Climate activists say they blockaded 15 Amazon sites in 3 countries on Black Friday, using huge bamboo structures to prevent access for trucks


An activist from the Extinction Rebellion (XR) climate change group sits on a giant wooden rocket as they block the exit to an Amazon distribution centre in Tilbury


Isobel Asher Hamilton
Fri, November 26, 2021, 

An Extinction Rebellion protester outside an Amazon warehouse in Bristol, UK.Alex Street

Extinction Rebellion blockaded 15 Amazon facilities in Europe on Friday, the activist group said.


The group said Amazon's "environmentally destructive business practices" were behind the protest.


Extinction Rebellion said it plans to keep protesting for at least 48 hours.

Climate change activism group Extinction Rebellion said it blockaded 15 Amazon sites in the UK, Germany, and the Netherlands on Black Friday.

According to a press release issued by the group, the majority of the blockades took place in the UK, with the group targeting 13 warehouses or "fulfilment centers."

The Daily Telegraph reported that Amazon's largest UK warehouse in Dunfermline, Scotland was blockaded at 4 a.m. local time by roughly 20 activists. Per The Telegraph, protesters prevented lorries from entering and leaving the site.

Photographs showed one protester outside Amazon's warehouse in the southeast England town of Tilbury wearing a big, fake head resembling Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, straddling a model rocket — evoking the billionaire's flight to space in July.

A police officer looks at a person wearing a head mask depicting Amazon founder, Jeff Bezos, as Extinction Rebellion activists block an entrance to an Amazon fulfilment centre in Tilbury, Essex, Britain, November 26, 2021.REUTERS/Henry NichollsMore

Police in Manchester said a protest in the Altrincham area of the city was preventing access to a warehouse, while West Midlands Police said officers were called to the Amazon depot in the city of Coventry, following reports that activists had blocked access to the site, the BBC reported.

Photographs also showed protesters erecting large structures out of bamboo to block access to the sites.

Activists from Extinction Rebellion block the entrance to the Amazon fulfilment centre in Coventry, preventing lorries from entering or leaving on Black Friday.

Joe Giddens/PA Images via Getty Images

In its press release, Extinction Rebellion said it intends to keep its blockades up for at least 48 hours.

A spokesperson for Extinction Rebellion told Insider at 10:20 a.m. local time that all 13 UK sites were blocked, preventing access to logistics vehicles.

When asked by Insider whether the blockades had impacted its operations, an Amazon spokesperson said: "We have a large network of sites across the UK and are working to minimise any potential disruption to customers."

Amazon has 21 fulfilment centers in the UK according to its website.

"The action is taking place on Black Friday in order to confront the exploitative and environmentally destructive business practices of one of the world's largest companies," the group said in its release.

Citing figures from Amazon's 2020 sustainability report, Extinction Rebellion said the company produces more carbon emissions than a country the size of Denmark.

Extinction Rebellion protesters outside an Amazon facility in Dartford, UK.Denise Laura Baker

An Amazon spokesperson told Insider on Friday: "At Amazon, we take our responsibilities very seriously. That includes our commitment to be net zero carbon by 2040 — 10 years ahead of the Paris Agreement — providing excellent pay and benefits in a safe and modern work environment, and supporting the tens of thousands of British small businesses who sell on our store."

"We know there is always more to do, and we'll continue to invent and invest on behalf of our employees, customers, small businesses, and communities in the UK. We're proud to have invested £32 billion [$43 billion] in the UK since 2010, creating 10,000 new permanent jobs across the country this year alone, and generating a total UK tax contribution of £1.55 billion [$2.1 billion] in 2020," they added.

Bezos announced in 2019 that Amazon aims to become carbon neutral by 2040. In January 2020 over 350 Amazon employees signed an open letter criticising the company's climate change policies — taking issue with both its 2040 deadline and its relationship with the oil and gas industry.

Extinction Rebellion isn't the only group protesting Amazon on Black Friday. Workers and activists forming a coalition of 70 trade unions and organizations including Greenpeace are expected to take action on Friday under the mantra "Make Amazon Pay."

For Amazon, Black Friday marks one of the busiest shopping days of the year and the beginning of its extremely busy holiday season, known internally as "peak."


Extinction Rebellion protesters cause Black Friday chaos at Amazon


James Titcomb
Fri, November 26, 2021

Amazon was targeted on its busiest shopping day of the year as Extinction Rebellion protesters closed off sites, leading to cancelled shifts and the prospect of late deliveries.

The environmental group blockaded 13 of Amazon’s 21 warehouses, including its largest in Dunfermline, in a series of Black Friday demonstrations.

Staff were told not to come in for the afternoon shift at a warehouse in Peterborough due to the protests. Those at another centre in Rugeley, Staffordshire, were forced to park at a local supermarket to get into work, with operations said to have ground to a halt.

Amazon, famous for its promise of one-day delivery, said it was making adjustments to limit disruption to deliveries.

The company said: “We have a large network of sites across the UK and are working to minimise any potential disruption to customers."

The demonstrations disrupted traffic in areas around the centres, and led to at least 13 arrests after protesters erected bamboo structures at the warehouses’ road entrances.

Amazon told staff: “We are currently reviewing the measures we have in place to make sure you feel secure as you start or leave your shift and to ensure your safe entry and exit from the site. For your own safety, please do not engage with the protesters or react to any provocation.”

Extinction Rebellion said it was protesting against working conditions at Amazon as well as the consumerism encouraged by Black Friday.

“The action is intended to draw attention to Amazon's exploitative and environmentally destructive business practices, disregard for workers' rights in the name of company profits, as well as the wastefulness of Black Friday," it said. The protest group also targeted sites in the US, Germany and the Netherlands.

An Amazon spokesman said: “At Amazon, we take our responsibilities very seriously. That includes our commitment to be net zero carbon by 2040 - 10 years ahead of the Paris Agreement - providing excellent pay and benefits in a safe and modern work environment, and supporting the tens of thousands of British small businesses who sell on our store.

“We know there is always more to do, and we’ll continue to invent and invest on behalf of our employees, customers, small businesses and communities in the UK.”

Amazon said last year’s shopping period from Black Friday to Cyber Monday was the biggest in its history.

Climate tipping points: The Arctic is a bellwether for irreversible change




Fri, November 26, 2021, 10:30 AM·3 min read

The warship HMS Terror lies at the bottom of the Arctic Ocean in the Northwest passage, lost in 1848 after two grueling years stuck in the Arctic ice. Rescue missions launched to recover the ship in 1851 suffered the same fate, crushed under the year-round ice that encased Northern Canada and the Arctic Ocean. But in 2016 - just 168 years later - the Victoria Strait was clear of ice, allowing the recovery of the HMS Terror and beckoning exploration of the most northern reaches of the globe.

The Arctic is iconic for maintaining year-round ice and snow, but in the last decade, it has begun to transition to wetlands and open ocean. Emblematic of this change, in July 2020, the last intact ice shelf in the Canadian Arctic fell into the sea. Since first analyzed in 1902, the Milne ice sheet already lost 43 percent of its previous mass. Canada's Ellesmere Island ice caps were also lost in the summer of 2020, as the ice deposited during the Little Ice Age (1600 to 1850) melted completely. Glacier melt, thawing permafrost and wetland expansion create a new landscape, changing ecosystems as well as altering the global atmosphere and ocean circulation.


The term "tipping point" is often applied to a moment of critical change in human history. In ecology, tipping points describe small changes that, over time, force an irreversible change. Yearly lows of sea ice and a startling increase in permafrost thaw in a warming climate signal that the tipping point has already been crossed. We have already lost the frozen Arctic.

At this critical moment of loss, we must use the Arctic tipping point as a hard lesson - as ecosystems worldwide approach tipping points.

Small tipping points expand through ecosystems

As ice and snow are lost, the warming climate makes it difficult to recover. Sea ice that is only a few months old covers gaps in the Arctic Ocean, with yearly loss of old ice greater than the annual gain. In 2019, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) reported that just 1 percent of the Arctic Ocean ice older than four years old remained. A warming atmosphere and sea prevent ice growth, leading to an ice-free Arctic Ocean.

In the summer of 2020, Arctic wildfires expanded across the tundra - driving permafrost thaw and triggering meltwater infiltration. In the permafrost, water from small thaw areas expand laterally, warming the surrounding permafrost ice. Gradually, disconnected thaw expands across a large area, abruptly transforming frozen ecosystems to wetlands. In pockets of permafrost and ice melt, vegetation grows at unprecedented rates. Once permafrost thaws, ongoing atmospheric warming makes a return to stable permafrost impossible.

The rapidity of Arctic change has surprised researchers and the public alike. Until recently, climate change models failed to identify that the combination of fire, ice loss, and land clearing would force tipping point thresholds. In many cases, these small-scale, discrete events expand across the landscape to create enduring change.

A bellwether for future change

After the hottest summer on record, its clear climate change has already transformed the Arctic - a bellwether for irreparable climate change. Our fragile Arctic must be the first and last system to cross a permanent tipping point.

Around the world, ecosystem tipping points loom as wildfire, human land use and biodiversity loss exponentially increase and magnify climate impacts. Expanding ocean dead zones, coral reef bleaching and rainforest loss are emblematic of system collapses - and are slowly combining to create global tipping points. There is very little time to alter the trajectory of Earth's ecosystems, halting climate-driven collapse. To protect the Earth's incredible diversity and stability, we must acknowledge that climate change is already permanently changing the planet - and we have little time to change course.

Kimberley R. Miner, Ph.D., is a Climate Change Institute research assistant professor at the University of Maine. She works on the Arctic Methane Project looking at the impacts of climate change in the Arctic. Miner's opinions are her own and do not reflect those of the University of Maine.

Protesters break into Lebanese ministry as crisis deepens

 Children search for valuables in the garbage next to a market in Beirut, Lebanon, Monday, April 12, 2021. Lebanon's severe economic crisis that threw much of the population into poverty is dramatically affecting children leaving some go to bed hungry, lack good medial care and drop out of school to help their families, UNICEF, the U.N. children's agency said Tuesday, Nov. 23, 2021. (AP Photo/Hassan Ammar, File)


BEIRUT (AP) — A small group of protesters broke into a ministry building in Beirut early on Friday and removed a photo of the president from one of its main rooms, as the Lebanese pound hit a new low amid a worsening economic and political stalemate.

The protesters who entered the Ministry of Social Affairs said conditions in crisis-hit Lebanon have become unbearable as a result of the rapid economic collapse and ongoing crash of the pound, which reached 25,100 to the dollar. The previous record was 25,000.

Prices have been skyrocketing in recent weeks as the government lifted subsidies on fuel and some medicines, making them out of reach for many in Lebanon. Some three quarters of the population of 6 million, including a million Syrian refugees, now live in poverty. The minimum monthly wage is now worth about $27.

Protesters have blamed the ministry for sluggishness in issuing ration cards that are supposed to give poor families monthly financial aid.

The protesters broke into the meeting room at the ministry and turned a framed picture of President Michel Aoun upside down before removing it. They replaced it with a banner in Arabic that read “revolutionaries of October 17.”

The protesters were referring to the start of nationwide protests in October 2019 against the country’s ruling class. They are blamed for decades of corruption and mismanagement that threw the small nation into the worst economic and financial crisis in its modern history.

“Those who usurped public money cannot conduct reforms,” shouted one of the protesters before leaving the building following police intervention. “We have hit rock bottom. Things cannot get worse.”

The crisis has been made worse by the coronavirus and the August 2020 explosion in Beirut’s port that killed 216 people, injured more than 6,000 and destroyed parts of the capital.

The Cabinet, formed in September after a 13-month vacuum, has not met in more than six weeks amid deep divisions between rival groups over the judge leading the investigation into the port blast. Comments by a government minister that triggered a diplomatic row with oil-rich Gulf Arab nations have added to the acrimony.

In other parts of the country, protesters placed posters that read “the mafia that destroyed the Lebanese pound” outside some branches of local banks, the state-run National News Agency said.

For the past two years, local lenders have imposed informal capital controls that prevent many people from accessing their savings.

Opinion: Time to ban cosmetic pesticides in Edmonton

Raquel Feroe , Jane McArthur , Rod Olstad 

“Pesticides are approved by Health Canada so they’re safe.” If only that were true. Instead, this is a commonly held myth and one that it is time to leave behind.

© Provided by Edmonton Journal Dandelions bloom and go to seed in a park along Strathearn Crescent in Edmonton, on Friday, June 4, 2021.

As explained on the Pesticide Free Edmonton website , the reality is that approval from Health Canada does not mean that a pesticide is “safe.” The decision is instead based on “acceptable risk.” The framework is premised on risk-management options, with legal and practical considerations taken into account. The framework and review process has at times undermined health concerns.


Health Canada’s Pest Management Regulatory Agency was the subject of a scathing audit in 2016. As The Globe and Mail reported , the agency “allowed pesticides that it deemed as posing unacceptable risks to humans and the environment” to be used for several years. Hopefully, the review of the Pest Control Products Act promised by the new federal government will address the shortcomings of past practice.

In the meantime, Pesticide Free Edmonton recognizes room for change within municipal jurisdiction over pesticides. For this reason, we are advocating for a cosmetic pesticide ban. A cosmetic pesticide ban means protection from non-essential use of pesticides (including herbicides, fungicides and other biocides).

Polls show that people across the political spectrum support these bans. People understand that eliminating unnecessary use of toxic chemicals means better health and environmental protection for their families, pets, and green spaces. Our campaign is supported by hundreds of individuals and endorsed by over a dozen health and environmental not-for-profit organizations.

Many cities across Canada have already banned the cosmetic use of pesticides because we simply do not need these chemicals. Vancouver, Toronto, and Montreal (and indeed the entire provinces of Ontario and Quebec) have cosmetic bans, and one cannot say that these cities are overgrown with “weeds.” By any measure, Vancouver has beautiful parks and gardens, and at the same time, it is protecting biodiversity and public health.

In some cases, cities have had pesticide bans for over 20 years — meaning Edmonton is over two decades behind. And now, as we grapple with health and ecological crises, eliminating unnecessary exposure to toxic chemicals is more important than ever.

Clear best practices exist to protect people and the environment from pesticides. A cosmetic pesticide ban is that best practice. Children must be safe walking to school and playing in neighbourhood yards and city parks. Bees and birds must be protected from further extinctions, and biodiversity, in general, must be protected to prevent the collapse of ecological and food systems. People must be free to open their windows without worrying about toxic chemicals drifting from a sprayed lawn.

A ban will leave people with safer, more effective yard and park management tools and help keep us all healthy. That’s why we are asking you to join us in our call on the City of Edmonton to:
Enact a bylaw to ban the cosmetic use of pesticides;
Allow exemptions from the ban only for public health purposes;
Provide proactive public education about the ban, informing city employees, councillors, and the public of the suspected link of several pesticides used for cosmetic purposes to cancer and other serious illnesses, the increased risk for children, the toxicity of pesticides to pollinators and other insects, birds and other wildlife, and critical soil organisms, and the importance of biodiversity;
Provide the public with a list of least toxic pesticide alternatives, including alternative lawn and garden management practices;
Lead by example, decreasing mowing and planting hardy native species.

For illness prevention, health protection and a beautiful community, it’s time to suspend myths that keep us in the practice of using toxic chemicals with harms that far outweigh the benefits. That means it’s time for a cosmetic pesticide ban in Edmonton.

For more information, see https://edmontoncouncilofcanadians.ca/pesticide-free-edmonton/ .

Dr. Raquel Feroe is a retired medical specialist in internal medicine.

Jane McArthur, Ph.D. is toxics campaign director with Canadian Association Physicians for the Environment (CAPE).

Rod Olstad is co-chair of the Edmonton Chapter of the Council of Canadians.

CUTTING OFF NOSE TO SPITE FACE

Canadian regulator rejects Enbridge plan to sell oil pipeline space under contract

By Rod Nickel 

WINNIPEG, Manitoba (Reuters) - The Canada Energy Regulator on Friday rejected Enbridge Inc's plan to sell nearly all space on its Mainline oil pipeline under long-term contracts, rather than rationing it on a monthly basis.

The regulator (CER) said in a written ruling that the change would have dramatically changed how shippers gain access to the 70-year-old Mainline, benefiting some with contracts while hurting others who lack them.

"Overall, Western Canadian oil producers could suffer too many negative consequences," the CER said.

A new proposed framework for setting tolls to move oil would also "excessively favor" those with contracts, the regulator said.

Enbridge planned to sell 90% of space under long-term contracts on the 3 million barrel per day Mainline, Canada's longest oil pipeline system, which moves oil from Western Canada to refineries in Eastern Canada and the U.S. Midwest.

Enbridge applied for the change in 2019 when demand for the Mainline greatly exceeded its capacity. That congestion has since eased.

Enbridge did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

A party can appeal the decision to the Federal Court of Appeal within 30 days, if it demonstrates that the CER erred, said CER spokesperson Ruth Anne Beck.

Fourteen shippers, representing 75% of the Mainline's volume and primarily companies with refineries, expressed support for Enbridge, including Canadian producers Cenovus Energy and Imperial Oil. U.S. refiners BP Plc and Marathon Oil Corp were also Enbridge's supporters.

Canada's biggest oil producer, Canadian Natural Resources Ltd, was among the plan's opponents.

Contracts would have allowed Enbridge to secure more of Western Canada's long-term oil production even as rival Trans Mountain completes its mostly contracted pipeline expansion late next year. TC Energy Corp cancelled its Keystone XL project this year, freeing up more potential shipper demand for the Mainline.

The current toll system will remain in place on an interim basis.

(Reporting by Rod Nickel in Winnipeg and Ismail Shakil in Bengaluru; Editing by Matthew Lewis)

‘I stand with the Wet’suwet’en and all the Indigenous land and water protectors’


A longtime Indigenous rights activist wants Wet’suwet’en land and water defenders to know they’re “not alone,” that their power is “in the Spirit,” and that it’s time for Canadians to start “upholding their share of democracy.”


Ellen Gabriel is a Onkwehón:we rights activist from the Kanienkehaka (Mohawk) community of Kanesatake. She lived on the front lines of her people’s resistance to the construction of a golf course and townhouses on Kanienkehaka lands in 1990. The 78-day standoff became known as “the resistance at Kanesatake,” also known as ‘The Oka Crisis’ as images of Mohawk and First Nation warriors facing off against the Canadian military became memorialized in the country.

Gabriel, who has continued her activism over the last three decades, was the spokesperson for her community at the time. She lived through the brutalization and criminalization of her people at the hands of state-sanctioned police and military officers, patterns she sees repeated in Wet’suwet’en territory today, she tells IndigiNews.

Wet’suwet’en land and water defenders and supporters have been blocking access to Coastal Gaslink project sites and work camps as part of the latest in an ongoing conflict between members of the nation and the company that has spanned over a decade.

The construction would be devastating to Wet’suwet’en homelands and waters and any green lights given on behalf of the nation were signed outside of traditional governance practices by elected officials whose authority comes from the disputed Indian Act and holds no authority off of the reservation, defenders say.

Members of the nation served Coastal Gaslink — a subsidiary of Calgary-based energy company TransCanada which is attempting to build a 670-kilometre natural gas pipeline through Wet’suwet’en land — with a notice of eviction on Nov. 14, “but of the estimated 500 individuals housed at Coastal GasLink’s two remote work camps, only a handful left,” according to reporting by the Narwhal.

Days later, RCMP officers began arresting defenders and supporters, enforcing an injunction obtained by the company. Community members — including hereditary chiefs, matriarchs and clan spokespeople — and journalists have since been arrested as heavily armed RCMP officers continue to enforce the disputed injunction.

Defenders continue to demand that they are the only authority over their traditional territories, through a governance system that was recognized and upheld in the Supreme Court of Canada ‘Delgamuukw v. British Columbia.’

Indigenous supporters, including Mohawk land defenders, have joined those on the front lines protecting the yintah (Wet’suwet’en traditional territory), as solidarity marches take place across the country.

IndigiNews spoke with Gabriel about recent events. Here’s what she had to say:

Gilpin: What have you been seeing and thinking about the ongoing resistance in Wet’suwet’en territory?

Gabriel: I see police brutality. I see the unnecessary use of force. It's really indicative that Canada has not changed since its inception and since its monarchs decided to brutalize Indigenous Peoples. Nothing has changed in the century since contact. We’re forced into their courts with their laws and their criteria. And even if we have a small win, it's really never implemented.

I think that what’s going on is the same thing that was going on 500 years ago, which is you have mercenaries that work on behalf of the corporations to make the rich richer, Indigenous Peoples are disposable and there is no political will to actually view us and view our rights as human rights. I think that it's just deplorable.

I stand with the Wet’suwet’en and all the Indigenous land and water protectors, no matter where they are on Turtle Island. I think we have not really progressed. I think the people themselves, like the Canadian people themselves may have changed, but their government, this colonial relationship that we have, it really has not changed. They've just been able to find some of our own people to continue oppressing their own. It’s divide and conquer. Canada cares more about its reputation than doing the right thing.

Gilpin: What do you think needs to happen now?

Gabriel: I think that the police should be charged with a crime against humanity for doing the dirty work of Coastal Gaslink and the government of Canada and B.C. It's really horrible that no matter what we do, in very peaceful measures, they still push us to the brink where we have to defend ourselves. And I think that's inexcusable in this day and age.

What we really need to do is start getting Canadians to get up off their hands and work alongside us. Because the word reconciliation is a shallow word right now. It's very hollow, frankly, because there is no reconciliation right now. It doesn't matter how many times Justin Trudeau, Marc Miller, or Carolyn Bennett, cries it — reconciliation is not happening, because reconciliation goes far beyond just monetary compensation for the genocide that was inflicted upon and is still being inflicted upon Indigenous Peoples.

We want our land back so that we can restore and revitalize our languages, our cultures, our songs, because we are people of the land and that’s what's important and we're still fighting for our land. We cannot fight the bullets and the tanks and these paramilitary forces that do the bidding of corporations.

We need to tell Canada that they promised something and again, they broke it. And then we tell that to the world, because one of the things that I learned in 1990 was that the government is more concerned about its reputation than actually doing the right thing.

Gilpin: You have voiced your support for the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP) as a tool for upholding Indigenous Peoples’ human and inherent rights. How would this international declaration come into use in the situation taking place in Wet’suwet’en territory and what other tools do you see as necessary in this time?

Gabriel: I think any tool that we can use against the colonial powers is a tool that we should be using. It's just words on paper. You can't just say, well, you have to respect it. We have to show that our Indigenous laws compliment these new laws. Indigenous people worked on this.

But I don't think it's the solution. I think there are other solutions that are there. And, you know, if we continually have to make those human rights complaints and continually have to demonstrate to the world that Canada is an authoritarian government, then those are the tools that we need to use. But I think that the strongest tool we have is our own mind and being able to process what's going on, and express it to the people who don't know what we're feeling and the suffering that we're going through.

We’re always crying out for unity. I think the people who are on the front lines are the ones who are unified. As our Elders say, it’s not about power, it's about upholding obligations to our own Indigenous laws. The UN declaration — that's for the state to really uphold and for us to use and to remind them that they have promised in their own way, when they respected and legislated it, that they have obligations and that they should take that seriously.

It's a repetition of things that we saw here. For us, our whole community was surrounded and as was Kahnawake. They learned how to continue to brutalize us. They were not interested in lessons learned, they were interested in how to continue to oppress us, which is what they're doing.

It's about them getting away again with a genocidal act and there seems to be no solution within the laws and politician’s will, so it's really up to the ordinary citizen. You claim to live in a democracy, you claim you want reconciliation, well this is what you have to do. It should not be shouldered alone by Indigenous Peoples, because the government doesn't care about us.

Gilpin: Climate change is an undeniable fact, and one you recently tweeted about saying, “It’s odd that people cry about the effects of the climate crisis, but do not draw the conclusion that Indigenous Peoples have been warning about this for decades.” Can you expand on that?

Gabriel: Well, you know, it's interesting, because all the Elders, the people whose shoulders we stand on as activists ... they were not listened to when they warned about things. They said that you can't treat the earth like this and expect no consequences.

People continually think that it's up to states like the government of Canada to stop greenhouse gases. To not support Indigenous Peoples who have been fighting for the protection of the lands and the waters is hypocritical. They can't make that connection and realize that what we've been doing is not just for our benefit.

Gilpin: What else would you like to share?

Gabriel: My final words are to the Wet'suwet'en water and land defenders: You're not alone. We felt alone during the first few weeks of the crisis and for most of it. We had lots of people praying and doing ceremony for us. And I think that they just need to know that people are there for them, doing those ceremonies and burning tobacco and thinking of them, that they are not alone and that their strength is in the Spirit.

The Spirit of our ancestors is watching us, watching over us, to protect us. And I think that's what they need to know — that they are loved and that people care about them. Editor's note: On Nov. 26, we issued two corrections to this story. We changed "images of Indigenous warriors facing off with heavily armed RCMP officers" to "images of Mohawk and First Nation warriors facing off against the Canadian military." We also removed the statement that "youth" were among those arrested because IndigiNews was not able to confirm that the person we assumed was a youth self-identifies as such.

Emilee Gilpin, Local Journalism Initiative Reporter, The Discourse

Vying with vultures: Widespread poverty has some Hondurans living off rubbish



Marlon Escoto has spent 45 years picking through rubbish at a municipal dump in Honduras to try to find things to sell and earn a living 

(AFP/Luis ACOSTA)More

Moises AVILA
Fri, November 26, 2021, 

Marlon Escoto has been rummaging through rubbish since he was 14, trying to chase off vultures while picking out pieces of plastic and fragments of metal to sell.

Ravaged by drug trafficking, violent gangs, corruption, political instability and hurricanes, Honduras sees more than half its 10 million people -- 59 percent -- scraping by in poverty.

"I look after my children from here... from the rubbish," Escoto, 59, told AFP as he stood in a sprawling dump on a hill overlooking the capital city Tegucigalpa.

He will not be leaving it anytime soon.

Escoto's wife is in hospital and he needs to pay for her treatment. But he says his earnings from scavenging barely put food on the table.

On this particular day Escoto is one of perhaps 100 people picking through the mountains of garbage at the municipal dump.

Honduras will hold presidential elections on Sunday, and Escoto does not know who to vote for.

Left-wing candidate Xiomara Castro, a former first lady who leads in several opinion polls, will be trying to break the decades-long, alternating grip on power of the ruling National Party and the Liberal Party.

"Everyone has the right to vote because we're citizens," Escoto said. "But none of the parties have helped me. I paid for everything in my house."

Handouts, though, are common in Honduras, and they seem to spike as elections near.

A month ago, the government started distributing vouchers worth 7,000 lempiras -- about $290 -- per family to alleviate poverty. The minimum wage is around $400 a month, although most people work in the underground, off the books economy.

Queues of people formed to receive their vouchers as the opposition accused the government of buying votes.

"We have to see what the effects of the money dance will be," said Eugenio Sosa, an analyst and professor at the National University.

Liberal Party candidate Yani Rosenthal has also promised vouchers -- worth $60 a month to each adult -- if elected, without saying how he would fund it.

"Here we collect plastic bottles, cardboard, glass bottles, paper," said Marco Antonio Cruz, 69, another recycler working at the dump. "They haven't given us much, just enough for a plate of food."

Magdalena Cerritos, 72, and her four children all work at the municipal dump close to Honduras's capital, but she holds no grudges against the governing party (AFP/Luis ACOSTA)

- 'Vultures circle above' -

As soon as the sun rises, trucks turn up at the dump -- known locally as the "crematorium" -- to unload more mountains of rubbish.

Vultures circle above before swooping down to compete with humans for scraps of food.

The recyclers have municipal permits to scavenge. Some even consider their permit a gift from the mayor, Nasry Asfura, the presidential candidate for the ruling National Party.

Many work alone, others as part of a cooperative.

The stench stings nostrils and seeps into clothing.

An aerial shot of people looking through rubbish for pieces of plastic or metal to sell at a municipal dump on the outskirts of Tegucigalpa (AFP/Luis ACOSTA)

Recyclers pick animal entrails off plastic bottles with no sign of disgust. They joke that even Covid-19 would not enter the dump.

The pandemic was largely responsible for pushing unemployment here from 5.7 percent in 2019 to 10.9 percent in 2020, according to a study by the Autonomous University.

"I brought up my children here," said Magdalena Cerritos, 72. "I have four children that work here," since there is "no work" elsewhere.

Even after 40 years picking through rubbish at the "crematorium," Cerritos, ever hopeful, plans to stick with National Party candidate Asfura, whose nickname is Papi a la Orden (Papi at your service).

"I'm a Nationalist, and I'll go for Papi," she said. "I think Papi could do well."

mav/bc/bbk/dw

Hondurans weary of corruption look for change in election

By MARLON GONZÁLEZ and CHRISTOPHER SHERMAN

1 of 7

Free Party presidential candidate Xiomara Castro acknowledges supporters accompanied by her running mate Salvador Nasralla, right, during a closing campaign rally, in San Pedro Sula, Honduras, Saturday, Nov. 20, 2021. Honduras will hold presidential election on Nov. 28. (AP Photo/Delmer Martinez)

TEGUCIGALPA, Honduras (AP) — For many Hondurans, Sunday’s election will be about stripping power from a party whose successive administrations are widely seen as having deepened corruption and driven tens of thousands to flee the country, many toward the United States.

Expelling President Juan Orlando Hernández’s National Party after 12 years is more important to them than who takes power when it’s gone. The animosity toward Hernández is such that for several years, migrants walking out of Honduras have chanted “Get out J.O.H.!” referring to his initials.

Complaints against Hernández and his party are multiple. An already difficult life has gotten even harder for many. Honduras was hit by two devastating hurricanes in 2020. The pandemic raised unemployment to 10.9% last year, according to the National Statistics Institute. The economy shrank by 9%, according to the World Bank. And street gangs rule swaths of territory through terror.

Hernández has also become a national embarrassment. U.S. federal prosecutors in New York have accused him of running a narco state and fueling his own political rise with drug money. Hernández has denied it all and has not been formally charged, but that could change once he leaves office.

And many believe Hernández isn’t legitimately their president. A friendly court sidestepped the constitutional ban on reelection and Hernández won a 2017 contest filled with irregularities that nonetheless was quickly recognized by the Trump administration.

So the National Party’s candidate in Sunday’s election, Tegucigalpa Mayor Nasry Asfura, has faced significant headwinds as Hernández’s chosen successor.

Honduran prosecutors also accuse him of diverting more than $1 million in public funds to personal use, but the Supreme Court has put the case on hold until a sort comptroller court investigates.

Try as he might, Asfura hasn’t been able to shake Hernández’s stigma. At a recent rally in Tegucigalpa, Asfura pleaded, “I am different.”

The National Party’s strength is its ability to distribute benefits and mobilize voters, including some 200,000 government employees, and Asfura is still in the race. Whichever of the 14 candidates gets the most votes Sunday wins; there is no runoff.

Polls give Xiomara Castro the best chance of beating Asfura. This is Castro’s third try. She lost to Hernández in his first run and then dropped out in 2017 when she joined the coalition backing television personality Salvador Nasralla, who this year dropped out to back her.

The 62-year-old candidate of the leftist Liberty and Refoundation party is the wife of former President Jose Manuel Zelaya, who had aggravated both the U.S. and Honduran establishments by building close ties with Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez. He was ousted by the military in a coup in 2009. Officials justified his ouster by alleging he planned to violate the same constitutional ban on reelection that Hernández later ignored.

He too has faced corruption allegations. When a Honduran drug trafficker was sentenced to life in prison in the United States in 2019, U.S. Attorney Geoffrey S. Berman said he had paid millions in bribes to government officials, including $2 million to Zelaya, an accusation Zelaya denied.

Castro’s campaign has focused on the need to remove the existing power structure, and tying Asfura to Hernández at every opportunity.

“They call Honduras a narco state because of this mafia that governs us and because of which they also say we’re the most corrupt country in Latin America,” Castro said at a recent campaign event. “This is the moment to say enough of the misery, the poverty and the exclusion that our country experiences now.”

For years, the U.S. relationship with Honduras has been governed by Honduras’ willingness to cooperate in the war on drugs as a key transshipment point for cocaine headed north and in helping to stem migration?. But U.S. prosecutors have shown that while the government was assisting in interdiction, its politicians were benefitting from drug proceeds and helping protect other shipments, most notably in the case of former lawmaker Juan Antonio “Tony” Hernández, the president’s brother, who was sentenced to life in prison in the United States.

The Biden administration has continued to struggle with Central American migrants arriving at the Southwest border, many of them from Honduras. Vice President Kamala Harris has said corruption in the region as one of the key problems driving that movement.

According to the Vanderbilt University’s Americas’ Barometer Pulse of Democracy 2021 report released this month, more than half of the those polled in the nation of 9.3 million expressed a desire to live or work abroad — 30 percentage points higher than in 2004.

In addition to president, Hondurans will elect a new congress and their representatives for the Central American Parliament.

Luis Vásquez, a 43-year-old systems technician in Tegucigalpa, said he was underwhelmed by all of the candidates.

“There isn’t an option of proposals that we can trust; it’s just more of the same,” he said. But he was sure his vote would not go to the National Party, “because of the high level of corruption it has shown.”

__

Sherman reported from Mexico City.

'Human zoos' were vectors for racism, a Belgian exhibition shows


'Human zoos' were vectors for racism, a Belgian exhibition showsPlaster heads from 1911 moulded from "real Congolese" for the musuem's "Human Zoo"" exhibit showing how racist stereotypes were propagated (AFP/Kenzo TRIBOUILLARD)More

Matthieu DEMEESTERE
Fri, November 26, 2021

In the late 19th to early 20th centuries, recreated African villages were set up across Europe as amusement parks that served to extol the supposed cultural superiority of colonising empires.

They were also powerful vectors for racist stereotyping, as a Belgian museum show under way illustrates.

"Human Zoo: The age of colonial exhibitions" at the Africa Museum outside Brussels until March next year has resonance, because its buildings are on the site where Belgium's King Leopold II in 1897 reconstructed three "Congolese villages" on royal grounds.

At the time, the Belgian Congo -- today the Democratic Republic of Congo -- was Leopold's private property and 267 men and women were taken from it by force to be put on show in Brussels' World Fair, made to sit in front of the dwellings. Seven of them died, from cold or sickness.

That episode features in the museum's exhibition, which displays 500 items and documents showing what indigenous peoples suffered under various colonial powers.

The old ethnographic displays were designed to "show the other as primitive" and to "manufacture the 'savage'" to "reinforce the superiority of whites," the organisers explained.

Measurements of skulls -- craniometry -- were used to support theories of "inferior races".

The curators of the show estimate that the "industry" of putting human beings on display lured in around 1.5 billion people between the 16th century and 1960 to gawk.

- 'Freak show' roots -

The reconstructed villages and the human "specimens" displayed in them owed part of their existence to "freak shows" where individuals with physical abnormalities -- gigantism, dwarfism, or women with beards among others -- were presented as spectacle by circus owner P.T. Barnum among others.

In Europe, the "human zoos" reached their peak popularity from the 1880s after new colonial conquests. Imported exotic decors gave a curious public the impression of visiting real African villages.

While Germany and France had already hosted their own "villages", Belgium got its first in 1885, near Antwerp, with 12 Africans.

Twelve years later their number grew 20 times bigger, and the colonial section of the World Fair in Brussels' satellite town of Tervuren attracted a million visitors.

Over and over again, "the same message was repeated thousands of times, and the public ended up truly thinking that the African was a cannibal, inferior, dirty, lazy," one of the curators, Maarten Couttenier, told AFP.

"And these stereotypes still exist today -- proof that the colonial propaganda worked."

In the final part of the exhibition, the issue of how this racist denigration persists in everyday language challenges visitors with cliched phrases written in big letters on a white wall.

"I love black people!" -- "Oh, you did better than I expected" -- "The apartment's already rented".

For Salome Ysebaert, who conceptualised the museum's exhibition, such comments appear inoffensive and banal, but in reality are "microaggressions" revealing that racism is still lurking in minds, more than 60 years after the last "human zoo" in Brussels closed, in 1958.

mad/rmb/

Bank of England museum to host slavery exhibition

Louis Ashworth
Thu, November 25, 2021

The portraits of Sir James Bateman (L), Sir Robert Clayton (C) and Sir Gilbert Heathcote (R) were quietly removed from public view over summer - Bank of England

The Bank of England’s museum will host an exhibition about slavery, Andrew Bailey said, as he rejected suggestions that the central bank had “gone ‘woke’”.

The display at the Bank’s Threadneedle Street headquarters will include portraits of former governors and directors linked to the slave trade that were taken down during the summer, the Governor said.

The museum has been closed since Covid struck but is set to reopen soon.

“We’re actually going to open up with an exhibition, a display in the museum, on the history of slavery,” Mr Bailey told students at the Cambridge Union.

He added: “Quite a bit of the material that we’ve moved is going to reappear in the public part [of the Bank].”

The Bank said in August it had removed oil paintings and busts of seven former leading figures at Threadneedle Street after establishing their links to the transatlantic slave trade.

Mr Bailey said the Bank of England had no direct links to the slave trade, but added: “Clearly some of my predecessors were involved in it.”

Explaining the decision to remove the portraits, he said: “If you’re a member of staff in the Bank of England from an ethnic background … should you be required to sit in a room looking at a painting of somebody who owned slaves?

“Honestly, we can debate this at great length. I think it’s better to do it in the public part of the Bank where we can explain it.”

Mr Bailey added: “It’s not because as some of the newspapers say we’ve sort of gone ‘woke’, whatever that word actually means. Let's not make people sit in rooms and feel difficult because they're looking at these images.”

A report commissioned by the Bank and released in July found that ethic minority workers faced “material disparities” at Threadneedle Street and were being held back by unconscious bias and microaggressions.

At the same talk on Thursday, Mr Bailey also warned that El Salvador’s decision to recognise Bitcoin as legal tender was worrying and risked harming its citizens.

“It concerns me that a country would choose it as its national currency,” he said.

“What would worry me most of all is, do the citizens of El Salvador understand the nature and volatility of the currency they have?”

Mr Bailey’s comments come after the central American nation announced plans for a $1 billion bond issuance, with the funds raised to be split between buying the cryptocurrency and building a new city near an active volcano.

The International Monetary Fund warned earlier this week that El Salvador should not use Bitcoin due to the instability of its price. The world’s biggest digital coin is known for its wild price fluctuations, having swung from under $20,000 to almost $70,000 in the past year.

Led by its president Nayib Bukele, an outspoken supporter of Bitcoin, El Salvador officially adopted the cryptocurrency as legal tender in early September, meaning it must be accepted as payment for goods and services.

However, the move has been plagued by problems with El Salvadorans reporting issues with the government’s bitcoin “wallet”.

Mr Bailey also offered a sceptical assessment of economic developments in Turkey, where the lira has plunged as its president Recep Tayyip Erdogan fiddles the dials of monetary policy.

“As far as I can tell, it's a policy stance, which says the best way to tackle inflation is to cut interest rates,” he said. “And that's an unusual combination… I don't comment on other people's policies much. But I’ll just say it's an unusual combination in economics, certainly.”

USA

Who bought firearms during 2020 purchasing surge?

by Rutgers University

Credit: Pixabay/CC0 Public Domain

A new Rutgers study has found that people who bought firearms during the COVID-19 pandemic and national surge in firearm sales tend to be more sensitive to threats and have less emotional and impulse control than firearm owners who did not make a purchase during this time

In the study, which was published in the journal Science and Social Medicine, the researchers surveyed 3,500 adults in the United States, 32 percent of whom owned a firearm. While firearm owners in general still reported less emotional control and impulse control than those who did not own firearms, they were less sensitive to threats and fear.

"We focused on those who purchased firearms during a time of substantial stress with the COVID-19 pandemic, a contentious election and a large racial justice movement following the death of George Floyd," said co-author Taylor R. Rodriguez, a member of the New Jersey Gun Violence Research Center, based at Rutgers. "People who are sensitive to threats such as these and who have difficulties with impulse control are buying firearms at a greater rate during this unprecedented time."

The study also indicates that those who plan to purchase firearms in the next year are also prone to poor impulse and emotional control, which may drive decisions like firearm purchasing.

"Even though we know that firearm access increases the risk for a host of dangerous outcomes, it may be that purchasing firearms provided these individuals with a sense of safety and control," Rodriguez said.

The Rutgers research highlights the need to examine the personality traits of those who purchase firearms in order to get a better understanding of these surges in firearm sales.

"We are living through stressful, uncertain times, and individuals who tend to be on the lookout for threats and who make rash decisions may be coping with that by purchasing firearms," says co-author Joye C. Anestis, an associate professor at Rutgers School of Public Health. "Research on firearm ownership has historically overlooked personality as a factor in understanding who purchases firearms and why. Our findings highlight the need to change that practice.People who purchased guns during buying surge more likely to have suicidal thoughts

More information: Joye C. Anestis et al, Dispositional characteristics in firearm ownership and purchasing behavior during the 2020 purchasing surge, Social Science & Medicine (2021). DOI: 10.1016/j.socscimed.2021.114408

Journal information: Social Science & Medicine 

Provided by Rutgers University 

Gun violence soared during the COVID-19 pandemic, but the reasons are complex

by Paddy Ssentongo, Jennifer McCall-Hosenfeld, The Conversation

Credit: Pixabay/CC0 Public Domain

In a new study, we found that the overall U.S. gun violence rate rose by 30% during the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic compared to the year before. In 28 states, the rates were substantially higher between March 1, 2020, and March 31, 2021, compared to the pre-pandemic period from Feb. 1, 2019, through Feb. 29, 2020. There were 51,063 incidents of gun violence events resulting in injury or death in the United States in the first 13 months of the pandemic compared to 38,919 incidents in the same time span pre-pandemic.

Early in the pandemic, gun sales in the United States surged, with more than 20% of these purchases by first-time buyers. And access to firearms is a well-established risk factor for gun-related suicide and homicide. This sharp increase in firearm purchases raises serious concerns, since the combination of increased stress, social disruption and isolation during the pandemic created a perfect storm of conditions that could contribute to increased gun violence.

These trends were also concerning since the increased rates of gun violence could strain the health care infrastructure that was overtaxed due to an unprecedented influx of COVID-19 patients.

We are a team of scientists and physicians with expertise in preventive health care and modeling diseases of public health concern.

How pandemic conditions played a role

The pandemic has been associated with psychological distress due to increased isolation, increased rates of domestic violence, a disruption of social networks and unemployment. But much more research is needed to get a clear picture of how all of these variables may have contributed to overall gun violence.

We used a publicly available database of gun violence events and divided those events by the number of people living in each state. We also added other factors such as age, race and ethnicity, and we recorded the status of each state's stay-at-home orders and the number of COVID-19 cases. We found that gun violence rates increased substantially in 28 states, or 56% of all states, scattered throughout the U.S., without any clear pattern. The increase in gun violence was highest in Minnesota, with a 120% increase.

Due to ongoing police investigations, we were advised to not separate out counts of suicides and homicides before investigations are completed. To get a fuller picture, it will be important for future studies to assess comparisons of suicide and homicide rates during this same period.

The spike in gun violence in the era of COVID-19 comes as a stark reminder that greater public health resources are needed to address and prevent gun violence, even as we continue to work to mitigate the pandemic.US gun violence increased 30 percent during COVID-19 pandemic

Provided by The Conversation 

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

New method to analyze low-probability, high-risk events such as earthquakes, pandemics

by Louise Lerner, University of Chicago

Certain events, like major earthquakes, are known as “black swan events”— rare, but highly

 consequential when they do happen. Researchers developed a new way to help analyze

 the risk of such events. Credit: Shutterstock.com

Quick—if you had to guess, what would you think is most likely to end all life on Earth: a meteor strike, climate change or a solar flare? (Choose carefully.)

A new statistical method could help accurately analyze the risk of very worst (or best) case scenarios. Scientists have announced a new way to tease out information about events that are rare, but highly consequential—such as pandemics and insurance payouts.

The discovery helps statisticians use math to figure out the shape of the underlying distribution of a set of data. This can help everyone from investors to government officials make informed decisions—and is especially helpful when the data is sparse, as for major earthquakes.

"Though they are by definition rare, such events do occur and they matter; we hope this is a useful set of tools to understand and calculate these risks better," said mathematical biologist Joel Cohen, a co-author of a new study published Nov. 16 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. A visiting scholar with the University of Chicago's statistics department, Cohen is a professor at the Rockefeller University and at the Earth Institute of Columbia University.

Varying the questions

Statistics is the science of using limited data to learn about the world—and the future. Its questions range from "When is the best time of year to spray pesticides on a field of crops?" to "How likely is it that a global pandemic will shut down large swaths of public life?"

At a century old, the statistical theory of rare-but-extreme events is a relatively new field, and scientists are still cataloging the best ways to crunch different kinds of data. Calculation methods can significantly affect conclusions, so researchers have to tune their approaches to the data carefully.

Two powerful tools in statistics are the average and the variance. You're probably familiar with the average; if one student scores 80 on a test and one student scores 82, their average score is 81. Variance, on the other hand, measures how widely spread out those scores are: You'd get the same average if one student scored 62 and the other scored 100, but the classroom implications would be very different.

In most situations, both the average and the variance are finite numbers, like the situation above. But things get stranger when you look at events that are very rare, but enormously consequential when they do happen. In most years, there isn't a gigantic burst of activity from the sun's surface big enough to fry all of Earth's electronics—but if that happened this year, the results could be catastrophic. Similarly, although the vast majority of tech startups fizzle out, a Google or a Facebook occasionally comes along.

"There's a category where large events happen very rarely, but often enough to drive the average and/or the variance towards infinity," said Cohen.

These situations, where the average and variance approach infinity as more and more data is collected, require their own special tools. And understanding the risk of these types of events (known in statistical parlance as events with "heavy-tailed distribution") is important for many people. Government officials need to know how much effort and money they should invest in disaster preparation, and investors want to know how to maximize returns.

Cohen and his colleagues looked at a mathematical method recently used to calculate risk, which splits the variance in the middle and calculates the variance below the average, and above the average, which can give you more information about downside risks and upside risks. For example, a tech company may be much more likely to fail (that is, to wind up below the average) than to succeed (wind up above the average), which an investor might like to know as she's considering whether to invest. But the method had not been examined for distributions of low-probability, very high-impact events with infinite mean and variance.

Running tests, the scientists found that standard ways to work with these numbers, called semi-variances, don't yield much information. But they found other ways that did work. For example, they could extract useful information by calculating the ratio of the log of the average to the log of the semi-variance. "Without the logs, you get less useful information," Cohen said. "But with the logs, the limiting behavior for large samples of data gives you information about the shape of the underlying distribution, which is very useful." Such information can help inform decision-making.

The researchers hope this lays the foundation for new and better exploration of risks.

"We think there are practical applications for financial mathematics, for agricultural economics, and potentially even epidemics, but since it's so new, we're not even sure what the most useful areas might be," Cohen said. "We just opened up this world. It's just at the beginning."Financial crashes, pandemics, Texas snow: How math could predict 'black swan' events

More information: Mark Brown et al, Taylor's law of fluctuation scaling for semivariances and higher moments of heavy-tailed data, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (2021). DOI: 10.1073/pnas.2108031118

Journal information: Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 

Provided by University of Chicago