Wednesday, November 30, 2022

Mid-Week Post

Your middle-of-the week rejoinder ...


Justin said in 2013 - and I quote -

"You know, there's a level of of admiration I actually have for China because their basic dictatorship is allowing them to actually turn their economy around on a dime ... "


Let's keep that in mind:

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Hey, Lametti, how do you like these tanks?!:

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A woman was not allowed to go into the hospital and was forced to give birth in the cold street.

It is a bit graphic so do be advised.

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Nearly 1,000 students rallied outside the Chinese consulate in Toronto Sunday night, calling for an end to the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) as they stood in solidarity with protesters in China following the deaths of at least 10 people in a fire in Xinjiang’s capital of Urumqi.

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Rare mass protests against COVID-19 lockdowns have broken out across China, including in major cities, following the horrific deaths of at least 10 people in Xinjiang’s capital city of Urumqi in north-western China, when first responders were unable to reach an apartment fire that was left to burn for hours due to COVID-19 blockades and locks throughout the residential compound.

Video footage of the incident went viral on Chinese social media before internet censors could remove news of the tragedy, sparking outrage as more districts around China announced their own lockdowns in response to surging numbers of COVID-19 infections.

Protests broke out in many places across Urumqi city on Nov. 25, with angry residents demanding that the city-wide lockdown, which had lasted for three to four months, be lifted.

A resident of Lianxing community in Urumqi told The Epoch Times on Nov. 26 that many residents rushed out of their residences on the night of Nov. 25. “People came out to protest in all communities in Urumqi, all of them came out.”

Angry residents have broke blockades and pushed down fences, shouting slogans of “down with the Communist Party” and “Xi Jinping should resign.”

Facing the protests, city authorities on Nov. 26 announced they were loosening Urumqi’s COVID-19 restrictions.

Citizens were told they can leave home as long as they have been isolated for three days and that shops were allowed to reopen. High-risk areas that have not reported new infections for five consecutive days would also be reclassified as low-risk areas, allowing residents to leave their residential compounds.

A resident who has a restaurant in Midong District told The Epoch Times: “This time, the protest was quite fierce, so it worked.”

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The West stood by while students at Tiananmen were mowed down, so there's that:

Xi Jinping’s censorship apparatus employs millions of web monitors and expends vast resources to patrol an ever-expanding list of banned words, search terms, phrases and hashtags. But that vast multi-agency infrastructure for censoring and obliterating messages and suspending accounts and disappearing netizens just couldn’t keep up last month, when all the “Bridge Man” posts started showing up on Chinese Tiktok, Weibo Wechat and other microblogging sites.

And the censors can’t keep up now as hundreds of thousands of people stare down riot police in Beijing, Shanghai, Urumqi, Guangzhou, Chengdu, Nanjing, and in Wuhan — the city in Hubei province where the coronavirus was first unleashed upon the world in late 2019, several weeks before the authorities publicly admitted what was happening. Protests have been logged pretty much everywhere. Students have joined in at more than 50 universities across the country.


In other news, Jiang Zemin is dead.




Pablo Rodriguez must get all tingly when he reads this:

As it mulls kicking Elon Musk’s Twitter off the app store, it has now been revealed that Apple restricted the use of AirDrop in China, a move that harmed the organizational efforts of demonstrators protesting against the CCP’s lockdowns.

Over the past week, multiple major cities across China have seen massive protests against lockdowns, with the normally compliant Chinese exploding into rage in response to their government’s ‘zero COVID’ policy.

Much of the unrest blew up in response to an incident in Xinjiang’s capital Urumqi, where at least 10 people, some say up to 40, were killed during an apartment fire because lockdown rules stopped residents from fleeing the burning building.

Most of the city’s residents have been prevented from leaving their homes for over 100 days as a result of the draconian rules, which are still in place nearly three years after the pandemic began.

With Beijing now trying to contain what some are calling the most serious mass uprising since Tiananmen Square, Apple is apparently helping them to crush dissent.

Earlier this month, Apple restricted the use of AirDrop in China, which protesters had been using to evade censorship.

AirDrop allows local connections between devices, meaning it cannot be monitored or censored by local authorities.

However, Apple launched an update to the app in China that restricted usage to just 10 minutes, making it harder for protesters to communicate with other activists, as well as send messages nearby bystanders and tourists.

AirDrop was also being used by protesters in Hong Kong, who were brutally suppressed by the CCP during months of unrest in 2019.

The smartphone company chose to roll out the new “feature” in China only right as the country experienced its biggest demonstrations in decades, which some would suggest is more than just a coincidence.

“Apple has helped Beijing to suppress public dissent multiple times, mostly by complying with its requests to remove apps used by protestors for information and communication,” reports Reclaim the Net.

“Apple also helps the Chinese Communist Party prevent users from remaining private by banning VPNs in the region.”

The development coincides with Elon Musk revealing that Apple is threatening to remove Twitter from the app store entirely over its support for – God forbid – free speech.

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Somewhat related:

Senators have added stronger privacy protections to the Liberal government’s controversial online streaming bill, although other amendments to exclude smaller platforms and add a reference to consumer choice were voted down by Liberal-appointed senators.


Get rid of the g-d- thing today.

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Cybersecurity experts say a federal inquiry should think of social media as the central nervous system of the Freedom Convoy protest in Ottawa last winter.


One of the reasons why Justin wants free speech banned.


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To remind one:

When Doug Ford called upon the notwithstanding clause just a few weeks back various federal ministers and the prime minister sounded ominous warnings and grave cautions that the premier should have reached for a specific and limited deployment of that clause. Which demonstrated they very clearly appreciated the injury to democracy and civil rights involved in even a one-time, narrowly-focused use of its powers.

Did the inquiry demonstrate that Ottawa’s calling upon the far more massive and invasive application of the Emergencies Act — the mother of all notwithstanding clauses was justified? Did it have an equal sense of the gravity of what was involved?

Clearly no. It was established early on during the inquiry that the conditions set out in the statute for the summoning of the Emergencies Act were not met. To stress: the conditions laid out in the act itself, as the absolute determinants of its legitimacy, its legality, were not met.

In other words that high bar, those defined circumstances in which alone any federal government could avail of the most draconian legislation on the Canadian statute books were not met.



Because some people are "special":

The blockade of rail lines through Tyendinaga Mohawk territory has crippled much of Canada’s freight and commuter rail traffic, and the string of protests have been blamed for 1,400 layoffs at Canada’s main rail companies, propane shortages in eastern Canada and economic hardship for farmers,” reported the Guardian about the protests intended to stop a $6.6 billion gas pipeline project in northern B.C.
In fact, the rail blockade was preceded in early January 2020 by a posting on the “North Shore Counter Info” anarchist website that urged disruption and sabotage in support of the indigenous protest. For two months, sabotage in Toronto, Hamilton, Burlington, Montreal, and elsewhere disrupted rail service. Ferry service was disrupted in B.C., and the provincial government there declared its own emergency powers, which the RCMP declined to enforce in the interests of further dialogue.
By Feb. 13, 2020, VIA Rail had shut down its national passenger service, leading to the layoff of about 1,000 employees. CNR shut down its rail lines east of Toronto, and five days later laid off 450 workers.
“I know patience is running short,” the Guardian quoted Prime Minister Trudeau in appealing for Canadians to let his government achieve a peaceful resolution to the rail shutdown. His choice of “dialogue and mutual respect” led to then Indigenous Services Minister Marc Miller participating on Feb. 15 in a “Silver Covenant Chain” ceremony on the blockaded tracks, but his appeal for an end to the protests was rebuffed.
Three days later, Trudeau met with Opposition leaders to discuss the national crisis but refused to allow then Conservative leader Andrew Scheer into the meeting because he had criticized Trudeau’s handling of the blockade as “the weakest response to a national crisis in Canadian history. Will our country be one of the rule of the law, or will our country be one of the rule of the mob?”
Still choosing “dialogue and respect” over hair-trigger swinging into action unlike the reckless Mr. Scheer, the PM waited until Feb. 21 to call for the barricades to come down. It took three more days for the Ontario Provincial Police to move in, dismantle the blockade, and arrest some protesters.
Justin Trudeau, we can safely assume, was “absolutely, absolutely” serene in choosing not to choose the Emergencies Act. He knew he had a choice.


So ...



Also related:

Credit union depositors who made Freedom Convoy protest signs were reported to police, records show. Desjardins Group, one of the country’s largest credit unions, also reported customers who made “suspicious” purchases of fuel: “We are waiting for more instructions.”

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Liberal political aides were angry over the number of soldiers, sailors and air crew who sympathized with the Freedom Convoy, records show. The RCMP had so many members support protesters it issued a 35-page guide “regarding the participation of current or prior employees” in street demonstrations: “How the f—k many?”


(Sidebar: maybe that's why the government wants them dead.)

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Storage of mobile field hospitals will cost taxpayers more than $135 million this year, records show. “This is something I was completely unaware of,” said Public Works Minister Helena Jaczek. The storage costs follow a sole-sourced $150 million contract to SNC-Lavalin Group Inc. for field hospitals: “That is not exactly directed to preventing or treating Covid.”

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The Department of Finance privately ridiculed its own inflated claims of economic hardship blamed on the Freedom Convoy, records show. Bloomberg News figures repeatedly cited by Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland were “too cute,” wrote the department’s director general of economic analysis: “Seems large to me?!”

 


No one speaks for the Pakistani Christians:

Two hundred Christian families remain homeless in Pakistan’s capital of Islamabad after a government agency bulldozed their homes and the church building they used for Sunday worship.

The government’s Capital Development Authority demolished the homes in a Christian area, Nawaz Sharif Colony in Islamabad, the U.K.-based group Centre for Legal Aid, Assistance and Settlement (CLAAS-UK), said in a statement to The Christian Post.

Christian residents had not been given any warning or time to remove their belongings before the demolition on Oct. 18, the group said in the statement this week, adding that the government agency also demolished a church, “but thankfully, there were no injuries or fatalities.”

The government has not provided any alternative place for the residents to live.



South Korea sends out fighter jets when Chinese and Russian jets enter air space:

South Korea said it used its fighter jets as a tactical measure after two Chinese and six Russian warplanes entered its air defence area on Wednesday.

South Korea’s joint chief of staff (JCS) said the Chinese H-6 bombers repeatedly entered and left the Korea Air Defence Identification Zone (KADIZ) off South Korea’s southern and northeast coasts starting around 5.50am, reported Reuters.

At 6.44am, the jets re-entered the zone from an area northeast of South Korea’s southern port city of Pohang and exited the zone at 7.07am, reported Yonhap.

At 12.18pm, six Russian aircraft, including four TU-95 bombers and two SU-35 fighters along with the two Chinese H-6 bombers, flew into the KADIZ from an area 200km northeast of the South’s Ulleung Island and exited the zone at 12.36pm.

The country’s JCS, however, said the aircraft did not violate South Korea’s airspace.

South Korea’s F-15K jets were deployed as a tactical step against a potential accidental situation, the JCS added.



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