03 May 21
It's Live on the HomePage Now:
Reader Supported News
Charles Pierce | The Cyber Ninjas Have Called in Men With Badges to Protect Them From Antifa
Charles Pierce, Esquire
Pierce writes: "It is not getting any more dignified out in Arizona."
t the end of Time Bandits, Terry Gilliam’s underrated classic, a bit of leftover concentrated evil, disguised as an overdone Sunday roast left in a toaster oven, explodes, taking out the parents of Kevin, the movie’s young hero. You have to be very careful not to leave hunks of fleshy concentrated evil behind.
But enough about Louis DeJoy.
Camp Runamuck’s legacy to the United States Postal Service, which is now and always will be one of the crown jewels of this constitutional republic, ought to be reaching the end of his campaign of calculated vandalism. The Homeland Security & Governmental Affairs Committee on Friday voted to advance three of the president’s nominees to the Postal Service’s board. This would establish a Democratic majority on the board, a development that Democrats and the postal workers union have long sought with the assumption that a Democratic majority would dispense with Postmaster DeJoy.
Not so fast, says Bloomberg.
Both incumbent Democratic board members including Chairman Ron Bloom have expressed support for DeJoy, whose restructuring of the service has drawn widespread criticism. Bloom in February told House lawmakers that “the board of governors believes that the Postmaster General in very difficult circumstances is doing a good job.” He told The Atlantic magazine for an article published April 21 that DeJoy “earned my support.” It would be a stunning turnabout for a former Trump donor whose replacement was urged in a letter last month signed by 50 lawmakers, and had been accused of letting service slow during an election that drew a surge in mail-in voting.
As recently as this past week, DeJoy was beefing about the USPS in an intemperate tantrum of a response to criticism of his stewardship of the service. If he somehow survives in his position—and, it should be noted, as a member of this president’s cabinet—there is going to be hell to pay in several quarters of the government.
You didn’t think we were going to go a day without checking on the Cyber Ninjas out in Arizona, did you? It appears that things are getting a little testy in and around the ongoing farce. Men With Badges, who are not police, have appeared. Check out the video from CNN. And the other day, a judge ruled that the Cyber Ninjas had to release the details of what in the hell they’re doing with 2.1 million ballots that they got their Cyber Ninja mitts on. On Friday, the documents were released and, in the immortal words of Little Richard, “Oooh, my soul!” Somebody get the net. From NBC News:
The documents offer a detailed look at the conspiratorial thinking behind an extraordinary partisan hunt for fraud some six months after former President Donald Trump lost the election and began pushing the lie that it was stolen from him.
After Ducey declined to provide National Guard resources, the companies then prepared their own security plan and threat assessment, outlining potential threats to the recount that included Antifa, a network of loosely organized radical groups frequently blamed by Trump allies for violence despite little evidence. In an “extreme threat scenario,” the assessment suggests that a coordinated attack involving a chemical fire and disrupted traffic could allow the recount facility to be breached. “Antifa will likely use the backed-up traffic in those six lanes to slow police and fire response to any permitter breach operation,” the assessment says, adding that this could lead to “nearly unmitigated access” to the facility.
Personally, given the choice between this festival of fools and the Crazy Times Carnival next door, I think Antifa’s probably over riding the Tilt-A-Whirl. At least there’s cotton candy and fried dough.
Weekly WWOZ Pick To Click: “If You’re a Viper” (Fats Waller): Yeah, I pretty much still love New Orleans.
Weekly Visit To The Pathe Archives: This week was Duke Ellington’s 121st birthday. (He and Willie Nelson share April 29.) Here’s the Duke from 1933. One of the only stories my father told about World War II that made him smile was about the time his ship tied up in the Brooklyn Navy Yard and he and some shipmates went uptown to hear the Ellington band. They all went to Ebbets Field the next day to see Preacher Roe on the mound. Must’ve been a helluva weekend. History is so cool.
One of the pet topics around the shebeen has been the ever-increasing likelihood that at least some of the world’s next wars are going to be fought not over oil, but over water. A steadily heating planet is beating the hell out of aquifers all over the world. This week, a dispute over a water source set off fighting between Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan. From the BBC:
The fighting has focused on water facilities in territory claimed by both Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan. Like many parts of Central Asia, the border between the two countries has been a focus of tension for the past 30 years. Before that, it mattered little which bit of territory belonged to whom as people could move freely between Soviet Republics. But the collapse of the USSR generated hard borders - and potential violence. The meandering boundary between Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan is particularly tense as over a third of its 1,000-km (600-mile) length is disputed. Restrictions on access to land and water that communities regard as theirs have often led to deadly clashes in the past. The latest fighting was the heaviest in years and has raised fears of a wider conflict between two impoverished neighbours.
Back in the day, we used to call these “brushfire wars,” and a lot of them were simple proxy conflicts with roots in the Cold War. Once the Soviet bloc came apart, long-suppressed ethnic slaughter broke out in Europe. Then came what we’re living through now, resource wars, nations fighting over whatever comes into short supply, and millions fleeing to escape the conflicts, and to find what no longer is theirs. If you’re wondering why the Pentagon considers the climate crisis a national-security threat, look, at the moment, to Central Asia.
The Prime Minister of America has another bit of business he’d like to discuss. From the Washington Post:
Manchin, a key swing vote in the closely divided Senate, said he believed a constitutional amendment, rather than legislation, would be required to admit D.C. as a state. His stance deals a major blow to statehood advocates who were hoping for his support after the bill passed the House last week. Manchin cited findings from the Justice Department under Presidents Ronald Reagan and Jimmy Carter and comments from then-Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy in reaching his decision.
And thus does the fate of constitutional government depend on all of us carefully monitoring Hoppy Kercheval’s radio program.
Is it a good day for dinosaur news, Science Times? It’s always a good day for dinosaur news!
A duckbilled dinosaur species was recently discovered in Japan which rewrites what has been known about how the so-called hadrosaurs spread all over the world. According to a Mail Online report, it was previously believed that hadrosaurs, known for their broad, flat snouts, wandered from North America to Asia before they went extinct 66 million years ago.However, the fossilized remains of the Yamatosaurus izanagii, a never-before-seen species reveals the route was actually the opposite…
According to the co-author of the study, Dr. Anthony Fiorillo from Southern Methodist University in the United States, he believes that dinosaurs in Asia possibly spread to the Americas through the Bering Land Bridge. This report also specified that the dinosaur is the second new species of hadrosaur discovered in Japan, which was attached to mainland Asia, during the dinosaur era.
You can never take what you know about them for granted. They’ve been extinct for 70 million years, but they still have surprises up their (metaphorical) sleeves, and that’s why they lived then to make us happy now.
Happy Arbor Day to all my friends in Nebraska, where they aren’t building the Keystone XL pipeline. Arbor Day, after all, was invented there by a newspaperman named J. Sterling Morton. Go plant a tree. You’ll feel better about the world.
I’ll be back on Monday with whatever happens to Rudy Giuliani over the weekend. Be well and play nice, ya bastids. Stay above the snake-line, wear the damn mask, and take the damn shots.
READ MORE
A bill approved last week by the Florida legislature would restrict the use of drop boxes for mail ballots. (photo: Eva Marie Uzcategui/AFP/Getty Images)
Florida Republicans Rushed to Curb Mail Voting. Now the GOP May Be Regretting That Move.
Amy Gardner, The Washington Post
Gardner writes: "Republican operatives worth their salt remember well the Sunshine State's 1988 U.S. Senate race."
Floridians went to sleep that Nov. 8 believing that Democrat Buddy MacKay had prevailed with a slim lead of less than one percentage point. The television networks had called the race for him. The St. Petersburg Times published a story the next day declaring that Republican Connie Mack had “failed to win big” in crucial conservative strongholds Lee and Pinellas counties.
Then the last of the absentee ballots came in. They went 3 to 1 for Mack, delivering him a 34,518-vote victory.
“It was legendary,” said David Johnson, a longtime GOP consultant in the state. “The Republicans had done such a good job with absentee ballots that they eked out a narrow win.”
So began a long and fruitful relationship between the GOP and absentee voting. Republican campaigns invested millions of dollars encouraging their supporters to cast ballots by mail. State legislators passed laws making it easier. Over the ensuing decades, GOP voters in Florida became so comfortable with casting ballots by mail that in 2020, nearly 35 percent of those who turned out did so, according to state data compiled by University of Florida political science professor Daniel A. Smith.
Virtually every narrow Republican victor of the past generation — and there have been many, including two of the state’s current top officeholders, Gov. Ron DeSantis and Sen. Rick Scott — owes their victory, at least in part, to mail voting.
Now, some Florida Republicans are reacting with alarm after the GOP-dominated state legislature, with DeSantis’s support, passed a far-reaching bill Thursday night that puts new restrictions on the use of mail ballots.
Not only are GOP lawmakers reversing statutes that their own predecessors put in place, but they are also curtailing a practice that millions of state Republicans use, despite former president Donald Trump’s relentless and baseless claims that it invites fraud.
Even as Democrats and voting rights advocates accuse the proponents of Senate Bill 90 of attempting to suppress the votes of people of color, these Republicans say their own political fortunes are in peril, too.
The potential fallout in the key swing state illustrates how the Republican Party is hurting itself in its rush to echo Trump’s false allegations, they said.
“Donald Trump attempted to ruin a perfectly safe and trusted method of voting,” said one longtime Republican consultant in the state who spoke on the condition of anonymity to offer a candid assessment.
“The main law that we pass when we pass election bills in Florida is the law of unintended consequences,” he said. Now, he added, the GOP must live with the result.
A sharp reversal
State Sen. Joe Gruters, a Republican from Sarasota, the chairman of the state GOP and a chief proponent of Senate Bill 90, said the measure was necessary to shore up public confidence in elections — something both Republican lawmakers and their supporters demanded.
“It’s not going to hurt anybody, Republicans or Democrats,” Gruters said in an interview Sunday. “People are going to understand the changes that we me made long before another election comes around. People will have a full grasp of what we’re dealing with.”
He added: “My goal is to make it as easy as possible to vote and as hard as possible to cheat, period.”
In future years, Gruters said, he would like to expand early in-person voting — a method that was embraced more broadly by Republicans last fall.
This year’s bill restricts the use of drop boxes, adds hurdles to voting by mail and prohibits actions that could influence those standing in line to vote, which voting rights advocates said will probably discourage nonpartisan groups from offering food or water to voters as they wait under the hot Florida sun.
Together, the provisions compound hurdles for voters, critics said, because the curtailment of mail voting will probably lead to longer lines on Election Day and during early in-person voting, particularly in urban communities that already tend to face long wait times to vote.
Senate Bill 90 requires voters to reapply for mail ballots every two-year election cycle, rather than every two cycles — or four years — as current law allows. The legislation prohibits mobile drop boxes, and it requires local election supervisors to staff all drop boxes and to allow ballots to be dropped in them only during early-voting hours. Supervisors who leave a drop box accessible outside those hours are subject to a civil penalty of $25,000.
The state’s association of county election supervisors opposed the measure, which also limits who may turn in a voter’s ballot, allowing only certain family members to do so or limiting individuals to turning in the ballots of just two nonfamily members.
The bill marks a sharp reversal for the state GOP, which invested heavily in absentee voting in the past three decades.
After the seminal 1988 election, Republicans began working to broaden the appeal of mail voting. They reached out to the elderly in particular, expanding their electorate by teaching low-propensity voters how easy it could be to vote from home.
They established ballot “chase” programs, tapping public voter files to call Republican voters they knew had requested ballots and remind them to turn their votes in.
“Vote-by-mail programs for our statewide campaigns would cost $4 [million] to $5 million in the 1990s,” Johnson said. “It was a lot of money. But it was not at all unheard of.”
The GOP also began changing state law to make it easier to vote by mail. In 2002, the state ended its absentee voting system, intended only for voters unable to vote in person on Election Day, and replaced it with a no-excuses vote-by-mail system, one of the first states to do so.
A few years later, Republicans passed legislation creating a mail-ballot request list, allowing voters who request a ballot once to automatically receive mail ballots for two subsequent election cycles. The measure came at the request of county supervisors of elections, who had become inundated with mail-ballot requests each election. Republicans seized on the idea to eliminate a step for voters and boost turnout during off-year elections.
“For smaller elections, they just ship the ballot, which, for me, works great,” said Marianne Combs, 58, a nurse from Destin, in the Florida Panhandle, who voted for Trump by mail last year. “I’ve got good intentions of going to the polls when it’s a lesser election, but I don’t always get there.”
Even as recently as 2018, Republicans passed a law requiring a mail-ballot drop box at every early-voting site in the state.
“That was before their leader’s attack on mail balloting,” said Ion Sancho, a former election supervisor for Leon County, home of Tallahassee.
As Republicans worked to boost their advantage in mail voting, they sought to rein in the use of early in-person voting hours, a method Democrats had embraced.
After Barack Obama won Florida in 2008, largely by encouraging early in-person voting among Black voters, GOP lawmakers in Tallahassee, backed by then-Gov. Rick Scott, passed legislation dramatically reducing how many early-voting hours local election officials were allowed to offer.
“Fifty-four percent of African American votes that year were cast at in-person early-voting sites,” Sancho said. It was hard not to conclude that Scott wanted to “frustrate” the Black voters who had chosen to vote that way, he said.
The law backfired, however. After Election Day 2012, with widespread TV reports of elderly Black voters standing in seven-hour lines in Miami, more than 70 percent of Floridians said in polls that they wanted early voting expanded again. The legislature relented and reversed itself.
Steve Schale, a longtime Democratic consultant in Florida who worked on Obama’s campaign in the state in 2008 and 2012, said he tried to boost mail voting when it became clear how successful Republicans were at it, but the effort failed.
Black voters in particular said in polls that they didn’t like mail voting; after enduring decades of racially motivated voter suppression, they said they wanted to see their ballot fed into the scanner with their own eyes.
Over the past decade, more Democrats have taken to the practice of voting by mail, cutting into the Republican advantage. But as recently as 2018, that advantage still existed, albeit more narrowly, with 1,080,000 Republicans and 1,027,000 Democrats voting by mail that year. That was still a meaningful gap: In the U.S. Senate race that year, Scott defeated incumbent Bill Nelson (D) by 10,033 votes, and in the contest for governor, DeSantis’s winning margin over Andrew Gillum (D) was 32,463.
Trump goes on attack
Then came 2020.
When the coronavirus pandemic struck, election officials across the country began promoting and expanding mail voting to allow voters to cast ballots safely.
Trump seized on the changes as part of a long-running effort to shake public confidence in the outcome of the White House race.
“MAIL-IN VOTING WILL LEAD TO MASSIVE FRAUD AND ABUSE,” the president tweeted on May 28, one of dozens of such attacks that he unleashed throughout the year. “IT WILL ALSO LEAD TO THE END OF OUR GREAT REPUBLICAN PARTY. WE CAN NEVER LET THIS TRAGEDY BEFALL OUR NATION.”
On June 22, he tweeted: “Because of MAIL-IN BALLOTS, 2020 will be the most RIGGED Election in our nations history - unless this stupidity is ended. We voted during World War One & World War Two with no problem, but now they are using Covid in order to cheat by using Mail-Ins!”
Florida Republicans were aghast, according to several political strategists who described private reactions.
“It was comical to watch Trump light on fire 20 years of Republican work and tens of millions of Republican investment — literally lighting a match to it,” Schale said. “Every time he sent a tweet out, I’d get a text from a Republican operative here in Florida with an eye-roll emoji.”
Republicans did their best to parse the president’s words and assure their voters that mail voting was safe in Florida. Gruters, an avid Trump supporter, told the Orlando Sentinel last July that the president was opposed only to “universal” mail balloting — when states hold mail-only elections — even though Trump had specifically criticized no-excuses mail voting, such as in Florida, where anyone may choose, without providing a reason, to vote by mail.
Florida Republicans are “100% in lockstep with the president that we’re against the universal vote-by-mail system,” Gruters told the news outlet. “[But] people that feel uncomfortable with voting in person, even though we’re months away, anybody has that right to request an absentee ballot. And the Florida Republicans have dominated in years past.”
The party also sent fliers to Republican voters assuring them that Trump supported absentee voting. “Absentee ballots are fine,” one flier read, quoting the beginning of a tweet from the president that blurred out the portion of his message that read: “Not so with Mail-ins. Rigged Election!!!”
There is no difference between absentee and mail voting in Florida.
In the end, Democrats saw a more dramatic surge in early in-person and mail voting over those four years than Republicans did, but despite Trump’s attacks, Republicans also voted by mail in higher numbers than during the previous presidential election. In 2020, 34.5 percent of Republicans voted by mail, up from 29.9 percent four years earlier, according to data compiled by the University of Florida’s Smith.
The shift is starkly visible among Black voters, who overcame their mistrust of mail voting in droves last year, with 552,000 choosing to vote that way, compared with just 245,000 four years earlier, according to Smith’s analysis. Black voters overwhelmingly vote for Democratic candidates.
Still, many Republicans said they stuck with mail voting because it is so easy and they’re familiar with Florida’s rules.
“It’s not difficult to do,” said Realtor Joyce Geras, 78, of New Port Richey. “We will definitely be continuing to vote by mail. Florida is a very good state as far as helping its seniors vote.” Geras said she was aware of the new bill “making it more difficult” to request a ballot.
Private worries
As Gruters’s Senate Bill 90 was debated in the legislature this year, some Republicans privately expressed worry that it could further undercut the party’s ability to encourage mail voting — particularly among military voters and the elderly, who overwhelmingly use that method to cast their ballots.
One former state party official who spoke on the condition of anonymity to relay private conversations said some Republicans briefly discussed whether lawmakers could exempt those two groups from the provision requiring voters to request mail ballots every election cycle. “Key lawmakers said, ‘You can’t do that,’ ” the former official said. “It would raise equal protection problems.”
Now, the damage is done, he added. “Now, you’ll have military personnel who might not think they have to request a ballot who won’t get it. And we’ve got senior voters who have health concerns or just don’t want to go out. They might not know the law has changed, and they might not get a ballot, because they’re not engaged.”
Several state Republican operatives said they have spoken directly to lawmakers in their party who did not like Senate Bill 90 — but were unwilling to speak up for fear of incurring the wrath of party leaders and their own supporters.
Because more Democrats voted by mail in 2020, Republicans may assume that curtailing mail voting will have a larger effect on the other party, several voting rights activists said.
Kirk Bailey, political director for the ACLU of Florida, said he thinks that’s a mistake.
“This bill is so restrictive for all voters that it’s going to impact all the parties in ways that I’m not sure anybody really knows,” he said.
Schale cautioned that the shift of Democratic and Republican voting habits in 2020 is by no means assured to continue. Two huge factors were at work — Trump’s rhetoric, plus fears of the coronavirus — that will wane in time, he said.
“Any time either party tries to make a change in the way we think about elections because of one election cycle, it’s kind of fraught with danger,” he said. “I do not believe we know enough about voting behavior to know that Democrats are going to vote by mail forever going forward. In the same way, Republicans have voted by mail for 20 years, and we don’t know they’re going to stop just because Donald Trump doesn’t like it.”
In fact, new research by the University of Florida’s Smith found that the use of mail voting among Republicans is more extensive than GOP voters themselves recognize.
He found that state records showed that 18.2 percent of Florida Republicans who said they did not plan to vote by mail in the fall actually did so in the end. In other words, even among Republican voters who supported Trump and signaled mail-vote hesitancy, the desire to vote that way prevailed.
And that signals a potential miscalculation by the GOP, Smith said.
“Make no mistake: Senate Bill 90 targets newly registered and younger voters, African Americans, as well as Democrats, who disproportionately switched to requesting and voting a mail ballot in November due to health concerns,” Smith said. “The GOP leadership has discounted any collateral damage, calculating that the benefit to the party outweighs any harm done to its party faithful.”
READ MORE
Pro-Trump and anti-mask demonstrators hold a rally outside the Oregon state capitol as legislators meet for an emergency session in Salem, Oregon, on 21 December 2020. (photo: Andrew Selsky/AP)
Republican Who Let Violent Protesters Into Oregon State Capitol Is Charged
Associated Press
Excerpt: "Prosecutors have leveled two criminal charges against a Republican member of the Oregon house of representatives who let far-right rioters into the state capitol in December."
State representative Mike Nearman was charged with official misconduct and criminal trespass over December 2020 incident
rosecutors have levelled two criminal charges against a Republican member of the Oregon house of representatives who let far-right rioters into the state capitol in December.
Mike Nearman was charged with official misconduct in the first degree and criminal trespass in the second degree. Oregon state police struggled to force the rioters out of the Capitol, which was closed to the public, on 21 December as lawmakers met in emergency session to deal with economic fallout from the coronavirus pandemic.
The Marion county deputy district attorney, Matthew Kemmy, told Nearman’s attorney, Jason Short, in a letter his client must appear in court on 11 May or face arrest.
Short was out of his office late on Friday and not available for comment. Nearman did not immediately respond to messages seeking comment.
Nearman was seen on security cameras letting violent protesters into the Oregon state capitol. They attacked authorities with bear spray. Outside the building, some protesters assaulted reporters and broke glass doors.
In January, after Nearman’s role became clear from the security footage, the state house speaker, Tina Kotek, called for his resignation and stripped his committee assignments.
“Representative Nearman put every person in the Capitol in serious danger,” Kotek said on 11 January.
She also referred to the deadly storming of the US Capitol days before, on 6 January, by supporters of then-president Donald Trump.
“As we tragically saw last week during the insurrection at the United States Capitol, the consequences [here] could have been much worse had law enforcement not stepped in so quickly,” Kotek said.
According to court records, the misconduct charge alleges Nearman, from the town of Independence west of Salem, “did unlawfully and knowingly perform an act … with intent to obtain a benefit or to harm another”.
The charge is a Class A misdemeanor, punishable by a maximum 364 days in prison and a $6,250 fine. The trespass charge accused him of unlawfully letting others into the Capitol. It is a Class C misdemeanor, punishable by a maximum of 30 days in jail and a $1,250 fine.
READ MORE
Protesters chant for Ohio state troopers and Columbus police to take a knee with them in solidarity on the Ohio Statehouse steps on June 1, 2020, in Columbus. A federal judge has ordered Columbus police to stop using force against nonviolent protesters. (photo: Matthew Hatcher/Getty Images)
Judge Says Columbus Police Ran 'Amok' Against Protesters; Restricts Use of Force
Catherine Whelan, NPR
Whelan writes: "A federal judge has ordered police in Columbus, Ohio, to stop using force including tear gas, pepper spray and rubber bullets against nonviolent protesters, ruling that officers ran 'amok' during last summer's protests of the murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis."
Judge Algenon Marbley of the Southern District of Ohio described the actions of the Columbus police as "the sad tale of officers, clothed with the awesome power of the state, run amok."
He opened his 88-page opinion with a quote from Martin Luther King Jr.: "But somewhere I read of the freedom of assembly. Somewhere I read of the freedom of speech. Somewhere I read of the freedom of press. Somewhere I read that the greatness of America is the right to protest for rights."
Marbley sided with the 26 plaintiffs who protested last summer, ruling that "unfortunately, some of the members of the Columbus Police Department had no regard for the rights secured by this bedrock principle of American democracy." Columbus police used force "indiscriminately" and without provocation during the widespread protests last May and June, he wrote.
In addition to alleging extreme nonlethal tactics used by police on otherwise nonviolent protesters, the lawsuit also accused police of collective punishment — responding to a single protester "who threw a water bottle, harassed or taunted an officer" by indiscriminately pepper-spraying or tear-gassing the whole group, according to Marbley. "What is more, [officers] sometimes failed to give audible warnings or adequate time to disperse before resorting to less-lethal force," the judge wrote.
One of the plaintiffs was struck by a projectile at the same time police ordered protesters to disperse, video shows, according to the injunction. "In other words, there was no time for protestors to react," Marbley said. A 31-year-old plaintiff's knee was shattered "into many little pieces" and he was unable to walk for five months, according to the judge's order. The man still cannot walk for more than a half-mile without "significant pain."
"Multiple witnesses testified to their physical and emotional injuries suffered at the hands of CPD officers while exercising their fundamental rights to assemble and protest" last year, the judge wrote.
According to the injunction, Columbus officers are banned from using those methods of "non-lethal force" against nonviolent protesters including those who are chanting, verbally confronting police and occupying streets. That includes body slams, flash-bang grenades, rubber bullets, batons and shoving.
NPR's efforts to reach the Columbus Police Department for a comment were unsuccessful.
READ MORE
Canada's highest court ruled that that Rick Desautel and the 4,000 other members of the Colville Confederated Tribes in Washington state were successors to the Sinixt. (photo: Shelly Boyd)
'An Indescribable Moment': Indigenous Nation in US Has Right to Lands in Canada, Court Rules
Leyland Cecco, Guardian UK
Cecco writes: "Canada's supreme court decision on the Sinixt people could affirm hunting rights for tens of thousands."
or decades the Rick Desautel had been told by courts and governments that his people no longer exist in Canada.
But Desautel and others in his community in Washington state have long argued that they are descendants of the Sinixt, an Indigenous people whose territory once spanned Canada and the United States.
On Friday, Canada’s highest court agreed, ruling that Desautel and the 4,000 other members of the Colville Confederated Tribes in Washington state were successors to the Sinixt – and as a result, that they enjoy constitutionally protected Indigenous rights to hunt their traditional lands in Canada.
The closely watched court decision settled longstanding questions over the status of the Sinixt, but it also has the potential to affirm hunting rights in Canada for tens of thousands of Native Americans living in the US dispossessed of traditional territories by an international border drawn hundreds of years ago.
“I was so nervous before the decision. I don’t think I slept more than an hour the night before,” said Desautel. “When the decision came through I just let out a huge sigh of relief.”
In 1955, after the Sinixt were pushed down into Washington state, the Canadian government declared them extinct. Nearly 60 years later, Rick Desautel decided to challenge the idea that his people no longer existed.
In 2010, he crossed into British Columbia without a permit to hunt elk, arguing he had longstanding treaty rights to so. The province of British Columbia disagreed, slapped him with a fine, and fought him all the way to the supreme court.
At issue for the court was how to interpret section 35.1 of the Canada’s charter, which recognizes the treaty rights of “Aboriginal peoples of Canada”.
The court concluded that “Aboriginal peoples of Canada” refers to the modern-day successors of Indigenous societies that occupied Canadian territory during European contact, even if those societies and their members, including the Sinixt, are now located outside Canada.
“Excluding Aboriginal peoples who moved or were forced to move, or whose territory was divided by a border, would add to the injustice of colonialism,” the court wrote on Friday.
“Today was an indescribable moment for us,” said Rodney Cawston, chairman of the Colville Confederated Tribes. Ahead of the judgment, he said, members had gathered at Kettle Falls, a historic Sinixt fishing site, for early morning prayers. “Everyone was just absolutely elated when we got the news … It’s been a very long battle for our people. Many of our people and our ancestors have been working on it for a very long time.”
In addition to reaffirming Sinixt rights, legal experts have said, the ruling in Desautel’s favour could affect thousands of Indigenous peoples separated from ancestral territory in Canada when the border was drawn.
The decision could recognize Canadian hunting and fishing rights for peoples in the United States whose traditional territory was north of the border. The ruling also raises questions over whether the nations whose members live in the US but have treaty rights in Canada need to be consulted over resource projects.
Despite Desautel’s success, there are no comparable provisions in the US constitution that could apply to Indigenous peoples in Canada who pursue fishing or hunting rights south of the border.
But for Desautel, the decision serves as a powerful victory for further generations.
“My grandchildren and their children can look past that border crossing and say, ‘That’s what we began right there.’ And now they can cross that imaginary line and visit the territories of our ancestors,” he said.
“They can see all the adversities their ancestors faced – the logging, mining and smallpox – and know they’re the byproduct of that survivability.”
READ MORE
Villagers stand behind a lockdown barrier to ask for food donations after their village has been closed for more than two weeks inside a red zone with strict lockdown measures during the latest outbreak of COVID-19 in Phnom Penh, Cambodia, April 30, 2021. (photo: Cindy Liu/Reuters)
Mounting Desperation in Cambodia Amid COVID Lockdown
Phorn Bopha, Al Jazeera
Bopha writes: "Iv Sovann has been in lockdown with her family in the Cambodian capital of Phnom Penh since April 5 when the government imposed a raft of stringent measures to curb a sudden surge of coronavirus cases."
Government using punitive laws to tackle surge in coronavirus cases, as the closure of markets leaves people hungry.
hnom Penh, Cambodia – Iv Sovann has been in lockdown with her family in the Cambodian capital of Phnom Penh since April 5 when the government imposed a raft of stringent measures to curb a sudden surge of coronavirus cases.
The 36-year-old’s family of six has no income.
Her husband, a teacher, lost his job when the school where he worked shut down a year ago.
Sovann has been keeping the family afloat by working as an accounts assistant for a local transport company.
“We are not rich. We live hand to mouth. If we were rich like others, it would be OK for us to be in quarantine for a year,” she said.
Desperate for food, this week she was among a group of people in the Phnom Penh district of Stueng Meanchey who took matters into their own hands.
“We saw some people get some food like rice noodles and canned fish, and we did not get anything. So, we went out to ask for our food,” she said.
Her protest secured Iv Sovann a 25kg (55 pounds) bag of rice from the local authority but others were not so lucky.
“There are still many more families,” she said. “I don’t know why some get donations, and why some don’t.”
‘They fabricate the news’
Cambodia is grappling with its worst COVID-19 outbreak since the pandemic began last year and has imposed strict lockdowns, backed by punitive fines and jail terms, in Phnom Penh and several other areas in a bid to curb the virus’s spread.
The country has reported more than 13,000 cases and more than 90 deaths in less than three months.
Authorities have designated neighbourhoods with high rates of coronavirus cases as “red zones”.
Within these districts – home to roughly 300,000 people – villagers are unable to leave their homes except for medical emergencies.
The government has promised to supply food to the areas, and blocked aid groups from entering the red zones to offer relief, but its efforts appear to have fallen short, leaving thousands desperate.
Vorn Pao, president of the Independent Democracy of Informal Economy Association (IDEA), says he receives hundreds of messages from its members every day asking for help. He estimates about 5,000 of the organisation’s 14,000 members across the country do not have enough to eat, especially those in “red zones”.
“[We] are lacking food,” he told Al Jazeera.
“We are appealing to the government to help assist with [food] without discrimination.”
On Friday, Amnesty International called on the government to allow civil society to deliver aid to those facing food shortages warning Cambodia was facing a crisis as a result of the government’s policies in response to the rising infections, all linked to the B.1.1.7 variant.
“The Cambodian government’s outrageous mishandling of this COVID-19 lockdown is causing untold suffering and sweeping human rights violations across the country,” Yamini Mishra, Amnesty International’s Asia-Pacific regional director, said in a statement.
“Right now, residents of ‘red zones’ and others in Cambodia are going hungry because of fundamentally unreasonable policies.”
Phay Siphan, a government spokesman, reacted angrily to Amnesty’s criticisms.
Amnesty “does not know Cambodia”, he said, branding those who told Al Jazeera that they did not have food “liars”.
“We help them; we study which areas they are in and what the situation they are in,” he said.
“We have checked [them]. They just fabricate the news. It’s not true.”
Questioned further, he doubled down.
“They are lying,” he said. “Tell me who doesn’t have food. Text me the [addresses] of those who don’t have food. I’ll get food to send to them right away.”
Local and international organisations have called on the government to let them into the red zones to help those in need.
“The government must urgently give access to NGOs and UN agencies who are equipped to safely provide critical medical services, food, and other essential social services in these areas,” said Naly Pilorge, director of Licadho, Cambodia’s most prominent human rights organisation.
Amnesty echoed the appeal.
“Everyone under lockdown must be provided access to adequate food, water, health care and other essential items,” Mishra said in the statement.
Food supplies cut
People working in construction, garment factories, on the land and in informal work have been worst affected by the lockdown measures, which have forced the closure of all markets in Phnom Penh where most common people buy their food.
Ou Virak, president of Future Forum, a think-tank dedicated to public policy issues, says the government could alleviate shortages by making existing supply chains COVID-19 safe, instead of shutting them down.
“I think the [government] should allow the existing markets to open, but make sure they are not too close to each other,” he said.
By doing so, the government would not only help people who need food, but also the farmers who are struggling to find a market for their produce.
“Shutting down the market is a very risky measure,” said Ou Virak. “Even if you have money, you can’t buy food.”
Sok Eysan, spokesman of the ruling Cambodian People’s Party, rejects criticism that the government has mishandled the lockdown, saying supplies are sufficient.
“Until now, we have not heard of people who died because of starvation or because of lacking food since the government, Red Cross and generous people are actively helping people everywhere, especially those in the red zones,” he said.
Amid the new wave of cases, the country has stepped up its vaccination programme and prioritised people living in the red zones. More than 1.3 million people in the country of 15 million have received at least one dose of the coronavirus vaccine.
‘Zero tolerance’
But it has also relied on more punitive measures to curtail the spread of the virus.
In March, the government passed a new COVID-19 law that imposes a fine of as much as $5,000 and a jail term of up to 20 years for those who breach the rules. Cambodia has a monthly average income of about $550.
The United Nations has called on the government to revise the law saying it is “grossly disproportionately”.
According to Licadho, authorities have arrested 258 people under the COVID-19 law. Of these, 83 have been charged, placed in custody and taken to jail. Last month, a provincial court sentenced four people to a one-year prison term for dancing and drinking.
“A public health crisis is not the time to be sending more people to Cambodia’s overcrowded prisons,” Naly Pilorge said.
“The COVID-19 law should be repealed, and those arrested and sentenced to draconian prison terms under the law should be immediately released.
“Authorities should instead focus on organising safe vaccinations for at-risk populations, providing a social safety net for those most in need, and ensuring access to food, medicine and other necessities for the nearly 300,000 people locked in red zones across the capital.”
Sok Eysan, however, remains unmoved.
He says the government will adopt a zero-tolerance approach to people who violate the COVID-19 law, as it tries to curb the spread of the virus.
“Those who violate the principle of this [COVID] law in any article must be responsible for it before the law,” he said.
READ MORE
Governor Greg Gianforte of Montana. (photo: Andrew Harnik/AP)
Yellowstone is Shooting Paintballs at Wolves and Says It's for Their Own Good
Daniel Modlin, The Daily Beast
Modlin writes: "America's most famous National Park is shooting paintballs at wolves."
It may seem hard to believe but, after all, Yellowstone is an otherworldly place. It’s home to a geyser that miraculously erupts on a timed schedule, hot springs that evoke colors many have never laid eyes on, and vast swaths of lands largely untouched by human hands where wildlife roam free, undisturbed.
Well, sort of.
Wildlife and human interaction within Yellowstone has always been an issue. Littered across the park are signs which read “Do Not Take Selfies With The Bison,” signs you might not think should be necessary, yet are. Conservationists familiar with the park and Rangers alike are renowned for their stories, seemingly cherry-picked from an episode of Yogi Bear, about bison wreaking havoc on park visitors who just wanted to get up close for a picture, or of tourists maniacally interacting with grizzly bears, acting as if the park were a zoo, not a wild place.
In the last five years, annual visitation has only dipped below 4 million once (last year), continuing to grow at a steady click sans the pandemic, and the habituation of animals to humans has grown along with it, especially in regards to wolves. To combat this, park officials are turning to paintballs, among a variety of other non-lethal hazing methods, as an alternative to killing the wolves, in the hopes that they will be able to deter the apex predator from further engagement and interaction with visitors.
The crowds that form when wildlife is spotted are astronomical, according to Yellowstone Senior Wildlife Biologist Doug Smith. “This is the best place in the world to view free-ranging, wild wolves. Whenever there’s a sighting a crowd develops, cars pull off, and cause massive traffic jams.”
There’s no respite for these animals either. “It’s a year-round thing,” Smith said. “When you have hundreds of thousands of people actively looking for you a year, you’re going to get used to people.”
Why is wolf-viewing an issue? According to Dr. David Ausband, a U.S. Geological Survey research biologist at the University of Idaho’s Fish and Wildlife Sciences department, when “people see them up close, they get the bright idea to feed them, and such a reward system can lead to increasingly emboldened behavior by wolves.” Smith echoed this, suggesting that when “wolves lose their natural fear of humans, it’s very difficult to restore it, and can result in the potential for wolves to hunt humans.” Ausband mentioned an event several years ago, where a habituated wolf in Algonquin Park went after someone in camp. While this sort of “hunting” has never happened at Yellowstone, the park has had to put two wolves down which they deemed potential threats to visitors.
Even though Yellowstone leans into educational policies first and foremost, like a brochure they hand out to visitors that details how to properly interact with wildlife, as well as a 100-yard distancing protocol for all wildlife viewing, Smith says “these things are difficult to teach and more difficult to enforce.”
“Ultimately, it’s up to the visitor,” Smith said. “We try and educate them, but most commonly, the wolves move in closer, and people aren’t cognizant enough to maintain the necessary distance because they all want a better picture.”
“Instead of killing them, we want to do everything in our power to preserve them—that’s where non-lethal munitions come into play,” Smith said.
Hazing, used frequently on wildlife like coyotes, involves the use of deterrents, like loud noises, inflicted pain, and in many times, a combination of the two on an animal to discourage them from engaging in an undesirable activity or behavior. The idea with wolves is to essentially make them afraid of humans again, especially if they’ve lost that fear due to park visitors feeding them or getting too close to them.
According to Ausband, the use of wolf hazing doesn’t really work. “We tried hazing methods in the livestock industry in Idaho, but the wolves were pretty smart and caught on pretty quickly.”
Smith and his crew disagree. In fact, they’ve developed a method shared with Teton National Park, Denali National Park, and others, that involves bean bag rounds “in the ass,” which is according to Smith “the best place to hit a wolf,” rubber bullets, and cracker shells to create a cacophony of noise and a barrage of the senses that frightens the wolf and discourages it from interacting with humans again.
“I tell my guys to make it seem like the Fourth of July is happening right over their heads,” Smith told The Daily Beast.
Clear paintball rounds (that, importantly, don’t leave a mark on the animal), are also a tool used since, Smith says, “you’re lucky if you can even use one tool before the moment has passed.”
Most importantly, Smith said that park conservationists are only hazing wolves in this manner during “teachable moments.” He said, “You have to hit them when they're doing something wrong like getting close to someone or wandering around a developed area—you can’t just find them out in the wild and hit them with rubber bullets—they won’t learn that way.”
“The bottom line is this,” Smith said. “Humans always win.” But he hopes through attempted dehabituation, he can prevent more wolves from being needlessly killed, and perhaps, “change the culture around how habituated wolves are dealt with” across the country.
Smith ran through a story about a wolf that grew up right around people near the Lamar Valley. When it became a yearling, it stole someone’s tripod, and they had two options, to either put it down, or try and dehabituate it.
“It was our worst wolf, but we hit him numerous times and eventually, that wolf moved away from the road and started a new pack. It’s a success story for sure.”
While you might expect conservationists outside of the park to be against this non-lethal hazing, they’re actually all for it.
Brooks Fahy, the edecutive Director of Predator Defense, a conservationist nonprofit, told The Daily Beast: “Not only is this hazing and dishabituation better than just killing them outright, but it also comes at a time when wolf-mania in the region is off the charts.”
Montana, Idaho, and Wyoming, the three states that surround Yellowstone are all currently involved in an all-out attack on the apex predator.
In Montana, which borders Yellowstone to the North, two wolves were illegally poached from a helicopter this past weekend, and the governor was found illegally trapping/killing a wolf outside of Yellowstone. The state has also signed three “anti-wolf bills” into law this year—one which allows snares to be used for the trapping of wolves, one that lengthens Montana’s trapping seasons, and one which creates a wolf bounty program.
In Idaho, which borders Yellowstone to the west, it’s a similar story. There is currently a bill that was just sent to the governor’s desk that would allow for 90 percent of the state’s wolves to be killed—something conservationists call “ludicrous.”
“They are keeping it at 90 percent because that’s the lowest it can go without having them listed as an endangered species again,” Brooks told The Daily Beast.
Andrea Zaccardi, a senior attorney for the Center for Biological Diversity, echoed this sentiment, arguing that “if this horrific bill passes, Idaho could nearly wipe out its wolf population,” adding that “unless we can stop this from becoming law, decades of progress towards wolf recovery will be lost.”
Regardless of the outcome, conservationists argue the very paradigm between Idaho—which is “legalizing the slaughter of wolves,” in their words—and Yellowstone, which is doing everything in their power to maintain this wild space for the apex predator, is shocking, and ultimately confusing (for the wolves, too!).
Curtis Smith of the Wild Earth Guardians, another environmental nonprofit, echoed this: “It’s crazy—it’s like we expect wolves to recognize these arbitrary human boundaries. In Yellowstone they get shot with paintballs and if they cross the border into Montana, Wyoming, or Idaho, they get shot with bullets.”
Brooks agrees. “Ultimately, [Idaho’s approach is] a human-centric, anthropocentric model of conservation, and if that’s the approach we’re going to take, maybe we don’t deserve these wild creatures.”
While Doug Smith hopes his team’s dehabituation methods help prepare wolves that venture out of the park for this sort of human interaction, he’d also like to see hazing more widely implemented as a conservation tactic for the wolves.
“Hazing can be a tool used in many settings where you want to cause wolves to avoid a certain area,” Smith said. “If you do it the right way, I think it can be applied in more places than just national parks.”
READ MORE
Contribute to RSN
Update My Monthly Donation
