Full Comment Postmedia Network

Praising terrorist “martyrs,” open praise for Hamas, Hezbollah and the Houthis, and inciting violence toward Jews: social media platforms have been flooded since Hamas’s Oct. 7 attacks on Israel, with alarming and disturbing content that American online platforms seem unable to control. Tal-Or Cohen Montmayor, whose organization CyberWell deploys open-source monitoring of antisemitism on social media, joins Brian this week to explain how Hamas and its backers exploit weaknesses in online content screening. And, she says, they can leverage the algorithms in TikTok, Twitter and Facebook to spread messages that promote terror, spread misinformation and fuel the hatred seen at protests gripping our cities and our university campuses. (Recorded May 2, 2024)
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 fIt wasn’t just that funding for the out-of-control opioid crisis flowed to those promoting radical, unproven policies. Advocates leading the charge to B.C.’s doomed drug decriminalization experiment were personally investing in businesses to supply opioids to addicts, profiting off the back of a massive social crisis, as Vancouver psychologist Dr. Julian Somers tells Brian this week. Meanwhile, leaders promoting ever more “safe supply” grew too friendly with pharmaceutical producers. Somers, an addictions specialist, explains how this complete abandonment of harm-reduction principles, including any focus on recovery, created the catastrophe that has B.C. now desperately reversing course — even as other Canadian governments plan to repeat its mistakes. (Recorded May 2, 2024)
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Don’t expect the foreign interference inquiry to do much to impede Beijing’s stunningly successful capture of Canada’s critical institutions, says Jonathan Manthorpe, author of Claws of the Panda. China’s most insidious infiltration isn’t happening at the ballot box but in our universities, corporations, the political class — and, perhaps most corrosively, our mindset. We been fooled into believing we need China: for trade, for friendship, for influence. But we don’t, and never have, says Manthorpe, who’s releasing an updated edition of his influential book in May. But, as he tells Brian, China does need Canada — to manipulate and exploit. And we’ve played right into its hands. (Recorded April 19, 2024)

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The recent budget’s tax hikes won’t be enough to get us out of the fiscal mess the Trudeau Liberals have made with unrestrained spending and endless deficits, as Robert Asselin tells Brian. Asselin once advised Liberal finance minister Bill Morneau and is now with the Business Council of Canada. He says that with deficits becoming structural and interest on the debt now eating up massive amounts of revenue, the imbalance between spending and revenues is so out of whack that economic growth alone can’t save us. The only way out of disaster will be doing what the Liberals have tried to avoid: Whacking middle-class workers with higher taxes. (Recorded April 17, 2024)
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The Canadian Victoria Cross has never been awarded in its 31 years of existence. Gen. Rick Hillier aims to change that, and he joins Brian to discuss the new “Heroes Among Us” project launching with Postmedia — and his worries about the general state of our military, and our nation, today. Hillier lays out in stark detail how Canada’s world stature has sunk from its former greatness, why we’re a “parasite on defence,” why the army is “essentially broken,” and why Ottawa’s new defence policy doesn’t reassure him in the least. He also talks about why he thinks Canada is being divided by leaders whose job it should be to unite us. (Recorded April 12, 2024)

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Islamist extremism is on the march, as Hamas, ISIS, Hezbollah, Palestinian Islamic Jihad, the Houthis and al Shabab unleash attacks against the West. Highly organized support for radicalized violence parades openly on our city streets. What connects them all is money, as Haras Rafiq tells Brian this week. And he says Canada has become a critical nexus of funding from Qatar, Iran and other sponsors connected to the Muslim Brotherhood. Rafiq is at the Institute for the Study of Global Antisemitism and Policy and served as anti-extremism adviser to top U.K. ministers. He explains how Islamists exploit Canada’s system to launder billions here and spread money globally to promote their ideology of destroying Israel and spreading shariah law worldwide. (Recorded March 27, 2024)
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