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On Real Estate Investors in Hiding and Wondering if Trump Has a Trudeau Pee Tape

Tea & Two Slices is NEEDS frontman and veteran dishwasher Sean Orr’s long-running snarky news round-up. Mr. Orr lives and works in Gastown and is very aware of his privilege, so don’t remind him.

Canada signs on to U.S.-led renewal of war on drugs. Does Trump have a Trudeau pee tape or something? How was he able to coerce us into signing this piece of dinosaur legislation? Did fellow signatory Rodrigo Duterte personally threaten to stab Trudeau or something?

Perhaps Trudeau thought Trump was talking about the indie band The War on Drugs and wanted to amp up his clout among angsty teenagers…

Sorry to make jokes. It’s not funny, even if the entire world is laughing at Trump. People are dying steps away from where I’m writing this. This isn’t just bad policy, it’s deadly.

The Trudeau government’s decision to sign on to the declaration, released by the White House on the sidelines of U.S. President Donald Trump’s first attendance at the United Nations General Assembly in New York, contradicts Ottawa’s previous skepticism of Washington’s drugs war at home and abroad, and comes just weeks before cannabis legalization in Canada.

Former New Zealand prime minister Helen Clark said she believed that both Canada and Mexico – which also signed the declaration even though president-elect Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador has repeatedly said that the “war on drugs” has failed and he will pursue new policy – likely have signed on reluctantly, held hostage by the North American free-trade agreement talks in Washington, over which a critical deadline looms.

Ok, so Trump probably threatened to bar him from the States for smoking pot which would make him look terrible as the statesman he so badly wants to be. Got it.

But who will think of the children systemic foundations of inequality? Canadians spending big money on homelessness without addressing its root causes. Remember this whenever some reactionary conservative moans about how his tax dollars are spent on people “camping” in tents…

‘It’s time to leave’: Nanaimo tent city ordered to shut down within 21 days. “I’m gonna close my eyes and count to 21. When I open my eyes, the problem will exist not here.” – Chris Thompson

Small first step, big victory: B.C. Rental Housing Task Force recommends cutting annual rent increase cap. This is why it’s so important that folks like Jean Swanson and the Vancouver Tenants Union are building a movement and not simply “running for election”.

Because that would mean admitting that we have a functioning democracy, and we don’t. To borrow from Chris Hedges:

“We will wrest back political control by dismantling the corporate state, and this means massive and sustained civil disobedience, like that demonstrated by teachers around the country this year. If we do not stand up we will enter a new dark age.”

Proof we don’t have a functioning democracy? Vancouver shows B.C. is still the Wild West of election advertising.

Exhibit B: Facebook shuts down accounts attacking candidates in Vancouver election. Must be the Russians, lol. Wait, the NPA actually blamed it on the Russians?

Twitter thread of the day:

Vancouver’s in a Lather about Duplexes. Come to My Neighbourhood. But Making Room is such a creepy name for an action plan. Making Room for whom?

Counterpoint:

Of course he’s a real estate investor: $100K reward offered for accused murderer who could be in Vancouver. I imagine he’s gotten a ton of plastic surgery done and is hiding in a sophisticated network of empty condos in Coal Harbour.

Bonus: Bless this house: Why Canadians put so much faith in the housing market.

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