Wednesday, May 08, 2024

Mid-Week Post

Your middle-of-the-week white noise ...


March for Life: be there AND be square.



There is no perfect successor as all options are bad.

No one would angle for Himmler over Hitler, would they?

(Sidebar: save Hamas.):

Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland is the most prominent candidate when it comes to replacing Prime Minister Justin Trudeau in a potential Liberal leadership race, according to a new poll, while the majority of Canadian say they are unsure who is the best potential successor.

A recent Abacus Data survey provided to The Toronto Star asked 1,500 respondents who they think should replace Mr. Trudeau as Liberal leader if he were to step down. The most prominent response was “don’t know,” with 54 percent of those surveyed saying they were unsure who the best candidate would be.

Of those who did have a preference, however, Ms. Freeland was the top choice. As deputy prime minister and finance minister, Ms. Freeland has the highest profile of all the potential candidates, taking 13 percent of the vote.

Just behind her was former Bank of Canada governor Mark Carney at 11 percent. Mr. Carney, who has described a future run for the top Liberal spot as a possibility, is best known in recent years for his climate change activism and support of the carbon tax.

Other potential candidates—Foreign Affairs Minister Mélanie Joly, Industry Minister François-Philippe Champagne, Public Safety Minister Dominic LeBlanc, Housing Minister Sean Fraser, and Treasury Board President Anita Anand—all garnered between 3 percent and 5 percent of Should you be worried about China rigging elections?:the vote as the best option for a future Liberal Party leader.

While Ms. Freeland and Mr. Carney appear to have more name recognition than the others listed in the survey, no one potential candidate appears to jump out as the clear public choice as a successor for Mr. Trudeau.


The cream of the crap, ladies and gentlemen.

A group, the only accomplishment of which is the destruction of Canada, proves that even the ovine masses have tired of this party but won't vote decisively.



Did the Liberals leave their keys in the mailbox?:

The federal Liberals are trying to crack down on a scourge of auto thefts across the country, even as the government is struggling to keep its own vehicles away from thieves, new data show.

Documents tabled in the House of Commons on Monday show 48 government vehicles from 14 departments and agencies were stolen between January 2016 and February of this year.



Shouldn't you be worried about China rigging elections?:

Canada’s intelligence agency predicts violence fuelled by “anti-gender” ideology is expected to continue over the next year, potentially driven by recent attacks and religion-motivated extremism.


Where is this religious fervour that holds that there are only two biological sexes?

I'll wait.




As ye sow ... :

Thirteen federal judges said Monday that they would no longer hire law clerks from Columbia College or Columbia Law School after the university allowed an encampment on its lawn to spiral into a destructive occupation of a campus building. The judges cited the "explosion of student disruptions" and the "virulent spread of antisemitism" at Columbia, which has now canceled its main graduation ceremony because of the unrest.

Led by appellate judges James Ho and Elizabeth Branch, who spearheaded a clerkship boycott of Yale Law School in 2022 and Stanford Law School in 2023, as well as by Matthew Solomson on the U.S Court of Federal Claims, the judges wrote in a letter to Columbia president Minouche Shafik that they would no longer hire "anyone who joins the Columbia University community—whether as undergraduates or as law students—beginning with the entering class of 2024."

"Freedom of speech protects protest, not trespass, and certainly not acts or threats of violence or terrorism," the judges wrote. "It has become clear that Columbia applies double standards when it comes to free speech and student misconduct."



Who taught these guys how to negotiate?:

The New York Times reported Tuesday that the terror group had explicitly told mediators that some of the 33 hostages it would release under the first phase of the prospective deal would not be alive. The Times said it was not clear whether the terror group had informed interlocutors how many of the 33 would be alive.

A failure to release 33 living hostages would appear to conflict with Israeli demands.


I'd say so.



No one listens to Diplomat Barbie:

Canada’s foreign minister says Israel’s invasion of the city of Rafah in the Gaza Strip is “completely unacceptable,” and she’s holding out hope that ceasefire talks will prevail. 

Israeli officials announced Monday that the country approved a military operation into the border city, and Israeli forces began striking targets in the area.

The move came hours after Hamas announced it had accepted an Egyptian-Qatari ceasefire proposal, which Israel says does not meet its essential demands. 



To be fair, Justin has failed every test in his life.

Why not a moral one?:

On Oct. 7, a cowardly, medieval, murder cult (campus heroes) Hamas took the lives of over 1,200 Jews.

Without warning, at a music festival; chased, toyed with; beating every Jew they could find; hunted them down, tormented them, raped them, shot them. A great insensate orgiastic jubilation over a massacre of innocent Jews of an intensity and enormity not seen since the demonic practices of Jew-hating, Jew-destroying Nazism. The greatest puncture in that useless lying balloon of “never again” since the failed slogan was first muttered. Jews massacred in their homeland. Jews killed again.

(Sidebar: a slogan that now has not aged well in the era of hatred, self-importance and - to say the least - bad taste. That's bigots for you.)

Hamas is in a squalid tradition; there’s a lot of Himmler in Hamas.

There was also the deep cruelty, the sadism of taking hostages, ripping families asunder if they did not kill them, scooping up babies, young children, keeping a special eye out for pretty girls — dragging over 250 innocent people of all ages to Hamas’s web of dirt tunnels. How could a man look into the eyes of a 10-month-old infant and sunder him from his family? How could men rape and beat so many female hostages?

Oct. 7 was an enormity, I say again, on a historic scale. Were an equivalent atrocity to have fallen on Muslims somewhere in the West, this world of ours would be spinning into the sun on the strength of universal and ferocious denunciations.

But hey, this was Israel. Those killed, raped and kidnapped were Jews. Jews who lived in Israel. So, this runs on a totally different moral and political plateau.

The ambush of unarmed civilians on that Oct. 7 demanded and still demands a clarion statement from our leaders of totally unambiguous support for Israel, a visit to relations of those killed, and those still hoping for release of their family members held hostage. ...

Hamas is in a squalid tradition; there’s a lot of Himmler in Hamas.

There was also the deep cruelty, the sadism of taking hostages, ripping families asunder if they did not kill them, scooping up babies, young children, keeping a special eye out for pretty girls — dragging over 250 innocent people of all ages to Hamas’s web of dirt tunnels. How could a man look into the eyes of a 10-month-old infant and sunder him from his family? How could men rape and beat so many female hostages?

Oct. 7 was an enormity, I say again, on a historic scale. Were an equivalent atrocity to have fallen on Muslims somewhere in the West, this world of ours would be spinning into the sun on the strength of universal and ferocious denunciations.

But hey, this was Israel. Those killed, raped and kidnapped were Jews. Jews who lived in Israel. So, this runs on a totally different moral and political plateau.

The ambush of unarmed civilians on that Oct. 7 demanded and still demands a clarion statement from our leaders of totally unambiguous support for Israel, a visit to relations of those killed, and those still hoping for release of their family members held hostage.

Political cowardice, the fear of losing some of the Muslim vote has Trudeau and Joly responding to antisemitism by dusting off tattered platitudes (“this is not who we are as Canadians,” or some equally flaccid slogan crafted by a herd of consultants and speechwriters). He has no moral force to exert, he has no high presence in the world’s leadership, his flighty antics and frequent displays of incompetence have left him an isolate on the world platform. Essentially, his sad record internationally, his unintellectuality (his mind is not overclouded with ideas) and the obsessional tie to global warming fantasies (serious leaders may mouth the words these days, but the global warming juggernaut is bogged down) have combined to place him outside the adults who do rule the nations of the world. He is no one’s wise man. ...

We never did get to hear our loudly, proudly self-proclaimed first male-feminist prime minister show any serious, extended response to the horrid tortures, beatings, rapes, kidnappings and murder of Israeli women, girls and infants. Remember — because a lot of people don’t seem to want to remember — this was an unprovoked mass killing by armed and hate-saturated Palestinians. As the records and film show (they filmed their own bestiality) they took special and malignant pleasure from the horrors, rape and murder of Jewish women. Women as children, teenagers, parents and elderly. Hamas loves to hate women.

What, my male feminist PM, kept you from taking the podium in your blackest denunciation mode? Where, most progressive of all progressive PMs, was your soul-tormented outcry that woman and girls were being raped and beaten — their dead and mutilated bodies put on exhibit to cheering Palestinians? And for the girls kidnapped to serve as hostages and “sexual relief” for the criminals of Hamas?

This was sexism at the murder and torture level. This was feminism, Hamas-style.

 

We need to stop expecting anything resembling basic decency or sense from Justin.

He clearly doesn't have it.

Instead, we must turn inward and ask ourselves why we tolerate this failure of a Peter Pan. 


Also:

Violent crimes targeting Jewish schoolchildren, storekeepers and other citizens totaled 77 last year, B’nai Brith yesterday said in its Annual Audit Of Anti-Semitic Incidents. The Criminal Code complaints were in addition to thousands of other incidents from online slurs to death chants at public rallies: “O Allah destroy the enemies of the people of Gaza.”

** 

First fact is that strict majority of people I talked to are neither students nor affiliated with our university. We have something like 100,000 students and tons of staff, so it’s not hard to find them! But yeah, “student encampment” is just objectively wrong as a description.
They took down one piece of fencing on the quad where convocation events happen next week, and have a handful of (masked) people controlling entry. I walked around the “sign-in” and no one noticed for ten minutes or so. But it’s *not* free entry.
The “security” and “spokesperson” both explicitly said that if you don’t support the collective’s view on Palestine, you aren’t welcome and they will remove you. Actually, I was specifically told to leave now or “it would become more uncomfortable.”
When I said, what do you mean, he tried to play it off as that it would be “embarrassing.” I did see a large group (50 people or so) surround a different woman who’d gotten in and start chanting “all Zionists are evil.”
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In terms of posters, honestly, it was just a general melange of far-left policy. There was a speaker who was at the Wet’suwet’en protest (long story, but “traditional leaders” vs. elected leaders of a First Nation in B.C. on resource development), a Congo flag, a climate sign, etc.
One (white) person explained to me it was a black & brown led group. I responded that visibly the protesters are fairly obviously overwhelmingly white people. I was told this was only because non-white people don’t feel safe joining but that they all support it.
I talked to another protester about how, safety-wise, surely they must understand that a giant “Honour to the Martyrs” poster is interpreted as pro-violence given how that term is used in the Gaza conflict. She insisted martyr and intifada aren’t violent terms.
I asked “why protest here,” especially to folks who had no personal link to U of T. They said because U of T won’t divest. I said U of T has no such investments other than index funds and the like, same as that owned by the Canada Pension Plan or Teacher’s Pension or their parents.
Response was always “we agree, everyone’s complicit in genocide.” At one point, a group I was talking to argued that Kenya sending peacekeeping troops to Haiti was colonial violence. Given language, I suspect IMT (the International Marxist Tendency) played a role in organizing.
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I discussed alternatives with some of the groups. Free speech, right to protest, Chicago principles: all great! But banning people who don’t agree with you, by force, from a common space on campus, especially when graduation for poor HS class of 2020 is next week, isn’t speech.
The university response right now is basically “let it peter out.” They have campus security in case a fight breaks out. But they’re still complicit in allowing the “entry gate” — an older woman with a Marxist shirt claimed to be the “group liaison with the school.”

**

On the surface level, there is a series of student groups that are organizing these protests—the most prominent among them being Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP), Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP) and Within Our Lifetime (WOL). “SJP has no U.S. revenue service (IRS) status and most of the money sources are hidden, which raises major concerns,” Steinberg said. “There is simply no transparency about who is funding them.”

Hatem Bazian, the founder of SJP, is one of the clearest links between these protests and terror organizations. Bazian was previously a major fundraiser for the Ohio-based nonprofit Kindhearts, which was censured in 2006 by the U.S. Treasury Department for giving money to Hamas. Kindhearts settled with the Treasury Department and was dissolved in 2012 over the 2006 case.

Bazian was also a prominent advocate and speaker for the Islamic Association for Palestine (IAP), which shut down after it was found liable in civil court in 2004 for its support of Hamas. “Hatem Bazian, the head of SJP, has clear connections to various terror organizations,” Steinberg told JNS.

A recent report by the New York-based Institute for the Study of Global Antisemitism and Policy (ISGAP) shed some light on the source of SJP’s funding. ISGAP found the central donors to be Westchester People’s Action Coalition (WESPAC); Tides Foundation; American Muslims for Palestine (AMP), its parent organization Americans for Justice in Palestine (AJP); and JVP.

Bazian is also a co-founder of AMP. AMP is currently under investigation by the Virginia Attorney General after being accused of being a reincarnation of the IAP. Its former executive director, Abdelbaset Hamayel, and its current one, Osama Abuirshaid, were IAP board members and directors, respectively.

AMP has denied any links to Hamas but confirmed that the charity gives grants of between $500 and $2,000 to pro-Palestinian student groups. AMP’s national board member Salah Sarsour was also a major fundraiser for the Holy Land Foundation, which was designated a terrorist group in 2001 for funneling more than $12 million to Hamas.

**

A total 179 Gazans have received Canadian visas to date, figures show. Nearly 8,000 have applied, said the Department of Immigration: “This is Canada’s effort to get people out.”

 

 

 

That is because foreign meddling benefited the Liberals:

It’s 2024, and Justin Trudeau’s Liberal government has tabled the foreign-interference bill that would have been so useful in 2019.
A new offence for foreign interference, with serious jail time as the penalty, would have been in effect before the last election. A foreign registry would not just be on the drawing board, but in place and working years before the 2025 election. Now it will almost certainly come after the vote.
The Canadians from diaspora communities who were intimidated by proxies of foreign governments or police and felt like there wasn’t much of a response when they called the cops – maybe they’d already feel more secure.
But Mr. Trudeau’s government hemmed and hawed and delayed. Then there was a year and a half of troubling headlines and half a public inquiry and, finally, legislation about foreign interference.
By now, even the Liberals have to wonder how much trouble they might have spared themselves if they had just done this stuff sooner. Only the screaming urgency of political necessity made them act, and by the time they did, political damage had been done.



Slavery never went anywhere:

Border agents still have not prevented a single shipment from entering Canada on suspicion it was linked to forced labour, new data shows, almost four years after the country adopted new rules under the renegotiated North American trade pact. 

That’s a stark contrast to enforcement in the United States, where authorities report they have denied thousands of shipments of goods within the past two years over concerns they were made or sourced using forced labour.
It also comes as the Liberal government in Ottawa continues to promise it will table delayed legislation to “eradicate” forced labour from Canadian supply chains — a commitment first made during the 2021 federal election campaign — and as the first deadline approaches for businesses and federal institutions to report on their efforts to ensure the products they use aren’t tied to forced labour.

 



The entire bill's goal is not protection but censorship:

The long-awaited legislation proposes to create a new digital safety regulator and includes changes to the Criminal Code to usher in stiffer penalties for hate-related crimes.

That has been met with heavy scrutiny, along with the government's plan to reintroduce a section of the Canadian Human Rights Act to allow people to file complaints about hate speech online.

Critics warn that doing so could chill free speech, while Justice Department officials say only the most extreme examples of hate speech would be targeted.

 

What would those examples be?

Like these:

The CRTC is asking Canadian broadcasters for extensive details on their diversity initiatives in hiring and broadcasting.

 In a four-page letter sent May 1 by email, the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC) asked broadcasters six questions on their “program offerings and employment opportunities” to see if they met the requirements of the Online Streaming Act.

 “This includes the representation of Canadians from Black or other racialized communities and Canadians of diverse ethnocultural backgrounds, socio-economic statuses, abilities and disabilities, sexual orientations, gender identities and expressions, and ages,” the letter says. “Further, broadcasters must provide opportunities to Indigenous persons and programming that reflects Indigenous cultures and languages.” 

 

(Sidebar: what's a "racialized"?)

 

Unelected and unaccountable are setting up a template.

Surely, they can pay for these things themselves.


And - oh, do you think so?:

The Leger online survey found 57 per cent of respondents who said free speech in Canada is under threat.
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Of those, 34 per cent said it was “somewhat” threatened, while 23 per cent said they consider the threat a serious one.
Some 36 per cent said their free-speech rights were in no danger, while seven per cent said they didn’t know or did not answer.



The free-for-all that is Canada:

One of the suspects accused of gunning down B.C. Sikh temple leader Hardeep Singh Nijjar entered Canada using a study permit that he said took only days to obtain.

In a video posted online in 2019, Karan Brar said he applied for a student visa through EthicWorks Immigration Services in Bathinda, in India’s Punjab state.

“And in a few days I received my study visa,” he said.



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