How improper farming methodology and drought caused the catastrophic Dust Bowl

Randi Mann - 6h ago


This Day In Weather History is a daily podcast by Chris Mei from The Weather Network, featuring stories about people, communities and events and how weather impacted them.

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On Friday, May 11, 1934, tons of topsoil blew from the Great Plains region of the United States all the way to New York, Boston, and Atlanta.

This was an event associated with the Dust Bowl.


© Provided by The Weather NetworkHow improper farming methodology and drought caused the catastrophic Dust Bowl"A farmer and his two sons during a dust storm in Cimarron County, Oklahoma, April 1936. Iconic photo taken by Arthur Rothstein." Courtesy of Wikipedia

The Dust Bowl was a series of severe dust storms during the 1930s. It was caused by the combination of drought and inaccurate farming methodology. Farmers deeply plowed the virgin topsoil of the Great Plains, which displaced the native grass that usually traps soil and moisture during droughts and heavy winds.

Farmers were able to widely convert arid grassland to cropland with new technologies like gasoline-powered tractors.


© Provided by The Weather NetworkHow improper farming methodology and drought caused the catastrophic Dust Bowl"A dust storm approaches Stratford, Texas, in 1935." Courtesy of Wikipedia

During the 1930s drought, the plowed soil turned to dust. Winds blew that dust that created large blackout clouds. The dust clouds were nicknamed "black blizzards" and "black rollers."

The black blizzards travelled as far east as New York City. The dust plumes reduced visibility to one meter.

Edward Stanley, an editor for the Associated Press, was rewriting another reporter's coverage of the storm and coined the term "Dust Bowl".


© Provided by The Weather NetworkHow improper farming methodology and drought caused the catastrophic Dust Bowl"Buried machinery in a barn lot; Dallas, South Dakota, May 1936." Courtesy of Wikipedia

The impacts of the catastrophic conditions were exasperated by the Great Depression. In 1935, the drought caused families to leave their farms and move to other areas to seek work. Areas in Texas, Oklahoma and other areas in the region were deserted because of the Dust Bowl conditions.

The dust storms left more than 500,000 Americans homeless. Some residents in the Great Plains areas died from dust pneumonia or malnutrition.

The Dust Bowl has been featured in cultural work such as the novel The Grapes of Wrath (1939) by John Steinbeck.

To learn more about the Dust Bowl, listen to today's episode of "This Day In Weather History."


Thumbnail: "A dust storm approaches Stratford, Texas, in 1935." Courtesy of NOAA

Charles Noble | The Western Producer

https://www.producer.com/news/charles-noble

When 30-year-old Charles Noble came to Canada from North Dakota in 1903, most farm work was hard, manual labour using oxen to pull a plow through the.

The Groundbreaking Legacy of Versatile Tillage 

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The product is an immediate success and some years later the first Noble Cultivator factory opens in Nobleford, Alberta. The Noble Blade is designed to shear ...

Wide blade sweep plow - SARE - Sustainable Agriculture Research ... 

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Overview: Often generically called 'Noble blades' due to the Canadian manufacturer, these implements are perhaps the ultimate steel force for weed ...

CANADA GUN CONTROLS

Feds tweak draft regulations, following criticism, to ensure gun buyers have licence

OTTAWA — The Liberal government has revised draft firearm regulations to ensure someone buying a gun actually has a valid licence.


© Provided by The Canadian Press

When Bill C-71 received royal assent in 2019, the government said it would require sellers to verify the validity of a firearms licence before selling a non-restricted firearm, such as a rifle or shotgun.

However, proposed regulations included no obligation on the part of a seller to check with the federal firearms registrar to see if a prospective gun buyer had a valid licence — an omission that sparked criticism from gun-control advocates.

Final regulations made public today have closed that loophole.

Bill C-71 also requires vendors to keep records of non-restricted firearm transactions.

In addition, the legislation expands background checks that would determine eligibility for a firearms licence to a person's entire life, not just the last five years.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published May 11, 2022.

The Canadian Press

Anglican church put interests of alleged abusers ahead of victims, says woman whose trust was violated

Paige Parsons -CBC

May 10,2022


It all started with a desire to make the church a safer place.

In early 2021, Cydney Proctor and two other people spoke to a reporter for the Anglican Journal, the national newspaper of the Anglican Church of Canada. The trio were interviewed about alleged sexual misconduct they said they'd experienced at the hands of men connected to the church.

They had told the reporter about trying to report their alleged abusers to the church — processes that they said they found frustrating and retraumatizing. The Journal assured the sources the piece would be free of any details that could identify them.


© David Laughlin/CBC

Cydney Proctor says she disconnected from the Anglican Church of Canada after being the victim of alleged sexual misconduct by men affiliated with the church. She previously shared her story with the Anglican Journal, the church's national newspaper, and experienced a breach of journalistic practice.

But in an email to Proctor on May 12, 2021, the reporter, staff writer Joelle Kidd, shared bad news.

She explained she'd finished a draft of the story, and said it had been shared with the Journal's publisher — the General Synod of the Anglican Church of Canada. This was common practice if a story promised to be controversial with potential legal implications.

But, Kidd continued, unbeknownst to her or her editor, the draft was also sent out to the Anglican dioceses and colleges that the sources critiqued in the piece. This meant the very institutions the women believe previously mishandled their various allegations of sexual misconduct were given a chance to pour over a draft — with potentially identifying details in it.

"It's one of those things where if I didn't laugh about it, I was going to cry about it, and just like probably never stop crying," Proctor, 31, said from her home in Halifax.


© David Laughlin/CBC

Cydney Proctor says she's frustrated by the Anglican Church of Canada's response to her reports of alleged sexual misconduct by three men affiliated with the church.

Proctor was angry that, in her view, the church had again put the interests of alleged abusers and their employers before complainants.

A full year after the breach came to light, the church's efforts to make amends have fallen flat for the three sources and hundreds of Anglicans across the country who are demanding accountability for the breach and change in how the Anglican Church of Canada treats those who come forward to report sexual misconduct.
Frustrated with how complaints were handled by church

As a young person growing up in Nova Scotia, Proctor was a committed member of the Anglican community, volunteering with a number of groups, organizing and attending church events regularly.

Beginning in 2008, when Proctor was in her late teens and early 20s, she says she experienced varying forms of sexual misconduct from three different men with ties to the Anglican church.

The timeline of her interactions with the different men overlaps. She didn't take her allegations to police, but she did report each of them to various Anglican bodies that had authority, and said she got mixed results.


© David Laughlin/CBC

Proctor is one of three sources who spoke to the Anglican Journal for a story about how the church handles sexual misconduct complaints. But after Anglican leadership circulated an unpublished draft to the involved church institutions, she said she feels frustrated.

Her allegations against the men range from explicit messages to an attempted sexual assault. And while there were some consequences levied out by the institutions where she reported, two of the three are still working as Anglican clergy persons as far as she knows, and the other is still involved in the church community. CBC News did not investigate the claims.

Proctor said the stress of her experiences left her dealing with mental health challenges, including depression. She was struggling in school and drifting away from the church.

As years passed, Proctor said she still felt frustrated with how her different complaints had been handled.

She wanted to do more, and said she felt like speaking to a reporter might be the answer. In early 2021, she approached the Anglican Journal with her story.
Sources offered anonymity

She wasn't the only one. Around that same time, two other people also reached out to the publication making their own allegations that they were victims of sexual misconduct by people affiliated with the Anglican Church. They, too, believed the church's accountability process had failed them.

CBC News requested interviews with the two other sources who spoke to the Anglican Journal through an intermediary, but they did not provide a response. CBC News is not identifying the sources or their alleged abusers.

The Journal's editor at the time, Matthew Townsend, assigned a feature to delve into their stories and the cultural side of how allegations are handled by the church.

"How does the church view complaints? How does it handle them?" Townsend explained during an interview from his home in Dartmouth, N.S., in April. "And does it do it in a way that is sensitive to the people who say they've been harmed?"

Townsend assigned the piece to Kidd in early 2021 and then stepped away for a few months of parental leave. He expected that when he came back in May 2021 the story would be ready for editing. Kidd declined an interview request for this story.

Townsend said given the nature of the piece, the Journal took the unusual step of telling the sources they would be allowed to review the story before it was published so they could make sure no identifying details had been included.

All three sources were offered anonymity, though Proctor said she asked to be named in the final piece.
'The worst thing I ever experienced in my career'

The Anglican Journal and its relationship with the church is complicated. The church is the owner and publisher, but the Journal's mandate is one that is journalistic. Staff are journalists who work in similar ways to reporters and editors at other Canadian media outlets.

Townsend said it wasn't unusual for church leadership to review a draft of a controversial or legally fraught stories. He knew the sexual misconduct investigation would be one such story.

Related video: Anglican Church under fire for breaching confidentiality of sexual abuse accusers (cbc.ca)

While he was away, church leadership requested a draft. Townsend said it wasn't close to what the finished piece would be and contained details that could potentially identify the three sources even though their names, including Proctor's, had been replaced by pseudonyms in this version.

The draft was shared with the Anglican Church of Canada primate Archbishop Linda Nicholls, the church's director of communications, and general secretary Alan Perry.

Townsend said Kidd and the editor acting for him were assured the draft would not be shared elsewhere. But Perry shared the draft with the institutions that were the subject of the three sources' complaints.

On Townsend's first day back at work in May 2021, he realized what had happened.

"It's the worst thing I ever experienced in my career, for sure. I was mortified by it . . . it was sickening, to be frank. These survivors had approached us very courageously, wanting to share their stories," he said.
Draft shared for fact-checking, church says

Townsend said he immediately began to push for the church to take steps to resolve the situation. An inquiry was planned and an apology was offered to the three sources, but Townsend said he didn't believe the church understood the gravity of the breach.

About a month later, both he and Kidd resigned.

In a May interview, Nicholls said the draft was shared in order to fact check with the involved institutions. Her account of what happened differs from Townsend's and other critics.

She said her office believed the draft they received was nearly the final version and said they weren't told about the conditions offered to the three sources. She said they didn't — and still don't — think there was any identifying information in the draft.

"The draft indicated that the sources of the story were protected in the story, so we did not feel we were sharing anything that was not going to be published imminently," she said.

Asked if church leadership told the journalists the draft wouldn't be shared beyond its office, Nicholls said not to her knowledge, but that she doesn't know for sure.
A systemic issue

The church hired an external reviewer to complete an inquiry report into the journalistic breach, which was delivered Aug. 11, 2021, according to a summary response to the incident prepared by Nicholls in September and later shared publicly.

"The current situation is primarily a systemic issue resulting from this lack of clarity, misinformation and situational circumstances that are not the responsibility of any single person alone," she said in that summary.

The church committed to an 18-month process to review and improve communication and processes between management and journalism staff. Nicholls declined to provide an update on how the process is going.

During the interview with CBC News, Nicholls said the actual inquiry report was only shared with people within the church who deal with journalistic matters so that they can understand what happened.

The church has not given the report to Proctor and the two other sources.

"The report is not about the sources or about their previous experiences. The report is about how the church house handled the journalistic side of dealing with this article," Nicholls said.
'Symptomatic of a larger problem in the church'

Releasing the report to the sources is one of the key demands of a group of Anglicans calling on Anglican leadership to hold someone accountable for the breach of trust.

Theology doctoral students and Anglicans Carolyn Mackie and Michael Buttrey were among those in the church community who were aware of what had happened.


© Derek Hooper/CBC

Lifelong Anglican and doctoral student Michael Buttrey is a co-organizer of the ACCToo open letter to the leadership of the Anglican Church of Canada.

They decided to form a movement called ACCToo — a play on "#MeToo" (the ACC stands for Anglican Church of Canada) that came to define online conversation around sexual abuse and survivors sharing their stories.

Working with the three sources' permission, they crafted an open letter calling for:
Releasing the inquiry report to the sources;
Requiring General Secretary Alan Perry, who circulated the draft, to resign;
Publishing an apology admitting wrongdoing in the Anglican Journal.

Once the letter was ready, they started gathering signatures online.

"We see this as symptomatic of a larger problem in the church," Mackie said. "And because of that, it seemed appropriate that addressing the problem should also invite the participation of the church itself."
High-ranking clergy sign open letter

When the letter was first published in February, they only had about a dozen names. Now, there are nearly 450. The names on the list include Anglicans from across the country, from lay people to clergy of various rank. Even the bishop of Quebec, Rt. Rev. Bruce Myers — the highest ranking position in a diocese — signed the letter.

Rev. Jordan Haynie Ware, the social justice and community connection archdeacon for the Anglican Diocese of Edmonton, is one of the many clergy signatories. Given her position and her experience in her own diocese, Ware said it made sense to sign the letter and to start from a position of believing people who say they've been harmed.

"Maybe there are things that the primate knows about that she's holding back. But I would like to see a really clear response that indicates why they don't feel that they can live up to the three calls," she said.


© Nathan Gross/CBC

Rev. Jordan Haynie Ware is the social justice and community connection archdeacon for the Anglican Diocese of Edmonton.

The letter sparked a flurry of responses, including a majority opinion from the Anglican Journal editorial board that the inquiry process was not sufficiently independent.

The board added that the inquiry report — even a redacted version — contains potentially identifying information about the sources.

Despite there being various understandings of what happened, the board said it's clear people were harmed, and that those responsible for the breach should face consequences.
An apology

The responses and signatures have not swayed Nicholls.

The archbishop apologized publicly in a written response to the ACCToo letter, and repeated that apology during her interview with CBC News.

"I am deeply sorry for the breach of trust that led to the pain that the three sources have felt," Nicholls said. "The retraumatization of what they experienced in the past because of our failure — that is of deep concern."

Nicholls has said it was never church leadership's intention that the story not be published. But after the breach, Townsend didn't feel the article could proceed and said one of the sources asked for work on it to be paused because they felt betrayed.

Nicholls offered to meet with the three sources — even through a mediator so they could remain anonymous — but that offer hasn't been accepted.

But the archbishop stands by how the church handled the situation. She said she was surprised when the open letter was published.

The attention it has garnered was also unexpected for its authors. Buttrey said he thinks that's a reflection of the wider Anglican community's concern about how leadership has handled the situation.

"I think the senior leadership of the church believes that they sit at the heart of the Anglican Church and they know what is best for it. I don't think that's true," he said

Support is available for anyone who has been sexually assaulted. You can access crisis lines and local support services through this Government of Canada website or the Ending Violence Association of Canada database. If you're in immediate danger or fear for your safety or that of others around you, please call 91

What the polls really say about Americans and Roe v. Wade

Grayson Quay, Weekend editor
Tue, May 10, 2022

Protesters. Illustrated | Getty Images, iStock

With the U.S. Supreme Court apparently poised to strike down Roe v. Wade (1973), pro-choicers and pro-lifers have both claimed mainstream support while denouncing their opponents as extremists.

 Here's everything you need to know:

What do the polls say?

Outside the Supreme Court last week, Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) blamed Republicans for Justice Samuel Alito's draft ruling, which was leaked to the press the previous night and would overturn Roe v. Wade. "They have been out there plotting, carefully cultivating these Supreme Court justices so they could have a majority on the bench who would accomplish something that the majority of Americans do not want," Warren said.

A flurry of articles emerged to back up her claim that Roe is popular and overturning it is not. "By a nearly two-to-one margin, voters oppose overturning Roe v. Wade," Politico reported, citing a poll conducted Tuesday. "Sixty-six percent [of Americans] say Roe v. Wade should not be completely struck down," CNN found. According to an ABC News/Washington Post poll, 54 percent of Americans want the court to uphold Roe, while only 28 percent want to see it struck down.

The trend seems to hold even if the question isn't directly about the court case in question, the details of which many Americans may not know. When asked whether abortion should be legal or illegal in "all or most cases," respondents to the ABC poll favored "legal" 58-37. The margin was even wider when respondents were asked whether the decision to have an abortion should be left to a woman and her doctor or "regulated by law." Some 70 percent chose the first option, while only 28 percent backed legal restrictions on abortion.

But these questions are still rather vague. What about concrete policies? Well, the same ABC poll — which offered respondents a binary, yes-or-no choice — found that 57 of Americans oppose a 15-week ban, while 58 percent oppose a six-week ban. And if you add "It depends" as an option, those numbers drop from majorities to pluralities. A Pew Research Center survey found 44 percent of Americans think abortion should be legal at six weeks. Another 21 percent said it should be illegal at that stage, and 19 percent said it depends. On the question of a 14-week ban, the numbers were 34 percent opposed, 27 in favor, and 22 percent on the fence.

Data from Gallup shows public opinion on abortion has been mostly steady since 1973, with 10 to 20 percent of Americans believing abortion should always be illegal, between 20 and 30 percent believing it should always be legal, and between 50 and 60 percent saying it should be legal in some circumstances. Pew notes, however, that the divide is far more partisan than it was when Roe was handed down and that "change in attitudes has come almost entirely among Democrats," with support for legal abortion in all or most cases among Democrats up 17 points since 2007, from 63 percent to 80 percent.

But wait, what do the other polls say?

National polls aren't everything. The New York Times notes that support for legal abortion varies widely by state. In West Virginia, Kentucky, Tennessee, Mississippi, Alabama, Louisiana, Arkansas, and Utah, pro-lifers outnumber pro-choicers by a margin of 10 points or more.

Also, as with all surveys and polls, it depends on how you frame the question. According to FiveThirtyEight, "[p]olls have found that a large majority of Americans support abortion in the first trimester, but that support tends to drop in the second trimester."

At this point, respondents' views sometimes become contradictory. A 2018 Gallup poll found that 65 percent of Americans believed abortion should generally be illegal during the second trimester of pregnancy. In the same survey, 69 percent of respondents said the Supreme Court should not overturn Roe v. Wade. In other words around two-thirds of Americans supported Roe while a similarly large majority supported abortion restrictions that are unconstitutional under Roe, which protects the right to abortion until the last few weeks of the second trimester.

Abortion rights activists who advocate for unrestricted abortion up until birth are therefore "way out of the public mainstream," David O'Steen, the executive director of the National Right to Life Committee, told The Associated Press.

And writing for National Review, Alexandra DeSanctis argued that citing statistics about public support for Roe is too simplistic. "For one thing," she wrote, "surveys suggest that many Americans don't even know Roe dealt with abortion, as well as that a majority of Americans believe overturning Roe would lead to abortion being illegal across the entire country, a status quo that most Americans don't support."
What would overturning Roe actually do?

The majority opinion in Roe held that "the state may not regulate the abortion decision" during the first trimester of pregnancy, as summarized by the Oyez legal archive. During the second trimester, states are permitted to "impose regulations on abortion that are reasonably related to maternal health." Once the point of viability is reached — meaning the baby could survive outside the womb — states could "regulate abortions or prohibit them entirely" as long as they maintained exceptions for the life or health of the mother.

Under Roe, attempts to ban abortion before the point of viability — around 28 weeks in 1973, but now around 23 or 24 weeks due to medical advances — were struck down as unconstitutional. Planned Parenthood v. Casey (1992) held that any regulations on abortion before the point of viability were also unconstitutional if they imposed an "undue burden" on the woman seeking an abortion.

Alito's draft ruling would overturn both precedents, allowing states to impose whatever abortion bans or restrictions they wanted at any stage of pregnancy, at least where federal reulation is concerned. Controversial policies already under consideration in some states, like a 15-week ban, a ban once a fetal heartbeat can be detected at around six weeks, a requirement that married women seeking abortions inform their husbands first, or even a nine-month waiting period, would all become feasible in states with conservative governments.

Of course, state laws and precedents would remain a constraining factor. Ten state supreme courts have ruled that their state constitutions protect a woman's right to have an abortion. In the other 40, everything's on the table — in theory. In practice, the end of Roe might see some blue and purple states codify protections of abortion rights while red states pass more regulations.

Neither party has the votes in the Senate to pass a federal law restricting or enshrining abortion rights, so these battles will be fought in state legislatures. Blue states like Massachusetts and New York have already moved to codify abortion rights into state law, while red states like Oklahoma have passed near-total bans.

Unsuspecting men don't yet know that overturning Roe v. Wade will also change their lives


Amanda Jayne Miller
Wed, May 11, 2022, 

Many unsuspecting men do not yet know that their lives are on the precipice of changing radically. Unless the leaked draft of a Supreme Court ruling on Roe v. Wade is drastically altered, the nearly 50-year-old ruling, which guarantees women the constitutional right to an abortion, appears poised to fall.

Numerous authors have decried the collision course this will put American women of childbearing age onto, with predicted outcomes ranging from the need for women (at least those who can afford to do so) to travel out of state to America devolving into an Atwoodian hellscape. But it seems that no one is talking about the impact the end of Roe might have on the other half of the population: men.
Abortion does not only affect women

To be clear, many men support abortion rights. As a sociologist who has studied men’s views of abortion, I know that the majority of men feel that decisions about terminating or carrying out a pregnancy should be situational.

Nearly 70% of the men I interviewed said abortion should be legal, and choices about whether they personally would prefer that their partners terminate an unexpected pregnancy were dependent upon the state of their relationships, their financial situations and their own maturity.

These views are further reinforced by a study from the Pew Research Center finding that while men, in general, are less likely to believe that abortion should be legal in all or most cases than are women, among young adults who are most at risk of unintended childbearing, two-thirds support abortion rights.

Wading into Roe: Supreme Court abortion leak investigation and the curious case of Clarence Thomas and Co.

The consequences of forced fatherhood – especially if their partners also prefer not to have children – are immense. Fatherhood is a lifetime commitment to childrearing, but even for those men who are not active participants in their children’s lives, they will be responsible for years of child support.

While data on which men’s partners have abortions is scant, because individuals tend to partner with people like themselves, we can extrapolate based on what we know about women who opt for abortions.

Dems need to fight back: It's time for Democrats to use the leaked Roe opinion as a battering ram against the GOP

Nearly 1 in 4 women in America will have an abortion by age 45. Of these women, more than half are in their 20s and 60% already have at least one child. Most important, 75% are poor or low income.

Abortion-rights supporters protest outside of the Supreme Court on May 3, 2022.

This means that their male partners are often among the most vulnerable. They are also likely to be young and low income. Those men who already have children with other partners are more likely to be in particularly precarious situations. The ability to get a better job by attaining more education will be thwarted; the need to work multiple jobs to support their families will take away time spent with children. Indeed, meeting the markers of successful fatherhood – a career, homeownership and marriage – will become infinitely more complicated.

Less often brought up is the impact on men’s romantic lives. In 2019, for example, just under 630,000 abortions were performed. This number has been steadily falling since the early 1980s, in part due to the availability of effective contraception.

NBA great Kareem Abdul-Jabbar: His fight for social justice has always been about sacrifice

Some experts anticipate that challenges to Griswold v. Connecticut (1965) and Eisenstadt v. Baird (1972), which made contraception legal for married and unmarried couples respectively, could soon follow based on similar legal theories. Avoiding an unintended pregnancy may become far more difficult than these men anticipate unless 40-year-old happily married men agree to practice a lifetime of abstinence.

Of course, such arguments will not sway the nearly 10% of American adults who say abortion should be illegal in all circumstances, according to Pew. And the current focus placed upon how such a ruling might impact women is highly appropriate given that women will face the cruelest consequences of such a decision. But by ignoring the impacts that severe restrictions on abortion can have on men, we risk leaving a huge group of potential allies in the dark.

Wading into Roe: To the women who support abortion rights, it's time to make a stand. This ends now.

According to the Guttmacher Institute, should Roe v. Wade be struck down in June, 26 states are likely to make abortion illegal, with some states even attempting to codify laws that would make it illegal for residents to obtain an abortion by crossing state lines.

Amanda Jayne Miller

There are still options. The first among these is to vote in the 2022 midterm elections for pro-abortion rights candidates, allowing Congress or state governments to provide a legislative solution. We can also call our legislators to express our views and share our own stories.

Most important, men, especially, can reframe their thinking. Abortion isn’t just a women’s issue – it’s an everyone issue.

Amanda Jayne Miller is a professor of Sociology and director of Faculty Development at the University of Indianapolis. Her book (with co-author Sharon Sassler), "Cohabitation Nation: Gender, Class, and the Remaking of Relationships," won the 2018 William J. Good Book Award for Family Sociology. She is a Public Voices Fellows through The OpEd Project.

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Roe v. Wade: Overturning abortion rights will hurt men, too

With Roe v. Wade in peril, abortion-rights
activists ask: Where are the men?

Trevor Hughes, 

USA TODAY
Mon, May 9, 2022

Abortion rights activists worried te Supreme Court is poised to strike down Roe v. Wade are increasingly asking: Where are our male supporters?

Although Americans widely support abortion access in the United States, many activists worry about preserving the right to abortion if the Supreme Court decides to overturn Roe v. Wade, effectively ending access in more than a dozen states almost overnight.

Last week, the court confirmed the accuracy of a draft ruling that would overturn Roe, although the final decision could change when it is issued in about two months. If and when that decision comes, activists fear the lack of public support from a broad group of Americans may prolong their fight to restore abortion rights.

Some activists say abortion rights have been framed largely as a reproductive health issue, allowing many men to say they support abortion rights without having to actually participate in protecting them — a “disastrous” approach, said Amelia Bonow, founding director of Shout Your Abortion.

“We just need you guys to start trying. It’s going to be scary and you’ll feel vulnerable and you’ll mess it up sometimes. But we need you to try,” Bonow said. “This is something that affects absolutely every person. I don’t care who you are or where you live. Your life has been shaped in a million profound ways by abortion.”

FINANCIAL IMPACT: What the end of Roe could mean in a nation without child care aid or family leave

Bonow’s Seattle-based national nonprofit works to reduce the stigma surrounding abortions, and in December she organized a group of people who took mifepristone, which can be used to end a pregnancy, on the steps of the Supreme Court. Advocates like Bonow point out that if Americans were more willing to stand up, lawmakers would more easily be able to see the wide support for abortion access.

Amelia Bonow, left, Erin Jorgensen, center, and Alana Edmondson, right, show and then take abortion pills to make a statement about how safe and available they believe they are, as they demonstrate in front of the U.S. Supreme Court Wednesday, Dec. 1, 2021, in Washington.

Men played a significant role in ensuring access to abortion rights in the 1960s, but those were primarily doctors who saw the consequences of back-alley abortions performed before the procedures were legal nationally, said Alesha Doan, a political science professor at the University of Kansas.

Doan, who has written numerous books on reproductive rights, said there’s been a clear trend in which many men have stepped back from the abortion rights fight – except for the largely white, Christian men trying to abolish access.

“The biggest reason we see an absence of male voices is the framing of the issue, the framing of abortion as a women’s issue that men don’t have any place in. And that is inaccurate,” Doan said. “When we talk about abortion rights, we’re talking about equality. We’re talking about body autonomy. These are much larger issues than just access to reproductive health care."

Doan said the absence of broad, vocal support for abortion access means anti-abortion advocates were able to occupy that space.

“The male voices who dominate the debate are men in power who want to limit or eliminate those rights,” she said. “It’s men speaking about women, men claiming to be experts on women. Men speak very loudly to curb women’s rights. We hear lots of very loud male voices on that side.”

ABORTION BY PILL: More than half of US abortions are already by pill. Here's why.

Mary Ziegler, a law professor at Florida State University, said the disengagement by men represents a sense of complacency among those who have only ever known legal abortion since the court decided Roe v. Wade in 1973.

A poll conducted last week by Washington Post and ABC News found a majority of Americans – 54% – want the Supreme Court to uphold Roe v. Wade, while 28% support overturning it. When broken down by party, it showed 75% of Democrats, 53% of independents and 36% of Republicans want the ruling to remain in place.

Almost 25% of American women will have an abortion by age 45, according to an analysis by the Guttmacher Institute and published in the American Journal of Public Health.

In the 1980s and ’90s, Ziegler said, abortion rights groups used language like “My Body, My Choice,” an approach that attracted men, including some conservatives and Libertarians, who supported the idea that governments should stay out of health care decisions.

But that approach risked alienating poor communities of color, who in many cases needed government-provided health care, she said. She said the shift in advocacy language toward reproductive justice, access to birth control and other health issues allowed men to abdicate their participation.

“There probably was, to some degree, a shift away from messaging that targeted the median male voter, and toward the people who were most affected by this, which is women of color,” said Ziegler. “The idea that this is about what government should or shouldn’t do has been replaced by messages that I think some men felt was less useful.”

'PEOPLE WILL TRAVEL': What Roe could mean for abortions across state lines

ABORTION CLINIC SECURITY: Advocates fear ruling could spur new attacks.

The Supreme Court is considering several abortion-related cases, including a 2018 Mississippi law banning virtually all abortions after 15 weeks of pregnancy. Advocates fear the court's conservative majority will use that case to overturn Roe v. Wade and allow states to ban abortions as they see fit.

In light of that pending decision, advocates have been trying to engage more men and enshrine the right to abortion access by law, not just by Supreme Court ruling. Given the likelihood that the Supreme Court will overturn Roe v. Wade within a year, abortion rights supporters of all genders need engaging, said Kristin Ford, vice president of communications and research for Washington, D.C.-based NARAL Pro Choice America, an abortion rights group.

“Many people, I think, have been nervous talking about abortion. Our society tends to be squeamish talking about topics related to sex. But the reality is that a vocal minority has really focused on that and waged a decadeslong campaign from the bottom up,” Ford said.

ABORTION AND THE GOP: McConnell calls US abortion ban 'possible,' says he won't change filibuster to pass it

Stephen Parlato of Boulder, Colo., holds a sign that reads "Hands Off Roe!!!" as abortion rights advocates and anti-abortion protesters demonstrate in front of the U.S. Supreme Court, in Washington, Dec. 1, 2021.

Abortion rights advocates are angry that white men have long been the loudest voices in the anti-abortion movement, and they say all abortion rights supporters, regardless of their gender identity, must pressure legislators to protect access at the state and federal levels.

“A lot of times, abortion is painted as a polarizing issue. And that’s just not true. The overwhelming majority of the country believes abortion should be legal,” Ford said. “This a topic that’s uncomfortable for man people to talk about. And we can’t continue to operate in a culture of shame and silence and stigma.”

Abortion rights groups including NARAL and Planned Parenthood note some male political leaders have been vital supporters, including Wisconsin Gov. Tony Evers, Nevada Gov. Steve Sisolak, and U.S. Sens. Mark Kelly, Raphael Warnock, Cory Booker, Richard Blumenthal and Chuck Schumer. They are all Democrats.

Schumer, the Senate majority leader, promised the Senate this week will take up the House-passed Women’s Health Protection Act, which would effectively codify the Roe v. Wade ruling in federal law. But the proposal is not expected to pass the Democrat-controlled Senate, where 10 Republicans would need to support it. President Joe Biden, another champion of abortion access, said he supports the bill.

'Urgent as it gets': Senate bill protecting abortion rights would bar waiting periods, arbitrary clinic regs

Oren Jacobson, co-founder and co-executive director of the Chicago-based nonprofit Men4Choice, said pro-abortion men have been silent for too long. He said some just don’t understand the harm that comes from banning abortion, while others think there’s no place for them in what has become positioned as a women’s rights movement. He said everyone needs to start flexing their political muscles in support.

“We have to look at where we are and recognize that part of the reason we are where we are is because pro-choice men have ignored the voices of women who are most impacted by this issue for decades,” Jacobson said. “The guys who support abortion are the ones who are sitting quietly on the sidelines. Our entire goal is to move those guys off the sidelines and into the fight.”

Men4Choice, which works primarily in Illinois but has outreach in other states, focuses on teaching men how to support women who are taking the lead. The group does not bother trying to reach anti-abortion men and instead focuses solely on silent supporters. Jacobson said arguments about paying child support or becoming a father are less persuasive than pushing those men to stand up for women.

“We tell them, you have two roles in this: call out the (expletive) who are using their power to rob people of the right to control their own body, and to show up and support people in the ways they ask us to do so,” Jacobson said. “We try to shift their framework away from just being about abortion, to one about freedom. We ask them the question: ‘Can a person be free if they cannot control their own body and their own health care decisions?’ And we remind them, ‘you’re here to be a partner, not a savior.’”

Bonow, the activist, said it’s possible to get more men engaged by separating public support for abortion access from the more deeply personal decision to have an abortion.

She’s frustrated and angry that the Democratic Party hasn’t done more to protect abortion access, despite 20 years of conservative activists reshaping legislatures, and state and federal courts, laying the groundwork for overturning Roe v. Wade.

“I completely understand why it feels scary or vulnerable, and why men’s impulse would be to ‘stay in my lane,’” she said. “But I need every man who cares about equality and parity, about economic and racial justice, to have an opinion. And to have that opinion out loud."

Would Roe v. Wade's demise reshape the midterm elections? Ask that question in October.

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Abortion protests, fight for Roe: Where are the men?

CERTIFIABLE 

Trump repeatedly asked if China had secret ‘hurricane gun’ and if US could retaliate, report says

Graeme Massie

THE INDEPENDENT
Tue, May 10, 2022, 



Donald Trump repeatedly asked White House national security aides if China had a “hurricane gun” to shoot damaging man-made storms at the United States, a report says.

The one-term president demanded to know if such a weapon would constitute an act of war and whether his military could retaliate against the nuclear power, three unnamed former officials told Rolling Stone magazine.

“It was almost too stupid for words,” one source told the magazine, which said that the person was “intimately familiar” with Mr Trump’s questioning.

“I did not get the sense he was joking at all,” the source added.

Mr Trump seemingly had a deep personal interest in hurricanes while the occupant of the Oval Office and has suggested that the military should bomb hurricanes before they make landfall.

According to Axios, in 201 the then-president asked national security and homeland security officials about the threat posed to the US mainland by the storms.

“I got it. I got it. Why don’t we nuke them?” he reportedly said,

“They start forming off the coast of Africa, as they’re moving across the Atlantic, we drop a bomb inside the eye of the hurricane and it disrupts it. Why can’t we do that?”

Mr Trump, who has denied the claim, was reportedly told by one unnamed official: “We’ll look into this.”

Shortly after Mr Trump became president, National Geographic published an article stating that the idea of hitting hurricanes with a nuclear bomb had been raised over the years.

The article said that it was a “really bad idea” with “a surprising history.”

Mr Trump also discussed Hurricane Dorian in the Oval Office, and appeared alongside a National Hurricane Center map that seemed to have been altered with a black pen.

The alteration showed the hurricane’s path hitting Alabama, in an apparent effort to stand up a false claim that Mr Trump had made earlier.

Trump Reportedly Asked Aides If China Could Be Shooting Hurricanes At The U.S.

Josephine Harvey

HuffPost
Tue, May 10, 2022

Donald Trump’s fantastical theories about hurricanes were apparently not limited to nuking them.

During his first year in office, the former president repeatedly asked national security aides if China had secret technology or weapons that could create hurricanes and shoot them at the U.S., according to Rolling Stone.

Citing two unnamed former senior administration officials and a third person briefed on the matter, the magazine reported that Trump inquired repeatedly whether this would constitute an act of war and asked if the U.S. could retaliate.

“It was almost too stupid for words,” one former White House official told Rolling Stone. “I did not get the sense he was joking at all.”

This inquiry was mocked in some official circles as the “Hurricane Gun” thing, according to the magazine.

China has attempted to modify weather to protect agricultural regions or improve major events such as the Olympics. However, there is no evidence to suggest the country has the technology to generate massive storms and then fire them across the world.

During Trump’s first year in office, Hurricane Maria devastated Puerto Rico while two major storms hit the mainland U.S., Hurricanes Harvey and Irma.

As president, Trump made headlines on multiple occasions for bizarre weather-related antics, including the infamous 2019 “Sharpiegate” incident in which he held up a map of Hurricane Dorian’s trajectory that appeared edited to show the storm potentially affecting a portion of Alabama. (Trump had incorrectly tweeted days earlier that Alabama would likely be in the storm’s path).

The same year, Axios reported that Trump suggested on multiple occasions during his first year in office that homeland and national security officials explore the possibility of using nuclear bombs to stop hurricanes from hitting the U.S.

Trump later vehemently denied ever making the suggestion.

He has also made a confusing patchwork of comments about his position on climate change. He has called it a “hoax” while also claiming it is “very important to me.” Once, in 2012, Trump famously argued that climate change was “created by and for the Chinese in order to make U.S. manufacturing non-competitive.” He later claimed he was joking.

This article originally appeared on HuffPost and has been updated.

FARMER JOE
Biden sees bigger role for US farms due to Ukraine war


Wed, May 11, 2022, 4:08 a.m.·3 min read

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Joe Biden wants to put a spotlight on the spike in food prices from Russia's invasion of Ukraine when he travels to an Illinois farm to emphasize how U.S. agricultural exports can relieve the financial pressures being felt worldwide.

The war in Ukraine has disrupted the supply of that country's wheat to global markets, while also triggering higher costs for oil, natural gas and fertilizer. The U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization said its food price index in April jumped nearly 30% from a year ago, though the index did decline slightly on a monthly basis. Americans are also bearing some pain as food prices are up 8.8% from a year ago, the most since May 1981.

The trip to Illinois on Wednesday is an opportunity for Biden to tackle two distinct challenges that are shaping his presidency. First, his approval has been dogged by high inflation and his visit will coincide with the release of the May consumer price index, which economists say should show a declining rate of inflation for the first time since August.

But much more broadly, it's an opportunity to reinforce America's distinct role in helping to alleviate the challenges caused by the war in Ukraine. The trip follows a similar pattern as Biden's recent visit to an Alabama weapons factory highlighted the anti-tank Javelin missiles provided by the U.S. to Ukraine.

“He’s going to talk about the support we need to continue to give to farmers to help continue to produce more and more domestically,” White House press secretary Jen Psaki said Tuesday. “Just as we are providing weapons, we are going to work on doing what we can to support farmers to provide more wheat and other food around the world.”

The Democratic president noted in remarks Tuesday about inflation that Ukraine has 20 million metric tons of wheat and corn in storage that the U.S. and its allies are trying to help ship out of the country. This would help to address some supply issues, though challenges could persist.

Several House Democrats, including Speaker Nancy Pelosi, met with Biden on Tuesday after having visited Ukraine. They warned that the food shortage meant the consequences of the war started by Russian President Vladimir Putin would extend well beyond Ukrainian borders to some of the world's poorest nations.

“It's going to result in a hunger crisis, much worse than anybody anticipated,” Massachusetts Rep. Jim McGovern following the White House meeting.

An analysis this month for the center-right American Enterprise Institute by Joseph Glauber and David Laborde noted that countries in the Middle East and North Africa are mostly likely to suffer from the higher prices caused by grain shortages.

There are limits to how much wheat the U.S. can produce to offset any shortages. The Agriculture Department estimated in March that 47.4 million acres of wheat were planted this year, an increase of just 1% from 2021. This would be the fifth lowest amount of acres dedicated to wheat in records that go back to 1919.

Biden will be traveling with Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack to Illinois. After the president speaks at the farm, he will go to Chicago to speak at a convention for the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers.

Josh Boak, The Associated Press

SPECULATIVE CAPITALI$M

History of Bitcoin Slumps Makes $20,000 Realistic Target

Akshay Chinchalkar
Tue, May 10, 2022


(Bloomberg) -- Crypto fans desperate for a floor in Bitcoin’s selloff may have to be patient. Every significant slump in the largest cryptocurrency since 2014 has reached the 200-week moving average. That lies close to $20,000 -- or about 35% below Bitcoin’s current price, which is already down by a similar percentage in 2022.

Chief ‘really happy’ to be at the table with Alberta on carbon capture projects


Mon, May 9, 2022

Getting the nod to further develop two separate carbon capture project proposals in Alberta is not too much for the First Nation Capital Investment Partnership (FNCIP), which comprises the First Nations of Enoch Cree, Paul, Alexander and Alexis Nakota Sioux.

“We can take on more, if anything,” said Enoch Cree Nation Chief Billy Morin. “They’re two completely different, separate applications and we’re lucky we got them both in round one, which we were kind of happily surprised.”

At the end of March, the Alberta government announced six potential projects had been selected in the first round of submissions to look at safely storing carbon from industrial emissions in hubs deep underground.

FNCIP is involved in the Open Access Wabamun Carbon Hub west of Edmonton and the Wolf Midstream project east of Edmonton.

The Wabamun Carbon Hub sees FNCIP joining with the Lac St. Anne Métis to partner with Enbridge Inc.

“We do have to walk with some humility and say we do need partners like Enbridge. We do need emitters like Capital Power, which has already signed up with Enbridge and Lehigh (Hanson Materials Limited). We need those industry partners for their expertise, but also to come to the table in a fair and equitable way, and that’s what Enbridge has done,” said Morin.

FNCIP and Lac St. Anne Métis have 50 per cent ownership in the Wabamun project.

In the Wolf Midstream project, which also involves Heart Lake First Nation and Calgary-based energy company Whitecap Resources Inc., FNCIP has 30 per cent ownership.

The Wolf Midstream sequestration hub will serve large facilities in the industrial heartland of Fort Saskatchewan. Initial hub volumes are expected to be between two to three million tonnes per annum with significant expansion capability to support current and future requirements of area businesses. If given the go-ahead, it is expected to be operational by the end of 2024.

Engaging First Nations as these projects get underway is an indication that the province has learned from its mistakes with oil and gas development, said Morin.

“In one way, shape or form I would say they got ahead of the game this time and learned from some of their historic mistakes in not engaging with us developing oil and gas over the last 80 years,” he said.

“This one is a brand-new industry and from the start we’re at the table, having ownership … (and) upholding treaty rights below the depth of the plow…So the government was really proactive … and I'm really happy they did that.”

Companies will be invited to work with government to further evaluate the suitability of each location. If the evaluation demonstrates that the proposed projects can provide permanent storage, companies can work with the government on an agreement that provides them with the right to inject captured carbon dioxide. This agreement will also ensure they will provide open access to all emitters and affordable use of the hub, reads a statement from Alberta Energy.

“It's round two, so we're talking about more regulatory development with the provincial government,” said Morin. “Now it's getting down into the details of ‘let's get a shovel in the ground’ and that is going to take a lot more engineering, technical capacity, community engagements, internally and externally from First Nations. (It’s) another year planning roughly.”

Morin said he sees FNCIP engaging with the Alberta Indigenous Opportunities Corporation once they have “structured a deal” with the province.

“It's not the only way we can raise capital, but certainly in Alberta that was exactly what this was designed for. (It) is to engage First Nations in new initiatives with industry in the province itself. Absolutely, we will be at the table with them early,” he said.

The AIOC, created in 2019, was initially set up to provide loan guarantees to natural resource projects. This past February, the mandate expanded to include investments in major agriculture, telecommunications and transportation projects. The AIOC can provide up to $1 billion in loan guarantees. To date, it has backstopped more than $160 million in Indigenous investments in natural resource projects, according to Alberta Indigenous Relations.

Alberta has committed $1.24 billion through 2025 to two commercial-scale carbon capture and storage projects. Both projects will help reduce the carbon dioxide emissions from the oil sands and fertilizer sectors and reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 2.76 million tonnes each year. This is equivalent to the yearly emissions of 600,000 vehicles.

A second request for full project proposals to provide carbon storage services to regions across the rest of the province just closed.

By Shari Narine, Local Journalism Initiative Reporter, Windspeaker.com

SEE LA REVUE GAUCHE - Left Comment: Search results for CCS  

THE REALITY IS THAT CCS IS NOT GREEN NOR CLEAN IT IS GOING TO BE USED TO FRACK OLD DRY WELLS SUCH AS IN THE BAKAN SHIELD IN SASKATCHEWAN
https://plawiuk.blogspot.com/2014/10/the-myth-of-carbon-capture-and-storage.html