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The world is a chaotic place ...



If there is anything that can eclipse the attempted murder of five people (one of whom was a police officer), it is this:

A 64-year-old man armed with multiple machine guns strafed an outdoor country music festival in Las Vegas from a high-rise hotel window on Sunday, slaughtering at least 58 people in the deadliest mass shooting in modern U.S. history before killing himself. 

(Sidebar: the previous holder of this despicable record belonged to an Islamist who shot forty-nine people at a gay club in Florida.)

The barrage of gunfire from a 32nd-floor window of the Mandalay Bay hotel into a crowd of 22,000 people lasted several minutes, sparking panic as throngs of music fans desperately cowered on the open ground, hemmed in by fellow concertgoers, while others at the edge tried to flee. 

More than 500 people were injured - some by gunfire, some trampled - in the pandemonium adjacent to the Las Vegas Strip as police scrambled to locate the assailant. 

Police on Monday identified the gunman as Stephen Paddock, who lived in a retirement community in Mesquite, Nevada. They said they believed he acted alone and did not know why he attacked the crowd. The Islamic State militant group claimed responsibility for the massacre, but U.S. officials said there was no evidence of that.

Throughout the panic, moments of life-saving decency:

Bystanders and first responders had already been improvising, using wheelbarrows and riot fences as makeshift stretchers, lugging the injured and dying along the Las Vegas strip. Padgett’s voice was trembling, it sounded frayed, but when the man asked for help her voice didn’t waver.

“Put them all in the back,” she said. “Put them all in my truck.”

The problem of evil is combatted with the problem of good. People were willing to rush to the aid of others, even risking their lives to do so.




Back to a previous evil:

Public Safety Minister Ralph Goodale tried Monday to assuage renewed concerns about the security of Canada’s asylum system after it emerged the suspect in a weekend attack in Edmonton entered Canada as a refugee in 2012.

Abdulahi Hasan Sharif is facing 11 charges — including five counts of attempted murder — after a city police officer was stabbed and four people were struck by a cube van in what authorities have characterized as an act of terror.

Oh, really, Ralph? Then how is it that Mr. Sharif slipped through the cracks of this allegedly thorough vetting process (and from a known hotbed of terrorism, as well) as Chiheb Essaghaier and Raed Jaser did?

How does this escape the notice of the RCMP?

Sharif's former co-worker, who didn't want to be identified out of concern for his safety, said:  "He would rant.

"It was very incoherent. He would just bounce from idea to idea, tangent to tangent, just about what he believed in and he definitely had genocidal beliefs, you could say.

"He had major issues with polytheists. He said they need to die. That sort of thing. I only had a handful of conversations with him about it; those only occurred when there were just two of us in the work room."

(Sidebar: these polytheists.)

Around 8:15 p.m. local time Saturday near Commonwealth Stadium, an Edmonton officer was struck by a Chevrolet Malibu while working crowd control for a CFL game.

Const. Mike Chernyk, standing behind a barricade when he was hit, was sent flying into the air. A man got out of the Malibu and attacked Chernyk with a knife before fleeing on foot.

More than three hours later, a white U-Haul van was pulled over at a checkstop on the city's north side. A police officer recognized the driver's name as similar to the name of the registered owner of the car that had struck the officer earlier.

(Sidebar: why is it always a white vehicle?)

The U-Haul then sped off toward downtown Edmonton, where streets were filled with Saturday night bar crowds and football fans. Pursued by police, the van struck and injured four pedestrians.

Considering that Ralph's boss just let anybody in, how does Ralph plan on defending his government the next time this happens?


Also:

The recommendations include reciting and explaining the Muslim greeting “As-salamu alaykum” (peace be upon you) alongside the singing of O Canada and inviting children to visit a local mosque. It also includes templates of famous mosques around the world for children to construct during cut-and-paste exercises.

But it’s the guide’s alarming definition of Islamophobia that’s caught the attention of the leading Jewish advocacy group. The school board’s guide defines the term as “fear, prejudice, hatred of dislike directed against Islam or Muslims, or towards Islamic politics or culture.”

“The TDSB definition, if enforced, could lead to punishment for students or teachers who display ‘dislike’ towards the persecution of LGBTQ people in the Islamic Republic of Iran, harsh restrictions on women in Saudi Arabia, and Palestinian terrorism against Israelis, all of which are examples of “Islamic politics”, an earlier press release from B’nai Brith Canada says.

The organization contacted the TDSB Monday morning and by the afternoon, the school board had committed to pulling all copies of the guidebook until they revised the definition of Islamophobia, according to B’nai Brith Canada. It’s unclear if they plan to revise or remove any of the other controversial aspects of the guide. ...

The House of Commons heritage committee is currently engaged in a study of Islamophobia and other forms of prejudice following the passing of the controversial M-103. The committee has yet to offer an agreed upon definition of the ill-defined term.

 


You know what you're doing, France:

A man who fatally stabbed two women outside Marseille's main train station had been detained for shoplifting and released the day before the attack, and used seven fake identities in previous encounters with police, officials said Monday.

Also:

Muslim women in Austria were forced by police to remove their facial coverings Monday as an anti-burka law came into effect.

Good because no one else can wear an identity-concealing garment. 

Except Batman.

The trial of Kim Jon-Nam's assassins has begun and the testimony is graphic:

Airport nurse Rabiatul Adawiyah Mohamad Sofi
Rabiatul said that before Kim had a seizure, she used facial tissue to wipe liquid off his face, but he appeared to still be sweating. She said Kim appeared to be in pain and told her someone sprayed liquid on his face.

Airport doctor Nik Mohd Adzrul Ariff Raja Azlan
Nik said Kim was unable to respond when he was asked what had happened.

“When I saw him, his hands were clutching his head. He was closing his eyes tightly and his face was very red. He was sweating profusely,” Nik testified.

He said Kim had extremely high blood pressure and rapid pulse and started to display seizure symptoms, with his jaw and teeth clenched and eyes rolling upward.

Kim then fell unconscious and his blood pressure plunged, and his pulse gave out, Nik said.

Also:

Last August, a secret message was passed from Washington to Cairo warning about a mysterious vessel steaming toward the Suez Canal. The bulk freighter named Jie Shun was flying Cambodian colors but had sailed from North Korea, the warning said, with a North Korean crew and an unknown cargo shrouded by heavy tarps.

Armed with this tip, customs agents were waiting when the ship entered Egyptian waters. They swarmed the vessel and discovered, concealed under bins of iron ore, a cache of more than 30,000 rocket-propelled grenades. It was, as a United Nations report later concluded, the “largest seizure of ammunition in the history of sanctions against the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea.”

But who were the rockets for? The Jie Shun’s final secret would take months to resolve and would yield perhaps the biggest surprise of all: The buyers were the Egyptians themselves.

This kind of thing doesn't just happen.

How are those sanctions working out?




It's just money:

The federal Finance Department says the government ran a $100-million deficit through the first four months of the current fiscal year, a significant decline from the same period last year.

I would bake the cake ... but not as they wished.

I would require an old priest and a young priest to mix flour from the Holy Land and blessed water. I would have the cake expertly frosted in the presence of the Ark of the Covenant.

Frosted by. Top. Men.

How does that cake taste now, losers who hate their dads?!