Happy International Women’s Day, Saskatoon! At At quarter to one it’s an icy tundra of suck at minus-18 with a minus-27 windchill. The high is minus 17, bleccch, while the low is minus-25, double-bleccch. Today’s sunrise was at 7:36 while sunset is at 6:59, sayyy. On to news!
1. IT’S INTERNATIONAL WOMEN’S DAY!!! Here’s Planet S‘s feature. More? Okay! Women world-wide are being asked to go on strike—here’s the story on CBC and in the The Washington Post, a Guardian live-blog, and a quartet of Al Jazeera stories on women in Gaza, South African grandmothers, the world’s female leaders past and present and of course the requisite global overview. Vice has a piece on climate change and women here, and Vox has a story on U.S. President Womanhater’s resurrection of the women’s health funding ban. Here in Canada? The Liberal federal government just announced $650 million in international funding for women’s sexual and reproductive health—something, it should be remembered, we’d never get from a Conservative government because Conservatives in 2017 are the party that panders to extremists who want to restrict women’s reproductive rights (hi Brad Trost, how’s the leadership bid coming along?). So if you want to bash Liberals (and we all do sometimes!), maybe bash ’em for not giving us a national child care program (which BTW we’d also never, ever, ever, ever see from 21st-century Canadian Conservatives who, did I mention, pander to extremists?).
2. RALLY AT THE MARBLE PALACE Public workers are protesting expected cuts.
3. SASK NDP FIGHTS WANTS DEEPER CUTS TO POLITICAL SALARIES AND DEMANDS A PLAN THAT ISN’T JUST SLASH-AND-BURN “We don’t want to be a rubber stamp or seen to be helping this government force a wage cut on the people,” says MLA David Forbes.
4. YESTERDAY’S BLIZZARD Intense.
5. POACHERS KILL A WHITE RHINO IN A FRENCH ZOO Pure evil. Attacks on endangered world heritage wildlife are top-tier crimes and international incidents and, if I were the boss of things, grounds for full-scale war with South-East Asia. I might not be sane on this subject. I’m Chinese criminal court levels of “justice by firing squad” when it comes to rhino poachers.
6. “URGENTLY LOOKING INTO THE MATTER” The big tech companies respond to the big Wikileaks news about the CIA getting into people’s cellphones. Oh! And televisions.
INTERNATIONAL WOMEN’S DAY!!! Rawkaroll!
