Saturday Post

A lot going on in the world ...



Canada is so far back that it might as well not even exist:

China’s top prosecutor said on Thursday that two Canadians detained after Canada arrested a Chinese technology company executive had “without a doubt” violated the law.  

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10 more than previously known — have been detained in China since the arrest of a Huawei executive last month in Vancouver.

Global Affairs Canada said on Thursday it's aware of 13 Canadians detained in China (excluding Hong Kong) since Dec. 1.

Not to worry! Justin's all-inclusive JV team is en route to a holiday:

A group of Canadian lawmakers travelling to China this weekend will use the trip to push for the release of two Canadians detained there since last month, says a Conservative MP in the delegation.

Putting aside Justin and his dad's undying love for this "basic dictatorship" (which the average Canadian ignored as it does with Tienanmen Square, the one-child policy, Falun Gong, organ trafficking, North Korea, cheap crap, poisoned milk and dog treats), no leader worth his salt would let another country willy-nilly arrest and hold hostage its nationals.

I would like to make it clear at this point that Justin Trudeau isn't a leader in any actual, political, moral or national sense.


Not even Radio-Canada in Quebec sees it that way:

A character playing Prime Minister Justin Trudeau takes a drag from a joint and is suddenly transported into a fantasy world where he is dressed in traditional Indian clothing as talking cows are knocked over by a gorilla with Donald Trump’s signature hair and red tie.

The scene mocking the prime minister’s ill-fated trip to India last February was part of Radio-Canada’s annual end-of-year parody show, during which the national broadcaster satirizes the year’s newsmakers. Called “Bye bye,” the show draws millions of viewers New Year’s Eve and is considered the television event of the holiday season in Quebec.

But this year the French arm of the CBC is on the defensive after a barrage of online criticism from people claiming the sketch was racist and made a mockery of Indian culture.

Thank you for your opinion, paid shills, but everyone saw Justin and his fruity imitations of Indians at weddings and they can un-see any of that.



 More on China:

Huawei Technologies Co. can get really touchy about its phones. This week, the fast-rising Chinese company demoted and cut the pay of two employees held responsible for a New Year’s greeting tweeted from Huawei’s official account -- with an iPhone.

It was an embarrassing snafu for China’s biggest telecoms gear maker, which supplanted Apple Inc. as the world’s No. 2 smartphone brand in 2018 and is now gunning for the top spot. The slip-up comes as tensions run high with finance chief Meng Wanzhou facing extradition to the U.S. over alleged bank fraud.

It's probably because they don't want to be spied on.

But ... but ... Singapore:

North Korea’s top diplomat in Italy sought asylum from an unidentified Western country with his family, JoongAng ilbo reported Thursday.

Jo Song-gil, the acting North Korean ambassador to Rome, is currently under protection of Italian authorities upon his request, the newspaper reported, citing an unnamed diplomatic source. 

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This could be a huge intel windfall. Italy has long been rumored to be a major locus of North Korean money laundering. For example, read the UN Panel reports on NK RGB infiltration of the World Food Program's Rome office. https://t.co/ggFETsQ6eS

— Joshua Stanton (@freekorea_us) January 3, 2019

 
Any time there is a defection, Kim finds it all the more difficult to keep his anger in check and the truth about his regime hidden.

Also:

US President Donald Trump on Wednesday revealed that he received a “great letter” from North Korean leader Kim Jong-un.

Speaking at a cabinet meeting, Trump said that he received a letter from Kim, and reiterated his belief that North Korea is seeking real changes, and once again stressed his part in North Korea-related developments. 

(Sidebar: I don't think so, Donald.)

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When North Korean leader Kim Jong Un used his New Year speech to highlight coal as a "primary front" in developing the economy, he was making a case for what analysts see as a flawed but key resource on which his country increasingly relies.

Coal has long been a major resource for North Korea, and Kim's call for self sufficiency in the face of international pressure is a recurring theme.

But as international sanctions have increased over the past year, coal is one of the few local resources to which Kim can turn as he tries to make good on promises to improve life in a country notorious for limited electricity, analysts and defectors say.

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On YouTube, Shin had accused Moon’s office of forcing the issuance of 4 trillion won worth of deficit-covering bonds in late 2017, despite opposition from the Finance Ministry.

In response, the Ministry of Economy and Finance took legal action against Shin, saying he had breached confidentiality laws concerning public records.

According to Shin, the Blue House also ordered the replacement of the CEO of KT&G through KT&G’s second-biggest shareholder, the state-run Industrial Bank of Korea, as well as the replacement of the president of local newspaper Seoul Shinmun.

The accusations have prompted heated debate on the political scene, with the main opposition Liberty Korea Party considering legal action against Cheong Wa Dae over the alleged bond issuance.

An early turfing of Mr. Moon may be needed in order not to revert to a military government state.

It's just an economy:

Canadian employment gains hit a three-year low in 2018, official data showed on Friday, reinforcing market expectations that the Bank of Canada will keep interest rates unchanged next week.  

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Organizers of a truck convoy to Ottawa to pressure the federal government to fast-track pipeline construction say the effort is snowballing.

Proponents of pushing hundreds of trucks and other vehicles to Parliament Hill in February say a GoFundMe page and a recruitment effort are swelling the effect of the so-called Yellow Vest protest that’s expected to embark from Red Deer on Feb. 15.

“(Ottawa) is forcing us to do this — there’s a passion,” said organizer Glen Carritt of Innisfail.

Oh, how embarrassing for the Narrative-tellers:

The portrait of the disgruntled public servant, beaten down by a poisonous workplace culture and years of disregard under Stephen Harper’s Conservative government is oft-painted — and, generally speaking, pretty inaccurate, according to a research article published Dec. 17 in Public Personnel Management, an academic journal for human resource and public sector executives.

While job satisfaction among federal bureaucrats decreased slightly during Harper’s time as prime minister, it remained “quite high” overall, writes Jocelyn McGrandle, the article’s author and a PhD candidate at Concordia University. McGrandle based her findings on data from the federal government’s 2008, 2011 and 2014 Public Service Employee Surveys.

“Over the past five years in the Canadian political landscape, there have been numerous calls for rejuvenating the federal public service due to toxic work cultures and a general disrespect for public servants,” McGrandle wrote. “Much of this was directed at the Conservative government under Stephen Harper.”

So strong was this outrage that the Public Service Alliance of Canada rolled out an anti-Harper campaign prior to the 2015 federal election, McGrandle pointed out. Then-Liberal leader Justin Trudeau also penned a letter to public servants promising a new era of trust and respect for the bureaucracy, if elected.

And let’s not forget “Harperman,” the 2015 protest song crafted by Environment Canada scientist Tony Turner that called for Harper’s ousting and led to Turner’s suspension from his job.

“2015 was such an interesting election with the public service very clearly coming out, not in favour of a particular party, but certainly against one party,” said McGrandle in an interview, when asked to explain her desire to research this particular topic. “That was sort of my puzzle: Is the public service that dissatisfied? Or is this a bit of political posturing?”

Having analyzed the data, she’s inclined to believe the latter.

“Much of the lack of satisfaction seems to be mostly political rhetoric,” McGrandle concludes in her article. While overall job satisfaction — ranked by survey respondents in the public service on a five-point scale — declined from an average of 4.14 to 4.05 between 2008 and 2014, “satisfaction, even at its lowest point in 2014, still remains relatively high.”

During the 2015 election, veterans campaigned against the Harper government for its failure to seriously address their concerns. They discovered after Justin was let in that the Liberals were far worse. Now, they must be thinking that they are between a rock and a hard place:

“The new pension plan, which will take effect in April, 2019, will save the government money, at least in the short term, and reduce the compensation awarded to many disabled soldiers. During the first four years of the plan, Ottawa will pay about $1.8-billion less, in total, to disabled vets than it would have under programs enacted during the Harper government. And critics say it has gone to some lengths to prevent veterans from having input.”

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Blaszczyk had asked Trudeau why Canadian Veterans were still having to fight in court, despite Trudeau’s promise during the 2015 campaign that no Veteran would have to “fight their own government in court” for the benefits they have earned through serving our nation.

Trudeau’s response was horrendous, saying Veterans were “asking for more than we’re able to give right now.”

Trudeau was widely denounced for the disgusting comment, which showed his true attitude towards Canadian Veterans and the military. Indeed, as we just saw, the Trudeau government is slashing $1.8 BILLION in funding for pensions for wounded Canadian Veterans.


Sadly, Trudeau isn’t the first politician, and the Liberals aren’t the only government that have failed Canadian Veterans. The previous Harper government made promises and didn’t deliver, even cutting some services to Veterans. ...

In an extended video, you can see Brock Blasczyzk ask Scheer for an apology for how the previous Conservative government failed Veterans. Scheer gave a more ‘politician style’ answer, instead of committing to make an apology like he should have.
 

Also:

Nearly three years after Prime Minister Justin Trudeau promised to send weapons to Kurds in Iraq the armaments are still sitting in a military warehouse in Montreal, with no current plans to distribute the equipment to either Kurdish or Canadian forces.

There is no money for veterans but there is for a heli-pad:

It appears Justin Trudeau wants to be flown from Ottawa to his official cottage in the Gatineau Hills via helicopter. 

Documents obtained under Access to Information laws show that in the summer of 2017, there were serious discussions about installing a helipad at Harrington Lake, the official cottage of Canada’s prime ministers. 

E-mails show that officials, including those from the National Capital Commission and the Treasury Board — the department that controls government spending — were discussing the proposal.

Most of the 68 pages involved in the discussions have been redacted: they don’t even simply black out information anymore, they just remove the pages. 

But given the specific question asked and the reasons for not releasing all the information, it is clear that this was an actual proposal under discussion. ...

This raises a host of questions beyond Trudeau’s opulent spending of your money to make him feel comfy. 

Where would the PM fly from? 

There is no helipad on Parliament Hill, no helipad at 24 Sussex Drive or Rideau Gate — where his family lives now. 

Would he drive out to the Macdonald-Cartier Airport in Ottawa’s south end, a 30-minute drive from his official residence when the cottage is only 25 minutes away by car?

And why do you need a helicopter when your cottage is only a 25-minute drive from your home? How many Canadians would like their workplace to be only a 25-minute drive away, nevermind their taxpayer-funded cottage.

Don't pay the damn thing at all:

An Alberta rancher says she will refuse to pay the carbon tax on her propane bill until there's action on the Trans Mountain pipeline expansion.

"I just thought this was one thing that I could do to have a voice on the issue," Sheila Griffith told CBC's Radio Active on Thursday, over the phone from her ranch west of Calgary.

Griffith uses propane to heat her rural property and has been paying the carbon tax since it was added to her bill in January 2017 when it was introduced by the province.

But in December she decided she would no longer pay the carbon tax portion of her bill and wants the province to follow suit.

There is an electoral reason for flooding a country with people who are clearly not engineers, teachers, doctors or even willing to not hate Jews:

Justin Trudeau appears to have given up hope of reducing the flow of people crossing from the United States illegally to claim asylum, and is test-driving fresh rationalizations on why a migrant surge might not be such a bad thing. The new line from the Prime Minister is that the flow of asylum seekers may prove an economic boon for Canada.

(Sidebar: no, he just doesn't want to.)

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As of Jan. 1, Ottawa is funding just 16 organizations to deliver pre-arrival services, down from a high of 27 in 2015. The program’s budget for the next five years is $113 million, or $22.6 million per year, down from $32 million in 2016-17.

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People’s Party Leader Maxime Bernier is calling for Birth Tourism to be made illegal.

His call follows an article in the National Post, which described how more and more pregnant non-citizens are coming to Canada to give birth, which can lead to “debasing the notion of citizenship.”

We are already living under soft communism but thanks for the warning:

“You [North] Americans are so gullible. No, you won’t accept Communism outright; but we’ll keep feeding you small doses of Socialism until you will finally wake up and find that you already have Communism. We won’t have to fight you; we’ll so weaken your economy, until you fall like overripe fruit into our hands.” ...

Communism can be characterized by a single word: deception. Communists never disclose their real intentions. They are fraudsters who employ different identities, names and slogans, all for one goal: totalitarian enslavement. Since 1970, the goal of the Communist Party USA has been to subvert environmentalism and use it to advance their agenda.

Justin takes money from people have ties to the Chinese government and its military. And let's not forget Islamism:

The Jewish National Fund of Canada, one of the country's long-established charities, has been the subject of a Canada Revenue Agency audit over a complaint that it used charitable donations to build infrastructure for the Israel Defence Forces (IDF), in violation of Canada's tax rules.

ISIS thugs have murdered, raped and destroyed valuable property. Letting them return to countries of refuge is letting them get away with crimes:

A decorated Navy SEAL was brought into court in shackles in San Diego Friday, cheered by supporters who call him a hero. But he's also accused by the military of being a war criminal. 

Special Operations Chief Edward Gallagher was arraigned on charges of murdering a wounded ISIS fighter during the bloody 2017 battle for the Iraqi city of Mosul. According to the charge sheets, Gallagher, a trained medic, stabbed the teenage fighter in the neck and body while other members of the SEAL team were treating his wounds. He then posed for photographs with the body and conducted his own reenlistment ceremony standing over it.  

In court, Gallagher pleaded not guilty to the charges. His wife, who attended the hearing, has said her husband was only trying to save the injured fighter's life.