Friday Post

Here comes the week-end...


Oh, what a surprise:




So Russia's incursion into Ukraine wasn't humanitarian after all!

This should render any argument against fracking or drilling as invalid given that such arguments are fuelled (no pun intended) not by environmental or consumer concerns but by those who stand to lose the most.

Follow the money, not of the oil or gas companies who don't hide their ambitions but of those who cry the loudest.


Also:

China has sent four oil rigs into the South China Sea in a sign that Beijing is stepping up its exploration for oil and gas in the tense region, less than two months after it positioned a giant drilling platform in waters claimed by Vietnam.

**

Federal Justice Minister Peter MacKay is defending comments he made last week about why so few women are appointed as judges in Canada.

MacKay was responding to Wednesday’s Toronto Star report about an Ontario Bar Association meeting at which he was asked about the lack of women and visible minorities on federally appointed court benches.

MacKay answered the question by saying that women don’t apply to be judges because they fear the job will take them away from their children — and that children need their mothers more than their fathers, the Star report said.

On Thursday, rather than back away from the comments, MacKay stood his ground.

Yes, about that:

The percentage of Ontario lawyers who were Aboriginal was unchanged between 1981 and 2001, but increased from 0.6 to 1.0 percent between 2001 and 2006. In 2006, it is estimated that there were 315 Aboriginal lawyers in Ontario. Aboriginal persons are 1.96 percent of the Ontario population and 0.57 percent of all university graduates with occupations. Relative to the number of Aboriginal university graduates with an occupation, there are about twice the expected number of Aboriginal lawyers. 

 

In 2006, 3,685 or 11.5 percent of all Ontario lawyers were members of a visible minority, up from 9.2 percent in 2001. To compare, members of a visible minority accounted for 23 percent of the total Ontario population in 2006, 22 percent of Ontarians with an occupation, and 30 percent of Ontario university graduates with an occupation.

As one can see, there is a potential tidal wave of affirmative action hires minority and female judges who may rule from the bench interpret the law.


Moving on....


For the refreshing honesty of it, I wish people would just admit that slavery never left us:

A massive overhaul by the Government of Canada to tighten and control access to its embattled Temporary Foreign Worker program is designed to make the program an “option of last resort” for Canadian companies, but immediate response to the sweeping changes claimed it too severely punished those putting it to legitimate use.

Employment Minister Jason Kenney announced on Friday the introduction of several significantly tougher policies surrounding the hiring of foreign workers, and introduced stronger oversight for companies that apply for assistance through the program.

Under the new system the names of companies that hire foreign workers through the program will be made publicly available, and companies that abuse the program will be more harshly punished.

“We are overhauling the program today to ensure we put Canadians first, that the Temporary Foreign Worker program is only used as a last and limited resort, that Canadians always come first, that employers redouble their efforts to hire Canadians for available jobs and to ensure this program works in the best interests of the Canadian economy,” Kenney said at an afternoon press conference.

But immigration advocates and small business groups were quick to express their frustration with the amended plans, claiming the changes were too drastic and swung the pendulum too far in the other direction.

We can always deny Pakistan aid:

A 20-year-old woman has been gang-raped, killed and hanged from a tree in Pakistan in a case with a chilling resemblance to a double rape and murder that caused outrage in neighbouring India last month.

Pakistani police said Muzammil Bibi, 20, was attacked by three men in a field in the impoverished Layyah area of densely populated Punjab province.

"This is the first time in my 22 years of service in the police that I have seen such a case, where a girl was raped in this way and found hanging from a tree," senior officer Sadaqat Ali Chohan told Reuters.

"We have heard of such cases in India but never in Pakistan. The girl's clothes were torn. We took her down and moved her to hospital. Her body had signs of resistance. We have arrested three individuals who have confessed to the crime."

According to police, she resisted the rape and attackers strangled her.

Police said her parents spent all night looking for her and found her body hanging the next morning.

Also, let's stop trading with China:

China again rejected U.N. concerns Thursday about the fate of North Korean defectors in its territory, reasserting its long-criticized policy of sending them back to their totalitarian homeland against their will. 

China has classified tens of thousands of North Koreans hiding in border areas as illegal migrants, not asylum-seekers, and routinely returns them to North Korea if they are caught. Back in their home country, they face harsh penalties including even death.

Most North Korean defectors walk across the border with China before seeking to resettle in South Korea. 

"With regard to the illegal border-crossers from North Korea, we are obliged to deal with the relevant issue in accordance with international laws, internal laws of China as well as humanitarian principles," China's foreign ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying told reporters when asked about U.N. concerns about North Korean refugees in China. 

"In China, we have no such thing as political asylum," Hua said.

(Kamsahamnida)



And now, WWI from the air.