Tuesday Post

It's not about fairness, Mr. Fatah. It's a show trial. If it were any more of a show trial, Lenin himself would spring out and accuse you of attempting to undermine the Revolution:

Leading up to my testimony at the House of Commons Heritage Committee last week, I had expected MPs to have some degree of interest in what a Muslim had to say about M-103 and the loaded word “Islamophobia”.

Instead, I felt a tangible hostility from the phalanx of Liberal MPs, as well as the chair, MP Hedy Fry.

Their body language, and refusal to address anything I had said as a witness made it evident to me this was not a “hearing”, but an exercise to rubber stamp a pre-determined outcome.

This wasn’t the first time I had seen what appeared to me as a kangaroo court.

Nearly 50 years ago in 1970, I was brought in handcuffs before a Martial Law Court in Karachi, Pakistan where a military colonel presided over my sentencing, even before I had spoken.

Nothing I could have said would have mattered in the day’s proceedings that sent me to a hill top prison in Balochistan.

Of course, my committee appearance in Ottawa was not that bad and my freedom was not at stake.

But the attitude of the chair reminded me of the Pakistani colonel.

Fry was not there to hear me, in my view, but to time me and interrupt me, so that I could not complete my thoughts or respond to attacks on me by Liberal MP Arif Virani.

While I spoke, many of the MPs helped themselves to sandwiches and instead of taking notes, munched away. At one stage, Fry scolded me, telling me to not respond to Virani’s question directly, but to address her, and that it was only through the chair that I could answer questions.

(Sidebar: ... for you are a chap who would dare thwart the revolution.)

Could this be interpreted in any other way than a show trial where the verdict is already known and those in charge are alternately at ease or attempting to instill fear in those being tried?





Saudi Arabia claims that it is giving women the right to drive, seventeen years into the latest century:

Women will be allowed to drive for the first time next summer in Saudi Arabia, the ultra-conservative kingdom announced Tuesday, marking a significant expansion of women's rights in the only the country that barred them from getting behind the wheel.

Also - a fool he was:

A senior education official in Saudi Arabia has been fired after a school textbook erroneously included a digitally altered image of the late King Faisal that showed him sitting next to Yoda, a character from the “Star Wars” movie series, according to reports in the Saudi media.

Edit or do not. There is no Photoshop.

Trudeau's favourite country tortures its political dissidents and forcibly returns North Korean defectors:

Canada, which has been accused of sharing intelligence that led to the torture of prisoners abroad, on Monday issued rules to prevent its security agencies from disclosing or requesting information from other countries if it would result in mistreatment.

The rules also prohibit Canada's spy agency, border services agents and federal police from using information likely obtained through torture, unless it is necessary to prevent death or significant injuries.

The Obama administration told the Warmbier family to keep quiet during their son's North Korean captivity:

The parents of a young Ohioan who was detained in North Korea for more than a year and died soon after being released said Tuesday he was “jerking violently,” howling, and “staring blankly” when he returned home on a medical flight.

Fred and Cindy Warmbier appeared on Fox News’ Fox & Friends morning TV show amid an escalating war of words between the Trump administration and North Korea. A North Korean official has claimed President Donald Trump has, in effect, declared war, which the White House denied.

Otto Warmbier’s father said they wanted to speak out about his condition after hearing North Korea claiming to be a victim that’s being picked on.

“North Korea is not a victim. They’re terrorists,” he said. “They kidnapped Otto. They tortured him. They intentionally injured him. They are not victims.”

The parents described the condition his family found him in when they went aboard an air ambulance that arrived June 13 in Cincinnati. They said Warmbier, a 22-year-old University of Virginia student, was howling, making an “involuntary, inhuman sound,” “staring blankly into space jerking violently,” and was blind and deaf with his head shaved. Fred Warmbier said his mouth “looked like someone had taken a pair of pliers and rearranged his bottom teeth.”

Also:

Kim Jong-un had 11 musicians executed with anti-aircraft guns and orders aides to pick out sex slaves from North Korea’s schools, a defector has claimed.

The Trump administration is now claiming that it is not seeking a regime change in North Korea:

The Trump administration said Monday it's not seeking to overthrow North Korea's government after the president tweeted that Kim Jong Un "won't be around much longer" and called Pyongyang's assertion absurd that Donald Trump's comment amounted to a declaration of war.

Trump is doing what his predecessors did: kicking the can down the road.

The North Koreans cannot wait that long, I'm afraid.

If there is no regime change, then everything Trump has said, done and tweeted is wasteful bluster.




The world has often decried the sale of arms to Iran:

Russian parliamentarians are objecting to Canada’s stated plans to eventually sell weapons to Ukraine.

After a Friday meeting with visiting Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said Canada is beginning the lengthy process to certify Ukraine to buy Canadian weapons.

Harper gave material aid to Ukraine. Trudeau is just stuck with it ... for now.




But ... but ... they're not victims!

Hindu Rohingya women are reporting that they are being forced to remove sindoor (a traditional vermilion red powder worn by married women along the parting of their hair) break their bangles, and marry Muslim men, converting religion in the process.

 

(Sidebar: "The Wrath of Khan" joke is imminent.):

The Toronto Sun recently published a column by Omar Khan, former senior staffer to several Ontario Liberal cabinet ministers (“Wynne is actually doing the province some good”, Sept. 23).

Khan, now a Vice President for Public Affairs at Hill+Knowlton and a member of the Ontario Liberal Party campaign steering committee, defends the record of Premier Kathleen Wynne, rejecting the notion he says has been put forward by “firebrand columnists” that Ontario policies are producing something close to a “second Bolshevik revolution”. ...

Ontario, once you factor in federal taxes, maintains one of the highest top marginal income rates in the developed world. Top earners face a tax rate of 53.5% on any additional earnings.

Economic research shows such punitive taxes undermine growth and make it harder for Ontario to attract top talent.

A recent study by Ontario’s Institute for Competitiveness and Prosperity notes some CEOs, when recruiting top international talent, report they often receive little more than a “courtesy call” in reply, due largely to Ontario’s high tax rates.

Ontario also carries a huge public debt.

The cost of servicing this debt makes it harder for the provincial government to consider tax relief, at least without prolonged spending restraint or cuts.

And debt is an obstacle to tax competitiveness.

Why bother complaining about opioid abuse?

The first city-run supervised injection site will open in the ByWard Market Tuesday afternoon to fight the growing opioid crisis, as the volunteer group that has been running an unsanctioned site only a few streets away says it will continue to operate.

A witness in the gas plant scandal trial proves problematic:

In an email sent to OPP investigators on Feb. 22, 2015, Gagnon suggested new charges be considered against David Livingston and Laura Miller.

(As it turned out, detectives were already considering those charges.)

The two were respectively then Ontario Premier Dalton McGuinty’s chief of staff and deputy chief of staff at the time that two gas plants in Oakville and Mississauga were cancelled and relocated at enormous public expense.

Gagnon appeared to be suggesting a motive for why Livingston might have wanted emails and documents relating to the cancelled plants to disappear.

“Livingston was leaving public service,” Gagnon told the Project Hampden team, “but had to protect his reputation and that of the party for any future employment elsewhere and the parties (sic) future election.”

If such a view was probably as common as mother’s milk at Queen’s Park at the time, and perhaps even among a cynical electorate, it is a problematic statement from an expert at a time when expert witnesses are being held to ever-higher standards by Canadian courts.

But is it untrue?

I'm sure it is common for investigators to colour their findings with speculation. after all, they do have to guess as motives. If Livingston did, in fact, delete e-mails at the behest of his party, then Gagnon is not saying anything that the jury cannot conclude themselves.




This is the same party that refused let pro-life MPs run:

Conservative Leader Andrew Scheer is accusing Liberals of a “lack of respect” for parliament after a kerfuffle in the status of women committee Tuesday morning.

Liberals and New Democrats oppose the Tories’ nomination of an apparently pro-life MP for committee chair, a role traditionally held by a member of the official opposition. After Rachael Harder was put forward for the role, Liberals vacated their seats in protest and forced the committee meeting to adjourn.

There is no "pro-choice", only pro-abortion (as one can plainly see from the childish behaviour above - like all women always worry about abortion!).

People will defend that shibboleth to the end.

From a party known for its horrendous treatment of women, this is typically melodramatic of them.



Also - perhaps people are finally sick of Trudeau's crap:

If a federal election was held today, the Conservatives would be narrowly voted in over the Liberals.

So says a new Forum Research poll, which found of 1,350 decided and leaning voters, 39% would support the Tories and 35% would back the Liberals.

The same poll found the NDP got 15% of the vote, while the Bloc Quebecois and the Green Party got a mere 5% and 4%, respectively.

Specifically, the poll found if an election were held today, the Conservatives would get a 169 seat minority government, while the Liberals would win 130 seats. The NDP, BQ, and Green Party would get 26, 12 and one respectively.

The poll also found is that Liberal Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s performance approval is down.

 
But never discount the congenitally stupid.




It is not reconciliation. It is obeisance:

Staff and students at Memorial University are striving towards reconciliation with the province's Indigenous population with a short declaration at the start of many on-campus events.

If you've attended anything at MUN so far this school year, you've probably heard it.

"We respectfully acknowledge the territory in which we gather as the ancestral homelands of the Beothuk, and the island of Newfoundland as the ancestral homelands of the Mi'kmaq and Beothuk," the declaration begins.

It also goes on to acknowledge the Inuit and Innu populations as the original inhabitants of Labrador.

Were there universities before the dreadful Europeans came?


Also:

The chief and a band councillor from a small Southwestern Ontario First Nation have been removed from office in the fallout of a nearly $600,000 band powwow, an audit of which found much of the spending wasn’t backed up.

That kind of reconciliation can be expensive.




And - to be filed under "a damned inexcusable travesty":

Jack Anawak was eight years old in 1956, the year the doctors came to his family’s home in their tiny Arctic community and took his mother south to treat her tuberculosis.

Two years later, she died in hospital and was buried, somewhere.

The family was never told where and for nearly 60 years the mystery has sat in Anawak’s heart like a dark hole in the sea ice that never freezes smoothly over.

(Sidebar: oh, please ...)

“It left a question mark,” said Anawak, who became a prominent Inuit leader and Liberal MP.

“Where is she buried? Where did this happen?

“You’re always wondering where your loved one is. To me it’s really important we close that final chapter of our lives, to finally realize you can go and visit your mom or your dad.”

Anawak may finally get some answers.

After nearly 10 years of work, the federal government is preparing to release a database holding everything that is known about what happened to people who were taken south for tuberculosis treatment.

And now, just in time for Halloween:

Halloween has exploded in popularity in Japan over the past few years, which has made celebrating one of my favorite holidays here all the easier, with fun events being held in major cities and delicious Halloween-themed treats being sold at restaurants and chains across the country.

Not to be left out, this year conveyor-belt sushi chain Kurazushi will be joining in the festivities with its own ghoulishly themed menu, featuring two savory items and two desserts.