m

info@canadianinquirer.net
sales@canadianinquirer.net

Your Wild Ride Starts in a

facebook.com/
2023 Bronco Sport
Philippine Get

3.99 72
FORDTO.CA
% 41 On all 2023
CanadianInquirer CANADA’S FIRST AND ONLY NATIONWIDE FILIPINO-CANADIAN NEWSPAPER APR
Bronco Sport
Models
Purchase Financing Months
X.com/
pcinews_X OCTOBER 27, 2023 www.canadianinquirer.net VOL. 8 NO. 563

'UNDAS' PREPS

With barely a week to go before the observance of All Saints’ Day (Undas), families and relatives clean and repaint the tombs of their dear departed at the Manila South Cemetery on Wednesday
(Oct. 25, 2023). The Manila Cemetery earlier said cleaning, painting, and renovation of tombs would only be allowed until Oct. 25.
YANCY LIM / PNA

PBBM orders shorter 19

period, simplified
requirements for fuel How the Playboy bunny
suit went from uniform to
Halloween costume

subsidies
BY RUTH ABBEY GITA-CARLOS
Philippine News Agency
MANILA – President Ferdinand R. Mar-
cos Jr. has ordered the shortening of “trig-
ger period” and simplification of require-
ments for the release of fuel subsidies.
Marcos gave the directive during the
review of mitigating measures for high
fuel process in a sectoral meeting at Mala-
cañan Palace in Manila on Tuesday morn-
❱❱ PAGE 4 PBBM orders shorter
29
`
Even if Israel can completely
eliminate Hamas, does it have
a long-term plan for Gaza?
Brown, red, black, riceberry – what
are these white rice alternatives,
PAGE 16 and are they actually healthier?

Advanced equipment and testing available

We direct bill most insurance companies:

Square One
Sun Life Green Shield
Manulife Blue Cross
Great-West Life Claim Secure Valid only at
Located in Square One Industrial Alliance Square One
inside Pearle Vision
If you are 19 years old and under or 65 years old
905-277-3052
and older, you are covered under OHIP**

visit www.drshekari.com *Eye exams available by Independent Doctors of Optometry inside Pearle Vision.
to schedule your eye exam*
12/31/2021.
2 OCTOBER 27, 2023 FRIDAY

www.canadianinquirer.net
FRIDAY OCTOBER 27, 2023
House panel to draft laws to support
PBBM's 'bloodless' drug war
BY FILANE MIKEE
CERVANTES
Philippine News Agency
MANILA – The House Com-
mittee on Public Order and
Safety will hold hearings aimed
at drafting new laws that would
assist President Ferdinand R.
Marcos Jr.'s administration in
pursuing a more successful war
against illegal drugs, its chair-
man said Tuesday.
Rep. Dan Fernandez of the
lone district of Santa Rosa, La-
guna said this was upon the
instruction of House Speaker
Martin Romualdez, assuring
the Marcos administration that
the House committee would be
a "close partner" in achieving
the goals of the government’s
“bloodless war on drugs”.
"President Marcos has
demonstrated that a bloodless
campaign against illegal drugs
can be an effective one. Basta
sama-sama dito ang law en-
forcers, kami sa lehislatura bil-
ang oversight, at syempre ang
taumbayan (We are all in this
together --the law enforcers,
PBBM sees immediate need
to modernize agri, fisheries
BY RUTH ABBEY GITA-
CARLOS
Philippine News Agency
MANILA – President Ferdi-
nand R. Marcos Jr. on Wednes-
day stressed the immediate
need to modernize the agri-
culture and fisheries sector, as
part of the efforts to make the
Philippines a “food- and nutri-
tion-secure” nation.
Marcos made the remark
during the celebration of the
70th founding anniversary of
the Federation of Free Farmers
(FFF) at the Salvador Escudero
Hall of the National Meat In-
spection Service on Visayas Av-
enue, Quezon City.
“This administration is steer-
the legislature as oversight, and
the citizenry)," Fernandez said.
"We will have more success in
this campaign for sure."
Fernandez said the govern-
ment has been hitting its mark,
as he commended Marcos for
netting over 4.4 tons of shabu
valued at PHP30 billion since
the administration began on
July 1, 2022.
He also cited the recent re-
port of the Philippine Drug
Enforcement Agency (PDEA)
showing a 52 percent drop in
the number of deaths in anti-il-
legal drugs operations under
the current administration.
According to PDEA, there
were only 19 deaths recorded
from July 2022 to September
2023 compared to the 40 fatal-
ities in 2020 to 2021.
Fernandez said the "true
endgame" of an effective blood-
less anti-illegal drug campaign
of the government is the de-
struction of illegal drugs, add-
ing that it should be tackled on
"multiple fronts".
"This war will be easier
won if we tackle it in multiple
fronts. Our Speaker, Martin
ing the growth of our fisheries
and farming industries with ur-
gency,” he said, noting that the
Department of Agriculture (DA)
has allocated PHP4.73 billion as
an investment for the large-scale
agriculture and fishery mechani-
zation and modernization.
Marcos, who also leads the
DA, expressed optimism about
realizing his bid to modernize
the agri-fisheries industry, giv-
en the allocation of PHP85.88
billion for the sector in 2023
and the proposed allotment of
PHP92.4 billion in 2024.
He said his administration is
striving to implement efficient
mechanization strategies to
reduce post-harvest losses and
ensure the optimal yield at an
affordable cost.
Romualdez, knows this fully
well. Whole-of-government ap-
proach po tayo dito. One agency
need not force the issue in ad-
dressing the drug war since this
administration doesn't view
force as the only solution," Fer-
nandez said.
Antipolo City Rep. Romeo
Acop, meanwhile, underscored
the need to craft legislation that
would further improve the abil-
ities of the Philippine National
Police and their other counter-
parts in going after drug lords in
the "hope of reducing, if not to-
tally eradicating, this menace"
with zero casualty in mind.
Acop said the “bloodless” an-
ti-drug operations would even
be more successful as law en-
forcers launch a reinvigorated
campaign, but this time with
less casualties.
“The 52 percent significant
drop in the number of fatalities,
as reported by PDEA, is really a
welcome development. For sev-
eral years, we have been the sub-
ject of human rights abuses in
this part of the world,” Acop said.
House Dangerous Drug
Committee chair and Surigao
He said the government is
also doing its best to increase
the exportation of the country’s
agricultural products, acknowl-
edging that the move is “an es-
sential driver in the competi-
tiveness of our economy.”
“In line with that collective
mission, I wish to reaffirm one
of the top priorities of this ad-
ministration, which is the en-
hancement of our agricultural
productivity, the guarantee of
our food supply, the affordabil-
ity of our food supply, and our
lessening dependence on im-
portation,” Marcos said.
“This includes pursuing pol-
icies that will support and pro-
tect the overall welfare of our
farmers, our fishers, our man-
ufacturers, and the consuming
www.canadianinquirer.net
Philippine News
SEIZED. Over 1,000 packs or 323 kilograms of shabu amounting to PHP2.2
billion have been seized at the Manila International Container Port on Oct. 6,
2023. (YANCY LIM/PNA)
Del Norte Rep. Ace Barbers said
the government's bloodless war
shows that the "dragon that is
the drug menace" can be slayed
without lives being lost.
"Violence, if it can be avoid-
ed by our law enforcers in the
pursuit of suspects, can result
to less anger, resentment, de-
sire for vengeance from our
people and will likewise negate
attention and condemnation
from international watchdog
groups,” he said.
Barbers said his committee
would determine if legislation
is needed to strengthen Marcos’
anti-drug campaign.
“Let us see how we can boost
public,” he added.
Marcos also hoped for a closer
collaboration with the FFF, as
he recognized its long-standing
cooperation and partnership
with the government in sustain-
ing development in the areas of
agri-fisheries, agrarian reform,
and agricultural cooperatives.
He assured the organization
that the government is pursu-
ing the strengthening of vari-
ous agricultural associations
and cooperatives, to provide
beneficiaries with business and
investment opportunities.
“This will definitely elevate
the standard of living, improve
the lives of the farmers and our
fishers and that of their fami-
lies,” Marcos said.
“You have solidified your
3
the anti-drug war without re-
sorting to violence, without
eliciting anger and resentment
from our people, and without
drawing global attention and
condemnation,” he added.
Senior Deputy Speaker Aure-
lio “Dong” Gonzales Jr. lauded
authorities for a job well done,
as he initiated a House probe to
dig deeper into why their dis-
trict in Pampanga was "home to
drug operations".
“Our inquiry is in consonance
with the bloodless anti-drug
campaign of President Marcos
which has so far netted a whop-
❱❱ PAGE 20 House panel to draft
presence over the past seven
decades, and I eagerly antici-
pate an even deeper collabora-
tion, given our shared commit-
ment. I thus enjoin all the men
and women of FFF to contin-
uously take part in supporting
and empowering our farmers
and fisherfolk.”
Since its inception in 1953,
the FFF has been at the fore-
front of the struggle to liberate
Filipino farmers from social,
political, economic, moral and
cultural oppression.
To date, the FFF enjoys a
mass base of about 200,000
farmers and fisherfolk, and re-
mains as one of the largest and
most reputable organizations
of farmers in the country. ■
 4 Philippine News OCTOBER 27, 2023 FRIDAY

DMW celebrates labor relations,

fosters stronger ties with Canada
BY MARITA MOAJE
Philippine News Agency
MANILA – The Philippines
and Canada vowed to continue
their strong friendship and en-
sure safe, ethical, and fair mi-
gration for Filipino workers.
During the Philippines-Can-
ada Friendship Week kickoff
at the Department of Migrant
Workers (DMW) head office in
Mandaluyong City on Monday,
DMW Undersecretary for Policy
and International Cooperation
Patricia Yvonne Caunan thanked
the Canadian government for
upholding the rights and welfare
of Filipino migrant workers.
“This Friendship Week
highlights the strong mutual
partnership between the Phil-
ippines and Canada in uphold-
ing fair, ethical, and safe re-
cruitment, as well as fostering
stronger ties to further our two
countries’ labor cooperation,”
Caunan said.
The Philippines-Canada
Friendship Week runs from Oc-
tober 23 to October 26 and will
feature educational seminars,
including the presentation on
“Fair and Ethical Recruitment”
by the International Organiza-
tion for Migration (IOM), and
the “Challenges Encountered by
Filipinos Migrating in Canada.”
Meanwhile, a photo booth
exhibit that highlights overseas
Filipino workers (OFWs) in
Canada’s dedication, persever-
ance, and resilience is held at
the DMW office.
An online "Kamustahan”
among OFWs at the job site is
also in place, aside from bazaars
and food-tasting booths for vis-
iting OFWs.
Canadian Ambassador to the
Philippines David Hartman
thanked the DMW for the gen-
erous hospitality and for the
initiative to hold a Friendship
Week to celebrate the success
of Canada and the Philippines
in upholding fair, ethical, and
safe recruitment, and enhanced
mutual cooperation.
According to Statistics Can- Ambassador of Canada to the Philippines H.E. David Hartman expresses his gratitude
ada, the 2021 Census of Pop- to the Department of Migrant Workers (DMW) for the generous hospitality and
ulation showed that there are strengthened mutual labor cooperation between the two nations during the opening
957,355 Canadians with Filipi- of the Philippine-Canada Friendship Week, today October 23, 2023 at the DMW
no roots, with 757,410 of them Head Office in Mandaluyong City. (DEPARTMENT OF MIGRANT WORKERS/FACEBOOK)
reporting that they were born
in the Philippines and had im- the third largest source country A large percentage of Filipino
migrated to Canada. for immigrants, next to India Canadians live in Ontario, Al-
This makes the Philippines and China. berta, and British Columbia. ■

PBBM orders shorter..

❰❰ 1 ing, Energy Secretary
Raphael Lotilla said in
a Palace press briefing.
“The President gave instruc-
tions on changing the language
of the 2024 GAA (General Ap-
propriations Act) provision
on fuel subsidies for the trans-
port sector in order to shorten
the trigger period from three
months to one month and sim-
plify the release requirements,”
Lotilla said.
“It will shorten the period
within which the subsidy can
be released to our drivers. Be-
cause before, it would take three
months, and the difference is
quite obvious in terms of being
able to help the transport sector,”
he added, explaining that when
the Dubai price per barrel ex-
ceeds USD80 for three months,
that will be the “trigger” for the
provision of fuel subsidies.
Lotilla said Marcos wants to
simplify the release require-
ments because, in the past, it
took some time to release the
funds for fuel subsidies.
He said the existing policy
mandates the Department of
Transportation (DOTr) to first
consolidate all the lists of ben-
eficiaries given by the Land
Transportation Franchising
Regulatory Board (LTFRB), the
Department of the Interior and
Local Government (DILG) and
the Department of Trade and
Industry (DTI).
“So, we are simplifying all of
these requirements so that the
Department of Transportation
will be responsible for the list
for those which are under the
LTFRB, then DILG will come
up with the list for those which
are with the tricycle drivers un-
der the local governments and
then, DTI will take care of the
rest. And that will simplify the
process,” Lotilla said.
“So, this time, as proposed by
the Department of Budget and
Management to Congress, the
guidelines will need only to be
agreed upon by the Department
of Budget and Management, the
Department of Transportation
and the Department of Energy.
And these can be released upon
the finalization of the list of
beneficiaries.”
Lotilla noted that the Exec-
utive Department’s proposal
to Congress is to allot PHP2.5
billion for the provision of fuel
subsidies in 2024, saying the
proposed budget “would suffice
to cover the amounts needed.”
Asked how soon the benefi-
ciaries can expect changes in the
guidelines for the release of fuel
subsidies, Lotilla said it would
take effect “as soon as Congress
approved the [2024] GAA.”
“Since the Congress is right
now considering the General
Appropriations Act for 2024,
doon na ‘yun isasalang iyong
amendment from three to one
month (that’s where the amend-
ment from three to one month
will be introduced),” he said.
Approval of 20% ethanol
blend for gasoline products
Meantime, the proposal to
raise the ethanol blend for gas-
oline products to 20 percent
from the current 10 percent is
targeted to be approved by end
of 2023, Lotilla said.
He said the implementation of
a higher ethanol blend to gasoline
Uno Fuel attendant refills a customer’s vehicle in Camarin, Caloocan City on
Tuesday (Sept. 7, 2021). (BEN BRIONES/PNA)
www.canadianinquirer.net
is “voluntary,” in an effort to fur-
ther pull down gasoline prices.
“For those of you who are us-
ing gasoline, you know that we
have a mandatory requirement
of a 10 percent blend of ethanol
with gasoline, and that the new
policy (of raising it to 20 percent)
that we will be implementing is
voluntary. And this is primarily
a price mitigation measure be-
cause ethanol, especially import-
ed ethanol, is cheaper than the
price of gasoline,” he said.
Lotilla also noted that the ini-
tiative will lower pump prices
because of the increased blend.
“Right now, the price of gas-
oline without ethanol is around
PHP56.89. Then, it will result
in a price differential of around
PHP1.28 or up to even PHP1.50,
depending on, of course, the
prices. The local ethanol price
per liter is currently around
PHP79.49, which is higher than
the imported ethanol which is
at PHP41.44,” he explained.
Lotilla said Marcos and his
Cabinet are also eyeing the in-
crease in the coco methyl es-
ter or the coco biodiesel blend
from the current 2 percent to 3
percent, stressing that the plan
“can also drive down the cost of
coco methyl ester.”
Continued electrification
of transport sector
During the sectoral meeting,
Lotilla said Marcos also directed
concerned government agencies
to work on the continued elec-
trification of the transport sec-
tor, particularly mass transport
and light cargo vehicles.
He said the President stressed
the need to have charging sta-
tions for electric vehicles (EVs),
as well as to prepare the econo-
my for the eventual manufactur-
ing of EVs in the country.
Lotilla said Marcos is also
seeking to tap the local mining
sector for the production of
minerals needed for the pro-
duction of batteries and other
components for EVs. ■
FRIDAY OCTOBER 27, 2023 5

Get the latest News & Updates

read daily news

from Philippines,
Canada & the World
www.canadianinquirer.net
The one and only daily Filipino-Canadian live news
www.canadianinquirer.net
6 Philippine News
PBBM approves coordinating council
for UHC law
BY MA. TERESA
MONTEMAYOR
Philippine News Agency
MANILA – President Fer-
dinand R. Marcos Jr. has ap-
proved the creation of a coordi-
nating council for the Universal
Health Care (UHC) law, Health
Secretary Teodoro Herbosa
said Tuesday.
Herbosa said the establishment
of the body would ensure the roll-
out of healthcare functions within
a well-integrated system.
"The problem we’re trying
to solve is the fragmentation of
the health system, we saw this
during the Covid-19 (pandem-
US legislators ‘unequivocally DOLE: Household
support’ PH after collision workers, call
near Ayungin center agents
BY MA. TERESA
MONTEMAYOR
Philippine News Agency
most in-demand
MANILA – Four American
nationwide
lawmakers on Wednesday ex-
pressed support to the Philip-
pine government following a
collision incident near Ayungin
Shoal after a Chinese Coast
Guard vessel conducted danger-
ous blocking maneuvers against
passing Filipino resupply boats.
House Foreign Affairs Com-
mittee Chairman Michael
McCaul, Ranking Member
Gregory Meeks, along with Sub-
committee on the Indo-Pacific
Chairwoman Young Kim and
Ranking Member Ami Bera, is-
sued the statement and called
out China over what they called
“maritime intimidation” in the
South China Sea.
“We unequivocally support
the Philippines and condemn
the unlawful actions by the Chi-
nese Coast Guard in the South
China Sea,” the statement read.
“The Chinese Coast Guard
ic). Because of the local govern-
ment code, (the) local health
system was given to municipal
mayors and governors,” he said
in a Palace briefing.
The council will serve as a
governing body that will oversee
the implementation of the UHC
law, the estimated total of the
national cost for the UHC, and
the implementation of UHC at
the local government level.
The DOH will chair the coun-
cil with the Department of the
Interior and Local Government
as its co-chair.
Its member agencies include
the Department of Information
and Communications Tech-
nology, Department of Budget
and maritime militia vessels in-
tentionally hit Philippine Coast
Guard ships over the weekend
and continue to violate inter-
national law, endanger Filipino
crew members, and obstruct
Philippine vessels’ access in
their own exclusive economic
zone,” it added.
The four legislators believe
that the incident is part of a
“larger pattern” of the People’s
Liberation Army Navy, the
Maritime Militia, and the Chi-
Chinese Maritime Militia on the left then on the right is Philippine Coast Guard
vessel BRP Cabra (MRV-4409) (ARMED FORCES OF THE PHILIPPINES/FACEBOOK)
and Management, Department
of Finance, Philippine Health
Insurance Corporation, Philip-
pine Regulation Commission,
National Economic and Devel-
opment Authority, Technical
Education and Skills Develop-
ment Authority, Commission
on Higher Education and De-
partment of Education.
The council will standardize
the health policies, Herbosa said.
"What happens is there is go-
ing to be a special health fund
which is emphasized in the law,
that’s why we created the coun-
cil to watch the spending of the
money and the implementa-
tion will be standard for all dif-
ferent local government units
nese Coast Guard’s "aggressive
and provocative behavior in the
South China Sea, where it ac-
tively intrudes in other states
exclusive economic zones".
“We condemn Beijing’s mari-
time intimidation and welcome
the Biden administration’s an-
nouncement to increase joint
patrols with the Philippines
and other partners in the South
China Sea,” the lawmakers said.
❱❱ PAGE 8 US legislators ‘unequivocally
www.canadianinquirer.net
(LGUs),” he said.
"The council will police or
monitor how LGUs or local
health systems would be spend-
ing funds, income from Phil-
Health, and how the other sys-
tems can be improved.”
UHC Act implementation
updates
Under the UHC Act, which was
enacted in February 2019, the
DOH, the DILG, PhilHealth and
LGUs will endeavor to integrate
healthcare into province and
city-wide healthcare systems.
Since 2021, Herbosa reported
that 71 LGUs have committed
to integrate their local health
systems. These were labeled as
UHC Integration Sites which
BY FERDINAND PATINIO
Philippine News Agency
MANILA – The domestic help-
er position is on top of the list
of five in-demand job vacancies
nationwide, with close to 6,000
available positions, the Depart-
ment of Labor and Employment
(DOLE) reported on Tuesday.
In a statement, DOLE's Bu-
reau of Local Employment
(BLE) said 16,421 vacancies
were available nationwide for
the period Oct. 16 to 20.
Of the 5,761 domestic work-
er vacancies, majority were
in Santa Cruz, Davao del Sur
(1,023); Tagum City, Davao del
Norte (1,009) and Ormoc City,
Leyte (1,000).
The call center agent position
had 4,886 vacancies, with ma-
OCTOBER 27, 2023 FRIDAY
consist of 59 provinces and 12
highly-urbanized cities.
“Starting this year 2023, we
already engaged five UHC Inte-
gration Sites to become primary
care provider network sandbox or
trials or pilots and these are Bagu-
io, Bataan, Quezon, Guimaras and
South Cotabato,” he said.
“We contracted them, and
they’re being piloted as a test
run for this network healthcare
systems,” he added.
Apart from additional health-
care provider networks by next
year, health board members par-
ticularly governors or mayors as
chair, will be provided with nec-
essary capacity to manage local
health care system. ■
jority posted on the government
job portal PhilJobnet (2,393).
Meanwhile, the other posi-
tions were for executive assis-
tant with 2,376 and customer
service assistant with 1,798 va-
cancies. Majority of jobs avail-
able were in Panabo City, Davao
del Norte at 1,300.
Completing the top five list
was production worker with
1,600 vacancies, according to
data from the PESO Employ-
ment Information System and
job-matching portal PhilJobNet.
The BLE advised interested
applicants to contact the Public
Employment Service Offices in
their areas.
For other information, the
public may visit PhilJobNet web-
site philjobnet.gov.ph or check
the BLE PESO directory at bit.
ly/2022PESO_directory. ■
FRIDAY OCTOBER 27, 2023
WPS incident puts into doubt China
sincerity in PBBM-Xi understanding
BY JOYCE ANN L.
ROCAMORA
Philippine News Agency
MANILA – The latest inci-
dent involving a China Coast
Guard (CCG) coming into con-
tact with a Philippine mili-
tary-contracted resupply boat
near Ayungin Shoal puts into
question Beijing’s commitment
to upholding the understand-
ing reached between the Phil-
ippine and Chinese leaders, the
Department of Foreign Affairs
(DFA) said Monday.
Foreign Affairs spokesperson
Ma. Teresita Daza said the mis-
sions the Philippines under-
takes within its exclusive eco-
nomic zone near Ayungin Shoal
are humanitarian in nature to
resupply Filipino troops man-
ning the BRP Sierra Madre.
She added that Philippine
activities within the area are
consistent with its rights under
international law.
“It’s rather difficult to imag-
ine how these activities could
be deemed as threatening or
provocative to China. Not only
did China’s actions endanger
lives at sea, they’re also illegal,
dangerous, provocative and
deplorable,” she said in a press
conference at the National Se-
curity Council in Quezon City.
“They undermine mutual
trust, confidence and respect
that should underpin our bilater-
al relations and put into serious
doubt the sincerity of the Chinese
side to uphold the understanding
between President (Ferdinand
R.) Marcos Jr. and President Xi
(Jinping),” she added.
Last January, Marcos and
Xi “reaffirmed the importance
of maintaining and promoting
peace and stability in the re-
gion and the freedom of naviga-
tion in and overflight above the
South China Sea”.
During the two leaders' meet-
ing, the two sides also estab-
lished a “direct communication
mechanism” between the DFA
and the Chinese Ministry of For-
eign Affairs on maritime issues.
Daza said the DFA did not
use the hotline this time be-
cause “incidents in the past have
shown that the usefulness of this
mechanism is rather limited”.
The official was referring to
the incident off Ayungin Shoal
when a CCG vessel used water
cannon against a Philippine
resupply boat en route to BRP
Sierra Madre on Aug. 5.
On that day, the DFA sought
Beijing through the maritime
communication mechanism
“for several hours” but was un-
able to reach them.
Daza reiterated that Ayungin
is within the Philippine exclu-
sive economic zone (EEZ).
“This is our EEZ, this is our
waters, China has no right to lin-
ger in and around the waters of
Ayungin Shoal and actually in-
terfere with the Philippines’ le-
gitimate activities in and around
Ayungin Shoal,” she said.
‘Heavy responsibility’
Chinese vessels have sailed
dangerously close to Philippine
ships for a number of instances
over the past months but the
Oct. 22 incident was the first
time a CCG vessel collided with
a Filipino boat while making a
blocking maneuver.
The latest incident drew in-
ternational condemnation, in-
cluding from the United States,
Canada, European Union, the
Netherlands, Germany, Japan
and France.
Daza reminded that “China
as a major power bears a heavy
responsibility of contributing to
peace and stability in the region”.
Hours following the presser,
the Chinese Embassy in Manila
said its Deputy Chief of Mission
Zhou Zhiyong told the DFA to
honor the Philippines’ so-called
“promise, stop making prov-
ocations at sea, stop making
dangerous moves, stop ground-
lessly attacking and slandering
China, and to tow away the ille-
gally ‘grounded’ warship”.
Zhou represented Chinese
Ambassador Huang Xilian, who
is currently out of town, when
the DFA summoned the latter
on Monday morning.
In the same briefing, Daza
underscored that Marcos has
categorically denied the exis-
tence of such a promise and “if
whether there is such an agree-
ment, he rescinds it”.
“It would help if the media also
help us in actually countering
narratives that do not have basis
– and this is one narrative that’s
coming from their end,” she said.
Act with restraint
Lawmakers on Monday urged
China to adhere to internation-
al maritime laws and standards,
act with restraint and guarantee
the safety of all vessels in the
West Philippine Sea (WPS).
"Such actions not only jeopar-
dized the lives of those onboard
but also threatened region-
al peace and stability," House
Speaker Martin Romualdez said
in a statement. "Such incidents
cannot be overlooked."
Romualdez said the Philippine
government will exhaust all dip-
lomatic initiatives and mobilize
the support of the international
community to prevent these "un-
lawful acts" by China, which is
considered not only as a "trading
partner", but also "expected to be
an ally" of the Philippines.
www.canadianinquirer.net
Philippine News
Pres. Ferdinand R. Marcos Jr. and Chinese President Xi Jinping (PCO)
Rethink strategies
Senator Grace Poe said re-
cent incidents in the WPS call
for a serious rethinking of the
Philippines' strategies in deal-
ing with the problem.
“As we firmly assert our
rights in our waters, fortifying
our relations with like-minded
states must continue to thwart
similar belligerent actions,”
Poe said in a statement.
Poe said China's latest act
of aggression poses a credible
concern that could heighten
the tension not only between
the Philippines and China, but
could also be a potential flash-
point in the region.
Senate President Juan Mi-
guel Zubiri condemned "this
latest abhorrent actions of the
China Coast Guard and Chi-
nese maritime militia that put
in danger the lives of our brave
countrymen who were on a
routine resupply mission to our
troops in Ayungin Shoal.”
He also praised the PCG and
the AFP for displaying courage
and restraint in continuing their
7
resupply missions and called on
the China Coast Guard to re-
spect human lives and abide by
the United Nations Convention
on the Law of the Sea and other
international laws governing
safe maritime travel.
"Our freedom of navigation
in our own exclusive economic
zone within our own continen-
tal shelf should be recognized
and upheld," Zubiri said as he
reiterated his support to in-
crease the budget of PCG.
Senator Jinggoy Estrada said
the Chinese vessels’ action is
completely unacceptable.
"This is a violation of our sov-
ereign rights and an assault on
our maritime personnel,” Es-
trada said.
Senator Risa Hontiveros said
the latest collision is squarely
the CCG’s fault, adding the PCG
“has every right to be in the
West Philippine Sea. They have
no right to drive our troops
away from our sea.”
Senator JV Ejercito said the
❱❱ PAGE 16 WPS incident puts
8 Philippine News OCTOBER 27, 2023 FRIDAY

PH inks new cooperation

Correspondent/Hosts
Arianne Grace Lacanilao
Matte Laurel
Violeta Arevalo
Babes Newland
Graphic Design
Shanice Garcia
Ginno Alcantara
Arlnie Colleene Talain Singca
Account Manager
Kristopher Yong
Director/Producer
Boom Dayupay
Photographers/Videographers
Ginno Alcantara
Management
Alan Yong
For photo submissions, please email
editor@canadianinquirer.net
For General Inquiries, please email
info@canadianinquirer.net
For Sales Inquiries, please email
sales@canadianinquirer.net
or visit
‘www.canadianinquirer.net/advertise-with-us/’
Philippine Canadian Inquirer is located at
#1820-666 Burrard Street
Vancouver BC V6C 2X8 Canada
Email: info@canadianinquirer.net,
sales@canadianinquirer.net
Instagram: @pcinews_ig
Twitter: @pcinews_twt
Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/pcinews
Philippine Canadian Inquirer
is published weekly every Friday.
Copies are distributed free throughout Metro
Vancouver, Edmonton, Calgary, and Greater Toronto.
framework with UN for 2024-2028
BY RUTH ABBEY GITA-CARLOS
Philippine News Agency
MANILA – The Philippines on Tues-
day signed a new cooperation frame-
work with the United Nations for the
period 2024 to 2028, signaling the coun-
try’s commitment to the international
body to attain sustainable development.
President Ferdinand R. Marcos Jr.
witnessed the signing of the 2024-2028
United Nations Sustainable Develop-
ment Cooperation Framework (UN-
SDCF) in a ceremony at the President’s
Hall of Malacañan Palace in Manila, co-
inciding with United Nations Day.
The UNSDCF was signed by Depart-
ment of Foreign Affairs (DFA) Secretary
Enrique Manalo, Socioeconomic Plan-
ning Secretary and National Economic
and Development Authority (NEDA)
Director General Arsenio Balisacan and
UN Resident Coordinator in the Philip-
pines Gustavo González.
The UNSDCF is a collaborative stra-
tegic planning framework for coopera-
tion between the Philippines and the UN
Development System, in support of the
national development priorities and the
accomplishment of the 2030 Agenda for
Sustainable Development.
Embodied in the 2030 Agenda for
Sustainable Development and adopted
by all UN member-states in 2015, the 17
Sustainable Development Goals (SDG)
involve strategies aimed at improv-
ing health and education, reducing in-
equality, and spurring global economic
growth while addressing climate change
and preserving the environment.
Marcos said the UNSDCF is a docu-
ment that deepens, expands and elevates
the partnership between the Philippines
and the UN.
“As founding member of the United
ports the UN as a beacon for multilateral people want to live and how the country
approaches for making lasting peace and will be by 2040; and serves as anchor for
progress a reality for all peoples, for all development planning.
nations,” he said in his keynote speech He added that the arrangement pro-
after the signing ceremony. vides a “good model of co-ownership,
“Beyond building better from the pan- transparency and accountability for UN
demic and for resilient communities, the country programs,” ensuring that these
world needs a transformative agenda to are driven by the needs and context of
bridge divides, address inequalities and national development.
foster growth that carries everyone for- “Our partnership can be a catalyst for
ward. Especially in this complex glob- the accomplishment of our shared goals
al environment, we certainly need the in the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable De-
United Nations to thrive in its import- velopment,” Marcos said.
ant work, including at the country level “We look forward to vigorous engage-
here in the Philippines,” Marcos said. ments on key issues that bear on the
Marcos noted that the cooperation future of our communities including
framework is oriented to support Philip- food security, health, education, climate
pine government policies and priorities action, decent work, digital transfor-
embodied in his administration’s eight- mation and disaster risk reduction. We
point socioeconomic agenda, the Phil- invite new approaches to help promote
ippine Development Plan and NEDA’s innovation driven by climate smart and
“AmBisyon Natin 2040.” sustainable growth at all levels. We also
The NEDA program represents the are fostering access to green financing,
collective long-term vision and aspira- lasting peace and better public services
tions of the Filipino people for them- across the archipelago.”
selves and for the country in the next
❱❱ PAGE 14 PH inks new
25 years; describes the kind of life that
COOPERATION FRAMEWORK. President Ferdinand R. Marcos Jr. (2nd from left) joins (from left)
Socioeconomic Planning Secretary Arsenio Balisacan, Foreign Affairs Secretary Enrique Manalo and
United Nations Resident Coordinator in the Philippines Gustavo González during the signing of the
United Nations Sustainable Development Cooperation Framework for 2024-2028 at the President’s

The views and opinions expressed in the articles

Nations, the Philippines strongly sup- Hall of Malacañan Palace in Manila on Tuesday (Oct. 24, 2023). (REY BANIQUET/PNA)
(including opinions expressed in ads herein) are those
of the authors named, and are not necessarily those of
Philippine Canadian Inquirer Editorial Team.

PCI reserves the right to reject any advertising which

it considers to contain false or misleading information
or involves unfair or unethical practices. The advertiser
agrees the publisher shall not be liable for damages
arising out of error in any advertisment.
US legislators ‘unequivocally..
❰❰ 6 They also lauded the Biden
Member administration for reaffirming
its commitment to upholding
its obligations under the Mutual Defense
Treaty in case of an armed attack against
the Philippines in the West Philippine Sea.
Last month, the Indo Pacific-Sub-
committee discussed the situation in the
contested sealane and held a hearing ti-
tled “Lasers and Water Cannons: Expos-
ing the CCP's Harassment in the South
China Sea".
The Oct. 22 incident drew interna-
www.canadianinquirer.net
tional attention and support, including
from Japan, South Korea, Canada, Euro-
pean Union, the Netherlands, Germany,
France and Denmark.
On Oct. 23, the Japanese Ministry of For-
eign Affairs said Tokyo is concerned over
the “recent surge in tensions in the South
China Sea,” including the dangerous action
that caused a collision between Chinese
and Filipino ships.
“Japan believes that the issue con-
cerning the South China Sea is directly
related to the peace and stability of the
region and is a legitimate concern of the
international community including Ja-
pan, and thus Japan opposes any unilat-
eral attempts to change the status quo by
force as well as any actions that increase
tensions in the South China Sea,” it said.
The Japanese government said it
would continue to cooperate with the
international community, including the
US and member states of the Associa-
tion of Southeast Asian Nations, to “pro-
tect free, open, and peaceful seas”. ■
FRIDAY OCTOBER 27, 2023
Canada’s Start-Up Visa program is struggling
to fill the shoes of its predecessor
BY STEIN MONTEIRO,
Toronto Metropolitan
University, BRADLEY
BERNARD, Toronto
Metropolitan University
The Conversation
To bolster its rapidly-growing
tech sector, the Canadian gov-
ernment introduced the Tech
Talent Strategy in June 2023
with the aim of attracting work-
ers and entrepreneurs. As a part
of this strategy, the government
announced improvements to
the Start-Up Visa program.
The Start-Up Visa program is
designed to help foreign entre-
preneurs gain permanent resi-
dence in Canada. Initially intro-
duced as a five-year pilot project
in 2013, it was created to replace
the longstanding Federal Entre-
preneur Program that had been
in operation since the 1970s.
However, the Start-Up Visa
program has not proven to be a
suitable replacement. Although
the program has grown over the
years, our analysis found that
it’s still only half the size the
Federal Entrepreneur Program
was in 2010.
The Start-Up Visa program is
falling short in a number of key ar-
eas, including job creation, global
trade opportunities and the long-
term viability of businesses.
Job creation
The primary concern with
the Start-Up Visa program is
its ability to create jobs. Un-
like the Federal Entrepreneur
Program, which required those
coming to Canada to create at
least one new job, the Start-Up
Visa program doesn’t have job
creation requirements in its ad-
mission criteria.
Job creation is an import-
ant reason why Canada has
expanded its pathways to per-
manent residency. Immigrants
with a variety of professional
experiences can contribute to
Canada’s growing economy, and
business immigration plays an
Canada News
important role in that growth.
A 2019 study by Statistics Can-
ada found that immigrant-owned
firms had a higher net job growth
per firm than firms owned by
the Canadian-born. While not
all immigrant-owned business-
es were founded by immigrants
who came through the Federal
Entrepreneur Program, they
represented about 21 per cent of
all immigrant-owned businesses
in 2010.
Innovation and interna-
tionalization
Aside from job creation, the
Start-Up Visa program has
additional objectives to boost
innovation and international-
ization. However, the ability of
the Start-Up Visa program to
attract businesses that are in-
novative is still unclear.
Prior to the Start-Up Visa
program, immigrant-led busi-
nesses in Canada proved to be
innovative, although not to the
degree suggested by Immigra-
tion, Refugees and Citizenship
Canada (IRCC).
A study by Statistics Cana-
da using data from 2011, 2014
and 2017 revealed that immi-
grant-led businesses operating
in Canada for over 20 years
were more likely to imple-
ment innovations in processes,
products or marketing, and use
patents compared to similar
Canadian-owned firms. This
suggests that businesses from
the Federal Entrepreneur Pro-
gram were not necessarily un-
derperforming.
While it’s anticipated that
businesses entering through
the Start-Up Visa program will
exceed these results, the lack of
data makes it difficult to deter-
mine whether this is actually the
case. Only a few applicants were
endorsed by investors, and most
were supported by incubators,
meaning applicants consist pri-
marily of early-stage startups.
While they might be innovative,
they will likely face challenges in
terms of survival and longevity.
While there is no concrete
evidence to suggest businesses
in the Start-Up Visa program
are more innovative, there is
www.canadianinquirer.net
evidence to suggest it has re-
sulted in increased internation-
alization, another one of the
program’s objectives. Since the
Start-Up Visa was introduced,
many immigrant entrepre-
neurs have moved to Canada
from the United States.
Financing constraints and
debt obligations
Another area where the
Start-Up Visa program falls
short is direct foreign invest-
ment. While the ministerial
instructions governing the pro-
gram don’t explicitly state cap-
ital should only come from Ca-
nadian investors, a significant
number of designated organiza-
tions are based in Canada. This
suggests the program is focused
on attracting foreign entrepre-
neurs to Canada, rather than
attracting foreign capital.
Without specific require-
ments, the Start-Up Visa pro-
gram is unlikely to attract sig-
nificant foreign capital into
the country, as foreign entre-
preneurs are often required to
secure funds from Canadian
investors.
In contrast, foreign entre-
preneurs that came through
the Federal Entrepreneur Pro-
gram ended up bringing their
own foreign capital with them.
The program required these
entrepreneurs to have a net
worth of at least $300,000. This
approach resulted in them be-
ing 3.1 to 4.5 percentage points
more likely to rely on personal
finances and networks to start-
up their ventures than their Ca-
nadian-born counterparts.
Start-Up Visa applicants
In the face of these criti-
cisms, how necessary is the
Start-Up Visa program exactly?
Aside from instances of fraud-
ulent applications to the Start-
Up Visa, there are fundamental
issues with the program.
One issue is whether the
Start-Up Visa program is divert-
ing potential applicants away
from other programs. Another
9
is whether it genuinely offers
a route to permanent residen-
cy for those who are unlikely to
succeed in other pathways.
Foreign entrepreneurs who
come through the Start-Up Visa
are younger, more highly edu-
cated and have better knowl-
edge of English or French than
those who came through the
Federal Entrepreneur Program.
These characteristics are sim-
ilar to those arriving through
other pathways, with the crucial
difference being that Start-Up
Visa applicants bring entre-
preneurial skills. But these ap-
plicants could easily use other
routes like Express Entry or
Provincial Nominee programs.
In terms of the individual qual-
ity of applicants, the Start-Up
Visa does not contribute signifi-
cantly to the skill composition
of immigration to Canada. How-
ever, it does present an opportu-
nity to invest in foreign startups
— all these entrepreneurs need
is an ecosystem that will help
them thrive. But their prosper-
ity largely depends on Canada’s
startup ecosystem, which essen-
tially makes the Start-Up Visa an
instrument for investing in risky
foreign startups.
So what next?
Whether a policy works de-
pends on its evaluation. The Fed-
eral Entrepreneur Program was
shut down because many foreign
entrepreneurs started small, un-
scalable businesses, which were
deemed unsuitable for Cana-
da’s future economic landscape.
However few, these businesses
brought in foreign direct invest-
ment and created jobs.
As shown by many studies,
most startups fail. About half of
all startups that have received
angel investments fail within
five years. At what point do we
say that the program may not be
working?
Our policy recommendation is
that IRCC should conduct a thor-
❱❱ PAGE 29 Canada’s Start-Up Visa
10
Protecting civilians in both Israel and
Gaza is critical for peace and justice
BY SAAD HAMMADI, ALEX
NEVE
Policy Options
It is time to put the human
rights of Israelis and Palestin-
ians alike at the heart of Cana-
da’s approach to the conflict.
A six-year-old boy was killed
and his mother badly injured
in a vicious stabbing in Chicago
recently. Police have arrested a
71-year-old man on murder and
hate crime charges. They say the
boy and his mother were target-
ed because they are Muslim and
that the attack was in response
to the conflict taking place be-
tween Israel and Hamas.
In another instance, two teen-
age boys and a 20-year-old man
have been arrested in Toronto
after making threats at a Jewish
high school – an incident which
police are also investigating as a
possible hate crime.
These are but two examples,
among many others, of the extent
to which tensions in Israel and
the occupied Palestinian territo-
ries are spilling over around the
world, including Canada.
There has been a clear rise in
antisemitic, Islamophobic and
anti-Palestinian hate and vio-
lence, as well as increased fear
and vulnerability within those
communities. Governments
and people everywhere must
act immediately and urgently
to resist this madness.
The escalating conflict be-
tween Israel and Hamas is ex-
acting a staggering civilian toll.
Yet, while Canada, the United
States and the European Union
have extended “unwavering
support” to Israel, they have
been far from definitive in their
support for the people of Gaza.
Alongside the strong posi-
tions that Prime Minister Jus-
tin Trudeau has taken in con-
demning the Hamas attacks
and calling for the release of
hostages, he and his govern-
ment must also forcefully back
calls for an immediate ceasefire
and for unhindered access to
Gaza for humanitarian aid.
Canada must also condemn
and demand an end to the Israeli
military operations that are bla-
tantly and devastatingly not in
Canada News
keeping with either internation-
al humanitarian law or interna-
tional human rights law.
Both steps would be a major –
but greatly overdue and welcome
– change in Canada’s long-stand-
ing approach to the region.
As has been made abun-
dantly clear by human rights
groups and the UN Human
Rights Council’s independent
commission of inquiry, Hamas
is responsible for war crimes
in southern Israel, including
indiscriminate rocket attacks,
hostage-taking and summary
executions.
This most recent Hamas at-
tack has been calculatingly cru-
el and unimaginably violent.
Those responsible for these
horrific crimes must be brought
to justice – but justice that is in
accordance with international
law, possibly through the cur-
rently blocked wider investiga-
tion of actions in the region by
all sides by the International
Criminal Court.
Israel’s massive siege and
bombardment of Gaza is not
that kind of justice. Quite the
contrary, extensive, terrifying
war crimes are being exacted on
the entire population of Gaza,
not just Hamas leaders or fight-
ers. Illegality in response to ille-
gality does not resemble justice
in the slightest.
Close to 6,000 lives have been
lost already in the armed con-
flict between Israel and Hamas,
according to their accounts.
That staggering number con-
tinues to rise daily, particularly
as the unrelenting Israeli bom-
bardment of Gaza – where more
than 70 per cent of those killed
have been women and children
– intensifies.
Israel’s military is now poised
for a massive ground invasion
of Gaza and has been warning
civilians in the northern part of
the territory to evacuate to the
south. The UN has made it clear
that an evacuation of that scale
before the invasion is impossible.
A ground offensive will al-
most inevitably force hundreds
and thousands of Palestinians
out of the Gaza Strip, possibly
even across the fortified south-
ern border with Egypt.
Israel’s plans have been
Armored corps operating in the Gaza Strip in 2014. (ISRAEL DEFENSE FORCES/FLICKR, CC BY-NC 2.0)
rightly condemned as unlawful
collective punishment of civil-
ians in Gaza, more than half of
whom are children. It will in no
way bring either justice or secu-
rity to Israelis.
All parties to the conflict and
all members of the international
community, including Canada,
need to focus now on de-escala-
tion, peace and protecting hu-
man rights. It is in that direction,
not more bombs and military
assaults, that the only hope for
averting further devastation lies.
That is crucial as well, to
avoid the worrying potential
that other actors such as Iran
and the Lebanese militia group
Hezbollah will be drawn into a
widening conflict.
Since 2007, Israel has im-
posed an air, land and sea
blockade on the Gaza Strip, re-
inforced by Egypt’s closure of
its border crossing out of Gaza
at Rafah, which has caused im-
mense suffering in the territory.
Many experts, including the
UN special rapporteur on hu-
man rights in the occupied Pal-
estinian territory, have raised
the concern that this may
amount to ethnic cleansing.
They also worry it might lay
the ground for Israeli expansion
of unlawful settlements, already
commonplace in the West Bank,
into Gaza as well – in further vi-
olation of international law.
The Israeli-announced
“complete siege” of Gaza – with
no access to food, water, elec-
tricity and fuel – amounts to a
collective punishment of the
www.canadianinquirer.net
civilian population, unequivo-
cally prohibited under interna-
tional law. It has to stop.
The minimal humanitarian
access that opened up across
Gaza’s southern border with
Egypt on October 21 is nowhere
near enough.
Canada must call equal-
ly for the safety of civilians in
the Gaza Strip and Israel. It is
no longer defensible for Can-
ada to maintain a position of
forcefully recognizing Israel’s
right to defend itself – with the
important qualification that
Israel’s defence should be in
accordance with international
law – while still stopping short
of what is required next.
In addition to calling for an
end to military operations, an-
other concrete indication of
a new approach would be for
Canada to abandon its oppo-
sition to the investigation that
is currently being conducted
by the International Criminal
Court’s prosecutor into exten-
sive evidence of war crimes and
crimes against humanity in the
occupied Palestinian territory.
The ICC investigation targets
both Israelis and Palestinians.
It represents a vital step for-
ward in confronting the impen-
etrable impunity that has pre-
vailed throughout the decades
of this conflict.
It provides a venue for pros-
ecuting both the crimes that
were committed by Hamas,
originating in Gaza, and the
crimes Israel is responsible
for in its response. That is
OCTOBER 27, 2023 FRIDAY
something that Canada should
strongly endorse, not seek to
shut down.
Canada, widely seen on the
world stage as a champion of
international justice, is par-
ticularly well-placed to work
against that impunity. Opposing
the prosecutor’s important and
ground-breaking investigation
serves only to reinforce that im-
punity – a significant barrier to
achieving both justice and peace.
All of this matters here in
Canada as well. Jewish Cana-
dians, as well as Palestinian
and Arab Canadians, have been
deeply affected and trauma-
tized by the recent events. They
both fear, and are vulnerable to,
hate crimes here.
They need to be confident
that their government is stand-
ing up equally for everyone’s
human rights in this terrible
conflict. Palestinian Canadians,
Arab Canadians and Muslim Ca-
nadians very understandably do
not have that confidence today.
It all comes down to the sim-
ple truth that the way toward
peace in Israel and Palestine
lies in fully respecting inter-
national human rights and hu-
manitarian law. That means the
rights of Israeli and Palestin-
ians alike – an approach which
must now define the way Cana-
da deals with this crisis. ■
This article first appeared
on Policy Options and is repub-
lished here under a Creative
Commons license.
FRIDAY OCTOBER 27, 2023
Queerphobic hate is on the rise, and LGBTQ+
communities in Canada need more support
BY CHRISTOPHER
DIETZEL, McGill University,
HANNAH MAITLAND,
York University, Canada,
STEPHANIE JONSSON,
York University, Canada
The Conversation
In the past few years, people
who identify as LGBTQ+ have
been facing increasing harm
and discrimination. Canada is
not insulated from growing an-
ti-queer and anti-trans senti-
ment.
The Saskatchewan
government recently
passed a controver-
sial bill that requires
students to get their
parents’ permission
to change their pro-
nouns in school. Crit-
ics have called the bill
a “humiliation” for the
province and experts
have warned that it
could further endan-
ger at-risk youth.
The bill is part of a
wave of reactionary an-
ti-LGBTQ+ sentiment
that has been on dis-
play in legislatures and
on the streets. In Sep-
tember, marches were
held across the coun-
try to protest inclusive
public education.
Drag queen story
hours across Canada
have been targets of
coordinated attacks,
with one in Québec
being forced to move
to an undisclosed location be-
cause of safety concerns.
In the United States, the
number of anti-LGBTQ+ bills
introduced in state legislatures
has surpassed 500, and the rate
of online harassment against
LGBTQ+ people has been in-
creasing.
Discrimination against
LGBTQ+ people is also taking
place online. Sexual minority
Canadians are twice as likely to
experience inappropriate be-
haviours online, and LGBTQ+
youth in Canada are significant-
ly more likely to be cyberbullied
than their straight, cisgender
counterparts.
We at the Ontario Digital
Literacy and Access Network
(ODLAN) use the term “queer-
phobic online hate” to refer to
all forms of online discrimi-
nation and hatred directed at
LGBTQ+ people. ODLAN is a
volunteer-led non-profit orga-
nization with a mission to en-
hance digital literacy, remove
access barriers and support
marginalized communities who
experience challenges, includ-
ing digital harms.
Some examples of digital
Sexual minority
Canadians are
twice as likely
to experience
inappropriate
behaviours online,
and LGBTQ+
youth in Canada
are significantly
more likely to be
cyberbullied than
their straight,
cisgender
counterparts.
harms include cyberbullying,
online harassment and non-con-
sensual image sharing. Queer-
phobic online hate can also start
online and continue in person.
For example, an LGBTQ+ gym
in Edmonton was forced to close
because of doxing.
Queerphobic online hate
Our goal at ODLAN is to devel-
op digital strategies that mitigate
problems LGBTQ+ communities
face online. We recently part-
nered with Wisdom2Action, a
consulting firm that works to fa-
cilitate positive change related
to gender justice and LGBTQ+
inclusion, to conduct a research
project on how LGBTQ+ individ-
uals and organizations in Canada
have experienced queerphobic
online hate.
For this project, we conduct-
ed six focus groups with a total
of 17 participants, including one
focus group for racialized par-
ticipants; one for trans, non-bi-
nary, Two-Spirit, genderqueer,
agender, and gender non-con-
firming people; one for people
with disabilities, two for any
LGBTQ+ anglophones; and one
for any LGBTQ+ francophones.
Our research found that
LGBTQ+ people and
organizations experi-
ence queerphobic on-
line hate in many ways.
This hate can happen
on social media, in-
cluding in the form
of public comments
or private messages.
Participants also re-
ported receiving an-
ti-LGBTQ+ comments
in emails directed at
them or their orga-
nization. Queerpho-
bic online hate was
expressed through
text, images, videos
and emojis, and many
spoke about being vic-
tims of trolling and an-
ti-trans rhetoric.
Queerphobic online
hate can be perpetu-
ated through virtual
events. One partici-
pant said their organi-
zation frequently saw
high levels of hateful
activity during public-
ly live-streamed webi-
nars.
Unfortunately, queerphobic
online hate can sometimes come
from LGBTQ+ people. Our re-
search found that cisgender, gay,
white men, including those from
older generations, may speak out
against trans, queer and non-bi-
nary people. Aphobia (prejudice
against asexual and aromantic
people) was identified as another
form of lateral hate (when mem-
bers of a marginalized group per-
petuate harm against members
of their own group). Other par-
ticipants stated that transphobia
is not uncommon in LGBTQ+
spaces and that those spaces are
often unwelcoming to racialized
www.canadianinquirer.net
Canada News
people.
Misinformation and disin-
formation
The roots of misinforma-
tion and disinformation about
LGBTQ+ communities are di-
verse and rooted in pseudo-sci-
ence and religion. While this is
not new, today’s digital world
means that anti-LGBTQ+ be-
liefs can easily be spread far and
wide online.
Sometimes, information is
misinterpreted and misappro-
priated to justify anti-LGBTQ+
hate. Misinformation like this
may not be shared intention-
ally, but it still causes harm.
Disinformation about LGBTQ+
people, such as them being
“groomers,” is both intentional
and harmful, having severe re-
al-world impacts.
As trans people have gained
visibility, the trans identity
has been framed as a conta-
gion that is rapidly spreading,
particularly among young peo-
ple. Information about rates of
de-transition (when someone
in the process of transitioning
stops or returns to their gender
assigned at birth) is often mis-
interpreted, taken out of con-
text and posted to social media.
Disinformation like this aims to
discredit trans people and justi-
fy discrimination against them.
Discriminatory and con-
spiratorial beliefs
Our research found that an-
ti-LGBTQ+ ideologies were
often combined with other
11
bigoted and discriminatory be-
liefs and far-right politics. One
racialized participant reported
that they had seen anti-immi-
gration sentiment tied to claims
that queer and trans people
were immigrating to Canada.
Queerphobic online hate has
been justified by pseudo-scien-
tific beliefs or arguments about
protecting children from per-
ceived threats. With an appar-
ently growing parental rights
movement and escalating an-
ti-LGBTQ+ hate in Canada,
more research on queerphobic
online hate is urgently needed.
LGBTQ+ organizations, staff
and volunteers also need soli-
darity and support.
We recommend creating and
providing targeted resourc-
es that help people deal with
queerphobic online hate and
develop digital literacy skills.
This should be done at multi-
ple levels, including the local
level with community organi-
zations, as well as the provincial
and federal level with govern-
ment agencies. It also means
filling existing deficits among
LGBTQ+ organizations by im-
proving resources, offering mu-
tual aid and sharing resources.
Queerphobic online hate
must also be countered with
systemic solutions like enhanc-
ing the resources and services
available to LGBTQ+ organi-
zations, including better and
❱❱ PAGE 22 Queerphobic hate is
12
Generation X takes the helm of the public
service with John Hannaford
BY KATHRYN MAY
Policy Options
Generational change is one
of a long list of challenges facing
Canadian public servants. The
new clerk of the privy council
wants to start with a conversa-
tion about values and ethics.
(Version française disponible ici)
OTTAWA – John Hannaford,
the first Gen Xer to head Cana-
da’s public service after decades
of Baby Boomer dominance,
thinks it’s time for a reaffirma-
tion of the values and ethics of
an upstanding public servant.
The new clerk of the Privy
Council Office inherits a federal
workforce larger than at any time
in history with the biggest demo-
graphic turnover in years. It in-
cludes an upcoming generation of
leaders and thousands of new em-
ployees who started their careers
during the past five years, the bulk
of it spent at kitchen tables and in
basements. Since the pandemic,
these newcomers have had little
exposure to the life and culture of
going to the office every day.
And they’ve faced constant
flux, insecurity and instability
– a trend global events may only
make worse.
That’s why during a recent
interview and in his first dis-
cussions with public servants,
Hannaford said it’s time to
re-ground a new generation
on the values and ethics that
should bind a professional and
non-partisan public service.
“Because so many of us are
new, because we are living
through times of rapid, peril-
ous change, because not every-
one sees government as a force
for good, I believe reaffirming
our first principles is impera-
tive. Reminding ourselves why
we are doing the work we do
for Canada,” he recently told a
crowd of public servants.
Rise of the Millennials
Millennials, aged 27 to 42,
are quickly closing in on be-
coming the dominant genera-
tion with thousands coming on
board during the recent hiring
binge. Millennials and Gener-
ation Xers, who occupy many
leadership jobs, account for 80
per cent of the workforce.
Canada News
Hannaford created a task
team of deputy ministers who
are leading senior officials on a
government-wide a “dialogue”
about values and ethics, some-
thing that has not been done in
30 years. The last deputy minis-
ter task force on values and eth-
ic produced the Tait report, the
foundation of today’s code gov-
erning public service behaviour.
In the interview, Hannaford
said values and ethics will be
his ‘North Star’ in renewing the
public service for the future.
And the five underlying princi-
ples are as relevant today as 30
years ago — respect for democ-
racy, respect for people, integri-
ty, stewardship and excellence.
“Given all that is new in this
world and the changing ways
we now work, we need to reflect
on how to apply our core values,
how to ensure we are following
our compass in ever-changing
circumstances,” he said.
The shift to hybrid work is
one of biggest disruptions to the
way public servants work in a
century. Add to that, the vexing
policy and service challenges
from constant social upheaval,
climate change, a digital revolu-
tion driven by AI and automa-
tion, and global crises looming
around every corner.
Hannaford calls the public ser-
vice a “team sport” and said a big
challenge is to “figure out how you
work well with others and how
to maximize your value in a team
and how maximize the team.”
The art of teamwork
He joined the government
28 years ago, as a young lawyer
and foreign service officer. The
workplace, he recalled, was like
community where he could
confer with colleagues, watch
managers and executives do
their jobs and make decisions.
The public service hybrid
plan has most office workers at
their desks two or three days a
week. Hannaford argued man-
agers have to be mindful and
deliberate about how to make
the most of those days to build
community, along with the
common purpose and congeni-
ality that goes with it.
“We must reinstitute the art
of teamwork, emphasizing that
through the ability to work as
teams, through collaboration,
we become even more creative,
which I believe is the key to suc-
cess in this digital age of inno-
vation,” he said.
That’s because public servants
are the stewards of government
and often the “public face of
government and the measure by
which it is judged,” he said. The
values and ethics code are the
companions to the “peace, order
and good government” Parlia-
ment lives by when it legislates.
He also warns that values
can’t become an excuse to resist
change or “an anchor to keep us
moored in the past.”
Hannaford said public ser-
vants have to be in top form
to deal with the changes and
impacts of global instability
coming at them. Being on top
of change is not enough. They
have to be part of change, get
out in front and lead it.
That’s a tall order for a risk-
averse and slow-footed public
service, which some critics wor-
ry is no longer fit for purpose in
today’s rapidly changing world.
They say Hannaford’s plan falls
short of the reforms and over-
haul the public service needs.
Clerk John Hannaford (@PRIVYCOUNCILCA/TWITTER)
www.canadianinquirer.net
But Ralph Heintzman, a for-
mer senior bureaucrat and val-
ues and ethics guru, argues such
a discussion is necessary before
any reform: “The public service
has to understand what it is be-
fore you fix how it works.”
The Liberals’ post-pandemic
order to bring workers back to
the office for two to three days
a week met stiff resistance. It’s
still a sore point for many, es-
pecially young workers, who
claim they were more produc-
tive, preferred the flexibility
and work-life balance and saved
money on the commute.
Stories abound about people
flouting the order or getting
around coming in every week.
One senior bureaucrat said em-
ployees in his department are
averaging about 1.8 days a week,
below the two to three days a
week target.
It’s opened a debate over
whether the location of work is
a right or a privilege. Workers
even went on strike over it. It’s
a hot-button issue Heintzman
says the task force will have to
wrestle with: How do workers’
personal preferences square
with values and ethics?
OCTOBER 27, 2023 FRIDAY
“That’s a good example of
an issue where public service
values come into play. The first
principle is not whether this
suits you and is a better work-
ing environment for you,” said
Heintzman.
“Rather, the first principle
is we’re here to serve the pub-
lic interest. We’re here to serve
Canadians and the democratic
government. The issue should be
approached from that perspec-
tive, not from that of individual
workers. It might turn out the
right answer is somewhere down
the middle and a mixture of work
from home and the office.”
So what is the role of the
public service?
But public servants have lots
of worries for the future; trust in
government; service fiascos that
damaged their brand and repu-
tation; a decline in sharing “fear-
less advice”; a hollowing out of
policy capacity; big spending
and looming economic reckon-
ing; conflicts between different
levels of government; and the
need for public service reform.
It’s all supposed to part of the
task force’s discussions, but at
the centre is the very role of the
public service. Many argue Par-
liament must have a say in that.
It was key recommendation of
the Tait report 30 years ago.
“The public service cannot
decide for itself what its man-
date and mission and values
are. Those must be decided by
the elected representatives
of the people of Canada,” said
Heintzman.
For now, this is a public ser-
vice exercise that will take
about a year. The task force is
expected to a have a prelimi-
nary report on the way forward
by the end of the year.
“We’re in very early days,”
Hannaford said. “Obviously we
operate within a broader polit-
ical environment and we’ll see
what that means in terms of
Parliament and other interac-
tions. But at this stage, this is
a conversation I want to have
amongst public servants.” ■
This article first appeared
on Policy Options and is repub-
lished here under a Creative
Commons license.
FRIDAY OCTOBER 27, 2023 13

World News
Where the ICC stands if war crimes are com-
mitted on either side of the Israel-Hamas war
BY CATHERINE GEGOUT, Karim Khan, the ICC prose- There are three issues that 2019, Netanyahu argued against ever, article 25 of the ICC trea-
University of Nottingham cutor, calling on the ICC to ex- could hinder an ICC investiga- investigating war crimes alle- ty refers to the possibility of
The Conversation plicitly warn Hamas and Israel tion: a lack of cooperation by gations against Israel, asserting investigating people for aiding
against committing crimes. Israel, a lack of financial sup- that Palestine did not meet the and abetting others to commit
Bensouda did something sim- port from member states and criteria of statehood to accede to crimes. Any leader supporting
Since Hamas launched its of- ilar in 2018 when she warned pressure by countries which the ICC treaty. leaders or people who commit
fensive in Israel on October 7 Israel not to forcefully evict a feel a solution would be easi- States party to the ICC could war crimes could be held ac-
2023, drawing a swift and em- Palestinian community from er to achieve without the in- call for Hamas and the Israeli countable too.
phatic response from the Ne- Khan al-Ahmar, a village in the volvement of the ICC and the government to respect interna- Is the ICC gaining promi-
tanyahu government, at least occupied West Bank. She said prospect of war crimes charges tional law. But this has already nence?
1,400 people in Israel and 5,000 the eviction could constitute being levelled. This pressure proved fruitless in the UN secu- The ICC has 123 state signa-
people in Palestine have been a war crime, as defined in arti- would be dangerous for the rity council. The security coun- tories. It is now investigating
killed. Many of these have been cle 8.2 of the ICC Treaty, which ICC’s credibility. It is import- cil tried but failed on October 18 crimes potentially committed
civilians – hundreds of Israelis prohibits the deportation or ant for justice and politics to to pass a resolution which would in Ukraine by Russia, a perma-
at a music festival near the Re'im transfer of all or parts of the remain independent. have enabled the the condemna- nent member of the security
kibbutz, close to the border of population of the occupied ter- The UN’s commission of in- tion of the terrorist attacks by council. As a result, Vladimir
Gaza. Hundreds of Pal- quiry, mandated by Hamas and made a demand for Putin could not attend the 2023
estinians were killed the UN Human Rights the hostages’ release. Brics summit in South Africa
by an explosion at the Council, has been col- It would also have called for for fear of arrest.
Al-Ahli Baptist Hospi- lecting evidence of compliance by all with inter- There have also been recent
tal in Gaza. potential war crimes national humanitarian law, hu- calls for the US to ratify the ICC
While the first atroc- committed by all sides manitarian pauses would have treaty. Armenia is the latest
ity was committed by Give the current situation in Israel and Occupied provided for the urgent establish- state about to join the ICC. In-
Hamas fighters, re- Palestinian Territories ment of full, safe and unhindered ternational criminal law is gain-
sponsibility for the in Israel and Gaza, the ICC since October 7. humanitarian access for the UN, ing prominence, and awareness
hospital blast has yet to could take two measures. It has already said Red Cross and humanitarian or- of this fact could have a de-
be determined. Inves- that there is evidence ganisations to Gaza to enable ba- terrent effect on any leader or
tigators will eventually that war crimes have sic necessities to be supplied to person worldwide considering
attempt to piece to- been committed, both the civilian population. committing war crimes. ■
gether the truth about by Palestinian mili- France and China voted in fa-
both atrocities. But will tants, gunning down vour of this resolution, but the This article is republished
anyone stand trial for civilians and taking UK abstained with Russia, and from The Conversation under a
war crimes? hostages in Israel, and the US exercised its veto. How- Creative Commons license.
The International Criminal ritory. Combined with pressure by Israel’s response by putting
Court has the jurisdiction to in- from local and international Gaza in a state of siege, which
vestigate potential war crimes communities, a warning of this it has described as appearing to
in Israel and Palestine. Pales- kind could have a temporary be “collective punishment”.
tine joined the court in 2015. effect, as it did in this case. But, Human Rights Watch has
In 2021, the then prosecutor, in the event, even though dip- reported “multiple airbursts
Fatou Bensouda, announced lomats from many states have of artillery-fired white phos-
the opening of an investiga- tried to discourage the eviction, phorus over the Gaza City port
tion into crimes alleged to have the Israeli government still and two rural locations along
been committed since June 13 wants to proceed. the Israel-Lebanon border”,
2014 in the West Bank, Gaza Second – and more impor- which it has attributed to Isra-
Strip and East Jerusalem, the tantly – Khan told Reuters press el. This could potentially be a
date when Palestine declared agency on October 12 that the war crime, but Israel denies the
acceptance of ICC jurisdiction. actions of both Hamas militants allegation.
Between then and early 2023, in Israel and Israeli forces in the On the Palestinian side, the
more than 3,000 people have Gaza Strip fall under the juris- ICC could investigate Hamas,
been killed in Palestine, and diction of the ICC, even though Islamic Jihad or any of the
more than 200 in Israel. Israel is not a member state. “It’s armed militant factions for al-
What the ICC can do horrendous what’s going on, legations of war crimes in Pales-
Give the current situation what we’re seeing on our televi- tine or Israel. On the Israeli side,
in Israel and Gaza, the ICC sion screens. There has to be a the ICC could investigate the
could take two measures. Tira- legal process to determine crim- leader of the government, Ben-
na Hasan, the director of glob- inal responsibility,” he added. jamin Netanyahu, and other of-
al rights campaigner Human Challenges and investiga- ficials who could have commit-
Rights Watch, has written to tions ted crimes in Palestine. Back in International Criminal Court, The Hague (VYSOTSKY/WIKIMEDIA COMMONS, CC BY-SA 4.0)

www.canadianinquirer.net
 14
Greta Thunberg is far from the only
neurodivergent climate activist – many who
see the world differently also want to change it
BY LOUISE TAYLOR,
Queen's University Belfast
The Conversation
Amid her calls for govern-
ments to act on climate change,
Swedish activist Greta Thun-
berg has spoken openly about
her Asperger’s syndrome and
obsessive-compulsive disorder.
She is not the only environmen-
tal campaigner to speak about
being neurodivergent (having
a neurological condition or dis-
ability) – something Thunberg
describes as her “superpower”.
In the UK, naturalists Chris
Packham and Dara McAnulty
have both discussed their au-
tism. Packham has said that it
has been “enormously benefi-
cial” to his career.
In my doctoral research, I
interviewed 23 youth activists,
conservation workers and en-
vironmentalists to examine the
link between nature experienc-
es and mental health in an era of
climate breakdown. My findings
shed light on the motivations
and intentions of neurodiver-
gent people who work in the en-
vironmental and conservation
sector, as well as those who are
drawn to climate activism.
Many of my participants had
been diagnosed with mental
health, psychiatric and neu-
rological conditions including
autism, ADHD and bipolar dis-
order. They reported finding
community and a sense of pur-
pose in the environmental ac-
tivism movement and through
a connection with nature.
Autistic traits and activism
In a recent BBC documen-
tary about his life with autism,
Packham said that some of the
PH inks new..
❰❰ 8 The 2024-2028
UNSDCF is one of
the first frameworks
signed under the reformed UN
development system.
The reform of the UN devel-
opment system (UNDS) be-
World News
Greta Thunberg (ANDY BOSSELMAN, STREETSBLOG DENVER/FLICKR, CC BY 2.0)
campaigners he works with “ei-
ther are [autistic] or they have
traits of autism, with an aggra-
vated sense of injustice and a
deep-rooted desire to tell the
absolute truth”.
This, he said, can be an asset
during turbulent times: “Autis-
tic people have an enormous
amount to offer in times of cri-
sis – sometimes clear thinking,
clear speaking, can be enor-
mously beneficial.”
Links between autistic traits
and environmentalism are still
being studied. Some research
has suggested that mental
health conditions may present
barriers to pro-environmental
action, for example because of
high costs or difficulty in sus-
taining lifestyle changes.
But for many neurodivergent
people, their condition can en-
courage their activism. As a
neurodivergent therapist and
gan in May 2018 and involves
a broad repositioning of the
UNDS to help countries around
the world achieve the SDGs.
Under the framework, the Phil-
ippine government and the UN
have agreed to work on three over-
researcher, I have found that
many of the people I work with
are sensitive to external events
and situations. People with
autism or ADHD often report
experiencing the world more
intensely than those who are
considered neurotypical. Some
say this heightened sensitivity
applies to pain, suffering and
injustices – making them like-
ly to take action to manage the
discomfort they experience. As
one of the young activists I in-
terviewed said:
I suffer from depression and have
mental health issues, and some of
that is caused by the climate … I just
really want to get this solved … as
the days go on I feel more and more,
I don’t know, hopeless at times. But I
still want to go on strike.
Certain types of autism in-
volve hyperfixations – special-
ised areas of knowledge and in-
terest that border on obsession.
arching strategic outcomes.
These include human capital
development, inclusion, and
resilience building; sustainable
economy economic develop-
ment, decent work, and inno-
vation; and climate action, en-
www.canadianinquirer.net
Many neurodivergent people
have a thirst for knowledge and
desire to learn everything on a
subject. When this is applied to
science and climate, it can drive
a passion for activism.
Challenging the status quo
Autistic people often struggle
to adhere to or understand so-
cial and cultural norms. This can
put them at greater risk of social
ridicule, or being described as
rude or antisocial. Along with
this is often an inability to com-
prehend or respect hierarchy
and authority. These traits may
also be a strength in activism,
where directly criticising and
challenging powerful people
and political systems can be a
daunting prospect.
Many neurodivergent people
believe strongly in equality and
fairness, and reject systems where
people are not all treated equally.
People on the spectrum may
experience extreme psycho-
logical and emotional distress
when demands are placed upon
them that they do not under-
stand or agree with. In schools,
neurodivergent children need
special assistance to adhere to
the requirements of the educa-
tion system.
Many people on the autism
spectrum have heightened lev-
els of empathy and compassion
for those who are suffering or
in danger. Similarly, many en-
vironmentalists have an un-
shakeable belief and desire to
live a good life and believe in
equality and fairness. For both
of these groups, a strong sense
of justice can be a motivator for
how they live and behave.
Combating climate anxiety
As awareness of neurodiver-
gence increases, more people,
vironmental sustainability, and
disaster-resilience.
The cooperation framework
between the Philippines and
the UN was negotiated by the
Department of Foreign Affairs,
the NEDA and the Office of the
OCTOBER 27, 2023 FRIDAY
and notably children, are being
diagnosed with conditions such
as autism and ADHD. In North-
ern Ireland, where I conducted
my research, the rates of autism
diagnoses among school-aged
children increased from 1.2% in
2009 to 4.5 % in 2021.
Neurodivergent people are
often more vulnerable and sus-
ceptible to experiencing mental
illnesses. This can include so-
cial anxiety, depression as well
as climate anxiety.
The people I spoke to in my
research indicated that activ-
ism can be an antidote to feel-
ings of distress, discomfort
and hopelessness. Activism
and pro-environmental actions
were essential coping tech-
niques for those who cared for
the environment and non-hu-
man world. It helped people
feel less helpless, giving them a
sense of purpose and hope for
the future.
As Thunberg has said of her-
self, activism is a way to stay
well in a time of climate and
ecological breakdown.
Thunberg has achieved in-
ternational recognition and
acclaim for her work. Like her,
many other neurodivergent
climate activists are acting not
out of desire for fame, but be-
cause they have a strong sense
of justice and they believe it is
the right thing to do. We can
all learn from the many young
neurodivergent people who,
in spite of their conditions (or
perhaps because of them), are
striving to make the world a
better place. ■
This article is republished
from The Conversation under a
Creative Commons license.
UN Resident Coordinator in
the Philippines, in consulta-
tion with relevant government
agencies and stakeholders. ■
FRIDAY OCTOBER 27, 2023
A twist in Indonesia’s presidential election
does not bode well for the country’s fragile
democracy
BY TIM LINDSEY, The
University of Melbourne,
SIMON BUTT, University of
Sydney
The Conversation
On Valentine’s Day next year,
Indonesia will go to the polls
for its most important election
in ten years.
The incumbent president,
Joko Widodo (known as “Joko-
wi”), has built a broad support-
ing coalition of political parties
and oligarchs, which has deliv-
ered stability but also power and
wealth for a small elite. He has
also presided over a period of in-
creasing democratic regression,
marked by an erosion of the in-
dependence of institutions like
the anti-corruption commission,
inaction on claims of human
rights violations, and litigation to
silence critics of the government.
Despite this, Jokowi remains
immensely popular, with some
opinion polls indicating that
80% of citizens support him. He
would likely win again if he ran.
However, after two five-year
terms, he is constitutionally
barred from a third, and propos-
als to change the rules to keep
him in the palace have failed.
This is of deep concern to
his political allies, who are re-
luctant to lose their privileged
positions. So, for many months,
politicians and oligarchs have
been manoeuvring to find a way
to keep their grip on power.
A former rival turned ally
Their solution now seems to
be aligning behind the minister
for defence, Prabowo Subianto.
At first glance, he is an un-
likely choice: a cashiered gener-
al and former son-in-law of the
authoritarian Soeharto, who
ruled Indonesia for more than
three decades. Prabowo has
been accused of human rights
abuses, including in Timor and
Papua, and alleged involvement
in the abduction and murders
of activists around the time of
the collapse of Soeharto’s New
Order regime in 1998.
Prabowo never faced trial, al-
though several of his men were
tried and convicted. The allega-
tions against him meant he was,
for years, denied a visa to enter
the US. He has denied the alle-
gations against him.
More recently, Prabowo ran
against Jokowi in two bitter-
ly fought election campaigns
(2014 and 2019), which polar-
ised Indonesia.
However, Prabowo is a mem-
ber of an elite family, and, despite
his previous election losses, can
be expected to poll well. After
he lost in 2019, Jokowi effective-
ly co-opted him by offering him
a seat in cabinet. He has been a
compliant member of the admin-
istration ever since. Now he is Jo-
kowi’s preferred candidate.
After months of uncertain-
ty, Jokowi and his circle have
come out strongly in support
for Prabowo, with Jokowi’s son,
Gibran Rakabuming Raka, an-
nounced as his vice presidential
running mate in recent days.
A controversial court decision
This has sparked enormous
controversy, for two reasons.
First, Jokowi is a member
of former President Megawati
Soekarnoputri’s PDI-P party,
which backs another candidate,
Ganjar Pranowo. Prabowo and
Ganjar are running almost neck
and neck, with Ganjar some-
times slightly ahead. If Joko-
wi’s supporters now give their
votes to Prabowo, this might be
enough to beat Ganjar.
Megawati is sure to see this
as a massive betrayal by Joko-
wi, and she and her party will do
whatever they can to stop Pra-
bowo and Gibran.
Second, the 2017 Election
Law says candidates for presi-
dential or vice presidential of-
fice must be at least 40 years old.
Gibran is only 36. Last week,
this obstacle was conveniently
overcome when the Constitu-
tional Court ruled there was an
exception to this age limit if the
candidate had previously held
elected office as a regional head.
Gibran happens to be the may-
or of Solo and so is now eligible.
Knocking out a statutory age
limit for candidates might not
seem a big issue, but this case
has caused a huge scandal in In-
donesia.
The problem is the court’s
chief justice, Anwar Usman,
also happens to be Jokowi’s
brother-in-law and Gibran’s
uncle. The conflict of interest is
obvious. But Anwar refused to
recuse himself.
This was significant because
the case was decided by five
judges to four. Anwar had cast
the deciding vote.
Reversal of three similar cases
Legally, the most controver-
sial part of the decision is its
reversal of three decisions the
court read out earlier on the
same day about precisely the
same minimum age require-
ment. In those cases, the court
had maintained the minimum
age limit for presidential and
vice presidential candidates.
As one of the dissenting judg-
es in Gibran’s case pointed out,
Anwar did not attend a meeting
of judges last month to decide
the three other cases. In that
meeting, the judges voted by a
majority of six to two to main-
tain the minimum age limit.
However, two days later,
Anwar did attend a meeting to
decide the Gibran case, during
which the judges voted to re-
move the requirement. As dis-
senting judge Arief Hidayat
wrote in his judgment, Anwar
www.canadianinquirer.net
World News
claimed he had not attended
the first meeting to discuss the
three other cases because of
“health reasons”, not out of a
conflict of interest.
The court’s decisions in all
four cases were read out the
same day, and, to the surprise
of many, the final decision over-
ruled the others.
The implication here is clear.
When the chief justice did not
attend the judges’ meeting on
the initial three cases, the court
was clearly in favour of main-
taining the minimum age (and
thus blocking Gibran). But when
he did attend the final meeting, a
number of judges switched sides
and changed their decisions.
This reeks of political manip-
ulation and interference. Pro-
fessor Saldi Isra, perhaps the
most-respected judge on the
Constitutional Court for his ex-
pertise and integrity, expressed
it this way in his dissenting
judgment:
I am confused, I am really con-
fused how to start my dissenting
opinion. Because since setting
foot in the Constitutional Court
building as a Constitutional
Court judge on 11 April 2017 […]
this is the first time I have experi-
enced an event so ‘extraordinari-
ly strange’ and which can be said
to defy reasonable expectation:
The court changing its position
15
and attitude in a flash.
The court has now paved
the way for Gibran to run in
the election. Critics joke the
court’s name should be changed
to “Mahkamah Keluarga” (the
“Family Court”).
Undermining the court’s
independence
The Constitutional Court is
Indonesia’s first and only court
with the power to review stat-
utes. It was a key institution
that emerged from the reforms
after Soeharto’s fall. But many
now see this decision as mark-
ing the end of the court’s in-
dependence. This is because it
comes against a background of
other obvious attempts to un-
dermine its independence.
Earlier this year, the court’s
serving deputy chief justice, As-
wanto, was removed by the na-
tional legislature for perceived
disloyalty. In fact, all he did –
along with other judges – was
raise questions about the con-
stitutionality of a law that was
enacted without adequate pub-
lic participation. This just hap-
pened to be Jokowi’s signature
Job Creation “Omnibus” Law.
Aswanto’s removal put the
court’s other judges on notice
that they could share his fate if
they went against the govern-
ment, particularly in big cases.
Many suspect Aswanto’s removal
was front of mind for the judges
in Gibran’s minimum age case.
While there have yet to be
any polls conducted since Gi-
bran’s entry into the race, many
expect the court’s decision
means Prabowo will emerge as
the favourite. And if he and Gi-
bran win, Jokowi and the elite
group around him may well ex-
pect to extend their influence
and privilege for years to come.
However, the decision may
also spell the end of Constitu-
tional Court as an independent
check and balance on Indonesia’s
increasingly powerful rulers.
That does not bode well for the
country’s fragile democracy. ■
This article is republished
from The Conversation under a
Creative Commons license.
 16
Even if Israel can completely eliminate Hamas,
does it have a long-term plan for Gaza?
BY IAN PARMETER,
Australian National University
The Conversation
Not counting periodic
cross-border skirmishes, Isra-
el has fought three major wars
against Hamas since withdraw-
ing its forces from Gaza in 2005
– in 2008, 2014 and 2021. Each
involved limited ground incur-
sions, with Israeli soldiers in
Gaza for about a fortnight.
In the past couple weeks,
Israel has put together a huge
force to mount another ground
invasion in retaliation for the
Hamas cross-border attacks
that killed around 1,400 Is-
raelis on October 7. The Isra-
el Defence Forces (IDF) have
called up their entire armoured
corps – more than 1,000 tanks.
Around 360,000 reservists will
also join the force’s full-time
personnel of about 170,000.
The operation is shaping up
to be Israel’s biggest since its
invasion of Lebanon in 1982,
which was aimed at driving the
Palestine Liberation Organisa-
tion (PLO) from its base there.
The Israelis succeeded in that
objective. But an unforeseen
consequence of that war was
the development of the Shia
militant organisation Hezbol-
lah. With Iran’s support and
tutelage, Hezbollah has become
a far stronger enemy for Israel
than the PLO had ever been.
It’s a truism that wars have
unintended consequences. And
in the current conflict with
Hamas, it’s not clear what the
end game might be for Israel.
Why a ground invasion is
so risky
The difficulties of a Gaza
ground assault are clear enough.
Fighting street to street in a con-
fined, highly urbanised environ-
ment will be hideously difficult
for Israel’s forces. Hamas also
has the advantage of an exten-
sive tunnel network estimat-
ed at up to 500 kilometres in
WPS incident puts..
❰❰ 7 CCG’s reckless maneu-
vers “were not only
provocative but also
blatant act of bullying that must
World News
length, enabling its militants to
attack and then disappear.
Israel can counter these chal-
lenges to some extent with the
use of robots and drones. But
night vision technology will be
ineffective in the total darkness
of tunnels, as these devices re-
quire faint ambient light to work.
Israel has also warned the
roughly 1.1 million civilians in
the northern half of Gaza to
move to the southern half. Alto-
gether, the United Nations says
some 1.4 million people in Gaza
have been displaced so far in the
conflict, with nearly 580,000
sheltering in UN shelters.
It’s unclear how many people
are still in the north. Israel has
warned that those who remain
could be classed as sympathisers
with “a terrorist organisation”.
Inevitably, there will be ap-
palling civilian casualties. Not
all will necessarily be the IDF’s
fault, but the default position of
the region and those in the glob-
al community opposed to Isra-
el’s action will be to blame Israel.
Another challenge is the es-
timated 200 hostages taken by
Hamas during its raid into Is-
rael. Hamas says it has spread
them around Gaza. Almost cer-
tainly, some will be in the north-
ern war zone. Hamas claims
22 have already been killed by
Israeli bombs. Some relatives
of the hostages are criticising
the Netanyahu government for
not giving sufficient priority to
freeing their loved ones.
When the fighting stops:
no good options
What Israel intends to do
if and when it has secured the
northern half of Gaza is not
clear. The coastal strip is al-
ready facing a “catastrophic”
humanitarian situation, ac-
cording to the UN. And in terms
of administering the territory,
there are few good options.
1) A military reoccupation
of Gaza, as Israel did from
1967 to 2005.
This would constitute a huge
be denounced, not only by us but
by the international community.”
Senator Francis Tolentino
said the collisions show China's
military burden and expose
IDF personnel to violence and
kidnapping. US President Joe
Biden has warned reoccupation
would be a big mistake.
2) Eliminate Hamas’ se-
nior leadership, declare vic-
tory, then leave.
Such a victory would almost
certainly be short-term. Other
low-level members of Hamas
would take pride in coming for-
ward to reconstitute the group.
Or another group, such as Pal-
estinian Islamic Jihad, might
fill the vacuum. Israel would
not be able to control who or
what that entity might be.
3) Call on the secular Fa-
tah party that now controls
the Palestinian Authority in
the West Bank to take con-
trol in Gaza.
That is scarcely viable. Fa-
tah lost a civil war to Hamas in
2007 and there’s no indication
the Palestinian Authority’s re-
turn would be acceptable to Pal-
estinians there. Moreover, the
authority’s leader, Mahmoud
Abbas, was elected to a four-
year term in 2005 – and is still in
charge. As such, he lacks legiti-
macy, even in the West Bank.
4) Administration of Gaza
by non-aligned local leaders.
This is a pipe dream. Even
if such figures could be found,
Gazans would almost certain-
disregard for international law
and basic maritime safety.
He called for an investigation
under the International Con-
www.canadianinquirer.net
ly see them as collaborators
with the Israelis, given their
role would be to keep the strip’s
hardliners under control.
5) Administration of Gaza by
a non-Palestinian Arab force.
Again, this is not feasible.
The leaders of potential Arab
contributors to such a force,
such as Egypt, Jordan or Saudi
Arabia, would not want to be
seen as policing Palestinians on
behalf of Israel.
6) Administration of Gaza
by a non-Arab or United Na-
tions force.
Given the enormous risks, it’s
very hard to see any non-Arab
countries embracing this idea.
A UN peacekeeping force would
require not only Israeli approval,
but a UN Security Council reso-
lution at a time when Russia and
China rarely agree with the three
Western permanent members.
Israel also contends Hezbol-
lah has impeded the UN peace-
keeping force in Lebanon from
carrying out its mandate, pre-
venting it from stopping mili-
tant attacks. After the Hamas
attacks, Israel would be un-
likely to entrust its security to
peacekeepers with little incen-
tive to put their lives on the line
for its sake.
‘Mowing the grass’
For too long, Israel has be-
lieved the Gaza imbroglio could
vention for the Safety of Life
at Sea (SOLAS) and the Code
for the Investigation of Marine
Casualties and Incidents of the
OCTOBER 27, 2023 FRIDAY
be contained. However, the
population has grown so large,
this is no longer the case.
With a growth rate of just
over 2% per year, its population
is expected to be three million
by 2030.
Gaza is also incredibly young,
with a median age of 19.6, com-
pared with the global average
of 30.5. Almost half the adult
population is unemployed, and
Palestinians in Gaza are four
times more likely to be living in
poverty than those in the West
Bank. This is a recipe for social
upheaval and radicalisation.
As two Israeli journalists,
Efraim Inbar and Eitan Shamir,
noted in a perceptive analysis
of Israel’s 2014 Gaza war, the
Israeli military describes its as-
saults on Gaza as “mowing the
grass” – acting to punish Hamas
severely for its aggressive be-
haviour and degrading its mili-
tary capabilities.
The aim was to achieve re-
alistic and, therefore, limited
political and military goals. It
was part of a long-term strategy
of attrition, which would have
a temporary deterrent effect in
order to create periods of quiet
along the border.
Eliminating Hamas altogeth-
er, the authors said, was not an
“attainable military objective”.
Even if Hamas rule can be
terminated, the alternatives are
Israeli rule, the rule of more rad-
ical groups, or chaos.
Against an implacable, well-en-
trenched, non-state enemy like
the Hamas, Israel simply needs to
‘mow the grass’ once in a while to
degrade the enemy’s capabilities.
From a humanitarian perspec-
tive, this phrase is objectionable.
The question, now, is whether
Israeli President Benjamin Ne-
tanyahu will attempt a different
strategy this time. We’ll find out
in the coming weeks. ■
This article is republished
from The Conversation under a
Creative Commons license.
International Maritime Or-
ganization. (with reports from
Filane Mikee Cervantes/Leonel
Abasola/PNA) ■
FRIDAY OCTOBER 27, 2023 World News 17

Israeli not looking for war International

with Lebanon: President migration at record-
Herzog high level in
ANADOLU
Philippine News Agency 2022, says OECD
JERUSALEM – Israeli Pres-
ident Isaac Herzog on Tuesday
said Israel is not seeking a war
on its northern borders with
the Lebanese group Hezbollah.
Addressing a press conference
with his French counterpart Em-
manuel Macron who is in Israel
on a solidarity visit, Herzog said:
“Hezbollah is playing with fire.
I want to make clear that we are
not looking for a confrontation
on our northern border.”
“But if Hezbollah drags us
into a war, it should be clear
that Lebanon will pay the
price,” Herzog warned.
Border clashes between Hez-
bollah and Israeli forces followed
the conflict in Gaza, which has
been under Israeli bombard-
ment and a blockade since Oct. 7.
The war began when the Pal-
estinian group Hamas initiat-
ed Operation Al-Aqsa Flood, a
multi-pronged surprise attack
that included a barrage of rock-
et launches and infiltrations
into Israel by land, sea and air.
It said the incursion was in
retaliation for the storming
of Al-Aqsa Mosque and grow-
Israeli President Isaac Herzog (HAIM ZACH / GOVERNMENT PRESS OFFICE/WIKIMEDIA
COMMONS, CC BY-SA 3.0)
ing violence by Israeli settlers
against Palestinians.
The Israeli military then
launched Operation Swords of
Iron against Hamas targets in
the Gaza Strip.
The Palestinian death toll
from ongoing Israeli airstrikes
❱❱ PAGE 20 Israeli not looking
ANADOLU
Philippine News Agency
ISTANBUL – International
migration flows to the Organi-
zation for Economic Coopera-
tion and Development (OECD)
region and labor market
reached a record-high level last
year, the group said Monday.
Permanent migration to
the organization's countries
reached 6.1 million in 2022,
up 26 percent from 2021, and
reaching the highest level since
2005, it said in a press release.
"15 out of the 38 OECD coun-
tries registered in 2022 their high-
est levels of permanent migration
over the past 15 years," it said.
Growing labor migration was
one contributing factor, as mi-
grant workers have helped low-
er labor and skill shortages in
OECD countries, it added.
Asylum applications in its region
were also at a record high, it said,
adding: "Over two million new appli-
cations were lodged in OECD coun-
tries in 2022, well above the previ-
ous record of 1.7 million in 2015 and
almost twice the 2021 level."
The Russia-Ukraine war has
caused millions of Ukrainian
refugees to migrate to OECD
countries, it said.
"Germany and Poland are host-
ing the highest numbers in ab-
solute terms, while Estonia, the
Czech Republic and Lithuania are
hosting the highest numbers of
refugees from Ukraine as a share
of their population," it added. ■

Your Wild Ride Starts in a 2023 Bronco Sport

The Bronco® SUV debuted in 1966 roaring with life. It was a rough, tough, go-anywhere, do-anything
rugged utility vehicle.
Start your outdoor adventure in a 2023 Bronco Sport. Gear up for your wild ride and take on any terrain with up to 7 available
G.O.A.T. Modes. The Bronco Sport SUV further takes you to the fun. Water-Fording capability,* impressive ground clearance
and a High-Performance, Off-Road, Stability, Suspension (HOSS) System help make every drive a joy ride.
Right now, get 3.99% APR Purchase Financing For up to 72 months on all 2023 Bronco Sport Models.
Visit your Toronto Area Ford Dealer today or Fordtoronto.ca for more details.

Learn more at Fordtoronto.ca

* Water fording is prohibited and illegal in certain jurisdictions. Obey local laws. Try to avoid water higher than the bottom of the hubs and proceed slowly.
Refer to your Owner’s Manual for detailed information regarding driving through water. Ford is committed to the preservation of the environment and treading lightly.

www.canadianinquirer.net
18
Entertainment
Adele called herself a ‘borderline alcoholic’.
But is that a real thing?
BY NICOLE LEE, Curtin
University
The Conversation
British singer-songwriter
Adele says she has quit drink-
ing, describing herself as a “bor-
derline alcoholic” when she was
in her 20s.
She joins a growing number
of people who are trying to quit
or reduce their drinking.
But what does “borderline
alcoholic” mean and is it a real
thing?
It’s not all-or-nothing any
more
In the early days of alco-
hol treatment, people used to
think of problems with alcohol
as all-or-nothing. They used to
believe there was something
different about people who
had problems with alcohol and
those who didn’t. That’s how
the idea of the “addictive per-
sonality” came about.
But now we think of drinking
on a continuum. It goes from
"It's Showtime's" Imogen, Argus, Kulot, Jaze,
and Lucas revive popular tunes
ABS-CBN
Including Dalandan Shake,
Pamela, and Totoy Bibbo
"It's Showtime's" "Isip Bata"
kiddie panel Imogen Cantong,
Argus Aspiras, Princess Kath-
ryn “Kulot” Caponpon, Jaze
Capili, and Lucas Landicho
have released their rendition of
various classic children tunes.
From the viral success of "Da
Da Da" and "Mini Ms. U," Imogen
continues her stride as a young
artist with her own version of
Vhong Navarro and Makisig Mo-
not drinking at all to depen-
dent drinking. And people can
move up and down that contin-
uum at different points in their
lives. The old saying “once an
alcoholic, always an alcoholic”
doesn’t apply any more.
How much is it OK to drink?
The Australian national alco-
hol guidelines say healthy men
and women should drink no
more than ten standard drinks
a week and no more than four
a day. So that’s about two to
three drinks three to four times
a week. Most Australians drink
within these guidelines.
If you drink over those guide-
lines you are more likely to ex-
perience a number of long- and
short-term problemsincluding
alcohol dependence, cancers,
diabetes and heart disease. The
risk of problems increases the
more you drink and the more
frequently you drink.
About 25% of Australians
drink at risky levels and around
6% drink at such high levels
that they would probably be de-
rales' "Dalandan Shake."
Argus also revived another
Vhong Navarro hit with his ren-
dition of “Totoy Bibbo," which
was both composed and pro-
duced by Christian Martinez.
Meanwhile, Kulot brings
a modern and youthful twist
to Awra Briguela’s “Clap Clap
Clap.” ABS-CBN Music cre-
ative director Jonathan Manalo
and Star Pop label head Roque
“Rox” Santos composed the
track that reflects Kulot’s vi-
brant sound.
Jaze also brings back the
Vhong Navarro classic novelty
pendent. Daily drinking is asso-
ciated with dependence.
So when is someone an alco-
holic or a borderline alcoholic?
The term “alcoholic” is rare-
ly used by health professionals
any more. It can make people
believe there is nothing they
can do about the problems they
might be experiencing. Histori-
cally, that’s what the early treat-
ment providers believed in the
1930s and that myth has con-
tinued. But some people find
identifying as an “alcoholic”
helpful to maintain their goal of
quitting drinking.
Health professionals have
never used the term “border-
line alcoholic”. But in describing
herself that way Adele is real-
ly saying alcohol is having too
much of a negative impact on
her life, and like many others has
decided to do something posi-
tive about it by taking a break.
Which terms do we use now?
Now, we tend to talk about
“dependence” on a continu-
um from mild to moderate to
song “Pamela” while Lucas en-
courages listeners to “Learn The
1-2-3” in his first single, which
was written by Jonathan, Rox,
and Annabelle Regalado-Borja.
These songs will be part of
"Isip Bata: The album" that will
have a total of 11 tracks, including
"Ang Kulit," "Chicken Dance,"
Mag-exercise Tayo," "Sayaw ni
Vhong," "Step 1,2,3," and "The
Teacher and the Pupils."
Check out their songs by
streaming it on ABS-CBN Mu-
sic YouTube channel and on
various music platforms. For
more details, follow Star Music
www.canadianinquirer.net
severe. We also talk about the
range of problems other than
dependence that people can
experience, which also lie on a
continuum.
The threshold for whether
someone is a problem or depen-
dent drinker is not just how much
they drink (although that is im-
portant), but also how severe the
alcohol-related problems are.
Problems with alcohol don’t
always correlate with con-
sumption. Some people can
drink a moderate amount and
have a lot of problems and oth-
ers can drink a lot and appear
not to have many negative con-
sequences.
I’m worried about my
drinking. What next?
If you are wondering if you
are drinking too much you can
check online with a free and
anonymous assessment.
Signs you may have a prob-
lem with alcohol include:
• having trouble stopping
once you start drinking
• wanting or trying to cut
(ABS-CBN)
on Facebook, Twitter, Insta-
gram, Tiktok, and YouTube.
For updates, follow @abscb-
OCTOBER 27, 2023 FRIDAY
back but slipping up frequently
• spending a lot of time drink-
ing or recovering from drinking
• having cravings to drink al-
cohol, such as if you come home
from work and reach straight
for a drink
• dropping the ball at work,
study or home because you’ve
been drinking, such as not be-
ing able to do your work be-
cause you’re hungover
• continuing to drink alcohol
even though you know it’s caus-
ing problems with your health,
friends, work or relationships
• giving up or reducing social
and work activities to drink instead
• drinking when it’s not safe, such
as before driving or swimming.
If you find you aren’t getting
the same effects from alcohol as
you used to or you need more
and more alcohol to get the
same effect, you have probably
developed a dependence.
Sometimes people who are
very dependent can experience
❱❱ PAGE 30 Adele called herself
npr on Facebook, Twitter, Ins-
tagram, TikTok, or visit www.
abs-cbn.com/newsroom. ■
FRIDAY OCTOBER 27, 2023
How the Playboy bunny suit went
from uniform to Halloween costume
BY DAISY MCMANAMAN,
University of York
The Conversation
In the 2004 film, Mean Girls,
Cady (Lindsay Lohan) is invited
to a Halloween party. Previous-
ly homeschooled, Cady dresses
as a zombie bride, but is shocked
to find her peers wearing much
more suggestive costumes. “In
girl world”, Cady muses, “Hal-
loween is the one time a year
when a girl can dress like a total
slut, and no other girls can say
anything about it.”
One of those girls, Regina
George (Rachel McAdams), is
wearing one of the most cultural-
ly significant costumes of the last
decade: the Playboy bunny suit.
Originally designed in 1960 as
a uniform for female workers of
the Playboy clubs, the Playboy
bunny suit was the first service
uniform to be patented in the
US. Yet despite this, the cos-
tume has been replicated and
sold by numerous fashion retail-
ers (sometimes attracting legal
action by Playboy), becoming
one of the most prevalent fancy
dress and Halloween costumes.
Every October the instant-
ly recognisable Playboy bunny
suit – with it’s corseted body-
suit, ears, tail, cuffs, collar, bow
tie, and name-tag rosette on the
hip – is the costume of choice
for celebrities such as Kylie
Jenner and Paris Hilton, and
normies alike.
The history of the Playboy
bunny suit
The bunny suit’s origin has
been subject to much misin-
formation. It has been falsely
reported that the suit was de-
signed by Zelda Wynn Valdes,
known for her figure-hugging
designs for clients such as Ella
Fitzgerald and Josephine Baker.
Though the story that it was
created by an under-recognised
black designer is compelling,
the truth is that many different
hands went into the creation of
Lifestyle
the suit.
While Wynn Valdes did create
bunny suits for the New York
Playboy Club, the original con-
cept came from Ilsa Taurins, the
girlfriend of a former Playboy
promotions director. Her moth-
er sewed the first prototype.
Since it’s debut in 1960, the
bunny suit has been seen in nu-
merous colours and patterns
– even once made entirely of
chocolate – but the design has
remained largely unchanged.
In 1963, journalist and activ-
ist Gloria Steinem spent two
weeks working undercover as a
bunny in the New York Playboy
Club researching her two part
exposé, A Bunny’s Tale.
Steinem critiqued Playboy’s
treatment of bunnies, drawing
attention to the discomfort of
long shifts wearing the cos-
tume, violating examinations
by a Playboy-affiliated doctor
and the egregious merit/de-
merit system laid out in the em-
ployee manual.
Bunnies could receive de-
merits for a long list of per-
ceived errors, including un-
kempt hair, chewing gum or
incorrectly bent bunny ears.
But not everyone agreed.
Kathryn Leigh Scott, author of
The Bunny Years (1998), worked
alongside Steinem during her
undercover stint. She claims
that the reality of working as a
bunny was more nuanced than
Steinem portrayed. According
to Scott, the club provided an
opportunity to travel and earn
a decent wage in a time where
there were less opportunities
for women in the workforce.
The last of the original US
Playboy clubs closed in 1988
and attempts to reopen them in
Las Vegas and New York have
been short-lived, but the bunny
remains a contentious subject
of feminist debate.
In the recent docuseries Se-
crets of Playboy (2022), former
bunnies came forward with ac-
counts of sexual harassment
19
and assault in Playboy clubs. attend a bunny casting. costume choice. I became an ex-
However, many women who Unlike Steinem, my attempt aggerated version of myself. The
have worn the costume both to go undercover proved fruit- ears and heels made me stand
for work and leisure have also less. On reflection, I wanted to taller while the corseting exag-
claimed that they find the Play- go through the Playboy bunny gerated my feminine features.
boy bunny suit sexually em- casting process because I want- Regina George made a smart
powering. ed to know what it felt like to Halloween costume choice.
The rise of the ‘sexy’ Hal- wear the suit. For me, the Playboy bunny rep-
loween costume In 2021, my friend Amber resents feminine sexuality in
The rise in popularity of the Sylvia and I set out to create it’s most playful and heightened
Playboy bunny as a Hallow- the bunny suit of my dreams. form. And considering its history
een outfit can be linked to the Embellished with over 10,000 – originally crafted for the enjoy-
increase in popularity of the rhinestones, my suit celebrates ment of male Playboy club pa-
“sexy” Halloween costume. the countless women of Playboy, trons – it’s a little spooky, too. ■
In the US, modern adult Hal- who continue to inspire both my
loween costumes entered the research and art practices. This article is republished
cultural zietgeist in the 1970s. Dressed as a Playboy bunny, from The Conversation under a
Writing for Time magazine, I realised why – over 60 years Creative Commons license.
journalist Laura Stampler cred- on – it continues to be a popular
its this to LGBTQ+ Halloween
parades, which encouraged out-
landish and creative costumes.
By the 1990s and 2000s, Hal-
loween costumes reflected the
the rise of postfeminist, overtly
sexualised media representa-
tions of women. Sexy costumes
began to dominate Halloween
parties, offering a campy reflec-
tion of pop culture.
Despite changing times,
browse any website selling
Halloween costumes and vari-
ations of the Playboy bunny
costume still pop up. This con-
tinuing popularity could partly
be due to Playboy’s lasting cul-
tural impact (the brand turned
70 this year). Or it could be due
to a perceived distinction be-
tween the iconic “bunnies” and
the Playboy brand.
The costume’s appearance in
media from anime such as Drag-
on Ball, to films such as Legally
Blonde and Bridget Jones’s Dia-
ry has led to the Playboy bunny
becoming a pop culture icon in
her own right.
Embodying the Playboy
bunny
Call me a bad feminist, but
I love the Playboy bunny cos-
tume. In November 2017, while
studying for my MFA in Chi-
cago at an institution that was
once gifted the original Playboy
Mansion, I flew to New York to
www.canadianinquirer.net
 20
How much time do kids spend on devices –
playing games, watching videos, texting
and using the phone?
BY DAVID ROSENBERG,
Wayne State University,
NATALIA SZURA, Wayne
State University
The Conversation
How many hours does the
average American spend on
devices each year? – Maxwell
P., age 10
Think about your favorite de-
vices – your smartphone, laptop,
tablet, computer or console – the
things you use to play cool games,
watch hilarious videos and con-
nect and chat with friends.
Many young people spend a
lot of free time looking at them.
Turns out that teens spend an
average of 8½ hours on screens
per day, and tweens – that’s ages
8 to 12 – are not far behind, at
5½ hours daily.
Keep in mind those num-
bers are for only social media,
gaming and texting. They do
not include the time that kids
used screens for schoolwork or
homework.
What’s more, much of the
time taken up by social media
and texting is apparently not
even enjoyable, much less pro-
ductive. A 2017 study of teens
ages 13 to 18 suggests they
spend most of those hours on
the phone in their bedroom,
alone and distressed.
These lonely feelings cor-
relate with the rise in the use
of digital media. In 2022, 95%
of teens had smartphones com-
pared with only 23% in 2011.
And 46% of today’s teens say
they use the internet almost
constantly, compared with 24%
of teenagers who said the same
in 2014 and 2015.
Our team of psychiatrists
who treat young people with
Israeli not looking..
❰❰ 17 on the Gaza Strip has
climbed to 5,087, the
Health Ministry in the
blockaded enclave said.
“The fatalities include 2,055
children, 1,119 women and 217
Lifestyle
digital addiction have many pa-
tients who spend over 40 hours
per week on screens – and
some, up to 80 hours.
Think about it: If you spend
“just” an average of 50 hours
per week on devices from ages
13 to 18 – the total time you will
spend on screens equates to
more than 12 years of school!
Find the right balance
All this is not to say that ev-
erything about devices is bad. In
this digital age, people embark
on exciting journeys through
the screens of their devices.
Sometimes, screens are the win-
dows to a magical adventure.
But too much screen time can
lead to problems. As human be-
ings, we function best when we’re
in a state of balance. That hap-
pens when we eat well, exercise
regularly and get enough sleep.
But spending too much time
using digital devices can cause
changes in the way you think
and behave. Many teens and
tweens developed the “fear of
missing out” – known as FOMO.
And one study shows some peo-
ple develop nomophobia, which
is the fear of being without your
phone, or feeling anxious when
you can’t use it.
Moreover, digital addiction
in high school may predict se-
rious depression, anxiety and
sleep disruption in college.
Rates of depression and anxi-
ety are skyrocketing among col-
lege students. The fear of miss-
ing out is pervasive, resulting in
sleep disruption; too many col-
lege students sleep with smart-
phones turned on and near
their bed – and wake up to re-
spond to texts and notifications
during the night. Sleep disrup-
tion itself is a core symptom of
both depression and anxiety.
elders,” the ministry said, adding
15,273 people were also injured.
More than 1,400 Israelis have
been killed in Hamas attacks
since Oct. 7, according to Israeli
authorities. ■
How to avoid device addiction
A 2016 poll indicated that
half of teens felt they were ad-
dicted to their mobile devices.
Getting hooked on screens
means missing out on healthy
activities. To achieve a better
balance, some experts recom-
mend the following: Turn off
all screens during family meals
and outings. Don’t complain
when your parents use paren-
tal controls. And turn off all the
screens in your bedroom 30 to
60 minutes before bedtime –
this step will improve sleep.
You may be a “screen addict”
if you:
• Feel uneasy or grumpy
when you can’t use your device.
• Don’t take breaks while
spending hours on your device.
• Ignore other fun activities
you enjoy, like going outside or
reading a book.
• Have trouble sleeping, or fall-
ing asleep, because your screen
time is too close to bedtime.
• Experience eye, lower back
and neck strain.
• Struggle with weight gain or
obesity because you’re inactive.
House panel to draft..
❰❰ 3 ping 4.4 tons of shabu
worth PHP30 billion
since the Chief Execu-
tive started his six-year term on
July 1 last year (2022),” he said.
The PDEA has also appre-
www.canadianinquirer.net
• Have difficulty with re-
al-life, face-to-face social inter-
actions.
If you notice these signs, do
not dismiss them. But also realize
you’re not alone and help is out
there. You can find balance again.
A healthy approach
Exercise – riding a bike, play-
ing sports, lifting weights or
going for a jog or walk – keeps
your brain healthy and pro-
tects it against depression and
anxiety, as well as limiting your
screen time.
Another way to be happier
and healthier is to spend time
with people – face to face, not via
a screen. Seeing people live and
in person is the best way to bond
with others, and it may be even
better for life span than exercise.
Creative hobbies are good,
too. Cooking, playing an in-
strument, dancing, any arts and
crafts, and thousands of other
fun things make people happi-
er and more creative. What’s
more, hobbies make you well
rounded and more attractive
to others – which leads to more
face-to-face interactions.
hended 64,862 drug suspects,
slightly higher compared to
64,143 arrests in the same peri-
od from 2020 to 2021.
Last Friday, the PDEA de-
stroyed nearly PHP6 billion
OCTOBER 27, 2023 FRIDAY
It’s also critical for parents to
practice healthy screen habits.
But about one-third of adults
say they use screens “constant-
ly.” This is not exactly a great
example for kids; when adults
take responsibility to mini-
mize their own screen time, the
whole family gets better.
Our research team used
magnetic resonance imaging,
also known as MRI, to scan
the brains of teens who had
digital addiction. We found
impairment in the brain’s de-
cision-making, processing and
reward centers. But after a dig-
ital fast – meaning the addicted
teens unplugged for two weeks
– those brain abnormalities
reversed, and the damage was
undone.
Our findings also showed
that kids with a desire to over-
come digital addiction did bet-
ter with a digital fast than those
who were less willing or who
denied their addiction.
A balanced lifestyle in the
digital age is all about finding
joy in screenless activities – be-
ing active, connecting with oth-
ers and exploring your offline
interests. ■
Hello, curious kids! Do you
have a question you’d like an
expert to answer? Ask an adult
to send your question to Curi-
ousKidsUS@theconversation.
com. Please tell us your name,
age and the city where you live.
And since curiosity has no age
limit – adults, let us know what
you’re wondering, too. We won’t
be able to answer every question,
but we will do our best.
This article is republished
from The Conversation under a
Creative Commons license.
worth of dangerous drugs and
controlled precursors and es-
sential chemicals at the Inte-
grated Waste Management,
Inc. in Barangay Aguado, Trece
Martires City, Cavite. ■
FRIDAY OCTOBER 27, 2023
New class of recyclable
polymer materials could
one day help reduce
single-use plastic waste
BY KATHERINE HARRY,
Colorado State University,
EMMA RETTNER, Colorado
State University
The Conversation
Hundreds of millions of tons
of single-use plastic ends up in
landfills every year, and even
the small percentage of plas-
tic that gets recycled can’t last
forever. But our group of ma-
terials scientists has developed
a new method for creating and
deconstructing polymers that
could lead to more easily recy-
cled plastics – ones that don’t
require you to carefully sort out
all your recycling on trash day.
In the century since their
conception, people have come
to understand the enormous
impacts – beneficial as well as
detrimental – plastics have on
human lives and the environ-
ment. As a group of polymer
scientists dedicated to invent-
ing sustainable solutions for re-
al-world problems, we set out to
tackle this issue by rethinking
the way polymers are designed
and making plastics with recy-
clability built right in.
Why use plastics, anyway?
Everyday items including milk
jugs, grocery bags, takeout con-
tainers and even ropes are made
from a class of polymers called
polyolefins. Polyolefins make up
around half of the plastics pro-
duced and disposed of every year.
These polymers are used in
plastics commonly labeled as
HDPE, LLDPE or PP, or by their
recycling codes #2, #4 and #5,
respectively. These plastics
are incredibly durable because
the chemical bonds that make
them up are extremely stable.
But in a world set up for sin-
gle-use consumption, this is
no longer a design feature but
rather a design flaw.
Imagine if half of the plastics
used today were recyclable by
twice as many processes as they
are now. While that wouldn’t
get the recycling rate to 100%,
a jump from single digits – cur-
rently around 9% – to double
digits would make a big dent in
the plastics produced, the plas-
tics accumulated in the envi-
ronment and their capacity for
recycling and reuse.
Recycling methods we al-
ready have
Even the plastics that make
it to a recycling facility can’t be
reused in exactly the same way
they were used before – the re-
cycling process degrades the
material, so it loses utility and
value. Instead of making a plas-
tic cup that is downgraded each
time it gets recycled, manufac-
turers could potentially make
plastics once, collect them and
reuse them on and on.
Conventional recycling re-
quires careful sorting of all the
collected materials, which can be
hard with so many different plas-
tics. Here in the U.S., collection
happens mainly through single
stream recycling – everything
from metal cans, glass bottles,
cardboard boxes and plastic cups
end up in the same bin. Sepa-
rating paper from metal doesn’t
require complex technology, but
sorting a polypropylene contain-
er from a polyethylene milk jug is
hard to do without the occasional
mistake.
When two different plastics
are mixed together during re-
cycling, their useful properties
are hugely reduced – to the
point of making them useless.
But say you can recycle one
of these plastics by a different
method, so it doesn’t end up
contaminating the recycling
stream. When we mixed sam-
ples of polypropylene with a
polymer we made, we were still
able to depolymerize – or break
down the material – and regain
our building blocks without
chemically affecting the poly-
propylene. This indicated that
a contaminated waste stream
could still recover its value, and
the material in it could go on to
be recycled, either mechanical-
ly or chemically.
Plastics we need − but
more recyclable
In a study published in Octo-
ber 2023, our team developed
a series of polymers with only
two simple building blocks –
one soft polymer and one hard
polymer – that mimicked poly-
olefins but could also be chem-
ically recycled.
Connecting two different
polymers together multiple
times until they form a single,
long molecule creates what’s
called a multiblock polymer.
Just by adjusting how much of
each polymer type goes into
the multiblock polymer, our
team created a wide range of
materials with properties that
www.canadianinquirer.net
Lifestyle
spanned across polyolefin
types. But creating these mul-
tiblock polymers is easier said
than done.
To link these hard and soft
polymers, we adapted a tech-
nique that had previously been
used only on very small mole-
cules. This method is improved
relative to traditional methods
of making polymers in a step-by-
step fashion, developed in the
1920s, where the reactive groups
on the end of the molecules need
to be exactly matched.
In our method, the reactive
groups are now the same as
each other, meaning we didn’t
have to worry about pairing the
ends of each building block to
make polymers that can com-
pete with the polyolefins we
already use. Using the same
strategy, applied in reverse by
adding hydrogen, we could dis-
connect the polymers back into
their building blocks and easily
separate them to use again.
With an almost twofold in-
crease in annual plastic use pro-
jected through 2050, the com-
plexity and quantity of plastic
recycling will only increase.
It’s an important consideration
21
when designing new materials
and products.
Using just two building blocks
to make plastics that have a
huge variety of properties can
go a long way toward reducing
and streamlining the number of
different plastics used to make
the products we need. Instead
of needing one plastic to make
something pliable, another for
something stiff, and a third,
fourth and fifth for properties
in between, we could control
the behavior of plastics by just
changing how much of each
building block is there.
Although we’re still in the
process of answering some big
questions about these poly-
mers, we believe this work is a
step in the right direction to-
ward more sustainable plastics.
We were able to create mate-
rials that mimic the properties
of plastics the world relies on,
and our sights are now set on
creating plastic compositions
that you couldn’t with existing
methods. ■
This article is republished
from The Conversation under a
Creative Commons license.
 22
Hamas-Israel conflict: Algeria offers to host
Palestine’s football matches – the bigger history
BY MAHFOUD AMARA,
Qatar University
The Conversation
Palestine was about to embark
on its 2026 men’s Fifa World
Cup qualifying campaign when
the latest round of Hamas-Is-
raeli conflict broke out, making
Palestine’s national football
stadium in the Israeli-occupied
West Bank potentially unsafe for
matches. As a result, the Asian
Football Confederation asked the
football-loving nation to stage its
home matches in a neutral venue.
Algeria in north Africa offered to
host Palestine’s games and cover
its players’ costs. Mahfoud Ama-
ra is a specialist in the intersec-
tion of sport and politics with a
particular research focus on foot-
ball in the Arab world. We asked
him three questions.
What’s the history of Algeria
and Palestine’s relationship?
There are parallels between
the colonial systems in Alge-
ria and Palestine. Both nations
have been under direct military
and settlement occupation. In
the case of Algeria this was until
independence in 1962.
Algeria had a large popula-
tion of European settlers who
confiscated the land of the Arab
and Berber population. France
legitimised its occupation of Al-
geria on the basis that there was
no such thing as an Algerian na-
tion with a state entity before
1830. Israel’s ideology denies
the existence of a Palestinian
nation prior to the unilateral
announcement of the birth of
the state of Israel in 1948.
Algerians used various means
to reclaim their independence
Queerphobic hate is..
❰❰ 11 more accessible men-
tal health support. We
at ODLAN are invest-
ed in these goals by, for exam-
Sports
from France, including armed
struggle. The fiercest conflict –
from 1954 to 1962 – resulted in
independence and a large num-
ber of casualties, particularly Al-
gerian. In the 1960s and 1970s,
Algeria was considered a pinna-
cle of revolutionary movements.
The Palestinian nationalist
movement was inspired by the
Algerian one in its struggle to
achieve independence using
both political and violent means.
Since independence, Algeria has
been supportive of the Palestin-
ian cause. Algeria participated
in the Arab-Israeli wars, fighting
against Israel. Following the Is-
raeli invasion of south Lebanon
in 1982, Algeria received Pal-
estinian refugees. So there is a
long, shared history.
Radio Free Palestine was
broadcast from Algeria until the
signing of the Oslo Accords in
1993. The Oslo Accords aimed to
find a peaceful solution to the Is-
raeli-Palestinian conflict through
a negotiated two-state solution.
How does their football
history unite them?
Both are nations with a great
passion for football. The sport
brings hope in difficult times
and is a vehicle for political ex-
pression. Algeria and Palestine
are ardent supporters of one
another’s national teams. They
share historical similarities in
creating these teams.
Algerian people, under the
leadership of the National Liber-
ation Front or FLN (proclaimed
as the representative of the Al-
gerian revolution, similar to the
Palestinian Authority in rela-
tion to the Palestinian struggle),
used all means to amplify Alge-
ria’s cause for independence, in-
ple, developing and launching
training modules to help or-
ganizations develop strategies
to address queerphobic online
cluding sports. Football played a
significant role.
In 1958, a Fifa World Cup
year, the FLN ordered all Alge-
rian professional players in Eu-
rope – most of them playing in
France – to leave their comfort-
able lives and fame and secret-
ly travel to Tunisia to form the
FLN football team. This served
to bring the Algerian conflict
into the spotlight, especially in
metropolitan France. Fifa, the
sport’s world governing body,
did not recognise the Algerian
team. Even so, it played a num-
ber of matches with national
teams from north Africa and
socialist countries to build sup-
port for the Algerian cause. The
Algerian Football Federation
officially joined Fifa in 1964.
The Arab Palestine Sports
Federation was founded in 1931
and re-established in 1944. It
had 55 athletic clubs affiliated
with it. The Nakba (catastro-
phe) refers to the mass dis-
placement and dispossession
of Palestinians during the 1948
Arab-Israeli war. It put a stop to
hate and protect themselves
from such harms.
Until we have a society that
is inclusive and safe for all
www.canadianinquirer.net
Palestinian national sports and
pushed most Palestinians into
exile and refugee camps.
After the Oslo Accords of
1993, the Palestinian Football
Federation gained affiliation
with various international
sports federations. This in-
cluded Fifa in 1998. However,
since then, the federation has
encountered persistent chal-
lenges in establishing a viable
national football infrastruc-
ture. This is mainly because of
the enduring fragmentation of
the Palestinian territory and
population – spanning the West
Bank, Gaza, various refugee
camps and the diaspora. In or-
der to safeguard the mobility
and travel rights of Palestinian
players, the federation has had
to adeptly navigate these chal-
lenges to play in international
competitions.
How does this play out on the
football field today?
Algeria is ranked 34 in the
world by Fifa and is a leading
contender in Africa. Palestine’s
team is ranked 97 and has qual-
LGBTQ+ people, individuals
and organizations need to keep
fighting against queerphobic
online hate across Canada. ■
OCTOBER 27, 2023 FRIDAY
ified for the Asian Cup of Na-
tions three years in a row. It is a
symbol of national unity.
If Algeria were to host Pales-
tine’s training camps and inter-
national matches for the 2026
World Cup and 2027 Asian Cup
it would mean some stability.
Being in Algeria would pro-
vide access to infrastructure,
football support and – most
importantly – a large base of
fans. A friendly match between
Palestine and Algeria in 2016
gathered thousands of Algerian
fans, estimated at 80,000. Many
cheered for Palestine. Algeria
hosting Palestine in 2023 would
be an opportunity to reiterate
its support for the Palestinian
cause and to leverage its sports
diplomacy.
For the Palestinian Foot-
ball Federation, maintaining a
presence in the international
football arena will help to pro-
mote the rights of Palestinians
to practise sports and represent
their country.
The sports arena has
emerged as an unconventional
yet powerful platform for the
expression of solidarity with
political causes like Palestine’s.
This becomes all the more sig-
nificant when considering the
fragmented positions held by
Arab states regarding the Israe-
li-Palestinian conflict. While of-
ficial state positions may differ,
the people – particularly Arab
players and fans – have often
used sports events to fly the
Palestinian flag. ■
This article is republished
from The Conversation under a
Creative Commons license.
This article is republished
from The Conversation under a
Creative Commons license.
FRIDAY OCTOBER 27, 2023
Cricket? Lacrosse? Netball?
The new sports that might make
it to the 2032 Brisbane Olympic Games
BY RICHARD BAKA, Victoria
University
The Conversation
At the International Olympic
Committee’s recent session in
Mumbai, India it officially ratified
five sports being added to the ex-
isting 28 core sports for the 2028
Los Angeles summer games.
Of these five, several will be
making their first-ever appear-
ance, namely squash and flag
football, while others have had a
long gap between inclusion – la-
crosse in 1904 and 1908, cricket
in 1900 and baseball/softball
coming back in after a gap since
the Tokyo 2021 games.
Until 1992, the IOC al-
lowed sports to be added to
the Olympic Games by the lo-
cal organising committee as
“demonstration events”. Un-
der this arrangement, the 1956
Melbourne games included
baseball and Australian Rules
football. Over the years, a large
number of other host cities
trialled a variety of sports, but
only a few stayed in the games.
Nowadays, the Olympic
Agenda 2020 + 5 serves as a ma-
jor IOC policy document about
how the games should operate.
A recent change sees the local
organising committee recom-
mending what sports should be
added to their particular games.
Faced with an IOC guideline
to cap the summer games at ap-
proximately 10,500 athletes and
to stay within a 19-day sched-
ule, means there are limitations
to new sports being added. Be-
sides the 28 core sports guaran-
teed inclusion in the summer
olympics (although these core
sports can be altered by the
IOC), what are the criteria used
for any new additions?
Inspiring the next genera-
tion: The inclusion of new sports
in the Olympics is a strategic
move to attract younger athletes
who may not be involved in tradi-
tional Olympic sports.
Innovation and adapta-
tion: Many of the recently add-
ed sports represent new and
innovative approaches to com-
petition and showcase the abil-
ity of the games to adapt to the
changing times.
Diversity: The inclusion
of different sports is a way of
embracing cultural diversity
and promoting global reach to
regions that may not have tra-
ditionally been strongly rep-
resented at the Olympics. For
example, it is expected that by
adding cricket, the sub-conti-
nent, with its huge population
base including India, Pakistan,
Sri Lanka and Bangladesh, will
develop an enhanced interest in
the olympics.
Popularity and integrity:
How popular is the sport world-
wide? Is it played in a number
of countries and does it have a
significant number of partici-
pants? Is the respective world
sporting federation “squeaky
clean” and does it have strong
and effective leadership? Most
importantly, is it devoid of
sport integrity issues (such as
significant doping and gover-
nance faults)?
Screen dream: Is the sport
going to be exciting to watch
for television viewers? Since
broadcasting rights is the ma-
jor source of revenue for the
games, the IOC wants to cater
to the broadcasters’ and audi-
ence’s preferences.
Corporate cash: New sports
in the olympics tend to attract
corporate interest and spon-
sorship from new sources. This
helps to secure the financial
stability of the games and aligns
with the IOC’s wish to diversify
its revenue streams.
Leaving a legacy: Since fa-
cility legacy has become an ex-
tremely important criterion,
will any newly built facilities
be useful post-games? There
is a very strong push to elimi-
nate costly facilities that later
become “white elephants” – a
strong criticism of the 2004
Athens Olympics.
Gender equality: There has
been a concerted effort by the
IOC to ensure a 50-50 gender ra-
tio. The recent addition of mixed
“co-ed” events seen in many
winter sports has the potential
to expand into several summer
sports (for example, mixed re-
lays in swimming or athletics).
Host nation’s preferences:
In the new process of selecting
sports, the IOC has given a lot
of flexibility to the local organ-
ising committee to evaluate and
make recommendations.
So given all of this, what sports
might we expect to be added for
the Brisbane 2032 games? Here
are some early thoughts.
The favourites
Cricket: It is being intro-
duced in 2028 and should re-
main in the games in 2032 due
to its popularity in the host na-
tion and strong support from
the sub-continent.
Lacrosse: This is a sport in
which Australia is again expect-
ed to do well. As it will be played
in a modified six-person format
(similar to rugby 7s) and using
a shot clock, nations tradition-
ally not strong in the current
version of this sport – with its
bigger field and larger number
of players – may begin to take
an interest and support its in-
clusion.
Sport climbing, surfing and
skateboarding: All of these had
www.canadianinquirer.net
Sports
their debut in Tokyo 2021 and
will likely remain in the pro-
gram. Surfing, in particular, will
be popular in beach-crazed LA,
and should be a no-brainer for
sunny Queensland.
Baseball/softball: These
should be back in the 2028
games after a short hiatus. As
Australia is normally quite
competitive in these sports and
a medal contender, they are a
strong chance be included.
The “maybe” list
Flag football: It will no doubt
be assessed after its LA 2028 de-
but. The fact that the NFL in the
US is actively supporting this
initiative enhances its chances
of remaining in the program.
Breakdancing: This popular,
youth-friendly sport making
its debut in the Paris games,
was somewhat surprisingly not
selected for LA in 2028. This
does not preclude its addition
to the 2032 games, especially if
it proves to be a hit in 2024.
Netball: There will be a strong
push to have it included by the
Brisbane organising commit-
tee, but its limited worldwide
profile will work against it.
E-sports: Competitive video
23
gaming has experienced explo-
sive growth worldwide in recent
years. Although it offers a unique
blend of skill, strategy, and tech-
nology is it deemed worthy of
an Olympic guernsey as it lacks
athletic prowess? However, the
IOC is monitoring it very close-
ly and recently announced a
new standalone E-sports games,
which could possibly lead to it
making an appearance in the
mainstream games.
Long shots
Surf lifesaving: These would
be a perfect beach activity for
these games and a sport in which
Australia would be a medal fa-
vourite. But a limited worldwide
profile harms its chances.
Pickleball: It is one of the
world’s fastest growing sports
and quickly gaining a following in
Australia. As it is played on tennis
courts it is not a big cost factor for
the host city. But it may take a few
more years of growth and lobby-
ing to get into the games.
Motorsports, karate and kick-
boxing: All three put in a bid for
the LA games and were not suc-
cessful. They are not likely to be
included in the Brisbane games,
as they appear to have limited
widespread support among the
large IOC membership.
AFL: This is a real long shot,
as too few countries play this
sport and the host nation would
dominate.
Four years from now, the IOC
must decide on the sports for
the 2032 Brisbane games. New
sports breathe fresh life into
the Olympic movement, ensur-
ing its relevance and appeal.
With lobbying by many
sports to capture a spot on the
program, much can happen
between now and then. The
Brisbane 2032 Olympic Organ-
ising Committee must attempt
to strike a balance between its
recommendations to the IOC
for final approval, while at the
same time trying to put an
“Aussie slant” on the sporting
program. ■
This article is republished
from The Conversation under a
Creative Commons license.
24
How the Israel-Hamas war could affect the
world economy and worsen global trade tensions
BY DANIELE BIANCHI,
Queen Mary University of
London
The Conversation
Global geopolitical tensions
often play a pivotal role in shap-
ing people’s perceptions of eco-
nomic growth. Research shows
concern about such issues can
cause people and businesses to
become more cautious about
spending and investing, which
can ultimately lead to econom-
ic recession.
The recent escalation of the
Israel-Palestine conflict is no
different. Investors around the
world are worried about the
repercussions of this war – par-
ticularly in light of an already
bleak picture for global eco-
nomic growth.
Hamas’s October 7 attack
on southern Israel is the latest
chapter of a cycle of violence
that has been going on in this
region for decades and, sadly,
seems to have no end in sight.
While the reasons behind these
events are complex, the con-
flict’s potential immediate and
long-term economic ramifica-
tions are easier to grasp.
After all, if the Rus-
sia-Ukraine war has taught us
one thing, it’s that we should
be mindful of the intricate in-
terdependencies that shape the
global economic and geopoliti-
cal landscape.
How conflicts can affect
the economy
Internal and inter-state con-
flicts often have a significant
effect on stock market indices,
exchange rates, and commod-
ity prices – sometimes even
sending prices higher in the
lead-up to hostilities. The lon-
ger-term economic impact is
typically more complicated to
assess, however. The lasting ef-
fects of even seemingly dramat-
ic events on investor behaviour
can be hard to predict.
Conflicts in the Middle East
Business
tend to lead to spikes in oil pric-
es – think of the OPEC oil em-
bargo of 1973-1974, the Iranian
revolution of 1978-1979, the
Iran-Iraq War initiated in 1980,
and the first Persian Gulf War
in 1990-91. Since the region
accounts for nearly a third of
global oil supply, any instability
can create market uncertainty
based on concerns about inter-
ruptions to global oil supply.
This uncertainty is reflected
in the risk premium in oil mar-
kets. This is the price paid for
oil traded ahead of time in the
futures markets versus the re-
al-time price of oil. It reflects the
profits that speculators expect
to receive from buying and sell-
ing oil during a time of conflict,
as well as the hedging needs of
businesses that produce and
consume oil and their concerns
about supply and demand.
And so, the effect of the latest
Israel-Hamas conflict on global
financial markets will depend
on the involvement of other ma-
jor regional powers. If the con-
flict remains between Israel and
Hamas, the effect will probably
be limited and arguably exclusive
to countries with direct trade ex-
posure to Israel or Palestine.
But if the conflict spreads to
major oil-producing nations in
the region such as Iran, the glob-
al economy could face severe re-
percussions as energy costs for
businesses and households could
spike if supply is interrupted.
Higher energy prices would
hamper central banks’ efforts
to tame inflation pressures in
most advanced and emerging
economies. If this leads to a
“higher for longer” monetary
policy that keeps interest rates
elevated, it would push up the
cost of borrowing and refinanc-
ing by governments, companies
and people.
History can offer some in-
sights into how the impact on
the global economy could un-
fold under these different sce-
narios. For instance, the 50-day
OCTOBER 27, 2023 FRIDAY
war between Israel and Hamas Israel/Palestine conflict was regional powers, could further
in 2014, which killed 2,200 peo- initially laid out by the United accelerate this global realign-
ple, mostly civilians, had no Nations in 1947 and reaffirmed ment and have detrimental
significant effect on the global in 1974, with almost unanimous consequences for global eco-
economy or financial markets. support around the world. nomic growth.
Yet, when Israel and Hezbol- But there has been some nu- Under these circumstances,
lah clashed in Lebanon in 2006, ance in the international reac- investors are already bracing
oil prices surged globally due to tions to the attack. With most for increased financial volatility
fears of a broader conflict in the western countries quickly voic- across the board – from stocks
Middle East. ing support for Israel’s right to and government bonds to
What to expect this time defend itself, while countries commodity markets. So-called
U n f o r t u n a t e l y, safe-haven assets like
there is another factor gold are typically used
to consider at the mo- as protection against
ment. The escalation overwhelming eco-
of the Israel-Palestine nomic uncertainty.
conflict has happened The price of gold has
alongside the realign- Investors around the world shot up following the
ment of various global are worried about the latest escalation in the
alliances. This slow Israel-Palestine con-
creep of “deglobalisa- repercussions of this war... flict.
tion” can be seen in a Financial mar-
shift in trade policies kets will continue to
in recent years. monitor the conflict
Countries such as between Israel and
the US and UK are re- Hamas for signs of
locating economic ac- escalation. Anything
tivity including sourc- that pushes oil prices
ing or manufacturing products like China and Russia called up further will reignite fears of
from different countries out of for a ceasefire without taking a higher inflation.
concern about relying on sup- stance on Hamas. Unfortunately, this is hap-
pliers in potentially hostile re- This suggests that the issue pening just as many countries
gions, as well as the impact of of Israel-Palestine could tie in were starting to see inflation
imports from low-wage coun- with the broader trend towards slow again after two years of
tries on struggling local labour the new geopolitical divisions persistently high consumer
markets that were already starting to prices. ■
At the moment, these shifts emerge before Hamas’s attack.
can also be seen in the reactions A prolonged conflict between This article is republished
to the Hamas attack on Isra- Israel and Palestine, especially from The Conversation under a
el. A two-state solution) to the with the involvement of major Creative Commons license.
www.canadianinquirer.net
FRIDAY OCTOBER 27, 2023
X/Twitter: imposing a US$1 bot tax
on new customers will only make
the platform’s problems worse
BY HAMZA MUDASSIR,
Cambridge Judge Business
School
The Conversation
X, formerly known as Twit-
ter, is testing a subscription
plan called “Not a Bot” of US$1
equivalent per annum in New
Zealand and the Philippines.
Those who don’t subscribe will
still be able to log in to view
content and follow other ac-
counts, but won’t be able to in-
teract through tweeting, liking,
sharing or bookmarking con-
tent. The plan is limited to new
accounts and only the browser
version of the platform, as op-
posed to the mobile app.
As the name of the plan sug-
gests, X has positioned Not a Bot
as a means to deter bots. Bots are
fake accounts running on auto-
mated scripts, usually created by
malicious actors to spread fake
news and drive advertising traffic.
They are present in large num-
bers not just on X but also other
platforms such as Facebook.
Bots have been a dominant
theme since Musk took charge
of Twitter a year ago. His trou-
bled move to start charging for
blue checkmarks was part of the
same battle, while he also previ-
Diokno pitches Maharlika Fund
to biz in Gulf countries
BY KRIS CRISMUNDO
Philippine News Agency
MANILA – Department of
Finance (DOF) Secretary Ben-
jamin Diokno has pitched the
Maharlika Investment Fund
(MIF), the Philippines’ sover-
eign wealth fund, to business
leaders in Saudi Arabia during
a roundtable meeting with the
private sector on Thursday.
In a statement Thursday
ously tried to get out of buying
the company on the grounds
that the previous board hadn’t
been clear with him about bot
levels. Introducing a broad-
er system of charges to tackle
bots is a bold move, but there’s
a good chance it will only make
the company’s problems worse.
The bot arms race
Ever since the Musk takeover,
X’s financial woes seem to have
only increased. Despite aggres-
sive layoffs of thousands of em-
ployees and a sharp reduction
in server capacity, the company
has yet to reach positive cash-
flow (though new CEO Linda
Yaccarino has said breakeven is
close). This is because its reve-
nues have shrunk as fast, falling
approximately 59% in the year
to May as advertisers have exit-
ed due to increased hate speech
and ads featuring things like
online gambling and marijuana
products. This, combined with
the increased debt burden from
the takeover, has put X under
serious pressure to achieve a
turnaround.
Internet companies have
long been in an arms race with
bot makers. Every time they im-
plement a new means of detect-
ing fake accounts, bot makers
find ways of countering them.
night, Diokno said the agency is
working closely with the Office
of the President in enhancing
the guidelines of the MIF and
has assured that the sovereign
wealth fund will be operational
by the end of this year.
President Ferdinand R. Mar-
cos Jr., who is leading the Phil-
ippine delegation to the As-
sociation of Southeast Asian
Nations-Gulf Cooperation
Council (ASEAN-GCC) Summit
in Riyadh, deferred the imple-
Older bot-detection algorithms
sought to purge internet plat-
forms using machine learning
and searching for unusual lan-
guage patterns, but weren’t par-
ticularly successful.
Things have gotten worse
with the rise of generative AI.
It has literally changed the face
of fake news, videos and images,
reducing the ability to detect
bots either through algorithms
or even human moderators.
Musk’s US$1/year propos-
al represents a different ap-
proach. The main problem is
bot farms, where thousands of
accounts are created and then
run on different social media
platforms via large servers. This
makes it possible through econ-
omies of scale to create a bot ac-
count for a fraction of a penny,
according to Musk. By charging
new X accounts, it will become
much more expensive for bot
farms to achieve the scale need-
ed to be profitable.
Restricting the charge only
to the browser version of X will
hurt them the most: whereas
the mobile app only allows a
single account login at a time,
bot accounts need multiple log-
ins on different browser win-
dows running on the same ma-
chine to be useful.
mentation of the MIF to further
study the implementing rules
and regulations (IRR) of the law.
Despite moving the implemen-
tation, Diokno has emphasized
the vital role of the MIF in the
country’s economic development.
“The MIF stands as a corner-
stone for financing the infra-
structure projects of President
Ferdinand R. Marcos, Jr.’s ad-
ministration, which are crucial
to achieving sustained and in-
clusive economic growth. We are
www.canadianinquirer.net
Business
A decent idea in theory …
On the face of it, the proposal
sounds a smart move. Having
fewer bots may help X win back
some of the advertisers who
have quit the platform.
It is also a new revenue
stream. Musk said shortly after
his takeover that X was signing
up 2 million new accounts per
week, which points to some po-
tential, but let’s not get carried
away. It is unclear how many
genuine users will agree to pay
the charge, but since browsers
account for approximately 20%
of the monthly total active base,
we could assume a generous 10%
of new subscribers. This would
Elon Musk (NASA/AUBREY GEMIGNANI VIA NASA HQ PHOTO/FLICKR, CC BY-NC-ND 2.0)
steadfast in our commitment to
seeing the Fund off and running
before the end of 2023,” said Dio-
kno, who is also set to chair the
Maharlika Investment Corp.
Earlier, Trade Secretary Al-
fredo Pascual said the trip to
Saudi Arabia aims to boost the
Philippines’ investment and
trade ties with the country.
“We will deepen engagement
with the business community
of the Kingdom of Saudi Ara-
bia,” Pascual said.
25
result in a paltry US$10.4 million
(£8.6 million) increase in annual
revenues, less than 0.25% of the
company’s 2022 total.
This also has to be offset
against potential users decid-
ing to walk away. Particularly
if the scheme becomes more
aggressive in size and scope, it
could become the undoing of
the platform. Musk has already
hinted at charging all X users a
small monthly fee. Supposing it
were US$1 per month, it could
prompt a steep drop not only in
bots but in genuine users.
Let’s not forget the chaos
❱❱ PAGE 27 X/Twitter: imposing
Malacanang Palace also an-
nounced that Marcos bagged
USD120 million worth of
“deals” during his visit in the
Middle East country, which will
benefit “more than 15,000 Fili-
pinos in training and employ-
ment opportunities across a
wide range of professions in the
construction industry.”
The President has yet to give
further details on the signed
agreements between the Phil-
ippines and Saudi Arabia. ■
26
Let the community work it out:
Throwback to early internet days could
fix social media’s crisis of legitimacy
BY ETHAN ZUCKERMAN,
UMass Amherst, CHAND
RAJENDRA-NICOLUCCI,
UMass Amherst
The Conversation
In the 2018 documentary
“The Cleaners,” a young man
in Manila, Philippines, explains
his work as a content moder-
ator: “We see the pictures on
the screen. You then go through
the pictures and delete those
that don’t meet the guidelines.
The daily quota of pictures
is 25,000.” As he speaks, his
mouse clicks, deleting offend-
ing images while allowing oth-
ers to remain online.
The man in Manila is one of
thousands of content modera-
tors hired as contractors by so-
cial media platforms – 10,000 at
Google alone. Content modera-
tion on an industrial scale like
this is part of the everyday ex-
perience for users of social me-
dia. Occasionally a post some-
one makes is removed, or a post
someone thinks is offensive is
allowed to go viral.
Similarly, platforms add and
remove features without input
from the people who are most
affected by those decisions.
Whether you are outraged or
unperturbed, most people don’t
think much about the history
of a system in which people in
conference rooms in Silicon
Valley and Manila determine
your experiences online.
But why should a few compa-
nies – or a few billionaire own-
ers – have the power to decide
everything about online spaces
that billions of people use? This
unaccountable model of gover-
nance has led stakeholders of
all stripes to criticize platforms’
decisions as arbitrary, corrupt
or irresponsible. In the early,
pre-web days of the social inter-
net, decisions about the spaces
Technology
people gathered in online were
often made by members of the
community. Our examination of
the early history of online gover-
nance suggests that social media
platforms could return – at least
in part – to models of commu-
nity governance in order to ad-
dress their crisis of legitimacy.
Online governance – a history
In many early online spac-
es, governance was handled by
community members, not by
professionals. One early online
space, LambdaMOO, invited
users to build their own gover-
nance system, which devolved
power from the hands of those
who technically controlled the
space – administrators known
as “wizards” – to members of
the community. This was ac-
complished via a formal pe-
titioning process and a set of
appointed mediators who re-
solved conflicts between users.
Other spaces had more infor-
mal processes for incorporating
community input. For exam-
ple, on bulletin board systems,
users voted with their wallets,
removing critical financial sup-
port if they disagreed with the
decisions made by the system’s
administrators. Other spaces,
like text-based Usenet news-
groups, gave users substantial
power to shape their experienc-
es. The newsgroups left obvious
spam in place, but gave users
tools to block it if they chose to.
Usenet’s administrators argued
that it was fairer to allow each
user to make decisions that re-
flected their individual prefer-
ences rather than taking a one-
size-fits-all approach.
The graphical web expanded
use of the internet from a few
million users to hundreds of
millions within a decade from
1995 to 2005. During this rapid
expansion, community gover-
nance was replaced with gover-
nance models inspired by cus-
tomer service, which focused
on scale and cost.
This switch from community
governance to customer service
made sense to the fast-grow-
ing companies that made up
the late 1990s internet boom.
Promising their investors that
they could grow rapidly and
make changes quickly, compa-
nies looked for approaches to
the complex work of governing
online spaces that centralized
power and increased efficiency.
While this customer service
model of governance allowed
early user-generated content
sites like Craigslist and GeoC-
ities to grow rapidly, it set the
stage for the crisis of legitimacy
facing social media platforms to-
day. Contemporary battles over
social media are rooted in the
sense that the people and pro-
cesses governing online spaces
are unaccountable to the com-
munities that gather in them.
Paths to community control
Implementing community
governance in today’s platforms
could take a number of different
forms, some of which are already
www.canadianinquirer.net
being experimented with.
Advisory boards like Meta’s
Oversight Board are one way to
involve outside stakeholders in
platform governance, providing
independent — albeit limited —
review of platform decisions.
X (formerly Twitter) is taking
a more democratic approach
with its Community Notes ini-
tiative, which allows users to
contextualize information on
the platform by crowdsourcing
notes and ratings.
Some may question wheth-
er community governance can
be implemented successfully
in platforms that serve billions
of users. In response, we point
to Wikipedia. It is entirely
community-governed and has
created an open encyclopedia
that’s become the foremost in-
formation resource in many
languages. Wikipedia is surpris-
ingly resilient to vandalism and
abuse, with robust procedures
that ensure a resource used by
billions remains accessible, ac-
curate and reasonably civil.
On a smaller scale, total
self-governance – echoing ear-
OCTOBER 27, 2023 FRIDAY
ly online spaces – could be key
for communities that serve
specific subsets of users. For
example, Archive of Our Own
was created after fan-fiction au-
thors – people who write origi-
nal stories using characters and
worlds from published books,
television shows and movies
– found existing platforms un-
welcoming. For example, many
fan-fiction authors were kicked
off social media platforms due
to overzealous copyright en-
forcement or concerns about
sexual content.
Fed up with platforms that
didn’t understand their work
or their culture, a group of au-
thors designed and built their
own platform specifically to
meet the needs of their commu-
nity. AO3, as it is colloquially
known, serves millions of peo-
ple a month, includes tools spe-
cific to the needs of fan-fiction
authors, and is governed by the
same people it serves.
Hybrid models, like on
Reddit, mix centralized and
self-governance. Reddit hosts
a collection of interest-based
communities called subred-
dits that have their own rules,
norms and teams of modera-
tors. Underlying a subreddit’s
governance structure is a set
of rules, processes and features
that apply to everyone. Not ev-
ery subreddit is a sterling exam-
ple of a healthy online commu-
nity, but more are than are not.
There are also technical ap-
proaches to community gov-
ernance. One approach would
enable users to choose the al-
gorithms that curate their so-
cial media feeds. Imagine that
instead of only being able to
use Facebook’s algorithm, you
could choose from a suite of
algorithms provided by third
parties – for example, from The
❱❱ PAGE 30 Let the community
FRIDAY OCTOBER 27, 2023
Governments and hackers agree:
the laws of war must apply in cyberspace
BY PROFESSOR JOHANNA
WEAVER, Australian National
University
The Conversation
There are rules in war. In-
ternational humanitarian law
regulates what combatants can
and can’t do, with the goal of
protecting civilians and limit-
ing suffering.
Most of these laws were devel-
oped during the 19th and 20th
centuries. But in our own cen-
tury a new kind of battlefield has
emerged: the domain of cyberat-
tacks, digital campaigns and on-
line information operations. All
these have played a heightened
role in Russia’s war in Ukraine
and, increasingly, in the current
Israel–Hamas conflict.
There is a persistent myth
that cyberspace is a lawless wild
west. This could not be further
from the truth. There is a clear
international consensus that ex-
isting laws of war apply online.
In the past month, we have
seen three significant devel-
opments in this area. Rules for
“civilian hackers” have begun
to gain traction. A new interna-
tional humanitarian report has
recommended ways forward
for governments, tech compa-
nies and others. And the Inter-
national Criminal Court has for
the first time signalled that it
considers cyber warfare to fall
within its jurisdiction.
Rules for hacktivists
On October 4 2023, two ad-
visers to the International
Committee of the Red Cross
proposed a set of rules for “ci-
X/Twitter: imposing..
❰❰ 25 around Musk’s blue
check mark subscrip-
tion, for which lots of
celebrities refused to pay and
the platform partially back-
tracked to prevent an exodus.
That system also didn’t stop
malicious actors from scam-
ming genuine X users. With X
users already having felt the
whiplash of Musk’s previous de-
cisions, charging them for what
has been free could be the straw
vilian hackers” during war.
The proposals include things
like “do not conduct any cyber
operation against medical and
humanitarian facilities” and
“when planning a cyber attack
against a military objective, do
everything feasible to avoid or
minimize the effects your oper-
ation may have on civilians”.
The authors were motivated
by evidence of online attacks
disrupting banks, companies,
pharmacies, hospitals, railway
networks and civilian govern-
ment services.
Cyber, digital and informa-
tion operations – used along-
side “real-world” military op-
erations – have risen into the
mainstream during Russia’s
war in Ukraine. Many opera-
tions are carried out by civilian
groups not formally connected
to the military.
These manoeuvres are not
spectacular. However, as Jer-
emy Fleming (former head of
GCHQ, United Kingdom’s elec-
tronic spy agency) put it:
it was never our understand-
ing that a catastrophic cyber-
attack was central to Russia’s
use of offensive cyber in their
military doctrine. To think oth-
erwise, misjudges how cyber has
an effect in military campaigns.
That’s not to say that we haven’t
seen cyber in this conflict. We
have – and lots of it.
After the proposed rules
for civilian hackers were pub-
lished, something extraordi-
nary happened.
Two of the largest hacktiv-
ist groups actively engaged on
opposite sides of the war in
that breaks the camel’s back.
To emphasise, a platform’s
value lies in its user base. The
more users interact with each
other, the more content they
produce and vice versa. This
induces other users to join the
platform, which makes it at-
tractive to advertisers who can
reach a bigger, more engaged
audience. This virtuous cycle
is known as “network effects”,
and drives the success not only
Ukraine are the Russian-affili-
ated Killnet and the Ukrainian
IT Army. Spokespeople for both
groups vowed to the BBC they
would uphold the rules.
Digital threats during
armed conflict
It is not just actors in
Ukraine, and not just hacktivist
groups, who must comply with
the laws of war in cyberspace.
On October 18, the Interna-
tional Committee of the Red
Cross published the final report
of its global advisory board on
digital threats during armed
conflicts.
The report is the culmination
of two years of work. The board
comprises a diverse group of
experts spanning the geopo-
litical spectrum, including the
United States, Russia, China,
South Africa, Mexico, India and
Australia (including me).
We worked on “the interna-
of social media but also services
like telecoms, ride sharing,
messaging, streaming and mul-
tiplayer online games.
High risk, low return
While bots are a very real is-
sue, X’s “bot tax” is not the best
way forward. This is akin to a
government raising taxes on
tax-paying citizens because it is
incapable of getting tax avoid-
ers to pay their share.
Unfortunately there’s no
www.canadianinquirer.net
Technology
tional consensus that the estab-
lished principles and rules of [in-
ternational humanitarian law]
apply to all forms of warfare and
to all kinds of weapons, be they
new or old, digital or physical”.
To safeguard civilians against
digital threats, the report in-
cludes 25 action-oriented rec-
ommendations for belligerents,
states, tech companies and hu-
manitarian organisations.
Since 2013, negotiated agree-
ments at the United Nations
have recognised that existing
international law applies to
what states do in cyberspace.
In 2021, Russia, China, the
US, Australia and every coun-
try in the United Nations went
one step further, explicitly rec-
ognising the application of the
laws of war to cyber operations.
The International Commit-
tee of the Red Cross – its mis-
sion being “to prevent suffering
quick fix with bots. The best way
forward is leveraging advanced
technologies such as generative
AI, sharing more transparent
data with academic institutions
to push research forward, and
sharper human moderation.
X needs to remain in that arms
race, while sticking to the broad-
er reinvention strategy already
outlined by Musk. This includes
turning X into a super-app, akin
to WeChat, Grab and others
27
by promoting and strength-
ening humanitarian law and
universal humanitarian prin-
ciples” – has also affirmed this
many times, including via the
reports above.
The International Crimi-
nal Court weighs in
Of course, agreeing to the
rules doesn’t prevent irrespon-
sible actors from breaking them.
And this is where the third sig-
nificant development comes in.
In September 2023, Karim
A.A. Khan, the prosecutor of the
International Criminal Court,
signalled the court would begin
“collecting and reviewing” ev-
idence of cyber warfare. It will
also examine “misuse of the
internet to amplify hate speech
and disinformation, which may
facilitate or even directly lead
to the occurrence of atrocities”.
This is the first time the In-
ternational Criminal Court has
expressly indicated cyber war-
fare and misuse of the internet
fall within its jurisdiction. This
puts governments, militaries,
tech companies and hacktivists
on notice that they do not act
with impunity in cyberspace.
As the war drags on in
Ukraine and conflict escalates
between Israel and Hamas (in-
cluding increasing reports of
hacktivism), all parties would
do well to reflect that the rules
of cyber warfare are clear.
Bombs or bytes, missiles or
malware, international human-
itarian law applies. ■
This article is republished
from The Conversation under a
Creative Commons license.
from Asia, offering new services
such as telephony, remittances,
deliveries, mini games and vid-
eo channels. Giving users more
things to do in one place is key
to the platform’s future. But that
requires more patience and cash,
which both X and Musk might be
running out of. ■
This article is republished
from The Conversation under a
Creative Commons license.
28
Out of Autopilot and Into Our Best Life:
Booking.com Shares its Seven Predictions
for Travel in 2024
BOOKING.COM
The leading digital travel
platform’s most extensive trav-
el predictions research to date
foresees travel as the primal
pulse of life in the year ahead
AMSTERDAM, 18 OCTOBER
2023 – As 2023 enters its final
months and 2024 optimistically
appears on the horizon, numb-
ness and detachment loom as a
result of the perma-crisis, includ-
ing increased cost-of-living and
climate change concerns. People
around the world have emotion-
ally checked out of the news agen-
da and events at home in order to
take a much-needed breather.
Where in years past trav-
el has been a means to escape
life, Booking.com is releasing
research that shows that travel
is life in 2024 with more than
three quarters (78%) revealing
that they feel more alive than
ever when they are on vaca-
tion, and 68% wanting to be
more like their vacation self in
their day-to-day life back home.
That’s because 68% also think
they are the best version of
themselves while on vacation.
And with AI set to transform
2024, travelers are increasing-
ly plugging into tech to do the
grunt work, freeing them up to
stretch their imagination, tune
into their intuition and spark
more soul-stirring experiences.
To explore how travel will
transport people out of auto-
pilot and into unleashing their
best life, Booking.com commis-
sioned research among more
than 27,000 travelers across 33
countries and territories, com-
bining it with its insights as a
leading digital travel platform
to reveal seven predictions for
travel in 2024.
1. (Alter) Ego Enthusiasts
In 2024, travelers will feel more
alive by creating their very own
Travel
epic alter egos on vacation, with
more than a third (37%) making
up stories about their real life to
people they meet on their travels.
These alter ego enthusiasts love
the thrill of embodying a 2.0 ver-
sion of themselves, and go to great
lengths to reimagine their best
self, with more than three in five
(62%) enjoying the anonymity of
travel and the chance to recreate
themselves.
Fueling the idea that peo-
ple take on different personas
when traveling to feel more
alive, over two thirds (68%)
feel they are the best version of
themselves on vacation, able to
shed inhibitions and embrace
new aspects of their personali-
ties, while 42% would even pay
to rent a nicer car than they
drive at home to live their finest
lives with confidence. What’s
more, well over half (57%) of
travelers feel ‘main character
energy’ on their travels, with
these performers empowered
to be the stars of their own life.
Aliases and avatars abound,
both IRL and through VR and
AR. Those digital alter egos
with a desire for wanderlust can
go anywhere and do anything in
the metaverse, and in 2024 the
people behind them will bring
their digital fantasies to life in
real-world destinations.
2. Cool-cationers
Heat has officially had its va-
cay heyday, with scorching tem-
peratures pushing the mercury
to record-breaking levels and
causing heat waves around the
world. Sweltering conditions
are accelerating a rise in trav-
elers chasing cooler climes to
revive and refresh themselves.
The majority (51%) report that
climate change will impact the
way they plan their vacation in
2024, while over half (56%) say
that as temperatures soar close
to home, they will use their va-
cation to cool down elsewhere.
This effect taps into the ex-
pected rise of water-centric trav-
el that takes the edge off the heat,
and helps people wash away their
worries. Three quarters (75%)
agree that being close to water
instantly makes them feel more
relaxed, with over a third (36%)
interested in water-centric va-
cations in 2024. As people dive
headfirst into aquatic escapes,
mindful water immersion will
quickly become the next main-
stream version of meditation,
where the wild-swimming craze
meets the ice-therapy movement
(thanks, Wim Hof). This fresh
form of feel-alive wellness trav-
el will see floating yoga, water
sound baths and snow medita-
tion surge, as well as a boom in
ice therapy retreats, underwater
hotels and mermania, with water
no longer the backdrop but the
main event.
3. Surrender Seekers
In 2024, just bring yourself.
Travelers increasingly want to
surrender themselves to the ele-
ment of surprise, explore the un-
known and venture into unchart-
ed territory on vacation, with
over half (52 %) keen to book a
surprise trip where everything
down to the destination is un-
known until arrival. Averse to the
‘sameness’ of everyday life and
actively avoiding cookie-cutter
experiences, the intuitively ad-
venturous traveler of 2024 wants
to step outside of the homoge-
nized vacation, with 56% pre-
ferring to venture off the beaten
path and a third (34%) seeking to
travel with strangers.
Shifting from rigorous plan-
ning to chance encounters and
experiences with a roll of the
dice, these surrender seekers are
relinquishing control for the art
of letting go – with carpe diem
their life motto. The majori-
ty (55%) would like to have no
plans set in stone prior to travel-
ing in 2024 so they can go where
www.canadianinquirer.net
the wind takes them, while over
two thirds (69%) prefer to trav-
el with loose plans so they can
change direction based on what
feels good in the moment.
The travel industry is already
responding fast with tech-en-
abled flexible services, giving
travelers the option to cancel,
change plans, and buy now,
pay later at the press of a but-
ton. The explosion of AI, which
has already seen the launch of
Booking.com’s AI Trip planner,
is going mainstream in 2024:
48% would trust AI to plan a
trip for them, with a third of
baby boomers (30%) and one in
five (20%) of the silent genera-
tion finally surrendering to AI
in order to assist their travels
plans in the year ahead.
4. Culinary Excavators
The food archeologists of 2024
will dig deep into the roots of
food on vacation to unearth new
culinary treasures, with nearly
two thirds (61%) more interested
in learning about the origins of a
destination’s ‘must-eat’ delica-
cies than they were in the past.
Culinary excavators are bucking
next-gen food trends in favor of
preserving the true craftsman-
ship of traditional dishes; leaning
OCTOBER 27, 2023 FRIDAY
on gastro-tourism to embrace
the unique history, geography
and produce that makes for one-
of-a-kind cuisine that will awak-
en the senses.
Four in five (81%) want to try
indigenous cuisines in 2024,
and heritage flavors are in the
spotlight with travelers putting
power in the hands of the un-
der-represented, unlocking the
secrets of cultures which may
have been lost or forgotten in
other parts of the world. Expect
an increase in indigenous expe-
riences that take travelers on
trails that tell the story behind
the food they serve, bringing
pride and income to communi-
ties around the globe.
Foodie travelers in 2024 will
be experientialists who fluctu-
ate between digital and physical
realities to transform every dis-
covery into a heightened mul-
tisensory extravaganza, with
nearly half (46%) wanting an
immersive ‘phygital’ food expe-
rience enhanced by VR or AR.
Think mood altering lighting,
paired fragrances and sensual
soundscapes that enhance the
traces of foodways past.
❱❱ PAGE 30 Out of Autopilot
FRIDAY OCTOBER 27, 2023
Brown, red, black, riceberry – what are
these white rice alternatives, and are
they actually healthier?
BY YASMINE PROBST,
University of Wollongong,
KAREN ZOSZAK, University
of Wollongong, OLIVIA
WILLS, University of
Wollongong
The Conversation
Throughout history, rice has
remained an important food
staple. It supports the nutri-
tional needs of more than half
of the global population.
While you might be familiar
with a handful of types, there
are more than 40,000 different
varieties of cultivated rice – a
testament to the diversity and
adaptability of this staple crop.
Rice, much like other grains,
is the edible starchy kernel of a
grass plant. In fact, the vast ma-
jority of rice varieties (although
not all) belong to just one spe-
cies – Oryza sativa.
If you have ever found yourself
at the supermarket, overwhelmed
by the number of rice options
available, you are not alone. From
aromatic Thai “jasmine” rice used
in curries, to the “basmati” rice of
India and the sticky “arborio” for
making creamy Italian risotto,
each variety, or cultivar, is distin-
guished by its grain length, shape
and colour.
Each cultivar also has its own
flavour, texture and unique
nutrient properties. To make
things more complicated, some
varieties are higher in anthy-
ocyanins – antioxidants that
protect the body’s cells from
damage. These rice varieties
are known by their colour – for
Canada’s Start-Up Visa..
❰❰ 9 ough evaluation of the
Start-Up Visa program
to measure its perfor-
mance regarding its stated objec-
Food
example, red or black rice.
What is brown rice?
Compared to white rice,
brown rice is a whole grain with
only the inedible outer hull re-
moved. It is largely grown in In-
dia, Pakistan and Thailand.
To make white rice, the bran
(outer shell) of the grains is re-
moved. In brown rice, the bran
and germ (core of the grain)
are still intact, giving this type
of rice its tan colour and high
fibre content. Brown rice nat-
urally contains more nutrients
than white rice, including dou-
ble the amount of dietary fibre
and substantially higher mag-
nesium, iron, zinc and B group
vitamins, including folic acid.
Brown rice also contains
polyphenols and flavonoids –
types of antioxidants that pro-
tect the body from stress.
It is often sold as a longer
grain option and has a similar
tives of job creation, innovation
and internationalization, as well
as provide achievable targets for
these objectives.
nutty flavour to black and red
rice cultivars, though some
chefs suggest the texture is
slightly chewier.
Fancy black rice
While not as common as other
varieties, black rice – also called
purple rice due to its colouring –
is high in anthocyanins. In fact,
black rice contains the same an-
tioxidant type that gives “super-
foods” like blueberries and black-
berries their deep purple colour.
The Oryza sativa variant of
black rice is grown primarily in
Asia and exported globally, while
the Oryza glaberrima variant is
native to and grown only in Af-
rica. Among black rices there are
also different shades, from ja-
ponica black rice, Chinese black
rice, Thai black rice through to
Indonesian black rice.
With its antioxidant properties,
some would argue black rice is
one of the healthiest choices due
When IRCC closes a pathway
to permanent residency and
opens up a new one, Canadians
should ask not just whether it
www.canadianinquirer.net
to its protective effects for heart
health and metabolic diseases.
Black rice can be a short, me-
dium or long grain and has only
the outermost layer (inedible
hull) removed for consumption.
The bran and germ remain in-
tact, similar to brown rice, mak-
ing it a high fibre food. Black
rice has been described by some
foodies to have a mild nutty and
even slightly sweet flavour.
Iron-rich red rice
Similar to black rice, red rice,
or Oryza rufipogon, is a medium
or long grain variety coloured
by its anthocyanin content. In-
terestingly, it is considered an
edible weed growing alongside
other rice varieties and pri-
marily grown in Asia as well as
Northern Australia.
The difference in colour com-
pared to black rice types is due
to the amount and type of anthy-
ocyanins (specifically catechins
and epicatechins) in red rice.
Red rice also contains more
iron and zinc compared to
white, black or brown varieties.
The anthocyanins found in red
rice are used as a pigment for
colouring other foods such as
liquor, bread and ice cream.
Is riceberry a type of rice,
too?
Despite the slightly confus-
ing name, riceberry rice was
originally developed in Thai-
land as a cross between a local
jasmine rice and local purple
rice variety, creating a lighter,
purple-coloured grain.
Increasingly available in
Asian grocers across Australia,
this type of rice has a more fa-
aligns with our objectives, but
also whether those objectives
are clear, measurable goals that
can be evaluated over time. ■
29
vourable nutrient profile than
brown rice and has a shorter
cooking time similar to that of
white jasmine rice.
Rice is not just another carb
Rice has many nutritional ben-
efits besides providing the body
with carbohydrates – its primary
fuel source. Rice contains more
than 15 essential vitamins and
minerals including folic acid,
magnesium, iron and zinc and is
naturally gluten free, making it an
appropriate substitute for people
living with coeliac disease.
Brown, red and black rices
are also whole grains, recom-
mended as part of a healthy eat-
ing pattern.
In addition, different culti-
vars of rice have a low glycaemic
index or GI – a measure of the
speed at which carbohydrates
raise blood sugar levels.
Generally speaking, the more
colourful the rice variety, the
lower its GI. This is a particu-
larly important consideration
for people living with diabetes.
Less frequently consumed rice
varieties have nutritional bene-
fits, including their anthocyanin
and fibre content. However, they
can be harder to find and are of-
ten pricier than more common
white and brown varieties.
If you enjoy trying foods with
unique flavours, try experi-
menting with black or red rice
varieties. Whatever the colour,
all types of rice have a place in a
balanced diet. ■
This article is republished
from The Conversation under a
Creative Commons license.
This article is republished
from The Conversation under a
Creative Commons license.
 30
Let the community..
❰❰ 26 New York Times or
Fox News.
More radically
decentralized platforms like
Mastodon devolve control to a
network of servers that are sim-
ilar in structure to email. This
makes it easier to choose an
experience that matches your
preferences. You can choose
which Mastodon server to use,
and can switch easily – just like
you can choose whether to use
Gmail or Outlook for email –
and can change your mind, all
while maintaining access to the
wider email network.
Additionally, advancements
in generative AI – which shows
early promise in producing
computer code – could make
it easier for people, even those
without a technical back-
Out of Autopilot..
5. Reboot Retreaters
❰❰ 28
When things are fall-
ing apart back home
amid global instability
and an ever-hectic world, di-
sheveled travelers are booking
one-track trips rooted in self-im-
provement to bring themselves
back to the life they truly want
again. The new era of sleep tour-
ism, for example, welcomes sleep
concierges and cutting-edge tech
to serve the 58% who want to
travel in 2024 to solely focus on
uninterrupted shut-eye.
For those who are used to
sleeping solo, over a third (39%)
of travelers would carve out
time for a matchmaking holiday
to find a spark with a new part-
ner or lover, while more than
a third (35%) would focus on a
heartbreak holiday to get over
an ex. On the contrary, for those
still rocking their relationships,
a quarter (24%) want to deepen
that human connection with
their partner as their main pri-
ority for traveling in 2024. On
the flip side, for those increas-
ingly frazzled parents, they are
surprisingly seeking solace on
completely solo holidays, with
the majority (58%) planning to
travel alone in 2024, dropping
the kids and their partners to
prioritize their vitality.
Taking the impetus to rein-
vent their ‘real’ life even fur-
ther, half of all travelers (51%)
revealed that the stripped-back
lifestyle of agrarian and indig-
enous communities, where
ground, to build custom online
spaces when they find existing
spaces unsuitable. This would
relieve pressure on online spac-
es to be everything for everyone
and support a sense of agency in
the digital public sphere.
There are also more indirect
ways to support community
governance. Increasing trans-
parency – for example, by pro-
viding access to data about the
impact of platforms’ decisions
– can help researchers, poli-
cymakers and the public hold
online platforms accountable.
Further, encouraging ethical
professional norms among en-
gineers and product designers
can make online spaces more
respectful of the communities
they serve.
Going forward by going back
self-sufficiency is a way of life,
would appeal to them in 2024.
Beyond just back to basics, the
focus is on a better balance with
nature and the elements to re-
set their day-to-day back home.
6. A La Carte Affluencers
Fueled by the cost of liv-
ing crisis alongside the main-
stream stealth wealth trends
of 2023, travelers in 2024 will
employ money saving hacks to
cut costs, yet level up vacations
with ‘à la carte’ luxuries, scor-
ing a rush from traveling like
the rich – even if just for a mo-
ment in time. These à la carte
‘affluencers’ want to appear
wealthy, sweeping away the re-
ality of having to make finan-
cial sacrifices, but behind the
scenes are obsessed with see-
through spending and curating
budget-friendly travel itinerar-
ies with the help of their travel
partner in crime, AI. In fact,
more than half (56%) of travel-
ers will want insights and tips
from AI when on vacation to
upgrade experiences with sug-
gested ancillaries and deals, all
with a flick of their finger.
Additionally, half (50%) of
travelers plan to pick destina-
tions in 2024 where the cost
of living is less expensive than
their hometown, while travel-
ing closer to home is also a draw
for some who will be searching
for luxe-for-less copycat vaca-
tions to reduce costs in 2024
(43%). Many (51%) travelers
will be willing to pay for day
Between now and the end
of 2024, national elections are
scheduled in many countries,
including Argentina, Australia,
India, Indonesia, Mexico, South
Africa, Taiwan, the U.K. and the
U.S. This is all but certain to lead
to conflicts over online spaces.
We believe it is time to con-
sider not just how online spaces
can be governed efficiently and
in service to corporate bottom
lines, but how they can be gov-
erned fairly and legitimately.
Giving communities more con-
trol over the spaces they par-
ticipate in is a proven way to do
just that. ■
This article is republished
from The Conversation under a
Creative Commons license.
passes to use the amenities in
a five star hotel rather than ac-
tually staying there, with a sim-
ilar number of parents (47%)
planning to take their children
out of school to travel outside of
peak season to make their mon-
ey stretch further in 2024.
7. Mindful Aesthetes
Once upon a time, the words
sustainable and stylish were not
necessarily synonymous, with
the words ‘eco-travel’ conjuring
up visions of primitive campsites.
Make way for the intersection of
design and mindfulness to influ-
ence travel in 2024, opening up
new and inspiring doors for trav-
elers who have a desire to make
more conscious and responsible
choices, not just for a short get-
away, but as a way of life.
Gone are the days when com-
fort and exceptional design
were solely associated with ex-
cess and extravagance, with a
growing movement of hotels
and other unique places to stay
presenting inventive, yet aes-
thetically pleasing responses
to significant environmental
and social challenges. These
discerning travelers will hunt
down jaw-dropping architec-
ture that has environmental
features at its heart, with over
half (53%) looking for accom-
modation that has wow-fac-
tor sustainability innovation.
Three in five (60%) want to see
sustainability in action, while
nearly two thirds (65%) want to
see the outside brought indoors
www.canadianinquirer.net
Adele called herself..
❰❰ 18 withdrawal symptoms
when they stop – strong
cravings, nausea, sweat-
ing, agitation and anxiety.
The more of these signs you
have, the more likely you are to
be dependent on alcohol.
If you have any of these signs,
taking a break from alcohol for a
few months or longer can help.
If you find that’s too hard, you
can try sticking within the Aus-
tralian alcohol guidelines by
reducing the number of drinks
per occasion and increasing
your drink-free days.
There’s help
Sometimes when people ex-
perience some of these prob-
lems they need a bit of help to
keep them on track. You can
talk to your GP who can refer
you to a psychologist or treat-
with green spaces and plants in
accommodations on vacation.
In 2024, in exchange for
contributing to conservation
efforts, sustainable itineraries
will give travelers exclusive ac-
cess to the places that they are
helping preserve, in the most
mindful and responsible way.
A large number are interest-
ed in sustainable travel apps
where they can unlock rewards
(60%), such as experiences with
locals in off-the-beaten-path
areas (47%) or visiting remote
locations that tourists oth-
erwise have limited access to
(44%). The mindful aesthetes
are a reminder that it’s possi-
ble to bring home all the vacay
feels, but also that bold sense
of purpose to feel more deeply
connected to the environment
and surrounding communities
when back at home as well. ■
Arjan Dijk, Senior Vice Pres-
ident and Chief Marketing Offi-
cer at Booking.com comments:
"Our 2024 travel predictions
reflect the idea that travel is not
a means to escape life, but in-
stead a catalyst to live our best
lives. From thrilling adventures
in a new destination to feeling the
pulse of a new culture and every
experience in between, travel al-
lows us to become the best version
of ourselves. At Booking.com, it's
our mission to make it easier for
everyone to experience the world
and we believe in the power of
travel to inspire, transform and
OCTOBER 27, 2023 FRIDAY
ment service. Or you can try
self-help options such as the
Hello Sunday Morning’s Day-
break app (a community of
people supporting each other
to change their relationship
with alcohol). If your problems
are more severe, you can try
something like SMART Recov-
ery (evidence-based group sup-
port for alcohol and other drug
problems).■
If you are worried about your
own or someone else’s alcohol or
other drug use, you can contact
the National Alcohol and other
Drug Hotline on 1800 250 015
for free, confidential advice.
This article is republished
from The Conversation under a
Creative Commons license.
enrich lives and we are commit-
ted to empowering extraordinary
experiences that resonate with
the heartbeat of each and every
traveler in 2024 and beyond.”
For more information about
Booking.com’s 2024 Travel Pre-
dictions, please visit: https://
www.booking.com/c/trends/
travelpredictions2024.html
Travel Predictions 2024 re-
search commissioned by Book-
ing.com and conducted among
a sample of adults who plan to
travel for business or leisure in
the next 12-24 months. In total,
27,730 respondents across 33
countries and territories were
polled (including 1008 from Ar-
gentina, 1012 from Australia,
505 from Austria, 1001 from
Belgium, 1002 from Brazil, 1009
from Canada, 1009 from China,
1002 from Colombia, 508 from
Croatia, 504 from Denmark,
1011 from France, 1011 from Ger-
many, 1016 from Hong Kong,
1004 from India, 510 from Ire-
land, 504 from Israel, 1014 from
Italy, 1004 from Japan, 1009
from Mexico, 1014 from The
Netherlands, 1015 from New
Zealand, 500 from Portugal,
502 from Singapore, 1010 from
South Korea, 1009 from Spain,
502 from Sweden, 507 from
Switzerland, 504 from Taiwan,
1003 from Thailand, 502 from
the UAE, 1007 from the UK,
1005 from the US and 1007 from
Vietnam). Respondents complet-
ed an online survey in July 2023.
 OCTOBER 27, 2020
JULY 17, 2023 cx328
1

CANADA

PINOY EXPRESS DELIVERY

TRUCK OR CARGO AVAILABLE FOR RENT WITH A DRIVER.
Driver will help: Load-Pack-Unload

Perfect for: *Furniture Pick-up *Online Purchases

Room * Bachelor * 1-2 Bedroom
No More Hassle and Headache of going out to Rent.
Just pick up the phone and will show up at your door.
Let your Kababayan help you!!! We Speak your language
Maraming Salamat

Call: (416) 841-0244 for more details.

Leave a Message and we will call you back.

Electronic Technicians Needed

Experience in Low Voltag
Electrical System
installation and Servicin
Computers with Networking
Email resume to suda@alarmboss.com
Call 416-432-1902

CHRISTMAS SIGNING BONUS!!! TIN TIN DIM SUM Spectrum Health

re Ca
is Hiri
Do you have: Personal Support
W orkers
Cleaning, sweeping and moping experience (Outside Retail)
Experience in using a power washer & leaf blower
Enjoy Working Outdoors
Proudly serving fresh
and not frozen dim sum allday who w ant more!
Good time management skills and can work unsupervised
Have your own transportation $10.99 only More hou
rs
Iron Platter Style (w ith rice & veg in soup)
Competitive Pay Rates Tonkatsu Com bo (Chicken or Pork)
Spicy Ram en Pot
$500 Signing Bonus
Pay Via Direct Deposit

6455 Macleod Trail SW, Unit 192A, Calgary, AB T2H 0K9

(Located inside Chinook Mall)
Please email your resume to S ec uredG ro u p
info@securedsecuirty.com or fax 604-239-0251 securedsecurity.com
(403) 253-7742 Learn mo
re atw w w.spectrumhealth
care.com

www.canadianinquirer.net
 32 OCTOBER 27, 2023 FRIDAY

Your Wild Ride Starts in a

2023 Bronco Sport
Get

3.99 %41
72
On all 2023
Bronco Sport
APR Models
Purchase Financing Months

FIND OUT MORE AT FORDTO.CA

Vehicle(s) may be shown with optional equipment. Dealers set selling and leasing price which may vary from MSRP. Limited time offers. Offers only valid at participating dealers. Retail offers may be cancelled or changed at any time without notice (except in Quebec). See your Ford Dealer for complete details or call the Ford
Customer Relationship Centre at 1-800-565-3673. For factory orders, a customer may either take advantage of eligible raincheckable Ford retail customer promotional incentives/offers available at the time of vehicle factory order or time of vehicle delivery, but not both or combinations thereof. Retail offers not combinable
with any CPA/GPC or Daily Rental incentives, the Commercial Upfit Program or the Commercial Fleet Incentive Program (CFIP). Until October 2, 2023, receive 3.99% APR purchase financing on new 2023 Bronco Sport for up to 72 months to qualified retail customers, on approved credit (OAC) from Ford Credit Canada Company.
All prices are based on Manufacturer’s Suggested Retail Price. © 2023 Ford Motor Company of Canada, Limited. All rights reserved.

www.canadianinquirer.net