Solwd

OTTAWA, Ont. — Two of Canada’s federal ministers joked about summoning tanks to downtown Ottawa to end a protest of pandemic public health measures in February.

One of them called the chief of the Ottawa Police Service “incompetent” for failing to dislodge protesters from the streets around Parliament Hill.

And a third minister dismissed a provincial premier’s concerns about the federal response to the protest as “bonkers.”

A public inquiry into the Canadian government’s use of emergency powers to end the so-called “Freedom Convoy” protests last winter is giving Canadians a rare glimpse at the inner workings of a government under pressure — including candid, often frustrated text messages between Cabinet ministers that they likely never expected would be made public.

The government has partially waived Cabinet confidence for the purposes of the inquiry, giving the Canadian public extraordinary access to thousands of pages of documents from the time of the crisis that would normally remain private. Together, they shed light on the unvarnished thoughts of senior members of a government that generally sticks closely to scripts and talking points.

The inquiry is required by law as a result of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s decision to invoke the never-before-used Emergencies Act on Feb. 14 to end the protest. Powers under the act were used to freeze the bank accounts of protesters, ban travel to protest sites and compel tow trucks to clear out vehicles blocking Ottawa streets. The commission must now determine whether the Liberal government was justified in using emergency measures.

This week, a series of Cabinet ministers and senior government staff are appearing before the commission. Trudeau, the final witness after six weeks of public hearings, will testify on Friday.

On Wednesday, a commission lawyer questioned Justice Minister David Lametti about text messages he sent to his chief of staff on Jan. 30, just days after trucks rolled into Ottawa and clogged downtown streets, which showed he was already contemplating use of the Emergencies Act.

Lametti testified he was simply “being prudent” in raising the Emergencies Act early on. “I knew that we had to begin thinking about it, whether or not it was going to be an option,” he said.

Other colorful text exchanges with Public Safety Minister Marco Mendicino, however, reflect Lametti’s growing frustration with the protest and what he perceived as inaction on the part of police.

“You need to get the police to move,” Lametti told Mendicino on Feb. 2. “And the CAF [Canadian military] if necessary.”

“How many tanks are you asking for?” Mendicino replied.

“I reckon one will do!!” Lametti responded.

On Wednesday, Lametti testified the exchange was “meant to be a joke between two friends.” He also clarified that the government cannot instruct police in operational matters.

Two days later, on Feb. 4, Lametti and Mendicino again voiced their irritation in a text exchange. “Police have all the legal authority they need to enforce the law,” Mendicino wrote. “They just need to exercise it, and do their job.”

“I was stunned by the lack of a multilayered plan,” Lametti responded. “Sloly is incompetent,” he added, referring to Peter Sloly, then-chief of the Ottawa police.

Speaking to a commission lawyer, Lametti said the comment was “a complete product of the heat of the moment” and added he would “soften it now with the benefit of hindsight.”

The justice minister said he was forced to leave his residence and move to another location in Ottawa for part of the protest, which lasted from late January until the weekend of Feb. 19. He also spent some time in Montreal, where his riding is located, and said his staff members in Ottawa were harassed by protesters for wearing masks when they went to work.

He said his comments were partly a reflection of the fact that his life “had been altered by this.”

But a lawyer for Sloly challenged Lametti’s claim that his texts were just casual correspondence between friends. “You can understand how when such a thing is made public that … Canadians through the media take the words to be the weight of your office,” the lawyer said.

“I take that point,” Lametti responded.

Other text exchanges offer a much more candid account of conversations happening at the highest levels than was offered publicly at the time. On Feb. 11, after Trudeau had a phone call with President Joe Biden about ongoing blockades of border crossings, his deputy chief of staff, Brian Clow, texted Deputy Prime Minister Chrystia Freeland.

“POTUS was quite constructive,” Clow wrote. “There was no lecturing. Biden immediately agreed this is a shared problem. He started talking about rumoured convoys against the Super Bowl and DC.

“PM spent a fair bit of time telling the President about the US influence on this. Money, people, and political/media support.”

Official readouts of the call from Ottawa and the White House were much more circumspect. “The leaders agreed to continue closely coordinating bilateral efforts,” the Canadian readout says. “The Prime Minister and President discussed the American and global influence on the protests, including financial support.”

Other messages express frustration with criticism of the federal government, and with the limited tools Ottawa had at its disposal. Earlier this week, a group chat between Mendicino, Transport Minister Omar Alghabra and Intergovernmental Affairs Minister Dominic LeBlanc was tabled with the commission.

The exchange shows the ministers discussing messages then-Alberta premier Jason Kenney sent to LeBlanc, claiming Trudeau had “really screwed the pooch” with his response to the protests.

“Speaking of bonkers,” Alghabra commented. “Totally,” LeBlanc replied.

On Feb. 13, Greg Fergus, an Ottawa-area Liberal member of Parliament, texted Lametti to voice his annoyance about the ongoing occupation. “Is integrated command the best we can offer? Fuck,” he wrote.

“Our only other legal option is the emergencies act,” Lametti answered.

“That is exactly where people are at. It is where I am at,” Fergus responded. “And me,” Lametti agreed.

Trudeau invoked the Emergencies Act the next day.

https://www.politico.com/news/2022/11/24/canada-cabinet-freedom-convoy-00070816

Biden could then be heard saying something to the first lady and then Dreyer chimed in, “Hello? Happy Thanksgiving, Mr. President. Are you there?”

https://nypost.com/2022/11/24/biden-call-into-macys-thanksgiving-parade-turns-into-cringe-tv-moment/

Thanksgiving and the holiday season are a time when people may warn against political discussions as a way to avoid dinner table blow-ups.

However, researchers at the University of Pennsylvania have found that complete avoidance might not be necessary if dinner attendees take time to understand each other’s “primal world beliefs” when conversing about politics.

Jeremy “Jer” Clifton, a senior research scientist at the University of Pennsylvania’s Positive Psychology Center, told Fox News Digital that primal world beliefs, or “primals” for short, are a category of “extremely basic beliefs about the world as a whole.”

Clifton and his colleagues recently published a paper on primal world beliefs in the context of politics – an avenue of study that belief researchers hadn’t studied in depth.

AT THANKSGIVING, AVOID THESE HOT-BUTTON CONVERSATION TOPICS TO PREVENT ARGUING AT DINNER

Prior established research has suggested that there are 26 primal world beliefs, but the top three revolve around the belief that the world is or isn’t safe, enticing and alive.

“I didn’t come up with safe, enticing and alive,” Clifton said during a phone interview on Tuesday, Nov. 22. “It emerged from the data, and now it’s replicating across different groups, different cultures and different samples.”

The new primal world beliefs and politics paper examined nine studies that analyzed people’s worldviews, which surveyed 4,500 individuals. 

Clifton and his team also analyzed 80,000 tweets that presented world and life views.

THANKSGIVING: 12 FUN FACTS ABOUT THE HOLIDAY TO DISCUSS DURING DINNER

“What’s interesting is people are actually really bad at actually knowing the primal world beliefs of different groups,” Clifton said. “So, if you ask a lot of conservatives, and if you ask a lot of liberals, both sides think the other side thinks the world is a bad place.”

World beliefs shape overall well-being and personality formation in addition to personal politics, Clifton explained.

“What we found is that the belief [that] the world is a dangerous place is one of the least important primal world beliefs when you try to understand the left and right,” Clifton said. “It’s really hard to find someone who sees the world as an objectively ugly, dull place.”

He continued, “The belief of the world is safe, enticing and alive correlate with each other, and together they make up the general belief that the world is a good place.”

HOLIDAYS MAY BE THE RIGHT TIME FOR FAMILY HEALTH CHATS: JOAN LUNDEN SHARES KEY TIPS 

Researchers have found that people generally view the world as “safe” or “dangerous,” according to Clifton.

“That’s not to mean it’s an either-or. It’s a dimension and we are all scattered along that dimension,” Clifton said. “Some of us are more in the middle and some of us are more extreme.”

People who have a safe worldview see life as cooperative, comfortable and stable, whereas people who have an opposite viewpoint see the world as a place filled with misery, decay and brutality.

THANKSGIVING TABLE TALK: 12 FUN TIDBITS WORTH TACKLING 

“The belief that the world is a safe place versus a dangerous place is about threats of all types. Germs, instability, crime, [and hurtful things] like [a family member] calling you names, all of [these negative factors are] involved in that.”

People who have an “enticing” worldview see life as attractive or alluring versus “dull,” Clifton explained.

“This is the belief that the world is a place that’s beautiful, interesting, funny and meaningful. It’s not really related to pleasure, but engagement,” Clifton said.

“Pleasure is actually more involved with the belief that the world is a safe place versus a dangerous place because if the world’s a safe place, it’s a place where you can avoid being miserable,” he continued.

PASTOR ROBERT JEFFRESS: FAITH WILL ALWAYS BE A ‘KEY ISSUE’ IN POLITICS 

Those who see the world as enticing look forward to what’s to come, while those who see the world as dull often think exploration as boring or pointless.

The “alive” world belief means when people view life and world events as having a deeper meaning rather than being “indifferent” or “mechanistic,” according to Clifton.

Those who view the world as alive see an “intentional” and “purposeful” relationship with an active universe that carries out plans, reacts to individual actions and communicates its will and desires, Clifton explained.

“The belief the world is alive is tied to being more religious, but actually it’s a lot more tied to being more spiritual. And in fact, there’s a lot of people who aren’t religious at all, who think all religions aren’t true, who totally see the world as alive,” Clifton said. 

“[For example,] an atheist friend of mine who will plan a picnic and then if it rains, they’re like, ‘OK, it’s a sign from the world that I need to call my mom and make up for that fight that we had this morning,’” Clifton added.

THANKSGIVING QUIZ! HOW WELL DO YOU KNOW THESE SURPRISING FACTS ABOUT THE ANNUAL HOLIDAY?

People who view the world as mechanistic see life as “indifferent” and “random,” and often themselves as an Interchangeable part of a “mindless machine” that has “no plans or desires,” according to Clifton.

Empathy, cooperation and respect are key to seeing the world from another perspective, Clifton told Fox News Digital.

“In these politically polarized times, there’s less appetite for doing so,” Clifton said. “We all want our side to win.”

People who view the world as safe will often try to assuage and allay fears if they come into contact with someone who thinks the world is a dangerous place, Clifton explained.

However, the new primal world belief research paper that covers politics has found that varying political ideology largely takes shape depending on whether a person views the world as hierarchical or non-hierarchical.

“The belief the world is a hierarchical place is the belief that the world is a place that’s full of differences,” Clifton said.

One group tends to view differences as a hard line in the sand that commands respect and asks that the drawn line be preserved.

Clifton said this way of thinking is usually favored by conservatives while liberals tend to see the world as “a place full of differences” with “superficial and arbitrary lines in the sand.”

“[For example,] we could talk about lines between the rich and poor, between men and women,” Clifton noted. “A lot of the debate on trans rights could well come down to these fundamental assumptions we have about whether the world is a place where differences really matter.”

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Understanding worldviews on opposite sides of the political aisle can help people navigate sensitive discussions respectfully on Thanksgiving, other holidays and daily life, according to Clifton.

“We can disagree and yes, we can debate, but we can also recognize that all that any of us can do is act on the basis of what we believe to be true,” Clifton said. “And we can realize that if we saw the world in a different light, we too might be more liberal, or we too might be more conservative. It’s an exercise in being patient with the other side.”

Clifton noted that current research hasn’t found that positive primal world beliefs reflect privilege.

So far, the assumption that wealthy people or people who live in high-income zip codes have a more positive view of the world because they’ve “probably had an objectively good and abundant life” hasn’t been proven to be true, Clifton said.

“I’m hopeful because once we can get past that and actually really deeply start to care again and want to understand,” Clifton told Fox News Digital. “I think we’ll find that our primal world beliefs help make a lot of sense of why we do the things we do.”

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Clifton doesn’t recommend people try to change another person’s mind when discussing politics at the Thanksgiving table.

“Do I have empirically tested ways of changing these beliefs? No, I do not,” he said. “Down the road, maybe there will be ways to productively discuss what these primal world beliefs are and try to change them.” 

He went on, “[The research is] on the way. But, I think that just knowing that these beliefs exist, and you have options can be helpful.”

https://www.foxnews.com/lifestyle/thanksgiving-dinner-side-politics-why-shouldnt-be-off-table

The visiting Mississippi State Bulldogs will take on the No. 20 Ole Miss Rebels on Thursday night.

https://nypost.com/2022/11/24/mississippi-state-vs-ole-miss-prediction-odds-college-football-picks/

Musk Tweets “Tesla Full Self-Driving Beta Now Available To Anyone” In US

Tyler Durden
Thu, 11/24/2022 – 15:05

https://www.zerohedge.com/technology/musk-tweets-tesla-full-self-driving-beta-now-available-anyone-us

Prosecutors said they have opened probes into the role played by consulting firms in the 2017 and 2022 presidential elections, widening an investigation into consulting firm McKinsey & Co.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/frances-mckinsey-probe-widens-to-include-campaign-financing-11669320943?mod=pls_whats_news_us_business_f

OTTAWA — With blockades at Canada-U.S. borders choking supply chains, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and top government officials scrambled to ease heightened anxiety in Washington.

The revelations were revealed in testimony and documents tabled Thursday at a public inquiry into the federal government’s decision to use emergency powers to end the ‘Freedom Convoy’ blockades and clear a weeks-long occupation of downtown Ottawa that started in January 2022.

“I could see for the first time this amber light flashing,” Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland told the Public Order Emergency Commission.

The inquiry is required by law as a result of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s decision to invoke the never-before-used Emergencies Act on Feb. 14 to end the protests.

Powers under the act were used to freeze the bank accounts, ban travel to protest sites and compel trucks to tow vehicles blocking streets. The commission must determine whether the Liberal government was justified in using those measures.

Freeland told the inquiry about a Feb. 10 phone call from Brian Deese, the director of the National Economic Council and Biden’s top economic adviser, who expressed urgent concern about the border blockades.

“They are very, very, very worried,” Freeland wrote in an email to her staff. “If this is not sorted out in the next 12 hours, all of their northeastern car plants will shut down.”

During the conversation, Deese acknowledged the integrated nature of the cross-border economy that Canadians regularly emphasize with American counterparts. Transport Canada analysis pegged the cost of the blockades at C$3.9 billion in halted trade.

Freeland asked Deese if he could arrange a phone call between Biden and Prime Minister Justin Trudeau. He would “try to make it happen,” she wrote to staff.

Brian Clow, Trudeau’s deputy chief of staff, had already heard from White House officials including Juan Gonzalez, special assistant to the president and the National Security Council senior director for the Western Hemisphere.

Gonzalez wanted to connect Trudeau’s national security adviser, Jody Thomas, with officials at the Department of Homeland Security.

Clow helped coordinate the Trudeau-Biden discussion, which took place Feb. 11. He prepared the prime minister for that call with a point-form note and a clear message: Ottawa had a plan to end the blockades.

The note ended with an appeal to the president: “We are in this together. We benefit from our integrated supply chains. Some U.S. politicians are arguing for more protectionism. That’s a mistake.”

After the Trudeau-Biden conversation, Clow followed up with Freeland.

“POTUS was quite constructive,” he wrote. “There was no lecturing. Biden immediately agreed this is a shared problem.”

The president reportedly alluded to trucker convoys rumored to be heading to the Super Bowl in Los Angeles, as well as for the streets of Washington.

Clow’s text said Trudeau spoke with the president about American influence on the Canadian blockades, including “money, people, and political/media support.”

At the time, Fox News personality Tucker Carlson was one of the most prominent vocal American supporters of the Canadian protests.

Official readouts of the call from Ottawa and the White House offered fewer details.

Trudeau will be expected to share his recollections of this time when he testifies at the inquiry Friday.

U.S. Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg was also preoccupied with the border blockades. The same day Deese called Freeland, Buttigieg got hold of Transport Minister Omar Alghabra to press his counterpart for “a plan to resolve” the disruptions.

Buttigieg initiated the call, an interaction Alghabra told the commission was “unusual.”

During her testimony Thursday, Freeland told the commission the pace of the cross-border interactions during the crisis was uncharacteristically swift. Meetings that typically required advance notice and effort to arrange took place within 24 hours.

In an email to staff, Freeland noted Deese had requested daily updates — a stark signal that a “hard to get hold of” White House adviser was following closely.

Those check-ins never transpired. Four days after the Deese call and three days after Trudeau touched base with Biden, the government invoked the Emergencies Act.

“In other words, Canada took prompt action, and daily updates were not necessary,” reads a commission summary of a September interview with Freeland.

The minister described the stakes as existentially high for Canada. BMO CEO Darryl White and TD Bank CEO Bharat Masrani both called her the weekend before the Emergencies Act invocation. On Feb. 13, Freeland convened a call with a group of top bankers.

Freeland also exchanged text messages on Feb. 11 with Stelco CEO Alan Kestenbaum.

“This is really impacting us badly now like many others,” wrote Kestenbaum. “I fear that even worse, the long term consequences of shutting down auto plants because of lack of Canadian parts, will only convince the auto companies to ‘on shore’ even more and relocate supplies (and our customers) to the USA.”

“I share your concerns,” Freeland replied. “We are determined to bring this to an end quickly, and we will.”

Freeland testified that she worried Canada was “in the process of doing long-term and possibly irreparable harm to our trading relationship with the United States.”

Freeland raised the specter of Democrats and Republicans in Washington “who would love any excuse to impose more protectionist measures on us.”

Canadian diplomats and business leaders are well-practiced in launching a full-court press in defense of Canada’s interests in Washington. They maintained a united front during Trump-era NAFTA renegotiations and more recent congressional deliberations over tax incentives for made-in-America electric vehicles.

“We didn’t save NAFTA only to have it undermined,” Freeland texted Flavio Volpe, a staunch free-trade ally and president of the Auto Parts Manufacturers’ Association.

The impact of the emergency powers on border blockades remains unclear. Documents tabled at the inquiry show that law enforcement agencies didn’t require the Emergencies Act to open up the border.

RCMP Commissioner Brenda Lucki told reporters after her testimony that the force used “existing tools” to carry out arrests near an Alberta crossing on Feb. 14 — the same day as the invocation. The protesters in Coutts, Alta., departed the area the next day.

Emails from government officials in Manitoba claimed a border blockade in that province was cleared without the need for emergency powers.

And a six-day blockade at the busiest Canada-U.S. border crossing between Detroit and Windsor was cleared on Feb. 13, a day before invocation.

https://www.politico.com/news/2022/11/24/washington-ottawa-freedom-convoy-00070817

It’s time to strip Chris Mullin of his status as a New Yorker.

https://nypost.com/2022/11/24/chris-mullin-makes-plea-for-aaron-judge-to-sign-with-giants/

The US will send Ukraine another $400 million in military aid from US stocks as Russia’s war on the country reached its ninth month, the Pentagon announced.

https://nypost.com/2022/11/24/us-to-send-ukraine-another-400m-in-latest-military-aid-package/

USMNT has an overall record of 2-8-1 against England, but it is 1-0-1 against the Three Lions at the World Cup. That includes a 1-1 draw in 2010.

     

http://rssfeeds.usatoday.com/~/720292182/0/usatoday-newstopstories~Big-bad-England-wont-be-quite-as-scary-when-USMNT-sees-it-up-close-at-World-Cup-Opinion/