Wednesday, January 15, 2025

Mid-Week Post

Your middle-of-the-week moment of bewilderment ...


Now in, a hostage deal - of sorts - is being reached with Hamas, the very people who perpetuated the October 7th attacks and expect to be rewarded for it:

Israel and Hamas have agreed to a ceasefire and hostage release deal, according to U.S. President-elect Donald Trump.

“This epic ceasefire agreement could have only happened as a result of our historic victory in November, as it signaled to the entire world that my administration would seek peace and negotiate deals to ensure the safety of all Americans and our allies,” Trump stated on Wednesday afternoon.

“I am thrilled American and Israeli hostages will be returning home to be reunited with their families and loved ones,” he added, noting that his national security team, through the efforts of Steve Witkoff, his nominee for special Middle East envoy, “will continue to work closely with Israel and our allies to make sure Gaza never again becomes a terrorist safe haven.”

“We will continue promoting peace through strength throughout the region, as we build upon the momentum of this ceasefire to further expand the historic Abraham Accords,” Trump stated. “This is only the beginning of great things to come for America, and indeed, the world.”

An Israeli source told the country’s Channel 12 News that the Palestinian terrorist group committed to the deal in writing, and Al Jazeera reported that a Hamas delegation, led by senior official Khalil al-Hayya, delivered the approval to mediators in Doha and Cairo. ...

The parties agreed to a six-week initial ceasefire phase that includes the gradual withdrawal of Israeli troops from the Gaza Strip and the release of the hostages in exchange for Palestinian terrorists held in Israeli prisons, an official briefed on the talks told Reuters.

 Hamas is holding 98 hostages, 94 of whom were taken during the Oct. 7, 2023, massacre and four of whom were captured in 2014, according to the Israeli Prime Minister’s Office. Thirty-six are deceased, including two from 2014 (Israeli Defense Forces Hadar Goldin and Oron Shaul).

 

This is a bad deal.

The very idea of negotiating with Hamas for corpses should be unthinkable and the trade-off - terrorists - for hostages being released in stages is uneven, to say the least.

As if Hamas can be trusted.



Back at home, the clown show meant to drag out the Trudeau government continues unabated:

Former finance minister Chrystia Freeland will announce her intention to run for the Liberal party leadership just before the U.S. presidential inauguration, a source close to her campaign team said Monday.

 

This Chrystia Freeland:

The cost to service the federal government's sizeable debtload will spike in the years ahead — and those public debt charges will eat up much more of Ottawa's revenue than they have in recent years, according to Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland's fall economic statement, tabled today.

Freeland's document suggests Canada will avoid a recession but predicts economic growth will slow to a crawl. Unemployment is set to rise nearly a full percentage point next year and tens of thousands more people could be out of work.

Freeland wants to spend about $20.8 billion more over the next six years than the federal government initially projected. Freeland is pitching the increase as smaller than in years' past and as a sign of fiscal prudence. Most of the new spending is earmarked for new housing initiatives, such as low-cost loans to builders, and climate-friendly projects.

**

A massive spike in reported lost federal revenue, combined with reported losses—accidental and otherwise—of public property and money, made 2023-24 a record year for such losses at close to $649.5-million overall, the highest such total in the last 10 years of federal public accounts. 

In 2022-23, losses across these three categories had totalled $534.2-million.

 

 

Then there is this clown:

In a pair of photos captured in 2013, Carney can be seen chatting with Ghislaine Maxwell. Taken at the Wilderness Festival — a U.K. music and arts festival that brands itself as a destination for “wholesome hedonism” — it shows a smiling Carney standing next to Maxwell along with his wife Diana Fox.

At the time, Maxwell was mostly known as a British socialite seen often in the company of charismatic U.S. financier Jeffrey Epstein. Now, she’s serving a 20-year jail term for assisting Epstein in running an elaborate pedophile sex-trafficking ring. ...

There are no rules forbidding Canadian party leaders from holding dual citizenship. Technically, it would even be possible for a non-citizen to be prime minister.

But dual citizenship has been a point of controversy for Canadian politicians before, most notably with former Conservative leader Andrew Scheer, who held citizenship in both the United States and Canada. Although Scheer publicly announced his intentions to renounce his U.S. citizenship, he abandoned the effort after losing the 2019 election. “Knowing that I won’t be prime minister, I discontinued that process,” Scheer told CTV at the time.

Carney is a citizen of three countries. Born a Canadian, he obtained Irish citizenship in the 1980s, and then British citizenship in 2018 when he was Governor of the Bank of England. ...

As British financial columnist Matthew Lynn put it, Carney presided over low growth and the decline of London as the world’s leading financial centre. “The Bank printed way too much money, stoking an asset bubble, and ultimately triggering the highest inflation rate in the G7,” wrote Lynn.

Carney was also one of the central figures of what the U.K. tabloid press has dubbed “Project Fear”; an organized effort warning of dire financial consequences if the U.K. followed through with its exit from the European Union. Carney’s successor, Andrew Bailey, has now publicly acknowledged that many of those warnings were overblown.


Carney has not veered away from attacking Pierre Poilievre and quite unimaginatively, too:

Carney wasn’t shy about attacking Poilievre after Stewart said Poilievre seemed “very off-putting” and “like a villain in a Karate Kid movie.”

 

Why IS Mark Carney campaigning in the US? 

**

Hardly an "outsider":

**

**

For any of the reasons that people normally seek greatness, there’s nothing in it him to be Prime Minister of Canada.

He’s a made man — and, a consummate ‘insider.’

That might surprise watchers of Jon Stewart's Daily Show. In a recent episode, Carney told the unwitting Stewart that as a contender for the Liberal leadership, he was an 'outsider.'

Well, not really.

As Calgary MP Michelle Rempel-Garner says in her Substack, Carney is “a close advisor to Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, a key architect of the Liberal government’s much-criticized agenda, and a high-ranking member of the world’s most elite organizations.”

Think World Economic Forum then, and also the Bilderbergers, The  Group of 30 — Carney is the G30 chairman — Chatham House and the Brookings Institution. They're Carney's crowd.

As Rempel-Garner said, 'He's not in the club, he runs the club.'

**

While Carney seems a shoe-in to be installed, that hasn't stopped anyone else from throwing their hats into the ring:

Former B.C. premier Christy Clark and Industry Minister François-Philippe Champagne both announced on Tuesday they won’t run to become leader of the Liberal Party of Canada. Meanwhile, Liberal House leader Karina Gould is expected to launch her leadership campaign later this week.


This Karina Gould:

Government House leader Karina Gould stood up on Monday afternoon to ask for unanimous consent to adopt a motion calling to strike “from the appendix of the House of Commons debates” and from “any House multimedia recording” the recognition made by Speaker Anthony Rota of Yaroslav Hunka, 98, whom he described as “a Ukrainian hero, a Canadian hero.”

Rota has apologized but is now facing calls for his resignation by two of the four recognized parties in the House since it was revealed that Hunka was in fact serving in the First Ukrainian Division, also known as the Waffen-SS Galicia Division or the SS 14th Waffen Division which was a voluntary unit that was under the command of the Nazis during the Second World War.

 

(Sidebar: from the most "transparent" government in the country's history.)

**

A “fact-checking” program launched in 2019 by then-Democratic Institutions Minister Karina Gould paid researchers nearly $370,000 to discourage media and the public from questioning authority, Access To Information records show. Researchers stressed the importance of invoking Canadian values to avoid being seen as Liberal partisans: “Dissenting voices, in some cases even just one, can weaken the power of a normative belief.”

**

Government House Leader Karina Gould yesterday would not disclose records regarding a human rights case in which she complained of an inability to get along with co-workers. Gould is contemplating a bid to become Prime Minister: ‘She describes a series of incidents in which she believes she was treated unfairly.’


All of this so that the unaccomplished frat-boy doesn't have to leave office but others might:

Trudeau has only announced he "intends to resign" as prime minister and Liberal leader. As of writing, he is still very much the prime minister and Liberal leader. He could well use the genuine (post) national crisis facing Canada as his casus belli to call an election right now. The feckless Liberal caucus would be powerless to stop him, and it would abort the still nascent leadership race. He would still likely lose the election, but it would give him at least a prayer of a chance of fighting on.

Trudeau could (at least try) to fashion himself in the anti-American cloak worn by his father, promising to protect Canada from Trump and paint Pierre Polievre as a fifth column that would sell Canada out as the 51st state.

And Justin's "Screw the West, we'll take the rest" strategy would be at its foundation: putting an export tax on Alberta and Saskatchewan oil in a trade war to protect Eastern manufacturing (that is, votes).

This would rightly trigger an unprecedented national unity crisis. Peter Lougheed and his PCs may have been staunch defenders of Alberta's resources and constitutional space, but he's a choir boy compared with Danielle Smith and the UCP of 2025. She keeps a spigot on the major sovereigntist movement flowing through that party right now. Yet, another Trudeau looting Alberta for raw political gain this cynically would likely see it blow.

(Sidebar: like so.)

It worked for Pierre Trudeau but salted the earth for Liberals in these parts for two generations.


Will there even be an election in October?


Also - sir, the people have spoken and they wanted you gone. Apparently, fiscal prudence just wasn't a Canadian value.

But it IS an American one and that is why the Liberals are scrambling now:

Stephen Harper said it was Canadians, not economic pressure from U.S. president-elect Donald Trump, that led Prime Minister Justin Trudeau to say he will resign. ...

Harper said the prime minister was in a “no-win” situation when he travelled to Trump’s compound in Florida after Trump’s initial threat of 25 per cent tariff on Canadian imports. While his attendance made it “look like he was grovelling,” Harper believes choosing to ignore an invitation would have been seen as not addressing an international relationship in need of repair.

Canada’s 22nd prime minister also doesn’t have much hope for whoever picks up the mantle of new Liberal leader in late March.

Likening their plight to that of U.S. Vice-President Kamala Harris, who had to carry forth the Democratic party’s record when she became its presidential candidate in July, Harper said a new Grit boss would quickly be faced with an election “where nobody wants that record to continue.”

“It’s hard for me to imagine how they could reframe the government that’s so unpopular and make themselves electable in the space of a few weeks,” he said.

 

(Sidebar: I can.) 

**

But it took them nine years:

In his most explicit critique of his successor to date, former prime minister Stephen Harper said the government of Justin Trudeau has failed on basically every possible metric and has “denigrated” the country.

“All of the results of that government are bad; I mean virtually everything has been bad,” Harper told Florida-based podcaster Gabe Groisman this week.

On economics, Harper said “the damage is undeniable,” and he also accused Trudeau of pursuing a “woke agenda that has really denigrated the country’s culture and history and institutions.”

“I think Canadians have reacted more strongly against that than even the economic results,” said Harper.


More national news:

 **

Readers trying to understand the many claims made about the number of children who died at residential schools can be forgiven for being confused about what they are being told. Various numbers, such as 3,201, 4,000, 6,000, and even 50,000 have been advanced by different people at different times.

So, what is the actual number of documented deaths of named children who died while attending a residential school?

In fact, Volume 4 of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission Report provides the answer.

It is 423.

That is the total number of documented deaths of indigenous children who died while attending the 134 residential schools that operated in Canada from 1883 until the last one closed in 1998.

(An additional 409 “unnamed” deaths are recorded, but the TRC Report  acknowledges the fact that many, or all, of them are likely duplicates of the named deaths).

So where did those other numbers come from?

The 3,201 is the total of the named deaths (423), the unnamed deaths (409) and a  guess by the TRC that all of the former students who died within one year after their attendance at a residential school died as a result of their attendance at residential school. (see chart above)

An investigation into the death records of the children who died within one year of their residential school attendance quickly shows that the number is an overestimation. For example, some of those deaths were from accidents that occurred where the child lived on their home reserve, and had nothing to do with residential schools. Some occurred after illnesses contracted on their home reserve, and not at school.

But of even more significance, there is no good evidence that the children who died at, or within one year of attendance at a residential school, contracted their illnesses (usually tuberculosis) at the residential school. How many of those children would have died if they had not attended is simply unknown.

An unrelated example might be helpful to illustrate this point: English poet, John Keats, was one of the millions of adults and children who died of tuberculosis in previous centuries, before antibiotics were discovered. He died at age 25. Although he contracted the disease in England, he died at a residence in Rome. It would obviously be absurd to blame Keat’s death on that Roman residence, or on Rome.

It is equally absurd to blame a residential school for killing a child, if that child had arrived at the school already infected with tuberculosis. Only if the child was not infected when he arrived at the school could the school and system be blamed. It is a fact that we simply don’t know how many children arrived at the schools already infected, and how many were infected at the schools.

However, the findings of the chief medical officer of the time, Dr. Peter Bryce, suggest that most of the children contracted tuberculosis on their home reserve. Bryce supervised the tuberculosis testing of Indian children from eight Indian reserves when they first arrived at residential school. Incredibly, every one of those children entering residential school for the first time tested positive for tuberculosis. This is proof that they contracted their tuberculosis on their home reserves. In all probability those children’s’ tuberculosis would have progressed and killed them even if they had stayed home.

Their report(see page 253).

Bryce’s investigations also found that a stunning 92.5% of all Indian students beginning their attendance at both day and residential schools tested positive for tuberculosis. Poor malnutrition, crowded housing, lack of basic hygiene in their prairie reserve homes all contributed to the shockingly high tuberculosis rates. 

On some western reserves the death rate from tuberculosis was a staggering 9%. These were the reserves that the students came from, so it should surprise no one that some died.

Bryce is remembered as the brave doctor who blew the whistle on the bad tuberculosis conditions at residential schools that prevailed in the early 1900s. He is that.

But he also blew the whistle on the even worse tuberculosis conditions on the reserves where the students came from. The unfortunate children who died of tuberculosis while attending a residential school represent a tiny fraction of the many thousands of reserve residents who died of tuberculosis, but never saw a residential school.

It is simply not known how many of the 3201 children died because of their attendance at a residential school, and how many would have died if they had stayed home. The only things we can say for certain about the number “3201” is that it is an exaggeration, and a guess.

As for the other numbers that have been advanced, such as 4,100 and 6,000, these are simply that original 3201, with additional names arbitrarily added by the National Centre for Truth and Reconciliation (NCTR — the successor to the TRC) at the request of anyone who wanted to commemorate an ancestor who had once attended a residential school. So, Helen Betty Osborne, who was murdered years after her residential school attendance, and a former student who died at the age of 86, are two of the people named on that list.

Their deaths had nothing to do with residential schools. The NCTR “Memorial Register” is meaningless as an information source, and more closely resembles a Coutts Hallmark card.

And what about even larger numbers that have been claimed by indigenous activists? Former TRC Murray Sinclair claimed that  “15-25,000, maybe more”, children died at residential schools; former National Chief RoseAnne Archibald said that “thousands, tens of thousands” were deliberately killed; Tk’emlups Chief Roseanne Casimir said “215” were secretly buried at Kamloops.

There is no credible evidence to support any of these wild claims The most likely inspiration for those numbers come from the fabulist, Kevin Annett,  who was taken quite seriously by Canada’s mainstream media, including the Globe and Mail, and by Canadian university indigenous studies departments (despite his preposterous claims that 50,000 and more students were killed in every conceivable way, and were “buried between church walls all over Canada”).

 

Perhaps one should focus on more recent matters:

Nine years of reconciliation have not led to “any tangible improvements in the qualify of life for Indigenous people,” says a Privy Council report. In-house focus group research found First Nations, Inuit and Métis questioned the point of cabinet’s friendship when many communities had undrinkable tap water: “Most did not feel the prioritization of this issue had led to any tangible improvements.”

 **

Remember that Justin threatened to sue veterans for "asking for too much":

Canada should honour volunteers who served in the 1990 Persian Gulf conflict as legitimate wartime veterans, the Commons veterans affairs committee says in its final report to the 44th Parliament. The “legal semantics” of whether veterans were at war or not meant reduced disability benefits for 4,458 Canadians who served in Operation Desert Shield and Desert Storm: “Wrong answer.”

**

Cabinet quietly polled Canadians on a home equity tax even after promising it would not introduce the measure, records disclose. Cabinet aides commissioned focus groups on the question as Prime Minister Justin Trudeau attended an invitation-only meeting with home equity tax advocates in Vancouver last June: “We can all learn from each other.”

 


Canada the cruel:

When a Canadian child was rushed to the hospital after nearly drowning, his parents say doctors threatened to take the child off life support and suggested harvesting his organs. 

“We had 14 days to prepare his funeral and say goodbye to him,” Nicolas Tétrault, the boy’s father and a former Montreal politician, told The Federalist in English, his second language. “They were promoting to harvest the organs and give them away.”

Tétrault said his two-year-old son, Arthur, drowned in October. An ambulance took Arthur to a hospital where doctors resuscitated him, and he was later transferred to Montreal Children’s Hospital, where he was stabilized. But doctors told his parents Arthur had brain damage and an abnormal breathing pattern. According to Tétrault, after approximately five weeks doctors gave an ultimatum — they would “unplug” the boy from life support on Nov. 29.

So Tétrault and his wife fled with Arthur to New Orleans, where he is being treated at Ochsner Medical Center and is off a ventilator.

**

According to a recent report, “euthanasia regulators have tracked 428 cases of possible criminal violations” in Ontario between 2018 and 2023, and none were reported to police. One doctor in Vancouver repeatedly accused of violating MAID rules has helped kill hundreds of patients, as The Federalist reported. According to CTV News, one family recently named the doctor and her clinic in a lawsuit for alleged “unlawful administration of MAID,” claiming this resulted in a psychiatric patient’s “wrongful death.”

The MAID process may appear morbidly peaceful. In “clinician-administered” MAID, “a physician or nurse practitioner directly administers a substance that causes death.”

As laid out in the MAID protocol for the Northwestern territories, this often involves the injection of multiple chemicals, including midazolam, a sedative; propofol, which induces a coma; and rocuronium or cisatracurium, which paralyze muscles. Ireland called it the “stuff of nightmares,” noting this cocktail creates the appearance of calm while a patient experiences respiratory arrest.

The alternative method, often called “self-administered medical assistance in dying,” involves “a physician or nurse practitioner provid[ing] or prescrib[ing] a drug that the eligible person takes themselves, in order to bring about their own death.”

Ireland provided a signed affidavit to The Federalist from Pat Gray, an elderly patient Ireland said is now deceased. A doctor allegedly encouraged Gray to accept MAID, but she refused, according to the document.

“One day, she decided to offer me MAiD. I quickly said no and then showed her my bookmark that said, ‘With God all things are possible,'” the patient wrote. “[I]f God wants to use my life longer for even one more miracle, it will be worth it.”

 **

At least 15,000 Canadians died while waiting for surgery or a diagnostic scan over the course of a year, according to government data collected by public policy think tank SecondStreet.org.

The true figure for the fiscal year 2023-24 is likely nearly double owing to a “huge hole” in the data, said SecondStreet president Colin Craig. Missing are data from Quebec, Alberta, Newfoundland and Labrador and most of Manitoba.


 

Slave labour.

Call it what it is:

"If there are 31 days in a month, I will work 31 days," one worker told the BBC.

Most said they only have one day off a month.

The BBC spent several days here: we visited 10 factories, spoke to four owners and more than 20 workers. We also spent time at labour markets and textile suppliers.

We found that the beating heart of this empire is a workforce sitting behind sewing machines for around 75 hours a week in contravention of Chinese labour laws.

These hours are not unusual in Guangzhou, an industrial hub for rural workers in search of a higher income; or in China, which has long been the world's unrivalled factory.

But they add to a growing list of questions about Shein, once a little-known Chinese-founded company that has become a global behemoth in just over five years.

 


If, in fact, South Korea has been seized by North Korean interests, things will get really bad:

Impeached South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol was arrested and questioned by authorities in relation to a criminal insurrection investigation on Wednesday, saying he was only cooperating with what he called an illegal probe to avoid violence.

His arrest, the first ever for an incumbent South Korean president, is the latest head-spinning development for one of Asia's most vibrant democracies even though the country has a history of prosecuting and imprisoning former leaders.

Since lawmakers voted to stand him down after his short-lived declaration of martial law on Dec. 3, Yoon has been holed up at his hillside residence, guarded by a small army of personal security that blocked a previous arrest attempt.

He agreed to come in for questioning after more than 3,000 police officers determined to arrest him marched on his residence in the early hours of Wednesday.

"I decided to respond to the CIO's investigation — despite it being an illegal investigation — to prevent unsavory bloodshed," Yoon said in a statement, referring to the Corruption Investigation Office for High-ranking Officials (CIO) that is heading the criminal probe.

A prosecutor accompanied Yoon in his car from his home in the upscale area known as Seoul's Beverly Hills to the austere CIO offices, where he slipped in through a back entrance, avoiding media.

Authorities now have 48 hours to question Yoon after which they must seek a warrant to detain him for up to 20 days or release him.

However, Yoon is refusing to talk and has not agreed to have interviews with investigators recorded on video, a CIO official said. The CIO said it had no information on why Yoon was refusing to talk.

 


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Monday, January 13, 2025

On the Korean Peninsula

Another unstable part of the world:

The diary of the dead man, published by Ukraine’s Special Operations Forces, described the reckless tactic along with expressions of love for Kim Jong-un and a “longing” to return to his homeland.
On one notebook page, a crude drawing shows a stickman soldier breaking cover to attract the attention of a drone, while his two comrades lie in wait to shoot it down.
“When the bait stands still, the drone will stop and it will be shot down,” the soldier wrote in scrawled handwriting, translated by The Wall Street Journal.
The drone-trapping instructions detailed how the “human bait” should stand within seven metres of the Ukrainian drone which will then be “neutralised with precision shooting”.
Military observers and Ukrainian commanders have said that North Korean soldiers have not been trained in modern warfare and are being used as cannon fodder by their Russian allies.

 

Yet look what the Ukrainians are ready to do: 

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said Sunday he was ready to hand over captured North Korean soldiers to Pyongyang in exchange for the return of Ukrainian POWs held in Russia.

Zelenskyy's offer came hours after South Korea's National Intelligence Service confirmed Ukraine's announcement from the previous day that it had captured two North Korean soldiers.

Kyiv said Saturday they had been wounded fighting Ukraine's troops in Russia's Kursk region, but at the time did not provide any proof of their nationality.

 
Zelensky, are you mad?

 

Japan adnd South Korea vow to strengthen ties:

Foreign Minister Takeshi Iwaya became the first Japanese top diplomat to visit South Korea in nearly seven years on Monday, holding talks with his counterpart in Seoul on bilateral and trilateral cooperation just a week before U.S. President-elect Donald Trump is due to take office.

Iwaya met with South Korean Foreign Minister Cho Tae-yul, with Cho looking to reassure Iwaya of the government’s stability and its commitment to bilateral ties in the wake of the political chaos unleashed by President Yoon Suk Yeol's impeachment over his short-lived bid to declare martial law.

South Korea and Japan remain committed to "unwaveringly" developing bilateral ties under any circumstances, Cho told a news conference after the talks, with the two sides agreeing to continue to deepen cooperation across a number of areas.

In Monday’s talks, Iwaya and Cho also discussed ways to maintain momentum for trilateral cooperation with their mutual ally, the United States, ahead of Trump’s Jan. 20 inauguration.

 


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Dubbed the "Largest Exhibition of Auschwitz's Evil", A Toronto Museum Aim to Open Eyes

I doubt that will happen here:

Among the vivid memories Nate Leipciger has of Auschwitz is his arrival at the Nazi death camp on Aug. 2, 1943, with his father, Jack, from the Jewish ghetto in Sosnowiec, 35 kilometres to the north.

“I had no idea where we were. It was unreal and beyond my imagination,” recalled Leipciger, 96, a well-known figure in Holocaust education in Toronto, in a Post interview. “After being tattooed (with the number 133628) and inducted as a prisoner and losing my identity, I thought this was hell on earth, from which I had little or no hope of getting out. I was in total despair. Only my father’s presence gave me some hope.”

About 10 members of his family, including his mother and sister, were murdered in the gas chambers of Birkenau, the largest of the nearly 50 sub-camps collectively known as Auschwitz.

The largest, deadliest and most notorious of the Second World War Nazi death camps — and that’s saying something — Auschwitz still conjures images of gas chambers, skeletal inmates in striped uniforms, barbed wire, crammed boxcars, crematoria, and chimneys belching smoke and human ash. It is synonymous with killing on a modern, industrial scale.

It became that through the sheer number of its victims: 1.3 million people were deported to Auschwitz between June 1940 and the summer of 1944. Of those, 1.1 million were Jews, 900,000 of whom were gassed shortly after arrival. The death toll included up to 75,000 non-Jewish Poles, 21,000 Roma, 14,000 Soviet prisoners of war, and as many as 15,000 in other categories — criminals, homosexuals, Jehovah’s Witnesses and “undesirables.” Many inmates were worked to death in surrounding factories. In January 1945, the camp’s Soviet liberators encountered 7,600 survivors in Auschwitz’s three main camps.

Opening at the Royal Ontario Museum today, just ahead of the 80th anniversary of the liberation of the camp on Jan. 27, 2025 (also the annual International Holocaust Remembrance Day), the hauntingly named “Auschwitz. Not long ago. Not far away,” bills itself as the single most comprehensive exhibition dedicated to the history of the concentration and extermination camp.

A preview by the Post revealed an exhibition that is at once stunning and numbing, comprising more than 500 original artifacts, and hundreds of photographs, charts, drawings, correspondence and diagrams on loan mainly from the Auschwitz-Birkenau Memorial and Museum and more than 20 other institutions and private collections around the world. Many of the objects are being shown in Canada for the first time. ...

The exhibit comes amid skyrocketing antisemitism the world over, and when it appears knowledge about the Holocaust is fading. A Leger Marketing poll in 2020 found that only 43 per cent of Canadian respondents knew that six million Jews perished in the Holocaust. Among those aged 18 to 24, it was 40 per cent.

“It’s not easy to go to a museum to learn about the particular story of Auschwitz, but sometimes the things that are more difficult are the ones that are more necessary,” noted Ferreiro.

 

 

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It's All In the Culture

Until we realise that and act with equal amounts of disgust and self-preservation, none of these social ills will go away:

For years, the British establishment ignored the mass rape of thousands of English girls by predominantly Pakistani-Muslim men — a crime it still refuses to confront. Embarrassment over the ethnic profile of both abusers and victims enabled networks of rapists, known as “grooming gangs,” to prey on vulnerable children with impunity. Driven partly by racial and religious contempt for their mostly white victims, these men exploited girls across northern and central England in an atrocity without parallel in modern British history. It continues to this day. ...

The illusion came at a cost. Whistleblowers were smeared as bigots, and victims dismissed by the very people meant to protect them. In case after case, town after town, police and local officials were more concerned with avoiding accusations of racism and preserving “community cohesion” than preventing the rape of children. And with few exceptions, journalists averted their eyes from one of the gravest injustices of our time.

That changed last week, when the grotesque details of one case, involving the mass rape of a 12-year-old girl, reached Elon Musk, who amplified it to his 200 million followers on X. This shattered what writer Ben Sixsmith called a decades-long “conspiracy of murmuring” and triggered an international outcry — one, at last, commensurate with the scale of the horror.

 

If the problem is that someone brings attention to these crimes and not the actual crimes, then Britain is lost.

**

Back in that 2014 column, written when ISIS was conquering territory the size of Britain and reveling in the spoils, I quoted one of the jihadists who was gleefully anticipating “slave market day.” The Koran, he insisted, authorizes Muslims to sexually exploit “the (captives) who their right hands possess.”
He was right. Jihadists usually are when they refer to scripture. You can argue that the Islam their well-schooled superiors drill into them is a literalist, selective mining of scripture — passages that more progressive, “moderate” interpretations of Islam contextualize, reinterpret, or regard as applicable only to a bygone time. Perhaps . . . but you can’t credibly argue that the jihadists are making it up. It’s in there.
I learned that the hard way in the early Nineties. I wanted to believe that our government was right that the notorious defendant I was prosecuting, the “Blind Sheikh” Omar Abdel Rahman, was a raving maniac, but when I dove into his background — as prosecutors have to do because “He’s a raving maniac” is not a very persuasive courtroom argument — I learned that he was renowned in his milieu as a doctor of Islamic jurisprudence who graduated from Al-Azhar University, which for a millennium has been the seat of Sunni Muslim scholarship. And when he purported to draw on scripture, the scripture bore him out. That’s why, even though he was physically unable to carry out actions useful to a jihad, he nevertheless exercised profound influence and commanded authority over jihadists.
Doctrine matters to our enemies. Which is why it should matter to us.

**

1. Eradication of Syria’s pre-Islamic past.

References to Syria’s pre-Islamic religions and gods are slated to be removed. The new curriculum plans to remove references to Queen Zenobia of the Palmyrene Empire, who briefly took territory from the Roman Empire in Arabia, Egypt, and Asia Minor.
The erasure of Zenobia is reminiscent of ISIS’s hatred for all things pre-Islamic, as evidenced in their beheading of archaeologist Dr. Khaled al-As’ad, who refused to give ISIS the location of ancient artifacts, and their destruction of countless key pre-Islamic treasures like the Temple of Baal Shamim, the Temple of Bel, the Arch of Triumph, the Tetrapylon, Jonah’s Tomb, the ancient cities of Nineveh and Nimrud, and various Assyrian and Akkadian artifacts in Mosul’s museum.

2. Demonization of Jews and Christians.

The new curriculum seeks to change references of “those who are damned and have gone astray,” “the cursed” and “the misguided” to “Jews and Christians.” This comes on the heels of growing reports of HTS persecution of Christians and puts al-Jolani’s recent charm offensive to Syria’s nine-person-strong Jewish community in question.
The curriculum changes sound like Qatar’s textbooks, which are chock full of anti-Semitic and anti-Christian references and contrasts with Saudi Arabia’s textbooks that have recently purged most of the problematic verses relating to Jews and Christians in the wake of the Abraham Accords. Additionally, some reports indicate that Jews and Christians will now be required to learn about Islam starting in the first grade, and Judaism and Christianity will be taught with a critical lens. Under Assad, the curriculum included multiple religions, and non-Muslims were not required to learn about Islam.

3. More explicit Islamist interpretations.

The changes also amend the definition of “martyr” from someone who dies for the “homeland” to someone who dies “for the sake of God.” The phrase “governed by the law of Justice” will be replaced by “governed by the Sharia of God.” Another reference to “law” will be replaced by “commitment to Sharia and law.” (RELATED: New Syria Doubles Down on Jihad)
Additionally, the new curriculum plans to ban a broad category of “innovative claims in the field of religion and fabricated hadiths,” which seemingly narrows what can be acceptable religious interpretation. The emphasis on a radical Islamist interpretation of martyrdom and theocracy is also more in line with Qatar’s textbooks, which continue to praise jihad, but again contrasts with Saudi textbook reform that has removed most problematic references to martyrdom and jihad.

4. Purging scientific inquiry.

Changes to the curriculum also include removing references to the Big Bang Theory and the Theory of Evolution, as well as an entire section on the “Origin and Evolution of Life,” and a paragraph on the “Evolution of the Brain.”

5. Revisionist history.

Lastly, the new curriculum seeks to eliminate mentions of the Ottoman rule of Syria, which the Ba’athist curriculum called “oppressive,” as well as references to French colonialism and Syrian opposition to that colonialism. Removal of the unfavorable portrayal of Ottoman rule could be a nod to Turkey, which backs HTS and the current regime.
The new Syria’s proposed education reforms are a slide towards jihadism and intolerance of minorities, and away from scientific and historical inquiry.



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Canada Doesn't Have a Justice System

But it does have a legal one:

The Parole Board of Canada has cancelled unescorted temporary absences for a woman who helped kill a pregnant Inuit student from Labrador just over a decade ago in Halifax and dumped her body beside a highway in a hockey bag.

Victoria Lea Henneberry is serving a life sentence for the second-degree murder of Loretta Saunders in February 2014. The parole board had granted her 30 days of unescorted leave in the fall of 2024 to take “personal development” courses at a halfway house.

Henneberry, now 39, and her boyfriend, Blake Leggette, were subletting a room in Saunders’ Halifax apartment when the couple killed the Saint Mary’s University student after she came to collect their rent that they didn’t have.

The parole board revoked Henneberry’s leave because of her behaviour in a decision released Friday.

“You began expressing feeling emotionally overwhelmed. Your expressions began to look like warning signs for more serious concerns as you indicated you did not want to wake up,” the parole board said.

“Concerns also arose with you not following the rules. Despite it being explained to you that you should not access the internet as per the (unescorted temporary absence) rules, you later reluctantly admitted you did so through other residents.”

Henneberry got others to order items for her from Amazon, including a guitar pic and earrings, said the decision, dated Dec. 24. “You did this despite not being able to bring new items back into the prison with you and despite the express purpose of the (unescorted temporary absences) being for rehabilitative purposes.”

 

So many benefits for a convicted murderer. 

**

Lawyers are set to begin legal arguments today for four girls scheduled to face trial this year over their alleged role in a deadly group attack on a homeless man in Toronto.

The teens are part of a group police allege swarmed and stabbed Kenneth Lee, a 59-year-old man who was living in the city’s shelter system, in December 2022.

Eight girls between the ages of 13 and 16 were arrested in the hours after Lee’s death.

 

And we will never know who they are.


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Your Awful Government and You

One could be here all day talking about how utterly morally and politically corrupt they all are:

To wit:

It’s a list that’s as long as it is all-encompassing.

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s nearly decade-long time in office was defined by a regular stream of scandals, faux pas and controversies — many of which brought the PM to his knees but, against all odds, managed to maintain the confidence of his party.

While this list doesn’t cover everything, here’s a sampling of some of the biggest blunders, goofs and scandals committed by the PM and his government over the past 10 years.

CASH-FOR-ACCESS SCANDAL (2016)

In Dec. 2016, The Globe and Mail reported pricey Liberal Party cash-for-access events held at homes of wealthy Chinese-Canadians, charging attendees as much as $1,525 each in exchange for one-on-one time with the PM. ...

AGA KHAN AFFAIR (2016)

Among the first defining scandals of Trudeau’s administration was the PM’s infamous eight-day 2016 Christmas vacation at the Aga Khan’s private island in The Bahamas.

While the PMO concealed the trip from public view, the story — broken by the National Post — was later confirmed, touching off an ethics investigation that saw Trudeau become the first PM in Canadian history found guilty of ethics breaches. ...

ELBOWGATE (2016)

Trudeau’s attempt to manhandle the Conservative whip during a vote resulted in a female MP being elbowed in the chest, prompting a flurry of apologies from the PM. ...

 INDIA TRIP (2018)

Among the more memorable blunders from the Trudeau era was the infamous 2018 state visit to India, which saw the PM — still riding high in popularity both at home and around the world — engage in some embarrassing behaviour.

Despite being invited by Indian PM Narendra Modi, Trudeau and his family were greeted at the airport by an agricultural minister.

Among invitees to a state dinner during Trudeau’s visit were Sikh extremist Jaspar Atwal — one of four people convicted in a 1986 plot to murder Indian cabinet minister Malkiat Singh Sidhu.

Seemingly unwilling to settle on locally-produced food, the government paid over $17,000 to fly Canadian celebrity chef Vikram Vij to India from Vancouver to prepare food for the PM and his entourage at a number of events.

Trudeau’s choice of elaborate costumes during the trip also earned scorn from Indian media and pundits, which stood in contrast to his Indian counterparts who wore business suits.

“The ‘Mr. Dress-up goes to India’ trip really set the bar for Trudeau when it came to wasting money in a spectacular fashion and he tried hard to live up to that for his entire tenure,” said Kris Sims, Alberta Director of the Canadian Taxpayers Federation.

 

Read the whole thing.

The biggest scandal is that Canadians let this go on as long as they did.

 

More governmental incompetence:

Cabinet aides in pre-election polling asked Arab Canadians how the government could “promote the rights and safety of members of the Arab diaspora,” says a Privy Council report. No corresponding focus groups were held with Jewish Canadians: “Most felt the Government of Canada was on the wrong track.”

 

Putting aside the clearly anti-semitic flavour of the current government, there aren't supposed to be "Arab Canadians" but only Canadians.

One cannot serve two masters.

**

At least appear that way:

The Liberal Party must run a leadership contest free of foreign interference, say MPs. A change in Party voting rules follows evidence a busload of Chinese foreign students helped nominate MP Han Dong (Don Valley North, Ont.) in 2019: “Listen, there’s foreign interference concerns.”

** 

Remember - the Trudeau government wants a cut of your alleged Can-con:

A federal subsidy program for Canadian musicians went 80 percent over budget due to pandemic lockdowns and collapsing album sales, says a Department of Canadian Heritage report. Musicians have complained they are reduced to collecting pennies in royalties from streaming services: “The current economic context does not allow the majority of artists to make a living.”



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The Real Failure Was the Government

But don't take my word for it: 

After making some progress battling wildfires that destroyed thousands of homes and killed at least 24 people in the Los Angeles area, firefighters are preparing for a return of dangerous winds that could again stoke the flames Monday.

At least 24 people have died in the fires, but more victims continue to be found.

Other fire departments have sent equipment and firefighters to help battle the devastating blazes. Hundreds of National Guard troops are also helping.

Los Angeles County Fire Chief Anthony Marrone said his department has not turned down any offers for help since the fires began.

Los Angeles City Fire Chief Kristin Crowley said she’s grateful for all the first responders who are helping.

“We absolutely know that we cannot do this on our own,” she said.

 

This Kristin Crowley: 

Crowley publicly criticized the city Friday for budget cuts that she said have made it harder for firefighters to do their jobs at a time when they are seeing more calls. She also cast blame on the city for water running out Tuesday when about 20% of the hydrants tapped to fight the Palisades fire went dry.

The Los Angeles Department of Water and Power has disputed that claim.

“I'm not a politician, I’m a public servant. It’s my job as the fire chief for [LAFD] to make sure our firefighters have exactly what they need to do their jobs,” she told CNN.

 

Like having water at the ready?

From the province of Ontario:

An annual inspection shall be made of tanks for fire protection, tank supporting structures and water supply systems, including piping, control valves, check valves, heating systems, mercury gauges and expansion joints, to ensure that they are in operating condition.

 I see.

Now to Los Angeles:

As wildfires raged across Los Angeles on Tuesday, crews battling the Palisades blaze faced an additional burden: Scores of fire hydrants in Pacific Palisades had little to no water flowing out.

“The hydrants are down,” said one firefighter in internal radio communications.

“Water supply just dropped,” said another.

By 3 a.m. Wednesday, all water storage tanks in the Palisades area “went dry,” diminishing the flow of water from hydrants in higher elevations, said Janisse Quiñones, chief executive and chief engineer of the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power, the city’s utility.

“We had a tremendous demand on our system in the Palisades. We pushed the system to the extreme,” Quiñones said Wednesday morning. “Four times the normal demand was seen for 15 hours straight, which lowered our water pressure.”

 

Interesting:

 

So, the fire chief, whose annual salary is $439,722, whose job it is to annually check water tanks, to inform necessary parties of water levels and any other equipment to fight fires, just didn't do that?

It's called passing the buck, dear, which you did:

So my stance on this is when a firefighter comes up to a hydrant, we expect there’s going to be water. We don’t control the water supply. Our firefighters are there to protect lives and property and to make sure that we’re properly trained and equipped. That’s my position on this. So if there’s no water, I don’t know how the water gets to the hydrants. Please defer that to DWP or whomever controls that part. But I can tell you the resiliency of our firefighters. If there’s no water, they’re going to go find water. They’re going to figure out a way to do the best they can with what they’ve got in a very dynamic situation.

 

Just Macgyver it! That's the way!

Way to abdicate responsibility.

 

All that money just to do nothing:

 

 Oh, the foulness doesn't end there:

**


 

If it makes you feel better, the government is screwing Canadians over, too:

When a catastrophic fire ravaged the mountain town last July, people from near and far rallied in support of this much beloved place. Firefighters from Australia, New Zealand, Mexico and South Africa deployed alongside local emergency response crews. The feds in Ottawa, the Alberta government and the town of Jasper collaborated with Parks Canada to safely evacuate 25,000 people. Nearly six months later, the charred remains of one-third of the town have been cleared, residents are trickling back, and commercial property owners, including Marc, are desperate to rebuild.

But they see Alberta’s bete noire Steven Guilbeault, who as environment minister is the man with the most power to secure Jasper’s future, as a roadblock.
“I can’t believe Guilbeault hasn’t been out here to see what’s going on,” says Marc.
Located half a kilometre south of the Jasper townsite, Tekarra Lodge’s cabins and main lodge got clobbered by the wildfire; only the lodge’s staff and manager’s housing survived. And recovery is not going well, Marc reports in our recent conversation. “I’m very worried about the fact that it’s not going well. Because it’s not just a matter of a couple of things going sideways. I think there are real structural problems, and I don’t see a lot of real will right now to resolve those structural problems. And we have to, or we’re going to lose Jasper,” he despairs. “It’s that simple.” ...

The biggest problem, Marc explains, is Parks Canada takes direction from the federal environment ministry and they’re getting no direction from the top. So the bureaucrats are following the rule book, not prioritizing action.
Edmonton Liberal MP Randy Boissonnault, previously in charge of a cabinet-level working group on Jasper, has been stripped of all responsibilities after getting caught up in scandal. And the mandate of federal Minister of Emergency Preparedness Harjit Sajjan is limited during Jasper’s recovery phase.
Liberal super-environmentalist Guilbeault is no friend of Alberta’s UCP government — that’s no secret — but it does seem harsh for his ministry to not prioritize Jasper’s recovery; in my mind, that’s a no-brainer.
“I don’t think that a hotel owner in Banff or Jasper is at the top of Guilbeault’s friends’ list,” Marc shrugs. Meantime, our departing prime minister, Justin Trudeau, is (to paraphrase his exit speech) lecturing fellow politicians on the need to calm down and start working for Canadians, as Parliament has been seized with infighting resulting in a lack of productivity.
 
 

According to Greenpeace co-founder Patrick Moore, supported by multiple data sets, the overall trend in Earth's temperature is actually decreasing — debunking a claim by CTV, posted to social media by federal Environment Minister Steven Guilbeault — that 2024 was the "hottest year ever."

"Here is the record of global temperatures going back 5 million years, as the Earth sank into the Pleistocene Ice Age which began 2.6 million years ago," said Moore in a statement.

"Note that it is still getting colder over the long term."

The Associated Press story published by CTV said, "The last 10 years are the 10 hottest on record and are likely the hottest in 125,000 years."

That may or may not be correct.

In fact, Earth's average temperature was significantly warmer before human industrialization.

Guilbeault, who worked for Greenpeace Canada for over a decade in various roles, said in a social media post, "The stakes are higher than ever. This news comes at a pivotal time and we cannot let the environment come second on any political agenda."

"Our plan is working," he said. "Canada's emissions have fallen to their lowest level since 1997 and we can’t let up now!"

Guilbeault and other politicians around the world have used climate change as justification for advancing polices involving deindustrialization and carbon taxation.

A pivot away from fossil fuels has created energy scarcity and insecurity — particularly in the U.K. and Germany.

In Canada, Guilbeault threatened to impost a de facto production cap on Alberta oil and gas to help save the planet from climate change.

"There is no definitive scientific proof, through real-world observation, that carbon dioxide is responsible for any of the slight warming of the global climate that has occurred during the last 300 years, since the peak of the Little Ice Age," said Moore, who holds a PhD in Forestry from the University of British Columbia.

Climate trends throughout a significant portion of geological history suggest Guilbeault and others are wrong about so-called climate change and the "hottest year ever" — even though very recent numbers indicate slight warming.

 
 
 
 

A California family's unshaken faith emerged in the form of a lone statue of The Virgin Mary — untouched by the relentless flames of southern California's wildfires — her resilience amid the smoldering ruins leading them to sing in praise.

"It was remarkable how everything had gotten fried, but the statue of The Virgin Mary and another statue of Saint Joseph were in perfect condition," Peter Halpin, the family patriarch, told 'Fox & Friends Weekend' on Sunday. 

"Obviously, they were a little singed, but we just took that opportunity to pray," he continued. "Our home is dedicated to the sacred heart of Jesus and always has been and all my family members, my extended family, so we said a prayer to the sacred heart of Jesus, and then we sang that special song that our entire family has known for decades to The Blessed Virgin, and it was a remarkable thing."

 
 
 
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