The Day Jason Kenney Lost Alberta

His $100 bribe for the unvaccinated unites Albertans in scorn and anger.

David Climenhaga Today | TheTyee.ca
David J. Climenhaga is an award-winning journalist, author, post-secondary teacher, poet and trade union communicator. He blogs at AlbertaPolitics.ca, where this column originally appeared. Follow him on Twitter @djclimenhaga.

Jason Kenney refuses to implement effective vaccine passports for non-essential settings, but will spend $20 million rewarding people who haven’t yet been vaccinated. Government of Alberta photo by Andrew Peloso.

This is a universal law of human nature.

So while it’s true evidence suggests “vaccine passports” would be more effective at getting vaccination-hesitant Albertans to do the right thing than Premier Jason Kenney’s scheme to give $100 gift cards to dim-witted holdouts if they agree to get a jab, that’s not why the idea was instantly and universally loathed. It’s also likely not because it’ll cost about $20 million.

It’s because good citizens who did the right thing and stepped up to be vaccinated will get bupkes.


There is a fury in the land!
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The premier, Health Minister Tyler Shandro and chief medical officer of health Deena Hinshaw had all been harshly criticized for disappearing from view for weeks while the COVID-19 Delta variant burned its way through the province after they’d defied conventional wisdom and opened the place up in July.

So we all knew something foolish was probably coming down the pike when we got word they’d scheduled a Friday news conference, dragging Alberta Health Services CEO Verna Yiu along to lend a little credibility to their effort. (Yes, Yiu confirmed, Alberta’s ICUs are now almost at capacity.)

Kenney and his United Conservative Party government, after all, have a track record for bad ideas.

Who would have guessed, though, they’d come up with something that provoked such atavistic revulsion? One would have thought even Canada’s most tone-deaf premier would have understood this. Apparently not.

When Kenney dropped his big idea a few minutes into the news conference — which with characteristic contempt for his audience began about 20 minutes late — it was almost as if there was a province-wide gasp of astonishment.

Within seconds, the Twittersphere exploded. Everybody hated it. Even Kenney’s friends.

Worse, from the premier’s perspective, it was widely and hilariously mocked.

Brian Mason, the former Alberta NDP leader tweeting from his Okanagan retirement redoubt, dubbed it “Kenney’s Pennies” — a great take on Ralph Bucks, premier Ralph Klein’s $400 “prosperity bonus” back in 2005. This moniker will stick.

Ralph Bucks were a bad idea too, but since we all got the money, it didn’t violate a fundamental taboo.

Kenney Pennies seem to have offended everyone, even Kenney’s journalistic cheerleading squad at Postmedia.

Political columnist Don Braid called it “a panicky bribe for the undeserving.” His column set the tone for what followed the initial hostile reviews.

Licia Corbella called it a “vaccine bribery scheme.” A “gobsmacked” Rick Bell ripped the premier a new one during the news conference’s Q&A session for reporters. “Do you realize,” he asked the premier, “what kind of a message this is going to send to the seven out of 10 Albertans who have gone out and got fully immunized?”

“I wish we didn’t have to do this,” a defensive Kenney retorted shoutily. “But this is not a time for moral judgment!”

Yes it is, said an entire province.

“I’m much more concerned about protecting our hospitals than I am about some abstract message this sends,” Kenney huffed at about 43 minutes into the hour-long news conference.

That was the moment, I think, when he lost Alberta.

History may well show it was the moment the United Conservative Party began to take on water. If you hear music, it’s only the orchestra playing “Nearer My God, to Thee”.

“We have left no stone unturned and yet we have the lowest vaccination rate in Canada,” Kenney, having lost his audience, whinged.



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Of course, he left a very large stone unturned: Vaccine passports. Most of the province wants them and most experts say they work.

CTV reporter Bill Fortier raised that point, asking Hinshaw what her professional view was about “whether or not Alberta should bring in a proof-of-vaccine program like B.C., Ontario, Quebec and Manitoba?”

“Policy decisions always need to be made in the context of a particular population, and the reason that policy decisions are made by elected officials is because they do need to reflect the context of that population,” she said carefully. “It’s clear that in other populations when requirements have been introduced that uptake has increased and at the same time, that is not, again, without some impact.”



Kenney’s COVID Fantasies Are Leading Alberta into Disaster

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Possible translation: Of course we should bring in vaccine passports. They work! But the cavemen in the UCP caucus, steeped in culture war ideology, will not abide it. And they’re the particular population that counts around here.

This, Dear Readers, is why you have focus groups.

If the UCP strategic brain trust had focus-grouped this idea, it never would have seen the light of day.

Too late now. Always the smartest man in the room, Kenney knew better.

Capping off One Hell of a Summer
ARTIFACT: Hats off to Jason Kenney’s marketers for this baldly ironic memento.

David Beers 1 Sep 2021 | TheTyee.ca
David Beers is founding editor of The Tyee.

As one person tweeted, ‘If this was truly Alberta’s Best Summer Ever, then this is the worst hangover ever.’


The United Conservative Party of Alberta invites you to purchase the item above for $40.

The most important issues of the federal election from our award-winning newsletter. Starting Aug. 26.

For the record, Alberta’s summer of 2021 saw...

More than 1,100 wildfires scorching the province since spring...

Plummeting employment among young men...

A brain drain of “young talent” exiting the province...

And Alberta’s job economy rejected as too retro. Consider: The province has Canada’s worst jobless rate. Yet employers scrape for workers. The Business Council of Alberta diagnosed in July “a mismatch of skills coupled with increased interest in career changes among workers.”


Kenney’s COVID Fantasies Are Leading Alberta into Disaster

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The golden rays of summer just kept shining. An Aug. 10 report noted Alberta’s opioid overdose deaths were streaking for a new record.

And right on cue, as Premier Jason Kenney lifted health precautions, the Delta variant doffed its cap. Since June, Alberta has seen 132 deaths due to COVID-19 and now has over 1,000 cases daily.

On Tuesday, an emergency doctor warned hospitals were filling up with unvaccinated patients due to fear and misinformation.

Where was Kenney to speak life-saving truth to his citizens? No one seems to know, as he hasn’t been seen or heard from in weeks. Apparently he’s spending Alberta’s Best Summer Ever somewhere else.

Into the vacuum have stepped volunteer health pros who issue their own COVID-19 updates, tabulating the misery Kenney dumped on their unprotected heads.

Time is running out, Kenney’s party agrees. Specifically, those Best Summer Ever Alberta 2021 caps are available for a “Limited Time Only!” exhorts the UCP website.

Then again, if you do miss out, there are plenty of these still to be had. Perfect wear in Alberta, any season

.

Read more: Politics, Coronavirus

A Salute to All the Workers Who’ve Kept Us Going

They feed us, rescue us, lend a needed touch. They make our lives possible. A photo essay.

Joshua Berson Today | TheTyee.ca

Joshua Berson is a Vancouver-based photographer who partners with a range of clients who share values of social justice, equality and diversity. These include progressive political parties, unions, women’s groups, environmental organizations, and international and community-based non-profits.

Megan Lawrence is an ambulance paramedic in Vancouver. All photos by Joshua Berson.


During this pandemic, people crucial to the core functioning of our society masked-up, sanitized and risked their family’s health to do their jobs. Today The Tyee salutes all the workers who’ve kept us going.

I’ve had a front-row seat, as a photographer who often chronicles union members at their work sites. Presented here are some pictures of the everyday heroes I’ve met, people like barber Guy Quesnel. His grandfather, father and uncle were all barbers. Guy took over the business in 1995 and it’s provided him a solid livelihood and many warm relationships with his customers.

Then, in the early part of the pandemic, all personal service establishments, including barbers, were closed. “I assumed it would only last a couple of weeks,” Guy told me. “Maybe a month.” He thought that it might make for some time off. But as he learned, “It was no holiday!” Until restrictions were lifted, the shop was shut for ten weeks.

Customers who’ve returned to sit for a haircut and bask in the memorabilia of the Vancouver Canucks and the New Westminster Salmonbellies that cover the walls of Elk’s Barber Shop may not be aware that this is now B.C.’s only unionized barbershop. Guy Quesnel has been a member of UFCW Local 1518 for 30 years.

F

rom top: Guy Quesnel is a third-generation barber in New Westminster. Home health-care workers like this one in Prince George forged on despite risks posed by COVID-19. Photos by Joshua Berson.

Labour Day — or International Workers’ Day as it is known as in most countries — is a time for unions to celebrate the achievements of the labour movement. The eight-hour workday, weekends, health and safety rights, gay and trans rights, collective bargaining rights, women’s rights, pensions, benefits… it’s a long and growing list. Unions, which have long served to reduce inequality and create pathways out of poverty, during COVID times have been called upon to support their members in new and crucial ways.

And yet, despite the increasing rates of unionization during the pandemic, and despite a more worker-friendly NDP provincial government, the majority of workers do not have the protection of a union.

From top: Assisting a resident at a single residency occupancy building in Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside. Delivering crew and supplies to container ships in the Port of Vancouver. Disinfecting showers in a Courtenay community centre. 

Photos by Joshua Berson.

Organizing the unorganized is still a major priority for the union movement. As the great Canadian labour activist and politician J.S. Woodsworth famously said in rallying the movement, “What we desire for ourselves, we wish for all.” This rings especially true now as COVID exposes inequities. During this crisis, unionized workers have enjoyed a level of protection and security only dreamed of by their unorganized (non-union) siblings.

“Most of our 700,000 members have solid contract language that has protected their jobs during the pandemic” says Mark Hancock, national president of Canadian Union of Public Employees

.

From top: HEU members at Vancouver General Hospital celebrate winning their 19-year fight to end privatized outsourcing of housekeeping and dietary workers. Members of Unite Here Local 40 protest at Hilton Vancouver Metrotown, where 97 were fired, the rest locked out. ‘The hotel was always like a family to me, so I didn’t see this coming,’ said Sophea Kong, a banquet server let go after 13 years. Photos by Joshua Berson.

Good news: The provincial government is reversing an injustice done by the B.C. Liberal government in 2002 when it tore up contracts with public health workers, driving down their pay by laying off many and forcing them to be rehired into out-sourced jobs. Health Minister Adrian Dix recently announced that some 4,000 such workers with be brought back in-house as public sector employees. Most are women, many are workers of colour. Today, they earn less than they did during the SARS epidemic 18 years ago. “This is a significant act of solidarity with a group of workers who’ve been pushed to the margins by two decades of privatization,” said HEU secretary-business manager Meena Brisard.

Bad news: Hilton Vancouver Metrotown fired 97 Unite Here Local 40 members and locked out the rest. “Women who clean rooms and serve guests are the backbone of the hotel industry. Hotel workers deserve the right to get their jobs back when business returns. Hilton Metrotown is proving itself to be on the wrong side of history,” said Burnaby Mayor Mike Hurley.

In Castlegar, members of the building trades exit an access shaft at the Hugh Keenleyside Dam that spans the Columbia River. Photo by Joshua Berson.

Today, although we celebrate the achievements of the labour movement, we also recognize that each gain has come at a huge cost and with an even larger struggle.

The ongoing push includes insuring support for workers when health measures close operations, or making sure the transition to work at home is fair and just. “The impact of the pandemic was felt across our entire union,” said David Black, president MoveUP, a union with more than 12,000 members at public and private sector companies.

From top: Kyle McNeil, a supervisor at ICBC, has been working from home for most of the pandemic. Tamara Derby drives a forklift at the ICBC Central Estimating Facility in Coquitlam. Canada Line’s Stephen Rayson is among the many workers who have kept transit running during the pandemic. Photos by Joshua Berson.

“Many of our members, sadly, saw their industries shut down for prolonged periods of time. Those who were fortunate to work in essential services had to shift from their familiar work environment to a very new reality, whether that meant new guidelines in the office or to a work-from-home setup,” Back continued.

“Our union worked closely with our members and their employers to accommodate and ensure that workers felt safe in their new environments and could continue to do the work they are passionate about and provide critical services the public relies upon. Our members deserve a lot of credit for how quickly they managed to adjust to their new environments, keeping themselves and those around them safe.”

From top: A meatpacker in Richmond. Surrey hospital workers stand ready to admit COVID-19 patients at the outset of the pandemic. Photos by Joshua Berson.

But of course, many workers stayed at their posts, their efforts deemed essential to keep society from grinding to a halt.

“Collecting garbage, keeping the water running, staffing hospitals, sanitizing schools and driving buses. CUPE members have shown up every day of this pandemic,” said Hancock of the Canadian Union of Public Employees.

“We have played an outsized role during the COVID crisis in keeping our communities healthy, clean and safe. I could not be more proud of our members.”

From top: Construction was halted early in the pandemic. When it resumed, this ironworker at Olympic Village helped get projects moving again. Among the legion of retail workers who’ve shared smiles and service in anxious times is this meat shop employee on Vancouver’s Granville Island. Her name is Grace. Photos by Joshua Berson.

As the virus has upped anxieties and many resist even basic public health measures such as wearing a mask, frontline workers often bear the brunt. As UFCW 1518 president Kim Novak said in an accompanying Tyee interview today, union members doing their jobs “not only dealt with an increased risk of COVID exposure, they dealt with angry customers, anti-maskers and now anti-vaxxers. They never signed up for that, and it’s completely unacceptable that they should have to deal with that kind of behaviour.”



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“Workers are getting B.C. through the pandemic, we’re driving the recovery — and a lot of us have paid a heavy price along the way,” said Sussanne Skidmore, secretary-treasurer of the BC Federation of Labour, an umbrella organization for 500,000 unionized workers in the province. “But where we’ve had unions, workers have been safer, better paid and better able to weather the storm. No wonder there’s such a surge in organizing. We’re stronger when we stand together.”

Looking to join a union? Here is a good starting place.

Joshua Berson is a member of UFCW 1518 and Unifor 780G. In a past life, he was an HEU member working at the VGH laundry.

Labor shortage leaves union workers feeling more emboldened

By BEN FINLEY and TOM KRISHER

FILE - In this June 18, 2021 file photo, UAW Members strike outside the Volvo Trucks North America plant in Dublin, Va. With Help Wanted signs at factories and businesses spreading across the nation, in manufacturing and in service industries, union workers like those at the Volvo site are seizing the opportunity to try to recover some of the bargaining power — and financial security — they feel they lost in recent decades as unions shrank in size and influence. (Matt Gentry/The Roanoke Times via AP)


NORFOLK, Va. (AP) — When negotiations failed to produce a new contract at a Volvo plant in Virginia this spring, its 2,900 workers went on strike.

The company soon dangled what looked like a tempting offer — at least to the United Auto Workers local leaders who recommended it to their members: Pay raises. Signing bonuses. Lower-priced health care.

Yet the workers overwhelmingly rejected the proposal. And then a second one, too. Finally, they approved a third offer that provided even higher raises, plus lump-sum bonuses.

For the union, it was a breakthrough that wouldn’t likely have happened as recently as last year. That was before the pandemic spawned a worker shortage that’s left some of America’s long-beleaguered union members feeling more confident this Labor Day than they have in years.

With Help Wanted signs at factories and businesses spreading across the nation, in manufacturing and in service industries, union workers like those at the Volvo site are seizing the opportunity to try to recover some of the bargaining power — and financial security — they feel they lost in recent decades as unions shrank in size and influence.

“We were extremely emboldened by the labor shortage,” said Travis Wells, a forklift driver at the Volvo plant in Dublin, Virginia, near Roanoke. “The cost of recruiting and training a new workforce would’ve cost Volvo 10 times what a good contract would have.”

In addition to 12% pay raises over the six-year contract, the Volvo deal provided other sweeteners: Many of the union workers will be phased out of an unpopular two-tier pay scale that had left less-senior workers with much lower wages than longer-tenured employees. All current workers will now earn the top hourly wage of $30.92 after six years. And by holding out as long as they did, the workers achieved a six-year price freeze on health care premiums.

Volvo conceded that it’s had difficulty finding workers for the Virginia plant but says it offers a strong pay and benefits package “that also safeguards our competitiveness in the market.”

FILE - In this June 18, 2021 file photo, striking UAW members express themselves at vehicles departing the Volvo Trucks North America plant in Dublin, Va. With Help Wanted signs at factories and businesses spreading across the nation, in manufacturing and in service industries, union workers like those at the Volvo site are seizing the opportunity to try to recover some of the bargaining power — and financial security — they feel they lost in recent decades as unions shrank in size and influence. (Matt Gentry/The Roanoke Times via AP)

The improvements achieved by the Volvo workers in Virginia provided a case study of how union workers may be gaining leverage as companies scramble to find enough workers to meet customer demand in an economy that’s been steadily recovering from the pandemic recession.

The growing demand for labor has also benefited lower-paid workers at restaurants, bars and retailers. But the financial gains for union workers mean that a category of jobs that have long been seen as supportive of a middle-class lifestyle may now be moving closer to that realty.

Chris Tilly, a labor economist at UCLA, said the shortages among burger-flippers and cashiers is notable “because those low-end jobs more typically have a labor surplus.”

“But there are also shortages,” Tilly noted, “at higher skill levels — including jobs where there are chronic shortages like nurses, machinists and teachers.”

In Ventura County, California, 37 transit workers voted in July to join the Teamsters. They plan to negotiate with management to seek higher pay and eliminate split work shifts. Ruby McCormick, a bus driver who voted to join, said the booming job market was a big factor in her decision.

“Several years ago, before I came on to the company, there was an attempt to have the union, but it was voted down,” she noted. “This time, we actually passed by a landslide.”

For years, companies in most unionized industries have commanded an upper hand. During the slow, grinding economic recovery that followed the 2008-2009 Great Recession, they negotiated concessions and held down pay raises. Rising health care costs further diluted wages.

By contrast, this recovery has produced an unexpected labor shortage and given many workers more bargaining power than they’ve had since the 1980s, when the Reagan administration set a tone of hostility toward unions, and manufacturers began moving many jobs overseas, said Susan J. Schurman, who teaches labor studies at Rutgers University.

Schurman noted that the current worker shortage has compelled many employers to raise pay.

“Typically, when they have to do that to hire somebody, they kind of have to do it to keep the people they have,” she said. “So you get kind of an across-the-board wage effect.”

Unions may also be benefiting from frustration among working class Americans over wages that, adjusted for inflation, have been stagnant for decades. That discontent helped drive President Donald Trump’s 2016 election victory, particularly in states in which auto and steel industries once thrived — as well as the outsize support for Sen. Bernie Sanders, who ran for president as a Democrat.

“They simply have not benefited from the economy over the last three decades,” Schurman said of many American workers. “That anger is going to go somewhere. And if I were a union organizer right now, I’d be really excited.”

During the contract talks with Volvo Trucks, workers felt more confident about demanding a better contract because other jobs were open, noted Mitchell Smith, regional director for the UAW in the South.

President Joe Biden, who has frequently vowed to help create “good-paying union jobs,” has also appointed a more worker-friendly National Labor Relations Board to settle disputes with employers.

An expanded footprint could help unions organize in places where they haven’t been welcome before. Citing growing interest in membership, the 1.4 million-member Teamsters union says its organizing unit is eyeing Amazon’s vast warehouse and distribution operations. Much is at stake for the Teamsters. Amazon is expanding its own distribution network, striking at the union’s heart — transportation and package workers — and relying less on United Parcel Service, the largest employer of Teamsters’ members.

Martin Rosas, a union leader for the United Food and Commercial Workers in Kansas and parts of Missouri and Oklahoma, said that meat packing workers seized the opportunity created by the labor shortage and the dangers of COVID to negotiate pay increases for some skilled positions.

Still, to gain major victories on a widespread scale, unions will need much more time. Last year, there were only eight strikes involving 1,000 or more workers, said Joseph A. McCartin, a Georgetown University history professor who studies labor unions. From 1960 to 1980, a period when organized labor commanded far more influence, the average annual total, McCartin said, was 282.

The Labor Department reported in January that the percentage of workers who were union members rose 0.5 percentage point last year to 10.8%. And that was due mainly to fewer union workers losing jobs during the pandemic than nonunion workers. Union membership has fallen from 20% of the work force in 1983, the last year for which comparable data is available.

Lagging wages have been a sore point for unions for years. Worker productivity has grown faster than average pay for four decades, McCartin noted, with the benefits going disproportionately to executives and corporations, not rank-and-file employees.

“The very emergence of organizing efforts,” he said of unions, “is likely to prod employers to try to get ahead of the curve by offering incentives intended to take the wind out of organizing efforts.”

That said, some experts say it’s far from clear that any leverage that workers may now be gaining will endure. As the economy began to emerge from the pandemic, businesses were opening faster than people were returning to work. But Tilly, the UCLA professor, suggested that the job market is likely to slow in the coming months — and once it does, workers may lose some bargaining power.

“As long as the economy is growing — and growing at a relatively vigorous pace — that’s going to continue helping workers, and for that matter dealing unions a better hand, too,” Tilly said. “But we are not necessarily in a new era that’s going to look exactly like it has for the last few months.”

____

Krisher reported from Detroit.

___

Follow AP coverage of how the coronavirus pandemic is transforming the economy at: https://apnews.com/hub/changing-economy

Families slam 'corrupt' Russia at MH17 crash trial

Issued on: 06/09/2021 -

Russia has denied any involvement 

Sem van der Wal ANP/AFP/File

The Hague (AFP)

The traumatised families of 298 people killed in the shooting down of flight MH17 over Ukraine in 2014 demanded justice from Russia on Monday as they testified in the Dutch trial of four suspects.

People who lost children, parents and siblings in the crash of the Malaysia Airlines plane said they could not truly say goodbye to their loved ones until those responsible had been brought to book.

International investigators say a Russian-made missile fired from eastern Ukraine held by pro-Moscow rebels brought down the Boeing 777, but Russia has denied all involvement.

Ria van der Steen, who lost her father Jan and stepmother Nell, said she was quoting from the Russian writer Alexander Solzhenitsyn: "They are lying, we know they're lying and they know that we know that they're lying."

"I am full of feelings of revenge, hate, anger and fear," said Van der Steen, who was the first to testify.

"I know they are dead and I will not see them again, but I can't put an end to this process of saying goodbye, certainly not until those who are responsible for their deaths are found to be guilty for what they have done."

Van der Steen told the court of recurring nightmares, like walking through the debris after the crash to search for her father.

Around 90 relatives are expected to address the court in the coming days

 ROBIN VAN LONKHUIJSEN ANP/AFP

"When I eventually find him, I have to tell him that he has died, and then I wake up crying," she said.

Australian Vanessa Rizk, whose parents Albert and Maree were travelling back on the doomed plane from a European holiday, said the perpetrators "deserved punishment for their heinous actions."

"How would the perpetrators feel if it was their loved ones? How would (President Vladimir) Putin and his corrupt Russian government answer that," she said via livestream from Australia.

- 'Like a clay pigeon' -

Russian nationals Oleg Pulatov, Igor Girkin and Sergei Dubinsky, and Ukrainian citizen Leonid Kharchenko are all being tried in absentia for murder. Only Pulatov has legal representation.

Around 90 relatives, both from the 196 Dutch victims of the crash as well as those from Australia and Malaysia, are expected to address the court in the coming days.

A tearful Peter van der Meer told the judges that he had lost his "life and his future" following the death of his three young daughters Sophie, 12, Fleur, 10 and Bente, aged 7, along with his ex-wife Ingrid.

"I hope the perpetrators will feel an urgency to speak up after the story I have told you today, so that they can look in the mirror and don't have to lie to their children or grandchildren about what they did on July 17 2014, he said.

Van der Meer said he stopped celebrating the Dutch holiday of Saint Nicholas after the death of his daughters. "It's a festival for children. I don't feel like celebrating it any longer. I have no children," he said.

Another witness, Robbert van Heijningen, who lost his brother Erik, sister-in-law Tina and their 17-year-old son Zeger, said the perpetrators knew "they were shooting a vulnerable civil airliner from the sky, like a clay pigeon, without a chance."

International investigators say a Russian-made missile brought down the plane EMMANUEL DUNAND AFP/File

Sander Essers, whose brother Peter, his sister-in-law Jolette Eusink and their two children Emma, 20 and Valentijn, 17 were killed in the crash, said his brother phoned him 20 minutes before the flight departed "with a feeling of foreboding."

"I blame myself for not taking his premonition seriously. I have sleepless nights because of it," said Essers.

Head judge Hendrik Steenhuis set September 22, 2022 as a possible date for the verdict in the trial, but gave alternative dates in November and December of that year.

© 2021 AFP

Conservation meet mulls moratorium on deep sea mining

Issued on: 06/09/2021 - 

Deep marine seabeds are fragile and poorly understood: total darkness, very cold, high-pressure, limited food filtering down from the surface 

Nicolas TUCAT AFP/File

Marseille (AFP)

The world's top conservation forum will vote this week on whether to recommend a moratorium on deep sea mining, with scientists warning that ecosystems degraded while dredging the ocean floor 5,000 metres below the waves could take decades or longer to heal.

The proposed ban is among a score of measures deemed too controversial to be decided remotely ahead of the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN) Congress, meeting through Saturday in Marseille.

A "yes" vote by IUCN members -- some 1,400 national agencies, NGOs and indigenous groups -- is a commitment "to support and implement a moratorium on deep seabed mining".

The measure also recommends greater oversight of the International Seabed Authority (ISA), an intergovernmental body that regulates the extraction of precious minerals from seabeds beyond waters falling within national exclusive economic zones.

Parts of the ocean floor are rich in minerals, including so-called polymetallic nodules composed mostly of copper, manganese, cobalt and nickel -- metals increasingly in demand for electric vehicle batteries.

But there's a catch: these fist-sized rocks are generally found on seabeds four to six kilometres below the surface.

Commercial mining at those depths does not currently exist, but there are several companies investing in the technology that would make it possible.

The ISA -- mandated by the UN to regulate mineral-extraction from the high seas "for the benefit of humanity as a whole" -- has approved 30 licenses for exploration.

"The threat is very imminent," said Matthew Gianni, co-founder of a coalition of deep sea conservation NGOs, adding that mining could begin within two years.

- Fragile seabeds -

One major player in the industry working with the South Pacific island states of Nauru, Kiribati and Tonga that has environmental watchdogs on high alert is The Metals Company, based in Vancouver.

"Polymetallic nodules are the cleanest path toward electric vehicles," the company website claims.

Areas in which it is licensed to explore could yield enough nodules to supply more than a quarter of a billion new electric vehicles, it said.

Because the rocks are 99 percent composed of the sought-after minerals and unattached to the sea floor, they should be easier to collect and produce little heavy metal pollution, the website said.

Environmentalists disagree.

Deep marine seabeds are fragile and poorly understood: total darkness, very cold, high-pressure, limited food filtering down from the surface, they say.

"We are only now starting to get to know these ecosystems and still don't really understand how they work," said Pierre-Marie Sarradin, who leads research on deep ecosystems at Ifremer, a top marine research centre in France.

Scientists at JPI Ocean, a European consortium, have discovered that zones with lots of polymetallic nodules are also richer in biodiversity.

The ISA has set up a number of protected areas, but scientists say they are not representative of the zones likely to be mined.

One thing scientists do know is that when these seabeds are disturbed, recovery is very slow.

- Carmakers cautious -

In one zone where the ocean floor was scraped 30 years ago "the ecosystem has still not returned to its initial state", said Sarradin.

"It is also hard to measure the impact on fixing carbon, an essential process in the fight against global warming," he added.

How mining will affect neighbouring areas, or even disturbances linked to the noise and light, are likewise unknown, especially as there are few details about the technology that would be used.

"Nodules take two million years to reform, and animal life that depends on them cannot be restored," said Katja Uhlenkott, a doctoral student at Carl-von Ossietzky University in Germany.

Several major car manufacturers have taken a cautious position on seabed mining despite the potential for supplying an essential component of one of their fastest growing markets.

BMW, Google, Samsung SDI and Volvo have all pledged not to use minerals extracted from deep-water seabeds, or to finance deep-sea mining.

For Farah Obaidullah of the Deep Sea Conservation Coalition, made up of more than 80 NGOs and policy institutes, the solution for car makers remains on land.

The sought-after metals can be recycled, and new battery technologies are in the pipelines, she said.

Mining conditions on land are "currently horrendous," she acknowledged. But they can be improved.

"No one is going to go six kilometres under the sea to monitor things and say 'you are not doing things right'," she noted.

Once industry has a pathway to the deep ocean "we will be completely overwhelmed", Sarradin said.

© 2021 AFP

 

Afghan women filmmakers plead at Venice Festival

Afghan female filmmakers who fled the Taliban are begging the world to not forget the Afghan people and to support its artists. The women spoke at a panel discussion at the Venice Film Festival to warn that a country without culture will eventually lose its identity.

'The Box' gets inside Mexican sweatshop at Venice film festival

Issued on: 06/09/2021 - 

'How do you put a camera inside a real maquiladora?' said Vigas.

 'It's nearly impossible.'

 Filippo MONTEFORTE AFP

Venice (AFP)

Getting access to a "maquiladora", one of the hundreds of factories that line Mexico's border with the United States, was the biggest challenge of shooting Lorenzo Vigas' latest film at Venice, the director said Monday.

"The Box" is in competition for the top prize at the Venice Film Festival, to be announced on Saturday.

It was shot in Chihuahua, the site of hundreds of foreign-owned factories assembling cheap goods and apparel for the United States just across the border, and one of Mexico's most violence-plagued states.

The cheap labour that fuels the maquiladoras has made Mexico a major exporter, but at the cost of its poor and uneducated workers, many of whom work in sweatshop conditions for rock-bottom wages.

"How do you put a camera inside a real maquiladora? It's nearly impossible," the Venezuelan director, who lives in Mexico, told journalists Monday.

"They're very jealous of not exposing their production line," said Vigas, who in 2015 became the first Latin American to win Venice's prestigious Golden Lion with his first feature, "From Afar".

"They're very jealous of not exposing the condition of their workers -- so how do you shoot a film?"

The production team spent nearly a year trying to find a maquiladora that would allow the crew to shoot inside, before finally getting the green light from a company that was ready to close for bankruptcy.

"We didn't get any roadmap from people who had done this before -- because nobody was allowed before to do this," said one of the film's producers, Jorge Hernandez Aldana.

- Missing women -

The film tells the story of a 13-year-old boy (first-time actor Hatzín Navarrete), who travels halfway across Mexico to recover the remains of his father, whose body has been found in a mass grave.

On the way, he hooks up with a man, played by Hernan Mendoza, who supplies workers for the maquiladoras. He signs up poor people in remote villages with a pitch that they must protect Mexican jobs from Chinese competition.

When we finally see inside the jeans assembly factory where the workers are taken, in the middle of a bleak, unforgiving desert, we immediately wish they could turn back -- it's loud, hot, and the pace is non-stop.

Besides its central theme of replacing absent fathers, "The Box" touches on the brutal reality of thousands of women there -- many of them maquiladora workers. Since the 1990s hundreds have been abducted, either vanishing entirely or their bodies turning up discarded or buried in the desert.

Tarantino regular Tim Roth stars in another film in competition, 'Sundown', by Mexico's Michel Franco

 Filippo MONTEFORTE AFP

"More than 20,000 women in the north of Mexico have disappeared," said Vigas. "Nobody knows why."

More than 73,000 people in Mexico are missing, the government said in 2020, a quarter of them female.

Another Latin American film in competition is "Sundown" from Mexico's Michel Franco. His "New Order" with its searing indictment of the gap between rich and poor in Mexico, won Venice's Silver Lion last year.

"Sundown" stars Tim Roth as a man escaping his obligations at a time of family crisis to hang out on an Acapulco beach.

But, just as in Vigas's film, an undercurrent of social tension pervades the quiet drama, keeping the viewer on edge -- and even a tranquil beach holiday in Mexico is not enough to keep violence at bay.

© 2021 AFP

LES RIP

French cinema's 'national treasure' Belmondo dies at 88

Issued on: 06/09/2021 -

Known in France as 'Bebel', Belmondo was also often called 'Le Magnifique'

 - AFP/File

Paris (AFP)

Actor Jean-Paul Belmondo, one of postwar French cinema's biggest stars whose charismatic smile lit up the screen for half a century, has died aged 88 at his Paris home, his family announced Monday.

Belmondo, who first came to fame as part of the French New Wave cinema movement with films like "Breathless" by Jean-Luc Godard, went on to become a household name, acting in 80 films covering a multitude of genres, including comedies and thrillers.

"He had been very tired for some time. He died peacefully," the family said in a statement sent to AFP by Belmondo's lawyer, Michel Godest.

Belmondo, who was born on April 9, 1933 in the wealthy Paris suburb of Neuilly-sur-Seine, grew up in a family of artists. His father was a well-known sculptor.

Belmondo, who was bad at school but good at boxing, started his acting career in theatre before embarking on a film career that was to span half a century, with 130 million cinema tickets to his films sold.

Known in France as "Bebel", Belmondo was also often called "Le Magnifique" (The Magnificent), after a 1970s secret agent satire in which he starred.

"He will always be The Magnificent," President Emmanuel Macron tweeted. Calling Belmondo "a national treasure", Macron added: "We all recognised ourselves in him".

- 'Solar, talented... and so French' -

Former president Francois Hollande said that "everybody would have loved to be friends with him", while ex-premier Manuel Valls called Belmondo "magnificent, solar, talented ... and so French".

Many others, including politicians, the French Foreign Legion and film fans the world over also paid homage to Belmondo on social media.

"It's impossible not to feel that this is the end of an era," tweeted Uruguay's national film library. "The world is mourning a monument of film," wrote a fan in Italy, Peter Patti, also on Twitter.

Apart from Godard, Belmondo went on to work with other famous French directors including Francois Truffaut, Alain Resnais, Louis Malle and Jean-Pierre Melville.

He later turned to film production, and returned to his first love, theatre.

Belmondo's acting career was cut short in 2001 when a stroke he suffered while on set left him handicapped.

He won France's highest film prize, the Cesar, in 1988 for his role in "Itinerary of a Spoiled Child" -- which he didn't accept -- and an honorary Cesar in 2017.

Many of his films became international hits, and Time magazine in 1964 declared Belmondo the face of modern France.

He won several lifetime achievement awards, in 2010 from the Los Angeles Film Critics Association, in 2011 at the Cannes film festival, in 2016 at the Venice festival.

burs/jh/cb/jm

© 2021 AFP

Belmondo, French film's handsome devil, dies at 88

Issued on: 06/09/2021 - 

Jean-Paul Belmondo, pictured at a film festival in the French city of Lyon in 2013 

PHILIPPE MERLE AFP/File

Paris (AFP)

With his devil-may-care charm, Jean-Paul Belmondo, who has died aged 88, was the poster boy of the New Wave, France's James Dean and Humphrey Bogart rolled into one irresistible man.

With his boxer's physique and broken nose, his restless insouciance chimed with the mould-breaking French cinema of the 1960s.

Director Jean-Luc Godard, the New Wave's brilliant enfant terrible, cast Belmondo in his break-out role as a doomed thug who falls in love with the Jean Seberg's pixie-like American in Paris in "Breathless" (1961).

The film floored critics and audiences worldwide and, with Francois Truffaut's "The 400 Blows", changed the history of cinema.

Time magazine in 1964 declared Belmondo the face of modern France.

"The Tricolour, a snifter of cognac, a flaring hem -– these have been demoted to secondary symbols of France," it said.

Come to bed eyes: Belmondo starred in Jean Becker's "A Man Named Rocca" in 1961 with Beatrice Altariba

 STAFF OFF/AFP/File

"The primary symbol is an image of a young man slouching in a cafe chair... he is Jean-Paul Belmondo -– the natural son of the Existentialist conception, standing for everything and nothing at 738 mph."

- A boxer's charm -

Yet Belmondo was far from a sauve intellectual and spent most of his career in he-man roles that played on his raw sex appeal.

Despite making his name as a charming gangster, the actor was brought up in the bourgeois Paris suburb of Neuilly-sur-Seine, the son of a renowned sculptor, Paul Belmondo.

Born in 1933, he performed poorly at school during the war but was a talented boxer, winning three straight round-one knockouts in a brief amateur career.

Tough cookie: Belmondo (left) won three straight round-one knockouts in a brief amateur boxing career - AFP

He then trained at the National Conservatory of Dramatic Art.

His first foray into cinema in 1957 in the forgettable comedy "On Foot, On Horse and On Wheels", ended up on the cutting-room floor.

But undeterred Belmondo went on to work with some of the most talented directors of his generation, making a trio of films with Godard, and then with Truffaut, Alain Resnais, Louis Malle and Jean-Pierre Melville.

Truffaut described him as "the most complete European actor" of his generation.

- Action hero -

The charmer was often cast opposite glamorous women, from Catherine Deneuve and Sophia Loren to Claudia Cardinale in the period romp "Cartouche", and he constantly reworked his persona in diverse roles.

But from the 1970s he took on more bankable action movies in which he performed his own stunts.

Jean-Paul Belmondo in 1963 in Paris with French actress Jeanne Moreau 

AFP/File

Swashbuckling comic adventure films and farces such as "Swords of Blood" (1962) and the Oscar-nominated "That Man from Rio" (1964) introduced Belmondo to legions of new fans across the globe.

His enjoyed the mix of arthouse and more box office-friendly fare, saying, "It is like life. One day you laugh, the next you cry."

Belmondo also briefly -- and forgettably -- ventured across the Atlantic for two English-language films, "Is Paris Burning?" in 1966 and the spoof James Bond "Casino Royale" a year later.

- Cesar snub -

In the 1980s Belmondo experimented with more mature dramatic roles, earning a French Oscar, a Cesar, for Claude Lelouch's "Itinerary of a Spoiled Child" in 1988 about a foundling raised in a circus.

But he rejected the prize because the artist who sculpted the statuette, Cesar Baldaccini, had once disparaged the works of his father.

Twice married and twice divorced he also lived with the ex-Bond actress Ursula Andress for seven years. Belmondo had four children including the racing driver, Paul Belmondo, with his youngest born in 2003 when he was 70.

His eldest daughter, Patricia, died in a fire in 1994.

Heartbreaker: Belmondo in 1964 alongside US actress Jean Seberg 

AFP/File

He suffered a stroke in 2001 while on holiday in Corsica, which affected his speech, sparking a huge outpouring of love for the actor.

It effectively put an end to Belmondo's career, though he did make one last touching movie as old man whose only consolation was his dog.

Worse was to follow.

His final relationship with ex-Playboy model Barbara Gandolfi, who was 42 years his junior, ended in scandal in 2012 with her convicted of swindling the actor out of 200,000 euros.

But in 2016 the Venice film festival awarded him a Golden Lion for lifetime's achievement.

"I never think about my past," he told reporters there. "Forward, forward, forward."

© 2021 AFP

With his devil-may-care charm, Jean-Paul Belmondo, who has died aged 88, was the poster boy of the New Wave, France's James Dean and Humphrey Bogart rolled into one irresistible man. With his boxer's physique and broken nose, his restless insouciance chimed with the mould-breaking French cinema of the 1960s.

French film icon Jean-Paul Belmondo in photos


\

Teenager Fernandez brings football spark to US Open tennis

Issued on: 06/09/2021 

Canadian teen Leylah Fernandez has upset Naomi Osaka and Angelique Kerber to reach the US Open quarter-finals 

TIMOTHY A. CLARY AFP

New York (AFP)

When Leylah Fernandez was cut from a Canadian youth tennis development program, her father Jorge, an Ecuadorian soccer player, became her coach in a sport he knew almost nothing about.

What he did know was how to be a professional athlete and he infused his daughter with mental toughness, patience, focus and confidence -- the same attributes he learned the hard way on the football field.

The results have made his daughter, a left-hander who turned 19 on Monday, a formidable force at this year's US Open.

Leylah ousted third-seeded defending champion Naomi Osaka, a four-time Grand Slam winner, and 16th seed Angelique Kerber, a left-hander with three Slam titles, to reach the last eight in her best Grand Slam run.

"With him being my coach, him teaching me, just being competitive in sports has definitely impacted my game and my mentality," Fernandez said.

"I've been working hard, training super well. My coach, my dad, is saying be patient, have confidence in your game, it will show in matches. I'm glad it finally did."

World number 73 Fernandez, who will face Ukraine's fifth-seeded Elina Svitolina in a Tuesday quarter-final, won her first WTA title in March at Monterrey.

Fernandez, whose mother is of Filipino heritage, is also guided by pro coach Romain Deridder. Her father is at home but still sending in plans for matches.

"My dad, he would tell me what to do, like for tennis-wise, just give me a game plan, and I try to execute it as much as possible," she said.

"He's at home with my younger sister. He has been calling every day, telling me what to do, so it has been great.

"He's just telling me what to do in the day before and then he trusts in me and my game that I'm going to execute it as much as I can.

"He decided to stay back, but he has his reasons, and obviously his reasons are working tremendously right now."

Fernandez has a confidence built upon years of work, running sprints when she made too many errant shots to hone her skills and toughen her for the challenges she now faces.

"From a very young age, I knew I was able to beat anyone who is in front of me," she said. "Even playing different sports, I was always that competitive, saying I'm going to win against them, I'm going to win against my dad in soccer, even though that's like impossible.

"I've always had that belief. I've always tried to use that in every match that I go on."

- 'Pinch myself a little' -

Fernandez has her mother and fitness coach in her box cheering her on, as well as having become a fan darling with crowds at Arthur Ashe Stadium.

"Having them cheering me on every point has been very helpful. In those tough moments when I'm feeling down, with their positivity I was able to get back into it and forget about the mistake that I just did," she said.

"Keep fighting, keep pushing through. Just, like I said, have fun on the court and trusting my game. Having fun on the court, I think that's the key to anybody's success."

The upsets she has pulled off have added to the joy she feels at living the tennis dream that once seemed dead.

"I did have to pinch myself a little bit to see that it actually happened," Fernandez said of her two upset wins.

"I'm just going to enjoy it at 100%, and tomorrow is going to be a new day."

© 2021 AFP