Why would the Prime Minister need to issue a statement late Friday night? Why isn’t Saturday morning good enough? The Prime Minister has no role in the policing of a riot in Montreal. Prior Prime Ministers were not judged on the exact hour that they issued statements.
I know you wrote this before Poilievre’s latest statement on Twitter. In this statement Poilievre claims that Trudeau is responsible pretty much for anything and that there is a direct line between Trudeau’s leadership and the riots yesterday. I would love to hear your views how Trudeau should respond to this escalation of assigning blame.
Who in their right mind ISN'T an "lslamophobe" FFS?
This morning I hear that in Iran, proud theocracy openly practising gender apartheid sanctioned by WHAT creed or doctrine again, ISLAM is it, uh YEAH, is now labelling transgressors of their insane dress code as mentally ill along with imprisoning them, which is better than killing them outright I guess, but talk about the pot calling the kettle BLACK.
And apparently ISIS is on the upswing again, that dreaded death cult based on WHAT again? Oh right--Islam.
All religions are cults, straight up, but Islam is the absolute worst in a bad field, hands down.
It’s NOT Islam! It’s their bastardized version of the Islamic faith, just like Fundamentalism is a bastardized version of Christianity! They bare no resemblance to the religion that these iterations have come from, except the use of the name of that religion. Anyone who is a true Muslim will tell you that what ISIS and the Taliban practice have no resemblance to the original religious texts.
Of course they will tell you that but these texts are just that after all, texts written by men of the time of course, and like any text are subject to interpretation. And further to that, they are just another set of ideas, and so are open to criticism by those of us living now, in modernity, especially women I'd add. All religious texts are clearly written BY men, are OF men, and FOR men; note the common subjugation of women, which is putting it mildly.'
ISIS and the Taliban are the "true Muslims" because they're "purists" when it comes to the bloody text, this doctrine that has sanctioned AND produced ACTUAL gender apartheid in Iran, Afghanistan, and anywhere else these psycho guys manage to get control.
The men in these countries are NOT followers of Islam. If they were they wouldn’t be fighting with every other Islamic country over who has the TRUE word.
And this type of misogyny is no different than the misogyny that has been foisted upon women by every race of men and every religion of men, since the first man learned how to kill others and became the “leader” based on nothing but physical strength. The USA is currently displaying their inherent misogyny for all the world to see and I don’t see you condemning them. They are well on their way to treating women no better than any of the cults you are describing, and will be just as devastating for women. And this is coming from a “Christian” country. Want to argue about Christian cults? Because they are just as devastating and destructive to women as any other religion. Religion itself is a MAN made creation and all of them to one degree or another treat women as nothing more than baby makers, sex objects and Mothers, along with prescribing what they can do, say, wear, and go. In other words sex slaves.
Totally agree with everything you said. I am of course an atheist and no cheerleader for ANY male deity (because they are notably ALL male, another giveaway) or for the continued hegemony of men, to say the LEAST.
I'm with Mother Nature, which has been dominated in a comparable way for centuries, but is now ALSO revolting, big-time, to massive effect. Men are eternally jealous of the power of women, particularly over THEM, i.e. their deep need for them that is as deep as they go, down to their urge to crawl back into them some have argued. But also their power of being able to produce human life, hence big tech's dangerous bid with AI.
We're experiencing such vicious polarities that it is becoming difficult to breath. Jews are targeted, Muslims are targeted, the rural urban dichotomy is growing. I long for the days when the most significant Cdn polarity was between English and French language services. It is perhaps far worse in other countries. but dammit why can't we focus on amnd appreciate the things that bind us together.
And because one side of the usual political spectrum has fairly recently basically lost its mind, not just coincidentally since joining forces with the religious right, i.e. Christian Nationalists who have had it with pretending they're ok with non-believers/secularism/ separation of church and state when clearly they are NOT, and have been agitating since the sixties, coalescing around women gaining control over their lives for the first time in history. Hence when they recently gained control of the Supreme Court, tellingly, the first thing they did was overturn Roe v. Wade. Religion has always been about controlling populations, but ESPECIALLY women.
Despite women's rights obviously being human rights, not to mention the fact that they comprise half of humanity, all kinds of younger men have latched onto Trump as "da man" to stick it to "the hos" who have been intruding FAR too much on their turf for quite some time, including the sacred military.
Joe Rogan has 14 million "followers," and he invited Trump on his podcast, not Kamala. It's breathtakingly stupid to have installed Trump in the presidency again, but it was "bros vs. hos" after all, so what can you do?
So this is where politics IS, a resurgence of open sexism and misogyny along with the usual racism and the growing rural/urban dichotomy.
AND all of this has been supercharged by social media enabling genuine, relentless weaponization of the vitriol unleashed on ALL fronts simultaneously and exponentially. Never mind the accompanying MAJOR surveillance and shameless manipulation of algorithms; turns out undoing western civilization has been dead easy.
Clearly, people simply were not meant to have this much to do with each other; it's brought out the absolute worst that history has always told us was there lurking. But who cares about that; are we not entertained?
We should unplug the internet to save our societies and focus on rolling back climate change for our collective survival, but it appears that as a species we're probably just too stupid to live.
Climate change aside, the primary question before us has truly become whether or not we will survive the male of our species I'd say....
As long as the NDP bets on anti-semitism, yes, that's you Matthew Green and Heather McPherson, the vile protesters will have a political home in Canada.
NOTHING about the convoy was remotely defensible or reasonable.
Claiming otherwise simply shows a high tolerance for completely inappropriate behaviour, probably the result of the unleashed proud boys on the right unleashing one unprecedented thing after another, Mark Zuckerberg style, as in "move fast and break things."
I wish Substack offered a 'dislike' button, so I could dislike your comment.
Like everything else in our world the last few years, the reasons the convoy began are complex. And the reasons it continued for as long as it did had everything to do with the lack of response by ALL levels of gov't.
Give me a break. That they tried is a weak excuse for policy failure. The whole concept of vaccine mandates was premised on lies.
We were told to get vaccinated because it would stop the spread of the disease. Get vaccinated to save granny. This lie was well known at the time and still persists today. And then we find out they didn’t even test for transmission. We were also told that natural immunity offered less protection than vaccines. This is what the state-sanctioned experts were telling us. The entire rationale for mandates was flawed and they knew it.
I won’t engage in anything else because your post is little more than a rant for Trudeau, a rant against Trump and religion, and a deferral to the manufactured scientific consensus, which isn’t how science actually works. This is tiresome frankly.
Here’s a hint, using all caps doesn’t make your argument stronger and using FFS is not persuasive. It makes you sound like an unhinged ideologue.
I'm the "unhinged ideologue?" So what do you mean when you say "STATE-SANCTIONED experts?"
The government just hires qualified people who are sanctioned by the educational institutions they've attended, like they've always done.
When exactly do you guys think all these basic changes took place in Canadian society from when you were a kid getting immunized, going to a doctor and sometimes a hospital when you were sick?
On the mandates, the majority of the population wanted them actually.
And the "MANUFACTURED scientific consensus?" Again, the "state" is doing that, as in "the deep state?"
That’s fair. I do not deny that Ottawa residents were impacted by the protest. Clearly they were, and I sympathize with that, and support the idea that the protest went on too long.
But your friends suffered far less harm than parents with children in school, or parents with children in organized extra-curricular programs. All of this was taken away from them. Those impacts are still being felt today with learning loss.
Interesting little factoid not necessarily relevant to this conversation, but something people are completely oblivious to. More than 165 million people were pushed into $2 a day poverty because of lockdowns, mostly in Asia and Africa. The UN measures this poverty rate annually. Extreme poverty dropped every single year from 1998-2020. Lockdowns changed everything for them.
The Ottawa postal code is one of the wealthiest in Canada. People living there didn’t feel the impact of covid policy like other people, such as truckers. Although I sympathize with their circumstance during the protest, many people suffered far more. The trucker protest sparked restriction reversals almost immediately.
PANDEMICS change things. How are you so casual about something none of us have ever experienced? Let me guess. It was a "shamdemic?"
And all those epidemiologists and doctors and other medical science people just should have KNOWN how it would manifest as well?
They bloody well TRIED their best, earnestly committed to at least fewer deaths, but evidence-based science in real time didn't stand a chance against the smug, stupid dogma of religious belief, adherents of which were the worst offenders because, you know, we prefer an alternate reality thanks where our "god" rules. Unbelievable.
Americans weren't so lucky with Trump so way more died there in proportion. But do the Liberals get ANY credit for what they did? No, not even down there where it happened; Trump was STILL unbelievably re-elected FFS, and everyone here is (again unwittingly succumbing to algorithms) hell-bent for election as they say to GET RID of Trudeau and responsible Liberal governance so we can vote for the Convoy (Conboy) Party of Canada who don't even accept science (recall that Harper was the first PM to MUZZLE scientists?), EVEN the science of climate change WHILE it ramps up in real time. Who knew people were so stupid?
WTF is this about? The truckers didn’t break anything - not a single damn thing. It was a righteous protest - by patriots who were forced into a corner by an authoritarian Covid regime. To mention the truckers protest in the same breath as the Montreal mob is disturbing.
I have two colleagues with small children who had to move out of their house in Ottawa because they could not safely live (or sleep) in their own home.
And I have a 25 year old son who was fired from his job for refusing to get vaccinated. Not one single person was injured by the protestors. Not one single person was threatened. Safety was never an issue. Sure, it was annoying for local residents and I empathize with that, but infinitely more people were impacted by the authoritarian covid policies championed by Ottawa. Maybe if Trudeau met with them just one time, the protest would have ended much sooner.
Don’t mention the Montreal mob in the same breath as the truckers. The truckers were at their breaking point after nearly three years of an authoritarian Covid regime. The clowns in Montreal are untethered by what - a conflict 10,000 miles a way that has nothing to do with Canada directly.
Oh the truckers were your beloved TRIBE were they? May I suggest that there is NO PRECEDENT and NOTHING defensible or even remotely reasonable about parking your "big rig" in Ottawa in close proximity to the government of Canada and the duly elected PM with huge signs saying "FUCK TRUDEAU" while simultaneously braying on about FREEDUMB FOR THREE WEEKS. Where else in the WORLD can you do that without being exterminated? Where? Get a perspective FFS.
You guys have all BEEN HAD by algorithms stoking hatred for a guy, Justin Trudeau (starting with who his father was which he obviously can't fucking HELP) and the "Libtards" by the relentless, stupid cons (remember how we didn't used to CALL them that, remember when they were the reasonable Progressive Conservative Party of Canada instead of the Convoy Party of Canada and/or the Christian Party of Canada that they've DEVOLVED into thanks to Preston Manning's "Reform Party" takeover which has coincided with hidden agendas, bozo eruptions and over time the destruction of our formerly functional political system?!) One of the realities that is so untenable to conservatives is that progressives/Liberals/Democrats are actually the majority in democracies, which makes them the bona fide NATURAL GOVERNING PARTY of this country. Think about it; why do we NEVER talk about a "conservative democracy."
Sources are all. Try getting your information from our public broadcaster; they're the last bastion of the idea that was/is Canada. It's a fragile thing like any idea, but it brings us together and has history. Now if we could just get it across to people that RELIGION IS ALSO JUST AN IDEA, and so deserves the same criticism that any idea deserves among supposedly rational people, we might bloody well GET somewhere.
Far too often any criticism of Israel is equated with antisemitism. It’s becoming apparent Israel is being run by religious zealots who are being driven by ancient prophecies from the 5th century BC and don’t care how it looks if they drop bunker bombs on civilians and hospitals. They are the self-proclaimed “God’s chosen people” fulfilling the word of Yahweh, sweeping aside anyone who gets in their way.
Competing religious delusions are what has made the Middle East conflict so famously intractable for decades now, so if you blithely eschew any knowledge of the very complicated history of the region like so many of these sheltered university students surprisingly do (?!), the next best approach is to at least pan OUT to evaluate in the usual fog and psychosis of any WAR what HAMAS actually DID at that music festival, how it took barbarism to a whole other level, uniquely sanctioned by the ancient doctrines of ISLAM. (They're stubbornly unevolved, like Catholicism, which is what makes these two religions the worst at this point.)
If you saw any of their proud, shared videos, Allah (alalala) is summoned repeatedly as fortification and justification, and if you followed any of the analysis of actual footage you learned that these disturbingly indoctrinated, RABID guys SHOT WOMEN IN THE FACE WHILE RAPING THEM. Then there's the whole taking old people and babies as hostages and taking them to their underground tunnels like the vermin they are, crawling around underneath all those women and children and their families, making all of THEM hostages as well. Clearly they're no match for the Israeli army (or for the superiority of their modern civilization) but will HAMAS surrender accordingly to END the carnage of their people above ground? NO and NO because they're all bent on martyrdom, again sanctioned by their insane cult.
Netanyahu is a monster in his own right, and interestingly has been sanctioned in that by the most religious guys in his cabinet, but I have seen zero discussion about the role of RELIGION in this mess, except by Sam Harris, who is an atheist.
So until we start collectively challenging the big lie that is religion, our species is truly at risk of survival, and believers are disproportionately science deniers, including climate science, despite the scientific method demonstrably being us humans at our best and most rational. Truth is the sunshine we desperately need now, but it's like Jack Nicholson said, we apparently "can't handle the truth." So it's hard to feel hopeful anymore, especially since Trump won, grand initiator of the big lie, American style.
And the taking over of land was also initiated by a mythical being, in this case the Jewish god/bible, none of which is TRUE either of course. Sigh.
Your article is well described by Shakespeare in Macbeth: 'It is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing'. The fact is that you don't know anything about what transpired in Montreal, and should refrain from saying anything about it until you do, if ever.
Why would the Prime Minister need to issue a statement late Friday night? Why isn’t Saturday morning good enough? The Prime Minister has no role in the policing of a riot in Montreal. Prior Prime Ministers were not judged on the exact hour that they issued statements.
I know you wrote this before Poilievre’s latest statement on Twitter. In this statement Poilievre claims that Trudeau is responsible pretty much for anything and that there is a direct line between Trudeau’s leadership and the riots yesterday. I would love to hear your views how Trudeau should respond to this escalation of assigning blame.
I have been accused of being antisemite
I have been accused of being an Islamophobe.
Let me be perfectly clear
I am against the indiscriminate killing of innocents
Be they man, woman or child
Be they in hospital, in school or just listening to a concert
I am against killing
Using religion as an excuse is unconscionable …
(With thanks to Mr. Dan Rather for the idea)
Who in their right mind ISN'T an "lslamophobe" FFS?
This morning I hear that in Iran, proud theocracy openly practising gender apartheid sanctioned by WHAT creed or doctrine again, ISLAM is it, uh YEAH, is now labelling transgressors of their insane dress code as mentally ill along with imprisoning them, which is better than killing them outright I guess, but talk about the pot calling the kettle BLACK.
And apparently ISIS is on the upswing again, that dreaded death cult based on WHAT again? Oh right--Islam.
All religions are cults, straight up, but Islam is the absolute worst in a bad field, hands down.
Do not equate government with the religion …
If you do, Christianity really sucks …
It’s NOT Islam! It’s their bastardized version of the Islamic faith, just like Fundamentalism is a bastardized version of Christianity! They bare no resemblance to the religion that these iterations have come from, except the use of the name of that religion. Anyone who is a true Muslim will tell you that what ISIS and the Taliban practice have no resemblance to the original religious texts.
Of course they will tell you that but these texts are just that after all, texts written by men of the time of course, and like any text are subject to interpretation. And further to that, they are just another set of ideas, and so are open to criticism by those of us living now, in modernity, especially women I'd add. All religious texts are clearly written BY men, are OF men, and FOR men; note the common subjugation of women, which is putting it mildly.'
ISIS and the Taliban are the "true Muslims" because they're "purists" when it comes to the bloody text, this doctrine that has sanctioned AND produced ACTUAL gender apartheid in Iran, Afghanistan, and anywhere else these psycho guys manage to get control.
The men in these countries are NOT followers of Islam. If they were they wouldn’t be fighting with every other Islamic country over who has the TRUE word.
And this type of misogyny is no different than the misogyny that has been foisted upon women by every race of men and every religion of men, since the first man learned how to kill others and became the “leader” based on nothing but physical strength. The USA is currently displaying their inherent misogyny for all the world to see and I don’t see you condemning them. They are well on their way to treating women no better than any of the cults you are describing, and will be just as devastating for women. And this is coming from a “Christian” country. Want to argue about Christian cults? Because they are just as devastating and destructive to women as any other religion. Religion itself is a MAN made creation and all of them to one degree or another treat women as nothing more than baby makers, sex objects and Mothers, along with prescribing what they can do, say, wear, and go. In other words sex slaves.
Totally agree with everything you said. I am of course an atheist and no cheerleader for ANY male deity (because they are notably ALL male, another giveaway) or for the continued hegemony of men, to say the LEAST.
I'm with Mother Nature, which has been dominated in a comparable way for centuries, but is now ALSO revolting, big-time, to massive effect. Men are eternally jealous of the power of women, particularly over THEM, i.e. their deep need for them that is as deep as they go, down to their urge to crawl back into them some have argued. But also their power of being able to produce human life, hence big tech's dangerous bid with AI.
We're experiencing such vicious polarities that it is becoming difficult to breath. Jews are targeted, Muslims are targeted, the rural urban dichotomy is growing. I long for the days when the most significant Cdn polarity was between English and French language services. It is perhaps far worse in other countries. but dammit why can't we focus on amnd appreciate the things that bind us together.
Because of the internet.
And because one side of the usual political spectrum has fairly recently basically lost its mind, not just coincidentally since joining forces with the religious right, i.e. Christian Nationalists who have had it with pretending they're ok with non-believers/secularism/ separation of church and state when clearly they are NOT, and have been agitating since the sixties, coalescing around women gaining control over their lives for the first time in history. Hence when they recently gained control of the Supreme Court, tellingly, the first thing they did was overturn Roe v. Wade. Religion has always been about controlling populations, but ESPECIALLY women.
Despite women's rights obviously being human rights, not to mention the fact that they comprise half of humanity, all kinds of younger men have latched onto Trump as "da man" to stick it to "the hos" who have been intruding FAR too much on their turf for quite some time, including the sacred military.
Joe Rogan has 14 million "followers," and he invited Trump on his podcast, not Kamala. It's breathtakingly stupid to have installed Trump in the presidency again, but it was "bros vs. hos" after all, so what can you do?
So this is where politics IS, a resurgence of open sexism and misogyny along with the usual racism and the growing rural/urban dichotomy.
AND all of this has been supercharged by social media enabling genuine, relentless weaponization of the vitriol unleashed on ALL fronts simultaneously and exponentially. Never mind the accompanying MAJOR surveillance and shameless manipulation of algorithms; turns out undoing western civilization has been dead easy.
Clearly, people simply were not meant to have this much to do with each other; it's brought out the absolute worst that history has always told us was there lurking. But who cares about that; are we not entertained?
We should unplug the internet to save our societies and focus on rolling back climate change for our collective survival, but it appears that as a species we're probably just too stupid to live.
Climate change aside, the primary question before us has truly become whether or not we will survive the male of our species I'd say....
As long as the NDP bets on anti-semitism, yes, that's you Matthew Green and Heather McPherson, the vile protesters will have a political home in Canada.
NOTHING about the convoy was remotely defensible or reasonable.
Claiming otherwise simply shows a high tolerance for completely inappropriate behaviour, probably the result of the unleashed proud boys on the right unleashing one unprecedented thing after another, Mark Zuckerberg style, as in "move fast and break things."
I wish Substack offered a 'dislike' button, so I could dislike your comment.
Like everything else in our world the last few years, the reasons the convoy began are complex. And the reasons it continued for as long as it did had everything to do with the lack of response by ALL levels of gov't.
Give me a break. That they tried is a weak excuse for policy failure. The whole concept of vaccine mandates was premised on lies.
We were told to get vaccinated because it would stop the spread of the disease. Get vaccinated to save granny. This lie was well known at the time and still persists today. And then we find out they didn’t even test for transmission. We were also told that natural immunity offered less protection than vaccines. This is what the state-sanctioned experts were telling us. The entire rationale for mandates was flawed and they knew it.
I won’t engage in anything else because your post is little more than a rant for Trudeau, a rant against Trump and religion, and a deferral to the manufactured scientific consensus, which isn’t how science actually works. This is tiresome frankly.
Here’s a hint, using all caps doesn’t make your argument stronger and using FFS is not persuasive. It makes you sound like an unhinged ideologue.
I'm the "unhinged ideologue?" So what do you mean when you say "STATE-SANCTIONED experts?"
The government just hires qualified people who are sanctioned by the educational institutions they've attended, like they've always done.
When exactly do you guys think all these basic changes took place in Canadian society from when you were a kid getting immunized, going to a doctor and sometimes a hospital when you were sick?
On the mandates, the majority of the population wanted them actually.
And the "MANUFACTURED scientific consensus?" Again, the "state" is doing that, as in "the deep state?"
You're paranoid, deluded, and wrong.
That’s fair. I do not deny that Ottawa residents were impacted by the protest. Clearly they were, and I sympathize with that, and support the idea that the protest went on too long.
But your friends suffered far less harm than parents with children in school, or parents with children in organized extra-curricular programs. All of this was taken away from them. Those impacts are still being felt today with learning loss.
Interesting little factoid not necessarily relevant to this conversation, but something people are completely oblivious to. More than 165 million people were pushed into $2 a day poverty because of lockdowns, mostly in Asia and Africa. The UN measures this poverty rate annually. Extreme poverty dropped every single year from 1998-2020. Lockdowns changed everything for them.
The Ottawa postal code is one of the wealthiest in Canada. People living there didn’t feel the impact of covid policy like other people, such as truckers. Although I sympathize with their circumstance during the protest, many people suffered far more. The trucker protest sparked restriction reversals almost immediately.
PANDEMICS change things. How are you so casual about something none of us have ever experienced? Let me guess. It was a "shamdemic?"
And all those epidemiologists and doctors and other medical science people just should have KNOWN how it would manifest as well?
They bloody well TRIED their best, earnestly committed to at least fewer deaths, but evidence-based science in real time didn't stand a chance against the smug, stupid dogma of religious belief, adherents of which were the worst offenders because, you know, we prefer an alternate reality thanks where our "god" rules. Unbelievable.
Americans weren't so lucky with Trump so way more died there in proportion. But do the Liberals get ANY credit for what they did? No, not even down there where it happened; Trump was STILL unbelievably re-elected FFS, and everyone here is (again unwittingly succumbing to algorithms) hell-bent for election as they say to GET RID of Trudeau and responsible Liberal governance so we can vote for the Convoy (Conboy) Party of Canada who don't even accept science (recall that Harper was the first PM to MUZZLE scientists?), EVEN the science of climate change WHILE it ramps up in real time. Who knew people were so stupid?
WTF is this about? The truckers didn’t break anything - not a single damn thing. It was a righteous protest - by patriots who were forced into a corner by an authoritarian Covid regime. To mention the truckers protest in the same breath as the Montreal mob is disturbing.
.. ‘patriots .. Look up Oklahoma City .. One 18 wheeler driven by a ‘patriot 🦎🏴☠️
One slight difference - not a single person was injured in Ottawa. Not a single one. Silly and unserious comparison.
I have two colleagues with small children who had to move out of their house in Ottawa because they could not safely live (or sleep) in their own home.
And I have a 25 year old son who was fired from his job for refusing to get vaccinated. Not one single person was injured by the protestors. Not one single person was threatened. Safety was never an issue. Sure, it was annoying for local residents and I empathize with that, but infinitely more people were impacted by the authoritarian covid policies championed by Ottawa. Maybe if Trudeau met with them just one time, the protest would have ended much sooner.
Was your son employed by the government or a company?
On that, Sir, I respectfully disagree.
Don’t mention the Montreal mob in the same breath as the truckers. The truckers were at their breaking point after nearly three years of an authoritarian Covid regime. The clowns in Montreal are untethered by what - a conflict 10,000 miles a way that has nothing to do with Canada directly.
Ya. Not really possible to respond to this rant. It’s just a string of infective and silliness.
The word is "invective" and do tell; which point is "silliness?"
Oh the truckers were your beloved TRIBE were they? May I suggest that there is NO PRECEDENT and NOTHING defensible or even remotely reasonable about parking your "big rig" in Ottawa in close proximity to the government of Canada and the duly elected PM with huge signs saying "FUCK TRUDEAU" while simultaneously braying on about FREEDUMB FOR THREE WEEKS. Where else in the WORLD can you do that without being exterminated? Where? Get a perspective FFS.
You guys have all BEEN HAD by algorithms stoking hatred for a guy, Justin Trudeau (starting with who his father was which he obviously can't fucking HELP) and the "Libtards" by the relentless, stupid cons (remember how we didn't used to CALL them that, remember when they were the reasonable Progressive Conservative Party of Canada instead of the Convoy Party of Canada and/or the Christian Party of Canada that they've DEVOLVED into thanks to Preston Manning's "Reform Party" takeover which has coincided with hidden agendas, bozo eruptions and over time the destruction of our formerly functional political system?!) One of the realities that is so untenable to conservatives is that progressives/Liberals/Democrats are actually the majority in democracies, which makes them the bona fide NATURAL GOVERNING PARTY of this country. Think about it; why do we NEVER talk about a "conservative democracy."
Sources are all. Try getting your information from our public broadcaster; they're the last bastion of the idea that was/is Canada. It's a fragile thing like any idea, but it brings us together and has history. Now if we could just get it across to people that RELIGION IS ALSO JUST AN IDEA, and so deserves the same criticism that any idea deserves among supposedly rational people, we might bloody well GET somewhere.
Far too often any criticism of Israel is equated with antisemitism. It’s becoming apparent Israel is being run by religious zealots who are being driven by ancient prophecies from the 5th century BC and don’t care how it looks if they drop bunker bombs on civilians and hospitals. They are the self-proclaimed “God’s chosen people” fulfilling the word of Yahweh, sweeping aside anyone who gets in their way.
What does this have to do with Montreal mayhem?
Competing religious delusions are what has made the Middle East conflict so famously intractable for decades now, so if you blithely eschew any knowledge of the very complicated history of the region like so many of these sheltered university students surprisingly do (?!), the next best approach is to at least pan OUT to evaluate in the usual fog and psychosis of any WAR what HAMAS actually DID at that music festival, how it took barbarism to a whole other level, uniquely sanctioned by the ancient doctrines of ISLAM. (They're stubbornly unevolved, like Catholicism, which is what makes these two religions the worst at this point.)
If you saw any of their proud, shared videos, Allah (alalala) is summoned repeatedly as fortification and justification, and if you followed any of the analysis of actual footage you learned that these disturbingly indoctrinated, RABID guys SHOT WOMEN IN THE FACE WHILE RAPING THEM. Then there's the whole taking old people and babies as hostages and taking them to their underground tunnels like the vermin they are, crawling around underneath all those women and children and their families, making all of THEM hostages as well. Clearly they're no match for the Israeli army (or for the superiority of their modern civilization) but will HAMAS surrender accordingly to END the carnage of their people above ground? NO and NO because they're all bent on martyrdom, again sanctioned by their insane cult.
Netanyahu is a monster in his own right, and interestingly has been sanctioned in that by the most religious guys in his cabinet, but I have seen zero discussion about the role of RELIGION in this mess, except by Sam Harris, who is an atheist.
So until we start collectively challenging the big lie that is religion, our species is truly at risk of survival, and believers are disproportionately science deniers, including climate science, despite the scientific method demonstrably being us humans at our best and most rational. Truth is the sunshine we desperately need now, but it's like Jack Nicholson said, we apparently "can't handle the truth." So it's hard to feel hopeful anymore, especially since Trump won, grand initiator of the big lie, American style.
And the taking over of land was also initiated by a mythical being, in this case the Jewish god/bible, none of which is TRUE either of course. Sigh.
I don't often agree with you, Sir, but on this I am with you all the way.
Thank you for being clear on a terrifically clear subject.
Your article is well described by Shakespeare in Macbeth: 'It is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing'. The fact is that you don't know anything about what transpired in Montreal, and should refrain from saying anything about it until you do, if ever.