Oleg Orlov, a prominent Russian human rights activist, has been detained after staging a one-man protest in Moscow’s Red Square against Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
Members of Memorial, a now-banned human rights organisation of which Orlov had been a leader, shared a video of him on Sunday holding a banner before being taken away by police.
Just like Ottawa.
Israel understands that the United Nations is a broken institution that helps sow chaos, terror and injustice. It knows that because it’s so often on the receiving end.
It’s taken the horrors in Ukraine for people to begin to register that a central pillar of world affairs since the Second World War has crumbled. Even now, though, the full implications aren’t acknowledged.
As evidence of Russian war crimes in Ukraine has mounted, the U.N. General Assembly has now voted to suspend Russia from the U.N. Human Rights Council.
But the council has long been a vicious joke. Serial human-rights abusers, including such states as China, Cuba, Pakistan, Libya and Venezuela, are currently members.
We are living in a material world, after all
The Russian invasion of Ukraine has made it clear that what Boris Yeltsin in the 1990s called “the cold peace” has given way to Cold War II. The first Cold War was a struggle not only of nations and alliances but also of systems—capitalism versus communism. The second Cold War is already a struggle among systems as well, pitting countries that focus on manufacturing (China) and resources (Russia) in the physical world against an alliance led by the United States, which for the last generation has sacrificed much of its own manufacturing and mining to specialize in global leadership in finance, services, and entertainment. To put it another way, the contest of models in Cold War II is not about ownership of the means of production; it is about material production versus immaterial service provision.
On April 7, I wrote a post about the fact that Jack Maxey, a man who once worked with Steve Bannon at the latter’s War Room, was contending that he had successfully recovered 450 gigabytes of deleted documents and photos from Hunter Biden’s infamous hard drive. Maxey promised that he would soon be making this information available to the public. However, Yaacov Apelbaum, a writer whose work a highly reputable friend of mine recommends, suggests that Maxey’s assertions should be taken with a very large grain of salt.
They can’t bear people living guilt-free lives.
Every now and then someone pipes up to point out that if environmentalists really want to lower carbon, they’re going to have nuclear. And they’re promptly buried in a tsunami of outrage (“Nuclear? Do you want us all to die?”) and spin (look at this blog post sponsored by a solar panel company about how well solar panels work). The obvious answer is that environmentalists, like all lefties, don’t actually care about the things that they claim to care about.
Broadway now exists to promote ideology, not art
We all know our consciousness is corrupt, and a long life, examined, brings the burden of regret, shame, and indeed a horror at our own actions that, at times, becomes scarcely bearable.
The theatre, and tragedy particularly, offers a median between outright confession and conscious, rational (which is to say flawed or at least untrustworthy) understanding.
Sex, money, and the future of online free speech
For more than a decade, both amateurs and professionals shared their sometimes sweet, sometimes weird, and often graphic sexual activity on Pornhub. Launched in 2007 not long after YouTube and with a similar free-for-all spirit, the site represented a new wave of “adult entertainment” in which anyone with an internet connection could partake and anyone with a digital camera could become a star.
Dubbed “tube sites,” Pornhub and its various peers began to dominate web traffic generally and porn consumption specifically. These sites trod on porn’s established business model, but for savvy sex workers the tube site network could provide a way to break into the business or reach audiences directly, without the porn industry’s usual middlemen. To monetize one’s presence in the early days took some creativity, but tube sites would eventually offer content partnerships that allowed people to get paid directly for their videos. Their competitors, such as cam sites and clip stores, made the process of charging money and getting paid even smoother.
Canada will offer Ukraine up to $1 billion in new loan resources via the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and provide an additional $500 million in military aid, the Liberal government said on Thursday.
Why are we sending more billions to Ukraine and contributing to escalate this war??
Our army doesn’t even have the resources to defend our territory. Let’s solve our problems first. https://t.co/sadRG8Hn6d
— Maxime Bernier (@MaximeBernier) April 9, 2022
The Walt Disney Company is one of the most powerful corporations in Florida. Gov. Ron DeSantis is a rising political star in the political party that dominates the state.
Despite that self-evident truth, Disney unwisely — perhaps stupidly — challenged the governor to fight back when it came out against the Parental Rights in Education bill, which opponents have deliberately misnamed the “Don’t Say Gay” bill.
According to this article in The Grid, Disney exercised its considerable power and influence under the radar and behind the scenes — until now. Whether the company became overtly political because of lobbying by a small but vocal radical minority who demanded Disney “do something” about the bill or whether executives were already on board with a radical agenda isn’t important.
A couple recent episodes of the Paramount+ series Star Trek: Picard featured Starfleet crew members traveling back in time to present day to beat up U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents, free a busload of illegal immigrants on their way to be deported, and lecture that racism just “took off a hood and put on a suit” in the early 21st Century.
Charest condemns leadership rival Poilievre’s convoy, crypto, climate policies
Doubling down on his condemnation of his Conservative leadership rival, Jean Charest says that Pierre Poilievre should be disqualified from becoming leader of the federal Conservative party over his support of the “Freedom Convoy.”
“Everyone knows that Pierre Poilievre supported the blockade,” Charest said in an interview on CTV’s Question Period. “If you say to Canadians: ‘I want to be the leader of the Conservative Party and I want to be the chief legislator of the country, but I don’t have to obey the laws,’ I’m sorry. That’s not just a failure in leadership. It disqualifies you, as far as I’m concerned, as being someone who thinks or aspires to be a leader of a party.”
There are now promotional videos on TikTok for getting top surgery. Keep your kids away from TikTok. It’s cancer pic.twitter.com/sUUqJBTNjG
— Libs of Tik Tok (@libsoftiktok) April 8, 2022
Get an electric scooter they said ,it'll be good for the environment they said ..and it'll be fun…. pic.twitter.com/oEiZNwfL8p
— Penfold (@elbow112) April 9, 2022
Deputy Prime Minister and Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland says there is no better source of extra funds for Ukraine‘s recovery from the Russian invasion than from the assets of those backing the war.
In an interview with The West Block‘s Mercedes Stephenson, Freeland emphasized the proposal in the budget she tabled last week that would allow Canada’s minister of foreign affairs to not only freeze Russian assets, but seize them, too.
OMG! But I can’t fly because I’m not 💉vaxed?! https://t.co/Jv7cA8dCj3
— contrary mary (@contrar07964578) April 10, 2022
