Wednesday, October 25, 2023

Mid-Week Post

Six more shopping days until Halloween  💀🎃👻...



The oldest hatred in the world is not only one of the most accepted but emotionally retarded, as well. 

One would think that with the horrific images and stories floating about, the spitefuk haters would at least keep their exuberance to themselves. 

But no:

And another twist: nobody in the Allied nations openly rejoiced when images of Nazi death camps were made public, but some of Hamas’ “progressive” allies in the West jubilantly celebrate the terrorists’ evil deeds. Cornell University professor Russell Rickford, for example, told a pro-Palestine rally he found Hamas’ pogrom “exhilarating” and “energizing.”
The loathing of Jews among the Palestinian people did not begin with Israel’s occupation of Gaza following the 1967 war.
In 1961, during Egypt’s Gaza-occupation tenure, Martha Gellhorn, an outstanding war correspondent, spent time touring Palestinian refugee camps in Jordan, Lebanon and Gaza, culminating in a 17,000-word article, “The Arabs of Palestine,” in The Atlantic.
Her angle was anthropological. She wanted to understand the Arab mindset. She chose to visit eight of 58 UNRWA-run camps, requesting that she be shown “your best and your worst camp, and if time permits, let us also look at the in-between.” She met Palestinians in their homes. The refugees talked, and she listened. She asked questions, and they responded with candour.
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The remarkable essay she produced — which is still relevant, with much to offer any curious and objective reader at this existential moment in Arab-Jewish relations — is the product of a capacious and insightful mind.
Ironically, Gellhorn found Gaza — a hellhole today — the most attractive of the camps: idyllic weather, pristine white beaches, lush terrain, abundant cafés and a main square with “an array of parked Mercedes.” It was a “beehive of activity,” full of United Nations peacekeeping soldiers who “spend money in the town in their free time,” along with upper-class Egyptians.
“The refugees seemed to bring prosperity with them,” wrote Gellhorn. Ninety-eight per cent of the children attended school, dressed in neat uniforms. They put on shows for the parents. There were “Brownie babies, Girl Scouts, Boy Scouts, girl gymnasts and boy gymnasts.” Daily life was calm, orderly and civilized.
The downside was that they were exposed “to the full and constant blast of Egyptian propaganda.… And having been so devastatingly beaten by Israel again, in 1956 … it only makes the orators more bloodthirsty.” The residents hated Jews and believed all manner of conspiracy theories about them.
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One kindly schoolteacher told Gellhorn he believed the partition plan (the UN’s 1947 offer of two states, one for Jews, one for Arabs) was a good idea. Astonished, Gellhorn reminded him that the Arabs had rejected the 1947 offer of a state, instead gambling on a winner-takes-all war to finish off the Jews, and lost.
He conceded that was true. So she asked, “Now you say that you want to return to the past; you want partition.… If you had won the war, would you now accept partition? Would you … allow the 650,000 Jewish residents of Palestine — who had fled from the war — to come back?”
He unhesitatingly responded, “Certainly not. But there would have been no Jewish refugees. They had no place to go. They would all be dead or in the sea.”
From this exchange, Gellhorn said she realized she had “the missing clue” as to why, although she liked individual refugees she met, she could feel “no blanket empathy” for the Palestinians: it was the consistent absence of empathy in her subjects for anyone else’s suffering.
**

In other words, not a single word of the breaking news reports was true. American media failed a basic test this week, and it failed it spectacularly.
What went wrong? A lot, actually.
For starters, “Hamas says” should have been a red flag, not a green light. That the claim originated from a terrorist group should have prompted responsible newsrooms to add an automatic layer of additional scrutiny. There’s an old journalism aphorism that says, “If your mother says she loves you, check it out.” And if ever there was a group whose anti-Israel claims required “checking out,” it’s the one whose entire existence is dedicated to the destruction of Israel.
But the problems this week in American media go well beyond reporters simply taking Hamas officials at their word. There’s also the fact that no one repeating Hamas’s version of events bothered to check whether the hospital had, in fact, been destroyed. Making at least an attempt to put eyes on the facility before reporting on its supposed destruction could have saved newsrooms a lot of trouble and embarrassment.
Whatever happened to that basic rule of journalism: “It’s better to be right than to be first”?
There’s also the issue of the speed with which Gaza officials provided their death-toll estimate. Indeed, within an hour of the supposed “strike,” in the dark, under supposed “rubble,” Gaza officials put the number of dead at around 500, a claim that American newsrooms dutifully repeated. But to anyone with even an inkling of curiosity, the speed with which the number was provided should have raised red flags. Israel, which has a functioning government and the type of infrastructure that allows for swift search-and-rescue operations, is still counting its dead from the October 7 slaughter. Yet, despite what we know about the typical response time to mass-casualty events in even advanced countries with fleets of first responders, American media didn’t so much as hesitate to report the figures Hamas produced almost immediately following the suppose airstrike.
Why?
Not to put too fine a point on it, but U.S. media reported Hamas’s version of events because U.S. media wanted the story to be true. They wanted to believe that Israel had committed a war crime. There’s a reason for this. Call it the college-to-media pipeline.



But no:

The Israel Defense Forces on Tuesday issued photos it said showed fuel tanks in the Gaza Strip, asserting it had information that large amounts of fuel were being kept there by Hamas.

The photos were shared by the IDF’s Arabic-language account on X, formerly Twitter, depicting a location near the Rafah crossing, in the south of the Gaza Strip.

“This is what over half a million liters of diesel looks like,” wrote IDF Arabic spokesman Avichay Adraee, “while Hamas keeps claiming it does not have enough fuel to support hospitals and bakeries.”

The post was published a few hours after Hamas said that a power outage at the Indonesian Hospital in the northern Gaza Strip was a “crime against humanity” and called on Arab and Muslim countries and the UN to take steps to address the crisis.

The hospital was hit by a power outage on Monday night due to a fuel shortage. Al Jazeera reported that electricity was restored during the night, but the hospital only has fuel to operate generators for 48 more hours, after which lifesaving medical devices such as respirators and incubators will cease functioning.





Not bloody yours, mate:

In Canada, the conflict has also done something else. It has definitively exposed the true motivations for Liberal government’s seemingly incoherent and milquetoast foreign policy. Instead of standing for principle and the interests of our nation and its allies, the Trudeau Doctrine is dictated by diaspora politics and his party’s re-election prospects. This is true not only of its positioning on the current conflict, but on every major foreign policy issue in the past year.
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It began with the Liberals trying at all costs to avoid a public inquiry into Chinese electoral interference. In February 2023, the Globe and Mail broke the story of how China implemented a sophisticated strategy to engineer the return of a Liberal minority government and defeat opposition Conservative politicians in the 2021 election. Allegations about this had been swirling for months, including reports on Chinese interference in the previous 2019 election.
But instead of seeking answers, Trudeau sought cover. He appointed “special rapporteur” David Johnston to examine the issue, effectively kicking the can down the road. Months later, Johnston quit in disgrace when the House of Commons demanded he resign after he had conveniently concluded that interference claims were based on “limited and partial intelligence” and thus did not warrant an inquiry.
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Yet months later, when Trudeau was given information by CSIS that the agency was “actively pursuing credible allegations of a potential link”  between India and the killing of a Canadian Sikh separatist gunned down in the parking lot of a temple in Surrey, the government leapt into action.
Trudeau first raised the issue privately with Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi at a G20 meeting in New Delhi. When that didn’t achieve the desired result, Trudeau publicly accused India of involvement in the crime in September, setting off a diplomatic firestorm that continues to burn. Canada’s trade mission to India was cancelled, 41 of our diplomats in India have been recalled, and our Indo-Pacific Strategy lies in ashes less than a year after it was unveiled.
Why did Trudeau act in such an incoherent way on these issues? Well, it’s math. A glance at the Canadian electoral map shows the importance of the Sikh and Chinese diaspora vote in both British Columbia and Ontario. There’s also the matter of Trudeau’s supply and confidence agreement with the NDP, led by Jagmeet Singh, who was strongly supportive of Trudeau’s stance.
And now, as war rages once again in the Middle East, there’s the Muslim vote to worry about, in electoral districts in Scarborough and the 905 belt around Toronto, as well as in Montreal. With the Conservatives soaring in the polls, ridings like Mississauga-Lakeshore, which the Liberals kept in the past byelection, could be in jeopardy if Muslim voters switch allegiances or stay home.
So once again, Trudeau is letting domestic policy dictate foreign policy. And this time, he’s not only throwing the Jewish community under the bus, but the values Canadians cherish, including the protection of minorities from hatred. And this weekend provided yet another example of that.

(Sidebar: he used his own kids as props. Should we be surprised that he would do or say anything to stay where he is? No. He divides, smugifies, lies, avoids conflict and brings in masses of unvetted migrants he hopes will vote Liberal one day. He will give such masses free reign because it will pay off come election time.  But now he realises that he cannot control the chaos of backward, hateful walking tinderboxes that could very well repeat here what was done in Israel. He can't even control the dissent in his own party on this matter.  No one, save the Chinese, wants him around. This won't end well.)
**

One of the clearest indicators of this bias is how Trudeau and Joly responded to a missile hitting the Al-Ahli Hospital in Gaza City on Tuesday.

They both suggestively pointed the finger at an Israeli bomb — based only on the word of the terrorist organization Hamas — and have been reluctant to change their position despite mounting evidence that a misfired rocket from within Gaza was responsible.

But Canadian military intelligence has now determined “with a high degree of confidence” that the strike on the hospital was “caused by an errant rocket fired from Gaza.” The news was announced Saturday in a statement by Bill Blair, minister for national defence.

By Sunday afternoon, Trudeau and Joly’s vocal response was: Nothing.

**

The leader of the Conservative Party in Canada and Justin Trudeau’s main opponent in the upcoming elections, Pierre Poilievre, has criticised the Canadian prime minister’s handling of the diplomatic row with Delhi once again and said he has reduced himself to a “laughing stock” in India.

“Justin Trudeau is considered a laughing stock in India – the world’s biggest democracy,” Mr Poilievre said in an interview with Nepal’s Namaste Radio Toronto.

Mr Poilievre, who is gearing up to challenge Mr Trudeau in the general elections in 2025, was asked about the “bitter situation” in the Canada-India relationship.

He put the blame on Mr Trudeau and said he was “incompetent and unprofessional” and vowed to restore a “professional relationship” with India if his party came to power.

Speaking of the worsening relationship between the two countries, which led to two-thirds of Canadian diplomats being asked to leave India this week, Mr Poilievre said: “This is another example of how Justin Trudeau is not worth the cost after eight long years,” Mr Poilievre told the outlet.

**

One of the most notorious outgrowths of the Trudeau government’s anti-racism push was the more than $500,000 in federal monies handed over to Laith Marouf, an anti-racism contractor with a history of virulently anti-Semitic comments. At the time, the outrage wasn’t so much that Canada had so badly misallocated half a million dollars, but that Marouf had apparently thrived within an ecosystem in which near-daily social media posts decrying Israelis as “little castrated b—-hes” and “European garbage” didn’t raise any eyebrows.
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Canadian anti-racism materials cite heavily from the workbook Dismantling Racism, one of the seminal works of the Critical Race Theory movement.
Dismantling Racism does mention Jews, but only as a quick aside to say that Jews have opted to “become white” in order to benefit from white supremacy. “Becoming white involves giving up parts of your original culture in order to get the advantages and privileges of belonging to the white group,” it reads.
Virtually every Canadian DEI workshop ends with a recommendation to read How to Be an Antiracist by Ibram X. Kendi. Within the elaborate hierarchies of oppression that Kendi describes in the book, there is no mention of Jews, but it implies that any group that is persevering within the current “systemically racist” system is necessarily a collaborator.
“One either allows racial inequities to persevere, as a racist, or confronts racial inequities,” writes Kendi.
As a 2022 column in the Canadian Jewish publication TheJ.ca put it, critical race theory was bound to come down on Jews eventually, if only because they didn’t fit the narrative as victims of the Canadian system.
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“Jews, just two per cent of the population of Canada, have succeeded in White Christian society. They don’t fit CRT theory. CRT theorists and antisemites have therefore included them in the class of White Christian oppressors,” it read.
**

** 


 

The Liberals will not answer for the SNC-Lavalin scandal, the Ukrainian Nazi scandal, Chinese election interference, funding Hamas, or any other screw-up, malfeasance or spate of gross incompetence:

In an unexpected move, the Liberals shut down a parliamentary committee that was about to hear from top RCMP officials on why it did not pursue a criminal investigation into Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s actions in relation to the SNC-Lavalin affair.

(Sidebar: oh, it wasn't unexpected.)

At the start of the meeting on Monday, Liberal MP Mona Fortier took the floor to complain that members of the parliamentary committee on ethics had only learned late Friday afternoon that it was switching gears from its study on TikTok and would instead hear from the RCMP.

RCMP Commissioner Michael Duheme and Sergeant Frédéric Pincince, who was in charge of the investigation into SNC-Lavalin, were scheduled to offer a “briefing session” on the matter after questions arose from documents released last week by the group Democracy Watch that shed light on the federal police force’s decision to shut down their investigation after four years.

Fortier mentioned that any changes to the schedule of a committee usually require a 48-hour notice period and said the move to invite the RCMP officials was made at the “last minute.”

“This had not been discussed whatsoever by the committee. I think the committee should have at least had the opportunity to debate a motion and to present it in due form,” she said, before moving a motion to adjourn the meeting, resulting in a shouting match from both sides.

Conservative MP Michael Barrett said the government MPs were “looking to shut down a hearing on a very serious matter with respect to a criminal investigation into the prime minister” and said the situation was “not acceptable.”




Who did you vote for, Canada?:

A House of Commons committee is asking the heads of Canada's major grocery chains to appear before MPs and explain their plans to stabilize food prices.

The agriculture committee passed an NDP motion last Thursday to invite the grocery executives, or summon them if necessary, to testify about the measures their companies are taking to address food inflation.

Earlier this fall, Industry Minister François-Philippe Champagne announced the major Canadian grocery companies — Loblaw, Metro, Empire, Walmart and Costco — had presented to the government their plans to tackle rising prices, which he says included discounts, price freezes and price-matching campaigns.

Champagne offered few details about these promotions at the time, saying he wanted the grocers to compete with one another.

Most grocers have also not confirmed the details of their plans. The motion at the parliamentary committee is asking the grocers to submit "a comprehensive report on their strategies and initiatives taken to date and on further actions aimed at the stabilization of grocery prices in Canada." The deadline for the submissions is Nov. 2.


This is how the Liberals pretend to care about the mess that they've created: by dragging the food monopoly before them and demanding answers to questions for which they know the answers.

Food isn't expensive because the grocers (who were somehow never greedy opportunists when the government locked down the country) are jacking up prices. Taxes upon taxes are making food outrageously expensive.

Why point that out?

**

A new survey suggests the number of Canadians struggling with their monthly mortgage payment is on the rise, along with worries of potentially higher payments when it comes time to renew with their lender.

Around 15 per cent of borrowers say they find the financial aspect of their mortgage “very difficult,” up from 11 per cent in June and eight per cent in March, according to data released on Monday by the Angus Reid Institute.

**
**


Environment Minister Steven Guilbeault will not release letters he claimed to receive from Canadians grateful for the carbon tax. Guilbeault said he had thank-you notes from a woman named Jill in Regina and “Bob, a teacher.”
**

The size of the federal government’s payroll is worrisome, Budget Officer Yves Giroux said yesterday. The number of employees has increased 26 percent since 2015, by official estimate: “But we haven’t seen similar improvements when it comes to service.”






Cabinet will take measures to curb housing demand, says Housing Minister Sean Fraser. The Minister in a letter to MPs said increasing the housing supply alone is insufficient: ‘Canada will need careful well-calibrated measures to moderate housing demand.’

The housing demand that you cannot meet.

Right.





The joke is on you.

This country is broke. 


A Federal Court judge has verbally approved a landmark $23-billion settlement that will see Ottawa compensate more than 300,000 First Nations children and their families over chronic underfunding of on-reserve child-welfare services.





Canada's air force will have to wait a few extra years to get the armed drones it has been promised for more than a decade — because, among other things, the pilotless aircraft require special modifications to fly in the Far North.

The federal government had planned to acquire by 2025 a fleet of MQ-9 Reaper drones, built by U.S. defence contractor General Atomics.

But the Department of National Defence (DND) acknowledged recently that the acquisition date has been pushed to 2028 — more than 11 years after drones were identified in the Liberal government's defence policy as an important priority for modernizing the country's air force to meet modern threats.





On a Friday afternoon in Nashville last October, several hundred people gathered in a plaza near the state Capitol for an event billed as the "Rally to End Child Mutilation."

The rally was organized by a right-wing pundit who had been claiming the transgender care clinic at a Nashville hospital was drugging and mutilating children.

Local media outlets debunked the claims. But on the day of the rally, people showed up with signs accusing the clinic's doctors of being "groomers"; one sign called for them to be killed. 

The crowd, according to published reports, was a mix of religious conservatives, masked members of the Proud Boys and the leaders of the Republican state caucus.

By the end of the rally, the politicians had vowed to ban what's known as gender-affirming care for minors, which usually involves hormone treatments rather than surgery. 

Within months, a ban was signed into law.


If it weren't for the ham-fisted way in which this article was written, Canadians wouldn't know the dangers of opposing gender surgeries.

But, as no one needs the CBC, they still don't!


Also:

Nearly half of Canadians say they support their province using the notwithstanding clause to ensure that schools tell parents if their child wishes to use a different name or pronoun, a new poll suggests, and more people support that idea than oppose it.

New data also suggest a majority of Canadians believe teachers should have to notify parents of such changes. Just under half said that should be the case even if a child tells their teacher they don't feel safe informing their parents.





The charges are stayed, not dropped.


Crown prosecutors are staying the bail-related charge for a key organizer of what became the Freedom Convoy because of delays in her criminal trial.

Currently on trial for mischief, obstructing police, counselling others to commit mischief, and intimidation, Tamara Lich had also been accused of breaching her bail conditions.


Only thousands of Islamists can block streets and call for Jews to be killed.

But if you question Justin even once ...






Author Salman Rushdie called Sunday for the unconditional defence of freedom of expression as he received a prestigious German prize that recognizes his literary work and his resolve in the face of constant danger.





We don't have to trade with China: 

The Canadian government has given Chinese law enforcement assistance in their pursuit of fugitive Chinese nationals living abroad for decades, an investigation by CBC's The Fifth Estate has learned.

In Canada, that help has sometimes come as a result of quid pro quo deals, people with first-hand knowledge of the relationship, including two former Canadian ambassadors to China, told The Fifth Estate. 

Calvin Chrustie, a former RCMP operations officer in British Columbia, said in an interview that he received direction "from Ottawa at the highest level" to "assist and collaborate with" Chinese officials regarding a "high-profile fugitive that they were after in the Vancouver area." 

Chrustie said he refused to facilitate a meeting for the Chinese officials, who wanted to interview the fugitive and convince the person to voluntarily return to China to face prosecution.

China has ensured Canada's continuing co-operation by bartering on trade, offering assistance fighting illegal drugs and by negotiating the release of Canadians arbitrarily detained in China, The Fifth Estate investigation found.

"Our economic interests sort of drove this," said veteran Toronto immigration lawyer Lorne Waldman, who represents a number of people now in Canada who are wanted by Chinese authorities.

"We turned a blind eye to the lack of rule of law in China and turned a blind eye to the fact that we should be way more skeptical about the evidence coming from China. And as time went on, we turned a blind eye to the fact that Chinese agents were acting in Canada."

**

A former deputy minister of public safety yesterday testified it was “not my job” to warn a Conservative MP he was targeted by Chinese agents. Rob Stewart told the House affairs committee that foreign agents target “many people in Canada” that he never warned: “It was not my job to inform them.”

**
“We have seen in the past, acquisition of land, acquisition of different companies ... when you start to dig a little bit further, you realize that ... there is another intent,” said Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS) Director David Vigneault in an interview with U.S. network CBS.
“And we have seen and blocked attempts by the PRC [People’s Republic of China] to acquire locations near sensitive, strategic assets of the country where we knew that the ultimate purpose was for spying operations,” he added, without providing additional details.

Is that why the Chinese still run not-at-all secret police stations in the country?

**

The Chinese communist regime employs a "mass collection" approach to subvert its target countries, sending numerous operatives abroad to gradually infiltrate different facets of society, says a former senior manager with the Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS).
In an interview with The Epoch Times "American Thought Leaders" program, Michel Juneau-Katsuya spoke on the interference tactics used by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) that he has observed over the past several decades. They involve collaborating with gang members and tycoons who have immigrated to Canada and made investments there, he said.
"They simply overwhelm us in so many different fields, that it's difficult for Western agencies to understand," said Mr. Juneau-Katsuya, who formerly headed the Asia-Pacific unit at the CSIS.
**

Chinese President Xi Jinping green-lighted Russia's invasion of Ukraine and is supporting that war with lethal and other assistance. In North Africa, Beijing, in conjunction with Moscow, has been fueling insurgencies that resemble wars. In the Middle East, China is backing Hamas's monstrous attacks on Israel.

Hamas fighters, for instance, appear to have Chinese-made weapons, presumably supplied through Iran. Moreover, the U.S. Navy in 2021 and this year seized Chinese weapons in transit to another proxy of the Islamic Republic, the Houthi militia in Yemen.

"Tehran for some time has distributed Chinese weapons to its terrorist proxies throughout the region," Jonathan Bass of energy consultant InfraGlobal tells Gatestone. "The Middle East, thanks in no small measure to Beijing, is soaked with blood."

What is the Communist Party of China up to?

Xi, who reveres Mao Zedong, is taking a page from his hero's "peasant revolution" playbook. Mao in 1949 prevailed over his enemy, Chiang Kai-shek's Nationalist government, by "encircling the cities from the countryside."

Ukraine, North Africa and Israel, as Beijing sees it, are parts of the "countryside" today. So, what is the "city"?

The main enemy of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) is the United States of America.

The CCP declared a "people's war" on America in a May 2019 landmark editorial in People's Daily, the self-described "mouthpiece" of the regime. The CCP views the U.S. as an existential threat. As an initial matter, America stands in the way of Beijing from ruling tianxia, or "all under Heaven."

Moreover, the Party believes it must destroy the U.S. because of what America stands for. An insecure ruling organization is worried about the inspirational impact of America's form of governance and values on the oppressed Chinese people. This means the United States will never have amicable relations with China as long as the Communist Party rules it.

Today, therefore, the CCP is waging proxy wars against America, such as Russia's campaign to annex Ukraine, or backing Iran, which has for decades been calling for "Death to Israel" and "Death to America." Beijing's takeover of North Africa looks like an attempt to control the migration routes to Europe. Splitting off Europe from America, in turn, would be another step in starving the U.S. Similarly, China is buying friends in, among other places, Latin America, the Caribbean and the Pacific Ocean as a means of further isolating America.

The Chinese regime is not bashful in revealing overall strategy. "While in the countryside, the Communist Party mobilized the masses of peasants and established base areas, thus opening up a road of encircling the cities from the rural areas and seizing political power by armed force," states China.org.cn, a Chinese propaganda site, in "An Illustrated History of the Communist Party of China."

President Joe Biden is either unwilling or unable to defend the world from malicious Chinese communism. The catastrophic withdrawal from Afghanistan, completed in August 2021, signaled that American policy was in collapse. As a result, in the "countryside" there are many soft spots for Xi to attack.

China's leader will continue to attack them, especially as Biden pays what are essentially ransoms and thereby provides incentives for further disorder. The ransoms include the unfreezing of $6 billion in connection with a hostage swap with Iran — announced on the 22nd anniversary of 9/11 — and the October 18th announcement of "humanitarian assistance" to Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank, apparently to free Americans held by Hamas.

**

A Chinese coast guard ship and an accompanying vessel rammed a Philippine coast guard ship and a military-run supply boat Sunday off a contested shoal, Philippine officials said, in an encounter that heightened fears of an armed conflict in the disputed South China Sea.



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