Monday Post

A lot going on ...




What could have ended in disaster ended with a safe landing:

A Toronto-bound Air Canada plane has made an emergency landing at Madrid’s international airport after pilots reported an engine problem and a tire rupture shortly after takeoff.

Flight-tracking website Flightradar24 showed the aircraft, which took off at about 3 p.m. local time, circling the airspace above Madrid for more than two and a half hours as it lessened its fuel load.

The Boeing 767 carrying 128 passengers had been circling southeast of Adolfo Suarez-Barajas airport “to use up fuel and lighten the aircraft for landing,” the carrier said Monday morning.

The “engine issue” occurred shortly after take-off, according to Air Canada. ”A tire also reportedly ruptured on take-off, one of 10 on this model of aircraft,“ the carrier reported.

Ignacio Montesinos, a spokesman for Spain’s airport operator, says the pilot radioed the tower citing an “emergency.”

Madrid residents posted videos online showing a plane flying unusually low over the Spanish capital’s centre and suburbs, as it readied to eventually touch down safely.

No one is asking why viruses were smuggled out of Canada and taken to China.

This China:

China’s stock market opened to the most savage wave of selling in years, with thousands of shares falling by the daily limit after just minutes of trading.

Though investors turned on computers hours early to tee up their sell orders, many of them couldn’t exit the market fast enough. All but 162 of the almost 4,000 stocks in Shanghai and Shenzhen recorded losses, with about 90 per cent dropping the maximum allowed by the country’s exchanges.

Health-care shares comprised most of Monday’s gainers on speculation they will benefit from the virus outbreak.

“The sell-off was so quick and intense,” said Li Changmin, managing director at Snowball Wealth in Guangzhou. “We’ll be busy dealing with risk controls and even liquidation pressure if stocks keep falling.”

It's like people are averse to Biblical plagues.


In the mean-time, Canada is hobbling together some sort of rough, quickly-thought-out plan to deal with a virus that has already cost 360 lives:

The Canadian government has chartered a plane to Hanoi, Vietnam ready to evacuate more than 300 Canadians currently in Wuhan, the foreign affairs minister said during a news brief Monday.

When the Canadians arrive, they will be housed at Forces Base Trenton in Ontario for a 14-day quarantine period.

(Sidebar: China praised its North American vassal state for its calm and rebuked that loutish United States for not wanting to deal with something worse than SARS. Yankee heathens! But it sure does appreciate American help in containing this Chinese Chernobyl.)

**

Canadians who are exhibiting respiratory symptoms linked to a new coronavirus likely won’t be able to get on a flight home from China, Ontario officials said Monday.

(Sidebar: yeah, like that's stopped anyone before.)

**

The Liberal government insisted China let the primary caregivers of Canadian children return to the country with their primary caregivers after leaving Wuhan, the epicentre of an outbreak of the novel coronavirus, even if they are not citizens themselves.

Anchors away!

**

I believe that the communist state killing Christians and political dissenters for their organs was a far more pressing health matter but I guess you know what you are doing:

Doctors, human rights advocates and politicians raised concerns about coronavirus on Sunday in Calgary, fearing it could quickly spread through Chinese detention camps.

Because priorities:

When Prime Minister Justin Trudeau arrives in Ethiopia later this week, he will be following in the footsteps of two cabinet ministers and a parliamentary secretary who have visited in the last few weeks. The attention is all part of Canada’s campaign for a seat on the United Nations Security Council.

Many analysts say Trudeau’s Africa tour may be too little, too late because Canada’s spending commitments on foreign aid and personnel contributions to UN peacekeeping are at all-time lows.

It's probably because he is spending too much time and money on censorship:

Canadian Heritage Minister Steven Guilbeault suggested news media in Canada should be regulated, requiring news outlets in Canada to be licenced.

“If you’re a distributor of content in Canada and obviously if you’re a very small media organization the requirement probably wouldn’t be the same if you’re Facebook, or Google. There would have to be some proportionality embedded into this,” Guilbeault told Evan Solomon an interview on CTV’s Question Period.

“We would ask that they have a licence, yes,” Guilbeault continued.

Who would issue these licenses? What would be the criteria?

**

Stunned by the sudden onslaught of questions, Guilbeault attempts to walk back:

In Ottawa, Heritage Minister Steven Guilbeault clarifies his position on broadcasting & telecom review panel's recommendations: "Let me be clear. Our govt has no intention to impose licensing requirements on news organizations nor will we try to regulate news content." #cdnpoli pic.twitter.com/XQQlutSQzp

— CPAC (@CPAC_TV) February 3, 2020

 


Yes, about that:

"We would ask that they have a license. Yes." #cdnpoli pic.twitter.com/F7iTPWW3T5

— Pundit Class 🇨🇦 (unlicensed) (@punditclass) February 2, 2020

 


The correct response to this planned outrage:

I will NEVER register with the federal government for 'permission' to share my views. Communist-style Authoritarians can go fuck themselves.

— Spencer Fernando 🇨🇦 (@SpencerFernando) February 2, 2020

 


An act of protest planned here.

DO fight back.

You don't want to wake up and realise that you are living in the Soviet Union.




Transparency? What country are you living in?:

Seventy-four per cent of Canadians believe that bargaining between governments and unions should happen transparently, according to a new Ipsos poll.

Twenty-six per cent of respondents, however, believe that negotiations should happen behind closed doors, according to the survey, which was conducted on behalf of Global News.

And that is why you have strikes and governments that stick it to you.




Doing what he is paid to do:

Alberta Premier Jason Kenney will travel to Montreal and Washington, D.C., this week.

A statement from Kenney’s office says the trip, which starts Monday and continues until next Sunday, will promote the government’s work to drive investment, expand Alberta exports and get pipelines built.

The statement says Kenney will meet with business leaders in Montreal and do media interviews.

In Washington, he’s set to attend National Governors Association meetings along with Ontario Premier Doug Ford, Saskatchewan Premier Scott Moe and Quebec Premier Francois Legault.

Kenney has previously taken Legault to task for opposing new pipelines while his province benefits from Alberta’s oil and gas wealth.

The statement says Kenney’s interviews will “underscore how all Canadians benefit from a thriving energy sector, and why Alberta is a preferred source of energy in both environmental and social terms.”

Wow. The Europeans really have a handle on their lone wolves:

British Prime Minister Boris Johnson vowed to end the early release of convicted terrorists after an Islamist attacker stabbed two people days after he was set free half way through his prison term.

Sudesh Amman, jailed in 2018 for possession of terrorist documents and disseminating terrorist publications, was shot dead by police on Sunday after he went on the rampage with a stolen 10-inch (25 cm) knife on a busy London street.

Amman had previously praised the Islamic State group, shared an online al Qaeda magazine and encouraged his girlfriend to behead her parents.

Johnson said the government would announce fundamental changes in dealing with people convicted of terrorism offenses, saying he had come “to the end of my patience” with freeing offenders before they had completed their sentences and without any scrutiny.

“I think the idea of automatic early release for people who obviously continue to pose a threat to the public has come to the end of its useful life,” he said in a speech.

“We do think it’s time to take action to ensure that people — irrespective of the law that we’re bringing in — people in the current stream do not qualify automatically for early release.”

**

French police shot and wounded a man armed with a knife after he challenged officers inside a police station in eastern France on Monday, a spokesman for the national Gendarmerie said.

The man, who wounded one officer’s hand, was taken to hospital. A motive for the attack was not immediately clear, the spokesman said.

Oh, I think we know.




A newly found diary gives a glimpse into the bloody Battle of the Somme:

A British soldier’s battered World War I diary recounting the bloody Battle of the Somme has been discovered in a U.K. barn.

The diary, which was written in pencil by Private Arthur Edward Diggens of the Royal Engineers, starts on Feb.13, 1916, and ends on Oct. 11 of that year. His diary entry for July 1, 1916, describes the first day of the Battle of Somme.

"Something awful,” he wrote. “Never witnessed anything like it before. After a bombardment of a week the Germans mounted their own trenches and the infantry reckon that every German had a machine gun."

"Our fellows were mowed down," Diggens added.