Mr. Keean Bexte, Rebel News: “KEEP THE PANDAS — Until China releases Canadian hostages”
Category: Sackville’s Memorial park
Why isn’t Canada covidwise when it comes to China?
China kept the outbreak of the coronavirus secret. It did so by oppressing its healthcare providers and citizens who dared to share information.
Furthermore, China did not hesitate to play political shenanigans within the World Health Organization, delaying the declaration of the pandemic.
Not only that, China collected medical equipment from all around the world.
Then, it “adjusted” its data… by 50%.
In addition to all this, it profited from the world’s misery by selling us personal protective equipment or PPE (some of which were even defective).
Despite the deception described above, Canada remained silent about China.
Specifically, it did not join all the countries denouncing this unacceptable behaviour.
Now, we learn that Canada has decided to partner with a Chinese company (CanSino Biologics) for the development of a vaccine:
Here is the company’s website (established in 2009):
http://www.cansinotech.com/homes/onepage/index/39.html
Of note, this company could have links/partnerships with the “Chinese Communist Military”, according to Asia times, Bangkok Post, and Mr. Spencer Fernando:
https://www.bangkokpost.com/business/1881475/travel-curbs-tighten-billions-in-stimulus-virus-update
According to the CBC, Canadians will “help develop, test potential COVID-19 vaccine from Chinese company“:
https://www.cbc.ca/news/health/vaccine-cansino-1.5566216
How can Canadians trust China and the scientific quality of its vaccine, after having experienced defective PPE? And why would their country deal with China and not with another company, perhaps older (scientifically more experienced) or perhaps located in a more trustworthy country?
Mind you, Bambi has nothing against this particular company. She is just questioning the logic behind this choice?
Did Canada consider other options? On which criteria did it base its decision?
Does Canada care about Canadians’ opinions or feelings? Many may also be questioning all this.
Who knows? Perhaps many Canadians will instantly trust this vaccine (perhaps in order not to be called “racists” like Mr. Bryan Adams). Perhaps this vaccine will hopefully work? Perhaps China will finally behave?
Perhaps all this… but Bambi, as a deer with a memory and an intuition, will be reluctant to trust, both China and… the judgment of Mr. Trudeau et al. since the beginning of the pandemic.
Didn’t Mr. Trudeau say in 2013 the following: “There’s a level of admiration I actually have for China. Their basic dictatorship is actually allowing them to turn their economy around on a dime“?
Let’s conclude this post with some older humour… It is sometimes better to smile to what we find absurd in life.
France 24: “Lebanon announces 4-day ‘full closure’ from Wednesday”… after having been “one of 15 to have successfully flattened the curve”
Lebanon has known several days with just 5 new cases of covid-19 (0 cases in many of its regions). However, as described in earlier posts, these numbers have increased to 13 and even 36 per day due to lack of discipline of some citizens.
Too bad. Good luck! One must say that what is MUCH more worrisome than the coronavirus is this country’s economic tragedy. The pandemic is the icing on the cake.
Indeed, in addition to hearing stories of food prices literally spiking (e.g., bags of rice over 6.5 times more expensive), Bambi chatted with a friend who broke her heart with the following story: Her spouse went to shop for the groceries. He witnessed a sad incident where a man stole a woman’s grocery bags, after tricking her into thinking that they made a mistake by taking each others’ bags. To use the word of her friend, “such a sad incident would have never occurred had the man not been desperate to feed his family. Who can blame him for that?” (mind you, the incident happened in a typical, middle-class, Beirut neighbourhood). Citizens have been brought to their knees, so to speak… How sad. How unfair.
To conclude this post with her friends’ own description: “our confinement in Lebanon actually began on October 17, 2019” (the day the revolt started following a massive financial crisis). Since then, people cannot have access to their savings, many lost their jobs, and schools stopped for a long period. When people manage to get money out of banks, it is still a small amount per week and the Lebanese “Lira” lost much of its value, lately reaching 4,500 to the US dollar.
Although Bambi is usually an optimistic deer in life, she has trouble seeing the rainbow of hope for Lebanon, not the one related to the pandemic. She can see the latter more easily. It is the one related to the metastatic cancer of systemic corruption that is harder to envision. Of course, Lebanon will re-invent itself and rise again in the end, as always throughout history. However, getting rid of corruption is the true battle here.
Luckily, despite the misery and even if people may perhaps not be able to have access to their savings, they still have their sense of humour. Indeed, below the France 24 news documentary, you can see a picture with a joke that has recently circulated on Whats’App. Thanks Joëlle for sharing it :).
Since when expressing frustration is racism? And since we are at it, why can’t we be “racist”?
It seems that Mr. Bryan Adams expressed a frustration against “bat eaters”, using the F. word.
He was immediately called out by a couple of so-called “social justice activists”, labelling him with the R. word.
All the Canadian media picked up the story in lockstep (here is just one example: https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/bryan-adams-instagram-1.5565624).
Don’t journalists have anything more important to do than this?
Or are they somehow diverting our attention from the main issue, cleverly raised by Mr. Lilley yesterday and that should matter more here:
Why isn’t Canada joining the USA, Australia, France, Germany, the Netherlands, Britain, the European Union, the African Union, and even countries like Kenya, Uganda, Kazakhstan, and Nigeria in condemning China?
To come back to Mr. Adam’s “racism”, are people in Taiwan racists too ??
Anyhow, Bambi as a deer who loves eating meat (minus bats) is more disturbed by Canada’s silence, about China’s attitude at the beginning of the pandemic, than by Mr. Bryan Adams’ words.
China may have not been responsible for the beginning of the tragedy (it could have started anywhere else).
However, sadly yet perhaps not surprisingly, China had a dictatorship’s reflex in dealing with the tragedy when it started and for that, it should be held accountable.
As a reminder, China’s initial response was to hide the truth (not just deny it, as this would have been a typical first reaction, especially when frozen by fear). Specifically, the Chinese government oppressed healthcare providers and citizens talking about the coronavirus, kept secret the seriousness of the outbreak, played political shenanigans within the World Health Organization to deceive us all even longer, collected protective medical equipment from all around the world, and then profited from our misery by selling us personal protective equipment, etc. (some of which were even defective).
Anyhow, this story makes Bambi recall “Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy” (or mad cow disease). At that time, people were criticizing British animal husbandry practices and rightly so:
Why wasn’t this criticism racist back then? And why is it now?
To conclude this post on a lighter note, let’s imagine for a second that the virus did not originate from the pangolin and then moved to the bat as an intermediate host. Let’s imagine that it all started in a shawarma (like donair but, of course, tastier ?)!
If people start criticizing Lebanese hygiene in cutting shawarma, will they be racist? Even if they use the full F. word, they won’t be racist. Guess what? The people of Lebanon themselves would be using it too, just like people in Taiwan and Hong Kong.
Merci Madame Ginette Reno… “oui, ça va bien aller”!
First, without lyrics:
Well, with lyrics, if you feel like practising your French by singing with Ms. Reno :)!
Selfishness or silliness in some repatriated Lebanese expats may have resulted in an extended curfew and… a possible 48-to-72-hour lockdown
After a relatively excellent job in its fight against the coronavirus (with 0 new cases in many regions), Lebanon is now seeing a surge in its covid-19 cases, with 36 new cases on Sunday (13 on Saturday, and 12 on Friday).
As a result, Lebanon has extended its curfew, from 7 PM to 5 AM. It is even, considering a full lockdown again, which could last from 48 to even 72 hours, according to the Health Minister:
Journalists from the MTV Channel tried to get information from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. The latter declined to offer any explanation, stating that its repatriating mission ends when the doors of the airplane close. The journalists then turned to the Ministry of Internal Affairs. The latter sent them to the Ministry of Health.
Luckily, the Minister of Health accepted their invitation for an interview: https://www.mtv.com.lb/en/programs/prime_time_news/2020/videos/10_may_2020/
From what Bambi understood from the documentary above (Arabic content), the first two steps of the repatriating mission were conducted in a rigorous manner by the Ministry of Health, as reported in earlier posts.
However, it seems that some Lebanese expats who have been quarantined in hotels in Beirut until their test results, forgot about the strict instructions of the Ministry of Health. As soon as they returned their regions/villages, they engaged in social activities. One expat from Nigeria received friends over (a Lebanese tradition to welcome newcomers). Others literally left their places. Some even attended social events, including Iftar dinners with loved ones, after a day of fast (Ramadan month is still on).
After investigations by the health authorities, it turned out that the person who received his friends over infected them all with the coronavirus. One of those infected guests happens to be a soldier who works in the military tribunal. Well, he then had an Iftar with 12 of his colleagues. They are now all infected.
Why can’t some citizens be covidwise? Is using one’s brain too much to ask for, even if we are happy to be back home or even if we are celebrating a holy month? Don’t we have a collective duty in a pandemic, toward our fellow citizens? The latter have been sacrificing, by putting their lives and economy on hold, for over three months. They deserve some respect and consideration.
Mr. Mario Dumont: “Canada without a budget” [“Le Canada sans budget”]
First, here Mr. Dumont’s original article published on May 8, 2020 in the Journal de Montréal:
https://www.journaldemontreal.com/2020/05/08/le-canada-sans-budget
Second, here is a quick translation:
“Should the Canadian government have a budget? Justin Trudeau has hinted that he will not table any. The budget is a forecasting exercise. With this year’s situation being too unpredictable, he said the exercise would become pointless.
Generally, the exercise is done in late February or early March.
Minister Morneau pushed it back a bit this year, and then we found ourselves in the middle of a crisis.
In the past month, the Prime Minister announced unprecedentedly large budgetary measures, but did so at daily press conferences.
From a legal point of view, completely new measures, such as the CERB [Canadian Emergency Response Benefit], have taken their legal foundation in the bills adopted urgently in Parliament.
From a strictly legal point of view, it could therefore be said that a budget is not mandatory.
But…
Minimum
The opposition parties are demanding at least an economic update, a kind of a lean version of a budget.
I would say this is the minimum. Budgeting is not trivial, even if the forecast it contains may become obsolete after a few months, during turbulent times.
Mr. Trudeau maintains that he was completely transparent in disclosing all his measures daily and stating the cost of each. True, but this has nothing to do with a budget. Unpacking a long list of expenses is not the same as budgeting.
Budgeting brings income and expenses together. It deals with debt financing, an economic strategy, and the interaction between measures, for example.
The CERB and the wage subsidy are communicating vessels. Where are we at? The taxpayers who receive this aid will return part of it via their tax, for those who earn enough. How much do we estimate?
Spend, spend
Making a budget is the difference between spending relentlessly and having some sort of plan, even if you are going through a storm.
A budget also provides the government with a framework for future decisions. These difficult decisions will come quickly.
Next June, should we extend a few billion more to extend the wage subsidy for companies that have not resumed their activities?
In July, the Trudeau government will have to rule on the CERB. Add months or turn the millions of people still out of work on regular EI [Employment Insurance]?
These decisions must be made as a function of the needs expressed, but also according to the government’s ability to pay.
Normally, the budget provides the government with a framework for drawing the line among all possible expenses.
Right now, we would rather have the impression that Mr. Trudeau is spending frantically and enjoying announcing it during his press briefings [mind you, the French verb for “enjoying” is “jouit”. One must say that it has a sexual connotation in the language of Molière. If Bambi is not mistaken, it is not the case in the language of Shakespeare].
The urgency of the situation justifies much of it, but still. Is anyone still keeping a record/account on his/her calculator somewhere?
In the absence of a budget, we are asked for a complete act of faith in Justin Trudeau. And rigorous financial management is not his specialty.”
ABC News: “Can Coronavirus kill Lebanon’s revolution?”
Bambi just came across the following moving article and video documentary (29 minutes, 29 seconds) by Mr. Adam Harvey, from Foreign Correspondent (ABC News):
https://www.abc.net.au/foreign/revolution-in-the-time-of-corona/12216964
Both Mr. Trudeau and Mr. Ford did not respect travel bans to go to their cottages whilst a 19-year-old youth is arrested in NB, fined $292, and sent back to Ontario
First, here is the story:
Second, both Mr. Daniel Arefi and his family, should have educated themselves better about the emergency measures in New Brunswick in the middle of the covid-19 pandemic.
In addition, perhaps the airline company should have not accepted to fly Mr. Arefi from Toronto (Ontario) to NB. Did anyone ask him about the purpose of his trip, essential business or not? Didn’t they tell him about the travel ban before the flight?
Upon his arrival, this youth seems to have explained that his trip was to “visit” his family. According to his dad, it was rather to move back to NB to live with them (after having lost his job in Toronto, as a barber).
Miscommunication? Maybe.
Perhaps this is the result of uncertain times for a young man who may have been forced, by the economic circumstances, to come back to live with or closer to his parents. Perhaps that was not his first choice at this stage of his life. Perhaps in his mind, it was just a visit (even if visits can sometimes last a lifetime). Perhaps this is how he and his parents negotiated this tough crisis together. Anyhow, this is neither our business, nor the focus of this post.
In this story, we can see the following: On one hand, we have a province serious about its covid-19 measures (bravo, as this is meant to protect us!). However, on the other, we have NB airport staff who went a bit TOO far in the application of the provincial emergency measures.
This has resulted in an “unfortunate situation” for the individual and his family, to borrow the words of Premier Higgs (who was asked a question about this at today’s press conference, as per the article above).
We can even add that this situation is not just “unfortunate”, it is both ridiculous and unfair.
Since Mr. Arefi has already landed in NB and he does not have a job in Toronto anymore, why didn’t we allow him to self-quarantine here (his dad seems to have talked about having rented an apartment for him for this purpose). We would have allowed this family to be happily re-united in 14 days from now.
Fine him only, if this is necessary… but why was he handcuffed whilst being arrested? Was this necessary? Why was he sent back to Toronto, after all the flying hassle and costs? Is this the safest and wisest legal decision, even if he did not act in a “covidwise” way?
Talking about fines, were Mr. Trudeau and Mr. Ford fined for having gone to their cottages?
Surely not… even if they did not set the good examples to all of us, including to Mr. Arefi.
In contrast, we do not hesitate to harshly punish this youth/his family and so many other citizens across the country.
All this has a name in English: Double standard.
“Deux poids, deux mesures”, in French.
In Lebanese Arabic, it sounds lighter: “Some get the olive oil” (= health-enhancing), “others the trans fats” (=health compromising).
Regardless of the language, the meaning is the same: it seems UNFAIR.
Bambi likes Mr. Dave Rubin… One day she will read his new book
