Mid-Week Post

Your mid-week cloud cover ...




Watch as NOTHING gets accomplished in the next two years:

Democrats took control of the House of Representatives in the midterm congressional elections Tuesday, while Republicans won more seats in the Senate to strengthen their majority hold.

Also - says the moron who screwed up NAFTA in the first place: 

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau isn’t ruling out the possibility that Canada will ratify its new North American trade deal with the United States and Mexico even if U.S. tariffs on steel and aluminum exports are still in place.

It's just money:

Encana’s announcement last week that it was acquiring Texas-based Newfield Exploration may be good news for the Calgary-based company, but it is not good news for Canada. It is the most recent chapter in an unfolding story of capital flight from the Canadian energy sector. First the big internationals, and now Canadian-based firms like Encana, are moving their operations and/or capital budgets out of Canada and relocating their money to the U.S. and elsewhere. And it’s no mystery why. Thanks to government policies adopted by the governments of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and Alberta premier Rachel Notley since their respective elections in 2015, Canada has become a less and less competitive place to invest and do business.

To wit -  “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.”:

More than 200 mass graves containing between 6,000 and 12,000 bodies have been found in Iraq from the time of ISIL’s three-year reign, U.N. investigators said Tuesday.

**

An Islamic State-linked media outlet says a Canadian man was behind the terror group’s highest-profile cyber attacks, including the embarrassing takeover of the Twitter account of the U.S. military’s Central Command.

The Canadian fighter, who is said to have been killed by a drone strike in Syria, also allegedly penetrated bank computers and used the “spoils” to fund their fighting and hacked the U.S. Department of Defense, airports, international media organizations and the accounts of “hundreds” of U.S. soldiers.

Moral qualms, blah blah blah:

The federal government has dramatically slowed the approval process for weapons exports in recent years, the result of controversy over arms deals with Saudi Arabia and other nations with poor human rights records.

Canada could always just stop dealing with Saudi Arabia.




Why would Justin give refuge to Asia Bibi after having let in Syrian migrants instead of rape-gang-targeted Yazidis, awarded $10.5 million to Omar Khadr,  voted for M-103, tripped over his feet to apologise for a crime that turned out to be a hoax and has basically been a d!ck to anyone who points out the obvious about ISIS?:

In 2011, just weeks before his assassination, Shahbaz Bhatti met Stephen Harper in Ottawa. The prime minister offered him refuge in Canada, knowing that his life was in mortal danger at home. Bhatti was grateful but declined, choosing to go back home to his likely death.

I would expect that the Canadian High Commissioner in Islamabad has already been instructed to offer the Pakistani government safe passage and immediate asylum in Canada for Bibi, her family and her lawyers. She is in desperate need. It would be an honour for Canada to grant her safety and liberty.

A man whose callous disregard for human life cost the lives of three children will not be getting day parole:

A drunk driver who killed three young children and their grandfather in a crash north of Toronto three years ago has been denied parole.

A panel with the Parole Board of Canada says Marco Muzzo has not addressed his alcohol misuse, and denied him both day parole and full parole.

 
Because the Japanese can read the writing on the wall and it says that the Chinese are coming:

Why then would the Japanese people support a militarization of their country? We need look no further than the bellicose growth of Chinese nationalism and the recent moves by the Chinese to dominate the South and East China Seas in the way that the United States dominates the Caribbean. The Chinese have made no secret of their ambition with the creation of artificial islands that now host air bases, anti-aircraft missiles, and Chinese “coast guard” vessels that though mostly painted white (as coast guard vessels generally are), mount naval-style guns on their foredecks.

Japan is heavily dependent on sea transport, especially for fuel oil and natural gas, that comes from the Middle East via the Strait of Malacca and the Formosa Strait. With the U.S. under President Donald Trump adopting an increasing isolationist tone, Japan, like Australia and other nations in the region, will have to put more assets into their own defence.

And now, 325 year old fortifications found in Quebec City:

Archeologists in Quebec City have discovered the first fortifications built in 1693 to protect New France from a major attack, in what is considered the first reinforced palisade of that era.

The discovery was made by an archeological firm, Ruralys, that was overseeing renovation work on a building on Sainte-Ursule street, after a worker found a small piece of wood sticking out of the black sand.

"We knew we had to [be cautious] because usually we don't find wood that deep in the soil," said archeologist Jean-Yves Pintal, who was knee deep in the mud on the day the site was found.

The team carefully dug deeper and found the wooden structure was nearly 20 metres in length — the first tangible proof of the rempart palissadé de Beaucours, that is featured in history books as the predecessor to the stone fortifications that still surround the old city to this day.

It's the first time that a reinforced palisade of that kind is found," Pintal said Tuesday at a news conference organized by the Ministry of Culture and attended by Premier François Legault, as well as Quebec City Mayor Régis Labeaume.