Commentary

Im not quite sure when counselling people to make their bed every morning became a seditious act of far-right extremism, but according to a coalition in the nations capital, the two are linked.

Starting each day with a completed task such as tucking the sheets in is among Jordan Petersons tips in his book 12 Rules for Life: An Antidote to Chaos, which has now been on Amazons list of best-sellers for 256 weeks. He may be internationally renowned as a leading public intellectual, but in Canada some people want him shut down.

Three dozen self-described Ottawa community organizations want their city council to ban Peterson from speaking on Jan. 30 at the Canadian Tire Centre.

As we approach the one-year anniversary of the so-called Freedom Convoy, the last thing we need is a spokesperson of the far-right taking centre stage in our city, Jaime Sadgrove, manager of communications and advocacy for the Canadian Centre for Gender and Sexual Diversity, told the Ottawa Citizen.

Fae Johnstone, a critic from the trans community, chimed in on Twitter: Proud to join over three dozen organizations across Ottawa calling on the @CdnTireCtr to cancel their upcoming event with misogynistic, racist and transphobic Jordan Peterson.

And as Johnstone told the Citizen: His message puts marginalized folks at risk.

And there you have itsome pretty clear outlines of the arguments that will be used to suppress speech in Canada in the coming years. Disagreeable phrases, or even thoughts, put people at risk. Never mind Peterson (he can take care of himself), the real concern going forward for the rest of us is how deftly the radical left has led the charge for censorship.

So far, theyve been stunningly successful in shaping the conversation to their liking. Really, theyve run the table and as it stands theres no reason to think they wont continue to do so.

They have done it by conquering the narrative. Words that offend have swiftly transitioned from offensive or eew to acts of hate that can inspire violence. When they choose, even silence is violence. People of colour are now racializeda far more active term which has swiftly been adopted, unopposed, by most corporate human resource departments. Inconvenient facts are unashamedly labelled disinformation.

Catholic priests are about to be banned as chaplains in the Canadian Armed Forces because their church maintains views that allegedly make them incapable of spiritual compassion when it comes to women and gay soldiers and sailors. They, it is feared, may feel more uncomfortable in the chaplains presence than they are grasping for the salvation of their immortal souls.

Most of us may never have met one, but public servants are taught in education sessions that white supremacists and their attitudes are stitched throughout the fabric of society and, as critical race theory gets adopted unimpaired by intellectual review, its now accepted that all white people are irredeemably racist. Nerves are so raw that, for instance, theUniversity of Southern California has removed the term field from its curriculum due to racist connotations. In reports concerning cancer screening, some media refer to people with cervixes rather than use the term women.

Its a minefield. And a very cleverly designed one at that.

It is the foundation upon which Heritage Minister Pablo Rodriguez will build legislation restricting freedom of expression. As most folks know by now, governments can legitimately argue for restricted speech when it is linked to harm. To put it simply, a trained psychologist like Jordan Peterson standing up on a stage in Ottawa and claiming that people with penises might not be actual women is the 21st-century equivalent of shouting Fire! in a crowded theatre. And whether its true or not just doesnt matter.

Just ask J.K. Rowling who, although she has never spoken one harsh word against a member of the trans community, continues to be given the bums rush from polite society, as Brendan ONeill put it recently in the Spectator.

What has really happened is that belief in biological sex has been redefined as bigotry, he wrote. Standing up for womens sex-based rights has been rebranded as transphobia. So Rowlings perfectly normal views, which are likely shared by most people out there, can be talked about as hate crimes when they are nothing of the kind.

British author and political commentator Konstantin Kisin, who is about as middle of the political road as it gets, has similarly found himself shunned by some media for his efforts to bring reason to the woke, recently through a very popular speech to the Oxford Union. And yet:

Funny how people attack me for going on right-leaning media, he tweeted. Do you know that not ONE left-leaning publication or TV show has invited me on to talk about my speech? Not one.

Thoughts and words that once were viewed as merely contentious or disagreeable are now subjected to the most severe opprobrium from segments of society previously deemed radical but which are now termed moderate. The moderatesthe sort of people who like to make their beds every morningare now the extremists. Resist and you risk being branded an ally of all the evils listed above.

Hyperbolic neo-puritanism isnt just winning, its poised to codify its victory in legislation, after which there will be no going back. And, as history teaches, those who suppress free expression never turn out to be the good guys.

Views expressed in this article are the opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.

Peter Menzies is a senior fellow with the Macdonald-Laurier Institute, an award winning journalist, and former vice-chair of the CRTC.

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Peter Menzies: Ottawa's Speech-Restricting Legislation Built on Same Foundation That Aims to Silence Peterson ... - The Epoch Times

Can we know and choose meanings and values that will make us worthwhile and happy? Can we know who we are and ought to be? Can we know ourselves, construct community and relate to God and others wisely and well?

Jordan Peterson argues we can find meaning even in the chaos and suffering of life. Bernard Lonergan, S.J., demonstrates how to transcend ourselves in knowledge, how to heal our culture, how to discern and discover truth, and how to relate to the loving mystery of God. Father Lonergan shows us the way to progress and how to counter the forces of decline. These two Canadians address our punishingly polarized, religious and cultural controversiesbut in radically different ways.

Peterson, a public intellectual, global phenomenon and omnipresent YouTube star, is a clinical psychologist and a superb speaker. He revels in denouncing the postmodern denizens of contemporary academe. He discovers deep meaning in everything from academic journals to biblical stories to classical literature to Disney movies to Harry Potter to the lives of his two children. Peterson decries Jacques Derridas proposition that all is interpretation and Michel Foucaults assertion that everything is just a struggle for power.

Peterson preaches that our existence is structured by natural hierarchies, rooted in nature. Inequality has its benefits (although he realizes too much inequality is eventually destructive). Gender fluidity, most leftist ideologies and some contemporary movements for social justice (e.g., Black Lives Matter) are targets of his withering critiques. He argues that such utopian visions are ultimately harmful to the persons they pretend to assist. He is rightly haunted by his extensive studies of the worst people, places and events of the 20th century: Hitlers atrocities, Stalins gulag, Maos cultural revolution and the Khmer Rouges killings.

He defends capitalism, supports those who lean toward the maintenance of the status quo, and questions those who too quickly and unreflectively tear apart established orders without knowing where such revolutionary energies eventually lead.

For Peterson, the best we can do is devise strategies for balancing the threatening forces of chaos with order, characterized by sensible freedom and societal compromises that do not allow liberties to develop into tyrannies. His astute analysis of the difficulties of perception calls attention to the ways in which our own internal functioning(s) cause us to see the world in certain ways. Curiously, he approaches questions of being and God but pulls back from definitive pronouncements on such matters. Maybe this is a sign of an admirable heuristic humility. But in the final analysis, he offers more means of survival than reasons for transformative grace and hope.

Petersons two best-sellers, 12 Rules for Life and Beyond Order (along with his earlier academic tome, Maps of Meaning), provide observations and stories, many from Petersons personal life and clinical practice. Like Scott Pecks 1978 The Road Less Traveled, whose first words were life is difficult, Peterson begins with the pain and suffering of human existence. He trumpets his message, especially to young men: Get your act together. Dont expect anyone to make life easy for you. Confronting lifes inevitable tragedies and tribulations requires sacrifice. Get off the couch in your parents basement. Choose a path. Work to make things the way you want. Be honest, truthful and wise. Be strong. Be heroic. In doing so, you will find a meaningful life and be a worthwhile person.

Among the Canadian Jesuit Bernard Lonergans works are two major undertakings: Insight: A Study of Human Understanding (1957) and Method in Theology (1972). Both are demanding but rewarding reading (hint: Start with Method). Lonergan describes our lives as part of cosmic processes of emergent probability. Cycles of progress and decline characterize human history.

The rock on which we can build is the transcultural, transtemporal, self-evident fact of the deep and disinterested desire to know that characterizes human persons. To disagree with Lonergans starting point is contradictory: Such disagreement demonstrates the desire to know at issue. For Lonergan, the act of understanding reveals our cognitional structure, which reveals a metaphysics (what is really real and true) and ushers forth an ethics (the revelation of what we ought to do).

Lonergans method is transcendental. The appropriation and practicing of Lonergans method lead us beyond ourselves to relations with others and, ultimately, God. The point is self-appropriation of our consciousness, i.e., awareness, on the levels of experiencing, understanding, judging and deciding. Each of these levels reveal intrinsic transcendental precepts, or rules: Be attentive, be intelligent, be reasonable, be responsible. I would add that creative action calls us to be loving.

Lonergan profoundly analyzes evil rooted in the reality of bias. As much as we desire to know and desire to come to the act of insight, we can be blind or obstinate, and thus can resist the challenges of the transcendental precepts mentioned above. Bias operates on personal and communal levels. We screen out data (e.g., racists refusal to realize that other races are equal); communities and cultures can become corrupt (e.g., Nazi abominations); one can authentically appropriate an unauthentic culture and meaning system.

Bias also can infect our common sense, causing us to judge social problems in overly simplistic ways. Take gun control as an example. Many people coming from theoretical approaches ask questions like the following: Why do we see mass murders almost daily in the United States, while other nations see so few? Why are so many incomprehensible mass shootings carried out by unhappy, isolated, friendless, young white men? Why are so many murders in our cities the result of young Black men killing young Black men? Why do we refuse to sanely regulate guns? There are no simple, common-sense answers to such questions. And yet note that it is not uncommon to hear simplistic dismissals like guns dont kill people; people kill people.

For Lonergan, conversion is key. Our commitment to authenticity, lived in our accepting the wisdom of the transcendental precepts, makes for progress. The opposite, inauthenticity, can also lead to decline. Being attentive, intelligent, reasonable, responsible and loving is better than ignoring reality, being stupid, reveling in being unreasonable, refusing responsibility and frustrating the power of love with apathy and hate. By conversion on the intellectual, moral and religious levels of our being, we transcend to the reality of God.

Peterson is well worth reading and hearing, even when one disagrees with some of his pronouncements. Further, his popularity and impact force us to ask: What need in the culture and times is he fulfilling? His recipes for finding ways to good and true humanity are attractive to many, albeit those who are dissatisfied with the more leftist readings of social reality. Ultimately, Peterson argues that the only way to set the world right is to fix oneself.

Lonergan, on the other hand, realizes that we can only truly meet our challenges with collective effort. The group, not the individual, transforms culture. Lonergans owners manual for humans also goes wider and deeper than Petersons binary of chaos and order.

In Chapter 7 of Insight, Lonergan describes his theory of Cosmopolis, an analysis of social reality written in the 1950s in the wake of World War II that sounds eerily like a prescription for the ills of our present world. Cosmopolis recognizes that overly individualistic solutions are not viable. We are all in this together. We, not just I, must respond to the challenges of our times. Matters like climate change, extreme income inequality, racism and sexism require a transformation of ourselves, our communities and our culture.

Cosmopolis is the yet-to-be-constructed set of social relations that will make a world of peace and liberty and justice for all. It calls us to speak the simple truth though truth has gone out of fashion, as Lonergan puts it; to open ourselves and our communities to solutions and answers we often want to avoid. But Cosmopolis is not easy to construct, because the cycles of progress and decline are not understood by common sense, and our different theories about progress clash. We need the grace of a higher viewpoint.

For Lonergan, that higher viewpoint is faith, the knowledge born of religious love. Aquinas taught that grace is the ability to do what we could not do before. To avoid the descent into new forms of totalitarianism, to become who we deeply desire to be, we must discover how to relate to one another and God in ways that increase freedom and love while diminishing the destruction of decline.

Faith is also about opening ourselves to God setting things right. Authentic ways of knowing and choosing and loving lead us to being in love with God, Lonergan writes in Method in Theology, and that love is the basic fulfillment of our conscious intentionality. That fulfillment brings a deep-set joy. That fulfillment brings a radical peace. That fulfillment bears fruit in a love of ones neighbor that strives mightily to bring about the kingdom of God on this earth. Further, the failure to reach such fulfillment fills us with the conviction that the universe is absurd.

Both Lonergan and Peterson realize our most excruciating conflicts are over meaning. Petersons emphasis on the individual causes him to neglect the power and creativity of community, while for Lonergan, common meaning constitutes community. Still, our church and world will benefit from both voices: Hearing the contemporary longings to which Peterson responds, and studying Lonergans paths to realizing the fulfillment of our deepest desires and, ultimately, our redemption.

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Jordan Peterson and Jesuit Bernard Lonergan have different takes ... - America: The Jesuit Review

Manscaped/Screeshot by Chris Matyszczyk

I'm not the man I used to be and what many a men's magazine -- and, no doubt, Dr. Jordan Peterson -- say I should be.

I'm still alright with that and roll along my way as best I can.

So I confess I don't leap on every male bandwagon, rousing the horses with a hee-haw and a giddyup.

Also: Look what Boston Dynamics' humanoid robot can do now

But I do feel an urge to mention a particular class of male-oriented gadgets that I've resisted for perhaps too long -- the personal shaving machine.

I feel sure it's a good idea. I feel slightly less sure that the way it's about to be advertised is, well, entirely edifying.

You see, I've just stumbled into a new ad for Manscaped's Beard Hedger.

Or, according to its more comprehensive Amazon description, the "MANSCAPED The Beard Hedger Premium Precision Beard Trimmer, 20 Length Adjustable Blade Wheel, Stainless Steel T-Blade for Precision Facial Hair Trimming, Cordless Waterproof Wet / Dry Clipper."

How would you present such an apparently useful product to the world?

Would you show the world's strongest men trimming their beards before competition? Would you perhaps show rows of delirious hipster men trimming their beards and claiming it improves their coffee-drinking technique and hygiene?

Or would you show a famous golfer and his son chatting about how, in dad's day, women allegedly liked men to be hirsute downstairs?

You might guess that Manscaped chose the last option. For here is golfing legend John Daly and his son, University of Arkansas golfer Little John Daly, discussing, well, dad's pubic orchard.

Dad asks his son which club he should use. Little John, for some reason, believes dad is talking about his beard and suggests dad try this little machine.

"Manscaped, huh?" The dad says. "Son, back in my day ladies loved grass in the fairways." Then he appears to be about to show his son his, well, grass.

Do I hear a ho-ho?

Look, it's not you, it's me.

You'll tell me it's perfectly normal for a dad to chat with his son about the landscaping of his nether regions. And I'll tell you that you're right, while quietly squirming.

Little John has to explain to Big John that this particular gadget is for his face, rather than beneath his belly. Then a voiceover pops up to explain this thing has 20 settings, which sounds quite marvelous.

The two stars play the ad very well. There's even a tinge of fine comic timing.

Personally, though, I find the best way to deal with my beard is to shave it off completely every ten days. That way, I look slightly different every day.

Also: The 10 best tech gifts under $100

Here, though, we're being told that a man's beard should have a consistent look -- which, should you be familiar with Big John's highly subjective daily attire, isn't usually the case for him.

Male personal grooming is a highly lucrative market -- $55 billion, it seems. This is because many men have a great need to present themselves in a very particular way. Surely you've seen at least one session of Congress to appreciate that.

But oh, dad and son talking about, you know, downstairs? That may be a little too liberal for some.

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It's a very personal gadget and personally I'm disturbed - ZDNet

Over the past year, thirty-six-year-old Andrew Tate has become a cultural phenomenon. On social media, the former British kickboxer-turned-influencer is one of the most famous men in the world, with over eleven billion views on TikTok alone. Tate is the personification of various internet subcultures, combining the critiques of the anti-feminist manosphere and the alt-right with the posture of a pickup artist. A self-described pimp who has stated he believes sexual fidelity is only for women, he made his millions running porn sites. He now uses social media to accrue legions of young male fans and monetize them by running online programs such as Hustler University, which sells tips on how to pick up women and get rich quick. His popularity grew when several social media platforms decided to simultaneously de-platform him, landing him interviews with everyone from Tucker Carlson to Piers Morgan.

On December 29, Romanian authorities arrested Tate and his brother at his Bucharest mansion on charges of human trafficking. Six women have accused Andrew Tate (and other suspects) of running a lover-boy scheme in which they persuaded women they wanted a relationship but then forced them to perform in pornographic videos. He remains in jail without bail on charges of rape and sex trafficking.

Tates status as an international internet celebrity makes this more than a local crime story. It is crucial to understand why he is wildly popular among men today. Tate made his money by turning his romantic partners into camgirls and selling their bodies to viewers online. On a now-deleted section of his website that pitches his tactics to other men, Tate wrote:

Andrew Tate is a symptom of our cultures crisis of masculinity rather than a solution to it. Hes a self-described pornographer who says he is too smart to read. But what he does is win. He drives fancy cars, flies on private planes, lives in fancy mansions, and parties in dozens of countries. All the while, he markets himself as an opponent of Western degeneracy while boldly selling a different sort of degeneracy in response.

Tate is fundamentally a creation of our current moment. Because our post-sexual revolution culture advocates gender neutrality and condemns traditional masculinity, he can advocate overt misogyny and claim to be defending traditionalism and masculinity. He can argue that his ugly views attract backlash merely because they are dissident; that he is not a sleazebag, but a heroic realist. He runs porn sites despite arguing that everyone should live true to God and yourself; he says he loves super-religious countries even though they enforce a baseline of morality he has no desire to live by. But because he angers progressives and claims to be fighting for truth, he frequently gets away with making these assertions without any pushback from interviewers.

Tates popularity is a reminder that in a society frequently hostile to traditional masculinity, lucrative opportunities arise for hucksters to amass influence by selling the genuinely toxic kind. Tate tells men to take back their lives and assert controlat the expense of women. There is no mutual, Christian self-sacrifice in his thinking. He says that our society wants to keep young men poor, weak, complacent, and alonebut makes his money from porn and casinos, facilitating addictions that do precisely that. His alleged conversion to Islam was a pathetic attempt to borrow credibility from a worldview that he hopes will help him cosplay as an ancient warlord rather than a promiscuous porn peddler who works out and mastered the social media algorithms.

In the wake of the sexual revolution, Christians called for a return to the values we abandonedand many believed that a backlash would eventually bring this about. But in a culture thrown into chaos by the implosion of our moral infrastructure, we are seeing many kinds of responses emerge. There is the self-help stoicism of Jordan Peterson and the common-sense feminist critique of Louise Perry (see her book The Case Against the Sexual Revolution). And then there is Andrew Tate, a creature of the sexual revolution who advocates masculinity without virtue, strength without tenderness, and casual cruelty by right of conquest. His popularity is an indication that in our pornified, post-Christian society, this particular path has proven attractive to legions of confused young men. These men desire, as men always have, to be heroesbut in a society that has left them with no guidelines or pathways for achieving true heroism, many cling to the false promises of Andrew Tate.

Jonathon Van Maren is the author ofPatriots: The Untold Story of Irelands Pro-Life Movement.

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Andrew Tate, Symptom of the Sexual Revolution | Jonathon Van ... - First Things

Federal Conservative Party leader Pierre Poilievre speaks at an adult education centre as he starts his tour of Quebec on Jan. 16, in Montreal.Ryan Remiorz/The Canadian Press

As a public service, we are ceding this space to an urgent request from the Quebec provincial police for help in identifying a person calling himself Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre, who visited the province in recent days. The following is an unofficial translation:

The Sret du Qubec is seeking assistance from the public in establishing the true identity of an individual going by the name of Pierre Poilievre, who held several public events and granted mainstream-media interviews this week in Montreal, Trois-Rivires and Quebec City.

The SQ has reason to believe that the person in question may have usurped the identity of the federal Conservative Leader in order to persuade Quebeckers that the real Mr. Poilievre is nothing like the angry cartoon character who won his partys 2022 leadership contest by promising to blow up Canada as we know it. The individual in question seemed much nicer and more reasonable than the Pierre Poilievre who has been trolling the internet in recent months. We nevertheless ask the public to exercise caution in trusting this individual, despite his friendliness.

The SQ draws the publics attention to a recent Angus Reid Institute survey indicating that almost two-thirds of Quebeckers have an unfavourable view of the real Pierre Poilievre. This may have something to do with his highly publicized support for the freedom convoy that occupied downtown Ottawa in early 2022, and a widespread portrayal in Quebec media of Mr. Poilievre as a right-wing populist who styles himself along the lines of MAGA Republicans. The person calling himself Pierre Poilievre who visited Quebec this week sounded more like a Green New Deal Democrat.

The individual in question bears a striking physical resemblance to the Member of Parliament for Carleton and speaks with the same distinctive twang, in both official languages. Nevertheless, the SQ has several reasons to believe he may be an imposter.

During his media interviews and press conferences, this individual never once said that everything feels broken in Canada. He offered a positive green vision of Canadas future as a renewable-energy superpower and global leader in electric vehicles. We must permit Quebec to build more hydroelectric dams to provide the electricity that will be needed to power electric cars, the person calling himself Pierre Poilievre said. The future of our green economy depends on [critical] minerals and green electricity.

The individual in question did act like the real Pierre Poilievre in evading questions about whether a Conservative government would make an increase in federal health transfers conditional on Quebec agreeing to adhere to certain national standards. He did promise to speed up the certification of foreign-credentialed doctors and nurses to alleviate a labour crunch that has left Quebec hospitals severely understaffed.

I respect Quebecs autonomy. I do not want to interfere in their decisions, the person calling himself Pierre Poilievre told a prominent Radio-Canada news anchor. Quebeckers are capable of being masters in their own house, as they say.

However, contrary to the real Pierre Poilievre, the individual in question offered only mainstream answers to mainstream questions. This person did not once veer into the culture-war diatribes characteristic of the real Pierre Poilievres social-media persona. Not once did this individual leap to the defence of Jordan Peterson the University of Toronto professor emeritus who has become a hero of the anti-woke U.S. right, and who has complained that the College of Psychologists of Ontario ordered him to undergo social-media training because some of his tweets may be degrading the profession as the real Pierre Poilievre did recently in English on YouTube. The individual calling himself Pierre Poilievre was not heard even saying the word woke in Quebec.

The individual in question denied reports the Conservatives are trying to recruit high-profile Coalition Avenir Qubec cabinet ministers Genevive Guilbault and Eric Girard to run for their party in the next federal election. Ms. Guilbault is Deputy Premier and Transport Minister. Mr. Girard is Finance Minister. They are competent centrists in Premier Franois Legaults otherwise right-leaning government. Either would be a catch for the Tories.

Controversial Quebec Conservative Party Leader ric Duhaime, who is also a fan of Mr. Peterson, would appear to hold political views that align more closely with those of the real Pierre Poilievre than the two CAQ ministers. But the person calling himself Pierre Poilievre did not go out of his way to arrange for any photo ops with Mr. Duhaime on his Quebec tour.

These and other inconsistencies in the behaviour of this person calling himself Pierre Poilievre lead the SQ to ask the public for any information that could aid in determining whether this individual is the real deal or a poseur. If you can help, please contact the SQ Anti-Fraud Squad as soon as possible.

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Opinion: Will the real Pierre Poilievre please stand up? - The Globe and Mail

The Jayhawks picked up a key commitment this weekend from Damarius McGhee who will transfer from LSU.

One of the factors that led to his decision was the relationship he built with Kansas cornerbacks coach Jordan Peterson. When McGhee entered the transfer portal in early December that is when Peterson first reach out.

He started recruiting me and hit me up as soon as I hit the portal, McGhee said. Then over the last couple weeks we started to really get into it.

During that time, it gave Peterson a chance to sell McGhee on the program. It was a big reason he committed to the Jayhawks.

Oh yeah, that's my guy, he said of Peterson. He told me a lot. He told me about the defense, and I like how they do their schemes. I like what they do with their defense. He was joking around a lot on the visit. Hes the one who basically recruited me the whole time.

McGhee saw the bond the coaches have on the official visit and that was something that caught his attention.

The coaching stuff stood out, he said. I can tell that they want everybody together, be together, and grow together. That's really what I'm looking for. Coming from LSU and that new coach and everything.

As a true freshman he started on special teams at LSU and that was one of his strengths coming out of high school. He was a four-star recruit coming out of Pensacola Catholic High School and had offers from several colleges including Alabama, Georgia and several others.

Peterson talked to him about playing special teams as well as cornerback.

That's what really opened my eyes about Kansas, McGhee said. One of the first things they said something about special teams and running kicks back. So, I was just like, Yeah, this is probably going to be the place for me. I've been wanting to do that. I missed that and I've been gone for too long.

A portion of his visit was watching the basketball against Iowa State. He liked the game and the atmosphere in Allen Fieldhouse.

Not too many people can say that they went to one of those, he said. That game was crazy right there. That was probably the best basketball games Ive seen.

McGhee said Kenny Logan was his host and they hit it off right away. They have something in common being from Florida and playing defensive back.

I just knew he was from Florida just when I heard him talk, I was like, yeah, he's from Florida, McGhee said. But two different parts of Florida. Hes ready for me to come in though, so we can go to work. If you saw what he said he called me lil bro when I committed.

He is in the process of getting into KU and said he could arrive sometime later in the week.

I'm excited to go out there, he said. I'm excited to go out there and play. I'm just trying to show everybody who I used to be.

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Damarius McGhee ready to get to Kansas and work - Rivals.com - Kansas

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Andrew Tate Detained In Romania For Another Month: His Human Trafficking Charges Explained And A Timeline Of The Social Media Stars Controversies -...

In March 2022, over six months before Elon Musk officially took over the social networking site, the billionaire took to Twitter to slam the apps stance on freedom of speech.

From that point onwards, his agenda became pretty clear and his determination to acquire the platform ramped up.On October 27, he did just that, for the sum of 44.4 billion.

In the months since, employees have been fired, verified (blue-ticked) accounts have started being charged for the privilege, and some users who audaciously critiqued Musks approach to the platform have been banned.

Conversely, Musk has reinstated some of Twitters most controversial figures.

Musks freedom of speech, but not freedom of reach policy means that while hate speech on the platform wont be promoted or boosted, users will be able to seek it out - no different from the rest of the Internet, to quote Musk himself.

The Twitter Blue subscription has even allowed senior Taliban officials to briefly acquire verified status - includingHedayatullah Hedayat, the head of the Taliban's "access to information" department.

Citing local media, the BBC reported he had his blue tick revoked in December but it recently returned to his profile - before it was removed again this week.

The former US president was always vocal on Twitter until his account was permanently suspended in January 2021 following the storming of the Capitol in Washington, DC.

At the time, Twitter said this was done in order to prevent the risk of further incitement of violence. Following the ban, Trump retaliated by launching his own social media app, Truth Social.

On November 18 last year, Musk asked his Twitter followers whether Trump should be allowed back on the platform. In a Brexit-esque result, 51 per cent of users voted yes, and two days later, Musk confirmed Trumps account would be reinstated, signing off Vox Populi, Vix Dei: the voice of the people is the voice of God.

Six weeks after being banned for sharing antisemitic posts, Kanye West was granted access to Twitter once more - only to have it revoked again on December 2, 2022.

The US rapper, now known as Ye, was banned again for posting an image of a swastika inside the Star of David. It was shared just hours after he stated "I like Hitler" on far-right conspiracy theorist Alex Jones' radio show, InfoWars.

Musk soon afterwards took to the platform and tweeted 'FAFO' (F*** Around and Find Out).

Towards the end of last year, a number of high-profile brands binned their relationship with West over the antisemitic posts shared on his Twitter and Instagram profiles, including Adidas, which terminated its Yeezy trainer deal.

Currently under investigation in Romania over allegations of rape and human trafficking, the social media influencer Andrew Tate is another big name who made a Twitter comeback following Musk's takeover.

On November 18, 2022, his account - which was deactivated over the summer - returned, and became very active in re-establishing the man who was also removed from platforms including Facebook, Instagram and TikTok for a multitude of reasons, not exclusive to referring to women as property.

Since then, Tate's account has been removed once again following his arrest in Romania on December 29.He and his brother, who are both detained in the country, have denied any wrongdoing.

Canadian psychologist and author Jordan Peterson made a return to Twitter after being banned last summer for violating Twitters hateful conduct policies.

The offending tweets targeted Elliot Page, referring to the transgender actor by his deadname Ellen and preceded a 15-minute long video where Peterson said he would rather die than delete the tweet and concluded, Up yours, woke moralists. Well see who cancels who!

Since his return to the platform, Peterson has made a number of demands on Musk and the future of Twitter - including that Twitter bans anonymous accounts from posting alongside verified accounts.

Over the years, and especially in recent months, a few different public figures have found their Twitter access revoked as a result of factors including inciting hate speech, racism, sexism and more.

These are some of the other accounts the world is nervously awaiting a verdict on.

After rising to fame on the hit UK TV show 'The Apprentice,' Katie Hopkins ultimately gained a name for herself as a right-wing commentator.

Following several short suspension stints on Twitter, Hopkins was permanently banned from the site in June 2020 after telling footballer Marcus Rashford women should think about how they are going to feed a child before they decide to have it.

Alt-right commentator Milo Yiannopoulos was permanently blocked from Twitter following abusive content directed towards actor Leslie Jones.

The founder of the far-right conspiracy theory website Infowars called the Sandy Hook school shootings a government orchestration and was banned from Twitter in 2018.

However, Musk has already commented on this, stating on Twitter I have no mercy for anyone who would use the deaths of children for gain, politics or fame.

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Trump, Tate and the Taliban: Which controversial figures have the Twitter blue tick? - Euronews

Often playful, sometimes comical, and always profound, Zen paintings represent one of the worlds most fascinating religious and artistic traditions. "None Whatsoever" features masterworks of Zen Buddhist Japanese paintings from the renowned Gitter-Yelen Collection spanning more than four centuries. Selections from the MFAH collection of modern and contemporary art complement the presentation.

The exhibition explores the origins of Zen Buddhism in Japanese painting through ink paintings and calligraphies by painter-monks, such as 18th-century Buddhist master Hakuin Ekaku, who expressed Zen Buddhist teachings through their art. A related selection of modern and contemporary art influenced by Zen Buddhism features work by Franz Kline, Takahiro Kondo, Robert Motherwell, Ad Reinhardt, and Hiroshi Sugimoto, among others.

The exhibition takes its title from a legendary encounter between a Buddhist monk and a Chinese emperor. According to 8th-century Chinese sources, itinerant monk Bodhidharma, patriarch of Zen Buddhism, visited the court of Emperor Wu Liang. When the emperor asked how much goodwill his generous deeds had earned in the eyes of the Buddha, the monks curt reply, None Whatsoever, shocked the ruler. This exchange - seemingly casual and dismissive, yet also uncompromising, profound, and revolutionary - has come to embody the relationship in Zen Buddhism between student and teacher.

The exhibition will remain on display through May 14.

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The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston presents "None Whatsoever: Zen ... - CultureMap Houston

In the third volume of Michael Posners oral biography of Leonard Cohen, friends, lovers, spiritual kin, musicians, and business partners all tell stories of the besuited poet and singer-songwriter. This final segment begins in 1986 when the singer Jennifer Warnes, his sometime lover and collaborator, releases Famous Blue Raincoat, an album of Leonard Cohen songs that helps revive his reputation, and runs all the way through Cohens widely noted death in 2016. Cohens late-in-life resurgence as a recording and touring musician receives well-deserved attention but the most impressive episodes in this volume show us Cohen, in the 1990s, turning 60 and confronting the chaos inside himself while carrying on with his lifes work. Its a crowdsourced redemption story with graying flecks and a dramatic soundtrack.

Cohens reputation owes quite a lot to other musicians who covered and championed his music, starting with Judy Collins who recorded "Suzanne" in 1966, then another three of his songs a year later on her next album. In 1991, the tribute album Im Your Fan presented Cohens songwriting in recordings by Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds, R.E.M, and other heroes of alternative rock. This album also featured the seminal John Cale cover of "Hallelujah," but for which the song might not have been covered by Jeff Buckley, but for which the song might not have become a seemingly universal pop hymn.

The personal storms that roll through this volume are as momentous as any in the earlier books and yet more interesting and revealing. One almost pities Cohen as he spends ever more time at the Mount Baldy Zen Center near Claremont, Calif., enduring a demanding course in Zen Buddhism under Kyozan Joshu Sasaki. Old Leonard is a man in crisis: yanked by his own appetites toward dissipation and whoring; drowning in prescription-grade depression; seduced by fame and Hollywood, both personified by his latest girlfriend, Rebecca De Mornay; and, to his credit, unable to quit his vocation as a poet and a singer.

His practice as a Zen Buddhist seems to have been a way through the madness. It was not itself a path of sanity, though. Picture not a Zen garden, balanced, artful, and at peace. Picture New Age bedlam. "You do realize that we are on a hospital ship here, where all of us are broken, and none will ever get well and the ship is sinking," Cohen told fellow initiate James Truman.

The writer Pico Iyer appears as yet another friend and interpreter of the great Cohen koan. He offers a helpful gloss on the hospital comment: "Partly hes saying, 'There are no answers here. This is not salvation, just the opposite. Its about sitting still in a burning house, going up in flames."

Around this time Cohen gave a deeply interesting interview to Arthur Kurzweil of the Jewish Book Club, addressing the possible tension between Buddhism and Judaism. After he took up Zen Buddhism, Cohen said, he practiced Judaism with a passion for the Absolute that he hadnt known before. Buddhist meditation was therefore not so much an alternative to his own religion but a re-initiation into the sacred. Cohen, who toyed with many other journalists and interviewers, seemed to be playing it straight as he described the Bible to Kurzweil as a "landscape," spiritual and historical, that we are invited to inhabitpart of a larger moral universe continuous with the lives of the original Kohenim, a world that is still in existence, still holy, and still broken.

"There is a crack in everything," as he famously wrote. "Thats how the light gets in."

These years of rock bottom followed by an upward ascent provide an extraordinary glimpse of an extraordinary person at an extraordinary time. One is reminded of Henry taking leave of Falstaff to assume the crown, of the prodigal son coming home. This very fallen character reaches for the divine and it is quite moving.

There are other major episodes, such as the revelation that Cohens accounts are unstable and he may be heading toward insolvency. In the usual telling, he is simply ripped off by his manager Kelley Lynch, who was interviewed at length for these volumes. She is unrepentant and blames much of the difficulty on Cohens own profligacy, but the evidence against her (to say nothing of the jail time she served for harassing Cohen) seems overwhelming. The setback, however, does encourage him to keep working, keep recording, and, at an age when most people are watching the ink dry on their final will and testament, embark on a world tour.

Posners volume offers a lot of chapter and verse on the financial scandal and a number of excellent anecdotes of Cohen on the roadhe is so old and tired after performing that he cant bear to hang out with even the likes of Paul Simon and Bono. His problems with girlfriends decline in number but never quite zero out, as we hear from his many friends and acquaintances.

Assembling a life story through so many individual stories raises important questions about what is finally the truth, but Posner's oral history does so intentionally, making a virtue of its own inconsistency. It may be less scholarly or deliberate than weighing every piece of evidence and forcing it all through the sieve of a well-considered thesis, but there is a lot to be said for its free-flowing method. For one thing, it foregrounds the evidence, in a playful way, respecting the readers right to make up their own mind. Secondly, it keeps the principle of uncertainty front and center, ever present amid the polyphony of multiple witnesses relaying different takes on the same events.

Just as earlier volumes offered contrary opinions on Cohens lovemaking, singing, and guitar playing, so volume three tells us he was, in truth, not political at all but also that he was an NRA-card-carrying, pro-Israel realist who was deeply versed in the problems of the Middle East. (It seems possible to write a convincing essay on his political positions that could very well upset some of his most liberal fans.) We also hear that he was a man of superlative integrity and yet an apologist for sexual assault. (When his Zen master was credibly accused of multiple counts of groping and far worse, Cohen, reportedly, was more embarrassed than angry and did not lift a finger to see his beloved Roshi punished.) That he was, at times, a no-show parent and deeply committed to his childrens well-being. (The voices of his two offspring are all but absent, which seems just as wellthese three volumes, even when youre enjoying them, which is most of the time, do not leave you wanting more.)

Leonard Cohen was, apparently, a fiend and a friend. A gentleman and a rake. A voluptuary and an ascetic. And why not all of these?

At its best, however, this Babel of voices is ultimately unifying, producing a multiplicity of impressions that stack into one larger meta portrait like a Chuck Close painting. What brings it all together is the unlikely triumph of this aging troubadour who, after seeking refuge from his own recklessness, continued to climb the tower of song.

Leonard Cohen, Untold Stories: Thats How the Light Gets Inby Michael PosnerSimon and Schuster, 475 pp., $35

David Skinner is an editor and writer who writes about language and culture and lives in Alexandria, Va.

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The Various Positions of Leonard Cohen - Washington Free Beacon