A Chinese Proverb says, “May you live in Interesting Times.” Today in the “Age of Donald Trump” and a rise of right-wing political parties across the Globe we are seeing a resurgence of right wing views, anti-Immigrant sentiments and veiled discrimination against “The Other” and the trampling on the rights of various minorities.
Freedom of expression includes not saying what you don’t want to. So these updates which may give some insight to ‘truth management’ in Canada start out with the journalist’s right to protect his/her sources. Refusing to reveal a source to the court in both the U.S. and Canada can place a journalist in jail. The extremes of countering an individual’s wishes not to reveal information have become the state’s domain due to current policies on torture. U.S. officials who have approved torture are allowed to enter Canada although torture is clearly against Canadian law.
Would a farmer ask a fox to help design a security system for her free-range chickens?
A group that stokes Islamophobia and defends an explicitly supremacist organization shouldn’t be part of a Public Consultation on Systemic Discrimination and Racism in Québec. The Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs (CIJA) should be removed from the “list of selected organizations” for this important initiative.
Seems like in the past 15 years or so the idea of patriotism has changed some. More polarized, more tied to political or ideological views. I’ve never seen patriotism or the flag connected to either; I see the flag more as the symbol of a nation that allows the freedom to express those ideas. That alone deserves my respect.
— Macy Moore, U.S. Marine
So I wish you well, Sarge, give ’em Hell!
Kill me a thousand or so
And if you ever get a war without blood and gore
I’ll be the first to go
— Phil Ochs, The Draft Dodger’s Rag
Guess that makes me a proud bitch.
— Teresa Kaepernick, Colin Kaepernick’s mother’s in response to Trump’s comment about her son
As Prime Minister, I am proud to say that I support Israel. And it is absolutely right that we should mark the vital role that Britain played a century ago in helping to create a homeland for the Jewish people.
The term ritual defamation was coined by Laird Wilcox to describe the destruction of the reputation of a person by unfair, wrongful, or malicious speech or publication. The defamation is in retaliation for opinions expressed by the victim, with the intention of silencing that person’s influence, and making an example of him so as to discourage similar “insensitivity” to subjects currently ruled as taboo. It is aggressive, organized and skillfully applied, often by a representative of a special interest group, such as, ironically, the Anti-Defamation League.
It is hard to calculate the cost of the stubborn refusal of the Thai population to learn foreign languages. Some daring estimates, however, calculate that the losses could be in tens of billions of dollars, annually. And the situation is not getting any better.
Bangkok wants to be the center of Southeast Asia, and by many standards it has already achieved this goal.
The “Battle of Cable Street” is a key event in the “creation myth” of the anti-fascist movement. It goes like this:
Arbitrary detentions, torture, mass graves and mass rapes. No, you are not reading about a rogue third world authoritarian dictatorship. Instead these are words that describe matters recurrent in the “world’s largest democracy”, India. The country, over time, has developed a mechanism to extend and tighten its hold on disturbed regions, specifically those states that carry visible secessionist sentiments. This apparatus of oppression is pillared through draconian legislation, which is painted and repainted from time to time.
