For Today

A lot going on ...




American bombers fly over the Korean Peninsula in a show of force:

South Korean and Japanese jets joined exercises with two supersonic U.S. B-1B bombers above and near the Korean peninsula on Thursday, two days after North Korea sharply raised tension by firing a missile over Japan. 

The drills, involving four U.S. stealth F-35B jets as well as South Korean and Japanese fighter jets, came at the end of annual U.S.-South Korea military exercises focused mainly on computer simulations. 

”North Korea’s actions are a threat to our allies, partners and homeland, and their destabilizing actions will be met accordingly,” said General Terrence J. O’Shaughnessy, Pacific Air Forces Commander, who made an unscheduled visit to Japan. 

“This complex mission clearly demonstrates our solidarity with our allies and underscores the broadening cooperation to defend against this common regional threat.” 

North Korea has been working to develop a nuclear-tipped missile capable of hitting the United States and has recently threatened to land missiles near the U.S. Pacific territory of Guam. 

On Monday, North Korea, which sees the exercises as preparations for invasion, raised the stakes in its stand-off with the United States and its allies by firing an intermediate-range missile over Japan.

 
I don't even know why Wynne bothers to blame anyone. The unions will always vote her back in:

How much longer can Ontario Premier Kathleen Wynne blame former Premier Mike Harris for everything? ...

Wynne was on Newstalk 1010 radio’s Moore In the Morning show Thursday.

Host John Moore said to her, “Whenever you announce a program I might think that it looks great, but how do we afford it?”

Wynne said, “I would argue to you that the deficit that was in place when we came in to office under the previous premier in 2003, we were dealing with billions and billions of dollars of deficit and that was slowing us down in terms of our economic growth. That was not allowing us to make the best of our municipalities, our communities.”

So how bad was it when both Mike Harris and his brief replacement Ernie Eves left office?

In October, 2003 the CBC reported that Ontario’s former Conservative government left the province with a $5.6-billion deficit, according to a retired provincial auditor, Erik Peters.

The Liberals claim today they will soon balance the budget but PC Leader Patrick Brown says the Liberals are hiding their deficit.

As the Sun's Lorrie Goldstein reported earlier this year, “Brown said despite Wynne’s claim of a balanced budget – the first since 2008 – the Liberals are actually hiding a $5-billion operating deficit. 

He said they’re covering it up with one-time sales of government assets valued at $1 billion, $2 billion from cap-and-trade, $1.5 billion in federal “Trudeau trust fund” cash and by counting $500 million in pension assets as revenue, an accounting trick rejected by Ontario Auditor General Bonnie Lysyk.”

So how is it that a $5-billion deficit Wynne says they were saddled with 14 years ago has not improved under the Liberal’s wise leadership, while debt has increased from about $133 billion in 2003 to over $300 billion today?

Is there anyone holding the Liberals to account?

No.

Small businesses can complain about the Liberals' obvious hatred of their existence, so much so that backbenchers need to discuss strategies for ignoring their constituents when they ask about taxes, but until they take to the streets and, even more importantly, reduce the Liberal vote substantially, their noise means nothing.




Political correctness is the reason why we can't have nice things:

A judge has called for "culturally matched" foster placements for children after a five-year-old Christian girl was sent to live with a Muslim family. Judge Khatun Sapnara has also ordered the council to look into the circumstances of the case.

The Times reported how the child was taken into care in March, spending four months in a foster home where the family had encouraged her to speak Arabic.

After that, she was looked after by a second Muslim couple, with the paper reporting that the carers veiled their face in public.

There were also claims that a cross the girl had been wearing had been taken off her and that she was not allowed to eat pork.

Judge Sapnara told lawyers for Tower Hamlets council that her overriding concern was the welfare of the little girl.

"You would presumably accept that the priority should be an appropriate, culturally matched placement that meets the needs of the child in terms of ethnicity, culture and religion?" she asked lawyers for Tower Hamlets at a family court in east London.

Kevin Gordon, counsel for the local authority, said no white British foster carers were available at the time the girl had to be placed.

Judge Sapnara said her decision to order the child's removal from foster care was taken "because of the evidence available to the court today, that the grandmother is an appropriate carer for the child," she said in a move which was supported by the council. The child is now being looked after at her grandmother's home.

South Korean schools see a 2.5 percent drop in students:

South Korea saw a 2.5 percent on-year drop in the number of students enrolled in kindergarten, elementary, middle and high schools last year, government data showed Thursday. 

As of April, 6.46 million children are attending school, according to data compiled by the Ministry of Education.

Middle school students reported the steepest decline of 5.2 percent, or 76,156 fewer students, compared to the previous year’s survey. There were 4.7 percent, or 82,758, fewer high school students. The number of students attending kindergartens declined 1.4 percent.

However, the number of elementary school students rose 0.1 percent, growing by 1,384 students. The ministry attributed an increase in this year’s first graders to a higher birthrate in 2010.

By region, Sejong was the only city in South Korea that saw an increase in all four categories. The number of high school students in Sejong grew a whopping 18.2 percent this year. All other cities and provinces surveyed suffered a decline in the numbers of kindergarten, middle and high school students.

The number of students from multicultural families increased by 10.3 percent to 109,837, surpassing the 100,000 mark for the first time since the government began tracking the number in 2012. That accounted for 1.9 percent of all students here.

In elementary school alone, the number of multicultural students went up by 11.8 percent to hit 82,733, which the ministry attributed to an increased number of international marriages. 

Mid- Week Post

The last for August ...

(sigh)



Terrible:

Tropical Storm Harvey spun across southeastern Texas into Louisiana on Wednesday, sending more people fleeing for shelter after swamping Houston with record rains and flooding that killed at least 25 and drove tens of thousands from their homes. 

The slow-moving storm has forced 32,000 people to seek shelter since coming ashore on Friday near Corpus Christi, Texas, as the most powerful hurricane to hit Texas in more than half a century. On Wednesday, it pummeled a stretch of coast from Port Arthur, Texas, to Lake Charles, Louisiana. 

Among the latest deaths reported were two people who drowned while driving through high water near Simonton, Texas, 40 miles (64 km) west of Houston, Major Chad Norvell of the Fort Bend County Sheriff’s Office said on Twitter. 

Houston’s KHOU-TV reported that an infant girl was swept away by floodwaters as her parents were driving from Houston toward Louisiana on Highway 150. Police in Harris County, home to Houston, said 17 people remained missing.

One should consider that dialogue with no promise of denuclearising on North Korea's part has been tried. As long as China protects North Korea, talk is cheap:

President Donald Trump on Wednesday declared “talking is not the answer” to the tense standoff with North Korea over its nuclear missile development, but his defense chief swiftly asserted that diplomatic options remain, and Russia demanded U.S. restraint. 

Trump’s comment, a day after Pyongyang fired a ballistic missile over Japan that drew U.N. and other international condemnation, renewed his tough rhetoric toward reclusive, nuclear-armed and increasingly isolated North Korea. 

“The U.S. has been talking to North Korea, and paying them extortion money, for 25 years,” Trump, who just last week said North Korean leader Kim Jong Un was “starting to respect” the United States, wrote on Twitter. “Talking is not the answer!” 

When asked by reporters just hours later if the United States was out of diplomatic solutions with North Korea amid rising tensions after a series of missile tests by Pyongyang, U.S. Defense Secretary Jim Mattis replied: “No.” 

“We are never out of diplomatic solutions,” Mattis said before a meeting with his South Korean counterpart at the Pentagon. “We continue to work together, and the minister and I share a responsibility to provide for the protection of our nations, our populations and our interests.”

Well, this must be embarrassing:

Liberal MP Darshan Kang is vehemently denying allegations that he repeatedly sexually harassed a young female staffer in his Calgary constituency office and is vowing to defend his reputation "at all costs."

Kang issued a statement Tuesday proclaiming his innocence even as a damning new allegation surfaced that he tried to buy the woman's silence and the NDP demanded that Prime Minister Justin Trudeau immediately suspend the Calgary MP from the Liberal caucus until an investigation is completed.

For the second consecutive day, Trudeau refused to comment on the matter, saying only that it's being handled through a recently created independent process for resolving such misconduct complaints and that he'll let the process "unfold as it should."

Say what? 

A Saskatchewan man who viciously beat a homeless woman before setting her on fire will not be declared a dangerous offender.

Judge Stanley Loewen ruled Wednesday that Leslie Black will not get the designation which would have kept him in prison indefinitely.

Loewen recommended Black be sentenced to a lengthy prison term, followed by a long-term supervision order which would mean Black would be monitored for up to 10 years.

Black pleaded guilty to attempted murder in the sexual assault of Marlene Bird, who was attacked in Prince Albert in 2014. Her injuries were so serious both legs had to be amputated and she lost much of her eyesight.

Bird told court in handwritten letters she now can’t do anything on her own, including simple things such as picking a blueberry or going to the bathroom.

She said she has to wear adult diapers, can’t control her bowels and feels disgusted with herself when she can’t make it to the bathroom in time. Bird said she also fears entering the city because of the attack.

At the hearing, Black said if he could go back to the night he attacked Bird, he would have taken his father’s advice and stayed home.

In a brief statement, which Black read despite a stutter he has had since witnessing his mother’s murder when he was a child, Black said he understands that Bird and her family have not forgiven him.

“I apologize for what I did,” he said. “I still can’t forgive myself.”

Black said he is not a violent person and wants to get the help he needs to succeed in life.

“I’m usually a happy-go-lucky guy.”

Of course, the court agrees with his assessment.

Naomi Klein is a fat harridan and a champagne socialist:

Some have since said that Klein’s proposal was not serious. She was joking. Maybe, but as I recall from my reading of Klein’s 2014 book This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs. The Climate—and having followed her work through well beyond her own term limits as a leftist crank—humour is not a big part of her repertoire. When Klein proposes submitting aging columnists she doesn’t like for review before some undefined tribunal—other than the market for free expression—I think she’s serious. God help me if I had suggested publishers stop publishing her books and others by other writers of equal menace. Remember Klein’s infatuation with Venezuela’s Hugo Chavez?

But ... but ... money fixes everything!

Math test scores among public elementary school students in Ontario have not improved — in some cases they have decreased slightly — despite a $60-million "renewed math strategy" the government had hoped would help solve the problem.

The latest results of the province's standardized tests — conducted by the Education Quality and Accountability Office — show that only half of Grade 6 students met the provincial standard in math, unchanged from the previous year. In 2013, about 57 per cent of Grade 6 students met the standard.

And among Grade 3 students, 62 per cent met the provincial standard in math, a one-percentage-point decrease since last year.

Norah Marsh, the CEO of EQAO, said math scores remain a concern and digging deeper reveals one area the province would like to focus on.

"For the students who met the standard in Grade 3, not as many are meeting it in Grade 6," she said. 

"Certainly, that's an area of focus as far as intervention between Grades 3 and 6 so they can achieve better results."

One might suggest that parents take an active role or that the curriculum return to the basics but that would just be nutty.




But if it did have ties to Iran, it could create a lasting peace:

Ask a few people from Thunder Bay what to do while you’re in town and you’ll get some different answers — see the Terry Fox monument, go to the Hoito, hike the Sleeping Giant, have you seen our amazing/horrible new lakefront? — but inevitably, everyone will agree that you need to eat a Persian.

Relax. In Lakehead lingo, a Persian is a sweet, fried cinnamon roll slathered in bright pink icing. The esteemed pastry takes up one of ten spots in the Wikipedia category “Culture of Thunder Bay” and is clearly a local point of pride — an eating contest earlier this year drew dozens to watch and compete in a quintessentially Lakeheadian pastry bonanza.

Mmm ... Persian donut ... possibly ...

For A Monday

"Therefore do they hate the truth for that thing's sake which they loved instead of the truth. They love truth when she enlightens, they hate her when she reproves."

Just in, North Korea has fired a missile over northern Japan:

North Korea fired a ballistic missile from its capital Pyongyang that flew over Japan before plunging into the northern Pacific Ocean, officials said Tuesday, an aggressive test-flight over the territory of a close U.S. ally that sends a clear message of defiance as Washington and Seoul conduct war games nearby.

Seoul's Joint Chiefs of Staff said the missile travelled around 2,700 kilometres (1677 miles) and reached a maximum height of 550 kilometres (341 miles) as it flew over the northern Japanese island of Hokkaido. The launch, which appears to be the first to cross over Japan since 2009, will rattle a region worried that each new missile test puts the North a step closer toward its goal of an arsenal of nuclear missiles that can reliably target the United States.

North Korean missile launches have been happening at an unusually fast pace this year, and some analysts believe that the North could have such an arsenal before the end of U.S. President Donald Trump's first term in early 2021.

 
More to come.


Also:

(Merci)





But ... but ... his family made him become a terrorist!

Former Guantanamo Bay detainee Omar Khadr returns to court this week to ask that his bail conditions be eased, including allowing him unfettered contact with his controversial older sister, more freedom to move around Canada, and unrestricted internet access.

This sister:

The comments were made 13 years ago, but for many Canadians they continue to define Zaynab Khadr, and by extension much of her ill-famed family.

In interviews with the National Post and others, the Ottawa-born daughter of an alleged al Qaeda insider spoke with jarring ambivalence about the 9/11 attacks.

The person behind the 2001 terrorist attacks wanted to hit the American government “where it will hurt it, not the people,” she told the CBC. “But sometimes innocent people pay the price. You don’t want to feel happy, but you just sort of think, well, they deserve it, they’ve been doing it for such a long time. Why shouldn’t they feel it once in a while?”

The Chretien, Martin and now the Trudeau governments were and are not ignorant of these facts.





Speaking of terrorists ... :

An Ontario judge has ordered a mental health assessment for a Toronto-area woman facing terror charges in an alleged attack at a Canadian Tire store.

Justice Kimberley Crosbie said Monday that she has reasonable grounds to order the assessment into Rehab Dughmosh's fitness to stand trial, given the woman's behaviour at a court appearance earlier this month.

At that court appearance, Dughmosh, 32, responded to multiple questions from the judge by saying people in the courtroom were "infidels."

"This behaviour has caused me to be concerned about whether she is understanding the nature and object of the proceedings," Crosbie told the court.

Dughmosh has also previously refused to leave her cell to attend court — and chose not to appear at her hearing Monday — and has claimed that she has said all she needs to in court already.

A correctional officer also told the court earlier this month that Dughmosh generally doesn't leave her cell to shower, opting to wash in her cell instead.

"This behaviour, involving isolation and withdrawal, is concerning," Crosbie said. 

(Sidebar: no, she's just a bigoted little b!#ch who thinks that the world owes her a favour.)


Of course! She's mentally ill! That must be it! She's not a lone wolf who misinterpreted the un-revised teachings of Mohammad. She's just nuts.

That's why the legal system is bending over backward for her.





Ontario - failing once more:

More than 350 workers at a General Electric plant in Peterborough, Ont., will be losing their jobs as the 125-year-old facility ceases manufacturing next year.

Speaking of abject failures:

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau used a mid-mandate mini-shuffle Monday to shore up his cabinet in two areas where his government has fallen far short of his soaring campaign rhetoric: veterans and Indigenous affairs.

In the most dramatic move, Trudeau split Indigenous and Northern Affairs Canada into two separate departments and appointed one of his most reliable, competent ministers, Jane Philpott, to one of them — a move billed as ending the "colonial" approach to Indigenous Peoples, with the ultimate goal of encouraging self-government and doing away with the "paternalistic" Indian Act.

He also named a personal friend, rookie MP and former television host Seamus O'Regan, to the veterans affairs post, replacing Kent Hehr, who has been heavily criticized for dragging his feet on the Liberals' promise to restore lifelong disability pensions for injured ex-soldiers.

More on the partisan, less on the experience.

Canada is back or something.

A bionic eye helps a mother see her youngest child:

A Quebec mother of four can partially see again thanks to a "bionic eye" that was implanted in March in the first such operation of its kind in the province.

Sandra Cassell was diagnosed in 2001 with retinitis pigmentosa, a form of retinal dystrophy that affects around 3,000 Quebecers.

The illness degrades vision to the point of near total blindness.

Cassell said she was determined to find some way to restore her vision and see her youngest child for the first time.

"The older children, I had seen them and had an image in my head, but I'd never seen my baby," she said.

Her research led her to the American company Second Sight, which was developing a retinal prosthesis called Argus II.

The device consists of a camera that is attached to glasses and connected to a chip grafted onto the retina of the eye.

The images captured by the camera are converted into a series of electrical pulses that are transmitted to the chip.

"The goal of these pulses is to stimulate the cells still alive in the retina and bypass those that have died," explains Dr. Cynthia Qian, an ophthalmologist specializing in vitreoretinal surgery.

"This prosthesis can offer the chance to have a functional vision again."

Kayaking for Christ:

A local ABC News station spotted a man kayaking through a flooded area and decided to interview him on live TV. It turned out that the man was a Catholic priest returning to his parish to help those in need and offer Sunday Mass!

Sunday Post

Poland has not forgotten its Russian neighbour:

Now, the Washington Post reports Russia is preparing to send 100,000 troops to the very edge of NATO territory, read Poland, Latvia, Lithuania and the like, for exercises scheduled to last several months.

Who can fault the average man or woman in Poland for feeling uneasy?

Granted, NATO, with Canada playing a small but valuable role, has been active in the region since April, 2014.

But in reality, that has been more a rattling of pocketknives.

It's time for Poland to nuclearise.




"Industry"? That is an understatement:

Through tens of thousands of private hearings, this is how Canada has assigned dollar figures for the abuse of former students at residential schools. The assessments are part of the largest class-action settlement in Canadian history, indeed, one of largest in the world.

But if justice takes time, a decade and 38,000 claimants later, the assessment process for the Indian Residential School Settlement Agreement has yet to wrap up, and may take until 2023. That’s left some claimants in painful, years-long limbo. And the cost, originally estimated at $960 million, is so far more than triple that amount, with an added $700 million in administration fees alone – including payments to lawyers who have been allowed to charge both the government and the victims they represent.

How did such a dramatic miscalculation happen?

“It’s absolutely ridiculous. This became an industry for everyone involved, including for government,” said Steven Cooper, a lawyer who helped negotiate the settlement and represented survivors.

This is  a hydra. Cut off one head and another will grow in its place to collect money.



 
There is one in every corner:

Man says Nazis were socialist, gets schooled by history writer

  

Despite this, the populist nationalists that support the likes of Donald Trump, regualarly take the oportunity to remind modern day liberal or left-leaning critics of white-supremacists and neo-nazis that 'Socialism' was included in the Nazi party name. 

Hitler's party positioned as a left-wing organisation based on his rhetoric, rather than his actions, espoused in the 1920s and 1930s to disenfranchised workers frustrated with what they perceived as a two-tier society. 

Neither left or right wing want to be known as the side of the political spectrum that Hitler was on, and both sides would argue he was on the other, politically speaking.

One such incident occurred recently on Twitter.

Yes, about that (from the comments):

"Why We Are Socialist" by Reich Minister Joseph Goebbels:
"We are socialists because we see in socialism, that is the union of all citizens, the only chance to maintain our racial inheritance and to regain our political freedom and renew our German state.Socialism is the doctrine of liberation for the working class. It promotes the rise of the fourth class and its incorporation in the political organism of our Fatherland, and is inextricably bound to breaking the present slavery and regaining German freedom. Socialism, therefore, is not merely a matter of the oppressed class, but a matter for everyone, for freeing the German people from slavery is the goal of contemporary policy. Socialism gains its true form only through a total fighting brotherhood with the forward-striving energies of a newly awakened nationalism. Without nationalism it is nothing, a phantom, a mere theory, a castle in the sky, a book. With it it is everything, the future, freedom, the fatherland!

"Why We Are Socialist" by Reich Minister Joseph Goebbels:

"We are socialists because we see in socialism, that is the union of all citizens, the only chance to maintain our racial inheritance and to regain our political freedom and renew our German state.

Socialism is the doctrine of liberation for the working class. It promotes the rise of the fourth class and its incorporation in the political organism of our Fatherland, and is inextricably bound to breaking the present slavery and regaining German freedom. Socialism, therefore, is not merely a matter of the oppressed class, but a matter for everyone, for freeing the German people from slavery is the goal of contemporary policy. Socialism gains its true form only through a total fighting brotherhood with the forward-striving energies of a newly awakened nationalism. Without nationalism it is nothing, a phantom, a mere theory, a castle in the sky, a book. With it it is everything, the future, freedom, the fatherland! …

We are against the political bourgeoisie, and for genuine nationalism!

We are against Marxism, but for true socialism!

We are for the first German national state of a socialist nature!

We are for the National Socialist German Workers Party"

Nope, no socialism there.

 

Don't let facts get in the way of a good narrative, some say. 




A lot of things upset the Muslims:

Authorities in Egypt have reportedly closed down a 1,300-member church in the Minya governorate and are preventing Christians from worshiping at another church in the area, according to a report.

Morningstar News, a donor-funded news agency that reports on persecuted Christians worldwide, reported that the Virgin Mary and St. Paula Church in Kedwan village was shut down last month by authorities based on the claim that local Muslims objected to the church.

Capitulation is what Europeans do.


Case in point:

Hundreds of thousands of peace marchers flooded the heart of Barcelona on Saturday shouting “I’m not afraid” — a public rejection of violence following extremist attacks that killed 15 people, Spain’s deadliest in more than a decade.

And that useless gesture is in aid of what? Is it backed up with raids, tighter borders, surveillance on known Islamist hate-mongers?

I wouldn't think so.

Islamists aren't afraid of Europeans. That is why they attack them with virtual impunity. Either Europeans can start getting a clue or they can get used to being road pizza.


Also:

London police arrested a second man Sunday in connection with a suspect who drove up to a police van not far from Buckingham Palace then reached for a 4-foot (1.2-meter) sword, an incident detectives called a terrorism attempt.

Scotland Yard said three officers were slightly injured when they confronted the 26-year-old man who allegedly drove at the police van then stopped in a restricted area outside the gates of Queen Elizabeth II's London residence Friday night.

The driver reached for the sword in his car and repeatedly shouted "Allahu akbar!" ("God is great" in Arabic) during the incident, police said. The officers used tear gas to incapacitate the man and arrested him at the scene.

Damn Scottish separatists! 

But ... but ... his family made him into a terrorist!

Former Guantanamo Bay detainee Omar Khadr returns to court this week to ask that his bail conditions be eased, including allowing him unfettered contact with his controversial older sister, more freedom to move around Canada, and unrestricted internet access.

In support of his request, Khadr notes the conditions originally imposed two years ago were necessary as a graduated integration plan following his 13 years in American and Canadian custody.

No issues have arisen since his release and the various restrictions have been revised several times — most recently in May last year, he says.

Currently, Khadr, 30, can only have contact with his sister Zaynab if one of his lawyers or bail supervisor is present. The condition is no longer necessary, he says.

As has been said several times, he is an unrepentant terrorist. 

Oh, Pastor Lim ... :

Toronto-area Pastor Hyeon Soo Lim says holding Canadian citizenship was the reason he wasn't executed or tortured during his more than two years of detention in North Korea.

"If I'm just Korean, maybe they kill me," Lim said during an interview with CBC's Rosemary Barton on Saturday. "I'm Canadian so they cannot, because they cannot kill the foreigners."

Yes, about that:

On December 28, 2014, a North Korean soldier (believed to be a deserter) crossed the border into China and killed four Chinese civilians in Nanping village, in the city of Helong in China’s Jilin province.

**

The North Koreans also tried to kill Park Chung-hee’s successor, Chun Doo-hwan, by planting a bomb during a South Korean state visit to Rangoon, Burma. The bomb was planted at the mausoleum of Aung San, Burma’s murdered leader who happens to be the father of Aung San Suu Kyi. The explosion killed 21 people, including three members of the South Korean cabinet. Chun survived because his car was late. (If you work on Korean peninsula issues at all, sooner or later, you’ll go to a nice event hosted by the Asan Institute for Policy Studies and meet its president, a lovely man named Hahm Chaibong. His father was among those killed in the Rangoon bombing.)

**

A woman linked to the destruction of a South Korean airliner with 115 people aboard confessed on television today that she is a Communist North Korean agent and said she planted a bomb on the plane.

The North Koreans have no compunction killing Koreans or otherwise. The good pastor was kept alive as a bargaining chip.

Did he think that he didn't need outside help?


Also:

South Korea is poised to complete the installment of a US missile shield next week, officials said Friday, despite unabated controversy over the Moon Jae-in government’s flip-flopping on the timing of the deployment.

Did you or any of your Liberal friend disabuse them of such notions, Mr. Dubourg?

Emmanuel Dubourg says he’s seen social media posts falsely claiming Canada has a special residency program for Haitians and that Canadian officials are in the United States to facilitate their entry.

**

The federal government is transparently lying to potential asylum seekers by saying there are "no advantages" to coming across the border illegally, the Canadian Council for Refugees says.

Emmanuel Dubourg, the Liberal MP who was sent to Miami to discourage Haitians from travelling to Canada to claim asylum, told reporters Friday that he has been telling them "there is no advantage" to coming to the country irregularly. ...

But Janet Dench, the executive director of the Canadian Council for Refugees, told HuffPost Canada that Ottawa's plan seems "like a strange strategy, because it is so obviously false."

"The reason that people come irregularly is because that is the way to avoid the Safe Third Country Agreement. I don't understand on what basis you could say you don't have an advantage by doing it. I mean, the advantage is you can make a claim [while] you would be immediately found not eligible if you presented yourself at a point of entry," she said.

No, I didn't think you did.

After all ... : 

“To those fleeing persecution, terror & war, Canadians will welcome you, regardless of your faith. Diversity is our strength #WelcomeToCanada,” he tweeted. 

Election in 2019.

Scratch a Liberal ...:

Sen. Denise Batters was minutes from boarding a flight home when she noticed two-day old Twitter posts that said she was only in the upper chamber because her husband killed himself. ...

Since the Trudeau government’s election in 2015, Batters has become a vocal critic of Liberal policy on medical assistance in dying and towards the Senate itself.

In late June, a former federal NDP candidate in Saskatchewan posted on the senator’s Facebook page that she was “only sitting in the Red Chamber because her husband, the MP, committed suicide.” The date was June 27. It was the first time the senator had heard or seen anyone aim those type of comments at her. ...

On Wednesday night, she was minutes away from boarding a flight from Toronto to Saskatchewan when she went on Twitter and by chance came across two tweets posted on Monday. A Twitter user with the handle @swancoole tweeted that Harper appointed her to the Senate in 2013 only because her husband killed himself and taxpayers are now supplying her life insurance.

The tweets appeared to be in response to online criticisms the senator levelled against the Liberals for paying a new consul-general, one the party recruited who was also a former candidate, more than a female recruited to a similar position.

When parents of autistic children stood on the side of the streets in Ontario to protest Wynne's appalling treatment of them, one motorist honked and said that he would still support the Liberals despite what they've done.

And that is a Liberal voter in a nutshell - a heartless tribalist.

People like him are the problem.

Also - as long as she has the unions, she will never lose:

The last nine of months of polling that have landed in Kathleen Wynne’s lap, and were obtained by The Canadian Press through a Freedom of Information request, suggest improving public opinion fortunes for a now somewhat less unpopular Liberal government.

The polling conducted by the Gandalf Group — headed by the man leading the Liberals’ 2018 re-election bid — found large support for the government’s plan for a $15 minimum wage, general support for carbon pricing, if not necessarily the specifics, and even improving assessments of the hydro file, over which the government has been consistently hammered.

And:

A new petition calls on Ontario Attorney General Yasir Naqvi to respond to the Jewish community’s complaints and concerns about hate crime and hate speech.

This Yasir Naqvi:

The National Council of Canadian Muslims (NCCM), formerly known as the Council of American Islamic Relations-Canada (CAIR-CAN), hosted a community picnic on Saturday, July 6th at the Dovercourt Community Centre ”“ and before a crowd of over 300, re-affirmed its mission to foster civic engagement in the Muslim community. ...

MPP Yasir Naqvi was on hand to reiterate the importance of NCCM as a national voice in the three key areas of media relations, human rights, and political advocacy.

Nope.


Aaaannnddd:

Days after families were sent scrambling following the abrupt closure of an Islamic high school in Scarborough, some of the affected students came together on Friday to protest.
With less than two weeks before the start of the school year, the Islamic Foundation School (IFS) announced it would be shutting down the grades 9 to 12 classes due to low enrolment as well as administrative and financial issues. The elementary school classes will not be affected. 
The union representing teachers says it was given no prior notice of closure and will take legal action.

Nearly 150 students are now in need of finding another place to continue their studies. 

Yeah, that's a shame.

I suppose racism is acceptable when leftists do it:

Counterprotesters crowded around him at an anti-illegal immigration rally in Southern California.

R.C. Maxwell, an African-American supporter of President Donald Trump, was voicing his views on immigration, saying that he had grown up in the black community and “I’ve seen problems with illegal immigrants.”

“There’s a problem with illegal immigration; I speak out against that,” Maxwell shouted Sunday night during the “America First!” rally held in Laguna Beach. “That doesn’t make me a Nazi.”

Then the crowd got loud.

“You’re a traitor!” one hollered.

“People want you in chains, dude,” another person called out.

“I know they do,” Maxwell said.

Another said: “If you want to keep the peace, you should leave.”

Video showed a man emerge from the crowd and throw a punch – then Maxwell hit the ground. The scene turned into chaos as others tried to make him stop, and someone asked, “Where’s the cops?”

The man, who was heard screaming and cursing, was later identified by police as 20-year-old Richard Losey, of Lancaster, Ohio.

Losey was arrested Tuesday on suspicion of misdemeanour battery with a hate crime enhancement, Laguna Beach police said this week in a statement.

But prosecutors have since said “there is not enough evidence” to charge Losey with a hate crime, according to the Los Angeles Times.

“Political motivation is not an area covered under hate crimes in the penal code,” Susan Kang Schroeder, chief of staff for the Orange County district attorney, said in a statement, according to the newspaper.

California law defines a hate crime as “a criminal act committed, in whole or in part, because of one or more of the following actual or perceived characteristics of the victim:

– Disability
– Gender
– Nationality
– Race or ethnicity
– Religion
– Sexual orientation

– Association with a person or group with one or more of these actual or perceived characteristics”
Authorities said in a statement that the victim was “sucker-punched” as he was “peacefully speaking with a group of people.”

Losey had fled by the time police had arrived at the scene, authorities said, but video of the incident was shared widely on social media. Authorities said that after the victim contacted police Monday to report an assault by a counterprotester, police were able to identify the suspect.

When he was arrested, Losey was attempting to buy a bus pass for home. Police believe he was trying to flee the state to avoid prosecution.

 

What appalling creatures leftists are. 

Also - a list of offensive things that will be erased from Canadian memories soon enough. We were always at war with Eurasia.

Because Rex Murphy:

We should all guard against neo-Nazism. But we should equally guard against a near twin, Black Bloc, which dips into every protest with fondness for fists and semi-riot. This latter element we have seen both more frequently and more numerously than — to end on a high note — the other bunch of losers who spent much of their protest hiding out in a parking garage. Which should we worry about more I wonder?

Screw you, Iceland!

A 17-year-old boy with Down syndrome is a hero in Italy after saving a little girl from drowning.

Valerio Catoia and his family were at Sabaudia Beach on July 12 when two girls ages 10 and 14 were literally swept out to sea. They were no match for the powerful undercurrent that relentlessly rushed them farther out by the second. They screamed for help.

"The little one started to go down but then re-emerged," the Republic reported. Valerio "instinctively" dived after her instantly.

Valerio's father also heard the girls crying out and immediately went into action. Ahead of lifeguards trying to help, the two heroes reached the girls struggling to stay afloat.  

While the father assisted the older girl, Valerio reached the younger girl, cradled her, and swam her safely to the shore.

News of the rescue spread and Valerio quickly became a national hero. Italian citizens not only accepted the Down syndrome teen, they championed him all the more for overcoming his disability.

This is probably creating shock-waves in trigonometry circles:

A 3,700-year-old clay tablet has proved that the Babylonians developed trigonometry 1,500 years before the Greeks and were using a sophisticated method of mathematics that could change how we calculate today. The tablet, known as Plimpton 332, was discovered in the early 1900s in southern Iraq by Edgar Banks, an American archaeologist and diplomat, who was the inspiration for the Indiana Jones films.

And now, amazing dogs:

Swansea Jack is a legend in Wales, where he lived with his owner, William Thomas, near the River Tawe. It’s here that the black retriever’s superhero reputation began when he jumped into the river to save a drowning boy. A few weeks later, he did it again. And then again. And again. All told, it’s believed that Jack saved a total of 27 people during his lifetime.

Good boy.

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