Author, journalist. Ottawa Citizen & National Post columnist. Maclean's magazine refugee. Senior Fellow, Raoul Wallenberg Centre for Human Rights.
Oct 31, 2023 • 7 tweets • 2 min read
If you thought the #Israel #Palestine inanities erupting in Canada were just about deranged college kids who don't know what they're talking about, let me introduce you to the "Cash Management Group," which claims over $5 billion in assets. A thread.
It's a project of entrepreneur Andrew Johns, a bitcoin promoter whose news platform Coastal Front hosts "many esteemed and diverse guests." This is Coastal Front's "coverage" of Saturday's "Freedom for Palestine" rally in Vancouver:
It's pretty disheartening how so many people appear to have convinced themselves that the shocking revelations about Beijing's long reach into Canadian institutions are just part of some stealth plot to elect Poilievre, and so should be dismissed out of hand.
So damn cynical.
They rejoice in poll results that seem to show Poilievre isn't gaining from this, as if that's what matters. Nothing has ever dimmed my optimism for this country more than this. For years, tens of thousands in the diaspora have been living in fear. I've covered these stories.
Mar 1, 2023 • 6 tweets • 3 min read
This is what Trudeau is hiding (thread):
In 2015, Team Trudeau’ set out to serve as the political wing of the Canada-China Business Council, and Beijing’s influence-peddling operation, the United Front Work Department, expanded radically in Canada. therealstory.substack.com/p/chinas-magic…
The problem isn’t Chinese immigrants. It’s that the United Front’s Mandarin-bloc hierarchy embedded itself in symbiosis with Team Trudeau’s political & economic-growth strategy. The Trudeau Liberals’ “Chinese” base is the United Front’s Mandarin-bloc base. therealstory.substack.com/p/chinas-magic…
Mar 20, 2022 • 6 tweets • 2 min read
Sad there are Conservatives either venal or stupid enough to tolerate this jumble of self-contradiction, evasion & deception. Huawei itself says most of the work Charest did for them was to help in the effort to get Huawei through national security roadblocks into 5G. Thread:
Charest says it's only now that he wants to be Conservative leader and PM that he says Huawei's 5G presence would be "a threat to national security." Says that working for Huawei to get it into 5G was somehow magically *not* working against Canada's national security interests.
Dec 6, 2021 • 5 tweets • 2 min read
Can we stop avoiding what has happened here, please? The Trudeau government has shed itself of a foreign-policy embarrassment that was about to mangle Canada-U.S.-relations. 1/5 nationalpost.com/news/politics/…
Barton was hired because he'd just stepped down as the big boss at McKinsey, where he'd turned the consultancy into a massive public-relations machine for opioid dealers and gangster states. 2/5 nytimes.com/2018/12/15/wor…
Aug 26, 2021 • 5 tweets • 1 min read
Months ago, the UN warned: Like flies to carrion, jihadists from around the world were flocking to Afghanistan as a consequence of the US capitulation. From all over Central Asia and beyond. undocs.org/en/S/2021/486 As in Af'stan in the 1980s, and Syria this past decade. 1/5
The arrivals were Taliban affiliates, Al Qaida, and the Taliban IS splinter group behind today atrocities in Kabul. There is no unified Taliban command. It's all about shifting allegiances, splits, coalescence, re-mergers and opportunism. 2/5
Aug 6, 2021 • 7 tweets • 2 min read
1. This is heartening. Conservatives would nix bogus "supply chain management" rules to actually stop slave goods from entering Canadian markets. Weirdly, Ottawa's "Emancipation Day" noise last weekend was a distraction from modern-day slavery. cbc.ca/news/politics/…2. Note to CBC editors: It's not just "some seafood harvested in Southeast Asia and some personal protective equipment". Weird that a certain country (five letters, starts with 'C', ands in 'A' isn't even mentioned.)
Apr 15, 2021 • 24 tweets • 5 min read
1/24 The thread that follows contains some things I've been wanting to get off my chest about the China beat, and "journalism," and certain people journalists and grad school panels rely on for insight.
Prompted by this:
2/24 The column linked above is an apologia for the discreditable ideas of the (won’t say disgraced; too mean) former Asia Pacific Foundation president (unmentioned) Senator Yuen Pau Woo, in which the author, an Asia Pacific Foundation research fellow (also left unmentioned)...
Dec 25, 2020 • 4 tweets • 2 min read
Of course I love Shane MacGowan's Fairytale of New York & its majestic pathos and melancholy and it could be the greatest Christmas song. But it's not really about Christmas. For a song about Christmas & what it really means, there's a sublime hillbilly hymn for that. 1/4
In Steve Earle's Nothing But a Child, the Wise Men "chased a brand new star ever toward the west, Across the mountains far. But when it came to rest They scarce believed their eyes. They'd come so many miles
And this miracle they prized was nothing but a child." 2/4
