Is America Great Yet?
Ned Yeung
Commercial and portrait photographer in Edmonton, Canada. See https://cyclopsphoto.com
Pronouns
he/him
Gender
cishet male
My son brought home the class Everywhere Bear this weekend. Like in the book Everywhere Bear, Emmy sits on a shelf in the class then comes home with a child every weekend to have fun adventures which we document in photos. Bluey had one, Peppa Pig had one, but I'm not sure if there is an official name for this tradition. I want to call her a Share Bear. I'm surprised nobody else calls them Share Bears, because to me that just feels like the most natural thing to say.
Ned Yeung boosted:
Just had a salad that was so big, christian god saw it as a testament to collective human unity and, as with the Tower of Babel, smote and confounded me, scattering my mind into a million different voices, to teach me humility and the dangers of hubris.
This is a longer, more in-depth version of what @avilewis posted from mstdn.ca, which he posted on FB. I get it. I was on mstdn.ca too, and the character limit was my biggest gripe... But now I'm on beige.party so I can post the whole damn thing for ya'lls, links and all. ;)
'This post has been on my mind for a few days now, so I’m going to say something about it.
The Minister of AI having an "ongoing engagement" with the government of Israel on technology and AI is deeply concerning. No, it’s just plain wrong. It makes Canada vulnerable to international legal consequences, and it takes Canada far down the wrong path.
The post itself radiates the same kind of defiant impunity we’ve seen from both Israel and the Trump administration when it comes to flouting international law.
Here’s the case:
The ICJ has found that there is a plausible genocide going on in Gaza, committed by Israel.
Israel has been using AI to mass target Palestinians for years. It has used the genocide in Gaza to accelerate this technique, ramping up the speed of AI targeting to create what Israeli journalists called a “mass assassination factory”.
This is not new. Israel has long used its apartheid system, built on top of an almost 60-year illegal occupation, as a laboratory for technologies of social control, violence and dispossession. And it has then turned those cruel and immoral technologies into a major export industry - including selling phone hacking tech to bad actors all over the world.
https://www.versobooks.com/en-ca/products/2684-the-palestine-laboratory
Canada should not be exploring deeper collaboration with Israel around these tools and technologies: quite the opposite. We should be doing everything we can - diplomatically and economically - to rein in their sale and use around the world. Just as we should be using every tool we have to rein in Israel’s impunity and ongoing genocide.
Providing cover and normalization for Israel as an exporter of these technologies is not just wrong, it’s dangerous for Canada. Israel is a country still in the act of committing an ongoing genocide. Almost 500 people have been killed by Israel since the so-called “ceasefire” started.
Talking AI and other tech tools with Israel opens Canada up to international censure, isolation and even indictment.
And it offers a stark contrast with the kind of story the Prime Minister is telling about Canada these days.
Many Canadians were proud to hear Mark Carney pledge that Canada would help forge a new international order that would be "fairer" than the last.
This sure isn't it.
We can't lecture the world about shredding the international rules-based order and then pal around with the people who have been shredding it before our very eyes for the last 2 years - not to mention all the decades of occupation and apartheid that preceded this horrific moment.'
- Avi Lewis
Ned Yeung boosted:
Organizing works! This is a win for public pressure, and a message about the moral clarity Canadians want from politics right now.
Now we need legislation to ban all Canadian companies from contracting with ICE or otherwise supporting Trump's kidnapping and deportation machine. And Parliament must pass Jenny Kwan's bill to close the U.S. arms export loophole – so that no Canadian armoured vehicles, weapons, or equipment end up in the hands of ICE to brutalize people.
https://www.ctvnews.ca/vancouver/article/bcs-pattison-says-ice-warehouse-sale-wont-proceed/
Ned Yeung boosted:
This post has been on my mind for a few days now, so I’m going to say something about it. 🧵
The Minister of AI having an "ongoing engagement" with the government of Israel on technology and AI is deeply concerning. No, it’s just plain wrong. It makes Canada vulnerable to international legal consequences, and it takes Canada far down the wrong path.
The post itself radiates the same kind of defiant impunity we’ve seen from both Israel and the Trump administration when it comes to flouting international law.
Ned Yeung boosted:
Canada should not be exploring deeper collaboration with Israel around these tools and technologies: quite the opposite. We should be doing everything we can - diplomatically and economically - to rein in their sale and use around the world. Just as we should be using every tool we have to rein in Israel’s impunity and ongoing genocide.
Providing cover and normalization for Israel as an exporter of these technologies is not just wrong, it’s dangerous for Canada. Israel is a country still in the act of committing an ongoing genocide. Almost 500 people have been killed by Israel since the so-called “ceasefire” started.
Talking AI and other tech tools with Israel opens Canada up to international censure, isolation and even indictment.
And it offers a stark contrast with the kind of story the Prime Minister is telling about Canada these days.
From @avilewis :
'More than 50 years ago, my grandfather and NDP Leader David Lewis coined the term 'corporate welfare bums' to turn a common right-wing talking point on its head.
The real "freeloaders," he reminded us, aren't the poor or vulnerable – they're the big corporations at the top, hoarding wealth and power with the eager help of their friends in government.
These days, we've gone from corporate welfare to straight-up corporate kleptocracy. The current Liberal government is giving away billions of dollars to profitable corporate giants through subsidies and tax breaks with few strings attached.
If David were still alive, he'd say we're overdue for a reckoning. We've got to pry apart the hands of government and big business – and get them out of our pockets.
Today, I'm proud to announce our 'Tax Plan for the 99%' – a bold plan to tax the ultra-rich, end corporate handouts, break up monopolies, and improve our social safety net.
A super-majority of Canadians back the idea of tax fairness. Nearly 90% support a wealth tax, and 80% believe that the rich should be taxed more.
Big popular solutions like this are how we excite people across the political spectrum, fight inequality – and win.
Our 'Tax Plan for the 99%' will:
Tax the ultra-rich – Implement a wealth tax on the top 1%, starting at 1% and rising to 3% on the largest fortunes, to generate as much as $40 billion a year. Create a new tax bracket for the top income earners. Treat capital gains the same as employment income. Tax wealth inheritance over $5 million.
End corporate handouts and break up monopolies – End all fossil fuel subsidies. Keep costly consultants out of the public service. No more blank cheques for corporations that take our money and move production out of Canada.
Crack down on the corporate hoarding class – Tax excess corporate profits. Crack down on tax havens. Adequately fund the CRA to go after tax cheats. Reinstate the Digital Services Tax.
Raise the floor for all of us – End poverty within five years through major increases to income supports for people with disabilities, seniors, families with children, and low-income adults. Establish a national framework for a guaranteed liveable basic income.
The fountains of wealth that are being generated in this country are not trickling down to working people. It's all stuck at the top.
We need political leaders with the courage and the will to finally go after that wealth, and to redistribute it to improve life for everyone.
Join us to build a government for the many, not the money.'
Read the full plan here: https://lewisforleader.ca/ideas/tax-policy
Ned Yeung boosted:
New in PN: Lower courts can't fix what's broken in Minnesota
"Judge Menendez’s decision isn’t a failure of will. It’s a result of a world where conservatives on the nation’s highest court have decided their job is to help President Trump achieve a desired result, law and procedure be damned." https://www.publicnotice.co/p/judge-menendez-ice-minnesota
"The DOJ just DELETED a document in the Epstein Files we discovered that contained horrifying allegations against Donald Trump.
But we saved it." 👉
https://www.meidasplus.com/p/doj-just-deleted-this-document-from
Ned Yeung boosted:
While reporting this, I had something happen that's never happened. A comms rep for one of the co's disputed my reporting and said what I was telling them was untrue because it was not in Grok, xAI's chatbot.
I was looking directly at the files. And this person was using AI to challenge the truth.
RE: https://bsky.app/profile/did:plc:emhyi4kljodgqlusdsopgfgd/post/3me4ox67ek22n
I think it's wild that you just go to sleep and dream. No catalog, no prompts... what if you don't even know what to dream?
From 2022...
'This is wild.
All Albertans must read this.
UCP set up a web of numbered companies in USA with UCP current cabinet ministers as directors. Unpaid US taxes, strange transactions, $7,000,000.00 “administration fees”.
This isn’t normal.'
- Thomas Lukazuk
![“The paper trail should be there through the whole thing,” he said in an April 26 interview. People looking at corporate registers, he said, shouldn’t have to cross-check their search with company names in annual reports.
When The Narwhal searched for the corporate records in Delaware, it found that 2254746 Alberta Sub Ltd. was assessed on March 2, 2022, as “delinquent” for failing to pay US$386.26 in taxes or file an updated annual report.
Asked about this, the provincial commission’s chief of staff, Lynda Gwilliam, told The Narwhal in an email that the company’s taxes “were initially delayed, but have since been filed with the appropriate bodies.”
Gwilliam did not provide an explanation for the delay, but wrote that its Delaware corporate structure was nothing out of the ordinary.
“For the partnership with TC Energy to build [Keystone XL], the [Alberta Petroleum Marketing Commission] set up companies in both countries, as is a common practice in such situations,” Gwilliam wrote on April 22.
“These companies were utilized to construct the [Keystone XL] project and were in no way a ‘backup plan’ related to any subsequent NAFTA claim.”
Torso of a man holding a map showing where a pipeline will cross in Montana.
A man displays a printout of where the proposed Keystone XL pipeline would have crossed in Montana. The small circles are locations identified as burial or sacred grounds. Photo: Sara Hylton](https://files.mastodon.social/cache/media_attachments/files/116/016/513/719/663/449/original/7578782e0c704950.jpg)
'Toronto police officers arrested in organized crime, corruption probe.
The arrests of at least seven Toronto officers were confirmed by a source who said the charges include drug trafficking and conspiracy to commit murder.
Feb. 4, 2026
At least seven Toronto police officers have been arrested in a large-scale investigation into organized crime and corruption, the Star has learned.
The officers, several from the city’s northwest 12 Division, were swept up in a York police investigation dubbed “Project South,” according to a source with direct knowledge of the arrests. The source said the charges include drug trafficking and conspiracy to commit murder.
A second federal source said the probe has led to more than 30 arrests.
The Star is not naming either source because they were not authorized to speak publicly about the case.
Among those arrested are several senior officers with more than 10 years on the force. At least one of the accused was expected to be held pending a bail hearing. It’s unclear when the others will make their first court appearances.
Reached by the Star, Toronto police spokesperson Nadine Ramadan would not comment on the number of officers involved or the nature of the charges.'
If blood be the price for your cursed wealth, good God, we've paid it in full!
Do you hear the people sing?
Singing a song of angry men?
It is the music of a people
Who will not be slaves again!
When the beating of your heart
Echoes the beating of the drums
There is a life about to start
When tomorrow comes!
It was meant to be a Mean Girls reference, but I agree it wasn't the best choice. What they could have made it purely Canadian like, "Get in hoser, we're voting for Avi!"
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