How Canada's UNDRIP bill was strengthened to reject 'racist' doctrine of discovery


OTTAWA — When European explorers first set foot on the lands that are now Canada, they claimed the territory as their own, despite the presence of Indigenous Peoples who had already been occupying the lands for generations.

 

 Provided by The Canadian Press

They did this using the "doctrine of discovery," a policy originally emanating from decrees issued by the pope in the 15th century authorizing Christian explorers to claim so-called "terra nullius," or vacant lands, based on the notion they had racial and religious superiority.

This doctrine has since been repudiated by many official bodies, including many faith organizations.

Now, a new landmark piece of legislation will see the Canadian government overtly reject the doctrines of discovery and terra nullius as "racist, scientifically false, legally invalid, morally condemnable and socially unjust."

This language is found in Bill C-15, which passed in the Senate earlier this week. The law aims to harmonize Canada’s laws with the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples.

But the addition of this potent rejection in the soon-to-be proclaimed law was not initially part of the legislation when first tabled in Parliament in late 2020.

It was added later, after Indigenous leaders and First Nations chiefs pressed the Liberal government to strengthen the original wording that simply rejected colonial doctrines more generally.

Justice Minister David Lametti, who spent 20 years teaching property law before entering politics, says he spent years "preaching" to his students about how these doctrines were "colonialist and destructive."

"So it was really a real personal pleasure for me, when Indigenous leadership suggested it, we said, 'Oh yeah, we'd love to do that,'" Lametti told The Canadian Press in a recent interview.

"It is important that we inject that into the narrative that these doctrines have no force whatsoever, no explanatory force, no legal force and no moral force, quite frankly, quite the opposite and they need to be explicitly rejected."

On Friday, Lametti and Crown-Indigenous Relations Minister Carolyn Bennett joined leaders from Canada's national Indigenous organizations: National Chief Perry Bellegarde of the Assembly of First Nations, Inuit Tapiriit Kanatami President Natan Obed and Metis National Council vice-president David Chartrand for a solemn ceremony marking the passage of Canada's UNDRIP bill.

"This is a very historic moment today," Bellegarde said during the ceremony.

He stressed the importance of the UN declaration in recognizing the inherent and treaty rights of First Nations in Canada and that the government's adoption of it into law is a noteworthy milestone.

"This bill is a powerful tool for building a better relationship with Canada in which those rights, our rights, must be respected and upheld and implemented. And it is part of our road map to reconciliation in this country," Bellegarde said.

The inclusion of a strong repudiation of the doctrines of discovery and terra nullius were important to include and specifically delineate in the legislation because it was those doctrines that the European settlers used to try to eliminate Indigenous rights and subjugate First Peoples, he explained.

Those colonialist ideologies are what eventually led to the creation of the residential school system, disputes about land claims and resource development rights and ongoing systemic racism within many of Canada's institutions.

"Those two doctrines are fast becoming, not only in Canada but globally, (seen) as illegal and racist doctrines. So to have them mentioned in there is very powerful. It's about decolonizing Canada's laws and policies," Bellegarde said.

"It will have a huge impact. It's always about peaceful coexistence and mutual respect and sharing this great this great land and sharing these resources. We've never surrendered or given up anything, and that's fundamental to this going forward."

Another addition to the bill that came after it was tabled in Parliament was a strengthening of language that recognizes the protection of Aboriginal treaty rights under the Canadian Constitution. Wording was added to say that "Canadian courts have stated that such rights are not frozen and are capable of evolution and growth."

Chief Wilton 'willie' Littlechild, a former Conservative MP who was part of a team of human rights and legal experts who took part in a 1977 Indigenous delegation to the United Nations that helped to push for and later draft the 2007 declaration, was instrumental in getting these passages into the legislation's preamble.

He says it was of utmost importance for him personally to see this enshrined in Canada's UNDRIP law because fighting for recognition and respect of Canada's treaties with First Nations was the reason his people in Maskwacis, Alberta tasked him with going to the global community, seeking an international declaration of their rights over 40 years ago.

"It was treaty violations in August 1977 and their concerns about the daily violations of our treaties that they wanted me to go back to the international arena to remind the world," Littlechild said.

"So treaties, or violations of our sacred agreements, is why I went there and we proposed solutions, one of which is the very legislation we're talking about today."

This report by The Canadian Press was first published June 19, 2021.

Teresa Wright, The Canadian Press

How America quietly lost 2,700 ships

rpremack@businessinsider.com (Rachel Premack)

© Provided by Business Insider Farewell, sweet ships... AP Photo/Seth Wenig

Since 1960, America's cargo fleet has fallen from 16% of the world's fleet to 0.2%.

It's thanks to the government slashing support of shipping, and the rise of overseas tax havens.

Our domestic snubbing of shipping underlies why we're in a shipping crisis.

At the time ocean shipping took over the world, America gave up on the shipping industry.

In 1960, when the world moved 1.2 million tons of goods via ship, the American fleet comprised 16% of the world's total cargo shipping power. By 2019, global trade shot up to 10.7 million tons - but America's domestic carriers are moving just a sliver of it. The US Merchant Marine now makes up just 0.2% of the world's vessels.

Meanwhile, the US consumes the most goods moved by shipping container of any country - which is how lawn chairs, yoga mats, and basically everything else you buy moves from factories in Asia to stores in North America and Europe. (I'll be focusing on containerized shipping in this piece. The two other major types are bulk shipping, which moves raw goods like iron ore, and tankers, which moves oil.)

The shipping crisis has been the talk of 2021. Unprecedented trade volumes has sent freight prices to record highs, as I wrote about last week. And as fraught ocean supply chains hamper Americans' access to, say, life-saving electric generators or surgical masks, consumers are dependent on a trade network entirely out of their control.


Two big reasons explain why American fleets have nearly vanished:

Lack of government investment into shipping

A loophole that lets shipowners register vessels abroad

Our shipping building empire of yore

Shipping is not as lucrative as you think. Ships have to be at least 90% full to turn a profit. Management consulting giant McKinsey bristled at the industry in a 2014 report, calling it "highly unprofitable" and "exceptionally volatile."

It's always been like this. That's why, in the 20th century, major seafarers like the United Kingdom subsidized the building and operations of their cargo lines.

To understand how shipping has changed in the past 100 years, I chatted with two experts. One is maritime historian Salvatore Mercogliano, who was in the merchant marine before he entered academia. The other is John D. McCown, who has three decades of experience operating and investing in container shipping. He recently published a shipping history called "Giants of the Sea."

In the early 1900s, the United States was heavily dependent on the cargo fleets of Germany and the UK. But constant warring had those European ships otherwise engaged. So America began developing its own major ocean carriers.

© Bettmann / Contributor Californians building Liberty vessels galore in 1941. 

In 1936, Congress established the US Maritime Commission. It was charged with building a fresh fleet of government-funded merchant ships - and was appropriated at least $1 billion (in 2021 dollars) each year to do so. In the commission's annual reports, officials argued such a fleet was crucial to the country's national defense.

The commission planned to furnish 500 ships over the course of 10 years. Instead, it built a whopping 5,777 ships from late 1930s until 1950 - "more ships than were really needed," as McCown put it. Some were sold off to other countries or were destroyed in the war, but many became our very own cargo ships.
Bye-bye federal bucks

Many of the ships that comprised America's fleet of 2,926 came from that effort from the US Maritime Commission. They were intended to support America's wartime efforts. After the end of World War II, this massive fleet just started moving our regular ol' peacetime stuff.

Those ships would not be replaced with the same vigor that furnished them. The Maritime Commission was disbanded in 1950.

Commissioners wrote in an annual report in 1949 that they envisioned an American cargo fleet run by private enterprise that could mostly stand without government support. Mirroring its overall ascendance, the US was becoming a shipping superpower; an American businessman named Malcom McLean would even invent containerized shipping in 1954, arguably the largest advancement in ocean trade since humankind invented the boat.

But these bureaucrats knew that it was unusually expensive to build or operate ships in the US.

They decided, then, to dole out government subsidies in another way. There were two programs: the operating differential subsidy (ODS) and the construction differential subsidy (CDS). Throughout the 1960s and 1970s, taxpayers were spending billions per year to support the building and operating of American ships.

A couple canoodles near the Port of Los Angeles circa 2004. I wonder if they were thinking about the curtailing of federal subsidies to US shipbuilders and operators... Robert Nickelsberg/Getty Images

It wasn't enough to maintain the fleet that Americans built during the Second World War. From 1960 to 1980, our domestic cargo fleet shrank by 2,062, from 2,926 to 864, according to the Department of Transportation.

America's new role as a "thought leader," rather than active manufacturer and operator, in shipping was sealed in the early 1980s, McCown said. That's when, under the Reagan administration, the government stopped writing new contracts to subsidize American maritime giants.

Predictably, America's two biggest cargo carriers began pulling out of the US by the next decade. Maersk, a Danish carrier, acquired one, while French carrier CMA CGM acquired the other.

The 'flag of convenience' loophole

Where did these ships go? The new behemoths may shock you: Panama, Liberia, and the Marshall Islands.

Those three countries have the most ships by deadweight tonnage registered with their flags. It's thanks to a trick in which a ship may be owned and operated by one group, but registered in another country. About three-quarters of ships are registered in a country separate from where they're owned.

German shipping giant Hapag-Lloyd, for instance, operates the ship Afif, which is owned by a company based in the United Arab Emirates. But Afif flies under the Marshall Islands flag.

© Shilo Watts/Getty A beach in the Marshall Islands, where I believe I need to take a reporting trip soon to better understand the shipping crisis. 

Countries like the Marshall Islands have an "open registry" in which anyone can register their vessel there, sometimes called a "flag of convenience."

And boy, is it convenient!

The reason for this complexity is, of course, that it saves money. Registering your ship in, say, Panama means you can hire cheaper labor, deal with fewer pesky safety regulations, and avoid income taxes altogether.

Mercogliano said the open registry trend, which began after World War II, was a major slam to American shipping power.

"None of the big shipping companies are American anymore," Mercogliano said. "Basically, everything shifted overseas. And at the same time that we see our fleet decreasing, global trade has increased tremendously."
How the wimpy American fleet points to the shipping crisis

Even if there were more American ships, we would still have a global crisis. China, South Korea, and Germany, all of which have strong ocean carriers, are also experiencing the congestion that's striking US ports.

Still, some say the lack of American presence in shipping, particularly at our own ports, could be harmful. The federal government launched an investigation last fall into allegations that foreign-owned shipping companies are refusing to carry containers loaded with American agricultural goods - instead preferring to move empty containers, which have a shorter turnaround time.

"The control is outside of US control, it's in the hands of these other companies," Mercogliano said. "Now I'm not saying it's nefarious or conspiratorial, but they have different interests."

It's clear that our government has turned away from its 20th century concept that a robust shipping industry is critical for a strong nation. A 2017 report noted that America's ports mostly compete for state and local funding, rather than federal - a far cry from our previous obsession with funding domestic shipping.

A man unloads American logs from a cargo ship in Osaka, Japan in 1983. This predates the lumber shortage. Gary Braasch/CORBIS/Corbis via Getty Images

And that shift has unfortunately coincided with an upswing in trade - from 1979 to 2019, global cargo trade has increased by nearly threefold. Ships, which have increased in average size by five-fold since 1990, are becoming too big to dock at some of these ports.

The elevated demand for stuff we've seen this year, coupled with our inability to process an upswing in trade, is causing this year's shipping crisis - which is estimated to stretch into 2022, causing shortages and price upticks along the way.

Infrastructure improvements aren't sexy. But if bringing American shipping into the 21st century means we can avoid shortages of "just about everything," we better cozy up to them.

 rpremack@insider.com.
Read the original article on Business Insider

Racial disparities have reduced Black life expectancy and left more than 3 million Black families in the US with a negative net worth, warns a new McKinsey report

rhodkin@businessinsider.com (Reed Alexander) 

 Black Americans continue to face a disproportionately harsh economic situation, according to a new study from McKinsey & Co.    Willie B. Thomas/Getty Images

A study released by McKinsey & Co. illustrates the harsh economic reality faced by Black Americans.

More than 3 million Black American households were found to have a negative net worth.

One key cause is that Black Americans command single-digit shares of high paying jobs.

On the eve of the holiday Juneteenth, which celebrates the ending of slavery in the United States, management consulting firm McKinsey & Co. has warned that economic disparities facing Black Americans have stranded millions with negative net worths and reduced their life expectancies.

The new research, which underscores the harsh systemic challenges that continue to encumber the Black community, points to several factors.

For one, McKinsey said, Black workers comprise small, single-digit shares of the total number of professionals in highly-paid careers like physicians (5%) and software developers (4.5%), the global management consultant found.

It's also tougher for members of the Black community to rise through the ranks of corporate America. For every 100 men in the US who are promoted into managerial positions, just 58 Black women are promoted into management roles, according to a study by LeanIn cited by McKinsey.

And while nearly 13% percent of the US private sector workforce is composed of Black workers, that demographic is pulling in just 9.6% of total US wages.

Perhaps most striking of the study's findings were data points like this one: In a world in which racial pay gaps didn't exist, Black wages in the US would be $220 billion higher annually, according to the study, which was previously reported by CNN.

What's more, 19% of Black families - about 3.5 million in all - are now hindered by a negative net worth as a result of carrying excess debt, as compared to just 8% of white families who are in the same position, McKinsey said.

Among American families that do count a positive net worth, white families have a median net worth of $188,000, as compared to Black families, whose median net worth is $24,000.




Over the past year, business leaders have become more vocal about societal issues. In fact, it's hard to count the number of CEOs who are speaking out about diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) right now.

But which companies are actually following through with their DEI promises? Fortune and research firm Refinitiv examined Fortune's 500 biggest companies in the US, gathering data on each company's diversity statistics.

They ranked the companies based on 14 equally weighted metrics that measured how much diversity data the company shares including the percentage of people of color on a company's board, the percentage of women employees, the percentage of women managers, among others. Each diversity data figure was worth one point, and the companies were then ranked based on their score. Companies that disclosed the most data came highest on the list, like Microsoft. Other companies that came in the top 20 include Intel, Verizon, and Allstate.

At a time when employees, customers, and investors are demanding that corporations address diversity, the list helps identify companies that are ahead of the pack. Nearly 70% of companies in the Russell 1000 release no data on the racial and ethnic makeup of their workforce, per Just Capital.

Jasmine Hill, founder of DEI consultancy Radiant Slate, said that surveys like these help encourage companies to be more transparent in their workforce data and to keep up with their competitors.

"Sharing diversity data on a company's workforce is essential for starting the conversation," Hill told Insider. "However, actively using the data to improve the working environment of marginalized groups is far more important."

Diversifying the workplace is not just about collecting data, it's about addressing gaps in representation and fostering a sense of inclusion among your workers at the same time.

"Diversity is about who's in the room, but it's time to start moving towards inclusion."
Read the original article on Business Insider

The pandemic has inflicted further economic harm on Black Americans

McKinsey said that the coronavirus crisis has worsened the Black community's economic anguish.

Indeed, the firm said that the fallout from COVID-19 has disproportionally cost Black workers their jobs; deprived them of their savings; and exposed them to significant health risks, given that frontline jobs which were largely held by Black employees left many workers vulnerable to the virus.

Geographically, the McKinsey research found that Black workers are primarily spread throughout southern states.

More than 56% of the Black labor force lives in states in the country's southern region, like Texas, Florida, and Georgia. That left the authors to suggest that other regions, like states in the west and Pacific, would have to rethink their recruiting strategies to attract Black talent.

"Black workers are underrepresented in the highest-growth geographies and the highest-paying industries," the study authors wrote. "They are overrepresented in low-growth geographies and in frontline jobs, which tend to pay less."

The McKinsey study is far from the first to shed light on Black America's economic reality.

One Pew Research Center analysis from 2018 looked at the standard income ranges of earners in both the Black and white communities in America.

The analysis found that earners at the 90th percentile of the Black community's range generated just 68% of what earners at the 90th percentile of white community's earnings spectrum did.

Looking forward, the authors of the McKinsey study said changes based on the findings could help make strides in the right direction.

"Addressing the wage disparities described in our research alone could propel an estimated two million Black Americans into the middle class for the first time," they wrote. "This could reverse current trends, with cascading effects lifting the prospects of the next generation even future."

Read the original article on Business Insider

Gallery: Microsoft tops the list of most transparent companies for diversity data. Here's how far the top 5 have come - and how they can still improve. (Business Insider)

Slide 1 of 6: Fortune and research firm Refinitiv assessed Fortune 500 companies on their diversity data. Companies were rated on 14 metrics, such as the percent of women in management positions. Microsoft, Target, and Gap ranked in the top five companies. See more stories on Insider's business page. Over the past year, business leaders have become more vocal about societal issues. In fact, it's hard to count the number of CEOs who are speaking out about diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) right now.But which companies are actually following through with their DEI promises? Fortune and research firm Refinitiv examined Fortune's 500 biggest companies in the US, gathering data on each company's diversity statistics.They ranked the companies based on 14 equally weighted metrics that measured how much diversity data the company shares including the percentage of people of color on a company's board, the percentage of women employees, the percentage of women managers, among others. Each diversity data figure was worth one point, and the companies were then ranked based on their score. Companies that disclosed the most data came highest on the list, like Microsoft. Other companies that came in the top 20 include Intel, Verizon, and Allstate. At a time when employees, customers, and investors are demanding that corporations address diversity, the list helps identify companies that are ahead of the pack. Nearly 70% of companies in the Russell 1000 release no data on the racial and ethnic makeup of their workforce, per Just Capital.Jasmine Hill, founder of DEI consultancy Radiant Slate, said that surveys like these help encourage companies to be more transparent in their workforce data and to keep up with their competitors. "Sharing diversity data on a company's workforce is essential for starting the conversation," Hill told Insider. "However, actively using the data to improve the working environment of marginalized groups is far more important." Diversifying the workplace is not just about collecting data, it's about addressing gaps in representation and fostering a sense of inclusion among your workers at the same time. "Diversity is about who's in the room, but it's time to start moving towards inclusion." 

1/6 SLIDES © Courtesy of Comparably

MICROSOFT TOPS THE LIST OF MOST TRANSPARENT COMPANIES FOR DIVERSITY DATA. HERE'S HOW FAR THE TOP 5 HAVE COME - AND HOW THEY CAN STILL IMPROVE.

Fortune and research firm Refinitiv assessed Fortune 500 companies on their diversity data.

Companies were rated on 14 metrics, such as the percent of women in management positions.

Microsoft, Target, and Gap ranked in the top five companies.

Mother of invention: Study highlights gender gap in health innovations

Issued on: 18/06/2021

A biologist at OSE Immunotherapeutics pharmaceutical lab works on a program to develop a vaccine against Covid-19 on March 31, 2021 in Nantes, France. LOIC VENANCE AFP


Washington (AFP)

Harvard business professor Rem Koning studies how bias hurts innovation. But three years ago, his research hit too close to home when his wife, suffering from a rare post childbirth condition, couldn't find treatments designed with new moms in mind.

"It came out of nowhere. And the whole thing was a lot more scary than I think it needed to be," Koning told AFP about the diagnosis of postpartum preeclampsia, which is characterized by high blood pressure.

The couple were also disappointed by the quality of tech products aimed at mothers -- and realized it might be because most medical innovations were designed by men who dismissed or overlooked women's needs

These experiences led Koning to conduct a machine learning text analysis of more than 440,000 US biomedical patents filed from 1976 to 2010, the results of which were published Thursday in the journal Science.

By tracking inventors' names and tying them to patents, Koning and his colleagues John-Paul Ferguson and Sampsa Samila found patents filed from all-female inventor teams were more than 35 percent more likely to focus on the health of women.

Teams that were majority female were 18 percent more likely to make products with women in mind.

These patents were aimed at solving problems that affect women either specifically -- like menopause or preeclampsia -- or disproportionately, such as fibromyalgia.

Then there are conditions like atrial fibrillation that affect women differently, from risk factors to symptoms and even treatments.

But while the impact of women innovators on women's health products was significant, their representation was small.

- 6,500 lost inventions -

Women inventors represented 25 percent of the patents filed over the three decades analyzed -- and the team estimated that if patents were invented equally during the period studied, there would be about 6,500 more female-focused inventions on the market.#photo1

"Sadly, prior research has shown that women account for a minority of patents in the US, both in biomedicine and across other fields, too" Koning said. "So, we weren't surprised but still disappointed by how little the numbers had changed."

Despite years of improvement, women make up only 27 percent of all US STEM workers, according to census data -- and the gap in future products benefiting women's health needs will likely persist.

Writing in a related commentary, Fiona Murray, who researches innovation and inclusion at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, argued that innovators from diverse backgrounds identify research blind spots and improve the lives and health of more people.

For example, African American ophthalmologist Patricia Bath was granted a patent in 1988 for a laser-based cataract removal system.

The invention not only benefited women, who suffer disproportionately from the eye disease, but ultimately everyone else.

From a business perspective, Koning said a dearth of women inventors can negatively impact an economy struggling to recover from the effects of a global pandemic.

"When women don't get to invent or start new companies, we lose new ideas, new technologies and so end up with slower economic growth," he said. "Not only does society lose out on the ideas discovered by women, but women consumers are especially disadvantaged."

On the other hand, Koning said not all inventors are guided by gender identity, and sometimes male inventors invent products for women, for example. Their study was also limited in its binary analysis of sex and gender.

"Unfortunately, the limitations of our data prevent us from delving deeper into the complex ways gender and sex are related," he explained.

"Though my sense is that our findings suggest that transgender/nonbinary research is likely also overlooked given the barriers such researchers face in society and in the sciences."

© 2021 AFP

Fleeing gangs, thousands of Haitians unsure of their future

Issued on: 18/06/2021

Hundreds of families have taken shelter in a sport center of the city of Carrefour, in the suburbs of Port-au-Prince Robenson GEFFRARD AFP

Port-au-Prince (AFP)

Daniella Francois sleeps each night on a small foam mattress in a gymnasium in the Haitian capital that has been converted into an emergency shelter, as she is unable to return to her Port-au-Prince neighborhood which is in the grips of a gang war.

She is one of thousands of residents of the city's western Martissant district who have become refugees in their own city, living in sports centers or temporary accommodations in private homes.

While the gym is just several hundred meters (yards) from the Martissant neighborhood where Francois has lived her entire life, the move has nonetheless been jarring.

The 18-year-old orphan, who lives alone with her four-year-old daughter, had to flee suddenly on June 1.

"When the armed men finally arrived on my street, I had no choice, I had to leave," she said. "The guys don't play around -- whoever is in front of them they do what they want with."

Undermined by insecurity and political instability, Haiti is struggling to emerge from a string of seemingly never-ending crises, which of late have resulted in an upsurge in kidnappings and gang violence.

Joining a flood of families attempting to escape the insecurity, Francois ended up at the sports center in Carrefour, a neighboring community where municipal authorities have been providing assistance.

"We receive lots of help from the community, churches, associations, individuals who voluntarily bring food, clothes," said Gutenberg Destin, who coordinates emergency preparedness for the municipality.

- Gangs control the road -

Aid from humanitarian agencies and other organizations in Port-au-Prince had to be mostly transported by helicopter to Carrefour, with gangs controlling two kilometers (1.2 miles) of the main road through Martissant.

An initial count on June 8 found more than 1,100 people staying at the sports center, but the arrival of destitute families has not abated since then.#photo1

"Just last night, people arrived," Destin told AFP on Tuesday. "Until then they felt safe in the area in which they lived in Martissant, but gradually the hotbed of insecurity is spreading."

The hundreds staying at the center only represent the tip of the iceberg as far as the population of displaced people is concerned.

More than 5,100 people are estimated to have taken refuge with host families scattered throughout Port-au-Prince or have otherwise fled to other provinces, a UN report released Monday said.

The document warns that among the displaced, some who are living with host families are suffering sexual abuse and even rape, including offers of "sex for shelter."

- Traumatized children -

At the Carrefour gym, Kettelene Chateau said she can count on neighbors to look after her children when she leaves during the day to search for new housing accommodations with her husband.

"When we fled, my children were really scared -- they were shaking, they were crying, they were traumatized," the 38-year-old said.

Due to the noise and overcrowding at the gym, she sent the two youngest of her five to stay with a friend in Carrefour.

At the sports center, NGOs organize daily games so that the hundreds of children, who otherwise have little to do except wander among the mattresses, momentarily forget the ordeal they are living through.

"My children are smiling again and they are now able to sleep," Chateau said, somewhat relieved but still worried for the future.

"My six-year-old is very aware and keeps asking me 'Mom, when are we going to go home? Will we have to live somewhere else?'" she said.

"I have to tell her that I do not know. I would like be able to tell her something, but I do not know," Chateau said.

© 2021 AFP

LISTEN TO THE PROLETARIAT....MARX & ENGELS
'Listen to the party': Chinese cities deck out in slogans for 100TH anniversary


Issued on: 18/06/2021 -

The world's second-largest economy has been lauding its achievements in the weeks leading up to July 1, which marks the centenary of the party's founding in Shanghai NOEL CELIS AFP

Beijing (AFP)

China is ramping up a propaganda blitz ahead of the 100th birthday of the ruling Communist Party, with banners and billboards around the country reminding citizens to live a "civilised" life and obey authorities.

The world's second-largest economy has been lauding its achievements in the weeks leading up to July 1, which marks the centenary of the party's founding in Shanghai.

Large boards with a red-emblazoned "100" showing the Communist hammer and sickle emblem have been hung above retail stores and along busy streets to mark the superpower's rise.

"Listen to the party, appreciate the party, follow the party," declares one roadside sign in Beijing.

The Communist Party has more than 91 million members, according to the official Xinhua news agency -- many of them grassroots cadres and ordinary civil servants.#photo1

Party propaganda is a part of daily life in China, where red banners giving advice, encouragement and official messages are seen on streets all year round.

But public displays have proliferated in recent weeks as the centenary draws near.

"Build a civilised image everywhere, let's all be civilised citizens", reads one banner, against a warm-hued silhouette of families against the capital's skyline.

Some boards show a portrait of Lei Feng, modern China's most famous model soldier, whose purported exploits and recognition by former leader Mao Zedong have turned him into a national folk hero.#photo2

Authorities have used his legend to encourage citizens to strive hard, and messages under his visage urge the public to "learn the Lei Feng spirit".

Elsewhere at a major downtown street corner in Beijing, a bright red screen is broadcasting a row of People's Liberation Army troops in helmets, holding bayonets and yelling.

"Raise a new generation of spirited, capable, courageous and morally upright revolutionary soldiers," the text underneath reads.

China has the second-largest military budget in the world after the US, although Beijing's defence spending still accounts for less than a third of Washington's outlay.#photo3

Next month's anniversary celebrations will see the release of a blockbuster film about the party's founding featuring some of China's top movie talent.

Key party members will also receive a special medal at a ceremony in Beijing.

© 2021 AFP

US cutting forces, missile batteries in Middle East

Issued on: 19/06/2021 

A Patriot missile battery near Prince Sultan Air Base at al-Kharj, Saudi Arabia 

ANDREW CABALLERO-REYNOLDS POOL/AFP/File


Washington (AFP)

The Pentagon said Friday it was cutting the number of troops and air defense units deployed to the Middle East, confirming a Wall Street Journal report that eight Patriot batteries were being moved out from the region.

The move comes as President Joe Biden's administration seeks to ease tensions with Iran after they heated up in 2019 and saw a strong escalation in the US military presence across the region.

The Wall Street Journal said the Patriot anti-missile batteries were being removed from Iraq, Kuwait, Jordan and Saudi Arabia, and that a separate anti-missile system, called THAAD, was being transferred from Saudi Arabia as well.


Each battery requires hundreds of troops and civilians to operate and support them.

Pentagon spokesperson Commander Jessica McNulty said that some of the units were being redeployed to other countries and some were returning to the United States for maintenance.

She would not say where the redeployed units were being moved to.

"This decision was made in close coordination with host nations and with a clear eye on preserving our ability to meet our security commitments," she said in an email.

"We maintain a robust force posture in the region appropriate to the threat and are comfortable that these changes do not negatively impact our national security interests," McNulty said.

"We also retain the flexibility to rapidly flow forces back into the Middle East as conditions warrant."

The US military is rapidly adjusting its global footprint as it pulls out of Afghanistan entirely and sees a greater threat from China in the Asia-Pacific region.

The Pentagon also slashed its troop presence in Iraq last year to 2,500, supporting Iraqi forces in their fight against the Islamic State group.

Iran is still viewed as a major threat across the Middle East, but the Biden administration is in negotiations to restore the agreement on Tehran halting its nuclear development program, which would also see some sanctions on the country lifted.

"The Defense Department maintains tens of thousands of forces in the Middle East, representing some of our most advanced air power and maritime capabilities, in support of US national interests and our regional partnerships," McNulty said.

© 2021 AFP

Myanmar protesters wear flowers to mark Suu Kyi's birthday

Issued on: 19/06/2021 

Flowers tucked into a bun have long been a signature look of Myanmar's ousted leader Aung San Suu Kyi JOHN MACDOUGALL AFP/File

Yangon (AFP)

Anti-coup protesters in Myanmar donned flowers in their hair Saturday to mark the birthday of ousted civilian leader Aung San Suu Kyi, who remains under house arrest and is due to face court again next week.

Suu Kyi's elected government was overthrown in a February 1 coup that sparked mass protests and renewed clashes between the military and ethnic rebel armies in border regions.

Flowers tucked into a bun have long been a signature look of Suu Kyi, who turns 76 on Saturday.

Many replicated the floral hairstyle and uploaded pictures onto social media across Myanmar on Saturday.

Among them was Myanmar Miss Universe beauty queen Thuzar Wint Lwin, who wore red flowers in her hair and wrote: "May our leader be healthy."

In Yangon's north, protesters put up posters on power lines wishing Suu Kyi a happy birthday and expressing solidarity.

"Happy Birthday Mother Suu. We are right behind you," the signs read.

Some marched with black umbrellas and banners that read "freedom from fear" alongside pictures of Suu Kyi.

In the border region of Karen state, some rebel soldiers were photographed holding their guns and yellow, white and purple posies and single flowers tucked behind their ears.

Demonstrators in the south-eastern city of Dawei made a giant pink birthday cake and brought it to their street protest.

The Noble Peace Prize Laureate's international reputation was damaged after she defended Myanmar's military over allegations of genocide against the ethnic minority Rohingya population in troubled Rakhine state in 2017.

- Back in court -

Not all Myanmar flower protest participants were full of praise for Suu Kyi.

"I am involved in this campaign because now she is unfairly detained by the military and her civilian rights... and freedom is denied," a 35-year-old activist told AFP, adding it wasn't personal support.

"After she is free from her detention, she will have to take full responsibility over her silence concerning the suffering of Rohingya and other ethnic groups."

The civilian death toll since the coup is estimated to be at least 870 people and close to 5,000 protesters are in detention after being arrested, according to a local monitoring group.

The UN General Assembly on Friday took the rare step of calling on member states to "prevent the flow of arms" into Myanmar, part of a non-binding resolution condemning the military coup in the violence-wracked country.#photo1

The resolution -- which did not go so far as to call for a global arms embargo -- also demands that the military "immediately stop all violence against peaceful demonstrators".

It was approved by 119 countries, with 36 abstaining including China, Myanmar's main ally. Only one country, Belarus, voted against it.

Suu Kyi is due back in court next week and has been hit with an eclectic raft of criminal charges, including accepting illegal payments of gold and violating a colonial-era secrecy law.

She went on trial for sedition on Tuesday, but journalists were barred from observing proceedings.

UN calls for member states to 'prevent the flow of arms' into Myanmar

Issued on: 18/06/2021 -

A protester holds a sign during a demonstration against the military coup in Myanmar's Karen state HANDOUT KNU Dooplaya District/AFP/File

United Nations (United States) (AFP)

The UN General Assembly on Friday took the rare step of calling on member states to "prevent the flow of arms" into Myanmar, part of a non-binding resolution condemning the military coup in the violence-wracked country.

The resolution -- which did not go so far as to call for a global arms embargo -- also demands that the military "immediately stop all violence against peaceful demonstrators."

It was approved by 119 countries, with 36 abstaining including China, Myanmar's main ally. Only one country, Belarus, voted against it.


This came on the same day that the Security Council was holding informal talks on the situation in the Southeast Asian nation, where the military ousted civilian leader Aung San Suu Kyi on February 1.

The resolution was not passed by consensus, as had been hoped, but rather through a vote, forcing all 193 UN countries to reveal their views.

In a quirk of history, Myanmar's envoy to the world body, Kyaw Moe Tun, voted in favor of the text. He has passionately rejected the coup and brushed aside the junta's claims that he no longer represents Myanmar. The United Nations still considers him as the rightful envoy.

After the vote, the diplomat voiced regret that it had taken three months for the Assembly to adopt the resolution and that it was not more explicit about an arms embargo.

Among the countries that abstained were Russia and Mali, where a second military coup in less than a year recently took place, Iran and Egypt, and Brunei, Cambodia, Laos and Thailand.

The UN General Assembly very rarely adopts resolutions condemning military coups or calling for limits on the arms supplied to the target country.

"It is the broadest and most universal condemnation of the situation in Myanmar to date," said Olof Skoog, the European Union's ambassador to the UN.

"The EU is proud of the resolution just adopted by the UN General Assembly. It sends a strong and powerful message. It delegitimizes the military junta, condemns its abuse and violence against its own people and demonstrates its isolation in the eyes of the world," he said.

The resolution also calls for a restoration of democracy in Myanmar, and the release of all detained civilian leaders.

"We absolutely must create the conditions for democracy to be reinstated," said UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres before the vote on the resolution, hoping for a "very clear message" from the General Assembly.

- 'Do the obvious' -

It asks for the implementation of a five-point plan drafted by ASEAN in April including the naming of an envoy from the bloc.

The text also calls on the junta to allow the UN envoy to Myanmar, Christine Schraner Burgener, to visit the country, and for safe passage of humanitarian aid.

Burgener briefed the Security Council during its closed-door meeting on Myanmar on Friday. No joint statement was adopted at that meeting because of persistent divisions between its members, diplomats told AFP.

The Assembly resolution "calls on UN member states to do the obvious: stop providing weapons to Myanmar," said Human Rights Watch.

"Months of atrocities and grave human rights abuses by the junta's security forces have shown time and again why no government should be sending them a single bullet. The UN Security Council should now step up and pass its own resolution imposing a global arms embargo on Myanmar," said Louis Charbonneau, UN Director at HRW.

The resolution is an opportunity "to show that the world stands with the people of Myanmar, and not the military" who "committed horrific acts of violence against ordinary civilians," said British Ambassador to the UN Barbara Woodward.

More than 860 civilians have been killed in Myanmar since the coup, according to the UN and the Association for the Assistance of Political Prisoners (AAPP).

© 2021 AFP

Nazi invasion of Soviet Union was 'murderous barbarity'

Commemorating the upcoming 80th anniversary of Operation Barbarossa, German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier said the suffering of the former Soviet people should be "burned into Germany's collective memory.

Watch video 02:09 80 years since the Nazi invasion of the Soviet Union

German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier spoke at the German-Russian museum in Berlin-Karlhorst on Friday to commemorate the 80th anniversary of Nazi Germany's invasion of the Soviet Union during World War II.

The museum is located in the same building where the German Wehrmacht signed the unconditional surrender to representatives of the Soviet Union, the United States, Great Britain and France on May 8, 1945.

"Nobody during this war mourned more victims than the people of the former Soviet Union," Steinmeier said, adding that the German war against the Soviets was carried out with "murderous barbarity."

"It weighs on us that our fathers, grandfathers, great-grandfathers who waged this war, were involved in these crimes," he added.


German President Steinmeier opened the exhibit "Dimensions of a Crime: Soviet Prisoners of War in World War II."

Steinmeier's remarks opened an exhibition at the museum called, "Dimensions of a Crime: Soviet Prisoners of War in World War II." The Wehrmacht captured around 5.7 million Soviet prisoners of war, of whom 3 million died in captivity.

On Monday, Steinmeier visited the Sandbostel camp in the northern state of Lower Saxony, a former prisoner-of-war camp that today is a memorial site. Steinmeier spoke with former prisoners and laid a wreath.

President Steinmeier lays a wreath at the Sandbostel memorial on Monday

On Tuesday, June 22, a wreath-laying ceremony is scheduled at the Soviet War Memorial in Berlin-Pankow.

Representatives from 15 ex-Soviet states were invited to Friday's exhibition. Ukrainian Ambassador Andrij Melnyk rejected the invitation, calling the museum venue "an affront" because of its "Russian" focus and because the wartime persecution of other countries such as Ukraine, Belarus and the Baltic states was being "simply ignored."

UKRAINE , BELARUS (WHITE RUSSIANS) BALTIC STATES COLLABORATED WITH THE NAZI'S AGAINST THE RUSSIAN COMMUNISTS

The German-Russian museum is the building where Nazi Germany surrendered in May 1945

What was Operation Barbarossa?

On June 22, 1941, Nazi Germany launched its invasion of the former Soviet Union, which was code-named Operation Barbarossa.

The attack involved 3.3 million troops along an 1,800-mile (2,900-kilometer) front, making it one of the largest invasion forces in history.

Adolf Hitler famously broke the non-aggression pact, known as the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact, signed in secret between Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union weeks before the war began in August 1939. 

GIVING STALIN MUCH NEEDED TIME TO BUILD MASS MANUFACTURING OF WEAPONS SYSTEMS LEARNED FROM THE GERMANS THE T90 TANK IS ONE RESULT

The German invasion less than two years later caught the Soviets by surprise, and their forces were initially overwhelmed and incurred heavy losses before consolidating to block the German offensive.

Eastern Europe's WWII killing fields

Operation Barbarossa opened the Eastern Front in Europe, the largest of the entire war, which witnessed some of its fiercest battles and worst atrocities until Nazi Germany's capitulation in May 1945.

An estimated 30 million people were killed on the Eastern Front — far more than any other theater during World War II.


RUSSIA MARKS 75TH ANNIVERSARY OF STALINGRAD WITH PARADES AND NOSTALGIA

One of Soviet Russia's greatest World War II triumphs
Russia celebrated the 75th anniversary of the defense of Stalingrad on Friday with somber memorials and patriotic military parades. Russian President Vladimir Putin was a highly visible presence throughout the day, laying wreaths, addressing veterans and attending military parades. He is seen here in front of 85-meter The Motherland Calls statue in what is now called Volgograd. PHOTOS 1234567

Soviet civilians in areas under Nazi occupation in Eastern Europe were subjected to brutal and arbitrary killings. Nazi racial ideology targeted both Jews and Slavs, millions of whom were executed or sent to concentration camps.

"From the first day the German campaign was driven by hatred, by antisemitism and anti-Bolshevism, by racist madness against the Slavic and Asian peoples of the Soviet Union," Steinmeier said.

"Those who waged this war killed in every possible way, with unprecedented brutality and cruelty," he added. "It was German barbarism, it cost millions of lives and devastated the continent."

Learning from history

Steinmeier's office said in a statement that the series of memorial events this week is intended to draw attention to the suffering of the Soviet Union, which at 27 million incurred the highest number of casualties during World War II, 14 million of whom were civilians.

"Only those who learn to read the traces of the past in the present will be able to contribute to a future that avoids wars," Steinmeier said.

"And yet these millions are not as deeply burned into our collective memory as their suffering and our responsibility require," Steinmeier said.

He added that after the war, many Germans did not want to hear about the wartime suffering of people in the Soviet Union, whose story had been obscured by the Cold War and the division of Europe behind the Iron Curtain.

"Only those who learn to read the traces of the past in the present will be able to contribute to a future that avoids wars, rejects tyranny and enables peaceful coexistence in freedom," Steinmeier said Friday.

Number of displaced persons at record high: UN report

The UN has called for action after an increase in people fleeing conflict and persecution despite the COVID pandemic. The number of displaced people has doubled in the last decade.


A total 82.4 million people have left their homes due to persecution, conflict, violence and human rights violations


The number of people leaving their homes due to persecution, conflict, violence, and human rights violations has increased to 82.4 million, according to the Global Trends report from the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR).

The report released in Geneva on Friday called for reversing the global trend towards more flight and displacement triggered by violence and persecution, which has been going on for almost a decade.

The newly released total figure is 4% higher than the previous year, when 79.5 million had been recorded at the end of 2019.

The vast majority of refugees around the world are hosted by countries that border crisis areas and are low- and middle-income nations. Developing countries hosted 86% of the world’s refugees and Venezuelans displaced abroad. While the least developed countries provided asylum to 27% of the total.

The majority of refugees are hosted by low- and middle-income countries that border crisis areas
A displaced person behind each number

At the end of last year, there were 20.7 million refugees under the UNHCR mandate, 5.7 million Palestinian refugees, and 3.9 million Venezuelans who fled their homes. All those figures represent slight increases compared to 2019.

A further 48 million people were displaced within their own country, while there are 4.1 million asylum-seekers.

These figures show that despite the pandemic and calls for a global cease-fire so governments could care for the sick, conflict continues to drive people from their homes.

United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees Filippo Grandi said behind each of these numbers "is a person displaced from their home and a story of flight, uprooting, and suffering.

"Each individual deserves our attention and support — not only through humanitarian assistance but by finding solutions to end their plight," Grandi said.

Watch video 04:17 Denmark tells Syrians to return home

Grandi said that while the 1951 Geneva Refugee Convention and the Global Compact for Refugees are important legal frameworks and tools to respond to displacement, "We need much stronger political will to address the conflicts and persecution that force people to flee in the first place."
Borders shut down at peak COVID

The report also found that at the height of the pandemic in 2020, more than 160 countries closed their borders, while 99 countries made no exception for people who had sought international protection.

But with improved measures such as medical examinations at borders; health certificates or temporary quarantine on arrival; simplified registration procedures; and hearings by video, more countries found ways to guarantee access to asylum, while containing the spread of the coronavirus.

Watch video 02:59 Vaccinating Germany's refugees: Face-to-face contact is key

Over the course of last year, 33,800 refugees were granted citizenship by a host country. However, resettlement — the admission of refugees from a non-secure first host country to a safe third country — saw a dramatic slump.

Only 34,400 applications for resettlement were accepted — the lowest figure in 20 years. This was because of significantly fewer resettlement places made available, and due to the pandemic.

Grandi said those who govern and who have influence must "put aside their differences, abandon selfish approaches in their policies and focus instead on preventing and resolving conflicts and guaranteeing respect for human rights."
More children born as refugees

According to the report, children are particularly affected during displacement crises, especially if their displacement drags on for many years.

The UN estimates that almost 1 million children were born as refugees between 2018 and 2020. Furthermore, 42% of displaced persons are girls and boys under the age of 18.

Many of them are at risk of remaining in exile for years to come, some potentially for the rest of their lives.

UNHCR spokesperson Chris Melzer told DW that quite often there isn't enough money to give more than just basic education to refugee children.

"I've heard from several refugees around the world, actually parents telling me 'Forget us, we are a lost generation, but do something for our children. Give them education, let them have a chance'. Well, we don't want to give up the parents' generation as well. But indeed, education is the key factor," he said.

Children are particularly affected during displacement, especially if their displacement drags on for many years

The report said it was especially challenging to ensure the best interests of at-risk children, not least children who are unaccompanied or separated from their families.

Some 21,000 unaccompanied or separated children lodged new asylum applications in 2020, compared to 25,000 one year earlier. Considering that new asylum applications in 2020 dropped by 1 million due to COVID-19, this figure is disproportionately high.
Refugees in Germany dropped significantly

The number of arrivals in Germany has dropped significantly for the fourth year in a row, to 102,600 applications.

The country hosted the third-largest number with nearly 1.5 million; Turkey hosted the highest, with 3.7 million refugees. Colombia was second with more than 1.7 million, including Venezuelans displaced abroad.

Turkey, bordering war-torn Syria, still hosts more refugees than any other country at present

"While globally the situation is becoming more and more dramatic, in Germany and Europe the numbers have dropped for the fourth year in a row, again significantly," said the UNHCR representative in Germany, Katharina Lumpp.

Europe should use this period of fewer arrivals to develop a reliable concept for the adequate distribution of arriving asylum-seekers, she noted. "Then a system of fair responsibility-sharing could be anchored in Europe.''

US pulls Cambodia wildlife sanctuary funding

The US Embassy in Phnom Penh says it has spent more than $100 million to combat deforestation in the Prey Lang Wildlife Sanctuary. But illegal activities continue apace.



Illegal logging has resulted in loss of natural resources at wildlife sanctuaries

The United States is ending an aid program aimed at protecting one of Cambodia's biggest wildlife sanctuaries, the US Embassy in Phnom Penh said on Thursday.

The United States Agency for International Development (USAID) will redirect the money to support civil society and private sector initiatives to improve livelihoods in the region. 

Why did the US stop the funding?

The US foreign aid organization said it had invested more than $100 million (€83.5 million) to protect the Prey Lang Wildlife Sanctuary. Since beginning assistance in 2016, it had increased ranger patrols and trained law enforcement officers

But the sanctuary lost over 38,000 hectares (93,900 acres) of forest, or nearly 9% of its forest cover, during that time, the US Embassy said. Cambodian authorities had not adequately prosecuted wildlife crimes or put a stop to illicit activities, it added.

Well-documented illegal logging continues around the sanctuary, and authorities have silenced communities worried about the loss of natural resources, the embassy statement said.

What will happen to the money?

The funding will be redirected to support civil society, the private sector and local efforts to improve livelihoods and expand climate sensitive agriculture.

The US says it will also continue to work with the Cambodian government through initiatives like the Mekong-US partnership, which was launched last year with an eye toward countering the growing influence of China in the region.

QAnons Are Harassing People at the Whim of a Woman They Say Is Canada’s Queen

AN IMAGE CREATED FROM VIDEOS POSTED BY ROMANA DIDULO 

AND HER FOLLOWERS.

A woman who claims she is the secret ruler of Canada has, thanks to QAnon influencers, thousands of followers, some of which are extremely active offline and harassing Canadians.

By Mack Lamoureux
TORONTO, CA
17.6.21

The woman whom thousands of Canadians believe is their secret ruler isn’t afraid to tell her followers she’s calling for the executions of health care workers and politicians behind the vaccination rollout.

“At the firing squad, the military firing squad, you will receive not one, but two bullets on your forehead for each child that you have harmed as a result of injecting this experimental vaccine,” said Romana Didulo to those involved in vaccination efforts in a recent video on Telegram. “So when you go home tonight, think about how many bullets.”

Didulo, a B.C.-based woman in her 50s, has recently built up a following of thousands of people who listen to her claims of having been put in control of the Great White North by the same forces that QAnon believers think are fighting the deep state in America. QAnon, for the uninitiated, is a wide-ranging, wildly unfactual conspiracy centred upon Donald Trump’s secret fight against an international cabal of elitist pedophiles. Didulo was recently thrust into her position by several well-known QAnon figures who helped anoint her as a leader and in turns sent a swarm of followers her way.

But despite her following being only weeks old, Didulo has rallied her Canadian followers to real-life action. They’re in the midst of filing hundreds of “cease and desist” notices demanding businesses, governments, and police forces stop all activities related to combating the pandemic. They have organized themselves into localized groups to email their demands out en masse, send them via registered letter, or simply make their way to stores or police stations in order to physically hand them out.

One particularly riled-up group of conspiracy theorists in Cochrane, Alberta, went to over 30 businesses last week to hand out the notices. On June 10 they decided to go to a K-8 school—while children were present—and hand the notices and anti-vax flyers out. They eventually were kicked out and Cochrane RCMP confirmed to VICE World News that two people received trespassing tickets for their actions. The group complained about its mistreatment by police inside its Telegram chat and mulled over “bombarding” the school’s principal with letters.

Didulo has said that if the people who received the cease and desist orders from her followers break them, they will be executed.

“Peace, prosperity, or perish,” is one of her slogans, after all.

THE REAL QUEEN OF CANADA 

The Queen

It’s not Didulo who is necessarily important, but her growing and active audience.

QAnon, which may, according to a recent poll, have as many as 30 million followers in the U.S. as well as more outside of it, has contributed to real-world violence, including the Capitol Hill uprising. Only a few short years ago, Didulo could have been simply ignored as someone with a grift or a tenuous grip of reality posting videos, but now, thanks to the new QAnon ecosystem, she’s a figure of consequence. In this modern environment, someone claiming to be the secret ruler of Canada and to be holding military tribunals and executions can rapidly gain thousands of followers, some willing to follow her off the deepest creases of the internet and into the real world.

To know the volatility of her followers, however, you must first know who they’re following. Didulo is the “leader” of an online political party called the Canada1st Party of Canada—which does not appear to have been officially registered anywhere but has been turned into a corporation by Didulo. She began posting about the party and making videos about her policy in late 2020, during the second wave of the pandemic. However, the party never took off, and she languished in obscurity for some time.

That all changed in May when she changed tactics and switched her rhetoric to fit several popular QAnon narratives. After getting noticed by a couple of well-known QAnon figures, her profile has been growing rapidly.

She now has almost 20,000 followers on Telegram, her primary channel, and a growing and engaged audience. The audience consists of an intersection of QAnon believers, anti-lockdown zealots, and “sovereign citizens” (people who think government laws do not apply to them, especially ones related to taxes). And her audience is not a passive one.

“Hello, Canada, I’m Ramona Didulo, I'm the founder and leader of Canada1st. As of February this year, 2021, I am the head of state and commander in chief of Canada, the Republic,” she said in her announcement video. “The people who appointed me are the white hats and the U.S. military, together with the global allied troops and their governments—the same group of people who have helped President Trump.”

She speaks to her audience either through Telegram posts or via poorly produced videos in which she sits on a couch in front of an empty beige wall. In a follow-up video to her initial decree, Didulo declares herself not only the “the head of state,” “commander in chief,” and “head of government,” but also the “Queen of Canada, replacing Queen Elizabeth II of England who has now been executed for crimes against humanity.”

Many of Didulo’s followers seem to believe she’s holding tribunals behind the scenes, which are resulting in the executions they’re thirsting for. These followers use extremely tenuous scraps of evidence to prove Didulo is actually in power—including the fact that Romana Didulo is an anagram for “I Am Our Donald.”

The violent rhetoric she spouts in her posts and videos seems to be one of the main things driving her popularity. “Let’s keep this simple,” Didulo wrote recently, “death is the penalty for crimes against humanity.” This was met with much jubilation from hundreds of followers: “YASSS!!! 🙏,” wrote one; “I’m so happy we have you.😘❤️,” wrote another; “she is the only one that is saying anything hopeful or anything that makes sense…. It felt completely hopeless before Romana came along,” wrote a third.

“As much as I hate to see people being put to death, it has become necessary because the jerks just won't stop what they are doing,” wrote yet another.

Pete Smith, a journalist with the Canadian Anti-Hate Network, has been researching Didulo and her rapid rise. Smith said Didulo immigrated to Canada from the Philippines at a young age (something Didulo claims on her own website as well) and that prior to Didulo starting Canada1st in late 2020, she started and quickly shut down several companies and ventures—which weren’t conspiracy-oriented—and that nothing she’s attempted has really taken off before now. Even her initial posts declaring Canada’s new secret rulers were met with relatively little fanfare until she was signalled out by QAnon figures such as Charlie Ward and Whiplash347, who legitimized her to their audiences.

"It’s their endorsement that seems to have been the cause of all of this,” said Smith. “Without them, I don’t believe that there is a Canada1st party like we’re seeing right now."

Drew, an anti-fascist researcher who follows the anti-lockdown group closely (and didn’t want to be named because of fear of reprisal), said he came across Didulo in early 2021 but that she “was a nobody” until she got big-upped by Q-influencers.

Marc-André Argentino, a research fellow at the International Centre for the Study of Radicalization and Political Violence who has written several papers on the QAnon movement, told VICE World News influencers in the QAnon ecosystem “have shown an uncanny capacity to raise unknown individuals to positions of influence in a very short period of time.

“In the absence of ‘Q,’ influencers in QAnon ecosystems have taken on the mantel of determining what is canon (or authoritative) in these spaces,” said Argentino. “Though they may not always agree, they are able to bestow authority on random individuals. This makes for a volatile ecosystem, which expands radicalization pipelines in unpredictable ways.”


In a video speaking about her, one popular QAnon theorist who gets thousands of views on off-brand sites like Rumble and Bitchute states unequivocally she’s a “temporary holding until they get Trump in.” Others have “confirmed” her by sharing her videos or outright saying she’s legitimate, as she fits into their conspiracy.

“She is sending out all these cease and desist orders to stop these mass mask mandate and vaccine mandate crimes and she’s making it very clear that if you violate the crimes you’ll be executed,” said one popular online QAnon influencer in a video on Didulo that received over 30,000 views. “God bless her; Canada needs somebody like that.” A follower of Didulo told VICE World News that seeing Didulo being spoken about by these figures confirmed to her she was legit and “not a bullshitter.” The woman, who is active in helping hand out cease and desist notices in Alberta, said she’s attempting to talk to Didulo to confirm some of her claims, but was not able to contact her. Numerous attempts by VICE World News to contact Didulo and people whom she previously worked with before declaring herself Queen went unanswered.

“Everywhere I look and the people that I listen to and even people down the States and the UK say she’s here to sidetrack the cabal,” the follower told VICE over the phone. “She’s a true and sincere person; that’s without a doubt.”

Smith said that, as far as he can tell, she is relatively “unique” as a figure leading another country in the conspiracy ecosystem at the moment. Didulo didn’t shrink before the demands put on her by the quick growth of her audience, and posts frequently under the guise that she’s leading Canada. She decreed that Victoria is the new capital of Canada and recently released a video addressing the Indigenous community after the bodies of 215 children were found in a mass grave outside a residential school. She promised to investigate if they were killed for adrenochrome harvesting. (A central tenet of the QAnon conspiracy revolves around the false idea that elites torture and kill children to extract adrenochrome—a substance that can be bought cheaply at chemical supply stores—to maintain their own youth and vitality.)

Didulo’s rapid rise has seen her receive a bit of pushback. Other conspiracy theorists have made videos and blogs claiming she's a government “psyop” to ruin the true QAnon movement, or that she’s in fact mentally ill. Didulo has responded to her critics by saying everyone who commits fraud about her—or says she’s endorsed companies or products—will be executed.

The Queen’s Court

Asizable portion of Didulo’s followers are not passive, and are in the midst of a rather large effort to hand out cease and desists across the country. Didulo instructed her followers to send notices to schools, retirement homes, police stations, grocery stores, hospitals, places of worship, hotels, banks, and so on. Her subjects are loyal and listen to their queen.

"The speed with which her audience has grown and then how quickly they have become active on the street in real life is extremely significant,” said Smith.

The cease and desist comes in the form of a PDF they’re sharing. It says it serves as the recipient’s “lawful notice to cease and desist” all vaccinations, PCR testing, masking, lockdowns, and quarantines, and border closures. It contains two “special notes” at the bottom. The first says that Joe Biden is not actually president and the U.S. military is in charge south of the border; the other says the Canadian Armed Forces have been notified (by email) that Didulo is now in charge.

In order to facilitate the cease and desist effort, Didulo’s followers have splintered off into localized chat groups to organize and “serve” as many notices as they can. While there have been groups created for each continent and other countries like South Africa and Australia, the effort is mainly localized to Canada. Each province has its own Telegram group with hundreds of members, and while not every member is active, many of them are.




A VERY LIMITED LIST OF THE BUSINESSES THE GROUP SAID THEY HAVE SENT CEASE AND DESISTS TOO. THE NUMBER THEY'RE CLAIMING IS FAR LARGER THAN WHAT IS SHOWN HERE.

VICE World News viewed the groups for Alberta, Ontario, British Columbia, and Manitoba. Each was extremely active, with users posting address after address of where they have sent the letters or are planning to send them. Some have even created spreadsheets that break the province down by town and business, lists when the cease and desist was filed and by whom, and, in some cases, the name of the person who received it. Others posted videos of them going from store to store handing out the notices.

Many of the people who are actively organizing cease and desist efforts and celebrating imaginary executions do so under their real names. The members run the gamut from electricians to real estate agents to outdoor adventure guides to, of course, people who run holistic health clinics. Many of them are elderly. VICE World News reached out to several people involved in these efforts, as well as online supporters of Didulo, to see just how much of her rhetoric they believed, but most did not respond.

One woman, who handed out cease and desist notices in British Columbia, said she’s not sure if Didulo is legitimate but she’s “praying it’s true.”

“I know she’s sure brought people tons of courage to send out cease and desist letters,” she said. “Doesn’t do any harm.”

While the group is active at the moment, its activities seem constrained to handing out cease and desists. But even this fairly innocuous activity doesn’t always go well.

“Served Dairy Queen (a) Cease and Desist,” wrote one woman. “Very rude. Patrons were laughing at us. Two employees walked out and videotaped us. One said we can’t go there anymore. Felt good though."