Tuesday, January 18, 2022

Some People Are, Well, "Special"

So "special" that they cannot be criticised under any circumstances:

But Canadian journal The Dorchester Review is now questioning the discovery, seven months after the remains were reported. Professor Jacques Rouillard, professor emeritus in the Department of History at the University of Montreal, wrote in the journal that the anthropologist who discovered the remains, Beaulieu, is young and has been “an instructor in Anthropology and Sociology at the University of the Fraser Valley since 2018.”

“Her preliminary report is actually based on depressions and abnormalities in the soil of an apple orchard near the school – not on exhumed remains,” Rouillard wrote.

The professor added that new research on the subject was revealed at a July 15 press conference, where Beaulieu slightly reduced the number of remains she claimed to have found from 215 to 200 “probable burials.” She said that after “barely scratched the surface,” she found many “disturbances in the ground such as tree roots, metal and stones.” Those “disruptions picked up in the radar” led her to conclude that the grounds “have multiple signatures that present like burials.”

Beaulieu, however, cannot confirm that what she discovered are the remains of children or tree roots, since the site has not been excavated. Professor Rouillard questioned where an excavation would ever take place.

“By never pointing out that it is only a matter of speculation or potentiality, and that no remains have yet been found, governments and the media are simply granting credence to what is really a thesis: the thesis of the ‘disappearance’ of children from residential schools. From an allegation of ‘cultural genocide’ endorsed by the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) we have moved to ‘physical genocide,’ a conclusion that the Commission explicitly rejects in its report. And all of this is based only on soil abnormalities that could easily be caused by root movements, as the anthropologist herself cautioned in the July 15 press conference,” Rouillard wrote.

The professor noted that anthropologist Scott Hamilton, “who has worked on residential school cemeteries for the TRC between 2013-2015,” said people need to be careful about relying on ground-penetrating radar because the soil could have been disturbed by any number of occurrences not relating to the burying of bodies.

** 

Sir John A. Macdonald Public School in Pickering has officially been renamed.

On Jan. 17, Durham District School Board trustees voted 7-1 to change the name of the local school to Biidassige Mandamin P.S.

Biidassige (Josephine) Mandamin was an Anishinaabe elder who was known for her advocacy work on water protection.

The process to rename the school wasn't without controversy.

A survey to gather feedback from the community saw 917 people participate — 68.7 per cent of whom said the school should not be renamed.

Trustee Christine Thatcher called the number of participants a "very good size" and questioned how plans to rename the school moved forward if a majority did not support that direction.

DDSB superintendent Erin Elmhurst says the school naming committee felt Sir John A. Macdonald “did not align" with the board's policy on school names.

Trustees voted in May 2021 to start the process to potentially rename Sir John A Macdonald P.S. as well as Julie Payette P.S. in Whitby. Community members raised concerns about Payette’s resignation as governor general amid bullying allegations and Macdonald’s connection to residential schools.

“This is something that should have been done some time ago,” trustee Niki Lundquist said in an interview at the time. “It’s a very challenging thing to recognize the need for truth and reconciliation while having a school named after a historic figure who has caused irreparable harm and multi-generational harm to a group of students who are within the DDSB.”

The community was also consulted on potential new names for the Pickering school — Biidassige Mandamin P.S. was not the top pick. Instead, the community's No. 1 choice was Bay Ridges P.S., a reference to the community the school is located in.



More Shafias!:

More than a million Afghans have asked to settle in Canada, Immigration Minister Sean Fraser yesterday told reporters. Canada has accepted 6750 to date, said Fraser: “I use the point to illustrate the pressures the system is facing.”

 

Also:

A Canadian woman who was held for two years at an ISIS detention camp in Syria is now under investigation for terrorism offences and war crimes. However, her lawyer has suggested RCMP officers are exploiting their powers by both monitoring and investigating the Calgary mother, according to court documents recently filed at the Calgary courthouse.

 

What these ISIS women did:

Members of ISIS families tell journalists entering the al-Hol and Roj camps that they came to Syria to wage jihad for the sake of God, and that the ideology of ISIS is not yet over. In April 2019, women proudly shouted in front of an Al Arabiya TV camera: "our faith, ideology have been implanted here forever, and America, the Kurds, the infidels, and the Jews will not be able to remove it. This is a belief that has been instilled in our children too, and we will never regret it. We will continue, because the caliphate will return again." Likewise, children indoctrinated by ISIS ideology throw stones at journalists and threaten them with slaughter because they are "infidels." ...

In 2014, ISIS established its first armed women's battalion under the name of "Al-Khansaa Brigade,” which included one thousand women in its ranks. These women participated in more than 200 terrorist operations, carried out police work within the caliphate, and promoted ISIS ideology in their societies. As evidenced by social media, it is possible that some of these women are inside the al-Hol camp, continuing in their roles to support ISIS.

** 

A German woman who joined ISIS in 2015 and later married a fighter has been sentenced to 10 years in prison for the death of a five-year-old enslaved Yazidi girl, several outlets reported.

Lawyers only identified the woman as Jennifer W. and said she's "believed to be the first ISIS member who was put on trial anywhere in the world for international crimes committed against Yazidi victims," CNN reported.

The Washington Post identified the defendant as Jennifer Wenisch. She was found guilty of "crimes against humanity and attempted war crimes," by a court in Munich, The Wall Street Journal reported.

In court, the mother of the child, a Yazidi woman testified that Wenisch, 30, and her husband, Taha al-Jumailly, enslaved her and her daughter for several months in 2015 in Fallujah, Iraq, the Post reported.

The Post reported that around 7,000 Yazidi women and children were enslaved when ISIS took over Northern Iraq in 2014. The Yazidis are a religious and ethnic minority that mostly live in northern Iraq, southeastern Turkey, and northern Syria, and were heavily targetted by ISIS who falsely believed they were "devil worshippers," the BBC reported.

The mother said Wenisch did not intervene when her husband left the young girl outside to die of thirst in the heat as punishment for wetting the bed, the Journal reported. She witnessed her death.


Expect more of this.


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