Facebook groups like Yellow Vests Canada also provide fertile ground for bad actors — foreign and domestic — to weaponize hate and use it to sow further discord as part of broader influence campaigns.
— Caroline Orr, National Observer, Aug. 21.
Since the Trudeau ethics report was released last week, a small commotion has erupted in the legal community. The commotion centres around whether retired Supreme Court of Canada (SCC) judges should be permitted to return to private practice, and whether in doing so they can be weaponized against one another.
— Kyla Lee, Lawyer’s Daily, Aug. 20.
If there ever was a moment for an election debate on foreign policy, that time is now. Voters want to know how our political leaders will deal with the global challenges that directly affect Canada’s prosperity, security and values. How do we protect our economy that depends on trade when U.S. President Donald Trump has weaponized trade and challenged its basic rules?
— Rudyard Griffiths and Janice Stein, Globe and Mail, Aug. 8.
At least since the Jazz Age, a collection of prominent black and brown artists have incorporated [cannabis] into their artistic and cultural expressions. Law enforcement would later exploit this fact to weaponize drug laws against communities of colour — again, even though drug use across racial groups is essentially equal – giving quasi-cover to their decades of biased policing and racial repression.
— Chuka Ejeckam, Globe and Mail, Aug. 2.
Unplanned would have you believe that it is a guide to salvation, but it stumbles endlessly in its technical execution and in its aversion to the truth. It is a weaponized shrine to nefarious motives, aimed squarely at reinforcing the beliefs of those who wish to demonize the notion of female reproductive rights.
— Mike Gould, The Charlatan, July 31.
In the U.S., the issue of Russian interference has been weaponized for partisan purposes, to the extent that Americans can’t even agree on the basic facts.
— Caroline Orr, National Observer, July 30.
As a millennial, I’ve seen how my generation has been weaponized through one avenue that absorbs a great deal of our youth’s time: the “education” system.
— Michelle Haley, Post Millennial, July 15.
Trump has already weaponized social media to advance his own agenda and silence his critics — and now, he’s threatening to weaponize the presidency to go after those same platforms if they try to clean up their acts ahead of the next election.
— Caroline Orr, National Observer, July 15.
Jason Kenney has successfully weaponized people’s skepticism of climate change policies, their desire to let someone else pay for mitigation, and their willingness to accept arguments that confirm their biases. His success in this has given him a powerful mandate to repeal carbon prices on transportation and heating fuels in Alberta.
— Andrew Leach, Policy Options, July 15.
In addition to hostage-taking, the CCP has weaponized trade by banning imports of canola oil, primarily from parts of Canada that have historically been a vulnerability for the Liberal Party in election time.
— J. Michael Cole, Epoch Times, July 10.
Newer songs [Bad Religion] like “Chaos from Within” or the Suicidal Tendencies-influenced “Do the Paranoid Style” or “My Sanity” don’t shy away from what’s been happening south of the border, but feel more like counter-punches than the knock-out blows. That didn’t put a damper on the evening, especially when older tracks like “Infected,” “Suffer” and “21st Century Digital Boy” are weaponized in the warm-sounding Burt instead of a sweaty punk venue.
— Anthony Augustine, Exclaim!, July 5.
The public got a glimpse of this dystopian reality in 2016, when the now-defunct data firm Cambridge Analytica harnessed data stolen from Facebook and used it to develop a weaponized propaganda machine that profiled voters and targeted them with military-style psychological warfare.
— Caroline Orr, National Observer, July 4.
The galvanizing image of Alan Kurdi was weaponized politically, appearing as it did during a federal election campaign and after it became known the Conservative government had denied the Kurdi family’s application for asylum.
— Anne Kingston, Maclean’s, June 26.
Disagreeing with big government, heightened taxes, or wanting reasonable immigration reform does not make someone racist, sexist, or a bigot. Nobody is fascist for wanting border security. These terms hold such negative connotations that any person would tremble at the thought of being assigned such a label. Sadly, it appears the left has weaponized these words to use it as their argument of choice.
— Anthony Daoud, Post Millennial, June 23.
We live in the real world and people’s past actions and words will be weaponized against them. In today’s political climate calls for disqualification and de-platforming are regular and incessant.
— Cosmin Dzsrdzsa, Post Millennial, June 11.
The Raptors are the only NBA team north of the U.S.-Canada border. That carries symbolic value. We The North, a branding initiative created by Sid Lee, a Canadian creative firm, sought to weaponize that otherness.
— Danny Chau, The Ringer, June 14.
Their salary cap situation makes the Leafs vulnerable to an offer sheet, but it also means they’ll want to shed some salary to make room for the players they want to keep. In this situation, the Canucks can weaponize their cap space and take advantage of the Leafs’ situation to acquire some additional assets along the way.
— Daniel Wagner, Vancouver Courier, June 5.
There’s something between balletic and weaponized about watching professional basketball players warm up.
— Richard Warnica, National Post, May 31.
WINNER: Caroline Orr, National Observer (4)
RUNNER-UP: The Post Millennial (3)
How can we understand opinionators when they weaponize cliches?
I think, in this case, that you’d need to avoid ‘overshooting’ their drivel with your higher IQ. May I suggest a pre-frontal lobotomy? Suddenly, they’ll make much more sense.