Oprah Said What!!! by Joe Ingino

Oprah Said What!!!
  Oprah’s God like  speech to the masses at the Golden Globe was a moment of intense viewing... It was as if she was about to split in half and Hillary to pop out.
Instead, Oprah with the flare of Hollywood stood there and said, “I want all the girls watching here, now, to know that a new day is on the horizon! And when that new day finally dawns, it will be because of a lot of magnificent women, many of whom are right here in this room tonight, and some pretty phenomenal men, fighting hard to make sure that they become the leaders who take us to the time when nobody ever has to say "Me too" again.”
Wait a  minute... is that statement not prejudice?   I can understand the context.  But is the statement not bias towards girls and women?
What if a white man stood there and said the same about young boys and men?  Would it not be deemed as bias and prejudice and totally out of line?
Then the question lingers why is Oprah able to get away with it?  
To ad insult to injury.   The most untrusted news source CNN is quick to deem it a Presidential candidacy speech.   Really?   Are we not out to stop bias and prejudice?
I like the opening statement by Seth Meyers, “Good evening, ladies and remaining gentlemen.”
Part of that had to do with the general side lining of Golden Globes host Seth Meyers. The late-night star described himself aptly as “like the first dog they shot into outer space” as an awards host in the post-Weinstein Hollywood era. And he didn’t seem ready for the altitude at first, claiming early on that he’d been a second choice to host after various women said no.
This was in service of an unworthy joke about how women feel uncomfortable in hotels now because of Weinstein, and worse still, didn’t feel true. (He’s another straight white guy hosting an awards show! What else is new?) What did feel true was a staging of Meyers’s Late Night bit “Jokes Seth Can’t Tell,” in which members of protected-class communities get the opportunity to deliver the punch lines of jokes that, up until very recently, any other straight white guy hosting an awards show would have felt empowered to tell.
Is this going to be the new world order?  Is equality not something all can enjoy?   You have the Trump bashers making statements that Trump is a racist a bigot and does not respect women.    Really, I have yet to see any of those allegations made public.   I believe that Trump in the year in office has accomplished many great things for all Americans.   For the young boys and girls.  For the middle ages men and women.  For elderly men and women.   Not in one instance was there reference to bettering women over men.   Child over adult or youth over seniors.   I have yet to see how a cry to young women as Oprah did can’t be seen as bias and discriminatory. The underlying monster is politics and how battered we as a population truly are.   We suffer from a general overwhelment.   Deep inside we all want good in the world but we fail to understand the world enough to appreciate that utopia is not what we should be striving for as in perfection there is imperfection.
Seth in his jokes made references such as:  Happy New Year, Hollywood! It's 2018, marijuana is finally allowed and sexual harassment finally isn't. There's a new era under way, and I can tell because it's been years since a white man was this nervous in Hollywood. For the male nominees in the room tonight, this is the first time in three months it won't be terrifying to hear your name read out loud.  Satire with a strong social punch.  A punch that at times is hard to comprehend as it brings to question the change that we undergoing if it is for the good or the compromising of our civilization.  There is no question that there should be no discrimination, bias and or prejudice against no one.  If so then why did Oprah draw such line in the sand?

For The Love of Hate by Joe Ingino

For The Love of Hate
  What is wrong with America?  Have we finally lost our common sense and National pride?  I can respect freedom of speech and human rights.   What I do not understand is public defiance and civil unrest in the name of democratic freedoms.
In these modern time it appears that as soon as a white police officer wrongly uses excessive force against a minority that it has granted minorities a license to go out and riot.
It appears that in these modern times, to hate a President is the ‘IN’ thing.   I wonder if during Kennedy’s Presidency the same took place.   After all Kennedy was one that took the world by the horns and shook it.
Trump seems to be doing the same.  Trump in my opinion is a man that has his own cosmic significance and purpose.   He has gone up against the system that was stacked against him and has come out on top every time.  Yet, Trumps sublime TV network CNN can’t go 15 seconds with putting out his name to millions of people.
We the ignorant population eat it all up.   We talk about it during out day and we create opinion based on hearsay. 
We have become a population of people that love to hate and hate to love progress and change.  It appears that due to our daily failures we have  become blind and are easily manipulated to oppose success.   To look for fault and or fracture.
We live in a system that is not for us to succeed but for us to fail.  A system that has as oppressed by our own ignorance of the actual facts.
I remember at the University during my graduate years... a professor joking and stating.  We are the educated ignorant as no matter how smart we know within our disciplines.  We know nothing but what we are told and hear.
The system has each one of pigeon holed into a mind set.  Outside of that mindset we are truly ignorant of the real facts.  As I written. We are modern day slaves.  Instead of chains we are held in captive  by our necessities/commitments/responsibilities.    We are constantly punished and made to work harder through our many financial commitments.   We live in a world that has us believing we have choice.  In reality our choice is controlled by our ability to work hard for the system.
Romantics have noted that ‘Love and Hate’ are the means to the end in a philosophical “yin yang” model.
Instead of praising a President that is actually making significant changes.   It appears at least according to CNN that the village people want him out.
Now since when has bias news reporting been confused with ‘fake news’.   Or is ‘fake news’ the new or old ‘bias news’. 
As a journalist I remember the many phone calls for being labeling a particular slant based on what was printed.  In reality in 99% of the cases it was what it was.   If a particular side was predominant then that was what it was.  Today it appears that due to financial gains, bias is predominant... and when money can’t reach you.  Some media outlets like CNN have turned to ‘fake news’.  I say this due to the fact that look at the experts they bring on their show.   Everyone is an expert...  DAM now I am doing it... I am turning on to a CNN.  Every time I rag on CNN I am giving them public exposure.   For the love of hate.  Can we just all wake up and see the truth?   Ha, keep dreaming Dorothy.  The truth is not for all to know as much like in that Tom Cruise movie.  “WE CAN’T HANDLE THE TRUTH”.   If anything we are good ignorant modern slaves with opinions.   

Mr. President, tell your lawyers: 'You're fired!' Larry Klayman

Mr. President, tell your lawyers:
'You're fired!'
Exclusive: counters those claiming Flynn matter not a problem for Trump.

No matter how hard President Trump’s lawyers try to spin it, or favorably disposed media try to downplay it, the criminal charges filed today, with the entry of a plea against and cooperation agreement concerning retired Gen. Michael Flynn, do not bode well for the White House. Flynn pleaded guilty of one count of lying to the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), and with yet another leak from the special counsel it appears that no jail time will be recommended, only probation, if Flynn cooperates with Mueller and his team of Trump-hating leftist and Muslim lawyers and gives up the goods on the president, his associates and his family. Indeed, the speaking criminal information made public today in the open court of the Honorable Rudolph Cantreras speaks to Flynn’s admissions of likely so-called collusion (however legal in reality) with Russia over the removal of sanctions imposed by former President Barack Obama.

While the usual inexperienced political pundits on the conservative side of the spectrum rushed to made glowing assessments that if this is all Mueller has, then President Trump is “out of the woods,” those with any degree of real criminal defense experience, particularly in the legal culture of the Washington, D.C. swamp, know better.

The simple and hard fact is this: Given all of the illegal grand jury leaks of the Mueller prosecutors over the last many months that Flynn would ultimately be indicted for several alleged crimes, some of which if provable are very serious, the general pleading only to this very limited charge shows that the special counsel got a lot in exchange, implicating, at best, those in and around the president for other alleged crimes.

While I believe Flynn to be an honorable man and hero, the other hard fact is that Mueller and his hack prosecutors were without any doubt threatening to destroy him, his son and his family if the general did not “turn state’s evidence.”
And, as the old adage goes, a sinking and drowning man will grab on to anything to save his life, even if the suborned perjury at the request of Mueller is necessary to save oneself and his family.

That in simple terms is why today’s events, caused by a special counsel who is the product of both the Democratic and Republican establishments – most of whom would like to see the Trump presidency incinerated short of a nuclear attack by North Korea – is so dangerous for the president and all of his men and women who, only for now, have been left standing. And, to underscore the partisanship of Mueller, he chose to make his plea and cooperation agreement with Flynn known in open court, and elsewhere, on the very day of President Trump’s biggest legislative triumph to date: the passage by the U.S. Senate of tax reform, after the House of Representatives voted similarly a few weeks ago.

Mueller thus intended to take the media focus away from this Trump victory by smearing him with the Flynn criminal charges, plea and a cooperation agreement before a federal judge in Washington, D.C., who was nominated by former President Barack Obama.

 While I am not casting any aspersions on Judge Cantreras, one hopes that he will administer to the sentencing of Flynn impartially, as well as address any further criminal leaks of grand jury information by Mueller and his prosecutors.

I fully expect that over this weekend we will hear a drumbeat from the president’s lawyers, Ty Cobb, John Dowd and especially Jay Sekulow, the latter of whom has taken on the role of legal spokesperson, that all is well in Gotham. And, while I like Jay and think that he is a fine religious-rights lawyer at the American Center for Law and Justice, he, like his other two colleagues, is ill-suited to now wage a strong defense of the president and those around him in the months ahead.

Indeed, Ty Cobb, the great-great-grandson of the famous baseball player, has “struck out.” And, I have had my own experience with Cobb during the Clinton years, when he ran interference for the Bonnie and Clyde of American politics by representing John Huang, the suspected communist Chinese spy Bill and Hill placed at Ron Brown’s Commerce Department. There, Huang, who had worked for the Chinese Riady family and its Lippo Bank before moving to the Democratic National Committee and then Commerce, was believed to have passed classified economic information to the Chinese as a quid pro quo for the Chinese government illegally lining the coffers of the Clinton-Gore re-election campaign in 1996.

Not coincidentally, the Riady family were huge donors to Bill Clinton when he ran for governor of Arkansas and later the presidency. In several depositions I took of Huang, where he was held in contempt by a federal magistrate judge over 150 times for refusing to answer my questions under oath, Cobb was present to protect not just his client but also the Clintons. Why, then, would President Trump want him as his criminal defense counsel?

As for John Dowd, he is pure Republican establishment, that same establishment that has repeatedly tried to drive a stake in the president’s heart. And, Jay Sekulow, while loyal to the president, lacks the experience and thus depth to represent him in a criminal defense setting.

Now that Mueller’s handwriting is on the “Trump White House Wall,” the president must now be true to himself and his instincts and retain seasoned and hard-hitting criminal defense lawyers outside of the incestuous Washington, D.C., legal swamp – where most attorneys put their own clubby political and other interests ahead of their clients. The best defense for the president is a good offense. In this way he can keep the ball away from the Mueller team.

At Freedom Watch I filed suit late last week to have Mueller removed as special counsel based on the continuing criminal leaks and conflicts of interest. You can see our complaint at www.freedomwatchusa.org. It’s time the president hire lawyers who will also go on the offense and not only join our case, but also sue Mueller and his friend James Comey for the illegal wiretaps and unmasking the FBI and Obama administration initiated on the Trump Tower and team.

Now is not the time for President Trump to listen to his legal defense team and be consoled that all is going well. It’s time to wake up and with new lawyers go on the offense before it is too late. In the famous words of The Donald, “Your fired!” At this perilous point, the president does not need any more ill-suited conflicted, weak and inexperienced “apprentices”!

"And the L-rd set a mark upon Cain . . . . " Gen. 4-15. By H.J. ROGERS

 H. J. Rogers
Harvard Law School '66
    
        The Biblical Mark of Cain is not intended to be a punishment, nor lead to some form of punishment.  In the words of Gunther Plaut, editor of The Torah which is used in most Reform synagogues, "[I]t is not a hand of rejection but a sign of protection."   The person who best expresses my own conflicted feelings with regard to those who kill is the Irish poet Oscar Wilde in his long poem "The Ballad of Reading Gaol".  Wilde spent a couple years in prison on what might be loosely called a morals charge today.  During his routine exercise walks, Wilde would observe another prisoner walking in another ring in the opposite direction:
        I walked with other souls in pain,
            Within another ring,
        And was wondering if the man had done
            A great or little thing,
        When a voice behind me whispered low,
            "That fellow's got to swing."
        I can see clearly now that it the not the murderer per se that attracts me.  Murder, any murder for any reason, is a terrible thing, so very terrible that even a man like Albert Camus, a Nobel prize winner who rejected any morality based on Judeo-Christian precepts, could reject it categorically:  "There are some causes worth dying for but none are worth killing for."  Equally terrible is what is done to a person convicted of murder: They are locked away in a tiny cell for years to prevent them from "cheating the hangman".  What is humorous in a way is our attempt to make killing humane.  To my mind the Chinese do it best with a small caliber bullet to the base of the skull.  The organs are immediately "harvested" and the next-of -kin is sent a bill for the bullet.
        Nothing attracts public attention like a murder trial.  In the mid-1950s, we my family living in a little coal patch near Wheeling.  A man named Walter Rabulsky was accused of murdering a bar girl and dumping her body along the railroad tracks.  The trial was highly publicized and based on circumstantial evidence.  My parents were quite divided, arguing the evidence as it appeared each day in newspapers.  My mother was certain that Rabulsky had done it while my father was skeptical about the quantum of evidence.  Rabulsky's acquittal was almost a personal triumph for my father.
        The trial was one of the few things that brought excitement to both of my parents, so I was surprised at their relative lack of interest at the next big murder case that occurred in Wheeling.  I had expected them to be as enthusiastic as they had been about the Rabulsky case, but they were almost indifferent.  The perpetrator in this case---a young boy murdered a playmate in the crawl space under a house on Wheeling Island---was clear and thus the "who-done-it" element was not present.  I read the early stories eagerly but not even my mother wanted to talk about the case.  Nonetheless, I was determined to skip high school, hitchhike the eight or 10 miles to Wheeling, and see with my own eyes someone who had to swing.
        Tommy Williams was the defendant's name.  He was 13 or so but was being tried as an adult because of the heinousness of the crime.  The testimony was to the effect that Williams and an even younger boy had lured the third boy under the house with the intent of killing him.  Because the City-County building was under construction, the trial was held in the banquet hall of the Greek Orthodox church on lower Chapline Street.  When I opened the door to the courtroom, I was surprised by the fact that there were only a handful of spectators.  The facts of the case doubtless sent a shudder through the minds parents in the  early part of the Eisenhower era.  It is one thing to preach to kids to be wary of strangers.  It is another thing when one's precious is lured away by playmates and one of them beats the child to death.
        The trial was a classic battle of psychiatrists.  It was the first time I had heard the phrase "Oedipus complex": The victim was a surrogate for the father who came back from the war and supplanted young Tommy in his mother's affections.  "Sounds like you," my mother said, unimpressed with the summary of the psychiatrist's testimony that she read in the newspaper.  "I'm not going to let you use that excuse if you kill someone", she laughed.   My father was less kind when he found out that I had been skipping school to go to the trial.  He called me a "ghoul".
        "But Pop," I said, "I want to be a lawyer.  That's why I'm going to the trial."  I was lying through my teeth but the answer pleased him.  My fascination with murderers was certainly not the reason that I eventually became a lawyer.  I went to law school as a prerequisite to entering into politics.  The murder mystery of the Orient Express still bores me.  It was the transgression of the natural law that fascinated me (making me an odd bedfellow with Justice Clarence Thomas) at the time.   Hemingway's idea that killing was a divine attribute exercised by a mortal was what first intrigued me.  The terrible fate that awaited people convicted of this terrible crime completed the equation. 
  Mary Wright, the grandmother of megalawyer and Democratic Congressional candidate Ralph Baxter, also attended the trial.  She lived in Pine Grove which made her commute over 60 miles one way.  She was driven by her husband Earl who rode to work at the Hope Gas facility in nearby Hastings with my grandfather John Henry Stewart.  Earl Wright had to take off from work to drive his "ghoulish" wife to and from the trial. When the trial was over, Earl resumed riding with my grandfather.  For the next few days, Earl would regal my grandfather with second hand accounts of the trial. When my grandfather came home in the evening he would tell his wife (also named Mary) about the proceedings.
        When the story of the trial passed from my grandmother to my mother on a Sunday afternoon telephone call, my mother learned that the thing than had most impressed Ralph Baxter's grandmother about the proceedings was how Tommy Williams's older brother had sat behind him every day in the courtroom, listening to every word of the testimony.  It was Mary Wright's opinion that the older brother was probably in on the murder, possibly even the instigator.  "I wouldn't put it past him" Mrs. Wright told my grandmother.
        "I didn't have the heart to tell your grandmother," my mother said with a smile, ''that her precious grandson was the person that Mary Wright thought was in on the murder."
        Years later I would tell Tom Goodwin, the man who prosecuted the case (I would try a civil case against him), and a half dozen years later one of the defense attorneys Jim Byrum (in 1962, he would meet me at the door of a 12-step program) about how I had seem them ''strut their hour upon the stage'' when I was just a high school student.  Also, I would meet with one of the psychiatrists (a Dr. Osterman) about a client of mine at his office at 3 or 4 a.m.  He kept weird office hours, which would lead to his murder in the late 1970s.  I was later appointed to represent the accused murderer (a fellow named Barrett from eastern Ohio) on a post-conviction review case.
        [Osterman was a proponent of electroshock treatments and the murderer administered his own form of "shock treatment" to Osterman with a 12 volt battery.  The word on the street was that this was a hit disguised to look like a drug robbery.  According to scenario suggested to me by a local "doper" lawyer--Steve Herndon, a conversation between Osterman and a lawyer in his building about an underaged patient lead to the hit.
If Herndon knew what he was walking about, this lawyer ended up involved in Barrett's trial.]  
        Williams was sentenced to the old maximum security prison at Moundsville for life with mercy, which meant that he would be eligible for parole.  When he sentenced Williams, the judge said that because of his youth, he was to be accompanied by a guard at all times when he was out of his cell.  This was to protect him  from sexual predators.
        In 1963 between college and law school, I would spent 6 or 7 months as a guard at the prison.  The place was as tough as it was reputed to be.  An old guard once pointed out Williams at my request.  Like me he was now in his early 20s, quite indistinguishable from the hundred or so other inmates milling around the yard.  I asked about whether he had always been accompanied by a guard.
        "Oh, yes.  He was accompanied everywhere he went until he turned 18.  It was in the order of commitment, you know.  He would have been a prize catch for one of the old cons," the old guard said.  Then he smiled and gave me half a wink.  "Of course, the guard would turn his head every now and then.  By then he was community property, if you know what I mean."  I had a few opportunities later to speak with him but never did, basically because I didn't know what to say.  After all, I had grown up with sports and girls and college while Tommy had grown up, well, he had grown up here, in the constant company of guards who would for reasons of their own occasionally turn their heads.  And then it got worse.

INSURANCE FOR THE INSECURE By Joe Ingino

Logic
By Joe Ingino 
Editor/Publisher

“I live a dream in a nightmare world”
  
INSURANCE FOR THE INSECURE
  I say let’s put a stop to insurance companies rip off scheme.  Why should a consumer pay four thousand a year on insurance when their vehicle is only worth five hundred dollars.
Why should insurance companies get away with short changing victims of accidents when it comes to paying out for damages.
Why should insurance companies be allowed to extort and dictate who pays what.
Why should insurance companies make millions a year with little or no overhead...
We live in a shameful world.  It is dog eat dog.  Fairness and doing what is right is a myth.
We are led to think we are on righteous path when in reality we are modern day slaves working to the drumming beats of corporations and social confusion.
I have a plan that the government should entertain.  Instead of sending billions to foreign lands to be used to purchase more weapons to continue the civil unrest so that these nations can turn around and bleed us of more money.  I say put a stop to it.
I suggest the government dissolve all these vultures we know as insurance companies.   Replace them with this system of dealing with accidents.       No one pays insurance premiums.  In the event of an accident.  The government will loan that individual the amounts required to compensate for damages caused.   The individual will be responsible for re-paying back the government in installments, (much like a loan) or their license to drive may be suspended.
With this.  There be no more lawyers, courts and the usual short changing consumers as it happens now.  Did you know that if you are in a car accident.  Some lawyers may take up to 60% off your settlement.
Under the new proposed system.  The money would go to the victim directly to cover any damages.  Adjusters for the government would be sent to assess the damages and issue the appropriate awards to compensate.
Did you know that if you are stabbed or shot on any Ontario street.  That your life is only worth 100k to any insurance company.   Did you know that if you have a million dollar policy.  In some cases in order to collect on that policy you have to prove you were worth one million dollars.
Read the fine print.
You may have figured it out by now.  I have an issue with insurance companies.... the so called professionals...  and we look down at the adult entertainers.... at least you pay and you know what your buying.  With the insurance companies you get fucked month after month only to be denied claims and or given dimes on the actual retributional amounts awarded.
We live in a sea of the ignorant.   The less we know how something works the more corporations make off our ignorance.   Look at the legal system.  You can’t fight a simple claims court without representation of some sort.   Most people have no clue how to fill out the forms and or present.
Why is the system made so confusing to the average person.  Why is it that at schools they don’t teach courses that educate young minds on how to deal with the real issues of our world.
In the case of insurance companies.  How to buy direct instead of a broker.   How to save money when negotiating rates.  How not to be taken by empty fears that they try to push at time of signing.
This planet is a funny place.  Nothing is really what it seems and the more you understand it the more you see it for what it truly is.
 Mark twain said it best.
“The more I learn about people, the more I like my dog.” and this is true for all of humanity.

WELCOME TO A COLD 2018 By John Mutton

Welcome to a cold 2018. I cannot remember a winter this cold in the Greater Toronto Area, maybe in the 70's perhaps.

It is too cold for road salt to actually work at this point. The new anti icing spray that our highways are treated with is a godsend.

The bitter cold this January is also followed by many a Municipal budgets that are usually a little better to swallow in election year, however Durham Taxpayers are paying way too much.

As I have mentioned many times, we can bring taxes down in Durham Region, I for one know how and I plan on doing so upon my return to public office.

In Durham we are funding many services that we have no mandate or responsibility to fund. However, the inability to say no to special interest groups and social related issues is putting a financial strain on our residents in the middle, working class, let alone affordability for those making less income.

Upon return to elected office, I will immediately look at what the economic impact has been from the dozens of international trade junkets that have occurred both in the public eye and by stealth. I refuse to pay for a vacation when we don't derive investment or job growth.

Bottom line is that money is being spent where it shouldn't be and when we need real funding for real pending issues like Lake Ontario Shoreline flooding where only beads and trinkets are available in comparison.

Time for change has come, is here and Durham can do better!

John Mutton
President and CEO
Municipal Solutions - Energy and Infrastructure

M103, Islamaphobia and the death of critical thinking

  M103, Islamaphobia and the death of critical thinking
By Diane Bujold
  It truly insults my intelligence when I hear the word "racist" attributed to a person who questions our government's open-door policy on people from Islamic backgrounds. Immigration as such is not the issue. Islam is not a "race". If you're going to result to insults, at least find a new terminology. The term "racist" should only be attributed to those who are prejudiced against a "race" i.e. a person's skin color. And from what I've experienced anywhere in Canada, there are very few racists.
  I also resent the word "Islamaphobia". Being afraid of, or very concerned about, the large influx of immigrants from the Islamic world does not make a person "Islamaphobe".  A phobia is an irrational fear of something. Being well aware of what is happening around the world and being concerned that the same will reach our shores in a short time is not "irrational". It is a legitimate concern.
  There is such a thing as the Islamization of the Western world. Anyone with half a brain and the inclination to honestly do a little research will soon become aware of what is happening around the world through large influx of Islamic migrants.  Germany, Switzerland, England and France in particular have suffered enormous casualties through Islamic terror. Being concerned that what has been - and continues to happen - all over Europe may happen in Canada does not make me "phobic". Rather it is based in a sad reality.
  Canada needs immigrants. But inviting everybody and anybody without concern for the open statements of world domination that many in the Islamic world themselves proudly profess as their intent, to me, is a recipe for disaster.
  Being concerned about our changing demographics in favor of people who want to destroy our democratic rights & freedoms and at its core, want to want to establish a Caliphate governed by Sharia law, is not a "phobia". It is a realistic concern given a social system attached to the practice of a Political, Judicial, Educational and Religious Ideology that has not changed in 1400 years, and a culture that does not want to integrate but rather to 'dominate'.
  This said, I know very well that many Muslims come here to escape the tyranny of an oppressive regime and only want to live in peace and raise their families. I've met several of those people and I can tell you that they have no desire to return to an existence of tyranny such as the one they left behind. We hear from them from time to time in social media, but not nearly as often as we'd like. Those are the legitimately peace-loving immigrants I want to see establish themselves and prosper in our democratic multicultural system.
  But let's not stupidly keep our heads in the sand. There are those too who adhere to the principal of world domination as dictated by their understanding of their holy book and the teachings of their radical Imams. They are not hard to find as they openly profess their beliefs. Why, just recently in Montreal, didn't an Imam insist on the construction company next door to their mosque remove the two female workers from the site as it offended the Muslims inside? As our demographic changes to include more and more people of the Islamic faith, I think it would be more prudent for our government to ensure that new immigrants share our values rather than want to practice such things repressiveness as the suppression of women. Haven't we come too far to backtrack into the dark ages? By the way, the construction company apparently complied with the Imam's demands as they relocated the two female workers to another site. I say shame on them for complying.
  There are many examples of how this ideology is taking root in our country and many Canadians are bending over backward to shamefully accommodate it. Much of what extremists say though, is often not published in mainstream media because for some reason that escapes me, the powers that be do not want the rest of us to know what how prevalent it is. That kind of convoluted logic doesn't serve any good purpose that I can think of. In a society that prides itself on multiculturalism, everybody should have a voice and those who seek to destroy our freedoms and way of life should be heard loudly and clearly so that we (Muslims and non-Muslims alike) can all make informed decisions as to who we will vote for; the leader who supports such things as Sharia Law or the one who supports Canadian rights and freedom of speech. We are not babies. We should have the right to choose.
  I once dated a Muslim man whose country of origin is Iran. I asked him what made him decide to come to Canada. He told me that in the 70s, it was great living in Iran. People had freedom and dressed in Western clothes and listened to Western music. He said that women wore bikinis on the beach and the young people wore tie died t-shirts (even showed me a picture of himself in tight jeans and a colorful hippy type shirt,… very cute). He said that he decided to leave after things had "changed" and people "lost many freedoms" at the end of that era. Today, I understand it to mean the establishment of Sharia Law where severe punishment - even death - follows any criticism of the regime. Now if a man like that made the decision to immigrate to Canada because of lost freedoms in his homeland, what makes anyone think that he would welcome the establishment of Sharia Law in his adopted country? I'm quite sure many Muslims would feel the same way.
  Our Prime Minister seems to have taken a shine to anything and everything Islamic. But is he being a bit too biased in favor of Islam and forgoing any sound measure of critical thinking while at the same time completely disapproving of others? M103 would suggest so. After all, why are some people allowed to criticize while others are being shamed into silence with such labeling as "Islamaphobes" and "racists"? It makes no sense.
In a society where freedom of speech still exists, the questioning of the decisions on the part of our law makers should be welcomed by everyone regardless of whether we agree or not with the question posed.
  In other words, I may not agree with what you say, but I will defend your right to say it. And in a democracy, that freedom should never be squashed by the likes of M103 and those who seek to destroy freedom of speech.

Another province calls Trudeau's carbon tax bluff

Another province calls Trudeau's carbon tax bluff

Wearing thin is the insistence from carbon tax proponents across Canada that there was no other way this could have played out

588 words

By Paige MacPherson
Contributor
Canadians for Affordable Energy

When the Alberta government introduced its carbon dioxide emissions tax, ministers often

Click image to download

claimed that if they hadn't, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau would impose his own tax, leaving taxpayers worse off.

More than a year later, New Brunswick is challenging that 'we have no choice' assertion. In December, Premier Brian Gallant's government announced that instead of introducing a new carbon tax, they are rebranding a portion of their gasoline tax as a carbon tax and redirecting the cash into a fund to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

Critics of the New Brunswick's plan are skeptical. Redirecting existing funds means less money for general revenues and seldom do taxpayers see governments do more with less. A green fund can easily become a money pit of black hole proportions (see Ontario).

But while federal Environment Minister Catherine McKenna directed some disapproving comments at New Brunswick - and repeated that Ottawa will impose the federal price on any jurisdiction that doesn't apply it - to date it's all talk.

With N.B. voters going to the polls in 2018, Trudeau is unlikely to push an unpopular carbon tax on would-be Liberal voters, threatening Gallant's Liberal government.

Voters know they're already paying carbon taxes by another name anyway.

Carbon tax proponents insist that increasing the cost of carbon (on things like gasoline) will encourage people to use less of it.

Gas taxes have gone up. Before the current NDP government came into office, Alberta's gas tax was increased by four cents to 13 cents per litre, without a carbon tax. New Brunswick's gas tax is already a weighty 15.5 cents per litre - more than 50 per cent higher than the 10-cent federal excise tax.

If you want high taxes on people driving their kids to school and moving groceries from farms to shops, you already have it.

In Alberta, the environment minister continues to scoff at scrapping the tax, which United Conservative Party Leader Jason Kenney vows he'll do. The minister maintains that Ottawa would have acted if Alberta hadn't introduced its own new tax (never mind that Alberta's was imposed earlier and at a higher rate than the federal plan).

But the list of provinces challenging that in one way or another is growing.

If Trudeau is bluffing, several premiers are now calling it.

Manitoba's government challenged Trudeau's declaration by imposing a carbon tax at half the federal price.

And a carbon tax was noticeably absent in Saskatchewan Premier Brad Wall's climate change strategy.

New Brunswick's plan employs political wordplay. Saskatchewan's strategy of simply saying no is much clearer. For any government that sees the value in affordable energy, the only fair solution is no carbon tax at all.

But New Brunswick's plan has illustrated again that despite Trudeau's declarations, the provinces have their own priorities and, importantly, their own taxpayers to answer to. That's a wake-up call for carbon tax enthusiasts, as well as Alberta government ministers still clinging to the defence that Ottawa will drop a carbon tax on the province like a lump of coal in their stockings.

It's a political game of chicken. In the meantime, Alberta taxpayers have been paying the carbon tax for a full year. As an added New Year's treat, the tax increased by a further 50 per cent on Jan. 1.

Wearing thin is the insistence from the Alberta government, and carbon tax proponents across Canada, that there was no other way this could have played out.

Emails destroyed, justice denied?

Emails destroyed, justice denied?

What part of 'Don't delete government emails' did these Ontario cops not understand?

By Karen Selick
Contributor
Troy Media

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Deleted government emails have been hot news in Ontario since former premier Dalton McGuinty's aides David Livingston and Laura Miller were charged with deliberately destroying records relating to cancelled gas-fired power plants.

Now an unrelated Ontario trial has revealed another alleged incident of deliberately deleted government emails.

In late 2015, government employees and police raided Glencolton Farms near Durham, Ont. It's the home of dairy farmer Michael Schmidt, who has for decades advocated the legalization of raw milk sales in Canada. The farm is now an incorporated co-op owned by about 150 shareholders.

When bureaucrats and police officers began seizing milk products and computers, about 70 people (co-op owners and their family members) rapidly converged on the farm to defend their property. Someone - not Schmidt - drove a tractor across the driveway, making it impossible for the government's van to leave. Dozens of people milled about, questioning the legality of the intended seizure (or, as they saw it, theft) of the milk.

The standoff ended after about five hours with the government unloading its van and the co-op members then permitting the empty vehicle to depart.

No one was arrested that day. But eventually, five people were charged with obstructing police officers. One was Schmidt, who the prosecutor cast as the blockade's mastermind, despite markedly conflicting evidence from witnesses.

While awaiting trial, the accused filed a freedom of information request. They especially wanted to find out why only five of them, out of 70 present that day, were charged. What criteria had the government used in deciding who to prosecute? Was this prosecution actually designed to put Schmidt in jail and silence his repeated, annoying advocacy on raw milk?

They eventually received a copy of the notebook of lead investigator Const. Ken MacPherson of the West Grey Police Service. His notes made references to emails exchanged between himself and other investigators. The accused asked for those emails. To their consternation, they were told that MacPherson had "resigned from [the police] service in June of 2016 and his email account including all sent and received emails was deleted at that time."

What? The chief investigating officer in a criminal case leaves his job while a trial is still pending and all of his electronic correspondence is destroyed? Is this what normally happens at the West Grey Police Service? How many other cases were on MacPherson's plate when he left? How many other accused people have been denied full disclosure because officers resign or retire and their email accounts are destroyed? And considering that the charges relating to the destroyed gas plant documents had been laid only six months earlier, how could it have escaped the police service's attention that destroying all of an officer's emails might be problematic?

The Police Services Act of Ontario gives clear guidance on this subject: it's considered misconduct for an officer to wilfully or carelessly cause the loss or damage of records belonging to the police force. It's also a Criminal Code offence to wilfully destroy computer data. Someone might be in a wee bit of trouble.

In any event, the Crown dropped the charges against two of the accused and a third was acquitted before Schmidt went to trial. Schmidt was convicted in October 2017 and sentenced in November to 60 days in jail. A few days later, the Crown quietly dropped the charges against the fifth accused.

One obvious inference is that the goal of the exercise was indeed to put Schmidt in jail and that charging the others was mere window dressing. Once a conviction was secured against Schmidt, the others were superfluous. The missing emails might corroborate this.

Both the current chief of police in West Grey and the Crown counsel prosecuting the case declined to be interviewed for this article.

Schmidt is appealing his conviction, his sentence and a judicial ruling that prevented him from accessing the destroyed emails on the computers of the people who MacPherson corresponded with.

Meanwhile, a formal complaint about the destroyed emails under the Police Services Act, and possibly under the Criminal Code, seems warranted.

Breaching the fine line between teaching and brainwashing

Breaching the fine line between teaching and brainwashing

Being a teacher means making sure your students are exposed to more than one perspective

By Michael Zwaagstra
Senior Fellow
Frontier Centre for Public Policy

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There's a fine line between teaching and brainwashing. Teaching informs students about the world around them and helps them become critical thinkers. In contrast, brainwashing provides students with heavily skewed information that leads to one predetermined conclusion.

It's easy to mix these two things up if we aren't careful.

People who work in schools are called teachers rather than brainwashers for very good reason - there's a world of difference between teaching students what to think and teaching them how to think. While teachers should challenge students' thinking by exposing them to contrary ideas, teachers should not indoctrinate students with their worldview.

Unfortunately, there's reason to believe that some teachers are blurring the line between teaching and brainwashing. For example, a recent CBC story featured a Regina public school teacher who had his Grade 6 and 7 students spend most of November working on a variety of climate change projects. This unit culminated with a public event where students made presentations about how to stop climate change.

Obviously, climate change is an important issue and it makes sense for students to learn about it. However, the story also noted that the teacher recently spent time at an intensive training session led by former U.S. vice-president Al Gore. That teacher is now a "climate reality leader" who is expected to train other teachers about how to take action on climate change. This probably explains why he had his students watch Gore's latest movie, An Inconvenient Sequel, during class.

The CBC story makes it clear that this teacher went far beyond informing students about climate change. His climate change unit was designed to make his students take action that conformed to what he learned at the Gore training session. That isn't teaching, it's indoctrination.

We can expect to see more of this type of indoctrination if provincial curriculum guides continue to focus more on social justice than on learning a defined body of knowledge. For example, the Alberta government is rewriting its kindergarten-to-Grade-12 social studies curriculum and there's a disturbing lack of emphasis on historical facts and events. Instead, students will focus on broad themes such as diversity and environmental stewardship. This ambiguity practically invites teachers to indoctrinate students.

There's a better option. In order for students to become critical thinkers, they need to master a defined body of knowledge in a variety of subject areas. It can't be assumed that students will naturally pick up the necessary knowledge while engaging in inquiry projects conducted within specific themes. For example, if students are going to grapple with major issues like climate change, they need to know a whole lot about meteorology. Much of this knowledge needs to come by direct instruction from the teacher. Otherwise it won't be learned.

All too often, critical thinking is presented as an abstract skill when it's actually highly dependent on subject-specific content knowledge. Students can't think critically about something they know nothing about.

Social justice appeals to a lot of teachers. It can be far more exciting to engage students in what seems to be an important social justice project than to painstakingly help them master basic curriculum content. However, there are no shortcuts where real learning is concerned. If students are going to become critical thinkers, they need to first learn a lot of basic facts and skills. This may not be as flashy but it's essential to learning. Teachers must be responsible for the essentials of learning.

When this learning process is short-circuited, students are easily brainwashed. Students, particularly those in younger grades, are influenced by their teachers. If their teacher is passionate about what he recently learned at an Al Gore training session, it's easy for students to simply adopt their teacher's beliefs. It may look like students are deeply engaged in the subject matter but more often than not they're regurgitating what they know their teachers want to hear.

Obviously, we want to develop critical thinking in schools. So teachers need to take the time to help their students develop substantial subject-specific content knowledge.

In addition, when controversial issues arise, teachers must make sure students are exposed to more than one perspective. That way, students can make up their own minds about these issues.

John Mutton and 2018

As we enter 2018, I will be very active on issues effecting Durham Region as a whole and the best practises that I have learned across the cutting edge municipalities in Canada and the USA that I have a privilege to work in.

This year I will tackle the issues of:

•Taxes: Yes we can hold the line and pay less in Durham Region. How...well watch me and find out.

•Health Care: We can do better with our own mandated responsibilities, this will be one of my in depth focuses for illumination to the residents.

•Crime: The answer to better policing in Durham lies with our front line divisional staff who know their divisions better than anyone. I will have an exclusive on this with advice and recommendations from our officers that actually work our streets.

•Affordable Housing: Again, North American and European best practises have proven examples to follow. We need to embrace change and I will show you how others have broken down the barriers to affordable housing.

•Poverty and Homeless initiatives: We are living in the era of the disappearance of the middle class or perhaps to be put better, the increases in struggling of the middle class. Stay tuned for ideas around affordability, non profit housing and a strong economy having programs for inner city youth and those impoverished.

•Transit: it can be better if coordinated GTA wide properly with egos set aside and more affordable with proper purchasing and tendering policies. No more upside down bridge installations.

•Emergency Management: Never again should we be caught unprepared for the massive flooding along our lakeshores. For a municipality that has the best emergency planning for Nuclear, why can't we deal with other emergencies such as flooding in a well practised, scripted and plausible plan.

2018 is going to be an exciting year, it is a year for change across the Province, Durham and our local municipalities. We have grown tremendously, we need thought leaders to govern accordingly.

Till next week....

John Mutton
President and CEO
Municipal Solutions - Energy and Infrastructure

Finding The God Particle In This Article

Finding The God Particle In This Article
By Joe Ingino
By now it is no secret of the great work that is underway at the CERN (Conseil Européen pour la Recherche Nucléaire) laboratory in Switzerland.
The Large Hadron Collider (LHC) is the world’s largest and most powerful particle accelerator. It first started up on 10 September 2008, and remains the latest addition to CERN’s accelerator complex. The LHC consists of a 27-kilometre ring of superconducting magnets with a number of accelerating structures to boost the energy of the particles along the way.
Inside the accelerator, two high-energy particle beams travel at close to the speed of light before they are made to collide. The beams travel in opposite directions in separate beam pipes – two tubes are kept at ultrahigh vacuum. They are guided around the accelerator ring by a strong magnetic field maintained by superconducting electromagnets. The electromagnets are built from coils of special electric cable that operates in a superconducting state, efficiently conducting electricity without resistance or loss of energy. This requires chilling the magnets to -271.3°C – a temperature colder than outer space.
At this facility many physic theories are being explored. But no one more important than the ‘God Particle’. The term 'The God particle' was coined by the physicist Leon Lederman in his 1993 popular science book, The God Particle: If the Universe Is the Answer, What Is the Question?
The particle that the book title refers to is the 'Higgs boson'. The particle we now call the Higgs boson has never been observed. First hypothesized in 1964, the Higgs boson, if discovered, would be a vital missing piece of the model that physicists use to describe elementary particles and their interactions: the Standard Model.
What is the Higgs boson? The theories and discoveries of thousands of physicists over the past century have resulted in a remarkable insight into the fundamental structure of matter: everything in the Universe is found to be made from twelve basic building blocks called fundamental particles, governed by four fundamental forces. After 5 years of scrutinizing the elusive Higgs boson closely, scientists say they've determined that the "God particle" Tapping into ‘Dark Matter’
Astonishingly, astrophysical observations have demonstrated that all visible physical matter accounts for only four percent of the Universe. Now the race is on at CERN to find those elusive particles or phenomena responsible for dark matter (23 percent) and dark energy (73 percent).
Essentially what the CERN experiment hopes to achieve is to separate – by way of the atom smasher - the invisible dark matter, which has been described as the very glue that holds together, from the visible. There’s just one problem with this experiment: Nobody has any idea what the consequences will be if that goal is achieved. So once again, this ‘dark versus visible’ paradigm has generated a battle that transcends the scientific world, becoming a question involving philosophy and spirituality.
What fascinating science. At the end of the day. It appears that no matter what we attach to the word ‘God’ to it transforms it into a whole new priority and or importance to the world.
But even if we define the so called elusive mystery of the ‘GOD PARTICLE’. Can it really be called ‘GODLY’. Let’s take a step back. If God made us in his image. How can a particle define a GOD?
The other aspect of the scientific labeling is more for hype then practicality. Think about it... defining the origin of matter...anything to do with GOD as we know it?
Scientist as clever as they are also human with the same complexities and confusion as the rest of us. I guess under their understanding. Defining the origin of all matter would incorporate the social concept of a GOD. It would shed light to religious doctrine and once in for all put religions of the world in their place. Primarily ‘SOCIETY’.
If we learn anything from human history is that the writing have been on the wall all along and we as humans make advancements by piecing the parts of the puzzle to paint a picture of understanding.
In this case. We must clearly put ‘GOD’ where it belongs. As a tool through out history that was used to oppress and control the human psychic from it’s primal instincts. Fear, is a powerful tool to the ignorant. With this said. All religions of the world may be understood if incorporated as a social building element of world societies. The root for all cultures, customs and traditions.
And now back to science.
What the scientist at CERN are attempting to do is not find GOD. But instead gain understanding to how matter and anti matter co-exists and the ramifications it has to our existence.
Are we energy entrapped in frequency of sort, manipulated by laws and rules. If so we still have the dilemma of defining the origin of the source of energy.
I remember once someone saying ‘IN NOTHING WE FIND EVERYTHING AND IN NOTHING WE HAVE DEFINE ALL’. Interesting thinking.
As it puts CERN firmly in it’s place... as no matter the discovery we still have the issue of the causation of the origin... or the source.
As stated if dark matter (23 percent) and dark energy (73 percent) then are we getting any closer to the answer of what came first. The chicken or the egg? Or are we just sophisticating the question by attaching ‘GOD PARTICLE’ to it.
I think that understanding is crucial to our development as a civilization. I doubt it very much if a definiative answer can rationally be found to the origin of matter. What I think we will find by the research at CERN are new sciences... The long standing theories of dimensions, dual realities and new ways to improve technologies. Such as the use of dark energy to replace nuclear reactors in the production of electricity. How to use the dark energy to supply infinite energy to all kinds of machineries.
Scientists are at the brink of understanding the frequencies that inter twine our realities. Port holes that until know have been feared as not fully understood. World within worlds that up to know have been nothing but science fiction. World’s that due to lack of scientific understanding have been kept secret. We have not had a major scientific break through in over 50 years. I think we are at the brink of such break through. Are we ready as a people? As a civilization?
Time will tell.