Emma Watson shares message in solidarity with the Palestinian movement

IMAGES STAFF
DESK REPORT

The British actor's message has received worldwide

attention, with Pro-Palestinian supporters on

social media lauding the move.

Photo: AP

British actor Emma Watson recently took to social media to share a message in support of the Palestinian movement, leaving many Pro-Palestinian netizens both surprised and elated at the move.

The 31-year-old — who rose to fame for her portrayal of Hermione Granger in the Harry Potter movies — reposted a post originally shared by the Bad Activist Collective on Instagram on January 2.

The post includes a picture showing Pro-Palestinian supporters with the quote "solidarity is a verb". The post's caption included a poem by British-Australian scholar Sara Ahmed about what solidarity truly entails.

Watson's move has received worldwide attention. Pro-Palestinian supporters on social media have hailed her support for the cause.

Watson was already in the public eye because of her appearance in the Harry Potter reunion special broadcast on January 1. Netizens have lauded how she chose to post the message while she and the reunion were trending on social media, capitalising on the opportunity to make her post "more visible and impactful".

However, the actor has also been on the receiving end of criticism. Israeli Ambassador to the United Nations Gilad Erdan strongly criticised her post, calling Watson an "antisemite".

A long-held argument of the anti-Palestinian movement is that calling for a free Palestine is akin to anti-Semitism. Model Bella Hadid was on the receiving end of a lot of backlash and claims of anti-Semitism after she was vocal about her support for the Palestinian cause. Actor and activist Mark Ruffalo withdrew his support for Palestine and apologised after criticism.

Harry Potter actor Watson is a UN Women Goodwill Ambassador and has been since July 2014. She is known for her campaigning efforts in promoting gender equality, campaigns such as the HeforShe solidarity movement.

Israel's UN envoy lashes out after Emma Watson expresses support for Palestinians

Gilad Erdan and former ambassador Danny Danon face online backlash after criticising Harry Potter star who expressed solidarity with Palestinians

Emma Watson at a premiere in NY in 2019 for her movie Little Women (AFP)

By MEE staff
Published date: 3 January 2022 

Israel's ambassador to the United Nations lashed out at actress Emma Watson on Monday after the Harry Potter star shared a picture on Instagram in solidarity with Palestinia

In the post, Watson shared a picture from a pro-Palestinian rally with the phrase, "Solidarity is a verb". In the caption, Watson included a quote from British-Australian activist Sara Ahmed, who said: "Solidarity does not assume that our struggles are the same struggles, or that our pain is the same pain, or that our hope is for the same future.

"Solidarity involves commitment, and work, as well as the recognition that even if we do not have the same feelings, or the same lives, or the same bodies, we do live on common ground."

Gilad Erdan, Israel's ambassador to the UN, took to Twitter to criticise the actress' remarks, writing: "Fiction may work in Harry Potter but it does not work in reality."

"If it did, the magic used in the wizarding world could eliminate the evils of Hamas (which oppresses women and seeks the annihilation of Israel) and the PA (which supports terror). I would be in favor of that!" he added.

His comments came shortly after Danny Danon, the former Israeli ambassador to the UN, also lashed out at Watson.

"10 points from Gryffindor for being an antisemite," Danon tweeted

Social media users slammed both Erdan and Danon over their comments, with many claiming they "diminished attention to real cases of anti-semitism."

Leah Greenberg, the co-executive director of Indivisible Project, a nonprofit founded in 2016 in response to the election of Donald Trump as president, said Danon's remarks were "a perfect demonstration of the utterly cynical and bad-faith weaponization of antisemitism to shut down basic expressions of solidarity with the Palestinian people.

"Former Israeli ambassador to the UN calls Emma Watson an ‘antisemite’ for expressing solidarity with the Palestinians. Beyond parody," tweeted broadcaster Mehdi Hasan.

Meanwhile, Palestinian activist Mohammed El-Kurd, who played a crucial role in raising international awareness about the forced evictions of Palestinians in the occupied East Jerusalem neighbourhood of Sheikh Jarrah, responded with, "Cry louder it's making me laugh."

Watson's Instagram post currently has over 600,000 likes and over 47,000 comments. The picture was originally posted in May by the Bad Activism Collective after Israel's latest offensive on the Gaza Strip resulted in the deaths of more than 250 Palestinians.

LETTER FROM INDIA
Stalled but not overturned

Jawed Naqvi

Published January 4, 2022

The writer is Dawn correspondent in Delhi.

A NEW YEAR’S ritual of decluttering mail threw up some old dispatches from New Delhi to Dawn. A November 2004 piece points to the growing distance between relative agreeableness and reason — and the bilious ditch we find ourselves in today. The dispatch spoke of then prime minister Manmohan Singh’s upcoming visit to Jammu and Kashmir. A troop reduction was ordered in the militarily fraught area. Predictably, the move was slammed by the Hindu right, a common feature of domestic compulsions.

The step to improve relations with Pakistan was seen by the international press as a facet of Singh’s sagacity. In today’s India, such an act would face hateful slander. In its essence, pervasive right-wing hate isn’t new. If anything, it is in keeping with its growing worship of Gandhi’s murderers. Among reasons cited for the assassination, was Gandhi’s proposed visit to Pakistan with a message of Hindu-Muslim harmony.

Hindutva fears harmony. Period. It thrives on parochial strife. The communally hateful speeches made in Haridwar recently were not original in this respect, nor did they mark a major shift in communal bias in recent Indian history. A new element is that the government has become more openly engaged in encouraging communal hatred to spread unhindered. The singer Rasoolan Bai was driven from her home in Ahmedabad following anti-Muslim violence in the 1960s. The bias in Gujarat has a history. It is equally true that Atal Bihari Vajpayee tendered an embarrassed apology to the global community as prime minister when Graham Stein and his sons were burnt alive by a Hindutva mob. Contriteness eludes Hindutva’s current crop of leaders.

Read: Where the linear progression of Hindutva will take India

If Indian democracy is yet to be rescued there’s a recent example to emulate. The peaceful farmers movement has shown the way, not for the first time. It was the farmers who formed the bulwark of the JP movement against Indira Gandhi’s authoritarian rule. Sadly, the RSS wormed its way to become a key part of the movement. The plot showed up in the subsequent early collapse of the opposition government that succeeded Mrs. Gandhi. The recent farmers movement on the other hand not only ensured victory for its economic causes, its social impact helped the coming together of Hindu and Muslim farmers in western Uttar Pradesh to the chagrin of Hindutva.

Hindutva fears harmony. Period. It thrives on parochial strife.

It goes to Singh’s credit that he studiously avoided the temptations of political hamming in his two-term tenure. He didn’t sit on a swing to the sway of folk music, for example, with visiting leaders. Nor did he show up uninvited at a party across the border. The protocol ensured there was no emotional backlash when things went wrong. Life with neighbours, more so with difficult neighbours, as he had seen from close quarters, was not black and white. He stayed his course for mutually handy peace with Pakistan. When he went into a civil nuclear deal with the US, he dexterously left largely unruffled the fragile trust with Beijing.

Singh didn’t blink even when the Mumbai horror came visiting four years down the road from the Kashmir bonhomie. He overrode calls from his own party men for military action against Pakistan. The foreign minister of Pakistan was visiting New Delhi when the terror attack happened. The Zardari government was in denial about the Pakistani identity of the lone attacker captured alive. Pakistani journalists stepped in to correct the narrative by identifying the family of the gunman. Dawn led the team, which may not be unrelated to other reasons that upright journalism is facing the heat from the Pakistani establishment today.

Stern words to the neighbour and a change in the home portfolio saw Singh cruising back to a second innings within seven months of the dastardly carnage. He annoyed his right-wing opponents further when he followed his instincts with a controversial post-Mumbai nightmare peace bid with Pakistan in Sharm el Sheikh. His overall trajectory showed that Singh was only building on his predecessor’s steps to keep Pakistan crucially engaged in peace talks.

Moreover, Singh was not going to repeat the mistakes of the Vajpayee administration, which mobilised the army for what was projected to be a ‘decisive war’ with Pakistan following the December 2001 attack on parliament. Mercifully, the war never came although some 1,800 Indian soldiers were killed in accidents with mines and fuses. As the author of the letter to president Clinton, which the US made public, Vajpayee claimed the nuclear tests he ordered in 1998 had China in the cross hairs. In other words, peace with Pakistan was a way for his strategists to avert the nightmare of two simultaneously hostile borders should relations with Beijing sour.

I cross-checked the facts of Singh’s Kashmir visit with The Guardian’s narrative of the event. It spoke of “guerrillas” launching an attack on an Indian army camp ahead of the troop reduction. This was baffling. Only those who didn’t want Indian troops to be reduced in the militarily saturated region would do something so damning. The same question arose with the subsequent terror attack in Pulwama. Did the perpetrators not know that they were shoring up Prime Minister Modi’s sagging election campaign?

Another telling story that surfaced in the old emails was about the Agra summit of July 2001. The summit was a disappointment for Gen Musharraf and Vajpayee. But the failure was handled with grace. “The caravan of peace has stalled, ladies and gentlemen of the press. It has not overturned.” Foreign minister Jaswant Singh’s words helped Vajpayee ride out the ensuing tensions and go to the 2003 Saarc summit in Islamabad. “Jang mein qatl sipahi hongey, surkh ru zilley ilahi hongey.” (In a war, soldiers will needlessly die/ So their majesties can hold their heads high!) Jaswant Singh grimly heard the couplet recited at his packed news conference following the parliament attack outrage. The lines from the mailbox are just as relevant today.

The writer is Dawn correspondent in Delhi.
jawednaqvi@gmail.com
Published in Dawn, January 4th, 2022

'Despicable and totally unacceptable': Pakistan slams fake online auction of Muslim women in India

Naveed Siddiqui

Published January 4, 2022 -

Screengrab of the Bulli Bai platform. — Photo via The Wire/Twitter


Pakistan strongly condemned on Tuesday the displaying of Muslim women's photographs for fake online auction on a website in India, terming it "despicable and totally unacceptable", and urged the international community to play its parts in stopping the "rising xenophobia and Islamophobia" in the neighbouring country.

Photographs of more than 100 prominent Muslim women, including journalists, activists, film stars and artists, were displayed last weekend without their permission on a website named Bulli Bai — a derogatory slang for Indian Muslims — for sale through fake auction.

The website was hosted on GitHub, a San Francisco-based coding platform, and taken down within 24 hours. The Indian police have arrested a man who was allegedly behind the fake auction.

Though there was no real sale involved, the Muslim women listed on the website said the auction was intended to humiliate them, many of whom have been vocal about rising Hindu nationalism in India and some of the policies of Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

The Foreign Office in Islamabad denounced the act in a statement issued on Tuesday, saying that "Pakistan strongly condemns the despicable and totally unacceptable harassment and insult of Muslim women on the internet and purpose-built online application in India."

"In a completely obnoxious and repugnant act, aimed at humiliating, harassing and insulting Muslim women, their doctored images have been placed on the internet application with outrageous captions for 'auction'," the statement said, adding that "hate-mongering followers of such applications attacked the dignity of nearly 100 influential Muslim women by 'bidding' on them with deeply offensive remarks."

The FO said this was the "newest low in the violent streak of hate attacks against minorities in India whereby cyberspace — with purpose-built online platform(s) and social media — has been used yet again, to demean and harass women, particularly Muslim women, [so as] to create a feeling of fear and shame amongst the Muslim community".

"These horrifying occurrences have left Muslim women traumatised and in deep fear," it added.

Read: 'Sulli Deals' — How photos of Muslim women were misused on a GitHub app

The FO further stated that under the "Hindutva-inspired BJP-RSS combine dispensation" in New Delhi, space for minorities, particularly Muslims, continued to shrink in India.

"It is reprehensible that no action has been taken against the perpetrators of [a] similar abhorrent act six months ago," wherein the photographs of dozens of influential Muslim women were put up on a social media platform, the FO said.

It was referring to Sulli Deals, another app on GitHub on which photos of hundreds of Muslim women were uploaded on July 4 for fake auction.

"Deafening silence of the BJP (Bharatiya Janata Party) leadership and absence of discernible action against ‘Hindutva’ proponents openly calling for genocide of Muslims should send alarm bells across the international community about the gross and systematic human rights violations of minorities, particularly Muslims, in India," the FO said.

It added that Pakistan was reiterating its calls on the international community, particularly the UN and relevant international human rights and humanitarian organisatins, to fulfill their responsibilities to "stop the rising xenophobia, Islamophobia and violent attacks against minorities in India and ensure their safety, security and well-being".

America’s trajectory

Owen Bennett-Jones

Published January 4, 2022 

DAWN.COM

The writer is author of The Bhutto Dynasty: The Struggle for Power in Pakistan.

THE ushering in of the new year is a time not only for resolutions but also, in the case of journalists, for predictions. So here is a forecast of what’s going to happen in the United States, not only in 2022 but looking as far ahead as early 2025.

This scenario begins with the 2022 mid-terms in which the Republicans will take back control of Congress. The recent Republican victory in the race for governor of Virginia show that the visibly aging Joe Biden has next to no prospect of bucking the well-established trend that the mid-terms go against the White House.

Once in control of Congress, the Republicans will inevitably resort to their hyper-partisan tactics, further frustrating any proposal, initiative or policy with Biden’s name on it and setting the scene for a rancorous presidential election campaign in 2024. Whether Biden has the energy to run for a second time is not yet clear. But we do know that Trump has a total grip on the Republican Party and although he has not declared his intention to run, he will do so and the Republicans will make him their candidate.

Making a prediction about the result of that election is inevitably speculative but past results give an indication of what might happen. In the popular vote in 2016, Trump lost to Hillary Clinton by 2.9 million votes — only securing the presidency because of the electoral college system whereby states — in most cases on a ‘winner takes all’ basis — send delegates to Washington to vote for the new president. In 2020, Trump lost to Biden by 7m votes. Trump is such a divisive figure there is little prospect of him breaking out from his loyal support base. In other words, there is every chance that when it comes to the popular vote in 2024 he will lose again — and possibly by a very significant margin.

Very many people in America — Democrats and Republicans — are armed.

When he lost to Biden, Trump tried to overturn the result. We all heard the phone calls to, for example, the Georgia secretary of state, Brad Raffensperger, in which Trump repeatedly demanded that the results be manipulated in his favour. These efforts failed only because state-level officials who control US elections — such as Raffensperger — refused to be bullied. That is unlikely to happen again in 2024. Many of those who resisted Trump last time round have come under severe pressure. Raffensperger, for example, has received a series of death threats describing how he and his family will die. Similar threats have been made to election officials all over the country. Police — for reasons that are unclear — have failed to investigate, never mind prosecute, the so-called patriots making the threats.

As a result, many of the officials who held the line in 2020 have withdrawn from public life are being replaced by Trump ultra-loyalists who have swallowed their leader’s evidence-free claims that the 2020 election was rigged. Raffensperger has in fact refused to resign but, as a result, faces a challenge for his secretary of state slot (which comes up for election in 2022) from a Republican Congressman Jody Hice who is leaving his seat in Congress in an attempt to take over from Raffensperger. That Hice would relinquish his Congressional seat to be Georgia’s secretary of state is a mark of just how far Trump loyalists are going to get themselves into key positions in the electoral system. Some Republican states are also reforming their procedures to empower potentially partisan official oversight boards.

These new ideological state-level officials can be expected to refuse to validate Democrat wins in 2024. This in turn opens up the likelihood that Republican-held state assemb­lies will refuse to send duly elec­ted pro-Democ­rat delegates to the electoral col­­­lege to form­ally choose the president. Re­­m­ember, it was at the Cong­res­sio­nal meeting to validate those delegates’ votes on Jan 6, 2021, that Trump tried to have a mob occupy the building to prevent that validation from taking place.

So, what happens if the election result isn’t respected? The endless manufactured grievances churned out by Fox News and the other right-wing US channels have given the Republicans the false impression that they are angrier than anyone else. But if the popular vote of the US electorate is overturned, then the Democrats and their supporters may well be even angrier. And needless to say, very many people in the United States — Democrats as well as Republicans — are armed.

So here is my prediction. In late 2024 or early 2025, there will be armed civil conflict in the US between the supporters of Trump on the one side and supporters of democracy on the other. And for once Pakistanis will be able to look at the US and shake their heads about a failed state.

Published in Dawn, January 4th, 2022

PAKISTAN

Age of politics

Arifa Noor

Published January 4, 2022 

The writer is a journalist.


AGE has never been too far from political discussions. Take the case of the US where the youthful Barack Obama was replaced by a 70-year-old Donald Trump who then stepped aside for an even older Joe Biden. Their respective ages were more than just numbers. If Obama’s youth was seen as a symbol of hope, his successors’ ages could be seen as reflecting the crises of American politics and the two main political parties.

In Pakistan, we seem to have a mix of the old and the young. Imran Khan, at 69, along with Nawaz Sharif (72) and Asif Ali Zardari (66) are seen as part of the same generation. However, of the three only the latter two are seen as experienced politicians, having been through the turmoil of the 1990s. And their children and heirs, Maryam Nawaz (48) and Bilawal Bhutto-Zardari (33) are not just seen as the future but also as young leaders who can afford to wait till they come to power.

Imran Khan, on the other hand, is not young but is (or should one say ‘was’) viewed as the leader of the youth. Whether he can hold on to this image after this term remains to be seen.

But considerable attention is paid to Maryam Nawaz and BBZ and their political futures. Here, it is rather interesting how it is said repeatedly that they have the luxury of time on their side. For example, it used to be said that PPP may have ceded space in Punjab but BBZ could afford to wait to regain this space, as he was so young. Similarly, in between all the analyses about who will lead the PML-N, many are of the view that Maryam may have to wait for her turn because once again she is rather young and cannot become prime minister right away. Even Shehbaz Sharif hinted at this in an interview some time ago.

In Pakistan, we seem to have a mix of the old and the young.

Are Maryam and BBZ really so young? Or does it only seem so because of the presence of Khan, AAZ and Sharif? And one just needs to catch the footage of any meeting of the PDM to realise that our political landscape is mostly dominated by ageing men.

This was not always so. While Maryam and BBZ are seen as inexperienced, their parents came into the limelight and power when they were rather young. Benazir Bhutto was a mere two years older than her son is at present when she took oath as the first prime minister of Pakistan in 1988. And Nawaz Sharif, who replaced her two years later, was 41 years old then.

Before these two catapulted to the political mainstage, Zulfikar Ali Bhutto was also around 45 when he took over as prime minister of Pakistan, while Mohammad Khan Junejo, who seemed to be an old soul, was just 56 when he took oath. To offer another example, Altaf Hussain was 35 in 1988 when MQM made its mark in the 1988 national elections.

Read: Karachi's political fortresses

Over the years, it seems, as we begin to be seen as a country with a young population, that those leading us have grown older and older.

This isn’t just limited to Pakistan. When Benazir Bhutto was Pakistan’s prime minister, her counterpart in India, Rajiv Gandhi, who took oath in 1984 at 40 years, was just as young and glamorous. At present, the current prime minister, Narendra Modi, is at 64, just a wee younger than our three politicians. And the Congress is headed by 75-year-old Sonia Gandhi whose son at 51 is still seen as ‘young’. Bangladesh and its two begums present a similar ageing problem.

Is this all a coincidence or does it reveal something about our politics?

To some extent, in Pakistan, at least, the 1970s and the 1990s could be explained by the socioeconomic changes brought in during the Ayub era because of land reforms and industrialisation, followed by the first election on universal franchise. The combination of factors ushered in an age of populism symbolised by the PPP and Bhutto. The old guard was replaced by a young party and its young leadership, including Bhutto. His premature death led to his young daughter coming to the fore. And her nemesis, Nawaz Sharif, established himself in Zia’s Punjab, during the period the military regime was trying to groom an anti-PPP political class as Punjab too was changing rapidly, thanks partly to remittances from abroad.

Since then, a relatively continuous process has perhaps allowed the same set of (ageing) politicians to dominate the landscape. Although by the noughties, Imran Khan emerged as an option and was able to attract the growing number of young voters, or would-be voters, as he had stepped foot into politics in the 1990s, his age didn’t match his inexperience.

And this continuation, which has also led to the cultivation of the political dynasties, has seen the emergence of BBZ and Maryam Nawaz. They are young but their political image, which they lay claim to, is not what Benazir and Nawaz Sharif symbolised in the 1990s. This is not to say they cannot symbolise hope — they could. But it is a hope which harks back to the past — their speeches reveal this, which speak of the populism of Bhutto or the achievements of Nawaz Sharif. And the debate about Imran Khan’s performance refers again and again to his and his team’s lack of experience. Maryam Nawaz and BBZ, to some extent, are about continuation and not change.

But all this leads to a number of questions about the youth and their political choices. Will Khan continue to be seen as their leader or will it be someone else? And if it’s the latter, who will it be? Will it be new young leaders brought forward by movements such as PTM? Or will Maryam Nawaz and BBZ evolve into young leaders who signify a new age as their parents once did? But in order to do that, they will first need to be seen as old enough to be in charge. If the Gandhi dynasty in India is any indication, there may still be some time before that happens.

Published in Dawn, January 4th, 2022

THE GRASS IS ALWAYS GREENER...
Returned N.Korea defector struggled to resettle in South, lived meagre life

By Hyonhee Shin

© Reuters/KIM HONG-JI FILE PHOTO: A general view of the North Korean guard posts, in this picture taken from the top of the Aegibong Peak Observatory, in Gimpo

SEOUL (Reuters) - A former North Korean defector who made a risky and rare cross-border return home last week had struggled in South Korea, officials and media reports said on Tuesday, sparking fresh debate over how such defectors are treated in their new lives.

© Reuters/Kim Hong-Ji FILE PHOTO: A man looks towards North Korea's propaganda village Kaepoong through a pair of binoculars at the Unification Observation Platform near the demilitarized zone in Paju

South Korea's military identified the man who crossed the heavily armed Demilitarised Zone (DMZ) separating the two Koreas on Saturday as a North Korean who defected to the South in a similar area just over a year ago.

The man's plight shed new light on the lives of re-defectors and raised questions about whether they had received adequate support after making the dangerous journey from the impoverished, tightly controlled North to the wealthy, democratic South.

The re-defector was in his 30s and making a poor living while working as a janitor, a military official said.

"I would say he was classified as lower class, barely scraping a living," the official said, declining to elaborate citing privacy concerns.

Officials, who said they saw little risk of the man being a North Korean spy, have launched an inquiry into how he evaded guards despite being caught on surveillance cameras hours before crossing the border.

North Korean officials have not commented on the incident and state media have not reported it.

LITTLE INTERACTION

South Korea's Yonhap news agency reported police in the northern Seoul district of Nowon who provided safety protection and other care to him raised concerns in June over his possible re-defection, but no action was taken due to a lack of concrete evidence.

Police declined to comment. An official at Seoul's Unification Ministry handling cross-border affairs said on Tuesday the re-defector had received government support for personal safety, housing, medical treatment and employment.

The man had little interaction with neighbours, and was seen throwing away his belongings a day before he crossed the border, Yonhap reported.

"He was taking out a mattress and bedding to garbage dumps on that morning, and it was strange because they were all too new," a neighbour was quoted by Yonhap as saying. "I thought about asking him to give it to us, but ended up not doing that, because we've never said hi to each other."

As of September, around 33,800 North Koreans had resettled in South Korea, daring a long, risky journey - usually via China - in pursuit of a new life while fleeing poverty and oppression at home.

Since 2012, only 30 defectors are confirmed to have returned to the North, according to the Unification Ministry. But defectors and activists say there could be many more unknown cases among those who struggled to adapt to life in the South.

About 56% of defectors are categorised as low income, according to ministry data submitted to defector-turned-lawmaker Ji Seong-ho. Nearly 25% are in the lowest bracket subject to national basic livelihood subsidies, six times the ratio of the general population.

In a survey released last month by the Database Center For North Korean Human Rights and NK Social Research in Seoul, around 18% of 407 defectors polled said they were willing to return to the North, most of them citing nostalgia.

"There's a complex range of factors including longing for families left in the North, and emotional and economic difficulties that emerge while resettling," the Unification Ministry official said, vowing to examine policy and improve support for defectors.

(Reporting by Hyonhee Shin; Editing by Lincoln Feast.)

Curriculum, new school funding pose challenges for Edmonton public in 2022: Estabrooks

Despite the testy relationship with the province this past year, Edmonton Public Schools board chairwoman Trisha Estabrooks is hopeful for a path forward that best serves students in 2022.

© Provided by Edmonton Journal Edmonton Public Schools board chairwoman Trisha Estabrooks on Dec. 7, 2021 in Edmonton.

Lauren Boothby 11 hrs ago

Edmonton public is one of dozens of Alberta school boards that refused to test the UCP government’s controversial draft K-9 curriculum after many education experts and advocates denounced parts — the social studies program in particular — for being regressive, faulty, negligent and plagiarized.
“We’re elected to represent Edmonton families and they’ve asked us to be loud and to be vocal on that issue, and I believe we have been,” Estabrooks told Postmedia in a year-end interview.

Last month, Education Minister Adriana LaGrange announced the social studies curriculum will be revised and a new version released in the spring. Math, physical education and English language arts and literature programs are going ahead in the fall with some changes.

Estabrooks said this is a step in the right direction, but the board is concerned some subjects will be implemented without field testing and requested changes being made. Edmonton public asked the government days prior to pause the roll-out, make revisions, then pilot it for two years.

“This is where the minister and I agree. We know we need a modern up-to-date curriculum. Where we disagree is how do we get there,” Estabrooks said prior to the changes being announced. “Now is not the time to be putting in place this curriculum.”

LaGrange met with Edmonton Public Schools this month, Nicole Sparrow, LaGrange’s press secretary, said in an email. Sparrow said the group providing advice on how to put the curriculum in place hasn’t been finalized.

“We are committed to continue working collaboratively with all education stakeholders to ensure Alberta’s students receive the world class education they deserve,” she said.

“(LaGrange) has firmly committed to having teachers on the (curriculum implementation advisory) group as well as system leaders from the public education system.”

New projects

Aside from the curriculum battle, the board at Edmonton Public Schools was also dismayed when nothing on its capital project wish list was funded this year.

“Which, quite frankly, is tough for growing school divisions such as Edmonton Public Schools … I guess we remain optimistic that the province will invest in our capital plan for this year,” Estabrooks said.

“Even though we’ve just opened up a brand new high school, a number of our high schools remain at or above capacity.”

Sparrow said the needs of all of Alberta’s 63 school boards must be considered in the budget. She said the government invested $1 billion in educational capital projects this year and that 31 Edmonton Public Schools projects were funded over the last decade.

Four new public schools opened in Edmonton in 2021 and Joey Moss (Keswick) K-9 School is slated to open next year.

WE NEED SCHOOL NURSES NOT COPS

Pandemic

Despite being in a second year of a global pandemic, students had more continuity and spent more time learning in-person this year, which was needed, said Estabrooks.

“I think about the early days of the pandemic and how the communities that I represent just felt this sense of mourning …and then we emerged from that, and we figured out new (strategies),” she said.

Estabrooks also thinks there’s a renewed appreciation for public schools as community hubs and for teachers, especially when students were learning online.

“So many parents were like ‘What? Wow! Look at what teachers do.’ All of a sudden your child is home learning right beside you (and) you see the challenges, you see how hard it is. So I think that our gratitude for staff in our schools is enormous.”

Anti-racism, police in schools

Using an anti-racism and equity lens is one item Estabrooks says the newly-elected school board will be working on next year.

“It really falls to this next board of trustees to ensure the accountability piece around that policy, to ensure that the policy isn’t just words on a few pages of paper.”

The policy was recently put to the test by advocates lobbying for students to get four days off for some religious and cultural holidays. One was approved.

Estabrooks said the board has more work to do on the issue and consultations about these holidays are ongoing.

There’s only so much the board can do without other levels of government, Estabrooks said. According to Sparrow, school boards have the authority to set their own instructional calendars.

Also next year, Estabrooks expects the review of the school resource officer (SRO) program will be complete.

The board voted to review SROs last year and superintendent Darrel Robertson later paused it.

Critics of the SRO program say poor and racialized children are often targeted for discipline, then funneled into the criminal justice system, while police have said it has a crucial public safety role.

Edmonton Catholic Schools (ECS)’ SRO program is still in place and under review.

Sandra Palazzo, ECS board chairwoman, declined multiple requests for a year-end interview with Postmedia.

lboothby@postmedia.com

ALBERTA
NDP ready for 2022 byelection as Notley blasts UCP's handling of COVID-19

Alberta NDP Leader Rachel Notley said lifting COVID-19 restrictions for what the province called “the best summer ever” was “the government’s biggest failure” this past year.

In a year-end interview, Notley said it was this decision that worsened the fourth wave of the virus and pushed Alberta’s health care system to its breaking point.

More than 15,000 surgeries were delayed as hospitals were overwhelmed. COVID-19 hospitalizations peaked at 1,133 patients, including 267 patients in ICUs.

The Northern Lights Regional Health Centre (NLRHC) brought in seven health care workers from Newfoundland and Labrador to help staff.

During the third wave in the spring, the local ICU was regularly packed and patients were sent to hospitals in Edmonton.

“How many people had their treatment delayed at the same time we saw up to 1,000 preventable deaths?” said Notley.

Premier Jason Kenney; current health minister Jason Copping and his predecessor, Tyler Shandro; and Chief Medical Officer of Health Dr. Deena Hinshaw have admitted lifting most COVID-19 restrictions on Canada Day put Alberta on course for the fourth wave in the fall.

Meanwhile, the NDP is ending the year on a high note. Party fundraising outpaced the UCP and the Opposition succeeded in getting the UCP to reverse course on multiple files.

This included coal mining along the eastern slopes of the Rockies, a widely-panned draft K-6 curriculum, and wage cuts for nurses.

Notley also attacked Kenney for making a $1.5 billion investment in the Keystone XL pipeline before the 2020 U.S. presidential election was held. President Joe Biden fulfilled his campaign promise to cancel the project during his first day in office.

“You didn’t have to be an oil and gas expert to know that it was a very reckless gamble, of $1.5 billion, at least, belonging to Albertans. We shouldn’t have lost that money,” said Notley.

Notley said her goals for 2022 include a focus on improving Alberta’s health care system and economic diversification. The party has called on the Alberta government to boost supports for long-term problems among recovered COVID-19 patients, particularly in rural Alberta.

“We know affordability is a problem. It’s always been a problem in Fort McMurray but it’s going up across the province,” said Notley . “[The provincial government] can put the cap back in place that we had around utilities They could put the cap on insurance rates back because people’s insurance rates are skyrocketing.”

Locally, the NDP is siding with the municipality’s fight to run its own EMS dispatch. The party is also lobbying for a reversal to changes made to the Disaster Relief Program (DRP). Earlier this year, the province limited homeowners to a one-time payment of $500,000 in government relief after a natural disaster. Municipalities and Métis settlements are also now on the hook for 10 per cent of damages.

“These changes will have sweeping effects on housing prices and the ability to sell a previously flooded home in Fort McMurray,” said Ariana Mancini, NDP candidate for Fort McMurray-Lac La Biche, earlier this month. “This is about protecting our community, encouraging people to raise their families here and ensuring those already living here can retire in peace.”

Mancini’s main opponent is former UCP MLA and Wildrose Leader Brian Jean. Jean lost to Kenney for UCP leadership and resigned in Feb. 2018.

Earlier this month, he announced a return to politics and won the UCP’s nomination by promising to out Kenney. Jean says the premier’s leadership during the COVID-19 pandemic is setting the NDP up for a victory in the next provincial election.

Mancini is also running against Paul Hinman, leader of the separatist Wildrose Independence Party and former Wildrose MLA for Cardston-Taber-Warner and Calgary-Glenmore. A date for the byelection must be scheduled by Feb. 15.

-with files from Vincent McDermott and the Canadian Press

JeHamilton@postmedia.com

Jenna Hamilton, Local Journalism Initiative Reporter, Fort McMurray Today

Edmonton suspends intake of healthy animals at care and control centre, asking residents to care for lost or stray pets during extreme cold

Edmonton’s Animal Care and Control Centre has suddenly suspended the intake of healthy animals until further notice and is asking residents to care for lost or stray pets in the interim

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© Provided by Edmonton Journal Edmonton's Animal Care and Control Centre is suddenly suspending the intake of animals considered healthy until further notice as a result of staffing and capacity challenges.

But animal rescues and residents are raising the alarm over the surprise change, concerned about the onus now being placed on them to take care of these animals rather than the city service Edmontonians pay for.

The City of Edmonton announced the immediate, temporary suspension on social media Saturday afternoon as extreme cold temperatures are expected to continue to bear down on the city over the next week.

The temporary change is a result of staffing and capacity challenges, the city said, noting the shift would allow the centre to focus on the animals already being cared for at the northwest Edmonton facility.

Instead of bringing lost or stray dogs and cats into the centre, the city is asking residents to make attempts to find the owner on their own and care for the animal until they are reunited. If the animal has a tag with a licence number on it, residents can call 311 for owner information. Animals that are considered to be in medical distress, injured or sick will still be accepted by appointment only.

But Vanessa Freeman, co-founder of the rescue Community Cats Edmonton, said this could lead to many challenges including the ability for already stretched rescues to help care for these animals if residents can’t. Lack of communication from the city has left rescues scrambling to come up with a solution, Freeman said, noting she received four calls on Sunday alone about cats needing assistance.

“Rescues are busy, we are full. So to make a change and not ask rescues to help in any way but simply imply that if the city can’t help, the rescues have to. I just don’t understand that,” she said. “I’m just not sure if this action was made thinking of the impact it would have on the animals and the community.”

Dog owner Valerie Bielenda said she believes many residents will do whatever it takes to protect animals from the current extreme cold weather, but this could lead to issues if the animal is aggressive or unvaccinated and residents are left alone to manage.

“It’s not acceptable because they’re putting the public at risk because if you by chance take in an aggressive dog, then there’s a risk for the humans,” she said. “This can’t be a safe alternative, it can’t be what they expect people to do.”

Appointments for animals ill, injured or in distress can still be made online.

Dustin Cook 

Misinformation from the U.S. is the next virus—and it’s spreading fast

Stephen Maher 

MACLEANS

LONG READ

© Used with permission of / © St. Joseph Communications. People gather at City Hall to protest vaccine mandates on Aug. 9, 2021, in New York City (Michael M. Santiago/Getty Images)

On Sept. 22, Shanon Sheppard of Halifax posted a video on Facebook to share terrible news with the world.

Sheppard, who comes across like a normal, worried mom in the video, says she hopes she can keep from crying. After she composes herself, she reveals the disturbing news she just learned from her daughter at school.

“One of her friends is now in critical care in hospital here in Halifax because her heart stopped right after she had a vaccine,” Sheppard says. “She’s not well right now. She can’t breathe. Her heart keeps stopping. She’s 13 years old—13 years old, and her heart stopped!”

Sheppard denounces Nova Scotia Premier Tim Houston and chief medical officer Dr. Robert Strang for forcing a 13-year-old girl to be injected with a dangerous vaccine.

When Mark Friesen saw the video the next day, in Saskatoon, he became enraged. Fresh from a fourth-place finish as a People’s Party of Canada (PPC) candidate in the federal election, he tweeted a link to Sheppard’s video along with his own video, filmed from behind the wheel of his truck.

RELATED: Why Americans have come to worship their own ignorance

“There are kids dropping like flies all over the world!” said Friesen, struggling to control his temper. “There are adults dropping like flies all over the world from this vaccine that you’ve now mandated! And the rest of you people, you just accept it because the government says so, because the f–king media says so, while we watch our kids die!”

Hundreds of other people shared Sheppard’s video on Twitter. It went viral, getting more than 100,000 views on Facebook alone, before the platform took it down.

It wasn’t true, of course. Serious vaccine-related illnesses are rare, and carefully reported by doctors. Strang told CBC Halifax that officials had determined that there was no freshly vaccinated 13-year-old girl in hospital and that “some other information would lead us to believe that this is a false story.”

This is a scene from the infodemic, where made-up stories go viral, catching public health officials flat-footed and convincing people not to take the vaccines that are the best hope for protecting them and ending the pandemic.

Sheppard, whose personal website describes her as a tarot-card reader, psychic and jewellery designer, no longer has a social media presence, but Friesen, a misinformation superspreader, didn’t stop.

Friesen, who owns a Saskatoon tree-pruning business, calls himself the “Grizzly Patriot.” He is a family man with a folksy Prairie manner and a thick beard—he comes across like a conspiratorial Red Green, but instead of sharing cabin-improvement tips, he’s got fake news about the “globalist” threat to your freedom. He is an energetic activist, giving talks, organizing rallies and holding protests outside hospitals. He has run twice for the PPC and even took the province to court, where he lost, unsuccessfully challenging public health rules.

He won’t get vaccinated, won’t wear a mask. In July, he tweeted: “To all those lovely people that hoped I’d catch ‘Covid’ and die: Um, 14 months of rallies, protests and town hall events, speaking, singing our anthem, hugging, shaking hands without a mask or social distancing, literally gathering with hundreds of thousands.”

This fall, his luck ran out.

Friesen’s social media accounts fell silent at the end of September. At some point in early October, he was hospitalized in Saskatoon, possibly in a facility he had been protesting outside just weeks earlier. He has COVID-19.

On Oct. 22, Laura-Lynn Tyler Thompson, an independent evangelical broadcaster, revealed in an online video that Friesen had been airlifted to Toronto’s Mount Sinai Hospital. From his bedside, Sean Taylor, a PPC candidate from B.C. and a fellow anti-vaxxer, told Tyler Thompson that Friesen had been intubated.

“He’s sick,” said Taylor. “He’s in a fight but I’m hopeful.”

***

Friesen was flown to Toronto—at an estimated cost of $20,000—because Saskatchewan’s hospitals were overwhelmed, mostly with unvaccinated COVID patients—many of them, no doubt, victims of the infodemic.

Two days before Tyler Thompson’s broadcast, Dr. Saqib Shahab, Saskatchewan’s chief medical health officer—whom Friesen had often attacked—broke down in tears as he discussed the situation. “It is very distressing to see unvaccinated, young, healthy people ending up in the ICU and dying,” he said. “To see young lives lost to a vaccine-preventable disease—how can we accept this?”

As we enter year three of the pandemic, the people in charge of fighting it can be forgiven for crying. The medical establishment has used astonishing new technology to invent, test, manufacture and distribute vaccines that can stop COVID-19, but the disease keeps mutating among the unvaccinated, producing variants with the potential for “immune escape.”

Doctors who should be focused on the 30 mutations in Omicron—the newest, most worrying variant—instead have to waste time countering misinformation sown by a vast army of deluded keyboard warriors who are constantly changing their toxic messages, mutating like the virus.

While we are fighting the coronavirus, we are also fighting an American virus—misinformation—which is mostly spread through American social media platforms that have dissolved the old bureaucratic borders against the dark side of American political culture. It’s a virus as dangerous as the one that causes COVID-19.

Strang says most of the misinformation he encounters has its roots in the U.S., with much of it going back to Donald Trump, who regularly spread misinformation.

“That set a precedent and allowed that to happen. All the stuff that I see here has very direct routes back to the U.S.”

READ: The American dream has moved to Canada

A report from the Communications Security Establishment—Canada’s cybersecurity agency—explains why: “Canada’s media ecosystem is closely intertwined with that of the U.S. and other allies, which means that when their citizens are targeted, Canadians become exposed to online influence as a type of collateral damage.”

A recent study by Canadian political science professors found that 71 per cent of Canadians follow more Americans than Canadians on Twitter, for instance. The platforms are “saturating information streams with U.S.-based news,” and “news exposure is associated with more COVID-19 misperceptions after controlling for domestic news exposure and other indicators of political engagement.”

In short, Canadians are getting bad ideas from the United States. “Social media exposure is related to COVID-19 misperceptions in large part because of its capacity to amplify the impact of content coming from the U.S. information environment.”

***

If you dig at all into the sources of the ludicrous theories about COVID-19, you’ll soon find yourself in the fever swamps of the American right.

Some say Bill Gates is implanting microchips in vaccine recipients. Others say COVID is caused by 5G towers. Friesen has tweeted about a “globalist” plot, and has mentioned the Rothschilds, a family that has often been featured in anti-Semitic conspiracy theories. One video Friesen shared asserts that shadowy figures at the World Economic Forum want to reduce the world’s population to 500 million by forcing people to take vaccines that make them infertile.

In an interview with an American podcast, he said he gets a lot of his information from a writer with the John Birch Society, which has been pushing racist and anti-Semitic conspiracy theories since the days of Dwight Eisenhower, who they allege was a secret Communist.

Elaborate and nonsensical conspiracy theories like these, often tinged with anti-Semitism, have a long history in the United States. In 1964, in Harper’s magazine, American historian Richard Hofstadter laid out the long, dismal history in an article called “The Paranoid Style in American Politics,” written in reaction to the presidential candidacy of Republican Barry Goldwater.

READ: Misinformation is an infection that politicians have left to fester

Hofstadter found a malignant thread—conspiratorial anti-establishment movements alleging nefarious plots, always featuring a powerful villain who “makes crises, starts runs on banks, causes depressions, manufactures disasters, and then enjoys and profits from the misery he has produced.”

The specific enemy changes—Masons, Catholics, Communists, Blacks and Jews have all played the role—but the story stays the same. The enemy is “a perfect model of malice, a kind of amoral superman—sinister, ubiquitous, powerful, cruel, sensual, luxury-loving.”

The people who recognize the plot, on the other hand, are heroes.

“As a member of the avant-garde who is capable of perceiving the conspiracy before it is fully obvious to an as yet unaroused public, the paranoid is a militant leader,” Hofstadter wrote.

If you watch the videos of the conspiracy theorists, which I don’t recommend, you’ll see that they are bound together by the cause, sharing the excitement and hardship of the struggle—an escape, perhaps, from a humdrum life spent reading tarot cards or pruning trees.

Amarnath Amarasingam, an assistant professor at Queen’s University, sees that psychological dynamic at play among those radicalized by Islamism or white nationalism, not just anti-vaxxers.

“They’ve developed this kind of embattled identity, this small vanguard of people who are going to wake up the sleeping masses to the true reality of their lives [and tell them] that the wool has been pulled over their eyes and they are being used for sinister ends.”

The paranoid style, traditionally on the margins of American political life, has come into the mainstream in the Trump era. Although Donald Trump was vaccinated, and spoke half-heartedly in favour of vaccination when he came under pressure for mishandling the pandemic, he pivoted to misinformation as a way to deflect accountability.

Trump’s supporters, like all of us, are inclined to conformity bias, which leads individuals to form opinions based on what their group thinks, in what some researchers call tribal epistemology. In this case, it has fatal consequences. There are three times as many COVID deaths in Trump-supporting counties, where vaccination rates are low, as there are in Democratic counties. In Canada, the areas most heavily influenced by Trump-style politics are also the areas with the highest rates of vaccine resistance.

Advanced Symbolics, an Ottawa tech company, has designed an AI program that sifts through social media posts to figure out what’s happening inside the walled gardens of the platforms. They found that the two biggest spreaders of conspiracy theories in Canada were populists—Ontario MPP Randy Hillier and Maxime Bernier, the leader of the PPC.

The same dynamic is at play around the world. A lot of COVID-19 misinformation in Africa and Latin America, for instance, appears to have its roots in right-wing American messaging.

© Provided by Maclean's Maxime Bernier at an election rally in Edmonton last September (Artur Widak/NurPhoto/Getty Images)

Maxime Bernier at an election rally in Edmonton last September (Artur Widak/NurPhoto/Getty Images)

Another big stream of misinformation comes from the wellness industry. There is often a sales pitch for vitamins connected to the anti-vax nonsense. The best example of that is Joseph Mercola, a wealthy Florida tanning-bed salesman and alternative-medicine proponent who has put millions of dollars into anti-vaccination campaigns.

The messages are often amplified by celebrities like Gwyneth Paltrow and Joe Rogan, who, critics say, share unhelpful health news to get headlines and sell products.

University of Alberta professor Timothy Caulfield, who has spent years cataloguing health misinformation spread by celebrities, has watched, horrified, as the wellness hucksters have softened the ground for dangerous nonsense.

“There’s this strange coming together of the wellness community—traditionally thought of as the libertarian left, even New Age—and the far right,” he says. “They have come together. They really have. And now the wellness industry is an entry point for QAnon.”

QAnon, a ludicrous conspiracy that falsely alleges that many prominent figures are involved in child sex trafficking, is the most dangerous current expression of the paranoid style.

Corey Hurren, the Manitoban who crashed through the fence around Rideau Hall with a loaded firearm apparently meant for Justin Trudeau, believes Bill Gates was behind COVID-19.

Canadian QAnon influencer Romana Didulo, who has tens of thousands of followers, was recently questioned by the RCMP after urging supporters to “shoot to kill anyone who tries to inject children under the age of 19 years old with coronavirus19 vaccines.” In December, Quebec police arrested a Laval father after he posted a news release about a vaccination campaign at his daughter’s school with the comment: “It’s time to go hunting bang bang.”

***

It was back in February 2020, when the world was just waking up to the pandemic, that Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, director-general of the World Health Organization, warned of what was coming: “We’re not just fighting an epidemic; we’re fighting an infodemic,” he said. “Fake news spreads faster and more easily than this coronavirus and is just as dangerous.”

Washington Post writer David J. Rothkopf, who coined the term “infodemic,” called it “a complex phenomenon caused by the interaction of mainstream media, specialist media and internet sites, and ‘informal’ media, which is to say wireless phones, text messaging, pagers, faxes and email, all transmitting some combination of fact, rumour, interpretation and propaganda.” That was in 2003, two years before Facebook went live. It now has almost three billion monthly users—about 40 per cent of the world’s population, including 24 million Canadians.


MORE: The slow death of American freedom

Viral fake news spreads quickly on social media platforms. Under pressure, the companies are responding—Meta, Facebook’s parent company, says it has removed 24 million pieces of COVID misinformation from Facebook and Instagram around the world, and Facebook puts labels on COVID content with links to public health sites.

But critics say the platforms have been too slow, and it is hard to know how much misinformation is being shared, because Meta makes it difficult to know what its algorithms are putting in people’s feeds. There’s no Top 10 list or database of the most frequently shared fake videos, and other networks—like Rumble, Parler and Telegram—allow misinformation in the name of free speech.

We can’t know where we would be if it weren’t for misinformation on social media, but we can be sure that more people would be vaccinated, and fewer would have died.

In February, Frank Graves of EKOS Research surveyed Canadians, asking them five questions about COVID. He found almost half of respondents were somewhat misinformed, and eight to 20 per cent had “a very distorted picture.”

Within that latter group, about 70 per cent do not want to get vaccinated. Graves says the fourth wave is “to a large extent” the result of disinformation, mostly from Facebook and YouTube. It is concentrated in the Prairies, and among people who support populists like Trump.

“The evidence is that this group just simply is not accessible to reason, evidence or persuasion,” Graves says. “They’re absolutely convinced that what they know is true and what everybody else knows is false. They don’t consume any mainstream media, which they consider fake news. They don’t trust science. They don’t trust public health.”

University of Toronto epidemiologist David Fisman is sure that is costing lives. “There’s a very strong correlation between being disinformed and declining to be vaccinated,” he says. Because of that, he adds, “something like half the severe illness and death we see being attributable in some degree to misinformation is a reasonable guess.”

Between the middle of August, when COVID case counts were low, and Dec. 1, when they were creeping up again, about 3,000 people died of COVID in Canada. If Fisman is right, about 1,500 dead people could be considered victims of the infodemic.

Consider Twila Flamont, of Yorkton, Sask., who died of COVID in October at the age of 36, leaving six children who will grow up without their mother. Her husband, Derek Langan, told the CBC they didn’t get vaccinated because of conspiracy theories about the vaccines that they read on Facebook.

Or consider Jason Bettcher, an Edmonton iron worker who died in October at the age of 47, leaving a grieving wife, four children and two grandchildren. He posted QAnon and anti-vax memes on his Facebook page. In an anguished post on Facebook, his widow wrote that before he was intubated he told her he would get the shot as soon as he could, but he changed his mind too late.

Or consider Makhan Singh Parhar, 48, of Delta, B.C., who died, likely of COVID, on Nov. 4, after spending years spreading conspiracy theories, including some about COVID. He recorded a video as he became ill, mocking the idea of COVID, which he considered fake news.

Linda Methot Hartley, 65, of Grand Falls, N.B., was luckier. Hartley, a widowed, retired personal care worker, spends a lot of time on Facebook. In 2021, she received an audio file from someone—she can’t recall who—as a Facebook message.

In the five-minute recording, an unidentified woman who calls herself a “natural doctor” says that the vaccines contain “ingredients that are very catastrophic to your cellular system.”

“Once they make you so that your immune system can’t make white blood cells anymore, you become dependent on the boosters to stay alive, just like someone becomes dependent on insulin.” The “doctor” says Big Pharma is doing this to get “re-occurring customers for life.”

This message scared Hartley half to death. She shared it with her friends on Facebook and, although she wasn’t entirely sure, she ultimately decided not to get vaccinated. “I really thought it was true what they were saying, that the government wants to kill us with the vaccines, that it was poison,” she told me in a recent interview.

Hartley got infected with COVID and spent more than a month in hospital, terribly ill. Now, freshly vaccinated and on the road to recovery, she regrets being taken in, and has spoken out publicly, urging people not to be fooled by what they see on Facebook.

“It was a bunch of lies.”

The toll would be even higher if one counts people who were denied treatment for other ailments because of COVID-19. Strang says that while there was little collateral damage in his province, which kept COVID levels low, it took a toll elsewhere. “A lot of people’s health was impacted and [a lot] quite likely died because they couldn’t get the right care at the right time for their non-COVID health-care needs,” he says. “It’s just a very safe assumption to say that the misinformation and the hardcore anti-vax stances have been a major factor behind that.”

***

The Public Health Agency of Canada (PHAC), which takes the lead in responding to medical misinformation, has been overwhelmed by the pandemic, struggling to manage vital short-term tasks like enforcing quarantine policy. It does not seem to be acting as effectively as it could in countering misinformation, leaving debunking to be handled by local authorities.

In an email, a spokesperson told me that, to date, PHAC has “largely focused” on “crowding out misinformation by ensuring Canadians have access to factual, evidence-based information.”

PHAC likely doesn’t know the scope of the problem. Much of what happens on Facebook is still unknown—especially in private groups where anti-vaxxers use code words to evade content rules—and the company takes pains to shut down researchers who try to pierce the secrecy veil.

Experts emphasize the need for greater transparency. A recent report from the American Aspen Institute and a 2018 report from the Canadian Public Policy Forum make the same point that Frances Haugen, the Facebook whistleblower, has made to lawmakers: governments need to force the platforms to make their networks more transparent.

For example, the political scientists who found Canadians’ feeds full of American content were unable to determine if Canadians are choosing U.S. content or whether the platforms’ algorithms are pushing it. The dominant medium of 21st-century life—social media—is governed by secret rules set in distant corporate offices, where engagement is prized over other values, like truth.

MORE: The pandemic is breaking parents

In Canada, instead of requiring the platforms to be more transparent, the Liberals are proposing greater controls on hate speech, which appeals to the party’s base, but raises concerns about freedom of expression and will do nothing about misinformation.

“ ‘Let’s do something to show that we’re doing something,’ ” says Amarasingam. “It’s not going to solve the problem they think it’s solving. And it’s not a good trend for civil liberties.”

To harden the body politic against misinformation, we need to encourage critical thinking, do a lot more to promote media literacy and work to maintain public trust in institutions that provide good information. Public health agencies need to be quicker and more aggressive in countering damaging false information.

© Used with permission of / © St. Joseph Communications. An anti-vaccine protest in New York in November (Stephanie Keith/Getty Images)

An anti-vaccine protest in New York in November (Stephanie Keith/Getty Images)

It will be an uphill battle. American research shows that even students studying misinformation struggle to tell the difference between good and bad sources of information.

But we have no choice but to tackle this problem, in part because it will not go away when the pandemic ends. The dark techniques that social networks have enabled will be manipulated to sow discord and mislead the public about other issues, like climate change and immigration, for example.

Would-be regulators around the world are struggling with this issue, and there are no easy solutions, in part because we must protect the right of Friesen to think and say what he likes if we are to continue to have a free society.

Canada is better placed than many countries are to strike the right balance. The Edelman Trust Barometer, which measures citizens’ trust in institutions around the world, shows that Canadians’ trust level actually increased by three points during the pandemic, and Canada remains ahead of most Western countries, which is reflected in our high vaccination rates.

But our leaders appear complacent, or distracted by partisan struggles. In Europe, which is farther from the American source of so much of the misinformation, lawmakers and regulators have done a lot more. They require regular reporting on disinformation from the platforms, for instance, and have established a hub for fact checkers and experts to monitor the problem and propose regulatory solutions.

There is no silver bullet, no magic solution that will make it all go away, but that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t try to push back. The cost of inaction is too high.

***

Friesen, who believes the mainstream media is full of liars, did not respond to my efforts to communicate with him for this article. I wondered if he would change his thinking while he was intubated, as Hartley did, and recognize that he had been deceived and turn against the anti-vax movement when he recovered.

On Nov. 26—two months after his accounts went silent—he posted about his health.

“Today I stood up by myself for more than two minutes,” he wrote. “Progress is being made. I went in on Oct. 4 weighing 260 pounds. Today I weigh 202 pounds. Lots of muscle was consumed by my body while being out for four weeks.”

On. Nov. 29, he posted a photo of himself from when he was intubated, looking gaunt and terribly unwell, unfocused eyes gazing blankly off to one side.

“I’m somewhat convinced this was the moment when the big fella turned me back home to recover and continue the fight for our freedoms,” he wrote.

Friesen’s life was saved by teams of highly trained health-care workers at goodness knows what cost to the rest of us, in terms of both money and health-care capacity. Since the beginning of the pandemic, the Saskatchewan Health Authority has had to delay about 26,000 elective surgeries because its ICUs are full of unvaccinated COVID patients like Friesen.

And he is still at it, sharing misinformation from his hospital bed, a shadow of his former self, a man who went to death’s door because he refused to take a free vaccine that would have kept him from getting sick.

He’s free to do that, but we are free, in turn, to use him as an example of what can happen to you if you believe things that aren’t true.

This article appears in print in the February 2022 issue of Maclean’s magazine with the headline, “The next virus.” here.