ENDANGERED WHOOPING CRANES SUMMER IN ALBERTA

Rare whooping cranes raised for wild as COVID rules relax

NEW ORLEANS (AP) — A year after pandemic precautions all but halted work to raise the world’s most endangered cranes for release into the wild, the efforts are back in gear.

© Provided by The Canadian Press

Fourteen long-legged, fuzzy brown whooping crane chicks — one more than in 2019 — are following their parents or costumed surrogates in facilities from New Orleans to Calgary, Canada.

“We are thrilled to have bounced back in the wake of the pandemic,” said Richard Dunn, assistant curator of the Freeport-McMoRan Audubon Species Survival Center in New Orleans.

Adult whooping cranes are white with black wingtips and red caps, and at 5 feet high are the tallest birds in North America. Only about 800 exist, all descendants of about 15 that survived hunters and habitat loss in a flock that migrates between Texas and Alberta, Canada.

Last year, zoos and other places where the endangered birds are bred had to cut staff and reduce or eliminate use of artificial insemination, which requires close work by two or three people, and of having people in shape-disguising costumes raise chicks.

“One chick hatched out at the Calgary Zoo,” Dunn said. “And it had to stay in Calgary because they couldn't cross the border" to get it into either of two U.S.-only flocks.

Both a flock based in southwest Louisiana and one taught to migrate between Wisconsin and Florida by following ultralight aircraft were created in hopes of mitigating disaster should anything happen to the original border-crossing flock, now about 500 strong. The original flock is the only one that can survive without human assistance to increase its numbers.

Seven chicks hatched this year at the Species Survival Center.

Aurora, a male produced there by artificial insemination, is being brought up by his mother and “stepfather,” though his mother is temporarily hospitalized after chipping her beak on their enclosure's chain-link fence.

The other six — five hatched from eggs taken from the wild in Wisconsin and one from an egg bred at the International Crane Foundation in Baraboo, Wisconsin — are being raised by staffers.

Video: Rare cranes raised for wild as COVID rules relax (The Canadian Press)

The Milwaukee Zoo is raising one chick from an egg received from the crane foundation, and the foundation and the Calgary Zoo are each raising three chicks. The Milwaukee Zoo's chick will remain captive for breeding, Dunn said.

Dunn said Audubon and the crane foundation are the only facilities that use costume-rearing as well as having mated crane pairs bring up babies, and this year only Audubon did so.

Pandemic prospects were still uncertain and vaccines not yet readily available in February, when the foundation had to make its decisions, crane foundation aviculturist Kim Boardman said in an email. “We expect to costume and parent rear again in 2022,” she said.

Audubon’s keepers do checkups and other tasks the chicks won't appreciate while wearing regular clothes, to teach them that humans are to be avoided.

When teaching the chicks to hunt and other crane behaviors, they dress in baggy costumes with the neck of a crane-head hand puppet holding in one loose, black-tipped “wing.” The puppet demonstrates how to pick up insects from the ground, then passes the tasty morsels to a chick.

Although the chicks will be given identifying numbers such as L1-21 when they're released as mottled brown-and-white juveniles late this year, at Audubon they have names: Blizzard, Fog, Hurricane, Lava, Lightning, Tornado — the only female — and Aurora.

It's been a good year in the wild, too — Louisiana's 68 adults included a record 24 nesting pairs. They hatched a record 14 chicks. including two in Texas, and five have survived into July, said Sara Zimorski, a biologist with the Louisiana Department of Wildlife and Fisheries.

Youngsters that live long enough to fly get numbers starting with LW and the number assigned at hatching. One of Louisiana's five has been seen flying, and, along with a yearling is counted in the 70-member flock. If all five become fledglings, that will tie a record from 2018.

The Wisconsin-Florida flock numbers about 80, with about 120 birds in captivity. Seven eggs were taken from Wisconsin's flock to be raised in captivity, at least 14 more hatched in the wild and six of those survived through June.

Eggs are collected from early wild nests because parents will lay a second if the first doesn't hatch or the chicks die. Collections not only increase the number of chicks per year but in Wisconsin, help keep wild chicks from hatching when bloodsucking black flies are at their worst.

One of Louisiana's Texas-nesting pairs also hatched a chick last year — the first documented since the early 1900s, Zimorski said. Texas is the original flock’s winter home but those birds nest in Canada’s Wood Buffalo National Park.

This year's Texas survivor was hatched by first-time parents and is still very young, Zimorski wrote in an email. “It has a long ways to go!” she said.

Janet Mcconnaughey, The Associated Press

IN EGYPT THE WHOOPING CRANE IS KNOWN AS AN IBIS

Psychedelics Could Be a Medical Game-Changer—So I Tried Them for My Debilitating Headaches
Katherine Ellison

© Julien Pacaud Hallucinogenic drugs are showing promise in treating various health conditions. One writer explores their history and tries one for cluster headaches.

The beefy armed guard at the door of the Church of Entheogenic Plants chuckled at the sight of me, and I guessed what he might be thinking: What’s that 60-something lady doing here?

It wouldn’t have been unreasonable to wonder—and not just because everyone else waiting to pass through the metal detector that day last winter was roughly 40 years younger than I. Vice News has called the Oakland, CA, church, also known as Zide Door, America’s “most prominent ‘magic mushroom club,’ ” implying that its religious decor is a ruse to evade state and federal laws against selling psychedelic drugs. In accepting “contributions” for strains of ’shrooms with names like “Blue Meanies” and “Penis Envy,” Zide Door claims the same exemption that lets the Navajo legally ingest peyote, a traditional sacrament.

Ruse or not, that hasn’t offered much protection. In August 2020 police raided the premises and seized about $200,000 worth of cash and drugs. Pastor David Hodges told me he planned to sue the city government for violating his congregants’ religious freedom.

Potentially breaking the law was not my only concern when it came to trying magic mushrooms. I was an unusually suggestible child in the 1960s, when well-meaning parents scared their kids straight with stories about acid trippers who went blind from staring at the sun, mistook a baby for a turkey and stuffed it in the oven, or woke up convinced they’d turned into a glass of orange juice. In the late 1970s, when many of my college pals were experimenting, I declined even to smoke weed.
The pain in my brain

But last February, I was standing in front of the church out of desperation, hoping that psilocybin, the active ingredient in mushrooms, would relieve my excruciating pain. I was in my 12th week of a siege of cluster headaches, and I felt as if a Lilliputian with a tiny ice pick were jabbing at the back of my right eye for an hour each day, starting at 5 a.m.

Cluster headache is a rare disorder, estimated to affect roughly one or two in 1,000 people (migraines are at least 120 times as common). They’d plagued me for a month or so every two years since 2005, and usually prednisone knocked them out. But this time the only thing that brought even brief respite was—no joke—snorting cayenne pepper, which made me sneeze until I felt as if I might pass out. I also worried that it might be corroding the inside of my nose.

I’m far from the only person seeking out these long-demonized drugs for medical reasons. Using LSD, psilocybin, and MDMA (Ecstasy) to relieve suffering appears to be on the rise. While most self-experimenters use psychedelics to enhance well-being, a portion “self-medicate preexisting mental health conditions,” wrote psychiatrist Adam Winstock, M.D., in the Global Drug Survey. His annual polls of more than 500,000 people suggest that the use of LSD and psilocybin among respondents has roughly doubled over just the past five years. An honorary clinical professor at the Institute of Epidemiology at the University College of London, Dr. Winstock joins other experts in comparing the drugs favorably with prescription antidepressants. “The benefits are really clear for patients,” he says. “They want things that work, work quickly, and don’t require them to take medications every day.”

Americans’ interest in hallucinogens was supercharged by Michael Pollan’s 2018 best seller, How to Change Your Mind. A year later, Johns Hopkins launched a $17 million center to study a variety of illicit-drug therapies that showed promise in treating disorders such as depression, trauma, anorexia nervosa, tobacco addiction, and even post-treatment Lyme disease. Researchers are excited, even as psilocybin and LSD continue to be classified as Schedule I substances, which are seen as having no medical use, a high potential for abuse, and unacceptable risks even under professional supervision.

But if you’ve ever had cluster headaches, you know why they’ve been called“suicide headaches.” People in the midst of an attack are believed to die by suicide at roughly three times the rate of the general population, and sufferers describe the attacks as more painful than childbirth, gunshot wounds, and kidney stones, according to University of West Georgia psychology professor Larry Schor, Ph.D., who has conducted a large survey of cluster-headache patients (and suffers from them himself). On average, cluster-headache patients take more than five years to be properly diagnosed, after which even prescribed drugs may fail. Early on, I tried taking sumatriptan, a drug for migraine headaches, and at first it was helpful, but then made my headaches worse, sending me to an emergency room three times. As this latest attack stretched on, I knew I had to try something new

.

© Julien Pacaud woman with a headache on a bench

From hedonism to healing

Researchers first investigated the potential therapeutic benefits of psychedelic drugs in the 1950s and 1960s, when hundreds of Americans, including actors Cary Grant, Rita Moreno, and Jack Nicholson, joined a series of supervised experiments in California. (Grant credited acid with helping him control his alcohol use and cope with the long-unexplained disappearance of his mother when he was a child.) The backlash began after Harvard lecturer Timothy Leary and psychologist Richard Alpert (who became known as Ram Dass) championed wider use of LSD and psilocybin, with Leary’s call to “turn on, tune in, drop out” becoming a slogan of the counterculture. President Richard Nixon branded Leary “the most dangerous man in America” and in 1971 launched the war on drugs.

These days, the hope is that psychedelics may help the many millions of Americans who suffer from depression and other serious mental disorders, particularly when nothing else has worked. The National Institute of Mental Health estimates that 17.3 million U.S. adults have at least one major depressive episode each year, while up to 30% don’t receive sufficient help from mainstream anti-depressants. PTSD affects nearly 8 million people, including more than half a million U.S. veterans, while 40 million adults have anxiety. (Some of these rates were higher during the pandemic.) Researchers have been studying psychedelics to alleviate cluster headaches since 2006, but I learned of them through an activist patients’ group called Clusterbusters, which has touted their use since 2002.

Amid all the hoopla, some people may get a boost from just the idea of psychedelics: More than 60% of participants in a 2020 study said they’d experienced mind-altering effects after taking a placebo. Still, researchers have gathered sufficient evidence of psilocybin’s power to convince the FDA in 2019 to classify it as a“breakthrough therapy” for two types of severe depression. That fast-tracked it for approval, similarly to how esketamine (related to ketamine, an illegal party drug) was OK’d for treatment-resistant depression that same year.

Video: We're bring back these psychedelic drugs, 'but as a medical treatment against various forms of mental health issues': atai Life Sciences Founder (Yahoo! Finance)

The treatment of PTSD may be the next potential boon: Some scientists have found MDMA both safer and more effective in treating trauma than conventional antidepressants. In May, a major study published in Nature Medicine provided new evidence along these lines, and late last year Rick Doblin, executive director of the nonprofit Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies (MAPS), predicted that MDMA-assisted psycho-therapy for PTSD could win federal approval as soon as next year.

It’s not clear just how psychedelics might supply mental and emotional benefits—or, in my case, relieve physical pain—but scientists have some ideas. Studies suggest that psilocybin and other psychedelic drugs affect levels of serotonin, a neurotransmitter and hormone involved in regulating mood. MDMA is believed to activate receptors for oxytocin, a peptide linked to trust and bonding, possibly helping soften trauma sufferers’ defensive shells. So far the explosion of discoveries has involved small studies that need to be expanded and replicated. Yet the drumbeat of positive developments has likely helped increase official tolerance in some parts of the nation.
Risky business

Many jurisdictions are considering rewriting their laws on psychedelics. In May 2019, Denver became the first U.S. city to decriminalize psilocybin mushrooms, and Oakland, CA, followed suit. Voters in Oregon and Washington, DC, have approved the therapeutic use of psilocybin, while California lawmakers recently took up a bill to decriminalize some hallucinogens. The trend is familiar: Whereas barely 20 years ago cannabis was outlawed everywhere in the United States, today 36 states and four territories have legalized it for medicinal purposes. (Decriminalization doesn’t make a drug legal. It simply reduces penalties associated with it. Selling psychedelics is still illegal everywhere, and possession of them can lead to federal prosecution that could result in up to a year in prison and $1,000 or more in fines.)

Of course, breaking the law isn’t the only risk involved. Some recreational magic mushroom users have reported frightening bad trips, panic attacks, seizures, and hospitalizations. Scientists and drug aficionados alike warn against casual use, and participants in psychedelic studies to date have all been carefully screened and supervised, with researchers rigorously excluding subjects with preexisting conditions such as heart trouble, schizophrenia, and bipolar disorder. “I really worry about people in a time of crisis choosing to take psychedelics without supervision and making themselves worse,” says Dr. Winstock, whose surveys indicate that approximately 8% of LSD and psilocybin users had a bad experience over the past year.
Targeting my headaches

Still, in reporting a story for the Washington Post, I learned that many scientists regard psilocybin as one of the least toxic and addictive of all recreational drugs, and that the reports of bad trips involved much larger doses than the therapeutic amount for my cluster headaches. In severe pain, I decided to give it a try.

“Psilocybin’s chemical structure is similar to melatonin’s,” says Yale University neurologist Emanuelle Schindler, M.D., Ph.D., referring to a hormone that regulates circadian rhythm and is taken supplementally for insomnia as well as headache prevention. It is also akin to triptans, which are prescribed to treat one headache at a time. “Psilocybin has a longer-term effect, though,” notes Dr. Schindler, who is currently working on a study on its effects for cluster headaches.

Over the years, Clusterbusters members have offered invaluable support to Dr. Schindler and other scientists, recruiting patients for their studies and providing them with information from their self-treatment with psychedelics. In 2004, the group convinced Harvard researchers to conduct a pioneering study on psilocybin and LSD. The Harvard team gathered testimonies from 53 cluster-headache patients, most of whom said the drugs had helped. John Halpern, M.D., a psychiatrist who led the Harvard study, told me he has since seen many patients go from being “incapacitated” to “having as close to a functional cure as you can get.” The two drugs may prove to be “the best we have to offer” to cluster-headache patients, he adds, “although legally we can’t offer them.”

I followed Clusterbusters’ recommended protocol of taking small amounts of psilocybin—more than microdoses, but short of what would lead to tripping—brewed in a multi-ingredient tea containing lemon, honey, vitamin C, and a little instant coffee, with three doses spaced five days apart. The first time I didn’t feel anything remarkable until the next

morning, when I had a more-awful-than-usual headache: the “slap-back” side effect the website had warned me to expect. Over the next five days, however, I noticed that there were two days when I didn’t have a headache at all.

Maybe a little overconfident, I overestimated with my second dose. Twenty minutes after sipping the tea, I found myself staring for half an hour at our backyard pistache tree, which seemed to have grown beckoning silvery branches. I felt as if I could see the tree breathing, which was wondrous. I was back to myself within a couple of hours, and the next morning I had another slap-back headache. But the two mornings after that—nothing. For the rest of the week, the headaches were milder.

Then I took my third dose, measuring carefully this time. The only psychedelic-ish effect that I noticed—really noticed—was that my dog’s face was utterly gorgeous. Then I fell asleep next to my husband. I woke up to yet another fierce headache the next morning, but the morning after that I had zero pain. Zero again the next day, and the next. Two months have now passed without my having a single headache.

© Julien Pacaud scientist researching psychedelics

Increasing availability

As the psychedelic-therapy revolution matures, there have been calls to ensure that its potentially powerful benefits are accessible to all. That will require some significant change considering that Black people are much more likely than white people like me to be arrested for possession of any drug, even after decriminalization.

“Equity of access to these drugs will address the burden of disease we know is greatest among people of lower socio-economic status, who have higher rates of depression and PTSD,” says Dr. Winstock. MAPS has trained scores of therapists of color to prepare for the time when treatment with them becomes legal.

In the meantime, research continues. “It doesn’t strike me as weird that the same molecule used by someone in a bedroom listening to Pink Floyd can also be a healing drug,” says Dr. Winstock. He says that psychedelics’ capacity to “disrupt existing brain networks and allow new pathways and new ways of thinking is why they can have wide potential in so many different conditions.”

As for me, I can’t say whether my cluster-headache siege ended on its own or whether using ’shrooms really did do the trick. But I do know that I’ve got a plan if the headaches return—and that I’ll never look at our pistache tree the same way again.

This article originally appeared in the August 2021 issue of Prevention.

Watching for birds & diversity: Audubon groups pledge change


BOSTON (AP) — When Boston socialites Minna Hall and Harriet Hemenway sought to end the slaughter of birds in the name of 19th century high fashion, they picked a logical namesake for their cause: John James Audubon, a naturalist celebrated for his stunning watercolors of American birds.

© Provided by The Canadian Press

Now, 125 years after the founding of the Massachusetts Audubon Society for the Protection of Birds, the organization and the nearly 500 Audubon chapters nationwide it helped inspire are reckoning with another side of Audubon’s life: He was also a slaveholder and staunch opponent of abolition.

In the year-plus since George Floyd was killed by Minneapolis police, Audubon chapters have pledged to do more to atone for the past, including diversifying their staff and finding ways to make natural spaces more welcoming to people of color. It’s part of a broader reckoning within the wider environmental movement, which for years has faced criticism for its racist origins and lack of diversity.

“At this point, if people are not part of what they’re trying to protect, that’s an issue,” said Debbie Njai, an Illinois resident who founded the outdoor group BlackPeopleWhoHike.

The Mass Audubon published an essay last fall acknowledging how Audubon’s family's wealth came in large part from running a Caribbean sugar plantation. It has also pledged to have people of color make up 25% of its board of directors, and hopes to open more wildlife sanctuaries in communities of color.

The National Audubon Society, which is based in New York and is separate from the Mass Audubon, has similarly delved into its namesake’s legacy in a series of essays.

And the Sierra Club publicly apologized last July for the racist views of its founder, John Muir, who openly dismissed American Indians as dirty savages. The Oakland-based group has also committed $5 million to boost its environmental justice work and recently voiced support for Black reparations.

Environmental groups understand the future of their movement hinges on changing their white, elitist reputation, said David O’Neill, president of the Mass Audubon.

“If we don’t get younger and we don’t get more diverse, we’re not going to have people to advocate on behalf of nature, and that’s not good for anyone,” he said during a recent visit to the group’s Boston Nature Center, an urban wildlife sanctuary in a majority Black neighborhood that it hopes to replicate in other Massachusetts communities of color.

Green organizations appear to be making progress on improving staff diversity, but their leadership remains predominantly white, said Andres Jimenez, head of Green 2.0, a Washington, D.C., group that puts out an annual report card on diversity in the environmental sector.

In its most recent report, Green 2.0 found that the nation’s largest green groups added, on average, six people of color to their staff, two to their senior management and one to their board of directors between 2017 and 2020.

“We need to see that change up top to move the ball in an accelerated way," Jimenez said.



Bird conservation brought the country’s latest racial reckoning to the environmental movement’s doorsteps, and, in many ways, it’s where the calls for change are most acutely felt.

There's a growing campaign, for example, to drop the eponyms of birds that honor slaveholders and white supremacists — Bird Names for Birds.

The catalyst was a dispute between a Black birdwatcher and a white woman with her dog in New York’s Central Park that went viral last summer, sparking #BlackBirdersWeek and other similar efforts to highlight Black nature enthusiasts and the discrimination and other challenges they face in the outdoors.

Christian Cooper, the birder at the center of that controversy, stressed organizations like the Audubon have been taking steps to address diversity long before his viral moment, even if some have yielded mixed results.

A board member with the New York City Audubon Society, Cooper said his chapter has been trying to draw more diverse members through modest events like last month's Juneteenth birdwatching and potluck picnic.

“The organizations that are having the most success are those that are trying new things,” Cooper said. “The reality is that fixing centuries of ingrained racial bias as it manifests in the environmental movement is hard and uncomfortable work."

At the National Audubon Society, the racial reckoning has boiled over into staff unrest.

Spurred by complaints of a toxic workplace, an outside audit concluded in April that a “culture of retaliation, fear, and antagonism toward women and people of color" existed at the organization. Longtime CEO David Yarnold swiftly resigned.

Tykee James, who serves as the organization’s government affairs officer in Washington, is among the staffers pushing to form a labor union to address diversity and other workplace problems. He also wants the Audubon to be more vocal in publicly advocating for environmental justice causes.

“The culture that we’ve had in this organization hasn’t been one for workers of color, hasn’t been one for women, hasn’t been one for nonbinary folks,” James said.

Matt Smelser, a spokesperson for the Audubon Society, referred to a May statement from the group, which said “bullying and other bad behavior” won't be tolerated going forward. The organization also continues to search for a permanent CEO and has committed to remaining neutral in the unionization efforts, he added.

Back at the Mass Audubon, O’Neill says the organization’s board has added new members so that 17% of them are people of color. The staff of more than 950 is about 65% white.

Scott Edwards, an ornithologist at Harvard, said the jury’s still out on whether these early steps are enough. Some green groups will have to re-imagine their mission and pivot to more urban populations, he said.

“Organizations will have to think creatively about how to get communities of color more connected with nature,” said Edwards, who is Black. “Show them that their voices are needed and wanted. Make them feel included in the larger effort of conservation.”

Mamie Parker, who worked for decades at the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and was its first Black regional director, advises environmental groups to approach racial equity like a conservation challenge.

“When you plant a tree to restore a forest or take care of bald eagles to rebuild their population,” the retired biologist from Dulles, Virginia, said, "it takes years before those efforts bear fruit.”

Philip Marcelo, The Associated Press

ALBERTA 

THE P IN UCP IS FOR PURITAN

Advocates say detox centre move to city's edge puts people at risk

AHS leaders made the decision without consulting clients, families or employees.

Janet French 

© Craig Ryan/CBC News AHS plans to move the Addiction Recovery Centre out of downtown Edmonton into Alberta Hospital on the northeast outskirts of the city

A plan to move one of Edmonton's two downtown detoxification centres to Alberta Hospital Edmonton indefinitely is troubling to some advocates for people dependent on drugs and alcohol.

Alberta Health Services (AHS) says imminent construction of the west leg of the Valley Line LRT will have a negative effect on patient care at the Addiction Recovery Centre (ARC) at 103rd Avenue and 107th Street.

The city is building a new station steps away from the centre, where staff supervise and treat up to 38 people going through addiction withdrawal.

Although a statement from AHS said there are benefits to moving the service to the hospital in Edmonton's far northeast, advocates say they have grave concerns.

Angie Staines said she felt "absolute fear" when she heard of AHS's plans to relocate the service this fall.

Her son Brandon, 26, has been an opioid user for nine years. She's lost count of the number of times he's overdosed. She's tried to get him into ARC before, and says he was turned away every time due to lack of space.

There's a daily one-hour window when potential clients can line up outside for assessment to see if they qualify for a bed.

She said it's illogical to move the service out of downtown, where vulnerable people and many of the agencies who serve them are located.

She said many clients would have no way to get to Alberta Hospital, which is north of 167 Avenue on 18th Street NW.

"It makes absolutely no sense," Staines said. "People will die because of this decision."

She said AHS leaders made the decision without consulting clients, families or employees.

"We need to meet these people where they are at," Staines said. "They are human beings. And frankly, I am sick and tired of my son's life not mattering because he is a drug user."

The George Spady Centre, about one kilometre from ARC's present site, also runs a 35-bed medical detox service.

An AHS statement says ARC takes both scheduled admissions and walk ins, and that many clients are transported to the centre by friends, family or organizations. Alberta Hospital also has shuttles the program could use.

Clients come from all over Edmonton and beyond city limits, AHS said — nearly a fifth are homeless.

The new space in Alberta Hospital's Building 12 would allow the program to run up to 55 detox beds on the same budget, give clients more privacy and permit more intake time flexibility, the statement said.

An ARC employee who works with patients said there are also risks to the move. CBC is not identifying the employee for fear she will lose her job for speaking out.

Colleagues have used Naloxone kits while people were standing outside hoping to be accepted, she said.

"I can't tell you how many lives we've saved during those admission times."© Craig Ryan/CBC News Spaces in the ARC detox program are limited. People line up outside every day to see if they can be admitted to the program.

Although not a drop-in centre, ARC is a safe place people can turn to in a crisis, she said. People come to ask for blankets or for a staff member to call 9-1-1 during emergencies, she said.

Relocating the detox centre to a psychiatric hospital may also exacerbate the stigma of seeking help, she said.

"It's very frightening to think, 'They're sending me to a mental institution because I'm an alcoholic,'" she said. "Most people won't go."

AHS said the move is for an undetermined period of time. Construction on the west LRT line is expected to continue until 2026 or 2027. The organization's statement was also unclear about whether the service will return to its current site.

"AHS is conducting an analysis to determine future locations for this program," it said.

Ousted Alberta MLA Pat Rehn invited back into UCP fold

3

© Facebook Pat Rehn, the MLA for Lesser Slave Lake, was also criticized for travelling to Mexico during COVID-19 travel restrictions last winter.

Lesser Slave Lake MLA Pat Rehn has been invited back into Alberta's United Conservative Party caucus five months after he was kicked out for being absent from his constituency.

Caucus chair Nathan Neudorf announced the decision in a press release Wednesday.

"Since his removal from caucus, Rehn has worked tirelessly to rebuild trust with local families, businesses, elected officials and Indigenous leaders," Neudorf said in the release.

"[Rehn] has been doing an incredible amount of work to rebuild trust and get things done in his constituency."

Neudorf said the UCP received letters from several municipalities and the Lesser Slave Lake Constituency Association, requesting Rehn be allowed to rejoin caucus

When CBC News asked for the letters, UCP caucus spokesperson Tim Gerwing sent a list of individuals who supported the decision.

The list includes reeves, councillors and local businesspeople but no municipalities as a whole.

Slave Lake Mayor Tyler Warman said neither he nor his council was consulted about the decision. They did not send a letter of endorsement.

"We found out just the same time as everybody else did," Warman said. "And so, a little bit of shock for sure, a little bit of puzzlement."

Warman had called for Rehn's resignation in January, saying Rehn was absent for meetings with local leaders and UCP cabinet ministers about important regional issues.

Rehn has been sitting as an independent MLA since Premier Jason Kenney kicked him out of caucus in January for frequently being absent from his constituency.

Rehn's expense claims for the first part of 2020 showed he spent more time in Edmonton than in Lesser Slave Lake.

His per diem expenses showed he bought meals in Edmonton for most of May, most of June and every day in July, including weekends. The legislature only sat for five days in May.

At the time, Rehn said on Facebook that an assistant had made some errors in recording meal allowances, which he wasn't aware of. He apologized and said he wouldn't claim any meal allowances in 2021.

In the press release Wednesday, Rehn said he was humbled to be given a second chance in Lesser Slave Lake.

"The past six months have been eye-opening to me, as I worked to regain the trust and confidence of my constituents. It was clear that I was not living up to expectations in representing Lesser Slave Lake, and for that I am sorry."
Premier supports decision

In January, Kenney had strong words of reprimand for the MLA, stating that Rehn would be barred from running for the UCP in the future.

Kenney's press secretary Jerrica Goodwin said Wednesday the premier supports the caucus decision to invite Rehn back. Goodwin did not answer whether Rehn will be allowed to run in the next provincial election under the UCP banner.

Rehn was also caught going to Mexico over the winter holidays despite COVID-19 travel restrictions in place. He was one of six Alberta MLAs who travelled outside the country during this time.

Opposition NDP deputy leader Sarah Hoffman rebuked Kenney and the UCP for letting Rehn back in to caucus.

"He billed taxpayers for months' worth of expenses for extended stays in Edmonton," Hoffman said in a press release, adding that Rehn had failed to show up to serve his electorate.

Hoffman said Rehn's behaviour undermined health orders and the government's response to the pandemic, calling the caucus decision another example of Kenney's inability to lead

Humphrey Bogart’s Son Addresses Similarities Between ‘Jungle Cruise’ & ‘The African Queen’

"But 70 years later, they probably won't be doing a rerelease of 'Jungle Cruise'."

Brent Furdyk 

Ask any film buff to identify the title of a movie in which a macho boat captain is hired by a prim, educated woman to take her to a remote destination up perilous river on run-down steamboat and the answer that's likely to be given is "The African Queen", the 1951 classic starring Humphrey Bogart and Katharine Hepburn.

© Disney+ / The Everett Collection/CPImages Jungle Cruise - The African Queen

Disney's upcoming "Jungle Cruise" shares a similar storyline, with "intrepid researcher Dr. Lily Houghton (Emily Blunt)" enlisting the "questionable services" of "wisecracking skipper Frank Wolff" to "guide her downriver on La Quila — his ramshackle-but-charming boat."

In an interview with Entertainment Weekly, Bogart's son, Stephen Bogart, addresses the similarities between the two movies, particularly given that "The African Queen" will be returning to the big screen this year for a special rerelease in honour of the film's 70th anniversary.

RELATED: Dwayne Johnson & Emily Blunt Ride The ‘Jungle Cruise’ In New Disney Trailer

"The Rock is fine. He's got a great personality. He seems like a very good person. I think he works hard; he cares about it, and I'll go see the movie. It'll be fun. But I never thought of it as a continuation, nor do I think Dwayne Johnson is trying to be Humphrey Bogart, that'd be tough," Bogart told EW.

"I don't want to disparage [anyone]," he said diplomatically when asked to compare the two films. "But 70 years later, they probably won't be doing a rerelease of 'Jungle Cruise'."

Disney’s “Jungle Cruise” releases in theatres and on Disney+ with Premier Access on July 30.

Dogecoin co-creator Jackson Palmer has called "cryptocurrency an inherently 

right-wing technology."

SHARE AND QUOTE OFTEN!

© Yuriko Nakao/Getty DogeCoin co-creator Jackson Palmer has called "cryptocurrency is an inherently right-wing" technology. In this photo illustration, visual representations of digital cryptocurrencies, Dogecoin and Bitcoin are arranged on January 29, 2021 in Katwijk, Netherlands.

"After years of studying it, I believe that cryptocurrency is an inherently right-wing, hyper-capitalistic technology built primarily to amplify the wealth of its proponents through a combination of tax avoidance, diminished regulatory oversight and artificially enforced scarcity," Palmer wrote in a Twitter thread posted Wednesday afternoon.

"Despite claims of 'decentralization'," he continued, "the cryptocurrency industry is controlled by a powerful cartel of wealthy figures who, with time, have evolved to incorporate many of the same institutions tied to the existing centralized financial system they supposedly set out to replace."

Palmer went on to say that the cryptocurrency industry uses "shady business connections, bought influencers and pay-for-play media outlets" to create a cult-like belief that one can "get rich quick" from the currency. This allows the industry to "extract new money from the financially desperate and naive," he added.

He added that the industry's use of technology prevents others from auditing, taxing or regulating the industry in ways that could prevent corruption, fraud and inequality. "This is the type of dangerous 'free for all' capitalism cryptocurrency was unfortunately architected to facilitate since its inception," he wrote.

Palmer also wrote that he no longer engages in public discussions about cryptocurrency because powerful leaders and retailers in the industry will "smear" any "modest critique" of the technology rather than engage in a "good-faith debate" or "grounded conversation."

While he said that new technology can make the world a better place, he said it cannot when it is "decoupled from its inherent politics or societal consequences."

Palmer and Billy Markus began the Dogecoin cryptocurrency in 2013 as a joke. The two software engineers sought to poke fun at cryptocurrencies by naming the currency after "Doge," a popular meme. The meme uses an image of Kabosu, a real-life Japanese Shiba Inu dog, and superimposes broken English exclamations in multicolored Comic Sans font on top of it, usually to humorously express admiration or discomfort.

While other cryptocurrencies, like Bitcoin and Ethereum, were created to only be available in limited quantities, Dogecoin was created to be widely available. Nearly 10,000 new Dogecoins are mined every minute, according to Coinbase, one of the United States' five most popular exchange websites.

Dogecoin has fallen in price over the past couple of months following its all-time high of $0.73 on May 8, CoinMarketCap data shows. As of July 14, Dogecoin has a price of $0.197.

Newsweek contacted Markus for comment but did not hear back before publication time.

IT IS PRONOUNCED DOGGIE NOT DO-GEE

DISASTER CAPITALI$M

208 years for Mexican expert over quake-collapsed school


MEXICO CITY (AP) — A judge sentenced a Mexican building expert to 208 years in prison Wednesday for signing off on defective remodeling work blamed in the collapse of school that killed 26 people during a 2017 earthquake.

© Provided by The Canadian Press

It was the longest sentence yet handed down in relation to the magnitude 7.1 quake of Sept. 19, 2017, though it is largely symbolic, because Mexico does not permit life imprisonment and limits sentences to 60 years.


City prosecutors said Juan Mario Velarde, the “responsible director” of the remodeling, was convicted of 26 counts of homicide. He is one of hundreds of private experts who are paid to oversee safety and standards on building sites.

In 2020, the owner and director of the private elementary school that collapsed in Mexico City was sentenced to 31 years in prison. That woman, Mónica García Villegas, was convicted of charges equivalent to manslaughter.

Much of the Enrique Rebsamen school fell, killing 19 students and seven adults, all employees of the school.

García Villegas was prosecuted because officials said her decision to improperly build an apartment atop part of the school contributed to its collapse.

As in other cases, authorities apparently failed to enforce building and operation regulations prior to the quake, which killed a total of 228 people in the capital and 141 others in nearby states.

Israel’s killer robots go on display at Greek weapons fair


David Cronin

Rights and Accountability 

15 July 2021

Was Yair Lapid (left) acting as a salesperson for Israel’s weapons when he visited Europe this week? (NATO)

There was talk of a “fresh start” when Yair Lapid visited Brussels this week.

Israel’s foreign minister was on a mission to “reboot” relations with Europe.

But behind his fresh facade lurked something rotten and sinister.

Lapid wasn’t simply visiting to charm those EU representatives who are always impressed by smartly dressed liberals. He also paid a trip to the headquarters of NATO, a military alliance dominated by the US.

A tweet from Alon Ushpiz, the top official in Israel’s foreign ministry indicated that Lapid was making a sales pitch. The discussions with NATO’s administration were part of a “continuous effort to strengthen our cooperation first and foremost on technology,” Ushpiz stated.

The technology to which he refers has often been tested on Palestinians.
Israel’s attack on Gaza during May offered an opportunity to expand the use of advanced military equipment.

A recent article in Defense Update – a website promoting Israel’s war industry – explains how the attack was facilitated by the latest version of the Elbit Systems’ Digital Army Program.
The program gathers information about “all activities related to enemy actions.” By doing so, the Israeli military could “accelerate the targeting process,” the article states.


Killing faster?

During its May offensive, Israel deliberately targeted civilian infrastructure and carried out massacres of civilians.

Moreover, Israel regards millions of Palestinians as enemies. Back in 2007, Israel designated the entire Gaza Strip as a “hostile entity.”

So what is a weapons trade website really saying when it enthuses about how technology can “accelerate the targeting process”? Does it mean that Israel can now kill children and other non-combatants faster than before?

Elbit is Israel’s top weapons firm.

Since the May attack, Elbit has proven that it is attractive to investors by raising almost $580 million worth of capital in Tel Aviv. Elbit will use some of this money to expand its business in the US and Europe, the firm has stated.

As part of efforts to boost exports, Elbit is now taking part in Defence Exhibition Athens. That fair is sponsored by the Greek government, which has become a major client of Elbit in recent years.
Elbit is one of many Israeli firms participating in the fair.
Rafael, the main firm behind Iron Done – a system for intercepting rockets fired by Palestinian resistance fighters – will be showcasing its Sea Breaker “autonomous weapon system.”
Autonomous weapon systems are more commonly known as “killer robots.” Rafael boasts of how Sea Breaker offers “effective warhead lethality” and how it uses artificial intelligence technolgy that has been “combat proven.”


“Combat proven” is a euphemism for equipment that has already been tried out in military attacks. If Rafael’s boast is accurate, it implies that Israel has begun using artificial intelligence and related technology against Palestinians – as The Jerusalem Post has reported.

Blood-stained brand

The Athens fair is one of several events in Europe where Israel’s weapons traders enjoy a hearty welcome.

In October, Paris will play host to Milipol, an exhibition of “homeland security” equipment.

Israel Weapon Industries has long booked a stall.

That firm advertises how its rifles are “developed in close cooperation” with Israel’s military. It does not spell out how those firearms enabled snipers to gun down participants in Gaza’s Great March of Return during 2018.

NSO Group – a firm producing malware for spying on journalists – is another Israeli exhibitor expected at Milipol.

So is Wintego, which assists government agencies in extracting “secured data and chats” from mobile phones.

By making ultra-modern tools for spying and killing, Israel markets itself as passionate about innovation. And elites in the West can always be relied on to endorse any Israeli brand, keeping hush about how it is stained with Palestinian blood.

David Cronin's blog

Amazon’s Greatest Weapon Against Unions: Worker Turnover

Chris Smalls made a lot of friends in his first year working at an Amazon warehouse in 2015. But within a matter of months, most of them were gone.

“That’s the name of Amazon’s game: Hire and fire,” said Smalls, 32. “They know that people don’t want to be here long, that these jobs break you down physically and mentally.”

Smalls would know better than most. Amazon terminated him last March after he led a walkout at his Staten Island, New York, warehouse over safety concerns. Now Smalls has started an independent effort to organize a union at that facility, battling the same force he saw from the inside: Amazon’s high turnover rate.

“It’s definitely one way to avoid a union,” he said.

After successfully beating back a union drive at its Alabama warehouse in April, the world’s largest online retailer is facing a wave of worker activism in the U.S. and abroad. Both established labor unions and other worker groups are trying to organize employees inside Amazon’s ever-growing network of fulfillment centers and delivery hubs.

But whatever strategies the organizers deploy, they must contend with the company’s intimidating churn rate.

Amazon does not release data on the turnover in its warehouses and declined to do so for this story. But the observations of workers like Smalls square with a 2020 analysis from the National Employment Law Project, which found that the turnover rate in the local warehouse industry increases significantly when Amazon comes to town. Warehouse churn more than doubled in several California counties after Amazon facilities opened, averaging more than 100%.

The Seattle Times conducted its own analysis of Amazon’s workforce data last year, putting the company’s turnover at 111% during the pandemic. A New York Times investigation published this week put the figure even higher, at 150%, showing that Amazon was shedding 3% of its workers every week before the pandemic began.

A turnover rate above 100% doesn’t mean every single worker quits or gets fired in a year: It means the number of workers who leave is greater than the average number of workers employed during the same time period. So while some workers may last years, others last days. Under a turnover rate of 100%, every theoretical position inside the warehouse would turn over once in a year, on average.

That has huge implications for organizing.

Before the National Labor Relations Board schedules an election, a union must secure signed union authorization cards from at least 30% of the workers in an expected bargaining unit. In reality, a union wants far more than that ― ideally two-thirds or greater ― since they will need to win a majority of votes cast, and the employer may launch an anti-union campaign that weakens support.

At an Amazon warehouse, high turnover means a union would be losing cards every day as workers leave and new employees unfamiliar with the campaign replace them. Even if the union manages to win an election, high turnover could hurt its position at the bargaining table if some of the most active organizers have quit or been fired. And churn could even help the employer purge the union from the facility by convincing newer workers to decertify it.



‘It Is By Design’


High turnover has bedeviled unions for as long they’ve been organizing U.S. workers, but the vastness of Amazon’s workforce presents extreme challenges.

“It’s a big commitment for a worker to decide to start organizing with their coworkers,” said Irene Tung, who co-authored the NELP report. “And it may take years before they see a first contract.”

On a more fundamental level, high turnover makes it harder to build solidarity. Those who come to see the warehouse as just a place to get a paycheck for a few months would feel less invested in the job, or a campaign to improve it. Workers who barely know one another would be less likely to trust each other or take risks together.

Gene Bruskin, a longtime labor organizer, said Amazon’s turnover also creates basic logistical hurdles as workers try to establish networks. Bruskin is in regular touch with Amazon workers who are trying to organize their warehouses.

“When you’re trying to build a committee and sort of track leadership, map the place out and figure out where your good connections are, you just can’t count on that,” Bruskin said. “The best you can do, knowing that you’re going to lose a lot of folks, is to try and create a culture of solidarity and activity … so that when somebody [new] comes in they sort of pick up the vibe. You just can’t be as dependent on a particular group of people.”


Bruskin said one worker he knows recently lost a longtime organizing ally when he quit Amazon. She was devastated by his departure because he had so much Amazon experience relative to other workers.

“A ‘long time’ there in Amazon is people who’ve been there more than a couple years,” Bruskin said.

The turnover in Amazon warehouses stems partly from the seasonal nature of the business. Amazon fills its greatest share of orders in the runup to the holidays, during the period known as “peak.” The company staffs up accordingly, then drops workers as post-peak volume dictates.

But many workers quit or get fired because they can’t keep up with Amazon’s pace. The company tracks workers’ productivity through scanners and enforces a time-off-task policy that dings them for time away from their duties. (Amazon recently tweaked that controversial policy in a way the company said would make it less punitive.) Plenty of others likely leave because they get hurt.

One worker at a fulfillment center in the Midwest, who spoke on condition of anonymity for fear of retaliation, said a lot of workers at their facility end up quitting because of inattentive managers and unreasonable expectations. It seems that relatively few workers who opened the facility several years ago remain on the job. The worker said their facility seems to lose as many “pickers” a week as it can manage to bring on board.




Amazon openly encourages some of the turnover, offering employees annual buyouts to leave the company if they believe Amazon isn’t right for them. Under the pay-to-quit program, workers with a year under their belts are eligible for $2,000 or more to leave under the condition they can never return.

But the turnover is also part of the company’s founding ethos. According to the recent Times report, Amazon founder and outgoing CEO Jeff Bezos believed a long-tenured workforce amounted to a “march to mediocrity,” and preferred that the hourly labor at the company’s foundation be done on a short-term basis.

Turnover can be expensive for employers, since they have to constantly hire and train new workers who, for at least a period, will be less productive than the ones leaving. But labor experts say a company of Amazon’s size and sophistication would not have high churn if it didn’t prefer it that way.

Joseph McCartin, a historian and director of Georgetown University’s Kalmanovitz Initiative for Labor and the Working Poor, said industrial titans a century ago were concerned about the toll turnover was taking on their operations. He said it was a prime motivator behind Henry Ford’s famous $5-a-day compact with workers, which increased wages significantly in 1914. According to McCartin, lower turnover eventually helped foment the pre-World War II union organizing boom, since it helped stabilize workers within their industries.

But in recent years, McCartin said management philosophy at many companies has moved in the other direction, as employers wield turnover to better control the workforce. Amazon, he said, may exemplify that calculation.

“For the past 20 years or so we’ve had more and more employers who’ve gone full circle to the model that used to exist at the turn of the last century ― the model that people like Henry Ford started to break from, [the idea] that turnover actually works for us,” McCartin said.


Nelson Lichtenstein, a labor historian at the University of California, Santa Barbara, said modern employers like Amazon can mitigate the traditional expenses of turnover thanks to technology that cuts down on the costs of training. Amazon workers, after all, are largely managed by algorithms.

“It is by design,” Lichtenstein said. “They do want turnover. They don’t talk about it, but they want it.”


‘Exploiting It On A Larger Scale’

Amazon’s high turnover shaped some of the most critical decisions made by the Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union in their unsuccessful effort to unionize an Amazon facility in Bessemer, Alabama, earlier this year.

The union assumed they were losing at least 60 cards per week — and perhaps many more — due to turnover among the workforce of nearly 6,000. That was one reason they did not resist Amazon’s effort at the NLRB to greatly expand the bargaining unit, even though it would disadvantage the union: They worried that if litigation delayed the election then turnover would naturally whittle their support.

As the lead organizer told HuffPost at the time, “You’ll never deep-organize a workplace that has 100% turnover. You’ll just chase your tail.”


The Bessemer facility had been open for less than a year and one worker recalled seeing an influx of hires in the runup to the vote. The addition of new workers would have helped diffuse union support inside the facility and put more work on organizers’ plates.

“These new people came into a building full of [Amazon] banners,” said the worker, who spoke on condition of anonymity because she supported the union effort. “I’m sure they had an orientation that told them how great Amazon was.”

Workers ultimately rejected unionization by a lopsided count of 1,798 to 738, with many voters saying they did not see a need for a union there. (There were an additional 505 challenged ballots that went unopened and may have favored the RWDSU.)

The high turnover raises questions about whether traditional union elections are worth pursuing at Amazon warehouses, especially when the company has shown its willingness to invest heavily in anti-union campaigns. In many cases, Amazon’s lawyering could delay a union election long enough that turnover would erode union support and essentially take care of the problem.

The Teamsters have gone public with an effort to unionize Amazon’s workforce, but the union said it is not beholden to going the traditional NLRB route of gathering signed cards and petitioning the labor board for an election. A Teamsters local that’s organizing in Iowa has already said it is considering recognition strikes, where workers not yet formally unionized would carry out work stoppages in an effort to pressure the company into bargaining.

Randy Korgan, national director of the Teamsters’ Amazon campaign, said it’s important to view the company’s high turnover in the broader context of the warehouse industry. Working conditions in the field were deteriorating well before Amazon’s era of dominance, Korgan said, pointing to the use of temporary workers in facilities operated by companies like Walmart, especially in major logistics hubs like California’s Inland Empire.


Amazon, he maintains, is accelerating a downward trend.

“Those of us who have been in the living rooms of these workers for 30 years, we’ve seen the transition happen,” Korgan said. “Amazon is just exploiting it on a larger scale.”

Korgan said labor organizers can manage 100% turnover at a facility that employs a couple hundred people, but in a workplace teeming with thousands, “the math is the math.” That’s why the union is keeping different approaches on the table.

“The NLRB is one strategy. Recognition strikes are another,” he said. “It’s getting workers to understand the influence they have, and what the pathways are after that.”

Some Amazon workers have been organizing under the banner of Amazonians United, which started in Chicago. The group has openly eschewed the NLRB process and appears focused instead on building militant minorities willing to carry out job actions, such as walkouts over safety issues. As one member put it, “For us, success isn’t dependent upon a union election.”




When Amazon fired Smalls following his walkout last year, the company accused him of violating the facility’s safety rules. Vice later reported that Amazon officials, facing a public-relations mess, hatched a plan to malign Smalls as “not smart or articulate.”

Smalls has created a new, independent union in his long-shot bid to organize the Staten Island facility, called the Amazon Labor Union. Working without the resources of an established union, he and a handful of fellow organizers have been posted outside the warehouse to catch workers as they come and go from their shifts. They have been gathering union cards and Smalls hopes they will someday be able to file for an election with the NLRB.

Smalls said he’s managed to bring aboard some workers with fairly long tenures at the warehouse. He believes a lot of those workers are more interested in unionizing because they’ve had more time to understand how Amazon operates. Yet each day seems to bring more fresh hires whom Smalls encounters for the first time, underlining the daunting challenge.

“We are seeing new faces,” Smalls said. “We’re trying to catch them before they even start.”

July 8, 2021

Amazon’s Greatest Weapon Against Unions: Worker Turnover | Wild Tokens World (wtokensw.com)