Mid-Week Post

Autumnal zen...



Former Israeli president Shimon Peres has passed away at the age of ninety-three:

Israel on Wednesday mourned the death of Shimon Peres, a former president and prime minister whose life story mirrored that of the Jewish state, as the government began preparations for a funeral that is expected to bring together an array of world leaders and international dignitaries.

Peres, celebrated around the world as a Nobel Prize-winning visionary who pushed his country toward peace during a remarkable seven-decade career, died early Wednesday from complications from a stroke. He was 93.

Oh, burn:

The U.S. Senate on Wednesday overwhelmingly rejected President Barack Obama's veto of legislation allowing relatives of the victims of the Sept. 11 attacks to sue Saudi Arabia, paving the way for the first veto override of his eight-year presidency.

The final vote was 97-1 against the veto, a blow to Saudi Arabia, a frequent U.S. partner in the Middle East recently subject to harsh criticism in the U.S. Congress.

Democratic Minority Leader Harry Reid was the only senator to side with Obama.

Democratic Senator Tim Kaine, a vice presidential nominee, and Bernie Sanders, an independent and former Democratic White House contender, did not vote.

(Sidebar: there's your Democratic moral stalwarts for you.) 

The Tories take issue with Trudeau's public trust-fund:

Passengers who accompanied Prime Minister Justin Trudeau on his first two international trips were apparently well fed.

The government has revealed, in response to a written question by the Conservatives, that the cost of food and beverages supplied aboard a government Airbus used for the trips amounted to just over $1,300 per person. ...

More than $1,000 for food and beverages per passenger per trip "is more than the average Canadian earns in two weeks," he said.

"Again, I'm just not sure anybody's minding the store when it comes to remembering that it's taxpayers who are on the hook for all these things."

Calkins said the meal tab is part of a "pattern" of excessive spending by the Trudeau government, which has been plagued for weeks by the disclosure of generous expenses claimed by political staffers, including the prime minister's top two aides, for relocating to Ottawa and by ministers for limousine and photographers' services.

Some of those expenses, including a portion of the Trudeau aides' moving expenses, have been reimbursed.

The latest disclosure shows that $72,040 was spent on food and beverages for 55 passengers — including almost two dozen journalists — aboard the prime ministerial plane during a trip to Turkey and the Philippines last November for a G20 summit and an APEC leaders' summit.

Another $81,383 was spent on food and drink for 62 passengers — including more than a dozen journalists —aboard the prime minister's plane for a trip later the same month to London, where Trudeau met the Queen, Malta, where he attended a Commonwealth summit,  and Paris, where he participated in a United Nations climate change conference.

Also: go here to make PM Gerald Butts repay what he owes.


And:

Justin Trudeau is used to fawning media coverage from the Canadian press but the British media travelling with Prince William and Princess Kate aren’t going quite so easy on our charming Prime Minister. 

It began with young Prince George refusing to engage in a high five with Trudeau and then moved on to more serious matters when a visit to an immigration centre threatened to get political.

 
If Ontarians hate the way Wynne is running things, why did they vote for her in the first place (RE: gas plants, deleted e-mails, failed "green" policies, Ben Levin, children with autism)?

Half of Ontario voters feel unprotected from price increases in the electricity system, a new poll shows.

“Ontarians have never been this angry,” declares a presentation of the Innovative Research Group poll, to be revealed Wednesday afternoon at the Ontario Energy Association conference in Toronto. A draft of the presentation was shared with the National Post and the results of the 600-person poll show a growing distrust in the Ontario government’s handling of the energy file, in particular electricity prices.
The poll about provincial politics and energy rates was commissioned by the Ontario Energy Association — an industry group representing everything from gas to electricity companies — for its annual conference.

When asked if they feel “consumers are well-protected with respect to prices and the reliability and quality of electricity service in Ontario,” 50 per cent of respondents “strongly disagreed” — the highest rate of disatisfaction since the firm started asking the question in 2002. Another 20 per cent “somewhat disagreed” while just 19 per cent said they “somewhat” agreed and six per cent “strongly agreed.” Three per cent had no opinion and another two per cent didn’t know.

Well, obviously:

Malaysia Airlines flight MH17 was shot down by a missile fired from a launcher brought into Ukraine from Russia and located in a village held by pro-Russian rebels, international prosecutors said on Wednesday.

The findings counter Moscow's suggestion that the passenger plane, en route from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur in July 2014, was brought down by Ukraine's military rather than the separatists. All 298 people on board, most of them Dutch, were killed.

The conclusions were based on thousands of wiretaps, photographs, witness statements and forensic tests during more than two years of inquiries into an incident which led to a sharp rise in tensions between Russia and the West.

Among the key findings were: the plane was hit by a Russian-made Buk-9M38 missile; the missile was fired from the rebel-held village of Pervomaysk in eastern Ukraine; and the launcher was transported into Ukraine from Russia.

Now make Russia accountable. 

What did the Trudeau government promise Iran?

The release of Concordia University professor Homa Hoodfar from Iranian custody is a welcome event and no doubt a joyous moment for her friends and family. But it cannot be categorized as a triumph for Canadian diplomacy.

It may not result from Canadian efforts at all. Foreign regimes, big or small, good or evil, cunning or irrational, have their own internal dynamics and processes over which not even a superpower has much control; it is far from clear that, say, the People’s Republic of China could make the despotic leader of North Korea behave, even if it wanted to.

Despite the posturing in some quarters, Canada does not enjoy much global influence over countries like Iran. If anything, Tehran’s mullahs delight in displaying their contempt for the sort of Western, democratic values Canada espouses. While their motives for releasing Hoodfar remain unclear, it would be a worrying sign if her freedom had been paid for with concessions from Ottawa.

Also:

Saudi Arabia has deported 27 Lebanese Maronite Christians, including women and children, for celebrating the feast of the Assumption of Our Lady in their home. Saudi Arabian authorities justified the deportation by claiming the Christians participated in "un-Islamic prayer" and that they possessed the "Gospel".

 

If the police are so affronted by citizens protecting themselves then maybe they ought to do what they are paid for:

A Facebook group called Farmers With Firearms is gaining attention since its creation last Thursday and causing concern among law enforcement.

The group, which now has more than 1,000 likes, describes itself as a group that “will fight if need be” to protect their property.

“We need to protect ourselves out here,” said Lee, a farmer from west central Saskatchewan who created the group but didn’t want his surname used.

“The police take hours to show up,” he told Yahoo Canada News. “I created the group/page to keep the farmers in rural [Saskatchewan] informed as to where people are seeing suspicious vehicles.”

Earlier this month, RCMP officials in Saskatchewan cautioned against vigilantism. Sgt. Earl LeBlanc, with the RCMP’s “F” Division Communications Unit in Regina, said residents who witness a crime or suspect a crime is underway should report it immediately to the police.

LeBlanc urged the farmers not to chase or subdue the suspects in any way.

“Let us do our jobs,” LeBlanc told Global News.

(Sidebar: then do your g-d- job.)

 

Farmers in Saskatchewan say they’re having to use their rifles to defend their property instead of shooting wildlife. Some farmers say they have been approached by masked gunmen on their property or have seen an increase in crime.

And yet he went to a Catholic hospital:

Ian Shearer had had enough of the pain and wanted a quick, peaceful end, his life marred by multiple afflictions.

But the Vancouver man’s family says his last day alive became an excruciating ordeal after the Catholic-run hospital caring for him rebuffed his request for a doctor-assisted death, forcing him to transfer to another hospital.

The US will move forward with a missile deployment system against Chinese-backed North Korea:

The U.S. intends to deploy a missile defence system in South Korea “as soon as possible” to counter the threat from North Korea despite opposition from China, the top U.S. diplomat for East Asia said Tuesday.

Assistant Secretary of State Daniel Russel said he believes South Korea is firmly committed to the deployment of the Terminal High Altitude Area Defence, or THAAD system. He told a congressional hearing the system is purely defensive and is not aimed at China but at North Korea.

The plans have complicated South Korea’s efforts to foster warmer ties with China, which traditionally has had closer ties with North Korea, and have added to tensions between Washington and Beijing as well. Beijing says the system’s radar could reach into Chinese territory.

(Sidebar: there can be no warm ties with a country that helped separate Korea in the first place.)




And now, medicine:

Scientists have created arteries that can be safely implanted and continue growing in their hosts. They published a report of their progress today, September 28, in the journal Nature Communications.

You know the best of Star Trek but what about the worst?

Yangs and Kohms (Yankees and Communists, get it?) fight it out in this thinly disguised Cold War allegory, which finds our three heroes and a redshirt held prisoner by a rogue starship captain (Morgan Woodward) who thinks he’s found the secret of immortality on a planet scarred by ongoing war between two tribal factions. Bizarrely, this was one of three scripts that Gene Roddenberry proposed for the second Star Trek pilot, but NBC passed; good thing too, as the show might never have been picked up if this silly exercise in pointless action and half-baked civics was presented to the network. It ended up getting made deep in Season 2, and surprisingly didn’t kill the series outright.

Sunday Post

The accused killer of five people was reported to be "zombie-like" upon his arrest:

The 20-year-old suspect in the deadly Washington state mall shooting said nothing and appeared "zombie-like" when he was arrested by authorities nearly 24 hours into an intense manhunt, authorities said.

As the surrounding community absorbed the news, critical questions remained, including the shooter's motive.

(Sidebar: yes, no one ever seems to know the shooter's motive in these things. Ever.)

Island County Sheriff's Lt. Mike Hawley said he spotted Arcan Cetin from a patrol car Saturday evening in Oak Harbor, Washington, and immediately recognized him as the suspect who killed five people at the Cascade Mall in nearby Burlington.

Hawley said at a news conference they had received information that Cetin, of Oak Harbor, was in the area. Cetin, who immigrated to the U.S. from Turkey, is a legal permanent resident who has been living in Oak Harbor, authorities said. He had been arrested once before in the county for assault, Hawley said.

"I literally hit my brakes, did a quick turn, I jumped out," Hawley said. "We both jumped out with our guns, and he just froze."

Cetin was unarmed and was carrying a satchel with a computer in it.

"He was kind of zombie-like," Hawley said.

Canada's back!

Ottawa has confirmed that a Canadian is among three people taken hostage in Libya earlier this week.

Just get Justin to promise the Libyans what he promised the Chinese for Kevin Garratt.






Diplomat's son avoid consequences for the armed robbery that killed his brother:

A teenager caught up in a double shooting in Florida that left his older brother dead has been quietly deported to Canada following a remarkable standoff between U.S. federal authorities and the state judge who sentenced him, The Canadian Press has learned.

American immigration agents escorted Marc Wabafiyebazu from Miami to Montreal earlier this month where he was reunited with his mother, Roxanne Dube.

"It's done. It's done. It's done," Dube, a senior diplomat, said in an interview from Ottawa. "He has his life ahead of him."

Now 16, Wabafiyebazu is back home in Ottawa studying privately for his high school equivalency and reconnecting with family and friends as he relaunches his life shattered by the gunfire in March last year that killed Jean Wabafiyebazu, 18, and another teen.

Although authorities never accused the younger sibling of shooting anyone, he nevertheless found himself facing a minimum 40-year prison sentence on charges of felony first-degree murder. Instead, in a plea deal rarely seen before, Wabafiyebazu pleaded no contest in February to reduced charges of felony third-degree murder.

In exchange, Circuit Judge Teresa Pooler sentenced him to in-custody boot camp, house arrest, and a minimum five years probation to be served in the United States.

(Sidebar: "caught up" nothing. He was part of an armed robbery.)

Doesn't one wish that one's father was a diplomat or prime minister or some other member of the elite for whom laws never, ever apply?





The police are treating the death of a customs agent as a suicide which seems very odd:

A Canada Border Services Agency officer was found dead in Terminal 3 of Toronto's Pearson International Airport on Friday night, the agency confirmed on Saturday.

Peel Regional Police said they received a call for medical assistance at about 8:20 p.m.

Const. Mark Fischer, spokesperson for Peel Regional Police, said Friday night that a man shot himself inside the airport but not in a public area. He said police are treating the death as a suicide. 

Peel Regional Police said Saturday there is no ongoing investigation.

"There are no outstanding parties," Const. Harinder Sohi, spokesperson for Peel Regional Police, said. "There is no investigation continuing from our end."

A blast in Hungary is believed to have been aimed at officers:

Hungary's police were the target of a home-made shrapnel bomb that rocked central Budapest late on Saturday, injuring two officers, the national police chief said on Sunday.

Karoly Papp described the incident as a criminal case of attempted homicide, adding there was no sign that the attack had been carried out by a foreign militant organization, but without ruling it out explicitly.

"We consider this attack occurred against the entire Hungarian police. Someone tried to execute my officers," Papp told a news conference.

He said the attack was clearly directed at police, who were known to patrol the area, on one of the busiest thoroughfares in central Budapest, on a Saturday night. The device was detonated shortly after 10:30 p.m..

It was not immediately clear why police would be the target.

Both the officers needed surgery, with a female officer in a critical condition on Sunday and her male colleague stable.

Police have identified a suspect who was at the scene before the blast and asked for citizens' help to find him. Papp gave a description of the suspect, who he said was a 20-25 year-old male in blue jeans and a hat.

He gave no details on the suspect's nationality.

 




The UN is useless in stopping Syrian warplanes and even it knows it:

Warplanes bombed a strategic camp on the northern edge of Aleppo on Sunday as Syrian government forces, backed by Russia, battled rebels for control of the city as the U.N. Security Council met to discuss the escalating violence.

Russia's support of the latest offensive by Syrian forces since an international ceasefire collapsed last week appears to have buried any hope for diplomacy. The rebels said any peace process would be futile unless the "scorched earth bombing" stopped immediately.

Related:

When Russia launched a military intervention to support Syrian dictator Bashar Assad last year, U.S. President Barack Obama responded with wishful schadenfreude.

Russia, he predicted, would get “stuck in a quagmire.” He added: “It won’t work.”

Obama had good reason to resent Russia’s increasingly assertive foreign policy in the Middle East and elsewhere, and to imagine it might backfire on its architect, President Vladimir Putin. The U.S. president clearly hoped an overstretched Russia would get its fingers burned in Syria and emerge chastened from its adventure in Middle East counter-insurgency.

That’s not what happened. Russia didn’t get stuck in a Syrian quagmire. It applied a limited amount of military force to great effect, reversing the tide of the civil war and ensuring Assad will not go unless Putin agrees. From Moscow’s perspective, the Kremlin’s intervention worked out just fine.

Quelle surprise:

President Obama vetoed legislation on Friday that would allow families of victims of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks to sue the government of Saudi Arabia for any role in the plot, setting up an extraordinary confrontation with a Congress that unanimously backed the bill and has vowed to uphold it.

People twice voted to put this lying sack of sh-- into office. They are as culpable as he.


Also:

President Barack Obama took direct aim at GOP nominee Donald Trump’s assertion that conditions for African-Americans now are worse than they have been at any time in U.S. history, saying in an interview aired Friday that even young children know better than that.

“You know, I think even most 8-year-olds will tell you that whole slavery thing wasn’t very good for black people,” Obama said in an interview with Robin Roberts of ABC News that was taped Thursday in the new National Museum of African American History and Culture ahead of its opening. “Jim Crow wasn’t very good for black people.”

Trump has suggested repeatedly that black Americans should vote for him because of the dire circumstances they now face, saying in August in Michigan, “What the hell do you have to lose?”

Even a third-grader knows that Islamic theocracies are bad for people, Barry.

And from a guy who has never even smelled a ghetto let alone lived in one, it's very rich to pretend to be fair to black Americans while fomenting racial discord in order to distract them from the real reasons why they are poor and ravaged by crime.





This guy must know where all the bodies are buried:

Former Ontario ombudsman André Marin wants to run for the opposition Progressive Conservatives in the upcoming Ottawa-Vanier byelection, driven into elected politics by anger over petty tweaks to electricity prices announced in the latest throne speech.

“You have an institution, which is parliament, and the speech from the throne is reserved for some pretty big stuff. Policy directions, big changes,” Marin said in an interview Friday. Instead, Premier Kathleen Wynne used the Sept. 12 speech to tout a hydro rebate equivalent to provincial sales tax and a plan for more daycare spaces.

“It’s a teeny weeny, itsy-bitsy hyperpartisan speech and I said to myself, enough is enough. Hydro rates are soaring through the roof, people are paying $1,000 a year more on hydro since the Liberals are in and now we get thrown this bone. Kathleen Wynne’s world is like Alice in Wonderland. It’s this blue-sky world and we’re worrying about our grandchildren when we can’t pay today’s bills,” Marin said.

Did Trump at any point apologise for his dirty tricks against Cruz? Because, failing that, endorsing him looks like a complete lack of self-respect:

When Cruz refused to endorse Trump at the RNC, and an angry Texas delegation (composed mostly of Cruz delegates) gave him an earful, Cruz pivoted to the personal, saying that Trump had insulted his family.

“That pledge was not a blanket commitment that if you go slander and attack Heidi, then I’m going to nonetheless come like a servile puppy dog and say thank you very much for maligning my wife and maligning my father,” Cruz said.

Today, both explanations for his long hold-out came back to haunt Cruz. By buckling, Cruz was suggesting that Trump had failed ideological tests and it hadn’t mattered, and that it didn’t really matter that Trump had smeared his wife and father.

Kim Jong-Un might find himself disappointed in November:

After eight years of “strategic patience” under the Obama administration – waiting for North Korea to change its calculus – the next administration will certainly launch a review of U.S. policy toward North Korea.

Hillary's husband aided North Korea in its nuclear ambitions and Trump does not seem to have a handle (or care) on the situation in the Korean Peninsula.

This won't end well.





And now, cat on a Roomba:

Friday Post

Aahh, glorious fall...

Former immigration minister Chris Alexander is throwing his hat into the ring:

Former immigration minister Chris Alexander is adding his name to those considering a run for leadership of the federal Conservative party.

"I'm actively considering a bid to lead the Conservative Party of Canada and excited by the exchanges I'm having about how to renew and reinvigorate our party," he told The Canadian Press late Thursday.

The 48-year-old former ambassador to Afghanistan was seen as a rising star when he ran for the Conservatives in the Toronto-area riding of Ajax-Pickering in 2011. Two years later, Stephen Harper brought him into the cabinet as immigration minister.

But Alexander became embroiled in controversy during last year's election campaign amid questions about the government's handling of the Syrian refugee crisis.

He was also criticized for promising, along with then-labour minister Kellie Leitch, to create a telephone tip line for "barbaric cultural practices."

Alexander ended up losing to Liberal Mark Holland in the newly created riding of Ajax. Leitch was re-elected, and is one of five registered leadership candidates.

Despite his election loss, Alexander had intended to run again for the Conservatives in 2019, believing the party could do far better than it did last October if it developed a bolder and more inclusive agenda.

Mr. Alexander was an ambassador to Afghanistan (something his dad never handed him) and though he suggested a hotline to report barbaric practices, at least he called them as such unlike some pansy China-appeasers one could mention.




John McCallum doesn't listen to Canadians:

The federal government’s own internal polling contradicts the Immigration Minister’s claim that Canadians are clamouring for increased immigration.

John McCallum told reporters last week that “almost all” of the Canadians he met with during consultations this summer told him to boost Canada’s immigration targets.

However internal polling conducted by Mr. McCallum’s department found Canadians are just fine with the current targets, even though most people had no idea how many immigrants currently come to Canada each year.

Actually, people found the target number of migrants flooding into Canada was too high.

That Canadians did not know how many immigrants come into the country each year shows how McCallum et al can pull the wool over their eyes with very little effort.


Related:

The Ontario Liberals might have a better shot at retaining their majority government if they get a new leader, a new poll suggests, even as Premier Kathleen Wynne plans to stay to fight the 2018 election.

 
The problem is that someone would still vote Liberal.




But... but... they did it, too!

After days of dogging the Liberal government over $200,000 in moving expenses approved for two top staff members in Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s office, the Conservatives are being called onto the carpet for their own staff spending.

The Privy Council Office released figures Friday that show former prime minister Stephen Harper’s office spent almost $325,000 on moving expenses from 2006 to 2015, including $93,000 for one senior staff member. That figure was spread over three years.

It was a reprieve of sorts for the Liberals, who have been on the defensive over $207,000 in moving expenses approved for Trudeau’s chief of staff, Katie Telford, and his principal secretary, Gerald Butts. Overall, the Trudeau government has spent $1.1 million on relocation expenses for political staff since taking office.

That's nice.

Let's break down the entitlements so far:

The two nannies who take care of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s three young children are on track to cost Canadian taxpayers nearly $100,000 a year.

**

The flight manifest for Prime Minister Justin Trudeau's Christmas vacation to the Caribbean, released to the Conservatives through an access to information request, was redacted to leave off the names of family members and a nanny who travelled on the government-owned Challenger jet. ...

Canadian prime ministers are not permitted to fly on commercial flights for security reasons. The round-trip to the Caribbean destination cost taxpayers tens of thousands of dollars because the Challenger jet's rate is roughly $12,500 for an hour in the air.

**

Justin Trudeau took a small army of 44 people with him for a three-day visit to Washington last March, at a cost of more than $25,000.

**

Sophie Grégoire Trudeau could get additional staff to help her deal with a flood of requests, the Prime Minister's Office confirmed Thursday.

Grégoire Trudeau has one staffer now, but told Quebec City's Le Soleil earlier this week that she needs a team to help her serve people.

"I want to be everywhere, but I can't," she told the newspaper, adding she has three children and a husband who is prime minister. "I need help. I need a team to help me serve people."

**

More than $17,000 has been spent photographing Minister of Environment and Climate Change Catherine McKenna and her staff since the Liberals took office less than 10 months ago.

McKenna’s office points out that Conservative environment ministers who preceded her hired photographers too. They spent at least $99,000, but it was spread over eight years.

Then there is that pesky $220,000 (possibly a larger amount) for PM Gerald Butts and Katie Telford  that the Liberals think is no big deal.

But when one considers who works for a party of liars (oh, hi, Maryam Monsef), this is strictly small potatoes.

Like Justin is:

It’s a pity that, even in that forlorn venue, Trudeau was unwilling to let go of that rhetorical Linus blanket and say a few things about what is really going on in the world. He could have offered some meaningful analysis on the situation in Syria. He could have uttered some truths to those who rarely hear them. Instead, it was the usual mush about “modest Canada” and how we’re back and ready to help.

It really is time to stop bragging about how modest we are, as one cannot honestly brag about being modest. And besides, it’s unseemly. Let other countries pay testimony to our worth if they are so moved to do so. And as for diversity, yes it is a fine virtue as far as virtues go, but so are unity, coherence, national identity, fiscal competence and the rule of law. Saying the word “diversity” is not like waving a magic wand that somehow rids us of all tribulation and want. Nor is it, by any test, the only metric for a healthy and admirable society.

But it was a UN session, and perhaps it is understood that to scatter anything but clichés and self-congratulations before that august convocation would be a breach of its worthless protocols.

I want Rex Murphy to run for prime minister. Now.




The government could make things a million times easier by scrapping the taxable CPP and lowering other taxes but oh no!

So what if a new report by Morneau Shepell, the human resources firm once chaired by our current federal finance minister, finds that the new enhanced CPP doesn’t significantly tackle all that much — and, in some ways, makes our retirement system even worse. Finance Minister Bill Morneau had come to champion the enhanced CPP, too, as one that would make a “real difference in future Canadians’ situations.” But few Canadians will see more secure retirements, as calculated by Morneau Shepell’s chief actuary Fred Vettese and co-author Bonnie-Jeanne MacDonald. Wynne’s own finance minister, Charles Sousa, praised the federal Liberals for delivering pension reform that showed “great leadership and great desire to do something of great benefit for our young people.”

That’s a lot of “greats,” and all of them seemingly undeserved, given that the number of middle-income workers who will no longer have “inadequate” savings after this landmark CPP change, according to Vettese and MacDonald, amounts to a modest 8.7 per cent: Previously 36.4 per cent, we will now have 27.7 per cent of middle-class Canadians inadequately prepared. But that 8.7 per cent, notice, falls within a specific “middle-income” subcategory, which itself comprises only 60 per cent of Canadians. So, in total, we have five per cent of all Canadians who might see a more secure retirement from an enhanced CPP, even though the other 95 per cent of us will have no choice but to participate.

 

Thank you:

After almost 20 years as a lawyer, including eight as a Crown prosecutor, Johnson, a Cree from northern Saskatchewan, estimates a staggering 95 per cent of his criminal cases involve people who were intoxicated.

From his base in La Ronge, Johnson says he’s amazed how many people he’s met who have suffered a brain injury as a result of getting hit with a bat, board or rock during a drunken brawl. He’s grown tired of hearing domestic violence victims utter the phrase: “When he’s sober, he’s a good guy.”

And he’s become fed up standing next to graves of people who died from alcohol; he lost two brothers to drunk drivers.

It’s time, he says, for people to stop being afraid to talk about the issue.

“If a white person uses ‘Indian’ and ‘alcohol’ in the same sentence, they’re afraid of being called racist. If an Indian says ‘Indian’ and ‘alcohol’ in the same sentence, they’re afraid people are going to point at them and say, ‘Look it’s true, they are lazy, drunken Indians,’” he told the National Post.

“I’m taking a subject and opening it up and saying we have to talk about this.”

In Firewater: How Alcohol is Killing My People (and Yours), set for release this week by University of Regina Press, Johnson writes that while colonization and trauma from residential schools may help to explain the reasons for alcohol abuse, they don’t offer any solutions.

“If we allow ourselves to believe the victim story and we live by it, we become victims, and victims can never fix their own situations,” writes Johnson, who once worked as a logger and miner.

Perhaps it would be better to ignore wags who pose as ethicists because their expectations are not only savagely immoral but impractical and unrealistic, as well:

Authorities should bar doctors from refusing to provide such services as abortion and assisted death on moral grounds, and screen out potential medical students who might impose their values on patients, leading Canadian and British bioethicists argue in a provocative new commentary.

Mengele also operated without a moral compass ... on children.




The people of London got the mayor they voted for:

At an event in New York City called “Building Progressive, Inclusive Cities,” Sadiq Khan, London’s London mayor, met with his counterpart in the Big Apple, far-left Mayor Bill de Blasio, and explained that urban dwellers should simply get used to jihadist rampages.

Terror attacks are “part and parcel of life in a big city,” Khan told the Evening Standard just hours after police foiled multiple terror attacks in New Jersey and New York.

Imagine the mayor of London saying that when the IRA was blowing stuff up.




And now, catch the bears before they hibernate:

Mid-Week Post

On this fall's eve....

Despite planting several bombs throughout New York City and in New Jersey, injuring twenty-nine people, and fooling an incredibly gullible public that dismissed similar-looking bombs as kids' toys, federal prosecutors are charging Ahmad Khan Rahami with weapons offenses, not terrorism:

Federal prosecutors on Tuesday charged the Afghan-born man arrested after weekend bombings in New York and New Jersey with four counts including use of weapons of mass destruction and bombing a place of public use.

The charges were laid out in a federal complaint that said a handwritten journal was found on the suspect, Ahmad Khan Rahami, that praised Osama bin Laden, the mastermind of the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks and accused the U.S. government of slaughtering Islamist fighters in Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria and Palestine.

The federal charges come after the father of Rahami, the naturalized American citizen captured on Monday in New Jersey after a shootout with police, said he had reported concerns about his son being involved with militants to the Federal Bureau of Investigations two years ago.

The FBI acknowledged it had investigated Rahami in 2014, but found no "ties to terrorism" and dropped its inquiry.

The White House said on Tuesday it appeared that the bombings were "an act of terrorism" as an investigation continued in to whether Rahami had accomplices, or if he picked up militant Islamic views during trips to Afghanistan and Pakistan.

"The investigation is active and ongoing, and it is being investigated as an act of terror," U.S. Attorney General Loretta Lynch said in Lexington, Kentucky.

(Sidebar: this is the same government that did not call the attack on the American embassy in Benghazi an act of terrorism but did not hesitate to legitimise the racist group, Black Lives Matter.)

Typically late to get in front of yet another terrorist act, New Jersey Muslim groups finally condemn bombings. Just the bombings:

Nawaz Sheikh, president of the Muslim Community Center of Union County, says he never knew bombing suspect Ahmad Khan Rahami, though his father, Mohammad, has been a regular at the Elizabeth mosque for years. 

“His father was our member, he attended the mosque on a normal basis,” Sheikh told reporters at a press conference outside Elizabeth City Hall on Tuesday.

Sheikh and several other Muslim leaders from Elizabeth and other parts of New Jersey gathered here to condemn the bombings that took place in New York City and Seaside Park, N.J., over the weekend, and to emphasize that violence is not condoned by the Muslim faith.

“In Elizabeth, which is our city, we don’t have a radical Islamic problem,” said Hassem Abdellah, president of the Darul Islam mosque in Elizabeth. “And we don’t have imams who teach radical Islam. So it was important to us that the country understand that in our city, we have law-abiding Muslims who love America, who serve in the military, who go to schools, who are police officers and law enforcement.”

Related:

Traffic slowed to a crawl and offices emptied across Prince Edward Island Wednesday as parents raced to collect their kids in the wake of province-wide school evacuations triggered by a bomb threat.

"It was kind of nerve-wracking," Morgan McNeill, a student at Holland College, said after being evacuated from the Charlottetown school.

RCMP spokesman Sgt. Kevin Baillie said a fax was sent to Ottawa RCMP Wednesday morning from someone threatening to detonate bombs at several schools. Schools were notified within 10 minutes, he said.

"There's been no threat found. Everybody is safe," said Baillie at a midday news conference.

Late Wednesday afternoon, Mounties said a "comprehensive threat assessment" was undertaken and police are confident the threat was not credible. A statement said physical checks were conducted at every school and the facilities were safe for reopening.

Also:

Forever Wars are the ultimate liberal foreign policy luxury. In an age when Western technology is so dominant that it can support intervention without victory, conflict without imperialistic aims and "absorb" terror, the status quo doesn't have to win, just indulge its moral vanity.

This is why we should grow numb to the ever-growing number of terrorist attacks. Not that terrorism is not an affront to humanity and Western civilisation and not because terrorism costs the lives, freedoms and economies of good people everywhere but because people just don't care themselves, certainly not enough to face the nature of this evil and confront it with the force necessary to stop it in its tracks. It is better, in the post-modern West's view, to refrain from calling out a foe, dismantling an evil ideology and feel secure in its ruination so that the world can live in relative peace and security. Note how the defeat of imperial Japan is still celebrated even though half-witted ideologues decry the use of a massive weapon that brought about the end of the Second World War. Why didn't that fortitude exist when combatting the Chinese-backed North Koreans or the Viet Cong? Weren't their belligerent efforts just as evil? How can a backward and violent ideology like Islamism elicit so much sympathy? How many attacks on Western soil have to happen before people have finally had it?

The truth is that people just don't give a damn and until (or if ever) they do, one had better get used to bombs - real or fake - planted throughout a city or stabbings or shootings and various concessions of the freedoms the West once enjoyed.

Now they'll know what to destroy:

Multaka, Arabic for “meeting place,” is a cultural program designed for and led by refugees. More than 20 trained tour guides from Syria and Iraq conduct tours twice a week in four museums around Berlin. The institutions they visit might showcase Islamic art or artifacts from German history. According to Stefan Weber, director of the Museum of Islamic Art and one of the initiators of the project, guides are usually attracted to pieces they find meaning in.

Mother-of-the-year calls her sons rapists:

When mothers, and women in general, assume that all boys are budding little rapists, then what if, for some, the soft bigotry of deplorable expectations then leads them to own the slander? If we only see them through men's base desires, if being a "good boy" will not absolve them of culpability, then why fight those base desires? Be the monster they expect you to be because the physical satisfaction and the bit of revenge you get out of it is all this crap world has to offer you anyway. It’s a horrid position, but one that has logic to it. Beat a boy down enough, make his life miserable and hopeless, and that just might make some sense to him.

I'm sure the mother thinks she is doing some public good, berating her sons for all men — in public, note, writing under her own name — but really, she is publicly exposing them so she can advertise what a good woman for women she is. She sees her boys as a means to her ends, not full humans with aspirations or autonomy. Hopefully these boys have a grandfather who can intervene on their behalf.

  

Berating a child enough will mould him into the anti-social criminal horrible hags like this woman wish men to be so that their warped word-view may be validated.

Today in "entitled to entitlements":

The Conservatives are accusing the Liberals of “entitlement” and "lining their pockets" after it was revealed they approved more than $1.1 million in relocation costs for staffers.

The figure includes more than $200,000 for two members of the Prime Minister’s Office and Justin Trudeau has so far refused to say who.

MPs Blaine Calkins, Karen Vecchio and Jacques Gourde raised some of the expenses in daily question period Tuesday, stating that:

• Prime Minister Justin Trudeau “gave a whopping $220,000 to five political staff,” including $125,000 to one and $80,000 to another for relocation expenses.
• Foreign Minister Stephane Dion approved $146,000 to relocate nine political staff.
• Environment Minister Catherine McKenna gave “over $20,000 to one of her Liberal staffers for their move,” despite “no costs associated with the actual move.”

Also revealed in the documents, which were released after a request from Conservative MP Larry Miller:

• An employee of Global Affairs expensed nearly $120,000 in costs.
• An employee of Environment and Climate Change expensed nearly $76,000.
• A staffer of Innovation, Science and Economic Development Minister Navdeep Bains expensed nearly $114,000.
• A staffer of Government House Leader Bardish Chagger expensed more than $70,000.
• Some ministers, including Kirsty Duncan (science), John McCallum (immigration) and Harjit Sajjan (national defence), reported no staff relocation costs.

CTV’s Joyce Napier asked Trudeau after his speech at the United Nations to name the staffers in his office who charged more than $200,000. He would not.

“The fact is when we came into office we followed all the rules set up by the previous government in 2008 for relocation expenses for senior public service and ministers’ staff,” Trudeau said.

“We are following the policy as it was laid out by the previous government,” he added.

WRONG!

Prime Minister Stephen Harper has followed through on a campaign promise to introduce a sweeping bill designed to make government more transparent and to crack down on unethical actions.

**

The bill, sponsored by Conservative MP Russ Hiebert and backed strongly by the Prime Minister's Office, gained Senate approval Tuesday and requires unions to publicly disclose any spending of $5,000 or more and any salary of more than $100,000.

Unions will have to provide that information to the Canada Revenue Agency, which would publicly post the information to its website.

**

The First Nations Financial Transparency Act requires that 581 First Nations, defined as an Indian band under the Indian Act, make their audited consolidated financial statements and a Schedule of Remuneration and Expenses of chief and council available to their members as well as publish it on a website.

**

A “very upset” Prime Minister Stephen Harper wants any federal Conservative who is in politics to seek personal gain from public office to get out of his caucus.

Trudeau, on the other hand, is not just a trustifarian big-spender, he promised to over-tax anyone earning over $200,000 (that includes himself) and to scrap the only things that held band chiefs accountable. Think of the loads of cash spent on communications spent already. Isn't it a waste of money to persuade those who didn't vote for the lisping hand-puppet that he is all that?

Cowardly stooge Stephane Dion may sing his praises but there is a reason why the global big-wigs at the UN would rather watch paint dry than hear Trudeau stutter some more stupid platitudes no one cares about. He is pegged as a doofus by China and Russia.

Not even Wynne can catch a break these days as seen in rural Ontario. I guess no one likes high hydro bills yet they seem to vote for the governments that drive them up.

But the Canadian electorate is a glutton for punishment. It will vote in a way that costs it the most money and dignity.





Thank God that he wasn't shot because only guns maim or kill:

A man in his 20s has been rushed to hospital in life-threatening condition after being stabbed multiple times inside the Eaton Centre.

Toronto police say they were called to the shopping mall at 2:20 p.m. Tuesday about reports of someone stabbed inside. 

A source close to the investigation tells CBC News the victim was stabbed six times with a large steak knife and that police have obtained cell phone videos of the incident, recorded by witnesses. The victim was also known to police and had been shot previously, the source said. 

Police say a man suffered multiple stab wounds on the lower level of the mall and began walking. He collapsed shortly afterward and was found near to the spot where he was stabbed.

He has since been transported to St. Michael's Hospital.

Shortly after, officers located a male suspect who was walking north on Yonge Street. He is now in custody and a weapon has been found.

Because Ted Cruz:

At the United Nations today, President Obama took to the podium to once again blame the United States for the woes of the world. He suggested our country is just one of many that need to get beyond the old divisions of nationality. He chided those who would limit the inflow of refugees from nations infiltrated by Islamic terrorists as ignorant bigots, predicted climate change would destroy countries and cause mass conflicts, and referred to Israel as an occupying power.

“Mr. Obama would have done much better to use this opportunity to advance an American agenda, not a global one, and praise our nation as a model of liberty and tolerance. He should have called out oppressive regimes from the Russian Federation to the People’s Republic of China for denying their citizens basic political freedoms. He should have named the 2010 Nobel Peace Laureate Liu Xiaobo, jailed by China for peacefully advocating for reforms, and asked why he has not been freed. He should have challenged our Arab allies to join us in the fight against radical Islamic terrorism, a terrible scourge that threatens our very way of life. And he should have forcefully advocated for our great ally Israel, putting the United Nations on notice that the United States will do everything in our power to stop its serial persecution of Israel in that body, and forcefully prevent any unilateral attempts at statehood by the Palestinians.

“Unfortunately, President Obama chose to deliver a lecture on the need to abdicate our sovereignty in the interests of abstract international norms. Ironically, that is the worst thing America could do for the world, which needs strong leadership to promote peace, not capitulation to an unelected, authoritarian collective.”

 
Did someone say puppy-cam?





And now, the saga of the HMS Terror:

What then was the most likely fate of the crews, and particularly the officers who had a disproportionately higher death rate? Based on the evidence from the search ships, we proposed that the deaths of Franklin’s officers were probably due to non-medical factors such as accidents and injuries sustained when officers took on the dangerous task of hunting for wild game to supplement provisions, and continued the attempt, on foot over difficult terrain in a harsh climate, to discover the route of a north-west passage. Ironically, the expedition’s success in reaching a remote part of the Arctic resulted in entrapment that precluded escape or rescue.

(Merci to all)