I found it intentionally misleading and a pile of steaming bullshit.
tomato, tomahto.
But but but… I’ve been told that Trudeau is a devious dictator, who has seized all powers, and does whatever he wants! Or a dundering doofus, who cannot do anything at all. Depends on the time of day, and the whims of the typical commentator on the newspaper website I suppose.
Any read on this interim police chief, Steve Bell? No idea what he’s about - hope he’s under an absolute maginifying glass going forward on this. A couple months back the Stupidest of Us were influencing idiots in other countries to do the same, and so I’d like to see this Ottawa buffoonery go the way of Bobby Sherman really quickly.
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Reporters should use the phrases “donnybrook” and “bouncy castles” much more. I hardly ever see this. It is a shame, kinda.
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What would J.C. have done? Jean Chretien, Canada’s most popular recent PM (supposedly), would have used the phrase “p’tit gars” and given them all Shawnigan handshakes. Then read them the Riot Act. Then threatened anyone still there with blocking the streets. I hear that the dark is afraid of J.C.! He makes onions cry. No one is scared of cutely themed socks…
Or even worse, a…a…a drama teacher.
If only we had … a comedian! Like Ukraine!
Asides.
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The episode of “Servant of the People” showed on Vision tonight was hysterically funny. How similar are Ukrainian and Russian? I was surprised that I could understand a few simple phrases.
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Patrick Watson died. I enjoyed his The Struggle for Democracy when it aired on CBC decades ago. Somewhat sad, but not going to start another thread over it (but feel free).
I was rereading a profile of Poilievre in a recent Macleans (April 2022) asking “why he was always so angry”. He isn’t. It is a populist act, as he supposedly he can be thoughtful and charming in private.
He claims to want freedom for Canadians, namely:
- The freedom to build a business without obstruction
- The freedom to keep the fruits of ones’ labour
- Freedom to make health and vaccine choices
- Freedom to speak without fear
- Freedom to pass on your values
- Freedom to worship in your own way
He supports anyone fighting peacefully for their rights and freedoms
He stands with the truckers but says engaging in violence, vandalism or obstruction is wrong and should be punished.
His views have been essentially stable throughout his political career. Not sure about the public persona.
It might be worth restating vaccines for Covid probably saved 20,000,000 lives. Far from perfect, it seems things would have been 2.7 times worse without them.
I don’t think forcing people to take vaccines was the right move. Coercion has its costs. Getting vaccination rates up to 40% in all countries, or the oldest 5% in Africa would also have had enormous benefits.
A couple of months ago? As we speak, farmers in the Netherlands are blocking border crossings, fishermen are blocking ports, and the whole country is in turmoil. There are farmers mobilizing in Germany and Italy. In fact, massive protests are breaking out in a number of European countries.
This isn’t just about vaccines now. It’s about insane climate/enviro policy that is going to destroy a big percentage of the world’s food supply and lead to mass starvation if we aren’t careful. And insane energy policy that has given Putin the power to make large chunks of Europe freeze in the dark if they don’t kowtow to him. it’s also providing him with enough funds to pursue the war indefinitely.
The Netherlands, for example, is the second largest food exporter in the world after the U.S. We are in a global food/supply chain crisis and yet the government there wants to cut nitrogen fertilizer use by 30-90%, depending on the farming region. The government also wants a massive culling of cattle because they are bad for greenhouse gases. That will essentially cut crop yields by at least 30%, and put a large number of farms out of business, Trudeau wants to do something similar in Canada.
Sri Lanka already tried to ban nitrogen fertilizers, and it destroyed their agriculture industry and the government there fell two days ago to massive riots. Inflation due to wild deficit spending and terrible energy policy is also firing up the European protests.
Canada may have provided an example of what private people with large machinery can do, but similar protests in Europe are for different reasons and are not going away until we stop the madness.
In the meantime, Germany just announced it is closing its final three nuclear plants anyway, and replacing them with coal fired plants (well, replacing 1/4 of their lost capacity) - this while panicking over the risk of Putin cutting off the natural gas they rely on. And so while the Netherlands is destroying its agriculture for global warming, its neighbor is going the other direction and increasingly relying on natural gas and coal.
And in the U.S, Washington state is planning to shut down 8 perfectly green hydro dams because of a lawsuit saying they negatively impact salmon populations. They have no plans to replace the energy, and are possibly the worst state for solar power.
The world is going mad. The truckers are just a symptom. It’s happening everywhere. If we aren’t careful, we’re going to wind up killing a billion people.
Some of these claims seem surprising. I would be grateful for cites confirming them.
You mean the policy that we should ignore human impact on climate change, and not massively reduce what we’ve been doing to contribute to it?
Yup, that policy would be very likely to lead to destroying a large percentage of the world’s food supply and lead to mass starvation.
– what do I mean, “would be”? Portions of it are happening right now; though we haven’t hit the “mass starvation” part yet.
Fine.
Amsterdam protests:
German farmers aiding the Netherlands farmers:
Protests/government falling in Sri Lanka:
Protests in Albania:
Germany closing down the rest of its nuclear plants:
https://www.euractiv.com/section/energy/news/germany-rules-out-prolonging-its-nuclear-power-plants/
Washington closing dams:
You may note a shortage of major North American media sources here. This news is being seriously under-reported by the mainstream media in the US and Canada.
If Putin cuts off the gas this winter as he is threatening to, or the war makes it impossible to deliver the gas promised, there will be massive repercussions and mass casualty events as a result. We are governed by fools. The biggest fools appear to currently rule in the Netherlands and Canada, and of course the former leader of Sri Lanka.
I sometimes like to “sample” claims to get a sense of whether or not I should take them seriously. This one is definitely in the “Not” category. Did you even read this article?
To sum up:
- This is merely a proposal
- Similar to earlier proposals that apparently went nowhere
- Where they explicitly acknowledge the problems of replacing the lost power generating capacity
- And address many of the other changes that would be needed, like transportation needs
- And there’s already considerable opposition to this both in the public at large and the political sphere.
So, not so much to panic about there. They’re not just going to blow up the dam and go, “Salmon goes BRRRRR LOL!” as the fish jump up the rapids.
EU farm policy often makes little sense. I agree global climate priorities can sometimes be very optimistic and there are many examples of short-sighted policy. As you know, it is a complex issue not easily summarized in a few articles although I thank you for providing them.
The Netherlands has done wonders to reclaim land and export a lot of food. However, I’m not sure they are the second highest. Given their modest area and smallish population, it is still impressive, however.
I can’t recall the Canadian convoy protesting food and energy policy specifically. I do remember concerns with vaccine mandate, improper suggestions regarding the PM and a skewed view of Canadian law and sovereignty. Does Trudeau really want to cut yields so much?
The wonders they have achieved are largely the result of nitrogen fertilizer use.
From Wikipedia:
Bolding mine.
This issue hadn’t really surfaced at the time of the trucker protests, which were about vaccine mandates. But it’s now rising as an issue here, due to the Netherlands shining a light on it. These policies are pushed by the WEF, and Trudeau, Chrystia Freeland and the Netherlands PM are WEF leaders.
From here:
That’s the same policy they just implemented in the Netherlands and earlier in Sri Lanka. That will reduce crop yields by 20-30% by 2030.
Politically, this could trigger a much-inflamed separatist movement i the west. Estimates show that this policy woild reduce agriculture exports in western Canada dramatically, after we already took it on the chin in the oil patch. But more importantly, if the western nations all do this we will starve a lot of people in the world. Madness. At this rate, we will do far more economic and human damage trying to stop climate change than climate change itself will cause.
Here’s the gamut of Liberal ‘green’ plans, straight from the horse’s mouth:
Some of those may be good ideas, but there is an awful lot in there that would be immensely destructive if they try to do it. For a long time I thought “They must be saying some of this just to placate their base, because no one would be stupid enough to actually try to implement this.” But then I look at Europe, and it appears they are deadly serious. Emphasis on the ‘deadly’.
This area is well outside my limited expertise. However, Canada has often had much more environmental talk than action. The Liberal website you curated mentions this in very vague terms without quantification… No government is going to do anything that, with few benefits and good reason, greatly upsets the farmers. Talk of proposals and consultations means about as much the usual meaningless cross-country tour to talk to ordinary Canadians. Not much.
The madness of Putin invading Ukraine is a big factor in a lot of what is happening now, just saying that he will pursue the war indefinitely (as if that was not madness) and declaring what the others do is the madness is… really a very underwhelming argument.
I looked at the Sri Lanka issue and while the nitrogen fertilizer item was a factor of the unrest there, Sri lanka changed course on fertilizers back in October 2021, if there had been no war this would have been one among many other dumb things the Sri Lankan government did wrong; another factor, and also thanks to Russian craziness, is that the war caused shortages on wheat imports and Sri Lanka is not the only country that is suffering thanks to the Russian madness.
The real craziness of Putin’s war made things worse.
You are likely to disagree with here here, but I’d say the war in Ukraine is a direct result of the crazy climate policies of Germany and other Euro states.
Putin likely would not have invaded Ukraine if he didn’t have confidence in keeping Germany and other countries now beholden to Russian natural gas out of the conflict. Also, he could not afford the war if he did not have massive gas sales to Europe.
But yes, now that the war is on it is adding to European unrest and threatening energy supplies even more. Which is why it is utter madness for Germany to be shuttering its nuclear plants now. Especially after the EU just declared nuclear power a green energy source. It’s almost like Germany is simply doing the bidding of Putin.