Links - 25th March 2023 (2 - Justin Trudeau)

Opinion | Liberal-NDP deal: Canada doesn’t need two left-wing parties that support Trudeau - The Washington Post - "Though the NDP also had no realistic path to victory — the NDP has never come close to winning any national election — Singh’s campaign nevertheless chose to frame him as a plausible candidate for prime minister capable of unseating Trudeau... It’s one of the most breathtakingly dishonest traditions in Canadian politics, given it is equally established practice for the NDP, post-election, to conspire to keep Liberal leaders — the ones they just finished running to a minority — in power... The NDP fancies itself the embodiment of Canada’s authentic left, the party too good to fall for Trudeau’s cringe-normie-basic-bro liberalism, with the pinup calendars and the rest. In the last election, Singh constantly accused Trudeau of being an empty suit. He repeated this pitch in his high-profile interactions with ambassadors of the American hard left, such as Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.), whose own bases were receptive to ideological attacks against a figure as drearily bourgeois and kitschy as Trudeau. Today, that grotesque cypher of middle-class centrism — a man NDP propaganda has relentlessly portrayed as a phony who is soft on Indigenous genocide and racism and is a tool of Big Oil — is the leader Singh’s party has endorsed to steer the ship of state for the next three years. A strain of NDP folklore rationalizes this. NDP mythology holds that virtually every progressive achievement in Canada over the last century or so has been the product of the party’s behind-the-scenes pressure on Liberal prime ministers. For 50 years, NDP members have been trying to take credit for Canadian Medicare, which was supposedly created on the insistence of former NDP boss Tommy Douglas during the fragile 1963-1968 administration of Liberal prime minister Lester Pearson. (Historians dispute whether this actually happened.) Even at the time, voters didn’t buy the argument... If this is the NDP’s strategy for winning the prime ministership, it’s hardly a shock the party is so unsuccessful."

Trudeau has spent most money per person per year in Canadian history - "The Liberal government is on track to log the five highest years of per-person spending, even excluding COVID-specific spending"
So many liberals on reddit were bashing this article for ignoring inflation and population growth, when they are mentioned in the article (and the latter is even in the headline). Ironic that they then call the National Post biased and that they're morons

Conservatives had sudden drop in votes where interference suspected - "The National Post reviewed voting tallies from ridings identified as areas of concern by various reports and by Conservative campaign officials. The ridings are all home to large populations of Chinese Canadians. Across multiple ridings, a similar pattern emerged: Conservative candidates saw significantly fewer supporters coming to the polls, however the Liberals did not see large gains, indicating not that large numbers of voters switched allegiances, but that for some reason, large numbers of voters did not vote at all."

Our reports of Chinese meddling got ignored for years: advocates | The Star - "The first time Cheuk Kwan and Sheng Xue testified to a parliamentary Foreign Affairs Committee was in 2006. They warned of Beijing’s desire to “control everything” including activities of Canadians, and urged Ottawa to adopt a stronger stance in order to “earn (China’s) respect and not wrath.”... Kwan alleges that his organization was targeted by United Front astroturfing: a new group arose with a very similar name, and it started issuing press statements and interviews that regularly opposed his own group’s messages, while boasting of connections to the Chinese consulate in Toronto. He and others also became suspicious when they saw buses of people arrive at federal political nomination meetings to support candidates who were known to shy away from critical messages about China, or when buses of international students in Toronto arrived to participate in counterprotests defending China’s position. Sources in the Chinese-Canadian community tell the Star that they have sent many tips, including copies of email correspondence, to RCMP and CSIS. In 2018, Mounties in Metro Vancouver probed allegations that the Chinese-state-linked Canada Wenzhou Friendship Society sent out messages on the social-media app WeChat urging chat group members to vote for certain candidates in mayoral elections — and offering a $20 transportation subsidy. But police later said they found no evidence of voter manipulation... And these are relatively subtle forms of influence, Kwan said: Beijing’s blunt tactic of coercion on Canadians is to threaten their friends, family members or business connections in China... A Chinese student in Quebec only had two followers on Twitter, but he still didn’t escape Beijing’s tactics, which he alleged included tracking his IP address and threatening his father living in China... She thought she would be safe living with her mother in Greater Toronto, But since 2014, the award-winning writer has faced a relentless online smear campaign, including fake nude photos and a photo that seemed to show her kissing a man who is not her husband."
Racists!

Public inquiry into Chinese election interference is the only way say MPs | The Star - "In picking Johnston, whom former Conservative prime minister Stephen Harper appointed as governor general in 2010, Trudeau may have been hoping to win all-party support for a cooler approach to the hot-button issue. However, prior to the news of Johnston’s appointment, several Liberals who spoke to the Star had expressed doubt that anything less than a public inquiry would satisfy growing Canadian concerns about reported efforts, particularly by the Chinese communist-led government, to flex its muscle in Canadian elections and in other spheres... that MP, like several others who spoke only on condition they not be identified in order to speak freely, said that the only real option at this stage is to name an inquiry"

Trudeau 'friend' David Johnston won't restore confidence in elections - "A man with personal connections to Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, Johnston should have never accepted the position of independent special rapporteur... Trudeau has described Johnston as a “family friend” and as a friend of Trudeau’s father. Johnston is involved with the Pierre Elliott Trudeau Foundation, as a “member” who advises and helps select the board of directors. The foundation is, of course, implicated in allegations the Chinese government tried to use it to influence Justin Trudeau ahead of the 2015 election. That doesn’t mean Johnston himself is implicated, but someone with more distance from the matters being investigated would have clearly been preferable. As head of the federal leaders debate commission, Johnston appointed WE Charity cofounder Craig Kielburger to the advisory board. A Trudeau friend appointing someone whose charity regularly paid Trudeau family members to speak at events and was granted a plum government contract in 2020, is the sort of thing that is just expected in Liberal circles, it seems. Despite appearances, there is no indication that Johnston is anything but a man of integrity, which is why he should have stayed far away from the government’s so-called investigations into interference, lest he open himself up to attacks and allegations his appointment was motivated by partisanship... The prime minister has refused to answer questions about what he knew and when, despite mounting evidence that his government was warned by intelligence officials about Chinese interference repeatedly since at least 2017. Instead, Trudeau is tasking committees and panels to investigate China’s influence. He has dismissed calls for a public inquiry, but decided to appoint the rapporteur to recommend whether an inquiry is needed. The position is a pointless distraction, created for the nakedly self-serving and partisan reason of delaying Trudeau having to answer questions, perhaps until Canadians have stopped paying attention... During the period in which Johnston’s governor generalship overlapped with Trudeau’s government, he was entirely in tune with the Liberal approach to Beijing relations... As head of the debate commission, Johnston tried to deny accreditation to Rebel News so that it could cover the 2021 election debate in person. A judge overturned the decision after Rebel News argued in court “The imposition of these standards amounts to an attempt to regulate the media industry and profession.” Regardless of what anyone thinks of Rebel News, it isn’t the role of a government body to determine which media can cover which events"
Conflict of interest is only a problem when it threatens liberals

The Liberal government is in serious crisis mode on Chinese interference - "The politicization of the issue, while inevitable, isn’t helpful. But as long as the Liberal government prioritizes its electoral viability, the scandal will only intensify. The leaks did not help the work of CSIS, but rather damages the organization’s international credibility and will likely make it more difficult for CSIS to acquire sensitive information. Still, with an elected democratic government that has so far only sat on its hands, the leaks may have been necessary for the sake of Canadian democracy."

BONOKOSKI: Donations poured into PET foundation once Justin Trudeau became Liberal leader | Toronto Sun - " Back in 2016, an analysis of the Trudeau Foundation’s public disclosures found the amount of money contributed to the foundation by foreign donors grew each year after Trudeau claimed the party’s leadership. Moreover, a significant proportion of the charity’s donors, directors and members have ties to companies and organizations that are actively lobbying the federal government. Administration costs also blossomed, from $430,000 pre-pied piper to $1.6 million, with one unnamed payee pulling in $250,000-plus in salary and another $120,000-plus, and nine others at more modest incomes. As the old saying goes, it takes money to make money. The Trudeau Foundation excels at that maxim."

Trudeau's relationship with China far uglier than Trump's with Russia - "John McCallum, the former Liberal cabinet minister and former ambassador to China, admitted in a July 2019 interview with the South China Morning Post that he’d been advising the Chinese foreign ministry on how to conduct its affairs so as to help re-elect Trudeau’s Liberals and hinder the prospects of the Conservatives. To draw out the more instructive comparisons between Trump’s susceptibility to Moscow’s entreaties and the influence Beijing can be said to exert over Trudeau, as a thought experiment, try to imagine how the American press and the public would have reacted had the following scenario played out in 2016. Immediately after his inauguration, Trump appoints the head of the Russian-American Business Council to name his cabinet and head the transition team that would carry him into the White House. He replaces all of former president Barack Obama’s senior officials with Russia-friendly bureaucrats. Trump then sees to it that the Russian-American Business Council boss takes up the most senior post in the United States Senate. Trump’s team then undertakes a root-and-branch restructuring of American foreign policy, snubbing old and enduring alliances and re-ordering the U.S. State Department to a new priority focus on relations with Moscow and the integration of the American and Russian economies. Trump’s team sketches out a series of radical initiatives: The Joint Chiefs of Staff should be on a “first-name basis” with the senior generals of the Russian armed forces. Russian President Vladimir Putin’s favoured oligopolies should be granted equal status with American multinational corporations. All barriers in the way of Russian conglomerates acquiring America’s keystone industries should be pulled down. And a network of immigration and visa offices are to be opened in Russian cities. Anticipating a hostile response from the American public, the Trump White House sinks resources into a public-relations strategy designed to shift key demographic sectors of public opinion towards a favourable view of Russia and its kleptocrats and the benefits of their dirty money sloshing around in the American economy. Within a year of his inauguration, Trump is feted in Moscow as a kind of venerable pro-Russian American folk hero, just like his pro-Russian folk-hero daddy. Trump’s autobiography has been translated into Russian, and he’s the toast of the town, in state media and social media. There’s a lot of exciting talk about the new America-Russia relationship and the possibilities of a free trade agreement, perhaps an extradition treaty. Only days later, Trump brings Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev out on the ice in a New York Rangers jersey at Madison Square Garden, surrounded by hand-picked American and Russian journalists. The head of a seedy international consulting firm who has spent years nurturing the most intimate relationships with Putin’s most powerful oligarchs is given a formal role in the U.S. Treasury Department to map out a top-to-bottom overhaul of American economic, trade and immigration policy. Despite his firm’s notoriety for servicing police states and unscrupulous opiate manufacturers, the global guru-consultant is then appointed as Trump’s ambassador to Russia. Of course, Trump did none of these things. But Trudeau did all of these things in relation to China... The opinion-shifting project was to be completed by the Public Policy Forum, but it didn’t work, because Canadians are fairly unshakable in their distaste for the hideous police state in Beijing. Another thing that didn’t help was Chinese President Xi Jinping’s spiteful abduction of Michael Kovrig and Michael Spavor as punishment for Canada’s detention of Huawei chief financial officer Meng Wanzhou on a U.S. extradition request. Before long, almost everything Justin Trudeau had hoped the “golden decade” in relations with Beijing would secure as his legacy, in the tradition of his Mao-admiring father, Pierre, was falling to pieces. Trudeau did all these things. If Trump had done half of them in pursuit of his affections for Putin and Russian money, there wouldn’t have been a mere cornpone intefadeh of the type that stormed Washington on Jan. 6, 2021. By 2017 or thereabouts, there would have been, we might speculate, a great deal more colourful and thrilling example of American civil disorder replicated on Canadian television screens. The thought experiment I laid out here might help to explain some of the cognitive dissonance erupting in much of the news media... The dissonance involves difficult questions about how to “cover the story,” because Beijing’s election-interference operations are a function of Beijing’s higher-level influence operations in Canada. It’s all been unfolding right in front of our eyes — and in recent years, it’s become difficult to determine where those operations end and the Trudeau government’s official China policy begins. At times, it’s been difficult to find the line between these things, and difficult to know whether the line exists at all."

Even Liberals sense the China scandal could spell the end of Trudeau - "The Liberals were already trailing in the polls, looking tired and gaffe-prone. The list of missteps is long, even in recent months: from awarding money to an anti-semitic anti-racism consultant, to the trade minister granting government contracts to her best friend; from gun legislation that was defended for months before being withdrawn, to the appointment of a special representative on Islamophobia who was shamed publicly for having written about Quebec’s discriminatory religious symbols law. All this at a time when inflation is still outpacing wage rises and the cost of borrowing is threatening to cause a wave of mortgage loan defaults. However, the controversy over foreign interference rises above the level of a typical, business-as-usual screw up, and it has placed Trudeau’s Liberals under more pressure than at any time since at least the SNC Lavalin scandal four years ago... It was a deflection technique worthy of a Yes, Minister script — discredit the report by citing security considerations, claim the findings could be misinterpreted, and urge Canadians to wait on the conclusions of an in-camera committee of parliamentarians with high-level security clearance. The reaction of many, many Canadians is that Trudeau has something to hide... A Nanos poll on Friday found that 90 per cent of respondents are concerned about Chinese interference in Canadian society. In an Angus Reid Institute poll published Wednesday, two-thirds of Canadians said they felt the Liberals are afraid to act against China."

Opinion: We don’t need a public inquiry into foreign interference in Canadian elections - The Globe and Mail - "The interference that should concern us is not something that happens to Canadian democracy, but rather the kind that happens with the collaboration of certain of its domestic participants. The collaboration may be passive – winking at or acquiescing in foreign interference, rather than taking action against it. Or it may be active: taking orders, or receiving benefits, from foreign actors. In the present crisis, we have been given plenty of evidence of both, thanks to a series of extraordinary intelligence leaks. That is not why we are in a crisis, however. We are in a crisis because it took those leaks to bring the matter to light: because the Prime Minister and others in his party and his government, reportedly presented with much of the same intelligence, chose to do nothing about it, and to keep both the interference and their own inactivity a secret. As early as June of 2017, the Prime Minister’s national security and intelligence adviser, Daniel Jean, drafted a “Memorandum for the Prime Minister,” copied to the clerk of the Privy Council, advising that Chinese agents were “assisting Canadian candidates running for political offices.” It said officials had documented evidence China was attempting to infiltrate “all levels of government.” In 2019, three weeks before that year’s election, security officials reportedly gave an “urgent, classified briefing” to Liberal Party officials, “warning them that one of their candidates was part of a Chinese foreign interference network.” The candidate was allegedly Han Dong, a former member of the Ontario Legislature whom security officials had been monitoring due to his alleged close connections to the Chinese consulate in Toronto. He was allegedly selected as the nominee in the Toronto riding of Don Valley North on the recommendation of Michael Chan, another former Ontario MPP and a key organizer and fundraiser for the federal Liberal Party; he is also under scrutiny by CSIS due to his own close ties to the consulate... How much of all this was made known to the Prime Minister is uncertain. But it would be astonishing if he were not apprised of at least the broad outlines, on an issue of such importance, and with such explosive implications... intelligence officials at the highest level, including the Prime Minister’s own national security adviser, thought the information credible enough to present it to government – not just once, but on multiple occasions over several years. Whoever leaked the information also thought enough of its credibility, and importance, to risk imprisonment for leaking it to the press. That is why we need a public inquiry – an independent public inquiry – to get to the bottom of this. It is not just that China’s interference activities were allegedly carried out with the help of domestic enablers. It is that, as the intelligence suggests, those domestic enablers were, overwhelmingly though not exclusively, prominent members of the governing party. The government cannot be entrusted to inquire into itself; Liberals cannot be left to investigate Liberals... It is significant that the Prime Minister appears to have taken no action in response to the intelligence reports... A bank robbery may not imperil the bank’s overall solvency, but it is still a bank robbery. The question is whether the robbers had inside help."

Kelly McParland: After years of cozying up to China, Trudeau impotent in face of election interference - "The current prime minister famously expressed his enthusiasm for the one-party state’s “basic dictatorship.” As late as 2018, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau was still enthusiastically seeking a free trade deal with Beijing, even as China’s military aggressiveness grew and evidence of human rights abuses against minority Uighurs multiplied despite international condemnation. United States Ambassador to Canada David Cohen said concerns about Ottawa’s curiously wide-eyed approach were raised during his confirmation hearings. He expressed satisfaction that attitudes appeared to be shifting as Liberals “have clearly woken up to a significant issue.” Still, that awakening comes seven years into the Liberals’ hold on Ottawa. The chickens from those years of wilful blindness are now coming home to roost... Innovation Minister François-Philippe Champagne vowed to impose new strictures on Canadian universities’ co-operation with Chinese military scientists, but not until a Globe and Mail report revealed some 50 universities had been actively helping out with research and technology projects. A Chinese scientist and long-time federal civil servant was fired from the Winnipeg infectious disease lab, but federal authorities fiercely resisted attempts to get an explanation as to why. It all points to a government that remains determined to avoid accepting the degree to which its earlier embrace of all things China was naive, wrong-headed and, as has become glaringly obvious, dangerous — not only to Canadian institutions and public faith in the country’s leadership, but to the individuals targeted by Beijing with veiled threats and overt pressure. Trudeau’s initial response to the latest revelations seemed as focused on finding out who was leaking the reports as on confronting the substance. Liberals continue to study the idea of setting up a registry of foreign agents, as has been established in Australia and the U.S., but want more time to think about it. “We are very much looking forward to going out and having a good consultation,” Public Safety Minister Marco Mendicino indicted in December, at the same time a survey by Nanos Research found 88 per cent of Canadians in support of the idea and just seven per cent opposed."

The Real Andy Lee Show on Twitter - "Guess what I found? Who was present at the donation signing when a million dollars was given by Niu Gensheng to the Pierre Elliott Trudeau Foundation? The man who wrote the report on foreign election interference and found that our election wasn’t compromised. Morris Rosenberg."

Don Martin: Trudeau can't continue to defer the China revelations - "The raging China saga has topped an annus horribilis year, which is not yet two months old, for a prime minister who now spends many days huddled in private meetings or touring the country to attend Liberal fundraisers while using ribbon-cuttings to disguise the travel tab as official government business. The latest shrugged-off response from the prime minister’s office to growing demands for an inquiry into allegations China attempted electoral interference to help the Liberals secure another mandate is starting to look a lot like wilful blindness for partisan gain. And Trudeau’s attempt at detonating a distraction from the ongoing controversy is transparently pathetic. Picture this: minutes before a Monday news conference the prime minister banished the popular TikTok app from government devices due to a security risk from China, this at the precise moment when demands for him to call an inquiry into Chinese manipulations of our electoral system reached a crescendo. It would thus appear Trudeau sees a greater security threat in an app of limited deployment on government devices than five-alarm warnings of election manipulation from inside a spy agency so frustrated by his inaction that it’s become a Titanic-level leaky ship... When former spy agency leaders, the opposition parties and even friend and former top adviser Gerry Butts unite to urge some sort of probe into Chinese electoral interference, it’s either time to surrender to the notion or explain in much greater detail why it’s such a bad idea. The dirty tricks outlined in Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS) documents are not, as Trudeau alleges, a plot to shake Canadian confidence in our electoral system. They’re the dead canary demanding a better coal mine. Add all this incendiary fuel to a bonfire of controversies in the last few months - be it his lousy choice of an anti-Islamophobia representative; the continuing asylum-seeker invasion at Roxham Road; ethical lapses by cabinet ministers Mary Ng and Ahmed Hussen; the McKinsey consulting mess; delays in the flawed medical assistance in dying and firearms control bills and the still-irritating passport office and airport snafus – and you’ve got to wonder how long this Liberal trainwreck can stay on track with NDP in the caboose. Trudeau can’t continue to defer the China revelations to a parliamentary committee examining the issue. MPs on those committees never set out to get the truth in those partisan clashes. Their aim is to shape the narrative to fit their party’s position by badgering witnesses along ridiculous lines of questioning, which may or may not have anything to do with the issue under examination. An independent clearing of the air is essential, be it a public inquiry or a probe by a respected Canadian given access to secret documents and CSIS insiders to determine the extent, effectiveness and electoral implications of any China-driven meddling in key ridings."
I see liberals claiming all media in Canada is conservative except the CBC, so this won't convince them

CSIS uncovered Chinese plan to donate to Pierre Elliott Trudeau Foundation - The Globe and Mail - "China appears to have targeted Justin Trudeau in a foreign influence operation after he became Liberal Leader in 2013, according to a national security source who said Beijing’s plan involved donating a significant sum of money to the Pierre Elliott Trudeau Foundation. The source said the Canadian Security Intelligence Service captured a conversation in 2014 between an unnamed commercial attaché at one of China’s consulates in Canada and billionaire Zhang Bin, a political adviser to the government in Beijing and a senior official in China’s network of state promoters around the world. They discussed the federal election that was expected to take place in 2015, and the possibility that the Liberals would defeat Stephen Harper’s Conservatives and form the next government. The source said the diplomat instructed Mr. Zhang to donate $1-million to the Trudeau Foundation, and told him the Chinese government would reimburse him for the entire amount... Mr. Trudeau told reporters Monday that Morris Rosenberg, a former head of the Trudeau Foundation, had been selected in summer 2022 to write an independent report that will assess the effectiveness of a government panel that monitored the 2021 election for foreign threats... Mr. Rosenberg, a former deputy minister of foreign affairs, was chief executive of the Trudeau Foundation between 2014 and 2018. He was “involved in facilitating a controversial $200,000 donation from influential CCP official Bin Zhang, who was also intimately involved in Trudeau’s 2016 billionaire cash-for-access scandal”... Guy Saint-Jacques, who was Canada’s ambassador to China until October, 2016, said Mr. Zhang had told him before the 2015 election that he planned to make donations in Canada in memory of the senior Mr. Trudeau... Mr. Saint-Jacques wondered about the source of this largesse. Chinese President Xi Jinping had poured billions of dollars into the United Front Work Department, a Chinese Communist Party organization that advances Beijing’s interests abroad, including by making political donations, co-opting politicians and offering paid trips to China. Mr. Saint-Jacques noted that Mr. Zhang was often present at events when Canadian politicians and officials visited China. “I cannot claim he is someone who is recycling money from the United Front Work Department but, if I look at what he is doing, clearly the activities that he supports favour the Chinese regime by celebrating people who are old friends of China and so on,” Mr. Saint-Jacques said. Mr. Saint-Jacques said that during this period of time Chinese officials would often tell him they wanted Mr. Trudeau to become prime minister. “The Chinese are smart, because after eight years [of Stephen Harper] there is a good chance that the government will be defeated,” he said. “When Trudeau was elected, some Chinese officials were extremely pleased. They said red is good and blue is bad.” “It was clear they were very pleased and they thought the relationship was improving – and of course they did.” He noted that the Trudeau government initially sought to negotiate a free trade deal with China."
I saw people blaming Harper for signing a trade deal with China and so being equally culpable. Apparently China's future growing authoritarianism was public knowledge when he was PM, and a trade deal is as bad as being wilfully ignorant about election interference

Are Trudeau Liberals truly changing course on China? - "It’s highly unlikely any of this is happening because the Trudeau Liberals, after seven years in office, have had a big re-think about where they stand on crucial issues. Mostly it’s been forced on them in contravention to policies they have championed until now. With inflation rising, interest rates increasing, debt charges escalating, the dollar weakened, housing unaffordable, the Bank of Canada losing money and Big Bank CEOs fretting, Freeland could hardly go on claiming Canada “can’t afford not to” keep flooding out borrowed money. The Canada Revenue Agency, the country’s tax collector, is so desperate for cash to meet the government’s record spending levels that it’s clawing back $3.2 billion in money Ottawa sent out in COVID benefits. Some 825,000 debt notes have been sent to people who thought they were being helped by a generous government, only to be told Ottawa wants it back. Similarly, Joly couldn’t reasonably continue the decades in which Liberal China policy consisted of Team Canada junkets in search of elusive trade deals, compliant ambassadors tasked with keeping Beijing mollified, a blind eye turned to abusive trade practices, technology theft and industrial espionage, and a willingness to endure crude insults and diplomatic snubs, all in service to the belief that lots of money could be made if only we put up with enough baloney. If kidnapping the two Michaels hadn’t cleared Ottawa’s fog, Washington’s toughening stance and its determination that Canada get on board would have... While issuing carefully-worded denials about his knowledge of Chinese interference in Canadian elections — “I do not have any information, nor have I been briefed on any federal candidates receiving any money from China,” Trudeau allowed that “there are consistent engagements by representatives of the Chinese government into Canadian communities, with local media, reports of illicit Chinese police stations.”"

‘Unwarranted’: India slams Canada PM’s remarks on farmer protests - "Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s remarks on the continuing farmers’ protests in India has not gone down well with the Hindu nationalist government, which dubbed his comments as “unwarranted”."
From 2020

YOU SAID IT: Where's our money going, Mr. PM? - "Just look at the irony. Former Conservative minister Bev Oda was hounded by the Canadian media to resign over purchasing an expensive glass of orange juice in London, England. Yet Trudeau spending $6,000 per night on a hotel room in London barely raised an eyebrow with most in the media. Kudos to the Sun for shining a light not only on such abuse of tax dollars, but also the all-out coverup efforts by the Trudeau government to keep secret the name of who used this lavish accommodation. I think we can safely conclude Trudeau used the accommodations. Unfortunately, Trudeau will keep doing such outlandish things as long as most of the media never holds him to account. The fact such a thing happened and there was no serious media investigation shows the sad state of our democracy. Canadians expect the media to ask serious questions, not simply be cheerleaders for Trudeau."

Trudeau government spent $6.8 million on hotel bill for 10 people | Toronto Sun - "Between April 1 and Oct. 30, 2022, the Trudeau government spent $6.8 million booking a single Calgary hotel to accommodate just 10 people for COVID quarantine... Paying $6.8 million for just 10 people from April to October, an average of $680,000 per person, is indefensible and makes Justin Trudeau’s $6,000 per night London hotel rooms look like a bargain. Any time the Trudeau government has been asked to explain outrageous COVID spending, they have deflected by saying they had Canadians backs during the pandemic. This isn’t having anyone’s back; this is picking our pockets for wasteful spending... In addition to the amount paid to the hotel, the federal government also paid the Canadian Corps of Commissionaires $1.7 million for security, $41,000 for medical transportation services, another $4,600 for bus services, nearly $1.5 million to the Canadian Red Cross for traveller support services and $1.1 million for cleaning services. Add on the $35,000 the government paid for repairs, and we get a grand total of $31.3 million or an average of about $21,000 for each of the 1,490 people who stayed there over the past three years. Were this spending at the beginning of the pandemic when we still really didn’t know what was going on — when it was panic mode for every level of government — it would be understandable, but this was happening just a few short months ago... “So, two questions: How many other hotels did this happened at? And has anybody been fired for this waste?” Rempel Garner asked. True to form, the government response focused on protecting people and claiming that is what this was about."

Canada’s designated COVID-19 quarantine facilities cost nearly $389M over 3 years: PHAC

Caring Trans Girlfriend / Don't Tell Him / Arm Positions

More blocked by ifunny:

"Having a caring Trans girlfriend is thousand times better than a real woman. <3 p=""> "Don't call it mental illness. Don't call this abuse. Don't cite the statistics. Do celebrate this. Do tell him he is brave. Play along with his fantasy. Mutilation helps him get well. Don't tell him it can never be real."

"*Hand straight up* - Call Waiter
*Hand 10 to 90 degrees* - Hogwarts Legacy fan
*Hand 90 degrees* - Call Taxi
*Hand 110 degrees* - Pet Children
*Hand 150 degrees* - Pet Dog
*Hand straight down* - Rest"

Links - 25th March 2023 (1)

Woodburning stoves face tougher restrictions - "Andrea Lee from environmental law charity Client Earth said putting pressure on councils to impose fines on households was “passing the buck”.   “It’s not fair to put the burden on people [by using fines], especially when the Government is not really coming clean on what damage has been caused by woodburners,” she said.   “At the moment, there are people who may have no other choice because of the energy crisis. In that case what the Government should be focusing on is not leaving people to choose between heating and their health.”... The Government is also considering extending the ban on the sale of wet wood and traditional coal for use outdoors, after a ban for domestic use in 2021."

My beloved wood burner is staying put, no matter what the Government says - "How can my beloved stove – which is simultaneously warming the family, encouraging the bread dough to prove, using up a waste product and lowering my heating bills – be anything but good? The, uh, burning question is whether I am contributing to the poor air quality in my area. Well, the neighbours have never complained, despite one side having a roof terrace and the other being, for a while, keen gardeners. In fact, the engine-idling delivery drivers are the real polluters. Apparently, even my equally beloved gas hob is more harmful"
Clearly, a dangerous criminal who needs to go to jail

Doctor Removes 23 Contact Lenses From Patient's Right Eye - "Asking the patient to look down again, I could see a huge, dark-purple blob of contact lenses stuck to her eye. It almost looked like a second pupil. I gently started using a Q-tip to peel the lenses apart one by one, like you would deal a deck of cards. They were coming out in a chain, drooping down her lid. There were a lot of contact lenses — I thought this could be my Guinness Book of World Record moment.  In nearly 20 years of practice, I had never seen anything like it... I posted the video of the examination, and it went viral straight away. Optometrists from South America, Mexico, and Europe were using the video to educate people about making sure they take their daily contact lenses out of their eyes every single night. These are light, flimsy lenses and should not be used for more than 24 hours... Although I can't be certain of how she managed to forget to remove all those lenses, it could because she had been wearing contact lenses for 30 years. When a person wears contact lenses over a long period of time, it can cause desensitization of the corneal nerve endings.  She wouldn't have felt something like 23 contact lenses as sharply. It also could have been her age. Older people's eyelid fornix, the least sensitive space, is much deeper, and the contact lenses just sat there for a while not bothering her."

Stop training so many doctors, universities told | News | The Times - "Universities have been told they must limit the number of medical school places this year or risk fines, a move attacked as “extraordinary” when the NHS is struggling with staff shortages. Medical schools have been told to curtail offers to ensure that there is “no risk” of them accepting more would-be doctors than permitted by a government cap, with universities saying they are likely to offer fewer places than normal to sixth-formers this year. Ministers have been criticised for holding firm to a 7,500 cap on new medical students in England while also acknowledging that a chronic shortage of doctors and nurses is contributing to long delays for NHS treatment... Medical school places are capped to limit the cost of doctor training, with the taxpayer paying about £160,000 towards the cost of each medical student. The cap was suspended during the pandemic, allowing thousands more medical students to be admitted, and reinstated for this academic year. Ministers have been under increasing pressure to raise the cap, with the head of NHS England, Amanda Pritchard, calling for a “very ambitious” increase in medical training, to end an over-reliance on foreign doctors."

Health, Sex and Scary: 50 Shades of Grey's Anatomy - FML - "Today, I had the best sex I’ve ever had in my life. Too bad it put me in the hospital with a slipped disc and a concussion, and yet I just know me and the violent lady in question will probably do it all again at our next date. Good thing my health insurance is paid up. FML"

Boss Erika Lust Lets Staff Take 'Masturbation Breaks' At Work - "The boss of an adult entertainment company offers her employees half hour daily masturbation breaks after finding they had become 'agitated' during lockdown.  Erika Lust, boss of Erika Lust Films, is hoping to 'normalise' masturbation by allowing her 36 members of staff a half-hour masturbation break every day and has even set up a private 'masturbation station' at the office. The filmmaker decided to offer the break after noticing her staff were 'agitated' and 'performing with less energy' during the pandemic.  She launched the initiative to coincide with Masturbation Month, which is May, but plans to allow staff to make the most of the extra 30-minute break for the rest of the year... colleague Avril, a clinical sexologist and project manager of The Porn Conversation, agreed, adding: "Masturbation has been shown to not only make you happier, more relaxed and more focused, but it's also good for creativity and increases your drive to get things done. "Basically, it's the perfect medicine for a stressful day at work.""

Boss Erika Lust Lets Staff Take 'Masturbation Breaks' At Work - "An open-minded company is offering its employees the opportunity to masturbate during work hours, and they’ve even ordered custom-built ‘w*** pods’ to help them out. The unusual work perk has been introduced by Stripchat, an adult website and social network with 200 employees."

Meme - "Who loves you more, your wife or your dog. Try this quick test. Lock them both in the trunk of your car, then let them out after an hour. See who's happy to see you."

More S'porean workers dissatisfied with job, suffer poorer mental health than Filipino, Indonesian peers: Survey - "More employees in Singapore are dissatisfied with their job, and more suffer poor mental health, than their counterparts in Indonesia and the Philippines, a survey has found.  The grim profile of the Singapore workforce came even though workers here report spending either less time at work than their regional counterparts or, at worst, the same amount of time on the job.. employees here are the least engaged at work among employees of the three nations, and experience the poorest quality of life...   Although Covid-19-pandemic-related and geopolitical uncertainties have contributed to this burn-out, “the glamorisation of productivity" and the “rise and grind” mentality has taken its toll on the region’s workforce, especially younger employees, the authors of the report said... workers tying self-worth and identity to professional achievements may tend to glorify workaholism...   In a similar survey done in 2020 among more than 2,000 Singaporeans, Milieu Insight found that 52 per cent of workers aged 16 to 24 “embraced the idea of hustle culture”."

Why Roman concrete outlasts its modern counterpart - "Roman concrete, in many cases, has proven to be longer-lasting than its modern equivalent, which can deteriorate within decades. Now, scientists behind a new study say they have uncovered the mystery ingredient that allowed the Romans to make their construction material so durable and build elaborate structures in challenging places such as docks, sewers and earthquake zones. The study team, including researchers from the United States, Italy and Switzerland, analyzed 2,000-year-old concrete samples that were taken from a city wall at the archaeological site of Privernum, in central Italy, and are similar in composition to other concrete found throughout the Roman Empire. They found that white chunks in the concrete, referred to as lime clasts, gave the concrete the ability to heal cracks that formed over time. The white chunks previously had been overlooked as evidence of sloppy mixing or poor-quality raw material... For many years, researchers had thought that volcanic ash from the area of Pozzuoli, on the Bay of Naples, was what made Roman concrete so strong. This kind of ash was transported across the vast Roman empire to be used in construction, and was described as a key ingredient for concrete in accounts by architects and historians at the time. Masic said that both components are important, but lime was overlooked in the past."

Here’s What Romans Ate at the Colosseum 2,000 Years Ago - "The recent find shows that spectators snacked on a variety of meats, vegetables, and fruits. Pizza may even have entered the scene. Archeologists found remnants of olives, figs, grapes, peaches, plums, walnuts, cherries, hazelnuts, and blackberries. They also believe that the meat was “cooked at the moment on improvised braziers, together with some pizza”"

A randomised controlled trial of dietary improvement for adults with major depression (the ‘SMILES’ trial) - "‘SMILES’ was a 12-week, parallel-group, single blind, randomised controlled trial of an adjunctive dietary intervention in the treatment of moderate to severe depression... These results indicate that dietary improvement may provide an efficacious and accessible treatment strategy for the management of this highly prevalent mental disorder, the benefits of which could extend to the management of common co-morbidities."
Of course, if you don't support only medicating people you don't think mental illness is real and are contributing to "stigma" and are a bad person

Review of 1,039 studies indicates exercise can be more effective than counselling or medication for depression - "The largest improvements (as self-reported by the participants) were seen in people with depression, HIV, kidney disease, in pregnant and postpartum women, and in healthy individuals, though clear benefits were seen for all populations. We found the higher the intensity of exercise, the more beneficial it is. For example, walking at a brisk pace, instead of walking at usual pace. And exercising for six to 12 weeks has the greatest benefits, rather than shorter periods. Longer-term exercise is important for maintaining mental health improvements. When comparing the size of the benefits of exercise to other common treatments for mental health conditions from previous systematic reviews, our findings suggest exercise is around 1.5 times more effective than either medication or cognitive behaviour therapy. Furthermore, exercise has additional benefits compared to medications, such as reduced cost, fewer side effects and offering bonus gains for physical health, such as healthier body weight, improved cardiovascular and bone health, and cognitive benefits... Some clinical guidelines already acknowledge the role of exercise – for example, the Australian and New Zealand Clinical Guidelines, suggest medication, psychotherapy and lifestyle changes such as exercise. However, other leading bodies, such as the American Psychological Association Clinical Practice Guidelines, emphasise medication and psychotherapy alone, and list exercise as an “alternative” treatment – in the same category as treatments such as acupuncture. While the label “alternative” can mean many things when it comes to treatment, it tends to suggest it sits outside conventional medicine, or does not have a clear evidence base. Neither of these things are true in the case of exercise for mental health. Even in Australia, medication and psychotherapy tend to be more commonly prescribed than exercise. This may be because exercise is hard to prescribe and monitor in clinical settings. And patients may be resistant because they feel low in energy or motivation."

History of McDonald's Apple Pie: From The 1960s To Now - "  If you decide to try an apple pie from McDonald’s today, you will unfortunately not be biting into the golden crispy outside of a fried apple pie. This is the result of a huge change in 1992.  In 1992 McDonald’s switched from frying their apple pies to baking them. Unfortunately, not with a lot of success. While the restaurant maintained most of the original recipe, the switch from frying to baking resulted in a loss of flavor and texture."

Meme - "Mac os:
Can you install this 5 year old program? Nooooo. i can't! this program is too old!
Windows:
Can you install this 25 year old program?
Yes, i can! Installing... done!
Linux:
Can you install this 25 year old program?
it's already installed"

Meme - "THIS IS ONE OF THE GREATEST PLEASURES IN LIFE ... READING A BOOK ... IF YOU SEE ANYTHING ELSE CONSULT YOUR PSYCHOLOGIST."

Meme - Ayy Wu Wei @RealBigBaby: "Jesus died for me? That's manipulative."
"He didn‘t stay dead either so add gaslighting to the mix"

The World’s Most Efficient Languages - "The prize for most economical language could go to certain colloquial dialects of Indonesian that are rarely written but represent the daily reality of Indonesian in millions of mouths. For example, in the Riau dialect spoken in Sumatra, ayam means chicken and makan means eat, but “Ayam makan” doesn’t mean only “The chicken is eating.” Depending on context, “Ayam makan” can mean the “chickens are eating,” “a chicken is eating,” “the chicken is eating,” “the chicken will be eating,” “the chicken eats,” “the chicken has eaten,” “someone is eating the chicken,” “someone is eating for the chicken,” “someone is eating with the chicken,” “the chicken that is eating,” “where the chicken is eating,” and “when the chicken is eating.”... When a language seems especially telegraphic, usually another factor has come into play: Enough adults learned it at a certain stage in its history that, given the difficulty of learning a new language after childhood, it became a kind of stripped-down “schoolroom” version of itself. Because all languages, are, to some extent, busier than they need to be, this streamlining leaves the language thoroughly complex and nuanced, just lighter on the bric-a-brac that so many languages pant under. Even today, Indonesian is a first language to only one in four of its speakers; the language has been used for many centuries as a lingua franca in a vast region, imposed on speakers of several hundred languages. This means that while other languages can be like overgrown lawns, Indonesian’s grammar has been regularly mowed, such that especially the colloquial forms are tidier. Lots of adult learning over long periods of time is also why, for example, the colloquial forms of Arabic like Egyptian and Moroccan are somewhat less elaborated than Modern Standard Arabic—they were imposed on new people as Islam spread after the seventh century."

Should We Be Asking For Counter References From Bosses? - "“The biggest reason we are seeing people move jobs is culture,” Baker says. “A boss that has an open-door policy or where you feel like you can approach them, keeps staff settled.” Not surprisingly, there is a strong correlation between an employee's happiness and their relationship with their direct manager. According to McKinsey, relationships with management are the most influential factor in determining employees’ job satisfaction, which is also the second most important influence of overall wellbeing. And yet, in a 2019 survey, McKinsey found that 75% of participants said that the most stressful part of their job was their immediate boss. “A business that has turned over a lot of staff? That's usually a red flag. Why have they gone through so many employees? If an employer or a boss is a good boss they tend to be able to retain staff,” says Baker. In the interview process, she recommends that candidates ask why the vacancy is available in the first place. She also encourages people to do some background research on business turnover and retention...  In addition to asking for counter references, Baker says that clear communication is the simplest indicator of good management. A clear onboarding process and a business plan that outlines how employees can achieve their professional goals are two other green flags that Baker likes to tick off."

Konstantinos Konstantinides's answer to What percentage of total box office revenue is made in the opening weekend? - Quora - "Lots of good data in http://boxofficemojo.com/alltime/weekends/ which lists the biggest openings and % in terms of Gross. It can be as high as 44% with the majority between 25-35%."

Eliot Jarrett's answer to What percentage of total box office revenue is made in the opening weekend? - Quora - "The short answer is that the percentage will be much higher for large budget, action-adventure, 'tent-pole' movies. But as with other box-office related questions, it will vary significantly based on such factors as:      Film genre & if it's part of a franchise (e.g. Batman, Terminator, etc.), Production and marketing budget, Release saturation (number of theaters), Time of Year (which often ties into the above three), Quality of film (ratings, word of mouth)... Hangover 2 had a production budget of $80 million and was released into 3,615 theaters. It's opening weekend box-office was ~ $86 million, or 1/3 of its final gross.  Bridesmaids had a more modest budget of $32 million and was released into 2.958 theaters. It's opening weekend gross was ~ $27 million or 15% of its final tally... The disparity will be even greater if you consider a platform-released, Oscar-contender niche film versus anything that's more mainstream. For instance, 2007's Juno only grossed 7% of its eventual total box office in the opening weekend."

Wirawan Winarto's answer to What are some hilarious but effective military tactics? - Quora - "British air forces once dropped a lot of guidebooks into enemy lines that contained instructions on “How To Fake Illnesses” with detailed step-by-step guide on how a soldier or a factory worker could fake illnesses to get sent home. Once the Nazi high-commands caught these leaflets, they stopped believing soldiers who claimed to have illness and refusing to send them home. Not only degrading their morale, this also caused genuinely ill soldiers or workers to get sent back into combat, spreading real disease among their ranks."

Calls grow to cancel Kevin Hart's comedy show in Egypt over 'Afrocentric' views - "Egyptians have taken to social media, calling for comedian Kevin Hart’s debut show in the country to be cancelled over his past comments in support of Afrocentrism on Ancient Egypt.  A hashtag calling for Hart’s show to be cancelled or boycotted has become one of the top trending topics on social media in Egypt over the past few days.  One Twitter user said Afrocentrists "want to steal and attribute Egypt's civilization to Africans and tell modern Egyptians that we are occupying Egypt from them. We must all participate in the campaign to cancel Kevin's concert." Hart, a popular US comedian, is a proponent of Afrocentrism, which advocates examining history through a lens that focuses on the role of Black Africans. Some followers say modern Egyptians have no claim to the country’s ancient history because they are the descendants of Arab invaders... Hart’s critics from across Egypt have noted an interview the comedian gave where they say he claimed Africans were the kings of Egypt.  ”We must teach our children the true history of Black Africans when they were kings in Egypt and not just the era of slavery that is cemented by education in America. Do you remember the time when we were kings?”... Many Egyptians criticised Hart’s financial backing of an Afrocentric animation series by the company Black Sands Entertainment, which some have accused of "Blackwashing" ancient Egyptian history."

Meme - "Sub-Saharans were always painted in a different color than Egyptians
And even when they were painted with a similar color to Egyptians , They still looked different
And even without any colors they looked different
Ancient Egyptians never considered you one: of them , so stop trying to fit in"
Too bad for the "We Wuz Kangz" crowd. Ironically a lot of them are going on about true history or whitewashed history

Meme - "The real reason they don't invite me to parties anymore:
T-shirt: 'I'm here to f*** someones wife'"

A Total Of 20 People Showed Up To Brittney Griner's Waco 'Homecoming' - "The recently published piece described the sparse scene at the church while insinuating that the city of Waco and Baylor weren’t, and still aren’t, all that accepting of Griner... To no surprise, MSESPN believes Griner is a hero and deserves some sort of praise after her stint in a Russian prison. Waco is in the wrong, and Griner is in the right, according to the four-letter network’s opinion... As is the protocol for any story over 500 words published at ESPN, the story was sure to mention former President Donald Trump to portray the message that anyone that supports him is a bad person that doesn’t care about Griner."

Meme - "What's Up in Windom
Jackie Junior Hollon: "I hate to ask but would anyone would donate some food me and my roommate are running low and we don't get paid until the end of next week. I have already been to the food bank."
Paola Morales: "I have this, I hope it helps you"
Jackie Junior Hollon: "Paola Morales thanks my buddy is kinda picky about those types of food."
Angela Johnson: "Jackie Junior Hollon How can a person asking for food donations be "picky" about the food they receive?""

Meme - "WOMEN'S GRENADE
I was filming a beautiful woman get into her car when I saw she dropped a grenade.
I took it to my military service friend who said "this is a real grenade"
PLEASE!
I believe God made you drop the grenade to meet me. My mother and father met in a Grenade Store. For halloween as a child I dressed as Grenade. God is connecting Grenade-Themed events in my life.
YOU ARE THE WOMAN I'M SUPPOSED TO MEET!

The mother of my children said she can't understand why I‘m always filming amazing women get into their cars. Who's laughing now! Call me to meet and discuss your grenade."

How 'Good Vs Evil' Narratives Are Breaking Your Brain - ""Every big problem can be traced to some evil group of villains, and progress is entirely about defeating them."  This is a fundamental misunderstanding of how the world works and how humans behave... Imagine Yale released a detailed study on rising crime and their conclusion was just, "Since 2019, Americans have simply become more evil. There are just way more assholes now." Experts don't talk like that; they deal in quantifiable factors like poverty, substance abuse, mental illness, etc. Studies into the obesity epidemic don't rant about the sins of sloth and gluttony, if you ask your vet why your dog won't stop chewing on the furniture, she doesn't reply, "Because he's a bad dog. Just a real piece of shit."  Experts don't think that way (at least, not when functioning in their roles as experts) because it's not productive in finding a solution. "The subject is evil and/or disgusting" is a thought-stopper, a reason to not do any more work on the problem. It never offers a course of action beyond, "Heap scorn on them so that we can revel in our superiority."... if your job is to study how diseases spread in humans, the behavior of the pathogen is only half of the equation, right? The behavior of the people matters just as much... most Americans don't like masks. They impede interpersonal communication in frustrating ways (obscuring facial expressions, hiding lips and muffling voices) and have negative cultural connotations. We see masks as dehumanizing, which is why cannon fodder bad guys always wear them... and superheroes remove them at their most heroic moment. We even use the removal of a mask to symbolize a character has been redeemed, or had their full humanity restored... Also, the fact that the nation is highly polarized and that a certain percentage of the population would resist any mandate, no matter how unobtrusive, was also easily predictable based on available data. For all sorts of cultural and political reasons, this group sees compliance with government as emasculating and humiliating. Disease experts could have done that research by opening any random page of a US history book, or just walking outside for five minutes. And yet, among my peers, around 100% of the reaction boils down to declaring the non-compliers to be evil, end of discussion. "They're selfish assholes." It's the exact kind of value judgment we'd find laughable if coming from a scientific journal. It's no different from Christian schools teaching abstinence-only Sex Ed because they refuse to accept the undeniable fact that young people are going to do sex stuff regardless of any moral condemnation from the adults they’re already rebelling against.  This is a problem. Once you’ve settled on "moral failing" as the root cause of an issue, no other thoughts are possible because the mere act of considering any other intervention would just be enabling the moral failing... What about a supply of free COVID saliva tests, so that vaccine resisters can at least be confident they're not dooming grandma with their next visit? Or guidelines about how to have safe social encounters in the COVID era, instead of issuing the kind of abstinence-only commandments that we would openly mock in literally any other circumstance?... I don’t see how the same doesn’t apply to climate change. A statement like, "We can't fix climate change until we overcome human greed!" is as unscientific as, "We can't fix climate change until someone can convince CO2 to knock it off."... You can't so much as buy a cup of coffee without involving someone who profoundly disagrees with your morals. Society is literally nothing but cooperation among people who, in ancient times, would have brutally murdered each other... Housing prices are rising? It definitely can't be due to supply and demand, too many people moving to the cities and fighting over too few homes. There has to be someone to blame, some evil person or party we can find and punish. My feeds are full of memes about murdering landlords; now go find me a rational, scientific analysis that proves that is a successful long-term strategy for lowering housing prices...  I think we’re stuck on the same belief in guilt and atonement that pervades organized religion, this idea that solving the problem isn’t enough, that some humans simply deserve to feel pain, that the cosmic bill must come due... we have an entire subreddit making fun of COVID deniers who died of COVID... "Those oil executives should be in jail!" I thought we wanted to abolish prison?"
This is like how to many people, to explain is to justify. It is easier to just write off people as deplorables. But then, attacking "the other side" can be more important than solving the "problem". New "problems" always come along, after all, due to the reality of the slippery slope. Humans are tribal beings after all
It is interesting that even in December 2021 the writer believed that covid vaccines prevented transmission (and didn't believe the vaccines worked in the elderly). This won't stop all the gaslighting about how nobody said that

Jason Pargin, author of John Dies at the End, etc on Twitter - "GRAPHIC VIDEO: Cruel uncaring tourists fed this tree too much Taco Bell"

A Lee Dynasty in Singapore After All? - "“It is clear that Lee is holding onto power, but it is not clear why, or what he is waiting for,” said Michael D. Barr, an associate professor and Singapore expert at Flinders University in Adelaide. “This business of him holding on to give the fourth-generation leaders time to sort out the succession mess is nonsense. If he wanted to give the next PM the chance to step up and have plenty of time to make his mark and assert his authority before the next general election, he would simply announce that he is stepping down in a month, or a week, and leave them to sort it out. And they would.”  By deciding to continue in power, Hsien Loong is contributing to suspicions that he intends to perpetuate a Lee dynasty by ultimately working out a stratagem to bring his son, Li Hongyi (above, left, with his father), currently a director of a government technology firm, into power although the son has said he is not interested in a political career. This is an idea that in the past has been met with stiff resistance and resort to the Singapore – but not international – courts by the family. In 2010, the now-defunct International Herald Tribune apologized to Hsien Loong, Kuan Yew, and former Prime Minister Goh Chok Tong and paid a hefty fine for an article on dynastic politics in Asia despite the fact that nowhere did it say or imply that nepotism played a role in the Lee family's – or any other family's – political prominence in the region. In that way, the case is reminiscent of another in which the Financial Times apologized for a September 2007 article in which there appeared to be no libel. The article merely listed the names of Lee family members in high positions in the island nation... Anyone who takes over, be it Lawrence Wong or ministers Ong Ye Kung and Chan Chun Sing, both of whom have been mentioned in the past, is likely to be regarded as beholden to the Lee family, and “that is exactly what Lee doesn’t want,” Barr said. “He wants to be able to exercise power. He thought he could do it through Heng, since Heng is so obviously a creature of the Lee family, and clearly no one was ever going to marvel at how good a job he was doing. But that plan is out the window because Heng was much too obviously below par, an embarrassment.” The general disenchantment on the part of the general public already manifested itself in the general election last August when voters handed the PAP its worst showing since 2011... Another indicator of growing disenchantment with the PAP and the Lee family was delivered in April, when an opposition political figure, Leong Sze Hian, the latest victim of Lee family serial defamation suits, became the first individual to raise enough public money to fully pay off S$133,000 (US$99,000) ordered by the high court within days after he was convicted of sharing an article uploaded onto Facebook deemed to have libeled Hsien Loong.  Leong was followed in short order by Roy Ngerng... Then there is the bitter feud between Lee and his younger brother and sister"
From 2021

The Paris Review - And Alexander Wept - "And Alexander wept, seeing as he had no more worlds to conquer... nobody seems to have located any citation of the quote earlier than 1628... The quote is a hash of three passages in Plutarch, first century CE... Alexander is not weeping in sorrow that there are no more throats to cut. This is not a picture of a man at the end of a career of world conquest; he’s at the beginning. “Look at all these throats—and I haven’t even cut one!”"

Billions in CERB payments provided to over 800,000 ineligible claimants
People who don't understand the tradeoff between emergency measures being quick to take effect and being poorly targeted will complain either way

Why is Canada more expensive than other countries? - "Compared to other countries that are part of the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), the price of basic wireless internet and cellphone packages in Canada is consistently on the higher end... The Economist’s Intelligence Unit’s Inclusive Internet Index for 2022 ranks Canada as 15th out of 100 countries in internet affordability... Canadian housing prices have more than doubled between 2005 and February 2022, growing at least twice as quickly as those of any other G7 nation by the end of 2021. Canada has the worst price-to-income ratio among developed nations, according to recent data by the OECD, tied with Portugal and the Netherlands... Interchange fees – otherwise known as transaction fees or processing fees – refer to the amount a merchant or company must pay to be able to accept credit cards... Interchange fees have been restricted to less than one per cent in various regions of the world, including the European Union, Israel, the United Kingdom, China, and Australia. The average interchange fee in Canada, on the other hand, is 40 per cent higher at 1.4 per cent, making it one of the most expensive countries in the world to use a credit card... The European Union set a 0.3 per cent interchange charge ceiling in 2015. Between 2015 and 2017, this adjustment alone helped EU businesses save up to two billion euros, according to a 2020 report by the European Commission. According to a different 2020 study by the European Commission that looked into the impacts of the cap, “there is no systematic evidence” that banks reacted to the lowered fee by “increasing consumer banking fees or by making changes in issuing of cards.”"

Links - 24th March 2023 (2 - Trans Mania)

Meme - "Deluxe Bathrooms. NTLY Limited to [3] Minute"
">Trans bathroom
>Someone is hanging from the ceiling
What did EA mean by this?"

Your child isn’t trans, she’s just a tomboy | The Spectator - "Therapists, doctors, teachers – all were happy to accept Sam’s new identity.  Well of course they were. What else can any modern professional do? Trans doctrine has it that ‘41 per cent of trans kids attempt suicide’. Not to affirm a child’s chosen pronouns might mean self-harm, perhaps a lawsuit, unemployment, ostracisation. That stat, as it happens, is garbage. But as it’s heresy to question it, few know to ignore it. So: smile, affirm, give the kid another shove along the road to medicalisation. In some places to question a child’s chosen gender is illegal ‘conversion therapy’. Even our tidy little PM has said he might ban conversion therapy. If heads of government buy into the madness, why should health professionals resist?...   It’s weird how straight-laced progressives are. At no other point in history would the existence of a boyish girl have raised the idea that she might actually be a boy in some metaphysical sense. But because we’ve been marinating, for a decade, in the glutinous language of critical gender theory, it’s become normal to think a boyish girl or a girlish boy needs treatment. Sam’s mum was primed. We’ve all been primed. I’m just lucky no one thought like this in the 1980s. Sam’s story, right up until David the counsellor enters the scene, will be familiar to any number of us who were once called tomboys. As a child it never occurred to me that it wasn’t infinitely preferable to be a boy. I liked my hair short, climbed trees and collected knives. If you’d asked me, any time in the first 12 years of my life, if I’d like to be a boy, I’d have said yes, no question. And if a serious-looking medical man had given me that beard/boob dilemma, I’d have answered same as Sam. I was as hungry for adult attention, and it’s clear as day to any kid which answer will keep you in the spotlight. And what six-year-old girl wants breasts?... 'I even bought Sam a she-wee so she could pee standing up like the boys. I also looked into children’s packers so Sam could have a bulge in her pants.’  If a fake crotch bulge for a prepubescent girl seems outlandish, I’m afraid that’s only because you’re not fully submerged in the new normal. Just you wait until your family faces its own trans nightmare. And if it does, you might take heart and guidance from what Sam’s mum did next... ‘Sam, we think that living with this secret that you are a girl is not healthy so we are going to start using she/her pronouns.’ ‘And guess what?’ writes Sam’s mum. ‘Sam was extremely relieved. We never saw her so happy.’  I think about what David said: parents, take your lead from the four-year-old. And then about Sam’s relief when the adults were back in charge. It makes my blood run cold."

‘Lia’ Thomas Exposed His Junk to Female Teammates - "Riley Gaines, a former teammate of Thomas, is calling for changes to be made by the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA).  “We were not forewarned beforehand that we would be sharing a locker room with Lia. We did not give our consent, they did not ask for our consent, but in that locker room, we turned around and there’s a 6’4″ biological man dropping his pants and watching us undress, and we were exposed to male genitalia”...   “That to me was worse than the competition piece,” Gaines added. “Not even probably a year, two years ago, this would have been considered some form of sexual assault, voyeurism. But now not even are they just allowing it to happen, it’s almost as if these large organizations are encouraging it to happen.”   Gaines, a spokesperson for the Independent Women’s Forum, claims that the NCAA has become a champion of transgender athletes at the expense of women’s sports. The 22-year-old originally planned to go to dentistry school but is putting her career plans on hold to be an advocate for female athletes who are reluctant to speak out. “People are terrified, especially speaking from my experience of talking to other NCAA swimmers specifically. Lia Thomas’s teammates even. They are told their school has made their stance for them. They are told if they feel uncomfortable seeing male genitalia in the locker room, they should seek counseling resources. They’re told they will never get into grad school if they speak out”"

Meme - INAECCESSIBELLE CONT @StarQueen_9: "Cis bisexuals who attack gay/trans folk and stay acting like "monosexism" isn't a symptom of how Homonationalism created a white/ cis/bourgeois reduction of the term "Gay" in order to expand the culture of monogamy and Patriarchy + cishetero/allo-sexism that harms ALL of us."

Meme - "My gynecologist and his nurse looking at the maggots living inside my neovagina"

Public Library Director Fired After Staff Allegedly Tried to Shut Down Kirk Cameron Reading Event - "A public library director in Tennessee has reportedly been fired following allegations that he and some library staff tried to shut down a children’s reading event last month featuring conservative actor Kirk Cameron.  The Sumner County Library Board voted 4 to 3 on Wednesday to terminate Hendersonville Public Library director Allan Morales... Morales lost his job after last month’s children’s library event that featured Kirk Cameron, swimmer Riley Gaines, and Duck Dynasty star Missy Robertson. It was Missy Robertson who accused the librarian of organizing a campaign against the event, though she didn’t use his name.  “He started a campaign in the community to shut [the event] down without officially canceling it because then he knew that it wouldn’t be good for their library”... She alleged that while she and others were trying to shoot promotional videos, some library staffers began behaving disruptively to prevent the team from recording footage.  “They’re slamming books together. They’re kicking cabinets. They’re hollering out loud,” said Robertson.  In a Facebook post, Kirk Cameron referenced “unkind pushback” from “one disgruntled librarian.”"
Weird. We're told that if you oppose drag queens reading to kids, you're a terrible person because reading to kids is such a wholesome activity

Meme - "Imagine looking at the world today and thinking drag shows are the problem."
Ironic. When you point out that liberals are obsessing about pointless trivial bullshit, they say that just because you are concerned with one problem doesn't mean you're not concerned with others, or that you think that is the main problem with the world. Not to mention the mischievous conflation of drag shows to children with drag shows

Meme - "A DRAG QUEEN NEVER HURT A CHILD"
"Drag queen jailed for arranging sex with children in Wimbledon"

The strange reaction to the death of a child rapist drag queen | The Spectator - "Darren Moore was found dead. Moore was a long-standing and well-known drag artist in Cardiff where he lived.    He was also a convicted child rapist. But this chilling fact has been almost entirely ignored by the mainstream media as they report his death. Instead, the commentary and news coverage has been hugely positive about Moore’s life. At times, the coverage has bordered on gushing, with article after article going into great detail about the warm tributes to Moore pouring in from the local community. A member of the public was interviewed, saying: ‘it’s rocked the community, that’s all I can say, no-one’s safe anywhere’. Another was quoted as saying: ‘everyone in the gay community knew him, he was just liked by everyone.’    The police were quoted by the press, stating: ‘Cardiff has a long and proud tradition of recognising, celebrating and protecting equality and diversity.’   There were also lengthy quotes from Moore’s family, including: ‘He was always the life and soul wherever he went, he was our social butterfly.’   The twisted irony of these statements is difficult to ignore.   There was even space in these lengthy articles to describe Moore’s appearance on the night of his death in minute detail. These included statements, such as: ‘Moore was last seen…while wearing full face make-up, a luminous green drees, blonde wig, heels and carrying a clutch bag.’   Yet, almost universally, there has been no mention of Moore’s horrific past.   Moore was jailed in March 1999 after being convicted of four counts of rape of a boy aged under 16.   He was also banned from having contact with children. However, in 2011, he was sentenced for breaching his sex offender’s order, after being caught working with children as a dance and gymnastics coach.    The fact that news outlets had the ability to report on the colour of Moore’s wig but not on the atrocious crimes he had previously committed is worrying.   In articles by ITV News, Sky News, the Mirror and the Daily Post, there was not a single mention of the above. BBC News referenced it briefly in two lines, at the end of a lengthy and otherwise positive piece.   There is growing concern that journalistic integrity has been thrown under the bus when it comes to reporting on issues relating to ‘LGBT+’ individuals. I believe this to be the fault of gender ideology, which has put the fear of God into people that if they say something negative or challenging about a ‘trans’ person, even if it is factual, they might be condemned as being ‘transphobic’... A Go Fund Me page was created to raise money for his funeral. The page states that ‘his larger-than-life character and charisma were something that you’ll never forget.’ I’m sure Moore’s vulnerable and helpless victims will also struggle to ‘forget’.   More concerning was the publicity and support that came from ‘Aida H. Dee’ (real name Sab Samuel), who is the founder of ‘Drag Queen Story Hour UK’. This is an individual who has previously stated: ‘trans women are women’, as well as the statement that ‘love has no age’.   On his Facebook page, Samuel wrote of Moore: ‘I’d like to help give my friend the send off he deserves’ before stating ‘Rest in Power’ and encouraging people to donate to Moore’s Go Fund Me page.  Drag Queen Story Hour is often showcased before young toddlers and children in libraries, schools, art galleries and hospitals around the country. It involves ‘Aida H. Dee’ wearing such tight-fitted clothing that his genitals are often visible and includes children posing with the trans pride flag. Drag Queen Story Hour has previously stated that Samuel can be an ‘imaginative role model for children to look up to’.   There is nothing to suggest Samuel has done anything wrong himself, but if he was aware of Moore’s conviction, then as an individual who engages with children on an almost daily basis, being this sympathetic towards a child rapist is surprising... we rely on our news outlets to report accurately and thoroughly, free from ideological influence. When much of our media fails to report, wilfully or blindly, the facts regarding Darren Moore’s rape of children, they do a disservice to us all."
Ironically, the same people who keep sharing the meme about how drag queens never appeared on "to catch a predator" keep going on about media bias

Meme - "Banning Drag Queens won't work. The only thing that will stop a bad guy in a dress is a good guy in a dress."

Actress called transphobic for condemning ‘abhorrent’ drag queen cabaret for parents and their babies - "A drag queen cabaret event for babies has been condemned as “abhorrent” by British actress Amanda Abbington.  The CabaBabaRave entertainment company is hosting a string of events intended for infants and their parents, and footage has emerged of one show featuring a man dancing in knee-high boots and a bondage harness, and another performing a handstand in a thong.  The performance staged in front of babies has been branded “abhorrent” by Sherlock actress Abbington, who stated on Twitter that if anyone believed the show was appropriate for children there must be something “fundamentally wrong” with them.
'I lost quite a few followers for saying that a semi-naked man in thigh high boots dancing in a highly sexualised way shouldn’t be performing in front of babies and it tells me everything I need to know about where society is heading. How do you not agree with me on this????'"
If you're against sexualising children, you're transphobic

Meme - "Horrors! Milton Berle and Bob Hope grooming kids in the 1950s."
Comment: "So heres the thing. Hope and Berl were doing it as a joke, the entire point is they looked and sounded like men thus dressing as women was laughable. Funny how you chose them specifically making fun of men dressing as women to make your point"
Comments (elsewhere): "Doing it for a laugh and doing it to try and undermine the foundations of humanity, aren't really equivalent."
"Weak sauce whataboutery. The UK has a history of pantomime dames as part of children's entertainment, traditionally an overweight middle aged actor who would throw in a few "nod and a wink" saucy innuendo jokes for the parents that would go over the heads of the kids in the audience, but the show was otherwise wholesome entertainment. The "male" lead was typically played by an attractive female too, whose obvious femininity was usually the butt of the dame's jokes. You could also bring up Les Dawson and Roy Barraclough dressing up as gossipy old women for comedy sketches, or Tony Curtis and Jack Lemon in Some Like It Hot for that matter. What makes it different is the clear insertion of alphabet agenda to impressionable pre-schoolers, at best it's proselytising propaganda, at worst it's outright grooming. I'm sure you actually do know the difference, you're just being deliberately obtuse."
"I get it. You progressives don't understand what comedy is. That's why you canceled Dave Chapelle."
"They did this as humor because men look funny dressed as women and people like laughing at funny things"
"I support Drag shows for Islamic countries"
"So they admit that they are nothing more than sheer comedy to everyone? Bout time they came to terms with it."

Meme - "Drag queens are just trans groomers in skimpy clothes"
"Actually most of drag is just fully clothed men in women's clothing making fun of women"
"Making fun of women? Holy shit I love drag now."

Drag Queen Biden Invited to White House Previously Tweeted, “Kids Are Out to Sing and Suck D!” - "Drag queen activist Marti Cummings celebrated his invitation to the event on Monday by tweeting, “To be a non binary drag artist invited to the White House is something I never imagined would happen. Thank you President & Dr. Biden for inviting me to this historic bill signing. Grateful doesn’t begin to express the emotions I feel.”... “Anyone who thinks drag isn’t for children is wrong,” Cummings also asserted, along with a picture of a young boy who was apparently “excited” to perform with drag queens.  Cummings also appeared in a music video called “Show Me Your D*ck,” which includes erect penises flashing up on screen. Another video showed the activist bragging about how he had gay sex with 52 men in a single year, a rate of one per week.  Cummings has repeatedly insisted that children should be exposed to drag queen shows... Media outlets responded hysterically when Donald Trump unwittingly met accused anti-Semite Nick Fuentes at his Mar-a-Lago mansion a few weeks ago.  Will any of them react similarly to this?  Don’t hold your breath."

School suspends sex education after drag queen 'told 11-year-olds there are 73 genders' - "Sex education has been suspended in Isle of Man schools after a drag queen allegedly told 11-year-olds that there are 73 genders.  The Isle of Man government has launched an independent review of its personal, social, health and economic (PSHE) curriculum after parents raised the alarm about the “graphic, disproportionate, indecent presentation” of sexual acts and different gender identities understood to have been taught in lessons.   Parents of pupils at Queen Elizabeth II High School in Peel, on the Isle of Man, have reported that Year 7 pupils were taught by a drag queen who told them there are 73 genders.   When one “upset” child responded and said “there’s only two”, the drag queen allegedly responded “you’ve upset me” and made the pupil leave the class.  Some 11-year-olds at the school were taught about oral and anal sex, while another group learned about sex change operations and were shown how skin graft taken from a girl’s arm could be used on an artificial penis, according to reports. “A lot of children are just too traumatised to even talk to their parents," Eliza Cox, vice-chairman of Marown Commissioners, told Energy FM Isle of Man. “As a parent, you don’t know what children are being taught.”  She said that one teacher on the island had told her she had to teach a group of boys and girls in Years 7 and 8 how to masturbate. Another teacher was said to be so uncomfortable with the content of the PSHE curriculum that they told pupils: “Please don’t listen to me” while they taught the lesson."
Weird.I thought this never happens

West End musical dragged into gender row over casting man in trans role - "A musical once held in the West End has become embroiled in a row with trans campaigners after a man was hired to play a transgender character.  Producers of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert have defended the decision to cast Miles Western as Bernadette Bassenger, a  former drag queen portrayed by Terence Stamp in the comedy film.  The move prompted five transgender and non-binary theatremakers to call for venues across the UK to boycott the production when it returns to theatres in June ahead of a hopeful bid to return to London's West End.   In a letter published online, critics said: “If you are a cisgender actor who is playing trans, ask yourself why you’re OK with taking a role that a transgender actor will never be offered. We are apparently not talented or skilled enough to play ourselves, so what makes you good enough to play us?...   The producers said: “We chose Allie not because she was a transgender performer but because she was the best actor for the role.”  In January, Russell T Davis, creator of the Channel 4 drama It’s A Sin, said he cast gay actors in gay roles to get “authenticity” as well as “revenge for 100 years of straight-washing”.  In 2018, Scarlett Johansson dropped out of production of the film Rub & Tug, in which she would have played transgender character, after criticism from members of the trans community."

Meme - "IF YOU ANSWER NO TO ANY OF THESE QUESTIONS... CONGRATULATIONS YOU'RE A 'TERF'! OR WILL BE DENOUNCED AS ONE
DO YOU THINK LESBIANS CAN HAVE A PENIS?
DO YOU THINK GAY MEN CAN HAVE A VAGINA?
DO MEN GET CERVICAL CANCER?
DO WOMEN GET PROSTATE CANCER?
DO YOU THINK MEN CAN GET PREGNANT AND GIVE BIRTH?
ARE THERE MORE THEN TWO SEXES IN HUMANS?
SHOULD MALES BE ALLOWED TO PLAY IN FEMALE SPORTS?
DO YOU THINK IT'S OK TO REFER TO MOTHERS AS BIRTHING PEOPLE, AND WOMEN AS VULVA-OWNERS OR MENSTRUATORS?
IF A MALE OFFENDER 'IDENTIFIES' AS A WOMAN SHOULD IT BE RECORDED AS A WOMAN'S CRIME?
DO YOU BELIEVE THAT WE ALL HAVE A 'GENDER IDENTITY' e.g. TRANS, NON-BINARY, CIS, AGENDER ETC?
IS IT OK TO TELL PEOPLE THAT THEIR 'GENITAL PREFERENCE' IS TRANSPHOBIC AND THAT THEY SHOULD INCLUDE TRANS PEOPLE IN THEIR DATING POOL?
DO YOU THINK MALES SHOULD BE ABLE TO STRIP SEARCH YOU ON THEIR SAY SO? HOW ABOUT MY MUM? YOUR 20 YEAR OLD DAUGHTER?
DO YOU THINK WE SHOULD TEACH KIDS (ESPECIALLY GENDER NON-CONFORMING OR HOMOSEXUAL KIDS) THAT THEIR BODIES ARE WRONG AND THE ONLY WAY TO BE HAPPY IS TO FIX IT WITH MEDICATION AND SURGERY?
SHOULD MALE-SEXED PEOPLE HAVE THE RIGHT TO UNDRESS AND SHOWER IN A COMMUNAL CHANGING ROOM WITH TEENAGE GIRLS?
DO YOU THINK ASKING ANY OF THESE QUESTIONS IS HATEFUL?"

Analysis of Mortality Among Transgender and Gender Diverse Adults in England - "In this cohort study of 139 484 individuals, TGD people had elevated overall mortality compared with cisgender people, specifically deaths from external causes (suicides, homicides, and accidental poisonings), endocrine disorders, and other ill-defined and unspecified causes. Transfeminine individuals had a decreased cancer mortality risk compared with cisgender women but the same risk as cisgender men, whereas transmasculine individuals had the same cancer mortality risk as cisgender people."
Clearly the fault of "stigma" and "discrimination"

Meme - "THE TRANSGENDER SONG:
(To the tune of 'If you're happy and you know it, Clap your hands)
If a person has a penis, he's a man
If a person has a penis, he's a man
If he doesn't want to lose it
Even though he doesn't use it
If a person has a penis, he's a man.
If a person has a nutsack, he's a man
If a person has a nutsack, he's a man
He can tuck it to conceal it
Let it dangle and reveal it
If a person has a nutsack, he's a man
If he amputates his bits, he's still a man
If grows a pair of tits, he's still man
If the chromosome's a "Y"
HE WILL ALWAYS BE A GUY...
If he isn't born a woman, he's a man."

Gender dysphoria in adolescence: current perspectives - "Increasing numbers of adolescents are seeking treatment at gender identity services in Western countries. An increasingly accepted treatment model that includes puberty suppression with gonadotropin-releasing hormone analogs starting during the early stages of puberty, cross-sex hormonal treatment starting at ~16 years of age and possibly surgical treatments in legal adulthood, is often indicated for adolescents with childhood gender dysphoria (GD) that intensifies during puberty. However, virtually nothing is known regarding adolescent-onset GD, its progression and factors that influence the completion of the developmental tasks of adolescence among young people with GD and/or transgender identity. Consolidation of identity development is a central developmental goal of adolescence, but we still do not know enough about how gender identity and gender variance actually evolve. Treatment-seeking adolescents with GD present with considerable psychiatric comorbidity. There is little research on how GD and/or transgender identity are associated with completion of developmental tasks of adolescence... Evidence from the 10 available prospective follow-up studies from childhood to adolescence (reviewed in the study by Ristori and Steensma28) indicates that for ~80% of children who meet the criteria for GDC, the GD recedes with puberty. Instead, many of these adolescents will identify as non-heterosexual"
The lawsuits are going to be aplenty

Meme - "I support the LGBT: Lesbians, Gays, Bisexuals, TERFs"

Meme - THE AMAZING ATHEIST!: "What is a woman? A culturally malleable social designation traditionally imposed upon females at birth, that can now be adopted or rejected by anyone at their own individual discretion. Next."
Tiffany Woman4Women: "That's femininity. It amazes me that fellow atheists are falling for the religion of gender. Women are adult human females, without exception."
DRUNKEN ATHEIST STUDIO @christofilms: "The demand from these radical activists to accept their dogma without question reminds me VERY much of growing up under Catholicism. No thanks. I didn't escape that cult just to join a new one"

Meme Timmie @haytimmie: "Advantages trans women have over cis folks:
Funnier
Prettier
Access to large network of thirsty lesbians (Twitter)
Confidence forged in the fires of bigotry
Huge catalogue of trans specific jokes
Laser eyes
Freshly grown boobs at any age
Extensive trivia knowledge
Blahaj"
Trans narcissism strikes again
BLÅHAJ is the Ikea baby shark

Meme - "ok, predditor.
Reddit banned the word "groomer" because it's "hate speech," and 24 hours later the community came up with a new word."

Watson on Twitter - "I really wish my gender clinic had given me "conversion therapy." If they had actually taken the time to question and challenge me back then, maybe I wouldn't have to live the rest of my life as I am: a young woman with a beard, massive chest scars and bladder problems. Thanks."

Meme - "Cant get a girlfriend"
"So you become the girlfriend"
"Cant get a boyfriend"

Meme - OutspokenSamantha @Outspoken_Sam: "Today I went to the bank and told them I I identify as a millionaire, and that I'd like to withdraw my money. They laughed and asked me to leave. Turns out - just because you believe something in your brain, doesn't make it true, and you can't force others to pretend it is."

Meme - "r/actuallesbians She was my bestfriend in high school and I loved her but she came out as lesbian. I discovered I'm a transwoman and convinced her shes still a valid lesbian and its transphobic not to date me. We've been a transbian/lesbian couple for 6 months"

Meme - @Huff4Congress: "I asked ChatGPT Al to write a Dr. Seuss poem that's also a persuasive explanation why "transwomen" are men."
"Seuss Transwoman Argument
Write a persuasive Dr. Seuss poem explaining why a "transwoman" is a man
I see your hair. It is a wig.
Your Adam's apple still looks big.
You are a man, and that is clear.
I do not see a woman here.
I must admit, It's rather odd
To hear you say you're now a broad.
You have no uterus, so no:
You cannot bleed from down below.
I do not like your padded bra!
You should not use the women's spa!
You tell me you had surgery;
Your pronouns still are "him" and "he."
Your chromosomes are X and Y.
That means you'll always be a guy.
You gave yourself a girly name.
That does not mean you're now a dame.
A surgeon chopped your eggs and ham?
I still won't call you Ma'am I Am."

Meme - "One of the most surprising ON THE ROAD TO SHE
ARE "BIOLOGICAL" WOMEN JEALOUS OF TRANS WOMEN?"

The true difference between men and women’s bodies – and what it means for the trans athlete debate - "In general, a world-class male athlete will always beat a world-class female athlete, says Dr Richard Bruce, senior lecturer in cardiorespiratory physiology at King’s College London. “The world record for the men tends to be about 10 per cent faster for pretty much every event from 100 metres up to the marathon,” he says. The same goes for swimming. In field events, such as long jump and discus, there is about a 20 per cent difference and in weightlifting it’s 30 per cent. This male advantage is mostly down to genetics. Your genes control the production of hormones as well as the receptors that interact with the hormones. “You can affect that by taking drugs to dampen it down, but the actual gene is still there,” says Professor Paul Lee, a Harley Street specialist in sports, regenerative and orthopaedic surgery... As men tend to be taller than women, the volume of their lungs is typically 20 per cent bigger. “Therefore they can take deeper breaths,” says Prof Lee. “This tends to give men a slight advantage because they are able to get more air into their body, leading to greater oxygenation via the bloodstream – and therefore more endurance.”   Dr Bruce also feels an advantage in performance is conferred by heart size and haemoglobin levels. Haemoglobin is essential for transferring oxygen in your blood from the lungs to the tissues. Though equal in childhood, in women haemoglobin levels plateau during early puberty, while in men it continues to rise, leading to a 10 to 20 per cent difference in haemoglobin concentration.  Higher volume of red blood cells equals higher athletic performance. Dr Bruce says: “In any running event of upwards of 5K where there is aerobic exercise associated with longer-distance events, haemoglobin levels are important.” Men’s naturally higher levels of testosterone mean they tend to be leaner than women. “Testosterone is related to metabolic rate and means that men tend not to put on fat as easily; they put on muscle,” explains Prof Lee. Even with the same training regime, a man will put on 20 per cent more muscle, he says: “For the female it will not be as easy, they will have to work harder to get the same muscles as men.”  “The proportion of slow-twitch (endurance) and fast-twitch (power) fibres are fairly similar across genders,” says Dr Paula Vickerton, director of anatomical studies at Queen Mary University of London, “but males have larger fast-twitch fibres, which allows them to generate higher force.”. This combination of power and strength is part of why men have an advantage in short and middle distance running events.  Women’s fat composition may help in some endurance sports... The science is pretty simple on this one: the more muscle mass you have, the more power you can produce. “That is a really big deal,” says Prof Lee. Therefore, combined with height, this multiplies the male advantage.  The longer the lever arm (the distance between the point of application of a force and the axis), the more force a person can produce... studies have consistently shown that men have a higher football-kicking velocity than women... “If you’ve got a stronger muscle attachment to the bone, the bone gets thicker and stronger in response,” says Dr Vickerton, “Testosterone drives muscle growth, which in turn drives bone mass.” Women’s muscles are smaller, so their bones are weaker, particularly after menopause. Prof Lee agrees: “When we assess bone strength via scans, the male line is higher than the female.”... Gymnastics is an example of an integrated sport that accounts for physiological differences between men and women. “It allows men and women to compete in slightly different but similar disciplines that really show off their physiology,” explains Dr Bruce. “So, men do the rings, which require a lot of upper body strength, and women do the balance beam that requires balance and flexibility.”... The anatomy of the pelvis and knees reveals the clearest differences between men and women, says Dr Vickerton: “Females have a wider pelvis, which means their femurs are at a sharper angle then in men, which loads their knees quite differently.”... “A man being taller means he will have a bigger chest wall and can therefore produce a lot more power,” says Prof Lee. “When you see the track and field athletes, such as javelin throwers, they are really big and tall, male or female. You can generate a lot more power from the upper limb with a slightly bigger skeleton.”... women’s elbows also have a slightly higher carrying angle. “Which means when you have your arms by your sides they’re not perfectly straight. It means the lever arm is shorter and not as powerful”"
Clearly testosterone levels are the only relevant factor to consider and if you think skeletons matter, that's transphobic
Does this mean we can stop pretending race doesn't make a difference? Since for example we know that East Africans and West Africans have different slow and fast-twitch fibres?