When you can't live without bananas

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Monday, April 21, 2025

Why is Ukraine struggling to mobilise its citizens to fight?

Of course, the pro-proxy war people see no problem with supporting a nation of Chamberlains:

Why is Ukraine struggling to mobilise its citizens to fight?

"Over the past few months, Ukraine has increasingly been under pressure from its Western allies to start mobilising young men under the age of 25. This came after the mobilisation law passed in April did not deliver the expected number of recruits. Even the lowering of medical requirements – allowing men who had had HIV and tuberculosis infections to serve – did not help much.

Some pro-Western Ukrainian officials, like Roman Kostenko, the secretary of Ukraine’s parliamentary security committee, have also pressed for lowering the age. Kostenko said he is being constantly queried by members of the US Congress why the Ukrainian government asks for weapons but isn’t willing to mobilise its youth.

So far President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has refused to move forward. Part of the reason is demographic fear: Sacrificing young men en masse in a prolonged conflict risks condemning Ukraine to an even bleaker future, where demographic decline undermines its ability to rebuild economically, socially, and politically.

But the Ukrainian president also fears public anger. There is growing and palpable reluctance among Ukrainians to fight in the war. And this is despite the fact that their leaders and civil society frame it as an existential struggle for survival.

Many Ukrainians are indeed fatigued after nearly three years of full-scale war, but their war-weariness is not just a matter of exhaustion. It stems from pre-existing fractures in the nation’s sociopolitical foundations, which the war has only deepened...

Like in all post-Soviet and post-communist states, a new social contract emerged in the 1990s that reflected the new sociopolitical realities in Ukraine. State-citizen relations were reduced to the following: the state won’t help you, but in return, the state won’t harm you either.

Meanwhile, politics became animated by the dramatic Maidan revolutions of 2004 and 2014. The opportunities created by these uprisings were repeatedly co-opted by narrow elite groups – oligarchs, the professional middle class, and foreign powers – leaving large portions of Ukrainian society excluded and their interests underrepresented.

Before 2022, this situation was tolerable for many Ukrainians to an extent. The borders were open, so millions were able to emigrate. In 2021, Ukraine occupied the eighth place in the ranking of countries with the most international migrants – more than 600,000 left in that year alone. Remittances from the emigrants helped those who stayed behind maintain an acceptable standard of living.

But in the long term, this path did not seem sustainable. In 2020, Prime Minister Denys Shmyhal admitted that the state will struggle to pay state pensions in a decade and a half. After years of declining state capacity and de-development, Ukrainians were unsurprised. The news was received as another indication that one should save up American dollars and try to emigrate.

The war put the already weak social contract to the test. All of a sudden, a state that had hardly been present in Ukrainians’ lives demanded that they sacrifice themselves for its survival.

In the wake of the failure of Russia’s initial invasion plan, the surge of unity fuelled a wave of volunteerism. However, as the war ground on, a stark realisation emerged: the state is distributing the burdens and benefits of the war unequally. While some segments of society gain materially or politically, others bear disproportionate sacrifices, fuelling a growing sense of alienation within a large part of the Ukrainian population.

The state has done little to strengthen its relations with citizens in the face of waning war enthusiasm. Instead, government officials have bombarded the population with messaging about self-reliance.

In September 2023, Minister of Social Policy Oksana Zholnovich called on citizens not to remain dependent on benefits, since this makes them “children”. She proposed a “new social contract” in which citizens accept social spending cuts and live independently as “free swimmers”.

In September 2024, the government announced it was not going to increase the minimum wage and social security payments in 2025 despite inflation reaching 12 percent.

As the third year of the war is about to wrap up, the consequences of this weak social contract are becoming increasingly apparent. The narrative of fighting an existential war no longer seems to move the majority of Ukrainians.

The words of one of our interviewees are quite illuminating. This person fundraises for non-lethal military equipment for the army – but not drones or other weapons, because he believes that “the state completely failed in its most critical role of preventing war”. He told us: “I don’t understand why this war should fully become my war in the truest sense of the word.”

He said he found it hard to be open about his views: “When you want to live as you wish, you only speak openly in close circles. Either you have to let go of all ambitions, part of your identity, or consider emigration because this country will ultimately become completely foreign to you.”

The attitude that this is not “our war” can be seen reflected in polls conducted throughout the past year, in which a silent majority does not seem ready to mobilise to fight.

In an April 2024 poll, only 10 percent of respondents said that most of their relatives were ready to be mobilised. A June survey showed that only 32 percent “fully or partly supported” the new mobilisation law; 52 percent opposed it, and the rest refused to answer.

In a July poll, only 32 percent disagreed with the statement “mobilisation will have no effect other than increased deaths”. A mere 27 percent believed that forced mobilisation was necessary to solve issues at the front line.

According to another July poll, only 29 percent considered it shameful to be a draft dodger.

A consistent pattern can be seen in these surveys: those supporting the continuation or strengthening conscription only constitute about a third of the population; a significant minority evade responding to such questions, reflected in the large number of “hard to say” or “don’t know” answers; and the rest openly reject mobilisation.

These attitudes on conscription may seem at odds with results from “victory” polls. The majority in such surveys still indicate that “victory” for Ukraine should mean reclaiming all territories within its 1991 borders and rejecting any concessions to Russia.

But there is really no contradiction here. It is evident that while most Ukrainians would like to see “total victory”, they are unwilling to sacrifice their lives for this goal and empathise with others who feel the same. That is why the majority also supports a negotiated peace as soon as possible.

The lack of motivation to fight is also apparent in the rates of draft dodging. Per the April mobilisation law, all men eligible for mobilisation were to submit their details to the draft offices by July 17. By the deadline, only 4 million men had done so, while 6 million had not.

And of those who entered their details, various officials have said that from 50 to 70-80 percent had medical or other reasons allowing them to legally avoid mobilisation.

Meanwhile, groups and channels have proliferated on Telegram to alert people to the presence of mobilisation officers in certain areas; they have continued to run despite some members getting arrested.

The mobilisation authorities have launched investigations against 500,000 men for draft evasion so far.

Draft dodging has not only revealed the scope of the crisis of motivation but also the extent to which the war has massively deepened class divides.

Over the past year, there have been regular news reports of officials accepting massive bribes in exchange for exempting men from military service.

In one case made public in early October, a top medical official who also served on a local council representing the ruling Servant of the People party, amassed a fortune taking bribes to facilitate draft-dodging through disability slips. The local police said it found $6m in cash and released a photo of a family member who had photographed themselves on a bed with piles of dollars.

Less than two weeks later, Ukrainian media reported that nearly all prosecutors in the region where the medical official operated were registered as “disabled”. In the aftermath of the scandal, Zelenskyy sacked some officials and triumphantly abolished the institution responsible for giving out disability slips. Uncomfortable questions about why top officials didn’t notice these corrupt schemes were dismissed.

Those who do not have thousands of dollars to pay for a medical exemption or bribe border police, attempt dangerous journeys at Ukraine’s western borders. As a result, a significant portion of Ukraine’s border patrol is stationed on the “peaceful” western borders.

Since 2022, 45 Ukrainians have drowned in the Tysa River on the border with Romania and Hungary in desperate attempts to flee. There have been multiple cases of Ukrainian men trying to escape the country shot and killed by their own country’s border patrol. In March, a video went viral of a border patrol guard madly shooting into the Tysa to demonstrate what he does to draft dodgers, saying: “$1000 to cross this river isn’t worth it”...

Those who make it to the front line are usually too poor or too unfortunate to have been caught by draft officers. As parliamentarian Mariana Bezuhla put it in mid-September after visiting the front lines near Pokrovsk, the people there were mainly those who could not “decide things” with a bribe. In a November TV interview, a military commander said that 90 percent of those at the front are “forcibly mobilised villagers”.

Army officers often complain of the low quality of these “busified” troops, the term referring to the minibuses into which draft-age men are dragged off the streets. No wonder there have been hundreds of arson attacks against these vehicles.

The effect of such violent coercion unleashed onto mostly impoverished Ukrainian men is the extremely low morale at the front line. As of November 2024, there were four mobilised soldiers for every volunteer.

Mass desertions by mobilised soldiers have been leading to constant retreats...

“A significant portion of the people openly state: Over my 30-40-50 years, the state hasn’t given anything except a Kalashnikov. Why should I be a patriot?’” he observed...

Morale problems are compounded by the abuse recruits suffer during mobilisation and deployment. Each month sees a new case of someone beaten to death in the mobilisation stations. In December, media revelations pointed to systemic torture and extortion within the ranks of the Ukrainian army.

In a September interview with a local media outlet, Ukrainian officer Yusuf Walid claimed that 90 percent of officers treat the mobilised “like animals”.

Walid also said that the generation of those born in the 1980s and ’90s are “hopeless” in terms of their patriotic commitments – all they care about is economic survival. This is hardly surprising, given that the post-Soviet Ukrainian social contract convinced individuals to focus on their own survival rather than asking for “handouts” from the state.

While the rural poor are coerced into fighting at the front lines, there is a well-off urban minority that lives a relatively protected, comfortable life in Kyiv and Lviv. This “warrior elite” – composed of activists, intellectuals, journalists and NGO workers – maintains the patriotic narrative that Ukraine must fight till victory.

Yet, it seems many members of this elite appear to be reluctant to join the fight at the front line. There have been a number of high-profile patriotic journalists and activists who have called for mass mobilisation, while themselves seeking exemptions on medical or other grounds.

Among them is Yury Butusov, a very well-known military journalist, who reportedly sought an exemption on the grounds of being a father of three children, and Serhiy Sternenko, a prominent nationalist “activist”, who claimed disability exemption for “bad eyesight”.

In June, the employees of 133 NGOs and enterprises receiving foreign funding were granted official exemption from mobilisation. Many of these organisations are not involved in maintaining any critical infrastructure.

While enthusiastically supporting the pro-war narrative of fighting until total “victory”, Ukraine’s patriotic intelligentsia blames all corruption and the growing failures of the state on the statist Soviet past.

In their view, the solution is simply to continue to diminish the role of the state. But austerity has not only done little to endear Ukrainians to their government, especially in times of war, but has also largely failed in terms of its stated aims.

One just has to look at the various corruption scandals in enterprises run by highly paid “reform” officials, who are supported by Western allies. These “reformed” companies mainly wage the struggle against corruption by keeping the rest on minuscule wages, like state railway company Ukrzalyznytsia, or letting go of their workers.

The anticorruption rhetoric is blind to the class divides that it helps entrench. Ordinary Ukrainians often joke about the high salaries received by “anti-corruption observers” and young “reform” members of the board of directors of top state companies.

Anticorruption serves more often than not as a justification for neoliberal policies that favour the business interests of international capital. Ironically, the dismantling of state enterprises driven by such considerations severely weakened Ukraine’s massive Soviet-era military-industrial complex after 2014, which affected its war capabilities.

But instead of blaming themselves for the current state of affairs, the nationalists tend to blame the Ukrainian people. Dmytro Kukharchuk, a well-known nationalist officer, gave a long interview in July about Ukraine’s dim military prospects. According to him, “there are many more khokhols [the Russian “colonial” slur against Ukrainians] today” than there are “true” Ukrainians. He defines “khokhols” as those unwilling to fight for Ukraine’s territorial integrity.

Kukharchuk belongs to the leadership of the extreme-right National Corps party and commands a battalion in a brigade linked to the Azov movement. The sentiments he expresses might seem confined to the fringe, but his rhetoric is far from unique. It echoes a narrative that has dominated Ukrainian, and more broadly, post-Soviet, national-liberal civil society and intelligentsia since the 1990s. This narrative, repeated endlessly, derides the majority of the population – dismissively labelled as bydlo, or “cattle”.

This disparaging term targets those who, in the view of these elites, cling to “Soviet” habits, prioritise personal wellbeing, value state-provided welfare, and resist self-sacrifice for nation-building. Such discourse is not only ethnonationalist but profoundly classist, painting a large segment of the population – primarily workers, poor people, and pensioners – as obstacles to reactionary-defined social progress while valourising a narrow, self-defined vanguard of the nation.

Ukraine’s growing setbacks in the war cannot be attributed to Russia’s overwhelming power or insufficient Western aid. History provides numerous examples of nations overcoming far stronger adversaries in protracted conflicts, often with little or no military or financial support from powerful allies like NATO.

Consider not only Vietnam in the 1960s and 1970s and Afghanistan 1979 – 2021, but also revolutionary France after 1789 and revolutionary Russia after 1917, both of which successfully repelled counter-revolutionary interventions by other great powers. These revolutionary movements not only survived but went on to dominate large parts of Europe.

Time and again, social revolutions and national liberation struggles have demonstrated the ability to forge stronger and more mobilised states against all odds.

According to the dominant narrative, Ukraine should fit into this pattern: a nation emerging from Russian and Soviet oppression, driven by successive national liberation movements, dissident intelligentsia, Maidan revolutions, and the resistance to Russia’s “hybrid war” in the Donbas. This story culminates in the unity and resilience of the Ukrainian people repelling the full-scale invasion of 2022. But this narrative appears fundamentally flawed.

This may be because Ukraine’s is simply one of many post-Soviet trajectories shaped by the modernising successes and later the degradation of the Soviet revolution. Like in many other countries in the region, the state after independence was captured by predatory and comprador elites who prioritised their own interests over the public good.

This failure to deliver meaningful opportunities and protections for the majority of Ukrainians has left the state unable to demand much from them in return. As a result, today, Ukraine is unable to fully mobilise its people who are divided by a profound sociopolitical disconnect.

Contrary to the popular narrative of national unity, there has been no cohesive project of national development to bridge the divide between those bearing the brunt of the war and the political and intellectual elites who claim to represent them both at home and abroad. This disconnect undermines the idea of a shared purpose driving the nation forward.

More and more, it seems the only emotion truly uniting the fragmented Ukrainian nation is fear. Not the lofty ideals of nation-building, but the visceral dread of personal and communal devastation. This fear stems from the apprehension of losing one’s home if the front line comes close, the anguish of becoming precarious refugees, or the terror of enduring months in basements, hiding from relentless shelling and street battles. Even for those whose homes remain intact, fear persists – of lawlessness, looting, murder, sexual violence – the grim realities that often accompany military occupations.

If Ukrainians are united only by a fundamentally negative coalition – by shared fears rather than shared aspirations – then what happens when these fears begin to shift and compete? Some people start weighing them against one another. The fear of losing one’s home to invasion is measured against the fear of enduring forced conscription, becoming cannon fodder in a war that seems increasingly difficult to win.

There is the fear of repression under occupation, juxtaposed with the fear of being arrested in a state where civil society and government increasingly diverge from their own views of freedom and human rights. There is the fear of being humiliated as a khokhol by Russians or as a Russian-speaking mankurt (a disparaging term for someone who has lost touch with their roots) by your own nationalists.

These shifting fears drive the Ukrainian population, but they do not unite it.

We talked to a Ukrainian man in his 50s who did not leave his town in the Kharkiv region even when the front line got just a few kilometres from it and there was regular shelling by the Russians. He could have left for a safer part of Ukraine, but he did not and stayed to help, distributing humanitarian aid to his neighbours.

He is not a coward; he is a patriot. But as he said, he is not willing “to die for the state we have now. Not for that Ukraine which is imposed on us now …This is my country, but this is not my state.”"

Links - 21st April 2025 (1 - Mark Carney [including Sasha Carney and Trans Mania])

Ryan Gerritsen🇨🇦🇳🇱 on X - "Mark Carney - “I am not Justin Trudeau.” Ya ok, he only advised him on the economy, immigration, climate change, infrastructure & more in 2020. He had his hand in everything that has contributed to the downfall of Canada."
Michael Burt 🇨🇦 The Plumb Line on X - ""I just got here.""

Meme - Mark Carney to Trump: "CANADA WILL Never BE THE 51st STATE!"
Mark Carney hugging Xi Jinping: "WE'RE CHINA'S 51ST PROVINCE"

He saved the Liberal Party from oblivion. But can Mark Carney close the deal? - "“Has there ever been a prime minister with a résumé so suited for this job, at least on the economic management side? But at the same time there has never been a prime minister so inexperienced,” said Elizabeth Goodyear-Grant, professor of political studies at Queen’s University and director of the Canadian Opinion Research Archive. Running a central bank or hedge fund is different than governing a country like Canada. There is less visibility, and fewer regional and provincial balances to strike, Goodyear-Grant said. Carney’s career has been an escalating series of jobs managing money and setting rules behind the scenes for others to follow, but he has less experience playing them out himself before the public, and barely a few weeks experience as a governing party leader... “I find him fascinating,” with his “long flirtation” with the Liberal Party, and the obvious sense that he was only interested if he could have the top job from the get-go, said Jim Farney, professor of political studies at the University of Regina, director of its graduate school for public policy, and an expert in the politics of Canadian social conservatism... Farney said chiefs of staff under Stephen Harper, for example, usually went about 18 months. What would it mean to be chief of staff to Carney, he wondered, or finance minister? Farney said he is likewise unclear how Carney will relate to provincial premiers and Indigenous leaders, with his poor French and inexperience in brokering political compromise... “Somewhere Michael Ignatieff is screaming,” said Tamara Small, professor of political science at the University of Guelph. The same things that tanked Iggy arguably apply to Carney too: the “Just Visiting” slogan, that sense of elite entitlement, of swanning into politics as if it’s a step down, the wonky inexperience with campaigning. “They both use words like mendacious,” Small joked... That’s Carney’s current image to the wide centre-left of the Canadian electorate. Smart as Harper, less cringe than Trudeau. Polls suggest it is a sweet spot, though the real test remains. Canadians do not usually vote mainly on foreign affairs, not since free trade in 1988, and even more rarely on a single issue, not since conscription in 1917. This election is set to be an outlier . “We are going to vote on a nationalistic posture toward foreign affairs. It won’t last forever, but it’s strong now. People are still in the throes of trying to figure it out,” Small said. Carney’s novelty helps him, because he looks good on paper, his bio full of what his main rival Pierre Poilievre has called “trophy titles.”"

Amy Hamm: Carney has the charisma of an AI chatbot - "Carney has faced similar criticism regarding his comments in French: that he is not fluent enough to offer much substance in Canada’s second official language. In February, he mistakenly said in French that he is “in agreement with Hamas.” In March, he struggled to understand a French-speaking journalist’s question. His answers in French have been short and simple. But is he really doing any better in English? I think not. We should seriously consider if this is less a matter of Carney’s French-speaking skills, and has more to do with his general failure to articulate any substance or vision for his leadership. His English comments are hardly more meaningful than the ones he makes in broken French. Despite the constant and trite references to “building,” he has not, in either language, given Canadians a straight answer on building pipeline projects. He even vacillated — in a single sentence — from a no, to a hopeful maybe, to a more reserved “we’ll see” while on the Quebec talk show, “Tout le monde en parle,” recently. “We are in a crisis, we must act. We must choose a few projects, a few big projects. Not necessarily pipelines, but maybe pipelines, we’ll see,” said Carney . Speaking at a Liberal new conference about our military, Carney offered more vacuous statements and promises : “We won’t only bring the Canadian Armed Forces up to today’s standards, we will also build a military that is ready to fight threats that Canada is facing. And we will protect Canadians, now and into the future.”"

EDITORIAL: Public skeptical about Carney’s new carbon tax - "A survey by Leger for the Canadian Taxpayers Federation of 1,631 adults from April 4-7 found that 70% of Canadians believe businesses pass along most (44%) or some (26%) of the added costs they face to the public because of the federal industrial carbon tax. Only 9% believe businesses absorb most of the costs without hiking prices, while 21% say they don’t know."

Jean Philippe Fournier on X - "I read the liberal platform. I know a thing or two about govt budgets having worked for a Finance minister.  This plan will lead to Canada losing its AAA credit rating.  Markets were expecting (wrongfully) something serious to come from an ex-central banker. They were wrong.  And mark my words they will react.  The craziest thing in there is the creative accounting regarding investments vs. spending. Liberals will pretend that "investments" (I presume infrastructure? who knows cause there aren't any details!) don't count in the deficit, and so they will be able to "balance the budget" by 2030.  Unfortunately, their 250 billion dollars (!!) in new spending will still add to the debt. You just won't see it. Canada, in its current state, can't afford this.   As an economist, I honestly was expecting more from Carney." Carney promises $130B in new spending, no timeline for balanced budget - "A Mark Carney-led government will spend $130 billion on new measures over the next four years, with no timeline to balance the federal budget... The four-year plan also includes billions in gender and equity-related spending, including $160 million to make the Trudeau-era Black Entrepreneurship Program permanent, $400 million for a new IVF program and $2.5 billion for new infrastructure in Indigenous communities... New and existing measures will blow a $225-billion hole in the federal budget, with some of it being offset by bigger federal penalties and fines for transgressions like money laundering... The Liberal platform gives no timeline for a return to balance... He admitted that he’d need to cap growth in public sector employment to meet the platform’s fiscal targets... Article content  NDP Leader Jagmeet Singh said, any way you break it down, Carney’s plan means cuts to services for everyday Canadians."
You can fund endless spending by "taxing the 'rich'" and printing money, after all

Western Standard on X - ".@AmazingZoltan: "How many genders are there?"
Carney: "Uhhhhhhh ... In terms of sex, there are two.""
Amy Eileen Hamm on X - "According to @BCnursemidwife, @VCHhealthcare and the panel that found me guilty, Carney is wrong about there being two sexes. I hope that they summarily denounce his bigotry, as they did when I said the same thing."

Wesley Yang on X - "“We value all Canadians for who they are and will continue to do so.” Canada’s prime minister in reply to question about whether women deserve their own private spaces. (Translation: No)"

Meme - Kat Kanada @KatKanada_TM: "There's no bigger polluter than a Liberal who never shuts up about climate change and Net Zero, etc."
"Carney and wife burn 242,250 litres of jet fuel on European networking tour - emit 612 tonnes of CO2. Canadian Parliament is currently suspended and Carney is not an MP"

Meme - General Hillier @GeneralHillier: "Wow! Many things you can throw at the other party but saying they abandoned the Armed Forces and the Liberals stepped up and changed that? Nothing further from the truth. The last decade has been a ‘Decade of Despair’ for the CAF because of the Liberal government."
Liberal Party @liberal_party: "Pierre Poilievre and his Conservative Party abandoned our Armed Forces and our Veterans. Liberals stepped up and changed that."
Clearly, everything wrong federally in Canada in 2025 is the fault of Stephen Harper's government which lost power in 2015

Meme - "Pierre's Housing plan:
Get rid of bureaucracy and red tape in the way of building homes
End the Liberal immigration disaster growing our population
Use incentives and punishments to force cities to reach targets housing
Carney's housing plan:
The same government that failed at planting trees will launch a state-owned construction company that will somehow build 500,000 homes per year"

Carney cancels on Canadian 'The Knowledge Project' pod, goes on US anti Trump Democrat Scott Galloway's pod instead : r/CanadianConservative - "Who is importing US politics again? Pierre has helped launch two independent Canadian podcasts since his campaign has started - who is "anti" Canadian media again? Jon Stewart and Galloway Carney, or Primeau, Gonzalez, Shane Parrish?  I bet the CBC will talk about Carney's appearance on Galloway's pod, and not Pierre's 1 million view episode from TKP."
"Carney literally launched his campaign on an American talk show.  He's recieved endorsements from "Canadian" celebrities who just so happen to prefer to live and pay taxes in the US of A. Brookfield certainly does also.  Neil Young has lived in America for about as long as Canada has had its current flag!  Another famous American endorsement he got last month: Donald Trump.  Americans are lining up for Carney!"

Ivison: Carney’s magic fades a little after French debate - ""I thought he was on the defensive, but nonetheless, didn’t really speak to any serious policy issues. He had to say: ‘Sorry, I’m not Justin Trudeau. I just showed up here.’ But didn’t really have an answer to how the team and the program is any different from what we’ve had over the last 10 years.”... Article content Article content  Brodie said he doesn’t think that’s a plausible argument. “I think that when we get to the ballot box, Canadians are looking to make a judgment on the last 10 years of a country that’s poorer, weaker, and more divided. For better or for worse, he’s the guy who’s leading that party. And over the course of the past three weeks, we’ve seen all these folks who were major figures in the Trudeau government, who had planned to retire, now coming back to sign up for Mr. Carney’s team.” Ivison suggested that Carney is still trying to straddle being the agent of change and being the defender of Trudeau policies like dental, pharma and daycare. Article content  Lang said that is an inherent contradiction. Article content  “I guess what he’s trying to say is the leader of the Liberal Party changes everything in the Liberal Party, even if the leader of the Liberal Party doesn’t fundamentally change the cabinet, because the cabinet hasn’t fundamentally changed. And there’s a lot of policy continuity. They’re keeping a lot of the things in place, apart from the apparently hated carbon tax. So there is a tension there at a minimum, if not a contradiction... Article content  Brodie said Poilievre faced challenges at two levels. “One, he had to continue to prosecute the case that we’ve had 10 years of poor, weaker, divided (government). ‘Do you want four more years of that?’ And I think on that front, he actually did pretty well. I’m not sure that Carney had great answers about how much of a change his next four years, if he got them, would be. Article content Article content  “And, secondly, there’s the prosecutor case on the individual issues. I know some of the questions were not in Mr. Polievre’s wheelhouse. But I think he did well considering these are probably issues he doesn’t really especially want to talk about. But on housing, cost of living, and on getting our own economic house in order to go toe to toe with Trump for the next four years, I thought those were good answers. He didn’t lose his cool….(and) his advantage in the language, I think, showed through,” he said. Article content  NDP leader Jagmeet Singh did lose his cool with the moderator, Patrice Roy... Article content  On healthcare, Brodie said the NDP has a specific interest in healthcare because it relies on healthcare unions for support. “They have to talk about what a great system it is because their supporters are the only people who still believe that. Everybody else is looking for some bigger change here in order to get just basic access to basic tests, as those wait lists continue to grow and people find their health is suffering. I’m not surprised that the Liberals don’t want to talk about healthcare. It doesn’t work for them the way that it used to. It really only works for the NDP because they have to keep those healthcare unions (happy). They are the only people who think the current system is working because after all, it is working for them,” he said."

Stephen Taylor on X - "No surprises here. Liberal who can't speak French wins French debate according to French CBC."a>

Moose on the Loose on X - "Mark Carney just RIPPED OFF Pierre Poilievre's plan but made it worse. Pierre - removes gst off of all new homes Carney - remove gst off all new homes and substancially renovated homes but ONLY for first time home buyers"

Stephen Taylor on X - "Reporter asks Carney: "In one week, you promised to cancel the increase on capital gains. You opened the door to the pipeline project, and you also promised to cancel the GST on the purchase of a first home. My question is simple: why didn’t you run for the Conservative Party?""

Senator Leo Housakos on X - "For a guy who’s supposedly an economic guru, has he put out any policy yet that he didn’t copy from the guy who’s supposedly nothing more than slogans?
Carbon Tax ✅
GST for homeowners ✅
Capital Gains Tax ✅"

Viva Frei on X - "This is Mark Carney “cancelling” the capital gains “tax hike” that Justin Trudeau proposed while Mark Carney was advising him behind the scenes. Here is a video of Justin explaining that tax hike less than one year ago. If you vote Liberal, you are an idiot with the memory of a goldfish."

Brian Lilley on X - "A couple of things about cancelling the capital gains tax changes - which I support.
1. Carney can’t do this without a vote in the House.
2. The Liberals were telling us until 5 minutes ago that this capital gains tax change was vital for our economy and fairness"

'We are all Canadians': Carney speaks on LGBTQ+ rights - "access to health care in Canada is not a business, it is a fundamental right for all Canadians without exception."
Don't Trust the Science on puberty blockers and transitioning kids!

Billboard Chris 🇨🇦🇺🇸🇦🇺 on X - "BREAKING: Canadian Prime Minister @MarkJCarney ’s daughter went to the UK’s infamous gender clinic, the Tavistock, when she was a child.  In this essay discovered by True North News, Sasha Carney (formerly Sophia) writes of her visits to the Tavistock.  She also rails against ‘transphobes,’ and tells of her childhood inspiration for identifying as transmasculine — a ‘boygirl’ identity encouraged by Enid Blyton books that her mother starting buying her.  “My teenage years existed in close proximity to this TERF-driven scrutiny, which was fixated on identifying how ‘authentically trans’ people like me really were.   “In 2013, shortly after I chopped off all my hair into a deeply regrettable floppy Justin Bieber cut, I moved to London, the land of Enid Blyton murder mysteries. A block from my new house was the Tavistock & Portman NHS Foundation Trust, an imposing grey building which contained the country's only child and adolescent ‘gender identity clinic.’  “I watched as my friend, after a year of weekly appointments trying desperately to get an official diagnosis of gender dysphoria, was denied the diagnosis, and with it any hope of top surgery because they sometimes wore skirts.   “I watched organisations with names like @Transgendertrd  refer to trans Tavistock patients as ‘experimental subjects’who didn't know what was best for them.   “I watched as my school's former principal told a national news outlet that trans students like me and many of my close friends were c*s women who were only coming out to ‘cause turbulence’ and ‘adhere to anything a bit radical.’  “I watched all this happen, and I quietly stopped wearing underwire bras, and wore baggier clothes, and I felt a fierce surge of jealousy every time I walked into the Tavistock for therapy and saw patients turn left, towards the medical spaces I didn't feel ‘trans enough’ to enter.”  Did Liberal leader Mark Carney approve of these visits to the Tavistock, the home of the UK’s childhood sex changes?  Full essay text in thread, below. 👇🏼"

Billboard Chris 🇨🇦🇺🇸🇦🇺 on X - "I see the libs found this post and lost their minds.  It’s not an attack. It’s a literal re-posting of a publicly published essay that Mark Carney’s adult daughter wrote.  You should all read it to understand where she’s coming from, and then contemplate why a girl who doesn’t fit neatly into a stereotypical box felt a need to go to a gender clinic.   Why does our society even have gender clinics?!  The only message she should have received from the government healthcare facility and from her parents was that there was nothing wrong with her.  The very idea that there are clinics to treat children who don’t conform is INSANE.  And given that TENS OF THOUSANDS of mostly AUTISTIC CHILDREN are being MAIMED, STERILIZED, and turned into lifelong pharmaceutical patients forever dependent on some exogenous source of hormones (never mind the bone loss, heightened increase of cancers, heart disease, etc.), OF COURSE WE SHOULD BE TALKING ABOUT IT.  She’s the daughter of the Prime Minister of Canada — a country doing nothing to stop systemic child abuse. A country which does the very opposite. It encourages the child abuse under a lie of ‘gender-affirming care.’  So you can all politely take your virtue-signalling foolishness somewhere else. Or not. I really don’t care. Hate or love, it’s all good.  And great job to @CandiceMalcolm ’s news organization for originally uncovering this important essay."

Melanie Bennet on X - "Nope. The public interest in the Sasha Carney story isn't about Sasha Carney. It's about Mark Carney's willingness to medically abuse his own child. If he can sacrifice his child to genderwang, then it's pretty likely genderwang will flourish under his leadership, harming countless more children in the process."

Robyn Urback on X - "Trash story, with zero public interest. Defenders will say it speaks to Carney’s “judgement” or something, but that’s a terribly weak way to defend publishing a story that cruelly targets a politician’s kid just to whip up fury"
Jonathon Van Maren on X - "Sasha Carney is a writer who has focused on transgender issues, a current subject of debate in Canada. If Pierre Poilievre had a son or daughter who was, say, a pro-life activist--would that attract journalistic interest? Or if they were an activist opposing gender ideology?"

Eva Kurilova on X - "It's interesting that liberals are desperately saying "don't talk about Mark Carney's adult daughter who is open about her views!" instead of "actually it's a GOOD thing his daughter is a they/them who advocates for the sterilization of children." Very telling."
Jonathan Kay on X - "I agree we shouldn’t dwell on kids of politicians who get trapped in a cult. Many families endure such tragedies. it’s usually not relevant to politics. It’s more complex when our govt *subsidizes* that cult, & when the person is an adult who boasts about their cult membership."

Thread by @SimonEsler on Thread Reader App – Thread Reader App - "They’re Trying to Silence You on Carney’s Child. Here’s Why. 🚨
Pundits want all discussion of Mark Carney’s kid shut down—claiming it’s “cruel” and “inappropriate.”  But this isn’t about privacy. It’s about suppressing debate on radical gender ideology in Canada.  Let’s break it down. 🧵👇
1️⃣ Carney’s child published a public essay.  If it was meant to be “off-limits,” why was it written to shape public discourse on gender identity?  Why is discussion of this policy-driven essay now “off-limits”? 🤔  If you enter the arena, your ideas are up for critique.
2️⃣ Politicians’ families aren’t off-limits—until now! 😆
🔹 Doug Ford’s daughter faced media scrutiny for her anti-vaccine stance.
🔹 Trudeau’s family was investigated in the WE Charity scandal.
Public interest in politicians’ families isn’t new—so why the sudden rules?
3️⃣ Gender policy is not “private”—it’s public. This essay endorses:
✅ Puberty blockers
✅ Gender-affirming care
✅ Self-ID without medical gatekeeping
These are policy arguments. We have every right to debate policies affecting Canadian children.
4️⃣ Meanwhile, the UK is backtracking on gender-affirming care. The Cass Review EXPOSED:
🚨 Puberty blockers lack solid scientific backing.
🚨 Tavistock rushed kids into medicalization.
🚨 Detransitioners were ignored & silenced.
Why is Canada doubling down while the UK reverses?
5️⃣ Sasha Carney’s essay is a chance to address this before the election. It’s not about one family—it’s about policies pushed into law without scrutiny.
🔹 Canada’s conversion therapy ban passed w zero opposition
🔹 Gender-affirming care is a Uniparty issue in Canada
6️⃣ Pundits aren’t protecting Carney’s child—they’re protecting the status quo.
The Cass Review shattered gender-affirming care. Scandals from Tavistock, WPATH, and whistleblowers are mounting. This is a desperate attempt to prevent scrutiny before Canada’s model collapses too.
7️⃣ This is about control. If the debate were about truth, they’d welcome discussion. If their position were strong, they wouldn’t need censorship. Instead, they demand silence—because they can’t defend the reality of what’s happening.
🔥 Final Thought:  Sasha Carney’s essay isn’t just a personal story—it’s a case study in ideological subversion.  This conversation isn’t being shut down to protect a family.  It’s being shut down to protect a system that can’t survive scrutiny.  Will we let them?
🇨🇦 Canada deserves answers 🇨🇦
🔹 Why are we ignoring the Cass Review?
🔹 Why is gender medicine “off-limits” for debate?
🔹 Why was the conversion therapy law passed without opposition?
This isn’t about left vs. right—it’s about a system that must be questioned."

Barbara Kay on X - "The daughter did not request privacy. Au contraire. She represents gender ideology aloud and with pride. It is fair to wonder aloud what effect this will have on her father’s political stance."
Unapologetic Conservative 🇨🇦🇮🇱 on X - "If she was an astronaut, could we talk about it? If she was working for Xi Jinping should we mention it? Will the woke left be be talking about it to promote votes? Is she talking about it? Why can't Conservatives discuss what is in public, highly relevant to every Canadian family, current legislation, controversial, proven to tumble Liberal polls?  Just stick to reasoned arguments & facts  & don't sink to petty attacks."
Joel: יוסף פנחס on X - "Agreed. Especially when Mark Carney and his family were more than happy to have Canadian press write glowing articles about them. His four daughters are all adults and once they allowed the press into their personal lives for propaganda purposes they are completely fair game to have any and all negative press as well."
Knight Templar of Ni on X - "Yeah I'm confused here. I thought trans people were to be feted and celebrated not hidden in a closet. 🤷 How short their memories are though."

Dr. Debra Soh on X - "If a politician has a “trans” child, the public has a right to know. It tells us your policies will be based in pseudoscience & that you have poor judgment."

Stuart Parker, blancmange impersonator & cannibal on X - "Remember when Stephen Harper shook his son’s hand as he headed off to elementary school?   The left and the legacy media were fine with excoriating Harper on his parenting style and plastering the kid’s face everywhere. Impugning and attacking the parent-child bond between the PM and his minor child on TV, in newspapers, magazines, memes, editorial cartoons. Right in front of a this seven year old kid.  Sure, that was okay. But talking about Mark Carney’s 24-year-old activist public figure daughter, now that—that’s apparently beyond the pale.  Why? We all know why. It’s because there are no acceptable circumstances to criticize genderwang. Until this orthodoxy is overthrown, it will always be made to seem like whatever criticism has been made is blasphemy."

TyranP on X - "Attacked should not be condoned, that’s true.  However acknowledging their existence and/or public activism on any debated subject that’s part of the cultural zeitgeist is valid, and not an “attack”   Parents who trans their kids are cemented to the ideology for life  They can never admit they (even inadvertently or coherced) harmed their own children.  Gender ideology is child abuse & is something Carney will commit to on behalf of all Canadians  That’s why it’s relevant.  I’ve only seen @BillboardChris  ‘s mentions of it. Which was not an “attack”. That’s valid discourse on the topic, and hella relevant.  If that’s what you’re referring to, I have to ask; Since when does acknowledging reality become “going after someone” or an “attack”?"
Reality is an attack on delusion, so

Jagmeet Singh on X - "To Poilievre's friends. Lay off Carney's kid. Stop being a bunch of bullies and jerks. It's not okay."
Dr. Emily Stowe on X - "1) She's 24 YO and everything discussed about her, SHE published online.
2) Remind me again who used his kid as a prop and brought her to the House of Commons? Sit down and shut up."

Sunday, April 20, 2025

Links - 20th April 2025 (3 - Hamas Attack Oct 2023)

Everything I disagree with is antisemitism : r/LookatMyHalo
YouTube star Ms. Rachel should be investigated for spreading Hamas propaganda over posts about Gaza kids, antisemitism group tells AG Bondi
Naturally, terrorism supporters were very upset and had very poor reading comprehension as usual (StopAntisemitism didn't allege anti-Semitism, just spreading misinformation). Of course, spreading misinformation is good when it pushes the left wing agenda

Eyal Yakoby on X - "BREAKING: Hamas’s own casualty list reveals 72% of those killed are combat-aged men. For 18 months, they claimed 70% were women and children—and the world believed it. Now, the truth is being revealed."
Hamas admits to lying about Palestinians allegedly killed by Israel

Gaza official admits natural deaths listed as war fatalities - "Many of those listed as war fatalities in Gaza actually died of natural causes or did not die at all, a Palestinian health official working for Hamas admitted on Saturday, following an analysis that showed massive discrepancies in casualty tallies. The head of the statistics team at Gaza’s Hamas-controlled health ministry, Zaher al-Wahidi, made the admission to Sky News after an analysis by the HonestReporting nonprofit last week found that some 3,400 individuals listed as war casualties in earlier tallies had been dropped from the ministry’s latest update.   Comparing the October and August tallies to the March one, HonestReporting researcher Salo Aizenberg found “around 3,400 names missing” from the latest one, “including over 1,000 minors,” he told JNS.  “We realized that a lot of people died a natural death,” Wahidi told Sky News regarding the October tally. “Maybe they were near an explosion and they had a heart attack, or houses caused them pneumonia or hypothermia. All these cases we don’t [attribute to] the war,” he said... The March statistics changed the age distribution of reported fatalities in Gaza: Of all deaths recorded by Hamas between the ages of 13 to 55, which is the general combat age for Hamas fighters, 72% were male, according to the HonestReporting analysis... [A] report from December indicated that the latest casualty figure at the time included the approximately 5,000 people who die of natural causes each year in the Gaza Strip. To date, the Hamas-run ministry has not published a list of natural deaths since Oct. 7, 2023. The latest admission “means that every list that they’ve ever issued is a mix of war deaths and natural deaths,” said Aizenberg.  The Health Ministry figures also do not distinguish between combatants and noncombatants."
Damn Zionist lies!

UN Watch on X - "“If 1.6 million Palestinians in Gaza are refugees, then why is it wrong for Jordan and Egypt to welcome them? If you object that this would uproot them from their homes and lands in Gaza, then why are they being called refugees?” — Hillel Neuer"

Asra Nomani on X - "The gun is one weapon. The camera is the other weapon. A Hamas propaganda soldier cues hostage Agam Berger to wave on stage in Jabalia in Gaza, as a drone flies by. He gives her a thumbs up when he’s done. Hamas has first-class cameras and film crews for its sick terrorist porn."

Heidi Bachram 🎗️ on X - "I think a lot about Tanzanian student Joshua Mollel who was swarmed by Hamas terrorists. They screamed in his face, threw him to the ground. Then beat, stabbed and shot him. They celebrated after. He was nothing but a bloodied trophy to them. There were no marches for Joshua. After Hamas brutally murdered Joshua one of them stole his jeans and ripped his underwear. A last grim indignity. They bundled him onto one of their white pickup trucks from hell and kidnapped his corpse to Gaza where he remains today. Bring Joshua home. The video of Joshua’s murder will forever haunt me. Hamas are monsters. This is Joshua Mollel’s father Luito visiting Nahal Oz kibbutz where his son was kidnapped from. Joshua ran into the dairy shed when the sirens sounded and Hamas found him and brutally murdered him on the way to Gaza. We MUST bring Joshua back for the family to grieve."

Kamel Amin Thaabet on X - "Name a war besides Israel / Gaza where one of the belligerents was required to supply utilities and large amounts of aid to the other party’s population. I’ll wait."

𝗡𝗶𝗼𝗵 𝗕𝗲𝗿𝗴 ♛ ✡︎ on X - "Why did Hamas take five Thai migrant workers hostage exactly? Can any of you enlightened anti-zionists explain this to me?"
TTTW on X - "Or, I would argue, the bigger question is why didn’t they release them if their war is just against Israel?"

Gad Saad on X - ""We will conquer the West in three ways:
1) By the womb of our women
2) Via hijrah (immigration)
3) By using your miserable freedoms against you."
The "you are violating my free speech" BS by not allowing me to "protest" is a manifestation of point #3 in the playback."

NSW Health workers allegedly threatening Israeli patients identified as Ahmad Rashad Nadir, Sarah Abu Lebdeh - "Two NSW nurses are expected to be fired over an antisemitic video that has rocked Sydney after a summer of anti-Jewish violence, embarrassing the state’s health system after they were captured bragging about killing and refusing to treat Israeli patients.  Ahmad Rashad Nadir and Sarah Abu Lebdeh were on Wednesday stood down from their roles at Bankstown-Lidcombe Hospital in south-west Sydney... Abu Lebdeh threatens to kill Israeli patients and refuse them medical care, allegedly telling Veifer: “One day, your time will come, and you will die the most horrible death.”  “I won’t treat them, I will kill them,” Abu Lebdeh says when asked what would happen if an Israeli patient came into the hospital. “You have no idea how many [Israelis] came to this hospital, and I sent them to Jahannam [the Islamic equivalent of the underworld],” Nadir says in the video... Nadir’s lawyer, Mohamad Sakr, said his client had issued a “sincere apology” to Veifer and the wider Jewish community.  “He understands what has happened. He is trying to make amends with what has happened. He has never appeared before the court in relation to any criminal matters. He is a person of prior good character,” Sakr said.  “He’s apologised for the action, he’s apologised for his words, whether he had the mental capacity at the time of an alleged offence, to commit an offence, that is a matter for the courts.”... Nadir fled Afghanistan when he was a child, according to a social media post from not-for-profit group The Helmsman Project. “Rashad Nadir is making a difference in our public hospitals working as a nurse while studying part-time to get a master’s and continue helping his adopted country after fleeing Afghanistan,” the 2021 post said.  “They used to tell me ‘why you here for, go back to Afghanistan’ or ‘shut up you don’t know how to speak English’. At that time I could understand what they say but I wasn’t able to answer them back or stand up for myself,” Nadir is quoted as saying.  As a high school student in 2015, Nadir was interviewed by SBS for a piece on a University of Technology Sydney summer program.  His mother told SBS she was proud that her son was able to study in a “good school, in a peaceful country”. Albanese described the video as a “vile” act of antisemitism, and said the footage was “sickening and shameful”.  “These antisemitic comments, driven by hate, have no place in our health system and no place anywhere in Australia,” he said... NSW Premier Chris Minns told parliament on Wednesday an investigation would be launched into the publication of a New Bankstown Hospital newsletter featuring an image of a woman wearing a pro-Palestinian T-shirt.  Minns said such “political messaging” could “undermine public confidence”.  Opposition Leader Mark Speakman said there was “no place for that sort of political expression in a publicly funded newsletter”."
Damn suppression of "pro-Palestinian" "speech"! This is a violation of their freedom of speech and is a Danger to Democracy. And we know they really meant "Zionists", so there's nothing to look at here and only Islamophobes are trying to create a problem when there isn't one

Meme - i/o @eyeslasho: ""Yes, there are Muslim nurses here in Australia saying on video that they want to kill the Jewish patients they treat, but just imagine all the Islamophobia that the video would cause if people saw it.""
Anthony Albanese ➐ Australian Labor Parody @AlboIsPM: "The eSafety Commissioner is attempting to have the Bankstown nurses video removed from the internet, citing concerns over Islamophobia."

Israel Now on X - "Toronto police officer Farhan says it is a hate crime to call Palestine rallies as Hamas supporters."
Brian Lilley on X - "Hey @OfficerFarhan I've been to countless protests and rallies since October 7. You might call them "pro-Palestinian" but I actually listen to what they say, the chants, the signs, the messages. They are pro-Hamas. Come arrest me if you want. No court would back that up."
Left wing logic: condemning hate speech is a hate crime

@amuse on X - "TERROR: Toronto Police celebrate October 7th inspired conversions to Islam in Canada. The slaughter of more than 1,000 Jews evidently inspired mass conversions to Islam in Toronto."
If you think the police are biased, you're an Islamophobic far right conspiracy theorist who believes misinformation

Brian Lilley on X - "I have no issue with anyone of faith wanting others to join their faith. What’s disgusting here is that two Toronto cops, in uniform, in an official TPS podcast, were praising the claim that so many people wanted to learn about Islam after Oct 7."

dahlia kurtz ✡︎ דליה קורץ on X - "Canada! Where you can praise terrorism and still be honoured for your contribution to 🇨🇦. Haroon Siddiqui is one of two officers — who praised the Oct 7 massacre for increasing converts to Islam. He was just awarded the King Charles Coronation Medal.🥇 Shalom, Toronto Police."

Bryan Passifiume on X - "NEW FROM ME: Toronto police tell me they've deleted an episode of a TPS podcast where two uniformed Muslim liaison officers praise Oct. 7 for an increase of converts to Islam, and imply that criticizing anti-Israel rallies equates to "islamophobia""

Meme - Drew Pavlou 🇦🇺🇪🇺🇺🇦🇹🇼 @DrewPavlou: "Hamas boasts on Telegram that they are now going through the Gaza Strip with death lists and executing Palestinian dissidents.   Western leftists will take to the streets to protest this I’m sure. Because they care so deeply about Palestinian lives"
"The list goes on, more than 380 people, including agents, merchants and thieves who stole humanitarian aid and participated in the occupation's war on their people, thinking that the occupation would remain a support for them. No way. The beginning is Rafah, then Khan Yunis, then the central, then Gaza, then the north. The rest of the governorates, one after the other, will be dealt with by a special unit affiliated with the security services in Gaza. They will strike with an iron fist, and there will be no repentance for anyone except the punishment of bullets."

Chris Kluwe (Bluesky) - "First they came for the Palestinian protestor and I said “hey you Nazi fucks, you’re being Nazis, everyone else we need to shut these motherfuckers down RIGHT now” because I actually paid attention to the poem"
Left wing logic: if you want anti-Semites who support terrorists in violation of their visa conditions, and who also attack Jews, to be deported, you are a Nazi, because nobody is above the law - unless it affects the left wing agenda, and Jews only matter when they can be used to shit on white people
At first I thought this was condemning terrorism supporters who were attacking the Jews, but of course the Jews are the real Nazis, so

Jake Cox on X - "First they came for the Palestinian terrorist supporter, and I did nothing… because they support Hamas and creating fear for Jewish students on college campuses."

Who really wants ‘ethnic cleansing’ in the Middle East? - "A new definition of chutzpah just dropped. It’s people thinking they can spend 16 months crying ‘Crush the Zionist entity!’ and then wring their hands over the threat of ‘ethnic cleansing’. It’s protesters thinking they can wail ‘From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free’ – shorter version: erase Israel – and then accuse others of wanting to ‘cleanse’ the Middle East of ‘problematic’ people. It’s an activist class that is consumed by a burning hatred for the very idea of a Jewish homeland thinking it can lecture its opponents on the importance of respecting other people’s homelands... Behold the orgy of sanctimony that has greeted Donald Trump’s nutty proposals to push Palestinians out of the Gaza Strip so that he might turn it into the ‘Riviera of the Middle East’... we need to take down the idea that he has unforgivably put ‘ethnic cleansing’ on to the agenda for the Middle East, for the truth is that the West’s influential Israel-loathers did that long ago... Keep your wigs on, people – Trump is not the first US president to propose ‘rebuilding’ a nation... Student radicals at Columbia University in NYC are damning Trump for ‘advocating for ethnic cleansing’ – a ballsy position for a campus where just a few months ago Jewish students were being told to fuck off back to Poland. What’s exasperating about all this is that we’ve just come through 16 months of shameless agitation for the end of the Jewish State. Modern anti-Israel activism, at root, is a dream of ethnic cleansing... Campus activists referred to Israel as ‘the pigs of the Earth’ and fantasised about a future when it would die. ‘We don’t want no two states / We want ’48!’, they cried, referring to 1948, when the modern state of Israel did not yet exist. Plainly put, they want the obliteration of the Jewish homeland... You should be grateful we’re not ‘going out and murdering Zionists’, said a spokesman for Columbia’s Gaza encampment last year. Trump might want to put up some plush condos in Gaza but at least he hasn’t raised the prospect of murdering everyone who believes in Palestinian statehood... Anti-Israel agitation is the first ‘peace movement’ in history where the aim is not just to stop a war but also to stop the existence of a country. People have even chanted in favour of the Houthis, whose flag literally says ‘Death to Israel’. In polite society too, at literary soirees, at dinner parties, the question goes out: ‘Should Israel exist?’ These dreams of cleansing are incredibly influential. Hence, headlines like ‘Most young people think Israel should not exist’, after a poll of youthful Brits found that 54 per cent of them thought Israel should be brought to an end. And its people? What happens to them? Fuck off back to Poland?... the West’s opinion-formers can’t have it both ways. They can’t treat Gaza’s inhabitants as a fundamentally homeless people, as permanent refugees, as the generational victims of the Arab-Israeli War of 1948, and then reach for the smelling salts when Trump proposes rehousing them"

Hamas 'Prime Minister' among senior terrorists killed in IDF surprise attack - "The IDF launched a surprise attack in Gaza early Tuesday morning after the ceasefire collapsed with Hamas's refusal to release more Israeli hostages.  According to Arab media, among the senior terrorists were eliminated: Hamas political bureau member Mohammed Abu Ubaida al-Jammasi, Hamas political bureau member Issam al-Da'alis, Hamas political bureau member Yasser Harb, Hamas Ministry of Interior Director Mahmoud Abu Watfah, senior Hamas internal security official Bahjat Abu Sultan, and director of the Hamas Justice Ministry Abu Omar al-Hata.  Issam al-Da'alis, from Nuseirat, was a prominent leader in Hamas, and served as the head of the Government Follow-up Committee, often compared to the position of Prime Minister. He was considered one of the leading managerial and organizational figures in the terror organization. He actively participated in the Hamas government's general policy-making and served as the President of the Union of UNRWA Employees in Gaza. Da'alis also served as an assistant to Hamas political leader Ismail Haniyeh"
Surprise surprise. Yet more terrorists working for the UN

Meme - nesma @_nesmam: "Thank God, our Lord extended our lives to see this day" - 07 Oct 23
nesma @_nesmam: "My brothers under the rubble, we were bombed!!!!!!" - 3/17/25
Clearly, they are innocent victims of genocide

Meme - Open Source Intel @Osint613: "Hamas-linked blogger Salah al-Ja’frawi, the social media poster boy for Palestinian aggression followed by cries of victimhood since Oct. 7, reportedly stole $4M in donations meant for a Gaza hospital. The Palestinian Health Ministry denied involvement, and activists accuse him of exploiting the war to enrich himself.  Contributed by @inside_IL_intel"
Aka Mr FAFO
Why would the Zionists do this?!

Cam 🎗️ 🔴🌊🚶‍♀️🇬🇧🇺🇸🇮🇱 on X - "Idiots believe that Hamas are so clumsy that they accidentally swapped the body of probably the most talked about female hostage in history with a random Gazan woman but are also capable of giving accurate civilian casualty figures 2.5 seconds after an airstrike."

Jane on X - "Outside UCL right now 60+ protesters chant ‘Zionists off campus.’ They cover their faces as they scream ‘No more hiding, no more fear, Zionists not welcome here’ and call for intifada. Imagine being an Israeli student or teacher inside that building."
Only terrorism supporters get to hide

Vivid.🇮🇱 on X - "This is why Israel has to destroy so many buildings inside the Gaza Strip. Hamas terrorists were firing RPGs from inside homes, wearing civilian clothes like the cowards they are, and boobytrapping the houses. Gaza is a shithole that must be flattened."

The cancer of October 7 denial is spreading. Its antidote is this forensic account of Hamas's crimes - "It wasn’t Hamas, people said, or, if it was, the attacks had been solely military – though detailed maps of civilian settlements were found on some attackers and some carried an incubator into Israel to enable them to kidnap babies. There had been no killing of women and children and no rapes, such people said, or, if there had been, they must have been “personal mistakes”. Hamas, said a Hamas leader, “spoke to the families, they ate and drank”. True, sort of: they screamed insults at the families as they killed them. In between bouts of murder, they ate and drank the contents of their fridges.   I experienced directly the success of such denials. Two months after the killings, a moderate Muslim friend well acquainted with the region wrote to me. He said there was no credible evidence supporting claims of heinous acts like rape, beheadings, or burning people alive. Such statements had been made, he thought, to garner international support for Israel’s invasion of Gaza.  If such a distinguished and educated Muslim whom I greatly respect could believe such falsehoods, what hope for the Muslim masses?   A poll last year of British Muslims taken by the Henry Jackson Society found that only 25 per cent believed that rapes or murders had taken place on October 7. To me, this was not particularly surprising, given the successful spread of absolute untruth. Which is why the report published this week by the commission of the All-Party Parliamentary Group (APPG) for UK-Israel, chaired by Lord Mendelsohn (different from Lord Mandelson), is so important. It organises, relates and explains all the events of that terrible day, giving some necessary before-and-after, but avoiding theorising and polemic.   Every site of a killing is named and every victim, and, where known, how each victim died. Here are the 30 named communities, mainly kibbutzes, attacked, the story of the rocket barrages and border breaches, of assaults from land, sea and air (paragliders) on Bedouin villages, military facilities, Israeli cities, the Nova festival (the latter the scene of the greatest carnage), and more.  The report, pulled together by five scholars under the leadership of the historian, Lord Roberts of Belgravia, also describes the variety and incidence of atrocities – torture, sexual violence, the desecration and kidnapping of corpses, hostage-taking, looting, the deliberate killing of civilians, women and children and the terrorist livestreaming of such things.   Everything is evidenced, footnoted. Every dead person is indexed to where he or she died. This completeness and accuracy, like the systematic recording and commemoration first used by the British in the First World War, is simultaneously a way of honouring the dead and a work of history... I noted that the British Broadcasting Corporation was not present at the report’s launch in Parliament last week and did not cover any aspect of it... One tells of Aviv Kutz, a graphic designer who, following incendiary kite and balloon attacks from Gaza in 2018, had launched an annual Kites for Hope event. He, his wife and three children were all murdered in their mamad (safe room), clasping one another’s hands. In his house was found the family’s “peace kite” he had planned to launch that very day... Two sets of ideas combine. The first, mainly a Muslim view, is that white Christians, chiefly the British – with their accomplices/controllers the Jews – conspired to break the Muslim ummah (global community) by inventing the Holocaust and giving the Jews the Holy Land, thus causing suffering unparallelled anywhere else ever.  The other, mainly a white Western view to be found in places like David Lammy’s Foreign Office, the BBC and our universities, is that first the British and then the Americans (also goaded on by “Zionists”) wished – and still wish – for racist imperialist reasons to crush the wretched of the earth. And for this, we must do eternal penance.  This strange coalition of ultra-strict, pseudo-religious non-European fanaticism and ultra-liberal European guilt has a division of labour. The fanatic, usually non-white, rushes in to kill. The guilty liberal, usually white, stands ready to excuse such actions. In a free society, this is a literally lethal combination."
Evidence doesn't convince people who hold their beliefs for non-rational reasons, so

Goldie Ghamari, JD | گلسا قمری on X - "In Canada, if you dress up like Islamic terrorists and burn the flag of Canada, Mark Carney and the Liberals will reward your Islamic Jihad by sending $100 million of your Canadian taxpayer dollars to a "society" that holds murdered baby parades."

Meme - HonestReporting @HonestReport...: "It was in the newspaper in 2018 when it was taken in Yemen." Heidi Bachram 🎗️ on X: "This is the author of the “Understanding Hamas” book who universities seem to love. She claims Hamas didn’t take civilian hostages. They literally kidnapped my husband’s cousin Tsachi and broadcast it to the world. She makes me sick. https://t.co/nPizBu49ey" / X
Mohamad Safa @mhdksafa: "This photo needs to be the front page of every news paper in the world. Children of Gaza are dying!"

Eyal Yakoby on X - "BREAKING: Terror supporters at UPenn have gathered outside the center of Jewish life, chanting “F*ck Hillel.” Can you imagine the national attention if students gathered outside the Muslim Student Association and did this? UPenn needs to lose its funding."

Protestors physically preventing students from attending classes in Leacock : r/mcgill - "By the terms of the strike agreement, striking is encouraged by the SSMU, but not enforced. Despite this, protestors physically blocked access to classrooms, depriving students the ability to choose whether they want to participate in strike action."

These are the Palestinians released so far in exchange for Israeli hostages - The Washington Post (aka "Who are the Palestinians released by Israel in exchange for hostages?")
Thread by @EFischberger on Thread Reader App – Thread Reader App - "This Wapo article is one of the most blatant examples of journalistic malpractice I've seen in a while.  Shame on @leo_sands, @sammy_westfall, @NihaMasih, and @MiriamABerger for omitting critical information that would've drastically reframed the piece for their audience 🧵
First of all, as seen above, the very first organization they refer to is Samidoun, described as "an activist network supporting Palestinian prisoners."  The problem? Samidoun has been designated as a terrorist group by the US, Canada, Germany, Israel, and the Dutch parliament. Then there's this nonsense. They describe the PFLP as a "small leftist armed group" and it's longtime member Khalida Jarrar as a "political activist and legislator."  Nowhere do they mention that the PFLP is a designated terror group in the US, EU, Canada, and other countries. If the authors DID mention those facts, that would reframe this entire paragraph, would it not?  As it is now, it just reads like Israel arrested her for her peaceful "anti-occupation" activism. And they also fail to mention WHY she was arrested in 2017: It's due to her leading role in the PFLP in the West Bank during the period where it denotated a roadside bomb that killed a 17-year-old Israeli girl.  She is definitionally a terrorist. Finally. It's worth mentioning that the PFLP has bene respnsible for numerous terror attacks, plane hijacking, mass shootings that killed dozens of people (at least 17 Americans), invaded Israel on October 7th, and held Israelis hostage.  Full piece here:
One of the authors was already pushing the "genocide" lie 10 years ago"

Meme - Eitan Fischberger @EFischberger: "One of the co-authors of this @washingtonpost  article said that she will "always and forever" support Hamas.  And they still let her cover this topic."
"Israel breaks Gaza ceasefire, killing more than 400 in wave of strikes. For Palestinians, the renewed strikes brought a sudden return to the carnage and terror of the 15-month-long war. By Claire Parker, Miriam Berger, Heba Farouk Mahfouz, Abbie Cheeseman and ***"

Martin Varsavsky on X - "I am on the board of Axel Springer that owns Político. I consider this article one sided Hamas support. It fails to mention that the airstrikes were aimed at eliminating top Hamas military and thar Israel was successful at doing so. It also quotes casualty figures given by Hamas that are not believed to be accurate."

NizNellie3 on X - "🚨 Hi, Linda. 👋 @usedgov Current student, Rose Bortoff, assisted in the pro-Hamas camps and the takeover of Hamilton Hall. A police raid on Hamilton found knives, gas masks, ropes and literature that read: “DESTROY ISRAEL, DEATH TO AMERICA!" That's her with Ilhan Omar."

Trans + Trans-aged Daughter / MtF Clothes / Accepting Transmen as Men


"Missy Taylor: My 27 year old daughter who acts like a two- year-old would like another little to play with she's 27 acts like 2 in diapers transgender and my fiance"


"r/MtF
Clothes finally arrived, fuck this shit
Pretty cute tbh, the sizing is correct and all that shit, I did it, the problem is, I put them on and I look like a man with girl clothes, I'm fucking tired of this shit, my hrt appointments were postponed like 2 months and I just kinda hate my stupid brick body every single day, just crippling dysphoria, and my weak ass crying till I fall asleep lol"


"I accept you as fellow men. Now, keep in mind.... Men get the shit kicked out of them for lipping off to other men. Equality is a fun thing. Be polite and use logic, now that you're a man. It's not socially acceptable to punch a woman but now you're just a man with a big mouth??? Welcome to the club." *Woman with 2 FTMs*
"Look I Am A Man Now"

Links - 20th April 2025 (2)

Frances Ryan on X - "Breaking: DWP's “misleading and unfair” consultation on disability benefit reforms unlawful, the High Court has ruled. Ministers presented reforms as supporting disabled people into work, when savings was a “primary rationale”.   Huge congrats to @EllenClifford1. A legend."
Sam Ashworth-Hayes on X - "You can't govern a state where the rules and processes are so unclear and so prone to activist interpretation by the legal profession that every action can be blocked by lawfare, and political decisions are removed into the realm of legal argument. It's a recipe for stagnation. Particularly when people opt into the profession on the basis of activist views.  Drastically need to cut the courts down to size."

Time Capsule Tales on X - ""Lost German Girl", a beaten woman filmed on a country road near the Czech border during the surrender of German troops in May 1945. To this day, her identity & what happened to her before or after this is unknown"

Vagrant of Rhodes 🗡️🕯️ on X - "I feel the need to mention that I, like so many others, went my entire educational life never once being told about this. Countless hours in rigorous history classes at the AP level in high school all the way through a Masters degree. AP *European* History, even a directed study on refugees. Countless conversations with my parents. Hours of videos on YouTube in my spare time, movies, documentaries. I was fascinated by the world wars so I immersed myself in the subject frequently in my youth. Yes Dresden was sometimes mentioned, but always hand waved, justified and understated. The fate of the German people was never really acknowledged. Not a single time. When I learned of this and its true extent, it shattered me. My entire worldview, which used history as a guide, was built upon so many lies and obfuscations. This single fact may have cemented my radicalization journey far more than so many other events which, though they seemed more relevant to me and my life, did not have the impact of humbling me as much as this did.  The depravity with which the German people were treated towards the end of the war amounted to a genocide unto itself. Yet no one, none of the historians I read, teachers I learned from, or filmmakers I watched dared to even mention it. I had to know why. Why lie? Why hide this? Was it shame? Was it malicious? What else were they hiding or lying about? The entirety of the global system and "new world order" (which I saw beginning to crumble during 9/11), the very historical legitimacy of democratic nations and liberal society, the Regime's own claim to power, was predicated upon the idea that Germans were cartoon villains who deserved what they got. "They were bad so they lost the war. It was brutal but fair" is the line. And maybe just "losing a war" works for that line but no one deserves this. No one. I should have known better, but when you're young you trust sources of authority around you. I was already starting to radicalize at this point but this set me over the edge. I think I felt almost a personal betrayal, on a subject I felt very strongly about, and had a vested personal interest: a deep hobby of mine (history) had been tarnished. As someone who always needs answers, this was like poison to me.   There comes a point in a man's life when he realizes the stories of the world he learned in his youth are not what they appear to be. I knew that and had already dealt with some of it. But this really threw me, because it showed how little I really knew about the world. My radicalization had already begun, but I think this hyper accelerated it for me."

Nana Akua: London is becoming lawless and falling apart under Sadiq Khan's embarrassing guidance - "only the other day, Sir Keir Starmer blamed the grooming gang outrage on the far-right. So out of touch. Despite the Labour administration's very shaky relationship with the Trump camp following a high-profile spat with Elon Musk and a number of insults previously made by several of his cabinet, Sadiq Khan has decided to stick his oar in as well, further inflaming tensions... "The hard-right and far-right are on the march. These are desperately worrying times, especially if you're a member of a minority community."  For goodness sake, what is he talking about? He clearly hasn't done his research.  Not only did Donald Trump win the political vote, he also won the popular vote as well. Ethnic minorities voted for him in their droves. They deserted the Democrats. It was a victory. It was a landslide for the Republicans. May I make a suggestion, Sadiq? Knife crime is at an all time high in the capital. Only the other day, a 14-year-old was stabbed in cold blood on a bus - one of a few stabbings over the past few weeks in our once great capital.  And of course, a murderer who featured on the BBC was put back behind bars for breaching his conditions after a music video of him bragging about his crime showed he was in Greenwich, a borough he is banned from in London.  Attacks on women and girls have skyrocketed in our great capital. How about you focus on that?  It's painful, isn't it? Sadiq, how about you get on with cleaning up the capital city that you are in charge of London? Remember that?"
It's a great way for politicians to distract from their failures by kicking up a fuss about some other nonsense

Rambo Van Halen on X - "5th grader just came to me and asked if he could download the Duolingo French app. (My kids have phones, but we have to approve app downloads.) I'm like, no problem--but why do you want to learn French? It turns out he and all his friends (boys and girls) have decided to learn French together.  There's a large bilingual contingent in his class, and they like to talk shit in Spanish.  So the White kids are fighting back by learning French.  I told him, cool--let me know how I can help.  I just wish I was there for the conversation where they decided on French🤷‍♂️"

Thread by @bendreyfuss on Thread Reader App – Thread Reader App - "No one on the America left would ever actually move to China because the one thing they care about most of all is being able to whine about how they’re victims of oppression and that’s the main thing that you aren’t allowed to do in China. They’re too mouthy and they know it. They’d end up in a fucking police station demanding someone call the US embassy within a year. Only the west is prosperous enough to confidently allow our stupidest citizens to whine endlessly about bullshit. The right likes to cry about bullshit too but they only pull the “I wish I lived in Hungary” crap when there is a democratic president and their feelings are hurt.  The lefties doing this china shit do it just bc that’s who they are. They wanted to move to Yemen a year ago lol. The democratic equivalent of conservatives who say they wish they live in Hungary is the annoying liberals who threaten to move to Canada whenever a republican wins.  The lefties actually just are knee jerk America haters who get in bed with the villain of the week. Normie democrats need to defeat the left once and for all lol. They’re our problem. We have let this get out of hand and we have to take our rabid dog behind the barn and put it down. Or else we have to stop feeling superior to republicans for failing to stop the far right. The Democratic Party did a pretty good job for like 75 years of marginalizing the far left (with some occasional temporary lapses). It’s not like we don’t know how to do this. We did it until like a decade ago. They’re communists and we must not be associated with them. Whenever I express this opinion the far left is like “well then you can’t blame us when we don’t vote for your candidate!” Great. Deal. You aren’t worth the trouble. Go start your own party. Call it the New Socialism Party or The USA Sucks And Its Adversaries Have A Point Party. And while you’re at it you should take the Jews with ya!  Haha just kidding  A bit of cheeky antisemitism to lighten the mood. I know you don’t like Jews. I’m Jewish actually. We have popular opinions mostly. The Christians have grown quite fond of us actually. We get to stay."

Thread by @SwipeWright on Thread Reader App – Thread Reader App - "Fertility rates in the West are at all-time lows. I wonder what could be causing this?
ACADEMIA: "Is pregnancy a disease?" "We conclude that there are both normative and pragmatic reasons to consider pregnancy a disease."
Funding for this "research" came from "the European Union's @HorizonEU research and innovation programme."  This program, which aims to "achieve the UN's Sustainable Development Goals and boost the EU's competitiveness and growth," is funded to the tune of €93.5 billion from 2021 to 2027.  Do you think most Europeans would approve of their tax dollars funding "research" disparaging pregnancy as a "disease"?
"Like a disease, pregnancy is caused by a pathogen, an external organism invading the host’s body."  I'm sorry, but this is just nonsense. If the authors are referring to the fetus, then it's not the case that this is an "external organism invading the host's body." A fetus is fully internal.  If they're referring to sperm, it's still wrong. Sperm are not "pathogens" and are not "organisms." They're germ cells—gametes.  I don't suspect the authors have a very strong grasp of basic biology."
Is pregnancy a disease? A normative approach | Journal of Medical Ethics

Richard Hanania on X - "Is society better off if people marry and make having children a priority? Percent answering yes
All voters: 39%
Trump voters: 59%
Biden voters: 19%
Whites: 41%
Hispanics: 36%
Asians: 35%
Blacks: 34%
A low birth rate is not mysterious when we live in an antinatalist culture."

Meme - Defiant L’s @DefiantLs: "They only like you when they have use for you I guess."
Jack Hopkins @thejackhopkins: "I've been blessed to have known some actual battlefield heroes. I must tell you, though, John Fetterman checking himself into Walter Reed to treat his clinical depression, knowing what criticism awaits him...is one of the most heroic I things I've seen in a LONG while."
Jack Hopkins @thejackhopkins: "John Fetterman. What a fucking turd."

Thread by @molmccann on Thread Reader App – Thread Reader App - "John Eastman has articulated many times the clear argument against birthright citizenship. His argument is straight forward, it rests on history and precedent, and it avoids the absurd result we have today. Here are his basic points: 🧵
The Citizenship Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment states: “All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside.” The first problem is redundancy. If “subject to the jurisdiction thereof” simply means, as common parlance accepts, that one is subject to the law because of physical presence in the territory, that clause is redundant—"born in the United States” covers that base. An interpretation of a legal text that creates a redundancy is disfavored. “Subject to the jurisdiction thereof” should be interpreted to mean owing sole allegiance to the United States. This is confirmed by one of the primary drafters of the clause, Sen. Lyman Trumbull, who stated “subject to the jurisdiction” meant subject to “complete” jurisdiction—“[n]ot owing allegiance to anybody else.”
Initially, the Supreme Court agreed. Although dicta, both the majority and the dissent in the Slaughter House Cases agreed that the 14th Amendment’s “subject to the jurisdiction” clause excluded the children of citizens and subjects of foreign states who just happen to be born in the United States. SCOTUS confirmed this understanding in Elk v. Wilkins when it denied birthright citizenship to an Indian born on a reservation who claimed citizenship as an adult. The Court held that the claim of birthright required him not to be “subject in some respect or degree to the jurisdiction of the United States, but completely subject to their political jurisdiction, and owing them direct and immediate allegiance.” Astoundingly, the Supreme Court completely reversed course in United States v. Wong Kim Ark. In that case, a Chinese man born to permanent residents (who were barred by federal statute from obtaining full citizenship) claimed birthright citizenship, and the High Court held Wong Kim Ark qualified for the 14th Amendment’s birthright citizenship.
As Eastman points out, the gloss placed on Wong Kim Ark is much broader than even its holding, which addressed the child of legal permanent residents. Birthright citizenship should, at the least, be limited to children of parents here legally. The situation we have today is, again, absurd and untenable."

Meme - Jeremykauffman @JeremyKauffman: "I have a great idea for a maid company that only hires minorities You'll never guess the name though"
power poster @EffervescentCok: "Maid in China
No wait. You're gonna name it Ethnic Cleansing you sick fuck"

Mouin Rabbani on X - "I've finished reading two long exit interviews with Antony Blinken, one in NYT and the other in FT. To say the man is utterly delusional is a vast understatement."
Sam Haselby on X - "Anthony Blinken is a great representative of the American meritocracy: grew up in River House (one of the fanciest buildings in NYC), spent years living in Paris, went to The Dalton School, Harvard BA, Columbia JD, but is essentially an idiot."

Meme - Brian Lilley @brianlilley: "Canadian media have blindly praised Chrystia Freeland because she had been a journalist too. Except if you looked at her record in journalism, it was all sizzle, no steak. American outlets covered her disastrous run at Reuters. Here's a view from a woman who worked for Freeland."
Leah Eichler: "I don't normally write about Canada but ... Thirteen years ago, Chrystia Freeland fired me. I was running the Thomson Reuters online news service for the US and Canada, based in Toronto. I had a 5 week old baby but came back to talk to her about ways to cut cost for my 24-7 news operation, which included 40 dedicated multimedia journalists. I came prepared with ideas. But before I could speak, she shushed me and said, "It's never easy when the invading army overthrows the ancien regime." At 36 I didn't feel ancien of anything. I was one of a few female news leaders, consistently hitting above my performance target. She told me, essentially, to go home. I was replaced by a man in NY whom I had hired and they dragged their feet until the end of my mat leave to finally let me go, moving the entire digital news operation to Bangalore. I don't love what's happening to the government at the moment, especially with the historically low Canadian dollar and Trump's threat of tariffs. However, I would love to say to her, "who is ancien regime, now?" That's it folks, a 13-year old grudge released. Thank you for coming to the show."

Singapore adults' ability to read or write in English is below OECD average. What's the problem? - "As was the case in all countries surveyed, the Singaporeans adults with a higher education scored better than those of lower education levels: Adults with tertiary education scored 48 points higher than those with upper secondary education, who in turn scored 59 points above those with less than upper secondary education.  But this pattern does not necessarily apply across borders. Tertiary-educated adults in Singapore scored lower for literacy than adults with only upper secondary education in Finland.  Men in Singapore scored an average of four points more than women."
Related: Some English-speaking Singaporeans getting upset when the poor level of English skills in Singapore are pointed out
The headline is misleading as PIAAC is about literacy, not English skills

Crémieux on X - "Students misperceive the odds of actually going into particular careers. Many more students think they'll be artists than actually end up as artists. More students end up as nurses than initially think they'll be nurses. But engineers are mostly correct!"
What Jobs Come to Mind? Stereotypes about Fields of Study

Meme - Libs of TikTok @libsoftiktok: "“Take the subway. It will help with congestion. It’s super safe and good. Oh you don’t want to? Ok I will tax you to drive and force you to endure this.” - Kathy Hochul basically"
*Someone sucking a dildo on the subway, with stuff strewn around her*

Use of Alternative Medicine for Cancer and Its Impact on Survival - "There is limited available information on patterns of utilization and efficacy of alternative medicine (AM) for patients with cancer. We identified 281 patients with nonmetastatic breast, prostate, lung, or colorectal cancer who chose AM, administered as sole anticancer treatment among patients who did not receive conventional cancer treatment (CCT), defined as chemotherapy, radiotherapy, surgery, and/or hormone therapy. Independent covariates on multivariable logistic regression associated with increased likelihood of AM use included breast or lung cancer, higher socioeconomic status, Intermountain West or Pacific location, stage II or III disease, and low comorbidity score. Following 2:1 matching (CCT = 560 patients and AM = 280 patients) on Cox proportional hazards regression, AM use was independently associated with greater risk of death compared with CCT overall (hazard ratio [HR] = 2.50, 95% confidence interval [CI] = 1.88 to 3.27) and in subgroups with breast (HR = 5.68, 95% CI = 3.22 to 10.04), lung (HR = 2.17, 95% CI = 1.42 to 3.32), and colorectal cancer (HR = 4.57, 95% CI = 1.66 to 12.61). Although rare, AM utilization for curable cancer without any CCT is associated with greater risk of death."

Toronto Star on X - "CBC needed with Elon Musk ‘meddling’ in Canadian politics: heritage minister"
Jonathan Kay on X - "By the way, can we all take a moment to savour the delicious irony of the Liberals telling us how necessary the CBC is on the same day that Carney announces his big news on American television"
Christopher Bataluk on X - "It's so weird how Musk whom is a Canadian citizen who lives in the states is meddling but any lefty actor they can wheel out from Hollywood just loves Canada."
Dan Levy ✡ דניאל לוי on X - "& that they’re talking about a man - Elon Musk - who holds Canadian citizenship. Unless we are considering it meddling when Canadian citizens who don’t live in Canada opine on Canadian politics? Is that the new rule? I must have missed a meeting or a memo, if so."

Meme - "The Nile River: Us Egyptians can predict the flooding of the Nile using the Nileometer. We measure the height of the Nile which determines how fertile the land would be.
The Yellow River: The Yellow River has flooded. Billions have died. The people are revolting... The Mandate of Heaven has been lost...."

Meme - Man to woman in sexy armour: "DID YOU GET THAT "ARMOR" IN A BROTHEL? EH, WHATEVER."
*Unable to penetrate seeming bare skin with sword*
Woman in full armour after killing man: "WORKS EVERY TIME... I'LL ENCHANT THE SWORD WITH AN ILLUSION TOO WHEN I REACH THE CITY."

Meme - Mike Davis: "You defended your 49-year-old husband sticking a cigar in his 22-year-old intern's vagina off the Oval Office. Sit this one out, Hillary."
Hillary Clinton @HillaryClinton: "If Republican leaders don't enjoy being called weird, creepy, and controlling, they could try not being weird, creepy, and controlling."

Meme - "Bonjour, mon amis, mon name is Monsieur Ken. I'm a 27 year old American ouiaboo (Francophile for you trangers). I bake croissants in my kitchen, and spend my days perfecting my confectionary and playing superior French games (Another World, Beyond Good and Evil, Rayman Legends). I train with my baguette every day, this superior bread can cut clean through hunger because it is baked at over a thousand degrees (Celsius), and is vastly superior to any other baked good on earth. I earned my baking license two years ago, and I have been getting better every day. I speak French fluently, both Metropolitan and Corsican dialects, and I write fluently as well. I know everything about French history and their Napoleonic Code, which I follow 100%. When I get my French visa, I am moving to Paris to attend a prestigious High School to learn more about their magnificent culture. I hope I can become an artist for Asterix or work at Ubisoft! own several berets, which I wear around town. I want to get used to wearing them before I move to France, so can fit in easier. I kiss my elders four times on the cheek when we meet and speak French as often as I can, but rarely does anyone manage to respond. Wish me luck in France!"

Meme - Woman: "I HAVE To BE HONEST... I'M NOT IN THE MOOD To DATE RIGHT NOW."
Man: "WHAT A RELIEF! ME NEITHER."
Woman: "OH, SHWOD!"
Woman: "LET'S WAIT AND TRY OPENING OUR MARRIAGE NEXT YEAR."
Man: "CHEERS TO THAT."

Meme - maggie zhu @zhuphilia: "you can actually observe americans' declining literacy in shooter manifestos from the past five years"
du cote de chez rob: "new classroom motivator just dropped: "you're telling me 500 words is a lot? do you realize that the unabomber wrote 35,000 in a hand-built off-grid cabin? you'd never have made it in the '90s!"

Meme - "Mommy loves Cream *pie*"
"Funny baby onesie $5"

Abu al-Daraja on X - "🧵 Why did Assad's army collapse so fast? Thread about the history of the Syrian armed forces. Of course, Assad was abandoned by his allies. That was decisive. But his own forces also put up no noteworthy resistance after the recent attack by Hayat Tahrir al-Sham. Why?"

Timothy Bates on X - "Interesting work on the heritability of BMI: It doesn't have one value, but distinct causes at low, medium, and high BMIs.  High BMIs were largely governed by environmental  effects (.60). Mid-range BMIs largely reflected genetic effects (heritability of .78 at BMI 21). Shared environment also peaked in this range.  Curiously, low BMIs reflected strong dominant genetic effects (peaking at 0.73)"
The heritability of BMI varies across the range of BMI—a heritability curve analysis in a twin cohort

Devon Eriksen on X - "If you keep equating every good thing to Nazis, then pretty soon people are going to start saying "you know, maybe those Nazis weren't all bad after all".   Some of them already are.   And maybe it's time we took another look, and understood what the Nazis really were, instead of picturing them as some sort of Saturday-morning-cartoon-villain version of the ultimate evil, someone who wants to blow up the world just because.   Here's how I think fascism works. Not politically, but psychologically.
Fascism is a spiraling hypersensitivity to disgust.
Disgust is a natural human reaction with a healthy aim... to make us avoid unclean, polluted, toxic, infectious things.   We couldn't survive without disgust.    But when this healthy response, to that which is legitimately disgusting, become the focus of a monoculture which creates a purity spiral, then two things happen:
1. Responses to legitimately disgusting things become more and more disproportionate.
2. The definition of disgusting becomes broader and broader, encompassing things which only bear a chance resemblance to that which is actually disgusting.
It seems to me that if you look at the history of the Nazi movement, it starts with a healthy rejection of disgusting things, of which there were many to be found in the Weimar republic, and moves to radical responses, and to finding more and more things disgusting.  Which leads, by degrees, to wiping out entire populations and declaring war on the rest of the world, because they don't live up to your newfound standards of moral, social, psychological, sexual, and and political hygiene.   Now, for the 80some years since the war, we've certainly had a lot of focus on the disproportionate responses and how bad they were.   But we're also had a lot of pretense that they happened suddenly for no reason at all.   Which is not the kind of attitude you want to have, if you don't want Nazis, because it ignores how you got Nazis in the first place.   If you don't want Nazis, don't glorify disgusting things. And don't call natural and healthy things fascist.   Because then people will embrace fascism just to replace disgusting things with natural and healthy ones."

The Moderating Role of Psychological Distress in the Relationship Between Postmodernism and Left‐Wing Authoritarianism - "In recent years increased interest towards the growth of political polarisation in many Western countries has focussed on extreme conservative views. However, less is known about ideologies on the opposing end of the spectrum that may also lead to antisocial activist behaviour and suppression of dissenting viewpoints. This study aimed to explore the factors associated with these beliefs with a particular focus on postmodern beliefs and the role of psychological distress as predictors of what has been termed left-wing authoritarianism. A total of 365 participants completed measures of ideological beliefs, left-wing authoritarianism and psychological distress. The study found that postmodern beliefs and distress predicted left-wing authoritarianism. Contrary to expectations, the effect of postmodernism on left-wing authoritarianism was stronger when distress was low. Future studies could extend these findings through a greater focus on other potential influences, and the possible moderating role these have on belief development."

Meme - Spergler Acolyte @SperglerAcolyte: "I think good handwriting is a sign of vanity. In school, girls would often write carefully since they worried how others would perceive their penmanship and, by extension, their character (neurotic trait). Boys on the other hand couldn't care less about something so superficial."

Meme - Crémieux @cremieuxrecueil: "The biggest reason for disability payments to workers in 1961 was stuff like heart disease and stroke, but nowadays, far and away the biggest reason for disability payments is back pain and related problems."

Meme - Ben @BWoodzy99: "Question: Why does the British museum exist? Answer:"
"2,000-year-old statue found in rubbish bag in Greece. A local resident stumbled across the statue in a bin"

Meme - ~~datahazard~~ @fentasyl: "Reminder that the modern degenerate NGO industry was created by Reagan's tax reform and has privatized $10,000,000,000,000 of assets in the past 20 years.  Nonprofit indeed.
More than 10% of the US workforce is employed in the nonprofit sector. In 2012, they made up:
- 27% of DC's workforce
- 18% of NY, MA, ME, VT, RI
- 16% of PA
Be sure to follow @fentasyl for more fun facts about the bloated nonprofit albatross."
Time for left wingers to demand that churches be taxed again

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