The Desolation of Smug

And, boy, is there a lot of smug going around!



Case in point:

.....two former supreme court justices agree on the essential but overlooked aspect of the Liberals small business tax changes....which is to open small business to a boatload of Canada Revenue Agency audits and litigation. 

How dare small businesses attempt to make a living?!



The Senate has voted against calling mutilating children "barbaric" because - in Liberal Senator Mobina Jaffer's words - "By pairing these two words, we are instead removing the agency from the individual committing an action that is clearly wrong and associating it instead with a cultural group at large. We are implying that these practices are part of cultures and that these cultures are barbaric.” .


Yes, about that:

A website serving Calgary Muslims has raised eyebrows by making a lengthy pitch for female circumcision, arguing the practice has “immense” value and blaming its poor reputation on Jewish-controlled media.

The provocative blog post by a foreign Islamic scholar drew strong rebukes this week from researchers and advocates concerned about female-genital mutilation, and from a major Jewish group. ...

The post by Asiff Hussein, affiliated with the Centre for Islamic Studies in Sri Lanka, promises to explain “how misogynists and feminists are feeding upon each other to denigrate an Islamic practice that brings untold benefits to women.”

It says circumcision should only involve removal of the clitoral prepuce, a procedure it says leads to enhanced sexual enjoyment for women, and argues it is endorsed by the Hadith, sacred interpretations of the Prophet Mohammed’s words.

**

Abu al- Malih ibn `Usama's father relates that the Prophet said: "Circumcision is a law for men and a preservation of honour for women."

**

More than 200 million girls and women alive today have been cut in 30 countries in Africa, the Middle East and Asia where FGM is concentrated.

The practice is not only barbaric (there's that word again) but widely accepted. So, yes, Miss Jaffer, pairing this awful practice with a culture is both accurate and appropriate. You and Liberal voters may feel differently but one might wager you have never undergone at the whims of a man something that made you incontinent.



 Good boy. Do as you're told:

The Liberal government’s nominee for federal ethics watchdog won’t commit to completing ongoing investigations into the prime minister or finance minister if he gets the job.

But Mario Dion told the House of Commons ethics committee that if he is appointed, reviewing the files would be a top priority.

“One of the first things I would attend to (is) review the whole genesis of those investigations,” Dion said.

“I would own the final result and therefore I have to assess what has been done to date to determine whether I am supportive of that, but abandoning an investigation completely without reason is not something I would do.”

Outgoing conflict of interest and ethics commissioner Mary Dawson is currently looking into a trip Justin Trudeau took last Christmas to a private Bahamian island owned by the Aga Khan, spiritual leader of Ismaili Muslims, billionaire philanthropist and family friend of Trudeau’s.

She is also investigating Finance Minister Bill Morneau’s involvement in new pension legislation that could benefit the company founded by his father and in which Morneau, until recently, still owned shares.

Both issues are hot political potatoes for the government. But there’s no guarantee those reviews will be completed before Dawson leaves her post on Jan. 8 and, more troubling for Opposition parties, there’s no requirement for her successor to do so.

But I thought that a Canadian is a Canadian and was entitled to $10.5 million for acts of terrorism?

Canada’s immigration minister has started a court action to revoke citizenship from a man accused of Bosnian war crimes who was allowed into Canada in 1997 and granted citizenship in 2004.

So, a Bosnian war criminal is bad but Omar Khadr is good?

Right ...

Total consistency there. Really working.


Also - one would assume that such sentiments were, at best, fatuous, as Trudeau has demonstrated on several occasions that he possesses neither brains nor integrity:

A Saskatchewan man has received a two-year suspended sentence for making online threats against Prime Minister Justin Trudeau.

Derek Hurrell, 34, pleaded guilty to one count of uttering threats earlier this year. According to the Crown prosecutor, Hurrell posted on Facebook stating he wanted to "blow out" Justin Trudeau's brains.

In May, Hurrell was arrested near the town of Borden, Sask., located about 50 kilometres northwest of Saskatoon. The investigation began after police in New Brunswick notified the RCMP's national security enforcement section.

In Saskatoon provincial court, Prosecutor Mike Segu told court this should not be treated as an ordinary threats charge, as it was directed at the prime minister.

Hurrell had no direct contact with Trudeau.

Because the only the top coward can be exempt from both criticism and personal injury. Screw the   proles.


And - killing terrorists makes them win somehow:

We have become scared of killing terrorists. Last week, the defence secretary, Gavin Williamson, sparked outrage for stating that, ‘quite simply, my view is a dead terrorist can’t cause any harm to Britain’. Williamson suggested that government policy should be to kill ISIS fighters before they return to the UK wherever possible. He was hardly engaging with the difficult questions surrounding returning terror suspects by pointing out that a dead terrorist has been effectively neutralised. They’re dead after all. However, the reaction to this banal statement was far more shocking. Many argued that it is always wrong to kill people without first applying due process.

Maiming and killing Yazidis is always wrong, too, but no one seems to care about that.



There are only 1.7 million aboriginals (or variations thereof) and only 260,550 fluent speakers of an aboriginal language (of which there are seventy) in Canada. The forced interpretation of regional languages no one understands is, at the very least, an exercise in folly:

Ottawa is boosting its roster of Indigenous language interpreters in the House of Commons, even as MPs grapple with whether to move beyond the chamber's two official languages, English and French.

Unlike problems caused by illegal cigarettes and guns:

Indigenous leaders looking at the prospect of legalized marijuana in Canada say they don't see a route to riches, but rather a serious risk that the black market in pot will set its sights on their vulnerable communities.

I'm waiting for the about-face where selling marijuana will be key to Big Reconciliation.



Palliative care is a more compassionate but less money-saving option, so ... :

A private member's bill is about to become law and its goal is to make end-of-life health care better for Canadians from coast to coast.

Bill C-277, also known as the "Framework on Palliative Care in Canada Act," is expected to receive Royal Assent on Tuesday and become law.

The bill calls on the government to come up with a cohesive plan for people in palliative care that bridges the provinces and gives people who are dying the option of quality end-of-life care.

Palliative care physician at the Hospice of Windsor and Essex County, Dr. Darren Cargill, said he's "very happy" and impressed by the bill. 

"What I like is the emphasis on improving access to palliative care," Cargill said. "It's not where we'd like it to be... In many areas access is below average or poor and certainly improving that for patients is key."

Cargill said there are "tremendous gaps" when it comes to end of life care across the country. He hopes that this bill will help make it easier to bring that care where the patients are — whether that's in hospital, long-term care facilities or at home.

In other news:

Bangladesh counterterrorism officers are questioning the wife and other relatives of a man accused of carrying out a bomb attack in New York City’s subway system, officials said Tuesday.

Bangladesh’s government condemned the attack, saying it opposes all forms of terrorism and violent extremism.

U.S. authorities have identified the suspect as Akayed Ullah, a 27-year-old Bangladeshi immigrant. Ullah is accused of strapping a crude pipe bomb to his body and detonating it during rush hour Monday in an attack in which only he was seriously wounded.

The US State Department has revoked visas for Haitians crawling north:

American authorities say an ongoing operation along their northern border has led them to revoke U.S.-issued travel visas for thousands of people, most of whom were headed to Canada to claim asylum.

Some, according to a U.S. State Department report, are associated with terrorist groups.

The revocations happened as part of what's called Operation Northern Watch, which focuses on criminal activity such as visa fraud, human smuggling and terrorist threats at the Canada-U.S. border.

Since the operation began in January 2015, authorities have revoked approximately 2,400 visas that were issued from 85 different American diplomatic posts abroad.

"Although some suspects have committed crimes in the United States, the vast majority of the individuals referred through Operation Northern Watch are individuals intending to claim asylum in Canada or have already claimed asylum," reads the annual report of the State Department's diplomatic security service (DSS).

"Included in this group were individuals with ties to designated terrorist organizations."

Jew hatred? One could say that again:

Trump is under fire from international political leaders and diplomats because they say by taking Israel’s side on the issue of who controls Jerusalem, Trump has set back the peace process and eliminated the U.S. as an “honest broker” in negotiating the two-state solution.

But if it’s a diplomatic crisis, why the violence against not only Israel, but Jews? ...

The violence, however, is being fomented mainly by those in the Arab and Muslim world and its diaspora, who have a different agenda when it comes to Israel.

They don’t want a peace process that culminates in Israel and a new Palestinian state living in peace.

They want to destroy Israel.

But ... but ... global warming!

“The video shows what appears to be an old male in declining health, but clear clinical signs of starvation aren’t obvious (e.g. convulsions),” said longtime polar bear biologist Andrew Derocher in an email. In a series of tweets, Arctic wildlife biologist Jeff Higdon similarly speculated that the animal could be suffering from an aggressive form of bone cancer. “That bear is starving, but (in my opinion) it’s not starving because the ice suddenly disappeared and it could no longer hunt seals,” he wrote, noting that bears routinely survive long stretches of ice-free water during the summer. “It’s far more likely that it is starving due to health issues,” he added. However, noted University of Alberta polar bear researcher Ian Stirling disputed that it was an older bear, pointing out the lack of scarring around the animal’s neck. In an email, Stirling added that it’s impossible to know for sure what caused the bear’s emaciation, but it “is what a starving bear would look like, regardless of the cause.”

Does China know something the rest of us do not?

A Chinese county along the border with North Korea is constructing refugee camps intended to house thousands of migrants fleeing a possible crisis on the Korean Peninsula, according to an internal document that appears to have been leaked from China’s main state-owned telecommunications company.

Also:

North Korea’s political prisons are just as bad as — and perhaps even worse than — the Nazi concentration camps of the Holocaust, a renowned judge and Auschwitz survivor has concluded after hearing from former North Korean prisoners and guards.

Thomas Buergenthal, who served on the International Court of Justice, is one of three jurists who have concluded that North Korean leader Kim Jong Un should be tried for crimes against humanity for the way his regime uses brutal political prisons to control the population.
“I believe that the conditions in the [North] Korean prison camps are as terrible, or even worse, than those I saw and experienced in my youth in these Nazi camps and in my long professional career in the human rights field,” said Buergenthal, who was in Auschwitz and Sachsenhausen as a child, as well as the ghetto of Kielce, Poland.

**

A North Korean defector has spoken about the horrific human right violations she says she witnessed in the state’s prison camps — including starved prisoners fed to dogs.

Speaking at the UN Monday, Ji Hyeon A described how she was forced to have an abortion when she was three months pregnant. She pleaded with the world to take action.

And a merry Hanukkah to all y'all:
 

Ba-ruch A-tah Ado-nai E-lo-he-nu Me-lech ha-olam a-sher ki-de-sha-nu be-mitz-vo-tav ve-tzi-va-nu le-had-lik ner Cha-nu-kah.

Blessed are You, Lord our G‑d, King of the universe, who has sanctified us with His commandments, and commanded us to kindle the Chanukah light.

(Merci beaucoup)