“… Khamenei believes that the US has lost all influence in the region, and that it “is now left with no option but to withdraw” altogether. With Joe Biden in the White House, Khamenei isn’t far off regarding America’s loss of influence. And as for withdrawing from the region, America isn’t adequately standing up for Israel nor even against its own enemies, so it has a weak presence.
A knife attack on a train in the middle of the day left a man with life-threatening injuries and “traumatised” onlooking school children. Not in some wartorn developing country (officially, anyway), but in the capital of England.
Meanwhile, on a London subway… I can’t believe someone didn’t jump in and help save the man getting carved liked a Thanksgiving turkey. https://t.co/2v2ijaIJy5
— Bruce Ballou 🇺🇸 (@_BruceBane) March 27, 2024
Several waves of protesters disrupted President Biden’s grandiose fundraiser at Radio City Music Hall Thursday, where he kicked it with former Presidents Barack Obama and Bill Clinton to raise cash and enthusiasm for his 2024 re-election bid.
One demonstrator, a woman blowing a whistle, holding a “war pig” sign and warning of “nuclear war with Russia,” was removed from the lavish New York City event, dubbed by the 81-year-old president as a “grassroots fundraiser.”
The federal government is clearly worried about the onslaught of criticism of its newly introduced Bill C-63, the Online Harms Act. That criticism has come from all corners, including civil society groups like the Canadian Civil Liberties Association and the Canadian Constitution Foundation¸which I work for.
Academics have warned about amendments to the Criminal Code and Canadian Human Rights Act chilling speech, and about the expansive search powers for the proposed “Digital Safety Commission.” Thousands of regular citizens have written to their Members of Parliament asking them to stop and fix the bill.
It speaks to the seriousness of the situation that the Bank of Canada is not so much taking the gloves off as slipping lead into them.
Senior deputy governor, Carolyn Rogers, came as close to wading into the political arena as any senior deputy governor of the central bank probably should in her speech in Halifax this week .
But she was right to sound the alarm about a subject — Canada’s waning productivity — on which the federal government’s performance has been lacklustre at best.
It wasn’t a scenario normally associated with Conservative Party leader Pierre Poilievre.
Encircled by dozens of First Nations leaders, Poilievre was the focus of attention and respect at a ritual-filled gathering this year at the Vancouver Convention Centre.
As a classical liberal who believes in individual liberty, the pursuit of happiness, secular democracy, rule of law, social equality, free trade, fiscal responsibility, and a strong national defence, I was politically homeless in Canada long before cancelling my Laurier Club membership and leaving the Liberal Party in October 2023.
Are you proud to be an American?
Ummm… you sure about that? pic.twitter.com/8m8LCdiOAD— Dr. Jebra Faushay (@JebraFaushay) March 28, 2024
‘We won’t forget’: How some Muslims view Poilievre’s stance on Israel-Hamas war
OTTAWA – A spokesman for a regional Muslim advocacy group says Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre’s stance on the Israel-Hamas war could complicate his party’s relationship with Muslim Canadians.
Nawaz Tahir of the Hikma Public Affairs Council in London, Ont., met Poilievre during the leader’s outreach efforts in southwestern Ontario last summer.
Tahir says he believes Poilievre has missed chances to show compassion with Muslims and that building ties could be, in his words, “much more difficult now.”
Muslim man harasses a woman on a London bus for eating her lunch while he is ‘fasting’ during Ramadan.
“I can smell that do you mind eating that somewhere else I’m fasting.”
— Oli London (@OliLondonTV) March 28, 2024
I don’t think they can be saved, the German Catholic idiots, they have delved so deeply into masochism.
In the first century, the historian Sallust wrote of the Roman Republic: “Decadence and arrogance are the natural dividends of prosperity.”
These are also Western dividends and Ayaan Hirsi Ali is right when, in her lectio this week named for Russell Kirk, she attacks the “suicidal degeneration of the West”.
They want to make everything collapse, without caring about the avalanche that will inevitably overwhelm them too, she asserted.
Meanwhile in Jolly Old England …
Ramadan lights on display in central London over Easter
Last summer, Sound of Freedom surprised many with a massive box office success that opened many people’s eyes to the ongoing reality of child exploitation. Now, a hit show from Investigation Discovery reveals that some of those children suffering abuse aren’t as far away as we might have thought.
As a Jew, I am watching in dismay as Hamas seems to be winning the war that Hamas unilaterally instigated on October 7 by its horrific assault. Hamas, which committed the actual war crimes of intentional killing, rape and torture of civilians, taking civilian hostages for ransom, and purposefully embedding military personnel and weapons within and below civilian homes, schools and even hospitals, has, with a brilliant campaign of disinformation, fine-tuned for a short-attention-span world of instant communication, and fanned by vehement supporters in the West, diverted public outrage away from Hamas’ actual war crimes, and directed it against Israel’s difficult military response. Hamas’ religiously motivated leaders are willing to put their own civilian population in harm’s way. Indeed, Hamas’ primary military strategy is to have as many Palestinian civilians as possible killed, or suffering, in order to turn public opinion against Israel, and to induce those in the West who support Hamas’ side of the war (such as Canada’s left-wing New Democratic Party) to put forward resolutions calling for a ceasefire, an arms embargo against Israel and official recognition of the State of Palestine, as the NDP did in Canada’s House of Commons on March 18.
An Australian state premier has backed a campaign to return an Instagram-famous magpie to its human carers after it was seized by wildlife authorities.
The bird, dubbed Molly, was rescued as a chick by a Queensland couple and formed an unlikely bond with their bull terrier, Peggy.
More than two million people follow a “Peggy and Molly” profile online.
Queensland’s leader Steven Miles says Molly should be reunited with the family, contradicting state officials.
In November 2023, the UK Poet Laureate Carol Ann Duffy penned a poem, “We See You,” celebrating the triumph of female soccer players. Success of women in traditional men’s sports is certainly something to celebrate. Even so, a Poet Laureate’s task is surely also to reflect deep contemporary issues affecting the nation. Duffy, a devoted feminist, gender activist, and supporter of the oppressed, has yet to address the most seminal issue of the moment for women’s welfare: the horrific and systemic gender-based violence suffered by innocent Israeli girls and women, many raped to death, abused, tortured, massacred, with their sexual organs carved from their bodies by Hamas murderers on October 7, 2023. Perhaps she still might comment or pen an emotive poem, perhaps.
