REVIEW: STAR WARS THE LAST JEDI

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In George Lucas’s original Star Wars trilogy, fans were immersed in a vast and uncharted universe rife with relics of the late Jedi order. The first film, “A New Hope,” introduced and set the stage for the main protagonists and antagonists with drips of detail to induce intrigue and wonder in the audience. Following sequels provided sustenance for fans’ fervor, delving deeper into the characters and connecting storylines.

With 2015’s “The Force Awakens,” Disney played it safe. Director JJ Abrams effectively stuck to the same script (almost literally) as “A New Hope,” and the film was highly enjoyable – discounting its lack of original storytelling, and the fact that our hero Luke Skywalker had been reduced to retirement in what could only be described as the Florida of the vast Star Wars universe.

Now on to “Episode VIII: The Last Jedi.” Before I go any further, the review will contain major spoilers. There was a slew of weaknesses in the plot (and this is aside from the fact that the movie felt drudgingly dragged out at times) that can’t be pointed out without giving anything away. But don’t be disparaged, I’m saving you from having to sit through a 152-minute long mess.

Spoilers Ahead!

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EVERYTHING YOU NEED TO KNOW ABOUT THE NET NEUTRALITY DEBATE

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The topic of net neutrality is one of the hottest debated issues of the modern day, and for good reason. We all use the internet and thus have a natural tendency to weigh in on issues regarding its regulation.

The internet, however, is a complex hierarchical structure riddled with reams of vagaries. Without first understanding them, people shouldn’t attempt to propose legislation.

Unfortunately, from Congressmen to commentators to comedians, this is exactly what we’ve been seeing regarding net neutrality.

The only hot political issue where coverage is comparably poor is that of firearms. In fact, USA Today and Vox.com tweeting out explainers on the civilian AR-15 with a chainsaw and grenade launcher attached to it is the perfect analogy for how net neutrality is covered in the media.

But before getting to net neutrality, there are some key concepts about how the internet works that need explaining.

What is the Internet?

The internet is best described as a “network of networks.” It’s divided into regions that perform different functions. Access to the internet is provided through an Internet Service Provider (ISP). The ISP you’re probably most familiar with is the one you pay directly for your home internet (for example AT&T, Verizon, or Bell Canada). These providers are known as Tier 3 providers. But ISPs do a lot more than simply sell you a home internet plan. There are also Tier 1, and Tier 2 internet service providers.

Here’s a rough sketch of the interconnected web in the United States.

Tier 1 ISPs are known as the backbone of the internet. There exist about a dozen of them around the world, and they peer with one another, thus not having to pay anyone for transit (they have no providers). Tier 1 networks can reach every other network on the internet.

Next on the internet hierarchy are Tier 2 ISPs. These are effectively a bridge between the Tier 1 internet backbone, and the Tier 3 access ISPs end users use to connect to the internet.

And finally, between all of these, we have Internet Exchange Points (IXPs). This is a large, physical exchange point where data is exchanged between peers.

For a closer look at the function these exchange points serve, here’s a second diagram.

In the above diagram, Internet Service Provider (ISP) A, B, and D are all transit networks. With reference to the above diagram, these can either be Tier 1 or Tier 2 networks. For example, AT&T, or Verizon Enterprise Solutions.

ISP C and ISP E are access-ISPs. Meaning, this is where you — a home user — connect to the global internet. You go to your local ISP and obtain a modem. This is how you gain access to the outside World Wide Web. As mentioned above, AT&T would be an example of ISP A, ISP B or ISP D (transit networks). However, AT&T also offers services as an access ISP (this is simply a different division of the company) and deals with selling customers plans for their home internet (see here.)

Lastly, on this diagram, we have two internet exchange points. Recall in the first diagram, we saw these connected IXP points between networks. (1) The New York International Internet Exchange (NYIIX) and (2) the London Internet Exchange (LIIX). These are two of the many internet exchange points that exist around the world. These physical locations are large hubs where independent networks exchange traffic with one another.

What is Net Neutrality?

Traditionally, if Google wanted access to the global internet to deliver its content to you (an end user) it would go to an ISP, and become its customer. The ISP would, in turn, provide transit to Google.

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Economists HATE This. Eliminate Poverty With This One Weird Trick: The $9000 Minimum Wage!

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On Tuesday, Ontario’s provincial government, undeterred by the province’s title-claim to the world’s most indebted sub-sovereign borrower (one-third the population of California, and twice the debt!), raised its minimum wage to a whopping $15 per hour.

Left-leaning lemmings were instantly filled with vim and vigour, proclaiming the minimum wage hike a social justice victory.

The Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) led with, “How the Liberals went from cool to hot on $15 minimum wage.” Abandoning business decay as cause for concern, CBC ran another headline, “Ontario’s minimum wage raise a ‘small business killer,’ say critics, but for many it means feeling ‘human’.”

Reveling in hysteria and self-dramatization, liberals immediately decried the new law’s detractors as being cold-hearted and uncaring toward “working class families”. As the CBC’s own headline suggests, if you oppose the government-mandated minimum wage, you oppose people “feeling human.”

Here, in no particular order, are a list of reasons Canada’s Liberal government is making a terrible mistake by raising the minimum wage.

A Minimum Wage Hike Prices Low Skilled Workers Out of the Job Market

I got my first job in the summer of 2010. I was 17 years old, working as a lifeguard earning a generous (personally, I was very happy with it) $14 per hour.

At the time, the minimum wage was around $10 per hour.

I was making close to 50% over the minimum because prior to landing the job, I’d spent more summers than I can recall taking swimming lessons, as well as taking and completing first aid and lifeguarding courses.

What do you think would happen if the bare minimum you’re legally allowed to pay an employee jumps up to $15?

Naturally, lifeguards will also need a sizeable raise to maintain an incentive for people to expend the time and money on the required training. There’d be no reason to go through the trouble of becoming a lifeguard if you’re paid the same wage as a grocery store employee, who requires no prerequisite training, and has far less responsibilities.

This also means that companies employing lifeguards will prioritize hiring and keeping people with experience. This logic applies to jobs across the board. What you’ve effectively done is price low-skilled and inexperienced workers entirely out of the labor force. Their new “minimum wage” is now zero.

Youth unemployment in Ontario is higher than the national average. A recently published government jobs report showed that despite a slight January decline in national unemployment (5,700 less persons working than January of 2016), youth unemployment in Ontario was nearly 3 times harder hit (18,900 persons between 18 and 24 working in February of 2017 than in February of 2016). The Liberal government has a genius plan to address this. Make hiring unskilled, inexperienced young people more expensive!

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Everything You Need to Know About Deep State

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What is “Deep State”?

Origins of the term “Deep State” trace back to Turkey. The Turkish term “derin devlet” – deep state – referred to a cabal of government officials with off-the-record ties to various crime syndicates. Turkish politicians leveraged these connections to carry out state-ordered killings – among other dark deeds – in efforts to silence dissenting communist Kurdish insurgents.

As noted in The Economist: “Starting in the 1950s Turkey’s deep state sponsored killings, engineered riots, colluded with drug traffickers, staged “false flag” attacks and organised massacres of trade unionists. Thousands died in the chaos it fomented.”

Deep State in America

American pundits and politicians use the term “Deep State” to describe a coordinated effort amongst appointed (unelected!) government officials – in all branches of government – to undermine and undercut the democratically elected president.

Leaking private conversations, memos and discussions in spades to whoever shares the vision of a Trump-free future (The New York Times and The Washington Post proceed to dislocate their shoulders, hyperbolically raising their arms screeching *me!*, *ME!*), these unnamed government officials attempt to erode trust and confidence in the Trump administration.

Due to their unbridled enmity for all things Trump, liberal news outlets have effectively jettisoned any semblance of journalistic ethics, opting for the Shaun King route of reporting. Forget verifying sources, if it fits the narrative it must be true!

This, in a nutshell, is how we get headlines like this from Business Insider that read, “Trump reportedly called his national security adviser at 3 a.m. to ask if the US wanted a strong or weak dollar.”
The Business Insider article cites a HuffPost piece titled “Leaks Suggest Trump’s Own Team Is Alarmed By His Conduct,” which itself attempts to verify these incendiary claims against President Trump by citing unnamed, anonymous individuals: “according to two sources familiar with Flynn’s accounts of the incident.”

As another example, The Hill – a widely read political news outlet – ran the headline “NSC officials include Trump’s name as often as possible so he reads memos: report.” The article claims, “Reported by Reuters,” which then links to a Reuters headline that reads: “Embroiled in controversies, Trump seeks boost on foreign trip.”

And if you thought, “Finally! I can now see real reputable sources,” think again! The Reuters report says, “National Security Council officials have strategically included Trump’s name in as many paragraphs as we can because he keeps reading if he’s mentioned, according to one source, who relayed conversations he had with NSC officials.” One unnamed source (just one!) is used to back up inordinate assertions about the president.

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REVIEW: The Promise: A Powerful, Memorable Film

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With “The Promise,” filmmaker Terry George, known for his 2004 Oscar-nominated “Hotel Rwanda,” set out to tell the story of 20th century’s first genocide.

Following the timeline of events that led to the Ottoman Empire’s perpetration of genocide against the Armenian population in 1915, the plot is centered around a love triangle between an Armenian student named Mikael Boghosian (played by Oscar Isaac), an Armenian from Paris named Ana Khesarian (played by Charlotte Le Bon) and an American reporter named Chris Myers (played superbly by Christian Bale).

Leaving his small Armenian village in the Ottoman Empire, Boghosian travels to the Turkish capital Constantinople to study medicine.

The film depicts Turkish-Armenian relations at a high point (“high” is meant in the vaguest sense). Many Turks still held venomously racist views towards Armenians, but they went to the same universities, lived in the same cities and shopped in the same markets (when walking through the market, a Turk exclaimed to him, “that Armenian pig will rip you off.”)

Shortly after, as the Ottoman Empire entered the First World War, Turkish aggression against the Armenian population became a mainstay of government policy. This film portrayed this accurately, as the blueprints for Adolf Hitler’s Third Reich soon spread to every village in the Ottoman Empire.

Turkish officers began rounding up Armenian intellectuals and businesspersons, executing them on a whim. Boghosian was yanked out of medical school and sent to a labor camp where he was effectively starved, and made to work while awaiting execution.

Miraculously, Boghosian escaped. Following his harrowing journey back to his home village in an attempt to save his family, the film vividly portrays the horrors of the Armenian genocide. From cargo trains packed full of prisoners, to their coerced death march through the desert where they were executed.

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THE RUSSIANS ARE COMING. QUICK, ELECT A REPUBLICAN!

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After spending the last eight years pushing the notion of foreign policy as an afterthought with America needing to “lead from behind,” Democrats have suddenly recast themselves as foreign policy hawks. Particularly towards Russia.

Following last week’s report in The Washington Post regarding Attorney General Jeff Sessions’s meetings with Russia’s US ambassador last year, Democrats collectively lost their minds, calling for Sessions’s resignation with alacrity.

That story has two key points. First, Sessions’s meetings were nothing out of the ordinary (he met with over twenty-five foreign ambassadors while in the Senate), with one of the two meetings even organized by the Obama administration. Second, Sessions attended the meeting as a member of the Armed Services Committee with no ties to the Trump campaign (hence his testimony!).

Nevertheless, sharpening her tomahawk, Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) tweeted, “And we need Attorney General Jeff Sessions – who should have never been confirmed in the first place – to resign. We need it now.”

The Washington Post’s’ Chris Cillizza wrote, “Jeff Sessions is in deep trouble. Bigly.”

The New York Times’s headline read: “Jeff Sessions Needs to Go.” Another of its op-edheadlines read: “What to Do With Jeff Sessions.”

Presumably, for the next four (eight, if they keep this up) years, liberals have concluded their best argument against securing the border and deporting criminal illegal aliens: THE RUSSIANS ARE COMING!

So, in light of the Democrat Party’s newfound infatuation with the former USSR, let’s briefly review the party’s history with Russia.

— WOODROW WILSON:

Near the end of the First World War, as the Bolsheviks’ rise to political prominence grew commensurate with increasing destabilization of the Romanov Dynasty, US troops were sent to Archangel, Murmansk, and Vladivostok. The campaign was called, ‘The Northern Russia Expedition.”

In 1917, as the Bolshevik revolution broke out, the Russian aristocracy was exiled and replaced with communists: Lenin, Trotsky, and Stalin (or, as they’re referred to at the University of California, Berkeley; The Three Wise Men)

Once the Armistice of Compiègne was signed in 1918, Woodrow Wilson withdrew US troops from the region instead of engaging the communist uprising. As a result, the Bolsheviks prevailed, and communism spread, leading to the mass slaughter of millions.

— HARRY TRUMAN:

President Harry Truman, at the Yalta conference, agreed with Joseph Stalin that Poland – along with the rest of Eastern Europe – would have free, democratically elected governments following its liberation from Nazi control. Predictably jettisoning that promise, Stalin went on to institute a communist, USSR-controlled puppet government in Poland. The Soviets went on to do the same in Albania, Bulgaria, Romania, Czechoslovakia, East Germany, and Hungary.

Truman’s efforts to halt (or even slow down) the Soviet Union’s rapid expansion into Eastern Europe and far-reaching influence into Turkey and Iran went nowhere.

And then we have Korea. For all their banal tirades of George W. Bush’s Iraq War (which he won, handily!) liberals are quick to forget about Truman’s disastrous Korean intervention. Despite no formal obligation to intervene, Truman sent an armada of US forces to Korea, against the Soviet-backed communists in the peninsula’s north. As the war escalated and it became clear that Truman didn’t have a clue what he was doing, much less a vision for victory, his approval rating dropped so low, it just barely hovered above smallpox.

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‘LAWS RESTRICTING FREE SPEECH’ ARE OUR STRENGTH

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Canada’s Liberal Party is currently spearheading Motion 103 (M-103) through Parliament. Set for debate in April, the motion calls on the government to “recognize the need to quell the increasing public climate of hate and fear” and “condemn Islamophobia and all forms of systemic racism and religious discrimination.” The motion also calls for the establishment of a governmental committee to  “undertake a study on how the government could reduce or eliminate systemic racism and religious discrimination including Islamophobia.”

As opposed to a bill (or law), M-103 is a motion. Its purpose is to “raise awareness,” drawing attention to an issue (extolling their own virtue is the Liberal Party’s raison d’être, after all). Although M-103’s passage wouldn’t change Canada’s legal system, the motion is intended to become a progenitor or future legislation.

Why do we need new motions or laws to combat “Islamophobia”? The Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms (CCRF) and the Criminal Code of Canada already protect Muslims and other religious groups. The motion ostensibly seeks to combat “systemic racism against Muslims”, despite zero evidence that Canadian laws systemically target Muslims. And if there was evidence, why doesn’t Prime Minister Justin Trudeau just change the law? He runs the government.

Moreover, “Islamophobia” is an elusively defined term. The proposed motion fails to explain what Islamophobia actually is. “Islam,” after all, is a religion. Would criticizing its tenets be considered a “phobia”?

Late last year, Liberals amended Canada’s Human Rights Act, again adding vaguely-defined terms to the CCRF: “gender expression” and “gender identity.” In effect, it became a human rights violation to refer to a biological male as a “he,” insofar as he self-identified as a woman. Motion-103 is drafted along the same lines.

Anti-Semitism – which is far more prevalent in Canada than Islamophobia – is omitted in toto. According to 2015 police data, Jews were the identified group most targeted by hate crimes in Canada, with the LGBTQ community coming in second.

The CBC – which recently published an editorial entitled, “Anti-Islamophobia motion offers a chance to take a stand against hatred. Why quibble over semantics?” –  is yet to print one (just one!) article on the Muslim Imam in Quebec delivering a sermon in which he prayed for the annihilationof the “accursed” Jews.

And if Quebecois Imams don’t make the CBC’s cut for required reporting, a Toronto Mosque, Masjid Toronto, has a story ripe for the picking. An Imam was caught on video calling for the extermination of the Jews, saying, “O Allah! Purify Al-Aqsa Mosque from the filth of the Jews!”

Recently at Toronto’s Ryerson University, the Muslim Students’ Association and Students for Justice in Palestine Jewish Persecution organized a joint protest, blocking a motion commemorating Holocaust Education Week.

But not to worry, Trudeau has a foolproof plan to combat anti-Semitism via a rapid increase of Muslim refugee admissions to Canada.

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Rebuttal to UToronto Student Newspaper’s Defense of Suppressing Free Speech

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Less than a month after anarchists, communists, and a bevy of other perpetually useless members of society shut down a speech at the University of Toronto, the school’s student newspaper, The Varsity, published a column titled “Bigotry bears no right to a platform”.

The author, Adina Heisler, a second-year gender studies major, writes,

Speakers at the event included [Jordan] Peterson, Psychology Professor who has been called transphobic by some students on campus following his Professor against political correctness YouTube lecture series…

Remember. The first rule of writing an editorial that justifies – better yet encourages – forcefully shutting down public speakers with whom you disagree politically, is to avoid fairly characterizing your opponent at all costs. Don’t bother watching Jordan Peterson’s videos, providing their links, and highlighting the exact quotes which suggest he’s a bigot, unworthy of speaking at the university that employs him. Just go ahead and write it. Be sure to back up this already-robust accusation with “has been called”.

Heisler continues:

According to protester and community activist Qaiser Ali, the protesters objected to “the fact that the university has both allowed and sanctioned an alt-right, neo-fascist hate conference starring Ezra Levant.”

Qaiser Ali – as reported by The Varsity – was one of the protesters who helped shut the event down, screaming “F-Trump, and F-white supremacy”. The only person Heisler’s interviewed in her entire editorial on why it’s ok to forcefully shut down a speech at a public university is one of the people who actually shut down a speech at a public university.

Heisler claims that she contacted Ezra Levant for comment on the article to no avail. However, I spoke to Ezra myself. He told me that nobody by the name Adina Heisler from The Varsity reached out to him.

Going forward, the author paints a truly Orwellian portrait, writing,

The protesters are correct in saying that the speakers should not have been permitted to have this platform in the first place…

…whether or not a speaker should be allowed to have space on campus cannot necessarily be boiled down to a left-versus-right issue. There are a number of reasons why we might object to having certain types of events on campus.

For example, it was completely unacceptable when Ken O’Keefe, a conspiracy theorist and Holocaust denier, was given a space to speak on campus in June 2016, because he was propagating blatantly false anti-Semitic views.

That last part is actually correct. Ken O’Keefe is a Marxist Holocaust denier who was invited to speak at the university. His speech, however, was somehow not interrupted by the same people who felt Ezra Levant was about to pull out a sword and sacrifice a transgender Syrian refugee he had locked up in a cage somewhere.

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Back in the USSR. You Don’t Know How Lucky You Are, Boy

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On Saturday, left-wing protesters abruptly shut down a University of Toronto (UofT) lecture hosted by Generation Screwed and Students in Support of Free Speech. After screaming “No Trump, no KKK, no Fascist USA”, the liberal activists proceeded to pull the university fire alarm, forcing everyone out of the building.

The panel had several speakers, including Rebel Media’s Ezra Levant and University of Toronto professor Jordan Peterson – who rose to infamy in 2016 after sparking liberal hysteria, suggesting that there are fewer genders than Baskin Robbins ice cream flavors. The topic of discussion was fiscal responsibility and free speech – it was also held in Canada, raising the question why on Earth the protesters would chant “Trump” or “USA”.

This deliberate disruption by the social justice cabal comes less than a week after college campus liberals in the United States tried shutting down Rebel Media commentator Gavin McInnes in New York University. Gavin was dismayed to discover that “tolerance” apparently comes packaged as pepper-spray, as he was full-on assaulted by the “protesters”.

Adding insult to injury, a woman claiming to be an NYU professor began berating police officers ASKING THEM TO ASSAULT Gavin McInnes. Remember when the left suggested police brutality was a bad thing?

The NYU speech debacle was just mere days after California communist rioters shut down Milo Yiannopoulos from speaking at the University of California, Berkeley. As reported by Tucker Carlson, people in black masks began hurling rocks at the building Yiannopoulos was scheduled to appear in. The social justice AntiFa intifada set the campus ablaze, forcing the Conservative commentator into immediate evacuation.

If you’re thinking Milo Yiannopoulos being an openly gay immigrant, who boasts about sleeping with black men would in any way preclude him from being a “xenophobic racist homophobe”… Don’t forget, he’s a right-wing Trump supporter.

And we’re not done yet! Just one week ago, Marquette University’s program assistant for the Center for Gender and Sexuality Studies was caught attempting to sabotage an upcoming lecture by Daily Wire editor-in-chief Ben Shapiro, rounding up reams of students to protest the event.

Over the past decade, political violence has been increasingly normalized on the far-left. We’ve come to a point where forcefully shutting down events is no longer some offshoot occurrence when a professional provocateur like Pam Geller is invited to speak and draw Mohamed cartoons with crayon.

Today, it’s practically leftist dogma. Try finding me one notable conservative speaker who’s successfully been able to deliver a speech on a college campus without security having to show up. Just one.

It’s about time we stop referring to these acts as protests. They’re not protests. You can read Merriam-Webster’s dictionary definition of what protests are here (before liberals have it banned).

Protesters didn’t pull the fire alarm on Ezra Levant, start a fire at Milo Yiannopoulos’s venue or pepper-spray Gavin McInnes (all in the last seven days!). Soviet-style fascists did.

Ironically, the social justice juggernaut flavor-of-the-month label is “AntiFa”, an abbreviation of “anti-fascism”.

When you’re dressed in black, with a mask covering your face and are violently seeking to shut down speech, you can scream “I’m anti-fascist!” as much as you want. Despite what your fervid imagination would have you believe, you’re still the fascist.

Whether it’s screaming “fascist KKK” like a petulant child, pulling fire alarms, starting actual fires or pepper-spraying people – which apparently is justified because they’re Nazis! – the far-left has somehow convinced itself they’re Seal Team 6 tasked with taking out Bin Laden anytime a conservative shows up to campus.

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Barack Obama’s Foreign Policy Of Appeasement And Broken Promise To The Armenians

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In his initial 2008 run for office presidential candidate Barack Obama said this to the Armenian community: “Two years ago, I criticized the secretary of state for the firing of U.S. Ambassador to Armenia, John Evans, after he properly used the term ‘genocide’ to describe Turkey’s slaughter of thousands of Armenians starting in 1915. … As president I will recognize the Armenian Genocide.”

In a transcript posted on his own website (it’s now deleted and only viewable on the internet archives) Obama states:

Genocide, sadly, persists to this day, and threatens our common security and common humanity. Tragically, we are witnessing in Sudan many of the same brutal tactics – displacement, starvation, and mass slaughter – that were used by the Ottoman authorities against defenseless Armenians back in 1915 … America deserves a leader who speaks truthfully about the Armenian Genocide and responds forcefully to all genocides. I intend to be that President.

This was Obama’s great paean to morality and human rights back in 2008 – Prior to him officially taking office.

Before I break down why this is one of the biggest letdowns of the Obama legacy (yes, bigger than Obamacare), here’s a quick history lesson.

As of 301 A.D., Armenia became the first Christian nation in history. For centuries, the country flourished and grew. Things took a turn for the worse roughly around the 15th century, when Armenia was absorbed by the Islamic Ottoman Empire.

As the Ottoman empire crumbled through the 1800’s, Armenians grew weary living as second-class citizens under the Islamic regime. As they pushed for independence, the Ottoman Turks objected violently. In the mid-1890’s, the Sultan unleashed an armada, massacring some 300,000 Armenians in what would be called Hamidian massacres.

Years later, during the early 20th century, Ottoman reformers known as the Young Turks ousted the Sultan. Eventually, a trio of Islamists from the Young Turks, known as the Pashas, seized power. Perceiving the resilient Christian Armenian population as a threat, they set out to exterminate them. On April 24, 1915, 250 Armenian intellectuals and community leaders were rounded up and shipped off to be executed.  Through the First World War, the Ottoman Turks carried out what became the first genocide of the 20th century, wiping out 75 percent of the Armenian population – a million and a half human beings.

Being masked by the scope and scale of the First World War, the unspeakable Ottoman atrocity was not instantly known to the rest of the world.

The phrase “Armenian genocide” did not even appear in the New York Times until 2004. (The New York Times taking 89 years to accurately report something is actually better than their usual record.)

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