Mid-Week Post

 

Under the First Nations Financial Transparency Act, band chiefs must post their financial statements to whoever wishes to see them.

Some do not care for this act at all:

The Assembly of First Nations, which represents more than 600 aboriginal communities across the country, said the law was part of a “heavy-handed” Harper government propaganda strategy. The organization noted that the average elected official in aboriginal communities was making about $37,000 per year, based on 2010 estimates.

But what do current documents say?

If the discontented few don't feel a need to be accountable to PM Harper, do they want to be accountable to their own people?

After all, there is nothing to hide (one assumes).

Related:

Aboriginal people in Ontario are prepared to lay down their lives to protect their traditional lands from any unwanted development, a group of First Nations chiefs said Tuesday.

Five aboriginal chiefs served notice on the Ontario and federal governments, developers and the public that they'll assert their treaty rights over their traditional territory and ancestral lands.

That includes the rights to natural resources — such as fish, trees, mines and water— deriving benefit from those resources and the conditions under which other groups may access or use them, which must be consistent with their traditional laws, said Ontario Regional Chief Stan Beardy.

"All those seeking to access or use First Nations lands and resources have, at a minimum, a duty to engage, enquire and consult with First Nations with the standards of free, prior and informed consent," he said. ...

That's nice.

Except this isn't new. The government and any interested party have to crawl through endless procedures just to investigate the possibility of resource development. Nothing is sprung upon anyone so who is David and who is Goliath?

It gets better:

Grand Chief of Treaty #3, Warren White, argued that Prime Minister Stephen Harper recognizes the state of Israel, but not the lands of Canada's aboriginal peoples.

"He needs to have the same principles that he's saying about Israel lands to Treaty 3 territory and native lands in Canada," White said.

Oh boy..... 

What is the exchange rate of the Turtle Island dollar to the Israeli shekel, anyway?

In other news....


Why are we trading with China?

Canada on Tuesday took the unusual step of singling out Chinese hackers for attacking a key computer network and lodged a protest with Beijing, raising tensions at a time when Ottawa wants to boost oil sales to China.

Officials said "a highly sophisticated Chinese state-sponsored actor" had recently broken into the National Research Council. The council, the government's leading research body, works with major companies such as aircraft and train maker Bombardier Inc.

Canada has reported hacking incidents before, but this was the first time it had singled out China.

If Canada was serious about Chinese espionage, it wouldn't just up its cyber-defenses, it would be thinking sanctions and prison sentences for hackers.

Also:

In June ChinaAid reported that some sources claimed 360 Christian organizations had had their buildings demolished, crosses removed or received demolition notices. Crucially, the churches affected include both Protestant and Catholic, registered and unregistered. They vary in size and in age. Some have had their sign removed, while others have been completely demolished. However, almost all have been ordered to remove religious symbols, most often the cross, but also sacred statues and signs.

This must be embarrassing:

On at least a dozen flights former premier Alison Redford’s staff books “false passengers” to fill airplane seats and then removes the names before printing the flight manifest.

This is so Redford can have the plane to herself and her daughter and her security and whoever else she wants.

This as well:

House Republicans on Wednesday passed a resolution authorizing them to sue President Barack Obama for what they call an overreach of constitutional authority. 

The resolution passed the Republican-controlled House in a party-line vote of 225-201 on Wednesday. All but five Republicans voted for the measure, while all 199 Democrats voted against it. 

The coming lawsuit will accuse Obama of exceeding his constitutional authority as president by making unilateral changes to the Affordable Care Act — specifically, in twice delaying implementation of the law's so-called employer mandate. 

House Speaker John Boehner has hinted at the lawsuit for a little more than a month. Republicans have argued that Obama has continually overstepped his constitutional authority through executive actions on Obamacare and other areas, including his 2012 order to ease deportations of some young undocumented immigrants.

At this point, the UN can go to hell:

After another deadly attack on a UN school in Gaza sheltering Palestinians from fighting between Israel and Hamas militants, the United Nations declared "enough is enough" on Wednesday and asked – when civilians are warned to leave, where do they go?

If this bothers the UN so much, why didn't it do anything when rockets were found under UN schools?

When will it respond to Hamas' destruction of a hospital?

Far from the camera’s eye, Gaza’s children are injured and sometimes even die, every time Hamas terrorists misfire a missile intended to kill other children in Israel.

But operatives quickly scramble into the scene and clear away the debris from the failed launch, before international cameras are able to snap a shot of the bloody mess.

Reporters are warned and sometimes roughed up. Photographers too. They understand the deal; they’ve been through this before and they know the rules of the region.

In Syria, dozens have died. 

Italian journalist Gabriele Barbati, however, swallowed his fear and waited for the opportunity to tell the truth. When he left Gaza, he took his morals along with him and posted that truth in a tweet on the Twitter social networking site.

The reference is to an alleged attack on the Al-Shati “refugee camp” and the Al-Shifa hospital in Gaza, both of which were blamed on Israel. An Iranian-made long-range Fajr rocket misfired upon launch at the Al-Shifa hospital, killing and injuring numerous civilians shortly after 5pm on July 28, including many children.

Within 30 hours, 2,395 people had re-tweeted his post and 703 had marked it a ‘favorite.’

Where was its ire when Hamas violated yet another humanitarian ceasefire?

I think it's time for Canada withdraw from this anti-semitic bluster-fest.


Is there really a bullying problem?
 

The political justification for ‘Safe Schools’ programmes, or the associated ‘Gay-Straight Alliances’, is that there is a plague of gay-based bullying in our schools, and the only way to counter that is through celebrating homosexuality. That justification, however, is doubtful.
In one large study comparing a thousand homosexual and heterosexual adults in the UK, published in the British Journal of Psychiatry in 2003, the researchers found no increase in bullying of gay men compared to heterosexual men, whether at school or subsequently, whether verbally or physically. “Reports that gay and lesbian people are vulnerable to such experiences because of their sexuality are often taken at face value”, these researchers noted, with other studies failing to draw a comparison to heterosexual students.
In other words, there are many reasons to be bullied at school – for being too smart, too dumb; too fat, too weak; or for being “gay” even when you are not gay. A report in the news only last week finds one-third of 10-year-olds in Australia report being bullied for various reasons. That is something many young people go through, and the claim that homosexual people suffer disproportionate bullying appears to be “taken at face value”.
- See more at: http://www.mercatornet.com/articles/view/is_the_gay_bullying_plague_in_our_schools_a_myth#sthash.jts2Girb.dpuf

The political justification for ‘Safe Schools’ programmes, or the associated ‘Gay-Straight Alliances’, is that there is a plague of gay-based bullying in our schools, and the only way to counter that is through celebrating homosexuality. That justification, however, is doubtful.

In one large study comparing a thousand homosexual and heterosexual adults in the UK, published in the British Journal of Psychiatry in 2003, the researchers found no increase in bullying of gay men compared to heterosexual men, whether at school or subsequently, whether verbally or physically. “Reports that gay and lesbian people are vulnerable to such experiences because of their sexuality are often taken at face value”, these researchers noted, with other studies failing to draw a comparison to heterosexual students.

In other words, there are many reasons to be bullied at school – for being too smart, too dumb; too fat, too weak; or for being “gay” even when you are not gay. A report in the news only last week finds one-third of 10-year-olds in Australia report being bullied for various reasons. That is something many young people go through, and the claim that homosexual people suffer disproportionate bullying appears to be “taken at face value”.

(Merci)

 

Sandra Fluke's biggest contributor is herself:

Ms. Fluke is now the single largest contributor to her own Senate campaign.
From the Washington Examiner:

  Fluke donated $12,000 to her campaign and $4,826.27 in non-monetary contributions. While $16,826.27 may not sound like a lot, Fluke also loaned her campaign $100,000.

  Where does a 2012 law school grad working as a social justice attorney get a loan that size? Her campaign never responded to a Washington Examiner inquiry, so we’re left to speculate.

  Perhaps the loan was in part secured by the family of Fluke’s husband, Adam Mutterperl. In 2012, Fluke married Mutterperl, an amateur stand-up comic and son of big-time Democratic donor William Mutterperl.

Who knew?

You can be a self-absorbed flash-in-the-pan all you want just as long as you pay for it.


And now, a labour of grammatical love and a stroke of masterful trolling:

National Review’s Charles Cooke shared a piece of hate email he received from somebody who obviously has anger issues with people of differing opinions:

I edited that lovely letter I received — for style, spelling, accuracy. Then I sent it back to him as an attachment. pic.twitter.com/nYrtIqrXFp