Second wave falling flat - covid deaths down 82%

 Given all the hype around the much-feared "second-wave," let's take a look at the numbers.

Canada's first wave case numbers peaked on May 3, when the seven day average of new cases hit 1797. The seven day average for daily covid deaths peaked at 175 just four days later, on May 7.

What has changed since the spring? 

Daily covid tests have gone up about five-fold, from approximately ten-twelve thousand per day to 40-60 thousand per day.

The daily new cases have gone up by more than 50%. So far the seven day average in the second wave has peaked on October 28 at 2805 cases.

With testing up 500% and cases up 50%, what has the daily death count done? To this point, the seven day average of daily deaths in this dreaded second wave has peaked at 31, three days ago. That's a drop of over 82% from the peak of the first wave.

But let's lock-r-down anyway, just to be safe...

The steady drip of anti-China warmongering

The Globe and Mail treats us to two Yellow Peril screeds today. On page A3 Robert Fife and Steven Chase display a little faux outrage over the fact that China claims the US and its allies were the aggressors in the Korean war. The reason I suggest their outrage is somewhat inauthentic is because these guys are smart enough to know better. Without the intervention of the US and her allies there would have been no Korean war. China and her people have every right to feel pride in the fact that they helped stymie Uncle Sam's plans for the Korean peninsula. 

Then, on the opinion page, we get a China expert from McGill waxing wise about how important it is to stand with our allies, and poke Xi Jinping in the eye at every opportunity, because that's what the US and her satellites are doing.

Our expert, one Jerome Beaugrand-Champagne, gets right down to the nitty-gritty. PM Fluffy is way too timid around the commies for his liking. He'd like to see us ramp the belligerence to a level that'll get us a pat on the back from Pompeo. Let's recognize Taiwan and send soldiers to defend it!

Sure thing, Jerome - here's your rifle!

What kind of idiocy is this? 

Strangled by Google's algorithms

 Early on in the life of this blog it enjoyed a lovely covid-like growth curve. Since then, unfortunately, Google's algorithms have done a great job "flattening the curve," so to speak.

I suspect I sealed my fate with this post about Seven World Trade Center. Suggesting there was more to 9/11 than the official narrative revealed is heresy, of course. Nine years later I think that post stands the test of time. Why not waterboard Silverstein and Giuliani? It's a harmless enough "interrogation technique" when applied to brown terror suspects. Why should white terror suspects be treated any differently?

There's actually another angle to the Frankel Steel story. Several times during my tenure as an inspector there, I flagged structural columns that had already been approved for shipment but had been fabbed out of the wrong grade of steel, making them substantially weaker than what the design specs called for. It's not unreasonable to assume that some such columns found their way into the building. Could that have contributed to its collapse?

But I digress; back to the algos. Not long after I started the blog, somebody from Before It's News requested permission to post my blog on their site, and it remains there to this day. It's basically a click-bait site and I'm relegated to the "alternative" section, the fringe of the fringe, where you'd think no one would ever find it.

Here's the thing; I routinely get at least two to four times, and frequently more than ten times as many views on any given story on that fringe website than I do at Google-owned Blogger, the biggest blog hosting site on the internet.

How is such a thing even possible?

No more drunken mouse-flinging

We've been enjoying a major mouse infestation here at Falling Downs. I'm more than a little disappointed in Doublewide, the resident mouser. There's other cats were you came from, Catso Fatso. Think about it.

Maybe a week ago I picked up some traps at Home Hardware, or maybe it was TSC. Anyway, we're up to about a dozen of the rodents by now, and I've mastered the art of the one-handed trap-flick that will deliver that dead mouse all the way to the compost pile on the other side of the driveways. I'm not sure dead mice are kosher for compost, but I figure the raccoons will sort that out.

Sunday, for one reason or another, I got a little past my daily quota of Busch Light tallboys. In addition, I had spent several hours pruning pot buds earlier in the day. Your fingers get caked with a layer of resin, which leaves a nice glow. 

Checked the traps before turning in. Yup, another little invader to be pitched. I've done this a dozen times now. I've got it down. I fling the dead rodent while simultaneously opening the trap...

And find myself flat on my back, ten feet from the porch. Worse yet, the trap was still in my hand, and the mouse was still in the trap. I had somehow flung myself, instead of flinging the rodent. As I was lying there, wondering if anything was broken, and enjoying my view of the night sky, the Farm Manager stepped out to enquire whether I needed assistance.

Well, you know how that goes. Once you say yes to the assistance, you've given up the moral high ground.

So I declined the offer, and salvaged my integrity, if not my pride, by getting back on the porch under my own power. 

No more drunken mouse-flinging.

Forget Biden-Trump; watch Macron-Erdogan instead

I've been predicting the imminent demise of the wily Erdogan for about nine years now. I'll be right eventually.

I thought he was a goner in 2016, but apparently Putin saved his ass that time around. He's less likely to be as brotherly next time, what with Erdogan mucking up his various efforts in Syria, Libya, and now Nagorno- Karabakh.

Meanwhile, Sultan-in-waiting Fethullah Gulen hopes his handlers at Foggy Bottom give him another chance. While Turkey is indeed a NATO member, it's likely that those handlers are well aware that it would be a far more reliable (read pliable) ally under a President Gulen.

Enter NATO member Macron, a man with enough arrogance, chutzpah, and self-regard to give Erdogan a run for his money. Macron has troubles aplenty himself; Yellow Vests, Black Death, and a six-million strong Islamist underclass seething with resentments.

 One of the most cherished values of the NATO nations is freedom of speech. In France this freedom is held in especially high regard when it comes to freedom to mock the religion of that aforementioned seething underclass. This has bubbled into the open once again due largely to the folks at Charlie Hebdo reprinting their infamous cartoons of The Prophet to mark the trial of the crazed fanatics who shot up their offices when they were originally published.

This has given Erdogan the opening to pose as the guardian of Islam world-wide. For better or worse, his message is sure to gain traction in the banlieues. How far will white France go to defend its right to mock the religion of its non-white underclass?

There you have it. In this corner, NATO member France. In that corner, NATO member Turkey...

Something's got to give eventually!

Idiots to the left of me, idiots to the right...

Watching the idiocy unfold next door is a downright sobering experience. I had no idea so many people are so stupid.

From the putative left of the spectrum, there's absolutely relentless braying and howling over how Trump is ushering in a Christian-fascist-white-supremacist dictatorship.

From the other side, they're shitting their pants at the prospect of Biden, that's Joe Biden, senator from Mastercard, ushering in a socialist-communist dystopia.

Really? 

What I'm seeing is a lot of business-as-usual. The only thing that's changed is the technology. Thanks to social media, it's become way too easy to weaponize millions of morons.

There's no danger of Biden leading America to socialism, and the country will remain the fascist but secular oligarchy it's always been, regardless of who wins.

Globe and Mail advises parents to install trampolines on condo balconies for their children

There's a lot of hysterical nonsense in today's Globe and Mail, most of which concerns the US election, "the most consequential since 1864," according to contributor and New Yorker stalwart Adam Gopnik. 

What's so consequential about it? 

Whether Trump or Biden prevails on Nov. 3, the American people can be assured of remaining the only modern society without public heath-care. They can be assured of the continued emaciation of the middle and working classes. Income inequality will continue to rage out of control. Military spending will continue to rise, employment precarity will increase, and the homeless crisis will get worse.

In short, the world will continue to be a bed of roses for the billionaires and their minions, while the rest of us double down on the fight for the hind teat.

So why do Gopnik and the other never-Trumpers featured in the Globe's opinion section find this election so important? Because it's the last best chance to turn back the clock to the pre-Trump golden age of the American Empire, when the USA unambiguously led the Nations of Virtue in the battle for freedom and human rights against the forces of darkness; China, Iran, Russia, and the handful of failed states who bob in their wake.

In other words, they're pining for the good old days; Hiroshima, Korea, Viet Nam, Laos, Cambodia, Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria... the glory days when American might determined what was right.

Yessiree, it would be tough to top the foolishness in the opinion pages, but Mathew Hague pulls it off on page p3. The sub-head of his story, on coping with kids in your condo apartment in the time of covid, caught my eye; "climbing walls in bedrooms, foldaway desks with chalkboard, and trampolines on balconies... how some are making the most of their condos for their kids."

I'm not always a big fan of "expert opinion," but I'm willing to bet that 100% of pediatricians would not recommend putting a trampoline on your high-rise balcony for your children.

In this case, I'm with the experts.

What did you think of the debate?

I thought the script-writers did a bang-up job. That would be the crew from Dana White's empire who moved into the White House when Trump did.

The script-writers obviously provided a few more stage notes this time around. I can imagine the margin notes, underlined and highlighted; GET TRUMP TO SHUT UP.

And it worked. There was way less Trump than the last debate, but that just made him look better.

What's amazing, to my way of thinking, is that our information infrastructure has largely convinced us that this entirely stage-managed shit-show of an election somehow matters.

Are Rudy and Hunter banging the same (east european) tarts?

There's gotta be something about those East European women...

Neither Hunter Biden nor Rudy Giuliani can control themselves when exposed to east european women.

And look what happened to Trump!

Ukraine seems to be where most of those women come from, although FLOTUS actually hails from Borat's home country, if I'm not mistaken.

I think we've just uncovered a new conspiracy, folks; PUTIN'S BALTIC BITCHES PLOT TO RULE WORLD.

They already have the White House, so the rest is easy sledding, as they say.

CBC News website helps US State Department spread disinformation

If you're the sort of person who instinctively believes everything that comes out of the US State Department, NATO, and the many think tanks in their orbit, you'll probably find yourself nodding sagely as you read this story by Thomas Daigle.

Yup, them darned Ruskies are at it again. Gonna corrupt the 2020 election, just like when they put Trump in the White House four years ago, and it sounds like this Professor Chossudovsky chap is neck-deep in collusion with Bad Vlad.

If, on the other hand, you have grown wise to the lies peddled by NATO, State, and their many affiliated think-tanks, then you're probably aware that the odds of reading spin, misinformation, and outright bullshit are about the same at CBC News as they are at Global Research.

Which is not to deny there is Kremlin-sponsored disinformation out there. It is merely to suggest that we need to be at least as vigilant when we're reading Washington-sponsored disinformation. In fact, the lies that our own leaders tell us represent a far more insidious threat to our freedoms than the lies of our adversaries.  

We can build a Haldron Collider but we can't build a better mousetrap

Over the summer, our mouser, Doublewide, put quite the dent in the local chipmunk population. We were a little ambivalent about that, but figured it was keeping her hunting instincts sharp for the upcoming indoor mouse-hunting season.

But apparently she considers herself a big-game hunter now, and can't be bothered with mere mice anymore.

Which is how I found myself at the Tractor Supply Company picking up a couple of Rodentex plastic traps this afternoon. I prefer the old-school Victor traps, but between them not making them like they used to, and my essential tremor, it can be quite an adventure to get them baited and set.

Hence these better mouse-traps, at four times the price.

Do they work?

Ya, but they only get the job half done. After thirty seconds the mouse comes to, and walks away with the trap stuck to its head.

Nova Scotia terrorized by tsunami of racist hate

Check out Tiffany Gooch's take on the Indigenous lobster fishery in today's Toronto Star.

Racist hate, hateful racist terror, racist terrorist mobs... holy heck, things have really gone off the rails out there in Nova Scotia!

Luckily for the future of interracial harmony and reconciliation, Liberal strategist Tiffany has got to the bottom of this shit-show and named and shamed the culprits; the racist non-Indigenous (do you mean white, Tiffany?) Indian-hating lobster-men of Nova Scotia and their racist co-conspirators in the RCMP. (I know I've not used the correct nomenclature here, Tiffany, but my research shows that the vast majority of lobster fishers self-identify as "lobster-men," and I therefore use the term as a gesture of respect.)

Here's the thing. The Donald Marshal decision that established Native rights to a "moderate livelihood" was rendered in 1999. For over 21 years the political class has failed to come up with a definition of what that means. For over two decades, our political leadership has stalled, dithered, denied, and delayed moving forward, allowing these tensions to fester. The violence that exploded in the past week was utterly predictable, and is ultimately the result of failed political leadership.

While Tiffany's article oozes faux solidarity with the victims of white oppression in the lobster fishery, she is in fact a member of the political class that has created the nightmare she now blames on racist lobster-men. Harper's Holy Rollers ignored the problem for almost ten years. Liberal governments under Chretien, Paul Martin, and Justin Trudeau have ignored it even longer.

As a "Liberal strategist," Tiffany, I'm sure it feels good pointing fingers at working-class fishers worried for their livelihood, but it's the negligence, incompetence, and arrogance of the people we look to for leadership that is responsible for having created this toxic environment in the first place.

America's three existential threats

None of them are called Russia, China, or Iran. The three existential threats are the climate change crisis, the pandemic, and systemic racism. Of the three, the climate crisis has been with us the longest.

You saw the first stirrings back in the sixties, and you must admit that as "crises" go, this one's proven itself to have impressive legs. It's gone a long way from the initial concerns of climate experts over how we're fouling our nest with our pollution, to global warming, to climate change, to species decline, to the extinction rebellion, and even though we've been distracted, this one will come back and wipe us off the planet if the other existential threats don't do us in first.

Then back in January the pandemic reared its head. This completely new virus, unlike anything previously known to humanity, has laid waste to long-term care homes around the world, snuffing the lives of hundreds of thousands, the vast majority of whom would have moved to the proverbial "better place" within months anyway, and forcing us to shut down, at the behest of medical experts, the global economy at the cost of millions of livelihoods and trillions of dollars.

As if that wasn't enough of a body blow to our species, within months social scientists had discovered another pandemic even more insidious than covid; systemic racism. Unlike the old in-your-face non-systemic racism of the bygone era, which manifested as slavery, segregation, and lynchings, this new systemic racism is much more subtle, lying more in the domain of the deadly "micro-aggression."

What do America's three existential crises have in common? Each of them, being the province of experts, is subject to continuous revision and redefinition, because that's how things work in the world 'o experts.

Science evolves, don't you know! 

And because science, even social science, evolves, you can be bloody sure that by the time humanity devises a fix for any of these malicious maladies, the threat itself will have "evolved," making our remedies irrelevant, and sending the experts back to the drawing board...

It's a vicious downward spiral. Humanity is doomed.

The academy follows NASCAR and F-1; if you want tenure, bring your own sponsors

Let's say you've got a youngster keen on gaining a tenure track position. He/she's got a gaggle of post-grad degrees from the finest schools, and is eminently qualified for that tenure track post at a top institution.

Unfortunately, there are at least 101 equally qualified candidates available for every tenure track position.

It's an embarrassment of riches for the university. Which candidate will pass muster?

The candidate who ticks all the boxes?

Or the candidate who ticks all the boxes, and their uncle just endowed a chair in the economics department to the tune of fifty million dollars?

Hmm...

It's a lot like Lance Stroll and his F-1 career. Lance can obviously drive a F-1 car, but is there a serious person on the planet who imagines that he'd be driving one if Daddy wasn't rich? 

RIP Boomer, 2004-2020

Had a picture of the old girl having a last slurp of water out of Colpoy's Bay on the way to the vet for her last appointment.

It doesn't seem to want to load. Maybe in the fullness of time...

Boomsie had a great run. She was everything you'd ever want in a hound, and then some.

We will miss her.

UN goes full commie

 Get a load of this headline; China, Russia and Cuba win spots on UN Human Rights Council.

Notice how America's most loyal allies, Canada and the Marshall Islands, are excluded. Oh baby, the fix is in!

What can the UN possibly be up to? Surely it is beyond obvious to every sentient human being that America represents the very pinnacle of human endeavour. So why elevate this disgusting gaggle of enemies of freedom and democracy to the Human Rights Council?

What's next? Venezuela and Nicaragua on the UN Security Council?

If there's one thing great about America, it's that even hostile electoral adversaries like Trump and Biden are united in their faith that America is the greatest, the light unto the nations, the shining shitty on a hill, the pinnacle of human achievement, the ....

Hello?..

Hello?

Happy Turkey Day!

 I used to think Canada had thanksgiving early because we had less to be thankful for. They had Elvis and Chuck. We had Paul Anka.

Now I realize I had it back asswards. We celebrate thanksgiving early because we have so much more to be thankful for!

It would have to suck to live down there. It's painful to watch, even at a distance. They seem to be heading into some major turbulence.

Which is completely mind-boggling, because it doesn't matter one iota who wins this election that threatens to unleash a civil war.

The billionaires have won already.

Pot-addled hillbilly knows more about NK war than Canada's Foreign Minister

 Our FM Champagne has stepped up and called out the wily Erdogan.

Stop messing around in Nagorno-Karabakh, or else!

Sure.

First of all, Erdogan isn't just messing around. He's the prime mover.

Secondly, and here's where it's beyond obvious that our humble little democratic corner of the British Empire has faded into complete irrelevance, Erdogan does not in a million years have to give a shit what our FM has to say about the matter.

At this very moment, Erdogan is giving the entire world the finger. What Canada might think or not think isn't even on his radar. If even the Pompeo-Trump combine can't move Erdogan, anything our FM Champagne says means less than nothing.

The only way to end racism

We're hard-wired for racism.

By "we," I mean all of us; black, white, brown, Asian, whatever.

And it's not just us. It's everywhere up and down the evolutionary chain. We are hard-wired to reject those who are "different." 

Because, if there's a threat to the tribe, the flock, the herd... it's gonna come from the ones that are not like the rest.

That's why, when you introduce an outsider chicken to an established flock, they will peck it to death.

Luckily, humans are, at least potentially, smarter than chickens.

I've noticed in my own extended clan, over the last fifty years or so, some evidence that we are indeed smarter than chickens.

We washed up on these shores from eastern Europe, beginning after the WWI. The pioneers mostly settled in New York and New Jersey. By today's standards, all of them were white.

There followed a second wave after the WWII, oddly enough. Most of the second wave ended up in Canada, largely because they were war-sick, and figured their kids would be less likely to be cannon fodder if they grew up in Ontario, rather than in New York or New Jersey. 

Good call!

All of them were white too.

Fast forward to a family get-together sixty years later. Along the way, various family members dilly-dallied with folks quite outside our tribe. I think cousin Thomas was the pioneer in that aspect, having hooked up with a black woman way back in the... seventies?

By now, the family picnic pretty much looks like a mini UN, and the amazing thing is, we're all family!

That's how we're gonna beat racism. You can have all the government blue panels and white papers you want, but at the end of the day, the only way to beat racism is to enlarge the tribe. White gals gotta drop more brown babies. Brown gals gotta drop more white babies, and so on and so forth.

Holy shit, I see a Nobel Peace Prize in these pearls of wisdom...

Alarm bells grow louder as runaway covid train barrels down on Thanksgiving in Ontario

 After reporting the bizarre coincidence of having test numbers and case numbers both spike on the exact same day (see previous post), the CBC wasn't done with scaring the crap out of us.

Here's the "runaway train" headline.

And here's the growing alarm bells.

That's at least the third fear-mongering covid story on CBC news today. You don't think they're deliberately trying to spread fear, do you?

Neither of these stories are news, they are entirely speculative. The actual information they contain could readily be delivered without the sensationalism of alarm bells and runaway trains.

It is possible that those who come up with the scary headlines intend them to have a cautionary effect. Perhaps people will be more careful after reading them.

Perhaps, but I think it's more likely that the fear-mongering is intended to keep the populace frightened, and therefore more pliable than they otherwise might be. 

"Ontario reports record-high Covid-19 cases, also sets testing record"

No shit!

That's a headline on view at CBC News this morning.

Who can even imagine such a thing? You do a record number of tests and find a record number of cases?

Unbelievable!

Shocking!

Check out this quote:

The testing record comes as the province pushes towards its goal of processing 50,000 tests daily by the middle of October, and more than 75,000 per day by mid-November.

Let me go out on a limb here and make a prediction. I'm no expert, but I have a hunch, a "gut feeling" as it were, that as Ontario continues to ramp up testing, we'll continue to see a rising case count.

Grey-Bruce bumpkins beat The Virus

Check this out from the Toronto Star. It's not every day that we get props from national media. 

Congratulations Grey-Bruce! 

It sounds like we have a first-rate guy at the top of the health unit. Thank-you, Dr. Arra! You're worth every cent of your 30k/monthly salary!

When you get accolades from a community where a lot of folks are getting by on 30k/year, you're obviously doing something right.

Aside from having a competent guy at the top, we've also got a robust population. We have a lot of people who spend a lot of time outside and always have, which would mean healthy immune systems. There's also a lingering ethos of resiliency left over from the old days. We're not folks who run for a covid test every time we sneeze.

That's all fine and good, but we can't rest on our laurels. They keep telling us the second wave is gonna be here any day now...

Is there a market for previously vaped pot?

I asked that question of Junior when I got my first vaporizer a few years ago, because he's way more knowledgeable on this stuff than I am. 

He figured that was a bit of a stretch. 

But I asked Google the same question, and I came up with all sorts of stuff. 

First of all, it's got its own acronym!

AVB.

Stands for "already vaped bud." Who knew?

Anyway, there's a whole lotta great suggestions out there, everything from cooking and baking to making custom blunts. 

The possibilities are endless! 

You'll never get a fair "new deal," green or otherwise, from the same old ruling class

Unless they feel a little heat.

I'm not talking about the heat created by the rioting mobs. All that's going to do is bring down the wrath of the police state. 

As corrupted and dishevelled US democracy may be, it's still, so far, got the machinery of democracy in place. There remains the possibility of using that machinery for good, instead of leaving it in the hands of the corporate political professionals. That's how OAC got into Congress.

It takes a lot of grassroots work to overcome the advantage the billionaires bring to the fray.

Money.

How Canada stands up to Trump

Canadians generally and Canadian media in particular have an ingrained antipathy toward Donny J. We are, after all, a sophisticated, educated, and morally superior nation, and Trump is...well, just so darned yucky and gross.

Today, Jaime Watt's column in the Sunday Star is titled "Trump is running against democracy." Who can even imagine such a thing! Trump is so yucky and gross he is running against the very democratic ideals that make civilization possible.

Star columnist Vinay Menon, meanwhile, advises his (presumably Canadian) readership to "seek out the remarkable healing power of Biden," although evidence that Biden has "healed" much of anything in almost a half century in politics is threadbare at best.

While these A-list Canadian pundits are polishing our smug and sanctimonious superiority complex, the Royal Canadian Navy was, for the fourth time in four months, sending a warship through the Taiwan Strait. While Canada is blessed with an abundance of coastlines, none of them are anywhere near China, so it's not as if we're over there "defending our interests."

No, what we're doing is "standing with our allies" in a signal to the commies that we're a vital part of the coalition of "liberal democracies" ever anxious to keep the Yellow Peril in check. The leader of the "liberal democracies," also known variously as "the free world," the Nations of Virtue, or simply Uncle Sam's Club, is of course America's Donald J Trump.

One could question just how sound America's claim is on either liberalism or democracy, but aside from the ubiquitous Trump bashing, these questions don't come up. It's as if our pundits believe that America was that "shining city on a hill,"right up until January 20, 2017, when the light of freedom was suddenly snuffed. If we all wish hard enough, perhaps it may flicker back to life after November 3rd, when we can once again huddle under Uncle Sam's skirts without embarrassment.

In the meantime, our allies UK and US, sail through the Taiwan Strait on a regular basis, and it is imperative that we "stand with our allies," the same "liberal democracies" currently busying themselves with destroying Julian Assange in revenge for exposing their war crimes.

Here's the problem; talk is cheap. It costs nothing to write anti-Trump op-eds. On the other hand, it costs hundreds of thousands of dollars per day to sail a Halifax-class RCN frigate through the Taiwan Strait. And our frigate fleet is getting long in the tooth. We need to upgrade the fleet if we are to continue standing with our allies.

To that end, Canada is forging ahead with plans to build 15 state-of-the-art frigates at a cost of 45 billions. The lead contractor is US military supplier Lockheed Martin. For all our Trump-bashing and anti-American posturing, it is clear that, virtue-signalling aside, Canada's ruling elite remains as desperate as ever to ingratiate themselves with the Big Dog, regardless of who sits in the Oval Office.

As UK and US collude to crush Assange, CBC, Globe and Mail avert eyes

For anyone with even a remote interest in human rights and truth, Julian Assange's extradition hearing In London over the past three weeks should be the biggest story in the world. You wouldn't know it from reading our leading "news" outlets, however.

Two august "liberal democracies" are openly destroying Assange for exposing their crimes against humanity. You'd think the Globe and the CBC, both of which claim to do journalism, might find a story there, but no such luck.

The Globe did find space for a 3,000 word hagiography of famous "human rights advocate" Irwin Cotler in today's paper. Cotler is the guy who made his name fighting apartheid in South Africa, but he can't see any in Israel. There is a curious pattern in Cotler's human rights advocacy; he can only find human rights violations in countries on Uncle Sam's shit list. If you're a human rights abuser in Iran, Russia, or China, Irwin's coming for you.  If you're an IDF sniper kneecapping Palestinian children at the Gaza fence, Irwin's got your back.

Here's a particularly telling quote from the Globe's story: "Mr. Cotler is also a member of a panel that advises the British and Canadian governments on how to improve press freedom."

Yes indeedy!

*******

While we await that panel's recommendations, here's a couple of recommendations from me if you're interested in stuff the CBC and the Globe and Mail don't consider newsworthy. 

Consortium News is your best bet if you think the state destruction of Julian Assange is a news story. 

For an alternative view on Irwin Cotler's human rights advocacy, check out Yves Engler here.

Trump goes to Walter Reed... and is never seen again?

This Trump-Covid shit is starting to smell fishy to me.

I think maybe the dude over-exerted himself a bit the other night, and I can understand why he might be a little "fatigued," but generally speaking, you don't go to Walter Reed for a touch of fatigue. Nor are you hospitalized for "moderate symptoms."

And he's apparently getting shots of "experimental treatments."

Hmm...

Sure hope Novichok isn't one of them.

Covid cases surge while covid deaths flatline

 As the drumbeat for more restrictions gets incessantly louder, it might be a good time to check out these graphs from the World Health Organization.

Sure enough, cases are indeed surging, from 2,667 the week ending August 10, to 8,545 the week ending September 21. That's over a 300% surge, and that's the number people use who want to scare the crap out of you.

Meanwhile, what does the death graph say? It's basically been a flat line since the middle of July, averaging under 50 deaths per week. Canada would expect 5,500-5,600 deaths per week from all causes this year had Covid-19 never happened. 

<50 /5,500 is statistically irrelevant. It is bupkis, my friends. It's a teensy-weensy nothing-burger.

Which is why people who want to scare you whack you across the face with those surging case numbers every chance they get...

OH MY GAWD WE GOTTA SHUT 'ER DOWN AGAIN!!!