Alberta NDP call for public inquiry into government's handling of pandemic as Shandro agrees to release report

Author of the article: Ashley Joannou

Publishing date:Aug 03, 2021

NDP deputy leader Sarah Hoffman, left, at a press conference in Edmonton on Wednesday, April 28, 2021. PHOTO BY GREG SOUTHAM/POSTMEDIA

The Alberta NDP is calling for a public inquiry into the UCP government’s handling of the COVID-19 pandemic, saying Albertans deserve an arm’s-length and open look into the effectiveness of the decisions that were made.

At a Tuesday press conference, NDP deputy leader Sarah Hoffman said an independent review led by a retired judge and modelled after the Walkerton inquiry into contaminated drinking water in Ontario is necessary to look into the Alberta government’s recent decision to end isolation requirements, contact tracing and asymptomatic testing even as cases climb in the province.

She said it’s clear that Albertans can no longer trust their own government to keep them safe.

“A full public inquiry is necessary because it allows Albertans to understand what happened over the course of this pandemic and to plan for the future, so we don’t make the same deadly decisions again when we face another pandemic or another public emergency.”

The proposed inquiry would also look at the effectiveness of the government’s public health restrictions, contact tracing, modelling and public communication, Hoffman said.

It would also look into the circumstances that caused deaths in continuing-care facilities and a large number of cases at meat-packing plants.

The opposition has promised to hold its own inquiry if it becomes government next election.

The call came after Postmedia reported over the weekend that the government would not be releasing its third-party review into the pandemic’s first wave, with Alberta Health saying the information “was not particularly relevant to the evolving situation.”

Health Minister Tyler Shandro reversed course Tuesday morning, agreeing to release the report this week. He tweeted that the report in question would have been considered for release together with future reviews of the entire pandemic response.

“Given the interest in the report, the full report will be posted earlier than planned in the interest of full transparency,” he said.

In an email Tuesday, Premier Jason Kenney’s deputy press secretary Harrison Fleming accused the NDP of attacking the credibility of chief medical officer of health Dr. Deena Hinshaw and seeking a “witch hunt.”

“The NDP’s only objective is to politicize the pandemic with witch hunts that would stretch out for months, even years,” he said.

“What the NDP wants is a backward-looking, political circus that serves nobody. We’re focused on moving on from COVID, rebuilding the economy, and creating jobs and opportunities for all Albertans.”

The government has faced heavy criticism since announcing its plans to remove most COVID-19 protocols. The move has been questioned by the Alberta Medical Association, the Canadian Pediatric Society and five consecutive days of protests including outside the legislature in Edmonton.

Long-awaited report into Alberta COVID-19 response to be released this week: Shandro

By Kirby Bourne 630CHED
Posted August 3, 2021 

WATCH: With Alberta phasing out pandemic protocols despite a resurgence in COVID-19, concerns are growing about a fourth wave and the consequences for the rest of Canada.

A long-awaited third-party report into Alberta’s handling of the first wave of the COVID-19 pandemic will be released “later this week,” Tyler Shandro tweeted Tuesday morning.

Alberta’s health minister made the comments after media reports that the report wouldn’t be released.

“The media response to the reporter said the interim report only reflected the pandemic response to the first wave,” Shandro tweeted.

“The report would be considered for release together with future reviews of the entire pandemic response.


“Given the interest in the report, the full report will be posted earlier than planned in the interest of full transparency.”

Earlier Tuesday, Opposition leader Rachel Notley called on the government in question period to release the report.

“To the premier: where is it?” she asked.

“This report belongs to Albertans and they deserve to see just how badly Jason Kenney mismanaged the pandemic response from Day 1, and how badly they continue to mismanage this response today,” NDP deputy leader and health critic Sarah Hoffman said at a news conference.

Calgary doctors push back against Alberta lifting quarantine rules, COVID-19 testing and contact tracing

But the Official Opposition says releasing the report now is too little too late and is calling for a full public inquiry into the government’s handling of the pandemic.

“Enough is enough,” Hoffman said.

“This is more than a broken promise from Tyler Shandro. This is evidence of a corrupt and secretive government working to deceive the public.”

READ MORE: Coronavirus: Third-party review of Alberta COVID-19 response expected in early 2021

“This government has had an issue with transparency throughout the pandemic,” Dr. Joe Vipond, an ER doctor from Calgary, said while attending a rally outside the legislature Tuesday.

“You don’t know and I don’t know how many people have gotten sick in hospital. You and I don’t know how many people have died from in-hospital-derived infections. We don’t know if there have been assessments of provincial buildings or schools or hospitals to ensure that there’s no airborne transmission. In fact, they won’t even say the words ‘airborne transmission,’ anybody in the government, including our chief medical officer of health.

“We need more transparency from the top to the bottom, including that report.”

The NDP is calling for a public inquiry — led by a retired judge — into the UCP government’s handling of the entire COVID-19 pandemic.

Hoffman went so far as to promise the inquiry will still be done if the NDP wins the next provincial election.

Paramedic says AHS’ COVID-19 rule changes put him and colleagues at risk

Hoffman didn’t have a time or cost estimate for how long an inquiry of this nature would take, but she said that it is “absolutely necessary,” and that it would take longer and cost more “the more they (the UCP) delay.”

“Minister Shandro has committed to releasing the independent first wave report this week and we will continue to review our pandemic response measures,” a statement from Alberta Health to 630 CHED said. “And of course Alberta Health officials will be conducting a fulsome review of the province’s total response.

“However, let’s be clear, the NDP have no real interest in improving anything,” communications advisor Brett Boyden said. “They continue to ignore that the pandemic is global in nature.


“The NDP’s only objective is to politicize the pandemic with witch hunts that would stretch out for months, even years. What the NDP wants is a backward-looking, political circus that serves nobody.”

The $475,000 review was awarded to KPMG last August. The government had originally said it hoped the report would be released in late 2020.

Late last year, that timeline was changed to sometime in early 2021.

In March, Shandro said it was his understanding the authors of the report had completed the first draft.

According to a news release when the review was announced, the province said it would “enhance Alberta’s capacity to respond to a potential second wave of COVID-19 and any future pandemics,” and added that a “strong, coordinated response can help save lives, prevent wide-scale spread of disease and help jobs and the economy bounce back more quickly.”

–with a file from Adam MacVicar, Global News

5th day of rallies in downtown Calgary calls for health measures to continue past Aug. 16


For the fifth day, protesters gathered in downtown Calgary calling on the province to keep COVID-19 health measures in place past Aug. 16.

CTV News CalgaryStaff
Published Tuesday, August 3, 2021

COVID-19 rallies continue in Alberta

CALGARY -- For the fifth day, a noon hour rally was held in downtown Calgary to protest upcoming changes to Alberta's COVID-19 health restrictions.

Crowds gathered in Alberta's two largest cities once again in the wake of the province lifting all restrictions as of Aug. 16.

That means masks won't be needed anywhere, including in taxis, on transit and in public schools and buildings. As well, Albertans who test positive will no longer need to quarantine.

Protesters have said they will hold daily rallies leading up to Aug. 16, calling on the government to rethink the move.

Health Minister Tyler Shandro said last week that the shift from a pandemic to endemic response in Alberta with regards to COVID-19 is due in part to the increasing amount of fully immunized Albertans.

Calgary Mayor Naheed Nenshi has said he is considering calling a special meeting of council to discuss the role the city can take, including whether to call another state of local emergency.

According to the latest numbers from the province, Calgary is leading in the number of active COVID-19 cases at 990, well ahead of Edmonton at 301.

"We're trying to do whatever we can as a civic government with very, very limited ability and power, but the right thing to do would be for Dr. Hinshaw and the premier to come out and say 'Look, we went too quickly, we can see the case counts are going up. Let's go back and put some measures in place,'" said Coun. Jyoti Gondek, who is running for mayor in October.

"I have zero confidence, we're going to do that."

Another councillor running for mayor, Jeromy Farkas, said protesters need to show why a continuation of health measures is needed.

"We can't pick and choose when to support the scene," he said.

"Dr. Hinshaw has made the call, if people think she and her team have got it wrong then they need to prove it rather than stir people up based on emotional arguments."

For the fifth day, protesters gathered in downtown Calgary calling on the province to keep COVID-19 health measures in place past Aug. 16.

Calgary mom contemplates leaving Alberta amid changing COVID-19 rules


BY STEFANIE LASUIK

Posted Aug 3, 2021 1:18 pm MDT

CALGARY – A Calgary parent is considering moving her children out of the province due to Alberta’s stance on COVID-19 measures.

Last week the province announced it would no longer require isolation for positive cases, reduce testing and contact tracing, and lift the mask mandate in schools.

“What do we do here?” said Krista Li, who is concerned about the changing COVID-19 rules in Alberta.

“How do we as parents send our child into an environment that we know isn’t safe?”

Li worries about her children ending up in the hospital, developing long COVID, or passing the virus along to their elderly grandparents who live with them.

“It’s bone-chilling to think that my child can be sitting in a classroom with somebody who is COVID positive and they have no requirement to be at home. Parents have no requirement to report that to the school. It’s the stuff nightmares are made of. It’s hard for me to speak about without getting emotional because these are my kids. It is my job to protect them,” she said.

“It is very selfish to minimize and say, ‘Well, kids just get sick.’ This isn’t the flu. I would like our premier to understand that. This isn’t the flu. And I think when scientists and when doctors and when researchers and epidemiologists are telling us this is dangerous, it’s on us to listen.”

Li says she’s left to contemplate the mental health effects of at-home schooling, or taking them back to her hometown in Newfoundland for school, leaving her husband behind

Dr. Ruth Grimes, the president of the Canadian Pediatric Society spoke with CityNews, and said more needs to be done.

“I think that these basic public health measures should not be set aside.”

Cases in younger people have increased in the United States, where some places have re-imposed mask mandates. In Canada, children and teens made up 1.9 per cent of COVID hospitalizations as of Friday.

“Children are a small population of those who have been hospitalized let alone going to ICUs, and thankfully who have died. But that doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t still be concerned about those and the fact is that you don’t have enough information to comment on likely is long COVID symptoms in children and what those mean,” added Grimes.

“It’s a knot in your tummy,” said Li. “And no matter what solution you come up with, it sucks. It’s a buffet of poor choices.”

She says school boards need to release their plans so parents can make informed decisions.

In the meantime, Grimes added that it’s important for parents to keep up the fundamentals and stay positive even as they’re concerned.

“We want adults in our community to protect our children. We want our children to be able to go back and have a good start and a return back to normal contact with their friends, normal play, normal physical activity.”

CHRISTIAN SCIENCE IS NOT SCIENCE
Kenney maintains changes to COVID-19 rules backed by science

BY NEWS STAFF

Posted Aug 3, 2021 

CALGARY – Premier Jason Kenney says he understands concerns from several Albertans over the province’s plan to scale back COVID-19 protections, but maintains the changes are backed by science.

Kenney said Tuesday there has long been a debate about the dangers of the disease and the damage done by restrictions.

But his response to concerns was very similar to what we heard last week from Health Minister Tyler Shandro.

These changes — including removing mandatory isolation requirements, some testing and contact tracing details — have some people concerned it will lead to a fourth wave of the virus and there won’t be enough checks in place to catch it before it takes hold.

When asked about the adjustments, Kenney said it was at the behest of Chief Medical Officer of Health Dr. Deena Hinshaw.

“No, it’s not a direction I asked her to pursue,” Kenney said, as he added the recommendations were accepted without modification in July.

Kenney read off several recent quotes from Dr. Hinshaw during the press conference, including points that this change will allow officials to focus on other public health issues rather than just COVID-19. But on the removal of mandatory isolation, Kenney said this was not in response to resourcing concerns.

“I think Dr. Hinshaw’s concerned that anybody who might have minor symptoms of cold or flu, if all of them are automatically put on two weeks of self-isolation that can be very disruptive,” he said.

But with that said, isolating after a positive COVID-19 test is still heavily recommended and Kenney felt that people will practice personal responsibility and understand the need to isolate in order to protect the wider population.

A common theme during recent protests is people being concerned about what it means for the return of school in fall and the risk posed to children.

Kenney said it should not be much of a concern for people and there are fewer adverse effects for children who catch COVID-19.

“It’s important to highlight that the risks for children posed by COVID-19 are extremely low, they are lower than for the typical annual flu,” he said. “Kids aged five to 14 have 140 times greater risk of emergency department visits for a sports-related injury in 2019 than their risk for COVID-related hospital admission since March 2020.”

The premier did not want to act like COVID-19 is completely a thing of the past, but vaccines are the driving factor in making them consider the changes.

“Dr. Hinshaw and I both have said that we expect to see an increase in cases in the fall based on seasonality, but that will likely be concurrent with an increase in flu and cold cases as well,” he said. “Within the foreseeable future we will have three-quarters (of the eligible population) fully vaccinated, meaning that effectively COVID does not pose a risk for 99.999 per cent of that population.”

Kenney was citing data from the United States in that figure, and said while Alberta is slightly behind the national average on vaccinations we are still far above most other jurisdictions around the world.

The premier also said it was unfortunate to hear people calling for a return to the mask mandate in Calgary, referring to councillor and mayoral candidate Jyoti Gondek, but he does understand why some people would still be holding on to various concerns after dealing with the pandemic for so long.

“I think it’s regrettable that we’ve seen comments attacking the expertise of our brilliant chief medical officer of health,” he said. “It’s time to follow the data. It’s time to listen to the science.”


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Imagining New Worlds: Revolutionary Love and Radical social Transformation in the Twenty-First Century

© Radical Philosophy Review
Online First: October 23, 2019

DOI: 10.5840/radphilrev2019102110

https://www.academia.edu/41371028/Imagining_New_Worlds_Revolutionary_Love_and_Radical_Social_Transformation_in_the_Twenty-First_Century

Matt York

Abstract:
As we witness the collapse of the neoliberal consensus and the subsequent rise of authoritarian ‘strong men’ and xenophobic nationalisms across the globe, the capitalist hegemony that was consolidated by the neoliberal project remains very much intact. IN pursuit of a sane alternative to this post-neoliberal world order this article proposes love as a key concept for political theory/philosophy and for performing a central role in the revolutionary transformation of contemporary global capitalism. Through a close reading of the works of Emma Goldman and Michael Hardt, and specifically their own pursuit of a political concept of love—I draw on, and make links with contemporary ideas of love as a political concept for radical social transformation in the twenty-first century. I argue that new love-based political subjectivities, practices, and group formations offer exciting opportunities for a reimagining of the frame within which an alter-globalization can occur, and link theory to praxis by introducing an ongoing Collective Visioning project which illuminates a new post-capitalist, post-patriarchal, 

post-colonial, and post-anthropocentric synergetic politics grounded in revolutionary love. Revolution is love if it wants to be worthy of its name.

—Srećko Horvat,
The Radicality of Love

  Reconsidering Value and Labour in the Digital Age

Edited by
Eran Fisher
Open University of Israel
Christian Fuchs
University of Westminster, UK

August 23, 2015

https://www.academia.edu/12978869/BOOK_Reconsidering_value_and_labour_in_the_digital_age

 

Part I Foundations

1 Introduction: Value and Labour in the Digital Age 3

Christian Fuchs and Eran Fisher 

2 The Digital Labour Theory of Value and Karl Marx in the Age of Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, and Weibo 26

Christian Fuchs

3 The Hands and Brains of Digital Culture: Arguments for an Inclusive Approach to Cultural Labour 42

 Marisol Sandoval

Part II Labour and Class

4 A Contribution to a Critique of the Concept Playbour 63

 Arwid Lund 

5 Marx in Chinese Online Space: Some Thoughts on theLabour Problem in Chinese Internet Industries 80

 Bingqing Xia

Part III The Labour of Internet Users

6 The Exploitation of Audience Labour: A Missing Perspective on Communication and Capital in the Digital Era 99

 Brice Nixon

7 Audience Labour on Social Media: Learning from Sponsored Stories 11

8 Advertising on Social Media: The Reality behind theIdeology of “Free Access”: The Case of Chinese SocialMedia Platforms 133

Yuqi Na

Part IV Rent and the Commons

9 Mapping Approaches to User Participation and DigitalLabour: A Critical Perspective 153

Thomas Allmer, Sebastian Sevignani, and Jernej Amon Prodnik

10 Is the Concept of Rent Relevant to a Discussion of Surplus-Value in the Digital World? 172

Olivier Frayssé 

11 The Demise of the Marxian Law of Value? A Critique of Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri 188

 Jakob Rigi

Part V Productivity in Reproduction

12 Devaluing Binaries: Marxist Feminism and the Value of Consumer Labour 207

 Kylie Jarrett 

13 The Concept of Subsumption of Labour to Capital:Towards the Life Subsumption in Bio-Cognitive Capitalism 224

 Andrea Fumagalli

14 Form-Giving Fire: Creative Industries as Marx’s “Work of Combustion” and the Distinction between Productive andUnproductive Labour 246

 Frederick H. Pitts 

Index 260

Are women climate scientists judged for speaking out?

Not so much, research suggests

by George Adamson, The Conversation

Credit: Rightclickstudios/Shutterstock

Many scientists are likely to be invited for media appearances in the run up to COP26, the international negotiations on global heating that will take place in Glasgow in November 2021. Journalists will ask climate scientists to help place the talks in context and to discuss the value of particular options for reducing emissions, or to explain how climate change may have contributed to particular weather events. Given the exposure these opportunities afford, it's no surprise that some climate scientists take the chance to lend their support to particular measures.

While there is some debate over how effective it is for scientists to act as advocates, many consider it a moral obligation to discuss possible solutions to climate change, even if it goes beyond their direct expertise. Still, lots of scientists who are convinced of the importance of advocacy often refrain from it, fearing the harm it could cause their professional reputation.

In a new study, published in the journal Public Understanding of Science, myself and fellow researcher Lauren Armstrong were the first to examine how climate scientists are perceived by other scientists when speaking in favor of particular policies in the media. What we found suggests women scientists may have less to fear from their peers than they might think.

Advocacy involves making subjective judgements about how the world should be. That subjectivity can be accentuated by dramatic, narrative-based writing when it's reported in the media. This would seem opposed to the disinterested objectivity of science.

Reputational fears can be particularly discouraging for women scientists. They face well-documented barriers in science, including lower pay, fewer citations and lower funding success. Women are more likely to be stereotyped as emotional, which some seem to consider contrary to the spirit of scientific endeavor.

Wanting to avoid being considered unscientific by peers could prevent female climate scientists from giving media statements, particularly ones in which they are urged to advocate for action. The lack of publicly visible women scientists has been linked to the lower number of women who enter the profession, and it reduces the number of female messengers on an issue that disproportionately affects women globally.

Gender bias in science

We sent environmental scientists in UK universities a fictitious media statement that ostensibly responded to the 2016 Climate Action Summit, a two-day meeting hosted by the UN and held in Washington DC. The statement reported a number of existing and projected effects of climate change and advocated for "strong policies and strong action from government."

Each statement was attributed to either Daniel, Matthew, Rebecca or Helen Thompson. Participants were asked to read the statement and rate the scientist who wrote it on 23 attributes, including those stereotypically associated with women (such as emotive and caring), men (competitive and decisive), science (objective and impartial) and the media (dramatic and biased).

Across 19 of the attributes, there was little or no evidence of a gender difference. When treating the participants as a single population of men and women, there were no significant differences between the male and female scientists for any attributes.

Male participants did rate the female scientists as significantly more dramatic and biased than their female counterparts, however. This trend is in line with previous studies. For example, research in management science has found that female leaders are typically perceived by their male colleagues as more dramatic, and more prone to making judgements based on their emotions.

But the analysis didn't reveal whether male scientists were rating their female peers as more dramatic and biased than their male peers, or if female scientists were giving higher ratings to their female peers. The latter outcome would also be in line with previous studies, which suggest female scientists tend to associate female peers with the objective, rational traits commonly associated with both science and masculinity.

That means that, with the exception of some minor differences between male and female participants, there's reason to believe that advocacy in the media won't significantly harm women climate scientists' standing among their peers based on their gender. This is a significant finding for climate science communication, and for climate politics more broadly.

To more thoroughly understand the experiences of women scientists, it would be useful to learn how these perceptions translate into behavior. Nevertheless, encouraging female scientists to take on more visible roles, without fear of gender-based repercussions, could bring more women into climate science and help make people more aware of the science of climate change.

Gender pay gap means fewer female candidates on the ballot

Journal information: Public Understanding of Science 

Provided by The Conversation 

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

MORE BAD NEWS FOR UCP AS POLL BY LEGER SHOWS NDP LEADING IN EDMONTON, CALGARY AND EVEN RURAL ALBERTA


ALBERTA PREMIER JASON KENNEY WAS TRYING TO SHORE UP THE UNITED CONSERVATIVE PARTY’S RURAL BASE IN STRATHMORE, EAST OF CALGARY, YESTERDAY (PHOTO: TWITTER/JASON KENNEY).

Alberta Politics
DAVID CLIMENHAGA
POSTED ON AUGUST 01, 2021, 

Another poll by a respectable pollster suggests that if an Alberta provincial election were held today Rachel Notley’s New Democratic Party would triumph handily over Jason Kenney’s United Conservative Party.

This is starting to look like a trend.



NDP Opposition Leader Rachel Notley (Photo: David J. Climenhaga).

Such an election won’t be held today, of course, so everyone can stop hyperventilating.

Still, if I were a member of Premier Kenney’s strategic brain trust, I would be worrying about the results of the online poll by Leger that were revealed yesterday by Postmedia’s newspapers.

Postmedia, which is not really a very respectable news organization nowadays, has a partnership with Leger to release these surveys from time to time. Given Postmedia’s often undisguised partisanship for Conservative causes, it must have just about killed its executives to publish such results. Still, to their credit, they did. Some vestigial instinct to practice traditional journalism must have gotten the better of them.

The results are pretty dreary from the UCP’s perspective – at least as long as Mr. Kenney remains at the helm. They are a different matter for Ms. Notley, of course, the Opposition leader and former premier of Alberta.

According to the pollster, 39 per cent of Albertans now support the NDP, compared to 29 per cent still clinging to the wreckage of the UCP.

More than half the 1,377 Albertans who responded to the pollster’s questions between July 22 and 26 thought the province was headed in the wrong direction. Only a quarter gave the direction the province was heading as being the right one.


The NDP led in all parts of the province, even among the UCP’s rural base. Its support was overwhelming – 45 per cent of committed voters, compared to the UCP’s 28 per cent – in the Edmonton region.


Leger Executive Vice-President, Western Canada, Ian Large (Photo: Leger).

The NDP also has the committed support of most younger voters, polls very strongly among women, and leads quite strongly among men. Only the geezers – present company excepted, of course – seem to still support the UCP.

The timing of the poll, obviously, means Leger’s questions were posed before the Kenney Government announced its effective surrender to the coronavirus and its decision to stop collecting statistics about COVID-19 that might make it look bad, or requiring anyone with symptoms of the disease to get tested or self-isolate.

Friday’s announcement could well turn out to be the moment when very large numbers of Albertans decide the direction in which their province is heading is actually now at that point of the compass commonly known as “going to hell in a handbasket.”

This, in turn, may make Leger’s poll a complementary development to Elections Alberta’s revelation at the end of last week that the NDP raised more than twice as much in contributions as the UCP did in both the second quarter and the first half of 2021.

Those spending decisions by politically alert Albertans were also made before anyone knew what their UCP Government was going to do on the COVID file.


Independent MLA Drew Barnes (Photo: David J. Climenhaga).

Naturally, Postmedia’s coverage tried hard to find a silver lining for the UCP in this cloudy forecast. “NDP has wide lead on UCP, but many Albertans aren’t fully committed: poll,” said the Calgary Herald’s headline, a little wistfully.

Political columnist Don Braid quoted Leger Western Canada VP Ian Large saying “there’s lots of potentially good news for the UCP” upcoming – included in his calculus was the Trans Mountain Pipeline that’s being built thanks to the efforts of Liberal Prime Minister Justin Trudeau.

Lorne Gunter, another right-wing Postmedia columnist (is there any other kind?) made some sound points. To wit: that committed UCP support is actually up, just not as much as committed NDP support, and that Mr. Kenney needs to shore up support with the party’s far right.

My guess is the UCP’s lunatic fringe – tempted by a smorgasbord of fringy separatist parties and infected by the Q-virus from south of the Medicine Line – will already be pretty happy with Friday’s announcement of the government’s new COVID policy.

So if that doesn’t work, there’s probably not much more Mr. Kenney can do to win them back and get them contributing again – short of welcoming back rebel MLA Drew Barnes from exile, anyway. (Wait for it — Ed.)

Meanwhile, a majority of Albertans appear to think the new COVID policy actually is lunacy. However, we’ll need to see some polling on that issue from someone to know if that is really true.

The UCP does have a long time to get its mojo back, and still could.

Mr. Kenney, though, really seems to have a talent for doing things that infuriate large groups of voters. So it wouldn’t necessarily be a good bet at this point to put money on the proposition Mr. Kenney won’t continue to mess right up to the next election in 2023, or whenever it ends up being called.

UCP Caucus press release played fast and loose with truth about MLA’s support

Alert readers will recall how a couple of weeks ago, Lesser Slave Lake MLA Pat Rehn was welcomed back into the UCP Caucus after a short sojourn on the independent benches as punishment for ignoring his constituents 140-some kilometres north of the fleshpots of Edmonton.


Lesser Slave Lake UCP MLA Pat Rehn (Photo: Facebook/Pat Rehn).

Mr. Rehn, who had also been caught holidaying in Mexico as the pandemic raged over the Christmas holiday, had learned to behave himself since Premier Kenney cast him into outer political darkness, Caucus Chair Nathan Neudorf said in mid-July in a press release.

“The United Conservative Caucus was presented with letters of support – including from several municipalities and the Lesser Slave Lake Constituency Association – requesting Rehn be allowed to rejoin caucus,” Mr. Neudorf’s release said. (Emphasis added.)

Now, thanks to the reporting of South Peace News editor Chris Clegg in High Prairie, we know that claim wasn’t strictly true.

Actually, it turns out, no municipalities in the riding expressed any support for Mr. Rehn’s return, Mr. Clegg informed his readers on Wednesday.

“The Town of Slave Lake, Town of High Prairie, M.D. of Lesser Slave River, Big Lakes County and Northern Sunrise County, all deny they wrote letters of support,” Mr. Clegg reported.

There were some letters of support from individual councillors – one of whom, oddly, wrote on the letterhead of the Church of the Nazarene — but none of them acted in their role as council members.

China's Tencent limits gaming for minors after media outcry

by Zen Soo

Visitors gather at a display booth for Chinese technology firm Tencent at the China International Fair for Trade in Services (CIFTIS) in Beijing on Sept. 5, 2020. China's biggest gaming company Tencent Holdings said Tuesday, Aug. 3, 2021, that it would limit gaming time for minors and ban children under 12 from making in-game purchases after a state media article called games "spiritual opium" on Monday. Credit: AP Photo/Mark Schiefelbein

China's biggest gaming company, Tencent Holdings, said Tuesday it will limit gaming time for minors and ban children under age 12 from making in-game purchases after a state media article called games "spiritual opium."

Tencent's pledge to curb gaming for minors came hours after the company's stock plunged as much as 11% following a critique published by the Economic Information Daily, a newspaper affiliated with China's official Xinhua News Agency.

The newspaper article named Tencent's wildly popular Honor of Kings game as one that minors were addicted to, and cited a student as saying that some played the game for eight hours a day. The online article was removed hours later.

"'Spiritual opium' has grown into an industry worth hundreds of billions," the newspaper said, adding that no industry should be allowed to develop in a manner that will "destroy a generation."

On Tuesday, Tencent said in a statement it will limit gaming time for minors to one hour a day, and two hours a day during holidays. Children under age 12 will also be prohibited from making purchases within the game, the company said.

Under Chinese law, users under age 18 can play online games for a maximum of one and a half hours a day, and three hours during holidays.

Tencent also called for the industry to control gaming time for minors and discuss the possibility of banning those younger than 12 from playing games.

It was not clear if Tencent issued the curbs in light of the article. The company did not immediately comment.

The critique of the gaming industry sparked a selloff of stocks in Chinese gaming companies including NetEase amid fears that the gaming industry could be the next to experience a clampdown.

Chinese authorities in recent months have targeted e-commerce and online education, implementing new regulations to curb anti-competitive behavior after years of rapid growth in the technology sector.

Last month, authorities banned companies that provide tutoring in core school subjects from turning a profit, wiping out billions in market value from online education companies such as TAL Education and Gaotu Techedu.

"Obviously there's great concern over policy uncertainty because this is not just about online education, there was also talk about data security and now, about mobile games," said Kenny Wen, wealth management strategist at Everbright Sun Hung Kai.

"So the future will be highly uncertain, it is difficult to give a fair valuation on these stocks and investors will take a wait-and-see approach and be relatively prudent in this sector as we don't know what will happen next."

Tencent's stock price closed down 6.11% at 446 Hong Kong dollars on Tuesday.

China gaming shares dive after 'spiritual opium' warning

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Psychologist explains why spite could destroy liberal democracy

by Simon McCarthy-Jones, The Conversation

Some people feel spite for those who are more successful than them.

 Credit: fran_kie/Shutterstock

As communism imploded in 1989, the American political scientist Francis Fukuyama asked if liberal democracy was "the end of history," being the form all societies were destined to take. The past decades have suggested not. Illiberal democracies and hybrid democratic-authoritarian regimes continue to emerge.

Fukuyama foresaw this possibility. He felt that citizens dissatisfied with liberty and equality could destabilize liberal democracy—restarting history as it were. One way they could do so, I realized while writing a book about spite, is if such dissatisfaction led to spiteful acts.

I therefore believe defenders of liberal democracy must understand the danger of spite.

The need for recognition

Fukuyama argued that political struggle causes history. This struggle tries to solve the problem of thymos—an ancient Greek term referring to our desire to have our worth recognized.

This desire can involve wanting to be recognized as equal to others. But it can also involve wanting to be recognized as superior to others. A stable political system needs to accommodate both desires.

Communism and fascism failed, argued Fukuyama, because they couldn't solve the problem of recognition. Communism forced people to make humiliating moral compromises with the system. Fascism offered people recognition as members of a racial or national group. Yet it failed after its militarism led to defeat in the second world war.

In contrast, Fukuyama claimed that liberal democracy could solve the problem of recognition. Granting universal human rights, acknowledging the dignity and worth of all, moved to address desires for equality. Encouraging entrepreneurship, competitive professions, electoral politics and sport created safe outlets for those wanting to be recognized as superior.

But liberty can lead to inequalities, frustrating the desire to be recognized as equal. And measures taken to reduce inequalities can impede the desire to be recognized as superior.

These frustrated urges can lead to a spiteful backlash. This could lead to decision-making that weakens a liberal democracy. It could even rip apart the delicate net of rights that holds liberal democracy together.

Counter-dominant spite

A desire for equality is found in contemporary hunter-gatherer societies. Whenever someone gets above themselves, the group will bring them down. Means can range from gossip to murder.

If ancient humans evolved in comparable conditions, we likely evolved "counter-dominant" tendencies. Indeed, we can see this today in games devised by economists.

In such games, the majority of people, when anonymous, will pay to destroy someone else's undeserved gains. Furthermore, nearly half of people, if anonymous, will destroy others' fairly earned gains. We even see people paying to punish others who help them, finding the esteem gained by generous people to be threatening. This is called do-gooder derogation.

Counter-dominant spite can weaken liberal democracies. During the 2016 Brexit referendum, some people in the UK voted Leave to spite elites, knowing this could damage the country's economy.

Similarly, during the 2016 US presidential election some voters supported Donald Trump to spite Hillary Clinton, knowing his election could harm the US. Regimes hostile to liberal democracy encouraged such spiteful actions in both the UK and US. Ultimately, counter dominance achieved by spitefully pulling others down risks destroying property rights in a communistic race to the bottom.

Dominant spite

The desire to be superior to others, regulated by hunter-gatherer societies, broke loose about some 10,000 years ago, when agriculture started. People then lived in larger groups, with more personal resources. Dominance-seeking, also part of our evolved nature, could no longer be easily constrained.

The desire to be seen as better can be socially productive and motivating. Yet it can also lead to what is known as dominant spite. This can involve accepting a loss to retain an advantage over another. For example, many of us would rather earn less yet be ahead of our neighbor than earn more and be behind them. Similarly, around 10% of people will accept less if it maximizes how far ahead they are of others. In short, dominant spite reflects a desire to rule in hell rather than serve in heaven.

Dominant spite is also seen in some people's need for chaos. Researchers have found that around 10%-20% of people endorse statements such as that society should be burned to the ground. This may represent frustrated status seekers who think they could ultimately thrive in the ruins.

Liberty, equality, democracy?

To prevent a spiteful descent into hell, we need to understand what triggers spite. We know that spite increases as inequality and competition rise. Do-gooder derogation is greater in societies where the rule of law and co-operative norms—how acceptable people find tax evasion or fare dodging—are weaker.

An economically growing liberal democracy, seen as lawful and fair, may be the most effective way to address the problem of recognition. Yet this society must still deal with some members believing all inequalities are the result of oppression, while others think any brake on inequality is immoral. Such feelings still leave the door ajar for destructive acts of spite.

Yet, although spite can threaten liberal democracy, it may also save it. When people violate values we find sacred, the activity in the part our brains that deals with cost-benefit analyses is dampened down. This encourages us to act regardless of what harm may come to us, allowing us to feel spite for the other.

At the end of history, Fukuyama argued, people would no longer risk their lives for causes once deemed sacred. But if no-one felt liberal democracy was sacred, who would risk themselves to defend it?

To defend liberal democracy, it must be held sacred. This is what motivates its defenders to "go on to the end… whatever the cost may be," as Winston Churchill once put it. Spite may pull liberal democracy apart, but it may also be the sublime madness that saves it from tyranny.Democracy in decline for one-third of the world

Provided by The Conversation 

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Air pollution exposure is shifting from outdoor to indoor – here's why

by Nicola Carslaw, David Carslaw, The Conversation

Credit: Olga Soloveva/Shutterstock

You may have seen the before-and-after-lockdown photos of major cities that appear to show dramatic changes in air quality. In one, the India Gate war memorial in New Delhi is barely visible amid the smog. Then, during lockdown, it's clearly visible in its red Bharatpur stone grandness.

Getting vehicles off the road may do wonders for smog, but there's more to air pollution than that. The shift away from vehicles powered by fossil fuels and the improvement of outdoor air quality in urban areas, combined with changes to buildings and lifestyles, means that indoor air pollution will become much more important in the future. And there aren't many easy answers about how much of a risk this will create—or how to address it.

Vehicles have been a dominant source of air pollutants for decades. But the century-long dominance of petroleum-based fuels is drawing to an end with the increasingly rapid rollout of electric vehicles. A consequence of this will be a fall in concentrations of highly reactive gases called nitrogen oxides, which actually neutralize another pollutant from industrial sources, ozone. So fewer petrol and diesel-fuelled cars, coupled with lower emissions from those that remain, could actually result in higher ozone concentrations in urban areas.

Unlike way up in the stratosphere where ozone plays an important role in protecting us from harmful ultraviolet radiation, at the surface, it can act as a respiratory pollutant. This property makes life difficult for those with respiratory illnesses such as asthma and bronchitis.

But we are not just exposed to ozone outdoors, it can also move into buildings through windows, doors and cracks in buildings. So it follows that if ozone concentrations increase outdoors, they will also increase indoors. Indeed, computer models predicted that during lockdown, indoor ozone concentrations would increase by 50%.

Once indoors, ozone reacts with the many chemicals that are emitted from common indoor activities, such as cleaning, to form new air pollutants, some of which are harmful to our health.

However, indoor ozone is not the only problem. There are many sources of air pollution indoors. When we cook, particularly with natural gas, and when frying meat at high temperatures, we produce nitrogen oxides and particulate matter. Cleaning can produce fragrance compounds (called volatile organic compounds) as well as particulate matter. Burning candles can also produce nitrogen oxides and particulate matter, and also volatile organic compounds if scented.

Some of these compounds are emitted directly and some of them can further react—such as with ozone—to form new air pollutants. Consequently, indoor air quality depends largely on indoor activities and how well-ventilated a building is.

Over the last 50 years or so, buildings have become more airtight with increased energy efficiency measures—a trend that is likely to continue. Over the same period, people in many countries have been spending an increasing amount of time indoors—in homes, commuting or at work. Children in the UK were recently estimated to be spending only just over an hour outdoors each day. As a result, most of our exposure to air pollution happens indoors, even if the pollutants are formed outdoors.

Yet while ventilation will dilute emissions from indoor sources, it will also allow more ozone indoors that could initiate chemical reactions. It is clearly a complex picture.

Air pollution exposure is complex and dynamic

Altering sources of air pollution may reduce the concentration of some pollutants, but could increase those of other pollutants such as ozone. We are exposed to air pollution outdoors and indoors and to mixtures of different air pollutants in each. Even on the same street in identical houses, exposure is likely to differ in the individual houses because of the different behavior within.

The main health effects associated with air pollutants are either from long-term exposure, such as cardiovascular and respiratory diseases and lung cancer, or arise from short-term exposure, such as damaging the lungs or exacerbating asthma. Although we understand the health effects of some air pollutants such as nitrogen dioxide and particulate matter reasonably well, for many airborne pollutants, there is little or no information on how they affect our health.

This absence of information is particularly acute for indoors, where research lags that of outdoor air quality significantly. For instance, indoor air particulate matter is formed or emitted during cooking, and it would be useful to know whether the toxicity of these particles is greater or less than common sources outdoors, such as motor vehicles.

All this means improving outdoor air quality will not necessarily reduce our overall exposure to air pollution. An important future step is to get a better understanding of our total exposure to air pollution, particularly that indoors, and its effects on our health.Study examines indoor exposure to air pollution

Provided by The Conversation 

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.