BeaverFever

Of all the things rich boy JT is guilty of, slumming around a pig farm with skid row hookers and bikers and druggies is not likely to be one of them.

The POLARIS in India was old and it’s breakdown is no surprise. The Challenger, assuming its one of the new ones, is a bit of a surprise an I assume just unlucky. I guess even his aircraft are sick of working for him.

You think the Democrats are keeping the other republicans “in line”? LMAO

“The lesson seems to have been learned that Canada needs firepower more than it needs to guarantee the jobs of shipyard workers into the 2040s.” Has it though? We’ve been here many times before why assume the lesson has been learned this time.

Furthermore IMO the Cyclone’s weapon system needs to have more than just torpedoes it needs anti-ship missiles. I’m sad to learn there aren’t even any plans to keep the existing system ip to date. I still think it’s a cool helicopter it’s just had the misfortune of having Canada, the absolute worst procurer in the developed world, as it’s flagship launch customer and the many subsequent boondoggles probably scared other potential customers away.

Air force worried about keeping new maritime helicopters' weapons systems operational DND searching for outside consultant to 'define' options for the future of the Cyclone fleet Murray Brewster · CBC News · Posted: Jan 10, 2024 4:00 AM EST | Last Updated: 4 hours ago A CH-148 Cyclone helicopter from 12 Wing Shearwater, home of 423 Maritime Helicopter Squadron, flies near the base in Eastern Passage, N.S. on Tuesday, June 23, 2020. (Andrew Vaughan/The Canadian Press) The air force is worried about keeping the aging weapons systems aboard its CH-148 Cyclones operational into the future, according to leaked documents obtained by CBC News. It's an understatement to say that the $5.8 billion maritime helicopters project is a work-in-progress for the Department of National Defence (DND) and the aircraft's U.S. manufacturer, Sikorsky. It will soon be 20 years since a previous Liberal government ordered the aircraft to replace its fleet of CH-128 Sea Kings, 1960s-era workhorses which saw decades of service flying off the decks of Canadian warships. But even after two decades and billions of dollars spent, not all of the 28 Cyclone helicopters the federal government originally ordered have been delivered. And DND doesn't consider the Cyclones delivered so far to have reached their final "operating capability" — an important designation that indicates the military is satisfied it got what it paid for. Late Tuesday, the defence department acknowledged in a media statement that it's searching for an outside consultant to "define potential options" for the fleet. Retired colonel Larry McWha — an aviation expert who commanded 423 Squadron when it flew CH-124 Sea Kings — said maintaining and upgrading the Cyclone's weapons system will be a huge, costly challenge because Canada is the only country flying the CH-148, a militarized version of the Sikorsky S-92. Components will become harder to find and may even have to be specially manufactured, said McWha, who has followed the Cyclone program from the beginning. The leaked documents — a Sept. 23, 2023 PowerPoint presentation and a spreadsheet that details technical concerns cited by air bases and air force wings across the country — show that 12 Wing in Shearwater, N.S., where many of the Cyclones are based, questioned the "sustainability of the CH-148 Weapon System" in the medium and long-term. WATCH | Weapons systems for maritime helicopters may soon be outdated: Air force worried 'new' helicopter's weapons systems will be obsolete A leaked internal report warns the Canadian Armed Forces Cyclone helicopters have weapons systems that are becoming obsolete as the Forces continue to wait for the final two helicopters' delivery — almost 20 years after they were initially procured. The documents, which were verified by CBC News, were presented to senior military leaders last fall. "Operational Relevance is in question as critical systems such as secure SECURE COMMUNICATION / TACTICAL DATA LINK / PRIMARY WEAPON are set to expire without replacement pathways," says the spreadsheet. In a written statement, DND said the air force is aware of the concerns. An optimistic timeline "The replacement of secure comms, tactical datalink and weapons (an upgraded torpedo) are all being actively pursued and funding is being sought to complete all the upgrades," said the statement. Air force planners still don't anticipate getting the replacement systems installed and run through the initial testing phase until 2031. The department said stopgap measures are being considered. "However, investigations are ongoing to identify and implement limited interim capabilities for both the torpedo and secure comms by 2025 in order to reduce the operational impact," the DND statement said. "Investigation of a limited interim tactical data system is also ongoing." When the Cyclones were first ordered in 2004, the Liberal government of then-prime minister Paul Martin predicted that the helicopter would be in service by 2010-2011 at the latest. That proved to be a wildly optimistic timeline, as neither DND nor the manufacturer anticipated the technical complications that came with converting a civilian chopper to military use. Sunk costs By 2013, the Conservative government of then-prime minister Stephen Harper (which also hired an outside consultant) was looking at scrapping the Cyclone project altogether as costs and delays mounted. But the government — which had already spent $1.7 billion on the project by that point and had received just four test helicopters — opted to stick with the program. Under the terms of a revised contract with Sikorsky, signed almost a decade ago, the air force would start to receive 28 "fully capable" CH-148 Cyclone helicopters in 2018. In its statement, DND acknowledged that the helicopters have not reached their full capability and likely won't be fully operational by the stated 2025 deadline. "Given current personnel and resource constraints, it is unlikely 12 Wing and the RCAF will achieve FOC [Full Operating Capability] by 2025," the statement read. A scarcity of personnel, parts The air force blames shortages of skilled personnel — a problem that plagues the military across the board. It says it can't assign enough skilled people to the airbase in Shearwater to bring the fleet up to standard. "An additional reason for the delay involves disruptions in the global supply chain that are creating delays across most industries," said the DND statement. "As such, there has been a delay in the delivery of the 27th and 28th aircraft as Sikorsky waits for parts. The delivery of the 27th aircraft is expected in the first part of 2024 and in [second quarter] 2025 for the 28th and final aircraft." A Royal Canadian navy CH-148 Cyclone helicopter deploys flares in a training exercise in November 2022. (Royal Canadian Navy/Twitter) McWha said it's significant that the department is acknowledging the impact of the parts shortage. "Sustainability of the Cyclone fleet has been a problem and will only get worse," he said. "If the manufacturer cannot get delivery of the parts necessary to deliver a contracted product to the customer, one can only imagine the difficulty that the customer must have in getting replacement parts to support products that have already been delivered." An 'orphan' system The problem, said McWha, relates to the fact that the Cyclone is what the military calls an "orphan weapon system" — no other countries are flying it and it draws on a small pool of replacement parts. The communications and combat system the air force is now struggling to replace may have been state-of-the-art in 2004, he said, but it was also unique to the helicopter. "Even if it is possible to find a supplier willing to produce replacement parts or repair failed components for such a small fleet, the cost of doing so will inevitably be very high," said McWha. "This was entirely foreseeable back in 2004." Unless the government throws lots of money at them, he added, the "manufacturers have no incentive to retain the technicians and engineering to service or support a tiny obsolescent fleet that is no longer on their production line." Dave Perry, a defence analyst and president of the Canadian Global Affairs Institute, said it's interesting the defence department has chosen to get outside advice. He added that, given all the problems with the Cyclone project to date, he's wondering whether federal officials are considering replacing the Cyclone with something less troublesome. "There's been some Canadian allies recently that have done essentially exactly that, moved to cut their losses on some helicopters which were underperforming and look at alternatives. I don't know whether or not we're quite at that situation," said Perry, whose organization has hosted conferences that occasionally have been sponsored by defence contractors. https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/cyclone-helicopter-canadian-forces-1.7079088

Unless it’s to oppose COVID restrictions, in which case there is am unlimited right to indefinitely blockade border crossings and the streets of the national capital, no matter how much economic damage it causes and how many lives it ruins, is that correct?

The terrorists aren’t my buddies don’t play those childish games republicans like to play where they accuse anyone who disagrees with them as being terrorist sympathizers. That’s exactly how they brow-beat Americans into their fraudulent BS Iraq invasion And if you honestly don’t think killing tens of thousands of civilians and children isn’t going to lead to more terrorism and probably worse terrorist acts you’re not very smart. That’s exactly what happened in the Republicans Iraq invasion, just as the so-called “terrorist sympathizers” who opposed that fraudulent Republican war predicted Like what do you think is going to happen when this is all over, the 2 million+ displaced Palestinians, most of whom now have family and friends that have lost innocent lives and children are just going to shrug their shoulders, go back to their obliterated cities and repressive Israeli occupation or a refugee camp in some other country? Israel couldn’t have done a better job of recruiting for Hamas and Islamic terrorist groups if it tried. This is exactly what those groups want amd the only result is going to be more terrorism.

So what? The small number of seats is even less of a reason reason for Netanyahu to have added his extremist party to his coalition government, much less placing the extremist leader as head of the country’s national security. Exactly because Netanyahu has s a turd, he’s no moderate and never has been. He has never claimed to be a moderate except for maybe a decade or two ago and even the it was only when speaking to US media. For years many in Israel have publicly blamed him for the assassination of former PM Yitzhak Rabin due to the violent rhetoric against the peace process being pursued at that time. So as I said previously on this thread I’m not floating a conspiracy but optics matter and this is exactly why you don’t appoint pro-violence extremists like Ben-Gvir to critical positions like national security. Even if there is no conspiracy you can’t appoint people who would have every ideological motive to engage in such a conspiracy and who benefit from the events that unfold as a result You can’t put a reformed pedophile in charge of a daycare even if you have absolute certainty he won’t do anything wrong because you know that even a false accusation against him would seem credible and you wouldn’t have a leg to stand on so similarly you really have to question why in the case o Israel the pedophile was put in charge of protecting the children (and then spectacularly failed to do so) And then as revenge for the children he failed to protect he’s been allowed to host an orgy with the children of the other side which is something he’s always wanted Even if there was no secret plot - and I’m not saying there was - you can’t tell me their violent anti-Palestinian views don’t consciously and subconsciously guide the decisions they make and are continuing to make.

Funny thing is the Challengers aren’t that old…..at least 2 of the 4 planes aren’t, presumably he’s on one of the newer ones. Just bad luck I guess

US president could have a rival assassinated and not be criminally prosecuted, Trump’s lawyer argues Insights from The New York Times, Lawfare, and Just Security REUTERS/Cheney Orr Sign up for Semafor Principals: What the White House is reading. Read it now. Your Email addressSign Up THE NEWS Former president Donald Trump’s lawyer argued that presidential immunity would cover the U.S. president ordering political rivals to be assassinated by SEAL Team Six. During a hearing at a federal appeals court on Tuesday, Trump’s lead lawyer John Sauer made a sweeping argument for executive immunity, essentially saying that only a president who has been impeached and removed from office by Congress could be criminally prosecuted. Therefore, Sauer argued, the former president should be shielded from criminal prosecution. One of the judges asked Sauer: “Could a president who ordered SEAL Team 6 to assassinate a political rival, and is not impeached, would he be subject to criminal prosecution?” Sauer responded: “If he were impeached and convicted first... there is a political process that would have to occur.” The court is considering an appeal in Trump’s election obstruction case after the trial judge already rejected these same arguments about the scope of presidential immunity. Assistant special counsel James Pearce urged the panels of judges to reject Trump’s argument. “Never in our nation’s history until this case has a president claimed that immunity from criminal prosecution extends beyond his time in office,” he told the court. All three of the judges expressed skepticism about Trump’s legal argument, repeatedly grilling his lawyer on the immunity claims. The outcome of the arguments is expected to have major implications for Trump’s 2024 bid. https://www.semafor.com/article/01/09/2024/trump-immunity-hearing-president-assassinate-rival-not-prosecuted

It sure does, he’s not Minister of Sport or Minister of Arts and Culture, he’s Minister of National Security! Nothing is forcing Netanyahu to form a coalition with this extremist party much less put it in charge of the country’s national security…..something that failed horribly on October 7 while conveniently gave the same extremists the war they wanted. Netanyahu himself is a hardliner who openly brags about having sabotaged past peace initiatives.

Yes Israel has. Many members of the Israeli government are hardliners including current minister of National Security Itamar Ben-Gvir Let me repeat that: the man in charge of Israel’s security on Oct 7 is a pro-war extremist who was previously convicted of supporting an anti-Palestinian terrorist group. Netanyahu and the rest of his government are not much better Ben-Gvir, a settler in the Israeli-occupied West Bank, has faced charges of hate speech against Arabs and was known to have a portrait in his living room of Israeli-Americanmass murderer and Jewish extremistBaruch Goldstein, who massacred 29 Palestinian Muslim worshipers and wounded 125 others in Hebron, in the 1994 Cave of the Patriarchs massacre. He removed the portrait after he entered politics.[6] He was also previously convicted of supporting a terrorist group known as Kach, which espoused Kahanism, an extremist religious Zionist ideology.[7] Under his leadership, the Otzma Yehudit (Jewish Power), a party which espouses Kahanism and anti-Arabism, won six seats in the 2022 Israeli legislative election, and is represented in what has been called the most right-wing and hardline government in Israel's history.[8][9][10][11] He has called for the expulsion of Arab citizens of Israel who are not loyal to Israel.[11] Ben Gvir is "widely known for his openly racist, anti-Arab views and activities".[12] Israeli sociologist Eva Illouz has said Ben Gvir represents "Jewish fascism".[13] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Itamar_Ben-Gvir

If by “Israel” you lean the current anti-peace Israeli hardliners in government who want to prevent lasting peace at all costs and wish to indefinitely maintain the current status quo of tit-for-tat terrorist attacks and “mowing the grass”…then yes I think that’s who is going to win. But that also means Hamas wins too, because they want the same thing.

I said Clinton or Democrats, dummy.

Almost a third of Americans still believe the 2020 election result was fraudulent …Virtually all Democrats (93%) say Biden won the election fairly, a view shared by 58% of independents. Just 21% of Republicans believe Biden won his election fair and square, while 68% say he won "due to voter fraud." That's very similar to Monmouth's findings in the weeks after the 2020 election, when 18% of Republicans, 67% of independents and 95% of Democrats said Biden's election victory was fair. The Mueller report doesn’t say there was “no evidence”. In fact: Mueller spent almost 200 pages describing “numerous links between the Russian government and the Trump Campaign.” He found that “a Russian entity carried out a social media campaign that favored presidential candidate Donald J. Trump and disparaged presidential candidate Hillary Clinton.” He also found that “a Russian intelligence service conducted computer-intrusion operations” against the Clinton campaign and then released stolen documents.… While Mueller was unable to establish a conspiracy between members of the Trump campaign and the Russians involved in this activity, he made it clear that “[a] statement that the investigation did not establish particular facts does not mean there was no evidence of those facts.” In fact, Mueller also wrote that the “investigation established that the Russian government perceived it would benefit from a Trump presidency and worked to secure that outcome, and that the Campaign expected it would benefit electorally from information stolen and released through Russian efforts.” To find conspiracy, a prosecutor must establish beyond a reasonable doubt the elements of the crime: an agreement between at least two people, to commit a criminal offense and an overt act in furtherance of that agreement. One of the underlying criminal offenses that Mueller reviewed for conspiracy was campaign-finance violations. Mueller found that Trump campaign members Donald Trump Jr., Paul Manafort and Jared Kushner met with Russian nationals in Trump Tower in New York June 2016 for the purpose of receiving disparaging information about Clinton as part of “Russia and its government’s support for Mr. Trump,” according to an email message arranging the meeting. This meeting did not amount to a criminal offense, in part, because Mueller was unable to establish “willfulness,” that is, that the participants knew that their conduct was illegal. Mueller was also unable to conclude that the information was a “thing of value” that exceeded $25,000, the requirement for campaign finance to be a felony, as opposed to a civil violation of law. But the fact that the conduct did not technically amount to conspiracy does not mean that it was acceptable. Trump campaign members welcomed foreign influence into our election and then compromised themselves with the Russian government by covering it up. Mueller found other contacts with Russia, such as the sharing of polling data about Midwestern states where Trump later won upset victories, conversations with the Russian ambassador to influence Russia’s response to sanctions imposed by the U.S. government in response to election interference, and communications with Wikileaks after it had received emails stolen by Russia. While none of these acts amounted to the crime of conspiracy, all could be described as “collusion.”….Mueller found at least four acts by Trump in which all elements of the obstruction statute were satisfied – attempting to fire Mueller, directing White House counsel Don McGahn to lie and create a false document about efforts to fire Mueller, attempting to limit the investigation to future elections and attempting to prevent Manafort from cooperating with the government. As Mueller stated, “while this report does not conclude that the President committed a crime, it also does not exonerate him.” https://time.com/5610317/mueller-report-myths-breakdown/ MUELLER: 'If we had had confidence that the president clearly did not commit a crime, we would have said so' The former special counsel Robert Mueller on Wednesday in his first public statement on the Russia investigation said if he had determined President Donald Trump didn't commit a crime he "would have said so." "If we had confidence that the president did not commit a crime, we would have said so," Mueller said. Mueller also said he was legally unable to charge the president with a crime, emphasizing it's against Justice Department policy and describing it as "unconstitutional." https://www.businessinsider.com/mueller-would-have-said-so-concluded-trump-didnt-commit-crime-2019-5?amp Not to all the crazy batshit conspiracies that Republicans are accusing him of You have me confused with Nationalist and the hordes Putin-admiring Trump supporters.

When was that? Kim Campbell was appointed as the sacrificial lamb when they realized they were going to lose by the biggest landslide in Canadian history after Mulroney

That’s some first rate revisionism right there. Next you’ll be telling us nobody really believed the 2020 election was stolen or that Hunter Biden was involved in serious crimes. Obama’s alleged Kenyan birth was a common and popular conspiracy among Republican supporters especially Trump. I’m sure that in 2030 that’s exactly what the internet republicans on this forum will be claiming.

Trump’s administration had Epstein arrested amd detained amd Epstein was in Trump administration’s custody and corrections employees under the control of the Trump administration are the one who falsified their records. Trump was a close friend who parties hard with Epstein’s for 20 years. Hilarious that you think any foul play points to Clintons or democrats.

Why do you say that?

Israelis and Palestinians are both trapped by the dangerous fantasies of history The illusions, projections and selective histories of both sides have brought us to the current moment. These narratives compete with one another, but in another way are complementary versions of the same story Photo illustration by The Globe and Mail (JAVIER SORIANO/AFP via Getty Images, Carl Court/Getty Images) M.G. Conford is the writer and director of the documentaries Through The Eyes Of Enemies, Not On Any Map, and Fragments of Jerusalem. He is an associate professor of film at Toronto Metropolitan University. Just over 30 years ago, I was travelling between Israel, Gaza, the West Bank, Lebanon, Jordan, Syria and Egypt, filming a documentary, Through The Eyes of Enemies, which charted the reactions to the signing of the initial Oslo peace accord between Israel and the Palestinians. It was a high-water mark, the cresting of hope, and everywhere I went in the region you could feel its rise. It’s not that the tensions had evaporated; they most certainly had not. But there was a shimmer of possibility and people throughout the region – not all people of course, but sizable majorities – were almost giddy with the incipient change. At the White House in 1993, Israeli and Palestinian leaders Yitzhak Rabin and Yasser Arafat shake hands in front of U.S. president Bill Clinton after signing peace accords.Ron Edmonds/The Associated Press Thirty years later, at this most terrible and devastating moment in the Middle East, so far from that one of hope, it’s important to understand both sides’ illusions, projections and selective histories that have brought us to this point. These narratives compete with one another, but in another way are complementary versions of the same story. The ironies abound. The Jewish people have been placed in the position of “colonialists” when they themselves were desperately searching for an escape from the horrific antisemitism in Europe that had wiped out the vast majority of them. The Palestinians have been cast as the fierce and implacable foe the Jews have always feared when they were the ones being dispossessed and impoverished. Duelling fantasies of history as well: the original Zionist myth of a land without people for a people without land, entirely ignoring the people that were already on the land. The Palestinian denial of the ancient and deep connection of Jews to the same land, claiming there had never been a temple in Jerusalem, that Jews had not been the original refugees, expelled from the same land many centuries earlier, and that they did not carry it with them wherever they had wandered. And more: Israelis claiming Palestinians all left voluntarily in 1948, rather than the many chased out by the Israeli army; and Palestinians, willfully ignoring the many Jewish refugees chased from their own homes in Arab lands. Throughout, the twinned wounds of homelessness and national yearning mirror one another. The past decades have been a tragedy of lost opportunities. But it helps not at all to point fingers of blame. This has been a blood sport in the region for nearly a century already, each side prepared with the recitation of a sad litany of atrocities (Deir Yassin, Hebron in 1929, Hebron again in 1994, bombings in Netanya, Jerusalem, Tel Aviv, and on and on) to justify their actions. The past decades have also brought less and less contact between the populations. Since the early 2000s, the Separation Wall (or Security Fence, or what have you) has not only hemmed West Bank Palestinians in; it has also severed much of the opportunity to encounter one another in daily life. And that lack of human contact is an essential part of the problem. The rise of maximalist voices – the Jewish settler and Greater Israel movement on one side, and Hamas and Islamic Jihad, with their mirroring claims to all the land, on the other – amplify disinformation and make other voices faint and hard to hear. Bullet holes show through the window of a kindergarten in Kibbutz Be'eri, one of the communities attacked by Hamas.Christopher Furlong/Getty Images It should not need to be stated: The brutality of Oct. 7 was not justified in any way by political or historical injustice. The acts of cruel and gratuitous violence were simply crimes against humanity, committed by a group, Hamas, that is dedicated to wiping out both the state of Israel and all Jews living within it. To not unequivocally denounce them, to see them as part of a legitimate fight for freedom for Palestinians, is an act of moral confusion. The last time I saw such horrific images of dead bodies was in 1994 when I was working for CNN as a freelance film editor in Jerusalem and was called in early one morning for duty. For the next 24 hours, I edited story after story about an extremist Jewish religious settler, Baruch Goldstein, massacring 29 Muslims and injuring more than 100 at prayer in a mosque in the Tomb of the Patriarchs in Hebron. Those images haunted me for months after. They too depicted an act against humanity, to be condemned absolutely, without equivocation. In each the role of religion, the way in which images of the enemy are embedded in the holy narratives of each people, cannot be ignored. Religious right-wing settlers will whisper to you that Palestinians are Amalek, the hated Biblical enemy, and thus there is a special sacred injunction to wipe them out. “Do not spare them,” the Bible says, “kill every man and women and child.” Recently, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, too, made reference to wiping Hamas out like Amalek. This denigration of the humanity of Palestinians contributes to the acceptance by many Israelis of the massive and criminally indiscriminate bombing campaign in Gaza, which too must be condemned, and halted. Islamic texts, meanwhile, have numerous hateful references to Jews. One hadith that notably says “if the Jew will hide behind a tree even the tree will say come and kill him” – is echoed in official pronouncements from Hamas. No one can doubt that the fundamentalist Islamic credo they follow had a large part in the celebratory attitude of the attackers; one telephoned to excitedly tell his mother that he had “slain 10 Jews” with his own hands. Baruch Goldstein carried out his slaughter one week after the biblical tale of Amalek was read in synagogue. On Oct. 7, 2023, when more than 1,200 dead and mutilated bodies were strewn across the killing fields near Gaza, with the details of gruesome barbarity filmed in real time by the murderers, you could hear over and over again the triumphant shouts: “God is Great.” Portraits of captured Israelis cover a wall in Tel Aviv on Dec. 28, more than 11 weeks after militants took scores of people into Gaza from surrounding communities.AHMAD GHARABLI/AFP via Getty Images Israeli tanks sit near the southern Gaza border, while smoke rises from air strikes over central Gaza. As the new year began, Israel said it would scale back troop numbers but continue the offensive for months more.Violeta Santos Moura/Reuters, Menahem Kahana/AFP via Getty Images Wounded Palestinians get care at a Khan Younis hospital on New Year's Eve, when Gaza's health ministry raised the region's death toll to more than 21,800 people and rising. The Hamas-run ministry's tally does not distinguish between civilians and combatants.Mohammed Dahman/The Associated Press Israelis were deeply shocked by the insensitivity of much of the world to the deliberate and cruel slaughter of their friends and families on Oct. 7, and by how rapidly they were painted as aggressors, as somehow deserving to be massacred in their homes and beds or while out in a field listening to music. Meanwhile Palestinians, witnessing the continuing obliteration of entire extended families, wonder in fury and anguish if the deaths of their many thousands of civilians actually count. The pain among families on both sides is raw and utterly shattering. But images of the dead and wounded also quickly became instrumentalized as fodder in a global propaganda war, with supporters of each side blinding themselves to the essential humanity of the other. In late October, I listened to a “Teach-in for Palestine” at the university at which I teach. Sponsored in part by the faculty association, I had expected, or at least hoped, that the teach-in would be an opportunity to learn about the complexity of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, to engage in critical thinking and listen to opposing viewpoints. Where else if not universities should such discussions take place? But that is not what I experienced. I was surprised that not once was the name of Hamas mentioned, nor any sympathy evinced for the Israeli victims of the massacre. Had people attending not seen the almost unbearable pain in the face of the Israeli mother whose two daughters, aged 8 and 15, were kidnapped and taken to Gaza? The grandmother whose school-age grandchildren were shot and killed? Was there no room for empathy, or any distinction between just cause and heinous crime? A protest banner in Montreal decries the events in Gaza as a genocide.Graham Hughes/The Canadian Press It became clear that the lives of slaughtered Israeli civilians, many of them peace activists, were not thought to be worth mentioning, though the words “genocide” and “massacre” were used often to describe the policies of Israel. Genocidal. Neo-Nazi. These are terms that freeze thought. Even setting aside for a moment any inaccuracy or barbed callousness, they simply allow no space for discussion. The term “colonizers” was used frequently, and I wondered how the Jewish family from Yemen that had travelled by donkey and foot to escape persecution in that country, or the 85-year-old man born in Iraq and now a hostage of Hamas, were colonizers, let alone “white” and “European” (the most common modifiers added to “colonizer”). This was sloppy and simplistic thinking, affixing labels to a morally complex problem. A world of binaries, of cartoon heroes and villains, has infected discourse in almost every public forum. As someone who has tried to make sense of this conflict through a series of films over the course of nearly 30 years, and who has vehemently disagreed with the injustice of many Israeli policies, the inability of students, and more than a few professors, to deal with this complexity was heartbreaking. I should say that I attended the event over Zoom, as I’d had to go to the dentist an hour or so before to treat a broken filling, and my mouth was still numbed. My dentist seemed shaken by something and I assumed it was the events in the Middle East. But actually it was something closer to home. His friend, a Jewish doctor, had received a message on his office answering machine that morning. He asked me if I’d like to hear it, as his friend had shared the recording with him. This is what it said: “Dr. –, you f*cking Jew, Hitler killed six million of your people then you came to our land and now you are killing our children. We will come for you and kill you and kill your whole family, we will kill your wife, kill all your children, you motherf*cking Jew.” That was the end of the message. I have filmed in the middle of a demonstration on the streets south of Damascus, amid thousands shouting “Death to Israel, Death to America, Death to the Jews.” I have seen the scrawled graffiti on Israeli walls saying “Death to Arabs,” and in the West Bank saying “Kill the Jews.” I have seen the rictus of hate distorting faces on both sides of the conflict. But somehow none felt as chilling as listening to that recorded message in a dentist’s chair in Toronto. Perhaps because while this was an almost expected part of the landscape there, here, in multicultural, liberal Toronto, it felt like the upswell of hatred was now overflowing all boundaries, and seemingly reaching, well, everywhere. Meanwhile, at my university’s law faculty (dedicated to social justice and equity), 74 students – nearly one-quarter of the student body – released a statement saying that “all forms of Palestinian resistance” are justified. This statement came out within two weeks of the Hamas massacre. Slogans have replaced thought. And slogans are not adequate to what is a moment of real existential fear on both sides. 'Make hummus, not walls,' reads graffiti in Bethlehem on a barrier between the occupied West Bank, on this side, and Israel on the other.Maja Hitij/Getty Images More than 20 years ago I made a film (Not On Any Map) highlighting “unrecognized” Arab villages within Israel. These villages were created by state policies (similar to the policies in areas of the West Bank that Israel still controls) that prevent Israeli Arabs from getting building permits, running water, electricity, schools or medical clinics in the makeshift villages where they’ve been living since being evicted from their original villages soon after 1948. For making such a film, I was swung at by a right-wing settler and called an antisemite. (When I told him I was Jewish, he sputtered, in mimicry of an old Borscht Belt comic, “That’s the worst kind.”) The most acute current existential fear felt by Palestinians, as a nation, is around the forced movement of the population away from their homes in Gaza. In it, they detect clear echoes of the Nakba of 1948, when they were never allowed to return once the fighting had ceased. Such existential fears were amplified when Israeli Knesset member Ariel Kallner, among others, declared a “Nakba that will overshadow the Nakba of ‘48.” And they were further intensified when extremist religious settlers in the West Bank distributed pamphlets saying “You have one last opportunity to escape to Jordan. Afterward we’ll drive you away by force from our holy land.” Existential fear in Israel is equally deep. Israelis see the 150,000 Hezbollah missiles aimed at the north, along with those in Gaza. They see surrounding countries with largely Muslim populations that have, for most of Israel’s history, been hostile or at least deeply antagonistic to it. They see forces backed by Iran in Syria and in Yemen, and the Iranian regime itself, all committed to the death and destruction of the only Jewish state, created as a safe haven in a world that has shown time and again its violence and hostility. The latest wave of antisemitism throughout the world ­– including the shockingly rapid return of the most hateful caricatures of Jews – has paradoxically, and sadly, provided concrete reminder of the need for such a haven. For Palestinians, decades of dallying by Israel paired with the unchecked rise of settlements and worsening brutal repression in the West Bank contribute to their conviction that they are being played – that Israel has no intention of allowing a viable state of Palestine to exist, ever. Meanwhile, Hamas spokesman Ghazi Hamad proclaimed on Lebanese television that Hamas will repeat Oct. 7-like attacks again and again and again until Israel is completely annihilated. “We will,” he says, “remove that country.” The return of the most elemental existential fears of both sides is what makes this current round of fighting so fierce and unrelenting. And that very fierceness paired with the continuing brutality only fuels ever-greater extremism, hatred and rejection on both sides. Israelis take shooting lessons in the West Bank settlement of Migdal Oz.ARIS MESSINIS/AFP via Getty Images There has now been a decade or more of agreed-upon “wisdom” within Israel that a two-state solution is no longer possible, that there are too many settlements, that there is no functioning Palestinian governmental entity, that there will never be agreement on Jerusalem or the right of return, that there is no plan for all of this. Such wisdom has led to the Netanyahu conception (which Israelis call the conceptzia). The idea that the conflict can be “managed,” that the Palestinian people will accept their oppression and the control of the Israeli state over their lives, that Hamas can be a tool in keeping the Palestinians divided. This has manifested in the odious term “mowing the grass” to indicate a periodic incursion of forces or of bombing to keep resistance in check. After Oct. 7, does anyone think this is truly sustainable? There is only one way out of this morass. It has been the only way since the UN partitioned the land into what was supposed to have become two states, but because of the rejection of both Palestinians and the surrounding Arab states, never did. The tragedy is that one state, Israel, eventually thrived, and the other, the stillborn Palestine, and its people, remained in a state of perpetual impoverishment. And the suffocating and humiliating occupation that has gotten only worse these past 30 years plays directly into the hands of extremists such as Hamas. So yes, Palestine – and Palestinians – must be free, for their sake, and for the sake of the Israeli people as well. But not, as the slogan goes, from the river to the sea. And Israel must be safe and secure, its people free from the fear of attack. But also not in some mythical “Greater Israel” – from river to sea – and not at the cost of the endless domination of another people. The view from Jabel Mukaber, a Palestinian neighbourhood in Israeli-occupied East Jerusalem, includes the golden Dome of the Rock and the al-Aqsa Mosque compound around it. Access to the mosque, built on the site of ancient Jewish temples, is a contentious issue for Israelis and Palestinians.AHMAD GHARABLI/AFP via Getty Images Tent camps of displaced Palestinians stretch into the distance in Rafah, on the Gaza Strip's border with Egypt. Refugees from the north fled in droves to this southern city before Israel's ground offensive began.MAHMUD HAMS/AFP via Getty Images Out near the edge of Jerusalem, in Kiryat HaYovel, there’s a park that contains a large playground sculpture by Niki de Saint Phalle. It is known locally as HaMifletzet, the monster. Neighbourhood children play there, gleefully sliding out of the monster’s mouth. The artist intended it as a kind of lesson in resilience, but it’s hard not to read it as some great and insatiable Moloch. The danger of both sides being swallowed by such a malignant Moloch, the Canaanite god who jubilantly welcomed the sacrifice of children, is enormous. Israel must take extreme care. No one who has seen the horrific acts of brutality and murder in the Hamas videos can deny Israel’s right to pursue the perpetrators and do what it must to prevent their recurrence. But does anyone believe that the children and women killed by the massive aerial bombing in Gaza deserve such a fate? Or that their surviving relatives will not be filled with even more hate and desire for vengeance? Hamas, in its deliberate and cynical embedding within the civilian population, both invites and celebrates every Israeli bomb that kills the innocent, knowing it will only further inflame hatred in the region. And the anger, the hatred, the violence and the desire for vengeance from both sides threaten to overwhelm all else. But vengeance too is a kind of fantasy. For nothing – not the sorrow, not the anger, no hatred and no act of vengeance – can bring back the dead. And nothing will bring back the world as it was before Oct. 7. What is needed now is what is nearly impossible to achieve when the bullets and missiles and bombs are flying, when the wounds of grief are so recent, when blood is still in the air: a recognition of the depth of each other’s traumas. The terrifying cruelty of the brutal massacre and the hostage situation; the terrifying cruelty of the bombs that cannot distinguish between a child and an armed fighter; the horror of helplessness; the unrelenting wave of anger and heartbreak. All can be felt with the simplest of thought experiments: Your small child. Your son. Your daughter. Your mother. Your father. Your brother. Your sister. Events of the past few months are building a mountain of hate that will remain long after the dead are counted. And yet the future is still ahead. And to have a livable future requires a radical rethinking. If the loudest and angriest voices are allowed to dominate, in the region and outside of it, there is no hope whatsoever, and without hope the cruel calculus of fear, intimidation and violence is sure to reign. When I spoke to Palestinian philosopher and educator Sari Nusseibeh at a similar moment of strife, he said that though a change of conception might appear inconceivable in such a moment, “the distance from the present to the future is like a pane of glass. Just the thickness of a pane of glass.” What is required of us – and what the acts of continuing violence make so difficult to attain – is to hold the image of the other as a human being, as a mother, a child, as a wise old man or woman (or foolish young one), and, against all the urging toward hatred and vengeance, to make that, and that alone, the priority. Amos Oz once wrote that the imagining of the other is a moral imperative. It is, he said, “the most powerful antidote to fanaticism.” A dove flies over a ruined house in Khan Younis on Nov. 28, during a truce between Hamas and Israel. It lasted seven days before fighting resumed.Saleh Salem/Reuters For years, the right-wing in Israel – and Hamas in their way – have promulgated the notion that the peace process was an illusion, a mirage. But what events have shown is that the delusion, the Fata Morgana, was that there could ever be normality without finding a peaceful, negotiated settlement to the issue. Polls back in 1993 – before a cruel wave of Hamas suicide bombings and the assassination of Israeli prime minister Yitzhak Rabin undermined belief in the possibility – had support for a peace treaty among both Palestinians and Israelis running above 65 per cent. Since then, the far right in Israel and Hamas have shared the same goal: to put a halt to any possibility of the peaceful division of the land into mutually recognized stable states of Israel and Palestine. Even in the past few weeks, Mr. Netanyahu has boasted how he has stopped a Palestinian state from coming into existence in the past and how he will also in the future, arguing that the Hamas attack shows why he is right to do so. It is exactly this thinking which has brought us to where we are now. The sole way to escape the cycle of violence is to clearheadedly renounce all the maximalist and eliminationist fantasies and the dehumanizing caricatures that have led, and will continue to lead, to the horrifying shedding of the blood of thousands of men, women and children. In an interview I filmed before he passed away, the Israeli writer A.B. Yehoshua said that the weight of history and mythology was killing the people of the region, dominating and crushing them. “We have finally to ask ourselves,” he said, “are such things worth more than the small joys and pleasures of life itself?” Israeli soldiers carry a fallen comrade's coffin in Tel Aviv on Jan. 1.Clodagh Kilcoyne/Reuters If there is any meaning to be gained from all these lost lives, it can only be this: to acknowledge that there will be no final victory, that five million Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza will not be wiped from the map, and that neither will seven million Jewish Israelis. And to begin, yet again, the slow and painful work of accepting that no one’s victimhood eclipses the requirement to acknowledge the other’s, and to begin rebuilding the foundation – already begun these 30 wasted and blood-filled years ago – of two states, with security and freedom and sovereignty for each. Otherwise all that will come of the latest bitter brutal episode in this shared tragedy is children and their children and their children’s children doomed to repeat the cycle, to live their lives in fear and hatred. And on and on. A friend, usually vociferous, with whom I have often argued about the conflation of Zionism and colonialism along with the interpretation of various details of history, seemed subdued when I last saw him, his mood pained in much the same way as my own. The past no longer matters, he said. We should only talk about the future. In many ways this seemed the wisest thing I had heard these past months. Precisely in the depth of horror and revulsion at the current violence, in the anger and bereavement at the immense and devastating loss of innocent lives, perhaps there is paradoxically a glimmer of hope, of clarity, that the current state of things is both unsustainable and unbearable. As former Palestinian minister Ziad Abu Zayyad, now 83, said in an interview I filmed with him more than 15 years ago: “How long can this continue? Will we go on killing one another forever?” When Yitzhak Rabin agreed to sign the accord with Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat just over 30 years ago, he sounded a simple clarion call in his speech: Enough of blood and tears. Enough! He did not say enough of Jewish blood and tears, but the blood and tears of both sides. Do we have the ears to hear those words now? https://www.theglobeandmail.com/opinion/article-israelis-and-palestinians-are-both-trapped-by-the-dangerous-fantasies/

You don’t understand how science works. Your ONE limited study that was published only 6 months after the start covid doesn’t “prove” anything. There are dozens and dozens of comprehensive studies discrediting HCQ as an effective COVID treatment, which has been the scientific consensus has been for years now. The article in the OP has linked HCQ to 17,000 unnecessary deaths. Trump supports are hilarious.

Hydroxychloroquine, A Drug Trump Promoted To Treat Covid-19, Linked To 17,000 Deaths, Estimates Show Joshua CohenJan 7, 2024, A bottle of pills of hydroxychloroquine sit on a [+] AFP via Getty Images The former president, Donald Trump, repeatedly promoted the use of hydroxychloroquine in the spring of 2020, as both a preventative against and treatment for Covid-19. He did this despite the drug not having proven effectiveness or safety. According to a study published in the February 2024 issue of the peer-reviewed journal Biomedicine & Pharmacotherapy, the pharmaceutical has now been linked to approximately 17,000 deaths. The drug known as an anti-malarial for decades, hydroxychloroquine, was prescribed to patients by some doctors during the first wave of the Covid-19 pandemic “despite the absence of evidence documenting its clinical benefits.” Authors of a new study—a meta-analysis of randomized clinical trials involving 44 separate cohort studies—estimate that 16,990 Covid-19 patients in the U.S., France, Belgium, Italy, Spain and Turkey died as a result of taking the drug. This translates into an 11% increase in the mortality rate among Covid-19 patients. According to researchers, the toxicity of hydroxychloroquine in patients with Covid-19 is partially due to its severe cardiac side effects. Former President Trump made it a habit in the spring of 2020 to preside over daily briefings conducted by the White House Coronavirus Task Force, where he continually embraced preventive and therapeutic use of hydroxychloroquine. Notably, the President’s advice directly contradicted guidance from the nation’s federal public health agencies, including the Food and Drug Administration and Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. There were plenty of warnings at the time from clinical researchers and senior public health officials alike, including National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases Director Anthony Fauci, about the unproven, experimental nature of hydroxychloroquine and the concern that it might do more harm than good. And this wasn’t the only time Trump gave unsound medical advice to the American people. You may recall when in April 2020 Trump infamously suggested that bleach or other disinfectant chemicals could be useful to combat coronavirus infections. In the spring of 2020, according to the American Association of Poison Control Centers, accidental poisonings as a consequence of people ingesting bleach or other household cleaners spiked in America, doubling from their levels a year before. This takes nothing away from the positive work of the Trump Administration during the Covid-19 pandemic, igncluding its efforts initiating Operation Warp Speed, a public-private partnership to facilitate and accelerate the development, manufacturing, and distribution of Covid-19 vaccines, therapeutics, and diagnostics. This program has been hugely successful, as measured by the pace at which Covid-19 vaccines and treatments were developed and launched. But Trump’s issuance of unwarranted treatment recommendations left a lot to be desired. All such governmental advice must be tightly regulated and given only by those with the requisite knowledge and expertise. This is not to say that there aren’t things that could improve at U.S. public health agencies, including messaging by medical experts. But in the end those in government disseminating messages to the public ought to be officials whose expertise isn’t in doubt. They may make mistakes, but they’re qualified practitioners of medicine or have a clinical science background. Trump did not have this. He never should have gone to the podium and addressed the American people touting unproven therapies or dangerous substances. The moral of this story is that when presidents with no medical expertise contravene public health entities, expect trouble. This is particularly the case when a president like Trump takes center stage, upstaging rigorously trained medical professionals rather than leaving all actual healthcare decisions and guidance up to them. https://www.forbes.com/sites/joshuacohen/2024/01/07/trump-promoted-hydroxychloroquine-to-treat-covid-19-a-drug-now-linked-to-17000-deaths/?sh=3108819d2fcd

So what happened in 2016 is that Republicans decided “they can’t really force us to follow the laws and norms of society if we simply refuse to”. The Dems did not “break every rule of decency to subvert the law” that was all republicans. in fact Trump’s supporters openly admiredTrump’s willingness to violate norms and rules of decency, they said it is what made him so great and proves that he’s not an establishment phoney. The so-called “weaponizing of the FBI” and related conspiracy crap is just their flimsy excuse. The FBI likely cost Hillary the election with the nothing-burger email investigation which they very publicly announced was being re-opened right before election day. Of course the Republicans need to lie and pretend to be the good guys and the victims. Every villain in history has claimed to be the good guy and the victim nobody says “hey let’s be evil”. Of course if the logic is that any party is justified in attempting insurrections, coups, election fraud etc as long as they claim that the system is corrupt and untrustworthy then you don’t have a democracy at all because of course any party will claim that.

New Republic isn’t trashy. But I agree Trump supporters will deny any reports that are inconvenient for them to believe regardless of how credible they are and will simply scream conspiracy. Heck Trump could even admit to it or there could be a video of Trump tag-teaming an underage girl with Epstein and m it wouldn’t change anything. Probably more MAGAs would start defending statutory rape, there’s already a pro-rape camp in the far right among goons like Andrew Tate .