EDITORIAL: Pandemic open debate is important

Author of the article:Postmedia News

Publishing date:Jan 15, 2021  

Ontario Premier Doug Ford announced an Ontario-wide lockdown in an effort to curtail a massive spike in COVID-19 cases expected over the holiday season. The Canadian Press PHOTO BY FILE PHOTO /THE CANADIAN PRESS

A large part of the world is currently engaged in an unprecedented experiment to stamp out COVID-19. Across Canada, people are living under a variety of lockdown restrictions. For the most part, the rules keep getting tighter.

Is it working? Is it a good idea? Is there a better way?

People are going to have different answers to these questions for a whole variety of reasons.

And guess what? That’s OK. It’s healthy. This is a democracy and Canadians are informed people who have a right to hold an opinion and voice it.

There is unfortunately a narrative that has emerged in Canada though that blindly assumes that only good will come from lockdowns. Any individual — no matter how highly-credentialed — can be attacked for questioning and even presenting evidence that there are consequences to locking down human society for an extended period of time.

For example, on Friday Ontario Premier Doug Ford removed one of his own MPPs, Roman Baber, from the Progressive Conservative caucus for daring to challenge the government’s fixation with strict lockdowns.

While it’s not surprising to learn that a politician got booted from his own team for openly challenging his government’s direction, what is alarming is the way Ford did it.

Ford denounced Baber for “spreading misinformation.” That’s just not true.

Instead, Baber produced a two-page letter that was full of facts and statistics about how COVID-19 is playing out in Canada and some of the negative consequences of the lockdowns that have been highlighted by experts.

It is not misinformation to quote government data. It is not misinformation to highlight how the Canadian Mental Health Association reports that the number of people who now have thoughts of suicide has skyrocketed to 1 in 10 Canadians.

It is not misinformation to suggest, as many experts have already done, that there is a better way to doing all of this.

We need more of an open debate. Pro-lockdown. Anti-lockdown. Calls for a more balanced approach. It should all be encouraged.

These are major decisions being made about our lives that shouldn’t be made lightly. They should include as many voices at the table as possible.

It’s more important now than ever.

EDITORIAL: Pandemic open debate is important | Toronto Sun

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BONOKOSKI: Justin Trudeau’s playing with a whole heap of crazy

Author of the article:Mark Bonokoski

Publishing date:Jan 15, 2021  

When I was youngish and in my first year of college, and my maternal grandmother was the gentlest soul I had ever met, we were having tea before I returned to Toronto from her home in St. Catharines.

But no more about him.

Clara was ailing, and closing in on the end of days, when she turned to me and said “someone needs to do something about Pierre Trudeau.”

This was out of the blue. This was like the Pope blaspheming, but later understandable when I learned more about Trudeau.

The first time I actually met Justin Trudeau, however, was when I tracked down his embattled mother outside New York when she had derailed and was hanging with the famous Studio 54 glitter set.

Young Justin was around five. He asked me to bend down to presumably hear him better and instead gave my moustache a painful yank.

What could I do? He was a kid whose mom was a mess, and I was the dirty, rotten chump who had found her.

Today, of course, he is Prime Minister, and his insidious lessening of our democratic traditions is looking more socialist by the second.

“Trudeau’s recent behaviour is not an aberration precipitated by the (pandemic) crisis,” former Conservative finance minister Joe Oliver recently wrote in the Toronto Sun.

“Rather, it follows a pattern that started early in his government. Underpinning it is the special appeal left-wing autocrats hold for him, bequeathed by his father.”

Oliver was considerate not to lump Trudeau the Younger in with strongmen like Rodrigo Duterte of the Philippines, Viktor Orban of Hungary or Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey, all of whom exploited the urgent need for government assistance caused by the COVID-19 pandemic to enshrine executive power at the expense of personal freedom.

But their countries are accustomed to conflict and uncertainty, which are the door-openers for despots, and the exploitation was barely noticed as virus victims piled up and situations became increasingly dire.

Trudeau had to be devious.

Right from the get-go, and without even a modest groundswell of support, Trudeau snapped his fingers and said voters were wanting ranked ballots, which is a crock of hooey that would have produced Liberal majorities ad infinitum.https://www.youtube.com/embed/SaaVZn5ICx8?embed_config={%27relatedChannels%27:%20[],%27autonav%27:true}&autoplay=0&playsinline=1&enablejsapi=1

Proportional representation, the last bad idea to replace first-past-the-post, would produce an endless chain of minority governments.

It would be Groundhog Day on a loop, much as it is today under Trudeau Jr., who at least tried to buy unlimited spending power in an omnibus bill he hoped to sneak through under the pandemic’s heat.

Trudeau’s government will now operate without a budget for two years during the biggest spending spree in Canadian history, resulting in nearly a $400 billion deficit and federal debt of over one trillion dollars.

Years ago, back when I was a young journalism student and my dying Grandma was toying with taking matters into her own hands, Pierre Elliott Trudeau was the most dangerous man in Canada who used the FLQ as a foil.

It got him the War Measures Act, while Justin Trudeau is being urged today to enact the comparable Emergencies Act — even by the media.

And that’s a whole heap of crazy.

BONOKOSKI: Justin Trudeau’s playing with a whole heap of crazy | Toronto Sun

Israeli land is being stolen in broad daylight

The Palestinians have learned that in order to conquer Israeli territory, it is better not to go about it through armed resistance, but through “silent” seizures, such as the planting of trees.

COLUMN MATAN PELEG

(January 14, 2021 / JNS) Israel’s security establishment is alive and kicking. It has destroyed missile-production facilities in Syria and Iraq, assassinated nuclear scientists, demolished dozens of terror tunnels and thwarted thousands of terrorist attacks.

It is therefore no surprise that the Palestinians have learned that in order to conquer Israeli territory, it is better not to go about it through armed resistance, but through “silent” land seizures.

Former Palestinian Authority Prime Minister Salam Fayyad can attest to this, as he is the mastermind behind the large-scale European government-funded building across Area C in Judea and Samaria—land that is under Israeli control according to the Oslo Accords.

The watchdog organization Regavim revealed that in 2018 alone, the “Fayyad Plan” seized nearly 80,000 dunams of land in Area C, an area that spans a mere four million dunams in total.Subscribe to The JNS Daily Syndicate by email and never miss our top stories

In addition to illegal construction, another effective method used by Israel’s enemies to conquer state land is simply to plant trees; not one or two, but millions. Think of it as an initiative of the Jewish National Fund, only one that works against the State of Israel.

While we are all focused on COVID-19 and the political situation in Israel, a Jordanian NGO named APN—The Arab Group for the Protection of Nature—is working under the radar to “liberate Palestine from the river to the sea” (their words) by planting millions of trees in Israeli territory.

Employing this “green resistance” (again, their words), the APN’s Million Tree Campaign has planted nearly 2.5 million trees over the past two decades in Israeli territory, with a focus on Judea and Samaria. According to its website, APN has cultivated 126,307 dunams of land from 2001 to 2019.

The reason this is such an effective tool has to do with the antiquated Ottoman-era law governing Judea and Samaria, which allows for someone to claim ownership over state land if he has cultivated the land in question for several consecutive years. And APN is fully aware of this.

In addition to working hand in hand with the P.A., APN is funded by the Kingdom of Jordan, foreign foundations based in Kuwait, the Islamic Relief Worldwide organization, Turkish “human rights” organizations and others. The Jordanian government isn’t merely unaware of APN’s activities; it knowingly encourages the NGO’s efforts to seize Israeli land. In Aug. 2020, Jordanian Minister of State for Media Affairs Amjad Adaileh issued an official letter thanking APN for its efforts.

It’s also important to note that the plantings are not arbitrary. The organization publicly states that it chooses the spots for planting in order to curb “Jewish settlements expansion” and to combat “the danger of nationalizing land by the occupation.”

In the past few months alone, the organization has boasted planting thousands of trees in dozens of locations across Judea and Samaria, including near Jerusalem, Hebron, Ariel and throughout the Jordan Valley.

APN also documents its plantings, which can often be seen on its website or social media page, to use as evidence in its efforts to claim ownership of the land.

Earlier this month, Israeli Minister of Community Affairs Tzachi Hanegbi announced that the government will be allocating 21,000,000 shekels (approximately $67 million) in 2021 to establish vehicle and drone patrols aimed at combating this phenomenon of illegal land seizures.

While this is a very welcomed initiative, there is still much more work that needs to be done. If Israel’s security establishment doesn’t start diverting more resources and manpower to combating these illegal land grabs, one day we will wake up to find that our land has been stolen—without a single shot having been fired.

Matan Peleg is the CEO of Im Tirtzu.

Israeli land is being stolen in broad daylight (jns.org)

‘LOCKDOWN ISN’T WORKING’: Ford caucus member breaks rank to speak out

‘COVID is real, but the fear of COVID is exaggerated’

Arwen~MPP Roman Baber’s letter to Premier Ford is in this article. It is respectful, thoughtful and contains facts/statistics that cannot be denied and should not be dismissed. Truth tellers are coming to the forefront at personal and professional cost, truth compels them to do so.

https://torontosun.com/news/provincial/lockdown-isnt-working-ford-caucus-member-breaks-rank-to-speak-out