India is hiding its Covid crisis – and the whole world will suffer for it

Modi’s government had a choice between saving lives and saving face. It has chosen the latter

Workers cremate people who have died of Covid-19 at a crematorium outside Siliguri on Tuesday. Epidemiologists believe the country’s reported death toll is only a fraction of the true figure. Photograph: AFP/Getty Images

OPINION 

Ankita Rao

THE GUARDIAN

Thu 6 May 2021 

A few years ago, as Narendra Modi came into power, I worked on an investigative report about India hiding its malaria deaths. In traveling from tribal Odisha to the Indian national health ministry in New Delhi, my colleague and I watched thousands of cases disappear: some malaria deaths, first noted in handwritten local health ledgers, never appeared in central government reports; other malaria deaths were magically transformed into deaths of heart attack or fever. The discrepancy was massive: India reported 561 malaria deaths that year. Experts predicted the actual number was as high as 200,000.


India’s neighbours close borders as Covid wave spreads across region

Now, with Covid ravaging the country, desperate Indians have taken to Twitter to ask for oxygen cylinders or beg hospitals for an open bed. The crisis has been exacerbated by the government’s concealment of critical information. Between India’s long history of hiding and undercounting illness deaths and its much more recent history of restraining and suppressing the press, Modi’s administration has made it impossible to find accurate information about the virus’s hold in the country. Blocking that information will only hurt millions within the country. It will also stymie global efforts to stop the Covid-19 pandemic, and new variants of the virus, at India’s border.

Epidemiologists in India and abroad currently estimate that the country’s official reported Covid-19 death toll – around 222,000 at time of publication – only accounts for a fraction of the real number. The director of the US-based Institute of Health Metrics and Evaluation has estimated that India is only detecting three to four percent of actual cases. Other experts point to total excess deaths in cities such as Mumbai as proof that there could be 60% to 70% more deaths from Covid-19 than the government is admitting to.

There are various reasons India could be cooking the books on Covid deaths. For one, the utter failure of the public health system makes it difficult to account for the millions of bodies passing through hospitals, clinics and those dying in their own home. Despite having become one of the largest economies in the world, India has always spent a dismal portion of its GDP on healthcare, with an investment somewhere around 3%, compared to Brazil (9%) or the US (17%).

But systemic failure is only one part of the puzzle. The reigning party of the Indian government touted its success in curbing the virus very early in the pandemic, and has never let go of that narrative. As bodies burned in funeral pyres across Uttar Pradesh in April, Yogi Adityanath – the state’s chief minister and a key Modi lackey – claimed that everything was under control and repeatedly refused to announce new lockdown measures, even as he himself contracted Covid-19.

This denialist rhetoric is occurring at almost every level. Like India’s see-no-evil approach to malaria or tuberculosis, its Covid obfuscation suppresses “bad news” in order to buoy the country’s international image and the government party’s domestic standing. Not all countries with struggling health systems do this. Some actually at times overcount deaths from other viruses in order to get more humanitarian aid. But undercounting disease is, in many ways, far more sinister. Modi’s government had a choice between saving face and saving lives, and has chosen mass death.
India's Covid obfuscation suppresses 'bad news' to buoy its image and the government party’s domestic standing

While undercounting disease is a longstanding problem in India, the assault on press freedom is far more recent. Since Modi came into power in 2015, the freedom of India’s expansive media culture has dramatically shrunk, according to sources including Reporters Without Borders. In the last few years, the government has sued or prosecuted several news organizations and journalists, citing defamation or other even more dubious rationales. Controversial laws such as the 2000 Information Technology Act allow for what seem like increasingly frequent, and grossly arbitrary and politically motivated, crackdowns on freedom of speech and press.

Indian journalists tell me they are often asked to self-censor their reporting on the Covid-19 pandemic, as well as what they say on social media, for fear of inciting the ire of the government. Many were understandably incensed last week when the Indian central government reportedly made Twitter and Facebook remove posts critical of the government’s Covid measures. Meanwhile, India continues to be one of the most dangerous places in the world for journalists to work, and more than 165 journalists have allegedly died of Covid-19 while covering the crisis itself. (Last month Kakoli Bhattacharya, an Indian journalist who worked as a news assistant for the Guardian, died of Covid.) In the absence of trustworthy Covid information from their own government, Indians are mostly reliant on social media and foreign reporting for the story of what’s actually happening.

The result is a public health nightmare for India – and also, I fear, for the global community, which, just as many countries are breathing a sigh of relief, could face another Covid wave that includes new variants. We can learn from other epidemics what that might look like: India was one of the last countries to eradicate polio, and is one of 15 countries that still have a significant number of people with leprosy. India also has the third largest HIV/Aids epidemic in the world. India’s struggles with diseases that have been eradicated or largely ameliorated elsewhere leaves a backdoor for global public health threats and costs billions of dollars in disease burden. These health crises also harm international travel, trade, and other economic indicators, creating new challenges not only for India but for its allies, as well.

India likes to tout itself as the world’s largest democracy – and use that moral authority to protect its standing in the global economy and the international diplomatic community. But with a dark curtain separating the reality of the country’s Covid-19 crisis from the rest of the world, India’s standing and authority are at risk. If the country continues to choose political expediency over transparency in the days to come, the people of India, scrambling to protect their families, are the first victims, but far from the last.


Ankita Rao is a news editor at the Guardian US

To filmmaker Gibney, opioid crisis is 'Crime of the Century'

L

© Provided by The Canadian Press

NEW YORK — Not unexpectedly given the subject matter, HBO's two-part documentary “The Crime of the Century” opens with a body bag.

It contained a man from San Diego — his remains carried away in the predawn hours after overdosing on fentanyl — one of nearly a half million Americans to die from opioid abuse since 2001.

Filmmaker Alex Gibney quickly widens the lens, however, for an explanation of how the drugs that caused the crisis came to be, how companies aggressively promoted and distributed them and how the government failed to act swiftly and effectively to save lives.

The story is exhaustive and often sickening, its scope recalling the examinations Gibney and his team have given in the past to Enron, to Scientology and, most recently, to the Trump administration's response to COVID-19. “The Crime of the Century” will be shown Monday and Tuesday.

“I felt that the whole idea of the crisis was being treated as if it were a spontaneous event that just couldn't have been helped,” Gibney said. “What was missing was the element of crime, in particular the sort of broad, over-arching conspiracy.”

If you put everything together, “it's almost like a murder mystery,” he said. “In some way, it is a murder mystery.”

The role of the Sackler family and their company, Purdue Pharma, in developing the prescription painkiller OxyContin is familiar territory. Gibney's film digs into the aftermath, including the push to get doctors to overprescribe the medication and the company's use of former government regulators to cripple serious oversight.

A former Purdue Pharma salesman, Mark Ross, tells how he got involved to make some money and help people with chronic pain. But when he grew concerned about abuses, his bosses told him to stay in his lane.

Gibney reports on a little-known memo prosecutors in Virginia drew up in 2006 that detailed Purdue Pharma's actions, its contents essentially hidden when the Justice Department reached a settlement. It was his “a-ha” moment, seeing the connections between OxyContin, heroin abuse and the development of fentanyl.

Asked for comment on “The Crime of the Century,” a Purdue Pharma spokeswoman pointed to the company's recent proposed settlement in federal bankruptcy court, intended to clear thousands of lawsuits stemming from OxyContin.

“We remain focused on achieving a global settlement that would deliver more than $10 billion in value, including 100 per cent of Purdue's assets and millions of doses of opioid addiction treatment and overdose reversal medicines, to claimants and communities across the country affected by the opioid crisis,” the company said.

Gibney’s Jigsaw Productions worked in tandem with The Washington Post on the documentary, and he credits the newspaper’s journalists for helping draw connections and bringing stories of government to life.

Ross is a key character in Gibney's film, as is Joe Rannazzisi, a former federal Drug Enforcement Administration agent who saw his efforts thwarted and is trying to educate the public on what is going on, and Alec Burlakoff, former sales executive at the rogue company Insys Therapeutics, manufacturer of fentanyl.

With the storytelling ability of a born salesman, Burlakoff tells a frightening tale of a corporate culture where doctors were bribed and intimidated to pump out the dangerous drug. Money was the concern, not consequences.

Celebratory videos from company events bring the culture to life.

“He was able to cast all moral qualms to the side and rapaciously and relentlessly sell a drug that he knew was terrible for people, in ways that were utterly reprehensible,” Gibney said. “But he takes us through the process step by step by step in a way that's just jaw-dropping. You understand ultimately how the crime works.”

Gibney's film doesn't avoid the stories of a victim like Roy Bosley, showing in detail how opioids killed the Utah man's wife. Filmmakers also confront the doctor who ran the pain clinic where Bosley's wife was treated.

That story illustrates Gibney's focus on the people and companies responsible for creating addicts.

“If you understand the perps and what their motivations are, it helps you understand not only how crimes are committed but how to prevent them in the future,” he said.

There is some good in these drugs, in limited doses for people who have undergone serious operations or are in end-of-life care, he said.

The opioid crisis shows “the danger of what happens when you mix and kind of turbo-charged 21st Century capitalism with health care,” he said. “You realize the incentives are all wrong. You realize the incentives are to make money, rather than care for patients.”

If it really is the crime of the century, will anyone pay?

“That's a good question,” Gibney said. Companies that have been charged with wrongdoing will point, as Purdue Pharma has, to fines and settlements, he said.

Gibney believes that most of the people who have lost loved ones due to the opioid crisis mostly want an apology or, more significantly, the truth.

Most of the companies and executives involved, however, hide behind settlements that keep what happened essentially hidden, he said.

“When you evade and avoid the truth, you avoid a public reckoning,” Gibney said. “That's why I make films like this, to say ‘look at what happened. Apply it the next time you see a situation where something like this is coming. Don’t be fooled.'”

David Bauder, The Associated Press

Right-wing think-tank ordered to pay man hurt at rally $2.4M

GOP LEGALIZING AUTO ASSAULT  LIKE THIS

COLUMBUS, Ohio — A federal judge has ordered a right-wing think-tank led by white nationalist Richard Spencer to pay $2.4 million to an Ohio man severely injured during a white supremacist and neo-Nazi rally two years ago in Virginia.

© Provided by The Canadian Press

Bill Burke, of Athens, Ohio, says he was struck by a car driven by James Alex Fields Jr. — in a crash that killed counterprotester Heather Heyer — during the August 2017 rally in Charlottesville, Virginia. White nationalists were protesting the planned removal of a statue of Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee. Burke says he attended the rally to join a counterprotest.

Burke's physical injuries, including head and knee injuries and a crushed left arm, still require medical treatment and may be permanent, and he has experienced “severe psychological and emotional suffering,” according to Burke's May 2019 federal lawsuit.

Burke sued multiple defendants and in recent years received court-ordered payments of $5,000 from former Ku Klux Klan leader David Duke and $10,000 from the Traditionalist Worker Party.

In the 2019 lawsuit, Burke also accused the National Policy Institute, led by Spencer, of helping organize and promote the Charlottesville rally. In a Tuesday ruling, federal Judge Michael Watson handed down the $2.4 million judgment against the organization in an order that also brought the lawsuit to a close.

The order includes $217,613 for past and future medical expenses, $350,000 in punitive damages $500,000 for pain and suffering, and $1 milli
on for emotional distress.

Watson judge noted that Burke separated from his wife in the attack’s aftermath, was out of work for more than a year, can no longer exercise, and suffers from depression, post-traumatic stress disorder and survivor’s guilt because of surviving the attack when Heyer did not.

“The emotional toll this senseless attack has taken on Plaintiff is extreme,” Watson said. “It has impacted virtually every aspect of Plaintiff's daily life, and he deserves to be compensated for the harm.”

Phone and email messages were left for the National Policy Institute. Despite the ruling, it's unclear if Burke will ever see money from the judgment.

Although copies of Burke's complaints were successfully served on the organization, according to court records, no attorney ever entered a court appearance regarding the lawsuit. The court found the group in default a year ago for not defending itself.

“It is important that the judgment is satisfied not only to compensate Bill for his damages but also to disrupt and dismantle an organization that attempts to portray white supremacy as an intellectual endeavour,” Burke's attorney, Michael Fradin, said in a statement

The "Unite the Right" rally on Aug. 12, 2017, drew hundreds of white nationalists to Charlottesville to protest the planned removal of Lee's statue.

In December 2018, Fields was convicted of first-degree murder in the killing of Heyer and multiple charges for injuries caused to others in the car attack. He was sentenced to life in prison plus 419 years. He is appealing his convictions.

Fields, of Maumee, Ohio, is also serving life sentences after accepting a plea agreement in a separate federal hate crimes case.

Andrew Welsh-Huggins, The Associated Press

THE IRVING'S FOR SURE

MPs urged to demand the names of Canadians behind offshore tax shelters

Harvey Cashore

© Raphael Satter/Associated Press Beachgoers walk along a tidal causeway in the town of Peel on the Isle of Man on Monday, March 26, 2012.

Five years ago, tax law expert André Lareau was blocked from giving testimony before the House of Commons finance committee by a last-minute gag order preventing witnesses from talking about a prominent accounting firm's tax avoidance scheme.

Now, he has a message for the members of Parliament who are today rebooting their probe into offshore companies registered in the Isle of Man: if they're serious this time, they should subpoena the Canadian accountants who helped to set up the offshore tax dodge — and demand that they give up the names of the wealthy Canadians whose identities they've been protecting.

"If the committee is willing to open that, well, maybe, just maybe, that means that they are pretty serious about it," Lareau, an associate professor at Laval University, told CBC News.

MPs are re-launching the probe Parliamentarians halted in June 2016 after the accounting firm KPMG said witness testimony in Ottawa could prejudice ongoing court cases.

CBC's the Fifth Estate and Radio-Canada's Enquete reported earlier this year that shell companies set up in the Isle of Man are suspected of involvement in a massive fraud that cost investors their life savings. Some experts believe KPMG may have had a hand in creating those companies.

Documents obtained from the Isle of Man's public registry, as well as emails from an offshore leak of financial data, show links between KPMG and four shell companies set up in December 2001 that were named after ancient swords.

KPMG acknowledges it set up a tax avoidance and asset protection "structure" in the Isle of Man for wealthy Canadians beginning in the late 1990s.

© CBC Tax law professor André Lareau says MPs should be seeking the names of Canadians behind offshore tax shelters.

But the accounting firm — also known for providing advisory and auditing services to federal and provincial governments — denies having anything to do with helping to set up the four shell companies later suspected of being involved in a financial fraud that cost investors their life savings, and where more than $500 million disappeared offshore.

CBC/Radio-Canada's revelation of a suspected connection between those shell companies and the missing millions prompted fraud victims and opposition parties to call for a reboot of the finance committee's long-dormant investigation of the Isle of Man and offshore shell companies.

"People have been cheated, they have lost their savings. The federal government should do more than pay lip service in the fight against tax evasion and international tax evaders," said NDP MP Peter Julian.

"Canadian offshore bank accounts … are hiding money from the government. Why would any party not want that revealed?" said Green Party MP Elizabeth May.
Call in the accountants, says Lareau

MPs from all parties voted last week to resume committee hearings this afternoon into offshore tax shelters, including those in the Isle of Man.

Today's witness list includes Lucy Iacovelli — KPMG Canada's managing partner for tax — and Janet Watson, who lost her savings in a Montreal-based fraud known as the Cinar/Norshield/Mount Real scheme.

Lareau said that, for the revived committee probe to be effective, MPs must call the individual accountants and bankers who were involved in setting up various Isle of Man shell companies — and who know the names of the wealthy Canadians or "beneficial owners" behind them.

"Obviously, they will talk only to the committee if they are obliged to do so," Lareau said, pointing out that Commons committees have the power to issue subpoenas.

In the past, KPMG has opposed releasing the names of the wealthy Canadians behind multiple shell companies it helped to set up in the Isle of Man, citing client confidentiality.

Lareau said he believes that MPs were under pressure from the accounting industry to limit their probe when they launched it five years ago.

© CBC Dennis Howlett: 'It's not right that people can hide behind shell companies.'

In 2016, the Liberal-dominated finance committee defeated an opposition motion to compel KPMG to provide the names of the "beneficial owners" of those shell companies. Dennis Howlett, the former head of Canadians for Tax Fairness, said it's high time the veil was lifted.

"It would be a good idea to force KPMG to disclose beneficial owners," said Howlett. "It's not right that people can hide behind shell companies."

The Trudeau government said in its recent budget that, as part of a plan to crack down on tax avoidance, it would introduce a registry to identify the beneficial owners of Canadian companies.

While that measure wouldn't affect the Canadians behind offshore companies, it does indicate the Liberal government is concerned about corporations set up to protect the identities of their true owners, said Howlett.

Committee cut short

Howlett is one of the tax experts who was also prevented from testifying at the House of Commons finance committee five years ago.

Both Howlett and Lareau were asked to testify about the KPMG Isle of Man scheme — but were barred from even mentioning the name of the accounting firm when they got to the witness stand.

Lareau and Howlett were told that a lawyer for KPMG had written a letter to the committee warning that a continued probe of the accounting firm could improperly affect ongoing tax court cases.

Liberal MP Wayne Easter, chair of the finance committee, then told Lareau and Howlett they could not give any testimony related to the accounting firm's Isle of Man tax scheme.

"Why am I here?" Lareau said at the time. "They asked me to come here to speak about KPMG and I'm prevented from speaking about KPMG."

"The particular case that we're not supposed to refer to is only the tip of the iceberg," Howlett told MPs on the committee in 2016.

The three tax court cases KPMG said it was concerned about were settled out of court two years ago — but the finance committee never resumed its probe until news reports earlier this year revealed new information regarding KPMG's potential connection to companies later suspected of involvement in the fraud.

Financial asset tracers have said that identifying the true owners behind the so-called "sword companies" — Katar, Sceax, Spatha and Shashqua — could go a long way in helping governments understand how they may have been involved in the fraud, and where the money ended up.

"If I had got this information … while we were still on the scene, we would have tried to get to the bottom of this," said lawyer and asset tracer Wes Voorheis, who was hired to find some of the missing money in 2004.

KPMG insisted it conducted an in-depth review of its files before concluding it had no connection to the sword companies.

"KPMG Canada has thoroughly considered and refuted any connection between KPMG Canada and the sword companies," Mark Gelowitz, KPMG's lawyer, said in a recent letter to CBC.

"Unless CBC has additional evidence of KPMG Canada's involvement with the sword companies that it has not shared with KPMG Canada, the proposed allegations are demonstrably unsubstantiated, false and defamatory.

"

© Chris Wattie/Reuters Retired Supreme Court of Canada justice Ian Binnie (L) shakes hands with Governor General David Johnston after being awarded the rank of Companion in the Order of Canada at Rideau Hall in Ottawa on November 23, 2012.

Gelowitz pointed to the fact that KPMG had hired Ian Binnie, "a retired Justice of the Supreme Court of Canada," to conduct an independent review of its files.

Binnie's review, based on documents and information provided to him by KPMG, concluded that the sword companies — along with more than a dozen other Isle of Man shell companies identified by journalists — were not connected to the accounting firm's offshore tax structure.

Binnie has declined to speak directly to journalists about his report, opting instead to communicate via email.

KPMG has said the leaked emails that state the accounting firm set up the sword companies are unreliable. The emails were obtained by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists and emerged after Binnie had written his report. KPMG says their author did not have knowledge of its operations at the time and that she was "mistaken."

Binnie turned down CBC's request to discuss the leaked emails and whether they might affect the conclusions in his report.

After stating he would speak with KPMG's legal counsel, Binnie sent CBC/Radio-Canada an email: "I have no reason to doubt the due diligence undertaken by KPMG."

GLOBAL WARMING

Melting glacier reveals World War I cave shelter and artifacts

By Jack Guy and Livia Borghese, CNN 6/5/2021

Researchers have recovered a treasure trove of World War I artifacts from a cave shelter in northern Italy revealed by the melting of a glacier.

© Courtesy White War Museum A lantern was among the items to be found in the melted ice.

During the war, the cave shelter housed 20 Austrian soldiers stationed at Mount Scorluzzo on the Alpine front, close to the famous Stelvio Pass, historian Stefano Morosini told CNN Tuesday.

While people knew the shelter existed, researchers were only able to enter it in 2017 as the surrounding glacier had melted, added Morosini, who is scientific coordinator of the heritage project at Stelvio National Park and teaches at the University of Bergamo.© Courtesy White War Museum The cave shelter in northern Italy was accessible to researchers after the surrounding glacier had melted.

Inside they found food, dishes and jackets made from animal skins, among many other items, he said.

The artifacts illustrate the "very poor daily life" of the soldiers, who had to deal with "extreme environmental conditions," said Morosini. Winter temperatures could drop to -40 degrees Celsius (-40 degrees Fahrenheit), he added.© Courtesy White War Museum A variety of items were found, including bottles and tins.

"Soldiers had to fight against the extreme environment, fight against the snow or the avalanches, but also fight against the enemy," Morosini said.

"The artifacts are a representation, like a time machine, of... the extreme conditions of life during the First World War," he said, adding that more items appear in the area every summer as the glacier melts.

"It's a sort of open air museum," said Morosini, who said that five years ago the bodies of two soldiers were found, along with documents that allowed them to be identified and their remains given to their families.

The artifacts from the cave shelter are being preserved and will form part of the collection, due to open in late 2022, at a museum dedicated to World War I in the northern Italian town of Bormio, said Morosini.

© Courtesy White War Museum The cave shelter housed Austrian soldiers stationed at Mount Scorluzzo.

The shelter was occupied in the first days of the war by Austrian troops, who made it completely invisible from the Italian side or from aerial observation, according to a statement from White War Museum, located in Adamello, northern Italy.

It sits at an altitude of 3,094 meters (10,151 feet), just below the peak of Mount Scorluzzo, and excavation work has been carried out each July and August since 2017, removing around 60 cubic meters of ice from the cave.

A total of 300 objects were recovered, including straw mattresses, coins, helmets, ammunition and newspapers.

"The findings in the cave on Mount Scorluzzo give us, after over a hundred years, a slice of life at over 3,000 meters above sea level, where the time stopped on November 3, 1918 when the last Austrian soldier closed the door and rushed downhill," reads the museum's press release.

© Courtesy White War Museum The view of the Stelvio glacier from Mount Scorluzzo.

SELF DEPRACATING HUMOUR 
Russia is 'stealing' the north magnetic pole from Canada

Tristin Hopper 

POSTMEDIA

6/5/2021

© Provided by National Post

It’s popular these days to mourn the passing of American global hegemony. After decades of Pax Americana, the world risks slipping into a new era shaped by emerging powers such as Russia, Iran and China. But amid hand-wringing over the loss of military or economic power, you may not have noticed that NATO just lost one of its lesser known assets: De facto ownership of the mysterious dot to which all of the world’s compasses point.

Watch the latest Everything Should Be Better video or read the transcript below to learn how Russia isn’t just seizing pieces of Eastern Europe these days; it may soon have title to what was previously one of Canada’s proudest cartographic features.

There are a few things you can take pride in as a Canadian. We’re the world’s number one producer of pulses. We’re the world’s largest non-resident constitutional monarchy. And whenever someone pulls out one of these (a compass) it’s pointing right at us. Canada may not technically own the North Pole, but we do own the magnetic north pole: The mysterious dot to which all the world’s compasses point.

Or, at least, we used to. Because I have bone-chilling news for all of you. In recent years, for reasons we don’t fully understand, the Magnetic North Pole has been fleeing the sublime liberty of the Maple Leaf in order to take up residence in Russia.

As of 2020, Magnetic North is right around here: Still in international waters, but clearly making a beeline for Siberia. If it keeps moving at its current pace, roughly 55 kilometres per year, the magnetic pole will make landfall in Russia right around 2050, just in time for Putin’s ninth term as president.

Artist’s impression.

This is quite a black eye for a country that has been home to magnetic north since we can remember, and who proudly puts magnetic north on its official maps.

The first time a human being stood on what they knew to be the magnetic north pole was in 1831. James Clark Ross was looking for Sir John Franklin around the Boothia Peninsula when he found it, and this location of magnetic north would officially become Canadian territory in 1880.

Unlike the actual north pole (which Canada weirdly claims is also ours by publishing maps pretending to own a giant triangle of international waters) magnetic north has always moved around a little bit. The reasons for this aren’t fully understood, but the earth is basically a big ball of liquid rock and metal with a thin crusty part that we all live on. If all that molten planet shifts a bit more vigorously than usual, it moves the magnetic field around.

© Robert Allison/SAS Institute A map by the SAS Institute showing the sharp drift of the north magnetic pole in recent years.

For most of the 20th century, magnetic north only moved about 11 kilometres per year, following a lazy path around the Canadian Arctic archipelago. As recently as 2007, when the guys from Top Gear set out to drive a specially equipped truck to magnetic north, their whole trip from beginning to end was in either Canadian territory or Canadian waters.

But by then, magnetic north had already begun its all-out drive across the Arctic Circle. As to why, NASA thinks climate change might be a reason: The Arctic has lost 278 gigatonnes of ice in the last 20 years, and when you take that much weight off all at once it shouldn’t be completely surprising that it’s freeing up the ground beneath to shift around a bit more freely than usual.

So what’s Canada to do about losing our magnetic pride and joy? Well, if anyone has 278 gigatonnes of ice lying around, that would be helpful. We could experiment with building an extremely large electromagnet in Winnipeg to override the earth’s magnetic field and ensure that the world’s compasses continue to point the correct, Canadian, way.

Or, boycott the compass. If these things are going to insist on pointing at Russia, we make it a point of national honour to dismiss them as the kitschy party tricks they are. Real navigators use GPS and celestial measurements.

Winners don’t use cardinal navigation.

• Email: thopper@postmedia.com | Twitter: TristinHopper

Germany to bring forward climate goals after constitutional court ruling

Government proposes net zero deadline of 2045 instead of 2050, but critics demand actions not numbers

The coal-fired Neurath power station. Coal-powered energy is currently scheduled to be phased out by 2038. Photograph: Ina Fassbender/AFP/Getty Images


Philip Oltermann in Berlin
@philipoltermann
Thu 6 May 2021

Germany’s government is to revise its emission reduction targets after the country’s constitutional court declared the current climate protection measures insufficient, aiming to become greenhouse gas neutral by 2045 rather than 2050.

The finance minister, Olaf Scholz, and the environment minister, Svenja Schulze laid out a legislative proposal on Wednesday to cut emissions by 65% from 1990 levels by 2030. An 88% reduction of carbon emissions is to be reached by 2040.

Germany’s emission levels are currently 40% lower than they were in 1990, meaning it would require a reduction of a further 25 percentage points over the next nine years to meet its next target.

The German cabinet could ratify the proposal from the Social Democrat ministers next week if, as expected, it finds support among its senior coalition partners, Angela Merkel’s Christian Democratic Union.

“We will strengthen our efforts for the year 2030 once more”, the chancellor said, stressing that her government would “do everything to meet the target of climate neutrality by 2045”.

Germany’s coalition government has been surprisingly upbeat about the constitutional court’s announcement last Thursday. Key ministers from both parties have welcomed a ruling that effectively criticises them for jeopardising young people’s freedom by postponing inevitable cuts to greenhouse gas emissions.

The case was brought by young environmental activists, backed by Fridays for Future, Greenpeace, Germany’s Friends of the Earth (BUND) and other NGOs.

The government has not yet explained what concrete measures it will take to meet the new targets, whether by revising its carbon pricing scheme or speeding up the phase-out of coal-powered energy, currently scheduled for 2038.

Targets like ‘net-zero’ won’t solve the climate crisis on their own
Mathew Lawrence

“Matching numbers with actions will require the kind of major effort that this country has seldom seen”, wrote the Süddeutsche Zeitung newspaper. “It could turn the federal republic into an international beacon and help to lessen the worst impacts of the climate crisis. But this coalition government would rather leave it to its successors to work out the details.”

The emissions targets debate comes five months before national elections in Germany on 26 September, and against the backdrop of several polls showing a lead for the Greens.

The ecological party is pushing the outgoing government to double its investment in climate protection measures by €8bn (£7bn) by 2025.

“We’ve got some ambitious targets, that’s a step in the right direction”, said the Greens’ co-leader Robert Habeck on Thursday. “But the key challenge is following up numbers with actions, and in that respect the government isn’t delivering.”

Halbeck, who lost out to his fellow co-leader, Annalena Baerbock, in the race to become his party’s candidate for chancellor, said the Green party would seek a 70% emissions reduction by 2030 and urged the government to expand renewable energy sources, reduce subsidies for coal power and increase the price on greenhouse gas emissions in the transport and building sectors.

#CNNFIRESANTORUM

Santorum's comments on Native Americans don't quiet critics

NEW YORK — CNN analyst Rick Santorum's claim that he misspoke during a recent speech where he said there was “nothing here” when the United States was founded did little to diminish anger against him.

© Provided by The Canadian Press

The National Congress of American Indians on Tuesday renewed calls for CNN to fire the former Pennsylvania senator. The group's president, Fawn Sharp, called Santorum arrogant for comments made to Chris Cuomo on Monday night.

“I was optimistic he would own it, he would recognize it and he would apologize,” Sharp said, “but he did none of those things.”

CNN has not commented on Santorum's initial remarks in an April 23 speech before Young America's Foundation, a conservative youth organization, and did not on Tuesday, either. There's been no indication of a change in status for Santorum, a commentator who was often tasked with giving the Republican point of view during campaign coverage.

When he spoke to the youth group, Santorum said immigrants created a nation based on the Judeo-Christian ethic from a blank slate.

“We birthed a nation from nothing,” he said. “Yes, there were Native Americans, but there isn't much Native American culture in American culture.”

Those comments were swiftly criticized, and Santorum was invited onto Cuomo's prime-time show Monday to explain himself.

Santorum said he “misspoke” in the sense that it wasn't clear that he was speaking in the context of the founding of the United States government.

“People say I'm trying to dismiss what happened to the Native Americans,” he said. “Far from it. The way we treated Native Americans was horrific. It goes against every bone and everything I've ever fought for as a leader in the Congress.”

Cuomo said that what upset people was “beating up the little guy” and that it perpetuated the sense that anyone who wasn't a white Christian — be they gay, Black, Native American or whatever — was somehow considered an “other.”

“You're like me, you're a mutt,” Cuomo told him. “You came here a couple of generations ago. You ain't no Pilgrim, Rick.”

Santorum said he does not try to diminish those who aren't like him.

“Just because I disagree with someone on the issue of marriage doesn't mean that I hate them, or see them as ‘less than,’” he said. “That's what I get accused of, and that's wrong.”

CNN's Don Lemon, who follow Cuomo on the network schedule and often banters with his colleague between the two shows, was visibly angered by Santorum's remarks.

Lemon said he was furious watching the interview in his office and wanted to apologize to viewers who were insulted by it.

“I can't believe the first words out of his mouth weren't ‘I’m sorry, I said something ignorant, I need to learn about the history of this country,'” Lemon said. “No contrition. Didn't talk about, you know, the suffering the Native Americans have had to deal with in this country. Rick Santorum, really? Did he actually think it was a good idea for him to come on television and try to whitewash the whitewash that he whitewashed?”

There was no immediate comment from Santorum to Lemon's remarks.

Sharp said anger against CNN was building in Native American communities and that a petition circulating calling for Santorum's firing has more than 15,000 signatures.

David Bauder, The Associated Press

Giant sequoia found still smoldering after 2020 California wildfire

A firefighter checks on the evolution of the Castle Fire as it burns in the Sequoia national forest in September. Photograph: Étienne Laurent/EPA


Charred tree – which may be thousands of years old – looks like chimney spouting smoke in national forest

Jack Herrera in San Francisco
Thu 6 May 2021 

Scientists have discovered a giant sequoia still smoldering in California’s Sequoia national forest, months after wildfires tore through the region last August.

The tree was found, charred but still standing, by researchers in the lower part of the national forest this week. While turning down a sharp switchback on the trail, a member of Sequoia’s fire ecology and research team spotted a plume of smoke in the ravine below. Using a long camera lens, the team tracked the smoke to a single giant sequoia, standing in the burn area from last year’s Castle fire. The enormous tree, which has probably stood for hundreds if not thousands of years, looked like a chimney spouting smoke in the middle of the blackened forest.

In August, lighting struck deep in Sequoia national forest. The resulting Castle fire spread into areas of the Giant Sequoia national monument, home to trees that have stood for over 2,000 years, including “General Sherman”, the largest tree on earth. For weeks the Castle fire burned through 150,000 acres of land, before crews managed to contain the blaze in late December.

The smoldering tree in Sequoia national forest. Photograph: Tony Caprio/AP

Now researchers know that while the flames disappeared, some embers remained smoldering throughout the winter. The fire inside the tree discovered this week was sheltered inside the tree for months, even through the winter’s rain and snowfall.

Mike Theune, fire information officer for Sequoia and Kings Canyon national parks, said it was not wholly unusual for some patches of ember to remain burning months after a fire dies down. The inside of a tree, like the interior of a wood-burning stove, can provide an oxygen-rich shelter for a fire to survive. However, the fact that a Sequoia is still giving off smoke after an entire winter of rain and snow could be testament to California’s exceptionally dry winter: after precious little snowfall over the last two winters, most of the state is entering extreme drought conditions.

“The vegetation – the fuels – are dry,” Theune said. “They don’t have the high moisture content that [could prevent fire].” Elsewhere in the state, experts have warned that the unprecedented dryness of California’s diverse flora could lead to an early and devastating fire season this year.
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“The fact areas are still smoldering and smoking from the 2020 Castle fire demonstrates how dry the park is,” Leif Mathiesen, the assistant fire management officer for Sequoia and Kings Canyon, said in a statement. “With the low amount of snowfall and rain this year, there may be additional discoveries as spring transitions into summer.”

While last year’s fires claimed thousands of acres of land, Theune said it was important to remember that many of the sequoias in California’s Sierra Nevada mountains have stood for thousands of years and have survived millennia of forest fires and droughts.


Parts of California see May red flag fire warning for first time since 2014

Read more

“But at the same time, we are seeing the impacts of climate change, high fire severity, and long-term extended drought periods,” Theune said.

Sequoias have a complex relationship with fire. For much of the20th century, foresters worked to prevent fires within the nationally protected land, hoping to defend the ancient tree. Then, in the early 1960s and 1970s, researchers working the park made a startling discovery: in areas where fires had burned, young sequoia saplings flourished, even as the forest floor elsewhere in the park remained barren of new trees. That observation led to the discovery that giant sequoias depend on fire to release their seeds.

Because of sequoias’ need for fire, California fire officials working out of Sequoia national forest were some of the earliest proponents of prescribed burns – among California government officials, that is. Intentional, controlled burns have been practiced by Indigenous people in California for thousands of years as a form of land husbandry. In the 60s and 70s, officials in Sequoia intentionally lit fires in controlled areas, and low-intensity fires created by lighting strikes were allowed to burn.

Smoke rises from the forest. Photograph: Tony Caprio/AP

Theune has stood in the forest during one of these prescribed burns. As the heat from the flames on the forest floor reached the trees’ branches, the sequoia’s cones, protected by a sticky resin shell, melted and opened. From the treetops, hundreds of small seeds, each the size of a pinky nail, floated to the ground below, where the fire had left the floor rich with new nutrients.


As California begins to more actively pursue prescribed burns as a way to manage forest fires, Theune says there are lessons to be learned from ecologists in Sequoia national forest. One of the main instructions: low-intensity fires can be regenerative and prevent more devastating blazes. But high intensity, out-of-control fires are harmful for forests – as evidenced by the recently discovered smoldering sequoia, which stands in a patch of dead and blackened trees.

The sorts of high-intensity blazes California hopes to prevent are being fueled largely by two interlinked phenomena: the climate crisis and increasing human development. California is becoming warmer and drier, which creates enormous risks in the state’s sprawling cities and towns, where vegetation and other fuels have been allowed to build up unabated – and where power lines and residents hold the potential to release perilous sparks.

Ruby Bridges: the six-year-old who defied a mob and desegregated her school


Ruby Bridges with an escort of US deputy marshals leaves school in November 1960. Photograph: anonymous/AP
Black lives

In 1960, she walked past hateful protesters to become the first Black child at a Louisiana school – and was then taught alone for a year. She discusses fear, forbearance and her fight for a better future

by Steve Rose

Thu 6 May 2021 10.00 BST

This year, Ruby Bridges saw some newly discovered video footage of her six-year-old self and was terrified for her. The footage was from 14 November 1960, a day that shaped the course of Bridges’ life and – it is no exaggeration to say – American history. Not that she was aware of it at the time. On that day she became the first Black child to attend an all-white primary school in Louisiana.

Looking at images of Bridges’ first day at William Frantz elementary school in New Orleans, she is a study in vulnerability: a tiny girl in her smart new uniform, with white socks and white ribbons in her hair, flanked by four huge federal agents in suits. Awaiting her at the school gates was a phalanx of rabidly hostile protesters, mostly white parents and children, plus photographers and reporters. They yelled names and racial slurs, chanted, and waved placards. One sign read: “All I want for Christmas is a clean white school.” One woman held up a miniature coffin with a black doll in it. It has become one of the defining images of the civil rights movement, popularised even further by Norman Rockwell’s recreation of it in his 1964 painting The Problem We All Live With.

The confrontation was expected. Three months before Bridges was born, the US supreme court had issued its landmark Brown v Board of Education ruling, outlawing segregation in schools nationwide. Six years later, though, states in the south were stubbornly refusing to act upon it. When nine African American children enrolled at the Little Rock school in Arkansas in 1957, it had caused an uproar. President Eisenhower had to call in federal troops to escort the children through a national guard blockade ordered by the governor. Three years later it was Louisiana’s turn. Bridges was one of six Black children to pass a test to gain access to formerly all-white schools. But two of the children dropped out and three went, on the same day, to a different school. So Bridges was all on her own.

Ruby Bridges: ‘I cannot even fathom me now, today, sending my child into an environment like that.’ Photograph: Thomas Dumont

Many have read resolve or defiance into Bridges’ demeanour that day, but the explanation is far simpler. “I was really not aware that I was going into a white school,” she says. “My parents never explained it to me. I stumbled into crowds of people, and living here in New Orleans, being accustomed to Mardi Gras, the huge celebration that takes place in the city every year, I really thought that’s what it was that day. There was no need for me to be afraid of that.”

Watching the footage of that day 60 years later, Bridges’ reaction was very different. “It was just mind-blowing, horrifying,” she says. “I had feelings that I’d never had before … And I thought to myself: ‘I cannot even fathom me now, today, as a parent and grandparent, sending my child into an environment like that.’”

Bridges, 66, can understand her own parents’ actions, though. They grew up as sharecroppers (poor tenant farmers) in rural Mississippi in the pre-civil rights era before moving to New Orleans in 1958. “They were not allowed to go to school every day,” she says. “Neither one of them had a formal education. If it was time for them to get the crops in, or to work, school was a luxury; that was something they couldn’t do. So they really wanted opportunities for their children that they were not allowed to have.”

Bridges’ parents paid a high price for their decision. Her mother, who had been the chief advocate for her attending the white school, lost her job as a domestic worker. Her father, a Korean war veteran who worked as a service-station attendant, also lost his job on account of the Bridges’ newfound notoriety. The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), which had played a big part in Bridges’ case, advised him not to go out and look for work, for his own safety. “That in itself caused a lot of tension,” she says, “because I’m the oldest of eight, and at that point he was no longer able to provide for his family. So they were solely dependent on donations and people that would help them.” The local corner store refused to serve them. Even her sharecropper grandparents were made to move from their farm in Mississippi. Her parents eventually separated. “I remember writing a letter to Santa Claus and asking him to give my father’s job back, and that he didn’t have a job because I was going to the school. So I guess somehow I did feel some blame for it.”

Ruby’s mother, Lucille, next to the Norman Rockwell painting The Problem We All Live With. Photograph: Steve Ueckert/AP

Life at her new school was no easier for Bridges. For the first year, she needed federal protection every day since protesters were always at the school gates, including the woman with the doll in a coffin. “That I used to have nightmares about,” she says. “I would dream that the coffin was flying around my bedroom at night.” Bridges had to bring her own lunch every day for fear of being poisoned. The white parents all withdrew their children from the school, and the staff refused to teach Bridges, except for one teacher: Barbara Henry, who had come from Boston. For the first year, Henry taught Bridges alone, just the two of them in the classroom. “We knew we had to be there for each other,” says Bridges.

Bridges had another ally outside the school: Robert Coles, a white child psychiatrist who had witnessed the scenes outside the school, and volunteered to support her and her family, visiting the home on a weekly basis. Coles went on to establish a career studying the effects of desegregation on schoolchildren. It later emerged that it was one of his relatives who had sent Bridges her smart school clothes, which her family could never have afforded.

Things changed gradually. Over the course of that first year, a few white parents let their children back into the school. At first they were kept separate from Bridges. “The principal, who was part of the opposition, would take the kids and she would hide them, so that they would never come in contact with me.” Towards the end of the first year, however, on Henry’s insistence, Bridges was finally allowed to be part of a small class with other six-year-olds. “A little boy then said to me: ‘My mom said not to play with you because you’re a nigger,’” Bridges recalls. “And the minute he said that, it was like everything came together. All the little pieces that I’d been collecting in my mind all fit, and I then understood: the reason why there’s no kids here is because of me, and the colour of my skin. That’s why I can’t go to recess. And it’s not Mardi Gras. It all sort of came together: a very rude awakening. I often say today that really was my first introduction to racism.”

It was also an insight into the origins of racism, she later realised. “The way that I was brought up, if my parents had said: ‘Don’t play with him – he’s white, he’s Asian, he’s Hispanic, he’s Indian, he’s whatever – I would not have played with him.” The little boy wasn’t being knowingly racist towards her; he was simply explaining why he couldn’t play with her. “Which leads me to my point that racism is learned behaviour. We pass it on to our kids, and it continues from one generation to the next. That moment proved that to me.”

Bridges with Barbara Henry at the unveiling of a statue in Ruby’s honour at William Frantz elementary school in 2014. Photograph: Courtesy of Ruby Bridges

By the time Bridges returned to the school for the second year, the furore had pretty much died down. There were no protests, she was in a normal-sized class with other children, predominantly white but with a few more African Americans. The overall situation had improved, although Bridges was upset that Henry had left the school (they have remained lifelong friends). Thanks to Henry’s teaching, Bridges spoke with a strong Boston accent, for which she was criticised by her teacher – one of those who had refused to teach her the year before. Every year, though, more and more Black students came to the school. By the time she moved on, high schools had been desegregated for nearly a decade, although Black and white pupils still did not mix. The south’s racist legacy was still close to the surface: her high school was named after a former Confederate general, Francis T Nicholls. Its sports teams were named the Rebels, and had a Confederate flag on their badge, which the Black students fought to change. (The school was renamed Frederick Douglass high school in the 1990s, and its teams are now the Bobcats.)

Bridges says she did not have much of a career plan when she finished school. “I was really more focused on how to get out of Louisiana. I knew that there was something more than what I was exposed to right there in my community.” She first applied for jobs as a flight attendant, then became a travel agent for American Express for 15 years, during which time she got to travel the world.

By her mid-30s, Bridges had satisfied her wanderlust and was married (to Malcolm Hall, in 1984) with four sons. But she felt restless. “I was asking myself: ‘What am I doing? Am I doing something really meaningful?’ I really wanted to know what my purpose was in life.” In 1993, Bridges’ brother was shot dead on a New Orleans street. For a time she cared for his four daughters, who also attended William Frantz elementary school. Then in 1995, Coles, now a Harvard professor, published his children’s book The Story of Ruby Bridges, which brought her back into the public eye. People in New Orleans had never really talked about her story, Bridges explains, in the same way that, for years, people in Dallas didn’t talk about the Kennedy assassination. “You have to understand, we didn’t have Black History Month during that time. It wasn’t like I could pick up a textbook and open it up and read about myself.” Bridges helped promote Coles’ book, talking in schools across the US. It became a bestseller. A few years later, Disney made a biopic of Bridges, on which she acted as a consultant. “I think everybody started to realise that me, Ruby Bridges, was actually the same little girl as in the Norman Rockwell painting.”

Bridges in 2013 with Charles Burks, one of the marshals who escorted her to school. Photograph: Michael Conroy/AP

The proceeds from the book helped Bridges set up her foundation. Bringing her nieces back to William Frantz, she noticed the lack of after-school arts programmes, so set up her own. She continued touring schools across the country telling her story and promoting cultural understanding. (She recently had a new book published, This Is Your Time, retelling her story for today’s young people.) Then, in 2005, Hurricane Katrina struck New Orleans and the school was badly damaged. There were plans to tear it down. “I felt like if anybody was to save the school, it would be me,” she says. Bridges successfully campaigned to have the school put on the National Register of Historic Places, which freed funds to restore and expand it. “So now it has been reopened. Kids are back in the seats. And I’m really proud of the fact that I had something to do with that.” A statue of Bridges stands in the courtyard.

It was not until much later in life that Bridges became aware of Rockwell’s painting of her. It is not a faithful recreation of the scene (if anything it is closer to John Steinbeck’s eyewitness account in his 1962 book Travels With Charley in Search of America) but in contrast to Rockwell’s earlier cheery Americana, it captures the anger and drama: the N-word and “KKK” are scrawled across the wall behind Bridges, along with a splattered tomato.

Bridges on a visit to schoolchildren in Canada. 

Photograph: Rene Johnston/Toronto Star/Getty Images

When Barack Obama became president, Bridges suggested the painting be hung in the White House to commemorate the 40th anniversary of the event. Obama agreed, and invited Bridges and her family to its unveiling. He gave her a big hug. “It was a very powerful moment,” she says. “As we embraced, I saw people in the room tearing up and realised that it wasn’t just about he and I meeting; it was about those moments in time that came together. And all of those sacrifices in between he and I. He then turned to me and said: ‘You know, it’s fair to say that if it had not been for this moment, for you all, I might not be here today.’ That in itself is just a stark reminder of how all of us are standing on someone else’s shoulders. Someone else that opened the door and paved the way. And so we have to understand that we cannot give up the fight, whether we see the fruits of our labour or not. You have a responsibility to open the door to keep this moving forward.”

Ironically, and dishearteningly for Bridges, today William Frantz’s pupils are 100% Black. The white population had already begun moving out in the mid-60s, she explains, partly because of damage done by Hurricane Betsy, in 1965, but also in response to the changing demographics of the district. Today it is one of the poorest in the city, with relatively high crime rates. It is not just New Orleans: “white flight” has effectively resulted in a form of re-segregation in schools across the US.


Bridges sees this as the next battle: “Just as those people felt like it was unfair, and worked so hard during the civil rights movement to have those laws changed, we have to do that all over again. And we have to, first and foremost, see the importance of it. Because we’re faced with such division in our country, but where does that start? It starts very young. So I believe that it’s important, just like Dr King did, that our kids have an opportunity to learn about one another: to grow together, play together, learn together. The most time that kids spend away from home is in school, so our schools have to be integrated. And I know that there are arguments on both sides about that, but we’re never going to become the United States of America unless we, the people, are united.”

This Is Your Time by Ruby Bridges is published by One.