Hard Pass

JD Vance accused Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-MN) of having “definitely committed immigration fraud” and said that he’d recently spoken with White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller about how best to “go after her.”

Speaking on a podcast hosted by MAGA influencer Benny Johnson on Friday, Vance was asked about claims that Omar had defrauded the United States by marrying her brother to secure his legal residency.

The unsubstantiated claim has circulated in MAGA circles for years but has been denied by Omar multiple times. The congresswoman was born in Somalia but moved to Minneapolis with her family in 1997, fleeing the civil war.

As the war in Iran pushes U.S. gas prices toward $4 a gallon nationally, some lawmakers are pushing to suspend the federal gasoline tax in the latest attempt to try to control surging energy costs.

Lawmakers say the action would provide much-needed relief for families and businesses that rely on their cars and trucks to get to work and school and run everyday errands.

Asked about the gas tax at a Cabinet meeting Thursday, Donald Trump said he has “thought about” suspending it but suggested states should consider suspending their fuel taxes.

Agency uses devices, which are uncomfortable and interfere with employment, to push people to self-deport, advocates say

cross-posted from: https://lazysoci.al/post/45181275

They work better when they're charged...

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Inside the country, Iranians have been blocked by the Iranian regime from accessing the global internet. It’s now been nearly a month since the internet blackout began.

Internet access in the country remains shut down since the United States and Israel launched attacks on the country.

[Irainian-Canadian] Parsaei’s parents, two brothers and countless cousins are currently living in Iran.

“It impacts our families a lot,” she said. “I found that myself, I am just overwhelmed, but I try to be strong to fight for our people.”

Parsaei spoke with her brother last week for the Persian New Year, but it was only for a couple of minutes.

She doesn’t know when she’ll be able to talk with her family next.

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Earlier this year, Iran’s government restricted internet access during widespread protests.

Tech analyst Carmi Levy says there are creative ways folks inside Iran have been communicating with people outside of the country.

“For example, there have been an estimated 50,000 Starlink terminals that have been smuggled into the country and those are being used for intermittent connectivity,” he said.

“There are what we call Bluetooth mesh networks, so apps like Bitchat that allow connectivity without using the internet and the more people who use them, the greater the range and that allows messages to get in and out under the radar of the regime.”

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Levy says virtual private networks (VPN) are also often a go-to for communicating when you don’t want the government to be able to see what you’re talking about.

He said although there are ways to communicate with the outside world, it does come at a risk.

“The government is looking for this activity and is punishing this activity,” he said. “When you are trying to communicate with someone back home, recognize it’s not going to be an hour-long FaceTime or video conference call, it’s going to be short text messages simply to confirm that everything is okay.”

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As for Parsaei, she says she will do everything she can to get in touch with her family more often, but notes it’s virtually impossible.

She said she’s taking things day by day.

“It seems that we are having two lives now,” she said. “We have here our children, our work, our family, everything that we need to take care of ourselves here. At the same time, we are worried about back home, our family there.”

“Iranian people don’t have any voice. We are trying to be their voice here. We are fighting.”

Archived link

At the [Canadian] Industry Committee on Thursday, MPs were hearing from experts on China as they were examining Canada’s electric vehicle policy. The Mark Carney Liberals just recently announced an agreement with China to bring in 49,000 Chinese EVs, growing to 70,000 per year within five years.

There are real concerns about the safety and security of these vehicles, concerns that have been raised by many countries including Australia, Poland, the United States, Britain and Israel.

Rather than engage on the issues at hand, Ma decided to attack a witness as not competent and then ask questions that could have been written directly by Beijing. The witness in question was Margaret McCuaig-Johnston, an expert on China and former civil servant who worked for every federal government from the one led by Pierre Trudeau through the government of Stephen Harper.

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McCuaig-Johnston is widely respected in Ottawa but now loathed in Beijing. Based on the treatment he gave her on Thursday, by Ma as well.

“Do you have an advanced degree in technology and cyber security? Yes or No?” Ma asked McCuaig-Johnston.

She had been critical of the spying components of Chinese EVs, something that everyone watching the file has been concerned about. Ma knew that the answer was no; he just wanted to undermine her by pointing that out.

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Here is the full exchange between Liberal MP Michael Ma and Margaret McQuaig-Johnston at the industry committee where MP Ma sounds like he's running interference for the Chinese Communist Party in Beijing.

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In a statement after the fact shared to Facebook, Ma claimed he was talking not about Xinjiang but the Chinese city of Shenzhen where BYD, a major Chinese EV producer has plants. The reason this statement is unbelievable is that McCuaig-Johnston had already been speaking about forced labour and had been asked about forced labour in Xinjiang.

Given the context of the questioning, and the statements that came before Ma's questions, this does not seem plausible at all.

McCuaig-Johnston, and any reasonable person listening to the exchange, would have assumed he was asking about Xinjiang where forced labour is well documented. After the meeting, McCuaig-Johnston says she gave Ma a report on forced labour in Xinjiang and he accepted it and didn’t try to correct the record with her. He only did that hours after the meeting was over in a social media post.

For her part, McCuaig-Johnston had been clearly talking about Xinjiang and specifically auto parts made with aluminum through forced labour in that province.

Whether he wanted to or not, Ma was parroting lines from Beijing, muddying the waters for China’s dictatorship that was cheered on by state-aligned media.

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All of this comes after Carney’s Liberals pulled their MPs from a multi-party trip to Taiwan so as to not upset Beijing. We have had a new trade agreement with Taiwan ready since last April for final signature, but the Carney government has not moved forward.

Meanwhile, Carney has moved forward with an attempt to not just increase trade with China but to make China a strategic partner and a place to pivot to, away from the United States.

It’s as if we learned nothing from the attempts by China to interfere in our elections over several years or from the public inquiry called as a result.

Ma’s performance on Thursday was shameful, but sadly in line with the behaviour of the Liberal Party of late.

Source: https://www.reddit.com/r/mildlyinfuriating/comments/1s5jnan/the_security_line_at_jfk_this_afternoon/

Archived link

Canadian Energy Minister Tim Hodgson said Friday the federal government is opposed to forced labour, a day after another Liberal MP cast doubt on China's labour practices.

On Thursday, MP Michael Ma apologized after appearing to question reports of human rights abuses in China while engaging with a witness at a parliamentary committee hearing earlier in the evening.

In a written statement, Ma said he regretted making a mistake by making remarks at the committee which "inadvertently came across as dismissive of the serious issue of forced labour."

He had asked an expert during the hearing on Thursday whether she'd seen forced labour with her own eyes. In his statement later, Ma pointed out he had referred to the southern Chinese city of Shenzhen and not Xinjiang, where the Communist government has been accused of widespread abuses.

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Speaking to reporters in Markham, Ont., on Friday, Hodgson deferred questions on whether Ma should remain in the party's caucus to Prime Minister Mark Carney, who did not hold a scheduled news conference during an event in Halifax on Friday.

"Michael has already commented to the press. He said that his views did not reflect the views of the Liberal party. He has apologized for those views," Hodgson told reporters when asked if Ma should remain in the Liberal caucus.

But Ma made no such acknowledgment in the apology posted to his social media, or in his statement to The Canadian Press. His statement, did however say he condemned forced labour "in all its forms."

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Conservative foreign affairs critic Michael Chong published an open letter to Carney on Friday calling on the prime minister to "urgently" clarify his position on forced labour and the Uyghur minority in China.

"Your position on this matter also directly affects those here at home," Chong wrote.

"Canadians in the Chinese community have been subject to threats and intimidation from (the People's Republic of China) for the simple act of speaking out on these very issues. Many also worry about families still in the PRC who may face consequences or punishment from the government of the PRC."

The United Nations reported in 2022 that China had committed serious human rights violations in Xinjiang against Uyghurs and other Muslim minorities that “may constitute international crimes, in particular crimes against humanity.”

A report issued that same year by Global Affairs Canada concluded China “is using otherwise legitimate programs for retraining and relocation of unemployed workers as instruments of a broader campaign of oppression, exploitation and indoctrination of the Uyghur Muslim population into Han (majority) Chinese culture.”

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