It's Monday

And you know what that means!


Canada does not have an abortion law and that has meant open season on anyone five weeks old to five minutes before birth.  The proposed Soylent Green laws will still mean a slippery slope for the sick and elderly and soon everyone else who has decided to chuck in the towel:

With just one week to go, the federal government acknowledged publicly for the first time Monday that it may not be able to meet the Supreme Court's June 6 deadline for passing a law to govern medically assisted death.

Health Minister Jane Philpott said the government now risks missing next Monday's court-imposed deadline — the first time a Liberal cabinet minister has admitted what to many observers now seems patently obvious.

Members of Parliament were scheduled to vote later Monday on an array of would-be amendments to the government's controversial assisted-death bill, known as C-14, with a final third-reading vote scheduled for Tuesday.

"We are at risk of not meeting the June 6 deadline," said Philpott, noting that the bill would establish a clear legislative framework for both patients and their health care providers.

"Having said that, it is my hope that we can see this piece of legislation put into effect at the very soonest possible date."

(Sidebar: gee, how sanguine.) 

Also:

“We define transability as the desire or the need for a person identified as able-bodied by other people to transform his or her body to obtain a physical impairment,” says Alexandre Baril, a Quebec born academic who will present on “transability” at this week’s Congress of the Social Sciences and Humanities at the University of Ottawa.

“The person could want to become deaf, blind, amputee, paraplegic. It’s a really, really strong desire.”

Maybe these mentally ill surgery fanatics would like to talk to those "happy suckers" in wheelchairs who would rather not be. 

Then the mentally ill mobility-haters will asked to be euthanised.

The world is a mad, chaotic place.

Trudeau will find a way to over-ride an unelected judge's opinion just to spite the Tories. Watch:

The federal Conservatives are calling on the Trudeau government to refer a recent court ruling in New Brunswick on interprovincial trade to the Supreme Court for review.

That ruling in April effectively removed limits on cross-border alcohol imports.

Judge Ronald LeBlanc tossed out all charges against Gerald Comeau, who was charged with illegally importing 14 cases of beer and three bottles of liquor from a Quebec border town in 2012.

The "colonisers" are the reason why there is a Canada in the first place:

Q This strikes me as a move toward reconciliation as well — a move away from the colonial past and the tabula rasa notion of North America.

A Yes. And it recognizes First Nations’ contribution to building the country. It’s never appreciated, what they have done. Starting with the earliest people who came. They were guided through the Rocky Mountains by the First Nations people. They would never have found their way to the ocean. So they always had a role to play, but it was subdued because the cultural differences were so great.

You're welcome, hippies.

Again, why is it wrong to kill people like this?

“To all the bros thinking about buying a slave, this one is $8,000,” begins the May 20 Facebook posting, which was attributed to an Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant fighter who calls himself Abu Assad Almani. The same man posted a second image a few hours later, this one a pale young face with weepy red eyes.t

“Another sabiyah [slave], also about $8,000,” the posting reads. “Yay, or nay?”

I'll believe it when I see it:

Egypt’s president vowed on Monday to bring to justice members of a Muslim mob who stripped an elderly Christian woman naked and paraded her on the streets of a southern village.

It's an animal:

The director of the Cincinnati Zoo on Monday stood by the decision to shoot dead a gorilla as he dragged a 4-year-old boy around by the ankle, saying the ape was not simply endangering the child who fell into his enclosure but actually hurting him.

"Looking back, we would make the same decision" to shoot the gorilla, Thayne Maynard, director of the Cincinnati Zoo & Botanical Gardens, told a news conference.

"The gorilla was clearly agitated. The gorilla was clearly disoriented," Maynard said, while lamenting the loss of Harambe, a 17-year-old Western lowland gorilla, whose species is listed as endangered.

The boy's head was banging on the concrete as he was being dragged through the enclosure, which was one factor in the decision to shoot Harambe on Saturday.

Shooting the ape with a tranquilizer dart would have further agitated him and further endangered the child, so zookeepers made the decision to shoot Harambe. The zoo's dangerous animal response team shot Harambe dead about 10 minutes after he encountered the child.

Animal lovers mobilized on Monday as outrage mounted over the killing.

I like animals as much as the next person but once one attacks a person, human safety comes first.

In the wild, a gorilla would make very short and bloody work of anyone who gets in the midst of its society.


Also:

A woman who was killed by a crocodile in Australia has been criticized for her “stupidity” in ignoring warning signs when she went for a night-time swim on a notorious beach.

Cindy Waldron, 46, from New South Wales, was swimming in waist-deep water with her friend Leeann Mitchell, 47, at 10:30 p.m. on Sunday when she screamed that she was being attacked by a crocodile, before disappearing under the water.

The incident occurred at Thornton beach in the Daintree region of North Queensland, where a five-metre crocodile had recently been spotted. Waldron’s body is still missing.

Warren Entsch, the local MP, said Waldron was responsible for her own misfortune. “This is a tragedy but it was avoidable,” he said. “You can only get there by ferry — and there are signs there saying ‘watch out for the bloody crocodiles.’ If you go in swimming at 10 o’clock at night, you’re going to get consumed.”

Darwin does not want some people to live.


And there's more:

France has granted Watson political asylum, shielding him from extradition requests by Costa Rica and Japan on charges that he asserts are trumped up. Watson now lives as an international fugitive in a luxurious 18th-century chateau near Bordeaux.

He does it for the animals!




And now, on this Memorial Day, famous people who served in the armed forces.

The world thanks you.

Sunday Post

 

Beginning the work-week contemplatively....

Kathleen Wynne is a known liar, deflector and someone who simply has no desire to understand how the electorate feels.

Cases in point:

The provincial Liberals are, once again, facing allegations of destroying documents.

Premier Kathleen Wynne says she will fully cooperate with an OPP investigation into allegations from the Trillium Wind Corp.

The wind power company alleges that government officials destroyed documents relevant to a case relating to the government cancelling a Lake Ontario wind project.

The documents are alleged to have been destroyed around the same time that emails were deleted in relation to the Liberals’ cancellation of two gas plants, says Trillium lawyer Morris Cooper.

**

Ontario Premier Kathleen Wynne says the province will not ban the use of natural gas for home heating as part of its climate change action plan.

Yes, about that....

**

Premier Kathleen Wynne claims Ontario needs to take autistic children five years of age and older off what parents consider to be the best program for them, because the experts tell her that is what is best. I think she’s wrong.

Families with autistic children five and older on the IBI (Intensive Behavioural Intervention) wait list, will get $8,000 to pay for treatment for a year as they are cut off the wait list.

That’s far less than what families report the treatment costs, tens of thousands of dollars annually.

Further, many parents of autistic children, as well as many experts, believe IBI is the best treatment.

Indeed, many parents say it’s the only treatment that works.

Dr. James Porter of IBI Behavioral Services says 85% of kids on IBI are older than five, so Wynne may be wiping out treatment for the vast majority of them.

**

In an interview with OISE’s winter 2009 newsletter, Levin said: “I was the deputy minister of education. In that role, I was the chief civil servant. I was responsible for the operation of the Ministry of Education and everything that they do; I was brought in to implement the new education policy.” ....

But the pushback continues. In fact, Premier Kathleen Wynne, when pressed on it after he was charged with seven counts of child pornography in 2013, downplayed the involvement of her transition team member.

**

Premier Kathleen Wynne says she has no doubt homophobia motivated some of the hundreds of people who protested Ontario's new sex education curriculum this week.

And in typical melodramatic fashion, Premier Wynne again played the victim card after a Wildrose MLA vaguely commented on something rather unsavory about her:

Wynne received a hostile welcome from members of the province’s opposition Wildrose party during a visit hosted by Alberta Premier Rachel Notley. Most Wildrose MLAs refused to stand when Notley introduced Wynne, before one MLA attacked Ontario as a debt-ridden basket case while Wynne sat in the gallery.

Notley and many observers labelled Wildrose’s behaviour as inappropriate and even rude. The controversy escalated Friday, when the same MLA, Derek Fildebrandt, posted a comment on social media saying he was “proud to have constituents like you” after one directed a homophobic slur at Wynne. Wynne is openly gay.

 

This woman could not elicit sympathy from me if she paid me in the pensions she thinks Ontarians want.

But I will try being sympathetic:

Bob Rae, who was given not one but two boots after screwing over teachers during his time as premier of Ontario, decides to be utterly infantile: 

One should never mistake Liberals for people with class or reason.

But... but... transparency!

The new constitution makes the Liberals the first major federal party to let Canadians join without having to pay a membership fee. It also streamlines the party’s bureaucracy, which promises to make it into a leaner, more efficient machine able to perpetuate a new trend in Canadian politics: the permanent campaign.

The voting results were definitive, with 1,988 delegates supporting the new constitution and only 66 opposed. That was a far cry from what many had expected, and represents a clear endorsement by Liberals of their faith in Trudeau and the leadership team.

Opponents had earlier complained not just about the perceived centralization of power within the party’s executive, but also about the way the party had rolled the new constitution out. They alleged there hadn’t been any consultation, and that the party was trying to strong arm delegates into supporting it.

They had said that the party wasn’t living up to the ideals of openness, transparency and consultation that Trudeau had promised Canadians during the election campaign. There was even an unsuccessful attempt on Friday night to make it a secret, instead of public, ballot to head off any punishment from party leaders.

Hours before the vote, Trudeau told delegates that there would not be repercussions for those who voted against the new constitution. “It takes courage to speak out against something your party leadership believes in,” he said, “and I want you to know that I admire and thank you for doing it.”

(Sidebar: bullsh- there aren't repercussions. Did everyone forget what party this is?)

There is no prostitute like a Liberal prostitute. They will vote for anything.

Speaking of hookers....

Conservative delegates voted overwhelmingly Saturday at their national convention to effectively accept same-sex marriage, a move Tory MPs and leadership candidates said modernizes their party and sends an important message to Canadians.

There is no need to vote for someone who dissimilar from other parties only in signage.

You deserve to lose, Tory plants.

Oh, please:

Vickers became a national hero in October 2014 for his part in shooting dead an armed assailant inside the Parliament buildings, where he served as sergeant-at-arms for the House of Commons.

The ambassador’s televised take-down of Murphy at the Grangegorman Military Cemetery was greeted with widespread cheers on Canadian social media.

But experts in security and diplomacy say Vickers’ decision to take matters into his own hands raises serious questions of judgment.

“From what I can see of all this, it was certainly an over-reaction on the part of the ambassador, at a minimum,” said Gar Pardy, a former Canadian diplomat and director general of consular affairs.

 

Someone had to wear the big-boy pants.

 

Interesting:

About 40,000 years before the appearance of modern man in Europe, Neanderthals in southwestern France were venturing deep into the earth, building some of the earliest complex structures and using fire.

And we thought that Neanderthals were primitive.

 

But Wait! There's More!

There usually is.....



In typical Liberal fashion, MPP Bob Delaney issues a non-apology for sending the OPP to intimidate a mother of an autistic boy:

A Liberal backbencher who landed in trouble after his constituency office called police on the mother of an autistic child tried to defuse the situation with an apology, but the underlying controversy over changes to autism funding remains.

After Premier Kathleen Wynne told him to apologize, Bob Delaney released a statement of apology Tuesday, four days after police knocked on Melanie Palaypayon's door.

But it wasn't until Wednesday that he conveyed that apology to Palaypayon personally. The Mississauga-Streetsville member of the legislature says he tried a couple of times to reach her, Palaypayon says he didn't. But, she said, she accepted his apology.

Delaney said that they have agreed to meet in person and will put the conflict behind them.

"I've accepted responsibility for the set of circumstances that led to that and I've thought at what point might we have defused it, but all of that is 20/20 hindsight," he said in an interview.

 
The smell of douchebag on this guy must be overwhelming.




But... but... I thought they were refugees!

Two church groups in Fredericton, who lovingly prepared a home for a Syrian refugee family that never came to Canada, are about to give up the apartment they rented mid-February in response to Ottawa's urgent call for help.

Hey, remember when everyone said that Putin was Europe's savior?

Russian President Vladimir Putin on Friday warned Romania and Poland could find themselves in the sights of Russian rockets because they are hosting elements of a U.S. missile shield that Moscow considers a threat to its security.

Why ever would Romania and Poland want to protect themselves from Russia?

Oh yeah....




How is that reunification plan going, South Korea?

A former U.S. Forces Korea chief has said that instability in North Korea will lead to its collapse "sooner than many of us think."

Gen. Walter Sharp, who led the USFK from 2008 to 2011, was speaking at a forum in Hawaii, according to the Stars and Stripes army daily on Wednesday.

"There would be major changes" on the Korean Peninsula before the tenure of the current USFK chief ends in three years' time.

"I believe there will be strong provocations, strong attacks by North Korea that could quickly escalate into a much bigger conflict," Sharp added.

He pointed out that China, the North's sole ally, joined the most recent round of UN sanctions.

"North Korea's economy is clearly not meeting the needs of the people of North Korea," he said.

"Planning for what happens after the North's collapse must begin now," Sharp said, stressing the "need to work very hard to plan and exercise" for regime collapse and "to provide stability and security in a collapse scenario within North Korea."

"I could see a role for the United Nations along the border between what is now North Korea and China, doing border control there, perhaps with China as the lead of that UN command up there," he said.  

(Sidebar: perhaps the good general forgets why there is a North Korea in the first place.)



Speaking of China....

China has played down this week’s U.S. decision to lift a decades-old ban on sales of lethal arms to Vietnam as it looks to avoid aggravating relations already strained by territorial disputes in the South China Sea.

What would really scare China is a pan-Asian alliance against them.

How about it, nations other than China?




Not that China and its history of communist blood-letting (which Justin's dad supported no end) should gloat but it is correct in saying that the US or any WWII ally feel contrite for the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The moral preeners may feel comfortable decrying these grave military acts but they are strangely reluctant to say these things in Seoul, Manila, Jakarta, Beijing, or even Phnom Penh where the pacifist witticisms will not resonate.




This, apparently, has nothing to do with Islam:

An armed Muslim mob stripped an elderly Christian woman and paraded her naked on the streets in an attack last week in which seven Christian homes were also looted and torched in a province south of the Egyptian capital.

According to the local Orthodox Coptic church and security officials, the assault in the Minya province village of Karma on Friday began after rumours spread that the elderly woman's son had an affair with a Muslim woman — a taboo in conservative Egypt.

Police have arrested six men suspected of taking part in the violence and are looking for 12 more, the security officials said, speaking on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak to the media.

President Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi called for the culprits to be held accountable and gave the military a month to restore property damaged during the violence, at no cost to the owners.

In a statement issued Thursday by his office, el-Sissi said Egypt appreciates the role of "glorious Egyptian women" and that "the rights and the protection of their dignity are a humanitarian and patriotic commitment before being a legal and constitutional one."

During the so-called Arab Spring, many people deflected blame for the mob with statements similar to el-Sisi's.As usual, there is nothing to see here.

Friday Post

Aaahhhhh, the week-end....



Kevin Vickers is a man who accepts a limited amount of nonsense:

Or none.

You decide.




The Liberals deliver their first deficit which they say proves that the former government left Canadians in debt:

The Liberals say the latest figures from the Finance Department — which show a small deficit in the last fiscal year — confirm that the Tories left the books in the red when they lost the election last fall.

However, the Conservatives place blame for the deficit squarely on the Liberals — continuing a war of words over the state of the government's finances.

The Finance Department said Friday there was a $2-billion deficit for fiscal 2015-16, based on preliminary estimates. The result comes before any year-end adjustments as well as a $3.7-billion commitment to benefits for veterans.

 

Yes, about that:

For months now, Tories have pressed the Liberal government to admit it inherited a surplus. Interim Tory Leader Rona Ambrose (link is external) urged Morneau to concede that "undeniable fact" Monday, days after the Finance Department released a report showing Ottawa ran a surplus of $7.5-billion over the first 11 months of the fiscal year.

Trudeau promised he would have THREE deficits and this is a promise he has not failed to deliver. In order for the budget to be balanced, the spend-happy Liberals will have raise taxes and inflate the dollar.

And let's not forget those gold reserves that were sold off.

But, hey! Let's just blame everything on the previous government while Trulander (the cheap b@$#@rd that he is) gives his spoiled wife an anniversary she won't forget!


Also: in case one missed it, former prime minister Stephen Harper left politics with little fanfare. No selfies for him. As Canadians slog into the mire of moral corruption and financial ruin, they may spare a thought for him as he kept the country afloat. Not a perfect man but not a blowhard whose dad was a rotten prime minister, either.




New Brunswick is set to deal its citizens a double whammy of legal stubbornness and economic collapse by appealing a court decision that limited alcohol importing and keeping its moratorium on fracking.

Good times, New Brunswick. Good times.




While Obama feigns concern over North Korea, investigators have linked the rogue regime to security breaches in Asian banks:

Security researchers have tied the recent spate of digital breaches on Asian banks to North Korea, in what they say appears to be the first known case of a nation using digital attacks for financial gain.

In three recent attacks on banks, researchers working for the digital security firm Symantec said, the thieves deployed a rare piece of code that had been seen in only two previous cases: the hacking attack at Sony Pictures in December 2014, and attacks on banks and media companies in South Korea in 2013. Government officials in the United States and South Korea have blamed those attacks on North Korea, though they have not provided independent verification.

On Thursday, the Symantec researchers said they had uncovered evidence linking an October attack at a bank in the Philippines with attacks on Tien Phong Bank in Vietnam in December and one in February on the central bank of Bangladesh that resulted in the theft of more than US$81 million.

“If you believe North Korea was behind those attacks, then the bank attacks were also the work of North Korea,” said Eric Chien, a security researcher at Symantec, who found that the identical code was used across all three attacks.

Researchers are conducting tests to see if brain-damaged patients will regain consciousness:

Researchers from Yale University In America discovered that measuring how much glucose the brain uses is a good indicator of how much damage has been done, and whether a patient will recover awareness within a year.

Currently there is no way of telling how long it will take for someone with brain damage to regain consciousness, and families are often forced to take the heartbreaking decision of switching off life support systems.

(Sidebar: let one hope that pulling the plug does not happen.)

An Open Letter to Japan

Dear Japan,

Would you like to know why Canadian prime minister Justin Trudeau will not stand by you as China makes moves in the South China Sea or seal the deal on the Trans-Pacific Partnership agreement?

I'll let you deal with disappointment in your own way.

Mid-Week Post

Summer is coming....

Former prime minister Stephen Harper has decided to move into the private sector:

Former Conservative Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper, who lost power last October after almost a decade in office, will leave politics later this year and go into business, a Conservative source said on Wednesday.

Harper, 57, stepped down as party leader in the wake of his defeat by the Liberals of Justin Trudeau in the Oct 19 election.

He was re-elected as a legislator for a parliamentary constituency in Calgary, but will resign his seat before the House starts its fall session in September, said the source.

"He will go into a global business venture. He has no plans to become an academic," said the source, who asked to remain anonymous since Harper has made no formal announcement about his future yet.

Several companies had asked Harper to sit on their boards, the source added.

Perhaps his time has come. Corruption and chest-elbowing are new games, ones for which Mr. Harper feels he is unprepared.

Or, perhaps, he knows that soon Canada will be a pile of smoldering ash thanks to Pierre's son.

Either way, he is not sticking around.




The Ontario government is allocating $220 million to prevent aboriginal suicide as opposed to encouraging aboriginal youth to leave remote locations, get an education and then a job. But heaven forbid one should ever find a purpose:

Ontario plans to spend more than C$220 million ($168.48 million) to improve aboriginal healthcare, the Canadian province said on Wednesday, a month after a rash of suicide attempts in a poor indigenous community drew global attention.

The province's Liberal government said the funding, to be spent over three years, would boost doctor service, make fruits and vegetables more available for children and increase the number of mental health workers.

The Slovakian prime minister reiterates what many in Europe already feel -  that Muslim migrants who refuse to assimilate have no place on the continent:

In Slovakia, meanwhile, the prime minister said Wednesday his country is not a suitable place for Muslims to live because they could change centuries-long traditions.

In an interview with the local press agency TASR, Robert Fico said he doesn’t want to have “tens of thousands of Muslims” in Slovakia.

His country is also a vocal opponent of a compulsory EU plan to redistribute refugees in member states and is suing the EU over it.

Fico charges the Muslims would change Slovakia’s traditions, which have “been present here for centuries.”

Russia eventually frees a scapegoated female Ukrainian pilot after a prisoner exchange:

Russia freed Ukrainian pilot Nadezhda Savchenko on Wednesday after holding her for nearly two years, with President Vladimir Putin pardoning her as part of a swap for two Russian servicemen jailed in Ukraine.

The Ukrainian president sent his plane to pick up Savchenko in Rostov-on-Don in southern Russia and bring her home to Kyiv, where she received a hero’s welcome.

“Thank you everyone for fighting for me!” she told a scrum of journalists at Kyiv’s Borispol Airport. 

“You fought for everyone behind bars. Politicians would have kept silent if people had been silent. I would like to say thank you to everyone who wished me well: I have survived because of you.”

The two Russians were also freed on Wednesday, and Russian state television showed them being greeted at a Moscow airport by their wives.

Savchenko was captured by Russia-backed rebels in eastern Ukraine in 2014 and sentenced in March to 22 years in prison for her alleged role in the deaths of two Russian journalists in the conflict zone. Her refusal to bend after nearly two years in Russian custody has made her a national hero in Ukraine.

The two Russians, Alexander Alexandrov and Yevgeny Yerofeyev, were captured last year. They acknowledged being Russian officers, but the Russian Defence Ministry claimed they had resigned from active duty. They were tried in a Kyiv court, which sentenced them to 14 years in prison after finding them guilty of terrorism and waging war in eastern Ukraine.

Both of the Russians submitted a petition to Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko for a pardon, Alexandrov’s lawyer Valentin Rybin announced Wednesday morning, indicating a swap was imminent.

Now, perhaps after this dreadful game of political chess, the West can start getting a clue about what is going on in eastern Europe.





Belgian police arrest four people suspected of plotting a new attack:

Police found "traces" of a plot to launch a new attack in Belgium when they arrested four people suspected of recruiting jihadists for Syria and Libya, prosecutors said Wednesday.

The four were charged with "participating in the activities of a terrorist group" following their arrests in the northern port of Antwerp and other Flemish-speaking cities, the federal prosecutor's office said.

"The four were more involved in the part of recruiting," Eric Van der Sypt, a spokesman for Belgium's federal prosecutors, told AFP. "And we found traces of plans for an attack in Belgium."

Another one? In Belgium? Colour me surprised.




But... but... doctored videos!

In explosive new court filings the attorney for Planned Parenthood admits that he secretly received a videotape from the Houston prosecutor's office, and says the grand jury never even voted on whether to indict Planned Parenthood for selling aborted human beings' body parts. Furthermore, the district attorney admits her office violated the law in its handling of the indictment of pro-life investigator David Daleiden – but dismisses the infraction as “minor and harmless.”

How is rail-roading "harmless"?




Eleven states don't care for Obama's need to watch people relieve themselves:

Eleven states filed a lawsuit on Wednesday challenging the Obama administration's guidance to U.S. public schools this month that transgender students must be allowed to use the bathroom of their choice.

The lawsuit, filed in federal court in Wichita Falls, Texas, accused the Obama administration of trying to turn workplaces and schools into "laboratories for a massive social experiment."

 
The trannies won't like this.





That a government is poised to pass euthanasia laws, ostensibly with restrictions, means that it is too late to go back. The only restriction will be for lawsuits against any medical practitioner or hospital that fails to preserve the life of anyone who has the audacity to be over seventy years old:

Medical regulators in every province have issued detailed guidelines doctors must follow to help suffering patients end their lives once Canada’s ban on medically assisted dying is formally lifted next month.

And most of those guidelines impose safeguards similar to — or even more stringent than — those included in the federal government’s proposed new law on assisted death.

A relic of Saint Thomas Becket , murdered at the behest of Henry II, is returning to Canterbury Cathedral:

A small piece of bone thought to belong to St. Thomas Becket is, after centuries of exile in Hungary, returning to Canterbury Cathedral where the archbishop was murdered in 1170. Encased in a dazzling modern reliquary, the bone will be displayed in several Catholic and Protestant churches on its way to Canterbury.

And now, this summer, head to Zalipie, Poland to admire its prettily painted facades:

For a Tuesday

Yep...

 
Human remains recovered from the debris of EgyptAir flight  804 indicate that there may have been an explosion:

An Egyptian forensic official says human remains from the crashed EgyptAir flight indicate there had been an explosion on board.

The official is part of the Egyptian investigative team and has personally examined the remains at a Cairo morgue. 

He said all 80 pieces brought to Cairo so far are small and that "there isn't even a whole body part, like an arm or a head".

The official added that "the logical explanation is that it was an explosion" but no traces of explosives have been found.

However, another forensics official said only a tiny number of remains had arrived so far and it was too early to specify whether there had been a bomb on board.

All 66 people on the plane were killed when the Airbus 320 crashed in the Mediterranean on 19 May while en route from Paris to Cairo.

An American court has rejected Omar Khadr's request to remove a judge:

An attempt by Canada's Omar Khadr to have a judge thrown off his appeal panel has raised important legal questions that U.S. President Barack Obama and Congress should deal with quickly, a court in Washington has ruled.

Nevertheless, the D.C. Circuit said it was not prepared at this time to grant the former Guantanamo Bay inmate's request.

"Although we deny the writ, we cannot deny that Khadr has raised some significant questions," the D.C. Circuit said.

"We encourage Congress and the executive branch to promptly attend to those issues."

At issue is Khadr's call to have the court toss presiding Judge William (Bill) Pollard from the panel hearing his appeal of his war crimes conviction. Khadr and his lawyers argue that Pollard's position on the panel is illegal based on federal statutes that prohibit a judge from continuing to work as a lawyer.

For an allegedly innocent child solider (read: a member of a terrorist family who has never condemned terrorism nor apologised for the death of Christopher Speer.), he is really grasping at straws.





The police are called on a mother whose autistic son has been deprived of care he sorely needs by the very government that started it all:

Melanie Palaypayon is taking a breather at her family’s Muskoka cottage to collect her thoughts after Peel Regional Police came to her door Friday morning.

She says the encounter left her intimidated and shaky.

The 35-year-old Mississauga mom was tired of being told by her local MPP Bob Delaney’s constituency office that he couldn’t meet with her due to scheduling conflicts. On Thursday morning, she picked up the phone and told the Liberal MPP’s staff she planned on squatting there and handing out flyers to protest against new provincial autism rules that mean her six-year-old son Xavier can no longer qualify for intensive behavioural intervention (IBI).

Around 8:50 a.m. Friday morning, the cops came to her door after Delaney’s office complained.

“I am shocked and intimidated,” she told the Sun in a telephone interview Saturday. “I asked myself, ‘Is protesting prohibited here?’ or ‘Are they making a statement that we can’t call MPPs now?’ Why are they sending two police officers. I am alone, I am a mom of an autistic kid. I told them I would not be holding the door. I did not swear. My tone is aggressive and I can be persistent ... but I am not a wrestler.”

A part-time nurse, Palaypayon, and her husband Clint, a computer programer, said the government’s move to cut children age five and older from being eligible for IBI paid by the province will mean more than 3,500 families who have been waiting half their lives for treatment will be removed from wait lists over the next two years.

This would put a $50,000 a year financial strain on those families to pay for private therapy.

“We’ve been waiting 3 1/2 years,” Palaypayon said, breaking down in tears. “We’ve been waiting half of his life for this treatment and they just cut it off. We’re going to be in huge debt. I will try my best to give Xavier what he needs. I see a lot of potential in him.”

Delaney claims his two staffers – one a mother and the other a grandmother – were verbally abused, but would not get into details, insisting “it’s between me and the constituent” when Palaypayon made over 10 calls to his office last week.

“We had one parent who was over the line with her actions,” he said. “The number of times she would call the office, essentially to have identically the same conversation. The tone and remarks she would use. (She) repeatedly used the word, ‘we’ ... and she is very clearly seeking a confrontation. We are not welcoming a confrontation with an unknown number of people.”

Delaney said he called police but didn’t realize they would go and visit her home. He denies it was an intimidation tactic, but rather he had an obligation to keep his office staff safe.

“Given the things she has given to my office staff and the treatment to women who are doing their level best to help her, none of these women deserve the treatment they received and I’m going to leave it that,” he said.

Peel Regional Police were unable to discuss the details of their visit to Palaypayon’s Mississauga home.

“We have a responsibility to follow up any complaint,” Const. Rachel Gibbs said Saturday. “But we can’t comment on this because it’s a private matter and there was no risk to public safety.”

(Sidebar: I have heard that this particular MPP chose to do his nails while families with autistic children pleaded their cases at Queen's Park. Like the leaders of his douchebag political party, he is set to apologise for using the police to intimidate this woman.)


What a brilliant case for privatising healthcare and education.  By giving the heartless Liberal government (any government, really) power over the general populace, they have made decision that have ruined families, especially the families that consistently vote Liberal. Until the electorate wakes the hell up, the Liberals will continue ruin people's lives and using the police to enforce their will.


Also:

Fresh from man-handling whips from other parties and elbowing women in the chest, PM Trulander stops short of  supporting Japan against the nation he most admires:

Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe said after meeting Tuesday with Prime Minister Justin Trudeau that Canada had committed to supporting his country’s opposition to sweeping territorial clams, island-building and other aggressive measures widely regarded as a challenge by China to the rule of law in the South China Sea.

“On the South China Sea, we share serious concern over unilateral actions which heighten tension, including large-scale reclamation, building of outposts and military usage thereof,” Abe said. “We agreed to work closely to secure free and safe seas based on the rule of law.”

However, although the issue is of urgent and pressing importance to Japan and many of Canada’s other Asian allies as well as the U.S., Trudeau made no mention of it when he spoke moments later.

This is why Japan, South Korea, Taiwan et al must form a new pan-Asian alliance against China. Canada and the US do not give a care about them at the moment.


Also:

He’s taking Wednesday off work, to spend the day with his wife and celebrate their anniversary.

But actually, that’s a bit of a lie, too.

The Trudeaus’ anniversary is on May 28th. That’s on Saturday, after the G7 is over. They’d be back in Canada by then, because of the time zones.

But then they can’t have an exotic date night at taxpayers expense, can they?

Who in the real world gets to take their anniversary off from work?

He’s lazy, sure. Trudeau always had one of the lowest attendance records in Parliament as an MP. It bored him.

Trudeau's whole life has been this way. He was a substitute drama teacher, not even a full-time drama teacher, because a full-time job would get in the way of fun.

He dropped out of university where he was studying environmental something, because it was too much work.

Justin and Sophie Trudeau are a national disgrace, and an international embarrassment.

Oh, dear:

Tragically Hip frontman Gord Downie is determined to “blow people’s minds” with a raucous Canadian tour in the wake of learning he has an incurable brain cancer, his managers said Tuesday as fans tried to digest the shocking announcement about the singer’s illness.

Outrage is alright when some people do it:

When it comes to standing up for gay rights, corporate outrage is rather selective. Large companies that have publicly denounced new laws in several southern U.S. states as “anti-gay” are quite happy to remain silent as they carry on business in countries that criminalize gay sex.

After North Carolina passed a law upholding separate male and female public washrooms, PayPal publicly cancelled its plans to build a new operations centre in that state, citing that law. Yet PayPal chooses to place its international headquarters in Singapore, where gay sex is punishable by two years in prison.

Calling trans-people mentally ill fascists and pointing out that their monomaniacal dreams of extreme surgical procedures are just sick and pointless ways to feed their delusions will be punishable for up to two years in prison:

Canada's Liberal Party government led by Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has introduced a bill that would ban transgender discrimination, including both gender identity and gender expression, with up to two years in prison for violators.

Leave the pretend girls alone. Stop judging them and their enablers for carrying out ridiculous fantasies which will only ruin people in the end.




And now, Bugs Bunny and his contribution to the opera world:

Like many other singers and crew staging the 17-hour, four-opera Wagner extravaganza at the Kennedy Center, Ms. Bishop got her first taste of opera from a cartoon rabbit and his speech-impaired nemesis.

“I could sing you the entire cartoon before I knew what opera really was,” says Ms. Bishop, who performs the part of Fricka, wife of Wotan, king of the gods.

The rabbit in question is Bugs Bunny, who, in the 1957 Warner Bros. cartoon “What’s Opera, Doc?” finds himself hunted by Elmer Fudd, in the part of the hero, Siegfried.

“Kiww the wabbit! Kiww the wabbit!” Elmer, in an ill-fitting magic helmet, sings to the urgent strains of Ride of the Valkyries as he jabs his spear into a rabbit hole.

Bugs flees, dons a breast plate and blond braids, climbs atop an obese white horse, and for two minutes and a ballet interlude, fools the smitten Elmer into thinking he is Brünnhilde. 

“Oh, Bwünnhilde, you’re so wovewy,” Elmer croons.

“Yes, I know it,” Bugs answers coquettishly. “I can’t help it.”

And just because: