Wednesday, December 27, 2023

Mid-Week Post

Your post-Christmas Day set of musings ...

 

How right he is!:

Republican U.S. Presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy thanked Canadian truckers for their “civil disobedience” during the Freedom Convoy protests of 2022.


Ramaswamy made the comments while announcing a campaign stop in a video posted on his official account on X, formerly known as Twitter.

“Let me tell you something, truckers of our country are the backbone of this country,” Ramaswamy began.

“It’s not just about moving things from place to place,” he said.


“That’s our entire supply chain. That’s how our economy runs. That’s how we’re able to live our modern way of life,” Ramaswamy added, calling truckers “people who’ve been on the frontlines of standing for liberty.” 

The 38-year-old former biotech executive then praised the anti-mandate protests in Ottawa led by truckers in early 2022.
“Remember that Canadian convoy of truckers who bravely stood up against the vaccine mandates? Well the Canadian government revealed how authoritarian they really are, silencing those truckers with censorship, even seizing or freezing their personal bank accounts,” Ramaswamy said.
“That was wrong, and I respect those who through their civil disobedience revealed civil overreach on the part of government, administrative overreach,” he said.
“Thank you to those truckers in Canada for doing their part,” Ramaswamy added.
Ramaswamy’s video was captioned with a note claiming the Freedom Convoy was “a valuable lesson about the power of civil protest against an out-of-control totalitarian government.”

 

Also - when you've lost the Washington Post ... :

People (including our own Ed Morrissey) have been saying this since the decision appeared Tuesday but I’m still a bit surprised to see the Washington Post‘s editorial board making the same case. After laying out the basis of the Colorado decision under the 14th Amendment, the board points out “the law is not so clear.” The board argues that section 3 of the Amendment should probably apply to the president (which is what the Colorado Supreme Court found) but says that doesn’t really matter unless you’ve also concluded that President Trump did in fact commit insurrection in connection with Jan. 6. And on that point, the Colorado court is way out on a limb.


And - American-style politics are alright when they do it:



It's just money:

Debt servicing just got way more expensive
First, an easy one: The Trudeau government borrowed an obscene amount during the COVID-19 pandemic, and with rising interest rates the treasury is getting hammered with debt-servicing costs.
As recently as 2021, interest charges on federal debt cost $20.3 billion per year. In the current fiscal year, it’s probably going to blow past $46.5 billion. Ottawa now spends about as much on debt management as it does on health care transfers to the provinces.
The phenomenon of pricier debt is not limited to Canada: Virtually every government in the world ran up record-breaking debts during COVID and are now facing the consequences. But if Canada is different, it’s that our rate of pandemic debt accumulation was at least $200 billion higher than it needed to be. And in justifying all this extra spending at the time, Trudeau argued that it was a good time to take out extra debt since “interest rates are at historic lows.”
The corporate welfare is just unbelievable
Canada has a long history of government signing over grants and bailouts to politically connected corporations. As far back as 1972, then NDP Leader David Lewis famously championed the cause of stopping Canada’s “corporate welfare bums.”
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But the Trudeau government has taken corporate welfare to new heights. It was only a few years ago that Bombardier was the undisputed champion in collecting federal grants, bailouts and interest-free loans. Over 50 years, according to an analysis by the Montreal Economic Institute, Bombardier received a cumulative “$4 billion in public funds.”
In just the last calendar year, the Trudeau government has signed two subsidy agreements that would dwarf that $4-billion figure several times over. In the spring, both Stellantis and Volkswagen agreed to build EV plants in Ontario in exchange for federal subsidy packages that could cost as much as $18.8 billion (plus another $9 billion from the Ontario government).
And that new $18.8 billion liability on the books doesn’t even account for the massive ramp-up in the corporate welfare everywhere else. To name just a couple: In 2021, Air Canada got a $5.4 billion loan package. And the Trudeau-founded Strategic Innovation Fund gets about $1.5 billion per year in handouts to green energy companies.
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The day-to-day costs of running the government are through the roof
To put it simply, there are more bureaucrats making more money than ever before. The Trudeau government has expanded the size of the bureaucracy well beyond anything seen in peacetime.
In just the two years between 2021 and 2023, the operating costs of the federal government grew by 32.5 per cent, driven largely by a massive expansion in both the number of civil servants and their pay. More than 31,000 new employees were hired during that period, and Ottawa did not skimp on salaries or bonuses. Between April 2022 and July 2023 — a period marked by no shortage of noticeable failures in government performance — 7,895 public administrators qualified for bonuses and other performance payouts totalling $132,610,541.
These new Liberal programs may suck, but they’re not cheap
The Trudeau government has been particularly aggressive at hammering through “legacy” programs. Once upon a time, the idea of a national child-care program dominated headlines for weeks and defined elections. Now, it’s one of a bouquet of social welfare programs introduced in just the past few years. While the Trudeau government is still hammering out its $10/day child-care plan, it’s rolling out a national dental care plan, and it just announced that a national pharmacare program is around the corner.
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Access has been about the same as Canada’s other “universal” benefit programs: $10-a-day daycare spaces are so scarce that merely getting into the program has been compared to wining a “lottery.” But even a half-cocked federal program quickly gets expensive when it’s rolled out across the country.
The federal child-care program alone is estimated to cost about $7 billion per year, according to a 2022 assessment by the Parliamentary Budget Officer. Dental care, even in its limited form, was pegged at $4.4 billion per year in the most recent budget. An October estimate by the Parliamentary Budget Officer put the starting cost of a federal pharmacare plan at $11.2 billion per year.
These three programs alone — which are not even close to reaching their final form — are already expected to cost somewhere in the neighbourhood of $22 billion per year. For context, that’s the equivalent of funding the Department of Veterans Affairs for more than 40 years.
Everything has been allowed to devolve into a hideously inefficient money sink
Last week, Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre highlighted a Parks Canada deer cull that had spent more than $800,000 to kill 84 deer, calling it “asinine.”
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While the money is a rounding error in federal budget expenditures (it literally represents about 15 minutes’ worth of deficit accumulation), it does serve to illustrate a key feature of the Trudeau government: Absolutely everything has become more expensive than it needs to be.
Basically, for nine years there’s been little to no pressure to rein in costs, and federal departments have responded accordingly. As one example, the official prime ministerial residence, 24 Sussex Drive, is an abandoned, rat-infested biohazard. Somehow, its annual maintenance costs are still $146,000 per year.
Even when the Trudeau government pledges a new culture of saving money, it notably has no effect. Earlier this year, Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland promised to find $15 billion in savings over the next five years. Instead, only a few months later the Fall Economic Update ended up earmarking $20.8 billion in new spending over the next six years.
 


We don't have to trade with China:

Beijing critics are voicing concern about the foreign interference commissioner's recent decision to let MP Han Dong and former Ontario cabinet minister Michael Chan access classified information and question witnesses. Some Chinese diaspora also worry about their safety due to the two politicians' participation.

Gloria Fung, president of Canada-Hong Kong Link, voiced these concerns, referencing media reports that cited Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS) allegations against the two.

"With the presence of Michael Chan and Han Dong who have been alleged by CSIS to have close ties with the Chinese Consulate, some witnesses may feel the public inquiry no longer provides a safe space for them to speak up and share their experience and analysis of foreign interference," Ms. Fung said in an interview with The Epoch Times.

In a Dec. 4 decision, Justice Marie-Josée Hogue, who heads the inquiry, granted full standing, or "full participation rights," to Mr. Dong and Mr. Chan, currently deputy mayor of Markham, Ontario. This grants them the rights to question witnesses and access non-public information.
 
(Sidebar: this Marie-Josee Hogue. Justin has a lot of friends to appoint.)

Both politicians are facing allegations of involvement in Beijing's interference in Canada's 2019 and 2021 federal elections.

**

Foreign interference commissioner Marie-Josée Hogue has denied the Conservatives' appeal regarding participation in an upcoming public inquiry aimed at examining China's election interference in Canada. She also dismissed concerns from a human rights coalition about granting standing to three individuals accused of ties to the Chinese regime.

In a Dec. 22 decision, Justice Hogue maintained her earlier decision on Dec. 4 to grant limited standing to the Conservative Party of Canada (CPC), rejecting their protests against their "intervener" status. The Conservatives said this status compromises the credibility of the inquiry, as it prevents them from questioning witnesses in the factual phase and denies them access to non-public information.

Justice Hogue justified her decision, stating, "I concluded that the CPC has a direct and substantial interest in the work of the Commission, but that this interest is of a general nature only." Additionally, she expressed the belief that the CPC wouldn't require cross-examining witnesses or accessing non-exhibit documents to make its "necessary contribution" to the inquiry.

 

But your boss, Justin, doesn't?

Interesting. 

 

But this guy can speak:

In a private briefing in May 2020, Senator Yuen Pau Woo promised to shield members of Beijing’s “United Front” from critical scrutiny in Canada for taking pro-China stances on controversial issues such as the treatment of Uyghurs.

Woo’s pledges of support for United Front organizations are captured in recordings of his meeting with Canada Committee 100 Society, a Vancouver group with ties to the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC).

The CPPCC is the Chinese Communist Party’s basic structure for united front influence operations according to a declassified Central Intelligence Agency document and recent U.S. government testimony on China’s political interference networks.

Woo’s private statements call into question his public intervener role in Ottawa’s upcoming Foreign Interference Commission, according to experts that analyzed his comments. Commissioner Marie-Josée Hogue has granted Woo’s late application to make legal arguments in the hearing.

But analysts experienced in Chinese interference say the Senator — who was appointed by Justin Trudeau in 2016 — is legitimizing the United Front’s expanding networks of influence, which facilitated Beijing’s federal election interference in 2019, according to leaked CSIS records that triggered the Commission.

The stakes surrounding the Commission’s outcome and Woo’s intervener status are of serious consequence due to the nature of CSIS’s investigations, which accuse United Front community leaders in Canada of being Chinese Communist Party proxies that recruit and channel support to Beijing’s preferred candidates.

For example, according to three national security sources, an elite politician hand-picked by Justin Trudeau, Liberal cabinet minister Mary Ng, was identified in CSIS investigations as one of 11 Toronto-area candidates clandestinely supported by Chinese Consulate and United Front influence networks in the 2019 election.

These national security whistleblowers asked not to be identified because of ongoing investigations.

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s office and International Trade Minister Mary Ng have not responded to The Bureau’s questions for this story.

While CSIS’s election investigations haven’t been tested in court, recent legal decisions have affirmed the United Front is active in recruitment and grooming of Beijing’s preferred candidates in Canada.

According to a July 2023 Canadian immigration ruling, over the past 10 years President Xi Jinping has massively increased manpower for Beijing’s United Front Work Department and tasked its networks to influence “overseas Chinese communities, foreign governments, and other actors to take actions or adopt positions supportive of Beijing’s preferred policies.”

The Bureau obtained recordings of Senator Woo’s May 2020 meeting from a Chinese Canadian that believes the private briefing raises national security concerns.

Charles Burton, a fluent Mandarin speaker and former Canadian diplomat, analyzed Woo’s recorded statements and called them shocking.

“Senator Woo's briefing to Canada Committee 100 Society effectively enables the legitimacy of agencies of the Chinese Communist Party in our country,” Burton said. “This does call into question Senator Woo's intervener status in the Inquiry.”

 

**

A federal inquiry into foreign interference has asked to delay its first report by about two months in order to allow sufficient time for a public process and hearings on the issues.

Commissioner Marie-Josée Hogue said in a press release Friday the requested postponement until May 3 is aimed at giving "meaning and purpose" to preliminary hearings, and to allow more time to maximize transparency.

Ensuring classified information is put into a form that can be released to the public is a long and complicated process, she added.

The commission, which will begin public hearings Jan. 29, is looking at attempted meddling by China, Russia and other foreign states, as well as non-state actors, in recent Canadian federal elections.

The inquiry will proceed in two parts, the first focusing on allegations of interference and any effect that might have had in the 2019 and 2021 federal elections. The second phase will examine what capacity the federal government has to detect and counter foreign interference. Hogue said the second report, due in December 2024, doesn’t need to be postponed.

Also on Friday, the inquiry dismissed a request from the Conservative party to reverse an earlier decision to deny it full standing in the factual phase of the proceedings.

That means the Conservative party won't be able to cross-examine witnesses or access documents that aren't exhibits made into evidence, though representatives will be able to attend hearings, access exhibits and make submissions.

**

  • The Chinese Communist Party, led by China's President Xi Jinping, has, over the years, by espionage, intellectual property theft, hacking, spying and militarizing artificial islands, initiated a bitter conflict between China and the US.

  • China appears determined to "neutralize" states that might challenge its claim to the South and East China Seas. If successful, China's naval assets will dominate a large portion of the world's commercial sea lanes, if the US is unable -- or unwilling -- to knit together a serious formal military alliance of democratic states in the Indo-Pacific.

  • Rather than fight a war, China apparently is hoping to envelop the US in Latin America by establishing Chinese-controlled ports and numerous bilateral Belt and Road Initiative projects in Cuba, Panama, Venezuela, Nicaragua, Brazil and Argentina.

**

Hush money:

Ottawa is willing to sign off on multimillion-dollar settlement packages for Canadians Michael Spavor and Michael Kovrig to compensate them for the nearly three years they were incarcerated under harsh conditions in Chinese prisons, two government sources say.
Federal lawyers are in compensation talks with the two men and are hoping to conclude financial settlements early in the new year, the sources say. The Globe and Mail is not identifying the sources because they were not authorized to discuss the delicate legal negotiations.
Of particular concern to the government is a potential lawsuit from Mr. Spavor that has put a spotlight on Canada’s Global Security Reporting Program, the sources say. Mr. Kovrig, during his time as a Canadian diplomat, worked for the GSRP, a special unit within the intelligence branch of Global Affairs Canada that sends foreign service officers to hot spots to collect security-related information for Ottawa.
Mr. Spavor alleges that China arrested and imprisoned him and Mr. Kovrig because he unwittingly provided information to Mr. Kovrig that was shared with Canadian and other Western spy services. Mr. Kovrig has told The Globe that he followed the “standard of laws, rules and regulations governing diplomats.”
The government has offered around $3-million to each but the sources say Mr. Spavor’s lawyer, John K. Phillips, is seeking $10.5-million, alleging gross negligence on how Ottawa handled GSRP operations in China.
The federal sources say the government is not prepared to offer as much as $10.5-million and that both Mr. Spavor and Mr. Kovrig will receive the same amount of compensation for the hardship endured in Chinese prisons, some of which was spent in solitary confinement.
**

It's called a shakedown:

Chinese President Xi Jinping bluntly told President Joe Biden during their recent summit in San Francisco that Beijing will reunify Taiwan with mainland China but that the timing has not yet been decided, according to three current and former U.S. officials.

Xi told Biden in a group meeting attended by a dozen American and Chinese officials that China’s preference is to take Taiwan peacefully, not by force, the officials said.

The Chinese leader also referenced public predictions by U.S. military leaders who say that Xi plans to take Taiwan in 2025 or 2027, telling Biden that they were wrong because he has not set a time frame, according to the two current and one former official briefed on the meeting.

**

The secret biolab operated in a warehouse in Reedley, California, about 25 miles southeast of Fresno. It was discovered on Dec. 19, 2022, by Jesalyn Harper, a code enforcement officer with the City of Reedley Fire Department.
In the warehouse, Ms. Harper discovered thousands of vials of infectious agents, including coronavirus, chlamydia, E. coli, streptococcus pneumonia, HIV, hepatitis, herpes, rubella, and malaria.
On Oct. 19, 2023, Mr. Zhu was arrested in California and charged with manufacturing and distributing misbranded medical devices and for making false statements to the FDA.
Mr. Zhu filed a suit against the city of Reedley for $30 million and against the county for $50 million. The prospect of having a conversation with the city leaders regarding his claims was used to entice him to show up at the warehouse and have him arrested on the spot by FDA agents with automatic machine guns in their hands.
Mr. Zhu had claimed that he was a consultant named David He hired to help get Universal Meditech and Prestige Biotech out of the trouble they were in. Prestige Biotech is the company that owns the biolab in Reedley.

**

But the Chinese aren't allowed to celebrate Christmas:

China’s state propaganda outlet Global Times proclaimed 2023 the “most depressing Christmas Eve in the West since the end of the Cold War” on Tuesday, claiming that a failure to support the Communist Party’s foreign policy demands had made the holiday “insecure.”

**

All Chinese citizens are forced to participate in what the Communist Party refers to as the “social credit system,” in which the Party scores each individual based on revolutionary fervor and loyalty to genocidal communist dictator Xi Jinping. Faith generally, Curry explained, indicates to the government a loyalty to a higher power than Xi and can thus hurt a person’s social credit score. As a result, most Chinese Christians will likely quietly observe the Christmas holiday at home, fearing retribution from their regime.



The burn!:



For Christians and other religious minorities, every day is October 7th:

 **

At least 70 unarmed men, women and children have fallen to Fulani terrorists attacking at battalion strength in Central Plateau State since December 23, according to officials speaking to Truth Nigeria senior editor Masara Kim at the scene.

“At present , 70 are dead,” said Monday Kassah, Chairman of Bokkos County to TruthNigeria. Higher numbers of casualties are feared in a series of ongoing attacks targeting Christian villages in Plateau State, Nigeria. The attacks, believed to be driven by land grab and ethnic displacements, have forced thousands of residents to evacuate their homes amidst intense gunfire by terrorists speaking the Fulani dialect, according to eyewitnesses.

Police and army authorities have yet to respond to inquiries from TruthNigeria, which published several advance warnings about a potential terror spike in the state leading up to Christmas.

The Fulani tribe, one of the largest in West Africa with around 10 million members in Nigeria, holds significant political influence in the country. However, militants associated with the group have faced accusations of genocidal massacres.

In the first half of 2023, Fulani-linked attacks resulted in the deaths of over 2500 Christians in Nigeria, according to Intersociety, an organization monitoring and documenting genocide in the country. Plateau State alone witnessed at least 500 of these deaths, reports Intersociety.

The latest violence commenced on December 23 in the eastern part of Bokkos county, where at least 16 people lost their lives in the village of Gwana, according to Kassah, the county chairman, speaking to TruthNigeria. The attack site is located just 5 miles from the county headquarters.

** 

Despite a near-total media blackout, 120,000 Armenian Orthodox Christians have been under blockade by their Muslim neighbors for pretty much the entirety of the year. For nine months, these Armenian Christians were being starved to death by a blockade that was imposed on them by the government of Azerbaijan.

**

While Montreal’s Notre Dame held Christmas mass after a fire, four Alberta churches stood skeletal, damaged, quiet on Christmas, set ablaze by arsonists in the last few weeks.

The four Alberta churches, in various parts of the province, are all under investigation by police. Most recently, just five days before Christmas, the Seventh-day Adventist Church in Beiseker, a village of less than 1,000 people northeast of Calgary, was burned to the ground.

It prompted Pierre Poilievre, the Conservative party leader, to post on X that his thoughts were with the congregation as they mourned the loss of their church.

“This is the 4th church in 2 weeks to be targeted by acts of violent anti-Christian hatred,” Polievre tweeted.

 **


Of course, one should never forget the October 7th attacks and those who are glad that they happened:

There’s no proof to substantiate this claim, especially as Hamas’ Gaza Ministry of Health does not distinguish combatant and civilian casualty count break downs.

Furthermore, Israel claims that at least 7,000 Hamas fighters have been killed by the IDF. As well, it’s unknown how many Palestinian civilians were killed by the over 1,000 errant Hamas rockets fired at Israel that landed prematurely in Gaza, maiming and slaughtering innocent Palestinian civilians.

 **

Even as America increasingly highlights humanitarian suffering in Gaza, planning for the “day after” there will require re-examination of past misconceptions, such as calling the Strip the world’s “largest open air prison.”

That moniker, often promoted in press accounts and pushed hard by the Qatari-owned pan-Arab network Al Jazeera, led to unprecedented foreign aid to the Palestinian territories. While Arabs in Syria, Yemen, Sudan, the Sahel, and other war-besieged territories were clamoring for outside help, Gaza received lopsided attention.

“Suddenly we discovered that Gaza, which is inhabited by 2 million people, has 36 hospitals,” Hoda Jannat writes on his widely followed X Arab-language account. “There are Arab countries with 30 million citizens that do not have this number of hospitals.”

The writer notes that before the war, Israel supplied water, electricity, gas, and fuel to Gaza, while no other Arab country enjoys such outside aid. Gaza, he adds, was lavished with cash, including $30 million a month from Qatar, $120 million a month from the United Nations Relief and Work Agency, $50 million a month from the European Union, and $30 million a month from America.

“There are Arab countries drowning in debt and cannot find anyone to help them even with one million dollars,” the writer notes. Contrary to widely held belief, he adds, Gaza was not besieged: goods came in, residents were traveling through Egypt to other countries, and outsiders came in.

“Suddenly we discovered that Gaza was living better than many Arab countries, and its people were living better than many Arab peoples,” Hoda Jannat concludes. A “programmed lie,” he argues, clouded people’s minds, pushed by “Muslim Brotherhood media” — a reference to Al Jazeera.

Global sympathy to what is known at the UN as “the occupied state of Palestine” and its Gaza component seems disproportionate to its needs. Suffering in the Strip is caused by poor management, graft, and — most blatantly — Hamas’s investment in war preparation, as opposed to the welfare of residents.

Late last week, in the last act of the UN Security Council for the year, a new bureaucracy was created to ensure that, as the war goes on and for the foreseeable future, aid to Gaza would pour in. At the same time, Gazans clamor to receive goods that already reach the Strip.

Hamas men often block access to aid deliveries, even shooting at crowds. In some cases, Gazans are maimed, and even killed. Hamas has the power to decide where aid is directed and who should receive it. Gazans increasingly complain that Hamas members “steal” food, medicine, and fuel intended for civilian use.

A senior Hamas politburo member, Mousa Abu Marzouk, stated the obvious in a statement. “The aid that comes to Gaza must be distributed to the resistance fighters, and what remains, distribute it to the people,” he said recently, before attempting to walk it back. 

“The attempt of some citizens to seize aid,” Mr. Abu Marzouk added, “will be fought with all force, and the people must offer what is expensive and what is cheap for the sake of the resistance, not steal the food of the resistance.”

**

Of the 98 hate crime occurrences recorded by Toronto Police since Oct. 7, 56 were against Jews, while 20 were against Muslims and Arabs.

** 

Liberals MPs spent Wednesday evening doing damage control in the wake of news reports about a politically embarrassing video of a Palestinian terror leader thanking Canada for supporting a ceasefire in Gaza.

It's not like dead Jews vote Liberal or anything. 

The Liberals really do catch the eye of dictators:

Canadians would ultimately do a disproportionate amount of the fighting needed to destroy Nazi Germany. But for an ignominious few months in the mid-1930s, Canadian Prime Minister Mackenzie King took it upon himself to openly woo Germany’s extremist new government.
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King made an unsolicited visit to German dictator Adolf Hitler in 1937, and in diary entries from the time would praise the autocrat as a handsome, sensitive, beauty-loving man who reminded him of Joan of Arc. “I wished him well in his efforts to help mankind,” wrote King.
The Germans weren’t quite as effusive towards Canada, but Hitler would gift a signed portrait of himself to the Canadian prime minister, and top Nazi Hermann Göring would make a point of thanking Canada for its recent gift to the Berlin Zoo of a bison. ...
(Sidebar: years later, the Liberals would invite and applaud a Ukrainian Nazi.)
The USSR had nothing good to say about Canada when it was at its most repressive. At the height of the Holodomor, the Stalinist purges and the mass-expansion of the Gulag network, Canada was nothing more than a toadie of British Imperialism. Even into the 1950s, Soviet leader Nikita Khruschev even took pleasure in reminding Canada that if a Third World War broke out, Moscow had plenty of nuclear bombs aimed at the likes of Toronto and Montreal.
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But for a period in the 1970s, the Soviet Union’s relationship with Canada went quite a bit farther than the peaceful co-existence that was popular at the time. In 1971 — just three years after the Soviet Union had rolled tanks into Czechoslovakia to crush the Prague Spring — Soviet premier Alexei Kosygin publicly thanked Canada for its decision to withdraw troops stationed in Europe.
The Canadian troops had been there in the first place as a NATO bulwark against Soviet aggression – and the drawdown was conspicuously not reciprocated with any withdrawal of Soviet forces. But in comments circulated by the Soviet press, Kosygin said that if the rest of NATO could start acting more like Canada, the Kremlin might consider it. ...
One of the first international gaffes made by Prime Minister Justin Trudeau was an effusive, uncritical statement he issued in the wake of the 2016 death of Cuban dictator Fidel Castro. “Fidel Castro was a larger than life leader who served his people for almost half a century,” it read, before praising Castro for making “significant improvements to the education and health care of his island nation.” Even the left-wing press noted that Trudeau was praising a repressive dictator whose record included the execution of dissidents and the mass-incarceration of homosexuals.
But Trudeau’s mere praise of Castro pales in comparison to the open support of the island’s Communist regime exhibited by his father, Pierre Trudeau. As prime minister, he openly defied a U.S. blockade against the island by making an official visit in 1976 in which he appeared in a parade alongside the dictator and publicly declared “long live prime minister and commander-in-chief, Fidel Castro.”

 **

In the final hours before Dec. 25, Canadian roads were blocked, overpasses were barricaded and malls were swarmed by screaming crowds as anti-Israel demonstrators attempted to make good on a promise to cancel Christmas.

On Saturday, a crowd of more than 100 moved through Downtown Toronto screaming for “intifada.” Demonstrators attempted to block entrances at Toronto’s Eaton Centre. And on Christmas Eve, an overpass and two approaches to Toronto’s Highway 401 were blockaded for several hours by a group waving Palestinian flags.

 

Shouldn't these people have their bank accounts frozen by now?

**

The Jewish celebration of Hanukkah in the Dutch city of Enschede took a strange turn, after the mayor refused to be seen near the Israeli ambassador. The Enschede synagogue had invited mayor Roelof Bleker to the Hanukkah celebration and reserved a seat for Bleker next to the Israeli ambassador, Modi Ephraim. But a few hours earlier, the synagogue received a phone call from Bleker with some preconditions. “The mayor did not want to sit next to the ambassador and did not want to shake his hand.”
Enschede's small Jewish community – 45 Jews in total – was already frustrated with Bleker, who rejected their requests for greater security and surveillance after October 7, despite a wave of anti-Semitic attacks across the country.

But what is better than Hanukkah without Israelis in Europe from which Jews are disappearing to celebrate multiculturalism? When there are no longer even 45 Jews in Enschede, will they call Hamas to light the Hanukkah candles?

**

At least tens of thousands of people remain displaced in Manipur as of September, according to the United Nations.

As a result, Christmas celebrations will be largely absent in Manipur, local media reported Thursday.

“The violence continues. In this environment, nobody can celebrate Christmas, or any other festival like before,” Manipur local Helamboi Baite told the Indian outlet. “It won’t be the same for us. Maybe, families would have a somber celebration inside their homes, but I don’t think any gathering will take place in the streets.”

Manipur Christians held a mass funeral for the remains of 87 people killed in the mob violence erupting in May on December 19; they had not received the remains of their loved ones before then.

“The youngest tribal victim in the ongoing violence is one-month-old Isaac, while the oldest is 87-year-old Veinem Chongloi,” the Indigenous Tribal Leaders’ Forum (ITLF), a Kuki-Zo organization, said in a statement, according to The Print.

The outburst of anti-Christian violence in Manipur followed a protest by Christians in New Delhi in February in which a crowd of between 15,000 and 20,000 people demanded the Modi government act to protect Christian communities.

“We’ve gathered here peacefully because we want to share the anguish of our fellow citizens who follow the Christian faith in the states of Chhattisgarh, Jharkhand, Madhya Pradesh, Uttar Pradesh, Karnataka and so many other places where their basic fundamental rights are being snatched,” said the United Christian Forum, a human rights group participating in the rally.



Canada the cruel:

The Church of England has warned that countries whereassisted dying is legal have shown that it can lead to a “slippery slope” whereit becomes easier and easier to get help to end one’s life.

In a submission to MPs, the Church said that when the law had been changed in other countries, such as Canada and the US, stringent safeguards had been dropped over time, opening up assisted dying to more and more people.

Pressure has been mounting for a change in the law to allow doctors to help certain people to die since Dame Esther Rantzen, who has cancer, said she was considering ending her life at the Swiss clinic Dignitas.

But in a submission to the Commons health select committee, which is carrying out an inquiry into assisted dying, the Church said it would be impossible to bring in systems to rule out the possibility that people had been coerced into wanting to die.

It said it would be “foolish” to think that elderly people would not be pressured into committing assisted suicide.

** 

A Winnipeg man who was misdiagnosed with a fatal disease by two different doctors says anybody believed to have a life-threatening condition should be sent to a specialist in the field for final determination.

A neurologist at Sunnybrook Hospital agrees.

Fredrik Bergstrom, 51, went to see his family physician in March after developing a limp and numbness in one foot for no apparent reason. 

"He did a 10-minute examination and then he literally teared up and hugged me and he said, 'Fredrik, this is ALS,'" Bergstrom said.

He was told the disease was advanced and would progress rapidly. 

"We're at the end of the line," he recalled his doctor saying.

Shocked, Bergstrom immediately called his wife and told her to come home from work. He said the two cried through the night. 

"It was just absolutely devastating," he said.  ...

By now, Bergstrom says, plans were moving quickly. 

Within two weeks, his diagnosis was put into writing for insurance and disability claims, he was told he would never return to work and soon would be unable to walk. He was given a disability placard for his car, and was even contacted by a therapist regarding medically assisted death.

He shut down his business and started making calls. 

"We had to tell friends and family. I had to tell my aging mother, who's already lost a son to this, that she was about to lose her last son and that was — that was a tough conversation," he said. ...

At the end of July, Bergstrom had an appointment with a third doctor — a neurologist. 

After receiving a full panel of tests and a more exhaustive examination, he was given another shock.

The doctor told Bergstrom he thought they would be having a palliative, end-of-life discussion, but instead the doctor told him he had likely been misdiagnosed.

** 

The federal government chose a right-to-die advocacy group to help implement its medical assistance in dying legislation. It’s a classic case of regulatory capture, otherwise known as letting the foxes guard the henhouse.

In the “Fourth annual report on Medical Assistance in Dying in Canada 2022,” the federal government devoted several paragraphs of praising to the Canadian Association of MAID Assessors and Providers (CAMAP).

“Since its inception in 2017, (CAMAP) has been and continues to be an important venue for information sharing among health-care professionals and other stakeholders involved in MAID,” reads the report.

With $3.3 million in federal funding, “CAMAP has been integral in creating a MAID assessor/provider community of practice, hosts an annual conference to discuss emerging issues related to the delivery of MAID and has developed several guidance materials for health-care professionals.”

Six clinicians in British Columbia formed CAMAP, a national non-profit association, in October 2016. These six right-to-die advocates published clinical guidelines for MAID in 2017, without seriously consulting other physician organizations.

The guidelines educate clinicians on their “professional obligation to (bring) up MAID as a care option for patients, when it is medically relevant and they are likely eligible for MAID.” CAMAP’s guidelines apply to Canada’s 96,000 physicians, 312,000 nurses and the broader health-care workforce of two-million Canadians, wherever patients are involved.

The rise of CAMAP overlaps with right-to-die advocacy work in Canada. According to Sandra Martin, writing in the Globe and Mail, CAMAP “follow(ed) in the steps of Dying with Dignity,” an advocacy organization started in the 1980s, and “became both a public voice and a de facto tutoring service for doctors, organizing information-swapping and self-help sessions for members.”

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau tapped this “tutoring service” to lead the MAID program. CAMAP appears to follow the steps of Dying with Dignity, because the same people lead both groups. For example, Shanaaz Gokool, a current director of CAMAP, served as CEO of Dying with Dignity from 2016 to 2019.




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