Mid-Week Post

Your middle-of-the-week fun pic ...




China executes members of the Falun Gong movement and harvests their organs. A Chinese company put melamine in milk products for children. It has profited from the virus it spread around the world.

I'm sure its "vaccine" (used in the loosest sense of the word) will be just fine:

As reported by the Globe & Mail, CanSino – a company linked to China’s Academy of Military medical Sciences – will be brought to Canadian soil to test out China’s Ad5-nCoV, the Chinese vaccine candidate.

Making the deal even more absurd, Canadian technology will be used on the vaccine, but even if it works, Canada won’t get any ‘revenue’, with all of it going to China.

According to the report, “Canada’s involvement with Chinese vaccine developers dates to the 2007 signing of an agreement on scientific and technological co-operation. In 2011, the two countries agreed to collaborate on vaccine development. CanSino’s chief executive, Xuefeng Yu, also spent many years studying in Canada and working as an executive at Sanofi Pasteur Inc. He was formerly based in Toronto.”

And while this latest collaboration under the Trudeau government is a terrible move, as long back as 2014 the Harper government had signed a deal with China, and as a result China gets access to our technology without Canada being able to profit.

(Sidebar: thanks, Steve.)

Additionally, the China-controlled company is seeking Health Canada approval to conduct human trials in Canada.

Not surprisingly,  seventy-two percent of Canada's beer-and-popcorn consumers think a coronavirus vaccine made by China, the same country that bullies people in Canada (more on that later), should be mandatory.

Critical thinking is overrated!



Also - how interesting:

Sales of hydroxychloroquine doubled in Canada last March as various preliminary reports and even U.S. President Donald Trump began touting it as an effective treatment for COVID-19, although studies have since failed to back up those claims.

And - I'm sure this is nothing to be concerned about:

The Canadian Pharmacists Association (CPhA) said on April 17 that the number of drug shortages being reported to the government’s mandatory reporting website “has increased dramatically in the last few weeks.”

In the months leading up to March, the website had been listing about five new shortages a day. But from March 24 to April 7, it listed an average of 11.6 drug shortages per day. And from March 31 to April 7, that number climbed to 15.9 shortages a day.

“There are mechanisms through which they [Health Canada and the provinces and territories] are monitoring this very closely,” Chief Public Health Officer Dr. Theresa Tam, said on May 12 during her daily press conference. “And I think they are looking at different strategies.”

The industry in Canada is preparing itself for absorbing greater stress.

When Pierre Trudeau expressed his undying love for Mao Tse Tung, the murderer of millions, no one did anything. When his useless son declared his "admiration" for China's dictatorship, it was treated as cute. For years, Canadians have bought cheap rubbish from Chinese slave labour and even justified doing so as a means of strengthening the Chinese consumer and democratising the country.

Does it look like a democracy?:

For example, Anastasia Lin, the Ambassador for China Policy at the Macdonald-Laurier Institute and Miss Canada in 2015, has strongly spoken out against China, and faced serious repercussions. As noted in a recent Global News report, Lin says Chinese-Canadians are “suffering in silence” as the strength of China’s “United Front” grows in this country.

Here’s part of what Lin said:

“In considering Communist China’s threat, we could talk about many angles,” Lin said in her speech. “We can talk about how its censorship of information endangers global health, and now the coronavirus outbreak is a perfect example. I can tell you personally how the Chinese Communist Party targets family of political opponents abroad.”

And Lin took direct aim at the Communist Party’s influence networks.

“Beijing backs numerous front organizations and civil-society groups in Western societies, including Chinese student and professional associations. These groups act as extensions of the state and party apparatus. They are mobilized to influence the outcome of local elections and influence government policy in the West,” Lin said.

“These groups are controlled and financed by the Chinese government through the United Front Work Department and the Office of Overseas Chinese Affairs, but these connections are concealed from the public.”

According to one expert on the United Front, the federal government has failed to protect Chinese-Canadians from Beijing’s influence and intimidation attempts:

“In an interview regarding the United Front’s influence networks in Canada, Manthorpe said the United Front has been vastly increased under President Xi Jinping and seeks to control the Chinese diaspora and use community members ⁠— only on the basis of their Chinese ancestry ⁠— as foreign agents for Beijing’s strategic goals.

But Manthorpe said the United Front diaspora control operations have only been successful “to a limited degree.”

“It certainly hasn’t been very successful amongst the Canadians of Chinese heritage. I mean, the antipathy towards Beijing in Richmond, Scarborough, wherever, is huge and building,” Manthorpe said.

And yet, Canada has largely failed in exposing United Front operations and protecting Chinese-Canadians from the pressure exerted on them, he said.

“I think we need a lot more openness from Ottawa, identifying these United Front organizations,” Manthorpe said.

“And I think it’s also important to give support to Canadians of Chinese heritage who are under attack by these infiltrators.”

**

U.S. lawyers prosecuting Huawei Technologies Co. for alleged Iran sanctions violations said the company shouldn’t be allowed to share more than 21,000 pages of “sensitive” evidence in the People’s Republic of China because it could be “misused.”

**

Canada’s ambassador to Beijing says China is alienating foreign countries and injuring its goodwill abroad at a time when its diplomats have adopted a heavy-handed approach around the world. Dominic Barton is also backing a “rigorous review” of the World Health Organization and the spread of the deadly coronavirus – although not until the worst of the pandemic is over.

(Sidebar: this Dominic Barton.)

**

No, China gave the nod and Canada obeyed. The sanctions will remain unenforced:

The Canadian Armed Forces is postponing the deployment of a warship and surveillance aircraft to help enforce United Nations' sanctions against North Korea because of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Also - hasn't China done enough to the globe?:

For a few hours Monday, scientists held their breath as they watched a nearly 20-ton piece of space debris from a Chinese rocket fall through the sky and pass over Los Angeles and New York City, uncontrolled.

It's just an economy:

Cabinet has spent so much so quickly the Parliamentary Budget Office yesterday said it doesn’t know what the deficit is. “These days a week can feel like a month,” Budget Officer Yves Giroux told the Commons finance committee.

**

We could be sending out as much as $400 million per month in fraudulent emergency payments but the federal government isn’t doing anything to stop it.

Instead, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau is attacking those asking questions.

(Sidebar: this "prime minister".)

**

Peruse this little gem:

Targeting COVID-19 aid at low-income seniors makes sense, public policy experts say, but the federal government’s $2.5-billion package announced on Tuesday hands out too much money to people who don’t need it.

Some also argue that the political expediency of giving broad-based grants to an important voting bloc is likely the reason why.

**

Your parents frittered away your inheritance. Deal with it:

Students are also more likely to hold less secure jobs in industries most impacted by COVID-19, including accommodation or food services, according to StatsCan. 

For students who initially reported they had a job lined up after their academic term ended, 31 per cent ended up losing their job and 40 per cent had their job start date delayed. Only 13 per cent said their job was still in place.

Elections have consequences. 

**

The federal government is planning stronger measures to deal with a looming influx of people arriving from the United States, a clear sign Canada is bracing for the realities of life after lockdown while living next door to the world’s largest COVID-19 hotspot.

But not stopping flights from China or allowing in cheap labour infected with the coronavirus? 

Right. 




Small government? That won't ever happen in Canada:

In a rare newspaper column, former prime minister Stephen Harper argues that the massive public spending — and the subsequent massive public debt — in response to COVID-19 right now must lead to smaller government action so the economy can recover and debt levels can recede.

If spending doesn’t go down as soon as possible, governments could face a debt crisis down the road that requires “brutal” austerity measures, he says.

Why point out the failure of the authorities to enforce existing laws or warn people of an active shooter in the area when you can just issue a blanket-ban on weapons that are already outlawed?:

A former neighbour of the gunman behind last month's mass shooting in Nova Scotia says she reported his domestic violence and cache of firearms to the RCMP years ago and ended up leaving the community herself due to fears of his violence.

Brenda Forbes said that in the summer of 2013, she told police about reports that Gabriel Wortman had held down and beaten his common law spouse behind one of the properties he owned in Portapique, a coastal community west of Truro.

Domestic violence is being examined as a key aspect of the mass shooting, as police have said the rampage began on the night of April 18 after the gunman argued with his common law spouse and restrained and beat her before she managed to escape into the woods.

He went on to kill 22 people and burn a number of homes before police shot and killed him outside a gas station in Enfield, N.S.

Forbes said her first awareness of Wortman's domestic violence was shortly after he moved to Portapique in the early 2000s, when his partner came to her door and asked for help.

"She ran to my house and said Gabriel was beating on her and she had to get away. She was afraid," said the 62-year-old veteran of the Canadian Forces.

People who don't pay taxes shouldn't dictate policy:

An Indigenous leader is telling the RCMP to stay off reserve land after armed officers were dispatched to break up a sacred ceremony.

"These are First Nations lands. This is Indian land. Stay off our lands unless you are invited," said Chief Bobby Cameron of the Federation of Saskatchewan Indigenous Nations.

Public health orders do not supersede First Nations law and treaties, asserts Cameron, who added that maintaining tradition and ceremony is even more important during the COVID-19 pandemic.

But Seders are forbidden.

**

A draft agreement between hereditary chiefs who oppose a pipeline in northern British Columbia and the federal and provincial governments recognizes the rights and title of the Wet’suwet’en under the First Nation’s system of governance.

People who were not actually voted for by the tribe but whatever.




Another act of savagery in Afghanistan:

Afghan officials on Wednesday raised the death from the militant attack on a maternity hospital in Kabul the previous day, saying that 24 people were killed, including two newborn babies, their mothers and an unspecified number of nurses.

Militants stormed the hospital in Dashti Barchi, a mostly Shiite neighbourhood the western part of Kabul, on Tuesday morning, setting off an hours-long shootout with the police. As the battle raged, Afghan security forces struggled to evacuate the facility, which is supported by the aid group Doctors Without Borders, carrying out babies and frantic young mothers.

Often the disabled are overlooked:

The coronavirus outbreak in Japan is creating new hurdles for people with disabilities, adding to the already existing challenges in their everyday lives. These challenges make disabled people worry the pandemic will slow down Japan’s progress toward a barrier-free society. They hope the new reality will provide the impetus for new policies and initiatives that will address the impact of COVID-19 on people with disabilities.

Wow, the Victorians were pretty hard-core about their parlour games:

Snap-dragon

Not for the faint of heart. Take your bullet-pudding dish and fill it with brandy. Drop a few raisins into the liquid. Then light the whole thing on fire. Your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to grab a raisin and extinguish it by popping it in your mouth. (And I thought flaming Sambuca during my university days was badass.) Lewis Carroll makes mention of it in Through the Looking Glass, when he writes of the snap-dragon-fly: “Its body is made of plum-pudding, its wings of holly-leaves, and its head is a raisin burning in brandy.”