For A Monday

 

Ah, the gentle breezes of summer ...




China, furious that its buffer state, North Korea, has ruffled many a feather, lashes out at the US, like it has the moral authority to do so:

Chinese state media on Monday stressed the limits of new United Nations sanctions on North Korea, and also slammed the United States for its "arrogance", saying Washington needed to understand it also has a role in lessening tensions. ...

In a front page commentary, the overseas edition of the ruling Communist Party's official People's Daily said North Korea's open flouting of U.N. rules with its missile launches meant that it had to be punished, but sanctions had to be targeted. 

"Sanctions to the greatest possible extent must avoid causing negative impacts to ordinary people and to third countries, and avoid bringing disaster to the country in question's normal and legal trade and business exchanges with the outside world, people's normal lives and the humanitarian situation," it wrote. 

"A precision blow is the essential part of sanctions." 

China has repeatedly said that while sanctions need to be imposed, they cannot bring a final resolution to the North Korea issue, which has to be addressed by talks. 

China has also called for Washington and Seoul to help lower tensions by reining in their military activities and drills on the peninsula, and by withdrawing the Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) anti-missile system. 

The influential Global Times, published by the People's Daily, said it an editorial that the United States needed to curb its "moral arrogance over North Korea". 

"The West should be reminded to exercise restraint. If it believes it is only North Korea rather than the U.S. and South Korea as well to blame for the nuclear issue, this ill-fitting mindset will not help solve the crisis," the strongly nationalist publication said. 

"The U.S. should aim for peace and co-existence rather than geopolitical dominance." 

Yeah, the Chinese said that.



Also:

U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson held a door open for dialogue with North Korea on Monday, saying Washington was willing to talk to Pyongyang if it halted a series of recent missile test launches. 

And - if the Japan and South Korea want to survive, they need to arm themselves:

The foreign ministers of Japan, the United States and South Korea agreed Monday to ramp up international pressure on North Korea to compel the reclusive country to abandon its nuclear and ballistic missile programs.

North Korea is not going to denuclearise and China won't, either.





You know what you're doing, France:

French anti-terrorism police are investigating an incident at the Eiffel Tower in Paris overnight. A man brandishing a knife and shouting "Allah akhbar" crashed through a security barrier, reportedly intending to kill a soldier. The iconic Eiffel Tower was then evacuated by police. The arrested suspect told investigators that he had been in contact with a member of ISIS who encouraged the attack. This marks the seventh terror incident in France this year.

Obama must be soiling his shorts:

Nebraska regulators will hear final arguments for and against TransCanada Corp’s proposed Keystone XL pipeline this week before deciding whether to approve its route later this year, the last big hurdle for the long-delayed project after President Donald Trump gave it federal approval.

Ernst Zundel is dead and no one cares:

As historical footnotes go, one of my proudest contributions was the exposing of Ernst Zundel as a neo-Nazi.

From that point onward, the secret world of this notorious Toronto-based anti-Semite began to unravel, leading to years in court fighting extradition as a security risk, and finally his deportation to a German jail where he served time for inciting racial hatred and for being a Holocaust denier, a criminal offence in Germany.

It has been learned, through a posting by his estranged wife, that Zundel — odious to the core — died of a heart attack Saturday at age 78 at his home in Germany’s Black Forest where he lived after his release from prison in 2010 following five years of incarceration.

If he lived unrepentant and died that way, he is in for a very fiery shock.





If one's language and culture are incredibly important to one, then one ought to teach and maintain it.

Not that emphasising rare languages is helping people in the market-place bit I digress ... :

Indigenous language skills are being lost in Saskatoon, despite the efforts of educators in the province and the emphasis placed on language preservation by the Truth and Reconciliation Commission.

Data released Wednesday by Statistics Canada from the latest census, gathered in 2016, shows the number of people in Saskatchewan who identify an Indigenous language as their mother tongue dropped from 30,895 in 2011 to 28,340.

Organic and/or locally-sourced foods are gastronomical ways to virtue-signal, not aid low-income groups or persons:

“While eating local or organic food is often touted as superior from a health, environmental and oftentimes ethical perspective, such foods are often available only in Canada to the wealthy, with limited access for those living on lower or even middle incomes,” The Globe and Mail reported. ...

On Wednesday, I priced out a week’s worth of quick, easy, highly rated online dinner recipes for an imaginary family of four at my indomitable local No Frills and came up with about $125 (that’s excluding basic pantry items like oil, flour, sugar and spices.) Mom and Dad will barely get out of McDonald’s for the per-meal price of $18, never mind the kids. These were pretty solid family meals, too: tuna casserole, shepherd’s pie, a roasted chicken dinner, sausage and vegetable stew — and a warm, crispy baguette with each. You could easily cut the budget by a third and stay perfectly healthy. ...

And now, a matcha Zen garden: