#Ozzone - 3:23 - There are many who are carnally-minded in the western church today. Are you one?

 

Islam - Current Day - Baloch Hero Murdered in Toronto; Boko Haram Christmas Eve Massacre; Young Terrorists Arrested in Kuwait; 15 Afghan Taliban Neutralized

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Heroic refugee arrives in T.O., takes off niqab: 'I knew I was safe'

But She Wasn't!

Updated with 5 min video - a must see

Author of the article: Tarek Fatah

Publishing date: Jan 16, 2016  • 

Karima Baloch, 32, fled her native Balochistan. The day she landed in Toronto, she says the first thing she did was

rip the niqab off her face. “I knew I was safe and that I did not have to hide from anyone in Canada,” she said.

(Dave Abel/Toronto Sun/Postmedia Network)

She could have ended up as the Joan of Arc of Balochistan, a territory larger than Poland that sits at the mouth of the strategic Strait of Hormuz, leading to the Persian Gulf.

Its people say they’re occupied by Pakistan.

But as fate would have it, Karima Baloch, 32, said she escaped a Pakistani military attack on the town of Tump in Balochistan, getting away in the darkness of night as mortar shells rained on her home.

Karima evaded arrest and stayed underground for nearly a year before landing in Toronto on Nov. 27, where she’s applied for refugee status.

For years, I had seen videos of her leading large processions and speaking at protests, but never her face.

To evade arrest, “Banuk Karima” — as her supporters call her — would wear a niqab, the Islamic face mask, to get lost in the crowd as police would wade in to try to arrest her.

The day Karima landed in Toronto, the first thing she did was rip the niqab off her face.

“I knew I was safe and that I did not have to hide from anyone in Canada,” she told me in an interview.

“Wearing the niqab is oppressive,” she said. “The niqab that is nowadays being forced onto Muslim women has no basis in Baloch culture or history. Every time I had to wear it to hide myself, I felt I was less of a human, more of a farm animal, a piece of property owned by someone else.”

Being a female activist in a largely male-dominated political movement allowed her and many of her colleagues to stay below the radar of Pakistan’s feared security agencies, who’ve been accused of abductions and extra-judicial killings of political activists in Balochistan.

But Karima’s situation changed dramatically on March 18, 2014.

“It was around 4:30 p.m. and the four of us, our chairman, Zahid Baloch, myself and two other girls from the Baloch Students Organization, were walking towards the Balochistan University in the city of Quetta, when we were surrounded by a number of SUVs with no military markings, but vehicles used by the Pakistan Army.

“We women were asked to stand aside as armed plainclothes men took Zahid Baloch and forced him to squat on the road with his face towards the ground. As they kept hitting him on the head, we yelled for help, but were told to go home.”

Karima says that was the last she saw of him as he was driven away blindfolded and in handcuffs.

Karima and her colleagues feared the student leader would be tortured and killed, so the next day family and colleagues of Zahid Baloch went to the police to register a complaint.

But police officials, she said, refused to take on the case. For 10 days, they kept going back to the police station.

Karima says when she and the two other female students said they were eyewitnesses to the abduction, they became instant targets of the Pakistan Army and its Inter-Services Intelligence branch. All three had to go underground, Karima said, to escape government-backed jihadi death squads assigned to kill them.

Asked about Karima’s allegations, Pakistan’s High Commission responded: “Regarding so-called ‘abduction’ of one Banuk Karima Baloch, you will, no doubt, agree that apprehending miscreants, who are involved in killing of innocent civilians, kidnapping for ransom and blowing up of gas pipelines is (a) duty of the State.

“By painting a totally misleading picture, certain individuals attempt to abuse liberal asylum laws of Canada for personal gains.”

The commission suggested the Toronto Sun do an investigation of her claims before printing them.

When asked to comment on the Pakistan High Commission’s allegation against her, Karima angrily denied ever being involved in blowing up pipelines or any terrorist activity. “There is an apt Urdu proverb that applies to the Pakistani official,” she said. “Ulta chor kotwal ko dantey (the burglar blames the police when caught in the act).”

During her year on the run, Karima was elected as the first female president of the Balochistan Students Organization, which has a vast network of activists across Balochistan.

She said one of her colleagues, Lateef Jauhar, who went on a hunger strike for 45 days to demand the release of Zahid Baloch, was also targeted and had to flee his protest camp in the middle of the night.

In April 2014, a call for help was sent to me from mutual acquaintances, asking me to assist Karima and her friends to escape certain death in Pakistan.

Today, because of the compassion and commitment of former immigration minister Chris Alexander and some dedicated government officials, Karima is in Toronto, free of her niqab and able to fight for the freedom of Balochistan.

I expect she and her friends, who wish to remain anonymous, will be accepted as refugees and, in a few years, as Canadian citizens thanks to our country’s decency.

So welcome to Canada, my Baloch friends.

One day, the Balochistan you fled will, like Canada, be “strong and free.” 

UPDATE: Dec 21, 2:00 PM

Terek Fatah

Baloch activist Karima Baloch escaped Pakistan in 2016 to seek refuge in Canada. 

Unfortunately, Canada could not provide her the safety she required. Her dead body was found today at the Toronto Harbourfront. 

My deepest condolences to her husband Hammal Haidar and the Baloch community in US-Canada and in Occupied Balochistan. 

Karima will always be remembered for her courage and charm. She was a leader in a man’s world of political giants and guerilla fighters. 

May she rest In Peace. 

While there is a possibility that she suicided, that does not jive with the attitude of ripping off her niqab and declaring herself 'safe' when she landed in Toronto. This 5 minute video from WION (YouTube news channel from India), and a brilliant young lady who dares to speak truth to power, explains why the Trudeau gov't is attempting to whitewash the murder as a suicide. The video is a bit unnerving for those of us who are watching what horrors Pakistanis are unleashing in the UK - tens of thousands of young British girls being gang-raped and trafficked. 

Boko Haram kills 7, abducts 7, burns church in Christmas Eve attack

By Christen McCurdy

At least seven people were killed Thursday after gunmen thought to be associated with Boko Haram opened fire

on a village in Nigeria. Image via Google Satellite

Dec. 25 (UPI) -- At least seven people were killed Thursday in a Boko Haram gun attack in Nigeria's Borno state, a local official said.

Kachallah Usma, secretary of the Chibok local government area, told CNN the organization killed seven people and kidnapped another seven, including a pastor in the majority-Christian village of Pemi.

"The terrorists killed seven people, burnt 10 homes and looted food supplies that were meant to be distributed to residents to celebrate Christmas," militia leader Abwaku Kabu said.

According to Usma, the group also burned down a church, a dispensary and several houses.

Pemi is located about 12 miles from Chibok, where the group kidnapped more than 200 schoolgirls six years ago.

A man purporting to be Abubakar Shekau, one of the group's factions, has claimed responsibility for the kidnapping of more than 300 schoolboys earlier in December, but governor Aminu Bello Masari has disputed this claim.

Audu Chiwar, a former secretary of the Chibok community, said he received a call from a local resident saying gunmen had opened fire in the village and that several houses and a church had burned.

One eyewitness said a Christian youth organization had been holding a Christmas parade in Pemi when the attack began.

Kuwait: Three arrested for adopting extremist ideology

Were also found in possession of weapons

Published:  December 26, 2020 17:42

Tawfiq Nasrallah, Staff Writer, Gulf News

Dubai: Three young persons have been arrested in Kuwait after being found in possession of weapons and ammunition and adopting extremist ideology, local media reported.

According to the Kuwaiti newspaper Al Qabas, the Ministry of Interior said it arrested two minors, ages 15 and 16, and another adult, who were in possession of unlicensed weapons and ammunition and carrying extremist ideology, adding that the operation comes as part of its tireless efforts to confront crime, track down criminals and confront them firmly.

Social media

The ministry said in a statement that, based on cooperation between the relevant security agencies, and after searching and investigating outlaws, one of the accused was arrested, who admitted that he had met a person through social media platforms. Discussions between them led them to know that they carry the same ideology.

Following in-depth investigation, the ministry said that two other people were arrested, one of them was a juvenile carrying the same extremist ideology, and after taking the necessary legal permission, their home was searched, and weapons, unlicensed ammunition, logos and photographic devices were found.

Once being confronted with what have been found, they acknowledged and confessed their possession of weapons and ammunition. The accused and seized items were referred to competent authorities to take the necessary legal measure.

7 Taliban terrorists killed in airstrike in Afghanistan’s Balkh province,

8 more in Bala Bolok District

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Cache of weapons and ammunition also destroyed during strikes

Published:  December 26, 2020 11:54

ANI

  

As many as seven Taliban terrorists were killed in Chomtal district of Afghanistan’s Balkh province in an airstrike on Friday. Photo for illustrative purposes. Image Credit: AP

Balkh: As many as seven Taliban terrorists were killed in Chomtal district of Afghanistan’s Balkh province in an airstrike on Friday. The Ministry of Defence (MoD) of Afghanistan said that a cache of weapons and ammunition were also destroyed during the strikes.

“7 Taliban were killed in Chomtal district of #Balkh province as a result of an airstrike, today morning. Additionally, 5 others were wounded and a large amount of their weapons and ammunition were destroyed,” Ministry of Defence, Afghanistan Tweeted.

The MoD also informed about the killing of eight other Taliban terrorists in Bala Bolok district of Farah province.

“8 Taliban terrorists were killed and 3 others were wounded in Bala Bolok district of #Farah province, last night. Also, a large amount of their weapons and ammunition were destroyed during reciprocal attacks of #ANA,” MoD said in another tweet.

After a series of videos surfaced showing Taliban leaders continuing their terror activities in Pakistan, Afghanistan’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs on Friday said that the presence of Taliban leaders in Pakistan “clearly violates Afghanistan’s national sovereignty”.

War and bloodshed

Afghanistan has also urged Islamabad “not to allow its territory to be used by insurgents and elements who insist on continuing the war and bloodshed”.

The official statement was released after “a series of video footages emerged in which the Taliban appeared among their followers, disclosing the existence of all Taliban leaders in Pakistan and acknowledging their continued activities in Pakistani territory”.

The Ministry expressed “deepest regret” over some Taliban leaders being seen in the videos visiting training camps.

Chomtal Dist., AFG

Mind-Bending Paradox - Russian Orthodox Church More Open to Abortion Than Russian Government - Correction

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Correction: see comments below

Russian Orthodox Church has ‘soft & flexible’ stance on abortion & does not demand practice be made illegal, spokesman reveals

26 Dec 2020 12:33

By Jonny Tickle, RT

FILE PHOTO Vladimir Legoyda © Sputnik / Nina Zotina

The Russian Orthodox Church is not proposing a blanket ban on abortion and its official position is actually “more flexible” than a complete prohibition. That’s according to Vladimir Legoyda, the institution's main spokesperson.

Speaking on Saturday to RTVI, a New York-based Russian-language channel aimed at expats, Legoyda revealed that the Church is not entirely against the termination of pregnancy being legal.

“We are taking a softer and more flexible position in this case: we demand [abortion] be withdrawn from the compulsory health insurance fund,” he said. The Compulsory Medical Insurance Fund is a taxpayer-funded state program that guarantees the provision of free medical care for a wide range of illnesses.

Russia's religious debate around abortion hit the headlines in November, after Oleg Apolikhin, the chief fertility specialist at the Ministry of Health, suggested creating ‘abortion centers,’ that would be used exclusively for pregnancy terminations. Apolikhin expressed the opinion that terminating a pregnancy had become fashionable and instead wanted to change it into a “socially negative phenomenon.” The specialist also suggested removing abortion from the schedule of state-provided care.

His suggestion was knocked back by the ministry itself, which disagreed with both proposals. However, this idea has complete support from the Russian Orthodox Church, which also agrees with Apolikhin’s view that doctors should be able to refuse to perform an abortion.

“The Church has repeatedly said that doctors who, per their religious beliefs or internal convictions, do not want to perform abortion surgeries, should be able to not perform them,” Legoyda wrote on Telegram in November.

The leader of the Russian Orthodox Church, Patriarch Kirill, has previously called abortion a sinful practice, believing that terminating a pregnancy because of a discovered abnormality is “even criminal.”

In his opinion, abortion should not be an option just because an embryo “might not make a good football player, or a good lawyer, or a very strong and healthy person.”

#Ozzone 3-22 > Do You Know The Secret of Keeping the Burning Heart Kindled?

 

The Great Reset - The Great Reset to Be Revealed at Davos Next Month

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Justin Trudeau let it out of the bag a couple weeks ago, now WEF seems prepared to go mainstream with their Great Reset Initiative - God help us!

World Economic Forum: Digital Davos 2021 to Reveal

‘Great Reset Initiative’

davosAP Photo/Michel Euler

SIMON KENT, Breitbart

21 Dec 20206

The World Economic Forum (WEF) has revealed its Davos 2021 Agenda, confirming the annual gathering of political and business elites next month will be a digital event heralding the public unveiling of its Great Reset Initiative.

In a preview to the digital “Davos Dialogues”, the WEF asserts, “The time to rebuild trust and to make crucial choices is fast approaching as the need to reset priorities and the urgency to reform systems grow stronger around the world.”

The need for “global leaders to come together to design a common recovery path and shape the Great Reset” in the post-cornavirus world has never been stronger, it adds.

It then continues to set out the exact plan of WEF action to reshape the modern world in a pattern of its own design. The WEF says:

An entire week of global programming will be dedicated to helping leaders choose innovative and bold solutions to stem the pandemic and drive a robust recovery over the next year.

The Davos Agenda will also mark the launch of the World Economic Forum’s Great Reset Initiative and begin the preparation of the Special Annual Meeting in the spring. Each day will focus on one of the five domains of the Great Reset Initiative.

As Breitbart News reported, there has been much discussion as to the exact form the much-discussed Great Reset Initiative will take.

Last month in a WEF panel discussion, former Secretary of State John Kerry laid out one possible element.

He said President-elect Joe Biden is ready to rejoin the Paris Climate Agreement — which threatens to eliminate more than a million American jobs — and be a driver of the ”Great Reset” whereby unelected global bureaucrats are looking to alter the world’s economy by abolishing money, private property, and democracy for the sake of a “New World Order,” according to James Delingpole.

“The notion of a reset is more important than ever before,” Kerry said. “I personally believe … we’re at the dawn of an extremely exciting time.”

Kerry dismissed the U.S. rejoining the Parish Climate Agreement as being “not enough.”

“I know Joe Biden believes this. It’s not enough just to rejoin [the Paris Climate Agreement] for the United States. It’s not enough for us to do just the minimum of what [the agreement] requires,” Kerry said. He went on:

The Biden administration will focus on every sector of the American economy. There will be a 2035 goal to achieve net neutrality with respect to power and production … we’re ready to come back in and help to lead and raise the ambition in Glasgow to accelerate this incredible capacity for a transformation in the private sector.

According to the WEF’s own publicity, the Davos Agenda will feature:

Heads of state and of government from the G20 and international organizations giving special addresses on the state of the world.

Industry leaders and public figures discussing in leadership panels how to advance and accelerate public-private collaboration on critical issues such as coronaviorus vaccination schemes and climate change, among others.

The Forum’s core communities, including its international business council, sharing their insight and recommendations from global, regional and industry initiatives in impact sessions.

The Davos Agenda will be held between 25—29 January, 2021.

Global Warming > “NEW LITTLE ICE AGE INSTEAD OF GLOBAL WARMING?” BY DR THEODOR LANDSCHEID

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Among the long list of scientific papers suggesting that a solar-driven spell of global cooling is on the cards, Dr Theodor Landscheidt’s ‘New Little ICE Age Instead of Global Warming?‘ probably has the claim of priority.

SEPTEMBER 7, 2020 CAP ALLON

Electroverse

Published in 2003, just a year before his death, Landscheidt’s research is standing the test of time, and is still largely on course to be proved correct.

The paper’s abstract begins:

‘Analysis of the sun’s varying activity in the last two millennia indicates that contrary to the IPCC’s speculation about man-made global warming as high as 5.8C within the next hundred years, a long period of cool climate with its coldest phase around 2030 is to be expected.’

Crucially, in the growing list of research concluding that a solar-driven multidecadal spell of global cooling is on the cards (research from multiple studies of quite different characteristics), the year 2030 ALWAYS features prominently. Unlike the IPCC, which tosses its thermageddon doomsday date back and forth like a hot potato, researchers who track the multimillennial plays of the cosmos (namely those of the Sun) routinely land on the year 2030 as being the date of ‘climate deterioration’: this in itself should serve as compelling evidence.

Dr Landscheidt continues:

‘It is shown that minima in the 80 to 90-year Gleissberg cycle of solar activity, coinciding with periods of cool climate on Earth, are consistently linked to an 83-year cycle in the change of the rotary force driving the sun’s oscillatory motion … As the future course of this cycle and its amplitudes can be computed, it can be seen that the Gleissberg minimum around 2030 and another one around 2200 will be of the Maunder minimum type accompanied by severe cooling on Earth. This forecast should prove skillful as other long-range forecasts of climate phenomena, based on cycles in the sun’s orbital motion, have turned out correct as for instance the prediction of the last three El Niño years before the respective event.’

Dr Landscheidt concludes his introduction with the IPCC’s position on global warming, and he points to a growing list of publications showing a solar-climate connection:

‘The IPCC’s judgement that the solar factor is negligible is based on satellite observations available since 1978 which show that the Sun’s total irradiance, though not being constant, changes only by about 0.1 percent during the course of the 11-year sunspot cycle. This argument, however, does not take into account that the Sun’s eruptional activity (energetic flares, coronal mass ejections, eruptive prominences), heavily affecting the solar wind, as well as softer solar wind contributions by coronal holes have a much stronger effect than total irradiance. The total magnetic flux leaving the Sun, dragged out by the solar wind, has risen by a factor of 2.3 since 1901 (Lockwood et al., 1999), while global temperature on earth increased by about 0.6°C. The energy in the solar flux is transferred to the near-Earth environment by magnetic reconnection and directly into the atmosphere by charged particles. Energetic flares increase the Sun’s ultraviolet radiation by at least 16 percent. Ozone in the stratosphere absorbs this excess energy which causes local warming and circulation disturbances. General circulation models developed by Haigh (1996), Shindell et al. (1999), and Balachandran et al. (1999) confirm that circulation changes, initially induced in the stratosphere, can penetrate into the troposphere and influence temperature, air pressure, Hadley circulation, and storm tracks by changing the distribution of large amounts of energy already present in the atmosphere.’

Moving on, Section 3 of the paper includes this golden nugget:

‘If the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide (CO2) were the dominant cause of the observed rise in global temperature, the trend of this rise would be similar to the continuously rising CO2-trend shown [below] after Peixoto and Oort (1992).

Time series of the atmospheric CO2 concentration as measured at Mauna Loa Observatory, Hawai

(From Peixoto and Oort, 1992). These data are accepted to be representative for the global trend.

The course of the Northern Hemisphere land air temperature, however, represented by the thick line in Fig. 4, does not follow the CO2 trend.

Close correlation between surface land air temperature in the Northern Hemisphere (thick curve) and the changing length of the 11-year sunspot cycle (thin curve), indicating the varying intensity of the sun’s eruptional activity (From FriisChristensen and Lassen, 1991). Contrary to the curve in Mauna Loa graph (above), representing the steadily increasing amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, the thin solar curve covaries with the undulations of observed temperature.

The increase in surface temperature from 1890 to 1940 was steeper and smoother than in the current warming phase since the early 1980s though the rate of anthropogenic emissions at that time was only 10% of the present rate. From 1940 through the late 1960s temperatures were falling in spite of the fast rise of anthropogenic CO2-emissions.

A closer look shows that nearly all Gleissberg minima back to 300 A.D., as for instance around 1670 (Maunder minimum), 1810 (Dalton minimum), and 1895, coincided with cool climate in the Northern Hemisphere, whereas Gleissberg maxima went along with warm climate as for instance around 1130 (Medieval climate optimum). The degree of temperature change was proportional to the respective amplitudes in the Gleissberg cycle. During the Maunder minimum solar activity was minimal and during the Medieval Climate Optimum very high, probably even higher than in the six decades of intense solar activity before 1996.’

In subsequent sections, Dr Landscheidt’s paper delves into ‘the length of the 11 year solar cycle and temperature’, it looks at ‘the relationship between solar eruptions and global temperature’, as well as the ‘forecast of deep Gleissberg minima and cold climate around 2030 and 2200’.

My summary serves as a brief introduction to Dr Theodor Landscheidt’s work, and of course should not be seen as a substitute for reading the paper itself, which concludes with a damning verdict on the IPPC’s scientific method:

‘The IPCC’s “story lines”, far from forecasts as practiced in other fields of science, are nearly exclusively supported by runs of General Circulation Models (GCM). These models are based on the same type of nonlinear differential equations which induced Lorenz in 1961 to acknowledge that long-range weather predictions are impossible because of the atmosphere’s extreme sensitivity to initial conditions. It is not conceivable that the “Butterfly Effect” should disappear when the prediction range of a few days is extended to decades and centuries.

The IPCC-hypothesis of global warming requires that long-wave radiation to space is reduced because of the accumulating anthropogenic greenhouse gases. Actually, satellites have observed a trend of increasing tropical long-wave radiation to space over the past two decades (Wielicki et al., 2002). GCMs predict greater increase in temperature with increasing distance from the equator, but observations show no net change in the polar regions in the past four decades (Comiso, 2000; Przybylak, 2000; Venegas and Mysak, 2000). According to the most recent data, Antarctica has cooled significantly (Doran et al., 2002) instead of warming.’

In this prominent paper’s final section (11), it is concluded:

‘We need not wait until 2030 to see whether the forecast of the next deep Gleissberg minimum is correct. A declining trend in solar activity and global temperature should become manifest long before the deepest point in the development. The current 11-year sunspot cycle 23 with its considerably weaker activity seems to be a first indication of the new trend, especially as it was predicted on the basis of solar motion cycles two decades ago. As to temperature, only El Niño periods should interrupt the downward trend, but even El Niños should become less frequent and strong.’

I am getting a little nervous with this theory, but will wait to see if some serious decrease in sunspot activity by 2023, or so, before I start to panic.

Unfortunately, accurately gauging modern temperature trends has been made nigh-on impossible. Many of today’s data sets cannot be trusted as they ignore, deliberately or otherwise, crucial factors such as the Urban Heat Island effect (UHI) in order to exaggerate, or indeed completely fabricate, a warming trend.

Furthermore, regional fluctuations – rather than the global average – will be far more important to know as we move forward into a Grand Solar Minimum. Some parts of the planet are actually expected to warm during this otherwise bout of “global” cooling–the Arctic being one. However, saying all this, the overall temperature of Earth is still expected to drop –perhaps by as much as 2C. Looking at the global temperature data sets out there, the most trustworthy is probably the UAH Satellite-Based Temperature of the Global Lower Atmosphere–but this also suffers from a host of issues. Currently, as of August 2020, the UAH has Earth at 0.43C above the 1981-2010 average–which is down a full half from the El Niño-driven high observed at the start of 2016. For almost 5 years now we have been living a sharp cool-down, and if we take out naturally-occurring El Niños then we find that there has been no discernible warming since the turn of the millennium, arguably even longer.

The COLD TIMES are returning, the mid-latitudes are REFREEZING; in line with historically low solar activity, cloud-nucleating Cosmic Rays, and a meridional jet stream flow; and both NOAA and NASA appear to agree, if you read between the lines, with NOAA saying we’re entering a ‘full-blown’ Grand Solar Minimum in the late-2020s, and NASA seeing this upcoming solar cycle (25) as “the weakest of the past 200 years”, with the agency correlating previous solar shutdowns to prolonged periods of global cooling here.

The Media is the Message - Promising Politician Sues Opposition and Media for Character Assassination

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Howard Anglin: The smear campaign that took down a promising politician

Anyone concerned about the polarization of our political discourse

should be rooting for Caylan Ford

Author of the article: Howard Anglin, Special to National Post

Publishing date: Dec 22, 2020  

Caylan Ford PHOTO BY LEAH HENNEL/POSTMEDIA

What happened to Caylan Ford 20 months ago, when she was running as a candidate for the United Conservative Party in Alberta, should terrify anyone thinking of running for public office. What has happened to her since should worry the rest of us.

Now, she is finally fighting back. After her candidacy was ended by false accusations that she is racist and a “white supremacist,” she’s suing (for $7m) those she says defamed her, including the Alberta NDP, the CBC and the Toronto Star. Anyone concerned about the polarization of our political discourse should be rooting for her.

The NDP, the CBC, and the Toronto Star are all far-left organizations. I'm inclined to believe that all three operate by the motto that 'the end justifies the means'!

Ford was the kind of candidate parties dream of: a Mandarin-speaking former federal foreign affairs adviser; a campaigner for persecuted minorities with a master’s degree in international relations and another in human rights law from Oxford; a documentary filmmaker; and a locally raised young mother of two. She won a competitive nomination and was poised to defeat the incumbent NDP justice minister in Alberta’s May 2019 election.

Then, less than a month before election day, with a must-win seat in jeopardy, the NDP’s attack machine went into action. An anonymously sourced article in Press Progress, a pro-NDP news website, reported that several years earlier in a private Facebook conversation, Ford had “complained ‘White Supremacist Terrorists’ Are Treated Unfairly,” and “echoed white supremacist rhetoric.” Within minutes, the NDP called on her party to remove her. Under pressure to be a team player, and with little time to react, Ford withdrew rather than cause a distraction. By the next day, it was national news.

Ford knew the hyperbolic claims were not true. She had every reason to believe that, once the storm of the election had passed, she would be clear to tell her side of the story. Fair-minded people would be able to read the full record, the truth would supplant her opponents’ lies and she would be able to move on with her life and her career. That this has still not happened, that she still has not been given a platform to tell her side of the story and try to clear her name, is why her story still matters.

Ford’s resignation did not end the attacks. A CBC headline a few days after stated as fact that she had made “white supremacist comments,” and the leader of the Alberta Liberal party decried her “white supremacist values,” which he said “will sicken decent people across this province.”

The few radio interviews she did to defend herself were quickly pulled offline at the first sign of online pressure and legal threats. As she learned, the news cycle may move on, but the Internet doesn’t forget. Almost two years later, the NDP’s lies stand as the official record and Ford is effectively unemployable. She can’t even venture onto social media without almost immediately being denounced as a Nazi.

Press Progress relied on quotes from an anonymously provided Facebook conversation from 2017. It cited four short excerpts out of what Ford says, and the anonymous source admits, were tens of thousands of words of serious discussion covering a wide range of topics.

No one else besides the source has seen the conversation, including Ford, since 2017. We can’t even know for certain if the quotes were accurate and no one, including Press Progress or the media who wrote about it, can prove it because the source now claims to have deleted the conversation, and has gone to court to oppose Ford’s attempt to get the original data from Facebook.

Even if we accept the decontextualized excerpts at face value, they tell quite a different story than the sensational headlines. Did Ford really say white supremacist terrorists are treated unfairly, as Press Progress had claimed? No. She had been discussing the most effective ways to fight radicalization, including white supremacy, which in prefatory comments she called “odious” and “perverse.”

Specifically, she wrote: “When the perpetrator is an Islamist, the denunciations are intermingled with breathless assurances that they do not represent Islam, that Islam is a religion of peace, etc. And there is a great deal of soul-searching — we ask ourselves in earnest what radicalized these people, how can they be directed to more productive and healthy paths.…

“When the terrorists are white supremacists, that kind of soul-searching or attempts to understand the sources of their radicalization or their perverse moral reasoning is beyond the pale. And anyone who shares even some of their views (e.g. wanting strong borders and immigration control), while rejecting the more odious aspects, is painted with the same brush.… You just don’t have the same attempts to separate the violent terrorists from the wider community of belief.”

In other words, Ford contrasted earnest and constructive attempts to disassociate Islamist radicalization from mainstream Islam with the counterproductive tendency to portray white supremacists as part of a spectrum of conservative opinion. She thinks this is a problem. Many experts in fighting radicalization would agree.

And had she really “echoed white nationalist rhetoric”? Hardly. She had, as noted, called white supremacy an odious and perverse ideology. But when her then-friend asked for her feelings on Europe’s “demographic replacement” — that is, the effect of high levels of international migration to compensate for low birth rates and an aging population — she expressed sadness at the potential for violence and inter-ethnic strife, as well as the loss of local cultures and diversity under the homogenizing pressures of globalization.

Ford recalls that she and her then-friend (himself the son of Ismaili immigrants) had used the phrase “white peoples” while recognizing that it was imperfect shorthand, and that earlier she had said it is not a term she would use herself. She also recalls explaining why she thought that essentializing people by race was unhelpful and even immoral.

But, never thinking her private words would be scrutinized out of context, she used the term in this sentence, which her former friend anonymously leaked: “I am somehow saddened by the demographic replacement of white peoples in their homelands — more in Europe than in America — partly because it’s clear it will not be a peaceful transition and partly because the loss of demographic diversity in the human race is sad.”

The missing context is key: Ford had previously said that this was imprecise language she didn’t endorse herself. She also remembers expressing sadness at the loss of other ethnic and cultural traditions, whether as a result of the assimilation and subjugation of Indigenous peoples in North America, or in the Tibetan plateau. Her former friend or Press Progress left out those parts of the conversation.

If Ford erred, it was in not using scare quotes or another way to mark her distance from the terms “demographic replacement” or “white peoples.” But this was a long private conversation carried on over several weeks between two people using mutually understood terms. One cannot expect the scrupulous repeated qualifications of formal public writing. She certainly never expected her words would be scrutinized out of context by people not party to the conversation who had never met or spoken with her, and used to destroy her career.

It’s certainly possible that Ford’s explanation might not convince everyone, but the problem is that she has never even been given that chance. That is the injustice of cancel culture: it silences its targets and blocks the ears of those who have rushed to judgment; it is a one-sided star chamber prosecution that proceeds swiftly and ruthlessly.

The NDP’s campaign to distort her comments into something far more heinous — conflating the use of the public policy term “demographic replacement” with neo-Nazi demagoguery about a “great replacement” conspiracy — was transparently cynical. There was nothing in Ford’s career defending persecuted minorities (see her documentary on Falun Gong slave labour in China) to support that extreme inference.

All the benefit of the doubt should have weighed in Ford’s favour, but once the smear was out, it was too good to check. The CBC and most other media outlets displayed no more scruple or skepticism over cherry-picked, dubiously sourced quotes than the Twitter mob.

I didn’t know Caylan Ford before the mob came for her. I reached out after, because it seemed few others had. Having met her, I can say that, if she is a white supremacist, then I’m a Bolshevik. Alberta and Canada could have used her experience and her thoughtful voice. Our politics is coarser and dumber without her.

She deserved better than the ochlocratic injustice of social media and we, the public, deserved better than the careless credulity of many mainstream media outlets. Until that wrong is righted — in court, but more importantly in the court of public opinion — her fate will give good men and women a reason to shun politics, and our society will be the poorer for it.

National Post

Howard Anglin was formerly principal secretary to the premier of Alberta and deputy chief of staff to prime minister Stephen Harper. He is currently doing post-graduate research in law at Oxford University. 

It's not unusual to hear an unsubstantiated story on Mainstream Media one day, and the next day referred to as fact. MSM needs to be sued much more often so, perhaps, they will become a little more responsible for the crap they feed the country.