In the bleak mid-winter ...
What is the greater error: Trudeau's insistence that child-rapists add positively to Canadian society or that Liberal voters voted for this once and will do so again?
Discuss:
“The prime minister also expressed his personal belief that former ISIS fighters can be de-radicalized in the event that they return to Canada. In a recent interview on CTV’s Question Period, Public Safety Minister Ralph Goodale said he believed the likelihood of reintegrating former ISIS fighters is “pretty remote.However, rather than support Goodale’s common-sense view, Trudeau said, “There’s a range of experiences when people come home. 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.”‘
Trudeau is so convinced of this that he has not put any returned ISIS thug on a UN sanctions list:
The Canadian government insists it's using "all available tools" to find, detain and convict citizens who have travelled overseas for the purposes of terrorism, but it hasn't submitted a single name to the UN committee that maintains a sanctions list of international jihadists.
UN Resolution 2253 encourages all member states to actively submit the names of individuals and entities that support ISIS and al-Qaeda.
British, French, German and American citizens all figure among the 256 individuals on the list. Arab countries have provided the majority of the names, but many other countries including Russia, China, India, Pakistan, Turkey, Bosnia, Nigeria, Tanzania, Indonesia and the Philippines have also listed citizens. Even the island nation of Trinidad and Tobago has a citizen on the list.
But there are no Canadians. Some other countries that have seen citizens leave on jihad, including Sweden and Belgium, have also not responded to Resolution 2253.
(Sidebar: remember - election in 2019.)
But what can one expect from the quintessentially corrupt? :
Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau contravened some ethics rules when he accepted a vacation last year on a private island belonging to the Aga Khan, the country’s ethics commissioner said in a report on Wednesday.
Conflict of Interest and Ethics Commissioner Mary Dawson said Trudeau contravened a rule on gifts when he accepted the use of the island in March and December 2016, while there were ongoing official dealings with the Aga Khan and the Aga Khan Foundation Canada was registered to lobby Trudeau’s office.
(Sidebar: oh, now you have something to say, Mary?!)
Oh, it gets better:
Under the new version of the bill, the U.S. federal corporate income-tax rate will fall dramatically from 35 to 21 per cent beginning Jan. 1, 2018. Taking into account state income taxes (as shown in the accompanying table), the new U.S. corporate income-tax rate will be 26 per cent, not much higher than the world average of 24.7 per cent — and almost a point lower than Canada’s rate.
Further, the U.S. tax burden on domestic investment will dramatically decline well below many countries and slightly less than in Canada, especially in the next five years.
The lower corporate income-tax rate, and allowing expensing rather than amortization of machinery and equipment, will boost productivity as American business retool operations with digitization, artificial intelligence, robotics and big data processes. The growing U.S. economy will create more demand for imported goods and services, but the U.S. is also turning itself into a more powerful magnet for corporate investment that might have gone elsewhere.
The U.S. tax bill also contains some important limitations on the deductibility of interest expense for corporations: specifically, any interest expenses in excess of 30 per cent of adjusted profits will not be deductible. That will see multinationals moving their debt out of the U.S. and onto their books in foreign jurisdictions. Canada will bear some of this cost with falling corporate tax revenues.
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McKenna appears to believe that poor people should not be permitted such development, but claims it is for their own good. She asserts that coal pollution leads to 800,000 premature deaths annually.
Such precision invites skepticism, especially since the statistic comes from an organization called “Endcoal.” Nevertheless, 670,000 of those claimed deaths would occur in China, which is very conspicuously not a member of Ms. McKenna’s alliance. (It also doesn’t seem to want any economic, environmental or gender-sensitivity lectures from Canadian Liberals, as Justin Trudeau’s recent trip embarrassingly demonstrated.)
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The Liberal government has unveiled its pensions-for-life plan for injured veterans, boosting financial compensation for those hurt while in military service even as it acknowledges that not all will be happy with the new program.
The scheme would reintroduce monthly non-taxable payments to replace the lump-sum benefit brought in for veterans in 2006. It also includes other new benefits that Veterans Affairs Minister Seamus O’Regan says will significantly expand compensation for injured military personnel.
Way to buy back those votes!
Moving on ...
Plotting terrorist attacks in Canada is not as illegal as one thinks:
On Tuesday, the jury at the Montreal courthouse found only Jamali guilty on one count, a reduced charge — possession of an explosive substance without lawful excuse — that the presiding judge, Superior Court Justice Marc David, added as an option while he was instructing the jury on Thursday.
Djermane and Jamali were acquitted on the three more serious charges they faced: knowingly participating in or contributing to, directly or indirectly, any activity of a terrorist group for the purpose of enhancing the ability of any terrorist group to facilitate or carry out a terrorist activity; possessing explosive substances with the intention to put lives in danger or cause serious damage to property; and committing a criminal act for the profit of, or under the direction of, a terrorist group by being in possession of an explosive substance.
There is a rise in anti-semitism in Canada. Three guesses as to why:
At least eight synagogues in four cities across Canada have received anti-Semitic letters calling for the death of Jews, B’nai Brith Canada said.
Four synagogues in Toronto, two in Montreal, one in Hamilton and one in Edmonton have reported being sent the hate mail, the Jewish advocacy group said Tuesday.
A photo on B’nai Brith Canada’s website shows the letter containing the words “Jewry must perish,” and a swastika scrawled onto a blood-soaked Star of David.
“It’s really unfortunate that, at this time of year, with the Jewish community celebrating Hanukkah … you have a message of targeted hate that’s going out to religious institutions across the country,” B’nai Brith Canada CEO Michael Mostyn said. “It’s sad to see and it’s actually quite terrifying for the individuals opening these letters with hateful genocidal messages.”
Police in all four cities confirmed they were investigating the letters.
That any university needs a free expression task force is enough to withdraw any and all funding from it:
Twenty-three faculty and/or librarian members of the WLU Faculty Association are nominated for the five seats the WLUFA is guaranteed (plus two who will be appointed by the task force chair) on the task force.
Clearly, the WLUFA will dominate the task force; the association has seven of the 13 seats.
So I figured it would be interesting to see who was ardently in favour of free speech on campus and if the deck was stacked beyond the fact that Pimlott is one of two WLUFA vice-presidents.
Only three professors — David Haskell, Kimberly Barber and Jordan Goldstein — clearly defined themselves in their accompanying “statements” as free-speech advocates.
Eight others obviously identified with what has become the other side of the issue, as nominee Alison Mountz described it: She was in favour of protecting free speech, she said, “but only alongside examination of conditions that make speech and expression free and safe for all…”
Nine others, in their formal statements, appeared neutral. They were either professors in the hard sciences, or seasoned faculty association members, or they seemed keen to hear all views.
But then I dug a little deeper, and that’s when I saw what associate professor Kate Rossiter (she was the main investigator in Recounting Huronia, an award-winning, arts-based research project about the Huronia Regional Centre, the now-closed Toronto institution for developmentally handicapped children) had said on her Facebook page when the Shepherd brouhaha was at its height.
On Nov. 29, almost three weeks after Shepherd had been reamed out, Rossiter wrote: “For those of you following the unfolding Laurier debacle, this article is a breath of fresh air.”
The link was to a blog post written by one Alex Usher at Higher Education Strategy Associates, a Toronto outfit that “provides strategic insight and guidance to governments, post-secondary institutions and agencies…” and “strives to improve the quality, efficacy and fairness of higher education systems in Canada and worldwide.”
Entitled, “Has everybody lost their damn mind?”, Usher’s was a typical progressive take on the Shepherd business: Yes, Rambukkana had handled things badly (he couldn’t have done worse, Usher said, “if he’d wanted to hand a propaganda victory to Peterson and his ilk.”)
But Shepherd, Usher said, had revealed herself as not so bright (for having picked the clip she did, though Usher admitted he didn’t know precisely what excerpt she had used), and all those free-speech defenders who didn’t also stand up for Masuma Khan at Dalhousie University (she is the student leader who was briefly under investigation by the university for her “whitefragility” Facebook comments, and for the record, I supported her right to speak her mind) were hypocrites and “probably racist, dog-whistling hypocrites” to boot.
Also:
But the strangely-overlooked thing isn’t just that Shepherd’s free speech rights were only tenuously at stake to begin with (as a lowly non-union employee, she’s tasked with conducting tutorials more or less as directed). And it wasn’t just that the “progressive” or “social justice” contribution to the cacophony was in the right-wing tradition that had marshalled establishment power against the activists of Emma Goldman’s generation (women and men who went to jail in free speech fights over union organizing, reproductive rights and the right to convene street assemblies to assail the cruelties of capitalism).
It was this: Here were three manager-academics getting caught redhanded, on tape, as they badgered, bullied and browbeat a young worker, and the “left,” to the extent that it is anything of the kind, came down squarely on the side of the boss. Even now, after Laurier’s external investigation has shown that Shepherd had been subjected to a farrago of trumped-up transgressions, non-existent student complaints and outright lies — and even though the investigation totally vindicated and exonerated her — Shepherd remains, to the campus “left,” the villain of the piece.
Indeed.
The real issue for the wags at Wilfred Laurier University is that they were caught, not their vilification of someone seemingly like-minded as they.
Communism always eats its own.
And:
In an email sent this week, Canadian Historical Association president Adele Perry advised members that the association’s elected council voted last month to rename the 40-year-old Sir John A. Macdonald prize the “CHA prize for Best Scholarly Book in Canadian History.” Association members will make a final decision next May at their annual meeting.
James Daschuk, a University of Regina historian and winner of the Sir John A. Macdonald prize in 2014, said the change would be overdue.
“It is incumbent on us as historians maybe to lead the way, to provide information for citizens and political leaders,” he said in an interview. He said he would be surprised if the change was not overwhelmingly approved.
His own prize-winning book, Clearing the Plains: Disease, Politics of Starvation, and the Loss of Aboriginal Life, was an indictment of Macdonald’s treatment of Indigenous people.
(Sidebar: why aren't Pierre Trudeau's writings indictments of his love of communist tyranny?)
Speaking of communism, Trudeau gets to pretend that he is a serious leader who cares:
Canada and United States will co-host a major international meeting of foreign ministers on the North Korean crisis next month in Vancouver.
This North Korea:
The North Korean woman drives a motorbike slowly down a narrow lane shaded by tall corn to the farmhouse where she lives with the disabled Chinese man who bought her.
It’s been 11 years since she was lured across the border by the prospect of work and instead trafficked into a life of hardship. In those years, she’s lived with the dread that Chinese police will arrest her and send her back to be jailed and tortured in North Korea. She’s struggled with the scorn of neighbors who see her as an outsider.
But most of all, she’s been haunted by grief and regret over the children she had to leave behind.
“When I first came here, I spent all day drinking because I worried a lot about my kids in North Korea,” said the woman, who asked to be identified only as S.Y. due to safety concerns. “I was quite out of my mind.”
Experts estimate that thousands, and perhaps tens of thousands, of North Korean women have been trafficked across the border and sold as brides since a crippling famine in North Korea killed hundreds of thousands of people in the mid-1990s. Brokers tell the women they can find jobs in China, but instead sell them to Chinese men, mostly poor farmers in three border provinces who struggle to find brides in part because Beijing’s one-child policy led to the abortion of many female fetuses.
Like S.Y., many of the women have children still in their homeland.
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Tokyo police conducted nationwide raids on an insurer serving pro-Pyongyang Korean residents of Japan Sunday on suspicion that it concealed assets to foil debt collection by the state-backed Resolution and Collection Corp., investigative sources said.
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The United States has called on the U.N. Security Council to blacklist 10 ships for circumventing sanctions on North Korea, documents showed on Tuesday, while South Korea’s President suggested delaying military exercises with Washington to ease tensions ahead of next year’s Winter Olympics.
It doesn't help that Moon is being a wanker about this:
South Korean officials said on Wednesday a proposed delay in military drills with the United States was aimed at ensuring a peaceful 2018 Winter Olympics, not ending the North Korean missile crisis, as relations with China suffered new setbacks.
Kim Jong-Un will not be gracious about things.
Surely the South Koreans remember their last Olympics.
Also - for some people, stupidity is a way of life:
A science editor at BuzzFeed UK raised a few eyebrows last week after some curious remarks about Communism.
“All I want for Christmas is full Communism now,” editor Kelly Oakes tweeted — before locking down her account after it was picked by right-wing media and the always ferocious James Woods.
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A story or two a week comes out telling of the horror stories surrounding the country ruled by its communist dictator, Kim Jong Un. Be it starvation, parasites and disease, torture, brutal executions, rape, or religious persecution, North Korea is by almost every definition a hell-on-Earth.
But according to the New York Times, this isn’t a result of the communist system currently crushing the people under its heel. This is the fault of the U.S. and its nefarious plan to make sure an unstable power doesn’t become a nuclear one.
Trump shouldn't threaten to do it. He should just do it:
U.S. President Donald Trump on Wednesday threatened to cut off financial aid to countries that vote in favor of a draft United Nations resolution against his decision to recognize Jerusalem as Israel’s capital.
Someone get a cold, wet blanket for the EU because Poland just burned it:
Poland's president signed two laws Wednesday that complete a radical overhaul of the Polish justice system, ignoring a warning from the European Union that the legislation breached fundamental democratic principles and could lead to unprecedented sanctions against the member state.
And now, your guide to wassailing:
The word wassail has many meanings. For centuries, it was a way to toast someone’s good health. Before the Battle of Hastings in 1066, English soldiers reportedly sang:
Rejoice and wassail!But, in England, wassail also denoted the alcoholic beverage you imbibed during that toast—an elixir of steamy mulled mead or cider. Sometimes, wassail was a whipped dark beer flavored with roasted crab apples.
(Pass the bottle) and drink health.
Drink backwards and drink to me
Drink half and drink empty.
(Merci beaucoup)
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