Jordan Peterson Whines Over ‘Woke’ Report on Drop in Traffic Deaths

Edith Olmsted

The Daily Beast.

Sat, March 2, 2024 

ATTILA KISBENEDEK/AFP via Getty Images

Right-wing pundit Jordan Peterson fumed over a report that traffic deaths in Hoboken, New Jersey, had decreased.

On Saturday, the Associated Press reported that since implementing “daylighting,” the removal of parking spaces near intersections seven years ago, the city had recorded zero traffic deaths.

The news incensed the conservative psychologist, and he took to X to slam the outlet for reporting the story. “You have become pathetic beyond comprehension @AP and the woke death will soon visit you,” he wrote.

To conservatives like Peterson, limiting parkings spaces is a dire infringement of individual liberties, and not worth the obvious benefit to public safety and human life.

Decrying the announcement that a city has become safer portrays a grim loss of perspective, not totally surprising from a culture warrior who recently displayed grave ignorance on Russia’s war with Ukraine.

Hoboken Mayor Ravi Bhalla, who oversaw many of the city’s changes after he was elected in 2018, responded to the post on X. “Being triggered by safe streets and Hoboken’s zero traffic deaths in 7 years is certainly a mood,” he wrote.

According to the Associated Press report, Bhalla was inspired to implement daylighting, lower speed limits, and staggered traffic lights in 2015 after the death of an 89-year-old woman.

“Our seniors, who we owe the greatest duty of safety to, should be able to pass that street as safely as possible,” Bhalla said. “For her to actually be killed was a trigger that we needed to take action.”

Trump tried to crush the 'DEI revolution.' Here's how he might finish the job.


Jessica Guynn, USA TODAY
Sun, March 3, 2024 at 9:00 a.m. MST·7 min read

On a cold January night before the New Hampshire primary, Donald Trump traveled to Rochester, a city of blue-collar, culturally conservative voters who swung his way in 2016 and again in 2020.

“We will terminate every diversity, equity, and inclusion program across the entire federal government,” the former president declared to a packed auditorium.

It was more than just a popular applause line at Trump rallies. Behind the scenes, a coalition of dozens of right-wing groups is preparing to make Trump’s words a reality.

Led by the Heritage Foundation think tank, which has helped mold the policies of Republican administrations since the Reagan presidency, conservative interests have drawn up a sweeping plan known as Project 2025 in anticipation of Trump’s return to power. Part of that agenda goes after the decades-long corporate drive to increase racial diversity in cubicles and executive suites.

“The Biden Administration has pushed ‘racial equity’ in every area of our national life, including in employment,” according to Project 2025 which runs nearly 900 pages.

Conservatives behind Project 2025 say the private sector has been corrupted by doctrines such as critical race theory which argues that historical patterns of racism are embedded in law and other American institutions, harming Black people and other people of color. They want to reverse “the DEI revolution in labor policy” in favor of more "race neutral" policies.

“Getting rid of critical race theory from federal agencies, diversity, equity and inclusion policies, unconscious bias — we are certainly going to have ideas and proposals ready for a possible new administration,” former Trump administration official Russ Vought, who is advising Project 2025, told USA TODAY in an interview.

Civil rights advocates say Project 2025 is the work of a small group of vocal conservatives who are laying the groundwork for a far-reaching rollback of civil rights laws that would water down federal safeguards against racial discrimination if Trump is re-elected.

“They are trying to take apart the legacy of these laws that made us a multiracial democracy,” said Alvin B. Tillery Jr., director of the Center for the Study of Democracy and Diversity at Northwestern University. “Trump is just picking up the mantle."
What Trump would do on DEI if elected

The presidential transition plan calls for purging liberal policies and dismantling some federal agencies.

“The next conservative president must make the institutions of American civil society hard targets for woke culture warriors,” Kevin Roberts, president of the Heritage Foundation, wrote in the foreword to the policy agenda.

The think tank declined to comment, but Project 2025’s director, Paul Dans, told Steve Bannon's "War Room" podcast: "We want everyone walking into office to be literally on the same page" for the first 180 days of the next Republican presidency.

The Trump campaign did not respond to a request for comment. Trump has said that he alone is responsible for the policies of a future administration, but Project 2025 − which outlines an agenda that touches every government agency − offers insights into what those policies might look like.

Jonathan Berry, a veteran of the Trump administration and lead author of a chapter on the Labor Department and related agencies, says Project 2025 continues the work of the first Trump White House which banned diversity training by the federal government and government contractors.

The plan broadly reflects where Trump's policy stood at the end of his presidency in 2020, Berry said, adding that "it also represents the direction you would expect to see a second Trump administration go.”

Among the recommended measures:

Bar the federal government and government contractors from using taxpayer dollars to conduct training about systemic racism;


Abolish the Labor Department’s Office of Federal Contract Compliance Programs, which is responsible for ensuring that federal contractors comply with antidiscrimination laws;


Eliminate “disparate impact” liability – evaluating whether the impact of a policy varies based on race, ethnicity or other factors, even if the conscious intent was not to treat people differently.


Prohibit racial classifications and quotas and halt the collection of employment data on the racial and ethnic makeup of the American private sector workforce.

“The Biden administration is abusing the law in ways that tend to flatten the human person into identity politics categories,” Berry said. “The goal here is to move toward colorblindness and to recognize that we need to have laws and policies that treat people like full human beings not reducible to categories, especially when it comes to race.”
'They’re advocating for the return of white privilege'

Marc Morial, president of the National Urban League, says Project 2025 peddles concepts like “race neutrality” to reverse the progress women and people of color have made in the workplace over the last 60 years.

Before the Civil Rights Act of 1964 made it illegal to discriminate, private-sector employment was mostly segregated. Even when Black people landed positions, they were mostly low-skill jobs with no authority or mobility.

“They are not advocating for colorblindness. They’re advocating for the return of white privilege. They’re advocating for the policies that were used during a segregated America,” Morial said. “Let’s just hide disparities. Let’s just pretend they don’t exist. Let’s sanction things that appear to be race-neutral but are discriminatory.”

National Urban League president Marc Morial in January 2019.

According to Justin Gomer, associate professor of American Studies at California State University, Long Beach, today’s conservative playbook contains much of the same wish list as its first edition which was prepared for Reagan's presidency: Ending “reverse discrimination,” repealing affirmative action, limiting the Justice Department’s ability to file discrimination lawsuits and preventing the Labor Department from tracking employment statistics.

“This is what Heritage does. It tries to entirely dismantle all government mechanisms from even assessing, let alone studying or addressing racial discrimination,” Gomer said.
Anti-DEI attacks after George Floyd murder

As the nation grows more diverse and research studies suggest that diverse companies outperform more homogeneous peers, businesses are working to make their workforces and leadership better reflect the communities they serve.

After the 2020 murder of George Floyd forced a historic reckoning with race in America, corporations redoubled those efforts.

Racial parity in the business world is a long way off. A USA TODAY investigation of the nation’s largest companies found that the top ranks are predominantly white and male, while women and people of color are concentrated at the lowest levels with less pay, fewer perks and little opportunity for advancement.

Corporate diversity efforts are broadly supported by the American public. A vast majority of adults – 81% – believe that corporate America should reflect the nation’s diversity, according to a recent study by The Harris Poll.

But the political environment shifted after Floyd's murder. Diversity pledges from businesses spurred a backlash against the “woke policies” of corporate America.

In September 2020, a Trump White House memo from Vought suggested rooting out "ideologies that label entire groups of Americans as inherently racist or evil" in diversity training materials by searching for keywords such as "white privilege," "systemic racism," "intersectionality" and "unconscious bias."

Soon after, a Trump executive order prohibited racial sensitivity training by the federal government and government contractors and the administration threatened to suspend or cancel federal contracts with companies that violated the order.

The order had an immediate chilling effect on reinvigorated efforts to reverse patterns of discrimination and exclusion in the workplace. Worried that the diversity training they routinely offered employees might run afoul of the new rules, companies protested.

Asked about his executive order during a presidential debate, Trump said: "They were teaching people that our country is a horrible place, it’s a racist place. And they were teaching people to hate our country. And I’m not gonna allow that to happen."

Joe Biden retorted, “Nobody’s doing that.” Biden rescinded the executive order after taking office.

Over the last several years as president of The Center for Renewing America think tank, Vought has joined other conservatives in fighting what he says taxpayer-funded “state-sanctioned racism.” Republican-led legislatures have introduced dozens of bills to restrict DEI in education but also state government, contracting and pension investments.

The anti-DEI backlash has only intensified in recent months.

Last year’s Supreme Court decision striking down affirmative action in college admissions set off a wave of legal threats against corporate diversity policies and programs from conservative activists like former Trump administration official Stephen Miller and anti-affirmative action activist Edward Blum. Billionaires Elon Musk and Bill Ackman have also assailed DEI efforts as “racist.”

“It gets to the very nature of what it means to be American, which is that we are all human beings made in the image of God and we should be equal in the eyes of the law,” Vought said. “And our law cannot be treating us differently based on our skin color.”

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Trump tried to decimate DEI. How the next GOP president might do it.

US White supremacist fitness clubs are fat-shaming Trump supporters and plotting a race war

Alia Shoaib
Sun, March 3, 2024 

A fighter in a ring.Getty Images

White supremacist "active clubs" are spreading across the US.


The clubs recruit disaffected white men and promote physical fitness and masculinity.


The groups also sometimes mock and fat-shame Donald Trump and his supporters.

A network of white supremacist fitness clubs is spreading across the US, recruiting men to prepare for what they believe will be a race war.

The groups, known as "active clubs," target disaffected white men by offering a sense of community, with members regularly meeting to practice martial arts or work out.

But the groups have a much darker agenda that's rooted in white supremacist ideology.

Their Telegram channels reveal their extreme views — they are filled with neo-Nazi iconography, racist and antisemitic memes, and negative news articles about people of color and LGBTQ+ people.

"They are quickly becoming one of the most prominent vectors for white terrorist radicalization in the United States in recent years," Jon Lewis, a Research Fellow at the Program on Extremism at George Washington University, told Business Insider.

"They're training for what they view to be this kind of inevitable race war, this inevitable violent clash for the future of civilization," he added.

One former member of an active club told Vice News last year that the group would slowly introduce extremist ideology to new members by making racist jokes and talking about stories in the news in which ethnic minorities attacked white people.

"They believe that there's an inevitable cultural war that'll come and because they tie culture directly to race, a culture war means race war," they said.

"They never were like, 'You need to learn how to fight so you can beat up people of color. It was like, 'You need to learn how to fight because people want to kill you in the future,'" they added.

In a promotional video, the leader of the SoCal active club said that they were not terrorists and simply wanted to build a "positive community" and get white men "off the internet and into the real world."
White nationalism 3.0

One of the main strengths of the clubs is that they work as decentralized networks, with white men nationwide encouraged to set up and run their own clubs, Lewis said.

In the US, there are at least 46 active clubs across 34 states, a 2023 report from the Counter Extremism Project (CEP) said.

The investigative news outlet, Bellingcat, has also reported that the white supremacist active club movement had spread to Europe.

The movement was inspired by Robert Rundo, who founded the white supremacist MMA club known as the Rise Above Movement.

His concept of "white nationalism 3.0" advocates for nationalists to operate in smaller, decentralized groups and improve their online image to evade law enforcement scrutiny.

Members of the right-wing group the Patriot Front.Kent Nishimura / Los Angeles Times via Getty Images

While active club members do not regularly engage in overt violence, some are known to intimidate their enemies, particularly journalists.

The Tennessee active club has gained particular notoriety for its threats to local journalists, activists, and politicians and for the extreme views of its leader Sean Kauffman, who is a neo-Nazi and Holocaust denier.

"While the Tennessee active club on the surface seems like an outlier because of what the leader Kauffman says publicly, and he waves the Nazi flag publicly, the other active clubs are thinking that too, they're just not doing it in public," Jeff Tischauser, a researcher at the Southern Poverty Law Center, who investigates active clubs, told BI.

In an increasingly polarized climate, political extremism and threats to democracy have become a top concern for US voters, according to a recent Reuters/Ipsos poll.
The groups sometimes mock and fat-shame Trump and his supporters

Although many far-right groups once aligned themselves with former President Donald Trump, most have since grown disillusioned and criticize him for not doing enough to advance their extremist agenda.

"The groups I track have long since turned on Trump," Tischauser said, adding that some viewed Trump as a "puppet to Jewish interests who steals their nationalist rhetoric to win votes" and who "cannot be counted on to enact nationalist policies."

In one video, the Central CA active club also hit out at the former president for not being a true "revolutionary."

Some clubs have also taken to mocking and fat-shaming Trump and his supporters.

A video posted by the Alamo active club on Telegram shows clips of Trump rally attendees, all of whom appeared either overweight or were people of color, captioned: "Average conservatives."

The video then cuts to shots of white men sparring and lifting weights with a caption saying "average nationalists."

A Telegram channel run by the owner of the Lewis Country Store in Nashville, which is associated with the active club movement, also regularly mocks Trump for his weight, something he has been seemingly sensitive about in the past.

While some in the movement see Trump as a useful tool for helping shift policies to the right, their distrust in the political system likely means many won't vote or show support for any political candidate, Tischauser said.

Many of the groups believe there is no political solution and advocate for a societal breakdown from which a white ethnostate can emerge, Lewis added.

"They see a violent revolution, a violent racial conflict as the only way to get to their desired end state," he said.

Downtown Halifax getting new high-speed, net-zero commuter ferry service

The Canadian Press
Mon, March 4, 2024 



HALIFAX — The Nova Scotia government announced Monday a $258-million plan for a new high-speed ferry service that will link Halifax with Bedford, a rapidly growing suburb about 10 kilometres northwest of the port city's downtown.

The province will contribute $65 million, Ottawa will kick in $155 million and the Halifax Regional Municipality will spend $38 million on the Mill Cove ferry service.

The project calls for the construction of five electric ferries, a new ferry terminal in Bedford, and a new terminal in Halifax to replace the existing waterfront facility.

Nova Scotia Environment Minister Timothy Halman said the net-zero ferries and terminals will not produce air pollution. As well, a new bridge will be built over a CN Rail line in Bedford to provide access to the Mill Cove terminal.

The project is expected to be completed during the 2027-28 fiscal year.

"This project addresses road traffic in the area and helps us plan for future population growth," Halman said in a statement. "The new ferry route will also encourage people to use public transportation and help us meet our climate change goals."

The plan has been in the works since 2021 when the three levels of government announced they would spend more than $3 million on a study and design work. At the time, transit officials said they hoped the service would be in operation by this year.

The population of the Halifax region, which includes Bedford, has been rapidly growing since 2015.

Last year, Statistics Canada reported the growth rate in the metropolitan area around Halifax was second only to that of Moncton, N.B. The federal agency said the Moncton area grew by 5.3 per cent between July 1, 2021, and July 1, 2022, while Nova Scotia's capital grew by 4.4 per cent — growth rates that were more than twice that of the national average.

“With the growth we are continuing to see, so is the need to make sustainable transportation competitive with personal vehicles," Halifax Mayor Mike Savage said in a statement.

"Not only will this improved ferry service help people get around faster, it will also promote continuous growth surrounding the terminal and establish a consistent community hub."

The new ferry service is expected to help ease regular traffic congestion on the Bedford Highway, which runs along the west side of Halifax harbour.

The municipality currently uses a small fleet of diesel-powered ferries to link downtown Halifax with Dartmouth, on the east side of the sprawling harbour. The Dartmouth ferry is the oldest saltwater ferry service in North America, having started operations in 1752.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published March 4, 2024.

SHAMEFUL COLONIAL PRACTICE
Newfoundland and Labrador only province that still intends to imprison migrants

CBC
Mon, March 4, 2024 

His Majesty's Penitentiary in St. John's, Newfoundland, where migrants have been detained at the request of the Canada Border Services Agency. (Sarah Smellie/The Canadian Press - image credit)

Newfoundland and Labrador, led by Andrew Furey's Liberal government, is the only Canadian province with no plans to end the controversial practice of incarcerating migrants in its provincial jails.

Every other province has now indicated to the Canada Border Services Agency (CBSA) that they will no longer imprison people detained under the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act.

The detention of migrants for administrative purposes in the same facilities as criminally charged or convicted individuals is a violation of international law, according to many experts.

"In the event a detention is required, it would be assessed on a case-by-case basis," wrote Newfoundland and Labrador's Department of Justice and Public Safety in response to Radio-Canada's questions.

"Immigration detention is not a common occurrence in Newfoundland and Labrador. The province does not have a formal agreement with the Canadian Border Services Agency," the department wrote.

Last year, six immigration detainees were imprisoned in Newfoundland and Labrador, according to CBSA statistics. The federal agency said there are no such detainees being held in that province at the moment.

Hanna Gros, refugee lawyer and researcher at Human Rights Watch denounces Newfoundland’s decision to continue detaining migrants

Refugee lawyer Hanna Gros, a researcher with Human Rights Watch, said she's deeply disappointed in Newfoundland and Labrador’s decision to continue detaining migrants (Submitted by Hanna Gros)

Province's position 'deeply disappointing'

"Newfoundland's position is deeply disappointing," said Hanna Gros, a refugee lawyer and expert in immigration detention with Human Rights Watch.

It's one of the organizations behind the #WelcomeToCanada campaign launched in 2021 that called on provinces to cancel their immigration detention contracts with CBSA.

"Why is Newfoundland the only province committed to this abusive practice? The fact that it's not a 'common occurrence' is all the more reason to end this practice. It's not an excuse to continue it," Gros said.

Many asylum seekers are among the tens of thousands of people who have been detained by the Canada Border Services Agency over the years.

Many asylum seekers are among the tens of thousands of people who have been detained by the Canada Border Services Agency in recent years. (The Canadian Press)

Gros fears CBSA could now send immigration detainees that other provinces refuse to imprison to Newfoundland and Labrador.

"We've seen that CBSA has no qualms about transferring people across provinces to keep them incarcerated, so it's a huge concern," she said.

Most detainees deemed flight risk

Border officers can detain foreign nationals or permanent residents, including refugee claimants, for three main reasons: if they're considered a flight risk, if their identity is not well established or if they pose a danger to the public.

The vast majority of the 71,988 migrants detained by CBSA between 2012 and 2023 were deemed a flight risk, meaning the border agency believed they would not appear for immigration processes, including those that might result in their removal from Canada.

Since June 2022, nine provinces have refused to imprison people held for immigration purposes, or have committed to doing so in the coming months. Many provinces had signed formal contracts with CBSA under which they had to give the agency one year's notice of cancellation.

Her Majesty's Penitentiary in St. John's, Newfoundland. Last year, six people were incarcerated in this province for immigration purposes.

A view from inside Her Majesty's Penitentiary in St. John's. Last year, six people were incarcerated in Newfoundland and Labrador for immigration purposes. (Ariana Kelland/Radio-Canada)

CBSA said last December that it's upgrading its immigration holding centres in Laval, Que., Toronto and Surrey, B.C., in order to "accommodate high-risk detainees."

The agency said detention is always a measure of last resort, used only when alternative solutions in the community are impossible.

Many migrants have died in detention in Canada over the years, some by suicide.

Maine questions Canadian study of Agent Orange use at New Brunswick military base

The Canadian Press
Mon, March 4, 2024 



FREDERICTON — Maine's state legislature says it has found flaws in a Canadian study on the use of the herbicide Agent Orange in the 1960s on a southern New Brunswick military base.

A report released in January by a legislature commission says the potential links between health problems and the use of Agent Orange at Canadian Forces Base Gagetown need to be re-evaluated.

It says a new investigation would help United States veterans access medical care if they had worked at the base, where in 1966 and 1967 the American military tested defoliants such as Agent Orange.

A 2005 study by the Defence Department and other Canadian government agencies found that herbicide levels used at the Gagetown base posed no risk to human health.

But the Maine commission says it gathered testimony that criticized the methods used to collect evidence in the Canadian study.

Herbicides such as Agent Orange were used extensively in the 1960s by the American military during the Vietnam War to destroy crops of the Viet cong and North Vietnamese, and the U.S. Veterans Affairs Department has recognized certain cancers are associated with exposure to those chemicals.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published March 4, 2024.

Files.libcom.org

https://files.libcom.org/files/Bookchin%20M.%20Our%20Synthetic%20Environment.pdf

Our Synthetic Environment - Libcom.org 

Our Synthetic Environment. Murray Bookchin. 1962. Table of contents. Chapter 1: THE PROBLEM. Chapter 2: AGRICULTURE AND HEALTH. Chapter 3: URBAN LIFE AND HEALTH.

Germany accuses Russia of seeking to divide Europe with leaked call

Updated Mon, March 4, 2024 
By Andreas Rinke and Rachel More

BERLIN (Reuters) -Germany accused Russia on Monday of leaking an intercepted recording of German military discussions about how to support Ukraine against the Kremlin's invasion in an attempt to divide Europe.

Russian media last week published an audio recording of a meeting of senior German military officials held by Webex discussing weapons for Ukraine and a potential strike by Kyiv on a bridge in Crimea.

Germany has confirmed the authenticity of the 38-minute call, saying it is investigating what it called an apparent act of eavesdropping by Russia that was part of an "information war".

Participants in the call discuss the possible delivery of Taurus cruise missiles to Kyiv, which Chancellor Olaf Scholz has publicly rejected. They also discuss how France and Britain are delivering and operating their own cruise missiles with shorter ranges.

While there has been little public response so far from allies, analysts say the recording is likely to strain ties given it is another major security breach and reveals the extent of German reluctance to get too involved in the war.

"This hybrid attack aimed to generate insecurity and divide us," a government spokesman said on Monday. "And that is exactly what we will not allow. We are in constant contact with our partners."

Moscow accuses the "collective West" of using Ukraine to wage a proxy war against Russia. NATO says it is helping Ukraine to defend itself against a war of aggression.

A spokesman for British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak told reporters the leak was a matter for Germany to investigate and Britain would continue to work with Germany to support Ukraine.

Still, he added that Britain was the first country to provide long-range precision strike missiles to Ukraine "and we would encourage our allies to do the same".

Tobias Ellwood, a Conservative lawmaker and former chair of the parliamentary defence committee, told the BBC's Radio Four Today programme said Russia had probably not learned anything it did not already know through the leak, given its vast spy operations.

"That doesn't prevent some serious conversations taking place in the diplomatic corridors between Germany and Britain and indeed NATO, as well as to why this happened in the first place," he said.

Germany has suffered a few embarrassing security leaks of late - authorities arrested a German Foreign Intelligence Service (BND) employee they suspected of spying for Russia in late 2022.

"It is a wake-up call that we are being targeted by (Russian President) Putin," Finance Minister Christian Lindner said on Monday.

GERMAN AMBASSADOR SUMMONED?

The Kremlin said on Monday the recording showed Germany's armed forces were discussing plans to launch strikes on Russian territory, and questioned whether Scholz was in control of the situation.

"The recording itself says that within the Bundeswehr, plans to launch strikes on Russian territory are being discussed substantively and concretely," Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters.

"Here we have to find out whether the Bundeswehr is doing this on its own initiative. Then the question is: how controllable is the Bundeswehr and how much does Scholz control the situation?" Peskov said.

He said both scenarios were "very bad. Both once again emphasise the direct involvement of the countries of the collective West in the conflict around Ukraine".

The German government spokesman called accusations of war preparations "absurd" propaganda.

"The Russians were spooked by Olaf Scholz's U-turn last year on the dispatch of the Leopard 2 battle tanks," analysts at Eurointelligence wrote in a briefing note. "They now want to make sure that he sticks to his line on the Taurus missiles."

Russia's foreign ministry said in a statement it demanded an explanation from Germany's Ambassador Alexander Graf Lambsdorff about the discussion. It did not say how the ambassador responded.

It was the second time in the past week that Moscow has pounced on what it sees as evidence of Western intent to attack Russia directly.

After French President Emmanuel Macron floated the possibility that European nations could send troops to Ukraine, allies of Putin said last week that any French troops would meet death and defeat like Napoleon's soldiers who invaded Russia in 1812.

Putin said in a speech on Thursday that Western countries risked provoking a nuclear war if they sent troops to fight in Ukraine.

(Reporting by Andreas Rinke, Rachel More and Sarah Marsh in Berlin, Alistair Smout and Elizabeth Piper in London and Filipp Lebedev in Tbilisi; Writing by Mark Trevelyan and Sarah Marsh; editing by Timothy Heritage, Nick Macfie and Alex Richardson)

Germany’s Pistorius Says Russian Leak Part of Disinformation War

Verena Sepp
Sun, March 3, 2024



(Bloomberg) -- President Vladimir Putin is looking to divide Ukraine’s allies with a disinformation campaign, Germany’s defense minister said, days after Russian media published a leaked conversation about the possible deployment of German long-range missiles in Ukraine.

“It’s about division, it’s about undermining our unity, so we should react in a level-headed but not less determined way,” Boris Pistorius said after a hastily-convened special meeting of the defense committee in Berlin on Sunday.

“This is clearly about undermining our unity,” he said. “It is about using this recording to destabilize and unsettle us,” adding that “we should not fall for Putin’s line.”

In the 38-minute audio recording obtained by the media platform Russia Today, German air force chief Ingo Gerhartz and highly-ranked officers discussed a possible delivery of German Taurus missiles to Kyiv, and their potential impact.

“On Friday, immediately after it became known, I contacted the federal office for military counterintelligence (MAD) and instructed them to investigate the incident completely,” Pistorius said, adding that he is getting regular updates.

Read more: Germany Probes Military Security Leak After Russian Wiretap

Der Spiegel and the German press agency DPA reported separately that the recording has been determined to be authentic, while potentially doctored, and that the conversation had been conducted on the commercial, non-encrypted video calling platform Webex — with invitations sent to mobile phones via a Bundeswehr office landline.

Pistorius said it was no coincidence that the revelation came amid funeral services for Kremlin critic Alexey Navalny and new revelations about the Wirecard scandal.

Chancellor Olaf Scholz has clearly positioned himself against the deployment of German Taurus missiles in Ukraine, causing tensions among some NATO members.

Explainer-Why a leaked German military recording is causing outcry


Press conference about the Air Defender 23 in Berlin


By Sarah Marsh and Andreas Rinke

Mon, March 4, 2024 

BERLIN (Reuters) - Russian media last week published an 38-minute audio recording of an intercepted online call between senior German military officials about how to support Ukraine against the Kremlin's invasion.

Germany's government has confirmed the veracity of the call.

This is what the officials discussed and the reactions to the security breach:

WHAT WAS DISCUSSED DURING THE RECORDED CALL?

In the call, German Air Force Chief Ingo Gerhartz discusses with three high-ranking Luftwaffe officials the possible delivery of Taurus cruise missiles to Kyiv, which Chancellor Olaf Scholz has publicly so far firmly rejected.

They also talk about the training of Ukrainian soldiers, and possible military targets for the missiles including the bridge linking the Russian mainland to Crimea and Russian ammunition depots.

The discussions included details of allies' operations, such as the fact British personnel were deployed in Ukraine and how Britain's Storm Shadow and France's Scalp missiles were deployed in the country.

One official talks about the fact Britain is already handling for France the satellite data needed for Ukraine to program the missiles.

He suggests it could do the same for Germany - preventing the country from being in any way directly involved in their deployment, which is a political red line for Berlin.

WHY IS THIS A SCANDAL?

Critics have denounced the fact military secrets were discussed via a standard off-the-shelf platform like WebEx, saying this demonstrates a systematic underestimation in Germany of security threats. One call participant joined from his hotel room in Singapore, government officials confirmed.

Germany's allies have not publicly criticized the leak. A spokesman for British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak told reporters it was a matter for Germany to investigate and Britain would continue to work together with Germany to support Ukraine.

But former British Defence Secretary Ben Wallace was quoted as saying by The Times that the incident demonstrated Germany was "neither secure nor reliable".

The recording also underscores the extent to which the decision on deploying Taurus missiles is a political one - and Scholz is reticent about Germany getting too directly involved in the Ukraine war or prompting an escalation of hostilities.

The Taurus missiles can reach twice as far as the Storm Shadow and Scalp missiles, and would thus enable Ukraine to even reach as far as Moscow.

HOW DID GERMANY REACT?

Germany has said the leak was a Russian "hybrid disinformation attack" that aimed to sow discord within the country and with allies. It has also called accusations of war preparations "absurd" propaganda.

German authorities say they are investigating the incident but it is unclear so far whether any security protocols were breached and no one has been fired yet.

MOSCOW'S TAKE

The Kremlin says the recording shows Germany's armed forces were discussing plans to launch strikes on Russian territory, and questioned whether this was government policy or Chancellor Scholz lost control of the situation.

Russia's foreign ministry said in a statement that it demanded on Monday an explanation from the German ambassador to Moscow Alexander Graf Lambsdorff about the discussion which "clearly demonstrates the involvement of the 'collective West', including Berlin, in the conflict around Ukraine".

RUSSIAN SPYING IN GERMANY

Germany, one of the largest providers of military hardware to Ukraine, is a major target of Russian spying operations, which have grown in scale since Russia's 2022 invasion of Ukraine, authorities have warned.

The authorities arrested a German Foreign Intelligence Service (BND) employee they suspected of spying for Russia in late 2022.

Last year, authorities arrested an officer of the military procurement agency on suspicion of passing secret information to Russian intelligence.

(Reporting by Sarah Marsh and Andreas Rinke; Editing by Tomasz Janowski)

LA REVUE GAUCHE - Left Comment: Search results for SECURITY STATE 

CANADA

Commons committee nixes Conservative push for hearings on lab security lapses

The Canadian Press
Mon, March 4, 2024 



OTTAWA — A House of Commons committee has declined to vote on a Conservative request to delve into the activities of two scientists who were fired from a high-security lab over their dealings with China.

Conservative foreign affairs critic Michael Chong asked the House committee on information, privacy and ethics to call various witnesses, including representatives of the Public Health Agency of Canada.

However, a majority of the committee voted to end debate on the motion after Liberal MP Iqra Khalid said hearings are unnecessary and fall outside the committee's mandate.

More than 600 pages of internal reports and correspondence about the security matter were made public last week after a special all-party review.

The documents show two scientists at the National Microbiology Laboratory were fired in early 2021 after reviews found they failed to protect sensitive assets and information.

Records say the scientists, Xiangguo Qiu and her husband, Keding Cheng, played down their collaborations with Chinese government agencies.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published March 4, 2024.

Survey finds 25% of Canadians think discrimination is a problem in sports

The Canadian Press
Mon, March 4, 2024 



One-quarter of respondents polled last year felt that racism and discrimination were problems in community sports in the country, according to a survey published Monday by Statistics Canada.

Eighteen per cent of respondents said they have experienced or witnessed racism or discrimination in sport over the last five years, with race or skin colour the most cited reason at 64 per cent.

Physical appearance was cited in 42 per cent of incidents and ethnicity or culture in 38 per cent.

LGTBQ Canadians (42 per cent) were more than twice as likely as heterosexuals (17 per cent) to report having experienced or witnessed discrimination.

Athletes made up 80 per cent of those who saw or were subjected to discrimination, with spectators at 26 per cent. Coaches and those in non-athletic roles ranged from five to 15 per cent.

Participants and athletes (64 per cent), spectators (39 per cent) and coaches and instructors (36 per cent) were most often responsible for acts of discrimination.

The likelihood of experiencing or witnessing discrimination in a sport decreased with age, peaking among people aged 15 to 24 (30 per cent) and gradually declining to seven per cent among people 65 and older.

The data for the survey came from the Survey Series on People and their Communities (SSPC) — Participation and Experiences in Community Sports, which was collected from Nov. 27-Dec. 17, 2023.

Statistics Canada said racialized and immigrant groups were oversampled "to provide adequate coverage of these groups."

This report by The Canadian Press was first published March 4, 2024.

SHELTER IS A RIGHT!
Tents trashed as Halifax clears out homeless encampment designated for closure

The Canadian Press
Mon, March 4, 2024 



HALIFAX — Workers are clearing out a central Halifax homeless encampment today — one week after a municipal deadline passed for residents to leave it and four other sites previously approved by the city.

Fencing was installed around the perimeter of Victoria Park, and the municipality’s executive director of community safety Bill Moore was on site alongside city workers who were putting tents, food waste and unclaimed belongings in the garbage.

Moore says people who had been camped in the park have moved elsewhere, and some of them will be setting up their tents one block away on a grassy berm along University Avenue.

He says Victoria Park has a concerning rat infestation, and people who want to continue sleeping in a tent can do so at one of the four remaining designated encampment sites — including the University Avenue green space.

On Feb. 7, Halifax asked unhoused people living in tents at Victoria Park and four other previously authorized encampments to leave by Feb. 26.

The city said the encampments are a safety risk and indoor housing options are available, including at the Halifax Forum, a shelter with 70 beds located in the north end of the city.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published March 4, 2024.

The Canadian Press