Canadians cry – “More punishment, please!”:
Taxpayers have paid pandemic relief to five banks operating in Canada including branches of the state-run Bank of China Ltd. The Prime Minister’s Office did not comment: “It’s not good news for anyone if local businesses have to close shop.”
Environment Minister Jonathan Wilkinson for the first time acknowledges climate change programs will see Canadians pay higher net costs for fuel. Wilkinson also called the carbon tax a “carbon tax,” a phrase never used by his department: “Politicians have an obligation to the public to tell them the straight goods.”
The Federation of Electric Power Companies of Japan has called for cooperation for power saving as the supply-demand balance becomes tight amid a cold snap hitting the country.
The industry group said Sunday on its website that it wants customers to cooperate for efficient power consumption by continuing to use heating equipment amid the cold wave while curbing the use of other electric appliances.
Electricity demand for heating has been increasing recently as cold weather continues to hit many regions of the country. In seven regions, mainly in western Japan, on Friday, maximum power demand surpassed the levels believed to be seen once in about 10 years, the federation said.
Meanwhile, there have been days when the amount of electricity generated with solar energy dropped due to bad weather, according to the group.
In a move that surprises exactly no one, just like a useless prime minister’s son getting to play at his dad’s former desk:
North Korean leader Kim Jong-un consolidated his grip on power at the party congress Sunday, where he was elected general secretary of the Workers’ Party of Korea.
His predecessors all held the title, while his late father, Kim Jong-il, was named “eternal general secretary” in 2012 when Kim Jong-un succeeded him.
“Kim Jong-un has reshaped the party leadership, as guided by ideologies shared by Kim Il-sung and Kim Jong-il, and put forward policies for North Koreans,” according to the resolution adopted at the congress.
Experts said Kim, who has been chairman of the State Affairs Commission since 2016 following four years of being first secretary, was seeking unrivaled power.
“Kim wants to see an indisputable one-man rule, so he threw out the chairmanship because it did not make him stand out among other party chairmen,” said Cheong Seong-chang, senior research fellow at the Sejong Institute.
“The title is a clear sign of being ‘first among equals,’” said Shin Beom-chul, director of the Center for Diplomacy and Security at the Korea Research Institute for National Strategy.
Other experts said the change was foreseen given that Kim has repeatedly sought to portray himself as a leader who “serves the people.”
“Being secretary rather than chairman portrays Kim as less authoritarian,” said Kim Hyung-suk, who was South Korea’s vice unification minister between 2016 and 2017.
Meanwhile, Kim Yo-jong, Kim Jong-un’s sister whom South Korea’s intelligence agency described as the regime’s “de facto second-in-command,” was not promoted. She remained a member of the Central Committee and was not included in its Politburo.
Churches and all places of worship are once again closing in the province of Quebec in an effort to stop the second wave of the COVID-19 pandemic. This decision is part of a new series of containment measures announced by Premier Francois Legault Jan. 6.
Like in the press gallery, for example:
While stopping short of demanding that Chinese propaganda outlets like Xinhua and the People’s Daily be required to register as foreign agents, O’Toole expressed his disappointment that they have been accredited by Ottawa’s Parliamentary Press Gallery.
O’Toole also vowed to cancel all remaining joint exercises with China’s People’s Liberation Army.
(Sidebar: yeah, whatever, O’Toole.)
Make no mistake who owns Canada and who sold it out.
Police have placed a security perimeter around the entrance of Twitter’s headquarters in San Francisco, amid reports that pro-Trump supporters are expected to descend upon the building in protest of President Trump being permanently banned from the platform.
The article of impeachment stated that during the rally that Trump “willfully made statements that encouraged — and foreseeably resulted in — imminent lawless action at the Capitol. Incited by President Trump, a mob unlawfully breached the Capitol, injured law enforcement personnel, interfered with the Joint Session’s solemn constitutional duty to certify the election results, and engaged in violent, deadly, destructive, and seditious acts.”
Fifty years ago, I was a young teen growing up in Montreal. The fans of separation were being fanned by a group called Front de libération du Québec (FLQ).
The FLQ kidnapped British High Commissioner James Cross and days later, Quebec Minister Pierre Laporte. Laporte’s body was found in the trunk of a car at St. Hubert airport a week later.
Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau imposed the War Measures Act, which allowed him the ability to deploy troops to the streets of Montreal and extraordinary detention powers.
I remember some older teens in my neighbourhood were arrested just for going for a cocktail in a downtown club. In another incident, a bomb blew apart the mailbox at the corner of my street triggering a military response. It was a frightening time.
Looking at the video clips of the streets of Montreal on the weekend, when a curfew was implemented, triggered many memories for me. People just walking down the street were arrested just for drinking a coffee in public or trying to flag a cab in the downtown area.
Cancel culture doesn’t exist, they say. And yet with the flick of a switch, billionaire capitalists voted for by precisely nobody have just silenced a man who is still the democratically elected president of the United States. With the push of a button in their vast temples to technology, the new capitalist oligarchs of Silicon Valley have prevented a man who won the second largest vote in the history of the American republic just two months ago — 74million votes — from engaging with his supporters (and critics) in the new public square of the internet age.
The Big Tech Purge is now at the next level. They’ve gone from concept to execution (a fitting word) on their test case of shutting down speech and banning what they don’t like from the internet.
“I addressed the regulations theologically, scientifically, legally, and politically. I knew that receiving a fine would be a real possibility. Having received one now, the course is unchanged,” he wrote, adding that he would not be following the restrictions and reducing capacity to ensure physical distancing or enforcing mask use within the church.
Unless you’ve been living under a rock, you know Tim Berners-Lee is a pretty important dude in the technology world. He’s the father of the Internet, responsible for the birth of the World Wide Web as we know it.
And he hates what it has become. So he’s taking some action to fix it.
The Left could have let us rest for a year. They could have celebrated defeating their nightmare bogeyman with their mindless zombie and his token minority “second,” and controlling all three tiers of government. They could have mocked and maligned us on television, film, and social media all night long, and we wouldn’t have cared less. We wouldn’t have whined and whimpered like they did for four years. We would have gone about our richer lives, attended to our family, friends, and faith, then, after a year, looked into replacing the Democratic Marxist rabble and their Republican enablers with real conservative candidates who would resume making America great again. I would have focused almost entirely on the culture war, in prose and fiction, trying to strengthen our side. But they couldn’t do it. Their Silicon Valley overlords just had to come after us all at once, attacking our lines of communication — Twitter, Facebook, Google — which they control, and Parler, which they don’t. So, to quote Michael Corleone (Al Pacino) in the otherwise godawful The Godfather, Part III, “Just when I thought I was out — they pull me back in.”
