15 December 21
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America's ongoing war on women just got nastier.
So why has 2021 become the most anti-abortion year in history, with 21 states ready to ban or severely limit abortion if the U.S. Supreme Court overturns Roe v. Wade? Why are Republican legislators in Arkansas and North Dakota supporting bills to ban virtually all abortions at any stage of pregnancy, making abortions less available today than in the 1600s when abortion was permitted up until at least the third month?
Because, to them, it’s about power, careers, and money—not abortion. For those pandering for votes and donations, abortion is merely a popular platform to get everyone’s attention in order to promote other “products”: their political ambitions, their religious agenda, their business interests. They are like slick hucksters taking advantage of the rowdy crowd at a lynching to sell miniature gallows for the home mantel.
The timing of the sudden outrage couldn’t be more suspicious or revealing. Texas governor Greg Abbott wants to be the New Trump: a younger, more appealing version of the former president but with less of the sexual-harassment-twice-impeached-failed-businesses-hiding-taxes-creepy-dad baggage. New packaging but the same old bitter aftertaste, like New Coke. Toward that end of getting the GOP nomination, he’s led the Texas Republicans into legislating against all the conservatives’ usual suspects: transsexuals, vaccines, immigrants, the poor, minorities, and women. He’s willing to climb over the broken backs of all of them to be president. What a patriot. He’s definitely not interested in what his own state wants, having signed the U.S.’s most restrictive abortion law even though 46% of Texans disapprove of the law while only 39% approve.
Republicans in other states who also want to chase the nomination, or curry Abbott’s or Trump’s favor, are rushing to pass similar laws that envision a soundstage version of America in the 1950s, with obedient women, compliant Blacks, grateful immigrants, and white men in charge of everything. They don’t care if these laws get overturned, they will have gotten the publicity they wanted.
For those who want to discuss abortion based on the merits of the arguments, we should examine a few of those main arguments.
Life begins at conception.
Everyone agrees that human life begins at conception. The science is irrefutable. However, that’s not the actual issue. The issue is when during the gestation do we choose to call the zygote/embryo/fetus a “human being.” Human life is defined by science, but “human being” is defined by society because it is society that decides when to convey equal rights of protection. That’s why societies throughout history have been able to define people who didn’t look like them as not fully human beings, as we did with Blacks in the original Constitution.
Yes, if left alone, the human cells will develop into a human being. But that doesn’t mean it is a human being until it is born. A common analogy is that cookie dough placed in the oven isn’t a cookie until it is fully baked. (Hold off on the protestations about heart beats and brain waves. I’m getting to that.)
Society decides the exact point to call the cells a human being and grant it full rights. The problem arises when granting the zygote/embryo/fetus full rights as a human being restricts the rights of women so that they have fewer rights than men, which most see as a greater evil than abortion. Our country has been slow to exorcize the inherent misogyny in its laws, attitudes, and culture, but great progress has been made in the past 50 years. Unfortunately, the backlash to those gains is choosing to say that even though you are a valuable member of society with many social and family ties, the zygote/embryo/fetus is more valuable.
Should government have the right to force a person to do something life-threatening?
Alice is married with two young children. She is two months into a planned pregnancy when her husband, Bill, is killed in an auto accident. The family has been living comfortably on their two incomes, but without Bill’s income, raising two children will be a severe hardship. Even if she could make the finances work, Alice is worried about the risks of childbirth (which has a much higher fatality rate than abortion). She doesn’t want to risk leaving her two children orphans. Does the government have the right to tell her she must take that chance of death and leaving her children as orphans?
How big of a risk is it? The rate of death in full-term childbirth is 8.8 per 100,000 versus the .06 per 100,000 with abortion. Another study found there were 17 maternal deaths per 100,000, more than double that of most other high-income countries. (Go here for a comprehensive fact check of pregnancy risk statistics.)
It doesn’t reflect America’s values to have the government insist a woman endure this life-threatening risk when men don’t have to do the same. Polls show that most people would support abortion if the woman’s life was at risk. But her life is always at risk. Shouldn’t she choose whether or not to take that risk?
Abortion is murder.
This is the main argument of many anti-abortionists: Women losing their right to control their own bodies pales when comparing it to the murder of the zygote/embryo/fetus.
The problem is that most of the people who argue this don’t actually believe it. It’s just a simplistic way to virtue signal that they have emotional and moral depth because they love babies (which is what they choose to call the unborn). But their proclamation that abortion is murder really reveals the opposite about them. For example, you are sitting on your porch and hear a child screaming next door. You look over and through the window you see a man with an ax chasing the child. Do you run over and stop this attempted murder? Most would say yes.
If abortion is murder, what have you done today to prevent it? Have you marched outside the abortion clinic? Have you written emails to all your contacts? Are you sitting in at your congressional representatives’ homes or offices? Or are you going on with your day as the man next door chases the kid with an ax? There are many legal methods of activism that you could do. But most do nothing but say they are against abortion because that makes them feel righteous and moral. Yet, their actions—or lack thereof—tell us they are not. Like Mafia dons attending Mass and building a new wing on the church.
Even a majority of anti-abortionists say there should be exceptions in cases of rape, incest, and if the woman’s life is at risk. But if the zygote/embryo/fetus is indeed a human being, then aborting it under those circumstances would still be murder. Yet, in allowing it, they are agreeing that the woman’s life is more valuable than zygote/embryo/fetus under certain circumstances. If they agree she is the more valuable life sometimes, then she should be more valuable all the time. The contradiction negates the original argument.
The basis for many for the people who want to declare the zygote/embryo/fetus a human being stems from religious beliefs. That should be their reasoning for not personally seeking an abortion, but not a justification for everyone else who does not follow their faith. One of the main foundations of our democracy is a separation of church and state. All faiths are welcome and the government shouldn’t interfere with legitimate religions. At the same time, religions shouldn’t interfere with the government or use it to impose their beliefs on everyone else.
Remember that historically many religions encouraged their followers to multiply not out of the sanctity for life, but in order to outnumber the competing religions. Until 1588, even the Catholic Church allowed abortion until “ensoulment,” when the soul entered the fetus, somewhere around 18 weeks.
The adoption option.
The number of induced abortions in the U.S. is about 620,000, half of what it was in 1980. Certainly, some of those can be attributed to the disastrous Abstinence Only policy—which studies have proven are ineffective and unethical—promoted by the same people eager to restrict abortions. Their policies cause the pregnancies they then force the women to endure.
Those same people herald the “adoption option,” in which women who don’t want to raise a child can give it up for adoption. Sounds good, until you look at the numbers. Adoptions in the U.S. are on the decline. In 2004, the total number of adoptions in the U.S. was 133,737. In 2014 it was 110,373. There are about 122,000 kids available for adoption, with 400,000 in foster care. If we add the 600,000 abortions that are now live births, where do those children go? Even if the threat of no abortions lessens the number of unwanted pregnancies, though based on history there is no reason to believe it will, and we cut that number in half, we still have 300,000 additional children every year with only 110,000 to be adopted. Who pays for them for the next eighteen years? We do. Adoption is clearly not a sustainable solution, but politicians will tout it anyway because they know their followers won’t know the numbers, or bother to look them up on their smart phone.
Of the 21 states that are gearing up to ban abortion, 15 of them rank in the bottom half of the states in a non-partisan foundation’s assessment of children’s well-being, with Mississippi ranked last and Texas ranked fifth from the bottom. Sadly, their legislators crusading-for-children posturing falls apart when it comes to the daily business of providing for their state’s already born children. And these states want to add thousands more children each year to their failing policies.
How to solve the abortion problem.
The reason abortion is so readily used to manipulate people is because many anti-abortionists’ position is the result of emotion rather than logic. They see a sonogram, they see toes or fingers, they hear a heartbeat and it sure feels like a baby. But it isn’t. To claim otherwise may make them feel good about themselves, but the cost of that feel-good moral superiority is the crushing of women’s rights to autonomy over their bodies, leaving them as second-class citizens.
The only way to resolve the self-serving politicians, religious zealots, and others using this issue for their personal gain is to have an unassailable policy by passing an amendment to the U.S. Constitution. That would establish exactly who we are and would not require the U.S. Supreme Court to interpret the Constitution regarding abortion.
Sure, it’s an uphill battle. Remember, this is the same country that refused to pass the Equal Rights Amendment which said only this: “Equality of rights under the law shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any state on account of sex.” One simple sentence to insure their basic rights and yet individual states found reasons not to pass it.
Have you ever noticed how many movies and tv shows—including the three Toby McGuire Spider-Man movies—feature women finding a dead bodies who then proceed to scream hysterically for no good reason. This must be where so many conservative men got their ideas about women. Is it any wonder that conservative legislators feel emboldened to pass laws that treat women like children and themselves as benevolent parents needing to guide them?
The only good that might come out of this political and social assault on women is that they and all those who support them will rise up and show just how powerful they can be. This could prove to be the largest political movement in the history of the country and could force politicians and the rest of the country to finally recognize their value. Remember what Alice Walker (The Color Purple) said, “The most common way people give up their power is by thinking they don’t have any.”
Feminist theorist hooks published more than 30 books and is considered highly influential. (photo: Getty Images)
The author was surrounded by her close friends and family at home when she died from an illness, a press release from her niece, Ebony Motley, stated.
hooks – real name Gloria Jean Watkins – published her books and scholarly articles under her chosen pen name to honour her maternal great-grandmother, whose name was Bell Blair Hooks.
Watkins opted to stylise the name in lowercase letters in order to focus attention on her ideas as opposed to her identity. She once said that her choice points to the “substance of books, not who I am”.
The author was best known for writing about race, gender and class, as well as the connection between them, which is a principle known as intersectionality. She also wrote about love, spirituality and politics.
Los Angeles police officers in front of the LAPD headquarters in downtown Los Angeles during Covid protests. (photo: Genaro Molina/Los Angeles Times/Rex/Shutterstock)
Internal documents show a Polish firm with no law enforcement experience helped LAPD collect tens of thousands of tweets related to Black Lives Matter and racial justice protests
Internal LAPD documents, obtained by the Brennan Center for Justice through public records requests, reveal that the department conducted a one-month trial of social media monitoring software from Edge NPD, a company that typically worked in advertising and marketing, had no prior experience contracting with law enforcement and was based thousands of miles away in Warsaw, Poland.
During the trial in fall 2020, Edge NPD tracked tweets on roughly 200 keywords for LAPD, the records show. In the process, the software collected millions of tweets, according to Edge NPD’s CEO, Dobromir Cias. The data set included tens of thousands of tweets related to Black Lives Matter and racial justice protests, some of them from prominent Black activists outside of LA and private civilians advocating for reforms, the files show.
The records suggest that LAPD was interested in using the company’s services, in part to help the department respond to “negative narratives”. Cias told the Guardian the company also aimed to flag possible threats.
The documents did not reveal what LAPD did with the data that was collected, and the department did not respond to repeated requests for comment.
LAPD ultimately did not pursue a permanent contract with the firm. But still, experts said, the trial raised serious concerns.
They wondered about the effectiveness of pulling in so much data, in so little time. Some said that, although law enforcement, journalists and researchers regularly monitor public online activity, it was troubling that a police agency’s social media monitoring activities appeared to include tracking a broad swath of critics. And the partnership also raised questions about oversight of surveillance technology, as well as police agencies’ data collection practices.
LAPD’s test run with Edge NPD came as law enforcement agencies have increasingly been forced to take their investigations online, and have sought tools to do so. Tech firms have responded by pushing new innovations and pursuing police contracts, and LAPD and the New York police department, with some of the largest budgets in the US, have often been at the forefront of piloting software.
Identifying ‘negative narratives’
Edge NPD primarily assists private companies with market research and helps them ensure that advertising campaigns aren’t jeopardized by bots and trolls, Cias told the Guardian.
The company was connected to LAPD by a US government agency that had used the firm’s software. A representative of that federal department emailed Edge NPD in September 2020, saying LAPD was interested in using its services for “public safety and strategic communications” and to “identify disruptive social media activity being artificially amplified by malign actors”.
ABTShield, Edge NPD’s proprietary software, could help LAPD “identify as early as possible when activity that could lead to civil unrest is being amplified via social media”, the US representative wrote, adding, “From a messaging perspective, knowing what the negative narratives being artificially amplified are would allow the communications team to create effective and timely responses.”
During the 40-day trial in October and November of 2020, Edge NPD provided LAPD with a dashboard monitoring tweets related to six topics: “civil unrest”, “American policing”, “domestic extremism and white nationalism”, “election security”, “potential danger” and the conflict between Armenia and Azerbaijan (which at the time was prompting local LA protests).
The two entities discussed roughly 200 possible keywords to follow, including “lapdchiefmoore”, “abolish the police”, “nojusticenopeace”, “police budget”, “police killing” and “acab” (a protest slogan that stands for “all cops are bastards”). In one email, Cias suggested adding “defund the police” and “BLM” to the list of keywords to follow.
An LAPD official agreed that BLM would be good to monitor, but added that “there are MANY legitimate people who are using that to express their rights”, records show.
Cias said that in addition to the dashboard, on occasion he would also personally send tweets to LAPD that he thought might signal a public safety threat.
“The major goal was to actually pass [along] quickly anything that looks kind of dangerous,” he said. He acknowledged he didn’t always confirm whether the content he was forwarding was legitimate: “When you’re passing this information, you don’t really know how serious it is. I think it’s up to law enforcement to really verify if it’s true … We don’t do fact checking.”
At one point, the records show, Cias emailed the department a post from a critic who had tweeted a video that appeared to show an LAPD officer tackling a journalist with a comment the department was “overfunded … and high on power”. (Cias told the Guardian he was sharing it as an example of how “defund” narratives were gaining traction online.)
The Brennan Center, which analyzed the tweets, found that the service collected nearly 2m tweets during the trial, including roughly 270,000 posts under the “American policing” category.
The records show the software frequently captured tweets with mainstream news articles and private civilians expressing opinions. The system also flagged tweets from LAPD critics calling on the chief to “resign”, as well as celebrity posts, including a tweet from Common, the rapper and activist, about racism in America.
‘It creates a haystack’
Experts consulted by the Guardian raised questions about the trial’s set-up, doubting the effectiveness of collecting such large amounts of data.
Mary Pat Dwyer, a Brennan Center fellow, questioned why LAPD was wasting limited resources to “chase content online that doesn’t pose any kind of safety threat”, including ordinary political speech and criticisms of police. “It’s striking the volume of information that they were pulling in and the terms they were using. It’s hard to understand how LAPD would even be processing all of this.”
“It creates a much larger haystack of data that doesn’t actually lead to any real, tangible, positive outcome for communities,” said Steven Renderos, executive director of national racial justice organization Media Justice. “Instead it just equips the police department with more data that helps it kind of justify its own efforts to to tell a better story about itself.”
He pointed out that the list included keywords such as “domestic extremism” and “racist” that were purportedly intended to capture tweets about white supremacy. “No one is describing themselves as a domestic extremist,” Renderos said. “Instead you then start filtering in tweets and messages from people who are merely … protesting white supremacy. Take these keywords together and what it’s actually doing is capturing a subset of thought and dissent among people. And that’s dangerous.”
They also worried what an agency like LAPD could ultimately do with such data. “I don’t trust the Los Angeles police department to use a tool with this amount of data in a way that’s responsible, because history has shown us that they can’t,” said Renderos.
LAPD has faced several racial profiling scandals over the years. The Guardian also recently revealed that LAPD was engaging in broad collection of civilians’ social media data, and had partnered with a different tech firm that claimed its algorithms could identify people who may commit crimes in the future, with criteria that experts said was discriminatory. Those revelations prompted Facebook to demand that LAPD stop collecting data on its platform for surveillance.
Activists caught up in the surveillance said they were not surprised. The software flagged tweets by Bree Newsome Bass, who received national attention in 2015 when she climbed a flagpole to remove a confederate flag at the South Carolina statehouse. In a thread included in the files, Newsome Bass advocated for demilitarizing police and putting funding toward mental health first responders. “The resistance to defunding police is 100% about racism & normalizing the daily violence police forces inflict on marginalized communities for the benefit of ruling classes,” she wrote.
“It’s political targeting,” Newsome Bass told the Guardian. “We’ve seen instance after instance where police agencies are focused more on policing Black people who are demanding equality and civil rights than actually preventing any violence … They’re making the case for defunding the police even further. They’re using taxpayer dollars to monitor our social media where we’re talking about how we’re wasting money on police.”
“There’s nothing violent or criminal about saying ‘defund the police’,” added Melina Abdullah, co-founder of Black Lives Matter LA. “We have a right to say ‘defund the police’. The idea that LA is tracking this kind of ideology should be very scary to people.”
Combatting ‘defund the police’
Cias told the Guardian the trial was free for LAPD and meant to be a “demonstration” of its technology, and to “help LAPD detect potentially dangerous situations” during the tense election period. He said the service identified roughly a dozen alerts related to possible threats and provided examples of tweets about protest clashes and about Dodgers fans allegedly engaging in vandalism while celebrating.
He stressed his firm is not a defense contractor, and the service was not intended to monitor specific activists: “This was not for actually analyzing the members of the Black Lives Matter movement.”
In a thank you letter to the company after the trial, an LAPD official said ABTShield had surfaced “threat-related content” and “enabled us to more efficiently analyze this barrage of data”. The service helps “parse out the proverbial ‘signal from the noise’”, the official said. In another email, an LAPD representative wrote, “The product is definitely working.”
As Edge NPD was starting its trial, the company also proposed a $150,000 annual contract for LAPD. The company told LAPD it could use artificial intelligence, machine learning and “human analysis” to identify online narratives that were rooted in “disinformation”, as well as public safety threats.
The firm proposed LAPD monitor specific “client-identified” topics, including “LA riots”, “police violence”, “BLM protests” and the “Proud Boys”. It also suggested that LAPD was the direct subject of misinformation and “malicious activity”, writing: “The LAPD itself is being targeted by organized attacks of automated bots and trolls (e.g. police brutality misinformation and “defund the police” narratives).”
Asked for clarification, Cias told the Guardian he did not have specific evidence of bot attacks on LAPD or of trolls spreading “defund the police” misinformation, but that the discussion was based on a “very strong hypothesis”.
“I could qualitatively assume that it might be true that those narratives related with Black Lives Matter and defunding police might be also supported … to some extent by malign actors who are interested in actually disorganizing public institutions in the United States,” he said, adding that he was proposing, in effect, doing “market research”.
While there is evidence that Russian trolls amplified Black Lives Matter content during the 2016 US election, activists said they were concerned that police departments and other critics of their movement were conflating authentic organizing online and troll campaigns.
“There’s been a lot of grassroots organizing to get people involved in the budget process and to put a spotlight on the absurd amount of money we spend on policing,” said Kenneth Mejia, an LA housing justice activist and city comptroller candidate who advocated for defunding. He noted that last year, BLMLA facilitated a community-driven process to present a proposed “people’s budget” that cut LAPD funding. “There’s an organic and growing awareness of the reallocating of resources from the police.”
LAPD did not move forward with a formal contract with Edge, though has remained interested in this kind of service, with records showing the department purchased or pursued software from at least 10 companies that monitor social media.
Last week, Twitter said it had suspended ABTShield’s developer account based on evidence that the firm violated its policies by deviating from approved uses, though the company did not elaborate further on the decision. Twitter’s policies allow for public data to be used for “news alerting” and “first responder support”, but it prohibits surveillance of “sensitive groups”, such as activist organizations.
A Twitter spokesperson, Shaokyi Amdo, said in a statement: “Twitter prohibits the use of our developer services for surveillance purposes. Period. We proactively enforce our policies to ensure customers are in compliance and will continue to do so.”
Evan Greer, deputy director of Fight for the Future, a digital rights group, said there should be stronger restrictions against the broad collection of social media data and the analysis law enforcement may perform on it.
“People don’t fully grasp the ways in which the ability to analyze data at a mass scale changes the game. There’s a difference between you tweeting something and knowing that it may be seen in public, and you tweeting something and knowing that it can be vacuumed up and analyzed in a million different ways using artificial intelligence and machine learning.”
Former Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin addresses the court during his sentencing for George Floyd's murder at the Hennepin County Courthouse in Minneapolis on June 25. (photo: Court TV/AP)
As part of a plea deal, Chauvin pleaded guilty to one count of violating Floyd’s civil rights and to one count of violating the rights of a 14-year-old in a separate case. Prosecutors said other related charges to those cases would be dismissed.
Prosecutors said they would recommend a sentence of 300 months in federal prison, to be served concurrently with his sentence on the murder conviction.
Chauvin, appearing in court in an orange prison jumpsuit before U.S. District Judge Paul Magnuson, answered quietly as the judge asked him whether he understood what he was doing.
“Yes, your honor,” Chauvin said.
“You understand that there is no right to appeal to a higher court? This is the end of it?” Magnuson asked.
“Yes, your honor,” Chauvin responded.
Asked later by the judge to reaffirm his pleas, Chauvin replied, “Guilty, your honor.”
In a joint statement, attorneys Ben Crump, Antonio Romanucci and Jeff Storms, who represented the Floyd family in a lawsuit in his death, said Chauvin’s guilty plea shows that “significant change is afoot” in holding police officers accountable for their actions. But they reminded the public to “never forget its cost.”
“George Floyd was a son, a brother, and a father … who changed the world,” the attorneys said. “We all play a role in keeping his legacy alive. We must all keep marching. We must all keep fighting against injustice. We must do this for George, to ensure that his one life and shocking death will change the future for countless others.”
Several members of Floyd’s family were in the room as Chauvin pleaded guilty, including Floyd’s brothers Philonise, Rodney and Terrance Floyd. Also present was the teenager cited in the second civil rights complaint. On the other side of the courtroom were several relatives of Chauvin. The two sides did not interact. As the proceedings ended, Philonise Floyd said to the teenager, “It’s a good day for justice,” according to the pool report.
Chauvin waved and smiled at his family as he left the courtroom.
Chauvin had previously pleaded not guilty to federal charges that he violated Floyd’s constitutional rights during a deadly encounter in which he and three other Minneapolis police officers restrained and handcuffed Floyd face down on a city street as Floyd gasped for air and eventually lost consciousness.
The May 2020 incident, captured on a viral Facebook video, spurred a national reckoning on issues of race and policing and sparked mass demonstrations around the world.
Chauvin, who pressed his knee into Floyd’s neck and back for 9½ minutes, was convicted in April on state charges of second-degree unintentional murder, third-degree murder and second-degree manslaughter and sentenced to 22 ½ years in prison. Chauvin is appealing that sentence. It was not immediately clear how his guilty plea would affect his state appeal.
Chauvin did not testify in his own behalf in his state murder case and had said very little publicly about the case, except for a brief statement at his June sentencing where he offered his condolences to the Floyd family and hinted at a plea deal.
But on Wednesday, as part of his guilty plea, he was formally asked to admit to several statements about his role in Floyd’s killing.
“You held your knee, your left knee across Mr. Floyd’s neck, back and shoulder, and your right knee across Mr. Floyd’s back and arm?” the prosecutor asked Chauvin.
“Correct,” Chauvin replied.
“This, as Mr. Floyd lay on the ground handcuffed and unresisting?” the prosecutor said.
“Correct,” Chauvin replied.
“You kept your knees on Mr. Floyd’s neck and body even after Mr. Floyd became unresponsive?” the prosecutor said.
“Correct,” Chauvin replied.
Chauvin was also facing a second federal charge alleging he violated the civil rights of a 14-year-old by hitting him with a flashlight and kneeling on him during a 2017 arrest — a case that prosecutors tried to cite in this state murder trial, but were blocked from doing by a judge.
A federal grand jury indicted Chauvin and three other officers at the scene of Floyd’s killing — J. Alexander Kueng, Thomas K. Lane and Tou Thao — in May on charges of violating Floyd’s civil rights. A federal trial in that case is expected to begin in January, though an official trial date has not yet been set.
Kyrsten Sinema. (photo: Stefani Reynolds/Getty Images)
The Arizona centrist says she supports addressing abuse of the tax trick, but a bipartisan-backed proposal to do so now is not cutting it for her.
Instead, the so-called “conservation easement” has become one of the most abused tax tricks in America.
Years ago, rich investors learned that if they team up to acquire cheap land, get it overvalued by an appraiser, and then promise not to develop it, they can make millions. Ever since the practice started, Republicans and Democrats have tried to curb this practice, which cost U.S. taxpayers an estimated $9.2 billion in 2018. And as Democrats try to pass their expansive social spending bill—the Build Back Better Act—they finally have an ideal chance.
Ending the tax break could be a small-but-needed offset for other programs, and it would restore a measure of fairness that both parties agree is currently lacking in the tax code.
In the evenly-split Senate, however, all it takes is one determined Democratic senator to kill any provision in that sweeping bill.
Enter Kyrsten Sinema. The centrist senator from Arizona is the only Democrat left who is voicing significant opposition to reforming conservation easements as part of this legislative push, according to three sources familiar with discussions on Capitol Hill.
Sinema’s opposition in the caucus is not just lonely, but strident—leaving some Democrats baffled. Privately, Sinema has also expressed doubt regarding a compromise proposal to have reforms apply only to future conservation easement deductions and leave past ones alone.
Inside and outside the Capitol, many have tried to win Sinema over.
On Dec. 7, over a dozen conservation advocacy groups—who believe abuse of the tax break is endangering its original mission—wrote to Sinema to directly make the case to her.
“We respectfully ask you to stand with us—and all in our community—by urging your leadership to curb abuse and restore the integrity of this cherished and worthy conservation program,” said the organizations, according to a copy of the letter viewed by The Daily Beast.
John LaBombard, a spokesperson for Sinema, told The Daily Beast that the senator has heard from Arizona officials and constituent groups—specifically citing hospitals and colleges—who have concerns with “the approach under consideration for this legislation.”
Sinema “shares the goal of stopping abusive comprehensive easement practices and believes that comprehensive reforms are needed,” LaBombard said, but added that she “believes that such reforms must be designed thoughtfully, after a robust review process that includes the views of impacted stakeholders—because oversimplified legislation could have a chilling effect on legitimate charitable donations of lands for conservation, hurting states like Arizona.”
“The senator looks forward to continuing discussions with the bipartisan group of senators examining this challenge,” LaBombard said.
As the Senate works to finish the Build Back Better Act by Christmas, some key policy issues are still unresolved, and Democrats remain hopeful that they still have a shot to include conservation easement reform in the final version.
But over the course of months of nonstop negotiating, Sinema has shown a willingness to single-handedly kill or modify aspects of the legislation—particularly the proposals to pay for it through changes in the U.S. tax code. While her fellow centrist Sen. Joe Manchin (D-WV) has largely been on board with raising tax rates for corporations and the wealthiest Americans, Sinema hasn’t.
And although Sinema has gotten her way on key items, like shutting down a hike of the corporate tax rate, her vote in favor of the final legislation is far from assured.
If Sinema holds firm to her opposition and blocks conservation easement reform on the Build Back Better Act, it will be a major victory for a small but well-resourced special interest fighting to save this tax break—a fitting coda to this near-perfect parable of how The Swamp operates in 2021.
Over the years, the effort to secure conservation easements has become something of a real business. So-called “promoters” of the deductions pitch and recruit investors to buy into easements as they might with other, more common investment products. Investors give the promoter money in exchange for a share of the easement—basically the donation of property rights—which, in turn, they can claim for a tax break.
The process of appraising the value of the land for tax deduction purposes is where the returns are most inflated: there are examples of tracts of land being bought for thousands of dollars an acre before being appraised at dozens of times the value for tax purposes.
And those involved have adopted the tried-and-true D.C. influence game playbook as they seek to retain a tax break that has become a livelihood.
In 2016, a nonprofit advocacy group called Partnership for Conservation was formed, with the purpose of pushing back against Internal Revenue Service scrutiny of those filing the tax deduction—framed as overly aggressive and antagonistic—and arguing that the deduction is vital for historic conservation and environmental protection.
An original cofounder of P4C was Frank Schuler, an investor whose firm was among the chief “promoters” of conservation easement schemes to investors. Schuler is a focus of the bipartisan 2019 report from the Senate Finance Committee documenting abuse of the tax deduction.
As part of that investigation, the committee obtained slide decks in which prospective investors were told by his firm that they could receive a charitable deduction of more than $4 for every $1 they contributed to a partnership entity involved in property transactions.
According to the report, a number of Schuler ventures relied on an appraiser who systematically over-valued properties—like mines—and netted investors hefty deductions as they promised to forego development on properties facing little risk of it.
Schuler has since left P4C, but it remains the lead group pushing back against proposals to reform the tax break, both publicly and privately. It has argued that the real problem is the appraisal process, not the tax deduction itself, because inflated appraiser values are what allow investors to reap such a return.
But the language proposed in Build Back Better seeks to curb abuse of this tax shelter by limiting deductions to 250 percent of what the land was bought for, if the break is claimed within three years of a partnership purchasing the land. It is based on a bill written by Sen. Steve Daines, a Montana Republican, and Sen. Debbie Stabenow, a Michigan Democrat, which has yet to become law despite its bipartisan support.
Initially, lawmakers wanted that rule to apply retroactively—opening up past transactions to enforcement under the rule, which is an area of concern for Sinema and others, though retroactivity would have dated to when the IRS put suspected tax cheats on notice. Public statements from P4C, and other critics of reform, have focused on the retroactive aspect as most problematic.
P4C, and other pro-conservation easement entities, have spent a combined total of nearly $1 million lobbying the Senate this year on the issue.
According to public disclosure filings, P4C has spent $720,000 so far this year on the lobbying effort this year, hiring the elite D.C. lobbying firm Holland & Knight.
The group has also blanketed Facebook with heart-tugging ads featuring fuzzy critters that convey the impression they are focused on climate change and environmental preservation. “Time is running out for our natural lands and wildlife,” reads one ad, featuring a forlorn-looking racoon. “Will you help save them?”
“Should Congress pass dangerous legislation that puts our wildlife and climate at risk?” prods another, featuring a squirrel with a nut. (It helpfully poses “yes” or “no” options to that question.)
Other high-powered lobbyists have gotten involved to fight conservation easement reforms. According to filings, an obscure Georgia-based entity, Red Oak Reserve LLC, paid $190,000 to hire Waxman Strategies, the lobbying firm run by former Rep. Henry Waxman (D-CA), the veteran lawmaker with significant cred on environmental issues.
There is no public evidence of Sinema’s links with the advocates or lobbyists involved. But sources close to the fight suspect she has been a target of this niche industry’s efforts, given her status as a key swing vote in the chamber and her relatively conservative position for a Democrat on tax issues.
The Partnership for Conservation did not respond to an emailed request for comment.
Lori Faeth has been on the opposite side from P4C on this issue, as government relations director for the Land Trust Alliance, a nonprofit group that has advocated an end to abuse of conservation easements.
“None of their so-called solutions would actually stop the abuse of conservation donations,” Faeth said of P4C.
Faeth argued that if Congress does nothing to stop this practice, the ability of smaller, less wealthy property owners to take advantage of the tax deduction for its intended purpose will be endangered. In 2018, anywhere from 2,000 to 2,500 conservation easements were for “the right reasons,” she said, with the total of tax breaks claimed topping out at $1 billion. That is far less than the $9 billion claimed in unwarranted deductions, per IRS data.
Even critics of how the IRS has cracked down on this practice say that Congress has a role to do something about it.
Pete Sepp, president of the National Taxpayers Union, has concerns that the IRS has stripped away “due process” for people who file for the deduction, and argues that the agency should provide more guidance on how to comply with the law.
Still, Sepp said a reform bill that does not apply to past transactions but focuses on future ones—the compromise Sinema is said to doubt—would be a “huge breakthrough.”
“If the interest is getting the tax policy right, starting with prospective, rather than retroactive provisions, would be great,” said Sepp.
In response to mounting pressure, the U.S. recently blacklisted NSO Group over its spyware sold to foreign governments. (photo: AFP)
International community must stand up against Israel's increasingly invasive surveillance operations
While these revelations might have shocked the international community, Palestinians have long known that Israel uses the occupied territories as a laboratory for testing invasive surveillance technologies. This allows Israeli firms to market their technologies as “field tested” when they are exported around the world.
In addition to violating Palestinians’ human rights, Israeli surveillance of Palestinian communities has far-reaching consequences for the international community. The lack of accountability, transparency and regulation on the sale and provision of surveillance tools threatens marginalised communities, human rights defenders, academics and journalists worldwide. As like-minded governments look to Israel as a blueprint for surveilling their own citizens, the international community can no longer afford to stand by as the right to privacy is eroded.
Indeed, Israeli surveillance systems have become central to controlling the everyday lives of Palestinians. Since its 1967 occupation, Israel has gradually tightened its control over the information and communications technology sector in the West Bank and Gaza, in defiance of the Oslo Accords, which required Israel to gradually transfer control to Palestinians.
This has resulted in severe violations of Palestinian digital rights, including a tiered system of accessibility in which Israelis enjoy access to 5G, while Palestinians in the occupied West Bank only have access to 3G, and 2G in Gaza.
'Pressure points'
Israel simultaneously stifles technological advancement for Palestinian communities, while controlling the infrastructure that undergirds the surveillance state. An Israeli military whistleblower recently revealed that Israeli authorities have the ability to listen in on any phone conversation in the occupied West Bank and Gaza - and not only that, any mobile device imported into Gaza via the Kerem Shalom crossing is implanted with an Israeli bug.
Israel’s controversial Unit 8200 uses such surveillance methods to find “pressure points” to turn Palestinians into informants. The Unit often seeks out gay Palestinians, and burdens them with the impossible choice of having their sexuality revealed to their friends and family, which may lead to persecution, or becoming informants and spying on their communities for the Israeli government.
Over the past half-decade, there has been a notable increase and diversification in Israeli surveillance methods. Israel encouraged the tech and security sector to produce algorithms and surveillance tools to sift through Palestinian social media content, and its controversial predictive policing programme has seen hundreds of Palestinians arrested on charges of social media incitement since 2015.
The Covid-19 pandemic has exacerbated the situation, as Israel has used the guise of public health to roll out new invasive surveillance measures. Palestinians face severe restrictions on freedom of movement and must apply for travel permits, but in light of the pandemic, Israel last year launched a mobile application to replace in-person permitting services.
While the app was framed as a public health measure, its more insidious intentions are clear in its terms of service, which force users to provide access to the data stored on their phones, such as calls and photos. This becomes more problematic when understanding how important these services are for many Palestinians.
Without proper permits, it can be difficult to find work within the small geographical areas to which many Palestinians are confined. Israel’s pandemic response has thus forced Palestinians to choose between access to a professional livelihood, or maintaining their right to privacy.
Closed-circuit cameras
At the same time, video surveillance and facial recognition software are a daily reality for Palestinians. In 2000, several hundred closed-circuit television cameras (CCTVs) were installed in the Old City of Jerusalem. In 2015, that system was significantly expanded, and today, facial-recognition technology has become so widespread that many Palestinians no longer feel safe in their own homes.
Some CCTVs are positioned in such a way that they can see into private homes, leading some women to resort to sleeping in their hijabs, while other families are reluctant to let their children play outside, as the cameras have stripped away any sense of privacy.
While Israel’s system of surveillance is clearly built on a lack of regard for Palestinians’ basic rights, including their right to privacy, the response from global governments has been slow and ineffective in addressing the issue. The work of civil society organisations and digital rights defenders is thus a vital tool for increasing public pressure on surveillance companies.
In response to mounting pressure, the US recently blacklisted NSO Group and Candiru, saying they “developed and supplied spyware to foreign governments that used these tools to maliciously target government officials, journalists, businesspeople, activists, academics, and embassy workers”. And last year, amid intense public scrutiny, Microsoft announced that it would sell its stake in the Israeli facial recognition company AnyVision.
Yet, this does not go far enough to tackle the systemic issue of entrenched Israeli surveillance systems and the testing of such technology on Palestinians. Governments around the world must push for increased regulation and transparency in how surveillance technologies are developed and deployed, and sanction companies that depend on the exploitation of marginalised communities to test their products.
Botswana's Moremi Game Reserve, on the eastern side of the Okavango Delta, is home to a plethora of wildlife, including hippos, elephants, lions, giraffes, and endangered African wild dogs. (photo: Cory Richards/National Geographic Image Collection)
Canada-based ReconAfrica appears to have flouted Namibian law, legal experts say.
Kapinga Kamwalye Conservancy borders the Okavango River and extends more than 22 miles south into the Kalahari Desert. Established in 2018 to protect habitat for charismatic animals such as elephants and rare sable antelope, the conservancy also attracts tourism and provides jobs for some of its 3,700 residents. Villages are interspersed among groves of towering teak, rosewood, and mopane trees, which offer vital shade.
But last December, the oil company came.
Today a clearing the size of five football fields scars the Kapinga Kamwalye refuge, sensitive land bulldozed in January by ReconAfrica for an exploratory drill site. Pits holding waste from test drilling are filled with dark liquid. Fields are pocked with the heavy imprint of metal seismic testing plates. Ripped-up trees lie in blackened heaps alongside wide tracks through the bush.
Since National Geographic began reporting last year on environmental and community concerns about ReconAfrica’s oil exploration near the Okavango Delta, a UNESCO World Heritage site, opposition to the project has grown in Namibia and beyond.
New evidence, including aerial photographs taken in September 2021, points to ReconAfrica having drilled in the conservancy without proper permissions.
In a statement emailed to National Geographic, the company wrote, “ReconAfrica categorically denies that it engaged in any wrongdoing.”
“The Company’s commitment to ethics and business conduct are based on the highest standards of corporate governance, respect, integrity, and responsibility,” ReconAfrica wrote. The company did not provide answers to a detailed list of questions emailed by National Geographic.
Meanwhile, a whistleblower who is a global securities expert filed a complaint on May 5 with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), accusing ReconAfrica of misleading regulators and investors about its work. The confidential complaint, which is based on public records, prompted two U.S. members of Congress to call for an investigation by the Department of Justice and the SEC. (The agencies would not confirm an investigation into ReconAfrica’s activities.)
#SavetheOkavangoDeltahttps://t.co/fs4adeKkS7
— Leonardo DiCaprio (@LeoDiCaprio) February 11, 2021
Recently, a class action lawsuit was also filed against ReconAfrica executives and associates, alleging violations of federal securities laws.
Celebrity environmentalists are speaking out. Leonardo DiCaprio, Forest Whitaker, and Ellen DeGeneres are among those who signed an open letter written by the environmental nonprofit Re:wild calling for a moratorium on ReconAfrica’s drilling. Prince Harry, meanwhile, published an opinion piece in the Washington Post with Namibian scientist and activist Reinhold Mangundu about threats to the region posed by ReconAfrica’s operations.
ReconAfrica obtained licenses in 2015 and 2020 to explore for oil and gas across more than 13,200 square miles in the ecologically sensitive, wildlife-rich Okavango Delta watershed in Namibia and Botswana. UNESCO recognizes the delta, a 7,000-square-mile oasis, as a natural landscape with “outstanding value to humanity.” It’s home to endangered animals, including wild dogs, white-backed vultures, black rhinos, and Africa’s largest remaining herd of savanna elephants.
The company’s exploration licenses cover a significant part of the sprawling Kavango-Zambezi Transfrontier Conservation Area (KAZA), established by five countries in southern Africa, in part to safeguard the headwaters of the region’s great rivers, including the Okavango.
ReconAfrica’s Namibia license is valid until January 29, 2023, and the company has said it will drill multiple wells in 2022. Test drilling so far has taken place roughly 160 miles upstream of the delta.
Critics describe ReconAfrica as adopting an act-first-ask-later approach: clearing land and conducting test drilling before securing land-use permits and local permissions, and using water and disposing of it before receiving water permits.
“The precedent of drilling first and asking permission later completely undermines any [environmental impact assessment] process, the rule of law, and, obviously, best practices,” said Erica Lyman, a law professor and director of the Global Law Alliance for Animals and the Environment at Lewis & Clark Law School, in Portland, Oregon.
ReconAfrica spokesperson Claire Preece told National Geographic in October 2020 that the company would “ensure that there is no environmental impact from these wells,” adding that “ReconAfrica follows Namibian regulations and policies as well as international best practices.”
Threatened lifeline
ReconAfrica’s drilling project comes as other threats are endangering the region’s vital ecosystem. Scant rainfall has contributed to one of the lowest levels of annual water inflows in the Okavango Delta ever recorded by Botswana’s Department of Water Affairs.
Water use by commercial farming in Namibia and Angola, as well as pollution and climate change, threatens the waters that nurture “much of the life, production, and economy” of the region, three scientists wrote in a recent paper in Conservation Namibia. The situation is so grave that a deeper study of the impacts on the entire water basin is urgently needed, they said. “The more broken the river, the harder it is to find fault or to fix, and the easier it is to accept further breakages.”
The Okavango Delta’s headwaters rise in central Angola, pass along the edge of ReconAfrica’s lease area in northeastern Namibia, and cross into Botswana, where they fan out into the wetlands. The entire watershed doesn’t have the same protections as the delta itself, largely because the three countries have conflicting national goals.
Surina Esterhuyse, a geohydrologist with the University of the Free State, in Bloemfontein, South Africa, said that if ReconAfrica were to discover commercially exploitable oil, getting it out of the ground could require large quantities of that increasingly scarce water. Pollution from oil and gas drilling in Namibia and Botswana, she added, could foul the Okavango River and could accumulate in the Okavango Delta, which has no outlet to the sea.
The company says it has established a buffer zone around the river to protect it. “ReconAfrica is implementing the most advanced technologies and systems available in our exploratory drilling operations to ensure all water, above and below ground, is protected,” according to a company fact sheet on water management published in September.
Even during exploratory drilling, groundwater pollution is a concern, as National Geographic first reported in March. ReconAfrica has not lined its waste pits with an impermeable plastic barrier to prevent chemicals from seeping into the ground, contrary to standard industry practice in British Columbia, where ReconAfrica is based.
The company says its pits are lined with a layer of bentonite clay, which swells when wet to create a barrier, according to its fact sheet on drilling fluids. Aerial photographs taken by a journalist in September 2021 show erosion along the waste pits’ sides.
In January ReconAfrica began construction of its first test well, at Kawe, without the required water permits, according to Namibia’s minister of agriculture, water, and land reform, Calle Schlettwein. The ministry did not respond to National Geographic’s queries, but in a December 13 story in The Namibian, Schlettwein told the newspaper that the company was not supposed to drill without the permits. “They did it illegally,” he said. “We reiterated that the rule is they should not drill for water without any permit. We threatened not to issue a permit anymore if they carried on like that.”
Six months after drilling began at the first site and roughly a month after drilling began at the second—about eight miles northeast, in Kapinga Kamwalye Conservancy—ReconAfrica announced in a June 24 press release that it had received “all water well regulatory approvals for drilling operations.” The company did not specify what activities were covered by those approvals, nor did officials provide copies of the permits when asked. Schlettwein told The Namibian there had been challenges coordinating among the ministries and that ReconAfrica thought its exploration permit from the Ministry of Mines and Energy included drilling boreholes for water.
The controversy heats up
Reinhold Mangundu, the Namibian activist and scientist who recently co-authored an opinion piece with Prince Harry protesting the drilling, said in an interview that “politicians are starting to ask the right questions”—questions shaped by input from Indigenous people, human rights activists, international experts, and scientists. He credits a groundswell of concern—driven by local people and amplified by the international community and Namibian and U.S. lawmakers—with “helping to uncover the flawed processes that led to this project being approved.”
Anti-drilling grassroots and Indigenous organizations have protested in Namibia’s capital, Windhoek, during the past year. In public hearings since June, Namibian lawmakers have expressed concerns about inadequate oversight by the environment and water ministries. And the Namibian High Court is hearing the case of a farmer who alleges that ReconAfrica illegally cleared his land for a test well.
The company says it had “documented permission” from the local traditional leader to clear the land.
The New York-based Rosen Law Firm, known for its work on investor rights, filed a class action lawsuit against 11 ReconAfrica executives and associates, alleging “violation of the federal securities laws.” The lawsuit names ReconAfrica board chairman James Jay Park, CEO Scot Evans, Namibian environmental assessor Sindila Mwiya, and three ReconAfrica spokespeople, among others. It states that company representatives “had a duty to disseminate accurate and truthful information” and to correct “materially false or misleading” statements.
The litigation attempts to hold ReconAfrica accountable for alleged misrepresentations that have the potential to “cost investors their life savings,” and it highlights how the company’s actions may be putting the region’s communities, the environment, and wildlife at risk, said Lyman, of Lewis & Clark Law School.
In a press release on October 28, ReconAfrica said it “will undertake vigorous action to defend itself against any such claims.”
In Canada, the Center for International Environmental Law and other groups filed a request on September 16 with the TSX Venture Exchange, where the stock is listed, to investigate possible “misrepresentations” in the company’s public disclosures that may have misled investors and regulators.
In Germany, ReconAfrica also lists its securities on the Frankfurt Stock Exchange, and a spokesperson at the financial regulatory agency BaFin confirmed to National Geographic in an email that the agency is “analyzing” the company’s trading activities.
The view from Kapinga Kamwalye Conservancy
On a broiling Sunday afternoon in September, a National Geographic reporter drove from the village of Shitemo, on the Okavango River, to Kapinga Kamwalye Conservancy to investigate ReconAfrica’s activities.
Namibia’s community wildlife conservancies make up more than 20 percent of the country’s land and are considered examples of how wildlife conservation can promote rural development and protect natural resources.
ReconAfrica’s second test drilling site, near Mbambi, is inside the conservancy.
Originally, according to the company’s own environmental assessment, the drill site was to be outside the protected area, but it was moved inside, about three miles to the northeast. (The company did not answer questions about why the site was moved.)
In the regional capital of Rundu, under a huge kigelia, or “sausage tree,” near the Okavango River, conservancy leader Thomas Muronga raised his soft voice to be heard over the high-pitched kee-kee-kee of Meyer’s parrots feasting on the blossoms above. ReconAfrica’s drill site, he asserted, was inside his community’s conservancy “illegally.”
In June, ReconAfrica CEO Evans said in a press release that the company intended to “exceed regulatory compliance.” But in the half year since, ReconAfrica still has not gotten approval from the Kavango East Communal Land Board, a group of local representatives empowered by Namibia’s Communal Land Reform Act to be the ultimate arbiter of land rights in the area.
The company didn’t submit its application to the land board until June 28, nearly six months after the land was cleared and drilling began, according to Muronga, who also sits on the board. The board’s chairman, Bernardino Mbumba, confirmed during a parliamentary hearing in Windhoek on November 23 that the company’s application is still pending—even though ReconAfrica began bulldozing the land for its oil well in January 2021.
In any case, before a communal land board can decide on an application, a company needs to secure written authorization from the Ministry of Agriculture, Water and Land Reform; the local traditional authority; and, if the land is in a conservancy, the conservancy’s leadership, according to the act. Even then, a communal land board can’t approve a project if it’s deemed to undermine a conservancy’s goals as laid out in five-year management plans that are filed with the government.
Kapinga Kamwalye Conservancy was set up “for the management of wildlife,” not for oil drilling, Muronga said.
It’s unclear if ReconAfrica has permission from the ministry to use the land inside the conservancy (the ministry did not respond to requests for comment), but even so, ministry approval would be only the first move of a multistep process.
Kapinga Kamwalye Conservancy’s chairperson, Muronga, said the reserve has not given its permission for drilling and the company never consulted with the conservancy’s management in advance about its drilling plans.
“Suddenly we found that they were within our area,” he said. “They were clearing with bulldozers.”
ReconAfrica says it has a letter of approval to use the land from the traditional authority, a local leader empowered by customary law. But according to the Communal Land Reform Act, such a letter is meaningless without the communal land board’s approval as well.
At the November 23 parliamentary hearing, Mbumba said ReconAfrica had worked for nine months at its first drill site, in Kawe, without approval of the Kavango East Communal Land Board, which manages all the land on which the company is drilling.
Despite this, the land board neither fined the company nor stopped it from drilling. “On that one, we failed,” Mbumba acknowledged, saying the board was preoccupied.
In September, the communal land board retroactively approved the first drill site, but ReconAfrica’s application for use of the second drill site, inside the conservancy, is still pending.
Job offers
Max Muyemburuko is chairperson of Kavango East and West Regional Conservancy and Community Forest Association, which oversees all conservancies in the region. He’s also chairman of Muduva Nyangana Conservancy, within ReconAfrica’s license area.
He and Muronga have been outspoken about ReconAfrica’s actions during the past year. In May, Muyemburuko told National Geographic that he believed his life was in danger for expressing concerns about the company’s oil exploration activities and treatment of local people.
Yet both men said in September that they’d received unsolicited offers to work for ReconAfrica to monitor wildlife, which they interpreted as attempted bribes.
They said ReconAfrica’s lawyer, Shakwa Nyambe, and a ReconAfrica contractor, Francois Jahs, asked to meet them on May 28 at Kavango River Lodge, in Rundu. Muronga provided National Geographic with an email from Jahs sent two days before, outlining a wildlife-monitoring plan Jahs said he wanted to talk about.
At the meeting, according to Muyemburuko, the two company representatives told them that “whatever assistance that we need, we can just tell them, and they can come up with some solutions.” Muyemburuko interpreted this as an incentive to stop him from criticizing the project.
Muronga noted that Nyambe and Jahs said they’d heard Muronga and Muyemburuko speaking out against the company in the media and understood they “are not happy.”
He said Jahs told him that “if we want to be helped,” they would “take us to work for the company.”
Nyambe encouraged them to accept the job offers, Muyemburuko said, because the conservancy’s “allowance is very small,” and “it cannot take you anywhere.”
“I did not see [the offers] as legal,” said Muyemburuko, who believes they “were made to keep us quiet.”
“Oh yes, that is a bribe,” Muronga agreed. "They wanted to silence us.”
Nyambe denied in an email that he had offered jobs to either Muyemburuko or Muronga, and added: “In my capacity as legal practitioner I have never received any instructions from ReconAfrica to conduct recruitment of persons on behalf of my client.” Jahs did not respond to requests for comment; nor did ReconAfrica, which pointed National Geographic to its anti-bribery policy.
The U.S. Foreign Corrupt Practices Act makes it illegal for any company whose securities are listed in the United States, including ReconAfrica, to offer anything of value to a foreign official to evade regulations. Christopher Bruno, a former U.S. federal prosecutor and former senior counsel with the SEC, said that what the conservancy leaders have described could violate the act, particularly because the company is seeking approval of land permits retroactively.
Because Muronga is a member of the communal land board, which has the ultimate authority to approve or deny leasehold over land that ReconAfrica already has developed, the job offer could be intended as a quid pro quo, Bruno said. “Giving jobs is like giving shares to people in the company,” he said.
ReconAfrica came “with a suitcase of promises,” Mangundu said, but all the “processes they’ve been part of—they’ve been flawed.”
A spokesperson for the company countered in the statement to National Geographic that “ReconAfrica is exploring in Namibia and Botswana at the invitation of the national governments. Ultimately, the people of Namibia and Botswana, through their traditional authorities, elected governments and regulatory agencies, will determine how they will manage their natural resources.”
“We are fighting with a big elephant,” Muronga said. “The people who are on top, giving out authorizations, they will be fine because they have money.” But “at the end of the day, whatever impacts that the project will have, it is going to be on us, who are poor.”
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