Leofish posted:

Saw this today.

Cultural Imperial posted:

are you like the dumbest person in finance? how do you even make money with a religious adherence to stupid ideology like that? that would explain why you can only get work in calgary instead of some place where you can actually make real money like nyc, london or conneticut

Tighclops posted:

The oil facilities are in no danger anyway since they all have massive cleared firebreaks and dedicated firefighting crews

Cultural Imperial posted:

imo this is the real tragedy of the wild fires. all those mines are nowhere near the flames

Cultural Imperial posted:

and their +50 WHMIS talismans

Pixelante posted:

Cultural Imperial posted:

don't forget somalia. the cf do good work

quote:

Donald Trump held a rally minutes away from B.C.'s border on Saturday where he touched on lumber and international trade.

The presumptive Republican presidential nominee hosted a 3 p.m. PT rally in Lynden, Wash. — a city less than 15 minutes south of Aldergrove, B.C. Earlier in the day, at noon, he held another event in Spokane, Wash.

During his 45 minute speech in Lynden, he meandered from topic to topic — from his love of his evangelical supporters to attacking Democratic front-runner Hillary Clinton by calling her "crooked."

He called NAFTA "one of the great economic disasters" that's "destroyed" the U.S., a message he first shared back in September 2015.

Cultural Imperial posted:

http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/donald-trump-calls-nafta-disaster-at-rally-15-min-south-of-b-c-border-1.3572100


social justice warriors, you have a friend in donald trump

Cultural Imperial posted:

http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/donald-trump-calls-nafta-disaster-at-rally-15-min-south-of-b-c-border-1.3572100


social justice warriors, you have a friend in donald trump

Excelsiortothemax posted:

What would happen if Trump actually got elected and removed NAFTA?

MechanicalTomPetty posted:

Apparently people have taken to calling the fort McMurry fire "The Beast" which I'm mentioning here because that is a rad loving name for a forest fire.

MA-Horus posted:

Where's my goddamn pink champagne

Leofish posted:

Do you have any links to the Haitian and African stuff, if true? Or was that a joke like, "oh they should help now, the ingrates" kind of thing you saw? I saw the stuff about Syrian refugees in Calgary gathering donations earlier this week.

PT6A posted:

If people are asking why those governments aren't sending aid, perhaps they need to ask their caretakers because I refuse to believe anyone that stupid can actually live independently.

EvilJoven posted:

Hatians in Haiti aren't sending money because they don't have any because when the Hatian government tried to boost the minimum wage in that country Hillary Clinton threatened them with all sorts of bullshit until they dropped the idea.

quote:

So it's true that the State Department (then led by Hillary Clinton as Secretary of State) strongly opposed a minimum wage increase in Haiti in 2009. However, the State Department's efforts did not occur in a political or economic vacuum, and Clinton wasn't the sole architect of efforts to quash a minimum wage hike (as the meme suggests). It was a concerted effort on the part of Haitian elites, factory owners, free trade proponents, U.S. politicians, economists, and American companies that kept the minimum wage so low, and to lay the blame squarely at the feet of any sitting Secretary of State would be an incomplete assessment, and thus inaccurate.

A law establishing a new minimum wage of $5.11 per workday ($0.64 an hour) was finally approved in 2014, which still fell far short of both the demanded raise by workers (to the equivalent of $11.36 per workday, or $1.42 per hour) and the recommended daily wage of $22.86.

flakeloaf posted:

First I've heard of it.


burn down all western nations

Pixelante posted:

Vice posted:

Russia Has Made a Questionably Sincere Offer to Help Put Out Canada's Forest Fires

By Justin Ling
May 7, 2016 |

It's hard to tell whether it's a legitimate offer, or a snide geopolitical belittling of one of its fiercest critics, but Moscow has extended an offer to Ottawa to help battle the raging forest fires in Fort McMurray which have displaced more than 80,000.

In a statement released Thursday, Russian Minister Vladimir Puchkov offered to "immediately" send emergency aircraft to help battle the blazes that have spread through Alberta's north throughout the week.

But considering the frosty state of relations between the two nations, it's unclear whether that was a legitimate olive branch or simply another Russian propaganda effort. Or, perhaps even more likely, a combination of both.

Puchkov said Russian air force is prepared to send Ilyushin Il-76 strategic transport planes — which the statement says can carry 42 tonnes of fire retardant material — as well as "Russian rescuers and specialists with necessary equipment to fight fires in Canada and organize ground support for aircrafts."

The statement, posted in English, appears roughly translated.

The statement says the offer was made directly via "telegram" to Ottawa, although the original statement — which has since been corrected — lists the wrong minister. It said the communique had been sent to Public Safety and Emergency Preparedness Minister Steven Blaney, who lost his job last October, not Ralph Goodale, who is the current minister.

A spokesperson for Goodale confirmed that the letter was received last week, and told VICE News that — thus far — Russia is the only country to reach out.

"The Government of Canada does have a mechanism in place for mutual firefighting support with other nations, including some specific agreements," the spokesperson said in an email. "Canada does not have a formal arrangement with Russia for this purpose.

"We will review the offer received from the Russian Federation and will respond to them in due course."

As one Russian official pointed out, similar aid offers were made to Haiti following its devastating 2010 earthquake and to Bosnia and Serbia after flooding there in 2014, as well as a range of other disasters worldwide.

But Russian aid to North America and Western Europe is somewhat more uncommon. Several Il-76 did land in the United States as part of an aid effort mobilized following Hurricane Katrina.

flakeloaf posted:

First I've heard of it.


burn down all western nations

quote:

Uber and Lyft spent nearly $9 million on a May 7 special election in Austin, Texas. They offered free rides to the polls, and texted users asking for their support. They pulled out all the stops in a political playbook that has worked in almost every other city in the US.
For once, it wasn’t enough.

Voters in the Texan capital came out against Proposition 1, upholding ride-hailing regulations that the city council passed in December. The rules are stricter than ones that Uber and Lyft face in other jurisdictions: They require drivers for the services to pass fingerprint-based background checks, to identify their cars with company emblems, and to avoid picking up and dropping off passengers in certain lanes.

Though this was one election in one city, it’s hard to overstate the significance of the outcome. Uber and Lyft have never shied from political hardball when it comes to getting their preferred rules on the books, and over the course of 2015, nearly two dozen states passed ride-hailing laws that Uber supported. The companies have come out on top after fraught political battles in Seattle, Las Vegas, New York, and San Antonio, to name just a few.

“Uber, I think decided, they were going to make Austin an example to the nation,” said David Butts, a local political consultant who helped coordinate the campaign against Proposition 1, according to a report in the Austin American-Statesman. “And Austin made Uber an example to the nation.”

Ahead of the vote, both Uber and Lyft had threatened to leave Austin should the proposition fail. Austin mayor Steve Adler invited them to stay despite the election results.

Neither Uber nor Lyft immediately responded to a request for comment.

The nay vote on Proposition 1 is all the more crushing for Uber and Lyft considering the lopsided amount of money they spent in favor of it. The companies invested a combined $8.7 million to support the proposition via their lobbying committee, Ridesharing Works for Austin, an unprecedented sum in Austin local politics. That dwarfed the $132,000 that Proposition 1’s opponents strung together from about 500 individual contributions, according to campaign finance filings.

Uber and Lyft claim that fingerprint-based background checks make ride-hailing services untenable. It’s unclear whether that’s actually the case. Uber, notably, has operated in Houston, the largest city in Texas, for over a year and a half despite the fact that fingerprinting there is mandatory. Earlier this week, the company threatened to leave Houston if the city’s regulations aren’t overhauled. It pulled out of another Texas city, Corpus Christi, in March after policymakers there adopted fingerprinting requirements for ride-hailing services.

Uber and Lyft have cultivated the impression that their services are indispensable to cities. But Uber in particular has also spun itself as politically unbeatable. It has the money; it has the policy talent; it has the app that makes reaching potential voters as simple as sending a text or push notification to their phones.

“Nearly every time we try to set up shop in a new city, there’s a powerful industry with powerful allies who try to stop progress,” Uber CEO Travis Kalanick remarked on the company’s five-year anniversary last June. “The only reason they haven’t succeeded is because of you. It’s because there’s always a handful of Uber riders and drivers who decide to stand up and speak out and petition City Hall. And then they’re joined by a few more. And then a few more. And pretty soon, an entire community of people is fighting for a new way of doing things that makes their lives a little easier.”

That’s a potent narrative. With the loss in Austin, it’s starting to come undone.

EvilJoven posted:

Sorry for letting that cat out if the bag. I bet a lot of you would be happier if you didn't know such things.

I know I would be.

Helsing posted:

I guess I'm more naive than I thought because I'm surprised that someone here was skeptical when told that Hilary Clinton took active steps to stop Haiti from raising it's minimum wage. How the hell do you pay any attention to politics at all and then find that even slightly surprising or hard to believe?