Wrestling boss Vince McMahon retires from WWE amid hush money probe

Author: AFP|

Update: 23.07.2022 

Vince McMahon -- pictured in 2009 -- said he is retiring as WWE Chairman and CEO 

/ © GETTY IMAGES NORTH AMERICA/AFP/File

Vince McMahon, the promoter who built a pro wrestling show into a global entertainment empire, Friday announced he was retiring as head of World Wrestling Entertainment -- under a cloud of serious sexual misconduct allegations.

McMahon, whose longtime friends include Donald Trump, became a character in his own wrestling promotions at one stage and even launched a rival to the NFL -- his over-the-top XFL.

"As I approach 77 years old, I feel it's time for me to retire as chairman and CEO of WWE," McMahon said in a statement. "Throughout the years, it has been a privilege to help WWE bring you joy, inspire you, thrill you, surprise you, and always entertain you."

McMahon stepped down from his roles with WWE last month pending the results of an internal investigation after allegations he had an affair with an employee and paid her $3 million to keep the matter secret.

His daughter Stephanie was named interim CEO and chairman while the ongoing investigation continues -- amid widening allegations of misconduct.

The Wall Street Journal reported two weeks ago that McMahon has paid more than $12 million to four women formerly associated with WWE over the past 16 years to keep quiet about affairs and alleged misconduct, including a former female wrestler who claims he coerced her into oral sex.

- Global phenomenon -

WWE boss Vince McMahon recruited the likes of Hulk Hogan -- pictured in 2018 -- who went on to become a megastar far beyond his ring performances / © AFP/File

After taking over from his father, also named Vince, and grandfather Jess, McMahon transformed the WWE from its regional beginnings, into a publicly traded international enterprise with hundreds of employees in offices worldwide.

As he took the sport global, the younger McMahon delivered a unique and colorful brand of wrestling, recruiting the likes of Hulk Hogan -- who went on to become a megastar far beyond his ring performances.

WWE wrestlers became cultural icons as McMahon used music and storytelling to introduce his stars into mainstream culture, delivering major events such as the first Wrestlemania in 1985 at New York's Madison Square Garden.

"The Rock" went from WWE icon to Hollywood superstar while "Captain" Lou Albano was in a Cyndi Lauper music video, and Hogan had star turns alongside Mr. T and Sylvester Stallone in a prime example of the crossover star mix that McMahon delivered.

McMahon also has longstanding ties to the celebrity-turned-president Donald Trump, who is a WWE Hall of Fame inductee -- and who gave McMahon's wife Linda a government role as head of the small business administration.

At the culmination of a staged feud, Trump once famously body-slammed the WWE boss, and shaved his head in the middle of a wrestling ring on live television.

WWE chairman Vince McMahon (C) prepares to have his head shaved by Donald Trump (L) and Bobby Lashley (R) while being held down by 'Stone Cold' Steve Austin after losing a Battle of the Billionaires best at the Wrestlemania event in Detroit in April 2007 / © Getty Images North America/Getty Images/AFP/File

Through telecasts and live shows, the WWE became a star-making machine melding the entertainment and sport realms, producing such colorful characters as "Stone Cold" Steve Austin, "Macho Man" Randy Savage, "The Undertaker," and Ted DiBiase, also known as "The Million-Dollar Man."

McMahon had kept in the background as a commentator until the late 1990s when he developed an evil "Mr. McMahon" character and a notable dispute with Austin, his own soap opera storylines becoming a big draw.

In February, 2001, McMahon launched the XFL with many of the same flashy extreme moves and off-field storylines that worked in WWE, but the would-be NFL rival folded after one season due to low television ratings and a comeback bid in 2020 was undone by Covid-19.

- 'Dedication & passion' -

McMahon thanked his family, employees and performers for building WWE's success.

"Our global audience can take comfort in knowing WWE will continue to entertain you with the same fervor, dedication, and passion as always," McMahon said.

McMahon said he leaves the company is the hands of daughter Stephanie and co-chief executive officer Nick Khan.

"As the majority shareholder, I will continue to support WWE in any way I can," he said.

Photo triggered Amazon murders of journalist, guide: AG

Author: AFP|

Update: 23.07.2022 

A demonstration in Rio to call for justice for the murder of Brazilian indigenous expert Bruno Pereira and British journalist Dom Phillip / © AFP/File

The murders in June of British journalist Dom Phillips and Brazilian Indigenous expert Bruno Pereira in the Amazon were likely sparked when they sought to photograph a boat belonging to their killers, the Attorney General's office said Friday.

Pereira had asked Phillips to photograph the boat, according to a statement from the office that said this detail may count as an aggravating factor in sentencing.

The details were revealed after the filing Thursday of charges against the three men suspected of committing the double murder.

Amarildo da Costa de Oliveira and Jefferson da Silva Lima have both confessed to the crime, according to officials, while Oseney da Costa de Oliveira -- brother of Amarildo -- has not.

The trio stands accused of murder in the first degree and of hiding the bodies.

"Bruno was killed by three bullets, one in the back without any possibility of defense," said the statement.

"Dom was killed simply because he was with Bruno, in order to ensure impunity for the previous crime."

Phillips, 57, and Pereira, 41, were shot dead while returning from an expedition in a remote region of the rainforest that is plagued by drug trafficking, illegal gold mining and fishing.

Phillips, the author of dozens of articles on the Amazon and a long-time contributor to The Guardian newspaper and other major news organizations, was traveling to the Javari Valley as part of research for a book.

Pereira was serving as his guide, and had previously traveled with him to the area.

An outspoken defender of Indigenous rights, Pereira had received multiple death threats prior to his murder.

Police are investigating a possible link to illegal fishing on protected Indigenous lands -- an issue close to Pereira's heart -- as a motive for the killing.

Czechs start razing pig farm built over WWII Roma camp


Jan FLEMR
Fri, July 22, 2022 


The demolition of a sprawling pig farm, built on the site of a wartime concentration camp for the Roma minority south of Prague, got underway on Friday following decades of controversy.

Targeted by the Nazis, some 1,300 Roma were imprisoned in the Lety camp during World War II, and 327 died there, including 241 children under 14 years of age.

More than 500 others were sent on to Nazi Germany's infamous Auschwitz-Birkenau death camp in occupied southern Poland.

The Moscow-steered communist regime, which ruled in former Czechoslovakia after the war, built the pig farm on the site in the 1970s.

The regime was toppled in 1989, four years before Czechoslovakia split into two states.

But even then successive Czech governments took decades to finally allow the demolition as the largely impoverished Roma minority stayed on the sidelines of society.

"Today marks the beginning of the end of one of the most shameful chapters in our modern history," parliament speaker Marketa Pekarova Adamova said at a ceremony in Lety.

Together with other officials, she symbolically started the demolition by dismantling a model made of little concrete bricks.

Cenek Ruzicka, whose mother was a Lety survivor, was less restrained as he grabbed a pickaxe and started smashing one of the buildings of the farm that was once home to 13,000 pigs.

His brother had a go at the windows with a hammer.

"As you can see, it has ended well. Of course I didn't expect it to take so long," Ruzicka told AFP.

- 'My culture drove me' -

Late Czech president Vaclav Havel unveiled a memorial near the farm in 1995, but officials then tiptoed about the farm which had been taken over by a private company.

A breakthrough came only in 2018 when the government agreed to buy the farm and build a Roma Holocaust memorial on the site, under pressure from the Roma minority and international institutions including the United Nations and the EU.


A visitor centre is due to be completed early next year as the first part of the memorial whose total construction cost is expected to be more than 100 million Czech koruna ($4 million).

Ruzicka, whose grandmother and three-month-old sister died at the camp, was a major driving force behind the move.

"My culture drove me. The guys from our community of the original Czech Roma are terribly proud, we never give up," said Ruzicka, who was born in 1946.

The Czech Republic, an EU country of 10.5 million people, has a Roma community estimated to number between 250,000 and 300,000.

Of the 9,500 Czech Roma registered before World War II, fewer than 600 returned home after the Holocaust.

Historians believe the Nazis exterminated over half of the roughly one million Roma who had lived in Europe prior to World War II.

The European Union estimates that 10-12 million Roma currently live in Europe, around six million of them in EU nations.

frj/dt/pvh

Battered by climate change, Latin America must brace for worse: report

by Andrea FIGUERAS ARISO

Hurricane Iota caused widespread devastation in Nicaragua in 2020.

Floods, heat waves and the longest drought in 1,000 years: Latin America is grappling with devastating climate change impacts that will only get worse, a World Meteorological Organization report warned Friday.

In its State of the Climate report for Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC) for 2021, the WMO said ecosystems, food and water, human health and welfare were all taking a battering.

Glaciers in the tropical Andes have lost more than 30 percent of their area in less than 50 years, increasing the risk of water scarcity in many regions, it said.

Sea levels continued to rise at a faster rate than globally, and the so-called Central Chile Mega Drought—13 years and running—is the longest in at least 1,000 years.

Meanwhile, deforestation rates "were the highest since 2009, a blow for both the environment and climate change mitigation," said the report.

Brazilian Amazon deforestation doubled from the 2009-2018 average, with 22 percent more forest area lost in 2021 than the previous year.

The Amazon provides oxygen-producing and carbon-trapping functions that are crucial not only for the region but for the world.

'Decades of progress' stalled

The report also documented the third-highest number—21—of named storms on record for the 2021 Atlantic hurricane season, and extreme rainfall that caused hundreds of fatalities and destroyed or damaged tens of thousands of homes.

Floods in Cuba last month.

"Increasing sea-level rise and ocean warming are expected to continue to affect coastal livelihoods, tourism, health, food, energy, and water security, particularly in small islands and Central American countries," said WMO Secretary General Petteri Taalas.

"For many Andean cities, melting glaciers represent the loss of a significant source of freshwater... for domestic use, irrigation and hydroelectric power."

Worsening climate change, compounded by the impacts of the coronavirus pandemic, have "stalled decades of progress against poverty, food insecurity and the reduction of inequality in the region," added Mario Cimoli of the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean.

In Guatemala, El Salvador and Nicaragua, 7.7 million people experienced high levels of food insecurity in 2021.

The LAC region had registered an average rate of temperature increase of about 0.2 degrees Celsius per decade between 1991 and 2021, said the report—double the 1961-1990 rate.

"Unfortunately, greater impact is in store for the region as both the atmosphere and ocean continue to rapidly change," said a WMO press release.

Chile is experiencing its longest drought in 1,000 years.

"Food and water supplies will be disrupted. Towns and cities and the infrastructure required to sustain them will be increasingly at risk."

The region was in urgent need of early warning systems to help it adapt to climate extremes, said the WMO.Four climate change records broken in 2021: WMO State of the Climate Report

© 2022 AFP

Ancient Siberian dogs relied on humans for seafood diets

by Issam AHMED

A new study has shed light on the dietary transitions that allowed early Siberian dog populations to

 increase as people put them to work in roles such as sledding.

As early as 7,400 years ago, Siberian dogs had evolved to be far smaller than wolves, making them more dependent on humans for food including sea mammals and fish trapped below the ice, a new study showed Friday.

Robert Losey of the University of Alberta, who led the research published in Science Advances, said the findings helped explain the growth in the early dog population, as people put them to work for hunting, herding and sledding.

"The long term changes in dog diet have really been oversimplified," he told AFP, explaining that prior work had focused only on two main ideas to explain how dogs transitioned from wolves, a process that began some 40,000 years ago.

The first of these was that friendlier wolves approached human camps during the Ice Age to scavenge for meat, eventually became isolated from their wild counterparts, and were then intentionally bred into dogs.

The second was that some dogs evolved a better capacity to digest starches following the agricultural revolution, which is why some modern dog breeds have more copies of the AMY2B gene that creates pancreatic amylase.

To study ancient dog diets in more depth, Losey and colleagues analyzed the remains of around 200 ancient dogs from the past 11,000 years, and a similar number of ancient wolves.

"We had to go to collections all over Siberia, we analyzed those bones, took samples of the collagen, and analyzed the protein in labs," he said.

Based on the remains, the team made statistical estimates for body sizes.

They also used a technique called stable isotope analysis to generate dietary estimates.

They discovered that dogs of 7,000-8,000 years ago "were already quite small, meaning that they just couldn't do the things that most wolves were doing," said Losey.

This in turn led to greater dependence on humans for food, and reliance on small prey and scavenging, rather than prey bigger than themselves, which wolves hunt.

"We see that dogs have marine diets, meaning they're eating fish, shellfish, seals and sea lions, which they can't easily get themselves," he said.

Ancient dogs were found to be eating fish "in areas of Siberia where the lakes and rivers are frozen over for seven to eight months of the year."

Wolves of the time, and today, were hunting in packs and mainly eating various species of deer.

Benefits and challenges

These new diets brought dogs both benefits and challenges.

"Beneficial because they could access stuff from humans, and those are oftentimes easy meals, but it came with the costs of all these new diseases and problems, like not enough nutrition," said Losey.

While the new bacteria and parasites they were exposed to could have helped some adapt, some dog populations might not have survived.

Most of the first dogs of the Americas died out, for unclear reasons, and were replaced by European dogs—though it's not thought colonization was to blame.

Those dogs that did survive acquired more diverse gut microbiomes, helping them further in digesting more carbohydrates associated with life with humansStudy shows how diet has transformed the ancient dog into a family pet

More information: Robert J. Losey et al, The evolution of dog diet and foraging: Insights from archaeological canids in Siberia, Science Advances (2022). DOI: 10.1126/sciadv.abo6493

Journal information: Science Advances 

© 2022 AFP

• 
  

Don Braid: Is Danielle Smith's striking campaign a paper tiger?

Is this Smith steamroller a fact, or cultivated myth?

Author of the article:Don Braid • Calgary Herald
Publishing date:Jul 21, 2022 

Danielle Smith speaks at a leadership campaign event on July 14. 

Bailey Seymour/Special to Postmedia
Article content

Danielle Smith’s campaign has been spectacularly successful at amping up her profile as a UCP leadership candidate.

But is she really the runaway public hit that all the media attention suggests?

Maybe not. The counterattack on her plan for nullifying federal laws has begun. Candidate Travis Toews and Jason Nixon, the government house leader, have both called it reckless and dangerous for the province, especially economically.

Nixon even said he doubts that the legislature, with a UCP majority, would pass her Sovereignty Act.

It’s worth recalling that when seven leadership candidates debated this very question on June 23, five disagreed with Smith.

Most favoured some moves clearly within provincial authority — a police force, for instance — but they all thought it was halfway crazy to nullify federal laws on Alberta soil.

Are those people all wrong, while only Danielle Smith is right?

There’s another quiet player in this little Alberta drama: Prime Minister Justin Trudeau.

The current unilateral federal move on stricter emission targets seems deliberately provocative at a moment when traditional energy is precious, literally. Many Albertans will be angrier than ever, and perhaps more receptive to Smith’s pitch.

As premier, she would be a handy foil for Trudeau to rile up his progressive base in a federal campaign. There’s little for the Liberals to lose in Alberta, and a great deal to gain elsewhere.

Trudeau has found Premier Jason Kenney useful at times. Ontario Premier Doug Ford as well. Danielle Smith would be a gift.

Her stand might have won some limited national sympathy during our deep recession. But don’t imagine any love for ignoring national laws now that the province is soaring again, cash-rich beyond the dreams of any other province.

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau speaks during a news conference on Bowen Island, B.C., on Tuesday. 

PHOTO BY DARRYL DYCK /THE CANADIAN PRESS

Smith’s campaign also gives the impression that she is far outpacing other candidates in UCP membership sales.

Leela Aheer, for one, suspects it’s true. She called last week for moderates to buy memberships in droves, in order to head off a Smith victory that could be locked down by the time sales stop on Aug. 12.

But once again, is this Smith steamroller a fact, or cultivated myth?

It’s now possible to get a fix on sales because campaigns fully accepted by the party have been given the party membership lists. These lists show numbers of daily sales by all candidates.

Smith’s campaigners claimed last week, in a published article, that they had sold 7,000 memberships in a 10-day period.

But Brian Jean’s campaign says that’s simply false. The list they received, after Jean was accepted, shows that all aspiring candidates sold fewer than 6,000 memberships in the same 10-day period, according to Jean spokesperson Vitor Marciano.

The party discourages candidates from talking about current total list numbers.

“But we just had to speak out on this one,” says Marciano. “The sales they’re claiming just aren’t there. That’s untrue. There are steady sales of memberships by candidates, but no great burst of sales for her.”


MORE ON THIS TOPIC
Braid: Danielle Smith's campaign pokes a stick into the extremist bonfire

Braid: Does Danielle Smith already have a lock on the premier's office?

Smith and Toews have been in a spat about who favours a sales tax. The fact is, they’ve both suggested it.

Toews has said in the past a tax might be considered later. On Sept. 4, 2020, Smith said in a Herald column that the province needs $5 billion in new taxes, and then added: “Yes, a provincial sales tax. Let’s not kid ourselves about that.”

Now they’re faulting each other for something they both said. Ridiculous.

Smith’s striking Sovereignty Act promise has blurred far more important issues. She talks about them, too, but she has made herself the Ignore Laws candidate.

Jean, by contrast, focuses on bread-and-butter concerns that aren’t so dramatic but may reach crisis level by vote count day, Oct. 6.

On Thursday he called for legislation to cap retailer margins for gasoline sales. Five provinces already do this, which helps explain why their gasoline prices are similar to or lower than ours, even though Alberta stopped collecting the gasoline tax of 13 cents per lite.

Smith’s campaign stands out, that’s for sure. But maybe it’s not as strong as it seems.

Don Braid’s column appears regularly in the Herald.
Twitter: @DonBraid

Former finance minister questions whether Alberta sovereignty bill would pass


EDMONTON — Alberta's former finance minister — with a large portion of the United Conservative caucus supporting him for party leader – has added his voice to those questioning whether a rival’s promised bill rejecting federal law would pass in the legislature.


© Provided by The Canadian Press

Former finance minister questions whether Alberta sovereignty bill would pass

Travis Toews says he will pursue other levers to carry the fight to the federal government instead of resorting to what he characterized as self-aggrandizing recipes for legal and economic chaos.

“I think that would be pretty questionable,” Toews said when asked in an interview Thursday whether he believes fellow leadership candidate Danielle Smith’s proposed Alberta sovereignty act would gain enough votes to pass in the legislature.

“I’ve got really about half the (United Conservative) MLAs right now overtly supporting me. And I’ve certainly heard from many of them real concerns over the sovereignty act approach.”

Toews made the comments a day after UCP government house leader and Finance Minister Jason Nixon told reporters he, too, doubts the act would find enough support in the house.

Nixon, who said he believes Toews is the best candidate, called Smith’s proposal fundamentally illegal and unenforceable, bad for business and politically problematic for overpromising what can’t be accomplished.

Toews said he agrees and is particularly distressed over what the act would mean for business viability, investor confidence and jobs.

“An environment where you’re asking businesses and companies to ignore federal law is not an environment that attracts investment."

He said uncertainties and inequalities would compound if some businesses decided to follow the province’s lead and ignore certain laws and court rulings while other businesses decided to abide by them.

“It has the potential to create economic chaos in the province of Alberta,” he said.

“We need to be assertive when we deal with Ottawa in terms of Alberta’s place in Confederation – assertive and strategic,” he added.

“I’m not about all that tired political rhetoric all for personal political gain that ultimately results in disillusioned Albertans and angry Albertans.”

Toews pointed to his five-point plan on federal relations, which would see a provincial pension plan, a provincial police force and working with other provinces to create consensus to alter the equalization formula and shift taxing power from Ottawa to the regions.

He said his government would also pass legislation to levy tariffs on goods and services or imports from specific regions to counter rules and policies deemed unfair to Alberta.

“I’m a great believer in free trade … but Alberta needs a way to tangibly push back in a very specific way,” he said.

Toews stepped down as finance minister in late May to run for the leadership. He has close to 30 committed supporters among UCP caucus members, while Smith has two.

Smith, a former Wildrose Party leader, radio talk show host and businesswoman, is considered one of the front-runners in the race to replace Premier Jason Kenney as party leader and premier when voting takes place Oct. 6.

Last month, Smith announced that if she wins the leadership, she would immediately introduce the sovereignty act bill granting her government the discretion to refuse to enforce federal laws or court decisions it deems an intrusion on provincial rights or a threat to Alberta interests.

Smith has said it's critical Alberta draw a line in the sand immediately when it comes to federal intrusions in areas such as energy development and COVID-19 measures.

Her campaign declined an interview Thursday but pointed to her statement a day earlier that said the sovereignty act would be invoked on a case-by-case basis and only after gaining support of members in the house in a free vote.

Political scientist Duane Bratt said while Nixon’s assessment of the bill’s flaws is accurate, the UCP caucus signalling it may not support Smith’s signature legislation could galvanize her supporters.

“Nixon is right on this. It is illegal. It is unconstitutional,” said Bratt with Mount Royal University in Calgary.

“I’ve been wondering at what point there was going to be a clash between the current government and the leadership race. Well we saw that (with Nixon’s comments) yesterday.”

This report by The Canadian Press was first published July 21, 2022.

Dean Bennett, The Canadian Press

Smith takes UCP leadership campaign down a dark, Trumpian road

by David J. Climenhaga 

AlbertaPolitics.ca

July 18, 2022

The danger now is that other candidates in the UCP leadership race, seeing the traction Danielle Smith has gained through these tactics, will join in with inflammatory conspiracy theories of their own.

UCP leadership candidate Danielle Smith’s been getting good crowds at her UCP leadership campaign events – the danger is she’ll draw other candidates into her Trumpian tactics.

 Credit: Danielle Smith / Facebook


The United Conservative Party leadership campaign took a dark Trumpian turn Monday, July 11 when candidate Danielle Smith got a big cheer from her supporters at a rally in Airdrie for accusing Alberta Health Services of deliberately sabotaging the Kenney Government during the pandemic by falsely claiming the system was near collapse to bully MLAs into accepting vaccine mandates and passports.

This is dangerous, paranoid stuff worthy of a QAnon meeting, but it seemed to work just fine for Smith – while flying almost completely under the radar of mainstream media.

But she set out her conspiracy theory quite clearly in an audio recording of the rally provided to AlbertaPolitics.ca

“Our health care system failed us,” she began. “I don’t think there’s any other way to describe it. And I think that we actually had an AHS, Alberta Health Services, that was either completely incompetent or they actively sabotaged our government.”

“Because there’s no other way to describe, when the premier gave direct orders to increase surge capacity by eleven hundred ICU beds, by the time they got around to the Delta wave, they had to admit they hadn’t. Not only had they not increased ICU beds, but they’d actually decreased them, to 173.

“And that was used as a pretext to scare the heck out of all the MLAs, to go, ‘Oh my gosh, if you don’t do something and shut people down, bring in vaccine mandates and vaccine passports, that we are going to have the health care system collapse.’ (Emphasis added, both times.)

“Well,” Smith said, “my view is that all of the senior managers who showed themselves incapable of doing this work, they need to go and find another line of work!”

This was followed by what sounds on the recording like a huge roar of approval.

Smith must have liked that response so much she repeated her claim on broadcaster Ryan Jespersen’s podcast, tossing in a defamatory slap at former AHS president and CEO Verna Yiu.

When Jespersen asked if she really believed her claim the near collapse of the health care system during the pandemic was a deliberate ploy by AHS, she responded: “All I do know is that Dr. Verna Yiu was let go a year before her contract extension was up, so somebody’s come to the same conclusion that I have, that she just wasn’t up for the job.”

It will be interesting to see how Yiu responds.

This is pure, undistilled Trumpism, heartlessly picking a victim to bully to justify unfounded, paranoid fantasies – and as we know from the ugly scenes in the United States throughout the Trump presidency, it stands a good chance of working pretty well for her.

It’s pretty rich for a former broadcaster who spent months during the pandemic promoting quack remedies for COVID-19 to say stuff like this. One wonders how much that contributed to the chaos in the health care system as COVID cases spiked. It’s hard to believe Ms. Smith, an intelligent woman, actually believes this nonsense, but I suppose we can’t rule out any explanation for her behaviour – which seems likely to continue.

The danger now, of course, is that other candidates in the UCP leadership race – seeing the traction she has gained through these tactics – will join in with inflammatory conspiracy theories of their own.

Brian Jean and Travis Toews are already halfway aboard the vaccine denial bandwagon – or, as Smith charmingly puts it, “vaccine choice.” Why not go all in?

So where is Danielle Smith going with this?

“I’m going to need your help,” she told her followers in Airdrie, “because what we need to do very quickly in the fall is that we need a facility audit of all 100 health facilities in the province, so when AHS says, ‘Oh my goodness, there’s nothing we can do, we can’t expand surgical capacity,’ we’ll have local people on the ground saying, ‘No, that’s not the case.’”

“There are whole wings of hospitals, whole floors, operating rooms that have been converted into storage spaces,” she claimed. “So, we need to get those back in action, so that when we get to the fall respiratory virus surge as we always do, every single year, we will not have Alberta Health Services saying this time there’s nothing we can do.”

As a remedy, she proposes a vaguely defined, completely un-costed health spending account scheme – which sounds a lot like a medical version of Ralph Klein’s 2005 prosperity bonuses.

“I’ve been told by nurses that a lot of the pressure on our hospital system are that we have chronic conditions that have been allowed to deteriorate so far, to the point, so far that person has to be to hospitalized,” she said. So, “let’s give the people the money they need to take care of themselves.

“All it would be is depositing in every Albertan’s account $300, and you can spend it on the health care that you need. Because when I look at all the different types of services we don’t cover, we don’t cover anything that’s going to keep you well, that will keep you from getting sick, and help you manage your conditions, whether it’s diabetes or obesity, or whether it’s a heart condition or COPD.

“There’s lots of people who are in the pro-, uh, in the vaccine-choice movement who would like to go to a naturopath or would like to go for acupuncture, or for chiropractic, or want to see a nutritionist, or want to see a counsellor.”

And that, she promised, would “take the power away from the bureaucracy that wants to be able to keep on with this model of just give us more money, and then every single year we just get worse and worse results.”

“So that’s what we’re gonna do. We’re gonna put the power back in the local community, and we’re gonna put the money back in your hands, so that you can hold everybody to account.”

“If it reduces money over here,” she blithely promised – again, without explanation or evidence – “then we’ll just feed back more money into your health spending account.”

Smith does have an agenda, of course, and it’s radical privatization of public health care.

She’s right about this much, though: Alberta does need to invest in more preventative medicine to reduce the burden of chronic disease.

But giving every Albertan $300, presumably once, isn’t going to cure any chronic conditions or eliminate any surgical backlogs. Nor will running the health care system like a ride sharing service

DAVID J. CLIMENHAGA
author of the AlbertaPolitics.ca blog, is a journalist and trade union communicator who has worked in senior writing and editing positions with the Globe and Mail and the Calgary Herald.... More by David J. Climenhaga

Appointment of Collin May as Alberta human rights chief is ‘a significant problem’

by David J. Climenhaga

AlbertaPolitics.ca blog

July 19, 2022

Despite the flaws in her argument, Rajan Sawhney is the first and only UCP leadership candidate to speak out against the appointment of the Calgary lawyer.

UCP leadership candidate Rajan Sawhney.


United Conservative Party leadership candidate Rajan Sawhney yesterday issued a statement saying “it is a significant problem” that the new chief of the Alberta Human Rights Commission made “pejorative comments about Islam” in a 2009 book review published by a right-wing website.

In her statement, Sawhney called for further investigation of the comments made by May, who the UPC appointed to the job on Thursday, despite news and commentary about his 2009 book review.

This hardly seems necessary since his review can still easily be found online at the C2C Journal website, and because May has publicly admitted that he wrote it.

Moreover, she seems to suggest the uproar about May’s appointment may indicate that media reports are not to be trusted. Whatever flaws Alberta’s media may exhibit, the few journalists and commentators who covered this story can plead not guilty to that charge for the simple reason that May has confirmed the accuracy of everything he is reported to have said.

Still, despite the flaws in her argument, this is an important development because Sawhney is the first and so far the only UCP leadership candidate to speak out against May’s appointment, even if she is a long shot to win the leadership race.

She has set the bar – albeit a rather low one – for the other candidates to lead the UCP to live up to. Or not to live up to, in which case no UCP supporter should complain if this remains an issue through the leadership race and into the election campaign that follows.

The former transportation minister said she had taken the time to read the review herself and found that the author largely accepted an interpretation of Islam “which takes a highly controversial and negative view of the faith of tens or even hundreds of thousands of Albertans.”

“These comments have created considerable and understandable hurt within the Muslim community, but also among all Albertans who value our pluralistic society,” she said, noting that “it is a significant problem when the person who expressed those unacceptable views is responsible for adjudicating human rights issues.”

This is an important point because even though May says he has changed his opinion of Islam since he wrote the review 13 years ago, that does not alter the natural perceptions of his views as bound to bring the proceedings of the commission into disrepute.

It would have behooved the UCP Government to remember, as Lord Chief Justice Hewart famously said in 1924, it “is of fundamental importance that justice should not only be done, but should manifestly and undoubtedly be seen to be done.”

As Sawhney observed yesterday, “no person of Muslim faith would have confidence that they are being treated neutrally by the Human Rights Commission if the Chair has pre-existing and negative views of that person’s faith.”

“This allegation of bias is also a reminder that the vetting of prospective candidates for sensitive and important jobs in government must be thorough,” she added, quite rightly.

Mind you, Sawhney was in cabinet when May was first appointed to the commission in a lesser role, so she should have some first-hand insight into how he was chosen the first time. Perhaps Cabinet simply accepted the minister’s recommendation without reflection or question.

Whatever vetting there was of May, it was disgracefully lax. It would almost be better if no checks had been made at all, which, while negligent would at least not have raised the additional possibility of malice in his selection.

DAVID J. CLIMENHAGA
author of the AlbertaPolitics.ca blog, is a journalist and trade union communicator who has worked in senior writing and editing positions with the Globe and Mail and the Calgary Herald.... More by David J. Climenhaga

'Authoritarianism 101': Trump Plot to Purge Civil Servants If Reelected Draws Alarm

"Schedule F, Do not underestimate the destruction this will cause," said one critic.

U.S. President Donald Trump looks on during an event at the White House on April 18, 2019 in Washington, D.C. (Photo: Drew Angerer/Getty Images)

JULIA CONLEY

COMMON DREAMS

July 22, 2022

Government watchdogs on Friday warned that a plan by former President Donald Trump to drastically remake the federal workforce should he win the presidency in 2024 would "utterly destroy" public service in the United States.

"This is truly the implementation of a fascist takeover of our government."

As Axios reported Friday, central to Trump's plans for a second term is the reinstatement of his executive order known as "Schedule F," which established a new category of federal employees.

Under the executive order, which Trump signed just days before losing the 2020 election, thousands of federal workers who have served under presidents from both major political parties could be reclassified as "Schedule F" employees, eliminating their employment protections.

Trump could purge as many as 50,000 members of the nonpartisan workforce who he deems to have influence over policy decisions, leaving them with no recourse, and fill their jobs with "loyalists to him and his 'America First' ideology," according to sources who spoke to Axios.

Max Berger of pro-labor media organization More Perfect Union suggested Florida Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis would also be likely to reinstate Schedule F—which was quickly rescinded by President Joe Biden in January 2021—if he runs for president and wins.

The executive order amounts to "authoritarianism 101," Berger tweeted.

Schedule F "would effectively upend the modern civil service, triggering a shock wave across the bureaucracy," wrote Jonathan Swan at Axios. "The next president might then move to gut those pro-Trump ranks—and face the question of whether to replace them with her or his own loyalists, or revert to a traditional bureaucracy. Such pendulum swings and politicization could threaten the continuity and quality of service to taxpayers, the regulatory protections, the checks on executive power, and other aspects of American democracy."

The plan would go "beyond 'deconstructing the administrative state,'" said the Coalition for Sensible Safeguards, which advocates for regulatory protections for the economic system, public health, and other sectors. "It's a plan to utterly destroy it."

While pushing to reinstate Schedule F should he take office again, Swan reported, "Trump has reduced his circle of advisers and expunged nearly every former aide who refused to embrace his view that the 2020 election was 'stolen'"—suggesting he is likely to seek out government employees who share that view.

Although Biden rescinded Trump's order, U.S. Rep. Gerry Connolly (D-Va.) has remained concerned that Schedule F will be reintroduced in 2025 under a Republican administration. He authored an amendment to the defense spending bill that would prevent "any position in the competitive service from being reclassified to an excepted service schedule that was created after September 30, 2020, and limits federal employee reclassifications."

The House passed Connolly's amendment on July 14 in a 215-201 vote, but Republicans in the Senate plan to block its passage, Axios reported.

"Congress [must] codify protections against this evil plan to place political allies of Trump throughout the government," said Fred Wellman, host of the podcast On Democracy. "Do not underestimate the destruction this will cause."


Walter Shaub, senior ethics fellow at the Project on Government Oversight, called on the White House to go beyond simply halting Trump's executive order and work with Congress to ensure legislation is passed protecting federal employees regardless of their political beliefs.

"Administration officials are aware of the issue," said Shaub. "But as with every other needed democracy reform, this administration has time and again proven it is not up to this crucial moment in history."


The reinstatement of Schedule F would result in a "reckless, lawless administration," said Georgetown University professor Don Moynihan.

"How bad could Schedule F be? The people planning to use it to take control of the executive branch have shown themselves comfortable with breaking the law in ways that undermine American democracy," said Moynihan, pointing to Trump ally Jeffrey Clark, an attorney who is being investigated by the FBI and Congress and who the former president wanted to install as attorney general.
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