The great Canadian media swindle

Federal government allocated $595 million in subsidies to news media in 2019, but the bailout was based on questionable data

Marc Edge / November 22, 2021 / 9 min read

News media have undeniably been diminished financially in recent years due to the flight of advertising revenues online. The situation in Canada, however, seems to have been systematically overblown by stakeholders seeking government funding, writes Marc Edge.

 Photo from Radius Images.

Canadian media have perpetrated a self-serving grand deception for the past few years with a little help from academics, media consultants, and think tanks. It worked so well in enriching news media that Canada’s entertainment industries are now following the same game plan by pleading poverty and shamelessly fudging the facts. The news media bailout announced two years ago was worth $595 million, but if the media consultants behind the curtain have their way, a coming entertainment media bailout could be worth billions.

By my count, we are actually up to five news media bailouts now. The Liberals recently showered another $60.8 million in secretive election eve “emergency support” on news media through the federal Aid To Publishers program. It is one story you won’t read about in our mainstream media, and the silence became deafening after Conservative leader Erin O’Toole promised to cancel the $595 million bailout if his party won the recent federal election.

The first news media bailout came in the form of $50 million provided in the 2018 budget under a new Local Journalism Initiative designed to increase news coverage in underserved communities. Newspaper publishers criticized the assistance as a “Band-Aid solution” and howled for more. After a campaign of intense pressure, they were given a full bailout of $595 million in the 2019 budget. Québec also provided $50 million in assistance. Then the pandemic hit and Ottawa introduced the Canadian Emergency Wage Subsidy (CEWS), on which publishers have since been feasting.

Newspaper profits are now the highest in years thanks to this firehose of government assistance. Postmedia Network, the country’s largest newspaper chain, recorded $67.7 million in operating earnings in its 2019-20 fiscal year (before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization), which was up 37 percent despite the pandemic. Fully two thirds of its profits came from government handouts, according to its annual report, including $40.3 million in CEWS, $4.5 million from the federal bailout, and $700,000 from the Québec bailout. The massive CEWS payroll subsidy didn’t stop Postmedia from making layoffs at its newspapers across the country.

The bailouts began after a media-made crisis arose in 2016 when Postmedia, which is mostly owned by New Jersey hedge funds, merged the newsrooms of its duopoly dailies in Vancouver, Calgary, Edmonton and Ottawa. This came after the federal Competition Bureau rubber-stamped its $314 million acquisition of Sun Media, the country’s second-largest newspaper chain, which gave Postmedia 15 of our 21 largest dailies, including eight of the nine largest west of Manitoba. It also came despite Postmedia’s promises not to reduce news coverage in cities where it suddenly owned both dailies.

Heritage committee hearings on Media and Local Communities quickly convened in Ottawa and sat for more than a year. Before a report could issue, however, it was upstaged by one from the Public Policy Forum think tank titled The Shattered Mirror: News, Democracy and Trust in the Digital Age. It portrayed a severe crisis in news media and quickly became the accepted wisdom, at least as far as Canada’s conflicted news media were concerned.

The Shattered Mirror was instead a masterpiece of disinformation, and it was only part of a larger campaign of corporate propaganda conducted by Canada’s news industry. The first clue was when the report claimed that Postmedia had lost $352 million in its most recent fiscal year. New Jersey hedge funds are not in the business of subsidizing Canadian journalism. That figure represented only an accounting loss on paper after an asset write-down of $267 million and other extraordinary expenses. On an operating basis, Postmedia instead made a profit that year of $82 million, of which $72 million went toward payments on its debt. That debt is absurdly held mostly by its hedge fund owners.

The Shattered Mirror seemed to conjure data out of thin air, at one point stating unattributed: “Since 2010, there have been 225 weekly and 27 daily newspapers lost to closure or merger in more than 210 federal ridings.” Daily newspapers have certainly been going away, but they have been largely giveaways. From 20 free dailies in 2014, mostly commuter tabloids, only one remained by the end of last year due to the ongoing flight of digital advertising revenues. The Shattered Mirror presented data from the Local News Map, a research project commenced the previous year at Ryerson University’s School of Journalism, which was then headed by the wife of report author Edward Greenspon, a former Globe and Mail editor. Map data claimed to show that 169 vaguely categorized “news outlets” had closed in Canada since 2008, with 53 opened. The data were gathered using the easily-fiddled methodology of “crowdsourcing,” however, by posting an online map on which members of the public could record newspaper closures and openings.



First published in 2017, The Shattered Mirror is a 108-page, $270,000 report commissioned by the federal Liberal government and published by the Public Policy Forum, an Ottawa-based think tank. It was widely panned by media experts and pundits alike.

The Local News Map project was headed by April Lindgren, the Velma Rogers Research Chair at Ryerson. A former newspaper reporter who did not hold a graduate degree, Lindgren may have inadvertently admitted the project’s purpose in a 2020 academic journal article she co-authored that counted 92 mentions of Local News Map data in news media reports before the bailout was announced in 2018, plus another 71 over the following year while it was being finalized. “At a time when funders are increasingly demanding evidence that research dollars are well spent… map data were incorporated into news and social media content that helped push the news industry’s problems onto the government’s policy-making agenda.”

The Shattered Mirror predicted that newspaper sales would fall to only two per 100 households by 2025, down from 18 in 2015. This ignored the fact that newspapers have never made money from copy sales, instead historically losing money on every copy sold only to make it all back and more through advertising sales. Carleton University professor Dwayne Winseck, who closely tracks media industries through the Canadian Media Concentration Research Project he directs, pointed to this prediction in accusing The Shattered Mirror of exaggerating the plight of newspapers. “The report is chock-a-block full of such examples, which lends to the impression that the report’s authors are goosing the numbers.”

Winseck also contradicted the report’s claim that between 12,000 and 14,000 journalism jobs had been lost since the 1990s. His 2019 study co-authored with Sabrina Wilkinson cited Statistics Canada data that showed the number of employed journalists increased from about 6,000 in 1998 to a peak of 13,000 in 2013 before falling back to about 11,000 in 2017. “There are in fact more journalists in absolute terms at the time of writing than at most points in the past 30 years.” Winseck noted in a scathing blog post that “these examples are not innocent. They are part of a process of ‘threat inflation’ with the aim of buttressing the case for the policy recommendations on offer.”

While The Shattered Mirror painted a worst-case scenario for news media, it made little or no mention of Postmedia’s industry dominance and foreign control. This was not surprising, according to Winseck, given that many of those involved in producing the report “have not just sat back and taken arm chair academic views on these matters but have been leading cheerleaders for the processes of consolidation.” He declined to identify the cheerleaders and urged readers to do their own research. “The industrious reader need only consult the list of acknowledgements to sort out who is who and draw their own conclusions. Given all this, that media concentration wasn’t on the agenda is not surprising.”

The report listed in its acknowledgements section hundreds of people who provided input, including a quartet of media scholars, none of whom was known for being critical of ownership concentration. Among the dozens of media consultants it listed, Ken Goldstein of Winnipeg’s Communic@tions Management Inc. was singled out as having been “particularly patient in helping us understand industry numbers.” A former vice president of Canwest Global Communications, Goldstein warned in a 2015 “discussion” paper posted on his firm’s website that “there will be few, if any, printed daily newspapers” left in Canada by 2025.

The paper, which did not disclose its genesis, purpose, or funding, simply extended circulation trends downward similar to The Shattered Mirror and forecast that newspaper penetration would fall below 10 percent of households by 2025. “To the extent that the trend lines are realistic, we do not believe that a viable print business model exists for most general interest daily newspapers once paid circulation drops below 10 percent.” In a 2017 paper, Goldstein doubled down on his projection of newspaper doom and included a graph that was almost identical to the one that appeared earlier that year in The Shattered Mirror. “The race against time and technology is no longer 10 years,” he concluded. “It is closer to five.”

The data source which definitively contradicted claims by The Shattered Mirror and the Local News Map, however, was published every year by the newspaper industry’s own trade association, News Media Canada. Well, every year except for 2018, when NMC’s case for a bailout was being made to the government through the media. The annual inventory of community newspapers usually showed that their number remained remarkably stable over the years at slightly over 1,000. The annual count was not updated for 2018 until the following year, however, after the bailout had been announced. It showed that the number had actually risen by 14 in 2018. It fell by 20 in 2019, however, for a net loss of six over the previous two years.




Community newspapers in Canada

A second disinformation campaign is now underway in pursuit of a bailout for Canada’s entertainment industries, which could be several times larger than what news media got. The campaign is epitomized by the well-reviewed 2019 book The Tangled Garden by media consultants Richard Stursberg and Stephen Armstrong. “The biggest media companies seemed destined for insolvency,” they wrote. “If the federal government does not wake from its torpor, the major Canadian media companies are likely to collapse. If this happens, English Canada will be effectively annexed by the United States.”

On the contrary, the annual profits of Canada’s largest media companies are greater than the entire economies of many countries. Bell’s $9.5 billion in profits that year would have ranked it 142nd in GDP among the 185 countries listed by the World Bank, while the $6 billion made by Rogers would have ranked it 151st behind Barbados and ahead of Sierra Leone. Their profit margins of 40 percent and more are fueled by some of the highest rates in the world for telecommunications services.

The book described how a Stursberg, former head of CBC English, devised the system of labour tax credits used in the news media bailout. It urged the federal government to tax foreign digital media such as Facebook, Amazon, Apple, Netflix and Google—for which it used the ominous acronym FAANGs—and re-route the proceeds to Canadian media. Making the FAANGs charge their Canadian customers federal and provincial sales taxes would bring in $100 million a year, it calculated, while disallowing the cost of advertising on foreign media as an income tax deduction would repatriate about $1.3 billion in ad sales annually. The advertising that didn’t return would be liable to pay an estimated $590 million a year in tax. Making Netflix and other foreign streaming services contribute 30 percent of their Canadian revenues to fund Canadian content, as the national television networks must, would bring in an estimated $438 million a year.

Ottawa was in the process of enacting the so-called “Netflix tax” before the election put a hold on legislation with Bill C-10, which would reap an estimated $800 million windfall. It was rammed through Parliament but stalled for the summer in a more skeptical Senate. More contentious will be a “link tax” pushed by publishers that would pay them every time a link to one of their articles appears on Google or Facebook. NMC and the lobby group Friends of Canadian broadcasting have been campaigning for such payments by claiming the digital giants are “stealing” news stories. The Toronto Star, which was recently acquired by a private equity firm, has joined the campaign with its long-running series “De-fanging Big Tech.”

It turns out that all those government reports issued decades ago—the Special Senate Subcommittee on Mass Media (1970), the Royal Commission on Newspapers (1981), and the Senate Report on News Media (2005)—were right when they warned that Big Media in Canada were getting too big and powerful. Now they are monetizing their power over public perceptions and laughing all the way to the bank as a result, at least from New Jersey.

Marc Edge is a journalism researcher and author who lives in Ladysmith, B.C. His books and articles can be found online at www.marcedge.com. The findings in this article were published recently in the peer-reviewed Canadian Journal of Communication.

Five reasons the left won in Venezuela

These elections should put the Biden administration on notice that the fiction of Guaidó as ‘interim president’ has failed

Leonardo Flores / November 25, 2021 

A man casts his vote in front of a mural of late president Hugo Chávez in Caracas. 

Photo by Lavra Palavra.

For the first time in four years, every major opposition party in Venezuela participated in elections. For the fifth time in four years, the left won in a landslide. Voters elected 23 governors, 335 mayors, 253 state legislators and 2,471 municipal councilors. The governing United Socialist Party of Venezuela (PSUV) won at least 19 of 23 governorships (one race remains too close to call) and the Caracas mayoralty in the November 21 “mega-elections.” Of the 335 mayoral races, the vote count has been completed in 322 of them, with PSUV and its coalition taking 205, opposition coalitions 96 and other parties 21. Over 70,000 candidates ran for these 3,082 offices, and 90 percent of the vote was counted and verified within hours of polls closing. Turnout was 42.2 percent, eleven points higher than last year’s parliamentary elections.

Here’s why chavismo, the movement behind the Venezuela’s Bolivarian Revolution, won:

1. Good governance in health, housing and food. Venezuela’s health policies in response to Covid-19 have been exemplary. The expectation in the US was that the coronavirus would overwhelm Venezuela’s healthcare system, which has been devastated by years of sanctions. And yet, per million population, Venezuela registered 15,000 cases and 180 deaths. For the sake of comparison, the figures in the US are 146,000 cases/million and 2,378 deaths/million, Brazil’s are 103,000 and 2854, and Colombia’s are 98,000 and 2,481. Unlike images we saw in Ecuador or Bolivia, there were no bodies of victims left on the streets, nor were there overflowing morgues like in New York.

In terms of housing, the Venezuelan government has built 3.7 million homes for working class families over the past ten years, the majority of which were built and delivered by the Maduro administration while under sanctions.

As deadly as the sanctions have been, things would be significantly worse were it not for Venezuela’s most important social program in the past five years: the CLAPs. These consist of boxes of food and other necessities, some of which are produced locally, which are packaged and distributed by communities themselves. Seven million Venezuelans families receive CLAP boxes every month, out of a country of 30 million people. Not only has this program been instrumental in keeping people fed, it has invigorated the base of chavismo and reconnected the government with grassroots after the PSUV’s defeat in the 2015 legislative elections.

2. The economic situation is improving. According to an August 2021 survey by opposition pollster Datanálisis, 50 percent of Venezuelans consider that their lives have improved compared to the previous year or two. Despite sanctions that have caused a 99 percent drop in government income, the Venezuelan economy is stabilizing. Inflation is down to single digits for the first time in four years. Credit Suisse projected 5.5 percent growth in 2021 and 4.5 percent growth in 2022. Oil production hit an 18-month high in October, helped by a trade deal with Iran.

3. The left is united (mostly). The PSUV didn’t win the elections alone, they were united with 8 other left parties in a coalition known as the GPP (Great Patriotic Pole). The PSUV itself held internal primaries in August, the only party to do so. Over half the GPP candidates were women, 52 percent, while another 43 percent were youth. Overall, 90 percent of the candidates hadn’t held office before, suggesting a renewal of the party from the grassroots. However, this marked the second election in a row in which the left wasn’t completely united. A coalition that included Venezuela’s Communist Party ran its own ticket. These parties got less than three percent of the vote in the 2020 parliamentary elections and their decision to run separately appears to have had no impact on the gubernatorial races.

4. The opposition is divided. Never known for their unity, the Venezuelan opposition suffered a major split as a result of some parties opting for boycotting elections and attempting to overthrow the government, while others preferred a democratic path. Despite all the major parties participating in these elections, the opposition was split into two main coalitions, the MUD (Democratic Unity Roundtable) and the Democratic Alliance. The vast majority of the 70,000 candidates are in the opposition and they were running candidates against each other in almost every race. Of the 23 gubernatorial races, six were won by PSUV candidates with less than 50 percent of the vote and by less than six points - more unity between the MUD and Democratic Alliance could have made the difference.

A count of the votes in the gubernatorial and Caracas mayoral races show the PSUV coalition taking 46 percent of the total vote, with the rest split between the various oppositions. A united opposition could win in Venezuela, but “united opposition” is an oxymoron.

5. The opposition is deeply unpopular. While much is made about the alleged lack of support for President Maduro (the millions of votes his party got will never be acknowledged by the US), it’s less known that the opposition is deeply unpopular. Here are the disapproval ratings for some of the opposition’s key figures: Juan Guaidó, 83 percent disapproval; Julio Borges (Guaidó’s “Foreign Minister), 81 percent; Leopoldo López (Guaidó’s mentor and mastermind of coup attempts), 80 percent; Henry Ramos Allup (longtime opposition leader), 79 percent; Henrique Capriles (2012 & 2013 presidential election loser), 77 percent; and Henri Falcón (2018 presidential election loser), 66 percent. All of these but Falcón are part of the MUD.

The MUD coalition spent years claiming they represented a majority, a claim which couldn’t be verified by their strategy of electoral boycotts. However, their return to the electoral process only marked a ten point increase in voter turnout compared to 2020. Moreover, the MUD placed below other opposition parties in nine of 23 states and in Caracas. The MUD only won one of the three governorships taken by the opposition. This might be due in part to widespread rejection of US sanctions. The MUD has repeatedly endorsed deadly sanctions despite the fact that 76 percent of Venezuelans reject them.

The MUD enjoys the political, financial and logistical support of the United States and the EU, while members of other opposition parties have been denounced and sanctioned by the US for negotiating with the Maduro administration. These elections should put the Biden administration on notice that continuing to support the MUD, and in particular, the fiction of Guaidó as “interim president,” is a failed policy.

Leonardo Flores is a Latin American policy expert and campaigner with CodePink.

This article originally appeared on CommonDreams.org.

Opinion: Gravel or Green: What Will Become of Alaska’s Coastal Plain?

Absent a suitable plan, the ghosts of the oil industry will haunt Alaska’s wildlife long after the wells are gone.


A rehabilitated drill pad (foreground) with an active pad (background). The revegetated plant community is almost exclusively grass, which differs from the original tundra system. Visual: Jonathan C. Slaght / WCS

BY JONATHAN C. SLAGHT
12.02.2021


LIFE ON THE COASTAL PLAIN of Alaska exists on a scale difficult to capture. It’s a wild place where herds of caribou move around wolves and bears in wide arcs, musk oxen graze among dwarf willows, and gyrfalcons search the terrain for waterbirds. The tundra ground cover — a thick mat of damp, stunted vegetation — has sat atop the permafrost that’s existed since at least the last ice age.

Conspicuous clusters of bright metal buildings also dot this landscape: oil wells, storage tanks, and generators — all linked by a sprawling system of roads and pipelines. Prudhoe Bay, at the center of the north Alaskan coastal plain, is one of the largest oil fields in North America. More than 800 wells stretch across more than 300 square miles, drawing oil from deep underground.

RELATEDLessons in the Impermanence of Permafrost

Caribou migrate here across the imposing mountains of the Brooks Range unimpeded by human-made obstruction, only to bow their heads under pipelines when they reach the plains. Brown bears meander across the tundra under the watchful eye of oil workers, like teenagers shadowed by mall security. And wolves sniff the air to disentangle the mingling scents of prey and diesel.

In some ways this arrangement works. The oil companies, perhaps reluctant to attract additional public scrutiny, have imposed on themselves rules about how to live and work in the oil fields. Most travel directly on the tundra is forbidden for workers, and any interactions with animals are prohibited. For a place with so many roads and so much wildlife, vehicle strikes are surprisingly rare. The heart of this industrial landscape is unexpectedly clean.

Yet despite these safeguards, the ecosystem is thrown off balance. Oil infrastructure provides artificial nesting places for previously uncommon predators such as ravens. Red foxes, likely lured by anthropogenic sources of food and warmth, have moved into Prudhoe Bay to kill and displace Arctic foxes. Dust blowing off a gravel road may collect on adjacent land and hasten snowmelt. These disruptions — perhaps more than oil industry executives and the people who regulate them initially understood — have a long half-life.

The pursuit of oil is inherently ephemeral. Individual wells eventually dry up or cease to be profitable; whole fields dwindle. Companies pull stakes to move their carnival of drills, steel, and actors elsewhere across the coastal plain. The buildings may disappear, but ghosts of the infrastructure often remain. In the absence of adequate restoration plans, the disturbed environments will continue to impact local species for decades to come. Unlike the tropics, where human disturbances can be quickly repaired by new green growth, the Arctic remains fragile and exposed.

Oil companies have worked for decades to rehabilitate these fields with varying degrees of success. They strip gravel from old roads and obsolete drill pads to facilitate recovery, often reseeding the stripped area to return the land to a more natural state. At first glance, such sites may be difficult to distinguish from the surrounding vegetation, but on closer inspection, most show clear signs of past disturbance and some appear to have not recovered at all.

Restoration ecologists have found tundra difficult to restore. Though rather uncommon, salt on gravel sourced from the Arctic coastal plain may leach into the soil and inhibit new growth even after the rocks are taken away. Road removal projects sometimes strip too much gravel, exposing permafrost, accelerating melt, and turning what was once solid ground into a lake. Even when a site is successfully seeded with grass, geese can swoop in to feast on the fresh shoots, grazing these sites back to bare patches of mud.

These disruptions — perhaps more than oil industry executives and the people who regulate them initially understood — have a long half-life.

For disturbed tundra to have any chance of recovering to a more natural state, oil companies and land management officials will need to consider new treatments. Tundra sodding, an under-utilized approach consistent with Indigenous Iñupiaq methods, seems to be the most promising intervention: When new oil infrastructure is created on existing tundra, the sod from that site could be carefully removed and fit atop an old drill site in need of restoration, much like plugging divots on a golf green. In current practice, oil companies usually just build new drill pads directly atop the existing sod, killing the ancient tundra cover in the process.

Successful caretaking of the Alaskan coastal plain will depend on a multitude of factors and will likely require decades of monitoring and adjustment, and a long-term commitment from industry and regulators. Key to this success will be for oil companies and environmental stakeholders to determine, upfront, the true costs of rehabilitation — financial and otherwise — and the tangible outcomes of different treatments. Such clarity could catalyze rehabilitation efforts in Alaska and elsewhere. This is not merely a retrospective exercise, but a forward-looking one.

In fact, the state of Alaska continues to eye the 1002 Area, a 2,300-square-mile section of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, despite a temporary moratorium on exploration and drilling within the Refuge. As exploration plans accelerate into this pristine landscape on the eastern border of the existing oil fields and elsewhere across the coastal plain, we still do not have viable and scalable tundra rehabilitation plans in place to address past actions, never mind what developers are eyeing next.

Oil companies and regulators must bolster nascent efforts to repair the damage that has already been done, and to ensure clean-up actions are built into the planning and implementation processes when expanding to new areas. We need to decide now what we want the coastal plain to look like in a hundred or a thousand years, after we have turned our attentions elsewhere.

Jonathan C. Slaght works for the Arctic Beringia Program of WCS (Wildlife Conservation Society). He is the author of “Owls of the Eastern Ice,” which won the 2020 PEN/E. O. Wilson Literary Science Writing Award, was named a New York Times Notable Book of 2020, and was long-listed for the National Book Award in Nonfiction.

Walters: Drought has big impacts on California agriculture

Farmers are reacting to shortages in three, often intertwined ways

In this Aug. 22, 2021, file photo a kayaker fishes in Lake Oroville as water levels remain low due to continuing drought conditions in Oroville, Calif. California’s reservoirs are so low from a historic drought that regulators warned Thursday, Sept. 30, 2021, it’s possible the state’s water agencies could get nothing from them next year, a frightening possibility that could force mandatory restrictions for residents.

 (AP Photo/Ethan Swope, File)

By DAN WALTERS, CALMATTERS |
PUBLISHED: December 2, 2021 

As California experiences a second year of drought, with no end in sight, the effects on California’s largest-in-the-nation agricultural industry are profound and perhaps permanent.

State and federal water agencies have cut deliveries to some farmers to zero while others, thanks to water rights dating back more than a century, still have access to water.

Farmers are reacting to shortages in three, often intertwined ways — suspending cultivation of some fields or ripping up orchards for lack of water, drilling new wells to tap into diminishing aquifers, and buying water from those who have it.

All three have major economic impacts. They are driving some farmers, particularly small family operations, out of business altogether, accelerating the shift to large-scale agribusiness corporations with the financial resources to cope, changing the kinds of crops that can be profitably grown, and supercharging the semi-secretive market for buying and selling water.

By happenstance, all of these trends are occurring just as the state begins to implement a 2014 law aimed at limiting the amount of water that farmers can pump from underground aquifers.

A couple weeks ago, the state Department of Water Resources announced that it had rejected as inadequate the underground water management plans of four San Joaquin Valley agencies, including the huge Westlands Water District, indicating that the state will be aggressive in enforcing the Sustainable Groundwater Management Act.

“We’re not going to accept a plan to do a plan,” Paul Gosselin, deputy director for the California Department of Water Resources, Sustainable Groundwater Management Office, told the Sacramento Bee. “We’re looking for very concrete, measurable changes to address these deficiencies.”

If anything, however, farmers are drilling more wells to cope with the current drought, the Bee also reported.

“I could work seven days a week if I wanted to,” Fresno County well driller Wesley Harmon told the Bee. “In my area, everybody’s pumping. You can’t blame the farmers. They’re trying to make a living, they’re trying to grow food for everybody.”

The drought is obviously one motive for drilling hundreds of new wells that must go ever-deeper as the water tables drop from overpumping, sometimes leading to the collapse of land above. But another is that farmers know a crackdown is coming and are doing what they can before it arrives.

The Public Policy Institute of California has estimated that full implementation of the groundwater sustainability act could force 750,000 acres of California farmland out of production, or “fallowed.”

The increased activity in California’s water markets, meanwhile, is beginning to draw attention. It’s sometimes more profitable for farmers to sell water than use it to grow crops, with prices surging to over $1,000 an acre-foot (about 326,000 gallons).

Environmentalists have complained that when Sacramento Valley rice growers received a major allotment of water from the federal government earlier this year, much of it was sold to water interests to the south while rice acreage continued to decline.

Recently, GV Wire, a San Joaquin Valley news site, published a lengthy article from an affiliate, SJV Water, about multi-million-dollar water sales by major agribusiness operations that left small farmers in Kings County in the lurch and forced them, if they can, to drill wells.

There even have been hints that farmers have sold their water allotments for high prices and then sustained their own crops by drilling more wells that exacerbate groundwater overdrafting.

These are serious issues that will become even more intense if drought continues but unfortunately are receiving scant attention from federal and state officials.

Dan Walters is a CalMatters columnist.

From burials to grieving, how we deal with death changes with the times

Do I have to be embalmed? What does a nontraditional funeral look like? A Twin Cities mortician answers your pressing questions about dealing with the dead. 

By Katie Moritz Star Tribune

 

DECEMBER 2, 2021 — 

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Even death changes with the times.

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Even something as old as death — and how we deal with it — changes with the times, according to a local mortician.

Do I have to be embalmed? And what does that even mean?

No, you don't. Embalming is not required by law, except in specific circumstances. The practice is common only in the U.S. and Canada, according to the Funeral Consumers Alliance, where many people believe it's a mandatory part of the funeral process. (It's not.)

Embalming is a surgical procedure — blood and other fluids are drained from the body and replaced with formaldehyde-based chemicals that delay decomposition. More and more, people are choosing funerals that don't involve an invasive process or the use of chemicals. Some may not want to delay the natural processes that return our bodies to the earth.

So if I'm not being embalmed, how will my body last long enough for a funeral?

With refrigeration and the use of portable refrigerants, like dry ice or Techni Ice, a public visitation can occur within six days of the death without embalming.

How would you characterize a funeral that's considered "traditional" in the U.S.?

What many call a traditional funeral is the modern practice that includes embalming and cosmetics, steel or hardwood caskets, visitation and service at a funeral home or house of worship, and burial at a cemetery using concrete outer burial containers and granite or bronze markers.

What many do not know is that there is no state law that requires a concrete outer burial container — cemeteries require them, and they can choose not to require them. The increase in green, natural or hybrid cemeteries means more choices for families.

What funeral choices are people making that diverge from that?

Natural death care encompasses a wide variety of options that are aimed at reducing a person's impact on the Earth after death. These may include the use of refrigeration in lieu of embalming, choosing flame-based or water-based cremation instead of burial, or burial without the use of a concrete outer burial container, metal or hardwood casket, or granite or bronze memorials.

A home funeral, or any community-led death care, occurs whenever families or communities care for their own dead. It may include those closest to them washing and caring for their body, making a casket or item for them, holding a vigil with their body at home, or organizing and participating in their burial or cremation.

Families who choose these options find that slowing down and being present with the dead helps them process their feelings.

Do you think COVID-19 changed the way people think about death?

The pandemic certainly has changed a lot about our rituals at the end of life. During 2020, there was so much heartbreak with folks dying alone and uncertainty about funeral services. I think those heartbreaks have given us a new appreciation for the power of ritual and the value of coming together to mourn. Grieving is an individual experience, but mourning requires the support of others. It's a sacred time for which there is no substitute and no shortcut.

Do you ever work with families that had never experienced natural burial before?

I'm a firm believer in learning what ways the family would like to honor, commemorate and celebrate the life lived and helping them understand and navigate the options available to them. Whether or not they choose more natural options, the most important thing, to me, is that they feel included, encouraged and lifted up in their decisions. That can make an enormous difference in a person's grief journey.

How is what you do now different from what you learned as a student?

I feel there's been a progressive change toward more cremation services, a greater focus on personalizing services for families and an influx of greener options at the end of lif

How can people get more comfortable with death? Any book recommendations?

People can get more comfortable with death by understanding it as a natural part of life. Spending time with the dead helps us see and experience the peace and stillness. Some folks meditate about their own deaths, and that reduces their anxiety. There are a host of books that speak frankly and eloquently about death, from "Tuesdays With Morrie," to "Beloved" and "Making Friends With Death."

I think that whether a person looks to a funeral director, an end-of-life doula, a pastor, a counselor or a friend, it's important to talk about death and dying, because it's a natural part of life itself.

Angela Woosley is a mortician and owner of natural funeral home Inspired Journeys in St. Paul.

Romania’s spy chief meets head of CIA, FBI on U.S. visit amid Russia tensions
De Alison Mutler
-2 decembrie 2021

Foto: INQUAM/Octav Ganea

Romania’s intelligence chief has met the directors of the CIA and FBI to discuss regional security during a visit to Washington which came amid growing tensions with Russia.

Eduard Hellvig, director of the Romanian Intelligence Service (SRI) met William J. Burns, CIA director, and Christopher Wray, who heads the FBI, the Romanian agency said Wednesday. It did not provide the dates of the visit.

It was the highest-level meetings in Washington ever held by a Romanian intelligence chief in a sign of the strong bilateral relations and escalating security concerns on NATO’s eastern flank.

Security

The two sides discussed regional and global security, focusing on intelligence sharing and cooperation. NATO member Romania is a stalwart U.S. ally in the Black Sea region and hosts a number of bases on its territory with American troops.

The officials analyzed the complicated regional security situation and looked at ways to boost joint capabilities to counter threats to U.S. and Romania’s national security.

Tensions between the U.S. and Russia rose on Wednesday after Russia said it was ordering U.S. Embassy staff who have been in Moscow for more than three years to fly home by the end of January.

‘Retaliatory measures’

Moscow said it had resorted to “retaliatory measures” after the Russian ambassador to Washington, Anatoly Antonov said 27 Russian diplomats and their families would have to leave the U.S on Jan 30. Another 27 diplomats would need to depart by June, because their visas have not been extended by the American authorities.

Last month, Romanian Foreign Minister Bogdan Aurescu asked U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken to consider boosting the U.S. troop presence on the Black Sea to defuse tensions with Russia.

Senior Romanian intelligence officials traveled with Mr Hellvig to the U.S. and met Avril Haines, the director of the National Intelligence. They also met Robin Dunnigan, the Deputy Assistant Secretary for Central and Eastern Europe in the Bureau of European and Eurasian Affairs.

Risk factors

Both parties reaffirmed their strong engagement to counter the risk factors leading to the current security challenges to the two states, to the regional and global security. Mr Hellvig also visited Brussels for talks on regional security.

Debt collectors can now text, email and DM you on social media


In this photo illustration, the Facebook and Instagram apps are seen on the screen of an iPhone.
CREDIT: JUSTIN SULLIVAN/GETTY IMAGES

Joe Hernandez
DEC 02, 2021 at 3:00 AM NPR

The next time someone tries to friend you on Facebook or follow you on Instagram, it could be a debt collector.

New rules approved by the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau that took effect on Tuesday dictate how collection agencies can email and text people as well as message them on social media to seek repayment for unpaid debts.

Kathleen L. Kraninger, the former CFPB director who oversaw the rule changes, said last year that they were a necessary update to the Fair Debt Collection Practices Act, which is more than four decades old.

"We are finally leaving 1977 behind and developing a debt collection system that works for consumers and industry in the modern world," Kraninger said in a blog post.

But consumer advocates say borrowers risk missing key information about their debts or falling prey to illegal scams if they're contacted online.

"The rules are really disappointing and concerning in a number of ways," said April Kuehnhoff, a staff attorney at the National Consumer Law Center.

The new rules set limits for debt collectors

Under the new rules, debt collectors who contact you on social media have to identify themselves as debt collectors but can attempt to join your network by sending you a friend request. Collectors must give you the option to opt out of being contacted online, and any messages they send have to be private — collectors can't post on your page if it can be seen by your contacts or the public.

Collection agencies can also email and text message debtors, but must still offer the ability to opt out. Industry officials praised the move as a welcome change to the outdated methods currently used by the collections industry.

"Consumers in the collections process deserve to be on a level playing field with others in the financial services marketplace with recognition of their preference to use email and text messaging over other outdated methods, such as faxes as outlined in the current law," Mark Neeb, CEO of ACA International, a trade association for debt collectors, said in a statement.

Advocates say consumers will pay the price

Kuehnhoff said consumers should have been given the ability to opt into electronic messages rather than being forced to opt out of them. She suggested that consumers who don't check social media regularly or miss an email may fail to see critical information about a debt. Many people don't have regular access to the internet either, she added.

Allowing debt collectors to email, text and use social media to contact consumers also gives criminals a new avenue to try to swindle people out of their money, a practice Kuehnhoff expects to increase in the future.

"I have actually already gotten my first spam debt collection email even before the new rules took effect," she said. "So certainly we should anticipate more bad actors who are trying to scam people into paying them money on alleged debts."

Kuehnhoff suggested that consumers shouldn't click on links from people they don't know and said they could report any problems with debt collection messages to the CFPB.

The new rules were devised during the Trump administration, when the bureau became more business-friendly than it had been in the past. Kraninger resigned in January at the request of President Biden, who nominated Rohit Chopra to be the agency's new director.

The new rules also set a limit for the first time on how often debt collectors can call you. Agencies will be restricted to seven calls per week per account in collection. [Copyright 2021 NPR]

High Stakes For Outgoing Honduras President Hernande

By Moises AVILA
12/02/21 

Juan Orlando Hernandez faces an uncertain future when his scandal-marred reign as Honduras president ends in January, along with the immunity from prosecution that the position gave him.

His National Party (PN) presidential candidate Nasry Asfuera has conceded defeat to leftist Xiomara Castro, who will be sworn in as her country's first ever woman president in less than two months.

Hernandez, 53, told AFP earlier this year that he intends to "step away from public life" to write his memoirs.

But US prosecutors have accused Hernandez of protecting drug traffickers in exchange for bribes.

"He's been under investigation since 2004... he runs the risk that (the US) requests his extradition," Ernesto Paz Aguilar, a former foreign minister, told AFP.

Juan Orlando Hernandez's reign as president of Honduras ends in January

 Photo: POOL via AFP / ANDY BUCHANAN

His brother Tony, a former PN legislator, is already serving a life sentence in the US for drug trafficking.

"The general rule is that the United States doesn't take any measures against presidents," said Paz Aguilar.

"There's no formal accusation" in the US but "he was mentioned as a co-conspirator in his brother's case," said Reina Rivera, an analyst and human rights defender.

Until recently, the US was a keen and close ally.

Hondurans don't expect Juan Orlando Hernandez to face trial, either at home or abroad Photo: Honduran Presidency via AFP / Handout

While the opposition and international observers questioned Hernandez's 2017 re-election, the US was the first country to congratulate him.

Washington also saluted his efforts to combat drug trafficking and he helped extradite several drug barons to face trial in the US.

But several of them then accused Hernandez of involvement in the illicit trade.

He denies that and insists the accusations are motivated by "revenge."

Should US prosecutors launch a case, Castro, who branded Hernandez a "narco-dictator", would be unlikely to protect him.

"One way out (from extradition) would be if they open a trial here... when a person has a pending trial in Honduras, they cannot be extradited," said Rivera.

Juan Orlando Hernandez would likely find a safe haven in Nicaragua 

Photo: AFP / Orlando SIERRA

In a case that has since been buried, Honduran prosecutors claimed Hernandez's 2013 election campaign benefited from embezzled funds.

But the opposition has also accused him of corruption linked to the acquisition of infrastructure and supplies to fight the coronavirus pandemic.

Hondurans don't expect Hernandez to face trial, either at home or abroad.

"If he committed crimes he has to pay for it," said Kenia Maldonado, 32, a street vendor.

"The problem is that here there are no laws, no-one can do anything to him here. There are laws for the poor but not for the rich."

Oscar Edmundo Arzu, 59, does not think Hernandez will be extradited.

"How could he not realize what his brother was involved in? But if the gringos (US) had sufficient evidence against him, they would already have asked for his extradition," he told AFP in central Tegucigalpa.

Another option for Hernandez would be to flee into exile, away from the reach of either Honduran or US justice "but his options are limited," said Michael Shifter, president of the Inter-American Dialogue.

"He is toxic and surely would be unwelcome in most countries."

There is one place that he would likely find a safe haven.

"The strong relationship that Hernandez has with (Nicaragua President) Daniel Ortega could mean an escape from his complicated legal situation," said Gustavo Irias, executive director of the Center for Democracy Studies.

Ortega is a pariah in Washington's eyes and the two countries have no diplomatic relations.

Hernandez's first foreign visit after he was elected was to see Ortega and should he go there, he wouldn't be alone.

"There is precedent in two former El Salvador presidents that were given a Nicaraguan refuge having been accused of corruption: Mauricio Funes and Salvador Sanchez Ceren," added Irias.

Nicaragua granted Sanchez Ceren citizenship in July, having already done so for Funes in 2019, meaning neither can be extradited to El Salvador to face charges.

"The realistic option is Nicaragua, it's one the gringos would probably accept," said Paz Aguilar.
Copyright AFP. All rights reserved.

Arrested development: the unfinished church dividing Kosovo

Kosovars think the unfinished church in Pristina is a reminder of Kosovo's bloody past (AFP/Armend NIMANI)More

Ismet Hajdari and David Stout
Thu, December 2, 2021, 

At first glance, the half-built Orthodox church in the heart of Kosovo's capital seems little more than a napping spot for stray dogs splayed out in a patch of unkempt weeds near the padlocked entrance.

But for nearly three decades the hulking structure has cast a long shadow over Pristina, serving as a potent symbol of the unresolved dispute between Kosovo and Serbia.

"This church must be destroyed," Jahir Islami, a 77-year-old retiree, tells AFP, citing painful memories of Kosovo's bloody past when the land was divided along ethnic lines during years of violent unrest.


Disputes over religious sites remain simmering flashpoints between the bitter rivals since Kosovo declared independence in 2008 -- with Serbia still refusing to acknowledge the breakaway province's sovereignty.

Kosovo is home to some of the Serbian Orthodox Church's most revered monasteries, with many of the centuries-old churches now residing in largely ethnic Albanian towns where Islam predominates.

The fate of those churches and Kosovo's shrinking Serb minority has continued to thwart efforts to reach a deal between the two sides that have achieved little progress in recent years.

Unlike the storied Orthodox monasteries in the countryside, the unfinished church in Pristina belongs to a more recent and brutal history.

Former Serbian strongman Slobodan Milosevic facilitated its construction in the mainly Albanian city during a bloody crackdown on the community in Kosovo, which led to a brief but vicious war in the late 1990s that only ended after NATO intervention.

- Church and state -

"They did not only commit crimes against our bodies but also wanted to erase our history, to attack our identity, to implement their project of ethnic cleansing of Kosovo," Hajrulla Ceku, Kosovo's minister of culture, tells AFP.

Kosovo officials have long accused Belgrade of using the Orthodox Church as a proxy, with the clergy acting as emissaries on the ground carrying out Serbia's will.

Tensions have been steadily rising over the future status of Kosovo's Orthodox churches since the election of Prime Minister Albin Kurti in 2021.

The left-wing leader has since called for four Serbian Orthodox churches to be taken off the UNESCO World Heritage in Danger list.

The churches were listed as endangered following rioting in 2004 that saw mobs target Orthodox sites after unfounded rumours about Serbs murdering Albanian children sparked days of fighting that killed at least 19 people.

For years, NATO troops were positioned outside most of Kosovo's Orthodox establishments to prevent further violence.

But since then, religiously motivated attacks have declined, with NATO troops only guarding the picturesque Visoki Decani Monastery in western Kosovo.

"This is a very important indication that the situation is much better than in the past," said former NATO commander in Kosovo Franco Federici.

Other churches are guarded by special units made up of Kosovo police, but some establishments have no security at all.

- Tensions -

The progress, argues the Kosovo government, also supports their calls to be recognised by the UN as the sovereign party responsible for the four listed churches, instead of Serbia.

Serbian Orthodox officials refused to comment on the matter when contacted by AFP.

But Belgrade has roundly dismissed any such moves to change the status quo.

"They want to present Kosovo as an oasis of peace and Pristina as needing to look after and protect Serbian cultural treasures," said Petar Petkovic, the head of Serbia's office for Kosovo.

"It's a hypocritical act by Pristina and an attempt to deceive the international community," he added, saying more than 135 churches and monasteries have been destroyed since 1999.

Similar claims have been made on the Albanian side, who say more than 200 mosques were damaged or destroyed by Serb forces amid bouts of ethnic cleansing.

But even as Kosovo officials point to a drop in recent violence, hostilities are again rising in Pristina.

In June, members of the Serbian Orthodox Church held a rare liturgy service inside the unfinished church, triggering protests and vandalism including the scrawling of graffiti saying: "Jesus hates Serbs".

The church's future is being hashed out in the courts following years of litigation between Orthodox officials and the University of Pristina, where the structure resides.

Even as tensions flare again, many residents in Pristina say they do not want the church to be demolished but rather to serve as a memorial to help remember Kosovo's troubled past.

"Perhaps this facility can be transformed into a cultural facility and help to build trust between Albanians and Serbs," says Nexhmi Statovci, a 66-year-old retiree.

"Let's not ruin it but use it for positive rather than negative things."

ih-ev-ds/imm/ah

 

Shuttered Hong Kong democracy

paper wins press freedom award

Date

12/2/2021 

(MENAFN- AFP)

Jailed Hong Kong media tycoon Jimmy Lai and the staff of his now-shuttered Apple Daily newspaper have been awarded a prestigious press freedom prize by the World Association of News Publishers.

Apple Daily, formerly Hong Kong's most popular pro-democracy newspaper, collapsed in June after authorities froze its assets under a national security law imposed by Beijing to curb dissent.

Lai, the paper's outspoken founder, and multiple senior executives and editors have been detained on "foreign collusion" charges over Apple Daily's support for international sanctions against China.

Warren Fernandez, president of the World Editors Forum, said this year's Golden Pen of Freedom award highlighted the "fears and challenges" of journalists who face increasing curbs in Hong Kong, a regional media hub.

"The jailing of a publisher, the arrest of an editor-in-chief and his senior colleagues, the shuttering of a newsroom, and the closure of a media title –- the 2021 Golden Pen award recognises, and reflects on, all of these," Fernandez said at a virtual ceremony on Wednesday.

Apple Daily was renowned for its acerbic criticism of China's leaders and Beijing made no secret of its desire to see the tabloid silenced.

Sebastien Lai, receiving the award on behalf of his father, said there will be "less and less people shining light in these dark corners" given Apple Daily's shutdown and the ongoing crackdown on journalism in the region.

In a statement announcing the award, the World Association of News Publishers called Lai an "outspoken critic of Beijing's control over Hong Kong and a high-profile supporter of the pro-democracy movement".

Established in 1961, the Golden Pen of Freedom is an annual award that recognises outstanding contributions to the defence and promotion of press freedom.

In authoritarian China, all local media is censored and state controlled while foreign media face significant reporting hurdles and visa denials.

Hong Kong has long served as a regional media hub, though it has tumbled down press freedom rankings in recent years as Beijing asserts greater control over the city.

Suppression of local media has increased in the wake of huge and often violent democracy protests two years ago and the subsequent imposition of the security law.

International media maintain a strong presence in the city with organisations including the Financial Times, AFP, CNN, the Wall Street Journal, and Bloomberg having regional headquarters in Hong Kong.

But the security law and crackdown on dissent have rattled nerves.

Last month an Australian correspondent from The Economist was denied a visa -- the fourth foreign journalist to be refused one without an explanation since 2018.

The New York Times relocated its Asia news hub to South Korea last year citing both the security law and multiple visa delays.

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