Women, Periods and Hormones

Lauren Southern on X

It's really awful how we discuss women's periods and hormonal cycles. It’s been disastrous for gender relations.

One thing I’ve noticed as my female friends and I have gotten older, is we’ve had to independently garner so much information about our own hormones that is not obvious general knowledge - and it’s been life changing in a positive way.

The increasing denial of gender differences has a part in this, but also cultural stereotypes have been destructive. (SOME) Men began making a joke out of menstruation, and weaponizing hormonal cycles against women “oh you're just a psycho cause you're on your period".

Leading women to get reasonably defensive - particularly when they say perfectly salient things that get cast aside by vulgar comments about their biological and hormonal experiences.

Unfortunately this went a step further into society fighting so hard against the “emotional woman on period” stereotypes that we began denying hormonal fluctuations all together.

I remember growing up as a young girl and being sold the idea that the entire notion of menstrual cycles affecting emotions was just a sexist stereotype. Leading to me never fully being aware of how my own hormones were impacting me.

This has been catastrophic for both men and women, and particularly their relationships.

As women, understanding how your cycle works, how your hormones fluctuate and how this may impact your reaction to certain events is critical to your success in life and relationships. It’s also critical to your health and knowing if something is off about your body.

Men, sympathizing with and realizing hormonal fluctuations are real and understanding them, are critical to having a healthy relationship with a woman. Your own hormonal cycles impact you as well.

It literally impacts every aspect of one's life.

If a man in your life is extremely ill, in pain etc. maybe that is not the best time to bring up a sensitive subject that needs to be addressed, or to put a ton of things on their plate to do.

This works similarly if a woman in your life is at a certain point in her cycle, sometimes experiencing pain, mass hormone fluctuations and changes. You need to be aware and acknowledge this strategically. And ABSOLUTELY not mock or minimize a serious biological function.

Tracking these cycles are integral to trying to get pregnant or avoid it.

Tracking cycles is critical when you make certain plans, considering whether they’re going to require large amounts of energy or will increase stress levels.

If hormone fluctuations are extreme, how you eat as a family or a couple may need to change and be adjusted to maximize both physical and mental health. (sugars, carbs etc. can spike inflammation and hormones)

Man or woman, physical health and gut health severely impacts your moods, ability to focus and have healthy well tempered relations.

I know so many women that will lose their periods entirely, or be struggling with symptoms of serious disease like endometriosis and never find out for ages because they don’t discuss these things with their partner - or their partner assumes they are exaggerating - and they wonder why everything is on the decline.

I sympathize with men, that it’s extremely difficult to understand an experience you have never had in your life. Which is why dismissing, mocking or ignoring it can seem easier, but once again will make everyone's life more challenging and everyone more ignorant.

It’s wild how few people are really in tune with their bodies, and the bodies of their loved ones. It’s particularly catastrophic when people make a mockery of or completely deny these realities.

I see men on here who think the bleeding part of a period is “ovulation” - or worse don’t see any point in trying to understand them at all because that’s “women’s business”.

Ladies, for your own sake start tracking your cycle! Really get into how your hormones are impacting your weight, skin, mood and general life flow.

Men, if you are in a relationship express a desire to understand - and definitely if married or in a very serious relationship, you should be just as aware and in tune with your ladies cycle as well. You should literally have the same tracker on your phone. Don’t shy away from this! Work together!

Solutions to modern gender chaos require acknowledgement of real biological phenomena on a serious level devoid of mockery, coming from a place of love.
 

Links - 28th September 2023 (2 - Socialism)

Meme - "200 years ago 85% of the world lived in extreme poverty. Today that number is less than 9%."
Commie: "cApiTaLisM hAs fAiLed!"

Meme - Morgan Artyukhinaa @LavenderNRed: "Did it hurt? When you realized everything you'd been taught about the Soviet Union and communism was a lie and that their existence was an enormous objective good for mankind rather than its biggest failure?
What about when you realized that China is not just socialist, but the biggest force for good in the world today and represents the future of mankind?"
Morgan Artyukhina @LavenderNRed: "They/them I autistic trans socialist & activist I writer @SputnikInt | bylines in @monthly_review @mintpressnews @globaltimesnews | Opinions & tweets my own."
Conflict of interest is never an issue for the left, because they are Right

Meme - "Oh, my tools fell *Hammer and Sickle*"
"Our tools"

Meme - simi @simimoonlight: "I'm sorry but it makes no sense for us to not hibernate in the winter. Other mammals do. We'd likely be so much more efficient, and happy. But capitalism."
Eli @eliburketttt: "bruh, we don't hibernate because our physiology doesn't allow our metabolic processes to adapt within the timeframe of a single winter. Not because of capitalism"
William Gladstone was right @wildgunman: "Shows how much you know. Prior to the incorporation of the Dutch East India Company in 1602, all of Europe slept for 4 straight months a year in a cave. Look it up!"

Meme - "Tankies be like "it's only year 147 of late stage capitalism but it'll get there eventually:^)"
"SIGNS OF THE SECOND COMING"
"Fuck off I don't believe in that made up nonsense"
"RICHARD WOLFF Is Coronavirus the end of Capitalism?"
"So true!!!"

Meme - "If capitalism is greed then communism is envy"

Meme - "Former Soviet citizen: Most of my mother's family starved to death, Stalin is a murderer.
Collectivist millennials: UM, ACTUALLY THAT DIDN'T HAPPEN SWEETIE"
Or they say his mother's family deserved it because they were counter-revolutionaries

Meme - "LAZY, ENTITLED, ANTI-WORK COMMIES: Tell me the truth... I'm... I'm ready to hear it
ANYONE WITH A BRAIN: THE HAMMER AND SICKLE REPRESENT LABOR/WORK"

4 in 10 Canadians prefer socialism but not higher taxes to pay for it - "42 per cent of Canadians believe socialism is the ideal economic system. That’s slightly lower than in the United Kingdom (43 per cent) but higher than in both the United States (31 per cent) and Australia (40 per cent). Just one problem: few Canadians want to pay higher taxes to fund it. Younger Canadians’ support for “socialism” presumably is due in part to their lack of real-world experience with genuine socialism and the misery it imposed. The polling data bear that out. Support for socialism drops from 50 per cent among Canadians 18-24 years old to 38 per cent among Canadians over 55.  There’s also the question of what its 21st-century supporters actually mean by “socialism.” Unlike other polls on this subject, this one, which was conducted by Leger in the fall of 2022, included definitions of socialism. Only 25 per cent of Canadians polled define socialism as the government taking control of companies and industries, which is the classic definition (i.e., “owning the means of production”)... According to the poll, which offered all respondents four tax options to help finance socialism, the two most popular options by far were a new wealth tax on the top one per cent, which got 72 per cent support, and an increase in personal income taxes for the top 10 per cent, which got 59 per cent support. The logic seems straightforward: most respondents assume these two taxes would not affect them. The other two tax options were far less popular. An across-the-board increase in personal income taxes garnered only 31 per cent support, while only 16 per cent of respondents supported a GST increase. In its eight years in power, the Trudeau government has already increased the top personal income tax rate from 29 to 33 per cent and has mused repeatedly about introducing a new wealth tax and raising capital gains taxes. As things stand, the top 20 per cent of families already pay a disproportionate share of the total tax burden, earning 44.6 per cent of all income but paying 53.0 per cent of all taxes (federal, provincial and local). The problem for Ottawa and the advocates of socialism is that because these targeted tax hikes don’t raise enough revenue to cover the costs of new spending the money has to be borrowed, which raises government debt and slows economic growth. Since the current federal government came to power Canada’s total national debt has increased from $1.1 trillion to an estimated $1.9 trillion this year. Canada is on an unsustainable fiscal path as governments, particularly the federal government, expand existing programs while adding new ones without being honest with Canadians about the ultimate need for broad-based tax increases to pay for them. The Trudeau solution from day one has been to borrow, which simply defers the tax bill to the future.  And the bill is already starting to come due. Ottawa expects to spend $43.3 billion next year solely on interest on the national debt. That’s more than it spends on employment insurance, the Canada Child Benefit or the Canada Social Transfer, and almost as much as total health transfers to the provinces ($49.3 billion).   The financial pressures from new spending, coupled with increasing debt and interest costs, will eventually force a decision on governments and Canadians more broadly. If we want larger government, we’ll have to pay the price in the form of higher taxes. As Nobel laureate Milton Friedman often reminded us, there’s no such thing as a free lunch, not even for advocates of socialism."
Online, I saw people dismiss the poll due to loaded questions (with no proof, of course).

POVERTY EXISTS FOR MILLIONS OF SOVIETS, USSR ADMITS – Chicago Tribune - "Soviet authorities, who once denied that poverty existed in their country and pronounced it an evil of capitalism, now say that tens of millions of Soviet citizens-at least 20 percent of the population-live in poverty, compared with about 14 percent in the United States. Their condition has drawn a remarkable amount of attention in the Soviet press in the last year, with frequent letters from poor people bemoaning their misfortune and articles by economists and sociologists blaming the government for neglecting the problem... There is no state plan, however, for dealing with poverty, according to interviews with several Soviet officials. There is no government agency to which people in need can turn, and the word ''poverty'' is not even used in state documents... While some officials still insist poverty is the result of laziness, most say the country`s economic instability is a major contributor... the average Soviet person works 10 times longer than the average American worker to earn a pound of meat, 4.5 times longer to earn a quart of milk, and three times longer for a pound of potatoes"
From 1989. Poor tankies

Under the Frog: Why Tibor Fischer’s 1992 Booker-Nominated Novel May Have Found its Moment - "Tibor Fischer: Most people on the Left (apart from Arthur Scargill) had realized that the countries of the Warsaw Pact weren’t workers’ paradises by the 1970s, but there was a curious reluctance to fully face up to the truth. I worked on a documentary series about Eastern Europe for Channel 4 that was broadcast in 1988. We were attacked by the Independent for being too harsh on Ceaușescu. A year later his own compatriots put him up against a wall and shot him.  I spent half my life having to explain that Communist Hungary wasn’t some noble experiment. One of my teachers, who, of course, like most staff room sages, knew fuck-all, argued that “at least they don’t have the rat race,” unaware that if there’s less cheese, the rats have to race even harder. And it seems I’ll have to spend the second half of my life constantly denying that Hungary is some fascist backwater. János Kádár, a dictator who was installed by Soviet tanks and whose regime executed hundreds of Hungarians got a better press in the West than the current, democratically elected prime minister, Viktor Orbán. You can’t make it up.   The far-Left have largely given up on the Five-Year Plans and Central Control of the economy, but they have retreated into the universities and schools where you will still find boastful Marxists. It’s what Gramsci called the “war of position.” You mislead the youth. There is, in fact despite the prattle about diversity, very little diversity in British universities, intellectually. Žižek, an avowed Communist has a position at Birkbeck University. Why not? But I’d love to see Birkbeck offer a position to someone who advocates a challenging form of neo-fascism.   I suppose every generation has the sensation of living in strange times. The sifting process in job applications and university applications in the UK, with the emphasis on ethnicity and social background is an intriguing mixture of Nazi Germany and Stalinist Russia. There is an alarming polarization of politics almost everywhere... Please show me a successful Communist country. There has never been one. Anywhere. And any progress or achievement has always come at high human cost. They could have electrified the Soviet Union without murdering millions of people. It is possible to do that. No one has got Communism right, because it’s not possible.
RA: Much is made of the fact in the book that Gyuri is Class X—from a formerly well-heeled family—and so is last in the queue for things like good jobs and university places. He’s told, “You’ll have to work twice as hard as everyone else to make amends for your background.” Are we moving towards this at all, do you think?
TF: I hope not, but there does seem to be a mania for social engineering again. In my lifetime, everything has been done to make education more “accessible,” which has happened. But it’s been done by lowering the standards. Really, really lowering the standards. I only know about the humanities but I can tell you, categorically, from what I’ve experienced, that there are students getting MAs now who wouldn’t have passed an English A-level in the 1970s.
RA: In your recent journalism you’ve written a lot about declining standards in education. You’ve said that “the educational absurdity of Dickens’s Dotheboys Hall in Nicholas Nickleby is being recreated in our arts faculties” and that “essays in history, literature and social sciences are [now] often little more than rants.” What do you mean?
TF: The standards in humanities are very low. Obviously things vary from institution to institution, but the bar has been lowered. Everyone I know who teaches at that level is in despair. Students aren’t encouraged to study or think independently in the way they were in my time at university. They read less—indeed, literature students seem to resent reading the most, and they’re spoon-fed, as at school. What I read in one week would now count as a term’s work. And you can get away with a lot as long as you maintain history/literature is a sexist/colonialist conspiracy."

Eugene Lyons’s chronicle of the 1930s Left remains startlingly relevant today. - "It may be that the best book that will ever be written about today’s progressive mind-set was published in 1941. That in The Red Decade author Eugene Lyons was, in fact, describing the Communist-dominated American Left of the Depression-wracked 1930s and 1940s makes his observations even more meaningful, for it is sobering to be confronted with how little has been gained by hard experience. The celebration of feelings over reason? The certainty of moral virtue? The disdain for tradition and the revising of history for ideological ends? The embrace of the latest definition of correct thought? Lyons was one of the most gifted reporters of his time, and among the bravest, and his story of the spell cast by Stalinist-tinged social-justice activism over that day’s purported best and brightest—literary titans, Hollywood celebrities, leading academics, religious leaders, media heavies—would be jaw-dropping if it weren’t so eerily familiar.   Indeed, looking backward from a time when, according to surveys, more millennials would rather live under socialism than capitalism, it’s apparent that Lyons was documenting not just a historical moment but also a species of historical illiteracy as unchanging as it is poisonous, its utopianism able to flourish only at the expense of independent thought. On a range of issues, alternative views were defined as not merely mistaken but morally reprehensible; and among the elites who dominated the cultural sphere, deviants from approved opinion were subject to special abuse. Of course, having lived and worked in Soviet Russia, Lyons made distinctions about relative abuses of power. Under Stalinism, dissidents were liquidated, or vanished into the gulag; the American Left could only liquidate careers and disappear reputations... As screenwriter Richard Collins would later recall of his time in the party, Communism was, for its devotees, “a cause, a faith, and a viewpoint on all phenomena. A one-shot solution to all the world’s ills and inequities.”...   That it was all a colossal fraud was obvious all along, or should have been. For anyone willing to see, Stalin’s Russian paradise was a totalitarian horror show, equaled only by Hitler’s Third Reich. For all the regime’s numerous apologists in the press, led by the New York Times’s Walter Duranty (who won the Pulitzer Prize for his efforts), word of the true state of affairs in Russia was not hard to come by because by the mid-1930s, reports on the Great Famine (the planned execution by starvation of millions of recalcitrant Ukrainian peasants) were too persistent to ignore without sustained effort. So, too, were those of systematic state thuggery, culminating in the confessions-by-torture of veteran Bolsheviks in the purge trials of 1937–38 and, in Spain, in the guise of fighting fascism, the systematic elimination of rival leftist parties by Soviet secret police. By the time he published The Red Decade, Lyons, a rare journalist given to damn-the-consequences honesty, had come to know his twin subjects exceedingly well—that is, Stalinism and the American liberals so ready to overlook its savage immorality. Having arrived from Russia as a small child and grown up in the poverty of the Jewish Lower East Side, he came of age a committed leftist, and, as he’d later acknowledge, when he returned to the land of his birth, in 1928 as a 30-year-old correspondent for the United Press, his aim was to use that privileged perch to promote the Revolution. It was on this basis that, in 1930, he scored a stunning journalistic coup that brought him worldwide recognition: the first-ever interview by a Western correspondent with the reclusive Stalin. And, to his subsequent shame, he joined other leading reporters in mostly running cover for the regime, including on the famine.  Within a few years, though, he began harboring doubts, and before long he was running afoul of Soviet censors by finding ways to alert readers to the regime’s hypocrisy and cronyism, the failure of its various economic plans, and, especially, its ruthlessness and brutality... at least as troubling to Lyons as the reality of the Soviet paradise was the refusal to face it that he encountered in America on his return. To the contrary, he ran up against an almost perverse eagerness to embrace every fabrication in its defense and to cast doubters as hostile to all that was good and true. Stalinist methods, if even acknowledged, often met with tacit approval...   That during those Depression years, the legions of starry- and steely-eyed included a disproportionate number of what we’d now call millennials was unsurprising; for the idealistic, emotion-driven young, hard questions always have easy solutions, and even in good times, there’s no competing with the romance of the Left. But what Lyons found far more unsettling was the credulity of those in the vanguard of progressive thought: leading figures in academia, entertainment, publishing, media, and the highest councils of government, from New York to Hollywood and everywhere between. These were the powerful and influential, the men and women who shaped public attitudes and opinion... In one sense, the book could hardly have appeared at a more propitious moment. As Lyons wrote in his introduction, it was originally to go to press on June 22, 1941—the very day that Hitler stabbed his ally Stalin in the back by invading the Soviet Union, thereby necessitating a wholesale revision of the CPUSA’s line on the European war. Already that line had drastically changed once, only two years earlier, instantly moving from die-hard anti-Nazism to adamantly antiwar, when Stalin shocked the world by signing his infamous nonaggression pact with Hitler; as a result, thousands of anguished party members had quit, and multitudes of fellow travelers quietly slipped away. But the hard core had rationalized, casting Stalin as a master statesman who had done what he had to in defense of the world’s lone socialist republic, and now they rationalized again... Lyons showed a special disdain for the wealthy who embraced radicalism to salve their guilty consciences... Much as he faults young people for their susceptibility to socialism’s appeal, Lyons faults even more the grown-ups, observing that views of the young are always “crudely colored by undefined emotional urges,” which leaves them “perfect raw stuff for demagogic molding. . . . [T]he glorification of youth is a modern development, it puts a premium on lack of experience, mental fuzziness and intuition as against intelligence and maturity.”  Hardly least, there were those in the left-of-center media who habitually assumed the worst about their own country"
We are still told that liberals don't hate their countries

Xi Van Fleet on Twitter: "In a Communist kingdom, useful idiots will end up in gulags. But how about those in power?  Pre. Liu Shaoqi, Mao’s right-hand man was purged, exiled, died alone in misery.  Lin Biao, Mao’s hand-picked successor, died in plane crash on route to Russia after his plot against Mao was discovered.  Zhou Enlai was denied medical treatment by Mao & died of cancer, a reward he got for being Mao’s most submissive & loyal “servant”.  No one is safe in a Communist power structure. Not even the dictators themselves who lived in constant fear, which is well justified as proven by Ceaușescu!"

Meme - Zhang Yong @zhang_yong1: "america leftist claim "peace , tolerate , diverse" ,. endorse homo marriage .. yet hate fear chinese , russian, very racist . they say "zhang go back china !" when i speak wisdom . seem very racist , hypocrisy"
Junxiong Ma @JunxiongMa: "Translated from Chinese by Google
When the People's Liberation Army landed in the United States and then massacred the American leftists, they would know that the real revolution is not the same as the gay fantasy revolution they imagined."

Meme - "Where am I?"
"Karl Marx! We resurrected you to lead the revolution!" *Furry, Antifa, Trans woman*
"... of lumpenproles?"

Understanding the Return of Socialism - "How are we to understand the apparently paradoxical attitudes of Generation Z (the cohort born between 1997 and 2012) towards socialism? In its fifth annual report, the Victims of Communism Memorial (VOC) found that 49 percent of Gen Z view the term “socialism” favorably, compared to 40 percent in 2019. On the other hand, the report found that an abysmal six percent of Gen Z trusts the government to take care of their interests. A Pew Research Center report also found that young people are much less trusting of elected officials than older age groups. So, although most of Gen Z has little faith in the government to effectively act on their behalf, many of them support an economic system which gives more power to the state... Whereas 31 percent of Gen Z respondents to the VOC report said they support the gradual elimination of the capitalist system in favor of a more socialist one, only 12 percent said they believe society would be better off with the abolition of private property.  The discrepancies in Gen Z’s idea of socialism suggest that a Soviet-style October Revolution orchestrated by the TikTok generation is unlikely. A HarrisX poll reached similar conclusions, reporting that nearly half of young adults think that socialism simply means providing necessities and ending poverty, with no mention of abolishing the market economy...   It should surprise no one that this form of governance resonates with young people. Wages in the United States have remained stagnant for decades, and they are faced with an unforgiving housing market and national student loan debt totaling over $1.7 trillion... The uphill economic battle many young people are fighting today is only exacerbated by a system of government that seldom represents their interests. A study which analyzed nearly 1,800 public policy decisions over 20 years found that the desires of average American voters appeared “to have only a minuscule, near-zero, statistically non-significant impact upon public policy.” Economic elites, on the other hand, were more successful than any other group in having their interests reflected in legislation...   Nor is the popularity of left-leaning policies in America limited to Gen Z. Pew Research Center found that a majority of Americans, 63 percent in both surveys, are in favor of tuition-free college and believe that the federal government should be at least partially responsible for ensuring all Americans have healthcare coverage."

Working Class History on Twitter - "#OtD 15 Jul 1971 the ironically named United Red Army was formed in Japan. A Maoist group, it had 29 members and it killed 14 of them in less than a year in internal purges, considering them not revolutionary enough. Here is a critical history of Maoism:"

Meme - Carl Benjamin: "Control of information is control of reality.
Mass killings under communist regimes
This article is being considered for deletion in accordance with Wikipedia's deletion policy. The verifiability of the claims made in this article is disputed. The neutrality of this article is disputed. This article or section possibly contains synthesis of material which does not verifiably mention or relate to the main topic."

FAMILIES : China : Communism Broke Grip of Tradition : Half a century of change has reduced role of family. But overseas relatives are imposing old values. - Los Angeles Times - "The late Chinese leader Mao Tse-tung, although himself a member of a strong Hunanese family clan, realized that political reform was was not possible unless people placed the interests of the state above those of the family, which up to that point had been by far the most powerful institution in China.  Even today in rural Chinese wedding ceremonies, peasant couples bow to a portrait of Chairman Mao rather than bow to their ancestors as was the tradition for more than 2,000 years.  Communist leaders were instructed to “draw a clear line” between themselves and their families. During the Cultural Revolution, youths were encouraged to love Chairman Mao more than their parents and were sent to the countryside to learn from the peasants. Parents were attacked by their own children in struggle sessions. Collective day-care centers became the norm."
From 1995. So much for the myth of the left being anti-family. This can still be seen today, e.g. narcissists urging people to cut off "toxic" family

Meme - "Another round of "7 year old or 40 year old tankie""
"My idea of what money might look like after the revolution"

Meme - Mystery Grove Publishing Co. @MYSTERYGROVE: "Reminder: Communism is when ugly deformed freaks make it illegal to be normal then rob kill all successful people out of petty resentment and cruelty. The ideology is all just window dressing."

Meme - Communist: "SOCIALISM IS BETTER THAN CAPITALISM"
Normie: "WHEN THE BERLIN WALL FELL WHO RAN TO WHICH SIDE?"

Meme - "Landlords need to understand that no matter how you put it, no matter how horrible you try to paint the tenant, no matter what you say. you do not deserve income more than a person deserves a place to live. period. no matter how u slice it. i do not care."
"That's similar to saying the farmer doesn't deserve the income for the produce or frozen meats more than the grocery consumer deserves the food." "Eventually, allowing users to steal from providers means grocers, farmers and landlords will have little incentive to do business and they will stop providing groceries or produce/grains/meats or residences. Watch the scarcity and prices for remaining groceries, food or rentals skyrocket in price after that."
Of course, it'll be fault of counter-revolutionary traitors when things go to shit
Maybe commies hate landlords because they know they're such failures they'll never buy their own place no matter what

Meme - Karl Marx: "Work for the money to pay rent and share of utilities *No*"
Karl Marx: "Living off of someone else's inheritance while splurging on a bourgeoisie lifestyle simultaneously complaining about the landlord's greed *Yes*"

Meme - Chairman Yang's Red Army: "Sex workers need a union"
"Lenin orders the massacre of sex workers"
"Wow! He's JUST like me!"

Meme - "The Romanov children were....literally children. They begged for their lives and when they were dead their corpse were sexually assaulted. Grow up."
Kerfus: "The Tankies being pro-necrophilia is not surprising"
Johnny Betawi @JohnBatavia: "The fuck do you care? They were dead already and it's a small retribution for what they had stolen from the people"

Meme - Communist: "Nooo, you don't understand! Cuba's crisis is due to the US embargo, not the Communist dictatorship! How do you expect their Communist nation to succeed without access to Capitalist nations like the US?!?!"

Meme - *Bible*
>be old book full of failed predictions and vague flowery language
>have dozens of possible interpretations
>centuries later, rival factions claim to have the one true interpretation and JPG regularly fight one another
>millions have died in attempts to implement these interpretations
>writings treated as infallible truth by privileged, self- righteous white people
>be communist manifesto
>pic unrelated"

Meme - Marxist Soccer @MarxistSoccer: "Also, I will not and cannot train anything other than lower body, because the upper body muscles are mostly for aesthetic and show which are Bourgeois traits. Strong glutes and thighs are the base of any Proletarian movement."

Single Fathers vs Single Mothers

I keep being told that the children of single fathers have better outcomes than the children of single mothers, but no one ever provides me with any evidence, even as many keep claiming there's tons of it out there.

In my previous attempts to get to the bottom of this question, I haven't been able to find anything, but finally I have found some evidence for the claim: 

"Among the group of studies that discriminated between single-mother and single-father families, some used single-father samples only (Greif, 1985; Hanson, 1981, 1982; Meyer & Garasky, 1993; Smith & Smith, 1981), others compared single-mother with single-father families (Ambert, 1982; Cohen, 1995; Defrain & Eirick, 1981; Downey & Powell, 1993; Fricke, 1982; Schnayer & Orr, 1983), and a few compared single-mother, single-father, and intact families (Santrock & Warshak, 1979; Santrock & Warshak, 1982; Wadsworth, Burnell, Taylor, & Butler, 1985)

Researchers conducting these studies found that the difficulties facing single mothers and single fathers were similar. Both had to adapt to undefined parts of the single-parent role, and each had to cross gender boundaries to raise a family alone (Cohen, 1995). In spite of these similarities, comparisons across family structures revealed that there were important differences in how single mothers and single fathers carried out their roles. Single fathers were more confident in their parenting and they were more likely to involve their children in family responsibilities than were single mothers (Fricke, 1982; Orthner & Lewis, 1979).

In general, researchers conducting a meta-analysis of this group of studies found that the influence of the parent-child relationship on children's outcomes was strongest for children of school age. They also reported that children experienced fewer problems if single fathers, rather than single mothers, had custody, and that these patterns were consistent across all child outcomes (Arnato & Keith, 1991).

Many of the comparisons of single-mother and single-father families centered on gender differences in parenting. Downey and Moen (1987) reported that single fathers and single mothers specialized in the types of resources they provided their children. They found that single mothers provided their children with more interpersonal resources, such as time spent talking with a child about school and involvement in a child's activities. In comparison, single fathers provided their children with greater economic resources. Since single fathers earn almost twice the income of single mothers, it is not surprising that they had greater economic resources to offer their chil- dren. It is inaccurate to imply, however, that all single fathers are affluent. A significant number live in poverty, which has been shown to negatively impact the parent-child relationship and children's behavior, regardless of family structure (Cohen, 1995; Meyer & Garasky, 1993).

Other researchers reported that income did not influence the parent- child relationship in single-father families, and that single fathers provided as many interpersonal resources as single mothers (Greif, 1985, 1995; Hanson, 1981, 1982). These findings are consistent with the majority of studies that have demonstrated that single custodial fathers provide a healthy and supportive family environment and are concerned about meeting the emotional needs of their children (Downey & Powell, 1993; Hanson, 1986a, 198613; Orthner, Brown, & Ferguson, 1976; Orthner & Lewis, 1979; Smith & Smith, 1981). In these studies, single fathers were found to be warm and supportive, and they commonly tried to compensate for being the only parent by giving as much time as possible to their children. For example, single fathers went out of their way to be with their children and take them on weekend outings and to evening activities (Orthner & Lewis, 1979).

Overall, researchers agree that a positive and warm parent-child relationship is associated with good child outcomes in all types of families (Santrock & Warshak, 1979; Hanson, 1982). However, when single mothers and single fathers were compared, several differences in positive parenting behaviors emerged. Single fathers were found to be more confident of their parenting ability and to feel they had a better parent-child relationship than did single mothers (Fricke, 1982). Single fathers also seemed to command more authority and respect from their children (Ambert, 1982). Orthner and Brown (1978) found that single fathers were less emotional and more pragmatic than single mothers, and that they were less likely than single mothers to depend on television as a sitter for their children. Single fathers also were more likely than single mothers to involve their children in family responsibilities, and to encourage their children's independence (Orthner, Brown, & Ferguson, 1976; Orthner & Lewis, 1979)

Another difference that emerged was that negative parenting, in the context of discipline, was not the issue for single fathers that it was for single mothers. Defrain and Eirick (1981) found that custodial fathers did not change their disciplinary approach to children following divorce, but mothers did. Other researchers found that single fathers who did change their disciplinary approach following divorce became more relaxed and democratic and less authoritarian (Santrock & Warshak, 1982; Smith & Smith, 1981). In contrast, single mothers tended to become more critical and inconsistent in disciplining their children after the divorce (Bronstein et al., 1993; Santrock & Warshak, 1982; Webster-Stratton, 1989). Negative parenting behaviors that have been associated with poor adjustment in children include lack of parental control by custodial mothers and authoritarian parenting by custodial fathers (Hodges et al., 1983)

In terms of the impact of divorce on children's behavior, one study revealed no differences between single-mother families and single- father families in child behavior problems (Schnayer & Orr, 1989). In contrast, several other studies documented that children living with single fathers had fewer behavior problems than children living with single mothers, and that children living with more affluent single mothers had fewer behavior problems than children living with financially distressed single mothers (Amato & Keith, 1991; Ambert, 1982; Downey & Powell, 1993).

In examining the types of behavior problems that children experience, Hodges and Bloom (1984) reported that younger children had more externalizing behavior problems than older children, and boys had more internalizing and externalizing problems than girls. Other researchers have found that boys are more likely to engage in externalizing behavior than girls (Loeber & LeBlanc, 1990; Santrock & War- shak, 1979; Simons, Whitbeck, Beaman, & Conger, 1994), and that boys were more demanding and less mature with single mothers than with single fathers (Santrock & Warshak, 1979).

In yet another study, researchers found that the source of stress in the family made a difference in the type of behavior problems experienced by children (Hodges, London, & Colwell, 1990). Parental stress was associated with externalizing behaviors, while children's stress was associated with internalizing behaviors.

In terms of overall adjustment of single parents and their children, Ambert (1982) found that single fathers were more satisfied with their role than single mothers, and children in the custody of fathers appeared to be happier than children in the custody of mothers. However, Amato and Keith (1991) note that economic resources may account for most of the reported differences in functioning between single- mother and single-father families. A number of studies show that poor children are significantly more likely than non-poor children to have both externalizing and internalizing behavior problems, regardless of family structure (Gibbs, 1986; McLeod & Shanahan, 1993; Velez, Johnson, & Cohen, 1989; Werner, 1985).

Another factor to consider is that family size has been found to affect functioning in single-father families, but not single-mother families. Cohen (1995) found that single fathers did better when they had a small family, although Demaris and Greif (1992) found no influence of number of children on the functioning of custodial fathers.

Few studies were found that compared parenting and child functioning as reported by single mothers, single fathers, married mothers, and married fathers. This approach is useful because i t allows comparison of family structure (single-parent versus intact families), gender (mothers versus fathers), and role responsibility of the parent (the primary parenting role of single parents and married mothers versus the complementary or co-parenting role of married fathers). Using this approach, Santrock and Warshak (1982) found that single mothers were more permissive and more likely to allow their children to control them than were single fathers, married mothers, or married fathers. Authoritative parenting was linked to positive child outcomes in both single-mother and single-father families. Authoritarian parenting was linked to poor child outcomes in single-father homes and permissive parenting yielded worse child outcomes in single-mother homes. In another study done in Great Britain, children in both single-mother and single-father families had higher externalizing scores than children in intact families (Wadsworth et al., 1985)

In summary, there is general agreement that children are likely to experience behavior problems following divorce, especially in single- mother families. Furthermore, externalizing problems seem to be more prevalent than internalizing problems. There also is agreement that single mothers use fewer positive and more negative parenting behaviors than married parents or single fathers. Overall, children seem to do better when they live with single fathers rather than single mothers and single fathers appear to be more satisfied than single mothers with the role of single parent.

These results, however, should be interpreted with caution. The literature on divorced families is prone to methodological problems, particularly the earlier studies and those that included single-father families. A majority of these studies used small, non-representative clinical and convenience samples and most were atheoretical. In addition, many of the studies addressed specific developmental periods of childhood such as early childhood, middle childhood, and adolescence, but the most common approach was to analyze the behavior of children from all three age categories as a single group without controlling for the age of the child...

Across most outcomes, the single mothers and single fathers were more alike than different in their responses. However, they arrived at this common ground from different positions. In contrast to married parents, single mothers had become less positive in their parenting following divorce, whereas single fathers had become more positive. Specific positive and negative parenting behaviors of single mothers and single fathers were not significantly different from one another, with the exception that single fathers allowed more independence in their children. In terms of their children's behavior, single mothers and single fathers both reported more externalizing behaviors in their children than married parents, and the specific types of problems they encountered were similar. The one major difference between single mothers and fathers was that single mothers reported more internalizing behavior problems in their children than married parents, whereas the reports of single fathers were no different than those of any of the other parents.

Given the similarities in the role responsibilities of single parents compared to married parents, these findings are not surprising. According to ecological theory, it was anticipated that the role responsibilities of parents would be more important than gender in explaining parenting and children's behavior...

There was no evidence to support the effect of gender on parenting...

Gender was also of little value in explaining children's internalizing and externalizing behavior. When single mothers were compared with single fathers, no differences were found in their children's behavior problems. Furthermore, children in single-parent families had more externalizing problems than children in intact families, whether the single parent was male or female. Children in single-mother families were unique, however, in that they were reported to have more problems with internalizing behavior than children in intact families. This finding may or may not be gender based. Single mothers may be more sensitive to, or aware of, internalized types of behavior problems than single fathers, leading to a higher rate of reporting. On the other hand, single fathers may discourage internalizing behavior as an expression of their children's distress. Another possibility is that institutional forces, rather than gender, are responsible. Children may be responding to their mothers' economic distress with internalized feelings of insecurity, fear, and depression...

There also was strong evidence that family structure contributed to children's behavior problems. All of the significant differences in reported child behavior were between single and married parents, with both single mothers and single fathers reporting more behavior problems. Externalizing behavior was especially problematic. Compared to children in intact families, children in single-parent families were more likely to lie, destroy property, and associate with children who got into trouble . . . behaviors which are particularly disturbing given that the children in the sample were pre-adolescent. These findings support the conclusion reached by Downey and Moen (1987) that lack of any parent, whether it is the father or mother, appears to increase children's problem behavior. Perhaps the strain of one person having primary responsibility for childrearing is a structural problem in single-parent families that cannot be resolved without having other adults share the burden."

--- Comparison of Parenting and Children's Behavior in Single-Mother, Single-Father, and Intact Families / Jeanne M. Hilton, Esther L. Devall (Journal of Divorce & Remarriage, 1998)

Links - 28th September 2023 (1 - Migrants)

Editorial: Feds need to listen on immigration levels : canada - "There is a difference between. The parties that are being referenced in this article are actually far right tracing their roots back to European neo-Nazi movements. The one in power in Italy right now is a descendant party of Mussolini's party that literally created fascism."
The people who claim this get upset when you say the Democrats were the ones supporting slavery

Refugees in Toronto sleeping on streets a 'crisis' - "Toronto’s new mayor called the number of refugee claimants sleeping outside a shelter in downtown Toronto a “crisis” while calling for new federal money to pay for asylum seekers in the city’s shelter system — money that the federal government gave no sign they would hand over."
Refugees sleeping on streets a 'crisis,' new Toronto mayor Olivia Chow says : CanadaHousing2 - "This is actually more cruel to the refugees as our winter will soon start to set in. They would be better off sleeping on the streets in their home country than in a Canadian winter."
Refugees sleeping on streets a 'crisis,' new Toronto mayor Olivia Chow says : CanadaHousing2 - "The government approved close to a million Ukrainian refugees. Where are they all going to go?"
Refugees sleeping on streets a 'crisis,' new Toronto mayor Olivia Chow says : CanadaHousing2 - "The article quotes a refugee from Uganda, a landlocked African country bordering Kenya.  https://www.unhcr.org/ke/figures-at-a-glance  The link shows refugees and asylum seekers in Kenya, of which a number come from Uganda.  Would it be less expensive to assist this person in Kenya, to provide financial support to the Kenyan government with refugee claims, or to have this person live on the streets in one of the most expensive cities in the world? Even with all the possible corruption and theft of money, it is much less expensive to support an average lifestyle in Kenya.  The GDP per capita in Kenya is around 4% of Canada. So, as a rough number, we could provide an average lifestyle for about 25 refugees in Kenya compared to 1 in Canada.  Which is more humanitarian?"
Refugees sleeping on streets a 'crisis,' new Toronto mayor Olivia Chow says : CanadaHousing2 - "Canadians are on the streets too where is their press conference?"

Liberals 'resettling' asylum seekers by dumping them on the pavement - "Despite allowing record numbers of refugee claimants to enter Canada in recent years, many of whom arrive in or head to Toronto, there’s a grand total of zero federally funded shelters for refugees in the city."

Opinion: Alberta, and the rest of Canada, are woefully unprepared for the coming immigration boom - The Globe and Mail - "ISC said they will receive less money from Ottawa – which makes up the majority of their funding – this fiscal year than last year. Contract updates from the federal government don’t reflect increased demand even as Alberta’s largest city grows by leaps and bounds, and so job vacancies won’t be filled... “You’ve got this talent pool that Canada says they want in their country, but we’re doing very little even at the basic level of language, employment services and housing.”"

Sabrina Maddeaux: Liberals 'resettling' asylum seekers by dumping them on the pavement. Dire scene in Toronto as dozens of migrants forced to live on the sidewalk for weeks. : Canada_sub - "Hope every Liberal who voted for Trudeau is opening their doors to these people and accepting them with open arms. After all, they are the ones who agreed with him, so they can foot the bill and help support their "leader"."
"Funny how nobody was "forced" to get vaccinated (because they were only incentivized, then coerced, and sometimes threatened with destitution and social exclusion), but not being given free lodging for showing up is being "forced" to live on the streets."
If it's something liberals approve of, you're never forced to do it, even if you are threatened with social exclusion, bankruptcy and denied medical care and 30% of Democrats wanted to take away your children and 60% wanted to lock you at home (while they pretend you just couldn't eat in a restaurant). But if it's something liberals approve of, not giving you free stuff "forces" you to do things

Mass Immigration Doesn’t Work in Sweden - "Swedish Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson publicly denounced his country’s poor management of immigration this week in a landmark opinion piece for the Swedish daily newspaper Aftonbladet.   The article is just the latest sign of a political volte face in the Scandinavian country’s infamous immigration outlook...   In an article titled “Three Things are Required to Put Sweden Back Together,” Kristersson lays out a radical reform to his nation’s immigration policies outlining his wish to see Swedish migration policy become the strictest in Europe.   While not denouncing immigration entirely, Kristersson stresses the need to update integration policies and clamp down on bogus asylum seekers clogging up the country. Kristersson also calls for new citizenship tests that prioritise knowledge of the Swedish language among new arrivals, in the hope of reducing the number of refugees excluded from Swedish society...        Despite earning a reputation as a “humanitarian superpower” in the 2010s for generous asylum acceptance rates, Sweden has experienced a significant electoral backlash against immigration driven by a surge in crime and recent rioting by Islamists.   Kristersson promised a “paradigm shift” in Sweden’s handling of immigration upon entering power last year, vowing to end decades of liberal immigration policy spearheaded by the Social Democrats. Kristersson also referenced Danish asylum policies as a model for Sweden to follow in the coming decade, with Denmark praised for its strict management of asylum intake.  Opinion polling has shown a public preference for more stringent border control as the Sweden Democrats pile pressure on Kristersson’s government not to submit to new EU migration quotas.  On the European stage, Sweden has used its presidency of the EU Council to harden the bloc’s resolve against illegal immigration as the government warned that unemployment among certain immigration groups posed a major fiscal problem to the country’s finances."

The rise of Sweden as Europe's gun crime capital - "Sweden is the only European country in which fatal shootings have significantly increased and, having been a country with one of the lowest gun violence rates in Europe, they now have one of the highest, in the space of just two decades...   The majority of shootings in Sweden are however related to organised crime. With 8 in 10 shootings linked to organised crime, gun homicides have increased, whilst familial/domestic-related gun homicides have decreased. Justice Minister Morgan Johansson argued that “over the last 20 years… Sweden has seen organized crime become established in a way that it wasn’t before, closely associated with the drug trade”, which led to proliferated gun violence.  In recent years, the epicentre of this gun violence has been focused in the metropolitan areas of Stockholm, Gothenburg, and Malmö but is increasingly spreading across the country. As the rates of gun violence ricochet throughout the country, the nature of this violence has also changed to become more destructive and deadly. Since an escalation in shootings in 2010, Swedish criminologist Ardavan Khoshnood has witnessed a shift: whereas in the past gunshots to arms, hands, and legs were common, he is now seeing an increased amount of shots to the head and has stated that gangs are now “shooting to kill” – a worrying development in Sweden’s gun violence epidemic. Several factors have facilitated this drastic rise in gun crime across Sweden. Firstly, the escalation in fatalities as a result of gun violence can partly be attributed to Sweden’s somewhat “lax” criminal sentencing laws: teenagers may receive a maximum sentence of only 4 years for gun-related murder, meaning they are the ideal recruits for gangs and are actively sought out as a result. Secondly, according to police reports, the increase in gun violence has been aided by a high inflow of trafficked weapons originating from the western Balkans. It is abundantly clear that criminal sentencing laws need to be reformed and that greater effort is made to tackle the influx of illegal weapons. Finally, in recent years, this violence has been partly linked to inadequate integration of the migrant population within Sweden. It is estimated that 20% of Sweden’s 10.5 million population was born abroad, with a mix of European migrants and those from countries such as Syria, Somalia, Iraq, and Afghanistan. The government claims that gang crime, driven by the drug trade, is linked to the poor integration of Sweden’s large migrant community. Indeed, former Prime Minister Magdalena Andersson has stated that “integration has been too poor at the same time as we have had a large immigration” creating “parallel societies in Sweden” with “completely different realities”.  These so-called “parallel societies” have created gaps in which criminal enterprises have flourished and subsequently so has gun crime. Swedish police have labeled at least 61 areas, all with high immigrant populations as “vulnerable” to criminal activities. A study conducted between the years 2006 and 2014 found that a shooting was close to 5 times more likely to occur in an area labeled as socially vulnerable. Furthermore, the report published by the Swedish National Council for Crime Prevention argues that “the increase in gun homicide in Sweden is closely linked to criminal milieux in socially disadvantaged areas”."
Of course, the solution is even more progressive policies. Then liberals will say they weren't liberal enough

Sweden has become a gangster’s paradise – and a case study in how not to integrate migrants - "In London, a city with about the same population as Sweden, no one was shot dead in the six months leading up to spring last year. In the next six months, four were shot dead in Södertälje, a city half an hour’s drive south-west of Stockholm.  Since then, things have become far worse. A gangland war erupted on Christmas Day and warring factions have been rampaging around the city in a manner resonant more of 1930s Chicago than contemporary Scandinavia. Gangsters use bombs to send each other warnings; assassins to shoot one another dead. There were 61 fatal firearms attacks last year, six times more than the combined total for Denmark, Finland and Norway... For those of us who zoom in and out of Sweden’s national debate, the most striking aspect is the language. Events that ought to scandalise an entire country are now being reported as part of everyday life. “For me, it has become normal,” said an eyewitness quoted in a report after last weekend’s murder of a 15-year-old in a shopping centre in Skogås, a suburb of Stockholm. “It’s the third or fourth time it’s happened and took place close to the shopping centre, so it wasn’t that shocking.”... Yes, the 2015 asylum wave saw Sweden import all kinds of criminality among the record numbers of people it took in. But Germany took in even more and doesn’t have such problems. Sweden’s police has seen its budget rise by 75 per cent in recent years but is still losing. Worse, they’re not sure how to win.  Max Åkerwall, a Stockholm police chief, spoke about it earlier this week. Locking up a gang leader, he said, creates a vacuum which leads to a violent power struggle among rival factions (police have counted 52 gangs). Hence more bombs, guns and murders. So it’s not a matter of a few Mr Bigs. It’s the emergence of a whole subculture of violence, unwittingly incubated by Sweden’s liberal immigration and criminal justice system... The phrase “no-go” area is deeply controversial in Sweden but certainly applies to neighbourhoods where authorities – even ambulance workers – cannot go for fear of attack... If you allow people smugglers to pour tens of thousands of usually male asylum seekers into a system unable to absorb them, you fill up edge-of-town estates where organised crime is the big business.  Police in Germany and Britain are more used to dealing with imported bad guys – jihadis and other assorted terrorists – and our laws are harsher. Sweden’s courts have always been keener on the wellbeing of offenders, especially the young. A few years ago, a law was passed declaring that arrest, detention or imprisonment of anyone under 18 should only take place “as a last resort”. This delighted the gangsters, who quickly took it as a licence to use children as their foot soldiers. Police say that children account for most of those arrested for gang-related violence, with about 1,200 of these so-called “child soldiers” now at large. In England, the age of criminal responsibility is 10. In Sweden, it’s 15: no one under that age can be sentenced to any punishment. Half of those arrested in raids after Stockholm’s post-Christmas murders are school-aged. Their trademark weapon is the thermos bomb: homemade and carried in flasks which, in a child’s hand, don’t look suspicious... Sweden was late to allow police to bug mobile phones, late to subject 19-year-old murderers to life sentences. Lise Tamm, a former chief prosecutor, complained about the “naivety” of the system as a whole. Thousands of decent people, she said, are being left in the lurch “as we protect the integrity of criminals and ignore the victims”.  You can see her frustration. There are plenty of calls for laws to change – but must a whole country abandon its liberal values to adjust for a new criminal minority? Then again, Sweden is running out of options"
I remember when a Swede mocked me for saying grenade attacks were a problem, and called them firecrackers

Migrant clans' war-like violence tops Swedish voters' concerns - "Sweden - one of the richest and most egalitarian countries in the world - now tops the European rankings for fatal shootings... While the violence was once contained to locations frequented by criminals, it has now spread to public spaces, sparking concern among ordinary Swedes in a country long known as safe and peaceful... Jacob Fraiman, an ex-gangster who now helps other criminals leave that life behind, says even he is shocked by the level of violence.  'I'm from another generation, obviously we had weapons too. But it wasn't often you had to shoot someone', he tells AFP in Sodertalje, an industrial town south of Stockholm with a large immigrant population... At the police station in Rinkeby, one of Stockholm's disadvantaged suburbs, 26-year-old patrol cop Michael Cojocaru says he and his colleagues regularly encounter brutal violence reminiscent of war and seize assault weapons, grenades and explosives.  'You'll see wounds, people who've been shot with AK47s, who've been stabbed, people who have war wounds', he tells AFP.  'It's like a totally different society ... another type of Sweden'."

Analysis: Gang crime looms over election in Sweden as shootings spread - "A report last year from the Swedish National Council for Crime Prevention showed that, of 22 European countries with comparable data, only Croatia had more gun deaths per capita over the last four years, a stark contrast to two decades ago when Sweden was toward the bottom... "Where maybe 10 years ago they gave someone a beating, they then switched to shooting each other in the legs. Now they shoot each other in the head," Forssten said, adding that the violence was often caused by turf-wars over drug sales."

Sweden's Top Cop Has 'No Explanation' Why Country Is Being Swept With Crime - "Outside Sweden, such areas where violence runs riot are known as "no-go zones" and even "ghettos", but the country's authorities stick to the more euphemistic "exclusion zones" or "parallel societies". The list currently features 61 entries, clouded with crime, unemployment and lawlessness. When asked why Sweden's peers are free of such problems, Thornberg said that he "doesn't really have a good explanation for that either" and suggested that this should be "researched". Remarkably, in 2022, the small immigrant-packed area of Jarva in Greater Stockholm alone had as many fatal shootings as the whole of Norway."

Migrant crisis: Berlin pool workers 'sick with stress' over feces on the wall and constant sexual assaults from 'Arab migrants and Chechens' - "Employees of an outdoor swimming pool complex in Berlin have penned a letter to Der Tagesspiegel newspaper complaining about perpetrators they describe as “mainly Arab migrants and Chechens” who are engaging in sexual harassment of women and mass brawls on the premises, while also leaving the complexes in disgusting conditions.  The letter comes after yet another fight broke out between migrant youths at the Berlin Columbiabad in the borough of Neukölln on Sunday which resulted in the popular public pool being cleared of visitors and shutting early. The complex announced on Wednesday that the pool will be closed for the rest of the week, citing staff shortages after a number of employees called in sick with stress...   Employees recounted conversations with some of the youths attending the complex during which they were told they deserved “to be spat on and beaten,” while another threatened that “New Year’s Eve-like conditions will prevail here,” a time of the year which has now become notorious in Germany with migrant riots and sexual harassment of women...   Federal Interior Minister Nancy Faeser has responded to the letter and stated that she backs having a permanent police presence at “problem” pools in Germany. However, in an opinion piece for German newspaper Junge Freiheit, Henning Hoffgaard mocks Faeser’s stance, writing: “The same interior minister who thinks border controls are the devil’s stuff now wants police controls at outdoor pool property boundaries. Will she notice the contradiction herself? Probably not.”  The Alternative for Germany (AfD) party, which has been rapidly rising in the polls across the country, pinned the blame on the federal government which has long advocated a policy of open borders and mass immigration, and claimed that ordinary Germans are now paying the price...   Ronald Glaeser, the leader of the AfD parliamentary group in the Berlin state parliament, also stated: “Anyone who doesn’t want to protect their border will have to close outdoor pools later. This is the logic of illegal mass immigration to our country. A handful of new lifeguards would just be tinkering with symptoms. We need a turning point for open borders.”"
Damn colonialism!

ATHENS: 35-year-old Bangladeshi Man Arrested For The Murder Of Cuban Transgender Woman - "A 35-year-old man from Bangladesh, who was earlier brought in as a suspect in the murder of the 46-year-old transgender Anna Ivankova on July 10 in her apartment in an Athens neighbourhood, was arrested by the Greek police.  The body of the 46-year-old woman was found in a pool of blood, in a ground-floor apartment in the area of Agios Panteleimon on Phylis and Magnisias Street, by the landlady who went to the apartment to collect the rent."
Comment (in response to TRA histrionics): "This whole story is actually pretty ridiculous. Marxist feminists are protesting about the murder of a trans person which was trying to escape socialism (immigrant from Cuba) which was murdered by a Muslim illegal immigrant, which the Marxist feminists protest about not being allowed to freely enter the country."

Belgium Parliament Introduces Bill Making Islamophobia a Crime - "Five French-speaking Belgian provinces have changed religious holiday names to secular ones, also recognizing Muslim holidays... A group of Belgian lawmakers have proposed a bill that would deem Islamophobia a crime punishable by fines and/or imprisonment.  Six senators of the Belgian Parliament drafted the resolution that would  categorize a person who “ considers Islam to be violent, threatening or supportive of terrorism”or “considers Islam to be a political ideology used for political and military purposes to establish its hegemony” as an islamophobe, and liable for prosecution under this law, if passed.  Opponents of the bill say it would be a ‘devastating blow to free speech’ in Belgium.   The French-speaking region of southern Belgium known as Wallonia has officially assigned the four major Christian holidays (Christmas, Easter, Thanksgiving and All Saints Day – known as Halloween in the US) secular names in a move that critics claim is catering to the atheistic views of the Socialists and the influence of the Muslim elements of its population... "school calendars  within Belgium's French speaking community will permanently use the following terminology: the Christian holiday previously known as All Saints Day (Congés de Toussaint) will now be referred to as Autumn Leave (Congé d'automne); Christmas Vacation (Vacances de Noël) is now Winter Vacation (Vacances d'hiver); Lenten Vacation (Congés de Carnaval) is now Rest and Relaxation Leave (Congé de détente); and Easter (Vacances de Pâques) is now Spring Vacation (Vacances de Printemps).”...  The mayor of Brussels, Freddy Thielemans,  is a Socialist and more than half of the eleven council members are either Socialists or Muslims – or both.  The Council has moved to refrain from the display of any religious holiday décor in the city, and replaced some with modern art works to give the metropolis a more ‘avant – garde character’; although, according to the Brussels Nieuws, one Council member from the Christian Democratic and Flemish Party, Bianca Debaets,  argued that  it was the ‘religious sensitivities of the Muslims’ that prompted the display of the cubical ‘light’ sculpture in place of a religious-toned  display – a Christmas tree.   The efforts of making Belgium more ‘Islam-friendly’, however,  leaves many Muslims still feeling alienated from the greater Belgian society.  The article by Soeren Kern states: “According to a new survey of Muslim youth in Flanders, the Dutch-speaking northern half of Belgium, only 30% of Muslim males between the ages of 15 and 25 feel as though they are accepted by Flemish society. This figure drops to 25% for Muslim females in the same age group.”    “The survey, which was published by the daily newspaper Gazet van Antwerpen on April 19, shows that 60% of Muslim youth believe that they will never be integrated into Belgian society. One in three of those surveyed say that he or she has been discriminated against at school, and one in five say they have been discriminated against at work. More than 50% say they have been victims of racism. Although 93% of those surveyed have Belgian citizenship, 42% of them say they consider themselves to be foreigners.”   “The results are virtually unchanged from a similar survey conducted in 2005, and imply that years of government efforts to make Belgium more multicultural have done nothing to change the minds of Muslim youth... “This definition of Islamophobia, which is based on a 1997 report published by the London-based Runnymede Trust, would effectively outlaw any critical discussion of Islam in Belgium [and label it as] ‘combating racism’."
From 2013

Not ideal for workers to be transported on lorries, but there are concerns ban will have knock-on effects: Govt - "It is “not ideal” for workers to be transported on lorries, but there are genuine concerns from employers about the knock-on effects of a ban, said several government agencies.  On Wednesday morning, the authorities said in a joint statement: “If the companies are unable to operate their businesses, there will be knock-on effects on society, including delays affecting new housing projects, polyclinics and MRT lines, as well as higher costs for all Singaporeans.   “Their employees – both Singaporean and migrant workers – would also risk losing their jobs if the companies close down.”...   In the past five years, people on board lorries – including those sitting in the front passenger cabins – formed, on average, about 4 per cent of the total injured from road traffic accidents each year.  Meanwhile, motorcycles accounted for the highest proportion of injuries, at about 50 per cent yearly.  The statement said: “Hence, our efforts will remain evidence-based and focus on improving safety for all road users."... A significant number of companies, especially small and medium-sized enterprises, have been grappling with post-pandemic cost increases and business disruptions, and are trying their best to stay afloat and complete their projects on time.  “Beyond financial costs, there are also structural and operational challenges, including the availability of alternative modes of transportation,” the statement added.  For instance, buses may not be suitable for specialist trades, which often require transporting a small crew of workers with equipment or goods, or both, to several locations in a day. “The situation is exacerbated by a shortage of bus drivers in Singapore, as we had seen with school buses.”"
The people who lobby for this will complain when construction costs go up, and blame greedy companies
This looks like one of those measures that looks good but has little practical effect. The fact that it's safe enough for NSmen despite the SAF fetishising safety suggests that it's not actually unsafe
Ironically, the very workers this is supposed to protect may not support this, as their wages will go down and/or some of them will lose their jobs
Maybe Singapore should ban motorcycles to protect motorcyclists

Julio Rosas on Twitter - "Mayor Eric Adams complains border states have created a "funnel" right to NYC, a sanctuary city, and warns the border crisis could "decimate" the city due to the cost of taking care of everyone."
Racist! Why does he hate immigrants?

Canada Tests the Limits of Its Liberal Immigration Strategy - WSJ - "the intake of newcomers is increasing so rapidly that analysts and newly arrived immigrants say it is adding fuel to an overheated housing market, straining a stressed healthcare system and clogging up roads in cities unaccustomed to traffic jams.  It is also prompting immigrants to think twice about choosing Canada... The country’s housing prices remain among the highest in the world even after a rapid and hefty rise in interest rates, according to data compiled by the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas. The price of a Canadian home sits 36% above 2020 levels because residential construction can’t keep up with population growth, analysts say. “This is what happens when our government decides to triple the rate at which our population is growing without giving any thought to where everyone will live,” said John Pasalis, president of Toronto real-estate brokerage Realosophy Realty... new polling released last month from Ottawa-based Abacus Data reflects skepticism, with 61% of citizens saying the government’s plans are too ambitious because of the negative impact on housing and healthcare. The Canadian Medical Association said the country’s population-to-physician ratio ranks 29th out of 36 developed-world economies, while data from the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development show Canada’s hospital-bed capacity is one of the lowest on a per-capita basis among rich-world economies... As immigration has surged, Canada’s gross domestic product per capita—widely used by economists to measure a country’s standard of living—has declined. National Bank Financial said last month that Canada’s per-capita output is on track to fall 1.7% in the second quarter from a year ago, and the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development predicts Canada’s GDP-per-capita growth could be one of the lowest among developed-world economies over the next four decades."

More international students are turning to food banks - "A growing genre of videos on YouTube and TikTok is angering some Canadians who say international students are being encouraged to abuse food banks in order to get “free groceries.”... a SaltWire report highlighted that the on-campus food bank at Cape Breton University was attracting more students, almost all of whom are international, and some may not necessarily require the assistance."

Sir Walter Raleigh 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁥󠁮󠁧󠁿 on X - "Dua Lipa and Rita Ora are pro open border liberals when it comes to Britain, the place that gave them a privileged upbringing away from their war-torn country. But when it comes to Kosovo/Albania they immediately turn into ethnic nationalists. Remarkable double standard."
James Kirkpatrick on X - "Just as everyone is conservative about the things they actually care about, everyone is an ethnonationalist about the nation they really belong to."

Links - 27th September 2023 (2 - Covid-19: Canadian Truckers)

Jonathan Kay on X - "highlights from the "Ottawa People's Commission" report. Apparently, the "Battle of Billings Bridge" was like the Vimy Ridge of 2022. Also, Ottawa was *double* occupied, since the city was already occupied by settlers. And "Angry White Men" is capitalized for some reason"

Jewish group demands apology after MPs honoured man who fought for Nazis - "Several Jewish advocacy organizations condemned members of Parliament on Sunday for giving a standing ovation to a man who fought for a Nazi unit during the Second World War.  During Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy's visit to Ottawa on Friday, MPs in the House of Commons honoured 98-year-old Yaroslav Hunka, who fought for the First Ukrainian Division... The First Ukrainian Division was also known as the Waffen-SS Galicia Division or the SS 14th Waffen Division, a voluntary unit that was under the command of the Nazis."
Jewish group demands apology after MPs honoured man who fought for Nazis : canada - "If a single Swastika is raised at a protest, everyone at that protest is a Nazi. If a foreign government brings in a literal SS war criminal to celebrate as an exemplar, they're heroes and we need to send them weapons as quickly as possible"
The cope I see is that one person invited him so it's only his fault (apparently it's no problem for the party not to vet invitees). But clearly in a ground-up protest the left disapproves of, the whole group is responsible for the "worst" individual's behavior (even if that person might not even be part of the same protest) (ditto for the anti-gender ideology protests, where one allegation of homophobic shouting means all the protesters are homophobic, even if that's not even what the protest is about)

WARMINGTON: As two charged Freedom Convoy protesters sat in court, police helped another protest block streets - "two Canadians are on trial who have already spent time in jail for their alleged roles in the 2022 Freedom Convoy protest. Outside the same courthouse, a protest of Eritrean residents was blocking streets as they marched up on their way to protest Israel at the Israeli embassy... While Lich and Barber are charged with mischief and counselling to commit mischief and intimidation, Greenspon is making the argument that all this ever was, was a lawful protest. “From what we have seen over and over again, the freedom convoy was a peaceful assembly and I don’t think there was any question about that,” he said. But that is not how the government sees it. They originally booked 16 days for this trail and then there was talk of making it 20. Now comes word two weeks will be added and the trial now scheduled to go a whopping 26 days. “And that may not even be enough,” said Greenspon with a chuckle, adding he’s never seen a mischief case lasting for almost a month — weeks longer than many murder cases. The Col. Russell Williams double homicide case was sorted out in two days. The Justice Paul Rouleau inquiry into the calling of the Emergency’s Act lasted 31 days"
Peaceful protests are only good when the left agree with them

NDP falsely accused Freedom Convoy protesters of spitting, shoving Asians - "Freedom Convoy protesters were accused of assaulting Asians by spitting and shoving them, but sworn testimony at a judicial inquiry contradicted these claims... Li described the only violent incident when residents of her apartment building threw cartons of eggs at protesters’ trucks... “Are you concerned the powers being used against the protesters from the convoy could one day be used against protesters on the left?” asked a reporter.   “This is a situation without precedent and it can never be applied to other scenarios,” replied Singh.  In the Commons, Singh made a claim that the protesters were dangerous arsonists who attempted to set residents on fire while they were sleeping, which was later found to be false."

KRAYDEN: Trudeau reveals why he really crushed the Freedom Convoy - "“What worried me so much about the convoy … the issue is there are people out there who are trying to spread [the anti-vaccine message] and push it beyond just 'my choice is to not do it' .. it’s more of a deliberate attempt to destabilize, to fundraise — to make money off of people's fears — to shift the narrative to undermine their trust in institutions to just sow chaos in our democracy and our society and our using very, very powerful means to do that … in a way that actively and deliberately harms Canadians."  Trudeau says he couldn't "shrug" that off.  Ah, there we have it. Trudeau forgot all about public safety or at least attempted to redefine as protecting Canadians from ideas that he doesn't agree with. And what about how he had to use the Emergencies [War Measures] Act to restore order and avoid some kind of insurrection that existed only in Trudeau’s challenged mind?  Trudeau also comes across as a man who still believes the country cannot long survive without his presumed brilliance and is still “in love with the gig”"

GUNTER: Online-streaming bill threatens freedom of expression | Toronto Sun - "We learned this week, via Emergencies Act commission documents, that during last winter’s Freedom Convoy the Trudeau government had no evidence of Russian or other foreign influence behind the protest, no massive foreign funding and no identifiable threat to national security. Yet the prime minister and several cabinet ministers repeated such claims for weeks – even after the convoy was broken up"

Why the coverage of the trucker protest should worry all Canadians - "the people who now hold this belief that anything less than total control and absolute discipline is a sign of weakness and illegitimacy are now what pollsters politely call “the centre-left.”... And we see this here with centre-left reaction to the national truckers’ protest in Ottawa. No permanent organization is running this protest, which appears to be built around social media, a GoFundMe page, and a loose affiliation of local leadership groups developed in provincial protests by truckers over the past few years.  And of course, it does not represent all or even most truckers in the industry... The Vancouver Peace March used to attract 10 percent of the city’s population (50,000 protesters at its peak) for its annual walk across Burrard Bridge to support global nuclear disarmament. And, consequently, the vanguard of the march comprised the Trotskyites, Maoists, and other communist sectarians and foreign dictator fan clubs who saw this as their big annual opportunity to radicalize and recruit ordinary anti-nuclear activists.  Right-wing commentators sought to discredit these protests by heavily featuring and platforming the most off-topic or the most radical protesters and then seeking to paint all protesters with that broad brush. This approach generally failed and was mocked by the mainstream press, who depicted the diversity of protesters and homemade signs as a sign of the depth of its support.  But today, that approach is working because our society’s mainstream values have changed and because the target audience is a different one. Because Canadians, as a whole, but especially centre-left voters have now come to believe that the legitimacy of a movement inheres not in its size or the diversity of people and views it represents but rather in its ability to discipline and control its supporters, this protest looks both illegitimate and frightening. Not only is this protest not controlling the speech and signage of its members; it is celebrating its refusal to control these things and instead sticking to the basics of making sure protesters are nonviolent and law-abiding.  And, in progressive, urban Canada, this broad-brush guilt-by-association strategy exhumed from the 1980s appears to be working, no matter how intellectually lazy its journalistic practitioners are being... Despite a recent passing interest in toppling pro-Confederate and pro-war statues in the United States, Canadian progressives have suddenly become very concerned about nationalist statuary. While I would never try to politicize a Terry Fox statue, myself, the level of offense centre-left urbanites are taking at people placing entirely removable and undamaging objects and signs on Ottawa’s Fox memorial is deeply worrying. No one has toppled the statue; nobody has even got paint on it. Similarly, the fact that there is urine of unknown provenance in the snow near the memorial to the unknown soldier is now being redescribed as protesters, as a whole, urinating on and thereby desecrating the war memorial. Who knew that the mere possibility of a half a dozen or fewer individuals disrespecting a war memorial by urinating near it could de-legitimate a gathering of thousands in the minds of Canada’s mainstream centre-left!?... As a person who, because I dissented from the progressive consensus on a single issue, has been smeared as a transphobe, homophobe, pedophile, white supremacist, racist, and ableist in the past year and a half, I can no longer simply accept the opinion of centre-left media on whether someone is a dangerous, bigoted member of the alt-right. I can no longer trust the government-financed Canadian Anti-Hate Network on whether someone is a dangerous hatemonger because many of my comrades and I are on their list. And not everyone is going to be like me and check those claims against the facts. Most people will just start ignoring those claims."
But of course, nothing BLM members or even leaders say or do is representative of or even reflects badly on BLM, because the left supports it

Emergencies Act inquiry studies fundamental rights and freedoms at stake in protests - "the commission, which is tasked with determining whether the federal government was justified in its invocation of the Emergencies Act to clear the protests, must grapple with some central questions. Where should the line be drawn on limits to Canadians' right to freedom of peaceful assembly? And what are governments and courts to do when that freedom conflicts with the rights of others?  The commission launched the policy phase of its inquiry Monday with a roundtable discussion featuring legal experts who study the Charter of Rights and Freedoms. Commissioner Paul Rouleau said the question of how to define whether a protest is peaceful is a "critical element" of the inquiry's work.  There's been very little discussion about the right to peaceful assembly at the Supreme Court of Canada, leaving the reasonable limits on that freedom a bit murky, said Jamie Cameron, a professor emeritus at York University's Osgoode Hall Law School. The key question, Cameron said, is: "What does it mean to say that an assembly is peaceful in nature?"  Some experts argue a line should only be drawn if a protest becomes violent, but others believe demonstrations can become disruptive enough that they can no longer be considered peaceful, she said... "There is a wide degree of consensus on the value of protest in a democratic society," said Vanessa MacDonnell, an associate professor at the University of Ottawa faculty of law and co-director of the uOttawa Public Law Centre... "On its face, it does look to be overbroad," Mathen said, adding that there are time limits on the powers and there was a list of exemptions to the ban on travelling in certain areas... Even when the Emergencies Act is invoked, the Charter of Rights continues to apply, as explicitly stated in the legislation... "It hasn't been fully canvassed by the courts at all but, in principal, the idea of fundraising to support a cause or a social movement is protect by the Charter freedom guarantees," said Michelle Gallant, professor at the Robson Hall Faculty of Law at the University of Manitoba.  She said the fundraising "animates" the freedoms related to the right to expression, assembly and association... Typically, when the state seizes or freezes someone's assets, the person is first given notice and an opportunity to respond somehow, said Gerard Kennedy, another University of Manitoba law professor.  Arguably neither of those procedural rights were afforded to protesters who lost access to their money after the act was invoked."
To liberals, of course, it is very simple: they had no right to protest

Three police forces had doubts about use of Emergencies Act - The Globe and Mail - "Documents tabled at the Emergencies Act inquiry reveal a discrepancy between RCMP Commissioner Brenda Lucki’s public defence of the sweeping legislation and her private advice to the government that the police had “not yet exhausted all available tools” when the act was invoked... The e-mail adds to a growing body of evidence from police forces, presented to the inquiry, that challenges the federal government’s argument that the act was needed to end more than three weeks of protests that threw the country’s capital into chaos, upended daily life, and subjected residents and businesses to uncontrolled and at times dangerous protests... the inquiry was also presented with evidence that a top federal civil servant and the police had agreed to a proposed negotiation with the protest leaders but that it was rejected by the government on Feb. 12. Before those talks Mr. Trudeau had publicly said negotiations with the convoy leaders were a “non-starter.”"

Truths the Emergencies Act Inquiry Must Reveal - "The Freedom Convoy became not just a conveyance to bring protesters to Ottawa but, for whatever reason, a kind of magnet for lies. Falsehoods, misdirection and dissembling proliferated about everything from alleged racism and violence to whether or not downtown Ottawa was actually “occupied” or “blockaded” to the technicalities of who even wanted the Emergencies Act and who actually ordered the freezing of bank accounts... The inquiry into Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s use of the Emergencies Act is finally underway. Much has come to light since those tumultuous events in February suggesting the Liberal government’s drastic action was unjustified. This is mostly thanks to the non-legacy media – see this, for example. Time will tell whether the Public Order Emergency Commission will reach the same conclusion... government and sympathetic witnesses are trying to keep the inquiry’s scope as narrow as possible. Consequently, the public may learn only portions of the whole truth concerning events of which they “have a right to know.”... The evaporating effectiveness of the Covid-19 vaccines had stunning implications which, had North American governments been paying attention (there is evidence that some other governments, like Denmark’s and Sweden’s, were), should have triggered major changes to pandemic management no later than early 2022... unvaccinated truckers who reluctantly got vaccinated in response to Trudeau’s mandate became more susceptible to Covid-19 infection as they travelled back and forth between Canada and the U.S. This would increase the likelihood that new cases would be imported into Canada. The truckers’ vaccination mandate therefore was a nonsensical public health measure that not only had nothing to do with keeping Canadians “safe” but cannot be “demonstrably justified” as a “reasonable limitation” of a Charter right, as the Charter requires for infringements of rights... One possibility is that federal public health officials, the vast health care bureaucracy and the Prime Minister’s Office (which has significant resources of its own) all failed to come across any of this data or failed to recognize its significance if they did. Such a large blind spot would suggest serious impairment in the federal government’s information-gathering and analysis systems, perhaps outright incompetence... The federal government unequivocally and incessantly assured Canadians that the vaccines were “safe and effective.” Yet, just two days after approving the first Covid-19 vaccine on December 8, 2020, the federal government announced a Vaccine Injury Support Program. Such a program had not been considered necessary throughout the 153 years since Confederation despite numerous traditional vaccines being introduced and administered during that time... Canadian law is quite clear that before administering any medical treatment, the person or party doing so must obtain informed consent from the patient receiving the treatment. The law is also quite clear that in order for this to be the case, absolutely no coercion can be involved and the person receiving the treatment must be advised of all potential adverse outcomes, no matter how small the probability, especially if the outcome is severe. If this is not done, the party providing the treatment has broken the law. When Trudeau began imposing vaccine mandates in 2021 he used coercive means – including the threat of job termination and/or the loss of mobility rights – to cause millions of Canadians to undergo a medical treatment (vaccination) which the federal bureaucracy knew and he knew (or ought to have known) posed the potential for serious injury"

Ottawa police chief ruined chance to shrink the ‘Freedom Convoy,’ inquiry told Tuesday | The Star - "The so-called “Freedom Convoy” occupation in the nation’s capital could have been smaller and easier to manage, if not for then-police chief Peter Sloly’s direction to not concede anything to the protesters"

Convoy blockades cost Canadian economy billions in reduced GDP, documents show - The Globe and Mail - "Minutes of a cabinet-level meeting attended by Ms. Freeland that took place the day before the government invoked the act show ministers were told that the blockades were causing economic losses of 0.1 per cent to 0.2 per cent of GDP per week... Conservative MP and emergency preparedness critic Dane Lloyd said in a statement that the government has not been fully truthful with Canadians about its decision to invoke the act.  “It is concerning that the Liberal government was not forthright with Canadians about the existing economic impact,” he said. “It is clear that the Liberal government was more interested in dividing, wedging, stigmatizing and name-calling Canadians, rather than seeking a solution using existing powers and practises.”"
Of course, covid restrictions were costless

Emergencies Act, ‘Freedom Convoy’ records withheld until days before inquiry end: PCO - "Bureaucrats supporting the Prime Minister’s Office claim they need until February 2023 to decide whether to release records about the so-called “Freedom Convoy” — the same month the judicial inquiry into the use of the Emergencies Act is set to wrap up."

GOLDSTEIN: Feds cried wolf in invoking Emergencies Act | Toronto Sun - "So far, the various justifications the Trudeau government has given for invoking the Emergencies Act against the Freedom Convoy protests have fallen apart...   Neither the RCMP nor Ottawa police asked the federal government to invoke the act, contrary to claims by Public Safety Minister Marco Mendicino.   A senior official with the federal government’s intelligence unit responsible for preventing the financing of terrorist and money-laundering activities testified before a parliamentary committee that the typical person who donated money to the Freedom Convoy protests posed no security threat.   “I think that there were people around the world who were fed up with COVID, who were upset and saw the demonstrations against COVID (mandates) and I believe that they just wanted to support the cause,” said Barry MacKillop, deputy director of intelligence at the Financial Transactions and Reports Analysis Centre... The Ambassador Bridge blockade ended the night before Prime Minister Justin Trudeau invoked the Emergencies Act meaning it wasn’t needed, nor did the blockades cause major economic issues.  Cross-border trade in February 2022 during the Freedom Convoy protests in Ontario and Alberta went up 16% compared to February 2021... The most serious criminal charges were laid in Coutts, Alberta, where police arrested a dozen people Feb. 14 on allegations ranging from weapons offences to conspiracy to murder.  That was the same day Trudeau invoked the Emergencies Act, meaning the charges were made through normal police investigation procedures, unrelated to the act. Freedom Convoy protesters did not attempt to set fire to an Ottawa apartment building after locking residents inside, contrary to government claims. Despite reports of illegal guns in the cabs of some truckers protesting in Ottawa, no gun charges have been laid to date.  Despite claims by Mendicino women were threatened with sexual assault by protesters, no sexual assault charges have been laid to date... invoking the Emergencies Act — resulting in a massive suspension of civil liberties — is supposed to be the last resort when the use of all other legislation has failed...   As the Canadian Civil Liberties Association wrote in its legal challenge of Trudeau invoking the Emergencies Act, Canada has experienced “terrorist attacks, economic collapses and a pandemic.  “All of these situations were dealt with using existing laws and normal democratic processes, or, when absolutely necessary, municipal or provincial emergency powers.  “There have also been national protest movements that occupied public spaces and city streets for months and blockaded critical infrastructure such as railways …  “These too have been responded to within the context of existing laws.”"

WATCH: Jordan Peterson says Trudeau is 'lying' about Trucker Convoy, never 'says a true word' - ""I don't believe that he ever says a word that's true from what I've been able to observe, it's all stage acting. He's crafted a persona, he has a particular instrumental goal in mind and everything is subordinated to serve that.  "The same motivation that is generally typical of people who are narcissistic, which is to be credited with moral virtue in the absence of the work necessary to actually attain it," he said.  "He's playing a role. You know, the swastika thing is just like, really? About Canadians? We're going to be worried about Nazis in Canada? I had protests for example, where people accused me of attracting nazis. First of all, that just isn't a thing in Canada, there isn't a Nazi tradition, and I don't know anyone in Canada who ever met anyone who met anyone whose Canadian who is a Nazi. So that's just a non-starter," he continued. Peterson was critical of Trudeau for using the swastika as a scapegoat to dismiss the entire protest, adding that there is not even clear evidence that the person who flew the swastika flag at the protest was a Nazi. "When that sort of thing gets dragged into the conversation right off the bat, that Canadians shouldn't be subjected to the inherent violence of the swastika, first of all it's not even obvious what that swastika was doing there. There's reasonable evidence to suggest that the person who was waving it was either a plant or someone who was making the comment that that was what was characteristic of the government, not of what they believed... Peterson then delved into the Trudeau Liberals' use of the Emergencies Act, which he says he needed to read through thousands of tweets from Liberals to understand the mentality of those who support Trudeau.  "You know, the story in Canada that our prime minister implemented the Emergencies Act, and so the question was why? So I went on Twitter when this was trending and read at least 5,000 Twitter comments to try and get a sense. These are people who are supporting Trudeau in his application of the Emergencies Act, I was trying to figure out 'what do they believe is happening?' And the story seems to be... and maybe I'm wrong... 'Make America Great Again' conservative republicans on the pretty far right were attempting to destabilize Canadian democracy," said Peterson.  "And so my question was, well, what makes you think they care, first of all about Canada and its democracy, and second, why in the world would they possibly do that? You need a motive for a crime like that. And that was at the same time that the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, which is subsidized by the Liberals to the tune of $1.2 billion a year, was insisting that most of the money that the truckers raised was foreign-financed. If it wasn't the bloody Russians, then it was the American conservatives, and so that all turned out to be a complete lie.  After the protests, it was discovered that the vast majority of donors to the freedom convoy in Ottawa were from Canadians, according to the president of GoFundMe. During a House of Commons public safety and national security committee meeting, President Juan Benitez admitted that nearly 90 percent of donations to the movement were from Canada... Peterson then ruminated on why Canadians buy into the mainstream narrative so handedly.  "Why do Canadians buy this to the degree they do, and I think they're faced with a hard choice, because in my country for 150 years you could trust the basic institutions, you could trust the government, doesn't matter what political parties were running it... from the socialists to the conservatives. the socialists were mostly union types and they were trying to give the working class a voice, and honestly so," said Peterson.  "You could trust the media, even the CBC was a reliable source of news. None of that's true now, so Canadians are asked a hard choice, or were in the trucker convoy situation, and the choice was; either all your institutions are almost irretrievably corrupt, or the truckers were financed by, like, right-wing republican Americans. Well, both of those are preposterous, you might as well take the one that's least disruptive to your entire sense of security. And so I think that's what Canadians did, mostly""

RCMP didn't ask for Emergencies Act to be invoked, commissioner tells Commons committee - "RCMP commissioner Brenda Lucki told MPs the Emergencies Act gave police across the country the tools to end Freedom Convoy protests, but said her force did not ask for the act to be invoked."

Letters to the editor: ‘Canadians … at risk of living in a bunch of petty fiefdoms if we don’t rally soon to preserve federalism.’ A constitutional crisis? Plus other letters to the editor for Dec. 14 - The Globe and Mail - "There is a requirement that if the Emergencies Act is invoked, an inquiry is triggered to get to the bottom of why such an extreme measure was needed. However, the crux of Justin Trudeau’s decision is hidden behind a legal opinion that his government refuses to reveal.  As someone who has campaigned on openness and transparency, what harm is there in Mr. Trudeau sharing the opinion if it is sound? There would, however, be harm in setting a precedent of invoking the Emergencies Act without justification.  What is the point of spending time and money on an inquiry if the people responsible are not required to provide their reasons?"

It was Justin Trudeau who picked the fight with the 'Truckists' - "to situate the events that led to the first-ever invocation of the Emergencies Act last year, you need to roll back the clock to Aug. 12, 2021. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s government had settled on a pretext to call an early election to transform his minority government into a majority.  It was to be a “pandemic election” to coast to victory on his government’s fairly successful handling of its various COVID-19 policy prescriptions and remedies. Until Aug. 12, the Trudeau government had gone along with expert advice to the effect that mandatory vaccination is a bad idea, because it’s divisive and less effective than incentives and rapid-testing schemes, and the last thing you should do is politicize vaccination. But then, on Aug.12, Intergovernmental Affairs Minister Dominic LeBlanc and Transport Minister Omar Alghabra said federal employees, Crown corporations and federally regulated industries like cross-border trucking and trains and airplanes would fall within the new rule: Vaccines would be mandatory. Three days later, the federal election was announced.   The lines were drawn. Either you supported Trudeau’s mandates and did what you were told, or you were a racist and a misogynist, and you were against science, part of a nasty little group that, in Trudeau’s words, “muscles in, and we have to make a choice in terms of leaders, in terms of the country. Do we tolerate these people?”...   During the hearings before Justice Rouleau, the primary justification the Trudeau government offered for opting for the statutory nuclear option to deal with what by then was the collapse of law enforcement in Ottawa was the economic disruption the truckers’ protest was causing, and the mere possibility of violence, either carried out by violent extremists or by some “lone wolf” crank, or in a confrontation between protesters and counter-protesters. “Apart from the economic concerns,” the Canadian Civil Liberties Association (CCLA) points out, “the evidence on which the government relies to back up these claims is extremely thin. The law enforcement and intelligence agencies whose expertise should help inform the government’s decisions did not assess the protests as giving rise to a serious threat of violence.”... At the end of the day, the epic confrontation between the Truckists and Trudeau was a fight that Trudeau picked. “From a positive and unifying approach, a decision was made to wedge, to divide, and to stigmatize,” is the way the cerebral Quebec Liberal MP Joël Lightbound put it last year, just before he resigned as chair of the Liberals’ Quebec caucus. “I fear that this politicization of the pandemic risks undermining the public’s trust in our public health institutions.”  And that is exactly what has happened.  Former finance minister Bill Morneau says the same, that using vaccine mandates as a political wedge in the 2021 federal election was a bad idea. “I didn’t see that as something that was helpful,” Morneau told the CBC last month. But that’s just Trudeau’s style. “When you react to social media, when you react quickly to the 24/7 news cycle,” Morneau said, “you find yourself taking decisions, saying things that exacerbate the strongly held opinions of the people who are putting out those points of view.”"