A Post For It Is Friday

The week-end is here....


"Workplace violence":

A man fired from a food processing plant beheaded a woman with a knife and was attacking another worker when he was shot and wounded by a company official, police said Friday.

Moore Police Sgt. Jeremy Lewis says police are waiting until the 30-year-old man is conscious to arrest him in Thursday's attack and have asked the FBI to help investigate after co-workers at Vaughan Foods told authorities that he recently started trying to convert several employees to Islam.

The man, whom The Associated Press is not naming because he has not been charged, stabbed Colleen Hufford, 54, severing her head, Lewis said.

Lewis said the man then stabbed Traci Johnson, 43, a number of times before being shot by Mark Vaughan, a reserve sheriff's deputy and the company's chief operating officer.

Coalition of the unwilling:

Bethnal Green and Bow MP Rushanara Ali, a Muslim member of Ed Miliband's frontbench team, has resigned as a shadow minister because she was unwilling to vote for British involvement in air strikes against Islamic State in Iraq.

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Paul Calandra was unapologetic about his performance during Question Period Tuesday. “That’s what Parliament’s about,” he said, in reference to a bizarre exchange with Tom Mulcair, in which the NDP leader asked about the Canadian deployment in Iraq and the prime minister’s parliamentary secretary responded with a non-sequitur about an NDP employee’s social media statements on Israel. ...

You would have been hard-pressed to discern that from his potty-mouthed performance the previous day. But there’s something in it. There is a faction in the NDP that is dragging the party ever leftward. Mr. Mulcair resisted that gravitational pull on Israel, but he appears to be powerless on Iraq.

The world has woken up to the threat of allowing the Islamic State to establish its caliphate. Even Arab nations like Qatar and Saudi Arabia have joined the coalition to stop it.

If the NDP votes against Canadian participation in such a patently justified intervention, it will, in the eyes of many voters, disqualify itself as a serious contender for government.

When this guy finally does die, who will miss him aside from a handful of perverts and murderers?

A Calgary man who was rumoured to be dead after travelling to fight with the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria appears to be alive and has conducted a video interview with media outlet Vice.

Farah Mohamed Shirdon, of Calgary, first came to attention in an ISIS video released earlier this year in which he tears up his passport and makes threats against the enemies of ISIS — naming both Canada and the U.S.

In August, CBC reported that social media postings were saying that Shirdon had been killed in Iraq. 

But after seeing reports that Shirdon may in fact still be alive, Vice used social media to track him down and arranged a video interview that Vice says took place on Sept. 23.

Vice says the interview, conducted by founder Shane Smith, was done on Sept. 23. Vice notes that the man Smith is speaking with is thought to be Shirdon. CBC producer Nazim Baksh, who has followed the story closely, says that the man in the video is in fact Shirdon, a former Calgary resident who studied at the Southern Alberta Institute of Technology.

In the video released by Vice, the man said that nobody recruited him, and that he is just one of thousands of foreign fighters who have travelled to Iraq.

"No one spoke a single word to me," he said. "I opened the newspaper, I read the Qur'an – very easy."

Prime Minister Harper's address to the UN emphasised the need to economically boost people in order to combat extremism. Ideology does not recognise class. The nineteen hijackers who murdered three thousand people on September 11th, 2001 came from affluence. Qatar and Saudi Arabia are funding terrorism. The purchasing power the one-party state of China has not increased democratisation. In short, Harper's words are folly.


Russia mulls a law that would seize foreign assets:

Russian President Vladimir Putin speaks to the media after talks with Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko in Minsk on Aug. 27. In another dark twist to the West's standoff with Russia over the crisis in Ukraine, a pro-Kremlin deputy has submitted a draft law that would allow the government to seize foreign assets in the country in response to Western economic sanctions. 

The law, submitted after Italian authorities seized €30m worth of shares and bank accounts belonging to the Russian businessman Arkady Rotenberg, would also allow for oligarchs to get compensation from the state in the case of an "unjust judicial act of a foreign court." The full (Russian language) text of the draft law can be found here.

Given Russia's parlous economic position — GDP grew only 0.8% this year — the concept of using state funds to bail out multimillionaire businessmen may be received poorly in the country. Already opposition leaders are rounding on the government with Boris Nemtsov, co-chair of the RPR-PARNAS political party and outspoken critic of Vladimir Putin, writing on Facebook:

What is [the benefit of] a strongman's friendship? It's when you have 4 villas, apartments and a hotel seized in Italy and your accomplice in the Kremlin immediately introduces a bill for damages from the Russian budget.

Kim Jong-Un is reportedly in bad health:

Young North Korean leader Kim Jong Un is suffering from "discomfort," state media has said in the first official acknowledgement of ill health after a prolonged period out of the public eye.

Kim, 31, who is frequently the centrepiece of the isolated country's propaganda, has not been photographed by state media since appearing at a concert alongside his wife on Sept. 3, fuelling speculation he is suffering from bad health.

He had been seen walking with a limp since an event with key officials in July and in a pre-recorded documentary broadcast by state media on Thursday appeared to have difficulty walking.

"The wealth and prosperity of our socialism is thanks to the painstaking efforts of our marshal, who keeps lighting the path for the people, like the flicker of a flame, despite suffering discomfort," a voice over for the hour-long documentary said. ...

North Korea observers speculate Kim's weight and family background may have contributed to his condition.

"Based on his gait, it appears he has gout - something (due to) diet and genetic predisposition that has affected other members of the Kim family," said Michael Madden, an expert on the North Korean leadership and contributor to the 38 North website.

How do North Korean doctors treat lifestyle-related problems?


(Paws up)