an extreme example of cousin decline

study authors project that 70 years from now, a 35-year-old woman in Canada will have just five living cousins, 75 per cent fewer than her 20th-century predecessor.

My father is descended from a line of exceptionally hardy Catholic women who were encouraged by their faith and enabled by their robust constitutions to multiply. As a result, he has around 140 first cousins.

The Industrial Revolution made labour more mobile. Rather than settling near their parents to farm the family land or apprentice at the family business, young adults began to move from place to place in search of employment

And something about diabetics.

Liberal-NDP pharmacare framework bill tabled | CTV News:

NDP Leader Jagmeet Singh said Thursday. "This is historic. This is the dream of our party since the conception of our party."

[emoji]

What does the pharmacare bill say?

In paving the way for a full-fledged pharmacare program, Bill C-64, "An Act Respecting Pharmacare," indicates the Liberals' "commitment to consulting widely about the way forward," and intent to establish a committee of experts to make recommendations "on the operation and financing," within 30 days of the bill becoming law.

The committee would then have an entire year from the bill's passage to provide a report to the health minister with its recommendations.

Chrystia Freeland says drug coverage for diabetes and contraceptives in upcoming budget

Government highlights next step to universal access to free contraceptives - Canada.ca

April 1 shenanigans I guess.

Cotler has risen to great prominence in recent decades, with his accomplishments including serving as an MP from 1999 to 2015, a minister and attorney general from 2003 to 2006, and Canada’s special envoy on combatting antisemitism from 2020 to 2023. Cotler has also received at least 15 honorary doctorates, and in 1991 he was awarded the Order of Canada while in 2023 he received Israel’s presidential medal of honour.

Along the way, Cotler has told a story that has captivated audiences and won him praise from prominent figures.

The exact details have varied over the years, but the most common version of Cotler’s narrative is that in 1981 he visited South Africa as a guest of the anti-apartheid movement, gave a speech in support of Mandela that led to him getting arrested and at the end of his trip was asked to be part of Mandela’s international legal team.

This story has been credulously spread by media outlets and politicians in Canada for decades, up to and including Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, with the significance and extent of Cotler’s activity in South Africa inflated alongside his rise to prominence.

However, comments from the figures and organizations mentioned above cast doubt on Cotler’s narrative. In particular, various sources told The Maple there’s no evidence and/or record that Cotler had any relation with Mandela or that he was arrested in South Africa. Some of these figures also disputed Cotler’s recent claim that Mandela wouldn’t have supported South Africa’s case against Israel before the International Court of Justice.

This article will go through each element of Cotler’s narrative, outline what he has said about them and present the findings of The Maple’s research and interviews.

saw some friendly looking postering the other day:

their website: https://communistworkers.wordpress.com/

it reminded me off this [email protected] post by @[email protected] about these people.

i am not this kind of nerd, or the adjoining kind of nerd. but i like seeing some nerds in my neighbourhood. are they cool in a demented way, or something spooky?

my eyes glaze over when reading about these intrigues. are they the same group, the opposite group, or just another group of weird communists in toronto?

my first thought is: cool on them to put up posters. virtually nobody will bother to go to the website to find out how strange they are. it's chill to have stuff like that up in the neighbourhood so I appreciate that. to 99% of people it's just a pro-woman poster with no evident anti-trans dogwhistling.

what to make of the rest of the website?

the very simplest part of it is:

We envision a mass front that welds the working class into a revolutionary force, mainly at the point of production and secondarily among the unemployed. We will make this a reality through creative application of the ideology of the working class: Marxism-Leninism-Maoism–Gonzalo Thought, principally Gonzalo Thought.

Reach us at [email protected]. Encrypt your email using the PGP key below. The Tails operating system is recommended for additional security.

-----BEGIN PGP PUBLIC KEY BLOCK----- [an entire PGP block]

talk about people without a threat model...

just telling people to use tails to email them. lolololol

I think they might be 14 in which case this is adorable assuming there isn't an old man at the centre.

what'do you think?

Landlord says his tenants stopped paying rent months ago. But he's in limbo until case is heard

The tenants dispute their landlord's claims

The tenants did not want to go on record with CBC News, but they said they disagree with the claims being made against them.

Delays stressing out landlord

Portman says he rented the Walkerville property before buying it and the adjoining home in 2014.

The current tenants, a family of three, moved into one side of the duplex in December 2021.

According to Portman, the tenants have never paid the $1,800 monthly rent on time, which has forced him to repeatedly notify them that their rent is late. The rent would cover the mortgage for the entire property, according to Portman.

The gist of the Guardian Angels service is that they assign a 'property protector' who will inhabit your property free of charge," which saves the owner from paying vacant property taxes

The service also promises that its "property protectors" are prevented from "acquiring any tenancy rights" in homes they inhabit.

Guardian Angels Property states on its website that it provides these services to clients complimentary.

blogTO reached out to the company, and a representative confirmed that the business model is based on these so-called property protectors — who lack tenant rights — paying Guardian Angels Property to stay in these units.

This happened back in 2019 but if you've ever wanted to read a total nothingburger of an article here is one: https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/national-microbiology-lab-winnipeg-china-1.7129960

Notice there isn't a single mention of what actually happened. Like 1000+ words on mishandled document drama. Libs find this compelling. Something happened! A scandal!

Twenty years ago today, Canada played a key role in overthrowing the president of Haiti and thousands of other elected officials, significantly increasing foreign influence and triggering the country’s ongoing downward spiral. On February 29, 2004, Canadian special forces took control of the airport, facilitating US Marines’ removal of elected president Jean-Bertrand Aristide, whom they forced onto a plane bound for the Central African Republic, an action Aristide described as “kidnapping.” Immediately following Aristide’s removal, five hundred Canadian troops were dispatched to patrol the streets of Port-au-Prince.

The Canadian government significantly influenced the OAS electoral mission, contributing more than Can$300,000. Beyond the OAS framework, Ottawa also backed the opposition’s call for an election review. Canada and the United States threatened to cut off assistance to the country to protest the formula used to determine the winners of the Senate seats. In September 2000, Foreign Affairs Minister Lloyd Axworthy and US secretary of state Madeleine Albright convened a meeting of “the friends of Haiti.” The meeting resulted in a US declaration that they would withdraw assistance for Haiti’s November presidential election.

On January 31 and February 1, 2003, Chrétien’s government organized the “Ottawa Initiative on Haiti” to discuss that country’s future.Quebec journalist Michel Vastel reported this event in the March 15, 2003, issue of L’actualité, noting that no Haitian officials were invited to the meeting. At this assembly, high-level US, Canadian, and French officials decided the elected president “must go,” the army needed to be recreated, and the country put under UN trusteeship.

journalists can be and may be charged with genocide for work they’ve published since October 7, and as a news industry in a country directly aiding and enabling Israel’s genocide, this should be on the mind of journalists in Canada as well. For example, consistent pro-Israel messaging in Canadian media could play a role in building support for, and minimizing opposition to, Canada’s sale of weapons to Israel or cutting of funds to organizations meant to help its victims. The coverage could also have played a role in convincing Canadians to go overseas to join the Israeli army in its slaughter, which at least some have done — an action that has won them several puff pieces in media outlets.

But what exactly might make a journalist guilty of genocide? According to the Genocide Convention, the following acts are punishable: genocide; conspiracy to commit genocide; direct and public incitement to commit genocide; attempt to commit genocide; complicity in genocide. Hickman writes that the most relevant one of these acts for journalists is incitement.

So, what counts as incitement? There is direct incitement, which comprises the sort of statements in Israeli media quoted by South Africa in its application. However, direct incitement is not the only form of incitement, with nine others being commonly listed. In the 2017 book Atrocity Speech Law: Foundation, Fragmentation, Fruition, Gregory S. Gordon writes that these other forms are: “2) predictions of destruction; 3) verminization, pathologization, demonization, and other forms of dehumanization; 4) accusation in a mirror; 5) euphemisms and metaphors; 6) justification during contemporaneous violence; 7) condoning and congratulating past violence; 8) asking questions about violence; 9) conditional calls for incitement; and 10) victim-sympathizer conflation.” For the purpose of this article, I will focus on two of them: accusation in a mirror and justification.

Accusation in a mirror (AiM), Gordon writes, “is a genocidal speech technique that entails accusing the victim of a plan to commit the identical offenses that the actual perpetrator seeks to commit or has already committed.” The term AiM was coined by the perpetrators of the Rwandan genocide in what was effectively a manual on how to incite genocide that was discovered. The propagandist behind the note wrote that genocidaires should “impute to enemies exactly what they and their own party are planning to do.” They added that this method will “persuade listeners and ‘honest people’ that they are being attacked and are justified in taking whatever measures are necessary ‘for legitimate [self-]defense.’”

In a 2008 paper on incitement to genocide, Susan Benesch wrote, “The propagandist understood that accusation in a mirror achieves an important psychological prerequisite for genocide: it provides a collective justification for mass atrocities, just as self-defense provides an ironclad excuse for the crime of homicide.” Benesch added, “Dehumanization [...] makes genocide seem acceptable. ‘Accusation in a mirror’ goes further by making it seem necessary. The fact that this succeeded—that populations came to believe that unarmed or grossly outnumbered Jews, Muslims, or Tutsi might actually annihilate the Germans, the Serbs, or the Hutu—demonstrates the power of incitement.”

Justification, Benesch writes, means “to refer to atrocities that are already underway, correctly identifying the victims but describing the atrocities in ways that make them sound morally justified.” Benesch adds, “‘In many of the most hideous international crimes, many of the individuals who are directly responsible operate within a cultural universe that inverts our morality and elevates their actions to the highest form of group, tribe, or national defense,’ as [Yale Law professor emeritus] W. Michael Reisman has observed. Nazi leaders, for example, continually emphasized the ‘humaneness’ of the massacres, torture, death marches, slavery, and other atrocities they ordered.”

🔍🔍🔍

I have not found the sort of direct incitement rampant in Israeli media in Canadian publications at this point. However, there are articles that sound to me, based on the descriptions I’ve read from scholars, to be examples of AiM and justification. These go beyond just supporting Israel’s actions. First, here are a few that sound like AiM to me.

On January 9, The Globe and Mail published an article by Rosalie Abella titled, “The genocide case against Israel is an abuse of the postwar legal order.” In it, Abella writes, “It is a legal absurdity to suggest that a country that is defending itself from genocide is thereby guilty of genocide.” Abella clearly states that the Palestinians are guilty of genocide, not the Israelis.

On January 29, the National Post published an article by Vivian Bercovici titled, “Israel is the true victim of genocidal intent.” Bercovici writes, “Hamas leaders and supporters worldwide have stated their unequivocal aspiration to repeat the genocide of Oct. 7, repeatedly.” She says that “Israeli politicians have made imprudent comments” but that they “pale in comparison to the blood-curdling sadism of Oct. 7, which has been celebrated by Hamas and so many of its supporters in the four months since and call for it to continue until Israel and its Jewish population are destroyed. Completely. Totally. Utterly. That is genocidal intent.” Again, Hamas is charged of genocide here, while Israel is not.

On February 18, the National Post published an article by Stephen Harper titled, “Israel’s war is just, Hamas must surrender or be eliminated.” Harper writes that Hamas’ actions on October 7 represented “the urge to commit genocide at its most evil,” and added that the operation “may not have been a Holocaust in scale, but it was in kind.” Israel’s actions, meanwhile, are not only defended, but described as “essential.”

These articles stuck out to me not just because they seem to be examples of AiM, but also because of who wrote them. Abella was a Supreme Court justice in Canada from 2004 to 2021. Bercovici is one of Canada’s former ambassadors to Israel. Harper was Canada’s prime minister for nearly a decade. These are not fringe people.

Next, here are a few examples that sound like justification to me.

On Nov. 10, 2023, the National Post published an article by Avi Benlolo titled, “The International Criminal Court must prosecute Hamas’s war crimes.” Benlolo writes, “Hamas shows little care or concern for the lives of civilians on either side, which constitutes war crimes. In stark contrast, Israel diligently strives to protect civilian lives. Since Oct. 7, the Israel Defence Forces has made over 20,000 phone calls, dropped 1.5-million leaflets and sent over four-million SMS messages warning civilians about upcoming military actions and urging them to temporarily move to safety zones.” An Israeli campaign the ICJ has determined may plausibly amount to genocide is described as humane, and of being an example of the state’s higher moral status.

On Dec. 8, 2023, the National Post published an editorial titled, “No truth behind claim that Israel is committing genocide.” The editorial board writes, “There’s no question that the Hamas fighters who streamed into Israel on Oct. 7 intended to kill or capture as many Israeli civilians as they could. The Israel Defence Forces (IDF), in contrast, have taken active steps to minimize civilian casualties. At the start of the war, Israel warned civilians to evacuate northern Gaza. It dropped leaflets, placed phone calls and sent text messages ahead of air strikes and ground offensives. It opened humanitarian corridors so Gazans could move south in safety, and initiated daily four-hour humanitarian pauses so people could gather supplies or travel to safer areas.” This is a nearly identical example of the rhetoric used by Benlolo.

On Dec. 10, 2023, the National Post reprinted an article from the Jerusalem Post by Jenny Hazan titled, “Are Canadians going to stand up to Jew hate?” Hazan writes, “We will fight it with the utmost humanity possible, as we have fought all the wars we have had to fight. That’s why Israel sprinkled warning flyers begging civilians to evacuate two weeks before retaliating. And why Israeli hospitals will treat a bomber at the same ER as his victims. [...] The list of kindnesses goes on.” Again, Israel’s conduct is portrayed as not only humane, but the most humane in the world.