Mid-Week Post

Your central point of the work-week...



France charged man involved in terrorist attacks:

France on Wednesday charged the main suspect in a foiled attack plot with membership of a terrorist organisation after police found an arsenal of weapons and explosives at his home.

The move comes as investigators stepped up efforts to smash a tangled web of Islamic State-linked extremists blamed for both the November Paris attacks and last week's suicide bombings on Brussels airport and metro that killed 32 people.

French national Reda Kriket, 34, was arrested near Paris last week and a police raid on his apartment netted a cache of assault rifles, handguns and TATP, the highly volatile homemade explosive favoured by IS jihadists.

State prosecutor Francois Molins said Wednesday that "no specific target" had been identified for the foiled attack but that the cache of weapons showed an imminent act of "extreme violence" had likely been prevented.

The stacking of the vote continues:

The Liberals are committing to finding new ways to get Syrian refugees to Canada and into other countries as the United Nations seeks nearly half a million spaces for Syrians by the end of 2018.

Wouldn't it be embarrassing if these migrants left before the next election?



Also:

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau arrives at the Nuclear Security Summit in Washington Thursday bearing two significant domestic achievements to reduce nuclear terrorism amid worries the Islamic State is pursing nuclear or radiological attacks.

At this point, one wants Trudeau get Gerald Butt's hand from out of his @$$ and justify that conclusion with some hard evidence.

Would-be terrorists don't necessarily need to obtain highly-enriched uranium for dirty bombs when radiation therapy materials are readily available.

And did everyone forget how not at war Trudeau is with ISIS?




A bittersweet tragedy:

James Cain learned only last Tuesday, following the airport bombing in Brussels, that his daughter was married.

The secret emerged as he and his daughter, Cameron, searched anxiously for news of Alexander Pinczowski and his sister, Sascha. Cameron disclosed to her father that she and Alexander had wed in 2013.

Alexander and Sascha, Dutch citizens who lived in New York, both died in the attacks.

On Tuesday, Cain said the revelation that he had a son-in-law was "the bright spot in our otherwise anguishing week."

He said his daughter and Alexander kept their marriage quiet because they "wanted to have all the immigration paperwork done, and Alex's career path more stabilized, before coming to us and planning a traditional Southern Church wedding in North Carolina."

Alexander and Sascha had been heading home to the United States when they died. Alexander, 29, was on the phone with his mother in the Netherlands when the line went dead.

Maybe these carriages would not be necessary if one did not let "refugees" into the country in the first place:

A German train operator has decided to introduce a women-only carriage in the aftermath of mass sexual assaults blamed on migrants from the Middle East and North Africa.

After yet another devastating attack, Pakistani Christians carry on:

As bad as the attack in Lahore was, it was not the deadliest of the many assaults on Pakistan’s three million Christians. Three years ago, two suicide bombers killed 127 worshippers at All Saints Church in Peshawar.

The deaths in Lahore followed the execution of Mumtaz Qadri, a police officer, convicted off assassinating Salman Taseer, Punjab’s governor. Taseer was targeted because he tried to change the country’s blasphemy laws and defended a Christian woman whose death sentence for insulting the Prophet Muhammad was eventually overturned by the courts.

Immediately after Sunday’s attack, thousands of Islamists marched from Rawalpindi to nearby Islamabad, commemorating what they regard as Qadri’s martyrdom. When they reached the capital without any intervention by police, they went on a rampage before beginning a sit-in outside the offices of Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif. 

They have threatened more violence if, among other things, the government does not implement their draconian interpretation of Shariah law and call off an army campaign against them in tribal areas near the Afghan border. ...

Christianity in Pakistan is a resilient force. One of the reasons may be that most Christians are unusually pious and few more so than Patrick. He sprinkles his conversations with constant references to the Almighty. I am not at all devout, but that has never bothered Patrick. That I was a Christian was enough for him.

The couple of times I attended mass with Patrick, dozens of army troops lined the streets leading to Our Lady Fatima Church. Despite the risks, the services, which were mostly celebrated in Urdu, were packed.

 First-Worlders, observe what real problems look like.




Another famine for North Korea?

North Korean state media has warned the country to prepare for a new “arduous march” as international sanctions take effect.

The term was coined by the North Korean leadership in 1993 as a metaphor for the famine that killed as many as 3.5 million people over four years.

The famine was brought on by economic mismanagement, natural disasters, the collapse of the Soviet bloc and the consequent loss of aid, combined with the regime’s insistence on continuing a life of luxury and feeding the military.

Now, less than one month after the UN Security Council voted in favour of new sanctions against North Korea for its recent nuclear and missile tests, Pyongyang has announced a nationwide campaign to save food.

Sanctions, I think, are not the reason why North Koreans will continue going hungry. The issue is always the leadership and its morally corrupt backers.

See OFK for concise and spot-on assessment on the Korean Peninsula.


Also: photos smuggled out of North Korea.




And now, a yogurt place one must simply frequent: