On a Monday

Lots going on ...




After killing fifty-two people in 2005,  killing twenty-two in Manchester in May of this year and killing eight people earlier this month, an actual lone wolf has finally managed to kill one Muslim man outside a mosque reputed to be a hotbed of Islamism:

A van plowed into worshippers near a London mosque in the early hours of Monday, injuring 11 people, two of them seriously, in what Prime Minister Theresa May said was a sickening, terrorist attack on Muslims.

The vehicle swerved into a group of mainly North and West African people shortly after midnight as they left prayers at the Muslim Welfare House and the nearby Finsbury Park Mosque in north London, one of the biggest in Britain.

The driver, a 47-year-old white man, was grabbed at the scene by locals and pinned down until police arrived.

The man was not named by police but local media reported he was a father of four who lived in Wales. He was held on suspicion of attempted murder which was later extended to preparing or instigating terrorism, including murder and attempted murder.

After being seized, he said he had wanted to kill "many Muslim people", one witness told journalists.

(Sidebar: oh, they always do, don't they?)

A man, who had earlier suffered a heart attack, died at the scene but it was not clear if his death was connected to the van attack.

In a big city, this sort of thing is to be expected, as a certain mayor of a certain city once stated.  


While the left salivates over this singular incident like Pavlov's dog locked in a bell factory, it will conveniently ignore other very pertinent events of today:

A Quebec man who was captured on video telling an undercover RCMP officer that he was prepared to die in the fight to establish an Islamic State was convicted of a terrorism charge Monday.

Quebec Court Judge Serge Délisle found Ismael Habib, 29, guilty of attempting to travel to Syria to commit a terrorist act.

**

Police arrested a shirtless man on a side road running parallel with Paddington station in central London Monday afternoon after he reportedly attacked a police officer and shouted “Allahu Akbar”.

** 

A man on the radar of French authorities for extremism was killed Monday after ramming a car carrying arms and explosives into a police convoy on Paris' famed Champs-Elysees Avenue, setting off a fiery blast and a cloud of orange smoke, officials said. France's anti-terrorism prosecutor opened an investigation.

 
 
(Sidebar: it should be pointed out that even mentioning these violates Motion 103.)





Terrible:

A huge forest fire raging since Saturday in central Portugal has killed at least 62 people, most of them dying in their cars as they tried to flee, the government said on Sunday,
"The dimension of this fire was such that we don't have memory of such a human tragedy," Prime Minister Antonio Costa said in Pedrogao Grande, the mountainous region about 200 km (125 miles) northeast of Lisbon. 

Most victims were caught in their vehicles on the road while fleeing flames that were destroying their homes. The prime minister said the death toll could rise as firefighters inspected charred remains of some buildings in remote villages.

Police said a lightning strike on a tree probably caused the blaze on Saturday in a region hit by an intense heat wave and dry, gusty winds, which has fanned the flames.

Also:

The death toll from a fire that ravaged a London tower block last week has risen to 79, police said on Monday, as the government tried to show it was improving its handling of a tragedy that has angered the public.

Just a reminder that making people use baseless pronouns like "xer" or "xe" is an exercise in absurdity and pointing that out to everyone is illegal in Canada:

On Thursday, the Senate passed Bill C-16, the Liberal government’s legislation that adds “gender identity or expression” to grounds of discrimination in the Canadian Human Rights Act. Bill C-16 was in part the motivation for Peterson’s video. The act applies to federal subjects (including airports, banks, the military and federally regulated industries), while equivalent provincial codes apply to remaining areas of personal and commercial activities (including most workplaces, schools, universities, hospitals and so on). Most provinces recently added the same or similar terms to their discrimination provisions.

Few Canadians realize how seriously these statutes infringe upon freedom of speech. The Ontario Human Rights Commission has stated, in the context of equivalent provisions in the Ontario Human Rights Code, that “refusing to refer to a trans person by their chosen name and a personal pronoun that matches their gender identity … will likely be discrimination when it takes place in a social area covered by the Code, including employment, housing and services like education.”

In other words, failure to use a person’s pronoun of choice — “ze,” “zir,” “they” or any one of a multitude of other potential non-words — will land you in hot water with the commission. That, in turn, can lead to orders for correction, apology, Soviet-like “re-education,” fines and, in cases of continued non-compliance, incarceration for contempt of court.

Millions of North Koreans and their government's kidnapping victims are ignored because basic human decency has been phased out for insipid interest in whatever a celebrity is wearing. That's why:

... The gulag of the Soviet Union, the concentration camps of Nazi Germany — they have been roughly replicated in North Korea. The whole world knows this — the UN report is a public document — and yet the regime lives on. How can that be?

It turns out that plenty of people find the regime repugnant but convenient. China’s Communist rulers are first in that line: Kim Jong Un annoys them, but they do not want a unified, pro-Western Korea on their border. South Korea has a Ministry of Unification but also many citizens who do not want the responsibility or expense of bringing 25 million impoverished North Koreans up to their living standard (South Korea’s population is about 50 million).

For its part, the United States is more interested in negotiating an end to North Korea’s nuclear weapons program than helping its captive millions. “Our goal is not regime change,” Secretary of State Rex Tillerson said in April.

And so, though the country is backward and totally dependent on outside assistance, the regime lives on. The prison camps endure. And Otto Warmbier’s parents are heartbroken.

Just in, Otto Warmbier has died:

U.S. student Otto Warmbier, who was imprisoned in North Korea for 17 months before being returned home in a coma less than a week ago, has died in a Cincinnati hospital, his family said in a statement on Monday.

 
And now, always read the small print:

In the spring of 1997, a 14-year-old’s school science fair project made a convincing argument to ban a dangerous chemical compound: dihydrogen monoxide, known as DHMO. Nathan Zohner, a junior high school student in Idaho, gave 50 of his fellow students a report called "Dihydrogen Monoxide: The Unrecognized Killer,” which accurately laid out the dangers of DHMO, convincing the majority of students to call for its ban. The experiment caused enough of a splash that it was picked up by The Washington Post.

The compound can corrode and rust metal and cause severe burns, the paper correctly argued. If you consume it, it can cause bloating and excessive urination and sweating. Thousands of people in the U.S. die from its accidental ingestion every year. If you are dependent on it, going through withdrawal can kill you. It’s found in significant quantities in acid rain, tumors, and more. Armed with this information and asked what the world should do about the threat of DHMO, 43 of Zohner’s classmates voted to ban the compound, citing its deadly nature. Lucky for them, no lawmaker would agree: DHMO is the chemical formula for water. Zohner—whose project won the grand prize at the regional science fair that year—wasn’t the first person to drive people into hysterics over the (real) dangers of DHMO, which can in fact burn, drown, and otherwise harm you in its various forms.

One of the earliest iterations of the hoax came from a Michigan paper called The Durand Express, which ran a piece decrying the harms of DHMO as an April Fool’s Day joke in 1983. Zohner’s experiment highlighted how easily young students—even those who had taken chemistry—could be taken in by misleading, fear-mongering scientific information. But scientific illiteracy isn’t just an issue with kids, and the widespread ability to Google basic facts hasn’t kept similar hoaxes and conspiracy theories from taking root in the public imagination today.

 

n the spring of 1997, a 14-year-old’s school science fair project made a convincing argument to ban a dangerous chemical compound: dihydrogen monoxide, known as DHMO. Nathan Zohner, a junior high school student in Idaho, gave 50 of his fellow students a report called "Dihydrogen Monoxide: The Unrecognized Killer,” which accurately laid out the dangers of DHMO, convincing the majority of students to call for its ban. The experiment caused enough of a splash that it was picked up by The Washington Post.
The compound can corrode and rust metal and cause severe burns, the paper correctly argued. If you consume it, it can cause bloating and excessive urination and sweating. Thousands of people in the U.S. die from its accidental ingestion every year. If you are dependent on it, going through withdrawal can kill you. It’s found in significant quantities in acid rain, tumors, and more. Armed with this information and asked what the world should do about the threat of DHMO, 43 of Zohner’s classmates voted to ban the compound, citing its deadly nature. Lucky for them, no lawmaker would agree: DHMO is the chemical formula for water. Zohner—whose project won the grand prize at the regional science fair that year—wasn’t the first person to drive people into hysterics over the (real) dangers of DHMO, which can in fact burn, drown, and otherwise harm you in its various forms.
- See more at: http://mentalfloss.com/article/501907/14-year-old-who-convinced-people-ban%C2%A0dihydrogen-monoxide#sthash.3I2jI3xr.dpuf