As ‘safe spaces’ on Western university campuses continue to multiply, it has become clear that institutions designed to defend free thought are now breeding grounds for illiberal conformism. Higher education no longer trains students to grapple with dissent. It teaches them to avoid intellectual conflict at all costs.
The New York Times and apparently all of polite society was in a tizzy late last month after learning that “fringe” researchers had “gained access” to National Institutes of Health data from thousands of children and, according to reporter Mike McIntire, “used it to produce at least 16 papers purporting to find biological evidence for differences in intelligence between races, ranking ethnicities by I.Q. scores and suggesting Black people earn less because they are not very smart.”
Has the US turned the tide on obesity? The latest figures from the Centers for Disease Control show that between 2017-20 and 2021-23, the prevalence of obesity fell by two percentage points.
It is perhaps too soon to get out the bunting. The obesity rate is still a hefty 40 per cent (compared with 28 per cent in the UK) and the proportion of Americans who are morbidly obese is 10 per cent (in the UK, the figure is two per cent). It will take another year or two to see whether the decline is sustained. But the signs are promising and – as John Burn-Murdoch argues in the Financial Times – there is only one plausible explanation for it: the weight-loss drug, semaglutide, sold as Ozempic or Wegovy.
I do not know enough about the success of these drugs or their side effects. I am reluctant to proclaim them a miracle.
Our well-intentioned government—named the “Good Intentions Paving Company” by financial analyst James Grant—always seems to find itself scrambling to explain how its latest scheme for a better world has delivered us into an even lower circle of hell. Bureaucrats to the core, they’ve even developed a one-step procedure for dealing with this task: blame it on the people. The term “white flight” is a product of this procedure.
A principal benefit of this system is that the Paving Company doesn’t have to ask people—in this case, the whites who took “flight”—why they fled. It must be because they were fleeing from nonwhite people, and fleeing from nonwhite people is racist. Why would you bother consulting racists about their motives?
Canadians have expressed “fairly negative views” about foreign aid with a quarter nationwide favouring a cut in funding, according to in-house research by Global Affairs Canada.
“Survey results reveal some fairly negative views about certain aspects of international aid,” said the department’s report, titled “Canadian Views On International Assistance Tracking Study.”
U.S. Surgeon General Vivek Murthy recently released an advisory titled “Our Epidemic of Loneliness and Isolation.” It warns that social isolation is a major public health problem. The 81-page document presents six government-directed “pillars” of action to address the health hazards of social isolation.
On the surface, these six directives may look innocuous, but they present a clear and present danger to the autonomy of our private lives and relationships. The project is potentially so massive in scope that it’s not an overstatement to say it threatens to regulate our freedom of association in ways we never could have imagined.
By the end of the Second World War, the thoughts of many Canadians were turning to how to build a better society. The sacrifices made and the spirit for change led to the creation of Canada’s social safety net, although its main elements – nationalized health care, public pensions, and unemployment insurance – took decades longer to fully create.
The COVID-19 pandemic and its aftermath seem eerily similar. Again, there were calls for “building back better.” Again, the hoped-for responses were muted by fiscal, inflationary and possible recessionary realities. But we believe the same desire for fundamental change exists today. The key is deciding how to move forward.
The author argues against basic income but expects to achieve a more equitable result in part by building strong communities.
I’m not sure that is possible in a low trust society like Canada which the government is determined to destroy by identity politics and mass immigration.
Smoking cannabis outside in Amsterdam’s red light district will soon be made illegal, and brothels forced to close earlier, under rules to save residents from “glassy-eyed tourist zombies”.
The new regulations are set to come into force in mid-May and aim to make city centre living more bearable for long-suffering locals.
A city spokeswoman said: “The atmosphere becomes dire, particularly at night. This comes at the expense of a good night’s sleep for residents and the liveability and safety of the whole neighbourhood.”
For a country that has taken such pains to emphasize the Canadianness of its homegrown artists, a new poll has some surprising findings
The idea of having a favourite Canadian artist is becoming a quaint anachronism, according to the head of the Association for Canadian Studies.
Even when pressed to name their favourite Canadian musical artist, about half say they do not have one, and those who do are all over the place. Bryan Adams tops the list at five per cent, followed by Drake, Shania Twain and Michael Bublé at three per cent, then Céline Dion, Justin Bieber, the Tragically Hip and Gordon Lightfoot at two per cent.
CanCon serves only to subsidize the sort of nagging left-wing mediocrities who make immediately ignored CBC Top Ten Lists.
That’s to be expected when government gatekeeping for the arts consists of one group of toxic leftists handing out our money to their equally toxic friends.
But perhaps the single greatest factor contributing to our cultural disconnect is that Canada is no longer a nation held together by common bonds.
Face it we are balkanized to the point of failed state status because the rot of multiculturalism and destructive immigration policy has hollowed out the culture.
I do not hear a stricken nation crying out for more government subsidized DEI pap.
I can’t help but laugh when I think back on the public vigils held for the late Gord Downie. They were far more “white” than any Rob Ford event, far more white than the Trucker protest in fact. Media failed to pick up on that for some reason.
I wonder if anyone attending a Downie vigil had their bank account frozen?
Remember the old “Whites Only/Colored Only” signs on water fountains and bathrooms in the old Jim Crow South? Thanks to Google, that kind of open, in-your-face racism is back with a vengeance. Google is so concerned that you not be racist that it is doing the most racist thing a major corporation has done at least since the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964: it is planning to mark the race of the owners of various businesses so that racists of all varieties can patronize only the stores of their favored group. Have Google’s far-Left ideologues really thought this through? If they really want to eradicate racism, this is just the way not to do it.
This will backfire.
VANCOUVER – Plans by the British Columbia government to confiscate suspected proceeds of crime with “unexplained wealth orders” are drawing praise from an expert in financial compliance as a way to make life harder from criminals.
Alexandra Wrage, CEO of Trace International, a global business association focused on commercial transparency and good governance, said unexplained wealth orders would help to redress and deter financial crime in the province, including money laundering.
I see a well intended idea abused by corrupt law enforcement. Asset seizures in the US have been nothing less than state sanctioned theft.
Last week, Caroline Farrow, a Catholic mother of five and UK director of CitizenGo, was arrested in her home for allegedly committing ‘malicious communications’ online (she strenuously denies these allegations).
Farrow’s account of the arrest—supported by cell phone photos and statements—details heavy-handed police forcing their way into her home, seizing her electronic devices, searching her, and whisking her away in a police car, all in front of her children and without a search warrant. This account is shocking, but by no means unique.
In 1920, the public health pioneer Charles-Edward Amory Winslow (1877-1957) famously described public health as the “art of preventing disease and prolonging life.” Working in public health during the early 20th century, Winslow faced the challenge of combating infectious diseases that caused high levels of early life mortality, like smallpox, typhoid fever, tuberculosis and cholera.
An Ontario court has granted Western University permission to remove the name of an emeritus history professor from six academic prizes funded by his estate following criticism that he espoused radical, racist views.
Kenneth Hilborn taught history and international relations at the London, Ont., university from 1961 to 1997. After his death in 2013 at age 79, Hilborn’s estate bequeathed $1 million to Western, including $750,000 to the history department for four undergraduate and two graduate awards that have been handed out since 2016.
In 2019, scholars began calling on the school to intervene, linking the scholarships with the legitimization of extreme right-wing beliefs by universities.
There is no point in denying History, use it as a teachable moment.
