‘An Attack On Greek Heritage’: Migrants ‘Chop Down Thousands Of Olive Trees’ On Greek IslandChris Menahan |
  Is this what they call “cultural enrichment?”
From Greek City Times:
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BlackBerry’s headquarters in Waterloo, Ont. is shown on Wednesday June 22 , 2016. Blackberry Ltd. has added Snap Inc. to the list of companies it’s taking to court in California for alleged patent infringement. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Eduardo Lima
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TORONTO — BlackBerry Ltd. says it has uncovered how China-backed hackers have been able to extract data from many of the world’s servers for a decade without being noticed.
BlackBerry executive Eric Cornelius says the hackers have been skilful in disguising some of their software tools to appear like advertising software that poses a low-level security risk.
Cornelius says the tactics give the hackers the ability to extract information from huge amounts of valuable data on web servers using the Linux operating system.
He says the hacker tools aren’t new but were mostly overlooked because most cybersecurity efforts are focused on mass market operating systems such as Microsoft Windows and Google Android.
BlackBerry says in a 44-page report that five separate groups with links to the Chinese government have been targeting Linux systems for a decade.
The federal government’s Canadian Centre for Cyber Security says it works with partners to monitor and deal with potential threats but it doesn’t comment on specific incidents.
There have been plenty of indications that the data coming out of China is false, starting with the fact that China has admitted so much.
There have been plenty of indications that the data coming out of China is false, starting with the fact that China has admitted so much.
I don’t say this often, but I think the Trudeau government deserves some praise for its handling of the coronavirus pandemic this week. Deputy Prime Minister Chrystia Freeland, in particular, has been impressive in setting the record straight and providing a calm and intelligent line of reasoning behind each government decision.
There are, however, some glaring exceptions to this statement. I’m talking about Health Minister Patty Hajdu and her despicable parroting of Chinese Communist Party propaganda during Thursday afternoon’s media briefing.
CTV’s Ian Brown asked the COVID-19 panel to respond to a Bloomberg news story about a classified U.S. intelligence report on China hiding the extent of the coronavirus outbreak by under-reporting the number of cases and deaths.
“China’s numbers are fake,” the report concludes.
“There’s no indication that the data that came out of China in terms of their infection rate and their death rate was falsified in any way,” Hajdu said sternly.
This was a remarkable moment. A top member of Trudeau’s inner circle was ardently defending a communist regime known for grave human rights abuses and lying on the world stage, while tacitly accusing our top ally and most important international partner of spreading false information.
To add insult to injury, when Brown tried to push back with facts, Hajdu lashed out at him, accusing the reporter of “feeding into conspiracy theories.”
Not only was this an autocratic response to a very reasonable question — making the minister look more like a Chinese official than an elected civil servant in a liberal democracy — but Hajdu’s comments are also highly ignorant and in contradiction to known facts.
There have been plenty of indications that the data coming out of China is false, starting with the fact that China has admitted so much.
In mid-February, China was widely criticized for not including individuals who tested positive for coronavirus but were not showing symptoms in official tallies. Last week, the Chinese government finally changed course to include asymptomatic cases — marking the eighth different definition of what constitutes a coronavirus infection in China’s official reporting since the outbreak began in late 2019.
On March 11, a Southampton University study found that had China acted just one, two or three weeks sooner, “cases could have been reduced by 66%, 86% and 95% respectively – significantly limiting the geographical spread of the disease.”
Instead, China spent the early days arresting doctors and journalists who spoke out about the deadly virus, while adamantly denying human to human transmission.
While there is no free press in China, and the communist regime expelled American journalists on March 17, there have been some independent reports calling China’s numbers into suspicion.
On March 27, a Radio Free Asia report contested the official death toll in Wuhan — a large metropolitan area the size of New York City and ground zero of the coronavirus outbreak.
While China claims the death toll in Wuhan is around 2,500, Radio Free Asia reports that incinerators at the city’s seven funeral homes have been “working around the clock.” They report that families have been given government stipends to cover the cost of cremation in exchange for their silence — “hush money” to keep the truth from the world.
Radio Free Asia estimates the real death toll in Wuhan to be somewhere between 42,000 and 46,800.
China’s evolving narrative and criminal cover-up of the coronavirus outbreak is no doubt to blame for the world’s lack of preparation for this deadly pandemic.
When the world finally navigates through this public health pandemic and resulting economic crisis, the global community must come together to hold China to account for its reprehensible actions that led to untold death and destruction.
China deserves to be prosecuted for crimes against humanity and ex-communicated from the global community. We should similarly judge minister Hajdu for her knee-jerk defence of the truly indefensible.
We’re asking readers, like you, to make a contribution in support of True North’s fact-based, independent journalism.
Unlike the mainstream media, True North isn’t getting a government bailout. Instead, we depend on the generosity of Canadians like you.
How can a media outlet be trusted to remain neutral and fair if they’re beneficiaries of a government handout? We don’t think they can.
This is why independent media in Canada is more important than ever. If you’re able, please make a tax-deductible donation to True North today. Thank you so much.
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This story was published on Oct. 3, 2019.
A Canadian government scientist at the National Microbiology Lab in Winnipeg made at least five trips to China in 2017-18, including one to train scientists and technicians at China’s newly certified Level 4 lab, which does research with the most deadly pathogens, according to travel documents obtained by CBC News.
Xiangguo Qiu — who was escorted out of the Winnipeg lab in July amid an RCMP investigation into what’s being described by Public Health Agency of Canada as a possible “policy breach” — was invited to go to the Wuhan National Biosafety Laboratory of the Chinese Academy of Sciences twice a year for two years, for up to two weeks each time.
“This will be third-party funded, and therefore no cost to [the Public Health Agency of Canada],” say the documents, obtained through access to information requests. The identity of the third-party was redacted.
During a Sept. 19-30, 2017, trip, she also met with collaborators in Beijing, the documents say, but their names have also been blacked out.
Qiu, her husband Keding Cheng and her students from China were removed on July 5 from Canada’s only Level 4 lab — one equipped to work with the most serious and deadly human and animal diseases, such as Ebola. Security access for the couple and the Chinese students was revoked, sources who work at the lab previously told CBC News.
People working inside the lab told CBC News this week they have heard the couple may return to work soon.
Several of them, who asked not to be identified for fears of retribution, say there have always been questions about Qiu’s trips to China — and what information and technology she was sharing with researchers there.
“It’s not right that she’s a Canadian government employee providing details of top-secret work and know-how to set up a high-containment lab for a foreign nation,” one employee said.
The staff member claims RCMP officers have not yet interviewed key people at the lab, because senior management has not made them accessible to police or allowed staff to contact them with relevant information.
A spokesperson for the Public Health Agency of Canada, which runs the lab, referred questions to the RCMP.
“We encourage anyone who has information and wishes to speak with the RCMP on this matter to attend RCMP HQ in Winnipeg at 1091 Portage Avenue,” RCMP said in an emailed statement.
“In order to maintain the integrity of the investigative process, we have no further comment at this time.”
A spokesperson confirms the police investigation is ongoing. Both agencies have said repeatedly there is no threat to public safety.
Meanwhile, there has been no change in Qiu and Cheng’s status at the University of Manitoba, which had severed ties with both of them and reassigned her students in July.
Qiu is a medical doctor and virologist who helped develop ZMapp — a treatment for the deadly Ebola virus, which killed more than 11,000 people in West Africa between 2014-2016 and saw an outbreak in Congo earlier this year.
She is a medical doctor from Tianjin, China, who came to Canada for graduate studies in 1996. She is still affiliated with the university there and has brought in many students over the years to help with her work.
During her trips, Qiu also visited the Chinese Academy of Science, Tsinghua University, the Chinese Medical Academy of Science and Bejing Institute of Biotechnology.
She spoke at several conferences, including some organized by the World Health Organization, the Chinese Society of Virology and International Symposium on Emerging Viral Disease.
Collaboration and information-sharing is common and expected in academia, says Jia Wang, deputy director of the China Institute at the University of Alberta in Edmonton.
“In an increasingly globalized world, in an increasingly globalized field of research, we do see more exchanges and more visits incoming and outgoing,” she said.
But researchers working with international partners also “need to understand the security parameters and the requirements to follow the procedures, and to safeguard intellectual property and also safeguard their research,” she said.
There’s a balance they need to strike between being cautious and open-minded to collaboration, though, Wang said.
“In the end, we are hoping that this research exchange will ultimately benefit Canada and benefit our people here.”
Qiu and Cheng have not responded to multiple requests for comment.
Relations between Canada and China have been strained since the detention last year of Huawei executive Meng Wanzhou on a U.S. arrest warrant.
Don’t Deport Helmut Oberlander
Canada First Immigration Reform Committee
Box 332,
Rexdale, Ontario, M9W 5L3
Ph:289-674-4455; FAX: 289-674-4820
Website: http://cafe.nfshost.com
Paul Fromm, B.Ed, M.A. Director
June 12, 2019
The Hon. Justin Trudeau,
Prime Minister of Canada,
House of Commons,
Ottawa, ON.,
K1A 0A6
Re: Deportation of Helmut Oberlander
Dear Mr. Trudeau:
After a 24 year legal battle, German immigrant and highly successful businessman Helmut Oberlander faces deportation from Canada. He has been stripped of his Canadian citizenship and faces removal. His case, with numerous appeals, has wended its way through the courts for almost a quarter of a century, at obscene costs to the Canadian taxpayer, to say nothing of the costs to Mr. Oberlander.
A complete review of this legal journey would turn this letter into a book. However, here is a brief summary. Helmut Oberlander was a 17-year old lad living in the Ukraine when German forces invaded. He was Volksdeutche, that is, part of a German minority who had settled there in the 18th century. Young Helmut spoke Russian, Ukrainian and German and, thus, was useful to the German army as a translator. He was seconded to a SD Einheit (Security Unit) of the German Army.
After the war, he went to Germany and trained as a bricklayer and construction engineer. In 1954, he emigrated to Canada and worked for the next few years in the construction trade. In 1958, he formed his own construction company Oberlander Construction and was instrumental in the building explosion in the Kitchener-Waterloo region over the next four decades. Mr. Oberlander was an exemplary and contributing citizen, paying handsome taxes and employing many people.
His legal torment began in 1994, when, in response to persistent Jewish lobbying to refight World War II, the government of the day sought to strip Mr. Oberlander of his citizenship on the basis that he must have lied to obtain entry to Canada as membership in units like the SD Einheit made him ineligible as they were implicated in killing some civilians. However, it was not as simple. It quickly became clear that Mr. Oberlander had committed no war crimes. He was a youthful translator. Potential immigrants were supposed to be asked about their wartime service. So, it is assumed that Mr. Oberlander lied. However, numerous people who immigrated at the time recall that, shortly after the war, RCMP interrogators no longer asked about wartime service but only about membership in the communist party. Could Mr. Oberlander be held responsible for not volunteering information he was not asked for? There is no longer any paper record. The notes from the interviews of the time have long since been destroyed. Indeed, there is no evidence of any wrongdoing on Mr. Oberlander’s part. In contrast, there are the 61 years of Mr. Oberlander’s entrepreneurship and contribution to Canada — in other words, evidence of a solid, exemplary, contributing citizen!
Why the singleminded obsession with the deportation of this 96 year old man? It’s hard not to draw a parallel with the treatment of ex-terrorist Omar Khadr. Like Mr. Oberlander his wartime actions started when he was what we would now call a “young offender”. But Mr. Oberlander committed no crime; while Mr. Khadr killed an American soldier and partially blinded another. Yet, Canada has bent over backwards for Mr. Khadr, citing his youthful status at the time, and rewarding him with what was to be a secret $10.5-million settlement. Mr. Khadr had contributed nothing to Canada. In contrast, Mr. Oberlander who never committed a crime has made an outstanding contribution to Canada as a model immigrant.
I call upon you to in the interests of fairness and humanity to a 96-year old man to end this persecution and let Mr. Oberlander live out his remaining years with his family in Canada. Stop the German bashing!
Sincerely yours,
Paul Fromm
Director
masks. 
It added that the workers live in on-site housing at Bylands Nurseries Ltd., and that 75 workers are involved — 63 migrant workers and 12 local workers — who are all self-isolating.
Interior Health said there were 14 positive tests for COVID-19, and that additional results are pending.
Interior Health said a medical health officer placed an order on Bylands Nurseries Ltd., on March 27, and that the workers are to remain in quarantine on the property until the medical health officer “provides alternate direction.”
“None of the workers were in roles that interact with customers and members of this group had very minimal contact in the community.”
Interior Health said the business is closed to customers, and that the workers live in accommodations that provide space for individuals to safely self-isolate.
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“Bylands Nurseries Ltd has been fully cooperative with IH through this process,” said Interior Health, adding the cases may be linked to a group of workers who arrived in Kelowna from outside of Canada on March 12.
Interior Health added that under orders from the medical health officer, Bylands Nurseries and Garden Centre has taken measures to prevent the spread of the novel coronavirus, including enhanced cleaning of all nursery, housing, sanitary and other facilities accessed by employees, along with denying visitors access to the site.
Interior Health added that the order only applies to Bylands Nurseries Ltd., and not the Bylands Garden Centre, which is a separate business. However, it said the owner of the garden centre has also elected to voluntarily close.
Coronavirus around the world: March 31, 2020
Provincial health officer Dr. Bonnie Henry called them farm workers, stating they had been in Canada prior to recent regulations regarding temporary foreign workers.
Asked by Global News what should be done to prevent outbreaks among temporary farm workers, Henry said this was an area of deep concern.
“We’ve had these discussions at the national level,” said Henry. “As you know, this is a national program. B.C. is one of the provinces that benefits from the temporary foreign worker program on an ongoing basis. And it’s a very critical part of supporting a number of different industries — farm industry, agricultural industries — across the province.
“But there are other provinces who have the same concerns. And many of the people come in from countries in South America or Latin America into B.C. and other provinces, so we have been talking about it nationally.”
Coronavirus outbreak: Freeland reiterates message of ‘critical week’ in COVID-19 fight
Henry continued, saying “certainly some people have come in several months ago and they are past the risk stage. And it’s becoming more challenging for foreign workers to get in because many of the flights from places that we would normally accept foreign farm workers are not able to leave at the moment.
“But we are in ongoing discussions with our counterparts across the country and with the federal government about the need for having effective quarantine for individuals who are coming in outside it from outside the country. And in my opinion, that needs to be in a facility that is able to effectively support and care for these people.”
Henry said the affected group has very good accommodations, where they’re able to isolate effectively, “but we know that’s not the case in all places where temporary farmworkers are housed, so that is very much a concern that we’re bringing up with our federal counterparts.”
Image Credits: Ezra Acayan/Getty Images.
From The Daily Caller, “Tucker Carlson: ‘China Continues To Threaten The Rest Of Us With Wet Markets’”
Chinese wet markets, where all sorts of unusual animals — from bats to cats to scorpions — are sold to consumers as food, have long been considered a breeding ground for exotic viruses. Despite the fact that such markets were consideredground zero for the novel coronavirus outbreak, reports emerged over the weekend that wet markets have been reopened in major cities across China.
“Well, we still don’t know where the coronavirus came from originally in Wuhan, and anyone who tells you we are certain of that is lying to you,” Carlson said. “But many people believe it could have originated in the wet market in Wuhan. That’s a place where consumers buy the meat of wild animals to eat including bats. Wild animal wet markets have long been recognized as a major pandemic threat. As coronavirus spread, China announced it would crack down on them, obviously, but it looks like the crackdown didn’t last long. According to Daily Mail, across China, wet markets are reopening and selling the same animals that they did before.”
The Fox News host listed two major cities, one where “dogs and cats are both for sale as food” and another with “a stand selling traditional Chinese medicines advertises things like lizards, scorpions, and, yes, bats.”
Jeff Nyquist joins The Alex Jones Show to expose the biological war started by China launched against the West, and what else is expected in the future.
Terrified dogs and cats crammed into rusty cages. Bats and scorpions offered for sale as traditional medicine. Rabbits and ducks slaughtered and skinned side by side on a stone floor covered with blood, filth, and animal remains.
Those were the deeply troubling scenes yesterday as China celebrated its ‘victory’ over the coronavirus by reopening squalid meat markets of the type that started the pandemic three months ago, with no apparent attempt to raise hygiene standards to prevent a future outbreak.
As the pandemic that began in Wuhan forced countries worldwide to go into lockdown, a Mail on Sunday correspondent yesterday watched as thousands of customers flocked to a sprawling indoor market in Guilin, south-west China.
Here cages of different species were piled on top of each other. In another meat market in Dongguan, southern China, another correspondent photographed a medicine seller returning to business on Thursday with a billboard advertising bats – thought to be the cause of the initial Wuhan outbreak – along with scorpions and other creatures.
[…] The market in Guilin was packed with shoppers yesterday, with fresh dog and cat meat on offer, a traditional ‘warming’ winter dish.
Many of these disgusting practices have come to America.
“New York City has over 80 wet markets (animal markets) that sell live animals to the public and slaughter them on site,” the animal rights group Their Turn reported on Monday. “Like the wet market in China where COVID-19 jumped from animal to human, NYC’s wet markets are a petri dish for infectious diseases.”
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I don’t say this often, but I think the Trudeau government deserves some praise for its handling of the coronavirus pandemic this week. Deputy Prime Minister Chrystia Freeland, in particular, has been impressive in setting the record straight and providing a calm and intelligent line of reasoning behind each government decision.
There are, however, some glaring exceptions to this statement. I’m talking about Health Minister Patty Hajdu and her despicable parroting of Chinese Communist Party propaganda during Thursday afternoon’s media briefing.
CTV’s Ian Brown asked the COVID-19 panel to respond to a Bloomberg news story about a classified U.S. intelligence report on China hiding the extent of the coronavirus outbreak by under-reporting the number of cases and deaths.
“China’s numbers are fake,” the report concludes.
“There’s no indication that the data that came out of China in terms of their infection rate and their death rate was falsified in any way,” Hajdu said sternly.
This was a remarkable moment. A top member of Trudeau’s inner circle was ardently defending a communist regime known for grave human rights abuses and lying on the world stage, while tacitly accusing our top ally and most important international partner of spreading false information.
To add insult to injury, when Brown tried to push back with facts, Hajdu lashed out at him, accusing the reporter of “feeding into conspiracy theories.”
Not only was this an autocratic response to a very reasonable question — making the minister look more like a Chinese official than an elected civil servant in a liberal democracy — but Hajdu’s comments are also highly ignorant and in contradiction to known facts.
There have been plenty of indications that the data coming out of China is false, starting with the fact that China has admitted so much.
In mid-February, China was widely criticized for not including individuals who tested positive for coronavirus but were not showing symptoms in official tallies. Last week, the Chinese government finally changed course to include asymptomatic cases — marking the eighth different definition of what constitutes a coronavirus infection in China’s official reporting since the outbreak began in late 2019.
On March 11, a Southampton University study found that had China acted just one, two or three weeks sooner, “cases could have been reduced by 66%, 86% and 95% respectively – significantly limiting the geographical spread of the disease.”
Instead, China spent the early days arresting doctors and journalists who spoke out about the deadly virus, while adamantly denying human to human transmission.
While there is no free press in China, and the communist regime expelled American journalists on March 17, there have been some independent reports calling China’s numbers into suspicion.
On March 27, a Radio Free Asia report contested the official death toll in Wuhan — a large metropolitan area the size of New York City and ground zero of the coronavirus outbreak.
While China claims the death toll in Wuhan is around 2,500, Radio Free Asia reports that incinerators at the city’s seven funeral homes have been “working around the clock.” They report that families have been given government stipends to cover the cost of cremation in exchange for their silence — “hush money” to keep the truth from the world.
Radio Free Asia estimates the real death toll in Wuhan to be somewhere between 42,000 and 46,800.
China’s evolving narrative and criminal cover-up of the coronavirus outbreak is no doubt to blame for the world’s lack of preparation for this deadly pandemic.
When the world finally navigates through this public health pandemic and resulting economic crisis, the global community must come together to hold China to account for its reprehensible actions that led to untold death and destruction.
China deserves to be prosecuted for crimes against humanity and ex-communicated from the global community. We should similarly judge minister Hajdu for her knee-jerk defence of the truly indefensible.
We’re asking readers, like you, to make a contribution in support of True North’s fact-based, independent journalism.
Unlike the mainstream media, True North isn’t getting a government bailout. Instead, we depend on the generosity of Canadians like you.
How can a media outlet be trusted to remain neutral and fair if they’re beneficiaries of a government handout? We don’t think they can.
This is why independent media in Canada is more important than ever. If you’re able, please make a tax-deductible donation to True North today. Thank you so much.