West Bank militants threaten Israel, urge Palestinian leaders to join resistance as tensions rise

Sam Kiley - Yesterday - CNN


Four US-made M4 Carbine rifles lean against the back of the sofa. The young men, mostly dressed in black civilian clothes, are relaxed and chatty. Neighbors pop their heads in to say hello through a door open to the street.

'We are the resistance': CNN talks to Palestinian militant brigade in exclusive interview

Duration 4:13  View on Watch

Which is odd.

Because these men are being hunted, targeted for kill-or-capture in a new Israeli military campaign to try to stamp out a fast-growing armed insurrection in the north of the West Bank.

The six men sip tea. The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) says it’s hunting them because they’re members of an armed militant group that’s planning more attacks against Israeli targets.

“Martyr posters” cover most of the back wall. Young men from the Jenin Brigade, most of them killed in fighting with Israeli troops, smile from their photographs at their living comrades across the room. The men now fiddling with their phones know they themselves may move from the sofa to that wall. An Israeli military strike team could attack at any time.



West Bank militants threaten Israel, urge Palestinian leaders to join resistance as tensions rise© Provided by CNNA shrine to the Palestinians who've been killed fighting Israel. For Israelis, this wall memorializes murderers. - Matthias Somm/CNN

This is Jenin Refugee Camp. It’s less than half a kilometer square, home to about 12,500 people and a hotbed of armed resistance against the Israeli occupation of the West Bank – and the existence of the Jewish state itself – for more than 20 years. Its tight alleys and ramshackle homes are densely packed, and crackle with tension.

At midday it’s shuttered while the neighboring town of Jenin is raucous with life. Locals say people mostly sleep during the day because at night there’s often fighting.

Earlier this year, eight Israeli civilians were killed in attacks in Tel Aviv and nearby Bnei B’rak by gunmen from around Jenin. Both of the militants in those incidents were killed.

There has been a surge in armed assaults on Israeli troops and civilians this year. According to the IDF, there have been around 180 shooting incidents in Israel and the occupied territories this year, compared to 61 shooting attacks in 2021. The Israeli military and police have seized 900 weapons from Palestinians.

Two days after we met, another Palestinian youth, aged 19 and a member of the Jenin Brigade’s militant armed group, was killed when Israeli forces stormed Jenin in an operation against the militants.

“Jenin is the hornets’ nest,” says IDF spokesman Lt. Col. Richard Hecht.

Growing anger with Palestinian Authority

Some of the M4 weapons cradled by the Palestinian militants have Hebrew etched onto them. “Senior Israeli commanders steal the weapons and they sell them. We buy them on the black market with money we raise ourselves,” claims a leader with the Jenin Brigade at our secret meeting in Jenin Refugee Camp.

In 2020 a report by Israel’s Knesset estimated that 400,000 illegal weapons were circulating in Israel. The IDF admits that weapons have been stolen but denies that “senior commanders” are likely to be involved.

Many, the IDF said, are smuggled into the West Bank. Hecht admits: “We’re putting a big effort into the connectivity between criminal gangs and terrorism.”

It’s been the bloodiest 10 months since 2015 – at least 131 Palestinians (not counting Gaza) and 21 Israelis or foreigners have been killed this year.

But there’s been a shift, too, not just in the level of armed attacks against Israeli targets and Israel’s campaigns – but a growing resentment towards the leadership of the Palestinian Authority (PA).

Indeed, the militants of the Jenin Brigade who sit in the shade of olive trees to hide from Israeli surveillance drones had a barely hidden threat to make against the PA.

“This is a message to the Palestinian leadership: if they believe in the will of the Palestinian people, they have to join the resistance and give the resistance fighters the freedom to defend and protect our people,” says the man who leads this delegation of fighters.



West Bank militants threaten Israel and warn their own leaders as tensions rise© Provided by CNNSome of the weapons cradled by the Palestinian militants have Hebrew etched onto them. - Matthias Somm/CNN

Without explicitly threatening the PA leadership, he said that it was hemorrhaging support even among the ranks of its own security forces. Numerous members of the PA’s police force and other security agencies have been involved in attacking Israeli forces, he said.

Under agreements signed with Israel under the so-called Oslo peace process, the PA is supposed to cooperate on security issues with Israel.

Many other Palestinian factions condemn this as “collaboration” and, according to officials in the Israeli military, security cooperation has almost broken down in the north of the West Bank, especially around Jenin and nearby Nablus.

In 1999, members of Fatah, the main group in the Palestine Liberation Movement which still dominates the PA, were beginning to condemn their own leader openly. Back then that was Yasser Arafat – who had led the Palestinian cause for years.

Arafat’s successor at the head of the PA is Mahmoud Abbas, known as Abu Mazen. At 87 his grip has slipped and a growing level of defiance against all that his authority has apparently failed to achieve is driving opposition in the West Bank.

The Jenin Brigade’s demands of the Palestinian Authority to join a new fight last week prompted PA Prime Minister Mohammad Shtayyeh to visit Jenin Camp.

He stood next to Fathi Hazem, the father of two sons killed by Israel – one who murdered three Israelis in Tel Aviv in a shooting attack at a bar. Both had been members of the Jenin Brigade.

No hope of a ‘dignified life’

Whether out of choice or a need for political survival, the PA’s “security cooperation” with the Israelis in the north of the West Bank has dwindled to almost nothing, an Israeli government official said.

This may be because any attempt to do so risks igniting a civil war between Palestinian militants and the Palestinian Authority.

The apparently unstoppable march of Israeli settlements into the West Bank, while peace talks with Israel have ceased, means that many Palestinians have no real hope of an independent or even prosperous future. This has provoked more violence.

On that, both the IDF spokesman and the fighters in Jenin Camp agree.

On the Israeli side, Lt. Col. Hecht, a former battalion commander says, “They’re frustrated and disaffiliated and they are saying to all the organized Palestinian groups and the PA, ‘we have had enough of you all – we’re sons of the Camp.’ They don’t identify with the five-star leadership of the PA in their fancy hotels around the world. They’re now saying we’re fighting for their manhood.”

And in the West Bank, the Jenin Brigade leader concurs: “All Palestinian people – as a result of the [Israeli] occupation’s daily violations, and invasions, and the formation of many extreme right-wing governments [in Israel] that weakened the PA and its organizations and leadership – have lost trust in all of the PA organizations.”



West Bank militants threaten Israel and warn their own leaders as tensions rise© Provided by CNNThese men are being hunted by Israel, they say, for being armed and affiliated with militant groups. - Matthias Somm/CNN

“Most of our Palestinian youth that fight and are martyred have a university or college degree. They’ve lost hope of a dignified life,” he adds.

But, we asked, given that during the last 20 years, the Israelis have got more settlements, and there has been no progress to independence from the Palestinian perspective, maybe a new path should be found? Isn’t it time to put down your weapons and switch to non-violent protest?

He replies: “The occupation killed off all of the peaceful solutions, and here, on this land, there is no place for peaceful solutions with this Zionist Israeli occupation.”

Asked if they are of the view that the Jewish state should be wiped out, he replies: “All armed factions and every militant does not believe in a two-state solution because this occupation did not, and will not, respect any peaceful agreement. I repeat this again, those [Israeli governments] are criminal gangs.”

Does this mean that the two sides are stuck in a fatal embrace? “We always aim for victory, and not death. This occupation is sending messages to the international community that we are terrorists. We are not terrorists, we are resistance fighters for freedom,” the commander replies.

But he agrees there are more young men flocking to the armed groups and setting up on their own.

Fast-growing threat

In Nablus, a group known as the “Lion’s Den” is growing fast, outside the control of the PA or even Hamas or Islamic Jihad.

According to the IDF, “they think up a target and then go and ask funding from Hamas or Islamic Jihad but they don’t take orders from anyone.” Israeli forces are intent on trying to break up these armed groups and reduce the threat to Israel, Hecht says.

“We’re very focused on precise intelligence: we’re trying to contain it when we see ticking bombs, the movement of weapons, rhetoric and warnings online – then we move to stop it,” he adds.

On Tuesday, joint Israeli security forces raided Nablus, targeting what they said was the leadership of the Lion’s Den and an explosives factory. At least five Palestinian men were killed in the raid.

In Jenin, the Palestinian brigade commander talks of plans for operations with militants across the West Bank and abroad that would “spark a regional war” that would come out of the camp.

But the more the conflict grows and the bloodier it gets, the greater the chance of the Palestinian Authority being sucked into direct conflict with Israel – or that the PA leadership which governs most of the 3.1 million population, dissolves itself. The latter possibility is the outcome Israel most fears.

If the Palestinian leadership in the PA disbanded and returned to full-time resistance across the whole of the West Bank, Israel would have to physically police the whole region – and pay for it.

“The PA collapsing or dissolving is the biggest threat. Having us go back into the towns would be a living nightmare,” says the Israeli government official.

This would turn the clock back to the days before the Oslo peace process. To when Palestinian groups ran a worldwide violent campaign, including terrorist attacks, in the name of freedom. To when Israel was largely isolated internationally – and had to use its own money to fund its responsibilities to Palestinians living under its occupation.

That may be exactly what the Jenin Brigade and others may be hoping for.

The headline on this story has been updated to better characterize a comment made by a militant leader.

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BRAUN: Putin's Russia wages war on its LGBTQ citizens

Liz Braun - Yesterday -  Toronto Sun

Let it never be said that “traditional family values” is an innocent term.

While America tries to turn back time over abortion rights, Russia has redoubled its efforts to blame the LGBTQ community for almost everything — even war.

The notion of traditional values is part of a smokescreen used by Russian state media to depict the gay community as a threat to the very fibre of what it means to be Russian.

The country is loudly homophobic, but things are so bad lately that an anti-gay stance was key to selling the war in Ukraine.

A recent article in the academic journal, The Conversation Canada, outline how the state and the Russian Orthodox Church have made LGBTQ activism the ultimate symbol of western corruption.

Carlton University professor Richard Foltz, in the article Homophobia as a wartime marketing tool: Some Russians fear the West will make them gay , wrote about the 2013 Russian legislation that banned anything that could be seen as promoting gay rights to children.

That law was described by Human Rights Watch as a “classic example of political homophobia” for “political gain.”

Now the law is a bout to be expanded, Foltz wrote, “to anything construed as presenting information about homosexuality and would apply to all ages.”

(As the Russian Book Union recently noted, this could mean the banning of classics by Tolstoy and Dostoevsky, among others — bit of a problem.)

The LGBTQ community has been a useful target for 10 years in the state’s attempt to separate Russia — conservative and family oriented — from the perverse and hedonistic West.

According to foreign policy.com , this has become a matter of national security in Russia. Anyone who does not conform to ideas of heterosexual family norms is a threat.

The anti-gay agenda in Russia has fuelled a big increase in hate crimes and is just part of a larger hate campaign the state appears to be waging.

Both President Vladimir Putin and Russian Orthodox Church leader Patriarch Kirill have presented the invasion of Ukraine as a form of holy resistance against the LGBTQ — people they claim are representative of failed Western morals.

It all sounds frankly bizarre — except that, as foreignpolicy.com wrotes , Russia’s attacks on the rights of LGBTQ citizens is approved of by Christian conservative groups in the U.S. and elsewhere. Hungary has passed a similar gay propaganda law, while Romania and Poland are thinking it over.

Moreover, as Foltz stated, using LGBTQ issues to win support for the invasion of Ukraine means Russia has a lot in common with the Republican Party in the U.S. “and their cynical exploitation of the abortion debate and other social issues.

“In both cases,” Foltz wrote, “a deliberate policy of inflaming the ignorant and irrational passions of broad segments of the population appears to have great success in stifling science and rational discourse — along with any level of human compassion.”

(Canada is not immune from such “deliberate policies” — as with Pierre Poilievre purposely using his videos to appeal to far-right, misogynistic online movements.)

Earlier this year, NBC reported on the massive donations to 11 American nonprofits identified by the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) as anti-LGBTQ+ hate groups.

Some of the groups assert that, “LGBTQ people are a threat to society itself,” and some justify violence against the community.

The common thread in all this is how hate translates into political power.

If the Parental Rights in Education bill — Florida’s “Don’t Say Gay” bill — is signed into law, it would prohibit “classroom discussion about sexual orientation or gender identity” in the state’s primary schools.

Sounds just like that repressive anti-gay Russian legislation of 2013.

30 people rescued after being trapped in Malaysian cave

KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia (AP) — About 30 members of a film crew who were trapped in a limestone cave in northern Malaysia during heavy rain Wednesday have been rescued, police said.


30 people rescued after being trapped in Malaysian cave© Provided by The Canadian Press

Two police officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to release information, confirmed that all of the people trapped in Tempurung Cave in Kampar district in Perak state were safely evacuated. They couldn't give further details.

Perak police chief Mohamad Yusri Hassan Basri was quoted by the Utusan Malaysia newspaper as saying that the people were trapped when water level near the cave's exit rose to about 1.5 meters (5 feet) due to heavy rains.

He said those trapped were members of a film crew from a Singaporean production company who were shooting at the location. He said there were a total of 80 crew members but most managed to escape except for 30 people, including local people and Singaporeans.

“All the trapped crew were rescued and taken out of the area" two hours after authorities were notified, he was quoted as saying. He said no injuries were reported.

Tempurung Cave, a spectacular network of chambers more than three kilometers (1.8 miles) long, is believed to be the longest and largest limestone cave in peninsular Malaysia. It is a popular tourist attraction, with sections developed with walkways and lighting.

The Associated Press

Survey finds thriving online market for Indonesian birds in Philippines

Mongabay - Wednesday
By Danielle Keeton-Olsen

Survey finds thriving online market for Indonesian birds in Philippines© Mongabay

Protected by law but threatened by trade, rare and endangered parrots native to Indonesia are frequently sold via Facebook in the Philippines, a new survey has found.

The analysis of online sales, government seizures and trade data compiled by the U.K.-based wildlife trade watchdog TRAFFIC indicates strong market demand in the Philippines for birds native to Indonesia.

Though officials have stepped up seizures, researchers say regulation of online sales remains absent or inconsistent, and warn that poached birds could potentially be sold from the Philippines to other countries.

Researchers surveyed 20 Facebook groups known to sell wild birds between January 2018 and December 2019, finding 501 posts by vendors in the Philippines selling a total 841 birds native to Indonesia. These species, which aren’t found in the Philippines, were mostly native to the eastern Indonesian islands of Papua and the Wallacea biodiversity hotspot.

Researchers identified 25 different species of birds from the posts, 24 of which were regulated by CITES, the global convention on the wildlife trade.



Survey finds thriving online market for Indonesian birds in Philippines© Mongabay

Serene Chng, one of the report’s authors, said researchers scanned sales posts for visual indications that the birds had been caught in the wild: birds that appeared injured or had missing feathers from being caught, or lacked tags used by captive breeders like microchips or closed rings around their legs. More than half of the posts analyzed advertised birds the researchers suspected were wild-caught.

The most common bird found among the trading posts was Eclectus roratus or the eclectus parrot, with 281 birds found for sale, followed by the sulfur-crested cockatoo (Cacatua galerita, 152 found) and the white cockatoo (Cacatua alba, 80), which is an endangered species.

“These three species, they’re not considered difficult to breed in captivity,” Chng said. “But nonetheless they ultimately continue to be poached from the wild for trade because there’s continued evidence, records of them being poached from the wild, there’s declining wild populations and confiscation from smuggling attempts so we do know that in addition to birds that are bred there’s continuous offtake from the wild.”



Survey finds thriving online market for Indonesian birds in Philippines© Mongabay

An analysis of online sales, government seizures and trade data compiled by wildlife trade monitor TRAFFIC found evidence that birds are being sold online in the Philippines, including species regulated by CITES. Images courtesy of TRAFFIC.

Trade networks

Prior to publishing the report, the researchers notified Facebook of the 20 groups that displayed offers for allegedly wild-caught birds. While Facebook removed the 20 groups, TRAFFIC noted that it had found 144 new groups selling birds as of January 2022.

Chng said this is an example of a consistent pattern: researchers from groups like TRAFFIC will alert Facebook or other platforms about illicit sales and the groups will disappear, only for others to pop up in their place later on. Though repetitive, she said, the effort of constantly reporting this activity effectively discourages smaller sellers.

“In established groups that have been there for a while, there’s more opportunities for stronger trader-seller connections to be formed because they have their own network and they’re maintained, but when these [networks] are disrupted … these can take time to be reestablished,” she said.

Boyd Leupen, a program officer for the Monitor Conservation Research Society who has studied Indonesia’s domestic bird trade, says the international sales of birds is a fraction of the local demand. This, he says, could be because the Philippines has domestic songbird populations that would satisfy the market, while Indonesia “has a unique songbird-keeping culture, which may be less present in the [Philippines].”

“Whereas parrots make up 99% of the trade in the [Philippines] report, they are a minority in the [Indonesian] domestic market where their trade numbers are dwarfed by those of songbirds (Passeriformes),” he said, adding that parrots are also in demand internationally.

Though he hasn’t conducted on-the-ground market studies in Indonesia since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, Leupen noted an increase in the online domestic trade of songbirds. He pointed to a recent survey that scraped more than 100,000 online sale posts to find 247 different species of songbird for sale in Indonesia’s domestic market between April 2020 and June 2021.



Survey finds thriving online market for Indonesian birds in Philippines© Mongabay

Leupen noted that trade in songbirds and in parrots appear to be largely separate, but both indicate a need for stronger enforcement.

“In 2018 the [Indonesian] Government revised the protected species list, adding many bird species, which could be seen as an effort to better regulate trade,” he wrote. “However, bird trade in [Indonesia] is so culturally entrenched that illegal or unsustainable trade are often not an enforcement priority.”

Chng also emphasized the need for tighter enforcement, noting that while seizures by authorities in the Philippines and Indonesia are increasing, the unofficial trade continues to flourish.

The TRAFFIC report also compared trade data from the Philippine government and other countries, noting that the Philippines reported exports of 1,034 birds of 21 species between 1979 and 2019, but other countries reported receiving eight times that total. And while the country already has legislation banning trade of wildlife from any seller without a permit, the report found exports of six bird species listed under CITES Appendix I, for which commercial trade is prohibited, and for which there are no approved export facilities in the Philippines.

One potential solution Chng recommended is to hold regular inspections of licensed breeding facilities, adding this is an issue globally.

“There’s so many examples of registered breeding facilities that are not actually breeding birds or any other type of animal,” she said. “They are taking animals from the wild and they’re holding them, selling them and passing them off as captive bred.”

An independent inspector, she added, “can have a look at [a] place and say there’s no way there’s breeding going on here.”

Related reading:

(以下引用)

‘It’s just a bird’: Online platforms selling lesser-known Indonesian species

(以上引用)

Banner image: Feral Moluccan cockatoo in the Philippines’ Parañaque City, Luzon Island. Image © Reynaldo Cruz.

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This article was originally published on Mongabay

NWT government releases archival data from residential schools

Friday

On Wednesday, the territorial government released a report containing a complete list of all residential schools, day schools, and residences in the Northwest Territories from 1862 to 2021.

Drawing from government records, historical accounts, news reports, academic theses, and monographs sourced through the NWT Archives, the report is intended to help provide clarity to researchers, former students, and families who have questions about the history of residential schools in the Northwest Territories.

“The NWT had a far higher percentage of Indigenous people attend residential schools than anywhere else in Canada," said RJ Simpson, minister of education, culture and employment, in a news release.

"To help support the work of reconciliation and healing, the GNWT has examined its own files to identify any information it has that can help communities study and document their own residential school history. This report is a resource for communities wishing to undertake residential school research.”

The report focuses specifically on administrative data, and contains a chronological timeline of schools in each community in the NWT, a brief history of each, and how the institutions received funding. It also notes whether the National Centre for Truth and Reconciliation has listed any deceased students that went to the school, and which organizations were responsible for running the schools.

The GNWT provided first access to the report to Indigenous governments through the Council of Leaders – a group of Indigenous leaders and territorial government leaders – before releasing it to the public.

"By working with Indigenous leadership as part of the Council of Leaders we are committed to providing support however we can," said Premier Caroline Cochrane. "There is a great deal of work that remains to address reconciliation in the Northwest Territories and Canada, and we continue to move forward. And while it will be long, and at times difficult, we are committed every step of the way."

The report also contains references and guidelines to aid further study.

"I know that for many people in the territory, this is not history – it is lived experience," said Simpson.

Former residential school students can call 1 (866) 925-4419 for emotional crisis referral services and information on other health supports from the Government of Canada.

The Hope for Wellness Help Line is also available to survivors 24 hours a day, 7 days a week for counselling and for anyone in crisis. Call the toll-free Help Line at 1 (855) 242-3310 or connect to the online chat.

Caitrin Pilkington, Local Journalism Initiative Reporter, Cabin Radio

Parliament Hill language interpreter sent to hospital, union blames lax headset rules

OTTAWA — A parliamentary interpreter was sent to the hospital during a Senate committee meeting last Thursday, and a union blames that on a lax approach to wearing headsets during video conferencing.

"I was astonished, because it should just not be happening," Public Services and Procurement Minister Helena Jaczek said.

At the Senate environment committee on Oct. 20, two witnesses testified over video conference with poor sound quality, and did not wear the recommended headphones with a microphone wand.

The meeting's chair, Sen. Paul Massicotte, opened the meeting cautioning that it might need to be paused.

"I must note that our two witnesses have forgotten or misplaced their headsets. We'll try doing it without the headsets, and hope it won't be too difficult for our interpreters," he said in French.

The first witness wore headphones while the second wore earbuds. During questions from senators, a buzz could be heard as the first witness spoke, similar to a smartphone vibrating on a table.

As the second witness answered questions from senators, there was a sudden moment of loud feedback.

The French interpretation briefly stopped at that point, with another voice taking over.

The Canadian Association of Professional Employees said the interpreter, a freelancer who is not amember of their union, was sent to hospital in an ambulance after experiencing severe symptoms and collapsing.

The union said that is due to an acoustic shock, which is when inner ear muscles are startled by sudden noises, such as someone tapping a microphone or suddenly speaking much louder than the rest of their remarks.

The meeting should have been stopped, the union argued, instead of proceeding with witnesses using inadequate equipment.

The union is calling for an independent investigation with public reporting of the results, and for all meetings to be suspended if Ottawa can't guarantee interpreters' safety.

In an interview, Jaczeksaid she was not sure if her department was conducting a probe but that the "entirely preventable" incident merited followup.

"The rules are that nobody should be speaking without using the approved headset," said Jaczek, who oversees the translation bureau.

"Whether it's the House of Commons or the Senate, I would have thought that those rules were clear."

Her department and Senate administration did not have an immediate comment.

The Canadian branch of the International Association of Conference Interpreters says that even brief noises can be loud enough to create concussion-like symptoms, loud ringing in the ears or vertigo.

Experts have testified to Parliament that the staff who translate meetings between English and French are getting injured because they are straining to hear some voices and are exposed to sudden noises.

So many interpreters have been placed on injury leave that the department has hired contract workers, to make up for the staff shortages.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Oct. 25, 2022.

Dylan Robertson, The Canadian Press

Tens of thousands demonstrate in Budapest against Orbán’s education policy

Tens of thousands of Hungarians took to the streets of the capital, Budapest, on Sunday to demonstrate against the education policy of right-wing Prime Minister Viktor Orbán's government.


File - File image of citizens protesting against the policies of Hungary's Prime Minister Viktor Orbán, Budapest. - Ladislav Vallach/TASR/dpa© Provided by News 360

Daniel Stewart - Oct 23

According to the organizers, around 80,000 people have gathered, including students, teachers and union leaders. The march ended in front of the Budapest University of Applied Sciences.

The demonstrators have demanded nine measures for the sector, including better salaries for teachers, curricula without ideology and the right of educators to strike, reports 'HVG', which has broadcast the demonstration.

Related video: Thousands protest to demand higher wages in Hungary

Duration 1:10

View on Watch

Sunday's protest was also directed against the control exercised by the government over the state media and a large part of the private media, as well as against Orbán's good relations with Russian President Vladimir Putin, reports the DPA agency.

This Sunday, Orbán criticized those who "shoot from the shadows and the heights of Brussels" against Hungary and warned that "they will end up in the same place as their predecessors", in reference to the Soviet Union.

"Let's not worry about those who shoot at Hungary from the shadows of the heights of Brussels," Orbán has stated during an event for the anniversary of the 1956 Hungarian Revolution, militarily put down by the Soviet Union, and has warned that "they will end up in the same place as their predecessors."

"We are tolerant when we have to be and we fight back when we can. We will draw our swords if the opportunity arises and we will resist the long years of oppression that may come," he said.

Slavery is not gone. It's just moved out to sea


Cambodian migrant workers on a Thai fishing ship wait during an inspection© Fábio Nascimento/The Outlaw Ocean Project, Thailand

Ian Urbina - Oct 21

While forced labor still exists throughout the world, one place where it’s especially pervasive is the South China Sea — especially in the Thai fishing fleet, according to a 2016 investigation by the New York Times. Partly this is because in a typical year, Thailand’s fishing industry is short about fifty thousand mariners, according to the U.N. in 2014. As a result, tens of thousands of migrants from Cambodia, Laos and Myanmar are whisked into Thailand each year to make up this chronic shortfall. Then, unscrupulous captains buy and sell the men and boys like chattel.

With fewer fish close to shore, maritime labor researchers predict that more boats will resort to venturing farther out to sea, making the mistreatment of migrants more likely. The work aboard the fishing boats is brutal. And in this bloated, inefficient, and barely profitable national fleet at a time of rising fuel prices, captains require crew members to simply do what they are told, and have little patience for complaints, no matter how long the hours, how little the food, or how paltry the pay. In short, these captains rely on sea slaves.

The Outlaw Ocean Project, a non-profit journalism organization based in Washington, D.C, got onboard a Thai distant-water vessel using enslaved labor. There, three dozen Cambodian boys and men worked barefoot all day and into the night on the deck of a purse seiner fishing ship.

The third episode of the podcast series The Outlaw Ocean, from CBC Podcasts and the L.A. Times, tells the harrowing stories of sea slavery. Listen to it here:

Rain or shine, shifts run eighteen to twenty hours. At night, the crew cast their nets when the small silver fish they target — mostly jack mackerel and herring — are more reflective and easier to spot in darker waters. During the day, when the sun is high, temperatures topped a hundred degrees Fahrenheit, but they work nonstop. Drinking water is tightly rationed. If they are not fishing, the crew sort their catch and mend their nets, which are prone to ripping.

One boy, his shirt smudged with fish guts, proudly showed off his missing two fingers, severed by a net that had coiled around a spinning crank. Their hands, which virtually never fully dried, had open wounds, slit from fish scales and torn from the nets’ friction. Infections are constant. Captains never lack amphetamines to help the crews work longer, but they rarely stock antibiotics for infected wounds.

On boats like these, deckhands are often beaten for small transgressions, like fixing a torn net too slowly or mistakenly placing a mackerel into a bucket for sablefish. Dispatched into the unknown, they are beyond where society could help them, usually on so-called ghost ships — unregistered vessels that the Thai government has no ability to track. Deckhands typically do not speak the language of their Thai captains, do not know how to swim, and, being from inland villages, sometimes had never seen the sea before.

Virtually all of the crew had a debt to clear, part of their indentured servitude, a “travel now, pay later” labor system that requires working to pay off money they often had to borrow to sneak illegally into a new country. The debt just becomes more elusive once they leave land.

There is this modern assumption, especially in the West, that we got rid of slavery. But debt bondage is still very much present. Like the Cambodian boys held captive, killed if they try to escape. This is what modern day slavery looks like. And until we modernize our understanding of that, we won’t know how to identify it, much less do anything about it.

This story originally appeared on The Outlaw Ocean and was Syndicated by MediaFeed.org.

CONSPIRACY THEORY 101

Alberta premier Danielle Smith 

vowed this week to cut provincial ties with the World Economic Forum, calling it an “offensive” organization that seeks to control democratic governments. 

The WEF is known mostly for organizing hyper-elite conferences in Switzerland, which is part of why it’s a frequent target of conspiracy theories holding that it’s a secret illuminati pulling the strings on the world’s government. Not helping the conspiracy theory is the fact that the WEF has a weird habit of claiming just that. 

But the group doesn’t really have any ties to the Alberta government, save for the Alberta Health Services’ involvement in a WEF-aligned health think tank alongside the likes of Harvard and the Mayo Clinic. Anyway; that membership abruptly ended this week with Smith’s announcement.

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(Meanwhile, it was only eight years ago that Smith (who was then leader of the Alberta Wildrose Party) was openly bemoaning the fact that the WEF had cancelled a planned conference to be held in Alberta. The cancelled WEF event was “highly embarrassing” and a “black eye” for the province, said Smith.)

NATIONAL POST

Busy ER departments leading to added healthcare costs and workloads: University of Alberta study

By Chris Chacon Global News
October 31, 2022 


Emergency room doctors in Edmonton and across the country are sounding the alarm about the dire state of ER wait times.

“Anywhere from two to seven hours depending on which emergency department you are going to and currently I’ve seen wait times across the country even approaching 18 to 20 hours,” said pediatric emergency physician Dr. Rod Lim.

“We’re seeing emergency departments closed and we’re seeing wait times reach dangerous levels across the country,” emergency physician Dr. David Carr added.

READ MORE: Stollery Children’s Hospital ER seeing ‘unprecedented’ wait times, surge in patients: Edmonton doctor

A new University of Alberta study finds those busy emergency rooms have led to higher costs because of the need for additional care after the initial emergency room visit.

“As they get busier they have less time to spend with the patient directly,” said study author and U of A business professor Mohamad Soltani. “As an alternative, what they do is they order more tests that can be helpful in diagnosing the case.”

Compounding the problem is a shortage of staff such as nurses, resulting in greater workloads for those frontline staff in the ER.

But Soltani stresses there are things patients can do to alleviate some pressure.

“For the patient side, we propose that the next time you are going to the emergency room, just give it a second thought,” Soltani said.

“Do you really need to go to emergency room? Or do you have some other channels where you can seek care?”

READ MORE: Emergency room at Alberta Children’s Hospital ‘extremely busy,’ complex mental health needs adding to workload

Edmonton ER doctor Warren Thirsk said more robust changes are needed in the health-care system.

“We need better planning, we need to admit that we have run the system too lean, we need to come up with plans that take into account the crux of the health-care system as people, so its people who look after people,” Thirsk said.

He said these wait times and staffing shortages are the worst he’s ever seen and health-care professionals and patients end up paying the price.

“Knowing that we can’t help people like we were trained to do — like we would want our family members to be looked after — is painful to see day after day,” Dr. Thirsk said.

Emergency room doctors in Edmonton and across the country are sounding the alarm about the dire state of ER wait times and services. Now, a new study out of the University of Alberta is showing overburdened emergency rooms are also leading to hidden costs and workloads. Chris Chacon explains.

 

Canada’s ER crisis: Doctors urge governments to stop finger-pointing and find solutions

Teresa Wright - Yesterday-  Global News

Healthcare workers listen as Ontario Health Minister Sylvia Jones makes an announcement at Toronto’s Sunnybrook Hospital, Thursday, August 18, 2022. 

THE CANADIAN PRESS/Chris Young

Canada’s ER crisis: Doctors urge governments to find solutions for ‘dangerous’ wait times   Duration 2:08   View on Watch

Emergency room doctors say patients are experiencing “dangerous” wait times in ERs across the country and it’s time federal and provincial governments stop pointing fingers over the “crisis” in health care and instead come up with solutions.

Hospitals across Canada are experiencing a “perfect storm” of pressures that have resulted in overcrowded emergency departments and wait times that can sometimes stretch to up to 20 hours, Dr. Rodrick Lim, medical director and section head at London Health Sciences Centre’s pediatric emergency department told Mercedes Stephenson in an interview on The West Block.

Read more:

‘Mind boggling’: ERs big and small across Canada struggle amid staffing crisis

It’s every doctor’s “worst nightmare,” he said.

“The thought of anyone waiting longer than they have to in a waiting room and something happening to them because of that is every health-care worker’s nightmare,” Lim said.

“It's just something that we don't want to think about but, unfortunately, there are stories (about this happening) coming across the country right now.”

Front-line workers in hospitals across the country have been sounding the alarm about what they call a “crisis” in their ERs, due to a combination of factors that has forced many hospitals to close their emergency departments temporarily over the last several months.

Video: Code Blue: Emergency rooms across Canada struggle with staff shortages

Significant nursing shortages is one of the biggest concerns, which has led to bed closures in both emergency departments and within medical units in hospitals. This means fewer available beds and personnel to care for patients at a time when hospitals are also seeing a significant influx of sick Canadians. Many have no choice but to go to ERs as they are unable to access primary care thanks to a national shortage of family physicians.

Meanwhile, health workers already burned out from working flat-out during the last two-and-a-half years of the pandemic are now left short-staffed amid a surge in patients due to waves of COVID-19 continuing and an unusually early start to the respiratory virus season.

The situation is particularly acute in children’s hospitals in many parts of the country, including Ontario, where pediatric units seeing an early spike in RSV (respiratory syncytial virus) cases are warning parents of significant wait times.

Read more:

Wait times in children’s ERs are spiking. Here’s a look at how long you might wait

“It's a tough situation… We are seeing quite a surge in RSV earlier than we traditionally see it,” Lim said.

“At the current time, there's a tremendous strain on both emergency departments, inpatient wards and ICU capacity across the country.”

Dr. David Carr, an emergency physician and clinical investigator at the University Health Network in Toronto, says emergency departments are a kind of barometer of the health system, and there are some “alarming signals” right now.

No Quick fix for Ontario ER rooms shuttered due to staffing shortages

With so many nurses retiring early and quitting their jobs due to burnout, emergency departments are not able to admit patients as there aren’t enough nurses to open the beds needed to accommodate them, he said.

It’s leading to a “cascade” of overcrowded ER waiting rooms, in which physicians have nowhere to see patients.

Read more:

What is RSV? Here’s what to know about the virus as cases surge in Canada

“We've now really shifted to just seeing patients in waiting rooms and in some cases outside of the waiting room because there's just no physical space,” Carr said.

All 13 of Canada’s premiers argue more federal funding is what’s needed to help their ailing health systems, but Ottawa says it wants to see better results from the billions already flowing to the provinces and territories for health care before increasing health transfers.

Lim says it’s time for the buck passing to stop and for all levels of government to focus on finding ways to ease pressures for health workers and patients alike.

“We're going to have to really have a serious conversation about health care and the amount of resources that are required and the amount of planning that's required,” he said.

Video: Code Blue: No quick fix amid staffing shortages, surgical backlogs in Canada’s healthcare system

“The sooner we can have an intelligent, comprehensive conversation around it, the better the solution will be.”

Possible fixes will be complex and need to involve short- and long-term plans, Carr added, including paying nurses more and lifting the freeze on nursing salaries in Ontario.

But long-term initiatives won’t help with the immediate pressures facing ERs in Canada, he said.

“Recognizing foreign-trained graduates and increasing class sizes for health-care professionals will help,” he said.

“But let's recall, this is not going to help this winter. And this winter is frightening both of us considerably.”