Someone flew a drone into one of the planes fighting the fires in LA
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/montreal/quebec-sopfeu-plane-grounded-1.7427777
"Neely was unarmed, with nothing but a muffin in his pocket, and didn't touch any passengers on the train. Multiple riders testified that he didn't even approach anybody, and that they didn't consider their lives threatened."
"Penny continued to choke Neely on the floor of the subway car for nearly six minutes after the train pulled into the station and other passengers left"
Eric Adams thinks he was "doing what we should have done as a city." So I guess the lesson is that you should choke healthcare CEOs to death and not shoot them if you want the mayor onside.
Grand Lake (New Brunswick) residents celebrate Liberal decision to go ahead with jail [https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/new-brunswick/grand-lake-jail-liberals-1.7395898]
"We needed this. This is the best Christmas present ever. And we thank the premier so much," said resident Carol Smith
Nothing says Christmas like building a $66 million people cage :)
For context, current facilities are "overcrowded" because they keep pushing everyone into poverty and then criminalizing existing, so the Tories decided to build a big ol' jail. It was supposed to go in Fredericton (the capital), but people protested and it ended up going to Grand Lake. The Liberals were opposed to the project until they won the election, of course. Tory prisons are bad, Liberal prisons are good for the economy.
However in the meantime, they've been releasing "low risk" inmates, which has shown very directly that you can, in fact, just not have people be in the jails. Ah well, nevertheless.
I mentioned yesterday that Susan Holt (New Brunswick premier) was arguing for retaliatory tariffs against the US. This worked the last time, when Trump put tariffs on Canadian steel and aluminium.
Now there are think-pieces about retaliatory tariffs in CBC, and Freeland (finance minister/deputy PM) has said that Canada's response last time was "smart."
"Hufbauer suggested, target electric vehicle company Tesla, owned by billionaire Elon Musk who has become a significant Trump ally." [https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/tariff-canada-retaliate-trump-1.7394432]
Please target Tesla. That would be fantastic. Last time they targeted like, Heinz, lol.
On the other hand: "the federal government owns the Trans Mountain Pipeline, and although the supply contracts for those shippers on the pipeline are destined for Asia, that's not to say that Canada couldn't look at striking deals with U.S. refineries, Meredith said."
This feels like a likely route. Not to mention that the threat of tariffs is largely predicated on Canada not "securing" the border, so I expect we'll start to see a more militarized border between the US and Canada. Canada has already committed to increasing their border policing in cooperation with the US, including more militarization of the Arctic to combat Chinese and Russian "threats." The Beyond the Border Accord has long established joint policing forces, and pre-clearance agreements have put American police on Canadian soil. Earlier this year Trudeau also promised Biden to ignore Canada's responsibility to the UN Refugee Convention more than ever before and just shunt asylum claimants down to US detention centres for deportation.
Yup, stricter borders
CUPW (postal workers union) has stopped negotiating with Canada Post [https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/canada-post-negotiations-talks-break-down-1.7394535].
As we get into the Christmas crunch, this puts massive pressure on Canada Post. No mail for Christmas? The government can't have that. CUPW knows this is really good leverage. The thing is, the last four times CUPW went on strike it was ended with back-to-work legislation; back in 2018 the legislation was tabled after a month of rotating strikes.
So we should expect to see back-to-work legislation soon, Canada absolutely loves making strikes illegal as soon as one actually has leverage.
One thing to consider with this: private couriers are absolutely using this opportunity to secure as many of the few remaining Canada Post contracts that exist as possible, which makes privatization a major leverage to be used against the union.
Another thing to consider: certain critical documents have been exempted from the strike (pension cheques for instance), however disability income and social assistance has not been exempted, which is some really scummy punching down. If you're going to do exemptions, deciding to placate the elderly who have pensions but not caring about the disabled or the very fucking poor is a cruddy choice.
In the past few weeks we've had a few mentions of NB's new Liberal premier, Susan Holt, and I would like to stress why exactly she is a complete buffoon:
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/new-brunswick/holt-gas-regulations-prices-new-brunswick-1.7390776
NB has a maximum price gas is allowed to be set at, and she wants to get rid of that. Sure, maybe this will let oil companies charge people more for gas, "However, she said the more likely outcome would be free-market pressures driving retailers to lower their prices. "
"Getting?" Canada's racism is foundational. A bunch of trading corporations "given" supreme legislative authority over half of a continent that only became a country in order to cement the capital accumulation of railway investors who decided the best way to build their railways uninterrupted was slavery, primarily sino-immigrant labour, and torture schools with backyard mass graves. Literally had a "whites-only" immigration policy for like a hundred years, and now it's a points system that is held up internationally as a gold standard despite being nearly indistinguishable from the Kafala system in the Gulf.
I never said the deal wasn't being cancelled, but the outrage being generated here is that it is being cancelled as a punishment, which there is no evidence of that isn't from a US-backed source.
When you read an Atlantic Council article and then say "fuck Xi" I think the US has worked its propaganda well.
Sure and maybe the news that China is cancelling a trade deal is true, but the point of these types of NGOs is to frame it with a lot of unsubstantiated spin. This article you linked writes specifically that the trade deal comes as a punishment for failing to privatize, but I can't find a single non-US funded source that links those as cause-and-effect. There is no evidence that this deal is being cancelled as a lever for privatization, which is the thing that you are criticizing China for doing.
That's why when you use sources like this you can't take their reasoning at face value, that's just spreading Atlantic Council narratives.
Have you actually looked at the team of people who run this foundation?
"Founder and Executive Director - Parsifal D'Sola Alvarado. Parsifal is a senior non-resident fellow at the Atlantic Council's Global China Hub. In 2019 he acted as an advisor on Chinese foreign policy for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the interim government of Venezuela (this is Guaido's fake government lol). Parsifal lived in Beijing from 2008 to 2016 where he served as communications manager and researcher for the China Files news agency."
Come on, at least use sources that aren't US feds.
MuinteoirSaoirse
joined 1 year ago
"RESTORING FREEDOM OF SPEECH AND ENDING FEDERAL CENSORSHIP"
https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2025/01/restoring-freedom-of-speech-and-ending-federal-censorship/
This is largely the no-more moderating hate speech order, but this bit is pretty sweeping: "The Attorney General, in consultation with the heads of executive departments and agencies, shall investigate the activities of the Federal Government over the last 4 years that are inconsistent with the purposes and policies of this order and prepare a report to be submitted to the President, through the Deputy Chief of Staff for Policy, with recommendations for appropriate remedial actions to be taken based on the findings of the report."
The Attorney General's office is going to be busy as hell keeping up with all these wide-scale audits of Biden's regime that pretty much every order calls for. Altogether, these orders point to sweeping retaliation within the fed for the past four years, and an explicit threat to get in line for the next four. Not unexpected, of course.