It’s possible that I shall make an ass of myself. But in that case one can always get out of it with a little dialectic. I have, of course, so worded my proposition as to be right either way (K.Marx, Letter to F.Engels on the Indian Mutiny)
Saturday, September 25, 2021
Many hurdles for families with food challenges, poll shows By ASHRAF KHALIL and CEDAR ATTANASIOyesterday
Barrios Unidos president Lupe Salazar pushes a dolly filled with canned food ahead of a food drive on Thursday, Sept. 23, 2021, in Chimayó, New Mexico.
(AP Photo/Cedar Attanasio)
WASHINGTON (AP) — Many Americans struggling to feed their families over the past pandemic year say they have had difficulty figuring out how to get help and had trouble finding healthy foods they can afford.
A poll from Impact Genome and The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research finds 23% of Americans say they have not been able to get enough to eat or the kinds of foods they want. Most of those facing food challenges enrolled in a government or nonprofit food assistance program in the past year, but 58% still had difficulty accessing at least one service.
And 21% of adults facing challenges meeting their food needs were unable to access any assistance at all. The most common challenge to those in need was a basic lack of awareness of eligibility for both government and nonprofit services.
Black and Hispanic Americans, Americans living below the federal poverty line and younger adults are especially likely to face food challenges, according to the poll.
Americans who have a hard time affording food also feel less confident than others about their ability to get healthy food. Just 27% say they are “very” or “extremely” confident, compared with 87% of those who do not face food challenges.
For homemaker Acacia Barraza in Los Lunas, a rural town outside Albuquerque, New Mexico, the challenge has been to find a steady supply of fresh fruits and vegetables for her 2-year-old son while staying inside the family budget.
Barraza, 34, quit her job as a waitress before the pandemic when her son was born. She considered going back to work, but on-and-off child care shortages as the pandemic took hold made that impossible, she said. The family lives off her husband’s salary as a mechanic while receiving assistance from SNAP — the government program commonly known as food stamps.
Despite the government help, Barraza said she still scrambles to find affordable sources of fresh vegetables, actively scouring local markets for bargains such as a bag of fresh spinach for $2.99.
Half of food-challenged in US say extra money is necessary to meet food needs
A new Impact Genome/AP-NORC poll finds about 3 in 10 Americans facing food challenges say reliable transportation is necessary to meet food needs. Only about 2 in 10 say that about free, on-demand prepared meals.
How necessary is ___ to meet your food needs?
Among Americans facing food challenges
Necessary
Helpful,
but not necessary
Not
helpful or necessary
Extra money to help pay for food or bills
50%
39%
9%
Reliable and accessible transportation
29%
39%
30%
Enough free food to last a few days
26%
53%
19%
A free prepared meal with no prior notice
17%
51%
30%
Meals that are delivered by a community service
16%
51%
32%
“If we don’t always have vegetables, he’s going to not want to eat them in the future. And then I worry that he’s not going to get enough vitamins from vegetables in the future or now for his growing body. So it’s really hard. It’s just really hard,” she said.
Even those who didn’t lose income during the pandemic find themselves stretching their food dollars at the end of the month. Trelecia Mornes of Fort Worth, Texas, works, as a telephone customer service representative, so she was able to work from home without interruption.
She makes too much money to qualify for SNAP, but not enough to easily feed the family.
She decided to do distance learning with her three children home because of fears about COVID-19 outbreaks in the schools, so that removed school lunches from the equation. Her work responsibilities prevent her from picking up free lunches offered by the school district. She takes care of her disabled brother, who lives with them and does receive SNAP benefits. But Mornes said that $284 a month “lasts about a week and a half.”
They try to eat healthy, but budget considerations sometimes lead her to prioritize cost and longevity with “canned soups, maybe noodles — things that last and aren’t so expensive,” she said.
Radha Muthiah, president of the Capital Area Food Bank in Washington said the struggles reflected in the poll are evidence of a new phenomenon brought by the pandemic: Families with no experience with food insecurity are suddenly in need, without knowledge of charitable options or experience navigating government assistance programs.
“It’s all new to them,” she said. “Many individuals and families — especially those experiencing food insecurity for the first time — are unaware of their full range of options.”
Many are leery of engaging directly with government programs such as SNAP and WIC — the parallel government food-assistance program that helps mothers and children. Muthiah said that reluctance often stems from either frustration with the paperwork or, among immigrant communities, fear of endangering their immigration status or green card applications.
The poll shows that overall, about 1 in 8 Americans regularly get their food from convenience stores, which typically offer less nutritious food at higher prices. That experience is more common among Americans facing food challenges, with about 1 in 5 frequenting convenience stores.
The dependence on convenience stores is a particularly troubling dynamic, Muthiah said, because the options there are both more expensive and generally less nutritious. Part of the issue is simply habit, but a much larger problem is the lack of proper grocery stores in “food deserts” that exist in poorer parts of many cities.
“Sometimes they are the only quick efficient option for many people to get food,” she said. “But they don’t get the full range of what they need from a convenience store and that leads to a lot of negative health outcomes.”
The poll shows half of Americans facing food challenges say extra money to help pay for food or bills is necessary for meeting their food needs.
Fewer consider reliable transportation or enough free food to last a few days, such as in emergency food packages, or free prepared meals at a soup kitchen or school to be necessary resources for meeting their food needs, though majorities say these would be helpful.
Gerald Ortiz of Espańola, New Mexico, bought a 2019 Chevy pickup truck before the pandemic, then lost the office job he had held for 20 years. Now he scrambles to make the $600 monthly payment and gets by through charity and by simply eating less. His unemployment payments ended this month.
“I make sure my truck payment is done,” said Ortiz, as he sat in a line of about 30 cars waiting to pick up food from a charitable organization, Barrios Unidos, in nearby Chimayó. “After that I, I, just eat like once a day,” he said, pointing to his stomach. “That’s why you see me I’m so thin now.”
He’s applying for multiple jobs and surviving on charity and whatever produce he can grow in his backyard — chili peppers, onions, cucumbers and watermelons.
“It’s been depressing. It’s been, like, stressful and I get anxiety,” he said. “Like, I can’t wait to get a job. I don’t care what it is right now.”
___
Attanasio reported from Chimayó, New Mexico. Associated Press polling reporter Hannah Fingerhut contributed to this report.
___
The AP-NORC poll of 2,233 adults was conducted August 5-23 using a sample drawn from NORC’s probability-based AmeriSpeak Panel, which is designed to be representative of the U.S. population. The margin of sampling error for all respondents is plus or minus 3.2 percentage points.
WHITE HATS VS BLACK HATS
QAnon, Proud Boys: Huge hack reveals details of far-right websites' internet provider and clients 'Panama Papers of hate groups': Identities, passwords of Epik users released by Anonymous
Washington Post Drew Harwell, Craig Timberg and Hannah Allam Publishing date:Sep 22, 2021 •
Supporters wearing Proud Boy clothing wave to the camera during a Make America Great Again campaign rally in Tampa, Fla. on Oct. 29, 2020.
PHOTO BY RICARDO ARDUENGO/AFP
Epik has long been the favourite internet company of the far-right, providing domain services to QAnon theorists, Proud Boys and other instigators of the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol — allowing them to broadcast hateful messages from behind a veil of anonymity.
But that veil abruptly vanished last week when a huge breach by the hacker group Anonymous dumped into public view more than 150 gigabytes of previously private data — including user names, passwords and other identifying information of Epik’s customers.
Extremism researchers and political opponents have treated the leak as a Rosetta Stone to the far right, helping them decode who has been doing what with whom over several years. Initial revelations have spilled out steadily across Twitter since news of the hack broke last week, often under the hashtag #epikfail, but those studying the material say they will need months and perhaps years to dig through it all.
“It’s massive. It may be the biggest domain-style leak I’ve seen and, as an extremism researcher, it’s certainly the most interesting,” said Megan Squire, a computer science professor at Elon University who studies right-wing extremism. “It’s an embarrassment of riches — stress on the embarrassment.”
Epik, based in the Seattle suburb of Sammamish, has made its name in the internet world by providing critical web services to sites that have run afoul of other companies’ policies against hate speech, misinformation and advocating violence. Its client list is a roll call of sites known for permitting extreme posts and that have been rejected by other companies for their failure to moderate what their users post.
Online records show those sites have included 8chan, which was dropped by its providers after hosting the manifesto of a gunman who killed 51 Muslims in Christchurch, N.Z. in 2019; Gab, which was dropped for hosting the anti-Semitic rants of a gunman who killed 11 in a Pittsburgh synagogue in 2018; and Parler, which was dropped due to lax moderation related to the Jan. 6 Capitol attack.
Epik also provides services to a network of sites devoted to extremist QAnon conspiracy theories. Epik briefly hosted the neo-Nazi site Daily Stormer in 2019 after acquiring a cybersecurity company that had provided it with hosting services, but Epik soon cancelled that contract, according to news reports. Epik also stopped supporting 8chan after a short period, the company has said.
Earlier this month, Epik also briefly provided service to the anti-abortion group Texas Right to Life, whose website, ProLifeWhistleblower.com, was removed by the hosting service GoDaddy because it solicited accusations about which medical providers might be violating a state abortion ban.
An Epik attorney said the company stopped working with TRL because it violated company rules against collecting people’s private information. Online records show Epik was still the site’s domain registrar as of last week, though the digital tip line is no longer available, and the site now redirects to the group’s homepage.
QAnon demonstrators in Los Angeles in August 2020. In January, Twitter suspended more than 70,000 accounts linked to QAnon.
PHOTO BY KYLE GRILLOT/AFP VIA GETTY IMAGES
Epik founder Robert Monster’s willingness to provide technical support to online sanctuaries of the far-right have made him a regular target of anti-extremism advocates, who criticized him for using Epik’s tools to republish the Christchurch gunman’s manifesto and live-streamed video the killer had made of the slaughter.
Monster also used the moment as a marketing opportunity, saying the files were now “effectively uncensorable,” according to screenshots of his tweets and Gab posts from the time. Monster also urged Epik employees to watch the video, which he said would convince them it was faked, Bloomberg News reported.
Monster has defended his work as critical to keeping the internet uncensored and free, aligning himself with conservative critics who argue that leading technology companies such as Facebook, Twitter, Amazon and YouTube have gone too far in policing content they deem inappropriate.
Monster did not respond to requests for comment from The Washington Post. But he said in an email to customers two days after hackers announced the breach that the company had suffered an “alleged security incident” and asked customers to report back any “unusual account activity.”
“You are in our prayers today,” Monster wrote last week, as news of the hack spread. “When situations arise where individuals might not have honorable intentions, I pray for them. I believe that what the enemy intends for evil, God invariably transforms into good. Blessings to you all.”
Researchrs have marvelled at Epik's apparent failure to take basic security precautions
Since the hack, Epik’s security protocols have been the target of ridicule among researchers, who’ve marvelled at the site’s apparent failure to take basic security precautions such as routine encryption that could have protected data about its customers from becoming public.
The files include years of website purchase records, internal company emails and customer account credentials revealing who administers some of the biggest far-right websites. The data includes client names, home addresses, email addresses, phone numbers and passwords left in plain, readable text. The hack even exposed the personal records from Anonymize, a privacy service Epik offered to customers wanting to conceal their identity.
Similar failings by other hacked companies have drawn scrutiny from the Federal Trade Commission, which has probed companies such as dating site Ashley Madison for failing to protect their customers’ private data from hackers. FTC investigations have resulted in settlements imposing financial penalties and more rigorous privacy standards.
“Given Epik’s boasts about security, and the scope of its web hosting, I would think it would be an FTC target, especially if the company was warned but failed to take protective action,” said David Vladeck, a former head of the FTC’s consumer protection bureau, now at Georgetown University Law Center. “I would add that the FTC wouldn’t care about the content — right wing or left wing; the questions would be (about) the possible magnitude and impact of the breach and the representations … the company may have made about security.”
The FTC declined to comment.
Without Epik, many extremist communities would have had far less oxygen to spread harm
SITE INTELLIGENCE GROUP
Researchers poring through the trove say the most crucial findings concern the identities of people hosting various extremist sites and the key role Epik played in keeping material online that might otherwise have vanished from the internet — or at least the parts of the internet that are easily stumbled upon by ordinary users.
“The company played such a major role in keeping far-right terrorist cesspools alive,” said Rita Katz, executive director of SITE Intelligence Group, which studies online extremism. “Without Epik, many extremist communities — from QAnon and white nationalists to accelerationist neo-Nazis — would have had far less oxygen to spread harm, whether that be building toward the January 6 Capitol riots or sowing the misinformation and conspiracy theories chipping away at democracy.”
The breach, first reported by the freelance journalist Steven Monacelli, was made publicly available for download last week alongside a note from Anonymous hackers saying it would help researchers trace the ownership and management of “the worst trash the internet has to offer.”
After the hackers’ announcement, Epik initially said it was “not aware of any breach.” But in a rambling, three-hour live stream last week, Monster acknowledged there had been a “hijack of data that should not have been hijacked” and called on people not to use the data for “negative” purposes.
“If you have a negative intent to use that data, it’s not going to work out for you. I’m just telling you,” he said. “If the demon tells you to do it, the demon is not your friend.”
Members of Proud Boys in front of the Capitol Building in Washington, D.C. on Jan. 6, 2021 to protest against the certification of the 2020 U.S. presidential election results. PHOTO BY JIM URQUHART / REUTERS /Reuters
Several domains in the leak are associated with the far-right Proud Boys group, which is known for violent street brawls and involvement in the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol and was banned by Facebook in 2018 as a hate group.
A Twitter account, @epikfailsnippet, that is posting unverified revelations from the leaked data, included a thread purporting to expose administrators of the Proud Boys sites. One man who was identified by name as administrator of a local Proud Boys forum was said to be an employee of Drexel University; the university said he hasn’t worked at Drexel since November 2020.
Technology news site the Daily Dot reported that Ali Alexander, a conservative political activist who played a key role in spreading false voter-fraud claims about the 2020 presidential election, took steps after the Jan. 6 siege to obscure his ownership of more than 100 domains registered to Epik. Nearly half reportedly used variations of the “Stop the Steal” slogan pushed by Alexander and others. Alexander did not reply to requests for comment from the Daily Dot or, on Tuesday, from The Washington Post.
Extremism researchers urge careful fact-checking to protect credibility, but the data remains tantalizing for its potential to unmask extremists in public-facing jobs.
Emma Best, co-founder of Distributed Denial of Secrets, a nonprofit whistleblower group, said some researchers call the Epik hack “the Panama Papers of hate groups,” a comparison to the leak of more than 11 million documents that exposed a rogue offshore finance industry. And, like the Panama Papers, scouring the files is labour intensive, with payoffs that could be months away.
“A lot of research begins with naming names,” Best said. “There’s a lot of optimism and feeling of being overwhelmed, and people knowing they’re in for the long haul with some of this data.”
THE FRIENDS OF MR. KENNEY David Staples: COVID threatens to take out Jason Kenney and his greatest political achievement, the UCP
It's no easy thing to hold on to the job of premier of Alberta. The previous four premiers, Ed Stelmach, Alison Redford, Jim Prentice and Rachel Notley, were all turfed before winning a first or second term
Author of the article:David Staples • Edmonton Journal Publishing date:Sep 24, 2021 •
Premier Jason Kenney standing in front of Jason Copping the newly appointed Minister of Health during a news conference in Edmonton, September 21, 2021.
UCP members face a few big questions in deciding Kenney’s fate: How much of the problem is simply COVID presenting a unique political challenge to all conservative parties? And how much of the UCP’s problem comes from Kenney’s own blunders?
There’s no doubt COVID presents a nasty political dilemma for conservatives. Kenney himself is well aware of it. On Tuesday, he pointed out how COVID cut into Conservative Leader Erin O’Toole’s vote in the federal election. In Alberta, 7.4 per cent of voters went for the one anti-lockdown, anti-vaccine party, the People’s Party of Canada. “It was a largely a statement against public health restrictions and the vaccine program,” Kenney said, noting this group is “very angry.”
As for his own UCP, Kenney said: “It’s no secret that there are a lot of supporters of my party who don’t like public health restrictions. There are others who don’t like our very focused efforts to increase vaccination.”
But along with COVID’s tricky politics for conservatives, Kenney’s leadership has been hammered by his own mistakes and shortcomings.
I go by the “nine lives rule” when it comes to assessing leaders in highly contested arenas, from professional sports to big league politics. After a leader makes nine major mistakes — errors that many of his own supporters admit were errors or are widely perceived by a majority of the general public as errors — he or she is in big trouble.
As I see it, Kenney has used up his nine lives.
1. His government invested in the Keystone XL pipeline in April 2020, essentially making a bet that pro-pipeline U.S. president Donald Trump would be re-elected. It was a poor bet.
2. The UCP put forward a K-6 curriculum with a social studies curriculum that had sections deemed offensive by a great many Albertans. If this wasn’t bad enough, the controversy undermined the entire curriculum rewrite project, even as the new UCP curriculum will bring in excellent improvements to huge problem areas in Alberta education, K-6 teaching in math, computer sciences and reading and writing.
3. Kenney was slow to recognize how poorly having his staff and MLAs travel at Christmas played with the public, especially with that faction of his supporters who hated strict lockdown measures. They blamed Kenney for imposing restrictions and were gobsmacked that his own people would travel to places such as Hawaii and England.
4 & 5. When major COVID waves brewed up in Alberta in November and this past month, Kenney was slow both times to bring in strict measures to help slow the outbreak. Nor did he do a strong job explaining the nature of his COVID policy dilemma. Those of us who recognize the grave harms of lockdowns give credit to Kenney for mentioning them as much as any premier, but he hasn’t effectively sold that message to Albertans, many of whom still act as if there are no dire consequences to lockdown and still believe his slowness to act comes down to “ideology,” instead of this complicated balancing of harms.
6. In early June, photos were taken of Kenney and his ministers on the Sky Palace patio relaxing with drinks, and not properly social distancing. It blew up big, but mainly because Kenney was slow to apologize for a relatively minor social distancing infraction.
7. Kenney’s base firmly supports investigating the foreign funding of environmental groups, but how many of them support the years it’s taking for the Allan Inquiry to issue a report?
8. Alberta’s “Open for Summer” policy turned out to be an over-reach, but that mistake was greatly compounded by Kenney’s over-enthusiastic messaging this summer about the pandemic being over once and for all.
9. At the start of the pandemic, Kenney continued to have a cold attitude towards health-care workers over ongoing pay disputes. It was no time to engage in such fights but, again, Kenney was slow to realize it.
It’s no easy thing to hold on to the job of premier of Alberta. The previous four premiers, Ed Stelmach, Alison Redford, Jim Prentice and Rachel Notley, were all turfed before winning a first or second term.
Adding COVID to the mix increased the degree of difficulty for Kenney from a double to a quadruple jump.
The only thing that might save him? COVID ICU rates dropping fast pronto and not coming back, taking COVID off the table as a major issue.
I don’t like those odds.
And if the virus continues to roll over us, the UCP is likely to formally fracture into warring camps.
Carson Jerema: Jason Kenney was never in danger of being overthrown by the party he created
But the premier remains unpopular and the health system is still in crisis
Author of the article: Carson Jerema Publishing date:Sep 24, 2021 •
Jason Kenney greets supporters at the United Conservative Party 2019 election headquarters in Calgary on Tuesday, April 16, 2019.
PHOTO BY JIM WELLS/POSTMEDIA Article content
To call Alberta’s would-be rebels disorganized would be a compliment. The handful of MLAs who reportedly spoke against Premier Jason Kenney’s leadership at a Calgary caucus meeting on Wednesday had complaints ranging from too many COIVD restrictions, to not enough, to personal grievances, to concerns over the United Conservative Party’s electability. Yet after days of agitating for the premier to resign, they dropped their knives as soon as they drew them.
This is how it was always destined to end. Kenney bears responsibility for a crashing health-care system when his “open for good” plan backfired after a wave of unvaccinated COVID-19 patients filled the province’s already-expanded intensive care spaces. But the UCP is Kenney’s party. It isn’t that much of an exaggeration to say he willed it into existence. Who on earth would this disparate group replace him with? Who would even want the job?
After the province introduced a vaccine passport last week, the group of malcontents succeeded in leaving the impression that there was a crisis of leadership to match the crisis in Alberta’s overflowing hospitals. The push to remove Kenney was, we now know, either an exaggeration or embarrassingly haphazard. Enough MLAs supported the UCP leader at the meeting, or as the Calgary Sun’s Rick Bell put it, were “willing to kiss the premier’s ring.” An anticipated motion of non-confidence was dropped.
That proposal was brought by R.J. Sigurdson, a southern Alberta MLA who’s opposed to restrictions. The others who spoke against Kenney haven’t been publicly confirmed, but unruly MLAs haven’t exactly been quiet. Sigurdson was among 15 members who signed a letter criticizing health measures back in April. The signatories also included Angela Pitt, who advises her constituents to “do their own research” on vaccines, and Jason Stephan, one of the MLAs caught up in the travel controversy over Christmas.
Former culture minister Leela Aheer told the Calgary Herald’s Don Braid after Health Minister Tyler Shandro was shuffled to a new post Tuesday, that, “The only thing that should have happened today is that the premier says he had failed and is stepping down.” Aheer, unlike the others, has been an advocate for stronger health measures, but she may hold a grudge after being kicked out of cabinet earlier this year. Richard Gottfried, one of the few members left over from the former Progressive Conservative party, also favours more restrictions and has been complaining publicly.
Never mind Alberta, is there anyone on the planet who could satisfy this group if they succeeded in turfing Kenney? What appeared to be a caucus in turmoil seems no more than the consequence of Kenney allowing MLAs a freer hand to say what they want, which is novel in Canada, where parties tend to whip their members into compliance. MORE ON THIS TOPIC
Whatever one’s opinions of the Alberta NDP’s policies, former premier Rachel Notley’s four years in government were relatively drama free thanks to party discipline — a trait that has also made it effective in opposition. The NDP has been relentless in highlighting every COVID failure and has mobilized an army of supporters on social media. Notley always appears in control.
Even if Kenney has subdued this most recent challenge, and even if he survives a leadership review in the spring, he remains unpopular in Alberta. A Leger survey from late July had the NDP leading, with 45 per cent support among decided voters, compared to 33 per cent for the UCP. The lead holds in all areas of the province and among most age groups.
A more recent poll from Maru Public Opinion has Kenney’s approval rating at 32 per cent, the lowest among provincial premiers, and over 20 points below his rating after winning the 2019 election. Speculation abounds about whether the premier will step down on his own terms to save the party.
Alberta’s handling of the pandemic has ranged from disappointing to truly tragic. Just this week, the head of Alberta Health Services said that beds freeing up from dying patients is partly what’s keeping hospitals from overloading entirely. Restrictions were lowered or eliminated as quickly as possible and the government resisted bringing them back until it was forced to impose stricter rules than it otherwise might have. This was the case last fall, and is the case again today. Kenney has tried to govern as if there was no pandemic, bringing in an aggressive legislative agenda throughout 2020, introducing a controversial school curriculum overhaul and scheduling a referendum on equalization for later this fall.
He kept his promise to cut corporate taxes by 40 per cent, which made sense before the pandemic, IT DID NOT MAKE SENSE EVEN THEN
but has failed to attract the investment it might have under normal circumstances. The removal of restrictions over the summer seemed as much foolish optimism as an attempt to fix rifts within his party and the province.
Kenney is now losing support to the left and the right, with a newly formed independence party garnering eight per cent support, despite having almost no profile.
The premier spent years campaigning in Alberta, first winning the Progressive Conservative leadership despite much hostility from within that party, then merging it with the Wildrose and finally winning government. All the while, Kenney preached the gospel of free markets, limited government, low taxes, good jobs and personal choice. He was often angry, but he had a clear vision. He presented himself as a rebel, despite being a career politician.
The rebels that have now come for Kenney definitely lack his drive. Will the voting public prove more determined?
Don Martin: Jason Kenney's political fate is in the ICU - and failing fast
OTTAWA -- All that was missing were pitchforks and torches when the United Conservative government MLAs gathered this week to decide the fate of their dead-premier-walking.
The caucus was seething - and fearing for their political lives – as fourth-wave case counts went tsunami, forcing the province to go bended-knee to the feds to help with ICUs filled to cattle-car capacity by the ventilated and the unvaccinated.
But then came a sign you should probably never underestimate Jason Kenney.
The premier pre-empted the kill-Kenney mood in the room by offering a leadership review next year so he could build the party back from the grave. If that vote tilted against him, he pledged to quit quietly and leave the party in recovery mode for his successor.
And then sources say a strange thing happened - Kenney stayed mostly silent for about five hours as MLAs vented at his failed coronavirus containment measures, which have made Alberta’s viral spread the worst in the country.
This is not normal Kenney behaviour. He’s a lousy listener, particularly in his caucus, and reacts harshly when challenged.
But despite slipping the noose until next year, a reprieve where he will no doubt use next month’s provincial referendum on ending equalization (which will never happen) to whip up anti-Ottawa hysteria, his reign as premier is in extreme peril.
Voters dump political leaders for strange reasons; be it dithering (Paul Martin), poor House of Commons attendance (Michael Ignatieff), botched TV interviews (Stephane Dion) or simply because they’re tired of them (Stephen Harper).
But Kenney is confronting a full-throated justification for a pink slip thanks to his chronic tone-deafness during the pandemic, incredulously topped off by taking a two-week vacation in Europe this month as Albertans were dying from the consequences of his policies. He’s lurched from pathetically bribing the vacillating unvaccinated with $100 to get their shot to now unleashing his Restriction Exemption Program, which is essentially the vaccine passport he promised to never introduce. He’s shown more enthusiasm in funding a $30-million Ministry of Truth to attack those who tarnish the oil industry’s halo than he has refuting the epidemic of fake news driving vaccine hesitancy in Alberta.
And he couldn’t contain his own out-of-step ideology early in the pandemic by taking on doctors over their compensation scheme, triggering some to exit the province in its hour of greatest need.
If his leadership survives the party membership vote - a huge IF in my view - Kenney has two years to resurrect the UPC fortunes before facing the voters.
Now, lest we forget, Jason Kenney can change a lot in two years.
Kenney performed his version of Ralph Klein’s Miracle on the Prairie when he quit being an MP to claim the Alberta PC leadership, to merge that party with the Wild Rose Party, to clinch the leadership of the reunited Conservatives to winning a legislature seat to becoming premier, all of that in under three years.
But it’s now almost a given Kenney will enter the Alberta history books as a one-term blunder.
This week his negative influence was partly blamed for giving federal Liberals and the NDP a combined four-seat stake in their Alberta dead zones.
And there are concerns his raging unpopularity could contagion into Saskatchewan, Ontario and even New Brunswick if all conservative premiers are unfairly tarred as vaccine-hesitant and passport-adverse.
Jason Kenney, one of the most successful federal cabinet ministers under Stephen Harper, has become the Canadian textbook on how to do things wrong in a pandemic.
It’s been almost 30 years since Kenney’s star first started to shine as the anti-tax advocate who confronted then-premier Klein over the province’s lucrative MP pension plan.
Klein smelled a political threat from the articulate youngster, admitted it was too rich and cancelled the MP pension plan outright while asking voters to forgive him for being human.
The pugnacious Kenney, who dodges blame for his many mistakes and delivers cold shoulders better than empathy, would never consider going full reverse-thrust into such drastic change - and couldn’t successfully sell it even if he did.
That’s why the un-Klein of Alberta is in rapid decline with no Miracle on the Prairie repeat in sight. Alberta Premier Jason Kenney answers questions at a news conference where the provincial government announced new restrictions because of the surging COVID cases in the province, in Calgary, Alta., Friday, Sept. 3, 2021.
THE CANADIAN PRESS/Todd Korol
DON MARTIN CTV NATIONAL POLITICAL AFFAIRS REPORTER CAME FROM CALGARY, HE WROTE A BIOGRAPHY OF RALPH KLEIN
Braid: Tears, grief and anger over the UCP's epic COVID-19 collapse
Author of the article: Don Braid • Calgary Herald Publishing date: Sep 24, 2021
Calgary ICU staff working on patients in a crowded ICU.
PHOTO BY SUPPLIED BY AHS
Mount Royal University political scientist Duane Bratt choked up while doing an interview. Dr. Verna Yiu, the head of Alberta Health Services, looked like she was about to cry as she said deaths are keeping the ICUs below capacity.
The government is locked in animosity with doctors 17 months after unilaterally cancelling their pay agreement.
The entire health system is filled with people who see the government that claims to support them as their sworn enemy.
It’s a toxic environment that I don’t believe can ever be cleared by this government, under this premier.
The UCP has inflicted on Albertans the worst policy and political failure since conservatives were first elected in this province in 1971.
I have some personal knowledge of Alberta government bungles going back to 1978 and can confidently say that no problem — not one political, social or economic uproar — comes close to this disaster that is killing people and wrecking a health-care system.
Calgary ICU team check a screen to help intubate a patient.
PHOTO BY SUPPLIED BY AHS
The government caused the crisis through ideological rigidity, political influence on pandemic measures and the arrogant belief that men of power can simply declare COVID-19 over (“The pandemic is ending. Accept it.”) when scientists everywhere warned that it was not
The usual political scandals — ex-premier Alison Redford’s travels, for instance — can be highly emotional, but they rarely touch people’s lives at a deep level. Most of all, they don’t cost lives. Today, death, misery and primal fear of a failed health system are making grown people of genuine empathy (a quality that seems lacking in leadership) weep with sadness and anger.
It is maddening, frankly, to hear Premier Jason Kenney try to diminish this crisis by stating Alberta has done well by national standards.
There was some truth to the claim through the third wave. But now Alberta is rivalled only by Saskatchewan, distantly, in the depth of defeat by the fourth wave.
When Kenney and his cabinet committee declared the pandemic over and done, there seemed to be no thought to the consequences of being wrong — lives lost, families grieving, medical staff exhausted to the point of collapse.
Kenney even managed to tie Open for Summer to the start of Stampede. This annoyed people elsewhere in the province who thought health care was being usurped by a Calgary rodeo.
Then the politicians went on holiday. The government started transferring people from COVID-19 duties to other areas. They were stripping staff even as the virus was gathering strength in plain sight.
One UCP insider told me that when Kenney was away (very likely in Europe, although he has never confirmed that), there was no place to go for advice or direction. Ministers and staffers just froze in place or went on vacation themselves.
The top leaders are like wartime generals who send the troops home on leave, and then watch helplessly as the enemy pours across the borders.
It’s tragic. And one day this government, when it finally faces the voters, may also come to tears.
Don Braid’s column appears regularly in the Calgary Herald.
How Alberta's Jason Kenney survived a possible caucus revolt — and what's next
'The premier is still a shrewd political operator'
Author of the article:Tyler Dawson Publishing date:Sep 24, 2021 •
Premier Jason Kenney speaks at the daily COVID-19 update with Alberta's chief medical officer of health, Dr. Deena Hinshaw, on March 13, 2020.
PHOTO BY ED KAISER /Postmedia, file Article content
EDMONTON — Alberta Premier Jason Kenney, having survived the possibility of a caucus revolt, now has roughly six months to prepare for a spring leadership review that has the potential to throw the United Conservative party into chaos prior to the next election.
In recent weeks, Kenney’s position has looked increasingly tenuous, while progressive Albertans, including the Opposition New Democrats, hammer the government for its handling of the pandemic.
But with no election immediately on the horizon, the most pressing threat to Kenney’s leadership has come from within his own party. With rumours swirling that Kenney could face removal by his caucus, sources floated names to reporters about potential replacements as UCP leader and premier, such as Finance Minister Travis Toews or Ric McIver, the transportation minister, and news reports detailed unhappiness within the ranks.
Alberta is no stranger to palace coups — similar plotting plagued premiers Ralph Klein, Ed Stelmach and Alison Redford — and political circles were aflame with gossip this week that yet another was about to unfold.
For now, though, Kenney has secured a stay on his political future.
“Going into that meeting, it was unclear whether or not we would see him come out as the leader of a united caucus or whether or not there would be some kind of move to express non-confidence in the leadership, and perhaps departures from caucus, either ejections or voluntarily,” said Matt Solberg, with New West Public Affairs, who also worked on the creation of the UCP. “The fact that none of that happened, I think is a demonstration that, first off, the premier is still a shrewd political operator.”
On Wednesday, when the caucus met in Calgary and over video link from Edmonton, an expected no-confidence motion on Kenney’s leadership never materialized.
Later in the evening, a letter was sent out to the party brass: Kenney had requested a review of his leadership to take place in the spring of 2022, at the party’s annual general meeting.
In a letter obtained by the National Post, Ryan Becker, the president of the UCP, said that would be the best way for the party’s grassroots to have their say about Kenney’s leadership.
“We are all aware that recent government decisions on responding to the fourth wave of the COVID-19 pandemic have caused anger and frustration among some party members and there is a growing desire to hold a leadership review,” Becker’s letter said.
Kevin Wilson, the president of the Airdrie Cochrane constituency association, said this move “absolutely” takes some of the wind out of the sails of angry grassroots Albertans and members of the legislature.
“We’re in the fourth wave of the pandemic, it’s the worst we’ve ever seen it, do we want to change captains now? I don’t think so,” Wilson said. “The leadership review in the spring, I think, is the right move.”
For both sides — those who support Kenney, and those who do not, both inside and outside government — the leadership review “gives people a date to work towards,” Solberg said.
**
Kenney has made no secret of the fact that there are people within his caucus, and people who voted for his party, that have been angry about public-health restrictions and, more recently, the province’s vaccine passport system.
Wilson said any time the UCP does something, they’re looking at 80 per cent in favour to 20 per cent opposed within the party, and the pandemic has been no different. Nor has the internal fight over Kenney’s future.
“That 20 per cent seem to have the most noise,” Wilson said. “So what you’re hearing is ‘Yup, we want him to be removed as leader,’ but, again, that’s the 20 per cent.”
When reporters asked about his leadership, Kenney has said his focus is on the response to the COVID-19 pandemic, and not internal politics. On Tuesday, Kenney shuffled Tyler Shandro from the health portfolio, moving Jason Copping from labour into the role.
“Right now, 100 per cent of my attention and that of my team and the whole government has to be focus on a life and death crisis that we’re facing,” Kenney told reporters after the shuffle.
On Thursday, a Kenney spokesman reiterated in an email that the premier remains focused on dealing with the fourth wave, and not internal politics.
Alberta Premier Jason Kenney during a news conference regarding the surging COVID cases in the province on Sept. 15.
PHOTO BY AL CHAREST / POSTMEDIA
Within caucus, there has been a small, but noisy, contingent in opposition to pandemic restrictions. Their activities culminated in April with a letter, signed by 16 UCP MLAs, that said they did not support reintroduced restrictions in the third wave.
Roughly a month later, two UCP MLAs, Todd Loewen and Drew Barnes, were kicked out of caucus for “undermin(ing) government leadership,” according to caucus whip Mike Ellis. Loewen had called on Kenney to resign, and Barnes has been a persistent critic of the government’s public-health restrictions throughout the pandemic.
But they were far from the only UCP MLAs who desire fewer restrictions.
There are also caucus members who have criticized Kenney’s approach for being too lax. Among them are Calgary MLA Richard Gotfried and Chestermere MLA Leela Aheer. Last week, Gotfried wrote in a Facebook post that he was “deeply apologetic” for the government’s sloth in introducing fourth wave restrictions.
“Nothing was done while we lacked any leadership at the helm,” Gotfried wrote. “It will cost us lives and I am gutted by the lack of responsiveness to unequivocal advocacy and clear warning signs.”
The day before Wednesday’s caucus meeting, Aheer told the Calgary Herald that Kenney should resign. “We need leadership that cares deeply about the human beings in this province,” she said.
Gotfried declined to comment and the National Post was unable to reach Aheer.
Prior to Wednesday’s meeting, sources close to Kenney, while seemingly frustrated with the agitating, seemed fairly confident the whole affair was going to blow over — and that’s what happened.
At Wednesday’s meeting, out of the 60-member UCP caucus, only around seven spoke up against Kenney’s leadership, a source with knowledge of the meeting told the National Post.
“The cabal was small, and then they … were nowhere near as aggressive as they were building up,” the source said.
“Jason was just like, ‘Cool, you know, let’s go around the room, let’s have a conversation, like, to be quite honest, I’m not afraid of this conversation.'”
“I think he actually believes he’s got to see Alberta through COVID and there’s nothing more politically important than that,” the source said.
Around 40 MLAs spoke in favour of the premier’s continued leadership, two sources told the Post, and the premier and cabinet ministers had to stop some of them from going after detractors, one source said.
It quickly became clear, sources said, there wasn’t enough momentum in the room to unseat Kenney, with just a few bullish and isolated anti-Kenney MLAs pushing the idea that Kenney needed to go. Once everyone spoke, it became clear that a silent majority were still backing Kenney, and that going forward with such a move would just end up destabilizing the party and province.
But caucus infighting is just one side of the story.
The other: the restive grassroots membership. And that’s where the leadership review comes into play.
Samantha Steinke, president of the Central Peace-Notley constituency association, said the local groups aren’t giving up — they want the review prior to March 1, 2022. Her board, she said, asked for an immediate review, back in spring 2021, to be held at the November 2021 convention.
“I think that the premier needs to resign,” Steinke said. “I’ve supported this party from the beginning, and I know that we’re founded on great things, but I don’t think Jason Kenney’s the guy that moves this conservative movement forward.”
**
While different people have different starting points for their discontent with Kenney’s leadership, much of the recent anger stems from a June 18 announcement: “On July 1, Alberta isn’t just open for summer, but I believe we will be open for good,” said Kenney.
Obviously, that hasn’t happened.
In fact, there has been considerable backtracking on that openness, and the severity of the fourth wave led the Kenney government to break one of its firmest promises: that there would be no vaccine passport. Paul Hinman, who’s now the leader of the Wildrose Independence Party, left in July 2020. Vaccine passports may have been the “straw that broke the camel’s back,” he said.
“But the camel has been kicking and biting for a long time,” Hinman said.
Alberta Premier Jason Kenney and Minister of Health Tyler Shandro update Albertans on a new lottery to help encourage everyone to get full COVID-19 vaccinations,
June 14, 2021. PHOTO BY CHRIS SCHWARZ/GOVERNMENT OF ALBERTA
Steinke said her board was done with Kenney long before vaccine passports, but the flip-flop was still critical.
“When your premier comes out and says ‘No, there’s no way we’ll ever do that, it’s illegal, we don’t support that,’ and then all of a sudden it’s like, ‘Actually we are going to do that,’ I mean, it makes people upset and it’s just another nail in the coffin for him of things he’s gone back on and another reason people don’t trust anything he says,” said Steinke.
Some, like Loewen, had called for Kenney’s resignation prior to the announcement of vaccine passports; an April letter circulated among party members sought signatures in a call for Kenney to resign.
In the case of Brian Hildebrand, who resigned from the constituency association in Taber Warner, one of the most conservative areas of the province, this was because of the perception there had been a centralization of power and the rejection of grassroots input.
Still, said Hildebrand, for many, the passports were the last straw.
“I’ve been very amazed at how compliant the population has been, at least up to this point. People have been very patient, in a lot of ways, (but) people’s patience does have an end,” Hildebrand said. “For there to be a demand to show your barista your vaccination papers, yet the premier refuses to disclose where he went on vacation, is a bizarre inconsistency for a lot of people.”
In August, COVID-19 case counts began to rise, rapidly outpacing any other Canadian jurisdiction in their severity.
As cases and hospitalizations climbed, Kenney was on holidays. Shandro, then the health minister, hadn’t been seen since July, and Dr. Deena Hinshaw, the province’s chief medical officer of health, had given just one press appearance since July. In other words, there was the widespread perception in Alberta that the government simply wasn’t doing anything. When the leaders did actually finally return to the public eye on Sept. 3, it was as the crisis was reaching a critical point. By Sept. 22, Alberta had more than 20,000 active cases, and is adding roughly 1,500 cases per day. There are more than 1,040 people in hospital, including 230 in intensive care; over roughly the past week, Alberta has logged, on average, just shy of 14 deaths per day.
New health measures were announced on Sept. 3, including a mask mandate, and a $100 gift card for those who got their vaccinations — a policy proposal meant to encourage the vaccine hesitant, but that was perceived by some as rewarding people for not doing the right thing earlier.
Among a number of constituency associations, there have been calls for a leadership review. As it stands, said Steinke, if 22 constituency associations call for an earlier leadership review, they should get it. Meetings are ongoing this week about that question.
If the ongoing push among constituency associations to have an earlier leadership review fails, there’s plenty of time between now and the spring. The perception is that it’s still Kenney’s race to lose — if he even still wants to stay on as leader.
“There’s a safe assumption that the premier will put together a strong campaign and a strong pitch for the membership for why he should continue to lead the party and lead it into that next election,” said Solberg. “He will put every ounce of his energy into trying to secure his leadership, I think that’s just who he is, that’s what has made him incredibly successful in his career to date.”
With files from the Calgary Herald and Edmonton Journal
Alberta friends on my mind. when will @jkenney resign? he’s broken the province’s health system, caused many preventable deaths. friends consider him criminally negligent. grounds for removal. #vaccinated #WearAMask
Twitter
Jesse Hawken
jessehawken
I wonder sometimes what Jason Kenney's long game was on reopening the province for July 1...did he truly think Alberta was the only place in North America where the pandemic had been conquered? Was there really not one medical health expert to emphatically tell him he was wrong?
Jason Kenney declared over and over that Alberta was “Open For Summer” and “Open For Good.” Then, in July, it became obvious his declaration was wrong and the data was indicating a very bad fourth wave of COVD-19 was coming. 1/3 #ableg #abhealth
Twitter
Documentary 'Ghosts of Afghanistan' exposes broken hopes
The timely film, which portrays divisions in Afghan society, as well as the government's false claims, was screened at the Human Rights Film Festival Berlin.
Searching for traces of the ghosts of Afghanistan: Canadian journalist Graeme Smith in a Kandahar graveyard
The documentary Ghosts of Afghanistan, shown at the Human Rights Film Festival Berlin, follows Canadian war correspondent Graeme Smith as he returns to Afghanistan and visits various people who were involved in rebuilding the country or who can offer an insider's perspective on the social and political context.
The deep divisions in Afghanistan are particularly evident through the perspective of the different women interviewed in the film. Among them is Shaharzad Akbar, the country's top human rights investigator, who denounces abuse by both the Taliban and the government.
A particularly striking contrast is revealed through one meeting with a group of burqa-clad women in Kandahar who live in compliance with the Taliban's expectations, as opposed to another person interviewed, Farahnaz Forotan, who is one of the country's most outspoken feminists.
Her home, decorated with large Frida Kahlo self-portraits revealing her breasts, would shock many conservatives. Provocative art in an Afghan woman's office: Feminist Farahnaz Forotan is featured in "Ghosts of Afghanistan"
Hindsight revelations
Current developments in Afghanistan make the film very timely, but, as it was filmed in 2019, it provides background on the structures that allowed the Taliban to retake Afghanistan.
As Smith explained at the Berlin festival, the initial version of the film offered an ending that was hopeful about a political settlement: "We didn't expect the Taliban to make a full military takeover of the country, so it involved very-last-minute edits," he said. "We had hoped that the process in Doha could lead to a compromise between the Taliban and their enemies."
In the film, these women say they do not feel threatened by the Taliban
The hindsight provided by the documentary is particularly revealing. Director Julian Sher told DW: "A major point of our movie is that the Taliban is much, much stronger than the Afghan government or the Western armies were willing to admit." Warnings about the Taliban were dismissed
Two interviews in the film express this idea particularly well. In one scene, Rahmatullah Amiri, one of Afghanistan's most respected political analysts, warns that in 2019 the Taliban had a major part of the country "under their full control."
That statement is followed by an optimistic claim by National Security Adviser Hamdullah Mohib, who says: "We have broken the back of the Taliban." He adds: "We have a military path to victory in this conflict."
"That's not true at all," is Amiri's reaction to the information. "If the back of the Taliban could be broken, that would be from 2009 to 2014, where hundreds of thousands of international troops where there and billions of dollars were poured into the construction and nation-building and everything." Amiri goes on to correctly predict that the Taliban "haven't reached their peak yet." Broken trust
Many people were inclined to believe and put their hopes in the country's 38-year-old Western-educated national security adviser, Hamdullah Mohib, who had served as the former Afghan ambassador to the US and was seen as one of the most trusted aides of President Ashraf Ghani. They both fled the country on August 15.
National security adviser Hamdullah Mohib being interviewed by Smith in "Ghosts of Afghanistan"
Afghan journalist Khwaga Ghani, who worked as a fixer on Ghosts of Afghanistan, was among those who were deeply disappointed by Mohib, a figure she had found particularly inspiring during the filming of the documentary in 2019.
"I had a totally different perspective and idea on what he was going to do for the country. I thought he could bring changes in society, in the security situation," she told DW. "But at the end, he really broke not just my trust but everybody's trust." Leaving Afghanistan
Like many others, Khwaga Ghani was forced to leave Afghanistan after the Taliban took over. As she was also working for different media outlets, including The New York Times, NPR, Vice and National Geographic, she managed to escape Kabul with her family thanks to the intervention of her US colleagues.
It was a complicated process. After four days spent hiding at a hotel after the Taliban's takeover of Kabul, her family was escorted to the airport. Ghani said they had to spend two nights close to the runway before being admitted into a plane that was filled with more than 400 people.
Their first stop was in Qatar, where they spent seven hours stuck in the plane, waiting for the buses that would take them to the military base. "Children were fainting inside the plane, there was no oxygen," she said.
Confronting the ghosts
After a second halt at the US airbase in Ramstein, Germany, they were finally sent to the Fort McCoy base in Wisconsin, where they are still waiting. Even though Ghani has contacts in the area, she is not allowed to leave the US army installation, where they have been kept for 21 days already. They do not exactly know when they will be allowed to leave, as investigations into the different refugees have to be completed.
Ghani and her family plan to eventually go to California, where her brother is already living. She has been granted a scholarship to pursue her studies in journalism and human rights.
Like many other Afghans, she intends to confront the ghosts of Afghanistan in the future. "I hope for my country to get better, so I can go back," she said. Meanwhile, she added, "I want to learn things here that will help bring some changes in my country."
Familial Forestry in India: Caring for trees like they're family
Trees are good for both biodiversity and people, helping to guard against drought. Which is why Shyam Sunder Jyani encourages communities in Rajasthan, India to nurture them like loved ones.
Watch video05:56 India: Trees as family members
In summer, temperatures in Rajasthan — one of India's driest regions — often climb above 45 degrees Celsius (113 degrees Fahrenheit). The climatic conditions are hard on people, and the little vegetation that survives here.
Shyam Sunder Jyani is a professor of sociology, but for the last 15 years he's dedicated himself to planting trees. To guard against desertification and provide both shade and fruit, Jyani has personally funded the planting of over 2.5 million saplings.
Jyani is investing in seedlings now for the future of the land, climate and people
But putting young trees into the ground isn't enough. They need care to grow and thrive, which is why he goes village to village, teaching locals how to nurture trees that will make the landscape more hospitable for future generations.
In June, Familial Forestry, as Jyani's project is called, won the Land for Life Award from the United Nations Convention To Combat Desertification. Jyani is pleased to have his efforts recognized, but what he really wants is many more trees in Rajasthan. He even has plans to bring more fruit trees to the state's big cities.
A film by Manish Mehta and Tabea Mergenthaler
Guatemala's Fuego volcano quiets after eruption
Issued on: 25/09/2021 -
Guatemala's Fuego volcano wrapped up a 32-hour phase of strong eruption, seen in this Septempber 23, 2021 image from Alotenango
Johan ORDONEZ AFP
Guatemala City (AFP)
Guatemala's Fuego volcano on Friday has quieted after a 32-hour long eruption, authorities said Friday.
The volcano, located some 35 kilometers (22 miles) southwest of the capital Guatemala City, began spewing lava and ash high into the sky on Thursday.
No damages or injuries have been reported and Emilio Barrillas, spokesman for National Volcanology Institute, told journalists that ash eruptions eased and lava emissions stopped on Friday.
"The seismic, acoustic and field observation parameters have shown that in the last hours this (eruptive) activity has remained in a progressive decline, which translates into low effusive activity," Barrillas said.
Fuego, 3.7 kilometers (12,240 feet) high, is one of three active volcanoes in Guatemala.
Though some areas on its eastern flank saw a bit of ash fall, there were no evacuations, the official said.
The current activity is the strongest since June 2018, when Fuego unleashed a torrent of mud and ash that wiped the village of San Miguel Los Lotes from the map, said Barillas.
