Why Hungary cannot be permitted to hold EU presidency

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  A core principle of any democracy is free and fair elections. Under Viktor Orbán's (right) leadership, this democratic norm has dramatically eroded. Electoral laws have been manipulated, gerrymandering is rife and media pluralism has been suppressed (Photo: consilium.europa.eu)

By SAMIRA RAFAELA AND TOM THEUNS

BRUSSELS/LEIDEN, TODAY, 
Last Thursday the European Parliament voted overwhelmingly to express its concern over Hungary's scheduled presidency of the EU Council.

The deplorable state of Hungarian democracy is by now widely known. Since 2010, prime minister Viktor Orbán and his Fidesz party have systematically undermined the principles and institutions that underpin democratic governance.

They have worked to curtail EU values such as academic freedom, gender equality and LGBTI+ rights, most recently in their copy-paste Russian law, which bans the visibility of the LGBTI+ community in public spaces.

A core principle of any democracy is free and fair elections. Under Orbán's leadership, this democratic norm has dramatically eroded. Electoral laws have been manipulated, gerrymandering is rife and media pluralism has been suppressed.

For the most recent national elections, the OSCE concluded that there was a "fundamental lack of a level playing field" in Hungary. For these reasons, the European Parliament concluded last year that Hungary was an electoral autocracy.

If Hungary would now apply to join the EU, it would fall miserably short on meeting the Copenhagen Criteria.

As a non-democratic state, Hungary is unfit to be Council president. Besides the symbolic travesty of an autocratic state presiding over one of the core EU institutions, there are two core problems.

The first is that there is a clear conflict of interest.

After years of dithering and appeasement, firm action is finally being taken against Hungary for dismantling democracy. The new budget conditionality mechanism, put in place specifically to prevent rule of law backsliding, has been used to withhold billions in EU funds to the Fidesz government. Infringement actions have led to further sanctions. And of course an Article 7 procedure is ongoing.

Having Hungary as EU Council president would have the absurd implication that Hungary chairs meetings on its own democratic decay. Were this to happen, the credibility of the council would be seriously undermined.

Let alone EU authority towards countries in the waiting room of the EU: how can we demand reforms from them with a non-democratic country at the helm of the Council?

The second is that Hungary could use the presidency to undermine European cooperation in key areas, such as asylum and migration. It is by now a given that the Fidesz government threatens its veto on crucial EU decisions, such as aid to Ukraine. The agenda-setting power that comes with the council presidency would only increase their margin for manouvre in such areas.

The presidency is also tasked with representing the council in its relations with the European parliament and commission, and negotiating on behalf of the council on EU legislation.

Who doubts that Hungary would use these roles to promote its illiberal political vision for Europe? Just think of the creative ways in which autocratic leaders aligned with Orbán would gain more access to the EU.

What makes things worse is that the timing of the scheduled Hungarian presidency (from July to December 2024) is especially sensitive. With European Parliament elections in June 2024, this is exactly the period that key EU posts are filled and the political direction for the Union is shaped.

Critics (and of course the Hungarian government) say that despite this nothing can be done. The Hungarian presidency is supposedly set in stone by the principle of 'equal rotation' in Article 16 of the Treaty on European Union (TEU). Democracy be damned.

But this principle has never been confronted with a non-democratic state wanting to take up the council presidency. Precedent is not a knock-down argument as there is no precedent for this situation. Besides, the TEU itself can be interpreted as providing some flexibility here as the other place where 'equal rotation' is mentioned — Article 17(5) — calls for strictly equal rotation, a demand missing from Article 16.

Three possible solutions

So what can be done? The Meijers Commission published a report recently on exactly this question. They suggest three possible responses.

The first, mildest option, would be for Hungary to give up chairing any meetings about its violation of EU fundamental values and any representative roles to other member states ('troika' partners). While this would require Hungary's cooperation, this could be a compromise.

The second option would be for the member states in the Council to change the order of the Council Presidencies to delay Hungary's Presidency. This could buy time for a more structural solution.

The strongest response would be for member states in the European Council to use Article 236 of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union to change the rules about the council presidency. They could adopt a new rule insisting that member states with Article 7 procedures against them cannot be council president.

Regardless of the route the member states take, it is vital that they act quickly and decisively. Allowing Hungary to assume the EU council's presidency threatens the foundational values of the EU, its institutional integrity and its democratic legitimacy.

AUTHOR BIO

Samira Rafaela is a Dutch MEP with Renew Europe. Tom Theuns is senior assistant professor of political theory and European politics at Leiden University and associate researcher at the Centre for European Studies and Comparative Politics, Sciences Po Paris.

For Women Under the Taliban, ‘Gender Apartheid’ Is Their New Life

Afghan feminists began using the term shortly after the takeover. Now, it's spreading globally

Amie Ferris-RotmanAmie Ferris-Rotman is Global News Editor at New Lines magazine

June 5, 2023

Women hold placards during a protest in Kabul on Nov. 24, 2022. (AFP via Getty Images)

“Spotlight” is a newsletter about underreported cultural trends and news from around the world, emailed to subscribers every Monday and Wednesday. Sign up here.

Across the world, journalists and human rights advocates, many of whom are Afghan, regularly note how many days have passed since the Taliban banned teenage girls from going to school. Today is day 623.

The ban on education is part of an ever-expanding list of restrictions placed on Afghan women since the Taliban seized power almost two years ago, ending America’s longest war.

The Taliban’s oppression of half of the country is not new: Improving the lives of Afghan women and girls was at the heart of the U.S.-led military campaign, and Washington often cited the group’s previous, notoriously brutal rule of the 1990s as something America would make sure would not happen again. And while the United States and its NATO partners disastrously failed on that as well as other fronts in the 20-year war, there is a new dynamic emerging amongst the world’s furore this time round, taking the form of a clarion call: Treat the Taliban’s systemic attacks on women as another famous struggle against inequality — that of apartheid.

After members of the Taliban triumphantly walked into Kabul, Afghan women saw many of their hard-won gains evaporate literally overnight. It is increasingly hard to keep track of the crackdowns, many as they are, which include limits on women working and traveling abroad, access to contraceptives, going outside without their entire bodies covered and entering public parks as well as even previously all-female spaces in gyms and bathhouses. Most recently, Taliban edicts have banned women from being employed by aid agencies, leading major organizations like the Norwegian Refugee Council to pull out of the country; many other charities are debating whether they can continue their work in Afghanistan. The stranglehold on Afghan women seeks to “extinguish our basic humanity,” Afghan activist Zubaida Akbar told a recent United Nations Security Council meeting. The number of incidents of gender-based violence, including forced and child marriage, is surging, as well as suicides by young women.

The erasure of Afghan women from public life captured the ire and imagination of Hollywood star Jennifer Lawrence, who has produced a documentary with Afghan filmmaker Sahra Mani. Their film, “Bread and Roses,” premiered in Cannes last month and follows the day-to-day lives of three women in Taliban-controlled Afghanistan. It was shot clandestinely, including some footage by the women themselves as they enter safehouses with their friends and relatives. The film was “born out of emotion and necessity,” Lawrence told the BBC. The documentary is one of several focusing on the plight of Afghan women since the fall of Kabul, including the BBC animation “Inside Kabul” and Netflix’s “In Her Hands.”

Afghan feminists started using the term “gender apartheid” shortly after the Taliban takeover; on International Women’s Day in March of this year, a group of prominent Afghan and Iranian women launched a campaign, asking for it to enter international law as a specific crime. The joint move followed protests by women from both countries, who took to their streets to demonstrate against their patriarchal oppressors. Signatories in an open letter included female members of the former Afghan Parliament and the Iranian Nobel Peace Prize laureate Shirin Ebadi.

“This treatment has a name: gender apartheid. This war on women must end now,” they wrote.

Since then, a slew of U.N. officials, including its chief, Antonio Guterres, have applied the term “gender apartheid” to Taliban rule.

And it’s spreading.

In February, the European Union’s foreign affairs and security senior official, Josep Borrell Fontelles, used the phrase when talking about Afghanistan. In April, former Swedish Foreign Minister Margaret Wallstrom tweeted that Afghan women are “living in what must be called gender apartheid.” Last month, David Alton in the British House of Lords called for the U.N. to make gender apartheid a war crime, saying, “As a schoolboy I joined the anti-apartheid movement. … But there’s a new kind of apartheid today … and it’s directed at women, purely because they are women.”

Naming the Taliban’s behavior perhaps won’t make them change. But in some way, using the term is meant to signal that these acts are a collective policy, directed against only one gender. In other words: They are a political decision. “It is not a magic bullet, but I fully believe it is one of the most promising approaches in view of the disastrous situation in Afghanistan,” Karima Bennoune, a professor of international law and human rights at Michigan Law School, told New Lines.

For most of the globe, the word apartheid evokes South Africa, charismatic freedom fighter Nelson Mandela and an international campaign against that country’s brutal, institutionalized racial segregation. Its etymology is distinctly white South African: In the Afrikaans language it means “aparthood” or “apart-ness.” The policy separated the majority Black population from the whites in South Africa and what is now Namibia, and included the prohibition of mixed marriages and the restriction of movement based on ethnicity and skin color. In place for almost 50 years (it was practiced across parts of the country before becoming official policy), apartheid is a crime against humanity and punishable by the International Criminal Court (ICC).

And while there have been allegations of apartheid by rights groups and minority groups in at least a dozen countries, from Israel in the Palestinian occupied territories to the Saudis’ treatment of non-Muslims to the Myanmar authorities’ discrimination against the ethnic Rohingya, the crime of apartheid has never been prosecuted in a court and therefore has not resulted in a single conviction, even in South Africa.

The ICC’s official definition of apartheid, which was included in the 2002 Rome Statute, states that the term means the “institutionalized regime of systematic oppression and domination by one racial group over any other racial group.” Interestingly, the term first surfaced in U.N. parlance in reference to Afghanistan during the Taliban’s first rule in the 1990s, according to Bennoune. She traces it to 1999, when Tunisian U.N. official Abdelfattah Amor used the term “religious apartheid” to describe the treatment of Afghan women under the Taliban.

In South Africa, apartheid finally came to an end in 1994, after a decades-long global campaign of sporting boycotts and economic sanctions, when Mandela, four years out of prison, was elected president of South Africa in a fair election — the country’s first to allow voting by nonwhite citizens — that stunned the world.

Mandela’s widow Graca Machel has even made the link with Afghanistan, telling the British newspaper The Telegraph in an interview last month, “More than the definition, it is for me to say the same vigor and the same persistence which was applied to fight apartheid should be applied in the case of Afghanistan.”

She stopped short of describing specific measures the international community could introduce to combat gender apartheid but said that the Taliban, as the white South African government before it, should be “squeezed” to the point that it must be ready to accept that it must change.

The issue gets to the crux of the question of how to engage with Afghanistan’s new rulers: Should the world work with them or further isolate the regime? So far, there are few answers. Denying aid to one of the world’s poorest countries would make the humanitarian crisis in Afghanistan considerably worse, bringing it even closer to famine and creating more internally displaced people and refugees. It would also lead to doubly punishing Afghan women and children, who have played no part in creating the current state of affairs. And while the international community has moved towards normalizing the term gender apartheid, calls for action tend to fall on the ears of the deaf and the jaded. Few in the West have the appetite to challenge the Taliban in any real way, wary after an ignoble, protracted war.

“Slavery and apartheid,” Mandela famously said in London’s Trafalgar Square, just over a decade after his release, “are man-made.”

How right he was.

 

Two-Year-Old Palestinian Child Succumbs to Israeli Forces’ Gunshot Wounds

T.Sh | DOP - 5 June, 2023

Tragic news emerged today, June 5, 2023, as a two-year-old Palestinian child, Mohammed Haitham Tamimi, succumbed to his injuries sustained from Israeli occupation forces’ gunfire.

The child and his father were shot on Thursday evening by Israeli forces in the village of Nabi Saleh, northwest of Ramallah.

According to activist Bilal Tamimi, an Israeli military unit set up an ambush for a vehicle at the entrance of the village.

They pursued and opened live fire at the vehicle, resulting in a bullet striking the two-year-old child in the head.

The father also sustained an injury in his shoulder.

The incident occurred while they were near their home, adjacent to an Israeli military checkpoint erected at the village entrance.

The death of Mohammed Haitham Tamimi highlights the devastating consequences of the ongoing Israeli occupation and the use of excessive force against innocent civilians, including children.

This tragic event serves as a painful reminder of the urgent need for a just resolution for the Palestinian people languishing under the barbaric Israeli occupation.

Official: Israel tortured 170 Palestinian detained children

May 29, 2023

Palestinian children take part in a protest demanding the release of prisoners in Israeli jails in Gaza city on 29 November 2016 [Mohammed Talatene/Apaimages]

May 29, 2023 at 3:25 pm

The Undersecretary of the Palestinian Ministry of Social Development, Assem Khamis, said all 170 Palestinian children who are currently imprisoned by Israel have been subjected to various forms of abuse and torture.

Speaking before the regional conference on preventing grave violations against children in armed conflicts held in the Qatari capital, Doha, on Sunday, Khamis said since 2005 until 2022, Israel has detained 7,500 Palestinian children, adding that the State of Palestine is keen to protect all children from any activity that leads to their involvement in armed conflicts, especially children who have previously been arrested by the Israeli occupation.

"The Israeli occupation seeks, in a permanent and continuous attempt, to obstruct the lives of the Palestinian children, and targets them with arrests, harassment, and expose them to violence and threats," he said.

He called to hold Israel; the occupying state, accountable for violations related to children's rights before international courts, in addition to supporting the Ministry of Development to be able to protect, care and rehabilitate Palestinian children.

Khamis has also called to support international organisations and Palestinian institutions that document the Israeli violations of children's rights, in addition to providing support, assistance, and participation in the Palestinian Child Conference, which will soon be hosted by the Kingdom of Jordan.

The Arab League has also called on the international community to intervene and work seriously to stop Israeli violations against Palestinian children, and to ensure the protection of their rights and safety.

READ: Palestinian children are being targeted by a shadowy campaign group

Yazidi women rescued eight years after ISIS kidnapping - analysis

While many Yazidis have been saved, the community continues to live in displaced persons' camps and does not receive much international assistance.

By SETH J. FRANTZMAN

JERUSALEM POST
Published: JUNE 5, 2023 

Yazidi refugees stand behind fences as they wait for the arrival of United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees Special Envoy Angelina Jolie at a Syrian and Iraqi refugee camp in the southern Turkish town of Midyat in Mardin province, Turkey, June 20, 2015.
(photo credit: UMIT BEKTAS / REUTERS)

Six women from the Yazidi minority in Iraq were recently rescued with the assistance of the authorities in the Kurdistan Region of Iraq and activist Nadia Murad. Murad wrote in a statement posted online on June 3 that “after weeks of investigation I am extremely heartened to report that we have rescued six more Yazidi women who were taken captive by ISIS.” The US Consulate in Erbil also praised the work of Nadia Murad, an activist and community leader, and the Kurdistan Region.

The report says that the women were kidnapped by ISIS in 2014. They were trafficked from Iraq to Syria and were rescued on Saturday. ISIS took over Mosul in Iraq in June 2014, nine years ago. At the time the Iraqi army retreated, leaving Iraq’s second-largest city in the hands of the extremists. ISIS first ethnically cleansed Christians and other minorities from Mosul and then set its sights on genocide against the Yazidi minority in Sinjar.

The Yazidi community lived in numerous villages near Mount Sinjar. ISIS attacked the area in August 2014 and rounded up Yazidis that were unable to flee. While hundreds of thousands of the minority community fled to Sinjar mountain or to Syria, where they were assisted by the Syrian YPG, others were held by ISIS.

Yazidi suffering at the hands of ISIS

ISIS divided women and children from men and elderly women and then systematically murdered most of the men and elderly women, killing thousands. Those who were murdered were buried in dozens of mass graves in scenes similar to how the Nazis murdered Jews in the 1940s. The women and children were sold into slavery and subjected to abuses. At the time ISIS enjoyed support in the West from volunteers and had impunity on social media to brag about its crimes, including the massacre of Shi’ites at Camp Speicher and the genocide of Yazidis.


However, the crimes eventually led to the intervention of the US-led anti-ISIS Coalition which defeated ISIS in 2019 with the leadership of the Iraqi army, Kurdish Peshmerga and the SDF in Syria. While 3,500 Yazidis have been saved and returned to their families, it is believed 2,700 people are still missing.

Displaced Yazidi women protest outside the headquarters of the UN Mission in Iraq (UNAMI), north of Baghdad, in 2015. 

(credit: AZAD LASHKARI/REUTERS)

According to a statement by Murad and her organization Nadia’s Initiative the women who were rescued will be reunited with their families and have been flown to Erbil in the Kurdistan Region of Iraq. “Rescuing trafficked and enslaved Yazidi women and children is an ongoing humanitarian campaign and the reunification of these six women with their families, after nearly nine years, gives us hope that more can be found.”

The US Consulate tweeted “Congratulations to Nadia Murad and President of the Kurdistan Region – Iraq Nechirvan Barzani’s Office for Rescuing Kidnapped Yezidis for their successful efforts to rescue six Yezidi women from the hands of ISIS and BringThemHome.”

While many Yazidis have been saved, the community continues to live in displaced persons' camps and does not receive much international assistance. In addition, many of the survivors of genocide and kidnapping do not receive enough international support for their trauma.

When Yazidis return home to Sinjar they find destroyed villages and desolate landscapes that receive very little investment from the authorities. They still suffer from militia checkpoints and neglected security in their areas, as well as a lack of access to proper health care and educational facilities. In addition, Turkey claims to be “fighting terror” in Sinjar and has carried out drone strikes and extrajudicial assassinations that have killed Yazidis in recent years.

NOTE THE VARIETY OF SPELLINGS

LA REVUE GAUCHE - Left Comment: Search results for YAZIDI 

LA REVUE GAUCHE - Left Comment: Search results for YEZIDI 

LA REVUE GAUCHE - Left Comment: Search results for YEZEDI 

CANADIANS ARE SOCIAL DEMOCRATS
Parliament votes down Conservative motion against safe supply of drugs

Stephanie Taylor
The Canadian Press
Updated May 29, 2023 

OTTAWA -

Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre has failed to persuade the House of Commons to condemn the Liberal government's approach to fighting drug addiction.

In a vote of 209-113 Monday, MPs defeated a motion presented by Poilievre.

The motion took aim at the federal government's harm-reduction policies for drug users, but focused mainly on its decision to fund the supply of pharmaceutical alternatives as a replacement for certain illicit drugs to combat the opioid crisis.

Such programs are commonly referred to as "safe supply," or "safer supply," although the federal Conservatives and other critics dispute that term, given the risks associated with drug use.

The federal government has pointed to experts who say that a poisoned drug supply is one of the main reasons so many Canadians are dying from unintentional overdoses, and that providing access to other drugs as a substitute saves lives.

The Public Health Agency of Canada says nearly 35,000 people died from opioid toxicity between 2016 and 2022.

Since becoming Conservative leader last fall, Poilievre has pointed to the alarming number of people who have died from opioid overdoses as evidence of a failed approach. He has criticized the option of offering an alternative supply of drugs, which his motion referred to as the "tax-funded drug supply," as fuelling addiction rather than recovery.

He argues such policies have led to wider access to dangerous drugs by users who, instead of taking them, turn around and sell them. Poilievre has proposed diverting money used to fund safe supply towards treatment.

His motion specifically called on the House to "immediately reverse its deadly policies and redirect all funds from taxpayer-funded, hard drug programs to addiction, treatment and recovery programs."

Mental Health and Addictions Minister Carolyn Bennett has told MPs that Poilievre's criticism of a replacement drug supply is not based on evidence, with her office adding in a statement Monday that Health Canada is not aware of substitute drugs "flooding the streets."

"For Pierre Poilievre to state untrue information about safer supply, and try to create barriers to accessing harm reduction services that are saving lives amid this ongoing crisis is incredibly irresponsible and dehumanizing to people who use drugs," a spokeswoman said in a statement from Bennett's office.

It said the government takes reports of diversion "very seriously." Bennett's office also pointed out that the British Columbia coroners service, which studied deaths from drug toxicity from 2012 to 2022 in the province, concluded there was "no indication that prescribed safe supply is contributing to illicit drug deaths."

"The Conservatives want to take us back to the failed ideology of Harper-era drug policy, and the war on drugs that was proven to be ineffective, costly, deadly, and deeply stigmatizing," said Bennett's office.

A coalition of groups that advocate on behalf of drug users in B.C. and those whose loved ones have died from opioid-related overdoses released a statement Monday, voicing concern about hydromorphone, one of the drug alternatives Poilievre has singled out as problematic.

The joint statement from organizations, including the Vancouver Area Network of Drug Users, says such prescriptions "help many of us reduce or eliminate our reliance on street drugs."

"If we get cut off, our risks will go up."

This report by The Canadian Press was first published May 29, 2023.

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HE'S ALL SOUND BITES NO SCIENCE

Poilievre slams ‘so-called experts’ pushing for government-funded supply of drugs to stop opioid crisis

Conservatives asked the government to reverse its safe supply policy, and instead redirect the money to addiction treatment and recovery programs

Author of the article: Catherine Lévesque
Published May 18, 2023 • POSTMEDIA

LYING IN PARLIMENT IS PERMISSIBLE

SLEEPING IS NOT

“These so-called experts are typically pie in the sky theorists with no experience getting people off drugs,” said Conservative Party Leader Pierre Poilievre during question period on May 18, 2023. 

OTTAWA — Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre doubled down on his criticism of the federal government’s approach to dealing with the opioid crisis, and insinuated advocates of the safe supply program are “activists” or wilfully perpetuating the crisis to make money.

His comments came as Conservatives used their opposition day motion in the House of Commons to ask the government to reverse its policy of offering a safe supply of drugs to people who are at high risk of an overdose, and instead redirect the money to treatment and recovery programs.

In his opening speech on Thursday, Poilievre accused Prime Minister Justin Trudeau of having implemented “a theory backed up by a group of activists, most of them tax-funded, pharmaceutical companies and others who stand to gain from perpetuating the crisis.

“These so-called experts are typically pie in the sky theorists with no experience getting people off drugs, or they’re members of the misery industry, those paid activists and public health bureaucrats whose jobs depend on the crisis continuing,” he said.

B.C. New Democrat Gord Johns expressed surprise at the comments, and said Health Canada created an expert task force on substance abuse, which included public health officials, community and business leaders among others, that recommended a safer supply of drugs.

He also said that the Canadian Association of Police Chiefs, as well as British Columbia’s chief coroner and chief medical officer have expressed support for the policy.

“And the leader of the Official Opposition calls them ‘activists’,” said Johns.
\

Ottawa insists safe supply drugs saving lives, downplays resale problem

Ben Perrin, a former adviser to prime minister Stephen Harper and author of a book on the opioid crisis, said in an interview that Poilievre’s comments are “repugnant and really hurtful” for all those who, like him, are arguing for a safer supply of drugs in order to save lives

“I was part of their party for years,” he said. “And I have been very public about the reasons for why, I’m sure with my views, and, you know, no one’s got me in their back pocket.”

The Conservatives have been pushing the issue on drugs ever since the National Post published an investigation showing that some B.C. drug users who were given government-funded opioids would trade or sell them to buy fentanyl or other street drugs.

A reporter from Global News tested that claim in Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside and demonstrated that this phenomenon of “diversion” is not just anecdotal. In fact, the reporter was able to buy 26 tablets of hydromorphone in just under 30 minutes for $30.

Minister of Mental Health and Addictions Carolyn Bennett said the federal government has been aware that there is an “issue” with diversion but still believes safe supply is saving lives.

The political debate on the issue became so heated earlier this week that Poilievre accused federal Liberals of “killing” people with their drug policies, which prompted Deputy Prime Minister Chrystia Freeland to stand up and defend her colleague, Bennett.

“Unlike the leader of the opposition, who is a career politician and has done nothing else, she is a doctor,” said Freeland of Bennett.

British Columbia’s coroner confirmed on Thursday that the unregulated drug market is to blame for most of the deaths related to the opioid crisis, and that illicit fentanyl continues to be the “most lethal driver” — not the prescribed opioids that are considered to be safe supply.

“Members of our communities are dying because non-prescribed, non-pharmaceutical fentanyl is poisoning them on an unprecedented scale,” said B.C.’s chief coroner Lisa Lapointe.

The House of Commons is expected to vote on the Conservative motion to reverse the government’s safe supply policy on drugs next week, but it seems unlikely that any of the other political parties will support it.

“We have lost thousands of lives to an unregulated toxic drug supply and what do the Conservatives do? They bring forward this motion, they play politics with people’s lives and they oversimplify this really important health issue,” said Johns.

Even the Bloc Québécois’ Simon-Pierre Savard-Tremblay accused Conservatives of indulging in “demagoguery” and said that Canada should focus on an approach focused on public health.

“We lived through 10 years of that Conservative government taking harm reduction out with their deadly war on drugs that has been proven to be ineffective, costly, as well as deadly. These policies have also had a profound negative effect on Canada’s most vulnerable,” said Bennett.

“Fight against evidence-based programs that are actually saving lives just has to stop. People are dying, but not for the reasons that (Conservatives) are giving.”

Are safe supply policies effective at curbing drug overdoses?

May 18, 2023 

Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre introduced a motion Thursday calling on the Liberal government to halt all programs providing non-toxic drugs to those suffering with addictions and redirect funding to treatment services. He argues the programs are leading to more opioid deaths. 

EVANGELICIST MORALIZING
Poilievre defends safe supply criticisms, says programs ‘perpetuating’ addiction

By Teresa Wright Global News
Posted December 21, 2022



WATCH: A new study published in the Canadian Medical Association Journal found that users provided with a safe supply of opioids were less likely to be hospitalized or in the emergency room. – Sep 19, 2022

Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre is defending his criticism of programs that offer what experts call a safer supply of drugs to Canadians with addictions as a tool to tackle the opioid crisis, saying he believes these programs are “perpetuating indefinitely” people’s addictions.

In a radio interview with host Alex Pierson on AM640 Toronto that aired Tuesday, Poilievre says his recent criticism of safe supply programs was “widely misrepresented by the critics.”

AM640 is a radio station owned by Corus Entertainment, the parent company of Global News.

He then went on to reiterate some of the same concerns about safe supply that front-line harm reduction experts say demonstrate a misunderstanding of the issue.

Poilievre clarified Tuesday that he supports providing medications that help reverse drug overdoses and medications that “reduce the pain and suffering of withdrawal” for those with addictions.

But he says his support doesn’t extend to the 17 federally funded pilot projects being run in pockets of the country that provide patients with prescriptions for pharmaceutical-grade opioids, offered to reduce reliance on street drugs that health officials say are increasingly contaminated with dangerously potent levels of fentanyl.

“What I don’t support is just perpetuating indefinitely their addiction, as the current approach is doing,” Poilievre told Pierson.

“We have these so-called safe supply programs, but the problem with the way they run is that they don’t guide people towards an eventual drug-free life. They keep them in the current state of addiction.”

The Conservative leader said believes the most important thing is to “keep the addict alive by avoiding overdose or contamination deaths,” but that the long-term solution must be to “get them into recovery and treatment and help them get off drugs altogether.”

Experts who have been working on the front lines of the opioid crisis, among many others, have raised concern about Poilievre’s comments about harm reduction measures such as safe consumption sites and programs that offer safer supplies of opiates.

In a video, entitled “Everything feels broken,” which was shared in November on the Conservative leader’s Twitter account, Poilievre pointed to a tent city on the outskirts of Vancouver, claiming a rise in addictions and drug use in communities across Canada is “the result of a failed experiment.”

“This is a deliberate policy by woke Liberal and NDP governments to provide taxpayer-funded drugs, flood our streets with easy access to these poisons,” Poilievre says in the video.

But some experts take strong issue with Poilievre’s comments.

Not only are his representations a “politicization” of the opioid crisis, but they also stand to further stigmatize vulnerable Canadians who are already living on the extreme margins of society with few social supports, Cheyenne Johnson, executive director at the BC Centre on Substance Use, told Global 

“The politicization of these issues to get votes is a bit disheartening when really there’s been clear calls by expert groups … that really show an evidence-based approach to improving the lives of people who use drugs in Canada,” Johnson said.

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“It’s disheartening to see those reports and recommendations that are there really be disregarded or not utilized.”

For example, a review of 10 federally funded safer supply pilot projects in three provinces, commissioned by Health Canada and released earlier this year, found that participants reported improvements in their lives and well-being.

Another independent study published in September in the Canadian Medical Association Journal (CMAJ) looked at individuals who used a safer supply program in London, Ont., for three years, and found participation in the program cut down on emergency department visits and hospitalizations for people at high risk for overdose.

It also found there were no opioid-related deaths among those who were part of the program.

As for Poilievre’s claim Tuesday that safer supply programs “don’t guide people towards an eventual drug-free life,” most centres that offer these programs do also offer additional wraparound supports, depending on people’s needs, Rob Boyd, CEO of Ottawa Inner City Health, told Global News earlier this month.

His organization runs a safer supply program and other harm reduction initiatives in Canada’s capital.

“You really need a kind of a comprehensive approach because you can’t just take one piece of somebody’s life and change it. You can’t just take their substance use and change it without changing other things because that’s there for a reason: it’s actually providing them with a coping skill in a very untenable situation,” Boyd explained.

“Part of what we want to do when we’re working with the marginalized populations and people who are experiencing a lot of barriers is to create these conditions where good things start happening to them.”

Safe drug supply key recommendation in reducing toxic illicit drug-related deaths

When people addicted to drugs start to see positive developments in their lives, their relationship to substances can start to change, which is why programs like safer supply are usually the beginning of a continuum of treatment, he said

“Most of the pilot programs that are happening across Canada have wraparound supports to (them), so again, you begin to work on other issues that can kind of build up the person’s capacity and motivation for change.”

Virtually any front-line worker who supports programs for drug users would agree with Poilievre that detox and rehabilitation treatment programs are also important, Boyd said.

But some of them must offer “low-barrier” access to allow those in the throes of a difficult addiction that causes significant pain and suffering upon withdrawal an opportunity for success, Boyd said.

“It has to be tolerant of the fact that, even as you’re starting people on treatment, that they’re going to continue to use drugs from the illicit supply and that people aren’t punished for that, so that people can be upfront and honest about their use,” he said.

“We also need to look at other types of treatment for opioid use disorder, because we really haven’t changed an awful lot about what treatments are available for people.”

Meanwhile, data released last week by the federal government shows that while the opioid crisis continues to cause an alarming number of deaths, the outlook could be starting to improve, thanks in part to health interventions that include safe supply, in addition to other prevention and treatment measures.

Previous modelling released in June projected that Canada could see anywhere from 1,400 to 2,400 opioid-related deaths every quarter, based on national surveillance data.

But newly updated projections by the Public Health Agency of Canada (PHAC) suggest the death toll could instead range from 1,300 to 2,050, every quarter through to June 2023.

The variations in these projections depend on five different scenarios with varying outcomes, based on whether health interventions could prevent the same proportion of deaths or more and whether the level of fentanyl in the drug supply remains the same or gets worse.

“The results of the model suggest that, under some scenarios, the number of opioid-related deaths through to June 2023 may remain high, or may also decrease, but not to levels seen before the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic,” PHAC states on its website.

A total of 32,632 Canadians have died due to opioids between 2016 and June of this year, according to the latest federal data.

The majority of deaths — 90 per cent — have occurred in British Columbia, Alberta and Ontario, but high rates were also observed in other regions, according to the data.

40 years ago, a comet came out of the blue in a surprise Earth flyby. Here's what we know now.

In a way, it was like a call to arms for astronomers.

By Joe Rao published 10 days ago

(Image credit: Digital Vision/Getty Images)

Forty years ago this month, there came a show stopping celestial sight — literally a bolt out of the blue.

A brand-new comet, that for several days made headlines around the world due to its exceptionally close passage near the Earth: A distance amounting to less than 3 million miles (4.8 million km), or about 12 times the distance of the Earth to the moon.

In fact, when the comet was first sighted on April 25, 1983, it was not with human eyes or a telescope , but from a satellite: IRAS, the acronym for InfraRed Astronomical Satellite, launched from the then-Vandenberg Air Force Base the previous January and placed in a 560-mile (900 km) orbit around Earth. The satellite was a joint undertaking by Great Britain, the Netherlands and the United States and was the first space telescope to perform a survey of the entire sky at infrared wavelengths. Its main purpose was to catalog the heat "signatures" of asteroids as well as to observe the processes involved in the birth and death of stars.

Seen first by a satellite

Want to hunt for comets on your own? We recommend the Celestron Astro Fi 102 as the top pick in our best beginner's telescope guide.

When the IRAS satellite picked up on a fast-moving object on April 25, it was first assumed that it was an asteroid. But then, just over a week later on May 3, Japanese amateur astronomer Genichi Araki reported the discovery of a new comet in the constellation of Draco the Dragon to the Tokyo Observatory. This was followed by an observation made by George Alcock, a well-known British comet observer, who was scanning the sky with 15 x 80 binoculars. Amazingly, Alcock — who had previous discovered four other comets — was inside his house and looking through a closed window, when he stumbled across the comet that Araki had sighted just seven hours before!

It soon became more and more apparent that the object that IRAS had discovered, was in reality not an asteroid, but was the very same comet found by both Araki and Alcock. It was thus deemed appropriate to name the comet IRAS-Araki-Alcock. When Araki and Alcock sighted it, the comet was shining at sixth magnitude — the threshold of visibility for someone without using any optical aid under a dark, clear sky.

 
Getting bright ... and close!

Once a preliminary orbit for the comet had been worked out, two things had been determined.

First, intrinsically, this was a relatively small comet, probably measuring no more than 2 or 3 miles (3 or 5 km) wide. And yet, within the next week, it was forecast to rapidly brighten more than 60-fold, possibly to second magnitude, as bright as Polaris, the North Star.

But in order for something like that to happen, it would have to approach very close to Earth. And indeed, calculations indicated that it was destined to miss our planet by only 2.88 million miles (4.63 million km) on May 11, 1983 making it the closest approach of any comet ever observed except for another comet by the name of Lexell — and that was in the year 1770!

Although IRAS-Araki-Alcock would make its closest approach to the sun (called perihelion) on May 21, 1983, at a point just inside of the Earth's orbit, it was during the time frame from May 4 to its closest approach to Earth (perigee) on May 11 that the comet garnered tremendous interest worldwide.

In a way, it was like a call to arms for astronomers. The combination of a comet passing exceedingly close to the Earth and appearing in a dark sky (the new moon was on May 12), while arching closely past a series of familiar and easy to find celestial landmarks on successive nights, went over very well with the mainstream news media.

 
Busy, busy, busy!

In retrospect, maybe a bit too well . . .

At the Central Bureau for Astronomical Telegrams (CBAT) in Cambridge, Massachusetts — the clearing house for astronomical discoveries worldwide — news of Comet IRAS-Araki-Alcock spread like wildfire. According to the bureau's director, Dr. Brian G. Marsden (1937-2010), he and his small staff were "absolutely swamped" with hundreds of calls from reporters, planetarium personnel, professional and amateur astronomers, and even the curious "man on the street," all requesting the very latest information on the approaching comet. In his time at the helm of the CBAT, Dr. Marsden considered the passage of this comet as clearly, "the busiest time ever in the bureau's history."

Probably the question that reporters asked the most was: "Are we in immediate danger of a collision?" (Nope!).

 
A timeline of the close encounter

May 9, 1983: The comet, now shining as bright as third magnitude, could be found passing near to the bright orange star Kochab in the Little Dipper's bowl; the comet's movement relative to the star was plainly obvious. Over a span of less than two hours, IRAS-Araki-Alcock appeared to approach Kochab, ultimately passing less than a half degree from the star, and then gradually moved away from it. It was like watching the minute hand of a clock. From everywhere north of the Tropic of Cancer the comet was circumpolar, that is, it was visible in the sky all night. In essence, we were looking directly up from Earth at the "underside" of the comet.

May 10, 1983: It formed a wide, more-or-less equilateral triangle with Dubhe and Merak, the famous "pointer stars" in the bowl of the Big Dipper, and appeared high in the north-northwest sky for American observers. Sharp-eyed skywatchers could find the comet without binoculars less than an hour after sunset.

May 11, 1983: The day of its closest approach to the Earth — revealed the comet strikingly near to the popular Beehive star cluster in the Cancer constellation, though the comet was incomparably brighter, peaking at around magnitude +1.5. A narrow gas tail was recorded on many photographs, but visually through binoculars and telescopes only the comet's diffuse head (called the coma) was visible. And viewed against a dark sky it appeared absolutely enormous, measuring roughly three degrees across; equal in apparent size to roughly six full moons! Through large telescopes, fascinating structures appeared to light up the inner coma.

With IRAS-Araki-Alcock now so close to the Earth, there was interest in trying to bounce radar signals off of it. Both, the 1,000-foot (305-meter) radio telescope at Arecibo, Puerto Rico and NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory at Goldstone, California, were successful in obtaining such radar echoes, which were used to provide details on the radius, rotation and composition of the comet's nucleus.

May 12, 1983: Now rapidly receding from Earth, the comet — making its farewell appearance for Northern Hemisphere observers — could be found low in the southwest sky after sunset, having rapidly diminished in brightness to third magnitude. By the following evening it was sinking below the horizon before the end of evening twilight. The show had ended almost as fast as it started.

 
Our next chance?

Will we ever have another chance to see a comet pass so very close to Earth in the foreseeable future?

Maybe.

Close approaches of comets to the Earth are rather infrequent. A comet's approach to within 9 million miles (14.5 million km) of our planet comes along — on average — about once every 30 to 40 years. For a comet passing to within less than 5 million miles (8 million km) of Earth, such a very close approach is even more infrequent, occurring about once every 80 or 90 years.

So, you can see how unusual the very close approach of less than 3 million miles (4.8 million km) to Earth was in the case of IRAS-Araki-Alcock.

Interestingly, however, since 1983, there have been several comets — or comet fragments — that may have approached Earth even more closely. One tiny comet, P/SOHO 5, "may" have come within 1.1 million miles (1.7 million km) of our planet on June 12, 1999, though this value is considered highly uncertain.

Another, 55P/Tempel-Tuttle — the comet that produces the annual Leonid meteor shower — was recently determined to have passed 2.1 million miles (3.4 million km) from Earth on October 26, 1366.

It would seem that only small, dim comets ever make exceptionally close passes to the Earth, but with one outstanding exception: Halley's Comet.

 
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On April 10 in the year 837, this most famous of all comets passed just 3.1 million miles (4.9 million km) from Earth. Seen from China, Japan and Europe, the comet shone as brilliantly as Venus, accompanied by a tail that stretched for over 90 degrees across the sky.

Oh, to see a comet like that in our lifetime!

And looking far ahead, to May 7, 2134, Halley's Comet will pass to within 8.6 million miles (13.8 million km) of Earth, likely shining as bright as Jupiter and again displaying a spectacularly long tail.

Something that our great, great, great, great grandchildren can look forward to.

NASA, China Rovers Find Signs Of Soaked Sand Dunes, Rushing Rivers On Mars

While China's rover investigated the dune soakings, Perseverance explored the remains of a powerful torrent.

Science

Edited by Anjali Thakur

Updated: May 28, 2023 


The findings were published in Science Advances.

NASA's Perseverance Rover and China's Zhurong rover have found signs of soaked sand dunes and rushing rivers on the red planet. China's rover found evidence that frost may have cemented dunes together as recently as 400,000 years ago. NASA's Perseverance found signs that a fast, powerful waterway once carved its way into Jezero crater, dumping water at a fantastic rate, according to a National Geographic report.

The findings were published in Science Advances. Zhurong which landed on Mars in May 2021 after it failed to wake up after a planned hibernation period, likely due to accumulation of dust on its solar panels.

NASA's Perseverance found the largest-ever river on Mars. The river was more than 66 feet deep in some places based on the height of rock formations. Scientists believe that these are preserved sandbars.

Jani Radebaugh, a researcher at Brigham Young University in Utah said that both findings "highlight the fact that it's really valuable to put things on the surface of the other planets."

China's rover discovered signs of water on the Martian surface. Sand dunes near the rover have developed a crust that likely formed as water interacted with the minerals. That water could have come from frosts that formed on the dunes in the past, or it might have fallen as snow hundreds of thousands of years ago when the planet's tilt may have allowed for snowfall in this region, reported Nat Geo.

The crusts suggest polygonal features that shrunk and expand over time. "To have these sort of shrinking and expanding features suggests there is relatively recent or modern or ongoing wetting and drying that's happening in these dune regions.

Ralph Milliken, a planetary scientist at Brown University and member of NASA's Mars Curiosity mission told Nat Geo that the dust of Mars is enriched with minerals that can absorb water vapor from the air. If that material covers the sand dunes, humidity changes through the season could cause the dust to absorb water vapour and release it again without it ever becoming liquid.

"These are likely things that are forming in lots of different places on Mars," Milliken says. "This might be a process that could be occurring over a large chunk of the planet in the recent geologic past."

While China's rover investigated the dune soakings, Perseverance explored the remains of a powerful torrent.

The NASA rover showed evidence that ancient rivers that once flowed over the planet ran much deeper, and flowed much faster than researchers previously thought. The river was part of a network of waterways that flowed in Jezero Crater. Notably, it's the area the rover has been exploring since landing more than two years ago in the hopes of eventually seeking out signs of ancient microbial life.

''Those indicate a high-energy river that's truckin' and carrying a lot of debris. The more powerful the flow of water, the more easily it's able to move larger pieces of material. It's been a delight to look at rocks on another planet and see processes that are so familiar,'' said Libby Ives, a postdoctoral researcher at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, in a NASA release.

1CommentsFor two years, Perseverance has been examining a top of an 820-foot-tall pile of sedimentary rock that stands 820 feet (250 meters) tall and features curving layers suggestive of flowing water. One location within the curvilinear unit, nicknamed ''Sprinkle Haven,'' is captured in one of the new Mastcam-Z mosaics.

China’s Rover Found Evidence of an Ancient Ocean on Mars


Elevation map of the northern hemisphere of Mars with the red star denoting the landing site of the Zhurong rover, which is ~282 kilometers (~175 miles) north of a previously proposed shoreline of the ancient Deuteronilus ocean. The different colored lines represent proposed shorelines from past studies. (Credit: ©Science China Press)

POSTED ON

MAY 26, 2023 

BY LAURENCE TOGNETTI

In a recent study published in National Science Review, a team of researchers led by the China University of Geosciences discuss direct evidence of an ancient ocean and its shoreline that existed in the northern hemisphere of Mars during the Hesperian Period, or more than 3 billion years ago. This finding is based on data collected by the China National Space Agency’s (CNSA) Zhurong rover in the Vastitas Borealis Formation (VBF), which lies within southern Utopia Planitia on Mars.

The Zhurong rover landed in Utopia Planitia on May 15, 2021, after being ferried across the void from Earth to Mars by the Tianwen-1 orbiter, which is still active around the Red Planet. Zhurong was initially designed for a mission duration of 90 sols (93 Earth days) and has far exceeded that timeline. However, Zhurong entered hibernation mode in May 2022 (Sol 347) to protect itself during the harsh Martian winter. While it was scheduled to resume communications with the CNSA in December 2022, it did not, and the CNSA recently admitted it might be gone for good.

During its mission, Zhurong has traversed 1,921 meters (6,302 feet), or just under 2 kilometers (1.24 miles) and its elevation has decreased by approximately 5 meters (16.4 feet). Throughout this trek, the researchers used Zhurong’s multispectral camera (MSCam) to conduct in situ analyses of 23 rocks from 106 pairs of panoramic images, and the observations Zhurong made were striking.

a) Base map of satellite image HiRIC (HX1_GRAS_HIRIC_DIM_0.7_0004_251515N1095850E_A) (Figure 1 of the study); b) HiRISE DEM (DTEEC_069665_2055_069731_2055) overlain on the HiRIC. The red star denotes Zhurong’s landing site, with the rover traveling just under 2 kilometers (1.24 miles) between its landing site and Zhurong’s last known location (Sol_344), with an elevation decrease of approximately 5 meters (16.4 feet). (Credit: ©Science China Press)

“When we examined the photos sent back by those cameras, we found that these exposed rocks exhibited distinct layering structures, which were significantly different from the common volcanic rocks found on the Martian surface or the layering structures formed by wind-blown sand deposits,” said Dr. Xiao Long, who is a professor in the School of Earth Sciences at the China University of Geosciences, and lead author of the study. “These layering structures indicate the characteristics of bidirectional water flow, consistent with the low-energy tidal currents observed in terrestrial coastal environments on Earth.”

Essentially, the study discovered evidence of an ancient shoreline that exhibited tides on Mars based on the rover’s images, which re-examines a multitude of past studies that attempted to draw ancient Martian shorelines using orbiter data, whereas this mission was the first to conduct a direct in situ analysis on the topic.

Elevation map of the northern hemisphere of Mars with the red star denoting the landing site of the Zhurong rover, which is ~282 kilometers (~175 miles) north of a previously proposed shoreline of the ancient Deuteronilus ocean. The different colored lines represent proposed shorelines from past studies. (Credit: ©Science China Press)

On Earth, tides both advance and retreat from the shoreline from the gravitational tug with our Moon. The researchers hypothesize that since Mars has two moons, these tides could still exist in ancient ocean, although at smaller scales.

The sedimentary structures observed in the images support the hypothesis that these structures were laid down from water flow, as opposed to wind deposits. The researchers also deduce that these sedimentary structures could have been laid down during a large retreat of an ancient ocean during the Hesperian Period, as well.

Like Earth, the geologic history of Mars is split into various Epochs, also known as periods: Noachian, Hesperian, and Amazonian. The Noachian Period is estimated to have occurred between 4.1 and 3.7 billion years ago, the Hesperian Period between 3.7 and 2.9 billion years ago, and the Amazonian Period began 2.9 billion years ago and continues to the present day. While a Pre-Noachian period has been identified and discussed within the scientific community to have occurred between 4.5 and 4.1 billion years ago, no direct evidence of its existence has been found.

Artist depiction of an ancient northern ocean on Mars billions of years ago. 

(Credit: NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center)

With these incredible findings by the Zhurong rover, scientists gain new insights into the history of Mars and how much different it might have looked billions of years ago compared to the cold and dry planet it is today.

“Future exploration and sample return missions to this region will further deepen our understanding of Mars’ habitability and the preservation of traces of life,” said Dr. Long.

Numerous plans are in the works for a sample return mission from Mars by both NASA and China, as the former is collaborating with the European Space Agency (ESA) to bring Mars samples back to Earth by 2033, and China has announced a timeline that would bring samples back in 2031, beating the NASA/ESA effort by two years. NASA’s Perseverance rover recently started collecting samples and dropping sample tubes filled with Martian regolith and pebbles to be later collected by a sample return mission.

What new discoveries will scientists make about ancient Mars and its ancient shorelines in the coming years and decades? Only time will tell, and this is why we science!