Anthony Rota, speaker of the House in Parliament made a big mistake. He invited a nazi into the revered space of Canadian power, claiming him (Yaroslav Hunka) to be both a Canadian and Ukrainian hero. Although he took responsibility for his actions, he cannot claim ultimate responsibility. Ultimate accountability is at least shared by the leader of the party in power as well as the party itself. An ethical leader would acknowledge, while having no part in the invitation, or planning of the blunder, he/she will by virtue of their authority rectify the situation. If someone has the power to do this, they are effectively saying the buck stops here. There is no shame in a leader correcting the mistakes of his MP, only in pretending that he is without culpability. Stepping up and into the mess, demonstrates a willingness to own every aspect of leadership including maintaining and repairing the relationships with those that are trusted. Embarrassment is a given, repair and reconciliation are rare.
Disingenuous Declaration
Demolition of Palestinian home by Israeli Forces 2013
“A land with no people for a people with no land.” This is one of the slogans I heard many times as I prepared for my trip to Israel in 2013. The attack by Hamas on Israel on 7 October, 2023 would not have happened had there been no people occupying the land of Palestine. Yet Israel formed their nation in taking over the majority of that land in 1948. There were 1.3 million Palestinians living in their homeland at that time. Menachem Begin gave orders to wipe out the entire human element in the village of Dar Yasin: 243 men, women and children sending a clear message to any one else who thought to defend their homes and communities: “stay and you will be slaughtered.” Just one example of Israel taking the moral high ground. Some of the 700,000 Palestinian families driven out of their homes in 1948 still hold the deeds to their homes now 75 years later.
I was in Lebanon in 2016. In the largest refugee camp, I met 3rd generation Palestinian refugees longing for home. According to Amira Hass she, a Jewish journalist who lived among the Palestinians “needed to know the people whose lives had been forever altered by my society and my history, whose parents and grandparents, refugees, were forced from their villages in 1948.” Her parents were among the few Jewish families who refused to move into a home, from which a Palestinian family had fled for their lives.
Nothing justifies Hamas’ attack on Israel today: full stop. Nothing justifies Israel’s daily aggression, occupation, humiliation, torture of prisoners, imprisoning children, bulldozing homes, increasing development of settlements and enclaves on Palestinian territory etc.: full stop.
To deny the truth of one side is an act of war. To collaborate with those creating falsehoods is an act of war. Israel has been waging war on Palestine for a very long time. To declare it today by President Benjamin Netanyahu is quite disingenuous; it’s only a matter of scale.
As Israel is positioning to annihilate Hamas solving nothing for peace, I have a few thoughts. What would it do for these two legitimate people groups to come together in the midst of grief and horror to say “enough.” Where are the brave men and women to exercise self-control knowing the long game requires a view for the well being of both nations? This is an opportunity to acknowledge that the security of Israel is an extension of Palestinian security and the many sub-issues that have grown out of the clash of these two brother nations. It is right to condemn todays attack. It is also right to spotlight the ongoing acts of terror on Palestinians by the Israeli’s.
The Buck Stops Over There
Missouri vs Biden: A Win For Science
In the Missouri vs. Biden case held a little over a month ago, Dr. Jay Bhattacharya was a witness against the Biden Whitehouse. This historical case saw Dr. Bhattacharya witness what the Supreme Court in 1949 said was “the vitality of civil and political institutions: free discussions… free debate.” According to Dr. Bhattacharya and as a point of fact, “the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that COVID-19 pandemic policy critics weren’t imagining these [censorship] violations. The Biden administration did indeed strong-arm social media companies into doing its bidding. The court found that the Biden White House, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the U.S. surgeon general’s office, and the FBI have “engaged in a years-long pressure campaign [on social media outlets] designed to ensure that the censorsohip aligned with the government’s preferred viewpoints.”
What was dismissed by the media and government as conspiracy theory was in truth a conspiracy. The shocking aspect of this common story is not the collusion between government and powerful entities/corporations. The shocker is that so many people fell for the media’s trickery in describing it. If someone dared to question the government (and thus media) sanctioned version of events, that individual was labeled with the shameful words ‘conspiracy theorist.’ And what followed these diseased, simple minded science deniers was ex-communication from the church of right think. A single day in court has come with much vindication, but as usual little “free press” coverage, no accountability, and absolutely no apology. Worst of all, a lack of interest which breeds forgetfulness and in turn a repeat of history.
Madness Revealed
Two decades ago, one of my university professors asked the class of students I was in how many bathrooms we had in our homes. It quickly became clear that the fewer bathrooms we could boast, the greater the currency we possessed in order to purchase observable virtue. When it came my turn, I asked if the fact that I had an outhouse until I was seven years old counted in my favour: it did not. After reading Douglas Murray’s book The Madness of Crowds, I have a greater understanding of what was happening in that room 20 plus years ago, and what continues to happen in the strange rooms we find ourselves in today. In the new world order a small class of people have risen to defend the underdog, which would seem to be anyone in the minority category: black, gay, immigrant, trans, and so on. According to Murray this elite class views privilege based on external characteristics as the new enemy: namely skin colour and possibly bathroom count.
Murray explains that this new upper class colludes with tech companies to extract pre-determined conclusion about people, for the purposes of weeding out their thoughts from public engagement. Apparently, the belief that a proclivity toward racist, homo/transphobic, right extremism have a higher incidence found in those individuals encased, for example, in the males with white skin is just one tenet of the new religious elite called woke. This group of individuals, while standing above everyone else in judgement and privilege feigns a self loathing (of trivial offenses) to highlight their righteous moral high ground that dare not be questioned; while at the same time hiding their real sin: racism, hate, hysteria, the very things they project onto their victims.
I work now with over 100 volunteers in a thrift shop to raise money for a good cause. A short while ago I asked a fellow worker if she heard the term woke. She had not. There exists a myriad of reasons why conflicts in one intellectual sphere bear little image to the lives of those in another. But without question we live in an era that until such time that certain issues flood the commons through powerful systems of release, they would otherwise go unnoticed. The export of ideas from powerful story makers (in concert with tech censorship of dissenting thought) must not be underestimated. An understanding of how information is produced and which way it flows to create policy is crucial to decision making for the every day citizen. Without an examination of conclusions that are arguably divisive, hateful and novel, the masses buy into “the science” that masquerades as an output of independent thought in a democracy.
Murray’s point is well taken. The speed at which media infects a person’s thoughts is overwhelming. Suddenly the consumer through “illusion of consent” via tech distortion, thinks he has a read on the popular sentiment of the day. Not wanting to be viewed as a bigot, racist, homophobe, he retweets the meme or slogan and then castigates anyone who thinks differently. The ruling class who orchestrated the issue and interpretation(s) to begin with, then relies on the population to enforce their perspectives and policies through this cunning flow of story formation. We fall into a trap; that being the illusion that the concerns of the common people are informing our leaders when in fact they do not. Instead, the everyday man and woman are unduly pressed upon, through the calculation of narrative flow, to nudge yea even force conclusion conformity aligning to those who hold the power.
As I read Murray’s book, I get a picture of our future that is more sinister than the stories of our past. The new colonizer’s strategy employs weapons “heretofore unimagined.” The new monarchs target the cyber space not with weapons of material destruction but social weapons of “emotional annihilation that shuns its victims into oblivion.” Shame, toilet counting, skin inspection, word-redefinition, outright cancelation and the like are the new nuclear threats. The gain from this madness? Less! Less unity, less thinking, less white influence, less science, less fact, less truth, less manliness, less men.
Murray skillfully illuminates a swath of taboo questions that challenge the set of unscientific assumptions that holds woke in a state of play. This book is a must read to help us think and question our way into sanity. We may even find ourselves in dialogue with someone other than ourselves.