Religious mobs are a threat to British democracy

In a diverse democracy like Britain, which accommodates a variety of political and religious beliefs and practices, maintaining social cohesion will always be a challenge.
Such differences mean tensions are bound to emerge and our core democratic values will be tested. What matters is how our public institutions, parliamentarians and government respond to these disputes. Demonstrating leadership is critical.
No such leadership has been on show in regard to the protests in recent days outside cinemas across the country, demanding that screenings of the film The Lady of Heaven be banned.

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ChiComs call theory that Covid originated in Chinese lab ‘politically motivated lie’

China has repeated its assertion the theory that the Covid-19 pandemic began with a leak from a Chinese laboratory is “a politically motivated lie”, after the World Health Organization (WHO) recommended continued investigations this week.

“The lab leak theory is totally a lie concocted by anti-China forces for political purposes, which has nothing to do with science,” the Chinese foreign ministry spokesperson Zhao Lijian said at a daily briefing on Friday.

“We always supported and participated in science-based global virus tracing, but we firmly opposed any forms of political manipulation,” Zhao said, while attempting to shift the blame to the US, and claiming – without evidence – that Washington was developing the coronavirus as a bioweapon.

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Why foreign fighters see Ukraine’s cause as their own

Aiden Aslin, Shaun Pinner and Brahim Saadoun embody the spirit of solidarity and internationalism.

Yesterday, two Brits and a Moroccan were sentenced to death by a court in the self-proclaimed Donetsk People’s Republic (DPR) in eastern Ukraine. The three, who had been fighting with the Ukrainian armed forces, were found guilty, in the words of the court, of ‘mercenary activities and committing actions aimed at seizing power and overthrowing the constitutional order of the DPR’.

The official condemnation from Ukraine’s Western supporters came quickly. The British government pointed out that they were prisoners of war and that, under the Geneva Conventions, they ‘were entitled to combatant immunity… from prosecutions’. UK foreign secretary Liz Truss called it ‘a sham judgement with absolutely no legitimacy’.


Speaking of Internationalism…

Lost photos from Spanish civil war reveal daily life behind anti-fascist lines

Photographs by two Jewish female photographers who worked behind anti-fascist lines during the Spanish civil war have gone on display in Madrid after 80 years. For decades the negatives and prints, many of which have never been published, were believed to be lost or destroyed. They are now on show in the capital for the first time.

I get a kick out of this pic. The photographers were affiliated with anarchist organizations and these are captioned “Anarchist Vehicles.”

Would they mind if I drove off with one?

I don’t hold anything against the left of 1930’s. Too little was then widely known about the anti-human horror of communism. The anti-Franco volunteers may have been naïve true believers  but there is no denying they were on the right side of history for once. The horror of WW I and the ravages of capitalism’s virtual collapse made signing up for the cause pretty easy for many I suspect.

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Police the Streets, Not the Tweets

The new inspector of constabulary for England and Wales pledges to focus on crime and resist “thought policing.”

Here in Britain we seem to police everything except crime. Yet some signs suggest that things could change. Andy Cooke has been named the new chief inspector of constabulary, with responsibility for overseeing the operational procedure of all police forces in England and Wales and making recommendations for improvement. Cooke clearly wants to send a message, telling the Times in an interview, “We’re not the thought police.”

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What Doug Ford’s blue-collar victory means for Canada’s progressives

OTTAWA, Ont. — Canada’s left-wing New Democrats are facing a new threat from a Conservative movement keen to steal long-standing support from the party’s working-class base.

Last week, an election in Canada’s largest province saw the Progressive Conservatives win a landslide majority, partly due to a successful bid to appeal to union workers in former NDP strongholds.

The NDP hasn’t had the working class vote for eons, they rep Big Labour  – principally our predatory public service unions whose members number nearly 2 million in Ontario. Private sector unions are not nearly so large but do rep the left leaning media.

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The Horror! Kawartha Dairy criticized after employee sports possible freedom convoy flags

Seriously? This triggered the snowflakes?

A popular ice cream destination in Newmarket, Ont. has asked an employee to remove “offensive” flags after complaints surfaced on social media.

Late on June 6, customers on Twitter started admonishing Kawartha Dairy after seeing a photograph allegedly of an employee’s vehicle decorated in flags that supported the so-called freedom convoy, an anti-mandate protest that shuttered streets in downtown Ottawa and across the province for weeks.

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Canada would need to spend $75B more over half a decade to reach NATO defence spending target, report says

Canada has fallen so short of its NATO commitment to devote 2 per cent of annual economic output to military spending that it would cost $75-billion over the next half-decade to catch up, a new report by a parliamentary budget watchdog says.

The North Atlantic Treaty Organization is a military alliance dedicated to the collective defence of its 30 members, including Canada. In 2006, NATO defence ministers agreed to commit a minimum of 2 per cent of their gross domestic product to defence spending to ensure the alliance’s readiness. In 2014, they renewed that commitment.

Parliamentary Budget Officer Yves Giroux says there’s no chance Canada will meet its NATO goal over the next five years with the government’s current level of military spending.

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William Watson: Canada’s biggest carbon footprint?

We see him here, we see him there, we see him damn near everywhere. Justin Trudeau has got to have Canada’s biggest carbon footprint. Since May 1, by calculations based on his official daily itinerary and an internet distance-between-two-points app, he has flown more than 38,000 kilometres. That’s just 2,000 km less than Earth’s circumference. Around the world in 38 days. They could make a movie.

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The Biggest Winner In Biden’s Solar Panel Charade Is Communist China

Since assuming the presidency last year, Joe Biden has been a tremendous gift to the communist Chinese government. Whether it’s repeatedly fumbling the ball on Taiwan or shutting down a Department of Justice initiative aimed at identifying and preventing spying activities by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), Biden’s administration has been at the forefront of empowering an increasingly aggressive China that seeks to replace the United States as a regional and global hegemon.

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Tesla investigation deepens after more than a dozen US ‘Autopilot’ crashes

US federal regulators are deepening their investigation into Tesla’s Autopilot function after more than a dozen Tesla cars crashed into parked first-responder vehicles over a period of four years.

The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) said on Thursday it was upgrading its preliminary investigation, which launched last August, to an “engineering analysis”, which is taken before the agency determines a recall.

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14 arrests of bloodthirsty inbred morons in anti-terror raid on Pakistani cell linked to bumbling Mohammedan who couldn’t get Charlie Hebdo’s address right

(ANSA) – ROME, JUN 7 – Italian police on Tuesday made 14 arrests in an anti-terror raid on a Pakistani cell operating in Italy and other European countries, judicial sources said.

The cell was allegedly linked to a wider network called the Gabar Group, itself linked to Zaheer Hassan Mahmoud, the 27-year-old Pakistani man who attacked the former offices of the satirical weekly Charlie Hebdo in Paris in September 2020, wounding two people with a cleaver.

Mahmoud went to Charlie Hebdo’s former offices to punish them for re-publishing cartoons of the prophet Mohamed for which 12 people were killed there in January 2015.

He did not know that the magazine had moved in the meantime.

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