Monday Post: On the Eve of the Eve of All Hallows

 

 
Yep.



Lots to talk about ...



Mary Dawson - this Mary Dawson - :

The federal ethics watchdog has never proactively checked whether public office holders with potential conflicts of interests are actually recusing themselves from decisions that could place them in an actual conflict, HuffPost Canada has learned.

In her 10 years in office, Mary Dawson, the House of Commons' conflict of interest and ethics commissioner, has only once investigated whether an MP failed to do so because of a conflict — and that was after a complaint was lodged by another MP, her spokesperson told HuffPost.

"You asked whether the Commissioner has investigated a member for not recusing himself or herself formally (by filling a recusal) or informally (by not showing up to votes or debates) because of a conflict," Margot Booth, the communications and outreach manager for Dawson's office wrote in an email to HuffPost. "The Commissioner has undertaken one inquiry in relation to a failure to recuse, the Thibault Inquiry in 2008."

Dawson has never investigated a cabinet minister.

- claims that many cabinet ministers, not just the slippery Bill Morneau, have retained control over assets that they would expect greedy farmers, waitresses and small business owners claim for tax purposes:

A number of other Trudeau cabinet ministers are in the same situation as Finance Minister Bill Morneau and have managed to retain control of assets they would be required to divest if this wealth wasn't being held indirectly through a holding company or similar mechanism.

Conflict of Interest and Ethics Commissioner Mary Dawson's office declines to identify the ministers, citing confidentiality rules, but confirms that a handful hold these assets indirectly and therefore aren't required to sell them or place them beyond reach.

The office would only say "fewer than five cabinet ministers currently hold controlled assets indirectly.

"This means that under the Conflict of Interest Act, they are not required to divest."

When asked whether the Prime Minister's Office believes these ministers should divest these assets, PMO spokesperson Cameron Ahmad responded, "We expect all Members of Parliament to work with the Commissioner and structure their affairs according to her guidance."

Controlled assets in federal ethics law are those whose value could be directly or indirectly affected by decisions taken by the government, including publicly traded stocks, stock options and bonds.

(Sidebar: like this.) 

Conflict-of-interest law in Canada requires cabinet ministers to divest assets such as publicly traded shares by selling them in an arms-length transaction or putting them in a blind trust beyond reach until they leave office.

The exception, according to the Ethics Commissioner's office, is if these shares or similar assets are held indirectly through a holding company or similar mechanism.

This is how "transparent" and "co-operative" Mary Dawson's bosses have been:

At least four other federal departments and agencies have ongoing contracts with Morneau Shepell, the human resources firm formerly run by Finance Minister Bill Morneau.

Given Mary Dawson's "impartiality" and "forthrightness", can anyone expect her to be an objective rudder in the muddy waters of the House of Commons?


She is a yes-man, an errand-boy, and, soon, a speed bump for a bus:

What we have heard now is that a number of Trudeau’s cabinet ministers have taken advantage of the same loophole that Morneau used to maintain control of his wealth while deciding on the wealth of the country, and all are hiding behind the same skirt that Trudeau so loves to cite as their guidance counsellor — the skirt of Conflict of Interest and Ethics Commissioner Mary Dawson.

Now, two things should have happened by now, but haven’t.

One, Mary Dawson should no longer be the federal ethics commissioner, now working through her third extension.

And, secondly, Bill Morneau should no longer be finance minister, not flailing away to regain lost trust. ...

As Mary Dawson has confirmed, a number of Trudeau’s cabinet ministers — supposedly “fewer than five” — who watched Morneau get grilled in Question Period by Tory leader Andrew Scheer and NDP house leader Guy Caron on his dodge of inscrutable ethics were playing the same game with their own investments.

Instead of putting their assets in a blind trust, they retained control of their money by holding it indirectly in a numbered corporation, or some similar mechanism.

And these are people who have insider information that goes way beyond normal insider information.

They are legislators, and they are legislators who sit in on cabinet meetings that decide on financial policy.

They are the most powerful flies on the wall in the country, yet Mary Dawson obviously gave them the advice that did not prohibit them from doing a Morneau.

As PMO spokesman Cameron Ahmad told the Globe and Mail, “We expect all Members of Parliament to work with the Commissioner and structure their affairs according to her guidance.”

This, of course, has been Trudeau’s pitch since the outset of the Morneau Affair, capitalized here to because it is indeed a scandal.

It enabled Trudeau to stand up in the House of Commons and, with the sincerest of faces, tell Canadians that Morneau — and now a bunch of his cabinet ministers — were complying with the ethics commissioner, and that Canadians had nothing to fear because everything was above board.

If this is not hiding behind Mary Dawson’s skirt, what is?

Indeed.

When it gets too hot, Trudeau can claim that Mary Dawson is incompetent, blame her for everything and replace her with someone similarly as complacent.


We need a revolution.


Also:

The Liberal government is not always appointing judges from a pool of "highly recommended" candidates, raising questions about whether partisan political considerations or diversity concerns are trumping merit.

And (because it bears repeating):

“Did anyone really think that the Liberals could somehow force the Trump administration into enacting their agenda — union power, climate change, aboriginal claims, gender issues?” writes Harper. “But while the Canadian government was doing that, the Americans have been laying down their real demands.”

 
The "First Nations" had financial accountability for their band chiefs until a certain party did away with it:

Last October, dozens of community members marched through the snow-covered roads of Samson Cree Nation calling for a forensic audit to scrutinize band spending.

One year later, they're one step closer to getting their wish.

Indigenous and Northern Affairs Canada confirmed that a complaint from the community, 100 kilometres south of Edmonton, has triggered what is called a "scoping exercise" — a federal-backed examination by an auditor of previous band spending.

"The purpose of the scoping exercise is to determine if the allegations have merit and if a forensic audit is required," INAC wrote in an emailed statement.

"It's the tip of the iceberg, but at the same time it's a start in a whole new direction," said Sherry Greene, who has been leading the fight for more financial accountability, transparency and consultation with membership at Samson Cree. "In our community, nothing like this has ever been done."

Also - what do you mean "you people"?

At these times, my colleagues sometimes would make sweeping remarks about all the horrors “we” had inflicted on First Nations, and the guilt “we” bore for the crimes of “our” ancestors. In these moments, I would politely remind everyone that my Russian father came to Canada (via China) as a 10-year-old, after his dispossessed family had been forced to flee not one but two communist revolutions. On my mother’s side, my Yiddish-speaking grandfather helped his own father peddle rags on the streets of Toronto’s Jewish ghetto — an occupation that left him scant time to build residential schools, or otherwise oppress Canada’s First Nations.

  
There is a possibility of a leak at one of North Korea's nuclear test sites:

Any future nuclear test by North Korea risks collapsing its mountain test site and triggering a radiation leak, South Korea's weather agency chief said Monday.

The head of the Korea Meteorological Administration, Nam Jae-Cheol, made the comments during a parliament committee meeting in response to a lawmaker's question about whether another North Korean test could lead to such an accident.

South Korea has detected several largely small-sized earthquakes near the northeastern nuclear test site the North used for its sixth and most powerful bomb explosion in September. Experts say the quakes suggest the area, which was also used for the North's previous underground nuclear tests, is now too unstable to conduct more tests there.

Lee Won-Jin, a Korea Meteorological Administration researcher, said the analysis of satellite photos indicated there were landslides around the Punggye-ri test site after the September test. He also said there now might be a hollow space inside Mount Mantap, the granite peak where the North's test site is located, citing studies of past underground nuclear tests by the United States.

Perhaps it's time to put North Korea back on the list of those who sponsor terrorism:

Chinese police arrested several North Koreans dispatched to Beijing on suspicion of plotting to murder Mr Kim Jong Un’s 22-year-old nephew, South Korea’s JoongAng Ilbo newspaper reported.

Two of seven North Korean agents were arrested over the alleged plot to kill Mr Kim Han Sol, whose father Kim Jong Nam was assassinated in Malaysia earlier this year, the newspaper said, citing an unidentified person familiar with North Korean issues.

North Korean defector Thae Yong-Ho to testify at the House of Representatives:

His testimony comes at a time when Kim Jong-un appears to have slowed a stream of high-level defections that had threatened to start a preference cascade and expose the regime’s entire overseas financial network. In recent months — perhaps coincidentally, since approximately the time Moon Jae-in took power in South Korea and appointed a former pro-North Korean, anti-American activist as his Chief of Staff — we’ve read about fewer high-profile defections and heard less from Thae himself. Whether that surge of defections has halted or merely gone unreported isn’t clear.

It also comes at a time when the U.S. government is also downplaying the importance of human rights in North Korea, sending messages that North Korean refugees are unwelcome, and merging the position of Special Envoy for Human Rights into a full-time part-time job instead of using it as a global pulpit for a more humane, tough-love policy.

The slowing of those defections also coincides with a campaign by the hard-left lawyers of Minbyun — a campaign largely ignored by the foreign press — to intimidate and expose refugees in the South. Pyongyang has also induced at least one high-profile defector into returning to Pyongyang and publicly renouncing the South, using means I can more easily guess based on past events than prove in this specific case. To gullible reporters, this campaign to publicize “re-defections” is evidence that North Koreans can’t adjust to life in a modern society. To more inquisitive journalists, and to the North Koreans themselves, the message will be the same one that Pyongyang’s assassins have delivered to refugees and Christian missionaries in China, to dissidents in South Korea, and at the airport terminal in Kuala Lumpur: “You can’t escape from us.” Perhaps Thae can better elucidate the reasons for this than I can.

Thae Yong-Ho also predicted that North Korea would collapse in five years. If the Moon administration is intimidating North Korean defectors, the South Korean electorate may wish to turn on him as they did the previous president. There can be no moral or legal defense for such a measure, nor can there be for anyone who would exercise this sort of unjust power over them.

Moon needs to go.


(Kamsahamnida)




American forces have captured someone they believe took part in the attack on the American embassy in Benghazi (Obama was mysteriously missing from his office at the time):

U.S. forces have captured a militant who is believed to have played a role in a 2012 attack on a U.S. diplomatic compound in Benghazi, Libya, that killed U.S. Ambassador Christopher Stevens and three other Americans, U.S. officials said on Monday.

The officials, speaking on the condition of anonymity, said that U.S. Special Operation Forces captured the militant in Libya in the past few days.

Two of the officials identified him as Mustafa al-Imam and said he had played a role in the attack and the ambassador's death.

The officials said the man was now in the custody of the Department of Justice and being transported back to the United States by the military.

They added that the operation was authorized by President Donald Trump and had notified the U.N.-backed Government of National Accord.

Proof that Trump was in his office (which is more than what one could say about his predecessor). 

Well, this must be embarrassing:

A former campaign adviser to President Donald Trump has pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI about his contacts with Russians, special counsel Robert Mueller said Monday, while Trump's former campaign manager and that official's business partner pleaded not guilty to felony charges of conspiracy against the United States and other counts.

There doesn't need to be any sort of dilemma. Just shoot the b@$#@rd:

Justice Department officials don’t believe they have enough evidence to bring charges against an American citizen and suspected member of ISIL who was captured in Syria last month, but the U.S. faces immediate legal challenges if he is not released and is detained without trial.

No one is scared of Napoleons:

A federal judge in Washington on Monday barred President Donald Trump’s administration from excluding transgender people from military service.

This isn't a victory. This is normalising lunacy.




The sludge from Hollywood just gets thicker:

House of Cards is coming to a close, with its upcoming sixth season set to be its last, reports Deadline.

The cancellation announcement comes after actor Anthony Rapp revealed, on Sunday, that series star Kevin Spacey once made sexual advances toward him when he was 14 years old. Following the allegations, Spacey released a statement saying he could not remember the incident and that it would’ve been due to “deeply inappropriate drunken behaviour.” He then chose this moment to come out as gay, leading many on social media to accuse him of lumping sexual assault together with sexual identity, a stigma the gay community has been fighting for years.

Oh - being gay and drunk is an excuse now?




God bless his heart:

Auschwitz survivor Ron Jones, who turned 100 this year, admits he has become "a bit of a celebrity" after more than three decades as a poppy seller.

The world needs more like him.


And now, some Japanese ghost stories to get one in the mood, like this one.




(Merci beaucoup)