WOLF BLITZER, CNN: You're used to this kind of stuff, but share with our
viewers what's going on between you and the White House.
BOB WOODWARD: Well, they're not happy at all and some people kind of,
you know, said, look, 'we don't see eye to eye on this.' They never
really said, though, afterwards, they've said that this is factually
wrong, and they -- and it was said to me in an e-mail by a top --
BLITZER: What was said?
WOODWARD: It was said very clearly, you will regret doing this.
I'd be worried. Four men didn't just die in Benghazi.
Dear Brothers and Sisters,
I offer a warm and affectionate greeting to the English-speaking
pilgrims and visitors who have joined me for this, my last General
Audience. Like Saint Paul, whose words we heard earlier, my heart is
filled with thanksgiving to God who ever watches over his Church and her
growth in faith and love, and I embrace all of you with joy and
gratitude. During this Year of Faith, we have been called to renew our
joyful trust in the Lord’s presence in our lives and in the life of the
Church. I am personally grateful for his unfailing love and guidance in
the eight years since I accepted his call to serve as the Successor of
Peter. I am also deeply grateful for the understanding, support and
prayers of so many of you, not only here in Rome, but also throughout
the world. The decision I have made, after much prayer, is the fruit of a
serene trust in God’s will and a deep love of Christ’s Church. I will
continue to accompany the Church with my prayers, and I ask each of you
to pray for me and for the new Pope. In union with Mary and all the
saints, let us entrust ourselves in faith and hope to God, who continues
to watch over our lives and to guide the journey of the Church and our
world along the paths of history. I commend all of you, with great
affection, to his loving care, asking him to strengthen you in the hope
which opens our hearts to the fullness of life that he alone can give.
To you and your families, I impart my blessing. Thank you! - See more
at:
http://www.news.va/en/news/popes-english-remarks-during-final-general-audienc#sthash.RENP9mLq.dpuf
During
this Year of Faith, we have been called to renew our joyful trust in the Lord’s
presence in our lives and in the life of the Church. I am personally grateful
for his unfailing love and guidance in the eight years since I accepted his
call to serve as the Successor of Peter. I am also deeply grateful for the
understanding, support and prayers of so many of you, not only here in Rome,
but also throughout the world. The decision I have made, after much prayer, is
the fruit of a serene trust in God’s will and a deep love of Christ’s Church. I
will continue to accompany the Church with my prayers, and I ask each of you to
pray for me and for the new Pope. In union with Mary and all the saints, let us
entrust ourselves in faith and hope to God, who continues to watch over our
lives and to guide the journey of the Church and our world along the paths of
history. I commend all of you, with great affection, to his loving care, asking
him to strengthen you in the hope which opens our hearts to the fullness of
life that he alone can give. To you and your families, I impart my blessing.
Thank you!
Each pope serves a purpose for a certain time. Pope Benedict XVI got the ball rolling for the next pope.
The court struck out some strange language in the law, which bans
speech that “ridicules, belittles or otherwise affronts the dignity of”
identifiable groups — language that the Saskatchewan Human Rights
Commission said was already ignored in practice.
But it upheld the controversial legal concept of speech that is “likely to expose” certain groups to hatred.
The Saskatchewan law, which is similar to others in Alberta, B.C.,
the Northwest Territories and federally, “appropriately balances the
fundamental values underlying freedom of expression with competing
Charter rights and other values essential to a free and democratic
society, in this case a commitment to equality and respect for group
identity and the inherent dignity owed to all human beings,” wrote Mr.
Justice Marshall Rothstein for the court.
“Framing speech as arising in a moral context or within a public
policy debate does not cleanse it of its harmful effect,” the judges
decided.
The judges reinstated Mr. Whatcott’s conviction by a hate speech
tribunal in the case of two anti-gay fliers he distributed, but
overturned it in the case of two others.
The judges have essentially done nothing to do away with the ridiculous hate speech law (consider how broadly defined and applied it is). As the "belittlement" aspect was already ignored, they upheld the "likelihood of exposure"aspect- the shield of the self-identifying, paranoid and perpetually offended masses- to protect the thin-skinned from any sort of slight, insult or legitimate criticism. How, pray, should anything be brought up if, even in moral and public policy discussions, speech still bears a "harmful effect" to those who use the law and human right commissions to wage personal vendettas against those with whom they find offense? Who is likely to be harmed by this kind of "hate" speech- the parties that can use taxpayers' money and the power of the Crown to penalise a speaker or the speaker himself? Debating or ignoring the aforementioned speaker would have cost what? The wags and the judges have made, of all people, William Whatcott a free speech hero or at least a household name and have sent a chill down the spines of a populace who dare not even breathe lest they offer offense.
And all because someone said homosexuality is a sin.
Does famed environmentalist David Suzuki not know that Sun News often reports about Sun News?
A reporter for Sun News says Suzuki refused to appear at a public
policy debate Tuesday night, until she and her cameraman were escorted
from the premises at the Ottawa stop of the “The Eco Tour.”
“David Suzuki didn’t just refuse to speak to us. He refused to appear
altogether, sending a handful of hostile event organizers to remove us
from the premises.
“After much debate and my reiterating I would be staying to ask a
question, one of the event-organizers-turned-Suzuki-mandated-attack-dogs
turned to the sizable crowd, incensed that I wouldn’t leave quietly,
and yelled for someone to call 911.”
In a video accompanying the post, an organizer tells Hume:
“Unfortunately, David Suzuki does not have time to talk to you tonight,
you can wait outside.” The video is worth watching for the moment the
smile on Hume’s face approaches “Gotcha!” level five.
Green Party Leader Elizabeth May was moderating the event, and
according to her spokesman, she appealed to the Sun News team to stay
until after the event, where she would take questions.
“Only Rob Ford calls 911 on the media!” she joked.
May also gave Hume a big hug, which has to be considered a historic
moment in environmentalist-Sun News relations. Hume later said on Sun
News that she has “tremendous respect” for May.
(Sidebar: indeed, as she appeared to be the only civilised one there.)
Leave it to leftists and liberals to not only make themselves look ridiculous but paranoid, as well. What does one expect from celebrity scientist David Suzuki and the United "Church"?
A Chinese manager outsourced his 12-year-old daughter’s homework to nine of his employees.
The senior executive’s plan was disclosed when one of his disgruntled workers told a local newspaper.
The worker, who gave his name as Mr. Chen, said it took three days to
finish the work. “We stayed up late for two nights,” he said. “The girl
was quite demanding. She only needed to do one of the four options but
insisted on doing them all, without getting involved herself in any
way.”
A newly released analysis of satellite imagery paints a bleak picture of North Korea’s growing gulag network.
The North’s Labour Camp No. 25, which makes up part of what
campaigners call “one of the worst, but least understood and reported,
human rights situations in the world,” appears to be in the midst of a
dramatic expansion.
According to the Committee of Human Rights in North Korea, the camp
grew at least 72% since 2003. The number of perimeter guard posts jumped
from 20 in 2003 to 43 by 2010.
The group believes the gulag network expansion may be a response to purges in the lead up to Kim Jong-un’s succession.
Direct information on North Korea’s forced labour camps is hard to
come by, but human rights abuses have been well-documented by defectors.
After escaping, Shin Dong-hyuk equated his experience with surviving a camp in Hitler’s Germany.
“People think the Holocaust is in the past, but it is still very much a reality,” Dong-hyk told Agence France-Presse. “It is still going on in North Korea.”
Gulag prisoners are often victims of forced disappearances. There are
between 150,000-200,000 political prisoners in the camps, according to
an Economist report.
See here for an incredible resource and insight into this modern-day tragedy. I hope the TDSB is watching.
Months after a Toronto woman filed a human rights complaint against a
Muslim barber who would not give her a haircut, the issue has been
quietly resolved.
During a closed-door mediation session Friday, Faith McGregor and
barbershop owner Omar Mahrouk came to an “arrangement” that satisfied
them both, thus putting the controversial complaint to rest.
Ms. McGregor filed a complaint with the Ontario Human Rights Tribunal
last June after she entered Terminal Barbershop on a whim and was
denied a haircut because it is against the barbers’ religion to touch a
woman.
Both Ms. McGregor and Mr. Mahrouk signed a confidentiality agreement
that bars them from sharing any details — common practice when a
conflict ends in mediation instead of moving on to an actual tribunal.
But both expressed relief in the process.
Where are the details? Are we not paying for this? Why should private business ownersbe forcedto kowtowto professional grievance-mongers? Faith McGregor put Omar Mahrouk through the proverbial wringer because human rights commissions allow such petty and insignificant vendettas to carry on. I don't care what his reason was for not cutting his her hair. There is no human right to a haircut nor is there a dearth of places he she can go. This farce is as stupid as gallicizing the word pasta or- God forbid- kimchi.
Liberal leadership hopeful and former astronaut Marc Garneau is
challenging Justin Trudeau to a one-on-one debate in a bid to bring the
frontrunner back down to Earth in the polls.
Garneau argues Trudeau has not been significantly challenged and if
the heir apparent to the Liberal crown can’t defend his ideas in a
debate against him, he wouldn’t be able to do so against Prime Minister
Stephen Harper.
“The leadership of the Liberal Party is too important a position to
hand to an untested candidate hiding behind a carefully crafted public
relations campaign,” Garneau told reporters Monday morning. ...
Trudeau responded cryptically on Twitter, seeming to suggest that he
would not disrespect the other seven candidates by having a one-on-one
with Garneau.
President Park Geun-hye was sworn into office on Monday pledging to
stimulate the country's flagging economy and warning North Korea that it
will end up the "biggest victim" of its nuclear ambitions.
"I
will do my utmost to build a Republic of Korea that is prosperous and
where happiness is felt by all the people," Park told a huge crowd in
front of the National Assembly. "As president... I will live up to the
will of the people by achieving economic rejuvenation, the happiness of
the people, and the flourishing of our culture."
She said the
president is responsible for government but the public decides on the
fate of the nation and called on citizens to join hands to pursue
"communal interests." Park vowed to create a government that is free of
corruption in order to win public trust.
I like the idea of giving a voice to the people but I won't hold my breath on the "free of corruption" thing.
Quebec's language watchdog is retreating from a battle
against an Italian restaurant over the number of Italian words in their
menu.
Those tricky Italians. Always trying to slip their language into things. Like Italian restaurant menus.
CBC News reports that Buonanotte, a high-end Montreal restaurant, was contacted by the Office Quebecois de la Langue Francaise (OQLF) because it was using too many words like "pasta" and "meatball."
Florida Sen. Marco Rubio's drink of water in
the middle of his televised response to President Barack Obama's State
of the Union address earlier this month truly is "the sip heard 'round
the world."
At a meeting Wednesday in Jerusalem, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin
Netanyahu held up a water bottle and toasted the Florida Republican
after Rubio told him the story.
“It was totally spontaneous following their more formal photos in
front of the U.S. and Israeli flags," a person who was in the room told
Yahoo News. "Rubio was directed to his chair and then picked up his
water, held it up and said, ‘Cheers!’ When he sat down he quickly told
the story of how he raised a bunch of money by selling water bottles
following his SOTU response. The prime minister did the toast with the
water bottle, and Sen. Rubio laughingly played along.”
The Fraser Institute report on public sector salaries released Wednesday
comes as a big surprise to absolutely no one — unless you’re a private
sector worker who’s been too busy trying to stay employed to study the
minutia of the Sunshine List. ... “Current data show that, for a person retiring today at age 55, their
life expectancy is now 84. This means the numerous Sunshine List
employees will each collect a pension of at least $2 million,” said
Tufts, who co-authored Pension Ponzi, a book subtitled, “How public
sector unions are bankrupting Canada’s health care, education and your
retirement.”
Premier Kathleen Wynne said Wednesday her government is holding the line.
“We have been clear that constraints needed to be put in place on
public sector wages and compensation packages. That’s why we’ve been
working with our public sector partners and we have settled for 0%
increases,” she said.
All I'm saying is that if the statue was of Our Lady of FATIMA, the problem would have solved itself:
Placing a statue of the Virgin Mary on a village street would not
normally cause too much consternation in France but when a bust of Our
Lady went up in Cogelin, a village on the south coast, the residents
were in uproar.
Recep Cetin (22) admitted the charges of murdering Irish nationals
Marian Graham and Kathy Dinsmore, both 53 and from Newry, Co Down, at
the Fifth High Criminal Court in Izmir, Turkey. ... Cetin complained he was being treated like "a Christian, an atheist or communist" in the trial. "I am a Muslim," he said.
But he added dramatically: "I am guilty and my guilt is a sufficient punishment for me." Eyup Cetin told the court he was the victim of a conspiracy.
"I told reporters I have nothing to do with this incident. I am innocent, yet I am kept in prison."
Seriously, though, speaking on behalf of leftists everywhere (because we
all think the same way, of course), I can assure that developing a an
official government policy on religion and using to to prosecute
faithful Christians" is way, way down there on our list. First we have
to restore communism, establish the global caliphate, destroy banks and
industries, teach your children Chinese, and impose the metric system on
the U.S. Sigh...so little time, so much to destroy...
Fair enough. And I don't want your church anywhere near my government.
Not going to say anything. This guy sums up militant atheists in all their incarnations:
Fifty percent of Americans
think atheists are a pain in the ass. Only half as many dislike
Muslims, despite the national hobby of raining electric death on Muslims
the world over. The reason for this disparity should be obvious: Modern
public atheists are more annoying. While I know many pleasant Muslims, I
can’t think of a single public representative of atheism who isn’t an obnoxious dung heap. ... Consider the “A+ movement.” They call themselves “A+”
because they’re self-regarding atheists “plus” some other stuff. The A+
“movement” was founded as a result of the debate around the Elevatordammerung,
a cataclysm that ensued when a socially inept nerdling asked a
cabbage-headed pinup girl for a cup of coffee while in an elevator. The
resulting tumult eventually spawned the A+ schism with the part of the “atheist movement” who found this as silly as the rest of the world did.
The A+ sect is effectively a religion. They do not consider
themselves to be such, but their superstitions saturate their lives in
ways that put ultra-Orthodox Jews to shame. The A+ communion is
fanatically Manichaean. They fervently believe that the world is evil
and can only be purified by their efforts to bring the world to A+
holiness. ...
The A+ crowd is considered important by the credulous.
It seems to me that they’re mostly interesting for being a pure strain,
a seething petri dish of neurotic misery. It is of scientific interest
to study this disease in its isolated form so vaccines and antitoxins
can be developed. The pestilence embodied in the A+hole faith has
already spread far and wide throughout Western Civilization.
What emotional complex causes human beings to become wild-eyed
totalitarian numskulls in the name of “sensitivity?” As with many
religious beliefs, their ideas start with seething ressentiment.
Unhappy people often blame others for their misery. Unworthy people
come up with elaborate justifications for why it is everyone else’s
fault. The old Christian formula of “the first shall be last, and the
last shall be first” has been recycled in the guise of the “privilege”
phlogiston. Their hurt feelings and oversensitive natures are now sacred
relics among the faithful. It is status and power, at least among the
faithful and chivalrous enablers, social goods otherwise denied to them
due to fortune and poor choices in life. There are plenty of talentless,
lazy dunderheads looking for a faith which accords them status for
being malcontented slobs.
@$$holes? That's putting it mildly. The perpetual victims and the ever-offended aren't just trademarks of the Islamists. They are also trademarks of the smug, the perpetually adolescent (by the way, if the thrust of any of your arguments is "LOL", "stop picking on me because I can't defend myself" and calling a disabled child an "it", it shouldn't be a surprise that everyone sees you as an intellectual lightweight and a social reject) and the inflated sense of self-importance (hi, Ashu Solo). Everyone is against them and only they are right.
Star Trek: The Next Generation introduced us to the many
technological marvels of a fictional 24th century, but a group of
University of Illinois scientists has pulled one of those marvels — the
Holodeck — one step closer to reality....
Well, it may lack the 'solid-holograms' of the Star Trek version, but the CAVE2 'hybrid reality environment', designed by Chicago's Electronic Visualization Laboratory (EVL), is probably the closest thing we have today to a real-life Holodeck.
When my parents came to this country, they had to work even to have someone return their phone calls (because foreigners really like it when you're rude to them). Imagine an immigrant not taking a dime from anyone; imagine a Toronto where they all will:
On Thursday morning, City Council will vote on Motion CD 18.5
— the so-called 'access without fear' motion — which could put Toronto
on the path of giving undocumented migrants the ability to utilize city
services such as food banks and homeless shelters.
The rationale, of course, is that some undocumented immigrants are
causing themselves and their families harm because they don't access
services out of fear of detention or deportation?
Thank you for stabbing legitimate, hard-working immigrants in the back, bleeding-hearts.
A Saskatoon man already fighting Christmas greetings on city buses
says the Saskatchewan Human Rights Commission has agreed to hear his
complaint against a city councillor who said grace at a volunteer
appreciation banquet.
“This isn’t supposed to be a Christian city or a Christian country.
This is a secular nation filled with all kinds of religious and
spiritual people, atheists and agnostics,” said local activist Ashu
Solo. “We need to respect everybody. We need to protect the rights of
the minority from the misdirected will of the majority in a
constitutional democracy like Canada.”
Only a militant atheist would take upon himself the mission to rid the world of things that personally bother him and no one else. I wish to register a complaint against this man and I hope that others will follow suit with this. Aren't there more serious violations of liberty than saying Grace or Merry Christmas? If you are a paranoid leftist with nothing better to do than see conspiracies where none exist (and therefore are too stupid to live) instead of acknowledging that real persecutions are going on in the world and need concrete action not political equivalents of cause-de-jour ribbons, then yes, someone is out to get you and they are using mealtime prayers and Christmas to do it.
In his first official visit to the country, Florida Sen. Marco Rubio
told Israel’s president on Wednesday that Jerusalem is “of course the
capital of your country.” He reiterated America’s bipartisan support for
Israel.
Obama's claimed phone call to Hillary and Hillary's statement would
occur approximately six hours after the attacks had started.
The White House made this assertion only after outgoing Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta told Congress that Obama did not contact him
the night of the attacks after a "pre-scheduled" 5 PM meeting. Panetta
said neither he nor General Martin Dempsey heard from Obama after this
meeting and that no one from the White House called at any point during
the attacks.
White House spokesman Jay Carney insisted that the President remained
in contact with his national security team: "Like every president
before him, [Obama] has a national security and deputy national security
adviser. He was in regular contact with his national security team
directly, and spoke with the Secretary of State at approximately 10
p.m."
Carney's claims also run counter to Counsel to the President Kathryn H. Ruemmler's intimation that no phone calls were made by Obama while the Benghazi consulate was under attack. At 10 PM Washington DC time, the consulate was still under attack.
Who's lying, Barry? Panetta? All those who testified that the State Department did nothing while four people were killed in Benghazi?
In a speech to
the Cato Institute in July 2007, then-Sen. Chuck Hagel claimed that
relations with North Korea were "moving in a positive" direction because
of multilateral talks with the regime of Kim Jong-Il, rather than the
path of confrontation the Bush administration had chosen with Iraq,
Iran, Syria, and Hamas in Gaza.
There is no such thing as a perfect plan, and the idea of pressuring
North Korea through international financial sanctions is no exception.
Like money launderers everywhere, the North Koreans have adapted to get
around anti-money laundering controls. Reuters has an excellent, must-read report
on North Korea’s use of bulk cash transactions to avoid the scrutiny of
banks and law enforcement. The report features an interview with Kim
Kwang Jin, who defected and revealed his role in an international
re-insurance scam.
North Korea has also responded by splitting its income streams via
more banks. South Korea claims that it’s difficult to associate
specific accounts with illicit activity, which is always the case with
money laundering. That’s the whole idea of such classic money
laundering methods as “structuring” — dividing large payments into
smaller ones to evade reporting requirements — and “co-mingling” —
mixing illicit funds with the proceeds of “legitimate” activity. The
usual law enforcement approach to such tactics is to impose special
measures on all of the suspected launderer’s income and assets. That
approach shifts the burden to those handling the suspect’s transactions
to establish the legitimacy of the origin and use of the funds. It was
also the clear intent of Paragraph 8(d) of UNSCR 1718.
All of which suggests that an appropriate U.N. sanction would be to
ban bulk cash transactions with North Korea, its nationals, and its
agencies.
The New York Post reports on the incident
that occurred Sunday morning involving the "30 Rock" star
and a Post
reporter and photographer:
Baldwin had first been
approached by a Post reporter while walking his dogs outside his East 10th
Street pad at around 10:50 a.m. He was asked for comment on a lawsuit against
his wife, Hilaria, involving her work as a yoga instructor.
The “30 Rock’’ star grabbed the reporter, Tara Palmeri, by her arm and told
her, “I want you to choke to death,” Palmeri told police, for whom she played
an audiotape of the conversation.
He then called G.N.
Miller — a decorated retired detective with the NYPD’s Organized Crime Control
Bureau and a staff photographer for The Post — a “coon, a drug dealer,’’
Miller’s police statement said.
"This pipeline is
so that we can start selling to China and other places. Which they would say
was about creating some jobs and it’s about bringing in money, but most of that
money isn’t trickling down to anybody....
"What is
trickling down to us is leakages, spills, bad health, um, contaminated water,
contaminated air, radioactive materials, property values dropping, our health.
That’s what’s being trickled down to us, and we have to say no to that."
Earlier this month,
the Facebook Inc. released its first “10-K” annual financial report since going
public last year. Hidden in the report’s footnotes is an amazing admission:
despite $1.1 billion in U.S. profits in 2012, Facebook did not pay even a dime
in federal and state income taxes.
An Iranian newspaper
is reporting that government authorities are confiscating Buddha statues from
shops in Tehran to stop the promotion of Buddhism in the country.
Sunday's report by the
independent Arman daily quotes Saeed Jaberi Ansari, an official for the
protection of Iran's cultural heritage, as saying that authorities will not
permit a specific belief to be promoted through such statues.
Ansari called the
Buddha statues symbols of "cultural invasion."
