Conservatives blame everything but guns for mass shootings

Tom Mockaitis, opinion contributor - The Hill

As shock and grief over the Robb Elementary School massacre give way to anger, people are demanding that something be done to curb the gun violence plaguing the country. While most Americans want reasonable gun control laws, conservative politicians have touted a range of explanations to deflect attention from that demand.

They blame a lack of mental healthcare, absent fathers, poor school security and the decline of religion — anything but unfettered access to firearms.

Governor Greg Abbott (R) of Texas offered the most disingenuous explanation for the tragedy.

At his May 25 press conference, Abbott stated: “There is no known mental-health history of the gunman.” In the next breath, however, he declared, “We, as a state, we, as a society, need to do a better job with mental health,” adding, “Anybody who shoots somebody else has a mental-health challenge, period.”

So, the perpetrator wasn’t mentally ill, but lack of mental healthcare caused him to shoot up a school? Abbott also fails to realize that the vast majority of people who suffer from mental illness never become violent. Stigmatizing them as potential mass murders is hurtful and unjust.

Not to be outdone, Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) focused on doors. He wants schools to have only one point of entrance protected by an armed guard. Using only one door could make it even easier for an active shooter to kill children. It would create a bottleneck for students entering the building each morning and leaving each afternoon. The concentrated mass of people would be an easy target.

Armed guards will not guarantee the safety of children any more than locked doors. The guard at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Fla., did not engage the gunmen who killed 17 students in 2018. An armed security guard (a retired police officer) at the Tops supermarket in Buffalo did exchange fire with the assailant, hitting him in the chest, but his bullet failed to penetrate the shooter’s body army. In Uvalde, police have come under increasing criticism for their hour-long delay in entering the classroom where the shooter was killing children.

Other Republicans have offered even more far-fetched explanations for the massacre. Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah) suggested that “fatherless” families might contribute to gun violence. The 15-year-old who killed four students in Oxford, Mich., lived with both of his parents, who bought him the gun used in the attack. The 15.3 million children being raised by single mothers are no more likely to engage in violence than anyone else.

Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Georgia) also jumped on the mental health bandwagon but added her own bizarre twist to the debate. “We don’t need more gun control,” Greene tweeted after the shooting. “We need to return to God.” Apparently, no one told her that Texas is one of the most religiously observant states in the country with 69 percent of its residents professing belief in God “with absolute certainty” and 63 percent saying they pray daily.

These responses to the Robb Elementary School massacre make clear that Republican politicians will do anything to avoid confronting the real cause of mass shootings: unfettered access to firearms. They ignore one glaring, incontrovertible fact: our country leads the world in school shootings and gun ownership (120.5 firearms per 100 people). From 2009 to 2018, there were 288 school shootings in the United States. Mexico came second with just 8; Canada and France had 2; Germany 1; the United Kingdom and the Netherlands, 0. There have been 27 school shootings in the United States so far this year.

Every country with low rates of gun violence has people who suffer from mental illness, alienation and social pathology. They also have stringent gun control laws that make it far more difficult for unstable people to obtain firearms.

The 2014 attack on the Canadian War Memorial illustrates how reasonable restrictions can save lives. Canadian law banned the shooter from purchasing a gun because of his criminal background. It also restricted magazine capacity and imposed a stiff penalty for illegally providing someone with a gun. As a result, he could only get a Winchester hunting rifle holding eight rounds. Its lever-action reloading mechanism restricted its rate of fire, so he killed only one person. In 2020, Canada went a step further banning 1,500 assault-style firearms (including the AR-15) after just one mass shooting in Nova Scotia, even though some of the guns used in that attack were purchased in Maine. In contrast, the assault weapon ban passed by the U.S. Congress in 1994 lapsed in 2004. Mass shootings have been on the rise ever since.

Everyone wants better healthcare for those suffering from mental illness, although the same politicians who call for such care refuse to fund it. We all support making school buildings more secure. However, these measures are not a substitute for reasonable restrictions on the right to bear arms.

Polling data on support for stricter gun laws has varied over time, increasing in the aftermath of mass shootings but declining as the emotional impact of those events fades. According to Gallup polls, 67 percent of Americans surveyed in 2018 following the Parkland shooting favored stricter gun control laws, but support fell to 52 percent in 2021.

However, polling data on specific measures paint a very different picture. Quinnipiac University polls found that 89 percent of Americans support required background checks for all gun buyers; 74 percent agree with “red flag” laws allowing police and family members to petition judges to confiscate guns from individuals at elevated risk of violent behavior and 52 percent want to ban assault rifles. Another survey found that 85 percent of non-gun owners and 74 percent of gun owners support a waiting period for firearm purchases.

Any of these reasonable measures could save the lives not only of school children but of murder and suicide victims. In aggregate, they might prevent tragedies like Sandy Hook Elementary, Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School and Robb Elementary. We should also ban the sale of body armor to anyone without a professional need for it (such as police security guards). The Second Amendment says nothing about Kevlar vests, which did not exist when it was adopted in 1791.

Staunch gun-rights activists oppose any regulation of firearms, insisting that even reasonable measures the vast majority of Americans want are a slippery slope to a complete ban. Some politicians, like Gov. Kay Ivey (R-Alabama), call the Second Amendment “sacred.”

What is sacred are the lives of our children. Until we put their safety ahead of the right to bear arms, we can expect more massacres like the one that befell the innocent victims of Robb Elementary.

Tom Mockaitis is a professor of history at DePaul University and author of “Violent Extremists: Understanding the Domestic and International Terrorist Threat.”

Teachers union plans gun control protests at GOP senators' offices

Jeremiah Poff - WASHINGTON EXAMINER

The American Federation of Teachers has organized protests to demand more gun control legislation outside the state offices of Sens. Ted Cruz (R-TX) and Pat Toomey (R-PA) and says more protests are coming.


© Provided by Washington ExaminerTeachers union plans gun control protests at GOP senators' offices

The first rallies are slated to take place Tuesday afternoon and come in the aftermath of the Robb Elementary School shooting in Uvalde, Texas, last week, in which a lone gunman killed 19 students and two teachers.

The shooting has renewed calls for Congress to pass legislation curtailing gun ownership and expanding background check requirements for firearm purchases. Toomey, who backed expanded background checks for gun purchases in 2013, has reiterated his support for the measure in recent days.

PROPOSAL TO ARM SCHOOL STAFF RECEIVES HOSTILE RESPONSE FROM TEACHERS UNIONS

"The school shootings in Uvalde, Texas, have laid bare the crisis we’re facing here in America — again. We can’t allow these preventable mass murders to keep happening," the American Federation of Teachers said in the announcement of the two Tuesday rallies.

"Students deserve safe and welcoming schools, and parents need to know their children are safe," the announcement continued. "Educators deserve to be able to teach; they should not be forced to be human shields to protect their students. Community members deserve to know their schools, stores and places of worship are safe; and they must not be scared to live their values. This is a public health crisis."

The protests are planned to take place outside the Pittsburgh office of Toomey, who is retiring at the end of the year, and outside the Austin office of Cruz.

But the AFT says it is also planning protests at other senators' offices as well as events for the weekend.

David Hogg, a gun control activist and former student at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, where a school shooting took place in 2018, promoted the protests on Twitter and called on educators to join the union's protests.

"Attention educators," Hogg wrote. "I told you I would have a direct way you can help us fight for gun safety. March For Our Lives worked with the president of NEA and AFT your marching orders are below. Let’s get to work."

Hogg's tweet came in response to AFT President Randi Weingarten, who expressed support for the Pittsburgh rally, saying, "We need Senator Toomey to do the right thing."

John DiMaggio Failed to Get Pay Raise for ‘Futurama’ Revival: ‘Getting Money Out of Disney’ Is Impossible

Zack Sharf 
Variety
© Courtesy of Comedy Central

John DiMaggio and Hulu jointly announced March 1 that the original Bender voice actor would return for the show’s upcoming revival. DiMaggio’s involvement was in question after he originally refused to join the revival because he felt the cast was not being paid enough. If you assumed DiMaggio’s return meant he was able to get his desired pay raise, then you’d be wrong, according to the actor.

“People are like, ‘I’m so glad you got more money!’ I didn’t get more money,” DiMaggio recently revealed at Phoenix Fan Fusion (via /Film). “But what I did get was a lot of respect, and a lot of head nods from people who are like, ‘Yo bro, I see you and thank you.'”

DiMaggio called it “quite rewarding” to be praised by colleagues for speaking out about unfair pay, adding, “Trying to get money out of Disney is like trying to get blood from a stone — you ain’t gonna get it!”

“But listen, this was the best thing about that fight: I had Disney, Hulu, I was holding on to their collective testicles so hard that they couldn’t, y’know, there was nowhere for them to go,” the voice actor added. “But there was also nowhere for me to go, and who wants to hold on to those for that long?”

Variety reached out to Disney for comment, but the studio does not comment on matters of compensation.

Hulu announced the “Futurama” reboot on Feb. 9, with DiMaggio sitting out but original cast members Billy West, Katey Sagal, Tress MacNeille, Maurice LaMarche, Lauren Tom, Phil LaMarr and David Herman all returning. Variety reported at the time that DiMaggio’s role of Bender would be recast if he didn’t figure out a deal to return. The actor said at Phoenix Fan Fusion that Hulu was “planning on using guest stars, [and] they were going to replace Bender’s voice each episode” if he did not return.

When DiMaggio originally spoke out about his pay issues with the reboot, he also championed his co-stars to receive higher salaries. “I’ve been thinking about everything that’s been going on these past months and just to be clear, I don’t think that only I deserve to be paid more. I think the entire cast does,” DiMaggio wrote on Twitter. “Negotiations are a natural part of working in show business. Everyone has a different strategy and different boundaries… Some accept offers, some hold their ground.”

Production on Hulu’s “Futurama” reboot kicked off in February with an eye toward a 2023 premiere.

US Health and Human Services announces new office focused on the environmental risks to underserved communities

Ella Nilsen -CNN

The Department of Health and Human Services announced on Tuesday it is establishing an Office of Environmental Justice, putting a spotlight on environmental inequities in health.

The new office will be led by interim director Sharunda Buchanan, a former official at the Centers for Disease Control specializing in environmental health issues like lead exposure.

While there are other federal offices, including the White House Council on Environmental Quality, that focus on environmental justice, Buchanan told CNN she hopes the HHS office will bring new resources to communities, especially low incomes communities and communities of color dealing with elevated lead exposure or inadequate waste water treatment.

“My goal for this office is to serve as a resource for communities, I want to work alongside these communities,” Buchanan told CNN in an interview Tuesday. “I like to say that environmental justice and health equity are inextricably linked. If you find an environmental justice issue, you’re going to inevitably find a health issue.”

The office will be responsible for creating and implementing a department-wide strategy on environmental justice and health and taking the lead on annual HHS environmental justice reports, among other tasks.

In addition to Buchanan, the new office is staffed with three detailees from the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and other offices in HHS.

“We believe this will be a longstanding office,” Buchanan said. “They are already ready and willing and raring to go.”

In a statement, Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra said many communities across the country “continue to bear the brunt of pollution from industrial development, poor land use decisions, transportation, and trade corridors” and that meeting their needs “requires our focused attention.”

Environmental justice has been a high priority for the Biden administration. Early in his term, President Joe Biden pledged 40% of federal funds for climate and clean energy initiatives would be prioritized for underserved communities, and CEQ announced in February 29% of the US population was eligible for those funds.

Buchanan told CNN Tuesday she was “elated” to be leading the office.

“I am so passionate about this work; this is actually my life’s work,” she said. “My goal for this office is to bring solutions to communities.”

When is a species really extinct?

Dodos have been extinct for centuries, but it’s not a simple matter to definitively designate a species as extinct. (Shutterstock)


THE CONVERSATION
Published: May 23, 2022

As the saying goes: “extinction is forever.” The list of extinct animals, like Steller’s sea cow, the Tasmanian wolf and the dodo, is depressing. And despite various efforts, extinction seems final.

But when does extinction start? That would seem like an easy question to answer. In the dry prose of the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN), extinction has occurred when “there is no reasonable doubt that the last individual of a species has died.”

And as we know from watching courtroom dramas, the concept of “no reasonable doubt” is a high bar, meant to protect the innocent in society. In conservation, it is to guard against crying wolf.
No longer extinct

In the 1980s, it was suggested that an extinction should be declared if a species was not observed for 50 years. That seems like a long time, but it wasn’t long enough. Many species have been rediscovered decades or even centuries after their last observation.

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For example, the black-browed babbler was recently recorded in the jungles of Borneo for the first time in 170 years!

And indeed, extinction need not technically be forever: some rediscovered species had been formally declared extinct. These species are referred to as Lazarus species — for instance, the Miles’ robber frog was brought back from the dead after it was located in a Honduran cloud forest in 2008

The Miles’ robber frog was once thought extinct, but was rediscovered in Honduras. (Tom Brown), Author provided

Read more: Meet the Lazarus creatures – six species we thought were extinct, but aren't
Premature declarations

Incorrectly declaring a species extinct can have serious consequences. Potentially urgent conservation actions for the species in question stop, and in some cases, those conservation actions can help protect entire ecosystems.

Perhaps more importantly, crying wolf undermines the credibility of extinction as a label.

Beyond reasonable doubt is a conservative position, but it leaves us in a bit of a pickle. With our colleague, Andrew Fairbairn, we recently documented that surprisingly many species have not been seen in over 50 years, and remain in a sort of limbo between extant (species that are currently living) and extinct.

Putting species in limbo is not helpful. A 2019 report by the United Nations suggested that a million species are threatened with extinction (roughly 12 per cent of all species). The actual number of species that have been declared extinct by the IUCN seems, on the face of it, much less dramatic: only 85 mammals or less than 2% of that group, for instance.

Such a mismatch can, to put it mildly, sow confusion. And because more and more species are predicted to become extinct, discrepancies between the number of “going extinct” and the number of “gone extinct” species may become more of a problem.

The last confirmed sighting of an Eskimo curlew was in 1963. 

(Arthur Chapman), Author provided

In our study, we found that 562 terrestrial vertebrates — mammals, birds, amphibians and reptiles — are currently stuck in lost species limbo, almost twice as many as the number declared extinct.

None of these have been declared extinct, but none have been reliably observed for at least 50 years. The famous ivory-billed woodpecker was last seen in 1944, although purported sightings continue to this day. And the last confirmed sighting of a Canadian species, the Eskimo curlew, was in 1963.

Read more: The 'Lord God Bird' might be extinct, but the story of the ivory-billed woodpecker isn't over yet

While most of these lost species are (or were) found in the tropics, they also hail from the United States, China, Australia and Canada, and include everything from tiny shrews and salamanders to dolphins and wild cattle.
Searching for proof

So what should be done about the confusing problem of lost species? Clearly, the answer is to go looking for them.

That is, of course, easier said than done. Many lost species live in remote ecosystems that are difficult to reach, like inaccessible rainforests or vast tundras. There are plenty of skilled field scientists who would love nothing more than to spend their time in under-studied ecosystems searching for lost animals, but funding to support such fieldwork is becoming increasingly scarce.

Confirming whether or not a species is extinct requires extensive and exhaustive searches of ecosystems that are often difficult to reach and search, like the Lambusango Forest in Indonesia.

 (Tom Martin), Author provided

Securing funding sources to support searches for lost species is therefore important. This could perhaps be helped by better awareness of and management of lost species as a group. While 50 years is an arbitrary measure, it might help focus attention by defining a clear list of candidate species.

We envision a scorecard of lost species, updated as time passes and species go on and come off when rediscovered or declared extinct.

We end with the full and depressing formal definition of extinct:

“a taxon is presumed Extinct when exhaustive surveys in known and/or expected habitat, at appropriate times (diurnal, seasonal, annual), throughout its historic range have failed to record an individual.”

We believe many lost species are not extinct, and so will be rediscovered. Each rediscovery will be cause for minor celebration and, we would hope, renewed attention and interest. But we really need to know, one way or the other.

Tom Martin, a conservation scientist with the Wild Planet Trust, and Gareth Bennett, an undergraduate student in biological sciences at Simon Fraser University, co-authored this article.

Author

Arne Mooers

Professor, Biodiversity, Phylogeny & Evolution, Simon Fraser University
Disclosure statement

Arne Mooers is a member of the Committee on the Status of Endangered Wildlife in Canada, an independent federal body that makes recommendations to the Government as outlined in the Federal Species at Risk Act.

Elections in Brazil: Lula faces many challenges running against Jair Bolsonaro

THE CONVERSATION
Published: May 30, 2022 12.02pm EDT

The Brazilian presidential elections will be held on Oct. 2. With four months to go, the former president and figurehead of the Workers’ Party (Partido dos Trabalhadores, PT), Lula da Silva, who made his candidacy official with great fanfare on May 7, is considered the favourite to defeat the incumbent, President Jair Bolsonaro, according to polls.

Should the vote go to a second-round runoff, polling shows 11 points would separate the two rivals. Lula, who was president from 2002 to 2010, still enjoys a high level of popularity, particularly in Brazil’s northeast. When he was running for re-election in 2018, the former metalworker built his campaign on the positive results of his previous terms in office using the slogan, “Make Brazil Happy Again.”

In the four years since Bolsonaro was elected, his government has had a dramatic effect on Brazilian society. His catastrophic handling of the COVID-19 pandemic made Brazil the world’s second-most bereaved country, with more than half a million deaths. Deforestation and illegal resource extraction in Indigenous territories reached record levels during his term. Bolsonaro’s hostility towards the judiciary and his clientelism, militarism and nepotism have permanently weakened Brazil’s already fragmented democracy.

Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro greets supporters as he arrives at the Labor Day and Freedom Day rally in Brasilia, May 1, 2022. His four years in power have produced dramatic effects on Brazilian society. (AP Photo/Eraldo Peres)

As a doctoral student in political science specializing in the study of social movements in Brazil, I worked with Workers’ Party activists during the 2018 elections, among others. In this article, I revisit the main challenges Lula and the Workers’ Party face in the run-up to an election that will be decisive for a country that has become an international pariah since Bolsonaro came to power.

Impeachment, imprisonment and corruption scandals

In 2016, in what she would later call a parliamentary coup, President Dilma Rousseff was impeached for manipulating the federal budget deficit to help with her re-election. The Workers’ Party was subsequently pushed out of the executive branch in spite of its victory in the presidential elections two years earlier.

Many experts, both inside and outside Brazil have condemned the procedure as an undemocratic political changeover indicative of a worrying erosion of democracy.

Two years later, Lula ran for a third term in the 2018 presidential elections. but he was imprisoned for corruption only a few months before the election. And due to a dubious judicial process, notable for its speed, timing and lack of tangible evidence, Lula had to sit by and watch as his protégé, Fernando Haddad, qualified for a second round against Bolsonaro.

The judge who sentenced Lula to eight years in prison, Sergio Moro, confirmed his intentions to become a presidential candidate, but then suspended his campaign to join the conservative União Brasil party. Since Lula’s release in November 2019, after 580 days of imprisonment, he is faced with a Workers’ Party leadership that is now firmly associated with corruption and bad governance in the eyes of part of Brazilian society.

An ongoing operation to remove facilities used by the homeless and people addicted to drugs in downtown Sao Paulo, April 4, 2022. Sao Paulo’s homeless population increased by 30 per cent during the COVID-19 pandemic. The Bolsonaro government’s management of the pandemic was catastrophic. (AP Photo/Andre Penner)

Loss of the Workers’ Party local base

The Workers’ Party is now deeply dependent on its national leaders, including Lula, who, at 76, is running in his seventh presidential campaign. Although the Workers’ Party still performs well at the national level (with five runoff qualifications, including four victories in presidential elections since 2002) and remains the main force of opposition to the government, the party has seen its local base erode since 2016.

In the October 2016 elections, the Workers’ Party won 254 municipalities, down from 644 in 2012. In 2020, the party won only 183 municipalities and no state capitals, a first since the end of military rule in 1985.

Faced with the loss of its local presence, the Workers’ Party, which is increasingly centralized around its leaders, no longer seems to be rebuilding itself from the bottom up or renewing its administration and supporter base.

A fire burns an area in the Alvorada da Amazonia region of Para state, Brazil, on Aug. 25, 2019. Deforestation has reached record levels during Jair Bolsonaro’s tenure. 

(AP Photo/Leo Correa)

Lula’s conciliatory strategy

Lula hopes to defeat the ex-military officer and far-right President Bolsonaro by building a broad democratic front around him. To that end, the Workers’ Party has renewed dialogue with some members of the Brazilian Democratic Movement, its centre-right ally until 2016 when it suddenly switched alliances.

Lula chose a historical rival, Geraldo Alckmin, as his running mate. Lula had faced Alckmin twice (in 2002 and 2018), when the latter was a member of the right-wing Brazilian Social Democracy Party. This strategy of conciliation with right-wing elites is a sign that the Workers’ Party agenda is becoming more liberal and confirms the party’s repositioning towards the centre of the political spectrum.

The Workers’ Party has also established an alliance with the far-left Socialism and Liberty Party, whose president, Guilherme Boulos, reached the second round of the 2020 municipal elections in São Paulo. On the other hand, no alliance seems possible at this stage with Ciro Gomes, a centre-left candidate who came third in 2018 with 12 per cent of the vote.

Voting intentions in the first round.

Towards a Lula-Bolsonaro polarization

On the opposing side, President Bolsonaro saw his approval rating drop to 19 per cent at the end of November 2021, notably because of his catastrophic management of the COVID-19 health crisis.

Since January 2022, as the pandemic has stabilized, the public’s voting intentions have risen slowly in Bolsonaro’s favour. Despite several setbacks, in particular the rise in fuel prices, the margin between the Bolsonaro and Lula is narrowing. With this in mind, Bolsonaro is rallying support among evangelicals to attract the religious vote.

Voting intentions in case of a second round Lula-Bolsonaro.

Since August 2012, Bolsonaro has repeatedly attacked the electronic voting system, even though it has been used in Brazil for 25 years, raising fears he will refuse to accept the result of the elections if he is defeated.

Analysts test the electronic voting system at the headquarters of the Supreme Electoral Tribunal in Brasilia, Brazil, on May 13, 2022. This year, the tests of the voting system are being closely watched as President Jair Bolsonaro questions the integrity of the system. (AP Photo/Eraldo Peres)

So, despite a seemingly comfortable lead in the polls, five months before the deadline, Lula da Silva’s victory is far from guaranteed. To retain his lead, he will have to consolidate a heterogeneous alliance and constitute a truly democratic front around him, one that will be able to respond to a candidate who publicly criticizes the electoral and democratic processes, themselves. The reconstruction of the Workers’ Party and the renewal of its administration will have to wait.

Author

Jonas Lefebvre
Doctorant en science politique, Université de Montréal
Disclosure statement
Jonas Lefebvre worked with Workers' Party activists during the 2018 election.
Partners

PHOTO Lula with activists of the Landless Movement, March 21, 2022. Though he is leading the incumbent president Jair Bolsonaro in the polls, Lula’s victory is not assured. (LulaOfficial)

Western countries demand Russia follows international law – so why don’t they?

THE CONVERSATION
Published: May 30, 2022 

With a passion that recalls the aftermath of the Second World War, politicians and commentators are demanding a global order that takes seriously the rules of the United Nations Charter — notably on respect for sovereignty and fundamental human rights.

While Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is the immediate spur, China’s conduct in the Indo-Pacific region has prompted similar calls.

It’s more than a fight between autocracies and democracies, Fareed Zakaria recently argued in the Washington Post. This moment requires a rules-based international order that has inclusive global appeal beyond western interests.

Zakaria is joined by Edward Luce in the Financial Times in arguing these appeals for a global rules-based order clearly require the West to take those rules seriously too, pointing to both the war on terror and the International Criminal Court as evidence it’s not truly serious.

The United States, for example, has refrained from joining the court, even as it advocates for war crimes trials for Russian soldiers and politicians.

Railing against China’s encroachment on the marine sovereignty of its neighbours in the South and East China Sea — in violation of the Convention on the Law of the Sea — also isn’t helped by the U.S. failure to ratify that treaty or participate in its tribunal (which ruled against China in a landmark 2016 case brought by the Philippines).

Chinese structures and buildings are seen at the man-made island on Mischief Reef in the South China Sea in March 2022. China has fully militarized at least three of several islands it built in the disputed South China Sea. (AP Photo/Aaron Favila)

According to international affairs experts Robin Niblett and Leslie Vinjamuri, there is a similar penchant for arbitrariness when it comes trade rules and the World Trade Organization, health rules and the World Health Organization and attitudes about development financing in sub-Saharan Africa. They argue that the COVID-19 pandemic’s impact on the fortunes of populist and authoritarian politicians may further erode liberalism.

This only scratches the surface. The essential issue is not merely inconsistency in following rules that have uncontested legitimacy. Rather, it’s whether those rules have withstood the assaults on their legitimacy by their western architects.
Global order hypocrisies

Russia’s Ukraine invasion has resulted in a massive exodus of people, exceeding 6.4 million at this point. Their reception in neighbouring Poland and Hungary has contrasted starkly with the treatment of equally desperate refugees from Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria and Yemen, among others. The conduct of supposedly liberal nations — from Great Britain and France to Nordic states, Canada and the United States — in terms of how they’ve received Ukrainian refugees compared to those from other nations isn’t any better.

The principle of nonrefoulement — a guarantee that no one will be returned to a country where they face torture, degrading treatment or other irreparable harm — is hardwired in international law, as is the right to seek asylum. Neither enjoy much respect in the face of populist attitudes, which have gone increasingly mainstream among politicians and citizens alike.

What has been called the “ethical spasm” in welcoming Ukrainian refugees (support for resettling refugees has been as high as 76 per cent in Britain) stands out precisely because asylum has otherwise been discarded as a pillar of international humanitarian law, and is replaced by what philosopher Serena Parekh calls “structural injustice” that’s comparable to Jim Crow segregation laws.

This conspicuous lack of regard for the letter and substance of rules is tied to resistance against scrutiny of domestic compliance with international human rights law. When it comes to Indigenous Peoples, for example, settler states like Australia, Canada and the United States have dragged their feet on any binding agreement, especially one that honours collective human rights.

‘Free speech’ folly

Incitement to hatred of vulnerable minorities, in violation of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, is also now justified via a loose interpretation of “free speech” — a phenomenon we see in white supremacist and Islamophobic activism, especially on social media.

In Canada, the “trucker convoy” protest that openly espoused white supremacy received support from the official Opposition within and outside Parliament. It’s hard to imagine such accommodation of a non-white protest paralyzing cities and borders for weeks on end.

Read more: The 'freedom convoy' protesters are a textbook case of 'aggrieved entitlement'

In this vein, what are we to make of liberal western states side-stepping the record of India’s egregious conduct towards religious minorities in order to mobilize a front against Russia and China?

We boldly claim to uphold the rights of China’s Uyghurs and Myanmar’s Rohingya but we ignore the rule of equal citizenship by Prime Minister Narendra Modi in his longstanding embrace of a violent Hindu supremacist ideology. This is a wilful sabotage of holding states accountable.

India Prime Minister Narendra Modi embraces Prime Minister Justin Trudeau as they attend the opening ceremony of the COP26 UN Climate Summit in Glasgow, Scotland, in November 2021. 

(AP Photo/Alberto Pezzali)

Finally, there is an outcry about “occupation,” which Crimea has endured since 2014 and the Donbas region of eastern Ukraine appears fated for in the aftermath of Russia’s invasion.

Foreign occupation is at the heart of the narrative of Ukraine’s plight as David confronting the Russian Goliath. The occupation has placed Taiwan on high alert, nervous China might be inspired by Russia.

But what about Palestine, where over a half century’s occupation by Israel is actively funded, militarily supported and legally shielded by western liberal democracies? Gershon Shafir, an American sociologist and human rights scholar, has explored why this is the case in the face of clear international legal and political norms to the contrary — from the UN Charter and the 1949 Geneva Conventions to explicit judicial rulings and UN resolutions, in addition to essential ethical and humanitarian principles.

The International Court of Justice found in 2004 that Israel’s “separation wall,” built in the name of security against Palestinian attacks, was outright illegal in its intrusion on occupied territories. It amounted to extending colonial capture by conquest, a practice explicitly outlawed since the 1960 Declaration on Colonial Peoples and Territories, which not a single UN member opposed.

The UN Security Council’s unanimous Resolution 242 of 1967 on the Palestine question affirmed the “inadmissibility of the acquisition of territory by war.” Israel nonetheless ignored the International Court’s finding.

Precedents set

A major precedent for dismissing judicial findings on a salient issue of global order was set by the U.S. in response to the 1986 International Court of Justice ruling on “military and paramilitary activities against Nicaragua.” The U.S. simply rejected the decision of a court that it had helped establish.

An Ipsos poll on public attitudes toward the Russia-Ukraine conflict reveals, unsurprisingly, a stark divide between the Global North and South. While 82 per cent of people agreed that the conflict poses great global risk, only 39 per cent (entirely in the north) disagreed with the proposition that Ukraine’s problems “are none of our business, and we should not interfere.”

A man rides a bicycle in front of a building ruined by shelling in Borodyanka, Ukraine, on May 24, 2022. (AP Photo/Natacha Pisarenko)

This is not just about the north-south divide at the UN in condemning the invasion; it’s about the alienation of civil society and ordinary folk from the global order. Which begs the question as to whether the very adoption of the rules of global order has been systematically snuffed out.

Author

Amyn Sajoo
Scholar-in-Residence & Lecturer, SFU School for International Studies, Simon Fraser University

Why a 110-million-year-old raptor skeleton should never have been sold at auction for over US$12M

THE CONVERSATION

Published: May 25, 2022

In mid-May, Christie’s auction house in New York sold a raptor skeleton (Deinonychus) for US$12.4 million. This represents a failure to protect and share our natural history with everyone.

We are paleontologists and represent the Society of Vertebrate Paleontology, a group of 2,000 scientists, students and museum professionals around the world. We are promoting awareness of the problems that high-profile auctions of vertebrate fossils cause, and why we think they shouldn’t happen.

Fossils are fascinating and beautiful objects. They provide a glimpse into a past substantially different from our present. We love seeing them come to life in movies. As paleontologists, we share the wonder, but when significant fossil specimens are held by individuals and not public institutions, society loses.

Dinosaur skeletons provide scientific knowledge and educate the public about the history and life of our planet. (Shutterstock)

Private ownership, public losses

Loss of high-profile dinosaur skeletons clearly hurts both science and the public. Some countries have a sense of “cultural patrimony” that includes not only cultural heritage, but natural heritage as well. This informs their laws, and prevents fossil sales and the unauthorized removal of fossils from their countries. When a fossil is sold, this heritage is removed from people in that country without consent.

When people are permitted access to private fossil collections, they are often from the purchaser’s country and not from the specimen’s country of origin, leaving local people cut off from seeing the fossil and learning about their own natural heritage. Not surprisingly, laws protecting cultural and natural heritage are often strongest in countries who have suffered the greatest loss of this heritage, like Mexico.

How much have the United States and other countries without legal protections in place lost through fossil auctions? We are only just beginning to understand. Of the known specimens of Tyrannosaurus rex, only 55 per cent are in collections in the public trust — and the remainder are in private hands.

The scientific community also loses. Specimens complete enough to be sold at legal auctions are often of significant scientific value, but may have been prepared in ways that inflate esthetic value at the expense of long-term stability.

Benevolent purchasers might want scientists to study their specimens, but there is no guarantee that primary data is recorded, rendering the fossil less meaningful for scientific research. Casts and CT scans allow some work to continue, but techniques that require examination of the original bone cannot be used, nor can new hypotheses be tested.

Even when provenance — the documentation of a fossil’s discovery and acquisition — is preserved, specimens held privately but made available to researchers have later been removed from access, and in some cases have disappeared after the death of their owners. This may have been the case with one of 12 known specimens of the enigmatic transitional bird Archaeopteryx.

Market purchases

Legal fossil auctions help drive the black market because high prices attract more people to excavate and sell more fossils of all kinds, and try to export them against local laws. When fossils are seen as accessories, investments or interior decor rather than scientific objects that represent the natural heritage of a region, this drives desire for these objects.

While not everyone can afford a Deinonychus skeleton, such sales drive desire for specimens at all economic levels.

One might ask whether museums could just start purchasing scientifically significant fossils to “save” them. After all, collectors and preparators (the scientists who preserve and prepare the specimen) deserve to be paid. However, often it is middlemen, and not the discoverers and landowners, who profit the most from these sales

.

A fossil of an Archaeopteryx disappeared in 1991 after its owner passed away. (Shutterstock)

Museums, whether public or private, have limited budgets and cannot afford to pay the ever-increasing costs of auctioned specimens. The sum paid for the auctioned raptor would fund the discovery, collection, study, preservation and public exhibit of many more fossils.

Living room dinosaurs

We are not arguing that commercial collectors have no role to play, or that no fossils should be sold. However, privately owned dinosaur fossils do not further science or education and such ownership costs the public their access to, and knowledge about, these fossils.

Any time a fossil is sold to a private collector, there are no guarantees that it will remain in its country of origin or that it will be displayed to the public or be available to scientists. There are also no guarantees that it will be maintained and cared for properly, or that data collected with it will be preserved.

These items are not just pretty cabinet curios, but contain vitally important information about the history and life of our planet. It is up to all of us, not just scientists, to understand the stories they tell us and protect them for future generations. In short, we believe that it is critical to stop auctioning off the natural heritage of the world to the highest bidder.

Authors

J

essica M. Theodor
Professor of Biological Sciences, University of Calgary

Margaret E. Lewis
Professor, Natural Sciences, Stockton University
Disclosure statement
Jessica Theodor is the President of the Society of Vertebrate Paleontology. She receives funding from the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada.

Margaret Lewis is the Vice President and Ethics Officer of the Society of Vertebrate Paleontology. She has received funding from the National Science Foundation and Leakey Foundation.

The future of fishing and fish — and the health of the ocean — hinges on economics and the idea of ‘infinity fish’

Fish stocks are in decline around the world, in part because of the way we value nature and fail to account for their long-term benefits. (Shutterstock)

THE CONVERSATION
Published: May 24, 2022 2.16pm EDT

Editor’s note: This story is part of a series that also includes live interviews with some of Canada’s top social sciences and humanities academics. 

Indigenous Elders recently shared their dismay about the unprecedented decline in salmon populations in British Columbia’s three largest salmon-producing rivers. Research produced by my team found that the Coho salmon catch off the southern B.C. coast has declined to only about five per cent of the peak catch, which dates back to the early 1900s.

The decrease in fish stocks is a global problem. Cod stocks off Newfoundland, pilchard along the coast of Namibia, spring-spawning herring off Norway and sardines off California have all collapsed in the past five decades or so. Globally, more than 100 million tonnes of fish are plucked from the ocean each year, equivalent to over 100 million mature cows in weight!

According to the United Nations Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO), 34 per cent of the world’s fish stocks are overfished. But other organizations, including the Global Fish Index, estimate that roughly half of marine fish stocks are overexploited.

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These depletions are partly due to the way we value — or rather don’t value — nature. The inappropriate valuation of the goods and services nature provides us with is a fundamental reason why we have failed to take good care of the ocean and the environment at large. It is undermining humankind’s ability to achieve what I call “infinity fish”: passing on a healthy ocean to our children and grandchildren so they too can have the option to do the same.
The price isn’t right

When it comes to fish, some economists say all will be fine if we just get “the price right.” I say get the value and valuation right and we will be in a better position to live in harmony with nature. Assigning the correct value to fish will help societies assess the long-term cost of depleting the ocean of too many fish, too quickly, in too many parts of the ocean.

More than 80 per cent of global fisheries subsidies go to large-scale industrial fishing fleets. (Shutterstock)

Marine fisheries are vital for the livelihoods of tens of millions of people worldwide. They contribute directly and indirectly to the food and nutritional security of billions by delivering seafood and generating tens of millions of jobs and incomes, especially in the least developed coastal countries of the world, where the ocean supplies up to 20 per cent of the animal protein people consume.

Read more: Ocean warming is changing the relationship coastal communities have with the ocean

Wild fish stocks are a renewable resource that can continue to provide food and livelihoods to people forever — if they’re used wisely. Mathematically, anything that continues to provide a positive gain, no matter how small, will add up to infinity.

No one wants a dead ocean. To avoid that, we need to adopt an infinity fish way of thinking: a proper and complete valuation of the full range of the ocean’s benefits — seafood, carbon sequestration, recreation, culture, heat absorption — beyond what we sell in the market.
Discounting nature away

A key challenge to economics is how to value benefits from marine ecosystems in a comprehensive manner and in a way that captures their long-term diverse values. We have to meet this challenge if we are to have any chance of achieving infinity fish.

A key obstacle to achieving infinity fish is that, as humans, we tend to view anything close to us, both temporally and spatially, as large and weighty, while we give little or no importance to anything more distant. This tendency, which is partly captured by the economic concept of discounting, has been a big stumbling block to our ability to live in harmony with nature.

Essentially, discounting, which reduces benefits to be received in the future to its value today, makes us want to frontload our benefits and backload our costs. This tendency partly explains why we continue to overexploit biodiversity and deplete marine fish stocks in particular. It also partly explains why we keep polluting the environment with carbon dioxide and plastic.

Closing the high seas to fishing would have an immense positive effect on fish stocks. (Shutterstock)

Once individuals, communities and societies calculate the true values, we will be able to develop the guiding principles we need to live in harmony with nature. It would motivate us to:effectively manage fish stocks;

deal with the drivers of overfishing;

eliminate or redirect harmful fisheries subsidies;

rebuild and restore depleted fish stocks;

avoid oil spills and marine plastic pollution;

eliminate illegal and illicit trade in fish catch;

close the high seas (areas beyond national jurisdiction) to fishing;

treat climate change as the crisis that it is.

Ultimately, we need to avoid harmful policies that encourage negative actions by people on nature, such as handing more than 80 per cent of global fisheries subsidies to large-scale industrial fishing fleets, to the disadvantage of small-scale coastal fishers, including artisanal and subsistence fisheries.

Read more: Putting an end to billions in fishing subsidies could improve fish stocks and ocean health
Future generations

From the ocean, good things come, and to the ocean, bad things go.

People take what they want or need from the ocean, pulling those goods into our economic, cultural and social systems. In turn, we generate lots of waste, including greenhouse gases, which are absorbed by the ocean and increase sea surface temperatures, raise sea levels and boost ocean acidity, among other negative impacts.

Achieving ‘infinity fish’ would allow us to pass on a healthy ocean to our children and grandchildren. (Shutterstock)

Clearly, we must take the good things from the ocean more wisely and within the limits of nature, while reducing the pollution that reaches the ocean to the barest minimum. We must also ensure that what we take out of the ocean is used to meet the needs of as many people as possible, especially, the most vulnerable among us.

To achieve infinity fish, we need an interdisciplinary approach, founded on partnerships that allow scientists, Indigenous Peoples, governments, businesses, NGOs and civil society to co-create solutions.

The ocean is huge: it covers 70 per cent of the Earth’s surface. But it is not too big to protect — we have the brains and empathy needed to collectively ensure we achieve infinity fish for future generations. We just need to get the values and valuations right.

Author

r

Rashid Sumaila
Director & Professor, Fisheries Economics Research Unit, University of British Columbia
Disclosure statement
Rashid Sumaila receives funding from SSHRC, NSERC, the Pew Charitable Trusts, Oceana. In addition to the University of British Columbia, he is affiliated with National University of Malaysia as a Distinguished International Professor.

Public police are a greedy institution

A photo from a demonstration calling for police accountability and an end to police brutality in Vancouver, in May 2020. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Darryl Dyck

THE CONVERSATION
Published: May 24, 2022

The ongoing calls from communities to defund public police, that grew louder following the police killings of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor in 2020, have raised several crucial questions.

As researchers of police work, we looked at some of the critical issues surrounding these calls in our new book on police, greed and dark money. We examined the push by public police to accumulate more resources despite these calls and the rise of secretive or “dark money” in public policing.

Although criminologists have shown that social development leads to less street crime and healthier communities, police departments seem unperturbed when social programs for housing, mental health and health care get cut to fund growing police budgets. It is also unclear whether a well-funded police institution leads to less transgression or safer communities.

The greedy tendencies of police departments help illustrate the major problems with public police funding in Canada and the United States today.

American sociologist Lewis Coser first spoke of greedy institutions in 1974. A greedy institution demands loyalty and conformity to its culture, worldview and politics. For example, the military is a greedy institution since it demands full loyalty to branches of the armed forces.

We are not the first scholars to apply the greedy institution concept to public police and to suggest its officers must be loyal and not cross the “blue line.” Our book extends this concept to show how the police institution seeks loyalty and conformity not just internally, it does so externally as well.

While the public police demands loyalty to its institution and conformity to its worldview, its challengers, within and outside the institution, tend to be shunned or neutralized.

A new book, Police Funding, Dark Money and the Greedy Institution 

outlines how public police departments demand loyalty and funds. 

(Routledge)

The other meaning of greedy institution is literal.

Police greediness is evident in the quest for private sponsorship of police, especially through private police foundations. These foundations exemplify the attempt of police departments to extend their networks and social connections while accruing more financial resources.

Another example is paid duty policing, which we argue reveals the police managerial desire to control officers’ off-duty activities, while ensuring they receive significant extra money beyond their salaries.

In both instances, dark money is something that often involves secret or anonymous donations or income. The murky exchanges of dark money are mostly hidden to the public.

Police foundations: a funnel for private capital

Police foundations have emerged as entities that allow private corporations and individuals to donate to police. In our book, we show how foundations are being established at record pace. In the U.S., there are hundreds of police foundations. In Canada, police foundations in Vancouver, Delta and Calgary, as well as a few others, have been funnelling corporate money to police for decades.

Not many people know how prominent the police foundation has become, nor about the sources and levels of dark money it funnels into public police or the related conflicts of interest that arise. For example, Axon (makers of tasers and body-worn cameras) and other weapons companies are major funders of police across North America.

The Vancouver Police Department’s SWAT Mobile Command Centre costs $500,000 and is funded by the donors of Vancouver Police Foundation. 

(Vancouver Police Department YouTube channel), CC BY

It usually works like this: Private entities give dark money to the foundation. Most foundation money ends up getting distributed to the police rather than local charities. The police often spend those dollars on tactical units, surveillance devices and police dog teams, things often associated with militarization of the police.

The foundation is the police institution’s shell corporation through which other corporations and individuals can privately donate. These donations continue despite already ample public police budgets and even after wide public calls to defund public police.

The foundation is also a communication vehicle for police, through which allies such as powerful corporations or folks from local companies and affluent individuals are accrued. The foundation can advertise the police worldview, garnering more loyalty and conformity. In this way, police foundations assemble allies and social and political capital even amid loud calls to defund police.

Paid detail policing as literal greed

Paid duty or paid detail is another type of greediness. You may have noticed uniformed and armed police officers standing or strolling about at sporting events: chances are those officers are working paid duty. The sports team or corporation’s venue is paying the officer individually.

If you’ve ever seen police standing around at a construction site, movie shoot or retail outlet or outside a nightclub, chances are those uniformed officers are receiving handsome compensation from a private funder.

Paid duty also reflects a greedy institution.

Officers are making big money from these paid duty postings. They receive up to $100 an hour extra from working paid duty and — where not legally required through obscure bylaws — loyal funders are expected to provide “easy gigs” such as standing around at construction sites or sporting events. Yet police administrators often restrict paid duty gigs where cannabis, alcohol, gambling or nudity is involved and that are assumed to taint officers’ loyalty.

In Winnipeg, police were criticized for paid duty guarding of groceries after they engaged in racial profiling of Indigenous customers.

Paid duty is a problem for professional, accountable policing and its connection with police corruption including in Jersey City, Seattle and New Orleans. In Toronto, officers sometimes miss court dates and exceed limits on paid duty hours worked during lucrative jobs provided by external funders, as reported by the Toronto Star.

Paid duty is also a problem because some funders are public, including government departments that operate road maintenance and construction, utilities and hospitals. The public already pays for police operations, with huge proportions of government budgets, but then are asked by the police institution to pay again for paid duty.

Both private sponsorship through foundations and paid duty channel dark money into police departments. This all suggests that public police need greater scrutiny so that their greedy influence and reach can be reigned in and this institution can be re-envisioned through a lens of the public good.

Authors

Kevin Walby
Associate Professor of Criminal Justice, University of Winnipeg

Randy K. Lippert
Professor of Criminology, University of Windsor