Category: Great Moments In Socialism

Lockdowns Forever

UnHerd- Covid-style controls against disorder are not the answer

John Woodcock, ex-Labour MP and Government advisor on political violence, argued this weekend that reinstating Covid-like restrictions would be the right response to the violent disorder taking place around the country following the dreadful events in Southport last week. At the same time, Keir Starmer has signalled moves that include more Government control of online information and the expansion of state surveillance through facial recognition.

Never Let A Serious Crisis Go To Waste

Off-Guardian- UK Riots: The agenda becomes clear…

Whatever the truth of this latest incident, and whatever long term aims it might be used to further, this “strategy of tension” has an immediate political agenda already becoming clear – and it’s as predictable as ever.

Attacking free speech is the ever-present, eternal agenda that comes before everything else and it’s been a real pile-on the last few days.

You cannot begin to fathom how irritating it is to the ruling class that ordinary people are allowed to just say whatever they want whenever they want – including having the audacity to fact check the media in real time, with no repercussions at all.

“Decline Is A Process, Not A Moment”

The critic- Boiling the British frog

On July 11th, the new Labour government announced that 5,000 prisoners would be released early, in order to ease prison overcrowding. On July 15th, reports emerged that London’s once-great Metropolitan Police had failed to solve a single burglary, phone theft, or car theft in 166 London neighbourhoods over the past three years. On July 17th, a Jordanian refugee who attacked a female police officer in Bournemouth was spared community service on the grounds that he could not speak English — and on July 18th, two asylum seekers from Egypt who stole a watch worth £25,000 in London’s West End were spared jail.

That same day saw two separate cases of rioting. In the Harehills area of Leeds, police were attacked and a double-decker bus was set on fire by local residents after four Romani children were taken into care by social services. In East London’s plurality-Bangladeshi borough of Tower Hamlets, rioting broke out in response to political unrest in Bangladesh.

Let me stress this again — all of these incidents took place within the space of a single week.

Konstantin Kisin- Riots in Britain: Nothing Left to Add

In all of these pieces, I explained that government policy across the Western world over the last two decades had brought the pot to boiling point. And predicted that instead of turning off the gas and listening to people’s concerns, the reaction from the media and politicians would be to screw the lid on tighter and make things worse. Which they have now done.

Central Planners, Planning

It’s not just Winnipeg.

Sun- Winnipeg must let the people decide on Plan20-50

Winnipeg city planners spoke glowingly in favour of the 30-year plan, which was the first red flag.

The WMR wants to mandate cramming almost 400 people per acre in Winnipeg, while heavily restricting gas-fueled vehicles and imposing land-density rules that may threaten the rights of property owners.

What’s that mean? Kiss your car goodbye. The bureaucrats will also tell you how big your yard can be, how many multi-family homes must be in every new housing development, and outside of the city, if you can dig a well.

And there are other rural concerns with the WMR scheme.

Water Carriers

I doubt that you could get a more sycophantic opinion piece than this, but Vanity Fair should at least have the decency to stop pretending that they’re engaging in journalism.

Hollywood went into panic mode over Joe Biden’s candidacy after the presidential debate. Most of that anxiety has now morphed into “unabashed excitement and energy unlike anything I’ve ever seen,” according to Jordan C. Brown, a Hollywood political strategist who served on the Biden campaign’s Entertainment Advisory Council and worked on events for Harris during her Senate and presidential runs. “I think people didn’t realize how worried and hopeless they were until she had this opportunity, and the party united behind her. I’ve just never seen anything like it.”

Even DreamWorks cofounder Jeffrey Katzenberg, a major force in Hollywood political fundraising who stood by Biden in recent weeks, has jumped onboard the USS Kamala. He is now a cochair of Harris’s campaign. “Again and again, she has been underestimated. Again and again, she has triumphed,” Katzenberg wrote of the vice president in a New York Times op-ed. “I couldn’t be more confident that this November will be no different.”

My Debt Engine Is Running Rough

In an economy as utterly dependent on housing as Canada’s this is the kind of news that grabs headlines. Even if the recent interest rate hikes are over and rate cuts continue, servicing the debt burden piled up during the lengthy near-zero era makes a quick recovery impossible.

The number of housing starts in the first half of 2024 has lagged behind the previous year, while June saw a 44-per cent drop year-on-year. At the same time, new home sales — which can predict future home construction — are also falling.

Data from the Canadian Mortgage and Housing Corporation (CMHC) shows that, between January and June, 36,371 new homes were started in areas of Ontario with more than 10,000 residents. Those figures were a 14-per cent decrease from the previous year.

Last month, the CMHC reported particularly dire figures. In June 2023, 10,114 new homes were started in Ontario, while this year that plummeted to 5,681.

He Was Feeling Better

True North- Inmate serving near 8-year sentence escapes from healing centre in Edmonton

“In the current fiscal year, there have been three escapees from Stan Daniels Healing Centre, with one of those offenders having already been apprehended,” a spokesperson for Correctional Service Canada told True North.

The Stan Daniels Healing Centre is a Section 81 facility operated by the Native Counselling Services of Alberta. These facilities are specifically used to house some Indigenous inmates where they can be offered “culturally appropriate services and programs to offenders in a way that incorporates Indigenous values, traditions and beliefs,” the correctional service says.

Honoring Dictators

Given the disastrous outcomes of Covid pandemic policy and the massive backlash that it created, one would think that governments would go out of their way to avoid giving too much notice to those responsible for such fiascos, but apparently the government of Manitoba thinks otherwise.

Manitoba’s chief public health officer, Dr. Brent Roussin is a physician, law school graduate, and familiar face to Manitobans as the province’s top public health authority and spokesperson during daily COVID-19 pandemic news conferences. A specialist in public health and preventive medicine, Dr. Roussin also brings an understanding of administrative law that was particularly helpful during the province’s COVID-19 response.

Functionaries like Roussin basically assumed the role of provincial dictator and divided their fiefdoms between “essential” and “non-essential” businesses, bankrupting many in the process. They also implemented such inanities such as restaurant masking rules and, in Manitoba, the bizarre measure that one could only golf with members of one’s household. Why do some insist on honoring such fools?

Expensive Sins

If treaty payments in the neighborhood of $126 billion don’t sink the Canadian economy, I don’t know what would. While it’s true that the annual per person treaty payments are very low, why wouldn’t a court also take into account the mushrooming budget for the Department of Indigenous and Northern Affairs which made such payments redundant over many decades?

In a unanimous ruling, the panel of nine judges declared both Canada and Ontario had “dishonourably breached” their obligations under the Robinson Treaties signed with the Anishinaabe of Lake Huron and Lake Superior in 1850.

Harley Schacter, a lawyer for Red Rock First Nation and Whitesand First Nation which started the group’s fight back in 2001, told reporters on Friday he believes his clients are owed “a couple of billion to as much as $126 billion.”

“It’s a victory for everybody.”

Everybody, that is, with the exception of taxpayers.

It’s Finally Over!

Global- British Columbia lifts COVID-19 vaccine mandate for health-care workers

B.C. provincial health officer Dr. Bonnie Henry has ended the COVID-19 public health emergency in British Columbia and ended the COVID-19 vaccine mandate in health-care settings.

However, the province is making it mandatory for health-care workers to disclose their immunization status, including COVID-19, influenza and measles vaccines.

Collecting these records will allow health-care administrators to make staffing decisions in the event of an exposure, outbreak, or future pandemic.

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