It’s possible that I shall make an ass of myself. But in that case one can always get out of it with a little dialectic. I have, of course, so worded my proposition as to be right either way (K.Marx, Letter to F.Engels on the Indian Mutiny)
Saturday, January 09, 2021
Why Impeach Trump at This Late Date? One Word, Says Bernie Sanders: 'Precedent'
"It must be made clear that no president, now or in the future, can lead an insurrection against the U.S. government."
Bill Zawacki carries a banner that reads "impeach" near the U.S. Capitol
two days after a pro-Trump mob broke into the building on January 8, 2021
in Washington, D.C. (Photo: Joe Raedle/Getty Images)
Sen. Bernie Sanders on Friday delivered a one-word answer to those wondering why Congress should impeach President Donald Trump even though he only has days left in office: Precedent.
"It must be made clear that no president, now or in the future, can lead an insurrection against the U.S. government," Sanders (I-Vt.) tweeted Friday amid mounting calls for federal lawmakers and Trump's Cabinet to remove him from office for inciting Wednesday's violent attack on the Capitol.
Some people ask: Why would you impeach and convict a president who has only a few days left in office? The answer: Precedent. It must be made clear that no president, now or in the future, can lead an insurrection against the U.S. government.
Sanders, who has twice sought the Democratic nomination for president, is on the growing list of members of Congress who have expressed support for impeaching Trump—again—removing him from office, and barring him from holding an elected position in U.S. politics ever again.
The senator is also among those criticizing Cabinet members for resigning rather than invoking the 25th Amendment of the Constitution to oust Trump and replace him with Vice President Mike Pence until Biden's inauguration on January 20. Pence reportedly disagrees with that course of action.
Both the Cabinet and Congress are under pressure to stop stalling and act now, with critics such as watchdog group Public Citizen pointing out that "a president who was deemed unfit to manage a Facebook page"—his access was cut off after the insurrection—"still has access to the nuclear codes."
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) told lawmakers on Friday that Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Gen. Mark Milley had assured her that "steps are in place" to prevent "an unstable president from initiating military hostilities or accessing the launch codes and ordering a nuclear strike."
As for impeachment, Pelosi wrote in her Friday letter that Republicans in Congress need to "call on Trump to depart his office—immediately." The speaker added that "if the president does not leave office imminently and willingly, the Congress will proceed with our action" to impeach him.
NEW: Pelosi says she spoke to the chairman of the joint chiefs about preventing Trump from accessing the nuclear codes.
In response to reporting that House Democrats will introduce articles of impeachment as early as Monday, Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.) declared Friday: "We have the articles of impeachment already drafted. Monday isn't early enough. The nation is waiting for us to respond ASAP."
Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Calif.) concurred. As he put it: "We should reconvene Congress today and vote on articles of impeachment tomorrow. There is no need for delay in fulfilling our constitutional responsibility."
PERMANENT ARMS ECONOMY $740 Billion Pentagon Bill receives all but six Democrat votes in Senate
“The United States government should be responding to the needs, to the desperation, of families in our country at this time.”
All but six Democrats voted for the $740 billion National Defense Authorization Act.
The six are Sens. Bernie Sanders (D-Vermont), Ed Markey (D-Mass.), Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.), Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.), Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), and Ron Wyden (D-Ore.)
The dozens of Democrats that joined Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and Senate Republicans voted to override President Donald Trump’s veto of the bill.
According to Truthout, the vote on the motion to proceed to the NDAA veto override came after Sanders, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.), and others denied McConnell unanimous consent last week to speedily advance the behemoth military spending bill, a tactic aimed at securing a clean vote on House-passed legislation that would deliver $2,000 payments to most Americans. But McConnell, joined by Sens. Pat Toomey (R-Pa.) and John Cornyn (R-Texas), rejected demands for a vote on the direct payments once again on Wednesday, declaring that the checks would benefit “millionaires and billionaires” — a complaint that was both false and shamelessly hypocritical, given that the same Republicans had no issue with passing President Donald Trump’s $1.5 trillion in tax cuts for the wealthy in 2017.
“We’re in the middle of an unprecedented crisis in our country. We have a healthcare crisis. We have an unemployment crisis. We have a hunger crisis. We have a housing crisis. We have an addiction crisis. We have a moral crisis in this country. The United States government should be responding to the needs, to the desperation, of families in our country at this time,” said Sen. Ed Markey.
Prominent climate science deniers moved rapidly to spread false and misleading conspiracy theories online during and after the attack on the U.S. Capitol by Trump supporters this week.
Some climate deniers, including some with ties to the Heartland Institute and other organizations that have historically helped to create the false impression that there is sizeable scientific disagreement on climate change, also directly expressed support for the attackers and called for more violence.
“Striking fear in politicians is not a bad thing,” the @ClimateDepot Twitter account tweeted on the afternoon of January 6 in a message describing the Capitol as then-“under siege.”
“Thomas Jefferson: ‘The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants,” @ClimateDepot tweeted seconds later.
“What’s needed next is mass protests to storm state Capitols and the CDC to end Covid lockdowns once and for all,” the thread continued, referring to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
The @ClimateDepot Twitter account, createdin April 2009, is held by Marc Morano, the communications director for the Committee for a Constructive Tomorrow (CFACT), a Washington, D.C.-based think-tank with a history of receiving funding from ExxonMobil and the conservative dark money organization Donors Trust. Morano serves as the executive director of CFACT’s climatedepot.com website, which as DeSmog’s database profile puts it, “regularly publishes articles questioning man-made global warming.”
Screenshot of Twitter thread posted by @ClimateDepot on the afternoon of January 6, 2021.
Morano has for many years played a prominent role in the climate denial movement. The Heartland Institute currently maintains a biography of Morano under its “Who We Are” section, noting his prior role as a “climate researcher for U.S. Senator James Inhofe,” who has regularly made speeches rejecting mainstream climate science. Rolling Stone once called Morano “the Matt Drudge of climate denial.” He more recently authored a book titled, The Politically Incorrect Guide to Climate Change. CFACT’s most recent tax filings show Morano was its highest-compensated employee, bringing in over $209,000 in pay and benefits in 2018.
On January 6, after the National Association of Manufacturers (NAM) — whose board of directors includes senior officials with ExxonMobil and numerous other fossil fuel companies — posted a statement condemning the violence at the Capitol Building, @ClimateDepot retweeted a reply to that statement reading: “NAM has always been a bootlicking organization groveling at the booted feet of their governmental masters.”
Many fossil fuel industry groups immediately condemned the insurgency in statements or social media posts, and some long-time climate deniers did as well. But Moranowas not the only prominent science denier to express support online for the mob attack in D.C.
William M. Briggs, described by the Heartland Institute as one of its policy advisors, published a post on January 7 headlined, “we fought the good fight and we lost — this battle.” In the piece, Briggs claims that “Congress had an unarmed Air Force veteran shot and killed” and misleadingly claims that “the crowd, by doing very little, by remaining inside the tourist ropes inside the building, even, forced the startled regime into hiding.”
Briggs’ post goes on to describe Republican politicians’ later condemnation of Wednesday’s attack as “the most disgusting display of cowardice and abject surrender we’re likely to see in our lifetimes.”
“Some of us will be in deep kimchi because of this, but there are no regrets,” Briggs’s post continued. “One thing is certain. They will be coming for us.”
DeSmog reviewed numerous accounts during and in the wake of the Capitol attack. Social media posts showthat severalother climate science deniers, like the UK-based columnist James Delingpole andSteve Milloy, publisher of the JunkScience.com website, joined many on the far-right in circulating false information suggesting that it was not the visible pro-Trump participants who had been planning online for weeks to “occupy the Capitol,” but instead members of their opposition — the loose, left-wing movement known as antifa — that actually invaded the building. On Thursday, the Washington Post reported that there was “no substantive evidence” thatany antifa supporters had participated in the pro-Trump insurrection, adding that many claims of antifa involvement had cited a soure that had, in fact, reported neo-Nazi participation.
Screenshot of retweet by @JunkScience on the afternoon of January 6, 2021.
Others in DeSmog’s Climate Disinformation Database, like the conservative media organization Prager U, used their social media presence to share messaging that sought to shift focus to last summer’s Black Lives Matter uprisings.
Detailed information about precisely what happened inside the Capitol Building on Wednesday — and what led to those events — is still continuing to emerge. But what is clear is that neo-Nazis and long-time far-right Trump supporters were documented, and in many cases documented themselves, participating in the mob violence inside the Capitol Building.
Also worth that the majority of damage done to federal buildings by PDX protesters was done to temporary, protective structures placed outside mostly-empty buildings. Plywood boards and walls were torn down and covered in graffiti.
“The goal isn’t necessarily to convince anyone of anything,” Melissa Ryan, author of the Ctrl Alt-Right Delete weekly newsletter covering the alt-right and CEO of CARD Strategies, told DeSmog. “The goal is to sow so much confusion that it’s actually hard for people to tell the truth from fiction.”
That misinformation benefits the far-right, she said.
“They did the same after Charlottesville,” said Ryan, who has previously written about interactions between climate deniers and QAnon conspiracy theorists. “They do the same after any of their protests that cause violence. The goal is to cause confusion amongst viewers, those amongst their audience that might have a little trepidation about being associated with violent extremist groups, so ‘both sides’ is sort of how they neutralize that.”
Several accounts associated with climate science deniers focused in particular on pictures of Jake Angeli, who wore face paint and a horned helmet on January 6, with these accounts suggesting that Angeli was a member of antifa. Angeli, however, is betterknown as “the QAnon shaman.”
“He’s absolutely a QAnon right-wing follower,” said Ryan.
Attempts to shift blame away from those visibly participating in the invasion and to antifa were later also spread in Congress by Republican Matt Gaetz of Florida who was met with audible boos on the House floor when he suggested that the Capitol attack was by people “masquerading” as Trump supporters — a word choice made all the more ironic by the fact that many participating in the apparent coup attempt were not wearing masks despite the raging COVID-19 pandemic.
And of course, President Trump himself may perhaps be the world’s best-known climate science denier.Earlier in the day on January 6, he had addressed members of the soon-to-be mob in person, calling on them to “walk down to the Capitol” and adding that “you will never take back our country with weakness.” Later that day, in a recorded video, he told them, “We love you. You’re very special. Go home.”
On Thursday night, in a tweeted video message lasting less than three minutes, President Trump said that the “demonstrators” — the same individuals whom he had personally addressed before the attack — had “defiled” the Capitol and called for their prosecution. Today, he resumed using his Twitter account to praise and encourage his base.
Today, Trump faces renewed calls for his impeachment or removal under the 25th Amendment. But the disinformation-fueled movement backing him is extremely unlikely to simply fade away — and may in fact be further emboldened by the images of Trump and Confederate flags that were waved inside the Capitol Building.
“I feel like it’s a very clear end of the Trump administration,” said Ryan, “but what’s terrifying is what it is the birth of.”
Far-right organizers have already reportedly posted calls to gather again on January 20, inauguration day. On Thursday, USA Today quoted from a “white-supremacist Telegram channel” that called for “Pro-Trump and other nationalist crowds” to gather in D.C. that day.
As you know, I’ve experienced the devastating effects of hate in my life — and it was allies like you who stood up and confronted it that made things better.
Canadians have a right to feel safe. After seeing members of the Proud Boys join those that stormed the U.S. Capitol with deadly weapons, we believe it is more urgent than ever to ban them in Canada.
Every signature on this campaign calls attention to this issue and puts pressure on Justin Trudeau and the Liberals to act.
Pfizer BioNTech Covid-19 Vaccine - Arnold Jerocki/Getty Images Europe
Jamie Johnson
More than 100,000 doses of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine may have been thrown away because of incorrect guidance by Public Health England, it has been revealed.
Instructions issued when the vaccine was being produced in December said that five doses could be obtained from each vial, but was revised by PHE on Jan 4 to allow for “administration of a sixth dose if obtainable”.
The Department for Health and Social Care said that the updated guidance had been issued on Dec 17, made available in a pack called “information for UK healthcare professionals”.
However, it is understood that some healthcare staff were unaware of the changes.
Government figures show that between Dec 8 and Dec 20, 600,000 people received the Pfizer vaccine in the UK.
This means that if there was an extra dose in each vial, there would be an extra 120,000 shots not used.
Prof Sir Sam Everington, chair of Tower Hamlets CCG, said the rules should have been made clear earlier to avoid vaccines being needlessly wasted.
“It’s just mortifying. I don’t know how many were lost in the process by nurses and GPs but I was incredibly frustrated, because I wanted them to mandate the six doses far earlier,” he said.
Dr Mary Ramsay, head of immunisation at PHE, said: “The NHS issued guidance on the sixth dose to the health system in December and the relevant regulations were amended shortly after. Therefore, clinicians could and were using the sixth dose before the PGD [patient group direction] was published.”
But Prof Everington said: “We got information that, actually, you could do six, but what they didn’t do was change something called the PGD. And that’s the ruling that nurses abide by. It took too long to come out with the PGD.”
Britain’s medical regulator, the MHRA, says every small glass container which holds the liquid vaccine contains five doses of the jab, administered in 0.3ml shots. But once the vaccine is diluted before being given to patients, as per the instructions, the vial holds as much as 2.25ml – enough for seven and a half doses.
It is thought that the vials are overfilled with extra doses in case the vaccine spills in transit or it gets stuck inside the syringe when it is administered.
The UK is not the first country to have revised its advice on Pfizer doses. On Dec 16, the US Food and Drug Administration clarified that extra doses from vials of the vaccine can be used if a full dose can be extracted.
In Israel, which has led the way on vaccination with 15 per cent of its population receiving the jab in the first two weeks, approval for a sixth Pfizer dose to be used came out on Dec 24.
The EU is even further behind. Only yesterday did the European Medicines Agency recommend updating the product information to clarify that each vial contains six doses of the vaccine.
The Prime Minister confirmed that as of Jan 7, with the Pfizer and Oxford jabs combined, over 1.5 million across the UK have been vaccinated.
NOT A MAX BUT STILL
Boeing 737 carrying 62 people feared to have crashed into sea near Jakarta
Suspected debris found in sea after Sriwijaya Air flight went missing shortly after takeoff
People at a temporary crisis centre organised in the domestic terminal of Soekarno-Hatta International airport, after the plane’s disappearance. Photograph: Willy Kurniawan/Reuters
An Indonesian passenger plane carrying 62 people that went missing on Saturday is feared to have crashed, after suspected debris was found in the sea north of Jakarta.
The Boeing 737-500, which departed from Jakarta’s international airport at about 2.36pm, lost contact four minutes later. Data from the flight tracker FlightRadar24 said Sriwijaya Air flight SJ182 had reached an altitude of nearly 11,000ft (3,350 metres) before dropping to 250ft.
The plane was carrying 50 passengers, including seven children, among them three infants, and 12 crew members, according to the transport ministry. It was scheduled to make a 90-minute journey over the Java Sea to Pontianak, the capital of West Kalimantan province on Borneo island.
A local fisherman reported that he had seen possible debris at 3.30pm, when an explosion was first heard, according to Deby Riana Sumanthi, the head of maritime agriculture and food security for the sub-department of Thousand Island-Jakarta
Footage of suspected wreckage was also broadcast on Indonesian TV. “We found some cables, a piece of jeans, and pieces of metal on the water,” a security official told CNNIndonesia.com. It has not been confirmed that the debris came from the flight.
Agus Haryono, a rescue agency official, told Reuters that 50 people were searching for the aircraft and would continue working into the night. Indonesia’s transport ministry said it was investigating the incident.
“A Sriwijaya plane from Jakarta to Pontianak with call sign SJY182 has lost contact,” said ministry spokesman Adita Irawati. “It last made contact at 2:40 pm (0740 GMT).”
The president director of Sriwijaya Air, Jefferson Irwin Jauwena, said the airline was coordinating with Basarnas, the National Search and Rescue Agency and the National Transport Safety Committee. The airline, which was founded in 2003, mostly flies within Indonesia and has an otherwise solid safety record.
The plane, a Boeing 737-500, does not use the same software system as those involved in two crashes that killed hundreds of people and left Boeing in crisis, according to Reuters.
In October 2018, 189 people were killed when a Lion Air Boeing 737 Max jet crashed into the sea minutes after taking off from Jakarta for a domestic flight. Months later, a Boeing 737 Max 8 crashed in Ethiopia, killing all 157 people onboard. The US justice department fined Boeing $2.5bn last week after the company was charged with fraud and conspiracy in connection with two crashes.
A Boeing spokeswoman said: “We are aware of media reports from Jakarta, and are closely monitoring the situation. We are working to gather more information.”
Indonesia, the world’s largest archipelago nation, has also been criticised for poor safety standards in its aviation industry, which has been plagued by accidents. An AirAsia plane crashed in 2014 with the loss of 162 lives.
Indonesia plane missing: Boeing lost contact after dropping 'more than 10,000ft in less than a minute'
Sat, 9 January 2021
A search and rescue operation is under way in Indonesia after contact was lost with a Boeing 737-500 plane on a local flight.
An Indonesian Transport Ministry spokesman said the Sriwijaya Air flight SJ 182 was flying from the capital Jakarta to Pontianak City in West Kalimantan province on the island of Borneo. The last contact was at 2.40pm local time (7.40am in the UK), it said.
Tracking service Flightradar24 said on Twitter that the flight "lost more than 10,000ft (3,000m) of altitude in less than one minute" about four minutes after departure.
The Indonesian Navy has determined the plane's co-ordinates and ships have been deployed to the location, Navy official Abdul Rasyid said.
Suspected debris has been located in waters north of Jakarta, an official from the Basarnas rescue agency told the Reuters news agency, although it has not been confirmed that it is from the missing plane. Fishermen spotted metal objects believed to be parts of an aircraft in the Thousand Islands, a chain of islands north of Jakarta, on Saturday afternoon.
Friends and relatives of people on the flight have been seen in television footage praying and hugging each other as they wait for news at the airports in Jakarta and Pontianak airport.
Some 62 people were on board, including crew. Ten of the passengers were children, the rescue agency said.
In its latest statement, the airline said it was still gathering information on the incident.
"We are aware of media reports from Jakarta regarding Sriwijaya Air flight SJ-182," it said.
"Our thoughts are with the crew, passengers, and their families. We are in contact with our airline customer and stand ready to support them during this difficult time."
Indonesian Transportation Ministry spokesperson Adita Irawati said: "The missing plane is currently under investigation and under co-ordination with the National Search and Rescue Agency and the National Transportation Safety Committee."
A spokeswoman for Boeing said: "We are aware of media reports from Jakarta, and are closely monitoring the situation. We are working to gather more information."
A plane flying from Jakarta to Pontianak would spend most of the 90-minute flight over the Java Sea. Sriwijaya Air is one of Indonesia's discount carriers, flying to dozens of domestic and international destinations.
Indonesia is the world's largest archipelago nation, with more than 260 million people.
The missing plane is not a Boeing 737 Max, the model involved in two major accidents in recent years - the first of which involved a crash in Indonesia.
The Lion Air 737 MAX, carrying 189 passengers and crew, crashed into the Java Sea just minutes after taking off from Jakarta in October 2018, killing everyone on board.
It was the worst airline disaster in Indonesia since 1997, when 234 people were killed on a Garuda flight near Medan on Sumatra island.
And in December 2014, an AirAsia flight from Surabaya to Singapore crashed into the sea, killing 162 people.
Latina mothers, often essential workers, report COVID-19 took toll
UC Davis researchers found stimulus didn't relieve burdens
IMAGE: FINANCIAL AND PSYCHOLOGICAL TOLL: THE PANDEMIC HAS FORCED MORE THAN 50 PERCENT OF THE FAMILIES IN A REGIONAL STUDY TO MAKE ECONOMIC CUTBACKS. view more
CREDIT: UC DAVIS
More than half of Latina mothers surveyed in Yolo and Sacramento counties reported making economic cutbacks in response to the pandemic shutdown last spring -- saying they bought less food and missed rent payments. Even for mothers who reported receiving the federal stimulus payment during this time, these hardships were not reduced, University of California, Davis, researchers found in a recent study.
"Latino families are fighting the pandemic on multiple fronts, as systemic oppression has increased their likelihood of contracting the virus, having complications from the virus and having significant economic hardship due to the virus," said Leah C. Hibel, associate professor of human development and family studies at UC Davis and lead author of the study. "These factors are likely to have a significant psychological toll on these families."
The study was published Jan. 7 in the journal Traumatology. Researchers administered surveys to 70 Latina mothers March 18 through June 5 of last spring, after the "shelter-in-place" orders went into effect in California in response to the COVID-19 pandemic.
The survey sample consisted of Latina mothers, all of whom are low-income, with 92 percent of the families having an essential worker (either the mother or her partner), in Yolo and Sacramento counties, researchers said. The survey respondents were identified through an earlier UC Davis study on Mexican-origin families living in the region. Yolo and Sacramento counties are in Northern California, which has a higher cost of living than most of the country, but has a relatively high level of social services available, researchers added.
Researchers said that although it has been reported that the stimulus checks may have kept some from falling below the poverty level, cutbacks due to other economic factors still had an effect on these low-income families.
"In other words, though the stimulus may have prevented some families from falling below the poverty line, our analyses suggest that many low-income families are still facing significant financial hardship," researchers said in the study. "This hardship appears to be placing families on a trajectory toward hunger and eviction."
Less food, higher stress
Mothers who engaged in cutbacks reported significantly higher levels of stress, depression, and anxiety. Further, receiving the federal stimulus money administered to those whose income was less than $99,000 a year (through the Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security Act) was not associated with lower cutbacks, stress, depression or anxiety. Of those surveyed, 65 percent had reported receiving their checks by the time the survey was administered.
Mothers' depressive symptoms were assessed through survey questions administered by phone. Most were in English, but in some cases, questions were asked in Spanish by native-speaking interviewers. Assessed on a five-point answer scale, mothers were asked such questions as:
"How stressed are you because of the virus outbreak?"
"How often have you felt or experienced depressed mood?"
"How often have you felt panicky?"
Mothers were also asked to indicate whether or not they made any of 12 listed cutbacks (food, rent, cutting back on air conditioning, etc.) in previous weeks because of the pandemic. Of these mothers, 52 percent reported being forced to make economic cutbacks, and they reported higher stress, depressive symptoms and anxiety than those who reported not cutting back.
Researchers noted that the immediate economic impacts of the pandemic on low-income Latina mothers' well-being suggests that alleviating families' economic hardship might benefit mothers psychologically. Though the researchers did not find the stimulus payment to buffer the economic or psychological impacts, they suggest the stimulus money was simply not enough.
"Without additional local, state or federal aid, the pandemic is likely to cause severe hardship marked by homelessness, hunger and mental illness. Additional recurring monthly stimulus payments could be a lifeline for families who are struggling to make ends meet," the researchers wrote.
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Additional authors of the study are Chase J. Boyer and Andrea C. Buhler-Wassmann, doctoral student researchers, and Blake J. Shaw, master's degree student researcher.
IMAGE: FIGURE: TRENDS IN THE NUMBER OF CHILDREN GRANTED MARRIAGE CERTIFICATES PER 10,000 16-17-YEAR-OLDS IN FIVE PROVINCES BETWEEN 2000 AND 2018 view more
CREDIT: ALISSA KOSKI AND SHELLEY CLARK
Canada is at the forefront of global efforts to end child marriage abroad. Yet this practice remains legal and persists across the country. In Canada, more than 3,600 marriage certificates were issued to children, usually girls, under the age of 18 between 2000 and 2018, according to a new study from researchers at McGill University. In recent years, an increasing number of child marriages have been common-law unions.
Child marriage, defined as formal or informal (common-law) marriage before the age of 18, is a globally-recognized indicator of gender inequality because the negative consequences for health and personal development disproportionately affect girls. While much research has focused on developing countries, in wealthier nations like Canada, child marriage practices are overlooked and understudied.
Using data from vital statistics agencies and recent censuses, the researchers found that child marriage remains in practice from coast to coast, with the highest estimates of formal marriage found in Alberta (0.03%) and Manitoba (0.04%), and the highest estimates of any type of child marriage (formal or common-law) in Saskatchewan (0.5%) and the territories (1.7%). The study, published in Population and Development Review, is the first to shed light on how common child marriages are in the country.
"Our results show that Canada has its own work to do to achieve its commitment to the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals, which call for an end to child marriage by the year 2030," says co-author Alissa Koski, Assistant Professor in Department of Epidemiology, Biostatistics and Occupational Health at McGill University.
The researchers found that Canadian-born children are slightly more likely to marry than those born outside of the country. More than 85% of all marriage certificates granted to children were issued to girls, who typically wed much older spouses. This gendered patterning is consistent with child marriage practices observed across the globe, according to the researchers.
Common-law unions more prevalent
The study shows most child marriages in recent years have been common-law. In 2006, formal marriage accounted for more than half of all child unions. By 2016, formal marriage accounted for only 5 percent and common-law unions were twenty times as prevalent.
"While the number of marriage certificates issued to children across the country has declined, it's possible that individuals are opting for more informal unions in response to growing social disapproval of child marriage," say the authors. This makes it increasingly challenging to determine to what extent child marriage has actually decreased or whether concerns about social or legal consequences have led to changes in reporting behaviors.
Informal unions can be just as harmful as formal marriages, the researchers say. In fact, informal unions often provide less social, legal and economic protection. In Quebec, for example, individuals in common-law unions are not entitled to alimony or division of property if the union ends. This raises questions about how best to address the issue. Preventing common-law unions among children will require different and innovative approaches that address the deeper motivations for this practice.
"The persistence of this practice within Canada highlights some of the inherent challenges to fully eradicating child marriage and reveals an important inconsistency between Canada's domestic laws and its global policies" says co-author Shelley Clark, James McGill Professor of Sociology at McGill University. The next steps will be to examine the mental health consequences of child marriage in Canada and to investigate motivations for the practice.
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About the study
"Child Marriage in Canada" by Alissa Koski and Shelley Clark is published in Population and Development Review.
An analysis of 145 scholarly journals found that, among various factors that could contribute to gender bias and lesser representation of women in science, the peer review process itself is unlikely to be the primary cause of publishing inequalities. However, Flaminio Squazzoni and colleagues emphasize that the study does not account for many other factors that may affect women's representation in academia, including educational stereotypes and academic choices of priorities and specialties. Even as female representation has improved in fields such as the humanities, psychology, and the social sciences, a publication gap persists, with male authors continuing to publish more manuscripts in more prestigious journals. To better understand whether peer review and editorial processes contribute to these gender discrepancies, Squazzoni et al. leveraged an agreement on data sharing with several large scholarly publishers; the team includes authors from the publishing companies Elsevier, John Wiley & Sons, and Springer Nature. The researchers collected and analyzed almost 350,000 submissions to 145 journals by about 1.7 million authors, as well as more than 760,000 reviews completed by about 740,000 referees. The sampled journals were identified by publishers so as to maximize coverage of research fields, although journals from learned societies, among others, were not considered. They then analyzed each step of the editorial process for bias, including the selection of referees, referee recommendations, and the editorial decision for each manuscript. They also accounted for each submission's research field, its proportion of women authors, and the position of women in the author list, while controlling for the proportion of women among referees, journal impact factors, the number of authors per manuscript, and the type of peer review adopted by each journal (single-blind or double-blind). The authors note, however, that it was not possible to directly estimate the quality of each submission. Author gender did not appear to affect how frequently manuscripts were accepted in the life sciences and social sciences, while manuscripts with higher proportions of female authors were in fact more likely to succeed in biomedicine, health, and physical sciences. "Our findings do not mean that peer review and journals are free from biases," the authors write. "For instance, the reputation of certain authors and the institutional prestige of their academic affiliation, not to mention authors' ethnicity or the type of research submitted, could influence the process, and these factors could also have gender implications." The researchers note that collaborative data sharing efforts from funding agencies, academic institutions, and scholarly citation databases will be necessary to further elucidate how existing structures determine academic opportunities.
