Free Republic

Revolutions are known to devour their children, and popular uprisings driven by the promise of change for the better have been notorious for turning into nightmares. The so-called Arab Spring is another dark night unfolding across the Middle East. This was predictable, and inevitable. The Tunisian fruit-seller who sparked this Arab Spring by self-immolating was a man driven to despair by the very culture into which he was born, and from which he knew there was no escape. The act of self-immolation was a terrible display of despair of a desperate man. And so is the political drama in Arab...

TORONTO – A Toronto school is no longer allowing children to play with most balls during recess. Earl Beatty Public School sent a letter to student’s homes on Monday informing them of the decision to ban most balls from use on school grounds. According to the letter, over the past few weeks, there have been “a few serious incidents of parents, staff and students being hit by a hard ball or nearly being hit by a hard ball” in the schoolyard. There was no information as to injuries of people hit by hard balls. The students are still allowed to...

HLN's Joy Behar and panel discuss Toronto Zoo's decision to temporarily separate "gay penguin" pair so they can procreate.

Drug overdose reported at Occupy Toronto site11/09/2011 | Shawne McKeown, CityNews.ca A man was rushed to hospital after he suffered a reported drug overdose Tuesday at Occupy Toronto’s home base at a downtown park. The incident happened after a 23-year-old woman was found dead at the Occupy Vancouver site Friday after an overdose. Paramedics in Toronto were called to St. James Park, at King and Church streets, late Tuesday morning to take the man, said to be in his 20s, to hospital, according to published reports. His condition wasn’t said to be life-threatening.

Six beautiful photos with captions of the show. Fruits and vegetables planted in Canada are displayed during the Royal Agricultural Winter Fair at Canadian National Exhibition in Toronto, Canada, on Nov. 4, 2011. The ten-day 2011 Royal Agricultural Winter Fair that opened here on Friday is one of the largest combined indoor agricultural fair in the world.(Xinhua/Zou Zheng)

I’ve written several times previously about the Toronto District School Board, the Valley Park Middle School, and the controversy over officially approved sex-segregated Muslim prayers at the school during school hours. Sergei Bourachaga sends the following essay examining the issue in the larger context of the treatment of women in Islam, and creeping sharia in Ontario.

Asking white people to mirror the movements of a black person lowers their levels of implicit prejudiceNew research shows that you can reduce racial prejudice simply by having a person mimic the movements of a member of the race he or she is prejudiced against. The method may work by activating brain mechanisms that contribute to feelings of empathy. Normally, when we watch another person perform an action, our brain activity changes as we mentally simulate the other person. But the brain activity is less strong when we're watching people from other racial groups, and is least strong among people...

A top Iranian banker who resigned amid a massive embezzlement scandal, one that has soured the political fortunes of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, has fled the country and is reported to be in the Toronto area – where a $3-million home is owned in his name. The scandal is described as the biggest fraud in that country’s history. The amounts of money involved exceed even the $2-billion loss the Swiss bank UBS recently sustained due to a rogue trader.

TORONTO - This Toronto dad is just not ready to explain to his first-grade son about transgender people, prostitutes, AIDS or female genital mutilation. So one can imagine his shock when he found these issues listed as special days of recognition in his son’s Toronto District School Board 2011-12 daily planner. “I was looking through this thing and was shocked by the kind of days they are marking as ‘days of significance,’” he said. The first one that jumped out at him, under a headline that said “equitable and inclusive,” was Nov. 19’s Transgender Day of Remembrance. Then came Dec....

A young Toronto girl testified Friday at the second-degree murder trial of her mother, Melissa Lewis, who is accused in the stabbing death of the girl's father in Toronto last year.

Hollywood star Gerard Butler increased his security team at the Toronto Film Festival over the weekend after receiving death threats. The "300" star has been promoting his role in controversial movie "Machine Gun Preacher," a true-life story based on a Hells Angel who rescues orphans in Muslim-dominant Sudan after converting to Christianity.

Infiltration of the federal government by members of the radical Muslim Brotherhood is worse than some have warned recently, says a former FBI special agent in Washington. The agent confirmed that at least three operatives of the Egypt-based Brotherhood – whose credo is "Jihad is our way and death in the cause of Allah is our dream" – have penetrated the Obama administration. The shocking charge was first leveled by Muslim reformer Tarek Fatah during a recent speech in Toronto. "Today in the White House, there are three members of the Muslim Brotherhood that influence Obama's policy," he told the...

Concerned that Toronto Catholic schools will adopt a policy promoting tolerance of homosexuality, a Coptic Orthodox priest is calling upon parents to consider withdrawing their children from the schools. “In these young grades, we don’t want teachers talking about God creating Adam and Steve,” said Father Jeremiah Attaalla, who ministers at Ti Agia Maria and St. Demiana Coptic Orthodox Church in west Toronto. “It’s Adam and Eve.” “Our members do not want gay-straight alliance groups in our Catholic schools,” added the priest, who says that 4,000 Coptic Orthodox children attend the schools. “We will pull our children from the Catholic...

The words “Islam will rule” are scrawled on a brick wall in black paint beneath a red and black swastika. Similar stencilled red and black swastikas have been reported in two other locations in Toronto this month, said Anita Bromberg, the national director of legal affairs for B’nai Brith Canada. Both a Korean-language church not far from Beth Tikvah and a laneway near Avenue Rd. and Roselawn Ave. were defaced

At one time, the term 'racist' was among the most devastating one could use. Being labelled with it would lower you down to the perceived level of the Klu Klux Klan, Apartheid, and even Nazi Germany. There were a few things you never wanted to be known as, and racist was one of them. But the term, like so many others, has been hijacked and twisted into something else. Using the disdain associated with the word to full advantage, the political left has transformed the concept of racism into a weapon, firing at anything that would hamper their progression towards...

A Chinese woman studying in Canada was fatally attacked in her Toronto apartment as her friend watched helplessly from a webcam in China. Qian Liu, 23, was found dead Friday morning in an apartment near York University, where she was enrolled in an English-language program. Liu, who was originally from Beijing, was chatting online with a man her friends have identified as her boyfriend in the early hours of Friday morning when she answered a knock on the door and was attacked, police said. The Chinese man with whom she had been chatting told police he watched in horror as...

A police officer who said women could avoid sexual assault by not dressing like “sluts” in an address to law students college has apologised. Constable Michael Sanguinetti made the stunning remark during a meeting about safety at Toronto's York University. While a more senior officer was talking, Mr. Sanguinetti interrupted and reportedly said: 'You know, I think we’re beating around the bush here. I’ve been told I’m not supposed to say this, however, women should avoid dressing like sluts in order not to be victimized.

A Toronto man says he’s having a dog of a time trying to figure out why police charged him in an alleged canine theft case in the city’s east end. Sean Dunkley showed up at the Sun newsroom Monday to tell his side of the story after the dogknapping case he’s charged in connection with was featured on the front page of Monday’s Toronto Sun. “Do you think this is a joke — some kind of sick joke this guy is playing on me?” Dunkley asked. “Now I’ve got (the story) on the front page of the Sun and people...

Criticizing Islam may get you a court summons in Canada. But calling the Jews “privileged racists” who intentionally exploit the memory of the Holocaust to generate political power may just get you a graduate degree. The University of Toronto has come under heavy criticism for accepting a master’s thesis from an anti-Israel activist that accuses the Jewish community of deliberately using Holocaust-remembrance programs to create a false impression of Jewish victimhood, in order to make it easier for Jews to push “racist” and “apartheid” policies in Israel: The thesis, titled “The Victimhood of the Powerful: White Jews, Zionism and the...

“Put that in your pipe you left-wing kooks,” hockey commentator Don Cherry told a shocked inaugural meeting of the new city council, blasting “left-wing pinkos.” Cherry was Mayor Rob Ford’s pick for a “special guest” for the pomp-filled ceremony. Cherry turned up in a pink-and-white silk jacket and patterned tie that was eye-popping even for the famously flamboyant TV star. The co-host of Hockey Night in Canada’s Coach’s Corner put the chain of office around Ford’s neck — something normally done by the city clerk — and then sat stoically, clapping as each of the 44 councillors got their ceremonial...