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.
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.
Meh. I gotta admit, I'm pretty numb / antagonistic to this sort of thing at this point. In my view, race-based politics / privileges are antithetical to the idea of democracy and equality. I don't support any race-based group attempting to gain privilege in a democratic country, and I can't see any reason why a race-based group should be treated with respect, as their aims are inherently racist.
One of the things we're witnessing in the USA currently, is a backlash to this sort of minority interest superseding majority well being. Sorta like how Jody Wilson-Raybould's bail reforms put Indigenous demographic representation in prison ahead of general public good/well-fare, and triggered the revolving door offender issues we've been trying to sort out for the past 6 years. For some stupid reason we don't call that racism, even though she took action in a position of power to explicitly benefit her own race. Framed slightly differently, what she did is like "destroying your enemy from within", an overtly hostile action taken against the interests of the majority of Canadians. It's about on par with how Harjit Sajjan used Canadian spec ops to prioritize non-Canadian Sikh rescues during the pull out of Kabul, an act our spy agencies flagged, but our liberal government turned around and said we couldn't call that racism, because we wouldn't consider the action racist if Sajjan wasn't also a Sikh. Our government's trying to tell us that using government influence to benefit your own race isn't racist: it's utter absurdity. The public isn't as stupid and gullible as some think, its just that so far the alternatives at the polling station have proven even less appealing.
On Lemmy I'm likely a minority voice, but I reckon there are a significant number of Canadians who feel the same. The more unreasonable 'demands' from such groups, the more likely that chatter about a minority-privilege industry will increase -- the more likely for a catastrophic blow back against any and all equity efforts that have been brought in to date. BC's already got a few politicians shifting into a new party with very negative views of current norms towards Indigenous rights -- and seeing indigenous people get more and more race-based privileges and exceptional treatment in government, isn't going to quell that resentment at all. Putting a group of racists, who feel empowered/entitled to speak as racists and only focus on their race-based interests, up as leaders in Canada, a democratic country, just seems wrong and embarrassing. Like how the hell do introductions get made with a straight face in these circumstances.... "Hi, we're Canada, a democratic nation that tries our best to conform to the principle that all people are created equal and are equally deserving of dignity and respect. And here's the group of racists, who have power based on their race/blood, you need to meet with and appease if you want to get things done, apparently?". If Canada can't come to an international gathering as a united voice, one able to enact/make good on decisions made by the group of international leaders, then we likely shouldn't be part of that group -- though maybe that's the "destroy them from within" approach that FN are targeting here.
At most, in terms of international politics, treat their leaders like premiers. Hell, some of our premiers are FN, and from what we've seen Wab Kinew's one of the most sane premiers on deck currently -- if FN want to speak for Canada at the federal level, they can run for election on a platform that benefits / considers everyone involved and get a majority mandate, rather than just their race-specific (racist) interests.
Like I disagree strongly with the recent bills Carney's put forward, as they seem like over-reach -- but if the alternative is for my interests to be subservient to a non-elected racially-fenced minority group.... at least I can theoretically vote to ditch Carney and crowd next time (hopefully there'll be viable alternatives! Maybe a FN party with a broader view!).
Carney was never a good choice, he was just a less bad choice then Pierre. Pierre would've gladly started chopping up the country for Trump, and/or brought Musk north for a Doge north department, or something even worse. Jagmeet wasn't realistic, and didn't offer a great platform, in part because they conceded to the libs before it even got rollin just to try and stop the cons.
Carney is a staunch neo-liberal, with a banker background to boot. Him being pro-market and pro-international business (ie. non canadian business) isn't 'new' for him. Him throwing small businesses under the bus is totally on brand. But every party toted the same general neo-liberal approach, without any pushes for drastic overhauls of existing norms that would've been needed if we were to actually respond to what's going on. We needed a more drastic shift away from the market-based rules, because the US had thrown out the rule book / started overtly breaking them on a routine basis -- Carney, and all the rest, are still sticking to those old rules hoping things will blow over. Opening markets and acting like its business as usual granting access / control to US interests because "business!", while the US president openly says they'll be selling deficient military hardware to their allies cause "maybe they wont be allies for long". Hell, the US bailed after like half a day at the G7, and spent most of that time whining about why Russia wasn't included... if you think the status quo is still in the room...
And its unlikely that govt will listen to feedback between elections. Especially if you're unfortunate enough to be from a riding that ALWAYS votes one way or another, as many of us are, because why would politicians even bother listening to your feedback if the vote is pre-determined in your area already? Alberta can be given pipelines left right and center, they'll still vote conservative. Parts of Vancouver can be completely ignored for decades because they always vote NDP.
I think it became inevitable that traditional 'sites' were going to be in trouble once AI bots gained ground. The user interface is much more organic / user friendly, given that it can be conversational.
It's why big corps were so quick to start building walls/moats around the technology. If end users had control over what sites their AI bots used to pull information from, that'd be a win for the consumer/end-user, and potentially legitimate news sites depending on how the payment structure is sorted out. Eg. Get a personalized bot that references news articles from a curated list of trusted / decent journalist sites across a broad political spectrum, and you'd likely have a really great "AI assistant" to keep you up to date on various current events. This sort of thing would also represent an existential threat to things like Googles core marketing business, as end users could replace many of their 'searches' with a curated personalized AI assistant trained on just reputable sources.
Big tech wants to control that, so that they can advertise via those bots / prioritize their own agenda / paid content. So they want to control the AI sources, and restrict end users' ability to filter garbage. If users end up primarily interacting with an AI avatar, and you can control the products / information that avatar presents, you have a huge amount of control over the individuals and their spending habits. Not much of a surprise.
It'd be cool to see a user friendly local LLM that allowed users to point it at reference sites of their choosing. Pair that with a news-site data standard that streamlines the ability to pull pertinent data, and let news agencies charge a small fee for access to those APIs to fund it a bit. Shifting towards LLM based data delivery, they could even potentially save a bit in terms of print / online publications -- don't need a fancy expensive user-facing web app, if they're all just talking to their LLM-based model-hot AI assistant anyway.
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!!"