Friday, April 04, 2014

Friday Post


Pour yourself a beverage for the week-end is upon us.


There are sixteen more days until Easter.


One hopes that Canadians of Persian descent remember which party it was that let Zahra Kazemi's death go unavenged (yes- unavenged):

Trudeau accused Harper of pursuing a staunchly pro-Israel foreign policy so as to gain Jewish votes, during an interview last Thursday with the Farsi-language weekly newspaper Salaam Toronto. The paper is read by Iranian-Canadians, and is widely recognized as being supportive of the Liberal party.

"Until the prime minister was chosen to be prime minister, he practically didn't travel abroad, and his position on foreign policy was from the point of view of 'can it advance my election campaign or not,'" claimed Trudeau to the paper, reports Shalom Toronto.

"His (Harper's) position on issues tied to Israel or to the United Nations is very much based on what can affect his standing in the ballot box," charged Trudeau.

The Liberal party leader attacked Harper further, saying the crisis in Ukraine troubled him because of the presence of a large Ukrainian community in Canada that is worried about the crisis. Trudeau claimed Harper's visit with Minister of Foreign Affairs John Baird to Ukraine was meant as a photo opportunity to gain more votes.

(Sidebar: Trudeau's shameless pandering is for what purpose? Who loves China's dictatorship and jokes about Ukraine? Who was that, Trudeau?)


Do you know what mocks motherhood, Kim Jong-Un, you fat, repugnant toad? Forced abortions and infanticide:

One of the most grotesque and inhumane issues that the Human Rights Commission found was the widespread practice of forced abortion and infanticide against North Korean women and their babies.  The report specifically addresses these abuses directed against woman who have been “repatriated” to North Korea from China – meaning they have managed to escape from North Korea into China and were then send back by Chinese officials.  The report notes, “Despite the torture, arbitrary imprisonment and other gross human rights violations awaiting forcibly repatriated persons in the DPRK, China pursues a rigorous policy of forced repatriation of DPRK citizens.” According to the UN Report, the vast majority of forced abortions and infanticides are perpetrated on women repatriated from China and their children.

These forced abortions and infanticides can take place in interrogation and detention centers as well as in prison camps.  Many of these forced abortions are performed under the rationale that the racial “purity” of the baby is unclear and “pure Korean blood” is an important concept in North Korea. One former North Korean official testified that having a child who was not “100 per cent” Korean made a woman “less than human.”

One witness told the Commission how she was forced to undergo an abortion without anesthetic by a woman who used rusty equipment. When the witness screamed, she was told to be quiet. Her dead baby was tossed in a bucket afterwards and she later found that she became infertile due to this procedure.

Another witness, Ms. Jee Heon A, recounted to the Commission how she witnessed a mother forced to drown her newborn baby. Ms. Jee testified:

“…there was this pregnant woman who was about 9 months pregnant. She worked all day. The babies who were born were usually dead, but in this case the baby was born alive. The baby was crying as it was born; we were so curious, this was the first time we saw a baby being born. So we were watching this baby and we were so happy. But suddenly we heard the footsteps. The security agent came in and … this agent told us to put the baby in the water upside down. So the mother was begging. ‘I was told that I would not be able to have the baby, but I actually got lucky and got pregnant so let me keep the baby, please forgive me,’ but this agent kept beating this woman, the mother who just gave birth. And the baby, since it was just born, it was just crying. And the mother, with her shaking hands she picked up the baby and she put the baby face down in the water. The baby stopped crying and we saw this water bubble coming out of the mouth of the baby.”

Please, someone take out this fat monster.

Related: please give here. It's more than a worthwhile story.


Oh look- people who don't know what they are talking about and like their "savages" "noble" are attacking an Inuit artist for her "SEALfie":

But it was Inuit singing star Tanya Tagaq's provocative "sealfie" that's sparked a furious social-media brouhaha. She's come under fire for tweeting a photo of her baby lying next to a dead adult seal, its blood splashed inches from the child's head.

The shot, taken near Tagaq's Cambridge Bay, Nunavut home, and tweeted March 28, sent anti-sealing activists and their supporters into a spitting rage.

The invective took a nasty turn.

"If they have the mentality 2 murder a seal like that, they could easily murder humans," read one tweet, which has since been deleted.

The attacks, including one woman's petition to have her baby taken away, shocked Tagaq.

“It became quite hurtful,” Tagaq told CBC News. “Right now, actually there's a woman who has my picture up on her Twitter and the things that people are saying about myself and my baby. It's just complete harassment. It's not OK.”

Yes, but that is the left for you, Miss Tagaq.

Now, run out and support Miss Tagaq's music.


And now,  a hard-working cat:

There is only one employee who works at Kishi train station in Kinokawa City, Japan... and she's a cat.

Tama is an aging cat who works as a train station master bringing in hordes of tourists, mostly from Hong Kong and Taiwan, and has helped revive the economy of the rural area.

She turns 15 this month and has been working at the station for seven years, since her appointment in 2007.
Tama's job is pretty relaxing. She only works four days a week and mostly just sits around on her cat bed wearing her gold-lined hat looking cute while tourists take pictures of her.

"The idea is clever, as the cat has become the symbol of the railway, attracting many tourists," Ka Wing Wu, a 22-year- old university student from Hong Kong, tells the Wall Street Journal.

Tama has caused a boom in the local economy of 1.1 billion yen revenue from train ticket sales, memorabilia and commercial appearances. During the first year of Tama's appointment there was a 10 per cent jump in train ticket sales.

Visitors from Hong Kong and Taiwan increased 240 percent from April to September last year, according to the railway company that owns the train station, Wakayama Electric Railway.


"The moment I met eyes with Tama, I was immediately struck with an image of Tama as station master," says company president Mitsunobu Kojima.

He envisioned her as a "maneki-neko", a Japanese lucky charm that would bring good business.


(Merci)


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