Mid-Week Post

The pinpoint of the work-week ...



When one thinks that one's government works for one, one is terribly mistaken:

According to a report by the Financial Tribune, the federal government“will provide $100 million in finance for a deal between Montreal-based multinational aerospace and transportation company, Bombardier Inc., and Iran’s Qeshm Free Zone Organization for purchasing 10 passenger planes, the FTZ’s chief executive, Hamidreza Momeni, has said.”

Reportedly, the $100 million will finance 80% of the deal.

**

Under the iron fist of Xi Jinping, the Chinese people have been force-marched back into the darkest moments before Tiananmen. The regime in Beijing has gone into hyperdrive in its efforts to persuade the rest of the world that this is how things must be. Beijing is now spending at least $7 billion a year, by the estimates of Christopher Walker, a vice-president of the National Endowment for Democracy in Washington D.C., on outward propaganda, to “make friends” in the democracies. To encourage cultural exchanges. To engage the news media, to further these ends. 

“Taken together,” Walker reckons, ” the forces working against democracy are more powerful than at any time since the end of the Cold War.” And a significant body of opinion around Ottawa appears to contend that we can’t beat them, after all, so we might as well join them.

**
 

British Columbia’s new NDP/Green coalition government was in damage control mode after the most ambitious of the province’s proposed liquefied natural gas (LNG) projects, the $36-billion Pacific NorthWest LNG, was cancelled Tuesday.

It's like a fan club for terrorists:

You can’t make this stuff up, folks. A registered third-party group previously committed to defeating former prime minister Stephen Harper has now turned its attention to getting Canadians to show some love for Omar Khadr.

“I stand with Omar Khadr” is the latest campaign from activist group Leadnow. They’re calling on Canadians to sign a petition to show their solidarity with the former al-Qaida enthusiast.

Yep.


Also - he may also get $10.5 million:

A Tunisian man convicted in a botched Canadian terror plot is being treated in prison with anti-psychotic drugs and now plans to appeal both his conviction and his sentence, a lawyer appointed on his behalf said Wednesday.

Chiheb Esseghaier “now understands the severity” of his life sentence, said Erin Dann, a court-appointed amicus curaie (friend of the court) and wants a chance to fight it.

Esseghaier was convicted in 2015, along with an accomplice, of planning to kill Canadians in a terrorist attack. An undercover FBI agent recorded him discussing plans to cut a hole in a railway bridge — possibly with a laser — poison the food on a military base, or trigger the eruption of a long-dormant volcano.

His accomplice, Raed Jaser, spoke on tape about murdering prominent Toronto Jews with a sniper rifle. Both men were sentenced to life in prison in September 2015.

The Supreme Court has disallowed seismic testing in Nunavut:

The Supreme Court of Canada has quashed plans for seismic testing in Nunavut, delivering a major victory to Inuit who argued they were inadequately consulted before the National Energy Board gave oil companies the green light to conduct this disruptive activity.

In a unanimous decision handed down Wednesday, written by Justices Karakatsanis and Brown, the top court ruled the NEB's consultation process in Clyde River was "significantly flawed," and gave little, if any, consideration to the treaty rights of Inuit and their reliance on marine mammals for subsistence.

A man who stabbed his pregnant wife could be charged with the murder of his infant:

(Sidebar: son or daughter? The CBC will not identify. That he or she was legally a bowl of jelly when his or her father attempted to kill him or her is too much to bear.)

A Montreal man accused of stabbing his pregnant wife, who remains in hospital, and prompting the baby's death has been charged with attempted murder and first-degree murder.  

The baby was born by emergency C-section following the stabbing of Raja Ghazi, 33, early Monday morning. The infant was in critical condition for several hours before dying in hospital. The woman was about eight months pregnant at the time of the attack. 

Sofiane Ghazi, 37, appeared at the Montreal courthouse via video conference on Tuesday. Along with being accused of murder and attempted murder, Ghazi was charged with:

- uttering threats

- car theft

- armed robbery

- failure to comply with conditions from previous arrests. 

The case has caught the attention of legal experts because the baby was in utero when the stabbing occurred and therefore not legally considered a human being.

But a representative from Quebec's director of criminal and penal prosecutions told reporters there are grounds for the murder charge because the baby was born.

Anne Aubé cited a section of Canada's Criminal Code, which says that "a child becomes a human being … when it has completely proceeded, in a living state, from the body of its mother."

Aubé acknowledged the case is "very rare." 

We don't have a justice system. We have a legal one.


Also:

"The clock ticks [so] that you have a few minutes and you start having brain damage and other organ damage," says Dr. Edgar Jaeggi, head of the fetal cardiac program at SickKids.

So on May 18, Ryan, Chaturvedi and Jaeggi, along with dozens of clinicians from both Mount Sinai Hospital and SickKids performed a risky and remarkable procedure: a balloon atrial septoplasty while the baby is still in the uterus.  

  

With neonatal and cardiac surgeons on standby in case an emergency cesarean section became necessary, the doctors used a needle to insert a balloon through Barry's uterus and into Sebastian's heart, making a small hole to open up the heart's interior wall, so oxygenated blood could pass through.  

Although the procedure was a success, it wasn't a cure for Sebastian's original heart defect, and he would still require open-heart surgery after birth.  But it meant that Barry could deliver him normally, without the trauma of knowing it would be a frantic race against time to whisk her baby away and supply him with oxygen.

People go to sh--holes like Cuba because it is a cheap holiday in a Third World dictatorship. Leaving one's clothes for the poor sods who can earn no more than twenty or thirty dollars a month isn't even in the same hemisphere as to why they went to Cuba in the first place.

So there's that:

It was intended to be a fun-filled family getaway in Cuba, but it soon changed course when a young family member fell ill. Now a family from Hamilton is struggling to return to Canada.

Nicole Antinello went to Cuba with her seven-year-old son Cole, 16-year-old daughter and 76-year-old mother. After a week in the Caribbean, they boarded a plane back to Toronto. They never left the tarmac.

Cole was visibly ill and officials noticed.

“They called the medical team to see if he was safe to fly. The medical team said, ‘No, he was not safe to fly,'” she told Global News.

Cole was taken to hospital and he was diagnosed with appendicitis.

“They pushed on his belly and he said, ‘Ow.’ He did not scream. He did not freak out. He did not have prior pain.”

Antinello phoned her insurance provider and said they advised her to do what the doctors prescribed. 

Cole’s appendix was removed on Saturday, but a lengthy recovery means he still hasn’t received clearance to fly home.

Since Antinello shared the story on Facebook with a link to a GoFundMe page, it has received significant attention. Friends, family and perfect strangers have shared her post asking for help.

Antinello described the hospital conditions as deplorable.

“There’s water that won’t stop running, there’s toilets that are overflowing … there’s dust flying in the air.”

It might have looked something like this:




Also:

China is on track to lead the world in organ transplant surgeries by 2020 following its abandonment of the much-criticized practice of using organs from executed prisoners, the architect of the country’s transplant program said Wednesday.

Chairman of the China Organ Donation and Transplantation Committee Huang Jiefu told The Associated Press that voluntary civilian organ donations had risen from just 30 in 2010, the first year of a pilot program, to more than 5,500 this year.

Voluntary, my @$$. 




Trump has decided that the American armed forces do not need trannies:

President Trump announced on Wednesday morning that the U.S. military would not “accept or allow” any transgender service members.

In a series of tweets, the commander in chief argued that too much is at stake in the military’s current operations for it to be “burdened” by the medical costs of transgender people or the “disruption” he says transgender service members would cause.

Oh, well.




And now, a corgi swimming:

 
(Paws up)