Maui wildfire victims fear land grab may threaten Hawaiian culture

Andrew Hay and Liliana Salgado
Updated Tue, August 22, 2023 

EVACUEES

KAANAPALI, Hawaii (Reuters) - Deborah Loeffler felt she could not lose much more after a wildfire destroyed the home in Maui, where five generations of her family have lived, and a son died the same day on the U.S. mainland.

Grieving and overwhelmed, Loeffler was soon beset by emails with unsolicited proposals she sell the Lahaina beachfront plot in Maui where her grandfather built their teal-green wooden home in the 1940s.

"It felt like we had vultures preying on us," said Loeffler, 69, a retired flight attendant, sitting in the brown-carpeted hotel room in Maui to which she was evacuated, an untouched container of cooked powdered egg and cold potato by her bedside.

Her experience will be familiar to people in places such as Paradise, California or northern New Mexico, where buyers moved in to try to obtain distressed property after blazes in 2018 and 2022.

Loeffler fears a land grab on Maui would mean the loss of Hawaiian culture.

In Hawaii, the fire exacerbated a chronic shortage of affordable housing, potentially accelerating a drain of multi-generational families from the U.S. state looking for places they can afford to live. The population of Native Hawaiians in the state dropped below the number living on the U.S. mainland over the last decade, according to U.S. Census data.

Before Lahaina was destroyed by the most deadly U.S. wildfire in a century, its average home price was $1.1 million, three times the U.S. national average, according to the real estate site Zillow.

In Maui County, where around 75% the population is Asian, Hispanic, Native Hawaiian or of mixed race, the median household income is $88,000, just 24% above the U.S. average, according to census reports.

Affordable housing advocates such as Hawaii Alliance for Progressive Action (HAPA) are calling for a moratorium on foreclosures.

HAPA along with the state government is documenting unsolicited purchase offers in Lahaina, the early 19th century capital of the kingdom of Hawaii before its overthrow in a U.S.-backed 1893 coup.

Hawaii's Office of Consumer Protection warned of people making below-market offers, playing on fears of foreclosure and the cost of rebuilding. The office declined to comment on how many such offers had been reported.

"We will be making sure we do all we can to prevent that land from falling into the hands of people from the outside," Hawaii Governor Josh Green, who has proposed a ban on Lahaina land sales, said at an Aug. 15 press conference.

Reuters has seen two emails sent by someone claiming to represent The EMortgage in Oklahoma City, one linking to a site called Cash Offer USA. The emails claimed to represent "local buyers" seeking sellers, offering all-cash deals and no closing costs for homes as-is -- "no need to make any repairs." Clicking on the Cash Offer USA link brought up an inactive form for uploading property details.

A functioning website for Cash Offer USA in Florida does offer cash for homes, but has an entirely different format to the Cash Offer USA page sent by The EMortgage.

The EMortgage did not respond to two emails from Reuters seeking comment. Reuters also emailed and called the Florida Cash Offer USA, which did not respond to a request for comment for this story.

Many long-term resident families who lost homes in the Lahaina fire did not have insurance, either because their homes had no mortgage or did not meet building codes, said Sterling Higa, director of Housing Hawaii's Future which seeks to end the state's workforce housing shortage.

How long residents can hold out against property offers may depend on the type of transitional housing they get as they wait to rebuild, said Higa.

"There has to be real support for them in terms of housing, in terms of financial support," said Higa, whose wife grew up in Lahaina.

Disaster response experts expect temporary housing to be provided through a mix of hotel rooms and condos, conversion of rentals, mobile home encampments and possibly some family transfers to Honolulu, the state's largest city.

"Keeping people nearby and engaged in recovery is a good first step to preserving the population," said Andrew Rumbach, a specialist in disasters, climate and communities at the Urban Institute in Washington.

At stake is the survival of Hawaiian culture, said Kaliko Baker, an associate professor at the University of Hawaii.

"If people buy land and build their own Lahaina does that include Hawaiian language schools?" said Baker, in reference to one such school that burned down next to an historic Lahaina church.

Loeffler, now sheltered with her husband a few miles from their destroyed home, deleted the email offers she received in disgust. She is mourning her son, Sam, whose death was unrelated to the Maui fire, and all that her community has lost.

She escaped with her purse and a book by a friend of her late son. She said she owes her life to her tenant who saw the fire coming and went door-to-door telling people to flee.

Loeffler plans to rebuild her plantation-style family home with insurance money so Lahaina can again "look like Lahaina." She wants her grandchildren to keep their connection to an island their Japanese-German-Hawaiian family has lived on for about a century.

"I'm not selling it, if I have to go live there in a tent I'm doing it."

(Reporting By Andrew Hay in Taos, New Mexico, Liliana Salgado in Kaanapali, Hawaii; additional reporting by Rachel Nostrant, Daniel Trotta and Jonathan Allen; Editing by Donna Bryson and Michael Perry)

 

Hawaii officials urge families of people missing after deadly fires to give DNA samples

AUDREY McAVOY, CLAIRE RUSH and JENNIFER SINCO KELLEHER
Updated Tue, August 22, 2023 


2 / 14
Crosses honoring the victims killed in a recent wildfire hang on a fence along the Lahaina Bypass as a Hawaiian flag flutters in the wind in Lahaina, Hawaii, Tuesday, Aug. 22, 2023. Two weeks after the deadliest U.S. wildfire in more than a century swept through the Maui community of Lahaina, authorities say anywhere between 500 and 1,000 people remain unaccounted for.

 (AP Photo/Jae C. Hong)

LAHAINA, Hawaii (AP) — Authorities in Hawaii on Tuesday pleaded with relatives of those missing after the deadliest U.S. wildfire in more than a century to come forward and give DNA samples, saying the low number provided so far threatens to hinder efforts to identify any remains discovered in the rubble.

Some 1,000 to 1,100 names remain on a tentative, unconfirmed list of people unaccounted for after wildfires destroyed the historic seaside community of Lahaina on Maui. But the family assistance center so far has collected DNA samples from just 104 families, said Julie French, who is helping lead efforts to identify remains by DNA analysis.

Maui Prosecuting Attorney Andrew Martin, who is running the center, said the number of family members coming in to provide DNA samples is “a lot lower than they’ve seen in other disasters,” though it wasn’t immediately clear why.

“That’s our concern, that’s why I’m here today, that’s why I’m asking for this help,” he said.

Martin sought to reassure people that any samples would be used only to help identify victims of the fires and would not be entered into any law enforcement databases or used for any other purpose. Those who donate also would be not asked about their immigration status or U.S. citizenship, he said.

“What we want to do — all we want to do — is help people locate and identify their unaccounted-for loved ones,” Martin said.

Two weeks after the flames tore through Lahaina, officials are facing huge challenges to determine how many of those perished and how many may have made it to safety but haven't checked in.

Something similar happened after a wildfire in 2018 that killed 85 people and destroyed the town of Paradise, California. Authorities in Butte County, home to Paradise, ultimately published a list of the missing in the local newspaper, a decision that helped identify scores of people who had made it out alive but were listed as missing. Within a month, the list dropped from 1,300 names to only a dozen.

“I probably had, at any given time, 10 to 15 detectives who were assigned to nothing but trying to account for people who were unaccounted for,” Butte County Sheriff Kory Honea said in a phone interview. “At one point the local editor of our newspaper … said, ‘Hey, if you give me the names, I will print them.’ And at that point it was like, ‘Absolutely. Anything that we can do to help out.’ ”

Hawaii officials have expressed concern that by releasing a list of the missing, they would also be identifying some people who have died. In an email Tuesday, the State Joint Information Center called it "a standard held by all law enforcement and first responders here in Hawaii, out of compassion and courtesy for the families, to withhold the names until the families can be contacted.”

As of Monday, there were 115 people confirmed dead, according to Maui police. All single-story, residential properties in the disaster area had been searched, and teams were transitioning to searching multi-story residential and commercial properties, Maui County officials said in an update late Monday.

There are widely varying accounts of the tally of the missing. Hawaii Gov. Josh Green said Sunday that more than 1,000 remained unaccounted for. Maui Mayor Richard Bissen said in a pre-recorded video on Instagram that the number was 850. And during President Joe Biden's tour of the devastation on Monday, White House homeland security adviser Liz Sherwood-Randall put it between 500 and 800.

An unofficial, crowd-sourced spreadsheet of missing people posted online listed nearly 700 names as of Tuesday.

Roseanna Samartano of Lahaina said she didn’t know anyone was looking for her until an FBI agent phoned her a few days ago to say she was on a missing persons list.

“I was shocked. Why is the FBI calling me?” the 77-year-old retiree said. “But then he came out with it right away, and then I kind of calmed down.”

It turned out a friend had reported her missing because he'd been unable to get in touch despite calling, texting and emailing. Her neighborhood of Kahana — which didn’t burn — had no power, cellphone service or internet in the days after the fires.

Sen. Gilbert Keith-Agaran, representing central Maui, said he’s not aware of any rules that prevent officials from making the list public. But as someone with several members of his extended family still unaccounted for, he understands why some may not want the list released.

“I’m not going to second-guess the approach by the mayor and his people right now,” he said.

Questions are also emerging about how quickly the names of the dead are being publicly released, even after family members have been notified. Maui residents are growing increasingly frustrated as the search for their loved ones drags on.

The Honolulu Star-Advertiser reported Tuesday that the Maui Police Department has instructed the medical examiner in Honolulu — where some burn patients were taken for treatment — not to release the names of anyone who dies from injuries sustained in Lahaina fire. The request came after one severely burned patient died and the man's name appeared in media reports after notification of his next of kin.

“I don’t know why they aren’t releasing the names," Honolulu Department of the Medical Examiner Supervising Investigator Theresa Reynolds told the newspaper.

Clifford Abihai said he feels like he's getting the run-around from authorities. He came to Maui from California after getting nowhere finding answers about his grandmother, Louise Abihai, 98, by phone. He has been just as frustrated on the ground in Maui.

"I just want confirmation,” he said last week. “Not knowing what happened, not knowing if she escaped, not knowing if she’s not there. That’s the hard thing.”

As of Tuesday, he said, he still had learned nothing further.

His grandmother lived at Hale Mahaolu Eono, a senior living facility where another member of his extended family, Virginia Dofa, lived. Authorities have identified Dofa as one who perished. Abihai described Dofa and Louise Abihai as best friends.

He said his grandmother was mobile and could walk a mile a day, but it was often hard to reach her because she'd frequently turn off her cell phone to save battery power.

Confirming whether those who are unaccounted for are deceased can be difficult. Fire experts say it’s possible some bodies were cremated in the Lahaina fire, potentially leaving no bones left to identify through DNA tests.

“Those are easy when destruction is modest,” said Vyto Babrauskas, president of fire safety research consulting firm Fire Science and Technology Inc. “If you go to the extreme of things — if turned to ash — you’re not going to be able to identify anything.”

Honea, the Butte County sheriff, said it took weeks to complete the search for remains in Paradise, and his detectives worked 16-hour days to narrow the list of the missing. Today there is only one person who still remains unaccounted for, and Honea said he has reason to believe that person was not in town the day of the fire.

The situation on Maui is evolving, but those who lived through similar tragedies and never learned of their loved ones' fate are also following the news and hurting for the victims and their families.

Nearly 22 years later, almost 1,100 victims of the 9/11 terror attacks, which killed nearly 3,000, have no identified remains.

Joseph Giaccone’s family initially was desperate for any physical trace of the 43-year-old finance executive, who worked in the World Trade Center's North Tower, brother James Giaccone recalled. But over time, he started focusing instead on memories of the flourishing man his brother was.

If his remains were identified and given to the family now, “it would just reinforce the horror that his person endured that day, and it would open wounds that I don’t think I want to open,” Giaccone said Monday as he visited the 9/11 memorial plaza in New York.

“So I am OK with the way it is right now,” he said.

____

Rush reported from Portland, Oregon, and Kelleher reported from Honolulu. Associated Press writers Jennifer Peltz in New York, Janie Har in San Francisco and Becky Bohrer in Juneau, Alaska, contributed.

Australia’s largest eagle discovered at last

Fossil-hunters descend into Flinders Ranges cave to confirm remains

Peer-Reviewed Publication

FLINDERS UNIVERSITY

 

IMAGE: COMPARATIVE DESCRIPTIONS OF DYNATOAETUS GAFFAE WITH LIVING TAXA, NEUROCRANIUM view more 

CREDIT: ELLEN MATHER FLINDERS UNIVERSITY

An eagle twice the size of the modern-day apex predator the wedge-tailed eagle, which soared over southern Australia more than 60,000 years ago, had a wingspan up to 3m wide and powerful talons wide enough to grab a small kangaroo or koala.

It was the largest bird of prey to ever live on the continent, and probably the largest continental eagle globally, according to new research from Flinders University. 

Closely related to Old World vultures of Africa and Asia and the critically endangered monkey-eating or Philippine Eagle, the Flinders palaeontology researchers say the now extinct raptor with a mighty wingspan and powerful talons was the top avian predator in the late Pleistocene.

Yet it has taken decades for it to be officially ‘discovered’ and described in the latest Journal of Ornithology.  

The Flinders University fossil hunters pieced together its story, naming the giant bird Dynatoaetus gaffae (Gaff’s powerful eagle), after extensive new research of fossil cave remains in South Australia’s Mairs Cave in the Flinders Ranges connected the dots to other bones previously found in the Naracoorte Caves, Wellington Caves and near Cooper Creek in the Lake Eyre Basin.  

Flinders University palaeontology researcher Dr Ellen Mather organised a field trip to the Flinders Ranges in late 2021 to revisit the location of four large fossil bones collected by cavers back in 1956 and 1969

“After half a century, and several delays caused by the pandemic, the expedition with volunteers from the University’s Speleological Society found a further 28 bones scattered about deep among the boulders at the site indicated by one of these museum relics.   

“We were very excited to find many more bones from much of the skeleton to create a better picture and description of these magnificent long-lost giant extinct birds,” says Dr Mather, who collaborated with experienced palaeo-ornithologist Associate Professor Trevor Worthy on the expedition.

“It’s often been noted how few large land predators Australia had back then, so Dynatoaetus helps fill that gap.”

Dynatoaetus and the recently described Cryptogyps are new genera of raptors unique to Australia, respectively eagle- and vulture-like, that existed until around 50 thousand years ago, Dr Mather says.

“This discovery reveals that this incredible family of birds was once much more diverse in Australia, and that raptors were also impacted by the mass extinction that wiped out most of Australia’s megafauna.”

“It was ‘humongous’ – larger than any other eagle from other continents, and almost as large as the world’s largest eagles once found on the islands of New Zealand and Cuba, including the whopping extinct 13kg Haast’s eagle of New Zealand,” says New Zealander Associate Professor Worthy, who has excavated several Haast’s eagle skeletons in NZ caves during more than 30 years of research experience in NZ, Australia and the Pacific.

“It had giant talons, spreading up to 30cm, which easily would have been able to dispatch a juvenile giant kangaroo, large flightless bird or other species of lost megafauna from that era, including the young of the world’s largest marsupial Diprotodon and the giant goanna Varanus priscus.”

It also coexisted with still living species such as the Wedge-tailed Eagle, which has interesting implications.

“Given that the Australian birds of prey used to be more diverse, it could mean that the Wedge-tailed Eagle in the past was more limited in where it lived and what it ate,” says Dr Mather. “Otherwise, it would have been directly competing against the giant Dynatoaetus for those resources.”

The latest discovery was made by piecing together the newly unearthed fossils with historic remains in collections of the South Australian Museum and Australian Museum found at locations spanning from the Lake Eyre Basin in central Australia to the Wellington Cave complex in central New South Wales. 

Led by location information on a SA Museum card recording where the earlier specimens were found, the Flinders expedition knew where to look in Mairs Cave in the southern Flinders Ranges. Repeating the measurements made 60 years previously, the cavers descended into a rockpile soon located the fossil eagle bones in crevices.

Thanks to this “serendipitous osteological sleuthing”, additional museum fossils of this species found across Australia soon confirmed the size and other details of the bird, which has been named in honour of Victorian palaeontologist Priscilla Gaff who first described some of these fossils in her 2002 Master of Science thesis.

Comparison of the tarsometatarsus (footbone) of Dynatoaetus gaffae and Wedge-tailed Eagle, with estimated silhouettes of the living animals above.

CREDIT

Ellen Mather (Flinders University)

Flinders University fossil hunters descend the 17m drop at the entrance to Mairs Cave in the Flinders Ranges.

Working to recover the bones from between the rocky floor of Mairs Cave in South Australia's Flinders Ranges.

CREDIT

Aaron Camens (Flinders University)

Flinders University lead author Dr Ellen Mather holding the femur of a Wedge-tailed Eagle (left) and Dynatoaetus gaffae (right) for comparison.

CREDIT

Flinders University

The article – A giant raptor (Aves: Accipitridae) from the Pleistocene of southern Australia (2023) by Ellen K Mather, Michael SY Lee (SA Museum / Flinders), Aaron B Camens and Trevor H Worthy – has been published in the Journal of Ornithology DOI: 10.1007/s10336-023-02055-x

Also see The Conversation: ‘Australia’s extinct giant eagle was big enough to snatch koalas from trees’

---

JOURNAL

Journal of Ornithology

DOI

10.1007/s10336-023-02055-x 

METHOD OF RESEARCH

Observational study

SUBJECT OF RESEARCH

Animals

ARTICLE TITLE

A giant raptor (Aves: Accipitridae) from the Pleistocene of southern Australia

ARTICLE PUBLICATION DATE

16-Mar-2023

 “plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose” 

Kenney stays on as leader, media invited to watch cabinet deliver standing ovation

TRUMP LIKE

1h ago

EDMONTON — Alberta Premier Jason Kenney says he will stay in the top job to maintain continuity and stability in government until a new United Conservative Party leader is chosen.

Kenney says it’s important to remain focused on public priorities, including reducing wait times in the health system and growing the economy.

He made the comments to reporters who were invited in to watch, take photos, and shoot video of his cabinet ministers giving him a standing ovation before the start of their meeting at McDougall Centre in Calgary.

He says the media opportunity was organized to demonstrate his government remains on the job, focused on public priorities.

Kenney did not take questions and has not done so since announcing earlier this week he was quitting as party leader after receiving just 51 per cent support in a party leadership review.

The party has not delivered any details or a timeline on the leadership race, and party rules do not prohibit Kenney from running again.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published May 20, 2022

PRIVATIZING HEALTH CARE WILL CONTINUE

'Eye on the ball': Kenney says he's focused on health care, economy

Lisa Johnson - 1h ago
Edmonton Journal

Premier Jason Kenney is aiming to portray a government still focused on public priorities in his first comments since caucus announced Thursday he will remain in power until a new leader can be chosen.


© Provided by Edmonton JournalJason Kenney speaks at an event at Spruce Meadows in Calgary on Wednesday, May 18, 2022. During the speech, he announced that he was stepping down as leader of the Alberta UCP party.

On Wednesday Kenney said he intends to resign after a narrow leadership review win, saying 51.4 per cent support was not “adequate.”

Before a Friday morning cabinet meeting that saw ministers offer Kenney a standing ovation, the premier said staying on for the time being will allow for continuity, stability and for his government to focus on the people’s priorities, including revamping the health care system and growing the economy.

“For me, that’s the most important thing. This is a critical time in Alberta’s history. We are determined to keep our eye on the ball,” said Kenney. The premier also reiterated much of his pitch to keep his job from April, touting his government’s progress in passing legislation and continued promotion of the province’s energy sector abroad.

“This is a demonstration that Alberta’s government continues to do the people’s business, continues to fight for this province, to work for a strong economy, to make life better for Albertans,” said Kenney, who has not appeared at a news conference to take questions from reporters since before the results of his leadership review were announced Wednesday night.

The premier’s office did not immediately respond to an inquiry from Postmedia about whether Kenney intends to run in the upcoming leadership race, which is yet to be scheduled by the party.

Kenney has been facing criticism from both inside and outside his party over his handling of the COVID-19 pandemic and allegations that he has been ignoring the grassroots of the party.

Before entering Thursday’s marathon six-hour caucus meeting , a number of his critics called for Kenney to step aside immediately and allow for an interim leader to step in. Fort McMurray-Lac La Biche UCP MLA Brian Jean, who won a byelection on a campaign to take over Kenney’s job, told reporters he hoped for a new interim leader to be appointed immediately.

“The healing process can’t start until Jason Kenney leaves. He knows that, we know that and we need to start the renewal process of the UCP,” said Jean.

-With files from Dylan Short

More to come…

lijohnson@postmedia.com

Bell: What the hell? Kenney is sticking around until God knows when

Rick Bell - 6h ago
Calgary Sun

Elvis has not left the building.


© Provided by Calgary Sun

Jason Kenney speaks at an event at Spruce Meadows in Calgary on Wednesday, May 18, 2022.

In fact, no one knows when Elvis is leaving the building.

For that matter, no one will tell us if Elvis will be leaving the building.

The show is not over.

Maybe you are one of those folks who thought Premier Jason Kenney was headed out the door.

Maybe you thought the UCP MLAs would choose an interim leader and that interim leader would serve as premier until a permanent leader was chosen and the UCP would get on with the job of digging themselves out of the political ditch.

Maybe you are one of those folks who actually truly believed the premier was stepping down sooner rather than later and he would no longer be the story and this would benefit the UCP because they could get a fresh start with only a year before the next election.

On the morning after the Wednesday night when only 51% of party members supported Kenney , UCP MLAs descended upon Calgary’s McDougall Centre, the premier’s southern Alberta HQ.

The MLAs were scheduled to figure out their next moves.

The Kenney folks had hoped the gabfest would be about arm-twisting UCP MLAs to follow the leader or else.

That didn’t happen because Kenney had only half the party on his side.

Instead, there was Kenney supposedly bound for the exit and talk of which individual could stand in as premier until a new leader took over. There were UCP MLAs actively seeking the gig.

There was some talk of how the UCP had to get their act together after Kenney.

Alas, in most cases, what the UCP MLAs coughed up as their ideas wasn’t worth the oxygen.

It was as if Kenney’s loyal soldiers were still waiting for the premier and his devoted minions to provide the officially-approved empty-calorie talking points suitable for regurgitation.

Outside, the mercury dropped, the clouds gathered, the rain fell, the winds blew.

Were they the winds of change? We could hope.

Inside the building, the UCP politicians talked and talked and talked and talked.

It was clear there was a push for the premier to stay until a new leader was elected.

There were those who still support Kenney.

There were those who don’t want to shake things up. They’ve got it good under Kenney.

They enjoy things the way they are. They’re looking out for number one.

One or two who might have plans to succeed Kenney did the suck-up Thursday, no doubt trying to curry favour with the premier’s loyalists.

Of course, there were others who believed kicking Kenney’s departure down the road would do more harm than good.

The show would go on. Kenney would remain a distraction. It would be the same old song and dance.

Someone on the outside looking in said Kenney couldn’t even resign without stepping on a rake.

People in the outside world, beyond the UCP circus, would be puzzled.

What the hell? Isn’t Kenney supposed to be gone?

Besides, Kenney did not have the backing of half his party.

But those who are on the premier’s team have a hell of a lot of skin in the game and they assemble their arguments.

Kenney passed the leadership review. Sure it was only 51%. Sure it wasn’t the 70% the out-of-touch inhabitants of the Kenney cocoon figured.

But 51% is technically a win. He doesn’t have to leave. He can leave when he wants. He is still the boss.

Rewind to Wednesday night.

When the 51% Yes vote is announced, Kenney speaks to his diehard supporters.

Cheers! Applause! Whistles! Yahoos!

Kenney tells his fervent followers he will respect the decision of the members.

Cheers! Applause! Yells!

They think he is staying on with 51%!

Kenney says he expects all UCP members to respect the result.

More Cheers! More Applause!

They REALLY think he is staying on with 51%!

And when he tells them he intends to step down as UCP leader and premier …

You can hear them. No! No!

Some cry. Some hang their heads. Someone calls the press “vultures,” because they do not embrace the exalted leader.

The Kenney love-in is reportedly in shock. They think Kenney is gone just like that. Poof! From hero to zero.

Fast forward to the next afternoon.

The wheels in motion.

The vote on Kenney staying on for a yet-to-be-determined time is by secret ballot.

He wins.

The UCP MLAs leave McDougall Centre the back way, avoiding the waiting microphones where questions would be asked and answers would not pass the smell test.

A short statement announcing Kenney’s latest victory goes out from the guy who chairs the UCP MLA chinwags, a guy by the name of Nathan Neudorf.

Kenney writes a letter to the party. He advises them of his intention to resign as leader when there’s a new leader elected.

From now to an unknown when, who knows what will happen?

By the way, the rain stopped. The sun came out briefly. The winds died out.

There was no wind of change.

rbell@postmedia.com

UCP leadership hopefuls jockey for position, disagree over interim head

NDP Leader Rachel Notley builds team as UCP caucus debates leadership

Who could replace Jason Kenney as UCP leader? Some possible contenders

SO LONG AND THANKS FOR ALL THE FISH

Jason Kenney to remain Alberta premier until new UCP leader chosen by party

Yesterday 7:05 p.m.
 The Canadian Press


Alberta Premier Jason Kenney, one day after announcing he was stepping down for the good of his United Conservative Party, will stay on until a new leader is chosen.

UCP caucus chair Nathan Neudorf said members met Thursday and decided that Kenney should remain in the top job for now.

“The United Conservative caucus had a vigorous discussion and debate about the future of our party and our government,” Neudorf said in a statement following an all-day meeting at McDougall Centre in Calgary.

“We agreed that we must remain united, focused on the best interests of Albertans and committed to doing the job Albertans elected us to do.

“In that spirit, we have affirmed Premier Jason Kenney’s continued leadership of our caucus and government until such time as a new leader is chosen, the timing of which will be determined by the United Conservative Party.”

Kenney did not issue a statement or speak to reporters but tweeted out a letter he sent to the UCP stating he will step down once a new leader is picked.

No caucus members came out to talk to the media after the meeting.

Earlier Thursday, some of Kenney’s caucus critics called for him to step down immediately to help heal divisions wracking the party.

“The healing process can’t start until Jason Kenney leaves. He knows that. We know that and we need to start the renewal process of the UCP," said backbencher Brian Jean.

Leela Aheer, who was kicked out of Kenney’s cabinet last year after criticizing him for his handling of the COVID-19 pandemic, said: “You need a team player who is going to bring folks together, because there has obviously been a lot of division.”

Todd Loewen, a former UCP backbencher voted out of caucus a year ago for openly demanding Kenney resign, said the decision to keep Kenney on is a slap in the face to the thousands of party members who voted for party renewal in the leadership review.

“This is the Jason Kenney Party. This is the JKP,” said Loewen.

“He remains in control of the party even though members rejected him.”

Kenney announced his departure Wednesday night after receiving 51 per cent support in a mail-in ballot of party members. The total was enough for him to technically stay in the job, but Kenney said it was not enough to maintain confidence and quell disharmony in the ranks.

His press secretary, Justin Brattinga, said shortly after that Kenney would remain as party boss until an interim leader was chosen.

Opposition NDP Leader Rachel Notley said Kenney is now officially a caretaker leader, further delaying crucial work on issues that matter to Albertans, such as health care and long waiting lists in hospitals.

“The drama and the infighting that has plagued this UCP is not over,” said Notley. “(Kenney’s resignation) is the starting gun for more chaos and more distraction.”

Kenney is the fourth conservative Alberta premier in the last 16 years to step down following a low endorsement vote from party members.

Former Progressive Conservative premiers Ralph Klein and Ed Stelmach stayed on as caretaker premiers until new leaders were picked. Alison Redford quit immediately, and caucus chose Dave Hancock as interim leader until Jim Prentice was selected as a permanent replacement.

Kenney has said anger from party and caucus members over decisions he made to limit personal liberties during the COVID-19 pandemic ignited the anger against him and led to the underwhelming vote of support in the review.

Opponents have said the dissatisfaction was not just over COVID-19 policies but also over Kenney's management style, which they deemed to be top-down, dismissive and undemocratic.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published May 19, 2022.

Dean Bennett and Colette Derworiz, The Canadian Press

Embrace the Witch!

Invite these women in, and let their voices pull on you: we pick our favourite witchy quotes from The Verso Book of Feminism.

Verso Books
31 October 2022

Halloween, also called Samhain the Witch’s New Year, marks the border between the light and the dark, between the bright days and the cold nights, between the dead and the living. Witches are said to traverse this space and find, in the dark, what new things can be born.

We’ve pulled six witchy selections from the Verso Book of Feminism! From the 1st century to the present, women making things and bringing new worlds to birth have been called witches; some have embraced the identity. In this way, the Book of Feminism is possibly also a grimoire. Since the veil is thin right now, invite these women in, and let their voices pull on you.

77 CE
Pliny the Elder
Naturalis Historia, XXV, 10

There was nothing more highly admired than an intimate knowledge of plants, in ancient times. It is long since the means were discovered of calculating before-hand, not only the day or the night, but the very hour even at which an eclipse of the sun or moon is to take place; and yet the greater part of the lower classes still remain firmly persuaded that these phenomena are brought about by compulsion, through the agency of herbs and enchantments, and that the knowledge of this art is confined almost exclusively to females.

The skills of Greek women—like famed second-century BCE astronomer Aglaonike from Thessaly, who was known for her expertise in predicting lunar eclipses—were considered to be magic and witchcraft rather than true scientific knowledge. Due to the circumscribed positions of women in the male-dominated Greek city-states, talented women were often known as sorceresses and priestesses rather than scholars. Aglaonike was called “the Witch of Thessaly” for her supposed talent of “making the moon disappear.” Here, Roman philosopher Pliny the Elder alludes to this history in his multivolume work Naturalis Historia.

1922
Masuda Rahman
Letter to the Newspaper Bijoli

Pack the conservative old men off to the forests with their rosaries, snatch the religious texts from the hands of the hypocrites and lawyers, drive the offenders away from the sacred podium of this temple we call society. Preach the words of our creator for the benefit of mankind… An irreligious and anti-motherhood society has decreed that women must always satisfy desires, cook delicious food, give birth to babies every year like bitches do, must abide by all its selfish dictates with bowed heads and offer their devotion, blindly, at its feet. We are goddesses, women, and vicious witches, all in one. Beware—it is not as if we have lost all sense of self-respect because we play mothers to you… My fellow workers! You are running after wealth, but where will you keep the accumulated treasure? … Our beautiful country now looks like a cremation ground—a place for evil spirits to prowl around, a ground for vultures to keep their eternal vigil. The air is putrid with the poisonous smell of decay! Is this a suitable place to erect a shrine of gold? We have to destroy, burn and erase all that is there to create anew. You cannot cleanse and purify this abhorred land, now full of waste, without our help. You work very hard to bring home the golden harvest every year, but we are the ones who do the threshing, separating the grains from the husk … Let us do the job that is ours. The flames of a hundred Vesuvius are stored in our chests, our hearts are tempestuous with the power of a thousand cyclones, and our eyes contain the unfathomable waters of ten thousand oceans.

Bengali Muslim writer Masuda Rahman was well known for her nationalist anti-British views, as well as her fierce criticism of patriarchal traditions in Islamic and Bengali culture.

1973
Barbara Ehrenreich and Deirdre English
Witches, Midwives, and Nurses: A History of Women Healers

Women have always been healers. They were the unlicensed doctors and anatomists of Western history. They were abortionists, nurses, and counselors. They were pharmacists, cultivating healing herbs and exchanging secrets of their uses. They were midwives, travelling from home to home and village to village. For centuries women were doctors without degrees, barred from books and lectures, learning from each other, and passing on experience from neighbor to neighbor and mother to daughter. They were called “wise women” by the people, witches or charlatans by the authorities. Medicine is part of our heritage as women, our history, our birthright.

Feminists Barbara Ehrenreich and Deirdre English wrote this pamphlet in “a blaze of anger and indignation,” part of the broader second-wave feminist activism in the United States that critiqued the sexism in medical practice and sought to teach women about their own bodies. Ehrenreich and English argued that historically, witch hunts were part of dismissing and criminalizing women’s knowledge in order to allow state-approved male doctors to take over medical care, an argument later researched and credited by feminist historians. “Our ignorance” of our own bodies, they argued, “is enforced.”

1978
Silvia Bovenschen
“The Contemporary Witch, the Historical Witch, and the Witch Myth”

Up until recently the word witch did not have a pleasant ring to it. It evoked childhood fears—we often called old teachers whom we could not stand and whom we feared by that name. The word “witch” experienced the same transformation as the word “queer” or “proletarian”: it was adopted by the person affected and used against the enemy who had introduced it … The fact that women are dressing up as witches for their demonstrations and festivals also points to this mimetic approach to their own personal history through the medium of mythological suggestion. They are, to a certain extent, practicing witchcraft. The anti-feminist metaphysics of sex kept conjuring up the magical demonic potential of femininity until this potential finally turned against it.

The second-wave women’s movement of the 1960s and 1970s reclaimed the figure of the witch as an icon of women’s power, women’s rage, and a target of male fear and misogynist violence—as Bovenschen, German literary critic and feminist, notes here.

2015
Genderchangers Academy
"What Is a Genderchanger?"

A genderchanger figures out how her computer works and she is not afraid of taking it apart. She can also change any card, plugin and unplug any devices without too much hassle. She is the witch and a knitter of modern times. She is a secretary with a ballpoint of steel. She is also kind to penguins and she lets her cat sit on the monitor.

A "gender changer" is an adapter that changes the “sex” of a computer port, here repurposed by the Genderchangers Academy, a women-only organization in Amsterdam dedicated to involving women in technology.

- all of the excerpts above are taken from The Verso Book of Feminism - an unprecedented collection of feminist voices from four millennia of global history. See all our Gothic Feminist reading here.



The Verso Book of Feminism
Edited by Jessie Kindig
Paperback
Ebook
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416 pages / October 2020 / 9781788739269
“A perfect bedside book for feminists. A commonplace book that is anything but commonplace.”
– Alix Kates Shulman

Throughout written history and across the world, women have protested the restrictions of gender and the limitations placed on women’s bodies and women’s lives. People—of any and no gender—have protested and theorised, penned manifestos and written poetry and songs, testified and lobbied, gone on strike and fomented revolution, quietly demanded that there is an “I” and loudly proclaimed that there is a “we.” The Verso Book of Feminism chronicles this history of defiance and tracks it around the world as it develops into a multivocal and unabashed force.

Global in scope, The Verso Book of Feminism shows the breadth of feminist protest and of feminist thinking, moving through the female poets of China’s Tang Dynasty to accounts of indigenous women in the Caribbean resisting Columbus’s expedition, British suffragists militating for the vote to the revolutionary pétroleuses of the 1848 Paris Commune, the first-century Trung sisters who fought for the independence of Nam Viet to women in 1980s Botswana fighting for equal protection under the law, from the erotica of the sixth century and the ninteenth century to radical queer politics in the twentieth and twenty-first.

 

Antarctica yields oldest fossils of giant birds with 21-foot wingspans

Two fossils from a group of extinct seabirds represent the largest individuals ever found

UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA - BERKELEY

Research News

 

IMAGE: AN ARTIST'S DEPICTION OF ANCIENT ALBATROSSES HARASSING A PELAGORNITHID -- WITH ITS FEARSOME TOOTHED BEAK -- AS PENGUINS FROLIC IN THE OCEANS AROUND ANTARCTICA 50 MILLION YEARS AGO. view more 

CREDIT: COPYRIGHT BRIAN CHOO

Fossils recovered from Antarctica in the 1980s represent the oldest giant members of an extinct group of birds that patrolled the southern oceans with wingspans of up to 21 feet that would dwarf the 11½-foot wingspan of today's largest bird, the wandering albatross.

Called pelagornithids, the birds filled a niche much like that of today's albatrosses and traveled widely over Earth's oceans for at least 60 million years. Though a much smaller pelagornithid fossil dates from 62 million years ago, one of the newly described fossils -- a 50 million-year-old portion of a bird's foot -- shows that the larger pelagornithids arose just after life rebounded from the mass extinction 65 million years ago, when the relatives of birds, the dinosaurs, went extinct. A second pelagornithid fossil, part of a jaw bone, dates from about 40 million years ago.

"Our fossil discovery, with its estimate of a 5-to-6-meter wingspan -- nearly 20 feet -- shows that birds evolved to a truly gigantic size relatively quickly after the extinction of the dinosaurs and ruled over the oceans for millions of years," said Peter Kloess, a graduate student at the University of California, Berkeley.

The last known pelagornithid is from 2.5 million years ago, a time of changing climate as Earth cooled, and the ice ages began.

Kloess is the lead author of a paper describing the fossil that appears this week in the open access journal Scientific Reports. His co-authors are Ashley Poust of the San Diego Natural History Museum and Thomas Stidham of the Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleoanthropology at the Chinese Academy of Sciences in Beijing. Both Poust and Stidham received their Ph.Ds from UC Berkeley.

CAPTION

This five-inch segment of fossilized jaw, which was discovered in Antarctica in the 1980s, dates from 40 million years ago. The skull of the bird would have been about two feet long, while the pseudoteeth, which were originally covered with horny keratin, would have been up to an inch long. At this scale, the bird's wingspan would have been 5 to 6 meters, or some 20 feet.

Birds with pseudoteeth

Pelagornithids are known as 'bony-toothed' birds because of the bony projections, or struts, on their jaws that resemble sharp-pointed teeth, though they are not true teeth, like those of humans and other mammals. The bony protrusions were covered by a horny material, keratin, which is like our fingernails. Called pseudoteeth, the struts helped the birds snag squid and fish from the sea as they soared for perhaps weeks at a time over much of Earth's oceans.

Large flying animals have periodically appeared on Earth, starting with the pterosaurs that flapped their leathery wings during the dinosaur era and reached wingspans of 33 feet. The pelagornithids came along to claim the wingspan record in the Cenozoic, after the mass extinction, and lived until about 2.5 million years ago. Around that same time, teratorns, now extinct, ruled the skies.

The birds, related to vultures, "evolved wingspans close to what we see in these bony-toothed birds (pelagornithids)," said Poust. "However, in terms of time, teratorns come in second place with their giant size, having evolved 40 million years after these pelagornithids lived. The extreme, giant size of these extinct birds is unsurpassed in ocean habitats,""

The fossils that the paleontologists describe are among many collected in the mid-1980s from Seymour Island, off the northernmost tip of the Antarctic Peninsula, by teams led by UC Riverside paleontologists. These finds were subsequently moved to the UC Museum of Paleontology at UC Berkeley.

Kloess stumbled across the specimens while poking around the collections as a newly arrived graduate student in 2015. He had obtained his master's degree from Cal State-Fullerton with a thesis on coastal marine birds of the Miocene era, between 17 million and 5 million years ago, that was based on specimens he found in museum collections, including those in the UCMP.

"I love going to collections and just finding treasures there," he said. "Somebody has called me a museum rat, and I take that as a badge of honor. I love scurrying around, finding things that people overlook."

Reviewing the original notes by former UC Riverside student Judd Case, now a professor at Eastern Washington University near Spokane, Kloess realized that the fossil foot bone -- a so-called tarsometatarsus -- came from an older geological formation than originally thought. That meant that the fossil was about 50 million years old instead of 40 million years old. It is the largest specimen known for the entire extinct group of pelagornithids.

The other rediscovered fossil, the middle portion of the lower jaw, has parts of its pseudoteeth preserved; they would have been up to 3 cm (1 inch) tall when the bird was alive. The approximately 12-cm (5-inch-) long preserved section of jaw came from a very large skull that would have been up to 60 cm (2 feet) long. Using measurements of the size and spacing of those teeth and analytical comparisons to other fossils of pelagornithids, the authors are able to show that this fragment came from an individual bird as big, if not bigger, than the largest known skeletons of the bony-toothed bird group.

A warm Antarctica was a bird playground

Fifty million years ago, Antarctica had a much warmer climate during the time known as the Eocene and was not the forbidding, icy continent we know today, Stidham noted. Alongside extinct land mammals, like marsupials and distant relatives of sloths and anteaters, a diversity of Antarctic birds occupied the land, sea and air.

The southern oceans were the playground for early penguin species, as well as extinct relatives of living ducks, ostriches, petrels and other bird groups, many of which lived on the islands of the Antarctic Peninsula. The new research documents that these extinct, predatory, large- and giant-sized bony-toothed birds were part of the Antarctic ecosystem for over 10 million years, flying side-by-side over the heads of swimming penguins.

"In a lifestyle likely similar to living albatrosses, the giant extinct pelagornithids, with their very long-pointed wings, would have flown widely over the ancient open seas, which had yet to be dominated by whales and seals, in search of squid, fish and other seafood to catch with their beaks lined with sharp pseudoteeth," said Stidham. "The big ones are nearly twice the size of albatrosses, and these bony-toothed birds would have been formidable predators that evolved to be at the top of their ecosystem."

Museum collections like those in the UCMP, and the people like Kloess, Poust and Stidham to mine them, are key to reconstructing these ancient habitats.

"Collections are vastly important, so making discoveries like this pelagornithid wouldn't have happened if we didn't have these specimens in the public trust, whether at UC Riverside or now at Berkeley," Kloess said. "The fact that they exist for researchers to look at and study has incredible value."

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The truth about 3 core lies of American fascism

Brandon Bradford
November 11, 2021

The US has a fascism problem. In its culture, in its hero worship, in its ideological makeup. Donald Trump was the culmination of that.

His supporters tried to whitewash the specifics, but they believed in a fascist hierarchy. There's no other explanation. Even for the current Republican Party, made of power-craving vultures whose only plan for America is inflaming white race hatreds and removing rights (voting, reproductive, et al.), January 6 should have been too far.

Fascism isn't something I say lightly.

Abuses of power and cults of personality can happen across the spectrum, but the current version of conservatism is something fascism easily maps over. The starting point on the right is "fascism now or fascism later," and it's intertwined with conversations about politics and society we have everyday. They are repeated and fundamentally false.

 A few ideas you've heard more than once:

You'll get more conservative as you get older.

I'm socially liberal but fiscally conservative.

We need a race-blind society.


These ideas build off of one another, because their foundations aren't rested on ideals, but ends.

You'll get more conservative …

It's generally believed the left is young and idealistic while the right is pragmatic and logical. The presumption is as generations age and accumulate wealth, they give up challenging political and social systems because it's in their best interest to keep things going as-is. I've always found this idea unconvincing for a few reasons.

What it means to be a conservative has shifted drastically as the far-right radicalization of the Republican Party has progressed to the mainstream over the last two decades.
Society has tended to get more liberal each generation. The arc of US history, in attempts to live up to the ideals we preach, is constantly moving left.
Society is more aware of systemic issues in education, finance, law, energy, and societal exploitation. The GOP has no plan for any of these. It hasn't for 20 years. Its stance is to figure it out when in office. Hope the Democrats actually put some plans in place while they pivot for more power. It's culture wars all the way down.

Maybe if Millenials and Gen Z had the same access to wealth, the same investment in wealth's political advantages and the same ignorance to the power structures that mold American society — maybe if all that, then yeah. Maybe they would skew more conservative as they age.

Maybe if they had been raised without the awareness of how power structures pool resources, and of how laws around housing and finance exacerbate compounded advantages coming from wealth.However, given that Millenials and Gen Z on average are three to four times poorer than Baby Boomers, grew up with multiple financial crises as well as a melting planet in an interconnected world, they are far less inclined to be skewing to the right. Which leads to:

"I'm socially liberal but …"

What is presumed is that equality is disconnected from equity. The modern generation knows that's false. There's no equality without equity and without access. In an intertwined, positive-sum economy, there is no such thing as socially liberal but fiscally conservative.

That phrase is about prioritizing money. Infrastructure they dislike? Waste. Infrastructure they like (i.e., that supports their own wealth)? Vital. It's an amorphous, 10,000-foot term that falls apart under any scrutiny. It justifies propping up defense contractors while cutting down education. It's a smokescreen and it always has been.

"We need a race-blind society"

You've heard this from the right in phrases like, "I don't believe race exists, so I'm not going to acknowledge it," and on the left in, "If we fix class issues, we will fix race issues." They never seem to get to how, because you can't fix problems made specifically with race in mind by ignoring that it exists. All their solutions require magic or time travel.

It's this: Completely change the past and the inequities it contains. Or this: Completely change the minds and experiences of everyone on the planet, all at once. A race-blind society without fixing engrained inequities ends up treating democratic baselines — like freedom, respect and empathy — as finite resources that those in power will dole out at their convenience. Or the "market" will dole out to those who are deserving of them. I call this trickle-down equality.

Trickle-down equality is the same magical nonsense as trickle-down economics. It focuses on changing society in superficial ways that ultimately protect the systems exacerbating the root problems.

On the right, trickle-down equality manifests itself in respectability politics — the model minority myth or means-testing food stamps. On the left, trickle-down equality deradicalizes and undermines the core goals of a movement to placate entrenched communities in power.

If you find yourself rising up to the subjectively elite class, they will placate your worries with comforts instead of community. This often happens with movement leaders who find themselves with a captive audience, a platform, but didn't find the amount of political success they hoped for. Slowly whitewashed down to be toothless representations of the political group they are now paid to speak for, as pundits and podcast hosts whose brand is "fight the power" in-between appearances on CNN panels, "both sidesing" slavery.

Real equality — real equity — is about specifics. About actionable, comprehensive plans. About making sure plans address issues in ways that really do raise all boats. In the sometimes fractured coalition that is the American left, a sizable portion, over decades of in-fighting, has been centered around policies that leave communities behind.

Move left

Fascism paves over nuanced challenges inherent in fixing our country's problems — by ensuring those out of power don't have a choice.

To combat this, we must try to be cognizant of our worldview. We must be targeted in our support. We must listen to community allies. Most importantly, we have to be aware of how conservatives control the conversation. We cannot meet a mentality that doesn't believe in a democratic society in the middle. You want to fight fascism and push America towards the values it preaches? Move left, friend. Move left.