Your middle-of-the-week life hack ...
Of course it is in Quebec.
Two Quebec community groups under investigation by the RCMP for allegedly hosting covert overseas Chinese police stations are recruiting volunteers for a Chinese-Canadian film festival, an annual event that has previously awarded films praising the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), the Chinese police, and the regime’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic.
The 8th China-Canada International Film Festival (CCIFF) is taking place at the Centre Cinéma Impérial in Montreal from July 14 to Aug. 19, with a series of events being held throughout that period.
The festival is organized by Montreal-based Canada China Art-Tech, a federally registered not-for-profit. Since its launch in 2016, the festival has given out awards to numerous Chinese-language films that praise the CCP and promote the communist regime’s global image and political agenda.
A petition opposing federal introduction of a public registry of foreign agents has closed with fewer than 2,500 signatures, a fraction of other petitions, records show. Liberal-appointed Senator Yuen Pau Woo had appealed to Canadians to rally behind it: “Sign the petition.”
Because Canadians aren't taxed enough:
Canada still plans to introduce a digital services tax in 2024 despite U.S. opposition, Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland said.
Freeland, speaking by phone from the Group of 20 finance ministers’ meeting in India, said Canada had already made a “significant concession” in 2020 by agreeing to delay its plan for the new tax.
A slight hiccup to your plans there, Chrystia:
With the Bank of Canada’s recent decision to raise its key interest rate, and the average price of a home rising year-over-year, many Canadians say they are struggling to afford housing. As a result, some have decided to relocate to countries where they will pay less for accommodation and other essential items.
One of those people is Roland Cameron from Hamilton, Ont. Cameron and his wife arrived in Barbados on July 10 and plan to live there permanently. The couple had considered living in other countries before settling on Barbados, where Cameron’s father’s side of the family lives. In search of a lower cost of living, the couple hopes to make the value of their dollar go further, Cameron said.
“The fundamentals of why we’re paying so much for stuff doesn’t make sense,” the 48-year-old business owner told CTVNews.ca in a telephone interview on June 12. “We would always come up with more income, but new costs would pop up.
“I’m done with Canada.”
What are you going to do when the population that leaves Canada rises to the double digits? Who will you tax? The Ukrainians? Did they agree to be over-taxed to pay for slush funds, bar tabs, gay business start-ups and a defeated resource sector and the jobs that go with it?
Good luck making up that loss.
Budget Officer Yves Giroux is demanding cabinet surrender terms of its multi-billion dollar subsidy agreements with Volkswagen and Stellantis by month’s end. “I am entitled to free and timely access,” he wrote: “Transparency and accountability are the Budget Office’s primary objectives.”**
Mine don’t include the predictable headlines on returning home about yet another Governor General mocking the peasants from her palace. While noshing on $608 steak followed by $238 dessert. The insolence is staggering.
Especially since she was already in trouble for a $1.3-million Middle Eastern jaunt in March 2022, while the peasants were still reeling from COVID lockdowns, including a staggering $99,000 in in-flight catering. On top of the $103,000 in airplane luxury dining during her $700,000, four-day book fair jaunt to Germany in October 2021 with a 32-person entourage. (Incidentally, as supreme commander of the Allied Expeditionary Force, Dwight D. Eisenhower got by with just 15 commanders and senior staff.)
How, with Canada’s vast bureaucracy and virtually universal public-sector bonuses for splendid work getting $1,000 lemons and limes or whatever it is they do, was there nobody to warn her not to spray herself with cash again? Nobody in her entourage to say “gosh, that’s a pricey limo to go down the street (especially given a $18,600 pre-visit to scout things out in a city of just 140,000 people covering only 273 square kilometres)”? Or do they just not care?
Actually they do care. They flaunt it. Which brings me to our prime minister, who seems to have the largest carbon footprint in Canada yet, without any sign of self-awareness, leaps on a jet airplane to self-promote at every opportunity, including heckling us commoners for driving carbon pollution-spewing cars to work, shop or see family.
In the past week alone he jetted from Lithuania to Ottawa to Dartmouth for the North American Indigenous Games, where he delivered the usual windy speech and was booed, before materializing in Toronto to “deliver the keynote speech at the Australia-Canada Economic Leadership Forum,” as colossal a self-important waste of time, money and high-octane fuel as one can imagine.
Incidentally, the Aboriginal Games booing was edited out of official accounts by the same people grasping for censorship powers to combat something they call “misinformation” online. Again a normal person would feel some embarrassment. But again we are not governed by normal people.
But if the senator had been caught taking Chinese money, that would have been acceptable, yes?:
The Senate ethics watchdog has found Conservative Sen. Michael MacDonald violated the code of conduct with a colourful rant during the Freedom Convoy protest last year, and a refusal to comply with an investigation into his actions.
The Nova Scotia senator was caught on video in February 2022 castigating downtown Ottawa residents who complained about the weeks-long demonstrations against COVID-19 pandemic-related restrictions and the Liberal government.
Also - yes, I think the convoy IS on trial.
Tamara Lich wouldn't have been arrested had she held up a train and we all know it:
The lawyer for Freedom Convoy organizer Tamara Lich warned the court Tuesday that the upcoming trial on her criminal charges should not put the entire convoy on trial.
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Lich was a figurehead of the demonstrations that gridlocked downtown Ottawa for three weeks in early 2022 in protest against COVID-19 public health restrictions and the federal Liberal government.
Delta Police Chief Neil Dubord is out with an open letter, criticizing some of B.C.’s legal drug policies as ineffective in the face of the toxic drug crisis.
Dubord writes that while he agrees with the “underlying principles of decriminalization, it is evident in the early evaluation that our communities are currently not experiencing the desired outcome from this policy change.”
He says early numbers indicate the number of drug poisoning deaths have not been going down.
“The number of overdose deaths in BC, reaching 791 from the time decriminalization was enacted until May 2023, closely mirrors the figures from the same period in 2022,” his letter reads.
"Trauma" is a currency for the perpetually aggrieved and constantly hamstrung masses who long to coast on pity:
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“The word ‘trauma’ is used to describe experiences or situations that are emotionally painful and distressing, and that overwhelm people’s ability to cope, leaving them powerless. Trauma has sometimes been defined in reference to circumstances that are outside the realm of normal human experience. Unfortunately, this definition doesn’t always hold true. For some groups of people, trauma can occur frequently and become part of the common human experience … In addition to terrifying events such as violence and assault, we suggest that relatively more subtle and insidious forms of trauma — such as discrimination, racism, oppression, and poverty — are pervasive and, when experienced chronically, have a cumulative impact that can be fundamentally life-altering.”Article content
This redefinition of the word “trauma” is motivated by politics, dressed up as medical diagnosis. ...Article content
The authors note that humans have a propensity to “return to a set-point of well-being relatively quickly after even the most aversive or auspicious life events.” Psychologists have known this since the 1970s. So why is this fact either not known or ignored by most mental health professionals today? Perhaps because both academic and clinical psychology have been completely captured by social justice politics, which, as sociologists Bradley Campbell and Jason Manning have discussed, valorizes victimhood.In fact, relatively few people suffer from trauma (traditionally defined), even among the most vulnerable populations. Rates of PTSD amongst addicts, for example, are lower than those of other mental health disorders. In one study, cited by the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Service Administration (SAMHSA), the largest mental health services organization in the U.S., researchers looked at the prevalence of psychiatric disorders among a sample of chronic crack cocaine users in a poor community. While 24 per cent of the users had a diagnosis of antisocial personality disorder and 17.8 per cent suffered from depression, only 11.8 per cent had experienced PTSD. Interestingly, the researchers found that white drug users were more likely to suffer from mental health conditions than black drug users, which suggests that — contrary to the Drexel University statement cited above — trauma is not primarily the result of institutionalized racism.Article content
A study of Brazilian crack cocaine users, also cited by SAMHSA, found that the extreme street violence and degradation to which they were subjected and exposed as a result of their drug use was the primarily source of their trauma. As someone who has spent a significant amount of time working with IV drug users, I find this unsurprising.According to SAMHSA’s guidelines on trauma-informed care (last updated in 2014), trauma arises from “an event, series of events, or set of circumstances that is experienced by an individual as physically or emotionally harmful or threatening and that has lasting adverse effects on the individual’s functioning and physical, social, emotional, or spiritual well-being.”The problem is that this defines trauma as a matter of subjective interpretation: it suggests that any experience could be traumatic if it makes the sufferer feel bad. Parental divorce and other common adversities could be defined as “trauma” if they are “experienced” as harmful. While SAMHSA’s guide follows the DSM-5 in acknowledging that trauma is only likely to occur when people are exposed “to actual or threatened death, serious injury, or sexual violence,” it dilutes the definition by arguing that psychological trauma is “not limited to such diagnostic criteria” and can be “characterized more broadly.” It is not the nature of events themselves that defines them as traumatic, but the individual’s emotional response to those events. By this definition, a toddler who refuses to go to bed on time and whose emotional resources are “overwhelmed” by bedtime to the point of nightly tantrums could be said to be experiencing “trauma.”Article content
This broadening of the definition has naturally led to an increase in the numbers of people reporting trauma. The mental health profession has responded by offering trauma-informed care (TIC). According to SAMHSA, most of the more than 10,000 behavioral healthcare programs in the U.S. now provide TIC of some kind.
But ... but I was assured that this was never the case!:
Federal investigators discovered a human remains trade with connections to Harvard Medical School and have arrested people in several states. According to prosecutors, the defendants were part of a nationwide network of people who bought and sold remains stolen from the medical school and an Arkansas mortuary. One of those charged, 55-year-old Cedric Lodge, of New Hampshire, allegedly took dissected parts of cadavers that had been donated to Harvard in a scheme that started back in 2018, prosecutors said. Another person facing criminal charges, Katrina Maclean of Salem, Massachusetts, owned a store that sells “creations that shock the mind” with along with “creepy dolls, oddities and bone art,” according to the store’s social media page.
My God, Americans! You'll never be able to pay this off!:
Budget groups continue to release dire forecasts for the explosive growth of the U.S. national debt.
The U.S. Treasury reported a $1.4 trillion deficit so far nine months into fiscal year 2023.
“Three-quarters into the fiscal year and we’re borrowing an astounding $5.1 billion per day,” said Maya MacGuineas, president of the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget. “If that isn’t a sign that we need a wake-up call, maybe it should be the fact that the deficit for this fiscal year is now larger than all of last year's deficit – and there’s still three months to go.
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Just weeks removed from a Supreme Court ruling that declared its student loan forgiveness program unconstitutional, the Biden administration on Friday announced new relief for students that will cancel $39 billion in debt for more than 804,000 past students.
“For far too long, borrowers fell through the cracks of a broken system that failed to keep accurate track of their progress towards forgiveness,” Education Secretary Miguel Cardona said in a statement. “By fixing past administrative failures, we are ensuring everyone gets the forgiveness they deserve.”
Cardona said the new program is justified by adjusting payment schedules in student loan programs to recognize some qualifying payments “should have moved borrowers closer to forgiveness were not accounted for.”
The justices voted 6-3 last month to strike down Biden’s plan to forgive up to $20,000 in debt for 43 million student loan borrowers, concluding the president did not have the legal authority to do so without legislation from Congress.
The U.S. soldier who dashed across the heavily fortified border from South to North Korea previously attacked a police car and punched a man in the face at a Seoul nightclub.
Travis King, 23, who has created a fresh diplomatic crisis for Washington in dealing with the nuclear-armed authoritarian state, pleaded guilty to assault and destruction of public goods during an incident last October and had been fined $4,000 (£3,097), according to Reuters.
A tip is a gratuity for excellent service, not a requirement:
Tipping is on the rise across the U.S. as more and more businesses have started asking for a little extra: Fast food restaurants, grocery stores, plumbers, online retailers, stadiums, and even self-checkout machines are now asking for a tip these days.
Social media is filled with people who are outraged, shocked or just plain confused about tipping.
One woman posted a video on TikTok after being asked to tip for her Subway sandwich.
"I panicked!" she says. "Do we tip at Subway? Is that a thing? Tell me!"
Always keep hard copies of everything. One never knows how older books in print will be in greater demand than before:
This shift in kidlit has been happening for a long time. About 25 years ago, novels that portrayed kids as environmental activists began to win awards. About 15 years ago, the award-winning books showed shocking, disturbing scenarios. Ten years ago, books that depicted sexualization and abuse at younger ages began to win awards. Then, five years ago, it shifted a bit more to where books focused on systemic racism and sexual identity won awards. Today, if books don’t include any of the above depictions, they are rarely published by medium and large publishing houses.
Strange.
Grade One students of various generations were able to master this basic skill.
What will be the excuse of the current crop of students?:
For many, the return of mandatory cursive handwriting instruction in the Ontario curriculum, starting in Grade 3, is a welcome and long-overdue move on the part of the Ministry of Education. It is a re-emphasis on direct instruction in foundational skills.
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Handwriting is a learned skill and it must be taught through direct, explicit, programmatic, developmentally progressive, consistent and sustained instruction — it will not simply be “caught” incidentally.
It is also not an end in and of itself, but a means to an end. It is not about presentation effects and looking pretty on the page. Rather, it is a powerful tool that affords a child a growing sense of confidence, pride and agency that their thoughts matter.
The young cardinal in charge of Mongolia’s tiny Catholic community said Monday that Pope Francis' upcoming visit to a country with just 1,450 Catholics is evidence of his willingness to travel to the farthest corners of the globe to minister to even a handful of the faithful.
Italian Cardinal Giorgio Marengo, who has been a missionary in Mongolia for two decades, spoke to reporters after delivering a speech on how Catholic missionaries “whisper” the Gospel there in hopes of spreading the faith, simply and quietly and in one-on-one relationships.
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