As a wise ambassador once said, there are three sides to every story. Your side, his side, and the truth. This blog is dedicated to always showing you the third edge of the sword.
You might be thinking to yourself "hey there have been other astronauts, right? Chris Hadfield is literally world famous."
Then you see the creepy Madonna picture, and the mermaid, and Cher, and you start to wonder if they wish Larry was a girl. The article drops little tidbits, starting with how Maggie isn't taking her husband's last name. Remember: all women who do this are disgusting.
As a teacher with an interest in crafts, Maloney has all the materials she needs in a closet. And Thornton has lots of wigs from his sketch comedy work.
Sketch comedy worker? Check.
They’ve had requests for Donald Trump and Doug Ford, but the pair want to keep things positive.
Extreme leftists? Check.
“It’s not the dressing him up as a girl [that would be embarrassing],” she says. “I want to raise a queer-positive, non-transphobic kid. I’m not raising a kid who’s going to be embarrassed that I put a wig on him. But I don’t want a picture to be rude.”
And there's the final nail in the coffin. They don't think being a male dressed unironically as Canada's one few female astronauts is embarrassing, but publicly stating they are positive with an evil sexual lifestyle is something to trumpet to a magazine.
“We don’t care,” says Thornton. “I think the future of the world is those gender [divisions] are going to get so blurred and forgotten. So many people say, ‘Oh, he’s going to need therapy.’ Hey man, everyone needs therapy.”
When your husband is a sketch comedy worker who is so feminized that you don't want to be Mrs. Pat Thornton you do probably need therapy: lots of therapy. But don't project your homo-loving pathologies onto the rest of us. "Those gender divisions" have outlasted hundreds of powerful societies and they'll outlast your faddish devotion. There's a reason therapy is needed by a specific philosophical/political bent that isn't me.
Bogus claims the virus was spread by people eating bats have swept the web.
Lululemon said the design was "inappropriate and inexcusable".
The row began on Sunday, when one of the Canadian firm's art directors, Trevor Fleming, posted a picture of the design on Instagram, which is unavailable in China.
However, the image, created by a California-based artist, found its way to Chinese social media platform Weibo, where it spawned the hashtag "Lululemon insults China" and garnered hundreds of millions of views.
People also expressed anger on Twitter using the hashtag #BoycottLululemon.
"We acted immediately and the person involved is no longer an employee of Lululemon," the firm said on Instagram, without naming the employee responsible for the design.
Trevor Fleming has been cancelled. His crime? Creating Freaking posting a decently clever but not particularly cruel "Bat Fried Rice" t-shirt. Normally this would be a snipe against the ridiculousness of cancel culture, but not today.
What do you mean "is thought to have"? You mean...we don't know? It is thought to originate in bats and then traveled to "some animal" and then to us. We don't know for sure it's bats but that seems a good guess. But how it went from bats to humans is still unknown. The BBC article refers to a metadata analysis in Royal Society Proceedings B that collected data about zoonotic viruses and compared to the Red List of Threatened Species, determining that rodents/bats/primates are the host for the majority of these viruses as of 2013. That's right, when you actually read the study you find a little wrinkle the BBC left out: the virus data was only published through December 2013 and the IUCN 2014 Red List was the specific year they highlighted. In other words, this study (which was received by the journal in late November 2019) completely predates the Wuhan Flu. While the BBC tries its best to obscure this important fact, the researchers they are consulting can only say 75.8% of zoonotic viruses (as of 2013) come from the rodent/bat/primate trifecta.
The scientists found that the receptor-binding domain of the spike protein had evolved to target ACE2 so effectively that it could only have been the result of natural selection and not of genetic engineering.
Furthermore, the molecular structure of the backbone of SARS-CoV-2 supported this finding. If scientists had engineered the new coronavirus purposely as a pathogen, explain the researchers, the starting point would likely have been the backbone of another virus in the coronavirus family.
However, the backbone of SARS-CoV-2 was very different than those of other coronaviruses and was most similar to related viruses in bats and pangolins.
One interpretation of these remarks is that the maker of a bioweapon would not choose a virus that could actually spread rapidly among people. That is not credible. A better interpretation of these claims is that a weaponmaker might choose the SARS-CoV-2 virus if s/he knew of its potential, but the maker would not know of its potential because computer models would suggest that it wouldn't work. That may be. But (a) these articles give us no information on the relevant computer models, nor on the authors' expertise or research into the development of such models, and (b) there is an assumption that a weaponmaker's knowledge would be limited to what s/he could learn from computer models. There is no discussion, here, of other sources of knowledge upon which a weaponmaker could draw (e.g., unpublished research; insightful hunches; the lab notes of one's former professor or colleague). The Scripps quote (above) seems to say that only natural selection could design a spike protein that was highly effective at binding to human cells. In this sense, the articles do not seem to explain why a lab would be incapable of developing such a design. They seem to rest upon assumptions about what a weaponmaker would do. There does not seem to be any suggestion that a researcher would be unable to design such a virus now, given today's knowledge about how it works. In this sense, the articles seem to contend that nobody knew what was possible until it actually happened. That is an assertion about historical fact. It can be tested by means of historical research. One might begin with an investigation of the Wuhan lab's facilities and records and interviews of relevant personnel. As the source of this virus, China should be expected to permit that investigation. Its unwillingness to do so does raise a question of whether it has something to hide. This appears to acknowledge that a researcher may have found the virus ready-made in nature. There may be other such viruses in nature. They may never make the jump to humans without the assistance of a researcher who collects them and stores them in a lab. That may have happened at Wuhan. It seems obvious that an investigation of that lab, yielding signs of work on (or at least storage of) something like SARS-CoV-2, would help to resolve the question of which scenario was most likely. The Scripps article says that the research "found no evidence that the virus was made in a laboratory or otherwise engineered." That is not a statement that no such evidence can be found, nor that an investigation of the Wuhan lab would find nothing. Thus, the Scripps article does not seem to justify some of the language found in the LiveScience article. The latter appears to be politically biased. Consider, specifically, its description of the lab hypothesis as a "persistent myth," and the ridicule of this "myth" as the "escaped from evil lab theory." Such language suggests a preconceived outcome -- that Jeanna Bryner, the writer, already knew what the truth was, and was simply waiting for the Scripps study to establish her prior convictions. That is not science. Contrary to the desires of non-science writers, science is often a matter of collecting evidence that appears to be persuasive, but that is subject to later reinterpretation in light of new information. Ridiculing and dismissing ideas that are not currently popular among one's friends seems like a good way to discourage real scientists from trying to learn things that might prove very useful in the future. LiveScience should discourage such prejudgment. The better approach would be to take a critical and thoughtful stance when reporting on such research -- to pause and reflect on what it says and, ideally, to find out (or at least be generally informed on) what persons of another viewpoint might say about it.
So with all this uncertainty what the hell is the BBC doing "fact checking" rumours like "the virus wasn't created in a lab"? You aren't allowed to say it came from bat soup, you aren't allowed to say it was manmade. So the only thing the BBC thinks you should be allowed to say is a theory from 2013.
Did you know that Columbia Journalism Review is "left-leaning"? By the standards of "media bias checkers" that must mean they want conservatives to be murdered just for existing.
I jest, but not by all that much. Let's just take a minor current affairs example: in writing about the protests in various U.S. states regarding lockdown rules that can be said to be at the least inconsistent confusing and possibly self-defeating, Jon Allsop refers to The right-wing media’s rallying cry: Anti-lockdown edition. Let's have a little peek.
Whatever the source of the anti-lockdown protests, right-wing media has thrown its weight behind them. Talk radio hosts, Twitter pundits such as Candace Owens, and sites including Infowars and the Gateway Pundit have all played their part, as have stars of Fox News. On Wednesday, Tucker Carlson called Whitmer’s shutdown policies “mindless and authoritarian” and accused her of careerism.
Well there you have it: arguing against a politician's actions (and/or questioning the motives behind them) is "throwing your weight" behind any and all protests against them. Back when George W. Bush (pbuh) was President that sure would have been a useful tidbit to know, wouldn't it? Warming to his theme, Allsop continues:
Asking whether the current anti-lockdown sentiment is “real” or manufactured is both a hard question to answer and, in some ways, a false one: conservative “movements,” these days, never exist independently of the right-wing media echo chamber. The echo chamber is the apparatus by which they operate.
So let me get this straight: it's false to believe that a conservative movement (and implicitly it's only conservative movements Allsop believes are to be described as such) can be natural unless it "exists independently" of "right-wing media" coverage.
So how, exactly, if you're a conservative interested in forming a movement, does Jon Allsop suggest you go about doing so? You will be banned or shadowbanned from social media. You will be ignored in the mainstream press. Without places like Gateway Pundit or Infowars covering your event and getting the word out to likeminded people, it's a guarantee that your movement will fizzle and die as you're left unable to mass-coordinate and recruit. One gets the sense that this conundrum is baked into the pudding of bad-faith far-left arguments like this one.
Going back to CJR as a whole, look right at that headline: "right-wing media". Columbia Journalism Review loves that formulation...2,840 results. How right-wing media is covering the COVID-19 epidemic ... The right-wing media's rallying cry: Anti-lockdown edition ... What if the right-wing media wins? Study: Breitbart-led right-wing media ecosystem altered broader Pandemic in the right-wing mediasphere
But hey, maybe they also use the phrase "left-wing media" all the time and just make it clear that they're in that camp. No, not so much... the Times, more than anyone else in the “left-wing media,” lazy, fraught terms like “thought police,” and “left-wing media machine.” Media Matters for America, a left-wing media monitoring group belatedly to the mainstream press, left-wing media results on “Trump News” are from National Left-Wing Media 96 percent of the results for Trump News were from the left-wing media catch-all “dishonest left-wing media” formulation
Notice that in this case "left-wing media" is almost always in quotes, either because its a direct quote or a scare quote meant to belittle whoever is using the term. It never appears in any headlines, and even in the mere 138 results some of them are describing Media Matters for America as a left-wing media monitoring group (my emphasis) rather than actual media themselves. Of these, only this article from Allsop in December about Pete Butt-in-Gag the child molesting Presidential candidate uses the phrase un-ironically to refer to actual media: in this case discussing their opposition to him on the basis that he's too busy sodomizing little boys to care about the plight of niggers who rob convenience stores.
You'd think that Columbia Journalism Review might be bothered to review journalism, give it a go and see if it fits them. Unfortunately that would require them to understand that if Gateway Pundit is "far-right", then Jon Allsop is one of the most extremist leftists on the globe.
I made this joke in my recent post about biased reporting of libertarian protests, but if The Guardian really wants my donation in defense of their vigorous and knowledgeable understanding of "the truth" shouldn't they be able to figure out that Edmonton is not in any of the 50 U.S. States?
Forget for a moment that this was a (regulatory-approved) increase that was announced before anybody but Chairman Xi knew about COVID-19. Isn't it amazing so many customers get the relationship between demand/load and price/rationing exactly ass-backwards?
But that provides little solace for Bell customer Kelsey Shaffer, a motel owner in Kakabeka Falls, Ont., who noticed a price increase on her March 25 phone bill with Virgin Mobile, a brand owned by Bell. The combined cost of two phone plans for her family had increased by 10 per cent to $110 a month.
"I was angry and upset," she said. "Just the fact that it's happening right now — when nobody has money and a bunch of people are out of work — is an extra slap in the face."
Bell is already bending ass-over for people who can't afford their bills†. You'd think a small business owner might be a little more clever.
You certainly won't expect such from an artistic CBC employee. They don't know the smallest thing about economics:
It just seems to me really thoughtless," said Sugith Varughese of Toronto, whose internet plan with Bell went up by $6 a month on his April 6 bill.
The actor, who has appeared on CBC television shows, said he hasn't worked since mid-March, when a play he was cast in got cancelled due to COVID-19.
"Going ahead with an internet price increase during a pandemic is completely unfair because I — like almost every other Canadian — am really dependent on internet now."
So everybody is really dependent on the internet right now. The solution, therefore, is to (artificially) deprive companies of the many they need to maintain/expand internet capacity.
† Hey here's a crazy idea! How about all of these people who are struggling financially start putting pressure on Rat Bastard 2.0's government to start scaling back on all the measures that were originally just to "save the healthcare system" and have suddenly turned into keeping the number of overall cases down?
For better or worse [almost certainly worse... -ed] the Wuhan Flu is going to bifurcate society for the near future. I'm not 100% sure this will have the same impact as a 9/11, but it's certainly not going to be nothing.
In a notice to the Supreme Court of Canada on Tuesday, the government said it was discontinuing its attempt to appeal a ruling from Ontario’s top court that found long-term segregation to be cruel and unusual punishment.
The Canadian Civil Liberties Association, which pushed the case, called Ottawa’s decision a belated good day for justice.
“It is just disappointing that it was so long coming,” said association lawyer Michael Rosenberg. “Far too many suffered needlessly before the country turned a corner.”
In its ruling in March last year, the Ontario Court of Appeal said placing prisoners deemed a risk to themselves or others in segregation for more than 15 days amounted to cruel and unusual punishment and was therefore unconstitutional. The court gave correctional authorities 15 days to end the practice.
Long-term segregation is cruel and unusual punishment when it comes to prisoners. When it comes to innocent free citizens, it's apparently just fine and dandy.
We had no problem subjecting Canadian travellers to 14-day quarantines even when they returned from countries without COVID cases. So was that the difference? A single day? I understand that there's a bit of a difference between the conditions in a solitary cell versus a home, but we already have prisoners in conditions far worse than people under house arrest, so the difference isn't really that vast. It's not surprising that the far-left Rat Bastard 2.0 federal government isn't interested in keeping prisons unpleasant and kowtowing to a fake human rights organization†, but it's still disappointing. After all, when people in Michigan make the same argument about Shelter-in-Place orders the Canadian intelligentStasi can't wait to jump all over them. Funny how these types like to treat prisoners better than citizens. Is it because prisoners are rarely all that white?
It's worth noting, similarly, one of the anonymous comments to Chris Selley's Ottawa Citizen article about the strange before-and-after priorities of the government:
Makes too much sense! Just two months ago, we were all supporting #BellLetsTalk day and stressing the importance of mental health in our community, and saying that it matters to the health of society, just as physical health is. Obviously the virus is a terrible, awful thing. But how do we measure a new case of chronic anxiety or depression because of the measures in place compared to a mild case of the disease? What are anxiety attacks and panic attacks compared to coughs and fevers? Should we consider a suicide related to the measures a case of the disease? Even if there were underlying causes of mental health, just as many cases of coronavirus had underlying physical health issues? Obviously, physical distancing is a huge, overriding tool to use. But let's make sure that we take steps to ensure the best result, with the fewest number of mental and physical health related deaths possible. Using these ideas- allowing for solemn exercise and recreation during the coronavirus- saves lives too.
Now I defer to nobody in my disregard for #BellLetsTalk, basically a political campaign to normalize the sick sodomitic relationships that are the leading cause indicator of mental health problems. However suddenly people's mental health, non-COVID physical health, and Charter rights aren't that important anymore. Going forward, can we really argue that putting prisoners in seclusion for two weeks is a problem?
Finally, and try not to be surprised by this, nobody is interested in asking "why are prisoners going into solitary in the first place"? That the answer is "these people are all scum even by scum standards and are being pushed for causing significant harm to others" doesn't fit the narrative so it's abandoned. The big driver for this "confinement = bad" legislative/legal/media push is the death of "poor" Ashley Smith, who killed herself during a 1,000 day stint in solitary confinement in Kitchener at age 19. Why was she in prison in the first place? Oh, just fourteen different cases by age 15. Sure none of them were particularly sinister, but the problem was once she was interred in the first place. She also constantly was trying to commit suicide: let Ashley Smith out of prison and she'd be dead before the ink would be dry on her discharge papers. Bad cases make bad law, and changing how we discipline prisoners because of one pathetic psychopath is the epitome of that characterization.
To tie it all back to the Wuhan Flu, why should we care if Ashley Smith died in custody on her 151st suicide attempt, and why should we change how we administer prisons because of it? Similarly, if 70% of virus deaths are people with less than 6 months left to live (as Martok was telling me when we did a Monday evening Whyte Ave beerwalk, I couldn't find a link to verify this) why are we devoting trillions of dollars in lost value to the real human beings on this planet earth in an attempt to save them?
They got a description of a vehicle associated with the person — a 2000 GMC Yukon SUV — which police allege was stolen.
It was later spotted on a grid road and wouldn't stop, and police say that while numerous officers chased it, the occupants threw items out the window, including a bag of weapons.
The SUV eventually ended up in a ditch, but police say several people jumped out during the chase, and one-by-one they were taken into custody.
In addition to charges including possession of stolen property, flight from a peace officer and weapons charges, the 10 adults and one youth are also charged with failure to comply the Saskatchewan Public Health Act, which prohibits gatherings of more than 10 people without maintaining a two-metre distance between people.
Since they didn't mention the details, the "media silence bubble rule" can be applied to determine that these thieves are all Red Indians from Makwa Sahgaiehcan.
The coronavirus now ranks as one of the most deadly diseases in Canada, according to statistics analyzed by the Star.
On average, forty people a day have succumbed to the virus since the first death was recorded in British Columbia on March 8. That number puts the virus third after cancer and heart disease in terms of daily deaths.
In total, the virus has killed 1,758 Canadians since the pandemic began, ranking it 12th on the list of most deadly diseases by year.
That's a scary sounding article. However, the brutal fact remains: this virus (with a few notable and tragic exceptions) kills (and maims!?!)people who were already at an increased risk of dying.
The British Office for National Statistics noted that 9 out of 10 deaths from the Wuhan Flu happened to people at "heightened risk of death". One of the statistical modellers at Imperial College London believes 2/3rds of people in Britain who died from COVID-19 so far would have died in the next short period anyways. In fact, of the 6,000 "excess" weekly deaths in the UK 2,500 weren't related to COVID but instead related to people not seeking treatment for non-COVID medical conditions. In other words, the cure may already be competing with the disease for deaths: once the UK recession hits 6.4% then it's apparently no longer "worth it". Save that info for future reference, kids.
Back to this side of the pond, Canadian coronavirus deaths look like this:
131.75 x 366 (it's a leap year, remember) gives us 48,220 deaths, 3rd place in Canada just like Toronto Star said. End of story, right?
But wait: Canada should have 6,235 flu deaths in 2020. Were any of these Wuhan Flu deaths going to be the same people who would have gotten Bird Flu? 6,838 diabetes deaths a year is sure high, though, and wait Wuhan Flu is very good at killing people with severe diabetes. Likewise the 12,293 people expected to die from respiratory ailments, 51,396 with heart disease and a good chunk of the 79,084 cancer deaths. As COVID rips through nursing homes are we going to see the same effect?
The Star analysis looks very impressive and scary with all other things remaining equal. But are other things remaining equal? Of course not: while the Wuhan Flu is certainly going to come with a large number of deaths, many of them unique to this virus, we're probably going to similarly find in Canada that "excess deaths" caused by our overreaction to COVID-19 is going to outweigh "excess deaths" caused by COVID killing people who weren't already on death's door.
This meme (itself a copy of a March one) has been making the rounds. I'm not really sure why, other than inertia. Other than this past week I wouldn't have called April 2020 particularly nice compared to April 2019.
But memories can be wrong so I double checked. Nope. In 2020 though the daytime high of 20.1°C on Monday was higher than any high in 2019†, the average high in April 2020 for Edmonton was +3.8 (std dev 8.53) while the average high in April 2019 was 11.3 (std dev 3.79). In fact every day† in April 2019 was above zero, while April 1st 2020 was -11 as the daytime high. I didn't graph the lows (for technical reasons) but the average April 2019 low was -0.1 (std dev 2.28) with the April 2020 low of -6.25 (std dev 7.80)
But as we've long known, the "centre of the universe" is the only place that matters: when Toronto is above average the whole country has to see news articles about the horrors of global warming. When Toronto is below average the whole country has to see news articles about how hard done by they are. So maybe over there the meme is true? I remember seeing Weather Network coverage about their horrible weather a week or two ago, but that could just be recency bias. So let's repeat the exercise for the Big Smoke.
The data bars don't look as "clean" as they do with Edmonton despite significantly less variability, but there is a little bit of truth to the statement. Last year the average daytime high was +8.7 (std dev 3.99), and this year the average daytime high is 9.4 (std dev 3.02). But for the lows (probably not as important, the only people who are out in that weather is the homeless which can't be more than 84% of the overall Toronto population) it was colder this year as well: 2.6 (std dev 2.36) overnight lows in 2019, 1.8 (std dev 2.29) overnight lows in 2020.
† For the purpose of this post both "months" are only the first 21 days of April
But let's be honest, the meme says "every other year". So what are the averages like for each city?
Well Edmonton is 6 degrees below average (10.1, 1.87 std dev) and Toronto is still about a degree below average (10.3, 1.50 std dev). Is it weird that the average highs are so similar? A little. Regardless, you may think things are way too warm outside with all this going on. It really isn't.
The couple, who lived in Manchester, were travelling across the Atlantic ocean from the Canary Islands to the Caribbean last month when, unbeknownst to them, a new and deadly coronavirus was spreading across the world.
After 25 days at sea, and with little communication with the outside world, the couple planned to dock on a small island in mid-March.
But upon getting phone signal while still off-shore, they discovered the island's borders were closed and found out the world had been suffering from a global pandemic they'd heard nothing about.
"In February we'd heard there was a virus in China, but with the limited information we had we figured by the time we got to the Caribbean in 25 days it would all be over," Elena says.
A trio of far-right, pro-gun provocateurs is behind some of the largest Facebook groups calling for anti-quarantine protests across the country, offering the latest illustration that some seemingly organic demonstrations are being engineered by a network of conservative activists.
I don't know anything about Tori Holland other than the fact that she's a complete moron. But I'm going to guess she voted for President Monkey. Before he was President Monkey he was Senator Monkey, and before that he was Community Organizer Monkey. What does a community organizer do? Organize communities, presumably. Like, Holland and her ilk understand that groups and events need somebody organizing them right? Rather than say engineered why not say organized? Well, because that doesn't sound as sinister and scary. Maybe she's not a moron, actually: maybe she's just fundamentally wicked.
The Facebook groups target Wisconsin, Ohio, Pennsylvania and New York, and they appear to be the work of Ben Dorr, the political director of a group called Minnesota Gun Rights, and his siblings Christopher and Aaron. By Sunday, the groups had more than 200,000 members combined, and they continued to expand quickly, days after President Donald Trump endorsed such protests by suggesting citizens should “liberate” their states.
It sure sounds like the Dorr Brothers took a lay of the land, tapped into a growing public sentiment that is not being permitted free expression in the regular media landscape, and have found their little Facebook group exploding in popularity. Pretty much everybody who dreams of rallying the masses to their cause hopes this sort of thing happens. Good on you, Dorr Brothers. It seems that President Donald J. Trump, who also is good at "smelling" the lay of the land, is also if not endorsing these protests at least discussing some critical thinking skills. Again, anybody who swooned over "if I had a son he'd look like Trayvon Martin" has no right to be upset about this.
The online activity implies that opposition to the restrictions is more widespread than polling suggests. Nearly 70% of Republicans said they supported a national stay-home order, according to a recent Quinnipiac poll. Ninety-five percent of Democrats backed such a measure in the survey.
The Facebook groups have become digital hubs for the same sort of misinformation spouted in recent days at state capitols — from comparing the virus to the flu to questioning the intentions of scientists working on a vaccine.
If lying moron Tori Holland really thinks that it's "misinformation" to "[question] the intentions of scientists" then what does she think of, for a minor example, this? Or is "questioning the intentions of scientists" the sort of thing she endorses when the scientists are talking about things she personally isn't a fan of? And whether the scientists are pure or not, where's the "misinformation"? Similarly, comparing the virus to the flu isn't "misinformation" either. There's giant holes in our knowledge of the Wuhan Flu big enough to drive a Mac Truck through. As Ezra Levant notes in this video, "misinformation" has been coming routinely from the official government sources.It's a conspiracy theory to not trust the information out of China: two weeks later it turns out intelligence services from Germany to the USA are investigating the virus lab angle. Is it misinformation to say the virus may have come from the Wuhan Lab on March 10th? April 10th? May 10th? December 10th? It was misinformation to say in early January that there was no human-to-human contact, wasn't it? On April 3rd Tori Holland herself published how many doctors -- doctors, mind -- were using hydroxychloroquine. This might have something to do with the fact that on March 29th the American College of Cardiology was talking about studies showing it may be effective. On April 15th, CNN cited that the French were finding it didn't work. So "misinformation" is a very disingenuous word to bandy around.
Public health experts say stay-home orders are necessary to slow the spread of the novel coronavirus, which has killed more than 35,000 people in the United States. The Trump administration last week outlined three phases for states to reopen safely — guidelines contradicted by the president when he urged citizens to rise up against the rules that heed the recommendations of his own public-health advisers.
“If people feel that way, you’re allowed to protest,” Trump said Sunday. “Some governors have gone too far, some of the things that happened are maybe not so appropriate.”
Tori Holland is lying about President Trump.
She's a liar.
When did Trump "contradict guidelines" with his statement? His statement was that some governors have taken steps to restrict movement that has little bearing on controlling the virus. For example, gun stores have been ruled non-essential and forced to close in some states: seeing how alcohol and tobacco sales have not been similarly curtailed, that seems a clear attack on gun rights. Even as the Pennsylvania Supreme Court waivered, Governor Wolf reversed course and rescinded his order to close gun stores. A church in Louisville is now suing Kentucky Governor Andy Beshear over his ban on church services (this is sort-of-unrelated-but-not-really to the church in Louisville that got one of the greatest court judgements ever on Easter Saturday). California essentially closed down the Pacific Ocean just because a bunch of people on social media were freaking out over pictures of cars parked near parks. It's not entirely unrealistic to think this might be overreach. As I noted already, this is a virus, not a tornado. Meanwhile, is it not permitted to challenge the statement "public health experts say stay-home orders are necessary"? Stay-home orders, one may note, are currently not in effect in any Canadian provinces (except parts of Alberta and Queerbec) and are only in effect in 19/50 U.S. States. In other words, there's some lively debate to be had about whether a "stay at home order" that restricts people exercising at the same time 10 feet away from each other is "too far" or "not so appropriate" as President Donald J. Trump has remarked. This doesn't even remotely "contradict" guidelines for States wishing to go from Massachusetts-level to New Hampsire-level to Alabama-level to Ontario-level to Alberta-level...let's note that even under President Donald J. Trump's re-open guidelines large numbers of places including bars still won't be opening.
Facebook said Sunday that it did not plan to take action to remove the groups or events, partly because states have not outlawed them. Organizers also have called for “drive-in” protests, in keeping with recommendations that people keep a short distance between one another. In other cases, involving protests planned for states such as New Jersey and California, the company has removed that content, Facebook said.
In a live stream posted on Facebook by local Indigenous media outlet Real Peoples Media, reportedly taken about 15 minutes after OPP arrived, dozens of officers stand face-to-face with protesters.
“Look at all these guns against us. How many years? How many years have you had these guns against us?” one protester asks police in the video. The officers do not respond.
“This is Mohawk territory you’re on. You guys are trespassing.”
So where was Holland upset about Facebook not taking action against its site being used to promote illegal blockades? Anyways, back to the nonsense over at NewsBrig.com:
“Unless government prohibits the event during this time, we allow it to be organized on Facebook. For this same reason, events that defy government’s guidance on social distancing aren’t allowed on Facebook,” said Andy Stone, a spokesman for the company.
None of the Dorr brothers responded to calls and emails Sunday.
Wisconsinites Against Excessive Quarantine was created Wednesday by Ben Dorr. His brother Christopher is the creator of Pennsylvanians Against Excessive Quarantine, as well as Ohioans Against Excessive Quarantine. A third brother, Aaron, is the creator of New Yorkers Against Excessive Quarantine.
Funny how when conservatives use social media, there's the most deep down dives ever into figuring out "how did this happen". At no point did the media investigate who created "Hamilton in Solidarity" and finding out what evil stuff they have been up to...
The online coordination offered additional clues about how the protest activity is spreading nationwide, capturing the imagination of the president and of Fox News even though it represents the views of a small minority of Americans. Trump himself tied the protests to gun rights — a major cause for the Dorr brothers — in telling Virginians that the Second Amendment was “under siege” as he urged them to “liberate” the state.
On the ground, pro-Trump figures — including some who act as surrogates for his campaign — as well as groups affiliated with prominent conservative donors have helped organize and promote the demonstrations.
Good heavens! Conservatives are daring to organize online! How can something with "represents the views of a small minority of Americans" possibly be connected with protests? That's never ever happened before. Like...ever. Hey remember when Stephen Harper removed the long-form census and got the left into a tizzy? It was because of a single (left-wing) activist who apparently had the entire country against her but was poised to win important court cases on constitutional issues: maybe these Trump surrogates are thinking they can get a piece of this action? Maybe they will turn out to even be right? Again, it's clear that when conservatives dare to use their voice to express their views and engage in political discussions that might spark a broader brushfire in the general population, suddenly its an astroturfing nightmare that has to be quelched. Meanwhile, "pro-Trump figures" have been involved in a poltical discussion! Egads! Again note the rampant hypocrisy: when "pro-Rachel figures" were involved in protest movements opposed to Alberta's oilsands development ("representing the views of a small minority of" Albertans) this didn't mean anything about Rachel Arab's actual beliefs or policy objectives: even when Rachel Arab herself appeared at them. Yet now groups with a lot of conservatives can be "affilitated with prominent conservative donors" and that's newsworthy.
Some of the most vehement protest activity, in Michigan, has been organized by the Michigan Conservative Coalition. Its founders are a Republican state lawmaker and his wife, Meshawn Maddock, who sits on the Trump campaign’s advisory board and is a prominent figure in the Women for Trump coalition. Jeanine Pirro, a Fox News host and avid Trump supporter, interviewed Maddock on her show Saturday, telling her, “Keep going. Thank you.”
Also promoting the demonstrations — including spending several hundred dollars to advertise the event on Facebook — was the Michigan Freedom Fund, which is headed by Greg McNeilly, a longtime adviser to the DeVos family. He served as campaign manager for Dick DeVos, the husband of Education Secretary Betsy DeVos, when he ran unsuccessfully for governor of Michigan in 2006.
The state’s Democratic governor, Gretchen Whitmer, who has become a target for Trump and his conservative allies, last week criticized the nonprofit, noting that it was “funded in large part by the DeVos family,” and saying it was “really inappropriate for a sitting member of the United States president’s Cabinet to be waging political attacks on any governor, but obviously, on me here at home.”
McNeilly said the funds used to promote the event were “not dedicated program funds” but instead came from “our grass-roots fundraising efforts,” and so had “nothing to do with any DeVos work.”
The Dorr brothers manage a slew of pro-gun groups across a wide range of states, from Iowa to Minnesota to New York, and seek primarily to discredit organizations such as the National Rifle Association as being too compromising on gun safety. Minnesota Gun Rights, for which Ben Dorr serves as political director, describes itself as the state’s “no-compromise gun rights organization.”
In numerous states, they have bypassed rules requiring them to register as lobbyists by arguing that they are instead involved in “pro-gun grassroots mobilization,” as “Ohio Gun Owners,” whose board Chris Dorr directs, describes its work.
A now-retired state legislator in Iowa, who in 2017 sought to close a loophole allowing the brothers to skirt lobbying rules, said he was not surprised that the Dorr brothers were involved in fomenting resistance to the public health precautions.
“The brothers will do anything to fan the flames of a controversial issue, and maybe make a quick nickel,” said the former state legislator, Republican Clel Baudler.
Activists get involved in controversial issues? That's amazing wisdom there Clel. Naomi Klein is now saying she's been warning us all along about the Wuhan Flu (she just mis-typed it "climate change"), but heaven forbid people who beleive in limited government speak out against massive government largesse and heavy-handed action.
Nearly 97,000 people had joined Wisconsinites Against Excessive Quarantine by Sunday afternoon, a Facebook group whose posts are visible only to members that said Democratic Gov. Tony Evers has been on a “power trip, controlling our lives, destroying our businesses” and “forcing us to hand over our freedoms and our livelihood!” In the group, some members speculated that Evers closed most state businesses and shuttered schools to appease pharmaceutical giants — not because of data showing that the novel coronavirus is highly contagious and deadly, infecting more than 4,300 in the state and killing 220.
All 97,000 of them? No, just 'some'. But hey, they're probably wrong thinking large pharmaceutical companies are involved in a conspiracy of...hey wait, isn't this the same logic anti-GMO activists use? Don't they get fawning media coverage? Meanwhile what's the problem with referring to the actions Evers took as "controlling our lives, destroying our businesses"? Is there anybody (pro- or anti-Evers) who says that isn't thinking that's true? Also, is it an A-or-B proposition? Is it possible that the closure of businesses and schools can be not to appease BigPharma or because of the deadly virus epidemic and instead just be because all people and governments have gone crazy and are massively overreacting? In the same way that we look down on the frenzy of the Salem Witch Trials or the French Revolution, will future centuries wonder why we went so crazy for a disease that as deadly pandemics fare may not even match the 1968 Hong Kong Flu? Apparently you aren't permitted such thoughts or expression of those beliefs. So says Tori Holland! Listen, people! (or else)
The group, along with Ben Dorr, created an event on Facebook for an April 24 “drive-in rally” at the Capitol that has attracted hundreds of pledged participants. They also seek to steer visitors to a website for the Wisconsin Firearms Coalition, where people can enter their names, email addresses and other contact information and share their views with the state’s governor. In doing so, they encourage visitors who are not “already a member of the Wisconsin Firearms Coalition” to “join us.” A page asking users to join the Minnesota group offered several rates for membership, from $35 to $1,000.
This is the "smoking gun" (pardon the pun) followup to ol' Clel Baudler talking about "making a quick nickel". Political activism costs money, and we've seen how much these forensic media types love digging into DeVos records to see who they funded. So if you can't get money from the big guys, get donations or memberships from the Average Joe. Oops, turns out the leftist media horde hate that too. But wait a minute, all sorts of media organizations are publicly providing their Wuhan Flu coverage but also asking people to subscribe or donate. When The Guardian puts that little blurb on the bottom of every article asking for money (and describing Canadian IP addresses as "readers like you across America in all 50 states" in the same blurb where they talk about how important the truth is) how is that any different than the Wiscounsin Firearms Coalition trying to get people to sign up to their group and contribute to the cause they apparently believe in?
Another private Facebook group focused on Pennsylvania, gaining more than 63,000 members by Sunday. Many questioned the wisdom of wearing masks publicly, contrary to recommendations by state and federal officials, and linked to a similar website catering to Pennsylvania gun owners. Still another targeting New York had become a forum for about 23,000 members to question whether the coronavirus is really that bad — despite the fact New York City has become the epicenter of the U.S. outbreak.
“While seizing power at a breathtaking pace,” the group’s description began, “Andrew Cuomo is sending NY’s economy into a death spiral!”
The current mass delusion that "a single life is worth the entire value of the global economy" notwithstanding, both the death toll from the virus and the reaction will have a negative economic impact. Public policy will have to decide where to draw that line and why. The fact that policy makers have only been looking at one side of the ledger has perhaps been forgivable, but cannot continue and eventually (why not now?!) other voices (in a democracy, mind...) will need to start being involved and speaking up. NYC is both the single worst city on the planet for the Wuhan Flu and also the richest major city impact which means its also most hammered by the economic impact. Even in NYC those 23,000 members are half the size of the total number of confirmed cases...many of those will be suffering mild sniffles and wondering if this is all worth it. Is there any overlap between confirmed cases and members of this group? Maybe...one of the problems with the insanely pessimistic models is that we got sold a "worst crisis ever" bag of goods and the product is failing to deliver. Yes NYC has a lot of deaths and stay-at-home may be required to slow the spread to avoid overwhelming the healthcare system...but in other American cities the "overwhelmed" healthcare system is wondering when the patients are going to show up. Authorities in Ohio aren't even releasing their information, which means those who are questioning the wisdom of #FlattenTheCurve mitigation efforts are getting the sense that the public health authorities don't want to admit how badly they've been overreacting. In this environment you can start to question any wisdom...and as Colby Cosh wrote April 7th "People in Dr. Tam's position will find it difficult to recoup the goodwill they have clumsily spilled" by flip-flopping on masks. Cosh also notes that there still isn't necessarily any evidence about masks, so there's a nonzero chance that advice will be flipped a second time. NewsBrig wants to make it seem like questioning this mask advise was silly but a month ago wouldn't they have said questioning that mask advise was silly?
Dozens of other Facebook pages, groups and events similarly promote protests targeting stay-home orders in state capitals nationwide. Permitting some of this content — including coordinated efforts on the part of conservative activists — marks a break with Facebook’s strict new rules governing content about the pandemic.
Those would be the "strict rules" like a conservative protest group is shadowbanned and often shut down while a leftist protest group is given free reign?
Since the outbreak began, the tech giant has barred a wide array of false or misleading posts, photos and videos, including those promoting cures that do not exist. The company also has deployed its fact checkers to debunk dangerous myths about the pandemic and its origins, and it has warned people about their interactions with online misinformation. Guiding Facebook’s approach — more aggressive than it typically takes even against known falsehoods — is a belief that it must stop the spread of dangerous mistruths on the platform amid a global health crisis.
Yeah funny about that, it turns out that the Facebook fact checking team is censoring as "misinformation" things that may or may not be true but are certainly inconvenient. And as Ezra noted above, this whole "misinformation" thing is a dangerous game to play when nobody is still 100% sure what the facts are. Some of the dangerous myths were promoted by major media figures and government press releases, but at the time they represented agreed upon wisdom so Facebook left them alone. It turns out, of course, that even in a "global health care crisis" they play to their known anti-conservative bias. Also note the slur-by-association: Joey McScammer saying that his special diet pills can cure Coronavirus [can't we get some of that Mike Sonko Kenya cure? -ed] is a scam pure and simple, so therefore its totally appropriate for Facebook to delete "dangerous misinformation" like speculating about the difference in official versus unofficial totals in China (even though you can speculate about the difference in official versus unofficial totals in France without any trouble). And what's with "dangerous myths about the pandemic and its origins"? If COVID-19 was cooked up in a lab or accidentally transmitted from a bat, what's dangerous about somebody advocating one theory over the other? Besides "asking China if they bothered to cook up a cure" what would really be the difference? This is just pure control for control's sake. Go figure a leftist writer would be happy to gin it up.
Many governors, however, have decried protests to open up the country as precisely that — potentially harmful to the people who attend the demonstrations and to the many more who are following guidelines and staying at home.
“I don’t think it’s helpful to encourage demonstrations and encourage people to go against the president’s own policy,” Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan, a Republican, said this weekend. “It just doesn’t make any sense.”
Well, that settles it now doesn't it? The Governor said this is harmful and even has an (R) after his name! Therefore you cannot ever do it, no matter what the reason and no matter how much other harm you (legitimately or illegitimately) are trying to avoid by changing the government policy. Meanwhile what if the protesters maintain this ever-so-important (and possibly -- pay attention Facebook -- total bullshit) social distancing rules? In the same way that if beer sales are essential as long as you stay 6ft apart, why can't protests be as well?
Representatives for the governors of New York, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania did not respond to requests for comment. A spokeswoman for Ohio Republican Gov. Mike DeWine said he has “acknowledged that the protesters have a First Amendment right to free speech,” adding: “He just asks that they practice social distancing.”
Good job, DeWine.
Alex Stamos, director of the Stanford Internet Observatory and Facebook’s former chief security officer, said the groups constitute a form of domestic disinformation because they were being operated by users with financial and political motivations to sway public debate in unauthentic ways. He was especially alarmed by the possibility that the group’s creators were deriving personal benefit by stoking online anger about the public health measures.
So let me get this straight: if conservatives form groups with political motivations to sway public debate then it's "unauthentic" and "domestic disinformation". Can Stamos perhaps be bothered to express exactly what public disinformation the protest (and not a random post from a member of the protest group) is spreading? That COVID-19 isn't as serious as we've been told? That's backed up by reality (barely) aligning with the lowest of the low end of the models. That economic concerns are also serious? That's a political question, not a scientific one: I addressed this almost a decade ago. Science cannot tell you how to enact public policy based on its "findings". When the findings are so unknown that your editor makes you put quote marks around them it becomes even more suspect. So yes, people with "financial and political motivations" are still allowed to "sway public debate". In fact, who else does it? When despicable uranist Tony Kushner wrote "Angels in America" to promote the sodomite lifestlye was he operating under "financial and political motivations to sway public debate in unauthentic ways"? Was he "deriving personal benefit" by stoking anger about "public health measures" by writing about faggots dying of AIDS? Kushner wins a bunch of faggy awards, Ben Dorr gets vilified by the Washington Post.
It’s always scams that drive the most ingenuity,” Stamos said.
Zachary Elwood, a software engineer in Portland, Oregon, who blogs about disinformation and tracked some of the activity by the Dorr brothers, urged Facebook to crack down on small clusters of users coordinating seemingly disparate activity, especially when the activity involved harmful untruths.
There's nothing "seemingly disparate". Conservative commentators around the globe are carefully tracking government overreach as organizations that supposedly are fighting the Wuhan Flu take actions that have incidental or often even completely orthogonal correlation to minimizing the spread of the virus. The founders and members of these groups are starting from the basic assumptions (do we need to do this at all?) and then proceeding to specific policies (what needs to be shut down and what can stay open) and the timeframe for them (why are we still doing this and when shall we stop?). Having evaluated everything and come up with opinions and ideas about it, these hundreds of thousands of Americans seek out others who agree with them and hope to reach critical mass and start influencing public officials. I'll guarantee you that when Zach Elwood wants to do something he does the same thing. Oh look, he does!
“It’s understandable that people are upset about the difficult situation we’re in, but they’re clearly being riled up by people with an obvious anti-government agenda,” Elwood said. “Facebook shouldn’t make it so easy to do that.”
Hey Zachary: send me your address so I can come punch you in the head until you bleed and get smarter. What's wrong with having an "obvious anti-government agenda"? What's wrong with Facebook -- supposedly a neutral site -- letting people easily create groups to enact the political change they want (even if it happens to be "anti-government")? Plenty of "anti-government" Facebook groups that I'm sure Elwood is a fan of are around. In fact that Politico story is interesting (emphasis mine):
The trove of new anti-Trump and left-leaning pages, many of which did not exist before November 8, are now nearly as popular on the social networking site as veteran publications that have been around for years.
“I think that part of the attraction of our news site is we try to be candid and direct,” Rather said. “We don’t spend much time debating ourselves about how to soften something or use a euphemism or even sophistry. I want to be as blunt as a punch in the nose.”
Two others, “Stand Up America” and “Donald Trump Is Not My President,” were created in the aftermath of the election, and now have close to one million and close to 500,000 followers, respectively. Another, the Democratic Coalition Against Trump, was founded in April 2016, and now has more than 250,000 followers.
These upstarts produce little original content, and in some cases barely come across as publications at all. Instead, they aggregate news stories that are often critical of Trump, adding piquant commentary that ensures maximum spread across Facebook.
“The energy and passion that we saw during the election still exists. Our goal is to tap into that and create something from that,” said Nate Lerner, executive director of the Democratic Coalition Against Trump. “If Mitt Romney had won [last year’s election], we wouldn’t be able to continue to campaign against him. Nobody would care.”
The anti-Trump pages bear some similarities to the right-wing news sites that powered Trump’s rise, in that they traffic in political anger and outrage, while providing news nuggets from across the web. For example, “Occupy Democrats,” which currently has 5.9 million followers, has been known to spread hyperbolic and misleading stories that do not hold up under fact-checkers’ scrutiny.
But notice what far-left Zachary has to say about Occupy Democrats:
Obviously not all of the news shared and spread by these foreign sites and fake accounts is fake. Some of it is based in reality; even that stuff, though, is phrased in exaggerated and obviously distorted/biased ways. And of course a lot of it just flat-out lies.
I understand you have an emotional need to think that foreign people posting false and divisive propaganda and riling up our population isn’t meaningful, and that “everyone does it,” but to most people, it is clearly something to be concerned about and clearly comes more from one ideology than the other.
These are the sort of people that NewsBrig brings in at the bottom of the article to throw one last uncontested hook. NewsBrig needs to go to the brig. And the guards need night sticks.
Bonus "organizing to protest lockdown restrictions are only bad when Republicans are involved media bias: when Israelis protest Benjamin Netanyahu’s restrictions the Daily Beast tag is BLACK FLAG but when Michigans do it its ENOUGH ALREADY.
Around the world free market economies (with a half dozen quotation marks around many of those words) are effectively shut down, which probably will cause the largest global recession in history. It might last for many months or possibly even multiple years.
Oil futures even temporarily reached negative value (with another half dozen quotation marks around many of those words) while Alberta oil is effectively without value due to the pipeline fiasco of the past few years.
As has been the case for over a century and a half, since Canadian Confederation, the territory of ostensibly sovereign indigenous nations within Canada has been consistently used for major infrastructure projects that non-indigenous Canadians don’t want to see run through their own backyards. This partly explains why it was so easy for indigenous protests to nearly shut down the Canadian economy in February: railways, highways, pipelines, canals, and other strategic infrastructure already cut through indigenous territory.
Taylor Noakes, for those who may not have known, is "a freelance journalist from Montreal" and an occasional CBC and National Post writer who "focuses on the intersection of history, architecture, urban planning and public policy". In other words, a hardcore leftist who hounds Jason Kenney by lying about subsidies and who writes about how "rule of law" should be subject to protest (but only when his friends are the ones doing it). It also means he's probably not stupid: he knows that what he wrote is wrong.
Like all leftists, Taylor Noakes is a liar. Always. He's always lying.
The reason railways, highways, pipelinies, canals, and other long thin things always "cut through indigenous territory" (which, by the by, isn't sovereign and nobody other than far-left activists ever believed that) is because lazy Red Indians claim their territory is the entire country. Remember that in B.C. various tribes including the Wet Soup One Indian Bands claim their territory is largest than the actual land mass of the province. The same Noakes who lied by referring to oil as having negative value in reference to the article about oil futures I posted above is welcome to explain how with negative land space in B.C. available to them, Coastal Gas is going to build a pipeline without some Red Indians whining about it. His useless slur against "not wanting this in their backyards" isn't even remotely true: yes the train from Montreal to Toronto runs through an Indian reservation near Belleville (which is where the major rail blockade was made up). But it's a total lie and fabrication for a man from Montreal who presumably has driven to Toronto and therefore past Belleville to describe this as not the backyard of (presumably white and well-off) Canadians uninterested in having the trains run by. Belleville is on the mainland right by Prince Edward Island (no, not that one), a prosperous county and sizable tourist attraction (though generally overshadowed by the Thousand Islands area just east of Kingston). The train line (and indeed also the 401) run right through "their backyard". In fact, the transportation options (plus the scenic lakeside views) are the reason that so many Canadian backyards are located there, just look at how the number of medium sized towns (more white prosperous backyards) are found along Highway 401 versus Highway 7 (which connects Ottawa and Toronto):
So why are the train lines running through Belleville and therefore through Injun territory? Well, it's because they run concurrently with where the people are. True, if you ignored topography and just built a straight line run between the two major cities it wouldn't cross Belleville...
...but my imaginary red line happens to run right through the middle of the Alderville Reservation. You can't run it parallel to Highway 7 without running over the Sarbot Lake Reserve either. See? No matter where you want to run an infrastructure project you're going to eventually have to run over land Red Indians lay claim to. Just look at this map of the pipeline route through mountainous interior BC and explain to me (or better yet, Taylor Noakes who maybe can't get this through his skull) how you run a pipeline between Dawson Creek and Kitimat without crossing Wet Soup One land (or indeed land claimed by four other bands of lazy Red Indians).
And if you don't, you'll find that the Red Indians have just expanded their claim. The Carrier Indians, despite the lies they like to tell you, never covered the whole of northern British Columbia: much of the northern horn of that pink claimed territory is land the Wet Soup flat out have never been on. While Houston (founded by missionaries, by the way, was never a Red Indian settlement) is on land the Wet Soup regularly walked on, only the Morice River Valley was really fit for human activity. The idea that land around Mt. Forester is their "territory" is laughable. Reverend Morice may have been the first human being of any race to set foot on it. Of course, the same reasons that they never had a legitimate claim to the land is the same reason Coastal Gaslink can't run a pipeline across it: the topography is abysmal.
Anyways back to the liar from Montreal:
Members of the community say neither pipeline workers nor the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) officers dispatched to the area are maintaining adequate social distancing, and that pipeline workers are lodged nearby in crowded hotels and work camps.
Police forces around the world aren't "maintaining adequate social distancing": this is far more a source of controversy when they are confronting freeborn citizens engaged in social distancing that is misunderstood than when they are performing a vital function like keeping jackpine savages from causing damage to people and equipment that are engaging in economic activity beyond their understanding. As for pipeline workers in crowded hotels and work camps, this seems more an issue for the workers to be taking up with their employers and authorities. I'm not sure why "members of the community" are concerned. Also, this is a pretty remote worksite isn't it? After everybody there is there for 14 days aren't they guaranteed nobody has it and therefore nobody can get it?
Indigenous North Americans are particularly susceptible to COVID-19 owing to the relative remoteness of indigenous communities from public health centers and the high rates of preexisting health conditions. In Canada, as in the United States, indigenous communities often lack access to clean drinking water as well. The rate of coronavirus infection among the Navajo, for instance, is estimated at 10 times the rate for the entire state of Arizona.
Wickham indicates that the five clans of the Wet’suwet’en nation are unable to continue negotiations because their consensus-based meeting system would require congregations of more than 50 people, which have been outlawed as part of Canada’s social distancing guidelines. Though the Wet’suwet’en have complied with the regulations, the same rules do not appear to apply to pipeline workers. Moreover, Wickham indicated that both the federal and provincial governments are unwilling to discuss either the pipeline or the presence of the RCMP in indigenous territory during negotiations.
Finally some good news out of all this. The federal and provincial governments should have been unwilling to negotiate with these lazy Wet Soup whiners from the very beginning: white landowners never got this treatment and therefore red land-sitters (the land is actually owned by the federal government who has the complete right to build on it at any time). Meanwhile what's this lie about "their consesnsus-based meeting system"? Strangely enough this wasn't on their list of demands on February 21st, and didn't seem to be in effect when useless tit of a cabinet minister Carolyn Bennett met with a half dozen chiefs in a closed door meeting. This sounds like another ridiculous lie promoted by deceitful Red Indians and their stooges like Noakes.
The pipeline isn’t the only issue, either for indigenous communities or in Canada’s uncomfortable relationship with pipelines. Health officials in Fort St. John, British Columbia, have warned their health care services could be quickly overwhelmed by a coronavirus outbreak in their community, itself near a controversial hydroelectric dam project opposed by local indigenous communities.
Yawn. No matter where in Canada you look, you'll find a major project being undertaken by whites to improve the quality of life, and nearby a bunch of Red Indians delightfully living in squalour denouncing the project as their primitive culture slowly/sometimes-not-so-slowly kills them.
A request by Manitoba First Nations chiefs for Cuban doctors to be allowed in to help contain the pandemic on indigenous territory was shot down by Deputy Prime Minister Chrystia Freeland, who argued Canada’s health care system has the capacity to handle the extraordinary stress the pandemic has placed on it—a point most indigenous leaders disagree with.
Falling world oil prices led to the cancellation of two major projects in February, though in both cases companies and investors backing them pointed to pipeline protests as showing fossil fuel projects were no longer socially or politically tenable in Canada. That these projects were only economically viable at pre-2014 prices has been conveniently omitted by corporate executives and pro-oil politicians alike.
Noakes could make a career out of just lying about the oil industry. It seems, in fact, that he has.
Companies leaving for the bad political landscape is due to two dishonest and disgusting actors: Red Indian savages and the far-left Antifa thugs that associate with them, and the cowardly idiotic Shiny Pony government. It's a fun little game that deceitful liars like Noakes like to use. Step one: have the savages make a big stink about a project. Step two: have the craven idiots in leftist governments take appeasement action. Step three: have the savages get even more...well, savage...and cause maximum damage and disruption. Step four: have the leftist government negotiate a deal that makes the project completely impossible. Step five: when the investors say "to hell with you all" use that as some sort of compelling evidence that clearly the project wasn't that great in the first place. While pre-2014 prices sure helped, and the oil slump is unfortunate, the fact remains that we as a society still need oil. While OPEC manipulation can still leave western producers like the USA and Alberta in temporary slumps and with bad patches, they're still just slumps and bad patches. It's always been understood that eventually the prices do rebound, and this product which literally everybody still needs and uses can again be sold. What's needed is solutions to problems. One of the problems, low prices of Alberta product, can be rectified by...you guessed it: pipelines. Noakes makes it seem like 2013 is never going to happen again and that the circumstances surrounding it are a bygone era. In reality, lower cost to external world markets also helps with viability. We just need some lazy Indians out of the way first.
Why Cuba?
While the Trudeau administration has at least projected an image of competence during the pandemic—particularly when compared to the United States
Trudeau’s continued support for pipeline projects—as well as a recent decision to resume controversial arms shipments to Saudi Arabia—are steeped in the big-tent political strategies of pre-pandemic Canadian politics.
Now he's just throwing halal spaghetti at the wall and trying to see what sticks: by "big-tent political strategies" what he means is "sell things we have or are making to people around the world who are trying to buy them". I didn't realize that was a political strategy, I always just called it "being a producer".
For the moment, the beleaguered prime minister can rest assured that more street protests and railroad blockades aren’t likely to appear on the horizon. Then again, no one saw the pandemic bearing down either.
Nice free market you have here. Shame if anything...bad...were to happen to it. For a guy with such a punchable face Noakes is quite the passive-aggressive punk, isn't he?
