Greetings one and all and welcome to this week's edition of Laura's Links. I'll start off by riffing a little on Mark's theme of "as I said twenty years ago". My variation on that theme has been trying to explain very slooooooowly to anyone who will listen, for the past twenty or so years, that Canada is going the way of Europe, which has gone the way (voluntarily) of a third-world Islamic hellhole.
I've been suggesting to Canadians for a long time (especially Canadian Jews) that they think about having an exit plan. I think Canadians in general should also seriously consider liquidating their real estate assets while the market is relatively good and before Mark Carney and his fellow Librano psycho globalist travellers, enact capital gains taxes on current home ownership. This riff may be getting boring, and I know I keep beating this drum, but I guess it's my way of dealing with watching the destruction of a once great nation in real time in just a few short decades. The Canada that I grew up in, the country that gave shelter to my Polish grandparents who escaped the Nazis, and gave them their lives, and livelihoods, and enabled them to start fresh and have families and children and success and security is truly gone. The new Canada is not a place where pleasant fellows preach the Good Word and there is fellowship and brotherhood among citizens. It's now the country where this guy was welcomed and feels quite at home and that's not good for any civilized person or nation-not "just" the Jews.
We are witnessing the convergence of several very evil forces ruining the great societies that our ancestors have built and died for. Like Mark always says, the world is changing, things are not the same as they were and never will be again, and we just don't know what is coming next. Victor Davis Hanson calls it the intentional effort to "de-civilize the nation". But it's not just America, it's all of civilization. Trump is doing his best to re-civilize the world and of course I wish him godspeed in this monumental task..
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Lastly, a short tribute to good friends.
This past Shabbat, I was blessed to spend the entire Shabbat with my whole family and old friends that we hadn't seen in a number of years. They wisely moved to Israel about twenty years ago.
We met when Mr. C and I were a young married couple with a toddler. I was pregnant with my son-with no clue what was about to hit us with his disability and syndrome-and they were also starting a family. We spent many holidays and Sabbaths together and we also all worked in the Jewish community in different capacities. My son was born after an emergency C-section, during which we nearly both lost our lives and he was hospitalized in the NICU (neo-natal intensive care unit) for almost seven months. I can't even begin to describe how difficult life was then, as I recovered, as we battled for my son's life and as we tried to stay competent and sane whole for our first-born child at home.
During these tumultuous weeks and months, our friends "S" and "A" were quite simply angels of mercy. More often than I can even recall, they would call us early in the week and say "we're doing Shabbos for you, don't worry". Then, they would show up on our doorstep on Friday afternoon before sundown with what I can only describe as "Shabbat in a Box": main courses, vegetables, sides and salad, Challah bread and wine for Kiddush. I spent all weekdays at the hospital, and my husband all weeknights. We were beyond exhausted and the kindness extended to us by these friends who repeatedly "made Shabbos" for us during a time of such great trauma and life and death tumult in our lives is something I will never, ever forget for as long as I live.
I hope and pray that I have successfully put a lot of this exact kind of loving kindness and chessed into the universe and that I have the strength to do even more in my lifetime.
Have a great weekend, now go tell your family and friends you love them!
Give them lots of hugs!
Go do lots of good deeds and acts of lovingkindness and report back in the comments if you are so inclined.
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North America:
Welcome to the new Canada. I'm sure everything will work out just fine.
More on the Qatari jet. Is it an FU to Boeing? A bribe? A gift? This X post seems to explain that it's kind of fake news because it was on the ground in Florida. But President Trump has confirmed that he got it for free so why not? There's no such thing as free. And the Qataris definitely don't do anything for free.
The "it's safe to talk about it now and make money off it now" school of journalism.
Every time I see an article like this I get annoyed. The usual tack is 'oh we are exposing his hypocrisy'. That's so wrong and boring. These people cannot be shamed because you can't shame the shameless. They get away with it because there is a two-tiered system for just about everything in America and the rest of the free world. They believe they are entitled to their entitlements. They have no compunction, reservations or shame. They will only stop when they are stopped.
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Jews and Israel:
David Horowitz and Brooklyn College.
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Jewish Wisdom and Thought:
ACK!!!! Remember, this is what I was talking about last week.
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The Great Walkbackening, Reckoning and Accounting:
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Christianity:
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The Formerly Great Britain:
A Pulitzer Prize for denial and distortion.
If your government wanted to humiliate you, force lies down your throat and subject countless girls and women to intentional abuse by sick, male perverts, what exactly would they be doing differently?
I'm clearly in the wrong line of work.
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Human Grace:
"You would be doing a great honor to my son if you keep wearing this."
It's open thread time! Log into SteynOnline and let Laura know what you think of these stories or other happenings from the week that was. Commenting privileges are among the many perks of membership in The Mark Steyn Club. While going off topic is permitted on Laura's Links, do stick to the other rules as you engage: no URLs, no profanity, and no ad hominem attacks.