ICMI this week ...
A weekly round-up of stories featured on the Daily News podcast
Last week on the Daily News podcast, I mentioned that Canada was giving $464.5 million to retool its Oakville plant. The plant was supposed to be retooled to make electric vehicles but is now being retooled to make the absolute shittiest vehicles for the planet — F250s, F350s and F450s. The news reported that Ford was pivoting away from EVs and towards these massive truks because Americans want them.
And our taxes are helping to make this happen.
This is a good example of multiple failures on display: Ford only cares about profit, and there’s a market for these massive vehicles, so they ditch their plans to sell no-emissions cars to sell these trucks. Canada cheers them along with half a billion dollars. The union (my union) is thrilled that half of the workers who had worked at the plant before wil be able to get jobs again. And we enable Americans (and some Canadians, though the news says that the market is principly in the United States) to pour more emissions into the atmosphere.
When you’re living through unbearable and unnatural summer heat, or trying to avoid the smoke from wildfires, know that half a billion of your taxes are being given to a company whose revenues nearly reach $200B, to manufacture vehicles that are large, dangerous and polluting. Great work, Liberals.
What would have happened if Canada had refused to give them this money? Would Ford have sold their plant? Are we so desperate for 1800 jobs that we don’t care whatsover what those jobs are doing?
No, we don’t. Because the government could never buy the plant, find the expertise needed to then produce the EVs that had been planned. The government could never find another use for this plant. We are wholly dependent on Ford — so dependent that we beg them with half a billion dollars — so they can ignore the climate catastrophe before us and make a bunch of giant trucks for a bunch of Americans who do not need any more trucks.
Anyway, here are the headlines from the Daily News.
Newfoundland and Labrador
Photo of 6-fingered woman shows N.L. government needs to ‘tighten up’ AI policy, Wakeham says
Manitoba
Ants invade hospital in southern Manitoba for second time, cancelling surgeries
Youth pastor charged with sexual assault of teen: Winnipeg police
Ontario
Administrator appointed to Conestoga College after audit uncovers ‘egregious financial decisions’
Special constables getting power to arrest for drug use on transit, Ontario solicitor general says
Alberta
Alberta government says wild horse population has reached ‘unacceptable’ levels, advocates disagree
Quebec
Airbus secures 150-plane order with AirAsia in boon for Quebec aviation
British Columbia
Canada
Why a salary of $115K isn’t enough to purchase a house in some parts of Canada
Honda more definitively halting $15B EV plant development in Ontario, according to reports
3 Canadians isolating in Ontario, Quebec after hantavirus ship outbreak
Canada promised FIFA ‘appropriate’ labour law exemptions for World Cup, document reveals
Ottawa gives Ford Motor Co. $464-million to refit shuttered truck plant
International
Zambia delaying US deals over minerals and data demands
Rebels claim to capture a key military camp in northern Mali after army withdraws
Narendra Modi’s BJP wins election in West Bengal for the first time
Israeli attacks in southern, eastern Lebanon kill at least 13 people
An explosion at a fireworks plant in China kills at least 26 people and injures dozens of others
Salvadoran news outlet El Faro says its assets frozen in retaliation for reporting on Bukele
Sudan accuses Ethiopia, UAE of being behind recent drone attacks
A 600-person search continues for missing US soldiers off Morocco’s coast
I attended University of Waterloo briefly, it is a purely casteist campus. The same sorts of rape "culture" and casteism that is present on campuses in India, and which resulted in the institutional murder of my dear brother Rohith Vemula, is present here.
I interviewed with a Russian immigrant for a co-op job at Matcor Automotive while I was a computer engineering student (dehumanized since age 12) at University of Waterloo. I recall meeting with another co-op student while I was employed there, she happened to of the same, very specific and not super common, 'kayastha' caste as me. Employees at UW couldn't be bothered to have to consider the human rights implications of any of my life before I got there, nor with any human rights violations inflicted upon me by students, staff, or graduates. I was told to go be a dehumanized student at Conestoga College. My skintone is too dark to be a university graduate in Canada, and my caste privilege insufficient for completing that transaction through an alternate payment method. This city is utter ugly shit, I would be ashamed to have anything to do with it at all. Proud to have studied alone and educated myself, even if it meant having to face the worst traumatization I have ever had to survive. This expertise in trauma survival, recovery, and healing exists nowhere else, nor is it something that can be productized.
Waterloo knows caste. Waterloo exploits caste, carrying out complex calculations to determine if Savarnas attend UW or Conestoga all while ensuring that skintone is never ignored.
Where is this "left" I keep hearing about? This ugly, awful city looks alright to you lot?