a-really-big-cat

'We do not want to trigger an election': Emergencies Act vote seen as a confidence vote

Cracks are starting to show in House of Commons for support of the emergency powers now that the streets have cleared of protesters and bloc

https://href.li/?https://nationalpost.com/news/canada/mps-to-vote-tonight-on-whether-emergencies-act-for-blockades-still-needed

'We do not want to trigger an election': Emergencies Act vote seen as a confidence vote

Cracks are starting to show in House of Commons for support of the emergency powers now that the streets have cleared of protesters and blockades

OTTAWA — Cracks are starting to show in the House of Commons in support of extending the Emergencies Act now that the streets around the parliamentary precinct in Ottawa have been cleared.

At least one Liberal MP and the NDP say they have concerns about the Emergencies Act being extended 30 days, but will vote in favour of it because they say it is a confidence vote for the minority Liberal government and they do not want to trigger an early election.

In a speech on Monday afternoon, Liberal MP Nathaniel Erskine-Smith said he is “not convinced” that the extraordinary measures in the Emergencies Act should extend beyond that date and said he would “vote accordingly” if it wasn’t for the fact that it is a confidence vote.

“The disagreement I’ve expressed here does not amount to non confidence, and I have no interest in an election at this time,” he said.

NDP leader Jagmeet Singh said it was also his interpretation that the vote that would take place on Monday evening at 8 pm ET would be deemed a confidence vote. He reiterated nonetheless that his MPs would be voting “reluctantly” in favour of extending the Emergencies Act.

“We understood absolutely that we do not want to trigger an election. That would be the worst thing to do in this crisis,” said Singh in a press conference.

“We would never allow that to happen,” he added.

Earlier in the day, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau did not say clearly if the vote on Monday night would be conditional to his government staying in power, but his answers to reporters’ questions gave a clear indication this would be the case.

“I can’t imagine anyone voting against this bill as expressing anything other than a deep mistrust in the government’s ability to keep Canadians safe at an extraordinarily important time,” said Trudeau, who added he is “confident” the Liberals would have enough votes for it to pass.

Meanwhile, Conservatives and the Bloc Quebecois remained steadfast in their opposition to the Emergencies Act, arguing it was not necessary in the first place. On Monday, they accused the government of using a power grab to force a majority vote on extending the measures.

“It would seem that the Prime Minister is strong-arming his backbench and the NDP to vote in his favour by threatening an election,” said Conservative Public Safety critic Raquel Dancho.

“The Prime Minister is invoking the most coercive of the legal arsenal and because he’s afraid to crash, he’s threatening to impose the constraint of making this a confidence vote,” added Bloc leader Yves-François Blanchet.

The Emergencies Act was invoked last week to put an end to the occupation in the streets of Ottawa by truckers and protesters. It granted extraordinary powers, effective immediately, to the federal government to help police forces put an end to the situation that lasted more than three weeks.

Among the powers is one that allows banks to freeze accounts of those linked to the funding of the protests in Ottawa and elsewhere.

The RCMP said it provided banks with a list of names of influencers in the Ottawa demonstration and people who did not want to move their vehicles out of the area, but not anyone who donated to the protest, the service said.

As of Monday, Wellington Street in front of Parliament was clear from all trucks, vehicles, but also posters, camping gear and other items brought by protesters in the past weeks.

Police forces had installed barricades and strict checkpoints preventing passage in the parliamentary precinct in Ottawa for anyone arriving by car or by foot. Only those who live and work in the area can access it, and they have to show proof to do so.

Trudeau told reporters on Monday that the “state of emergency” is not over, even though the streets are now cleared from demonstrators in Ottawa.

He indicated there are still trucks affiliated with the occupation in towns around Ottawa like Arnprior and Embrun that have manifested “a desire or an openness to returning to blockades right now.”

He added that the government would continue to evaluate every day whether or not to lift the state of emergency.

After it is passed in the House of Commons, the Emergencies Act will then be debated and voted on in the Senate.

beardedmrbean

'we're not going to fight for your civil liberties because we might lose power if we do'

thespectacularspider-girl

Fuck these shitheads.

And fuck Singh doubly so. Fucker desperately wants to keep a minority government because the Liberals need to parley with his party to maintain any power.

angrybell

Every person who voted with the government should be in jail. They are accomplices to a crime.

stuff-that-irks-me

There are disturbing reports some officers wielded military weapons as they closed in on the three-week-long demonstration.

Twitter users report police officers (or maybe even special ops) outfitted in full combat gear with assault rifles equipped with silencers approached unarmed protesters. 

One Twitter user reports “snipers are on the roof” of multiple buildings. 

There are reports protesters are “holding the line” as police begin mass arrests.

Police were spotted in armored tactical trucks. 

Even mounted police were called in. 

Every American watching the events unfolding in Ottawa should be very afraid because Canadian PM Justin Trudeau has chosen to unleash what looks like the military on unarmed civilians who are only asking for their freedoms back after being taken away during COVID.

Keep in mind, the Canadian Civil Liberties Association has condemned Trudeau for invoking the Emergencies Act. 

Trudeau is now creating a political emergency. 

Using what appears to be military weapons on unarmed civilians seems excessive, right?��

* * * 

Update (0943ET): AP News reports police have begun arresting protesters at the trucker demonstration in Ottawa’s downtown district. 

CTV News Ottawa's Graham Richardson says there’s a “beefed-up police presence.“ 

Images circulating on Twitter show police vans (commonly known as “paddy wagons”) have assembled as arrests are being reported. 

The government doesn’t want the world to see what's happening in downtown Ottawa. 

Government checkpoints in Ottawa. 

Here’s a live feed of downtown Ottawa. 

* * * 

Days after Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau invoked the Emergencies Act to crack down on protesters nationwide, Canadian police are preparing to clear hundreds of truck drivers from Ottawa, according to��Reuters. 

‘Freedom Convoy’ demonstrators against the government’s medical tyranny have staged a three-week-long protest of Ottawa’s downtown district that prompted Trudeau on Monday to invoke the Emergencies Act to crack down on what he has described as an attack on democracy. 

On Thursday evening, police began moving in on the downtown district, arresting protesters. We��noted two key organizers were arrested, including Tamara Lich and Chris Barber. The two have been described as top leaders in the movement. Authorities are expected to unleash a wave of arrests on Friday. 

“We absolutely are committed to end this unlawful demonstration. We have the plan, we have the commitment, we have the resources,” interim police chief Steve Bell told reporters on Thursday. To quell future protests at least 100 checkpoints will be erected in the downtown district. Anyone who doesn’t have a legitimate reason for entering the area will be barred. 

“This weekend will look very different than the past three weekends,” Bell added. 

Many of the truckers in the Freedom Convoy aren’t moving.

“I’m prepared to sit on my ass and watch them hit me with pepper spray,” Pat King, one of the leaders of the movement, told��AP News.

“There are no tow trucks in Canada that will touch them.”

Amid the rising tensions outside Parliament, many demonstrators still refused to budge, and the use of federal emergencies law will give police the tools to end the occupation.

Some Canadians are outraged their government would even enact such powers��(not seen in fifty years) on what has been described as ‘peaceful protests,’ However, the Trudeau administration sees things a little differently, calling truckers “fringe” and treating them as so-called ‘terrorists.’

Meanwhile, the Canadian Civil Liberties Association has announced its intention to sue the federal government for invoking the Emergencies Act in response, the CBC reports.

It remains to be seen if today’s move to end the capital’s blockade will go smoothly. Trudeau’s use of emergency powers has already prohibited travel, banned protests, conducted widespread arrests, blocked donations, and frozen bank accounts of truckers and their supporters. People are getting angry, and there are even fears of a possible bank run.

theconstitutionisgayculture

In case anyone is wondering, this is when you rise up and fight back.

Elites Are Smearing Truckers Because We're Doing Their Job Representing the People | Opinion

Elites are smearing truckers because we're doing their job representing the people | Opinion

The question you should be asking is not how two racists managed to find their way to a protest of 100,000 people, but rather, why is it tha

https://href.li/?https://www.newsweek.com/elites-are-smearing-truckers-because-were-doing-their-job-representing-people-opinion-1675022?amp=1

quoms

Tennessee school board bans Pulitzer prize-winning Holocaust novel, Maus

Author Art Spiegelman says decision by Mcminn county, which cited inappropriate ‘curse words’ and nudity, is ‘demented’

https://href.li/?https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/jan/27/tennessee-school-board-bans-pulitzer-prize-winning-holocaust-novel-maus

A Tennessee school board has banned a Pulitzer prize-winning novel from its classrooms over eight curse words and an illustration of a naked cartoon mouse.

The graphic novel, Maus: A Survivor’s Tale by New Yorker Art Spiegelman, uses hand-drawn illustrations of mice and cats to depict how the author’s parents survived Auschwitz during the Holocaust. [...]

Ten board members unanimously agreed in favour of removing the novel from the eighth-grade curriculum, citing its use of the phrase “God Damn” and drawings of “naked pictures” of women, according to minutes taken from a board of education meeting earlier this month.

“There is some rough, objectionable language in this book,” director of school, Lee Parkison, is recorded as saying in opening the session’s opening remarks. [...]

Board member Tony Allman supported the move to remove the “vulgar and inappropriate” content, arguing: “We don’t need to enable or somewhat promote this stuff.”

“I am not denying it was horrible, brutal, and cruel,” Allman said in reference to the genocide and murder of six million European Jews during the second world war.

“It shows people hanging, it shows them killing kids, why does the educational system promote this kind of stuff? It is not wise or healthy,” he added. [...]

Mike Cochran, another school board member, described parts of the book as “completely unnecessary”.

“We are talking about teaching ethics to our kids, and it starts out with the dad and the son talking about when the dad lost his virginity. It wasn’t explicit but it was in there,” Cochran said.

“We don’t need this stuff to teach kids history. We can teach them history and we can teach them graphic history. We can tell them exactly what happened, but we don’t need all the nakedness and all the other stuff.”

Cochran proposed revisiting the entire curriculum over concerns it was developed to “normalise sexuality, normalise nudity and normalise vulgar language.”

“If I was trying to indoctrinate somebody’s kids, this is how I would do it,” he added. “You put this stuff just enough on the edges, so the parents don’t catch it but the kids, they soak it in. I think we need to relook at the entire curriculum.”

Most of the articles/Twitter responses to this focus solely on the removal of Maus from the curriculum for spurious reasons (which is bad enough on its own!). I would like to suggest that the real story here is that at least two board members specifically said, out loud, that the reason the book needs to be banned is because its Jewish author is using it as part of a deliberate and secret plot to indoctrinate children into sexual perversion

libertarianblue

Years and years ago I thought of a funny joke. What if people decided to ban Maus for fear that it might make people into furries?

I didn't dare speak it out loud because I know how these things go. Which means one of you fuckers had the same thought and said it out loud. Who was it?

freeindependentnews

Teaching pigeons to gamble, torturing ferrets, fattening eels: The worst government waste of 2021

'This year, I am highlighting a whopping $52,598,515,585 of waste,' Republican Sen. Rand Paul wrote in his 2021 Festivus Report.

Samantha Chang, The Western Journal

https://href.li/?https://www.wnd.com/2021/12/teaching-pigeons-gamble-torturing-ferrets-fattening-eels-worst-government-waste-2021/

"This year, I am highlighting a whopping $52,598,515,585 of waste, including a study of pigeons gambling on slot machines, giving kids junk food and telling citizens of Vietnam not to burn their trash," the senator wrote.

oww666

don’t read this unless you really want to be angry 

thedailyrepublic

Read it. Get mad. If you read it and don't get mad, you're the fucking problem. This is how politicians spend our tax dollars and it should enrage everyone. The Festivus Report 2021 (.pdf)

• Foreign countries use our aircraft for free for 4 years (DOD)
$773,000,000
• US bought Afghanistan planes that were later thrown away (DOD)
$549,000,000
• US-constructed buildings in Afghanistan left sitting unused (DOD)
$2,400,000,000
• COVID relief grant for NYC to display art projects across the city
$25,000,000
• Ineligible and duplicate PPP loans (SBA)
$4,290,000,000
• Improper CARES Act unemployment insurance payments
$36,000,000,000
• Border walls in the Middle East and North Africa (DOD)
$250,000,000
• Free trips for Korean kids to visit D.C. (USAID)
$150,000
• Grinding up ferrets to develop COVID and flu vaccines
$4,500,000
• Tax Credit incentivizing CA residents to uninstall fireplaces
$2,100,000
• Translating books into the Georgian language (State)
$182,741
• Teaching French people about US culture (State)
$200,000
• Giving irrigation systems to Afghan farmers left unused (USAID)
$88,000,000
• Developing a film about dinosaurs (NSF)
$2,500,000
• Pigeons playing slot machines (NIH)
$465,339
• Telling people to not burn their trash (USAID)
$11,300,000
• Funding Green Energy programs in Africa (State)
$179,000,000
• DC Metro paid Lyft to subsidize riders
$28,005
• Attempting to replace an assault vehicle over 2 decades (DOD)
$3,400,000,000
• Funding the Wilson Center to put on parties for Congressmen
$14,000,000
• Study verified that hearing bad news decreases happiness (NIA)
$1,300,000
• Planting trees in New York City
$400,000,000
• Government paid for students who didn’t actually school
$2,100,000
• Kids crave junk food and gain weight study (NIDDK)
$352,000
• Getting high schoolers excited about being pilots (FAA)
$5,000,000
• Fattening eels for human consumption (FDA)
$337,500
• Social Security overpayments in Fiscal Year 2019 (SSA)
$4,200,000,000

TAXPAYER DOLLARS WASTED: $52,598,515,585

This is the United States government at work. Career politicians spending our tax dollars on stupid shit, and this is before we get into a debate over "progressive agenda" waste.

Have any issues with any of the above? You know what to do. Regardless of whether your rep supports this or not, make some noise. They work for us and when they don't hear from us, we make it easy for them to forget that. Let's fix that.

Federal Elected Officials

cajunsc74

That's just some of things paid for with our tax dollars

friendly-neighborhood-patriarch

UGHHHH

norton-not-an-anti-virus

😡🤬😡

CNN mess over Cuomo shows dangers of news-as-entertainment

The cable news giant spent lavishly on its primetime star until it emerged he had helped his brother respond to a billowing scandal

https://href.li/?https://www.theguardian.com/media/2021/dec/12/cnn-chris-cuomo-news-media-infotainment

CNN found itself at the center of the US news cycle this week, after its primetime host Chris Cuomo was abruptly fired for helping to shape the response of his brother, the former New York governor��Andrew Cuomo to multiple accusations of sexual harassment.

The younger sibling, 51, lost three jobs in as many days – as CNN host, Sirius satellite radio jock, and a contract for a book provisionally titled Deep Denial – and now faces an investigation by outside lawyers for CNN, while the elder Cuomo, 64, faces a justice department investigation stemming from a damning report issued by New York’s attorney general.

But the scandal has also placed CNN in the crosshairs after Cuomo accused his boss, network president Jeff Zucker, of knowing about his involvement in trying to manage his brother’s scandal. “There were no secrets about this, as other individuals besides Mr Cuomo can attest,” a Cuomo spokesman told the Wall Street Journal last weekend. [More on the article.]

There was a time when major media covered and questioned federal entrapment schemes and it wasn’t all that long ago.

The Informants

The FBI has built a massive network of spies to prevent another domestic attack. But are they busting terrorist plots—or leading them?

https://href.li/?https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2011/07/fbi-terrorist-informants/

How a suicidal pizza man found himself ensnared in an FBI terror sting

Every day was the same for Khalil Abu Rayyan, 21, a depressed pizza delivery man from Dearborn Heights, Michigan. Working for a pizzeria in

https://href.li/?https://amp.cnn.com/cnn/2017/11/29/politics/aby-rayyan-fbi-terror-sting-pizza-man/index.html

Fake terror plots, paid informants: the tactics of FBI 'entrapment' questioned

Critics say bureau is running a sting operation across America, targeting vulnerable people by luring them into fake terror plots

https://href.li/?https://www.theguardian.com/world/2011/nov/16/fbi-entrapment-fake-terror-plots

cheshirecat-rabbit

'Dune' Foresaw—and Influenced—Half a Century of Global Conflict

From Afghanistan to cyberattacks, Frank Herbert’s novel anticipated and shaped warfare as we know it.

Condé Nast

https://www.wired.com/story/dune-geopolitics-cybersecurity/?mc_cid=bc07281ce0&mc_eid=cf837d5459

In the decades since Herbert published Dune, in 1965, the book’s ecological, psychological, and spiritual themes have tended to get the credit for its breakout success beyond a hardcore sci-fi audience. In his own public commentary on the book, Herbert focused above all on its environmental messages, and he later became a kind of ecological guru, turning his home in Washington state, which he called Xanadu, into a DIY renewable energy experiment.

Written even before the advent of America’s war in Vietnam, Dune captures a world in which war is inherently asymmetric, where head-on, conventional military conflict has largely been replaced with all the subtler ways that humans seek to dominate one another: insurgency and counterinsurgency, sabotage and assassination, diplomacy, espionage and treachery, proxy wars and resource control. For the military officers and intelligence analysts who still read and reread Dune today, it presents an uncanny reflection of the state of geopolitical competition in 2021—from the pitfalls of regime change to the terra incognita of cyberwar. (…)

Ryan, the commander of Australia’s Defence College, says he has included Herbert’s novel on his recommended reading lists for years for the same reason. “I think Dune is a very complete story for those who want to study war and human competition as a phenomenon,” he says. He compares its lessons to those of Thucydides’ History of the Peloponnesian War in their timelessness. “It looks at big strategic ideas and it looks at motivators for people, whether it’s ideology, whether it’s greed, whether it’s the old Greek ‘fear, honor, and interest,’” Ryan says, quoting Thucydides. “Dune represents the world as it is: a very complex, sometimes beautiful, sometimes awful thing.”

servopedes

Interesting article, absolutely worth the read.

(Also, I really relate to the Army LT who brought Dune with him on a deployment to Iraq and read it while over there, lol.)

servopedes

The original assessment by the British Museum lads was around $7000.

Yikes...

Kabul Airport Attack Kills 12 U.S. Service Members, at Least 60 Afghans - WSJ

"Kabul Airport Attack Kills 12 U.S. Service Members, at Least 60 Afghans - WSJ" https://www.wsj.com/amp/articles/afghanistan-kabul-airport-explosion-11629976397

Kabul Airport Attack Kills 12 U.S. Service Members, at Least 60 Afghans

Two explosions ripped through crowds, followed by a gun assault, at Kabul airport, where the U.S. military is attempting to evacuate thousan

Yaroslav Trofimov, Sune Engel Rasmussen and Vivian Salama

https://t.umblr.com/redirect?z=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.wsj.com%2Farticles%2Fafghanistan-kabul-airport-explosion-11629976397&t=YjY2ZTE2YWE5MzU3Zjk2MjY2MDU4NDE1YWQ5Y2FlODJhN2U1OGRkYywxZTZhYzA1NTcxOGIyMmUyNjJjMzU1NDQxYWNkNDE3NTU3YmEyM2Zl&ts=1630006875

jaded4fox

‘Justice League’ Screenwriter Chris Terrio Is Super Pissed Off

The ‘Argo’ Oscar winner is tired of being hated by the haters—and he despises what happened to his DC films too.

Anthony Breznican

https://www.vanityfair.com/hollywood/2021/04/chris-terrio-justice-league-batman-v-superman?utm_brand=vf&utm_social-type=owned&utm_source=twitter&mbid=social_twitter&utm_medium=social

An article in which Chris Terrio chooses violence

servopedes

[Chris Terrio] described the films that Warner Bros. released to theaters in 2016 and 2017 as incoherent misfires, undermined by corporate meddling, poor franchise planning, and tone-deaf decisions that prioritized costly VFX sequences over coherent storytelling. Terrio believes that��Zack Snyder’s director’s cuts of both [Batman vs. Superman and Justice League] are much stronger, if still imperfect movies—an overall vindication of their work together. 

In an exclusive, wide-ranging interview, the screenwriter said the #SnyderCut of��Justice League, recently released as a four-hour-plus event on HBO Max, righted a kind of cinematic wrong perpetrated by studio leadership that has now almost entirely moved on from Warner Bros. 

“The 2017 theatrical cut was an act of vandalism,” Terrio said. “Zack may be too much of a gentleman to say that, but I’m not.”

- Chris Terrio

(The studio did not provide any comment on his remarks.)

gettothestabbing

Bernie Sanders's Mitten Maker Blames High Taxes for Ruining Her Small Business

https://freebeacon.com/politics/bernie-sanderss-mitten-maker-blames-high-taxes-for-ruining-her-small-business/

“I don’t have much of a mitten business anymore because it really wasn’t worth it,” Ellis said. “Independent crafters get really taken for a ride by the federal government. We get taxed to the nth degree, and it wasn’t really worth it pursuing that as a business, even as a side hustle. I mostly just make them as gifts.”

Ellis supported Sanders in 2020 but conceded in the interview that “Biden is pretty great,” even though she wished Kamala Harris were president instead. All three politicians—two Democrats and one socialist—are outspoken advocates for higher taxes.

jooshcraft

How does one person hold two completely opposing opinions.

“The feds fucked us on taxes” vs “The VERY people who constantly hike taxes like a state park trail are pretty great”

nunyabizni

Ask the Californians moving to Texas or Arizona

digitaldiscipline

The Day the Dinosaurs Died

A young paleontologist may have discovered a record of the most significant event in the history of life on Earth.

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2019/04/08/the-day-the-dinosaurs-died

hey, @bunjywunjy - this might be your jam (and any other dinosaur enthusiasts, it’s a heck of a read)

bunjywunjy

man that’s not just a heck of a read it’s fuckin GROUNDBREAKING is what it is!

this dude actually found a large fossil deposit that was created not just close to, but actually DURING THE K-PG EXTINCTION EVENT.

IT’S LITERALLY A WINDOW BACK IN TIME TO THE CHICXULUB IMPACT, AND TURNS OUT IT WAS WORSE THAN ANYTHING WE COULD POSSIBLY HAVE IMAGINED

it’s a geologic snapshot of the apocalypse.

tratserenoyreve

reading the full article is certainly a trip, and to summarize for those who are intimidated by longer reads:

- chicxulub is the given name for the meteor that struck/initiated the event

- the paleontologist within is described as making groundbreaking discoveries of multiple species every day, but many of his peers discount him because they’re grouchy old dudes he accidentally had a fragment of a turtle bone involved in a larger reconstruction of a fossil this one time and they won’t let him live it down.

- the extinction event was so fast and so destructive, this guy describes this particular dig-site as being so densely layered with dead and dying creatures, there is a lot of organic tissues that have been preserved, and he is able to even discern that many of the marine and freshwater fish may have still been alive as they were buried due to molten glass being found in their gills, implying they were still attempting to breathe.

- they looked into exactly when and how this could have happened, having freshwater and marine animals stacked on top of mammals and larger dinosaurs (including an amazing deinonychus forearm discovery he was able to match to feather fossils he was finding atop the pile), and rather it being the initial tsunami, they are fairly sure that it was caused by a seiche of catastrophic proportions, which would have been set off within the first hour of the event. denser and larger creatures sunk to the bottom, leaving lighter debris like leaves, small fish, feathers, and molten glass on the surface.

summary: terrifying!

lastoneout

This is fucking incredible

kerolunaticat

Holy SHIT!

peannlui

Here’s a famous book snippet describing how feasible that we could find dinosaur fossils on the moon.

yeah-yeah-beebiss-1

so what you’re telling me is that there may be a kernel of truth to this meme

'Magic mushroom' drug reduces anxiety and depression in cancer patients, study says

By 6½ months, after all patients had received psilocybin, about 60% to 80% showed clinically significant reductions in depression, anxiety and existential distress and and improved attitudes toward death.

Meera Senthilingam, CNN

https://www.cnn.com/2020/01/28/health/magic-mushrooms-psilocybin-cancer-patients-study-wellness/index.html?utm_source=twCNNi&utm_content=2020-01-30T06%3A01%3A04&utm_medium=social&utm_term=link

A single dose of psilocybin, a compound found in “magic mushrooms,” provides long-term relief of anxiety and depression in cancer patients, a new study finds.

In fact, cancer patients who were given psilocybin reported reductions in anxiety, depression, hopelessness, demoralization, and death anxiety more than four years after receiving the dose in combination with psychotherapy.“Our findings strongly suggest that psilocybin therapy is a promising means of improving the emotional, psychological, and spiritual well-being of patients with life-threatening cancer,” said Dr. Stephen Ross, associate professor of psychiatry in the Department of Psychiatry at NYU Langone Health.

Continue Reading.