Canadian Convulsions > Trudeau holding on by the fingernails of his ego; Canada's Homicide rate highest in 30 years

 

Poll says three in four want Trudeau to go,

but Trudeau insists he’ll stay

On Feb. 28, 1984, Pierre Trudeau went for his famous walk in the snow where he made a decision about his political future.

The next day — a leap year Feb. 29 — his boys, including a future prime minister, tumbled into his bedroom to say goodbye to dad before heading to school. It was then that Pierre told them, “Boys, it’s time to go.” The elder Trudeau announced his resignation that day, clearing the way for a decade of rule by Brian Mulroney’s Progressive Conservatives.

But if anyone thinks Pierre’s son is going to clear the way for Pierre Poilievre’s Conservatives by taking his own walk in the snow this February and declaring to his children that it’s “time to go”, they may be disappointed.

Justin Trudeau has told his closest advisers he would not be true to himself if he quit as Liberal leader and prime minister; that he’s looking forward to fighting an election against Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre; and that he believes that with two years until the next election — assuming the Liberal-NDP supply-and-confidence agreement holds — he and his party have enough runway to turn around poll numbers and win a fourth consecutive general election, a feat accomplished only by John A. Macdonald and Wilfrid Laurier.

What's the big deal about being true to himself when he has been less than truthful to 38 million Canadians for the past 9 years?

But neither Macdonald nor Laurier ever faced an electorate that was so down on the prime minister the way it is on Trudeau.

New polling by Ipsos, provided exclusively to Global News, shows that nearly three in four Canadians believe Trudeau should step down now. Among those who identify as Liberal Party supporters, one in three think it’s time for a new party leader.

“I’ve never seen a number that high for a prime minister, probably since Brian Mulroney back in 1991, 1992. And that’s what this really reminds me of,” said Ipsos CEO Darrell Bricker.

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“They created the party of Justin Trudeau and they’re going to live or die by that. They certainly have lived reasonably well over the space of the last eight years. But the other outcome is the one in which they’re defeated because they are the party of Justin Trudeau. And that’s where they are today.”

As goes Trudeau’s popularity, so goes the party’s.

Ipsos found that, if an election were held today, 40 per cent would vote Conservative, 24 per cent would vote Liberal and 21 per cent would vote NDP.

“If the NDP passes the Liberals in terms of second choice, I know what Jack Layton would do if he was the leader of the party,” Bricker said.

“He certainly wouldn’t support the government and they would go for it because they see themselves as the progressive replacement, the other option on the agenda on the ballot for Canadians who have a progressive point of view, but this NDP has not shown that level of moxie.”

Or, perhaps, any level of moxie. How can they prop up this seriously-unwanted government and still be taken seriously by the electorate?

While Jagmeet Singh’s NDP have been critical of Trudeau’s Liberals, they have not given any serious indication that they would unilaterally break the supply-and-confidence deal — a deal in which the minority Liberal government is guaranteed support on matters of confidence by the NDP in exchange for showing progress on a series of issues the NDP believe should be federal priorities, such as national pharmacare, universal dental care and housing.

The Liberals are not only in danger of slipping into third spot nationally, but they have also dropped to second spot in Quebec where the Bloc Quebecois is the choice of 32 per cent of those Ipsos surveyed in that province. The Liberals there are the pick of 28 per cent and the Conservatives the choice of 22 per cent.

Ipsos surveyed 1,000 Canadians using its online panel from Nov. 14 to 17. And while a margin of error cannot be calculated from online panels, the pollster says it can measure the reliability of its polls using a statistical method known as a credibility interval. Using that method, the pollster says its work is reliable to within 3.8 percentage points, 19 times out of 20.

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Bricker says the 16-point Conservative lead is not so much the result of any particular ardour voters have for Poilievre or the Conservatives as much as it is complete weariness with the Trudeau government and the Trudeau government’s inability to be seen as managing the issues Canadians care about the most: inflation, health care and housing.

When Ipsos asked respondents which party they thought would be best to tackle inflation, fix the housing crisis, manage the economy, and keep taxes down, most respondents picked the Conservatives. On health care, poverty and social inequality, the NDP was the top pick, and on climate change, the Green Party came out on top.

The Liberal Party was not seen on any single issue as the best to manage it.

And yet Trudeau himself believes another election win is possible. With Sean Fraser as his new point person on housing, the government is trying to convince Canadians it is making meaningful changes to housing affordability and supply. That might help boost Liberal numbers. Meanwhile, for the first time since Trudeau became leader of his party a decade ago, the party is running paid negative advertising attacking Poilievre hoping to drive down Conservative numbers.

American style campaigning!

Looking at the current polling data, Bricker believes Trudeau’s optimism and faith is “a very brave take on the current situation.”

Bricker says the best hope for the Liberals, given the desire for change among three-quarters of the electorate, is for a major external shock — a Trump re-election perhaps — or a series of major blunders by the Poilievre Conservatives.

“It would be absolutely unique for somebody to pull it out of the fire in the situation that he’s in,” Bricker said.

“I mean, even his own party supporters, a significant number of them don’t want him to run again. There’s nothing there. There’s no silver lining that anybody can really grab on that suggests that there’s any pathway through to improving these situations.”

David Akin is the chief political correspondent for Global News.

Trudeau still sees himself as the silver lining. His ego is such that he cannot believe that he can lose. But he knows that there will be millions of dollars making its clandestine way into Liberal election coffers from far-left organizations, not to mention pseudo-eco organiations that are financed by American Oil in their long campaign to prevent Alberta oil from ever getting to tide-water.

Yes, David, there is a chance he can still pull it off, but it would be the very worst thing that could happen to Canada.

Canada’s homicide rate is at the highest level in 30 years

Canada’s homicide rate is at the highest level in 30 years, as police-reported crime continues to rise in the country, data shows.

For the fourth year in a row, the national homicide rate went up in 2022, according to Statistics Canada data released Wednesday.

The homicide rate, which is considered a key indicator of the state of violence in society, increased by nearly eight percent to 2.25 homicides per 100,000 population.

This was the highest homicide rate since 1992, according to the agency.

Across Canada, a total of 874 people were killed in 2022, which was an almost nine per cent increase compared to the previous year.

“Despite recent increases, homicides remain a rare event in Canada, accounting for less than 0.2 per cent of all police-reported violent crimes in 2022,” StatCan said in its report.

3:17

More than half of Canadians feel violence in their community has increased: Ipsos poll

Among the provinces, Manitoba had the highest homicide rate last year, followed by Saskatchewan and British Columbia. Prince Edward Island and Newfoundland and Labrador had the lowest.

Most Canadians feel violence has risen in their community during the COVID-19 pandemic, polling shows. 

An Ipsos poll conducted exclusively for Global News in February suggested 58 per cent of Canadians believe there has been more violence in their community since the pandemic began in March 2020. And the data mirrors those sentiments.

StatCan had included homicide data for 2022 in its police-reported crime report earlier in July, but it published more trends related to homicide Wednesday, including on police deaths and youth suspects.

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Reducing crime by supporting youth

Five police officers were killed in the country last year “because of their occupation”, which was the highest number in 37 years for Canada.

There was also a big jump in the number of Canadian youth accused of homicide, with police reporting 90 youths accused in 2022, compared with 33 the year before.

The rate of youths accused of homicide more than doubled last year – reaching 1.23 per 100,000 youths – compared to the previous 10-year average.

StatCan said this increase can be largely attributed to a rise in the number of homicide incidents involving multiple accused individuals aged younger than 18 years.

Meanwhile, Indigenous and racialized people continue to be disproportionately affected by homicide, StatCan data shows.

Indigenous people represented more than a quarter (27 per cent) of total homicide victims, while one-third (30 per cent) of the victims were identified as being racialized people.

Firearms-related homicides accounted for 41 per cent of Canada’s homicides in 2022, similar to 2021 levels.

Gang-related homicides accounted for nearly a quarter of homicides 2022, “a large contributor to the overall national homicide increase” compared to 2021, the report notes.

74th Ontario City Declares Intimate Partner Violence an Epidemic - The Canadian Paradox?

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Military Madness > Kim Jong Un's Ego Hungrier than NK People

..

Kim Jong Un declares plans to make North Korea 'world's most powerful'

nuclear force

It would appear Kim Jong Un would rather feed his ego than the millions of hungry North Koreans.

By Adam Schrader

This photo released on Nov. 19 by the North Korean government shows North Korean leader Kim Jong Un inspecting

the Hwasong-17 intercontinental ballistic missile at Pyongyang International Airport in Pyongyang with his young daughter.

File Photo by Office of the North Korean government press service / UPI | License Photo

Nov. 27 (UPI) -- Kim Jong Un has declared his plans to make North Korea the "world's most powerful" nuclear force in an official order promoting defense science researchers.

Kim made the announcement in an order that was published by the country's only news agency, KCNA, on Saturday.

"Our relentless work to build nuclear forces to firmly defend the dignity and sovereignty of the state and the people by hundreds of millions of units is the greatest and most important revolutionary cause, and its final goal is to seize the world's strongest strategic force, absolute power unprecedented in the century," Kim said in the order.

Kim said that the scientists have developed "the world's most powerful strategic weapon," an intercontinental ballistic missile called Hwaseong-17.

The nuclear warhead, which is theoretically able to reach the United States, was test-fired earlier this month.

The supreme leader praised the scientists for "completing the development of nuclear weapons and making a remarkable leap forward in the development of nuclear weapons."

"The country's firm determination and decisive execution power toward the goal of the world's most powerful military, enormous potential and confident victory are shown to the world," Kim said.

The announcement came after Kim made a second public appearance with his young daughter, raising speculation about his succession.

Democratic People's Republic of Korea:

10.7 million people are undernourished

18% of children are stunted (impaired growth and development due to chronic malnutrition)

25.9 million population

People’s Egos Get Bigger After Meditation and Yoga, Says a New Study

A study found that meditation doesn't necessarily reduce ego. (Form via Unsplash)

BY Olivia Goldhill

According to Buddhist teaching, the self is an illusion. The religion preaches a fundamentally selfless worldview, encouraging followers to renounce individual desires and distance themselves from self-concern. To advance this perspective, millions of people around the world practice yoga and meditation.

But a recently published psychological study directly contradicts that approach, finding that contemporary meditation and yoga practices can actually inflate your ego.

In the paper, published online by University of Southampton and due to be published in the journal Psychological Science, researchers note that Buddhism’s teachings that a meditation practice helps overcome the ego conflicts with US psychologist William James’s argument that practicing any skill breeds a sense of self-enhancement (the psychological term for inflated self-regard.)

There was already a fair bit of evidence supporting William James’s theory, broadly speaking, but a team of researchers from University Mannheim in Germany decided to test it specifically in the context of yoga and meditation.

They recruited yoga 93 students and, over a period of 15 weeks, regularly evaluated their sense of self-enhancement. They used several measures to do this. First, they assessed participants’ level of self-enhancement by asking how they compared to the average yoga student in their class. (Comparisons to the average is the standard way of measuring self-enhancement.) Second, they had participants complete an inventory that assesses narcissistic tendencies, which asked participants to rate how deeply phrases like “I will be well-known for the good deeds I will have done” applied to them. And finally, they administered a self-esteem scale asking participants whether they agreed with statements like, “At the moment, I have high self-esteem.”

When students were evaluated in the hour after their yoga class, they showed significantly higher self-enhancement, according to all three measures, than when they hadn’t done yoga in the previous 24 hours.

A second study of 162 people who practiced meditation, recruited through Facebook groups devoted to meditation, found that the practice had similar impacts on self-enhancement as yoga. In this study, participants were asked to evaluate themselves based on statements like, “In comparison to the average participant of this study, I am free from bias.” The study found that participants had higher self-enhancement in the hour following meditation, than when they hadn’t meditated for 24 hours.

Researchers also evaluated participants’ well-being using two measures, the satisfaction with life scale and the eudemonic well-being measure, which evaluates satisfaction with autonomy, environmental mastery, personal growth, positive relations with others, purpose in life, and self-acceptance. They found that well-being increased along with self-enhancement, suggesting that self-enhancement is linked with the increased sense of well-being that many get from meditation.

These findings suggest that spiritual Buddhist practices like yoga and meditation may not do what proponents typically say they do, according to the study authors. “Ego-quieting is a central element of yoga philosophy and Buddhism alike. That element, and its presumed implications, require serious rethinking,” they write. “Moreover, ego-quieting is often called upon to explain mind-body practices’ well-being benefits. In contrast, we observed that mind-body practices boost self-enhancement and this boost—in turn—elevates well-being.”

There is an alternative explanation, though. It’s possible the study participants were doing meditation and yoga wrong. All of the participants were based in Germany, and various academics have theorized that western practitioners of Buddhism fail to practice with an eye towards the selflessness that should characterize the goals of these efforts. Though yoga and meditation were originally intended as ways to calm the ego, many non-Buddhist practitioners do these activities with an eye to self-improvement or calming personal anxieties.

Meditation can indeed be narcissistic, notes Buddhist writer Lewis Richmond in The Huffington Post. “The act of sitting in silence, eyes closed or facing a wall, attention focused on the inner landscape of breath, body, and mental activity, could at least be characterized as self-absorbed,” he says. Those who practice meditation with a self-centered perspective will likely become more self-interested, not less.

The notion that yoga can feed rather than diminish the ego won’t be surprising to those who’ve met holier-than-thou yoga devotees clad in designer athlesiure. But the psychological study didn’t examine whether Buddhist teachings themselves influenced this ego boost. Yoga alone may not be enough to dissolve the ego, but one psychological study does not invalidate thousands of years of Buddhist teaching and practice.

Xi Jinping - President of China for Life?

China's Communist Party sets stage for Xi

to remain in power

By Ben Hooper 

The Communist Party of China is suggesting abolishing presidential term limits, clearing the way for Chinese President Xi Jinping to remain in power for many years to come. File Photo by Xie Huanchi/UPI | License Photo

UPI -- The Communist Party of China has proposed ending presidential term limits, signaling President Xi Jinping plans to remain in power for years to come.

The state-run Xinhua news agency announced Sunday that the Central Committee of the Communist Party is suggesting constitutional amendments to be voted on by lawmakers when an annual legislative session convenes next month.

The proposals include plans to remove the clause in the constitution that limits presidents to serving for only two five-year terms.

Observers said the move signals President Xi Jinping, 64, intends to remain in power for many years after the end of his second term, which is due to end in 2023.

The Communist Party declared Xi as its greatest living theorist and appointed him to a second five-year term as head of the head party and took the unusual move of not identifying a likely successor, which was taken by many as an indication that Xi would seek to retain the presidency for more than two terms.

"I think this is without a doubt the clearest confirmation we've had yet that Xi Jinping plans to stay in power much longer than we thought," Jude Blanchette, a Beijing resident and political expert who works for company research body the Conference Board, told The New York Times of the Communist Party's latest announcement. "We should expect Xi Jinping to be the dominant political force in China for the next decade."

The move would enshrine Xi as China's longest-serving leader since Mao Zedong.

"Xi wants to be like Mao," a Chinese official involved in decision-making told The Wall Street Journal. "With Wang Qishan as vice president, Xi can just focus on big strategic issues as the nation's paramount leader and let Wang take care of all those foreign trips and other affairs."

The legislature is expected to pass the proposal after the session begins March 1.

"I don't see any reasonable challenges for him," Beijing-based political analyst Wu Qiang, told the Times. "He has removed any potential political competitors."

So getting rid of talented, capable people, Xi surrounds himself with incompetents. Consequently, he stands out even if he is unexceptional.