Capture the flag: how the convoy protests use Canada's most powerful symbol

Christian Paas-Lang - Yesterday 
cbc.ca

On any normal day, Ottawa is dotted with Canadian flags — adorning federal buildings and topping the Peace Tower on Parliament Hill.

But the national symbol has been virtually everywhere in the city over the past few weeks. Protesters have literally wrapped themselves in the Maple Leaf during the anti-vaccine mandate demonstrations that have occupied the downtown core — demonstrations that police moved to end on Friday with dozens of arrests.

Protesters' use of symbols has been controversial since the convoy rolled into town roughly three weeks ago. Sightings of Confederate flags and swastikas were major events early in the protest. On Friday, the Manitoba Métis Federation condemned protesters' use of its flag.

After weeks of living with the protesters, many downtown residents say they can no longer see a Maple Leaf flag without a feeling of tension.

"I have my guard up immediately," one resident said, describing their feelings when they see someone carrying the flag in the street.

"Every time I see a Canadian flag now, you know, it's almost like you're embarrassed to be Canadian at the moment."

Removal of flags key demand for counter-protesters

During the third weekend of the protests, some residents demanded that protesters remove Canadian flags from their vehicles before passing through a counter-protest blockade set up outside the city's downtown core.

Joel Harden, a provincial NDP MPP who was helping to manage that counter-protest, said that participants told him they felt the flag had been politicized and tarnished by its use in the protests.

"People feel like the Canada they want, the tolerant Canada, the inclusive Canada, has really been compromised in the last two weeks," he said. The fact that the flags were linked to reported episodes of protesters harassing locals just made it worse, he added.

"I'm not saying that speaks for every single protester, but the presence of those flags on those trucks, and some of those protesters doing those things, really unsettle people," he said.

"So, symbols matter to people. And I think it's fair to say that for a lot of counter-protesters, they felt an important symbol for them was violated."
Flag was political from the start

Experts say the protesters' use of the Canadian flag amounts to an argument in the public square about what the flag means — and what Canada means.

"It's not so much what the flag symbolizes as the fact that the flag represents the nation. And than what does the nation symbolize?" said Peter Ansoff, an American vexillologist — someone who studies flags.

"It's really what the nation stands for that they're arguing about."

Richard Nimijean, an instructor with the School of Indigenous and Canadian Studies at Carleton University, agreed.

"It's not so much that [protesters are] co-opting the flag. It's that the flag is, at one level, an object of unity," he said. "But in fact, flags are also subject to disunity. We fight about it all the time."

Forrest Pass is a vexillologist and curator with Library and Archives Canada. He said that while debates about the flag are often about national identity, there's also a practical element to protesters' use of the Maple Leaf image.

"I think there's also a use of it as a shield," he said. "I think that if we had seen heavy enforcement efforts early on in the demonstrations, with so many protesters flying the Canadian flag, I think that the optics of that would have been would have been bad."

Pass said the Canadian flag has never been a neutral or apolitical symbol. In fact, it was a political football from the moment of its birth.

Canada observed Flag Day on Feb. 15, celebrating the moment in January, 1965 when Queen Elizabeth signed the royal proclamation formally adopting the new flag.

The flag was controversial at first. Only after what Pass called an "acrimonious" debate between Conservatives (who opposed the new flag) and the Liberals and NDP (who supported it) did Canada replace the old Red Ensign with the Maple Leaf design.

But its use in the protest does represent something new, Pass argued.

"This sort of association of the flag with a right-of-centre movement is, I think, a novelty and I think is an indication that the Canadian flag has matured," he said. "Almost counterintuitively, it's becoming depoliticized by this use."


© Blair Gable/ReutersA man holds a Canadian flag in front of Parliament as truckers and supporters continue to protest COVID-19 vaccine mandates in Ottawa on February 18, 2022.

The way Canadians approach the flag, Ansoff said, is starting to align with the way Americans treat the Stars and Stripes; in the U.S., it's common for activists across the political spectrum to wave the flag in any protest.

"There's certainly a use of the flag on both sides," Pass said. "And I think that's an indication of the flag as an emblem, an indication that it is something that has come to represent Canada — even if we don't know exactly what Canada represents."
The power of symbols

The Maple Leaf banner had another significant moment last year, when flags on federal buildings were lowered for months to honour Indigenous children who died at residential schools.

During that time, Lou-ann Neel redesigned the B.C. flag — using styles inspired by her Kwakwakaʼwakw culture — to launch a conversation about symbolism and inclusion in Canada.

"For myself, my flag was just conveying a peaceful message that just says, 'We're still here. We're part of this province,'" said Neel, who attended residential school.


© Olivier Hyland/CBC News

The Canadian flag at half-mast atop the Peace Tower in Ottawa.

Neel, who works with the Royal B.C. Museum on Indigenous collections and repatriations, said the flag represents everything about this country — the good and the bad — and that arguments about its use should move beyond symbolism to a deeper engagement with the past.

"I think that we are missing the opportunity to have a much larger discussion, instead of just saying, 'You shouldn't do this or you ought not to do that with the flag,' because of some mysterious common vision we all share about it," she said.

Harden framed that optimistic vision a bit differently.

"What's that game we played as kids, capture the flag?" he said. "Let's recapture the flag with a different aura and put some actual kindness into it, and try not to dehumanize people on the way there."

OUT OF FRYING PAN INTO FIRE

Big coal states eye small nuclear reactors for grid, economy

The push comes as aging fossil plants have closed or faced economic pressure.


Nuclear startup TerraPower has chosen a site near the Naughton coal plant (pictured) in Kemmerer, Wyo., as the site for the company's proposed Natrium reactor demonstration project. | AP Photo/Natalie Behring


By JEFF TOMICH and KRISTI E. SWARTZ

02/17/2022 

Some of the nation’s biggest coal states are quickly warming to small nuclear.

In West Virginia, Gov. Jim Justice signed a bill last week eliminating a quarter-century ban on nuclear plant construction. And Indiana’s Senate passed a bill incentivizing the siting of next-generation nuclear plants at existing fossil plant sites.

Those bills follow nuclear-friendly legislation adopted the last two years in Wyoming and Montana, home to the nation’s largest coal-producing region, the Powder River Basin. And legislators in Missouri, another coal-dependent state, are also moving a bill to enable small modular reactors, or SMRs.

Nuclear energy’s push into coal country comes as aging fossil plants have closed or face economic pressure. That’s left states like West Virginia and Indiana looking at their future electricity needs and trying to help communities fill the economic void left when power plants shut down.

Proponents of a coal-to-nuclear transition see next-generation reactors as a solution to both needs, providing “baseload” power as well as jobs, taxes and other economic benefits to support host communities.

“Coal and other fossil sites offer substantial value as potential sites for new nuclear plants in terms of their existing power grid and other infrastructure, ready access to water sources and a local skilled workforce,” Alice Caponiti, deputy assistant secretary for reactor fleet and advanced reactor deployment at the U.S. Department of Energy, told an Indiana Senate committee last month.

DOE’s presence at the hearing was a sign of how the campaign to promote SMRs as a replacement for coal is embraced by parties that seldom agree on energy policy — red-state legislators who see the loss of coal as a threat to electric reliability and the Biden administration, which views advanced nuclear as a key to helping achieve the president’s goal to eliminate power-sector carbon emissions.

Critics worry the rush to embrace new nuclear is premature because SMRs won’t be commercially deployed for years and their economics are unproven.

Indiana and West Virginia are among four states visited so far this year by the representatives of the Nuclear Energy Institute in support of polices that lay the groundwork for new nuclear development.

Christine Csizmadia, who oversees state legislative affairs for the industry group, said interest among states is on the rise.

“Over the last few years here, I’ve seen 10 times the increase in terms of actual bills that have been introduced,” Csizmadia said in an interview. “They’re getting hearings, they’re passing, things are actually happening in the states that are related to nuclear.”

While some of the focus in the past has been on helping preserve existing nuclear reactors, states such as Wyoming, Montana and Nebraska have more recently passed bills focused on new nuclear.

Legislatures in states like West Virginia are lifting decades-old nuclear moratoria. Others are looking to incentivize new nuclear or passing bills calling for formal studies of advanced nuclear technology.

Just last week, the Tennessee Valley Authority announced a plan to bring an SMR online in the early 2030s at the Clinch River site near Oak Ridge, Tenn., where TVA has already secured an early site permit from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (Energywire, Feb. 11).

There’s a reason why next-generation nuclear technology has appeal for coal states, said Ken Nemeth, executive director of the Southern States Energy Board, an association of Southern state officials to provide a forum on energy issues.

“You’ve got a globally competitive cost involved in this and a workforce transition that’s needed in states that heavily rely on coal, and now we’re going to see some of that infrastructure shut down,” he said.
Prioritizing nuclear legislation

So far, the NRC has approved just one small modular reactor design from Portland, Ore.-based NuScale Power. The 720-megawatt plant, dubbed the Carbon Free Power Project, will consist of a dozen reactors on 890 square miles at DOE’s Idaho National Laboratory.

TerraPower, a nuclear startup founded by billionaire Bill Gates, announced plans in November to build its first advanced reactor in Wyoming, at the site of Rocky Mountain Power’s Naughton coal-fired power plant, which is due to close in 2025.

Neither SMR project is expected to begin full operation until 2030, meaning broader commercial deployment won’t happen until later next decade at the soonest. While the new reactors are partially funded with DOE grants, each project is the first of its kind to be licensed and built. And despite assurances from the industry, questions remain whether new nuclear projects can be cost-competitive.

That isn’t stopping states from prioritizing nuclear legislation.

Marc Nichol, NEI’s senior director for new reactors, said there’s good reason for the urgency. That’s because the timeline requires it, he said. Pre-development work, licensing and construction of an SMR is estimated to take eight to 10 years. And with coal plants continuing to disappear from the U.S. landscape, SMRs will be needed in the next decade.

“Planning needs to begin now. And I think the states are recognizing that.”

Marc Nichol, NEI

A NuScale paper last year suggested reasons why its SMRs are a good fit for existing coal plant sites.

The 77-megawatt modules in NuScale’s design can be configured in groups of four, six or 12 — a total roughly equivalent to a medium-size coal plant. And they are sized to fit within the confines of an existing coal plant property, potentially enabling the reuse of cooling water delivery systems and other infrastructure, potentially saving as much as $100 million per site, the paper said.

Perhaps more importantly, coal plants and SMRs share some of the same components — steam turbines, generators, pumps, and electrical and control systems — creating opportunities for displaced coal plant workers.

The job opportunities are another reason why Biden’s DOE is pushing coal-to-nuclear — because enabling a “just transition” from coal and other fossil fuels is a pillar of the administration’s climate agenda.

It’s a message that resonates with some lawmakers in coal states like West Virginia, where another powerful ally has also helped make the case for new nuclear: U.S. Sen. Joe Manchin.

The West Virginia Democrat holds the key as to whether the “Build Back Better Act” in Congress may gain traction. He also introduced a bill in December to finance and site the construction of advanced nuclear reactors (E&E Daily, Dec. 17, 2021).

The influential senator had called on his home state to repeal the ban on nuclear construction at a hearing last fall (E&E Daily, Nov. 5, 2021).

“This is something I would like to see changed,” Manchin said at the time. “I believe advanced nuclear reactors hold enormous potential to provide opportunity to communities across the country with zero-emission, baseload power.”

Not coincidentally, Manchin visited the West Virginia Senate floor just moments before the bill passed that chamber last month, a step toward overturning the nuclear ban.

Backers of that bill argued that a nod to nuclear would diversify the state’s coal-dominated fuel mix and help lure new jobs. And it would put special emphasis on advanced reactor projects located on the footprint of former fossil fuel plants.

“[This] says, ‘West Virginia is open for business in more ways than one,’” said state Sen. Robert Karnes, a Republican. “We’re bringing the state into the modern age, and we want to embrace all of the various options.”
‘They are not infallible’

The bill comes on the heels of steel giant Nucor Corp. choosing West Virginia to build a $2.7 billion steel mill. The investment is being billed as the largest single investment for the company as well as in West Virginia, so lawmakers have taken notice.

“Nucor Corp. has asked her what our future plans may be, and this would be, as they see it, a step in the right direction to allow nuclear energy as an energy source,” said state Sen. Michael Woelfel, a Democrat.

More than a dozen states have recently passed nuclear legislation, including West Virginia, which earlier this month lifted a 25-year-old ban on reactor construction. | National Conference of State Legislatures

Like West Virginia, Indiana, too, is being forced to look at the future of its energy mix.

Utilities such as Northern Indiana Public Service Co. plan to shutter remaining coal plants this decade. And the state’s largest utility, Duke Energy Corp., plans to exit coal by 2035.

While Indiana is seeing strong growth in renewables, particularly solar, the transition away from coal has legislative leaders eyeing nuclear as a missing link to the state’s energy needs.

“Renewables are fantastic, but they are not infallible,” Republican state Sen. Blake Doriot said during last month’s hearing. “We have to have what is called baseload.”

If West Virginia opened the door to nuclear energy, the bill working its way through the Indiana General Assembly goes a step further by incentivizing development.

Kerwin Olson of the Citizens Action Coalition, an Indiana consumer and environmental advocacy group, said proponents are seeking to capitalize by suggesting that the loss of coal-fired generating capacity and increased reliance on renewables will lead to grid failures like Texas experienced with Winter Storm Uri.

“They are capitalizing on a very fervent environment at the Indiana Statehouse,” Olson said. Legislators “are endeared with baseload power, and they see enormous opportunity.”

Olson said SMRs could play a part in helping reduce carbon emissions in Indiana. The question, he said, is at what cost.

S.B. 271 would classify SMRs as “clean energy” under Indiana law, meaning utilities that file applications with the NRC would make SMR projects eligible to apply to state regulators for so-called construction work-in-progress (CWIP) financing that would allow them to begin recovering costs years before the plant produces energy.

“It is a risk-shifting bill,” Olson said.

The bill would also make SMRs located at fossil plant sites eligible for a 3-percentage-point bonus on the return that a utility earns on the project.

No Indiana utility has proposed building an SMR or specifically included nuclear in long-range plans for meeting energy demand over the next 15 or 20 years.

Duke Energy, however, has made general references to an energy resource that fits the description.

In its integrated resource plan filed with state regulators in December, Duke’s modeling shows certain decarbonization scenarios dubbed “Biden 100” (for 100 percent decarbonization by 2035) and “Biden 90” (for a 90 percent reduction) would require 1,317 MW and 878 MW, respectively, of “zero emitting load following resources,” a term that includes SMRs and other advanced technologies that aren’t yet commercially available.

Duke and other Indiana investor-owned utilities in the state testified in support of the bill. So did officials with NuScale, which last year hired a politically connected Indiana consultant Suzanne Jaworowski, a senior adviser in DOE’s Office of Nuclear Energy during the Trump administration. Before joining DOE, Jaworowski served as director of Donald Trump’s Indiana 2016 campaign.
Less risky?

The use of CWIP financing looms large over the future of nuclear energy in the U.S.

Consumer advocates are generally dubious of utility proposals to recover costs of power plants before they’re operational.

That’s especially true for nuclear projects.

They point to a history of cost overruns, delays and project cancellations at nuclear projects, including a pair of high-profile projects in the Southeast.

The twin reactors at Southern Co.’s Plant Vogtle expansion were supposed to start operating in 2016 and 2017 and are seven years behind schedule. What’s more, Vogtle is now twice its proposed $14 billion budget, which means the financing costs that customers have been paying along the way have also doubled.

In South Carolina, utilities walked away in 2017 from the V.C. Summer expansion after rising costs forced its main contractor into bankruptcy. At the time, customers already had paid more than $2 billion toward building two reactors.

The fact that SMRs have yet to be deployed commercially should have lawmakers skeptical about the ability to bring new projects online on time and under budget, some consumer advocates and legislators said.

Nichol, of NEI, said the risk of cost overruns and delays with SMR projects, which have simpler designs and can be partially assembled off-site in factories, is overstated. What’s more, the federal funding is helping offset some of the risk of first-of-a-kind projects.

“There definitely is a view out there that these will be less risky,” he said. “If a state wanted it to have CWIP allowable for a first project, I think there’s acceptable risk in that.”

Not everyone agrees.

State Rep. Tracy McCreery of Missouri, a Democrat, cited Southeast examples as the reason she proposed a series of consumer protections as amendments to a bill that would undo the Show Me State’s 1970s-era ban on CWIP financing for power projects.

“I don’t think my constituents, the ratepayers, should have to take the risk of this construction,” McCreery said in an interview. “If this is such a good deal for the utilities, they should be able to get folks on Wall Street to put the money forward.”

One of McCreery’s amendments would have allowed the Missouri Public Service Commission to order consumer refunds if a nuclear project was started and not completed.

The committee’s Republican majority quickly voted down all the amendments and approved the nuclear bill last week in a party-line vote.

Unlike Indiana, where utilities backed nuclear legislation, investor-owned utilities in Missouri have stayed on the sideline.

St. Louis-based Ameren Missouri teamed up with Westinghouse Electric Co. to pursue a DOE grant years ago to construct an SMR at the site of the company’s Callaway nuclear plant. The grant application was passed over, however, and Ameren gave up.

The lack of obvious utility interest has some lawmakers and lobbyists wondering who’s behind the nuclear bill at the Missouri Capitol.

Said McCreery: “Nothing in this building happens unless there’s money behind it.”

A version of this report first ran in E&E News’ Energywire. Get access to more comprehensive and in-depth reporting on the energy transition, natural resources, climate change and more in E&E News.

Twenty years of mining in Faro, means billions of tax dollars for care and clean-up

Messy mining practices make for much work

Faro mine site showing water-filled pit, waste rock and tailings.

 (screen shot from Parsons Inc. website)

LAWRIE CRAWFORD, LOCAL JOURNALISM INITIATIVE REPORTER
Feb. 19, 2022 

Over a quarter of a century after the last rock truck wound its way out of the Faro mine pit, it appears a long-sought route to remediation is underway. On February 15, Canada signed a $108 million contract with Parsons Inc. for construction management and two years of care and maintenance on the Faro mine site.

Parsons, one of the largest players in remediation in the world, boasts that their “contract could span over 20 years and exceed $2 billion.”

The numbers boggle the mind, says Lewis Rifkind of the Yukon Conservation Society. Afterall, $2.2 billion is the total 15-year federal allocation for the northern abandoned mines program designed for eight mines in the Yukon and Northwest Territories. Faro is just one, and the federal contract does not include the Vangorda plateau portion of the Faro site, which was sold separately for future and concurrent, development and reclamation.

But still, the numbers keep going up, and the timeline keeps getting extended. Five years ago, the costs were anticipated at $500 million for 10-15 years, and now estimates are for $2 billion over twenty years.

In addition to the contract awarded to Parsons this week, another contract for $5.8 million was awarded to another company, CH2M Hill Canada Ltd., to design a water treatment plant for the site. According to Treasury Board data, these two contracts are in addition to the total federal spend on the Faro mine site between 2006 to 2021, which amounts to over $600 million.

Geology drove the creation of the mine, and drives the clean-up. The tailings, which cover an area equivalent to over 26,000 football fields, creates acid-rock drainage, which, if not mitigated, grows worse over time. There are an estimated 70 million tonnes of tailings and 320 million tonnes of waste rocks on the Faro site.

Once billed as the largest open pit lead-zinc mine in the world, the story of Faro is not a straight, nor smooth line. Faro is a story of zealot prospectors, ambitious and visionary collaborators, and an assortment of wheelers and dealers, aided and abetted by eager politicians.

They waived a mine and a town into existence essentially in the middle of nowhere, and convinced authorities to build a new hydro dam and improve highways; and for banks and governments to open their wallets with an assortment of loans, loan guarantees and grants — sometimes referred to as “other people’s money”. A book of the same name documents the rise and fall of one of the Faro mine owners, Dome Petroleum.

Faro’s height of prosperity in the late 1970’s was under Dome’s tenure and boasted the highest standard of living for the community’s 2,500 people. Labourers were paid $25 per hour and the cafeteria served steak and lobster. Those were the heady days of Dome Petroleum.

But Dome’s dealings paled compared to those during the tenure of Curragh Resources under Clifford Frame with his cut-throat, anything-to-save-a-buck approach to mining, that ended with the death of 26 miners at his Westray mine, that also ended his Faro venture.

Between closures and shut downs, Faro produced ore for around 22 of the 28 years between 1970 and 1998. Community comfort rose and fell with the price of ore. The townsite was carefully planned but burned to the ground in a forest fire in 1968, one year after completion. The town was rebuilt with tiers of stratified housing according to rank (executives on the upper bank) and bunkhouses on the lower bench. It was carefully located distant from Ross River, and kept most of its First Nation employees working in the coal mine adjacent to Carmacks.

Faro’s legacy is Yukon-wide. It created the demand for the Aishihik hydro dam which left the territory with excess hydro capacity for decades, opened the south Klondike highway year-round, left a viable townsite with affordable housing supported by a municipal grant which has left structures in place to house care and maintenance workers into the future.

But the colonial arrogance of the day is much more apparent now than then. The federal government asserts that remediation and restoration of the land is part of reconciliation efforts with First Nations. Submissions from the Liard First Nation to Yukon Environmental and Socio-economic Board show that they are not fully convinced that the standards set for remediation are high enough.

Parsons is now managing two of the world’s largest mine closure and reclamation projects, the Giant Mine in Northwest Territories, and now the Faro Mine Remediation Project, both of which rank in the top five on Canada’s most contaminated sites list.

Rifkind says that without mining there would be no reclamation industry, likening it to an altered form of Naomi Klien’s concept of disaster capitalism — companies that specialize in doing massive environmental cleanup after massive mining operations leave a mess.

That said, and apart from the enormous amount of greenhouse gas emissions that will be released as part of this project, and ignoring the amount of lime that will be required, Rifkind says that Parsons would be his choice of company to undertake the project as well.

“We’re thankful that something is actually happening. At least they are doing something” he says.

And for First Nations, the reclamation pill is harder to swallow. Never settled and never ceded, the Liard First Nation and the Ross River Dene Council have witnessed the slow and cumulative destruction of animal habitat, and the erosion of their wilderness of clean rivers and lakes.

“The legacy of harm is both physical and emotional,” said Chief Jack Caesar of the Ross River Dena Council. In a statement he said that “Canada’s sincere efforts to support a remediation process that includes our community is a major step towards improving both the land and our peoples’ experience around the Faro Mine.”

Rifkind calls it a “big environmental boondoggle.” All this, stemming from the dreams of a couple of persistent prospectors in the 1960s and 1970s: both died tragically in 1977.

Contact Lawrie Crawford at lawrie.crawford@yukon-news.com

SMART DOGS
African wild dogs cope with human development using skills they rely on to compete with other carnivores

The Conversation
February 18, 2022

African wild dogs (Screen Grab)

Large carnivores in Africa are important from ecological, economic and cultural perspectives, but human activities put them at risk. Increasingly, lions, hyenas and African wild dogs are restricted to protected areas like national parks. Within these limited areas, they must compete for the same food sources.

Competition is, of course, nothing new. For several million years, African wild dogs have evolved within a set of large carnivores that all prey on the same large herbivore species, like wildebeest and warthogs. Wild dogs are lanky, long-distance hunters that always live in groups, usually of eight to 10 adults. Cooperation with pack mates allows them to hunt prey much larger than themselves. Weighing in at about 40-62 pounds (18-28 kilograms), wild dogs have been shaped by the necessity to compete with larger species like the lion and spotted hyena.

There may be a silver lining to being the bottom dog in the competitive hierarchy. Research that my colleagues with the Zambian Carnivore Programme and I have conducted in Zambia and Tanzania suggests why smaller, subordinate species like wild dogs are better able to move through human-modified landscapes. Understanding how is essential for their conservation.


A pack of African wild dogs makes a formidable hunting team.
slowmotiongli/iStock via Getty Images Plus

Meeting the African wild dog

In the late 1980s, I was studying dwarf mongooses in Tanzania’s Serengeti National Park when an extraordinary thing happened. While I sat on the roof of an ancient Land Rover watching mongooses on a nearby termite mound, a wild dog trotted past. And then another, and another. Wild dogs had been missing from most (perhaps all) of the Serengeti for years due to a combination of intense competition from larger carnivores and outbreaks of rabies. But here they were, back again.

Over the next year, I occasionally followed the dogs to watch them hunt on the shortgrass plains, where they were constantly shadowed by spotted hyenas. Several hyenas often trailed the dogs even as they set out to hunt, and hyenas quickly aggregated when the dogs killed a gazelle or wildebeest – often alerted by the unmistakable sound of vultures plummeting through the air in their own race to the fresh carcass.

Although they are half the size, wild dogs do not easily give up a kill to hyenas. A pack of wild dogs making a coordinated attack on one or two hyenas can easily drive them off. But hyenas are also social animals, and researchers found that the dogs generally lost their kills to hyenas when their numbers were equal. Given the large population of hyenas in Serengeti, they took nine out of 10 kills that the dogs made. And lions are simply too dangerous to fight, so the big cats could always take over a kill from the dogs, and kill them surprisingly often.

At that time, very little was known about wild dogs in places other than Serengeti and South Africa’s Kruger National Park, a more wooded ecosystem where researchers had found a flourishing population that often hunted impala. Biologists started to rethink the prevailing view that wild dogs were specialized to live and hunt in open grasslands.

My colleagues and I spent six years in the 1990s observing wild dogs in the Selous Game Reserve, confirming the Tanzania Wildlife Department’s belief that this large ecosystem was a major stronghold for the species. We found that the density of wild dogs in Selous was very good, at least partly because wild dogs were better able to avoid problems with lions and spotted hyenas in the miombo woodland of Selous than in plains of the Serengeti. It was more evidence that not only could they survive outside of grasslands like in the Serengeti, but African wild dogs found advantages to other kinds of environments.

By the mid-1990s, a scientific consensus was emerging that the persistence of wild dogs in an area depends at least partly on their ability to avoid losing food to hyenas or being killed by lions.


African wild dogs have been less separated by human development, like roads, than some other large carnivores.
Simoneemanphotography/iStock via Getty Images Plus

Being bottom dog can pay off

Many studies, including our current research in Zambia, have confirmed that wild dogs are adapted to “live in the cracks” of a landscape where they are outnumbered and outsized by spotted hyenas and lions.

In the short term, wild dogs move quickly away from an encounter with lions – or an experimental playback of their roars over a loudspeaker – in a straight line that would be unusual under other circumstances. Over the long term, wild dogs avoid areas that are heavily used by larger competitors, even though this requires them to hunt in areas with fewer prey.

But there may be a benefit to being at the bottom of the competitive hierarchy. Compared to most species, all of the large African carnivores live in small and isolated populations that must remain connected to maintain genetic diversity. But humans have now modified more than half of the Earth’s terrestrial surface, cutting lines of movement and increasing the isolation of protected areas. Despite this general pattern, some species are better adapted than others to maintain connections between ecosystems.

Our research has used advances in genetic sequencing to test how well connected wild dogs and lions are in several ecosystems across Zambia and Tanzania. The basic idea is that well-connected populations remain genetically similar, but poorly connected populations become genetically distinct from one another over time.

We wondered whether the adaptations of wild dogs that allow them to move through a landscape dominated by lions and hyenas might also help them move through a landscape altered by humans. For example, wild dogs could move more quickly and in a straighter line after an encounter with people, just as they do after an encounter with lions. We hypothesized that genetic data would show that wild dogs have stronger connections between ecosystems than lions, and that their connections are less affected by humans.

And this is just what the data showed when we compared the genotypes of 96 wild dogs and, separately, 208 lions.



Each dot represents an individual wild dog, and similarity in their color represents genetic similarity.


Scott Creel, CC BY-ND

Wild dogs in eastern, central and western Zambia were genetically quite similar, showing that these populations remain well connected. In contrast, lions were much less genetically similar, with distinct populations that were not well connected.




Each dot represents an individual lion, and similarity in their color represents genetic similarity.
Scott Creel, CC BY-ND

We also mapped the degree to which human effects such as land conversion, agriculture and roads hinder animal movement, differentiating between areas with relatively little resistance to animal movement and areas with strong human effects. The genetic differences between lion populations were strongly correlated with human resistance, but there was no such correlation for wild dogs. That is, places that were less hospitable to animal movement had more genetically isolated populations of lions, but didn’t affect the genetic diversity of the wild dogs in the area.

While it is still too early to know if this pattern will apply to other species, it suggests that eons of dealing with lions and hyenas have provided the wild dog with tools that help them maneuver through the unforgiving landscapes that humans create outside of national parks.

Scott Creel, Professor of Conservation Biology & Ecology, Montana State University

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

PATRIARCHY IS FEMICIDE

Rape victims are damned if they do, damned if they don’t

Mia Brett
February 19, 2022


The Times reported this week a story about a woman’s DNA, stored in a rape kit, being used to catch her for an unrelated property crime.

While there isn’t evidence of rape kit DNA being used to prosecute any other cases, it has been confirmed that it is standard practice in San Francisco to use a database of rape kit DNA in other investigations.

This could be a statewide or even nationwide problem.

The charges in this case are not being pursued. The San Francisco DA cited Fourth Amendment issues. But that doesn’t mean such standard practice is technically illegal or isn’t indicative of larger problems in how the legal system treats rape and gender-based violence victims.

The truth is our society just doesn’t really care about abuse victims. I wish I was surprised by this latest story but really, I’m just exhausted.

First, you might be wondering how this could possibly happen.

When a victim is raped, they might undergo a forensic examination to collect evidence of the assault. This is commonly called a rape kit.

The examination can take between four to six hours. It involves a detailed medical history, head-to-toe photographs while undressed, biological evidence collected through swabs and a vaginal exam.

While important to ensure full medical treatment and evidence collection if one wants to press charges, the rape kit exam can also be emotionally and physically invasive and traumatizing.

If a victim chooses to pursue charges, they release the rape kit evidence to law enforcement in order to investigate their crime. They expect the perpetrator’s DNA to be entered into a criminal database to identify the rapist or other crimes the rapist has committed.

It’s highly doubtful, however, that any rape victim expects their DNA to be in a criminal database to be used against them in the future.

Victims puts themselves through this traumatizing and invasive exam because they have hope police will use it to investigate their rape.

In reality, there is a huge rape kit backlog of untested rape kits.

Rape kits aren’t tracked. Experts and the public have no idea how many untested rape kits there are. End The Backlog estimates, however, that there are hundreds of thousands of untested rape kits.

Consider what that means, practically.

Hundreds of thousands of crimes that have been reported but evidence is being ignored. Hundreds of thousands of rapists likely facing no criminal punishment or criminal investigation.

There has recently been a spike in crime rates around the country and many rightwingers are trying to blame this spike on police reform efforts and “defund the police” activists with little evidence.


Just this week US Senator Ted Cruz of Texas blamed judicial nominee Nina Morrison for elevated crime rates because she worked for the Innocence Project. It works to get innocent people out of jail.

Morrison’s efforts had nothing to do with police reform but because the Innocence Project exposes the flaws in the system, it’s easy to apply a bad faith accusation, that it contributes to crime spikes.

There is some evidence that increased policing can provide a short-term solution to rising crime, but how much help can police provide if they don’t even investigate reported crimes?

It is estimated that in the US one in six women will experience a rape or attempted rape in her lifetime. One in 33 men will, too.

Even though every 68 seconds an American is sexually assaulted, only 310 out of every 1,000 rapes are reported to police. Only 50 of those reports will lead to an arrest. Only 28 will lead to a felony conviction.


Rape is clearly an underreported crime and the rates of conviction are abysmal. The rape kit backlog and traumatizing treatment of victims who do report are huge reasons why the conviction rate is so low.

In 2019, the Times reported that women brought unrelated civil suits in seven cities to force police to investigate their rapes.

Officials claimed that half of the reported rapes in their precincts were false. (It’s believed that false rape accusations account for 5 percent of rapes, though that number is likely much higher than the reality.)


In 2016, Heather Marlowe filed a federal civil rights lawsuit against San Francisco for not investigating her 2010 rape. The Supreme Court declined her case but a Texas class action suit was settled last year.

Additionally, the US Justice Department can put pressure on local governments to better investigate sexual assault. This practice, however, lessened when Donald Trump was president.

In 2021, Milaukee settled a lawsuit brought by a rape victim who said police mishandled her rape case. She moreover alleged that police likely comitted ethics violations in their investigation.

These are just a few examples of rape investigations that were so badly bungled women turned to civil lawsuits to try to get some justice.

Our society blames women if they don’t come forward. We expect them to put themselves through the traumatizing experience of reporting and examination. Then our justice system fails them.

Worse than not investigating rapes, however, is the case in San Francisco. A rape kit could ultimately serve to criminalize rape victims.

Why would anyone come forward and report their rape if they knew the evidence could be used against them at a later date?

Why should we as a society support police if they can’t be bothered to investigate crimes brought to them? How can anyone say with a straight face that they’re concerned about getting criminals off the streets if they don’t care about prosecuting an entire class of criminal?


Mia Brett, PhD, is a legal historian. She lives with her gorgeous dog, Tchotchke. You can find her @queenmab87.

N.L. man faces 140 weapons-related charges after police seize 3D-printed firearms

Thursday, February 6th,2022

ST. JOHN'S, N.L. — Police say a Newfoundland man is facing 140 weapons-related charges following the seizure of a large number of illegally acquired and produced firearms, including 3D-printed guns.

The Royal Newfoundland Constabulary said in a news release today they conducted searches at two homes on the Avalon Peninsula on Feb. 11 and found three 3D printers allegedly used to manufacture firearms and found an array of partially 3D-printed guns.

Police say they also found various weapons allegedly manufactured with 3D printing technology, such as silencers and firearm barrels.

They say they also found four non-restricted firearms, two restricted firearms, nine prohibited firearms, assorted magazines, a bulletproof vest and ammunition.

Police say 40-year-old Scott Waterman of Torbay, N.L., faces 140 charges related to the possession of firearms and the manufacturing and trafficking of weapons.

They say one other person was arrested in connection with the two searches.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Feb. 17, 2022.

The Canadian Press

ABOLISH THE SECOND AMENDMENT
US gunmaker unveils semi-automatic rifle marketed to kids
Agence France-Presse
February 19, 2022

An AR-15 rifle on sale at a gun fair in Costa Mesa, California on June 5, 2021(AFP)

A US gun manufacturer has unveiled a semi-automatic rifle for kids modeled on the AR-15, which has been used in a number of deadly mass shootings, sparking condemnation from gun safety groups.

The gun dubbed the JR-15 is being marketed by maker WEE1 Tactical as "the first in a line of shooting platforms that will safely help adults introduce children to the shooting sports."

The company's website says the rifle "also looks, feels, and operates just like Mom and Dad's gun."

The JR-15 is only 31 inches (80 centimeters) long, weighs less than 2.5 pounds (one kilogram) and comes with magazines of five or 10 rounds of 22 caliber bullets. It was released in mid-January with a price tag of $389.

The adult model, the AR-15, is the civilian version of a military-style weapon and has been used in multiple mass killings in the United States, including in schools.

Mass shootings are a recurrent scourge of the United States, where the right to own weapons is guaranteed by the Constitution.

Attempts to regulate their sale is often blocked in Congress, where the powerful gun lobby -- in particular the National Rifle Association -- wields great influence.

On December 14, 2012, a young man used an AR-15 to kill 26 people, including 20 children, at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut.

An AR-15 was also used in a Las Vegas attack in 2017 that left 58 people dead, making it the deadliest shooting in recent US history, and in the Parkland High School shooting in Florida that killed 17 in 2018.

"At first glance this comes across as a grotesque joke. On second look, it's just grotesque," said Josh Sugarmann, executive director of the Violence Policy Center, which seeks to curb gun violence.

Newtown Action Alliance, a group also pushing for limits on firearms, condemned the gun lobby and weapons manufacturers who, it said, "will do anything in pursuit of continued profits."

Sugarmann slammed the imagery used by the manufacturer to attract young customers: a pirate skull with a Mohawk haircut for boys and for girls, a skull with blond bunches and a pink pacifier in its mouth.

In his 2016 report on the methods that US arms manufacturers use to attract young people, Sugarmann denounced weapons that are lighter to handle and often painted in bright colors -- pink, red, orange or metallic purple -- with the aim of drawing in young audiences.

In 2021, firearms killed nearly 45,000 people in the United States, including more than 1,500 minors, according to the organization Gun Violence Archive.

The Covid treatment pill is here – and big pharma will ultimately decide who gets it

Experts are predicting demand for life-saving antiviral drugs will rapidly outpace supply. Like the vaccine, the poorest countries will be left until last

Paxlovid is manufactured in Freiburg, Germany, December 2021. 

Photograph: Pfizer Inc. Handout/EPA

Othoman Mellouk

THE GUARDIAN 
Sun 20 Feb 2022 

Covid-19 has quietly become the gift that keeps on giving for big pharma. The past two years has seen it reap huge profits from Covid vaccines, while simultaneously opposing wider sharing of the technology required to make them. And now there’s a new money-spinner on the rise: Covid antiviral treatment pills. Once again, we’re poised to fall into the same inequality traps we’re caught in with the global vaccine rollout.

Both Pfizer and Merck have new antiviral pills rapidly arriving on the market – Paxlovid and molnupiravir respectively. As with the vaccines that came before them, both corporations have made it their business to ultimately decide who gets to make generic versions through the medical patent system – a crucial, life-saving question for millions around the world.


And business certainly looks promising. Pfizer alone, freshly cemented as the global Covid-19 vaccine kingpin, expects to make as much as $22bn from its new pill this year, on top of $37bn it made in 2021 from the vaccine.

The new medication isn’t coming cheap. Pfizer’s Paxlovid currently costs about $530 for a five-day course of the treatment. Merck’s molnupiravir, now approved for use in the UK, costs about $700. Reportedly, the cost of production for molnupiravir stands at about $17.74.

Familiar alarm bells should be ringing. Experts across the board are predicting demand for antiviral drugs will rapidly outpace supply. A World Health Organization report produced in January warned of a “high risk of shortages” of Paxlovid for low- and lower-middle-income countries until generic versions became more widely available, which isn’t likely to be until the second half of 2022 at the earliest. Separate analysis from the data and analytics firm Airfinity suggests that could be as late as early 2023. After an uneven global vaccine rollout, lower-income nations are faced with the prospect of a “wild west” scenario for life-saving pills, too.

The Guardian view on vaccine justice: the developing world won’t wait

Pfizer and Merck have chosen to designate a select few generic manufacturers able to produce cheaper versions of their drugs, through the Medicines Patent Pool (MPP). But even with these deals in place, they remain firmly in control, and access to generic versions are within reach of only half the world’s population.

A number of countries including Argentina, Brazil, Thailand, Russia, Colombia, Peru, Turkey and Mexico have again been excluded from such licences and are left to try to cut deals for the most expensive products. With so many priced out of the market, global supply will again be prioritised to rich countries, while the companies refuse to make affordable generic antivirals available to everyone wherever they are needed.

This is a grim mirror of the dramatically uneven vaccine supply earlier in the pandemic, when rich nations bought up many more doses than they could use. The US, where almost two-thirds (65%) of the population is already fully vaccinated, has reportedly put up more than $10bn for Pfizer’s Paxlovid – more than twice the entire GDP of Sierra Leone, where just 9% of people have the same protections. For less wealthy nations, competition isn’t even a possibility.

Meanwhile, Merck continues its “evergreening” patent strategy to extend its monopoly on molnupiravir beyond the standard 20-year protection. Since developing the pill, it has sought at least 53 patent applications to tie it up in legal red tape and stay firmly in control of who gets to make it and where. It has already received emergency approval in the US and Japan, and has been given the green light in the UK.

Even in nations within the MPP, where the pills are allowed to be made by select manufacturers, a low cost is not guaranteed. Dr Reddy’s Laboratories in India has made a generic version of Merck’s pill that costs $18 for a course of treatment. However, these costs won’t necessarily be reflected everywhere. Across the border in Bangladesh, the generic version of Pfizer’s pill will cost more than $170 for a course of treatment – prohibitively expensive for a huge number of the population. By restricting which manufacturers may produce a generic version, firms maintain considerable control over the final price. In the past, Gilead’s treatment for hepatitis C, sofosbuvir, only dropped in price consistently when the number of manufacturers was increased without these limits.

There is an uncomfortable assumption those in the global north have tacitly begun to accept. When the demand is higher than supply, there is a pecking order: rich nations first, buying up more than they realistically need, while the poorest are forced to scramble to outbid each other over what is left, dramatically overpay, or just wait until they’re affordable and watch death tolls rise. But this supply crisis is entirely artificial. We could produce more – Pfizer and Merck’s drugs are not complex, and could be easily manufactured in a wide range of developing countries if they had access to the knowhow and could avoid the threat of legal action. We need patents and other intellectual property barriers on life-saving medicines to be waived – either voluntarily by companies, or by government decree – so we can quickly supply all countries of the world.

We’re doubling down on a two-tier world when it comes to Covid-19 – rich, highly vaccinated nations with easy access to both preventive measures and treatments, and poorer nations trying to get by without either. It’s vital that we don’t sleepwalk into giving corporations so much control over who gets to live and who gets to die, all balanced on what they deem an acceptable bottom line.


Othoman Mellouk is a medicine access advocate with the International Treatment Preparedness Coalition

DOUBLE IT
Purdue Pharma owners up opioid settlement offer to $6 billion
Agence France-Presse
February 19, 2022

Opiods (npr.org)

The owners of Purdue Pharma, maker of OxyContin, have offered to pay up to $6 billion to victims of the US opioid crisis to settle an avalanche of litigation, according to a report filed Friday by a federal mediator.

The Sackler family's new offer would raise by at least a billion dollars a $4.5 billion bankruptcy settlement thrown out by a US judge in December over language that would have shielded the family from further lawsuits involving the highly addictive prescription painkiller.

Under the new proposal, the Sacklers "would be paying, in total, not less than $5.5 billion and up to $6 billion", according to Friday's filing to the US Bankruptcy Court in the Southern District of New York.

But while a "supermajority" of involved parties have agreed to the deal, all eight US states involved along with the District of Columbia would need to sign off for it to move forward, the report filed by US Bankruptcy Court Judge Shelley Chapman states.


The additional funds would be used "exclusively for abatement of the opioid crisis, including support and services for survivors, victims, and their families", according to the report.

The opioid addiction crisis has caused more than 500,000 overdose deaths in the United States over the past 20 years.

Facing thousands of lawsuits, Purdue filed for bankruptcy in 2019, and it pled guilty to three criminal charges over its aggressive marketing of OxyContin in 2020.

In December, US Judge Colleen McMahon ruled that the federal judge who approved the original bankruptcy plan three months earlier had no authority to prevent future lawsuits against the Sacklers, except in cases of intentional misconduct.


While more than 40 states had signed off on the rejected deal, a group of eight, along with the District of Columbia, refused to accept it.

William Tong, the Connecticut attorney general who led the appeal against the earlier ruling, called its overturning a "seismic victory for justice and accountability".

© 2022 AFP

Trump donor John Malone could soon be calling the shots at CNN

Karl Grossman, Fair
February 19, 2022

What will CNN become under John Malone?

“I would like to see CNN evolve back to the kind of journalism that it started with, and actually have journalists, which would be unique and refreshing,” the media billionaire Malone told CNBC ( 11/18/21) in November.

“I do believe good journalism could have a role in the future portfolio that Discovery/TimeWarner’s going to represent,” he went on.

In the interview with CNBC‘s David Faber, Malone also said:

Fox News, in my opinion, has followed an interesting trajectory of trying to have news news, I mean some actual journalism, embedded in a program schedule of all opinions.

Brian Flood of right-wing Fox News ( 11/19/21) said of Malone’s CNBC declaration:

Liberty Media chairman John Malone, who sits on the Discovery, Inc. board of directors, wants to see left-wing CNN revert back to nonpartisan journalism following the completion of a merger that would put the liberal network under the Discovery channel.

More than a board member

Malone, in fact, is more than a Discovery board member; he’s its chair and largest shareholder. CNN, started by Ted Turner and now owned by AT&T, is part of an $85 billion acquisition by Discovery, expected to be finalized this year.

Malone’s links to politics include being an active supporter—he’s currently a board member—of the Cato Institute, the Washington-based libertarian think tank that espouses the privatization of numerous US government agencies and programs, including Social Security and the Postal Service.

His Liberty Media empire was among the big contributors to Donald Trump’s 2017 inauguration festivities in Washington, DC, with personal and corporate contributions adding up to $1 million.

However, in 2019, in another interview with Faber on CNBC ( 11/21/19), Malone said:
Look, I think a lot of things Trump has tried to do—identifying problems and trying to solve them—has been great…. I just don’t think he’s the right guy to do it. Half the people that he’s hired and thrown under the bus are now trying to kill him. I mean, what kind of thing is that?

Malone then said he would vote for former New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg for president in 2020.

No ‘coward’s way out’



Newsmax
Brian Freeman of right-wing Newsmax ( 11/21/21) said:
CNN will be the key news property in the merged company, one that will be dominated by entertainment programming. There had been rumors that CNN might be spun off or sold, but Malone indicated [in the CNBC interview] that’s not likely.

Malone, Freeman said, described such a move as a “coward’s way out.”

Freeman asserted that “Malone has cause to worry about the left-wing network,” because
CNN’s ratings have collapsed over 50% in the past year and may be suffering from a credibility gap with viewers…. Last March, a Hill/HarrisX poll found that 47% of registered voters believe CNN holds a liberal bias in reporting.


(In the same poll, 48% of respondents said they believed Fox had a conservative bias—but who’s counting?)

Steve Straub of the right-wing website the Federalist Papers ( 11/22/21) said of Malone’s CNBC comments:
CNN’s soon-to-be new owner just made a startling admission, one that has been obviously apparent to us and many others for some time, that the so-called news network has no actual journalists.

‘The most powerful man you’ve never heard of’



Gentleman’s Journal called Malone “one of the most powerful, yet unknown, individuals in America.”


“John Malone… Meet the Most Powerful Man That You’ve Never Heard Of,” was a heading of a 2018 piece on the website of the British-based Gentleman’s Journal. Malone owns
services and TV channels you’ve most likely used or watched…yet the name John Malone still draws a sea of blank faces…. One of the most powerful, yet unknown, individuals in America…as Liberty Media’s chairman and largest stakeholder, John Malone is one of the world’s most influential media magnates.

In addition to being part-owner of the Atlanta Braves, the website noted,
he currently owns more land in America than anyone else: 2.2 million acres to be precise…. Malone has a net worth of around $9.22 billion, and thanks to his buccaneering role in media deals and land ownership, he’s been nicknamed the “Cable Cowboy.”

The article related how Malone, born in Connecticut, has a Ph.D. in operations research from Johns Hopkins University, and
joined the worldwide management consulting firm McKinsey & Company in 1968. However, fatigued from the constant traveling his job required, he left after five years to join General Instrument; while at GI, he ran Jerrold—a subsidiary which produces minicomputers for the cable TV industry—and was eventually offered the role of CEO of Tele-Communications, Inc… [which] only had 400,000 subscribers and owed creditors $132 million…. Malone was only 29 at the time.
Within 17 years of snapping up smaller operators and acquiring minority stakes in other channels, TCI, under the management of Malone, had accumulated 8.5 million subscribers and grew into the second largest cable company after Time Warner. Because of his business deals in the byzantine world of cable TV, Malone was compared to “Darth Vader” by former US Vice President Al Gore….
At the helm of Liberty Media, the young American changed the organization from just providing cable services to actually owning the networks broadcast on its infrastructure, including the Discovery Channel, QVC and Virgin Media.
‘CNN could face a reset’



Variety (2/8/22) says former CNN president Jeff Zucker (left) “pushed CNN to be blunt and unstinting in its efforts to hold feet to the fire,” while Discovery‘s David Zaslav (right) is “behind the scenes a relentless operator.”

The headline last week in Variety ( 2/8/22): “CNN Could Face a Reset Under Discovery Control.” The article by Brian Steinberg spoke of how under its recently resigned president, Jeff Zucker, “CNN became more swashbuckling, more colorful…”

But Discovery is “a media company that tries to maintain a quieter corporate demeanor.” Zucker
changed the culture of the news outlet, shoving it into more direct competition with Fox News Channel and MSNBC…. Will Discovery change the recipe? There are signs that executives at the company see Zucker’s departure as an opportunity for a reset at CNN.

The piece spoke of those who “argue Zucker’s strategies have been good for CNN—and for people who have been helped by its aggressive accountability journalism in Washington.” The article concluded:
Executives charged with leading CNN in the wake of Zucker’s exit have vowed to staffers in internal meetings that his vision for the network will remain intact, but chances are Discovery will dim Zucker’s flash.

That would not be good news.

The future of democracy in the United States is at stake amid the polarization and deadlock of the political process in Washington. Media are increasingly under the control of right-wing zealots like Rupert Murdoch and those behind Newsmax, etc., who are poisoning communications.

Critically needed now is an independent, honest, credible press providing, yes, aggressive accountability journalism—a light to enable people to find their way out of this mess. Instead, the nation’s oldest cable news channel will soon be under the control of someone who appears to want it to follow the “interesting trajectory” of Fox News.