Mid-Week Post

 

 
Your middle-of-the-week fun ...



A woman in Saskatchewan is charged with human smuggling:

Canadian police on Wednesday said they charged a woman with human smuggling offences in connection with the asylum seekers who have been streaming over the border from the United States in growing numbers in recent months.

Royal Canadian Mounted Police they intercepted a 43-year-old woman driving nine people across the U.S. border into the prairie province of Saskatchewan on Friday night. All of the asylum seekers are from West Africa but police would not give their nationalities, genders or ages.

The increasing flow of hundreds of asylum seekers of African and Middle Eastern origin from the United States in recent months is becoming a contentious issue in Canada.

The RCMP has intercepted more than 1,100 people walking into Canada in the first two months of 2017.

Michelle Omoruyi, 43, was charged with one count each of human smuggling and conspiracy to commit human smuggling.

The nine people were the first intercepted in connection with alleged human smuggling, the RCMP said on Wednesday. They were transferred to the Canada Border Services Agency, processed and released. They have filed refugee claims and are living in Canada while they wait for their claims to be decided, police said.

Refugee advocates have said Canada's policy to turn back people if they make refugee claims at border crossings - a provision of the Canada-U.S. Safe Third Country Agreement - increases the problem of human smuggling and unlawful border crossings.

  
But ... but ... we were just letting them in! Canadians love illegal immigrants! Why would we exploit them? WHY?!


Also:

When Conservative MP Michelle Rempel voiced concerns over the illegal crossings, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s top political aide (and best friend) Gerald Butts mocked her.

(Sidebar: this is the same MP who embarrassed Trudeau into taking in a minuscule amount of Yazidis, anyone who hasn't been raped and murdered by ISIS.)

He tweeted that her remarks “would not age well,” shaming her and implying she would come to regret speaking out against illegal immigration from the U.S.

Butts’ tweet is a window into the mind of the Liberal government.

Butts arrogantly condemns an MP for speaking out against open borders, while naively claiming she is the one who is out of touch with Canadian sentiment.

Trudeau and his team may be bleeding-heart liberals, but most Canadians take a more level-headed approach.

A recent Angus Reid poll found 75% of Canadians believe public safety and security should take precedence over providing aid to these asylum seekers.

The Trudeau government’s apparent denial of this problem starts at the top, and the mindset has made its way through the ranks.

The RCMP recently announced it would no longer provide updates about the number of illegal crossings through a popular entryway in Emerson, Manitoba.

“The RCMP will no longer be releasing weekly numbers,” an RCMP spokesman told the CBC, “as we are looking at providing a more consolidated approach.”

Transparency and a “consolidated approach” to law enforcement are not mutually exclusive.

Since the department of Citizenship and Immigration is required by law to publish this information, our officials can only keep us in the dark for so long.

Because the Liberals are lying sacks of crap. That's why the opacity.


And:

Over a recent one-month stretch, three people intercepted by RCMP while crossing into Canada on foot near Emerson, Man., were detained because they were found to be a danger to the public, Canada Border Services Agency officials say.

Mock that one, Butts.





Do you know who else were Sikh nationalists? The people who took down Air India 182:

Defence Minister Harjit Sajjan’s visit to his native India this week has run into controversy after one of the country’s political leaders accused him of being a Sikh nationalist.

Amarinder Singh, the top elected official in India’s Punjab province, where Sajjan was born, made the explosive accusation in an interview on Indian TV in advance of Sajjan’s trip.

In the interview, Singh expressed anger over not being allowed to speak at political rallies in Canada last year before calling Sajjan and the other Sikh members of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s cabinet “Khalistanis.”

“I’m not going to meet him,” Singh said. “There are five ministers who are Khalistanis and I am not interested in meeting any Khalistanis.”

The Khalistani movement is comprised of Sikhs who want to create an independent homeland and became synonymous with a wave of violence that swept across India in the 1980s.

Authorities believe Khalistani extremists were also responsible for the Air India bombing, the worst terrorist attack in Canadian history, which killed 329 people in 1985.

Don't take sides. Watch the train wreck:

Another day, another disappointment for Bill McKibben. The eco-activist, author and co-founder of the anti-carbon lobby group 350.org, confessed Monday that he’s been let down yet again, this time by our own prime minister, Justin Trudeau. Worse, McKibben wrote in the U.K.’s Guardian, Trudeau has proven himself to be phonier than even Donald Trump. The Liberals must be mortified.

McKibben’s been left disillusioned before by politicians who claim they’re climate leaders but then fail to commit to the full-blown economic Seppuku that would be required to “decarbonize,” by shutting down oil and gas exploration and production. At least Trump admits he doesn’t buy into the carbon-climate panic, McKibben notes. And he long ago pegged Stephen Harper’s government as a “wholly owned subsidiary of the fossil fuel industry.”

But Trudeau’s pulled a “scam,” McKibben grouses. He’s “cute,” and a master at the “politics of inclusion” with his compassion for immigrants and his flamboyant male feminism, but such matters mean so little compared to “the defining issue of our day” — climate change. And on that file, he insists, Trudeau is as big a heel as they come.

Trudeau is “hard at work pushing for new pipelines through Canada and the US to carry yet more oil out of Alberta’s tar sands, which is one of the greatest climate disasters on the planet,” McKibben gripes. The prime minister, he notes, told an international oil conference last month that “No country would find 173-billion barrels of oil in the ground and just leave them there,” but that’s exactly what McKibben expects us to do.

Give this man a Kewpie Doll!

Conservative leadership candidate Andrew Scheer says universities should lose federal funding if they fail to protect freedom of speech on campus.

Your prize, sir.

Oh, dear. PM Hair-Boy needs to put on the big-boy pants:

U.S. President Donald Trump promised on Tuesday to defend American dairy farmers who have been hurt by Canada’s protectionist trade practices, during a visit to the cheese-making state of Wisconsin.

Canada's dairy sector is protected by high tariffs on imported products and controls on domestic production as a means of supporting prices that farmers receive. It is frequently criticized by other dairy-producing countries.

"We're also going to stand up for our dairy farmers," Trump said in Kenosha, Wisconsin. "Because in Canada some very unfair things have happened to our dairy farmers and others."

Trump did not detail his concerns, but promised his administration would call the government of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and demand an explanation.

"It's another typical one-sided deal against the United States and it's not going to be happening for long," Trump said.

 

Even Australia and New Zealand agree with Trump:

But dairy industry leaders in Australia and New Zealand said on Wednesday they would support any move by the United States to draw the WTO into the trade dispute.

"I don't expect there would be many countries that would do anything other than support a WTO action against Canada," said Australian Dairy Farmers interim Chief Executive John McQueen.

Malcolm Bailey, chairman of the Dairy Companies Association of New Zealand, said his organization was working with his foreign ministry to gather information for a possible WTO complaint.

O Dio...





The Edmonton Catholic School Board wants all students attending public schools to be vaccinated:

The Edmonton Catholic school board is calling on the province to make vaccines mandatory for all students attending publicly funded schools in Alberta.

Trustees with Edmonton Catholic Schools voted unanimously Tuesday to ask the Alberta School Boards Association to join them as they lobby the government to make the legislative change. 

On Wednesday, however, the government said it had no plans to reopen a debate on mandatory vaccinations in the classroom.

Education Minister David Eggen said the government's own newly developed regulations are strong enough to protect students without necessarily forcing vaccines on students or forcing students out of schools.

"I think that our policy is probably reasonable and strong and we don't want to expel kids because their parents aren't vaccinating them," Eggen said. 

(Sidebar: this is the same man who has no problem violating students' privacy.)

 

Trustee Marilyn Bergstra, who introduced the motion, wants to see students immunized against diphtheria, tetanus, polio, measles, mumps and rubella. 

Bergstra said there is a "reduced appetite" among some parents to vaccinate their children. 

"As we're decreasing vaccination rates in the developed world, we're seeing increased outbreaks," she said.

Give Big Gay exactly what it wants except the funding. Surely everyone will chip in. With whatever money they raise at the S-and-M bake sale, they can erect cement barricades to keep out those fast-driving "lone wolves" Europe has seen a lot of recently:

The union representing Toronto’s police officers is urging the city to pull an annual grant to Canada’s largest Pride parade after the event banned police floats.

In an open letter released by the union Wednesday, a committee representing LGBTQ officers in the force said it would be unacceptable for the city to give the roughly $260,000 grant to an event that excludes certain municipal employees.

The committee said officers would feel completely devalued and unsupported by the city if the funding continued.

Whatever, you enormous pansy:

Marc Porlier, 43, is charged with arson and mischief in the fire at St. John the Evangelist Catholic Church. The fire burned one room and caused smoke damage throughout the building before it extinguished itself, sometime before 8 a.m. Sunday. The church’s priest, Andrew Materak, said surveillance cameras caught the arson on film. They show a man breaking a window and pouring a flammable liquid into the sacristy, the room where the priest prepares for mass.

Police recount the glee with which a man murdered three others in Fresno:

The black gunman suspected of killing three white men in a racially motivated attack in Fresno was proud of what he had done and laughed many times as he explained his actions in interviews with police, authorities said Wednesday.

After Kori Ali Muhammad learned that he was wanted in the death of a security guard last week, he decided to take out as many other white men as possible before he was caught, Fresno Police Chief Jerry Dyer said.

"That's what he set out to do that day. He said he did not like white men and said white people were responsible for keeping black people down," Dyer said.

Muhammad "is not a terrorist but he is a racist," Dyer said.

(Sidebar: I would say that it is pretty terrifying to be tracked down and killed.) 

Consider this:

And with Seoul and its 10 million residents just 56 km south of the border — well within North Korea’s artillery range — any eruption of hostilities could have devastating human and economic costs. That’s why the North Korean dynasty founded by Kim Il Sung has long hinged its survival, in part, on a warning that any attack could provoke all-out war.

But North Korea doesn't want just survival. It is blackmailing South Korea and the US. It's time to let that regime crumble.

In a word, I would say "no":

The Trump administration said on Tuesday it was launching an inter-agency review of whether the lifting of sanctions against Iran was in the United States' national security interests, while acknowledging that Tehran was complying with a deal to rein in its nuclear program.

You're the one freaking out, Holden Caulfield:

Two weekends ago, an armed Muslim man infiltrated a Christian conference held in Sioux Falls, South Dakota, sat among the hundreds gathered, and filmed himself holding a copy of the Koran. After he was peacefully asked to leave by security, the man continued filming from his car, where he brandished three pistols and two assault rifles and threatened, “Be f***ing terrified.” So far, the man has not been arrested.

There is something about that dictatorship chic that really appeals to First-Worlders:

Between 1990 and 1995, thanks to the collapse of the Soviet Union, Cuban people were forced to alter their entire lifestyles. They couldn't afford petrol, so the government provided them with bicycles. People started walking everywhere. Food was also in shorter supply - there were no supermarket aisles stuffed with junk food or wallets stuffed with money with which to buy it. 

In short, Cubans could no longer afford to be fat. In that five-year period, they lost an average of around five kilos per person, which is over 11lbs. As a result of people getting slimmer, they also started living longer, with fewer Cubans dying of diabetes and heart disease.

All of which is fantastic - except it didn't last. When the crisis ended, people started eating more and moving less and putting all that weight back on until, in the mid 2000s, they were right back where they started.

(Gracias)





Not even dictatorships can keep out faith:

In hopes of escaping the trappings of urbanization and economic inequality, Chinese citizens are increasingly turning toward Christianity for spiritual fulfillment, an expert said Monday.

Predominantly an atheist state, China in 1980 had 10 million Christians, according to the Catholic News Agency. That number jumped to 60 million in 2007, and in 2014, the Telegraph reported that China was on track to overtake the U.S. by 2030 as the most Christian nation on earth. According to the Pew Research Center, 70.6 percent of Americans, or 223.2 million people, identified as Christian in 2014. Last fall, the Chinese government enacted a new crackdown on churches, warning that spiritual sects need to pledge fidelity to the state first.

 
Yazidis, the same people Trudeau found unworthy for refugee status, are celebrating their new year.

A merry new year to all y'all.




And now, origins of flower names:

The word daisy has deep roots in the English language. As attested to in some of English’s earliest records, daisy comes from the Old English phrase dægesege: the “day’s eye,” as the flower’s white petals close at dusk and open at dawn, like the eye of the day as it sleeps and wakes.