Your middle-of-the-week dose of sanity ...
How are these people NOT robber-barons?:
Cabinet has doubled the cost of executive salaries since 2016, new records show. The disclosure follows a Budget Office warning that growth in federal payroll costs was worrisome: “Yes, it is worrisome.”
And the chief robber-baron is this douche-tool:
Dear PM Trudeau,
— The Food Professor (@FoodProfessor) November 20, 2024
If someone uses fiscal punitive measures to influence the climate while asking their people to prioritize the environment over feeding their children or paying rent, that person should not be holding their country's highest office.
Signed,
TFP. https://t.co/fsyw8zBYZX
**
Trudeau hopped on a plane to fly 8,280 km to take the stage at the Global Citizen Now Event at the G20 Leaders’ Summit Rio de Janeiro, Brazil to lecture the audience and Canadians about our country’s role in saving the entire planet.
He opened by insisting it is morally selfish to put food and lodging concerns above contributions to the carbon tax.
He told the audience: “It’s really, really easy when you’re in a short-term survive, I gotta be able to pay the rent this month, I’ve gotta be able to buy groceries for my kids, to say, OK, let’s put climate change as a slightly lower priority.” Then, as if he were a proud undergrad reciting textbook material, he mentions Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, but then doesn’t address these very real practical concerns.
He continued: “There’s a sense that affordability is in direct contrast with our moral responsibility to protect the planet. And that is something that unfortunately people have been amplified and used propaganda, misinformation, disinformation, and flat out lies to scare people into saying, oh, no, no, no. We’ve gotta take care of our household budget and bottom line first and environment second.”
A disgusting, mouth-breathing groomer.
Boissonnault’s departure comes at a bad time for the prime minister, who’s repeatedly touted the need for a unified “Team Canada” approach to bilateral relations with the United States, in advance of the looming return of Donald Trump’s “America First” agenda to Washington.
Trudeau will now need to do this without a single emissary in his cabinet to either Alberta or Saskatchewan, both major exporters of energy and agricultural products to the U.S.
Calgary Conservative MP Greg McLean told the National Post on Tuesday that Trudeau has himself to blame for the lack of representation.
“There’s a reason (the Liberals) don’t have good representation in Alberta,” said McLean. “It’s because they’ve worked against Alberta’s interests for a long time.”
Justin thought that parkas would protect the Yazidi from mass rape and murder:
Ten years ago, the Islamic State committed one of the worst crimes against humanity of recent times: the genocide of Iraq’s Yazidi religious minority.
After surrounding their villages, ISIS fighters gave the Yazidis an ultimatum: convert or die. It then executed the men and took the women and girls as slaves.
The massacres left Yazidis a scattered people, still trying to reunite their divided families while awaiting justice for the atrocities committed against them.
For many Yazidis, justice means prosecuting ISIS members for what they did in Syria and Iraq, but such cases remain rare in Canada.
Only three of the nine ISIS women who have returned to Canada from Syria face any criminal charges. None of the four women now living disconcertingly close to Bashar in Alberta have been charged.
But no one had a problem when Trump deported migrants and they all came to Canada:
Canadians are feeling increasingly uneasy about immigration and its role in generating "economic strain," according to a new survey conducted by the Canadian Museum for Human Rights.
Among other things, the survey found that many Canadians believe too much attention is being focused on newcomers and refugees, and that asylum seekers receive too many benefits.
Also - it is easy to get into Canada and stay here without any desire to actually be Canadian.
One will even receive benefits for that.
Now ... :
A new poll from Angus Reid finds a majority of Canadians still consider themselves to be happy, but that number has been decreasing in recent years. What’s more, non-white and new Canadians seem to be faring the worst in the growing trend of unhappiness.
The survey questioned more than 1,600 adult Canadians last summer, resulting in a margin of error of plus or minus two per cent, 19 times of out 20. It found that 61 per cent of Canadians identified themselves as “very happy” or “pretty happy” in their lives, with the over-55s leading the pack at 68 per cent. ...
The survey found that people born in Canada were most likely to be very or pretty happy (64 per cent) versus not too happy or not happy at all (35 per cent) compared to immigrants who have been here for 20 years or less. That group was more likely to report being unhappy (48 per cent) than happy (45 per cent), with 7 per cent saying they weren’t sure.
Only in Canada can someone this odious remain ahead:
Amid the ongoing controversy over a planned vigil commemorating Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar, the mayor of Mississauga, Ont., compared the deceased terrorist to Nelson Mandela during a council meeting on Wednesday.
(Sidebar: much to what one can assume was Carolyn Parrish's great disappointment, the vigil did not take place.)
**
Mississauga Mayor Carolyn Parrish — facing calls for an apology for comments seeming to defend Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar — has a long history of antagonism toward Israel, dating back to her time as a Liberal MP, a perch she lost after insulting George W. Bush and all Americans. ...
Parrish has a history of getting in trouble for what she has said. In 2003, Canadian journalist David Frum chronicled her vocal opposition to Israel throughout her early political life. In 2002, when Parrish was a Liberal MP, she accompanied several MPs to the West Bank and Gaza. She reportedly thanked the trip organizers by telling them: “You got your money’s worth. You have nine members of Parliament who’ve come back completely and totally convinced that what’s going on over there is a crime against humanity.”
Parrish’s impression of Israel, according to Frum, was reinforced by Palestinian misinformation alleging that the Jewish state killed hundreds in the Jenin refugee camp in April 2002, following a Hamas suicide bombing during the Second Intifada, despite news reports to the contrary.
“Palestinian sources originally claimed there were 3,000 dead in the street fighting, later lowering the tally to 500. An independent report found the actual number to be around 50, more than half of whom were terrorists. Despite the clarification, the myth of a Jenin massacre persists,” researchers at the Foundations for the Defense of Democracies wrote in a 2023 report. ...
Parrish was ousted from the Liberal Party caucus in 2004 for calling Americans “bastards” and appearing on a sketch comedy show stomping on a doll of then-President George W. Bush. She sat as an Independent MP until January 2006. She did not run in the 2006 federal election and was elected as a Mississauga city councillor in November of that year.
Also - Stephen Harper did not defund the CBC when he should have:
The CBC is at it again. This time, they’re explaining away the attacks on Israeli soccer fans that happened in Amsterdam on Nov. 7, suggesting there is a “clearer,” much more “nuanced” explanation for the violence that was doled out that night by individuals who chased and assaulted Jews in the street.
Which acts made Israeli soccer fans across the city deserving of such violence? The CBC points to a Nov. 11 joint letter by the Amsterdam mayor, police chief and chief prosecutor to council members, which states that some taxis in some parts of the city were vandalized, allegedly by Israelis; that an Israeli soccer fan took down a Palestinian flag from a building; and that others chanted slogans supporting the Israel Defense Forces. Is the CBC intentionally gaslighting Jews? ...
In reality, Amsterdam’s mayor breaks down events without the very-little-antisemitism-to-see-here rhetoric that our taxpayer-funded national broadcaster’s article suggests.
The CBC, meanwhile, suggests that the mayor of Amsterdam was wrong for blaming locals in a Nov. 8 statement condemning the “hateful, antisemitic rioters and criminals (who) attacked and beat up Jewish, Israeli visitors.” However, nothing in her letter to council on Nov. 11 contradicted her earlier words.
The CBC story continues by quoting remarks from several high-profile figures prior to the release of the mayor’s letter, including Dutch Prime Minister Dick Schoof denouncing “unacceptable antisemitic attacks,” King Willem-Alexander saying his country had failed Jews again and Israeli President Isaac Herzog referring to the violence a “pogrom.” Assumedly to diminish the severity of events, the CBC reporter follows up with a “but” and a claim that the letter in question “indicates it was Israeli fans who initiated the first attacks, which then spiralled.”
But taking down a flag is not an attack. Random vandalism on taxi cabs, allegedly perpetrated by Israelis, is also not an attack. Nor is chanting offensive slogans. Has this reporter even been in Montreal on a Canadiens playoff game night? Forget taxis, police cars get overturned and set ablaze.
The mayor’s letter does not even make it clear that any Israelis were arrested for taxi vandalism, or whether the taxis that were vandalized were the same ones that refused service to Israelis, a common occurrence that evening. Not that refusal excuses vandalism, but it might provide a “clearer picture” of why some vandalism may have occurred.
Unlike the CBC’s downplaying of events, the letter by Amsterdam authorities does not mince words about the “aggressive and threatening messages” that appeared on “several social media platforms” prior to the attacks on Israelis.
We’re plainly told that police monitored the spike in these messages on open and closed Telegram and WhatsApp groups. The tone of these suggestions “grew harsher” and “antisemitic.” Authorities later concluded that these messages were primarily made by “young Moroccan Amsterdammers” who turned against the Israeli team supporters. They noted a “significant level of aggression and willingness to act, and, in some cases, mobilization at specific locations.” As if that wasn’t enough, police “received reports that taxi drivers were being called to assemble at Strandvliet metro station, where the Maccabi supporters would be disembarking.”
If Canadians actually knew their own history, the grievance industry would grind to a halt:
The case against Macdonald largely requires you not to care about the intricate details of the past and, if you do, to interpret them only as would a crown prosecutor, not someone who was genuinely trying to understand life in that foreign country that is history. It requires you to look largely at only Canada, and, even then, to not contemplate the values and norms of his era. And the moralizing prosecution is carried out most strenuously by radicals who would find fault with just about anything done by someone they see as just another dead white man.
Patrice Dutil’s new book takes an entirely different approach. He wants us to walk in the shoes of Macdonald through one pivotal year: 1885. ...
Dutil lays bare some of the more ludicrous attacks that have been, in too many circles, taken at face value. Notably, there is the idea that Macdonald led a policy of genocide that attempted to starve the Plains Indians into submission in the 1880s. This idea gained publicity with the publication of James Daschuk’s book “Clearing the Plains: Disease, Politics of Starvation, and the Loss of Indigenous Life.” Dutil examines the case that has been drawn out of that book and lays bare its feeble foundations. Macdonald is said to have set policies that starved Indigenous peoples on the plains who were suffering from the effects of the decline of the buffalo. The broader phenomenon is accurate — the disappearance of the buffalo from the plain was a horrendous cultural and nutritional disaster for those who had relied on the hunt for survival.
Yet, when Dutil starts counting — asking how many people died and why — what becomes evident is that Daschuk’s book largely relied on generalizations based on only a handful of cases. Dutil finds in Daschuk’s book records of only 65 people who are said to have died in the key “starvation years” from 1879 to 1884 — and of these, 20 died of food poisoning. These deaths also largely occurred in the communities led by the two chiefs (Piapot and Big Bear) who most resisted Macdonald’s policy — who held out on signing treaties and taking up reserves. What Dutil shows is that Macdonald’s government spent huge sums of money trying to send food west — spending more on Indian affairs than almost any other aspect of government.
What’s more, it was precisely a desire to assist Indigenous peoples to shift towards an agricultural lifestyle — where they could feed themselves on the Prairies without the buffalo — that lay behind the other kinds of assimilation measures like residential schools, that are also now derided and attacked as “genocidal.” What Dutil does is expose the hard choices that lay behind a policy that had such terrible consequences, letting readers understand the political logic behind it.
“History is a tragedy, not a morality tale” is the fitting quotation from I.F. Stone that Dutil sets above his conclusion. There is much that is tragic about 1885 and the kinds of policies that Macdonald and others put in place. There is much that we might now find offensive — the common sensical race talk of the late 19th century, or the surety with which Macdonald and others spoke of civilization. And yet, there is also much to learn from taking this world — and the ideas of those who actually lived in 1885 — at face value — and trying to understand them for what they were.
For one thing — we will be surprised. We’ll be surprised to see Macdonald promoting a new bill to extend the franchise to women property owners, decades before women would eventually come to have the vote in most western countries. Macdonald lowered voting qualifications for working-class men and wanted to give women the vote as well as Indigenous peoples who met the same property qualifications. When his Liberal opponents criticized his desire to include Indigenous peoples as voters, he argued that Indians were “just as fit, as far as intellect goes, as far as education goes, as far as having an interest in the prosperity of the country goes, as their white brethren.” To deny them the right to vote was an “injustice.” When the vote for status Indians in Eastern Canada finally passed, he called it “the greatest triumph of (his) life”
Canadian students are afraid to air their views in public:
Three in five Canadian university students say they fear expressing their honest views on contentious political issues due to potential backlash from peers and instructors, a campus free speech survey says.
Participants in a survey of 1,548 university and college students were asked if they felt comfortable discussing “controversial issues” in the classroom, such as the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, transgender issues, and other politically charged subjects.
“Students were asked about potential consequences from other students and instructors if they shared their honest thoughts, ideas, and questions during a class discussion,” said the survey report, which was conducted by the non-profit organization Heterodox Academy (HxA).
Potential consequences feared by the students included formal career repercussions, such as an instructor refusing to write a recommendation letter, as well as informal social consequences, such as a classmate posting negative comments on social media about the student’s character, the report said.
Sixty-three percent of those surveyed said “they feared at least one formal consequence if they expressed their honest thoughts and opinions during class,” the report said.
“Among responses, students feared retribution from professors more than they were concerned about formal complaints from other students.”
The cry-bully culture is alive and well.
Any medical professional who doesn't take part in abortion or euthanasia or get the Covid jab can lose his or her license:
A doctor stripped of his licence to practice in 2018 for having sex with a patient has been reinstated, though he will have to do so with “at least three months of moderate-level supervision,” according to the Ontario Physicians and Surgeons Discipline Tribunal.
After that, Dr. Sugan Kayilasanathan — who in an unrelated incident was acquitted in 2011 of sexually assaulting a medical student — will undergo “a period of low-level supervision” for at least three months until a college-appointed expert completes an assessment of his practice.
The burn that keeps happening:
Kamala Harris and the Democratic Party’s prodigious fundraising operation raised more than $1 billion in her loss to Donald Trump, but the vice president is still pushing donors for more money after the election.
Putin expects some cannon fodder for Russia's running interference for North Korea:
North Korea may deploy as many as 100,000 troops to aid Russia’s war on Ukraine if the alliance between Pyongyang and Moscow continues to deepen, according to people familiar with assessments made by some Group of 20 nations.
The analysis is one of several on the evolving partnership between Russian President Vladimir Putin and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, said the people, speaking on condition of anonymity to talk about private discussions. They stressed that such a move wasn’t imminent and that military support at that scale — if it occurred — would likely happen in batches with troops rotating over time rather than in a single deployment.
We don't have to trade with China:
“Many of the existing tools remain underutilized or utilized in inconsistent or incoherent ways. As part of the Commission’s series of recommendations, the Commissioner can and should recommend that existing immigration and sanctions laws be leveraged to support and protect victims,” the Human Rights Coalition wrote in its submission to the foreign interference inquiry on Nov. 4.
The coalition, representing diaspora communities primarily from China, including Falun Gong practitioners, Hongkongers, Uyghurs, and Tibetans, submitted its report following the final round of inquiry hearings in September and October. The hearings focused on foreign interference, particularly by Beijing, aimed at undermining Canadian democracy and targeting diaspora communities with harassment and intimidation.
**
Swedish investigators are looking into the movements of a Chinese vessel in the Baltic Sea after two internet cables were severed, in what some Western leaders suspect was an act of sabotage.The Yi Peng 3, a Chinese-registered bulk carrier passed close to Swedish-Lithuanian and Finnish-German cables at the time both were mysteriously damaged on Sunday and Monday, according to ship tracking data.Sweden is now “taking a hard look” at Yi Peng 3 and the role it might have played in both incidents, a source familiar with the investigation told the Financial Times.The vessel had been travelling from Ust-Luga in Russia to Port Said in Egypt, through the Baltic Sea when the 730-mile fibre optic cable C-Lion1, the only such direct connection between central Europe to Finland and another cable were cut, causing some internet outages in Lithuania.A Danish navy vessel appears to have pursued the Yi Peng 3 on Tuesday evening according to marine traffic data.The same data showed HDMS Soloeleven, another Danish military ship, on Wednesday morning staying close to the Chinese carrier.
Ladies and gentlemen, Mr. Shuntaro Tanikawa:
Renowned poet Shuntaro Tanikawa, who is also known for translating the Snoopy and Charlie Brown comic strip “Peanuts” into Japanese, died on Nov. 13 at a Tokyo hospital in Suginami Ward of natural causes, his office said Tuesday. He was 92.
