For Whom the Chime Rings....

... or something....

Aaahhhh, glorious August....

It's official:

Former Conservative cabinet minister Jason Kenney is hitting the road in Alberta to drum up support for uniting Alberta’s divided right-of-centre parties.

 
News for Ontario Liberal voters:

“If you round Canada’s population down a bit to 30 million (it’s really more like 35 million), $300 billion would be $10,000 for each person in Canada. 

“(If you want a more accurate figure, using the population of Canada as 35 million, then $300 billion would be about $8,571.43 per person.)”

**

Ontario consumers won’t see a separate line item on their electricity bills showing the cost of the Liberal government’s cap-and-trade plan to fight climate change.

The Ontario Energy Board has decided charges related to the cost of the program, which is aimed at reducing greenhouse gas emissions, will be included in the ’delivery’ line charge on hydro bills.

The board admits utilities and industrial natural gas users argued for a separate line item to provide greater transparency to customers about the cost of cap-and-trade, but it says consumer groups said that wasn’t necessary.

(Sidebar: horsesh--.)


When the next election rolls around, please put signs on your lawns so that everyone knows who is to blame.




Muslims attend Mass in a sign of solidarity:

Muslims in France and Italy flocked to Mass on Sunday, a gesture of interfaith solidarity following a drumbeat of jihadi attacks that threatens to deepen religious divisions across Europe.

From the towering Gothic cathedral in Rouen, only a few miles from where 85-year-old Rev. Jacques Hamel was killed Tuesday by two Muslim fanatics, to Paris’ iconic Notre Dame, where the rector of the Mosque of Paris invoked a papal benediction in Latin, many churchgoers were cheered by the Muslims in their midst.

Interviewed outside the cathedral in Rouen, Jacqueline Prevot called it “a magnificent gesture.”

“Look at this whole Muslim community that attended Mass,” she said. “I find this very heartwarming.”

(Sidebar: lady, they're casing the joint.)

Dubious.

It's a public relations exercise complete with the usual smoke and mirrors and empty platitudes.


To wit:

Many Islamic fundamentalists, including those who don’t participate directly in violence, loathe Christianity with a poisonous passion reminiscent of medieval Christian anti-Semitism. Its practice must be suppressed — either without violence, as in Saudi Arabia, or amid carefully staged scenes of bloodshed, as in Baghdad or Rouen.

In the 21st-century Middle East, Christianity has been suppressed on an astonishing scale. Countless atrocities have reduced ancient Christian communities to shrivelled and terrified ghettoes or underground churches. Although this persecution has been reported in the West, it is of no great interest to secular politicians or the media. It is, as Neville Chamberlain said in a different context, part of ‘a quarrel in a faraway country between people of whom we know nothing’.

If the Islamic community at large truly felt that Christians were their wrongfully oppressed neighbours, what in their text and actions indicate that? Why are apostates murdered?

Perhaps this would be more convincing if these concerned third parties would let the authorities treat the offending butchers as they would be treated in Islamist states and be publicly and graphically executed?

Aren't we all supposed to get along?




Cousin of priest-murderer may face charges:

The cousin of one of two teenage jihadists who slit the throat of a French priest knew he was about to commit an attack and should face terror charges, prosecutors have said.

Farid K, arrested after his cousin Abdel Malik Petitjean killed Father Jacques Hamel, 85, last Tuesday in Normandy, was sent to face a judge yesterday with a recommendation from the prosecutor that he be charged with taking part in a “terrorist association with the aim of harming others.”

Farid, 30, hosted his cousin in his flat in Nancy in eastern France for a few days before the attack and “knew perfectly well” that Petitjean was about to carry out an attack, the prosecutor’s office said. He “was fully aware of his cousin’s imminent violent action, even if he did not know the precise place or day”, it added.

Farid is the only one of several suspects arrested after the attack in the town of Saint-Etienne-du-Rouvray who is still in custody.

Also:

The British woman found dead in Pakistan last week in an alleged “honour killing” had a bruise on her neck which doctors say suggest she was throttled to death, a post-mortem report has revealed. 

The report, a copy of which has been seen by The Telegraph, found that “there is a horizontal mark on right hand side of the neck of reddish discolouration”. Photographs included as part of the report show a long bruise around the neck a few millimetres in width.

A senior doctor at the government-run Jhelum hospital said on condition of anonymity that “cause of death looks like strangulation of the neck with a narrow rope-like object.” A hospital source confirmed to the BBC that the doctor's signatures on the post-mortem documents match those of the doctor who conducted the study.

The post-mortem report is preliminary, and the official cause of death will not be established until next week.  Police in Jhelum, the closest major town to the village where Samia Shahid died, had initially told media that the post-mortem report showed no external injuries.

Ms Shahid, 28, a beauty therapist from Bradford, was reported dead last week in Pandori village in northern Punjab, her family's ancestral home. Ms Shahid’s father says she died of natural causes. Syed Mukhtair, her second husband, alleges that the family was unhappy with his wife’s divorce and remarriage to him, and had tricked her into returning to Pakistan by falsely claiming that her father was unwell, in order to kill her.

Experts believe the pilot of the doomed flight MH370 deliberately caused its crash:

Larry Vance told Australian news programme 60 Minutes that erosion along the trailing edge of recovered wing parts indicated a controlled landing.

The Boeing 777 disappeared while flying to Beijing from Kuala Lumpur with 239 people on board in March 2014.

The official investigation team has said it is investigating whether the plane was piloted in its final moments.

An Australian-led search for the missing jet has focused on an area of the ocean floor 2,000km (1,242 miles) off Australia's west coast. The zone was selected based on the theory the flight was running on autopilot after veering off course. 
But an official co-ordinating the search effort told 60 Minutes the wreckage could be outside that search zone, if someone had been in control of the plane when it crashed.

I'm sure Putin has this covered:

Now, as ISIL loses ground in the Middle East, the potential return of local fighters is worrying the Russian government. Russian security forces carry out “special operations” in Dagestan’s rural areas almost weekly and Alexander Bortnikov, the head of Russia’s Federal Security Service, has said that his agency is monitoring 220 individuals identified as potential suicide bombers.

“We have documentary confirmation that leaders of groups sheltering in a number of Middle Eastern countries are planning to continue their terrorist activities and to try to give new impetus to the North Caucasus insurgency,” he said.

 


Yikes:

A Chinese village is naming and shaming people who do not care for their parents, plastering their pictures on billboards and rolling out plans to broadcast details of their “crimes” on loudspeakers.

The village drew up the rules after local elderly people raised concerns that they were not being treated well by their offspring.

This is the same country that murdered its elderly teachers because Mao told them to. It also sought out and destroyed female babies giving rise to singleton boys who now fill uniforms if they can't find wives.

Reap what you sow, China.




A terminally ill child who, only a day before, became an honourary Marine dies:

An 8-year-old California boy with a rare disease died Sunday – just one day after becoming an honorary U.S. Marine. 

Wyatt Gillette had Aicardi-Goutieres Syndrome Type 1, a disease that causes kidney failure and eventually leads to death.

His father, 29-year-old Marine drill instructor Jeremiah Gillette, reached out to fellow Marines asking for prayers when his son moved into hospice care. 

He and Wyatt's mother, Felishia Gillette, were stunned by the response. 

"I just started crying," Felishia said. "So many people and strangers took an interest."

One of those strangers was Marine Anthony North, who created a petition on Change.org to have Wyatt become an honorary Marine. 

"I truly feel that Wyatt has faced more hardship than any Marine has gone through, and for that should be given the title," North wrote on the website. 

Within days, the online petition gained thousands of names, and the U.S. Marine Corps granted the impassioned request. 

Wyatt's proud parents watched as their son was honored in a moving ceremony at Camp Pendleton on Saturday.

And now, fifteen holidays you can observe in August:

AUGUST 26: NATIONAL DOG DAY

Celebrate this adorable mug.