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| BRITISH TROOPS, FLANDERS 1918 |
WITH RESPECT to
Ukraine: They’ve lost. They’re a dead man walking. Their spring/summer
‘offensive’ was a bust. Tens of thousands of young Ukrainian men lost their
lives needlessly in probably what was the last major Ukrainian campaign of the
war. The ranks of its armed forces are depleting, and recruitment of
military-age men (18-25) is becoming difficult due to losses on the battlefield1
and the exodus of millions of Ukrainians from the country. Russian forces,
which have generally adopted a defensive posture for most of the conflict, are
gradually taking the offensive….
IN RECENT DAYS,
Putin has mused that the people of Ukraine, Belarus and Russia are from the
same stock—that they are related by language, culture, and history. He’s also
said that Odessa is a Russian city by its founding and heritage. And
discussions between members of the Duma (Russia’s parliament) suggest
Russian political elites favour a more hard-line approach to Ukraine. For
example, they favour the four contested eastern provinces of Donetsk, Kherson, Luhansk and Zaporizhzhia be incorporated into Russia, as well as the
remaining stretches of the Black Sea coast, including Odessa. They want to
disband Ukraine’s army and prosecute Ukrainian officials complicit in war
crimes. The longer this conflict goes on, the greater the losses in sovereignty
and territory for Ukraine.
NOW, too much time, blood and treasure have been spent. Russia
will demand a formal surrender from Ukraine and dictate the terms of the treaty
which will include a neutral, “denazified” rump state of what’s left of western
Ukraine (provided the Poles and others don’t carve it up for themselves). There
will be no negotiations. Russia has always said it would enter into
realistic dialogue with Kiev and its backers, but no political leader in the
West appears willing to meet the Russians halfway. Western leaders hear
what Putin and Russian politicians say but they don’t listen. So,
the Russians will do it their way….
 |
| Italy's PM Maloni with Zelensky in Malta💘 |
I HAVE NEVER SEEN such a gaggle of self-involved, nasty,
thick-headed clots as these neo-conservative globalists who infest Western
capitals and political ranks, today. Two nuclear superpowers at loggerheads and
no one is talking, or more accurately, one side talks and the other
pretends to listen.
IN OTHER NEWS, President Zelensky has a day or two of
crowing ahead. The European Union, in a 26-0 (one abstention) vote, adopted a
resolution to initiate membership talks with the busted flush Ukraine, a
process might take years, and there’s no telling whether Ukraine will still be
around. After getting a paltry $100 million from the U.S. in his brief state
visit there last week, and with no assurance of getting the promised $32
billion in aid from Washington in the new year, Zelensky seemed a bit reluctant
to return to Ukraine without a big bag of money in hand. He got instead a
formal invitation to join the EU which had voted days before in favour of
granting Ukraine candidate status in the alliance.
 |
| HUNGARY'S PM VICTOR ORBAN |
Earlier last week he voted NO to a crazy-ass big €50
billion aid package the EU wanted to send to Ukraine. Orban’s NO vote stopped
the insanely inflated proposal dead in its tracks because the EU
requires a unanimous vote count.2
WITH the more recent vote on Ukraine entering the EU, Orban was pressurized by one and all to vote in favour. In the end, he made the
unusual move of absenting himself from the vote, thus allowing it to pass 26-0. The
Hungarian PM remains skeptical whether Ukraine could ever qualify for
membership. And he’s right. Without foreign aid, the war-torn country would
fold like a cheap suit.
THE FOLLOWING DAY, EU member states began discussions
to invoke an “Article Seven” clause in the EU charter to strip Hungary of its voting rights. So much for
democracy! If you’re not 100% behind the schemes hatched in Brussels, then
you’re a pariah and will be punished. But Victor is pretty tough. I think he can take care of himself.
A FINAL POINT: Ursula
von der Leyen, the unelected dark queen president of the European Commission
recently proposed that the EU council take control of member states’
militaries, creating a central military command in Brussels, in part to make it easier for munitions and armaments to flow to Ukraine from across Europe.😟Folding 27 armies into one. Herding cats might be easier, so good luck with that! And the other day,
the EU leader was voted the “World’s Most Powerful Woman” by Forbes
magazine.3 ¡Ay, caramba! The lady eezz craazzy, man. Psycho! She needs to go!
The end times are nigh for the EU. Watch as the cracks appear in the
coming months. As for NATO—stay tuned!
IF the White
House had a president at the helm instead of the empty suit known as Joe Biden,
the threat of withdrawing American ships from the Mediterranean and stopping the
billions in aid and weapons the U.S. sends Israel every year might knock some
sense and humanity into the Israeli government. But I doubt at this point even
that would interrupt the IDF's (Israeli Defense Force) mission to drive all Gazans into the Sinai. Netanyahu wants
Palestinians who live in the West Bank gone as well. We don’t hear as much
about the fighting in eastern Israel, but hundreds of Palestinians have been
murdered by hard-line settlers.The country is a powder keg waiting for that one wayward spark for it to ignite.
IN northern Israel,
there have been mass evacuations of upwards of 200,000
Israelis to the south to escape missiles fired by Lebanon’s Hezbollah militias. Will this become a two-front war?
“The
United States actually took over the drafting and usurped the work on the text
while ‘twisting the arms’ of the delegations of regional states in
behind-the-scenes contacts. Under American pressure, the text kept losing
important provisions….”
 |
| ARE WE CHIMPS AT WAR? |
 |
| OR BONBOS AT PLAY? |
UPDATE:
GOOGLE AND CANADA—A
couple of interesting developments concerning Canada’s “Online News Act” legislation that is currently being tweaked for some changes.
The Canadian government has apparently backed down on its demand that
Canadian-produced news content be paid for by Google on a case-by-case basis.
The compromise was a lump-sum $100 million ‘user’s fee’ paid by the tech giant
(chump change, really) that was supposed to go into an arm’s length Media Fund
agency to distribute the money fairly to local content producers, large and
small. The Canadian government originally
was asking $172 million for the deal. However, the annual endowment will now be given directly to the
government which, apparently, will dole out the dough based on the number of
employees in a Canadian media producer.
SO, the big
boys (Nordstar, CBC, Global, etc.) will get the lions share. Smaller content
producers may get zilch. This increases the unfair advantage that large, dinosaur
legacy media organizations already have over small content producers. BTW, Meta is
still refusing to comply with the Act and won't upload Canadian news to its platform. Users of its Instagram channel
continue to be denied news posts produced in Canada.
Question: Is it healthy
for the media ecosystem in Canada to be reliant on handouts from Big Tech
companies to support local news and media? We may
have to wait for legacy media organizations to go away and die before small
and alternative media channels that promote the free expression of ideas and discourse can truly flourish.
 |
| MELISSA POULTON |
NEEDLESS TO SAY,
Maclean’s post received a flurry of comments, for and against, with her critics
accusing her of being a transphobe and calling for her to resign from cabinet.
Maclean issued an apology to Poulton but maintains her stance against the Green
Party’s “extreme policies on gender and self ID ideology.”
And she is taking action to have her NCHI file with the police permanently
closed.
Britain,
like Canada, has hate crime legislation on the books, and has for some time. Interestingly,
since 2014, British police also record so-called non-crime hate incidents which
are defined as
“…any
non-crime incident which is perceived, by the victim or any other person, to be
motivated by a hostility, or prejudice based on a person’s actual or perceived
race, religion, sexual orientation, disability, or transgender status.” (FIRE, "UK Police")
Note: these
are not crimes. Nor are they records of police investigations into
crimes. They are records of complaints and police inquiries into the
particulars of the complaint that are kept in a database indefinitely. They are
files on people whose speech is perceived as “motivated by a hostility” to
race, gender, or other protected categories. Furthermore, the victim does
not have to provide evidence that the speech or writing injured or threatened
them! Just claiming they were hurt or made to feel unsafe by someone’s speech
or post is enough to prompt police to investigate. And the police are under no
obligation “to investigate the veracity of the claims” and in many instances do
not even inform the accused about the complaint!
Between 2014
and 2019, in England and Wales, 119,934 NCHI logs were filed with various
police forces. In such cases, there are no trials, no submission of evidence. There
are no avenues for appeal and such logs may be released by the police, for example,
in a background check to a prospective employer, thus labeling the job applicant as somone involved in a “hate incident”. Unsubstantiated claims of
hate speech that are archived in an NCHI database could have a devastating impact on a person’s
reputation. Remember--no crime has been committed. No legal proceedings against the accused are even contemplated.
BUT the
efficacy of the NCHI system for preventing hate speech is questionable. In 2020, an advocacy
group filed a Freedom of Information request and discovered that "[n]ot a single
police force of the 43 questioned could give a single example [Italics mine] of a crime that
had been prevented by recording NCHIs.” As well, hate crimes reported in
Britain between 2013-2021 saw a three-fold increase from 45,000 cases to
124,000. So much for prevention.
Critics say that police “do not take seriously
the claim that NCHIs prevent escalation and regard this policing of lawful
speech as legitimate in its own right.” (FIRE, "UK Police") The British government, through its police service, appears more
interested in chilling speech it doesn’t like and collecting data on private
individuals, than 'preventing' crime. IN THIS CASE, a powerful politician is forced
to apologize and delete her post. How many in the general public now will mind their ps
and qs, and self-censor, if they know the police had such a file on them? Or may possibly open one in the future? Would, for example, a hasty, angry post on social media about the current conflict in Gaza, made by a teen, make its way someday to a hiring panel or university admissions board in the form of a NCHI complaint, with serious consequences for that young person's life and livelihood? It’s
a disturbing story and another example of how free speech is being eroded in
more and more countries, and at an accelerating rate. We should not forget that Canada, like Britain, has hate speech laws, and censorship is alive and
well in the true north strong and free(ish).
Concerning the
proposal, Meghan White, Executive director of the Ottawa-based non-profit,
Period Packs, suggests,
"[n]ot
only women or those who identify as women menstruate," said Ettinger. ”Trans
men, gender non-conforming and two-spirit folks menstruate as well,
and everyone who menstruates deserves to menstruate with dignity.’” (CBC)
AND
while there’s been push-back from critics who complain about putting menstrual
products in men’s washrooms, White points out that “limiting the products to
women’s washrooms would force all menstruating people5
[Italics mine] to go into a women’s washroom.” So, as our federal government
becomes increasingly ‘gender-sensitive’ and at the beck and call of woke pressure
campaigns, all federally funded institutions will soon have sanitary product
dispensers in men’s washrooms for use by biological females who identify as men
or the gender de jour. Confusing? Yep. And I promise you that if I ever
use a public stall and my stall neighbour asks me to pass them a pad instead of
roll—I will flee, business done or not!
THIS
free period products program, by Minister of Labour Seamus O’Regan Jr., will
affect workplaces employing 1.3 million people, 35% of which require menstrual
products regularly. The hope is that the practice will be taken up by private
sector employers eager to have another inclusivity box to tick. Period product
vending machine manufacturers like Global Industrial and Citron Hygiene are
also hopeful the federal program will catch fire.
IN
addition to this initiative, there is a new, multi-million-dollar pilot project
by the Ministry for Women and Youth to help “menstruaters”
in the general population cope with “period poverty”—the lack of access to
menstrual and sanitary supplies. I’ve seen ballpark figures of around $20 per
cycle as an average cost, and while I’m not sure if this is the case, costs for
such products can nearly double in rural parts of the country, and
that’s not fair. Thus, a federal program to assist vulnerable or impoverished women
in this respect sounds positive, from both an equity and a public health
perspective. For example, some women, for financial reasons, use tampons longer
than is recommended. This can result in toxic shock syndrome, a serious and
even life-threatening illness. And urinary tract infections can come from using
unsanitary materials instead of hygiene-controlled products. Ensuring a healthy
population of “menstruators” is a positive benefit for society. More broadly, a
society that promotes the availability and affordability of menstruation
products, stands a better chance of becoming a fairer and more inclusive one.
We’ll see if these two ministry programs go anywhere in the next year or
two.
Feminist
icon Gloria Steinem once wrote:
"If men could menstruate, menstruation would become an enviable, boast-worthy, masculine event: Men would brag about how long and how much. Boys would mark the onset of menses, that long-for proof of manhood, with religious ritual and stag parties. Congress would fund a National institute of Dysmenorrhea to help stamp our monthly discomforts and sanitary supplies would be federally funded and free.” (“If Men Could Menstruate”, 1978)
SOME POINTS TO CONSIDER:
--DID
you know that a woman loses on average 2-3 tablespoons of blood per cycle?
--“ONE
in five (20%) who menstruate say they may not afford period products at some
point in the next 12 months, and 7% say this is very likely. Six in ten of the
first group agree that inflation has increased the likelihood of not affording
period products.” (Menstrual Equity Fund Pilot.)
--IN
Canada, “average prices for tampons increased by nearly 10% and increased by 8.3% for a box of menstrual pads last year through the end of May.” (Global
News)
--1
in 3 women under 25 struggle to afford period products.
--63%
of women and girls had to miss an activity regularly or occasionally because
they were menstruating and had concerns about access to menstrual products or
proper sanitation facilities.
--IN
2015, Canada eliminated the GST tax on feminine hygiene products.
--SINCE
2019, B.C., Nova Scotia, P.E.I., and in 2021, Ontario, offer free period
products in schools. [Education is a provincial responsibility and hopefully
other provinces and territories will adopt similar programs for their education
sectors. Ed.]
--NOW
with the new federal legislation, more workplaces and public spaces will
begin offering free sanitary products at their facilities.
IN
2021, Scotland became “the first country in the world to provide free menstrual
products to all persons who need them.”
OUTSIDE
the developed world, women’s access to appropriate period products varies
greatly, and cultural norms in many countries make menstruation a topic not easily
discussed in public. But programs that support access to period products in
schools will enhance girls’ and young women’s ability to attend classes and
participate in activities if they can rely on a steady supply of free tampons
and pads, and proper (and private) hygiene facilities and waste disposal. WELL,
I’d not intended to go into this much detail, and I can only say that I’m sure
as hell glad I’m a guy!
“Computer
models suggest that 40 percent of the human-produced CO2 in the
ocean worldwide was originally absorbed from the atmosphere into the Southern
Ocean, making it one of the most important carbon sinks on our planet.”
AND icebergs
aid in this process of carbon sequestration.
SO much news, so little time.
Cheers, Jake ______________________________________
1. Russia’s top general estimates that nearly
400,000 Ukrainian soldiers have been killed or wounded since the start of
Russia’s “special military operation”. I’ve seen estimates that are
significantly higher. The AFU (Armed Forces of Ukraine) does not publish its
casualty count. It’s also reported that
the AFU is drafting men between the ages of 16 and 60 to cover the recruitment
shortfall, and possibly women, though this might have been put on the back burner for now. In some cases, military-aged men have been dragooned off the street and pressed into service by
recruiting officers and are sent into combat with very little training.
2. There are 27 countries in the European Union,
with 27 leaders and one vote per leader.
3. Squeezing in at number one hundred on Forbes’
100 Most Powerful Women in the World is: Barbie.
4. It has a nice Orwellian vibe, don’t you
think? Two articles from the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (thefire.org) I used:
👉https://www.thefire.org/news/uk-polices-speech-chilling-practice-tracking-non-crime-hate-incidents
👉https://www.thefire.org/news/uk-police-can-still-log-non-crime-hate-incidents-even-after-reforms
5. Okay. A pet peeve of mine is the woke
language used by the CBC. “Menstruating people” or “menstruators” are the words
used in the article. The words “woman” or “women” are used alongside other
gender categories like “trans man, “gender non-conforming”, or “ciswoman”. I,
as someone who was assigned male at birth and identifies as male, am called in
the new vernacular an old fart a “cisgender man” or “cisman”. Sigh…. Why
do I feel like ssslithering like a sssnake?
[Question for the future: How
many genders will it take until we can all get along? Isn’t humanity diverse
enough? Ed.]
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