Mid-Week Post

Hey! It's Wednesday and you know what that means!


A First Nations group has declared sovereignty in Quebec:

The Atikamekw First Nation in Quebec has declared its sovereignty over 80,000 square kilometres of territory and says any development in that area must get its approval. 

Armed with a Supreme Court of Canada judgment recognizing ancestral rights for First Nations in British Columbia, the Atikamekw want to have their say on projects located in the Nitaskinan region.

That's nice. Let everyone know when you will man your own power plants.


All is fair in the land of internal Liberal politics and by fair I mean unfair:

Two members of a Liberal riding association in southwestern Ontario have quit in protest over what they say is the party’s failure to respect its pledge to hold open nominations.

“This goes explicitly against what [Justin Trudeau] has said in terms of free, open, transparent nominations. We’ve had something that was distinctly closed and very, very opaque,” said Bryan Kerman, who quit the board of the Brant riding association after 40 years as a Liberal.

And they expected something else?

That's what you get when you put your faith in a band of crooks, liars and congenital idiots.

(Merci)


ISIS is afraid of Kurdish women fighters:




Ladies and gentlemen, Miss Loretta Lynn.

(Gracias, El Gordo)


News from the Korean Peninsula -

Impoverished states just don't do this unless they are getting help:

U.S. intelligence agencies believe North Korea is building a submarine capable of launching ballistic missiles, potentially increasing the threat posed by the nuclear-armed rogue state.

**

Cynical but probably true:

Separately, South Korea’s National Human Rights Commission says “it plans to open a permanent exhibition hall on North Korea’s human rights conditions in an effort to raise public awareness about the issue.” That’s the good news. The not-so-good news is that the opening date is scheduled for 2017, which should give South Korean’s left-wing parties, whose human rights policy can be summarized as “die in place,” plenty of time to cut funding for it.

 
Leftists suck no matter where they come from.

**

I wouldn't think so:

Analysts expect the shake-up of the Obama administration’s Korea policy-makers to bring about momentum in the long-stalled six-party talks.

But other Washington and Seoul sources indicate such anticipation may still be premature.

“In regard to North Korea, Washington’s tactic of strategic patience, the trend of ‘not doing anything,’ has not changed,” said a high-level diplomat here who has dealt with the six-party talks.

 No, it certainly has not changed. Putting in new faces will not create the illusion that something is being done.

(Kamsahamnida)


Getting one's priorities straight:

Penn State has removed Gideon Bibles from hotel rooms after a complaint from the Freedom From Religion Foundation (FFRF) accused the Bibles of advocating the killings of nonbelievers.

“The bible [sic] calls for killing nonbelievers, apostates, gays, ‘stubborn sons,’ and women who are not virgins on their wedding nights,” FFRF Co-President Annie Laurie Gaylor said in a statement last week. “What is obnoxious in a private hotel, however, becomes inappropriate and unconstitutional in state-run lodgings.”

This Penn State.


Horse crap by any other name:

A study published by professors at North Carolina State University claims that pressure put on mothers to cook nightly meals is elitist and stressful for working class families.

Published in late August, "The Joy of Cooking" reports the authors' findings after interviewing 150 mothers from diverse ethnic backgrounds over the past year-and-a-half. The professors also spent time shadowing 12 working-class and poor families.

According to the study, the heightened pressure from influential figures like Michael Pollan and Michelle Obama for families to sit down to healthier, home cooked meals on a nightly basis has become a source of stress for American mothers. The study refers to the message that "good mothers" cook for their families as "unrealistic."

Authors Sarah Bowen, Sinikka Elliott, and Joslyn Bretton (a professor at Ithaca College) relay a number of anecdotes culled from their body of research. Interviewed women cited time, money, and picky children as obstacles.

"Romantic depictions of cooking assume that everyone has a home, that family members are home eating at the same time, and that kitchens and dining spaces are equipped and safe,” the authors write. “This is not necessarily the case for the families we met."

The study alleges that even in modern America, expectations for a home-cooked, nightly meal constitute a "widely promoted standard to which all mothers are held." The authors document the experience of Elaine, a married mother of one, who feels inadequate because she struggles to provide a relaxing dinner for her family despite her love of cooking and preparation on the weekends.

The study suggests various different solutions, including the advent of healthy food trucks, monthly town suppers, shifting society’s emphasis towards lunch, and schools offering to-go meals that families can heat up for dinner.

The study does not mention any families that were able to enjoy a nightly home-cooked meal without drama. It concludes that the resurgent emphasis on home cooking is "a tasty illusion, one that is moralistic, and rather elitist."

(Sidebar: it's supper. Everyone eats it and somebody - ie, Mum - has to make it. It's not hard. You can even teach older kids to do it. It's a healthy, time-honoured, realistic, practical, affordable thing to do. Really. I'm not making that part up.)

I wonder if this study was racialist in not including Third World mothers who would give anything to put food on the table for their children.

Gee, I guess First-World problems are more important.


And now, a bear saving a crow: