Sunday Post

Let nothing trouble you, let nothing make you afraid. All things pass away. God never changes. Patience obtains everything. God alone is enough.

North Korea brings out the usual and tired canard of needing nuclear weapons to ward off the American menace that has attempted to feed the North Korean people since walking away in 1953:

A high-ranking North Korean official says the country’s development of nuclear weapons is necessary because of the threat posed by the United States and contends the nuclear program is for deterrence.

The deputy chairman of the parliament of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, Ahn Dong Chun, made the comments Sunday at an assembly of the Inter-Parliamentary Union in St. Petersburg, Russia.

“Our country is being threatened, the very existence of the DPRK is at stake,” he said, referring to statements by President Donald Trump at the UN General Assembly.

“Our nuclear programs are nuclear deterrence programs aimed at protecting our independence; we have no choice but to develop our nuclear programs,” he said, according to Russian state news agency Tass.

How much of a menace could the US be if sending aid to a country where its plump madman-in-charge assassinated his half-brother?


Also: 

Canada, which has no nuclear weapons, is generally an afterthought in these conversations, but that doesn’t mean there’s no cause for alarm. Over the four-hour briefing last month by experts from the government, the military and academia, the MPs on the Standing Committee on National Defence heard a simple but sober message: It is “only a matter of time” before North Korea develops a nuclear-armed ballistic missile capable of reaching North America, said Stephen Burt, assistant chief of defence intelligence. And Canada would be essentially defenceless should such a missile be launched.

Or as James Fergusson, director of the University of Manitoba’s Centre for Defence and Security Studies, testified in front of the Standing Committee, “We get on our knees and pray.”

While no one was paying attention, a gunman opened fire at a busy market in southern Sweden:

A GUNMAN has opened fire at a busy market in Trelleborg, Sweden.

Four people have been taken to hospital as a result of the incident which happened Thursday night local time, around 8am AEDT.

Police say the attack is not being investigated as terrorism. However it appears to be the latest in a string of violent gang-related incidents that have beset the Swedish nation.

I guess the Swedes owe Trump an apology.




I think it is perfectly acceptable to ask Singh - or any "Sikh-first" public personality - why he would tolerate the veneration of Talwinder Singh Parmar, one of the masterminds of the bombing of Air India 182. Does he regard the safety of all Canadians and how Canada views and treats terrorists as paramount or does he wish to appeal to a segment of an important voters block only?

It was his first day on the job as federal NDP leader, and in a television interview last week with the CBC’s Terry Milewski, Jagmeet Singh faced a question that on the surface seemed to have an obvious response.

Is it appropriate for Sikh temples in Canada to display posters hailing the alleged architect of the 1985 Air India bombing as a martyr?

The bombing of Air India Flight 182 killed 329 people — 280 of them Canadians. Talwinder Singh Parmar was killed in India by police in 1992 and never brought to trial for his alleged role in the plot, but subsequent inquiries into the bombing identified him as the leader of a conspiracy hatched in British Columbia to bring down the plane.

Singh, who is an observant Sikh, danced around the question. His first response was to caution against exaggerating the conflict between Sikhs and Hindus. He then condemned the “heinous massacre” of people aboard Flight 182, calling it a terrorist act.

Pressed a fourth time by Milewski to denounce the posters of Parmar, Singh replied, “I don’t know who was responsible, but I think we need to find out who’s truly responsible. We need to make sure that the investigation actually results in a conviction of someone who is actually responsible.”

Some commentators have argued it was unfair, even racist of Milewski to ask the question. Writing in Maclean’s, Arshy Mann said the question reflected “a double standard that a white, non-Sikh politician would never have to face.” He noted that when Patrick Brown was elected leader of the Ontario Progressive Conservatives, the CBC did not challenge him over his friendship with Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi. That friendship was forged at a time when Modi was an international pariah, accused of failing to stop the 2002 Gujarat anti-Muslim riots that left more than 1,000 people dead when he was chief minister for the state.

But for Bal Gupta, chairman of the Air India 182 Victims Families Association, Singh’s non-answer was a missed opportunity. “If leaders in Canada don’t disown terrorists and terrorism, then who would?” asked Gupta, whose wife Ramwati was killed in the bombing. He said families of the victims were very upset by Singh’s reply.

“You have to ask him whether he is representing all the Canadians or just one particular interest. I don’t know what is in his mind,” he said.

Singh is just another Trudeau but in Sikh form - fatuous, evasive, intellectually lightweight and clearly partisan.




A family in Ontario uses the human rights tribunal for their autistic son (because the legal system refuses to address the family's concerns and is loathe to abolish a system that is generally used for vendettas):

An Ontario family has launched a human rights complaint against a school board in an effort to get a popular form of therapy for autistic children provided to their son in class.

Beth Skrt of Mississauga, Ont., alleges the Dufferin-Peel Catholic District School Board has consistently refused to allow her five-year-old son Jack to receive Applied Behaviour Analysis (ABA) in class.

She says Jack has been receiving and benefiting from the therapy at an off-site facility he attends multiple days a week. Her son is also supported by education resource workers in class but she argues they are not equipped to provide the same level of therapy.

Skrt says her family offered to cover the cost of private ABA professionals to work with her son at school, but she says the board won’t allow it.

I find "reconciliation" ridiculous but perhaps that's just me:

The decision to drop “chief” from titles — “chief financial officer,” “chief academic officer,” etc. — is being sold as a gesture of reconciliation toward Canada’s Indigenous people. “The word has a lot of meaning to our people,” Dr. Duke Redbird, the board’s curator of Indigenous art and culture, told the Toronto Star. “One of the things that we have found in the past is that the word ‘chief’ was used as a slang, pejorative word, describing anyone who happened to be of Indigenous background.”

That’s doubtlessly true, and tragic. Discrimination against Indigenous Canadians is a serious and ongoing issue. But dropping “chief” from job titles isn’t a serious response. It’s tokenism. 

If "chief" - a word that appears in many various contexts - is offensive then should someone like Theresa Spence be titled "Crook"?

This is what happens when one allows vain, petty, corrupt people assume positions of power which they lord over people in the most absurd fashions. One would think band corruption and poverty would be heftier issues.

I guess not.




It's just money:

Maybe you’re thinking, “Even if it’s a bit ridiculous, it’s ONLY $200,000 against a background of billions.” But is it? To me this is the most intriguing part of all. Blacklock’s quotes an e-mail (“It’s fresh. I love where this is going”) from someone who has the title “senior marketing advisor for the finance department”.

Am I the only one left asking, “Why the hell does the federal finance department need a marketing advisor?” The “senior” part denotes a six-figure salary, none of which is included in the cheque that was written to the nice creatives at McCann. Is the finance department a business whose revenues depend on effective advertising? Does Canada’s federal government have several finance departments contending with each other for market share?

Also:

What about people who were born or married into “comfortable,” even fabulously wealthy families? They can afford to hire expensive tax lawyers whose professional mission is to exploit loopholes in our arcane and exceedingly complex tax code. That explains the popularity of family trusts.

Let’s take a look at how they work. A parent lends money without limit to a trust. It invests the funds, makes a small interest payment to the donor and then distributes (or “sprinkles,” to use the new pejorative term) the income or capital gains from the investments to the donor’s offspring. Assuming the beneficiaries are in a lower tax bracket than the donor, the total tax bill for the family is reduced. 

Whatever amount the trust does not distribute attracts the top individual tax rate of up to 53 per cent, in contrast to a threatened 73 per cent rate on passive corporate income.

How is that different financially from income sprinkling or passive income in a personal corporation? It isn’t, yet Morneau’s proposal exempts trusts. Furthermore, the fortunate trust-fund kids receive income or capital gains with no obligation to work or contribute to the trust. It is a gift, pure and simple. That is not a problem in itself, but why then penalize a farmer’s family members who receive wages for helping with the harvest? Or a shop-owner’s kids who are paid for watching the counter?

While legally distinct, the two situations are also identical from a fairness perspective. A mother or father transfers income to a son or daughter to take advantage of their lower tax bracket. If the mother is a doctor with a personal corporation, watch out. But if the father has the wealth to set up a family trust, his trust-fund relatives are just fine, thank you.

Liberal white feminists in the West tend to ignore the plight of women not in their countries or immediate social circles because their causes have never altruist and encompassing but ludicrous and self-centred. It is no surprise, therefore, that news of ISIS' female thugs partaking in the abuse of Yazidi girls and women and the abuse of women in Islamist circles goes decidedly under the radar as surely as Hollywood mouthpieces caught in the clumsy denial and deflection of a disgraced slab of lechery.

But I repeat myself ...




There is always someone who ruins things for others:

A new Winnipeg school’s decision to stop students from wearing their costumes to class on Halloween has upset some parents, who argue its not fair to deny their kids the fun.

Ecole Sage Creek School principal Marc Poirier says since this is the Kindergarten to Grade 8 school’s first year, staff debated what the costume policy would be.

He said teachers from schools where kids were allowed to dress up noted some kids wore scary or gory costumes that frightened younger children, or they carried props such as swords. Other costumes, he said, weren’t age-appropriate.

Poirier said some parents who didn’t support Halloween or trick-or-treating even kept their children home on Oct. 31 altogether.

“Although the schools did indicate guidelines for appropriate costumes, there were sometimes students who didn’t follow those guidelines,” Poirier explained.

“There was a discussion with those students about their costumes being inappropriate, and sometimes the students and the parents didn’t agree with the view of the school.”

Sage Creek administration decided, in consultation with a student committee, to have four different themed dress-up days during the week where Halloween falls. On Oct. 31, Poirier said it will be “tie and scarf” day.

Schools do set up appropriate attire rules and I suppose that includes Halloween costumes (even scary ones as that is the point of Halloween). Issue guidelines if one must and ensure that both parents and students understand them. Offending students (whose parents are clearly emotionally lazy) can be sent home to change costumes if they are really that bad. As for "tie and scarf" day, just ban Halloween rather than have some weak excuse for an event take its place.