Weekend Box: Fast Food Shame, ICBC’s Stick-y Situation & more
Welcome to The Weekend Box, Audley’s weekly round-up of interesting or obscure political, business and cultural news from around the world.
Image credit/International Labour Organization ILO on Flickr/License
MADAGASCAR: A VOTE, BUT NO CONFIDENCE
This week has seen an election in Liberia, and there’s a tense runoff in Argentina on Sunday (more on that later), but Madgascar’s might be the most fraught election of the week. The country’s president, entrepreneur, and former DJ, Andry Rajoelina, sought re-election yesterday despite 10 of his 12 rivals deciding to boycott the race.
For the past month, the 10 opposition parties, known as the ‘Collectif des candidats’, have led near-daily unauthorised marches, protesting at what they have called an “institutional coup” that favours Rajoelina. The government has responded to these protests with a persistent military and police presence, tear gas to disperse crowds, and night-time curfews, all of which has been described as "unnecessary and disproportionate” by the UN.
Rajoelina’s opposers claim he is not fit for a second term and the electoral process is deeply flawed. Most issues revolve around the partiality of the Independent National Electoral Commission (known by its French acronym, CENI) and its electoral register, which is missing voters from key opposition strongholds. Rajoelina’s decision to become a naturalized French citizen in 2014 has been the source of much anger. Based on local laws this should prevent him from running for president, and many see this as an act of betrayal that places him at the mercy of a former colonial power.
The gravity of the crisis was underlined by the president of Madagascar’s national assembly Christine Razanamahasoa, who last week called for the election to be suspended, but it of course went ahead.
The stakes are high for a country that is poorer today than it was in 1960 when it gained independence from France, despite its rich resources and agricultural potential. With early reports suggesting that only 20% of those registered have turned up to vote, this already struggling country could be on the brink of democratic collapse.
MAGNITSKY AWARDS: A SPOTLIGHT ON HUMAN RIGHTS
Audley had the honour to attend the 2023 Magnitsky Awards at Central Hall, Westminster, last night. The awards were established by human rights and anti-corruption activist Bill Browder in memory of lawyer and fellow activist Sergei Magnitsky, beaten to death in a Russian prison on 16th November 2009 for exposing massive fraud by Russian Government officials.
Now in their ninth year, the awards are an annual reminder that in a world where autocracy, corruption, and state terror are all too prevalent, there are still heroes prepared to take a stand for democracy, human rights, and the rule of law, often at great cost to their own safety and well-being.
Among a series of moving testimonies by presenters and recipients, Evgenia Kara-Murza paid tribute to her husband Vladimir, currently languishing in a Siberian penal colony, as she accepted an award on his behalf. She described how his decision to speak out against corruption and the Ukraine war “came easily, because his values are clear.”
Presenters included Roger Carstens, Special Presidential Envoy for Hostage Affairs, who presented an award to sisters Anaïse and Carine Kanimba. The sisters are Rwandan genocide survivors who secured the release of their adoptive father Paul Rusesabagina, the hero of ‘Hotel Rwanda’ who was forcibly rendered to Rwanda and imprisoned for speaking out against the country’s president. Carsten, ‘Captain America’ to the sisters, helped in the collective effort to secure Rusesabagina’s release. There are calls in the UK for an equivalent position to Carsten’s to be created in our Foreign Office, to improve the UK’s poor record in securing the release of its citizens, such as Vladimir Kara-Murza, wrongfully imprisoned abroad.
As Baroness Kennedy KC reminded us while receiving a lifetime award for her work in human rights (pictured), ‘to save a life is to save everybody’.
Image credit/Mike Mozart on Flickr/License
MCDONALD’S: FAST FOOD SHAME
“Truly horrific” were the words used this week by the McDonald’s UK CEO, Alistair Macrow, to describe testimonies from victims of harassment in the fast-food chain restaurants.
Speaking in front of the Business and Trade Committee, Mr Macrow revealed that the company faces ‘one or two’ sexual harassment allegations every single week. And this was just the tip of the iceberg. Macrow admitted, “we typically would see between 20 and 25 contacts per week, of which one or two would be [about] sexual harassment…and about five would be bullying.”
This follows the BBC investigation in July that uncovered a toxic culture of workplace harassment and a precedent of senior staff continually turning the other cheek. The fast-food chain employs a great number of young people, and more than 400 allegations of sexual abuse, racism, and bullying were made during the initial investigation, from workers as young as 17. Macrow said that 18 workers had been fired as a direct result.
Former workers have brought legal action in the hope that better protective measures will be put in place to prevent such harassment from happening in the future. But stamping out the behaviour will be no small task; in the UK alone, the fast-food giant has 1,450 outlets and nearly 180,000 employees. What is more, it is clear from the allegations that this has been a long-standing cultural issue with accusations dating back years, in some cases to the 1980s.
On top of this, McDonald’s uses a franchise system, which makes full oversight and cultural change a much harder task, but not an impossible one. For there is no doubt McDonald’s has the resources to protect its workforce – the question is whether the leadership will take the behaviour seriously enough to enact real change.
Image credit/Palácio do Planalto/License
YOU CAN’T SPELL ‘CAMPAIGN’ WITHOUT ‘AI’
For some time now, experts have claimed that AI is a threat to democracy; unless, it seems, you’re in Argentina, where rivals for the presidency Sergio Massa and Javier Milei are reportedly using the technology’s vast content-generation powers for their campaigns.
As Argentina’s elections approach their delayed climax with Sunday’s runoff, the candidates – Minister of the Economy Massa and libertarian outsider Milei – have intensified their fight for the office of president, in part by ramping up their public sparring with each other. A televised debate on Sunday saw Massa relentlessly attack his opponent with questions about his proposals.
But the Daily Mail report that Massa is taking his campaign into questionable territory. The economic minister has used AI to superimpose Milei’s face over footage from A Clockwork Orange and the poster for Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas in an attempt to portray his opponent as unstable, following an incident in October where Milei collapsed and displayed “erratic behaviour” on live television.
Massa has even gone so far as to create a deepfake video of Milei discussing a human organ market. While this is something the candidate infamously claimed he would legalise, and Massa has claimed responsibility for the video to the New York Times, his decision to distribute it in the lead-up to Sunday’s election is sure to ring alarm bells with those who warn that Generative AI could be used to turbocharge deepfake production and facilitate “new techniques of [disinformation] production and distribution.” The risk is acute in 2024, when numerous significant elections are to take place globally (we can count the UK’s among them).
If this isn’t reason enough for Massa to cool it with the AI use, there’s another that might hit closer to home – the posters of himself that he’s generated. It just can’t seem to get the eyes right…
Image credit/Adrian Grycuk/License
ICBC’s STICK-Y SITUATION
Banks and other big businesses can’t say they haven’t been warned about the threat of cyber attacks. ICBC, the world’s largest bank in terms of total assets, has become the latest high-profile victim of hackers.
The Beijing headquartered bank, which is 70% controlled by the Chinese government, was hit by a ransomware attack that prevented it from settling transactions in the US Treasury market. The breach proved hugely disruptive to internal operations. As reported by Reuters, corporate email at the firm ceased to function, forcing employees to switch to Google Mail.
One especially embarrassing detail is that ICBC employees briefly considered settling trades by passing a USB stick from one person to another on the New York trading floors.
Notorious cybercriminal gang LockBit claimed responsibility for the attack. Little is known about the group, but it is thought to operate in a former Soviet state, or Russia itself. The United States Department of Justice said LockBit has made at least $100m in ransom demands and has “extracted tens of millions of dollars in actual ransom payments”.
LockBit’s modus operandi is to effectively block the target organisation from accessing certain datasets. Access is restored when (and if) the victim pays the ransom. ICBC is alleged to have paid up to recover its data.
The entire episode will have sent shivers down the spine of the technology departments of financial institutions the world over. It will undoubtedly lead to calls for greater investment in cybersecurity and creating proper contingency plans (which don’t rely on USB sticks).
In the event, the attack on ICBC caused only a minor blip in the function of financial markets. But, as the FT Editorial Board put it, “next time, financial markets may not be so lucky.”
And that’s it for this week. I hope you found something of interest that you might want to delve into further. If so, please get in touch at cwilkins@audleyadvisors.com.
For now, that’s The Weekend Box officially closed.