The QAnon Queen Told Followers They Didn’t Need to Pay Bills. It Didn’t End Well.

The QAnon Queen of Canada told her followers to stop paying their electricity and water bills because she declared them free. But now the utility companies are calling.

By Mack Lamoureux
TORONTO, CA

VICE

A SCREENSHOT FROM A VIDEO ROMANA DIDULO RECENTLY MADE IN HER RV SHE IS TRAVELING THE COUNTRY IN. PHOTO VIA SCREENSHOT.


Followers of a QAnon influencer who's convinced some Canadians she’s the true Queen of Canada are saying their utilities are being cut off because they were told by their sovereign that they no longer had to pay bills.

One woman has repeatedly told her fellow QAnon Queen followers she’s “stopped paying hydro, water, natural gas, property taxes, line of credit, and my credit cards.” She pushes hard on her fellow true believers to join her in not paying their bills and chastising those who continue to pay.

“The more who do it, the quicker we can be free of enslavement,” she wrote on one of the group’s Telegram channels. “Those still living in fear are making it harder to get out. Don’t be afraid, because we’re in this together.”

Many, many others have posted that they, too, have stopped paying their bills after hearing that Romana Didulo—a QAnon influencer who has them convinced she’s running Canada behind the scenes—made a decree that electricity is free. Several have posted their power has been shut off or that they were on the verge of having it shut off and relented to finally paying.

"Dear (Queen Romana), when will the service companies stop shutting off our services for nonpayment?" one follower asked Didulo recently. "I just had my water supply shut off today in Stratford, Ontario."

Didulo, a Victoria, B.C.–based woman in her 50s or 60s, had little to no public profile until about two years ago. The short, soft-spoken Filipino immigrant has since rocketed to popularity over the last two years—thanks to other QAnon (a big-tent conspiracy movement that revolves around a secret war against a cabal of pedophilic elites) personalities giving her far-fetched claims of essentially running Canada from the shadows a giant boost. Since being "confirmed" by other QAnon influencers, her reach has grown to include over 70,000 followers on Telegram, many of whom follow her in real life.

 

ROMANA DIDULO AT A MALL WITH SOME OF HER FOLLOWERS. PHOTO VIA TELEGRAM.

Didulo is currently on a crowd-funded tour of Canada in a rented RV with several of her followers. The group makes frequent “meet and greets” in towns across the country and has drawn crowds as large as 50.

Are you a follower or a former follower, or do you have a loved one who follows Romana Didulo? We would love to hear your story. You can get in touch with Mack Lamoureux at mack.lamoureux@vice.com.

Didulo has issued several “royal decrees” on her Telegram page, some regarding utility bills. The critical ones are “Decree 24,” claiming that electricity is now free in Canada; “Decree 15,” which abolishes income tax; and “Decree 23,” which makes water bills illegal. Another decree, number 79, reverts the price of rent, housing, and propane back to 1955 levels. Other decrees issued by Didulo are that critical race theory is illegal in Canada (this was her very first decree, in fact) and that the age of consent was changed to 24—which sparked an outcry from her followers.

The bill-payment claims are causing direct harm to her followers, with many saying in their group chat that they've racked up thousands of dollars of bills. Many of Didulo's followers are vulnerable people, including seniors on fixed incomes, who could face steep consequences for these decisions. A page created by Didulo which allows her followers to ask her questions is filled with questions about bill payments.

"Dear Queen Romana I received a 24-hour notice for the power bill. Should I make a payment? Or will it be shut off?" reads one.

"Queen Romana please What do I say to the City of Red Deer trying to shut off my water on Monday," reads another. Some said that when they reach out for help about the situation, they’re mocked for their beliefs.

Christine Sarteschi, an extremist researcher who specializes in sovereign citizens and their pseudo-legal trickery, has been keeping a close eye on Didulo and her followers in recent months. Sarteschi says the prevalent discussions about followers’ utilities are disconcerting.

"A couple of times a week you see somebody who is posting about something like 'please help me, my utilities are going to get cut off' or something along those lines where they're experiencing some type of negative consequences from attempting to follow her decrees,” said Sarteschi. “It looks like the (bill payment) decree is the one I see mentioned the most in terms of people being harmed.”

One man who followed Didulo’s decree briefly spoke to VICE World News about his decision to stop paying his bills. He said he ceased payment four months ago and has yet to face any negative consequences. He said he’s not worried and that ”the ones who should be worried is the utilities companies, failure to comply with Queen Romana Royal Decrees carries a heavy penalty.” VICE News reached out to numerous people who said they have ceased paying their bills, but we received no response—like in many conspiracy cultures, this community tends to believe the media are corrupt and evil and are told not to speak to them.

If the followers’ claims and documents they post online are to be believed, the consequences for some extend further than just strongly worded email. Recently, the group panicked when a popular user had their power disconnected. The user, a person who posted regularly, had recently gone quiet. The group rallied around her.

“Joanna's power and water supply have been cut off,” a follower wrote on April 20. “Can we get a bunch of We The People to call and email her power company to inform them of the new laws, decrees, and let them know they are committing criminal offences against We The People!”




JUST SOME OF THE BILLS POSTED ONLINE BY DIDULO'S FOLLOWERS. PHOTO VIA TELEGRAM.

The group got together the emails of the heads of B.C. Hydro (who cut off the woman’s power) and sent them a deluge of emails about Didulo’s decrees and demanding they turn their friend's power back on. This tactic of sending emails about Didulo’s power to utility companies seems to be the group’s primary way of fighting back.

“If you supply the utility company's email address and your full name, I'll try to do whatever I can to help you get your utilities put back on,” one woman wrote to someone who said their power was shut off.

Didulo has told her followers that “those sending the bills are robots,” so a few are posting actual images of the threatening messages they’re getting from bill collectors and electricity and hydro providers as trophies. One email sent to a woman from a lawyer said she had “Organized Pseudolegal Commercial Argument in the nature of a sham debt elimination scheme.”

One of the things experts have long said is that being involved in these fringe communities can come at great personal cost. This includes the alienation of a person from loved ones and financial consequences. For one fan the decree led her to both.

“I stopped (paying) Hydro three months ago. I got phone reminders, a reminder by mail and an actual person called my husband. He does not follow QR and he was not pleased. Told me to pay the hydro bill,” they wrote. “I want to help collapse the government not my marriage so I paid.”

Sarteschi said that she thinks the appeal of Didulo is the promises that she makes. That the promise of no more taxes or debt is an intoxicating offer for some people. For these people, who get so wrapped up in these ideas they may have to "learn the hard way.”

"Until they get their utility shut off, they may not even realize that it's not real," she added.

Some who posted that they’d stopped paying their bills and faced consequences left the movement and turned on Didulo. A few of them have joined an online group whose stated goal is to ruin Didulo. But still, every day her followers report not paying their bills and gleefully brag about the notices they're racking up.

“Is some help coming soon?” one of her followers asked in early May. “The warning to stock up and telling us not to pay utilities etc is really difficult. I’m scared I am going to get cut off and won’t have money to reconnect!”

Follow Mack Lamoureux on Twitter.

THE KIND OF UNION THE RIGHT WING LIKES
LILLEY: Hard hat revolution as another construction union backs Ford's PCs
Brian Lilley - Wednesday
Toronto Sun

© Provided by Toronto Sun

Ontario Premier Doug Ford greets workers before making an announcement at Algoma Steel's direct strip production complex on Friday morning. 

BRIAN KELLY

Doug Ford and the PC Party are picking up another endorsement from a significant construction trade union.

The International Brotherhood of Boilermakers is giving Ford its full support, saying that he understands the need to have more people in the skilled trades and to get things built in Ontario.

“I’m proud to lend my support to Doug Ford and the Ontario PCs,” said Arnie Stadnick, international vice president of the union.

It’s not something I ever expected to see in my lifetime, and I say that as someone whose late father was a boilermaker. My earliest political memories are of the NDP orange signs on the front lawn of our house and those of other tradesmen that filled our neighbourhood on Hamilton’s east mountain.

The idea of a union like the Boilermakers, or LiUNA before them, endorsing a PC government in Ontario would have been unthinkable. Things have changed, though, and the NDP isn’t the party of labour or skilled trades any longer.

In the recent past, the Boilermakers not only opposed PC Party policies, they donated to groups like the Working Families Coalition to help get Liberal governments elected. That coalition has fallen apart without the support of unions in the building trades — many now see the Liberals and NDP as standing in the way of approving projects that get their members working.

Stadnick’s statement said that Doug Ford and the PC Party are “the best choice to address the province’s labour shortage by getting more people into the skilled trades.”

In a statement, Ford said that he’s honoured to have the support and remains committed to rebuilding the skilled trades sector.

There is no chance that Ford or his party will be getting endorsed by the teachers’ unions or any labour group representing civil servants, but the people who work with their hands, who work outside and as Labour Minister Monte McNaughton says, “shower at the end of the day, not the start,” are looking at the PC government and liking what they see.

Much of the credit for this shift has to go to McNaughton who has won over many in the construction sector with what Stadnick calls his “open door policy.” McNaughton has been able to win over skeptical union leaders by simply listening to their concerns.

He hasn’t brought in radical labour policy that would be reminiscent of the NDP; he just stopped picking fights and started taking concerns seriously. That, and the government’s general support for building infrastructure, is why the PCs received the endorsement.

“Doug Ford, Monte McNaughton and the Ontario PCs understand the benefits of ensuring that the province not only maintains, but continually improves upon a supply chain that is largely serviced from within the province,” Stadnick said.

The Boilermakers aren’t the biggest union, just a few thousand members across the province, but their support is symbolic. It’s also not likely to be the last construction union to endorse the Ford government.

McNaughton has made no secret that he wants to make sure blue-collar workers see the PC Party as their natural political home. To accomplish that would be a sea change in provincial politics.

Conservative leaning parties elsewhere have tried to make that shift of blue-collar workers into their fold with varying levels of success.

Whether this support from construction unions grows or sticks around beyond this election remains to be seen. What is clear is that for the time being, the people who work on the front lines of building up Ontario see the Ford government as the best option for getting things built.

Economic Manuscripts: VALUE, PRICE AND PROFIT (marxists.org)

NO WAY

Canada weighs whether to rejoin U.S. ballistic missile defence of North America

Canada opted out of the program in 2005, in part because of its links to U.S. president George W. Bush's administration

Author of the article:
The Canadian Press
Lee Berthiaume
Publishing date:May 10, 2022 •

 

The test launch of what North Korean state media report is a "new type" of intercontinental ballistic missile, in this undated photo released on March 24, 2022. 

PHOTO BY KOREAN CENTRAL NEWS AGENCY

OTTAWA — Canada is weighing whether to reverse course and finally join the U.S. in defending against long-range ballistic missiles, Defence Minister Anita Anand said Tuesday, while declining to provide specific plans for upgrading North America’s aging defensive systems.

Anand was speaking at a conference hosted by the Canadian Global Affairs Institute, where she offered hints at a promised review of Canada’s defence policy while underscoring the need to recruit and retain more members of the Canadian Armed Forces.

Canada famously opted out of the U.S. ballistic missile defence program following a heated national debate in 2005, deciding not to invest in the network of land- and sea-based radars and interceptor missiles designed to stop an attack on North America.

Then-prime minister Paul Martin’s decision was seen by many as an attempt to bolster his minority Liberal government. The NDP, and many Canadians, opposed missile defence, in part because of its links to U.S. president George W. Bush’s administration.
t

Canadian Defence Minister Anita Anand speaks to the media during the Ukraine Security Consultative Group meeting at Ramstein air base on April 26, 2022 in Ramstein-Miesenbach, Germany.

 PHOTO BY THOMAS LOHNES/GETTY IMAGES

Yet the question of whether it should reconsider has repeatedly reared its head in the intervening years, and Anand left the door wide open when asked Tuesday whether it was time for Canada to rethink its previous decision.

“We are certainly taking a full and comprehensive look at that question, as well as what it takes to defend the continent across the board,” she said. “We are leaving no stone unturned in this major review of continental defence.”

The review in question involves upgrading Norad, the early-warning system that Canada shares with the U.S. The system is badly showing its age at a time when concerns about an attack on the continent are at their highest point since the Cold War.

The Conservatives as well as several parliamentary committees have previously called for Canada to embrace ballistic missile defence, particularly after North Korea conducted a number of long-range missile tests in 2017.

The system itself is not designed to stop an all-out attack from a country like Russia or China, and its actual effectiveness has been questioned against what the Congressional Budget Office has estimated as a US$176-billion price tag over the next decade.

Supporters of Canada’s involvement have nonetheless said any defence is better than nothing.

Canadian and American jets intercept a Russian Tu-142 maritime reconnaissance aircraft in 2020. PHOTO BY NORAD

Conservative defence critic Kerry-Lynne Findlay noted Norad’s deputy commander at the time told a parliamentary committee in 2017 that U.S. policy directed American military officials not to defend Canada if it was targeted in a ballistic missile attack.

New missile tests by North Korea in recent months along with Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and growing concerns about China have all “amplified” the need to ensure Canada is properly protected, Findlay added.

“We have to understand that we would or could be defenceless in the event of a missile attack,” she said.

“Given that evolving threat, we’re very much in favour of Norad modernization, and we feel that Canada has to actively engage with the U.S. regarding that and joining the missile defence program.”

Anand did confirm that some of the $6 billion in new money earmarked for the military in last month’s budget will be spent on updating Norad, including the string of 1980s-era radars in Canada’s Arctic known as the North Warning System.

Yet the minister would not provide any timelines or other specifics, and instead promised announcements “in the short term,” echoing comments she made after meeting U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin in Washington last month.

Military officials have warned for years that the system is obsolete and in desperate need of replacement. Yet both governments have been slow to act, even in the face of new Russian aggression.

Anand defended the lack of details in an interview after the conference, saying the government is taking the appropriate amount of time given the scope and scale of work and money needed to update the system.

“It’s a major investment,” she said. “It’s going to be fully comprehensive. We are taking the time to get it right. And that’s the way I do business, and that’s the way our government does business.”

The government is also working to nail down the details on a planned review of Canada’s five-year-old defence policy, the minister said. The Liberals promised that review in last month’s budget, saying an update is necessary given recent changes to global security.

“We are answering all of those questions right now ourselves,” Anand said when asked about the review’s timing and who will lead it. “We are deeply engaged in setting the parameters of the review and the timeline and the substantive aspects.”

The minister did indicate that one of the areas in which the review will focus is on recruiting and retaining more Canadians to the Armed Forces, which is short thousands of members at a time when the military is busier than ever.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published May 10, 2022.

Experts say high mortality rate in Alberta honey bees this year

Quinn Campbell - Yesterday 
Global News

Southern Alberta fields are abuzz as honey bees begin to emerge after a long winter. But the bee population has taken a hit this spring.


© Demi Knight

Beekeepers are seeing high mortality rates this year in bee colonies

Renata Borba with the Alberta Beekeepers Commission said Alberta saw huge losses in the province's pollinators.

"We estimate so far about 45 per cent, which is very high," added Borba.

When it comes to the 'why,' Borba said its not a simple answer. It could be from parasites, viruses, pesticides or the weather.

Read more:
Alberta bee industry feels the sting from COVID-19

"We do have a few culprits that we think are the reason the colonies died and we experienced the high mortality, but we don't know for sure," she said.

University of Lethbridge associate researcher Shelley Hoover added the high death toll is Canada-wide, with some areas experiencing a 90 per cent loss.

Related video: Low bee populations cause concern for Canadian farmers (cbc.ca)

Closer to home, she said the drought and extreme heat that blanketed the prairies last year was hard on crops, which in turn was hard on bees.

"The crops are not producing the usual amounts of nectar or the pollen is nutritionally deficient — these are things that are affected by heat," added Hoover.

Read more:

Province and feds provide combined $340M for ranchers after drought-laden summer

She said the ongoing dry conditions this spring is also hard on the bees, who rely on a constant water source to survive.

"It''s just like any other livestock animal or wild animal: they have to go out and find water. They need it both in terms of drinking water but they also use evaporative cooling to cool their hives when it gets hot, so the drought was a double whammy."

The high mortality rate is causing a huge financial blow to bee producers who now have to replace their bees. The widespread loss means there is not many domestic options to choose from.

Read more:

Alberta weather: province continues to battle drought as summer begins

"COVID has been limiting flights for about two years now, so its becoming increasingly hard to get international imports to replace bees as well," added Hoover.

With producers facing so many challenges, Hoover suggests the best way to support beekeepers to buy local honey.

Peru community wants its land back, threatening Chinese copper mine

By Marcelo Rochabrun

LAS BAMBAS, Peru (Reuters) - The community of Fuerabamba in the Andean region of Peru was resettled eight years ago to make way for a giant Chinese-owned copper mine, in a $1.2 billion scheme billed as a model solution to protests dogging the South American nation's mining sector.

Now the community wants the land back.

In mid-April, more than a hundred Fuerabamba community members stormed the Las Bambas mine and pitched tents near the open pit, forcing a halt in production at a site that provides 2% of global copper supplies. They were joined by the nearby Huancuire community, which was protesting a planned expansion of the mine on their former land.

 Peruvian indigenous community demands back its ancestral lands, on the site of one of the country's biggest copper mines owned by Chinese firm MMG

An attempt in late April by the mine's Chinese owner MMG Ltd to remove the camp led to clashes in which dozens of people were injured and failed to end the protest. Copper production - worth $3 billion a year - remains suspended, with no restart in sight.

The Fuerabamba members were evicted but the Huancuire community remained in place - and the two groups have formed an alliance to bargain with the government and the mine.

Las Bamas acknowledges that 20% of its obligations under the resettlement agreement are outstanding, including the purchase of new lands for the community.

While Fuerabamba's leaders had initially called just for Las Bambas just to fulfill its commitments, tensions have flared since the failed eviction.

"We're going to keep fighting until Las Bambas shuts down and gets out of here for good," Edison Vargas, the president of the Fuerabamba community, told Reuters. "It's war." The protest is the most severe crisis Las Bambas has faced since opening in 2016, calling into question the future of one of the largest investments ever made in Peru, the world’s No. 2 copper producer, industry experts say. The mine, which still has over a decade of planned production remaining, has faced road blockades in recent years by communities further away that have hit its production. But the invasion marks a major escalation as well as the potential unraveling of Peru's most expensive community resettlement scheme, amid a resurgence in South America of protests against mining projects.




Some 1,600 members of the Fuerabamba community were relocated by Las Bambas in 2014 to a purpose-built village with tidy rows of three-floor homes near the mine. The community approved the move, which came with $300 million in cash payouts, according to the company.

A Reuters reporter who visited Las Bambas in late April saw community members, including women and children, rebuilding adobe houses there and grazing cattle against the mine's open pit backdrop. Residents of Fuerabamba and Huancuire said they would not abandon demands for the return of what they called their ancestral lands.

They face long odds, according to former government officials and advisors. Both communities received substantial payments from Las Bambas in exchange for the land they now want back.

Executives at Las Bambas - which is 62.5%-owned by MMG, the Melbourne-based unit of state-owned China Minmetals Corp - say the protests are illegal and have called on authorities to enforce the rule of law. The company declined requests for comment for this story.

On Tuesday, as the stoppage entered a third week, Peru's government failed to broker a deal in talks at Las Bambas with the communities, as the two sides traded accusations of violence.


Edgardo Orderique, chief executive for operations at Las Bambas, said Fuerabamba and Huancuire members had destroyed tens of millions of dollars of equipment and injured 27 security personnel during the clashes late last month. Vargas said a Fuerabamba member had lost an eye in the violence.

The protest underscores the depth of the challenge facing Las Bambas as it proceeds with plans to increase annual copper output from 300,000 to 400,000 tonnes amid a spike in global copper prices.

"This protest is the most serious that Las Bambas has faced since it began operating in Peru," said Ivan Merino, a former mining minister under Peru's embattled President Pedro Castillo, whose government has been torn between its pledge to uphold the rights of rural communities - the bedrock of its support - and the need to revive the economy.



"The State does not have the control to resolve the conflict," said Merino.

Related video: Protesters tear gassed at copper mine in Peru (Reuters)

Peru's mining ministry did not respond to multiple requests for comment.


A Peruvian indigenous community demands back its ancestral lands, on the site of one of the country's biggest copper mines owned by Chinese firm MMG

THE FACE OF PROGRESS

In the main square of New Fuerabamba, the town that Las Bambas built, a plaque says the settlement is the durable "face of progress and hope".

Close to a dozen residents, however, said the abrupt transition from rural living to town life had caused trauma and mental health issues. Reuters was not independently able to confirm this.

The residents cited simple problems like the new brick houses - which have electricity and indoor plumbing - do not keep out the cold of the chill Andean nights as well as their former adobe homes.

Residents have also complained that basics like water, food and fuel - which the rural community was previously able to glean from the land - must now be paid for. Many of them no longer plant crops or tend livestock because the replacement plots provided by Las Bambas are too far away.

"The problem is that sustainable development has not been achieved," said Paola Bustamante, a director at Videnza, a consultancy, who previously served as Peru's top official in charge of social conflicts at Las Bambas.

"What has been done is they were given some money and that's it."

As part of the resettlement agreement, Las Bambas gave one job per family at the company for the life of the mine. The company also said in a 2021 presentation that health and education levels have also sharply improved, particularly in young children.

Three residents told Reuters that some members of the community had already spent their payouts. The resettlement plan, which MMG inherited when it bought the mine from Glencore Plc in 2014, gave Fuerabamba's people cash settlements the mine says averaged $500,000 per family.

Residents say the payout was closer to $100,000.

Either way that's a huge sum in a country where the legal annual minimum wage is $3,300.

"For us, it seemed like a lot of money, endless money," Dominga Vargas, a lifelong resident of Fuerabamba, told Reuters from the tent camp at Las Bambas before the eviction. "But now it has all run out and we don't have anything left."

"How could we not regret selling," she added.

GOVERNMENT IGNORED 'CRITICAL SITUATION'

The government gave MMG permission to expand the mine in March. Fuerabamba chief Vargas said Castillo's administration turned a deaf ear to his warnings of a brewing crisis and a request for mediation before the occupation took place.

In a March 28 letter seen by Reuters, Vargas warned the mining ministry of a "critical situation" at Las Bambas. He told Tuesday's meeting that he also went to the capital Lima to ask the government to intervene in the dispute, without success.

On the day of the attempted eviction, April 27, the government declared a state of emergency in the area, suspending the civil rights to assembly and protest.

The government said in a statement following the eviction attempt that it had supported dialogue between the parties from the beginning.

Under Peruvian civil law, property owners can attempt to evict trespassers by force during the first 15 days after they have settled in the property. If that time period lapses, then they need to go through a lengthier legal process.

In the wake of the clashes, Vargas wrote to Las Bambas management saying that further attempts to restart mining operations would be considered a "provocation" by his community and could trigger more violence, according to a separate April 29 letter seen by Reuters.

"Las Bambas won't restart, not a single gram of copper will leave from here," he told the meeting on Tuesday.

The Huancuire community, which also sold land to Las Bambas a decade ago for $33 million that is now key to the expansion project, is demanding more benefits from the minerals under the ground.

Pablo O'Brien, a former adviser to several Peruvian governments including Castillo's, said the communities were pushing their luck making new demands given the large previous payouts.

"This situation is really just open extortion," he said. "They cannot complain that they have not benefited financially."

Community leaders denied the protests were a shakedown.

"As an indigenous community, we need to make ourselves heard because the government has issued this permit without consulting us," said Romualdo Ochoa, the President of Huancuire.

Under Peruvian law, citizens don't own mineral wealth underground and the land was already formally sold, Ochoa acknowledged. But he said indigenous communities have special rights because of their long ancestry in the territory: "What's under our soil still belongs to us."

(Reporting by Marcelo Rochabrun; Additional reporting by Marco Aquino; Editing by Adam Jourdan and Daniel Flynn)

PHOTOS © Reuters/ANGELA PONCE

Quebec to pass unbelievably onerous language law
Tristin Hopper - Wednesday

© Provided by National Post

Quebec Premier Francois Legault, whose government is soon expected to pass a massive expansion of French-language mandates in the province. Bill 96 expands considerably on the Charter of the French Language first introduced in 1977 under the much-contested Bill 101.

First Reading is a daily newsletter keeping you posted on the travails of Canadian politicos, all curated by the National Post’s own Tristin Hopper. To get an early version sent direct to your inbox every Monday to Thursday at 6 p.m. ET (and 9 a.m. on Saturdays), sign up here.
TOP STORY

The Quebec National Assembly is entering the final stretch of passing Bill 96 , a controversial law set to dramatically expand the province’s ability to mandate the use of French both in public and private life.

Proponents of the bill have called it a critical tool to preserve Quebec as North America’s last majority French-speaking jurisdiction. Nevertheless, Indigenous leaders have denounced the bill as “ cultural genocide ” for imposing French on the province’s predominantly English-speaking First Nations communities. Physicians’ groups have warned it “could endanger people’s lives or have negative impacts on mental health if applied.” And last week, Quebec college students staged a mass walkout to protest the bill’s curbs on English-language education. 

Below, some of the more contested aspects of Bill 96.


Doctors would be forced to address patients in French

With limited exceptions, Bill 96 requires doctors to address their patients in French, e ven in situations where both doctor and patient would better understand each other in another language. Certain bilingual institutions, such as the Jewish General Hospital, are exempt . As are patients who can prove that they’ve attended an English-language school in Canada, or immigrants who have arrived in Quebec within the last six months. But for everyone else, everything from cancer diagnoses to Alzheimer’s treatment must be performed in French.

If a doctor violates the tenets of Bill 96, all it takes is an anonymous complaint to the Office québécois de la langue française for investigators to enter their office and start seizing records without a warrant , including confidential medical documents. And in this, doctors are not alone: Many of the provisions outlined below are similarly backed by expanded powers of search and seizure by the Office québécois de la langue française.



Whole categories of legal contracts will become mandatory to draft in French

The bill mandates “ francisation ” of any company with more than 25 employees, which means that the companies will need to obtain government certification that they predominantly function in French. An estimated 20,000 businesses will be captured by the new regulations, according to the provincial government’s own figures.

Quebec’s current laws aren’t tremendously enthused about job notices that request proficiency in a non-French language, but they allow it in situations where “the nature of the duties requires such knowledge.” Bill 96 takes that a step farther, and requires employers to take “reasonable measures” to ensure that non-French languages are spoken in the workplace as little as humanly possible.

Under Bill 96, any “contracts of adhesion” must also be drafted in French, with violators subject to penalties of up to $30,000 per day (which makes the liability for noncompliance “nearly indefinite” according to one legal analysis ). Any employment or service contract must exist in French form, even if both parties would prefer another language. This also holds true for court proceedings.



First Nations leaders are saying the bill demolishes “any hope of reconciliation”

Indigenous communities in Quebec generally don’t speak French as a first language. The Kahnawake Mohawk Territory outside Montreal is part of a wider Mohawk Council that includes many members in the English-speaking United States. Inuit and Cree communities in the province’s Arctic regions weren’t even part of Quebec until 1912, and the Inuit in particular still retain widespread household use of Inuktitut, with English as the usual second language. For this reason, First Nations leaders have particular issue with Bill 96’s mandates on CEGEPs, the publicly funded colleges offered to Quebecers between high school and university.

Students at English-language CEGEPs will henceforth need to complete at least five classes in French to graduate, which First Nations leaders have said will push down already-low Indigenous graduation rates. “We declare that this bill, should it pass, will never apply … and that our people will not accept its application over them anywhere within their ancestral lands,” reads a recent statement by the Haudenosaunee Longhouse, the traditional Mohawk government in Kahnawake.

English-language schools will now have a hard cap on how many students they can accept

Another education-related provision of Bill 96 is that English-language CEGEPs will have top-down quotas on how many students they can take in. English-language elementary and secondary school is currently offered in Quebec to a select subset of what has been called “historic Anglophones”; English speakers with established roots in the province. New immigrants to Quebec, for instance, are already required to do their schooling in French regardless of their mother tongue.

But CEGEP students still have free rein to pick either an English or French school. Bill 96 brings that regime to an end; henceforth English-language CEGEP student will only be allowed to represent 17.5 per cent of total CEGEP admissions – a measure that has been denounced by Francophone students looking to brush up on their English before studying at a university in English Canada or the United States.

WAR CRIMES BEFORE THE ATOMIC BOMB
Japanese writer who documented WWII Tokyo firebombing dies
Wednesday

TOKYO (AP) — Katsumoto Saotome, a Japanese writer who gathered the accounts of survivors of the U.S. firebombing of Tokyo in World War II to raise awareness of the massive civilian deaths and the importance of peace, has died. He was 90.



One of his publishers, Iwanami Shoten, confirmed his death. He died on Tuesday of organ failure related to old age at a hospital in Saitama, north of Tokyo, NHK public television reported.

A native of Tokyo, Saotome was 12 when he narrowly survived the firebombing of the city on March 10, 1945, that turned the densely populated downtown area of the Japanese capital into an inferno. “I ran for my life as countless cluster bombs rained down,” Saotome recalled in one of his storytelling events.

More than 105,000 people are estimated to have died and a million made homeless in a single night, but the devastation has been largely eclipsed in history by the U.S. atomic bombings of two Japanese cities several months later.

After the war, Saotome pursued his writing while working in a factory. His debut autobiographical story, “Downtown Home” was nominated for the prestigious Naoki literary prize in 1952.

In 1970, Saotome began visiting survivors of the firebombing to hear their stories to let their voices be heard.

He established a civic group to document the firebombing and collect documents and artifacts about the attack, leading to the establishment of a museum, the Center of the Tokyo Raids and War Damage, in 2002. He served as its director until 2019.

As head of the museum, he published magazines about the firebombing, while continuing to write books for children and young adults to raise awareness of the tragedy.

“We must hand the baton to the younger generation” to keep retelling the story, he said in an interview with NHK in 2019.

Many of the survivors of the firebombing feel they were forgotten by history and by the government.

Postwar governments have provided a total of 60 trillion yen ($460 billion) in welfare support for military veterans and bereaved families, and medical support for survivors of the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, but nothing for civilian victims of the firebombings.

Acclaimed filmmaker Yoji Yamada, known for his highly popular film series “Otoko wa Tsuraiyo" ("It’s Hard Being a Man"), featuring a lovable wandering peddler named Tora-san, was a longtime friend of Saotome. He told Japanese media that he was “deeply saddened by the loss of his precious friend with whom he discussed postwar Japan, war and peace.”

Yamada often visited the firebombing museum. Sometimes Saotome took him around the area, making him a big fan of the Shibamata area, which became home to the Tora-san series.

Mari Yamaguchi, The Associated Press

A Forgotten Holocaust: US Bombing Strategy, the Destruction ...

https://apjjf.org › -Mark-Selden

by M Selden · Cited by 67 — As Michael Sherry and Cary Karacas have pointed out for the US and Japan ... Father Flaujac, a French cleric, compared the firebombing to the Tokyo ...

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  The Japanese Village at Dugway Proving Ground - Japan Focus

  https://apjjf.org › 2018/08 › Plung

  

  Apr 15, 2018 — Napalm, firebombing, Dugway Proving Ground, Japanese Village, ... precision bombing, civilian bombing, Tokyo air raids. ... Davis, Mike.

Bombing of Tokyo (10 March 1945) - Wikipedia

https://en.wikipedia.org › wiki › Bombing_of_Tokyo_(...

On the night of 9/10 March 1945, the United States Army Air Forces (USAAF) conducted a devastating firebombing raid on Tokyo, the Japanese capital city.

‎Background · ‎Preparations · ‎Attack · ‎Aftermath

Mike Davis - Firebomb | PDF | Strategic Bombing | Chemical Warfare

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Firebomb. How to Stop Worrying and Love the Incendiary Bomb. By Mike Davis. MacArthur fellow Mike Davis is the author of “City of Quartz”, “Ecology of Fear” ...

Landscapes can be weaponized to influence public opinion and perception during war

Fionn Byrne, Assistant Professor,

 School of Architecture and Landscape Architecture,

 University of British Columbia 

Wednesday
The Conversation

Blast craters, denuded landscapes and burning oil wells. When we think of the relation between war and the landscape, we think of such destructive acts and toxic legacies. Through this lens, nature and the landscape are often seen as casualties of war.

Yet there have been cases where nations have used the landscape as a weapon. In one such touchstone case — Operation Ranch Hand — the U.S. military released a defoliant called Agent Orange over the South Vietnam countryside to weaponize the forest during the Vietnam War.

While the end of the Vietnam War saw an international ban on using the environment as a weapon, landscape design — which includes the planning and planting of green spaces — continues to present itself as a tool capable of influencing the hearts and minds of local populations and ultimately achieving military objectives.

While speaking about the ongoing Russia-Ukraine conflict, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said,

“Winning a battle is not winning the war. Taking a city does not mean Vladimir Putin’s taking the hearts and minds of the Ukrainian people. On the contrary, he is destined to lose.”

Clearly, the United States military doctrine considers winning “hearts and minds” as a necessary measure to win a war.

As a design critic who has been studying the role of landscapes in warfare, I argue that trees and green spaces can be components of a non-coercive mode of warfare, as they can be used to further community solidarity and diminish the likelihood of insurgency.
Winning hearts and minds

The experience of the United States military in Afghanistan has proven that having a more powerful military force does not guarantee winning a war.

While the Taliban surrendered Kandahar only two months after the launch of Operation Enduring Freedom in 2001, the U.S. military remained in Afghanistan and engaged in violent conflict for the next 20 years, ultimately withdrawing and returning the nation to Taliban control.

Central to the United States’ effort to secure peace was the strategy of winning “hearts and minds,” or making emotional and intellectual appeals to the local population through attraction and persuasion instead of force.

The U.S. military may have ultimately failed to win the war in Afghanistan, but they did develop tactics to secure peace and win over the hearts and minds of local citizens. While not every effort was successful, I found several instances where the U.S. military’s war-fighting objectives aligned with an unlikely ally — the profession of landscape architecture.

Landscape architects, after all, have always worked to improve public and environmental health. And while hearts and minds are not exactly the same as physical and mental health, it is understood that physical health and well-being are necessary to establish a peaceful society.
Green spaces influence health and mental well-being

American landscape architect Frederick Law Olmsted’s legacy of park building in the United States shows that landscape architects are concerned with public health and social stability. Olmsted was the first professional to use the title of “landscape architect” and is best known for designing New York’s Central Park.

Olmsted’s parks helped sustain Americans’ mental and physical health and social connections during the darkest days of the pandemic. Urban residents enjoyed the greenery in these designed spaces after recognizing that spending time in nature can improve one’s physical health and mental well-being.

Since Olmsted’s time, a growing body of scientific research has concluded that exposure to green space contributes to improved health and well-being. While medical professionals have been prescribing spending time with nature, landscape architects have been working to maximize the positive outcomes of exposure through design.

Landscape design presents itself as a tool capable of influencing the health and well-being and, therefore, the hearts and minds of local populations. Ultimately it can achieve military objectives through the planning and planting of green space.
Weaponizing the landscape

Using the landscape as a weapon is an underappreciated area of study.

In 1976, the United States, along with 47 other nations, became signatories to the Convention on the Prohibition of Military or Any Other Hostile Use of Environmental Modification Techniques. This treaty prohibits “modification of the natural environment for use as a weapon of war” and “acts of war injurious to the natural environment.”

While deliberate environmental destruction continues, exemplified by the burning of oil wells set ablaze by Iraqi troops during the Gulf War, researchers hope that the International Criminal Court may one day prosecute “crimes against the environment.”

More recently, the Stop Ecocide Foundation has been working to provide a criminal definition of ecocide that will carry the force of international law, making punishable “severe and either widespread or long-term damage to the environment.”

These efforts are laudable and deserve our support. Yet, the understandable emphasis on damage and destruction decreases the attention given to acts of war, like tree planting efforts, that “improve” an environment.
Understanding the long-term impacts of war

One project undertaken by the U.S. military in Afghanistan saw active troops lead a reforestation effort in the Panjshir region, where they planted 35,000 trees, creating a regional green space.

As many individuals experienced this regional planting effort, the landscape influenced the hearts and minds of local citizens on a population scale.

Despite the U.S. military now having withdrawn from Afghanistan, these planted trees and other green spaces continue to grow and exert influence. Thus, it is not just acts of war injurious to the environment that have wide-reaching and long-term impacts on a population.

As I write from my office on the unceded territory of the Musqueam people, I am more keenly aware that a beautiful landscape can manipulate hearts and minds and become a weapon of war. The continued presence of a colonial landscape, designed and imposed on these lands, is easier to recognize if we ask what this land looked like before and after establishing a settler-colonial society.

We experience green spaces differently depending on their design and our cultural background. We need to think about who designed and built our local green spaces and for what purpose. Ultimately, it matters if the landscape is redesigned and replanted by local populations or by occupying forces.

This article is republished from The Conversation, a nonprofit news site dedicated to sharing ideas from academic experts.

Read more:

Crimes against the environment: the silent victim of warfare

How would Canada approach the prospect of war?

Language matters when Googling controversial people

Ahmed Al-Rawi, 

Assistant Professor, 

News, Social Media, and Public Communication,

 Simon Fraser University

 - Wednesday
The Conversation


One of the useful features of search engines like Google is the autocomplete function that enables users to find fast answers to their questions or queries. However, autocomplete search functions are based on ambiguous algorithms that have been widely criticized because they often provide biased and racist results.

The ambiguity of these algorithm stems from the fact that most of us know very little about them — which has led some to refer to them as “black boxes.” Search engines and social media platforms do not offer any meaningful insight or details on the nature of the algorithms they employ. As users, we have the right to know the criteria used to produce search results and how they are customized for individual users, including how people are labelled by Google’s search engine algorithms.

To do so, we can use a reverse engineering process, conducting multiple online searches on a specific platform to better understand the rules that are in place. For example, the hashtag #fentanyl can be presently searched and used on Twitter, but it is not allowed to be used on Instagram, indicating the kind of rules that are available on each platform.
Automated information

When searching for celebrities using Google, there is often a brief subtitle and thumbnail picture associated with the person that is automatically generated by Google.

Our recent research showed how Google’s search engine normalizes conspiracy theorists, hate figures and other controversial people by offering neutral and even sometimes positive subtitles. We used virtual private networks (VPNs) to conceal our locations and hide our browsing histories to ensure that search results were not based on our geographical location or search histories.

We found, for example, that Alex Jones, “the most prolific conspiracy theorist in contemporary America,” is defined as an “American radio host,” while David Icke, who is also known for spreading conspiracies, is described as a “former footballer.” These terms are considered by Google as the defining characteristics of these individuals and can mislead the public.
Dynamic descriptors

In the short time since our research was conducted in the fall of 2021, search results seem to have changed.

I found that some of the subtitles that we originally identified, have been either modified, removed or replaced. For example, the Norwegian terrorist Anders Breivik was subtitled “Convicted criminal,” yet now there is no label associated with him.

Faith Goldy, the far-right Canadian white nationalist who was banned from Facebook for spreading hate speech, did not have a subtitle. Now however, her new Google subtitle is “Canadian commentator.”

There is no indication of what a commentator suggests. The same observation is found in relation to American white supremacist Richard B. Spencer. Spencer did not have a label a few months ago, but is now an “American editor,” which certainly does not characterize his legacy.

Another change relates to Lauren Southern, a Canadian far-right member, who was labelled as a “Canadian activist,” a somewhat positive term, but is now described as a “Canadian author.”

The seemingly random subtitle changes show that the programming of the algorithmic black boxes is not static, but changes based on several indicators that are still unknown to us.

Searching in Arabic vs. English

A second important new finding from our research is related to the differences in the subtitle results based on the selected language search. I speak and read Arabic, so I changed the language setting and searched for the same figures to understand how they are described in Arabic.

To my surprise, I found several major differences between English and Arabic. Once again, there was nothing negative in describing some of the figures that I searched for. Alex Jones becomes a “TV presenter of talk shows,” and Lauren Southern is erroneously described as a “politician.”

And there’s much more from the Arabic language searches: Faith Goldy becomes an “expert,” David Icke transforms from a “former footballer” into an “author” and Jake Angeli, the “QAnon shaman” becomes an “actor” in Arabic and an “American activist” in English.

Richard B. Spencer becomes a “publisher” and Dan Bongino, a conspiracist permanently banned from YouTube, transforms from an “American radio host” in English to a “politician” in Arabic. Interestingly, the far-right figure, Tommy Robinson, is described as a “British-English political activist” in English but has no subtitle in Arabic.

Misleading labels

What we can infer from these language differences is that these descriptors are insufficient, because they condense one’s description to one or a few words that can be misleading.

Understanding how algorithms function is important, especially as misinformation and distrust are on the rise and as conspiracy theories are still spreading rapidly. We also need more insight into how Google and other search engines work — it is important to hold these companies accountable for their biased and ambiguous algorithms.

This article is republished from The Conversation, a nonprofit news site dedicated to sharing ideas from academic experts.

Read more:

There is, in fact, a ‘wrong’ way to use Google. Here are 5 tips to set you on the right path

Is Google getting worse? Increased advertising and algorithm changes may make it harder to find what you’re looking for

Ahmed Al-Rawi receives funding from the Department of Heritage, the Digital Citizen Initiative.

BOSSES SAY WORKERS ARE GREEDY

Forty per cent of Canadians would take less pay to work from home, survey finds

Nearly two in five (36 per cent) Canadian remote or partly remote workers say they would be willing to take a lower-paying job for the option to work from home, compared to a higher-paying role that requires full-time work at the office, according to an Ipsos survey * .

© Provided by National Post 

One recent poll showed 81 per cent of Toronto area office workers posted to their homes are happier that way.

Carly Penrose - Wednesday
National Post

The same survey, which polled 585 Canadian workers aged 18 and older, reported nearly one-third (32 per cent) of respondents would change jobs if their employer required them to work exclusively from the office — and 15 per cent have already switched jobs for that reason.

According to Statistics Canada, four per cent of workers were working mostly-remotely in 2016, but by 2021, largely due to the COVID-19 pandemic, that number increased to 32 per cent. Even when the pandemic is over, though, it appears workers are not eager to be back in the office full-time.

The pandemic changed how Canadians work — and how they want to work: poll

Employees are 'in the driver’s seat': How employers are trying to lure people back to the office

Related video: 1 in 3 Canadians willing to change jobs if forced to work from office exclusively: poll (Global News)

“Given unemployment rates right now, I think organizations have to be very thoughtful about the kinds of settings they offer for people working for their company,” said Terri Griffith, a professor of innovation and entrepreneurship at Simon Fraser University.

Last year, Forbes reported that companies like Google and Facebook said remote employees who live in, or relocate to geographic areas with a lower cost of living may be paid less. While employers in Canada cannot reduce an existing employee’s pay without significant legal risk, they could offer lower compensation before the person is hired. Griffith says that’s a risk “[if] another company says ‘no I’m going to pay you for the value of the work, I don’t care where you live.’ They may end up with the better employee.”

Shawn Hewat, CEO of tech company Wavy, said she has seen many companies struggling with recruitment and retention. Providing a remote work option can be an important incentive, “if that choice is taken away, you’re going to suffer from a culture perspective and from a hiring and retention perspective.”

* These are some of the findings of an Ipsos poll conducted between April 14 to 19, 2022, on behalf of Global News. For this survey, a sample of 585 working Canadians aged 18+ was interviewed. Quotas and weighting were employed to ensure that the sample’s composition reflects that of the Canadian population according to census parameters. The precision of Ipsos online polls is measured using a credibility interval. In this case, the poll is accurate to within ± 4.6 percentage points, 19 times out of 20, had all working Canadians aged 18+ been polled. The credibility interval will be wider among subsets of the population. All sample surveys and polls may be subject to other sources of error, including, but not limited to coverage error, and measurement error.