I am Groot

Biden has been tougher on China than Trump ever was. And frankly, both he and his main challenger, Desantis, seem to be very, very, VERY soft on Russia. I also don't think either one would challenge China if they went after Taiwan. I'm not even sure they'd challenge China if they went after Japan. Both seem to be of the belief that the only time to bring the US military into play is if and when an enemy lands in Florida. A significant number of Republicans seem to very much like Putin and all the misery and slaughter he's wreaked so far.

I don't think I've ever seen anything quite like this in the media before. Why I blew the whistle on Chinese interference in Canada’s elections When I joined the public service many years ago, I swore an oath. Not to party or to person, but to my country, to its democratic institutions and to my fellow Canadians. When I first became aware of the significance of the threat posed by outside interference to our democratic institutions, I worked – as have many unnamed and tireless colleagues – to equip our leaders with the knowledge and the tools needed to take action against it. Months passed, and then years. The threat grew in urgency; serious action remained unforthcoming. I endeavored, alone and with others, to raise concerns about this threat directly to those in a position to hold our top officials to account. Regrettably, those individuals were unable to do so. In the time that passed, another federal election had come and gone, the threat of interference had grown, and it had become increasingly clear that no serious action was being considered. Worse still, evidence of senior public officials ignoring interference was beginning to mount. https://www.theglobeandmail.com/opinion/article-whistleblower-china-canada-election-interference/

If it weren't for the requirement that you be born in the US I wonder how many Republicans would vote for Putin to be their candidate if he submitted his name.

Not to worry. Trump or DeSantis will become President in two years and pardon him.

So in an interview with the CBC Kennedy Stewart, the previous mayor of Vancouver, said he was interviewed by CSIS who asked him questions about Chinese influence. And the CSIS agent told him "We've been sending the information on Chinese interference up the chain for years and no one is paying any attention."

Johnston negotiated an agreement with China to put one of those Confuscious Institutes in at the University of Western Ontario when he was president. https://bulletin.uwaterloo.ca/2006/jun/16fr.html

The constitutionality of all laws depends entirely on who you appoint to the Supreme Court. I could get a law putting anyone named herbie into a labour camp be approved with the right people on the court. Slavery could be legalized. We could throw out any laws that offended the bible, including all the gay rights stuff. We could also get it legaly approved to put an end to democracy with the right judges on the supreme court. For that matter, how about a law that says if you can't trace your ancestry to indigenous people you lose your citizenship and all rights? I'm pretty sure that wouldn't be hard to get passed. You make it sound like Harper appointed conservative judges. He couldn't find conservative judges to put on the court. He was reduced to trying to appoint a semi-retired, part time judge in Quebec. And the judges of the supreme court ruled he couldn't do that because they said so. 'Because I say' so is the basic tone of supreme court findings. Sometimes they make some tortured effort to connect those findings with some aspect of the Charter. Sometimes not. I don't think people who commit mass murder, or for that matter, sex murderers, should have any hope at all. Do you think Paul Bernardo deserves his faint hope? Do you think he deserves to think that some day, maybe as society changes, he'll be allowed out again? I don't think he should have that hope. It would not actually surprise me given the nature of some of the decisions made by the parole boards. But that's not the point. He should not have that faint hope and the families of his victims should not have to relive the trial every few years just so he could.

I somehow doubt you'd say the same if the court ruled against one of your pet causes.

The answer to many government problems is for the citizenry to be more responsible and less placid. When Trudeau's major campaign planks about open government and changing the voting system were ditched overboard along with empowering MPs, the House and Committees he should have been thrown out in the next election. Instead, too many voters let themselves be swayed by very American-style hot-button scare campaigns over things like gay rights, guns and abortions.

Are you forgetting much of this stuff about China is coming from the Globe? They also broke the story of Trudeau's influence campaign against his attorney general over SNC Lavalin.

Our society discriminates against people based on these things all the time. In particular, our society and every level of government discriminate between males and females due to the obvious biological and anatomical differences between them. As it should. Pretending some guy who says he's now a girl is a woman, based on a weird new interpretation of that word does not in any way, shape or form invalidate the simple biology that they are not female. Or that females are weaker than males or subject to victimization both due to that weakness and to male biological imperatives and instincts regarding breeding. This is what trans supporters keep ignoring or dismissing. Bullshit. The Left need to stop flinging that word around for everything they don't like.

I don't accept the Charter as any kind of guide to the reality of human rights as its interpretation is too open to manipulation. But if it bothers you we can move on. She is representative of an attitude popular among the fashionably dumb (including much of our academia) that challenges the legitimacy of every part of Western society and all that we derive from it, including our belief in fundamental justice, those freedoms you spoke of, scientific rationality, and democratic politics. At heart, I detest dumb people who are dumb not because of a lack of intellect but ideological blindness and fanaticism. As a nationalist, I of course, also have contempt for those who, blinded by their ideological views, suggest that almost everyone in the country is not a legitimate citizen of this nation - one they also contest the legitimacy of. In short, I've always been a judgemental bastard and I judge her as a waste of skin tissue. What you are missing is the requirement for rigid ideological conformity which is enforced in dictatorships by the state and state associations (like phony unions in Russia and phony churches in China), and in Canada by ideological zealots in a variety of organizations with state power, like the law societies, medical associations, teacher associations and unions, or in this case, by a school board. It is the ideological requirement to never question doctrine that I am speaking of. And it's particularly appalling in education given academics pioneered the idea of tenure, supposedly to allow for free thought and the ability to challenge prevailing thinking. Putting up with what others say isn't the point. You can call Poilievre names if you want and argue against the convoy. But if your social views don't match that of the social justice types who are currently in charge of most institutions you'll lose your job if you express them. Or, as in this place, be banished from school, and, in effect, forced into solitary confinement. Isn't it interesting that we've said solitary is a bad place to put murderers but it's fine to put a sixteen year old student who dared to question doctrine. Because questioning doctrine is 'dangerous'. They want to enforce commitment to views on things like transgenderism which were considered ridiculous, unprofessional and outrageous less than a decade ago.

The Globe is correct. And it's not just a Liberal thing. I've found it much easier to get information on American government programs and policies whenever I care to look than finding out even the most basic information about Canada's. Whether it's how much we paid for vaccines or how much money is going to subsidize various businesses or what was spent and wasted during the covid mess or the routine stonewalling for anything from immigration numbers to the cost of paying for refugees, whether it's policing costs or why we should let companies that screw over the government keep getting more contracts, you can't find out much of anything from the government. Too often, in too many different contexts and for utterly indefensible reasons, the position of official Canada is that Canadians are delicate children who can’t be trusted with information of clear public interest. More than a culture of secrecy, myriad Canadian bureaucracies seem to have willingly pledged allegiance to a cult of confidentiality. Citizens, and the media who ask questions on their behalf, are often deprived of basic public information that people in other jurisdictions simply expect to get as a matter of course – and have every right to. The immediate result of this is to deny Canadians information to which they’re entitled. But the deeper effect is to cultivate a sense of scarcity and paternalism, as though anything more is an unreasonable expectation and people should be grateful for whatever crumbs they can pry out of the tightly clutched fists of the bureaucracy. https://www.theglobeandmail.com/opinion/editorials/article-canadas-cult-of-confidentiality/

Now I have some respect for Johnston. He did a great job as GG. Unfortunately, he should have refused such an invitation. If Trudeau isn't going to give Canadians an official inquiry led by a judge he should at least found someone with fewer ties to him and his party. As the saying goes, justice not only needs to be unbiased it needs to be seen to be unbiased. Johnston is on the Trudeau Foundation. He appointed WE charity's Kielburger to the Election debates commission and used a format and questions the Conservatives didn't want or approve. He also included Rosemary Barton as a moderator while she was suing the Conservative Party. He describes himself as a friend of China and visited there many times even before he became GG. On that occasion, he told Chinese President Xi Jinping that 'I feel as though I'm returning home" when he arrives there. “Now I’ve known the Governor General since I was a kid, from visiting him and his daughters when he was principal of McGill, to spending time on the ice or the slopes at their family home in the Laurentians.” “But getting to know someone as a family friend or a friend of your father’s is very different from having the honour of working alongside them.” -Trudeau Sept 28, 2017. https://ottawacitizen.com/opinion/carson-jerema-trudeau-family-friend-david-johnston-not-the-man-to-restore-election-confidence/wcm/9ca4f375-4a67-410d-8a2e-f213f3df96b8

Another release from the Globe and Mail demonstrating how eager China is to influence Canada. This time demonstrating their actions in the Vancouver municipal election which saw the first Chinese-Canadian mayor elected. China’s diplomatic mission in Vancouver has actively interfered in the city’s politics, using proxies in diaspora community organizations and grooming politicians to run in last fall’s municipal election, according to Canada’s spy agency. A Jan. 10, 2022, Canadian Security and Intelligence Service report viewed by The Globe and Mail outlines how China’s then-consul-general, Tong Xiaoling, discussed mentoring – or as the report quoted her, “grooming” – Chinese-Canadian municipal politicians for higher office to advance Beijing’s interests. Ms. Tong sought to elect pro-Beijing politicians to city council in the October, 2022, municipal election in which incumbent mayor Kennedy Stewart lost to Ken Sim by margin of nearly 37,000 votes. During his term as mayor, Mr. Stewart drew criticism from the Chinese government for suspending meetings with its diplomats after it put sanctions on Canadian MP Michael Chong, a friend of his and critic of Beijing, and strengthening ties with Taiwan, a self-ruled province that Beijing wants to annex. https://www.theglobeandmail.com/politics/article-chinas-vancouver-consulate-interfered-in-2022-municipal-election/ And as this column points out, China has embedded itself throughout Canada thanks to 'pliant liberals'. Something rotten has spread through this country's corporate sector, universities and political class The longer this drags out, the more light gets shed on the squalid and intimate relationship between the Liberals’ political base in this country’s wealthy and well-connected Mandarin-bloc hierarchy and the Ferrari-driving consiglieri of Beijing’s strong-arming and influence-peddling network in Canada. It’s the same circle of power. Slowly but surely, Canadians are beginning to understand what so many brave Chinese-Canadians have been warning about all these years. Slowly and steadily, the public is waking up to the alarms rung by Chinese political exiles, Hongkongers, Tibetans and Uyghur refugees, and by the Canadian Security Intelligence Service. But it is a dispiriting education. It’s the brazenness of it that’s so galling, the flaunting of impunity in a thriving social scene of dodgy casino high-rollers and senators, Chinese diplomats and targets of RCMP money-laundering probes, MPs and mayors at banquets and ribbon-cuttings, weekend barbecues and campaign fundraising parties. https://ottawacitizen.com/opinion/pliant-liberals-have-helped-china-embed-itself-in-canada/wcm/f8b26cf2-6ca8-4758-91be-3e52a8707671

It's still a silly exaggeration. Not EVERYTHING is a human right. Especially considering so many of those who consider this a human right don't believe freedom of speech or religion should be. You are imputing a degree of emotionality to me in the very next sentence in which you protest my presumptions about your attitude. I don't actually have to be 'seething' to insult someone on the internet, you know... That's not a legitimate argument. You can make ANYTHING a 'professional standard' or some other required rule of behavior. And if you do then no one is allowed to express a counter view or else they'll be silenced, fired, and marched off the site. Would it be acceptable to you if the Tories decided to make any disrespectful or disparaging statements about Canada's previous leaders and history a violation of 'professional standards' and fired any teacher who violated it? How about if they say there are two genders, period, and make it against professional standards to take any other position?

The similarity is that both are extremely authoritarian. Yes, I've heard this before. None of those Socialist countries that were or are authoritarian nightmares were REAL socialist countries. It's just a coincidence that ALL Socialist countries were horrible, brutal regimes. Antifa is a fringe outfit which is all about identity politics.

No one suggested it was. Ah, yes, Socialism is much saner. As in Venezuela. Or perhaps like democratic socialists like, oh, Daniel Ortega, for example. So much kinder and gentler! He said he believes there are only two genders. Probably because there are only two sexes. But hey, he's 16. Riiight. Because everything about the identity politics of the Left isn't about convincing everyone they're victims and then exalting being a victim as somehow being noble. Antifa is all about breaking the law.

This cite does not support much of anything he said. In fact, if anything, it makes things seem worse for the school. He was suspended for 'bullying' for stating his opinion on a subject under discussion? And the sheer fanaticism of the trans supporters in calling people, presumably teenagers, protesting over males going into female bathrooms a 'terrorist organization' is almost gob-smackingly lunatic. What planet are these people from anyway?

This is not a human rights issue. I really dislike how far people have stretched terms like this. It is not a 'human right' to be protected from anyone disagreeing with your self-declared gender. It is not a 'human right' to be able to pretend to be a different sex and be treated like that's true. One of the problems of the West is how that term has been stretched to the point of absurdity. Bein tortured or thrown in prison without trial or cause are violations of human rights. Not being addressed by the pronoun of your choice is not. " And you are seething" The number of genders. And probably more if they exclude the under-18s from surveys. No, it's actually quite similar. Do you think all the teachers at these schools believe in gender fluidity and that people can change gender overnight? Of course not! But if they dare to express their opinion they risk their job.

It most definitely is true. That does not suggest students are NEVER expelled for violence, but only a pedant would think I had suggested that. You have a cite for this? And told to complete the term by online learning, banishing him from his friends for the year is unnaceptable. Cite, please. Assuming someone is lying when nothing whatsoever had been presented to contradict their statement is the act of an ideological fool. Present your evidence and we'll have a look at it.

So if you're kicked out of a public school you're supposed to just not get an education. Is that what you're saying? You know, schools in Ontario, have, according to the press and social media, a huge violence problem. And part of that is because even when students commit repeated acts of violence they're not expelled. Yet here we have a guy who dared to express an opinion in a discussion that is shared by three-quarters of the population and you and the other zealots seem to find nothing inappropriate with him being tossed out of school for it.

That sentence reveals more about your sophistication and education than you probably would have preferred. He was referring to reality, something about which I suspect you try to stay away from as much as possible. They're not females. And that's what matters. I prefer "If you don't agree with the TOS work to get it changed. And if the people in charge won't change it then you change the people in charge.

A private school wouldn't act like this. Or if it did that's exactly what people would do. It's both a Catholic and a Public school in the two different cases mentioned.