Thursday, February 17, 2022



'People are just uncomfortable with a black woman in a power position': Texas A&M basketball coach defends her outfit choice after being criticized

Rubbish! Wearing "f**k me" clothing while in the public eye was bound to be distracting during a game she was attending

image from https://i.dailymail.co.uk/1s/2022/02/16/15/54273717-0-image-a-12_1645027105405.jpg

A Texas A&M women's basketball assistant coach hit back after facing backlash for wearing pink leather pants and stilettos to a game.

'I'm unapologetically myself every day, I could care less if anybody thinks that I'm being extra,' Sydney Carter said in response to her critics. 'I'm not gonna turn up turn my light off because somebody else is offended or intimidated by the fact that I embrace myself.'

The 31-year-old Aggies assistant coach believes race plays a major factor in the criticism.

'I just think that people are uncomfortable with a black woman being in a power position,' she told Yahoo. 'When you see a black woman who is actually confident and embracing herself, I think that that's very intimidating.'

The furor began when Carter shared photos of herself at the February 6 game against the Kentucky Wildcats. She was wearing the tight pink leather pants paired with a white turtleneck, clear heels and a pink breast cancer awareness pin at her chest.

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Justine Trudeau is reprimanded in Parliament for accusing Jewish Conservative Party MP of standing 'with people who wave swastikas'

Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau sparked anger on Wednesday when he accused a Jewish MP of 'standing with people who wave swastikas' after she criticized his handling of the Freedom Convoy truckers' anti-vaccine protests.

Melissa Lantsman, a 37-year-old Conservative MP for the Toronto suburb of Thornhill, confronted the prime minister in Parliament about the draconian Emergency Act, which he invoked on Monday for the first time in 50 years in a bid to end 19 days of chaos.

Trudeau responded with scorn to her complaints, saying: 'Conservative Party members can stand with people who wave swastikas, they can stand with people who wave the confederate flag.

'We will chose to stand with Canadians who deserve to be able to get to their jobs, and get their lives back. These illegal protests need to stop and they will.'

His comments were greeted with uproar, and forced the Speaker of the House to reprimand Trudeau and others, reminding them of rules against using 'inflammatory' language in Parliament during the debates.

After being reprimanded, Trudeau refused to apologize and again repeated that the blockades were illegal, and the measures to repress the protests were necessary.

Lantsman later tweeted: 'I think the Prime Minister should think long and hard about his own history before singling out a Jewish Member of Parliament and falsely accusing me of standing with a Swastika.

'What a disgraceful statement unbecoming of anyone in public office - he owes me an apology.'

Trudeau has stepped up his crackdown on Freedom Convoy demonstrators, with police now visiting the homes of people who post in support of the protests on Facebook and a woman forced out of her government job after donating to the demonstrations.

Trudeau on Wednesday was considering using his extraordinary powers under the Emergencies Act to establish 'no-go' zones in Ottawa to dispel the remaining protests in the nation's capital. Ottawa police fanned out among the demonstrators on Wednesday afternoon, distributing pamphlets saying protesters faced fines, arrests and vehicle seizures, and reading: 'You must leave the area now.'

As the blockades in Alberta and Manitoba ended peacefully, all focus came to bear on the protest in Ottawa, now in its third week, with demonstrators paralyzing the streets over their demand for an end to vaccine mandates.

Frustration with the failure of Canadian police to lift blockades at the border and in the capital, along with scenes of protesters lounging in hot tubs near Parliament, ultimately drove Trudeau to seek emergency powers earlier this week, sources told Reuters.

Trudeau has been slammed by critics who accuse him of imposing 'martial law' to crush the protests over vaccine mandates and other pandemic restrictions.

Lantsman had earlier during the Parliament session on Wednesday quoted Trudeau's October 2015 victory speech, when he was elected prime minister.

'A positive, optimistic, hopeful vision of public life isn't a naive dream; it can be a powerful force for change,' Lantsman quoted. 'If Canadians are to trust their government, their government needs to trust Canadians,' she quoted. Lantsman added: 'Those are the words of the prime minister in 2015.

'"These people - very often misogynistic, racist, women hater, science deniers, the fringe," - same prime minister, six years later, as he fans the flames of an unjustified national emergency.

'So, Mr Speaker, when did the prime minister lose his way? When did it happen?'

Trudeau said that his government was 'following to the letter' the Emergency Act, and it was needed.

Dane Lloyd, an MP for Sturgeon River in Alberta, accused Trudeau of making 'shameful and dishonorable' remarks.

He added: 'For the prime minister to accuse any colleague in this house of standing with the swastika is shameful.'

Lloyd called on Trudeau to 'unreservedly apologize' - and Trudeau refused.

He countered: ‘Canadians deserve their freedoms back.

'These illegal blockades that continue to interfere with people’s daily lives.'

Amid the catcalls, the Speaker intervened to 'ask everybody to calm down'.

Trudeau continued: 'The measure put forward are proportionate, responsible and completely folded into charter of freedoms. These steps are proportionate.’

Lloyd replied that the 'lack of apology speaks volumes' and urged Trudeau again to apologize.

Trudeau said: ‘These members continue to stand with illegal blockades. Canadians are watching carefully and … we will stand will stand on the side of Canadians who want their livelihoods back.’

For a third time, Lloyd demanded: 'Mr Prime Minister, apologize.'

And Trudeau said: ‘These illegal blockades have been going on in Ottawa for 20 days now. 'People are made to feel fearful, miss shifts at their work, these are things that cannot be stood for.

'That’s why we are moving forward with measures. We continue to defend freedom of expression, freedom to protest, as long as they are peaceful.'

Candice Bergen, the opposition leader, told Trudeau that the threshold for invoking the Emergency Act had not been met - pointing out that the three bridges into the United States have now been cleared.

'It's not something done lightly,' Trudeau replied. 'It was necessary to give local law enforcement the tools to lift these illegal blockades, to ensure law and safety and to ensure Canadians are able to get back to their daily lives.'

Bergen accused Trudeau of overreach.

'Why is the prime minister using this hammer on Canadians?' she asked. 'Isn’t it true that he’s using it just to save his own political skin?'

Trudeau insisted that the threshold had been met, adding: 'Now across the country, police have the tools necessary to keep people safe.'

Bergen said that the mandates must end, saying that continued lockdowns were harming the mental health of the country.

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Rock Star Truckers

Donna Laframboise

Members of the public are showering the truckers with thanks. And with food, fuel, and cash

I just spent a week in Ottawa. Talking to protesting truckers, attending their daily religious services, breaking bread with them in restaurants (usually small, ethnic places) that demand neither masks nor papers.

I spent a week watching these truckers being treated like rock stars by the public. People walk up to the cabs of these vehicles. They reach up to shake hands and announce some variation of: “We’ve just arrived in town for a few days. Thank you for starting this movement.”

Long before it was Valentine’s Day, people were tucking red cardboard hearts beneath the windshield wipers of these parked trucks. Strangers routinely pass cash, gift cards, thank you notes, and children’s drawings to the drivers. They offer them warm hats, sandwiches, chocolate, and home baked treats. A local adopt-a-trucker program is providing access to showers, and is doing laundry.

One of the earliest anecdotes I heard from a trucker, an oldtimer himself, was about a ‘little old lady’ who’d asked if a nearby Jerry can belonged to him. After he said she was welcome to it, she informed him her intent was to fill it with petrol and to wheel it back in a baby stroller covered with a blanket.

It’s a sweet story. But with a serious undertone. The French Resistance did that sort of thing. While living under Hitler’s boot.

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Priti Patel hires Australia's migrant guru in bid to help solve Channel crisis

image from https://i.dailymail.co.uk/1s/2022/02/16/21/54287195-10520925-image-a-16_1645047824711.jpg

A former minister who played a key role in Australia's controversial asylum seeker 'pushback' policy has been hired to shake up Britain's border measures.

Priti Patel will announce today that Alexander Downer, ex-minister for foreign affairs Down Under, will carry out a thorough review of the UK Border Force.

His remit will include looking at the influence of unions over the agency's effectiveness.

It comes after the union that represents the majority of Border Force staff joined forces with a migrant charity to launch a legal challenge against Miss Patel's plans to turn Channel boats back to France.

It is understood that Mr Downer will cover all of Border Force's work – including immigration checks at ports and airports, counter-smuggling operations as well as dealing with asylum claims.

His report will be due within months, and is expected to influence ministers' decisions on the next stages of immigration reform. It opens the possibility of a complete overhaul of Border Force.

Proposals could include a merger with a separate Home Office agency – Immigration Enforcement – which deals with foreign criminals, visa-breakers and organised crime gangs.

The Home Secretary's appointment of Mr Downer will be controversial because he has been a leading advocate of Australia's long-standing policy of blocking asylum seekers' boats off its coastline.

Introduced in 2001, it sees boats from Indonesia and other Pacific islands stopped at sea, refuelled and redirected away from Australian shores.

Last September Mr Downer, writing in the Daily Mail, said: 'Priti Patel has been widely ridiculed on both sides of the Channel for suggesting that boats carrying migrants be physically 'pushed back' towards the French coast.

'Yet, from my experience as Australia's former minister for foreign affairs, I know that a 'pushback' policy can work.'

He set out how Australia took 'direct action' during its own migrant crisis, intercepting vessels and deploying naval forces to turn them away.

'As word spread around Indonesia that we were determined to stamp out the trafficking, it soon stemmed the numbers,' he wrote. 'I see no reason why this cannot be done in the Channel.

'My advice to Miss Patel would be to introduce the 'pushback' policy without fanfare, and to keep the French informed on a need-to-know basis only.'

Australia has conducted its turn-back policy for most of the last two decades. Initially called the Pacific Solution, it was dropped by the country's Labour government in 2008 but later re-introduced after a series of migrant boat disasters. Since 2013 it has been codenamed Operation Sovereign Borders.

Mr Downer, 70, was the Liberal Party's minister for foreign affairs – Australia's equivalent of the Foreign Secretary – under Australian prime minister John Howard from 1996 to 2007.

He was also Australia's High Commissioner to the UK from 2014 to 2018.

Concern over trade union opposition to Miss Patel's immigration plans came to a head last month when the Public and Commercial Services Union (PCS) joined forces with migrant charity Care4Calais to launch a judicial review of her Channel pushback proposals.

The PCS described the powers, which are currently going through Parliament, as 'morally reprehensible'.

Its general secretary Mark Serwotka said at the time that his organisation 'strongly opposes this policy, on moral and humanitarian grounds, and we will not rule out industrial action to prevent it being carried out'.

The legal challenge is yet to be heard. Last year more than 28,300 migrants reached Britain from northern France – triple the total in 2020.

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My other blogs. Main ones below:

http://dissectleft.blogspot.com (DISSECTING LEFTISM)

http://edwatch.blogspot.com (EDUCATION WATCH)

http://antigreen.blogspot.com (GREENIE WATCH)

http://australian-politics.blogspot.com (AUSTRALIAN POLITICS)

http://snorphty.blogspot.com/ (TONGUE-TIED)

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