Sunday Post

 

On a quiet Sunday evening ...



What did Justin's embarrassing, Indian-phobic family vacation accomplish?

This:

Sikh Canadian pro-separatist figures are hailing Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s trip to India as a success, and slamming the Indian government for its supposedly frosty treatment of Trudeau during much of his visit.

Trudeau, who arrived back in Ottawa Sunday morning, spent much of his time in India dodging and scrambling to address allegations that his government has helped nurture Sikh extremists, unwittingly or otherwise.

The issue garnered Trudeau criticism in both Canada and India, with the biggest controversy during the trip being the invitation of convicted attempted murderer Jaspal Atwal to a dinner reception hosted by Canada’s high commissioner — and the Prime Minister’s Office’s subsequent attempt to shift the blame for the fiasco onto India.

But Trudeau’s trip, and the reception afforded to him by Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, are being perceived differently by those Sikh Canadians who support the creation of a Sikh ethnostate called Khalistan in India’s Punjab state.

Watch as this entire episode explodes into conflict that shouldn't even exist in this country.



Also:

The official Opposition is calling for an emergency committee meeting about how a man convicted of attempted murder wound up at a prime ministerial event in India.

Conservative public safety critic Pierre Paul-Hus wants the House of Commons committee on national security to review the Privy Council Office’s screening practices following Jaspal Atwal’s attendance at a reception this week.

Atwal was convicted of attempting to kill Indian cabinet minister Malkiat Singh Sidhu on Vancouver Island in 1986.

(Sidebar: Atwal was allowed in. THAT is how he ended up at a prime ministerial event.)


(Merci)




No one sees fit to remove the welcome from Justin's sissy hands:

Ottawa has reached a last-minute deal with Israel to suspend the deportation of asylum-seekers who currently are waiting for resettlement to Canada.

Israel is set to begin deporting some 37,000 asylum-seekers, the majority of them Sudanese and Eritreans, in April after Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government issued them expulsion notices.

The asylum-seekers, most of them deemed by Israel to be economic migrants rather than refugees in need of protection, can either leave voluntarily for a “safe” African country and receive $3,500 and a plane ticket, or face imprisonment. 

The Canadian government is under the gun to resettle 1,845 of the African refugees whose sponsorship applications are currently in process, some for years.

“Canada does not support policies of mass deportations of asylum-seekers. The rights of asylum-seekers and refugees are laid out in the Geneva Convention on the Status of Refugees, of which Israel is a signatory,” said Adam Austen, press secretary for Foreign Affairs Minister Chrystia Freeland.

“As the country that resettles the highest number of African asylum-seekers from Israel, we are in direct contact with the Government of Israel to convey Canada’s concerns about the situation.”

A spokesperson for Immigration Canada confirmed it has reached an agreement with Israeli authorities to allow the Canada-bound asylum-seekers to remain in the country and not be jailed until their sponsorships are finalized.

It's just money:

According to the report, “A key driver of the larger and persistent federal deficits over the course of the government’s current fiscal plan is rapid growth in program spending. Since coming into office, the Trudeau government increased program spending from $253.9 billion (2014/15) to $304.9 billion (projected for 2017/18). This $51-billion increase in spending equals growth of 20.1% in just three years.”

There is no need for another taxpayer-funded waste of time. The conclusion is simple and I shall provide gratis -  two men were tried in a court of law and were found not guilty by people deemed competent enough to weigh evidence. Both verdicts are reviled by people who already get a free ride in the crime department.

That's it, really:

First Nations leaders in Saskatchewan say a royal commission is “urgently needed” to examine the inequalities Indigenous people face in the justice system.

Chief Bobby Cameron of the Federation of Sovereign Indigenous Nations (FSIN) told reporters Friday in Saskatoon that the not-guilty verdicts in the trial of Gerald Stanley in Battleford and Raymond Cormier in Winnipeg — each of whom was accused of murdering young Indigenous people — raise serious questions about the roles of the police, justice and child welfare systems.

The focus of a royal commission needs to be on decisions that were made within those systems in the handling of the deaths of Colten Boushie, 22, and Tina Fontaine, 15, and the non-Indigenous men accused of killing them — rather than on the Indigenous people, as if the problems laid with them, Cameron said.

Teaching children to hate themselves is terribly Khmer Rouge of one:

Using song, dance, and paint, 40 children worked together Saturday to create an ABC picture book tackling concepts like slavery and colonialism. 

"I really believe that when we listen to the voices of children, that things can change," said Denise Gillard, the project director for the Book in a Day program. The program was developed by the Nova Scotia chapter of the Global Afrikan Congress (GAC).

The organization works to combat racism and promote the idea of reparations, which it defines as restitution for political, social and economic damage caused to African people by the Atlantic slave trade, slavery, and colonialism.

"It's the idea that European and Western nations need to acknowledge, first of all, the damage that's been done, apologize for this crime against humanity inflicted upon people of African descent, on African people," Gillard said. 

Yes, about that:

The formal apology for slavery and Jim Crow issued by the U.S. House of Representatives in 2008 was unprecedented, even after decades of lawmakers trying to push the government to finally apologize ...

 

**

In a statement marking the anniversary of the British act abolishing the slave trade, the PM said it was among history's most "shameful enterprises".

He added the same dedication that led to abolition was needed to tackle the "many forms" of modern day slavery.

I believe someone has beaten Big Apology to the punch.

What kind of person takes a pound of flesh from children anyway?

Moon helped North Korea add insult to injury:

South Korea said it approved the Winter Olympic visit by a sanctioned North Korean official, blamed for the deadly 2010 sinking of a South Korean Navy ship, in the pursuit of peace and asked for public understanding.

 

 

You're a real b@$#@rd, Moon:

North Korean on Thursday said it plans to send a high-level delegation to the closing ceremony of the Winter Olympics in Pyeongchang led by none other than Kim Yong-chol, the mastermind behind the torpedoing of the Navy corvette Cheonan in 2010. The Unification Ministry said it intends to allow Kim's visit "from a broad perspective" because it will "help improve inter-Korean relations and denuclearization, thereby leading to peace to the Korean Peninsula." ...

 

Kim was promoted from lieutenant general to general in February of 2012, just before North Korean leader Kim Jong-il's birthday anniversary. That was a direct reward for the Cheonan attack.

Yet the Americans are considered the pig-headed ones:

The White House said any talks with North Korea must lead to an end to its nuclear program after senior officials from Pyongyang visiting South Korea said on Sunday their government was open to talks with the United States.

The North Korean delegation, in Pyeongchang for the closing ceremony of the Winter Olympics, met at an undisclosed location with South Korean President Moon Jae-in, and expressed a willingness to meet with the United States, Moon’s office said in a statement.  ...

On Sunday, North Korean state media accused the United States of provoking confrontation on the Korean peninsula with the sanctions. 

The White House said its sanctions would continue. 

These sanctions:

The sanctions have left the North short of hard currency just as a degree of marketization was starting to improve the lives of some ordinary North Koreans. Kim's slush funds are being rapidly depleted, which means that regular handouts to the elite to buy their loyalty are also drying up, and even some in the ruling class are turning to open-air markets for their basic needs.

It's better to put sanction on North Korea's backer, China, the very same that doesn't know the meaning of the word democracy:

China's ruling Communist Party has proposed scrapping the ten-year term limit for the President, in a move almost certain to be written into the country's constitution in March.

The precedent-breaking change would allow the 64-year-old to continue as both the head of state and the more senior title of Communist Party General Secretary beyond 2023.

He is also the Chairman of China's Central Military Commission — a title, like that of Communist Party chief, that does not have a term limit.

According to China's state media, the Communist Party's main leadership group — the Central Committee — proposed the amendment, along with writing Mr Xi's ideology into the country's constitution.

Given that the Communist Party allows no opposition parties and suppresses dissenting political voices, the proposal is expected to be passed by China's rubber-stamp Parliament in early March.

White liberals sure do find other cultures "quaint":

“Some couples held weddings as part of their honeymoon, just as some Japanese hold weddings abroad,” an official at the shrine said, adding that many of the ceremonies are small in scale.

Some foreigners who married in Kyoto cited their good impressions of the city during previous visits, while others lived in Japan in their early childhood, the official said. Many of them believe Kyoto symbolizes Japanese culture, the official added.

Last month, an Australian gay couple, 31-year-old teacher Richard Delange and 33-year-old Matt Molony who works at a human resource company, held a wedding at Shunkoin, a Buddhist temple affiliated with Myoshinji Temple, in the city’s Ukyo Ward. For the ceremony they wore formal Japanese attire of montsuki kimono bearing family crests and hakama pleated skirts.

“In Australia, wedding ceremonies are big and expensive,” Delange said. “We always have to think about family.”

The couple decided to hold a small and relaxed wedding in Kyoto. They had visited the city before.

The wedding was “totally special,” Delange said, adding that he wants to recommend the “great experience” to his friends.

No word on whether a refusal to prepare wedding mochi was met with a lawsuit.

And now, researchers claim to have found the prophet Isaiah's "signature":

A piece of the 2,700-year-old seal impression is missing, and it’s not clear what it actually says. 

However, “the obvious initial translation, as surprising as it might seem, suggests that this belonged to the prophet Isaiah,” author and archaeologist Eilat Mazar writes in the journal Biblical Archaeology Review.

If the stamped clay seal is, indeed, Isaiah’s — experts said it would be the first “extra-biblical” reference to the 8^th century B.C. Jewish prophet, who foretold the birth of Jesus some 700 years in advance, and for whom the Book of Isaiah is named.