It’s possible that I shall make an ass of myself. But in that case one can always get out of it with a little dialectic. I have, of course, so worded my proposition as to be right either way (K.Marx, Letter to F.Engels on the Indian Mutiny)
Friday, July 22, 2022
'Just waiting to die': The Kenyans surviving on berries in drought-stricken north
It has been three years since the small village of Purapul in northern Kenya saw any significant rainfall and residents have been forced to turn to eating bitter wild berries in order to survive, though some say it is just a matter of time until they succumb to starvation. Their plight is part of a severe drought affecting people across the Horn of Africa, where an estimated 18 million people are on the verge of famine.
The UN's highest court ruled on Friday that a landmark case accusing military-ruled Myanmar of genocide against minority Rohingya Muslims can go ahead.
The decision paves the way for full hearings at the court on allegations over a bloody 2017 crackdown on the Rohingya by majority-Buddhist Myanmar.
"The court finds that it has jurisdiction... to entertain the application filed by the republic of the Gambia, and that the application is admissible," ICJ president Joan Donoghue said.
Hundreds of thousands of minority Rohingya fled the southeast Asian country during the operation five years ago, bringing with them harrowing reports of murder, rape and arson.
Around 850,000 Rohingya are languishing in camps in neighbouring Bangladesh while another 600,000 Rohingya remain in Myanmar's southwestern Rakhine state.
Gambian Justice Minister Dawda Jallow told reporters outside the court he was "very pleased that the court has delivered justice".
Several dozen Rohingya activists demonstrated outside the court while the judgment was read out. 'Great moment for justice'
"This decision is a great moment for justice for Rohingya, and for all people of Burma," said Tun Khin, president of the Burmese Rohingya Organisation UK, referring to the country by its former name.
"We are pleased that this landmark genocide trial can now finally begin in earnest."
Myanmar's representative, attorney general Thida Oo, said her country was now "looking forward to finding the best way to protect our people and our country."
Mainly-Muslim The Gambia filed the case in November 2019 alleging that Myanmar's treatment of the Rohingya breached the 1948 UN Genocide Convention.
Myanmar was originally represented at the ICJ by Nobel laureate Aung San Suu Kyi, but she was ousted as civilian leader in a coup last year and is now in detention.
Myanmar had argued on several grounds that the court had no jurisdiction in the matter, and should dismiss the case while it is still in its preliminary stages.
But judges unanimously rejected Myanmar's argument that Gambia was acting as a "proxy" of the 57-nation Organisation of Islamic Cooperation in the case.
Only states, and not organisations, are allowed to file cases at the ICJ, which has ruled on disputes between countries since just after World War II. 'Brutality and cruelty'
They also unanimously dismissed Myanmar's assertions that Gambia could not file the case because it was not a direct party to the alleged genocide, and that Myanmar had opted out of a relevant part of the genocide convention.
Finally they threw out by 15-1 Myanmar's claim that there was no formal dispute at the time Gambia filed the case, and that the court therefore had no jurisdiction.
It could however take years for full hearings and a final judgment in the case.
"Action will be taken against the military and their brutality and cruelty. And this gives us hope for our suffering," a Rohingya living in northern Rakhine state in Myanmar who requested anonymity told AFP.
A Rohingya woman living in a displaced persons camp near Sittwe, the capital of Rakhine state, added: "This is not only good for us (Rohingya) but also for the rest of Myanmar people who are suffering at the hands of Myanmar military."
US Secretary of State Antony Blinken declared in March that the Myanmar military's violence against the Rohingya amounted to genocide.
The International Criminal Court, a war crimes tribunal based in The Hague, has also launched an investigation into the violence against the Rohingya
(AFP)
'The tip of the iceberg': Three Picasso artworks discovered in three months
Joanna YORK -
A sketch worth hundreds of thousands, a children’s book and a ‘missing’ masterpiece... In the past three months, three unique artworks by Spanish artist Pablo Picasso have been found, in strange and unexpected circumstances. Is this a coincidence or not?
When the President of the Philippines, Ferdinand “Bongbong” Marcos Jr, won a landslide victory in May, 2022, he went to visit the home of his mother Imelda, former first lady and wife of the late dictator, Ferdinand Marcos Jr.
In a video showing mother congratulating son, one detail in Imelda’s opulent home stood out. On the wall, was a distinctive painting of an abstract nude rendered in blues and greens, on a red and orange bed. It was unmistakably Pablo Picasso’s “Femme Couchée VI”.
The painting was one of more than 200 that Imelda and Marcos senior acquired while the dictator was in power, using money siphoned from the Philippines to Switzerland. By the time he was deposed in 1986, he had plundered as much as $10 billion.
In 2014, “Femme Couchée VI” was targeted for seizure by anti-corruption authorities in the Philippines trying to recover some of those missing billions, but they failed to confiscate it and the work was declared “missing”. Since it was sighted in Imelda’s living room, questions have swirled over whether she owns the authentic version of the painting or a fake, or possibly both.
“It’s an astonishing story, for quite a few reasons,” Ruth Millington, art historian and author of “Muse”. “A criminologist might take decades or hundreds of years to track down a painting, but this one has been spotted online.”
As Picasso’s paintings of his muses are his most highly valued works, the real “Femme Couchée VI” is likely to be worth tens of millions of dollars. “It’s a bold and brazen move from the family if it is the real deal to show it on the walls behind her,” Millington adds. “But, if it's a replica, then it's ultimate attempt to troll the authorities who are searching for the real painting.”
“An important discovery”
One month after Bongbong Marco’s victory in the Philippines, a second artwork by the Spanish artist was unexpectedly found, this time by his granddaughter Diana Widmaier-Ruiz-Picasso in France.
Searching through family storage in June, 2022, she came across a collection of origami birds and sketchbooks filled with colourful images of animals, clowns and acrobats by the artist.
When she showed the books to her mother – Picasso’s eldest daughter Maya Ruiz-Picasso – memories came flooding back. The artist had used the sketches to teach his daughter, now aged 86, to draw when she was a child. On some pages, her notes and sketches appeared alongside those of her father. Next to one circus scene she wrote the number “10” indicating her approval.
“It’s an incredibly important discovery,” Millington says. “We all know that Picasso was intrigued by children's imagination. This is showing hard proof of that in the form of the sketchbook. It also shows that dialogue between him and his daughter bringing that personal element into it.”
Weeks later, on July 5, 2022, yet another artwork by the master of Cubism unexpectedly came to light
After being tipped off by customs officials, authorities at Ibiza airport in Spain searched through the luggage of a passenger arriving from Switzerland and found drawing, believed to be Picasso’s “Trois Personnages”, hidden in his bags.
Upon discovery of the work, the passenger claimed it was a copy and showed authorities an invoice worth approximately $1,560. But a further search of his bags unearthed a second invoice, from an art gallery in Zurich. The sketch, believed to be authentic, is valued at more than $460,000.
A prolific artist
Picasso was a prolific creator, estimated to have made around 50,000 artworks during his lifetime, compared to around 20,000 from Andy Warhol and 900 paintings from Van Gough. And these are just the authentic versions. “There's more fake Picasso's than real Picasso's, and there's a lot of real Picasso's,” says Dr Donna Yates, associate professor of criminal law and criminology at Maastricht University, in the Netherlands.
Currently, demand for works by the Spanish master is booming. “Since the pandemic, people are putting their money into artwork and trying to sell them on in a way that nobody quite expected,” Millington says. Insecurity in other markets is making art seem like a safe bet, “and a solid investment is something by a great master, like Picasso.”
In the case of works such “Femme Couchée VI”, infamy and intrigue only increase the value. Millington says, “even the fake now might be worth quite a lot because of the story around it.”
In a market that is full of Picasso’s – real and fake – where those works are in high demand, what to make of three unexpectedly coming to light in such different circumstances, in such a short space of time?
While the stories may be unique, they are not entirely unexpected. “It’s almost weirdly predictable,” says Yates. “It seems strange that we've got three kinds of Picasso things happening, but he produced a lot of work so there's a lot of Picasso artwork out there. At the same time, a lot of people target his work in a number of ways because he is very famous and his works are desirable.” 'The Wild West'
The art market is worth an estimated $65.1 billion globally, and the art crime market is also highly valuable. There are no global figures for the cost of art crime, but in the US alone the FBI’s art crime team has recovered more than 15,000 items valued at over $800 million since 2004.
According to Yates, a single case of a potential fake Picasso and another of illegal smuggling occurring within three months of each other are “the tip of the iceberg” when it comes to the true scale of art crimes occurring globally.
The smuggling incident in Ibiza is perhaps the least surprising of the three recent Picasso discoveries. “People think that artwork is always shipped around in well-packaged crates by professional art handlers, but often it is moved around in hand luggage,” Millington says.
Not only does this avoid costs such as taxes and the permissions needed to move some works of value, but the chances of getting caught are slim. “Often the least sophisticated forms of smuggling are the most successful,” says Yates. “Another one of the most common ways to smuggle things is through the post.”
The process of how valuable artworks fall into the hands of smugglers is relatively straightforward. Essentially works are sold to the highest bidder. “And frankly, more and more private individuals have much more money than museums do to buy these pieces,” says Yates. Once an individual owns an artwork, there is little to stop them transporting it as they please or selling it on to whom they wish.
Perhaps the most unique of the three discoveries are the sketchbooks and origami found in France. But although there is no hint of foul play, even this discovery may not as straightforward as it seems.
Artifacts that can shed new light on the creative process of a great artist are extremely rare, and in this case the timing is exceptionally opportune.
In April 2022, the Picasso Museum in Paris launched a nine-month exhibition entitled “Maya Ruiz-Picasso, Daughter of Pablo” dedicated to Picasso’s relationship with his eldest daughter. Two months in, a surprise discovery of new artifacts is sure to help promotion efforts, especially as the sketchbooks and birds are to be added to the items on display.
Nonetheless, Millington is pleased that they will be displayed in a museum, “where there's some reflection on Picasso and his interest in children's imagination.”
“I think they would do extremely well on the art market, but the market is so unregulated,” she says. “It’s like the Wild West.”
Wrestling boss Vince McMahon retires from WWE amid hush money probe
Author: AFP|
Update: 23.07.2022 Vince McMahon -- pictured in 2009 -- said he is retiring as WWE Chairman and CEO
Vince McMahon, the promoter who built a pro wrestling show into a global entertainment empire, Friday announced he was retiring as head of World Wrestling Entertainment -- under a cloud of serious sexual misconduct allegations.
McMahon, whose longtime friends include Donald Trump, became a character in his own wrestling promotions at one stage and even launched a rival to the NFL -- his over-the-top XFL.
"As I approach 77 years old, I feel it's time for me to retire as chairman and CEO of WWE," McMahon said in a statement. "Throughout the years, it has been a privilege to help WWE bring you joy, inspire you, thrill you, surprise you, and always entertain you." McMahon stepped down from his roles with WWE last month pending the results of an internal investigation after allegations he had an affair with an employee and paid her $3 million to keep the matter secret.
His daughter Stephanie was named interim CEO and chairman while the ongoing investigation continues -- amid widening allegations of misconduct.
The Wall Street Journal reported two weeks ago that McMahon has paid more than $12 million to four women formerly associated with WWE over the past 16 years to keep quiet about affairs and alleged misconduct, including a former female wrestler who claims he coerced her into oral sex.
After taking over from his father, also named Vince, and grandfather Jess, McMahon transformed the WWE from its regional beginnings, into a publicly traded international enterprise with hundreds of employees in offices worldwide.
As he took the sport global, the younger McMahon delivered a unique and colorful brand of wrestling, recruiting the likes of Hulk Hogan -- who went on to become a megastar far beyond his ring performances.
WWE wrestlers became cultural icons as McMahon used music and storytelling to introduce his stars into mainstream culture, delivering major events such as the first Wrestlemania in 1985 at New York's Madison Square Garden.
"The Rock" went from WWE icon to Hollywood superstar while "Captain" Lou Albano was in a Cyndi Lauper music video, and Hogan had star turns alongside Mr. T and Sylvester Stallone in a prime example of the crossover star mix that McMahon delivered.
McMahon also has longstanding ties to the celebrity-turned-president Donald Trump, who is a WWE Hall of Fame inductee -- and who gave McMahon's wife Linda a government role as head of the small business administration.
At the culmination of a staged feud, Trump once famously body-slammed the WWE boss, and shaved his head in the middle of a wrestling ring on live television.
Through telecasts and live shows, the WWE became a star-making machine melding the entertainment and sport realms, producing such colorful characters as "Stone Cold" Steve Austin, "Macho Man" Randy Savage, "The Undertaker," and Ted DiBiase, also known as "The Million-Dollar Man."
McMahon had kept in the background as a commentator until the late 1990s when he developed an evil "Mr. McMahon" character and a notable dispute with Austin, his own soap opera storylines becoming a big draw.
In February, 2001, McMahon launched the XFL with many of the same flashy extreme moves and off-field storylines that worked in WWE, but the would-be NFL rival folded after one season due to low television ratings and a comeback bid in 2020 was undone by Covid-19.
- 'Dedication & passion' -
McMahon thanked his family, employees and performers for building WWE's success.
"Our global audience can take comfort in knowing WWE will continue to entertain you with the same fervor, dedication, and passion as always," McMahon said.
McMahon said he leaves the company is the hands of daughter Stephanie and co-chief executive officer Nick Khan.
"As the majority shareholder, I will continue to support WWE in any way I can," he said.
Photo triggered Amazon murders of journalist, guide: AG
The murders in June of British journalist Dom Phillips and Brazilian Indigenous expert Bruno Pereira in the Amazon were likely sparked when they sought to photograph a boat belonging to their killers, the Attorney General's office said Friday.
Pereira had asked Phillips to photograph the boat, according to a statement from the office that said this detail may count as an aggravating factor in sentencing.
The details were revealed after the filing Thursday of charges against the three men suspected of committing the double murder.
Amarildo da Costa de Oliveira and Jefferson da Silva Lima have both confessed to the crime, according to officials, while Oseney da Costa de Oliveira -- brother of Amarildo -- has not.
The trio stands accused of murder in the first degree and of hiding the bodies.
"Bruno was killed by three bullets, one in the back without any possibility of defense," said the statement.
"Dom was killed simply because he was with Bruno, in order to ensure impunity for the previous crime."
Phillips, 57, and Pereira, 41, were shot dead while returning from an expedition in a remote region of the rainforest that is plagued by drug trafficking, illegal gold mining and fishing.
Phillips, the author of dozens of articles on the Amazon and a long-time contributor to The Guardian newspaper and other major news organizations, was traveling to the Javari Valley as part of research for a book.
Pereira was serving as his guide, and had previously traveled with him to the area.
An outspoken defender of Indigenous rights, Pereira had received multiple death threats prior to his murder.
Police are investigating a possible link to illegal fishing on protected Indigenous lands -- an issue close to Pereira's heart -- as a motive for the killing.
Czechs start razing pig farm built over WWII Roma camp
Jan FLEMR Fri, July 22, 2022
The demolition of a sprawling pig farm, built on the site of a wartime concentration camp for the Roma minority south of Prague, got underway on Friday following decades of controversy.
Targeted by the Nazis, some 1,300 Roma were imprisoned in the Lety camp during World War II, and 327 died there, including 241 children under 14 years of age.
More than 500 others were sent on to Nazi Germany's infamous Auschwitz-Birkenau death camp in occupied southern Poland.
The Moscow-steered communist regime, which ruled in former Czechoslovakia after the war, built the pig farm on the site in the 1970s.
The regime was toppled in 1989, four years before Czechoslovakia split into two states.
But even then successive Czech governments took decades to finally allow the demolition as the largely impoverished Roma minority stayed on the sidelines of society.
"Today marks the beginning of the end of one of the most shameful chapters in our modern history," parliament speaker Marketa Pekarova Adamova said at a ceremony in Lety.
Together with other officials, she symbolically started the demolition by dismantling a model made of little concrete bricks.
Cenek Ruzicka, whose mother was a Lety survivor, was less restrained as he grabbed a pickaxe and started smashing one of the buildings of the farm that was once home to 13,000 pigs.
His brother had a go at the windows with a hammer.
"As you can see, it has ended well. Of course I didn't expect it to take so long," Ruzicka told AFP.
- 'My culture drove me' -
Late Czech president Vaclav Havel unveiled a memorial near the farm in 1995, but officials then tiptoed about the farm which had been taken over by a private company.
A breakthrough came only in 2018 when the government agreed to buy the farm and build a Roma Holocaust memorial on the site, under pressure from the Roma minority and international institutions including the United Nations and the EU.
A visitor centre is due to be completed early next year as the first part of the memorial whose total construction cost is expected to be more than 100 million Czech koruna ($4 million).
Ruzicka, whose grandmother and three-month-old sister died at the camp, was a major driving force behind the move.
"My culture drove me. The guys from our community of the original Czech Roma are terribly proud, we never give up," said Ruzicka, who was born in 1946.
The Czech Republic, an EU country of 10.5 million people, has a Roma community estimated to number between 250,000 and 300,000.
Of the 9,500 Czech Roma registered before World War II, fewer than 600 returned home after the Holocaust.
Historians believe the Nazis exterminated over half of the roughly one million Roma who had lived in Europe prior to World War II.
The European Union estimates that 10-12 million Roma currently live in Europe, around six million of them in EU nations.
frj/dt/pvh
Battered by climate change, Latin America must brace for worse: report
by Andrea FIGUERAS ARISO
Hurricane Iota caused widespread devastation in Nicaragua in 2020.
Floods, heat waves and the longest drought in 1,000 years: Latin America is grappling with devastating climate change impacts that will only get worse, a World Meteorological Organization report warned Friday.
In its State of the Climate report for Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC) for 2021, the WMO said ecosystems, food and water, human health and welfare were all taking a battering.
Glaciers in the tropical Andes have lost more than 30 percent of their area in less than 50 years, increasing the risk of water scarcity in many regions, it said.
Sea levels continued to rise at a faster rate than globally, and the so-called Central Chile Mega Drought—13 years and running—is the longest in at least 1,000 years.
Meanwhile, deforestation rates "were the highest since 2009, a blow for both the environment and climate change mitigation," said the report.
Brazilian Amazon deforestation doubled from the 2009-2018 average, with 22 percent more forest area lost in 2021 than the previous year.
The Amazon provides oxygen-producing and carbon-trapping functions that are crucial not only for the region but for the world.
'Decades of progress' stalled
The report also documented the third-highest number—21—of named storms on record for the 2021 Atlantic hurricane season, and extreme rainfall that caused hundreds of fatalities and destroyed or damaged tens of thousands of homes.
Floods in Cuba last month.
"Increasing sea-level rise and ocean warming are expected to continue to affect coastal livelihoods, tourism, health, food, energy, and water security, particularly in small islands and Central American countries," said WMO Secretary General Petteri Taalas.
"For many Andean cities, melting glaciers represent the loss of a significant source of freshwater... for domestic use, irrigation and hydroelectric power."
Worsening climate change, compounded by the impacts of the coronavirus pandemic, have "stalled decades of progress against poverty, food insecurity and the reduction of inequality in the region," added Mario Cimoli of the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean.
In Guatemala, El Salvador and Nicaragua, 7.7 million people experienced high levels of food insecurity in 2021.
The LAC region had registered an average rate of temperature increase of about 0.2 degrees Celsius per decade between 1991 and 2021, said the report—double the 1961-1990 rate.
"Unfortunately, greater impact is in store for the region as both the atmosphere and ocean continue to rapidly change," said a WMO press release.
Chile is experiencing its longest drought in 1,000 years.
"Food and water supplies will be disrupted. Towns and cities and the infrastructure required to sustain them will be increasingly at risk."
Ancient Siberian dogs relied on humans for seafood diets
by Issam AHMED
A new study has shed light on the dietary transitions that allowed early Siberian dog populations to increase as people put them to work in roles such as sledding.
As early as 7,400 years ago, Siberian dogs had evolved to be far smaller than wolves, making them more dependent on humans for food including sea mammals and fish trapped below the ice, a new study showed Friday.
Robert Losey of the University of Alberta, who led the research published in Science Advances, said the findings helped explain the growth in the early dog population, as people put them to work for hunting, herding and sledding.
"The long term changes in dog diet have really been oversimplified," he told AFP, explaining that prior work had focused only on two main ideas to explain how dogs transitioned from wolves, a process that began some 40,000 years ago.
The first of these was that friendlier wolves approached human camps during the Ice Age to scavenge for meat, eventually became isolated from their wild counterparts, and were then intentionally bred into dogs.
The second was that some dogs evolved a better capacity to digest starches following the agricultural revolution, which is why some modern dog breeds have more copies of the AMY2B gene that creates pancreatic amylase.
To study ancient dog diets in more depth, Losey and colleagues analyzed the remains of around 200 ancient dogs from the past 11,000 years, and a similar number of ancient wolves.
"We had to go to collections all over Siberia, we analyzed those bones, took samples of the collagen, and analyzed the protein in labs," he said.
Based on the remains, the team made statistical estimates for body sizes.
They discovered that dogs of 7,000-8,000 years ago "were already quite small, meaning that they just couldn't do the things that most wolves were doing," said Losey.
This in turn led to greater dependence on humans for food, and reliance on small prey and scavenging, rather than prey bigger than themselves, which wolves hunt.
"We see that dogs have marine diets, meaning they're eating fish, shellfish, seals and sea lions, which they can't easily get themselves," he said.
Ancient dogs were found to be eating fish "in areas of Siberia where the lakes and rivers are frozen over for seven to eight months of the year."
Wolves of the time, and today, were hunting in packs and mainly eating various species of deer.
Benefits and challenges
These new diets brought dogs both benefits and challenges.
"Beneficial because they could access stuff from humans, and those are oftentimes easy meals, but it came with the costs of all these new diseases and problems, like not enough nutrition," said Losey.
While the new bacteria and parasites they were exposed to could have helped some adapt, some dog populations might not have survived.
Most of the first dogs of the Americas died out, for unclear reasons, and were replaced by European dogs—though it's not thought colonization was to blame.
More information:Robert J. Losey et al, The evolution of dog diet and foraging: Insights from archaeological canids in Siberia,Science Advances(2022).DOI: 10.1126/sciadv.abo6493
Don Braid: Is Danielle Smith's striking campaign a paper tiger?
Is this Smith steamroller a fact, or cultivated myth?
Author of the article:Don Braid • Calgary Herald Publishing date:Jul 21, 2022
Danielle Smith speaks at a leadership campaign event on July 14.
Bailey Seymour/Special to Postmedia Article content
Danielle Smith’s campaign has been spectacularly successful at amping up her profile as a UCP leadership candidate.
But is she really the runaway public hit that all the media attention suggests?
Maybe not. The counterattack on her plan for nullifying federal laws has begun. Candidate Travis Toews and Jason Nixon, the government house leader, have both called it reckless and dangerous for the province, especially economically.
Most favoured some moves clearly within provincial authority — a police force, for instance — but they all thought it was halfway crazy to nullify federal laws on Alberta soil.
Are those people all wrong, while only Danielle Smith is right? There’s another quiet player in this little Alberta drama: Prime Minister Justin Trudeau.
The current unilateral federal move on stricter emission targets seems deliberately provocative at a moment when traditional energy is precious, literally. Many Albertans will be angrier than ever, and perhaps more receptive to Smith’s pitch.
As premier, she would be a handy foil for Trudeau to rile up his progressive base in a federal campaign. There’s little for the Liberals to lose in Alberta, and a great deal to gain elsewhere.
Trudeau has found Premier Jason Kenney useful at times. Ontario Premier Doug Ford as well. Danielle Smith would be a gift.
Her stand might have won some limited national sympathy during our deep recession. But don’t imagine any love for ignoring national laws now that the province is soaring again, cash-rich beyond the dreams of any other province.
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau speaks during a news conference on Bowen Island, B.C., on Tuesday.
PHOTO BY DARRYL DYCK /THE CANADIAN PRESS
Smith’s campaign also gives the impression that she is far outpacing other candidates in UCP membership sales.
But once again, is this Smith steamroller a fact, or cultivated myth? It’s now possible to get a fix on sales because campaigns fully accepted by the party have been given the party membership lists. These lists show numbers of daily sales by all candidates.
Smith’s campaigners claimed last week, in a published article, that they had sold 7,000 memberships in a 10-day period.
But Brian Jean’s campaign says that’s simply false. The list they received, after Jean was accepted, shows that all aspiring candidates sold fewer than 6,000 memberships in the same 10-day period, according to Jean spokesperson Vitor Marciano.
The party discourages candidates from talking about current total list numbers.
“But we just had to speak out on this one,” says Marciano. “The sales they’re claiming just aren’t there. That’s untrue. There are steady sales of memberships by candidates, but no great burst of sales for her.”
Smith and Toews have been in a spat about who favours a sales tax. The fact is, they’ve both suggested it.
Toews has said in the past a tax might be considered later. On Sept. 4, 2020, Smith said in a Herald column that the province needs $5 billion in new taxes, and then added: “Yes, a provincial sales tax. Let’s not kid ourselves about that.”
Now they’re faulting each other for something they both said. Ridiculous.
Smith’s striking Sovereignty Act promise has blurred far more important issues. She talks about them, too, but she has made herself the Ignore Laws candidate.
Jean, by contrast, focuses on bread-and-butter concerns that aren’t so dramatic but may reach crisis level by vote count day, Oct. 6.
On Thursday he called for legislation to cap retailer margins for gasoline sales. Five provinces already do this, which helps explain why their gasoline prices are similar to or lower than ours, even though Alberta stopped collecting the gasoline tax of 13 cents per lite.
Smith’s campaign stands out, that’s for sure. But maybe it’s not as strong as it seems. Don Braid’s column appears regularly in the Herald. Twitter: @DonBraid
Former finance minister questions whether Alberta sovereignty bill would pass
EDMONTON — Alberta's former finance minister — with a large portion of the United Conservative caucus supporting him for party leader – has added his voice to those questioning whether a rival’s promised bill rejecting federal law would pass in the legislature.
Former finance minister questions whether Alberta sovereignty bill would pass
Travis Toews says he will pursue other levers to carry the fight to the federal government instead of resorting to what he characterized as self-aggrandizing recipes for legal and economic chaos.
“I think that would be pretty questionable,” Toews said when asked in an interview Thursday whether he believes fellow leadership candidate Danielle Smith’s proposed Alberta sovereignty act would gain enough votes to pass in the legislature.
“I’ve got really about half the (United Conservative) MLAs right now overtly supporting me. And I’ve certainly heard from many of them real concerns over the sovereignty act approach.”
Toews made the comments a day after UCP government house leader and Finance Minister Jason Nixon told reporters he, too, doubts the act would find enough support in the house.
Nixon, who said he believes Toews is the best candidate, called Smith’s proposal fundamentally illegal and unenforceable, bad for business and politically problematic for overpromising what can’t be accomplished.
Toews said he agrees and is particularly distressed over what the act would mean for business viability, investor confidence and jobs.
“An environment where you’re asking businesses and companies to ignore federal law is not an environment that attracts investment."
He said uncertainties and inequalities would compound if some businesses decided to follow the province’s lead and ignore certain laws and court rulings while other businesses decided to abide by them.
“It has the potential to create economic chaos in the province of Alberta,” he said.
“We need to be assertive when we deal with Ottawa in terms of Alberta’s place in Confederation – assertive and strategic,” he added.
“I’m not about all that tired political rhetoric all for personal political gain that ultimately results in disillusioned Albertans and angry Albertans.”
Toews pointed to his five-point plan on federal relations, which would see a provincial pension plan, a provincial police force and working with other provinces to create consensus to alter the equalization formula and shift taxing power from Ottawa to the regions.
He said his government would also pass legislation to levy tariffs on goods and services or imports from specific regions to counter rules and policies deemed unfair to Alberta.
“I’m a great believer in free trade … but Alberta needs a way to tangibly push back in a very specific way,” he said.
Toews stepped down as finance minister in late May to run for the leadership. He has close to 30 committed supporters among UCP caucus members, while Smith has two.
Smith, a former Wildrose Party leader, radio talk show host and businesswoman, is considered one of the front-runners in the race to replace Premier Jason Kenney as party leader and premier when voting takes place Oct. 6.
Last month, Smith announced that if she wins the leadership, she would immediately introduce the sovereignty act bill granting her government the discretion to refuse to enforce federal laws or court decisions it deems an intrusion on provincial rights or a threat to Alberta interests.
Smith has said it's critical Alberta draw a line in the sand immediately when it comes to federal intrusions in areas such as energy development and COVID-19 measures.
Her campaign declined an interview Thursday but pointed to her statement a day earlier that said the sovereignty act would be invoked on a case-by-case basis and only after gaining support of members in the house in a free vote.
Political scientist Duane Bratt said while Nixon’s assessment of the bill’s flaws is accurate, the UCP caucus signalling it may not support Smith’s signature legislation could galvanize her supporters.
“Nixon is right on this. It is illegal. It is unconstitutional,” said Bratt with Mount Royal University in Calgary.
“I’ve been wondering at what point there was going to be a clash between the current government and the leadership race. Well we saw that (with Nixon’s comments) yesterday.”
This report by The Canadian Press was first published July 21, 2022.
