Belgian farmers paralyzed Brussels on Friday with a Netherlands-style farmers' Freedom Convoy, to protest the government's planned emission cuts to fight climate change.
March 3, 2023 - "Convoys of tractors brought traffic in Brussels to a standstill Friday, as thousands of Belgian farmers protested the Flemish regional government’s plans to limit nitrogen emissions from agriculture. Some 2,700 tractors rolled into Brussels from the Flanders region, according to police estimates, filling the streets with a cacophony of honks as farmers vented their anger over the planned cuts, which they say threaten to put many of them out of business.
"'“It’s an economic and social catastrophe,” said Nele Kempeneers, a spokesperson for Belgian farmers' association Boerenbond, one of the unions that organized the protest. “A lot of farms will have to limit the amount of animals that they keep, or simply close down.'
"Some protestors plastered signs to the front of their tractors, voicing their opposition. 'No farmers, no food,' read one. 'Don’t forget who takes care of your food,' read another. Others started a fire and set off firecrackers on Rue de la Loi, in the heart of the European quarter. But this was a different group capitalizing on the protest — not farmers, a member of Boerenbond told POLITICO.
"Last year, the Flemish government put forward a package of measures to cut nitrate pollution. An initial agreement unraveled following a public consultation period over the summer. The parties making up the ruling coalition returned to the negotiating table this week but were unable to strike a deal.
"The planned cuts unfairly place a heavier burden on agriculture than industry, claim farming unions, who have the support of the Flemish Christian Democrats. 'There’s no future for us, we cannot go on like this,' Ruben Bauwens, a 30-year-old dairy farmer, told POLITICO.
"Similar protests took place last year in the Netherlands after the Dutch government approved an agreement that aimed to slash nitrogen emissions by up to 70 percent in some regions. Intensive livestock farming and the use of fertilizers in both the Netherlands and Belgium have contributed to levels of nitrogen ... in the soil and water that exceed thresholds on emissions set by the EU [European Union]."
March 3, 2023 - "The Milton man accused of second-degree murder in the shooting death of an armed intruder in his home last month has been released from jail on $130,000 bail. The family of 22-year-old Ali Mian hugged outside a Brampton, Ont., courtroom moments after Superior Court Justice Bruce Durno consented to his release.
"The judge said he took into account the position proposed by the Crown prosecutor who consented to Mian’s release, before imposing a number of conditions agreed upon by Crown and defence attorneys.
"Halton police said that on Feb. 19 at around 5 a.m., five suspects entered a home on Gibson Crescent in Milton. Investigators believe the intruders were intent on committing a robbery. Mian, who lived in the home with his mother, confronted the suspects and a number of gunshots were fired. When police arrived they found and identified one of the suspects as 21-year-old Alexander Amoroso-Leacock of Toronto. He was pronounced dead at the scene.
"Police made two arrests: 20-year-old Romario Clarke of Oshawa was charged with one count of break and enter and one count of unauthorized possession of a firearm; Mian was charged with second-degree murder. Three other suspects fled the scene. Police say the intruders were driving a light-coloured Dodge Charger with a sunroof and black wheels.
"Mian’s lawyer Jag Virk told Global News shortly after Mian was charged that his client is a registered firearm owner and used his gun legally against an armed intruder. Virk also said Mian should never have been charged with murder for protecting his mother from someone that broke into his home. 'His intention was not to kill the intruder, he only shot at him once,' said Virk in a statement released to Global News saying it was a case of self-defence.
"Evidence heard during Thursday’s court proceeding is under a publication ban.... Mian is next scheduled to appear in court in Milton on March 16."
Researchers find that much of the discussion of misinformation on social media is driven by beliefs that have no factual basis – in other words, by misinformation.
January 28, 2023 - "Alarmist narratives about online misinformation continue to gain traction despite evidence that its prevalence and impact are overstated. Drawing on research examining the use of big data in social science and reception studies, we identify six misconceptions about misinformation and highlight the conceptual and methodological challenges they raise.
"The first set of misconceptions concerns the prevalence and circulation of misinformation.
First, scientists focus on social media because it is methodologically convenient, but misinformation is not just a social media problem.
Second, the internet is not rife with misinformation or news, but with memes and entertaining content.
Third, falsehoods do not spread faster than the truth; how we define (mis)information influences our results and their practical implications.
"The second set of misconceptions concerns the impact and the reception of misinformation.
Fourth, people do not believe everything they see on the internet: the sheer volume of engagement should not be conflated with belief.
Fifth, people are more likely to be uninformed than misinformed; surveys overestimate misperceptions and say little about the causal influence of misinformation.
Sixth, the influence of misinformation on people’s behavior is overblown as misinformation often 'preaches to the choir'....
Conclusion
We identified six misconceptions about the prevalence and impact of misinformation and examined the conceptual and methodological challenges they raise.
First, social media makes the perfect villain; but before blaming it for the misinformation problem, more work needs to be done on legacy media and offline networks.
Second, the misinformation problem should be evaluated at the scale of the information ecosystem, for example, by including news consumption and news avoidance in the equation.
Third, we should be mindful of the categories that we use, like “fake” versus “true” news since they influence our results and their practical implications.
Fourth, more qualitative and quantitative reception studies are needed to understand people’s informational practices. Digital traces do not always mean what we expect them to, and often, to fully understand them, fine-grained analyses are needed.
Fifth, the quantity of misinformed people is likely to be overestimated. Surveys measuring misbeliefs should include “Don’t know” or “Not sure” options and avoid wording that encourages guessing.
Sixth, we should resist monocausal explanations and blaming misinformation for complex socioeconomic problems. People mostly consume information they are predisposed to accept; this acceptance should not be conflated with attitude or behavioral change. More broadly, conclusions drawn from engagement metrics, online experiments, or surveys need to be taken with a grain of salt, as they tend to overestimate the prevalence of misbeliefs, and tell us little about the causal influence of misinformation and its reception....
"To appropriately understand and fight misinformation, it is crucial to have these conceptual and methodological blind spots in mind. Just like misinformation, misinformation on misinformation could have deleterious effects (Altay et al., 2020; Jungherr & Schroeder, 2021; Miró-Llinares & Aguerri, 2021; Van Duyn & Collier, 2019), such as diverting society’s attention and resources from deeper socioeconomic issues or fueling people’s mistrust of the media even more (Altay & Acerbi, 2022). Misinformation is mostly a symptom of deeper sociopolitical problems rather than a cause of these problems (Ramaciotti Morales et al., 2022). Fighting the symptoms can help, but it should not divert us from the real causes, nor overshadow the need to fight for access to accurate, transparent, and quality information." Read more: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/20563051221150412 doi: https://doi.org/10.1177/20563051221150412
Spotting Fake News on Social Media, WXYZ-TV Detroit, January 28, 2022
February 21, 2023 - "The State Department-backed National Endowment for Democracy (NED) has cut ties with a "disinformation" monitoring group after it was revealed the organization was targeting non-liberal and conservative news organizations....
"Earlier this month, the Washington Examiner reported that a British organization called the Global Disinformation Index (GDI) with ties to a pair of American nonprofits is 'feeding blacklists to ad companies with the intent of defunding and shutting down websites peddling alleged "disinformation."'
"GDI gathers a 'dynamic exclusion list' that it provides to major companies such as Microsoft’s Xandr, according to the report that cites emails as evidence. GDI has also identified the 10 'riskiest' news organizations, including the New York Post, which broke the Hunter Biden laptop story that was censored by Big Tech and falsely dismissed as Russian disinformation in some media outlets. RealClearPolitics, Reason and the Federalist are also among the websites named....
"The National Endowment for Democracy – one of the American nonprofits involved -- caught wind of the news and decided to stop providing cash to the GDI. NED vice president of communications Leslie Aun told the Examiner that the group’s 'mandate is to work around the world and not in the United States' and shouldn’t be involved in domestic politics.
"'Recently, we became aware that one of our grantees, the Global Disinformation Index (GDI), was engaged in an initiative, funded by a different donor, that focused on specific U.S. media outlets,' Aun continued. 'We recognize the important work GDI has done with NED support in other countries to help preserve the integrity of the information space and counter authoritarian influence. However, given our commitment to avoid the perception that NED is engaged in any work domestically, directly or indirectly, we will no longer provide financial support to GDI.'"
Mar 1, 2023 - "A Lower Mainland Cannabis company says it has received approval from Health Canada to legally possess, produce, and sell cocaine.
"Adastra Holdings Inc. in Langley received a Controlled Drug and Substances Dealer’s Licence in August last year, which — at the time — only allowed it to produce and distribute up to 1,000 grams of psilocybin and psilocin, psychoactive compounds found in various species of fungi. Now the company says its dealer’s licence has been expanded to include cocaine, allowing it to interact with up to 250 grams of the drug. This includes permission to import coca leaves to manufacture and synthesize cocaine.
“Harm reduction is a critically important and mainstream topic, and we are staying at the forefront of drug regulations across the board,' said Adastra CEO Michael Forbes. 'We proactively pursued the amendment to our dealer’s licence to include cocaine back in December 2022. We will evaluate how the commercialization of this substance fits in with our business model at Adastra in an effort to position ourselves to support the demand for a safe supply of cocaine'....
"British Columbians can carry up to 2.5 grams of opioids, meth, cocaine, and more without fear of criminal penalties due to an exemption under the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act (CDSA), which is in effect until Jan. 31, 2026 throughout the entire province. BC is the first Canadian province to receive an exemption under the CDSA."
Chinese Billionaire Made $1 Million Donation to Trudeau Charity Following Election that Brought Liberals to Power | National Review - Ari Blaff: February 28, 2023 - "Ahead of the 2015 Canadian elections, the Chinese Community Party (CCP) reportedly considered targeting Justin Trudeau, then the Liberal Party’s national leader, to be the recipient of a million-dollar 'donation' via the Pierre Elliott Trudeau Foundation, named after his father and former prime minister. Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS) sources told the Globe & Mail, on condition of anonymity, that a commercial attaché at a Chinese consulate in Canada instructed Zhang Bin, a billionaire political adviser to the CCP, to transfer $1 million to the Trudeau Foundation.... [T]he Chinese government further added that it would reimburse Zhang for the political donation....
"[T]he following year the prime minister attended a party fundraiser in Toronto hosted by the Chinese Business Chamber of Commerce which Zhang attended. Shortly after the fundraiser, Zhang and Niu Genssheng, a wealthy Chinese business leader turned philanthropist, made a joint $1 million donation 'to honour the memory and leadership' of former prime minister Pierre Eliott Trudeau. According to the Globe & Mail report, twenty percent of the contribution was earmarked for academic fellowships and scholarships, with the remaining bulk set aside for the University of Montreal’s law school that included grants for college students to visit China.
"However, the prime minister dismissed any nefarious connections between Zhang’s contribution to the Trudeau foundation in a statement on Monday. 'Following his election as Leader of the Liberal Party, the Prime Minister withdrew his involvement in the affairs of the foundation for the duration of his involvement in federal politics,' Press Secretary Ann-Clara Vaillancourt noted.
"The revelations come on the heels of investigative reporting by Globe & Mail last week which revealed that the CCP meddled in Canada’s 2021 federal elections with the aim of re-electing Justin Trudeau.... 'Most important, the intelligence reports show that Beijing was determined that the Conservatives did not win. China employed disinformation campaigns and proxies connected to Chinese-Canadian organizations in Vancouver and the GTA [Greater Toronto Area], which have large mainland Chinese immigrant communities, to voice opposition to the Conservatives and favour the Trudeau Liberals,' journalists Robert Fife and Steven Chase wrote.
Trudeau Foundation returning $200K to Beijing-linked donor | CBC News - Darren Major: March 1, 2023 - "The Pierre Elliott Trudeau Foundation is returning a donation worth thousands of dollars made by an adviser to the Chinese government. In 2016, Zhang Bin, a wealthy Chinese businessman and adviser to the Chinese government, made a donation to the foundation worth $200,000. A story published by the Globe and Mail on Tuesday suggests that Canadian security officials linked that donation back to the Chinese government. Foundation president Pascale Fournier released a statement on Wednesday saying that, in light of the Globe's reporting, the foundation — which funds and promotes academic and public interest research — has reimbursed Zhang the full amount of the donation....
"The donation has drawn scrutiny from the Conservatives, who say it has compromised a recent report on foreign interference in the 2021 election. A report assessing the work of top civil servants tasked with monitoring and alerting the public of foreign interference in that election ... released Tuesday ... was written by Morris Rosenberg, a former senior public servant for more than 30 years. Rosenberg also served as the [Trudeau] foundation's president when Zhang made the donation.
"Even before Rosenberg's report was made public Tuesday, the Conservative Party said those ties discredit his work. 'This discredits the report and proves we need a separate investigation, and the government should fully cooperate with the House committee studying this very issue. They must cease their obstructionism, and the NDP must stop protecting the Liberals in committee so Canadians can finally discover the extent of [Chinese Communist Party] interference'.... Intergovernmental Affairs Minister Dominic LeBlanc dismissed the Conservatives' assertions, calling them a 'gratuitous smear.'" Read more: https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/trudeau-foundation-returning-donation-chinese-government-adviser-1.6764847
Frebruary 28, 2023 - "California’s state of emergency for the COVID-19 pandemic is finally over, ending on Tuesday after nearly three years in place. And after three tumultuous years, a new survey from the Public Policy Institute of California found that the majority [of] Californians have a bleak economic outlook for the future....
"California Gov. Gavin Newsom first issued the emergency order in response to the pandemic on March 4, 2020, giving him the power to issue sweeping mandates without needing the approval of state lawmakers. Newsom announced last October that he would end the emergency on Feb. 28....
"According to the PPIC survey, California has seen dramatic swings in economic conditions throughout the three-year emergency, starting with severe job loss that eventually rebounded, leading to the economic volatility of the past year as inflation remains high..... At the start of the pandemic the PPIC survey found that around 80 percent of Californians had poor economic expectations. That number was cut in half in 2021, but now has risen up to 66 percent.
"California’s poor economic outlook can be seen in the state’s jobs report. According to the PPIC, the state lost 2.8 million jobs in the first two months of the pandemic, but by October 2022 California had regained 2.8 million jobs. The rebound in the job market, however, was not a one-for-one ratio for jobs lost to jobs gained.
"Food service, arts and entertainment are still well below their pre-pandemic jobs levels, and government, retail and manufacturing jobs have still not returned to their pre-pandemic numbers. Transportation and warehousing jobs are up 16 percent, on the other hand.
"The survey reported that 53 percent of Californians report themselves to be worse off financially than they were at the onset of the pandemic, compared to just nine percent who report as better off."
