Friday Post

Here comes the week-end...



French Prime Minister Manuel Valls once said:

“The times have changed, and France is going to have to live with terrorism.”

Case in point:

Paris was plunged into panic Friday — again — when soldiers guarding the Louvre Museum shot an attacker who lunged at them with a machete and shouted “Allahu Akbar!” as the historic landmark went into lockdown.

It's almost as if this incident validates vetting migrants.


Also:

More than 300 foreign terrorists, spies and criminals who pose a risk to Canada’s national security tried to sneak into Canada last year, according to a report quietly released by the federal government on Monday.

It outlines all visa applications rejected between November 2015 and December 2016, and the grounds for refusal.

There were 310 cases where an individual was found inadmissible under Section 34 of the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act (IRPA) — the section dealing with national security concerns.

Among these 310 were seven individuals rejected for “engaging in terrorism,” nine for “engaging in an act of espionage or subversion,” and 13 for “subversion by force” against any government.

Another 79 were found to be a member of an organization that engages in terrorism or espionage, 26 to be a “danger to the security of Canada,” and 48 were stopped for having committed a war crime or crimes against humanity.

More on the Quebec City mosque attack that many would like to remain opaque.




Where were protesters? Nowhere:

The Catholic Archbishop of Erbil has denounced the hypocrisy of those protesting President Trump’s recent executive order on immigration, wondering aloud where all of the demonstrators were when Islamic State fighters were slaughtering Christians and other minorities in the Middle East.

Only voters blocks get attention, Your Excellency. 





Arrogance? That is barely the tip of the iceberg. It's more like self-deification:

In another slip of her terribly condescending tongue — yet again proving she either is completely out of touch with the common man or says whatever is on her mind without thinking (perhaps both) — Sandals also offered up her premise that GO Train riders don’t have the business cred to run corporations worth gazillions of dollars.

Evidently, as she claimed, one has to be exceptionally talented to be in “exceptional positions” — like the senior brass at OPG looking for $8 million in raises or Metrolinx CEO Bruce McCuaig thinking his “exceptional talents” (said tongue in cheek) are deserving of a neat little $118,000 top-up.

Now I’m not sure when Sandals last rode the GO Train and actually surveyed who takes it (cue her chauffeur-driven limo here) but if I were her I’d be the last one to talk about business cred, or to question the credentials of GO Transit riders.

After all, this is the same Sandals who as education minister coined the phrase “net zero” to try to trick Ontario taxpayers into thinking the deals with her “friends” in Ontario’s teachers’ unions would not cost us one dime extra because they’d be offset by so-called savings that never made sense to anyone.

I would consider a fruit basket, Mr. Trump:

President Donald Trump dispatched two top advisers to reassure Australia’s ambassador of American support for a decades-old alliance, a day after reports of his criticism of a refugee resettlement deal in a heated phone call.

Trump’s Chief of Staff Reince Priebus and senior adviser Steve Bannon expressed the president’s admiration for the Australian people during the meeting with envoy Joe Hockey, according to a White House official.

Trump’s move comes after he blasted the plan for the U.S. to resettle more than 1,000 refugees being held by Australia in offshore camps, an arrangement that was negotiated by his predecessor Barack Obama and current Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull. In a late night tweet, Trump slammed it as a “dumb deal.”

 
Malcolm Turnbull might want to re-evaluate how his country treats illegal immigrants and who it lets in. Passing off illegal immigrants to another country isn't exactly dealing with the problem.




Leftists' emotional retardation is the reason why the only way they can communicate is with froth and thuggery:

As the gathered crowd got more agitated, masked ‘black bloc’ activists began hurling projectiles including bricks, lit fireworks and rocks at the building and police. Some used police barriers as battering rams to attack the doors of the venue, breaching at least one of the doors and entering the venue on the first floor.” 

Now what do we call it when people in black uniforms and face masks storm a speaking venue, assault attendees, light fires and throw bricks at police with the express purpose of shutting down a speech? Would “fascist” work for you? In this context, and remembering it is a university campus where this outrage was perpetrated, I think fascist will serve quite nicely. ...

Righteousness staggers the angry mind. The rioters presented the “argument” that Yiannopoulos’s (aborted) talk was an act of violence, while ever so superciliously they maintained that their acts of violence were free speech.  One pureblood nitwit at the event whined that it wasn’t Milo’s talk, per se, that triggered her, but that she feared that in some future class she might unwittingly be sitting next to someone who had attended it. (Does Berkeley have an entrance exam? Does it require baying at the moon?)

When people tire of these violent pantomimes, will the thugs be jolted by a reaction not borne of trepidation?

De-fund the university. Take photos of the offending parties. Expel them. Get them to roll on their backers (like, they do this for free). Put this thuggery on their permanent records.




Yet another purge in North Korea:

North Korea fired its state security minister last month, presumably over corruption, abuse of power and torture committed by his agency, the government of rival South Korea said Friday.

The sacking of Kim Won Hong, who had been seen as close to leader Kim Jong Un, might cause instability in the country’s leadership by causing more fear in the ruling elite, said Jeong Joon Hee, spokesman for Seoul’s Unification Ministry. North Korea has not said anything about Kim Wong Hong, and Jeong did not say how South Korea obtained the information.

With all of these purges, Thae Yong-Ho's prediction might be correct.


Also:

U.S. Defence Secretary Jim Mattis on Friday reassured two key U.S. treaty allies, South Korea and Japan, that President Donald Trump, who has raised doubts about the value of such partnerships, is fully committed to defending them.

“I want there to be no misunderstanding during the transition in Washington that we stand firmly, 100 per cent shoulder-to-shoulder with you and the Japanese people,” Mattis told Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe.

Earlier in the day, in Seoul, with his South Korean counterpart, Han Min Koo, at his side, Mattis said, “the United States stands by its commitments, and we stand with our allies, the South Korean people.” He also explicitly warned North Korea against using a nuclear weapon, saying such an act would be met with a response that is “effective and overwhelming.”

 
A Yazidi boy has been reunited with his family:

His name was Ayman, but the couple who brought the boy home to their Iraqi village after buying him for $500 called him Ahmed.

Islamic State militants had killed or enslaved Ayman’s parents in their purge of the Yazidi religious minority to which he belongs, then sold the 4-year-old to Umm and Abu Ahmed, who are Muslims.

For the 18 months he lived with the couple, his relatives assumed he was dead, one of several thousand Yazidis who have been missing since the militants overran their homes in what the United Nations has called genocide.

When Iraqi forces retook east Mosul and the surrounding area last week, they found Ayman and returned him to what is left of his family. While their reunion was full of joy, breaking the bond between Ayman and his adoptive parents brought new sorrow. ...

It was Umm Ahmed’s idea to adopt a child. The couple had no children, and she heard Islamic State was selling orphans in the town of Tel Afar, some 40 km (25 miles) to the west.

“My objective was to win favor (with God),” said Umm Ahmed, only her eyes showing in a gap in her black veil. “To be honest, I wanted to teach him my religion, Islam.”

Her husband, a government employee, was against the idea but could not dissuade his wife, who went alone to get the boy from an orphanage run by the militants, paying for him with her earnings as a teacher.

Although the boy cried and did not want to go with her, she coaxed him, saying: “Come, you will be my child. We will live together and I will buy you everything.”

 
I think it is sorrowful that his family was killed and he was bought like a piece of meat.




And now, some music for a Friday. Enjoy.