For a Sunday

 

China returns its third hostage:

Global Affairs Canada says Albertan Sarah McIver has been released from custody in China and returned to Canada.

McIver had been detained over a work-permit issue related to her teaching job.

Her arrest followed those of Michael Kovrig and Michael Spavor, two Canadians living and working in China, on allegations they were harming China’s national security.

 
China does not do things for humanitarian reasons. The question is, therefore: what was promised? What will Justin's government do to free Robert Lloyd Schellenberg?


The Epoch Times has done some sterling work on exposing China and its rotten communist system (a system kept alive through toadying and trade). These articles are must-reads.

Case in point:

Huawei was involved in creating China’s “Golden Shield” internet censorship infrastructure; the incipient “social credit system” to track and rate citizens based on behavior; and video monitoring project “Heaven Net” (tian wang). Many of Huawei’s clients are Chinese state-security related.

Speaking of foreign influences:

The Rockefeller group, based in the United States, laid down five specific tracks to solve what they saw as the Canadian problem. First, they would stop the expansion of pipelines and other infrastructure. Second, they would forcibly cause reforms to the governance of “water, toxics and land.” Third, they would “significantly reduce future demand” for oilsands product. Next, they would leverage the debate to policy victories in both the U.S. and Canada. Finally, they would persuade policymakers that oil wasn’t going to be needed in the future because we’d have electric cars.

To execute this strategy, Rockefeller commenced a decade-long campaign to taint the world’s image of Canada and turn Canadians against each other. It was a brilliant success.

Rockefeller’s funders must be pleased with Trans Mountain’s expansion in limbo, the two next best pipeline prospects barely registering a pulse, and Alberta lowering its oil production on Jan. 1.

Next, the Trudeau government is preparing to pass legislation to permanently bar oil exports from leaving ports on the northwest coast of British Columbia and break up our distinguished National Energy Board after it was persistently criticized by Rockefeller’s partners in its anti-oilsands campaign.

Our oil is called “ethical” for good reason. Yet, few of Canada’s high environmental and social standards that apply to domestic production are imposed on the inward flow of imported oil. It’s another of those dissonant facts we have become accustomed to. Discriminate against ourselves? Well, if we must. Against others, like Saudi oil — we wouldn’t dare.

** 

The United Conservative Party has filed an official complaint with the election commissioner about Progress Alberta, a left-leaning registered political action committee.

At the heart of the complaint is two monetary donations Progress Alberta received from Tides, a U.S.-based foundation. The executive director of Progress Alberta says his organization has done nothing wrong.

**

“No apology if this sounds bellicose,” says UCP Leader Jason Kenney, explaining why he believes Alberta should fight back hard against anti-oil activists.

The counter-attack shouldn’t just come from government, according to Kenney. He insists that industry leaders join his battle.

If he’s elected, he says, “I will call in the CEOs of major oil companies and tell them they’ve got to get in this game.”

“I’ve got a new definition of ‘social licence.’ If they want to develop our resources, they’d darn well better start fighting for the industry. I want to see some energy companies take the fight to these (anti-oil) groups.”

(Sidebar: if the entire system has been corrupted, the presence of industry leaders isn't going to make a difference, Jason.)

**

But several people in the tech sector, who asked not to be identified due to the sensitivity of the topic, said that Ottawa has instead used the funds to support wounded industries. That instinct is very familiar for people who have followed Canada’s public spending efforts on innovation.

“Essentially all government funding in one industry or another is political,” said Aaron Wudrick, director of the Taxpayers Federation of Canada.

NO!

Surely not!:

Liberal government props up Bombardier with $372 million in loans

Hudak had an idea similar to this and people voted for Wynne all the same which led to the further bankrupting of Ontario:

Premier Brian Pallister, in his third year of a promise to eliminate the deficit by 2024, says he is not planning any large-scale layoffs, but some trimming remains to be done — largely by not filling vacant positions when someone retires or quits.

“Senior management is still heavy outside of core government, in the so-called MUSH sector (municipalities, universities, school boards and hospitals) and in the Crowns,” Pallister said in a year-end interview with The Canadian Press.

“(It’s) heavier than we would like, and so there is that aspect that has to be dealt with.”

Pallister was elected in 2016 on a promise to end a string of deficits that started under the former NDP government. He has already cut civil service jobs by eight per cent through attrition and has ordered Crown agencies to reduce management positions.

Why not just declare that if people weigh the same as a duck they are made out of wood and therefore float, that they are innocent and free to go? Don't mangle the legal system piecemeal. Do it at once and get it over with:

Legal experts say proposed changes to the Criminal Code after a high-profile acquittal in the fatal shooting of an Indigenous man are short-sighted.

Key changes in a federal bill, which has passed third reading, involve peremptory challenges during jury selection and use of preliminary inquiries. Peremptory challenges allow lawyers to remove a potential juror without giving reasons.

Calgary lawyer Balfour Der, who has worked as both a prosecutor and a defence lawyer for 38 years, said the proposed changes are a knee-jerk reaction in part to the acquittal by an all-white jury of a Saskatchewan farmer in the shooting death of a 22-year-old Cree man.

“It’s a reaction of the government to satisfy an interest group which may have been complaining after this,” he said in a recent interview.

“I can’t imagine anything less helpful in jury selection to both sides than to have no peremptory challenges. You’re not just looking for a jury of your peers but you’re looking for an impartial jury.”

Justin's usual tact of blaming Harper for everything and then comparing Scheer to Harper instead of trotting out a record of positive achievements should show what a weak, oleaginous, petty failure of an oxygen-sucking creature he is.

But if he really wants to compare himself to both Harper and Scheer, let's indulge him.

Stephen Harper and Andrew Scheer didn't do the following:

- vacation on a billionaire's private island and then be judged guilty of ethics violations
- tell a veteran and his fake leg that he and his brothers-in-arms deserved to get taken to court by the Liberal government and that they were asking for too much money
- make an @$$ of himself in front of all "peoplekind"
- embarrass Canada in India, fly away (at the taxpayer's expense) without a reasonable trade deal and then accuse the Indian government of lying
- molest a female reporter and shrug it off as "Men and women experience things differently ...” 
- screw up NAFTA
- keep open borders
- block much-needed pipelines

Yep. Harper and Scheer are certainly alike in that regard.




Speaking of scumbags:

Nathan Rambukkana and Herbert Pimlott, who teach at Wilfrid Laurier University in Waterloo, Ont., maintain their comments about Peterson were not defamatory but argue in a third-party claim that they could not have known the statements would be recorded or disseminated outside the November 2017 meeting.

The pair allege Lindsay Shepherd, then a teaching assistant, had “power and control” over the recording and the distribution of the conversation, and meant for the contents of the meeting to potentially become widely available and discussed.

Therefore, they argue, should the court find Peterson suffered damages or injuries, those would be “attributable to Shepherd and her publication and dissemination” of the recording.

How dare Lindsay Shepherd expose them for the lying bullies that they are?!


Also:

Time, that tattered, shrunken revenant of a once-popular news magazine, continues in its endless decline to delude itself that it has either the authority or the competence to name the “Person of the Year.” Brilliantly it named journalists — “The Guardians” — as 2018’s collective heroes, with Jamal Khashoggi given pride of place on the once-iconic cover. Time neglected to check on Khashoggi and now finds that it nominated a Qatar stooge, whose columns were midwifed by officers in the Qatar government, and whose “journalistic” career was but a distracting pendant to his many more serious activities, latterly as an anti-Saudi lobbyist, nephew to the one-time world’s biggest arms dealer, and a host of other shadowy mésalliances.

Oops.



Christmas was a different time back then:

The year was 1956. Mom and Dad were taking all four of us — my two older sisters and a younger brother — to our first-ever Christmas Party at Uncle Joe D’Souza’s palatial home in what was then known as Clifton. ...

Aunt Flora took me to a group of other girls and boys, and asked them to take me with them as they prepared to visit homes singing Christmas carols. Of course, I was unwelcome, not because I was a Muslim, but because none of the 12 to 15-year-olds wanted a four-year-old dressed up in shorts and a bow-tie to tag along. The D’Souza’s two sons, Henry and Leslie, received a firm one-finger warning to behave and so I went on my first and last walk in the night hanging on to Henry’s arm as all of them went door to door singing carols.

As we walked, I was in some different world. Karachi’s Catholics and the many Anglo-Indians were so near, yet so far when I recall that stroll in the night.

Fast forward to Nov. 6, 1987, the day I arrived at Montreal’s Mirabel Airport as a “landed immigrant” with two daughters and a “girlfriend” wife in tow.

As I walked out, lo and behold, I see Aunt Flora D’Souza at the gate. The same Aunt Flora, Uncle Joe D’Souza and their sons Henry and Leslie had all moved to Canada in the great escape from Islamic Pakistan that had turned into hell for Christians.

Henry who had taken me on my first Christmas would later die as would Uncle D’Souza and Aunt Flora and I wish I could meet Leslie if he gets to read this.

As my Christmas wish I hope Canada opens its door to another Catholic left behind in Pakistan — Asia Bibi who has spent nine years on death row, simply for being a Christian.

Also:

It is necessary to take stock of the plight of Pakistani Christians this year. Members of the 1.5% Christian minority in Pakistan start life at a disadvantage. They are called “Choorhas,” a pejorative term that means “washroom cleaners.” That reflects their social status. Plenty of other ethnic or cultural minorities around the world face this sort of discrimination. However, for Pakistani Christians their image is the least of their problems. Their suffering is worse than comparable minorities in other countries. Much, much worse.

The whole world now knows the case of Asia Bibi, the Christian woman only recently released after eight years on death row for allegedly insulting Islam. She was cleared but has to live in hiding with her family, following threats on her life from vengeful Islamist groups.

However, this is just one case of many, and the radar of the world’s media unfortunately has missed even more terrible outrages. Freelance columnist Meher Tarar tells the horrifying story of a Christian couple in Punjab, Shehzad and Shama Masih, who were set upon by a mob after a rumour that they had desecrated the Qur’an. They were dragged through their village behind a tractor and thrown into the furnace of the brick kiln where Shahzad worked. Shama was a mother of three, and pregnant. Their six-year-old son witnessed the murder of his parents.

It would be easy to attribute this thirst for violence against non-believers to small bands of hotheads, but the figures seem to disprove this. After Asia Bibi’s release, tens of thousands participated in the street riots baying for her death, and the rabble that immolated Shehzad and Shama comprised “thousands,” according to Tarar — so virtually the whole community. This vicious and prevalent contempt is what makes the situation for Pakistani Christians so unendurable.

 
North Koreans are not returning from China - a communist hell-hole - to North Korea - an even worse communist hell-hole - of their own volition. That point needs to be stressed:

North Koreans who defected but later changed their minds and returned to the North are giving lectures in towns and cities on the Chinese border extolling the pleasures of life under Kim Jong-un and the misery of being on the run in China and struggling to survive in a capitalist state. 

The lectures are part of the North Korean government’s efforts to halt the steady flow of its citizens over the border into China, from where they attempt to reach a third country - often Thailand - and seek asylum and the assistance of Seoul to settle in South Korea. 

The North has been increasing its deterrents on the border, adding advanced surveillance equipment, including infrared cameras, and more guard posts. Dissident media has also reported that mobile wiretapping units are operating close to the border to detect anyone calling China to potentially arrange a defection. 

The use of double-defectors, however, is designed to reinforce the regime’s message that many who flee the North regret their decision.

A year in archeological discoveries:

Archeologists found the world’s oldest shipwreck, which had previously only been seen in ancient art. The 23-foot-long vessel, believed to be Greek, was discovered at the bottom of the Black Sea and appears to be more than 2,400 years old.

Carbon-dating confirmed it is indeed the oldest known intact shipwreck. Archeologists have only ever seen the ship, thought to be a trading vessel, represented on pottery.

The ship was preserved by a lack of oxygen more than two kilometres below the surface. The ship’s rudders, mast and rowing benches are all intact, according to the Black Sea Maritime Archeology Project.

The ship was found alongside 60 other discoveries, including classical period Roman vessels and 17th century fleets, as marine archeologists studied the effects of pre-historic sea level changes on the surrounding area.