If Black Lives Matter isn't following any rules, why should anyone else?

TORONTO - Why does everybody else follow the rules?

Why bother in the future?

Black Lives Matter protesters in Toronto don’t abide by the rules, and since there are never any ramifications nor repercussions, why should anybody else?

BLM can set up a semipermanent protest centre in front of Toronto Police headquarters and nothing happens — except they get a meeting with the chief. Pull an aggressive stunt to get the attention of the mayor outside his office, and they are rewarded with a chance to sit down with him.

They do the same near the premier’s house and, you guess it, they get in to chat with her, too.

No wonder BLM thinks they can do whatever they want and disrupt whatever they want...

How Super PACs Killed the Tea Party

My take on this is that the Tea Party had no particularly inspiring, thoughtful leader which is why it's never been spectacularly successful. It was often called "the right-wing equivalent of the Occupy Movement." If that's true, then it shows how conservatives are generally more civilized then leftists. The Occupistas were routinely violent, and when not turning their violence towards their opponents, would occasionally rape and assault each other. Tea Partiers were either to decent or old for that depravity. 

But when the Tea Party started embracing imbeciles like Sarah Palin, they might as well have hung out a sign that said, "We're suckers, please con us."

As we watch the Republican Party tear itself to shreds over Donald Trump, perhaps it’s time to take note of another conservative political phenomenon that the GOP nominee has utterly eclipsed: the Tea Party. The Tea Party movement is pretty much dead now, but it didn’t die a natural death. It was murdered—and it was an inside job. In a half decade, the spontaneous uprising that shook official Washington degenerated into a form of pyramid scheme that transferred tens of millions of dollars from rural, poorer Southerners and Midwesterners to bicoastal political operatives

What began as an organic, policy-driven grass-roots movement was drained of its vitality and resources by national political action committees that dunned the movement’s true believers endlessly for money to support its candidates and causes. The PACs used that money first to enrich themselves and their vendors and then deployed most of the rest to search for more “prospects.” In Tea Party world, that meant mostly older, technologically unsavvy people willing to divulge personal information through “petitions”—which only made them prey to further attempts to lighten their wallets for what they believed was a good cause. While the solicitations continue, the audience has greatly diminished because of a lack of policy results and changing political winds...

http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2016/08/tea-party-pacs-ideas-death-214164#ixzz4HMyGg2Cx 

Audio file revives calls for inquiry into massacre of Iran political prisoners

In an extraordinarily blunt manner, Montazeri is heard telling his audience, among them the sharia judge and public prosecutors, “In my view, the biggest crime in the Islamic Republic, for which the history will condemn us, has been committed at your hands, and they’ll write your names as criminals in the history.” 

Iranian journalist jailed for 'insulting the supreme leader'

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The 1988 mass execution is believed to have started after the MEK forces, which had defected to Iraq and were fighting alongside Saddam Hussein against their countrymen, launched an unsuccessful military incursion against Iranian forces. The MEK, which was listed as a terrorist organisation by the US and Europe for many years, is still hugely unpopular in Iran because of its terror campaign after the revolution. It has become a cult-like group, condemned by the UN for its treatment of its own members. 

In the audio recording, Montazeri tells his audience that he believes the authorities had a plan to execute political prisoners for a few years and found a good excuse in the wake of the incursion. Montazeri’s own son, Mohammad, was a “martyr” of the 1979 revolution, whose assassination the ayatollah blamed on the MEK. Not all the people killed in 1988 were MEK supporters and most were in jail for some time. 

The ayatollah says he felt compelled to speak out because otherwise he would not have an answer on the “judgment day”. “I haven’t been able to sleep and every night it occupies my mind for two to three hours … what do you have to tell to the families?” 

Later in the recording, Montazeri insinuates that the number of people executed since the revolution outnumbered those put to death by the deposed Shah. When an official seeks his consent for the last group of around 200 people to be executed, he is heard saying fiercely: “I don’t give permission at all. I am opposed even to a single person being executed.”

Although execution of dissidents was rife in Iran in the 1980s, the 1988 summer executions were on a different scale. Amnesty International estimates the number of people put to death in that summer alone to be about 4,500, although others talk of bigger numbers. 

 The detention of Homa Hoodfar is unjust and unIslamic. Iran should release her

Tariq Ramadan

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A fatwa issued by Khomeini in 1988 ordered the execution of apostates who refused to recant...   

Millennials outraged over TV show portraying millennials as perpetually outraged

War broke out today between millennial media and the cast and creators of CBS’ new comedy series The Great Indoors, in which Joel McHale stars as an adventure reporter who becomes boss to a group of millennials in the digital department of their magazine. The apocalypse struck TCA this morning...

...Stephen Fry, who co-stars as the charismatic founder of The Great Outdoors magazine, who is a world traveler, explorer and adventurer, jumped in to note there is “an element of coddling” and “an element in which you have it tougher than the generation before.”

“Yeah, no shit,” Millennial Media Member snarked at Fry, whose family “generations before” includes relatives sent to Auschwitz and other concentration camps.

The Millennial Media Member wanted her question answered by Gibbons, not Fry, and said so in no uncertain terms.

“A great example is how you interrupted my answer,” Gibbons shot back...

Wang Yu in Return of the Chinese Boxer

10 minutes of CNN and MSNBC cutting off any criticism of Hillary Clinton

Ontario's Labour movement cannibalizes itself over mismanagement and greed

Sid Ryan chumming it up at a demonstration with Islamic, pro-terror
extremists Zafar Bangash and Ali Mallah

Sid Ryan was at the forefront of radicalizing unions so that rather than concentrating on workers' rights, he was pushing them into hateful political causes, like the "Occupy" movement, and partnerships with a variety of fanatical anti-Israel groups and anti-capitalist/class warfare extremists that provided no benefit to union workers. Because of a personal dispute over money he feels he is owed from the Ontario Federation of Labour, Ryan wrote on the facebook post reprinted below that "The days when union leaders can make decisions behind closed doors and not be held fully accountable for those decisions are over. "

That's what the rest of us, as a matter of principle, were asking from you for years, Sid.  But when Ryan headed the OFL, he took the opposite position. In a sublime irony, it turns out that personal greed rather than principle has finally gotten Sid Ryan to realize the need for union transparency.

---------

Sid Ryan

August 9 at 8:01pm · 

Today, I served the OFL with a lawsuit for refusing to live up to their obligations as an employer by withholding and essentially stealing 6 years worth of my banked vacation pay.

This is a decision I made with a heavy heart as I have devoted my entire adult life to Ontario's Labour Movement and trying to make life better for the workers of Canada. I became a union member within weeks of stepping off a plane in this great country back in 1975. I have walked picket lines and fought at every level of this movement against employer that screwed workers. So I will be damned if I allow a small bunch of self important back room boys to screw me out of banked vacation credits that I have earned over 6 years as OFL President.

The main reason given to me (in writing) by OFL President Chris Buckley and repeated today by Secretary Treasurer Patty Coates is that " the OFL does not have the money to pay" their legal obligations. Patty also mentioned the decision was supported by the union leadership on the OFL Executive Board. This decision was far from unanimous and turned into a rancorous debate that went on for several hours .

The latter point is an interesting one as the Executive Board is stacked with unions (USW, UFCW and IAM) that exacerbated the financial crisis at the OFL by withholding their per capita (union dues) and are now using the crisis they created to weasel out of their lawful obligations.

But beyond the shameful behaviour of the above mentioned leadership, just think through what Buckley has put in writing to me. The OFL doesn't have the money to pay out my owed banked vacation, so therefore tough luck "you should have taken all your vacation" he said . Imagine for a second if all employers begin to use this logic for not paying their workers their legally due entitlements.

What a horrible precedent for the leader of Ontario's Labour Movement to be setting.

This is coming at a time when the OFL is championing the Workers Action Centre campaign of raising the minimum wage and demanding Labour Law Reforms to stop bad employers from stealing the wages and vacation pay owed to their employees.

It sure takes some chutzpah for Buckley to get up on a podium and call out bad employers for "stealing their employees wages and vacation pay" when he is guilty as sin of the same charge.

As I have indicated recently, this shameful debacle is far from over. Besides my lawsuit and regardless of its outcome, I fully intend to be a delegate ar the next OFL convention where this issue will get a full and complete airing on the floor of that convention.

The days when union leaders can make decisions behind closed doors and not be held fully accountable for those decisions are over. I know for a fact the membership of USW, UFCW and IAM were not consulted by their leadership when they withheld hundreds of thousands of dollars in union dues from the OFL. Those leaders along with Smokey Thomas were quite willing to destroy the Labour Movement in Ontario in order to get their way. Thomas withheld over $4 million in union dues over a 4 year period and from all recent accounts that I have heard - he cut a deal with Buckley to pay back the OFL a mere pittance - a tiny fraction of the $4 million owed.

All of these issues will be fully aired at the next OFL convention.

Meanwhile, I will be seeing Chris Buckley in the Ontario Superior Court where he will be forced to defend his actions and where he cannot hide behind the OFL Executive Board.

Stay tuned as this debacle is far from over.

Brain-Controlled Machine Training Helps Paralyzed Patients Move Legs

Several patients who had been paralyzed in their lower limbs for years have now regained some feeling and movement in their limbs, after learning to control a robotic exoskeleton with their brain, a new study says.

The findings were unexpected — researchers had been training the patients to use so-called brain-machine Interfaces, including the robotic exoskeleton, with the hope that the patients could one day use the machines to help them walk again.

But the training appears to have had additional benefits: After a year, the patients experienced improvements in their ability to perceive sensations of touch below their spinal cord injury, and regained some control over muscles in their lower limbs, the study found...

Terry Glavin: My, how far the anti-globalization movement has fallen

It took a cartoon appearing in the World Social Forum program in Montreal this week that could have come straight from the pages of Julius Streicher’s Nazi propaganda tabloid Der Stürmer to provide a fleeting glimpse into just how deeply the rot has spread: a hook-nosed Jew vomiting an Uncle Sam caricature, disgorging a long-bearded jihadist.

Put to the crude Khomeinist propaganda purpose of attributing the Wahhabi-inspired terrorism afflicting the Middle East at the moment to the United States and Israel – a lunatic conspiracy theory that enjoys generous toleration among Canada’s self-described “anti-imperialist” activists – it should tell you something that the World Social Forum’s animateurs did not notice anything untoward about the cartoon until it became the subject of a public uproar.

That is how far the “anti-globalization” movement has fallen since the World Social Forum’s first annual gathering in Porto Alegre, Brazil, in 2001. Conceived as an altruistic alternative to the neoliberalism of the World Economic Forum convened annually in Davos, the Forum is now as pleased to draw unambiguously fascist tendencies to its bosom as it is to facilitate note-swapping among vegans who have quarrels with Monsanto’s genetically modified food experiments...

Related:  Green Party losing members, riding associations as BDS controversy highlights infighting

Emails reveal Hillary’s shocking pay-for-play scheme

Hillary Clinton put the State Department up for sale, with top aides pulling strings and doing favors for fat-cat donors to the Clinton Foundation — including a shady billionaire, according to smoking-gun emails released Tuesday.

The stunning revelations include how wealthy contributors seeking influence or prestigious government gigs could fork over piles of cash to get access to Clinton’s inner circle, including top aides Huma Abedin and Cheryl Mills...

What's just as atrocious is that while this is a scandal in the US, it's the way Kathleen Wynne's government does business in Ontario and they have no shame about it.

It's not easy being Green - Elizabeth May may step down as Green Party leader because of toxic anti-semitism in her party

After the Green Party voted to implement an anti-semitic resolution for the boycott of Israel, party leader Elizabeth May told the CBC's Rosemary Barton that she may have to step down as party leader if she can't get the policy reversed soon.

..."I'm struggling with the question of whether I should continue as leader or not, quite honestly," May told Rosemary Barton in an interview with The National.

"I'm quite certain most of our members don't support this policy, but weren't fully engaged in the consensus building process we normally would have had," she said.

"So if I can't find a way to bring that back and have the members review it with a consensus decision-making process, then I have to profoundly question whether I can continue as leader and that's obviously heart-breaking."...

In related news, the BC Green Party has publicly broken with the federal Green Party over thew anti-Israel resolution and denounced it as "a politically motivated movement that damages any attempt at peace" that "represents a significant step away from the values that define the BC Green Party ."





Related: Green Party antisemitism reveals risks of electoral reform

Incompetence and Corruption by the Wynne Government Translates to Exorbitant Electricity Costs For Ontario Consumers

You may be surprised to learn that electricity is now cheaper to generate in Ontario than it has been for decades. The wholesale price, called the Hourly Ontario Electricity Price or HOEP, used to bounce around between five and eight cents per kilowatt hour (kWh), but over the last decade, thanks in large part to the shale gas revolution, it has trended down to below three cents, and on a typical day is now as low as two cents per kWh. Good news, right?

It would be, except that this is Ontario. A hidden tax on Ontario’s electricity has pushed the actual purchase price in the opposite direction, to the highest it’s ever been. The tax, called the Global Adjustment (GA), is levied on electricity purchases to cover a massive provincial slush fund for green energy, conservation programs, nuclear plant repairs and other central planning boondoggles. As these spending commitments soar, so does the GA.

In the latter part of the last decade when the HOEP was around five cents per kWh and the government had not yet begun tinkering, the GA was negligible, so it hardly affected the price. In 2009, when the Green Energy Act kicked in with massive revenue guarantees for wind and solar generators, the GA jumped to about 3.5 cents per kWh, and has been trending up since — now it is regularly above 9.5 cents. In April it even topped 11 cents, triple the average HOEP.

So while the marginal production cost for generation is the lowest in decades, electricity bills have never been higher. And the way the system is structured, costs will keep rising...

In order to secure the pro-terror vote, Hillary Clinton's team invites Orlando terrorist's father and Taliban supporter to be her backdrop at rally

Seddique Mateen, the father of the suspect in the June mass shooting at an Orlando nightclub, secured a prime seat at a rally for Hillary Clinton on Monday outside the city. For 25 minutes, Mateen sat right behind the Democratic nominee for president as she remembered the victims of the Pulse nightclub shooting and laid out her policies.

Mateen’s presence was first noted by WPTV reporter Tory Dunnan, who was initially rebuffed for an interview but then was surprised to find Mateen holding a pro-Clinton sign and asking to talk to press.

“Clinton is good for the United States, versus Donald Trump,” Mateen said in broken English. “I was invited by the Democratic Party; I’m a member.” 

Federal government distances itself from Jew-hate festival, though gov't of Quebec subsidized anti-semitism to the tune of $100,000

MONTREAL – The federal government has distanced itself from a major international gathering opening Tuesday in Montreal following complaints that its programming included anti-Semitic content.

The World Social Forum, expected to draw more than 10,000 participants, was told last week to remove the Canadian government logo from its list of partners after two Liberal MPs expressed disgust over what they called a “blatantly anti-Semitic cartoon” on the event’s website.

MPs Anthony Housefather, representing the Montreal riding of Mount Royal, and Michael Levitt, representing the Toronto riding of York Centre, also took exception to the World Social Forum’s heavy emphasis on the anti-Israel BDS movement.

“The Prime Minister, the Government of Canada, and the Canadian Parliament have been very clear that we oppose the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement and that anti-Semitism is never acceptable,” the MPs said in a statement.

Forum organizers cancelled a session that had been scheduled to show how Islamist terrorists are “in the service of world Zionism-capitalism.” The page for the event had featured a cartoon of a hook-nosed orthodox Jew with a Star of David on his hat, a drawing that Reuben Poupko, co-chairman of Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs (CIJA) Quebec, said was “not so different from those that appeared in Nazi papers.”...

Background HERE 

College Students Protest, Alumni’s Fondness Fades and Checks Shrink

Scott MacConnell cherishes the memory of his years at Amherst College, where he discovered his future métier as a theatrical designer. But protests on campus over cultural and racial sensitivities last year soured his feelings.

Now Mr. MacConnell, who graduated in 1960, is expressing his discontent through his wallet. In June, he cut the college out of his will.

“As an alumnus of the college, I feel that I have been lied to, patronized and basically dismissed as an old, white bigot who is insensitive to the needs and feelings of the current college community,” Mr. MacConnell, 77, wrote in a letter to the college’s alumni fund in December, when he first warned that he was reducing his support to the college to a token $5.

A backlash from alumni is an unexpected aftershock of the campus disruptions of the last academic year. Although fund-raisers are still gauging the extent of the effect on philanthropy, some colleges — particularly small, elite liberal arts institutions — have reported a decline in donations, accompanied by a laundry list of complaints.

Alumni from a range of generations say they are baffled by today’s college culture. Among their laments: Students are too wrapped up in racial and identity politics. They are allowed to take too many frivolous courses. They have repudiated the heroes and traditions of the past by judging them by today’s standards rather than in the context of their times...

How Hillary Clinton's email blunder killed an Iranian scientist who had cooperated with the US

Aug, 6, 2016 (FDI) - Five years into a ten year jail sentence for espionage, former nuclear scientist Shahram Amiri was executed on Saturday by hanging and his body returned to his family.

Amiri “disappeared” while making the Muslim pilgrimage to Mecca in 2009. The Iranian regime accused the United States of kidnapping him because he was engaged in sensitive nuclear research. Later, Mr. Amiri surfaced in the United States, and published reports said the U.S. government paid him $5 million for providing information on Iran’s nuclear program. 

In July 2010, Mr. Amiri had remorse, after several emotional phone calls with his five-year old son, who he had left behind in Iran. He traveled from Arizona to the Iranian Interests Section in Washington, DC, asking to be taking back to Iran. 

Those events led to crudely-coded email exchanges between Jake Sullivan and his boss, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, that were released in July 2015 under the Freedom of Information Act. 

“The gentleman you have talked to Bill Burns about has apparently gone to his country’s Interests Section because he is unhappy with how much time it has taken to facilitate his departure,” Sullivan wrote in an email to Mrs. Clinton private email server on July 12, 2010. “This could lead to problematic news stories in the next 24 hours. Will keep you posted.” 

This is the type of email exchange, containing classified information, that Mrs. Clinton’s aides never should have communicated over an unclassified system, giving rise to the charge by FBI Director Comey that Mrs. Clinton had been “reckless” in her handling of classified material...

 So reckless, in fact, that now someone clearly referred to in her emails is dead, executed by the Islamic Republic of Iran...

Between Short Circuits and The Clinton Cackle, Trump Still Can Beat Hillary

If policy decides elections, then Hillary Clinton likely will be elected President in November. Not that her policies are particularly clever or bold, but they aren't insane and they are generally consistent. Some of Trump's proposals, particularly on tax reform, are good, yet others are plain weird. His constant flip-flops on policy mean that a Republican presidential vote is a leap of faith that Trump will surround himself with good advisors and actually take advice.

But we're talking about an American election and there's not much in the way of recent history to suggest that they're decided on policy.

Americans vote for the person they like the most, or dislike the least, and who does a better job of projecting the characteristics of leadership, strength and competence.  In those regards, neither candidate stands out as being an obvious choice, but Trump has many advantages, simply because of Hillary's many conspicuous failings.

Political candidates are selling a product; themselves, and like any product being advertised, the perception and brand value is paramount. What Trump has been masterful at during the campaign is undermining his rival's brand, and destroying confidence in it. While that cuts both ways and there's no shortage of lack of confidence about Trump competence, he's crushing Hillary in the areas of leadership and strength. In terms of likability, Trump's off the cuff speaking style gives him advantages over Hillary's contrived, practiced speech-reciting.

But even more pronounced are the doubts about Hillary's mental acuity in times of crisis with which Trump has been priming the public both consciously and subliminally.

Saying that Hillary's brain is prone to short circuits is making people really take a closer look at the Democratic candidate.  So even if her strange facial tics and gestures aren't due to mini-strokes or a mental defect, Trump has successfully managed to put the idea of that possibility more prominently in the collective consciousness of the voters.

That perception of her was magnified last week, when Hillary completely froze, like a deer in headlights, just by having a couple of animal rights protesters hold up small signs at one of her rallies. Hillary seemed mentally incapable of speaking until one of her Secret Service handlers came up to her and told her, "keep talking."  Moments like that inflict serious damage on public confidence in her.




The Short Circuit isn't all of Hillary's perception problems. In 2004, Vermont Governor Howard Dean's presidential primary campaign was derailed not by a a scandal involving corruption or sex, not by him making an offensive remark caught on or off camera, not by a policy misstep, but by a mistimed shriek at a campaign rally that made him sound silly. The "Dean Scream" was so widely ridiculed that many observes thing it's what accounted for his precipitous decline in the polls and withdrawal from the race.

Just as Dean had the Scream, Hillary has the Clinton Cackle.

Hillary Clinton has a shrill, nervous laugh she utilizes in the most odd of times, including right after her deer-in-headlights moment at last week's rally.  It's a terrible sound and many people have noticed and commented on it. It hurt her in 2008 when she ran against Obama in the Democratic primaries and it is hurting her again in this election cycle.



The Republicans are behind in the polls and have their own problems to deal with. But in the privacy of the polling booth come November, lots of Americans will not be voting for Hillary based on no other reason than that they don't want a President who sounds like the Wicked Witch of the West.

Director Zhang Yimou defends casting Matt Damon to lead The Great Wall

Zhang Yimou's Hero and subsequent film House of Flying Daggers are two of the best martial arts/fantasy movies ever made...

Acclaimed Chinese director Zhang Yimou has responded to criticism from an Asian-American actress over the casting of "white man" Matt Damon as his movie's lead, saying the role was never conceived for a Chinese actor.

Damon of the Bourne franchise will star later this year in the $150 million US Chinese-Hollywood fantasy movie The Great Wall, an English-language movie set in China involving menacing supernatural monsters.

Constance Wu, who stars in a U.S. comedy series centered on immigrants called Fresh Off the Boat, posted on Twitter last week: "We have to stop perpetuating the racist myth that a only [sic] white man can save the world."... 

..."Our film is not about the construction of the Great Wall. Matt Damon is not playing a role that was originally conceived for a Chinese actor. The arrival of his character in our story is an important plot point," he was quoted as saying. Zhang said actors portraying the movie's other four "major heroes" are Chinese.

The casting of Damon hasn't sparked any controversy in China, where producers are increasingly entering into co-productions with American and other movie makers to improve their filmmaking techniques, and where the government is pushing for Chinese films to be global hits...

Why is the Trudeau government sponsoring an extremist conference promoting hatred of Jews and insane conspiracy theories?

That a large gathering of groups extolling violence, Marxism, anti-semitic and anti-American 9/11 conspiracy theories is set to take place at McGill University in Montreal next week is odd. But what takes it beyond being merely odd and into the realm of being an outrageous breach of responsibility, is that they are receiving official sponsorship from the governments of Canada and Quebec.

A World Social Forum visual aid uses antisemitic,
anti-American propaganda to claim that Jews and 
Americans are behind Wahhabism

The "World Social Forum" claims its goal is to "gather tens of thousands of people from groups in civil society, organizations and social movements who want to build a sustainable and inclusive world.." However that inclusiveness does not extend very far. The groups and individuals presenting at the the event are almost exclusively limited to radical Marxist, anti-American, and anti-semitic organizations that promote extreme, hateful, and violent ideologies.

Governments of Canada, the Province of
Quebec,and the City of Montreal are
among the forum's partners

If Truth In Advertising Laws covered events like the World Social Forum, it would have to call itself the International Socialist Forum. Although in describing some of its facets, National Socialist Forum might be more apt. Among presentations at the World Social Forum is one called "Terrorizm (sic), Wahhbism, Zionism" which postulates the anti-semitic conspiracy theory popular amongst radical Shiite Islamists that Saudi Arabian Wahhabism, an extreme version of Sunni Islam, is actually is a Zionist plot. Among the resources that the World Socialist Forum have to make that argument is a cartoon reminiscent of Nazi anti-Jewish propaganda. (Update - on Saturday afternoon, embarrassed by being exposed for its antisemitism, the World Social Forum finally removed the Nazi-like cartoon from its website. However, the forum's many extremist and antisemitic seminars remain on their schedule.)

That seminar is one of at least a dozen at the forum whose object is the demonization, boycotting and delegitimization of Israel, matching the description of Jew-hate formulated by the Canadian and International Interparliamentary Coalitions for Combating Antisemitism.

The fact that Canadian taxpayers, through the Trudeau government, are subsidizing hate speech is bizarre at the least. In Quebec, a person can be prosecuted for telling sarcastic jokes about disabled people. Yet evidently, if someone  in complete seriousness wants to promote Jew-hatred, they can get a Quebec government grant. If these government partnerships with the World Social Forum stand in the light of being exposed, it also has the potential to disqualify the government from any prosecuting future Hate Speech offenses, as few are as egregious as the ones to which the government is cooperating in giving a platform.

Other seminars at the World Social Forum include one promoting lunatic, long-discredited anti-American 9-11 conspiracy theories and others extolling class warfare, violence and terrorism.

Among the speakers at the Forum are a number of terrorism apologists, including fanatical propagandists Eva Bartlett and Ken Stone, who are also routinely featured speakers at Toronto's annual al Quds Day rallies, which are anti-semitic gatherings held in the summer calling for the killings of Jews and terrorism against Israel.

Clearly the government and many of the sponsors did not do due diligence before agreeing to partner with and sponsor the World Social Forum. But now that they are aware of what they are involved with, if they do not immediately withdraw their support, it is tantamount to Justin Trudeau's government playing accomplice to violent, hateful extremism, and using public money to do it.

Canadian tax dollars used to promote lunatic conspiracy theories

These unions are abusing their workers dues to sponsor
the conspiracy laden, anti-semitic "World Social Forum"

Your tax dollars at work - ads from the Canadian Government
and the City of Montreal in the forum's program

Investigating the Obama administration’s $400 million payment to Iran

...JAY SOLOMON, The Wall Street Journal: The difficult part of this story from the very beginning was, the administration did announce back in January this $1.7 billion payment.

But as far as the specifics, the mechanics, they have refused to answer, like, when did the money arrive, how was it spent, was it sent in cash, until, through our reporting, we found out that actually this money was sent in pallets of cash on a plane secretly.

And to this day, we’re still trying to figure out the timing, when did this money arrive, and through this reporting, there is indications that it was secret, that basically these Americans weren’t going to be released until that money arrived. So then it becomes a question really of timing.

HARI SREENIVASAN: So, which leads you to believe that there was a quid pro quo, that the prisoners wouldn’t be released until the cash was in hand?

JAY SOLOMON: That is part of what we’re seeing...

Venezuela Reaches the End of the Road to Serfdom

...feckless and authoritarian kind of socialism is the only kind of socialism anybody has ever seen or heard of outside of a college dorm room. Either socialism is the unluckiest political idea in the history of political ideas and it just happens to have coincided with government by monsters, caudillos, and incompetents every place it has been tried, or there is in fact something wrong with socialism qua socialism...

The Big Lebowski Died

David Huddleston, most famous for his role as the real The Big Lebowski in the film of the same name, has died, Los Angeles Times reports. He was 85.

His wife, Sarah Koeppe, confirmed to the newspaper that he died of advanced heart and kidney disease on Tuesday in Santa Fe, N.M.

The character actor played a number of parts over the course of his more-than-50-year career. He acted on Broadway, television and also in commercials. But it was his breakout role later in life that brought him the most notoriety, his titular role in 1998's The Big Lebowski, in which he played the humorously cantankerous character who avoids capture by thugs who instead mistake Jeff Bridges' character, "The Dude," for the millionaire Lebowski. Though Huddleston only appears sporadically, his moments were scene-stealers and key to the film. The movie wasn't a blockbuster when it debuted, but it has since gained cult status and became widely popular...

Lawrence Solomon: For lies, corruption and scandal, Hillary is Trump on steroids

...Trump is a liar, continually making things up and changing his story. In the last week alone he claimed the NFL contacted him to complain that presidential debates would conflict with the NFL schedule (the NFL denies it), that he avoided the Vietnam draft due to a lucky draft number (government records show he obtained a medical deferment) and that he never met Vladimir Putin (contradicting his own earlier claims). His lies are often silly, about matters of little or no consequence, calculated to please his audience or make himself look good. He may not even realize his lies. As his Republican primary opponent, Ted Cruz, put it: “I actually think Donald, if you hooked him up to a lie detector test, he could say one thing in the morning, one thing at noon and one thing in the evening, all contradictory and he’d pass the lie detector test each time. Whatever lie he’s telling, at that minute he believes it.”

Clinton is a liar, too, but in an entirely different league. She lied about having destroyed government emails, about having exposed classified U.S. government secrets to Russia, China and other hostile nations through an unsecured server in her own basement that, according to U.S. intelligence experts, almost certainly led to the outing of covert CIA operatives. She lied to the parents of murdered Americans in the terror attack at Benghazi, Libya, about the cause of their death, and her role in their death. She lied under oath when testifying to Congress, and she lied about FBI Director James Comey’s public indictment of her lies, which he delivered to the nation.

Her lies are nothing new and they are legion. Hillary Clinton is a “congenital liar,” in the words of famed New York Times columnist William Safire, whose 1996 essay, “Blizzard of Lies,” explains that she lies “for good reason: To admit otherwise would be to confess taking, and paying taxes on, what some think amounted to a $100,000 bribe” allegedly arranged through some very suspicious-looking cattle-futures trades. For good measure, Safire also chronicled her other alleged criminal activities, including fraud, obstruction of justice and corruption...

More than half of all Canadians support travel ban to protect Canada from terrorism: poll

The idea of a ban on people coming from countries affected by terrorism has been an issue in this year’s U.S. presidential election, but it appears half of Canadians are on side with it.

Fifty-one per cent of respondents in an Ipsos poll conducted for Global News strongly or somewhat supported banning people from all countries compromised by terrorism as a means to ensure national security...

Bail granted to convicted student in Mandi Grey rape case

The Superior Court ruling is no surprise - the Lower Court Judge made glaring errors in law in his decision. The reasoning behind the decision by Judge Zuker to convict in the trial seemed grounded in Gender Studies theory rather than law. Doing the complainant no favors, the Lower Court's ruling was so blatantly biased in favor of her that it will likely result in a successful appeal:

Just under two weeks after he was convicted of raping a fellow York University doctoral student, Mustafa Ururyar was released on bail Wednesday.

Superior Court Justice Michael Quigley overturned the lower court’s decision last week to revoke Ururyar’s bail. He did not release his reasons immediately, but the previous day in court he openly questioned whether the judge in the case, Ontario Court Justice Marvin Zuker, had a “mind that may be a little too full” with academic texts and tomes on gender-based violence, rape and trauma to deliver a fully impartial ruling.

“That was a jaw-dropper,” said Quigley, referring to the number of academic references cited in Zuker’s judgment which had not been introduced as evidence during the court case. “That raises questions of having a predisposed mind.”

After a six-day trial spread out over six months, Zuker convicted 29-year-old Ururyar on July 21 of sexually assaulting Mandi Gray. The two had been hooking up for two weeks before the night of the assault. Ururyar’s defence had been that the two had consensual break-up sex, and Gray fabricated the rape charge to exact revenge and further her “political agenda” to become a champion of sex assault victims across country. (Gray has waived the publication ban on her name.)

Zuker, in end, found Gray “very credible and trustworthy” and said Ururyar’s version of what happened that night was “a fabrication, credible never.”...

Background HERE

Steve Forbes Explains Trump's Appeal

Matthew Lau: Why the right price for carbon is probably zero dollars

Recently, Canadians for Clean Prosperity published what it called the “Conservative Case for a Carbon Tax.” The organization, led by Mark Cameron, a former policy director to Stephen Harper, exists primarily to convince conservatives of the virtues of a carbon tax. To their credit, Canadians for Clean Prosperity does advocate that carbon taxes should be offset by equivalent cuts to corporate or personal income taxes and that they should replace — rather than add to — other regulations aimed at reducing emissions.

Where Canadians for Clean Prosperity goes wrong is in the price it wants to put on carbon. It advocates a minimum price of $30 per tonne, which would increase to $100 by 2030. The logic is that $30 is approximately the “social cost of carbon” (the supposed present value of damages caused by future climate change, per tonne of emissions today) as modelled by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). The group argues that taxes must eventually rise to $100, however, to ensure Canada reaches its emissions targets.

But ongoing uncertainties in the climate science prevent the social cost of carbon from being measured with much precision, and these estimates can be drastically changed simply by tweaking the discount rate used to convert future climate damages into present day value. The U.S. government’s Office of Management and Budget (OMB) states that government agencies performing regulatory analysis should provide estimates using discount rates of both three per cent and seven per cent. The latter figure is actually the default since seven per cent is “an estimate of the average before-tax rate of return to private capital in the U.S. economy.”...

Hillary Clinton bikini mural covered with niqab after public decency complaints

A Melbourne street artist who was threatened with a council fine over a provocative mural he painted of US presidential candidate Hillary Clinton has responded by covering her image with a niqab.

Maribyrnong council took issue with the original mural, which depicted Clinton wearing a revealing swimsuit with $100 notes tucked into it...

The regime admired by the Leap Manifesto nitwits just introduced forced labor laws

Hugo Chavez' Mini-Me, Nicolas Madero, is doing what socialist totalitarians invariably do, deprive people of basic rights and freedoms. Chavez' Venezuelan regime was admired and extolled by Naomi Klein and Avi Lewis and their comrades in stupidity, who want to impose their own plan to deprive liberty in Canada through their imbecilic Maoist-sounding Leap Manifesto.

President Nicolás Maduro signed a decree at the end of last week that gives powers to the labor ministry to order "all workers from the public and private sector with enough physical capabilities and technical know-how" to join a government drive aimed at increasing food production.

They can be required to work in the agricultural sector for a 60-day period that can be extended for another 60 days "if the circumstances require it."

Shortages of basic goods have become a normal part of life for most Venezuelans ever since the country was plunged into an economic crisis by the plummeting oil price. Food shortages have become particularly acute in recent months, accompanied by violent demonstrations and violent responses to these by the police...

Israel Proves the Desalination Era Is Here

Bar-Zeev, who recently joined Israel’s Zuckerberg Institute for Water Research after completing his postdoc work at Yale University, is an expert on biofouling, which has always been an Achilles’ heel of desalination and one of the reasons it has been considered a last resort. Desal works by pushing saltwater into membranes containing microscopic pores. The water gets through, while the larger salt molecules are left behind. But microorganisms in seawater quickly colonize the membranes and block the pores, and controlling them requires periodic costly and chemical-intensive cleaning. But Bar-Zeev and colleagues developed a chemical-free system using porous lava stone to capture the microorganisms before they reach the membranes. It’s just one of many breakthroughs in membrane technology that have made desalination much more efficient. Israel now gets 55 percent of its domestic water from desalination, and that has helped to turn one of the world’s driest countries into the unlikeliest of water giants.

...Driven by necessity, Israel is learning to squeeze more out of a drop of water than any country on Earth, and much of that learning is happening at the Zuckerberg Institute, where researchers have pioneered new techniques in drip irrigation, water treatment and desalination. They have developed resilient well systems for African villages and biological digesters than can halve the water usage of most homes.

The institute’s original mission was to improve life in Israel’s bone-dry Negev Desert, but the lessons look increasingly applicable to the entire Fertile Crescent. “The Middle East is drying up,” says Osnat Gillor, a professor at the Zuckerberg Institute who studies the use of recycled wastewater on crops. “The only country that isn’t suffering acute water stress is Israel.”

That water stress has been a major factor in the turmoil tearing apart the Middle East, but Bar-Zeev believes that Israel’s solutions can help its parched neighbors, too — and in the process, bring together old enemies in common cause...

Milton Friedman explains why capitalism is far better than any of the alternatives

CNN interview goes sideways when NYU & Princeton Russian scholar defends Trump's policy of detante with Putin

Statistics Canada wants to be able to invade your privacy to a degree only rivaled in totalitarian states

They want to be able to see credit card transactions and Internet searches, among other very personal data:

...Statistics Canada currently has a policy paper out asking for the law to be changed to give them this extraordinary power. Here's the quote,

that the Agency can require any organization to provide any data file in its possession, that originates with that organization, to Statistics Canada for statistical purposes.

That's a pretty broad and sweeping statement, it would seem to encompass anything and everything they could want.

To say “any organization” and “any data file” is pretty sweeping.

But the national statistics office didn’t stop there, they spelled out some of what they would be looking for.

This would include, without restricting the generality of the provision, such things as: building permit records and property evaluation records from municipal governments; health insurance records, motor vehicle registration and vital statistics records from provincial government departments; and electrical service billing files, credit card transaction files, cellular telephone transaction files, point of sale product code scanner transaction files and internet search transaction files..,