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)