On This, A Friday

 THAT is how it is done:

Sam Oosterhoff, a 19-year-old Brock University student, took over 50 per cent of the vote in Niagara West-Glanbrook, a riding that had been held by former Progressive Conservative Leader Tim Hudak since 1995.

“Today we sent a very strong message to Premier (Kathleen) Wynne: people are fed up. People have had enough of soaring hydro rates. People have had enough of cuts to health care,” Oosterhoff said to cheering supporters at his campaign celebration in Grimbsy.

 
When voters tire of the usual gated white L (l)iberals who vote with their snouts in the public trough and their deflective mud-slinging, they'll seek an alternative that is more "inclusive" than one thinks.

Aren't we all Canadians here and not public servants and convenient voters blocks?

I mean - haven't we all had enough of free visas and the subsequent flip-flops about them or the aforementioned gated white L (l)iberals' "not in my backyard" outrage or taxable benefits for me but not for thee?

I guess some people have.





Serbia, you will get nothing out of this. Trust me:

Canada has won the support of Serbia in its bid for a temporary seat on the United Nations Security Council in 2020, even though Canada went to war against it 17 years ago, says the country's foreign minister.

A shocking trend in child abuse:

Doctors say they are seeing a slow, but steady increase in referrals for children as young as three and four displaying “gender non-conforming behaviours” that run a spectrum, from boys dressing in stereotypical “girlish” clothes, or sometimes even pretending to not have a penis by pushing it between their legs, to “gender dysphoria” — psychiatry’s label for the distress that may accompany the “incongruence” or mismatch between “one’s experienced or expressed gender and one’s assigned gender.”

“I’ve had children say, ‘God made a mistake,’ or, ‘when will my penis fall off,’ or ‘when will I grow a penis,’” says Feder. ...

One widely quoted study co-authored by Dr. Kenneth Zucker — the controversial psychologist and sexologist who last year was ousted from his 30-year directorship of the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health’s gender-identity services after an external review concluded that not all his practices, according to CAMH, were “in step with the latest thinking” — reported 80 per cent of children treated for gender dysphoria are no longer happy by high school. They grew to accept the gender they were “assigned” at birth.

Let's be clear about some things.

A boy is a boy and a girl is a girl.

Who determined this?

Nature.

Children often have fanciful ideas about many things. One does not make one's kid don a red suit and mask if he believes that he is Spider-Man.

One can blog about one's cramming drugs and hormones into one's children until one is blue in the face but the kid is going to kill himself, anyway.

Is anyone happy about that?





One could point out that schools should adhere to academics only and one could point out that the ideologically itchy find any hint of belief so noxious that they will toil day and night to stamp it out but it might be better if one stood back and watch this train wreck in progress. Let the parties involved eat each other as they should. This confluence of irritation, hypocrisy and ineffectualism is just one of the banes of society that should disappear overnight and not be heard from again. Teachers are paid generously to teach, there is a Canada and it does have a non-balkanised identity and merely mentioning religion every now and then will not kill one.

Behold the pansy pearls-clutching below:

A Port Alberni mother is taking her local school board to court for forced participation in a spiritual smudging ceremony in her children’s school. 

It’s not the education of indigenous culture that’s the issue — that’s important, there’s still too little of it and we can continue to do better to educate our children about the darkest corners of Canadian history and the bright light of indigenous cultures. The problem is requiring children to participate in a spiritual or religious practice. It’s wrong, plain and simple, and an infringement of their freedom of religion, which also means freedom from religion.

Teaching kids about smudging ceremonies, and giving them the chance to participate in one, is a fine idea. As a fence-sitting agnostic, I have and it was great and calming and I really appreciated the openness of the First Nations community that offered it. But I also have friends who grew up in much more dogmatic households than mine, who would have broken into tears at being asked — nay forced — to do something against their religion. I considered the ceremony more spiritual than religious, but not everyone feels this way, and to suggest it’s not religious is actually an insult to its indigenous culture.

The most infuriating thing about this debate in B.C. isn’t the details of the challenge itself, however, but the maddening knee-jerk left-wing reaction. The argument is less about religious freedom and secularism, but about a mother supposedly trying to “ban indigenous ceremonies in schools,” as a Guardian headline screamed.

The mother isn’t trying to ban the ceremonies. Again, the issue is choice. Creating a prayer room for Muslim students, or ensuring Jewish students can miss class on Yom Kippur, or letting Hindu kids bring in treats on Diwali, are reasonable measures. But just as kids shouldn’t be required to sing religious Christmas carols, nor should they be forced to recite another religion’s prayer or be anointed under its practices. A multicultural society means freedom of religion and balancing competing rights.

Yeah but what about having some muck smeared on your face? Isn't that spiritual?

Focus your outrage. Do or do not. There is no try.





Oh, scorch:

During a press conference overseas yesterday, President Obama tried to explain away Hillary Clinton’s loss, partly pinning the Democrats’ failings on “fake news” being put out there ...

 Where was Obama when the American consulate in Benghazi was being attacked?



Also: this must be embarrassing:

You’ve likely heard about the Muslim woman from the University of Louisiana who claimed two men wearing Trump gear attacked her and stole her wallet and car. She later admitted to fabricating the story.

And this:

The record shows that Energy Transfer Partners, the company building the pipeline, spent years working diligently with federal, state and local officials to route the pipeline safely and with the fewest possible disruptions. The contrast between the protesters' claims and the facts on record is stunning.

Protesters claim that the pipeline was "fast-tracked," denying tribal leaders the opportunity to participate in the process. In fact, project leaders participated in 559 meetings with community leaders, local officials and organizations to listen to concerns and fine-tune the route. The company asked for, and received, a tougher federal permitting process at sites along the Missouri River.

This more difficult procedure included a mandated review of each water crossing's potential effect on historical artifacts and locations.

Protesters claim that the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers failed to consult tribal leaders as required by federal law. The record shows that the corps held 389 meetings with 55 tribes. Corps officials met many times with leaders of the Standing Rock Sioux tribe, which initiated the lawsuit and the protests.

Protesters claim that the Standing Rock Sioux pursued meetings with an unresponsive Army Corps of Engineers. Court records show that the roles in that story were in fact reversed. The corps alerted the tribe to the pipeline permit application in the fall of 2014 and repeatedly requested comments from and meetings with tribal leaders, only to be rebuffed over and over. Tribal leaders ignored requests for comment and canceled meetings multiple times.

In September 2014 alone, the Corps made five unsuccessful attempts to meet with Standing Rock Sioux leaders. The next month, a meeting was arranged, but "when the Corps timely arrived for the meeting, Tribal Chairman David Archambault told them that the conclave had started earlier than planned and had already ended," according to a federal judge.

At a planned meeting the next month, the tribe took the pipeline off the agenda and refused to discuss it. This stonewalling by tribal leaders continued for a year and a half.

 And:

If Trump is a hater, then voting for him is a hate crime. So, if you de-normalize Trump, you de-normalize the millions of your fellow citizens who voted for him. And, if you de-normalize his voters, you de-legitimize their votes. And, if you de-legitimize their votes, you de-legitimize the very idea of representative government.

And, if you lead a generation of young Americans down that dark road, you more or less guarantee that argument and Parliament and politics will be succeeded by fisticuffs and terror and horrible consuming violence .

Trust the party of unspeakable evil to go full Khmer Rouge after their name-calling and safety pin wearing had no effect.

What the wetted pants crowd still isn't getting is that the above sort of thing forces the pendulum the other way.

Get a clue, guys.




 
Are there still people who believe that Putin is not an autocrat?

Putin is setting up a team to ensure he wins a fourth term with a wide margin in 2018, according to five people close to the process. The effort is led by former nuclear-power chief Sergei Kiriyenko, who was appointed last month as the Kremlin’s head of domestic politics and is expected to lead the campaign when it’s announced publicly, probably late next year, said one of the people, all of whom asked not to be identified to discuss confidential deliberations.

Putin is laying the groundwork for his third decade in power. Kiriyenko’s mandate goes beyond the elections, according to the people who’ve discussed it with him. It includes shaking off some of the conservatism that’s permeated the political system in recent years and to do that without threatening stability. That makes his appointment part of Putin’s drive to bring in new generation of top officials.

Also: what the tyrant meant to say is that Cuba will only change if he and his living skeleton dictator brother are swallowed whole by the ground below and find themselves in hell:

Cuban President Raul Castro, the younger brother of legendary Cuban leader Fidel Castro, warned that others have gone through reforms too quickly without regard to the needs of the people, leaving their citizens jobless.

**

The “Mean Salary in Figures” report for 2012, published by Cuba’s National Statistics and Information Bureau (ONEI) this past June, reveals that the current average salary of Cubans is 466 pesos (CUP) a month.

This is roughly the equivalent of 20 CUC (US $22), the hard currency which affords Cubans any real purchasing power on the island (though no State employee is paid in it).

 
Should South Korea nuclearise?

Oh, hell, yes!

"Immediate denuclearization is hard to achieve," Zheng Jiyong, associate professor of Fudan University, said during a seminar held at Ajou University in Suwon, south of Seoul, "Efforts need to be made to freeze (its nuclear weapons) and prevent its proliferation or upgrade."

   Zheng, who also serves as head of the Center for Korean Studies at the university, said that sanctions have "failed" to prevent the North from getting its hands on nuclear weapons and that further preventative efforts will be "meaningless."

   "It would be better to communicate. In other words, it would be better to accept the nuclear reality (that the North has its own nuclear weapons) and try to induce the North to give them up," he said.

"While pursuing denuclearization in the long term, it is necessary to deal with the North's nuclear weapons in the short term by freezing them, preventing their proliferation or upgrading," he added.

He, meanwhile, took issue with the current nuclear nonproliferation scheme, saying that it has "defects" and "double standards" that hurt fairness and cause more countries to develop their own nuclear weapons.

He also drew attention to a possible nuclear "domino effect" in the Asian region, calling for more efforts to draw up new strategies for the nuclear weaponization era going forward.

"It is U.S. pressure that has prevented the nuclear domino effect from taking place here despite the relatively low entry barrier, with South Korea and Japan already having the necessary technology," he said.

Why would a North Korean nuclear state be preferable to a South Korean one?

Oh, yes - because China  - which has kept the two Koreas separate and killed millions of citizens on either side - said so.

South Korea, are you a tiger to this paper dragon?


(Kamsahamnida)





Proof that Japan is not mad:

Three years after leaving his home in Aleppo to seek safety from Syria’s ongoing civil war, Ismael, an asylum seeker in Japan, feels life has not changed for the better.

Being denied refugee status and unable to unite with his family, the 30-year-old, who withheld his full name due to safety concerns, said he feels like he is walking in an endless “darkness,” while scraping by with a low-paid part-time job instead of his former profession as a car mechanic.

“My home is destroyed and I have nowhere to return. Every day, I feel like I (will) go insane,” Ismael said, his voice shaking.

“I want to hear the voices of my wife and two kids. I want to live with them,” he said of his family, who live in a refugee camp in Turkey.

Ismael was granted permission to stay in Japan for a year on humanitarian grounds, which allows him to legally work, after his refugee application was turned down.

But unlike officially recognized refugees, it is almost impossible for him to invite his family to Japan apart from “extremely rare cases” made possible with diplomatic efforts of lawmakers and support groups.

Perhaps Japan is just being cautious.  The Austrians let in all manner of "refugees" and they end up beating girls who don't wear hijabs.





And now, a polar bear petting a dog: