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$5.5-million taxpayer-funded Manitoba daycare sits empty, flooded, and stripped by thieves

A $5.5-million daycare built with provincial funding has never cared for a single child and is now flooded, vandalized and stripped of valuable equipment.

The 74-space facility in East St. Paul was completed in 2024 for the Peguis First Nation Real Estate Trust. It was one of 22 daycares commissioned under Manitoba’s former Progressive Conservative government.

The province paid $3.3 million toward the project before cutting off funding in November 2024 amid uncertainty over who owns the land.

A CBC News investigation found broken windows, shattered glass, a damaged security system and extensive water damage. Two commercial refrigerators and a dishwasher have disappeared, copper wiring has been stripped, and rooftop air-conditioning units have been partially dismantled.

After the building went months without electricity, its sump pump stopped operating and approximately half a metre of water accumulated in the basement.

Patrick Ryan, volunteer board chair of Created 4 Me Early Learning Centre, estimated the damage now exceeds $1 million. The organization, which has 800 children on its waiting list, hired staff for the facility but later had to let them go.

The dispute began after the Peguis trust sold 75 percent of the company controlling the property to a numbered company owned by Andrew Marquess, a former trust adviser. The province says the ownership change may violate its operating agreement.

Education and Early Childhood Learning Minister Tracy Schmidt said the government still has not received documentation confirming ownership and cannot provide a timeline for opening the daycare.

A former deputy minister also warned that the project may not have followed normal provincial or municipal procurement practices.

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After 9/11, the ‘War on Terror’ Was a War of Terror

Three days after terrorists killed almost 3,000 people in the United States on September 11, 2001, President George W. Bush stood behind a pulpit at the Washington National Cathedral and spoke to a nation in shock. “Our responsibility to history is already clear,” he proclaimed, “to answer these attacks and rid the world of evil.” The vow was, of course, preposterous. Yet the “war on terror” that followed was scarcely more realistic.

“Terrorism is not an enemy. It cannot be defeated. It’s a tactic,” retired US Army General William Odom told C-SPAN viewers in 2002. “It’s about as sensible to say we declare war on night attacks and expect we’re going to win that war. We’re not going to win the war on terrorism.” But the American military crusade became more about persisting than winning. The ultraviolent momentum became its own reason. The destructive search for enemies created more. As years went by and the “war on terror” label faded, US warfare was so normal in so many places that it no longer needed a name or much of a rationale.

But 25 years ago, the impulse to avenge the horrors of 9/11 was instant. Fear and rage blended into high octane for war machinery. Suddenly, overwhelming public emotions were fully in sync with the psychology of a military-industrial complex set for large-scale killing.

None of the 19 hijackers were Afghan, and Al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden’s ties were much tighter with Saudi Arabia, but his presence in Afghanistan put that country in the Pentagon’s gunsights. The question in US media was not about whether, but when, to attack. The answer came on October 7 when American missiles began to explode in Afghanistan. Hours later, a Gallup poll found that “90 percent of Americans approve of the United States taking such military action, while just 5 percent are opposed, and another 5 percent are unsure.”

The air war remained quite popular in the United States. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld held daily live televised briefings that catapulted him to national adulation. A pattern set in, taking for granted that American warfare was beneficent in intent and benign in meaningful impact. People dying under American bombs and less directly didn’t count for much. “The targeting capabilities, and the care that goes into targeting, to see that the precise targets are struck, and that other targets are not struck, is as impressive as anything anyone could see,” Rumsfeld asserted. And he added, “The weapons that are being used today have a degree of precision that no one ever dreamt of.”

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Justice Watch: Justice Gethin Edward gives house arrest to driver who killed 12-year-old girl

An Ontario judge sentenced a man convicted of dangerous driving causing death and bodily harm to two years of house arrest after he killed a 12-year-old girl and left her mother requiring around-the-clock care.

Justice Gethin Edward rejected the Crown’s request for a four-year penitentiary sentence for 31-year-old Darris James Wilson.

Wilson was driving approximately 90 km/h in a 50 km/h zone when his Dodge Ram crossed the centre line and struck a Mitsubishi head-on near Oakland, Ont., in February 2022. Investigators found no evidence that Wilson braked before the collision.

The crash killed Sierra Beverly, who was being driven to a sleepover, and caused her mother, Naomi Beverly, multiple fractures and an acquired brain injury. Beverly now requires 24-hour supervision.

Police found open and unopened beer cans around Wilson’s seat, although responding officers said they observed no signs of impairment.

Edward acknowledged more than a dozen victim impact statements describing the family’s grief but placed significant weight on Wilson’s Indigenous background and the effects of colonialism on his connection to Six Nations culture.

The judge heard from a sentencing circle of Wilson’s relatives and supporters and credited his efforts to reconnect with traditional practices following the crash.

Edward said sending Wilson to prison would once again allow the state to take away the culture that had been “systematically” taken from his family by the Canadian government.

“I’m left with this simple refrain: ‘If not now, when. If not this case, what case?’” Edward said. “Now, and this case.”

Wilson will serve two years of house arrest at a Brant County residence while wearing a GPS ankle monitor. He may leave for work, school, church and medical appointments. He is prohibited from driving, consuming alcohol or using non-prescription drugs.

Sierra’s parents called the sentence deeply disappointing and said it felt inadequate after four-and-a-half years of waiting for justice.

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CIA role in 9/11 plot omitted in new revelations of Saudi role

Twenty five years on, the mainstream media’s determination to reinforce the official story of 9/11 appears to be finally cracking. Major news outlets are now reporting on an ongoing civil suit in a New York court against Omar Bayoumi, long-accused of being the Saudi intelligence handler of 9/11 hijackers Nawaf Hazmi and Khalid Mihdhar. Back in April 2023, The Grayzone exposed how Riyadh recruited then managed the two would-be hijackers on behalf of the CIA.

As Max Blumenthal detailed in his 2019 book, The Management of Savagery, the CIA had at least sought to recruit Hazmi and Mihdhar. When a 21-page declaration by lead investigator for the Office of Military Commissions Don Canestraro finally appeared in unredacted form in 2023, the darkest suspicions about the two hijackers was confirmed: they had indeed been recruited into a joint CIA-Saudi intelligence operation which may have gone awry.

This September, numerous media reported for the first time on apparently incontrovertible evidence implicating Bayoumi in the planning and commission of the 9/11 attacks. Never before seen material, including video tapes featuring Bayoumi paintballing with Al Qaeda recruiter Anwar Awlaki – himself killed in a US drone strike in September 2011 – and walking around Washington DC in 1999 apparently scoping Capitol hill security measures, and a pencil sketch of the supposedly precise “mathematical calculation” of the Pentagon attack with an accompanying crude plane diagram.

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Justice Watch: Justice Indra Maharaj scolds Crown for allowing too many victim statements after nine-year-old’s killing

An Alberta judge criticized prosecutors for permitting too many relatives and family friends to address the court after a carjacker high on meth killed a nine-year-old Calgary girl, according to a story first reported by the National Post.

Justice Indra Maharaj made the remarks while sentencing Duane Nepoose to 10 years in prison for the Boxing Day 2024 death of Victoria Desjardins.

Nepoose had violently stolen a Dodge Caravan and was fleeing police when he drove through a red light at approximately 170 km/h. The resulting collision killed Victoria and seriously injured her mother, sister and another woman.

He pleaded guilty to robbery, fleeing police, dangerous driving causing death and three counts of dangerous driving causing bodily harm.

Twenty-two victim impact statements were submitted, with 18 presented to the court. Maharaj described their number, scope and content as “unusual.”

The judge said statements from Victoria’s immediate family and other direct victims were useful but questioned submissions from aunts, uncles, cousins and family friends. Some portions were disregarded because they described the hospital scene or memorialized the child.

Maharaj also admonished the Crown for allowing three of Victoria’s young cousins to present individual statements about losing her. She suggested their experiences could have been condensed into a single community impact statement delivered by an adult.

“While I accept that these young relatives were genuinely affected, their statements largely addressed the broader family and community impact of the death,” Maharaj wrote.

The judge similarly said a heartfelt statement from Victoria’s babysitter “tended toward a memorial” and could have been included in a collective family statement.

Under the Criminal Code, victim impact statements may describe the physical, emotional and financial consequences of a crime. Courts may exclude irrelevant, inflammatory or prejudicial material, but the law does not require extended families to consolidate their grief into a single statement.

Victoria was remembered as an outgoing and creative girl who loved nature and the outdoors.

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Ohio Schools Can Send Unvaccinated Kids Home for 25 Days — Even If They’re Not Sick

Ohio’s new policy forcing healthy, unvaccinated children out of school for 21 to 25 days after a confirmed case of measles or rubella is drawing fire from parents, lawyers and scientists.

Critics say the policy isn’t needed to protect public health, it could harm children and it may be illegal.

The policy, part of a public health order signed in February by Ohio Department of Public Health (ODH) Director Bruce Vanderhoff, is enforceable even if the unvaccinated student shows no signs of illness or infection.

The policy also applies whenever a mumps or chickenpox outbreak occurs — and it extends to sports and extracurricular activities, not just classroom attendance.

The 21-to-25-day quarantine resets every time a new case or outbreak is reported at the student’s school.

Jeffrey Tucker, president and founder of the Brownstone Institute, called the policy “cruel and discriminatory” and a violation of the rights of children and their parents or guardians.

“If the policy is to protect the unvaccinated children, the parents should be the ones to decide,” Tucker said.

Karl Jablonowski, Ph.D., senior research scientist for Children’s Health Defense (CHD), said the “contrast between medical freedom and medical tyranny is blatant” in the policy, which he said “discriminates against people based on medical choice … with zero evidence that they pose a risk.”

Policy could lead to ‘serious risk of vaccine injury’

Ohio’s school vaccine mandates require students to receive routine childhood vaccinations for 10 diseases: diphtheria, hepatitis B, measles, meningococcal, mumps, pertussis (whooping cough), polio, rubella, tetanus and varicella (chickenpox).

Earlier this month, Ohio school districts sent letters to parents warning that children who haven’t received two doses of the measles-mumps-rubella (MMR) vaccine will be “excluded from school” for 21 days whenever the school confirms a measles case.

According to the policy, any vaccine doses children received five or more days before the minimum interval or age are “invalid” — so those students are classified as unvaccinated and required to be re-vaccinated.

That could put those children “at serious risk of vaccine injury,” according to Ohio Advocates for Medical Freedom, which called for the “immediate repeal” of the policy.

In a letter to leaders and members of the Ohio Senate and House of Representatives, the group said Ohio’s policy amounts to a “coercion tactic to bully parents into submitting to vaccination against their conscience out of desperation.”

Most families will be unable to find solutions to keep their unvaccinated children at home for several weeks or months, the letter noted.

Leslie Manookian, president of the Health Freedom Defense Fund, agreed that the policy appears deliberately designed to “coerce busy parents into vaccinating their children so they won’t be excluded from attending school and any school-related activities.”

However, Manookian questioned whether the policy will change the minds of parents who have chosen not to vaccinate their kids.

“This policy misses a larger point, which is that many parents would prefer to take the risk of their child contracting measles than to subject their child to the potential risk of the measles vaccines,” she said.

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California Democrat Ex-Mayor Found Liable for Sexually Assaulting Seven Women — Jury Hits Him With $13 Million Bill After State AG Rob Bonta Refused to Charge Him

A Sonoma County jury on Friday delivered a unanimous civil verdict against former Windsor, California, Mayor Dominic Foppoli, finding him liable for sexually assaulting seven women and ordering him to pay more than $13 million in compensatory damages.

According to Fox News, the awards ranged from roughly $6,000 to $4.65 million per plaintiff. Jane Doe 7 received about $4.65 million. Jane Doe 1 received about $3.8 million.

The jury also found the Santa Rosa chapter of the all-male Active 20-30 Club liable in one of the cases and ordered an additional $2 million.

Punitive damages have not been decided. That phase was set to begin this week after jurors found clear and convincing evidence that Foppoli acted with oppression, fraud, or malice.

Foppoli, 44, has never been criminally charged. That is the part California’s political class would prefer you not dwell on.

The allegations first exploded in April 2021, when the San Francisco Chronicle published accounts from four women. By the end of that spring, 13 women had accused the Wine Country politician of sexual assault or misconduct spanning nearly two decades. Foppoli resigned as mayor in May 2021.

Seven of those women filed a joint civil lawsuit in 2022. The trial that just ended ran about eight weeks.

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Normalizing Constant Surveillance

This is completely unacceptable. We have reached the point where you can purchase a television for your own home, pay for the television with your own money, put it in your living room, and discover that the damn thing may be capable of collecting information about you, your network, the devices around you, and what you are watching. An investigation by Gamers Nexus, Level1Techs, and independent security researchers found LG televisions scanning local networks for phones, smartwatches, computers, and other devices, collecting information about nearby Wi-Fi networks, location and IP information, and using Automatic Content Recognition to identify what appears on the television, including content coming through HDMI. Researchers also reported finding evidence of microphone audio being captured while a television was in standby and stored locally while offline.

LG acknowledges that its televisions can scan for compatible devices on the same network, describing this as ordinary smart-TV functionality, and says its ACR advertising feature is opt-in. Researchers nevertheless demonstrated just how much information modern televisions are technically capable of seeing around the household. LG Ad Solutions boasts of reaching hundreds of millions of “addressable secondary devices,” and LG advertising executives have used phrases such as “we own the glass” when describing the company’s relationship with the television screen. Excuse me? You sold me the glass. YOU DO NOT OWN IT AFTER I BUY IT. That mentality is precisely the problem with the modern technology industry. You think you are purchasing a product. Increasingly, corporations look at the product as a permanent doorway into your life.

I have written extensively about Flock cameras and the government’s expanding surveillance machinery. I have written about commercially available location information, license-plate databases, facial recognition, and the gradual destruction of privacy. Now look around your own house. Your television, refrigerator, doorbell, phone, smart gadgets, laptop, and any other device connected to the internet is capable of watching you.

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Australia Wants to Remake the Internet in the Name of “Safety”

The Australian government has published its proposed Digital Duty of Care legislation, a plan that it says will give people more control over their social media feeds, but which opponents fear is a way to introduce more online censorship.

The exposure draft of the Online Safety Amendment (Digital Duty of Care) Bill 2026 was published on September 8 for consultation, and it is not yet law. The deadline for submissions is noon on September 22, and Communications Minister Anika Wells said the plan is to formally introduce the bill to Parliament in October.

We obtained a copy of the draft for you here.

In the words of Prime Minister Anthony Albanese, “This is not about giving government control, it is about giving people control.”

And while the proposal is often referred to as My Feed, My Way, it is not about banning algorithms, but giving new and existing users a choice between feeds based on recommendations, and one that shows posts from accounts they follow.

But beneath this choice, there is a broader change to the Online Safety Act 2021 that would be introduced by the Digital Duty of Care bill, and that is to impose a duty on those behind online services to ensure a safe online environment as far as reasonably practicable.

This duty would apply to a wide range of services, including social media, messaging, games, hosting, search, app stores, internet providers, AI services enabling generated material to be shared through covered services, as well as certain equipment providers.

The minister in charge would be able to exempt services that are low-risk or minimally used. The proposal is designed to protect adults from what is described as seriously harmful material and conduct, while under-18s would have additional protection against harmful content and design features.

The list of harmful content and conduct that the draft seeks to protect adults from includes child sexual abuse, threats of violence, encouragement of self-harm, and support for listed terrorist organizations.

For children, the list includes pornography, encouragement of disordered eating, hostile attitudes towards women or gender equality, glorification of crime, dangerous stunts, abuse and bullying.

However, the minister would have the power to add more categories of harmful material or conduct by issuing a legislative instrument.

Wells must first seek and consider advice from eSafety, and the instrument can be disallowed by Parliament.

The draft bill also targets features that the government considers to have negative behavioral impacts, such as recommendation systems, endless feeds, and engagement-feedback tools, as well as time-limited content. Social media services would be required to stop these features for children under 16.

The proposal also includes a system of risk assessment that online services would have to conduct at least once a year, and keep for six years. These assessments would have to be provided to the eSafety commissioner on request.

eSafety Commissioner Julie Inman Grant, who has a history of censorship demands, would be in charge of enforcing the scheme, which would bring maximum company penalties of A$109.2 million.

The draft bill does contain some safeguards, such as the definition of reasonably practicable, which takes into account the risk, available measures, cost, and the potential for a measure to have a disproportionate effect on privacy.

The duty of care does not extend to lawful communications occurring in private solely between consenting adults, the draft bill states.

Opposition leader Angus Taylor on September 6 said he feared the proposal was “an attempt by the government to censor social media,” while One Nation leader Pauline Hanson said that Australia should be moving away from government censorship, not “building the Orwellian machinery for it.”

The Greens, on the other hand, have supported the idea of making sure users have a choice when it comes to feeds, but they want to make sure that users have to opt in to have their feeds curated by algorithms.

White House spokesman Kush Desai reacted by saying that President Trump “has unequivocally warned trading partners against imposing digital services taxes, fines, and other forms of extortion on America’s leading technology sector.”

Desai added that “the administration remains committed to raising these issues with our trading partners.”

Communications Minister Anika Wells sought to downplay the significance of the White House statement, telling News24 that the US was responding to broader questions that also included Australia’s tax arrangements, and not only the Digital Duty of Care proposal.

“We’re a sovereign nation, we have the right to defend Australian parents and kids and we’ll do that,” Wells said.

The government’s proposal has been portrayed as giving users a choice between personalized recommendation feeds and those that show posts from accounts they follow.

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