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"The whole town is on fire": Wildfire amid record heat wave forces entire Canadian village to evacuate - spark from train suspected


CBS News
Fri, 02 Jul 2021 17:18 UTC
Lytton canada wildfire
© 2 Rivers Remix Society
Lytton, located in southern British Columbia, Canada, was engulfed in flames within a matter of minutes
A wildfire amid a record heat wave in western Canada has forced authorities to order residents to evacuate a village in British Columbia that smashed the country's record for hottest temperature three days in a row this week. Mayor Jan Polderman of Lytton issued the evacuation order Wednesday, saying on Twitter that the fire was threatening structures and the safety of residents of the community, which is 95 miles northeast of Vancouver.

"All residents are advised to leave the community and go to a safe location,″ Polderman said.

Comment: More from RT:
sparks lakes wildfire canada british columbia
© AFP / BC Wildfire Service
Sparks Lake wildfire, British Columbia, seen from the air on June 29, 2021
The province's wildfire service said it had responded to the blaze in Lytton and confirmed on Thursday that there were four general clusters of multiple wildfires across British Columbia.

"Ground crews, helicopters, air tankers, members from volunteer fire departments, and heavy equipment have responded and will continue to do so over the coming days," it said in a statement.

Before the scenes in Lytton, at least three major wildfires were burning in British Columbia, with 26 blazes having started between Tuesday and Wednesday alone.
There is speculation the fire was sparked by a CN train passing through the tinder-dry area:
CN Rail is "evaluating" the status of its train traffic through the bone-dry B.C. Interior after a fast-moving fire on Wednesday destroyed much of the Village of Lytton — a blaze thought to have been sparked by a passing train.

The fire in Lytton is believed to have began at about 5 p.m. on Wednesday. Based on accounts from those in the village at the time, it moved quickly. Some estimates on Thursday have said as much as 90 per cent of the village was burned.

Global BC is reporting investigators believe the fire was sparked by a passing train, citing sources at the Thompson-Nicola Regional District.

Castanet reached out to both major Canadian railways, each of which run through Lytton, for comment and asked whether any thought is being given to stopping trains until conditions in the Interior improve.

"Pertaining to the impact on our operation, we are evaluating this, but our focus now being the safety and support of the community," CN spokesman Mathieu Gaudreault said in a statement.

According to Gaudreault, CN finds the Lytton blaze "deeply distressing" and very concerning.

"We have reached out to local elected officials to offer our assistance," he said.

"We want to offer our support to the people of the First Nation of Lytton and we are committed in assisting this community during this tragic event."

A CP Rail spokesman said his railway was focusing on helping in any way it can in the aftermath of the Lytton fire.

"Our focus is on assisting emergency response operations in the town of Lytton," Andy Cummings told Castanet via email.


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Attention

Judge orders release of Wisconsin woman in Slender Man case

Todd Richmond
AP
Thu, 01 Jul 2021 10:48 UTC
Anissa Weier
© Michael Sears/Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel via AP
In this Dec. 21, 2017, file photo, Anissa Weier, one of two Wisconsin girls who tried to kill a classmate to win favor with a fictional horror character named Slender Man, is led into Court for her sentencing hearing, in Waukesha, Wis. A Wisconsin judge on Thursday, July 1, 2021, ordered her release after being convicted of the stabbing in 2014. Weier asked Waukesha County Judge Michael Bohren this year to release her from the Winnebago Mental Health Institute, arguing she was no longer a threat to anyone.
A Wisconsin judge on Thursday ordered the release of a woman who has spent 3 1/2 years in a state mental health facility after being convicted of stabbing her classmate to please the Slender Man character.

Anissa Weier, 19, was sentenced to 25 years at the Winnebago Mental Health Institute in December 2017. She argued in a petition for conditional release that she's no longer a threat to anyone.

She won't be allowed to go free immediately, however. Waukesha County Judge Michael Bohren gave state officials 60 days to draw up a conditional release plan and sent Weier back to the mental hospital pending another hearing on Sept. 10.

Comment: See also: Teen pleads guilty to lesser charge in 'Slender Man' web meme-related stabbing attack

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NPC

Spain's cynically woke move to allow over-14s to determine their gender undermines parents and leaves vulnerable kids exposed

Damian Wilson
RT
Thu, 01 Jul 2021 09:06 UTC
spain transgender child
© REUTERS/Sergio Perez
Pete, 9, a transgender minor, takes part in a protest to mark LGBT Pride Day in Madrid, Spain, June 28, 2021.
Spain's loony left thinks it's in Europe's vanguard on gender identity, but allowing youngsters to self-determine without a medical diagnosis lets them make life-changing choices before they've even finished puberty.

The approval of a draft law in Spain to allow children as young as 14 to change their legal gender without a medical diagnosis is a wildly irresponsible, politically charged and ill-considered move that fails those vulnerable youngsters who most need protection. It bestows what is a life-changing decision with the same level of gravitas as buying a bus ticket.

If Spain's Equality Minister Irene Montero, the architect of the new bill, is serious about her claim that her party is "making history with a law that takes a giant step forward for the rights of trans and LGBTI people", then she is deluded.

Comment: See also:

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Folder

Judge to unseal dozens of documents about Ghislaine Maxwell's personal affairs, including those that reveal her and Epstein's relationship with the Clintons

Daniel Bates
Daily Mail
Fri, 02 Jul 2021 01:14 UTC
maxwell epstein clinton

A judge has ruled that dozens more documents about Ghislaine Maxwell's personal affairs should be made public, including some that could reveal more about her finances and her relationship to the Clintons. Maxwell and Epstein are pictured with Clinton in 1993.
A judge has ruled that dozens more documents about Ghislaine Maxwell's personal affairs should be made public, including some that could reveal more about her finances and her relationship to the Clintons.

Judge Loretta Preska said that unsealing the documents would not impact Maxwell's right to a fair trial in November as her lawyers have claimed.

Among the documents which will be made public in two weeks' time will be Maxwell's efforts to quash requests from Virginia Roberts Giuffre, who sued Maxwell for defamation, to obtain her financial records.

Comment: See also:

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X

Big Tech cracks down on Robert Malone, mRNA vaccine pioneer who warns about their risks

Greg Piper
Just the News
Wed, 30 Jun 2021 23:09 UTC
robert malone del bigtree
"To censor and silence scientists under such circumstances can lead to many unnecessary deaths," says previously censored Harvard Med professor Martin Kulldorff.

A scientist who credits himself as the inventor of mRNA vaccines, and has warned that they carry risks downplayed in the COVID-19 pandemic, said this week that LinkedIn "shut down" his personal account without explanation.

"The historic record of what I have done, stated, figured out (and when) etc. over time is a key part of establishing my credibility and track record as a professional," Robert Malone tweeted Wednesday. "And that has been erased completely and arbitrarily without warning or explanation."

Comment: See also:

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Propaganda

Canada's government is seeking to silence Canadian journalists at home and abroad with a draconian censorship bill

Eva Bartlett
RT
Wed, 30 Jun 2021 14:28 UTC
newspaper printing
© Unsplash / bank_phrom
As a Canadian journalist, I could be subject to a censorship bill which, if passed in Senate, means the government in Canada can effectively shadow-ban and censor my voice into oblivion, along with other dissenting voices.

After seeing his tweet on the issue of Bill C-10, recently passed in the House of Commons, I spoke with Canadian journalist Dan Dicks about this. He explained that the bill is being presented as being about Canada bringing Big Tech companies under the regulation of the CRTC (Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission), to have them display more Canadian content.

"But what people are missing," he cautioned, "is that there were clauses put into this bill, protections for certain publishers and content creators that would protect people like myself and yourself."

Those clauses, he said, were recently removed from the bill, leading many content-creating Canadians aware of the bill to worry they will be treated the same as a broadcaster or a programmer, subject to the regulations of the CRTC.

The bottom line is that, beyond the mumbo jumbo of the government, this is the latest attack on freedom of expression, and on dissent.

Comment: See also: Trudeau government's move to protect Canadians against hate speech & hate crimes is the road to hell for freedom of expression

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Chart Bar

Does this explain why COVID-19 is normally so puny but occasionally goes bang?

Will Jones
Lockdown Sceptics
Wed, 30 Jun 2021 01:58 UTC
coronavirus
I wanted to come back to the question of what causes COVID-19 occasionally to have explosive outbreaks. We've had two in England so far. Using the graph below (produced by Imperial's REACT study using symptom-onset reports from their antibody survey, so no PCR tests involved) we can see when they occurred. The first occurred from around February 25th to March 19th 2020, ending after about three and a half weeks, as abruptly as it began. The second got going around December 2nd, and ended - once again abruptly after three and a half weeks - on December 25th. As the lines below indicate, these starts and stops bear no relation to when lockdowns were imposed or lifted (the red and blue lines respectively).

england covid chart 1

Given that (as we can see) Covid was around in England throughout the winter of 2019-20 (arriving in November according to this graph) and was also simmering away in the autumn of 2020 without taking off, a key question is what triggers the beginning and end of the more explosive outbreaks?

Another way of putting the same question is: why does COVID-19 occasionally, Jekyll and Hyde-like, transform from a relatively gentle, not very infectious disease into a super-infectious disease for a few weeks, before suddenly returning once more to its largely benign form?
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Bizarro Earth

Four times as many troops & veterans have died by suicide as in combat - study

Meghann Myers
Military Times
Tue, 22 Jun 2021 19:52 UTC
US navy military suicide
© U.S. Navy photo by Mass Communication Specialist 3rd Class Alana Langdon/Released
Military suicides have outpaced the rate among the general U.S. population, but it's not clear why. JACKSONVILLE, Fla. (Sept. 10, 2019) Personnel Specialist Seaman Jenesis Fabian, assigned to Naval Station Mayport, ties a yellow ribbon around a tree at Mayport Memorial Park in recognition of Suicide Awareness Month. Participants tied yellow ribbons to represent the 46 active duty Sailors lost to suicide in 2019.
The suicide rate among active-duty troops and veterans has outpaced the also-rising rate in the general population in recent years, but with so many risk factors inherent to military life, it's difficult to pin down why.

There's no one reason for it, according to a study released Monday by the Costs of War Project, and the way the Defense Department and VA track suicides might mean even their growing numbers are incomplete.

"The report notes that the increasing rates of suicide for both veterans and active duty personnel are outpacing those of the general population ― an alarming shift, as suicide rates among service members have historically been lower than suicide rates among the general population," according to a news release.

Comment: Even wars that are fought for a righteous cause will take their toll on a human being, and this surge in suicides is, in part, the culmination of two decades of US-led wars that have primarily sought to line the pockets of the military industrial complex, to further US imperialism, and that are meted out with a indiscriminate brutality that undermines the sanctity of life: 120+ retired US generals sign letter questioning Biden's mental health, 2020 election result, warn of 'tyrannical govt'

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Bullseye

Bill Cosby is getting out of prison but, like America, he'll never regain his veneer of moral authority

Michael McCaffrey
RT
Wed, 30 Jun 2021 21:43 UTC
cosby
© REUTERS/Brendan McDermid
Once-beloved comedian Bill Cosby, a perfect representation of America's hypocritical, corrupt, deceptive and destructive culture, is getting out of prison soon, his conviction for a sex offense thrown out on a technicality.

The State Supreme Court of Pennsylvania overturned Cosby's conviction because a previous prosecutor on the case had made a deal stating the comedian wouldn't be charged criminally if he testified in a civil case brought by the alleged victim, ex-basketball player Andrea Constand. Cosby settled Constand's civil suit for $3 million in 2006 but was charged in 2015 for drugging and molesting her.

Thus far Cosby has served two years in a Pennsylvania prison on his three- to ten-year sentence, but won't be locked up on this particular charge anymore.

Cosby, and the legal case against him, seem to me to be a perfect representation of America and its diabolically twisted culture.
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Megaphone

Lockdown in New South Wales, Australia fails to prevent spread of Delta Covid variant


RT
Thu, 01 Jul 2021 19:30 UTC
lockdown
© Reuters / Loren Elliott
Officials in the Australian state of New South Wales have warned that the current two-week lockdown has failed to curb the spread of the Delta Covid variant, with new cases springing up for a third consecutive day.

The state's capital, Sydney, was placed under strict Covid restrictions until at least midnight on Friday 9 July amid a rise in infections linked to the Delta variant, first detected in India.

Despite residents having been asked to follow 'stay at home' rules and social distancing measures to slow the spread of the virus, authorities reported 24 new cases on Thursday, with half of those infectious individuals believed to have spent time in the community.

New South Wales Premier Gladys Berejiklian described the growing number of cases as "a cause of concern," suggesting that people with Covid-like symptoms are ignoring the lockdown order.
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