Brown University professor Emily Oster has created quite a stir with her recent article asking for a “pandemic amnesty.” In it, she calls for “both sides” in the COVID debate to forgive each other so we can focus on solving current problems. If Oster wanted exposure, she certainly got it, with commentators far and wide responding to her plea. If she wanted to heal wounds and close chasms, however, she failed miserably. Many have told her to go pound sand.
“Why didn’t your mother abort you?” a passerby shouted angrily at environmental protection activists who were blocking Berlin’s busy Frankfurter Allee during a recent protest.
This exchange illustrates the increasing divisions in Germany when it comes to the ever more conspicuous displays of civil disobedience employed by organizations such as Letzte Generation (“Last Generation”). A gap is growing between those who say they will fight for their future by any means within reason, and those who say that many such attention-grabbing tactics have crossed the line into criminality.
Decrying high inflation and the rising cost of food, housing and fuel, Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre held a rare media availability on Wednesday to declare: “it feels like everything is broken in this country right now.”
Listing off “40-year high inflation,” “35 year olds living in their parents’ basements” and the “nearly 100 per cent increase in fuel prices,” Poilievre placed the blame on Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and the Liberals, while pitching a Conservative government as the solution
Red states are growing, while blue states are mired in lawlessness and decline.
Yesterday’s Midterms were not a victory for conservative or progressive ideology, but an assertion of the growing power of geography in American politics. It was less a national election than a clash of civilisations.
Virtually nowhere in blue areas did Republicans make gains. Both the north-east and California – the central players in Democratic Party politics – stayed solidly blue. Even the most well-regarded GOP candidates, such as Lanhee Chen who ran for California state controller, struggled to make inroads in Democratic territory.
Four days into COP27, the latest global effort to save the planet, and there’s modest but discernible momentum toward having richer countries pay some of the bills for climate damage.
“I believe that we need to have an open and frank conversation about loss and damage, which countries like Canada and many developed nations have refused to do so far,” said Steven Guilbeault, Canada’s minister of Environment and Climate Change, in an interview at Canada’s pavilion at the summit venue in Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt.
Riots anyone?
A report authored by a police consultant and distributed by the former Ottawa Police Service (OPS) chief says the Freedom Convoy protests were a “movement by right wing Christians” who wished to attract followers.
“It’s a movement by right wing Christians who used mandates as a pretense to gain a following and privileged access as ‘protesters,’” wrote Erin Kelly, CEO of the contracted market research firm Advanced Symbolics Inc., in an email to Ottawa Police officials on Feb. 6, according to Blacklock’s Reporter.
OPS chief at the time, Peter Sloly, urged in a subsequent email that the consultant’s report be widely distributed among OPS officials, saying that it provides “really important insights.”
You can just see the thought process here… Hmmm gotta justify my invoice… I know!! Demonize Christians!! The Trudeau government loves that!!
OTTAWA — Justin Trudeau’s acknowledgement that the Chinese are playing “aggressive games” by interfering in Canadian elections is about as shocking as Captain Renault finding gambling was rampant at Rick’s Cafe in Casablanca.
The prime minister was responding to questions raised in an excellent Global News report about China targeting Canada with a campaign of interference in the 2019 election that included payments through intermediaries to at least 11 federal candidates.
Virginia teacher is upset that new rules say she needs to involve parents to affirm a student’s gender change pic.twitter.com/nVizjfiO6p
— Libs of TikTok (@libsoftiktok) November 8, 2022
Why don’t we know the origins of Covid-19? It’s been nearly three years, and even after scientists have analyzed millions of virus sequences, have taken samples of thousands of animals, including hundreds from the Wuhan market where the virus first is alleged to have broken out, we still haven’t discovered the proximal cause of the pandemic. It is strange, to say the least.
Eight out of 10 Canadians say China has negative influence on world affairs: poll
More than 84 per cent of Canadians feel China has a negative influence on world affairs and only 8 per cent believe Ottawa should make closer ties with the country a priority, a new Nanos Research poll shows.
The same survey, commissioned by The Globe and Mail, found more than 46 per cent of Canadians feel the United States has a negative influence on world affairs.
But, nevertheless, more than two-thirds of Canadians surveyed felt Canada should make closer ties with the U.S. a priority.
It took Junior an awfully long time to speak out against China, he hasn’t acted just spewed hot air.
The intelligence chief for the Ontario Provincial Police (OPP) told his superior he had concerns about information requests on social movements his unit was receiving from political leaders and other actors during the time of the Freedom Convoy last winter.
The OPP Provincial Operations Intelligence Bureau (POIB) “is increasingly receiving requests for information, intelligence, open source scrapes, background checks etc on a wide array of societal actors,” POIB head Superintendent Pat Morris wrote in an email to OPP Deputy Commissioner Chuck Cox on Feb. 2.
Communist China has emitted more carbon dioxide over the past eight years than the United Kingdom has since the beginning of the Industrial Revolution, a report from Oxford University’s Our World in Data project has found.
According to researchers at the University of Oxford, the United Kingdom has emitted 78 billion tonnes of carbon dioxide between 1750 and 2020, however, this pales in comparison to the recent output from Communist China, which has emitted some 80 billion tonnes since just 2013.
Americans in recent weeks have been outraged by reports that China’s regime has established a police station on the Lower East Side of Manhattan, in Chinatown.
The New York Post last month reported that the IRS-blacklisted ChangLe Association NY Inc., which had failed to file required reports for three consecutive years and thereby lost tax-exempt status in May, still owns and operates a “service station” at 107 East Broadway.
The location houses the Fuzhou Police Overseas Chinese Affairs bureau. The bureau’s stated purpose is to help China’s nationals with Chinese-government identification cards and drivers’ licenses.
After less than two years as a homeless shelter, opened with the aim of moving people out of park encampments, the Novotel on the Esplanade is pivoting back to life as a tourist hub.
The shelter will shut its operations by year’s end, the city recently announced, as part of a gradual closure of 27 temporary shelter sites by the end of 2023. The hotel aims to resume life as a tourism destination in 2023, city hall says — as a development application has also been made with hopes of building two towers on the site with a hotel, retail and condos.
Using the word “blacklist” is not racist, an employment tribunal has found, after an Asian engineer working for IBM alleged the word had been used to attack him.
Taiyyib Azam accused his co-worker of bigotry when they used the word during a team call in the aftermath of George Floyd’s murder in the United States. However, the tribunal found the use of the word was “entirely innocuous”.
The cyber security expert made various allegations of racism against colleagues in a bid to support “his views that every individual he interacted with was racist”, the tribunal heard.
He also alleged that his managers were using “black magic” and “voodoo” against him.
