Mid-Week Post

Aaahhh, the second day of spring ....



Justin is going to have a hard time getting consensus across the board for his patently fascist abuse of human rights and beliefs but not always from members of Parliament:

David Christopherson is pro-choice and has been an elected New Democrat for three decades. But on Monday night, he simply couldn’t bring himself to vote with the rest of his party on the Canada Summer Jobs attestation, which requires applicants to declare their core mandate respects abortion rights.

“Canadians have a right to disagree with the law, recognizing they will respect it and will honour the law,” he said. “You have the right to say anything you want about a law, and that attestation took that right away. I cannot condone that.”

The motion, put forward by the Conservatives, said groups that engage in non-political, non-activist work should be able to access the summer jobs grant regardless of whether they tick the attestation box. It was defeated 207 to 93, thanks to nearly every Liberal and NDP MP in attendance voting against it — except for Christopherson and Liberal MP Scott Simms.

“I wrestled with it, of course. You don’t vote against against your own caucus lightly,” Christopherson said. “To me, at the end of the day, that box took away Canadians’ right to disagree with the laws that they have to obey. I had a very strong, fundamental problem with that. And just abstaining wasn’t good enough.”

**

Elizabeth May says the Liberal government overreached by attaching a clause on abortion rights to summer job funding applications, even though she agrees groups that "harass" women shouldn't receive government support.

"To insist on an attestation of values was a really serious mistake and a very bad precedent," the Green Party leader told HuffPost Canada Tuesday.

May was applauded by Conservative MPs Monday after she voted in favour of an opposition motion targeting controversial Liberal changes to Canada Summer Jobs funding that angered faith-based organizations.

Liberal MP Scott Simms, NDP MP David Christopherson, and Bloc MPs Xavier Barsalou-Duval, Mario Beaulieu, and Marilène Gill also backed the motion, which was easily defeated by a vote of 207-93.

It is clear from the vote that 207 MPs enjoy dictating to their constituents what they should regard as right or wrong. If the constituents were in any way discomfited by this, they would vote the buggers out of office.

But this is Canada and Canadians simply don't do that sort of thing.

While Christopher and May's actions (assuming they are genuinely motivated) can be construed as principled, they themselves are part of the problem.

If one can consign one segment of society to death, how hard is it to squash free speech, withhold taxpayers' funds or bar teen-agers from summer employment?

Everything starts with a spark of life and follows it. Why let people speak freely and oppose their dictatorial government if they can removed from the gene pool at whim?

Also:

A Winnipeg church says the federal government is shutting out religious groups with a new rule this year for organizations seeking summer job funding, a day after the House of Commons voted down a motion to amend the change.

"I think it was very heavy-handed. I don't really understand why [the federal government] decided not to listen to the concerns of so many of their constituents across the country," said Glenn Krobel, lead pastor at Winnipeg's Centerpoint Church.

"Certainly, we've tried to be careful and articulate in a way that was respectful and thoughtful, but … they just haven't been willing to change anything."

For the better part of the past decade, Krobel says his church has applied for, and received, funding through the Canada Summer Jobs grant to pay summer students to work at its day camp. This year, their initial application was rejected. He's not sure they'll get the funding on reapplication, because of a controversial new requirement in the application.

Start asking private individuals and organisations to step up. Send a message to the fascists in Ottawa that they are not wanted or needed. 

Carbon taxes are government revenue and nothing more. An irresponsible government has to get the cash to jet-set about the globe and talk about the evils of an element it doesn't understand and it can't do that without carbon taxes:

“Carbon taxes might work on paper but they don’t work in the real world. Even if it is initially introduced as a revenue-neutral tax, you get changes in government and it becomes a cash cow for governments to spend,” he said.

He said the amount being charged in tax is insufficient to change human behaviour enough to meet emissions targets, while the carbon surcharge risks damaging Canada’s competitiveness.

Fast pointed out that the federal government’s claim that all revenues will go back to the provinces where they were raised is misleading. The government admitted this week in a written answer to a question by Conservative MP Robert Kitchen that the GST revenue collected on a carbon tax will be sent back to Ottawa, rather than rebated locally. The Parliamentary Budget Officer estimated that carbon pricing from the four largest provinces could net the federal government more than $500 million over two years.

Also - well, duh:

The U.S.-based Tides Foundation, for example, directs funds to Canadian organizations such as Dogwood Initiative and Leadnow, both of whom featured prominently in the anti-pipeline protest on March 10th in Burnaby, and both of whom take an active role in B.C. elections, aiming to get pro-energy politicians out of office and anti-pipeline politicians elected.

Whose money is it that Tides pays out? And whose interests does it serve? What donor requests are being satisfied? This of course is the great unknown. Over the last few years Tides has granted $40 million to 100 Canadian anti-pipeline organizations who, in return, have done a fine job of constraining the Canadian economy and saving money for American buyers of Canadian oil.

The activists have two main goals. They’d like to keep Canadian oil in the ground and, alternatively, they want to keep Canadian oil landlocked. Because we can’t reach overseas markets, our landlocked oil is sold at a huge discount to customers in the U.S. Scotiabank economists estimate that the current cost to the Canadian economy is $15.6 billion a year. We may as well write a cheque today “to our friends in the U.S.” for $43 million. And do it again tomorrow. And the next day. And every day after that. What an incredible campaign. No less oil consumed, but the Canadian economy suffers massive losses.

This erasure of identity is the result of lunatics and their lunatic ideas:

Families Minister Jean-Yves Duclos is defending Service Canada’s decision to ask its employees to adopt gender-neutral language when interacting with the public.

According to documents obtained by Radio-Canada, employees of Service Canada are being asked to no longer use gender-specific words such as Mr. and Ms. in order to avoid gender bias.

Members of the opposition were quick to criticize the directive, which some MPs mocked as ridiculous and harebrained.

One could say that again.

That's nice, legal experts. You do that. You overturn a verdict put out by twelve members of polite society chosen because they weren't "... going to hang Stanley". Do it because you don't like the verdict they handed down. Just forget that the Crown found no reason to appeal the verdict. You find ways to pervert the course of justice and hand over all decisions to a small group of unelected and unaccountable oligarchs who move as the political wind moves them. How could that ever go wrong? :

Nine academics from across Canada have signed onto “Project Fact(A),” an initiative that involves studying several aspects of Stanley’s trial and writing about them in a way that’s accessible to everyone. They hope to release their first set of findings by the end of April.

“One of the difficulties in thinking about this case is that so many people are speaking about it without actually being aware of what happened, aware of what the law is,” Tanovich said.

“One of our goals is to show, had the law been properly applied, it very well could have resulted in a different outcome.”

Boko Haram, that thuggish band of ignorance and poor hygiene, has released the girls it has kidnapped (and presumably raped and instructed to detonate themselves) with a stern warning that education just isn't for the feminine masses:

Boko Haram Islamic extremists brought back nearly all of the 110 girls they had kidnapped from a boarding school last month, dropping them off in the middle of the night Wednesday with a warning: "Don't ever put your daughters in school again."

Several of the girls interviewed by The Associated Press said they had been travelling for days before the convoy of vehicles arrived in the centre of the town of Dapchi around 2 a.m. Residents who had fled upon hearing that Boko Haram was headed their way watched from hiding as dozens of girls descended from the vehicles apparently unharmed.

"We were freed because we are Muslim girls and they didn't want us to suffer. That is why they released us," said Khadija Grema, one of the freed girls who said a Christian classmate remained captive.

(Sidebar: oh, what a surprise.)

 
A serial bomber in Austin, Texas blew himself up rather than be captured by the police:

The suspect in the deadly bombings that terrorized Austin blew himself up early Wednesday as authorities closed in on him, bringing a grisly end to a three-week manhunt. But police warned that more bombs could be out there.

The young man behind the attacks was identified as Mark Anthony Conditt, an unemployed 24-year-old who bought bomb-making materials at Home Depot. His motive remained a mystery, along with whether he acted alone in the five bombings in the Texas capital and suburban San Antonio that killed two people and wounded four others.

Finally:

He was the first assailant seen in a shocking security video sucker-punching a defenceless 29-year-old man with autism before his two pals joined in.

After a flurry of unprovoked punches and kicks at the bus station at Square One on March 13, the victim’s face was bloodied and his nose was broken. ...

Ronjot Singh Dhami, 25, of Surrey, B.C., is believed to be on the lam with two unidentified accomplices, who wore hoodies over their heads during the pathetic incident.

And thanks to tips from law enforcement and the public on the West Coast, investigators are confident they will soon identify two other suspects.

Let's see how tough this thug is while getting beaten up in jail.




And now, ice cream flavours both bizarre and delicious:

Reaching for a cone of dondurma may leave you empty-handed.

Turkey’s taffy-like ice cream contains salep and mastic—powdered orchid bulbs and pine resin—which render it slow-melting, elastic, and thick enough to cut with a fork and knife. The finished product is so sticky that vendors often make a show out of it, playing tricks on customers using sleights of hand and misdirection to keep the twirling cones just out of reach. Don’t be deterred: Good things come to those who wait.