Team Joyce Murray" said they will continue to provide Chinese-language services to constituents, but will post minimally on the platform moving forward

By Bob Mackin | May 12, 2023, 11:00am

Vancouver Quadra WeChat assistant Ying Zhou (left) and Liberal MP Joyce Murray | Joyce Murray/Facebook

Staff of a Liberal cabinet minister are phasing out the use of a controversial Chinese state-monitored social media app on which they promoted government and party activities.

Last Friday morning, users of the WeChat group for Vancouver-Quadra MP Joyce Murray, the minister of fisheries, oceans and the Coast Guard, were greeted with a notice in English that said: We have some news to share! As things in our office change, we will be using our WeChat channel MP Joyce Murray Information Group less and posting minimally on this platform.

The message, signed Team Joyce Murray, said the office would continue to provide Chinese-language services to constituents.

On Monday, after the Liberal Partys weekend convention in Ottawa, administrator Ying Zhou removed users from the channel on which she had frequently published Chinese translations of government announcements and Murrays activities inside and outside the riding. The audience included users in both Canada and China.

Murray was the minister of digital government in Prime Minister Justin Trudeaus cabinet from March 2019 to October 2021. She did not respond to an interview request. Contacted by a reporter, Zhou said: I cannot answer your question, before she abruptly ended the call.

Amanda Oliveira, Murrays chief of staff, was similarly blunt.

We have no further comments on that, said Oliveira, who repeated the line when asked if national security factored in the decision.

Zhous note came the day after Foreign Affairs Minister Melanie Joly announced she had summoned Chinese ambassador Cong Peiwu over a diplomats 2021 threat against Conservative MP Michael Chong and his relatives, which was revealed earlier in the week by The Globe and Mail. On Monday, Joly expelled Zhao Wei. China retaliated a day later by ordering Jennifer Lynn Lalonde to leave Canadas consulate in Shanghai.

Almost three years ago, a Liberal Party supporters use of Murrays WeChat group to promote a lawsuit against a journalist sparked debate in the House of Commons.

Maria Xu, a former honorary chair of the pro-Beijing Canadian Alliance of Chinese Associations, posted a notice about the Maple Leafs Anti-Racism Actions Association (MLARA) and a QR code to make donations for a potential class action lawsuit against Global News.

Global News ran a April 2020 story about how supporters of the Chinese Communist Party in Canada, Australia and other countries went on a six-week, worldwide personal protective equipment buying spree and exported 2.5 billion masks, gloves and other items to China early in the pandemic.

MLARA co-founder Ivan Pak said last year that they raised $15,000. No lawsuit was filed.

In Question Period, Murray said the WeChat group was an important part of community outreach, but she did not share Xus views.

We do periodically post the disclaimer and rules of engagement, said then-parliamentary assistant Jonathan Chiu. Neither the minister, nor any member of our team played any role in the fundraising. The WeChat account is not operated on a government device, it is run on a staff members personal device.

At the end of February, Treasury Board President Mona Fortier banned the use of the Chinese-owned video app TikTok from government devices due to privacy and national security concerns.

However, only WeChat was mentioned in the body of the Communications Security Establishments 2023-24 National Cyber Threat Assessment, which called the threat posed by China the most significant by volume, capability, and assessed intent.

Online foreign influence activity very likely also targets linguistic minorities and diaspora communities in Canada. State-sponsored cyber threat actors aim to influence these groups in order to minimize dissent or support the policies of their country of origin, said the report by the Canadian Centre for Cyber Security. These groups often interact on platforms that are semi-closed and censored according to restrictive content regulations, meaning that misinformation, disinformation and malinformation [MDM] can very likely spread more easily throughout these groups. For example, WeChat, a social media app from China used by billions around the world, has been used to spread MDM and propaganda specific to the Chinese diaspora.

Benjamin Fung, a professor in the School of Information Studies at McGill University, said Chinese-speaking immigrants to Canada basically go back to China when they pick up a smartphone and open WeChat. They feel like they are in a comfort zone when they scroll for celebrity or entertainment news.

Sometimes, however, the Chinese government or a state-sponsored organization will input disinformation to promote a candidate or an idea, as happened during the 2021 federal election defeat of Conservative MP Kenny Chiu, the Steveston-Richmond East backer of a foreign agents registry.

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Originally posted here:

Liberal minister's constituency staff wind down WeChat group - Business in Vancouver

Conservative teenagers are, in general, significantly happier than their liberal peers, according to a study conducted by Columbia University.

"The politics of depression: Diverging trends in internalizing symptoms among US adolescents by political beliefs," was published in the journal Social Science & Medicine Mental Health in December and while its findings were striking, the reason behind the trend is unclear.

Epidemiologist Catherine Gimbrone and her coauthors compared depressive attitudes of 12th-graders from 2005 to 2018 between those aligned with conservatism, which was defined in the study as "support of individual liberty, right-wing social and religious values, and unregulated free markets" and liberalism, which was defined as "support of equal opportunity, free but semi-regulated markets, civil liberties, and social justice."

TEENS AND SOCIAL MEDIA: AMERICAN PSYCHOLOGICAL ASSOCIATION ISSUES GUIDANCE FOR SAFE USE AND INSTRUCTION

The research concluded that "conservatives reported lower average depressive affect, self-derogation, and loneliness scores and higher self-esteem scores than all other groups."

Epidemiologist Catherine Gimbrone and her coauthors compared depressive attitudes of 12th-graders from 2005 to 2018 between those aligned with conservatism and those aligned with liberalism. (iStock)

Between 2011 and 2018, female liberals had a steep increase in depressive affect, which was similar to their male liberal counterparts between 2005 and 2011, but in 2013, they started to fall behind girls.

Between 2005 and 2018, conservative males and females didn't compare to the levels of their liberal counterparts. During that time, conservative males had a slightly higher depressive affect than their female conservative who eventually took the lead in 2016. In addition, when looking at all categories surveyed, researchers found that the more educated families were, the more likely their child was to be depressed.

POSTPARTUM DEPRESSION AMONG BIRTH MOMS: HOW WOMEN ARE BREAKING THE STIGMA

Researchers qualified their research, stating "conservative ideology may work as a psychological buffer by harmonizing an idealized worldview with the bleak external realities experienced by many" and that liberals faced "a series of significant political events," such as the election of a black president in 2008, the Great Recession, the student debt crisis, Republicans taking control of Congress and former President Donald Trump's 2016 victory that could be contributing to their mental state.

The study pointed to events like war, climate change, school shootings, structural racism, police violence against Black people, pervasive sexism, sexual assault and rampant socioeconomic inequality that "became unavoidable features of political discourse" that might have prompted youth movements to promote "direct action and political change emerged in the face of inaction by policymakers to address critical issues."

Researchers qualified their research, stating "conservative ideology may work as a psychological buffer by harmonizing an idealized worldview with the bleak external realities experienced by many." (iStock)

"This is particularly true for less privileged groups of liberals, including girls and low SES individuals, for whom both heightened awareness and experience of conservative actions to restrict their rights may have compounded emotional distress," they added.

But, Columbia University Sociologist Musa al-Gharbi reported in an article for American Affairs that conservatives don't just report higher levels of happiness, they also report having higher levels of meaning in their lives.

SURGEON GENERAL RELEASES ADVISORY CALLING FOR IMPROVED SOCIAL CONNECTION

"Conservatives are more likely to be patriotic and religious," he wrote. "They are more likely to be (happily) married and less likely to divorce. Religiosity, in turn, correlates with greater subjective and objective well-being. So does patriotism. So does marriage."

Consequently, "conservatism itself would be largely incidental to the happiness gap," he added. So "A liberal who was similarly religious, or patriotic, or had a similarly happy marriage, would be expected to have similar levels of happiness as conservative peers."

Journalist Matthew Yglesias also pondered this question in his article "Why are young liberals so depressed," hypothesizing that people dealing with anxiety or depression arent usually "totally untethered from reality," but "instead of changing the things they can change and seeking the grace to accept the things they cant, theyre dwelling unproductively as problems fester."

Columbia University Sociologist Musa al-Gharbi reported in an article for American Affairs that conservatives don't just report higher levels of happiness, they also report having higher levels of meaning in their lives. (iStock)

"Progressive institutional leaders have specifically taught young progressives that catastrophizing is a good way to get what they want," he added.

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New York Times Opinion Columnist David Brooks argued that "many on the left began to suffer from what you might call maladaptive sadness," with its three main features being a "catastrophizing mentality," "extreme sensitivity to harm" and a "culture of denunciation."

"For many, Americas problems came to seem endemic: The American dream is a sham, climate change is so unstoppable, systemic racism is eternal," he wrote. "Making catastrophic pronouncements became a way to display that you were woke to the brutalities of American life."

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Conservative teenagers are generally happier than their liberal peers, study finds - Fox News

Donald Trumps town hall with CNN Wednesday drew criticism from commentators in the liberal media who spoke out against the networks decision to give a platform to the former president.

MSNBCs Joe Scarborough said he wasnt sure why CNN "didn't just cut him off." "The View's" Joy Behar added that she didnt know the audience would be "filled with his cult." "I would like to know if CNN was passing out Kool-Aid before the event started," she said. And Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., argued it was a "profoundly irresponsible decision" to allow Trump to be platformed.

CNN moderator Kaitlan Collins asked Trump a series of questions about his claim that the 2020 presidential election was "rigged," his involvement on Jan. 6 and the verdict that found him liable for defamation and battery against his accuser E. Jean Carroll.

Fox News Jesse Watters argued on "The Five" Thursday that the town hall format was "perfect" for Trump.

"You're going to put President Trump live in the middle of a little arena surrounded by fans up against a 30-year-old CNN anchor? Oh, my God. I mean, that was not fair last night. That's what everybody wants to see," he explained. "And so CNN, I think, did well, though, because CNN is making a business decision here. They're going to pivot and say, we're going to play in this political game in the primary maybe, and we're going to chase ratings. They got a good number last night, and we're going to try to be normal again like we used to."

Watters said the media was acting "hysterical" because their strategy to "censure and scandalize" the president didnt work.

CNN FACING FURY FROM STAFFERS OVER TRUMP TOWN HALL: IT FELT LIKE 2016 ALL OVER AGAIN

"Trump's been out in the wilderness for a while, and now he's coming back to the mainstream media. He's re-entered. He's becoming more commercially viable, and that's what he's wanted. And when he started off really calm and relaxed, that was smart," he said. "They wanted him to go out there thrashing around, and he didn't. But he built up a crescendo. And then at the end, he called her nasty. And that was the best part. He loves conflict. The media hates conflict because the media wants 100% agreement."

"So Trump and the media don't mix. And they're going to have to wrap their heads around this because he is going to be appearing on some of their programs and the way they conducted that did not work for them. And that's why the media is so scared because they see how powerful he is once he gets his message out."

"Five" co-host Jessica Tarlov said the media finds itself between a rock and a hard place in covering Trump because he is currently the 2024 GOP front-runner but says things that need to be fact-checked.

CNN BLASTED BY ITS OWN ANALYST FOR TRUMP TOWN HALL: GUY WHO TRIED TO GET ME KILLED

"I think that it is important to make sure that people at least hear some pushback, whether they actually process what it is that you said in response-- that the truth does have to get out there," she explained. "And there was such an incredible cascade of lies flowing out of his mouth from the border wall. He said, you know, I secured the whole thing. It's 1900 miles long. He did 52 new miles. The documents. Obama took documents-- didn't happen. Joe Biden didn't comply. Joe Biden did comply. Perfect phone calls with Brad Raffensperger and with Zelenskyy. That Democrats support infanticide?! And Kaitlan Collins, let that one go."

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Former President Donald Trump sparred with CNN's Kaitlan Collins at a New Hampshire town hall.

"And I thought that that was a major losing moment for her, because if you want to make the Dobbs decision a focal point, which it absolutely will be in this election, and you hear the former president say the Democrats support abortion up till nine months, even after the baby's born-- complete dereliction of duty. And on the day after he gets a ruling that he sexually abused and defamed E. Jean Carroll, he calls her a whack job and the audience is laughing. It was A) just appalling."

Fox News' Joey Wulfsohn contributed to this report

Link:

How CNN violated the liberal media's pact to 'censure and scandalize' Trump - Fox News

Fred Siegel attended Rutgers University, where he was an errant student. He went on the road to make his fortune but was disappointed when hustling pool proved to be a dead end. He later earned a doctorate from the University of Pittsburgh.

In 1976, he married Jan Rosenberg, a sociologist. In addition to his son Harry, she survives him along with another son, Jacob, and four grandchildren.

Mr. Siegel taught on campuses of the State University of New York from 1973 to 1980; at the Sorbonne in Paris from 1980 to 1981; and as a professor of history and the humanities at the Cooper Union from 1982 to 2010. He was a member of the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, N.J., from 1989 to 1990; the editor of City Journal from 1990 to 1993; a columnist for The New York Post from 1994 to 1997; and a scholar in residence at St. Francis College in Brooklyn from 2011 to 2018.

Harry Siegel said that his fathers liberalism was largely shaped by conversations with his maternal grandfather, a garment worker and labor organizer, and that his political conversion as an adult was gradual.

The essayist Irving Kristol famously defined a neoconservative, a breed Mr. Kristol epitomized and popularized, as a liberal who has been mugged by reality. But Mr. Siegels conversion wasnt the result of a single personal experience, his son said even though a thief once grabbed a bag of $100 worth of kosher meat from him on the subway and several of the familys cars were stolen.

If Mr. Siegel approached a philosophical epiphany, though, it was during the blackout of 1977, when looters raged through parts of Brooklyn, stripping stores of merchandise and setting them ablaze in a night of rioting.

Mr. Siegel, whose favorite restaurant, Jacks Pastrami King, was among the places destroyed, reflected in 2017: The city itself had been mugged, I realized. Im still haunted by that moment from 40 years ago, when my political re-education began.

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Fred Siegel, Urban Historian and a Former Liberal, Is Dead at 78 - The New York Times

After eight days or is that 657 days? the Liberals have finally acted against Chinas meddling in Canadas politics.

It took Ottawa a long time to come to the necessary conclusion to expel diplomat Zhao Wei for his role in targeting Conservative MP Michael Chongs family members in Hong Kong, in order to punish the Canadian politician for opposing Beijings oppression of its Uyghur minority.

Starting with Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and moving on from there, the Liberals have tried to sidle past the controversy over Chinas interference in two successive federal elections by trying to create uncertainty and doubt about what, if anything, happened. Sure, theres foreign interference all the time, they have said, from many different directions. Whos to say what happened? And what about Russia?

That line of patter has been demolished by the revelations, reported by The Globe earlier this month, that Mr. Chongs family in China was targeted.

The governments own actions, eight days after that story broke, are proof that Chinas illegal actions are a real danger to Canadian democracy. Eight days in May have made all the difference between the government being able to deny and to delay, and finally having to acknowledge the threat posed by Beijing.

But the expulsion of a single Chinese diplomat can be only properly seen as the start of Ottawas response, and the bare beginning of an answer to what transpired (or more precisely, did not transpire) within the Liberal government since the summer of 2021, when the revelations about Mr. Chong were being communicated.

For a start: With whom was the brief on Mr. Chong shared? Mr. Trudeau initially blamed the Canadian Security Intelligence Service for not sharing that information outside of the agency. That statement was quickly proven false, with the current national security adviser, Jody Thomas, telling Mr. Chong that one of her predecessors was indeed in the loop.

The Prime Minister said he was relying on the best information he had at the time while still insisting that the report on the threat posed to Mr. Chongs family never made it to me, to my office or to the minister at the time.

Yet the national security adviser provides advice to the Prime Minister on security and intelligence issues and is an associate secretary in the Privy Council Office, the bureaucratic arm of the Prime Ministers Office. Quite literally, the national security adviser (who received the report concerning Mr. Chong) is part of a department that reports to the Prime Ministers office, which Mr. Trudeau somehow contends did not receive the report.

Who knew what in July, 2021, is an important question, but so is who knew what later. Nearly two years (657 days to be precise) passed between date on the CSIS report of July 21, 2021, and the expulsion of Mr. Zhao. Mr. Trudeau says he only became aware of the report after The Globe broke the news this month. Did the report simply gather dust in the intervening two years?

Clarity on Mr. Chongs situation is, of course, only one part of the answers needed on Chinas meddling. There remain the broader questions about Chinas actions during the 2019 and 2021 federal elections. No party is contending that Beijings malfeasance changed who formed government, but the clear possibility exists that the Conservatives could have lost seats. The party itself has said that up to nine seats may have been affected.

What has been done to counter Beijings moves, beyond this weeks expulsion? The Liberals have been tight-lipped, perhaps because there is very little to say. On the question of a foreign-agent registry, for instance, the government is proceeding at a creeping pace.

Most of all, Canadians deserve to be told what Mr. Trudeau knew about Chinas interference efforts, when he knew it, and what he did about it.

Luckily, the revelations about Chinas attempted intimidation of Mr. Chong, and the Liberals long overdue actions, come as special rapporteur David Johnston enters the final stretch of his one-man deliberations on whether to recommend that the government call a public inquiry. His deadline is just 12 days away, on May 23.

Mr. Johnston need not take the full fortnight. It should be crystal clear to him (and to all Canadians) that only a public inquiry can unravel the many unanswered questions about Chinas illegal meddling in this countrys politics.

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Globe editorial: The Liberals' eight days in May - The Globe and Mail

Fox News

Fired Fox News host makes remarks in latest leaked video published by Media Matters for America

Fox News was under attack from liberals and its former chief executive Roger Ailes would have never put up with this shit, Tucker Carlson told his producer in new leaked video of the fired Fox star.

Describing a conversation with an unnamed female executive at the rightwing network, Carlson said: I was like, shes got a lot of liberals working over there. And, you know, they see this as war and were the main force on the other side.

Thats crazy. If youve got pronouns in your Twitter bio, you shouldnt work here because we cant trust you because youre on the other side.

Just because youre liberal doesnt mean you did this. It does mean you shouldnt work here. And Roger would never put up with this shit.

Ailes built Fox News into a conservative political powerhouse but was fired in July 2016 after allegations of extensive sexual harassment. He died less than a year later.

Fox News has now been sued for gender discrimination by Abby Grossberg, a former producer who alleges that Carlson ran a workplace rife with misogyny, sexism, antisemitism and bullying. Fox has called the claims unmeritorious and riddled with false allegations against the network and our employees.

The video of Carlson discussing leaks and liberals was the latest published by Media Matters for America, a progressive watchdog, since the anchor was fired last month.

Carlsons termination came in the aftermath of the $787.5m settlement of a $1.6bn defamation lawsuit brought by Dominion Voting Systems, over the broadcast of Donald Trumps lies about voter fraud in his 2020 presidential race defeat by Joe Biden.

Other leaked videos have shown Carlson making misogynistic and insinuating remarks; saying the Fox Nation streaming channel sucks; and calling a Dominion lawyer a slimy motherfucker.

Fox News has not commented on the reason for Carlsons firing. Multiple outlets have reported that abusive comments about executives contributed to the decision. Sources close to Carlson have disputed that.

The New York Times revealed a text message, redacted in court filings where many abusive and crude messages were not, in which Carlson described Trump supporters attacking a counter-protester and said it was not how white men fight.

In an investigation last year, the Times called Carlsons prime-time opinion show what may be the most racist show in the history of cable news and also the most successful.

The video released on Tuesday showed Carlsons discussing the leak of material cut from an October 2022 interview with Ye, the rapper formerly known as Kanye West who expressed antisemitic views with little pushback.

The producer, Justin Wells, said: I knew it was going to leak when we taped that interview. I told everyone on the team in New York: Get that on the hard drives immediately, get that out of Foxs file system, off its servers immediately. If you need it to cut for the show, rename it to something that sort of they cant find. Do that now. We did all that and it still leaked.

Nobodys been leaked that I know of besides us, he adds, so whoevers leaking is targeting us.

Carlson said he would not name names about which liberals were leaking but also described Judge Jeanines guy as horrible and a screaming leftwing lunatic.

Jeanine Pirro, another opinion host, remains at Fox News despite being entangled in the Dominion case.

Media Matters said: Jerry Andrews, Pirros executive producer, repeatedly and unsuccessfully sought to prevent her from airing false claims about fraud rigging the 2020 presidential election, according to documents uncovered in the Dominion Voting Systems lawsuit.

Carlson said the Pirro staffer totally dicked over his anchor, and then we expect hes not going to dick over the network. Like, I dont have specific information on it, but its crazy Its like Im always telling people, Im telling my children, like, You know what the truth is? You can feel it. Dont lie to yourself.

Last week, Media Matters said it had rejected a demand that it stop publishing leaked videos.

The groups president, Angelo Carusone, said: Reporting on newsworthy leaked material is a cornerstone of journalism. For Fox to argue otherwise is absurd and further dispels any pretense that theyre a news operation.

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Tucker Carlson says Roger Ailes would never have put up with liberal attack on Fox News - The Guardian

Two Tasmanian Liberal MPs have quit the party to sit as independents, pushing Australia's only remaining Liberal stronghold into minority governance.

Bass member Lara Alexander and Lyons member John Tucker resigned this morningas both party members and members of the parliamentary Liberal Party.

They have also left their parliamentary positions, including memberships of parliamentary committees.

Both politicians will continue to serve their electorates as independents on the crossbench.

They have both said they didnot plan to bring down the government, with Mr Tucker saying he hoped Mr Rockliff would remain as premier.

The pair spoke to the ABC before holding a press conference this morning.

Both have flagged concerns about future debt surrounding Hobart's $715 million Macquarie Point Stadium, with Ms Alexander also taking issue with the transparency of government decision making, and Mr Tucker airing grievances against Marinus Link.

The building of a stadium was a central condition by the AFL before the league agreed to awardTasmania the game's 19th team licence.

"I don't want to disrupt the government. We need to make sure that the right decisions are being taken, and the last thing the community needs is a big upheaval," Ms Alexander told the ABC.

The Tasmanian MPs took issue with the proposed AFL stadium, saying decisions were made by cabinet behind closed doors, and they could not support it based on the information they had.

"To have the capacity to influence government decisions, you have to see the issue first before it goes to cabinet, and in this instance, I have not had the opportunity to," Ms Alexander said.

She told a press conference there neededto be far more transparency around how the stadium became part of deal with the AFL for a new team licence.

"I have not been able to understand where did that [the stadium] come from," she said.

"For a lot of Tasmanians, and a lot of our constituents, the question is if we all started to support the [AFL] team and the further along the line it became a package with the stadium.

"A number of questions are unanswered questions that have created this big anxiety and split in our community and people deserve to get an answer to all these genuine questions."

Ms Alexander said her intention was not to derail the stadium, but to put it under greater scrutiny.

"Being an independent, I do feel that I am more free in actually presenting policies and positions and suggesting solutions to some of the critical issues," she said.

"For me, as an accountant, as an economist, as a person that has worked in a not-for-profit sector, it's really hard for me to understand this particular investment [astadium];I just can't get my head around it."

Mr Tucker said he was neither for nor against the stadium, but wanted greater transparency.

"I want to ensure that these are the right decisions for the Tasmanian taxpayer, so we're not going to create a nightmare for them going forward with the debt load," he told the ABC.

Later at the press conference, Mr Tucker said he did not think their move to the crossbench would kill the project.

"Myself and Lara do not believe that it [becoming independent] will derail the stadium," he said.

"We are interested to look at what the contractors say and what the business case says, if the business case stacks up and everything looks right.

"I do not have a problem supporting the stadium. I suppose you could say I'm sitting on the fence with this, I want to see what the books say."

Ms Alexander told the ABC she first raised her concerns with Premier Jeremy Rockliff late last year and asked for more information, but she "still had not seen anything of a significant nature".

While she then told Mr Rockliff she was upset, she did not tell him she was considering quitting.

Meanwhile, Mr Tucker reached out to the premier in December over the government's competency, saying there was a disconnect with the people of Lyons, but acted after he said nothing had changed.

He said he told the premier of his intention to quit in late March, and they had been in discussions since, but had not been able to resolve the issues.

Mr Tucker also has concerns over the Marinus Link deal.

"If we put cheap power at risk for the Tasmanian public, people would not forgive us," he said.

"I want to see what the business case is, that we're going to see benefit from this, the Tasmanian taxpayers, and that's that's the crux of this.

"I want to see what the deal has been done with the federal government on this."

Ms Alexander and Mr Tucker sent their resignation letters to Mr Rockliff this morning.

On Fridayafternoon, Premier Jeremy Rockliff said he had received the two MPs' resignations, calling their actions "disappointing".

He said he would not resign as premier and would carry out the job "for all Tasmanians".

Asked if he would call an early election, he responded: "No."

"Today is a challenging day, but there are many, many things of which all Tasmanians need to be, and should be, proud of, of where we have come as a state over the course of the last 10 years under a Liberal government," he said.

"We will continue to invest in enablinginfrastructure, growing our economy, and supporting and investing in essential services that Tasmanians expect their government to invest in."

Mr Rockliff said he would work "across the parliament" to work in the best interest of Tasmanians.

Both Ms Alexander and Mr Tucker have called for better transparency from the government, but Mr Rockliff said he was "always open, transparent, consultative with our team".

Asked if he expected more members of his party to quit, Mr Rockliff said he had spoken to other Liberal MPs and they were committed to the government's plan.

He said people might not always agree with what the government did, but that decisions would always be made "for the right reasons".

Despite leading a minority government, Mr Rockliff said it would not impact on his team's plan for the state.

The premier said he was confidence the Liberal Party could win the next election currently set for 2025.

Updates are available. Tap to refresh.

By Daniel Miller

That's it from Lara Alexander and John Tucker the two new independents.

They've created a tricky situation for Australia's last remaining Liberal premier.

While both of the MPs have said they don't want to bring down the government, Jeremy Rockliff can no longer pass legislation through the lower house without support from outside his party.

How the premier reacts (we've had no word yet) is yet to be seen.

The stadium, which is nowhere near starting construction, is being pushed through under "major projects" legislation that does not require the majority of MPs in parliament to pass it.

But with this political threat to Mr Rockliff and a plea to be more transparent about the cost of the project and how decisions were reached, the premier will be hounded by the stadium issue even more.

We are seeking comments from Labor and the Greens, but for now, revisit this story to see updates throughout the day.

Thanks for joining us!

By Daniel Miller

Great news. Thank goodness. Many residents of tas regardless of their politics are shocked and angry that the stadium 'deal' has happened.

- Melissa

Do you have majority support in your electorate to abandon the Liberal Party to act as an independent. If so, how was this achieved?

- Mimi Martin

At a time when we have huge Pandemic debt to pay back building a sports stadium seems ludicrous

- Max Herron

Good on them for making a statement!

- Mat

The Liberals are in chaos which proves that Liberals were not 100% behind their Premier instead, they were in support of the majority of Tasmanians who did not want to be dictated by the AFL in providing a new Stadium and spending all that money when the Tasmanian community have far more pressing issues!!

- John Gray

Well done guys for standing up for what you believe in. There more pressing issues in Tasmania than Football. We need to address Health, education and homelessness.

- Rob and Laurie Kingston

Once again we are a state divided. Shut the doors and pack up the shop Closed for Business!

- Nick

Maybe they should quit politics and allow their by elections be a referendum on the stadium.

- Paul

By Daniel Miller

Ms Alexander stressed that the decision to quit the Liberal Party was "hard" and not made lightly.

She hopes the Tasmanian electorate will understand that when it judges her and Mr Tucker.

By Daniel Miller

Ms Alexander says she and Mr Tucker "do not want to kill football in the state". They just want the Tasmanian people to know how decisions were made around the stadium.

Mr Tucker says he wants to ensure "the AFL dream does not become a nightmare for the taxpayer".

By Daniel Miller

Lara Alexander, the former CEO ofSt Vincent's de Pauls in Tasmania before she joined parliament on a recount, questions the government's priorities.

"I think the critical thing is for the Liberal Party to get back to the bread and budget issues because this is not what the Liberal Party was elected [for] in Tasmania.

"I think [it should go] back to the bread and budget issues, and be transparent and honest with the community.

That is all the community is asking. It is really basic."

By Daniel Miller

Mr Tucker, with Ms Alexander's agreement, says the two new independents don't plan to bring the government down in parliament.

Mr Tucker says he hopes Jeremy Rockliff stays as premier.

By Daniel Miller

John Tucker aired issues directly with the premier months ago, so this is something that has been a long time coming for him.

Would he ever return to the party though if Mr Rockliff can convince him?

"I do not see a future going back to the party but I believe that you never say never, politics is a long day.

So what the future holds I do not know, but usually when you become an independent - myself and Lara are well aware of this, there is no going back."

Ms Alexander says she has no plans to return to the Liberal Party.

By Daniel Miller

"I have to be truthful to what I believe in," she said.

She said Tasmanian premier Jeremy Rockliff "probably was not surprised" when he received her resignation this morning.

By Daniel Miller

She says there need to be more transparency for MPs as well as the Tasmanian public about how the stadium became part of Tasmania's pitch to the AFL to get a team licence:

I can echo what John has said. For me it is important and I've been trying to understand and, I guess, that for a lot of Tasmanians, and a lot of our constituents, the question is is that if we all started to support the [AFL] team and the further along the line it became a package with the stadium.

I have not been able to understand where did that come from, where is the piece of information.

A number of questions are unanswered and questions that have created this big anxiety and split in our community and people deserve to get an answer to all these genuine questions.

By Daniel Miller

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Tasmania's Liberal government thrown into minority as MPs defect over $715 million AFL stadium in Hobart - ABC News

Bellingham, once rated the most hippie town in Washington State, is now getting tough on drugs an unexpected shift for this small, liberal city near the Canadian border that voted 80 percent Democrat in the last presidential election.

The move is part of a growing backlash in west coast cities against a harm reduction-centered and anti-incarceration approach to drug policy that is seemingly failing amid skyrocketing numbers of overdose deaths and a companion homelessness crisis.

Moderates and Republicans, where there are any are driving similar campaigns in cities like San Francisco and Portland, where a fed-up public is pushing for a change in strategy.

The public backlash here has been big, strong, a San Francisco-based independent journalist and advocate for a shift away from the citys intense focus on harm reduction, Erica Sandberg, tells the Sun. Theres a lot of talk about evidence-based science, she says of the harm reduction movement, and all you see is suffering and dead bodies. The disconnect is enormous.

The get tough ordinance passed by the Bellingham city council in April makes it an arrestable misdemeanor offense to inject, ingest, or inhale hard drugs in public a departure from a policy of tolerance toward open use. The recent deaths of two teenagers and a five-year-old girl from fentanyl overdoses spurred the calls for action, as did complaints from downtown business owners.

Were not hoping to push people into the dark, the citys mayor, Seth Fleetwood, told the council. Were saying that fentanyl should not be smoked in downtown streets because its dangerous for the individual thats smoking it and for public bystanders and its scaring people away.

The city of 92,000 people now averages more than two overdose deaths a day, a 70 percent increase from 2022. As in the rest of the country, fentanyl is the driving factor in these deaths. In 2018, there were only 11 overdose deaths in all of Whatcom County.

A recent Bellingham Partnership survey indicates that public safety is the number one concern of downtown business owners, with nearly half of the 53 businesses surveyed saying they plan to close or relocate from the downtown area this year.

Sounds a lot like San Francisco, where at least 20 major retailers have announced closures in the downtown area, most recently Nordstrom, Whole Foods, and T-Mobile. The drug crisis, homelessness, retail theft, public safety, the lingering effects of the pandemic, and a shift to working from home are to blame.

The Bellingham council passed the ordinance on a five-to-two vote, and even those who voted in favor were careful to say that this was not a turn toward criminalizing addiction or a return to the war on drugs. It was more, they suggested, a third way, somewhere in between the in-vogue progressive embrace of meeting people where theyre at and a full-on crackdown on drugs.

This is not the war on drugs, councilman Skip Williams, who voted in favor, said. Nobody is going to prison for the rest of their life. Were facing a crisis. Right now we dont have the tools. This gives us a tool.

One of the two council members opposing the legislation, Kristina Martens, issued a letter to the council prior to the ordinances passing. In it, she says the law will push incredibly vulnerable people who are experiencing crisis back into the shadows by requiring law enforcement to confiscate the only substances they can access to dull the pain of the experience and the trauma they are suffering from.

Ms. Martens attached bullet points from the website of the Drug Policy Alliance, a leading harm reduction advocacy organization. Ms. Martens also says the drug-court system needed to divert addicted persons into treatment instead of prison is not yet established, and that that needs to be the first step. Even those in favor of the ordinance acknowledged this issue, saying diversion to treatment is the ultimate goal for offenders.

Bellingham is not the first city in Washington to pass such an ordinance, and others are now debating similar legislation. On July 1 the states temporary, two-year-old law classifying simple drug possession as a misdemeanor is set to expire. The law was passed after the Washington Supreme Court struck down in 2021 the state law that made simple possession a felony.

If legislators dont compromise and pass a new bill by July 1, Washington will join neighboring Oregon as the second state in the nation to decriminalize possession. Governor Inslee has called the legislature back into session next week to address this.

Drug policy seems stuck in a polarized debate between a war on drugs versus complete laxness about their availability and harms. We need a third way, a Stanford University professor of psychiatry, Keith Humphreys, and former adviser to Prime Minister Johnson of Britain, Blair Gibbs, wrote this month in a Canadian paper.

If an exclusively harm reduction approach was the necessary pivot away from a war on drugs, then why has a more liberalized approach not managed to save more lives? It cant be compassionate if it doesnt work.

Messrs. Humphreys and Gibbs were writing about Canadian drug policy, but the Vancouver model of safe supply, safe injection sites, and a total embrace of harm reduction is the one to which much of the harm reduction movement in the United States is looking. Those who work in harm reduction say that its not that their policies arent working, its that fentanyl and a poisonous drug supply have changed the game.

Many drug users will tell you its impossible to find a straight bag of heroin because fentanyl, its analogs, and now Xylazine, an animal tranquilizer, have so thoroughly tainted the supply and are causing the massive increase in overdose deaths.

Those who oppose a sole focus on harm reduction say, yes, fentanyl has changed the calculus, which means pushing treatment even mandating it in some cases is necessary. They say the wait-until-a-person-is-ready approach of harm reduction is not suited to the age of fentanyl.

Once youve started using illicit fentanyl and youre homeless, your lifespan is about two years, a formerly homeless fentanyl addict who is now a recovery advocate in San Francisco, Tom Wolf, tells the Sun. An arrest and the option to enter treatment instead of remaining in jail is what helped Mr. Wolf to finally get clean.

Many of the prominent online accounts that document the fentanyl and homelessness crises in San Francisco call harm reduction an epic fail. Others, though, pushing back against the harm reduction agenda, say the tools of harm reduction like syringe exchange programs to prevent HIV transmission, naloxone access to reverse overdose deaths and save lives, and even fentanyl test strips to warn users when a product they are going to use may be deadly are helpful.

Even so, they call for scrapping the activist-driven, ideological approach that opposes police enforcement or forced drug treatment and calls anyone concerned about quality of life and safety right-wing shills.

They also point out that the European countries that have legal safe injection sites which are glorified by the harm reduction movement also have socialized medicine, a more robust welfare state. The sites were also established in combination with greater policing of open drug scenes, as well as a system for mandated treatment in some cases.

Ms. Sandberg says harm reduction has gone from something sensible and useful to a bastardization of the concept. Moderates are pushing back.

Ive been in San Francisco for over 35 years. I know when change is coming. I can feel it. I can see it. I can taste it, Ms. Sandberg says.

Governor Newsom just deployed the National Guard and the California Highway Patrol to crack down on fentanyl trafficking and dealing in the city. This week, the San Francisco Board of Supervisors unanimously passed a resolution calling on the mayor to fund 2,000 new shelter beds a break from the housing first agenda and a sign that elected leaders are taking residents concerns about homeless encampments seriously.

The city is not departing from a harm reduction approach it is still moving forward with plans to open multiple supervised drug consumption sites yet its moderating its path.

The overwhelming sentiment in places like San Francisco, Portland, Seattle, and Bellingham is that whatever policies are in place now are not working. The death toll and the conditions on the streets are irrefutable evidence.

Whether the Bellingham ordinance works to reduce street drug use and improves rates of recovery for drug users remains to be seen. What is clear is that even in the most liberal cities, residents and political leaders are ready for a third way or any way to get out of this crisis.

Originally posted here:

Liberal West Coast Cities Are Rethinking Their Drug Policies as ... - The New York Sun

The Biden Administration is gambling with Americans retirements to fund its own political agenda.

WASHINGTON Today, House Committee on Oversight and Accountability Chairman James Comer (R-Ky.) delivered opening remarks at a full committee hearing titled ESG Part I: An Examination of Environmental, Social, and Governance Practices with Attorneys General. In his opening statement, Chairman Comer emphasized that asset managers and activist shareholders are partnering with liberal advocacy groups to push ESG priorities and a radical political agenda with Americans money. He stressed that ESG commitments are often at odds with their clients best interests, occur without their clients knowledge, and used to force businesses to comply to a far-left ideology. In addition, he highlighted the Biden Administrations pursuit to advance ESG priorities over the economic, energy, and national security needs of the United States. He concluded that the Committee would continue to expose and investigate harmful ESG practices and hold unelected bureaucrats accountable for pushing their interests on the American people.

Below are Chairman Comers remarks as prepared for delivery.

Welcome to the Committee on Oversight and Accountabilitys first hearing on the Environmental, Social, and Governance agenda, also known as ESG.

Americans should be free to invest their own money in any legal investment strategy they choose.

This freedom does not exist when asset managers use their clients funds to push ESG instead of client returns.

And lets not kid ourselves. ESG is just window dressing for liberal activism and radical far-left ideology.

Because the Left are not big fans of diverse thought or individual freedom, they are using the feel good language of ESG to force compliance to their ideology.

Thats why I am concerned that asset managers and activist shareholders are pushing a political agenda with their clients money, agreeing to ESG pledges pushed by global advocacy groups.

These ESG pledges and commitments are often at odds with their clients best interests and happen without their clients knowledge.

Asset managers control an estimated $126 trillion dollars. Thats Trillion with a T, and almost 30 percent of all global financial assets.

Thats a lot of money being manipulated to push a leftist ideology.

Even beyond the assets controlled by asset managers, ESG activists have infiltrated the broader market by influencing just two proxy advisory firms who together control more than 90 percent of the market.

This is a coordinated effort by unelected shadow organizations to force their policies on U.S. taxpayers, investors, and retirees.

And instead of providing Americans with the financial protections theyre due, regulators under the Biden Administration are actively encouraging this political takeover of the American financial system.

President Biden dealt a heavy blow to workers and retirees when he used his first veto to kill a bill that reinforces fund managers fiduciary duty to maximize returns on pensions instead of focusing on ESG efforts.

When President Biden vetoed this bipartisan bill, Senator Manchin said This Administration continues to prioritize their radical policy agenda over the economic, energy and national security needs of our country, and it is absolutely infuriating.

Senator Manchin is right.

No administration should be able to gamble with Americans retirements to fund its own political agenda in the private market.

We must expose and investigate the propriety and legality of this coordinated effort.

In todays heated political environment, its impossible to avoid the ever-expanding web of issues people call ESG.

Whether its climate change, abortion, guns, DEI initiatives, or energy independence: the passions run deep.

Our country is based on a system of laws.

Issues of policy should be decided by elected officials accountable to voters.

I am concerned about the well-coordinated campaign to push ESG policies through markets and bureaucratic action, even though those policy goals do not appeal to voters and have not been decided by elected officials.

They are trying to achieve through intimidation and coercion what they cannot achieve at the ballot box.

This issue isnt theoretical. It is very real for any American family planning and saving for their retirement.

Trillions of dollars in retirement plan assets are at stake.

Obviously, maximizing the return on investment within a retirement account should be the primary factor asset managers focus on for their clients.

The ESG agenda prioritizes leftist ideology over the growth of retirees investments.

This is an injustice to those who shoulder the burden for their retirement savings.

Even the slightest reduction in returns from chasing social policy instead of value can have long term impacts on Americans retirement savings and ability to retire to spend quality time with their families.

Todays hearing is specifically focused on concerns Attorneys General have with ESG policies pushed by left-wing activists on the asset management industry and the potential harm for investors and retirees.

But today will not be the end of the Committees work.

Asset managers should understand that they are stewards of money that is not theirs, and their failure to act in the best interests of their clients is a dereliction of duty.

Proxy advisors should understand that they cannot intimidate and coerce companies to implement ESG policies without scrutiny.

While this is the first official hearing in what will be a series of oversight actions by this Committee to explore ESG, weve already held several hearings to investigate related issues, including misguided energy policy and progressivism in the military.

We must also continue our oversight of the Biden Administrations government-wide efforts by unelected bureaucrats to dictate to the American people what they are allowed to say, spend their money on, or do with their hard-earned savings.

Whether its the SEC and Federal Reserve; the EPA and Department of Energy; the Pentagon; the State Department, know this: we are watching.

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Comer: ESG is Just Window Dressing for Liberal Activism and Far ... - House Committee on Oversight and Reform |

In different but complementary and insightful ways, Robert D Kaplan, John Gray and Helen Thompson have made a persuasive case for a tragic future of global and regional struggles among great powers and lesser powers alike over security, resources, and values. If they are correct, and I think they are, then the project of liberal internationalism has failed for now and perhaps forever.

Liberal internationalism entranced many elites and citizens in the West and the world three times, following three global conflicts the two world wars and the Cold War. The promise of liberal internationalism was that zero-sum struggles among countries over power, wealth, and values, in which one countrys gain means losses for others, could be replaced by non-zero-sum collaboration to promote mutual security, mutual prosperity, and common values.

One way to eliminate interstate competition, of course, would be the unification of humanity under a single state, by force or by federation. But liberal internationalists have been committed to a world of national self-determination by many sovereign states, including new ones that emerge by secession or the partition of former multinational empires. Liberal internationalists have sought to reconcile their two goals of national independence with global harmony by replacing competition among states for relative power and relative wealth with global governance rather than with global government.

In the liberal internationalist vision, security would no longer be provided on a self-help basis by individual states or alliances. Instead, a system of collective security would make all states, big and small, powerful and weak, safe from the aggression of others. Interstate aggression would be outlawed by treaties, and outlaw states would be punished by national or global military forces deployed to enforce global law by a global organisation the League of Nations or the United Nations.

Following the Cold War, many liberal internationalists in the West, including neoconservatives and humanitarian hawks, were committed to the dream of a world without interstate conflicts, but realised that the United Nations would never effectively function as global police officer. Many found a substitute in the idea of a league of democracies which would oversee the post-Cold War world. Others hoped that a single country, the United States of America, could reduce incentives for interstate competition and provide security for all countries or at least all deserving countries by policing the world as the global hegemon. If post-Soviet Russia and post-Maoist China consented willingly to membership of a liberal internationalist order or rule-based system policed by the US and regional allies, then great-power politics would vanish. Only small and recalcitrant rogue states such as Saddam Husseins Iraq and North Korea would threaten the American-led liberal international order.

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The strategy of collective security has implications for trade policy. If the League of Nations, the United Nations, or Team America kept the peace, then individual countries would no longer need to try to maximise their control of industries, markets, and natural resources vital to national defence, just as individuals under a common national government are liberated from the need to stockpile arms and supplies as a precaution against attack by their neighbours. Free of the need to provide for national militaries, except perhaps for forces that states would contribute to global collective security campaigns, countries could abandon economic nationalism and join a borderless, rule-governed global market in which individuals and firms were the only participants.

What about conflicting values? Liberal internationalists from the aftermath of the First World War to the aftermath of the Cold War hoped that conflicts of values among countries would simply disappear as the result of the inevitable conversion of all of humanity to liberal democracy, founded on ideas of individual human rights derived from the American and French revolutions during the 18th-century Enlightenment. In place of older distinctions between Christians and pagans and civilised and barbaric countries, mostly-Western liberal internationalists distinguished liberal from illiberal states and democracies from autocracies. In a secular version of post-Christian theodicy, liberal internationalists assumed that the conversion of the heathens to Western liberalism was unavoidable and could be sped up by evangelisation and the occasional coup or war of regime change.

In his war message to Congress on 2 April 1917, the US president Woodrow Wilson declared: The world must be made safe for democracy. Its peace must be planted upon the tested foundations of political liberty. Echoing Wilson, in his second inaugural address 0 January 2005, George W Bush asserted: The best hope for peace in our world is the expansion of freedom in all the world So it is the policy of the United States to seek and support the growth of democratic movements and institutions in every nation and culture, with the ultimate goal of ending tyranny in our world.

The millennial hopes of liberal internationalists after the First World War were frustrated by the resumption of great-power rivalries that led to the Second World War. After 1945, the conflicts of the US and its allies with the Soviet Union, China and other members of the communist bloc disappointed and disillusioned those who had high hopes for the United Nations system. Now, the replacement of the USs fleeting post-Cold War global hegemony with great-power struggles pitting the US and its allies against China and Russia, along with the return of non-alignment as a strategy among many other nations, marks the defeat in our time of the liberal internationalist project.

In the emerging multipolar world, as throughout most of history, states will have to look after their own security, alone or with the help of military allies. This makes it imperative to adopt strategies of self-sufficiency in militarily essential manufacturing, raw materials, energy supplies, workforces, and consumer markets, at the level of blocs or alliances if not of individual countries.

In the realm of values, the project of liberalising the world has failed as decisively as earlier Western attempts to Christianise or civilise humanity. Saudi Arabia and Iran and many other Muslim countries, including Afghanistan under the Taliban, have non-liberal religious regimes of a kind liberals hoped would give way to secularism and individualism. In different ways Xi Jinping in China, Vladimir Putin in Russia, and Recep Tayyip Erdogan in Turkey have consolidated postmodern autocracies that can function effectively in the age of computers and rockets.

Nor is liberal democracy healthy in its Western heartlands. In the last generation, real power in the US and European countries has drained from legislatures to increasingly powerful executives, judiciaries, transnational agencies and corporations. The result has been the replacement of the old politics of left and right by conflict between elite technocratic insiders and alienated citizens represented by colourful and often ineffectual and corrupt populist tribunes such as Silvio Berlusconi and Donald Trump. As the multiple prosecutions of Berlusconi and Trump show, lawfare the weaponisation of the judicial system for partisan purposes as a substitute for elections is being normalised in North Atlantic democracies, having long weakened democratic institutions in the oligarchic societies of Latin America. Liberal democracy cannot flourish if political factions routinely seek to jail or censor rival politicians.

Military and economic competition, together with ineradicable conflicts of religious and secular values, cannot be eliminated as utopian liberal internationalists have hoped. But inevitable interstate conflicts can be moderated and prevented from escalating into all-out war. Age-old diplomatic expedients such as spheres of influence and neutral zones, along with newer methods such as arms control treaties, summit meetings and hotlines, can limit great-power rivalries and proxy conflicts. Instead of treating free trade as the norm and justifying sanctions and embargos only as punishments of global outlaws, we can acknowledge the legitimacy of selective protectionism and industrial policy by nations and blocs, while engaging in the trade-war equivalents of arms control negotiations. And conflicts among incommensurable values can be managed by what John Gray has called a modus vivendi , or co-existence, in a permanently pluralistic world.

What audiences want is a tragedy with a happy ending, an American movie mogul once declared. What the realist thinker John Mearsheimer calls the tragedy of great power politics is a permanent feature of a world without a world government, but that tragedy need not end in universal ruin.

Michael Lind is a professor at the Lyndon B Johnson School of Public Affairs at the University of Texas and author of The New Class War: Saving Democracy from the Managerial Elite (Atlantic Books)

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Liberal internationalism has failed, but we can live in a multipolar ... - The New Statesman

It has become an everyday experience in India. Somebody or the other is offended by a book or a film. The people who are offended have not necessarily seen the film or read the book in question. But they believe that it should be banned because, if they were to see it or read it, they are pretty sure that they would be offended.

So, a politician can call for a ban on Pathaan because he has heard that in one scene, the heroine wore a saffron bikini and this is clearly an insult to Hinduism. Even before a film is ready (say, Padmaavati, later rechristened as Padmaavat) activists will object to it without having read the script or without knowing very much about it. So they invade the sets or threaten violence at the cinema halls when the film is released.

It would be a mistake to see this issue as the prerogative of Hindu fundamentalists or eager publicity-hounds. There has always been an intolerant streak running though Indian society. Pandit Nehrus government banned books and magazines. Rajiv Gandhi banned the import of The Satanic Verses after protests from Muslim organisations. The film of Jesus Christ Superstar was denied a release in India because of Christian objections. More recently, Christian organisations had petitioned the Manmohan Singh government to ban the film The Da Vinci Code.

Religion and identity-politics are nearly always involved. The calls for a ban on The Kashmir Files and now, The Kerala Story, are framed in terms of standing up for Indian secularism and fighting communalism. The demands for bans come from those who believe that the films will create hatred against Muslims.

Also read: Govt panicking on FATF review. Bringing chartered accountants under PMLA wont help India

The traditional liberal response to all calls for bans has been if you dont like it, dont watch it. Dont deny others the right to express themselves.

So far, most liberals have stuck to that position even when they are deeply opposed to the films in question. The campaign to ban The Kashmir Files never got off the ground because of a lack of support from liberals. And now, even as Bengal has banned the film and others have advocated boycotts, liberals have held firm. The likes of Shashi Tharoor and Shabana Azmi have come out strongly against any ban on the film while making it clear that they do not approve of the way in which the movie portrays the situation in Kerala.

While this is a position that is entirely consistent with liberal values, it is also, in the medium term, a pragmatic stand. Once prominent liberals start calling for bans on films that express a Hindutva point of view, they will lose the right to complain if the government (which loves The Kerala Story; the Prime Minister even praised it on the campaign trail) starts banning films that advocate a more inclusive, less hate-filled view of the communal situation.

Nevertheless, there is a growing backlash against the liberal let-the-people-decide point of view. If you look at responses on social media, you will note that some of the objections to the liberal position are from the hard Left (which has no tradition of respecting freedom of expression anyway) and from organised tweeters, based perhaps in neighbouring countries which have a vested interest in inflaming communal tensions in India.

But many of the responses are genuine. They come from Muslims who fear that cinema, the most potent instrument of popular culture, is being used to paint them as jehadis and fanatics, as people hostile to Hindus or to India itself.

It is all very well for liberals to talk about freedom of expression, they say, but what about ordinary Muslims who feel targeted and helpless in the face of this sort of portrayal?

What about Muslim children who are treated as jehadis or enemies of Hindus by other children who have been brainwashed by such movies? While liberals will keep patting themselves on their backs for their adherence to their values, the vitiated atmosphere will ensure that ordinary Muslims pay the price for liberal grandstanding.

And there is a second argument.

Also read: Imran Khans fall due to blaming others, deflecting responsibility all the time: Ex-PTI worker

It is a variation of that classic question that haunts liberals: should they support those who want to destroy a free society by treating them as just another lot of people with a different point of view? Surely, a free society must deny a platform to those that would destroy it?

The Indian version of this argument is: are liberals letting a secular, pluralistic and diverse India down by supporting those who would destroy such an India and by allowing them to spread communal poison?

Both are serious and valid arguments. While I am clearly on the side of the liberals, along with the Tharoors and the Azmis, I do see that the road ahead is filled with dangerous challenges. We can say that The Kashmir Files is okay. That The Kerala Story is fine even if it distorts facts. Thats very liberal of us.

But what happens when the next lot of films comes along? What do we say when films become even more openly anti-Muslim? And rest assured, they will. Both The Kashmir Files and The Kerala Story have made money and received governmental praises. Other film-makers will want to make more such films. And they will now be even less restrained.

Do we then say: no, this is now going too far?

Because what is too far? Who decides that? Clearly, you cant leave it to this government which will co-opt such films into its politics.

What objective criteria do we have for saying: this movie shows Muslims in a bad light but is not openly communal so it is okay whereas this other one which shows Muslims in an even more negative light is communal and hence should not be released ?

My sense is that very few liberals have thought that far ahead. We have offered knee-jerk freedom of speech responses to The Kerala Story based on our own liberal instincts. And at most times, this would be fine.

But are these normal times?

What does the future hold for the diversity and plurality that have characterised Indias democracy? By allowing this caricature of Muslims as the other to advance further and further each year, are we not acquiescing in the normalisation of hatred and prejudice?

People have pointed to the way in which the caricature of Jews as greedy blood-suckers who bled the Aryan nation dry was planted in the minds of Germans before the open persecution began. Or how, American popular media consistently portrayed black people as unintelligent and hardly the equal of white people till the Civil Rights movement started.

Personally, I think these parallels are far-fetched. It is much too easy to trot out Nazi Germany references. They dont apply to todays India. But I do accept that there have been times in world history especially when confronted with prejudice and communal hatred that liberals have stood idly by and let the haters take control.

I am not changing my fundamental positions anytime soon. I am still opposed to bans and to curbs on freedom of expression. I have always opposed the intolerant streak at the heart of Indias governance through the ages. And I will continue to do so.

But yes, I do think we should debate how to respond when popular culture is used to divide the Indian people. India is changing. Perhaps our responses should change too.

Vir Sanghvi is a print and television journalist, and talk show host. He tweets @virsanghvi. Views are personal.

(Edited by Anurag Chaubey)

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Tharoors and Shabana Azmis took a classic liberal stand on 'Kerala ... - ThePrint

Opposition Leader Peter Dutton has struggled to land a blow on the governments carefully calibrated budget. After Treasurer Jim Chalmers first draft budget in October last year, the full May budget was always going to be a messaging budget, more designed to set Labors values narrative than set up the nation. But Dutton made a mistake by responding to the measures instead of the messages.

Stuck in the shadows: Peter Dutton has struggled to land a blow on the budget. Nick Moir

To adapt a maxim from management guru Peter Drucker, there are only two things in a budget that matter: innovation and marketing everything else is cost. There is nothing innovative in . Which leaves just marketing and, inevitably, costs.

It is high-quality marketing. Even before his speech on Tuesday night, the May budget was well sold. For weeks, budget drops had been given to the media. Where the dropped measures attracted blow-back, the treasurer had plenty of time to adjust. When a mooted JobSeeker raise for over 55s attracted the ire of younger voters, a payment was found for all jobseekers with earlier access to a higher rate for over 55s. Eligibility for the single parenting payment was perhaps going to be extended a little say to parents with a child under 12 years but following media campaigning by advocates, the cut-off was raised to 14.

The government has proven itself an excellent listener, responsive to advocates who make a strong and popular case. Great communication is based on good listening, and this budget established Chalmers as the strongest communicator to hold the role of treasurer for years.

Selling the budget: Chalmers is the strongest communicator to hold the role of treasurer for years. Alex Ellinghausen

Labors narrative building was assisted greatly by the post-election mini-budget last year. Explained at the time as an opportunity to update forecasts, put the Albanese governments election promises in play and cut back wasteful spending, the October budget papers reprioritised funds from existing programs the new government declared wasteful into non-specific slush funds. In May, that money was prioritised into new areas. But because of the October exercise, it is harder to say that the government cut any particular program in favour of another, removing a potentially effective attack line. Communications specialists everywhere will admire this clever tactic.

Chalmers has also shown himself willing to kill the darlings that might muddy his messaging. Wellbeing budgeting, which has been a Chalmers obsession for years, was nowhere to be seen. It has also been purged retrospectively from the October budget. In the online archives, Budget Paper 4 which contained the wellbeing addendum has disappeared. Measuring what matters, as Chalmers dubbed it, will have to wait till later this year.

Curiously, another measurement yet to be forthcoming is uptake on the There is no data to justify the decision to announce another 300,000 fee-free places this week. Instead, it is all message. As Skills and Training Minister Brendan OConnor puts it, the message is that, reducing cost of living pressures and ensuring no one is left behind is a key element of the Albanese governments plan.

In this and many other measures, the budget was carefully calibrated to convey that Labor values are responsible and fair. It lays claim to the title of better economic manager by delivering a surplus, while providing assistance however scant to people in the lowest income brackets. The sales pitch before, during and after budget night, has been that this is a budget driven by Labor values of helping the most vulnerable.

The opposition leader has criticised Labor over the rising cost of living and forecast migration numbers in an attack on the federal budget.

Strongly held values can only be refuted with values equally considered, nurtured and held. But in , Dutton nickle-and-dimed the individual measures in the budget while failing to articulate a Coalition set of values that would guide the alternative government. Instead, as the Liberal Party has done over a couple of years now, he promised something much like Labor, but perhaps a little less. The big announcements of the reply speech were that the Coalition would back nuclear power for Australia, would prefer migration slows down a bit while infrastructure building speeds up, and thinks people on welfare should be able to work for another $150 a week before losing their benefits. If there is a values framework informing those policies, it remained in the most secret heart of the opposition leader.

Perhaps this is because Liberals hoping to refresh the party are still searching for modern-day solutions in the 80-year-old writings of Robert Menzies, like the faithful interrogating the Talmud. Meanwhile, the right questions are packaged up plainly in the Labor Party narrative. Like what assistance for the vulnerable really means. Whether centralised child and aged care solutions are an ideal outcome for society. And whether children growing up in households without a working parent need some form of non-financial support to ensure welfare dependency doesnt become intergenerational. The answers to these questions, with just a sprinkling of the wisdom of old Bob, have the potential to give birth to a modern set of Liberal Party values.

While Chalmers is creating a strong, marketable brand for modern Labor, the Liberal Party has not yet grasped its in a branding war. The next Labor budget will no doubt also contain innovation; if the Liberals havent re-established a strong values-based brand by then, they will still struggle to cut through.

It was amusing to those who seek out symbols that, upon entering the hall in which the budget reply dinner was held, guests were confronted with the National Museums old dinosaur bones. It could be taken as a warning at least by those who didnt instantly feel like theyd arrived home.

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Duttons reply shows there is little meat on Liberal bones - Sydney Morning Herald

opinion

When Republican lawmakers and talking heads speak these days, this is what I hear:

I HATE liberal cancel culture and believe in absolute free speech! I would also like to ban, do away with or silence Disney, NPR, Bud Light, the FBI and CIA, this big pile of books over here, M&Ms, Mr. Potatohead, college professors, any Democratic lawmaker I dont want to hear speak, wokeness, any mention of diversity, drag shows, people who defend drag shows, people who defend people who defend drag shows, any mention whatsoever of the existence of LGBTQ people, this other big pile of books over here, the entire Department of Education, PBS and Oreos.

It all makes perfect sense if you have too much time on your hands and too few functioning brain cells to process the meaning of the word hypocrisy. And it confirms that todays mainstream Republican Party the party of Donald Trump and Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis and Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene and former Fox News host Tucker Carlson has become the party of cancel culture, a bubble-dwelling collection of right-wing caricatures who speak an intolerant and often conspiratorial language most regular Americans, and particularly most younger Americans, cant understand.

And it's happening all over the country.

Consider a recent comment from DeSantis when he was asked about the possibility of Elon Musk relocating Twitters headquarters to Florida: You know, I know Elon Musk, and what I would tell him is like, Ok, if youre going to move Twitter to Florida, are you bringing woke employees to Florida or are you bringing just your people? If its just his people then it may be good.

So the woke are unwelcome. People who disagree with DeSantis anti-woke stance whatever that happens to be, since it changes from day to day are unwelcome.

DeSantis continued to praise Musks attempts to de-woke-ify the social media platform: So I really applaud him for taking on Twitter, trying to moor it back towards facts and truth and stop (parroting) the ideology and trying to censor beliefs that conflict with it.

Allow me to translate that into English: DeSantis is glad Musk is silencing people he disagrees with because, in his mind, that will stop them from trying to censor things they believe are wrong.

Its worth keeping in mind the things the woke at Twitter want to ban include: Nazis, bigots, misogynists, racists and others spouting violent rhetoric. That, by DeSantis logic, is bad. That stifles free speech. And the best way to stop that free-speech stifling is to silence the woke and not welcome them to your state.

Some conservatives will argue this kind of thinking the thinking that leads a governor like DeSantis to try to cancel a huge corporation like Disney because it spoke out against one of his policies is not what the Republican Party is all about. To that I say: Prove it. Because as best I can tell these days, that is ALL the Republican Party is about, a grand old departure from the partys previous belief in limiting government intrusion into peoples lives.

In states like Tennessee, North Dakota, Montana and Oklahoma, GOP lawmakers are working to ban drag shows.

Republican-led legislatures in Florida, Iowa, Utah, Indiana and several other states have taken away a parents right to get gender-affirming care for a transgender child.

Florida passed DeSantis now-infamous Dont Say Gay law, restricting K-12 teachers from discussing sexuality or gender identity in the classroom.

And Republicans, from high-ranking lawmakers down to small-town school board members, have been banning books at a feverish pace. The non-profit free speech group PEN America studies school book bans and found that last fall, there were 1,477 instances of individual books banned, affecting 874 unique titles, an increase of 28 percent compared to the prior six months.

The group wrote in its report: These efforts to chill speech are part of the ongoing nationwide Ed Scare a campaign to foment anxiety and anger with the goal of suppressing free expression in public education. As book bans escalate, coupled with the proliferation of legislative efforts to restrict teaching about topics such as race, gender, American history, and LGBTQ+ identities, the freedom to read, learn and think continues to be undermined for students.

The Washington Post reported that a New Jersey school board recently rejected a sociology textbook in part because the book gave an accurate description of Michael Brown, who was killed by police in 2014, as an unarmed Black teenager.' The books offense? It didnt also describe Browns size and weight, or that he was scuffling with a cop when killed apparently failing to depict the victim as threatening enough.

A recent Indianapolis Star report said the young-adult shelves at the Hamilton East Public Library in Fishers, Indiana, are mostly empty. Books have been pulled because the librarys conservative-led board ordered a review to suss out any books that might contain profanities, descriptions of criminal acts or any instance of visual depiction of sexual nudity as described or any level of written description, even incidental, of sexual conduct as described.

Protesting the review and possible book bans, Fishers parent Matthew Rhea said during a recent board meeting: As a parent, I believe its my responsibility to watch out for my children, not to have other people watch out for my children. I don't know why other people think they need to help me with my children's education.

In Oklahoma, Republican Gov. Kevin Stitt wrapped up the month of April by vetoing a bill that funds the Oklahoma Educational Television Authority, one of the nations most-watched Public Broadcasting Service networks. He claimed the network aims to indoctrinate kids.

His evidence? Episodes of Clifford the Big Red Dog and Work it Out Wombats! that included lesbian characters.

Some of the stuff that theyre showing just overly sexualizes our kids, Stitt said, remarkably not choking on the absurdity of that comment.

PBS: Canceled. Transgender kids: Canceled. Woke Twitter employees: Canceled. Bud Light, because the company partnered with a transgender influencer: Canceled. Books that contain a passing profanity or a mention of criminal activity or, heaven forbid, something suggesting that sexual attraction is a thing that exists: Canceled.

This is todays free-speech-loving (as long as its their speech and not yours) Republican Party. The party of un-intrusive government (unless youre up to something that doesnt fit their mainly white, mainly straight and often male world view).

Diversity? Canceled! Equity? Canceled! Inclusion? Canceled!

If I didnt know better, Id say theres something these folks are afraid of. Cant imagine what it might be. But I suppose I should look it up soon before all the books that explain it get banned.

FollowUSA TODAY columnist Rex HuppkeonTwitter@RexHuppkeand Facebookfacebook.com/RexIsAJerk

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Liberal 'cancel culture'? GOP bans anything it disagrees with - USA TODAY

The West Bengal government has banned the controversial Hindi film, The Kerela Story, which tells the fictional tale of women from Kerala who were forced to convert to Islam and join ISIS. Soon after the ban was declared, many left-liberals, friends among them, voiced their disagreement. They were upset and unhappy about the culture of banning a work of art that was considered contentious and provocative. India has a long, bad record of banning books, films and other forms of art with political content for political reasons. Some felt banning what they consider a bad film gives it an aura it does not deserve. The people in a democracy must be able to judge it for themselves. Banning can also be a timid act against what is considered political propaganda. By banning a film, you allow curiosity and interest to get more intense, and one-sided. The act of banning grants a film its negative prestige.

Writer and professor at CSDS, Hilal Ahmed, tweeted on May 6 that banning a film was not the answer to the problem of misinformation or negative portrayal of a set of people. Instead, Ahmed argued, we must ensure healthy public reasoning where people could draw their own meanings from a work of art. Despite being in agreement with Ahmed, and with all those left-liberals who are against the banning of the film, I would like to raise some questions around it.

There is a fundamental liberal presupposition made by Ahmed in his discomfort against the act of banning. He believes a healthy public debate can take place around the film, where the meaning of art will be critically discussed and expanded, is possible. In fact, his whole argument rests on the possibility of a liberal-minded debate on the issue. But is it really possible under the current political climate? Ahmed connects three different issues in his argument: 1) there is a film which, according to him, spreads misinformation, in other words, a propaganda film, 2) desirable exchanges based on public reason can take place around the film, and 3) the meaning of art can be enhanced by such efforts.

A poster for The Kerala Story.

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For Ahmeds argument to bear fruit, the debates based on public reason must include the people behind the film and those who endorse it. There is clearly no point in people who agree that the film spreads misinformation debating the issue amongst themselves. If the filmmakers and the films supporters dont agree to join an objective and critical debate on it, the idea falls flat.

The point is, there is a political issue that the liberal argument does not address.

The film is clearly political. It has a take on what it sees as a social, and even national issue. Any debate over it will also be necessarily political. It cant be about the craft of filmmaking. If the filmmakers refuse to accept the accusation that it is a propaganda film based on misinformation, the debate will be reduced to two sides accusing each others political motives. Such a debate wont fulfil the liberal demand of public reasoning. The debate is doomed to failure.

The meaningfulness of public reasoning falls flat if both sides do not adhere to the principles of the debate. Without it, the meaning of art wont be elevated. The assumption that a debate based on public reason is possible does not take into account the possibility of this failure.

There is an obvious constraint in carrying out a public debate on the issue because there cant be a common ground between two polarised groups. The constraint, in other words, is deeply political. Imagine if the ground of the debate is reduced to the fact that the argument you make determines if you are a nationalist or not. In that case, the idea of public reasoning and art has to fall within this framework in order to gather meaning. It is a coercion of reason and the meaning of art. Will it serve the cause of public reason and the meaning of art?

It is true that in a liberal, secular, democratic country, nothing should be banned. Works of art and literature must be allowed to question, critique, and lampoon all forms and figures of power. Salman Rushdies famous definition of freedom of expression in his essay, In Good Faith (1990) goes: Without the freedom to offend, it ceases to exist.

Rushdies militantly liberal definition however does not take something important into account. The United Nations secretary-general, Antnio Guterres shared an important concern in a statement in May 2019: Public discourse is being weaponised for political gain with incendiary rhetoric that stigmatises and dehumanises minorities, migrants, refugees, women and any so-called other.

This clearly limits freedom of expression. It sets an ethical and political limit on free expression that holds that no value is greater than the dignity of vulnerable people. Not all films, or works of art and literature branded as propaganda, may raise an ethical problem of this nature and magnitude.

Also Read | Lucknow: Hoardings Set Up by BJP Leader Target Opposition for Denouncing Kerala Story

In a subsequent article, Hilal Ahmed acknowledged that the films portrayal of Muslims is deeply problematic and it might have an adverse impact on communal harmony. But the film must be screened, he insisted, and the state must maintain law and order. This argument shifts the question about the ethical limits of free expression to the juridical responsibility of the state. To appeal to the state to ensure public peace so that free expression can be allowed to exist is to argue that statist instrumentality can provide an acceptable justification for an ethical breach in the definition of art. What comes before the question of law and order is the question of the ethical (and social) law that precedes the question of order. Of what order serves in the name of the law. Of what does it serve of art.

To be against all forms of banning in the name of democratic values is a liberal virtue. The value is desirable. Except that, it falls short on occasions like the one under discussion. The political and the substantively ethical fact of the crisis is left aside, if one doesnt also admit that such a virtue is often without hope.

Manash Firaq Bhattacharjee is an author. His latest book is Nehru and the Spirit of India.

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To Oppose All Forms of Bans in the Name of Democratic Values Is a Liberal Virtue - The Wire

New Brunswick

Hadeel Ibrahim - CBC News

Posted: May 09, 2023

Liberal Party Leader Susan Holt started her first question period with a recurringissue: the primary-care wait list.

Holt was elected leader of the N.B. Liberal Party nine months ago, but did not have a seat in the legislature. In a byelection in April, she was elected in Bathurst East-Nepisiguit-Saint Isidore, and was sworn into the legislature Tuesday.

She also participated in her first question period, wearing a black T-shirt with "Straight outta Bathurst" printed in bold white letters.

Her first question as leader of the Official Opposition was to Health Minister Bruce Fitch: How many people are still on the primary-care wait list?

"New Brunswickersmade it clear to me and to all members of our team that the number one thing that keeps them up at night is their health, their loved ones' health and their access to care," she said.

Fitch said that atone point, the list had 74,000 people, largely owing to a record increase in population. Now, the list is at 47,000 people.

Holt said the government has already missed one of its deadlines to eliminate the wait list, and there's a new target for the end of June. She asked whether the province will be able to meet that deadline, but Fitch did not explicitly answer the question.

"We're going to continue to work day in and day out to reduce that number to make sure people have access to primary care," he said.

When the New Brunswick health plan was announced in 2021, the number of people on the list was at 40,000. After a jump in population, it increased to 74,000, then decreased again, he said.

Holt's second question was about the province's handling of a backlash against a school policy meant to protect LGBTQ students.

The policy sets minimum standards for a safe environment for LGBTQ students, allows students to choose their pronouns andrequires teachers to respect their choice. It also allowsthem to establish gender-sexuality alliance groups without requiring parental consent or notification.

The province has said it is rethinking the policybecause of "misunderstandings and concerns," and Holt asked Education Minister to describe the nature of the complaints the government has received,the specific number and where they came from.

Hogan didn't provide the information in his response.

"We believe in respectful, safe and inclusive school environment," he said. "We will continue to promote and guarantee that, we will continue to guarantee the Charter of Rights and Freedoms."

Holt saidHogan created an unsafe environment with comments last week, when he distanced himself from a learning session teachers were holding at a Fredericton-area school on sexual orientation and gender identify.

Holt said if the minister "were interested in ensuring that students were safe in schools, he would be putting his full support" behind the policy.

Hadeel Ibrahim is a reporter with CBC New Brunswick based in Saint John. She reports in English and Arabic. Email: hadeel.ibrahim@cbc.ca.

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Liberal leader targets wait list for primary care in her 1st question in legislature - CBC.ca

Liberal MP Richard Riordan on Tuesday wrote to Opposition Leader John Pesutto, the leadership team and who put their names to the expulsion motion to advise it was invalid under party rules.

Suspended Liberal MP Moira Deeming faces a vote to expel her on Friday, but a fellow party member says the vote would be invalid. Darrian Traynor

Deeming again pleaded for an explanation about what the conduct that justified booting her from the team was.

I am writing for a second time; can I please have a copy of the exact conduct to which the expulsion motion refers so that I can prepare my defence, she said in an email obtained by The Age to Pesutto and the five MPs behind the motion on Tuesday.

Deeming is now expected to mount a defence at the meeting, despite earlier telling colleagues she would not give the vote legitimacy by attending.

The partys parliamentary constitution was updated six months ago and states that a notice to expel a member must be signed by the leader, deputy leader, or five MPs. It must also specify the reasons for it.

Riordan, a Deeming supporter, claimed those requirements had not been met and invalidated the motion.

The Victorian Liberals are launching a fresh motion to expel exiled MP Moira Deeming after she denied trying to sue the party.

As the member responsible for the reissuing of the parliamentary constitution to all elected members, I write to raise two issues that I think will force the cancellation of this Fridays meeting, or risk a very messy legal dispute, the member for Polwarth wrote.

I have sought some independent legal advice ... a motion of this gravity must still be signed by its proposers.

Therefore, this Fridays meeting should be cancelled as there is no valid motion to debate.

In reply to Riordans email, a copy of which has been seen by The Age, Pesutto wrote: Many thanks for your email. We note your comments but confirm that the notice complies with the requirements under the constitution. Warm regards, JP.

Former leader Matthew Guy, James Newbury, Roma Britnell, Cindy McLeish and Wayne Farnham put their names to the motion to expel Deeming for bringing discredit on the parliamentary team, but did not include their signatures.

MPs opposed to the validity of the motion say that state law also requires that the recipient of a legal document for it to be valid.

Britnell and a spokesman for Pesutto both told this masthead the meeting would go ahead.

If the expulsion motion succeeds, Deeming would still continue to serve as a crossbench MP.

Deeming was in March suspended from the party room after attending the controversial Let Women Speak rally that was gatecrashed by neo-Nazis.

Last week, she issued a failed ultimatum for Pesutto to declare she was not a Nazi sympathiser and to allow her return to the Liberal party room or face a legal challenge.

She told colleagues she had advised [her] lawyers to prepare a legal challenge over [her] suspension, which prompted the fresh expulsion motion.

The upper house MP backed down from her legal threat at the weekend, issuing a statement denying she planned to sue the Liberal Party. She said she only wanted a lawyers assistance to help clear her name and resolve her suspension.

All I have ever wanted, since the leaders failed attempt to have me expelled for allegedly bringing the party into disrepute, was to have my name cleared, Deeming said in her statement.

The past six weeks have taken a terrible toll on me personally.

Narracan MP Farnham said Deemings threat of legal action was a step too far.

I felt her retraction was not representative of what she had put forward two days prior, he said.

It has nothing to do with her stance on women, it has everything to do with her behaviour in the present.

Three Liberal MPs, speaking on condition of anonymity to discuss internal party matters, said they did not take seriously the questions about the motions validity.

Both camps believe about two-thirds of MPs will support the motion.

But another MP said: John [Pesutto] keeps talking about reform. This isnt reform, this is Jihad.

Pesuttos office and Deeming have been contacted for comment.

Late last week, federal Opposition Leader Peter Dutton left the door open to intervening in the Victorian Liberal Party,.

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Liberals to plough ahead with Deeming expulsion vote, despite warning of messy legal dispute - The Age

(L to R) Quebec Liberal Party MNAs Desire McGraw, Jennifer Maccarone and Madwa-Nika Cadet with Andr Pratte/FacebookL. Ian MacDonald

May 9, 2023

As the once-mighty Quebec Liberal Party continues to sift through the entrails of the worst electoral showing in its 155-year history, it has turned to a white knight at once surprising and entirely logical.

On Monday night in the Unitarian Church hall in Westmount Montreals leafy bastion of Liberal solidity both federal and provincial a Town Hall addressed the question of how to rebuild from the rout of last October 3rd, which reduced the party of Robert Bourassa and Jean Lesage to 21 of 125 seats and 14.4 percent of the popular vote; less than half its previous low point.

The discussion was about values, specifically the partys brand as the defender of minority rights, the minority in this province being Liberal-voting anglophones.

Collective rights, said Andr Pratte former editor-in-chief of La Presse, former independent senator and legendary veteran of the federalist trenches do not apply when individual rights are not respected.

Language rights have made a major comeback here since nationalist premier Franois Legault passed the provinces latest polarizing language law Bill 96 one year ago. As the author of too many editorials on the subject to count, Pratte is as well-versed an authority as anyone in the province if not the country.

Respect for individual rights?

That, Pratte said, is the Liberal way of doing things.

The audience, including Liberal MNAs Desire McGraw (Notre-Dame-de-Grce) and Jennifer Maccarone (Westmount-St.-Louis) and former provincial and federal cabinet minister Raymond Garneau nodded in approval.

Pratte recently took on what is effectively the role of special rapporteur on how to resuscitate the party. In this mission he serves as co-chair, with MNA Madwa-Nika Cadet, of the Committee to Revive the Quebec Liberal Party. The ideally before the next provincial election in 2026 goes without saying.

In a recent Montreal Gazette op-ed, Pratte and Cadet laid the general groundwork for their listening tour:

As a nation, as a democracy, Quebec needs Liberal ideas, among others: the conviction that Quebec is best able to develop through dynamic and autonomous participation in the Canadian federation; the determined preservation and promotion of the French language and culture, while respecting the fundamental rights of all Quebecers; a belief in economic development, particularly the prosperity of Quebecs regions, as a driving force for social justice, while respecting the environment; the conviction that the Quebec state must be human, decentralized and at the service of Quebecers, while respecting their ability to pay.

The question of political succession looms over this process. The Liberals managed to remain as the official opposition last October only because of their share of the popular vote in the Montreal region. The partys leader, Dominique Anglade, resigned five weeks later. Anglade had run an excellent campaign of ideas that were of little interest to Quebecers beyond the reach of the Liberals, especially off the Island of Montreal. The first question is, who will fill the job now? The second question is, who would want it?

Some have suggested Pratte himself as a potential leader. After a stint taking the partys pulse in the wilderness, he could emerge the prohibitive front-runner, whether he likes it or not.

With the Parti Qubcois, founded in 1968 by the formidable Ren Lvesque, father of sovereignty-association, also a husk of its former self, the provinces defining debate has moved beyond la question nationale as McGill Institute for the Study of Canada Director Daniel Bland recently wrote in Policy, to questions of religious and cultural diversity and human rights.

And that debate, as much as the one that roiled the province and the country for four decades, is right in Andr Prattes wheelhouse.

L. Ian MacDonald is Editor and Publisher of Policy Magazine.

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Andr Prattes Third Act: Resurrecting the Quebec Liberal Party - Policy Magazine

As countries in the global South refuse to take a side in the war in Ukraine, many in the West are struggling to understand why. Some speculate that these countries have opted for neutrality out of economic interest. Others see ideological alignments with Moscow and Beijing behind their unwillingness to take a stand or even a lack of morals. But the behavior of large developing countries can be explained by something much simpler: the desire to avoid being trampled in a brawl among China, Russia and the United States, writes Matias Spektor, Professor of International Relations at Fundao Getulio Vargas in So Paulo and a Visiting Scholar at Princeton University.

Across the globe, from India to Indonesia, Brazil to Turkey, Nigeria to South Africa, developing countries are increasingly seeking to avoid costly entanglements with the major powers, trying to keep all their options open for maximum flexibility. These countries are pursuing a strategy of hedging because they see the future distribution of global power as uncertain and wish to avoid commitments that will be hard to discharge. With limited resources with which to influence global politics, developing countries want to be able to quickly adapt their foreign policies to unpredictable circumstances.

In the context of the war in Ukraine, hedgers reason that it is too early to dismiss Russias staying power. Russia will remain a major force to reckon with in the foreseeable future and a necessary player in negotiating an end to the war. Most countries in the global South also see a total Russian defeat as undesirable, contending that a broken Russia would open a power vacuum wide enough to destabilize countries far beyond Europe.

Western countries have been too quick to dismiss this rationale for neutrality, viewing it as an implicit defense of Russia or as an excuse to normalize aggression. In Washington and various European capitals, the global Souths response to the war in Ukraine is seen as making an already difficult problem harder. But such frustrations with hedgers are misguided the West is ignoring the opportunity created by large developing countries growing disillusionment with the policies of Beijing and Moscow.

As long as these countries feel a need to hedge their bets, the West will have an opportunity to court them. But to improve relations with developing countries and manage the evolving global order, the West must take the concerns of the global South on climate change, trade, and much else seriously.

Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, for example, has developed strong diplomatic and commercial ties with China, Russia and the United States simultaneously. For Modi, hedging acts as an insurance policy. Should conflict erupt among the major powers, India could profit by aligning with the most powerful side or joining a coalition of weaker states to deter the strongest one.

Under President Luiz Incio Lula da Silva, for example, Brazil has declined European requests to send military equipment to Kyiv. Lula reasoned that refusing to criticize Moscow would impede dialogue with U.S. President Joe Biden, and selling weapons to the Western coalition would undermine his ability to talk to Russian President Vladimir Putin. As a result, Brazilian officials have made boilerplate calls for an end to the fighting without doing anything that might trigger a backlash from either Washington or Moscow.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has publicly affirmed support for Ukraines territorial integrity and sent Kyiv humanitarian aid. But his government has avoided being drawn into the conflict, despite Turkey being a NATO member with strong and valuable ties to the United States and the EU. Erdogan recognizes that Turkey cannot afford to alienate Russia because Moscow wields influence over areas of major interest to Ankara, including the Caucasus, Nagorno-Karabakh, and Syria.

Indonesia under President Joko Widodo has courted Chinese and Western investment to reverse two decades of deindustrialization. Because taking sides in the war in Ukraine could jeopardize these plans, he has studiously sought to stand above the fray. In 2022, he was one of only a few world leaders to have met with Biden, Putin, Chinese President Xi Jinping, and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky.

Since hedgers value freedom of action, they may form partnerships of convenience to pursue specific foreign policy objectives, but they are unlikely to forge general alliances. This differentiates todays hedgers from nonaligned countries during the Cold War. Amid the bipolar competition of that era, nonaligned developing states rallied around a shared identity to demand greater economic justice, racial equality, and the end of colonial rule. To that end, they formed enduring coalitions in multilateral institutions.

By contrast, hedging today is about avoiding the pressure to choose between China, Russia, and the United States. It is a response to the rise of a new, multipolar world.

For countries in the global South, hedging is not just a way to extract material concessions. The strategy is informed by these countries histories with the great powers and their conviction that the United States, in particular, has been hypocritical in its dealings with the developing world.

The developing world also sees hypocrisy in Washingtons framing of its competition with Beijing and Moscow as a battle between democracy and autocracy. After all, the United States continues to selectively back authoritarian governments when it serves U.S. interests. Of the 50 countries that Freedom House counts as dictatorships, 35 received military aid from the U.S. government in 2021. It should be no surprise, then, that many in the global South view the Wests pro-democracy rhetoric as motivated by self-interest rather than a genuine commitment to liberal values.

People in developing countries remember the post-Cold War unipolar moment as a violent time with wars in Afghanistan, the Balkans, and Iraq. Unipolarity also coincided with the unsettling influx of global capital into eastern Europe, Latin America, and Southeast Asia. As the scholar Nuno Monteiro warned, when U.S. hegemony is unchecked, Washington becomes capricious, picking fights against recalcitrant states or letting peripheral regional conflicts fester.

The United States must also drop the expectation that the global South will automatically follow the West. Large and influential developing countries can never be true insiders in the liberal international order. They will, therefore, seek to pursue their own interests and values within international institutions and contest Western understandings of legitimacy and fairness.

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Influential developing countries can never be true insiders in the liberal international order - Modern Diplomacy

By Tim Baker, Political reporter

Tuesday 9 May 2023 19:16, UK

Sir Keir Starmer has refused seven times to rule out doing a deal with the Liberal Democrats after the next election if Labour finds itself the biggest party at Westminster but short of an overall majority.

Speaking to Sky News political editor Beth Rigby, Sir Keir declined to say whether he would do a deal with Sir Ed Davey multiple times.

It comes after both parties won hundreds of seats in last week's local elections in England at the expense of the Conservatives.

Extrapolations from the council votes show that the swing, if replicated at the next general election, would not be great enough to get Sir Keir into Number 10 as the leader of a majority Labour government.

Claims Johnson had 'showdown' with King 'inaccurate' - Politics latest

While he categorically ruled out joining up with the SNP to form a government, the leader of the opposition would not be as decisive about the Lib Dems as the question was "hypothetical".

Asked about the SNP, Sir Keir said: "Well, look, I'm going for an outright majority, and I'm often asked 'will you do a deal with the SNP?'

"And I've been absolutely clear, there are no terms on which we would do a deal with the SNP.

"I want to push on to a Labour majority."

This is a limited version of the story so unfortunately this content is not available. Open the full version

Read more:Starmer is desperate for a majority - but knows he may fall shortLabour's new council leaders pledge to take cost of living actionLocal election results in full

Asked whether he would do a deal with the Lib Dems, Sir Keir said: "I'm not answering hypotheticals, but we are aiming for a Labour majority.

"And that's what we're confident about, because you know, this set of local elections was a cry for change and Labour is the party that can deliver that change."

Beth asked multiple times if a deal with Sir Ed would be on the cards, with the Labour leader repeating that he wanted to "press on" or "kick on" - and that he wants a "Labour majority government" - but not saying no.

A Labour Party spokesperson later said that the party was not "contemplating a coalition because we're on course for a Labour majority government".

"We're not thinking about anything else because last week showed we don't need to," they added.

In total, Labour won 536 seats last week, the Liberal Democrats won 405 and the Greens won 241.

This came at the cost of 1,063 Conservative councillors, and 119 members of other parties and independents.

The way people voted was used to calculate an estimate of what could happen at the next general election - expected in 2024.

It showed that Labour could win 298 seats - its highest tally since 2005, but 28 short of a majority.

With the Lib Dems projected to get 39 seats, the two together would have enough for a majority in the House of Commons under these conditions.

The same projection showed the Tories would be down 127 seats at 238, with the SNP and other parties taking 75 seats.

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Sir Keir's unclear answer leaves the door open to Labour working with England's third biggest party less than a decade after they were in government with the Conservatives.

On Sunday, the Lib Dem's deputy leader Daisy Cooper told Sophy Ridge on Sunday that her party's aim was to oust as many Conservatives as possible - but also did not rule out a pact with Labour.

Read more:

Sir Keir Starmer refuses seven times to rule out deal with Liberal Democrats as projections show hung parliament - Sky News

Renee Heath has been stripped of a key role with the Victorian Liberals on the same day that Moira Deeming was expelled from the party room. 

The Victorian Opposition is yet again fighting amongst itself instead of the states Premier Daniel Andrews, says Sky News host Peta Credlin. And this time, apparently, I was the cause of the blue, Ms Credlin said. It all stemmed from the botched attempt by Liberal Leader John Pesutto to expel Moira Deeming from his parliamentary team. Ms Credlin said Victorian Liberal MP and party Secretary Renee Heath has been accused of leaking information from the minutes of a meeting concerning Ms Deeming. As multiple MPs have recounted to me, Heath was verbally attacked by John Pesutto she labels it bullying and accused of leaking the Deeming meeting minutes to me, Ms Credlin stated. Renee Heath did not give me any information about the minutes. The allegation today from Pesutto is completely false.

Ms Heath was removed as secretary of the parliamentary Liberals on Friday on a day in which Moira Deeming was expelled from the party room.

A number colleagues brought forward a motion to strip Ms Heath of the role but Opposition Leader John Pesutto would not name those behind the move.

"I think it's fair to say that a couple of Renee's colleagues in the party room moved the motion, reflected a view in the room that there had been a loss of confidence in the performance of the role," Mr Pesutto told reporters.

"Not in Renee personally, of course, but in the performance of the role and that it was an opportunity to elect somebody to that position for a fresh start."

Renee Heath (right) has been removed as Victorian parliamentary Liberal party secretary, while Moira Deeming (left) has been expelled from the party room. Picture: NCA NewsWire / Luis Ascui

Mr Pesutto declined to go into further details about the motion but confirmed he backed the move, which saw Ms Heath replaced by Trung Luu.

The Liberal leader added Ms Heath does "have a future" within the Liberal party room but indicated she was better suited to "other roles".

"I was convinced on the strength of the motion that was put, and the arguments that were made, that it was an opportunity for a fresh start in relation to that position," Mr Pesutto said.

"Renee still is a member of the party room, she still has a future in the party room, obviously with other roles. But at this time we felt it was important for a fresh start."

The motion came less than two weeks after Sky News Australia host Peta Credlin revealed Ms Heath was reduced to tears by Mr Pesutto during a party room meeting.

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'You cannot sue your boss and expect to keep your job': James Newbury on Moira Deeming's expulsion

Ms Heath was alleged to have leaked minutes of a meeting in March that saw Ms Deeming suspended from the Liberal party room for nine months.

"Today in the room, as multiple MPs have recounted to me, (Renee) Heath was verbally attacked by John Pesutto she labels it bullying and accused of leaking the Deeming meeting minutes to me," Credlin said on May 2.

"I can say to you right now, Renee Heath did not give me any information about the minutes the allegation today from Pesutto is completely false."

Credlin said Ms Heath was "shaken" by the experience, before quoting from an email the upper house MP sent to the entire Victorian Liberal party room.

The Sky News Australia host also made a point to tell Mr Pesutto that she did not get the email from Ms Heath.

"I once again feel completely stitched up and misrepresented by the leadership with no ability to defend myself. I wasn't even given the space to correct the mistruths about me in today's meeting," Ms Heath said in her email to colleagues.

John Pesutto said a motion was put forward on Friday seeking a "fresh start" in the party secretary role that had been held by Renee Heath. Picture: NCA NewsWire /Luis Enrique Ascui

"I am upset. Very upset. The way I have been treated and the way other conservative women in this party are treated is nothing short of bullying.

"Why can't we respect each other? Why can't you have an idea or a difference of opinions without having eyes rolled, and nasty and personal interjections?"

Ms Heath entered parliament last year after being elected to the Legislative Council as a Liberal member for Eastern Victoria.

She was one of the 11 Liberal MPs on Friday who voted against the motion to expel Ms Deeming from the party room. Nineteen MPs supported the motion.

Mr Pesutto did not go into the specifics of that vote but revealed Ms Deeming's threat of legal action against both himself and the party had not sat well with colleagues.

"That played a part," he said.

"I think nobody could look at that and say that it is a tenable position in any political party for one member of the party room to sue another member of that party."

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Renee Heath stripped of key Liberal party room role - Sky News Australia