Iraq hospital heads abandon posts after fire tragedy

Issued on: 17/07/2021

Fire engulfs the Covid isolation unit of Al-Hussein hospital in the southern Iraqi city of Nasiriyah Asaad NIAZI AFP


Nasiriyah (Iraq) (AFP)

Several hospital administrators in a southern Iraqi province have abandoned their posts, local authorities said Saturday, after arrest warrants were issued for senior staff following a deadly hospital fire in the city of Nasiriyah.

Saad al-Majid, health director of the southern governorate of Dhi Qar, told AFP that management teams of five hospitals had quit as "they're unwilling to assume responsibility" over any possible repeat of the tragedy.

At least 60 people were killed in the blaze late Monday at a temporary facility for Covid-19 patients at Nasiriyah's Al-Hussein Hospital in Dhi Qar fuelled by oxygen canisters exploding.

It was the second such tragedy in Iraq in three months.

In April, a fire at a Covid hospital in Baghdad -- also sparked by exploding oxygen cylinders -- killed 82 people, prompting the country's health minister to resign.

Local journalist Adnan Toame said the resignations among senior hospital staff at a time of public outrage were "embarrassing".

"They are shirking their responsibilities when they should instead be redoubling efforts to face up to this crisis," he said.

"This is a clear sign of the collapse of the health system in the governorate," chimed in Nasiriyah activist and journalist Adnan Dhafar.

On Saturday, a small fire broke out at Al-Haboubi hospital in Nasiriyah but it was quickly put out by fire crews, with no fatalities recorded.

Iraq -- whose oil-dependent economy is still recovering from decades of war and international sanctions -- has recorded more than 1.4 million coronavirus cases, including over 17,000 deaths.

Much of its health infrastructure is dilapidated, and investment in public services has been hamstrung by endemic corruption.

© 2021 AFP

DO I DETECT A THEME HERE

Gore queen Julia Ducournau wins Cannes top prize


Issued on: 17/07/2021 - 

Ducournau has a passion for all aspects of the human body

 Valery HACHE AFP


Cannes (France) (AFP)

French film director Julia Ducournau, who on Saturday won the Cannes festival's top prize for "Titane", developed a taste for skin-crawling bodily transformations early on in life thanks to her parents, both doctors.

Exploding into the spotlight at just 34 with her debut feature film "Raw", Ducournau quickly established herself as a singular and audacious filmmaker.

The coming-of-age tale with a gory twist, featuring a teenage vegetarian who finds she likes human flesh and blood, brought critics close to fainting when it was shown at the 2016 Cannes festival.


The impact of "Titane", about a young woman who has sex with cars and kills without a care, was much the same, with critics shielding their eyes during several scenes.

Getting a horror film short-listed for the top prize at Cannes was in itself a success, she told AFP during the first week of the festival.

"I've always wanted to bring genre cinema or outlandish films to mainstream festivals so this part of French movie production would stop being ostracised," she said.

"People need to understand that genre cinema is a way to talk about individual people and about our deepest fears and desires in a profound, raw and direct way."

The polished appearance of Ducournau, now 39, appears in stark contrast to the messy array of gore seen in her films.#photo1

The Paris-born daughter of a dermatologist father and a gynaecologist mother, both film lovers, suggests her fascination with some of the most disturbing aspects of the human body has deep roots.

"Even as a little girl, I would hear my parents talk about medical topics without taboo. That was their job. I liked to stick my nose in their books," she said while promoting "Raw".

Ducournau was visibly pleased at Cannes's "Titane" news conference when a critic compared her film to David Cronenberg's "Crash" and David Lynch's "Blue Velvet".

She also cites Brian de Palma, Pier Paolo Pasolini and Na Hong-jin as influences.

When she was only six, she watched "The Texas Chainsaw Massacre" in secret and, growing up, devoured the chilling gothic stories of Edgar Allan Poe.

Ducournau was a brilliant student, earning a double degree for French literature and English before studying script-writing at the prestigious Femis film school in Paris.

Her 2011 short film "Junior", shortlisted for the Cannes festival's critics' prize, already showed a liking for physical transformation.

"Genre cinema is an obvious choice for me, in order to talk about the human body. The human body that changes and that opens up," she told Telerama magazine.

Caleb Landry Jones, best actor at Cannes for playing mass killer

Issued on: 17/07/2021

Mothball-blue stare: US actor Caleb Landry Jones at Cannes 

CHRISTOPHE SIMON AFP

Cannes (France) (AFP)

"You can be too good at your job," joked Caleb Landry Jones, who has fast developed a reputation for playing creepy characters.

The Texan farm boy with an avant-garde heart won best actor at Cannes on Saturday, and at just 31 is already seen as one of the most interesting and unusual actors in Hollywood.

"I can't do this, I am going to throw up," a clearly shaken Landry Jones said as he accepted the prize.

Unafraid to take on roles like that of Australian mass murderer Martin Bryant in "Nitram" -- which had rave reviews at Cannes -- his career has stretched from the "X-Men" to the mould-breaking horror flick "Get Out".

In that movie poking fun at liberal white America's racism he played the scary lacrosse-stick wielding brother.

He also turned up in indie gems at the Oscars like "The Florida Project" and "Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri", acting as the catalyst for chaos.

- Run of good ol' boys -

In fact, Landry Jones has done such a run of racist good ol' boys, it was a shock to see him as Orphan Annie in gay drama "Stonewall".

"It's all about trusting the director, writer and the material," he told AFP, resplendent in a tangerine orange flared suit and tie in the style of 1970s Miami pimps.

Even his screen debut at 13 as a boy on a bike in the Coen brothers' "No Country for Old Men" was freaky -- "Mister, you got a bone sticking out of your arm."#photo1

His intense screen presence and what "Nitram" director Justin Kurzel calls his penchant for "completely inhabiting his characters, really living in them" also sets him apart.

He spent three months trying to get under Bryant's skin, a deeply disturbed young man who killed 35 people at Port Arthur in Tasmania in 1996.

Many critics were sceptical of another movie about a mass shooter, particularlyas many in Australia were appalled by the idea of glorifying Bryant.

But they were blown away by the intimate family drama about mental illness that exploded into the headlines.

Kurzel also stops the story in the seconds before Bryant starts shooting at the former convict colony.

- Mothball-blue stare -

Yet with his mothball-blue stare, and irises that seem to leak into the rest of his eyes, Landry Jones can sometimes come over as both distant and strange.

On the Cannes red carpet he pulled a few expressions for the cameras that seemed at odds with the sombre mood of the rest of the movie's team.#photo2

But the musician-turned-actor seems to embrace his own eccentricity and sense of difference.

"I've always been really into the extreme," he said of his passion for music. "My highs are very high and my lows are very low."

And he told AFP he doesn't ever let thoughts like "'Oh no, that is going to get me in trouble" stop him in his tracks.

- Sensitive portrayal -

With the memory of the Port Arthur massacre still raw, he said "it was very evident that people were going to be angry.

"Some people probably pegged the film to be a certain kind of movie... but it is a very sensitive piece and very respectfully made."

Being Texan helped with his role: "The film is in many ways about the Australian male. I found a lot of similarities with Texas. So I knew what that was."

Months of prep and Kurzel's notes were also invaluable.

"I really worked on the dialect for two months in Texas. But I arrived a month before we began shooting and if it wasn't for that I think I would have failed miserably."

"Some brutal feedback" from ordinary Aussies about his accent hit home.

For some time Landry Jones suffered the ultimate indignity of "apparently sounding like a Kiwi, a New Zealander," he laughed.

Kurzel also steered him to material "I have never gotten from a director before", including total immersion in 1990s Australian TV, including "Neighbours", the soap that launched Kylie Minogue on the world.

© 2021 AFP

CANNES 2021

In late surprise, Cannes screens powerful tribute to Hong Kong democracy protests

Issued on: 16/07/2021 - 
A still from Kiwi Chow's "The Revolution of Our Time", which screened at the Cannes Film Festival on Friday. © Courtesy of Cannes Film Festival

Text by: Benjamin DODMAN


In a last-minute addition to its line-up, the Cannes Film Festival has given a world premiere to Kiwi Chow’s “Revolution of Our Times”, a defiant chronicle of Hong Kong’s 2019 pro-democracy protests, taking a diplomatic gamble on a sensitive topic that could provoke China’s ire.
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After ten days of blazing sunshine, the rain descended on the Cannes Film Festival on Friday – a tribute, no doubt, to the defiant protesters who fashioned a global symbol of freedom out of an unlikely item: the umbrella.

The humble brolly has been an emblem of Hong Kong’s pro-democracy protests since 2014, first as a means of expression and then as a shield against police cameras, pepper spray, gas canisters and rubber bullets. But even the sturdiest umbrella cannot protect the protagonists of Kiwi Chow’s shocking documentary “Revolution of Our Times”, which chronicles the massive street protests that gripped Hong Kong in 2019 and their brutal suppression by police.

Protesters use an umbrella as a shield during the turmoil in Hong Kong in September 2019. © Mehdi Chebil

The secretive, last-minute inclusion of Chow’s film – announced only as a “surprise documentary” in an email to the press on Thursday – had aroused plenty of curiosity, as well as speculation that Cannes might be heading for a showdown with China’s criticism-averse authorities. As it turns out, fears of a fallout with Beijing are entirely justified: “Revolution of Our Times” is a powerful tribute to the courage and resilience of Hongkongers battling for their freedom, and an uncompromising critique of Chinese threats to the city’s semi-autonomous status.

“We’re not playing a game with this surprise screening,” festival director Thierry Frémaux told the audience ahead of the film’s premiere, perhaps hoping to defuse a potential diplomatic spat. Frémaux said the documentary had reached Cannes at the 11th hour, adding: “We saw it, we loved it, and in accordance with Cannes’ long tradition of showing films about what’s happening in the world, we decided it was important to screen it.”

The film chronicles the turmoil that shook the former British colony between June and November 2019, starting with the authorities’ attempts to introduce an extradition bill with mainland China that effectively hollowed out the “one country-two systems” principle agreed upon by London and Beijing. It then charts the protest movement’s gradual shift from civil to uncivil disobedience, culminating in the bloody 12-day siege of the city’s Polytechnic University that sanctioned the protesters’ defeat.

Chow has amassed extensive footage of the marches and the protesters’ pitched battles with police, much of it chillingly graphic. His film also features a wealth of interviews with ordinary citizens involved in the movement, their voices altered and their faces hidden by masks or blurred in post-production. The film states that it was “made by Hongkongers” and that most people involved use pseudonyms in the credits. Endnotes stress that several people in the film are now in exile or in jail.

Protesters wear gas masks, helmets and other protective gear at a Hong Kong protest in September 2019. © Mehdi Chebil

“Over the past fifty years, Hongkongers have fought for freedom and democracy but have yet to succeed,” reads the film’s synopsis, published on the festival’s website. “In 2019, the Extradition Bill to China opened Pandora’s box, turning Hong Kong into a battlefield against the Chinese authoritarian rule.”

That Hongkongers broadly support the protests is immediately obvious from images of a monster demonstration bringing two million people – almost a third of the total population – to the city’s streets. But the film’s focus is really on the so-called “Valiant”, the overwhelmingly youthful, black-clad protesters who believe that attacking is the best defence. “Be water” is their motto, constantly changing shape and flow, and the film is perhaps most absorbing in its portrayal of their fluctuating tactics (some inspired by video games).

A visceral experience, “Revolution of Our Times” brings to the fore the texture of protest: the energizing kick of revolutionary action, the bonds of comradeship, the pain from pepper spray and rubber bullets, the agony of parents who cannot reach their children, and the anguish of girls whose menstrual blood runs black from inhaling too much tear gas. It also documents the dismay of Hongkongers at the rapid escalation of violence in a city unaccustomed to this level of brutality (French viewers might argue that the police clampdown was, in its early stages, less brutal than the roughly simultaneous crackdown on Yellow Vest protesters in France).

“Do you even realise your police force is out of control?” a human rights activist asks stoned-faced officials at a police briefing as bloodcurdling footage of an officer shooting an 18-year-old in the chest at point-blank range goes viral. While youths drive the protests, older generations look on aghast as their cherished city-state is altered beyond recognition. “In such a civilised place, how can the governance be so barbaric?” asks one veteran campaigner, appalled by the police’s growing violence.

Chow makes little attempt to give the police’s perspective; his film is very clear as to which side we should all be rooting for. It is both a tribute to the bravery and extraordinary resilience of youths in the face of brutal repression, and a plea for help. As one activist puts it, “Hong Kong is the frontier of the free world against totalitarian systems.”

Riot police fire tear gas at protesters in Hong Kong in September 2019. © Mehdi Chebil

The director expressed his gratitude to the Cannes Film Festival for screening his documentary. In an emailed statement, Chow wrote: “It is our honor to have the World Premiere of ‘Revolution of Our Times’, a film documenting the struggle of Hongkongers, at Cannes; and receive great attention. Hong Kong has been losing far more than anyone has expected, this good news will be a comfort to many Hongkongers who live in fear; it also shows that whoever fights for justice and freedom around the world, ARE with us! And Hongkongers are staying strong!”

It is safe to assume that Chow’s film will not enjoy an official screening in Hong Kong. Under a controversial National Security Law imposed by Beijing in 2020, the director and others involved in the film could even face arrest and prosecution.

As for Cannes organisers, they will now surely be waiting nervously for reactions from the Chinese government, which has moved swiftly in the past to punish instances of support for Hong Kong’s pro-democracy camp. Beijing’s decision earlier this year to block all broadcasts of the 2021 Oscars ceremony has been widely interpreted as punishment for the nomination of the Hong Kong protest film “Do Not Split” in the best short documentary category.

The Olympic ban on Afro swim caps - and the backlash it has received - is a huge lesson for business leaders

insider@insider.com (Marguerite Ward)

© Luke Hutson Flynn The Soul Cap, which fits over Afros and thick hair, was banned by the international swimming federation. British Olympic swimmer Alice Dearing is a brand partner with Soul Cap. Luke Hutson Flynn

Soul Cap tried to have its swim caps - which fit over Afros - approved for the 2021 summer Olympics.

The governing Olympic body rejected the request, saying it didn't conform to the "natural" head.

Fortune 500 consultants explain why the decision is a teachable moment for other leaders.

Maritza McClendon, the first Black woman to make a US Olympic swim team and a 2004 Olympic silver medalist, vividly remembers the sound of her white teammates in high school and college laughing as she struggled to fit her thick, curly hair into her swim cap.

She'd laugh along with them, but inside, she had an awful, sinking feeling. It was one of many microaggressions she endured over the years.

To be Black and a swimmer, she said, is difficult. And a new ruling by the International Swimming Federation, or FINA, makes it even more difficult.

A company called Soul Cap recently tried to have its swim caps - which fit over Afros, locs, extensions, and thick hair - approved for the 2021 summer Tokyo Olympics. FINA rejected the product, saying the caps didn't follow "the natural form of the head." Following swift backlash, FINA is revisiting the ban.

In response to a request for comment, FINA pointed to its latest press release on the matter, which said the federation understood the "importance of inclusivity and representation," and that it would be revisiting the decision at an undisclosed date. As of this writing, no formal announcement has been made.

"It's just really disappointing," McClendon said. "The Olympics is the C-suite of sports. What kind of message does this send? It excludes the diversity the sport so desperately needs."

In addition to calling the ban "ridiculous" and "racist," consultants who work with Fortune 500 companies on issues of diversity said FINA's decision is a learning moment not only for Olympic leaders but also for business leaders.

Corporate America has been engulfed in a racial reckoning ever since George Floyd's murder in May 2020, and many experts said FINA's swim-cap ban highlights a problematic status quo. Decision-makers must not only welcome opportunities to be inclusive, these experts told Insider, but also question whom these standards of dress and behavior are serving.

"When we talk about something like the Afro cap not conforming to the 'natural shape of the head' - Well, the natural shape of whose head exactly?" said Tiffany Jana, the founder of the diversity, equity, and inclusion consulting firm TMI who works with Fortune 500 companies.

A lesson for all leaders

© Cat Harper Maritza McClendon, a 2004 Olympic silver medalist and the first Black woman to make a US Olympic swim team, said the ban excluded diversity that the sport "so desperately needs." Cat Harper

The backlash against FINA has been swift.

Soul Cap has spoken out against the ruling, saying it discourages many younger athletes from underrepresented backgrounds from pursuing the sport. And an online petition for FINA to remove the ban has garnered more than 59,000 signatures.

That FINA snubbed the opportunity to be more inclusive is a lesson for business leaders, said Jana, the author of "Subtle Acts of Exclusion."

Jana, who is nonbinary, called the decision "utterly ridiculous" and "a demonstration of white supremacy." "What is being stated is that the white standard is normal, that it is best, and that it is what's acceptable."

Some writers have said that FINA's language is reminiscent of phrenology, a pseudoscience from the 1800s involving the measurement of bumps on the skull to predict mental traits. It was used to argue that nonwhite people were inferior because of the shapes of their heads.

Jana said the decision showed a lack of historical and emotional awareness and "overall intelligence." Kerryn Agyekum, a DEI principal at the consultancy The Raben Group, agreed. Both said it's no longer OK for leaders to not be aware of how racism has influenced their sector, field, or even company or sport.
Stop policing Black and other nonwhite bodies

There's a parallel to draw between the ban on the Afro swim cap and the ban, in many professional spaces, of braids, locs, and other ways Black people care for their hair.

Both bans, DEI experts said, are knowingly or unknowingly racist.

"It's just another expression of how different people, their needs, their expressions, their well-being, and their way of being are not taken into consideration, honored, or privileged," Jana said.

Oftentimes, the "standard" or "professional" way of doing things - whether in sports or the office - is how white, able-bodied, cisgender, heterosexual people have existed, Agyekum said. The US Army has gone through a reckoning regarding what hairstyles are and aren't permitted, with new guidelines released this year that allow styles such as cornrows, braids, and ponytails.

The CROWN Act, a bill that prevents workplace discrimination based on one's hair texture or style, has passed in 11 states, including New York and California. Still, there is no law preventing such discrimination on the national level.

But business leaders shouldn't wait for the CROWN Act. They should question the status quo, Jana said, and stop policing Black and other nonwhite bodies, or making it harder for them to exist in work spaces.

For example, leaders should reexamine workplace rules around presentation, adjust healthcare policies to include trans and nonbinary people, and make sure their offices are accessible to differently abled people.

"Historically, there was a lack of the ability for Black people to actually swim in pools that were for whites only. Now you have this generation of people who don't know how to swim for that reason. In the present day, now hair becomes the issue," Agyekum said. "It's about exclusion."

Workplace culture and sports culture can change, Jana said, but only if leaders are willing to put in the work. Take, for example, how women have made gains in the professional world. Many companies now have lactation rooms, offer free menstruation products such as pads, and offer paid parental leave.

"This only happened after we stopped and took a hard pause," Jana said.
Embrace mistakes to usher in progress

No leader or organization will always get things right, especially when it comes to diversity, equity, and inclusion. But it's what leaders do after they make a mistake that defines what they stand for, DEI consultants said.

"You don't get from institutionalized slavery and racism to any kind of international, global utopia without tripping, without learning," Jana said. "What I'm interested in now is what FINA does next."

In order for FINA to be an anti-racist organization, Jana said, its committee should not only withdraw the ban but also issue an apology and commit to a full review of its practices.

"Show me you're doing the work," Jana said.

Read the original article on Business Insider

'Hockey Night in Canada' theme song composer Dolores Claman dead at 94

SHE WAS PRECEDED BY CBC HOCKEY NIGHT IN CANADA

© Provided by The Canadian Press

TORONTO — Dolores Claman, the woman behind the catchy tune that used to introduce CBC's "Hockey Night in Canada" broadcasts, has died at 94.

Claman's daughter Madeleine Morris said Saturday that her mother died in Spain this week, about two years after she was diagnosed with dementia.

"She was a good, ripe old age, and she had an incredible life," Morris told The Canadian Press. "I'm teary from time to time, but mostly I'm thankful she's in peace."

Claman was born in Vancouver, grew up with an opera singer for a mother and studied at the University of Southern California, before being accepted to the Juilliard School in New York to train as a performing concert pianist, said Morris.

By the time she graduated, Claman decided she would rather be a composer and had developed a love of jazz, Morris recalled.

After graduating and the end of Second World War, her mother moved to England and met and married Richard Morris.

They later moved to Toronto and co-wrote thousands of jingles, including "A Place To Stand" with its popular "Ontari-ari-ari-o" lyric for the 1967 Expo.

Claman was working for Maclaren Advertising in 1968 when she was hired to write the theme song that opened CBC's "Hockey Night in Canada" broadcasts.

She never expected the song, often called Canada's second anthem, to become as successful as it did and said it wasn't until at least 10 years after the tune's debut that she really realized its popularity.

"Some of my son’s friends at school thought I was amazing. They came to the door to see me. And it became more and more popular," Claman told The Canadian Press in 2016.

"I wanted my name on it because I was watching hockey and at the end they say 'lighting by' and 'best boy.' I phoned CBC and wrote to somebody (there). They wouldn’t give it to me. They saw no reason why."

She eventually negotiated the credit before licensing rights for the beloved track were sold to CTV in 2008, when Claman and the music agency representing her were unable to negotiate a deal with CBC’s sports division.

Claman was always pleased with the song, but the attention it got seemed to surprise her, Morris said.

"She was pretty stunned when people started making a really big fuss about it," Morris said.

"I remember watching her listen to a recording of it way later in life... She was analyzing it and she said, 'I am really proud of that. It was good, it was good for what it should have been.' "

The song landed her a spot in the Hockey Hall of Fame in 2010.

Morris remembers her mom always having a deep love of music and said she'd often analyze and comment on chord progressions or other elements of songs.

She also said her mother was a "strong feminist" and said sexism in the advertising business never seemed to faze her.

"I just did what I do. The mostly men (who) worked with me were very nice," Claman said in 2016, when discussing how she was one of few women in her industry.

"Rarely did I have any problems with them not wanting to work with a woman — well yeah, a couple of times, but that’s fair enough. I was lucky that I didn’t worry about it at the time."

But Morris did recall at least one incident, when Claman went out for dinner decades ago with a client in Toronto. The restaurant refused to serve Claman because women were supposed to wear skirts and dresses. She was wearing an emerald green top and bell bottoms.

"She just stood there...in front of the maître d' and the whole table and just unzipped her pants and took them off," said Morris.

The family will scatter her ashes at the park and in the Mediterranean because Morris said her mother loved travelling and admired the gardens in the U.K.'s Regent's Park.

— with files from David Friend in Toronto

This report by The Canadian Press was first published July 17, 2021.

Tara Deschamps, The Canadian Press

25 years later and First Nations no further ahead in control of oil and gas


The Indian Resource Council is fed-up with a 25-year-old memorandum of understanding with the federal government that has failed to move them along in acquiring control over the oil and gas on their reserves.

Now they are “demanding a high-level meeting” with Indigenous Services Canada (ISC) Minister Marc Miller and calling on him to take action on the Crown agency Indian Oil and Gas Canada (IOGC) and its co-management board.

In a resolution passed June 30, the IRC directed Miller to “initiate an Auditor General investigation of IOGC to determine the extent to which it is fulfilling its stated goal and mandate of serving the best interests of First Nations as fiduciary and trustee.”

“It’s a bureaucratic system that’s not working for First Nations,” said IRC president Stephen Buffalo, whose organization represents 140 member Nations who have produced oil and gas in the past, are producing now or have the potential to produce.

The IRC was created in 1987 to “keep an eye” on the IOGC “to make sure it did its job,” says Larry Kaida, assistant to the president.

The IOGC was created in 1987 through an order-in-council by Cabinet as an agency within then-Indian Affairs and Northern Development Canada, mandated to manage and regulate oil and gas resources on First Nations communities. The IOGC now falls under the purview of the ISC.

Almost 10 years later, in 1996, an MOU was signed creating a co-management board for IOGC with representatives from IRC, the government, and industry.

“The objective in 1996 was to get First Nations inside IOGC to understand that business and prepare themselves for eventual take over,” said Kaida.

Through co-management, he says, First Nations would learn the business and come to understand what it is they wanted to do in the industry while IOGC remained in control through legislation and regulations.

The MOU offered a three-phase approach to that end-goal: it began with co-management, moved into delegation and then finally control. The long-term vision was to have member IRC First Nations direct and assume full control of the IOGC.

But the approach never moved beyond co-management and even that wasn’t true co-management, says Kaida, despite IRC having six members and the government two members.

“The board has always been very shy to make the decisions, because that comes with consequences and liabilities, so they defer decision-making to the IOGC,” he said.

On top of that, adds Kaida, the government-appointed board member has veto power as the board can’t make decisions outside of the regulations and legal constraints of the IOGC.

“As long as we continue to have that kind of relationship where IOGC is the ultimate decision maker, we’re going to continue having the same problems,” he said.

The lack of an industry representative on the board for quite some time is another illustration of the inability of the co-management approach to work. Kaida points out that the industry board position has become one of advisor because of liability issues, which includes Canada being unable to provide liability insurance for board members.

First Nations want control over their natural resources, says Kaida, but Canada needs to maintain the fiduciary responsibility, which includes liability.

“If First Nations took over complete management of oil and gas, who’s going to pay for it if something risky happens on their lands?” said Kaida, pointing out that First Nations don’t have the “deep pockets” Canada does. “We need a backstop for these devolved activities.”

He said these concerns were very much the issue when the minister of the time recommended a pilot project the year after the MOU was signed. In that case, funding was made available for legal and other supports for five First Nations—four from Alberta and one from Saskatchewan—to take control of their resources. Three years later, two of the Nations had dropped out of the pilot project.

“There was this fear: What was Canada exactly offloading on First Nations?” said Kaida.

The pilot project resulted in the First Nations Oil and Gas and Moneys Management Act (FNOGMMA) in 2006, which allowed First Nations to opt out of the Indian Act in order to manage and regulate on-reserve oil and gas activities or assume control of their capital and revenue trust moneys held by Canada.

Community support was needed for First Nations to enact FNOGMMA, but that didn’t happen on the oil and gas side.

“If First Nations opt into FNOGMMA, they would relieve Canada of their fiduciary duty over their oil and gas resources. No First Nation is willing to jump from this deep end so far. But FNOGMMA is still sitting on the shelf for any willing takers,” said Kaida.

In 2015, the IRC pushed for a formal review of the IOGC co-management board. It was the first formal review since the board’s inception.

In a confidential report acquired by Windspeaker.com, MNP, who conducted that review, concluded the co-management board was “not effective” as the IRC’s mandate was to support First Nations in their efforts to control their oil and gas resources, while the government portion of the board made decisions based on policy.

The MNP review pointed out that the “confrontational nature” of the co-management board made it impossible for it to meet the original intent and mandate of the MOU.

“This lack of effectiveness is exacerbated by the fact that board members and the larger stakeholder community have different views with respect to how Indian oil and gas resources can and should be managed,” read the report.

“Not a hell of a lot” has come from the findings of that review, says Kaida.

Now the IRC has one more criticism to add to its growing list against the IOGC. The June 30 resolution points to the IOGC’s failure to regulate industry clean-up of abandoned wells on First Nations land.

Last year, the federal government allotted $1.7 billion to deal with orphan wells as part of Canada’s coronavirus pandemic economic measures. That money flowed through the provinces of Alberta, Saskatchewan and British Columbia and none went directly to First Nations.

It was the IRC that negotiated an $85 million set aside from Alberta for site reclamation on First Nations land, said Buffalo.

The resolution calls for Indigenous Services Canada “to provide adequate funding resources to ensure that the well abandonment program that IRC initiated on behalf of its members is successful.”

Kaida says the mandate of IOGC must also be revisited to support First Nations who want to diversify into green energy.

“They've got a totally outdated mandate and we're calling on the minister to enable those changes within IOGC so they've got a modern mandate that takes into account the changes in the energy sector,” said Kaida.

Indigenous Services Minister Marc Miller did not respond to a request from Windspeaker.com to confirm the upcoming meeting or for information on how he would be moving forward on the issues outlined by IRC.

Windspeaker.com

By Shari Narine, Local Journalism Initiative Reporter, Windspeaker.com, Windspeaker.com

WATER IS LIFE MNI WICONI

Coalition blasts plans to divert Colorado River amid drought

Sam Metz, The Associated Press

CARSON CITY, Nev. (AP) — Farmers, environmentalists and small-town business owners gathered at the Hoover Dam on Thursday to call for a moratorium on building pipelines and dams along the Colorado River that they say would jeopardize the 40 million people who rely on it as a water source.

© Provided by The Canadian Press

They're pushing for the moratoriums as parts of the U.S. West are gripped by historic drought and hotter temperatures and dry vegetation provide fuel for wildfires sweeping the region. Federal officials expect to make the first-ever water shortage declaration in the Colorado River basin next month, prompting cuts in Arizona, Nevada and Mexico.

“We’re here to say, ‘Damn the status quo,'" said Kyle Roerink, the executive director of the Great Basin Water Network.

“No more business as usual. Why? Because we’re failing: It’s plain and simple. We shouldn’t be seeing that bathtub ring growing like it is,” he added, gesturing toward the white band that wraps the perimeter of Lake Mead, marking former water levels.

Hot temperatures and less snowpack have decreased the amount of water that flows from the Rocky Mountains down through the arid deserts of the Southwest into the Gulf of California.

Scientists attribute the extreme conditions to a combination of natural weather patterns and human-caused climate change, which has made the West warmer and drier in the past 30 years.

Almost a century after seven U.S. states divvied up the river, Lake Mead and Lake Powell — the two manmade reservoirs that store river water — are shrinking faster than expected, spreading panic throughout a region that relies on the river to sustain 40 million people and a $5 billion-a-year agricultural industry.

The U.S. Bureau of Reclamation, which manages water, dams and reservoirs in 17 states, published new two-year projections showing more expected drops in the West's largest reservoirs. The agency has begun releasing water from Flaming Gorge Reservoir in Wyoming and said Friday that they intend to draw from reservoirs in New Mexico and Colorado in the upcoming months to keep Lake Powell from dropping low enough to threaten Glen Canyon Dam’s hydropower-generating capability.

Video: Drought concerns Colo. rafters, oases can be found (The Canadian Press)

Nevada stands to be less affected by the cuts tied to the water shortage declaration than Arizona because it doesn't use its full share of river water. In Arizona, farmers will have to rely more heavily on groundwater and leave fields unplanted.

Officials in both states acknowledge the record lows are part of an ongoing downward spiral for the river but assure water users that they've spent years preparing and have enough water to accommodate expected population growth and supply farmers.

But those speaking at Hoover Dam on Thursday blasted water officials and said agreements reached in 2007 and 2019 weren't fulfilling their purpose to maintain the river. They said proponents of projects to facilitate more water consumption weren't being realistic about action needed to ensure the Colorado River continues to supply water and hydropower to the region's cities and farms.

Utah Rivers Council Executive Director Zach Frankel said state and federal officials should abandon plans to build a pipeline to siphon water from Lake Powell to the Sand Hollow Reservoir in southern Utah. He said it was important to ensure federal infrastructure dollars weren't spent on projects that enable more wasteful water use and pointed out that Utah's Washington County — which would benefit from the diversion — uses more water per capita than Las Vegas and Phoenix.

"It is simply madness that as the Colorado River reaches its lowest levels in recorded history that we will be proposing a new water diversion upstream. While the lower basin is going to diet and cutting its water use, we should not let the upper basin go to an all-you-can-eat buffet," he said.

The Imperial Irrigation District, which oversees water in parts of Southern California and has water rights to roughly 20% of the Colorado River — more than Nevada and Arizona combined — withdrew from the most recent set of negotiations.

JB Hamby, the vice president of the district's board, said it was important that water management policies made in the future ensured that rural farming communities — which use the majority of the region's water — wouldn't bear the brunt of the drought so that cities can keep growing.

“A suburban ‘manifest destiny’ threatens the current and future sustainability of this river and communities that depend on it. We must champion and protect the diverse benefits of irrigated farmland for the West, the nation and the world — for food production and security, the environment, wildlife preservation, recreation and tourism and efficient water management.”

___

Sam Metz is a corps member for the Associated Press/Report for America Statehouse News Initiative. Report for America is a nonprofit national service program that places journalists in local newsrooms to report on undercovered issues.

Finding the Mother Tree: ecologist Suzanne Simard offers solutions to B.C.’s forest woes


Everything in an ecosystem is connected. A tiny sapling relies on a towering ancient tree, just like a newborn baby depends on its mother. And that forest giant needs the bugs in the dirt, the salmon carcass brought to its roots by wolves and bears and the death and decay of its peers. It thrives not in isolation, but because of dizzyingly complex connections with other trees and plants through vast but tiny fungal networks hidden below the forest floor.

It’s here, in the soil, that forest ecologist Suzanne Simard found her calling. Simard is a professor at the University of British Columbia and author of hundreds of peer-reviewed articles. She recently published a memoir, Finding the Mother Tree, about her life journey to discover what makes the forest tick. Amy Adams and Jake Gyllenhaal bought the movie rights to the book and Adams is set to play Simard in a feature film based on the memoir.

As a child, Simard’s relationship with the forest was simple. Spending her summers in the old-growth forests of the Monashee Mountains in southern B.C., she and her siblings did what most kids do in a forest: run, play, build forts. She also had a habit of snacking on the soil.

“I ate dirt all the time,” she tells The Narwhal from her home in Nelson, B.C. “I didn’t think, ‘Oh, I’m gonna study dirt.’ I ate it. I threw it. I dug in it. I rode my bike through big holes in it.”

Simard’s connection with the forest goes back generations. Her grandpa was a horse-logger, which means he chose one good tree at a time, cut it down, dragged it out of the bush with horses and launched it down a steep hillside into a lake where it could be floated downriver and sold. As those trees were taken from the forest, their selective removal let in new light that young plants greedily turned into photosynthate, sugars spurring their growth. The old trees provided shade and protection as the new trees filled in the gaps and the ecosystem continued to function as it had for thousands of years — cycles of warmth and growth, cold and decay.

When she followed in the footsteps of the loggers before her and entered the male-dominated industry in the late 1970s as a forester, Simard found herself working in a system that looked nothing like the horse-logging operations of her grandparents’ generation. Rough roads winding along valley bottoms and switchbacking up mountainsides led to big open spaces — clearcuts — where chainsaws, feller-bunchers (heavy machinery capable of cutting down and moving smaller trees, sometimes two or three at a time) and logging trucks able to navigate those roads worked efficiently and at a breakneck pace to take as many trees as possible, feeding mills and markets with the promise that those clearcuts would be replanted and when the trees were big enough, the process could begin all over again.

“I got my first job in the forest industry in Lillooet,” she says. “I loved the work because I love the bush and I love the danger of it all, the excitement of it all. But I was also conflicted because it was so different [from] what I understood, what I grew up with. It wasn’t careful — it was just exploitation.”

In those massive replanted clearcuts Simard found a sea of dying saplings, not the promised green gold. She set out to learn why.

The first clues the young forester found were wrapped around the roots of saplings. Healthy baby conifers uprooted from the dirt would reveal roots dangling a tangled web of fine fungal threads — mycelium — varied and brightly coloured. In contrast, the roots of sick seedlings, plucked from the hard, dry soil compacted by the machinery that had extracted the tall, old trees, were black and devoid of any mycelium.

As a young woman in an industry resistant to change, she found herself struggling to apply her observations to the work she was tasked to do: feed an industry increasingly hungry for trees while finding a way to make sure that hunger would always be satiated. Her suggestions to plant multiple species in clusters, mimicking the natural succession of healthy forests, instead of the preferred monocrop plantations of pine in neat little rows, were dismissed. While frustrating, she says coming face-to-face with the problems of entrenched forestry practices fuelled her curiosity.

“I think in some ways having that experience in industrial forestry and being part of the clearcutting machine myself was essential to the development of the questions I eventually asked,” she says. “I had conflicts and regrets, but it was also formative for me too.”

After working with logging companies, reluctantly flagging ancient forests for harvest, she got a job with the B.C. Forest Service and started conducting field experiments, fighting for funding and recognition of her work.

She eventually learned the mycelium were part of an extraordinary mycorrhizal network that was working with the trees to mutual benefit, carrying resources like carbon and nitrogen back and forth through the underground forest ecosystem. She popularized the term, Mother Tree, explaining the ecological connections between trees is like the nurturing connection between mother and child. She discovered that old trees feed new trees a cocktail of nutrients necessary for survival and change the ingredients of the cocktail in response to climatic conditions. She even found old trees recognize their own kin, preferentially distributing nutrients to their offspring over seedlings that took root in their shade carried there by wind or dropped by a bird or animal.

She also demonstrated the connection between different species, such as birch and fir, alder and pine, and proved through multi-year experiments that the forest management practice of eradicating deciduous species both manually and through the use of herbicides like glyphosate was in fact detrimental to regrowth, in some cases catastrophically so.

Yet, even when she’d proved that trees share resources and communicate through the mycorrhizal network, publishing her findings in peer-reviewed journals, she found there was another network at play, a network of politicians, policy-makers and corporate interests. Her theories and discoveries were scoffed at, discredited and mostly ignored by the people who needed to listen.

“When I published my first work on connection and forests, I just got slaughtered,” she says. “Honestly, it was too much for me. I didn’t have the strength. I was raising my kids at the time. They were little tiny babies, and it was just too much.”

She persevered and shifted into academia, taking a position at the University of British Columbia, juggling her work with motherhood, grief after her brother was killed in an accident and, later, breast cancer.

“I got really depressed about climate change and then I got sick with breast cancer,” she says. “So I stopped reading about the details of climate change, because I understood it enough. And I started looking at how systems work more. I just said, ‘I’ve got to focus on these positive things.’ ”

Fast forward to 2015 when Simard, now well-respected and her work widely accepted and the inspiration for a character in the Pulitzer Prize-winning book The Overstory by Richard Powers, started The Mother Tree Project to continue her research on how trees communicate with each other in the hopes that the discoveries can influence change, not only by increasing our understanding of forest ecology but also by presenting solutions to the problems facing B.C.’s forests as provincial policy continues to perpetuate destructive clearcutting practices.

“I’d done all this fundamental work on forests as social places, that forest trees are connected, that they share resources, they’re communicative, they’re regenerative, they’re interdependent on all these different ages of trees, between the old trees and the young trees,” she says. “And yet the work was never really applied.”

Partnering with a team of ecologists, foresters and researchers and leveraging her professorship to catalyze graduate students to tackle different aspects of the ambitious project, Simard started by establishing experimental sites in nine climatic regions across the province, sites that were chosen to better our understanding of how climate change will impact the success of forest regeneration.

“How do we protect these old trees and still be able to harvest some trees?” she asks. “And what would the patterns be as the climate is changing? As we have to migrate trees, what do they need? We’re finding out that survival of new migrants is about 30 per cent higher when they have the cover of old trees.”

It all comes back to the soil and the trade network that exists between forest organisms.

“It really is about bootstrapping up the new generations with as many fungi as it can support for a productive ecosystem,” she says. “The way to do it is to leave these old trees spread through the forest in clusters so that the old trees are protected against wind and infestations and just shock from being left alone.”

With enough old trees left behind to distribute resources where (and when) they’re most needed and shelter new growth, the next part of the process is stimulating and replicating natural systems. She explains encouraging native plants to remain builds the soil structure and adds diversity to the fungal species that help transfer resources from tree to tree.

Simard says the experiment is starting to gain traction with the likes of logging companies and BC Timber Sales, the government agency responsible for managing about 20 per cent of the province’s forests.

“They were reluctantly, grudgingly drawn into the project because they saw it as contributing, I think, to their social licence,” she says. “Now, those licensees are going, ‘Wow, this actually worked.’ I was just on a call with BC Timber Sales yesterday at this little conference and they’re saying, ‘Well, the public is pressuring us to shift to partial cutting, so we need to know about partial cutting.’ They’re talking about leaving 40 to 60 per cent of the basal area. That is a huge, huge shift.”

While partial cutting has yet to land in provincial policy, she says change, while slow, is gaining momentum through a combination of public pressure and the marriage of western and Indigenous science.

“I’ve worked in every sector — I’ve worked in industry, I’ve worked as a consultant, I’ve worked in government and academia — and I’ve pushed and pushed and pushed from inside. And the change you can make is just this tiny little incremental change, or nothing at all, or backwards. The civil disobedience [and] the protests are absolutely essential,” she says, referring to the movement to protect old-growth forests on southern Vancouver Island, where more than 200 people have been arrested, adding, “but they need the science to back it up.”

That science is what she dedicated her life to, finally coming to fruition with the Mother Tree project, but Simard warns of the urgency to protect those ecosystems for their role in fighting climate change and preserving biodiversity. Reforestation and adjusting harvest techniques is only one part of the shift needed, she says, explaining we also need to cut less and consider ecosystem values like carbon sequestration, water and biodiversity, not just the price a two-by-four will fetch on the market.

“We still need these big decision makers at the policy level, like Minister Conroy and the chief forester, Diane Nichols, and we need [NDP Premier] Horgan to stand behind them, to make these changes. Either we do partial cutting but we spread it over a bigger landscape or we do more concentrated clearcutting, which people don’t like and isn’t good for the forest. We need to make those two things happen at the same time: reduce the cut and save the old-growth forest and reforest what we do cut right away, but leave these old trees.”

The stakes are higher than ever, and grow exponentially as the extraction of the last of B.C.’s remaining productive old-growth continues.

“We need these old-growth forests, like at Fairy Creek, for their ability to store carbon [and] for species at risk that live there,” she says. “And these old-growth trees, we need them because the genes of those trees, the seeds, have seen many, many climates in the past. We need that legacy in order to deal with climate change in the future.”

Simard says the solutions — and hope — can be found in the forest itself.

“In an ecosystem, all the creatures (the biotic) create the trees, the plants, the fungi and so on. The way they have evolved is for resilience. They’ve evolved to be efficient, they’ve evolved to recover [and] they’ve evolved to regenerate. You can look at a system and say, ‘Well, there’s not much happening, it’s not really doing anything.’ I know that at some point it starts to build momentum. And it is just that all these creatures are working at small scales and it builds and builds like a nucleus that’s growing, and then the system can suddenly recover very quickly. That gives me incredible hope.”

She says returning now to the forests where she spent her childhood summers eating dirt is heartbreaking — because they’re gone. From above, the patchy clearcuts on the hills and mountains around Mabel Lake look like a 1990s haircut gone horribly wrong.

“When I drive by the brand-new clearcuts around my town, I feel sick to my stomach,” she says. “But then I go to the forest and I recover myself and I’m able to go back and do the fight again.”

“We have no choice but to remain hopeful, to continue to push and push and push as much as we possibly can in our own capacities and not exhaust ourselves,” she continues. “Get all the people around you that support what you’re doing, and you support them. Then you can survive this.”

She adds ecosystems have an inherent ability to recover, in the same way humans can recover from adversity and disease with help from a network of relationships, family and friends.

“I was meant to recover from breast cancer — I healed myself. And forests can heal themselves.”

Matt Simmons, Local Journalism Initiative Reporter, The Narwhal

SPECULATORS OF THE ROARING TWENTIES

Cryptocurrencies are taking the developing world by storm, with more users now in Nigeria than in the US - 2 experts lay out how bitcoin is changing emerging-market finance

cshumba@insider.com (Camomile Shumba ) 

© Robert Alexander Globe 

Insider spoke to James Butterfill from CoinShares and Marius Reitz from Luno in Africa about bitcoin in the developing world.

El Salvador recently made bitcoin legal tender and other governments may follow suit.

Cryptocurrencies can bring finance to the "unbanked" and help counter volatile domestic currencies, the two experts said.

Cryptocurrencies have made it into the mainstream this year, with crypto-backed bank cards, investment products and traders, both big and small, have got in on the action, driving the likes of bitcoin, ether and dogecoin to record highs.

In the developing world, crypto adoption is growing at breakneck speed. Young, fast-growing populations that lack access to traditional finance, but have smartphones, from Brazil to Botswana, are driving the surge in the use of cryptocurrencies.

James Butterfill, who is an investment strategist at CoinShares, the largest crypto exchange traded product provider in Europe, and Marius Reitz, the general manager in Africa of crypto exchange Luno discussed the social benefits of bitcoin for the developing world.

"In third-world countries, we are seeing the take-up of bitcoin. If you look at bitcoin volume growth, it's massive," Butterfill told Insider.

For example, according to a Statista survey of global consumers in February, nearly one in three of those polled in Nigeria said they owned, or used, cryptocurrencies, versus just 6 out of every 100 in the United States, in 2020.

El Salvador's recent decision to make bitcoin legal tender is an example of how developing countries are using crypto. The World Bank recently said it would not work with the country on its cryptocurrency plans because of how volatile it believes these assets are.

The amount of bitcoin that changes hands in emerging economies is exploding. Trading volumes in Brazil have risen 2,247% year-on-year in 2021, while in Venezuela, where political turmoil has created hyperinflation and economic crisis, crypto trading volumes have risen 833% in the last 12 months, according to data provider Kaiko.

In Nigeria, Africa's largest economy, trading volumes have risen 128% year on year, and in Turkey, where inflation and economic decline have hit the lira, they're up 143%, based on Kaiko's data.

Bitcoin has been trading between $40,000 and $31,900 over the last month, but has moved between lows of $30,000 and to highs of as much as $63,500 over the course of 2021. Despite its volatility, consumers in developing countries love it.

There are about 1.7 billion people that are considered "unbanked". However, around 48% of the global population has a smartphone and that percentage, in theory, have access to the internet, and therefore, cryptocurrencies, Butterfill said.

In Latin America, only 30% of the population over the age of 15 have a bank account, according to 2019 data by consultant Mckinsey.

"I think that really is a positive thing that bitcoin's helping the unbanked be bankable," Butterfill said.

A closer look at Africa

Crypto use has also grown in Ghana, Kenya, South Africa, Botswana and Zimbabwe.

"One region that may go unnoticed in the development and usage of cryptocurrencies, is Africa. The continent is one of, if not the most promising, regions for the adoption of cryptocurrencies due to its unique combination of economic and demographic trends," Luno's Reitz said.

One of the key factors that is encouraging people in Africa to use cryptocurrency is the cost of transferring money. The World Bank reported in 2020 that sending money to Africa via traditional bank transfer cost an average fee of 8.9% compared to the global average of 6.8%.

Sending money abroad, or even receiving funds from overseas, is littered with additional costs, including exchange rates and this is where crypto is helping fill that gap.

"It's either really expensive, or really difficult to do. So, with something like bitcoin, you can have an international bank account and it costs you virtually nothing, that's what's really powerful about it," CoinShares' Butterfill said.

Read the original article on Business Insider

Race, politics divide Americans on sports issues

Study finds gaps on paying college athletes, anthem protests

OHIO STATE UNIVERSITY

Research News

COLUMBUS, Ohio - Although some people may yearn for sports to be free of political or racial divisiveness, a new study shows how impossible that dream may be.

Researchers found that Americans' views on two hot-button issues in sports were sharply divided by racial, ethnic and political identities. In addition, their opinions on topics unrelated to sports, like the Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement, also were linked to their beliefs about the two sports issues.

The study analyzed opinions on whether college athletes should be paid and whether it is acceptable for pro athletes to protest racial injustice by not standing during the national anthem.

The gap between Americans on those two topics was sometimes stark - there was an 82-percentage-point difference in whether people supported athletes protesting during the national anthem (a low of 13% to a high of 95%) depending on combinations of race, political orientation, voting intentions and beliefs about issues like BLM.

"Sports are and have increasingly become a central part of the culture wars," said Chris Knoester, co-author of the study and associate professor of sociology at The Ohio State University.

"Sports are not a neutral ground."

The study, published online recently in the journal Du Bois Review: Social Science Research on Race, was co-authored by Rachel Allison, associate professor of sociology at Mississippi State University, and David Ridpath, associate professor of sports administration at Ohio University.

While many people believe the political divide concerning sports found in this study is a modern phenomenon, it really is not, Allison said.

"We like to think that sport is all about fun and entertainment, what we like to do or watch outside of our 'real' lives at work or in our families, and so in a sphere somehow outside of politics," she said.

"But the history of sport shows that it has never been outside of the political. Our study shows that continues to be the case."

Data for the study came from the online Taking America's Pulse 2016 Class Survey, designed and run by researchers at Cornell University and the GfK Group. The survey included 1,461 Americans.

Overall, the study found white adults were particularly likely to be opposed to paying college athletes (69%) and protests during the national anthem (73%). Black adults were especially likely to be supportive, with only 29% and 32%, respectively, opposed to these rights for athletes.

Latino adults and other adults of color were generally more supportive of these rights for athletes than white adults, but not as supportive as Black adults.

"In large part, we think these racial and ethnic differences occur because paying college athletes and allowing protests during the national anthem are frequently seen as antiracist actions particularly supporting Black athletes," Knoester said.

Other results in the study support this, particularly those related to Americans' beliefs about two race-related issues outside of sports.

One issue was racial discrimination in education: Participants were asked whether white students, or Black and Latino students, are advantaged in U.S. educational institutions.

The second issue was BLM. Survey participants were asked whether BLM advocates for Black lives mattering more than other lives.

Participants' beliefs on these two issues were strongly linked to their views on paying colleges athletes and athlete protests, the study found. As expected, the impact of these beliefs was compounded by the race and ethnicity of those surveyed.

White adults who were upset about BLM and who believed Black and Latino students were advantaged in education had a 75% predicted probability of being opposed to athletes being paid and an 85% probability of being opposed to athletes protesting.

Meanwhile, Black adults who believed white students were advantaged and who supported BLM had a 28% predicted probability of opposing athlete payments and a 21% probability of opposing athlete protests.

Self-identified conservativism and intentions to vote for Donald Trump for president (the survey was done in the month before the 2016 election) were also strongly linked to opposing pay for college athletes and pro athlete protests. Liberals and those intending to vote for Hillary Clinton were much more supportive of athletes' rights on both issues.

"We found that race, ethnicity and political beliefs all were linked to views about these two sports issues," Ridpath said.

"While political views were important, they did not completely erase the effects of people's race and ethnicity."

For example, it wasn't just conservative white adults who opposed paying college athletes. White adults who identified as middle-of-the-road politically were also generally opposed to paying college athletes (a 66% predicted probability).

Meanwhile, Black adults with moderate political views had only a 35% probability of being opposed. Other people of color with moderate political views were about 50/50 on opposing payment to college athletes.

Combining various identities solidified opposition or support on these two issues, the study found.

For example, a Black adult who was extremely liberal, intended to vote for Clinton, who thought white students were advantaged in education and who didn't think BLM inappropriately valued Black lives had a 13% predicted probability of being opposed to athletes' protests during the national anthem.

Meanwhile, a white adult who was extremely conservative, intended to vote for Trump, thought white students were not advantaged and believed BLM inappropriately valued Black lives had a 95% predicted probability of being opposed to athlete protests.

Since the data in this study was collected, public opinions have appeared to shift somewhat toward the rights of college athletes to get paid and pro athletes to protest, Knoester said. And those shifts have translated into policy changes.

NCAA college athletes have recently been given the opportunity to financially benefit from their name, image and likeness.

And the International Olympic Committee recently gave athletes more scope to protest at the Tokyo games, although significant restrictions remain.

But the controversies are likely to persist, and politics and race will remain a presence in sports, Knoester said.

"Racial and political issues are a part of society, so they will be a part of sports," he said.

###

Contact: Chris Knoester, Knoester.1@osu.edu Rachel Allison, rca174@msstate.edu David Ridpath, Ridpath@ohio.edu

Written by Jeff Grabmeier, 614-292-8457; Grabmeier.1@osu.edu