Divvys Blog

May 09, 2018

Message to Doug Ford: Rehab only works for addicts who are still alive

Two overdose deaths have occurred under the back stoop of my downtown building.

From what I know, the victims — in separate incidents — were transients huddling in a small crawl space.

This troubles me a whole lot more than the discarded needles and used condoms strewn about. Lives matter more than property. The lives of down-and-out strangers no less.

I mention this here just to note that I’m well aware of how street drugs have seized some Toronto neighbourhoods by the throat. There was a brazen shooting on the patio of a bar across the street. The proprietor of a convenience store on the corner was stabbed to death.

None of which has stopped developers from shoehorning new condo buildings on every reclaimed wedge of urban space, clawing back lots block by block.

Somehow, we need to find a way to coexist, renters and property-owners and addicts and vagrants, to use an unpopular term.

So, I’m not upset that there’s a pop-up safe-injection trailer at Moss Park, a few hundred yards away. Or that another supervised-injection site has opened recently at the Fred Victor Mission, directly across the street.

With a national opioid crisis that shows no signs of abating, Canada’s largest city needs more such harm-reduction refuges, not fewer.

I remind myself constantly that these men and women, a disproportionate number of them Indigenous people and refugees, are my neighbours too, with every right to be here. They must have, or at one time had, loved ones. Each is somebody’s son, daughter, parent, sibling.

Doug Ford, whose own brother fell prey to addiction and admitted to using crack cocaine, should have a whit better understanding of how drugs can destroy a person, a family. How can anybody who’s ever loved an addict seek to deny them a tiny niche in this great big metropolis where the drugs they crave, can’t exist without, are consumed in a safe and hygienic environment, with health professionals close to hand in the event of a crisis?

Family of the late Rob Ford clearly had the financial means to get the former Toronto mayor into a residence rehab program back in 2014. And Rob Ford must have been at a point in his life where he was able to admit his problem and seek help.

But Doug Ford, who would and probably will be premier of Ontario come the June election, seems a hard, heartless man, lacking in empathy and compassion. I’ve not forgotten any of the sneering, the name-calling, the mendacity and the slime he spewed with access to a radio talk-show microphone.

Ford has sought to sand down those jagged edges in his current campaign to unseat Premier Kathleen Wynne. But he’s fundamentally the same nasty piece of work.

“What I’m not going to do is I’m not going to have injection sites in neighbourhoods,” Ford said during Monday night’s televised provincial leaders’ debate. “I’ve criss-crossed this province, I’ve talked to numerous people, that family members have had addictions and they’re telling me they don’t want an area that they can do more drugs. What they need is rehabilitation programs.”

That echoed a statement on the subject Ford made last month. “Ask anyone out there, if your son, daughter or loved one ever had an addiction, would you want them to go in a little area and do more drugs? I’m dead set against that.”

Ask me, Doug.

Because I’ve been there. I know scores of people who’ve been there, too. And while the best option is to wean addicts off drugs, the alternative to addiction shouldn’t be an early death under a back yard stoop.

Ford has promised $1.9 billion in provincial spending for mental health and rehabilitation programs. That’s great. But the front-line crisis is urgent, claiming more lives by the day: at least 2,947 apparent opioid-related deaths in Canada between January 2017 and September 2017, 1,460 of those in Ontario, according to the Public Health Ontario website. Some 4,500 emergency room visits across the country in the same time period.

At the Moss Park site, as of Tuesday, 203 overdose reversals recorded with the immediate application of naloxone.

That’s 203 lives that would likely have been lost if Ford had his way.

There are currently four official supervised-injection sites in Toronto and two overdose-prevention sites operating in Regent Park and St. Stephen’s Community House. A supervised-injection site, as Susan Shepherd, manager of the Toronto Drug Secretariat explained to the Star in an email, provides safe and hygienic conditions for people to inject pre-obtained drugs under the supervision of qualified staff. In Canada, legal operation of a supervised-injection service requires an exemption under the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act, granted by the federal Health Department.

“Overdose-prevention sites are low-barrier, time-limited, and targeted services that are intended to help address the current opioid poisoning crisis,” said Shepherd. “They can be opened much more quickly than a supervised-injection site.”

These are operated by the province under the Ministry of Health and Long-Term Care, also having secured exemptions from the federal government.

They’ve been out there since last summer, at Moss Park, because there were angels in this city who recognized the swirling crisis was already right in our face. Too much dying.

Those mental health funds that Ford has avowed — if you put any stock in a politician’s promises — would be far down the line, where the urgency is immediate, right now. Further, Ford ignores all the expert literature on the subject, which tells us that front-line administering at supervised-injection sites is the best-practice antidote and the point at which addicts are mostly likely to obtain assistance for their part-and-parcel issues — access to housing, therapy and clinical care.

Help them yes, but save them first.

Between 400 and 500 visits per week at the supervised inject sites in Toronto.

We make it about morality and lack of willpower and goddamn property rates. But it’s about health, it’s about a compulsion that often strips addicts of their senses. Never, however, stripped of their innate humanity.

May 09, 2018

Former senior aide alleges favoritism in health insurance deal

by RITEBET, in

Allegations have been raised that the government of Guam’s procurement for health insurance has been skewed in favor of Calvo’s SelectCare, said a former senior Calvo-Tenorio administration staffer, who documented his concerns in a letter to elected officials Tuesday.

“I believe every single year of this administration, the health insurance contract has been illegal,” said Troy Torres.

Torres has come forward with multiple allegations of corruption since he was arrested on April 27 for alleged drug possession following a raid at his home in Latte Heights.

The former senior staffer believes he was wrongfully arrested at the direction of Lt. Gov. Ray Tenorio and Police Chief Joseph I Cruz. Torres was released a day after his arrest and given a notice to appear back in court within three years, but wasn't charged.

In an interview with The Guam Daily Post on Tuesday, Torres alleged that Tenorio’s Deputy Chief of Staff Jadeen Tuncap and Guam Memorial Hospital Chief Financial Officer, Benita Manglona, who are both members of the government’s health insurance negotiating committee, were directly involved to ensure Calvo’s SelectCare received the bulk of the annual health insurance contract payments. GovGuam's annual health insurance costs have amounted to about $80 million a year.

“They did not maintain confidentiality or secrecy of the health insurance negotiating process whatsoever,” Torres alleged.

Torres outlined his concerns in a letter to Speaker Benjamin Cruz, Attorney General Elizabeth Barrett Anderson, and Legislative Committee on Rules Chairwoman Sen. Regine Biscoe Lee.

He accused Tuncap and Manglona of regularly reporting back to governor’s chief fiscal policy advisor, Bernie Artero, and then-Chief of Staff Franklin Arriola, and occasionally the lieutenant governor.

“Whenever there were changes to the process, whenever there was a choice, there had to be maneuvering so SelectCare would always be chosen,” Torres stated.

Tuncap and Manglona “whipped up the votes” and “wheeled and dealed” with the other members of the GovGuam negotiating team, to do that, he added.

"Every year since 2011, Gov. Edward J. Calvo ensured, through Artero, Arriola and Chief of Staff Mark Calvo, that SelectCare was chosen and received either an exclusive contract or the lion's share of the money in a multi-carrier scheme," Torres wrote.

“I’m not saying it’s bad insurance, but how SelectCare was chosen was definitely illegal,” Torres said.

He said he knew of the alleged collusion because he was called into meetings to get updates on the health insurance negotiating team's activities and claimed orders were sent back through "the ranks" to Tuncap and Manglona, who would be charged with presenting information and "either convincing or strong-arming the majority of the members of the health insurance negotiating team into voting in ways that eventually led to the adoption of whatever scheme benefitted Calvo's SelectCare most," the letter stated.

He recalled sitting in meetings with Arriola, Tenorio, Manglona and others to ensure the “right choice” was being made and prior to Tenorio signing off on the award. "It was all a scam," Torres alleged.

Gov. Calvo has designated Tenorio as a signatory to the health insurance contracts because of Calvo's family's ownership of SelectCare.

When asked why he remained silent about the alleged corruption for so long and helped shape the message going out to the community while working at Adelup, he said, “I thought the good stuff outweighed the bad stuff. Now looking back, I realize 100 good things could never outweigh one bad thing.”

Torres said he regrets turning a blind eye and not speaking out sooner. “When you don’t say anything, it’s allowed a really powerful administration to become extremely corrupt,” he said.

He told the speaker and the attorney general that he remains willing to testify before any legislative inquiry or grand jury.

Governor’s Director of Communications Oyaol Ngirairikl did not respond to questions related to the health insurance contract allegations, but in another statement regarding other allegations raised by Torres Tuesday, she said, “His statements and erratic behavior speak more about him than anyone else.”

May 09, 2018

'I Want Women To Have Rights Like Men,' Says Lawyer In Pakistan's Swat Valley

by RITEBET, in

The woman in the brown burqa stood at the gate of court complex as men in suits shouldered past. With one hand, she clutched her son, and in the other, a piece of paper scrawled with a name.

The district police officer gave it to her when she complained about her husband's abuse. He told her to present it at the entrance of the sprawling court administration that serves the Swat Valley. Noorshad Begum couldn't read it, being illiterate.

She handed it to a court guard.

He immediately strode toward the woman whose name was scrawled on the slip: Mehnaz. She was easily identifiable — the only female lawyer there on a recent spring day, wearing a a black lawyer's robe over her long white outfit, her hair covered by a headscarf and face by a veil.

"I often fight cases free of cost for poor people," said Mehnaz, who, like many Pakistanis, goes by one name. "This woman can't afford to pay for a lawyer," she said, flipping through referral documents Noorshad Begum kept in a plastic bag.

"My husband married another woman," Noorshad Begum explained. "He abandoned me. I have five children. He doesn't bother to ask about us."

The final straw: he took the dowry money she'd saved for their daughter's marriage.

"She wants justice and her rights," said Mehnaz, summarizing the woman's case. Then, summarizing her life's desire, she said: "I want women to have rights like men."

Minutes later, the guard stopped Mehnaz again — to direct her to a nearby room, where another woman sat with a baby. She appeared to have recently been crying and spoke to Mehnaz in confidence.

Mehnaz and other women lawyers do what they can, helping women to obtain divorces, custody of children and inheritance. In the seven years since she's been practicing law, Mehnaz estimates that she's helped hundreds of women in the Swat Valley, offering free legal counsel to some and representing others. She handles cases for male clients as well.

The Pakistani Taliban ruled here a decade ago, imposing their harsh interpretation of Islamic law. The military pushed them out in 2009 and the government mostly resumed control.

But many women lead cloistered lives, regardless of who is in power. They are rarely seen on the grubby streets of Mingora, Swat's main city. When they do appear, they are draped in scarves that cover their hair and much of their faces. Other women don burqas. Few women work outside the home.

Mehnaz is one of 12 female lawyers in this administrative district within Swat that numbers 700,000 people, according to Gohar Ali Khan, a senior advocate based in Mingora. Khan said there were about 500 male lawyers.

As a teenager, Mehnaz saw her male relatives cheat their sisters out of their inheritance of land – a key asset in the fertile Swat River plain. Traditionally, Swat's women do not inherit, even though under Pakistani law, they are entitled to half the amount that their male siblings would receive.

Mehnaz recalled her male relatives saying to their sisters: "Our parents died in our house. There's nothing for you." She said those women were poor and that inheritance could have helped them.

"When I saw that women weren't given their rights," she says, "I decided I would be a lawyer. I'd help them get justice."

Her father, a schoolteacher, told her to forget it. He wanted her to be a teacher like him — it was a respectable job for women. Lawyering was for men, she recalled him saying. Mehnaz fought back. It was the first of many battles. Her mother sided with her. Eventually, her father relented.

Then the Taliban took over her village of Matta in 2007 and burned down the girls' schools months later. Mehnaz had already finished high school, but Taliban insurgents were also attacking women who tried to commute to study in other areas. So Mehnaz moved to her aunt's house in Mingora, Swat's main town. It hadn't yet fallen to Taliban control and there was a coed institution, the Muslim Law College.

But clashes between the Pakistani army and the Taliban in 2009 upturned her studies again.

"I did my exams under very difficult circumstances," she recalled. "There was curfew, clashes," she said, "and I was afraid of the Taliban, too, that they might kill me for getting an education."

Mehnaz says at the time, the Taliban even threatened her parents.

By then, her father was her biggest cheerleader. He counseled her to not think of the threats: just focus on exams.

She did. And two years later, in 2011, Mehnaz began practicing as a lawyer. On her first day, she recalled, people exchanged glances as she entered the court complex in her black lawyer's robe.

"People found it strange," she said. "They'd say, 'Why has she joined a male profession?' "

Mehnaz said she decided to make a point of sitting in the large, shady courtyard reserved for lawyers.

"There were no girls at all!" she said with a laugh. "It was very difficult to sit here." Other lawyers stared at her; she says they made her feel out of place. But she tried as much as she could to ignore this and keep working. She felt she was fighting two battles — one on behalf of her clients in the courts and the other, to be taken seriously by the court administration.

On a recent day, Mehnaz was again the only woman in the courtyard, but her male colleagues greeted her with respectful salaams. "Now, thank God, things are better," she said.

Although the Taliban weren't in power after the army took control of the Swat Valley, extremists still threatened women trying to work and girls getting an education. Malala Yousafzai was shot in the head by a Taliban gunman as she returned home from school in 2012.

During the same year, Taliban insurgents kidnapped the father of female lawyer Humaira Shaukat – to pressure her to quit her profession, Shaukat said. Although he was released after a month, the threats against her and her father have continued, she said – but she declined to provide further detail, saying it could put her in danger.

Since deciding to study law, Shaukat said: "I've walked about with a shroud wrapped around my head."

Also in 2012, as Taliban threats continued against women who worked and girls pursuing an education, Mehnaz said threats resumed against her own father.

"He was threatened through letters. Mobile phones. Sometimes through the post," she said.

Her father kept it secret from her, not wanting her to worry. But her siblings told her, fearing that she, too, might be in danger. "They were terrible years for me," she said. "It was risky. But I didn't lose courage."

These days, Mehnaz says she doesn't get threatened by the Taliban. But she recently joined a movement demanding rights for her ethnic minority, the Pashtuns. The movement emerged in January, and activists have been subject to arrest and disappearance.

Days after Mehnaz was interviewed by NPR, she sent a photograph of herself at a small protest. She was holding a sign saying, "We are demanding rights according to the constitution." She was the only woman, and she stood in the front row.

May 09, 2018

Stormy Daniels’ Lawyer Claims Russian Oligarch Paid $500,000 to Michael Cohen

by RITEBET, in

On Tuesday afternoon, Michael Avenatti, the on-media-everywhere lawyer for Stormy Daniels, released a report with a bombshell claim: An American company controlled by the Viktor Vekselberg, a Putin-friendly Russian oligarch, paid $500,000 last year to Michael Cohen, President Donald Trump’s embattled lawyer and fixer. The allegation carries tremendous implications and raises the question of secret financial ties between Russia and Trump world. The report also states that Cohen received payments from a Swiss pharmaceutical companies and other foreign sources. Though the report includes no evidence, the New York Times reportedTuesday reviewed documents that largely confirmed the claims.

Avenatti says that Vekselberg and his cousin Andrew Intrater, the CEO of the American subsidiary of Vekselberg’s company, Renova, routed the money to Cohen through an entity called Columbus LLC. That appears to be a limited liability corporation linked to Columbus Nova, Renova’s US subsidiary.

Avenatti also alleges that Cohen used a bank account to engage in suspicious bank transactions totaling $4.4 million between October 2016 and January 2018. Avenatti has not said how he obtained the information contained in his report.

Avenatti’s report suggests Cohen set up a company, Essential Consultants LLC, that he used to sell access to President Trump. Payments came from firms in Korea, Hungary, Singapore, Malaysia, Taiwan, and Israel, Avenatti says. He claims Novartis, a Swiss pharmaceutical company, paid $399,920 to Cohen’s firm in late 2017 and early 2018. After the payments, Trump met with Novartis’ CEO at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. The document also says Essential Consultants received $200,000 in four payments from AT&T in late 2017 and early 2018. AT&T confirmedthe payments in a statement reported by CNBC: “Essential Consulting was one of several firms we engaged in early 2017 to provide insights into understanding the new administration. They did no legal or lobbying work for us, and the contract ended in December 2017.”

Avenatti’s report could launch a massive case of alleged influence-peddling and may be a real game-changer in the Trump-Russia scandal. Vekselberg, as Mother Jones has previously reported, has an unusual set of ties to Trump and his inner circle.

This Russian oligarch was a partner of Wilbur Ross in rescuing and reviving a collapsed Cypriot bank that had been full of shady Russian money. Not surprisingly, Ross downplayed his curious connection to Vekselberg during his 2017 confirmation hearings for the commerce secretary position he now holds. And after the 2016 election, Vekselberg’s cousin—Intrater—donated $250,000 to Trump’s inauguration committee. Intrater also gave a $35,000 contribution to a joint fundraising committee for Trump’s reelection and the Republican National Committee. He had previously made no large political contributions.

Avenatti’s report claims that Vekselberg’s payment to Cohen came through Intrater’s company. If Avenatti is correct, this would prompt an obvious lead for special counsel Robert Mueller to follow: Did the money Intrater donated to Trump come from his cousin the oligarch? That is, did a wealthy Russian with Kremlin contacts funnel money to Trump and the Republicans?

Mueller seems to be already on this trail. As the New York Times reported last week, “Federal agents working with Mr. Mueller stopped Mr. Vekselberg, a billionaire businessman, at a New York-area airport this year, searched his electronic devices and questioned him, according to people familiar with the matter.” According to CNN, the agents asked Vekselberg about the payments to Cohen. Vekselberg also attended the now infamous December 2015 Moscow gala for RT, the Russian propaganda outlet, where ret. Gen. Michael Flynn sat at the head table with Vladimir Putin.

In April, the Treasury Department sanctioned Vekselberg and Renova along with other Russian oligarchs and companies. The sanctions freeze Vekselberg’s US assets, bar him or Renova from using the US banking system, and prohibit Americans from doing business with him.

In the hours after Avenatti tweeted out his seven-page report, media outlets—including Mother Jones—pressed him to provide confirmation of his assertions, which suggest a convergence of the Stormy Daniels affair and the Russia controversy. If Avenatti can back up these allegations, the scope of the Trump-Russia scandal could dramatically shift. The old watchword of scandals is “follow the money.” Avenatti—who recently made the brazen prediction that Trump would not serve out his term—is now saying this fundamental rule of investigations is essential for getting to the bottom of the current mess. He owes it to the American public to show whatever proof he has.

Michael Cohen’s lawyer did not respond to a request for comment.

Update: In a statement Tuesday night, Columbus Nova’s attorney, Richard Owens of Latham & Watkins, acknowledged payments to Cohen, but denied Vekselberg’s involvement.

Here is Owens’ statement: “Columbus Nova is a management company solely owned and controlled by Americans. After the inauguration, the firm hired Michael Cohen as a business consultant regarding potential sources of capital and potential investments in real estate and other ventures. Reports today that Viktor Vekselberg used Columbus Nova as a conduit for payments to Michael Cohen are false. The claim that Viktor Vekselberg was involved or provided any funding for Columbus Nova’s engagement of Michael Coehn is patently untrue. Neither Viktor Vekselberg nor anyone else other than Columbus Nova’s owners, were involved in the decision to hire Cohen or provided funding for his engagement.”

May 09, 2018

Girl strips off and sunbathes on an expressway causing traffic jam

by RITEBET, in

A woman stripped and lay in the middle of the expressway during a three-hour traffic jam caused by a lorry that crashed and erupted in flames.

The flaming oxygen tanker closed off both sides of the busy motorway, leaving Bank Holiday travelers stranded as emergency services rushed to the scene on the westbound carriageway by the Milnrow junction, near Rochdale, Greater Manchester.

Girl strips off and sunbathes on an expressway while stranded in traffic jam

It was a very hot day and the traffic jam didn't make it better, so the woman, who has now been identified as Lily, used it as an opportunity to top off her tan. She was snapped by amused road users and, soon, others joined her to make the best of the moment.

Lily was traveling to Blackpool with her partner Sam Wadsworth when they got stuck in the traffic jam between junction 21 and 22 of the motorway.