For A Monday

Quickly now...


I know what they could have sung - "Silent Night":

People from around the world are singing the praises of an Ottawa-area children's choir after their performance of a traditional Arabic song exploded on YouTube this weekend.

In the video, posted earlier this week, about 200 schoolchildren perform a choral version of Tala' al-Badru 'Alayna, a song that was purportedly sung to the Prophet Muhammad upon his arrival in Medina after he left Mecca.

(Sidebar:  I thought these people were refugees because of the followers of Mohammad.)

Oh, yeah. Various grinches would have fainted at the thought of it.

Maybe the children could sing about this:

New reports this week from the ISIS controlled city of Mosul in Iraq suggest that ISIS has stooped to a new low, issuing a Fatwa calling to kill infant children with Down's Syndrome. 

If true, it would like Peter Singer's dream come true.




Syrian children pose unique challenges to Canada's puppy mills schools:

The hallways and classrooms at Queen Elizabeth School in Edmonton are already teeming with students from around the world.

Now it's preparing for a new wave of children coming from a war zone, including many who have faced brutal journeys and seen horrors beyond the comprehension of most adults.

Nevertheless, principal Sue Bell is nonchalant.

"I actually don't really worry that much because I know that whoever walks through our door we're going to be welcoming and we're going to have a place for them to be and they're going to love it here," she told CBC News.

I'll say:

Syrian children are also taught that Jews are evil and a false people and that their religion does not make them a nation. Syrian textbooks praise the Holocaust as a positive event.

You have your work cut out for you, Canadian teachers.




Nicely done:

 A veteran SAS sniper killed five Islamic State (ISIS) fighters with just three shots to foil a suicide bomb attack in Iraq. The sniper, who has served with the SAS for a decade, decided to shoot after he spotted the five Daesh (IS) fighters leaving a bomb making factory whilst wearing heavy and warm clothing in the desert sun.

He fired three well-aimed shots from 800 metres away, killing five of the over-dressed jihadis near the IS-controlled Iraqi city of Mosul.

So when does the government end the beer monopoly?

It would "make a lot of sense" for Ontario's government-run liquor stores to sell marijuana if the federal Liberals make good on their promise to legalize pot, Premier Kathleen Wynne said Monday.

The new federal government's throne speech earlier this month included a pledge to "legalize, regulate and restrict access to marijuana," following up on a long-standing pledge by Justin Trudeau's Liberals.

The Liquor Control Board of Ontario, which has 650 stores across the province and a virtual monopoly on alcohol sales, has the experience and expertise to sell legalized marijuana in a responsible way, said Wynne.

"It makes sense to me that the liquor distribution mechanism that we have in place, the LCBO, is very well suited to putting into place the social responsibility aspects that would need to be in place," she said. "Obviously I don't know what the timeline is with the federal government, but it seems to me that using that distribution network of the LCBO...I think that makes a lot of sense."

(Sidebar: can you say "tax grab"?)

None of this makes sense but Kathleen Wynne hates Ontario and everything in it, so... 

 
Five Japanese women mount a challenge to keep their maiden names:

Five women in Japan are going against their government in the third round of a legal fight to keep their personal identity and their family names.

They are fighting to change Article 750 of the Civil Code which dates back to 1896. The law made it mandatory that married couples take the same surname and while it doesn’t specify which partner has to make the change, The Japan Times reports that at a rate of 96 per cent it is almost exclusively women taking on new names.

The Guardian reports that the women filing the suit claim the law violates the civil rights of married couples and is therefore unconstitutional. They are also seeking compensation. 

Or they could not get married.

Just saying.

Not even the lowly animals in the manger could give him refuge:

What happens when a drunk driver crashes into a guard rail and then tries to hide from the police in a nativity scene? A lot of puns and dad jokes, that’s what happens.

Yes, Twitter users decided to have a little fun after a suspected drunk driver crashed into a metal barrier in Tadcaster, North Yorkshire and then ran and hid in a large shed that was housing a nativity scene, reports The Telegraph.

North Yorkshire Police tweeted a photo of the crash and mentioned his attempt to hide — along with the fact that he had been located and arrested:

...  @NYorksRPG Suggest you charge him with Mangerous Driving. ...