For a Friday

Just in time for the week-end ...



Sweden - the same country that mocked Trump's comments on uncontrolled immigration,  where the Muslim Brotherhood has set up shop, where sexual assaults take place almost anywhere, and where feminists flee to less rape-filled climes - is now in a state of alert after a "lone wolf" plowed a truck into a shopping area and killed four people:

A truck plowed into a crowd on a shopping street and crashed into a department store in central Stockholm on Friday, killing four people and wounding 15 in what the prime minister said appeared to be a terrorist attack.

Swedish police said they had arrested one person after earlier circulating a picture of a man wearing a grey hoodie. They did not rule out the possibility other attackers were involved.

"We have a person who is arrested who may have connections to the event in Stockholm earlier today," police spokesperson Towe Hagg said.

There was no immediate claim of responsibility.

"I turned around and saw a big truck coming toward me. It swerved from side to side. It didn't look out of control, it was trying to hit people," Glen Foran, an Australian tourist in his 40s, told Reuters.

"It hit people, it was terrible. It hit a pram with a kid in it, demolished it," he said.

 
The standard apologies on behalf of the Swedish people and candlelight services are forthcoming.

Some liquid courage for you to face the rest of the day, Sweden.

Livid that Trump destroyed a Syrian base (where Obama would have drawn red lines, perhaps in crayon), despite being warned, Putin unleashes his measured post-Soviet wrath:

Russia condemned the U.S. missile strike on a Syrian air base in response to this week’s chemical attack as “aggression” and suspended crucial co-ordination with Washington in Syria’s congested skies. The country’s ministry of defence also announced plans to send a warship to the eastern Mediterranean, according to the Telegraph.

“To protect key Syrian infrastructure a range of measures will be taken reinforce and improve the effectiveness of the Syrian armed forces air defence,” the ministry said in a statement.

The overnight missile attack, which marked the first time the U.S. has directly targeted Syrian President Bashar Assad’s forces, was condemned by his allies in Russia and Iran but welcomed by the Syrian opposition and its supporters, who expressed hope it signalled a turning point in the devastating six-year-old civil war.

The Kremlin said President Vladimir Putin believes the U.S. strike is an “aggression against a sovereign state in violation of international law.” Spokesman Dmitry Peskov said Putin believes the U.S. launched the strikes under a “far-fetched pretext.”

(Sidebar: says the Supreme Annexer.)

Had Assad poisoned his own people, it was - perhaps - to avoid what he sees as further treachery. He, Putin and Iran can pick the carcass that was Syria clean whenever they like.


What is Canada doing? Throwing more money at that carcass. Trudeau already has a big enough voters block.

Imagine the money as parkas, Syria.


Also:

U.S. intelligence officials also believe North Korea has links to the Syrian Scientific Studies and Research Center, which the New York Times calls Syria’s “main research center for work on biological and chemical weapons.”

Although North Korea’s support for Syria’s chemical weapons programs predates the Syrian Civil war, Bruce Bechtol has described how it increased during the war. Other reports have alleged that North Koreans have been present in Syria during the civil war, where they have advised Assad’s army in a number of ways, including by helping it operate vacuum dryers used to dry liquid chemical agents and the SCUD missiles that are sometimes used to deliver those agents.

In Idlib, the murder weapon was probably sarin, another nerve agent North Korea is believed to possess in quantity, but which Syria most likely produced domestically with North Korean technical assistance. If Assad was the murderer of Idlib, then, Kim Jong-un was likely an accessory.

 
It's past due for a coup in North Korea.


(Kamsahamnida)




A woman who jumped into the Thames to avoid being killed by Khalid Masood has died:

A 31-year-old woman who fell into the River Thames during the London terror attack has died, London police said Friday.

Andreea Cristea and her boyfriend Andrei Burnaz were crossing Westminster Bridge on March 22 when the British attacker Khalid Masood plowed his rental car through a throng of terrified pedestrians.

Her death brings the number of victims who died from the attack to five. Masood was fatally shot by officers outside of the Houses of Parliament.

Cristea, an architect who was visiting London from her native Romania, fell into the Thames during the deadly rampage that saw Masood’s vehicle mount the sidewalk and reach speeds of 100 km/h. 

She was pulled out of the river alive and rushed to hospital where she was diagnosed with a blood clot on the brain. She died Thursday afternoon after her life support was withdrawn.

A leftist think-tank attempts to sum up Canadians' attitude towards Trump as antipathetic:

Half of Canadians think Justin Trudeau isn’t doing so well dealing with Donald Trump, says a Broadbent Institute poll released Friday.

Four out of five Canadians feel income inequality is growing, and most are unhappy with policy ideas that would likely align Canada with Trump’s prospective policies, results say.

“The notion that the federal government would align policy or chicken out from the best possible policy because they’re worried that somehow that would run afoul of Trump’s agenda — that’s just not on with Canadians,” said executive director Rick Smith, who is heading up the institute’s Progress Summit, a gathering of about 1,000 progressives in Ottawa this week.

A large majority of Canadians, 77 per cent, have negative opinions of the U.S. president. On issues that “affect Canada and the global community,” only 15 per cent of Canadians think he’s doing a good or excellent job.

A full two-thirds characterized Trump as “a perpetual liar” and 75 per cent report being “pessimistic and worried” about his four-year term.

Only 49 per cent of Canadians surveyed think Trudeau is doing a “good” or “excellent” job dealing with Trump so far, the remainder saying his performance has been “only fair,” “poor” or “terrible.” 

Still, about 60 per cent say they’re either very or moderately confident that the Canadian government can “effectively represent Canada’s interests in future dealings with the Trump administration.”

You don't speak for anyone, leftist hydra.

"We know what's best for you."

A moral case for tax reform? How about term limits for the money-grubbing, inept thieves in Parliament and a referendum on how low politicians' pensions can go?

At the Fraser Institute and among others seeking lower tax rates, the argument is framed as an economic one. Lower rates, especially top marginal rates, would produce more growth and better jobs. Lower taxes and other reforms will help the economy. “A tax reform plan that improves incentives to work, save, invest and undertake entrepreneurial activities can help enhance economic growth,” write Fraser’s Charles Lammam and Niels Veldhuis in the 100^th anniversary booklet.

Studies show that to be true, but economic arguments alone seem to wash over the heads of most people. Taxes, especially income taxes, should be a moral issue.

William Watson, in one of his Fraser essays, noted that the income tax was introduced in part as a moral equivalent of conscription. In 1917, to fight World War I, the federal government began conscripting thousands of young Canadian men into the military to send to Europe. The policy was rightly seen by many as unfair and morally abhorrent, but rather than stop conscription, the government brought in what Watson calls the conscription of wealth. “If young men were to be conscripted, wealth should be too.”

The government, to fix one wrong, brought in another wrong. Later, however, when military conscription was ended, the other wealth conscription continued and expanded in all directions.

The economic case for lower taxes and less wealth conscription may be strong. But that case will remain a hard sell so long as the moral case is not even being made.

Why should someone else get their hands dirty for "dignity"?

Bill 84 is the Ontario government’s proposed legislation designed to implement Ottawa’s law on medically assisted dying.

It ignores the conscience rights of doctors like myself, who oppose euthanasia on ethical grounds and, in its current form, will decrease public access to palliative care.

In 2015, the College of Physicians and Surgeons of Ontario changed its human rights policy to say doctors who oppose euthanasia must refer their patients who want to be considered for it to another doctor to carry out.

Doctors like myself argue this provision — known as effective referral — involves us in the euthanasia process against our will.

This despite the fact the federal law encourages provincial legislation to uphold the conscience rights of doctors.

Every other jurisdiction in the world that offers euthanasia to patients — including the other Canadian provinces — protects the conscience rights of doctors.

Every major religion and even secular humanist organizations have denounced effective referrals.

The Canadian, American, and Ontario Medical Associations all say they are unnecessary.

And yet one Ontario university medical school is already screening candidates’ views on euthanasia in their interview process — a discriminatory filtering practice.

Isn’t freedom of conscience enshrined in the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms?

(Sidebar: it's the stupid Charter.)




THANK YOU!

I have had as much as I can take for a while of the belligerent atheists who come crackling through the Internet assuming the airs of prosecutors, declaring ex cathedra that any suggestion of the existence of a supernatural force or that anything is not explicable by applied human ingenuity is medieval superstition. They have a trite little formula that they don’t have to prove the existence of anything and so have the high ground in any argument and then lapse into Hitchensesque infantilistic mockery about pink-winged little men in the clouds. They are repetitive and obnoxious and their fervour betrays the vacuity of their position. I am declaring a moratorium for a month or so on trying to reason with these self-exalted champions of reason.

Because there was so much misunderstanding and overwrought, misplaced hysteria from some readers, I will wind this up by restating key points with mind-numbing simplicity. We have no idea how the universe, or any version of the life and context we know, originated. We have no idea of the infinite, of what was before the beginning or is beyond any spatial limits we can imagine, even with the great exploratory progress of science. Miracles sometime occur and people do sometimes have completely inexplicable insights that are generally described as spiritual. No sane and somewhat experienced person disputes any of this. But there is a cyber-vigilante squad of atheist banshees that swarm like bats over such comments and are hyperactive philistines better responded to with pest control measures than logical argument. ...

As atheists renounce the roots of our civilization, they are troublesome passengers, and are apt to be less integral defenders of the West in time of challenge. They often dissent so uniformly and strenuously from any theistic notions that they have effectively established a third force that enjoys the society Judeo-Christianity has created while despising Judeo-Christianity and also purporting, generally, to despise the succession of dangerous adversaries that have threatened Judeo-Christianity, including Nazism, international Communism, and radical Islam.

There is nothing more arrogant than some militant faceless handle whose online smug can be felt kilometres away.

You are not clever, you are not insightful, you have no answers and no one thanks you for getting rid of Christmas.

Add to the debate or bugger off.




His name is Sir Michael Caine and he doesn't owe anyone a damn thing:

Esteemed British actor Michael Caine revealed this week that he voted for the controversial Brexit late last year for “freedom.”

In an interview with Sky News, the actor said, “I voted for Brexit. What it is with me, I’d rather be a poor master than a rich servant. It wasn’t about the racism, immigrants or anything, it was about freedom.”

“Politics is always chaotic,” he added. “In politics, you’re always going into areas you’ve never been before, so you’re going to get lost and then you’re going to find your way, and then it’ll be all right.”

And now, things you might not have known about Billie Holiday:

In 1999, Time Magazine named Holiday’s original studio recording of “Strange Fruit,” a 1939 protest song against lynching that was originally written as a poem by Abel Meeropol, the “song of the century.” The song is also part of The Library of Congress’ National Recording Registry and has been covered by various other artists, including Herbie Hancock and Nina Simone.