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Lots going on ...



Tabitha Speer has asked for a freeze on the money the Trudeau government awarded convicted murderer, Omar Khadr: 

The widow of an American soldier killed in Afghanistan will ask a Canadian court on Thursday for an urgent order aimed at preserving any money the federal government paid former Guantanamo Bay prisoner Omar Khadr for breaching his rights, new documents show.

The motion before Ontario Superior Court asks for a freeze on his money — the government reportedly paid Khadr $10.5 million last week — pending the outcome of a request to recognize a US$134.1-million Utah judgment against him.

The default American judgment was handed down in 2015 in Utah in favour of Sgt. Chris Speer's widow Tabitha and that of another former American soldier, Layne Morris.

"If the assets are not frozen pending the hearing of the application, there may be no assets left in Canada upon which the applicants may execute," their factum states. "The applicants have repeatedly requested assurances that the assets will not be dissipated. There has been no response."

The motion also calls on the court to order Khadr to "provide an accounting of the settlement funds, and the current location of all such funds, or property acquired thereby."

Also - Khadr's blithering cheering section:

Goodale — let’s call him “Roaring Ralph” — with an assist from Justice Minister Jody Wilson-Raybould, approached Baghdad Bob levels of disinformation last week as they executed the Trudeau government’s strategy of blaming Harper for the Khadr mess the Liberals created.

“The Harper government refused to repatriate Mr. Khadr or otherwise resolve the matter. They could have, but they didn’t,” Goodale declared.

Except Goodale omitted that in so doing, Harper was merely continuing the policy of the Jean Chretien/Paul Martin Liberal governments from 2002 until they lost power in 2006.

The Liberals made no effort to repatriate Khadr.

They merely asked the Americans that he not be sent to Guantanamo, and happily dropped the issue when the Americans said no.

The Liberals just wanted the Khadr story to go away because they were embarrassed Chretien had intervened on behalf of Khadr’s terrorist father, Ahmed Said Khadr, in 1996, when he was being held on suspicion of terrorism in Pakistan.

Following Chretien’s request that Ahmed Khadr be treated fairly, Pakistan Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto released him, whereupon he returned to Canada and soon after moved his family to Pakistan, where Omar began his terrorist training under the Taliban and the elder Khadr’s confidante, Osama bin Laden.

Wilson-Raybould said the Khadr settlement showed “rights are not subject to the whims of the government of the day.” Except she omitted “the government of the day,” which the Supreme Court of Canada ruled in 2010 had violated Khadr’s rights, was the Chretien-Martin government.

Why? Because it twice sent interrogators to question Khadr in Guantanamo in 2003 and 2004, and shared the information they obtained with his American captors, knowing they had used sleep deprivation to try and get Khadr to crack.

Someone should remind Goodale and Wilson-Raybould that Khadr was repatriated in 2012, under the Harper government, however reluctantly, while the Chretien/Martin government made no attempt to repatriate him from 2002 to 2006.

Unable to smoothly pull the wool over everyone's eyes, Wynne's government pretends to seek popular opinion on the proposed wage hike:

The Liberal government’s proposed legislation on labour reforms, which also includes equal pay for part-time workers, increased vacation entitlements and expanded personal emergency leave, starts committee hearings Monday that will travel the province.

The bill would boost the minimum wage, which is currently set to rise with inflation from $11.40 an hour to $11.60 in October, up to $14 on Jan. 1, 2018, and $15 the following year.

Businesses are strongly opposed to the increase, particularly the quick pace of it. A coalition of groups including the Ontario Chamber of Commerce, Restaurants Canada and the Canadian Franchise Association are sending Premier Kathleen Wynne a letter Monday, slamming the “arbitrary” increase.

“Many Ontario employers, especially small businesses, are now considering closing their business because they do not have the capacity to successfully manage such reforms,” they write.

Universities are not places of higher learning but places where stunted little minds go to die.

Case in point:

On June 28th, the Dalhousie Student Union passed a motion declaring that the DSU would not participate in the celebration of Canada Day on campus, on the grounds that Canada Day is oppressive. The motion passed with the overwhelming support of the union’s voting members, including four of its vice-presidents and president. I never would have believed it requires saying, but it apparently does: Canada Day is not oppressive, and those who celebrate it are not oppressors—Canada Day celebrates Canadians’ freedom from oppression. ...

On Canada Day itself, the DSU censored opposition to its anti-Canada Day stance by removing what DSU referred to as “racist and triggering” comments from its Facebook page. Never mind that students and alumni were expressing their dissatisfaction with DSU posting a picture of a person standing on Parliament Hill wearing face paint of an upside-down maple leaf, along with an overlay of an upside-down Canada 150 logo. DSU’s caption read, “We recognize that Canada Day and the Canada 150 celebrations are an act of ongoing colonialism that glorifies continued theft from, and disenfranchisement of, the indigenous peoples of Turtle Island (Canada).”

Quickly now: Canada isn't an island but why let facts get in the way of a crazy narrative?


Also:

Crucially, the legislative branch is the only one citizens choose directly. In places like France and the U.S. they also elect the chief executive. But they do not vote for heads of departments, police chiefs, deputy ministers or any of a host of important executive functionaries. Nor do they usually elect judges and we certainly don’t. So legislators are, as I wrote last month, “our agents within the state machinery.”

Regrettably, most no longer see themselves that way. Instead they aspire to be solid rungs on a coloured ladder up which their most ambitious colleagues climb to executive power. And they think the Speaker’s job is to hold the ladder to real power steady.

Why let democracy get in the way of that?




How can China and Russia oppose South Korea' s use of THAAD after North Korea successfully fired an ICBM?

Because it helped separate Korea into two and it still needs it separate. That's why:

China and Russia still think that the grim status quo on the Korean Peninsula is better than the removal of their buffer state, even if North Korea ends up arming itself with nuclear weapons. This is why they have been so passive in taking part in UN sanctions against the North.

North Korea has of course used this to its advantage and raced ahead to develop nuclear weapons and missiles and now it claims to have succeeded in developing an ICBM. If China and Russia continue to carp over something as harmless to their own ambitions as the THAAD battery, they should not be surprised if South Korea decides one day to develop its own nuclear weapons.