It’s possible that I shall make an ass of myself. But in that case one can always get out of it with a little dialectic. I have, of course, so worded my proposition as to be right either way (K.Marx, Letter to F.Engels on the Indian Mutiny)
Thursday, September 23, 2021
Kabul Restaurants Owned, Staffed by Women Now Closed
In order to feed their families, women are seeking ways to work and earn money, Tabasom said.
Women-owned businesses, especially restaurants and cafes, have remained closed for the past month since the Taliban entered Kabul city.
Niki Tabasom spent one million Afs to open a café in Kabul three years ago. She said that her café’s staff was all women who lost their jobs when the previous government collapsed.
She was collecting about 20,000 Afs daily from her café.
Niki Tabasom told TOLOnews: “The café has been closed since the Taliban came to Kabul. My colleagues and I lost our jobs.”
In order to feed their families, women are seeking ways to work and earn money, Tabasom said.
“Women are the breadwinners for some families, so these families are facing economic and financial problems,” she added.
The café’s employees said that each of them is leading a family. Opportunities for work must be found for women.
Qadira said: “They should consider our demands. When they don’t pay attention, how will the Taliban start governance?”
Sabrina Sultani said: “I was earning my livelihood by working at the café for two years. I helped my family.”
Afghan businesswomen lost millions of Afs as the Taliban took Afghanistan in mid-August.
Noor-ul-Haq Omari, head of the Union of Kabul Workers, said: “Investments led by women have unfortunately stopped. They lost their jobs and funds. In some cases, the women have sold their company’s expensive things at a very low price.”
Dozens of Afghan businesswomen had begun to invest in various fields across the country over the past few years, and now this has stopped.
Afghan Newspapers Stop Printing, Go Online
Watchdog organizations recently said the Afghan media outlets are running out of funds and face a lack of information under the Taliban.
The Afghanistan National Journalists’ Union on Wednesday reported that due to the financial crisis, around 150 print media outlets across Afghanistan have stopped printing newspapers and magazines since the fall of the former government. Many of these outlets continue publishing news online, while some have shut down completely.
Ahmad Shoaib Fana, chief executive of the national journalists union, said: “Print media has stopped in the country. If the situation goes on like this, we will face a social crisis.”
Ali Haqmal, a journalist working for 8 Sobh newspaper, reports that the outlet is now publishing online. He said: “We made efforts to do whatever people expect. We focus on reporting online, and we still try to get the information to the people.”
Ashaq Ali Ehsas, deputy chief of 8 Sobh newspaper, said: “Each day 15,000 papers were being published and distributed in Kabul and some provinces. The process was disrupted due to problems over the printing and distributing of newspapers after the fall of the government."
Arman Mili Newspaper is another famous newspaper which has stopped operating. Sayed Shoaib Parsa, the founder of the newspaper, said: “We had 22 employees here. All lost their jobs. We are waiting for the situation to normalize so we can restart publishing.”
Watchdog organizations recently said the Afghan media outlets are running out of funds and face a lack of information under the Taliban.
Population genetics and machine learning draw timelines on Pacific Island migrations. Rarotonga, Cook Islands (Kūki 'Āirani)
An international team of scientists has combined innovative machine-learning techniques with population genetics to provide the most accurate map to date of the earliest migrations through the Pacific Islands, opening a window into one of humanity’s most epic journeys.
The team, led by Andrés Moreno-Estrada, Alexander Ioannidis and colleagues, used a dataset of samples from 430 present-day Polynesians to build a picture of the routes taken to populate this vast stretch of islands, some separated by thousands of kilometres of volatile ocean. The findings are published today in the journal Nature.
The analysis suggests that the migration began in Samoa and spread first through Rarotonga (Cook Islands) in the 9th century AD, the Tōtaiete mā (Society Islands) in the 11th century, the western Tuhaʻa Pae (Austral Islands) and Tuāmotu Archipelago in the 12th century, and finally to the Te Henua ʻEnana (Marquesas Islands) in the north, Raivavae in the south, and Rapa Nui (Easter Island), the easternmost of the Polynesian islands, which was settled in approximately AD 1200 via Mangareva.
The team also found particularly close genetic links between the Marquesas, Raivavae and Rapa Nui – islands that all have ancient stone monoliths – despite the vast distances between them. Moreover, they pinpointed that the peopling of these last islands coincided with first contact with Native Americans, whose DNA can be found throughout the region. So, how did they do it?
Where machine learning meets genetics
According to Ioannidis, an expert in using computational methods for population genetics at Stanford University, California, US, the team was able to trace the movements of discrete groups of people by identifying population bottlenecks – instances where a previously rare gene from a larger population was carried to a new island by a much smaller group, where it then became more common within that island’s population. Identifying these signals in modern populations allowed the researchers to infer where those bottlenecks occurred, based on the populations in which they are most commonly found.
“The analogy that I like to use is balls in a bucket,” says Ioannidis. “So, let’s say you have 20 purple balls and three green ones in a bucket, and you take two at random, put them on a boat and they’re going to sail across the ocean and settle an island.
“Most likely the two new balls will be purple, but if you repeat this 1000 times in a row, sometimes you’re going to take just two green balls and put them on the boat. Then, every ball on the new island is going to have the green trait.”
Ioannidis explains that while the chances of an individual rare trait being carried to a new island are slim, there are more than 600,000 positions along a DNA strand, and therefore there are thousands of opportunities for a rare trait to reach a new island in a small group and become genetically common.
“That allows you to trace this process,” he says. “And it’s very unique to this situation, because most genetic studies are of continental populations, where you have people mixing all the time, so these signals just wash out.
Typically, ancient migration pathways are studied using ancient DNA, but Ioannidis says this study’s technique – sampling modern populations to build an ancient picture – holds serious promise.
“When you’re looking at ancient DNA, you have only a few samples and often they’re missing pieces of the sequence because it’s been degraded,” he says. But with this technique, “you have much higher quality data and you have a lot more of it.”
In order to carry out this kind of study on a modern population, the team had to first deal with a lot of genetic ‘white noise’ because modern Polynesians have large quantities of European DNA.
“Some of these islands have, for example, more than 50% European ancestry, so if you analyse the samples without accounting for that, you’ll come up with the fact that the most closely related Polynesian islands are the ones that are half French,” says Ioannidis. “But that doesn’t tell you anything about the actual history of settlement.”
In order to circumvent this problem, the team invented new methods to remove the European DNA from the data, using machine learning. This opens up potentially fascinating new avenues for studying ancient populations that are typically limited by the sparsity of ancient DNA, especially in the tropics where genetic material degrades rapidly.
“We’re able to do a very detailed reconstruction, even using modern genomes that have a lot of other complexity to them through recent history,” says Ioannidis.
Moreno-Estrada says the team’s ground-breaking paper demonstrates that modern DNA can open up windows into the past that ancient DNA has not yet been able to do.
“The popularity ancient DNA studies have is that it’s a direct dive into the past, and that’s true,” he says. “But it’s still very limited when you have very few sample sizes and poor-quality DNA, so even though you get cleaner data because it’s from that particular time period, you don’t have the power of reconstructing these population-level patterns.”
Ioannidis agrees. “A modern individual has two parents, four grandparents, and that grows exponentially. So, when you go back through history, they have hundreds or even thousands of ancestors who are all contributing DNA to their modern genome.
“So, there’s a sense in which you have a much broader sample of the past with one modern individual who has all of this history written in their code.”
Moreno-Estrada predicts that some people will question the accuracy of the data based on the fact that Polynesian populations were historically mobile and interactive, potentially blurring the gene pool.
But, he says, “it’s a matter of the genetic data telling us where the strongest signals are coming from. And this mostly comes from the initial pulse of the people settling.”
He explains that this initial settler population will dictate the dominant genetics of the island’s population, so later admixture events will have limited impact on island genetics, even if they have powerful impacts on culture and archaeology. Unravelling an ancient story of the peopling of Polynesia
According to Patrick Kirch, an expert in Pacific archaeology at the University of Hawaii who authored a commentary on the study in the same edition of Nature, the genetic picture built by the team largely accords with the archaeological evidence painstakingly uncovered in recent decades.
“People have been working on this question of how and when the Polynesians migrated for 200 years,” says Kirch. “But this adds a whole extra set of independent evidence, and strengthens our understanding of what happened in the past.
“What I’m seeing is a convergence of interpretation from two different fields with completely independent lines of evidence.”
There are, he says, some minor discrepancies, such as in the northern Marquesas. While the genetic data from the new study suggests a founder population around the 1300s, Kirch says there’s archaeological evidence that the islands were populated at least 300 years earlier. He says this likely suggests that the dates for the peopling of each island in the new study should be seen as the “youngest possible, rather than the oldest possible”.
Kirch says the new study is particularly exciting because it enables, for the first time, two powerful opportunities.
“One is that they can see directionality in the sequence, not just similarities or relationships between populations,” he says. “You actually have directional arrows that are going from one island to another.
“The second thing I think is pretty exciting is that they are providing fairly precise age estimates on the sequence of events.”
So, how did this remarkable expansion happen, and what compelled people to venture into the great unknown?
“Unfortunately, there’s very little direct archaeological evidence because canoes of wood and fibre don’t preserve generally,” says Kirch. “But if we look at what Polynesian voyaging was like when Europeans first entered the area, we get some idea, and we know that they had big double-hulled canoes and were sophisticated in their non-instrumental means of wayfinding.
“We know that Polynesians got to Tonga and Samoa area by between 800 and 900 BC, so they were there for a long time and then there was this long pause. This pause lasted over 1000 years, before the push into eastern Polynesia began around AD 900.
“My view is that in the intervening years between 800 BC and then, say, AD 900, when this final push occurred, they developed these sophisticated navigational techniques, developed the double-hulled canoe, because they were sailing back and forth between Tonga, Samoa and Fiji for hundreds of years.
“And at some point, somebody ventured farther out, probably got to the southern Cook [islands], and they realised, ‘oh my god, there’s still a lot more islands out there’.
“Within literally three centuries, every other speck of land in the eastern Pacific, all the way down to Aotearoa-New Zealand and up to Hawaii, all that got settled. It’s quite amazing.”
Illustrated above are distinctive monolithic sculptures crafted by the inhabitants of the Marquesas Islands (top), Mangareva (center), Raivavae (bottom left), and Rapa Nui (bottom right), together with elements characteristic of the Polynesian seafarers who, with their double-hulled voyaging canoes, carried out feats of exploration and discovery using the stars, the flight of birds, the winds, the weather, the ocean currents, and sea interference patterns from islands and atolls (such as the Tuamotus depicted at the center). Credit: Zaira Zamudio López
How much air pollution is too much? Global limits lowered for 6 pollutants
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1st update in 15 years to air quality guidelines used as reference by policymakers, academics
The Associated Press ·
Vehicles drive on a highway as smog envelops the area of Lahore, Pakistan, on Nov. 11, 2020. The World Health Organization has reduced the recommended limits for six harmful air pollutants for the first time in 15 years. (K.M. Chaudary/The Associated Press)
The World Health Organization (WHO) said Wednesday that the harmful health effects of air pollution kick in at lower levels than it previously thought and it is setting a higher bar for policymakers and the public in its first update to its air quality guidelines in 15 years.
The UN health agency released its revised air quality guidelines as climate change is a leading topic at the United Nations General Assembly in New York. Chinese President Xi Jinping announced Tuesday that China will no longer fund power plants fired by coal, which generates several of the pollutants covered by the guidelines.
Since the last update of WHO recommendations, better monitoring and science have cleared up the global picture about the effects of six major air pollutants on human health. According to the agency, 90 per cent of the world's people already live in areas with at least one particularly harmful type of pollutant.
The revisions also highlight another — and often parallel — aspect to environmental concerns beyond widespread worries about global warming and the impact of burning fossil fuels.
Exposure to air pollution is estimated to cause seven million premature deaths and affect the health of millions more people each year, and air pollution "is now recognized as the single biggest environmental threat to human health," said Dr. Dorota Jarosinska, WHO Europe program manager for living and working environments.
Air pollution is now comparable to other global health risks like unhealthy diet and tobacco smoking, WHO said.
The guidelines, which are not legally binding and intended as a reference for policymakers, advocacy groups and academics, lower the advised concentrations of six pollutants known to have impacts on health:
two types of particulate matter known as PM 2.5 and PM 10
ozone
nitrogen dioxide
sulfur dioxide
carbon monoxide
The guidelines could also send a message to the wider public about lifestyle and business choices — whether it's driving cars and trucks, disposing of garbage, working in industrial jobs or farming.
A girl holds a banner during a climate and anti-pollution protest in Bucharest, Romania on Feb. 14, 2020. Dozens joined a march to raise awareness about increasing levels of air pollution in the Romanian capital. (Andreea Alexandru/The Associated Press)
Where pollutants come from
WHO says the main human-generated sources of air pollution can vary geographically but include the energy and transportation sectors, as well as waste dump sites and home cooking and heating.
"We hope the tighter standards will draw attention to just how critical clean air is for human and ecosystem health," said Jessica Seddon, global lead for air quality at the World Resources Institute.
"The difficulty will come in making the WHO guidelines meaningful for the average person going about their day."
Health impacts
While wealthy countries in Europe, Asia and North America have made strides in improving air quality in recent years, WHO says globally more than 90 per cent of the world population breathes air with PM 2.5 concentrations that exceed the recommended levels in its last guidelines, published in 2006.
Such particles can penetrate deep into the lungs and enter the bloodstream, resulting in both respiratory and cardiovascular impacts. Air pollution has been linked to heart disease, diabetes, cancer and early death. Recent evidence has suggested negative effects on pregnancy, cognitive development in kids, and mental health, experts say.
A man who scavenges recyclable materials for a living walks across a mountain of garbage and smoke from burning trash at Dandora, the largest garbage dump in Nairobi, Kenya. The World Health Organization says the negative health impacts of poor air quality kick in at lower levels than it previously thought. (Brian Inganga/The Associated Press)
The new guidelines set or revise downward recommended air pollution levels for nearly all of the six particles both on a daily and annual basis. For example, they slashed the PM 2.5 recommendation on an annual basis to 5 micrograms per cubic meter, down from its previous level of 10.
What the change means
"That is just a huge change," said Susan Anenberg, associate professor of environmental and occupational health and global health at George Washington University.
"This annual average for PM 2.5 in the guidelines is going to be extremely difficult to meet. … There's very few people on the planet right now that have exposures that are that low."
The 2016 guidelines prompted many countries to take action even though WHO insists they are voluntary. Since then, evidence has grown about the negative impacts of air pollution on health based on improved pollution measurement systems and exposure assessments, leading to the update.
The ability of countries around the world to achieve those levels will require major changes to human systems, Anenberg said.
"They have to stop burning fossil fuels and what the world decides to do about climate change in the coming weeks will have major impacts on whether or not we're able to follow a guideline like that."
A key UN climate summit is set to take place in Glasgow, Scotland, in six weeks.
How bad is air pollution around the world?
WHO has issued similar guidelines on issues as diverse as tobacco consumption, sugar intake and playing video games. At times, its standards rankle industry groups and confront policymakers with difficult decisions.
While developed countries and some developing ones have set standards for air quality, a report from the UN's environment program earlier this month found that one-third of the world's countries have no legally mandated standards for the quality of outdoor air. Many of those are in Africa and the Western Pacific.
A person walks past a Toronto mural depicting the harms of air pollution. According to the World Health Organization, 90 per cent of the world's population breathes air with concentrations of PM 2.5, a pollutant known to have impacts on health, that exceed the recommended levels in its last guidelines, published in 2006. (Nathan Denette/The Canadian Press)
Over the last 20 years, air quality has improved in places where policies for reducing pollutant emissions have been enforced, including Europe, the United States and Canada, said Vincent-Henri Peuch, director of the European Union's Copernicus Atmosphere Monitoring Service.
China has seen improvements too. But air quality has deteriorated in many other parts of the world, especially in low-income countries, he said.
There are areas that offer promise. Experts note improvements through the retirement of old cars and their replacement with models that emit less nitrogen dioxide or run on batteries.
But WHO's overall message was stark.
"The unenviable challenge for policymakers will be to respond in a way that minimizes the proven harms to health, as set out by WHO, but with policies that are proportionate, cost-effective and crucially, deliver benefits equitably across the country and population," said University of York professor Alastair Lewis of the National Centre for Atmospheric Science.
HE JUST WON A CABINET POST
Federal election: Liberals gain Edmonton Centre after neck-and-neck race Kellen Taniguchi
The battleground federal riding of Edmonton Centre is once again Liberal red. Liberal candidate Randy Boissonnault was declared the winner Wednesday night after all mail-in ballots were counted, unseating Conservative incumbent James Cumming.
The two were in a neck-and-neck race during Monday’s election, with Boissonnault leading by a razor-thin margin of 136 votes at the end of the night. Elections Canada’s final tally showed he won by 577 votes, with 33.7 per cent of support just ahead of Cumming’s 32.5 per cent.
“Deep gratitude to the residents of Edmonton Centre, to the dream team we assembled, to the hundreds of volunteers who rallied to the cause to have a strong progressive voice representing them in the government in Ottawa and to send a clear message to everybody that there’s diversity in this province,” Boissonnault told Postmedia. “Diversity of thought, diversity of where people come from, how they want our society to be organized, but most importantly just that they want us to do the work that we promised to do.”
Boissonnault said that work includes implementing $10 a day childcare, a plan to combat climate change, getting concrete actions in place to combat racism and discrimination and affordable housing.
Boissonnault said he’s sure a lot of people were refreshing their internet browsers waiting for the final results to come in, but at about 4:15 p.m. on Wednesday he and his core team felt gratitude and the deep understanding that there’s heavy lifting ahead and they’re ready to do it.
Cumming conceded with a video posted to his Twitter account early Wednesday evening.
“Thank you to my family and the hundreds of volunteers who came out to support me this election,” Cumming tweeted. “I wish (Randy Boissonnault) all the best as he heads to Ottawa.”
“Congrats go out to Randy Boissonnault. Congratulations to your team,” Cumming said in the video. “You know Randy, you know what this riding’s like, they demand performance and I hope that you will stand up for the citizens of Edmonton Centre.”
Cumming said he isn’t sure what’s next for him but he will always be an advocate for the community.
Edmonton Centre is historically a close riding and this year was a race between Boissonnault, Cumming and the NDP’s Heather MacKenzie who received 28.8 per cent of the vote. “I want to thank James and Heather for a good race, a positive race and one that showed the best of Edmonton politics and I wish them and their families all my best,” said Boissonnault.
QUACK Florida's new surgeon general says COVID-19 vaccines are 'nothing special' and opposes mask mandates
Kelly McLaughlin Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis appointed Dr. Joseph Ladapo to surgeon general and secretary of the state's health department on Tuesday.
But Ladapo has come under fire for his criticism of COVID-19 vaccines and mask mandates.
Ladapo also called COVID-19 vaccines "nothing special" in a recent press conference.
Florida's new surgeon general called COVID-19 vaccines "nothing special" in a recent press conference.
Dr. Joseph Ladapo was appointed to surgeon general and secretary of Florida's health department on Tuesday by Gov. Ron DeSantis. "Vaccines are up to the person. There is nothing special about them compared to any other preventative measure," Ladapo said at a press conference on Tuesday, according to CBS News. "The state should be promoting good health, and vaccination isn't the only path to that. It's been treated almost like a religion and it's senseless."
Ladapo came under fire for his views on COVID-19, having previously voiced criticism toward mask mandates and vaccines.
In an op-ed in The Wall Street Journal, Ladapo said he believes mask wearing has "a modest effect on viral transmission," and on Wednesday he signed a new rule allowing students to continue to go to school if they're exposed to an asymptomatic case of COVID-19, WFLA reported. He has also promoted hydroxychloroquine as a treatment for COVID-19 infections.
Health experts, however, have backed research that contradicts Ladapo's theories about COVID-19 protection measures.
Ladapo did not immediately respond to Insider's request for comment.
Florida has seen high numbers of COVID-19 cases in recent months, and in mid-August, reached a record high of 16,000 hospitalizations, according to data from the Florida Hospital Association.
The state's health department said last week that as of September 16, 70% of people eligible were vaccinated against COVID-19.
CRIMINAL CAPITALI$M; BAKSHEESH
Exxon, Chevron conceal payments to some governments
Thursday, 23 Sep 20216:35 AM MYT
ConocoPhillips, which is not on the EITI board, is another member that does not disclose payments to countries not in EITI, the group said. It has had operations in countries including Libya, Malaysia and China.
WASHINGTON: U.S. oil majors Exxon Mobil Corp and Chevron Corp have failed to meet a core transparency standard set by the Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative, a global anti-corruption body on which the companies have board seats, EITI said on Wednesday.
Exxon and Chevron have declined to publicly disclose taxes and other payments they have made to governments in the countries where they operate that are not EITI members, the group said in a spreadsheet detailing member company https://eiti.org/news/eiti-publishes-data-on-adherence-to-supporting-company-expectationsadherence to its standards.
Norway-based EITI, founded two decades ago, has about 55 country members. It implements voluntary global standards to promote open and accountable management of oil, gas and mineral resources to prevent corruption in all resource-rich countries.
Countries that Exxon has operated in that are not EITI members include Qatar, Pakistan and India, according to its company website. Non-EITI countries that Chevron has operated in include China and Angola.
ConocoPhillips, which is not on the EITI board, is another member that does not disclose payments to countries not in EITI, the group said. It has had operations in countries including Libya, Malaysia and China.
Exxon spokesperson Casey Norton said Exxon complies with all laws that are in effect today.
Conoco spokesperson Dennis Nuss said the company had no comment. Chevron did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
EITI's release, based on publicly available information, could add pressure to the companies, already under fire from shareholders, activists and lawmakers for greenhouse gas emissions driving climate change.
It also highlights a widening governance rift between U.S.-based oil majors and those in Europe, which are widely seen to be doing better on climate and transparency.
European-based companies BP, Shell and Total all publicly disclose their taxes and payments to non-EITI countries, the group said.
EITI published the data for the first time since the standards were introduced in 2018, after pressure from civil society groups including Publish What You Pay-US (PWYP-US) and Oxfam America.
It is not mandatory that the companies, which as EITI members make annual payments to help fund the group's management, follow the group's standards.
But EITI Board Chair Helen Clark said in July, without elaborating, that the board's oversight committee would consider consequences for companies not meeting the group's expectations, possibly in October.
Clark said on Wednesday that publication of the companies not following expectations will help EITI members "engage in dialogue to improve corporate accountability and transparency." She said work remains to clarify the expectations, "but our hope is that it will encourage a 'race to the top' to meet or exceed them."
The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission is set to consider next April implementing a measure of the 2010 Wall Street reform law known as Dodd Frank that would require disclosures from energy and mining companies on payments to all foreign governments.
PWYP-US said the U.S. companies supporting EITI were getting the reputational benefit of EITI participation without meeting the basic expectations for membership.
EITI's company members and particularly those on its board must ensure that group's credibility is not weakened by companies that are not being transparent, said Carly Oboth, PWYP-US interim director.
"Otherwise, it will be clear that this global transparency initiative has become a victim of corporate capture," Oboth said.- Reuters
Edmonton Catholic parents upset over message from school inviting families to abortion protest
Author of the article:Blair McBride Publishing date:Sep 22, 2021
Parent Erin Gaudet is concerned about a letter emailed as an attachment from Holy Cross Catholic School asking students and parents to join an anti-abortion protest. PHOTO BY GREG SOUTHAM /Postmedia
Parents in the Edmonton Catholic School District are irate that an invitation to join an anti-abortion protest was included in a recent school council message.
The letter, emailed as an attachment to Holy Cross Catholic School parents on Monday, invites families to “stand and peacefully pray with (parish) St. John the Evangelist” on Thursday at the public right-of-way outside the Woman’s Health Options clinic on 109A Avenue.
The event is part of “40 Days for Life – 40 days of prayer and fasting for an end to abortion,” a worldwide grassroots movement.
“Please help to spread the truth about abortion in this important community outreach,” says the notice, which includes contact information for St. John the Evangelist parish officials. The notice is also in the parish’s most recent church bulletin.
For Neil McLeod, whose daughter attends Holy Cross, the invitation was “very unsettling.”
“What are we promoting in our school? This isn’t a call for a compassionate outreach. It’s a call to harass people, who are in a very troubled situation,” he said.
“With the (unmarked) graves (at former residential schools) coming to light, I would hope the Catholic Church would be doing a deep think on their roles in schools and their historical legacy. That’s not the case here. And it’s truly making me rethink having my daughter in a Catholic school.”
It’s the first time Christie McLeod, Neil’s former spouse, has seen this type of notice in the four years their daughter has attended the school.
She said that when she contacted Holy Cross principal Marlene Forest-Wallace about the letter, she received an apology and was told it was an error that wouldn’t be repeated. “At this point it’s not even about the school anymore,” Christie said. “My issue is about the parish organizing this protest that I think is sort of passive-aggressively designed to intimidate women who are trying to access health care, and using this guise of peaceful prayer.”
Although Erin Gaudet’s children attend other Catholic schools in Edmonton, as a longtime participant in that system she is shocked and disappointed at the letter.
“I’ve been involved with Catholic schools for a long time. You see a variety of social justice projects and that’s what’s great about Edmonton Catholic schools,” Gaudet said. “But this is inappropriate. The deeper level misunderstanding that comes from this is really hurtful to the Catholic Church.”
Postmedia’s efforts to contact Forest-Wallace weren’t successful.
However, Edmonton Catholic Schools District spokeswoman Christine Meadows said in an email that “including standalone information from the parish, regardless of the content, was an error” and staff have since been educated on procedures.
“We are reminding all our schools that the best way to connect families with their parishes is by sharing the link to the parish website instead of sharing excerpts of information,” she said. In a statement from the Catholic Archdiocese of Edmonton, spokesman Andrew Ehrkamp said 40 Days for Life is a peaceful, pro-life prayer campaign for pregnant women seeking abortions and people performing abortions.
“Through peaceful prayer, the 40 Days for Life campaign touches hearts and changes communities. Faithful Catholic parents who attend our parishes are always made aware of events and activities which are consistent with the Catholic faith through our bulletin and other means. The parent and/or school newsletter may be an extension of this communication.”
Amazon's Former Security Chief Is Now Guarding the Line 3 Oil Pipeline
Opponents of oil transport company Enbridge say that the company is using military-style counter-insurgency tactics against protesters.
By Tom McKay Yesterday 4:00PM Workers at Enbridge Energy’s terminal in Superior, Wisconsin, as seen in June 2018.
Photo: Jime Mone / File (AP)
The man heading up security for the oil transport company Enbridge, which is currently facing down an Indigenuous-led protest movement against the Line 3 pipeline, formerly helped Exxon shield its operations from demonstrations in Nigeria and oversaw global security for Amazon.
Kirby’s LinkedIn page shows that before coming to Enbridge in 2019, he spent three years as the head of Amazon’s corporate security. Documents dated to his final year there obtained by Vice show that under Kirby’s leadership, Amazon security monitored social media posts by union organizers and environmental activists. Vice reported that Amazon dispatched operatives from the infamous Pinkerton agency to investigate reports of employee misconduct at a facility in Poland.
For at least four years before his stint at Amazon, the Intercept reported, Kirby worked for Exxon as an adviser on “strategic security countermeasures” in Nigeria. The Intercept reported that the job responsibilities on Kirby’s LinkedIn page were deleted, but a previous version of his page showed they included managing crises including pirate attacks, employee kidnappings, and “community protests.” Accomplishments listed included “[Establishing] a Nigerian based security network with private and public sector security leaders” and “Oversight of host government security forces,” such as managing a “Security Maritime Operations center including a fleet of 17 military-grade security vessels” that protected Exxon’s offshore oil platforms.
Several items on Kirby’s LinkedIn, including the details of his jobs at Amazon and Exxon Mobil, have since disappeared. His page currently says only that he is the chief security officer for an “energy company.”
Some lessons that Kirby may have brought to helping Enbridge build Line 3 in Minnesota include payments to local police forces for their role in keeping protesters from interfering with construction, the Intercept wrote. Enbridge has also trained police and received invites to police intelligence meetings where the details of local activists are discussed and shared between agencies. Local agencies such as the Aitkin County Sheriff’s Office have aggressively monitored social media activity by prominent activists in order to rack up evidence for charges. The Minnesota Public Utilities Commission set up a special Enbridge-funded escrow account to pay for the time and equipment of local authorities protecting Line 3; according to the Intercept, Kirby assured a local sheriff that Enbridge wielded influence over who would become the public official in charge of determining reimbursements.
There’s another Amazon connection as well, the Intercept wrote: Enbridge Line 3 security lead Brian Aldrich, a former Marine who has bounced around major security firms who was once part of CEO Jeff Bezos’s security detail. Securitas, the company that owns Pinkerton, is also one of Line 3's primary private security providers.
It’s hardly private companies cracking down on protesters. Several states with governments controlled by right-wingers have launched draconian laws that target Indigenous and other environmental protesters. This year, the Montana legislature passed a bill that could impose $150,000 fines and 30 years of prison time for anyone involved in anti-pipeline “vandalism,” following the lead of three other states that designated pipelines critical infrastructure and thus carrying harsher penalties against those convicted of interfering with their operations.
The reason fossil fuel companies and politicians that enable them have pushed back so hard on Indigenous protesters is that those movements have had some major success in stopping oil and gas infrastructure for going into operation. A recent report by the Indigenous Environmental Network and Oil Change International examined 21 protest movements against oil and gas infrastructure, including the Keystone XL, Dakota Access, and Line 3 pipelines, as well as more obscure projects such as a proposed Rio Grande liquified natural gas export terminal in Texas and the San Juan oil and gas basin in New Mexico. The analysts found the activists were successful at stopping around 1.6 billion metric tons of carbon dioxide equivalent from being pumped into the atmosphere, accounting for about 24% of the annual total greenhouse gas emissions in the U.S. and Canada. Opposition to pipelines alone averted 779 million tons of carbon dioxide equivalent.
New oil and gas exploration must end next year to protect us from the worst impacts of climate change. Indigenous-led movements have been incredibly effective at turning the tide, but it’s clear oil and as companies are pulling out all the stops to keep the fossil fuels flowing.
Enbridge declined to make Kirby available for an interview with the Intercept, though spokesperson Juli Kellner told the site “Security teams use a ‘people first’ concept to ensure public safety—their mission is to observe, respond, and report safety issues.”
More than 25 workers at the Seaview Manor nursing home in Glace Bay mounted an information picket on Wednesday to raise awareness of a labour shortage in long-term care. (Tom Ayers/CBC)
Nursing home workers at Seaview Manor in Glace Bay, N.S., mounted an information picket Wednesday to raise awareness about a provincewide shortage of continuing care assistants and licensed practical nurses.
Tammy Martin of the Canadian Union of Public Employees, which represents about 125 staff at the 113-bed facility, said the labour shortage means workers are putting in overtime and giving up vacations.
"They're desperate for help," Martin said. "They've been working short for a long, long time and it's not getting any better. It just keeps getting worse."
She said that's not good for staff or residents.
"Somebody needs to pay attention that these workers and residents are in danger every time they work short," Martin said. "These people and these residents can't continue to go on like this, and across the province, something has to give and it has to give soon."
Alex Feldman, a resident of Seaview Manor, is seen in his wheelchair, holding a sign that reads, 'Long Term Care Loud.' Feldman joined the workers on the picket line, saying he supports them 100 per cent. (Tom Ayers/CBC)
Seaview resident Alex Feldman joined the picket line in solidarity with the nursing home's staff. He said the employees treat him well and he fully supports them.
Martin said the union does not blame administration at Seaview, which is aware of the union's concerns and agrees the solution needs to come from the provincial government.
She said CUPE was disappointed that the union was excluded from meeting Premier Tim Houston and staff with the Department of Health and Wellness this week when they were in Cape Breton to talk to health-care workers about the need for improvements.
The meetings were only for doctors or those employed directly by Nova Scotia Health, Martin said.
Seaview CEO Eric Doucette said the provincial government is well aware of the "critical" labour shortage in long-term care and is working on fixing it.
"I have total confidence ... that the new government definitely has this in [its] sights," he said.
"I think the first major demonstration of the awareness of the problem was actually appointing a minister of seniors and long-term care."
A sign advertising vacant positions, including LPNs, is seen outside Seaview Manor. The facility's CEO, Eric Doucette, says the labour shortage is provincewide and the new PC government is working to fix it. (Tom Ayers/CBC)
In addition, Doucette said, the province has created a new office of recruitment and retention for health-care professionals.
The Department of Labour, Skills and Education has also approved funding for a continuing care assistant training program in Glace Bay, he said.
Seaview management is doing its best to look after residents and staff, Doucette said.
"I think we do everything we can every day ... to make sure that our residents are properly cared for and that they are kept safe."
Seaview Manor's sign is seen outside the facility. The nursing home has appointed Dr. Mohsen Yavari as medical director, but the details are still being worked out before the facility's empty beds can be filled. (Tom Ayers/CBC)
Meanwhile, he said, the facility has hired a new medical director to oversee admission of new residents.
Last month, Doucette said Seaview had 15 empty beds at the same time the province said there were nearly 400 people in the eastern zone seeking admission to long-term care.
The CEO said the empty beds were a result of the lack of doctors in the area.
The facility has since appointed Dr. Mohsen Yavari as medical director, but Doucette said the details are still being worked out before the empty beds can be filled.
