Opinion
From mass graves to mass hysteria
The grounds of the former Kamloops Indian Residential School in British Columbia, where some believe Indigenous students may be buried — though there have not been any excavations. – Reuters
The Opposition with Dan Knight
A Canadian Teacher Fired for Challenging the Narrative on Residential Schools—Where’s the Evidence, Where’s the Justice?
I am a teacher buffeted daily by the chill winds of political indoctrination, censorship, conformity, and anti-education in schools.
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The New York Post reported this month that “after two years of horror stories about the alleged mass graves of Indigenous children at residential schools across Canada, a series of recent excavations at suspected sites has turned up no human remains.” In July 2021 the Assembly of First Nations claimed the “mass grave discovered at the former Kamloops Indian Residential School was proof of a “pattern of genocide against Indigenous Peoples that must be thoroughly examined.”
Yet the Canadian government already examined residential schools from 2008-15 through The Truth and Reconciliation Commission, with Commission Chair Murray Sinclair telling the media the number of missing children “could be in the 15-25,000 range, and maybe even more.” To date there has not been a single missing child identified, and not a single document from a parent or chief indicating a child was missing from any of the almost 150 schools over almost 150 years.
I’m not ignorant of the subject of our past as I am informed on the subject of Indian Residential Schools as I am a member of the pan-Canadian Indian Residential Schools Research Group. I also did a Master’s degree in Educational History with specialization in Indian Educational Policy under the supervision of Dr. Robert Carney, who was once the leading expert on the schools. I also obtained a Ph.D. from the University of Toronto where I argued A Case Against Censorship in Literature Education. Professionally, I have taught in high schools, elementary schools, and colleges and was for a time Principal of Neuchâtel Junior College in Switzerland. My last position was in Abbotsford as a senior French Immersion History teacher. It is to Abbotsford that I now turn, for that is where I was fired.
One fateful day in May 2021 I was teaching Calculus 12 at a high school named after the painter Robert Bateman where news was feverishly spread about the discovery of the remains of 215 children in a mass grave at the site of the long-shuttered Kamloops Indian Residential School. The principal used the PA system to ask teachers to stop their regular instruction to navigate the upsetting news with students. In this context, I spoke about the history of residential schools, the dislocation and despair of prairie First Nations (most residential schools being located in the Canadian west), the Indian Act (1876) and its authors’ intentions to support its most marginalized communities, the role of the church as teachers and proselytizers, and the reports of abuse and neglect.
As it was a math class, some of the students were uninterested or bored by my history soliloquy, but one girl spoke up to say the schools represented “cultural genocide.” I agreed with her by saying that modern western schooling was mandatory for indigenous children after 1920, and a third of these children were placed in residential schools (another third attending day schools, and the final third receiving no education at all).
I considered the discussion to be like any other, with some students engaged and others on their phone or quietly doing equations, until a second student, flush with anger and indignancy, reacted to my comment that children who died tragically while enrolled in residential schools did so mostly from disease. She said the Christian teachers in Kamloops (Oblate priests and brothers as well as nuns from the Catholic order The Sisters of St. Ann) were “murderers who tortured students to death by leaving them out in the snow to die.”
I didn’t say anything more, for I feared an argument, and directed students to return to their Calculus work. The class was given a break a few minutes later, and unbeknownst to me the girl complained to a counsellor, who told the principal, who told the district, and before class was over that day, I had a visit from two male administrators who commanded me in front of my students to gather my things and leave. While being frog-marched through the corridor I repeatedly asked what I had done wrong, but they wouldn’t answer. When I was close to the front door I turned to them and said I wouldn’t be leaving without hearing from the principal what I had done. This request was granted, but all the principal would say to me was that it was something I said.
My suspension ended after eight months when the district released its investigator’s report, to which senior management appended a charge of professional misconduct, as the following excerpts show:
“While acting as a TOC for a Calculus 12 class, Mr. McMurtry…inferring [sic] that many of the deaths were due to disease was in opinion inflammatory, inappropriate, insensitive, and contrary to the district’s message of condolences and reconciliation.”
“He left students with the impression some or all of the deaths could be contributed to ‘natural causes’ and that the deaths could not be called murder.”
“Both Mr. McMurtry and student accounts had some students passionately saying the deaths were murder, [and] the graves were mass graves.”
“[We] consider this to be extremely serious professional misconduct.”
While on suspension I dug into the grave story of murdered children and found I was right. Indeed, there was no discovery at all at the residential school in Kamloops in the middle of the Tkʼemlúps te Secwépemc reserve. No graves. No bodies. No murder weapons. No police investigation. No historical record or documentation from a parent or tribal leader of a missing child. Nonetheless, prime minister Justin Trudeau unilaterally ordered that our country lower its flag from coast to coast and in our embassies around the world for over five months, though all that Culture/Media professor Sarah Beaulieu (the sole source of the story) found, using ground-penetrating radar in an abandoned apple orchard on the reserve, were soil anomalies, likely sewage trenches or tiles from 1924. My judgment day was February 21, 2023. The Abbotsford School District trustees had to pronounce on a recommendation for termination from management. That very day I saw that the National Post featured my story on Page 1. I was suddenly under a deluge of support from many media platforms, especially Rebel News which sent a reporter to cover the disciplinary hearing. I boldly predicted in front of supporters that my case was strong and the tide in Canada was turning against cancel culture and its witch hunts, but I was wrong. I was fired and will likely never teach again. Canadian historian Marcel Trudel wrote:
“There is nothing more dangerous than history used as a defense; or history used for preaching; history used as a tool is no longer history.”
I would add that there is nothing more dangerous, in these times, than teaching history truthfully.
In my termination letter this February the case against me changed again, this time it was no longer about what I said but only my “inflammatory, inappropriate, and insensitive tone” that one day two years ago. Then this August I received a letter from the regulatory body for teachers, called the Teaching Regulation Branch (formerly the BC College of Teachers), which changed the case against me again. Now I am accused of “falsely suggesting that student deaths at the schools were comparable to the general child mortality rate and not the result of a government strategy of cultural genocide.” In the same letter the TRB calls for the cancellation of my teaching certificate for life… before my case has arrived at arbitration, before an arbitrator has been chosen or dates have even been set, and long before the merits of my case have been fairly determined.
In Kafka’s play The Trial there is a familiar quotation:
“Someone must have been telling lies about Josef K., he knew he had done nothing wrong but, one morning, he was arrested.”
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Great Reset
All 49 GOP senators call on Biden admin to withdraw support for WHO pandemic treaty
From LifeSiteNews
By Stephen Kokx
U.S. Sen. Ron Johnson warned that two international agreements are being considered at this month’s World Health Assembly that surrender U.S. sovereignty to the World Health Organization
Sen. Ron Johnson of Wisconsin has rallied every Republican in the U.S. Senate to sign an open letter warning the Biden administration to not support pandemic-related measures being considered at the World Health Assembly (WHA) later this month.
“Some of the over 300 proposals for amendments made by member states would substantially increase the (World Health Organization’s) health emergency powers and constitute intolerable infringements upon U.S. sovereignty,” they wrote.
Two international agreements are being considered at this month’s World Health Assembly that surrenders U.S. sovereignty to the WHO. @POTUS should reject them, or at least submit any agreement to the Senate as a treaty.
The entire Senate GOP conference has signed onto my… pic.twitter.com/a3IBoE2DeD
— Senator Ron Johnson (@SenRonJohnson) May 2, 2024
The WHA is the decision-making body of the World Health Organization (WHO). Its annual meeting sets policies for its 194 member nations. This year’s gathering, the 77th such undertaking, will be held from May 27 to June 1 in Geneva, Switzerland.
Johnson and all 48 of his colleagues informed the Biden administration that they consider the WHO’s widely criticized Pandemic Agreement a formal treaty that requires 2/3rd approval from the Senate per Article II Section 2 of the Constitution.
“Instead of addressing the WHO’s well-documented shortcomings, the treaty focuses on mandated resource and technology transfers, shredding intellectual property rights, infringing free speech, and supercharging the WHO,” they maintained. “The WHO’s most recent publicly available draft of its new pandemic response treaty is dead on arrival.”
A growing number of public figures as well as U.S. states and elected officials have raised the alarm about the Pandemic Agreement in recent months.
During an appearance on Tucker Carlson’s podcast in January, liberal intellectual Bret Weinstein argued that the WHO is gearing up for a “re-run” of COVID-19 in order to set up a “totalitarian planet.” He noted that the agreement is being modified so the WHO will have even more power to crack down on voices that dissent from Big Pharma’s narrative.
On Thursday, April 18, a group of GOP lawmakers and conservative activists similarly warned about the agreement at a press conference on Capitol Hill organized by the Sovereignty Coalition.
‘Not Now’ Campaign to Defend America’s Sovereignty Against WHO https://t.co/ThSRYgGHtP
— Sovereignty Coalition (@sovcoalition) April 18, 2024
“The treaty would put us under the thumb of the UN and communist China and the WHO for whatever they wanted to declare a crisis, whether it’s poverty crisis, or a gun violence crisis or a climate crisis, or a health crisis, and make us listen to the WHO. That is not constitutional,” Rep. Bob Good of Virginia exclaimed.
Johnson has been one of the most consistent voices in the Senate to expose the dangers of the COVID shot as well as the collusion taking place between the mainstream media and the medical industry. In February, he organized a roundtable discussion titled “Federal Health Agencies and the COVID Cartel: What Are They Hiding?” Dr. Robert Malone, vaccine expert Del Bigtree, GOP Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor-Greene, and many others attended.
Johnson and his GOP colleagues further drew the Biden administration’s attention to the WHO’s poor track record.
“The WHO’s failure during the COVID-19 pandemic was as total as it was predictable and did lasting harm to our country,” they wrote. “The United States cannot afford to ignore this latest WHO inability to perform its most basic function and must insist on comprehensive WHO reforms before even considering amendments to the International Health Regulations (IHR) or any new pandemic-related treaty that would increase WHO authority. We are deeply concerned that your administration continues to support these initiatives and strongly urge you to change course.”
They concluded that “in light of the high stakes for our country and our constitutional duty, we call upon you to (1) withdraw your administration’s support for the current IHR amendments and pandemic treaty negotiations, (2) shift your administration’s focus to comprehensive WHO reforms that address its persistent failures without expanding its authority, and (3) should you ignore these calls, submit any pandemic related agreement to the Senate for its advice and consent.”
conflict
Immigration Experts Warn Possible Biden Plan To Import Gazan Refugees Would Be ‘National Security Disaster’
From the Daily Caller News Foundation
Immigration experts are warning that a reported Biden administration plan to import Palestinians as refugees would pose a unique threat to the United States.
Internal federal government documents leaked to the media on Tuesday indicated that the Biden White House is considering options on how to provide permanent safe haven to Palestinians living in war-torn Gaza. While no official plan has been announced or implemented, many in the government and immigration field have sounded the alarm on the potential consequences of such a move.
Experts who spoke to the Daily Caller News Foundation framed the reported plan as contrary to the country’s interests, warned of the risks of importing poorly-vetted foreign nationals with potential terror ties and encouraged the Biden administration to instead relocate these refugees to a nearby region within the Middle East.
“This is an absurd plan that places woke ideology above the public safety and national security concerns of American citizens,” Matt O’Brien, director of investigations for the Immigration Reform Law Institute, told the DCNF.
O’Brien noted that Hamas is no longer just a designated terrorist organization in the Gaza strip, but the official government of the enclave: “That means an inordinate number of Gazans are going to have direct ties to Hamas — because they voted it into power — and it will be impossible to vet them because we can’t trust records compiled by their chosen government,” he said.
“The smarter thing to do would be to arrange for a third country in the Middle East to provide temporary refuge to any Gazan’s who are allegedly in need of protection,” he continued. “But allowing Gazans into the U.S. in large numbers will only set America up for a large-scale national security disaster.”
Congressional leaders have also noted the ideological extremism in the Gazan population, and what that could mean for everyday Americans if they are welcomed here en masse.
Iowa GOP Sen. Joni Ernst led a delegation of 34 Republican senators earlier this week in demanding President Joe Biden stop his purported plan. In their letter to the president, the senators noted the incredibly high number of Gazans currently supporting Hamas and how, because of the numerous logistical hurdles that come with importing migrants from a war-torn region halfway around the world, it would be nearly impossible to conduct proper vetting of all of them.
“We are confused as to why the United States is willing to accept Gazan refugees when even nearby Arab countries supportive of the Palestinian cause refuse to take them in due to security concerns,” the senators wrote.
Their letter demanded answers on how many Gazans the administration wants to accept and how exactly applicants will be screened to ensure no one with terrorist sympathies is allowed into the U.S.
If polling in the region is accurate, the American government will have a difficult time weeding out those who have extremists ties.
A survey released by the Palestinian Center for Policy and Research in March found that 71% of Palestinians supported Hamas’ Oct. 7 massacre on Israeli civilians. A mere 5% of the Palestinians surveyed said they believed the Oct. 7 attack to be a war crime.
Polls conducted in months past also indicated a rise in support for Hamas among the Gazan population after the Oct. 7 massacre.
“Every American should be deeply concerned about reports that the Biden administration is planning on implementing a program to bring Gazans into the United States,” Eric Ruark, director of research and public relations for NumbersUSA, stated to the DCNF.
Ruark echoed calls to relocate Gazans displaced by the fighting to a nearby region, in lieu of using the crisis as another way to bring more foreign nationals permanently into the U.S. He predicted that the administration would make a humanitarian argument in favor of relocating Gazans to the U.S., but added that the White House’s border policies made it clear that “humanitarianism is the least of its priorities.”
Egypt has long maintained security measures to keep Gazans from entering the Sinai, including a concrete wall topped with concertina wire and military personnel at the Rafah border.
It remains to be seen how exactly the Biden administration would go about bringing the Gazan refugees over. The Department of Homeland Security did not respond to a request for comment from the DCNF.
One proposal involves implementing the U.S. Refugee Admissions Program to accept those with American ties and already have escaped into Egypt, according to government documents reviewed by CBS News. Top administration officials have also reportedly discussed processing Gazans as refugees if they have American relatives.
The Palestinians who pass a slate of security, medical and eligibility screenings would qualify for refugee status, which can then offer them permanent residency, resettlement benefits and a pathway to U.S. citizenship.
All the logistics that come with such strategies, however, would require coordination and cooperation with Egypt, a bordering Arab country that has so far remained vehemently opposed to accepting a large number of Gazans — a detail that isn’t lost on critics of the Biden administration’s plan.
“Egypt and other Arab countries are refusing to take in Palestinian refugees from Gaza,” RJ Hauman, president of the National Immigration Center for Enforcement (NICE), said in a statement to the DCNF. “Instead of recognizing why that is and acting in our national interest, Biden wants to ramp up the dangerous trend of bringing in unvetted and potentially dangerous individuals who hate us.”
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