Mid-Week Post

Just in: three police officers have been killed in Moncton, New Brunswick.


Thousands of people in Hong Kong commemorated the massacre of pro-democracy demonstrators twenty-five years ago:

Thousands of people marched through downtown Hong Kong on Sunday to remember the bloody crackdown on the Tiananmen Square protests in Beijing, days before the 25th anniversary of the tumultuous event.

The demonstrators marched from a large park to Hong Kong government headquarters, while a separate group continued on to the Chinese central government's liaison office.

They renewed their long-standing demand for China's Communist Party to overturn its official verdict that the protests that ended in bloodshed on the night of June 4, 1989, were a "counterrevolutionary riot."

We still trade with China. Let's change that.


The provincial leaders of the main political parties squared off in their only debate yesterday.

The highlights:

- Kathleen Wynne did not answer either Andrea Horwath nor Tim Hudak's questions about the scandals that have plagued her term in office

- Andrea Horwath went on the attack against Wynne but still promises tax-guzzling programs

-Tim Hudak will not fire anyone but simply will not replace the excess bureaucrats who are to retire in the next few years

Also: while the popular press wasn't looking, accused pervert and former adviser to Kathleen Wynne will have a second trial in August.


Moving on....


The now-released purported deserter Bowe Bergdahl has his detractors who are now being savaged:

Wow @chucktodd reporting on @TheTodayShow WH aides telling him "we didn't know they (Bergdahl's platoon) was going to swift boat him."”

North Korea appears something of a terrible joke:

As I toured the Joint Security Area along the Demilitarized Zone, I was acutely aware of the armed guards on the other side of the border. They seemed acutely aware of me as well. The picture shows what happens when you don’t draw the curtains, and your neighbor is a mad dictator.

Before this trip, I had plenty of academic knowledge about communist regimes, drawn from histories, testimony, books, and news reports. But it is one thing to know that North Korea is controlled by a reckless tyrant and a danger to both its neighbors and the global community. It is another to come face-to-face with this particular brand of evil in the real world.

It struck me that these soldiers are not really on the outside looking in. Rather, they are trapped on the inside looking out.

They may be ordered to take pictures of foreign visitors touring the DMZ, but they dare not turn the camera upon their own leaders. Their fellow citizens cannot record the excess and injustice of the regime—or even the most mundane facts about their day-to-day lives.

In a nation forbidden from self-examination, there is no free press. There is an old camera stuck through the window to inform Kim Jong-un about what the neighbors are doing.

And in that moment, the fearsome vanguard of a movement which has murdered 100 million people and enslaved countless others looked small and pathetic.

An older article: Cham Muslims in Cambodia stand to lose their mosques due to time and demographics:

The Chvea ethnic group, who moved to O-Trav from Kampot in the 19th century, brought with them Islamic teachings that have been handed down to the present day. The village is home to one of the country’s oldest mosques – the pre-Khmer Rouge Al Mubarak – which, until this week, looked likely to be destroyed.

Cham Muslims are an ethnic minority in Cambodia. Once recruited by the Khmer Rouge in 1970 (where they numbered 250, 000), they were then targeted and murdered after 1974. Cambodian Catholics were all but eliminated and their churches destroyed. Buddhists, too, were murdered and Angkor Wat badly damaged and looted. The enemy now is time.

( SEE: The Black Book of Communism)


Remember- militant atheists are supposed to be smarter than you:

Fairy tales and believing in Father Christmas could cause children harm.

This is according to controversial biologist Richard Dawkins who warned an audience at the Cheltenham Science Festival about the dangers of make-believe. 

In typically incendiary style, Dawkins suggested it was 'pernicious to instil in a child the view that the world is shaped by supernaturalism'.

 
Does Dawkins really mean to say that people still believe the fables they read as children?

What a maroon, as Bugs Bunny might say.


Don't forget this little guy.

And this guy.


This is beyond unconscionable:

Pressure from government officials and eminent researchers appears to have pushed a federal agency to postpone enforcement action on violations it found in a government-financed experiment on extremely premature babies.

The agency, which polices ethics in health studies, says the controversy over the study of preemies highlights a “fundamental difference between the obligations of clinicians and those of researchers.”

That ethics body, called the Office for Human Research Protections, is part of the Department of Health and Human Services. The sponsor of the controversial experiment, the National Institutes of Health, is also part of HHS. Officials at both HHS and NIH provided “input” leading to the office’s delay in enforcement.

At issue is SUPPORT, a study in which researchers at two dozen academic institutions randomly manipulated the oxygen levels of 1,316 extremely premature infants without providing their parents the full details of the methods and risks.

It's sick.


And now, set your phasers to fun:

The Calgary Stampede Parade become one Tuesday, when they announced that the Grand Marshal of the 2014 Stampede Parade will be none other than William Shatner, a.k.a. Star Trek’s original Captain Kirk.

(Merci to all)