Mid-Week Post

Your middle-of-the-week fun run ...



Chinese President Xi Jinping congratulates incoming South Korean President Moon Jae-In on what he knows will be a productive relationship between China and a pro-Kim president:

Chinese President Xi Jinping sent a congratulatory message to new President Moon Jae-in on Wednesday expressing hopes to deepen ties and resolve differences amid diplomatic rifts over a US missile defense system deployed in South Korea.

China's official Xinhua news agency quoted Xi as saying that he has always valued the relations between China and South Korea.

Not being at all lazy (unlike some Canadian prime ministers), Moon went directly to work after being elected. He will visit Kim Jong-Un as soon as possible.





By the skin of their teeth:

British Columbia has its first minority government in 65 years as the Liberals squeaked out a razor-thin victory over the NDP on Tuesday, with the Green party holding the balance of power for the first time in Canadian history. 

Christy Clark's Liberals won 43 seats, the NDP under John Horgan got 41 and the Greens led by Andrew Weaver achieved a major breakthrough by picking up three seats.

The NDP won one riding by only nine votes, making a recount a certainty that will determine the difference between a minority and an ultra-thin majority if it were to flip to the Liberals.

Yes, looking after themselves is what they should be doing because the government doesn't care about them and never has: 

About 95 soldiers are stationed in neighbouring Oka. They are working to keep the region’s water filtration plants running as the area grapples with historic flood levels from the Lake of Two Mountains. The federal government offered to assist Kanesatake last weekend, but Simon refused.

Instead, the chief turned to his own community and a sister Mohawk reserve for emergency relief. As waves battered the dikes on the south side of town, Simon says about 100 local volunteers worked in shifts to hold the line and save as many homes as possible.

“When Mohawks mobilize, you can’t stop us,” he said. “You’d have one person bagging two, three pallets of sand by themselves. Elders, women and children they were here, helping wrap the bags. It was amazing.”

(Sidebar: the following segment will be so Islamophobic that it will register on the Richter scale and cause Iqra Khalid to soil her shorts.)

A closer look at Motion 103's initiator, supporters and other respected Muslim figures in Canada, however, indicates that there is cause for worry.

"Now that Islamophobia has been condemned, this is not the end, but rather the beginning... All of us must work hard to maintain our peaceful, social and humanitarian struggle so that condemnation is followed by comprehensive policies," wrote Samer Majzoub, a Muslim Brotherhood affiliate of the Canadian Muslim Forum -- presumably meaning that the next steps are to make it binding.

According to Islamist Watch's Josh Lieblein, writing in The Daily Caller:

" ...Khalid is a former President of York University's Muslim Students Association, a student group with documented ties to the Muslim Brotherhood. Similarly, Omar Alghabra is a former director of the Canadian Arab Federation, an association that has published statements in support of terrorist groups Hamas and Hezbollah.

"M103's supporters in the Muslim community have questionable ties of their own. It has been reported that Samer Majzoub was the manager of a Montreal private school that received a $70,761 donation from the Kuwait embassy, while the National Council of Canadian Muslims (NCCM) – formerly the Canadian branch of the Muslim Brotherhood-linked Council on American-Islamic Relations – published an open letter linking M103 to a wide-ranging campaign aimed at reducing systemic racism and Islamophobia in Canada.
...
"While the NCCM's open letter does not directly call for Sharia law or the criminalization of criticism of Islam, it does advance the notion that the famously tolerant nation of Canada must set up anti-racism directorates in each province to track instances of Islamophobia, institute a mandatory course on systemic racism for Canadian high school students, and train its police officers to use bias-neutral policing."

This attempt to turn free speech on its head in Canada is in keeping with the teachings of the country's top Muslim cleric, Iqbal Al-Nadvi, chairman of the Canadian Council of Imams, president of the Canadian branch of the Islamic Circle of North America (ICNA) and the Muslim chaplain of the Canadian army.

ICNA is an organization that strives "to build an Exemplary Canadian Muslim Community" by "total submission to Him [Allah] and through the propagation of true and universal message of Islam," according to Jonathan D. Halevi.

You are being watched and your right to free speech is in danger.

And your MPs let that happen.
 



Iraqi children describe their experiences being trained by ISIS to kill:

They made the captive children, malnourished and weak from hunger, fight over a single tomato. Then the Islamic State group militants told them, “In paradise, you’ll be able to eat whatever you want. But first you have to get to paradise, and you do that by blowing yourself up.”

The lesson was part of the indoctrination inflicted by the militants on boys from Iraq’s Yazidi religious minority after the extremist group overran the community’s towns and villages in northern Iraq. The group forced hundreds of boys, some as young as 7 or 8, into training to become fighters and suicide bombers, infusing them with its murderous ideology.

Now boys who escaped captivity are struggling to regain some normalcy, living in camps for the displaced along with what is left of their families. After surviving beatings, watching horrific atrocities, being held for months or years apart from their parents, losing loved ones and narrowly escaping death themselves, they are plagued by nightmares, anxiety and outbursts of violence.

“Even here I’m still very afraid,” said 17-year-old Ahmed Ameen Koro, who spoke to The Associated Press in the sprawling Esyan Camp in northern Iraq, where he now lives with his mother, sister and a brother, the only surviving members of his family. “I can’t sleep properly because I see them in my dreams.”

Killing ISIS doesn't make them win but it does make the world a slightly less evil place.





Speaking of heartless murderers:

Just a few hours after the commemoration of the 102^nd anniversary of the Armenian Genocide on April 24, 2017, Turkish warplanes dropped bombs on the Yazidi homeland of Sinjar (Shingal) on April 25, at around 2 AM local time, according to reports from the region.

The strikes reportedly killed at least 70 people in the area, with one bomb hitting a Kurdish peshmerga post in Sinjar, killing at least five and severely wounding several more.

Yazidis say they have been subjected to 72 genocidal massacres. The latest genocide, committed by ISIS, is the 73^rd and is still going on. Tens of thousands of Yazidis have been displaced and are refugees in several countries. Hundreds of Yazidi girls and women are still bought, sold and raped by ISIS terrorists -- the same men who murdered their husbands and fathers.

While Yazidis are still suffering from these atrocities, Turkey, evidently still no friend of non-Muslims, has attacked them yet again.

Just to remind everyone, Trudeau - among many other things - refused to let Yazidis into the country as refugees (the term he used was "disgusting").





Let the Great National Rip-Off begin!

The federal government's plan to impose a carbon tax on provinces that don't do it themselves is expected to mimic the Alberta carbon program, including rebate payments sent directly to low- and middle-income individuals.

A source who has seen the plan tells The Canadian Press that the technical paper outlining Ottawa's proposal will be released next week, seven months after Prime Minister Justin Trudeau told provinces they'd have until 2018 to implement a price on carbon or have Ottawa do it for them.

The Alberta model applies a tax on carbon generated by burning most transportation and heating fuels, except for those used on farms. It divides the tax revenue among income-based rebates to Albertans, a cut to the small business tax and investments in green infrastructure and renewable energy.

Trudeau and Environment Minister Catherine McKenna have always said any revenue from a carbon tax would remain in the province where it is raised, but they have been careful not to say it would go to the provincial government. By following the Alberta model, the federal government can send some of the money raised by the tax to individuals, bypassing provincial governments which refuse to impose their own carbon price.

(Sidebar: this is the same environment minister who has trouble distinguishing puffins from penguins.)

Australians voted to repeal the carbon tax for a reason.

Carbon taxes do not work. Carbon is not a pollutant. No country is going to tank its industry. Carbon taxes are a war on the poor.

Canadians are going to figure that out the hard way.





March for Life. Be there AND be square.





The day Canada became a dominion is a day to be remembered. The day we helped end the Second World War is a day to be remembered. The day a handful of soft-headed MPs let a minuscule subculture pretend is not noteworthy.





Che Guevara was a bigot but that is not on a t-shirt for some reason:

Another item Sanchez recalls about Ernesto Guevara was his constant belittling of his hosts: Mexicans. “These Mexicans are nothing but a rabble of illiterate Indians,” Che Guevara often snickered.

Also - but ... but ... holidays!

Americans are less interested in travel to Cuba this year than they were in 2016, a survey from insurance provider Allianz Global Assistance found. Some 76% of the 1,514 respondents said they were not likely to plan a trip to Cuba in 2017 compared to 70% in 2016. Only 2% of those surveyed planned to visit Cuba in the next six months or by the end of 2017, the same as 2016 despite a projected increase in travelers from the country’s ministry of tourism. It also found that 60% of Americans said “would not like to travel to Cuba” compared to just 58% in 2016.

Although some of these shifts may be expected after the initial flurry of interest, flight trends also suggest demand is lower than initially expected, said Brian Sumers, an airline analyst at travel site Skift. “When the country opened up, just about every U.S. airline was obsessed with getting as many routes into Havana as it possibly could — they thought it was going to be a gravy train,” he said. “Now, as I understand it, a lot of the flights are empty.”

Indeed, the initial excitement about the formerly closed off country gave way to moral dilemmas over food shortages and other problems caused by tourism, as well as disappointment over limited working internet, lower hotel standards, and lack of running water there. The Allianz study found lack of travel infrastructure was a major cause of anxiety about traveling to Cuba for 13% of Americans.

And now, why did great thinkers love dogs? Because ...

“The dog is the god of frolic.”