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Your middle-of-the-week ribbon, wristband, cap and crosswalk ...
A young Russian pianist who was set to perform with the Montreal Symphony Orchestra this week has been struck from the schedule after protest.
However, the orchestra maintained its praise for 20-year-old Alexander Malofeev, who has been outspoken against the invasion of Ukraine, where he said he has some family members.
"The OSM feels that it would be inappropriate to receive Mr. Malofeev this week," wrote a spokesperson for the orchestra, Pascale Ouimet, in a statement.
Montreal Symphony Orchestra, you have convinced me that you should never again receive public funding.
This is a petty, useless act done by petty, impotent people to make themselves feel large.
But this is part of the new Red Scare, not the objective caution and vigilance one might have for a global superpower with an autocratic regime (one that no one seemed to mind when Obama was ruining things):
A university in Italy has backtracked on a decision to postpone a course about the work of Russian author Fyodor Dostoevsky following a backlash.
Italian writer Paolo Nori posted a video on Instagram on Tuesday saying he had received an email from officials at the University of Milano-Bicocca, in Milan, informing him of the decision to postpone his course following Russia's invasion of Ukraine.
"Dear Professor, the Vice Rector for Didactics has informed me of a decision taken with the rector to postpone the course on Dostoevsky," the email said, according to Nori's video.
"This is to avoid any controversy, especially internally, during a time of strong tensions."
Nori said he had been invited by the university to deliver the four-session course on Dostoevsky, whose novels include Crime and Punishment, The Idiot, Demons and The Brothers Karamazov, starting from next Wednesday.
"They invited me. Each lesson was 90-minutes long. They were free and open to everyone," he said.
Nori went on: "I realize what is happening in Ukraine is horrible, and I feel like crying just thinking about it. But what is happening in Italy is ridiculous."
Also - today in "contradictory words and actions" news:
German Economy Minister Robert Habeck warned that a shortage in the supply of fossil fuels could threaten social cohesion in Germany.
After meeting with German business leaders, Habeck said, “I would not advocate an embargo on Russian imports of fossil fuels. I would even oppose it,”.
Why don't you do what Poland did and get it from Norway?
**
President Joe Biden announced a ban on all Russian oil imports Tuesday in the latest move from the United States to isolate Russia’s economy in response to its invasion of Ukraine.
This latest measure comes in addition to sanctions already placed on Russian financial systems and individuals in Russian President Vladimir Putin’s inner circle.
The vegetable wouldn't take Canadian oil, though.
Well, Canada won't take Canadian oil.
That can't be a problem, right?:
Canada’s benchmark heavy crude, normally among the cheapest grades in North America, has risen above US$100 a barrel for the first time since 2008 as the U.S. ponders a ban on imports of Russian oil.
**
“This could prove to be a tall order as immediate OPEC spare capacity currently rests with Saudi Arabia, UAE, Kuwait, and Iraq, and we estimate that these four countries could only bring on between 2.0-2.5 mb/d in the next 30-60 days,” she said.**
McTeaque told CP24 that he initially thought gas prices wouldn’t hit $1.90 a litre until a week or two from now but he now expects that threshold to be reached as soon as this week, beginning with an anticipated three cent hike on Wednesday that will push the price at the pumps to an average of $1.88 a litre.
He says that a planned increase of the carbon tax from eight to 11 cents per litre as of April 1 could also further inflate costs.
Canadians' previous objects of hate - whatever happened to them?:
Tamara Lich, one of the principal organizers of the Freedom Convoy protest, has been granted bail after being held for two-and-a-half weeks on mischief charges.
Superior Court Justice John Johnston said an earlier judge made “errors in law” in her Feb. 22 decision to deny Lich bail — he said that the charges she faces are at a “lower scale” than other offences where bail was granted.
“I find that Ms. Lich does require a level of supervision if released,” Johnston said, but that can be “managed” by the surety supervising her bail.
Remember that accused rapists are often out on bail.
**
Rats are deciding how to drag this out:
The government and Official Opposition disagreed over whether a Conservative should co-chair the committee. Government House leader Mark Holland publicly stated that a Conservative should not be involved in the leadership of the committee since several Conservatives expressed support for protesters.
**
The Canadian Bankers Association told a parliamentary committee that its members froze Freedom Convoy protesters’ bank accounts during the public order emergency not only to comply with RCMP disclosures but also based on “their own determinations.”
**
RCMP officials say the freezing of the Freedom Convoy protesters’ bank accounts without a court order was a necessary and targeted measure during the public order emergency, but opposition MPs are questioning why existing laws weren’t applied.**
Hundreds of Freedom Convoy protesters who had their assets frozen under the Emergencies Act for donating to the movement’s fundraiser will have their bank accounts marked for life, a Commons finance committee has heard.
According to Blacklock’s Reporter, the Canadian Bankers Association (CBA) told parliamentarians at the committee that alongside the 257 names provided to them by the RCMP, banks relied on their own resources to flag additional individuals for freezing.
“We primarily relied upon the names provided by the RCMP but there were obligations under the order separate that required banks to make their own determinations. We did not rely on external information,” said general counsel for the CBA Angelina Mason.
And it's all thanks to this ineffective douchebag right here:
Sep. 16, 2021 - Appearing on a Quebecois talk show, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau launched into an unfounded and divisive attack on unvaccinated people, calling them unscientific, “misogynists” and “racists.”
https://tnc.news/2022/01/04...
**
“Yes, we will get out of this pandemic by vaccination. We all know people who are a little bit hesitant. We will continue to try and convince them, but there are also people who are fiercely against vaccination,” said Trudeau.
“They are extremists who don’t believe in science, they’re often misogynists, also often racists. It’s a small group that muscles in, and we have to make a choice in terms of leaders, in terms of the country. Do we tolerate these people? Or do we say, hey, most of the Quebecois people – 80% – are vaccinated. We want to come back to things we like doing. It’s not those people who are blocking us.”
=============
Dec 20, 2021 – [Charter of Rights and Freedoms under Emergency Powers]
Justin Trudeau: “Regardless of the fact that we are attacking your fundamental rights...or limiting your fundamental rights, and the Charter says that is wrong, we are still gonna go ahead and do it. It’s basically a loop-hole that allows a majority to OVERRIDE the fundamental rights of a minority.
**
Friday, March 4, 2022 - Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau says he has seen a "slippage" in democratic values across the world which has "emboldened" Russian President Vladimir Putin to think he could invade Ukraine with impunity.
Speaking to the Ukrainian-Canadian community at an Etobicoke church on Friday, Mr Trudeau praised the Ukrainian resolve against Mr Putin's invading force and how the Russian leader "underestimated" the push-back of democracies.
"What a terrible mistake he made in underestimating Ukrainians and underestimating the level to which democracies would stand and do what he never expected us to do, which is push back hard," Mr Trudeau said at the Church of St Demetrius the Great Martyr.
He said a foreseen "slippage" in countries adhering to their democratic principles made Mr Putin think he could "get away with it" in Ukraine.
"Countries turning towards slightly more authoritarian leaders – countries allowing increasing misinformation and disinformation to be shared on social media turning people against the values and the principles of democracies that are so strong," he said.
(Merci)
**
This is why @JustinTrudeau didn’t arrive through main entrance as @MinPres did #cdnpoli pic.twitter.com/wkZwJtLGtT
— Travis Dhanraj (@Travisdhanraj) March 7, 2022
Also - because go to hell. That's why:
Deputy PM @cafreeland & Foreign Affairs Min @melaniejoly clearly did not like my Q— Why is @JustinTrudeau in Europe on the taxpayer dime while there are pressing domestic issues he could be dealing w/ at home…here’s the exchange #cdnpoli pic.twitter.com/nFPNCbe1TE
— Travis Dhanraj (@Travisdhanraj) March 9, 2022
Still messing up things for the rest of Canada and being disregarded by the rest of the world for being himself (insert own comment here):
If it sounds excessive to compare Canada under the Trudeau Liberals to such extremism, remember the truckers who set out to Ottawa a few short weeks ago. They were ordinary working Canadians who thought they had the same right to protest as enjoyed by the Indigenous and BLM protesters. None of them would have considered themselves to be radicals or revolutionaries. Although they all had their own particular grievance with the federal government, their main message was that the vaccine mandate for truckers was unnecessary, unscientific, unneeded, and had to go, which is exactly the view that most of the world is taking. Why the Trudeau government is one of the last in the world to recognize this obvious fact is anyone’s guess.
But that message was an “unacceptable view” the Trudeau government would not tolerate. But surely, when aggrieved Canadians come to Ottawa, they at least deserve to be heard by their government. Rather than going into hiding, all Trudeau needed to do was talk with the truckers to find common ground.
But Trudeau refused this simple, common-sense courtesy. Instead, he proceeded to irreparably damage our country, our reputation, our banking system, and our rapidly unravelling social fabric.
(Sidebar: at least the Americans tried.)
**
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau opened the door to increasing his government’s defence spending, which trails allies and sits below the NATO target, as he acknowledged the “context is changing rapidly around the world.”
But you didn't do that, did you, Justin?:
On Tuesday, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau continued his tour of Europe to “work closely with allies to strengthen NATO.” But even as Canada places 500 troops in Latvia and pledges CF-18s for Romania, there is an elephant in the room whenever Trudeau talks to NATO members about collective security: He happens to represent a country that has spent more than a generation utterly phoning in its NATO commitments.
NATO members are generally expected to spend about two per cent of their GDP on defence. Canada spends about 1.39 per cent – one of the lowest in the alliance. Even if you try and tweak the numbers by adding in the RCMP and the Coast Guard (which are technically considered “military forces” by NATO), we’re still looking at a defence budget of around 1.4 per cent of GDP. Tack on a round of planned Liberal defence spending increases, and we’re still at just 1.5 per cent.
This used to be pretty common among the non-American members of NATO, but with countries across the alliance now ramping up their military budgets as a direct response to Russia, Canada’s cobwebbed armed forces are increasingly an outlier among its Western allies. And even while he jets to European capitals on a tour that was specifically booked to discuss NATO issues, Trudeau has remained noncommittal on plans to boost Canadian defence spending.
This dissonance came up Monday during Trudeau’s press conference with U.K. Prime Minister Boris Johnson. Specifically, Johnson was asked whether it was “acceptable” that Canada spent so little while the U.K. was spending 2.4 per cent. ...
- The Royal Canadian Navy has no amphibious capability. The fleet doesn’t have a single landing craft or assault ship.
- The army has no self-propelled artillery. To throw shells at an enemy, Canada does it the same way we’ve been doing it since the First World War: We tow one of our 60-or-so guns to the battlefield and set it up.
- The navy can’t really resupply itself at sea. Canada’s last resupply ship kept catching fire, so until a replacement is completed, navy ships need to be refuelled and restocked using a former container ship that is not rated for combat.
- We’re not doing great on drones. Armed Bayraktar drones have proved to be an exceedingly cheap way for Ukraine to target incoming Russian columns. But even for a Canadian military that loves to cheap out on air support, we’re still years away from getting an armed drone.
- Even the official prime ministerial transport is an outdated embarrassment. The RCAF operates the Airbus CC-150 that is currently flying Trudeau around Europe, and as the National Post’s Colby Cosh noted in a recent column, the interior is notable for being strewn with extension cords.
A column by the CBC’s Murray Brewster noted that Trudeau’s European tour is almost exclusively occurring in countries that are either spending at the NATO benchmark, or are on track to meet it – a fact that is leading to Canada becoming “increasingly isolated” in the alliance.
**
For starters, Trudeau had to take a back entrance during a visit to Number 10 Downing Street, the official residence of British Prime Minister Boris Johnson. The reason was that anti-Trudeau protest crowds were blocking the usual entrance (and faraway chants of “f— Trudeau” could still be distinctly heard during Trudeau’s official photo op with Johnson).
Trudeau has gotten a lot of bad European press lately due to his response to Freedom Convoy, specifically how he used the Emergencies Act to greenlight a wave of bank account freezes without judicial oversight. Just as Trudeau arrived in the U.K., The Telegraph ran this piece noting how his star had fallen at home due to the trucker convoy.
After his audience with Johnson, Trudeau then attended a joint press conference with the British leader and Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte. There, foreign reporters quickly noticed that the Canadian prime minister doesn’t actually answer questions from the press.
To wit …
- When asked about whether Canada would be boosting its military budget to meet the NATO spending target of two per cent of GDP: “We need to make sure that the women and men in the Canadian Armed forces have all the equipment necessary to be able to stand strongly, as we always have as members of NATO.”
- When asked whether Canada would be using its petroleum sector to help Europe lessen its dependence on Russian oil: “We need to move forward on decarbonizing our economies, but we need to do that in a way that supports people through that process and we’re going to continue doing that.”
- When asked about the effectiveness of sanctions in curbing Russian aggression: “The courage of the Ukrainians in standing up to the Russian invaders has inspired and humbled us all and we need to show ourselves as determined to push back against Putin.”
Justin, in Europe, people are expected to actually answer questions. The European press has not been bribed to comment on your socks or how it characterised average Canadians as "racists" and "misogynists".
**
But you spent years quashing the Canadian oil sector, Justin, and solar power doesn't work, so ... :
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and the leaders of the U.K. and the Netherlands agreed Russia is no longer a reliable supplier of oil and gas, but Europe can’t yet shut off the taps and Trudeau was vague about how much Canada can deliver as a replacement.
Ukrainian officials said on Wednesday that a children's hospital and maternity ward in the city of Mariupol have been destroyed by Russian airstrikes.
"The Russian occupying forces have dropped several bombs on the children's hospital," the Mariupol City Council said in a statement. "The destruction is colossal."
According to the Associated Press, at least 17 people were injured.
To be filed under - WHAT COULD POSSIBLY GO WRONG?:
A "troubling new strategic convergence" between Beijing and Moscow has developed and the risk of "major power conflict" had grown since Russia invaded Ukraine, Australia's intelligence chief said on Wednesday.
Andrew Shearer, director general of the Office of National Intelligence, said China's President Xi Jinping appears to be planning to dominate the Indo-Pacific region and use it as a base to overtake the United States as the world's leading power.
The comments reinforce warnings that the Russian invasion of Ukraine, which has met near-universal condemnation by the West, may spread into a regional or global conflict. This week Australian Prime Minister called on liberal democracies to stop an "arc of autocracy" reshaping the world.
"We're going to have to work much harder to maintain the liberal quality of the rules-based order in Europe and here in the Indo-Pacific region," Shearer said at a conference hosted by the Australian Financial Review.
"We see a leader who's really battening down and hardening his country for this struggle to overtake the United States as the world's leading power," he added, referring to Xi.
**
China is considering buying or increasing stakes in Russian energy and commodities companies, such as gas giant Gazprom PJSC and aluminum producer United Co. Rusal International PJSC, according to people familiar with the matter.
**
Former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo noted the danger of all this absurdity in a tweet last Sunday: “President Biden — stop partnering with Russia to cut a deal with Iran. When China and Russia are on your side of the table negotiating ‘against’ Iran, you are putting America and Israel at risk.” A senior congressional official added on Monday: “It’s obvious that Russia should no longer serve as one of the key intermediaries brokering an Iran deal. We need to be isolating Russia not just economically, but also diplomatically. There is absolutely no chance that Russia has U.S. national security interests in mind when it comes to Iran’s nuclear program.”
Yeah. But Biden’s handlers show no sign of relenting on this. To all appearances, they’re rushing headlong in to a deal with Tehran that would, surprise of surprises, place Russia in a key role, as did the original Obama nuke deal.
**
Moscow claims that the labs had been working with deadly pathogens like anthrax and the plague, appearing to back up its claims with documentation of the orders to destroy the samples.https://t.co/YU98xBuc8u
— Rebel News USA (@RebelNews_USA) March 9, 2022
You may need that spirit after this distraction, Taiwan:
Ukrainians fighting against Russian invaders have inspired the people of Taiwan, the island's foreign minister said on Monday, as he announced millions of dollars in aid for Ukrainian refugees.
"Despite great adversity, the government and people of Ukraine have been fighting with tremendous courage and determination," the minister, Joseph Wu, told a news conference.
"Let me say this from the bottom of my heart: You have been an inspiration to the Taiwanese people in facing threats and coercion from authoritarian power."
Conservative Yoon Suk-yeol was elected South Korea's president on Wednesday in one of the closest fought races in recent history which will shape Asia's fourth-largest economy for the next five years.
Here are some of the policy pledges Yoon, former top prosecutor under outgoing President Moon Jae-in, has made during the campaign.
ECONOMY
Yoon says he supports market-led approaches, including job creation led by the private sector rather than government projects. He says he plans to cut red tape for companies and to deregulate the virtual asset industry.
Yoon has proposed allotting 50 trillion won ($40 billion) to help small merchants and the self-employed hit by the pandemic, including cash handouts totalling 43 trillion won.
TAXES
Yoon has said he will lower capital gains and property ownership taxes to increase housing transactions.
He has proposed raising the tax threshold for cryptocurrency investments from the current 2.5 million won to 50 million won.
Yoon has said he will abolish a planned new tax for people who earned 50 million won from stock investments, to be effective next year, and cut real estate holding taxes to increase housing transactions.
HOUSING
Yoon says current property regulations must be eased and guided by "market principles."
Yoon has vowed to create at least 2.5 million homes in the next five years, including 500,000 in the capital Seoul.
NORTH KOREA
Yoon's team said he will seek to restart talks with North Korea, and purse a roadmap with significant and swift benefits for Pyongyang if it takes concrete actions to denuclearise.
He has called for boosting military deterrence, including by strengthening ties with the United States. He has also said that preventive strikes may be the only way to counter North Korea's new hypersonic missiles if they appear ready for an imminent attack.
Yoon says he would seek to establish a permanent three-way dialogue channel between South Korea, North Korea and the United States.
FOREIGN POLICY
Yoon wants to buy an additional THAAD U.S. missile system to counter North Korea, despite risks that it could invite new economic retaliation from China, which has complained that the system's powerful radar can penetrate its territory.
Taking such a step could in fact provide a chance to "reset" testy diplomatic ties with China, Yoon's top foreign policy aide has said.
Yoon would ditch the current administration's "strategic ambiguity" between Washington and Beijing, while promoting more regular security dialogue to reassure the THAAD radar is not directed at China.
Perhaps Yoon sees what the vegetable and Justin (China's employees) will not.
A Vancouver Police Department recruitment video taken down in response to criticism of its militarized, "Hollywood" vision of policing has left behind some lingering concerns.
The video was posted to the VPD's Twitter feed on Tuesday and faced immediate backlash over its content and style.
"I was astonished at how inappropriate the footage was," said Meenakshi Mannoe, a criminalization and policing campaigner at Pivot Legal Society.
The video was composed of rapid cuts between footage of officers clad all in black, wearing tactical vests, body armour and helmets, and carrying large guns. The officers were shown rappelling down the sides of buildings and ships, and dangling from helicopters.
The video is set to an intense instrumental soundtrack — music that wouldn't feel out of place in a Batman movie.
The police department pulled the video from Twitter later the same day in response to a flood of negative feedback about the imagery, writing in a tweet, "We apologize if the images were upsetting for some, particularly during current world events."
History-destroyers do not like being called out:
Canada’s top librarian personally directed her staff to wipe federal websites of content she deemed offensive.
According to Blacklock’s Reporter, chief archivist Leslie Weir told employees at Library and Archives Canada to purge thousands of pages, including a biography of Canada’s first prime minister Sir John A. Macdonald.
“We need to discuss having a disclaimer on the website about having content that may offend people. I feel very strongly about that,” Weir said in an email on June 9, 2021.
“Much of the content on the Library and Archives Canada website reflects the time at which it was written. We understand much of this outdated historical content no longer reflects today’s context and may be offensive to many. This is an enormous undertaking with over 7,000 web pages.”
**
Internal records show managers at the national archives were driven to exchanging profane emails following a public outcry over removal of webpages celebrating John A. Macdonald. Response from taxpayers was overwhelmingly negative, admitted staff: “Are you guys on drugs?”
We we always at with Eastasia Sir John A. Macdonald.
Also - just home-school:
B.C. high school students will soon be required to complete Indigenous-focused coursework in order to graduate.
It was never about a virus:
A number of disclosures made last week support an immediate end to the Pfizer COVID vaccines. On Tuesday, March 1, the U.S. FDA’s Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research permitted access to the 55,000 page set of documents which Pfizer submitted to the FDA from its clinical trials in support of a COVID-19 vaccine emergency use authorization.
The data included a 38-page report entitled “List of adverse events of special interest.” The listing contains 1,291 different adverse events following COVID vaccination including: acute kidney injury, cardiac arrest, cardiac failure, central nervous system vasculitis, death neonatal, encephalitis brain stem, frontal lobe epilepsy, facial paralysis, fetal distress syndrome, juvenile myoclonic epilepsy, liver injury, stillbirth, and Type 1 diabetes mellitus.
In support of this disclosure is the U.S. government’s Vaccine Adverse Events Reporting System (VAERS) data. During the period from December, 2020 to February 18, 2022, VAERS received 1,134,984 reports of adverse events, including 24,402 deaths, following COVID vaccination.
Additionally, there have been 4,021 cases of myocarditis and pericarditis in the U.S. of which 643 reports are in children aged 12 to 17. It is recognized that VAERS captures less than 1% of actual adverse events.
Given these shocking and disturbing disclosures, Vaccine Choice Canada calls on Health Canada to immediately revoke the Pfizer vaccine emergency use authorization.
**
Ocugen said the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) declined to issue an emergency use authorization for Covaxin, the COVID-19 vaccine developed by its Indian partner Bharat Biotech, for children.
The biopharmaceutical company said it intends to continue working with the FDA to evaluate the process for getting an emergency use authorization for pediatric use of Covaxin, it said in a March 4 statement that announced the health agency’s decision. The company had sought to authorize the shot for children aged 2 to 18.
Ocugen had entered into a deal with vaccine maker Bharat in late 2020, under which it would develop, supply, and commercialize Covaxin for the U.S. market.
Covaxin, which isn’t cleared for any age group in the United States, is one of the two most widely used COVID vaccines in India and also has an emergency use listing from the World Health Organization.
**
Ontario is removing mask mandates on March 21 in most settings, including schools, and is ending all remaining public health measures, directives and orders on April 27.
I wonder if the "science" would have changed if no trucks showed up.
Hhhmmm ....
And now for something completely different:
Endurance, the ship that Ernest Shackleton lost in 1915 on his ill-fated expedition to cross Antarctica, has finally been discovered more than 3,000 metres (10,000ft) under the ice, 100 years to the day after the explorer was buried.
Members of the British-led recovery team celebrated as their submersible revealed that the ship was in remarkable condition. The vessel’s gold name plate is still clearly visible after 38,821 days on the ocean floor.
“This is by far the finest wooden shipwreck I have ever seen,” said Mensun Bound, lead marine archaeologist on the expedition.
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