And the Rest

Oh, Canada ... :

Anyone who was worried that Elon Musk had turned Twitter into some sort of alt-right hellscape can relax. It is still very much a welcoming place for hysterical left-wing conspiracy theories popular among the “#IStandWithTrudeau” crowd. Lately, they’ve been obsessed with spreading nonsense about Anaida Poilievre, wife of Pierre Poilievre, being some sort of foreign agent sent to destabilize Canada, possibly at the behest of Stephen Harper.

It’s all incredibly stupid and easily disproved, but a handful of Liberal-friendly accounts with tens of thousands of followers, have spent the last several days pushing this narrative, or otherwise attacking Anaida Poilievre for expressing political opinions. Twitter is as littered with left-wing misformation as it ever was.

This most recent silliness appears to have started as an argument about Twitter itself. After legacy blue check marks were removed from verified accounts that were not paying for the new Twitter Blue service, some newly checkless Twitter users suddenly became very offended anyone would pay $8/month to be verified.

As Conservative party leader Pierre Poilievre still has a check mark, suggesting he is paying for the service, Liberal Twitter descended into a tailspin of pearl clutching last week.

Anaida Poilievre responded cheekily with a screenshot of former U.S. president Barack Obama’s Twitter account that showed him with a blue check.

That, of course, gave the anti-check mob hives, which was possibly Anaida Poilievre’s intent.

An intelligent woman of colour involving herself in politics is the sort of thing that liberals pretend to encourage. But, because Anaida Poilievre is a dyed in the wool Conservative in her own right, they are using the fact she immigrated to Canada from Venezuela against her.

One typical post reads, “Maybe Anaida is the real story. A Venezuelan asset pulling the strings of her PP puppet.” A reply to that post from a user with over 30,000 followers reads “I think you hit the nail on the head.” That account, which includes the hash tags “#IStandwithTrudeau” and “#teamtrudeau” in the profile also posted “How much do you wanna bet she doesn’t have Canadian citizenship either.”

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Plenty of posts are calling for Anaida Poilievre to be “investigated.”

The winding road of this unserious, yet corrosive, conspiracy theory began in March when Liberal House leader Mark Holland claimed that Pierre Poilievre had refused a national security briefing on foreign interference.

In fact, no such briefing was ever offered and Holland apologized the next day, though Poilievre had said he would refuse such a briefing because it would limit his ability to talk about China’s election meddling. Despite Holland correcting the record, the belief that Poilievre refused the briefing has persisted on social media.

That false view was given new life when Justin Trudeau’s Chief of Staff Katie Telford testified at committee about foreign interference. Poilievre’s comments about not wanting a briefing because it would limit his ability to speak was invoked by Liberals and Telford herself, to argue that Conservatives understand why Telford can only provide so many details.

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The committee exchange was convoluted, but online criticism of Poilievre quickly morphed from the merely untrue “he refused a briefing” to the baffling “he refused a briefing because he can’t pass a security check.” That morphed again into “Anaida can’t pass a security check” because of some vaguely defined connections to Venezuela, a country she left when she was eight-years-old.

Don’t worry, it gets dumber.

A photo Anaida Poilievre posted of herself in 2014 with Venezuelan politicians and the hashtag #IDU Reception, which refers to the Conservative International Democratic Union, has been seized upon by conspiracy theorists as evidence of the malevolent forces at play, and proof that Anaida Poilievre is a foreign “operative” — a spurious and entirely baseless allegation.

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The IDU is hardly the illuminati. It is an organization made up of centre-right parties from around the world, such as Canada’s Conservatives, U.S. Republicans, Australia’s Liberals and Germany’s Christian Democrats. Its a professional organization, not a grouping of Bond villains, for aligned political parties, similar to other party groupings, such as Liberal International, of which the Canadian Liberal party is a member.

Anaida Poilievre is a long time Conservative staffer, so it is an unsurprising and insignificant detail that she would be at an IDU event.

The IDU has long lived rent free inside the minds of conspiracy minded Liberals and the fact that Stephen Harper has chaired the organization since 2018 has only reinforced their paranoia, as well as their belief in the unfounded idea that the IDU is manipulating world events, including, apparently, the personal lives of Conservative leaders.

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This tale of right wing global plots is quite the place to end up when the starting point was Pierre Poilievre being falsely accused of refusing a national security briefing.

Equally ridiculous is the assumption that Anaida Poilievre, who has over a decade of experience working for the Senate and House of Commons, can’t pass a background check.

Those working directly for the House, which includes those working in an MPs office, are required  to undergo “background and security assessments by both the Royal Canadian Mounted Police and the Canadian Security Intelligence Service.”

Similarly, Pierre Poilievre would have had to pass security clearance when he was appointed to cabinet under the previous Conservative government.

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Despite the strong relationship Canada maintains with Israel, Canadians have a mixed and uncertain opinion of the Jewish state, including on crucial, existential questions, a national opinion poll says.

 

This Israel:

It’s often said of Israel that in a land devoid of natural resources, they had to build an economy based on their human capital.

Tack on a deliberate government focus on driving innovation, and it’s part of why the country has long punched well above its weight in the tech field. Israel routinely ranks number one in the world for per-capita startups, and it has a rate of tech investment that has been as much as 28 times higher than the United States.

The USB stick was invented in Israel in the 1980s. Israeli agricultural scientists helped to popularize the cherry tomato. And any smartphone is inevitably going to be shot through with Israeli code, most notably if that phone has Waze installed.

 

And this Canada:

The Liberal MP who chairs the Canada-Palestine Parliamentary Friendship group is among multiple Canadian politicians condemning the presence of a man accused of being a “Holocaust denier” at a Parliament Hill reception held earlier this week to mark the International Day of Solidarity with the Palestinian People.

Salma Zahid, the Liberal MP who chairs the all-party friendship group, condemned the views of Nazih Khatatba, the publisher and editor of a Toronto-based Arabic-language newspaper, who Conservative MP Melissa Lantsman told the House of Commons Thursday was “a dangerous antisemite, Holocaust denier, and terrorist sympathizer.”

Though MPs from all parties, including Lantsman’s, attended the event, Lantsman demanded that the Liberal government apologize for Khatatba’s presence at the reception.

Transport Minister Omar Alghabra, who was one of several MPs who attended the Nov. 29 reception in Parliament Hill’s Valour Building, said he had no interaction at the event with Khatatba and, on Twitter, said Khatatba should not have been invited.

 

 Vaguely related:

Canada is weighing its next steps after a Paris court convicted a Lebanese-Canadian in absentia for the 1980 bombing of a synagogue in the French capital, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau says.

“We will look carefully at next steps, at what the French government chooses to do, at what French tribunals choose to do,” Trudeau told a news conference. “[But] we will always be there to stand up for Canadians and their rights.”

Hassan Diab, 69, a resident of Canada who received citizenship in 1993, faces life in prison in France. He wants Ottawa to reject requests for his extradition.

 

This bombing:

A Paris court has convicted a Lebanese-Canadian academic in absentia on terrorism charges and sentenced him to life in prison over a bombing outside a Paris synagogue in 1980 that killed four and wounded 46.

 

But ... shoes:

No remains found, so chief says "they were removed and reburied somewhere else.... It's all hushed up." 34 spots flagged by GPR but not 1 body. Canada's biggest hoax - government saying there are tens of thousands of murdered/missing children when none. https://t.co/dr7mWQzVfw

— Jim McMurtry (@JimMcMurtry01) April 21, 2023

 

History is written by Netflix.

Or so I have heard:

A lawyer has filed a complaint that accuses African Queens: Queen Cleopatra of violating media laws and aiming to "erase the Egyptian identity".

A top archaeologist insisted Cleopatra was "light-skinned, not black".

But the producer said "her heritage is highly debated" and the actress playing her told critics: "If you don't like the casting, don't watch the show."

Adele James made the comment in a Twitter post featuring screengrabs of abusive comments that included racist slurs.

Cleopatra was born in the Egyptian city of Alexandria in 69 BC and became the last queen of a Greek-speaking dynasty founded by Alexander the Great's Macedonian general Ptolemy.

She succeeded her father Ptolemy XII in 51 BC and ruled until her death in 30 BC. Afterwards, Egypt fell under Roman domination.

The identity of Cleopatra's mother is not known, and historians say it is possible that she, or any other female ancestor, was an indigenous Egyptian or from elsewhere in Africa.

Netflix's companion website Tudum reported in February that the choice to cast Adele James, a British actress who is of mixed race, as Cleopatra in its new documentary series was "a nod to the centuries-long conversation about the ruler's race".

Jada Pinkett Smith, the American actress who was executive producer and narrator, was meanwhile quoted as saying: "We don't often get to see or hear stories about black queens, and that was really important for me, as well as for my daughter, and just for my community to be able to know those stories because there are tons of them!"

But when the trailer was released last week many Egyptians condemned the depiction of Cleopatra.

 

What kind of person would appropriate others' history to make themselves appear big? 

The same kind of people who would make wild claims against the man who formed Canada.

 

The wolverine in all of its vicious glory:

A Calgary-based wildlife photographer captured a “once in a lifetime” image of a rare animal when shooting in the Canadian wilderness on April 15 on the outskirts of the city.

“I had no idea what it was until it broke out into the open and I got a couple shots of it,” Gordon Cooke told CBC News. He realized he had been photographing a wild wolverine. 

“There was no time to recheck the camera settings, so I was praying the whole time that the settings were good and the pictures would come out,” he said to McClatchy News. 

The images show the carnivorous mammal perched on a log in the wetlands of southern Calgary.