Christmas Week: Festive Friday

I'm sure these have nothing to do with the reasons they actually gave:

The Afghan refugee behind the wheel of an SUV in yesterday's horrific attack on Flinders Street has told police he was motivated by the supposed poor treatment of Muslims around the world.

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A tow truck driver in California was arrested on Friday and charged with attempting to provide support to terrorists by plotting to attack people, possibly with explosives, at a crowded pier in San Francisco before Christmas.

Everitt Aaron Jameson, 26, a former member of the U.S. Marine Corps, told an undercover investigator with the FBI he wanted to mount the attack to show support for militant group Islamic State, according to court papers.

 Yep.


Also:

Obama was desperate. After a string of public failures and humiliations, he badly needed something in the win column. And so with a cloud of failure swirling around him, he committed an act so egregiously destructive, so outrageously deceptive, it rivaled Neville Chamberlain’s calamitous Munich Agreement. On July 14, 2015, the Obama administration bound the United States to an agreement with the world’s premier state-sponsor of international terrorism and drug trafficking.

In its zeal to clinch a deal with the Islamic Republic, the Obama administration embarked on a systematic campaign to lie to the American people and Congress. It utilized its many obsequious troglodytes, chief among them Ben Rhodes, Susan Rice and John Kerry, to create echo chambers to hammer false talking points and narratives that would reverberate within friendly quarters of the establishment media.

But Obama did much more than lie. In an effort to appease Iran and stroke the detestable mullahs, he thwarted a very promising DEA operation, code-named Project Cassandra, targeting Iran’s terrorist proxy arm, Hezbollah; this, according to an explosive 50-page bombshell report authored by Politico’s Josh Meyer.

Justin Trudeau is a liar, thief and a crook, but I repeat myself:

In a letter dated Sept. 21 and obtained Thursday by CBC News, Commissioner of Lobbying Karen Shepherd refused to launch a formal investigation into the Aga Khan following a January complaint he violated the lobbying law by allowing Trudeau and members of the prime minister's family to vacation on his private island in the Bahamas.

In the letter, Shepherd said she conducted an administrative review in response to the complaint.

"After reviewing the information provided to me in the administrative review report, I have come to the conclusion that the Aga Khan receives no payment for his work on behalf of the Aga Khan Foundation Canada and, therefore, does not engage in activities requiring registration as a lobbyist," she wrote.

"Consequently, the Lobbyists' Code of Conduct does not apply to his interactions with the prime minister."

The complainant, who shared the letter on condition their name not be used, said they aren't satisfied with Shepherd's ruling and plan to ask her to reconsider. ...

Duff Conacher, co-founder of Democracy Watch, says refusing to investigate someone on the grounds they aren't paid to lobby could create a giant loophole in Canada's lobbying law.

"Democracy Watch will challenge this ruling in court, because it is legally incorrect, violates the spirit and purpose of the Lobbyists' Code of Conduct, and opens up a huge loophole that big businesses and other organizations will exploit by having their unregistered board members or staff do favours for, and give gifts to, politicians and government officials they are lobbying as a way of unethically influencing their policy making decisions," he said in an email.

The Aga Khan, believed to be one of the wealthiest individuals in the world, is the spiritual leader of millions of Ismaili Muslims and is listed as a member of the board of directors of the Aga Khan Foundation Canada. The foundation, which has received millions of dollars in federal government development aid over the years, is registered to lobby several federal government departments including the Prime Minister's Office.

A search of the lobbyist registry shows the foundation has filed 132 reports since 2011 outlining its meetings with government decision makers. However, none of those reports list any meetings with Trudeau — despite the meetings the prime minister has had with the Aga Khan and his officials.

While Shepherd has found the Aga Khan isn't subject to the lobbyist rules which prohibit lobbyists from putting politicians in a position where they could feel a sense of obligation such as giving them gifts, MPs are still subject to conflict of interest and ethics rules if they accept gifts.

Wednesday, Conflict of Interest and Ethics Commissioner Mary Dawson made public a scathing report that found Trudeau violated four sections of the Conflict of Interest Act when his family accepted vacations on the Aga Khan's private island nestled in the turquoise waters of the Bahamas.

All Aga Khan has to do is leave a lovely gift for Trudeau that he cannot help but feel obligated to take.

This:

Remember - Trudeau, who was embarrassed into letting in a handful of Yazidis refugees, thinks that their erstwhile victimisers would make quality citizens:

"We know that actually someone who has engaged and turned away from that hateful ideology can be an extraordinarily powerful voice for preventing radicalization in future generations and younger people within the community,” he told the news network.

This puts him at odds with the man in charge of rehabilitating returning radicals, Public Safety Minister Ralph Goodale, who recently told the same news network that it might be nearly impossible to completely reform an ISIS fighter hardened from the battlefield. In fact, Goodale said, once a Jihadist has left to join the violent crusade, the chances of him returning with good intentions are almost zero.

(Sidebar: this is the same doddering fool who pushed a grossly erroneous "sixty ISIS militants" number.)




I'm sure it's nothing:

Foreign Affairs Minister Chrystia Freeland planned to use a Friday meeting in Ukraine to get more information on reports that a man arrested there this on suspicion of spying for Russia sat in on a meeting in the Prime Minister’s Office this fall.

But Canadian officials refused to say how seriously they take the incident, and that while Freeland would be raising it, it’s not planned to be a major topic of discussion.

Stanislav Yezhov was part of Ukrainian Prime Minister Volodymyr Groysman’s delegation on a visit to Canada earlier this year, and was part of meetings with Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, among other senior Canadian officials.

Yezhov has also travelled with Groysman on trips to the U.S. and U.K.

But even Groysman is now accusing him of working for a “hostile state,” following Yezhov’s arrest Wednesday on accusations he’s a long-time Russian agent who has been passing that country information through electronic channels.

Alright! More people on welfare!

A new law intended to remove gender-based discrimination from the Indian Act took effect on Friday, but the federal government has still not provided a new registration process for Indigenous Canadians now eligible for Indian status. 

Indigenous and Northern Affairs Canada (INAC) has updated its website with information about Bill S-3, which is estimated to extend status eligibility to hundreds of thousands of Canadians, but it has yet to provide registration forms for new applicants. According to the government website, “detailed instructions about how to apply for Indian status under Bill S-3 will be posted on this website in the coming weeks.”

In the meantime, the department advises new applicants to “start collecting the necessary documents” using an existing application process as a guide.

Let the provincial pandering begin anew!

The federal government is considering building more Arctic patrol vessels to prevent job losses at Halifax’s Irving Shipbuilding — a move likely to fuel anger in Quebec, since Ottawa has rejected several proposals aimed at preventing shipyard layoffs in that province.

"Singular", one says:

Just how litigious was the late Barry Sherman? 

“I think he was probably the most active litigant in any industry in Canada,” said Amir Attaran, a professor in the faculties of law and medicine at the University of Ottawa. ...

(Sidebar: this Amir Attaran.)

Tom McAnulty, a pharmacist who formerly worked in the brand-name pharmaceutical industry, said that brand-name companies “detested” Sherman’s litigiousness. “Barry was one of the most aggressive,” McAnulty said. “Apotex, they would challenge all sorts of rulings by the government.”

But the pair of them personally got along quite well, he remembers. “He was a worthwhile adversary. 

You have to respect a man for his passion, his intelligence and his conviction,” McAnulty said.

Through Apotex, Sherman provided generic drugs to non-profits and relief funds. A shipment this October to the Mully Children’s Family, a children’s charity and orphanage based in Kenya, was worth over $320,000. On another occasion, they provided $100,000 worth of HIV drugs to the Canadian Jewish Humanitarian and Relief Committee. 

Attaran, at the University of Ottawa, said Sherman’s public relations machine over the years would portray his court battles to overturn patents as his attempt to provide cheaper drugs prices for Canadians in the form of generics. 

He described Sherman’s litigiousness as “absolutely singular” in the pharmaceutical world.

“That’s how they spin it. He was always in court fighting for Canadians to get cheaper drugs,” Attaran said. 

“That is outrageous fabrication. Because for all his efforts being the biggest generic drug company in Canada, having the greatest influence of any company in Canada over generic drugs, Canada pays among the highest prices in the world for generics. And that has been documented again and again.”

Human trafficking and its North Korean victims:

When Park Chun-mi (an alias) crossed the Yalu River into China one night in August 2009, she thought that she would not be hungry anymore and be able to make money to support herself.

Her dreams, however, were soon shattered.

At 23 years old, she was sold by human traffickers to a poor Chinese farmer in a rural area in Inner Mongolia just days later, an unexpected turn of events that upended her life for the next nine years.

"I was duped into crossing the border with China after being told by a North Korean woman that I can make money in China," Park said last week by phone as she was traveling on a bus across China to seek refuge in South Korea.

Park's case illustrated the cross-border trafficking that has become prevalent in China as North Korean women fall prey to traffickers in a country where unmarried women are in short supply due to a cultural preference for boys that has created a skewed gender ratio.

Greg Scarlatoiu, executive director of the Committee for Human Rights in North Korea, a Washington-based human rights organization, said up to 80 percent of North Korean refugees in China are women and they fall victim to human traffickers and other criminals due to the absence of protections.

"Many of those forced into sexual bondage under the guise of 'marriage' with Chinese men in run-down rural areas are often abused by the would-be 'spouse' and the entire family," Scarlatoiu said at a House Foreign Affairs Committee subcommittee hearing on Dec. 12.

There are those who have no higher purpose and choose to be petty, ignorant joy-killers and exhibit their self-unawareness and complete pig ignorance of the civilisation that has given them succour since birth.

And then there are those who are honest with themselves:

At this time of year the websites of atheist societies light up with grouchy complaints and arguments about Christmas. It’s such a public demonstration of Christianity, and so pervasive, that it strikes militant unbelievers as an annual annoyance. Several expressions of outrage appear currently on the pages of the Richard Dawkins Foundation, Dawkins being the distinguished scientist who became a famous atheist with his best-selling book, The God Delusion.

“I have been an atheist since early childhood but I might start going to church just to spite you,”says one pro-Dawkins combatant in the midst of an on-line quarrel. Another complains of being compelled to participate obliquely in a holiday that holds no theological meaning for unbelievers. “You can’t even wish people a happy holidays without being petty.”

Elsewhere we can find atheists who report that they have always enjoyed celebrating Christmas. They cherish it as a holiday that can be enjoyed together with Christians, agnostics and outright materialists. This does not, atheists are anxious to state, make any of them hypocrites. 

That does not worry me while singing carols or giving and receiving presents. I’ve never been a card-carrying atheist. I prefer a gentler term, unbeliever, which positions me to appreciate the value of Christianity while refusing to believe its dogma. Every Christmas I find myself grateful to live in a Christian-dominant community within a civilization that has been constructed by Christianity. This, of course, is modern Christianity, stripped of its warlike and oppressive habits.

The truth is that our society has been given its moral principles by Christianity, and those principles shape us, whether we are committed to a religion or not. Christian feelings enter in the moral air we breathe and find a comfortable home within us. ...

On a grander level, over almost two millennia, Western civilization’s Judeo-Christian traditions have given structure and a coherent meaning to societies across Europe and the Americas. Those traditions have provided the energy, intelligence and will to evolve democracy, separate church and state, define human rights and justify freedom of speech. Christianity, as if telling us how to sort all this out, also invented the universities. ...

The power of Judeo-Christian thought opened the practical imagination of the West, suggesting what wonderful ideas humans could have, and what wonderful things they could do. Northrop Frye, a Canadian Methodist minister who became one of the great literary theorists of the world, suggested the destination where all this leads: “The fundamental job of the imagination in ordinary life is to produce, out of the society we have to live in, a vision of the society we want to live in.”

Whatever one's beliefs may be, Christmas celebrates a singular event for all of humanity. That is its purpose and beauty.

Therefore, a happy Christmas to all.