Dude should license some Basil Poledouris theme music. Get some wizardy guy to do a new intro -- maybe ask Bernie for a hand. "Let me tell you of a time of EQUIIITABLE treaatment!!"
wampus
joined 4 months ago
A conservative literally went and shot a sitting democrat politician and her husband dead. It was a news story for about 10 seconds before being replaced by the latest Trump shenanigans. They're literally assassinating / murdering democrats in their homes man, and no one in America seems to care all that much.
And you think something'll happen if they deport a dude who is just... in the running for mayor?
Yeah, ok, sure.
Totally misses the point. I don't think anyone I know started avoiding US products to try and "hurt" the USA, we're not idiots thinking our tiny population is gonna have a huge impact on their economy or anything.
We avoided their products, cause they started making threats / acting hostile towards us, and we'd rather our money go to support either local Canadians, or to support companies from countries that aren't threatening us / acting hostile. We didn't/don't want to be in any way reliant on someone that views us as an enemy, nor do we want to support the fascist crap that's going on down there currently.
Most likely it was a move primarily about getting senior level execs at those companies into the military machine -- and into the chain of command of that machine. It makes those companies 'disclosing' data to the military much more likely, as well as tweaking apps to aid in military operations.
Like havin the CTO of meta "in the circle", likely gives them complete access to meta's tracking data for any target they want, in a more efficient way than previous.
Such a wimpy style of governance from the look of all these proceedings. Even if there are legitimate complaints, the person 'getting grilled' could practically sit there singing the alphabet, and the outcome would be the same.
It's like those odd sport interviews where the person just responds "I'm just here to not get fined" to every question -- ie. I'm forced to be here for pageantry/contract reasons, but there's no real point to any of it. Both the questions, and the answers, are ultimately pretty meaningless.
I laughed when I first saw those two UK-ancestry Indian girls who's mother had them 'identify' as First Nations in order to get tons of free grants / govt support, which they used to setup businesses and such... and the news was like "Why would someone do this?!?". For the money and govt perks, obviously.
One thing I didn't see much of in the article, were options to resolve the issue aside from a brief note about there not being many options currently. So what options do we realistically have to address the issue?
Do FN not keep a registry of their people, and/or do they not have established processes for third party's to verify identity claims via a simple form? Like do businesses have an option, sorta like running a background check with law enforcement, to check an identity?
I'd personally vote to remove the incentive for the frauds. Race-based benefits that are so lopsided you have people committing fraud to get those perks, a situation that seems antithetical to what the Charter and democratic nations are built on: that all races are equal. Remove individual govt incentives based on race -- no bursaries, grants, funding, tax breaks, etc. Have the fed gov supports be based exclusively on nation-to-nation type supports, sorta like they do with the provinces in terms of fund transfers, and base those transfers on the division of responsibility between FN and Canada, tied to the treaties where possible. Instead of having oblique benefits paid out to individuals spread across the entire country via tax breaks etc, have the funds be directly applied to 'nations' to fix things like drinking water availability. If an FN has no one living in their area, or if they free-ride off of colonial infrastructure that's been built, they get less 'national' funding -- sorta like if a foreign country came in and built a port for Canada to use, and we had free use of it, it'd be nuts for the govt to then up our taxes to pay for a new port... cause it's already there and available.
Its about manifesting peace. It's an advanced form of America's "Vibe Diplomacy".
There's no particular reason they couldn't. Even a simple dirty bomb detonated in a high population area could wreak havoc -- and any country with centrifuges can basically make one of those in no time.
Basically every sovereign state now has a very clear risk calculation supporting the development of nuclear arms and for ignoring all the UN's attempts for international cooperation / non-proliferation. Iran was compliant, from all accounts, with the vast majority of requirements that had been set out for it -- something that Israel's nuclear program is seemingly not required to adhere to (it's still "unofficial" that they have between 90 and 400 functional warheads).
Opening yourselves to international inspectors just gives the USA a very clear target list + floor plans. Further, not having a nuclear option means the USA will potentially attack you. Even if rules of engagement say they shouldn't attack civilian power plant infrastructure, the USA, Israel and Russia do it without hesitation. North Korea, China, and Russia have shown that having a nuclear deterrent will keep the USA away. It'll even make the USA suck up to you / praise you, and let you attack/invade your neighbours without the USA taking action.
What Trump and the States have done, in my view, essentially translates to destroying any semblance of international cooperation between nations (cause why bother trying to appease the EU, if the USA is gonna ignore international norms and bomb whoever they want anyway), and has made it so that every nation should now pursue weapons of mass destruction as a "deterrent", which will no doubt lead to catastrophe in time. But there aren't really many ways I can see it playing out otherwise.
Like that 5% NATO military spending.... should prolly be every NATO country building a nuclear / WMD program of their own, unbeholden to US constraints, "just in case".
The US officially giving tech execs military ranks is.... interesting. One of the stronger reasons to avoid companies like Huawei, was that the CCP had direct military ties / agents working within Huawei. The argument in favour of US tech companies in comparison, was that while they may have agreements with the US military, they were at arms length. Now they aren't, and the rationale seems to be attempting to shift to "just trust us", while they openly start major wars/conflicts and support genocidal actions in the middle east.
idk. If I were involved in the decision making for any critical area, I'd avoid the hell out of foreign controlled anything in my regular stacks at this point. Even if it means you have some efficiency hits until there may be an in-country provider available. It wouldn't matter who the other country is at this point, as the US going awol is something most wouldn't have 'bet' on like a decade ago, but here we are.
Personally, I don't mind seeing when comments are heavily down voted. If an opinion is unpopular, that's ok, especially in some areas where you generally know there's a likely bias in the audience.
What annoys me is seeing comments removed / silenced by mods when the comments dont align. If the comments calling for explicit violence or using overt slurs, by all means censor. But many online spaces will eliminate even respectful / neutral comments simply because they aren't in line with that narrative.
Yeah -- I've literally been at the same CU for decades, got signed up as a kid by my parents. A small (like 5000-10000 members?) local community credit union. I'm an old grumpy guy now with a mortgage and all that crap. Didn't even bother with a mortgage broker, as the rates I was offered were pretty good based on sites like ratehub, and they were flexible on a few of the 'standard' requirements that I was sorta borderline on (like gds/tds and ltv). Almost have it paid off now, faster than anticipated in part because they were also pretty flexible on my repayment schedule. When its term renewed, I asked if I could just overpay a bit more regularly in addition to the once per year lump sum and they were cool with it. Even though my longer term GICs and whatnot are 'slightly' worse on rates than I imagine I could get if I went elsewhere, I'm totally fine with that if it lets em keep doin what they're doin for the next generation.
I am a little concerned they might not be around in 10 years though, cause Canada (where I'm at) is seeing smaller financial institutions disappear left right and centre -- mergers to try and get big to be able to pay for govt regs and payment industry stuff. As soon as the management is 'national', from what I've heard, they basically just turn into banks for customer service, and you become a number.
I agree with your skepticism on this one.
Especially given what we can see with regards to US tech companies being complicit with a bunch of the authoritarian stuff going on down south, moves to disrupt their monopolies and try and foster a more local industry makes a ton of sense. Many of Carney's decisions lately align with US interests more so than Canada. It's not overly surprising, he's not pro-Canadian companies / people, but pro-business and international trade (at the expense of locals if need be), in a fairly generic neo-liberal way.
Also, bending over right before Canada day is just such a dick thing to do as PM. He should be trying to lead / inspire national pride, not appeasing foreign interests, for at least like 1 week of his term.
Still prolly better than PP would've been though. With PP we would've had Elon here Musking up the place.