Summertime bits and pieces

It’s Summer. It’s almost the weekend. Here’s some contextless, linkless bits of this and that.

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For anyone who wants a coherent foreign policy, particularly as it relates to Israel, the Tories are the only logical choice. Like, I don’t know what the Liberals are doing anymore.

I don’t think they know, either.

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Related: 75 per cent of American Jews have always voted Democrat. The only cycle where that changed somewhat was in the Reagan years. In Canada, I would be surprised if the Liberals and New Democrats federally get a single Jewish vote.

That’s an exaggeration, but not by much.

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I just watched and listened to some of Donald Trump’s “press conference.”

Just as I said about Joe Biden, it’s not right for anyone who has not medically examined Trump to say that he has cognitive issues.

But, man oh man.

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You can’t really say the Supreme Court of Canada is wrong or right in the Jordan Peterson case – they simply refused to hear it. Courts usually don’t like substituting their views with that of professional bodies. That’s normal. (Why else have such bodies?)

Me, I think professional bodies should not police the social media of their membership if the social media commentary is unrelated to the profession. That’s a very slippery slope.

I say that, too, as someone who is no fan of Dr. Peterson’s stuff. It has a distinctly culty feel to it, to me.

And: Andre Marin was Ontario Ombudsman and complained about me to the Law Society, using public resources and staff because I had been critical of his conduct in that office. Nobody ever compensated me for the time lost. The Law Society never acknowledged they were wrong to even consider the case.

Oh, and I won.

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“Harris Doesn’t Support Arms Embargo on Israel, a Top Adviser Says.”

That’s a New York Times headline. But by all means, MAGA types, keep believing the two Israel-haters who say she does without a scintilla of fucking proof.

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I believe every political party and ideology has an anti-Semitism problem. No one is covered in virtue. The Left presently has the biggest problem, of course.

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PSA: just as I block disinformation and bullshit from Israel haters, I will block disinformation and bullshit from Kamala haters.

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I’ve been researching ISIS and Hamas a lot, lately. Those who know, know why.

Someone told me ISIS and Hamas are the same.

Not really. They both want a caliphate, but initially in different places. Also, ISIS is much more a virtual operation. Not IRL. Also, statistically, Islamic terrorists radicalized online have a way way higher failure rate when it comes to attacks.

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You sleep for a third of your life.

In the first few years, you wish it was a lot less.

In the latter years, you’re okay with moving sleepy time to two-thirds. Four-fifths, actually.


Me and Brian on that Full Comment thing


My latest: the enemy within

In the video, the man is wearing an orange jumpsuit. It is the favoured uniform that ISIS uses for their prisoners. The man is dangling from a pole in a desert somewhere.

Lots of people were killed by ISIS, the Islamic State, in front of high-definition cameras, wearing those orange jumpsuits. In many of the ISIS snuff films – like the ones showing the beheading of American freelance journalist James Foley, Time magazine writer Steven Sotloff and British aid worker Alan Henning – there would be some reference to a news event, to establish its date.  The location would often be somewhere in the desert.

The victims, kneeling and wearing the Guantanamo-style coveralls, would read a statement given to them by ISIS.  Masked ISIS terrorists would be standing behind the men. One of the terrorists would typically make some statement, too, railing against Israel and America and the West.  Then, the terrorists would grab the victim, holding him down, while another terrorist would behead him, using a long-bladed knife. All on camera.

In the June 2015 ISIS video obtained by the authorities and shared this week by great reporters at Global News, Ahmed Fouad Mostafa Eldidi, 62, is allegedly seen holding a sword – which he then uses to hack away at the limbs of the man. We don’t know if the man is dead, but it seems likely.

The victim’s assailant is in a black robe and a head covering bearing the ISIS logo, and his face is briefly visible. The ISIS video was titled “Deterring Spies.” Eldidi has been charged by Canadian police with an aggravated assault outside Canada, but it’s unclear whether it relates to the atrocity shown in the video.

What is clear, however, is that Eldidi and his 26-year-old son Mostafa were this week charged in Toronto with multiple terrorism-related offences, allegedly because they were planning a mass-casualty attack using machetes and axes.

Also clear: the two Eldidis weren’t born here. Nobody is saying exactly when, but they moved to Canada at some point. Perhaps after the elder Eldidi allegedly was filmed lopping off someone’s body parts, perhaps before. But it all raises an important question, doesn’t it?

Why were alleged ISIS terrorists allowed into Canada? And, now that we’re on the subject, why are not quite a few others – the ones possibly shooting up Jewish schools, firebombing synagogues, blocking major highways near Jewish neighborhoods, and issuing death threats, more less in publicly, to Jews – still here? Why don’t we, you know, kick out those who are a risk to national security, and who are convicted of breaking laws? Why not deport them?

When Ben Mulroney and I asked that question on an AM640 radio show back in the Fall, there was a great hue and cry. It was racist, some said. It was fascist, they said. It is something that should never be the law in Canada, addled progressives thundered.

Except, well, it already is.

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My latest: the feminists who aren’t

Supposed Trudeau Liberal mantra: believe the victims.

Actual Trudeau Liberal motto: humiliate victims.

That truth was revealed, yet again, this week on Parliament Hill. A House of Commons committee was conducting a rare Summertime hearing. The subject: violence against women.

It’s an important issue. Canadian women are five times more likely to be targeted with sexual assault. In their lifetimes, four in ten Canadian women have experienced some form of violence from a partner. In 2022, almost 200 Canadian women were murdered, mostly by men – that’s one every two days.

So, the Status of Women committee scheduled a meeting this week to hear from police officers and victims themselves.

The Liberals on the committee, it appears, were in a bad mood. They didn’t want their Summer vacations interrupted. They adjourned early, back in June, and won’t be back until the middle of September: that’s three months on the golf course and away from legislative business.

So, the Grits were grouchy.

Cait Alexander, a young woman who heads an advocacy group called End Violence Everywhere, was there to give evidence. Her family sat behind her as she spoke. “I’m supposed to be dead,” Alexander said. She showed the assembled MPs harrowing photographs of three years ago, when her then-boyfriend beat her and left her for dead.”If you haven’t met a survivor and a victim’s family, well, now you have.”

After Alexander finished her opening statement, Liberal MP Anita Vandenbeld spoke. You could be forgiven for thinking that Vandenbeld is a nobody who couldn’t get picked out of a one-person police lineup. She’s worked for the United Nations (naturally), and she’s been investigated by the Ethics Commissioner (practically a Trudeau Liberals job requirement). That’s about it.

Vandenbeld spoke. She made a few vanilla comments about the issue before the committee, and then she went after Conservative MPs for “politicizing” the issue. Which she, herself, then did. She wanted to talk about abortion.

The witnesses who had been invited to speak were dumbfounded. So were the Tory and NDP MPs present. Cait Alexander couldn’t believe what was happening. She held up the photos of her battered body again. She was crying. An advocate of battered women, Megan Walker, spoke: ”This is the problem. Did [Vandenbeld] listen to anything that was said this morning?”

The meeting descended into chaos, while the female victims of violence looked on, appalled. MPs started raising points of order. NDP MP Leah Gazan said: “I’m disgusted because I wasn’t given a chance to put forward witnesses when I’m representing ground zero for murdered and missing Indigenous women and girls.”

At that point, Cait Alexander got up and left, in tears. Walker got up and followed her.

Some of the MPs apologized to Cait Alexander’s Mom, who was still in the committee room. Her mother was unmoved. “Sorry isn’t good enough,” she said. “We’ve heard ‘sorry’.”

And that, really, was the best and only response to a disgusting, appalling display by Anita Vandenbeld her ilk: saying “sorry” isn’t enough. It doesn’t cut it.

But Vandenbeld is a Trudeau Liberal, isn’t she? She’s a card-carrying member of the cult that professes to be feminist, and then sticks by the boss when it’s revealed that he groped a female reporter at a beer festival in 2000.

They’re the ones who regularly chastise Conservatives (and others) for being insufficiently on the side of women – and then look the other way when their boss kicks two impressive women, Jody Wilson-Raybould and Jane Philpott, out of cabinet. For talking back to him.

They’re the ones who insist that they want to ensure women have the right to choose – when they could have passed a law enshrining abortion rights at any time in the past decade. But didn’t.

By their words and their deeds, we know who the Trudeau Liberals are. Non-entities like Anita Vandenbeld show us, all the time.

They’re liars and hypocrites.

And, this week, they again reminded us that they don’t give a sweet damn about female victims of violence.

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“No parking”

No parking, eh? That doesn’t apply to this thing of extraordinary beauty and perfection! (In front of E’s place, Prince Edward County.)


My latest: Netanyahu’s race against fate

 

If you had the impression this week that Benjamin Netanyahu was running for office, you’d be right. He is.

But the Prime Minister of Israel wasn’t running where he was this week, which was at a podium in Washington, D.C., speaking to members of the U.S. Congress. Bathing in the standing ovations he received – reportedly more than any foreign leader has ever received when addressing congresspeople – Netanyahu could be forgiven for wishing he was running for re-election in America, and not Israel.

Back in Israel, you see, he is really, really unpopular. Presently, he is facing three separate corruption prosecutions; he is met with protesters wherever he goes in Israel, including hundreds who have camped outside his residence, for months; and he is deeply unloved by as many as 70 per cent of Israelis, who want him out. They disapprove of his inability to get all the hostages home, they disapprove of how he is conducting the war against Hamas, they disapprove of him.

But, mostly, they disapprove of something that is little-known in places like America, but is very well-known in Israel. Namely, what Netanyahu and his government knew about Hamas’ savage attack on Israel on October 7, 2023 – and what, if anything, he did about it.

Because, on balance, it doesn’t look he did much. It doesn’t look like he did anything meaningful to prevent the worst progrom in the 76-year history of the Jewish state – a vicious, sadistic, Satanic attack that left 1,200 men, women and children dead, over 200 taken hostage, and an untold number of women and girls subjected to sexual violence that is beyond comprehension. For that, Benjamin Netanyahu is now facing a near-impossible task: re-election.

The damning facts are well-known in Israel – and, in some cases, are actually still to be found on the Internet. They can be seen in videos created by Hamas and their evil cabal, and which were uploaded to assorted platforms.

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