Quotulatiousness

July 10, 2026

Defensive driving is more important today than ever before

Filed under: Bureaucracy, Business, Cancon, Government, Law, Politics — Tags: , , , , , , — Nicholas @ 05:00

At some point, the Canadian and provincial governments decided that the safety of their citizens was a lower priority than ensuring that temporary foreign workers — many of whom apparently understand little or no English or French — had to be given commercial trucking licenses and set loose on the King’s Highways:

Absolutely insane‼️

But this is something I’ve been raising the alarm on for years.

The Canadian trucking industry, which almost a third of it is gray/black market now, have been captured by foreigners and empowered by Ottawa.

100 trucking companies with a history of safety infractions, labour violations and regulatory failures were approved by the Liberals to mass immigrate temporary foreign workers.

Canadians are losing their lives on our roads every day by foreigners who shouldn’t be in Canada that the Liberals allowed scam organizations to bring in and who shouldn’t be behind the steering wheel to begin with. Then the Liberals and activists judges won’t even deport these people.

Many trucking companies that lose license to operate or get hit with infractions would just change provinces of operations and name – sometimes not even the name, and would just keep operating because there is no proper systems raising red flags and no one investigates. Complete incompetence.

Many operate in Alberta, Saskatchewan and Ontario and move around these provinces.

Update: Quebec has taken official notice of the situation.

EU “Chat Control” passes through parliamentary chicanery

Filed under: Europe, Government, Law, Liberty, Media — Tags: , , , , , — Nicholas @ 04:00

As mentioned yesterday, the EU introduced “Chat Control” which allows the authorities to examine any and all private communications by EU residents “to protect the children”. As eugyppius reports, it got through and was passed into EU-wide law on Thursday:

If anybody cares, what actually happened is that an extension of the European Union’s mass surveillance regulation known as Chat Control 1.0 failed to make it out of the European Parliament twice in March. Unable to summon a clear parliamentary majority, advocates (mostly in the centre-right European People’s Party [EPP]) turned to the European Council, which adopted the failed Chat Control 1.0 renewal on 2 July. The Council’s position hardens automatically into law unless the European Parliament can summon an absolute majority to stop it. To forestall any such majority from forming, the EPP on Tuesday moved with member state backing for urgent procedure, angling to force their scheme through in the last days before the summer holiday, after many MEP’s had already left. The parliament narrowly approved the urgent procedure, and in consequence there were not enough votes to stop Chat Control 1.0 when it came for a vote today. Hours ago, a majority of 314 MEPs voted to stop Chat Control against the wishes of the Council, while a minority of 276 voted to let it happen. Because 314 is less than the absolute majority of 361, Chat Control 1.0 passed even though most MEPs present didn’t want it to.

It was a sleazy vote, not least because it’s far from clear this procedural manoeuvre was even appropriate in this case. Also, electronic surveillance is bad, but if we are honest with ourselves this battle was already lost.

Chat Control 1.0 was first instated in 2021 as a temporary exemption to the ePrivacy Directive of the EU, allowing messaging services and online platforms to scan chats and other electronic communications for child sexual abuse material. The exemption expired in April, but various platforms have continued their surveillance with no legal basis in the intervening months. Now their formal permission to scan our private communications has been restored and extended through April 2028. We are, in other words, merely returning to the prior regime.

Chat Control 1.0 is a temporary stopgap while the European Parliament, the Commission and the Council try to negotiate their Child Sexual Abuse Regulation, or Chat Control 2.0. As envisioned by the Commission, this permanent law would not merely allow platforms to scan private communications for child sex abuse material, but require them to do so; require additional AI-assisted automated scanning not only for known child pornography but also for such vaguely defined activities as “grooming”; and extend scanning to end-to-end encrypted services like Signal via mandatory monitoring on the client side. This insane proposal has been watered down over the years, in large part because of parliamentary opposition, but it’s coming in some form. We’re getting Chat Control 2.0 before Chat Control 1.0 expires, and Chat Control 2.0 will be at least somewhat worse.

The EU’s stratégie “antiracisme”

Filed under: Europe, Government, Media, Politics — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 03:00

The media has been pushing the narrative of a huge rising tide of racism and white supremacy, even as those ideas had been steadily losing influence and popularity. European and western governments generally have been doing their part to keep racism alive by importing as many unassimilable young men of military age and setting them loose upon the native population. Something’s got to give:

It has been proven. The narrative of systemic racism and “white supremacy” was completely fabricated by the media and activists since 2010. It’s undeniable.

Ask yourself this: have you ever come across, among your friends, your family, or your colleagues, someone who calls themselves a white supremacist and wants to “restore the purity of the white race”?

No. It doesn’t exist. It might have been a marginal fantasy in the past. Today, it’s a media construct to justify division and ideology.

The post I made that Elon Musk reposted yesterday proves it perfectly.

This European strategy isn’t going to “fight racism”. It’s going to create the perfect breeding ground for grooming gangs to spread everywhere in Europe, including France.

Reminder: in the UK, thousands of underage girls were raped, drugged, and sexually exploited by networks (often Pakistani) in Rotherham, Rochdale, and elsewhere. The cops, social services, and elected officials let the most horrific abuses slide for years … because they were afraid of being labeled racists. They chose to sacrifice young girls rather than “stigmatize” a community.

This is exactly the mechanism that Brussels is now rolling out across the board:

– Denial of anti-white racism
– Definition of “structural racism” without perpetrators or intent (so everyone is suspect by default)
– 3.6 billion euros in public money to anti-racist NGOs
– Training for civil servants to detect “racial bias” everywhere

Result: police officers and agents paralyzed by the fear of being called racists. They’ll hesitate even more to act in certain neighborhoods or against certain groups.

In France, this ideology has already been carried by associations like Touche pas à mon pote and others of the same ilk. Instead of promoting integration and unity, they’ve created division by exploiting minorities for political ends.

Antiracism as it’s practiced today is racism. It divides people by skin color, protects real problems, and criminalizes those who dare to name the facts.

What needs to be done: stop dividing. Stop multiplying associations that exploit minorities to sow discord. Go back to true equality: judge actions, not origins. Protect victims without ideological taboos.

If this strategy passes, we won’t have “small” problems.

We’ll have grooming gangs on steroids across all of Europe.

That’s the price of this madness.

Auto-translated from the original French by X.

The Pastry War – When France invaded Mexico over pastry

Filed under: Americas, Food, France, History, Military, USA — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 02:00

Tasting History with Max Miller
Published 13 Jan 2026

Puff pastry rings filled with raspberry and apricot preserves and topped with a cherry

City/Region: France
Time Period: 1840

The Pastry War between Mexico and France was kicked off when, during a time of political upheaval, Mexican soldiers ransacked Monsieur Remontel’s pastry shop in the 1830s. Seeking reparations for M. Remontel as well as the repayment of other debts, the French invaded.

While we don’t know what was sold in Monsieur Remontel’s pastry shop in Mexico, these puits d’amour could certainly have been on the menu. By all means, you can make your own puff pastry, but I gave myself permission to use store bought, and you should, too. You can even use store-bought preserves to simplify things even further, but this preserves recipe is very delicious and very sweet. I used both store-bought apricot preserves and homemade raspberry preserves, and both were delicious. You can also fill them with half jam and half chantilly cream or pastry cream if the fancy strikes you.

    PUITS D’AMOUR.
    When the puff pastry has received all its turns, roll it out to a thickness of two lines; cut it with a fluted cutter, that is to say with a pastry cutter, and place the first piece on a baking sheet; then, with a cutter of the same type but smaller, cut another piece and place it on top; moisten the round with a little water, press it in slightly, brush these puits with egg, and put them into a hot oven. When they are three-quarters baked, sprinkle them with sugar in order to glaze them — that is, until the sugar melts; then remove them, hollow them out, and fill them with whatever preserves you judge appropriate.
    — Le Cuisinier Royal by André Viart, 1840

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QotD: Modern conspiracy theories

Filed under: Government, Media, Politics, Quotations, USA — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 01:00

Probably the most important part of the modern conspiracy theory is that it must flatter the person obsessed with it. For the conspiracy buff, the thrill is in feeling that they have figured it all out. Those super-intelligent people working in the shadows were not smart enough to outwit the conspiracy hunter. Everyone else falls for the official story, but the conspiracy theorist knows the real truth. Paradoxically, the conspiracy theory makes the world a much simpler and safer place for them.

The best example right now is the Left’s obsession with white supremacy. They cannot accept that their vision of Utopia is not very popular. That’s the first step in a conspiracy theory, the rejection of the most plausible reason. That allows them to spin wild tales of secret Nazis and spectral supremacists. Rather than confront reality, which is frightening and disconcerting, they have created a series of conspiracy theories to explain why the world is not as they imagine it.

This is why conspiracy theories are a useful metric to gauge social trust. When order begins to break down, people naturally look for reasons. That opens the door to speculation and then conspiracy theories. This, in turn, erodes social trust, which is the foundation upon which every ruling class rests. As that foundation falters, the ruling class looks for reasons. Since blaming themselves is always off the table, they naturally begin to speculate, which opens the door to conspiracy theories.

The Z Man, “Conspiratorial Rule”, The Z Blog, 2020-10-01.

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