Monday, November 14, 2022

RAINBOW WAVE AT US MIDTERM ELECTIONS 2022: LGBT CANDIDATES MAKE HISTORY

DOUGLAS MAGALETTI — NOVEMBER 10, 2022

Images: Facebook

In the aftermath of the 2022 US Midterm Elections, here is a rundown of the winners and losers of the night.

According to NBC News, a record 678 LGBTQ candidates were on the ballot, with more than 340 winning their elections so far. It was also the first time in US history that an LGBTQ candidate was on the ballot in all 50 states.

More LGBTQ Candidates Than Ever Before

President & CEO of the LGBTQ Victory Fund Mayor Annise Parker explained, “We saw more LGBTQ candidates of color, trans candidates, nonbinary candidates and bisexual candidates than in any other election year.”

Among them, Maura Healey, a Democrat candidate for governor of Massachusets, became the first out lesbian to be elected governor of a US State.

In a tweet after her victory, she wrote, “We might be the first, but we won’t be the last. To every little girl out there, we want you to know — there’s no ceiling you can’t break.”

Becca Balint, a Democrat, became the first out gay person to represent Vermont in the US Congress and updated her social media bio accordingly.

Robert Garcia, a Democrat representing California, will be the first out LGBTQ immigrant in the US Congress, and Democrat Leigh Finke became the first openly transgender person to be elected to the Minnesota House of Representatives.

In an interview with USA Today, Victory Fund press secretary Albert Fujii said, “We are already calling this year a ‘Rainbow Wave’ – with more wins to come.”

“Tonight’s Rainbow Wave is a clear rebuke to the increased homophobia and transphobia sweeping our communities – and proves voters want to elect qualified LGBTQ leaders,” Fujii said. “With so much at stake this election, from the future of marriage equality to abortion, LGBTQ candidates’ grit and exceptional grassroots support is paying off.”

Anti-LGBTQ Candidate Victories

In Florida, however, Governor Ron Desantis, a conservative Republican, won reelection in a landslide against his opponent, Former governor Charlie Crist, beating him by almost 20 points.

With more than 95% of votes in, DeSantis won 59.4% of the vote to Crist’s, 40%.

He is widely believed to be a potential front-runner for the Republican nomination in the lead-up to the 2024 US Presidential Election.

During a debate in October, in response to a question on minors undergoing gender-affirming medical procedures and therapies, DeSantis falsely claimed, “They mean doing double mastectomies on young girls. They mean chemically castrating young boys, that is wrong. We are not going to allow that to happen in the state of Florida.”

He went on to say, “A lot of the dysphoria resolves itself by the time they become adults…It’s inappropriate to be doing, basically what’s, genital mutilation.”

In March, DeSantis signed the “Don’t Say Gay Bill” into law.

The Bill, officially named the Parental Rights in Education Bill, will restrict the teaching of sexual orientation and gender identity.

MAGA Republican Wins

Georgia Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene, a MAGA Republican, also won reelection.

In April, Greene revealed that she plans to introduce a federal law, modelled on Florida’s ‘Don’t Say Gay’ Bill.

“We can do legislation to protect our children. You know, Congress makes the laws, Congress funds the money that funds agencies and different departments like the Department of Education,” Greene said.

“There should be no federal funding to any school anywhere that is indoctrinating children, that is teaching them that they can change their gender, that is teaching them anything sick and disgusting like this. We should stop all federal funding.”

Colorado Congresswoman Lauren Boebert, with approximately 95 percent of the vote tallied, is currently trailing her opponent by less than a percentage point.

In April, Boebert came out in favour of a government-mandated age requirement in order to make decisions about one’s own gender and sexuality.

Boebert, a conspiracy theorist and Trump supporter, tweeted, “We require people to be 21 to purchase alcohol beverages, and 21 to purchase tobacco products. Why is it so unreasonable to require people to reach a certain level of maturity before making life-altering decisions about their sexuality and identity?”

According to the LGBTQ Victory Fund, there are currently, two US senators, nine US representatives, two state governors, 189 state legislators, and 56 mayors who openly identify as LGBTQ.

MAURA HEALEY IS FIRST OUT LESBIAN WOMAN TO BE ELECTED GOVERNOR IN UNITED STATES

THE SECOND LGBTQ GOVERNOR ELECTED WAS OREGON

CHRISTINE LAI — NOVEMBER 10, 2022

Maura Healey. Image: Facebook.

Massachusetts Attorney General Maura Healey made history on Wednesday as the state’s first woman governor and the country’s first out lesbian governor.

Healey had previously made waves when she became the first LGBTQI person elected to be a state’s attorney general in 2014. Her election win marks the defeat of Republican Geoff Diehl, a former state representative who had the endorsement of former President Donald Trump.

Healey addressed her supporters at a victory rally in Boston on Tuesday, stating that this win was dedicated to “every little girl and every young LGBTQ person out there.”

“I hope tonight shows you that you can be whatever, whoever you want to be. And nothing and no one can ever get in your way except your own imagination, and that’s not going to happen”, Healey said.

Climate Action And Equal Rights

During the campaign, Healey advocated for immediate climate action, the expansion of job training programs, further protections for LGBTQI rights including banning the gay panic defence (a legal strategy which allows a defendant to claim a victim’s sexual orientation or gender identity/expression is to blame for their crime), and to make child care more affordable.

Healey has also said that she would actively work to protect access to “safe and legal abortion in Massachusetts” following the US Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe v. Wade in June this year.

Mass Live had reported that Healey core policies – “better laws and policies when those in office, just like those in the boardroom, reflect the populations that they serve and work on behalf of.”

LGBTQI Groups Welcome Historic Win

LGBTQI Victory Fund President and CEO Mayor Annise Parker commended Healey for her win which came up “in the face of so much hate and intolerance sweeping our nation”.

NBC News reported Parker calling this a sign “especially to LGBTQI kids in desperate need of hope, that LGBTQI people have a place in American society and can become respected public leaders. It is an uphill battle for LGBTQI candidates and women candidates to win high-level elected office, but Massachusetts voters know Maura is a fighter and today helped her make U.S. political history.”

Human Rights Campaign Interim President Joni Madison posted her congratulations to Healey on Twitter. “Tonight, Maura Healey made history, becoming the first out lesbian governor this nation has ever elected. Massachusetts embraced a platform of equality and inclusion by electing a pro-equality champion.”

An Advocate For LGBTQI Rights

According to HRC, Healey’s win sent an important message to the community, especially young LGBTQI persons.

With her in the statehouse, LGBTQ+ youth across Massachusetts and the United States will get to see that they are represented at the highest levels of government, and that they can achieve anything they set their minds on. We celebrate Maura Healey’s historic win and look forward to working with her to continue to fight for a Massachusetts that is inclusive and welcoming to all,” said Madison.

Healey has been an advocate for queer rights since her time in office. In 2009, Healey headed the country’s first successful challenge to the Defence of Marriage Act, a 1996 law which prohibited the federal recognition of same-sex marriages.

In her victory speech, she committed to defending women’s rights to control their reproductivity, stating, “As long as I’m governor, women will always have the freedom to control their own bodies.”

New pictures emerge of deadly air show collision as investigators probe Dallas tragedy

ByJuan Lozano and Josh Funk
November 14, 2022 —

Dallas: A national transportation official probing the cause of a midair crash of two historic military planes during an air show that left six people dead said that one of the key questions for investigators is why the aircraft were seemingly sharing the same space just before impact.

A World War II-era bomber and a fighter plane collided and crashed to the ground in a ball of flames on Saturday, leaving crumpled wreckage in a grassy area inside the Dallas Executive Airport perimeter, about 16 kilometres from the city’s downtown. New images released on Monday showed the moments before and after the fighter plane crashed into the bomber.

Photos show the moments after a Boeing B-17 Flying Fortress and a Bell P-63 Kingcobra collide in midair during an airshow at Dallas Executive Airport.CREDIT:AP

“One of the things we would probably most likely be trying to determine is why those aircraft were co-altitude in the same air space at the same time,” Michael Graham, a member of the National Transportation Safety Board, said at a news conference.

The crash came three years after the crash of a bomber in Connecticut that killed seven, and amid ongoing concern about the safety of air shows involving older warplanes. The company that owned the planes flying in the Wings Over Dallas show has had other crashes in its more than 60-year history.

The crash claimed six lives, Dallas County Judge Clay Jenkins tweeted on Sunday, citing the county medical examiner. Authorities are continuing work to identify the victims, he said. Dallas Fire-Rescue said there were no reports of injuries on the ground.

Armin Mizani, the mayor of Keller, Texas, said Terry Barker, a retired pilot who lived in Keller, was in the B-17 bomber that crashed. Mizani said he learned of Barker’s death from his family.

A Boeing B-17 Flying Fortress, front, is seen seconds before colliding with a Bell P-63 Kingcobra in Dallas.

CREDIT:AP

Mizani said Barker’s death has been difficult for his town of 50,000, where many of the residents know each other.

“It’s definitely a big loss in our community,” he said. “We’re grieving.”

Barker was an Army veteran who flew helicopters during his military service. He later worked for American Airlines for 36 years before retiring in 2020, Mizani said.

Maj. Curtis J. Rowe, a member of the Ohio Wing Civil Air Patrol, was a crew chief on the B-17, his brother-in-law Andy Keller told The Associated Press on Sunday. Rowe, of Hilliard, Ohio, did air shows several times a year because he fell in love with WWII aircraft, Keller said.

The Federal Aviation Administration also was going to investigate, officials said. The planes collided and crashed about 1.20pm, the FAA said.

The World War II-era B-17 Flying Fortress involved in the crash, pictured in June 10, 2021.CREDIT:AP

Graham said five people were in the B-17 Flying Fortress bomber and a pilot was the only person in the P-63 Kingcobra fighter plane. The aircraft are owned by Commemorative Air Force, the company that put on the air show. The aircraft are flown by highly trained volunteers, often retired pilots, said Hank Coates, president of Commemorative Air Force.

John Cudahy is president of the International Council of Air Shows, a trade group that sets the standards air shows follow and oversees the training of pilots and “air bosses,” who serve as the flight controller for an event. Cudahy said that typically at air shows there is a Friday rehearsal where the pilots fly through the entire show to practice, so the Saturday show is actually the second time the pilots have flown the show. There are also detailed briefings each day to go over the plan for the air show and cover exactly where each pilot will be and their roles in the show.

“It’s still to early to figure out what happened yesterday. I’ve watched the tape several times and I can’t figure it out and I’ve been doing this for 25 years,” Cudahy said.

Investigators will examine the wreckage from both aircraft, conduct interviews of crews present at the air show and obtain pilot training and aircraft maintenance records.

“We’ll look at everything that we can and we’ll let the evidence basically lead us to the appropriate conclusions. At this point, we will not speculate” on the cause, Graham said.

A preliminary report from the NTSB is expected in four to six weeks, while a final report will take up to 18 months to complete.

Air shows must obtain special waivers from the FAA and all of the pilots have to demonstrate their skills in low flying and other manoeuvres used in air shows, said John Cox, a former airline captain with more than 50 years’ experience. Cox is also founder of Safety Operating Systems, a company that helps smaller airlines and corporate flight services from around the world with safety planning.

Each air show is overseen by an air boss, Cox said.

“If there’s any adjustments that have to be made, it’s the air boss that makes those calls and the pilots comply with that,” he said. In addition, any pilot with a mechanical problem would announce it to the air boss, he said.

Air shows typically rely on extremely detailed plans, including contingencies for emergencies, Cox said. For example, any pilot who ran into trouble could break out of formation and go to a designated area free of other planes that is identified by a landmark of some kind.

The B-17, a cornerstone of US air power during World War II, is an immense four-engine bomber used in daylight raids against Germany. The Kingcobra, a US fighter plane, was used mostly by Soviet forces during the war. Most B-17s were scrapped at the end of World War II and only a handful remain today, largely featured at museums and air shows, according to Boeing.

The Commemorative Air Force has had previous crashes during its more than 60-year history, including a deadly 1995 crash near Odessa, Texas, involving a B-26 bomber that killed five crewmembers, according to an NTSB report. The plane crashed while practicing for an air show. The NTSB determined that the probable cause was the failure of the pilot to maintain minimum airspeed for flight.

In 2001, two separate West Texas crashes involving planes owned by the group – one in April and one in May – killed three people. In June 2005, two people were killed when a single-engine plane owned by the group crashed in Williamson, Georgia.

The Commemorative Air Force, previously called the Confederate Air Force until members changed its name in 2001 to avoid any association with the Civil War, had been headquartered in Midland, Texas, but relocated to Dallas in 2014.

Wings Over Dallas bills itself as “America’s Premier World War II Airshow,” according to a website advertising the event. The show was scheduled for November 11-13, Veterans Day weekend, and guests were to see more than 40 World War II-era aircraft. Its Saturday afternoon schedule of flying demonstrations included the “bomber parade” and “fighter escorts” that featured the B-17 and P-63.

AP

We underestimated Joe Biden, the midterms prove it

By Farrah Tomazin
November 14, 2022

Washington: Joe Biden is constantly underestimated.

A few years ago, he was almost written off while seeking his party’s presidential nomination, only to end up dominating the “Super Tuesday” primary contests to become the candidate chosen to take on Donald Trump.

A staggering loss for Donald Trump, while President Joe Biden is crowing over the Democrats’ success. CREDIT:AP

Later that year, he defied expectations again when he ended up toppling Trump and making the incendiary Republican the first president since 1992 who failed to win a second term.

And at this month’s midterm elections, Biden and his team were widely expected to face a Republican “red wave” that would result in the Democrats easily losing their majority in one or both chambers of the US Congress.

Now, the Democrats have control of the Senate after narrowly winning the key seat of Nevada, while the House of Representatives remains a nail-biter as votes continue to be counted.

Democrats win key Nevada race, giving party control of Senate

Despite record inflation and rising crime; despite polls suggesting most Americans believe their country is on the wrong track; and despite a president with one of the worst approval ratings in history, Biden’s Democrats have had one of the best midterms for a party controlling the White House in decades.

What happened?

First, there can be little doubt that this election was a repudiation of Donald Trump’s grievance-fuelled style of politics and the extremism of his “Make America Great Again” wing of the Republican Party.

Trump endorsed 330 candidates this year, most of whom were running in races that could have given them extraordinary power to set election rules and upend future elections - something Biden and the Democrats kept reminding voters in the final stretch of the campaign.

While the fate of Congress is still too close to call, US President Joe Biden is celebrating after avoiding a bloodbath in the midterms.

Among those defeated last week was candidate for Pennsylvania governor, Doug Mastriano, a far-right politician who helped bus people to Washington on the day of the January 6 Capitol attack and later tried to help Trump overturn the votes in his state. He was beaten by former state attorney general Josh Shapiro last week and only conceded on Monday AEDT.

Once an Oath Keeper: Mark Finchem is a Republican candidate for Arizona Secretary of State.

CREDIT:AP

Another extreme candidate was Mark Finchem, a member of the militia group the Oath Keepers, which is also linked to the US Capitol riots. Finchem was considered a good chance of becoming Arizona’s chief elections official, otherwise known as secretary of state, where he planned to ban early voting and restrict postal ballots, which had been used in Arizona for years.

And in Nevada, which ensured the Democrats have now secured their majority in the Senate, another important result was also called on Friday, against Republican candidate for secretary of state, Jim Marchant.

Marchant had pushed Nevada’s biggest county to switch to hand-counting paper ballots based on Trump-fuelled conspiracy theories about the validity of voting machines.

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What happens in Nevada will shape the US in next two years

He also led a national coalition of like-minded conservatives also running for secretary of state positions across the US, and at a rally in June, made their intentions clear: “When my coalition of secretary of state candidates around the country get elected, we’re going to fix the whole country and President Trump is going to be president again in 2024!”

Secondly, just as the midterms were a victory for democracy, they were also a rebuke of the US Supreme Court’s decision to overturn the constitutional right to have an abortion.

All around the country, voters delivered a string of decisive victories for reproductive freedom, from Michigan and Montana, to Vermont and California.

The biggest surprise came in the Republican state of Kentucky, where an anti-abortion amendment was defeated, following in the footsteps of a similar attempt in Kansas to remove protections in the state’s constitution earlier this year.

People applaud during a primary watch party in Overland Park, Kansas. State voters rejected a ballot measure in the conservative state with deep ties to the anti-abortion movement.

CREDIT:THE KANSAS CITY STAR/AP

The results suggest that even as Republican states sought to impose severe restrictions on women, much of the public differed, with midterm exit polls showing about 6 in 10 voters believe abortion should be legal in all or most cases.

Biden and the Democrats focused heavily on abortion during the campaign, and in many ways, this issue marks an inflection point in America. Republicans have been running on abortion for years, using it to reliably galvanise their base ahead of elections. Now there’s a chance that Democrats will do the same, reminding voters of what some GOP candidates could do – take away their right to choose – if they control the levers.
There was also a third important factor behind the Democrats’ better-than-expected result: young people.

Culinary Union members Edrulfo Camacho and his mother Angelica door knocking in Las Vegas.

CREDIT:FARRAH TOMAZIN

While the 2022 midterm elections didn’t result in a red wave or blue wave, there was arguably a Generation Z wave, as young people who became old enough to vote over the past decade showed up to make their voices heard.

In Florida, 25-year-old Maxwell Frost last week became the first member of Gen Z elected to serve in the US Congress after campaigning on a platform of gun control, racial justice and universal health care.

In the battleground of Nevada, 21-year-old Edrulfo Camacho – one of many hospitality workers hit hard by the global pandemic – spent weeks doorknocking houses in the suburbs of Las Vegas to sign up more voters to help push incumbent Senator Catherine Cortez Masto over the line.

And the southern state of Mississippi, where the clinic at the centre of the Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe v Wade was recently shut down, college student Victoria Akins shared her fears about what might happen if she accidentally fell pregnant but couldn’t access abortion services.

“I don’t want to be in college and exploring life as a student and then something happens to me where I can’t get an abortion,” the part-time shop assistant said.

While votes are still being analysed, preliminary data from the Centre for Information and Research on Civic Learning and Engagement (CIRCLE) suggest an estimated 27 per cent of American youth aged between 18 and 29 cast their ballot this year, the second-highest turnout for a midterm (which generally gets fewer voters than presidential elections).

This proved particularly pivotal in tight contests such as the Senate race for Pennsylvania, where Gen Z-ers increased their share of the electorate from 2018 and supported John Fetterman, the hoodie-wearing, tattoo-covered stroke survivor who beat Trump-backed celebrity doctor Mehmet Oz.

It was meant to be a much easier path for Republicans. After all, history shows that between 1918 and 2016 the president’s party lost an average of 29 seats in the House and an average four seats in the Senate during their first midterm election.

This year, Biden and the Democrats still had pushback, but it was much weaker than anybody expected, by turning the election into a choice between the two parties instead of the usual referendum on the incumbent administration.

And when faced with that choice – a party in the shadow of Trump; the erosion of reproductive freedom; fewer gains for future generations – Biden ended up defying expectations once more.

“We lost fewer seats in the House of Representatives than any Democratic president’s first elected midterm in at least 40 years,” a visibly relieved Biden told supporters in Washington last week.

“We had the best midterms for governors since 1986.

“And experts said we couldn’t beat the odds – but we did.”

Chris Zappone
Digital Foreign Editor

“Election deniers lose races for key state offices in every 2020 battleground”

November 13, 2022,

WaPo:

Voters in the six major battlegrounds where Donald Trump tried to reverse his defeat in 2020 rejected election-denying candidates seeking to control their states’ election systems this year, a resounding signal that Americans have grown weary of the former president’s unfounded claims of widespread fraud.

Candidates for secretary of state in Michigan, Arizona and Nevada who had echoed Trump’s false accusations lost their contests on Tuesday,with the latter race called Saturday night. A fourth candidate never made it out of his May primary in Georgia. In Pennsylvania, one of the nation’s most prominent election deniers lost his bid for governor, a job that would have given him the power to appoint the secretary of state. And in Wisconsin, an election-denying contender’s loss in the governor’s race effectively blocked a move to put election administration under partisan control.

Trump-allied Republicans mounted a concerted push this year to win a range of state and federal offices, including the once obscure office of secretary of state, which in many instances is a state’s top election official.

Some pledged to “decertify” the 2020 results, although election law experts said that is not possible. Others promised to decommission electronic voting machines, require hand-counting of ballots or block all mail voting. Their platforms were rooted in Trump’s disproven claims that the 2020 race was rigged, and their bids for public office raised grave concerns about whether the popular will could be subverted, and free and fair elections undermined, in 2024 and beyond.

Election administrators and voting rights advocates said the rebuke of election deniers seeking state-level office was a refreshing course correction by U.S. voters, whose choice of more seasoned and less extreme candidates reflected a desire for stability and a belief that the nation’s elections are in fact largely secure.

“This was a vote for normalcy,” said Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger (R), who prevailed against a Democratic opponent Tuesday after defeating U.S. Rep. Jody Hice in the spring primary. Hice, who was endorsed by Trump, spent the campaign attacking Raffensperger for refusing to block Joe Biden’s 2020 win in Georgia.

US Government Plausible Denial Trend Using Big Tech Proxies Only Gets Bigger – OpEd

November 14, 2022
By Rahul Manchanda

If you haven’t been sleeping under a rock for the past decade or so, you will notice that the United States Government (all 3 branches, judicial, legislative and executive) have not only done nothing meaningful in terms of taking down or dismantling the ever-growing and ever more dangerous monopoly/cartel/antitrust-violating Big Tech monsters coming out of the West Coast, but have actually wilfully contributed to their growth and out of control exacerbation.

This is precisely because, like the great old tradition of the U.S. Government using proxy nations, countries, paramilitary organizations, even the Mafia, they have discovered that they can try and remain faithful and true to the United States Constitution if they themselves can establish “plausible denial” that they had anything to do with the myriad and countless federal, state and local crimes being committed by Big Tech under their watch.

For example, because the vast majority of Big Tech consists of “private corporations,” the Federal Trade Commission and the U.S. Department of Justice Anti-Trust Division are able to disavow or ignore when, for example, Amazon.com, the biggest purveyor of online and physical books, media and television, openly censor a massive amount of information if they do not tow the line of their terms of service, thus completely undermining and destroying the First Amendment pertaining to freedom of speech and expression of ideas.

Similarly, when Facebook (now known as “Meta,”) buys and sells the most personal and sensitive bio-data and private information of their users (including biometrics) to the highest bidder, many of whom have insidious and harmful goals in mind, no one in the U.S. Government (including judges) bat an eyelash because of the protections of the Communications Decency Act § 230 (“CDA 230″), which effectively bans any and all lawsuits and liability against internet service providers or website owners/hosts thereon, drafted by such short-sighted if not evil Senators Ron Wyden and Chris Cox.

Taking this spear into the side of the American people (and the world), these same bought off and bribed (see “lobbied”) government employees in all three branches of the U.S. Government have also allowed Google, arguably the worst offender of them all in Big Tech, to break nearly every federal, state and local law known to mankind, as well as direct head on collisions with the United States Constitution involving the 1st, 2nd, 4th, 5th, 6th Amendments, if not the entire United States Bill of Rights.

But again, Google leaders such as Eric Schmidt, Larry Page, Jared Cohen, and Sergey Brin have intermingled so much of the U.S. intelligence and national security apparatus, if not the entire military industrial complex, that it is impossible to know the difference.

But they have been able to dodge any accountability because of their deep pockets, outright bribery of countless members of the U.S. Government (see again – “lobbying power”) that not even presiding federal judges can know their ass from their elbow about where the government begins, and where Google finishes the criminal tasks off.

This is again, known as “plausible denial,” and is a principal as old as the Central Intelligence Agency itself, also on par with the “black bag jobs” of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, which were both called to the mat and banned during the Frank Church senate hearings of 1976.

At least its predecessor, the Office of Strategic Services (aka “OSS”) had some integrity when they were led and staffed by such war heroes as “Wild Bill” Donovan and other American heroes.

But after World War II, and after the infection and subsequent transformation of the OSS by imported British intelligence and Nazi Germany scientists during Operation Paperclip to form the CIA, America (and Big Tech) has never been the same.

Rahul D. Manchanda, Esq, was ranked among Top Attorneys in the United States by Newsweek Magazine in 2012 and 2013. Manchanda worked for one of the largest law firms in Manhattan where he focused on asbestos litigation. At the United Nations Commission on International Trade Law (“UNCITRAL”) in Vienna, Austria, Mr. Manchanda was exposed to international trade law, arbitration, alternative dispute resolution, and comparisons of the American common law with European civil law.

Fort McKay: where Canada's boreal forest gave way to oil sands

Author: AFP

14.11.2022

At Fort McKay in western Canada, in the heart of the country's boreal forest, the pines and the people were long ago cleared out to make way for huge open-pit mines dedicated to excavation of oil sands / © AF

The acrid stench of gasoline permeates the air. And the soot coats everything in sight: the trees, the bushes, even the snow in winter. And all day long, explosions send the birds soaring to safety.

At Fort McKay near Fort McMurray in western Canada, in the heart of the country's boreal forest, the pines and the people were long ago cleared out to make way for huge open-pit mines dedicated to excavation of oil sands.

It's one of the biggest industrial projects in the world: as seen from above, the zone is in stark contrast to the vast expanse of green surrounding it. Huge black holes are gouged in the brown earth -- they are giant pools of water.

Then there is the network of roads on which hundreds of trucks drive every day, and the immense factories, with smoke spewing from wide chimneys.

On the ground, the noise is deafening. And it's quite a scene for the uninitiated: in the middle of the huge basins dug to capture the polluted waters stand huge metal scarecrows clad in helmets and security vests.

The ghoulish creatures are designed to scare away millions of migratory birds that arrive every year in this northern part of Alberta province. Adding to the mayhem: airhorns that are used several times a minute.

The mines have made the people left in Fort McKay -- many of them Indigenous Canadians -- very rich. But the installations have also profoundly altered and damaged the land on which their ancestors relied for centuries.

"Everything has changed, everything's destroyed to me now," says 74-year-old Margie Lacorde who lives in the center of town in a house chock full of knick knacks and framed photographs.

Margie Lacorde, who belongs to the Metis people, says the oil sands of Canada have forever altered ancestral lands / © AFP

The talkative Lacorde, who belongs to the Metis people, is sad to see the parched, yellowing leaves due to drought, and wishes she could still swim in the rivers and gather berries in the forest like she did in her youth.

The hunting grounds are long gone -- the land was sold for industrial use.

"The pollution is killing our nature," Lacorde tells AFP, though she herself worked in the oil industry for years to provide for her family.

She remembers her childhood with a significant bit of nostalgia.

Back then, families gathered snow and melted it to use as drinking and cooking water. Such a thing would be impossible today -- once the snow hits the ground, it's immediately filthy, covered in the dust that filters down from the factories.

- 'Desecrated' -

Environmental activist Jean L'Hommecourt says First Nations territory is being sacrificed for oil industry profit -- and that the concerns of local residents are being ignored / © AFP

"We're First Nations and this is our territory that is all being desecrated by the oil industry for the sake of the dollar, money, prosperity," says Jean L'Hommecourt, an environmental activist who took up the fight her parents once championed.

Even if agreements were reached with Indigenous communities to create jobs and protect some natural resources, the ecological impact of mining the oil sands have been so great that the 59-year-old woman says her people are now at risk.

"I lost my prosperity when the industry came in and took over all our lands and our waters and our access to our wildlife... everything that we depend on to sustain our culture has been compromised by industry," she says bitterly.

The area is a far cry from the picture postcard ideal of the Canadian West. There are no crystalline blue waterways or fish-filled rivers here.

Instead, Moose Lake -- sacred to L'Hommecourt's Dene people -- is now only accessible by all-terrain vehicle, a five-hour drive on a road pockmarked by potholes that runs in between the mines.

When she was growing up, L'Hommecourt's family cabin was in the middle of the forest, far away from the noise and bustle. But after the first oil sands mine was built in 1967, development proceeded at a rapid pace.

Today, the active oil sands extraction sites form a chain that is more than 60 kilometers (40 miles) long, hugging the shores of the Athabasca River.

Fort McKay -- population, 800 or so -- is a tiny speck on a map of this industrial complex.

Canada is home to 10 percent of the world's known crude oil reserves -- much of that is found in the oil sands of Alberta / © AFP

Canada is home to 10 percent of the world's known crude oil reserves -- much of that is found in the oil sands of Alberta.

Every day, nearly three million barrels of crude are extracted from the sands, according to official government data, helping to make Canada the world's fourth largest oil producer, and the primary exporter of crude to the United States.

In all, more than 4,800 square kilometers are used for oil sands mining.

At first, local populations were consulted and their fears were noted, L'Hommecourt says.

"And then they just said okay, well, we collected the information, we collected their concerns and everything else and we'll mitigate with the money," she added.

- Pollution -

Many environmental activists say the impact of the oil industry is so great that the term 'ecocide' is not too strong / © AFP

Many environmental activists say the impact of the oil industry is so great that the term "ecocide" is not too strong. Beyond the tangible destruction of the boreal forest, there is the massive amount of pollution in the air.

The oil and gas sector accounts for a quarter of Canada's greenhouse gas emissions, according to the latest official figures released this year. Of that total, the oil sands are responsible for 12 percent.

And traces of other toxic emissions, such as sulfur and nitrogen oxides, have been detected in the soil and the snow dozens of kilometers from the mining zone.

The industry also consumes a massive amount of water, taken from nearby rivers and lakes.

"There's still a lot we need to do on recognizing the harm from cleaning up existing operations," says Keith Stewart of the environmental pressure group Greenpeace, slamming companies that drag their feet on such matters.

Stewart nevertheless acknowledges a "huge shift" on protecting the environment in recent years.

"For a long time, even the notion that we could limit expansion was viewed as crazy and now... the idea of large-scale expansion now seems crazy," he said.

That reversal is not uniformly popular, as not everyone here sees the oil sands as a bad thing.

Ron Quintal, chief of the Fort McKay Metis, says his community relies on the oil sands industry to survive / © AFP

"The reality is that they shut off the oil sands tomorrow, my community would starve," says Ron Quintal, chief of the Fort McKay Metis, noting that nearly everyone around works in or for the industry.

For Quintal, "Indigenous communities have spent 30 to 40 years... trying to get their foot in the door" so it would be "very difficult for us to try to take our people backward."

He added matter-of-factly: "The development of the oil has empowered us to be able to do things that weren't possible before."

In Canada's boreal forest, one man works to save caribou

"When humans disappear from the Earth, the planet will be even more beautiful -- it will reclaim itself," he says.

Diane Desobeau and Marion Thibaut
Sun, November 13, 2022

Even though he lives in the middle of Canada's boreal forest, Jean-Luc Kanape can sometimes go weeks without seeing a single caribou. But for as long as he can remember, the animals have been part of his life.

For centuries, "our ancestors survived thanks to the caribous -- using its meat, pelts and tools made from its bones," says Kanape, a member of the Innu Indigenous group.

"Now, it's our turn to help them."

The caribou is a symbol of the power of the subarctic boreal forest, but also the beating heart of Canada's Indigenous culture.

But the broad-snouted deer is "at risk," Kanape says, notably because of the loss of its natural habitat.

In Quebec province, the animal's future is threatened by the lumber industry, which is crucial in some areas, providing 60,000 jobs, but which also contributes to mass deforestation.

Governments "are supposed to protect all living beings in their territory" but "do nothing" for the caribous, says Kanape, who helps the community identify and tag the remaining herds.

All around the 47-year-old's cabin, located not far from the St Lawrence River but a two-hour drive from the nearest village, there is evidence of deforestation -- the once lush mass of spruces and poplars has been hacked up.

As seen from above, the woods look like a jigsaw puzzle that has been taken apart. In some areas, trees line the ground -- they will be chopped up and taken away. for the most part, they are pulped to make paper or used in construction.
- Predators -

Recent data suggests that caribous, which are called reindeer in Europe, have a better chance of survival if at least 65 percent of their living habitat is preserved.

But in this part of Canada, roughly 80 percent of their habitat has been disturbed in some way. Tree harvesting helps renew the forest, but that also brings about changes in the native flora and fauna.

Moose have arrived en masse -- which also means the animals that prey on them have arrived too, notably wolves, whose migration has been facilitated by paths cut in the wilderness by the lumber companies.

When new trees sprout up, the tiny fruit bushes that crop up alongside them also bring bears -- another hunter of caribous -- to the area.

When Kanape heads out to track caribou herds, he uses both ancestral teachings and surveillance data collected by drones.

Whether traveling by boat along the river, in his pickup truck or on foot, he scours the ground for hoof prints. Each autumn, those hoofs adapt, their edges sharpening to allow the caribous to break through the ice to get at a major food source: lichen.

In recent weeks, Kanape was tracking a female caribou and her calf, who were living in a partially deforested area -- putting them at risk.

"How can I make them understand that they'd be better off in more wooded areas?" says Kanape. "She came here because she knows the area, which is totally normal."

He sometimes chases away the wolves to give the caribous a better chance to survive through the summer.

As things stands now, a precipitous fall in the calf population of the region's caribous makes their long-term survival not very likely, experts from Quebec's forests ministry warn.

- Growth -

From the Canadian Rockies in the west to Quebec's forests in the east, the caribou has seen its territory dwindle over the last 150 years, and the population has declined -- a shift that nothing seems to reverse.

Since 2003, the caribou has been listed as a species at risk of extinction, and is one of the most studied animals in North America.

In Canada, its survival will depend on the expansion of the oil, lumber and mining industries. The country has struggled to implement viable plans to protect the species, researchers say.

Overall, experts are concerned that the fate of the caribou is a "tipping point" -- and thus that the animal should be considered an "umbrella species" worthy of protecting, so that other animals in their habitat are indirectly saved.

"Dozens of species that don't get the same attention also need ancestral forests -- it's a natural habitat that is vital for many," explains Martin-Hugues Saint-Laurent, a biologist at the University of Quebec in Rimouski.

Canada's boreal forest is home to 85 species of mammals, 130 species of fish and 300 different bird species, many of them migratory.

"The forest is not just about the trees," says Louis De Grandpre, a scientist who has been researching the issue for 30 years.

"We are just barely starting to understand the scope of what's happening under our feet in the forest subsoil, where bacteria, mushrooms and a myriad of microorganisms are all at work."

The Innu people, who believe they are just as much a part of the forest ecosystem as all other living creatures, advocate for the creation of a protected forest zone.

Kanape has a far-reaching, philosophical outlook -- the animal kingdom will ultimately triumph.

"When humans disappear from the Earth, the planet will be even more beautiful -- it will reclaim itself," he says.

The Secret Wars Of The US Imperium – OpEd

November 14, 2022

By Binoy Kampmark

To get to where they are, imperial powers will deceive, dissimulate and distort. The US imperium, that most awesome of devilish powers, has tentacled itself across the globe, often unbeknownst to its own citizens.

In a report released by the New York University School of Law’s Brennan Center of Justice titled Secret War: How the US Uses Partnerships and Proxy Forces to Wage War Under the Radar, there is little to shock, though much to be concerned about. The author of the report contends that the list of countries supplied by the Pentagon on US military partnerships is a savagely clipped one. The list is so wrong that 17 countries have been omitted.

Katherine Yon Ebright, counsel in the Brennan Center’s Liberty and National Security Program, betrays a charmless naivete in remarking that the “proliferation of secret war is a relatively recent phenomenon”, something she regards as “undemocratic and dangerous”. She is certainly right about the last two points, but distinctly wrong about the novelty.

The United States, since its inception, has schemed, through purchase, conspiracy and force of arms, to spread its power and embrace an empire without declaring it. Along with that embrace came the perceived need to wage secret war.

The illegal, covert engagement by US forces in Laos was one of the most brutal examples of a clandestine conflict waged unawares to many politicians back home. It was, as the dark title of Joshua Kurlantzick’s book on the subject suggests, a great place to have war.

It began with a Central Intelligence Agency outfit training and arming members of the Hmong ethnic minority who would, some 14 years later, partake in full scale engagements with Communist allies of the North Vietnamese.

This development was accompanied by an aerial campaign that saw more bombs dropped by the US than used by its air force in the entirety of World War II. Between 1964 and 1973, more than 2.5 million tons of ordnance from over 580,000 bombing sorties was dropped.

US lawmakers tend to express much surprise that US forces should mysteriously appear in countries they can barely find on the map. But to a large extent, the circumstances arose with their own connivance. The authorising backdrop to such engagements centre on a number of instruments that have proliferated since September 11, 2001: the US Title 10 authorities, the 2001 Authorization for the Use of Military Force (AUMF), deployment notifications under the War Powers Resolution, and the souped up idea of the right to self-defence.

Of concern here is the broad umbrella of “security cooperation” programs that are authorised by Congress under the AUMF against designated terrorist groups. Codified as 10 U.S.C.§ 333, the provision permits the DoD to train and equip foreign forces in any part of the globe.

Section 127e, or 10 U.S.C. §127e, stands out, as it authorises the DoD to “provide support to foreign forces, irregular forces, groups or individuals engaged in supporting or facilitating ongoing military operations by United States special operations forces to combat terrorism.”

The 2001 AUMF has become an instrument of vast elasticity, stretched by every administration since its inception to cover a list of terrorist groups that remains secret to the public. The executive had long withheld the list from Congress, something it was bound to do given its cavalier interpretation as to what “associated forces” in the context of terrorist groups are.

The DoD has also kept quiet on the specific circumstances US forces operate under these authorities. As Ebright puts it, the reasoning at play is “that the incident was too minor to trigger statutory reporting requirements.” Confrontations deemed “episodic” and part and parcel of “irregular” warfare do not amount to “hostilities”.

Another accretion of secrecy, and one aided by its important premise of deniability, is the Presidential Approval and Reporting of Covert Actions, 50 U.S.C. § 3093 (1991). Again, the 9/11 terrorist bogey has featured in targeted killings and assassinations, despite assertions to the contrary.

Perhaps the most startling nature to such cooperation programs is the scope granted by Section 1202 of the National Defense Authorization Act of 2018. While it mirrors Section 127e in some respects, the focus here is not on counterterrorism but supporting “irregular warfare operations” against “rogue states”. Ebright strikes a bleak note. “Far beyond the bounds of the war on terror, §1202 may be used to engage in low-level conflict with powerful, even nuclear, states.”

Every now and then, the veil of secrecy on such operations has been pierced. In 2017, four members of the US Army Green Berets, along with four soldiers from Niger, were killed in an ambush outside the village of Tongo Tongo. It was the highest loss of life for US military personnel since 1993, when 18 Army Rangers perished in the Somalian Black Hawk Down incident.

What was head shakingly odd about the whole affair was not merely the surprise shown by members of Congress by this engagement, but the nonplussed way the Joint Chiefs of Staff chairman, General Joseph Dunford, called for an investigation. His sole objectives were to ascertain whether US forces had “adequate intelligence, equipment and training” and whether there was “a pre-mission assessment of the threat in the area” of appropriate accuracy. Surely the more relevant question would have been what these modern kitted-up Roman legionnaires were doing without broader awareness back home?

The findings of the summary report, and those of Pentagon officials, was that militants in the area had “superior firepower”. For every US and Nigerien soldier came three attackers. Again, this misses the overall point about clandestine operations that even some in the upper echelons of Washington know little about.

Despite a number of public statements claiming that the US military role in theatres such as Africa are confined to “advising and assisting” local militaries, the operational reality has occasionally intruded.

In 2018, the now retired General Donald Bolduc, who commanded US special forces in Africa till 2017, had enough boastful candour to reveal that the army had “guys in Kenya, Chad, Cameroon, Niger [and] Tunisia who are doing the same kinds of things as the guys in Somalia, exposing themselves to the same king of danger not just on 127 echoes. We’ve had guys wounded in all the types of missions that we do.”

Ebright recommends that mere reform of “outdated and overstretched AUMFs” will not do. “Congress should repeal or reform the Department of Defense’s security cooperation authorities. Until it does so, the nation will continue to be at war – without, in some cases, the consent or even knowledge of its people.”

That’s hardly going to happen. The security establishment in Washington and a coterie of amnesiacs are keen on keeping a lid on the fact that the US has been a garrison, warring state since 1941. And the next big conflict is just around the corner. Appearances must be kept.

Binoy Kampmark
was a Commonwealth Scholar at Selwyn College, Cambridge. He lectures at RMIT University, Melbourne. Email: bkampmark@gmail.com

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