For A Monday

A merry Gwangbokjol to all y'all....

Wasn't I just saying?

Even as reports emerged that Driver, a known terrorist sympathizer, was involved and had been killed, it was unclear whether there was still an active public safety threat.

Fear outweighed confidence as Canadians had to rely on assumptions and media reports to piece together what was happening.

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau didn’t even emerge from his extended vacation to assure Canadians he was monitoring the situation, let alone that the necessary resources were being devoted to maintaining public safety and order.

His itinerary has listed each day for the last three weeks as “personal,” which hasn’t changed in the days since.

Public Safety Minister Ralph Goodale issued a statement Wednesday night, saying that he had spoken to the Trudeau about the situation. Goodale also addressed media the following day, after the RCMP’s press conference on the Strathroy situation.

But it took Trudeau himself more than 25 hours from the time of the explosion to tweet his gratitude to the RCMP “for their work in Strathroy yesterday,” without issuing any statement regarding cooperation with the FBI, the threat of terrorism and homegrown radicalization, or anything other than Canada’s Olympic successes, for that matter.

Apparently his vacation came first.

Further:

People voted for this. People voted for a hand-puppet who prefers selfies over domestic security.

Let that sink in further.




The Ontario Liberals wasted money on shtupping for a federal and taxed retirement fund:

Ontario’s Liberal government is defending a publicly funded ad that promotes an agreement to enhance the Canada Pension Plan — a federal program.

The radio advertisement says, “Ontario has been working to help close the retirement savings gap” and “the improved CPP would help close the gap and strengthen retirement security for working Canadians.”

Ontario Auditor General Bonnie Lysyk says she would not have approved the ad under the previous rules, but the Liberals changed them last year and she says the new rules remove her discretion to veto ads she feels are partisan.

In this case, she says this ad is more “self-congratulatory” than informative for Ontarians, and the subject of it is actually more federal jurisdiction — and is not a done deal.

 Ontario Liberal voters wanted this waste. They voted for it.


Also:

Ontario doctors have voted resoundingly to reject a tentative fee agreement with the provincial government, creating a situation of “complete uncertainty” and prolonging an internal battle within the medical profession.

Sixty-three per cent of its members who voted Sunday rejected a four-year deal, the Ontario Medical Association said Monday.

The four-year tentative deal included an annual 2.5 per cent increase to the total budget for doctors’ fees, now about $11.5 billion a year. It included a promise not to impose further cuts on doctors, as the Liberal government did last year and in its 2012 round of bargaining. It included $370 million over the four years to encourage doctors to “co-manage” the system with the provincial health ministry in a bid to reduce costs.

Longevity is not as important as unquestioning loyalty:

President Vladimir Putin unexpectedly fired his longtime chief of staff on Friday, the latest in a series of high-profile Kremlin changes that have ushered out an older layer of Putin peers and replaced them with a younger generation of unquestioning loyalists.

“Putin is gravitating toward those who serve him, and distancing himself from those who, by virtue of their resources, attempt to rule alongside Putin,” Tatyana Stanovaya, a political scientist, wrote in a recent commentary for the Carnegie Moscow Center. “He does not need advice; he needs people who will carry out his orders with as little fuss as possible.”

If we can't vet our candidates, at least vet our migrants so that one can weed out some rather pernicious little traits like honour killing, for example:

Trump’s campaign aides said the new ideological test for admission to the United States would vet applicants for their stance on issues like religious freedom, gender equality and gay rights. The government would use questionnaires, social media, interviews with friends and family or other means to determine if applicants support American values like tolerance and pluralism. The U.S. would stop issuing visas in any case where it cannot perform adequate screenings.

Before the standard freak-out, the Netherlands has also experimented with this.

Carry on.




It's time to withdraw from the UN:

The soldier pointed his AK-47 at the female aid worker and gave her a choice.

“Either you have sex with me, or we make every man here rape you and then we shoot you in the head,” she remembers him saying.

She didn’t really have a choice. By the end of the evening, she had been raped by 15 South Sudanese soldiers. ...

For hours throughout the assault, the UN peacekeeping force stationed less than a mile away refused to respond to desperate calls for help. Neither did embassies, including the U.S. Embassy.

Relief:

Victory signs are flashed, a man's beard is cut, a woman smokes a cigarette, another sets fire to a niqab, and civilians embrace soldiers in celebration after being evacuated by the Syria Democratic Forces (SDF) from an Islamic State-controlled neighborhood of Manbij, in Aleppo Governorate, Syria. The SDF has said Islamic State was using civilians as human shields.

Good:

An Egyptian athlete who refused to shake his Israeli opponent's hand after their judo bout has been reprimanded and sent home from the Rio Olympics, officials said Monday.

What took them so long?




Why is permission to talk about honour killings even necessary?

In a free society, the public is expected to tolerate controversy. Freedom of expression cannot exist if people enjoy a “right” to be free from feeling offended by another person’s opinions. Yet this is the “right” claimed by some Muslims, who would like to be spared the trouble of having to deal with those who would criticize their theology. The so-called “right” not to feel offended by another person’s speech is a toxic cancer that is slowly killing our freedom and our democracy. In September, the court has an opportunity to confront this cancer and defeat it.

Okay - how could anyone let these morons take any ground?

An AP analysis of thousands of leaked ISIL documents reveals most of its recruits from its earliest days came with only the most basic knowledge of Islam. A little more than 3,000 of these documents included the recruit’s knowledge of Shariah, the system that interprets into law verses from the Qur’an and hadith — the sayings and actions of the Prophet Muhammad.

According to the documents, which were acquired by the Syrian opposition site Zaman al-Wasl and shared with the AP, 70 per cent of recruits were listed as having just “basic” knowledge of Shariah — the lowest possible choice. Around 24 per cent were categorized as having an “intermediate” knowledge, with just 5 per cent considered advanced students of Islam. Five recruits were listed as having memorized the Qur’an.

So now that they have a complete knowledge of Islam, is it safe to say that everything they did they did for Islam?




And now, a happy story:

There were no people home at the time of the blaze, but fire crews did discover a number of pets inside – including three baby kittens they were able to pull to safety, Jenkins said. He added that a few other pets did not make it.

Firefighters used the special pet oxygen masks on the three kittens, then called Langley Animal Protection Society staff who rushed the kittens to a vet.

She was impressed by the efforts made by fire crews to save the house, and to to save the kittens, watching intently as they administered the oxygen to the little critters.

“No life too small to save,” she said.

(Sidebar: if only people felt that way about everybody.)




The Acadians chose the Feast of the Assumption as their grand cultural day. Sit back and listen to the quasi-historical ballad of their plight.