On A Monday

Time to get the week rolling...


Justin Trudeau has offered to somehow compensate the charities he has taken money from:

Liberal Leader Justin Trudeau remained under fire Monday for taking hefty speaking fees from charitable groups after becoming an MP, despite promising to pay back any organization that was dissatisfied.

The Conservatives maintained Trudeau should never have accepted any money from any charity — before or after becoming an MP.

And they expanded the definition of a charity to include all non-profit groups, universities, municipalities and other public sector organizations.

"What is it about the ethical standard of giving money to charities rather than taking money from charities that he does not understand?" queried Canadian Heritage Minister James Moore in the Commons.
NDP Leader Tom Mulcair didn't go quite so far.

But he said Trudeau should return "every penny" paid by all charitable and non-profit groups since he was elected in 2008 — not just those who ask for their money back.

So far, only one charity, the Grace Foundation in New Brunswick, has asked Trudeau to give back his fee, claiming it lost money on an event aimed at raising funds for a seniors' home last year.

"I think it's a mistake for a sitting member of Parliament to be accepting money from a charity to do what is essentially part of your job, which is to talk to Canadians about your priorities and how you see things unfold," Mulcair said outside the Commons.

(Sidebar: you know it's a big deal when even the NDP is disgusted with wasted money.)


First of all, who wants to hear Trudeau speak? His father was a crappy prime minister (and a Nazi sympathiser) and the fils has as much philosophical sway as a dung beetle who just realised what he is and has become disgusted with himself. Has Trudeau said anything that is particularly memorable or helpful? This is akin to Kennedy worship. The name means so much that further digging into their sordid lives is discouraged. Furthermore, Trudeau is independently wealthy. He doesn't need "speaking fees", particularly as a sitting Member of Parliament whose job it is to speak to the electorate. Why he would even think of taking money from charities and the like is a gross display of greed. Everything he says and does now is an attempt to buy back some good will.

As for the school, clubs and charities, if they have the empty-headed desire and ability to pay to hear Trudeau give some meaningless blather, they need their heads examined big-time.


Russian President Vladimir Putin has criticised other Western nations for their support of Syria:

After months of deliberations, Washington decided last week to send weapons to the rebels, declaring that Assad's forces had crossed a "red line" by using nerve gas.

The move throws the superpower's weight behind the revolt and signals a potential turning point in global involvement in a two-year-old war that has already killed at least 93,000 people.

It has also infuriated Russia, Cold War-era ally of Syria, which has sold arms to Assad and used its veto at the U.N. Security Council to block resolutions against him.

Russia has dismissed the U.S. evidence that Assad's forces used nerve gas. The White House says President Barack Obama will try to lobby Putin to drop his support for Assad during this week's G8 summit hosted by British Prime Minister David Cameron.

After meeting Cameron in London, Putin said Russia wanted to create the conditions for a resolution of the conflict.

"One does not really need to support the people who not only kill their enemies, but open up their bodies, eat their intestines in front of the public and cameras," Putin said.

"Are these the people you want to support? Are they the ones you want to supply with weapons? Then this probably has little relation to the humanitarian values preached in Europe for hundreds of years."

The incident Putin referred to was most likely that of a rebel commander filmed last month cutting into the torso of a dead soldier and biting into a piece of one of his organs.

Both sides have been accused of atrocities in the conflict. The United States and other countries that aid the rebels say one of the reasons for doing so is to support mainstream opposition groups and reduce the influence of extremists.

The word is лицемер (hypocrite). Who has been arming Syria for years, Mr. Putin? For him to take the proverbial high road in this would be laughable if it weren't so terrible. Obama's decision to arm the rebels does not surprise anyone who has been paying attention to his presidency. The object should be not to side with either Putin or Obama but watch where the chips may fall. There are no ethical winners here.

Related: no one loves Obama:

President Barack Obama's approval rating is plummeting in the midst of American dissatisfaction with the recent privacy controversies and other scandals.

The president's approval rating is 45 percent, marking an 8-point drop in the last month, according to a CNN survey. Weighing down on the Obama administration are the revelations of government domestic spying programs, the Justice Department's secret pursuit of journalists' phone records, the Internal Revenue Service's inappropriate scrutiny of conservative political groups seeking tax-exemption status, as well as the lingering questions over the deadly attack in Benghazi, Libya, last fall.

This also might have something to do with it. What a cretin.

He's sullied America and Ireland enough. Impeach this bozo.

(thumbs up)

I'll say. Is he aware that they are stealing industrial secrets?

Human rights activist Chen Guangcheng has confirmed in a statement that New York University is forcing his family out of their campus home by month's end, warning that his case shows the power of a totalitarian regime halfway across the world to affect U.S. higher education policies.

"The work of the Chinese Communists within academic circles in the United States is far greater than what people imagine," the blind activist said in a statement released by his lawyers, the Washington-based Bancroft PLLC.

Seven thousand, six hundred Canadians died liberating Holland:

Despite infanticide still being murder under (the rarely enforced) Netherlander criminal code, the Dutch Medical Association (KNMG) has issued an ethics opinion holding that doctors may euthanize dying babies to end the parents’ suffering. From the story (Google translation):

When parents [of a dying child] can not stand it anymore, physicians may hasten death, the KNMG decided. On this issue existed for years ambiguity. Doctors should accelerate death in a dying child [using] muscle relaxants if the death takes so long that it is better for the parents not to see severe suffering.
It’s about real life without newborns for whom further treatment by doctors is seen as meaningless.In these infants, the ventilator stopped. Most children then die quickly, but some will remain a life time and suffering. Once a doctor administering muscle relaxants, however, the baby dies within minutes. Criteria are established in the report Medical-life decisions in newborns with severe abnormalities of doctors organization KNMG, published today.

The KNMG also okays dehydrating dying and severely disabled babies to death by withholding milk. It is also worth noting that under the infanticide bureacratic check-list–the Groningen Protocol–Netherlander doctors may euthanize babies who would live with serious disabilities if the doctor thinks the life would involve too much suffering.

And that's what they did it for.


People are aware that this chick isn't a NASA consultant, right?

The Miss USA contestant for Utah, Marissa Powell, may have impressed the judges with her talents and her stunning gown, but her stumbling answer to a question about income inequality has drawn her more attention than the new Miss USA.

This is cool:

Using a system called Lidar — Light Detection And Ranging — which is similar to radar, but uses laser pulses instead of radio waves, a team from the University of Sydney's archaeological research centre in Cambodia have located the ancient city of Mahendraparvata.

Mounted on a plane, the lidar made sweeps of the jungle below, and the data that was gathered was used to create a detailed terrain map of the area. Like the work done in Honduras showed, as the laser scans swept over the jungle, the light beams were able to penetrate through the jungle canopy, effectively allowing the researchers to 'remove' the canopy and see a detailed view of the jungle floor.

Holy metal thunder:

Hundreds of bikers took a break from hell-raising on Sunday to be blessed by Pope Francis.

Wearing black boots, jackets and vests, the tattooed Harley-Davidson riders stuck out among the nuns, priests, school children and shorts-wearing tourists at an open-air Mass in St. Peter's square.

As part of a three-day celebration of the 110-year anniversary of the U.S. company that produces the "hog", riders parked their bikes along the broad avenue that leads up to the Vatican, and engines were still rumbling when the Mass started.

It was unclear whether Francis's homily about celebrating life could have been aimed at the obsessive Harley fans.

Francis cautioned that "power and pleasure", among other things, lead to God being "replaced by fleeting human idols which offer the intoxication of a flash of freedom, but in the end bring new forms of slavery and death."

Mid-Week Post

Cherry tomatoes not only add flavour to your salad, they up the Zen content, as well.

How awkward... for Justin Trudeau:

Outgoing Senate Internal Economy Committee Chair David Tkachuk told reporters, Wednesday, that Harb owes taxpayers $231,649.07 for improperly claiming living expenses for the past eight years. ...

News of Harb's growing debt puts Liberal leader Justin Trudeau in an awkward position.

Last weekend, in an interview with Global News, Trudeau suggested that Harb's troubles were "an honest mistake or a misunderstanding of the rules."

"For me, there’s a real difference between what Mac Harb is going through and what Senators Duffy and Wallin seem to have on their plate," he said adding that Harb could be allowed back into the Liberal fold once the matter is cleared.

For me but not for thee, eh, Justin? Who took money from schools and charities?


If it quacks like a duck:

On Wednesday morning, Lou Schizas, a radio personality on the John Oakley show on AM640 in Toronto, referred to NDP leader Andrea Horwath as a "whore."

Perhaps Andrea Horwath should not have propped up the corrupt Liberal government, the leader of which she demanded answer questions in an inquiry. Someone might think she was doing favours instead of standing on principle. Oh wait...


We don't have to have the Indian Act:

The federal government is hoping to make it easier for First Nations couples whose marriages break down to divide the matrimonial home and land on reserves equally, but not everyone agrees with the proposed changes.

Currently, provincial laws governing the fair division of assets when marriages fail do not apply on First Nations reserves. The federal Indian Act, which governs most aspects of reserve life, does not address the subject.

Outside of reserves, when a married or common-law couple splits up, the house and belongings can be split 50-50.

But under the Indian Act, on the reserves, only the person issued the band house is in control, which can result in one partner left with nothing.

Bill S-2 aims to allow spouses living both on and off reserves the same rights to claim a share of the family's assets in the event of a marriage breakdown.

I guess it would be pointless to make adults act like adults and fix their marital problems but is there any hope of getting rid of the racist Indian Act that not only separates one group from the rest of Canada but requires a new set of laws to fix what is disjointed and dated?



What? Not meatless Fridays?

The Vancouver Food Policy Council is excited to let you know that the City of Vancouver has proclaimed Monday June 10th, 2013 as Meatless Monday.

Aside from the tremendous gall one possesses to proclaim what food one should not (READ: cannot) eat, raising cattle does not contribute greatly to "greenhouse emissions" whereas a strictly vegetarian diet requires high-quality cropland and is, as a result, not an efficient use of land. And then there's the health benefits of eating moderate amounts of meat- stronger immune systems, muscles, organs and ease with weight loss.

To top it off, meat tastes damn good!

So if you like beef (or chicken), eat your meat on Mondays. Do it for freedom!

And now, explain the NSA scandal to your kids with these books.

Thanks For the Memories

One should thank outgoing former premier and MPP Dalton McGuinty for the following:

-raising taxes (which he pledged not to do) and putting Ontario in debt. The debt now stands at $272 billion  with interest costs of $10.6 billion yearly.

-rejecting tax credits (ie- for winter tires) that would reduce burdens on Ontarians.

-Ontario now has some of the highest energy costs in the entire country. "Green energy" costs the average household $310 a year.

- the costly eHealth scandal

-Caledonia

- he broke promises to give funding for autistic students

-cancelled gas plants in Oakville and Mississauga, lied about it and had deleted e-mails to that effect, all at the cost of $828 million.

-forced Catholic schools to teach an immoral, inappropriate and unnecessary sex education program as well as pushed for ludicrous and obviously partisan anti-bullying laws and GSAs


Does that cover the entirety of McGuinty's ruination of Ontario? Perhaps not. The scorecard on this toad could run for days.

Let him leave and have him take that frightful Wynne with him.

Make Way For Tuesday's Post!

And here it is....

You can run from the legislature but you can't run away from the truth:

Former Ontario premier Dalton McGuinty will resign his seat in the legislature Wednesday, according to government sources, despite saying just last month that he would remain the MPP for Ottawa-South until the next general election.

Will his resignation make it easier to prosecute him? I hope so.


I wonder who is reading this?

Canada's government on Monday declined to say whether it was using data gathered by a secret U.S. government eavesdropping program, but confirmed its own secret signals intelligence agency was monitoring foreign phone and internet traffic.

If monitoring every form of communication and social media is meant to deter, prevent or punish terrorism, then do explain its (in)efficacy. Or should I be asking why no one takes a hardline against people who are obviously to dangerous to be tolerated in the West?

(hat tip)

Vaguely related: an Islamic institution wants the successor of Saint Peter to declare that a heresy a peaceful one:

An envoy from Al-Azhar in Cairo, raised the prospect of restoring ties with the Vatican yesterday but called on Pope Francis to take “a step forward” by declaring that Islam is a peaceful religion.

If it's such a hellhole, why did you go there?

A newlywed Ontario bride is frantically trying to free her husband and his cousin from a Dominican Republic jail "hellhole"— and she says she's left doing it with next to no help from the Canadian government.

I didn't realise it was the Canadian government's job to prevent people from doing stupid things like take cheap vacations on the backs of others.

What consular services cannot do for you:

• interfere in private legal matters, including criminal defence cases, or in another country’s judicial affairs
• seek preferential treatment for you or try to exempt you from the due process of local law
• get you out of jail
• post bail or pay legal fees or fines

Moving on....


Let's chuck the stupid Charter and elect our judges:

Two years after a riot in Vancouver made international headlines, charges have been approved against 229 people while 56 accused rioters are still waiting to learn if they'll be charged.

B.C.'s Criminal Justice Branch says that so far, police have recommended charges against a total of 325 people and that charges were not approved against 40 of them.

To date, 149 people suspected of participating in the riot have entered guilty pleas and 102 of them have received sentences ranging from discharges to more than a year in jail.

This all occurred two years ago. What's the hold-up?


The next time someone tells you birth control is so harmless that it can be given to a child, tell them to cram it:

The popular birth-control pills Yaz and Yasmin have been linked to the deaths of at least 23 Canadian women —the youngest just age 14, Health Canada documents say.

The deaths are among about 600 adverse reactions reported among women taking the contraceptives between 2007 and Feb. 28 of this year, Health Canada confirmed Tuesday.

Doctors and pharmacists who submitted the reports to the Canada Vigilance Program said Yaz and Yasmin are suspected in the 23 deaths. The reports say most of the women died suddenly after developing blood clots, a known risk with the pills.

Since 2007, Health Canada said the program has received reports of adverse reactions among 333 women taking Yasmin and 267 women prescribed Yaz.

Among those cases were 15 deaths linked to Yasmin and eight to Yaz. More than half of the women who died were under age 26, with the youngest being a 14-year-old girl. Most deaths reportedly occurred soon after the women starting taking the drugs.

And now, The League of Grumpy Justice. Enjoy.

Andrea Horwath Is A Terrible Person

As evidenced here:

Ontario’s New Democrats kept their promise and voted to support the minority Liberal government’s budget, averting a summer election.

The budget passed by a vote of 64 to 36 in a major achievement for rookie Premier Kathleen Wynne, who took over as leader of the Liberal party from Dalton McGuinty in February. ...

NDP Leader Andrea Horwath says her party felt it was important to work with the Liberals to get changes in the budget rather than washing their hands of the issue like the Progressive Conservatives did.

This is the same woman who demanded an inquiry into the cancelled and costly gas plants.

But no one should ever expect Andrea Horwath to take a principled stand on anything. She is, after all, the leader of the Ontario NDP.

It's Monday

 I'm sure this wedge was meant to be believed by those whose gullibility rating is quite high:

A U.S. Internal Revenue Service manager, who described himself as a conservative Republican, told congressional investigators that he and a local colleague decided to give conservative groups the extra scrutiny that has prompted weeks of political controversy.

In an official interview transcript released on Sunday by Democratic Representative Elijah Cummings, the manager said he and an underling set aside "Tea Party" and "patriot" groups that had applied for tax-exempt status because the organizations appeared to pose a new precedent that could affect future IRS filings.

Cummings, top Democrat on the House of Representatives Oversight and Government Reform Committee conducting the probe, told CNN's "State of the Union" program that the manager's comments provided evidence that politics was not behind IRS actions that have fueled a month-long furor in Washington.

"He is a conservative Republican working for the IRS. I think this interview and these statements go a long way toward showing that the White House was not involved in this," Cummings told CNN's "State of the Union" program.

"Based upon everything I've seen, the case is solved. And if it were me, I would wrap this case up and move on," he added.

Cummings, a Maryland Democrat, said he would release a full transcript of the committee's interviews with IRS officials by the end of this week, if the panel's Republican chairman, Representative Darrell Issa, does not.

Issa has released his own excerpts of interviews with IRS employees the committee is conducting jointly, which the Republican says suggests the added attention given to Tea Party groups originated from Washington, D.C. and had political motivations.

Oh, so the targeting of conservative groups was clearly not a partisan effort and the White House had no knowledge of it even though a former IRS commissioner visited the White House one hundred and fifty-seven times? Right.


Just after President Obama concluded his meeting with Chinese president Xi Jinping (whose country just happens to be the home of the Great Firewall, among other things), former NSA technical assistant, Edward Snowden, fled to Hong Kong:

The individual responsible for one of the most significant leaks in US political history is Edward Snowden, a 29-year-old former technical assistant for the CIA and current employee of the defence contractor Booz Allen Hamilton. Snowden has been working at the National Security Agency for the last four years as an employee of various outside contractors, including Booz Allen and Dell. ...

Despite his determination to be publicly unveiled, he repeatedly insisted that he wants to avoid the media spotlight. "I don't want public attention because I don't want the story to be about me. I want it to be about what the US government is doing."

He does not fear the consequences of going public, he said, only that doing so will distract attention from the issues raised by his disclosures. "I know the media likes to personalise political debates, and I know the government will demonise me." ...

On May 20, he boarded a flight to Hong Kong, where he has remained ever since. He chose the city because "they have a spirited commitment to free speech and the right of political dissent", and because he believed that it was one of the few places in the world that both could and would resist the dictates of the US government.

(Sidebar: no, it's a protectorate of China which has waged cyber war on its own people and others).

It's dodgy that he fled to Hong Kong and his support for Ron Paul also raises some questions but the American government is spying on its own people under the premise that it is attempting to stop terrorism (insert own "then why the hell did the Boston attack happen?" tirade here).

Let the comparisons to Bradley Manning begin.



Oh look- South Korea is going to meet with rogue state North Korea after months of hostility (the fault of which is entirely the latter's)... again:

Mid-ranking North and South Korean officials met in the border truce village of Panmunjom and on Sunday to prepare the stage for ministerial talks that follow Wednesday.

Did not see that coming.

Now the South Korean embassy steps up to bat for defectors:

The South Korean Embassy in Laos is now sheltering about 20 North Korean defectors, including recent arrivals. The embassy on June 4 moved 18 defectors from a safe house to the embassy for their protection.

According to a diplomatic source, they include children, people with physical disabilities, and cancer patients. But most are in relatively good health.

Saenuiri Party lawmaker Kim Jae-won, who arrived in Vientiane on Thursday, met the 20 defectors at the embassy compound in the afternoon.

"All defectors know" that Laos sent back the nine mostly orphaned defectors, Kim told reporters on Friday. "They have been resting since they were moved to the embassy compound and look forward to going to South Korea as soon as possible."

But their wish is not likely to be realized soon. North Korean defectors, even under the protection of the South Korean Embassy, have to be interviewed by Lao authorities, get travel permits and pay fines of $300 for illegal entry to leave the country.

"The Lao government has halted all the procedures dealing with North Korean defectors since the nine young North Korean were arrested and deported," Kim said. "It's unclear when it will resume the job and try to interview the defectors now waiting in the embassy."

Laos has not commented on what it will do about the defectors in the embassy. 

Trust a dog to do what a human being apparently won't:

A dog has been hailed a hero for saving the life of a newborn girl who had been slung into a rubbish dump.

The animal, a Thai Bangkaew called Pui, discovered the child inside a plastic bag at the roadside tip in Bangkok.

He carried the bag in his mouth to his owner Gumnerd Thongmak's house and barked loudly to get his attention.

(two paws up)


The truth comes out:

Lyudmila Putina once described her husband as a vampire. He suggested that anyone who could put up with her for three weeks deserved a national monument. What could go wrong for Russia’s first couple?

Don't fret, Lyudmila- he treats everyone that way.


The NDP will do its utmost to make sure there is no election no matter how badly Kathleen Wynne should be booted out of office and how she and McGuinty deserve prison (at the very least) for their deception:

Ontario’s Opposition accuses Premier Kathleen Wynne of being complicit in the mass deletion of emails on cancelled gas plants by senior Liberals in former premier Dalton McGuinty’s office.

The Progressive Conservatives say Wynne was a member of the Liberal cabinet when the chiefs of staff in McGuinty’s office and the Ministry of Energy deleted emails on the gas plants in Oakville and Mississauga.

PC critic Rob Leone says Wynne should either dissolve the legislature to allow an election or resign as premier because of her complicity in the cover up of documents.

Chris Hadfield has decided to retire after being awesome:

After capturing our hearts and expanding our minds during his five-month stay in orbit on the International Space Station, Canadian astronaut Chris Hadfield announced Monday that he'll be leaving the Canadian Space Agency on July 3.

"I've decided to retire from government service," he said at the CSA headquarters this afternoon.

"I've had such an interesting career, and after 35 years it's time to step down. I'm the last astronaut of my class that's still around," he added, according to CBC News. "It's rare to be an astronaut for more than 20 years."

If I had to guess at his next move it would be training unicorns. IF I had to guess.


And now, a cat is a mayoral candidate:

He'll call council to order with a meow and he'll hiss political opponents into submission.

Yes, there's no question Mexico's newest mayoral candidate in the city of Xalapa is just the leader the town needs. Morris the cat has pointy ears and the earnest, loving eyes of cat that's willing to enact change. And he has more than 80,000 'Likes' on Facebook.

Hail the mayor-cat! Viva! Viva! Viva!

 

Big Brother-in-Chief

Open Statement To Those Who Voted For Obama Even Once: if voting for this narcissistic tyrant was worth it for you, surrender the deed to your house and your credit card. Apparently privacy and even common human decency mean nothing to you.

First, there was the Benghazi scandal. Then the IRS scandal. Then the AP scandal. Now, the Kenyan dictator defends violating the privacy of the average American all the while doing nothing to apprehend real criminals and terrorists:

President Barack Obama defended sweeping secret surveillance into U.S. phone records and foreigners' Internet use, declaring them a necessary defence against terrorism, and assuring Americans, "Nobody is listening to your telephone calls."

Taking questions Friday from reporters at a health care event in San Jose, California, Obama said, "It's important to recognize that you can't have 100 per cent security and also then have 100 per cent privacy and zero inconvenience."

It was revealed late Wednesday that the National Security Agency has been collecting the phone records of hundreds of millions of U.S. phone customers. The leaked document first reported by the Guardian newspaper gave the NSA authority to collect from all of Verizon's land and mobile customers, but intelligence experts said the program swept up the records of other phone companies too.

Another secret program revealed Thursday scours the Internet usage of foreign nationals overseas who use any of nine U.S.-based internet providers such as Microsoft and Google.

In his first comments since the programs were publicly revealed this week, Obama said safeguards are in place.

"They help us prevent terrorist attacks," Obama said. He said he has concluded that prevention is worth the "modest encroachments on privacy."

What a bloody liar (no one should believe these guys, either). Can one "modestly encroach" his privacy and ask him how much money he's blown on golf holidays, his university records and where he was when Ambassador J. Christopher Stevens was killed?

Was Dzhokhar Tsarnaev apprehended through this surveillance? Oh wait...


To the NSA: you do know that you will either get thrown under the bus and/or will have to testify at some point, right? Don't pretend you're not reading this. You're tracking everybody.

But Wait! There's More!

It's been quite a busy week.


The Chinese government would rather its own people not know that twenty-four years ago it violently suppressed a student revolt:

Today's date won't show up.

You can search "June 4th" or "Jun 4th" and results will not come up. You can try with Chinese characters, or in their Pinyin transliteration, or in English or even French and the result will not appear on your screen.

Even "today" won't work. Nor “tomorrow.”

June 4, the anniversary of the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre is again keeping censors busy in China.

As in past years, there is a long list of words that people in China are blocked from searching on Weibo (the Chinese version of Twitter) around the time of the anniversary of the bloody incident.

According to a compilation from the Citizen Lab, at the University of Toronto’s Munk School of Global Affairs, this year’s banned search keywords include various combinations of the numbers 6, 4, 8 and 9.

Search terms such as “Tiananmen,” “square,” “tank” and “Changan Avenue,” which leads to the central square, and names of leaders of the 1989 protests were obviously blocked.

But Citizen Lab researchers found that even Roman numerals for 6 and 4 (“VIIV”), or the mixing of numbers and letters such as “8q b 4” (89 6 4) or other ways to describe June 4, such “May 35” or “April 65th.”

Another anti-censorship website reported that at times the authorities tried a more fine-tuned, filtered approach, allowing only some search results to come through.

By the date of the anniversary, the Chinese characters for “yesterday,” “today,” and “tomorrow” were also blocked, according to China Digital Times, a watchdog website based in California.

Carry on.

This never happened.

Obama rewards two people who know how to both lie and tow the party line:

President Barack Obama chose close confidante Susan Rice as his new national security adviser on Wednesday, increasing White House control over foreign policy and defying Republican critics of her handling of last year's deadly attack on a U.S. diplomatic compound in Libya.

**

A White House official says President Barack Obama will name former aide Samantha Power as the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations. Power will replace Susan Rice, who will take over as Obama’s national security adviser. ...

The chair of President Obama’s new Atrocities Prevention Board once called for the United States to force troops into Israeli-controlled territory in order to end abuses she said were being committed by both sides in the Palestinian-Israeli conflict.

An interesting article about the identity of God in the Bible and Koran.


Also: a special IRS tax form.


If one is going to legalise killing, at least dispense with the euphemisms:

The Quebec government is expected to table its “dying with dignity” legislation in the coming days.

The law would allow certain forms of medical aid in dying — also called “assisted suicide” by some.

Which is it- "dying with dignity" which occurs after a cursory meeting with physicians who just fill out some forms before before pumping one with death-causing drugs or "assisted suicide" which occurs after a cursory meeting with physicians who just fill out some forms before before pumping one with death-causing drugs?


And now, watch this cat give a pug a massage:




(Gracias)

Mid-Week Post

Let us begin...


Oh, how embarrassing this must be... for the Toronto Star:

John Cook, the Gawker editor who first reported that he saw an alleged video of Toronto Mayor Rob Ford smoking what may have been crack cocaine, is now saying the video might be “gone.”

In an article posted on the U.S. website Gawker Tuesday afternoon, Mr. Cook said that was what the owner of the alleged video told Gawker’s intermediary.

“It’s gone. Leave me alone,” was the message Mr. Cook said he received Friday.

The National Post has not seen the alleged video nor is the Post able to verify its authenticity. ...

Meanwhile, the editor-in-chief of The Toronto Star was suggesting in interviews on Monday that the alleged video may soon appear.

“[T]he video is slowly making its way to daylight, and when that happens, we’ll all be better off,” Mr. Cooke told The Province, a Postmedia newspaper in Vancouver. Two Star reporters have said they have seen the alleged video.

Oh, it's gone, just like your credibility.

And about that "better off" thing:

Toronto finished 2012 with a $248-million surplus, and although the city is still facing some significant fiscal constraints, its budget chair says the numbers are rare good news for Mayor Rob Ford.

Except that Trudeau didn't lead the charge:

On Wednesday, Trudeau held court on Parliament Hill, outlining his four-point plan to make parliamentarians more accountable and their finances more transparent.

(Sidebar: he held court. Imagine that.)

I wish people would stop trying to make Justin Trudeau appear as though he is some sort of statesman. Every time he opens his mouth (in this case, the Senate), he says something stupid and definitely unoriginal (ie- the Senate).


Ontario's privacy commissioner has found that former premier Dalton McGuinty broke the law by deleting gas plant e-mails:

Ontario’s privacy commission says the staff of former premier Dalton McGuinty broke the law by deleting emails and records relating to the controversial cancellations of two gas plants ahead of the 2011 election.

Information and Privacy Commissioner Dr. Ann Cavoukian said the deletion of emails violated the Archives and Recordkeeping Act. While she couldn’t confirm the deletions were politically motivated, Cavoukian went as far as to say the practice was suspicious.

"It is difficult to accept that the routine deletion of emails was not in fact an attempt by staff in the former Minister’s office to avoid transparency and accountability in relation to their work," Cavoukian wrote in her report. 

Well, duh.


No one wants to listen to a vain tart who scowls and goes on expensive holidays:

First lady Michelle Obama threatened to leave a nighttime fundraiser unless a protester quit interrupting her speech.

Obama was speaking Tuesday evening at a Democratic National Committee fundraiser in Washington. 

According to a pool report from a reporter who attended the event, an audience member started shouting in support of an executive order on gay rights halfway through Obama’s remarks. ...

The protester has been identified as activist Ellen Sturtz, 56, from LGBT rights group GetEqual. 

Sturtz was escorted out but it was reported she shouted out she was a “lesbian looking for federal equality before I die.”

Sturtz told the Washington Post the First Lady’s action surprised her. 

“She came right down in my face,” she said. “I was taken aback.”

Sturtz said she wanted President Obama to sign an anti-discrimination executive order.

Two tantrum-throwers, one solution.


The judge presiding over the bail hearing of a man accused of butchering Lee Rigby (well- he did do it. Everyone saw him. He bragged about it. There's film of it. I digress...) cuts him off:

A man charged with murdering British serviceman Lee Rigby outside his army barracks in London told a judge at his bail hearing that he is a soldier and complained about his treatment by police.

Michael Adebolajo, 28, is being held in custody ahead of a trial and didn’t ask to be released on bail. During a hearing at London’s Central Criminal Court today, Judge Nigel Sweeney switched off the video link to the prison where Adebolajo is being held because he repeatedly interrupted the proceedings.

Oh, poor, poor victim. Michael Adebolajo converted to a heresy and murdered a productive member of British society but HE is the victim in all of this. Whither the justice, I ask.


How do you engage a rogue state that repeatedly threatens its southern neighbour?

A former Canadian ambassador to North Korea says the Harper government isn't doing as much as it once did to engage the pariah state — a pullback that may be hampering its broader ambitions in Asia.

While not in the league of the United States or China, the current policy risks making Canada a non-player on the issue, said Marius Grinius, a retired veteran of both the senior diplomat corps and the Canadian Forces.

Grinius made four trips to Pyongyang, the North Korean capital, while he was Canada's envoy to South Korea between 2004 and 2007.

Grinius said he believes the current Canadian envoy to South Korea has yet to present credentials to communist leaders in the North Korea in order to get a first-hand view of the closed, backward communist state.

"You have to visit Pyongyang regularly to see what's happening in the streets and elsewhere," Grinius told the House of Commons foreign affairs committee Tuesday.

"That's the way you can establish credibility and expertise. Only then can you speak with some authority, having been there."

Let's stop right there. The real story is in the Korean countryside and in the north where the concentration camps are, not in Pyongyang under the watchful eye of a minder. One can forget about tough questions or criticisms of this totalitarian vassal state to China.

North Korea accuses South Koreans of kidnapping nine youths:

North Korea accused South Korean activists on Wednesday of trying to kidnap nine young people who the United Nations and South Korea believe were forced back to their homeland by China last week.

The United Nations said last week it was concerned about China's return of the nine to North Korea, where they face severe punishment, possibly execution, for having fled. The nine were first sent back to China after crossing into Laos.

Hundreds of North Koreans attempt to flee from their country every year, often first crossing into China and then making their way to Southeast Asia. Many end up at a reception center in Bangkok from where they are flown to South Korea.

The South Korean Foreign Ministry said the nine had been "forcibly deported to the North" after they were picked up by North Korean agents in Laos as they tried to make their way to South Korea.

But the North's KCNA news agency said South Korean "elements" had tried to trick the nine and take them to the South.

"Recently, a case of an unprecedented anti-humanitarian act of atrocity has been disclosed where traitorous puppet elements tried to trick and kidnap our youths and drag them to South Korea," the KCNA news agency said.

North Korea refers to the South as a U.S. puppet.

Some experts in South Korea say the North might try to use the nine in a propaganda campaign against the South or against international rights groups.

KCNA, quoting a spokesman for the North's Red Cross central committee, said the nine were forced to read Christian literature and had been given information critical of North Korean in an attempt to bring them to the South.

The South Korean government should "punish the instigators and apologize for the criminal act", KCNA said.

The South Korean government has come under criticism at home for failing to stop the deportation of the nine from Laos to China and back to North Korea.

Where is Megumi Yokota?

 From the defectors:

From the streets of Seoul to the European parliament, a new generation of North Korean defectors is stepping into the limelight, telling their personal stories to highlight the human rights abuses in their homeland.

It's a major change for the defector community, especially in South Korea, where for years they lived on the margins of society. Most did menial jobs and kept quiet, avoiding attention for fear of being labelled a "Red" or a "Sympathiser with the North".

Not any more.

"I plan to speak out as much as possible," said Hyeonseo Lee, who on a recent Friday evening addressed a street rally in Seoul for an event called North Korea Freedom Week.

Lee, 33, wowed the audience at this year's TED Conference, an international forum for people to promote their ideas. At the February gathering in Long Beach, California, Lee gave a harrowing account of life in North Korea and her eventual escape to South Korea via China, where she spent years in hiding.

Experts said it's too early to tell what impact this newfound outspokenness will have on international policy toward North Korea, already under layers of U.N. sanctions over its banned nuclear and ballistic missile programmes.

But in South Korea at least, prejudice toward defectors is ebbing away as more South Koreans hear their stories and meet them, said Shin Hyo-sook, head of the education research center at the North Korean Refugees Foundation in Seoul.

She said younger defectors had become more vocal in making calls for change after North Korean leader Kim Jong-un, himself only 30, showed no sign of wanting to improve human rights.

"I think a lot more of these younger defectors feel a kind of social responsibility to improve human rights for their people," Shin said.

There's a movie in this somewhere:

In Alaska, scores of volcanoes and strange lava flows have escaped scrutiny for decades, shrouded by lush forests and hidden under bobbing coastlines.

In the past three years, 12 new volcanoes have been discovered in Southeast Alaska, and 25 known volcanic vents and lava flows re-evaluated, thanks to dogged work by geologists with the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) and the U.S. Forest Service. Sprinkled across hundreds of islands and fjords, most of the volcanic piles are tiny cones compared to the super-duper stratovolcanoes that parade off to the west, in the Aleutian Range.

But the Southeast's volcanoes are in a class by themselves, the researchers found. A chemical signature in the lava flows links them to a massive volcanic field in Canada. Unusual patterns in the lava also point to eruptions under, over and alongside glaciers, which could help scientists pinpoint the size of Alaska's mountain glaciers during past climate swings.

"It's giving us this serendipitous window on the history of climate in Southeast Alaska for the last 1 million years," said Susan Karl, a research geologist with the USGS in Anchorage and the project's leader.

And here, too:

The fossilized remains of a 408-million-year-old fish species have been found in Spain, a study reports.

Researchers found scales, spines and shoulder bones of the new species (Machaeracanthus goujeti) in the town of Teruel and to the south of the city of Zaragoza. The fish lived during the Devonian period, and is a spiny shark (Acanthodii), an extinct type of fish that resembles both sharks and bony fish.

The discovery "expands our knowledge of the biodiversity that existed on the peninsula 408 million years ago, when the modern-day region of Teruel was covered by the sea," study researcher Héctor Botella, a paleontologist at the University of Valencia, Spain, said in a statement.

Little is known about the spiny sharks, other than that they only lived during the Palaeozoic Era (540 million to 250 million years ago) and really blossomed during the Devonian period (420 million to 360 million years ago).

But bones in the spiny shark group usually grow differently than the ones found here, suggesting the new species might be even more like sharks and arose during the diversification of jawed vertebrates.

Wait- there really is a Krusty Burger?

The IRS Timeline

Roughly...

January 2009-November 2012: former IRS commissioner Douglas Shulman visited the White House at least one hundred and fifty-seven times.

March 2010: the Cincinnati unit of the Internal Revenue Service began  targetting Tea Party and other related groups requesting 501(c) or tax-exempt status. By June 2010, eighteen groups were so identified. Questions regarding their activities, social media and even prayers were asked.

March 31st, 2010: Obama met with Colleen Kelley, union boss for the IRS. According to the Inspector-General's report, this was one day before the targetting began. She was then appointed to the Federal Salary Council after which raises were then issued.

June 2011: the IRS officials had knowledge that for over a year their agents deliberately targeted Tea Party-related and conservative groups:

Further, an early timeline of events compiled by the inspector general and obtained by CNN indicates the agency's practice of singling out conservative groups began as early as March 2010, and in July of that year, unidentified managers within the agency "requested its specialists to be on the lookout for tea party applications." In August, specialists were warned to be on the lookout for "various local organizations in the tea party movement" applying for tax-exempt status. The specific criteria would change several times over the next two years, according to a portion of the report.

May 2013: Steven Miller, the former head of the IRS, called the targetting and questioning of conservative groups by agents "foolish mistakes" at a congressional hearing.

June 4th, 2013: testimony given by groups specifically targetted by the IRS was given scant coverage. It was called "political theatre" by Congressman Jim McDermott. The testimony of six witnesses in particular was criticised by him.

The saga goes on...

Colossal Unfairness

It's bad enough that "workplace violence" badly distorts the actual events, the culprit who perpetrated them and his intentions but now the "alleged" may question his victims:

A military judge Monday granted Hasan's request to represent himself at his upcoming murder trial, and Hasan later hinted that he would try to justify the attack, revealing for the first time his defense strategy.
Hasan, an American-born Muslim, said he would use a "defense of others" strategy, which experts say requires defendants to prove they were protecting other people from imminent danger.

Will Major Hasan treat his witnesses as hostile by any chance?

 

Who Is Bradley Manning?

Bradley Manning is an American soldier currently being court-martialled for leaking military secrets to Julian Assange of the Wikileaks fame thereby violating his oath against aiding and abetting the enemy. He is a darling of celebrities who cannot possibly understand how serious this is.

That's who Bradley Manning is.

Kathleen Wynne Is a Horrible Person

If a cash-strapped province can't afford cancelled gas plants, it's not going to be able to afford "user fees" that are, in truth, nothing but a form of unfair taxation:

An internal draft document proves the Ontario Liberal government is considering new and increased user fees on everything from Drive Clean to an in-person ServiceOntario visit, Progressive Conservatives say.

Over the long-term, ministries proposed a 911 monthly phone bill surcharge of 75 cents, expanded use of red light cameras, reintroduction of photo radar and "pay for stay" user fees for inmates at correctional facilities, the draft document states.

Ontario Finance Minister Charles Sousa said Monday that he opposes a return of photo radar, but did not immediately rule out the other user fee hikes.

"I can tell you unequivocally we will not bring in photo radar," he said.

The "2013-14 Non-Tax Revenue (NTR) Proposals" draft was included in thousands of gas-plant records released to committee by the government last week, although it is not obviously linked to the cancelled Mississauga and Oakville plants.

According to the document, ministries were asked to develop new revenue options.

It is clear that the proposals are not to take effect without the government's stamp of approval on a case-by-case basis.

A $22.9 million increase in revenue by 2015-16 could be achieved mainly through a Drive Clean increase.

Another proposal is charging individuals who go in person to use ServiceOntario, the document says.

New fees for family court, justice of the peace services and public parking in government parking lots could bring in another $20.3 million, according to the document.

The draft document mentions new processing fees for the fish and wildlife licence and scheduled increases to Ontario Park fees.

Many ministries are proposing indexing existing user fees to inflation.

Could Premier Wynne enlighten the public as to how they are going to pay these "user fees" in a have-not province with some of the highest energy costs and a decreasing industrial base?