Sunday Post

Yon wine-making for the autumn...

The story so far...


What is clearly a terrorist attack in the heart of swanky Manhattan has injured twenty-nine people:

Investigators scrambled to find out who planted a bomb that rocked a bustling New York City neighbourhood and why Sunday, scouring shrapnel, forensic traces and surveillance video for any link to an unexploded pressure-cooker device found a few blocks away.

There seemed to be more questions than answers hours after the Saturday night blast that injured 29 people in Manhattan. All of them have since been released from the hospital.

 
Let the denials commence.

It's not like platitude-spewing hash-taggers care about confronting the problem of terrorism head-on or anything.





Of course he does:

Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, speaking days after a Canadian man was released from prison in China, said on Saturday there was "tremendous potential" for stronger and more stable ties with the Asian country.

China has a permanent seat on the UN Security Council (a seat Trudeau desperately wants) which it has used to shield North Korea from the consequences of its actions.

Aside from its own abuses of human rights, China is also complicit in violations of human rights against North Korean defectors.

A ruling in favour of the Philippines has not stopped China's aggression in the South China Seas.

China's currency-fixing has cost millions of jobs and devalued the dollar.

China's newer venture of industrial and economic espionage is a threat as injurious as sending jobs overseas.

Even the deal with Alibaba is so one-sided that it will dwarf and then crush Canadian small businesses while allowing China to increase its hold of the Canadian market.

Trudeau wants stronger ties with that China.





Carbon nor its by-product, carbon dioxide, is not a pollutant.

Australia got rid of its carbon taxes because they were ineffective, expensive and unfair.

Carbon taxes increase the cost of living which will make things harder for lower-income individuals and families.

And yet, the Liberal government will foist a carbon tax on the public:

Canada will impose a carbon price on provinces that do not adequately regulate emissions by themselves, Environment Minister Catherine McKenna said on Sunday without giving details on how the Liberal government will do so. 

Because they voted for it.


Also:

When pushed on the fact that bills are going up faster and higher than this 8 per cent, Wynne defended not only the price increases but her justification for those increases which is of course the need to “invest” in more green energy infrastructure.

She even hinted that more increases would come.

Bottom line?

This is only a temporary measure that will reduce bills in the short term.

But... but... gun laws!

A manhunt was underway late Thursday after two people were injured during a shooting inside a busy shopping mall in Grande Prairie, Alta.

At least the Americans don't thumb their noses at others regarding their gun-related civilian-on-cop crime.










US strikes on Syrian soldiers threaten an American-Russian brokered ceasefire:

Moscow stepped up its war of words with Washington on Sunday, saying air strikes by a U.S.-led coalition on the Syrian army threatened the implementation of a U.S.-Russian ceasefire plan for Syria and bordered on connivance with Islamic State.

The diplomatic row heated up on the last day of a seven-day ceasefire marred by a surge of violence as warplanes hit the strategic northern city of Aleppo for the first time since the truce came into effect.

On Saturday, the Russian defense ministry said U.S. jets had killed more than 60 Syrian soldiers in the eastern Syrian city of Deir al-Zor in four air strikes by two F-16 and two A-10 fighter jets coming from the direction of Iraq.

Syria's U.N. Ambassador Bashar Ja'afari charged that U.S.-led strikes were aimed at torpedoing the ceasefire, but France's foreign minister, speaking in New York, placed the main blame for truce violations on the government of President Bashar al Assad.

 

I'm sure Obama didn't mean to do that.

Can't he just transmit his apologies?


And:

Syria shot two surface-to-air missiles at Israeli jets—and they shot at the Israeli jets not even over their own air space.

These were not errant missiles or spillover shots which is military parlance for mistakes. These missiles were calculated and intentionally targeted shots from an S-200 Russian missile system aimed at Israeli jets that were, quite frankly, targeting Syrian rocket launchers.

This is a major change in Syrian engagement. It could signal an escalation of tensions between Israel and Syria, especially because three mortars were shot from Syria into Israel later that day.

The reason Syria feels it can engage Israel is very clear. One word—Russia. Syrian leadership believes that Russia will protect them from Israel.

 
I'm sure Israel is re-thinking its relationship with Russia now.



Also:

Russia's ruling party on Sunday looked set to dominate a new parliament made up of Kremlin loyalists after a state exit poll gave it almost 45 percent in nationwide elections.

Russian state pollster VTsIOM put President Vladimir Putin's United Russia on 44.5 percent, ahead of the ultra-nationalist Liberal Democratic Party on 15.3 percent, the Communists on 14.9 and A Just Russia on 8.1.

Putin captured over sixty-three percent of the vote in the 2012 elections.

Term limits aren't things that Putin takes seriously.

It's like stacking a committee with people who agree with you and then denying the average voter the right to vote in a referendum.





And now, photos taken by twenty-two finalists for the 2016's Weather Photographer of the Year Contest. Enjoy: