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Walking Lion

 

INSULT TO TRUTH... Trudeau says...

Canada's Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has slammed protests in the capital city against Covid-19 vaccine mandates as "an insult to memory and truth".

Protestors are demonstrating for a third consecutive day over a cross-border vaccine mandate for truckers imposed by the Liberal government.

Ottawa police asked the public to avoid the downtown area on Monday, citing "traffic, noise and safety issues".

Some downtown stores, including a shopping mall, will also be closed.

Demonstrators at the so-called Freedom Convoy have been mostly peaceful but the behaviour of some members of the crowd has been strongly criticised.

Police have opened investigations into several reported incidents, including footage of a woman dancing on the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier at the National War Memorial.

Nazi symbolism was seen on protest signs, some likening Covid-19 health measures to Jews under Nazi persecution. Friends of Simon Wiesenthal Center for Holocaust Studies criticised the use of those symbols as "a heinous form of Holocaust distortion".

Mr Trudeau said: "Freedom of expression, assembly and association are cornerstones of democracy, but Nazi symbolism, racist imagery and desecration of war memorials are not."  READ MORE...

Tiny Animal

 

Whoopi Goldberg's Comments About The Holocaust

Whoopi Goldberg is facing a backlash after she said on a US talk show that the Holocaust "was not about race".

The actress and television personality said on ABC's The View that the Nazi genocide of the Jews involved "two groups of white people".

Critics pointed out that Hitler himself had vented his hatred of the Jews in racial terms. She later apologised.

The Nazis, who believed themselves an Aryan "master race", murdered six million Jews in the Holocaust.

'I survived two concentration camps'
The families who weren't meant to live
Holocaust row seethes as leaders gather in Israel


Monday's discussion was sparked by a Tennessee school board's ban of a graphic novel about Nazi death camps during World War Two.

Maus, which depicts Jews as mice and Nazis as cats, has won a number of literary awards.

The school board said it banned the book because its profanity, nudity and depiction of suicide was inappropriate for 13-year-olds.

Goldberg, a 66-year-old Oscar-winning actress who has been on The View since 2007, told her co-hosts: "I'm surprised that's what made you uncomfortable, the fact that there was some nudity.

"I mean, it's about the Holocaust, the killing of six million people, but that didn't bother you?  READ MORE...

Wild Animal

 

Civil War in Myanmar

Myanmar is seeing increasingly deadly battles between its military and organised groups of armed civilians, new data suggests. Many of those fighting the military are young people who have put their lives on hold since the junta seized power a year ago.


The intensity and extent of the violence - and the co-ordination of the opposition attacks - point to a change in the conflict from an uprising to a civil war.


Violence is now spread across the country, according to data from conflict monitoring group Acled (Armed Conflict Location and Event Data Project). Reports from the ground also suggest the fighting has become increasingly co-ordinated and has reached urban centres which have not previously seen armed resistance to the military.


Although precise death tolls are hard to verify, Acled - which bases its data on local media and other reports - has collated figures to suggest about 12,000 people have been killed in political violence since the military seized power on 1 February 2021. Clashes have grown deadlier month on month since August.


In the coup's immediate aftermath, most civilians died as security forces cracked down on nationwide demonstrations. Now, however, the rising death toll is a result of combat - as civilians have taken up arms - Acled figures show.  READ MORE...

Easy Does It

Maher on China

 

Explosive

Toyota Heading to the Moon

TOKYO (AP) — Toyota is working with Japan’s space agency on a vehicle to explore the lunar surface, with ambitions to help people live on the moon by 2040 and then go live on Mars, company officials said Friday.

The vehicle being developed with the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency is called Lunar Cruiser, whose name pays homage to the Toyota Land Cruiser sport utility vehicle. Its launch is set for the late 2020’s.

The vehicle is based on the idea that people eat, work, sleep and communicate with others safely in cars, and the same can be done in outer space, said Takao Sato, who heads the Lunar Cruiser project at Toyota Motor Corp.

“We see space as an area for our once-in-a-century transformation. By going to space, we may be able to develop telecommunications and other technology that will prove valuable to human life,” Sato told The Associated Press.

Gitai Japan Inc., a venture contracted with Toyota, has developed a robotic arm for the Lunar Cruiser, designed to perform tasks such as inspection and maintenance. Its “grapple fixture” allows the arm’s end to be changed so it can work like different tools, scooping, lifting and sweeping.  READ MORE...

Here It Comes

 

The Eastern Mediterranean Changing

Image courtesy of Aris Messinis / AFP

Earlier this month, the United States surprised Greece and its two primary partners in the Eastern Mediterranean Gas Forum, Israel and Cyprus, by withdrawing its backing for a natural gas pipeline that would have connected them to Europe. 

The American change of heart was ostensibly justified by the need to focus on clean energy sources and that this project did not align with Europe’s green energy plan.

Instead, Washington urged the countries to consider two alternative electricity transmission projects; the EuroAfrica interconnector intended to deliver electricity from Egypt through Cyprus and then onwards to Greece and Europe via Crete, and its sister EuroAsia project that starts in Israel and connects to Europe through Cyprus. 

Both projects integrate these countries’ electricity grids with Europe’s.  The EastMed gas pipeline idea emerged after significant findings of gas deposits in the territorial waters of Cyprus, Egypt, and Israel. 

The pipeline, which would have cost an estimated $6-7 billion, was seen by many as an unrealistic project given the potential changes in the European energy consumption patterns, its sheer complexity and cost and the financing needs. Chances were that it would not get off the ground much less be completed by 2025 as projected.

The US State Department withdrew support for the project through the delivery of a non-paper – an informal manner of expressing a government’s preferences or requirement without direct attribution. Presumably the content could have been delivered orally except that Washington may have tried to avoid a situation where its message was diluted.

Even if the US may have thought it had a responsibility as part of the 3+1 mechanism of meetings with Cyprus, Greece and Israel designed to encourage regional cooperation, the fact remains that the decision to build a pipeline rests with those three countries and the Europeans and not Washington.  READ MORE...

Dancing Dog

 

NATO Wants Ukraine

Russia‘s foreign minister claims that NATO wants to pull Ukraine into the alliance, amid escalating tensions over NATO expansion and fears that Russia is preparing to invade Ukraine.

In comments on state television Sunday, Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov also challenged NATO’s claim to be a purely defensive structure.

Russia’s massing of an estimated 100,000 troops near the border with Ukraine has brought increasingly strong warnings from the West that Moscow intends to invade. Russia in turn demands that NATO promise never to allow Ukraine to join the alliance, and to stop the deployment of NATO weapons near Russian borders and roll back its forces from Eastern Europe.

The head of Russia’s Security Council, Nikolai Patrushev, on Sunday rejected Western warnings about a planned invasion.

“At this time, they’re saying that Russia threatens Ukraine – that’s completely ridiculous,” he was quoted as saying by state news agency Tass. “We don’t want war and we don’t need it at all.”

Russia-Ukraine standoff: Lukashenko, Kyiv residents speculate about possibility of war'

Russia has long resented NATO’s granting membership to countries that were once part of the Soviet Union or were in its sphere of influence as members of the Warsaw Pact.  READ MORE...

The Vaccinated

 

A New India

 

A Thirsty Duck

Canada - Freedom Convoy

After a week-long drive across Canada, a convoy of big rigs has arrived in the national capital to protest vaccine mandates and Covid-19 measures. Organisers insist it will be peaceful, but police say they're prepared for trouble.

It's been dubbed the Freedom Convoy, and it's got the country talking.

The movement was sparked by a vaccine mandate for truckers crossing the US-Canada border, implemented by Prime Minister Justin Trudeau's Liberal government earlier this month.

Upset with the new measure that would require unvaccinated Canadian truckers crossing the two nations' boundary to quarantine once they've returned home, a loose coalition of truckers and conservative groups began to organise the cross-country drive that began in western Canada.

It picked up steam and gathered support as it drove east. Many supporters, already opposed to Mr Trudeau and his politics, have grown frustrated with pandemic measures they see as political overreach.

Social media and news footage showed trucks and companion vehicles snaking along highways, cheered on by people gathered on roadsides and overpasses, often waving Canadian flags and signs disparaging Mr Trudeau.  READ MORE...

Skooter Dog