- The question of how the Israel-Hamas conflict will impact Netanyahu's political fortunes has come up. It's something of an open secret that Israel's leaders have tolerated, and even covertly aided, Hamas in the hope that they will cause more problems for the cause of Palestinian statehood than they will for Israel; that of course looks like something of an own goal now. For his part, Netanyahu will no doubt blame everyone but himself and his cronies for the situation while raining furious vengeance upon ordinary Palestinians as Hamas' leaders go into hiding; whether the Israeli public buys that remains to be seen. They still have to figure out how to rescue the hostages, though.
- Australian voters have soundly rejected a proposed constitutional amendment that would have given their indigenous peoples (Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders) recognition as the country's first peoples and given them an advisory body to Parliament. The situation was not helped by ridiculous conspiracy theories claiming that this was a plot to hand the country over to the UN, which the bleating masses lapped up. A consolation (albeit a small one) is that the country's largest cities mostly voted Yes; as usual, rural and small town folk seem to once again be the enemies of progress.
- Across the Tasman, New Zealanders have voted for change, even if they don't really understand what change means other than stopping those big city libtard ay-leets from taxing livestock farmers to try to limit the severity of climate change.
- Here at home, the Winnipeg Police Service has pulled community support units from inner city residential neighbourhoods in order to reassign them to the downtown. While there's definitely a problem in the downtown, community activists fear that abandoning poor neighbourhoods will turn out badly in the long run. Notably they have also increased their presence around synagogues and mosques, which is probably necessary given the grim situation in the Middle East.
- A project is underway to convert the old McKenzie Seeds building in Brandon to a vertical farm. Increasingly, this will be the future of farming, especially as conventional farming becomes harder due to climate change and other environmental problems. Of course some farming (notably grains) will have to remain outdoors, but this is a positive step for food security.
- The idea of an environmental tax on meat, especially beef, is gaining momentum in some places. Denmark is considering such a measure, for instance, and New Zealand planned to do the same thing, though the new government is likely to reverse this move. Of course industry people are doing the usual hand-wringing about how this will "drive up costs for low-income families", though really it will only drive up costs for inflexible low income families. What really needs to happen, though, is to use the revenue raised from this to bring down the prices of alternatives.
- School divisions in Manitoba have issued a large number of "limited teaching permits", which enable someone without the usual credentials to teach in classrooms, in order to replace the large numbers of teachers who left the profession during the ravages of the pandemic.
- Five people, among them the despicable Patrick Allard, have had their appeal of their convictions for violating COVID-19 restrictions denied.
- A climate researcher working in Bougainville, PNG has been fired because he refused to hop on a plane to meet with his German employers. He has no apologies; as far as he's concerned flying would be undermining the purpose of his job.
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