Man dies after waiting 16 hours in Quebec hospital to see a doctor

Sun, October 23, 2022

The Ministry of Health says it will request a detailed report from the hospital in question. 

(Charles Contant/CBC - image credit)

The case of a patient who died after spending 16 hours in a Quebec hospital's emergency room without being seen by a doctor is prompting physicians to denounce conditions in the province's health system.

The incident was brought to light by Dr. Sébastien Marin, an emergency room physician, who detailed the incident in several Twitter posts Saturday.

According to Marin, the deceased patient — a man over the age of 70 — went to an unnamed hospital, but returned home because no doctors could see him after 16 hours. Marin is not divulging the name of the patient, nor the hospital, citing patient confidentiality.

His condition deteriorated, prompting him to seek medical care again, this time at a different hospital. He chose to go to Barrie Memorial in Ormstown, south of Salaberry-de-Valleyfield, where Marin works.

"When I saw him, I immediately thought of a section of the aorta, because it's known for that," said Marin in an interview with Radio-Canada.

The man died about 10 minutes after arriving at Barrie Memorial. Marin said that according to the man's medical file, he had suffered an aneurysm recently.

"This is a case that fell through the cracks of the system," Marin said. "This is a case that was still quite clear, a case that was dangerous."

CBC News has not been able to confirm the name of the first hospital or Dr. Marin's account, however, the province's health ministry has confirmed it is investigating.

"I see patients dying every day. That's life, but he shouldn't have died," he added.

ER overcrowding raises fears of the worst, says doctor

Dr. Gilbert Boucher, president of the Association of Specialists in Emergency Medicine of Quebec (ASMUQ), says overcrowded emergency rooms put the population at risk.

"We are always surprised by this kind of thing," said Boucher, alluding to the death of the patient.

"We still hope that the triage system will ensure that we won't overlook conditions like that one," he said. "Unfortunately, over the last five or six months, many patients have left without having seen a doctor. Our triage nurses are doing a great job, but they too are under pressure."

Boucher is worried not only about the risks of forgetting a patient because their file wasn't evaluated properly, but also about the dangers of having to wait hours in the emergency room for treatment.

"We put caregivers in unbearable situations," he said. "There are no beds. There are no stretchers. The waiting rooms are full. Decisions have to be made after interviews of three to five minutes … This is when it gets incredibly dangerous."

A clear message has been sent to those in charge of the health network and to the government, said Boucher.

"There are risks for the population," he said.

"If this patient had been seen within a reasonable time, we're not saying that he would have survived, but at least he would have had a chance."

CAQ touts its health plan

The Ministry of Health says it will request a detailed report from the first hospital.

In an email, a spokesperson for Health Minister Christian Dubé also praised the Coalition Avenir Québec's plan for the health network.

She says the plan offers several solutions to improve the situation in emergency rooms, in particular with access to front line care, the hiring and development of more health professionals, and adding capacity in other parts of the network, in a bid to alleviate the strain on ERs.

But Marin says he's not getting his hopes up.

"I believe in reform, but it will take a long time," he said. "It has to be done right for it to work."

Thousands protest against PM Orban's government, "runaway inflation"

Sun, October 23, 2022 

Hungarian PM Viktor Orban delivers a speech for National Day, in Zalaegerszeg

BUDAPEST (Reuters) -Thousands of Hungarians including teachers and students marched through Budapest on Sunday to protest against the government, demanding higher wages for teachers and a curb on surging inflation that is eroding incomes.

Walking across a bridge over the Danube, protesters held up banners like "Orban get lost" and "No teachers, no future," a few hours after nationalist Prime Minister Viktor Orban pledged to preserve economic stability and maintain a cap on household energy bills even as the EU slides into an "economic crisis".

But at the latest in a series of anti-government protests participants said his government had let teachers down by giving them meagre salaries, while inflation, which topped 20% in September and is still rising, was becoming unbearable.

"I am here...for my children, there should be change," said Gyongyi Bereczky, a mail carrier, who joined the protests for the first time. "This runaway inflation... we cannot save up at all anymore, simply we cannot make ends meet as prices are soaring."

Teachers and students have been protesting for higher wages, a solution to a deepening shortage of teachers, and the right to strike.

As the country marked the anniversary of the 1956 uprising against Soviet rule, Orban, who was reelected for a fourth consecutive term in April, said earlier on Sunday that next year would pose challenges with the war in neighbouring Ukraine.

"A war in the east, and an economic crisis in the West," Orban told supporters in Zalaegerszeg, about 200 km (124 miles)west of Budapest, adding that there was "financial crisis and economic downturn in the EU".

"In 1956 we learnt that unity is needed in difficult times... we will preserve economic stability, everyone will have a job, we can defend the scheme of caps on energy bills, and families will not be left on their own."

Caps on gas and electricity bills have been a key plank of Orban's policies, but the costs of the scheme surged this year due to soaring energy prices, burdening the state budget. The government was forced to scrap the cap for higher-usage households from Aug. 1.

It is due to amend the 2023 budget in December as the budget law, approved in July, forecast growth at 4.1% next year while inflation was seen at 5.2% -- forecasts since rendered obsolete by the surge in prices into double-digits. Economic growth is now expected to slow to 1% next year.

The forint plunged to record lows earlier this month, forcing the central bank to ramp up interest rates in an emergency move.

(Reporting by Krisztina Than, Additional reporting by Krisztina Fenyo Editing by William Maclean)

1956 FROM THE LEFT POINT OF VIEW

The Hungarian revolution begins – archive, 1956 | Hungary

https://www.theguardian.com › world › oct › hungarian...

Oct 13, 2021 — On 23 October 1956, thousands of protestors gathered in Budapest to demand the withdrawal of Soviet troops from Hungary, setting off a ...

Hungary '56 - Andy Anderson | libcom.org

https://libcom.org › article › hungary-56-andy-anderson

Andy Anderson's pamphlet, written in 1964 and published by Solidarity is invaluable as a guide to the events of the Hungarian uprising of 1956.

• 
  

  The Hungarian revolution 1956 - Scorcher publications

  https://libcom.org › article › hungarian-revolution-195...

  
  

  Aug 31, 2007 — An pamphlet on the revolution in Hungary 1956, published by Scorcher publications in 1984. No.1 in a series of Council Communist Pamphlets.

Hungary 1956 and the Political Revolution - Marxist.com

https://www.marxist.com › hungary-1956-political-revo...

Oct 31, 1986 — We are reproducing an article first published in October 1986,the 30th anniversary of the 1956 Hungarian workers' uprising against Stalinist ...

 Newfoundland and Labrador

We should all be asking questions of Premier Furey — and not just about his fishing trip


Sun, October 23, 2022

This week, Premier Andrew Furey found himself defending a fishing trip to his billionaire friend's fishing lodge — a friend who's looking for government approval of a major project in western Newfoundland. 

(Government of Newfoundland and Labrador - image credit)

This column is an opinion by Amanda Bittner, a professor of political science at Memorial University. She specializes in the study of leaders, elections and public opinion, and teaches courses on political scandals, gender and politics and public opinion. You can follow her on Twitter. 

What does it mean to be a good leader? What is ethical leadership? How do we know if we can trust politicians?

These questions have come up for many of us over the last couple of days, as we read the news that our premier has been vacationing with his father at his billionaire friend's fishing lodge.

Is this a big deal? Well, it depends on how you think about it.

Andrew Furey was quoted by CBC as having said, "Everybody's been critical of me from Day 1, about first my charitable work, then me practising medicine, and now about what I do on my vacation time. Like, we need to — we need to have some respect for public figures here in their own personal time."

Respect for public figures is one thing — and yes, we should have more respect for public figures. The stats about the types of abuses politicians face are really disturbing. Gender-based harassment, for example, is off the charts and inexcusable. The racism faced by political candidates is atrocious and prevents us from having good people in office.

Energy Minister Andrew Parsons said this type of questioning of Furey's actions is part of the reason "we don't get qualified people to run for office."

This may be true, I guess. It's possible that rich elite white businessmen don't want to run for office because their actions will be questioned. As a political scientist, is this what keeps me up at night? No. Absolutely not. There are bigger problems.

I am worried about the state of our province, where the cost of utilities has climbed to astronomical levels. Where the cost of a jar of mayonnaise in a recent visit to the grocery store was $9. Where demand for food banks has tripled. Where the finance minister tells us that as Newfoundlanders and Labradorians, debt is our birthright. Where university students cannot find housing and the province's lack of commitment to education is, frankly, alarming. Where the support for mental health is so bad that parents do not have the resources they need to help their children. Where healthcare is so broken and 25 per cent of Newfoundlanders and Labradorians don't have a doctor, and the premier responds to us all (farcically?) by telling doctors to contact him if they're having trouble getting a job.

Danny Arsenault/CBC

How can we really trust a government that oversees all of this? How can the premier demonstrate a strong set of ethics and leadership that help build our confidence in his government's ability to handle the challenges we all collectively face?

What is good governance at a time like this?

The answer isn't easy. The job is hard, the solutions aren't obvious, and we may need to think outside the box, but then again, good leadership, ethics, and public trust seem pretty basic.

Should we worry about what the premier chooses to do on his own personal time? Are his recent choices a problem?

Was it a problem when Justin Trudeau vacationed with the Aga Khan?

Is it a problem that Furey is friends with John Risley and with Brendan Paddick, who are currently trying to lead the development of wind energy in the province?

Does it matter who a politician is friends with? Can a party leader or premier put those friendships aside when making public policy? What is the impact of leaders' behaviour in their personal lives on perceptions of their ability to lead ethically and maintain citizen trust in elected representatives? What counts as a scandal? As corruption? As ethically problematic?

I will not answer these questions for you.

What I will say is that asking these questions is important, and it is the job of all of us, including the Official Opposition, the media and "regular people" like us, to ask questions and push back on perceived — and real — conflicts of interest.

The challenge for Newfoundlanders and Labradorians is that we live in a place where we often know each other. This means that we have to be more vigilant, not less, in deciding how we proceed on a day-to-day basis, and think seriously about ethical political practices, democratic fairness and so on.

The premier's seeming lack of concern and care in the face of public scrutiny is not demonstrative of good leadership, nor does it help build a sense of trust with Newfoundlanders and Labradorians.

Does this mean that Andrew Furey is not allowed to go on vacation? No. Everybody needs to take a break.

Does this mean that how he chooses to vacation and who he goes away with matters? Yes. And it should.

But the premier's seeming lack of concern and care in the face of public scrutiny is not demonstrative of good leadership, nor does it help build a sense of trust with Newfoundlanders and Labradorians.

Nor, would I argue, do his actions fall within reasonably defined ethical limits.

We can't simply trust politicians to do a good job. Trust is dynamic between leaders and citizens. Trust has to be built. Leaders also make mistakes, they are fallible, even if they have the best intentions. We keep them accountable, we make them answer tough questions, to make sure they do a good job.

Does Furey want to do a good job? Yes, I think so.

He didn't need to take this job. He could have continued his career as a respected surgeon, fishing with his friends in his free time and enjoying his life. Unfortunately, he chose instead to take a pay cut and to do a hard and often thankless "job" that often requires the "worker" to make moral choices, decisions that affect the public both today and for years to come.

So what's the moral of the story?

If you're the premier? Your job is hard. People are expecting a lot from you.

If you're the rest of us: keep asking tough questions. It's the only way to ensure better policymaking and a better future for our province.

Young musician pushes their industry to sing a climate-friendlier tune


Brighid Fry is using their platform as a musician and songwriter to push the music industry for more action on climate change.

The 19-year-old artist has sent an open letter to the Canadian music industry, asking others to join them in making their sector greener. In the letter, Fry acknowledges the climate emergency and connects it to mental health issues in young people, calling on the music industry to use the $2.9-billion investment in zero-emission vehicles announced by the Trudeau government for tour buses and vans as well as the $1 million in green building investments to help make the industry more climate-friendly.

“The music industry could access this money to support taking leadership in moving the music industry towards a post-carbon future while asking the federal government to commit more,” Fry wrote in the letter.

Based in Toronto, Fry has multiple accolades, including a Canadian Folk Music Award, under her belt. She has also released three EPs, two of which are with her band Housewife (formerly known as Moscow Apartment), all while still in high school.

While Fry had “a lot on her plate” juggling her studies and her professional music career, now that she's focusing solely on music, Fry said they have the autonomy, time and platform to talk about climate advocacy.

“It's something I've always cared about, I have a platform now, so, obviously, I’m going to talk about something that is important to me. Anyone with that sort of platform should be doing that.”

Fry recently started trying to combine her music and climate work. “I don’t know as much about climate activism as I do about the music industry, but I wanted to find a way to combine the two things,” they said.

Fry joined in founding the Canadian branch of Music Declares Emergency, a group of artists, industry professionals and organizations hoping to recruit others within the industry, to “join in declaring a climate emergency and to work towards making the cultural and operational changes necessary to contribute towards a carbon-neutral future,” its website reads.

“There’s a lot of musicians who use their platforms, and when someone talks about these things, there’s a good chance people will listen,” Fry said. “The effect that musicians have on people to act on climate things has been around for a really long time.”

Fry said music has a unique position in relation to activism — the two have always gone hand in hand. “Look at how many musicians have been involved in political movements in the past and protest songs. There’s very clearly a connection there.”

Musicians at climate rallies help build energy and emotion, Fry added. “I think music is a way to really connect to people emotionally and get people to care and be motivated about things.”

Despite Music Declares Emergency receiving “tons” of interest from artists and music fans, Fry said the group held a panel during Canadian Music Week that didn’t receive a large turnout. Fry blames the lack of behind-the-scenes industry support.

“It makes sense the music industry is trying to build itself back after taking such a huge hit from the pandemic, but it was still pretty disappointing,” Fry said. “We’ve had so many musicians say, ‘I would love to help but don’t know where to start,’ so we decided we needed to have a day to centralize information and interest to get people on board.”

Canada Music Declares Emergency will be hosting the first Canadian music climate summit in Toronto today to celebrate the role of music and art in confronting the climate emergency.

While open to everyone, the summit is geared towards musicians and people behind the scenes in the industry, Fry explains. “Not only do we want to help musicians mobilize their platform and audience, we also want to help make the industry greener.”

To musicians, Fry said: “While you may not feel ready to commit anything yet, you can still learn, take the information and go with it. The music industry has always prided itself on being progressive and with the times, so we just have to continue to do that.

“We need a lot more people on board, but once we do, I think we will have it.”

Nairah Ahmed, Local Journalism Initiative Reporter, Canada's National Observer

Sun, October 23, 2022 

Advocates say loggers aren't doing enough to save old-growth forests near Revelstoke, B.C.


Sun, October 23, 2022 

Eddie Petryshen, a conservation specialist at advocacy group Wildsight, wants to protect the inland temperate rainforest near Revelstoke, about 570 km northeast of Vancouver. (Camille Vernet/Radio-Canada - image credit)

Standing among a series of stumps in the northern Selkirk Mountains, Eddie Petryshen pointed to a long, thick hemlock log on the ground.

"These trees are likely going to go make toilet paper," he said. "This tree right here, I would estimate about a metre and a half in diameter ... anywhere from 500 to 600 years old."

The Selkirk Mountains are a subrange of the larger Columbia Mountains, which houses the Interior Wet Belt — containing one of the world's only temperate inland rainforests, and a large ecological melting pot that contains thousand-year-old trees and protected caribou.

Petryshen, a conservation specialist at B.C.-based advocacy group Wildsight, is one of hundreds of activists that are trying to stop old-growth logging and habitat destruction in the area.

Camille Vernet/Radio-Canada

"We've had five caribou herds go locally extinct since 2014," he said. "We should just, potentially, stop logging some of these forests at the rate we're logging them."

The conflict between conservationists, First Nations and logging groups has been going on for decades near Revelstoke, about 570 km northeast of Vancouver. And in the past two years, it's ramped up amid a wider protest movement to protect old-growth forests.

Logging companies in the area say they're working to transition away from cutting old-growth, but advocates say it's not happening fast enough to save the habitat. Meanwhile, an old-growth logging deferral process from the B.C. government remains on the books.

The corporation that manages the forests around Revelstoke says they're only able to log around half of the area they've bought. And within that area, they say they're not logging two-thirds of the old-growth.

"We do want to manage the forests, we do want forestry. So avoiding harvesting doesn't really answer that," said Mike Copperthwaite, general manager of the Revelstoke Community Forest Corporation (RCFC).

"In the next 20 years, our harvesting won't include old growth. Our harvesting is going to be solely in second row stands. But we've got this transition period where these younger [trees] have to get to a certain age."

Logging still allowed

In Revelstoke, logging is big business, despite the potential threat to wildlife and old-growth forests.

The city owns and manages 1,200 square kilometres of forest under the RCFC.

Three forestry companies — Downie Timber, Joe Kozek Sawmills and Cascade Cedar Products — have the rights to log those forests, of which they say only 590 square kilometres is usable. The RCFC states that the corporation is the town's biggest employer, with more than 350 people involved in the operation.

Camille Vernet/Radio-Canada

Thousands of hectares of the forest are protected caribou habitat, and old-growth logging deferrals mean further blocks aren't able to be cut.

The Okanagan Nation Alliance released a statement on Aug. 23 demanding that old-growth logging stop in their region. According to the government, deferrals went into place shortly before that.

But Petryshen said 100-year-old trees are still cut away from deferral areas.

Copperthwaite said the deferrals were undoing "18 years of work" for the corporation.

"We are very focused on doing an environmentally sound job. We want to create beautiful forests for future generations in Revelstoke to benefit from," he said.

In a statement from earlier this year, the RCFC said they're not cutting 66 per cent of the old growth forests near Revelstoke.

Camille Vernet/Radio-Canada

One-of-a-kind caribou habitat

Researchers called the Interior Wet Belt and the temperate rainforest "one of the world's most imperilled," in a 2021 study published on MDPI, a Basel, Switzerland-based publisher of academic jounals.

The forest stretches over 160,000 square kilometres — all the way from Idaho in the U.S. to the north of B.C., straddling the Alberta border and containing numerous national parks including Glacier National Park.

Dr. Robert Serrouya, director of the caribou monitoring program at the Edmonton-based Alberta Biodiversity Monitoring Institute, said the lichen that grows in the cool forests — especially at higher elevations — provides food for the endangered mountain caribou.

Submitted by Cory DeStein

Serrouya said it's crucial that the caribou population survives in the region — not just because they're important to the local First Nations, but because their habitat is protected by both federal legislation and provincial Government Actions Regulation.

"If the caribou disappears, there would be a lot more pressure to cut down all those trees," he said. "We don't have federal legislation to protect old growth."

There are just over 1,200 southern mountain caribou in the region, according to the B.C. government's latest census, and the species is listed as "threatened" by the province.

Those numbers are down from more than 2,500 in 1995, and over 40,000 in the century prior to logging activities beginning in the early1900s.

Camille Vernet/Radio-Canada

Advocates remain skeptical

Petryshen said he wants the logging industry to "move beyond the rhetoric" that the industry would be decimated by deferrals.

"They can evolve and they can move forward as we make transitions," he said. "We can also build a more sustainable forest industry for workers."

Camille Vernet/Radio-Canada

Serrouya said research showed that timber supply curves are approaching a "precipice" in B.C., and that current harvest rates are simply not sustainable.

The RCFC said earlier this year that they would release community consultation plans about the future of their corporation going into 2023.

Urban Policy-makers must change direction fast in the post-pandemic era


Sunil Johal, Professor, Public Policy, University of Toronto

THE CONVERSATION
Sun, October 23, 2022 

The post-pandemic era presents an array of challenges to policy-makers. (Javier Allegue Barros/Unsplash)

After navigating the challenges of the COVID-19 pandemic, Canadians now find themselves facing still more challenges that impact their daily lives on almost every front.

These include an economy under pressure, a warming planet, a strapped health-care system and transforming workplaces.

For policy-makers, there are no easy, off-the-shelf answers. The policy environment in the late pandemic and post-pandemic era poses new obstacles to effective policy development — unless we adapt.

Our new environment is characterized by three key features.

A trio of challenges

First, we’re in a time of declining trust in public institutions and their leaders.

One recent survey found that more than half of respondents agreed that “official government accounts of events can’t be trusted.”

Furthermore, policy-makers are grappling with increasingly complex and interrelated challenges that demand co-ordinated, sustained inter-governmental effort.

Finally, the compounding impacts of global problems like climate change mean we’re also facing a more uncertain policy environment in which long-term planning is increasingly difficult.

The first report published by the newly launched CSA Public Policy Centre, where I hold an executive position, suggests this outlook will make it harder for governments to implement effective programs and policies while the imperative to deliver on critical issues is greater than ever.

Every delayed or ineffective effort at bolstering the financial security of Canadians, including delivering affordable housing units, risks a further erosion of public trust and undermines future efforts at public engagement and outreach.

Langford, B.C., has announced grants to help homebuyers cover the down payments on two-bedroom condos worth up to $450,000. A Langford condo building is seen under construction in this photo. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Chad Hipolito

Policy strain

Canada’s existing approaches to policy-making have been showing strain for some time.

Many Canadians struggle to access pharmacare and mental health services — as many as half of Canadians wait upwards of a month to receive needed mental health supports.

Our employment insurance system was also designed for a labour market that no longer exists and leaves too many part-time, temporary and self-employed workers behind.

There is general consensus on the challenges before us and what goals we want to achieve. What’s less understood and little changed in decades, are the mindset, culture and tools available to policy-makers to successfully achieve their objectives.

Here are three opportunities for policy-makers to consider.

1. Focus on the long term

Many of the issues we are confronted with today are the consequences of a prevailing mindset marked by a short-term approach and a failure to equitably consider the needs of people — especially the most vulnerable — in the decision-making process.

Climate change is a good example, with future generations set to bear the greatest costs of insufficient actions today.

Refocusing on the long term impacts of choices made today and how they affect different communities requires a shift in mindset, as well as thoughtful engagement of more diverse perspectives. Done well, meaningful engagement can not only lead to better program and policy results, but also help rebuild trust in public institutions, especially among marginalized communities.

2. Respond faster to emerging issues

The lag between an emerging policy issue and a policy response is growing as challenges become more complex and their impacts more uncertain. Emerging technology changes human behaviours at record speed, making it difficult for regulators to rely on traditional tools to protect citizens while also fostering innovation.

Traditional models of policy-making cannot anticipate an array of complex challenges. Digital platforms like Uber and Airbnb are an example.

They scaled up so quickly a decade ago, disrupting sectors, before policy-makers could develop regulatory frameworks that accounted for medium and long-term issues such as increased gridlock on city streets and a reduction in affordable rental stock.

Implementing practices of regulatory innovation, which create space for policy-makers to experiment, can help bridge the gap between emerging issues and policy responses.

Taxi drivers protest against Uber during a rally on Parliament Hill in February 2016. 

THE CANADIAN PRESS/Adrian Wyld

3. Broaden collaboration

Most pressing policy challenges are complex, cutting across departments and jurisdictional boundaries. Yet policy solutions are rarely conceived of with this in mind. Traditional policy-making tools restrict and limit the opportunities for potential solutions and breakthroughs.

There is a need to significantly improve data sharing and collaboration within government and trusted partners to understand difficult problems.

For example, a key challenge to ending homelessness is getting an accurate picture of how many people experience it. To this end, the B.C. Data Innovation Program has developed an integrated data project to better understand and respond to homelessness.

A woman addresses the crowd during a protest against Vancouver’s removal of a homeless encampment on the sidewalks in the Downtown Eastside in August 2022. 

THE CANADIAN PRESS/Darryl Dyck

Using administrative data for the first time has allowed the B.C. government to generate an estimated number of people experiencing homelessness. This evidence base leads to better policy decisions and service delivery.

A new environment calls for new approaches to policy-making that can more effectively navigate the complexities of today’s world. Many of our foundational policies and programs were designed decades ago and have remained largely unchanged.

We know what we need to do. Now is the time to revisit how we do it.

This article is republished from The Conversation, an independent nonprofit news site dedicated to sharing ideas from academic experts. It was written by: Sunil Johal, University of Toronto

Read more:


If cities don’t want homeless encampments they should help people, not punish them


Long-term renters evicted during housing boom face homelessness

Sunil Johal is currently a member of the Expert Panel on Portable Benefits providing advice to the Ontario government on the design and implementation of a portable benefits program and a member of the Expert Panel providing the City of Toronto with advice on its Long Term Financial Plan.

The protests in Iran are part of a long history of women's resistance


Niloofar Hooman, 

PhD candidate, 

Communication Studies and Media Arts, 

McMaster University

THE CONVERSATION

Sun, October 23, 2022 

A placard with a picture of Mahsa Amini, whose death while being detained by Iran’s morality police has ignited a wave of protests across the country. 

(AP Photo/Markus Schreiber)

On Sept. 16, Mahsa (Zhina) Amini, a 22-year-old Kurdish-Iranian woman, died in Tehran while in the custody of Iran’s morality police. Her death set off a massive wave of demonstrations that have spread across the country.

While the protests started with anger over the enforcement of the hijab, they represent a much wider movement that now poses the greatest threat the theocratic regime has faced since the 1979 revolution.
Controlling women’s bodies

As initial news of Amini’s hospitalization spread, angry citizens began demonstrating against the morality police. This coercive force has compelled women to comply with the mandatory hijab law through physical and verbal violence and humiliation — all part of a systematic effort to suppress and control their bodies.

The first spark of the growing protest movement came when Kurdish women attending Amini’s funeral in her hometown of Saqqez bravely took off their headscarves and chanted the slogan “death to the dictator” at great risk to their own safety.

After Amini’s death, the outrage and desperation of women came roaring through, targeting the dictatorial and patriarchal regime by demanding the liberation of female bodies.

History of resistance

On Oct. 16 an Iranian sport climber, Elnaz Rekabi, competed without a hijab at a competition in South Korea while representing Iran. Rekabi later said her hijab had “inadvertently” fallen off. However, many remained skeptical of her explanation, believing Iranian officials had pressured her to make the statement. Large crowds cheered Rekabi when she arrived back in Tehran days later.

While the current uprising may seem new, it follows decades of women’s resistance. Feminist activism in Iran goes back to women participating in the Constitutional Revolution in 1906. Women played a critical role and engaged in political actions by establishing women’s associations, joining protests and supporting strikes.

One month after the Islamic Revolution in 1979, Iranian women launched massive demonstrations after hearing whispers about a hijab mandate. Although those protests were able to postpone the mandate, it was eventually instated in 1983.

Iranian women never stopped fighting. They turned their bodies into arenas of resistance against the ideology and intervention of the state. Acts of civil disobedience and campaigns like My Stealthy Freedom, White Wednesdays, The Girls of Revolution Street and the Iranian #MeToo movement were designed to sustain momentum in the fight against oppressive bodily regulation.

Iranian women marching in Tehran in 1979 against the mandatory hijab. 

(Public domain/Hengameh Golestan)

In Iran, women’s bodies have always been at the forefront of the political agenda. Mandatory dress codes are a central feature of the regime’s policy towards women. They function as a policing apparatus to control women’s sexuality and regulate their bodies.

While women face aggression on a daily basis for not following the state’s gender and sexual proscriptions, stubborn forms of female bodily presence on social media are an important part of the way women are able to fight the regime’s hegemonic narratives.

Read more: Not 'powerless victims': how young Iranian women have long led a quiet revolution

Under Iran’s authoritarian governments, collective action organized under strong leadership with effective networks of solidarity has been challenging, especially in the post-Islamic revolution era.

However, digital spaces and social media is providing more room for Iranian women and sexual minorities to keep up their resistance and pose critical challenges to the restrictive gender politics of the regime.

Alliance of marginalized groups

The long struggle for women’s rights has taken more radical forms since Amini’s death. The protests against the mandatory hijab law have expanded and targeted the very foundations of the regime and its ideological taboos. By linking the protests to broader discussions of gender, ethnic, social, economic and political protests, demonstrators have elevated it to a protest against the Islamic regime itself.

An Iranian woman cuts her hair during a demonstration outside the Iranian embassy in Zagreb, Croatia. (AP Photo)

Amini’s identity as a Kurdish woman has made gender and ethnicity integral facets of the recent uprisings. It has created an inclusive alliance among religious, sexual and gender minorities, as well as suppressed ethnicities such as Kurds, Arabs, Turks, Balochs, Lors and others.

It is as if this intersection of oppressed identities has targeted the position of the Persian, Shia and heterosexual man as the hegemonic representative of the nation. Amini’s death has become the rallying cry for all the other subaltern counterpublics against the socio-political ideologies of the clerical regime.

Iranian women are de-ideologizing their bodies with anger (cutting off their hair and burning their hijabs) and joy (dancing). The female body, having been an object and symbol of a theocratic ideology, is now emerging as the most serious threat to the legitimacy of the regime. The ongoing uprising makes it clearer than ever that the liberated female body is the regime’s Achilles heel.

This article is republished from The Conversation, an independent nonprofit news site dedicated to sharing ideas from academic experts. It was written by: Niloofar Hooman, McMaster University. 

Read more:

Iranian women keep up the pressure for real change – but will broad public support continue?

Iran: ‘hijab’ protests challenge legitimacy of Islamic Republic

Niloofar Hooman receives funding from McMaster University's Graduate Student Scholarship.

Disqualified NDP leadership hopeful calls on B.C. to declare climate emergency




VANCOUVER — The NDP leadership hopeful who was ousted from her chance to compete for British Columbia's top political job says she's ready to take up an invitation to work with the man who will become the next premier.

However, Anjali Appadurai called for a bigger push on climate change initiatives before she works with David Eby, who was automatically vaulted to the position of party leader after she was disqualified from the race last week.

"We haven't seen a signal of that qualitative shift in leadership that is going to signal an emergency-level response, that's going to signal the speed and scale of actions that are needed. We've seen a watered-down version of that," Appadurai said.

Appadurai, 32, disagreed with a report by the party's executive that she engaged in "serious improper conduct" by working with third parties including the environmental group Dogwood BC, which was found to have conducted membership drives on her behalf.

The uproar following the report had Premier John Horgan blaming Appadurai's supporters for "thuggery" because he said they'd contacted volunteer members of the executive who met to decide her campaign's fate.

Despite the controversy, Appadurai has maintained her membership with the New Democrats. She said various people volunteered their time and she has no idea how many members their efforts drew to her campaign.

Appadurai said the NDP is still the best party to move ahead on climate change policies in a province that, within six months last year, experienced wildfires that nearly destroyed the town of Lytton, a heat dome linked to 619 deaths and floods that wiped out farmers' livelihoods and severed major highways.

B.C. is now in the midst of a drought.

The best way to forge ahead with any serious action is for the province to declare a state of climate emergency, cancel fossil fuel infrastructure and announce a moratorium on new oil and gas expansion projects, Appadurai said.

"Slowly drawing down emissions year by year, that's actually not how we're going to achieve any kind of meaningful climate action," she said. "I think we do need to acknowledge that we're failing on this file and in a related way failing on several other files because the climate crisis intersects across all parts of society and the economy."

At a muted celebration last week of his ascension to the party leadership, Eby said the province could not continue to expand fossil fuel infrastructure in order to hit its climate goals. He also said he's "very much looking forward to continuing the conversation with Anjali and the people who signed up to support her."

"They have a very clear set of values around climate change, one of the issues of our time," said Eby, who will become premier on a yet-to-be announced date.

The B.C. government has consulted environmental groups on initiatives like its CleanBC plan aimed at reducing greenhouse gas emissions. But Appadurai said those opportunities have been like a "dance" where advocates work to maintain a relationship with government and meet officials halfway.

However, some regulations around subsidies and climate targets have been inadequate, so it's time to "kick this into a much higher gear," she said. That could include, she said, setting up a secretariat in the premier's office and sharing climate-related decisions beyond the Environment Ministry.

Appadurai said the attention her leadership bid has garnered points to an evolving political landscape where social movements have increasing sway in a democracy that relies on centralized power in a party system.

"This thing escalated much faster than I could have imagined, than any of us could have imagined. I think it opened up a really important conversation that's live right now. And I'm going to bring our movements together to start making sense of it and making sense of where we go next," she said of her plans for "climate justice."

Appadurai, who was born in Madurai, a city in the Indian state of Tamil Nadu, moved to British Columbia at age six and grew up in Coquitlam.

She made her mark in federal politics last year by coming within about 450 votes of winning a seat for the New Democrats in the riding of Vancouver-Granville by campaigning on climate change, food security and housing.

But compared with Eby, 46, who is B.C.'s former attorney general and won his Vancouver riding in 2013 over then-premier Christy Clark, forcing her to run in a byelection, Appadurai has no political experience.

Hamish Telford, associate professor of political science at University of the Fraser Valley, said experience can take a back seat in leadership contests, as illustrated by federal Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre's recent win over the qualifications of former Quebec premier Jean Charest, for example.

"Leadership contests are about winning over the membership of the party," he said. "With the members that she signed up, there was a very real fear that she could win this thing," he said of Appadurai.

"As far as the party was concerned, it was a nice, neat outcome. They did their own investigation, found her guilty and tossed her out of the race. And that cuts off the possibility of an Elections BC investigation, which would have been the authority of definitive determination, if she had broken election laws."

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Oct. 23, 2022

Camille Bains, The Canadian Press

Alberta NDP resolutions could change the future of elections


Sun, October 23, 2022



Around 1,400 members attended the NDP's annual convention over the weekend where they voted on 76 resolutions that could be included in the party's election platform. 

Is lowering the provincial voting age a good idea? Alberta's NDP says yes.

At the party's annual convention over the weekend, members sifted through 76 resolutions focused on, among other things, the economy, health care and education in preparation for the next provincial election.

Over the three days of debate, resolutions that were passed include addressing issues with emergency medical services (EMS) —including the number of red alerts and ambulance shortages across the province — by offering paramedics with casual position full-time positions.

Delegates passed more than 10 resolutions, but that doesn't necessarily mean that they will make it into the party's election platform.

"We had a resolution today to talk about how do we repair the EMS system and that's something I think Albertans are talking about across the province," said Rakhi Pancholi, MLA for Edmonton-Whitemud.

"The resolutions are really focusing our agenda and our plans for the upcoming election. It's taking the top priorities that we're hearing from Albertans and from our members."

Alberta NDP delegates also tried to tackle the high prices of groceries. They passed a resolution for the NDP to call on the UCP to work directly with the opposition and create an all-party committee on food affordability and routine government reporting on grocery prices.

The provincial NDP caucus also passed a resolution saying they will also revisit consultation on the UCP curriculum within 100 days of forming government.

The resolution is intended to ensure evaluation and revision of the K-12 curricula will occur within every ten years to ensure the most up-to-date content and teaching methods are used.

Other resolutions related to class sizes, protecting agricultural lands, the voting age, recycling, labour legislation, truth and reconciliation calls to action and support for municipalities were passed.

"That was amazing to hear, because we actually had a number of high school students who were advocating on their own behalf,"said NDP member Liz Dolcemore. "It's great to see the next generation coming and stepping up and getting involved."

The Alberta NDP also passed the creation of seniors advocate resolution which outlines restoring the seniors' advocate position that was axed by the UCP. The advocate's role includes assisting seniors in navigating individual issues and investigating complaints about facilities and providers of continuing care.

Growing alienation

Editorial: The state’s neocolonial attitude towards Balochistan is profoundly altering Baloch society

DAWN Editorial Published October 24, 2022 

BALOCHISTAN’S agony has once again been laid bare before Pakistan’s elected representatives. Akhtar Mengal, who heads his eponymous faction of the Balochistan National Party, made a blisteringly forthright speech in the National Assembly last Wednesday.

In it, he pulled no punches about the human rights violations in his province, warning the state that its tactics were sowing the seeds of hatred that would be impossible to eradicate. Indeed, according to him, most Baloch youth have “reached a point of no return”. Mr Mengal angrily denounced the fake encounters in the province in which innocent people were killed and presented as terrorists. He referred specifically to the incident in Kharan on Monday, where the Balochistan CTD allegedly killed three missing people they described later as BLA “terrorists”.

According to the CTD, the men opened indiscriminate fire on the law-enforcement team and were killed in an hour-long exchange of gunfire. However, the Voice for Baloch Missing Persons chairman said three of the dead men had been identified as missing people; one of them — the leader of a local chapter of the Baloch Students Organisation — had been picked up on June 9, 2021, from Khuzdar.

There is a realisation among much of the civilian leadership that this is an untenable situation. Defence Minister Khawaja Asif, in response to Mr Mengal’s speech, acknowledged that remaining in denial of these long-festering wounds would be harmful for any nation. The weight of this baggage, he said, “was getting heavier by the day … We need dialogue”. But who will bell the cat?

The state’s neocolonial attitude towards Balochistan — for how else can such utter disregard for its people’s fundamental rights and the extractive nature of the state’s relationship with the province be described? — is profoundly altering Baloch society. Alienation and despair run deep among its populace. Pakistan’s integrity and well-being are linked to all its people being given a fair deal and a just share in resources. Instead, Balochistan has descended into a dystopian hellhole, a laboratory of flawed and shortsighted policies, such as allowing violent extremist groups safe haven in the province as a quid pro quo for them to counter separatist groups.

Read: ‘Lahore gets an Orange Line, Balochistan gets checkposts,’ laments JI leader

There have been half-hearted attempts to address Balochistan’s grievances — among them ‘development packages’ under both the PML-N and the PPP governments — but they have all come to naught because Balochistan was not to be allowed real agency over its workings or its resources, and people continued to go missing. And the much-vaunted ‘game changer’, CPEC, has only exacerbated the sense of marginalisation. Even the approach to the ‘angry Baloch’ leaders went nowhere.

In any case, today’s educated, middle-class insurgents are more likely to despise the powerful Baloch sardars, whom they see as an extension of the state. A truth and reconciliation commission, as suggested at Wednesday’s National Assembly session, may be viable, but sincerity is in short supply when it comes to Balochistan.

Published in Dawn, October 24th, 2022

SEE

LA REVUE GAUCHE - Left Comment: Search results for BALOCH 

LA REVUE GAUCHE - Left Comment: Search results for BALOCHISTAN