The Week - USA (2021-03-05)

Best columns: International NEWS 15

BRAZIL

JAPAN

The pandemic has hit Brazil’s black domestic

workers the hardest, said Clara Assunção, and the

government is doing almost nothing to help. The

very first Covid-19 fatality in Rio de Janeiro was

a 63-year-old black maid, Cleonice Gonçalves,

who died in March “after her wealthy employer

returned from Italy,” where the virus was already

widespread. Since they work in people’s homes,

maids are at particular risk of infection. Many

have complained that their employers refuse

to wear masks or maintain social distance. But

President Jair Bolsonaro’s right-wing government

hasn’t included them on the list of those to be

vaccinated first—even as truckers, who make up

far less of the population and work largely solo,

get priority. Of course, many maids are no longer

employed at all. Since the pandemic began, more

than 1.5 million domestic workers—of whom

more than 90 percent are women and more than

two-thirds are black—have been laid off. About

the same number of people have lost jobs in the

tourism industry. Yet while the government has

offered that sector a generous bailout, it did noth-

ing for the sacked maids. Bolsonaro’s “neglect of

domestic workers” is an example of our endemic

racism and a stain on Brazilian society.

Is the U.S. building an air base on top of the re-

mains of war dead? asked Shinichi Fujiwara. The

Pentagon is in the process of relocating a Marine

air base from the densely populated Okinawan

city of Ginowan, whose residents have long pro-

tested its noise and pollution and complained of

crimes by the Americans. A new site was chosen

on Okinawa’s remote northern coast, and the

military is reclaiming ground for it with a giant

landfill. The soil for the landfill is being excavated

in the south, and now “disturbing signs are emerg-

ing that human remains from the ferocious 1945

Battle of Okinawa might be mixed” with that soil.

Some 200,000 Japanese—including a quarter of
the civilian population of Okinawa—perished in
the U.S. invasion, among them many civilians who
blew themselves up with grenades rather than be
captured. Volunteers still search for bone fragments
to give these dead proper burials, and one recently
found a jawbone in the south of the island. When
he went back to the site a few weeks later, though,
the entire area had been quarried, almost certainly
for the new base. The land reclamation was already
“bitterly opposed by the majority of Okinawans,”
who wanted the Marine base moved to another is-
AP land entirely. This new allegation will enrage them.

Forgotten

casualties of

the pandemic

Clara Assunção

Brasil de Fato

More reason

to oppose

U.S. base

Shinichi Fujiwara

Asahi Shimbun

Australia has tamed Big Tech, said The

Aus tral ian in an editorial. After the

lower house of Parliament passed leg-

islation last week that will force digital

companies “to pay for news content

they currently take for free,” Facebook

threw a tantrum. While Google grudg-

ingly began striking deals with big

Australian media firms, Mark Zucker-

berg’s company called the legislation

“unworkable” and barred users in Aus-

tralia from sharing or viewing content

from any news outlet (see Technology,

p. 22). Facebook’s faulty algorithm also

blocked government and charity pages

that provide information on everything from bushfire mitigation

to domestic violence advice, and even blacked out the accounts of

state health agencies on the eve of our coronavirus vaccine rollout.

This sweeping shutdown sparked bipartisan outrage in Australia

and across the West, and so—after our conservative government

made some minor changes to the legislation— Facebook this week

“refriended Australia,” restored the blocked news content, and

began negotiating deals with major media companies. Zucker-

berg thought his company was more powerful than any govern-

ment, and “overplayed his hand in Australia.” The pushback on

Big Tech, started Down Under, “could open a new era of competi-

tive digital innovation that will benefit everyone.”

Not everyone, said Lisa Visentin in The Sydney Morning Herald.

Small newspapers and publishers— hollowed out by Google and

Facebook vacuuming up advertising dollars—don’t have the

money or lawyers needed to negotiate deals with Silicon Valley

titans, and nothing in the legislation

guarantees them a rightful slice of

online revenue. That’s unsurprising

when you realize the driving force

behind the legislation is Rupert Mur-

doch, the Aus tral ian media mogul

whose News Corp firm owns five of

Aus tralia’s biggest papers, as well as

its top online news site and the TV

network Sky News Aus tralia. Chang-

ing our tax code might be a better

way to fix the digital news market,

said Osman Faruqi, also in the

Herald. Face book made $530 mil-

lion from Aus tral ian advertisers in

2019, on which it paid only 2.5 percent tax, while Google made

$3.4 billion and paid a paltry 1.4 percent. A “turnover tax”—

such as the one being considered by the European Union—would

require the tech companies to “pay their fair share,” and the gov-

ernment could then use those revenues to support local journalism.

Facebook’s climbdown might seem like an “unvarnished victory

for democracy,” said Chris Stokel- Walker in INews.co.uk.

“It isn’t.” Zuckerberg caved in Australia—whose 17 million Face-

book users “represent literally a fraction of a percent of his entire

userbase”—to preserve Facebook’s already damaged reputation for

coming fights in more important markets. His firm is facing anti-

trust hearings in the U.S. and new regulation in Europe, and will

soon be subject to online anti-harm laws in the U.K. that will slap

fines on platforms that allow hate and disinformation to spread.

“This wasn’t Big Tech being brought to heel: This was Big Tech re-

alizing it needs to keep its powder dry for the bigger battle ahead.”

Australia: Facebook unfriends, then refriends, a nation

Aussie newspapers hit back at Zuckerberg.