BC and Yukon bureau chief for The Canadian Press
@CdnPressNews
. Ex-Vancouver correspondent for
@SCMPNews
. Read the story before commenting, brainiac.
It starts with “vaccine passports”…but what next? “Driving passports” to use my own car? “Library passports” to borrow a book? “TRAVEL PASSPORTS” to leave the country???? TYRANNY NEVER SLEEPS MY FRIENDS
I am approximately 1,000,000 per cent certain that Trump Googled "Seoul" specifically to make this observation and then confused Seoul's elevation for its population
I have a Vancouver friend who is a member of the
#BTSARMY
, who regularly (preCovid) flew to their concerts and told me over an extended riff that one reason she supports them is their history of engaging in social-justice causes. My friend is about 50 and she’s my doctor
The Black Lives Matter managing director thanks
@BTS_twt
and
@bts_bighit
for their $1 million donation: "We are moved by the generosity of BTS and allies all over the world who stand in solidarity in the fight for Black lives"
It gives me great pleasure to announce the death of Lt General Manas Kongpan, disgraced and bereft in a Thai prison, the most evil man I have encountered in 30 years of journalism...
After taking 5 YEARS (!!) to answer my freedom-of-info request,
@CanRevAgency
has released a secret study confirming millionaire migrants made 90% of lux home purchases in two Metro Vancouver municipalities while declaring refugee-level incomes 2/
And then they cheered me and the guys asked me to join their gang and the pretty girl who lives next door asked me to be her boyfriend and it was so awesome
My Mum and Dad met as children in the 1930s, partnered up as teenagers, and were inseparable until the day pa exited this world a few years back. Just a random tweet of admiration, folks
So, my wife and I were conducting a Jan 1 review of our 20-yr relationship & I asked if there was anything abt me that made her angry, & she said yes actually, she was still mad at me for preventing her from patting a wild wombat we encountered on a hike in Tasmania 12 years ago
I don't know that everyone who protests outside a hospital during a pandemic is a terrible person but protesting outside a hospital during a pandemic is exactly what a terrible person would do
So a lying anti-vaxxer has had his Australian visa revoked, which also bans him from entering the country for three years. The fact he plays tennis is neither here nor there IMO
*Disclaimer: the previous tweet was intended for comedic consumption only and does not in any way reflect an authentic opinion, fact, or combination thereof
So farewell Gen Manas, you oxygen thief, you killer, you profiteering piece of filth. As a devout Buddhist, you believed in reincarnation. May you suffer more for your crimes in the next life, than you did in this one. And may those you tortured find you, to speed you on your way
I have noticed a tendency among Vancouverites of the non-Asian persuasion to snicker at face masks viz the risks posed by the Wuhan coronavirus. I don't laugh. People who were in Hong Kong during the 2002-2003 Sars outbreak don't laugh. It was a shared trauma for millions 2/
You can still protest in Canada. The leaders of the Conservative Party haven’t been arrested. The Toronto Sun and other outlets critical of the govt haven’t been shut down. The electoral system has not been redrawn. TL;DR: This is a crazy comparison
During Hong Kong's pro-democracy protests in 2019, just like the cops in Ottawa, the authorities there treated every assembly as illegal. They used mass surveillance to track protestors and went after them. Wonder what China thinks of what's happening in Canada...
Exponential growth cannot be denied. Maths cannot be shrugged away. If you can’t see the terrifying truth of what is happening you are a denialist and a fool: Twitter will be 98.7% Wordle by Tuesday
So BC has seen its daily increase in cumulative
#covid19
infections drop from 24% to 12% since social distancing. The curve, thank the stars, is flattening. That's big. It's huge. 30 days from now, 12% = 21,720 cases. Sounds bad? Well 24% would = 460,244 CASES
A thread. For 4 months I’ve been investigating Covid-19 disasters in Vancouver care homes. The story drops now: Documents obtained via FOI reveal dozens of Vancouver care homes deliberately DID NOT DECLARE OUTBREAKS when a worker first tested positive 2/
@__J__P__11
@TrueFactsStated
I literally walked to Australia last time because they demanded I take off my shoes at the airport AND I WAS NOT THE ONLY ONE ✊
I feel I should add this: no story has affected me so deeply, as these crimes were unfolding in real time as we reported them. Reporter
@GregTorode
was sent racing over the Andaman Sea to the island where we knew the refugees were held; too late, he found just campfires
Greg shouted over mobile phone the tragic news, amid the din of the boat engine & waves: the refugees were gone. I informed the UNHCR. It was the night of Obama's inauguration. As he was sworn in, I went into the deputy editor's office & cried for 20 minutes
Manas died Wed in a prison hospital. He got off lightly. In 2009, reporters Alan Morison & Chutima Sidasathian came to
@SCMPNews
with a tale so hideous it seemed impossible: The Thai military was secretly towing
#Rohingya
refugees out to sea on wrecks & casting them adrift...
A whistleblower auditor said the study was covered up in 1996. CRA refused to acknowledge it existed. But it did, and today
@SCMPNews
publishes the results on the anniversary of my August 30 2016 ATIP request 3/
The released docs incl spreadsheets listing dozens of new immigrant buyers and their absurdly low incomes. It suggests systematic tax cheating. Eg: Here’s one rich newcomer, who bought a Burnaby home for C$2.88m. That year he/she declared total global income of C$174. 4/
But fate caught up with this monster. In 2015 he was arrested & later jailed for new atrocities: Rohingya were being held in secret jungle prisons, and ransomed back to their impoverished families. Those whose families couldn't pay ended up in a mass grave
To scare a superpower, you don’t need tanks or nukes. You just need everyone to decide, one afternoon, that instead of going to ikea or the movies, they’re going to take a walk instead. Ever imagined what 2million people look like? Imagine no more
@SCMPNews
Hundreds were dying under the most nightmarish circumstances. Skeletal men, baked to death by the tropical sun in excrement-filled hulks, as they drifted. Dying of thirst, starvation. Drowning. How many? We'll never know
Eventually, the Thai govt was shamed enough to halt this illegal policy. But Manas? Initially he got promoted! And Alan and Chutima got sued by the military for defamation (they won, thank god)
I feel like Australia underestimates how this Novak Djokovic incident is going to tar the entire nation as fundamentally anti-freedom, and a place you should not visit, for a long time to come.
In response to overwhelming demand for more wholesome content abt my Mum and Dad: They started out as city slickers who went to balls and stuff in Sydney. Mum's fam was Gatsby rich; Dad was solidly working class (his dad: carpenter). But he bought a tux tried to keep up
This issue in our otherwise happy relationship was reignited 5yrs ago when a teenage house guest told us he’d patted a wild Tasmanian wombat. It was coarse and unpleasant, right, I asked, as wife glared at me. No, he said, IT WAS THE SOFTEST THING IN THE WORLD
I still hear the BC speculation tax described as “controversial”. Last time I checked it enjoyed 75% support across BC. By that measure, just about anything is controversial. Lasagna. Hats. Seagulls
This thread is getting attention, so I wanted to add a post-script: IMO, there are two reasons horrific treatment of the
#Rohingya
flies under the radar, both counter-intuitive in the west. 1) The concept of ethno-Buddhist hatred, which many find hard to credit, but is v real...
It gives me great pleasure to announce the death of Lt General Manas Kongpan, disgraced and bereft in a Thai prison, the most evil man I have encountered in 30 years of journalism...
These were photos taken by the military to document their secret murderous process. Photos of men who were never seen alive again. The banal mechanics of evil
Grocery shopping in three Richmond supermarkets today and masking was somewhere north of 95%, vast majority wearing n95/KN95 types or blue medical masks
Yesterday, Dr Bonnie Henry phoned me for a long talk abt my reporting, outbreak protocols...and a document I had obtained revealing a deadly Covid-19 outbreak that WAS NOT PUBLICLY DISCLOSED. Day ended with Dr H scooping me at her press conf. A THREAD...
I don’t know. But in the 5yrs since my ATIP request, we had two BC elex, one fed elex and we’re in middle of another campaign. All fought in YVR to a great degree on housing affordability. I know this: the delay stinks. And Canada’s ATIP system is broken
Some personal news: my parents were childhood friends in the 1930s, who fell in love as teenagers, and were devotedly married to each other for almost 60 years
@markheseltine
Mark, if you don't have a vax passport you are hereby permitted to watch other people eating in a restaurant, listen to a concert from outside and look at your old holiday photos. By order: Me
Alan and Chutima trusted me as the SCMP's foreign editor with remarkable material, provided by a brave source inside the military: photographic proof of the policy, with Manas in charge. Here he is on the prison island where the refugees were held before being sent to their doom
That👆is a photo of the actual problem wombat. She asked me to explain why I pat-blocked her so long ago. I said it was disrespectful, as a wombat is like the forest king & you can’t pat a king. No, she said, the wombat is the forest pope & you touch the pope to get a blessing
How is it possible that folk in charge in BC appear to think we can stop the souped-up variants, with basically the same tactics that failed to stop Covid Classic? With vaccines moving slower than the variants HOW IS THAT POSSIBLE
One of very few exceptional journalists who have eluded us thus far. Good bookshelf setup. Love the art/photos. Add a succulent. 9/10
@ianjamesyoung70
@SCMPNews
@BBCWorld
I’ve long believed that Dr Bonnie Henry wildly underestimates BC folks’ willingness to accept and obey her rules ... and wildly overestimates their willingness to follow her suggestions
The anonymized spreadsheets list all 46 purchases of C$800K+ homes in Burnaby in a 2mth period. 37 could be identified by auditors. 33 were recent immigrants. These declared avg global income of C$16,430. 5/
Four months ago BC was registering abt 20 covid cases a day. Three months ago, abt 50. Two months, 100. Last month, 200 cases. Today, FIVE HUNDRED & EIGHTY NINE cases. You don’t need a mathematician to estimate where we’ll be at Xmas unless we get our shit together. Come on.
BC is beating covid-19. Maybe some credit goes to a shrewd Chinese community, which was socially distancing long before others had heard of the term, & long after well-meaning folk told them to stop being so silly about this 'pandemic' thing via
@scmpnews