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: