Saturday Post

(Insert own wistful remark here)


Unbelievable:

John Nuttall and Amanda Korody are free after a B.C. Supreme Court judge entered a stay of proceedings, ruling that they were entrapped by the RCMP. 

Justice Catherine Bruce said police went too far and used trickery and subterfuge to manipulate Nuttall and Korody into planting pressure cooker bombs in a failed attempt to blow up the B.C. Legislature on Canada Day in 2013.

In her conclusion, Bruce wrote: "Simply put, the world has enough terrorists. We do not need the police to create more out of marginalized people who have neither the capacity nor sufficient motivation to do it themselves."

"I'm absolutely ecstatic," said Maureen Smith, John Nuttall's mother. "I was so relieved to hear [the judge] say everything that is the truth. It makes me so angry that the cops did that to John and Amanda."

Last year, the common-law couple was found guilty by a jury of conspiring to murder persons unknown and making or possessing an explosive substance for a terrorist group. Both were facing life in prison.

They were arrested as a result of an elaborate sting operation in which they were befriended by undercover officers posing as Muslim extremists. 

Surveillance tape released by the court showed Nuttall talking at length about jihad and dying as a martyr for Islam. 

But the defence team argued Nuttall, 41, and Korody, 33, had been entrapped by the RCMP, and were not capable of pulling off a terror plot on their own. 

In her ruling, Bruce said the RCMP aided and abetted the pair, going to "enormous effort," including providing inducements like an elaborate escape plan and offers of jobs.

Bruce said to call the couple "unsophisticated" would be generous. The court heard that both were former drug addicts, living in poverty and relative isolation.

"The police decided they had to aggressively engineer the plan for Nuttall and Korordy and make them think it was their own.

"The spectre of the defendants serving a life sentence for a crime that the police manufactured by exploiting their vulnerabilities ... is offensive to our concept of fundamental justice," wrote Bruce. 

Crown attorney Peter Eccles expressed disappointment outside the courthouse. 

"These are two individuals who have the ideology, who have the motivation — because let's face it, they did do it," he said. "They are quite capable of committing murder for an ideological purpose which they were very keen to do.

"As we've seen in the last six weeks, lone participants are undeniably the greatest challenge law enforcement face," he said.

 
Dangerous precedent set by an unelected judge - straight ahead.




This will all change when the Liberals enact carbon taxes and start raiding public pensions:

Canada posted a narrower budgetary surplus in the first two months of the fiscal year compared to the same time period a year ago as revenue decreased, the federal finance department said on Friday.
The C$114 million ($87.01 million) government surplus in April and May was far smaller than the C$3.95 billion surplus run over the same months in 2015.

Revenue fell 2.1 percent in April and May, as an increase in income tax revenue was offset by declines in sales tax revenue and duties.

Another cop-killing in the US:

Jonathan DeGuzman, a 16-year veteran of the force, died Thursday night when a gunfight erupted after he and his partner stopped someone on a street in a blue-collar area of town.

Hours later, a trail of blood led to a wounded suspect who remained hospitalized in critical condition, while a second man described only as a potential suspect was captured after an hours-long SWAT standoff Friday.

The US has crossed a red line and blahblahblah:

North Korea’s top diplomat for U.S. affairs told The Associated Press on Thursday that Washington “crossed the red line” and effectively declared war by putting leader Kim Jong Un on its list of sanctioned individuals, and said a vicious showdown could erupt if the U.S. and South Korea hold annual war games as planned next month.

Shut it, Kim Fatty.


Also:

A North Korean student has taken refuge in South Korea’s consulate in Hong Kong after breaking away from a team taking part in an international math contest, local news reports said Friday.

The 18-year-old male student, whose identity remains unknown, reached the diplomatic mission on July 16, according to local newspaper Ming Pao. ...
 
This week, two workers at a North Korean restaurant in Malta were found to have defected last year, followed by a construction worker early this year. Last April, 13 staff members of a North Korean diner in the Chinese city of Ningbo arrived in Seoul.

Rex Murphy:

After the attack, Pope Francis was willing to say that this is “war,” but very much declined to say that religion itself was an element of this war: “we don’t have to be afraid to say this (is) a war of interests, for money, resources.” And to make his point explicit, he continued: “I am not speaking of a war of religions. Religions don’t want war.”

Those words are very much to be regretted. After all, these are self-professed jihadists. If religion doesn’t play a part in a holy war, I don’t know what does. How long will it take the leadership in the West to recognize this? How long must our leaders, from the White House to the Vatican, blindly argue that Islamists are not who they themselves say they are; that their motives are not what they declare their motives to be? This is not turning the other cheek. It is shutting their eyes and ears.

The murder of Fr. Hamel was as much a proclamation as a crime, and to deny its symbolism is not a mercy, it is an evasion of declared reality.

 

A forty-five year old woman sought legal counsel after doctors refused to kill a healthy twin:

A Toronto hospital’s refusal to reduce a woman’s twin pregnancy to one fetus — at least partly because of a doctor’s moral objections — has triggered a human-rights fight over the little-known but contentious procedure.

The Ottawa-area patient had been warned that carrying twins at her age could increase the risk of losing the whole pregnancy, and was referred to Mount Sinai Hospital for a “selective reduction.”
That means terminating at least one among multiple fetuses, akin to a partial abortion.

But the institution declined to provide the service, saying its practice was to only reduce triplets or more, unless one of the twins has some kind of anomaly. ...

“I was shocked, I was honestly disgusted and I felt judged,” the woman, identified in the case only as C.V., recalled in an interview. “It was very much a judgmental and ill-thought and essentially disrespectful reaction … I was literally in disbelief.”

The 45-year-old woman retained Amir Attaran, a health-law professor at the University of Ottawa, and filed a complaint to the Ontario Human Rights Tribunal, alleging discrimination on the basis of sex and family status.

Only then, she says, did the hospital refer her to a specialist at Toronto’s Sunnybrook Health Sciences Centre, who did the reduction without hesitation.

Tribunal member Brian Cook ruled on the case in late July, saying Mount Sinai’s actions were based on medical judgment, and did not constitute discrimination under the province’s human-rights code.
Cook also said the hospital indicated it would consider a request to abort the entire pregnancy, drawing a line instead at terminating one of two fetuses.

Attaran says his pro-bono client — anxious that no other woman have a similar experience — is requesting a formal reconsideration of the tribunal decision, and then may apply to court for a judicial review. ...

(Sidebar: yes, that Amir Attaran.)

Using the procedure on triplets or larger multiples seems generally accepted in Canadian medicine, given strong evidence about the risk of such pregnancies. Reducing twins — increasingly popular and often done for family-planning rather than just health reasons — is more controversial.

Doctors and support groups have said some parents are tormented by the notion that they gave life to one baby but not its siblings.

A 2004 U.S. study, however, said twin reductions can actually increase the chances of taking any baby home alive — given the risks of carrying twins.

Why save either baby? If one is going to pretend that one perfectly healthy twin just isn't worth surviving this woman's manufactured pregnancy, why boost the other one?

It's clear that this woman had no compunction of choosing which of her offspring would live or die just as she now has no compunction pursuing a vendetta against the physicians who made a medical call.

If medical staff are now reduced to the level of hit-men, patients had better worry.




The purge in Turkey continues:

Turkey will shut down its military academies and put the armed forces under the command of the defense minister, President Tayyip Erdogan said on Saturday in a move designed to bring the military under tighter government control after a failed coup.

And now, a globe-trotting llama:

For A Thursday

When "social justice" presidential candidate Bernie Sanders endorsed Hillary Clinton, his supporters felt betrayed. I wonder how they will feel about this:

Scratch a socialist and one will find a well-heeled caviar-hound every time.




I shant be blogging that much about the vile self-congratulatory moron-fest that is the Democratic convention.


But I will highlight this:

The release of a trove of embarrassing hacked internal emails and private voice mail recordings reveal not only the unseemly dealmaking involved in recruiting high-dollar donations for political campaigns but also the role fundraising officials play in approving and denying access to President Barack Obama and other top officials.  

At least two former U.S. ambassadors called the Democratic National Committee to speak about personal meetings with the president, according to audio recordings of the calls included in the leaks. One is heard on a recording from May for now outgoing DNC Chairwoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz seeking to confirm plans to attend a “small dinner” with Obama. Another had a staffer call DNC fundraising officials for tickets to a St. Patrick’s Day event with the president. 

“We’ve received an invitation to the vice president’s breakfast but not the White House reception,” the staffer said in a February recording. Later the staffer called back to confirm that the invitation was received.

Governance to the highest bidder.


What is worse is that people are actually voting for this.



People also voted for this:

All told, Ontario’s aborted pension plan cost $70 million before a single penny of contributions was collected, the province revealed Thursday.

Of that multi-million tally, over $2 million was spent on “golden handshakes” for the top Liberal appointees tapped to run the defunct plan, the documents released Thursday reveal. The man tapped as the plan’s CEO will, in the end, receive over $825,000 for six months’ work.

In sum, the six top executives will receive $2.8 million in compensation from the arm’s length corporation that would have administered the provincial pension plan.

Why sex education is pointless:

Actress Amber Tamblyn admitted she has much to learn about the reproductive rights of trans women, and whether men who self-identify as women can get abortions.

The real victims of the murder and maiming of a priest and his parishioners in the middle of Mass was not the aforementioned but Muslims:

The attack by two knife-wielding assailants on a church outside Rouen, Normandy, Tuesday in which the attackers killed an elderly priest by slitting his throat and gravely wounded a hostage appears to have been quite deliberately targeted at the Catholic church.  ...

The goal in going after such a provocative target? To trigger a backlash against Muslims in France and drive the country's Muslims into the recruiting arms of the Islamic State.

Yes, people who think this way actually exist.


(Sidebar: it wouldn't be the first time tyrants and bullies murdered principled people.)




Russia and Syria offer a narrow route of escape before blockading Aleppo:

After months of fighting to encircle its opponents in Aleppo, Syrian authorities backed by Russia on Thursday offered safe corridors out for residents and rebels in the northern city's besieged quarters, underlining the government's determination to seal off the metropolis and force an eventual surrender by the opposition.

The babies can stay but the parents have to go:

The internal briefing document, titled Birth by Non-B.C. Residents, was created in response to a Vancouver Sun story last year about the three-fold increase since 2009 of non-resident births.

A department in Victoria called the Audit and Investigations Branch, Eligibility, Compliance and Enforcement Unit (ECEU) knows about 26 private residences offering hospitality services to foreign pregnant women. It said the residences are used by two groups.

Changing electoral rules will be more costly than people think:

“Trading favours” and capitulation is imposed on the larger party (ies) by the smaller parties to form a coalition in PR countries that results in higher levels of government spending and larger deficits. 

For example, from 2000 to 2014, the average central government spending in countries with PR electoral systems was 29.2 per cent of the economy (GDP) compared to 23.5 per cent in countries like Canada that have a plurality/majoritarian election system. And crucially, PR countries more often finance their higher government spending with deficits (borrowing) than other countries.

 

Not that Trudeau et al care. They rule by fiat.




And now, cool off with ice creams from around the world. Enjoy:

(Thank you)

Mid-Week Post

The middle of the week in medias res...



The man who murdered nineteen people at a home for the disabled in Japan claimed he did so because it was "mercy-killing" to plunge knives into the most vulnerable members of society:

The suspect in a mass stabbing attack that left 19 people dead at a facility for the mentally disabled in Japan was being transferred Wednesday from a local police station to the prosecutor's office in Yokohama.

His head and shoulders covered with a blue jacket, 26-year-old Satoshi Uematsu was led out of a police station in Sagamihara city and into the back of an unmarked white van with emergency lights on top. Photographers and video journalists swarmed the van as it pulled away.

Uematsu had been held at the police station all day and overnight after turning himself in about two hours after Tuesday's pre-dawn attack. He had earlier delivered a letter to Parliament outlining the bloody plan and saying all disabled people should be put to death.

Kanagawa prefectural authorities said Uematsu had left dead or injured nearly a third of the almost 150 patients at the facility in a matter of 40 minutes. It is Japan's deadliest mass killing in decades. The fire department said 25 were wounded, 20 of them seriously.

Security camera footage played on TV news programs showed a man driving up in a black car and carrying several knives to the Tsukui Yamayuri-en facility in Sagamihara, 50 kilometres (30 miles) west of Tokyo. The man broke in by shattering a window at 2:10 a.m., according to a prefectural health official, and then set about slashing the patients' throats.

Sagamihara fire department official Kunio Takano said the attacker killed 10 women and nine men. The youngest was 19, the oldest 70.

Details of the attack, including whether the victims were asleep or otherwise helpless, were not immediately known. Kanagawa prefecture welfare division official Tatsuhisa Hirosue said many details weren't clear.

Uematsu had worked at Tsukui Yamayuri-en, which means mountain lily garden, from 2012 until February, when he was let go. He knew the staffing would be down to just a handful in the wee hours of the morning, Japanese media reports said.

The facility employs more than 200 people, including part-timers, with nine of them working the night of the attack, Hirosue said. All those killed were patients.

"They were working at night and were questioned by police after witnessing graphic violence, making them a little emotionally unstable now," he said.

In February, Uematsu tried to hand deliver a letter to Parliament's lower house speaker that revealed his dark turmoil. It demanded that all disabled people be put to death through "a world that allows for mercy killing," Kyodo news agency and TBS TV reported. The Parliament office also confirmed the letter.

Uematsu boasted in the letter that he had the ability to kill 470 disabled people in what he called was "a revolution," and outlined an attack on two facilities, after which he said he will turn himself in. He also asked he be judged innocent on grounds of insanity, be given 500 million yen ($5 million) in aid and plastic surgery so he could lead a normal life afterward.

My God, if the man sat in the House of Commons, he could change the national anthem and get kill his grandparents for hospital beds.


Perhaps his thinking is too forward for this time.


Also:

According to the sources, he broke into the Tsukui Yamayuri En facility at around 2 a.m. Tuesday and sought to buy time by restraining members of staff with zip ties, causing a delay of about 40 minutes before the police could be alerted.

Uematsu told investigators that he “tied up” the staffers and made them hand him over keys to the parts of the building where the residents lived. The 19 victims were all found in the residential areas, which are divided into eight sectors that have self-locking doors. ...

Photographed while getting into the back seat of a car at Tsukui Police Station, Uematsu appeared to smile for the cameras.

The nine men and 10 women killed ranged in age from 19 to 70. Police have not disclosed their names on the grounds that their relatives do not wish to have them identified due to their disabilities.

(Sidebar: the real shame isn't having a disabled relative; it's pretending that he doesn't exist.)

Police believe Uematsu intended to commit murder. The attack was likely premeditated, taking advantage of his more than three years of working experience at the facility. ...

“People with disabilities who are most vulnerable should not be victimized like this,” said Toshiyuki Hokage, 29, who came to lay yellow flowers at the entrance. “I am worried that discrimination toward people with disabilities might spread after this incident.”

(Sidebar: too late for that, I'm afraid.)




Father Jacques Hamel was beheaded in the middle of Mass by an ISIS-supporting "restive youth" wearing an electronic ankle bracelet that (for some reason) was active between 8AM to 12:30 AM. This murderer also forced an elderly parishioner to film the entire brutal episode and his rant demanding that people convert or more would die.  The savage then slashed the elderly man. Two nuns were also attacked by this terrorist before being shot to death by the police.

Now - at what point will the French say: "Screw this! We're going to go Charles Martel on your @$$!"?

The late Father Hamel (lauded already for his martyrdom during the bloody sacrilege that ended him) worked on an inter-faith committee. Fat lot of good that did that goodly man. Cardinal Andre Vingt-Trois' appeal to “overcome hatred that comes in their heart” is not helpful. The Church regards martyrdom as the ultimate witness to the Faith. It does not say that people should line up for it nor does it say do nothing in the face of persecution.

As these sorts of killings are no longer confined to countries where brown people live, perhaps those in the West can take a moment and review their history.

It might just save their lives.

Also during Europe's "summer of blood":

A suitcase filled with aerosol cans has exploded outside a reception centre for refugees in Germany.

**

Metropolitan Police Deputy Assistant Commissioner Neil Basu said: “Following recent events in France, we are reiterating our protective security advice to Christian places of worship and have circulated specific advice today.

**

A GERMAN shopping centre has been evacuated tonight after a teenager with "links to terrorists" was spotted acting suspiciously.

** 

A 15-year-old boy has been arrested on suspicion of planning a terror attack near Stuttgart, Germany after police discovered he had been in contact with the Munich shooter.

 


(Paws up)




In other news....


What? Not a recession, you say?

Harper dodged questions about whether Canada was in a recession after Statistics Canada said its real gross domestic product shrank during the first two quarters of 2015, and his finance minister, Joe Oliver, denied the label altogether. 

However, Harper and Oliver may feel vindicated after a study published by the right-leaning C.D. Howe Institute Tuesday said that the slump in oil prices that caused the economic contraction in the first half of that year was “not widespread enough to warrant a recessionary call.”

Don't worry. Canada will get its recession soon enough.




Oh, dear. Another broken election promise:

Canada has so far forked over more than $311 million to develop the F-35 — without any guarantee it will actually buy the multibillion-dollar stealth fighter.

The most recent instalment was made June 24, when the Liberal government quietly paid $32.9 million to the U.S. program office overseeing development of the warplane, despite having promised during last year's election campaign not to buy the F-35.

The contribution keeps Canada at the table as one of the nine partners in the project for the next year. Partners get a discount when purchasing the stealth fighter, and have access to billions of dollars in contracts associated with producing the plane.

Those potential industrial benefits are a big part of the reason why Canada continues to pay into the program, said Jordan Owens, a spokeswoman for Defence Minister Harjit Sajjan. The government says Canadian companies have secured US$812 million in contracts since Canada's first F-35 payment in 1997.

"New skills and technologies gained through access to the program have helped position Canadian industry to take advantage of other advanced aerospace and defence projects," Owens added in an email.

Being a partner, however, does not guarantee future work.

U.S. defence giant Lockheed Martin, which makes the F-35, warned last month that future work would be directed to other countries if Canada chooses not to buy the stealth fighter.

Ontario - the province that keeps on losing:

By FAO calculations, Ontario’s debt, at almost $300 billion, has grown almost 90% since 2008-9 alone. The province has $2.40 in debt for every dollar of revenue it brings in. Ontario owed $20,806 per person in 2014-15, compared to $8,387 in British Columbia. Although Liberals argue they need public “investment” to promote growth, 56% of additional borrowing since 2009-10 went to financing the existing deficit, while just 26% went to capital spending.

A possible North Korean defection in Hong Kong:

Hong Kong police have stepped up security measures at the South Korean Consulate after a North Korean defector with a military background approached it recently seeking political asylum, local media reported Wednesday.

The consulate sought help from the local government, which has arranged for a police anti-terrorism squad to provide it with round-the-clock protection, the Apple Daily newspaper quoted unidentified sources as saying.

Armed officers have set up surveillance posts in and around the commercial building that houses the consulate, located in the Central district, the report said.

Television broadcaster TVB said the North Korean entered Hong Kong legally.

China’s Foreign Ministry was reportedly notified of the issue.

Hong Kong police and South Korean consular officials had no comment, while a staffer who answered the phone at the North Korean Consulate said he was unaware of the report. “I don’t know,” he said before hanging up.

And:

The South Korean military said Wednesday that dozens of plastic bags containing North Korea’s propaganda leaflets were discovered in a river near Seoul.

An official of the South Korean Joint Chiefs of Staff said there have been previous cases in which North Korea sent such flyers to the South by air using balloons, but it is the first time they arrived via the Han River.

The official, while criticizing the act as a provocation aimed at causing confusion and division in South Korea, suggested that the North may have decided to use the river, as sending the leaflets by air has become difficult due to the summer south wind.

Ethnic Nuer women are raped by South Sudanese soldiers near the very UN camp they hoped would give them refuge:

South Sudanese government soldiers raped dozens of ethnic Nuer women and girls last week just outside a United Nations camp where they had sought protection from renewed fighting, and at least two died from their injuries, witnesses and civilian leaders said.

The rapes in the capital of Juba highlighted two persistent problems in the chaotic country engulfed by civil war: targeted ethnic violence and the reluctance by U.N. peacekeepers to protect civilians.

At least one assault occurred as peacekeepers watched, witnesses told The Associated Press during a visit to the camp.

On July 17, two armed soldiers in uniform dragged away a woman who was less than a few hundred metres from the UN camp’s western gate while armed peacekeepers on foot, in an armoured vehicle and in a watchtower looked on. One witness estimated that 30 peacekeepers from Nepalese and Chinese battalions saw the incident.

“They were seeing it. Everyone was seeing it,” he said. “The woman was seriously screaming, quarreling and crying also, but there was no help. She was crying for help.” He and other witnesses interviewed insisted on speaking on condition of anonymity because they feared reprisals by soldiers if identified.

A spokeswoman for the U.N. mission, Shantal Persaud, did not dispute that rapes took place close to the camp. The mission has documented 120 cases of rape and sexual violence against civilians throughout Juba since the latest fighting began, she said Wednesday.

“The mission takes very seriously allegations of peacekeepers not rendering aid to civilians in distress and the UNMISS force command is looking into these allegations,” Persaud said.

(Sidebar: And nothing was done because...?)


It's time to withdraw from the UN.




Proof that council workers in Britain need to be air-lifted to North Korea and left there:

A senior employee at the British Council is being investigated after she allegedly made disparaging comments about toddler Prince George.

Angela Gibbins, the head of global estates at the charity, is said to have called the son of the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge a “f****** d***head” who lived “on public money.

A Facebook comment under a picture of Prince George, allegedly written by Ms Gibbibs, read: “I know he’s only two years old, but Prince George already looks like a f****** d***head.”

The British Council, which promotes the UK and the English language in more than 100 countries, said her alleged comments, in which she also called the tot "royal, rich” and “advantaged” and referenced “white privilege”, were not representative of the organisation’s views. ...

(Sidebar: I think I see the problem here.) 

After being criticised by several Facebook users, Ms Gibbins is said to have responded: "I’m sound in my socialist, atheist and republican opinions.

(Sidebar: there you go.)

The problem isn't the monarchy (which the British will never get rid of). The problem is some useless mouth-breather who is damn lucky to suckle on public milk money attacked a three year-old child and expected others as useless as she is to pat her on the back for it. She must have been shocked (shocked!) that her vitriol did not get the applause she thought she deserved.




A lawsuit over side-effects of a cervical cancer vaccine by sixty-three women has been filed:

Sixty-three women and girls who reported side effects from cervical cancer vaccines sued the government and drugmakers on Wednesday as a sharp divide remained over the risks the medicine poses.

The plaintiffs, ranging in age from 15 to 22, filed suits in district courts in Tokyo, Nagoya, Osaka and Fukuoka, demanding compensation of at least ¥15 million each.

The plaintiffs say they experienced a wide range of health problems including headaches, fatigue and mobility impairment after receiving the human papillomavirus (HPV) vaccines between 2010 and 2013.

The plaintiffs also are demanding the state set up a nationwide network of specialists to help them with their symptoms. They want it to subsidize research for finding a cure and to support victims as they seek to continue their educations and search for jobs.

The drugmakers involved are GlaxoSmithKline PLC and Merck Sharp & Dohme Corp., who make the HPV vaccines Cervarix and Gardasil, respectively.

How many so-called professionals insisted that this vaccine was safe?

Oops.



And now, why fly when you can walk?