The United Kingdom is a cautionary tale. For all our complaining about politics in Canada, we have never had a government as bad as the Johnston government. Total folly.
Ultimately, Britons are to blame for electing him, voting for Brexit.
Sep 16, 2022 • 10 tweets • 3 min read
It's a bad time to be a journalist. Consider that Lisa LaFlamme — one of the most successful, best paid and most recognized journalists in the country — was recently discarded by Bell like a dixie cup.
Consider that female journalists are being routinely harassed and threatened online in a vile coordinated campaign, with apparent impunity. These are unacceptable work circumstances.
Canada is great. We've spent the past days arguing about @davidakin interrupting @PierrePoilievre during a news conference, which is of absolutely no importance. It's great. Nobody got hustled onto a plane and flown to another part of the country to make a dumb political point.
All the yelling about the horrible mainstream media, the terrible loss of trust, the calls for introspection, I don't actually think it has much to do with real sins of the MSM. The culture is full of poisonous junk.
Sep 13, 2022 • 5 tweets • 2 min read
I made a couple of points in my convention column on Poilievre's victory that we would be wise to keep in mind ipolitics.ca/news/pierre-po…
He sure did win a resounding and impressive victory, but the party disqualified the guy who I thought was going to come second.
Aug 30, 2022 • 8 tweets • 3 min read
This is the line that MacKenzie and his supporters take — they post videos mocking people who take them seriously. It's just a joke! We trolled the media! Diagolon is a fake country! Ha ha ha!
I don't find it funny or convincing. Diagolon is a movement, organized through Telegram, an encrypted app, associated with violent extremism. Senior member Chris Lysak was among those charged with conspiring to murder Mounties at Coutts. cbc.ca/news/canada/ca…
Aug 22, 2022 • 7 tweets • 3 min read
The Poilievre campaign is critical of journalists for covering the handshake in Dartmouth between @PierrePoilievre and the leader of Diagolon
@PierrePoilievre I have been looking at the social media posts of the extremist in question, which I won't amplify here, but I found it chilling. I find it disquieting that the extremists and Poilievre campaign's criticisms of journalists are sometimes strikingly similar.
May 15, 2022 • 10 tweets • 2 min read
I read the Buffalo shooter's manifesto last night. It's dim-witted, hateful white supremacist nonsense, full of conspiratorial antisemitic poison, and also, worryingly, a call to arms. This is a terrifying viral phenomenon, with each attack seeking to inspire copycats.
The ideas are so bad. These people are so stupid, so blind to the history of North America. The shooter writes about fighting to preserve European lands from invaders. He did his killing in what is traditional Seneca territory, and his victims were mostly descendants of slaves.
May 13, 2022 • 28 tweets • 7 min read
Because I contracted COVID-19 at the decadent and depraved Kentucky Derby, I could not give a talk for @thewalrus in Toronto this week to discuss this article. thewalrus.ca/why-is-politic… Instead, therefore, I have decided to do a thread on Twitter. 1/n@thewalrus I started working as a journalist in 1989 at the Grand Falls Advertiser, a twice-weekly newspaper in northern Newfoundland. It was a good paper, not the New York Times, but it had lots of information in it about things happening and a handful of reporters trying to dig up news.
The political question arising from this — what I am watching for — is what the reaction will be. Poilievre is following a Trumpian anti-elite script, as Nick Nanos pointed out before the debate. ctvnews.ca/politics/poili…
May 12, 2022 • 5 tweets • 1 min read
Summers are short. It is nice to have a glass of wine with a picnic lunch, especially if you live in a small apartment. The city's pleasure-hating historical roots are still just below the surface.
Council should be sent on a fact-finding trip to Parc La Fontaine in Montreal, have some Portuguese takeout chicken sandwiches washed down with a bottle of Le Castor. Then come back and vote again.
May 12, 2022 • 6 tweets • 1 min read
I like these last two questions. What book are you reading? And who is your political hero? What music do you listen to? Helps give a sense of their personalities.
I wouldn’t have guessed Lewis was a Coltrane fan, for instance.
Mar 5, 2022 • 9 tweets • 3 min read
We urgently need algorithmic transparency. We can only guess about what is driving the dominant medium in our lives. Only the platforms know what they are doing.
Putin made his nature plain enough many times, poisoning his political opponents and critics, for instance. Western leaders knew who he was. There was just too much money to be made.
Feb 19, 2022 • 15 tweets • 4 min read
We face a deadly serious problem in this country and we can’t afford to be blind to the causes and possible consequences. 1/x
Dean Allison, CPC MP for Niagara West, is tweeting like this after the people of Ottawa have been put through misery for weeks, and journalists are getting assaulted. 2/x
Twitter has suspended, apparently permanently, the account of @profamirattaran, a decision I think the company should reverse. @Twitter@jack@TwitterCanada 1/x@profamirattaran@Twitter@jack@TwitterCanada Attaran got in trouble for this tweet, part of a thread criticizing the government of Canada's slowness to approve vaccines for Canadian children.
Jun 22, 2021 • 13 tweets • 4 min read
Frum's article gives readers the impression that SJAM was unable to to take on the enormous task of providing food aid to the plains, which I think may leave readers with a false impression. 1/?
Here is what Frum writes. The suggestion is that anyone who thinks Canada should have provided food aid is guilty of presentism. 2/? theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/…
Jun 21, 2021 • 17 tweets • 4 min read
I think this is skillful argumentation, and likely a necessary part of reaching a new consensus, but I think it falls short in two ways.
First, it fails to mention the treaty obligation, the treaty-making process by which Macdonald and his agents essentially promised rations in exchange for signatures and then failed to provide the rations, leading to disease and death.
Jan 8, 2018 • 16 tweets • 4 min read
Beyak blames political correctness, promises to stand up for freedom of speech. I would like to use my freedom of speech to denounce her as a deluded fool.
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Here's the speech that she gave in the Senate last March: sencanada.ca/en/content/sen… I think it reveals a shallow, bigoted world view.
