For a Friday

Lots to talk about ...




London mayor Sadiq Khan once issued the extraordinary statement that terrorism was part-and-parcel of life in a major metropolis:

Sadiq Khan has said he believes the threat of terror attacks are “part and parcel of living in a big city” and encouraged Londoners to be vigilant to combat dangers.

Yes, about that:

A home-made bomb on a packed rush-hour commuter train in London engulfed a carriage in flames and injured 29 people on Friday, but apparently failed to fully explode, in Britain’s fifth major terrorism incident this year.

Yes, Londoners - get used to this.




North Korea fires a missile over Japan, the one that has gone the furthest to date:

North Korea fired another missile over the northern Japanese island of Hokkaido on Friday morning, just a day after Pyongyang said that Japan “should be sunken into the sea” with a nuclear bomb and that the United States should be “beaten to death” with a stick “fit for a rabid dog.”

This was the second time in less than three weeks that North Korea sent a ballistic missile over Japan, and the launch came less than two weeks after North Korea exploded what is widely believed to be a hydrogen bomb.

Japan should seriously consider nuclearising.



Vaguely related:

Current U.S. policy directs the American military not to defend Canada if it is targeted in a ballistic missile attack, says the top Canadian officer at the North American Aerospace Defence Command.

"We're being told in Colorado Springs that the extant U.S. policy is not to defend Canada," said Lt.-Gen. Pierre St-Amand, deputy commander of Colorado-based Norad.

 
What part of Canada is Trudeau willing to live without?



Some North Koreans appear to be indifferent to a conflict in which they may lose or win. They simply want their agony to end:

“An increasing number of residents are pointing out that, for them [the North Korean people], provoking the US is a losing battle. We are the ones who suffer from the regime’s belligerent behavior with no consideration for reconciliation and cooperation,” he added.

Some residents are said to be welcoming the regime’s propaganda that a war is imminent, a source in North Hamgyong Province said. We want the suffering to finally end even if it means losing a war,” he said.

“Kim Jong Un is using the same old strategy of his grandfather (Kim Il Sung) and father (Kim Jong Il) to consolidate the population with threats of war, but it is not really effective anymore.”

 
So why shouldn't Asian countries other than China nuclearise? Why shouldn't there be a regime change in North Korea that doesn't involve or please the dictators in Beijing?



Also:

Give Trump credit where it’s due. His policy instincts about Moon and the South Korean left hew closer to reality than those of the last several American presidents. A good president doesn’t always need a mastery of fine detail; he simply needs to have good enough policy instincts to select advisors who do (and then, stay off Twitter and let them do their jobs).

Now the question that confronts Washington is how to mitigate the damage that Moon is willing to do to core U.S. national security interests. Moon knows the weakness of his position — his people like him personally, and wanted a change after ten years of conservative rule, but are deeply uneasy with his North Korea policies. No doubt, the signs of decoupling of the U.S.-South Korea alliance are cause for celebration in Pyongyang and Beijing. But if Moon means to finlandize South Korea and undermine sanctions yet again, why should Washington let him do so on his own terms? A strong demonstration that this will cause a breach in the alliance will undermine Moon’s political support, and may discourage him from undermining sanctions that Seoul’s representatives have supported at the U.N.

 
(Kamsahamnida)




Further evidence that since the bombing of Air India 182, the Canadian government exhibits not only an unwillingness to combat terrorism and punish terrorists but will actively reward them:

Omar Khadr’s visits with his controversial sister will remain restricted, but he has been granted more freedom to use the internet.

Because it's not like he can't contact like-minded people online.


Also:

Two Islamic preachers accused of giving anti-Semitic sermons in 2014 won't face charges, a spokesman for Quebec's Crown prosecutor's office said Thursday.

(Sidebar: but people will be investigated for "climate change denial".)




Today in "governmental corruption and incompetence" news:

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau brushed off questions from reporters in St. John’s, Nfld. Wednesday after reports emerged the RCMP footed a bigger-than-anticipated security bill for his trip to the Aga Khan’s private island.

“The RCMP provides a protective service for the prime minister and my family and does an excellent job of that,” he said. “It has been the case for all prime ministers in the past and certainly into the future. … I’m not going to question the job or the choices that the RCMP makes.”

The CBC reported Wednesday the trip cost Royal Canadian Mounted Police and other government departments more than $215,000. Original figures contained in an initial response to parliament in March were lower — just over $127,000 — but the RCMP noted at the time that some expenses wouldn’t show up in that amount because they were still being processed.

**

There are growing signs that Canada won’t meet the criteria for attending a November peacekeeping summit in Vancouver, even though it is the host country.

The price of admission is clear in leaked UN documents obtained by The Canadian Press: Defence ministers attending must be ready to pledge specific forces to the UN, if they haven’t already done so.

Canada has yet to make any definite pledge, despite being the host of this year’s summit, and Prime Minister Justin Trudeau wouldn’t commit Wednesday to a decision before mid-November.

The uncertainty over Canada’s plans before the meeting has prompted renewed frustration and disappointment from the UN and various allies, some of whom are losing faith in the Liberal government’s promise to support peacekeeping.

(Sidebar: even he must realise that no one, even the UN, takes him seriously.)


**

A devastating forensic audit of a small southern Ontario First Nation has revealed that a celebratory powwow last year ballooned to cost $546,117, more than twice the original estimate.

The audit by the London, Ont., firm of Matson Driscoll & Damico Ltd. also shows there were virtually no financial controls for the Caldwell First Nation powwow, and suggests that some funds may have been stolen and that Chief Louise Hillier was in conflict of interest when her son’s company won an untendered $190,000 contract to video the proceedings.

(Importantly, the Aug. 28 audit — and the temporary suspension of chief and the entire council — was the result of a motion from Councillor Jim Peters at a June 3 meeting.)

The powwow, which featured unusually big cash prizes in singing, dancing and drumming contests — an astonishing total of $280,000, most “unsupported,” as the auditors put it, by documents such as receipts — was meant as a celebration of the 2010 settlement of the band’s specific land claim.

**

About 6,000 asylum seekers illegally crossed the Canada-U.S. border into Quebec in August, more than double July’s total, taking the province’s tally so far this year to over 12,000, government data showed. 

The surge has prompted a backlash from opposition politicians and anti-migrant groups in the primarily French-speaking province. 

As of this week almost 1,300 asylum seekers were in temporary housing in and around Montreal, the province’s largest city, according to the Quebec government. 

That has put Canada on track to get more refugee claims this year than any since 2001. The surge is straining a system already grappling with the worst delays in years. 

No, she shouldn't apologise, resign or make any move that can be construed as conciliatory because it's high-time people stopped living in an apartheid state:

The mayor of Winnipeg is calling for the resignation of a senator who wants Indigenous people to give up their status cards in exchange for Canadian citizenship.

Brian Bowman said the comments by Conservative Sen. Lynn Beyak are damaging to the country's reconciliation. If she won't quit, he said, she should be better educated and understand that Indigenous people are indeed Canadians.

"To have a member of the Canadian Senate be so incredibly ignorant about who Canadian citizens are is deeply offensive," Bowman said Thursday.

"At a minimum, she should be apologizing to Canadians — all Canadians."

A letter signed by Beyak, and posted on her website Sept. 1, says: "None of us are leaving, so let's stop the guilt and blame and find a way to live together.

"Trade your status card for a Canadian citizenship, with a fair and negotiated payout to each Indigenous man, woman and child in Canada, to settle all the outstanding land claims and treaties, and move forward together just like the leaders already do in Ottawa," Beyak wrote.

"All Canadians are then free to preserve their cultures in their own communities, on their own time, with their own dime."

 
Perhaps "enlightened" politicians can stop treating people as the "noble savage" (so they can be exploited for their votes) but as citizens who should be more than able to assume roles of responsibility and live in dignity.



That's a shame:

Groups of fleeing Rohingya Muslims watched from inside Bangladesh on Friday as another of the homes in their abandoned village across the border in Myanmar went up in flames.

The villagers said they’d escaped days ago, crossing into Bangladesh at the border point of Tumbru and joining thousands of other ethnic Rohingya huddling in the open in the district of Bandarban to escape recent violence in Buddhist-majority Myanmar.

Flames could be seen only about 500 metres from the border fence.

“You see this fire today, that is my village,” said Farid Alam, one of the Rohingya.

About that:

In the last month, the world media reports, 250,000 Rohingya have now fled the latest cycle of violence, that began with Rohingya attacks on the military in mid-August, for Bangladesh. In fact, Aung San Suu Kyi has spoken out, but not in the way that many expected. They wanted her to categorically denounce the Burmese military and to depict the Rohingya as entirely innocent victims of Buddhist attacks; this she has refused to do. She believes the story of the Rohingyas in Myanmar is more complicated than the outside world believes. She has noted that “fake news” about atrocities in Myanmar have been relied on by much of the world’s media. More than a few of the stories about the Rohingya have indeed been accompanied by photos purportedly showing the violence against them, but which, in fact, have turned out to be photos of other atrocities experienced by other peoples, having nothing to do with Myanmar. Even the BBC’s south-east Asia correspondent, Jonathan Head, concedes that “much of it [the photos, and the coverage]  is wrong.” A closer look reveals that many of the pictures supposedly from Myanmar have come from other crises around the world, with one of those tweeted by Turkey’s Deputy Prime Minister Mehmet Simsek even dating back to the Rwandan genocide in 1994.

Jonathan Head discusses at the BBC website four of the most widely-circulated photographs, ostensibly showing Rohingya victims of current Buddhist violence, that are examples of “fake news.” The first photograph, showing a number of bloated corpses, “does appear on several websites dated last year. This suggests the image is not from the recent violence in Rakhine state.’’

Another day in Pakistan:

A boy, 17, and a girl, 16, were neighbours in a suburb of Karachi. The girl ran away from home. The boy reportedly waited for her. After they were tracked down, they were accused of plotting to elope. Ultimately, by order of the council of elders in their community and for the honour of that community, members of their own families executed them by electrocution.

And now, where is the body of Sir John Franklin? An historian thinks he knows:

“I believe that Franklin is in a vault on King William Island,” says Louie Kamookak, an Inuit historian who has spent 30 years correlating stories collected from elders with European logbooks and journals.

The mystery that surrounds the Franklin Expedition is one of the great legends of Arctic exploration. The ships Erebus and Terror set out from England in 1845 with 129 men to search for the Northwest Passage, but they never returned. ...

Kamookak relates two stories passed down through generations that may offer tantalizing clues.
“One group of Inuit said they saw a burial of a great chief under the ground, under stone.”

This was remarkable for the hunters, as Inuit traditionally buried their dead on the surface, wrapped in caribou skins and under a cairn. They investigated the site, expecting to find something similar. All they found was a flat stone.

“They said he was a great shaman who turned to stone,” says Kamookak.

In another account, a group of travelling Inuit came across a large wooden structure.

“They managed to get a cross piece they took for a sled. The man who was telling the story said there was a flat stone and he could tell the stone was hollow.”

Given that other expedition graves have been found on land, Kamookak believes Franklin’s is there too.

“I don’t think they would have an ocean burial for him.”

If he’s right, Franklin is probably still lying beneath the tundra on King William Island’s rocky and windswept northeast coast.

Ladies and gentlemen, Mr. Stan Rogers.