Good morning,
Canada Native Children Deaths
Canada has been rocked by the announcement 215 children’s bodies have been uncovered on the grounds of a former Catholic residential school in the Western most Province of British Columbia.
The Kamloops residential school operated between 1890 and 1969 and the bodies are those of native Indian or Indigenous children. The federal government took over the facility’ from the Catholic Church and ran it as a day school until it closed in 1978.
In 2015 Canada's Truth and Reconciliation Commission released a report detailing the damaging legacy of the country's residential school system. Thousands of mostly indigenous children were separated from their families and forced to attend residential schools. The deaths are undocumented.
The report detailed decades of physical, sexual and emotional abuse suffered by children in government and church run institutions.
Israel and Netanyahu
Israel’s smaller political parties are banding together to close a chapter on the career of Benjamin Netanyahu, the longest serving P.M. They are close to forming a coalition Government for force Netanyahu for the political scene.
Leaders of the proposed coalition have indicated that they plan to focus first on infrastructure and economic policy instead of divisive issues like those related to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
But, Netanyahu leave his finger print on the destruction of peace efforts between Israeli’s and Palestinians and the delegitimization of Israels left.
On Back Story with Dana Lewis podcast we talk to Yossi Beilin, the architect of the OSLO Peace accords on where does Israel go from here?
Beilin predicts either peace or a unilateral Israeli withdrawl from the West Bank.
And, Jerusalem Post Military Affairs reporter Anna Ahronheim who talks about military goals in Gaza and was it a victory over Hamas?
https://www.buzzsprout.com/1016881/8576551
U.S. Republicans
U.S. Democrats in the State of Texas walked out the House at the last minute to block the passage of one of the most restrictive voting measures in America.
Democrat Carl Sherman said: “We’ve said for so many years that we want more people to participate in our democracy. And it just seems that’s not the case.”
Governor Greg Abbott said the failure of the legislation was “deeply disappointing and concerning” but vowed to bring it back at a special session at an unspecified date.
These voting suppression bills are the fallout from the Trump loss in the election and the BIG LIE, which is a claim by fringe Republican leaders the election was stolen by Democrats. Dozens of court cases have examine and rejected any evidence of election fraud.
But despite this, QAnon groups continue to push the election fraud theory and dangerously imagine Trump will return to the White House.
And none more than Trumps wacky former National Security advisor Michael Flynn who Sunday night at a QAnon rally called for a Myanmar like military coup in the U.S. to restore Trump’s rule. Bizarre. Flynn was pardoned by Trump for lying to the FBI, but is this not sedition and can it go ignored by law enforcement?
Putin and Belarus
Every time Russia’s President Putin is presented with an opportunity to side with The West he chooses instead to support the rogue. This weekend he literally gave hugs and handshakes to Belarus’ leader Alexander Lukashenko days after Lukashenko had ordered a Mig-29 fighter jet to force down a European flight from Athens to Vilnius, to arrest a journalist.
This is Lukashenko who has jailed thousands in his country for protesting what by all accounts were fraudulent elections held last August. Tales of torture and abuse are widespread.
Of course Lukashenko at his meeting with Putin sought to blame the West for election unrest, but he has little support or credibility in Belarus. Whats Putins game? Well in this case it’s the domination of Belarus first, with a “Union State” in the making.
And secondly Putin fears similar unrest coming to Russia, so he has supported Lukashenko’s brutal crackdown in Belarus.
U.S. President Biden will press Putin on human rights abuses in Russia when they meet next month. But any hope of better American-Russian relations seems highly improbable in the wake of tensions over Russian troop movements near Ukraine, election interference, computer hacking and the jailing in Russia of Alexei Navalny.
Putin and Lukashenko are birds of a feather, two aging dictators who have sucked the oxygen out of democracy and freedom in Russia and Belarus, and seem more brutal the longer they cling to power.
UK and India Variant
The UK is worth watching because it does more testing or genome sequencing of new variants than any other nation in the World and usually leads in new outbreaks. And right now it is seeing a huge surge of the Covid India variant which indicates Britain is heading for a third wave of the pandemic.
This as the UK was set to lift all Covid restrictions in 3 weeks time but may have to reconsider as fears of new illness and hospitalizations loom large. Research by Public Health England that suggests the new variant is highly transmissible and partially resistant to vaccines has heightened concerns that a third wave could overwhelm the National Health Care System.
The UK made a critical error of not locking down when India experienced it’s latest deadly Covid wave of infections. And many flights were allowed to land here from India. Public Health England data, including infections found through surge testing, suggests more than half of new cases are the B.1.617.2 variant found in India.
It’s a holiday here in Britain today. So I am off to have a park run and recommend you do the same! Enjoy your day and stay healthy.
Dana
https://nationalpost.com/news/trudeau-asks-for-flags-to-be-lowered-to-honour-kamloops-residential-school-children
https://www.jpost.com/breaking-news/yesh-atid-new-hope-teams-to-meet-669589
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2021/may/31/texas-democrats-late-night-walkout-republicans-restrict-voting-rights-bill-failure
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/michael-flynn-says-coup-like-in-myanmar-should-happen-in-america/ar-AAKxYA6?ocid=uxbndlbing
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/05/25/us/politics/biden-putin-summit.html
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/may/30/third-wave-of-covid-may-be-under-way-in-uk-scientists-say