In the ongoing struggle of SARS-CoV-2’s genes versus our wits, the virus that causes Covid-19 relentlessly probes human defenses with new genetic gambits. New variants of this coronavirus with increasing transmissibility have sprung up every few months, a scenario that is likely to continue.
Random mutations are random – unless they’re engineered.
American online fundraising platform GiveSendGo has demanded the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) launch a probe into who hacked their site and illegally published the private information of donors to the Canadian trucker convoy.
Ottawa’s interim police chief says officers are working to keep more protesters from getting close to Parliament Hill as they try to end the occupation of downtown streets.
Steve Bell told the Ottawa Police Services Board early Thursday afternoon a major increase of police officers will be seen throughout the core.
“Only those with lawful reason to enter the core, such as residents, businesses and others with lawful reasons, will be allowed in the area,” Ottawa police tweeted around the same time as his remarks.
Canada will be joining the withdrawal of a French-led military contingent from Mali after supporting the operation against Islamist militants for nearly a decade, according to a joint declaration by the military allies.
Canada does not have troops in the counter-insurgency campaign, known today as Operation Barkhane and Task Force Takuba, but has been supporting it with Canadian military transport aircraft since 2013.
France and its allies in the West African country, including Canada, have been increasingly critical of Mali’s military junta after it postponed elections and recruited hundreds of Russian military contractors for its internal security.
Ottawa’s new emergency law enlists a huge range of financial players in a bid to cut off funds to protesters tied to the trucker blockades, but questions remain about who will be targeted and whether it will even work.
A new order and regulations under the Emergencies Act, which the federal government invoked on Monday, requires a long list of entities — this includes banks, insurance companies, credit unions, trust and loan companies, payment processors and online fundraising platforms — to continuously determine whether they should freeze accounts and halt services for individuals or companies tied to illegal assemblies and blockades that have gripped the country for weeks.
The federal government has quietly adopted a policy that all but closes the door to repatriating Canadians from detention facilities in Syria for captured ISIS members and their families.
The secretive policy document on the detainees obtained by Global News said the government had no obligation to repatriate them and would only assist them under limited circumstances.
Deputy Prime Minister Chrystia Freeland said Thursday financial institutions have moved quickly to freeze the accounts of people linked to the demonstrations in Ottawa, leaving an unknown number of protesters in financial limbo.
Freeland vowed to take more accounts offline in the coming days in an attempt to starve the organizers of the funds they need to continue their occupation of the nation’s capital.
Freeland, who is also the finance minister, said the RCMP and other law enforcement agencies have been gathering intelligence on convoy protesters and their supporters and sharing that information with financial institutions to restrict access to cash and cryptocurrency.
He’s also exposed a massive flaw in Canada’s constitutional order.
… At no point in the last 34 years has anything that happened in Canada met either of these standards. By declaring that a medium-sized irritation — a group of truckers protesting in Ottawa — is severe enough to buck the trend (mostly, it seems, because the truckers happen to be his political enemies), Justin Trudeau has disgraced himself and his office.
Black Lives Matter filings reveal prominent Democratic lawyer Marc Elias and another longtime ally of former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton have taken on key roles in the charity amid scrutiny over its leadership and finances.
Elias, best known for his funding of British ex-spy Christopher Steele’s discredited anti-Trump dossier while he served as Clinton’s 2016 campaign general counsel, appears to be representing the Black Lives Matter Global Network Foundation through his recently formed Elias Law Group. BLM’s national organization repeatedly lists the Elias firm as one of its addresses and states in its short-year 2020 Form 990 that its books were now in the care of the Elias Law Group.
This is the most monumentally stupid, monumentally arrogant, and monumentally misguided decision by a prime minister since 1867.
When Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, in his sophomoric musings on the nature of Canada some years back, famously declared that Canada has “no core identity,” most of us thought he was stating his opinion, however ridiculous, of the country as he saw it at the time.
We were wrong, ever so wrong. He was stating an ambition. He was declaring a goal.
The first Canadian convicted under anti-terrorism laws enacted after the 9/11 attacks has lost his bid for release after the Parole Board ruled he wasn’t ready to leave prison.
The decision followed a hearing at which Mohammad Momin Khawaja struggled to explain how he had reformed since he was arrested when police disrupted a 2004 bomb plot.
He also appeared to downplay his actions, claiming he thought at the time that he was supporting a “good cause,” and was simply responding to “social injustice” and “suffering.”
He should have said he did it for Black Live Matters. He would get money from Justin.
A future in which special powers are invoked for fake emergencies is one in which freedom cannot be said to exist
There are few things as freeing as an emergency. There are also few things as dangerous as an emergency.
For two years now, to varying degrees the people of the United States and Canada have been living under emergency rules. On Monday, in Ottawa, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau introduced a new state of national emergency, not because of COVID this time, but because of the supposed threat posed by truckers protesting COVID restrictions.
Canada’s Justice Minister, David Lametti, has told Trump supporters who donated to the “Freedom Convoy” to “be worried” about having their bank accounts frozen.
Speaking with CTV News, when Lametti was asked if regular citizens who donated to the “Freedom Convoy” protests in opposition to the vaccine mandates should be worried about having their assets frozen by the government, Lametti singled out pro-Trumpers.
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau is obsessed with the money donated through crowdfunding sources to the truckers protesting cross-border vaccine mandates.
Trudeau has repeatedly expressed his concern about foreign money — mostly from the U.S. — supporting the trucker convoy. In just a few weeks, first through GoFundMe and then through GiveSendGo, supporters pitched in more than $10 million and then $8.4 million to the anti-vaccine mandate protest.
Nanos Research numbers show a continuing rise in support for the People’s Party of Canada — a trend that began in the summer before the 2021 federal election.
On the latest episode of Trend Line, Nanos Research’s Nik Nanos said that the percentage of Canadians polled who would consider voting for the People’s Party of Canada (PPC) usually sits at around 10 per cent. But as of Feb. 16, that number has gone up to 16 per cent, which Nanos calls a “material increase.”
The PPC is a better bet than the atrophied mainstream parties.
