On this day in 1862, the Mexican army defeated the French at the Battle of Puebla.
(On this day, Alan Shepard became the first American in space.)
It is also Children's Day in Japan and South Korea.
So, please - give your children Mexican food.
Moving on ...
Doing one's Chinese bosses proud:
(Sidebar: to wit.)
Xiangguo Qiu was a star at the National Microbiology Laboratory, Canada’s premier disease-research facility. As the co-creator of a once-promising treatment for Ebola virus, her work earned kudos around the world.
That reputation made it all the more shocking when she and her biologist husband, Keding Cheng, were escorted from the lab last July as internal and RCMP investigations got underway.
But a year later, those inquiries have yet to be completed, the two scientists appear still in limbo and the Public Health Agency of Canada, which employs them, has revealed another link between the affair and Wuhan, the Chinese city that several months later became the likely source of the COVID-19 pandemic.
A shipment of Ebola and henipavirus samples to China, previously disclosed by the agency and first reported by the National Post, was requested specifically by the Wuhan Institute of Virology, said Eric Morrissette, an agency spokesman. The institute runs the country’s lone BSL-4 disease lab, similar to the Winnipeg-based NML and the highest-security facility for handling pathogens.
Qiu helped train staff at the Wuhan lab, among several trips she took to her native China in recent years.
Yet the government and police have divulged little else about the situation, leaving a haze of mystery over it that has spawned groundless COVID-19 conspiracy theories — and frustrated even NML employees.
I'm sure it's nothing to be concerned with.
**
Having witnessed the deceptive tactics of the CCP play out in China, it is with increasing alarm that we see their influence growing in Canada, affecting media, government, and public perception. Much of this is carried out through the United Front Work Department, whose task is to advance China’s influence overseas. The CCP is skilled at this deception, having implemented it domestically for decades. In Canada, we have little experience with such duplicitous tactics and are susceptible to being unduly persuaded by them.
(Sidebar: oh, you're telling me.)
**
These "changes":
I would like to give an update on the developments surrounding CBC’s slanderous coverage of The Epoch Times’ special edition on Beijing’s coverup of the virus outbreak which led to a global pandemic.
I would also like to set the record straight that The Epoch Times special edition is in no way “advancing conspiracy” theories or claiming that the virus is “manufactured” as a bioweapon by China as alleged by CBC’s article, as I will make clear later in this statement.
Since the initial publication of its article on April 29, CBC has quietly made substantial changes to its headline three times—all without informing readers of the change or issuing a correction.
The four headlines so far are:
Original Version
‘Racist and inflammatory’: Canadians upset by Epoch Times claim China behind virus, made it as a bioweapon
Second Version
Some Canadians who received unsolicited copy of Epoch Times upset by claim that China was behind virus
Third Version
Some Canadians see claims in Epoch Times about origin of virus as ‘racist and inflammatory’
Fourth Version
Some Canadians who received unsolicited copy of Epoch Times upset by claim that China was behind virus
It is worth noting that all of these headlines are incorrect.
The reality is, as can be seen directly on the cover of our special edition on the coronavirus that was the main focus of the CBC’s article, is that we wrote: “The Chinese Communist Party’s coverup led to a pandemic that now threatens the lives of people around the globe.”
It clearly and squarely puts the blame for the coverup on China’s ruling communist regime. As a Chinese immigrant myself, I understand very well the difference between the Chinese Communist Party and China and the Chinese people—who have been the biggest victims of the CCP’s coverup.
But the CBC article is not making this distinction and is instead helping to push the communist regime’s line that the Party and China are one and the same.
Conflating the Communist Party with China as a whole or with the Chinese people is a tactic frequently used by the CCP itself to arouse nationalism, and use the claim of “racism” to deflect criticism of the CCP. It is sad to see that CBC has followed the same line as the CCP.
As a taxpayer funded media—to the tune of an estimated $1.2 billion per year—we would expect our national media to do a better job in informing Canadians about the threat that the regime in Beijing poses to not only the Chinese people, but to the world.
Not just that, CBC—as detailed in our previous article—deliberately ignored our statement to them, and failed to back up its main claim that we say the virus is a Chinese bioweapon, which is not what our special edition stated.
... making this article by the CBC the biggest lot of drek that you will read all day.
The following comments to the CBC article largely indicate that people were quite happy to read the publication and form an opinion for themselves.
The above is an example of the bribed press' efforts to cover for China. One cannot forget China's puppets in the government:
The reasons Dr. Bruce Aylward, who co-led the World Health Organization’s (WHO) mission to China on the coronavirus, should heed the call to appear before a Canadian parliamentary health committee are numerous and compelling.
First and foremost, Aylward is a Canadian, and more than 3,800 Canadians have been killed by COVID-19.
(Sidebar: as of this writing, and only a few days into the month of May, the death toll in Canada stands at 4,036 . Nunavut's only case turned out to be a false positive.)
Second, Aylward is almost certainly the best-informed Canadian on the efforts the WHO is taking to battle the outbreak.
Third, while Aylward joined the WHO in 1992 and has risen to a top position in the Geneva-based organization, his first responsibility is to his country and its needs, as opposed to his employer and its preferences.
One would think so, Mr. McParland, by Dr. Aylward isn't a victim of the WHO but its staunch defender and employee. He has made a conscious moral choice to refuse to appear before the committee (electing to be forced to appear) and answer legitimate questions about how China's actions affected his country.
**
The Communist
Party of China’s infiltration of every corner of our economy and society
is parasitic and we have stood by and allowed it to thrive. It’s time
to excise the parasite. https://t.co/8RAqgPQos8
—
Senator Leo Housakos (@SenatorHousakos) May
3, 2020
Indeed:
When I was last in Canada — in Ottawa, a few months ago — I was pretty dismayed at the extent of Chinese Communist Party (CCP) influence in the federal Parliament. I should probably not say any more to stay on the right side of the libel laws.
I have also been dismayed by the brazenness of friends of the Chinese Communist Party and their activities. I’m thinking, for instance, of Chinese students on university campuses, and the really extraordinary attack on the Tibetan student who was elected … president of the (University of Toronto Scarborough campus) student union.
Canada once helped China get a seat in the UN General Assembly and it appears (to more cynical audiences) that China will finance Justin's financially wasteful ambitions to get a UN seat, as well.
One hand sullies the other, it seems.
Also - if one needed further evidence that Justin Trudeau is a douchebag, here it is:
Today, when asked by Global News, Trudeau defended a astonishing report that revealed that there has been $5.8 million in tickets and fines to Canadians for breaking those measures.
It's easy not to be fined over the Easter holiday, I guess, Mr. Hidey-Hole.
And - where are you going to get the money for this particular bail-out, Mr. "plastic towards paper like drink-box water bottles sort of things"?:
Canada’s injection of $252 million into farm and food processing sectors was met with mixed reaction from industry leaders Tuesday, as the struggle to maintain production and supply during COVID-19 continues.
But it falls short of the $2.6 billion in emergency funding the Canadian Federation of Agriculture (CFA), one of Canada’s biggest farm groups, asked from the government just last week.
From the most opaque government ever re-elected:
Federal relief for commercial landlords will cost $2 billion by June 30, the Department of Finance said yesterday. Subsidy programs are now expected to increase the national debt to $1 trillion: “The amount being spent by the government is staggering.”
**
A third of people were buried in debt even before the recession, the Financial Consumer Agency of Canada said yesterday in newly-released survey data. Researchers cited “increasing financial stress” for millions before the pandemic shutdown.: “27 percent say they borrow to buy food.”
**
Pandemic contracts awarded by cabinet must be disclosed publicly after taxpayers were misled on terms of a $5 million award to Amazon, Opposition Leader Andrew Scheer said yesterday. The Department of Public Works admitted it is paying commercial fees to Amazon for managing orders of pandemic supplies after publicly claiming the company agreed to waive all profits: “Those days are over.”
**
Agriculture Minister Marie-Claude Bibeau says departmental research on the cost of the carbon tax is top secret and will not be shared with Parliament or the public. Growers have complained of a $100 million cost on fuel used for grain drying: “This document is secret.”
This is the government Canadians clearly want. Any other country would see mass demonstrations by now.
Why have Alberta fuel the country when the rich and powerful Irvings can do it?:
After failing to secure Western Canadian oil via the scrapped West-to-East Energy East pipeline back in 2017, Irving Oil Ltd.’s finally been able to get federal approval for a new route to connect the oilsands to its refinery on the East Coast.But this time it will circumvent provincial and environmental opposition faced during efforts to build that pipeline, as the oil will be shipped on foreign tankers from British Columbia to its refinery in Saint John, New Brunswick, via the Panama Canal.
If one is too stupid to clean properly, then living isn't for you:
Health Canada says there has been a clear jump in the number of accidental poisonings from household cleaners since the novel coronavirus pandemic began.
According to the agency, February and March combined had a 58 per cent increase in the number of reported exposures to cleaning products and disinfectants compared to the same months in 2019.
These include poisonings by exposure to bleaches, disinfectants, hand sanitizers, chlorine and chloramine gases. The most common reports involve bleach, which made up 38 per cent of calls to poison centres in March.
We need more people like her:
At a one-room house outside Nairobi, a 23-year-old girl with disabilities claps her hands and throws herself at Sr. Rose Catherine Wakibiru, who has been visiting girls with disability at their homes since the Kenyan government closed schools last month over coronavirus.
The girl, referred to as Faith, “is deaf and dumb,” Sr. Rose Catherine of the Assumption Sisters of Nairobi, told ACI Africa April 27. “She is autistic and has cerebral palsy and so she doesn’t know anything about social distancing. She has pure love in her heart and she can’t stop embracing people to show how happy she is.”
Faith lived at Limuru Cheshire Home along with 60 other girls who have physical or intellectual disabilities, before the pandemic.
Sr. Rose Catherine, administrator of the home, called the girls’ parents and guardians to retrieve their children when schools were closed.
“Most parents we called were not ready to pick their girls,” Sr. Rose Catherine said, adding that many girls at Cheshire home are drawn from poor backgrounds and that most come from informal settlements around Nairobi.
The nun explained that Faith initially lived with her mother and three siblings in a Nairobi slum, but they moved to another settlement “three weeks ago when their house was washed away in floods.”
When their house was washed away, Faith’s mother gave out her children to different well-wishers and looked for a place to stay herself. Later, friends helped her to get a single-roomed house where she stays with her three children and goes out to look for menial jobs to sustain her family.
Such jobs are hard to come by amid the restrictions due to coronavirus, and the family may be thrown out of their home as the mother is unable to pay for it.
Sr. Rose Catherine said five residents of the Cheshire home were taken in by other families, as they had nowhere to go.
“I know all [the] families that have their daughters here and I have an idea of those that can accommodate a girl [who] isn’t their own. So when I made those calls, I would ask a parent if they were willing to take care of an extra girl. That’s how I got all the five girls a place to stay,” said Sr. Rose Catherine.
To ease the burden of the foster parents, Limuru Cheshire Home supplies the girls with basic necessities such as food, soap, and sanitary materials in their new homes.
Some families were reluctant to have their daughters back home, and Sr. Rose Catherine said the biggest challenge for girls with disabilities and their families during coronavirus is poverty.
Most of the families “live on daily wages, and with their girls around they can’t go out and work as they used to. All the girls at the facility are special needs cases and they need someone to look after them” at all times, the nun said.
The girls also come last in families that grapple with lack of basic needs, such as food. When there is little food to share, children with disabilities do not get any of it, Sr. Rose Catherine reported.
“I have been to a home where I found my girl watching her siblings eat. When I asked her brother why her sister wasn’t eating anything, he said there was very little food in the house,” Sr. Rose Catherine recounted. “Children with disabilities are treated as second-rate individuals. People only think about them when everybody else has had their fill.”
Many of the girls’ families have asked the Assumption Sisters of Nairobi for help since having the girls returned to their care, and Sr. Rose Catherine has made at least eight home visits in recent weeks.
(Paws up)
