Randsacked

[Randsacked @randsacked]

@ggreenwald Glenn Greenwald on the wrong side of history, as usual.

[Randsacked @randsacked]

@NazaninNour Roger Waters is the original Kanye West.

[Jason Kenney 🇨🇦🇺🇦🇮🇱 @jkenney]

This👇is exactly right.

One of the most fascinating briefings I received as a federal Immigration Minister was from a foreign intelligence agency about the connections between Venezuela and the Iranian terror proxy Hizbollah.

And they showed me the receipts.

I saw in detail how the Venezuelan regime imported raw cocaine from the FARC Marxist terror group in Colombia, and worked with the Al Quds Force of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps to ship it in "dark" planes to Beirut, where it was then processed in Hizbollah facilities in the Bekaa Valley. The refined product was then shipped to Europe, and the proceeds used to finance Hizbollah operations, including weapons procurement.

When I asked how a fundamentalist organization could do this given that narcotics are haram, I was shown fatwas issued by Hizbollah imams indicating that as long as the drugs were sold to kaffirs, and the proceeds used to finance "the struggle," that it was religiously sanctioned.

I was also shown details on how Hizbollah agents were using Canada to launder illicit funds by buying stolen cars with cash from criminals gangs, and then shipping them out of the Port of Montreal for resale in West Africa.

All of this was possible because of extremely close coordination between the Iranian and Venezuelan regimes.

The agency was concerned that Canada was being lax about permitting Iranian and Hizbollah agents to enter the country. Prompted by this, I travelled to Damascus to spend time with our officials from various agencies drilling down on how to improve radically security screening of visa applicants from Lebanon and Iran.

This was in 2008! All evidence suggests the cooperation between these two abhorrent regimes has only grown since then, with Iran providing Venezuela with arms, helping to sustain its dwindling oil industry, and to market its sanctioned crude.

In return, Venezuela has acted as a kind of giant base of operations for Iran in the Western Hemisphere, including the IGRC and Hizbollah's ongoing involvement in drug trafficking and money laundering.

And, of course, both regimes have been in lockstep diplomatically, including with their shared enthusiasm for their biggest ally: Putin's Russia.

Upshot: stable democratic governments in both Iran and Venezuela this year would be a massive gain for global peace and security, including for Canada.

[Randsacked @randsacked]

@JShamess @FrankfortDarryl Same argument can be applied to the art world. Canada Council and other incentives for artists have undercut the need to respond to market forces, resulting in bland, woke, poor art seeking approval from granting agencies rather than sophisticated collectors with taste.

[Randsacked @randsacked]

@foolishyangban @EricDLombardi Companies taking these cost savings will soon be without mid-level management due to their elimination of juniors learning business. This problem will accelerate soon after when there are similarly few capable seniors to lead. Resulting instability will eventually rebalance.

[Randsacked @randsacked]

@EricDLombardi I’ve been using AI as much as possible over the past 18 months an encouraging my team to do the same. We just closed out by far our best year, which we ended with exactly the same team we started with. We are not replacing people with AI, we are making them better with it.

[Randsacked @randsacked]

Ask the Canadian Medical Association to reverse its stance on employer-funded care - Sign the Petition! https://t.co/rVWEday41Z via @CdnChange

[Randsacked @randsacked]

@donnelly_b @ArabiaBianca The other comments already list the obvious so here are some less known but still awesome suggestions:
Fundy National Park
Kouchibouguac National Park
Saskatoon and driving through the plains
Rock climbing in Squamish
Fernie Alpine Resort

[Randsacked @randsacked]

@brianstelter In Canada, Germany, the UK, and other countries, campaigns for national leadership are often as short as 6 weeks.

[Randsacked @randsacked]

@North_Resists Is the government not “the people” especially in a communist country? If not, then what, everyone gets to own land and homes the government paid for? So, who gets to decide who gets which piece of land and which home?

[Randsacked @randsacked]

@North_Resists ChatGPT, describe the two biggest man-caused famines known to history: 1 The Great Chinese Famine (1959-61) 15-45 million dead. 2 The Soviet Famine (1932-33) 3.5-7 million dead, caused by severe policy failures, deliberate political actions, and oppressive gov’t actions.

[Randsacked @randsacked]

@North_Resists History actually teaches that the most starvation and famine took place in communist Stalinist Russia, communist Maoist China, and currently in Kim’s North Korea, all places where the government owned all land assets. #History

[Randsacked @randsacked]

@IRPlawyer Governments do not provide housing. Developers and investors create and provide housing. In a free society, everyone has the opportunity to be a developer or investor; one does not need special rights to do so, just moxie and intelligence.

[Randsacked @randsacked]

@WOWYOUREDUMB2 Landlords do not set the price of rent. They seek the most rent the market will pay. Tenants seek to pay the least amount of rent for what they need/desire. The market sets the price.

[Randsacked @randsacked]

@IRPlawyer @MJPhillips76 This is an incredibly naive understanding of the property market, especially for a lawyer. Are you suggesting that the very existence of landlords causes higher rents? So, the government should provide free homes for everyone who can’t afford to own?

[Randsacked @randsacked]

@JShamess One of the reasons employees are returning to the office is that they are now starting to wake to the fact that their colleagues who do work from the office are visibly advancing their careers and seeing their salaries rise faster than those clinging to the WFH fantasy.

[Randsacked @randsacked]

Broken bureaucracy. High rise residential construction on hold, this time due to a permit delayed because city staff can’t figure out how to accept the free land they required for approvals. 🤦‍♂️

Please sire, may I give you free land? https://t.co/VOL2ANiBLp via @donnelly_b