But Wait! There's More!

There usually is....


One year ago, before Obama "cried" openly and long after the tragic "workplace violence" of Fort Hood, some "folks" in France were "randomly shot" by some clearly factional "lone wolves".

One year later, one of the many of a series of "lone wolves" paraded around in front of a police station in France and went out with a bang:

(Sidebar: what? Too soon?)

A man wearing a fake explosives vest and wielding a butcher knife was shot to death by police outside a Paris police station Thursday, jolting an already anxious French capital with a new dose of fear as the nation grimly marked a year of terror that started with the newsroom massacre at the Charlie Hebdo satirical newspaper.

The assailant — who shouted "Allahu akbar!" or "God is great!"— as he waved the knife at officers, was carrying a document with an emblem of the Islamic State group and "an unequivocal claim of responsibility in Arabic," the prosecutor's office said.

The extremist group claimed responsibility for the Jan. 7, 2015, attack at Charlie Hebdo and on a kosher grocery store three days later that killed 17 people. The Islamic State group also claimed the Nov. 13 attacks on Paris cafes, restaurants, a sports stadium and a music hall that killed 130 people.

Thursday's attempted attack shortly before noon in Paris' multi-ethnic Goutte d'Or neighborhood came almost one year to the minute after two Islamic extremists burst into the offices of Charlie Hebdo, killing 11 people. Just moments earlier, President Francois Hollande had paid respects to fallen security forces — three of whom were killed last year in terrorist violence — saluting their valor in protecting "this way of life, the one that terrorists want to attack."

Because Mark Steyn:

Both Paris and Copenhagen were twofers: the attacks on free speech were followed by attacks on Jews, at a kosher supermarket and a synagogue, respectively. To Obama, this second group of victims were merely a "random" "bunch of folks". Couldda been anyone, but just so happened to be "a bunch of folks" who like kosher food. As I commented:

Bank robbers rob banks because that's where the money is. In Europe, Islamic supremacists shoot up kosher markets, synagogues, Jewish museums and Jewish schools because that's where the Jews are.

I think most of us understand that a huge percentage of Muslims really hate Jews. I have a high degree of tolerance for hate: I spent a lot of time in Northern Ireland during a period when many Catholics and Protestants seriously hated each other, and I came rather to appreciate the way they were entirely upfront about their mutual hatred. The problem here is that in the biggest resurgence of Jew-hate since the Second World War we're not allowed to say who hates Jews.

That's why free speech matters. Without free speech, there are only the official lies - about who's killing Jews in Copenhagen, who's sexually assaulting women in Cologne - and there is nothing to say in response to either except to crank up the old joanna for one more chorus of "Imagine".

What happened on January 7th 2015 was terrible. But our response to it made it more terrible, and emboldened civilization's enemies. With respect to the late Charb, the choice is not between dying standing up or living on our knees - for those who choose to live on their knees will die there, too, cringing and craven.

If fortune favours the bold, then the "Je Suis German Girl" crowd, like the "Je Suis Charlie" crowd, are picking lint out of their pockets:

The interior minister for the German state of North Rhine-Westphalia, within which Cologne is situated, has said people of a right wing persuasion discussing the mass sexual assaults on New Years Eve online are equally “awful” as the attackers and rapists.

There's bravery for you. Shut up and pretend nothing is happening.

But it won't stop happening and the silence encourages it as much as cowardly, craven governments do:

Creating voters blocks and wasting taxpayers' money is all these people know how to do.

Speaking of money:

Panic selling in Asia prompted by developments in China spread across the globe and threw the Toronto stock market into a tailspin Thursday, capping off seven consecutive days of losses and thrusting the index into bear market territory.

The S&P/TSX composite index ended the day off roughly 20 per cent from its all-time high in September 2014 — a loss considered by many as a bear market.

The index lost 278.59 points, or 2.2 per cent, to close at 12,448.21, as commodity prices, including oil, continued to fall amid perceived weakness in the Chinese economy.

Oil plunged to around levels not seen since 2008, with the February contract for benchmark crude oil losing 70 cents to close at US$33.27 a barrel. That pulled down energy stocks on the TSX by more than four per cent.

**

The Bank of Canada says overcoming the economic suffering inflicted by the commodity-price shock essentially boils down to one main option: ride it out.

Stephen Poloz, the central bank governor, said Thursday that no simple policy response will fix the problem, although damaging factors like the steep slide in oil prices can be mitigated — to a point.

I'm this will "balance itself".

Though the Liberals are fine with Soylent Green so-called assisted suicide, they won't commit suicide politically:

The Trudeau government appears to be in no hurry to grapple with the explosive issue of doctor-assisted dying, even as it prepares to urge the Supreme Court of Canada next week to give it more time to craft a new law on the matter.

There is owning one's stance.



Look- if one is going to ban children from going to school if they don't have proof of vaccination, at least get one's g-d- act together on that proof:

About 5,000 suspension letters were sent for children in public schools in Ottawa on Dec. 15 because of their out-of-date vaccination records. Fifty thousand students had incomplete vaccination records in the city as recently as October. And when school started this week, about 1,800 students were suspended as a result.

The suspensions are lifted when a student provides either a valid exemption or proof of current vaccinations. As of Monday, 82 per cent of those students had provided the proof required to return to classes.

But documentation of vaccinations varies across the country, making it hard to get a good national picture of immunization rates for children.

“Those are not well tracked,” Dr. Gerald Evans, an infectious disease expert at Queen’s University, tells Yahoo Canada News.

The routine vaccination schedule varies between Canada’s 13 provinces and territories, as do the requirements for vaccination to attend public school. Only Ontario and New Brunswick legislate that children must be up to date on vaccines in order to attend public school. In all other provinces and the three territories, the regulations and policies around vaccine reporting and vaccine tracking — as well as legislation related to disease outbreaks —varies.

Finally: some sanity:

If the President doesn’t impose some actual, legitimately tough sanctions now, I really don’t know what to say for him. He’s just lost all political cover to do a deal with the North Koreans in the last year of his administration. What does he have to lose now?

And, of course, this is an election year, and an exceptionally volatile one. That won’t make it any easier for the President to continue with his avoidant North Korea policy.

As for Congress, it has strong North Korea sanctions bills pending in both houses now. If it doesn’t put a tough bill on the President’s desk now, it will forfeit the credibility of its criticisms of one of this administration’s — and the last administration’s — great foreign policy failures.

Internationally, the administration should put resources and capital behind a program of progressive diplomacy, to unite our allies in exerting coordinated pressure on Pyongyang, building capacity for smaller states to enforce existing U.N. Security Council sanctions, and building a larger coalition that would leave North Korea’s few remaining enablers increasingly isolated.

Speaking of enablers, the other party that might be rather exasperated right now is China. It was reportedly trying to arrange a visit to Pyongyang by a senior diplomat. I assume the purpose of this would have been to dissuade His Porcine Majesty from going through with the test. That, combined with the recent Moranbang fiasco, Kim Jong-un’s failure to visit China, and the fallout (sorry) from the Jang Song-thaek purge, give China reasons for exasperation. It still won’t cut off aid to North Korea, but I’m guessing it won’t put up much of a fight when Samantha Power asks the Security Council to approve another sanctions resolution.

Which China will then proceed to ignore, just like all the rest of those resolutions. Of course, we don’t have to just keep watching them do that. With China’s economy and stock market tanking again, the last thing it needs is for its banks to get fined, or even lose their access to the dollar system, for helping North Korea break U.N. sanctions.

The outcomes we should seek now are, first, China’s good-faith implementation of the sanctions it has been voting for and willfully violating since 2006, and second, China’s abstention on a resolution referring Kim Jong-un to the International Criminal Court for crimes against humanity, even if the only consequence of that is to isolate Putin as the lone veto.

Finally, it’s time to acknowledge that none of the problems North Korea continues to create for its people and ours are going to be solved without a fundamental change in the character of its government. Those around Kim Jong-un must understand that their only choices are to reform or to perish. China, for its part, must understand that Kim Jong-un’s oppressive and dangerous ways will inevitably bring something resembling the chaos and violence of Syria to its frontier. There is much China can do to encourage internal change, followed by gradual, negotiated reform and disarmament, if it wants to.

(Kamsahamnida)  

But were gays thrown from roofs?

The chief justice of Alabama's Supreme Court ordered the state's probate judges on Wednesday not to issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples despite a ruling by the U.S. Supreme Court last year legalizing gay marriage.

And now, this should make for one Furious George:

 A macaque monkey who snapped clear, perfectly framed selfies that would have made the Kardashians proud still cannot own a copyright to the photos because it's an animal, not a human, a federal judge said.

He was always a good little monkey and always a little furious.