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: