Mid-Week Post

For the middle of a sultry week...



How embarrassing... for Maclean's:

The Rebel now outranks Macleans.ca -- after less than six months (and no government subsidies)

Artist's rendition of The Rebel staff's well-earned feeling of pride.

Some current choice pieces from The Rebel: if Donald Sutherland wants to vote in the upcoming election, he can try living in Canada, "boring and stupid" Planned Parenthood videos aren't as shocking as what happens to chickens, the cost of Islam to Canada and much, much more!



Justin Trudeau was "missing in action" from the get-go. With many a toss of his curls and not enough sound and timely public policy, not to mention his gaffes, both oral and political, it's no wonder that the public has grown tired of him. Believing that one deserves to be leader because one's dad was and having done nothing of any substance to convince the electorate that one has capability of leading is simply not enough in the grown-up world where carbon taxes are onerous burdens for low-income families and withdrawing military support in the fight against ISIS is a moral and political failure:

Justin Trudeau, the man who was supposed to lead Canada's Liberals out of the political wilderness, has instead sunk to third place just months from an election, with some in his party complaining he is missing in action.

Born to a sitting prime minister and raised at the foot of power, he presents himself as a kinder, more approachable alternative to Prime Minister Stephen Harper after nine years of rule by the right-leaning Conservatives and three straight Liberal defeats.

But more than two years into his leadership of the once-powerful centrist Liberals, the 43-year-old father of three has struggled to define himself and been labeled by opponents as unready for office despite his prized political pedigree.

Some critics complain Trudeau, son of the late Pierre Trudeau, appears unwilling to go on the road and repeat his message enough times for it to sink in before the Oct. 19 vote.

Former Liberal legislator Dennis Mills, who worked for Trudeau's father - prime minister for 15 years ending in 1984 - took aim at Trudeau's team, saying his handlers needed to be more aggressive.

"All these photo ops are nice, but I think we haven't really seen the inner strength and the passion of the man, and that's because he hasn't been in a situation where that's been allowed to come out," Mills said.

(Sidebar: the word of one who has supped the Kool-Aid.) 

First Nation bands must file financial statements for the 2014-15 tax year or lose funding:

First Nations bands that have not filed their financial statements for 2014-15 by Wednesday at midnight will risk having federal funding for non-essential services cut beginning Sept. 1, warns Aboriginal Affairs Minister Bernard Valcourt.

Under a new law which came into effect one year ago, First Nations have to submit to the Canadian government their audited financial statements for the past fiscal year, including the salaries and expenses of their chiefs and councillors.

While 98 per cent of bands complied with the First Nations Financial Transparency Act last year, CBC News reported Monday that the federal government has taken eight bands to court in a bid to force them to comply. Four other bands are said to be co-operating with the government to meet the requirements.

(Sidebar: since when were tribes a nation? Never mind.)

There are six hundred and thirty-four First Nations reserves in Canada. It would much better and easier for everyone to simply make these reserves municipalities with every citizen electing not a corrupt band chief but a mayor who can be ousted if he or she does not perform. 

Scrap the Indian Act, is my point. This northern ghetto run by oligarchies nonsense has long run its course.

Oh, what a surprise:

Russia on Wednesday vetoed a U.N. Security Council resolution that would set up an international criminal court to prosecute those responsible for shooting down a Malaysia Airlines plane over Ukraine a year ago.

 

Unless he fled into a pool of ravenous tiger sharks, the alleged departure of "Jihadi John" from the child-raping organisation known as ISIS might mean he is fleeing to and may get refuge from a willing Western nation, very much like the one he left so that he could murder at will:

British terrorist “Jihadi John” has reportedly left the Islamic State (aka ISIS) group, fearing for his life after being identified six months earlier as a Kuwaiti-born Londoner from a well-to-do family.

Jihadi John left because the terrorist organization might drop him "like a stone or worse if they feel he is no longer of any use to them," according to a source for the British news outlet, the Daily Express.

The Daily Express report has not been confirmed by government sources or other news outlets.

Born Mohammed Emwazi, he initially gained international notoriety both personally, and for the terrorist organization, after a video was released by Islamic State in August 2014, showing him beheading American journalist James Foley.

"We have never been prouder of our son Jim," Diane Foley wrote on her son’s Facebook page who was killed after two years in captivity. "He gave his life trying to expose the world to the suffering of the Syrian people."

Mr. Emwazi is now wanted for murder by the United States and Britain for killings journalists and aid workers Foley, Stephen Sotloff, David Haines, Alan Henning, and Peter Kassig, among others. The last video that the Kuwaiti-born 26-year-old was featured in depicted the beheading of Japanese journalist Kenji Goto over six months ago. The Daily Express speculates that Emwazi may be working with "a less well-known jihadist group somewhere in Syria, to try to keep a low profile."

Good:

Israeli bulldozers began demolishing a contested housing complex in a West Bank settlement on Wednesday as the prime minister's office announced the "immediate construction" of some 300 new units at another location in the same settlement and advanced plans for about 500 new units in east Jerusalem.

Caught yet again haggling over baby parts, Planned Parenthood warns everyone not to focus on its immoral and illegal activities:

Planned Parenthood's newly-hired crisis communications firm has a message for the media: Don't report on the fetal parts videos.

On Monday, D.C.-based crisis communications firm SKDKnickerbocker sent a memo to media sources, warning them to not air a third video showing the possibly illegal sales of fetal parts.

Yes, popular press, do what you are best at: prostituting yourself to utter scum.

These people are truly the limit. There is no depth to which they will not sink.

It's time to audit Cecile Richards.



Oh, look! Selfish people are playing tug-of-war with a child:

Two dads who had hoped to bring a baby daughter home to Spain from Thailand after she was born there via surrogate six months ago have instead been stranded in Bangkok with her ever since, as the birth mom has changed her mind. Now the fates of the American biological father, Gordon “Bud” Lake, his Spanish husband, Manuel Santos, the surrogate mom, Patidta Kusolsang, and baby Carmen are in the hands of a Thai court, which will hold a hearing on the custody matter on Thursday.

The dads, who live in Valencia, believe Kusolsang changed her mind because she found out that they are gay.

“For the last six months, we have been stuck in Thailand, faced with the possibility of losing our jobs and our house back in the U.S. because we cannot leave. If we leave, we risk the greatest loss of all — our beautiful baby daughter, Carmen,” they write on a crowdfunding page for their legal expenses (which has brought in nearly $30,000 so far), noting on Facebook that they have already wiped out their savings on housing, school for their 2-year-old son (who is with them in Thailand), visa renewals, and food. “All this because our surrogate doesn’t want Carmen to be raised by gay parents, and the law that should give me full parental powers excludes me from obtaining them because I am gay.”

If you want to pretend to be a family, don't act shocked when an incubator et al might find that problematic.



And now, animals that want to be nature photographers. Enjoy.