T’was the Friday
before Christmas…
 |
| "Welcome to the club, boys." |
A debate over whether
Muslim women should be allowed to wear face-covering niqabs while testifying at
trial has wheeled its way through to the Supreme Court of Canada, where a
seven-judge panel weighed religious and “fair trial” rights and issued a
65-page conclusion.
The result is a
decision only negligibly clearer than those that preceded it. But what did we
really expect?
The Supreme Court of Canada
ruled in a split decision that
niqabs will be allowed on the witness stand in some cases and not in others,
leaving it up trial judges to decide on a case-by-case basis.
Why not go further and declare that
a
woman’s testimony is largely irrelevant? Face-covering garments are not
expressions of faith or culture but a deliberate expression of otherness and
contempt for a culture that will never treat them like second-class cattle.
For decades, North
Korea’s communist regime sent agents abroad to abduct defectors, whose fate for
abandoning the insular kingdom was imprisonment without trial, beatings,
torture and death.
The abductions
occurred mostly in South Korea and China but a man who admits to having taken
part in the program was recently caught in Canada, prompting the government to
seek his deportation.
Ottawa’s successful
effort to obtain a deportation order against the state-sponsored abductor was
described in an Immigration and Refugee Board decision released to the National Post on Wednesday.
But the case is being
treated with such secrecy that much of the ruling was deleted by officials,
apparently including the man’s name, age, nationality, when and how he came to
Canada and what he was doing here.
All that is certain is
that at a hearing in Vancouver in June, a lawyer representing the Minister of
Public Safety argued the man was inadmissible to Canada for crimes against
humanity. He had admitted his role in the abductions to a Canada Border
Services Agency officer in January.
On Thursday, new
information about the mysterious man emerged, notably that his name was Han and
he was born in North Korea. His involvement in the North Korean foreign
abduction program surfaced during interviews with the Canadian Security
Intelligence Service after he arrived in Canada and attempted to make a refugee
claim. He was deported to South Korea in August.
In an oral ruling, the
Refugee Board said there was sufficient evidence the man had participated in
the abduction of North Korean defectors as well as a South Korean pastor who
had been helping the refugees.
While the man had
claimed he did not know what happened to the victims after they were handed
over to North Korean agents, the Refugee Board said he knowingly took part in
the regime’s atrocities.
And what happens if
the North Koreans attack South Korea? How questions are framed matters: as in
past Chicago Council Surveys, in response to questions that imply unilateral
rather than multilateral action, a majority opposes using U.S. troops to defend
South Korea if North Korea invaded (56%). A slight majority of Republicans
(51%) would support such an action; intriguingly, self-identified independents
(36%) were more dovish than Democrats (40%). However, if this question is
rephrased in terms of a multilateral effort under the banner of the United
Nations, a majority (64%) supports using American troops, with the political
breakdown yielding majorities of Democrats (64%), Republicans (70%), and
Independents (60%).
The last time the Koreas had the UN involved, nothing was
resolved. What’s new?
Russia realizes
changes in Syria are needed but is concerned that the push to unseat President
Bashar Assad's regime could plunge the country even deeper into violence,
Russian President Vladimir Putin said Thursday.
Putin's assessment came just a week after Russia's top envoy for Syria was
quoted as saying Assad's forces were losing control of the country. Although
the Foreign Ministry backpedaled on that statement, analysts have suggested for
months that the Kremlin is resigned to losing its longtime ally.
At his annual hours-long news conference, Putin said Moscow stands for a
settlement that would "prevent the country from breakup and an endless
civil war. "Agreements based on a military victory can't be effective,"
he said.
Russia has repeatedly blocked international attempts to step up pressure on the
Assad regime as it fights an increasingly strong armed opposition. That has
brought substantial criticism of Russia as effectively supporting the regime,
but Russia has said its stance isn't aimed at propping up Assad.
"We are not preoccupied that much with the fate of the Assad regime; we
realize what's going on there and that the family has been in power for 40
years," Putin said. "Undoubtedly, there is a call for changes."
"We are worried about another thing: what happens next," he said.
"We don't want to see the opposition come to power and start fighting the
government that becomes the opposition, so that it goes on forever."
Assad represents stability. He’s an SOB and Russia’s SOB.
However, Russia has proven itself to be friendly with whomever it wishes when
it makes the effort. If the next (potential) government falls, who does it deal
weapons with?
A campaign of
intimidation by Islamists left most Christians in this southern Egyptian
province too afraid to participate in last week's referendum on an
Islamist-drafted constitution they deeply oppose, residents say. The
disenfranchisement is hiking Christians' worries over their future under
empowered Muslim conservatives.
Around a week before
the vote, some 50,000 Islamists marched through the provincial capital, Assiut,
chanting that Egypt will be "Islamic, Islamic, despite the
Christians." At their head rode several bearded men on horseback with
swords in scabbards on their hips, evoking images of early Muslims conquering
Christian Egypt in the 7th Century.
They made sure to go
through mainly Christian districts of the city, where residents, fearing
attacks, shuttered down their stores and stayed in their homes, witnesses said.
A gang of Islamic
militants burned down the Bacho Tambon Administration Organisation office on
Thursday, after failing to find any Buddhist employees to kill.
Seven armed men
stormed into the offices of the Bacho TAO in Bacho district shortly after noon.
Abdulwaha Dulayapinij,
the office’s chief administrator, told the police he and seven other employees
were just leaving for lunch.
''One of them fired a
gun into the air and ordered everyone to stay put in Yawi [a Malay dialect
spoken by Muslims in the South] and then asked if there were any Buddhist Thais
working here,” Mr Abdulwaha said.
“I told him there were
none, and the outlaw was upset and said I had lied to him.”
Mr Abdulwaha then
explained there was a female Buddhist Thai civil servant identified as Suchada
sae Li working at the TAO as a community development officer, level 3, but she
was on leave.
Upset with
the answer, two of the gunmen emptied a five-litre container of
gasoline into the archive and equipment storage rooms, set fire to it, and
then fled the scene.
In the Middle East,
children are being used by the adults who should be caring for them to turn
them into jihadist weapons to conquer the world -- sometimes with bombs
strapped onto them to kill their perceived enemies. Children are given gun
training to learn how to kill Jews, and are told that dying for the sake of
jihad is the highest honor and the only guarantee to go to heaven. If these are
not abuses of the human rights of the child, what is? In the elementary school
we attended in Gaza, the political and cultural agenda of the Arab world was
pushed down our throats in effectively every subject.
American children
today are also suffering from adult agendas shoved down their throats: the
environmental agenda, the feminist agenda, the gay agenda, the Islamist agenda,
the class-envy agenda, the racial-divide agendas, the animal-rights agenda, ad
infinitum. What people in the West fail to see is that they, too, are using
their children as weapons: as tools to bring about social, cultural and
political change, often to destroy the American system as we know it and
replace it with a new America that the popular culture and many Americans seem
so desperate to accomplish.
When we can’t or won’t fight our battles, we hide behind the
kids.
Conservative MP Nina
Grewal, a Sikh who represents a Vancouver-area riding, said the following
in a statement made to the House of Commons:
“Political correctness is diluting Christmas in a well-intentioned but
necessary attempt to be inclusive.
How can we as a society join together to celebrate Diwali, the Chinese
New Year, Hanukkah and Vaisakhi but at the same time rob Christians of the true
meaning of Christmas?
As a Sikh, I am not
offended when Christians celebrate Christmas in a traditional way. Rather, I am
pleased to celebrate with my Christian friends.
True diversity means respecting the traditions of all Canadians,
including those of the Christian majority.
Please join with me in
wishing everyone a very Merry Christmas.”
The pygmy right whale,
a mysterious and elusive creature that rarely comes to shore, is the last
living relative of an ancient group of whales long believed to be extinct, a
new study suggests.
The findings,
published today (Dec. 18) in the Proceedings of the Royal Society B, may help
to explain why the enigmatic marine mammals look so different from any other
living whale.
"The living pygmy
right whale is, if you like, a remnant, almost like a living fossil," said
Felix Marx, a paleontologist at the University of Otago in New Zealand.
"It's the last survivor of quite an ancient lineage that until now no one
thought was around."
