Ned Yeung
More strong arm bullying from Trump to defy court orders and put himself above US law.
If DOGE can't defy Federal Judge Lipton Hollander's order, then Trump will cut Social Security to everyone.
There are no institutions of the USA.
"According to the Trump administration, Musk and DOGE must have access to everyone’s most personal data — or you, your parents, or your grandparents can’t have Social Security."
Ned Yeung
Donald Trump wants to send American citizens to concentration camps for boycotting a billionaire corporation, causing the loss of half their stock value.
This is not a drill.
Ned Yeung
"The United States is no longer a nation under the rule of law.
I urge Canadians to avoid travel. Illegal detentions and kidnapping by ICE have become all too common for travellers and those with working VISAs.
Stay away at this time."
- Federal MP Charlie Angus
Now if only the Canadian government would step up and make this travel advisory official (on travel.gc.ca/travelling/advisories)
Watch the video here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lt_quvb5bW8
Note: I didn't share the BoingBoing link that MP Angus did, because it has some funny errors. If you want to read it, it's in the ALT text, but I felt the video itself was more accurate.
Ned Yeung
Ned Yeung
U.S. could lose democracy status, says global watchdog.
"If it continues like this, the United States will not score as a democracy when we release [next year's] data," said Staffan Lindberg, head of the Varieties of Democracy project, run out of Sweden's University of Gothenburg.
"If it continues like this, democracy [there] will not last another six months."
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U.S. President Donald Trump's speech at the Department of Justice on Friday was 'one of the most extraordinary ever by a sitting president,' according to a professor who studies democratic erosion.
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The report refers to ongoing events in the U.S. as unprecedented, mentioning Trump pardoning 1,500 criminals who supported him; firing independent agency watchdogs without process; purging apolitical police and military brass; ignoring laws; and his unilaterally deleting federal programs, and even a whole organization, created by U.S. Congress.
He's just called his predecessor's pardons void and vacated. He gave a bitterly partisan speech at the Department of Justice, demanding the prosecution of the media and certain adversaries. He threatened numerous universities with sanctions. He invoked a 227-year-old war measures law during peacetime — for the first time ever — to deport accused gang members without due process. And, most importantly, when that deportation plan wound up in court, he may have — although it's still in dispute — defied a court order, cracking the ultimate constitutional safeguard.
It's not just the scope of what Trump's done that has Lindberg envisioning the once-unthinkable: removing the U.S. from the democratic list and shifting it to the second-lowest tier among five, to a so-called electoral autocracy. It's also the speed.
Lindberg said Trump is doing many of the same things as Recep Tayyip Erdoğan in Turkey, Viktor Orbán in Hungary and Narendra Modi in India — only faster.
"It's the pace," Lindberg said. "He's trying to do in a few months what it took them eight to 10 years to achieve.… It's very dire."
https://www.cbc.ca/news/world/trump-democracy-report-1.7486317
Ned Yeung
Doctors in Gaza described scenes of “armageddon” as they struggled to tend to hundreds of dead and wounded, including children with severed limbs, as Israel launched some of its deadliest-ever strikes, shattering the relative calm of a ceasefire.
The ferocious bombardment came after Israel had imposed a two-week blockade on aid, supplies, and electricity, crippling the emergency responses. It pounded swathes of the strip early Tuesday morning, bringing an already struggling healthcare system to its knees.
Palestinian health officials said that in just a few hours alone, over 400 people had been killed, the vast majority women and children.
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On Tuesday the Israeli government broke the ceasefire and began bombing Gaza once again. The attacks targeted a number of residential at killed at least 400 people, most of them children.
Reporting from Gaza City, Al Jazeera’s Hani Mahmoud said that Al-Ahli Hospital had been overwhelmed with mass casualties and that entire families were arriving dead.
“Last night’s attacks prove again that there is no safe place across Gaza,” said Mahmoud. “People had gone back to bombed homes and evacuation centers, thinking it was going to be safe due to the ceasefire, but that was not the case. They were killed inside these very places.”
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“Israeli forces have signed a death warrant for Palestinian children in Gaza as they carry out nonstop attacks, continue to destroy civilian infrastructure, and prevent any humanitarian aid from reaching Palestinians in need,” said Defense for Children Palestine’s Ayed Abu Eqtaish in a statement. “This is nothing short of genocide.”
Israeli officials say that the country was given permission by the Trump administration to attack Gaza. “All those who seek to terrorize not just Israel but also the United States of America, will see a price to pay,” said White House spokesperson Karoline Leavitt on Fox News. “All hell will break loose.”
“I am sending Israel everything it needs to finish the job, not a single Hamas member will be safe if you don’t do as I say,” Trump posted to Truth Social.
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Dr Muhammad Abuafash, director of Palestinian Medical Relief, who rushed to treat those at al-Ahli hospital in Gaza City, said the few medics available struggled to decide who to treat first, as patients and bloodied bodies intermingled on the floor.
“The vast majority of the wounded are children. We’re talking about large numbers of children with severed limbs,” he said in desperation, adding that emergency workers were still pulling the wounded and the dead out from under the rubble.
“There are not enough medical facilities or supplies, nor are there enough medical personnel. The doctors deal with injuries without preference, unfortunately.”
Dr Tanya Haj-Hassan, a paediatric intensive care physician working with Medical Aid for Palestinians inside Nasser Hospital in southern Gaza, described being woken before dawn by an “airstrike frenzy.”
“The ER was just chaos, patients everywhere on the floor,” she said in a voice recording, adding that the paediatric intensive area unit beds were full and in the first couple of hours, more than 70 bodies were brought in and taken immediately to the morgue.
“There were probably three men, and the rest were all children, women, the elderly – it was everybody caught in their sleep, still wrapped in their blankets. Terrifying, a level of horror and evil that is hard to articulate. It felt like armageddon.”
Dr Mohammad Qishta, a Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF) emergency doctor at Nasser Hospital, said the emergency department was “disastrous.”
“We received no less than 400 cases in less than two hours. We received many bodies and parts of bodies, most of them children and women,” he continued.
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At our site, Tareq Hajjaj reported on a child who watched their mother burn to death before dying himself:
On Tuesday night, in the Qarara area east of Khan Younis in southern Gaza, brothers Muhammad and Ibrahim Hamidi decided to take their children and flee to a less dangerous location east of the city. The sound of heavy gunfire from tanks stationed near their home after a brutal night of nonstop shelling and bombardment pushed them to head toward the Mawasi area of Khan Younis, the same coastal stretch of land that had served as a so-called “safe zone” throughout the war.
The brothers arrived and set up their tents. In the middle of the night, Muhammad heard the sound of bombing. He emerged from his tent, hundreds of meters away from his brother Ibrahim’s. He was rushing toward the sound of the bombs to help people who had been hit — a common sight in Gaza — but he didn’t expect that the bombed tent would belong to his brother.
“I ran out, thinking the bombing might have targeted a family we know. When I arrived, I found my brother lying on the ground, covered in blood, and his wife holding their child, both of them on fire,” Muhammad Hamidi told Mondoweiss. “My nephew was lying on the ground, injured in his head and back, and looking at his mother. She was engulfed in flames with his younger baby brother. Then my nephew turned his head toward his father, who was bleeding after the missile struck his head.”
With deep sadness, Muhammad says that in his final moments, his three-year-old nephew watched his mother and brother burn. “The child was helpless,” he said.
Sources:
Ned Yeung
So to be clear, Donald Trump ignored a district judge's orders when he tried to invoke a wartime act from the 18th century to illegally deport thousands with no due process under the auspices of being gang members (with as little proof as "too much skin art") and therefore "international terrorists", claiming that the judge has no authority over him, disobeying the court order, and continuing to commit his crimes.
The normal route for a law abiding person who doesn't agree with a judge's order would be to follow the order then appeal it, to a higher court if need be. There were plenty of legal options available to him (which are often blocked to those who are marginalized and not so privileged).
Instead, when questioned why Trump disobeyed a court order, he responded by calling for the judge to be impeached, calling him a "Radical Left Lunatic of a Judge, a troublemaker and agitator", indicating that he was "sadly appointed by Barack Hussein Obama", despite the fact that the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court who rebuked him for this blatant disregard of the law, John Roberts, is a conservative institutionalist appointed by George W. Bush.
"This is wartime." "I can tell my enemies by the way they look, and that makes them a terrorist and enemy of the state." "The court of law has no authority over me." "Anybody who disagrees with me is a radical left lunatic."
This is authoritarian fascism in full display.
Ned Yeung
Premier Danielle Smith visited the University of Alberta Faculty of Law today. 👀
Lawyers and future lawyers know that Bill 26 and the UCP’s anti-trans bills are regressive, unconstitutional, and just plain wrong. And they had a message for her today. 👏
Ned Yeung
One thing I totally don't get about the anti-vaccination "logic"... so the measles vaccine is the old-fashioned kind which introduces a bit of weakened virus into the system so your body can identify it to build up a natural immunity.
So how can anti-vaxxers argue that you should just let yourself get sick with measles, suffer through the whole thing, then as long as you survive you will have immunity and be stronger for it?
That's exactly what the vaccine does, except safely, without the consequences.
You are introducing your body to the disease, to build a natural immunity. You can do it safely, or you can do it with great pain and suffering and even the potential of death. So yeah... uh, let's go with Option B to achieve the same result?
Is that really what's best for your children, and mine?
Forget about safely learning swordplay with practice wooden or bamboo swords so that you know how to handle it before the time comes when you need it, let's just give everyone real swords and send them off into battle with no training.
"Don't live in fear," live in chaos.
So anyways, on to the public health alert for Alberta and Edmonton specifically, even more specifically, people who were at the Stollery Children's Hospital's emergency department between March 14 at 10 p.m. and March 15 at 12:30 a.m. and anyone who was at the Belle Rive Medicentres Family Health Care Clinic in northeast Edmonton on March 12 between 2:15 p.m. and about 5:15 p.m.:
'Health officials say anyone who was exposed to a possible confirmed case may be at risk of getting sick and is strongly encouraged to review their vaccination records, AHS said.
Anyone who was potentially exposed and was born in or after 1970, and has less than two documented doses of vaccine, is at risk for developing measles and should monitor themselves for symptoms, AHS said.
Symptoms include a fever of 38.3° C or higher, a cough, runny nose and red eyes, and a red blotchy rash that appears three to seven days after a fever starts, beginning behind the ears and on the face.
People who are pregnant, young children and those with weakened immune systems are among those most at risk for complications from the disease which can include infections of the middle ear and the lung and swelling of the brain.
According to data from AHS, one to three out of every 1,000 measles cases is fatal. More than 90 per cent of people who are not immune and come into contact with the virus will become infected.
If symptoms develop, individuals are advised to stay home and call Health Link at 811 before visiting any health-care facility.
In Alberta, measles vaccine doses are offered, free of charge, through the province's immunization program. People exposed to the disease may also be eligible for vaccine or immune globulin to reduce the risk of developing measles.
Albertans uncertain of their immunization history are encouraged to call Health Link at 811 or contact their public health office.'
And finally, a statement by Dr. Mark Joffe, Alberta's chief medical officer of health:
"Measles is not just a mild childhood illness — it is a serious, highly infectious disease that can have devastating consequences.
Thankfully, we have a highly effective vaccine with a long-proven track record of safety. Everyone should take the time to check their immunization record to ensure they are fully immunized. No one should have to endure the consequences of a disease we can prevent."
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/edmonton/edmonton-measles-exposures-1.7485363
Ned Yeung
A reminder that it was only 3 days before 4,000 education workers in Edmonton Public, Fort McMurray Public, and Fort McMurray Catholic school districts reached a tentative agreement "higher than the original wage mandates imposed by the Alberta government", that Medicine Hat workers rejected a deal for a measly 3% annual wage increase which doesn't keep up with inflation, which their employer called a "final offer" (which is a bullshit line unless you intend on violating legislated labour laws).
Now 3 days later, their bargaining position has completely changed. There is no way that the Medicine Hat school district can continue to hold out when 4,000 fellow Alberta education workers have won a fair contract and in the words of Alberta CUPE president Rory Gil, "finally won the respect they deserve".
This is such an important lesson in solidarity and the power of collective action. This win will snowball and start a domino effect, ending strikes across Alberta with fair contracts for workers. We only have power when we stay strong and stand together.
Understand that those 5 months (Fort Mac) and 2 months (Edmonton) that 4,000 education workers spent in abysmal deep freeze temperatures were a fight for all of our rights as workers to fair pay and respect, as the valuable force which keeps our society running. This was not just a win for those 4,000 deserving workers. It was a win for all of us.
This is how all the labour laws and legislation which makes our working lives bearable have been earned. Health benefits, weekends, maternity leave, wage increases, reasonable working hours, overtime pay, paid holidays, vacation time, workplace standards, the right to refuse unsafe work, protection against discrimination. We owe it all to our steadfast union workers.
Thank a union worker today. In Solidarity.
https://alberta.cupe.ca/2025/03/12/medicine-hat-school-support-workers-reject-government-offer/
#solidarity #unionstrong #union #WorkerRights #abpoli #cdnpoli #education
Ned Yeung
"We can always tell" used to be a form of hate speech against a tiny group of marginalized people, indicating that they can tell if they are "a boy or a girl".
Now the same hateful ideology has expanded to cover large swaths of the American population, indicating that "they can always tell" who's an "illegal" by the way they look, leading to Indigenous First Nations people being deported from their homeland as Mexican immigrants, and tattoo artists being labeled as gang members, and therefore "terrorists", for their skin art.
This expansion of hateful ideology of course, should come as no surprise to anyone. That is why you cannot allow hate to live, no matter if it affects you or not. Soon enough, it'll hit your friends, your family, and yourself.
#uspol #cdnpoli #abpoli #hate #NoHumanIsIllegal #racism #transrightsarehumanrights
Ned Yeung
'Trump and DOGE fired USDA employees who held vital positions inspecting our food and protecting supply chains from invasive pests. Experts now warn that food could rot while waiting for inspections, which could lead to even higher grocery prices. "Efficiency."' - Robert Reich
Ned Yeung
I love how they attempt to deny the order by claiming that DOGE has no public accountability... :/
Yeah, this is the argument why DOGE should not exist and should be immediately shut down for its illegal operations out of the scope of public accountability, not why they should be able to doge FOIA requests.
Ned Yeung
That would be incredible! Fuck cancer (and fuck covid, too).
Ned Yeung
The mRNA technology behind coronavirus vaccines is now being used to create bespoke vaccines for cancer patients.
"Cancer vaccines weren’t a proper field of research before the pandemic. There was nothing. Apart from one exception, pretty much every clinical trial had failed. With the pandemic, however, we proved that mRNA vaccines were possible.
mRNA cancer vaccines work by giving the body instructions to make a harmless piece of a cancer-related protein. This trains the immune system to recognize and attack cancer cells carrying that protein. Think of it like a training manual for security guards. The vaccine gives the immune system a guide on what cancer looks like, so it knows exactly who to watch for and remove.
Going from mRNA Covid vaccines to mRNA cancer vaccines is straightforward: same fridges, same protocol, same drug, just a different patient.
In the current trials, we do a biopsy of the patient, sequence the tissue, send it to the pharmaceutical company, and they design a personalized vaccine that’s bespoke to that patient’s cancer. That vaccine is not suitable for anyone else. It’s like science fiction.
The UK was ready. We had fridges and we had world-class manufacturing and research facilities. During the pandemic, we had proven we could open and deliver clinical trials fast. Also, the UK had established a genomic global lead with Genomics England and the 100,000 Genome Project. All doctors and nurses in this country are trained in genomics.
So the UK government signed two partnerships: one with BioNTech to provide 10,000 patients with access to personalized cancer treatments by 2030, and a 10-year investment with Moderna in an innovation and technology center with capacity to produce up to 250 million vaccines. The stars were aligned.
For many years, we believed that research is inherently slow. It used to take 20 years to get a drug to market. Most cancer patients, unfortunately, will succumb by the time a drug gets to market. We showed the world that it could be done in a year if you modernize your process, run parts of the process in parallel, and use digital tools.
We have a trial to stop skin cancer coming back after you cut it out. It’s now completed. We over-recruited again, just like every single one of the trials that we ran, and the trial finished one year ahead of schedule. That’s completely unheard of in cancer trials because they normally run over-long.
What will happen now is that, over the next six to 12 months, we will monitor the people in the trial and work out if there’s a difference between the people who took the cancer vaccine and the ones who didn’t. We’re hoping to have results by the end of the year or beginning of 2026. If it’s successful, we will have invented the first approved personalized mRNA vaccine, within only five years of the first licensed mRNA vaccine for Covid. That’s pretty impressive."
- Dr. Lennard Lee, UK National Health Service oncologist and medical director at the Ellison Institute of Technology in Oxford
https://www.wired.com/story/wired-health-lennard-lee-cancer-vaccines/
Ned Yeung
Funny how the "Government is Evil" crowd is silent in the US, now that the government actually IS evil.
Ned Yeung
"DEI initiatives were not put in place to ensure lower-qualified minorities could get hired instead of more highly-qualified white people, it was put in place to ensure lower-qualified white people were not hired instead of more highly-qualified minorities."
If you want to know that you're getting a merit-based selection, then expand the talent pool and let everybody have a shot.
Ned Yeung
'Liberal leadership candidate Mark Carney says he will abandon his party's consumer carbon tax and replace the policy with an incentive program that rewards Canadians for making green choices.
He also said that he would work with other like-minded countries to introduce a carbon border adjustment, effectively a tariff, that would ensure countries with weaker climate change policies face financial barriers when they try to export products to Canada.
In making the announcement, Carney took aim at U.S. President Donald Trump for his withdrawal from the climate policies of his predecessors, as well as his attacks on Canada, saying that while Trump steps back from the climate change fight, he will step up.'
https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/carney-to-scrap-carbon-tax-1.7446908
Ned Yeung
This is a Canadian tradition for making pizza!
Ned Yeung
A friendly reminder that homosexuality was made legal in Canada in 1969 by Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau, father to the current but outgoing Prime Minister Justin Trudeau.
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