Links - 6th May 2025 (2 - General Wokeness)

Meme Coddled affluent professional @feelsdesperate: "4/ This paragraph may have been the funniest thing written in the past 10 years."
"Why The Review Was Unacceptable. After we published the review, we heard from Latin readers who believe the portrayal of Salma Hayek's taco was racist and that it reinforced harmful stereotypes. We heard from readers who were upset that we labeled the taco a lesbian when it seems more likely that she was bisexual. We heard from readers who questioned the consent of the sexual encounter between the taco and the hot dog bun. We heard from readers who found the taco to be a damaging portrayal of a predatory queer woman."

Canadians have constitutional right to unequal treatment: new report - "Equity, not equality, is a constitutionally protected right in Canada, argues a new report published by a Calgary-based think tank.  “Canadians have been sold a bill of goods,” Bruce Pardy, the author of the report and a Queen’s University law professor, told National Post by email. “Many of them think that they have a right to equal treatment under the law. They think that discrimination is illegal. But nothing could be further from the truth. In Canada, discrimination is lawful as long as it is committed against the right groups — and in particular against straight white men. “This isn’t just the law, but part of the Canadian Constitution. Unequal treatment is embedded as a constitutional standard — and in some situations, a constitutional requirement.”  In Canada, the principle of equity — seeking to achieve identical group outcomes — has made judicial inroads across the country, Pardy argues in a report published this week by the Aristotle Foundation for Public Policy.  “Equal treatment and equity are opposites,” writes Pardy, who is a senior fellow with the Aristotle Foundation. “The law cannot simultaneously apply the same laws and standards to everyone and also adjust them depending upon the group. Equal treatment and equity are mutually exclusive and cannot co-exist.”  This issue should be particularly concerning to young Canadians who could be “squeezed out of opportunities because of their identity”... The paper centres the discussion around equity versus equality by comparing the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms to America’s Constitution, arguing that the latter has truly enshrined the principle of equality for all.  The report uses the June 2023 U.S. Supreme Court ruling on race-based university admissions, otherwise known as affirmative action, as a jumping-off point. Pardy cites the landmark decision to show how America’s constitutional protections of equality are anchored in the fifth (due process) and 14th (equal protection of the law) amendments. While the American constitution sets out limits on the powers of legislatures, Pardy writes, “For most of its history, Canada did not have an equivalent.” In 1974, the Canadian Supreme Court underscored this point by saying that while citizens are entitled to the application of law “in a neutral way,” lawmakers are not curtailed from drafting unequal laws.  “This kind of equality meant only that courts applied laws as written, even if those laws treated people differently,” Pardy writes.  Pardy points to a 2008 Supreme Court ruling, R. v. Kapp, as an example of how unequal treatment in the name of addressing historic discrimination became ingrained in Canadian law.  The case revolved around a federal government policy aimed at boosting Aboriginal representation within the commercial fishing industry. The Aboriginal Fisheries Strategy permitted Indigenous Canadians to fish the Fraser River in British Columbia and sell their catch, but barred others from doing the same. When a group of non-Aboriginals sought to apply for the same fishing licence, they were denied. Several of them decided to fish anyway and were ticketed. The group challenged the ruling, but the Supreme Court defended the policy, citing carve-outs to Section 15 of the Charter, the equality provision, that permitted “substantive equality.”  The concept of equity was further entrenched over a decade later, in Fraser v. Canada, Pardy writes, following debates over a job-sharing program where two or three people could “split the duties of one full-time position.” Each individual would be entitled to their proportional share of the role’s pension. Because women with children more often enrolled in the program doing a smaller share of the overall job, compared to men, the Supreme Court deemed the program unconstitutional. Though the justices acknowledged the program was not discriminatory, the results were uneven between men and women. In their view, the program thus perpetuated “a long-standing source of economic disadvantage for women.” As Pardy writes, “In Fraser, the Supreme Court found that a voluntary program available to everyone on the same terms violated the equality guarantee. In the name of equity, section 15(1) does not now merely allow discrimination but may require it.” Pardy told the Post that while similar discriminatory practices are “happening in the United States,” the affirmative action ruling last year has given the country “some chance of sorting themselves out in time.”  By comparison, “in Canada, unequal treatment has become the constitutional standard. So we are stuck with a big problem”... “Our Supreme Court is largely to blame, but of course our foolish politicians and woke bureaucracies have had a big hand in fostering it as well.”"

Peter MacKinnon: York University's faculty hysterics expose desperate need for post-secondary reform - "Observers should pay no heed to the non-confidence motion brought by York University’s faculty association on March 19 against their university president, provost and board chair, for it is only another reminder that Canadian university governance is sorely in need of reform. The motion was a response to a decision by the university’s leadership in late February to suspend admission to 18 programs identified as unviable. The university is reportedly in serious financial trouble and must act to prevent a crisis, but these recent program cutbacks have been met with outrage from individuals and groups at York and some other universities. One York research group, the Critical Trafficking and Sex Work Studies Research Cluster, denounced the suspension for taking place “in a time when transphobia, anti-Black racism, queerphobia, Islamophobia, anti-Semetism, Sinophobia, Xenophobia, whorephobia, and misogyny are on the rise.” Now, four university senators are trying to take the university to court over the suspension. Non-confidence motions are tediously common at the institution and it is well known that these votes, at York or elsewhere, are easily won because faculty unions and their supporters can say what they like — no matter how slanted or disingenuous. Senior leaders, on the other hand, must be circumspect, avoiding the hyperbole that may aggravate differences. It is well known, too, that organizers and strong supporters of faculty unions are mobilized to vote while many indifferent or dissenting members distance themselves (or are distanced) from the proceedings without casting a ballot. In the York case, the non-confidence motion was “overwhelmingly” passed by the 200 faculty association members who voted — the other roughly 1,500 members didn’t participate at all... Change does not come easily to universities, a vulnerability that is hidden in good times but becomes apparent when money is short and trust is in decline. I have written earlier that universities have become captive to ideological and identity-driven issues that threaten them. The former were documented by a Macdonald-Laurier Institute study that described them as “political monoliths,” overwhelmingly left-leaning, with large numbers willing to “cancel” colleagues who do not share their views on social justice issues. Conservative professors (and, we might surmise, conservative students) engage in self-censorship for fear of reprisals from their left-wing counterparts. Identity-driven forces within universities, meanwhile, have been revealed in a study by the Aristotle Foundation that showed that diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) policies are pervasive in these institutions: 477 out of 489 job advertisements at the largest public university in each province featured a DEI requirement in filling academic vacancies. Some of these postings required applicants to belong to a preferred identity group, others gave those applicants preference, while others required candidates to pledge support for DEI. Whether it is their obstruction to change, ideological capture or race-based staffing procedures, it is clear that our universities need reform. In particular, university governance requires an overhaul. Nearly all of our universities are bicameral with boards of governors overseeing management and finance, and academic matters entrusted to senates or their equivalents. Many boards are too large: York’s board can have up to 32 members, including faculty, students, staff, alumni and external members elected by the board. That number should be reduced by half, with at least 10 members with backgrounds in finance and strategic matters coming from outside the university."
Clearly, the only solution is more subsidies so they can continue to push the left wing agenda

FischerKing on X - "White liberals in New England have their opinions because they have no idea what’s going on. Watch Piers Morgan interview ‘Ben’ of Ben & Jerry’s - he just doesn’t know anything at all. He’s a complete ass.  New England generally is regarded as a nice place to live because it isn’t ’diverse,’ and it’s insulated from all the problems of black crime and migration. You could radicalize these people quickly by forcing mass migration on them."
Aka luxury beliefs

Allentown City Hall employee charged with planting noose at own desk - "An Allentown City Hall employee was charged with planting a noose at their desk in January, according to police.  LaTarsha Brown is charged with tampering with or fabricating physical evidence and false reports to law enforcement... Brown reported finding what appeared to be a noose on her desk in her third-floor office at City Hall around 7:30 a.m. on Jan. 10. Responding police collected video and building access records from the time Brown left work on Jan. 9 and her 7:11 a.m. arrival on Jan. 10 to attempt to identify who placed the item on her desk.  Investigators interviewed all employees, and all agreed to provide a buccal swab for DNA testing except for Brown, Capt. Steve Milkovits said.  Milkovits said Brown was initially cooperative with the police investigation but later requested that it be discontinued.  The noose was submitted to Pennsylvania State Police for DNA testing on Jan. 14, according to Milkovits. A search warrant for Brown's DNA was approved and executed on Jan. 24. Three days later, it was submitted for comparison. Milkovits said a state police report was released on March 10 indicating that Brown's DNA matched swabs of the outer surface and inner-knotted portion of the noose. He added no other employee's DNA was found on the noose... The incident led to protests and demands for change at Allentown City Hall in January. Josie Lopez, a community organizer and friend of Brown's, claimed Monday that Brown has faced discrimination and retaliation in the past and believes her friend is innocent.  "This is not just an attack on LaTarsha. This is a warning to anyone in Allentown who dares to stand up against injustice," Lopez said. "This is a smear campaign. This is retaliation. Let me be clear. LaTarsha Brown is innocent. LaTarsha Brown deserves justice... Lopez said Brown was never offered security or protection after the incident and claimed Brown was never treated as a victim.  "City Hall did not follow any visible protocol to ensure her safety or well-being," Brown said. "Instead, they let a hate crime turn into an attack on her character.""

Meme - Furry, MTF and FTM: "We accept all identities!"
Normal person: "I identify as normal."
*annoyed Furry, MTF and FTM*

Religious school leader appointed Ofsted chairman - "A religious school leader has been appointed as chairman of Ofsted for what is believed to be the first time.  Sir Hamid Patel will take up the interim role until a successor is found for Dame Christine Ryan at the schools regulator.  He is the chief executive of Star Academies Trust, which runs nearly 40 primaries and secondaries, including several Islamic schools... He was previously the headteacher of Tauheedul Islam Girls’ High School in Blackburn.  While in that role, the school became one of the first in the country to urge pupils to wear a hijab outside of school.  Guidance reportedly told pupils to “recite the Koran at least once a week” and “not bring stationery to school that contains un-Islamic images”, such as pictures of pop stars. The school was criticised over a visit in 2010 from Sheikh Abdul Rahman al-Sudais, a Saudi Arabian cleric who had described Jews as “pigs”.  Sheikh Sudais also prayed for God to “terminate” the Jews and, discussing his visit, Sir Hamid told The Sunday Times in 2013: “The girls wanted to see this guy with 5 million followers. They had seen him on YouTube. He stayed 20 minutes.”"
Luckily, he's not from a Christian school, or that would be theocracy

Meme - "Lynnie, 22
I'm pan pansexual *Pride flag and rainbow*, panromantic, allo allosexual, alloromantic, poly polyam polyamory polyamorous, nerd, nerdy, gamer, gaymer, fem feminine, femgirl feminine girl, girly girl, cis cisgender, cissexual, Igbtqia2s+, romantic, sexual, switch, she/her/hers/herself/they/them/ their/their/themself/themselves, aesthetic, pastel, geek, geeky, masc masculine, masc girl masculine girl, tomboy, emo, goth gothic, woman, and female."

The charts that show youngsters are rejecting the Left’s culture wars - "A growing mass of evidence suggests that far from the Leftie snowflake cohort of lore, Gen Z are disparate in their politics and care about the same things older generations do – jobs, houses, security – more than culture wars or social issues. A landmark report from the John Smith Centre at Glasgow University, published this week, has added to this feeling. Working with the polling company Focaldata, the institute conducted 260 interviews with people aged 18 to 29, using those conversations to inform a 40-question poll of 2,039 young people across the country. Contrary to what may have been expected, it found that Gen Z are more worried about crime than the environment, surprisingly split on the benefits of migration, and focused on jobs, housing and family above all. “It goes back to Maslow’s hierarchy of needs,” says Eddie Barnes, the director of the John Smith Centre. “The bottom of that triangle is basics (including food, water, shelter, sleep, housing, health, finances). That’s where the younger generation are. This is a generation that has not had much in the way of wage growth, they’ve had extremely high housing costs, and financial insecurity. Those, not culture war issues, are the top priorities. What do people care about? It’s the financial stuff. Crime ranks much more highly than the environment, which was a big surprise.” When asked what the biggest contributors were to them feeling “nervous, anxious or on edge”, respondents replied: “financial worries” (37 per cent), “work pressures” (23 per cent) and “job security or unemployment” (20 per cent). Climate change languished on 10 per cent. Another question asked: “When you think about community, which of the following groups or places come to mind?” Some 42 per cent said family, 38 per cent said their “local town or city”, and 36 per cent said their “friends and social circles”. Gender, by comparison, was only seven per cent. The “most important issues facing the UK today” were inflation and the cost of living, health care, housing and crime. Only 20 per cent said climate change and the environment. The figure is down on a global survey from 2019, which found that 41 per cent of young people thought climate change was more pressing than anything else... "There was a feeling Covid was yet another thing that had damaged young people’s upbringing,” he says. “One young person said, ‘We’ll never get that time back’. There wasn’t bitterness or anger, but a feeling of lament.” Whatever the various causes, the result is a generation apparently more hardened to economic reality than millennials. “Home ownership and the economy are far more important than climate change,” says 25-year-old Oliver Freeston, a Reform councillor from Lincolnshire. “Climate change is natural, it’s been happening for thousands of years. If we have this crazy drive to net zero it’s going to bankrupt the country. It’s not lowering bills, it’s increasing them. For young people it’s already tough with stagnating wages and a high tax burden. We don’t need it to be made any harder.”... Some 51 per cent of respondents surveyed for the John Smith Centre research agreed immigration had changed their communities for the better, but 32 per cent disagreed. Immigration had more support among better-educated and higher-earning groups, as it does in older generations... Gen Z are less homogeneous in their voting intentions than previous generations"
"How dare you! You have stolen my dreams and my childhood with your empty words"

Christian Heiens 🏛 on X - "No political party ever goes quietly off into the sunset without a fight. At some point, the Democratic Party WILL rebrand in response to these disastrous numbers.  But when that moment inevitably arrives, it's going to be entirely cosmetic in nature.  Anti-White Hatred, Misandry, Open Borders, Oikophobia, Transgenderism, and Anti-Natalism are not going anywhere. The labels attached to these things will simply be dropped in favor of more "neutral" terms.  We're already seeing it. Both "Woke" and "DEI" were labels the Left applied to itself to describe core fundamental beliefs. Once those concepts became overwhelmingly negative, they were dropped.  Make no mistake, Democrat operatives are paying attention to the near total collapse in public approval for their party, and they will act on it. But Progressivism as a pseudo-religious creed is not going anywhere."

Meme - "THE TRUTH ABOUT LIBERAL VIRTUE SIGNALING
*HATE HAS NO HOME HERE*
UNLESS ITS HATE FOR TRUMP, HIS SUPPORTERS, WHITE MEN CHRISTIANS + CONSERVATIVES"

Meme - Steak 'n Shake @SteaknShake: "America deserves the best. America gets the best when fries are cooked in 100% Beef Tallow. Only available at Steak 'n Shake. 100% Beef Tallow Throwback Fries"
something witty @Stcmb76: "You chose the Nazi font?"
Steak 'n Shake: "Old English font style is not Nazi it's Old English! Get over the Nazi nonsense!"
Left wingers just hate white history. That's why if you talk about Anglo-Saxons you're a Nazi too

Meme - "Anti Woke VS Woke
Anti Woke
-Worships Elon Musk for some reason
-Lives on 4chan
-Believes in imaginary god
-Gets offended by pronouns
-Dislikes Diversity
Woke
-Hates Elon Musk for no reason
-Lives on Reddit
-Believes in imaginary biology
-Gets offended by anime and games
-Dislikes straight white people"

Richard Hanania on X - "Who is against considering aging a disease so we can help cure it? I regret to inform you public health is at it again. Yale professor: “Classifying aging as a disease can become part of structural ageism.”"

madi🥀 on X - "If you’re using the Bible to hurt other people, you’re using it wrong. “Love does no harm to its neighbor, therefore love is the fulfillment of the law” Romans 13:10"
If you tell an alcoholic that alcohol is bad for him, you're hating him

MEme - "All my friends are turning into Nazis and I can't stand it anymore.
I'm a 30 year old white guy. I just wanna chill, play games, and watch movies with my boys. But the older we get the more of them out themselves to me as racist, homophobic, or just straight up Nazis. I'm not talking edgy humor, I'm talking about stopping our Mario Kart game to go on a 30 minute tirade about how race-mixing is bad or that all gay and trans people are all secretly child molesters. They weren't always like this. When we were kids we all agreed that bigotry like this was for stupid old people. I feel like it's really kicked in the last few years. I've heard of people getting more conservative as they age, but I never imagined It'd be like this. And now I'm the only one left in the friend group who believes ludicrous things like "gay people should be allowed to get married" and "black people are human beings". I feel like a fucking crazy person and don't know what to do or where to go from here. I've argued, debated, and shown evidence until I'm blue in the face but I should have known from the start that was pointless. The worst part is they're technically good friends! They've supported me, laughed, cried, grieved with me through every up and down through my life. Some of them would take a bullet for me without a second thought. I used to think I was the luckiest guy in the world. But I just can't take it anymore. I feel like my soul is dirty after every hang out, listening to this vile shit coming out of their mouths. I know I gotta walk away but it's tough, I've known these people since I was a child, and being 30 having to start completely fresh and make new friends just sounds impossible. Shit sucks. I just wish it didn't turn out this way."
So much for the "empathy" the left keeps boasting of having

Jews Fight Back 🇺🇸🇮🇱 on X - "Meet Cynthia. She’s a manager at the Staples on Wilshire in Los Angeles.  When a Jewish woman came in to print postcards celebrating Jewish joy, her employee refused to help—called it “racist.” And instead of correcting him, Cynthia stepped in and defended it. She stood proudly on the side of blatant ILLEGAL antisemitic discrimination.  This wasn’t a “misunderstanding.” Cynthia didn’t accidentally violate someone’s civil rights. She took a stand—and that stand was: Jewish pride is unacceptable.  This is who @StaplesStores  puts in charge.  Disgusting."
They should've asked them to bake a Jewish cake

Dan Burmawi on X - "I lived as a Muslim for 20 years, and the first time I heard that jihad meant “self-struggle” was from Western university students. Yet they’re convinced that I’m wrong, and they’re right."

Meme - Conservatives want to be oppressed so bad it should be classified as BDSM: "For anyone who thinks we are over-reacting to project 2025 These are women in Afghanistan in the 1970s"
This is a perfect reminder that left wingers love to project. The irony is palpable

Voivod on X - "🇪🇸 Homosexual socialist politician Víctor Sáez visits a kebab shop in his locality in Spain to shoot a propaganda video to show that Muslims are tolerant people, but gets beaten up by the shop owner and his staff and thrown out for being gay"

Montreal officially replaces city hall welcome sign that included woman wearing hijab - "The City of Montreal has officially taken down a welcome sign that stirred controversy last fall because it depicted a woman wearing an Islamic headscarf. The sign in the lobby of the newly renovated city hall, which showed a woman wearing a hijab, drew criticism online, prompting Mayor Valérie Plante to commit to taking it down in the name of secularism."
Islamophobia! Of course, if it were a Christian sign, that would be an unacceptable sign of theocracy

UK security warning as Gaza issue harms integration - "Young British Muslims are growing more disillusioned and isolated because of the Middle East conflict and the government must consider integration a national security issue, a senior Islamic figure has said. The conflict in Gaza has “exacerbated” issues of division and integration between Muslims and non-Muslims, which can then allow extremism to breed on both sides, according to Sheikh Mohammad bin Abdulkarim al-Issa. Issa, the head of the Muslim World League (MWL), said that it presented a significant challenge not only to social integration but also to the UK’s long-term national security. He told The Times that both Muslims and non-Muslims should focus instead on domestic issues of shared concern as “a political situation outside should not interfere with integration inside”... Nearly one in five Muslims wanted religion to play a role in politics, compared with 5 per cent of non-Muslims... Young Muslims viewed Britain as far less tolerant than their older counterparts, and were more likely to say that concerns around Islam in Britain were not legitimate or based on sensationalist media portrayals. Less than 10 per cent aged 18 to 24 viewed Britain as a tolerant country."
Islamophobia! He must be a Zionist!
Time to disband the Church of England to prevent Theocracy
Clearly, left wingers obsessing over "Islamophobia" is not a self-fulfilling prophecy in alienating Muslims, and older Muslims are just ignorant about reality

Muslim charity accuses prison officers of ‘Islamophobia’ after jihadist attack - "A Muslim charity has accused prison officers of Islamophobia amid calls for a crackdown on Muslim gangs after the knife attack on staff by a jihadist.  Data obtained by Maslaha, a Muslim charity, show that prison officers were more likely to use force against Muslim inmates than other prisoners.  The official figures, obtained through Freedom of Information (FOIs) requests, showed that Muslim prisoners in eight of the nine jails with high Muslim populations were more likely to be confronted with batons, made to wear rigid bar handcuffs or deliberately held in a painful position... Hashem Abedi attacked three prison officers at Frankland with two home made knives and hot oil."
If Muslim prisoners were more likely to be violent and thus require force in being subdued, that was only due to Islamophobia

Chris Rose on X - "Jordan has now banned the Muslim Brotherhood, they now join: Austria Bahrain Egypt Kazakhstan Libya Russia Saudi Arabia Syria Tajikistan Turkmenistan United Arab Emirates Uzbekistan They’re not banned in the UK and we’re discussing “Islamophobia” laws instead. 🥴"

Police reissue Isis terrorist's mugshot after she complains she was not wearing a niqab - "A police force reissued a mugshot of a convicted Islamic State (IS) terrorist after she complained she was not wearing a niqab in it.  Farishta Jami, 36, was found guilty of terrorism offences on Thursday for planning to fly to Afghanistan to join IS.  West Midlands Police initially released an image showing her full face and hair – but then published a second that showed only her eyes beneath a navy blue niqab. Matthew Brook KC, Jami’s barrister, told Leicester Crown Court on Friday that she had experienced “considerable distress” because of the photograph showing her full face.

Meme - "*Heaven looking down* Hitler's ghost watching the left as they draw swastikas everywhere, destroy minority businesses, and assault Jewish students"

Lou DiBella🥊 on X - "Never forget who we are and what our fathers fought for. Take back the meaning of patriot. #America #HandsOff2025 🇺🇸"
@evolian 🧬📊 on X - "I absolutely love the libtardification of the people who fought in WWII by the left today. A vast majority of these people explicitly believed in racial segregation between Whites and blacks — not only in training, but uniform, rights, etc."

The Protocols of the Elders of Zion and Projection

"In some senses, its author(s), men from an international aristocracy increasingly alarmed at the advances of liberal constitutional governments over the course of the 19th century, produced a classic work of cognitive egocentrism: The Jews thought as they did. Those who embrace the dominating imperative as a political axiom assume others do, as well.

(No better incident illustrates this point than the first visit of the Japanese delegation to Hebrew University in 1978. They brought as their gift-crucial and carefully thought out in a gift culture-a beautifully bound translation of the Protocols into Japanese. This was so perfect a story, so deeply cutting and dark a joke, it seems like a perfect candidate for urban legend. But it is not.)*...

In a sense, the Protocols expresses their understanding of the anomalous present. Democracy is a prelude to horror. Someone is secretly planning its overthrow. Who else, but a people smart enough to con Gentile commoners into overthrowing their own aristocracies? Even some pathetic aristocrats become "infected with the idea of freedom, SO-CALLED LIBERALISM, and, for the sake of an idea, are willing to yield some of their power." Hence, free press, free thinking, Darwin, and Nietzsche are all pawns of the Jewish conspiracy. "Jews must know what we know," reasons the conspiracist, "and they must be planning what we would plan were we in their position."

If this psychological projection underlies the composition of the Protocols and appealed to some of its readership, the prophetic nature of the text, the extraordinary accuracy of its predictive powers over the early decades of the 20th century, provided it with a much wider and more frightened audience. Above all, it was disturbingly accurate in its reading of egalitarian ideologues.

Whenever the egalitarian zealots managed to pull off a revolution, whether in France in 1789 or in Russia in 1917, no sooner did they acquire power than they turned to terror to rule. All the fair promises that lured the commoners to support the leadership ended in mob rule and bloodthirsty demagogues. Given that the Protocols came out little more than a decade before the Russian Revolution and that by the time Marsden translated it into English, in 1922, the Bolsheviks had begun their purges and mass arrests, the work seemed utterly prophetic...

As [Hitler] plotted his own war of conquest to enslave the world's races, he projected precisely that intention on the Jews. "In reading ... the Protocols, one has the feeling that one is reading descriptions of Hitler's own ... plans. Page after page, all one needs to do is substitute the words 'Hitler will ... whenever the Protocols say 'the Jews [sic] will ... ""

And the same phenomenon repeats in the 21st century among the most zealous believers in the Protocols, the Islamists who plan to do what they accuse the Jews of doing. Here a Turkish Muslim working for the imposition of Sharia on Turkey outlines the plan of action:

You must move in the arteries of the system, without anyone noticing your existence, until you reach all the power centers ... until the conditions are ripe, they [Muslim followers] must continue like this. If they do something prematurely, the world will crush our heads, and Muslims will suffer everywhere, like in the tragedies in Algeria, like in 1982 [in] Syria [Hama] ... like in the yearly disasters and tragedies in Egypt. The time is not yet right. You must wait for the time when you are complete, and conditions are ripe, until we can shoulder the entire world and carry it. ... You must wait until such time as you have gotten all the state power, until you have brought to your side all the power of the constitutional institutions in Turkey .... Until that time, any step taken would be too early-like breaking an egg without waiting the full 40 days for it to hatch. It would be like killing the chick inside. The work to be done is [in] confronting the world. Now, I have expressed my feelings and thoughts to you all-in confidence ... trusting your loyalty and sensitivity to secrecy. I know that when you leave here-[just] as you discard your empty juice boxes, you must discard the thoughts and feelings expressed here.

It sounds precisely like what the Protocols imagined-long, slow, patient infiltration, using democracy to gain power, biding one's time until the proper moment to strike, the need for secrecy lest people who, were they to learn of the plans, would immediately and effectively terminate the conspiracy. The Project, a Muslim Brotherhood plan to bring Europe under Sharia rule first uncovered in Switzerland in 2001, resembles the Protocols so strikingly that readers-especially Jewish readers, who know how terrible it is to be accused of such awful plans -- initially recoiled at even entertaining the possibility that such things are true.

*Confirmed to me in conversation and e-mail by Menahem Milson, head of the Institute of Asian and African Studies at the time, who received the gift from the delegation."

--- The Melian Dialogue, the Protocols, and the Paranoid Imperative / Richard Landes

LInks - 6th May 2025 (1)

There needs to be a price for backstabbing - "What happened was nine Democrats stabbed the rest of their party in the back, the latest instance of backstabbing that is rapiding turning into a trend, in which patriots put their hopes in the party that has told them it will fight tyranny only to cave when the going gets tough. With Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, they are John Fetterman of Pennsylvania, Catherine Cortez Masto of Nevada, Brian Schatz of Hawaii, Dick Durbin of Illinois, Kirsten Gillibrand of New York, Gary Peters of Michigan, Maggie Hassan of New Hampshire, and Jeanne Shaheen of New Hampshire, and Independent Angus King of Maine. Indeed, most of the Democrats in the United States Congress, which is to say all but 10 of them (Maine Congressman Jared Golden was the lone House Democrat), voted against the continuing resolution that will accelerate the president’s dismantling of the federal government."
Surely this level of unhinged fanaticism will help them in the polls!

Ocasio-Cortez tops Democrats' poll on reflecting party values - "Democrats and Democratic-leaning independents were asked to name one person when “thinking about Democratic leaders today” who “best reflects the core values of the Democratic Party.”  The open-ended question yielded a range of responses: 10 percent pointed to Ocasio-Cortez, 9 percent said former Vice President Kamala Harris, 8 percent said Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), and 6 percent said House Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries (N.Y.).   Former President Obama and Rep. Jasmine Crockett (D-Texas) each were named by 4 percent of Democrats and Democratic-leaning independent respondents, while Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer (N.Y.), California Gov. Gavin Newsom (D), former Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and Sen. Elissa Slotkin (D-Mich.) were named by 2 percent of respondents.  At least fifteen other Democrats — many of whom have name recognition from previous presidential campaigns or rumors of possible ones — were named by 1 percent of respondents.  Meanwhile, a plurality of respondents, 26 percent, said they have no opinion, while 5 percent gave non-name responses and 5 percent said no one. All other names accounted for a total of 5 percent of responses. The survey reflects the lack of clarity among Democrats over who should lead the party, as Republicans control of the White House and both chambers of Congress. Ocasio-Cortez has been a leading voice criticizing Schumer for agreeing to a Republican spending bill that almost all Democrats opposed, due to provisions that cut programs and expanded President Trump’s power to control government funding.  “There is a deep sense of outrage and betrayal,” Ocasio-Cortez told reporters late Thursday, referring to Schumer’s decision. “And this is not just about progressive Democrats. This is across the board — the entire party.”    Schumer said a government shutdown would have been worse, effectively accelerating Trump’s efforts to close down government agencies he doesn’t like, but he has faced intense backlash within the party for not putting up a fight.   The last time Democrats were grappling with a Trump presidency, in 2017, the list of party leaders looked very different — with only Sanders near the top of both lists.  Obama led responses at 18 percent, followed by Sanders with 14 percent, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton with 10 percent, and Joe Biden with 7 percent."
No wonder they have record low ratings

6abfe214 on X - "Even if the causes of everything were 100% genetic, improvement is possible. Even without science. Europe managed to do it with violence.
I'm referring here to two ideas I've read
- Europe started habitually executing its lowest 1% of criminals. For hundreds of years it practiced eugenic culling.
- Near constant warfare of small armies produced a truth-demanding, militaristic and meritocratic culture/caste"

Fake Black Lives Matter Facebook page run by Australian union official – report - "A high-ranking Australian union official has been suspended amid reports he ran a fake Black Lives Matter Facebook page that solicited donations from the movement’s supporters. CNN reports that Ian MacKay – an official with the National Union of Workers – helped set up and run a Facebook page called Black Lives Matter as well as other domain names linked to black rights.  The page, which was removed by Facebook after CNN’s queries, had almost 700,000 followers – more than double the official Black Lives Matter page.  MacKay – who is white – did not respond to calls or emails but denied running the page when contacted by CNN... The investigation quoted sources who said the page may have garnered upwards of $100,000 in donations, at least some of which was directed to bank accounts registered in Australia.  It was tied to online donations that supposedly went to Black Lives Matter causes in the US. At least some of the money, however, was transferred to Australian bank accounts... MacKay also registered other websites with links to black rights, such as blacklivesnews.com, blackkillingsmatter.com and backfists.com, among more than 100 site names in total.  Domain records show that in 2015 he registered a site known as blackpowerfist.com, which operated as a Reddit-like discussion forum that encouraged donations. Historical domain registration details show Mackay used his union email address to register the site."
From 2018

Euros: Iain Dale left red-faced after dig at Spain's anthem - "He said the English players were singing God Save the King with “gusto” while the Spanish players appeared to remain completely silent during their anthem.  He tweeted: "What contrast between the two teams. Every England player belted out the national anthem with gusto. Not a single Spanish player opened his mouth."  But as he shared some early criticism about England’s opponents, he was quickly left red-faced.  The Spanish national anthem – Marcha Real – is one of only a handful in the world that doesn’t have official lyrics. Oh my, it's awkward.  The other three nations to have lyric-less anthems are Bosnia and Herzegovina, San Marino and Kosovo."

Amber Laudermilk arrest: Texas embalmer charged with castrating sex offender’s corpse - "A woman in Texas is charged with castrating the corpse of a sex offender.  Amber Laudermilk, 34, was an embalmer at the mortuary facility where the body of Charles Roy Rodriguez was received"

Fun fact: An employment pass/S Pass holder in Singapore can bring in their gay married partner on a long term visit pass, but a Singaporean isn't allowed to. : r/singapore

UN Judge, Onetime Columbia University Human Rights Fellow, Found Guilty of Slavery - "A United Nations judge was convicted on Thursday of trafficking a young woman to the United Kingdom and forcing her to work as a slave.  Ugandan judge Lydia Mugambe, 49, "exploited and abused" the victim, prosecutors said, forcing her to work as an unpaid maid and caregiver while barring her from seeking other employment. A jury found Mugambe guilty of multiple offenses, including facilitating illegal immigration, forced labor, and witness intimidation... Mugambe was a fellow housed within Columbia University's Institute for the Study of Human Rights, whose fellows work to "address some aspect of a history of gross human rights violations in their society, country, and/or region," in 2017... Mugambe became a judge on the U.N. International Residual Mechanism for Criminal Tribunals in May 2023, even though police had been called to her home in Oxfordshire three months earlier... A jury agreed with the prosecution's case that Mugambe, who also serves as a judge on Uganda's High Court, conspired with Ugandan diplomat John Leonard Mugerwa in a "very dishonest" quid pro quo. Mugerwa, the prosecutors said, arranged for the Ugandan embassy to sponsor the victim's entry into the United Kingdom under false pretenses, while Mugambe attempted to influence a judge overseeing a case in which Mugerwa was involved. "

RNC Research on X - "Tim Walz Imposed 95 Percent Tax on Zyn in Minnesota"
Thread by @eugyppius1 on Thread Reader App – Thread Reader App - "I would like a clear explanation, for why the Crusade Against Smoking (which is clearly bad for you) has from the beginning always expanded to include all alternative sources of nicotine, many of which (snus and zyn) are not clearly harmful at all. This makes absolutely no sense. Nicotine is a drug with useful productivity-enhancing neurological effects, if you want people to stop smoking, why hassle them over the vastly safer alternatives? It is the dumbest thing ever. Because of dumb EU regulations, proper snus are illegal to sell everywhere but Sweden, as are the tobacco-free nicotine pouches in Germany. You can buy cigarettes in vending machines and at every corner store tho."

Meme - AlJazeera Plus: "SAVE THE KOALAS!"
AlJazeera English: "EVERY COUNTRY EXCEPT QATAR, NEEDS DEMOCRACY & FREEDOM "
AlJazeera Arabic: "KILL ALL ALAWITES!"

Ben Leo on X - "Woman on radio gushing about how hard her civil servant son works. Stressed, always flat out. Then reveals he does three days in London and one from home. Three days off. THEN reveals he’s studied for and completed another degree WHILE employed! These people are mad."

Bob on X - "Muslims obligated to destroy democracy in the west and replace it with Islamic law, the argument is if to use democracy to destroy democracy or uprising intifada Jihad"
Islamophobia!

Auron MacIntyre on X - "When people hear “The Total State” they think gulags or digital surveillance, and yes all of that comes with it, but the real driver is the lie of liberation   In western liberal democracies the Total State emerged because government promised, first and foremost, to liberate us from each other   For most of history life was an exhausting effort to maintain a complex web of social institutions like church, tribe, and community which were necessary for spiritual health but also material needs like taking care of the poor or sick, education, protection etc.  The state grew by offering to slowly but surely take over all of these tasks, making us feel liberated from the demanding bonds of community while increasing the level of government power   This can be seen most strikingly in the voting patterns of men and women, whose mutual dependence formed the core building block of society: the family   The family is nothing if not a nested series of dependencies, one so critical to social stability that the state has been trying to dismantle it since Plato and yet has failed to do so  Mass democracy has done what no totalitarian throughout history has been able to achieve, it has turned men and women into hostile voting blocs who are racing to give the government enough power to liberate themselves from one another"
PatriciaFleming on X - "👍👍🎯Women inherently submit to authority. Feminism broke them from submission to men, so they'd submit to liberalism instead. Single women are the brides of liberalism."

Yasmine Mohammed 🦋 ياسمين محمد on X - "When I was in Malaysia, I couldn’t shake the feeling that something was off. The billboards proudly proclaimed: “Malaysia, Truly Asia.” But all I saw were niqabs, Halal food, and an entire culture bending over backwards to Gulf tourists. Have you noticed similar cultural shifts in other countries? Let me know"

China’s first corgi police dog loses bonus over 'workplace misconduct' - "The small but determined canine officer lost his year-end bonus for sleeping on the job and urinating in his food bowl, sparking widespread amusement and sympathy on Chinese social media.  According to domestic media, corgi joined the Weifang Public Security Bureau in Shandong province as a reserve explosives detection dog in January 2024, when he was just four months old.  Despite his diminutive size, the now 18-month-old Fu Zai quickly stood out for his exceptional talent in detecting explosives, winning over his trainers and the public alike."

Medical students are being let down | The Spectator - "It’s allocation day for junior doctor jobs. Soon-to-be medical graduates across the UK find out what deanery they will work in upon finishing university. While it should be an exciting time for Britain’s future medics, recent changes to the system have sparked outrage as students hoping to work close to friends and family find out they have been sent halfway across the country instead... Since 2024, instead of academic grades guiding the process, the SJT has been binned and students are randomly allocated a rank which in turn determines which job they get. ‘The system before wasn’t great,’ a penultimate-year medical student training in London tells me, ‘but now there’s no incentive to aim for anything above a pass in your exams.’ She goes on: ‘I’d like to stay close to where I grew up, but it doesn’t really matter how I rank my choices now – we could get sent anywhere.’  That realisation has led to a feeling of nihilism among current medical students. At universities that offer a six-year degree (which includes an intercalated Bachelor of Science) as compulsory, there is a growing trend of medics opting to leave after achieving their BSc in fourth year. Instead of completing their medical degree, they will pursue jobs in health policy, management or healthcare-related tech startups. There is increasing frustration at the lack of reward work in modern medicine offers – with gruelling hours on understaffed wards and pressure from seniors to fill ever-frequent rota gaps leaving medics feeling disillusioned. Couple that with being sent miles away from a partner, family and friends – with few extenuating circumstances for reallocation – and a sizeable number of the high-achieving cohort are considering abandoning the career altogether.  Today students have taken to X (formerly Twitter) to voice their upset at being sent across the UK, with one ‘heartbroken’ medic slamming the rules changing halfway through their study. ‘When I applied to medical school, the deal was that if you do well then you reap the benefits for your foundation programme,’ they wrote. ‘Changing it over halfway through was unbelievably cruel.’ Another student, who has so far got her first choice of deanery, remains glum about the process, noting: ‘With my grades, I could previously have been pretty sure about getting a good job. Despite the publication of the competition ratios for each area, you have no idea what your rank is. Even if you were to “tactically” rank jobs, you’ve got nothing objective to go off to guide you.’  It’s baffling that the UK Foundation Programme has chosen to run things this way. The NHS is facing a shortage of doctors across all specialties. There are almost 16 per cent fewer fully qualified GPs in the UK, relative to population, than other developed countries – while there has been a decrease in the number of full-time equivalent family doctors. Hospital wards, meanwhile, are overrun, A&E wait times are unacceptably high, and waiting lists remain in the hundreds of thousands.  To stop this worsening – and indeed, if there is to be any reversal of these trends – more doctors are needed in the system. This requires a focus on both recruitment and retention. Medicine is already suffering from a loss of doctors to countries like New Zealand and Australia on completion of FY2. The system must better serve its future doctors if we are to avoid a fresh exodus of graduates."
Clearly, the NHS needs even more money

Christian Heiens 🏛 on X - "Notice how the Constitution did absolutely nothing to shield you from COVID lockdowns, BLM riots, or the totalizing nature of the Great Awokening, but it’s always being invoked to shield the bureaucratic state at every turn?"

Meme - "Did you know that if you count everything right wingers do as "terrorism,' and nothing left wingers do as "terrorism,' then right wingers commit more terrorism than left wingers?"

Meme - Imtiaz Mahmood: "Thanks to the hijab, Muslim men won't get horny around this baby!"

Thread by @SandyofCthulhu on Thread Reader App – Thread Reader App - "In 1999, I was assigned to design the expansion pack to Age of Empires 2. I chose The Conquerors as the theme, and wishing to have 4 civs (as we had on Rise of Rome), I chose the Spanish, the Aztecs, the Huns, and the Mayans.  The project went ahead extremely well. We were almost completely finished, 5 weeks ahead of schedule as of January 2000. I was excited to move onto Age of Empires 3.  Then Microsoft called and we had an important conference call.
Microsoft said, "We want you to add Koreans to The Conquerors pack."  I said, "Koreans, greatly to their credit, were not conquerors. They stayed in their lane. While they're cool, they don't fit the Conquerors theme."  Here was Microsoft's argument: "Starcraft sold 3 million copies in Korea."  Here was my counter-argument, which seemed pretty valid to me. "Starcraft doesn't have any Koreans in it, so those sales had zero to do with a Korean civ."  Microsoft: "But ... Starcraft sold 3 million copies in Korea."  I could see where this was going. Once someone simply repeats a previous argument, it's clear they are no longer functioning from logic or intelligence.
So I went ahead and we crammed in the Korean civ in the last 5 weeks we had. No Microsoft didn't give us any extra time. We made what apparently were three mistakes. We used the wrong art for the turtle ships (we used a legitimate source, but apparently Koreans didn't like that source), we named the Sea of Japan "the Sea of Japan" (it's called that in every nation except one. Yup.), and we said there was a Japanese invasion of Korea from 1592-98 which for some reason in 2000 was controversial. A Microsoft representative in Korea actually got arrested and detained for a while.  And in the end, we didn't sell 3 million copies of Age of Empires 2 in Korea after all. Don't get me wrong, Age of Empires 2 sold super-well, and so did The Conquerors expansion. But Starcraft was impossible to topple from its Korean throne."

Wannabe dad, 35, dies after swallowing live chicken in tantric ritual - "a 35-year-old man in India passed away after consuming a live chicken in an alleged tantric ritual.  Anand Yadav was believed to have taken this drastic measure as part of an occult ceremony to fulfill his desire to become a father... Physicians were surprised to discover that the chick was still alive within the victim's corpse during the post-mortem study of the case, which was reported from Ambikapur... After making an incision near his throat, doctors found a fully alive chick trapped in a position that obstructed his airway and feeding canal, likely leading to asphyxiation.  Dr. Santu Bag, who conducted the post-mortem, expressed his surprise, saying, "I have performed over 15,000 post-mortems in my career, and this is the first time I have encountered such a case. The outcomes left us all in disbelief.""

Warwickshire slaughterhouse staff played wolf sounds to sheep and ‘inflicted immense pain, fear and distress’ - "Halal abattoir staff slammed sheep hard onto concrete floors and played recordings of wolves to the terrified animals as they were dying, footage reveals.  In a string of acts captured by hidden cameras, workers also breached animal welfare laws in ways that an academic said would have inflicted “immense pain, fear and distress”.  Sheep were inadequately killed, showing signs of life and suffering for up to four minutes after their throats were cut and when workers started dismembering them, an expert’s report says. But an official food standards inspector who was watching failed to act, according to the filmmaker who shot the scenes in secret... Workers resorted to conventional bolt guns on sheep that did not die when their throats were cut... The proportion of UK slaughtered sheep that are killed with stunning – which means animals cannot feel pain or suffer – fell last year, from 77 per cent in 2022 to 71 per cent, government figures show, suggesting more are being killed for the halal market."
Islamophobia!

Meme - 𝗡𝗶𝗼𝗵 𝗕𝗲𝗿𝗴 ♛ ✡︎ @NiohBerg: "In Egypt, over 9 out of 10 women have experienced sexual assault or harassment.  In Afghanistan, women aren't allowed to yell when they're beaten by their husbands.  Can we be serious for one minute please?"
Celine:"Nobody treats a woman better than a Muslim man, you guys just get on here and say anything"
noor @fraudnoor: "kaffir men treat muslim women better than muslim men do"

Thread by @atlanticesque on Thread Reader App – Thread Reader App - "True Believers in the Fully-Regulated Society™ are incapable of understanding why everyone else hates them and why they kill everything they touch.  Here’s a True Believer insisting it’s *no big deal* to be *forced to hire a compliance lawyer* to keep a hamster forum online. It’s like, what do you say to these people? They don’t understand the vast majority of people would rather just give up on a hobby rather than hire an attorney to ensure their hobby complies with the latest state regulations.  These people need to be purged from the body politic. “Just hold a staff meeting, review the latest regulatory measures, and ensure your operations comply. Then hire an attorney to draft the appropriate deliverables for administrative review. Heck, if you’re adventurous, you could try doing that yourself!”  One hears death creeping."

Hamster forum and local residents’ websites shut down by new internet laws - "Dozens of small internet forums have blocked British users or shut down as new online safety laws come into effect, with one comparing the new regime to a British version of China’s “great firewall”.  Several smaller community-led sites have stopped operating or restricted services, blaming new illegal harms duties enforced by Ofcom from Monday.  They range from a hamster owners’ forum, a local group for residents of the Oxfordshire town of Charlbury, and a large cycling forum.  The hosts of the lemmy.zip forum, hosted in Finland, blocked users from the UK accessing the site, saying the measures “pave the way for a UK-controlled version of the ‘great firewall’”... Britain’s Online Safety Act, a sprawling set of new internet laws, include measures to prevent children from seeing abusive content, age verification for adult websites, criminalising cyber-flashing and deepfakes, and cracking down on harmful misinformation.  Under the illegal harms duties that came into force on Monday, sites must complete risk assessments detailing how they deal with illegal material and implement safety measures to deal with the risk.  The Act allows Ofcom to fine websites £18m or 10pc of their turnover... many smaller internet forums have said they are not willing to deal with the compliance, or shoulder the theoretical financial burden of the new laws.  “While this forum has always been perfectly safe, we were unable to meet [the compliance requirements of the Act],” wrote the operators of The Hamster Forum, which describes itself as “the home of all things hamstery”.  Richard Fairhurst, the administrator of the “Charlbury in the Cotswolds” forum, wrote that the Act was “a huge issue for small sites, both in terms of the hoops that site admins have to jump through, and potential liability”.  “Running a small forum is much harder than it was when I started doing this almost 25 years ago,” he wrote on the site. The site has remained open but closed a debate board where people discussed off-topic issues.  Mr Fairhurst, who has run the forum since 2001, told The Telegraph: “By putting all these burdens on the small sites its going to push people away from these small locally run British-owned sites and towards the American giants.”  Bike Radar, the forum of the cycling magazine, shut down on Monday blaming “continually rising operational costs” without mentioning the Act specifically. The site has millions of posts. The Green Living Forum, which was set up in the early 2000s and had more than 470,000 posts, has also closed down, with the site’s administrator saying they were not willing to be liable for fines.  The host of lemmy.zip, a forum for sharing links, said he would block UK-based internet addresses from accessing the site. “These measures pave the way for a UK-controlled version of the ‘great firewall,’ granting the government the ability to block or fine websites at will under broad, undefined, and constantly shifting terms of what is considered ‘harmful’ content, a message on the site said.  The UK-based administrator of the site, who did not want to be named, said: “If I was living in any other country I’d be ignoring this, but because of this personal risk I can’t. I can’t deal with the possibility of an £18m fine for something I can’t guarantee I can comply with.” Ofcom has said that for small sites, the costs of complying “are likely to be negligible or in the small thousands at most”.  Digital rights campaigners the Open Rights Group (ORG) said Ofcom should exempt smaller sites from enforcement. “The Online Safety Act places onerous duties on small websites and blogs that may lead them to close or geoblock UK users rather than risk penalties,” the ORG’s James Baker said.  “The closure of small sites will not keep children safe but will benefit bigger sites, including Facebook and X, who are laying waste to content moderation on their platforms.  “There is a simple solution – the Secretary of State can exempt small, safe websites from onerous Online Safety duties, and protect plurality online.”"

Paul Hundred, GED on X - "Only Middle Eastern societies evolved pork bans - because aridification eliminated pigs’ niche, making them competitors for human food. It had nothing to do with health. All other centers of civilization kept raising and eating hogs."

Donald J. Trump on X - "Why do we always know how the four liberals are going to rule but have to think about which side the Republican judges will go."
Clearly, this is because liberals are always right and conservatives only realise this sometimes

Kim Kardashian Thought India Would Be Like Aladdin - "“We thought we were going to more of a marketplace, like a spice market,” which is when Kim admitted that she thought Mumbai would be more like what is seen in the 1992 Disney movie Aladdin, which is set in the fictional Middle Eastern city of Agrabah. “What you see Aladdin going to and stealing the bread from,” she said. “That’s where I thought we were going.”"

Meme - "4chan is actually more welcoming than reddit"
"This post has been removed by the moderators"

Chinese Restaurant Types Explained: Differences Between "餐馆," "餐厅," "饭店," "饭馆," and "菜馆" - "In terms of frequency, "餐馆" and "餐厅" are the most commonly used in everyday conversation. "饭馆" is also very common, especially in more casual contexts. "饭店" is used both for restaurants and hotels, depending on the region, while "菜馆" is less common and often specific to certain types of cuisine"

How Coke misled America - "Like the tobacco companies, Coke has spent millions spinning science to hide soda's health costs from the public and downplay the risks of sugar. In fact, Coke has been at this game longer than the tobacco industry. When the Tobacco Industry Research Committee started launching disinformation campaigns in 1954, it imported its staff and strategies lock, stock, and barrel from the Sugar Research Foundation, a nonprofit funded partly by Coke. The soda companies were pioneers of the PR strategy now known as the tobacco playbook. For decades, the $300 billion corporation has duped consumers by promoting messages that are either misleading or flat-out false. It's used an extensive network of allies and proxy groups to carry its messages, including co-opting scientists and their research, and spent billions of dollars on ads that associate Coke with warm and fuzzy feelings represented by polar bears, Santas, and happy families. Coca-Cola has yet to face a major reckoning for its outsize role in America's health crisis. One of the dietary falsehoods that Coca-Cola spreads is the concept that a calorie is a calorie. "We don't believe in empty calories," Katie Bayne, Coke's former chief marketing officer, said in 2012. The following year, James Quincey, now the CEO of the corporation, said, "When we talk about obesity, a calorie is a calorie. The experts are clear — the academics, the government advisors, diabetes associations — we need to have balance in the calories. And if you're taking in too many, or burning them off, that is a problem; wherever they're coming from, a calorie is a calorie." But in the human body, not all calories are created equal — far from it. Research has long shown that a calorie of liquid sugar is not metabolized in the same manner as a calorie of whole grain, for example, or a calorie of fruit or nuts. Those calories have fiber, vitamins, and other nutrients that are not present in soda. Coke also promotes the related message of "energy balance." The simplest energy balance argument posits that a calorie of food will be metabolized the same whether it comes from cashews, kale, or Coca-Cola, so consumers should focus not on the type of food but on trying to burn as many calories as they consume. Coke has been especially interested in emphasizing the calories-out side of the equation... Coke is in the business of selling sugar water. If it tries to reduce sales of its products, it would be violating its obligations to its shareholders"
Left wing logic - evil companies abuse non profits and corrupt science to push their own agenda, but if you criticise non profits the left approves of, you are heartless and evil, and if you criticise science the left approves of, you are a Science Denier)

Links - 5th May 2025 (Canadian Federal Election 2025/Mark Carney)

Immigrants denied Carney his majority - "The immigrant vote, long considered a reliable vote store for the Liberal Party, is quickly emerging as an important factor in having denied Prime Minister Mark Carney his expected majority.    Not only did immigrants break for the Tories in any number of pre-election polls, but immigrant-heavy ridings were the most likely to see their share of the Conservative vote increase as compared to 2021...   The Economist concluded that while Canada’s 2025 election yielded effectively the same result as in 2021, underneath the surface the country had undergone an electoral realignment similar to what’s occurred in the United States. “Just as in the United States, working-class and immigrant voters swung right,” wrote the publication... The B.C. Conservatives experienced a similar phenomenon in their own election...    The 2025 election thus represents one of the few times in Canadian history where the average 25-year-old was more likely to vote Conservative than the average 65-year-old — and where the average immigrant was more likely to vote Conservative than the average native-born Canadian.   As to why both groups are shifting right at the same time, one explanation is that both have been disproportionately vulnerable to the decline in living standards that has defined Canada’s last 10 years, particularly in the area of housing affordability...    New Canadians have also started to emerge as prominent opponents of some of Canada’s more liberal social policies, including harm reduction, repeat bail for chronic offenders and even lax integration of other immigrants...   “They value family, faith, entrepreneurship, and community order,” wrote Coletto. “For many, the Liberals’ progressive stances on gender, parental rights, and criminal justice reform felt out of touch.”" Jamie Sarkonak: Mark Carney's election win already has economists worried - "Fitch Ratings, one of the great deciders of how much interest Canada pays on its debt, flapped a warning flag in our faces for electing Prime Minister Mark Carney the night before. “Canada’s credit strengths offer significant headroom to weather a fiscal or economic shock,” wrote the ratings agency, “but increased structural deficits would pressure its credit profile.” Fitch had already priced in federal government deficits for 2025 and 2026, amounting to 2.6 per cent and 2.4 per cent of Canada’s GDP, respectively. Factoring in the Carney platform, though, resulted in even worse figures: the 2025 deficit is now slated to be 3.1 per cent of GDP, growing to 3.2 per cent in 2026. For context, the federal deficit between 2000 and 2019 ran at 0.4 per cent of Canada’s GDP. The Carney plan takes us to eight times that. Plus, he has the hurdle of a new Parliament, with new political dynamics. “As a minority government,” Fitch cautions, “the Liberals will have to compromise with other parties to pass legislation, increasing the likelihood that enacted policies will differ from the platform.”... Morningstar, the American financial services firm, figured that the housing situation in Canada won’t be sorting itself out with all the red tape and trade uncertainty; Carney’s plan to remove GST from homes bought by first-time buyers “may drive improved demand but exacerbate the same housing problem they are trying to solve,” making matters worse. This bodes very poorly for Canada, which is already in a bad place. GDP, the measure of our country’s objective output, has been limping upward. Divide that by population, which has been growing relentlessly under the Liberal government, and it looks much worse. GDP per capita fell for six consecutive quarters, only to slightly improve in the subsequent, and most recent, quarter. A recession is reached when a country has seen at least two consecutive quarters of negative growth — but since that usually refers to a decline in total GDP, Canada has narrowly avoided the label. In February, CIBC Deputy Chief Economist Benjamin Tal didn’t bother sugarcoating it with labels: “Let me break it to you: we are in a recession — a per-capita recession,” he told a real estate forum in Toronto. How bad we’re doing on a per-capita basis depends on your reference time period. Going back to 1981 and following up to 2024, the economy grew per capita at an average rate of 1.1 per cent, says Statistics Canada. Only now, this growth has since flattened, leaving our post-pandemic GDP per capita seven per cent below what it otherwise would have been: in the last quarter of 2023, GDP per capita was $58,111; had we remained on the 40-or-so-year trend, it would have been $62,356. We’re at a point where catch-up games will need to be played for years to return the economy to what it once was... We’ve read what Carney had in store and it was bad; worse, even than the trajectory under former Prime Minister Justin Trudeau.” Canada’s AA+ rating from Fitch — and high praise for its stability — haven’t been downgraded by the agency just yet, but it’s certainly looking like it’s headed that way. Instead of ignoring it, it should be taken as a last warning. Unheeded warnings are par for the course in Canada, though, so it’s doubtful we’ll ever see that blimp turned around. The same, we can probably say for, on the trade front: Carney, despite baselessly maligning Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre by telling followers that he “worships at the altar of Donald Trump,” and declaring the “relationship we had with the U.S.” to be over, is already warming up to President Donald Trump. Trump praised Carney on Wednesday, reportedly saying on a call with the Canadian prime minister that “we’re going to have a great relationship.” Despite the Liberal campaign’s constant invocations of Trump, the president was happy with the election result because, between the two candidates for prime minister, “They both hated Trump, and it was the one that hated Trump, I think, the least that won. I actually think the Conservative hated me much more than the so-called Liberal.”"
A "good economist" with bad policies is not a good economist. But a lot of people are taken in by 'qualifications' rather than achievements Opinion: Carney’s accounting change reduces transparency, accountability - "The government plans to separate federal spending into two budgets: operating and capital. Government salaries, cash transfers to the provinces and to individual Canadians (e.g., Old Age Security) will fall within the operating budget, while spending on “ anything that builds an asset ” will count as capital. The government plans to balance the operating budget by 2028-29 but fund increased spending within the capital budget with more borrowing.According to the Liberal Party platform , this accounting change will “create a more transparent categorization of the expenditure that contributes to capital formation in Canada.” In reality, it will muddy the waters, making it harder to evaluate the true state of federal finances... Mark Carney’s deficit-spending plan for the next four years dwarfs Justin Trudeau’s, and Trudeau was the biggest spender (per-person, inflation-adjusted) in Canadian history. That will add almost $100 billion more to Canada’s mountain of federal debt. Yet Prime Minister Carney has tried to sell his plan as more responsible than his predecessor’s... Carney’s definition of “capital spending” remains vague. Instead of limiting this spending to direct investments in long-term assets such as roads, ports or military equipment, the government will also include in the capital budget “ new incentives ” that “support the formation of private sector capital (e.g. patents, plants, and technology) or which meaningfully raise private sector productivity.” In other words, corporate welfare. In fact, any government subsidies to corporations — as long as they somehow relate to creating an asset — could potentially land in the same spending category as new infrastructure spending. Not only would this be inaccurate but such a broad definition means the government could potentially balance the operating budget, not by reducing spending, but simply by shifting it over to the capital budget. This would add to the debt but allow the government to pretend to be practicing “responsible” budgeting. To increase transparency, rather than split federal spending into two budgets the Carney government could give provide additional breakdowns of line items into “operating” and “capital” within the existing budget framework. Then Canadians could decide for themselves whether the government’s accounting was politically self-serving or helpfully clarifying." Carney's trick shouldn't fool anyone that future will be rosier - "generally accepted accounting principles (GAAP) were born. Each country has slightly different principles and reporting requirements that encompass GAAP, but, for the most part, GAAP is GAAP around the world. In other words, accounting principles have not changed much over the centuries since the foundational accounting equation has not changed.  However, accounting principles can be malleable and flexible. One of the most common manipulations is the classification of assets versus expenses... Alberta’s provincial government attempted this kind of budgeting exercise in 2013 and then-disastrous premier Allison Redford was thoroughly and rightfully roasted for this lame attempt to make the numbers look better.  There are other examples in recent history. Former United Kingdom chancellor (and later prime minister) Gordon Brown deployed this trick with his version of the Golden Rule from 1997 to 2009, hiding massive overspending and debt accumulation by keeping such amounts away from the operational budget. The same occurred in Greece before the 2008 financial crisis.   History shows that when politicians use this approach, it often leads to debt spiralling out of control.  What about Carney’s claims that such an approach would lead to personal tax cuts? Well, keep dreaming.  Any Canadian who falls for this promise should do themselves a favour and take a basic accounting course. Again, if you move expenditures off the budget into a capital budget, that does not reduce cash outlays. For governments, it means piling up debt.  If the spending gets too out of control (like it has in Canada), it leads to inflation, a stealth tax that slams the poor the hardest. Governments can only pay for spending increases by raising taxes and/or significantly reducing expenditures — operational and capital. Reduced personal taxes? I’ll believe that when Pacioli comes back from the dead and develops a new accounting equation.  Famous U.S. economist William Niskanen in his 1971 book, Bureaucracy and Representative Government, said, “The separation of current and capital budgets permits the executive and legislative branches to present a partial picture of fiscal policy that conceals the aggregate growth of public expenditure.”" Mark Carney has a housing plan. How long will it take to implement? - "Housing experts and economists say some of the proposed measures are promising, but some key challenges remain. And some measures will take a lot longer to implement than others. “Doubling the rate of building housing is extremely important because Canada has been under-building for nearly two decades and during this two decades population has been going up,” said Tu Nguyen, economist at RSM Canada. She added, “It's extremely ambitious to say that you are going to build 500,000 homes. Is it achievable? Maybe. It will not be easy.”... Much of the construction in the post-war years was done by a Crown corporation called Wartime Housing Canada, which later became the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation (CMHC). Federal Crown corporations are established either by a special Act of Parliament or by articles of incorporation under the Canada Business Corporations Act. But creating a Crown corporation from scratch would be gargantuan undertaking, one that will need a lot of work even after it is approved by Parliament. “When [CMHC] was involved in direct delivery of various programs back in the '70s, '80s and '90s, they established a network in the early post-war period of 96 branch offices across the country, staffed with architects, engineers, building inspectors, loans officers, underwriters, and so on,” Pomeroy said, adding that it could take years for Ottawa to recreate that scale. He said, “I can't imagine how at a single federal agency, you would actually be able to emulate that kind of support for local development.” This new agency would essentially act as a developer and, according to the Liberal platform, “develop and manage projects and partner with builders for the construction phase of projects.”... All major political parties agree that Canada needs to build more homes faster, but there are few answers on who will be building the homes. The Canadian Construction Association estimates that the industry is short by around a million workers. It is unclear where the parties plan to meet the demand for more workers." Adam Pankratz: Too many Canadians happy with Liberal decline - "Canadians voters asked for more of the same thin policy gruel from our own political beadles by sending the Liberals back to power for a fourth term. A decade of lost economic prosperity, denigration of national pride and failed immigration policy was ultimately not enough to turn the stomachs of the voting public... By nearly every metric the country is doing worse now than in 2015. Canadians feel less pride in their country. Our GDP growth per capita is second to last among OECD countries and total GDP per capita is equivalent to the poorest American states. Since 2015, Canada has been undeniably getting poorer, indeed, had our economy stuck to the 2015 baseline trends, we’d all be $4200 per year richer. Crime, including violent crime and drug abuse, are up. Finally, in perhaps the saddest result of all, young Canadians feel hopeless about their prospects of owning a home as prices have skyrocketed, with the average housing price getting more expensive by $43 dollars per day, every day, since the Liberals came to office; adjusted for inflation that’s an increase of over $150,000 for new homebuyers.   These are not the statistics we would normally associate with a populous demanding more of the same. And yet Canadians have just rewarded the Liberals a fourth term. We may search for other answers, but ultimately this vote reflects the fact that a great many Canadians are happy with our decline... This election Canadian voters, specifically Liberal voters, appear to have ignored every domestic indicator of success in favour of threats from a bombastic president down south when deciding how to cast their ballot.  While by now there is little doubt that Donal Trump was the wild joker factor in this election, some Canadians seem to have forgotten is that the U.S. president was nowhere to be found on any ballot across the country despite his larger unavoidable presence. Trump is a problem, no doubt there. But the larger reason Trump can threaten us so well is that we have been collectively weakened by poor governance for nearly a decade... In the aftermath of Trump’s election and threats of tariffs and annexation, Justin Trudeau went on CNN, and when asked what it meant to be Canadian, he said “We’re not American.” Mark Carney did not offer a more convincing answer during the campaign. Is that really all we can muster as a country and message? We’re just not Americans? Sadly, this vote is giving us a sense that a great many Canadians feel that is all we’ve got... Anyone who voted Liberal must believe Carney represents a meaningful and significant shift in economic and energy policy, as well as in national defence. These buildouts must happen. If sharp and decisive change does not happen in these areas, it does not matter who Canadians may or may not think is best to deal with Donald Trump as our country only continue to weaken.   So far, the indicators are not good. Carney has promised to keep Bill C-69, otherwise known as the Impact Assessment Act, and the emissions cap on the oil and gas industry. The day after the election Bloc Québécois leader Yves-François Blanchet (who’s support Carney may well need) stated there was “no future for oil and gas, at least in Quebec and probably everywhere.” Canadian energy dominance? I’ll believe it when I see it."
Left winger logic is that Canada still ranks highly on several metrics, so the country is not broken even if the direction is downward, or that rising crime isn't a problem since it's still lower than in the 90s. Yet they are outraged if 'rights' that have only been invented in recent years are taken away
One lost decade was not enough for boomer voters Conservatives back Poilievre, but need changes to avoid 'problems' - "Poilievre led the party to an additional 24 seats, including breaking through in the Greater Toronto Area. Supporters point to how he delivered on bringing a new coalition to the party, comprised of young people and those in the blue-collar trades." Randall Denley: Attacking Poilievre's Conservatives will come back to bite Doug Ford - "Ford is willing to work with federal Liberals when it furthers his political interests. He shouldn’t have let his disdain for Poilievre prevent him from doing the same with Conservatives. During the campaign, Poilievre took a tough-on-crime approach. Ford didn’t speak up to support him. Now that the election is over, Ford spent this week laying our new additions to his crime policy, one that is in sync with and arguably more severe than anything Poilievre advocated for. Couldn’t the two have worked together on that issue, at least? The Liberals will never give Ford what he wants on crime. On Wednesday, Ford went on a remarkable, self-described “rant” about “bleeding heart” judges who make decisions based on ideology — an ideology different from his own. The premier was annoyed that unelected judges would have any right to say no to his elected government on tougher crime policies, because “the people are supreme.”... If conservatives want future political success, their federal and provincial leaders will need to grasp the fact that they have more in common with each other than they do with the Liberals. At both levels, conservatives face a common threat. The collapse of the NDP in this federal election has fundamentally changed federal politics. If there aren’t two viable parties splitting the left-wing vote, Conservatives will face Liberal win after Liberal win. The problem is starkly apparent federally, but it’s happening provincially, too. In this year’s Ontario election, the provincial NDP support dropped to 18.5 per cent while the Liberals rose to 30 per cent. If the Ontario NDP continues to crumble, Ford or his successor will have a big problem. It’s time for conservative politicians to wake up and work together." Carson Jerema: Pierre Poilievre didn't stand a chance - "The government claimed Trump’s threats constituted a crisis, but Trudeau responded by resigning on Jan. 6, and proroguing Parliament, bending the apparatus of government for partisan aims to give the Liberals a chance to select a new leader ahead of an election. Given that Trudeau was certain to lose a confidence vote, it is questionable whether he had a right to make that move in the first place. The Liberal manipulations did not end with prorogation. Once Trump’s tariffs appeared to be imminent, Trudeau avoided calm attempts at negotiation, exploited the “crisis” to insult the U.S. president, blathered on in nationalistic platitudes, and started hinting at COVID-style income supports. While negotiations were, no doubt, going on between Canada and the U.S., rather than convene Parliament to face questions from the opposition, and to debate possible responses to the Americans, Trudeau kicked into campaign mode , delivering his successor a massive assist. The longer the Trump crisis persisted, the better positioned Liberals would be in any election. Although the opposition parties had promised to bring the government down, the former prime minister should have faced Parliament to at least try and get support for his agenda. This was to become a bit of a habit for the Liberals. Once Carney succeeded Trudeau in March, rather than meeting the House of Commons, he made multiple policy changes and flew to Europe to meet with government leaders in the U.K. and France, both of which he arguably had no right to do. Because Carney swore in a new cabinet, which had never tested the confidence of the House, some constitutional experts believed the prime minister should have been following the rules of caretaker government, which are normally reserved for election periods. They limit the prime minister to duties that are urgent or absolutely necessary. Even when the election was underway, Carney failed to respect these conventions, pausing his campaign three times to deal with Trump’s upending of free trade. By the third time Carney put his campaign on hold, there were no new tariffs or fresh threats from Trump. In fact, the tensions between the two countries had significantly decreased by then, but that didn’t deter Carney. He wanted to appear to be governing in a crisis, even a dissipating crisis. To top it off, a carbon tax rebate was deposited into bank accounts less than a week before the vote. The Liberals were able to set the carbon tax to zero, and claim they were saving Canadians money, while still depositing one final rebate ahead of election day. The Liberal state always wins." Terry Newman: Mark Carney won on phoney values. They won't fix Canada - "That lack of certainty about the size of his win didn’t stop Carney from taking a shot at Pierre Poilievre, whose seat was still in play at the time, not finalized due to an oversized ballot in Carleton. And he did this, ironically, only breaths apart from suggesting he has the values Canadians need, including kindness and humility. And because he spoke in a tone acceptable to Liberal Canadian sentiments, it didn’t seem to draw much, if any, criticism from election night pundits. He has convinced a large enough swath of the Canadian populace that we are at war with our American neighbours that such inherent value contradictions in himself and our country have ceased to be important.    Carney placed a heavy emphasis on Canadian values, the existence of which was ridiculed by the Trudeau Liberals when they entered the scene in 2015. This was taken up by CBC at the time, who appeared to take great joy in mocking then Conservative leadership hopeful, Kellie Leitch, for the mere suggestion they might exist, oh, and for the way she spoke. Ironic, given the uproar that was made, rightfully, by the Liberals and the rest of Canadians when a 1983 PC attack ad made fun of former prime minister Jean Chrétien for similar reasons. The CBC, no doubt, celebrated Carney’s win on election night. How could they not? He called them “underfunded,” promising them $150 million in his platform. Until it was clear there was at least going to be a Liberal minority after 10 p.m., they were unsure whether or not the election outcome meant they’d have to be delivering their own eulogy, as Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre had campaigned on defunding the broadcaster.   Why did the Liberals of the past decade all but refuse to acknowledge the existence of Canadian values up until now? Seemingly, it’s because they thought it in contradiction with their “diversity is our strength” message. But it didn’t have to be. Canada can be both a welcoming nation to immigrants while asserting core values, including not rushing to the streets to celebrate, for example, the horrific acts of October 7 in cities across Canada or accosting Jews in their Toronto neighbourhoods. These values should be easy to point to. But we cannot expect them from Carney’s Liberals no more than we could Trudeau’s. So, which values did Mark Carney decide Canadians have? According to him, three: humility, ambition, and unity. He told the crowd during his victory speech, he’d do his best to “uphold them every day” as our prime minister, ending with a “You betcha” — a folksy phrase popularized by the film Fargo, which takes places in Minnesota, not Canada. This was an awkward choice, given the juxtaposition between Carney’s status as a former governor of two central banks and global emissions targeting investment banker. It was so clearly an affectation that matched neither his middle-class Canadian upbringing, nor his likely hefty undisclosed assets. It’s as if he keeps trying new versions, caricatures of what he thinks Canada represents, from elbows-up to Mr. Dressup, to rural expressions, hoping one will fit. But they all hang off him like a poorly-hemmed suit. Why these values? Carney said that Canada was in a crisis, but reassured his audience that “Canadians are ambitious. And now, more than ever, it is a time for ambition. It is a time to be bold to meet this crisis with the overwhelming positive force of a united Canada, because we are going to build. Build, baby, build.”  And there seems to be no shortage to what he thinks his Liberal government should be building including “hundreds and thousands of not just good jobs, but good careers in the skilled trades,” “an industrial strategy that makes Canada more competitive while fighting climate change,” “new trade and energy corridors,” and, again, making the promise to “build Canada into an energy superpower in both clean and conventional energy.” But we know he’s refused to repeal Bill C-69, the Impact Assessment Act, and he can’t even bring himself to say the word “oil.” When he did during one of the Liberal leadership debates, he struggled to even get the word out. As if saying it made our clean energy saviour feel dirty.   And where does the necessity of Canadian humility come into play? He continued, “I want to be clear. The coming days and months will be challenging and they will call for some sacrifices. But we will share those sacrifices by supporting our workers and our businesses.” He followed up with, “We do things because they’re right, not because they’re easy,” again, congratulating his supporters on their kindness. But it’s not clear what sacrifices he was referring to. More national debt and a larger deficit? More counter measures against the U.S., which will hurt Canadians and possibly cost more jobs? More pain from carbon taxes, perhaps this time buried? It’s not clear even Carney knows what he meant.  In addition to the lack of clarity on these “sacrifices,” the suggestion doesn’t fit the moment. We’re not in war times, so the language of rationing is odd. And we’re not currently in a crisis, as U.S. President Donald Trump’s tariffs keep getting softened, and even Carney says he plans to negotiate a new deal with him. One thing’s for sure, though I doubt Carney truly got the message, Canadians do not need to make any more sacrifices for Liberal policies like the consumer carbon tax, which they recently reduced to zero — not because of the burden it placed on Canadians — but because it was too divisive and unpopular for them.   Yet, Carney continued to use the word “fight”...  To suggest that Canada’s relationship with the United States, as it has existed until now, is over for good, based on the chaotic choices of one American President who will be gone in four years does not seem wise or practical. But enough Canadians seem to agree with the prime minister, because what Carney said during this speech is what he’s been saying all along. Carney’s success hinged on an actual, foolish, and unhumble Canadian value — our deep-seated belief that we are somehow better than Americans, partially due to their ambitious natures. He sold us our own fiction, and it worked.  It now looks like Canadians’ concerns and values about women’s sex-based rights, the fool-headed administration of hormone blockers to children, the infiltration of toxic DEI into schools and workplaces rather than merit-based decisions, and anti-Israeli sentiment on campuses, streets, and neighbourhoods, among other things, will have to wait. As will concerns about Ottawa’s attacks on the resource industry, and issues of national unity. Carney has other ambitions." Canadians don't see a unified economic way forward and that's bad news - "Canadians are obviously very divided. A simple look at the vote count reveals that roughly 43.5 per cent voted for a Liberal candidate, whereas 41.5 per cent voted Conservative. The Liberals’ playbook to stoke fear was obvious and proved to be a political winner: calling the chaos caused by Donald Trump a national crisis or the “biggest crisis of our lifetime” to get people motivated to vote for the so-called saviour. There are a lot of historical examples around this simple playbook. Unfortunately, it continues to be a winner with shallow policies that surround that simplicity... regardless of the trade war, our country’s recent economic performance by virtually any measure has been stagnant. Should Carney carry out his plan that was presented during the campaign, it will lead to significant new government intervention and massive inflationary spending with little positive impact. And with the continued attacks on our precious and important energy industry, such a vital industry will not be able to contribute more to energy stability and important economic upticks. This is not a recipe for recovery; it’s a continuing eviction notice for Canada’s wealth creators. Expect more entrepreneurs and capital to flee. Third, our country can expect shallow taxation policies to continue as the norm. Our income tax statute is filled with political tax gimmicks that need to disappear. A great example is the recently added prohibition of expense deductions if you happen to be an owner/operator of a short-term rental property in a jurisdiction where the municipality prohibits such operation. This prohibition is nonsensical and dangerous, especially when you understand that drug dealers who wish to be tax compliant (which, of course, the vast majority are not) are able to deduct their expenses to earn such illegal income. This puts short-term rental owners in a worse-off position than criminals from a tax and public policy perspective. From a personal perspective, the Liberal win hurts. Canada needs significant tax reform and big-bang ideas to get our country back on track. The Conservatives had promised to convene a tax reform task force within 60 days of getting elected so as to carry out that necessary exercise. Unfortunately, the Liberals have historically shown zero interest in positive tax reform, other than carrying on with their political tax objectives. The election campaign provided further evidence of that since none of their tax policy promises displayed any big ideas. Most of their tax promises were copied from the Conservatives (personal tax cut for the bottom income bracket, elimination of the GST on new homes, elimination of the capital gains proposals and removal of the consumer carbon tax), with zero new big ideas other than one very silly idea to resurrect a 1970s-style tax shelter in an attempt to encourage housing construction. Good grief. Tax reform will remain a fantasy until the Liberals discover a poll that its voter base suddenly cares about fiscal sanity and sound taxation policies. Wait, I just saw a unicorn cross the street. Overall, Canada has significant work to do to unite. Is this Liberal government the one to do that? No. By stoking fears without plans for economic sanity and tax reform, it is likely that the day for Canadians to unite is a ways off. The Liberal Party win is an example of incoherence bound together by temporary issues, and the lack of a plan to get our country firing on all cylinders will be greatly exposed when those temporary issues disappear or diminish."