‘I Don’t Buy It’: Lawmakers on Both Sides of the Aisle Scoff at TikTok CEO’s Vow to Protect U.S. Data from CCP
With a U.S. regulatory crackdown looming, TikTok CEO Shou Zi Chew appeared Thursday before the House Energy and Commerce Committee. During the hearing, lawmakers from both parties expressed skepticism towards the CEO’s claims that the popular social-media app would protect U.S. data and American users from the Chinese Communist Party.
After Gentrification – What becomes of cities when the yuppies flee?
Gentrification is the urban policy most closely associated with the neoliberal era. Though reports of neoliberalism’s death are greatly exaggerated, there is no question that policies such as free trade, deregulation, entitlement reform, and foreign intervention are now more on the defensive than 20 years ago. Gentrification may be vulnerable, too. Certainly, fertility decline and remote work pose threats to it. The smaller family sizes that have become normal in 21st-century America mean fewer potential urban professionals in the college-to-city pipeline. Those currents will be yet further stemmed by the increased share of white collar jobs done via Zoom.
Gentrification is, at core, an economic strategy. It aims at increasing the number of middle- and upper-middle-class people living in urban cores. There always were, and always will be, young adults who want to live in cities. Gentrifiers differ from Patti Smith types, because they’re respectable and promise quantifiable gains to the urban economy such as higher real estate valuations. They moved into housing previously occupied by people with lower incomes.
The Opioid Harm Reduction Trap
Does Narcan normalize overdoses?
“Iwould love to see a world in which Boy Scouts make handing out naloxone as their Eagle Scout project,” said addiction scholar Stefan Kertesz in the Washington Post. Naloxone prevents opioid overdose deaths — which is a good thing.
But soon federal regulators are expected to approve the over-the-counter sale of a nasal spray of the drug — its brand name is Narcan — and I’m thinking that the so-called harm reduction movement is about to inflict a world of pain on damaged people and degraded cities.
Vaccine damage is now indisputable, say top scientists
USE of the gene-based Covid vaccines should be halted pending a detailed investigation of where the jab’s products travel in the body and for how long they last, a multinational team of scientists has declared in a report out this month.
The appeal comes from a group of ten scientists, including the top American cardiologist Dr Peter McCullough, who have reviewed evidence of the mechanisms through which they believe millions may have been harmed.
Dodging the Apocalypse
A little over a week ago, on Sunday, March 12, a near-catastrophic event occurred that could have wrecked the lives of everyone reading this:
A Powerful Solar Eruption on Far Side of Sun Still Impacted Earth.
A massive eruption of solar material, known as a coronal mass ejection or CME, was detected escaping from the Sun at 11:36 p.m. EDT on March 12, 2023. The CME erupted from the side of the Sun opposite Earth.
As China War Looms, Navy’s Priority is Going ‘Green’
“As Secretary of the Navy, I have made climate one of my top priorities.”
The “age of American naval dominance is over”, Jerry Hendix, a former Navy Captain warned in a high-profile article in The Atlantic.
Hendrix’s article imagines a scenario in which China or other enemy nations seize control of what are now international waters and the cargo that moves across them. “The great container ships and tankers of today would disappear, replaced by smaller, faster cargo vessels capable of moving rare and valuable goods past pirates and corrupt officials.” A handful of nations would end up controlling the chokepoints of international trade and America would not be one of them.
Other world leaders may be brought to account, but Canadian prime ministers, it seems, are invincible
It is the season of accountability for world leaders. As if by some cosmic coincidence, a number of present and former heads of government are more or less simultaneously being brought to justice for their misdeeds, in ways for which there is no precedent.
France strikes: rioting feared in latest pension reform protests
Public services will grind to a halt in France today as more than a million people are expected to return to the streets in protest at President Macron’s pension reform, which he defended as an unpleasant duty yesterday.
Some 12,000 police officers have been deployed to curb predicted violence after a week of spontaneous riots in Paris and other cities against the deeply unpopular retirement revamp that Macron imposed without a parliamentary vote last week. The government fears the re-emergence of a violent grassroots revolt like the gilets jaunes [yellow vests] insurrection of 2018-2019.
#France Firefighters on strike join the demonstration in Opéra’s square in #Paris, where the crowd is chanting “Everybody love the firefighters”. The firefighters forced riot police units to back down. pic.twitter.com/nay2TrFe72
— Arthur Morgan (@ArthurM40330824) March 23, 2023
In France Riot-Police joined the protesters. Soon everywhere. pic.twitter.com/vRzBfcb8nv
— Kim Dotcom (@KimDotcom) March 23, 2023
Council replaces ‘confusing’ wiggly lines with ‘yellow brick road’
Residents who hit out at a council’s use of confusing “wiggly lines” on a busy road have responded angrily after the markings were replaced with bright resurfacing, likening it to a scene from the Wizard of Oz.
The council provoked ire from residents in January 2023 when it painted curvy lines along a beachfront road in Clevedon, Somerset, as part of a controversial new plan designed to slow traffic.
Adam Zivo: Here’s why the outrageous Han Dong scandal is plausible
The intelligence leaks alleging MP Han Dong advised China to delay the release of Michael Kovrig and Michael Spavor are outrageous – but also entirely plausible. These leaks, which suggest that Dong’s motivation was to undermine the Conservatives to the benefit of Beijing, underline the need for a full and transparent public inquiry into China’s influence campaigns.
He was guilty the second he turned on the waterworks. Tears are the gold standard of Liberal party insincerity.
Eco-dread is a luxury belief we can no longer afford
Climate-change hysteria is a menace to the lives and interests of working people.
Here we go again. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has issued a new document – the final part of its mammoth sixth report – and we all know what that means. More doomsday porn in the papers. More shroud-waving from eco-agitators. More warnings of imminent apocalypse. The climate cult has not disappointed. Our world is on the ‘brink of catastrophic warming’, cries the Washington Post. We’re headed for ‘climate disaster’, warns the BBC. The ‘climate time bomb’ is ticking, says UN secretary general António Guterres. In short, the countdown to doom continues. Unless we repent of our eco-sins, we’ll cause the heat death of our celestial home.
Beijing denies meddling after MP Han Dong’s resignation from Liberal caucus
OTTAWA — Beijing says it has nothing to say about ongoing allegations that China has meddled in Canadian affairs, including those regarding a member of Parliament who resigned from the Liberal caucus.
Han Dong announced Wednesday night that he will now sit as an Independent while a rapporteur investigates claims of Chinese interference, including allegations the Toronto MP willingly received electoral support through Chinese officials.
WTF?
"Anita Dick and Holden Hiscock"pic.twitter.com/V96lAYfzSI
— Insider Paper (@TheInsiderPaper) March 23, 2023
h/t XC
Ontario’s 2023 budget braces for economic slowdown, with contingency fund and cautious investments
Ontario Finance Minister Peter Bethlenfalvy unveiled a budget on Thursday that he says shores up the province for uncertain economic times, while still managing to balance the books in 2024-25, offer new tax breaks to manufacturers, speed up planned cash for home care and add funding for supportive housing.
Oh Oh… No big cash injection for Toronto in Ontario budget
It wasn’t the budget Toronto was hoping for.
Despite months of pleading from city leaders, the $204.7-billion provincial spending plan released by Finance Minister Peter Bethlenfalvy on Thursday didn’t include the major funding injection the municipality says it needs to shore up its COVID-battered accounts.