Monday Musings: When you are trying to take away people's rights, lead with kids and terrorists. Royal photos. Throwing Israel under the bus.

Venting my spleen over the news of the day.

It’s that time of year up here at the goat, llama, motorcycle, and guitar orchard.

There was an article today over on Public about an attempt by Canada’s liberal party to pass a law that would further restrict free speech up in the Great White North and potentially incarcerate people for crimes that they haven’t yet committed. If it sounds dystopian, it’s because the Online Harms Act actually is. The rationale? To protect young kids from sexual exploitation in the digital world.

I have two observations about this. Whenever you want to pass some completely unnecessary and thoroughly illiberal law to take away people’s rights, always lead with either 1) kids or 2) terrorists. What kind of loser isn’t for keeping kids safe and dinging terrorists, eh?

Of course, America has set numerous examples for our Canadian friends on both fronts.

We have, for decades, passed annual National Defense Authorization Acts with increasingly draconian provisions, including one signed by President Obama in 2011 that authorized indefinite military detention of civilians without charge or trial into law for the first time in American history. 

And to gin up another example of Americans attempting to restrict rights to protect children, you’re going to have to get in line.

The good news is that many Canadians are having nothing to do with this. Even Canada’s national paper of record, The Globe and Mail, called the proposed bill “fatally flawed.”

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has likely gone a bridge too far this time after giddly implementing the Emergency Measures Act in February 2022 for the first time in Canadian history to freeze the financial assets of people who had donated to the Freedom Convoy protest, which truckers (who Trudeau claimed were racists and Nazis) led in calling for an end to COVID-19 vaccine mandates. My guess is that the Online Harms Act (Bill C-63) goes down like a lead balloon on Jupiter.

A few hours ago, I posted the following on X: I'm going Old Testament on the next news anchor who makes a big deal out of Kate Middleton's family photo. That's why much of the public thinks the news is a joke.

That’s my story, and I’m sticking to it.

Among the many things that the mainstream media in this country doesn’t get (like why Donald Trump is popular no matter how much they say that he shouldn’t be), is that no one in America gives a hoot about the British Royal Family photoshopping a family photo of the Princess of Wales. Who the hell actually cares? Filters on photos are ubiquitous these days, and unless you’re catfishing on a dating site, there’s probably nothing wrong with the practice. At least not wrong enough to merit headlines and space on the chyron at the bottom of the screen all day long.

I really want to see Joe Biden give Benjamin Netanyahu, Prime Minister of Israel, that come-to-Jesus talk that he threatened after the SOTU a few nights ago. In fact, I’d pay to see that. The spectacle of a guy who’d probably run from girl scouts too aggressively hawking thin mints, taking Netanyahu, who’s the prime minister of a country surrounded by deadly enemies, to the woodshed, is laughable.

Now I’m hearing that today the Biden administration is threatening to withhold American military support from Israel if they follow through with current plans for a new offensive in Gaza. It’s not enough that we are slowly abandoning Ukraine, which is degrading the Russian Army for us on the cheap; now we are getting ready to stab our best ally in the Middle East in the back.

With friends like us…

It’s disgraceful. Israel has every right to defend itself after what happened on October 7. Hamas has made no secret of the fact that their plan has been, all along, to count on the fact that their use of civilians as battlefield pieces would result in enough causalities to sway world opinion in their favor after a while, memories on the international front being very short.

News cycles too. What else do you expect from a media obsessed with a photoshopped image of the Princess of Wales?

Associated Press and Idaho Press Club-winning columnist Martin Hackworth of Pocatello is a physicist, writer, and retired Idaho State University faculty member who now spends his time with family, riding bicycles and motorcycles, and arranging and playing music. Follow him on Twitter @MartinHackworth, on Facebook at facebook.com/martin.hackworth, and on Substack at martinhackworthsubstack.com.