Sea Lord Mountbatten
Published 14 Jul 2024Hey guys! Today I am happy to bring you guys Jutland! Our cinematic on the 1916 Naval Battle of Jutland! Enjoy!
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April 5, 2025
World of Warships – Battle Of Jutland
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QotD: Arguments against publishing Animal Farm
What is disquieting is that where the U.S.S.R. and its policies are concerned one cannot expect intelligent criticism or even, in many cases, plain honesty from Liberal writers and journalists who are under no direct pressure to falsify their opinions. Stalin is sacrosanct and certain aspects of his policy must not be seriously discussed. This rule has been almost universally observed since 1941, but it had operated, to a greater extent than is sometimes realized, for ten years earlier than that. Throughout that time, criticism of the Soviet regime from the left could obtain a hearing only with difficulty. There was a huge output of anti-Russian literature, but nearly all of it was from the Conservative angle and manifestly dishonest, out of date and actuated by sordid motives. On the other side, there was an equally huge and almost equally dishonest stream of pro‐Russian propaganda, and what amounted to a boycott on anyone who tried to discuss all‐important questions in a grown‐up manner.
You could, indeed, publish anti‐Russian books, but to do so was to make sure of being ignored or misrepresented by nearly the whole of the highbrow press. Both publicly and privately you were warned that it was “not done”. What you said might possibly be true, but it was “inopportune” and “played into the hands of” this or that reactionary interest. This attitude was usually defended on the ground that the international situation, and the urgent need for an Anglo‐Russian alliance, demanded it: but it was clear that this was a rationalization. The English intelligentsia, or a great part of it, had developed nationalistic loyalty toward the U.S.S.R., and in their hearts they felt that to cast any doubt on the wisdom of Stalin was a kind of blasphemy. Events in Russia and events elsewhere were to be judged by different standards. The endless executions in the purges of 1936–8 were applauded by life‐long opponents of capital punishment, and it was considered equally proper to publicize famines when they happened in India and to conceal them when they happened in the Ukraine. And if this was true before the war, the intellectual atmosphere is certainly no better now.
But now to come back to this book of mine. The reaction toward it of most English intellectuals will be quite simple: “It oughtn’t to have been published”. Naturally, those reviewers who under stand the art of denigration will not attack it on political grounds but on literary ones. They will say that it is a dull, silly book and a disgraceful waste of paper. This may well be true, but it is obviously not the whole of the story. One does not say that a book “ought not to have been published” merely because it is a bad book. After all, acres of rubbish are printed daily and no one bothers. The English intelligentsia, or most of them, will object to this book because it traduces their Leader and (as they see it) does harm to the cause of progress. If it did the opposite they would have nothing to say against it, even if its literary faults were ten times as glaring as they are. The success of, for instance, the Left Book Club over a period of four or five years shows how willing they are to tolerate both scurrility and slipshod writing, provided that it tells them what they want to hear.
The issue involved here is quite a simple one: Is every opinion, however unpopular — however foolish, even — entitled to a hearing? Put it in that form and nearly any English intellectual will feel that he ought to say “Yes”. But give it a concrete shape, and ask, “How about an attack on Stalin? Is that entitled to a hearing?”, and the answer more often than not will be “No”. In that case, the current orthodoxy happens to be challenged, and so the principle of free speech lapses. Now, when one demands liberty of speech and of the press, one is not demanding absolute liberty. There always must be, or at any rate there always will be, some degree of censorship, so long as organized societies endure. But freedom, as Rosa Luxemburg said, is “freedom for the other fellow”. The same principle is contained in the famous words of Voltaire: “I detest what you say; I will defend to the death your right to say it”. If the intellectual liberty which without a doubt has been one of the distinguishing marks of Western civilization means anything at all, it means that everyone shall have the right to say and to print what he believes to be the truth, provided only that it does not harm the rest of the community in some quite unmistakeable way. Both capitalist democracy and the Western versions of Socialism have till recently taken that principle for granted. Our Government, as I have already pointed out, still makes some show of respecting it. The ordinary people in the street — partly, perhaps, because they are not sufficiently interested in ideas to he intolerant about them — still vaguely hold that “I suppose everyone’s got a right to their own opinion”. It is only, or at any rate it is chiefly, the literary and scientific intelligentsia, the very people who ought to be the guardians of liberty, who are beginning to despise it, in theory as well as in practice.
George Orwell, “The Freedom of the Press”, 1945 (written as the introduction to Animal Farm, but not published in Orwell’s lifetime).
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April 4, 2025
Wine, Urine, Paperclips: America’s Secret Weapons of WWII
World War Two
Published 3 Apr 2025Today Astrid and Anna explore the Simple Sabotage Field Manual, a top-secret WWII guide that taught ordinary people how to disrupt the Nazi war machine. From factory slowdowns to derailed trains, they show how small acts of sabotage targeted Hitler’s regime, and how resistance often came from unexpected places.
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Alberta plays a separate hand
In The Line, Jen Gerson discusses the disconnects between “Team Canada” (such as it is) and Alberta that now have Alberta sending its own delegation to talk to … someone … in Washington DC:
Photo by Jen Gerson, The Line.
Alberta’s periodic bursts of secessionist sentiment operate a little like the aurora that occasionally flash across the prairie sky, in tune with decades-long solar flare cycles. The phenomenon is always fascinating, yet it’s always impossible to know how seriously to take it. It waxes and wanes in line with a number of factors, only some of which can be predicted — oil prices, the partisan stripe of the federal government, and the introduction of new regulations.
We are getting another show, of late, and The Line has responded by commissioning some fresh hot polling numbers to determine just how willing Albertans are to take up U.S. President Donald Trump’s call of becoming the 51st state.
It is not a surprise that this is being talked about again. We appear to be on the verge of a potential fourth term of loathed Liberals — after being all but promised a Conservative one. Trump has declared economic war, and openly undermines our sovereignty. Alberta has elected a premier who seems to be willing to go much further than leaders past to both threaten the federal government, and align herself with Americans. Danielle Smith has made several appearances in conservative American media institutions to argue against tariffs; she also made a public appeal to her Quebec counterpart to create a common front for greater provincial autonomy. This after threatening to form another “Fair Deal” panel if a future federal government doesn’t meet a list of requests.
In the midst of this revived inter-provincial tension, an Alberta delegation has formed, insisting that it will be travelling to the U.S. in coming weeks to meet with members of the Trump administration.
Who are they meeting? Well, they won’t say.
“The response that we’re getting, quite frankly, from the present U.S. administration is very positive. We’ve been advised that the interest in what we’re doing is extremely high, and certainly everything that we’ve seen indicates that this is far from a fool’s errand,” said Jeffrey Rath, an Alberta lawyer leading the delegation, during a press conference last week held just off the lobby of a well-known Calgary hotel. The conference wasn’t well publicized, and it was obscurely signed — if you knew, you knew — and was thus populated by about 80 fellow travellers of the Alberta independence movement.
“We’ve been advised by the people we’re speaking to in the States to not disclose who it is that we’re talking to at this point,” Rath said. But the goal is clear. They’re going to Washington to meet with representatives of the Trump administration to “determine the level of support that the government of the United States would be prepared to provide to an independent Alberta.”
Admittedly, they’re only independent citizens — former Premier Jason Kenney called Rath a “treasonous kook” — though the press conference featured one former Conservative MP, LaVar Payne, and the U.S. delegation will reportedly include former Conservative MP Rob Anders.
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SVD Dragunov: The First Purpose-Built DMR
Forgotten Weapons
Published 3 Dec 2024The development of the Dragunov designated marksman’s rifle was spurred by the NATO adoption of the 7.62x51mm cartridge. The Red Army had standardized on a new suite of infantry weapons using the intermediate-sized 7.62x39mm round, and feared being out-ranged in open terrain by NATO units. The Soviet squad needed some way to reach out and engage a NATO machine gun or antitank weapon that might be beyond the range of their RPD light machine gun. And so in 1957, specifications were issued for a new 7.62x54Rmm precision rifle.
Three designers responded with proposals; Dragunov, Konstatinov, and Simonov. The Simonov was not really suitable (it was a scaled-up SKS in essence), and the Konstantinov was not as accurate as the Dragunov. And so, Evgeniy Dragunov’s rifle was adopted in 1963 as the SVD. Dragunov himself was a talented competitive marksman, and this experience undoubtedly contributed to the quality of his design. The SVD is a rotating bolt rifle with a lightweight short-stroke gas piston and a light-be-accurate barrel. It was issued to ever squad in mechanized infantry units, and was an important part of infantry armament, still in service today.
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QotD: Nero’s persecution of the early Christians
Senators, of course, had hated it. The loss of Rome’s familiar sights to countryside had borne witness precisely to what they had always found most disorienting about Nero: his ability to dissolve the boundaries of everything that they had previously taken for granted. So it was that they had accused him of starting the fire deliberately, as a way of clearing a space for his building plans; and so it was that Nero, looking to shift the blame, had fixed on convenient scapegoats. These culprits, even by Nero’s own taboo-busting standards, embodied everything that decent citizens had always most dreaded about moral upheaval: the adherents of a sinister cult whose motivation was nothing less than, in the words of a Roman historian, “their hatred for the norms of human society”.
“Christians”, these deviants were called, after their founder, “Christus”, a criminal who had been crucified in Judaea some decades before, under a previous Caesar. Nero, ever fond of a spectacle, had displayed a vengefulness worthy of the Olympian gods. Some of the condemned, dressed in animal skins, had been torn to pieces by dogs. Others, lashed to crosses, had been smeared in pitch and used as torches to illumine the night. Nero, riding in his chariot, had mingled with the gawping crowds. Suetonius would include his persecution of the Christians in the list — a very short one — of the positives of his reign.
Among those put to death, so later tradition would record, was a man who in time would come to be viewed as the very keeper of the doors of heaven. In 1601, in a church that had originally been built on the site of the tomb where Nero’s two nurses and his first great love had buried him, a painting was installed that paid homage, not to the notorious Caesar, but to the outcast origins of the city’s Christian order.
The artist, a young man from Milan by the name of Caravaggio, had been commissioned to portray a crucifixion: not of Christ himself, but of his leading disciple. Peter, a fisherman who, according to the Gospels, had abandoned his boat and nets to follow Jesus, was said to have become the bishop of the very first Christians of Rome. Since his execution in the wake of the great fire, more than 200 men had held the bishopric: an office which brought with it a claim to primacy over the entire Church, and the honorary title of “Pappas” or “Father” — “Pope”.
Tom Holland, “When Christ conquered Caesar”, UnHerd, 2020-04-10.
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April 3, 2025
1947 Newscast: Spies, Aliens, and Collapsing Empires! – W2W 18
TimeGhost History
Published 2 Apr 20251947 is a pivotal year: The British Empire crumbles as India and Pakistan gain independence amidst violence and mass migration. Truman launches a Cold War against Soviet communism, while spies infiltrate governments worldwide. Nations sign treaties reshaping Europe; Chuck Yeager breaks the sound barrier, and rumours swirl of aliens crashing at Roswell. Join us for the headlines that reshaped history!
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Election 2025 – Candidates overboard, biological clocks ticking, and Trump tariff letdown
One of the recent events in the federal election campaign — the Liberals finally getting rid of their toxic candidate in Markham-Unionville — has been reciprocated by the Conservatives dumping their candidate in a southwestern Ontario riding and another in the Montreal area. While the Liberals dragged their feet for several days, the Conservatives have been much faster to pull the ejection handle for their bozo eruptions (some might say too fast), but Poilievre absolutely did not want the kind of media circus that Carney enabled over the Chiang scandal.
The Liberals have been doing what they can to gin up angst and outrage over a recent Pierre Poilievre comment that they’re trying to portray as being somehow misogynistic and insensitive. In The Line, Melanie Paradis says that it’s nothing of the sort and instead it highlights a genuine concern for young Canadian women and their partners:
I just turned 40. I have two beautiful children — three-and-a-half years old and eight months — and I want a third.
That statement raises eyebrows. After all, I run a successful business. I work more than full-time. I live in the same economy as you. And yet — I want another baby. Not because I’m reckless. Because I love being a mom. Because I believe in investing in the future. Because I want to.
And in today’s Canada, that feels like a radical act.
This election, the conversation is dominated by Trump’s tariffs, and understandably so. But as we analyze different sectors that will be impacted by tariffs, and develop policy prescriptions for the hundreds of thousands of jobs that could be lost, where are the policies for the millions of young Canadians pausing their hopes and plans for children because of so much uncertainty? The untold story of Trump’s tariffs and threats is that the quiet collapse of Canada’s birth rate will only worsen. Nothing kills the mood or your hormonal balance quite like Trump.
Of course, the second Pierre Poilievre mentioned this, the Liberals couldn’t resist twisting it into a tired attack line about reproductive rights.
On Monday, Poilievre said, “We will not forget that 36-year-old couple whose biological clock is running out faster than they can afford to buy a home.” This is a statement rooted in the biological and economic realities of being 30-something and trying to conceive. Yet the Liberals are tripping over themselves to condemn Poilievre for somehow insulting women.
What a total misread. Poilievre is the only politician in this campaign who is speaking openly and clearly about a real issue that is radicalizing young Canadians: it has become far, far too hard to start and support a family in this country, and that is obviously a burden that lands entirely on the young. Given the demographics of the average Liberal voter, I can get why this would be below the radar for the party, but I’m begging them, and setting politics aside when I do, to stop viewing this as a moment to launch a political attack on your rival and instead ask if this is actually a national issue that we should be talking about more, not less. Even if the politician happens to be a man.
To my Liberal friends: You are punching down on hurting people when you dismiss this issue, and since this might matter to you more, you’re hurting your electoral chances, too. Your party has a blindspot here, and the issue is too important to become a partisan football. Like, my dudes, for all your stupid rhetoric about The Handmaid’s Tale, have you read the damn book? It starts with a fertility crisis and birth rate collapse. If you don’t want the red capes, maybe we should get out in front of the issue?
The latest round of Trumpian tariffs let Canada off easier than other American allies and trading partners in President Trump’s “Liberation Day” announcement:
While the rest of the world was trying to determine the length and breadth of the shaft, Trump waved around a cardboard chart that named their country and the percentage tariff hike they could expect to be hit with.
Top of the list was China, which will see a 34 per cent increase in the tariffs on its exports to the U.S. (on top of the previous 20 per cent). Japan will be hit with a 24 per cent increase and the European Union with 20 per cent.
But half of the chart was hidden behind Trump’s podium, so it took a while to figure that Canada was not on the list.
It was only after the Rose Garden press conference concluded that it became apparent that Canada is exempt, or at least the exports to the U.S. covered by the Canada-U.S.-Mexico trade agreement are not impacted (and they account for more than 90 per cent, according to RBC Economics).
However, the previously announced 25 per cent tariffs on autos, and on steel and aluminum from Canada remain in place.
The broad-based exemption is good news but the crisis facing the Canadian economy remains dire. As has been pointed out by many industry insiders, no auto plant in Canada can survive 25 per cent tariffs for an extended period at a time when their profit margins are less than 10 per cent.
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English Electric Lightning – the F-22 of 1958
HardThrasher
Published 14 Jul 2023In which we explore one of the more bonkers aircraft of the Cold War and all the reasons it made no sense whatsoever whilst being awesome in practically every way.
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QotD: When the History Department at Flyover State committed slow motion suicide
Now, you have to understand something about the academy at this point: Though these people are profoundly ideologically enstupidated, they’re still pretty cunning where their wallets are concerned. Indeed, that’s the whole reason they allow “scholarship” on left-handed LatinX truck drivers in the Ming Dynasty or whatever that persyn’s book was, to pull that kind of stunt — only “original” “research” gets published, and since all the true facts have been ascertained long ago, you have to make shit up if you want tenure. Publish or perish, baby!
A clever plan, but with one teensy tiny flaw: “Tenure” requires a university, and universities require students, which means that, while pretty much all professors hate teaching, they have to do it … and not only that, they have to actually appeal to those icky little deplorables, the students, in sufficient numbers to keep the faculty employed. If, back in your own college days, you wondered if maybe the only reason Western Civ I or whatever was required was that it gave Professor Jones something to do, congrats, you were right. But you can’t require History majors, and there’s only enough Western Civ to go around, which means you have to have 200- through 400-level classes that students actually want to take …
You can see where this is going, and to their credit, some of the faculty at Flyover State saw it, too. At the time, there were still enough upperclassman History majors (and grad students) that the class on LatinX truck drivers in the Ming Dynasty would fill … barely … but that situation obviously would not continue. Nor could you simply stick the new hire in Western Civ classes, because in addition to the other obvious problems, of course xzhey would immediately turn “Western Civ I” into “LatinX truck drivers in the Ming Dynasty … and maybe, if there’s time, the Roman Empire or some shit.”
You know what the Department ended up doing (hint: nothing), and so the first semester after the new hire went exactly like you knew it would. And so did the next, and the next, because as we all know, chicks of both sexes and however-many-we’re-up-to-now genders are herd animals. Hiring the radical lesbian gave all the slightly-less-radical lesbians, again of both sexes and however-many genders, permission to let their freak flag fly. Which, of course, they did. Pretty soon you couldn’t find a History class that wasn’t some bizarre, micro-specialized SJW mad lib. Sure, they’d still call it “The US in the Civil War Era” or “Modern Germany” or whatever, but the course description made it perfectly clear that the class was really about transsexual cabaret acts on the New York Bowery … and maybe, if there’s time, secession or some shit.
And soon enough there were no more History majors, and thus no more History Department. At one of the small schools that collectively make up “Flyover State”, the former History, Psychology, and Classics departments have been folded into something called the “Humanities Department” … to which, last I heard, the former English Department will soon be added.
Severian, “The Dunbar Problem”, Founding Questions, 2021-10-06.
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April 2, 2025
The Korea War Week 41 – One Order Away from WWIII – April 1, 1951
The Korean War by Indy Neidell
Published 1 Apr 2025The UN forces have again crossed the 38th Parallel in many places, but High Command is worried about Soviet intervention, which could ultimately force them to withdraw from Korea entirely. However, plans are still set for Operation Rugged to soon go into action — aiming into the Iron Triangle.
Chapters
00:00 Intro
00:58 Recap
01:46 Soviet Intervention?
04:22 Operation Rugged
07:01 Task Force 77
09:36 South Korean Porters
11:02 MacArthur and McClellan
13:55 Summary
14:13 Conclusion
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Iceland’s “double standards about sex between adults and minors … exposes grey areas in victim-centered sanctimony”
Janice Fiamengo discusses the recent revelation that Iceland’s Minister for Education and Children’s Affairs, Ásthildur Lóa Thórsdóttir, had an affair with an under-age teen when she was in her 20s:
Last week, Ásthildur Lóa Thórsdóttir [right], Iceland’s Minister for Education and Children’s Affairs, was revealed to have had a sexual relationship with a teen boy decades ago, when she was 23 years old. The case vividly highlights the west’s double standards about sex between adults and minors, and it exposes grey areas in victim-centered sanctimony.
That the case occurred in Iceland, a feminist stronghold with a female president, a female prime minister, and a claimed “zero-tolerance policy for sexual abuse and exploitation of children“, is not at all surprising. No one seriously expects feminists to apply their touted compassion to male teenagers; and no one believes that their championing of gender equality includes sexual probity for women.
Iceland is so thoroughly feminist that in 2023, the prime minister herself joined other women on a one-day strike to demand, amongst other utopian objectives, “an end to unequal pay,” neatly sidestepping (while illustrating) that the so-called pay gap is caused primarily by women’s tendency to work fewer hours than men do. Female moral innocence is such a cherished belief of the Nordic island nation that it has designated 2025 as Women’s Year, with “12 months of events dedicated to progressing gender equality.” (Interested readers should consult a gushing Guardian article, “Women are the best to women“, which depicts Iceland as a near-idyllic women-led community in which men hardly figure.)
Clearly, when the most powerful woman in the country can take a day off to showcase women’s alleged lack of power, few women are prepared to consider their own potential abuse of it.
That brings us to the Minister for Children’s Affairs, who appeared flabbergasted last week to find that her long-ago sexual past has become fodder for unsympathetic public discussion and suggestions of serious impropriety. “I understand … what it looks like“, she is quoted as saying to reporters, seemingly exasperated at how difficult it is “to get the right story in the news today”. At 58 years of age, Thórsdóttir is being given a tiny glimpse into what thousands of men have experienced since feminism entered its Jacobin phase.
Over three decades ago, Thórsdóttir began a relationship with a 15-year-old boy who was attending her church group. He has been identified as Eirik Asmundsson. He was a troubled boy with a chaotic home life, and she was an adult member in the group; newspaper articles have said that she was a group counselor, which she denies. She claims that the relationship did not become sexual until the boy was 16, and that he pursued her.
Thórsdóttir eventually gave birth to a child — a son — when she was 23 and Asmundsson was 16. She claims, again contrary to news reports, that their sexual relationship was long over by then, having lasted only a few weeks. What is undisputed is that she forced the boy to pay child support for 18 years, long after she had met and married another man, which occurred about a year after the child’s birth. She also opposed numerous requests by her child’s father to form and maintain a relationship with his son. Overall, she treated the boy shamefully.
Naturally, if a male government minister had been found to have been sexually involved with, impregnated, and then split from a 15- or 16-year-old girl when he was 22, especially when he was part of a religious organization in which he had some degree of moral or spiritual influence over her, there would be no public doubt whatsoever about his culpability.
All news reports would have been condemnatory, and his protestations, if he had been naïve enough to make any, would have been in vain. There would have been a chorus of disapproving statements from his fellow politicians in the Icelandic parliament. He would have been forced to resign from government and would likely be facing criminal investigation, perhaps for custodial rape (sex with a youth in one’s employment, care, or custody).
In Thórsdóttir’s case, in contrast, there has been only a brief flurry of reports and limited personal fallout. She was forced to resign from her ministerial post, but she remains in government. That she has kept her job is extraordinary. The Daily Mail, while not defending her, waffled about her potential criminality, saying “The age of consent is 15 in Iceland, but it is illegal to have sex with anyone under the age of 18 if the adult holds a position of authority over them, as Thorsdottir is accused of doing“.
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Eating in a London Blitz Bomb Shelter
Tasting History with Max Miller
Published 19 Nov 2024Hearty, if mushy, vegetable soup with honey biscuits and a cup of tea
City/Region: London
Time Period: 1940If you were taking shelter underground during the Blitz, a period in WWII when German planes bombed British cities, the food options were somewhat limited. You could bring snacks with you, but there were also canteens from which workers sold things like tea, cocoa, soup, biscuits, and chocolate.
This soup, fittingly named Blitz Soup, is mainly composed of fresh vegetables that many would have had access to from their victory gardens. While it’s surprisingly flavorful and delicious, if you cut down the cooking time to about 30 minutes, the vegetables wouldn’t be as mushy. Though either way, a thermos of this soup would have been a comforting meal while taking shelter.
Instead of the historical recipe, which is very basic, here’s the poem that accompanied it.
When down to your shelter you flitz,
It may not be quite like the Ritz.
If you drink something warm,
You’ll come to no harm,
And the best soup to drink is the “Blitz”.
(P.S.- Any vegetables can be used, and you’ll find this a very useful soup to take to the shelter if you have to take cover. We hope you don’t.)
— Gert and Daisy’s Wartime Cookery Book, 1940
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QotD: Restaurant wine etiquette
For extra points: if it’s a dark red like a cabernet or burgundy, wince slightly, then tell the sommelier to let it breathe for ten or so minutes before he serves it to the table. (That’s a cheat, by the way; all reds need to breathe a little after uncorking.)
The wine world is full of phonies who like to show off. The way to make people think you know what you’re talking about is to say less, not more. What you do (see above) is more impressive than what you say.
Kim du Toit, “Busted”, Splendid Isolation, 2019-11-25.
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April 1, 2025
Carney chooses not to dump Paul Chiang as Liberal candidate in Markham-Unionville
Update: The National Post is reporting that Chiang has dropped out of the campaign.
Liberal leader Mark Carney may believe he’s showing something something strength and something something compassion by allowing Paul Chiang to stay on the ballot as the official Liberal candidate despite the awful optics of the situation:
In the National Post, Anthony Furey says that the decision indicates that Carney values China’s values ahead of Canadian values:
Liberal MP Paul Chiang, left, and Liberal leader Mark Carney, right.
Mark Carney’s mishandling of the Paul Chiang scandal has got to be one of the worst cases of poor judgment in recent Canadian political history. From the moment the story broke, it was a no-brainer that Chiang could not remain as a Liberal MP and as the Liberal candidate in Markham-Unionville.
The fact Carney didn’t immediately do the right thing was a problem. And that he’s now defiant in keeping Chiang on despite several days of significant pushback seriously calls his judgment into question.
On Friday, the civil rights group Toronto Association for Democracy in China broke the scandal on remarks Chiang made about Conservative candidate Joe Tay that appeared in Chinese-language newspaper Ming Pao Toronto.
“To everyone here, you can claim the $1 million bounty (on Joe Tay) if you bring him to Toronto’s Chinese consulate,” Chiang said during an ethnic media conference in January.
Jaws dropped when the news spread. Dozens of human rights groups have already condemned the remarks.
Hong Kong Watch, a human rights advocacy group, wrote in a statement: “It is clear that this is a Parliamentarian suggesting to a broad community that a political opponent be taken against their will and handed over to the custody of a foreign government that has a well-documented history of wrongfully detaining Canadian citizens and using coercion to get Canadian citizens to return to (China).”
[…]
Yet Liberal leader Mark Carney is downplaying it and standing by Chiang.
“The comments were deeply offensive,” Carney said on Monday. “This is a terrible lapse of judgment by Mr. Chiang. He has apologized for those comments.”
If they are that offensive and if Chiang’s judgment is that poor, why keep him on as a member of the team?
Carney was hammered with repeated questions to that effect from the news media but was firm that Chiang would remain as a candidate. He also seems to think that Chiang being a police officer makes the remarks less of an issue, when it clearly makes it a much bigger problem.
“Mr. Chiang is a veteran policeman with more than a quarter century of service to his community,” Carney told the press. “And he will continue his candidacy going forward, having made those apologies very clearly to the individual, to the community and moving forward to serve.”
From the outside, it looks less like Carney is trying to stand up for a member of his party and more as though he’s desperate to hang on to that seat (perhaps Liberal internal polls aren’t quite as rosy in the GTA as the public polls are showing at the moment).
Also on the social media site formerly known as “Twitter”, Dan Knight posts a long note on the situation:
This is no longer just a political scandal — this is a national disgrace. Joe Tay, the Conservative candidate targeted by Paul Chiang’s shocking comments, has now broken his silence — and it’s nothing short of damning.
In his official statement, Tay pulls no punches. He calls Chiang’s words what they are: “threatening public comments … intended to intimidate me”. Not debate. Not disagreement. Intimidation. And Tay makes it crystal clear: “no apology is sufficient”. Why? Because this isn’t some offhand gaffe — this is the exact playbook of the Chinese Communist Party, imported straight into Canadian politics.
Let that sink in. A Canadian MP, standing on Canadian soil, echoed a bounty issued by a hostile foreign regime. And the man targeted — Joe Tay — says it plainly: “Suggesting that people collect a bounty from the Chinese Communist Party to deliver a political opponent to the Chinese Consulate is disgusting and must never be condoned.”
Disgusting — and yet, here we are. Paul Chiang is still in the Liberal fold. Mark Carney, the man who wants to run the country, says nothing. Meanwhile, Tay is left fearing for his safety — already in touch with the RCMP before the public even knew what Chiang had said.
This is the state of Canadian politics under the Liberal machine: where the only people paying a price are the ones speaking out. Where the candidate who exposes foreign interference is the one who needs police protection. And the one who parrots CCP propaganda? He gets to keep his seat.
Even Michael Chong — a guy who knows firsthand what CCP intimidation looks like — is stepping in and asking the obvious question: Why is Paul Chiang still a Liberal candidate?
Chong just posted on X (formerly Twitter) that at least three Canadians have already been coerced into returning to the People’s Republic of China against their will. Against their will. Think about that. Beijing is actively running transnational repression ops on Canadian soil — and now, one of Carney’s own candidates is joking about turning a political opponent over to the CCP for a cash reward. And we’re supposed to believe the Liberals take foreign interference seriously?
Chong’s post includes actual evidence — parliamentary testimony, U.S. indictments, and RCMP-relevant keywords like “United Front”, “overseas station”, and “minutes or less”. In other words, this isn’t conspiracy talk. This is real. It’s happening. And it’s been happening under the Liberals’ watch.
And still, Paul Chiang stays in the race. No suspension. No investigation. Nothing from Carney, the security-cleared savior of the Liberal establishment.
And here’s where the hypocrisy hits terminal velocity.
Remember, Mark Carney has a security clearance. That’s been his whole pitch. That somehow he is more qualified to lead Canada because he has access to classified intelligence. Because he is in the know. He’s the grown-up in the room. The steady technocrat with one foot in the Privy Council and the other in Davos.
Well, here’s a question: What good is a security clearance if your own MPs are acting like a propaganda arm for Beijing?
Because while Mark “Bank of China” Carney sits on his classified briefings, his Liberal MP Paul Chiang is out there, on camera, floating the idea that a Conservative candidate should be delivered to a Chinese consulate to “claim the bounty” placed on his head by the Chinese Communist Party.
Let’s repeat that: A Canadian MP is echoing a CCP-issued bounty, and Carney — the man with all the intelligence, all the briefings, all the supposed national security credentials — says nothing. Not a peep. Not even a token tweet.
So what exactly is that security clearance buying us, Mark? If you’re such an expert on foreign threats, why can’t you recognize one when it’s sitting in your own caucus?
It’s a joke. The entire premise of Carney’s leadership bid is unraveling in real time. He promised Canadians he could stand up to foreign interference — meanwhile, his own candidate in Markham–Unionville is out there sounding like a CCP press secretary. And instead of showing leadership, Carney hides behind talking points, closed-door fundraisers, and his carefully curated media handlers.
Joe Tay is right. This isn’t just about intimidation — it’s about sending a “chilling signal to the entire community”. And the message from Carney is loud and clear: if you’re a threat to the Liberal regime, they’re not just coming for your policies. They’re coming for you.
Security clearance? Please. It’s not leadership if you only speak up when it’s politically convenient. And if Carney won’t condemn this, then he’s not qualified to lead a PTA meeting, let alone a country.
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