so easy in their freedom, it fills her with rage. They can't even begin to comprehend what they have stolen from their people.'No one else will defend him but us' The retreat center where the families met every week was a thirty-minute crawling drive down the potholed dirt road from where Walber was arrested. In late June, 54 days after Walber's arrest, three-dozen of them sat as they usually did, in a circle of plastic chairs in an open-air pavilion, roofed in ceramic tile and ringed in a garden of carefully-manicured green.Rossy stood in the middle of the circle, wearing flip-flops and a white tunic embroidered with flowers, calling on people to speak. Chamba kept a notebook propped between his thigh and the arm of his wheelchair. The families were debating: Should they stay the course, and pursue their habeas corpus claims in court? Or was it time to take to the streets? The habeas corpus route had been Rossy's idea. Back in 2020, right when COVID-19 upended global travel, Rossy was in Ecuador at a theological conference. Bukele was about to close the borders and implement some of the most restrictive pandemic measures in the world. She managed to get onto the last flight into the Salvadoran airport and ended up at a quarantine center for six weeks. Desperate for a way out, a lawyer friend advised her to file a habeas corpus claim. It worked – she was released. Now, it's a tactic that more than 1,800 other Salvadorans across the country have also used since March, but to little effect since the administration has wrenched the legal system into its orbit, forcing many judges to retire and intimidating the rest, along with flooding the system with many times more defendants than it can handle. Members of the group have been harassed by the police, and there was always concern that cops might show up in the middle of the meeting to arrest everyone. One woman who had started attending after her husband was arrested was then herself arrested. Now, the neighbors couldn't agree on what was best. The state of exception allowed the police to detain anyone for any reason. If they protested and ended up incarcerated alongside their loved ones, who would defend them then?  People clamored to speak. Rossy called on a gray-haired man in a cowboy hat. He was one of the many who had spent consecutive days and nights on the street outside Mariona, where his son was being held, and while there, he heard rumor that the guards take vengeance on prisoners whose families caused trouble out front. He rose slowly, and then stated his firm opposition to any public action. He reminded the group that it wasn't only themselves who would pay the price for protesting. When he took up arms in the civil war, he said, it was his own life he was putting at risk. But now, any action might put his son's life at risk. When he finished speaking, Glenda – who, at 28 years old, was among the youngest group members – raised her hand. "I may not have as much life experience as many of you. And I didn't live the war fighting in the mountains like many of you did," she began. But, she continued, she did know that all of El Salvador's civil rights victories, including democracy itself, were the product of struggles on the street. She too had camped outside Mariona, and she had learned that viral malicious rumors appeared on social media as part of an attempt to silence families. A meeting of the Bajo Lempa families on June 17, 2022.Fred Ramos for Insider"If the state is going to kill my brother, it will do so whether or not I speak out. If it will incarcerate me – the same is true," she reasoned. "No one else will defend him but us." Finally, there was simply the value of the truth: "The president wants to make this country look like a wonderland, like everything is Surf City," she said – but the world needed to know what was really happening in El Salvador.  The group ultimately decided that Glenda was right: it was time to take the streets. And just as each Bajo Lempa family had discovered that they were not alone when they found the group, now they saw there were hundreds of families around the country who, like them, were ready to march in San Salvador. They began regularly joining the others in the capital to protest and speak to the media, while continuing their habeas corpus petitions. Just before Christmas, the families of the Bajo Lempa packed a bridge on a main thoroughfare and demanded their loved ones be freed. For now, the Bukele administration remains unmoved. The group is now planning to sue their government in an international human rights court.One day last summer, before anyone comprehended how long this would last, Roxana told me something that multiple women in the Bajo Lempa echoed: Since her children were detained, she has been dreaming of them. In one dream, she was sitting at home in the dark, and one of her three sons walked through the front door. He paused in the threshold. She thought it was Cristian, the only one who has not yet been taken. But when he stepped out of the shadow, she saw that it was Javier, her youngest. He was dressed just as he had been on April 27, the night the police hauled him away. She called to him – and then the dream ended. "As a mother," she said, "you wake up to a nightmare."This reporting was supported by the International Women's Media Foundation's Howard G. Buffett Fund for Women Journalists.Read the original article on Business Insider.....»»

The MS-13 gang made El Salvador one of the most violent places not at war. The 'world's coolest dictator' created a new layer of misery. Residents of the Bajo Lempa meet weekly at a retreat center to discuss the mass arrests.Fred Ramos for InsiderGang violence has made El Salvador one of the world's most violent places not at war. The crackdown by its "Bitcoin president" created a new layer of misery.SISIGUAYO, EL SALVADOR — On the morning that Walber Rodriguez was arrested last May, he was just two minutes from his home in Sisiguayo, El Salvador.Walber and his wife Estefany had worked the overnight shift at the shrimp cooperative, and then taken their six-year-old daughter Michelle to visit a relative. Walber was driving the family motorcycle, and Estefany and Michelle sat behind him. They were headed home.Walber was pulled over at "El Ceibo," a gathering place in Sisiguayo that's marked by a sturdy tree with an abundant canopy. Soon, Walber's sister, mother, and father had arrived, trying to reason with the officer, who knew them by name. They didn't understand why Walber was being handcuffed. Sisiguayo was a place that saw police and soldiers as allies. Back in 2015, when the MS-13 gang descended on the hamlet looking to recruit local teenagers, the cops had come down hard, even murdering some of the gang members, and Walber and his neighbors had raised money to build a new police station. Now, backup was arriving for the officer. Two navy soldiers showed up, including one who had been with Walber just the night before, watching a soccer game, and informed the others that Walber was "a working man." A patrol vehicle full of additional cops followed. No one named anything that Walber had done wrong. Yet the family's pleas didn't work. "Look," said the officer who led Walber off, flipping his wrist to the sky, "this comes from above." Within days of Walber's arrest, the Rodriguezes learned he was being accused of belonging to MS-13. "El Ceibo," a gathering place in Sisiguayo, is marked by a sturdy tree with an abundant canopy. It was here that Walber Rodriguez was arrested on May 1, 2022.Fred Ramos for InsiderScenes like this have been playing out across El Salvador since March, when President Nayib Bukele declared a "state of exception" and suspended certain constitutional rights, ostensibly to deal with MS-13 and two offshoots of the rival Barrio 18 gang, Barrio 18 Sureños and Barrio 18 Revolucionarios — all of which have terrorized El Salvador and made it one of the world's most violent places not at war. The declaration was meant to be temporary, lasting 30 days, but Bukele's administration has renewed it nine times. More than 60,000 people, mostly working-age men, have been arrested, while signs along roadways feature cinematic images of heavily-armed police ridding the country of "terrorists." Just as commercial fishermen trawl their way through columns of water to maximize their catch, Salvadoran authorities have rounded people up indiscriminately and with flimsy explanations.The 'world's coolest dictator' Even before authorities crushed in tens of thousands in a span of mere weeks, El Salvador's prisons were overcrowded and disease-ridden. It now tops the list of countries with the highest percentage of their populations behind bars, according to the World Prison Brief, a distinction that has been previously held by the United States. The supposed targets, MS-13 and Barrio 18, began in Los Angeles in the late twentieth century and arrived in El Salvador by way of gang members deported from the US. In 2018, then-President Donald Trump referenced MS-13 to say the US had allowed "animals" to cross into the country, and to justify draconian immigration policies. In El Salvador, the gangs have become one of the country's biggest employers, and they have cemented their power through backroom deals with elected leaders. That appears to have continued under Bukele, a former executive at a family public relations firm who was elected president in 2019 and has fashioned himself, in his ever-changing Twitter bio, as the "world's coolest dictator." Outside El Salvador, Bukele is best known for adopting Bitcoin as a national currency. A sign in the capital, San Salvador, announces the anti-gang crackdown.Fred Ramos for InsiderLast year, the US Treasury sanctioned two senior officials from Bukele's administration for cutting a deal with the gangs in exchange for support in the 2021 midterm elections — which saw Bukele's New Ideas party win a supermajority — and committing fewer homicides. What preceded the state of exception was a horrific weekend in which the gangs killed nearly 90 people. It, too, was allegedly a product of that deal: Salvadoran journalists at the investigative news outlet El Faro reported that the rampage was MS-13's retribution for a break-down in the agreement. The cooperation doesn't end there.: Earlier this year, when the U.S. federal court of the Eastern District of New York requested the extradition of MS-13's leadership to stand trial on terrorism charges, Bukele-allied judges blocked some of the extraditions. The administration then released one of the wanted gang leaders from prison, and a senior official helped him flee to Guatemala. The administration denies all this, and, so far, things appear to be going Bukele's way. Tough-on-crime stances have historically been as popular in El Salvador as in the United States. And, as in the U.S., the public is primed to believe that anyone targeted by police is guilty until proven innocent. A Gallup poll released in October recorded Bukele's public approval at 86%. Police make an arrest in San Salvador on June 14th, 2022.Fred Ramos for InsiderThe word on the street, according to family members gathered at prisons for news of loved ones, is that while local gang cliques have gone quiet, they're still out there — hiding in full knowledge of the police, whose focus is elsewhere. According to xxx, nearly 40% of the xxx murders in El Salvador since the beginning of the state of exception have been committed by police. Meanwhile, the administration has steadily eroded public access to information about who they are taking and why. El Faro obtained documents involving 690 arrests between March and April, and found that, overwhelmingly, the police are using criteria like "looking suspicious" or "acting nervous" to justify the arrests. Bukele, for his part, has breezily mentioned a margin of "one percent error." "This time, they're not coming out," he tweeted about the state of exception detainees in mid-April. The administration is building a new prison that Bukele says will house 40,000 "terrorists" who "will be cut off from the outside world." But, by terrorists, the president seems to mean people like Walber. 'Until we can embrace them'Once it became clear that Walber had been caught up in the crackdown, the Rodriguez family's hope for a quick release evaporated. By this point, they had discovered that they were not alone. All around them in Sisiguayo and the surrounding Bajo Lempa valley, people were arrested with no satisfactory explanation. The sons of two cousins who lived in a nearby community, Mario and Pablo, were among the first to be taken; their boys were handcuffed while drinking beers after a soccer game. Another neighbor was arrested even though he'd obtained and was carrying around his spotless police record, believing, wrongly, that such a thing would matter to police. He was detained holding his one-year-old in his arms.Residents of the Bajo Lempa who'd been touched by the arrests had begun meeting weekly at a nearby retreat center. There were only about a dozen attendees then, most of them trembling in fear and unable to tell their stories without crying. Now, Estefany, along with Walber's sister, Glenda, and Walber's parents, Tomas and Margarita, became the group's newest members. The group had started in April, launched by Rossy Iraheta Marinero and José Salvador Ruiz, known as Chamba  — two lay pastoral guides whose faith follows the tenets of Latin American liberation theology. They came from the same limited economic reality as their neighbors, and, in fact, they have full-time jobs and families. None of their own relatives had been detained. But they'd been stirred by the plight and compelled by their own theological solidarity practices to act. In the early days, they found that even civil society organizations that were traditionally fearless in denouncing state violence seemed reluctant to aid the so-called "terrorists." A handful of human rights organizations, principally one called Cristosal and a feminist collective in San Salvador, stepped up and, through them, the group has now filed 111 claims of habeas corpus  — a legal demand that prosecutors present their evidence against a detained person, or forfeit custody. "The families have hope that their loved ones are still alive, but they don't have certainty of that," Rossy told me. They also created a website where they posted photos of their imprisoned kin, and composed a song, "Until we can embrace them," that enshrines their suffering and their demands.   Few groups elsewhere in the country have coalesced in this way to lobby. Rossy reminds the families ofthat they are not friendless in their woe, evoking groups in earlier decades in Argentina and Mexico – and even in El Salvador itself – who never stopped agitating for justice on behalf of loved ones who had been disappeared by the state in earlier decades, leaving maps for others to follow. "A long battle" lies ahead, Rossy cautioned them in one meeting. "You have to be prepared."Outside MarionaWalber, and many of the others from the Bajo Lempa, had ended up at a prison informally known as Mariona, for the municipality where it's located. Under the state of exception, prisons were sealed off. Not even lawyers could get in. There was no protocol for finding out how Walber was doing, or if he was even alive. In El Salvador, it falls to families to help feed and clothe incarcerated relatives. Although the State provides meals to those in prison, Bukele has limited the men to two meager plates per day, as punishment. To leave supplemental food and other essentials, or to elicit a nugget of information from a bureaucrat at the prison's entrance, Estefany, Glenda, and others from Sisiguayo had no choice but to camp out outside Mariona. It's mostly men who have been arrested, and, in the first months of the crackdown, it was mostly women waiting outside prisons, by the thousands, for days at a time, sharing meals and makeshift cardboard mattresses. Everyone was taking on debt to afford the litany of expenses that follow an arrest, and some said they'd lost their jobs because they had spent so many days waiting. It was rumored that some police were offering to trade a man's freedom for sex or money.Glenda Rodriguez walks to the Mariona prison to get news of her brother, Walber Rodriguez, on June 20, 2022.Fred Ramos for Insider The jailings came so fast that Cristosal rushed to set up an online system where families could report arrests and sign up for support as they navigated the justice system. Families described traveling hours to a public defender's office and finding a line so long they lost hope of being seen. There's now about one public defender for every 200 arrests. Initial hearings include up to 500 defendants simultaneously, and Bukele has warned he'll be monitoring judges for "favoring delinquents."  If a name disappears from the register of detainees, it could mean they'd been moved to another prison, or to a hospital, or to a morgue. The country's major newspapers run regular reports of families being unceremoniously delivered the lifeless bodies of loved ones. One of the few men who'd been held at Izalco prison and then released told the Salvadoran outlet La Prensa Grafica that prisoners had been made to run barefoot in circles for hours. When one man fell from exhaustion, the guards broke his ribs, and he died eight days later, the man said. This is the kind of news the families of the Bajo Lempa live in terror of receiving. 'We fear each other again'Sisiguayo sits in the fertile valley where the Lempa river makes its final stretch through El Salvador before flowing out to the Pacific Ocean. Here, the air tastes salty and thick, a reminder of the mangrove forests and the ocean just beyond them. Homes are one-story cinderblock structures, painted in tropical greens and blues and surrounded by clotheslines, palm trees and outhouses. A communal speaker system broadcasts news and emergency alerts.A sunbaked dirt road connects Sisiguayo to the nearest highway, and along it, residents commute by bicycle or motorbike, bending around the cows, horses and dogs that loll about. Every year around November, the rainy season leaves behind deep potholes, so each family gives the share of money they can spare to pay for gas to power the construction equipment loaned from the mayor's office to fortify the road. Most young people work in shrimp cooperatives, where many tasks are nocturnal. It's a life of little sleep and hard manual labor. Night shifts start at around three in the morning. The workers return home for breakfast at about nine, and head off to a second job, like seasonal farming or bricklaying. Here, as everywhere else, the state of exception has been a financial drain. More than a dozen men from one of the shrimp cooperatives were netted in the crackdown, and what normally takes the cooperative two weeks to accomplish now takes two or three months. Roxana, another one of the Rodriguezes' neighbors, was hit especially hard by the arrests. Her two sons, a daughter-in-law and a brother-in-law had all been rounded up, as well as her boyfriend Jeremias' two nephews. Now, she spends much of her time running endless arrest-related errands. Her youngest daughter, who's 12, had to leave school to help run the family's corner store and care for Roxana's 5-year-old grandchild. Within the first six weeks, the costs ballooned to around $1000 — a small fortune that's twice the amount Roxana spent to open and fully stock her shop. By the late summer, Jeremias, is usually out in the fields alongside Roxana's two boys and his two nephews, planting corn for the family to eat. With them in prison, he had to forgo the crop this year, because it's too much to handle alone.  The state of exception "has a human cost that we still can't fully see," said Noah Bullock, Executive Director of Cristosal. "There is the torture, the inhumane treatment, the more than eighty deaths in prisons, and that's only talking about the people who are detained. Life projects that people have built slowly over generations are suddenly paralyzed and collapsed. There's the loss of income and the simultaneous expenses. The social cost of being stigmatized as 'terrorists.'" The administration seems unperturbed by the volume of blameless people it has locked up. "There will always be victims in war," Vice President Felix Ulloa has said of the state of exception. Walber's father, Tomas, at home in Sisiguayo, on June 17, 2022.Fred Ramos for InsiderThe last time state security forces were targeting the people of the Bajo Lempa, en masse and without explanation, it was in the middle of a civil war. From late 1979 until 1992, vicious US-backed government forces clashed with a leftist guerrilla movement. More than 75,000 Salvadorans died and thousands more were disappeared. A United Nations truth commission later found that 85% of the war kidnapping, torture and murder were committed by the government forces, including police and military. Walber's parents were among those fighting on the side of the guerrillas. In 1992, when they dropped their rifles after U.N.-brokered peace talks, they were given land as a way to return to civilian life. Margarita, Tomas and their neighbors came to inhabit Sisiguayo, with its rich coastal tracts, generous for fishing and farming. For Margarita, her son's senseless arrest reminded her of the state-sponsored kidnappings that had led her to take up arms. "That's what most hurts," she told me. "Now we fear each other again."  A photo of Walber Rodriguez's father, Tomas, from when he was a member of a guerrilla group during the Salvadoran civil war, hangs in his house.Fred Ramos for InsiderThe Bajo Lempa is also a flood plain, a condition that was exacerbated by poor government management of the hydroelectric dams that line the river. During repeated devastating floods in the past three decades, the people of the region, the Rodriguez family among them, lobbied and protested, even marching about sixty miles on foot to the capital to demand better dam administration. For Walber and his older sister Glenda, who were children at the time, this was an early education in democracy. The Bajo Lempa won. San Salvador committed to building the levies needed to ameliorate the annual floods, and to communicating its plans to discharge water from the dams, so the communities in harms' way could evacuate in time.Now, they are again under siege. Surf City Outside El Salvador, Bukele is best known for two things. First, his announcement, at the Bitcoin 2021 conference in Miami, that his government would "push humanity at least a tiny bit in the right direction" by adopting Bitcoin as a national currency. Second, his "Surf City" initiative along El Salvador's 190-mile Pacific coastline, where consistent eight-to-ten-foot waves in prime spots makes it one of the best surfing spots in the Americas. Everyone knows that Surf City is his, and that Bukele's target audience is Bitcoin enthusiasts and international surfers. After the apparent breakdown in negotiations between the administration and MS-13, the gangs left a message for Bukele in the form of a mangled cadaver left on the highway that connects the beaches to the capital.By June 2022, Bloomberg estimated that Bukele's crypto gamble had cost El Salvador nearly $56 million. That same month, as thousands of Salvadorans were being locked up, Surf City was playing host to the World Surf League's Championship Tour at a beach called Punta Roca. "Eighty-two degree water, no wetsuits!" thundered from the sportscaster.Nearby, cameramen grumbled to a Salvadoran surfer that they couldn't pan without a uniformed man with a rifle coming into the image.  Locals, who in theory stand to benefit from all of this, were remarking that whitewashing the entrance wall to one beach, El Tunco, and stamping it with an English name left it looking like a drive-through bank. "It was good that he saw the potential in our waves," Enzo, who runs a couple of cafes in the area, told me one evening. And promised infrastructural improvements, like finally completing a waste-water treatment plant so that businesses aren't reliant on bottled water, haven't arrived. Meanwhile, new luxury apartments with a base price of $400,000 are being marketed to crypto enthusiasts, prompting worry that excessive development will smother the area's natural beauty and put everyone out of business. It's almost as if Surf City is Bukele's Potemkin Village, thrown up to boost his standing in a handful of elite circles as he loses legitimacy elsewhere. Bukele "wants to promote the country as a place that other people can buy," said Bullock of Cristosal. "But what is his plan for the middle-aged man who has sold coconuts in Punta Roca his whole life? El Tunco already has local commerce and its own identity. Why not honor that identity?"'Dad's not working, is he?'When Walber was jailed, Estefany told their six-year-old, Michelle, that Walber had gone out of town for a job. When Estefany and Glenda left for days camped outside the prison, she said they were studying. Michelle's questions became harder to escape. When he was away working, Walber usually sent a flood of adoring messages to his daughter on Estefany's phone, but this time, there were none to show. Before ten days had passed, Michelle cornered her mom: "Dad's not working, is he?"  At six, Michelle is absorbing that her life is built on shifting sands — a father in prison, a mother who might withhold the truthcapable of deceiving her. Estefany tried to explain, saying, "The authorities make mistakes." But it's just another tectonic lesson for a child. Walber and Estefany have known each other since they were kids and they've been partners for years, but it was only last year that they finally got married. They were the first in the family to have a real wedding, and Glenda remembers how they both giggled when they asked her to save the date — Dec. 17. Graduation photos of Walber Rodriguez, left, and his sister, Glenda Rodriguez, right, at the family house in Sisiguayo.Fred Ramos for InsiderEstefany's dress, which Glenda and Margarita helped her choose, was the color of red wine and had a sparkling brooch at the bosom. Walber had splurged on a new oxford shirt, jeans, and white tennis shoes. He also surprised Estefany with a wedding ring, which he had secretly saved for months to buy. It was a luxury she had never imagined. The cake, a single-tier white sphere adorned with fruit, held the children rapt until it was time to dig in. When Glenda thinks about the politicians and the police who get to return home to their families at night, so easy in their freedom, it fills her with rage. They can't even begin to comprehend what they have stolen from their people.'No one else will defend him but us' The retreat center where the families met every week was a thirty-minute crawling drive down the potholed dirt road from where Walber was arrested. In late June, 54 days after Walber's arrest, three-dozen of them sat as they usually did, in a circle of plastic chairs in an open-air pavilion, roofed in ceramic tile and ringed in a garden of carefully-manicured green.Rossy stood in the middle of the circle, wearing flip-flops and a white tunic embroidered with flowers, calling on people to speak. Chamba kept a notebook propped between his thigh and the arm of his wheelchair. The families were debating: Should they stay the course, and pursue their habeas corpus claims in court? Or was it time to take to the streets? The habeas corpus route had been Rossy's idea. Back in 2020, right when COVID-19 upended global travel, Rossy was in Ecuador at a theological conference. Bukele was about to close the borders and implement some of the most restrictive pandemic measures in the world. She managed to get onto the last flight into the Salvadoran airport and ended up at a quarantine center for six weeks. Desperate for a way out, a lawyer friend advised her to file a habeas corpus claim. It worked – she was released. Now, it's a tactic that more than 1,800 other Salvadorans across the country have also used since March, but to little effect since the administration has wrenched the legal system into its orbit, forcing many judges to retire and intimidating the rest, along with flooding the system with many times more defendants than it can handle. Members of the group have been harassed by the police, and there was always concern that cops might show up in the middle of the meeting to arrest everyone. One woman who had started attending after her husband was arrested was then herself arrested. Now, the neighbors couldn't agree on what was best. The state of exception allowed the police to detain anyone for any reason. If they protested and ended up incarcerated alongside their loved ones, who would defend them then?  People clamored to speak. Rossy called on a gray-haired man in a cowboy hat. He was one of the many who had spent consecutive days and nights on the street outside Mariona, where his son was being held, and while there, he heard rumor that the guards take vengeance on prisoners whose families caused trouble out front. He rose slowly, and then stated his firm opposition to any public action. He reminded the group that it wasn't only themselves who would pay the price for protesting. When he took up arms in the civil war, he said, it was his own life he was putting at risk. But now, any action might put his son's life at risk. When he finished speaking, Glenda – who, at 28 years old, was among the youngest group members – raised her hand. "I may not have as much life experience as many of you. And I didn't live the war fighting in the mountains like many of you did," she began. But, she continued, she did know that all of El Salvador's civil rights victories, including democracy itself, were the product of struggles on the street. She too had camped outside Mariona, and she had learned that viral malicious rumors appeared on social media as part of an attempt to silence families. A meeting of the Bajo Lempa families on June 17, 2022.Fred Ramos for Insider"If the state is going to kill my brother, it will do so whether or not I speak out. If it will incarcerate me – the same is true," she reasoned. "No one else will defend him but us." Finally, there was simply the value of the truth: "The president wants to make this country look like a wonderland, like everything is Surf City," she said – but the world needed to know what was really happening in El Salvador.  The group ultimately decided that Glenda was right: it was time to take the streets. And just as each Bajo Lempa family had discovered that they were not alone when they found the group, now they saw there were hundreds of families around the country who, like them, were ready to march in San Salvador. They began regularly joining the others in the capital to protest and speak to the media, while continuing their habeas corpus petitions. Just before Christmas, the families of the Bajo Lempa packed a bridge on a main thoroughfare and demanded their loved ones be freed. For now, the Bukele administration remains unmoved. The group is now planning to sue their government in an international human rights court.One day last summer, before anyone comprehended how long this would last, Roxana told me something that multiple women in the Bajo Lempa echoed: Since her children were detained, she has been dreaming of them. In one dream, she was sitting at home in the dark, and one of her three sons walked through the front door. He paused in the threshold. She thought it was Cristian, the only one who has not yet been taken. But when he stepped out of the shadow, she saw that it was Javier, her youngest. He was dressed just as he had been on April 27, the night the police hauled him away. She called to him – and then the dream ended. "As a mother," she said, "you wake up to a nightmare."This reporting was supported by the International Women's Media Foundation's Howard G. Buffett Fund for Women Journalists.Read the original article on Business Insider.....»»

The output at Shell's (SHEL) Prelude FLNG facility has been disrupted on a few occasions in the past. Shell plc’s SHEL output at the Prelude floating liquefied natural gas (FLNG) unit has been halted again after the British oil and gas major stated that a small fire had been detected in a turbine enclosure on board the facility, 120 miles off the coast of Australia. A Shell spokesperson told Reuters that the fire at the giant FLNG unit "was rapidly extinguished."The facility had to be closed down for almost a year after an electrical trip in February 2020. Production resumed in January 2021. However, the unit was shut down again in December 2021 after a sudden loss of power and subsequent failed attempts to re-establish reliable power aboard.After a four-month halt, Shell resumed shipping LNG from Prelude FLNG in April 2022. However, shipments were interrupted again in June 2022 due to industrial action by workers protesting for enhanced pay. SHEL and the unions reached a pay deal in August, ending the 76-day strike and recommencing output.The Prelude FLNG facility produces natural gas off the coast of Australia. It is located at the Browse Basin, about 295 miles northwest of Broome in Western Australia. Shell has a 67.5% interest in the facility, while Japan’s Inpex holds a 17.5% stake. Additionally, Korea’s Kogas has 10%, and Taiwan’s CPC holds a 5% stake in the unit. Prelude FLNG can produce up to 3.6 million tons per annum (mtpa) of LNG, 1.3 mtpa of condensate and 0.4 mtpa of LPG.Headquartered in London, Shell is one of the primary oil supermajors, a group of U.S. and Europe-based big energy multinationals with operations spanning worldwide. The company is fully integrated as it participates in every aspect related to energy, from oil production to refining and marketing. SHEL operates as an energy and petrochemical company.Shell currently carries a Zack Rank #3 (Hold). Investors interested in the energy sector might look at the following better-ranked stocks that presently carry a Zacks Rank #2 (Buy). You can see the complete list of today’s Zacks #1 Rank (Strong Buy) stocks here.BP plc BP is a fully integrated energy company with a strong focus on renewable energy. BP’s third-quarter adjusted earnings of $2.59 per American Depositary Share on a replacement-cost basis, excluding non-operating items, beat the Zacks Consensus Estimate of earnings of $1.94 per share.BP is expected to see an earnings rise of 138% in 2022. Before reporting its December-quarter results, BP is willing to complete an additional $2.5 billion in share buybacks. BP boasted that this would make the total declared share repurchases from 2022 surplus cash flow $8.5 billion.Oceaneering International, Inc. OII is one of the leading suppliers of offshore equipment and technology solutions to the energy industry. OII’s third-quarter 2022 adjusted profit of 23 cents per share beat the Zacks Consensus Estimate of 13 cents.Oceaneering is expected to see an earnings rise of 82.4% in 2022. For 2022, Oceaneering projects consolidated EBITDA in the band of $215-$240 million and continued significant free cash flow generation in the range of $25-$75 million.Phillips 66 PSX is the leading player in its operations, like refining, chemicals and midstream, in terms of size, efficiency and strength. PSX’s third-quarter 2022 adjusted earnings per share of $6.46 beat the Zacks Consensus Estimate of $4.98.Phillips is expected to see an earnings rise of 251% in 2022. PSX’s board of directors authorized a $5-billion increase on its stock repurchase program, bringing the total share repurchases authorized since 2012 to $20 billion. This reflects Phillips’ focus on returning capital to stockholders. Infrastructure Stock Boom to Sweep America A massive push to rebuild the crumbling U.S. infrastructure will soon be underway. It’s bipartisan, urgent, and inevitable. Trillions will be spent. Fortunes will be made. The only question is “Will you get into the right stocks early when their growth potential is greatest?” Zacks has released a Special Report to help you do just that, and today it’s free. Discover 5 special companies that look to gain the most from construction and repair to roads, bridges, and buildings, plus cargo hauling and energy transformation on an almost unimaginable scale.Download FREE: How To Profit From Trillions On Spending For Infrastructure >>Want the latest recommendations from Zacks Investment Research? Today, you can download 7 Best Stocks for the Next 30 Days. Click to get this free report BP p.l.c. (BP): Free Stock Analysis Report Oceaneering International, Inc. (OII): Free Stock Analysis Report Phillips 66 (PSX): Free Stock Analysis Report Shell PLC Unsponsored ADR (SHEL): Free Stock Analysis ReportTo read this article on Zacks.com click here.Zacks Investment Research.....»»

Amazon and Starbucks face their latest union drive at a joint café in New York. It shows how the companies' images as progressive are being tested. Howard Schultz, the founder of Starbucks.Jim Bennett/Getty Images Workers at a café jointly operated by Starbucks and Amazon are voting on a union this week. About 30 Starbucks employees at the New York store will participate in the vote, Bloomberg reported. It's the latest way both companies' images as progressive employers are being tested. The new Starbucks Amazon Go stores that opened last year in New York City were supposed to be a dream collaboration, serving frappuccinos and grab-and-go food in stores that utilize Amazon's Just Walk Out technology and Starbucks' mobile ordering. But for some workers, the high-tech, high-profile store has created more work, not less.Some workers say the cobranded location has "doubled their workload with no additional pay," according to a story first reported by Bloomberg. One of the Starbucks Amazon Go stores is considering unionizing this week. Roughly 30 Starbucks employees at the Times Square location will decide on December 15 whether to join Starbucks Workers United.Despite the automation of ordering and paying, the workers say that they now have to inform customers how the store works when they enter, Bloomberg reported. They also risk getting burns while preparing Amazon's hot-food items, according to the report.The union drive is the latest example of the contrast between how Starbucks and Amazon view themselves as employers and how their workers feel. Under CEO Howard Schultz, Starbucks has tried to be a "model employer," according to a story on Schultz and unions at the coffee chain in The New York Times this month. Amazon's former CEO Jeff Bezos, meanwhile, told employees last year that he wanted Amazon to be "Earth's Best Employer" as well as "Earth's Safest Place to Work.""We are listening and learning from the partners in these stores as we always do across the country. From the beginning, we've been clear in our belief that we are better together as partners, without a union between us, and that conviction has not changed. We remain committed to our partners and will continue to work together, side-by-side, to make Starbucks a company that works for everyone," a Starbucks spokesperson told Insider.The union that would represent the employees at the Times Square store did not respond to Insider's requests for comment.Amazon workers at the LDJ5 Amazon Sort Center rally in support of the union on April 24, 2022, in Staten Island, New York.Andrew Lichtenstein/Corbis/Getty ImagesThe union drive at the joint store is the lastest for both Amazon and StarbucksStarbucks cafés and Amazon warehouses across the country have been on a unionization spree over the past two years.  If the Starbucks Amazon Go workers voted to unionize, they would join about 7,000 workers who have organized at roughly 260 Starbucks cafés in the US since last year. About 330 Starbucks have held votes to unionize, according to NPR. Earlier this month, some workers at about 100 stores went on strike during Red Cup Day, when Starbucks gives customers free reusable cups for eligible holiday drink orders. The workers were protesting "short staffing and the company's failure to bargain with union stores," Starbucks Workers United said in a press release.Amazon's JFK8 warehouse on Staten Island, meanwhile, is the only warehouse that has unionized. Workers there held a vote earlier this year after similar warehouses in Bessemer, Alabama, and another on Long Island voted against a union.Starbucks workers have pointed to issues including low pay and rigid work schedules in their union campaigns. Amazon warehouse workers have said the controversial practice of tracking "idle time" has led workers to skip bathroom breaks and that repeated movements tied to warehouse work lead to injury.A Starbucks Amazon Go cafeStarbucksBoth Amazon and Starbucks have cultivated reputations as progressive employers and pushed back against unionsBoth companies have painted themselves as forward-thinking on worker treatment and benefits.In October, Amazon raised average starting pay for its front-line workers to $19 from $18 and announced a program to train workers to take jobs within Amazon Web Services.As early as 1988, Starbucks extended healthcare coverage to part-time employees and ensured that it included domestic partnerships. Other industry-leading benefits have come in its wake, such as college-tuition coverage, 401k plans, and parental leave. Many of these benefits are rare for workers at retailers or restaurants. The unionization movement at Starbucks locations has shaken Schultz, who stepped in as interim CEO earlier this year. He has publicly stated he would not embrace union efforts at a company where he is known as the architect of creating progressive employee benefits."What's happening in America is much bigger than Starbucks," Schultz told The New York Times in June. "Starbucks, unfortunately, happens to be the proxy of what is happening. We're right in the middle of it. If a company is as progressive as Starbucks, that's done so much and at the 100th percentile, can be threatened by a third party, then anyone can."Read the original article on Business Insider.....»»

Zhengzhou, a city in east-central China with the world's largest Apple iPhone factory, had been in lockdown since Friday amid a surge in COVID-19. Foxconn employees take shuttle buses to head home on October 30, 2022 in Zhengzhou, Henan Province of China.Getty Images China is loosening its COVID-19 controls in Zhengzhou, home to Apple's largest iPhone factory. The changes end a five-day lockdown in the city. Factory workers have been protesting against China's strict pandemic restrictions amid an Omicron surge. China's "iPhone city" is ending its strict lockdown.Zhengzhou, a city in east-central China that is home to Apple's largest iPhone factory, Foxconn, is lifting its lockdown policy after five days, Bloomberg first reported, citing a WeChat post from the local government.The changes go into effect November 30, local time, according to the announcement.No new infections have been found for five days in a row, according to a translation of the announcement, and the status of the city has been reduced to a low-risk zone.Businesses can open to the public and resume activity in an orderly manner, according to the announcement, though they must continue to follow existing health protocols.People living outside of "high-risk areas" that don't have social activities don't have to get tested if they don't have to travel, like the elderly who live at home, or students and people who work from home, according to the government's post.The city made the announcement hours after officials in China said they would avoid strict restrictions, Bloomberg reports, after protests erupted in cities across the country against President Xi Jinping's zero-COVID policy.The lockdown came amid the current outbreak of cases of the Omicron variant which is highly transmissible. Social media videos appeared to show hundreds of workers at Zhengzhou's Foxconn factory clashing with security guards over COVID-19 restrictions at the factory.Protests against China's zero-COVID policy have spread throughout the country to cities like Shanghai, Xinjiang, Beijing, and Nanjing, after 10 people died in an apartment fire. The protests threatened to impact Apple's iPhone output, with Bloomberg reporting that there could be a production shortage of almost six million iPhone Pros this year as a result.Read the original article on Business Insider.....»»

China's lockdowns are unnecessarily strict, public-health experts say. They can delay a catastrophic COVID wave, but they can't stop one. Thousands of demonstrators erupt in rare protests against COVID-19 restrictions across China.AFP/Getty Images Protests are erupting across China over the country's restrictive zero-COVID policies.  Public-health experts say the policies are unsustainable, ineffective, and unnecessarily severe. Without vaccination campaigns targeting older adults, China's lockdowns may only delay a catastrophic COVID wave. Protestors are flooding streets across China — the largest protests since 1989's Tiananmen Square demonstrations — demanding relief from the country's restrictive zero-COVID lockdowns, and public-health experts agree with them."There really are no benefits to this type of irrational policy except to feed the naked power lust of the leaders of China," Amesh Adalja, a senior scholar at the Johns Hopkins University Center for Health Security, told Insider in an email.A woman delivers food to a residential compound that is under lockdown in Beijing, China.Thomas Peter/ReutersChina's zero-COVID measures are among the strictest in the world, and include frequent mass testing, closures of businesses and schools, and quarantining entire factories and stores on-site, according to the BBC. Public anger boiled over on Thursday after a fire in the locked-down city of Urumqi killed 10 people, reports The New York Times.People leave flowers and candles in protest over COVID-19 restrictions in mainland China, during a commemoration of the victims of a fire in Urumqi, in Hong Kong.Tyrone Siu/ReutersThere is no easy way forward for China, but constant 2020-style lockdowns are not the solution, according to public-health experts, who called the policies unsustainable, ineffective, and irrational. Eradicating COVID-19 is impossible, they say."Zero COVID is about elimination rather than mitigation of this virus. It's too late to eliminate. The cat is out of the bag. COVID is here to stay," Maureen Miller, an infectious-disease epidemiologist at Columbia University, told Insider via email.People talk through gaps in a barrier at a sealed residential area, following a COVID-19 outbreak in Shanghai, China.Aly Song/ReutersIn reality, lockdowns are "pause buttons," Jennifer Nuzzo, director of the Pandemic Center at Brown University School of Public Health, told Insider. "They're supposed to buy time to build up immunity in the population through vaccines," she said.China is buying time and then squandering it, experts say, with the potential for a devastating wave of infections looming on the horizon. In the meantime, people across China have grown tired of restrictions.Protestors and police gather during a protest against China's strict zero COVID measures in Beijing, China.Photo by Kevin Frayer/Getty ImagesChina may be primed for a catastrophic waveThe most vulnerable people in China — aged 80 years and older — are not well-vaccinated."If you look at the prevalence of vaccinations among the elderly, that it was almost counterproductive, the people you really needed to protect were not getting protected," Dr. Anthony Fauci, President Biden's chief medical adviser, said about China on NBC's Meet the Press on Sunday.In China, 59% of people age 80 and older have received one dose of the vaccine, according to data from the Chinese National Health Commission reported by BBC. Roughly half of that age group received two vaccine doses and 20% have gotten two shots plus a booster.A person walks past a poster encouraging older people to get vaccinated against COVID-19 in Beijing, China.Tingshu Wang/ReutersVaccination rates among 60- to 69-year-olds in China are higher than among the 80 and older set, with 89% having received one dose of the vaccine, and 87% having gotten two doses, according to the National Health Commission data.In the US, 95% of adults 65 and older have received at least a first vaccine dose, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and 92% are fully vaccinated. As a result, some experts fear an unchecked wave of Omicron infections could easily rip through China's cities, overwhelm healthcare systems, and cause mass death."Even if it is slightly less lethal than earlier waves of the virus, you can just imagine a virus ripping through a densely populated, largely older population in a short period of time. And while we've learned a lot about how to care for COVID, it's impossible to deliver that care when there's just too many people needing it all at once," Nuzzo said.What's more, research has shown the CoronaVac and Sinopharm vaccines, which China has been using, are less effective than the mRNA vaccines many Americans received. So it's possible that even China's fully vaccinated residents have lower immunity than those in the US.Epidemic-prevention workers in protective suits stand outside a residential compound that is under lockdown amid outbreaks of COVID-19 in Beijing, China.Thomas Peter/Reuters"On the one hand, the [zero-COVID] policy is clearly heavy-handed, and certainly the Chinese people are reacting to that," Neil Seghal, an assistant professor of health policy at the University of Maryland School of Public Health, told Insider, adding, "But on the other hand, it's not clear that in the immediacy there is a good alternative."Not everyone agrees that lifting lockdowns would be catastrophic."I'm still not so sure whether policy relaxations are going to be immediately followed by mass die off in the country," Yanzhong Huang, a senior fellow for global health at the Council on Foreign Relations, where he specializes in China, told Insider.He argues the incoming COVID wave could bring fewer hospitalizations than some experts fear — low enough for the healthcare system to handle it.As a result, Huang thinks the zero-COVID lockdowns are completely unwarranted. "If you really don't have that many severe cases, why do you need this?" he said.Lockdowns buy time, but China hasn't used it to ramp up vaccinationA woman gets tested at a nucleic acid testing site, following a COVID-19 outbreak in Shanghai, China.Aly Song/ReutersThe key to avoiding a potentially catastrophic surge is increasing vaccinations among the most vulnerable.China could use the time its lockdowns have bought to conduct fresh vaccine campaigns focused on people aged 80 years and older — but it hasn't. The government could also approve and distribute a foreign-made mRNA vaccine — but it still hasn't. Instead of using the Western mRNA vaccines that are already available, China's government is trying to develop its own, according to The Washington Post."It's a really vulnerable situation for China to be in," Nuzzo said, adding, "Unless they really use this time to protect the population through vaccination, I just don't understand how this is going to end well."Read the original article on Business Insider.....»»

Workers in the world's largest iPhone factory, which is based in Zhengzhou, have protested against pay and China's COVID-19 rules. Injured workers sit on the ground during a protest outside a Foxconn factory in Zhengzhou, China.REUTERS Apple faces shortfall of six million iPhone Pros due to mass protests in China, per Bloomberg. Workers at the world's largest iPhone factory have protested against pay and COVID-19 rules. Apple and its supplier Foxconn expect to make up for the shortfall in 2023, a source told Bloomberg. Apple faces a shortfall of nearly six million iPhone Pros this year as protests against China's zero-COVID policy ramp up in the country.Bloomberg reported the news on Monday, citing a source.The tech giant has a factory in Zhengzhou city, located in the central Chinese province of Henan, where a recent COVID-19 outbreak occured. Foxconn, the company that makes iPhones for Apple, runs the factory.A person familiar with operations inside the Zhengzhou factory, who requested to remain anonymous, told Bloomberg the estimated shortfall in production could change. They added that it depended on how fast Foxconn can coax workers back into the plant amid the protests.iPhone production could be pushed back further if COVID-19 lockdowns carry on over the next few weeks, the person told Bloomberg. Apple and Foxconn project they'll make up for the shortfall in six million iPhone Pros next year, the person added.Protests started erupting at the world's biggest iPhone factory on Tuesday over withheld pay and harsh pandemic-related restrictions. Videos showed crowds of factory workers shoving and charging guards at the plant, Insider reported.Over the weekend, the protests escalated and spread to other cities such as Xinjiang, Beijing, and Nanjing amid growing opposition to China's strict zero-COVID policies. The protests followed 10 people dying in an apartment fire in Xinjiang. Locals said firefighting was hindered by virus-control barriers, but city officials deny this, per the BBC.Foxconn's Zhengzhou plant, where half of the world's iPhones are made, employed 200,000 workers at one point, per Reuters. The protests are causing supply chain issues as Apple was hit with shortages on Black Friday.CNN reported that Foxconn on Wednesday offered 10,000 yuan, around $1,400, to protesting staff if they quit their jobs and leave the factory in Zhengzhou, known as "iPhone City." The payment is more than the average monthly wage for the factory workers, per Bloomberg. Apple and Foxconn didn't immediately respond to Insider's request for comment made outside of normal US operating hours.Read the original article on Business Insider.....»»

Protests and warehouse strikes come as Amazon faces unionization efforts across the world from Staten Island to Japan. An Amazon Warehouse worker participates in a protest in New Delhi, Friday, Nov. 25, 2022AP Photo/Manish Swarup Protests by Amazon workers and allies were planned in 30-plus countries on Black Friday. Campaign concerns include competitive wages, safe working conditions, and carbon emissions. The Make Amazon Pay campaign comes as Amazon faces unionization efforts across the globe. Black Friday kicks off the holiday shopping season. For Amazon, it's already off to a rocky start.Today, Amazon workers and activists are protesting to secure better working conditions across the globe. The campaign is led by Make Amazon Pay, a coalition of 70 trade unions and organizations including Greenpeace, Oxfam, and Amazon Workers International. "The pandemic has exposed how Amazon places profits ahead of workers, society, and our planet," Make Amazon Pay wrote in a list of demands shared on its website. "Amazon takes too much and gives back too little. It is time to Make Amazon Pay." Protests were planned in more than 30 countries, including India, Germany, and Japan, according to Make Amazon Pay. In the US, protests are expected in more than 10 cities from coast to coast at Amazon's main headquarters in Seattle, Jeff Bezos' penthouse in New York City, Whole Foods stores, and Amazon warehouses.Strikes are planned at 18 warehouses in France and Germany that were coordinated by trade unions, and several in the US, such as STL8, Amazon's warehouse in St. Peters, Missouri.Gig Workers Association (GigWA) in association with Amazon Warehouse workers and Hawkers Joint Action Committee participate in a protest in New Delhi, Friday, Nov. 25, 2022.Manish Swarup/AP"Amazon workers need higher pay. We need safer work," stated Jennifer Crane, who works at the Missouri warehouse, in a video made by Make Amazon Pay. "Things don't have to be this way. Amazon can afford to give us a living wage and to provide us a rate of work that doesn't lead to injuries of death."Amazon spokesperson Kelly Nantel previously told Insider that the company is working to address campaign concerns, including carbon emissions and competitive wages."These groups represent a variety of interests, and while we are not perfect in any area, if you objectively look at what Amazon is doing in each one of these areas you'll see that we do take our role and our impact very seriously," Nantel said. While unionization efforts by Amazon employees in the US have garnered many headlines, workers are also pushing for better working conditions overseas. Subcontracted drivers in Japan recently formed a union, which protested in front of the retail giant's Japan headquarters in Meguro, Tokyo.  In Bangladesh, garment workers rallied for union recognition, better pay, and humane working conditions."Garment workers, like those I represent, toil to swell Amazon's coffers often without any recognition that we are even Amazon workers," said Nazma Akhter, president of the Sommilito Garments Sramik Federation in Bangladesh, in a statement.Akhter continued: "Amazon is the third largest direct employer in the world, but when you take us in the supply chain into account, it is even larger." Even some corporate employees are considering unionizing, according to messages seen by Insider's Katherine Long. This comes on the heels of Amazon announcing its plan to layoff 10,000 corporate employees, with the effort starting on November 15.Read the original article on Business Insider.....»»

After violent protests, the iPhone assembler has offered payments of more than a month's wages if staff quit and leave the factory, CNN reported. Foxconn employees take buses to their home towns after a COVID-19 outbreak in Zhengzhou last month.Getty Images Protests erupted this week at Foxconn's Zhengzhou plant over withheld pay and COVID-19 restrictions. The company has offered workers 10,000 yuan ($1,400) to quit their jobs and leave the factory. The plant, which has 200,000 workers, is the world's largest iPhone factory. The Chinese company that makes iPhones for Apple has offered 10,000 yuan ($1,400) to protesting staff if they quit their jobs and leave its vast factory in Zhengzhou, CNN reported.Videos posted to social media showed violent clashes between workers and security forces at Foxconn's plant in Zhengzhou, the location of a recent COVID-19 outbreak.Protests erupted at the sprawling factory complex on Tuesday and Wednesday over withheld pay and harsh pandemic-related restrictions. Video footage shows security officers, clad in protective suits, kicking and beating workers. On Wednesday, in a message seen by CNN, Foxconn asked rioting workers to "please return to your dormitories" and promised to pay employees a settlement of 8,000 yuan ($1,120) if they quit. The company also pledged an additional 2,000 yuan ($280) if the workers left the plant on buses.The payout is more than the average monthly wage for workers at the factory, Bloomberg reported. Tensions have been brewing at Foxconn's Zhengzhou plant since an outbreak of the virus late last month. Before the outbreak the plant employed about 200,000 workers who lived in dormitories on-site.On October 26, Foxconn adopted a "closed loop system" — in line with China's controversial zero-COVID strategy — that severely restricted their movements and even forced some to sleep on factory floors. The draconian restrictions resulted in many workers fleeing the compound. In a bid to lure employees back earlier this month, Foxconn offered new recruits a 3,000 yuan ($420) subsidy if they completed 30 days of work and pledged to double the payment if they stayed for 60 days, CNN reported. This week's protests erupted after workers were told that these payments wouldn't be made until March and May next year, Reuters reported.In a statement to Reuters, Foxconn said its "miscommunication" over promised payment packages was a "technical error." "Our team has been looking into the matter and discovered a technical error occurred during the onboarding process. We apologize for an input error in the computer system and guarantee that the actual pay is the same as agreed and the official recruitment posters."In a statement to CNN, Apple — Foxconn's largest customer — said it was "working closely with Foxconn to ensure their employees' concerns are addressed."Apple and Foxconn did not immediately respond to requests for comment from Insider. Read the original article on Business Insider.....»»

The protests erupted over unpaid wages and workers fearing they may be infected by COVID-19, an unnamed witness told Bloomberg. A staff member wearing personal protective equipment (PPE) disinfects a factory at Industrial Park of Foxconn on November 6, 2022 in Zhengzhou, Henan Province of China.VCG/VCG via Getty Images Online footage appears to show workers rioting at Foxconn's iPhone making plant in Zhengzhou, China. The mass protests are the latest escalation of tensions over China's COVID-19 measures at the plant. The clips show swarms of angry workers shoving and charging guards at the factory. Videos on social media appear to show hundreds of workers clashing with security guards at Apple's biggest iPhone-making factory in China, as discontent erupts over draconian COVID-19 measures at the plant.Workers at Foxconn's Zhengzhou plant can be seen swarming the factory grounds and charging guards wearing white hazmat suits.Insider was unable to independently verify when or where the videos were taken.—Jennifer Zeng 曾錚 (@jenniferzeng97) November 22, 2022—老司机 (@h5LPyKL7TP6jjop) November 23, 2022The violent protests began early Wednesday Beijing time, Bloomberg reported, citing an unnamed witness at the factory who also sent clips of the incident to the outlet. According to the outlet, one video shows guards beating a person on the ground with sticks.The riots occurred over unpaid wages and workers' concerns that they would be infected by COVID-19, the witness told Bloomberg. Authorities deployed anti-riot police to restore order, the witness also said, according to Bloomberg.One livestream showed clouds of smoke being dispensed from a police vehicle, as a person shouted that tear gas and smoke bombs had been deployed, Agence France-Presse reported.Foxconn and Apple did not immediately respond to Insider's requests for comment.At the start of October, Foxconn's Zhengzhou plant employed around 200,000 workers, many of whom come from rural villages and towns but live in company-run dormitories.Tensions at the plant have repeatedly flared over the last month as the facility struggled to quell a COVID outbreak in accordance with China's strict zero-COVID policy.The southern Chinese city of Guangzhou also saw unrest over coronavirus restrictions, with crowds marching on the streets and breaking down quarantine barriers on November 15. The protests were concentrated in the Haizhu district, where many residents are poorer laborers concerned of food shortages and rising prices as they were barred from work, per the BBC.Tensions have been brewing at the Zhengzhou plant since OctoberFoxconn said on October 26 that its Zhengzhou plant was dealing with a COVID outbreak, per the South China Morning Post. Other districts in Zhengzhou city were also fighting outbreaks, and locked down as well. Throughout this period, the plant adopted a "closed loop system," under which workers are transported directly from their dormitories to the factory and back. The system allows the plant to keep running while attempting to stamp out the coronavirus. However, these lockdown-like conditions severely restrict the movements of workers, barring them from dining at cafeterias and even requiring some to sleep on factory floors.On October 31, videos emerged of workers fleeing the factory due to food shortage concerns and discontent over the curbs. Reuters reported that developments at Foxconn's plant could cut its iPhone production by 30% ahead of the holiday season. The Zhengzhou factory makes the majority of Apple's global iPhone shipments.Foxconn later denied claims on social media that several of its workers died from COVID-19 at the plant, calling footage of protesting workers "maliciously edited." The company temporarily raised wages and increased bonuses for workers in a bid to entice them to return.Provincial authorities also asked retired soldiers and government workers from neighboring cities to work at the Zhengzhou plant, saying they can receive their current salaries and additional wages from the factory, Reuters reported on November 16.This story is developing. Please check back for updates.Read the original article on Business Insider.....»»

The reported government-led hiring spree comes after hundreds of Foxconn workers fled the premises to avoid strict quarantine protocols. Foxconn employees take shuttle buses to head home on October 30, 2022 in Zhengzhou, Henan Province of China.VCG / Contributor Chinese government officials are helping Foxconn recruit Communist Party members, civil servants, and military veterans amid a labor shortage, NYT reports. Hundreds of workers recently fled the iPhone manufacturer's facilities amid a COVID outbreak. Foxconn's labor shortage could mean iPhone shipment delays around the holidays.  Chinese government officials are helping the largest manufacturer of Apple's iPhone, Foxconn, to recruit Communist Party members, civil servants, and military veterans, The New York Times reported on Friday.The move is reportedly part of a state-led effort to fill in the factory's labor shortage in the wake of a mass employee exodus over fears of strict COVID-related lockdowns.Foxconn, located in Zhengzhou, China, employs and houses more than 200,000 workers coming from rural villages and towns across China in dorms. The company told the Times that it's been working with local government agencies to hire more people to ramp up iPhone production and avoid shipment delays as the holiday season approaches. Local government officials in Zhoukou, a city that's two-hours away from Zhengzhou, gathered this week to discuss Foxconn's recruitment difficulties and established quotas to hire more factory workers, according to a Shanghai Securities Journal report written in Chinese.Recruitment notices were also posted across China's government-run social media pages, according to the Times. Foxconn will reportedly pay new workers up to 30 yuan, or $4 a day and promises them a 3,000 yuan bonus after 30 days if they start working by mid-November. While China has a track record of deploying military and government officials during turbulent times, an activist familiar with China's labor trends told the Times that recruiting retired soldiers in particular is an unprecedented move for private businesses. He emphasized that older veterans may struggle to work in physically taxing factory conditions. Foxconn's recruitment drive comes after hundreds of Foxconn workers fled its facilities in mid-October to avoid getting trapped quarantining there in light of a COVID-outbreak on-site. China locked down the area around the plant for seven days, which threatened to impact iPhone production heading into the holidays.Some workers were filmed climbing over fences and walking down highways with bags of personal belongings, heading toward their hometowns in an attempt to avoid alleged food shortages among quarantined employees.Unverified videos seen by Insider also show Foxconn workers protesting prison-like confinement in their dorms amid claims that eight employees allegedly died in a shared room, though Foxconn denied that anyone has died there.Read the original article on Business Insider.....»»