And the Rest of It

A few notes ...

 

What's in YOUR wallet, Chrystia?:

Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland’s department confidentially polled Canadians on resentment against “the rich” before announcing an $18 billion hike in the capital gains tax, records show. Freeland, a millionaire, within days of receiving the pollsters’ report began characterizing critics as having “rich friends.”

But ... the floorboards!:

The idea that Catholic nuns oversaw clandestine burials in the school orchard was first put about by a defrocked protestant minister who arrived on the Canadian scene in the late 1990s with stories about murders, kidnappings, the incineration of children and an archipelago of mass graves at residential schools across the country. The Tk’emlúps’ report of May 27, 2021 gave every impression of confirming what had been one of Canada’s most ghastly urban legends.

“This report has caused renewed grief and dismay in Indigenous communities, especially for those who attended the Kamloops Indian Residential School and for intergenerational survivors,” according to the Easter covenant’s text. “Many of those grieving are devout Catholics who, with others, are seeking solace, affirmation, and accountability from the Catholic Church.”

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The Tk’emlúps’ May, 2021 statement allowed the term “mass grave” to jump from the realm of macabre conspiracy theory to headlines across the country and around the world. A New York Times headline from the following day: “Horrible History: Mass Grave of Indigenous Children Reported in Canada.” CTV News: “The discovery of the mass grave is gripping the nation tonight. . .” The Toronto Star: Mass grave of Indigenous children discovered in Kamloops BC.The CBC: “After childrens’ mass grave found, advocates say it’s time to scan all residential school sites.”

The Trudeau government jumped on the story, calling for a period of national reckoning along the lines of the American soul-searching exercise precipitated by the 2020 murder of a Black man, George Floyd, by a Minneapolis police officer. That exercise ended up in waves of violent civil disturbances.

By the time Chief Casimir first tried to set the record straight, five days after its first shocking statement, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau had already lowered the flag on Parliament Hill and on all flags across the country. They would remain at half-mast for several months, and Ottawa committed $320 million to assist in the search for graves around residential school sites across Canada.

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In her first clarification, Casimir noted that the GPR survey was “very preliminary,” referring to the “initial horrific findings of what potentially could be, they are very preliminary. . . there could very well be children beneath the surface.” Three days later, Casimir was even clearer: “This is not a mass grave, but rather unmarked burial sites that are, to our knowledge, also undocumented.”

However, the waters were muddied the following month when Casimir is recorded as having moved a motion at a gathering of the Assembly of First Nations, referring to “the mass grave discovered at the former Kamloops Indian Residential School.”

Before 2021 was over, a series of similarly-reported “discoveries” appeared in the news media, one after the other, involving allegations of secret or undisclosed burials of what added up to roughly 1,300 children at old residential-school sites. As it eventually turned out, in each case the confirmed burials were in known cemeteries, and the children’s deaths, almost entirely from infectious diseases, were dutifully recorded. There’s still sparse evidence that there are any “missing children,” strictly speaking, from the residential-school period.

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But the die was cast in Kamloops. Across Canada dozens of churches and shrines were desecrated, vandalized, and in many cases, burned to the ground, perhaps most poignantly old Indian reserve churches beloved of generations of Indigenous Catholics. While it became routine to hear maudlin expressions of discomfort from Trudeau and his ministers, there were riots, statues were toppled, and anti-Catholic hate crimes nearly tripled. In 2021, Statistics Canada noted “the highest number of hate crimes targeting a religion since comparable data have been recorded.”

Last month, Chief Casimir hinted strongly at what could be construed as repentance, or regret, on the third anniversary of the uproars. She announced a “day of reflection” in almost exactly the same words as her initial 2021 statement, describing the same “unthinkable loss that was spoken about but never documented.” Except this new version referred to “the stark truth” that came to light during the GPR survey as “preliminary findings” confirming that what had been detected were “215 anomalies.”

 

Not good enough. 

She jumped in front of cameras when it suited her. Now, she has had to walk back on the most outrageous claims and after great harm done. 

Speaking of irrational:

One of the core supporting elements of the famine claim was a report produced in March by the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC), a United Nations-backed project to gauge food insecurity in various parts of the world that’s partially funded by the Canadian government.

It claimed that a famine was imminent, spurring a senior UN official to opine that the alleged famine was “human-made” and “entirely preventable.” Even supposedly credible humanitarian organizations lazily regurgitated the claims. Except there was never a famine, nor anything close to it.

While the IPC report garnered global headlines in March, in early June, the organization produced a follow-up study that has curiously attracted virtually no media coverage.

The authors of the new study, in sharp contrast to alleging an impending famine, admit that the March report “relied on multiple layers of assumptions and inference, beginning with food availability and access in northern Gaza and continuing through nutritional status and mortality.” The organization has now backed away from predicting an imminent famine.

 

Oh, my ... 

Also - I thought that Putin had these guys under wraps:

Armed militants attacked two Orthodox churches, a synagogue and a traffic police post in Russia’s southern republic of Dagestan, killing a priest, a church security guard and at least six police officers, Russian state news agency Tass said Sunday.

Russia’s National Anti-Terrorism Committee said in a statement that a Russian Orthodox priest and police officers were killed in the “terrorist” attacks.

Dagestan’s Ministry of Internal Affairs said a group of armed men fired at a synagogue and a church in the city of Derbent, located on the Caspian Sea.

The attackers fled and a search for them was underway, the statement from the ministry said. Tass reported that the church and synagogue were set on fire in the attack.

 

 

We don't have to trade with China:

Mr. Matas has dedicated nearly two decades to exposing the Chinese regime’s systematic organ harvesting practice.

“Millions of families lost their loved ones to the state crime, which is comparable to the holocaust in World War II,” Mr. Zhang said.