Slow down, wise up Contents “ Yep, I said it before p14–15 p24–25 Mission 2020 roundtable on halving emissions by Declaring a Digital Détente and I’ll say it again. 2030. Almost one-quarter of all cyberattacks in 2019 were Life moves pretty fast. Step Up at Davos is a call to action for CEOs to launched by nation states, doubling 2018 levels. create internal climate action units to put their Amid increasing demonstrations of cyber power, You don’t stop and look companies on the fast-track for delivering the how can nation states work towards a digital détente? transformational change needed to halve emissions around once in a while, by 2030, on track for limiting global average temperature rise to the Paris Agreement’s goal of p26–27 you could miss it.” 1.5ºC. Can we innovate our way out of the climate crisis? Ferris Bueller’s Day Off (1986) Innovation is changing the energy industry faster p16–18 than at almost any time in history. Technologies such Make My Money Matter & Tortoise: A ThinkIn at as carbon capture and advanced batteries could Davos speed the transition to a net-zero carbon economy. But are they bridge solutions to a new energy Political parties may be shedding members, but economy or ways to sustain our dependence on people are getting more political. It’s the age of carbon-based energy? As governments struggle to activism. And money is one of the most widely held adapt to the Paris agreement, public pressure to - and largely ignored - levers in the hands of people. transform the energy economy is rising along with 28,000+ members But this is about to change: people are waking up to the escalating climate crisis. What will it take for us the power of their pensions and personal all – the energy industry, governments and 50 countries investments. They can demand more of the consumers – to fundamentally change course? companies they invest in, the asset managers they READ TIME: 30″ entrust, the pension trustees and advisors that determine where they put their retirement savings. p28–29 Financial activism for the public good is not a James Harding prediction for the 2020s; it’s a movement planned by How to turn protest into progress the people who brought you Make Poverty History [email protected] From Hong Kong to Santiago, anti-government and the Sustainable Development Goals. Join us at protests fuelled by anger about inequality, corruption the MMMM ThinkIn to understand what financial and political repression are paralysing cities and Katie Vanneck-Smith activism for everyone will mean in 2020 - and, better nations, yet often rallies fail to achieve significant [email protected] still, to be a part of it. social change. How can movements transition from protest to political change more effectively?
p19–21 Tortoise’s Responsibility100 Index
p22–23 Henkel X and Tortoise 4 introduction 5 tortoise at wef
Tortoise is a response to two problems
1. The daily noise 2. The power gap A move towards action. A desire and We’re different, deliberately – Shouting into space: for every 700 article Low confidence in the power system an opportunity for change. links posted on Twitter, there is one reply Per cent who agree the system is… (last three months, average of nine major Slow News global news brands) – 22% surge in news We don’t do breaking news, but what’s driving it. We don’t cover every story, but – Nearly three-quarters of us worry about engagement¹ reveal a few. We take the time to see the false information or fake news being used 20% 34% 46% fuller picture, to make sense of the forces as a weapon – 76% believe CEOs should shaping our future, to investigate what’s Levels of trust in 2019, % take the lead on change unseen.
56% 56% rather than waiting for working for me not sure failing me Open journalism government to impose it We’ve worked on plenty of projects with 47% 47% (+11% vs 2018)¹ codenames. We’ve been in enough meetings behind closed doors. We think we’ll do – Consumers want brands better work by opening up. So, through our 20% 34% 46% to take a stand. 64% of ThinkIns, we’re committed to organised listening and will go out of our way to hear consumers worldwide are from other people. “belief-driven buyers”, working for me not sure failing me Responsible communications NGOs Business Government Media +13% vs the previous year.² Source: Edelman We’re a membership business, built for Neutral (50–59%) Distrust (<50%) and with our members. We’re not owned Corporations are racing to keep pace by a proprietor with an axe to grind. We’re The divide between the powerful and with their customers’ and employees’ independent of political party or commercial We are overwhelmed by information. the powerless is widening. shifting moral compass and rising agenda. We are blissfully pop-up free. The problem isn’t just fake news or junk We feel locked out. Alarmed by the lack of expectations. news, because there’s a lot that’s good – vision, hungry for leadership in business, Mistrust and the conspicuous absence That means we are a new communications it’s just that there’s so much of it, and so technology and society. We believe in of nuance in the mainstream social platform for smart, responsible brands. much of it is the same. In a hurry, partial responsibility; we care about dignity. and traditional media discourse pose Brands that want to inform the discussion, and confusing. Too many newsrooms a challenge for responsible brands and not attempt to influence it. That are chasing the news, but missing the story. business leaders looking to communicate prepared to engage with issues, not gloss authentically, intelligently and openly. over them. And leaders who are brave And that’s where Tortoise comes in. enough to do things differently and ambitious about the impact they can have. Sources: 1 https://www.edelman.com/trust-barometer#top 2 https://www.edelman.co.uk/magazine/posts/earned- brand-2018-brands-take-a-stand/ 6 introduction 7 tortoise at wef
Our founders
James Harding Katie Vanneck-Smith Matthew Barzun Ceci Kurzman Co-founder & Editor Co-founder & Publisher Co-founder & Chairman Independent Director James was Director Katie was President of The Matthew was US Ceci founded Nexus of BBC News and before Wall Street Journal & Dow Ambassador to Sweden Management and that was Editor of Jones and then to the UK previously worked at Epic The Times (Sony Music) Our partners
Keith Blackmore Chris Cook Polly Curtis Fliss Demir Liz Moseley Alexandra Mousavizadeh Ravin Sampat Emma Sullivan (Senior Editor, The Times (Policy Editor, (Editor-in-chief, (BBC) (CMO, Cannes Lions) (The Prosperity Index; (Exec Producer, (Head of Events, and the BBC) BBC Newsnight) HuffPost UK) Moody’s) BBC) Chatham House)
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Our partners Tortoise Network
The news is what we all make it. “We believe in a country where Tortoise does things differently. everyone can have an equal say. Being The problem The divide between the We don’t run ads and we never, ever sell our part of the Tortoise Network means powerful and the powerless is widening. members’ data. (It goes without saying that being part of a conversation, where we Information inequality is rife. For democracy our editorial integrity is paramount.) There’s can challenge ideas and seek to find to work, the news media needs to be more no rate card, no media pack, no menu of common ground on often divisive democratic. what we can and can’t do with our partners. issues.” Talk to us and let’s figure out how we can The solution: Giving everyone a seat at the Tabitha Morton work together. table won’t happen by itself. The Tortoise CEO, More United Network is a new membership funding model that ensures Tortoise journalism is All made possible by the generosity open to the people who are hardest for news of our Supporters. platforms to reach, but whose voices we most Quality journalism doesn’t come for free. need to hear. The third crucial link in the Network are the We find the people our newsroom is Tortoise patrons, businesses and foundations missing. who believe in the power of information equality. They commit to funding from 100 We monitor the demographic and attitudinal to 1000 Tortoise memberships at £50 per profile of our whole membership base to spot member per year. the ones that are under represented. Typically, people who are unseen and unheard by the “We wanted to support the Tortoise media, and people working for change on the Network because healthy societies front lines in different communities. should engage in shared conversations, open to all, about issues that matter.” We work with Connectors to invite Edelman them in. Our Network of not-for-profits, NGOs and “Too often conversations are charities with deep roots in local happening in echo chambers. We want communities across the UK introduce us to to support Tortoise because they are the types of people we’d struggle to reach bursting the bubble of news by opening ourselves, and support and encourage them up their membership to truly diverse to contribute to our journalism. groups.” Santander “Giving young people a chance to join a conversation about the world they live in, no matter who they are or where “We’re committed to supporting more they are from, is a brilliant way to inclusive, honest and better-informed engage them in debates and to build conversations that can make a real confidence in their own voices.” difference.” Michael Lynas Montfort Chief Executive, NCS Trust 14 introduction 15 tortoise at wef
What our members say Be our partner Help us build a different type “Tortoise has already “Tortoise was my first of newsroom for a slower, wiser replaced my cynicism Kickstarter backing with a smile when and I feel it was the news. Advocate for open reading the news. best decision I ever journalism. Take a seat at the Delightfully written made. The way each and well-researched.” topic is selected and table. Join the family. Write to us. covered is just Ishaan Malhi amazing!” James Harding Zahid Rawat Co-founder [email protected]
What the press say Katie Vanneck-Smith Co-founder [email protected]
“Tortoise was formed as a direct response “Tortoise is unlike anything else in the to the overwhelming amount of ‘daily noise’ market… From Nando’s to a refugee camp, in the news ecosystem.” Tortoise is taking its journalism out into Michael Luo the real world.” Ian Burrell
“The open editorial conference of Tortoise “These are dark days indeed, but Tortoise is is one point of difference... What that means perhaps bringing a bit of light to the media is making members feel they directly establishment.” contribute to editorial positions. A daily James O’Brien editorial conference, open to members, gives this real-life form.” Amol Rajan, Media Editor 16 tortoise notes 17 tortoise at wef
Mission 2020 roundtable on halving emissions by 2030
CEOs and climate change How can business step up? Mitigating climate-related risks in supply “Business needs three things from the According to a study of over 1,000 CEOs by 1 Set a target chains can make them more resilient as well political community: clarity, Accenture and UN Global Compact: as greener – for example, by investing in confidence, and perhaps most of all, 630 major companies have already adopted energy storage and micro-grids. courage. The more of these that the – A majority (86 per cent) of CEOs Science Based Targets to reduce emissions. global business community can see, acknowledge that action on climate But only 15 per cent of Fortune 500 “The bottom line is that carbon the greater and more transformational change is critical to achieving the UN’s companies have targets that align with consumption, not production, is what will be the business response.” Sustainable Development Goals. keeping the rise in global temperatures counts. Any serious global climate Paul Polman below 2°C. policy would have those who cause Former CEO of Unilever, 2018 – But only 44 per cent see a net-zero future the emissions paying for them. And the for their company in the next decade. 2 Incentivise green management obvious answer is to price carbon, 6 Divest Fewer (41 per cent) are decarbonising Research by the Carbon Disclosure Project whatever its source.” their company’s supply chain. It’s estimated that a third of all oil reserves, found that one in four European companies Professor Dieter Helm, Financial Times, 2010 half of gas reserves and 80 per cent of coal – Just 35 per cent of CEOs say they have or reward their senior management for meeting reserves in 2015 need to stay in the ground plan to set a science-based target within climate targets. 4 Transition your transport until 2050 if we are going to stay below 2°C the next year. But only 62 per cent of CEOs say they would According to the Mission 2020 Exponential of warming. In response to this challenge, To what degree do you agree with the following link their pay to sustainability outcomes. Roadmap, digital technology could cut the and despite the inherent risk of stranded statements on climate action? Accenture, UN Global Compact, 2019 number of business flights by more than 50 assets, the movement to divest from fossil Disagree % Neither % Agree % Strongly agree % fuels has been growing. The majority of pension funds don’t hold per cent. Local co-working hubs can reduce My company has set or 28 38 23 12 executives accountable on climate issues commuting emissions by around 50–60 per This year, total assets under management plans to set a science-based cent annually. in divesting institutions passed the $11tn target in the next year No accountability Flight (return) CO2 (kg) Number of countries in or information which yearly CO2 for the mark – a rise of 22,000 per cent from 2014. Decarbonisation eorts are 21 38 32 10 64 average person is lower happening across my FossilFree company's supply chain Manchester to 51 At the same time the number of institutional A net-zero future is on the 19 37 31 13 New York 736 investors dumping fossil fuel stocks has risen horizon for my company in the next 10 years from 180 in 2014 to more than 1,100 today.
Low carbon and renewable 12 28 41 19 Executive London to 67 350.org energy options exist across accountable Beijing 1,475 company operations 26 Dedicated team or “Carbon emissions have to decline by Climate-related risks and 12 27 43 18 position 45 per cent from 2010 levels over the opportunities are drivers of below the Edinburgh to 19 product development executive Madrid 250 next decade in order to reach net zero 6 Other by 2050. This requires a massive Climate action is prioritised 11 26 43 21 4 in the company mission, Source: Atmosfair reallocation of capital. If some strategy and core values companies and industries fail to adjust Source: Share Action 5 Lobby for better, greener regulation Public advocacy for climate 8 29 44 19 to this new world, they will fail to exist.” change is aligned with our Mark Carney corporate strategy 3 Audit your supply chain As more businesses become aware of the mounting physical and financial risk Governor of the Bank of England, 2019 Respect and support for 4 22 47 28 Emissions from a company’s supply chain caused by climate change, business leaders human rights inform climate are on average 5.5 times higher than action initiatives are seeking greater engagement with emissions by the company itself. CDP, 2019 Source: Accenture, 2019 policymakers. 18 tortoise notes 19 tortoise at wef
Make My Money Matter & Tortoise A ThinkIn at Davos
Money talks But it’s not just young people who are Value where it matters Companies Evidence from Germany, France and the waking up to the power of personal Pension funds Company shareholders are increasingly investment. UK suggests that younger generations are Pensions is one area where there is huge motivated by sustainability concerns. engaged in a more diverse range of political In the UK, more than 70 per cent of people potential for increased action to promote Median support for environmental and social activities than older generations. Democratic with assets over £25,000 believe that sustainable investing. shareholder proposals and number of US PRI Audit, 2018 financial institutions should actively avoid signatories – In the UK, 47 per cent of people do not investing in companies that harm people or Number of US PRI Signatories Demonstration 50% know where their workplace pension is participation the planet. DFID, 2019 invested. A third will never even check. 500 According to the Global Sustainable MMMM 0% 400 15-33 yrs 34-49 yrs 50-65 yrs 66+ yrs Investment Alliance (GSIA), the world’s – While the majority of people expect that 300 sustainable investment market has grown by pensions should avoid fossil fuels, 99 per Petition 50% 43 per cent since 2016 and is now valued at 200 participation cent of funds in the UK are invested in around $30tn. 100 fossil fuel companies. 0% Share of total managed assets by region, 2018 0 15-33 yrs 34-49 yrs 50-65 yrs 66+ yrs Pension scheme preferences 2000 2005 2010 2015
A sustainable fund (where A fund with 90% Median support for E&S proposals Voting 100% Total assets under 100% of the investments traditional investments, management participation Canada would be sustainable) and 10% sustainable $92tn 25% £1.7tn investments 40% Sustainable (50.6%) 38% 50% 36% 20% 15% Source: US £12tn (25.7%) 19% 10% Democratic 0% 17% 18% Audit, 2018 15-33 yrs 34-49 yrs 50-65 yrs 66+ yrs 5%
Young people also seem more aware 0% Australia/New Zealand 2000 2005 2010 2015 of the potential for financial activism, £0.7tn (63.2%) Female Male All Female Male All especially when it comes to protecting the Source: unpri.org, ISS Analytics environment. 76 per cent of 18-24 year olds Despite voicing concerns about climate- in the UK believe choosing where you invest Traditional fund (does not Not sure Japan seek positive impact on related risk, asset managers BlackRock money is one of the best ways to help the £2.2tn people and the planet) and Vanguard blocked 16 climate-critical planet. MMMM (18.3%) shareholder resolutions at S&P 500 33% Research from the Cambridge Institute 30% companies last year. The Guardian Europe £14tn (48.4%) 27% for Sustainability found that income level, education and gender had no statistically 18% Climate Action 100+ is an initiative by 370 14% investors with over $35tn in assets that is significant effect on preference for 10% seeking to engage with companies on their sustainable investment. On the other hand, emissions, governance and climate-related those under 35 years old and inexperienced financial disclosures. savers showed a strong preference. Female Male All Female Male All Source: BloombergNEF Source: DfID 2019 20 tortoise notes 21 tortoise at wef
Responsibility100 index
Banks The triple bottom line Are companies facing up to their Companies scaled by annual scope 1 and 2 One of the simplest ways to make an impact Appetite for sustainable investment is responsibilities? In January Tortoise carbon emissions is to switch bank accounts. growing, and that’s partly due to the fact officially launched the Responsibility100 that there is a growing body of evidence to Index, a ranking of the FTSE 100 on their 1 million 10 million tonnes of CO equivalent Analysis by the Rainforest Action Network suggest it is both low risk and profitable. efforts towards the biggest social and found that banks lent $654bn to fossil fuel Consumer Finance Engineering environmental challenges of our time. Digital and media Extraction The rest companies in 2018. A study by Morgan Stanley found that when US stock market volatility spiked, the Using a framework inspired by the UN In the first half of 2019, JPMorgan signed 90 The FTSE 100 median sustainable fund outperformed the Sustainable Development Goals, the Index Rio Tinto deals with fossil fuel companies. Only 5 were median traditional fund by 1.39 per cent uses only public data and compares a Group signed with renewable energy companies. BHP in US Equity returns, and had a narrower company’s commitments (its ‘Talk’ score) Bloomberg, 2019 dispersion. with its actions (its ‘Walk’ score). We hope it Shell Evraz pushes corporate transparency to the top of Glencore JPMorgan $67.4bn In March 2018, Axioma found that boardroom agendas. companies with a high ESG focus CITI $40.0bn outperform their benchmarks by between 81 Here are some of our key findings: and 243 basis points. Financial Times – Companies on the FTSE 100 have a CRH plc BP Bank of America $39.3bn collective annual carbon footprint of
ScotiaBank $36.0bn “The business case to invest in a 419 million tonnes of CO₂ equivalent IAG transition to a low-carbon (total emissions from direct activities and Wells Fargo $35.8bn economy is becoming extremely electricity purchased). That is 55m tonnes compelling.” more than produced by the entire UK. The UK TD $27.1bn David Blood, – The FTSE 100 on average reduced their Managing partner, Generation Investment RBC $26.8bn Management, 2019 gender pay gap by 0.5 per cent in 2018 – at this rate, it would take 38 years for them $250bn MUFG $25.5bn Green loan to equalise incomes. Sustainability- linked loan Barclays $24.1bn – More generally, there are big gaps in $200bn Social bond the FTSE 100’s data reporting. Not one Sustainability company reports on the representation Mizuho $22.5bn bond of LGBT and disabled people at senior $150bn Bank of Montreal $21.4bn management level – or their pay gaps –
while less than half of the FTSE 100 report Sources: FTSE 100 Annual and Sustainability Reports Deutsche Bank $20.9bn on their recycling of waste and water. $100bn Green bond
Morgan Stanley $20.3bn To see all of our findings as well as the rankings, a complete list of indicators HSBC $19.3bn $50bn and a technical methodology report, visit: www.tortoisemedia.com/intelligence/ Bank of China $17.2bn responsibility $0 2012 2014 2016 2018 Source: Banktrack Source: BloombergNEF The index
The Company Talk Walk Gap Sector Total rank The Company Talk Walk Gap Sector Total rank top 50 Unilever 6 1 5 Consumer Goods 1 bottom 50 Royal Bank of Scotland Group 41 53 -12 Banking 51 Diageo 9 3 6 Beverage 2 Mondi 3 77 -74 Packaging 52
Vodafone Group 1 7 -6 Telecommunications 3 Berkeley Group Holdings 29 59 -30 Construction 53
British Land 12 5 7 Financial Services 4 St. James's Place plc 69 48 21 Insurance 54
AstraZeneca 7 6 1 Pharma 5 Informa 80 45 35 Media 55
RELX 2 14 -12 Media 6 Experian 79 47 32 Support Services 56
WPP plc 4 10 -6 Media 7 BAE Systems 59 56 3 Aerospace 57
ITV plc 72 2 70 Media 8 Rentokil Initial 68 52 16 Support Services 58
GlaxoSmithKline 21 9 12 Pharma 9 JD Sports 64 54 10 Fashion 59
BT Group 23 11 12 Telecommunications 10 InterContinental Hotels Group 53 61 -8 Travel 60
Severn Trent 17 13 4 Utilities 11 Imperial Brands 48 64 -16 Tobacco 61
Aviva 26 16 10 Insurance 12 Rightmove 90 49 41 Digital Services 62
3i 62 4 58 Financial Services 13 BP 55 66 -11 Energy 63
Standard Life Aberdeen 28 12 16 Financial Services 14 Spirax-Sarco Engineering 63 57 6 Engineering 64
Barratt Developments 50 17 33 Construction 15 Sainsbury's 38 70 -32 Supermarkets 65
Land Securities 46 15 31 Financial Services 16 Phoenix Group 85 51 34 Financial Services 66
Lloyds Banking Group 36 18 18 Banking 17 RSA Insurance Group 56 68 -12 Insurance 67
Burberry 31 20 11 Fashion 18 Glencore 8 84 -76 Mining 68
Barclays 19 21 -2 Banking 19 Antofagasta 51 71 -20 Mining 69
Sage Group 94 8 86 Software 20 Rolls-Royce Holdings 75 60 15 Aerospace 70
Taylor Wimpey 22 26 -4 Construction 21 Polymetal International PLC 42 73 -31 Mining 71
HSBC 24 27 -3 Banking 22 Carnival Corporation & plc 35 76 -41 Travel 72
National Grid plc 20 28 -8 Utilities 23 Flutter Entertainment 93 58 35 Digital Services 73
London Stock Exchange Group 71 19 52 Financial Services 24 Halma 77 69 8 Engineering 74
Schroders 47 25 22 Financial Services 25 Smurfit Kappa 25 82 -57 Packaging 75
SSE plc 5 42 -37 Energy 26 Bunzl 88 72 16 Support Services 76
Auto Trader Group 96 22 74 Digital Services 27 Smiths Group 86 67 19 Engineering 77
Centrica 34 29 5 Utilities 28 Aveva 99 74 25 Software 78
Coca-Cola HBC 18 37 -19 Beverage 29 Royal Dutch Shell 14 90 -76 Energy 79
Compass Group 30 33 -3 Support Services 30 CRH plc 37 85 -48 Construction 80
Kingfisher plc 27 36 -9 Consumer Goods 31 M&G plc 32 88 -56 Insurance 81
United Utilities 45 30 15 Utilities 32 Prudential plc 32 88 -56 Insurance 81
Anglo American plc 52 34 18 Mining 33 TUI 54 83 -29 Travel 83
BHP 16 39 -23 Mining 34 Just Eat 89 75 14 Digital Services 84
Segro 70 23 47 Financial Services 35 Whitbread 74 78 -4 Travel 85
Legal & General 60 32 28 Insurance 36 Ashtead Group 84 79 5 Support Services 86
Hargreaves Lansdown 92 24 68 Financial Services 37 Morrisons 66 87 -21 Supermarkets 87
Reckitt Benckiser 10 55 -45 Consumer Goods 38 Ferguson plc 91 81 10 Support Services 88
Smith & Nephew 76 31 45 Engineering 39 Ocado 95 80 15 Supermarkets 89
Admiral Group 98 35 63 Insurance 40 Meggitt plc 83 86 -3 Aerospace 90
Croda International 43 40 3 Chemicals 41 Hikma Pharmaceuticals 65 92 -27 Pharma 91
British American Tobacco 40 46 -6 Tobacco 42 DS Smith 44 94 -50 Packaging 92
Standard Chartered 39 44 -5 Banking 43 International Airlines Group 78 91 -13 Travel 93
Next plc 49 43 6 Fashion 44 Evraz 58 96 -38 Mining 94
Johnson Matthey 57 41 16 Chemicals 45 easyJet plc 87 93 -6 Travel 95
Pearson plc 11 65 -54 Media 46 NMC Health 82 95 -13 Healthcare 96
Rio Tinto Group 13 63 -50 Mining 47 Intertek 67 98 -31 Support Services 97
Associated British Foods 61 50 11 Consumer Goods 48 Melrose Industries 97 97 0 Financial Services 98
Persimmon plc 73 38 35 Construction 49 DCC plc 81 99 -18 Support Services 99
Tesco 15 62 -47 Supermarkets 50 Scottish Mortgage Investment Trust 100 100 0 Financial Services 100 24 tortoise notes 25 tortoise at wef
Supported by Henkel X ThinkIn our partner
The world is in the grip of an unprecedented What did we find? Total rank Total 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 28 AI arms race, with the US and China surging The US is the undisputed leader in AI
ahead in a contest that could reshape our development, the Index shows. The western Commercial 24 46 21 29 18 39 36 19 41 26 38 54 40 43 48 51 34 44 37 42 47 27 45 53 49 50 52
societies from the ground up, Tortoise’s superpower scored almost twice as highly as Strategy
Implementation Innovation Investment 42 37 15 29 10 19 18 41 24 8 17 21 46 33 35 46 46 40 34 46 32 46 46 35 37 46 45 Global AI Index revealed at the end of second-placed China, thanks to the quality Government last year. of its research, talent and private funding.
Born out of conversations with America was ahead on the majority of Development 23 41 32 19 25 16 38 45 31 29 37 45 44 42 45 45 39 33 34 36 45 43 25 45 45 45 45
key metrics – and by a significant margin. representatives from national governments Research 20 17 30 25 36 35 15 27 33 39 47 54 38 32 51 52 37 42 40 46 49 41 50 48 53 43 44
involved in the scramble to develop and However, on current growth experts predict
China will overtake the US in just five to 10 Environment Operating 16 51 41 42 10 46 32 4 33 37 26 11 35 36 21 34 23 44 22 45 14 49 53 28 52 54 implement AI, the Global AI Index 40 ranks 54 countries based on their AI years.
capabilities, measuring performance across China is the fastest-growing AI country, Infrastructure 28 13 11 35 41 38 27 34 47 44 37 18 33 48 20 31 42 40 43 45 39 50 51 49 54 52 53 150 indicators including research, coding our Index finds, overtaking the UK on Talent 12 41 35 30 17 29 39 22 45 31 24 50 33 38 48 44 37 47 40 43 36 46 52 53 54 49 51 platforms, investment and government metrics ranging from code contributions to spending. For the first time at its launch in research papers in the past two years. Last London on 3 December, the Index disclosed year, 85 per cent of all facial recognition the huge acceleration of AI across the patents were filed in China, as the
globe as the technology becomes a new communist country tightened its grip on the battleground for influence and power. controversial technology. Beijing has already Country Norway Arabia Saudi Taiwan Belgium Malta Russia Czech Republic Iceland Mexico Portugal Lithuania Qatar Malaysia Turkey Uruguay Morocco Brazil South Africa Hungary Argentina Tunisia Indonesia Kenya Sri Lanka Nigeria Egypt Pakistan Tortoise developed the Index to further been condemned for using facial recognition understanding among policy makers, to track and profile ethnic Muslims in its
entrepreneurs and the public of a new western region. rank Total 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27
technology that some suggest is a Britain is in third place thanks to a vibrant Commercial 1 2 4 5 9 7 6 25 8 20 12 3 10 15 28 22 23 13 17 16 30 32 33 11 14 35
breakthrough as remarkable as the discovery AI talent pool and an excellent academic 31
of electricity. “AI is one of the most Strategy 13 1 7 4 5 6 30 31 12 42 39 46 28 16 9 22 23 25 11 44 20 46 2 14 26 27 3 reputation. This country has spawned Government important things humanity is working on,” hugely successful AI companies such as
Google CEO Sundar Pichai said last year. “It Development 2 1 11 10 12 9 15 3 7 6 4 5 14 17 24 8 20 13 25 22 18 35 30 28 40 21 DeepMind, a startup founded in 2010 which 45
holds the potential for some of the biggest was bought by Google four years later for Research 1 2 3 8 4 12 16 22 6 28 18 5 7 11 31 34 13 24 10 9 19 14 26 23 21 29
advances we are going to see.” $500m. Britain has been held back, however, 45 Over 12 months, we measured 54 by one of the slowest patent application Environment
countries across seven key themes: talent; process in any of the 51 countries. Other Operating 6 3 1 5 7 2 39 30 16 27 8 50 47 38 20 12 24 19 25 18 31 9 13 43 48 17 10 countries are snapping at its heels. Infrastructure 1 3 8 23 12 30 4 5 16 2 32 36 14 9 10 17 19 46 29 26 15 22 25 21 6 24 infrastructure; operating environment; 7
research; development; government To see all of our findings as well as the Talent 1 18 5 4 9 8 2 28 26 6 11 13 10 20 19 7 16 3 25 15 23 14 34 27 21 32 42 strategy; and commercial ventures. Each Global AI Index rankings, a complete list indicator was weighted for importance after of indicators and a technical methodology consultation with experts across the field. report, visit:
www.tortoisemedia.com/intelligence/ai Country United States of America of States United China Kingdom United Canada Germany France Singapore South Korea Japan Ireland Australia Israel Switzerland Finland Spain The Netherlands Denmark India Luxembourg Sweden Austria Zealand New Poland Estonia Hong Kong Italy United Arab Emirates Arab United 26 tortoise notes 27 tortoise at wef
Declaring a Digital Détente
The age of cyber-espionage The US is the most common target of Believed to operate out of Russia with the and Israel unleashed the Stuxnet computer state-sponsored cyberattack, followed by the backing of military intelligence service the worm on Iran’s nuclear programme. In 2012, 80% United Kingdom, Germany, India, South GRU. It has been tied to attacks on NATO, Iranian hackers struck Saudi Arabia’s national Organised crime Korea, China, Russia, Japan, Iran, and Israel. the World Anti-Doping Authority and the oil company, Saudi Aramco, with a massive Reuters, 2019 2016 US presidential election. hit to IT systems. In 2020, Iran-US relations 60% are particularly strained after the killing 2018 2019 APT30 of general Qassem Soleimani. Deniable China, Russia Also known as Naikon, PLA Unit 78020, 40% cyberattack is a likely avenue for retaliation. Iran Lotus Panda. 5G South Korea Believed to operate out of China. This group State- The rollout of 5th generation mobile 20% a liated China is noted for its consistent attempts to steal networks will increase the number of items Cashier Activist System data from members of the Association of Admin United States connected to the internet from 14.2bn to Southeast Asian Nations. It’s been active 0% Russia 25bn by 2021. With so much data moving 2010 2012 2014 2016 2018 since 2005. UK around, hackers will have a far wider surface Source: Verizon 2019 Netherlands APT33 for attack. State-affiliated cyberattacks are on the rise UAE Also known as Holmium, Refined Kitten and Towards a digital détente and comprised one quarter of data breaches Elfin. Pakistan Each point According to Juniper Research cyberattacks worldwide in 2019. Verizon represents one Mexico cyberattack Believed to operate out of Iran, this group could cost the global economy $8tn over the – 78 per cent of cyber-espionage incidents Saudi Arabia has made a name for itself conducting next five years and, with many businesses phishing attacks on aerospace and energy involved phishing attacks. Phishing Lebanon becoming digitalised, the threat is growing. involves tricking people by getting them companies in the US, Saudi Arabia and International cooperation, through initiatives Hong Kong to disclose their identity, bank account South Korea. like the Paris Call for Trust and Security in Unknown numbers, etc. over the internet or by What to look out for in 2020 Cyber Space and the UN’s governmental e-mail. Verizon, 2019 US, UK, N Zealand, cyber code of conduct, will be critical to Australia The Olympics maintaining cyberpeace. – 87 per cent involved the use of malware As Japan prepares to host the Games this (software specifically designed to disrupt Source: Council for Foreign Relations The global technology sector also has a role summer, cyber defence will be high on the list or destroy) or a backdoor (a way of getting using its expertise to promote cyberdefence The most common non-state victims are of official concerns. around normal security measures to gain the United Nations, Yahoo, the Asia- over cyberattack. high level access to a network). Pacific Economic Cooperation, and Bank of Japan’s neighbour, Russia, will be particularly Verizon, 2019 America. motivated to disrupt this year’s Games after “Just as the world’s governments came its ban from international sport for repeated together in 1949 to adopt the Fourth Who’s who in cyberspace? Hackers for hire doping scandals. Microsoft say Russian- Geneva Convention to protect civilians in times of war, we need a Digital According to analysis of publicly available What are the APTs (Advanced Persistent backed hackers have already targeted 16 Geneva Convention that will commit data by the Centre for Strategic and Threat groups) that nation states employ to international sporting and anti-doping governments to implement the norms International Studies, China and Russia have do their dirty work? organisations in the run up to 2020. been the largest sources of cyberattacks since that have been developed to protect Tensions in the Middle East 2006, with a large number of attacks also APT28 civilians on the internet in times of Cyberwar between Iran and the US and peace.” originating in Iran and the US. Also known as Fancy Bear, Sofacy and its allies is nothing new. In 2008, the US Brad Smith, Microsoft, 2017 Strontium. 28 tortoise notes 29 tortoise at wef
Can we innovate our way out Supported by of the climate crisis? our partner Are we innovating fast enough? Carbon capture Direct air capture Better batteries In 2018 the IPCC said we had 12 years to Carbon capture and storage (CCS) is Direct air capture plants take in air and “The arrival of cheap battery storage keep the rise in global temperatures below a negative emissions technology that remove carbon dioxide from it using a filter. will mean that it becomes increasingly 1.5°C. This would require a 45 per cent captures waste carbon dioxide at its The CO2 is then buried to deliver negative possible to finesse the delivery of carbon emissions cut by 2030. Yet even 12 source (e.g. power plants) and stores it emissions, or sold to industry. electricity from wind and solar, so that years may be misleading. To stay within deep underground. The UK’s Committee The downside: the machines use energy these technologies can help meet 1.5°C, the IPCC noted that emissions must on Climate Change says that CCS “is a which must come from renewable sources demand even when the wind isn’t peak this year. necessity, not an option” in the drive to for the process to be worthwhile. And the blowing and the sun isn’t shining.” achieve net-zero emissions by 2050. Energy production of all types accounts for price, at $100 to $600 per tonne of CO2 Seb Henbest, Bloomberg NEF 72 per cent of global emissions. Innovation Large-scale CCS facilities removed, could prove prohibitive. in the energy industry will therefore be Investment in lithium mining has risen From 2050, 10 million tonnes of CO2 would essential for achieving the Paris goals. almost ten-fold since 2012, and investment have to be removed from the atmosphere in battery manufacturing capacity has risen While spending by governments into each year to keep average temperature more than five-fold. low-carbon energy has been rising, it’s not increases to 2°C or less. Climeworks keeping up with demand. IEA, 2019 Lithium-ion batteries fell in price by 80 per cent between 2010 and 2017. Expected new generation from low-carbon power investment BloombergNEF, 2019 Israel’s Phinergy says its aluminum-air TeraWatts Renewable power Nuclear Ambient CO₂-free air air batteries could give electric cars a range of 900 1,000 miles (the current average is less than 100 on a full charge). 800 Source: Global CCS Institute Average lithium-ion pack price ($ 2018) 700 However, CCS has yet to be applied at scale. Air capture Demand plant $1,160 growth – 19 The number of fully operational carbon 600 capture facilities in the world.
500 – >2000 The number required to limit Waste heat or $899 renewable warming to 1.8°C according to the energy source 400 International Energy Agency (IEA). $707 $650 300 – 260 million Tonnes of CO2 emissions Concentrated CO₂ used to $577 boost crops grown in captured and permanently stored to date. greenhouses 200 $373 – 2.8 billion Tonnes of CO2 emissions that $288 100 need to be captured every year by 2050. $214 $176 World CCS Institute, 2019 0 2013 2014 2015 2016 2017 2018 2010 2011 2012 2013 2014 2015 2016 2017 2018 Source: IEA 2019 30 tortoise notes 31 tortoise at wef
How to turn protest into progress
It’s 1968 all over again But while one type political participation We’re living in an age of mass movements, 3. Start small and pick your battles 2019 saw an unprecedented rise in civil is thriving, another is in decline. Globally, but it’s not yet clear whether they’re an Case study: The Salt March voter turnout has dropped since the 1980s, effective way of achieving lasting change. disobedience across the world. In Bolivia, Mahatma Gandhi’s contemporaries initially despite growth in the voting population and Here are some key tips from the experts for Algeria, Sudan, Iraq, Lebanon, Chile, questioned his decision to make the British the number of countries holding elections. how to turn protest into progress: France, Spain, the UK and India, protest has Raj’s salt tax the primary focus of the Indian IDEA, 2016 caused significant disruption. 1. Clearly define the change you wish to Independence movement. 100% make In Hong Kong, pro-democracy protests were But one month after Gandhi and 78 of his the largest and longest in living memory. Case study: Extinction Rebellion closest followers marched 200 miles to the It’s not yet clear whether they have been a 90% Extinction Rebellion (XR) was founded in Indian Ocean, a mass campaign of non- failure or a success. 2018 by Roger Hallam, an organic farmer compliance was triggered that eventually led Number of participants in 1 July rallies from Wales, and Gail Bradbrook, a director to end of Britain’s control over India. 80% of strategy in non-profit work. Thousands 4. Have a post-protest plan 600 XR’s considerable success at bringing Case study: Tahrir Square Oceania attention to the climate crisis through 70% Secular protestors were highly involved in 500 Asia protest was arguably helped by the clarity of Americas the 2011 Egyptian Revolution but it was the Global average their demands. They are: 400 Europe Islamist Muslim Brotherhood that ended up Organisers’ 60% Africa figures – the official declaration of a climate winning the elections that followed. 300 emergency “Post-protest choices truly matter and – net zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2025 200 50% Government make a significant difference in 1950 1970 1990 2010 figures – the handover of decision-making on determining whether protests achieve 100 Source: Voter Turnout Database government climate policy to a citizens’ long-lasting change, or whether activists fall prey to the dangers of “Is protest a productive use of our assembly 0 government cooptation.” 2004 2006 2008 2010 2012 2014 2016 2018 political attention? Or is it just a bit of 2. Make unlikely allies Richard Youngs, Carnegie Europe Source: Hong Kong Institute of Asia-Pacific Studies social theatre we perform to make ourselves feel virtuous, useful, and in Case study: Harvey Milk Popular protest the right?” Harvey Milk was the first openly gay man It’s not just the frequency of protests that Nathan Heller, The New Yorker elected to US public office. His strategy as rose last year, it’s the number of protestors a gay rights campaigner involved going into too. From protest to progress conservative Irish Catholic neighbourhoods in San Francisco to win support among Last February, three million Algerians “Nonviolent mass movements are the merchant associations. He also gathered (an estimated 10 per cent of the country’s primary challenges to governments institutional allies such as Richard Hongisto population) turned out to protest the 20- today. This represents a pronounced – the ex-police officer who ran for sheriff year rule of President Bouteflika. shift in the global landscape of on a promise to remove homophobia in the And globally, around twice that number dissent.” local department. joined the Fridays for Future climate strike Erica Chenoweth that took place last September. Political scientist at Harvard 30 BIG LITTLE LIES 31 TORTOISE AT WEF
Over half of the false claims we scrutinised were straightforward errors or exaggerations about facts. One of the smallest was Jeremy Corbyn’s mistaken claim that the UK is the world’s fi fth richest country – it’s recently moved down to sixth (or ninth, depending on which measure you use). Not the worst untruth of the campaign, but still an error that a prospective prime minister probably should not make. Some of these untruths can be classed as “omissions”: claims that miss out important information, such as Siân Berry’s statement during the ITV leaders’ debate that funding for bus services has been cut by nearly half. Full Fact found that this statistic came from a report that, rather signifi cantly, ignores the full picture. Then there were the conjectures: things that can be neither proven nor disproven, like the SNP saying that Scotland has subsidised the rest of the UK in most of the last 40-year period. Channel 4 found that lack of data makes this impossible to know either way. Again, not a Nixon-level lie: but still a potentially misleading statement. ELECTION 2019 More troubling were the outright fabrications and deliberate acts of deceit. Phoney images of newspapers on Facebook, or leaflets with flawed evidence Big little lies to persuade voters to vote tactically. And perhaps worst of all, the fake fact-checker launched on social media as a means of re-badging the In a world of post-truth politics, we tracked the Conservative press offi ce Twitter feed during the ITV leaders’ debate on falsehoods of the election campaign – from the leaders, 19 November. their parties, and their social media machines Challenged on the BBC’s Victoria Derbyshire Show with the opinion of one viewer that his son was a liar, like Pinocchio, Johnson’s father Stanley was scornfully dismissive. “Pinocchio? That requires a degree of literacy which 11 DECEMBER 2019 | ELLA HOLLOWOOD AND MATTHEW D ANCONA ’ I think the Great British public doesn’t necessarily have,” Johnson Sr said. Lies, fake news, “alternative facts”: the world of post-truth politics is “They couldn’t spell Pinocchio if they tried, I shouldn’t have thought.” We a dangerous place. Which is why we at Tortoise have spent this election are not so sanguine. If the truth does not matter and lies can be laughed campaign keeping track of untruths. away in the middle of a general election campaign, then what chance does liberal democracy stand? We checked politicians’ whoppers against analysis carried out by the independent charity Full Fact and Channel 4 News’s FactCheck, and discovered that of 95 claims that were fact-checked during the election Who told the most untruths? campaign, 77 turned out to be untrue. Of the 77 untruths we collected, nearly two-thirds came from one of the But what, in the context of a hard-fought election, actually counts as two main parties, with slightly more from the Tory campaign compared an “untruth”? to Labour. We have used a broad defi nition to cover statements or manipulations or Boris Johnson told the most untruths of the leadership contenders, misrepresentations where politicians strayed from the truth: ranging from responsible for nearly half of the Tory’s untruths, compared to Corbyn who the misleading remark to the outright lie. accounted for a third of Labour’s. 32 BIG LITTLE LIES 33 TORTOISE AT WEF
Number of untruths by party But what is also striking is that parties tend to be least truthful on the issues Conservatives closest to their heart: Tories had most untruths about Brexit. Labour had the 26 most about poverty. Almost all of the SNP’s untruths related to the Union. Labour 21 Where are the untruths coming from? One of the biggest “platforms” for untruths (and perhaps a sign of how Lib Dems SNP Brexit Party rushed the campaigns have been) was offi cial party literature: manifestos, 5 5 4 Green Plaid Cymru press releases, leaflets and adverts. A handful of these included crimes 1 1 against charts, such as Labour’s donut chart, which implied that the 35 per cent of Hornsey and Wood Green constituents who didn’t vote Labour all voted Tory (in fact, the Lib Dems had a higher vote share than the Tories). Joint top was social media, where most of the untruths had no offi cial Which issues were parties the most dishonest about? affi liation to a party.
Perhaps unsurprisingly, the NHS and Brexit. Labour and the Tories told a Number of untruths by platform and party total of nine untruths about the NHS. For the Tories, this was most notably Party literature Social media TV the repeated promise of an unprecedented cash boost for our national health 20 20 18 Campaign trail service. (After adjusting for inflation, the NHS had a larger cash boost as 14 recently as 2004/05 to 2009/10.) Radio News Number of untruths by issue and party 3 1 Conservative Labour Lib Dem Brexit Party SNP Green Plaid Cymru None
NHS 13 Who was the most deceitful? Six came from Brexit 10 the Conservative But not all untruths are equal – some are outright lies – and we want to fi nd campaign Tax 8 out who told the worst. To do this, we scored each untruth for the electoral signifi cance of the claim and the level of dishonesty in the lie. Votes 6 Three came Poverty 6 from Labour Total and average scores for the severity of each party’s untruths Plaid Cymru Four came Union 6 SNP 2 from the SNP Lib Dems 19 17 (2.0) Spending 5 (4.4) (3.3) Crime 4 Brexit Party Media 2 Conservatives 15 140 (3.8) Johnson 2 Corbyn and (Average 5.4) Labour Johnson both 80 Corbyn 2 (3.8) Green faced two untrue 2 Immigration 2 personal attacks (2.0)
Environment 2 34 DESTROYER OF WORLDS 35 TORTOISE AT WEF
their way there, and get radicalised into an extreme ideology which drives some of them to violence. But there is no fundamentalist preacher for the ideology of chan sites. It’s mostly lonely people who fi nd themselves in a febrile information ecosystem without precedent in human history. Chan sites like 8chan are something entirely new: organic communities of anonymous participants that have started to behave almost like a new consciousness, separate and more powerful and dangerous than the sum of its parts. Ahmed The anger and hate that spews from 8chan is not a conscious extension of Al-Mahmoud, the anger and hate of its creator – though he had plenty – but an inevitable centre, survived Photography by the attack on Todd Heisler/ byproduct of the dark structure he built. The story of 8chan’s founder, the Al Noor Eyevine and mosque in Getty Images Fredrick Brennan, is a perfect expression of this: born with a profound Christchurch. disability and shuttled in and out of foster care, his creation of the site was The perpetrator 8CHAN posted on born not out of cold calculation or political ambition, but from a need to fi nd 8chan /pol/ beforehand Destroyer of worlds community in loneliness. 8chan is a monster, but its creator had no idea what it would become. How a childhood of anger led the founder of 8chan to He was just a kid. create one of the darkest corners of the internet Brennan was born in 1994 in the Hudson Valley in upstate New York. He lived with his parents in a trailer park in the small town of Livingston 28 JUNE 2019 | NICKY WOOLF until they divorced when he was fi ve, and Brennan moved with his brother and father to Craryville, NY. His childhood was one of intense pain. On 27 April, before he burst into a San Diego synagogue and opened fi re, killing one worshipper and injuring three more, the gunman said goodbye to Brennan had inherited from his mother a genetic disorder called osteogenesis the community that radicalised him. “It’s been real dudes,” he posted on the imperfecta. The condition, which stunted his growth and confi ned him to far-right politics board, /pol/, on the image-posting site 8chan. “I’ve only a wheelchair, is often called “brittle bone disease”. By the time he was 19, been lurking for a year and a half, yet what I’ve learned here is priceless.” Brennan estimates, he had broken his bones 120 times. The story was familiar. Six weeks earlier, a 28-year-old had killed 50 people The condition meant constant agony, but also boredom. After the divorce, at two mosques in Christchurch, New Zealand. Before starting his attack, his mother’s new boyfriend Bill showed him how to use a computer. Brennan he, too, had posted on 8chan’s /pol/ board. “It’s been a long ride,” he had was smart, always ranking near the top of his class in reading and writing, written. He signed off his post: “Meme magic is real.” The fi rst response from and was soon the best typist in his class. But he wasn’t yet interested in much an anonymous 8chan user urged him to “get the high score”. other than gaming. “Because we were poor we didn’t have many diff erent games,” Brennan tells me. “So we used to play the same one over and over.” From its eff ect on the world, 8chan could be ranked as one of the internet’s One had a little online forum for players. Brennan made friends there; they most dangerous sites. Some have even compared it to terrorist groups like swapped tips. It was there that Brennan fi rst stumbled across chan culture. Al-Qaeda or ISIS. The pattern is similar: men – and it is always men – fi nd In fact, it stumbled upon him. 36 DESTROYER OF WORLDS 37 TORTOISE AT WEF
It is important here to explain how chan sites work. 4chan, the oldest and were revoked, he found another way to get online: he bought an iPod Touch, most influential English-language chan site, is split into a limited number of an MP3 player that could access the internet. “Nobody knew,” he says. topic-specifi c boards. There are boards for various interests – cars, knitting, Access to 4chan became increasingly important to him during his time in anime – and each one is a community of users, who make posts and foster care. “I don’t know how long I’m going to spend in one place, the state comment on others’ posts. Posts expire after they lapse, and are pushed out is deciding everything through its agents, and I don’t really have much say in by newer ones. No registration is required, and each comment is anonymous. what happens to me,” he says of that time. “Maybe [4chan] wasn’t really a Anonymity is key: it means there is no incentive to follow social norms. It family, but it defi nitely made me feel a sense of normalcy.” After two years in also means that belonging to the community entails performance. With its foster care, Brennan went to live with his mother in Atlantic City, the fading users an anonymous mass, free from the eff ects of individuality – shame, in casino resort on the New Jersey coast, aged 16. particular – chan culture forms organically. The bigoted argot that emerged The kind of 4chan user he was, he tells me, serves to denote in-group status: taking off ence is for outsiders. changed over time. He moved on from /b/ One of the things the users on 4chan’s raucous and popular “random” board, to two other boards, the news board /n/ and /b/, liked to do was go on “raids”. In a raid, users pile on to another site en /r9k/, a board programmed to reject any masse, saturating it, disrupting the community and generally pissing people content that repeats something that’s been off . Getting a rise out of others is core to chan culture. posted before. He got turned on to the “alt-chan” scene – people looking for By the early 2000s, 4chan was growing alternative sites – when 4chan’s founder and exponentially, and at some point, its users administrator, Chris Poole, known by his picked on Brennan’s video-game board. To username “moot”, unilaterally shut down Brennan, it was as if an alien invasion force both boards. Both were later reinstated, with A vigil to had descended from the sky. He realised the remember /n/ reconstituted as /pol/, but Brennan was angry. “I felt like 4chan’s admin internet could be used for destructive as well victims of the had deleted those boards just to hurt me,” Brennan says. Umpqua as constructive purposes – and he saw how Community College mass much fun the destructive side could be. In In the meantime, Brennan’s online identity was developing. “I was known as shooting, Oregon, which the force of 4chan’s raid, which demolished the guy who was always talking about eugenics, that was my thing,” he says. has been linked his little community, Brennan saw for the He posted about it every day. In 2014, he wrote a disturbing essay, published to 8chan and 4chan fi rst time in his life something that could on the white supremacist website The Daily Stormer, calling for the make him feel powerful. Family members sterilisation of people with diseases like his. It simmers with anger, especially mourn the death of Lori at his father, whom he calls “a complete deadbeat”. It ends: “I am simply He went to 4chan. Gilbert Kaye, killed in the San asking for compassion from an ignorant society that falsely believes it is By 2006, the year he turned 12, he was on /b/ “all the time”. It was fun. Diego unethical to give genetically defective people incentives not to reproduce. synagogue On his old board there would only be a few posts every day; on 4chan, every shooting. The I am simply arguing for a world full of healthy, happy children who can play 30 seconds there was something new. Brennan spent as much time at the gunman had outside with their friends without breaking their legs.” been computer as possible. “My dad, he just felt like: well, he’s in a wheelchair, radicalised on Brennan’s views on eugenics were unarguably appalling, but they should also so it doesn’t make sense for him to do anything else but play with the 8chan /pol/ be seen in the context of his experience. He hated his parents for bringing computer,” he tells me. him into a life of pain, and it led him to this monstrous viewpoint. “I don’t When he was 14, Brennan was placed into foster care. His new guardians want to speak for everybody with a disability, but I hate being disabled and limited internet access, but Brennan found ways around it. Brennan fi gured I always have,” he tells me. out how to defeat the blocker program on the house laptop that prevented it One of his oldest memories, from when he was six, is of catching sight of a from accessing the internet. When he was caught, and his laptop privileges photograph of himself and a friend. By some accident of composition, the 38 DESTROYER OF WORLDS 39 TORTOISE AT WEF
shot made it look like he was standing up. For a moment the six-year-old other chan site, came looking for a home. Brennan daydreamed an alternate reality where he could walk, run, and play It would come to be known as “Gamergate”. with his friends. “Eventually it abruptly stopped, and I was thrust back into He still posted about eugenics, but he was reality,” he says. “That’s the fi rst time I really remember hating being already growing out of the hardline views he disabled. And I cried for a long time.” developed as a teenager as a way of dealing Brennan’s rage festered as he became a with his anger and his pain. For him, the site teenager. He says that he never identifi ed as was never about creating a home for his a Nazi; his feelings were more masochistic at ideology or actively spreading it to others; root. “I literally wanted a new version of 8chan was just a demonstration of his Brennan: the floodgates Nazi Germany to take over and to kill me coding abilities, “a portfolio-piece”. opened when and everyone like me. That’s how angry I he invited But there was a culture-war brewing. Self-described as free speech advocates misogynistic was,” he says. He spent hours thinking of Gamergaters to campaigning for “ethics in video games journalism”, Gamergate was actually his site. Picture ways to tell his dad how much he hated him. a large, leaderless group of misogynist video game fans, annoyed by what from 2014 Al “I put most of the blame on him. And it’s Jazeera they considered the forced diversifi cation of what had been a white male safe documentary hard to recover from that, you know. It’s A makeshift memorial for the space, who began a campaign of targeted harassment against the “social hard to recover from saying those type of things to your father. And I could three UCSB engineering justice warriors” they blamed. tell it upset him, but as a teenager I really didn’t care.” students stabbed to Kicked off 4chan for doxing, then kicked off 7chan, 4chon, and several other Now, he tells me: “Eugenics is just not that important to me.” He chalks most death in Isla alt-chans, Gamergate needed a home and Brennan saw an opportunity. He of it up to “rebellion”. This may be downplaying the extreme nature of the Vista, California by a man dialled into a Gamergate live-stream chat and made his pitch: “I’m not like views he held; we have only Brennan’s framing of his own story to go on. radicalised through Chris Poole. I’m happy to have you.” Gleefully, the Gamergaters moved in. But in any case, soon Brennan would barely have the time to post at all, even chan-type sites Discovering Brennan’s disability, they gave him a new nickname: Hotwheels. if he was inclined to maintain his eugenics obsession. Things were about to get wild. Brennan wasn’t keen on the moniker, and he says he didn’t personally care about their When Brennan turned 18, he started working for Mechanical Turk, a cause – he didn’t care much at all who his crowdsourcing marketplace for cheap digital labour, doing small writing jobs users were. “Free speech didn’t really factor or classifi cation work. “Bottom-of-the-barrel stuff .” His fi rst year, he made in to the reason I made 8chan in the $7,000. But he was also learning the system; he wrote a library program for beginning,” he says. “I just wanted to see Mechanical Turk which brought his coding skills into the marketplace what it would look like if users could make without him needing a degree. their own boards. But after the Gamergate He moved to New York City, where he met a girl. They broke up, but he guys came, I decided to go whole hog on the remained living with her in Midwood, Brooklyn. One day, he did magic free speech thing – to keep them.” mushrooms with her and her new boyfriend and, while high, the idea for a Students pay At best, he was wilfully blind to Gamergate’s politics; there is moral tribute to the new site came to him where users could make their own infi nitely recurring culpability in inviting them to the site. But the traffi c they represented was, Isla Vista victims boards, rather than be limited to what 4chan’s admins made. By the next day, at Santa to Brennan, unarguable. 8chan went from 100 posts a day to more than Barbara, he was already writing the code for what would become 8chan. Within a few California 10,000 every hour. It was “insane”, Brennan says. He was euphoric. If this days, he had registered the domain name. “It was kinda: boom – an instant keeps up, he thought, I am totally going to unseat moot. idea,” he says. The euphoria quickly faded as he realised what he had taken on. The next two That was October 2013. The following year, the site would take off in a way years were, he says, “the hardest of my life”. He had to keep the servers going. Brennan never expected when a rabid new online movement, kicked off every 40 DESTROYER OF WORLDS 41 TORTOISE AT WEF
He had to keep the software going. He had to talk to the media. “Honestly, If Brennan hadn’t created 8chan, the same culture would have developed sometimes it felt like I was the president of a small nation,” he says. There was elsewhere, he insists. “It’s not the technology that causes what happens, it’s “kind of a cult of personality on the board about me”, he says. really the hearts of the people who are using it,” he says. “If 4chan ceased existing, they would go to another site. If 8chan ceased existing they would He wasn’t their leader, exactly: on chan boards leadership is impossible. But go to another site. And the same patterns would repeat over and over.” as the owner of the site’s domain, he was legally responsible for removing illegal content like child pornography. Far from leading the mob, he spent his It is the structure of a chan site itself that radicalises people. “The other days desperately trying to keep up with it. It was completely out of control. anonymous users are guiding what’s socially acceptable, and the more and In Brennan’s telling of the story, he was more like a mascot. more you post on there you’re being aff ected by what’s acceptable and that changes you. Maybe you start posting Nazi memes as a joke… but you start In October 2014, Brennan held a party at a strip club in Long Island City, to absorb those beliefs as your own, eventually,” Brennan says. “Anonymity Queens, to celebrate the site’s fi rst birthday. People wanted his autograph. makes people reveal themselves, but because there are other anonymous It was “crazy”. The next day, he moved to the Philippines. users – not just one person in a black box – it also changes what they reveal.” Brennan only held on to the legal ownership of 8chan for about six weeks It changes what they do as well. after Gamergate arrived. His funding platform Patreon cancelled his account; money was running low. The site was in such chaos, the traffi c was so The killings in Christchurch and San Diego extreme, and there were so many attacks and legal threats flooding over him were not isolated incidents. It is diffi cult to that he decided he had to fi nd someone to take ownership. prove beyond doubt – one of the things that distinguishes chan sites is that posts are He had a few off ers, and he picked Jim Watkins, an American army veteran in anonymous – but several more mass his fi fties who owned a pig farm outside Manila. His company, NT shootings, including in Umpqua, Oregon, Technology, which operated several porn sites as well as 2channel – the and Isla Vista, California, are linked to the Japanese forerunner to 4chan – assumed legal responsibility for the domain culture of sites like 8chan and its and provided the hardware, while Brennan would continue to run the software predecessor, 4chan. They are also key to the and grow the community. In January 2015, as part of his new employment at A Trump spread of conspiracy theories like NT Tech in Manila, Brennan formally signed the domain over to Watkins. The Comet Ping supporter’s Q “Pizzagate”, which claimed Hillary Clinton was running a child sex ring out Pong pizza Anon T-shirt restaurant The content on 8chan is among the most off ensive, violent and bigoted on refers to a of the basement of a restaurant in Washington DC – and “Qanon,” which where conspiracy the web. It became a sump for the most racist and misogynist of users – holds that Donald Trump is a secret genius working to topple the “deep ‘Pizzagate’ theory that conspiracy Donald Trump is especially on the /pol/ board, where the most far-right political viewpoints state”. theorists a genius fighting believed Hillary collected. But in evaluating its behaviour, it is probably helpful to think of a the “deep state” Both those theories also almost led to massacres; a Pizzagate believer was Clinton was chan site not as a collection of individual arrested after shooting into the restaurant with a semi-automatic rifle when involved in a people but as some kind of many-headed child sex ring he came to “investigate” and a Qanon believer was arrested in Arizona with a trickster-god; a psychotic consciousness in home-made armoured vehicle and several fi rearms. From 8chan they quickly its own right. spread to the real world: Qanon signs are now a regular feature of Trump It is an explosive mix of nihilists looking to rallies, and the lingua franca of chan sites are echoed in the language of have fun and mess with people, lonely naïfs Trump supporters, among whom it is common to share memes originating in who don’t get the joke, and everyone in chan culture, often without knowing where they came from. between. When an impressionable, troubled Because of the way it’s structured, chan culture has immense power to create person winds up on a site like 8chan, they can memes: they spread from the site’s users via pseudonymous communities like soak up the culture like a sponge; some turn Reddit out to Twitter and beyond into the mass cultural consciousness. The / to violence to impress this faceless morass. pol/ boards on both 4chan and 8chan have become home to far-right politics. 42 DESTROYER OF WORLDS 43 TORTOISE AT WEF
One now-infamous meme that featured Hillary Clinton next to a Star of David sign made its way from its original posting to 8chan’s /pol/ board via anonymous Twitter accounts to Trump’s Twitter feed in a matter of days. This kind of thing happens all the time in the modern internet era, but the fact that it’s common makes it more shocking not less: the most extreme forms of hate-speech now have a direct line feeding them to the President of the United States. By April 2016, a little over a year after he sold the site to Jim Watkins, Brennan had soured not just on 8chan, but on the whole idea it represented. He now has no links with it; This image travelled from Watkins and NT Tech are the site’s sole legal owners. (Watkins did not 8chan to Donald respond to a request for an interview.) Trump via social media In essence, Brennan had created one of the most dangerous sites on the Photography by internet – a place with a structure that made it a perfect petri-dish for violent Getty Images misogyny and all kinds of hateful ideologies to germinate and spread – but he had done so entirely by accident. Power in the shadows When he sees news like the Christchurch shooting, Brennan says it makes him Merthyr Tydfi l in Wales overthrew its Labour council “worried for the future”. He tells me: “There’s this idea that if we have with the help of a Facebook group that started as unbridled freedom of speech that the best ideas will fall out. But I don’t really Prime Minister protest against parking wardens think that’s true any more. I mean, I’ve looked at 8chan and I’ve been its Jacinda Ardern admin, and what happens is the most rage-inducing memes are what wins out.” hugs a mosque-goer at Ahead of council elections in many areas of the UK Brennan still lives in the Philippines, but has moved out of the apartment the Kilbirnie Mosque next month, closed groups are influencing voters, but leased by Watkins into one of his own. He is married, has converted to following shooting attacks Christianity, and spends his time designing his own fonts. Asked what he on two mosques how are they administered and moderated? would say to his 14-year-old self, he pauses. in Christchurch “Um. It sounds like a cliché, but it gets The risk is that such groups can become a breeding better. You’re not going to feel like that for ground for lies and extreme views, closing off political ever.” debate and dissent He says he no longer supports compulsory sterilisation, though he still thinks 14 ApRIL 2019 | XAVIER GREENWOOD governments should provide genetic testing for disabled people who want to have It’s a bright spring day in Merthyr Tydfi l, but Lee Heggie can’t see the children. In fact, he is voluntarily sunlight. He has a windowless shop where he fi xes computers and repairs undergoing those tests now – he and his wife photographs in relative darkness. It’s hardly the place you’d come to start are thinking of having a child. a political revolution. 44 pOWER IN THE SHADOWS 45 TORTOISE AT WEF
But Heggie has turned out to be an underestimated and unlikely power in Merthyr Council Truths has emerged as a powerful force in local politics, Wales’s Taff valley. In Merthyr Tydfi l, where Keir Hardie, Labour’s fi rst stepping into the space left by the waning enthusiasm for political parties leader, served as MP, Heggie picked a fi ght with the Labour establishment. and the decline of local media. It’s not alone. Across the UK, these networks are growing. They’re private, popular and powerful. The gates are kept by In January 2014, he created a closed Facebook group called Merthyr Council locals; they’re where members can buy and sell, fi ght and gossip, but also Truths. He’d been chatting with his friend’s wife on Facebook about how the politick: talk, protest, organise. council had “screwed them over”. There was a feeling in Merthyr Tydfi l that small market traders were being unfairly targeted by private parking wardens. The pattern is repeating elsewhere, from Newport’s Casnewydd News (6,099 “I thought, I’m going to start a group members), where dubious claims about “no because I can’t fi ght them on my own,” deal” and the European Union infect Heggie says. “If I can create a group and discussions, to Essex’s Rayleigh Community bring everyone together to share their views Group (10,437 members), which a former on how the local authority has treated councillor is “disappointed to see being used people in this town, then people are going to for party political purposes”. Next month’s think something is going to be done about Merthyr Council local elections are argued out on them this. The response we had was unbelievable: Truths now has through the furious lens of the perceived I think we had 8,000 members in 48 hours.” 18,122 members disrespect shown towards the Brexit vote by Only one opencast mine Today, Merthyr Council Truths has 18,122 members. They account for the Conservative Party and the Labour Party. remains of 40 per cent of the local authority electorate and well over the 14,868 votes Merthyr Tydfil’s The nation is engaged in intense political discussions which most of us coal mining past cast in the last local elections. Heggie, along with two other administrators, can’t see. With 270 councils up for grabs in the local elections on 2 May, is responsible for vetting new members, approving new posts and Merthyr Council Truths is beginning to look like a prototype. Not as a moderating comments. folksy community group, but as an alternative, opaque kind of political “Labour treated that group as an enemy from day one,” Heggie continues. organisation. “They were laughing at us. They had a photo of a chicken and called me For Facebook, which is struggling to free itself from one political scandal ‘Lee Eggie, the Labour destroyer’. And they were laughing about that. But after the next, it suggests that Mark Zuckerberg’s decision this year to move it backfi red on them.” the company forcefully into the private social network business is not going In the council elections of May 2017, voters to free him of public and political responsibilities. If anything, the opposite. staged a revolt. The Merthyr Tydfi l In politics, Facebook is creating the next version of the public square, only constituency, once a Labour stronghold, it’s in private. turned independent. “It’s complacency, it is,” The private social network looks set to be the next wave of the internet and Heggie tells me from over his shop counter. – like the waves that have come before – it’s likely to be misunderstood “In this town, Labour never met an and underestimated. Much like the bulletin boards, then “user-generated opposition like they did in the last elections.” content”, social media platforms and messaging apps, private social networks Labour’s seats plummeted from 25 to 15, the are hailed for off ering community and creativity, cohesion and connection. independents’ seats soared from eight to 18. And yet, private social networks are harder to police for truth and A post-mortem might blame the Voting in responsibility. They are even more prone to sowing division, fostering Merthyr Tydfil’s incumbency of Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn. It might point out that local elections polarisation and enabling communities of hate. They represent the new in 2017, when independent candidates have done well before in post-industrial Wales. Labour lost the battleground between politics and the internet. It probably wouldn’t factor in a private social network on Facebook. council 46 pOWER IN THE SHADOWS 47 TORTOISE AT WEF
Those who wish to stereotype Merthyr battles they had fought, “put their foot on Tydfi l need only go to the Wyndham Arms, their step and said: ‘We’re standing as once named one of the roughest pubs in councillors.’ Because the group was so big Britain. At 2pm on a Wednesday, the pub is and the turnout so small, I think that’s what loud, drunk, male, and aggressive. Signs on pushed the independents into power.” the bar read: “Unless you’re a haemorrhoid, “It was the fi rst time,” says Lyn Williams, get off my ass”, “This property is protected one of the organisers of Merthyr Rising, by: pit bull with Aids”, and “No bloody “that councillors and the council itself were swearing”. The jukebox is broken, so Gold held to so much scrutiny by local people.” Radio blasts Video Killed the Radio Star Poster from an old Sanyo television. Coal miners in Heggie claims that all the active members of the group who ran won seats promoting the Taff Merthyr Merthyr Tydfil in colliery in the on the council, including two former administrators. the town’s bus In this former mining community, half of economically inactive residents are 1980s station labelled “long-term sick”, more than double the UK average. But this isn’t Among them was Tanya Skinner, who ousted the Labour council leader the whole story. Unemployment in Merthyr is below the national average for in winning her seat. She agrees that the group profi ted from fomenting bad Wales and it remains a proud and energised town. Every May, it plays host blood. “The election did demonstrate that people were very disillusioned to Merthyr Rising, a music, arts and ideas festival which commemorates the with Labour. Merthyr Council Truths was very often a place where those anniversary of one of the very fi rst workers’ revolts, in 1831, when miners views were aired. People would say: ‘We’re sick of Labour, you could put took to the streets of Merthyr Tydfi l and raised the red flag of revolution. a rosette on a donkey and they’d get in’.” The spark for Merthyr’s modern revolution came in February 2016 with the But it is what has allegedly happened since arrival in the town of a private company, 3GS, employed by the council to the independents have come into power that crack down on litter. One Facebook member described 3GS wardens as serves as a cautionary tale for playing out “Gestapo offi cers”, another member, now a local councillor, asked: “Who local politics through a closed Facebook pays the wages of the Stasi if no fi xed penalty notices are dished out?” group. Merthyr Council Truths, having been a tool to open up political debate in the area, A torrent of complaints followed. One member claimed he was fi ned for has become a means to close it down. feeding a bird in the KFC car park. Another said her grandson was fi ned for “spitting” after he coughed outside McDonald’s. Pictures and videos of the It didn’t used to be so. “We would pretty wardens were frequently posted on the group. much let people have their say,” Skinner says. “That was quite important for all of us Come January 2017, the wardens were gone. “Merthyr Council Truths has The Welsh hills that it didn’t become an echo chamber.” But when the majority of around the Taff been in the frontline battling the council’s use of 3GS litter wardens who put valley administrators left at the end of 2016, the group “started to become the profi t before morals,” wrote Heggie triumphantly. The departure of the antithesis of what we’d set out to do”. wardens came down, it seems, to pressure from the group, and the eventual success of its administrators in fi nding a legal loophole to stop the ticketing. The suspicion is that criticism of the independents has been censored. Kerry Gibbs, a former administrator and wife of a local councillor, recalls a A council spokeswoman told Wales Online at the time: “The pilot scheme “heated” conversation on the group last year about a private care home has been successful in terms of reducing litter, however a number of provider, which involved criticism of the independent leader and his wife. complaints have also been received from members of the public regarding “I started to notice comments [criticising the leader] being deleted,” she says, the approach adopted by 3GS when dealing with off enders.” “which is what you fi nd when a big emotive topic comes along. I started to But this wasn’t the end of it. The local elections were just four months away get involved and I could see some of my own comments were disappearing.” and Heggie says that members of Merthyr Council Truths, riled up by the 48 pOWER IN THE SHADOWS 49 TORTOISE AT WEF
Heggie insists that the administrators only reject derogatory posts. with her children; Gibbs’s husband was banned after an administrator was “We’ve had posts where people have been accused of being paedophiles,” criticised by some members for a comment he made towards a local he says. “That guy could have family and be super innocent. Then you’ve councillor. “Forty people were kicked out that night, including my husband.” got Dai Bloggs over there who weighs in because he sold him a dodgy car, The most serious accusation, made by the anonymous administrator, is that accusing him of being a paedophile.” “one of the council members is defi nitely influencing the group,” something Another former administrator, who wishes to remain anonymous, alleges which Heggie denies. “Don’t think the group is the local arm of the that members who dissent from the prevailing politics of the group are independents. It’s not.” blocked. “It has a huge impact on the town because it’s not run like an open There’s no evidence of a formal relationship between the independent-run community. It’s very much a dictatorship. Those who don’t subscribe to the council and Merthyr Council Truths, but Heggie’s own posts on the group views of the administrators are banned.” show his direct line of communication with independent councillors and pro-independent voices. So the ministry of the council truths have delete all our posts from last night!! Fair and balanced as always!! #MerthyrCouncilTruths. Lee Heggie From Independent Councillor Malcolm Colbran — Dai Davies (@Dai2584) July 23, 2017 ... There are now four Labour Party members from Treharris on Bedlinog & Trelewis Anyone still left on Merthyr Council truths or have they Community Council, who, unlike the rest of us, contribute nothing fi nancially to the Community Council, who do not live in the ward and are deciding what is best for us delete everyone that doesnt agree with them?? and how our money is spent. — Dai Davies (@Dai2584) August 10, 2018 I fought the election in May on the basis that Bedlinog & Trelewis residents were the best people to represent Bedlinog & Trelewis not Labour candidates from Treharris and you backed me overwhelmingly ... At least we have [Independent] Councillor More than 1,000 people are banned from the group, according to Heggie, Sherelle Jago on the Community Council to look out for our interests. either because they’re not from the area or “for being racist, swearing at people, or spamming the group”. Lee Heggie Gibbs claims that, since she and others left A MESSAGE TO MTCBC [Merthyr Tydfi l County Borough Council] OFFICERS: as administrators, “there have been big The new independent administration has promised the people of Merthyr Tydfi l a culls”, and that “if you look at the banned diff erent brand of politics. They’re delivering this diff erent brand of politics which list now, you will see it is pretty much the can be seen daily and it works. These people are showing that Merthyr Tydfi l is about the people who live in the town not the people who run the council. If you are all Constituency Labour Party [CLP] in there in your jobs to serve the people of Merthyr Tydfi l then show this and get behind Merthyr Tydfi l.” this new brand of politics and help make a Merthyr Tydfi l we have never seen before. Resisting this new brand of politics will only alienate yourselves and fuel bad feelings Locals estimate that Merthyr Tydfi l’s CLP towards yourselves from the people.... membership, the number of Labour Party members in the constituency, is about 550 people. Despite its population of Paul Mason, whose forthcoming book Clear Bright Future deals with the 63,500, Merthyr “The admins act like three people in the bubble,” Gibbs says. “It’s not just a has only one psychology of the xenophobic right, believes the real issue comes when truth matter of protecting the politics, they’re protecting themselves.” Lyn local paper falls out of discussions. “If a closed group is only there to assemble a political Williams was banned “for being a bit abrasive” towards perceived bias in force to take over a council and then shut down dissenters, that’s ugly but administrators; his wife was banned, Williams claims, after getting upset at contestable. It’s when the ‘truths’ become actual lies, and the group becomes an administrator for posting photos of a car accident she was involved in a bubble for people who want to believe them that’s the problem.” 50 pOWER IN THE SHADOWS 51 TORTOISE AT WEF
This is pertinent when private social networks are stepping into the space left Another rumour, posted on Merthyr Council Truths a few months later, by the decline of the local press. The Merthyr Express, founded in 1864, has claimed that the local primary school had made children pray to Allah, which now been subsumed by Wales Online, the news website that has swallowed sparked a thread of more than 1,000 comments. up a lot of local reporting in the country. A print edition is produced weekly Jan Kendall and its coverage extends well beyond Merthyr Tydfi l to the surrounding Today I have heard something that has totally disgusted me. Last Friday, coed y towns. “I’ve had people come to my shop,” claims Heggie, “and say: ‘I don’t Dderwen primary school had the children praying to Allah. use my tablet much, only for Merthyr Council Truths and checking my bank This was found out because one of the children went home and told their mother that statements.’” they were Muslim now because they had been praying to Allah in school. The mother went to the school and was told, yes they did because they had an And any reliance on Merthyr Council Truths as a news source comes with its inspection and wanted to show they were multi cultural. risks, given that the group can play hosts to rumours, misinterpretations and I am all for LEARNING about other religions, but to make children pray to something sometimes outright lies. There were several falsehoods circulating on the that isn’t even in their culture is absolutely abhorrent. If they made Muslim children pray to God there would be a public outcry. group about Muslims in the months leading up to the 2016 referendum in To me, this is tantamount to the “ grooming “ that government are trying to stop which Merthyr Tydfi l voted 56-44 to leave the European Union. Williams This school is just lucky it wasn’t my child recalls a “big Tommy Robinson fan” who caused consternation on the group, Haydn Roberts Bloody Disgusting,they wil have the kids coming to School in Burkas about a year before the EU referendum, by falsely claiming that the old next, YMCA building in the town was being turned into a mosque. Thomas Evans Anyone play the rasist card try walking into Islamic centre 1 street Though the original post was deleted the conversation continued in a down frombessemer rd Cardiff see if your made welcome follow-up thread. Tania Wood We hear every day about women running away with their young kinds to Jan Kendall join Isis men to because they were radicalized by Muslims in their college, over the Omg, is it really true that the ymca is being turned into a mosque? I really hope not, I internet in the Mosques ect and now we are getting our young kids who are highly am not racist or bear any resentment to any religion, but and I repeat BUT.... I hope impressionable to pray to Allah!! they are not going to be saying their prayers 3 times a day like they do in their own country, especially if they have the old “singing” going on because I for one will not be Karen Cross tbh i would be fuming !! because lets face it they are only doing this happy being woken up at 5am in the morning. because they reckon that attacks on muslims have gone up ,since ISIS , its being forced And before anyone one jumps to their defence, what would you say if a mosque was upon our children , this school is at the end of my street , going to be built right opposite your home!!!!!!!!!!! Naz Mohammed I dont understand what the problem is, if it was an RE lesson. Some These guys are not exactly quiet when it comes to calling out for prayer time of your comments are disgusting
Ceinwyn Jones if they want a mosque stay in there own country there are plenty there Liz Allan It was one lesson mun, nobody is ramming it down your throat. Honestly I am stunned at some of the reactions on here it is embarassing Emma Leah It was a hoax post! Naz Mohammed What a load of shit. Allah means god, what’s the diff erence Tracy Jones Bury a pig there they won’t be able to use it then it against their religion Jonathan Oates One blows themselves up Luca Helen Mosques in the UK usually don’t have speakers for the singer so I doubt you would hear it any more than the singing in catholic chrurches. And for people who Michele Jones One rapes children... say “they can do it in their own country” most of them have never seen any other country than Britain it’s their home they’re as much British citizens as you are so as Naz Mohammed We are not all terrorists long as they practice their religion peacefully no one should have the right to tell them they can’t! Narrow minded people should be going into one of their groups and Michele Jones We don’t all want to be Muslims... meetings and just see what they’re like before moaning about every fl aming thing!
Andrew Bedford I heard rhydycar is being turned into a bouncy castle for paedophiles. 52 pOWER IN THE SHADOWS 53 TORTOISE AT WEF
Chris Bigronnie We are welsh and british and brought up on these values which our parents and grandparents and past grandparents fought and died for these beliefs why should we ask our children to change what we have been taught for generations i am no way racist in any way but these kids have enough to deal with in thier lives and learning keep religion out of schools simple
Rachel Louise Williams Michele Jones omg that’s the most narrow minded thing I’ve read in here so far. Didn’t realise it was just Muslims who abuse children.... Learn something new every day! Michele Jones Why?...they do it OPENLY.. In the name of religion... I didn’t say only Muslims abuse!!!...they tell the world they marry 10 yeqr olds!
Jonathan Oates Next joke Naz
I ask Heggie how he feels about being a gatekeeper for truth on a group where misinformation and lies can spread so quickly. “When you try to say Photography by ‘lies’ and that, what is a lie? Who knows what is a lie on the group and what Getty Images isn’t a lie? How do we know?” DApHNE CARUANA GALIZIA But Mason believes someone needs to take responsibility in a group like Merthyr Council Truths. “The answer is not to shut down closed groups,” he Reasons to fi ght says, “but to treat them like subscription newspapers: as a form of publishing where someone, ultimately, takes responsibility and anyone can see what’s in This week a key suspect in my mother’s murder was them (even if they can’t join).” arrested. The conspiracy to protect her killers is fi nally Heggie as publisher is an unlikely thought: his own truths are conspiratorial. beginning to crumble He thinks the EU is a “Rothschild ideology” on the way to becoming a global superstate. He believes the 9/11 attacks were “defi nitely an inside job” 23 NOVEMBER 2019 | pAUL CARUANA GALIZIA (apparently a stall owner in his market used to fly commercial airlines and “every time he went in a flight simulator and tried to simulate 9/11 he It was Wednesday morning, and I had been in Malta for eight hours when couldn’t hit the towers”). He is on the fence about the earth being flat the messages came in. because he’s “never been up there to have a look”. As for the future, Heggie The fi rst read: “17 Black boat being raided.” The second: “Yorgen Fenech is by no means fi nished with local politics. “I’m hoping to get a team under arrest.” together to fi ght Gerald Jones [the local Labour MP] in the next general election. We voted to leave the EU and the customs union. Gerald thinks we In her last major story, my mother Daphne uncovered a network of shell don’t know what we’re about and went against us. What gives him that right? companies that were being used in a multi-million dollar bribery scheme. We didn’t give him the power to overthrow us.” Two of them are Panamanian, owned by men working in the Maltese government. Another, called 17 Black, is registered in Dubai. With Merthyr Council Truths in his power, Heggie has a chance. The language of feeling “overthrown” is telling. Private social networks are She never got to discover the owner of the Dubai company. My mother, subverting organisations and authority. They may change the rules of politics Malta’s most prominent investigative journalist, was killed by a car bomb – and we may never know how. outside our family home two years ago. 54 REASONS TO FIGHT 55 TORTOISE AT WEF
A year after her death, The Daphne Project, an international group of from the men charged with placing and detonating the bomb under my journalists continuing her investigative work, including Reuters, the Guardian, mother’s car – the men commissioned to organise and implement her death. New York Times, Süddeutsche Zeitung and others, found out that 17 Black is There they sat, Vincent Muscat and the two Degiorgio brothers, George and owned by Yorgen Fenech, an investor in a major new Maltese power station. Alfred – all Maltese, in their fi fties, looking haggard. Suddenly, the picture became clearer. An expensive defence lawyer argued that reams of the prosecution’s evidence against his clients – the Degiorgio brothers – is invalid. He tried to argue that My mother had already uncovered the identities of the other two men. The the message, sent from one of their phones to arm the bomb, is the same as a two Panamanian companies were owned by the Maltese prime minister’s message you might send to switch on a light. chief-of-staff Keith Schembri, and the then energy minister Konrad Mizzi, my mother had discovered. Days after they assumed offi ce in 2013, they took I looked at one of the men, Vincent Muscat, ownership of the companies, and just weeks later they rigged the and wondered what he was thinking. He saw privatisation of Malta’s energy sector. me and looked at the floor. Unlike his accomplices, Muscat wants out. In court, he They locked the country into an 18-year agreement to buy gas at twice the refused to share the same bench as the market rate from Azerbaijan, planning to share kickbacks of €5,000 a day Degiorgios. He sat alone, behind them and from 17 Black, later revealed to be owned by Fenech, into their Panama his lawyer, who was playing with a companies. It was like a huge piece of the puzzle had settled into place. highlighter pen. On Wednesday, Jacob Borg, a reporter at It was Muscat who, over a year ago, having The Times of Malta, was staking out seen the evidence amass against him, began Fenech’s large, sleek yacht at the private talking to the police. I’ll give you, he told marina built by his family’s conglomerate investigators, a name. The news that Muscat A suspect exits when, at around 5.30am, Borg heard the the courts in was talking came out – and set in motion a chain of events that led to Valletta, after yacht’s engine start and he called for help. being charged Fenech’s arrest on Wednesday. with the murder Fenech was trying to make a run for it. He of Daphne Melvin Theuma, a loan shark and operator of an illegal gambling ring, heard Caruana Galizia made it about a mile north before he was that Muscat was talking. He is reported to have prepared a new will the intercepted by the Armed Forces just 15 moment Muscat was arrested. On Thursday last week, he was detained on minutes later. Policemen unrelated money laundering off ences, but he knew immediately why they board a luxury Jogging along the coast farther east, my father’s colleague heard sirens out at yacht, owned by came for him. Muscat had ratted him out, and his only option was to do the Yorgen Fenech, sea and saw flashlights breaking though the dawn sky. “I thought it was a after it was same. So he named Fenech. fi sherman, caught with tuna,” he said at their offi ce in Valletta later that day. escorted back to Malta Fenech, meanwhile, transferred the directorship of his family conglomerate It just so happened that the arrest came on the same day of an important to his heavily-tattooed boxer brother two days before Theuma’s arrest. court hearing. Within an hour, my father and I were putting on our jackets, Fenech had been under suspicion of ordering my mother’s assassination ever ties and heading to one of the pre-trial hearings in my mother’s assassination since his ownership of 17 Black was revealed two years ago. There was no case, which began in July, at the courthouse on Valletta’s main street. It sits longer any point in denying it. opposite the memorial to my mother – made up of flowers and hand-written The scheme Fenech set up with Schembri, Mizzi and a third as yet notes – that the government clears away every single day. unexplained company, Macbridge, where they planned to share kickbacks Inside, we walked past heavily-armed police offi cers and into the courtroom from a corrupt gas supply agreement with Azerbaijan, was to be my mother’s where the murder trial will play out months from now. My grandparents next big story. It was the one she never fi nished. were, as always, sitting in the front row. They were just four metres away 56 REASONS TO FIGHT 57 TORTOISE AT WEF
Weeks before she was killed, she began receiving thousands of internal We edged closer until we passed the small barriers put up in front of the documents from Fenech’s energy company, Electrogas. The leak continued parliament building, right in time for the justice minister’s exit. A symbol of to flow for weeks after my mother was killed. I will never forget my brother injustice, of craven ineptitude, he was hurried into his car to cries of ġustizzja Matthew reading out emails in which Electrogas employees discussed the [justice], ġustizzja, mafi a. news of my mother’s assassination. At a remote country house in south-east Justice minister Owen Bonnici’s portfolio includes culture and so it is under England, a few days after her assassination, we handed over the material to his orders that the memorial is cleared each day. The crowd shouted: why the journalists who would form the Daphne Project. don’t you clean the memorial now, mafi a? People circled around his car, After two years of putting out the lie that my mother’s assassination was throwing coins at it, kicking and banging at it. A group sat down in front of unrelated to her journalism, of spreading a conspiracy theory that my brother, the car, blocking him from leaving. Matthew, had a hand in the plot, prime minister Joseph Muscat couldn’t pretend I have never seen this kind of public anger in Malta. any longer. This day, when Yorgen Fenech was arrested, his tactic changed. After 30 minutes, the group fi nally moved aside, but not before the minister’s The morning of Fenech’s detention, the prime minister, eyes drowsy and driver, eager to get away, ran over a police woman’s leg. She let out a piercing speech slurred, told journalists the arrest showed he could take decisive scream, before she was pulled away by another offi cer. The car sped off . action. But, he maintained, “so far”, that there are no links between politicians and the assassination. How much longer can they keep running? The government’s PR strategy was refi ned There was a strangeness about the day that by the end of the day to focus purely on followed. Malta was alight: it couldn’t Fenech. Never mind his bribery scheme believe what had just happened. Fenech, the involves a cabinet minister and the prime most powerful money man in the country, minister’s chief of staff . had been caught trying to flee. But the buses kept running, the sun was shining, and the The crowd, grudgingly, dispersed and my cafés were full. father and I returned home to Bidnija, where we sat down to watch the day’s news. I saw Slowly at fi rst, a crowd assembled outside more clearly, outside the crowd, how the prime minister’s offi ce at the entrance to unhinged the government cronies looked. Valletta. A man began to speak, saying the Joseph Muscat, ‘No to the prime prime minister is politically responsible for Corruption’: a The prime minister is a ghost in a shell of man; his chief-of-staff , so centrally minister of my mother’s assassination. He has blood on his hands, blood on his hands, banner is tied to implicated in my mother’s death, is greying and scuttles from blacked-out Malta the door of the he shouted. prime minister’s SUV to government offi ce to blacked-out SUV. And Mizzi, what to say about office in Valletta Mizzi. He is still denying any connection to 17 Black. With the crowd, my father and I walked down the main street to the memorial. But people were in no mood for it. A young woman called: “To The next day, my father woke me up at 7am with coff ee and Maltese toast parliament. To parliament now!” And so we turned back, and assembled at with butter and honey. I felt as though I had slept for fi ve minutes. the parliament building. We waited. Not patiently, but shouting, louder: Now, we plan to wait, day and night, in Valletta – to be there in court as soon assassini, korrotti, mafi a, mafi a. as Fenech is brought in, handcuff ed and desperate, miles away from his Ministers’ chauff er-driven cars were lined up outside, ready to take the superyachts, private jets and political protectors. politicians home after the evening’s sitting. Some escaped ahead of us. Some Before leaving Bidnija for my father’s offi ce, I sit with my coff ee at my took the back exit. Others marched out of the front in huddles of security mother’s old desk, and at last I understand. The race may not be to the swift, personnel and police offi cers. The crowd chanted louder: ASSASSINI, nor the battle to the strong, nor yet bread to the wise, and these, she says, are MAFIA, MAFIA. the reasons to fi ght. Notes Notes
Notes by Barney Macintyre
Published: January 2020 Design: Oliver Bothwell, Nick Stone Graphics: Ella Hollowood, Chris Newell
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