For A Tuesday

(insert own pithy phrase here)


Stephen Harper's first election promise on the campaign trail is a home renovation tax credit (assuming one has money to renovate):

Speaking at a warehouse in North York, Harper vowed to introduce a new, permanent home renovation tax credit if reelected in October. The plan would be phased in during the 2016/17 fiscal year and cost the government approximately $1.5 billion annually.

“For most Canadians, the family home is their biggest asset and their most significant investment in their future financial security,” Harper said. “I’m therefore very pleased to announce that to help make it more affordable for Canadians to adapt their homes to their changing needs and to maintain and increase those houses values we will establish a new home renovation tax credit.”

The credit, which was first introduced in 2009 as a temporary measure, would cover 15% of major home renovations between $1000 and $5000 a year. Harper, however, seemed to suggest the measure would only be introduced if economic conditions were favourable.

Justin Trudeau is a jerk but one already knew that:

And finally after over a 3 hour delay, Liberal leader Justin Trudeau bragged to the media about always being available for questions:

But CKNW’s Shane Woodford’s wasn’t letting that statement by Trudeau slide:

Most interesting though is how not a single Ottawa journalist has said a word about a Vancouver journalist calling-out Trudeau on his blatant lie.

Also: what he said:

It's true Harper has, according to Elections Canada, cost taxpayers an estimated $125 million more by holding a 78-day campaign ($500 million) compared to a traditional, 37-day one ($375 million).

But that pales in comparison to the up to $1.1 billion the Ontario Liberals wasted in the 2011 provincial election -- according to two auditors general of Ontario -- to save five Liberal seats, by cancelling two unpopular gas plants surrounded by Liberal ridings.

(Paws up)



Russia has claimed a huge portion of the Arctic, including the North Pole:

A defence expert says Russia's new bid for a vast swath of Arctic territory, including the North Pole, backs Canada into an uncomfortable corner in future negotiations over the frozen region.

Moscow's revised international submission was revealed today in a statement by the country's foreign ministry and claims 1.2 million square kilometres of the Arctic shelf.

Russia, the U.S., Canada, Denmark and Norway are working with the UN to define jurisdictional boundaries in the Arctic, which is thought to hold as much as a quarter of the planet's undiscovered oil and gas.

In late 2013, the Harper government ordered officials to rewrite Canada’s Arctic claim to include the North Pole and more survey work is taking place this summer before Ottawa submits the document.

Asking the UN to arbitrate fairly when Russia sits permanently on the security council and can virtually get away with murder is rather like asking a fox to forgo its chicken supper.

Canada has 162,000 kilometres of Arctic coastline and enormous possibilities for gas and oil exploration. It is unlikely that even if the UN did rule in Canada's favour that Russia would ever adhere to any agreement or law. Seeing as the UN is toothless either way, it's time to withdraw from that organisation and defend the claim to the Arctic ourselves.



An Israeli civil-rights group scores a legal win over North Korea:

Winning a lawsuit against North Korea is rare. Collecting millions of dollars in damages from the isolated country? Pretty much impossible. But an Israel-based civil rights group thinks it has found a way, starting with a North Korean ship that's been held, against Pyongyang's wishes, in a Mexican port for the past year. ...

The Shurat HaDin law centre began its pursuit after winning a $330 million U.S. District Court judgment in April over the abduction of a South Korean-born pastor in China and his presumed torture and killing in North Korea 15 years ago. Now the centre is aiming for whatever North Korean assets it can find.

It has focused on the Mu Du Bong, a cargo ship that accidentally ran aground off Mexico last July. Despite North Korea's protests, a panel of experts that monitors U.N. sanctions against Pyongyang for its nuclear and missile programs asked the Mexican government not to release it.

The ship's North Korean parent company, Ocean Maritime Management Co., has been under sanctions ever since another ship it operated was found to be carrying two Cuban fighter jets, missile and live munitions hidden under a cargo of sugar.

Seizing the Mu Du Bong requires that a Mexican court recognize the U.S. court's judgment. Civil courts in Mexico City and in the state of Veracruz have declined to hear Shurat HaDin's request, but it is now appealing.

The plan is to sell the ship to the highest bidder, with the money going to the South Korean pastor's family.

"There are so few North Korean assets around the world that an opportunity like this, to seize the boat, should not be allowed to simply slip away out of fear of North Korea or other political consideration," Nitsana Darshan-Leitner, Shurat HaDin's director, told The Associated Press on Tuesday.

Shurat HaDin is known for suing states such as Iran and Syria on behalf of victims of torture or terrorism, aiming for bad publicity for those governments even if it can't get them to pay.

North Korea has never admitted the abduction and torture of the pastor, U.S. resident Kim Dong Shik. Pyongyang has been known to respond harshly to people who try to promote religion, even among the thousands of North Koreans who have fled to neighbouring China.

Normally, foreign states can't be sued in the United States, but an exception in the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act allows it against countries that are listed as state sponsors of terrorism. Shurat HaDin filed suit over Kim's disappearance just one day before the George W. Bush administration removed North Korea from that list.

The removal has complicated efforts to collect damages from Pyongyang, including by accessing the millions of dollars of its money still thought to be frozen in several U.S. banks. As of 2008, the last year the U.S. Treasury reported it, $34 million of North Korean money remained in U.S. banks. A Treasury spokeswoman didn't comment.

Video number five:

A Planned Parenthood official admits that abortionists sometimes provide “intact” babies' body for organ harvesting and experimentation, in the latest undercover video released by the Center for Medical Progress. It also includes graphic footage of investigators seeing pristine organs extracted from a 20-week-old aborted baby.

The director of research for Planned Parenthood Gulf Coast, Melissa Farrell, told undercover investigators that abortionists are willing to alter the abortion process to obtain the body parts researchers request, or to deliver a child essentially intact.

“They can make it happen,” she said. “We bake that into our contract, and our protocol, that...we deviate from our standard in order to do that.”

“Some of our doctors,” she said, “do it [the abortion procedure] in a way that they get the best specimens, so, I know it can happen.”

As in the first video, Farrell goes to lunch with the team, stating that the fees paid for fetal body parts adds tremendous “diversification of the revenue stream” for the Planned Parenthood affiliate.

If she is admitting her activity generates a profit, that violates federal statutes prohibiting the sale of human organs for “valuable consideration.”

And yet the Senate refused to defund this human organ trafficking organisation.



One is still waiting for useless Western feminists to Slut Walk for this:

A senior United Nations official says Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant is circulating a slave price list for captured women and children, and that the group’s ongoing appeal and barbarity pose an unprecedented challenge. 

The official, Zainab Bangura, said that on a trip to Iraq in April she was given a copy of an Islamic State pamphlet, which included the list, showing that captured children as young as one fetch the highest price. The bidders include both the group’s own fighters and wealthy Middle Easterners. ...

“The girls get peddled like barrels of petrol,” she said in an interview last week in New York. “One girl can be sold and bought by five or six different men. Sometimes these fighters sell the girls back to their families for thousands of dollars of ransom.”

Kevin Vickers has received the Order of New Brunswick for his heroic actions during last year's terrorist shootings at the House of Commons:

Kevin Vickers, the former sergeant-at-arms in Parliament, has been named a recipient of the Order of New Brunswick for his role in stopping a shooting spree by Michael Zehaf-Bibeau last fall.

Vickers stopped the gunman in the House of Commons last October shortly after Zehaf-Bibeau killed Cpl. Nathan Cirillo, who was standing guard at the National War Memorial, and rushed into the building with his rifle. ...

The Order of New Brunswick was established in 2000 to recognize individuals who demonstrate a high level of excellence and achievement in their particular field.

A ceremony to present this year's recipients with their awards will be held at Government House in Fredericton on Nov. 4.