Reader’s Links for February 17, 2022

Each day at just after midnight Eastern, a post like this one is created for contributors and readers of this site to upload news links and video links on the issues that concern this site. Most notably, Islam and its effects on Classical Civilization, and various forms of leftism from Soviet era communism, to postmodernism and all the flavours of galloping statism and totalitarianism such as Nazism and Fascism which are increasingly snuffing out the classical liberalism which created our near, miraculous civilization the West has been building since the time of Socrates.

This document was written around the time this site was created, for those who wish to understand what this site is about. And while our understanding of the world and events has grown since then, the basic ideas remain sound and true to the purpose.

So please post all links, thoughts and ideas that you feel will benefit the readers of this site to the comments under this post each day. And thank you all for your contributions.

This is the new Samizdat. We must use it while we can.

About Eeyore

Canadian artist and counter-jihad and freedom of speech activist as well as devout Schrödinger's catholic

27 Replies to “Reader’s Links for February 17, 2022”

  1. The Truckers’ Ball is proving to be the social event of the season. City debutantes are in full bloom.

    Ottawa, a sleepy little government town full of comfortable little bureaucrats and government money, has a pea beneath its mattress. Yesterday a hissy fit broke out among the Mayor and Council. A real cat fight by all accounts, with Mayor Jimma taking a swing at councillor Deans with his proverbial purse. Hey, you try being a gay Mayor and have your city descended upon by an army of big gruff straight truckers who won’t listen to you. (Not that there’s anything wrong with big gruff straight truckers.) Why, it’s worse than breaking a middle finger nail just before you go to flip them off, no doubt.

    What makes matters worse is that these city leaders so pride themselves on being progressive. They even hired a woke Chief of Police who displayed such incredible agility when called outside his tiny political ring (to actually police) that he fell flat on his face (A real black face, not Dear Leader’s type.) Now, I could be wrong about both Jimma and Chief Sloly-Pete-Sloly, but did they both not spew lies at these nice truckers in order to murder their character in the public eye? What could possibly have gone wrong praying at the alter of Inclusion and Diversity when suddenly a group shows up who isn’t getting well greased at taxpayer expense, and just doesn’t fit in? How do you destroy the character of a group? “We’ll show you!” said the Prime Minister’s Office as it rode to the rescue on a paisley horse named CBC.

    Mayor Jimma claimed he didn’t have time to put his make-up on for the nasty truckers even though he saw them coming from 4,000 miles away. Excuses, excuses. So he brow beats the Chief behind closed doors until Ever-So-Sloly steals truckers’ gas to show his rainbow colours mean business. The judge shakes his head at the stupidity and orders the police to “…put it back where you got it!” as if berating naughty boys holding automatic weapons.

    Unmitigated mayhem. Then Sloly-Now-Quickly cuts and runs faster than a greased fifth wheel. We have Mayor Jimma and Dear Leader hearing the writing screaming on the wall as the chorus–from the city that recruits HR from the Dollar Store–crescendos for their resignations. Where will it all end?

    Like an alien invasion the truckers came to town all white and dirty and stinking like diesel. Downtown Karens met uptown blue collars like a blind date from Hell, and all the Neanderthals did was sit there. And honk.

    “Brutes,” whispered Mayor Jimma to Dear Leader. “Horrible, nasty brutes,” as the two spied from their sniper perch a burly, bearded man cleaning the street.
    “I want to dress up like one. Maybe Sophie will like me again,” replied Dear Leader dreamily.

    https://ca.yahoo.com/news/former-waterloo-chief-offered-job-222511455.html

  2. I’m told pat king is live streaming and it looks like rcmp are moving in. See if any here can find anything

  3. Talk turns to leveraging digital identity infrastructure as COVID credentials retire
    Dated : Feb 16, 2022
    BIOMETRIC Update.com
    mentions…EU, Quebec, Ontario (kickoff this month!) & Saskatchewan

    Mobile digital identity technology and infrastructure have been dramatically advanced by digital health passes, which provide the foundations of identity verification and linkage to credentials that can underpin mobile identity wallets.

    This is according to a LinkedIn post from Zetes People ID Head of Business Development and Innovation Geert Peeters.

    Peeters writes that the EU Digital COVID Certificate (EUDCC) and other such credentials intended for cross-border recognition based on reference to an official data source set up the development of “multipurpose mobile identity systems.”

    Peeters references the whitepaper ‘Covid-19 as a Catalyst for Advancement of Digital Identity’ by Perkins Coie Partner Charlyn Ho, which identifies trust, user-centricity and security as the three necessary qualities to engender the support necessary for widespread digital ID adoption. Zetes would add interoperability, Peeters says.

    Each of these characteristics have been built into digital health passes, if imperfectly, according to Peeters, who reviews the progress on each front.

    With a little more progress, Peeters suggests similar technologies could bring digital identity to the billion people who still do not have it.

    Planning for COVID credential retirement
    The EUDCC system is being extended by a year, to June 2023, to avoid a divergence of national systems within the bloc, Healthcare IT News reports.

    In various jurisdictions, however, COVID credentials are being rolled back or retired. The Canadian Province of Saskatchewan has already stopped requiring the credentials for indoor commercial settings, CP24 reports, while Ontario plans a March 1 end to proof-of-vaccination requirements.

    A program to develop Ontario’s incoming digital ID kicks off this month, and neighboring province Quebec is targeting a 2025 launch for its relatively comprehensive digital identity system.

    U.S. states continue to have widely varying approaches, and in the EU some German states have already begun reducing the use of vaccination and recovery credentials, ahead of their planned retirement.

    Now used by 27 EU states and 18 other countries, the EUDCC is considered a success by the EU, but the lack of encryption on the barcodes provided is a potential vulnerability, says Matthew Comb, a doctoral student researching digital identity at the University of Oxford.

    If the COVID pandemic had happened just a few years later, he says, the digital identity infrastructure would already have been established.

    The concept behind using private keys to decrypt digital credentials is already in production in various systems, but not in the public domain, where the private keys could be stolen. That, according to Combs, is a missing piece of infrastructure.

    “We’ve never done this before on a large scale, we don’t have the infrastructure in place to handle encryption keys, relative to a person’s digital identity, in a distributed environment because we have not reached an agreement on the standardised approach to manage the keys involved,” Combs tells Healthcare IT News.

    If the system did not have to work as broadly, such as in offline scenarios, secure servers could have been used.

  4. Ontario considers ending licence-plate stickers, saving drivers $120 a year
    Annual renewals to be done online as part of province’s move to digitize paper-heavy programs
    Feb 7/2022
    Source: The Province

    The Ontario Conservatives will this month present a bill that would eliminate licence plate stickers, CityNews reports, citing unnamed sources.

    Ontario MPPs return to the Legislature on Feb. 21 and they are scheduled to consider several new bills including this one, which has already been reviewed by the provincial cabinet. The news report says the proposal was “well received.”

    The move would save drivers $120 a year per vehicle. Though vehicle owners would no longer have to attach a sticker to the plate, they would still have to renew their vehicle licences annually, but with no fees.

    The government is planning the process for transferring to digital renewals for driver’s licences, parking permits, photo ID and health cards, saying a five-year savings total of about $30 million on postage and paper will be reinvested in other provincial programs.

    Ontario Transportation Minister Caroline Mulroney would not confirm the report, only acknowledging in a statement that Queen’s Park is looking at “a number of options to cut costs for Ontarians.”

  5. PRAVDA – How misinformation is threatening U.S. democracy

    Conspiracy theories and misinformation are influencing political beliefs in the U.S. like never before.

    False claims that the 2020 election was stolen, have some American voters justifying the violence that unfolded at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6.

    Some researchers worry there could be more violence if voters don’t accept the results of the midterm elections this November.

  6. reuters – CDC to update mask-wearing guidelines

    U.S. health officials said they are preparing for the next phase of the COVID-19 pandemic as Omicron-related cases decline, including updating CDC guidance on mask-wearing