Saturday, July 10, 2021

Colombia recycles terrorist conspiracy theory ahead of new protests

by Adriaan Alsema July 8, 2021

Defense Minister Diego Molano (Image: Colprensa)

Without a shred of evidence, Colombia´s controversial defense minister on Wednesday claimed that illegal armed groups are behind anti-government protests called for July 20.

Following a meeting in Cali, Defense Minister Diego Molano recycled the conspiracy theory that guerrillas would be involved in protests announced by social organizations.

Some intelligence indicates that FARC dissidents and the ELN continue with the intention of financing violent actions, so all Police and Army devices will continue in Cali to guarantee free movement and avoid blockades.
Defense Minister Diego Molano

Molano coined the same conspiracy during previous protests that started on April 28 after which armed civilians and the security forces subjected Colombia’s third largest city to multiple terror campaigns.


We will not allow what happened on April 28 to happen again. The security forces will maintain the active presence they have had in the last two months to guarantee tranquility and security.
Defense Minister Diego Molano

Molano was never able to provide any evidence to support his initial conspiracy theory.

The police involvement in the terror did force the resignation of Cali’s former police chief in May.

Cali mayor not playing ball

Mayor Jorge Ivan Ospina, who has stepped up efforts to recover the peace after Molano plunged his city in crisis, refused to confirm the defense minister’s latest conspiracy theory.

Instead, Ospina offered rewards for information on anyone trying to sabotage peaceful protests on the upcoming strike day.

\
The right to mobilization and protest cannot be confused with vandalism or harm to life. What we have developed this afternoon is a set of actions to promote the right to mobilization while respecting the right to life. We maintain this fund of 500 million pesos to be able to pay any person who provides information on events of vandalism.
Cali Mayor Jorge Ivan Ospina

Defense minister ignores court and OAS


The defense minister ignored a 2020 Supreme Court order that prohibited the stigmatization of protests.

The stigmatization and violence spurred the human rights commission of the Organization of American States to put the government of President Ivan Duque on a special watch list on Wednesday.
Colombia’s far-right regime put on despot watch list

The government’s efforts to violently crack down on the protests have left more than 80 people dead, Human Rights Watch Americas (HRW) director Jose Miguel Vivanco said last week.

According to the regional HRW chief, 40 of these murders were committed by police.

The defense minister has been charged with crimes against humanity before the International Criminal Court over the brutal repression of protests that have continued since April.




Colombia’s far-right regime put on despot watch list

by Adriaan Alsema July 8, 202

The human rights commission of the Organization of American States (OAS) put Colombia’s increasingly authoritarian President Ivan Duque on its list of suspected despots on Wednesday.

Until Wednesday, the “Special Monitoring Mechanism for Human Rights Issues” of the OAS’ Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) only applied to Nicaragua and Venezuela.

The government of Venezuela’s authoritarian President Nicolas Maduro was put on the monitoring list in 2019 after winning elections that were widely considered fraudulent.

Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega, whose government arrested six presidential candidates this week, has been monitored by the IACHR since 2018 already.

The far-right regime of Colombia’s President Ivan Duque will now also be monitored whether it likes it or not.

Welcome to the list of depots


Colombia’s addition to the special monitoring list all but ends credibility to Duque’s claims his government respects basic democratic and human rights.

The increasingly despotic president had already lost much of his legitimacy after independent media reported early last year that Duque was elected with the help of a drug trafficking organization in 2018.

The IACHR decision means that the OAS body will create a full-time commission to monitor the far-right government’s self-proclaimed commitment to democracy and human rights.

Colombia’s far-right president has long tried to deny his dictatorial tendencies that spurred the IACHR to issue a warning in over Duque’s moves to concentrate power in 2020.

The return of narcoterrorism in Colombia

Oversight whether you like it or not


The special OAS commission will “contribute to the consolidation of peace” in Colombia after government efforts to frustrate an ongoing peace process with demobilized guerrilla group FARC, violent efforts to quell protests and trumped up investigations against opposition politicians.

According to the IACHR, its special monitoring commissions seek to “facilitate an analysis of the decisions and recommendations, allow for public exposure of the case or situation, and provide for a regular and systematic follow-up of the issue, resulting in a more in-depth and focused follow-up” in relation to the government’s respect to human rights.

In the specific case of Colombia, the special monitoring commission will particularly keep an eye on the National Police and the National Army that are facing accusations of widespread human rights abuses.

Like the governments of Nicaragua and Venezuela, Colombia’s regime rejected the decision and has yet to confirm whether it will allow the OAS commission to operate inside the South American country.

The commission monitoring Ortega’s regime wasn’t allowed in the country until early this year while Maduro has refused any cooperation with the special monitoring commission on Venezuela.

The end of a three-year charade


The addition to the IACHR’s list of human rights violators is by far the biggest humiliation for the government of Duque and his informal boss, former Medellin Cartel associate and far-right former President Alvaro Uribe.

The informal superior of Colombia’s president was never put on any special monitoring list while in office between 2002 and 2010 despite being tied to the Medellin Cartel and far-right death squads.

Duque’s allegedly criminal misrule has been such that Uribe’s puppet became Colombia’s first suspected threat to democracy in the country’s history and in less than three years.

“Colombia’s worst president ever” is supposed to leave office in August next year but has pulled all kinds of stunts that have severely weakened the possibility of free and fair elections.

Many of Duque’s political and financial patrons are being investigated for their alleged involvement in organized crime and would face serious legal trouble if the president’s far-right Democratic Center party loses power in next year’s elections.
Mercenaries: the sinister export from Colombia's conflict
AFP 

Some fight in Yemen or Afghanistan, others guard oil pipelines in the United Arab Emirates; and yet more turned up in Haiti this week, where they are accused of assassinating the president.

© STR Colombia's conflict has fed a sinister market of mercenaries around the world

Hardened by more than half a century of conflict back home, retired Colombian soldiers and illegal combatants feed the sinister market of mercenaries around the world.

Some 26 Colombians have been accused of taking part in the pre-dawn murder of president Jovenel Moise on Wednesday that also left his wife Martine wounded.

© DANIEL MUNOZ People lie on painted silhouettes simulating dead bodies, protesting for thousands of extrajudicial executions known as "false positives" and perpetrated by Colombian military forces, in Bogota on June 4, 2021

Colombia said on Friday that at least 17 ex-soldiers are believed to have been involved in the attack at Moise's home. Some were killed by Haitian police and the majority were captured.

But the participation of Colombian mercenaries highlights the lucrative transnational mercenary market.

"There is great experience in terms of irregular war... the Colombian soldier is trained, has combat experience and on top of that is cheap labor," Jorge Mantilla, a criminal phenomenon researcher at the University of Illinois in Chicago, told AFP.

© Juan Pablo Pino General Commander of the Military Forces of Colombia, Luis Fernando Navarro Jimenez, speaks during a press conference in Bogota, on July 9, 2021

It's not just retired soldiers that leave Colombia's borders -- already so porous to the export of cocaine -- as guns for hire.

In 2004, Venezuelan authorities detained "153 Colombian paramilitaries" they accused of taking part in a plan to assassinate then-president Hugo Chavez.

- 'Prey to opportunities' -

Colombia has a seemingly inexhaustible pool of soldiers. The armed forces are made up of 220,000 personnel and thousands retire over a lack of promotion opportunities, misconduct or after reaching 20 years of service

Every year "between 15,000 and 10,000 soldiers leave the army rank and file... it's a human universe that is very difficult to control," Colonel John Marulanda, president of a Colombian association for former military personnel, told W Radio.

They retire relatively young with low pensions and that makes them "prey to better economic opportunities," said the retired officer.

He says that what happened in Haiti was a "typical case of recruitment" of Colombian ex-soldiers by private companies to carry out operations in other countries.

Colombian authorities say four companies were involved in the assassination.

A woman who claimed to be the wife of Francisco Eladio Uribe, one of the captured Colombians, said a company offered her husband $2,700 to join the unit.

Uribe retired from the army in 2019 and was embroiled in the "false positives" scandal investigated by authorities, in which soldiers executed 6,000 civilians between 2002 and 2008 to pass them off as enemy combatants in order to gain bonuses.

- Mercenary industry 'boom' -


In May 2011, the New York Times newspaper revealed that an airplane carrying dozens of Colombian ex-soldiers arrived in Abu Dhabi to join an army of mercenaries hired by the US firm Blackwater to guard important Emirati assets.

The Times then claimed in 2015 that hundreds of Colombians were fighting Houthi rebels in Yemen, now hired directly by the UAE.

For the last decade "there's been a boom in this industry," said Mantilla.

At that time, the United States began substituting its troops in the Middle East for "private security firms because it implies a lower political cost in terms of casualties and a grey area in international law."

When it comes to potential human rights violations "the legal responsibility falls on the material perpetrators" rather than the State or company that contracted them, said Mantilla.

Today there is a global market in which US, British, French, Belgian or Danish companies recruit mercenaries mostly from Latin America or countries like Zimbabwe or Nepal that have had armed conflicts.

"The companies are legal, but that doesn't mean that all the activities carried out by these people are strictly legal," added Mantilla.

jss/vel/lv/yow/bc/st

Colombia clashes with OAS over damning human rights report

by Adriaan Alsema July 8, 2021


President Ivan Duque
News


Colombia’s increasingly authoritarian President Ivan Duque rejected a damning human rights report by the Organization of American States (OAS).

In its report, the OAS’ Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) blasted the government’s excessive use of force to quell anti-government protests that kicked off on April 28.

The violent repression has left dozens dead and an unknown number of people missing.

The IACHR additionally recommended Colombia’s far-right government to adopt more than 40 measures to guarantee its citizens human rights and prevent abuses of power.
Read the full IACHR report (Spanish)

In his response, Duque said that “no one can recommend a country to be tolerant of criminal acts,” ignoring the OAS commission’s claim that the security forces and groups that had nothing to do with the largely peaceful protests were behind the violence.

The Inter-American Commission expresses its firm condemnation and rejection of the high levels of violence registered in the context of social protest, caused both by the excessive use of force by the public security forces and that provoked by groups outside the protest itself.
Inter-American Commission on Human Rights

According to the government, the police cracked down on more than 1,700 protests in response to “acts of vandalism, low intensity urban terrorism” and “blockades that threaten the rights of citizens,” while allowing 89% of the more than 14,000 protests that started on April 28 to proceed in peace.


This shows that the government of President Ivan Duque respects and guarantees peaceful public protest, which cannot, under any circumstances, be subject to vandalism, chaos and the destruction of Colombians’ property.

Foreign Ministry

The foreign ministry ignored police collusion with armed anti-protest groups and rejected a decision by the IACHR to form a permanent commission to monitor the Duque administration’s respect for human rights.

The OAS´ human rights commission previously created such a “Special Monitoring Mechanism on Human Rights Issues” for the increasingly authoritarian regimes of Nicaragua and Venezuela.
Read the Colombian government’s rebuttal (Spanish)
IACHR’s main issues

Duque’s false claim that the police had been acting against a “low intensity terrorism” campaign confirmed the IACHR’s concern about “the impact that polarization and stigmatization have on the human rights of protesters.”

This OAS commission urged the government to abide by a 2020 Supreme Court order that banned the stigmatization of protests.

THE IACHR additionally reminded the Colombian government it is supposed to provide security to citizens, instead of using force as if they were enemies.


Citizen security cannot be based on a use of force paradigm that aims to treat the civilian population as the enemy, but must consist of the protection and control of civilians.
Inter-American Commission on Human Rights

In order to protect instead of posing a threat to citizens, the iACHR recommended to transfer the National Police from the Defense Ministry to the Interior Ministry.

Duque rejected this, claiming that the current structure had provided stability after a civil war between 1948 and 1958 when the military and the police found themselves fighting each other.


Colombia has maintained this structure in a stable manner, correcting what for many years was highly questioned, and that is that during the years in which the Police was in the Ministry of Government it became politicized, and this politicization led to large outbreaks of violence.
President Ivan Duque

The president ignored the fact that Colombia suffered an armed conflict since 1964 that killed at least 265,000 people and left between 80,000 and 200,000 people missing.

Duque’s far-right Democratic Center party has categorically denied Colombia’s armed conflict, claiming that the deadly violence was due to a “terrorist threat.”

According to the IACHR, the current protests are not due to the government´s fictitious “low intensity terrorism” campaign, but “structural and historical demands of Colombian society” that “are enshrined in the 1991 Political Constitution and the 2016 Peace Accords.”

The Foreign Ministry’s perhaps most absurd insinuation was that the OAS commission’s recommendations could further fuel instability caused by the COVID-19 pandemic and the government’s broadly rejected response to the crisis.

Duque all but completely isolated Colombia’s government due to the president’s increasingly dictatorial tendencies and the his government’s increasingly evident ties to organized crime.


Trending


ICE embroiled in major fraud scandal in Colombia
Global warming is making you sick

In October 2020, Science magazine ran an article titled “Dust Bowl 2.0? Rising Great Plains dust levels raise concerns.”



In it, author Roland Pease described a recent storm front that swept up a wall of dust stretching from eastern Colorado into Nebraska and Kansas. It was reminiscent of the devastating conditions of the 1930s Dust Bowl, when farmers repeatedly saw topsoil turn to dust and blow away.

“Better get used to it,” Pease wrote. “According to a new study, dust storms on the Great Plains have become more common and more intense in the past 20 years, because of more frequent droughts in the region and an expansion of croplands.”


More than just affecting food supply, the phenomenon was also a direct health hazard. The super-fine dust particles were able to penetrate vulnerable lung cells, causing lung and heart disease.

All over the world, climate change is doing more than just causing environmental damage and making people sweat. It’s also making them sick. And Canada is no different.

Do people generally understand that climate change is a health hazard?

“They don’t. They really don’t,” said Dr. Courtney Howard, an emergency room physician in Yellowknife.

Howard is past-president of the Canadian Association of Physicians for the Environment (CAPE) and has spoken frequently on the link between climate change and health — including in a Tedx Talk in Montreal four years ago.

“What makes the work rewarding is that it doesn’t take long,” she said in a recent phone interview. “I’ve given variations on that talk now to multiple ministers, innumerable doctors and community groups, and you watch the penny drop. You watch the light bulbs go on.”

People’s attitudes change, she said.

“Making that connection between climate change and health is super important, because multiple studies replicated across countries have shown that preventing climate change as a health issue is the best way to motivate populations to take action.”

Howard says the direness of climate change first hit her about 10 years ago.

“When my daughter was nine months old, and Bill McKibbon’s 'Terrifying New Math' (Rolling Stone, July 19, 2012) came out, and it made clear the carbon budget that we have to work with for the first time … I finished the article in a fetal position around my daughter. And that led to a good three or four months of pretty profound grief as I considered what felt like a diagnosis.”

It was the same sort of revelation as when her mother got cancer, she says.

“Every new report on climate change used to feel like a punch in the gut. But because I’ve done the grieving, now they’re just information.”

A simple illustration of how climate change affects health is the impact it has on urban areas during heat waves.

When the town of Lytton, B.C., went up in flames last week, it followed a record-breaking heat wave, or “heat dome,” that caused dozens of deaths throughout the region.

Heat waves can be much more devastating in cities because the brick and asphalt intensify the heat.

“It makes for a nicer community if we dig up some of the tarmac and have trees there instead. People’s house prices go up, levels of well-being go up, and when a heat wave arrives, it’s much less hot,” Howard says.

Green areas can also act as a sort of “sponge” for flood waters and help reduce the effect of air pollution.

“If we can shift people onto their bikes, shift people onto the buses, shift people into electric vehicles, that means less kids with asthma in the emergency department, and that’s better for everyone,” Howard says.

Perhaps the most alarming threat posed by climate change is its impact on food production and distribution.

The dust bowl in the U.S. and wildfires in California and Canada are much more than local events. They have an impact on everyone because many of them are primarily food-exporting regions.

“The net food exporters will have challenges eventually because of climate change,” said Dr. Atanu Sarkar, a specialist in environmental and occupational medicine at Memorial University.

“That is an immediate, direct effect of climate change. More uncertainty, more problems in the food baskets of the world,” he said in a recent phone interview.

“Already, we are paying so much for the food.”

Extreme winds and snowfall can also affect food security on the island part of this province.

“If there are no ferries, there is no food, and you will see the shelves empty,” Sarkar said.

That’s one of the reasons Sarkar joined a local initiative called the Food Producers Forum. It’s a network of farmers, fishermen and foragers in the province who are tired of the status quo and constant lip service paid to food security in the province.

Instead, they’re doing something about it.

Saturday: Less talk, more action

Peter Jackson, Local Journalism Initiative Reporter, The Telegram
New coalition wants to 'climate-proof' Canada

A new climate coalition says the federal government needs to do more to keep Canadians safe from the impacts of severe weather.

Climate Proof Canada is urging the government to complete a National Adaptation Strategy (NAS), extend national flooding risk mitigation, and appoint a natural disaster resilience adviser.


The wildfires that destroyed most of Lytton, B.C., last week underscore the importance of improving Canada’s climate resilience immediately, said Robin Edger, a Climate Proof Canada spokesperson and national director of climate change at the Insurance Bureau of Canada.

“We just don't have a climate adaptation strategy,” he said. “There are other G7 countries that are on their third iteration of the climate adaptation strategy, we just haven't had the focus on it so far.”

Efforts to mitigate climate change through emissions reductions have “taken up most of the oxygen in the room” when it comes to addressing climate change, said Edger.

“It's a tougher conversation to deal with adaptation and resilience, because you have to face up to the fact that climate change is a now problem, not a tomorrow problem,” he said. “Even if we stopped burning fossil fuels tomorrow, there would still be a certain amount of warming just baked in because of the feedback loops that we've already set off.”

The coalition’s launch coincided with the release of Natural Resources Canada’s 734-page report examining Canada’s ability to adapt to climate change, which will inform a national strategy.

The report estimates every $1 invested in climate change adaptation generates $5 to $6 of benefits, and identifies “large gaps” in Canada’s climate change preparedness.

In December, the federal government launched its new climate plan, which includes a commitment to develop Canada’s first National Adaptation Strategy.

Edger said the Insurance Bureau of Canada and other coalition members were involved in early consultations around the NAS in mid- to late-June.

With a possible election looming, Edger said the coalition will talk to all major political parties about why climate resilience needs to be a part of their policy platforms.

“The strategy needs to protect people and infrastructure from the threat of increased flooding, wildfire, heat, drought, and other extreme weather events, with specific recognition of, and attention to, the disproportionate impacts of these events on Indigenous people and vulnerable communities,” he said.

Actions like creating forward-looking flood risk maps, including resilience assessments on all federal infrastructure projects, and protecting and restoring naturally occurring systems like wetlands and forests can help mitigate or lessen the impacts of climate change-induced disasters.

Although time is of the essence, Edger said the coalition is more focused on getting the content of the NAS right to jump-start unified action between federal, provincial, territorial, and municipal governments.

The creation of an adaptation strategy presents an opportunity, but will require setting measurable targets and timelines, he said.

“The strategy will establish a shared vision for climate resilience in Canada, identify key priorities for increased collaboration, and establish a framework for measuring progress at the national level,” said Moira Kelly, press secretary for Environment Minister Jonathan Wilkinson.

Climate Proof Canada is asking the federal government to devise sustainable finance initiatives to encourage public and private sector organizations to prioritize climate adaptation and resilience in their business plans. This would involve compelling publicly traded companies to disclose the risk climate disasters pose to supply chains and communicate their plan to manage those risks to investors.

There’s also an opportunity to educate individuals on measures they can take to protect themselves and their homes, said Edger.

For example, climate resiliency renovations could be married with existing energy-efficiency retrofit incentives.

Currently, the federal government is encouraging homeowners to undertake energy-efficient retrofits with free EnerGuide assessments and grants of up to $5,000, and plans to introduce interest-free loans worth up to $40,000 through the Canadian Mortgage and Housing Corporation to homeowners and landlords who pursue deep retrofits.

To mitigate the risks and impacts of flooding, homeowners can do landscaping to change the gradient of their property, install a sump pump, put backflow valves in pipes, and more.

“It's just it's such a no-brainer to incorporate resilience and adaptation measures into that sort of a program,” said Edger.

Natasha Bulowski, Local Journalism Initiative Reporter, National Observer
Heat wave in West will exacerbate drought, a vicious climate feedback loop

After a deadly, climate change-fueled heat wave smothered the Pacific Northwest at the end of June, historic heat threatens records once again, particularly in the drought-stricken Southwest region.
© David Paul Morris/Bloomberg/Getty Images Almond trees are dying for lack of water at an orchard in Gustine, California.

By Rachel Ramirez, CNN 14 hrs ago

More than 30 million people are under heat warnings and advisories. The National Weather Service says the risk level for this heat wave is "very high" — dangerous for not just those with underlying health issues, but the entire population, especially those who work outdoors. The overnights, which in some places will only drop to the mid-80s, will bring little relief.

As temperatures climb to the triple digits, the sun will bake out what little moisture there is in the ground, worsening the West's unprecedented drought. Scientists say heat and drought are inextricably linked in a vicious feedback loop that climate change makes even harder to break: heat exacerbates the drought, which in turn amps up the heat.

"As we're getting these very extreme heat waves, it's just making the drought even worse, even though drought is initially caused by the lack of precipitation," Julie Kalansky, a climate scientist at Scripps Institution of Oceanography in San Diego, told CNN. "But during the dry months of much of the West, these heat waves just continue this drying throughout the summer and into the fall."
© Brian L. Frank/The New York Times/Redux More frequent heat waves, smoke from wildfires and drought are battering farmworkers in California.

More than 93% of the West is in drought this week, according to the US Drought Monitor, the largest area on record in that region. Nearly 60% of the west is in the two most-severe drought categories, extreme or exceptional.

Three of the states entirely in drought conditions are also at the center of this weekend's heat wave: California, Nevada and Utah.

Death Valley in Southern California is forecast to reach 130 degrees or higher on Sunday and Monday, within stones throw of the hottest temperature ever recorded on the planet — 134 degrees at the same location in 1913.

Kern County, California, about a three-hour drive west of Death Valley, is expected to reach triple digits as well. Juan Flores grew up in a family of migrant farm workers in Kern. He worked in the grape fields in sweltering conditions on summer breaks, and remembers a previous extreme drought in 2011, when many migrant farm workers — including his parents — struggled economically.

"With the drought, you're going to have less crops, and because you're going to have less crops, you're going to need less people," Flores told CNN, "and then all of a sudden, folks are going to be on unemployment benefits, but those benefits don't last forever."

Although his parents are in a better economic situation, Flores said many migrant farm workers will still bear the brunt of climate change-fueled economic challenges as severe weather events become more frequent and more extreme.

"We've got to talk about a national emergency, especially in Kern County, because we're considered the fruit basket of the nation," said Flores, who is now a community organizer with the Center on Race, Poverty, and the Environment, a national environmental justice group.

Kalansky said strong storms that draw moisture from the Pacific Ocean, often referred to as atmospheric rivers, are crucial in determining whether California is going to end up in drought. In the last two years, however, only one such storm brought precipitation to California this winter.

During extended periods of heat, like what the West has endured this summer, dry air evaporates water from the soil, which worsens the drought — another reason water shortages are cropping up; not only has there not been enough rain to fill reservoirs, the air is leeching water from what's left of them.

The heat and the water shortages hit farming communities from several angles.

"When you have high heat in these in agricultural communities, it can be very dangerous and hard to work outside too," Kalansky said. "So that's kind of a double whammy."

The farm labor market in the US depends heavily on immigrants with very few legal protections. An analysis by the Union of Concerned Scientists found that from 2015 to 2016, only 24% of US farm workers were US citizens, while the remaining 76% were people of color. Many risked their lives crossing the border to escape climate-related challenges.

Extreme heat and drought compounds the health hazards farm workers regularly face in the fields, including exposure to pesticides and respiratory illnesses like asthma. During the unrelenting Pacific Northwest heat wave in late June, one farm worker in St. Paul, Oregon, died while working on a crew moving irrigation lines.

Adding insult to injury, Kalansky also warns that extreme heat, low humidity and the historic drought are a recipe for another destructive wildfire season.

"It primes the environment where if there is an ignition, it's really dangerous in terms of fire because the fields are so dry," she said. "And then if you add winds to it, that's when you really get these very dangerous conditions for wildfires."

As temperatures continue to surge, Kalansky said that these extreme weather events are merely a preview of what's to come if the world continues to spew planet-heating emissions.

"I would be thoughtful of how to mitigate the impacts now, in an equitable way, especially for communities that are most impacted," she said. "It's something very important to think about now and that will serve well, because this is likely to happen again in the not too distant future."
'Carnival barkers': Marjorie Taylor Greene, Lauren Boebert snubbed by GOP women’s fundraising group

Ella Lee, USA TODAY 


A prominent fundraising group for GOP women is “intentionally” withholding campaign donations to freshmen Republican Reps. Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia and Lauren Boebert of Colorado, Insider reported Wednesday.

"While we rightfully celebrate the number of GOP women serving in the House, I've always professed quality over quantity," Julie Conway, executive director of the Value In Electing Women Political Action Committee, told Insider in an email. "The work of Congress is not a joke or reality show. Our women have fought too hard for too long to be respected and taken seriously as legislators, policy makers and thought leaders. We cannot let this work be erased by individuals who chose to be shameless self-promoters and carnival barkers.
© Jacquelyn Martin, AP Rep. Lauren Boebert, R-Colo., speaks during a news conference, Wednesday, May 12, 2021, expressing opposition to "critical race theory," during a news conference on Capitol Hill in Washington. (AP Photo/Jacquelyn Martin) ORG XMIT: DCJM126

"I think that they would rather draw attention to themselves, and really Marjorie Taylor Greene more than Boebert, but they're cut from the same cloth," Conway added

Public records confirm the VIEW PAC has not given any money to Greene or Boebert to date, and Conway told Insider the PAC would continue to withhold support in 2022.

In response to USA TODAY’s request for comment, Boebert said she had “never heard of” Conway or VIEW, which she described as a “DC insider PAC.”

“I care about the hard-working Americans from Colorado’s Third Congressional District ... that’s whose cloth I’m cut from,” Boebert said in an email.

Greene did not immediately respond to USA TODAY’s request for comment.

Both congresswomen have been criticized for inflammatory language and questionable behavior, particularly on the topic of the COVID-19 pandemic.

At a fundraiser Thursday in Illinois for another freshman GOP congresswoman, Greene flaunted her We Will Not Comply Act, a bill she filed in April that would prevent discrimination against those who choose not to be vaccinated against COVID-19.

“It gives you permission to tell Biden’s little posse that’s gonna show up at your door, you know, that intimidate you – they probably they probably work for antifa by night, and then they come and intimidate you to take the vaccine by day – well, you get to tell them to get the hell off of your lawn,” Illinois' WCIA News reported Greene said of the bill Thursday, alluding to comments President Joe Biden made Tuesday of his effort to knock “door-to-door” to increase vaccinations nationwide.


The New York Times reported in December that in Effingham, Illinois, where the fundraiser took place, “almost every call” to a local funeral home there involved service for a COVID-19 victim.

Boebert has also been vocal about allowing people to choose whether they want to be vaccinated without being vilified.

“Anyone who wants the vaccine should have easy access to it (and thanks to President Trump they do) Anyone who doesn’t want the vaccine should be able to refuse it without being made to feel like a criminal,” she tweeted Thursday. “This is a free country after all.”

The Colorado congresswoman also recently compared COVID-19 to communism and accused Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, of “bullying” for telling Americans to “get over” vaccine hesitancy in a video.

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: 'Carnival barkers': Marjorie Taylor Greene, Lauren Boebert snubbed by GOP women’s fundraising group
HARPERS WAR

The fall of Panjwaii casts a long shadow over Canada's Afghan war veterans

Murray Brewster  CBC
© Murray Brewster/The Canadian Press A Canadian CH-147 Chinook helicopter takes off outside a combat outpost in Panjwaii, Afghanistan in June 2011.

The declaration that Panjwaii — a wild, angry district of Kandahar province in Afghanistan — had fallen to the Taliban was greeted this week with a mixture of shock, numbness and resignation by many of the Canadian soldiers who fought in that part of the country for the better part of five years.

A lot of Canadian blood was spilled on that lonely, scorched patch of land. Some of it belonged to former corporal Bruce Moncur.

There was also a lot of sweat and heartbreak folded into the gnarled, sun-bleached grape and marijuana fields in this region west of Kandahar City.

Just ask retired leading seaman Bruno Guevremont.

In many ways, both men left a little bit of themselves behind in Panjwaii — a sprawling, once-prosperous checkerboard of sand, farmland and ancient, dead volcanic hills that rise steeply out of the desert floor.

When soldiers referred to the killing fields of Kandahar, more often than not they were talking about Panjwaii — where Canadian troops did most of their fighting and dying amid endless fields, mud-walled compounds and empty villages.

Against an often-unseen enemy, they fought for the place over and over again throughout the five-year combat mission, which formally ended a decade ago this week.

The Taliban — the enemy that Canadian soldiers managed to keep at bay but never quite defeat — swept through Panjwaii last weekend, handing Afghan Army troops a significant defeat and delivering a major psychological blow in the wake of the American withdrawal.

'It's never going to end'


Following up on their victory in Panjwaii, Taliban insurgents reportedly penetrated Kandahar City late in the week. The Taliban desperately wanted control of Kandahar City, the second largest in Afghanistan, and spilled a lot of their own blood trying to get there — mostly with the Canadians standing in the way.

The city and its surrounding region was their spiritual home, birthplace and first seat of power, a place from which they projected their own brutal version of Islam in the 1990s.

Guevremont said he was shaken by the thought that the villagers he'd protected, and sometimes shared tea and flatbread with, were about to return to that kind of misery.

"What's the feeling I got when I heard that Panjwaii, (the Afghan National Army) had withdrawn and the Taliban was moving back in? It was anxiety. It was exhaustion," said Guevremont, who dismantled insurgent bombs and disarmed a live suicide bomber single-handed in the spring of 2009.

"It's like, this is never-ending. It's never going to end. I'm thinking about the local population. I mean, I made friends over there."

He said the news brought back vivid memories of the three times his team was called in to defuse bombs at schools.

"Once, we got there too late where an IED had actually detonated on a school, so a lot of children had died," said Guevremont. "There were two where IEDs were prepared to go off when the kids came out of school and we got there in time and dismantled those IEDs."

While he worries about the ordinary Afghans caught in the path of the advancing Taliban, he said he also remembers the insecure feeling of being an outsider among Afghans — of not knowing who could be trusted.

Guevremont recalled being asked by locals to respond to a report of a rocket strapped to the underside of a bridge — only to discover that he'd been led into a minefield. He had to dig and tiptoe his way out.

Ten years later, he is left with a sense of dismay — and futility.

"So, you're thinking, 'What did we do for 20 years? What did we do there for the whole time that we were there?'" he said.

He's not the only one asking those questions.

'It was an inevitability'

The hardened resolve and patient, wait-and-see attitude shared by the 40,000 Canadians troops who served in Afghanistan showed cracks here and there on social media this week.

What was it all for? It's a question that, over the past decade, has been answered with the claim that Canada's intervention empowered Afghans to choose their own destiny.

But for some former soldiers, fatalism has taken over.

"It was an inevitability," said Moncur, who suffered a major head wound in 2006 at the onset of Operation Medusa, the biggest battle fought by Canadians during the war.

"I honestly thought it was going to happen. I never thought the Taliban stranglehold on Kandahar was going to be broken for that long."
© CBC News Bruce Moncur (right) in southern Afghanistan in 2006.

Moncur and many soldiers like him take a pragmatic view of their service in Afghanistan: they had a job to do — keeping the Taliban at bay — and they did it.

"It's been 20 years now, a generation, and we lost a lot of blood and guts. But they lost too," he said, referring to the full sweep of western involvement in Afghanistan following the 9/11 terrorist attacks on New York and Washington.

There is a phrase the Taliban liked to use in their propaganda against western forces: "You have the watches, but we have the time."

Moncur said he has grown to appreciate the truth of that claim.

"The inevitability was, unless we were willing to retain that presence for a millennia, they were ultimately going to come out on top," he said.

'We didn't finish the job'

Moncur said he believes the war was not worth the sacrifice in lives and treasure. As a veterans' advocate who is married to NDP MP Niki Ashton, there is an important political dimension to his feelings about Panjwaii.

If Canada, he said, was serious about everything it claimed (and sometimes continues to claim) about its presence in Afghanistan, it would have not walked away from combat operations in 2011 and would not have left the country entirely in 2014.

"I have a hard time grappling with some of the politics that come after this, the decisions to leave," he said. "I mean, we didn't finish the job."

For soldiers like Moncur, mixed in with that remorse and dismay over the fall of Panjwaii is a sense that Canada's war in Afghanistan is ancient history now.

"I've moved on," he said. "I think a lot of the vets have moved on from this.

"I think if you had to ask them what they're more concerned about, the Taliban taking over Kandahar province or perhaps the state of the military within our country, I'm pretty sure most guys would be talking about what is going on with the Canadian military now."

But Canada left some loose ends behind in Afghanistan — flesh-and-blood ones.

Growing calls for Ottawa to rescue the local Afghan translators who worked for the Canadians and were left behind after 2014 have put the Liberal government on the spot in recent days.

Those calls started with ordinary soldiers but are now coming from some of the country's top former commanders — who say they're not prepared to see people who risked their lives for Canada sacrificed to the Taliban.
The trucking industry is doubling down on booting marijuana smokers, and it's getting a little ridiculous

rpremack@businessinsider.com (Rachel Premack) 

© Hollis Johnson/Business Insider This is marijuana. Hollis Johnson/Business Insider

A new federal law is making it impossible for truck drivers to responsibly enjoy marijuana.

It's a misguided attempt on the industry's part to promote safety.

Promoting better training would be wiser.

The trucking industry has been yelling about a driver shortage for decades. Since 2011, executives have listed the supposed shortage of truck drivers as a top 10 concern in an annual industry survey.


When it comes to recruiting, kids these days are perhaps the most vexing for trucking big wigs. Millennials and Gen Z just don't seem to want to become truck drivers. The most recent report from the American Trucking Associations on the driver shortage pointed to the "relatively high average age" of a truck driver (a whopping 46 years old) as one of the foremost reasons for the industry's labor woes. (The ATA is the industry group that represents America's larger trucking companies.)


There seems to be some cognitive dissonance among these 18-wheeler executives, though.

In 2020, the industry celebrated the implementation of a law that would scare off the 22% of Americans under 30 who smoke marijuana. That's the drug and alcohol clearinghouse, in which all truck drivers who have failed any sort of drug test must be listed in a federal database so that other trucking companies don't rehire them. (They're able to clear their names if they go through a process that includes meeting with a substance abuse counselor.)

The hope is to get drivers who abuse harmful substances away from 80,000-pound vehicles barreling down the highway. What's actually happened is that the majority of those positive drug tests have involved marijuana. Some 73,000 drivers total have been booted from the road due to positive drug tests of any ilk, according to the most recent federal data.

It's an antiquated position. Some 68% of Americans believe marijuana should be fully legal, and 70% believe consuming it is morally acceptable. Today, 18 states and Washington, D.C. have legalized cannabis for recreational use - and the majority of states have legalized it medically. Of course, it's still federally classified as a Schedule I drug, so onto the drug test it goes.

There's quite a bit to cover here, so here's what you're in for:

Marijuana is far, far less harmful than the other drugs in the clearinghouse

Employment experts say marijuana users are not likely to show up to work high

Things like faulty brakes or speeding cause far more accidents than drug use

Ultimately, the industry's interest in safety regulations aren't always as rosy as they appear on the surface

Marijuana is less harmful than cocaine or meth, but trucking is lumping them in together
© Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration, Department of Transportation Positive drug tests among truck drivers from Jan. 6, 2020 to June 1, 2021. Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration, Department of Transportation

Of the 80,098 positive drug tests conducted by the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration, which presides over our nation's fair commercial drivers, 42,534 identified marijuana. Cocaine (11,297) and methamphetamine (7,371) distantly followed. This data, which you can explore in more depth here, runs from January 6, 2020 to June 1, 2021. Some drivers tested positive for more than one substance - though the feds didn't tell us the overlap in that release of data.

Marijuana is not perfectly safe - ranked by damage to user and society, an oft-cited UK study from 2010 deemed the drug just below amphetamines like Adderall, which can be highly addictive. And there are many unknowns associated with long-term, heavy marijuana use.

Frustratingly, there's no way to test someone on whether or not they're impaired by cannabis, and some experts say a THC "Breathalyzer" test may never be feasible. That forces companies to measure marijuana intake by urine tests. But the drug can stay in your body for up to 30 days. That means folks who drive trucks have to abstain from marijuana entirely - as they can expect random tests every year or so, per the new federal clearinghouse rules.

Drug experts agree that marijuana is less harmful than meth, heroin, or cocaine, as Vox's German Lopez wrote. But the folks behind the clearinghouse still insist on treating marijuana the same as these highly-addictive, illegal substances.

It's not clear how randomly booting drivers who smoke weed is going to make the highways considerably safer. More likely, this new clearinghouse will winnow further who wants to become or stay a truck driver, a problem for an industry with a turnover rate as high as 94%.

'It's not like people are showing up high to work'


There's the Attorney Mark Goldstein, who is a partner at New York City-based Reed Smith, said a worker who randomly tests positive for a drug that stays in your system for a while (like cannabis) is not likely going to be stoned at work.

"If you're drug testing an employee at the start of employment or randomly, the likelihood that they come into work impaired is probably low," Goldstein told me over the phone. (I should mention Goldstein represents employers when they call up saying they've got a worker with a positive drug test.)

© Provided by Business Insider Okay in 18 states, but for none of America’s two-million truck drivers. Hollis Johnson/INSIDER

As Michele Siekerka, president and CEO of the New Jersey Business and Industry Association, said to NJ.com about all workers who consume cannabis: "It's not like people are showing up high to work."

Obviously, much like a trucker abusing alcohol while driving, anyone caught driving high - whether by police or their employer - should face severe consequences. But a urine test surfacing marijuana does not mean that the trucker in question is driving impaired - it just means they've ingested cannabis as long as 30 days ago.

Alcohol multiples the risk for a fatal car crash by 13.6, while marijuana has a 1.8 multiplier effect, according to one Columbia University study. And research suggests using a cell phone while driving can be as dangerous as drunk driving. We're not banning truck drivers from drinking alcohol or using their cell phones while they're off duty. Why is weed different?

Poorly designed safety regulations

There's a certain romantic quality to being a truck driver. The open road, seeing America in its jaw-slacking wonder, no boss mouth-breathing next to you, podcasts for days, and, most crucially, access to thrilling truck driver Facebook group drama.

And that's all true - but a wave of new regulations are frustrating a lot of drivers I've spoken to. There's a strong perception that the folks making these laws don't understand what it's like to be a driver. As one driver with 6.5 million accident-free miles commented to me recently: "We had a lot of fun in the early days. But today, gosh, I don't know, they want to put you out of business."

The driver of this mysterious 18-wheeler could smoke in their free time, and I frankly wouldn't care! Education Images/Universal Images Group via Getty Images

Regulations are making many current drivers want to quit. The ones around marijuana could even deter many people from becoming a truck driver.

Let's say I am a 20-something who occasionally indulges in marijuana. I know that marijuana impairs my driving for at least three hours, so I make sure not to do it when I know I may need to work in that timeframe, but it also lasts in my system for up to a month. Would I pick a job in which I could get booted at any moment because I smoke? Or would I work at, say, Amazon, which just nixed cannabis testing?

The insistence on knowing whether an employee uses marijuana follows a disturbing trend in which working people are being monitored more and more. Some trucking companies are putting driver-facing cameras in their cabins to watch their employees.

Bureaucrats and business executives say watching a trucker's every move is to promote better safety. (It's notable, of course, that one study from the University of Michigan suggests passenger cars, not 18-wheelers, are responsible for up to 70% of all fatal crashes between semi-trucks and cars.)

But if we're really interested in safer truck drivers, we wouldn't be targeting illegal drugs. Bad driving and bad roads are a bigger issue.

Illegal drugs were coded as causes for 2% of all truck-car accidents, according to a Department of Transportation study. Far more quotidian factors proved more dangerous: brake problems (a factor assigned in 29% of crashes); speeding (23%); unfamiliarity with roadways (22%); and roadway issues (20%). These could be addressed with better infrastructure and training, but neither factors are cheap fixes.

Unfortunately, the trucking executives who proclaim to love safety are also promoting a bill that would introduce those under 21 to interstate trucking. The idea is that this will make trucking appealing to kiddos again - never mind that experts disagree, and that those aged 18 or 19 have a crash rate that's twice as high as those in their 30s, 40s, and 50s.

Why is trucking going in on drug testing now?

Amid what Goldstein described to me as a trend away from drug testing among non-trucking employers, I wanted to learn more about why freight was suddenly embracing a federal database. So, I chatted with Craig Fuller, CEO and founder of media company FreightWaves, to learn more about what happened here.

The clearinghouse was a long time coming. It went into a larger transportation bill signed into law in 2012. It wasn't until 2017 that the law was codified, and then in 2020 it was finally enforced.

 Trump is the only 21st-century US president to have a big rig photo opportunity, at least from what I can find on our photo service. Take from that what you wish. JIM WATSON/AFP via Getty Images

The endless number of stakeholders gummed up the works, Fuller said. When writing such rules, everyone in the $800 billion trucking industry chimes in - there are independent drivers, major employers, insurance companies, equipment manufacturers, and so on.

Fuller also argued the database is actually quite an obvious idea. Before, there was no way of knowing whether a driver you just hired was already fired for cocaine by a previous employer.

He sketched it out as such:

"Let's say, Rachel, that you were driving a truck and failed a drug test. Let's just say it's pot. The fleet is going to fire you. So guess what you do, you get fired. You're gonna go down the street and go work at Jim Buck Trucking and get a job there. And you drive along a year later, you get tested again and boom, you get the boot. You leave that carrier. You go to the next one.

"The idea of the clearinghouse was that all of these fleets know who the drivers that have had incidents and issues. The problem is, it wasn't very (easy) to get access to that information until the clearinghouse came along."
 Jim Buck Trucking's No. 1 enemy. Hollis Johnson/Business Insider

Again, it's not just about safety


Fuller pointed to another, perhaps more sinister reason for the clearinghouse.

Big trucking companies, along with a genuine interest in safety, may be particularly interested in pushing drug testing because it could root out the industry's hundreds of thousands of small carriers.

A few "mega-carriers" dominate trucking, and their safety standards may be so stringent that they test hair follicles for illegal substances. But the theoretical Big Rachel's Trucking, which employs only myself and a few buddies, is probably is not using top-of-the-line drug testing standards.

Big Rachel's is not a concern in itself to these publicly-traded giants. The problem is that there's 183,916 trucking companies with fewer than six trucks just like Big Rachel's - and we dominate 89% of the industry. Collectively, we're Big Trucking's biggest competitor, and we often don't run on the same rules. Now, thanks to the new federal database, we're all on the same page.

Let's think about the real deterrents to safety instead

Fuller said that being less lenient on marijuana makes sense, but should be coupled with more accurate testing to detect non-cannabis drugs. Namely, he said we ought to focus more resources to hair follicle testing, which would be the most precise in rooting out addled drivers.

"I don't have a problem at all with drivers smoking a joint," Fuller said. "I have a big issue with someone on heroin or on prescription opioids or meth driving down the highway next to me or my kids."

And one more thing. People who make a living wage, lead a healthy lifestyle, and have strong social networks are going to be happier - and better at their jobs. It's common sense. Unfortunately, that's not reachable for many of our nation's two million truck drivers.

What do you think about testing truck drivers (or any employees) for marijuana? Would you like to apply for a role at Big Rachel's Trucking*? Send me an email at rpremack@insider.com.

*Big Rachel's Trucking is 100%, completely, utterly not real.

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