Shrill tinamou bird becomes inadvertent whistleblower on fake propaganda video shared during Ecuador elections

A widely shared video purporting to show a Colombian guerrilla force declaring its support for a candidate in the Ecuadorean election has been deemed fake thanks to the innocuous call of a ground-dwelling bird and a vigilant ornithologist

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© Provided by National Post Three masked and armed men wielding guns and standing in front of an ELN flag are pictured declaring their support for Andres Arauz.

The video, which was shared on social media on Jan. 31, showed three armed men standing in front of the red-and-black flag of the ELN — the National Liberation Army, Colombia’s largest guerrilla force — and declaring their support for Andres Arauz, the election’s leftist candidate.


Anyone have an idea of how often ELN release videos like this? pic.twitter.com/a90zpDHFtK— ᶜʰʳⁱˢᵗᵒᵖʰᵉʳ (@just_some_d00d) February 5, 2021

A caption at the bottom of the video described the setting as the ‘Colombian jungle’.

However an ornithologist watching the video immediately identified a bird whistle in the video as the pale-browed tinamou bird, which cannot be found in Colombia.

“I recognised the whistle instantly and I knew that the video could not have been filmed in Colombia,” Manuel Sánchez, an ornithologist and bird guide, told The Guardian .

The bird, he explained, lives in a small and rare dry forest-ecosystem in Western Ecuador and in northwest Peru. “Tinamous are quite primitive birds,” he said, and live on the forest floor.

“They don’t sing; they have short, inflected whistles,” he said.

© Getty Images The pale-browed tinamou is a ground-dwelling bird native to certain parts of Ecuador and Peru.

The ELN, according to The Guardian, have previously worked in northern Ecuador but there was no record of guerrilla activity within those ecosystems where the bird is found.

Others have also questioned the authenticity of the video after noticing spelling mistakes, strange accents and unusual weaponry.

The ELN has both denied releasing the video as well as any claims that it supports Arauz.

IN AN ODD WAY THIS STORY REMINDS ME OF THIS

 

  

THREE FINGER PROTEST

 Pro-democracy protesters in Thailand clashed with security forces near Bangkok's Grand Palace on Saturday, following a day of demonstrations. (Feb. 13)

Pirate skeletons found in famed 1717 Cape Cod shipwreck

The Whydah Gally is the world’s only certified pirate shipwreck. Discovered off Wellfleet, Mass., in 1984, the ship is said to have belonged to legendary Capt. Samuel “Black Sam” Bellamy, who captured the ship in 1717, just months before it sank in a storm off Cape Cod.

© Provided by National Post Some of the coins and gold raised from the wreck of the Whydah.

The ship had once transported slaves. After Bellamy took it over — he sailed it for less than a year before the sinking — it transported pirated booty from more than 50 ships along the New England coast. The Whydah was Bellamy’s “bank,” in which he stored a varied treasure from those conquered. The more than 15,000 coins recovered thus far represent the most diverse group of shipwreck treasure coins ever found.


Barry Clifford, who found the wreck, and his team of archeologists have recently discovered what they say are the skeletal remains of six of Bellamy’s crew, encased in mineral concretions that have grown over them over the centuries. The museum is X-raying and analyzing them now, and hope to get DNA samples and locate living relatives. But it may take some time: A concretion worked on for 23 years only recently revealed the pirate inside.

The Whydah reportedly held more than four and a half tons of gold and silver (some $120 million today) and to protect the goods, Bellamy fitted it with 28 state-of-the-art cannon.

“The Whydah collection represents an unprecedented cultural cross-section of material from the 18th century,” the Whydah Pirate Museum says. “The stories of these artifacts, as well as that of the ship herself, knit together over a dozen countries on four continents.” Indeed, artefacts previously recovered from the ship reflect the racially, nationally and religiously diverse crew.

© Postmedia files National Geographic’s 2007 exhibit Real Pirates shows a replica of the Whydah Gally hull.

Samuel Bellamy

One of the six skeletons most recently found near the wreck, which scattered its contents as it went down, may even be that of Black Sam himself, the museum told HuffPost ; he was so named for the natural locks he sported at a time when the fashion was for white powdered wigs. An Englishman, he is best known as the wealthiest pirate in recorded history, and had learned the life of piracy from his mentor Edward “Blackbeard” Teach. Though not from a wealthy family, the New England Historical Society says Bellamy “had good manners, dressed neatly in fancy clothes, and he always wore four ornate duelling pistols in his sash.”

Black Sam Bellamy ran his pirate operation democratically, the NEHS says. His men were slaves and sailors, but Bellamy apparently treated them equally and let them vote on important decisions. Bellamy, who called himself the Robin Hood of the sea, is said to have said of the wealthy merchants whose ships he pirated, that “They rob the poor under the cover of law, forsooth, and we plunder the rich under the protection of our own courage.” Like an early version of Marie Kondo, Bellamy would return captured ships and cargo if they didn’t suit his purpose.

© Whydah Pirate Museum handout A small concretion brought up earlier from the ship.

On board the Whydah the day of the storm were Bellamy and a crew of 146, one of whom was a boy of only eight to 10 years of age. Only two sailors survived. And 102 of the drowned men were buried in a mass grave. Now six more men have been located in the deep.

“We hope that modern, cutting-edge technology will help us identify these pirates and reunite them with any descendants who could be out there,” Clifford told local media including Boston TV station WHDH .

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R. Buckminster Fuller's "Great Pirates:" An investigation into Narrative Analysis in ... here and there by the separate sovereignties' internal democratic processes.

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BC Museum must ask 'hard questions' after racism, toxic workplace reports, says chair


VICTORIA — The Royal British Columbia Museum has been thrust into a public modernization of its internal and external culture after reports alleging racism and toxic working conditions at the institution, says the Crown corporation's board chairman

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© Provided by The Canadian Press

Daniel Muzyka said the reports have prompted several investigations including a formal B.C. government review by the Public Service Agency, which is still underway, and a diversity inclusion report commissioned by the museum board.

"There were revelations at the end of July that there were some issues around racism, diversity and inclusion in the museum," he said in an interview Thursday. "We wanted to immediately understand and address any culture and diversity and inclusion issues that we had."

The museum board announced the resignation of CEO Jack Lohman this week, saying the departure was "mutually agreed" to be in the best interests of the institution as it "addresses current internal issues." No other details were provided.

The museum has said Lohman, who has been CEO since 2012, is not available for comment this week.

Muzyka, who was appointed acting CEO, said there was no one event that led to Lohman's departure.

"We agreed that now's a good time to close one chapter of the museum and start a new one by mutual agreement,'" said the former dean at the University of British Columbia's Sauder school of business.

Muzyka did not directly discuss the findings of the inclusion report commissioned by the museum board, but he said culture changes inside and outside the museum are needed.

"Organizations that encounter culture issues, diversity issues, diversity inclusion, they need to have active dialogue," he said. "They need to ask the hard questions. They need to learn. They need to move on."

In particular, the museum must improve its approach to Indigenous issues, which includes its collections and the repatriation of artifacts to Indigenous groups, Muzyka said.

"It's ensuring that Indigenous knowledge is incorporated in what we do," he said. "It's also a question of making sure Indigenous history is told through the perspective of the people whose history we're recording."

Muzyka said addressing the issues at the museum must be viewed as a learning experience and taken as a period of necessary adjustment.

"We're physically modernizing our facilities, but organizationally this is modernizing us as well," he said.

Premier John Horgan said earlier this week he was alarmed by the allegations of racism at the museum.

"I think the premier's comments were ones that the board did share," Muzyka said. "We are also concerned that we identify and address all of the relevant issues."

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Feb. 12, 2021

Dirk Meissner, The Canadian Press

Lovers of Sappho thrilled by ‘new’ poetry find, but its backstory may have been fabricated
C. Michael Sampson, Associate Professor of Classics, University of Manitoba

The Museum of the Bible in Washington recently announced it has returned 5,000 fragments of ancient papyrus to Egypt. Among them are fragments of poetry by the ancient Greek poet Sappho the museum had acquired in 2012.

© ('Sappho and Erinna in a Garden at Mytilene,'1864, by Simeon Solomon) Fragments of Sappho? The 2014 discovery was of five stanzas of one poem and portions of a second.

The announcement follows years of questions about the origins of the fragments, and the origins of a fragment from the same papyrus roll that came to public attention in 2014. Scholars and literary critics were abuzz after The Daily Beast reported on Jan. 28, 2014, that papyrologist Dirk Obbink of the University of Oxford had identified two new poems by Sappho.

Sappho of Lesbos is one of the earliest Greek lyric poets, famed in antiquity for the polish and elegance of her verse.

Today, Sappho’s legacy extends beyond poetry. Her expressions of female same-sex desire (“… sweat pours down me / a tremor shakes me …”) have made her an icon for some LGBTQ+ communities.

Little of Sappho’s poetry survives, and what does is fragmentary. Obbink’s discovery was remarkable because it preserved the final five stanzas of one poem and portions of a second, making it one of the longest continuous sequences of Sapphic verse.

News of the discovery made international headlines, but serious questions about the papyrus’s origins, acquisition and ownership history — its provenance — did not. Provenance is important for establishing the authenticity and legal status of antiquities.

In the fall, I published new research into a digital sales brochure produced by the auction house Christie’s. My research calls into question the published accounts of the papyrus’s provenance. I believe the accounts of the Sappho papyrus’s origins that Obbink published were fabricated, and that its owner had access to Obbink’s unpublished research and sought to capitalize upon it.

© (Shutterstock) Little of Sappho’s oeuvre has survived, but the poet continues to stir people’s imagination.

Legal, ethical concerns

Papyri originate almost without exception in Egypt. In 1983, the Egyptian government passed legislation prohibiting the domestic trade in antiquities, establishing definitively that the country’s archeological heritage is state property.

To combat looting and the illegal antiquities trade, more than one scholarly association’s ethical guidelines cite the 1970 UNESCO Convention on Cultural Property in condemning the study of newly surfaced antiquities. According to those guidelines, scholars shouldn’t authenticate or publish objects that left their country of origin illegally or prior to the 1970 convention.

How and when the Sappho papyrus left Egypt are pressing legal and ethical questions.

© (Institut für Altertumskunde an der Universität zu Köln) P.Köln 11.429, containing poetry by Sappho discovered in 2004.

The Daily Beast linked to an unpublished, draft article Obbink briefly made available on a blog.

Regarding the papyrus’s origins, it said only that it was newly uncovered and in the private collection of an anonymous owner.
Scholarly questions

Historian and broadcaster Bettany Hughes soon reported in London’s Sunday Times that Obbink discovered the papyrus after prising it from mummy cartonnage — the casing of an Egyptian burial similar to papier-mâché.

Obbink corroborated its origin in mummy cartonnage in a Times Literary Supplement article. Hughes stated that the papyrus’s “provenance was obscure” and that it “was originally owned, it seems, by a high-ranking German officer.” Obbink said only that its provenance was both documented and legal.

Scholars questioned the mummy cartonnage narrative because the practice of recycling papyri in the manufacture of cartonnage ceased long before the papyrus was copied.

When Obbink’s scholarly paper was finally published on April 10, 2014, it didn’t discuss provenance.

A year later, Obbink revised the papyrus’s origin story at a scholarly conference on Jan. 9, 2015. He said it was recovered from an unpainted fragment of papyrus cartonnage that was purchased at a 2011 Christie’s auction. He did not specify when the recovery took place.

The Christie’s brochure

After Obbink’s presentation, Christie’s produced a 26-page brochure advertising the new Sappho papyrus for private sale. It circulated exclusively among Christie’s clientele, and was unknown to scholars. I received a digital copy from Ute Wartenberg Kagan, a scholar of ancient Greek coinage, which she obtained from a client of Christie’s. The brochure contained photographs captioned as “the recovery of the Sappho papyrus.” When I inquired about the brochure, Christie’s responded: “We cannot discuss private sales activities unless authorized to do so.”

I hoped to learn when the files had been created and modified, and to scrutinize what the images depicted more closely. I ran a computer program that examined the brochure and its JPG files, and was able to extract the metadata associated with them.

I concluded that the photos presented in the Christie’s brochure were staged and don’t depict the extraction of the Sappho papyrus. In my view, the photos document the story about mummy cartonnage that Hughes and Obbink wrote about.

One photo includes a panel of cartonnage I have identified as previously belonging to a high-ranking German officer, as was mentioned in Hughes’s report. The story was never plausible — scholars questioned it and Obbink subsequently revised it. But the brochure, I believe, bears witness to the original narrative.

I also concluded that the anonymous owner of the papyrus had access to Obbink’s unpublished research, and undertook to propose the papyrus for private sale almost immediately after Obbink presented the revised story at the scholarly conference Jan. 9, 2015.

The brochure’s “Provenance” section cited not Obbink’s January presentation but a scholarly article that wasn’t published until June 15, nearly four months after the creation of the brochure.

In response to an article in The Guardian that reported on my research, Christie’s said it: “… would never knowingly offer any works of art without good title or incorrectly catalogued or authenticated. We take our name and reputation very seriously and would take all necessary steps available to address any situation of inappropriate use.”

Scholarly ethics and antiquities

Scholars are wary of the antiquities market because academic appraisals add to objects’ commercial value, which can incentivize looting and the illegal trade in antiquities. Scholarship also offers legitimacy.

For this reason, scholars must scrutinize new discoveries carefully before conducting or publishing research, and present their findings transparently. When the media reports on preliminary research, it is important to convey its preliminary nature.

Last April, an Oxford student newspaper reported that Obbink had been arrested Mar. 2, 2020, for “for alleged theft of ancient papyrus from the Sackler Classics Library in Oxford.” Obbink has denied those allegations.

Questions remain about the 2014 Sappho papyrus. The Museum of the Bible’s recent announcement acknowledges the “insufficient reliable provenance information” of its papyri — including its Sappho fragments. The chapter about the museum’s Sappho papyri has concluded, but the status of the Sappho papyrus Obbink discovered is uncertain. The papyrus’s present owner is anonymous and its location is unknown.

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

C. Michael Sampson does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

 

Study: All monogamous mammals are not 'wired for love' in the same way

• Download PDF Copy

Reviewed by Emily Henderson, B.Sc.Feb 13 2021

Humans aren't the only mammals that form long-term bonds with a single, special mate -- some bats, wolves, beavers, foxes and other animals do, too. But new research suggests the brain circuitry that makes love last in some species may not be the same in others.

The study, appearing Feb. 12 in the journal Scientific Reports, compares monogamous and promiscuous species within a closely related group of lemurs, distant primate cousins of humans from the island Madagascar.

Red-bellied lemurs and mongoose lemurs are among the few species in the lemur family tree in which male-female partners stick together year after year, working together to raise their young and defend their territory.

Once bonded, pairs spend much of their waking hours grooming each other or huddled side by side, often with their tails wrapped around each other's bodies. Males and females of these species spend a third of a lifetime with the same mate. The same cannot be said of their closest relatives, who change partners often.

To biologists, monogamy is somewhat a mystery. That's in part because in many animal groups it's rare. While around 90% of bird species practice some form of fidelity to one partner, only 3% to 5% of mammals do. The vast majority of the roughly 6,500 known species of mammals have open relationships, so to speak.

"It's an uncommon arrangement," said lead author Nicholas Grebe, a postdoctoral associate in professor Christine Drea's lab at Duke University.

Which raises a question: what makes some species biologically inclined to pair up for the long haul while others play the field?

Studies over the last 30 years in rodents point to two hormones released during mating, oxytocin and vasopressin, suggesting that the key to lasting love may lie in differences in how they act on the brain.

Some of the first clues came from influential research on prairie voles, small mouse-like mammals that, unlike most rodents, mate for life. When researchers compared the brains of monogamous prairie voles with their promiscuous counterparts, montane voles and meadow voles, they found that prairie voles had more "docking sites" for these hormones, particularly in parts of the brain's reward system.

Since these "cuddle chemicals" were found to enhance male-female bonds in voles, researchers have long wondered if they might work the same way in humans.

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That's why the Duke-led team turned to lemurs. Despite being our most distant primate relatives, lemurs are a closer genetic match to humans than voles are.

The researchers used an imaging technique called autoradiography to map binding sites for oxytocin and vasopressin in the brains of 12 lemurs that had died of natural causes at the Duke Lemur Center.

The animals represented seven species: monogamous red-bellied and mongoose lemurs along with five promiscuous species in the same genus.

They're really the only comparable natural experiment to look for biological signatures of monogamy in primates."

Nicholas Grebe, Lead Author

Comparing the brain imaging results in lemurs with previous results in voles and monkeys revealed some noticeable differences in the density and distribution of hormone receptors. In other words, oxytocin and vasopressin appear to act on different parts of the brain in lemurs -- which means they may also have different effects, depending on their target cell's location.

But within lemurs, the researchers were surprised to find few consistent differences between monogamous species and promiscuous ones.

"We don't see evidence of a pair-bond circuit" akin to that found in rodent brains, Grebe said.

As a next step, the team is looking at how lemur couples behave toward each other if the actions of oxytocin are blocked, by feeding them an antagonist that temporarily prevents oxytocin from binding to its receptors in the brain.

So what can lemurs teach us about love? The authors say their findings caution against drawing simple conclusions based on rodent experiments about how human social behaviors came to be.

Oxytocin may be the "potion of devotion" for voles, but it may be the combined actions and interactions of multiple brain chemicals, along with ecological factors, that create long-lasting bonds in lemurs and other primates, including humans, Grebe said.

"There are probably a number of different ways through which monogamy is instantiated within the brain, and it depends on what animals we're looking at," Grebe said. "There's more going on than we originally thought."

Source:

Duke University

Journal reference:

Grebe, N.M., et al. (2021) Neural correlates of mating system diversity: oxytocin and vasopressin receptor distributions in monogamous and non-monogamous Eulemur. Scientific Reports. doi.org/10.1038/s41598-021-83342-6.

LUPERCALIA VALENTINES DAY

Mysterious and bizarre: scientists discovered ancient rock art 
Ancient rock art with humanoid figures, strange creatures, buffalo heads and other animals have been discovered in Eastern Africa, which researchers estimate belongs to an indigenous group that has existed for nearly 90,000 years. 

© Provided by National Post Archeologists found ancient rock paintings in the rock shelter of Swaga Swaga Game Reserve located in central Tanzania, Eastern Africa.

A team of Polish archeologists from Jagiellonian University spotted the Amak’hee 4 rock shelter site in Swaga Swaga Game Reserve located in central Tanzania, Dodoma area. Their discovery took place in June 2018.

The site contains rock art with unusual paintings that the scientists claim belong to an ancient Sandawe indigenous group, which has been around for at least 87,000 years. This group still lives in Southeast Africa to this day.

Researchers also claim that Sandawe possesses the oldest DNA lineage, the Daily Mail reported.

Most of the paintings were made with a reddish dye and are in good conditions because of a rock overhang that protected them from “flowing water” and “excessive sunlight,” the research paper states.

The arts portray bizarre shapes and figures, domesticated cattle, buffalo heads and giraffe’s head and neck

.

© Maciej Grzelczyk Scientist draw a digital sketch of Amakha painting 4 discovered in the rock shelter in Tanzania

According to the study, it seems that the painters “intentionally respected” an existing drawing as they did not overlay the new image on it. Alternatively, they included the existing image in “the new scene.”

“The same technique can be seen in the buffalo painting, where the tail of the buffalo was interrupted in such a way that it would not superimpose on the leg of figure,” reads the paper.

Scientists say that one of the paintings that particularly stands out is a scene concentrated around three images that “seem to feature stylized buffalo heads.”

Researchers also wrote that these shapes resemble the “central dip” in the figure of the buffalo head, from where the two horns erect and then “curve outward away from the head, as well as the downturned ears.”

© Maciej Grzelczyk Scientists compared the stone figures, African buffalo and a close-up of the digitally advanced photograph to show finer characteristics of the rock painting.

Scientists suggest that these paintings arise from a ritual of the Sandawe people, although their present religion does not involve elements of anthropomorphization of buffaloes.

“Even though in the present religion of the Sandawe people—who are descendants of those who created the paintings—we find no elements of anthropomorphization of buffaloes, nor belief in the possibility of transformation of people into these animals, there are some ritual aspects that offer parallels,” the research paper states. 

© Maciej Grzelczyk Most of the paintings were made with a reddish dye and are in good condition. However, due to the degradation of the dye, scientists cannot determine the approximate age of art.

“The Sandawe still practice the simbó ritual, the main element of which is entering trance states.”

According to the research paper, archeologists cannot determine the approximate age of the Amak’hee 4 paintings due to the degradation of the dye. They also cannot explain the motifs for portraying domesticated cattle. However, they concluded that the rock art comes from the hunter-gatherer period, which dates back to several hundred years ago.

POSTMODERN COMPANY TOWN

In Nevada desert, a technology firm aims to be a government

CARSON CITY, Nev. — In the Nevada desert, a cryptocurrency magnate hopes to turn dreams of a futuristic “smart city” into reality. To do that, he’s asking the state to let companies like his form local governments on land they own, which would grant them power over everything from schools to law enforcement

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© Provided by The Canadian Press

Jeffrey Berns, CEO of Nevada-based Blockchains LLC, envisions a city where people not only purchase goods and services with digital currency but also log their entire online footprint — financial statements, medical records and personal data — on blockchain. Blockchain is a digital ledger known mostly for recording cryptocurrency transactions but also has been adopted by some local governments for everything from documenting marriage licenses to facilitating elections.

The company wants to break ground by 2022 in rural Storey County, 12 miles (19 kilometres) east of Reno. It's proposing to build 15,000 homes and 33 million square feet (3 million square meters) of commercial and industrial space within 75 years. Berns, whose idea is the basis for draft legislation that some lawmakers saw behind closed doors last week, said traditional government doesn’t offer enough flexibility to create a community where people can invent new uses for his technology.

“There’s got to be a place somewhere on this planet where people are willing to just start from scratch and say, ‘We’re not going to do things this way just because it’s the way we’ve done it,’” Berns said.

He wants Nevada to change its laws to allow “innovation zones,” where companies would have powers like those of a county government, including creating court systems, imposing taxes and building infrastructure while making land and water management decisions.

The prospect has been met with intrigue and skepticism from Nevada lawmakers, though the legislation has yet to be formally filed or discussed in public hearings. Most in the Democratic-controlled Legislature are eager to diversify Nevada's tourism-dependent economy, but many fear backlash against business incentives as they struggle to fund health care and education.

This proposal differs from the big tax rebates they have grown wary of offering, like the $1.3 billion given to Tesla to build its northern Nevada battery factory or the billions New York and Virginia offered Amazon to build new corporate headquarters.

But it raises deeper issues about increasing tech companies’ grip on everyday life at a time when antitrust regulators and Democrats in Congress allege tech giants like Facebook and Google are controlling markets and endangering people's privacy.

Blockchains LLC and so-called innovation zones were a key part of Gov. Steve Sisolak’s January State of the State address, when he outlined plans to rebuild a more diversified economy after the coronavirus pandemic.

Sisolak, whose campaign and affiliated political action committee received a combined $60,000 from the company, said the proposal would transform Nevada into “the epicenter of this emerging industry and create the high-paying jobs and revenue that go with it.”

The governor’s office declined to comment further on innovation zones. But with Sisolak’s backing, the idea could garner serious consideration in the Legislature.

“I don’t know enough yet to say whether I’m comfortable with this as the next step or not. But, look, it’s a big idea and Nevada has been built on big ideas, so let’s hear it out,” said state Sen. Ben Kieckhefer, a Republican who sponsored blockchain-related legislation in 2017 and 2019.

If lawmakers back the proposal, technology companies with 50,000 acres of land (200 square kilometres) that promise a $1 billion investment could create zones governed by three people like county commissioners. The draft legislation says two of them initially would be from the company itself.

In Storey County, which is home to Tesla’s factory, officials are waiting for more information before offering opinions but say questions still need to be answered.

Commissioner Lance Gilman, who owns the Mustang Ranch brothel and bought most of the county's land to turn it into an industrial park decades ago, has supported luring technology companies to the area and growing its population. But Gilman, who worked in marketing for Blockchains LLC from 2018 to 2019, said there are many unknowns about ceding control to a new jurisdiction that falls within county borders.

”(The bill) wants the host county to let it form, become successful, not pay them very much money, and eventually let them take over the whole county and all the operations, if it becomes successful," Gilman said. "If it doesn’t become successful, who becomes responsible for all the stuff that was built in the meantime?”

The county's master plan doesn’t permit residential development in the Tahoe-Reno Industrial Center, where most of Blockchain LLC's property lies, but it allows for 3,500 homes in Painted Rock, a subsection of the company's 67,000 acres (271 square kilometres).

Berns said officials told him in an informal discussion two years ago that they weren’t interested in zoning for more homes, a meeting that former County Manager Pat Whitten confirmed. Berns understands that elected leaders in Storey County may not want an experimental city in their backyard but believes the idea should be a state decision because of its potential to “singularly define Nevada going forward.”

“We bought 70,000 acres of land in the county. What did they think we were going to do?” he said.

The former consumer protection attorney said the idea was born from how he sees government as an unnecessary middleman between people and ideas.

“For us to be able to take risks and be limber, nimble and figure things out like you do when you’re designing new products, that’s not how government works. So why not let us just create a government that lets us do those things?” Berns said.

___

Associated Press writer Michelle L. Price contributed reporting from Las Vegas. Metz is a corps member for the Associated Press/Report for America Statehouse News Initiative. Report for America is a non-profit national service program that places journalists in newsrooms to report on undercovered issues.

Sam Metz, The Associated Press

Opioid drug deaths killed 997 Albertans in the first 11 months of 2020

#LEGALIZEALLDRUGS

© CBC The latest numbers from the provincial government show 113 people died of overdoses, 106 of them from opioids.

A new surveillance report from the Alberta government indicates that 997 people died of opioid overdoses from January to November 2020.

The latest numbers give a glimpse at November, where a total of 113 people died, 106 of them from opioids. In the newest November opioid numbers, Edmonton and Calgary continue to be the hardest-hit communities.

For Petra Schulz, co-founder of Moms Stop The Harm, the first issue is the supply. She said a pharmaceutical-grade supply of drugs available by prescription has to be the first step.

"[People] are dying because the only substances they have access to are highly unpredictable, highly toxic and that's why we see these high death rates," she said.

"The only logical answer to this, is to provide people with a safe, regulated supply of substances."

Schulz lost her son Danny in 2014 to an accidental fentanyl overdose. The day before he died, he asked her to make an appointment with his doctor and psychologist. He never made it to those appointments.

"I'm all for investment in treatment … but if people don't live long enough, they will never make it to treatment," she said.

Sometimes, people who overdose don't have a substance abuse disorder, she said. People do use drugs casually and treatment isn't the answer for everyone, she said.

In a statement, Kassandra Kitz, press secretary for the associate minister of mental health and addiction said, Alberta has been working to establish "a full continuum of care for people struggling with addiction, inclusive of prevention, intervention, treatment and recovery.

"We have no intention of flooding the streets with cheap, taxpayer-funded opioids, as British Columbia is doing, as we believe this is how the crisis started in the first place and such endeavours are not grounded in evidence," Kitz said, adding that Alberta's opioid depency programs supply "evidence-based" medications like Suboxone and Methodone.

Opioid death numbers have remained fairly consistent since August.

Jennifer Jackson, a registered nurse and an assistant professor in the faculty of nursing at the University of Calgary, said it's extremely disappointing the province is still in the throes of an opioid crisis.

"I cannot say that I'm surprised," she said. "Unfortunately, we have not seen a policy response that matches the significance of the problem."

Jackson said there have been plenty of opportunities to intervene but they haven't been taken.

"It's very sad for me to say this, but I don't see this problem changing any time soon until we have robust policy responses that are based on science, not on stigma," she said.

Jackson likened the policy response to date to pouring gas on a fire, and said the province is running fast in the wrong direction.

Both Schulz and Jackson pointed to the closure of the Lethbridge supervised consumption site as one concrete failure.

© CBC Petra Schulz holds a photo of her son Danny, who died of a fentanyl overdose in 2014.

Schulz said she is glad the government is at least investing some money into the issues and she's glad they're doing these reports.

"But the numbers are only useful if they guide policy, if they guide health policy. If the numbers just tell us how tragic it is, we can't allow for that to happen," she said.

The current government is more driven by ideology rather than evidence when it comes to their health policy around substance use, she said.

"Much of these treatment spaces that are being funded, they are abstinence-based treatment which is not the recommended approach for opioid use disorder, yet we know most people are dying of opioids," she said.