Close Reading

***National Post***\nMuslim leaders should've condemned Hamas instead of fomenting hate\nIf they had spoken out against terrorism, their advocacy of the Palestinian cause would carry much more weight. \n\nPart of the reason we are seeing division, hatred and unrest in the streets of Montreal, Toronto and other communities across Canada is due to the collective failure of Muslim leaders, in Canada and around the world, to condemn the despicable Oct. 7 terror attack by Hamas on Israeli civilians. \n\nIt was a horrific and cowardly attack by a terrorist group — not by all Palestinians, Arabs or the wider Muslim community. It should have been condemned and contained immediately. Muslims who pride themselves as followers of a peaceful religion should have empathized and consoled the grieving Jews. \n\nThere was a lot of time to do this. There was a lengthy delay between the attack and Israel’s ground offensive in Gaza. Instead of taking this time to condemn Hamas’s slaughter, Arab and Muslim politicians and government leaders promoted anti-Jewish hate to shore up their political support. This is nothing less than encouraging antisemitism. \n\nMuslim political and religious leaders, barring rare exceptions, chose to contextualize, equivocate and, in most cases, justify Hamas’s barbarity. What we have, as a result, is widespread hate bordering on violence in Canada — a country where communities have historically lived side-by-side in peace. \n\nThe situation got worse due to the statements made by community leaders like Amira Elghawaby, Canada’s special representative on combating Islamophobia, who did not hide her partisan and divisive outlook by clearly siding with the protesters on Canadian streets, characterizing them as “peaceful demonstrations,” even though we have seen people supporting Hamas, calling for genocide against Israeli Jews and harassing and intimidating Jewish-owned businesses. \n\nOn Twitter, Elghawaby approvingly cited a quote from a Toronto Star column reading, “The stories I have heard are both fantastical and true. Muslims (and others who silently sympathize with the loss of Palestinians lives) are being disciplined, maligned, isolated and targeted at work.” \n\nInstead of reaching across the aisle and consoling the Jewish community, she has instead chosen to focus her public comments on rising Islamophobia. \n\nSeriously? Remember the Muslim family who were killed in a hate-related attack in London, Ont., a couple years ago? All communities, including the Jewish community, across the political and religious spectrum unambiguously condemned that hate crime. And it brought a sense of relief and security to Muslims in Ontario. \n\nRemember how, after more that 50 people were gunned down while worshipping at mosques in Christchurch, New Zealand, in 2019, political and religious leaders from all faiths stood behind Muslims and consoled them? \n\nAlso, after the Quebec mosque attack, almost all communities in Canada chose to stand with Muslims. There were images of people in Alberta who formed a human chain to protect Muslims. Similar scenes were witnessed elsewhere in the country. Jewish community leaders spoke out, loud and clear, in support of Muslims and against hate and bigotry. \n\nBut that is not what Elghawaby did. Instead, she makes it sounds as though it is Muslims who are the victims, while failing to mention the barbarity unleashed on Oct. 7. This is not leadership. This is not her mandate. Her job is to promote tolerance as enshrined in Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms. \n\nNow imagine a scenario in which Muslims did what they ought to have done in the first place: condemned the Hamas attack, sided with the Jewish victims and dissociated themselves from terrorism. Their voices for the Palestinian cause would have carried much more weight. \n\nWhat we are seeing instead is a rising tide of anti-Jewish hate on our streets, promoted and peddled by Muslim leaders themselves, either by gaslighting the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, or wallpapering it with the political colours of the Palestinian cause. \n\nLet us all come together, not to let hate be poured onto the streets of Canada, but to stand united for a secure and prosperous country. \n\nNational Post \n\nRaheel Raza and Mohammad Rizwan are members of the Council of Muslims Against Antisemitism.

I've had about 8 friends and 2 relatives who have tried life in the USA.\nOne cousin is still in Colorado after moving there with her 2nd husband, an American, over 10 years ago. The rest have come back to Canada and the biggest general impression I get is that it is simply a huge relief to get out of there. That is a huge contrast to the people I know who had tried life in Mexico, Dominican Republic, Jamaica, Europe, Thailand, Japan, VietNam, Australia, and New Zealand: far fewer of them have come back to Canada because they are happy with life there. And the ones who have come back all have things they miss about the countries and most want to go back someday.\n\nMost of the people I know who have come back from the USA are highly critical of the utter lack of a decent health care system in the USA, but for them it was a solvable problem because they had decent jobs and insurance while they were in the USA. What gave them so much relief when they came back to Canada was that during their time in the USA they never felt safe. There is something fundamentally and brutally fucked up about a country where every bank has armed guards, the mall cops are armed, half of the people in your neighbourhood are armed, you're scared to send your children to school, and every time you turn around you see a cop with his hand on his gun.

The figures don't tell all of the story when it comes to physician salary comparisons and tax-to-GDP ratios, for instance. Truly, doctors in the US can earn a lot more, but they also have to spend a lot of that on legal indemnity insurance because the US is the home of spurious litigation. The availability of doctors in Canada being damaged by the attraction of the USA is just part of a global phenomenon - professionally-qualified people will go wherever the money is best, so less-developed nations lose medical staff to richer nations. The UK effectively steals a lot of medical staff from the Philippines and sub-Saharan Africa, for instance.\n\nI notice that the UK is listed just above Canada on the tax-to-GDP table, but government spending is waaaaaaay higher than that (more like 45% and heading for 50%) and honestly to my knowledge the UK has had tax-to-GDP figures above 40% for many years (even at its lowest during the past 50 years it's probably never dipped below 35%). I don't know where the figures in that table came from, but I bet that there are some shenanigans behind them. For instance, the UK personal taxation load is heavily weighted by taxes on goods, but big companies often pay very little tax themselves. Ireland is an even more extreme example of that phenomenon - I note their relatively-low placing on the tax-to-GDP table. Multinationals see Ireland as a tax haven these days.\nLet me be clear - I'm absolutely not a a fan of socialism and fully advocate for lower taxes and smaller Government. It's notable that countries with bigger Government (more socialism) tend to take more in taxes. The USA needs to be considered state by state as well due to the differing levels of socialism. High-taxing states contribute less per-capita to federal revenues, but also note that federal support programs tend to concentrate upon those same states. The loudest voices behind the begging bowl tend to be the most socialistic. It's all a big mess - the lack of transparency does not help the case for high-taxing Governments.\n\n\nLastly, considering the current governing dynasty in Canada, I could never live there. Trudeau is a nightmare totalitarian. The events of 2020+ showed some national leaders in a revealing light. Canada and New Zealand are now two countries I could never consider living in. The USA is not far behind in the league of opprobrium. Liberty is a rare thing these days.

Homogeneous societies are the way, let's face it, yes we are all humans who bleed red. However we come from different parts of the world which have different views, creeds and cultures, values morals, the problem with the west is we let every one in because we are tolerant, tolerant to people who are not tolerant of our ways. It's better in england, Canada Australia new Zealand europe that's why they flock here from their fucked up ways, yet they cant even intellectually interact in our ways of life, go home if you dont like it