For a Tuesday

 
Oh, dear ... :

At least 530 people were killed in Iran's deadliest earthquake in more than a decade, state news agency IRNA reported on Tuesday, adding that more than 8,000 others were injured.

Iran said on Tuesday that rescue operations had ended in the western province of Kermanshah that was hit on Sunday by the 7.3-magnitude quake.

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Five people are dead and two others were left wounded in a shooting spree that began at a home in Northern California on Tuesday and ended at an elementary school, officials there say.

This sort of thing is not too uncommon but is indicative of a rotten system about to collapse:

Around 40 gunshots were fired from the North at a North Korean soldier who defected to South Korea via the Joint Security Area, South Korea’s military said Tuesday. 

He remains in critical condition at a hospital in South Korea, where he has received surgery for his injuries. Five bullets – including those from an AK-47 assault rifle – were found on his body, according to South Korea Joint Chiefs of Staff.

North Korea has yet to comment on the incident, the first JSA defection to the South in 10 years. While being surrounded by military outposts and minefields, JSA is a sought-after tourist destination for foreign visitors.

“Our assessment is that three North Korean soldiers and another from the North’s military outpost chased him as he fled, firing shots,” JCS top operational chief, Army Gen. Suh Wook, said during a meeting with lawmakers. 

The soldier drove a jeep toward the Military Demarcation Line, which bisects the two Koreas inside the JSA, until it became stuck in a ditch and could not move forward. The soldier jumped out of the vehicle and ran to the South, the JCS said.

This guy wanted out.

More to come.




From the most transparent in the country's history:

The federal government is dropping a campaign pledge to waive the GST on the construction of new rental units, claiming research has shown there are better ways to boost the supply of affordable housing.

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With an eye to next spring's election, Ontario's Liberal government will slash small business taxes as part of $500 million in new investments aimed at easing the transition to the province's increasing minimum wage.

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The number of foreign citizens deported for security, crime, organized crime and international human rights abuses has dropped by about a third since 2014, according to Canada Border Services Agency figures.

(Sidebar: in case one was confused about who and what Trudeau's government truly supports.) 



The Liberals aren't worried about anything, though:

The federal Liberals are being weighed down by a credibility problem, say pollsters and a former Liberal cabinet minister and their message of fighting for the middle class is getting undermined by a series of controversies tied to taxation and finance. ...

 

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The Liberals have issued a report card on their own performance, and it turns out they are absolutely brilliant at being the government.

The first “mandate letter tracker” looked at the 364 commitments the prime minister made in his missives to ministers and assessed whether they had been completed, were underway or were not being pursued.

The government did not quite give itself a gold star but the message was clear: great progress is being made and new challenges are being tackled every day with a positive attitude.

 


Not everyone is willing to support the Liberals' delusions, however:

Philippines President Rodrigo Duterte attacked Canada's Justin Trudeau at the end of a summit of Asian and Western nations for raising questions about his war on drugs, a topic skirted by other leaders, including U.S. President Donald Trump.

At the traditional news conference by the host nation at the end of the summit on Tuesday, Duterte was asked how he had responded to the Canadian prime minister raising the issue of human rights and extra-judicial killings in his anti-drugs drive.

"I said I will not explain. It is a personal and official insult," the Philippines president said in the course of a rambling answer, although he did not refer to Trudeau by name.

"I only answer to the Filipino. I will not answer to any other bullshit, especially foreigners. Lay off."

 
Oh, that must hurt. Here Trudeau thought that he would be the anti-Trump and "cordially" speak to Duterte, who has zero fraks to give about what anyone says about him, and it backfired on him. Anyone who is aware of Trudeau's gushing love for China's dictatorship (more on that later) and his indifference to Canadian victims of terrorism, Filipino or otherwise,  knows that Trudeau is morally and politically out of his depth. I doubt that even the popular press' faithful water-carriers can spin this as a win for the Fils.


Here is Trudeau bravely running away, in case people still possessed illusions of Trudeau's alleged fortitude:

Also:

A U.S. effort to stoke the fires of coal-powered electricity didn't escape the attention of Canada's environment minister Monday as Catherine McKenna used her Twitter account to troll the carbon-based fuel just as American officials were extolling its virtues.

Yeah, whatever, Climate Barbie.




That sort of thing only works if one contributes to society and even then that's a stretch:

If a group of First Nations get their wish, Calgary will be renamed Wichispa Oyade — Stoney Nakoda terms that roughly translate to mean elbow town.

This might explain some things:

Canada's workforce has experienced a troubling slide in literacy and numeracy skills, despite higher levels of education and improvements in learning technology, according to a new report from the C.D. Howe Institute. In "Talkin' 'Bout My Generation: More Educated, But Less Skilled Canadians," author Parisa Mahboubi compares results of international surveys from 2003 and 2012 and finds Canadians' skill levels declining across all age cohorts studied.

And if people were far less worried about driving wedges between parents and children and actually taught things properly, this wouldn't be a problem.




Speaking of iron-fisted dictators:

Chinese officials and residents in a rural area of Jiangxi province have revealed a government plan to “melt the hard ice” in the hearts of Christians towards communism by denying them pivotal poverty relief packages if they do not replace images of Jesus in their households with photos of President Xi Jinping.

One official stated that the move was necessary because Christians are “ignorant” and need to be taught to worship the state, not God.

The move is the latest in a string of crackdowns against Christianity in the Xi era. Xi’s regime views Christianity, which has experienced a popularity boom in the past decade, as a challenge to the supremacy of the Communist Party’s growing cult of personality around Xi himself.

 

Narcissism has always been a mark of a self-conscious tyrant and destroying Christianity has been an important goal of any communist dictatorship in history. Xi would not be hard-pressed to find support for his narcissism and cruelty among the leftists angry at their dads but he must know that with every act of censorship and tyranny, there will only spring up more "ignorant" believers.

Would Xi be angered at an icon of Jesus crushing the fat Mao underfoot? After all, the Good Book does says that a snake's head will be crushed by the descendants of Adam.

Would Xi like this?

How about this?

This appears to be a Chinese version of Mary and Jesus. This must doubly upset Xi.

Unbelievable:

The BBC has uncovered details of a secret deal that let hundreds of IS fighters and their families escape from Raqqa, under the gaze of the US and British-led coalition and Kurdish-led forces who control the city.

A convoy included some of IS’s most notorious members and – despite reassurances – dozens of foreign fighters. Some of those have spread out across Syria, even making it as far as Turkey.

 

Could one find the words to express even a modicum of disgust for such a disgraceful deal?