Mid-Week Post

Aahh, the last day of August...


Sunny ways and so forth:

Canada's economy shrank in the second quarter, its worst showing in seven years, hurt by a drop in exports and a disruption to oil production caused by wildfires in Alberta, though growth was seen as likely to rebound later this year.

Oh, dear:

Apparently the “big thinkers” inside the grit party are becoming worried about  Trudeau’s blatant attempts to hustle LGBT votes (Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Trans-sexual groups). His actions on the LGBT front have created “quite”  a reaction from the muslim caucus in the liberal party.  As I am hearing things, the rift arose when the rather large muslim component of the present liberal caucus found voice and began openly complaining.

Trudeau is the conductor of a slow-moving and explosive train wreck that will be worth watching when it finally unfolds.

More to come.



(Paws up)




Ahem - Rwanda:

Having unburdened herself or himself of this revelatory gem, the Star’s editorial writer gets bullet-chewing tough — on the former federal government, the one not currently sending any Canadian soldiers anywhere. “It’s wise to re-engage carefully, especially given Canada’s record of relative inaction in peace operations under former prime minister Stephen Harper. Favouring isolation over UN activism, he allowed a celebrated tradition of Canadian peacekeeping to wither.” Terrible!

However, the Star’s writer concludes with evident joy, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s Liberals have set the stars back on their proper course. “The Liberal government is going a considerable way in correcting Harper’s neglect. With millions of innocent civilians at imminent risk of brutalization and death in war zones around the world, Canada has a humanitarian duty to take meaningful action in easing the threat.”

To call the foregoing nonsense understates it some. That The Star saw fit to print this is amazing, even in a time when newspaper editorial writers are called upon to dash off their offerings in minutes, like performance art.

Where to begin? A briefing book provided to Foreign Affairs minister Stephane Dion following his appointment to cabinet, obtained by Postmedia’s David Akin via access to information, outlined the status quo ante — peacekeeping at the close of the Harper era.

There were five small Canadian “peace-support” missions under way, under UN auspices, in October 2015 — in the Democratic Republic of Congo, South Sudan, Haiti, Cyprus and Israel/Lebanon. Canada ranked 68th among 124 countries in troop contributions to UN operations — and was the ninth-largest contributor, worldwide, to the UN’s annual peacekeeping budget, with an annual outlay just shy of US$240-million.

Additionally, the document shows, Canadian soldiers were contributing in small numbers to the Multinational Force and Observers mission in the Sinai, the Office of the U.S. Security Coordinator for Israel and the Palestinian Authority, the NATO Kosovo Force, as well as European Union support operations in the West Bank and Ukraine. Hardly a portrait of neglect.

More importantly, this portrayal of Canadian military history — which I have heard repeated in various iterations by Grit partisans for years, running into decades — contains bomb-crater-sized holes. Most egregiously, it airbrushes the laudable peace-building aspects of the Afghan mission from 2002 to 2014, as well as the failures of peacekeeping in Somalia and Rwanda in the mid-1990s, from the frame.

It was a Liberal government, that of Jean Chrétien, that exacerbated the Somalia debacle with its shoddy handling of the aftermath, and its wrong-headed disbanding of the Airborne Regiment. The same government presided over  the catastrophic failures of the Rwanda mission. It was also a Liberal government that launched the Afghan mission, both in its post-9/11 initial phase in 2002 and its more robust humanitarian and combat phase beginning in late 2005. Liberals enthusiastically backed the Afghan mission — until the day Stephen Harper took power in 2006, after which they began enthusiastically bashing it. Defence Minister Harjit Sajjan knows this history well, having served with distinction in Afghanistan.

The prime minister, his defence and foreign ministers are not to blame for a bad editorial, granted. But they do share responsibility for perpetuating a transparently false construct of a glorious peacekeeping past that hasn’t corresponded to Canadian soldiers’ reality for at least the past 25 years.

Trudeau's Canada will definitely be back as Canadian peacekeepers stand back and watch bad things happen to people. Trudeau's mouth-breathing supporters will never hold him to account for his outright lies or glaring omissions but that does not mean that no one else should.





Delays are what governments whose interests lie elsewhere are counting on:

The deplorable violent demonstrations during the National Energy Board’s hearings on the Energy East pipeline in Montreal, and Tuesday’s announcement the hearings have been suspended indefinitely, provide more proof Ottawa’s pursuit of social licence for major energy projects is pointless, even harmful.

Instead of producing more opportunity for public input and building credibility of regulatory reviews, the hearings have degenerated into a soap opera. The result? More delays.

To wit:

In China, the state shuts down individuals. In Canada, individuals can apparently shut down the state. Or at least they can shut down any state apparatus they don’t like. But then the Liberal government had already undermined this particular piece of apparatus by declaring that the NEB needed to restore a credibility that it had never really lost. ...

State control has never gone out of fashion in China, but the country’s enormous success is due to unleashing the Chinese entrepreneurial spirit. Unfortunately, that success has enabled the recrudescence of imperial ambitions.

Meanwhile, Chinese economic interests and those of “Junior Trudeau” are hardly consistent. The Chinese are upset that the tens of billions of dollars they have poured into the Alberta oilpatch are showing significant losses, not just because of low prices but because Alberta oil is being blocked by the forces that closed down the Montreal hearings. The same anti-development groups have stood against West Coast LNG plants. That LNG could have replaced Chinese coal and thus addressed real environmental problems.

There are other ways in which the Chinese agenda is at odds with Trudeau’s climate obsessions. The prime minister said on Wednesday that Canada might join the Asian Infrastructure Bank, a Chinese-led rival to the U.S.-controlled World Bank. Insofar as the World Bank has become a tool for imposing expensive and unreliable alternative energy on poor countries, an alternative that is prepared to fund fossil-fuel projects is much to be desired. How that fits with the Canadian government’s climate posturing isn’t entirely clear.

**

Environmental Defence Canada was paid $212,500 by Tides USA “for outreach and education on the Line 9 and Energy East pipelines; ongoing promotion of Tar Sands Reality Check; leading government relations work in Ottawa; promotion of the Fuel Quality Directive (FQD); and supporting the work of allies.”

Has anyone bothered to ask Trudeau why the heavily-polluted China can have Canadian oil and gas but not Canadians?





Cheap Third-World vacations for everybody!

It’s such a peculiar Canadian conceit, this notion that our two countries enjoy a special and delightful relationship and that, somehow, the normalizing of United States-Cuba relations will impinge upon or utterly change the Cuba we loved when almost no one else did. ...

Over the ensuing decades, I never returned to Cuba, but plenty of other Canadians did. The handful I know who went regularly always took goodies for the locals — used clothing, geegaws and electrical appliances you couldn’t get in the stores there, simple things that were gratefully received.

In this way, Canadians reckoned, they were alleviating the deprivation and poverty — especially acute after the collapse of the Soviet Union in the 1990s ended subsidies to Cuba and ignited a major economic crisis — of the ordinary Cuban, while managing to put on the back burner of the conscience the fact that it was also a repressive state which at one point (2008, I think) even had the second-biggest number of imprisoned journalists on the planet.

If there is anyone who is filled with conceit and gales of hot sanctimonious gas, it's Canadians whose abandoned trinkets for the impoverished Cubans never occupied the same hemisphere as to why they went to that communist hellhole in the first place.





Uh, no. More money won't do the trick. If students, parents and teacher simply don't give a sh-- (and some of them don't no matter how much they tell that they do), they are not going to adopt attitudes and strategies to help them excel. When I taught abroad, I had students attend my classes physically and emotionally exhausted having spent the day studying and working to get into the best universities. From six in the morning to midnight, students trudged off to regular school and then supplementary classes. Some of them because their parents (who paid lots of money and sometimes attended supplementary classes themselves) wanted them to go and sometimes because they wanted to go. In Canada, teachers' unions sway elections after promises of huge paydays and benefits. Parents spend more money on computer games or hockey equipment and students flake out whenever any extracurricular activity that could give them an edge later on in life doesn't catch their interest.

Clearly students shouldn't be burned out and not every Canadian student/parent/teacher is idle but there is enough cause to make people point out the bleeding obvious, that being that unless everyone gets the lead out, there should be no more money:

Just days before Ontario children will be heading back to school, the Education Quality and Accountability Office has just released a report measuring how well students are doing on standardized tests and the results are shocking.

The Wynne Liberal government is offering the typical response sticking with the status quo curriculum but just proposing to spend more money on it.

Well, this must be embarrassing:

The State Department says about 30 emails that may be related to the 2012 attack on U.S. compounds in Benghazi, Libya, are among the thousands of Hillary Clinton emails recovered during the FBI’s recently closed investigation into her use of a private server.

Government lawyers told U.S. District Court Judge Amit P. Mehta Tuesday that an undetermined number of the emails among the 30 were not included in the 55,000 pages previously provided by Clinton. The State Department’s lawyer said it would need until the end of September to review the emails and redact potentially classified information before they are released.

Mehta questioned why it would take so long to release so few documents, and urged that the process be sped up. He ordered the department to report to him in a week with more details about why the review process would take a full month.

The hearing was held in one of several lawsuits filed by the conservative legal group Judicial Watch, which has sued over access to government records involving the Democratic presidential nominee. The State Department has said the FBI provided it with about 14,900 emails purported not to have been among those previously released.

Clinton previously had said she withheld and deleted only personal emails not related to her duties as secretary of state. With the November election little more than two months away, Republicans are pressing for the release of as many documents related to Clinton as possible.

In the meantime, Trump mends proverbial fences with Mexican president Enrique Pena Nieto:

Donald Trump said he didn't push Mexican President Enrique Pena Nieto on who would pay for the border wall he wants to build as president, and instead said he hopes the two countries can work closely together to secure the southern border and bring jobs back to both countries.

"We did discuss the wall," Trump told reporters at a joint press conference with Nieto. "We didn't discuss payment of the wall. That'll be for a later date. This was a very preliminary meeting. I think it was an excellent meeting."

This no-bluster thing might work for Trump.

Whatever will his detractors say now?




B@$#@rd:

A Colorado man has confessed to the attempted murder of his toddler son, after he unbuckled the two-year-old’s seatbelt and crashed his own car at approximately 75mph.

Nathan Weitzel, 29, told police he tried to kill his son, Isaiah, because he couldn’t handle the responsibility of fatherhood. He was charged with attempted first-degree murder, child abuse, assault, criminal mischief, possession of a controlled substance and vehicular assault.

This is a rather salty cartoon but it really captures the idiotic futility of pointless gestures against the cold steel of reality.




Britain used to be called "Great": 

A Muslim taxi driver in Leicester refused to pick up a blind couple because they had a guide dog. Charles Bloch and Jessica Graham had booked a taxi with ADT Taxis for them and their guide dog, Carlo. But when the taxi arrived, the driver said, "Me, I not take the dog. For me, it's about my religion." Many Muslims believe dogs are impure and haram (strictly forbidden).

Also:

More reports of the brutal treatment that Christians and other minorities experienced at the hands of the Islamic State (SIS) emerged during May. One account told of a couple who, after their children were abducted by ISIS militants, answered their door one day to find a plastic bag on their doorstep. It contained the body parts of their daughters and a video of them being brutally tortured and raped.

Another Christian mother from Mosul answered the door to find ISIS jihadis demanding that she leave or pay the jizya (protection money demanded as a tribute by conquered Christians and Jews, according to the Koran 9:29). The woman asked for a few seconds, because her daughter was in the shower, but the jihadis refused to give her the time. They set a fire to the house; her daughter was burned alive. The girl died in her mother's arms; her last words were "Forgive them."

And now, history's cat people:

Poet Laureate Robert Southey (1774-1843) was an out and proud cat lover. His felines made frequent appearances in his correspondence, often relaying messages through Southey to his friends' cats "from the Cattery of Cat's Eden." He too enjoyed picking arcane names for his pets. In 1826, when he was away from home in Leyden, he wrote this in a letter to his 7-year-old son Cuthbert:

I hope Rumpelstiltzchen has recovered his health, and that Miss Cat is well; and I should like to know whether Miss Fitzrumpel has been given away, and if there is another kitten. The Dutch cats do not speak exactly the same language as the English ones. I will tell you how they talk when I come home.

Seven years later, Rumpelstiltzchen's health finally gave out. Southey shared the news with his old friend Grosvenor G. Bedford, a cat lover in his own right.

Alas! Grosvenor, this day poor old Rumpel was found dead, after as long and happy a life as cat could wish for, if cats form wishes on that subject. His full titles were : "The Most Noble the Archduke Rumpelstiltzchen, Marquis M'Bum, Earl Tomlemagne, Baron Raticide, Waowhler, and Skaratch." There should be a court mourning in Catland, and if the Dragon [i.e., Bedford's cat] wear a black ribbon round his neck, or a band of crape a la militaire round one of the fore paws, it will be but a becoming mark of respect.

Jaspar was poor, and want and mice
Had made his heart like stone,
And Jaspar look'd with envious eyes
On yarn not his own.

For A Tuesday

Lots to talk about....



After landing in his favourite country, Trudeau basks in the former glories of his dad:

If the view in China is that Justin Trudeau is walking in his father’s footsteps, the Prime Minister is embracing it, telling business-people Tuesday that he’s looking to see how the “next generation of Trudeau could have an impact.”

The first event of a marathon, week-long visit to China made it abundantly clear that Pierre Trudeau, who established diplomatic relations with the country in 1970, is still a beloved figure here.

Oh, I'm sure:

(A) The future Canadian prime minister Pierre Trudeau came in 1960 and co-wrote a starry-eyed book, Two Innocents in China, which rejected reports of famine.

(B) By this time, Mao Tse Tung's Great Leap Forward, which forced millions of Chinese into communes where their physical and non-mechanised labour failed to produce bumper crops, inched toward forty-five million deaths (later numbers stand at seventy million).

The famine was so bad that even Canada imported 2.34 million tonnes of grain. 280,000 tonnes of wheat went to the former Soviet Union and was then sent back to China, giving the appearance of Soviet, not Western, aid.


Rather like the UN giving money to the much-maligned Assad but I digress.


Trudeau is one who enjoys getting his ego massaged.

How is "genocide-denier" for the old self-esteem, Justin?




Inflation is the increase in the price of goods and services. The price for one thing is too high for the goods and/or services delivered. 

Trudeau's father increased federal spending during his various turns as prime minister. He increased the public sector. The national debt grew.

Just like his son.

The national deficit now stands at one billion dollars.

The average Canadian's share of the national debt is over seventeen thousand dollars.

When inflation (and those pesky carbon taxes and other hidden taxes) finally hits, Canadians will be paying more for goods and services that are not worth it.

Everything old is new again:

Efforts to cut real interest rates by raising inflation are unlikely to prove more successful now than in the 1970s, and for the same reason: they depend upon people not noticing what is going on. Even if you could hold short-term rates down, long-term rates would surely rise to compensate for the expected higher inflation. Worse, so, before long, would wages. Once inflation expectations take root, they’re very hard to dig out.

You knew what you were doing, Liberal voters.




This wouldn't be the first time the Liberal government didn't care about a Canadian in Iran:

A professor from Montreal who has been imprisoned in Iran since June was recently hospitalized, is barely conscious and can hardly walk or talk, according to family. 

Homa Hoodfar, an anthropologist at Concordia University, is being kept in solitary confinement nearly three months after her arrest in Tehran on June 6 while on a personal and research visit to Iran, said her niece, Amanda Ghahremani. 

Hoodfar's family says Iranian authorities have refused regular visits by her lawyer and have tried to dismiss him. During his one visit in July, he was forbidden to discuss her case and has been denied all access to her legal file, the family said. They were recently informed Hoodfar is in hospital. 

"It has become clear that the authorities are not prioritizing her health and do not intend to respect Homa's due process rights under Iranian law," Ghahremani said.

"We're incredibly scared."

Justin Trudeau's brother, Alexandre, has helped Iran with its propaganda regarding its expanding nuclear program.

Carry on.


(Spasiba)




For the record, Tima Kurdi did not apply to sponsor her brother, Abdullah, who was living safely in Turkey and was a human smuggler.

That makes this article:

... either based on an incredible mistake or written to be deliberately deceptive.

I'm leaning towards the second one.




John Kerry would prefer that terrorist attacks would not receive any press coverage. They're terribly upsetting:

Secretary of State John Kerry said Monday during an appearance in Bangladesh that the media could “do us all a service” if they didn’t cover terrorism “quite as much.”

Why John Kerry should be told to cram it:

The Associate Press reported that 72 mass graves had been discovered in the most extensive survey carried of its kind. The known number of the dead buried in the unmarked pits, and known only to a handful of witnesses and IS itself, is believed to number between 5,200 to 15,000.

The highest number of graves have been found in Iraq's Sinjar province where IS carried out what has been described as a genocide against Yazidis. Sinjar Mountain itself is reportedly dotted with mass graves, six of them containing more than 100 people.

One witness to the atrocities in Sinjar, who peered through binoculars as IS carried out its extermination, told the AP about handcuffed men from nearby villages being shot and then buried by a waiting bulldozer.

The burials lasted for six days as the man, who has not been identified, watched the extremists fill one grave after another with his friends and relatives.

There are believed to be more mass graves in the surrounding area but they lie between IS and Iraqi lines. Because the no man's land has not yet been secured, families who remain behind have been left unable to retrieve their dead.

Terrorists will continue attacking people whether the popular press - which has censors itself - reports on it or not.

There are no safe spaces in terrorist-controlled regions.




Yet another poll released from Abacus Data says outright that the Liberals aren't just on top, they are expanding their voters base.

Imagine that!

Abacus Data's chairman is Bruce Anderson, the father of Kate Purchase, director of communications for Trudeau.

Carry on.


Also:

Almost a quarter of releases (28%) were sponsored by a non-media sponsor while another 23% were sponsored by the media (e.g. CTV, Global, La press). While we do not know for certain if the media paid for the poll results, we are assuming that the media did not attach its credibility to a poll that someone else paid for.  Of the 253 releases in the past three months, 32% of them did not have an identified sponsor. This means that we cannot be certain who covered the cost of these polls.

After relieving humans of their editorial work, Facebook automatically trends false stories:

Facebook announced Friday that humans would no longer write descriptions for its Trending topics list, handing over even more responsibility to the already-powerful algorithm. But just days after the policy change, Facebook’s algorithm chose a very bad, factually incorrect headline to explain to its news-hungry users why Megyn Kelly was trending.

How embarrassing.




Kim Jong-Un reportedly has had two officials executed for disobeying him:

North Korea publicly executed two officials in early August for disobeying leader Kim Jong Un, a South Korean newspaper reported on Tuesday, in what would be the latest in a series of high-level purges under the young leader's rule, if confirmed.

Kim took power in 2011 after the death of his father, Kim Jong Il, and his consolidation of power has included purges and executions of top officials, South Korean officials have said.

Citing an unidentified source familiar with the North, the JoongAng Ilbo daily said former agriculture minister Hwang Min and Ri Yong Jin, a senior official at the education ministry, had been executed.
The report could not be independently verified, and South Korea's Unification Ministry, which handles North Korea-related matters, did not have immediate comment.

Some previous media reports of executions and purges in the reclusive state later proved inaccurate.
The report of the executions comes soon after the South said North Korea's deputy ambassador in London had defected and arrived in the South with his family, dealing an embarrassing blow to Kim's regime.

 
There has been a rash of high-profile defections as of late. If this report is true, it further proves Kim's mental and national instability.




Japan believes an underground ice wall may staunch the flow of radioactive groundwater into the Fukushima reactor building:

Built by the central government at a cost of 35 billion yen, or some $320 million, the ice wall is intended to seal off the reactor buildings within a vast, rectangular-shaped barrier of man-made permafrost. If it becomes successfully operational as soon as this autumn, the frozen soil will act as a dam to block new groundwater from entering the buildings. It will also help stop leaks of radioactive water into the nearby Pacific Ocean, which have decreased significantly since the calamity but may be continuing.

You know what you're doing, Japan.




And now, dogs really do understand us:

The New York Times reports that Hungarian scientists recently trained a group of 13 extremely patient dogs to lie completely still in a MRI machine while the researchers measured brain activity. Scientists then played a voice recording of a trainer saying positive phrases (like “good boy”) in a positive tone of voice, positive phrases in a neutral tone of voice, neutral words (like “however”) in a positive tone of voice, and neutral words in a neutral tone of voice.

They found that the reward centers in the canine volunteers’ brains lit up significantly more when they heard positive phrases in a positive tone. Positive phrases in a neutral tone and neutral phrases in a positive tone didn’t have nearly the same impact. That is, dogs interpreted tone and vocabulary together. (Researchers note that in cases where dogs respond to owners saying meaningless or insulting words in a positive tone of voice, the dogs are likely responding to body language.)

We are being watched.

Bibliography

A: Chang, Jung, and Jon Halliday. Mao: The Unknown Story. New York: Knopf, 2005.

B:  Dikötter, Frank. Mao's Great Famine: The History of China's Most Devastating Catastrophe, 1958-1962. New York: Walker, 2010.

As It Were....

For today...



Aylan Kurdi's father did not apply for refugee status or for Canadian citizenship. He was living in Turkey when the flimsy boat he commandeered overturned and caused the death of his son.


But his bloated little corpse sure does win elections:

“There seemed to be an appetite for this, not only because of the Conservative government’s lack of response to the Syrian crisis but also other immigration and humanitarian issues. The Conservatives played a different game and they were really focused on wedge politics.

“The Liberals were trying to distinguish themselves as a more humanitarian and inclusive and compassionate brand of government than the Conservatives.”

There is no word on the stranded North Koreans the Tories planned on assisting prior to the election. Trudeau made it very clear that prioritising Yazidis and Iraqi Christians (who still are targeted for death) was "disgusting".

Chinese border guards are authorised to shoot North Korean refugees who escape into Trudeau's favourite country.



Also: if exploiting North Korea and the North Korean were easy, it would have been done by now:

Jim Rogers is nothing if not a contrarian, and one of his boldest moves is trying to bet on North Korea. 

The famous investor, who cofounded legendary hedge fund Quantum with George Soros, spoke to Real Vision TV and said North Korea is where China was in 1981. 

(Sidebar: Soros? Surprise, surprise, surprise.)

"If we all bought North Korean currency, we'd all be rich someday," Rogers said.

What a greedy b@$#@rd.





I'm pretty sure Trudeau doesn't care about human rights in China:

While stronger relations with China does position Canada to better lobby for improved human rights and adherence to international legal standards, the attitude and continuing unilateral transgression against non-Han Chinese within its own borders — in Tibet, for example — suggests that no real change is planned, or desired.

For many Canadians, the idea of closer trade and political relationships with a communist country that tramples the values Canadians value most is anathema. Let’s hope Justin Trudeau shares and projects those values.

Harper was not only more than willing to trade with China, he was poised to hand over huge stakes of our oil  to it. He had only the good sense not to say that he admired China as Trudeau Senior and Junior did.

Trudeau is more than willing to to carry on Harper's grand tradition of giving the communist Chinese oil it needs to run its staggering army (but not protecting the Canadian Arctic - that's too hard) while gumming up the works at home. It doesn't matter that China's government-controlled but little enjoyed wealth grows while goods and jobs and human rights go down the drain.

This is yet another wasted trip that serves only to pad China's wallet, bleed out jobs and resources and trample the Chinese dissident's face underfoot.





Quebec has benefited greatly from a francophone oligarchy. Like France, it abhors the hijab but won't curb those who wear it from entering Quebec.

Now, I expect a collective sense of guilt for hanging dream-catchers in cars:

A Montreal borough school has infuriated some parents after handing out construction paper headdresses on the first day of classes.

Two teachers at Lajoie elementary school in Outremont were wearing First Nations headdresses and giving paper ones to the children to wear, according to parent Jennifer Dorner.

Dorner posted about the incident on her Facebook page and the post has already been shared hundreds of times.

"In our family, we teach our children about cultural respect, we teach them the importance of honouring Indigenous cultures," Dorner posted. 

"We teach them about privilege and the history of genocide in our country."

(Sidebar: feel that white shame.)

I wonder if Pope Francis is aware of Mark Zuckerberg's walls:

Pope Francis has met with Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg and Zuckerberg's wife, Priscilla Chan, at the Vatican.

Vatican spokesman Greg Burke says one topic of discussion at Monday's meeting was "how to use communication technologies to alleviate poverty, encourage a culture of encounter, and make a message of hope arrive, especially to those most in need."

**

“I hear fearful voices calling for building walls and distancing people they label as others,” burped curly-haired mega-zillionaire Mark Zuckerberg earlier this year in an obvious swipe at Donald Trump. You may have heard of Zuckerberg before—he built a wall around his home in Palo Alto, CA and tore down four houses surrounding it. His personal security team protects that home around the clock. About a month after slamming Trump for wanting to build a wall along our southern border, Zuckerberg built another wall around his house in Kauai, reportedly blocking an ocean view for the less wealthy and less famous residents surrounding him.

Poland honours two resistance fighters who fought both the Nazis and the communists:

Seven decades after their deaths, a state burial was held Sunday in Poland for two Second World War heroes who fought the Germans but were later killed by the communists for their pro-independence activity.

The relatives of the 17-year-old Home Army nurse and a 42-year-old ensign attended the religious ceremonies along with President Andrzej Duda and Polish government officials.

The burial with military honours took place in Gdansk, in the north, where the two were captured in 1946, tortured and executed on Aug. 28, 1946. Their bodies were dumped in an unmarked pit at Gdansk military cemetery. Pavement tiles were put on top to conceal the site.

The remains of Danuta Siedzikowna, codename “Inka,” and Feliks Selmanowicz, “Zagonczyk,” were found in 2014. They were identified through DNA tests as part of government efforts to locate and properly honour thousands of Poles who fought for the nation’s independence against the Nazi Germans and then against the communists.

Ouch:

Germany’s second-in-command has only one regret after flipping the bird at a group of neo-Nazis recently.

He wishes he’d shown them both middle fingers, not one.

Another earthquake, this time in Iceland:

Iceland’s Meteorological Office says two earthquakes early Monday rocked the caldera of Katla, one of the country’s largest volcanoes.

Gunnar Gudmundsson, a geophysicist, said authorities are monitoring the situation at the volcano in southern Iceland and described it as “a little bit unusual.” The quakes measured magnitude 4.2 and magnitude 4.5 and were followed by some 20 aftershocks.

Ladies and gentlemen, Mr. Gene Wilder:

Sunday Post

 Wrapping up this pleasant Sunday....


 But... but... I thought electoral reform was in the hands of people who know better:

Heads up, average (or otherwise) Canadian voter: Have you spent your summer stubbornly tuning out earnest entreaties from your local MP and/or other aggressively civic-minded democratic do-gooders to spend an evening poking through the innards of the federal electoral system in search of a fairer, more representative alternative?

More specifically, have you been holding out for the opportunity to share your views on Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s pledge to scrap First Past The Post the old-fashioned way: by marking an X in the appropriate box on a ballot?

If so, you can take tentative comfort in the fact that, with very few exceptions, virtually every expert witness to testify before the House committee charged with studying the issue seems to agree — albeit reluctantly, in some cases, and only when pressed, with dramatically varying degrees of enthusiasm — that any attempt to change the vote-counting formula without widespread public support would be spectacularly ill-advised and politically risky, although almost certainly not actively unconstitutional.

I doubt that this will stop the Liberals from trying to pull a fast one on the voter.

 




Ontario Premier Kathleen Wynne warns that scrapping the controversial sex education curriculum she co-developed with a convicted child pornographer and for which she attacked people who objected to it is a bad idea:

In a letter distributed earlier week, with days to go before a byelection in the riding of Scarborough-Rouge River, Brown wrote that "a PC government would scrap the controversial changes to sex-ed introduced by Premier [Kathleen] Wynne and develop a new curriculum after thoughtful and full consultation with parents."

Speaking to CBC News from the riding Saturday, Wynne says scrapping the curriculum, which was updated last year, "would put kids at risk."

Ahem: 

In August 2012, Mr. Levin initiated a chat with J.B. asking her about the ages of her children. She replied that she had 2 daughters aged 8 and 14. He then engaged in sexualized conversation about the girls, urging the mother to engage in sexual touching. In the same discussion, he claimed that he sexually abused his own daughters and other children when they were as young as 12 years old and encouraged J.B. to do the same. (Here the Crown noted that there was no additional evidence that Mr. Levin sexually abused his daughters or other children.)

Who put kids at risk again, Kathleen?




PM Trulander wants to reset relations with China.


Meanwhile:

According to multiple sources in China close to North Korean affairs, Chinese public announcements on "enhanced border security measures" are ubiquitous in border regions, promising up to 1,000 RMB for those who report illegal border crossings, residence, and employment of North Koreans. Those who personally capture and hand over North Koreans to the Chinese authorities stand to receive 2,000 RMB for their efforts. 

They have also outlined stronger punishments for local residents who enter verbal agreements with North Koreans to help them cross the river or smuggle goods, threatening fines of up to 3,000 RMB for transgressors. Moreover, Chinese border guards have been ordered to shoot North Korean defectors caught illegally entering the country if they resist arrest.

The measures have far-reaching implications. Chinese residents in the border region increasingly shy away from not only helping defectors but also engaging in illegal trade with the North. “Some people are even reporting on others if they know them to be involved in these forbidden activities,” an additional source in North Hamgyong Province.

 

Trudeau's favourite country is killing North Korean refugees.

 

 

Also:

 

Amid the Great Disturbance In The Force that is the North Korean diplomatic corps this week, let’s not forget the 12 brave young North Korean women who defied a dictator, risked their lives — and, it must be said, the safety of their families — and made a break for freedom.  

 

Yonhap reports that the women have now left the care of the National Intelligence Service and “resettled” in undisclosed locations throughout South Korea.  

A child is taken off of life support at the hospital where he was being treated:

On Thursday afternoon, 2-year-old Israel Stinson was removed from a breathing ventilator at Children's Hospital of Los Angeles after a judge upheld the hospital's decision to remove life support, according to the Los Angeles Times. Now, the toddler's parents, Jonee Fonseca and Nathaniel Stinson, are left "devastated," as expressed by Alexandra Snyder, an attorney with the Life Legal Defense Foundation, a pro-life group representing Israel's family pro bono. 

For all the talk of individual rights, this all boils down to killing off patients. That's why I refuse to listen to hard case rhetoric or impassioned libertarian blather. No one really means it.




Quelle surprise:

Look closer, especially at the photo taken before the police show up.

One shows the woman seemingly sleeping, alone, lying directly on the sand.

She has no book, no sun cream, no beach bag. Her clothes are not suited to swimming.

Another shows her sitting quietly, looking around, as if waiting for the police to come. Hoping for the police to come?

As one French Muslim journalist, Ahmed Meguini, tweeted under the picture: “It’s 35C! Off to the beach for a nap in the sun in my ski outfit, like, totally normally.”

The pictures — sold worldwide by an agency — are not credited. They are, however, professionally shot.

The photographer was there long before the incident.

Banning the burqa - the sign of creeping Sharia - is picking one's battles, I suppose, but the French should move on to banning terrorism.




Putin's Western supporters often overlook things like this:

A well-known Russian journalist and critic of President Vladimir Putin has been found dead in his Kiev apartment with a gunshot wound to the head.

The body of Alexander Shchetinin, founder the Novy Region (New Region) press agency, was found at his flat after friends tried to visit him on his birthday.

A police spokesperson said Kiev forces were alerted of Ms Schetinin’s death at around midnight on Saturday. He is believed to have died a few hours earlier, between 8 and 9.30pm.

Officials have speculated that his death was caused by suicide, after a gun was found near his body along with spent cartridges, and the door to his apartment was said to be locked.

His opponents always seem to magically die somehow.




And now, he is such a brave and very little trooper:

(Kamsahamnida to all)

Friday Post

The last time Canada was a remotely workable country with a sane leader was October 19, 2015.

Now, the man who steered Canada through economic depression but would sell our oil to China is leaving politics for good:

Harper, 57, announced his resignation Friday as MP for Calgary Heritage, officially ending a political career that spanned more than two decades, including nearly 10 years as prime minster and almost 18 years in the House of Commons.

His dad never gave him the prime minister's office.


Also:

Curiously, we have no pictures of deputy ministers ordering their third bottle of Ch. Mouton-Rothschild, or sampling the caviar before heading off to the next seminar on how climate change will affect the world’s hungry. But I suppose that’s not the message the Liberals wanted to send. Indeed, all this was done in the service of the Trudeauean mantra that “Canada is back” (where Canada had been has, curiously, never been disclosed). And, of course, if Canada was back, McKenna, and her selfie-obsessed prime minister had to be sure the world knew it. Hence her decision to hire a photographer for the express purpose of recording the virtuous at prayer and to ensure that all the world could see that this government is committed to saving the planet.

Just as PM Trulander promised - Ottawa ran a near-billion dollar deficit:

The federal government ran a $995-million deficit over the first quarter of the fiscal year, an outcome Ottawa says is roughly in line with projections in the March budget.

The nearly $1-billion deficit over the first three months of the fiscal year that began April 1 stands in contrast to a $5-billion surplus over the same three-month period the previous year.

Finance Canada’s monthly Fiscal Monitor, released Friday, stated that Ottawa ran a $1.1-billion deficit in June of 2016. The federal government ran a $1.1-billion surplus in June of 2015.

This is debt. Trudeau promised debt. His voters gladly voted for debt.

I wish that they could own it all.




Peace-keeping is the reason why nearly a million Rwandans are dead:

The Liberal government has edged Canada closer to a return to peacekeeping, but stopped short of what might be the most important — and toughest — question: Where?

Four federal cabinet ministers used an air force base in Quebec as a backdrop Friday to announce that Canada will allot up to 600 troops for United Nations peacekeeping operations. They also revealed plans to spend $450 million over the next three years on peace and stability projects.

Speaking to reporters a few hours later in nearby Saguenay, Que., where his caucus held a two-day retreat in advance of the fall parliamentary session, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau touted the announcement as a sign of Canada's re-engagement with the UN.

"The commitment we made today," he said, "is us demonstrating to the world that we're very much interested and supportive of the work that the United Nations does to stabilize, to create security, to create opportunity in difficult places right around the world."

Yet noticeably absent was any indication of which countries or UN missions the government is considering for Canada. Trudeau said the government will discuss this with the UN and other nations.

(Sidebar: might I suggest Sudan?)

Sleazebags murder nuns who served a poor community:

The two nuns who were killed in Mississippi were by all accounts some of the most friendly, helpful people in town, cooking and caring for anyone in their poor community — making the slayings all the more puzzling.

Their car was found abandoned a mile away from their home, and there were signs of a break-in, but police haven't released any leads or suspects in the investigation.

The women, both 68 and nurse practitioners, were found dead Thursday morning when they didn't report to work at the nearby clinic where they provided flu shots, insulin and other medical care for children and adults who couldn't afford it.

They were identified as Sister Margaret Held and Sister Paula Merrill.

#NunsLivesMatter


Also:

She became the face of Italy's earthquake: Sister Marjana Lleshi, blood staining her veil as she texted her family and friends in her native Albania that she was alive.

In an interview Thursday at the mother house of her religious order, the 35-year-old nun recounted how she thought she would die when her convent walls collapsed. She texted her friends asking that they pray for her soul, only to be rescued by a man she has called her "angel."

Now safe, Lleshi says she wants nothing more than to go to next week's Rome canonization of Mother Teresa, the ethnic Albanian nun "who gave hope to those who didn't have any."

(Sidebar: I'm sure Blessed Mother Teresa pulled some heavenly strings for her.)

Also in good news in Italy:

It took 17 hours and several firefighters to rescue her, but 10-year-old Giulia was pulled from the rubble alive today after an earthquake struck central Italy Wednesday. 

**

A dog is rescued - literally.



The death toll in Italy has risen to two hundred and eighty-one.




Way to defend your values, France:

France's top administrative court on Friday overturned a ban on burkinis in a Mediterranean beach resort, effectively meaning that towns can no longer issue bans on the swimsuits that have divided the country and brought world attention to its fraught relationship with Muslims.

Women have had acid thrown at them because their "diverse and rich communities" didn't like how they dressed:

It is a question all Iranians are asking: who is stalking the streets of Isfahan, throwing acid into women's faces?

The attacks - there have been at least four in the busy city in central Iran in recent weeks - appear aimed at terrorizing women who dare to test the boundaries of the Islamic dress code.

When everyone is quite done kow-towing to the perennial enraged victims and lone wolves, perhaps it might give a thought to the mind-numbing situation in which post-modern French society now finds itself. France, like rest of Western civilisation, has abandoned all reason and decorum ages ago and then supports misogynistic body coverings because a vocal group of whiners and cultural jihadists moo the loudest.

Trayvon Martin's fake dad is as racially inclusive as David Duke is:

Obama could have acted more directly while in office to help blacks, West added, citing persistently high childhood poverty among African-Americans. “The (economic) recovery has not filtered over into black and working poor communities,” he said.

Cornel West points out what Trump did a while ago and excoriated for it.

But, you know, hope and change and all that.




And now, an Australian mailman writes a dog a letter just because the two get along so famously:

An Australian mailman and an adorable golden retriever named Pippa are showing the world mail carriers and dogs can be friends, after all. The Huffington Post reports that mailman Martin Studer has made a point of befriending all of the dogs along his route, but has struck up a particularly close friendship with Pippa over a common interest: mail.

Pippa, according to Studer, enjoys picking up the mail for her owners each morning—and Studer looks forward to handing it over to her. Studer averted a crisis one recent morning when, finding Pippa’s owners hadn’t received any mail, he decided to write Pippa a letter himself.