For a Monday

Ah, the sticky, oppressive heat ...

Former prime minister Stephen Harper has been seen leaving the West Wing of the White House:

Former prime minister Stephen Harper has wrapped up a Monday meeting with one of the most senior officials in the Trump administration.

The White House confirmed the meeting between Harper and Larry Kudlow, economic advisor to President Donald Trump, on Monday afternoon but did not say how long it lasted or what the two discussed.

Perhaps Mr. Harper was trying to clean up Justin's messes.

 

Meanwhile, the pervert thirty-nine percent voted for in the 2015 election tries to deflect an accusation of groping he cannot deny:

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau says he does not remember any “negative interactions” during an event he attended 18 years ago in British Columbia — acknowledging for the first time allegations of sexual misconduct that recently resurfaced about him at the event.

Trudeau told reporters in Regina on Sunday that he remembers attending the music festival in Creston, B.C., in the summer of 2000, but said he doesn’t recall anything going amiss.

“I remember that day in Creston well, it was an Avalanche Foundation event to support avalanche safety. I had a good day that day. I don’t remember any negative interactions that day at all,” Trudeau said. ...

(Sidebar: except for grabbing a woman and then saying this -  “I’m sorry. If I had known you were reporting for a national newspaper, I would never have been so forward.”)

The allegation is particularly problematic for Trudeau, who frequently proclaims himself a feminist and has generally taken a zero-tolerance approach to allegations of sexual misconduct within the Liberal party.

Four MPs have resigned or been kicked out of the Liberal caucus over alleged sexual misconduct since Trudeau became party leader in 2013.

These Liberal caucus members:

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and other Liberal MPs, including one accused of sexual harassment, took part in a closed-door workshop on creating safe workplaces at the Liberal convention in Halifax.

**

An Ontario Liberal MP is facing an allegation of sexual assault following an incident in Halifax early Saturday morning.

Halifax Regional Police are investigating the alleged assault they say happened just after 2 a.m. AT on Brunswick Street across from Citadel Hill in downtown Halifax, near where the Liberal Party policy convention was being held.

Francis Drouin's office confirmed an allegation had been made against him. 

**

Nunavut's MP and former federal cabinet minister Hunter Tootoo made a statement Wednesday, finally addressing allegations he had an inappropriate relationship before his sudden resignation from cabinet and Liberal caucus this May. 

"I made a mistake and regrettably engaged in a consensual but inappropriate relationship, and that is why I resigned," he said in the CBC newsroom in Iqaluit this afternoon. 

**

Calgary MP Darshan Kang has resigned from the Liberal caucus amid allegations of sexual harassment.

** 

Liberal Leader Justin Trudeau has suspended ethics critic Scott Andrews and Quebec MP Massimo Pacetti from the party's caucus after two New Democrat MPs alleged they were harassed.

**

The Prime Minister's Office won't release the findings of a third-party investigation into allegations of sexual harassment against a former aide — and says its standard will be to keep taxpayer-funded probes private.

 

Claude-Éric Gagné served as deputy director of operations in Prime Minister Justin Trudeau's office.

He had a heavy hand in the Liberals' big 2015 election win in Quebec — the party's best result since 1980. Gagné resigned last week before the PMO received the results of an independent investigation into his behaviour. Several women alleged Gagné had acted improperly towards them. He denies any wrongdoing.

A whole list of allegations and resignations from allegedly "pro-women" leftist male politicians who clamour for belief and action and then quickly deny and silence any reportage about their involvement in acts they once said that they deplored.

He who lives by the grope shall die by the grope.


Also - for Justin, Canada Day was a day for pandering to the least important but highly visible electorate:

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau says his government continues to "engage deeply with leaders and communities" when he was asked whether he would visit an Indigenous protest on the Saskatchewan legislature grounds.

Trudeau made a brief visit to Regina on Sunday, where he chatted with families of steelworkers during a Canada Day event.

The Justice for Our Stolen Children camp was set up in February to protest racial injustice and the disproportionate number of First Nations children apprehended by child-welfare workers.

(Sidebar: did everyone forget Phoenix Sinclair?)

 

A suspect who planned to kill several people, especially children, on the Independence Day holiday in the US has been apprehended:

An Ohio man arrested on suspicion of planning to detonate a bomb at Cleveland's Fourth of July celebrations and then stand by and watch "it go off" was granted a public defender on Monday during his initial court appearance.

FBI agents on Sunday arrested Demetrius Pitts, 48, after he met with an undercover agent and said he planned to plant a bomb at an event celebrating the U.S. Independence Day holiday in the Ohio city.

Pitts, a U.S. citizen and Philadelphia native who had expressed allegiance to the al Qaeda militant group, intended to target other locations in Cleveland and Philadelphia, the agency said. ...

Pitts also suggested giving the children of military personnel remote control cars packed with explosives during the event, in the hope they would unwittingly detonate the bombs, the FBI said.

But ... but ... global warming!:

It is 30 years this past week that Dr. James Hansen, then well into the first of more than three decades as head of the NASA (National Aeronautics and Space Administration)-Goddard Institute for Space Studies, testified to a U.S. Senate committee that the then-current heat wave in Washington was caused by the relationship between “the greenhouse effect and observed warming.” This was the starting gun of a mighty debate about the existence, cause and consequences of global warming. Hansen was embraced by the environmental movement, from authentic scientists like David Suzuki to well-meaning faddists like the Prince of Wales, to cynical interlopers from the defeated international left grasping at anything to debunk and confound capitalism, like Naomi Klein, to complete charlatans like former U.S. vice-president Al Gore. ...

In any event, Hansen’s predictions have all bombed and he has not recanted. His polyglot and multi-motivated echo chamber, including Dr. Michael Mann and his infamous “hockey stick” of sharply rising temperatures, have had their noses rubbed in the fiction of increasing world temperatures throughout this new millennium. 

Surveillance shows that Kim Jong-Un is still developing his nuclear program, surprising no one:

New satellite photos show that Kim Jong Un is continuing to develop his nuclear weapons program, and U.S. intelligence sources say they believe North Korea has increased its production of nuclear fuel at multiple sites. This wasn’t supposed to happen after the Donald Trump-Kim summit last month in Singapore.

According to an analysis by experts at the Stimson Center in Washington, North Korea has improved the cooling system of its plutonium-producing reactor at Yongbyon. Activity also continues at a nearby building where plutonium is extracted from spent fuel, and staining on the roof of another building suggests the North is enriching weapons-grade uranium using centrifuges. U.S. intelligence sources essentially confirmed this news by telling news agencies last week that the North has been increasing its production of enriched uranium for nuclear weapons.

After the June 12 summit with Kim, President Trump said that he trusts the young dictator and expects him to start fulfilling his promise to denuclearize immediately. “There is no longer a Nuclear Threat from North Korea,” Mr. Trump tweeted the next day.

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo says the President meant the threat from North Korea has been reduced. But the photos of Yongbyon show that isn’t true. Though the North stopped firing missiles and testing warheads, it can produce more weapons of mass destruction. The White House has declined to comment on the intelligence reports.

Part of the problem is that Mr. Trump didn’t get Kim to commit to a timeline for denuclearization, and Mr. Pompeo says the U.S. will not press for one. The President also failed to get the North to commit to giving the U.S. a complete list of its nuclear facilities. The U.S. could then check the list against intelligence to see if the North is being honest. Kim may now be exploiting these missed opportunities. Kim promised to dismantle a missile-testing facility at Sohae, but there’s no evidence he is doing so.

Even if there were a timeline for denuclearization, North Korea might not follow it for long. Kim’s father and grandfather reneged on every denuclearization deal they signed. But at least the U.S. could use missed deadlines to make a case for new sanctions at the United Nations Security Council.

(Kamsahamnida)




A couple in New Brunswick have a brush with a Great White shark:

Pat Barker and her husband, both avid canoers, were paddling through Passamaquoddy Bay toward Deer Island a couple of weeks ago.

At one point, they noticed that a dorsal fin had pulled up alongside their 24-foot-long canoe.

Barker said they thought it was a porpoise at first, but due to the creature’s colour and size — dark grey with a white underside and around 4.5 metres long — they quickly surmised it was probably a great white shark.

“I looked down, and I think, in my mind, I still wanted to see that porpoise shape,” she said.

“The girth around this thing was gobsmackingly huge. I can’t even describe it … it felt like I was coming up to a submarine.”

The predator turned towards the boat, dipped underwater, and circled around the back of the boat, she said.

As the couple hurried back to shore, she said, the shark followed them for some time, pushing a mound of water in front of it — Barker couldn’t say how long they were pursued, as she didn’t want to look back.

“It was terrifying,” she said. “I thought I was going to die. I thought that was it.”

After the couple reached the shore, Barker said they consulted a local shark expert in the area, who supported their theory that it was a great white shark based on their descriptions.

 
(SEE: boat, need, bigger)




UNESCO has added Oura Church as a world heritage site:

UNESCO decided Saturday to add 12 sites in southwestern Japan that are linked to the history of the country’s persecuted Christians to the World Heritage list.

The sites include the Oura Cathedral in Nagasaki, the oldest surviving church in the country and which is already designated as a national treasure; the remains of Hara Castle, a site of the Shimabara-Amakusa Rebellion that led to establishment of a national policy of seclusion; and the beginning of the hidden Christians’ unique system to transmit their faith and beliefs by themselves.

The sites were among 28 World Heritage candidates reviewed by the U.N.’s World Heritage Committee for four days through Monday in Bahrain.

The decision by the committee brings the total number of World Heritage sites in Japan to 22 — 18 cultural and four natural sites.