Manitoba’s Stefanson to Alberta’s Smith: Drop dead!

by David J. Climenhaga

November 1, 2022


“There are other, more pressing things for us to be dealing with right now” than Danielle Smith’s big ideas, Manitoba’s premier says.
Manitoba Conservative Premier Heather Stefanson. Credit: U.S. Embassy and Consulates in Canada


When Manitoba Conservative Premier Heather Stefanson blew off Alberta Conservative Premier Danielle Smith’s call yesterday to ship Alberta oil through the Hudson Bay port of Churchill, Wild Rose Country’s most quotable and quoted political scientist called it a rebuff.

“This is a surprise,” tweeted Mount Royal University’s Duane Bratt. “Stefanson is rebuffing Smith.”

I’d say it was more than a rebuff. It was actually a good brisk “bug off!” Only, you know, not with a bug.

“There are other, more pressing things for us to be dealing with right now, which is why we’re here today to deal with the most vulnerable in our society,” Premier Stefanson told reporters at a news conference about her government’s plan to open more homeless shelters.

(Translation: Do you think I’m nuts? We’re getting our butts kicked here by the NDP and I’d kinda like to win at least one election as premier!)

Stefanson said she understood where her Alberta counterpart is at. “She’s facing an election and some tough things, tough challenges politically within her own province, and she wants to get some of these issues out of the way.”

This was a pretty shrewd analysis of what Smith was up to when she mailed off a wordy letter to Stefanson and Saskatchewan Premier Scott Moe rambling on about what a great idea it would be to build pipelines and ship bitumen from Alberta out through Churchill because, you know, Russia!

Smith has made a lot of promises to her base, the same ones who used to be Jason Kenney’s base, and they’ve already demonstrated what they do to politicians who fail to implement their Q-adjacent demands. At the same time, she knows some of those same policies are kryptonite to a lot of Alberta voters, especially in Calgary.

So maybe she can get some of that garbage out of the way now, then set about to acting like someone folks might elect in a couple of Calgary ridings.

She’d like a photo op at the other two Conservative premiers’ earliest convenience, Smith concluded her epistle to her fellow potential Buffalonians, where “we will kick-start our ongoing collaboration in this area and formalize a structure to engage with the Port, relevant ministries, First Nations and stakeholders to move this important work forward.”

Stefanson: Uh, no.

As for it being a surprise, well, that’s a matter of debate too.

Both Alberta’s and Manitoba’s Conservative premiers have essentially the same problem: an election is looming and their parties are both under performing in the polls compared to the opposition New Democrats.

Stefanson, who assumed office a year ago Sunday after a party election, faces an election next year on October 3. Recent polling suggests that if an election were held tomorrow, there would be an NDP majority in Manitoba.

It’s probably a little early for the province’s Conservatives to panic, but Manitobans have elected New Democrats lots of times before, so it’s not as if anyone would describe another NDP government there as a total fluke.

What’s more, given the small-c conservative approach the NDP took to running the province under Gary Doer from 1999 to 2009, it’s not like anyone could get away with calling them communists like the UCP is forever doing in Alberta.

Smith was only elevated to her current post 21 days ago, so maybe she’s still in leadership campaign mode with the fringiest fringes of the UCP’s base in mind. Or maybe she really is the conspiracy-obsessed sovereignist she appears to be.

The next Alberta general election is a little closer, at the end of next May – as long as the recent buzz isn’t true that she intends to ignore the province’s fixed-election-date law and hang around until 2024 without calling an election.

Like her Manitoba counterpart, Smith is yet to win an election as premier. What’s more, at the moment she doesn’t even has a seat in the Legislature, although she hopes to fix that next Tuesday in Brooks-Medicine Hat.

Whatever the explanation is, it’s apparent that Stephenson and Smith have hit on dramatically different election strategies, at least for now.

Maybe they’ll both work. Maybe neither of them will. Maybe by this time next year there will be NDP governments in three out of four Western Canadian provinces! Now wouldn’t that be a chuckle!
Also yesterday …

Some days it’s hard to know what Alberta story to comment on. Also yesterday was Canadaland’s story of a bizarre plot by sketchy operatives bankrolled by a cabal of Calgary Conservatives to try to trick then Calgary Mayor Naheed Nenshi into taking a bribe from a fake Russian oligarch.

Nenshi, of course, told them to take a hike.

It’s hard to believe the people said to be behind the scheme could be that stupid, but then again, maybe it’s not that hard.

Later yesterday, Nenshi suggested the Calgary Police Service and the RCMP “investigate this story deeply.” There were also whispers on social media of very senior Alberta Conservatives indeed being involved in this intrigue.

So it may be best to leave this one alone until the police have completed their investigation – which should be, you know, in three or four years …

There is also the possibility that the planned use by Ontario Conservative Premier Doug Ford’s government of the Notwithstanding Clause of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms to smash a garden-variety public sector strike could provoke a general strike in Canada’s most populous province.

So that seems pretty worthy of commentary too.

Regardless, today’s pick was an opportunity to bask in the reflected glory of the New York Daily News’s headline about another Ford, U.S. President Gerald R. Ford, on October 30, 1975. It was, in the opinion of this former professional headline writer, one of the two or three greatest headlines ever written:


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DAVID J. CLIMENHAGA
David Climenhaga is a journalist and trade union communicator who has worked in senior writing and editing positions with the Globe and Mail and the Calgary Herald. He left journalism after the strike... More by David J. Climenhaga

Class War in Ontario
by Judy Rebick

rabble.ca

November 1, 2022

Doug Ford and Education Minister Stephen Lecce have declared war on the labour movement through attempting to restrict the rights of teachers to negotiate and strike.

A photo of Ontario Premier Doug Ford. Credit: Premier of Ontario Photography / Flickr

The Doug Ford government has just turned a minor labour dispute into class war in Ontario.

Refusing to budge in negotiations, offering a piddly 10 per cent wage increase when 50 per cent was demanded, the Ford government, usually notoriously lazy, started the legislative session at 5 a.m. on November 1 to drive through a bill that not only removes union rights to free collective bargaining and to strike in Ontario but also puts at threat all of our constitutionally protected rights.

If you think I’m exaggerating, here is the appendix to the so-called Keeping Students in School Act.

“The Act provides for new collective agreements. The central terms for those collective

agreements are set out in the Schedule. The Act requires the termination of any strike or lock-out and prohibits strikes or lock-outs during the term of the collective agreement. (4 years)

“The Act is declared to operate notwithstanding sections 2, 7 and 15 of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms and the Act will apply despite the Human Rights Code.

“The Act limits the jurisdiction of the Ontario Labour Relations Board, arbitrators and other tribunals to make certain inquiries or decisions. It also provides for there to be no causes of action or proceedings against the Crown for certain acts. Certain proceedings are deemed to have been dismissed.”

Faced with a union determined to get a decent wage for the lowest paid education workers, who care for children with disabilities, pre-school children in public childcare and keep our schools clean and functional, the Ford government has declared war on the labour movement and put all of our rights at risk

Section 7 of the Charter protects our freedom of conscience and religion, freedom of thought, freedom of peaceful assembly and freedom of association. Section 7 is the right to life, liberty and security of the person. The right that won us legal abortion.

Section 15 is the Equality section of the Charter guaranteeing equality before and under the law without discrimination based on race, gender, religion, disability, which is the section used to defend gay marriage among other things.

As if that wasn’t enough, the Act limits the jurisdiction of the Ontario Labour Relations Board and arbitrators and applies “despite the Human Rights Act.”

As soon as this bill passes, which it will because the Tories have a majority, 55,000 Ontario education workers, most of whom are women will lose all their legally protected rights.

And as the right-wing pundit on CBC’s Power on Politics said yesterday “the teachers are next.”

The Ontario Federation of Labour has called an emergency demonstration on November 1. This has to be the first step in a province-wide mobilization not just of the labour movement but of every person who supports social justice and human rights. Each of us should put aside whatever else we are doing and join this struggle to drive back this assault on labour and human rights.

CUPE Ontario has said “Enough is Enough” and called a province-wide walk out on Friday November 4, whether or not the legislation passed. Ontario’s largest school board in Toronto has said the schools will be closed on that day. I hope it is with a sense of solidarity with the workers. Hopefully, the teachers’ unions will also go out in solidarity. I also hope as many parents as possible will be out supporting the picket lines or protests at their childrens’ schools.

The last time we had a major cross-province labour action was the Days of Action in the 1990’s against Mike Harris’s Common-Sense Revolution. Harris was a sociopathic leader who couldn’t care less how strong the opposition was and the mobilizations that were organized by a cross movement coalition led by Labour failed to change very much. Dofo is a different kettle of fish. He wants to be liked. His government claims it’s pro-labour separating public and private sector unions. It was also the height of the power of neo-liberalism. Now neo-liberalism is declining and the battle is against an alt-right that would like to roll the clock back to the days when people like women, Black, LGBTQ people, and Indigenous people had few if any rights.

This is the moment in Ontario for a massive, intersectional movement to fight for democracy, labour rights and human rights.

DEFENDING THE RIGHT TO STRIKE!

ONT. NDP given boot from legislature after refusing to back down on Bill 28
Antonella Artuso - 47m ago

NDP given boot from legislature after refusing to back down on Bill 28© Provided by Toronto Sun

Ontario NDP members were removed from the legislature Wednesday after accusing Premier Doug Ford and Education Minister Stephen Lecce of lying.

Speaker Ted Arnott asked the MPPs to withdraw their unparliamentary language but they refused.

“If you’ve got a government that’s got a stick poised over people’s head, you’re not bargaining in good faith,” NDP Leader Peter Tabuns said, the first to be removed. “You are actually intimidating people.”

Question Period was dominated by Ontario’s Bill 28, the Keeping Students in Class Act, which would use the power of the notwithstanding clause to override collective bargaining rights in the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms and impose a contract on 55,000 CUPE education workers who had threatened to strike Friday.

Ford said the union refused to accept the government’s improved offer or back down from a strike that would put kids out of class starting as early as Friday.

“We won’t let that happen,” Ford said.

The CUPE members, which include maintenance workers and educational assistants, would have the most generous pension and benefits plan for this sector in the country, he said.

The union has said some of their members, many earning under $40,000 a year, have had to go to food banks.

aartuso@postmedia.com

The Unknown Natural Disaster That Wiped Out Part Of Ancient Britain

Jennifer Shea - Yesterday 

In prehistoric Doggerland, a hilly, densely wooded area that once connected today's British Isles and Europe, the Mesolithic ancestors of the modern-day Britons faced a problem that humans have to reckon with now: rising sea levels. In fact, the floods that wrecked their homeland were the result of melting glaciers, a situation that recalls present-day problems. And according to The Vintage News, the residents of Doggerland were eventually left with no choice but to pick up and move.


England and European mainland© Viacheslav Lopatin/Shutterstock

They set up their new homes in what are today England and the Netherlands. But the remains of Doggerland's civilization still make their way into fishermen's nets now, from artifacts to bones, per The Vintage News.

Those floods 6,000 years ago offer lessons for our age. According to National Geographic, some scientists warn that our melting polar ice caps could force billions of residents of areas near shorelines to migrate. And on an already overcrowded planet, that is a recipe for social strife.

What Happened To Suddenly Flood Doggerland?


Mesolithic hunter-gatherers© Print Collector/Getty Images

It is thought that amid the changing water levels, an epic tsunami struck Doggerland, according to The Guardian. The natural disaster was probably the result of a sub-sea landslide near Norway's coast.


Scientists have dubbed that landslide the Storegga Event, per Ancient Origins. And it likely caused multiple huge waves to overtake about 2,700 square miles of land in Doggerland.

How do we know that? Scientists at the University of Warwick have been plumbing the ancient DNA in sediment deposits from the North Sea for years. And in 2020, they released a study in the journal Geosciences finding that lithostratigraphy (the study of rock layers), geochemical signatures, macro and microfossils and sedimentary ancient DNA (sedaDNA) all point to a tsunami as the natural disaster that struck Doggerland, killing or driving out its inhabitants. While some Doggerlanders were able to make the journey to drier ground, many of the survivors lost their tools and shelter and probably died during the following winter.

Gathering What We Know To Tell A Cautionary Tale


Melting ice© Jane Rix/Shutterstock

Over the years, archaeologists and paleontologists from England and the Netherlands have pored over artifacts, seismic survey data, and even perfectly-preserved footprints on the seafloor to gain a better understanding of Doggerland culture. And they have actually put together a digital model representing 18,000 square miles of Doggerland before natural disaster struck, per National Geographic.

They have also assembled a physical exhibition that went on display in Holland's National Museum of Antiquities last year, and that features 200-plus artifacts — everything from skull fragments to arrowheads to mammoth molars, as The Guardian reported at the time. Some of the artifacts came from "citizen archaeologists" who picked the fossils up off the beaches near their homes.

Scientists hope that tales of Doggerland will spur more people to take climate change and the resulting uptick in extreme weather events seriously. Unlike the conditions that struck Doggerland, our present rising sea levels are a man-made catastrophe, and one we can at least try to reverse. Whether future humans will suffer the same fate as the residents of Doggerland remains to be seen.

Read this next: Really Bizarre Climate Change Side Effects

Filmmaker claims video exists of the aliens found in Brazil in 1996

Liz Braun - Yesterday 

An image taken from the trailer for the documentary,© Provided by Toronto Sun

Did the Brazilian military capture alien beings in 1996?

That’s the year residents of Varginha, Brazil, reported seeing a UFO in the night sky and maybe extraterrestrials, too.

Three young women claim to have seen an alien being on Jan. 20, 1996 — a creature about 5-feet tall, with a large head, brown skin and large red eyes — walking unsteadily in a rainstorm.

A second, similar looking creature was found lying by a road two days later, and another such being was spotted at the local zoo.

Brazilian military authorities explained away each of these incidents.

News Corp in Australia reported that interest in the alleged UFO crash, extraterrestrial encounter and subsequent military cover-up — which created a media frenzy at the time — has intensified once again with the news that video of an alien exists.

And it’s about to be released, according to the news agency.

Recommended video


The Varginha incident, as it’s known, is the subject of a new documentary called Moment of Contact from filmmaker James Fox.

Fox went to the small town in the southwestern state of Minas Gerais to interview eyewitnesses, experts and officials.

As retired Brazilian Air Force General Jose Carlos Pereira noted in the documentary, “Governments tend to cover up everything they can’t explain to their population.”

A local man, Carlos de Souza, witnessed the crash of a UFO in the area after locals reported seeing a cigar-shaped object falling slowly from the sky.

De Souza returned to the place 26 years later with the filmmakers and spoke about what he witnessed — strange pieces of aluminum-like material and the overpowering smell of ammonia.

A large military presence descended on the town almost immediately after de Souza got to the site, and cordoned off several blocks.

The alien beings are described by all who saw them as having strange, oily skin; a soldier who retrieved one alien body is said to have died within weeks from an infection he got after touching the alien’s skin.

A military insider said he saw a soldier with a camera filming a captured alien as the creature’s body was being transported from Humanitas Hospital in Varginha to ESA Army Base.

That’s where the rumours of video footage come from.

The film ends with a statement from filmmakers saying they continue to pursue video and photo evidence — evidence they say has already been seen by U.S. officials.

“According to local military and civilian witnesses, the bodies and crash debris were appropriated by agents from the United States of America.”

This GOP governor could lose in one of the midterms’ biggest upsets: report

Bob Brigham
November 01, 2022

Gov. Kevin Stitt / Gage Skidmore

Republicans are spending big to try and shore up an incumbent governor facing re-election in a reliably red state.

"Oklahoma Governor Kevin Stitt was supposed to cruise to re-election," Eric Cortellessa reported for Time magazine. "Yet the Republican Governors Association has just released a seven-figure ad buy to help Stitt over the finish line. And prominent Republicans like Florida Governor Ron DeSantis and Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas are rushing to his side, as party leaders fear Oklahoma might be the site of one of the biggest upsets of the midterms."

Joy Hofmeister, the superintendent of Oklahoma’s public school system, is the Democratic Party nominee after being a Republican until last year, blunting GOP messages attempting to link her to President Joe Biden.

Stitt has made Hofmeister's job easier.

"The tight race is largely the result of a series of missteps by Stitt, from scandals that have plagued his administration to a bitter feud with Oklahoma’s 39 American Indian tribes," the magazine reported. "Stitt also signed one of the country’s most restrictive abortions bills into law, which has drawn some pushback even in conservative Oklahoma for its banning the procedure in cases of rape, incest and when the mother’s health is at risk. And he oversaw one of America’s highest COVID death rates, with roughly 17,000 lives lost.

The magazine said Stitt loaned his campaign "roughly $1 million" in recent days.

Governor Stitt has hijacked the Republican Party,’ Hofmeister said. “He is pandering to extremism.”

Read the full report.

Invasive malaria mosquito spreading in Africa, researchers warn

Modelling research in 2020 found that if Anopheles stephensi spread in Africa it would put over 126 million people at risk of malaria

By AFP
November 02, 2022

Mosquito on a flower stem.— Unsplash

New evidence has emerged that an invasive species of malaria-carrying mosquito from Asia is spreading in Africa, where it could pose a "unique" threat to tens of millions of city-dwellers, researchers warned Tuesday.

In Africa, home to more than 95% of the world's 627,000 malaria deaths in 2020, the parasite is mostly spread in rural areas preferred by the dominant Anopheles gambiae group of mosquitoes.

However, the Anopheles stephensi mosquito, which has long been the main malaria spreader in Indian and Iranian cities, can breed in urban water supplies, meaning it can thrive during the dry season. It is also to resistant to commonly used insecticides.

Modelling research in 2020 found that if Anopheles stephensi spread widely in Africa it would put more than 126 million people in 44 cities at risk of malaria.

Djibouti became the first African nation to detect Anopheles stephensi in 2012. It had been close to eradicating malaria with just 27 reported cases that year.

However, the number has skyrocketed since Anopheles stephensi's arrival, hitting 73,000 cases in 2020, according to the World Health Organization.

On Tuesday, researchers revealed the first evidence that a malaria outbreak in neighbouring Ethiopia earlier this year was caused by Anopheles stephensi.

In the eastern Ethiopian city of Dire Dawa, a transport hub between the capital Addis Ababa and Djibouti, 205 malaria cases were reported in all of 2019.

However this year more than 2,400 cases were reported between January and May. The outbreak was unprecedented because it took place during the country's dry season, when malaria has usually been rare.

'Surprising'

As the numbers were rising, Fitsum Girma Tadesse, a molecular biologist at Ethiopia's Armauer Hansen Research Institute, and other researchers "jumped in to investigate," he told AFP.

They quickly determined that "Anopheles stephensi mosquitoes are responsible for the increase in cases," Tadesse said.

They linked Anopheles stephensi to the infections of the patients, and also found the mosquitoes — carrying malaria — in nearby water containers.

Tadesse warned that the mosquito's preference for open water tanks, common across many African cities, "makes it unique".

The research, which has not been peer-reviewed, was presented at the Annual Meeting of the American Society of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene being held this week in Seattle, US.

Also presented at the conference were early findings that identified Anopheles stephensi at 64% of 60 test sites in nine states of neighbouring Sudan.

"In some instances, we have found that up to 94% of households have stephensi" mosquitoes nearby, Hmooda Kafy, the head of the integrated vector management department at Sudan's health ministry, said in a statement.

The findings come after the Nigerian Institute of Medical Research confirmed in July it had detected Anopheles stephensi in West Africa for the first time.

Sarah Zohdy, an Anopheles stephensi specialist at the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, told AFP it was "surprising" that the mosquito was detected so far west, as the focus had been on the Horn of Africa.

'A major threat'

In the last couple of months it has been shown that Anopheles stephensi "is no longer a potential threat" in Africa, Zohdy said.

"In the Ethiopian context, this is a threat — we now have data to show that," said Zohdy, who also works with the US President's Malaria Initiative, a partner of the Dire Dawa study.

"The evidence now exists to suggest that this is something that the world needs to act on," she added.

Anopheles stephensi has also been reportedly detected in Somalia, according to the WHO, which in September launched an initiative aimed at stopping the spread of the mosquito in Africa.

Because Anopheles stephensi can thrive in urban water tanks, "you get a shift from a seasonal disease to one that can persist year round," Zohdy said.

That shift poses "a major threat" to recent gains made against malaria, she added.

Deaths from malaria had more than halved from the start of the century to 2017 — largely due to insecticide-treated mosquito nets, testing and drugs — before progress stalled during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Zohdy called for increased surveillance to find out exactly how far Anopheles stephensi has spread across the continent.

"The true extent of the distribution of the mosquito is unknown," she said.

Brazilian Centrist Alckmin, Lula's Big-tent Bet For VP

11/01/22 

Though from different political backgrounds, Brazil's vice president-elect Geraldo Alckmin (L) and Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva (R) teamed up to defeat far-right incumbent Jair Bolsonaro 

AFP / NELSON ALMEIDA

Known as a good administrator but dull politician, Brazil's business-friendly centrist Geraldo Alckmin is the wingman leftist president-elect Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva is betting on to help mend a deeply divided country.

The vice president-elect and his boss are not exactly an obvious match: Alckmin ran against then-president Lula in Brazil's 2006 election, losing badly in the runoff.

But they decided to team up, they say, to defeat a common enemy: far-right incumbent Jair Bolsonaro.

"People might think it's strange," Alckmin said in March when he became Lula's running-mate for the hard-fought election that ended with their victory in a runoff election Sunday.

"I ran against Lula in 2006. But we never put the very issue of democracy at risk."

Lula on Tuesday appointed Alckmin to lead the transition with the outgoing administration.

Alckmin, 69, rose to prominence as governor of Sao Paulo, Brazil's biggest and wealthiest state, in the 2000s and 2010s. The mild-mannered anesthesiologist earned a reputation as a solid managerial type and was well-liked by the business and financial sectors.

But he had fallen into political oblivion, winning less than five percent of the vote in the first round of the 2018 presidential race, which brought Bolsonaro to power.

A co-founder of the center-right Brazilian Social Democracy Party (PSDB), long the main rival to Lula's Workers' Party (PT), Alckmin switched to the center-left Brazilian Socialist Party (PSB) so he could do the once-unthinkable and stand as the ex-metalworker's VP.

"We have to open our eyes and have the humility to see that today, (Lula) is the person who best reflects and interprets the Brazilian people's sense of hope for the future," Alckmin said.

A few years back, he had fewer kind words for the former -- and now future -- president.

"After bankrupting Brazil, Lula says he wants to be president again. In other words, friends, he wants to return to the scene of the crime," Alckmin said in 2017.

But Lula wanted a business-friendly running mate to help him mount a big-tent campaign with broad appeal, winning back centrist voters still stinging from the huge recession and corruption scandals that marked the end of the PT's years in power (2003-2016).

Lula, 77, has been here before: his VP when he was president was center-right businessman Jose Alencar, who helped convince wary markets the ex-union leader was serious about orthodox economic policies.

As with Alencar, there appears to be little risk Lula will be overshadowed by Alckmin, a politician nicknamed "xuxu popsicle" -- a reference to a bland vegetable common in Brazil.

"I'm not a showman. If you want to see a show, go watch a comedian," the bald, bespectacled Alckmin once said.

Born in Pindamonhangaba, a small city outside Sao Paulo, Alckmin grew up in a devout Catholic family.

He was a city councilman and mayor before winning a seat in Congress and eventually the governorship.

Despite his clean-cut reputation, he did not escape unscathed from the massive "Car Wash" corruption investigation that stained a laundry list of politicians and business executives in Brazil, Lula chief among them.

Managers at construction giant Odebrecht listed Alckmin among the politicians who allegedly received illegal campaign donations.

He was never charged.

US requests for overseas abortion pills surges: study


AFP
PublishedNovember 1, 2022


After the US Supreme Court's controversial decision to overturn the nationwide right to abortion, more women have sought out abortion pills online - Copyright AFP/File Menahem KAHANA

Requests by Americans for abortion pills from outside the United States have surged since the US Supreme Court’s explosive decision last summer to overturn the nationwide right to the procedure, according to a study published Tuesday.

Researchers, whose work was published in the medical journal JAMA, analyzed the number of requests submitted to telemedicine service Aid Access, which delivers abortion pills from abroad to 30 US states.

Aid Access was purposefully set up to help women “self-manage” their abortions at home, circumventing local bans or other barriers.

After the Supreme Court’s controversial decision in late June, many Republican-led states severely restricted or outright banned abortions.

According to the study, Aid Access received an average of 83 requests per day before the Supreme Court’s decision from the 30 states in which it operates.

But in the two months after, that number jumped to 213 per day — an increase of about 160 percent.

Proportional to the number of women in each state, the increase in Aid Access requests were highest in Louisiana, Mississippi, Arkansas, Alabama and Oklahoma — all of which completely banned abortions.

In the states that outlawed abortions, “current legal restrictions” was cited as women’s motivation for using the service in about 62 percent of cases after the Supreme Court decision, compared to 31 percent before.

The study did analyze requests for the pills on other sites, where they are easily available for a few hundred dollars — but without medical supervision.

Another study, also published Tuesday in the journal JAMA, looked at the average travel time for women to reach an abortion clinic in the United States.

The average time was 28 minutes before the Supreme Court’s decision, and it increased significantly to 1 hour and 40 minutes afterward. The national average however masks wide local disparities.

In states that implemented a total abortion ban or limits after six weeks of pregnancy, the average travel time increase was four hours, according to the study, which added that the lack of access was especially a problem for those with fewer resources.

In the 100 days following the Supreme Court ruling, at least 66 clinics stopped performing abortions, according to a report in early October by the Guttmacher Institute.

Anonymous graves mark the end of the line for migrants at US border

Author: AFP|Update: 02.11.2022 

Anonymous graves in Falfurrias, Texas, mark the final resting places of many migrants who died attempting to enter the United States / © AFP

Sheriff Urbino Martinez has collected the remains of so many dead migrants who have come across the US southern border that he is known as "The Undertaker."

"It's deadly out there," says Martinez, who patrols the small Texan county of Brooks, a few dozen kilometers (miles) from Mexico.

"We started keeping track of the dead bodies from 2009," he told AFP in his office, pointing to 20 thick volumes, where his department has information on 913 cases.


But, he says, that's only a fraction of the true human toll of the border crossings.

"I would multiply that times five, maybe even 10 for those bodies that will never be recovered."

Sheriff Urbino Martinez, of Brooks County, Texas, says his department has information on 913 cases of deceased migrants collected since 2009 in 20 thick binders / © AFP

The United States logged a record 2.3 million migrant encounters at its southern border in the year to September -- a key issue for some voters as they head to the polls for next month's midterm elections.

Many were sent back south; an unknown number made it into the country without being detected.

At least 700 people are known to have died in the attempt.

To avoid the checkpoint in Falfurrias, the main town in Brooks County, migrants are directed by human traffickers into vast farmsteads where dense vegetation, treacherous sands and soaring temperatures can prove fatal.

Sometimes, there isn't much of a person left to find.

Martinez's folders are labelled "human remains" -- a chillingly accurate description of the photographs that sometimes show partial torsos or just a few bones.

"If it's real hot, your body will decompose completely within 72 hours, and then the animals are going to tear whatever's left.

"The feral hogs, the rats, anything that's out there that can tear the limb off, they're going to do it. We found human bones inside a rat's den before."

Numbers are down in Brooks county this year -- Martinez has logged 80 bodies so far in 2022, all of which were processed through his mobile mortuary.

"It is less than last year but it is 80 too many," he says.

- No identification -

The death that Martinez finds in Brooks is not unique to his county.

Dr. Corine Stern, the chief coroner for southern Texas, says most of migrants whose remains she deals with have died from heatstroke or dehydration / © AFP

The same pattern of tragedy is repeated all along the Texan border: desperate people dying as they flee the crushing poverty, violence and terror of their dysfunctional homelands.

In the border town of Eagle Pass, the municipal cemetery is strewn with rudimentary crosses that mark the graves of dozens of unknown dead; the men and women whose American dreams ended in anonymous graves.

Around 40 plaques, labelled John or Jane Doe, sit next to a small US flag.

Across town, the migrants are still coming, gambling that the possibility of death en route is better than the alternative.

"It was an ordeal," said Alejandra, a 35-year-old Colombian who crossed the rushing Rio Grande to reach Texas, even though she cannot swim. "But it was scarier to go back."

Cowering under a tree from the hot sun, Alejandra said she needed asylum because of the danger she faced from organized crime in Colombia.

"If we go back, they'll kill us," she said, looking at her three teenage children.

- Remains -

Corinne Stern, the chief coroner for southern Texas, says most of the migrants whose remains she examines died from heatstroke or dehydration.

"Up until about five years ago, (the border) took up about 30 percent of my time... Now it's taking up about 75 percent," says the doctor, who wears a necklace inscribed with the Hebrew word for "Life."

In the reception area of the morgue, a painting reads: "Let the dead teach the living."

Inside, a blackboard lists dozens of Jane and John Does.

Eduardo Canales founded the South Texas Human Rights Center in 2013, installing water stations around ranches to prevent migrants from drinking the water in the cattle troughs, which can be toxic for humans / © AFP

The morgue is impeccably clean, but the smell of bodily decay is pervasive, permeating the masks visitors are required to wear.

The vast majority of border cases she receives have no identification, Stern says, as she examines the skeletal remains of a still-clothed female body.

Attached to the corpse is a small olive green backpack.

When the doctor picks it up, two lollipops fall out, their colorful wrappings a contrast to the earthy ochre that swathes the clothes and the bones.

DNA samples are extracted in an attempt to identify her, but for now she will be labeled as yet another Jane Doe, one of 250 Stern has dealt with this year.

- 'Where is my wife?' -

For Eduardo Canales, the open-endedness of anonymous death is too much to bear.

In 2013, Canales founded the South Texas Human Rights Center, installing water stations around ranches to prevent migrants from drinking the water in the cattle troughs, which can be toxic for humans.

Canales, 74, supplies blue plastic barrels that have location coordinates and a phone number to call for help.

But when he began receiving calls from family members looking for loved ones who had gone missing after crossing the border, he decided to expand his work.

"For me the most important thing is for families to be able to find closure," he says.

The South Texas Human Rights Center supplies blue plastic barrels of water that have location coordinates and a phone number to call for help / © AFP

"Families don't stop looking, they never give up. They keep asking where is my wife, my brother, my daughter?"

Many were buried anonymously in the Falfurrias cemetery, but a partnership with Texas State University made it possible to exhume dozens of bodies and identify them by their fingerprints.

The effort has reduced the number of anonymous graves in Brooks: of the 119 people found in 2021, 107 were identified.

"But many more die and disappear without us ever finding them," Canales says, pointing to vast dusty plains.

"Here the only constant is death."