Bunia, DRC, the Perfect Breeding Ground for Ebola

"If Ebola comes, we'll be wiped out as we're packed like sardines."

"I've already heard of Ebola and it's a disease that scares me a lot."

"We displaced people here have no hygiene. Our children play next to filthy toilets and even relieve themselves on the ground, in the middle of the tarpaulins that serve as our homes."

Dorcas Mapenzi, Kingonze displaced tent camp, Bunia, Democratic Republic of Congo 

 

"Given these conditions, how are we going to protect ourselves against this disease, when everyone tells us we need to distance ourselves to fight Ebola?"

"We sleep piled on top of each other, with everyone's sweat."

"If a single person gets infected here in this camp, everyone will die."

Deborah Nzale, widowed family head, Kingonze camp, Bunia, Ituro Province, DR Congo

DR Congo is the epicentre of the outbreak though a few cases have been detected in Uganda  Getty Images

 

"Two weeks after the declaration of the Ebola disease outbreak in Ituri Province, the situation is deeply alarming."

"Never before has an Ebola outbreak recorded so many cases so soon after its declaration. [Teams on the ground were] witnessing a response that has not yet caught up to the rapid spread of the epidemic."

"The reality today is that nobody knows the true scale and severity of this outbreak. New suspected cases are being reported daily, yet hundreds of samples remain untested."

MSF deputy director Dr Alan Gonzales  

According to the military governor of Ituri province in the Democratic Republic of Congo, there are roughly 61 displaced persons camps in the area, within which are close to 970,000 people being housed. "We need to deploy equipment and qualified specialist medical staff as quickly as possible, to spare this province from disaster", stated Lt. Gen. Johnny Luboya Nkashama. Certainly, the fearful people in those camps having been alerted by posters at camp entrances that warn "Ebola really kills", would be grateful. 

 

In the Kingonze camp alone, where Dorcas Mapenzi, Deborah Nzale and Budjo Amos reside with other family groups, their elders and their children, a total of 25,000 people are co-housed. They are there, far from their native towns and villages, displaced by conflict in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo. Having fled proximity to the conflict, they now face another enemy whose death count may be higher than the potential threats from the conflict they fled.

 

WHO/Joël Lumbala The Rwampara General Referral Hospital in Ituri Province, DR Congo.

 

Since conditions in the camp are absolutely horrendous in terms of infection potential, if government health agencies fail to move quickly to ameliorate the vulnerability situation of the people crammed into those sites, the results could be phenomenally devastating. Medical assistance and supplies are coming into the country and into Uganda from other countries better equipped to deal with such emergencies, but nature can be unforgiving in the pathogens she throws around that wreak havoc on animals, including humans.

 

The central African country's east, where decades of armed conflicts forced millions of civilians from their homes has created the perfect storm. Ituri province has both armed militia groups battling one another and hordes of people driven from their homes in the impoverished DRC. The World Health Organization warned that the eastern DRC "faces a catastrophic collision of disease and conflict"; fighting in the affected province interferes with efforts to try to manage the epidemic. 

 

There have been 223 suspected Ebola deaths in the DRC since an Ebola outbreak was declared on May15 by the WHO, with another thousand suspected and confirmed cases up to May 24. Although no cases of infection have been recorded as yet at the Kingonze camp built in 2018, conditions are optimum for the disease where infection through close physical contact and bodily fluids, can prey on the unprotected. In tarpaulin shelters measuring three square meters, up to nine people live crammed together.

 

The strain of Ebola -- Bundibugyo -- responsible for this latest outbreak, lacks a vaccine or any measure of treatment, leaving efforts to contain its spread reliant for the most part on protective measures and rapid contact tracing. Clearly those measures are absent from the Kingonze camp, and likely most other camps in the province as well. No protective gear has reached Kingonze's displaced residents. 

 

With a single borehole in the entire camp to draw  up water, the tap flows for just a few hours daily. The Congolese state's slow response to the outbreak hasn't helped. Regional hospitals lack essential equipment, in particular isolation tents for affected patients.   

"People looking to raise awareness come through here with messages but, surprisingly, we don't have the kit we need to protect ourselves." 

"I don't even have soap to wash my hands."

"The most urgent thing is to give us clean water. The state has to intervene urgently."

Budjo Amos, displaced man, Kingonze camp  

 

"The Government of the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) and the World Health Organization (WHO) reaffirm their strong partnership and shared commitment to protect the health and well-being of the people of Ituri Province and the nation at large, following the joint mission to Bunia led by Dr Samuel Roger Kamba, Minister of Health, Mr. Patrick Muyaya Katembwe, Minister of Communication and Medias, and the visit of WHO Director-General Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus."

"While the Bundibugyo strain presents additional challenges, including the absence of a licensed vaccine or specific treatment, proven public health measures remain effective in slowing transmission and potential full recovery. The Ministry of Health, WHO and partners are working to rapidly undertake randomized control trials on candidate vaccines and treatments."

"Persistent challenges include early detection and isolation of cases, contact tracing, safe and dignified burials, robust infection prevention and control in health facilities, and strong community awareness. The Government and WHO call on all communities to continue adopting protective behaviours, including regular hand hygiene, early care seeking in health facilities, and sharing accurate information."

"The DRC brings unparalleled experience to this response, having successfully contained multiple previous Ebola outbreaks. This experience, combined with strong political leadership at the highest level of the State and renewed international solidarity, provides a firm foundation for bringing the current outbreak under control."

Government of the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) and the World Health Organization (WHO) 

 

 

Canada's Universal Medicare in Crisis

"ER [emergency-room] 'chair medicine' in Ontario [the awful cousin of hallway medicine] is unacceptable. Full Stop."

"We need to get rid of it. We must fund hospitals and fix the problem of critically ill patients put in a chair."

"There is zero exaggeration here. I am sounding the alarm. Hear it."

Toronto emergency physician Dr. Raghu Vengopal

 

"It would have been very easy to say, 'Well, if things get worse, come back later'. Who knows how long she could have sat there? And what if that stretcher hadn't become available, and her bleeding had gotten worse? She shouldn't have been assessed in a chair in the first place."

"Unconventional spaces [can include any carved-out space. Hospitals are converting ambulance bays into patient wards.] No heating, no plumbing, but, 'Hey, it's great -- we're taking care of our patients by sticking them in a cold garage'."

"More and more we're recognizing that we just want to see the patients. We want to try and find those ticking time bombs. We want to get people out of the department [ER] that have been there for 12 hours." 

Dr. Fraser Mackay, chair, Canadian Association of Emergency Physicians, rural, remote and small urban section 

“Chair medicine" and "waiting room care" have become routine and common, default responses to Canada's severely gridlocked emergency rooms. Photo by Peter Power /Postmedia

 

In hospitals across Canada, wait times at emergency rooms have become brutal. People arrive at hospital emergency rooms for the purpose their names suggest; they have a medical emergency and urgently require care. These are people for whom some kind of accident, a malady accelerating, inexplicable pain onset or any number of medical events from heart attack to kidney stones or a burst appendix, that occur beyond their doctors' normal office hours, on odd night or weekend hours, having no option but to rush to emergency rooms, only to be triaged by worn-out nurses and told to take a seat in the emergency waiting room alongside hundreds of others that one on-call emergency doctor will eventually get around to seeing, one by one. 

 

Wait times began to extend from an average of five hours to as long as 12 hours and longer before a physician is free enough to thoroughly examine and then determine a course of action for a presenting accident victim, a kidney patient, someone internally bleeding from a catastrophic fall. Because of an acute scarcity of beds, even of gurneys set up in hallways, many emergency rooms have taken to placing desperately ill people on chairs where attending emergency doctors have no option but to examine them there and then.

 

“If a physician … lets the public know that you are in an unsafe environment right now, that we’re doing the best we can, that overcrowding puts you at risk, that we have people dying in our waiting rooms across the nation — those are facts,” says emergency physician Dr. Trevor Jain. Photo by Logan MacLean/Postmedia/File

 

Canadian hospitals have reached the point where 'chair medicine' and 'waiting room care' are now common, routine default responses, driving doctors to absolute distraction in distress over the kind of low-access, low-level care that is made available to vulnerable people in medical distress. Dr. Venugopal in Toronto spoke of witnessing people in "extremis from pain" but "put and kept in a chair", when extremis is a word describing people doubled over-in-agony kind of pain. That represents cruel and unusual punishment for anyone desperate for medical care.  

"It slowly becomes normalized -- the frog in the boiling water. 'We just wanted to see them to get things started or get things moving along', and then it becomes two patients, then eight, then ten."

"You've normalized a patient population through one of these zones that isn't appropriate for them. That can be risky with 'undifferentiated' patients: Is the chest pain acid reflux, pneumonia or an evolving heart attack?"

"That's the five-alarm fire situation many of us worry about every day."

"You cannot appropriately examine a patient in a chair, physically, or from a patient privacy perspective. You have to lift up shirts, take off pants, put on monitors, get your stethoscope out."

Dr. Michael Herman, Ottawa-area emergency physician 

In a lawsuit against B.C.'s Fraser Health Authority, emergency doctor Kaitlin Stockton alleged she was threatened and harassed for speaking out about critical overcrowding. Photo by Tiga Ivsins

 

This is what medical care in Canadian hospitals has been reduced to, as the population base continues to increase through unprecedented levels of immigration, refugee and migrant intake, on an already-overburdened system with a steadily aging population. Hospital emergency rooms have been 'coping' for years, with steadily increasing wait times, overburdened medical staff and greater demands than ever before for universal health care service. 'Unconventional places' never designed for patient care have become the back-stop for patient care.

 

These are spaces where emergency medical care is reduced to looking after people with no access to oxygen or suction, no nurse call bell, no ready access to a washroom or a sink, and not a whit of privacy. In desperate coping reaction, patients are examined in closets and washrooms, with doctors directing ill patients into corners and cubby holes, blankets hung off IV poles for makeshift curtains in chaotic hallways. Doctors have had to depend, more than ever, on their physician-instinct in many cases, to ensure that people they examine in such circumstances are not given short-medical-shrift.

 

The exterior of the Windsor Regional Hospital emergency department photo. (Jennifer La Grassa/CBC)

 

"[The pressure to provide treatment in whatever space they can is creating a moral] damned if you do, damned if you don't [dilemma for emergency staff across Canada]." 

"You don't want to watch suffering and see patients not doing well and lingering in the waiting room. But you also know that, when you walk out there, you don't really have a nurse, you don't have monitoring, you don't have the standard things you would have if you had a normal care space."

"You, by definition, are basically kind of MacGyvering-it and giving suboptimal care to a degree."

Dr. Paul Parks, emergency physician, Medicine Hat, Alberta, former president, Alberta Medical Association 

On any given day in Ontario an average of 1,390 people in 2023-24 were given care in an unconventional space. Emergency departments over the years have designed 'minor treatment' spaces where for example, three chairs separated by office dividers in a public hallway outside the waiting room gave birth to 'chair care'. Then 'rapid assessment zones' designed for the 'less acutely unwell' arrived on scene where people with sprains, cuts requiring stitches, sore throats, ear infections could be tended to. 

 

Where danger enters the picture is when the emergency department gets 'jammed up with admits'; every cubicle or hallway stretcher filled with people requiring hospital admission, but no empty beds are available; scarce beds used for people who no longer require hospital care, but there is no space in nursing or long-term care homes, no home care or rehab bed available to them. Known as 'access block'.  A system in free fall lacks the capacity to adequately assess, treat and discharge acutely ill patients.

 

The growing practice of boarding -- admitted people kept on a hallway stretcher for one, two, three days awaiting an open bed has become inevitable under these circumstances. Recently, a systematic review discovered notable evidence that links boarding with higher hospital death rates, longer hospital stays, more medication errors and burdensome staff burnout. There is a chronic hospital bed shortage in Canada, with an obvious obligation for hospitals to be able to discharge patients once their need for medical care is completed. 

"None of this has anything to do with the emergency department. That's the frustrating part."

"But it's a huge burden on staff and a huger burden on the patients, because they're not getting the care they need in the place they need it."

Dr. Fraser Mackay  

“Chair” and “waiting room” medicine have become routine and common, default responses to Canada’s severely gridlocked emergency rooms, doctors say. Photo by Peter Power/Postmedia

 

Big Rig Fatalities on Canadian Roads

"[There has been lax oversight of driver licensing and certification schools]." 

"We found that some students at registered private career colleges obtained [Entry Level Training] certificates without completing all mandatory training hours and elements."

Ontario Auditor General report 

Canadian Trucking Alliance

"Although TFWs [temporary foreign workers] in trucking represent a small percentage of all permits issued under the TFW program, a quick review of online data shows that truck driver is often the 5th or 6th most requested job classification."

"TFW approvals for truck drivers] more than quadrupled [between 2010 and 2024]."

Teamsters Canada report

 

"While there are many commercial vehicle operators who are doing their due diligence and prioritizing safety, unfortunately we are still seeing those who are not properly maintaining their vehicles -- including repeat offenders."

RCMP spokesman

(Source: Government of Canada data)

 

Evidently there is a severe shortage of long-haul truckers in Canada. The result may be that governments are turning a blind eye to inadequately trained drivers. In many instances young men from the Indian subcontinent who travelled to Canada on student visas to attend Canadian universities are likely to be among those classified as temporary foreign workers who are hired by trucking companies that are not too terribly wedded to Canadian trucking requirements to fill the gap in low numbers of truck drivers' availability. These are young men whose presence in the country was for a specific purpose -- higher education -- who have just not bothered to show up for classes. They are also people whose visas have run out with the expectation that they will leave the country.

 

The rash of serious trucking accidents that have been occurring when large transport trailers are being driven irresponsibly can be at least partially attributed to the illegal presence of foreign temporary workers. What is equally troubling is that those who have been involved in, who have caused lethal road accidents, are being handled with undue consideration despite their having been responsible for lost lives as a result of careless handling of big rigs on busy highways. A non-citizen trucker who caused a fiery crash north of Kamloops B.C., killing two people has been handed a $2,000 fine and 18 months of probation, as an example.

 

Lovepreet Singh drove  his truck at full speed into a Toyota Corolla that had reduced speed at a construction zone. Singh's lack of attention caused the death of two people trapped in the burning car. Sukhwinder Sidhu, an Ontario trucker, responsible for a similar collision when he plowed his rig into cars stopped at a construction site that killed a woman was sentenced to two-and-a-half years in prison. A judge in Thunder Bay, Ontario granted Indian trucker Ajitpal Singh an absolute discharge. Singh had caused a fatal head-on collision with another trucker; that lighter sentence helped Singh avoid deportation to India. 

 

Jaskirat Singh Sidhu whose failure to stop at a stop sign at an intersection caused the death of 15 members of the Humboldt Broncos (Saskatchewan) hockey team in 2018, and last month had his deportation deferred. Mr. Sidhu who had served three-and-a-half years of the eight-year sentence ordered for causing the crash can now take advantage of a 17-month pause in deportation to enable him to seek a permanent stay on "humanitarian and compassionate" grounds. He had expressed  his profound sorrow on behalf of those young men who died so needlessly.

 

Photo: Eassons Transport

 

A judge in British Columbia gave 90 days of house arrest to trucker Dalvir Singh Jhatta for a crash that police stated could have killed several people, when he drove his tractor trailer at full speed into a tow truck attaching a Mercedes impounded by the RCMP. "Luckily the tow truck operator, the police officer, and the Mercedes driver were safely off to the side of the road, or they would certainly have been killed" stated Cpl. Michael McLaughlin of the BC Highway Patrol. 

 

In an April 2024 crash, Harpreet Singh pleaded guilty to driving without due care and attention when his tractor trailer crossed the centre line and collided with a CN Rail work truck, causing both vehicles to explode into flames, killing Singh's passenger Dharminder Singh and CN Rail employee Juver Balmores. Criminal charges were not pursued, as Crown prosecutors agreed to a $2,000 fine and 18 months' probation. 

 

While large commercial trucks represented three percent of the vehicles on Ontario roads, 12 percent of all fatal crashes between 2019 and 2023 were caused by these trucks, according to a report produced by an Ontario Auditor General report studying lax oversight of driver licensing and certification schools. A report published last month by Teamsters Canada found disproportionately heavy use of temporary foreign workers in the trucking sector. TFW approvals for truck drivers between 2010 and 2024 "more than quadrupled", the Teamsters report found.

 

The Burnaby RCMP spearheaded an inspection drive on commercial trucks last year throughout the Lower Mainland, discovering that over half of those trucks failed to meet basic safety standards. Police announced that of 2,901 trucks inspected, 1,610 were "placed out of service" for failing to meet provincial safety standards. Statistics Canada found that as a result of a collision involving a commercial motor vehicle, there were 377 fatalities for 2023, the most recent year for data availability. 

TruckNews.com 

 

Canada's Health Care System Groaning Under Levels of Unprecedented Demand

"[The Liberal government's temporary Interim Federal Health Program -- IFHP] has turned into a multi-year, taxpayer-funded entitlement where tens of thousands of bogus asylum claimants are provided health benefits that Canadians are not eligible for."

"The Liberals must explain to Canadians why asylum seekers who have had their refugee claims rejected, are facing enforceable removal orders, and in some cases fail to appear for removal, continue to receive deluxe, tax-payer funded health benefits while they avoid leaving Canada."

Conservative health critic Dan Mazier and immigration critic Michelle Rempel Garner

 

"IFHP eligibility is further extended when claimants pursue appeals before the Refugee Appeal Division (RAD) or the Federal Court, as well as during the completion of a Pre-Removal Risk Assessment (PRRA). On average, about 20 per cent of all claims referred to the IRB are appealed at least once at the RAD. Nearly 50 per cent of claimants who ultimately received a negative decision from the IRB in 2019 remained in the system for more than three years following that decision."

"As of February 2026, approximately 74,000 “failed refugee claimants”, defined as individuals who made a claim for refugee protection in Canada and did not obtain protection, were in the CBSA removals inventory."

"Failed refugee claimants may remain eligible for IFHP coverage while their cases are being assessed through ongoing immigration or risk-related processes (e.g., PRRA), and in some cases until their departure from Canada. Together, these factors substantially lengthen IFHP eligibility for a significant share of unsuccessful claimants. 

Parliamentary Budget Office report 

The Globe&Mail.com

 

Over $722 million was spent by the government of Canada in the provision of extensive health care to tens of thousands of asylum seekers, including a large number spent on 'failed refugee claimants' awaiting determination of status in the approvals system, or those who have been actively avoiding removal orders in the last fiscal year, the latest report of the Parliamentary Budget Office points out, in castigating the government for its lax processing and inexplicable devotion to providing migrants with a level of health care often not matched directed toward Canadian citizens.

 

As a result of 'backlogs in the country's asylum system, claimants are left waiting, sometimes for up to three years before their claims are officially either accepted or denied. In the interim their health care needs, at an unprecedented level of coverage, are catered to, and costs continue to rise under the Interim Federal Health Program. A program originally created to provide limited, temporary coverage in health care to foreign nationals considered to be disadvantaged and vulnerable. 

 

"As of December 2025, over 300,000 asylum claims were pending adjudication and  roughly 65 percent of these pending claims have been in the system for longer than a year." 

"This represents a five-fold increase since 2021 and is anticipated to increase in the near-term due to an influx of claims made between 2023 and 2025."

"[The number waiting between to and three years] will notably rise by 2027-27, reflecting elevated past intake and constrained exit rates."

Parliamentary Budget Office 

 

For 2024-25, total spending across all health care categories and beneficiary groups came closer to $822 million, accounting for resettled refugees' inclusion. This category "are selected and assessed abroad, with admission targets set in the Government's Immigration Levels Plan, resulting in relatively predictable intake and processing timelines". Asylum seekers on the other hand, noted the Parliamentary Budget Office, claimed an average of $724 per beneficiary each year on basic care representing doctor visits, hospital care, ambulances, labs, diagnostic testing and immigration medical examinations, in contrast to the resettled refugees' average of $97 for the same period.

 

It was found by the PBO that per-person spending on basic care increased consistently, while spending on supplementary health products and services such as urgent dental treatment, prescription drug coverage, vision care, counselling services, assistive devices and others increased at an accelerated rate. Canada spent $94 million on supplementary benefits across all groups in the 2019-20 fiscal year and by 2023-24 there was a near tripling to $285 million, reaching $457 million in 2024-25.

 

Prescription drugs and urgent dental care in particular accounted for 80 percent of the spending. PBO figures revealed that the number of dental claims rose by 43 percent between 2019 and 2025 (240,000 to 1.4 million claims). Higher average cost per claim combined to drive dental costs from $30 million to $257 million in that time frame. "Elevated intakes" and the "persistent backlogs" that resulted were identified as major drivers of increased expenses. In 2019 there were 64,150 claims -- which by 2024 rose to 173,000.

 

The present time sees about half (47 percent) of claimants in the system between one and two years with that number expected to rise.  Each additional month in processing time, according to PBO calculations, could drive program costs up by $72 million in the approaching fiscal year. Applicants must pass through several review layers to attain asylum refugee status, and if rejected can utilize several appeal avenues, which can take years, during which they they remain eligible for IFHP. 

Canada spent over $722 million on health care for asylum seekers in the last fiscal year as refugee backlogs and failed claims drove costs. Photo by Getty Images

 

Also eligible are the "nearly 74,000 failed refugee claimants" among the the CBSA (Canada Border Services Agency) removals inventory where currently 23, 4289 removals are in process, alongside 27,797 rejected applicants who failed to appear for removal and are in the process of being sought by border authorities for enforced removal.  

"These are  benefits that Canadians who have paid into the system their entire lives can't access."

 "It is undeniable that as the backlog grows, rejected asylum claimants continue adding pressure to a health care system where Canadians are already facing long wait times for care."

Conservative health critic Dan Mazier 

Closing Down Open, Questing Minds

"For me, university was a place where you wrestled with new ideas."

"Sex, politics, religion, war -- we argued about all of it."

"But somewhere along the way, the climate changed. Students didn't just disagree with ideas. They felt harmed by them."

"And the only way to feel safe was to silence the people expressing them." 

Ric Esther Bienstock, film maker

 

"I want to keep my head down. I'm a student.

"I finally got in. I don't want to ask a  question because it might piss somebody off."

"I can't afford to lose marks or lose friends."

Typical response from students

 

"I'm worried about offending someone in the class with a reading, so I'm just going to change my reading list."

"[If they get reported they know the administration will not have their back]."

Untenured professorial class

BifBamPop!

 

A movie has recently been produced by Montreal-born Ric Esther Bienstock, resident in Toronto. She has had interview experiences with students, professors and administrators at such academic institutions as Harvard, Yale, Cornell, Stanford, Penn State, Evergreen State College, the University of Sussex, and New College of Florida. 

 

Previous film work to her credit include Enslaved: The Lost History of the Transatlantic Slave Trade (with Samuel L. Jackson), The Accountant of Auschwitz, and Tales From the Organ Trade. The industry recognition she has received include two Emmys, two Edward R. Murrow Awards, and multiple Canadian Screen Awards. She is also an Officer of the Order of Canada. There is gravitas behind her image. 

 

"Students asking for safe spaces from emotional harm -- I found that just interesting, and I thought it would make for a good film." As an example ... former professor of evolutionary biology, Bret Weinstein, at Evergreen State College in Washington opposed the school's 2017 Day of Absence change that demanded whites leave campus. For this, he was called racist. "My filming began during a period of intense protests."

 

Her new film is titled Speechless, to be aired on both CBCGem and the BBC, focusing on the political upheaval that has transformed universities throughout North American and the United Kingdom. The film is a portrait of debates over race, gender and social justice escalating by way of 'viral outrage', 'reputational shrapnel' and 'institutional instability'. It also highlights the focus of campus concerns rolling out past university grounds.

 

New College of Florida, the first American institution to dismantle its DEI office and eliminate its gender studies program, initiates the film footage. "I worried about higher education and what's happening on campus. Higher ed is where we're shaping the minds of the future generation of citizens, leaders, doctors, lawyers, policy makers, politicians and teachers. If you can't engage with ideas that you don't agree with or that offend you, what does that mean?"

 

If questing minds who want answers or perspectives to help them digest information and reach informed opinions are shut down for fear of hurting someone else's feelings how does attendance at an institute of higher learning benefit either individuals or society at large? Where there is an imposition of firm self-censorship, free speech absents itself. Socially sensitive issues such as race, gender, terrorist violence such as October 7 must not be approached, as socially abrasive topics that must remain unquestioned.

 

A protest encampment at the University of Chicago’s Main Quadrangle, featuring a sign reading: “As you go to class, remember that there are no universities left in Gaza.” Photo by wabisabi2015/Flickr.

 

A conservative legal organization, the Federalist Society, with chapters at many elite law schools had invited Judge Stuart Kyle Duncan of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit to speak at Stanford Law School. Many of the school's law students protested his appearance, attempting to prevent the event from proceeding, lest Judge Duncan's rejection of same-sex marriage alarmingly disrupt those he would address, claiming the school should not be allowing him a platform.

 

This played against the fact that the Federalist Society chapter at Stanford's president is gay, and though he doesn't agree with the judge's views, he argues that, at a law school, students should have the opportunity to listen to a sitting federal judge in light of the fact that they may some day appear before him to argue cases ending up at the Supreme Court. Lacking that opportunity, they remain fixed in a silo of 'approved' views rather than being in possession of well-rounded information/viewpoint exposure. 

 

Film maker Ric Esther Bienstock, points out what should be obvious to anyone; living in pluralistic societies requires those with the opportunity to gain experience through being guided in a university setting to questions that perplex and answers that render all possibilities of explanations to sift through and find the responses that fit the jigsaw puzzle of appropriateness, exceptionalism, social constructs and a balance that results in that fine-tuning of opinion. 

"When I spoke to students from that law school who would not speak to me on the record in the film -- which says something also -- they said to me, 'why do I have to listen to someone who denies my existence, whose views I don't agree with?"

"I wanted to show you, and take you into that world, and then let viewers decide if they think it's good or not."

"If you want to live in a pluralistic society, you should expose yourself to different ideas, different views, different cultures. You can't have institutions that are all monocultures." 

Ric Esther Bioenstock, ethical/social filmmaker 

Filmmaker Ric Esther Bienstock discusses how bias plays into every conversation we have while she sits down with Piya Chattopadhyay in conversation. Watch Speechless on CBC Gem.

Workplace Antisemism Harassment

"You kind of feel like you're drowning. All the bad feels is what I felt: Lonely, confused,  hurt, isolated. And ultimately it led me to have a really bad breakdown."

"I was confused how these people can be my friends one day and then the next day hate me with a capital H, having not gotten into any verbal arguments, or anything like that previously."

"They knew I was Jewish and they knew that I am a Zionist, that I lived in Israel before."

"It escalated to the point where I wouldn't do my job anymore, not because of the things I was feeling, but realistically, I wasn't getting any calls, which we called leads, which are businesses that you get introduced to to sell your product to." 

"No one should be subjected to this kind of treatment at work for being Jewish."

Amanda Rafael 

Amanda Rafael: “I was confused how these people can be my friends one day and then the next day hate me with a capital H.” Photo by Supplied

 

Filing charges against her one-time employer with Quebec's labour tribunal, 34-year-old Amanda Rafael whose work was in sales with the company, documented the pattern of rabid hostility and psychological harassment she faced at her workplace, a situation that emerged the very day that southern Israel suffered mass deadly attacks by Palestinian terrorist groups led by Hamas. She described receiving antisemitic images as several of her co-workers turned on her with a vengeance with denigrating messages leading to her being frozen out of shared sales leads. When she alerted supervisors at the company, nothing came of it.

 

Lightspeed Commerce Inc. is a publicly traded e-commerce company, with a record of success that saw it labelled at one of those tech rarities, a 'unicorn'. Nothing quite prepared this young woman who worked for the company since 2021, when some of her work colleagues disconnected from her to an extent that was unimaginable to her, disorienting and totally demoralizing. She was so badly affected that when she consulted her doctor over the depressed state she was in, she was advised to take sick leave, to separate herself temporarily from the vitriol emanating from within her workplace against her. 

 

Quebec's labour standards authority investigated her complaint, forwarding it to the province's administrative labour tribunal for a hearing, reflecting Quebec's two-stage occupational complaints schedule. Her allegations at the tribunal are being challenged by Lightspeed. A point-of-sale and payments platform out of Quebec since 2005, the company has since expanded with clients in over 100 countries, with listings on the New York Stock Exchange and the Toronto Stock Exchange.  

Lightspeed Commerce

"Lightspeed is committed to providing a safe workplace environment and has a zero-tolerance policy toward workplace violence, harassment and discrimination, including hate speech and antisemitism."

"We expect all our employees to treat each other and every member of our communities with respect and integrity and to foster a diverse and inclusive culture."

Lightspeed Montreal, global tech company 

 According to documents filed with the tribunal a Lightspeed manager informed an investigator that the company's internal probe of the situation failed to support a finding of psychological harassment. Memes and posts at issue in the matter, explained the manager, had been sent from employees' private accounts. Accepting that the workplace atmosphere following October 7 was tense "on both sides", management took steps to ensure the workplace remained 'safe'. 

 

Amanda Rafael after having worked at  Lightspeed for two years, encountered an 'unsafe' workplace following October of 2023. She was ultimately terminated in February 2024, and six months later she filed her complaint against the company whose manager denied the company had failed to intervene on her behalf. Rafael documented how a colleague had posted a photograph of Adolf Hitler and with it a quote: "Jews are not people, they are animals", four days after October 7.  Other colleagues called her a "f---king Zionist", sharing social media posts reflecting "kill all Zionists", informing her that her presence was unwanted.

 

 

 

Rafael was asked to remove the flag of Israel from her company online profile, while some colleagues were free to add Palestinian flags to theirs. She was refused a request to be transferred elsewhere within the company, away from these demeaning colleagues. When she logged into the company's internal sales team messaging system she discovered colleagues having informed her clients that she was no longer employed with the company, introducing themselves at the new point of contact. "Is there something I don't know about here?", she had asked.  

"What Amanda alleges is not ordinary workplace friction or a mere political disagreement. It is targeted discrimination against a Jewish employee, coupled with an alleged failure by the employer to protect her dignity and safety."

"Lightspeed is a global public company. Amanda's experience raises serious questions."

Benjamin Ryberg, chief operating officer, the Lawfare Project 

Moscow's War: Terrorizing, Hunting, Killing Civilians -- Human Safari

 

"Located in southern Ukraine on the banks of the Dniepr River across from the Russian army, Kherson has become a hunting ground for what locals call a “human safari”." 

"The Russian forces are using drones to target civilians – whether they are on foot, driving, or even on bicycles. The drones they use are known as FPVs, for “first-person view”, meaning the operators see what the drone sees in real time."

"For residents of Kherson, these drones have become a daily threat."

"At least 577 civilians were killed by short-range drones in Ukraine in 2025, and more than 3,000 were injured, according to the UN Human Rights Monitoring Mission in Ukraine (HRMMU). Nearly 95% of civilian casualties were recorded in territory held by the Ukrainian government." 

"In an October 2025 report focusing on the Dnipropetrovsk, Kherson and Mykolaiv regions, the UN Commission of Inquiry of Ukraine found that 'Russian armed forces’ short-range drone attacks ... amount to a crime against humanity ... and war crimes'."

France 24

 

"It starts in the evening. Sometimes, from 8 or 9pm, they start terrorising us. Sirens go off, drones start hitting."

"But in our practice, based on statistics, the peak is around 2, 3 or 4 am. That is when most strikes occur, when people are peacefully sleeping." 

Maryna Averina, spokesperson, State Emergency Service of Ukraine, Odessa region 

FPV drone with a spool of fibre-optic cable. Image credit: Armyinform.com.ua

 

The buzz of drones alert Ukrainians of incoming drones equipped with cameras, rigged out with explosives and steered by joysticks in the hands of a Russian military operative a mere dozen kilometres' distance. They know from experience that they will be tracked, chased and attacked by these drones. Familiarity with the phenomenon and the drones' random, unexpected presence, they are familiarly named as Russia's 'human safari' scheme of population demoralization. Translated; a terror campaign begun in Kherson which evolved with new technology, then spread to border areas within Ukraine. 

 

This hunting down of civilians for the quite obvious purpose of a reign of terror, part of the Kremlin's 

'special military operation', in Vladimir Putin's obsession with destroying Ukraine as a sovereign state, while annexing southern Ukraine bit by bit as it did in 2022 when it captured Crimea in 2014. The United Nations has recognized the deadly tactic as a war crime, one that has crossed the border from one army battling another, to an army deliberately targeting civilians, in opposition to international prohibitions on targeting civilian populations. 

 

"It's a really horrible problem the Russians are imposing on Ukrainian civilians in these towns where they're using the human safari tactic", observed Robert Tollast, military sciences researcher at the Royal United Services Institute, London. Russians just across the Dnieper River began two years ago deploying cheap commercial first-person view (FPV) quadcopters to stalk and strike civilians as they went about the course of their days; biking, standing at bus stops, walking their dogs.

 

The spool of fibre-optic cable is usually quite large. Image credit: Armyinform.com.ua

 

Begun in Kherson, by April of 2025 the attacks killed 42 civilians each month, injuring close to 300, according to an independent UN human rights commission report. The campaign, determined investigators, was ordered by Moscow for the purpose of systematically terrorizing the population, amounting to "murder as a crime against humanity". At  first Ukraine took to jamming -- flooding the drone frequencies with empty radio noise, which worked for a while.  Until Russia equipped the drones with fibre-optic filament.

 

These hair-thin tethers unspool in flight for 19 kilometres; with small payloads even further, as they carry video to the operator who commands the drone in return. Equipped with these filaments that bypass radio signals, the drones could no longer be jammed. It was  found that if someone knowledgeable, like a soldier, could grasp a filament it could be snapped through a combination of loops and pinches. Someone in the right place at the right time who could muster the speed required to pull off that simple solution could save another person's life, as the drone, the integrity of the fibre-optic threat broken, could no longer relay video and messages back to the operator. 

"The Russian drones are said to “zero in on vulnerable, everyday locations: crowded markets, petrol stations, cafes, post offices, and humanitarian aid centers.” Some days, the drones target ambulances, police officers, nurses, doctors, and garbage collectors. "

"However, most days, the drones “hunt and wound or kill commuters on their way to work, or target pensioners eking out survival in the winter cold.” The drones also scatter butterfly anti-personnel mines “along streets, courtyards, playgrounds and public squares.” These small, camouflaged mines are hard to see, easily blending in with leaves and brush, and have led to a rise in foot amputations."

"The attacks have become so prevalent that civilians are unable to leave their houses during the day unless there is heavy rain or overcast conditions that prevent the drones from flying or decrease their accuracy. When they do venture out, many residents carry radio frequency drone detectors [devices designed to detect the radio frequencies used to control drones] and only travel after dark. "

Articles of War  

Articles of War