Sunday Post

Starting the week off...


John Baird has stated that Canada will not join the US in fighting ISIS in Syria:

Canada has no plans to follow its neighbour the United States in expanding airstrikes against the Islamic State group into Syria, the country's top diplomat said Saturday during a visit to the Middle East.

In an interview with The Associated Press, Foreign Minister John Baird said Canada has a responsibility to contribute to the U.S.-led bombing campaign in part because the Islamic State group has attracted Canadian fighters to its ranks. But he insisted that support would be confined to Iraq for now.

First of all, whatever the conflict, go in it to win (SEE: Korea, Iraq, Iraq II, Afghanistan). To do otherwise is a waste of material and personnel.

Secondly, ISIS is an enemy whose complete and utter destruction is necessary. Doing this cheaply will not help in the long run.

Thirdly, Obama does not want ISIS defeated but does want Assad out of power. It's best to do the opposite of what Obama wants.


Says the premier whose accused pervert friend helped her develop a sex ed program for kids:

Ontario's premier has entered the debate over Canada's new prostitution law a day after it took effect, adding her voice to a growing number of groups concerned for sex workers' safety and adding tension to her relationship with the Harper government.

Kathleen Wynne issued a statement Sunday saying she has a "grave concern" that the new rules dealing with the world's oldest profession won't be any better than the old system when it comes to protecting prostitutes from harm.

"I am not an expert, and I am not a lawyer, but as premier of this province, I am concerned that this legislation (now the law of the land) will not make sex workers safer," the statement reads.

(Sidebar: sex isn't work. It's not a trade. It's a way for trafficked girls to make money for pimps.)

Okay. Kill him:

A slickly produced video released on Sunday urged Muslims to launch indiscriminate attacks against Canadians, similar to those carried out in October in Ottawa and Montreal.

The SITE Intelligence Group, an American based company that monitors trends within the global jihadist movement, said the video was produced by the Islamic State and the Levant. It was also been distributed on Twitter and jihadi forums.

On the video a man, who says he is a Canadian and identifies himself as "Abu Anwar al-Canadi," urges his Muslim countrymen to follow the example of Martin Couture-Rouleau.

(Sidebar: Couture-Rouleau, one may remember, died like a little b!#ch.)

The OPP stands by and does nothing as aboriginal extremists seize yet another region:

Cooler heads should prevail and upper levels of government must step in after a First Nation in southwestern Ontario tore down barriers and began driving along a stretch of beach near the site of the 1995 Ipperwash crisis, the local mayor said Sunday.

Kettle and Stony Point First Nation took down the gates blocking vehicle access to Ipperwash Beach on Lake Huron on Friday, saying the route encompasses the band's "historical trails" and that the community wasn't consulted when the no-entry gates first went up in 1973.

The beach runs between the band's main reserve and Ipperwash park, a former provincial park where aboriginal protester Dudley George was killed by police in a heated land dispute two decades ago. The park is in the process of being transferred to the First Nation.

Members of the First Nation have long walked along the beach, but the addition of vehicles has sparked safety and environmental concerns among residents, Lambton Shores Mayor Bill Weber said in an interview.

"Right now we are hoping that cooler heads prevail," he said. The municipality has no problem with Kettle and Stony Point claiming the strip as a traditional trail, he added, but wants clarity from the senior governments on just how it can be used.

Weber said the municipality was caught off guard when workers equipped with machinery moved in Friday and ripped out the barriers, as there was already a longstanding forum with Kettle and Stony Point and local residents to deal with land issues.

Some of those living in the cottages lining the beach held a protest Saturday, with one resident even setting up his own makeshift barricade using a picnic table as cars and trucks drove by. Ontario Provincial Police — who fatally shot George in the 1995 standoff and now have a special framework for handling aboriginal protest actions — monitored the situation. Their spokesman for the area wasn't available Sunday.

Requests for meetings to help resolve the dispute over the three-kilometre stretch of sand along Lake Huron have been sent to the provincial and federal governments, Weber said.

"Let's all get together and discuss this and resolve this in a peaceful way," he said.

... or you can tell them to leave.

China, furious that the Philippines has taken the high road in all of this, denounces them:

China denounced the Philippines on Sunday for putting it under pressure with an international arbitration case over disputed waters, and refused again to participate a week ahead of a deadline to respond in the case.

In a position paper, China outlined its arguments against the jurisdiction of the Permanent Court of Arbitration at The Hague to take up the case filed by the Philippines last year that could have implications for China's claims over the South China Sea.

"Its underlying goal is not ... to seek peaceful resolution of the South China Sea issue, but rather, by resorting to arbitration, to put political pressure on China, so as to deny China's lawful rights in the South China Sea through the so-called 'interpretation or application' of the Convention," China's foreign ministry said.

China claims almost the entire South China Sea, rejecting claims to parts of it from Vietnam, the Philippines, Taiwan, Malaysia and Brunei. It has a dispute with Japan over islands in the East China Sea.

 One study claims that wind turbines do not reduce property values:

Wind turbines generally have little effect on the value of nearby properties with possibly isolated exceptions, a recent study of thousands of home and farm sales has found.

The surprising findings, published in the Canadian Journal of Agricultural Economics, come amid an already fiery debate over wind farm impacts and appear to contradict widely-held views among turbine critics.

The study focused on Ontario’s Melancthon township — home to one of the country’s oldest and largest wind farms — and surrounding areas.

“The lack of significant effects of the Melancthon wind farm is somewhat surprising, given the public outcry regarding the construction of these turbines,” according to the authors.

“These results do not corroborate the concerns raised by residents regarding potential negative impacts of turbines on property values.”

The University of Guelph researchers analyzed more than 7,000 home and farm sales that occurred between 2002 and 2010 in Melancthon Township, which saw 133 turbines put up between 2005 and 2008, and 10 surrounding townships. Of those, more than 1,000 homes and farms were sold more than once, some several times.

Except....

The presence of wind turbines  near homes has wiped tens of thousands of pounds off their value, according to the first major study into the impact the eyesore structures have on house prices.

The study by the London School  of Economics (LSE) – which looked at more than a million sales of properties close to wind farm sites over a 12-year period – found that values of homes within 1.2  miles of large wind farms were being slashed by about 11 per cent. 

This means that if such a wind farm were near an average house  in Britain, which now costs almost £250,000, it would lose more than £27,000 in value.

**

An Ontario Superior Court of Justice has determined that landowners living near industrial wind turbine projects do suffer from diminished property values. The court accepts that 22% to 55% loss of property values is occurring today. While the court found that residences may  suffer from diminished property values near wind farms, Madam Justice S.E. Healey dismissed the claims made by the Collingwood area landowners who sued the wind company – Canada Corp. and lease holders, because the proposed eight-wind turbine project has yet to receive approval by the provincial government.

**

If a property loses more than 1 per cent in value due to the erection of new wind turbines, the owner is ensured full compensation for his loss. The owner of the property must notify his claim for compensation for loss of value to Energinet.dk. As owner of the property you can choose to enter into a voluntary agreement for compensation for the loss of value with the erector of the wind turbine, or you can ask an impartial appraisal authority to make a specific appraisal of the property and determine the scope of your loss.

How embarrassing for MPAC (and its board of directors appointed by Minister of Finance, Charles Sousa) who put out this study.


The US marks the seventy-third anniversary of the start of the last war it won.