I just filed a column on the Zameer verdict. It should be online shortly. I'll share it once it is. But as part of my research, I went back through my archive to brush up on some other controversial self-defence cases. I want to share one with you. Some of you may remember it. + I'll let the column on Zameer speak for itself once it's live, but fundamentally, the common thread here is that contrary to what a lot of people seem to think, it is legal to kill in self-defence in Canada. Our laws are stricter than American laws, but you have the right.

Israel has been making video/audio recordings of the Oct. 7th attack available to journalists. You've probably read about this — the first briefing, to foreign media in Israel, was written up extensively, in part because of how shocked/upset the media was.

I've seen the video. I'm obviously going to write about what I saw in a proper article soon, after I've had a chance to reflect on it a bit and gather my thoughts. I also need to clean up my notes a bit, quite literally. There were no photos or videos permitted, so hand-jotted notes only.

I should probably save this for something other than X, but. A thought I had. I've been writing for a while about how the LPC is struggling to communicate.

I don't think its problems are only comms, which they seem to have partially convinced themselves. + But they're a problem. And they're a problem more now than they used to be. It seems that whatever knack they once had for it is waning.

I don't think the problems are hard to assess or even widely disputed. Old government, overly centralized. Not everything is complex. +

I'm going to turn in early tonight, I think, but I want to share a silly (as in absurd) little scenario I like to use to describe Canadian complacency some times.

Let me sketch out a little scene for you all. You've retired to the country. You've got a nice home on a nice piece of land. Rolling hills, gorgeous sunrises and sunsets, great views in all directions. You've got a few neighbours, but none are too close at hand. A bit of a walk to the nearest neighbour's place.

I've come back to this a few times. Just mulling it over.

This is, suffice it to say, not an optimal way for members of the governing party to be contextualizing matters of national security.

https://twitter.com/stevenchase/status/1628139685380821036

I've said this before in other contexts, and I intend this comment as a concerned citizen and not as a partisan critic, but it would be REALLY helpful if our federal Liberals familiarized themselves with the concept of blowback and accepted they aren't immune to it.

I'm busy today so I won't be online much, but the Liberals withdrawing their gun control bill is very, very interesting and a major political setback for them.

Remember, they were insisting the critics of their bill were spreading "misinformation" while they lied to defend it. Then they came around to admitting, okay, fine, we're doing what we've denied we were doing, but we have to do it, and we will do it.

And then today, suddenly, well, okay, fine, we won't do it.

With a new season of Star Trek: Picard coming out soon, I went back and reread my long (!) review of the first season, which also served as a brief behind-the-scenes history of what brought Jean-Luc Picard back onto the screen.

And .... hmmm. mattgurney.substack.com/p/star-trek-pi… Since I wrote that, we've had a second season of Picard, and now we have the final one coming up. I'm looking forward to the final episodes, very much so, and I'm going in with a wide-open mind. It's interesting, though, to read my review of the first, knowing what I do now.

That press conference, eh?

Not gonna cut it.

Also not convinced there's anything else they can do in the immediate term, so definitely playing the "been seen to be doing something" card. The challenge here is that we have

A. Long-running systemic issues that will take years to address, and only then with sustained political and financial effort.

and ...

B. Immediate short-term and high-viz symptoms popping up on a daily basis.

As I just said on my radio show, I don't have any objections to a national summit. Let's have one! Get the experts together. Collect data, consult leaders and stakeholders. All good.

But! The summit must be a precursor to action, not another goddamned substitute for action.

https://twitter.com/EdTubb/status/1618619855019855874

There is something broken in our political culture — I dunno if it's at the elected official level, the bureaucratic level, or some mixture of both. But process and appearances has largely supplanted action and effect.

I rode the TTC three times today. Once to downtown from my home in midtown. Once within downtown to a different place. And then home from downtown.

On two of those three rides, there was someone having a very obvious mental-health crisis on the vehicle with us. The first one was a young man who clapped his hands over his ears and shrieked incoherently at random intervals. And then he got off.

The second, an older man sat in a chair and screamed nonsense constantly for ten stops. Maybe more. That's just when I got off.