CaractacusPotts

Don’t panic! Disease X doesn’t exist yet – but it might one day. Disease X is the label that the World Health Organization uses to refer to some currently unknown infectious condition that is capable of causing an epidemic or – if it spreads across multiple countries – a pandemic. The term, coined in 2017, can be used to mean a newly discovered pathogen or any known pathogen with newly acquired pandemic potential. By the latter definition, covid-19 was the first Disease X. But there could be another in the future.

Episode notes

With activists and journalists being accosted and arrested across Canada last week - we thought it was time to reinforce that all cops are bastards (and tools of Capital) always. And that we can not, for a moment, make space for police responses to people trying to hold the powerful accountable.

We cover:

Journalist Brandi Morton arrested covering an encampment eviction in Edmonton, and the use of Police to clear eight sites in frigid temperatures;
The arrest of a certain right-wing journalist while trying to question Deputy Minister Chrystia Freeland - and what our collective response SHOULD have been;
Toronto Police declare an area of the City off limits to Pro-Palestinian protestors saying its a threat to the local Jewish community; and,
Ottawa Pro-Palestinian activists have been getting $490 fines from the City for breaking a noise by-law.

These open up discussions of police power and budgets, the criminalization of protests of any kind, the limiting of access to politicians and the attempts of the powerful of what is an acceptable protest.

“An international action is urgently needed to pressure the Israeli government to dismantle the settler groups, disarm them, dry up their source of funding, and end their political cover,” the Foreign Ministry said in a statement.

It also called for “placing all terrorist settler organizations and associations on international terror lists.”

Wael al-Dahdouh, Al-Jazeera’s Gaza bureau chief, has been transferred to Egypt to seek medical attention, local media reported on Tuesday.

Egyptian authorities facilitated the transfer following a request from the Egyptian journalists’ syndicate.

The transfer comes after Israeli forces killed Dahdouh’s 27-year-old son, Hamza, in an air strike on a car in Rafah earlier this month.

His wife, son, daughter and grandson were also killed by Israeli forces in October.

"Our son Ryan, 26, and the vast majority of the 42,000 who have lost lives to the toxic supply of drugs, would be alive today if their substance was legalized, regulated and controlled, like we do for alcohol users."