Mid-Week Post

Your Easter season frivolity ...




Oh, this must hurt:

Voters in P.E.I. have shed their century-old embrace of the Island’s two-party system, electing a Tory minority government and handing the upstart Green party official Opposition status for the first time.

With all polls reporting Tuesday, the Tories had won 12 seats, the Greens held eight, and the incumbent Liberals, led by Premier Wade MacLauchlan, had won six.

The tally so far: of all the territories and provinces, only the Yukon, Nova Scotia and Newfoundland and Labrador (for now, any way) are headed by Liberal premiers. The Northwest Territories and Nunavut have consensus-led governments, British Columbia is led by an NDP premier, Jason Kenney of the United Conservative Party is the premier-designate of Alberta, Saskatchewan has its own eponymous party in power and Quebec is led by a Coalition Avenir Quebec premier. Everyone else is Tory.

Things are looking rather tight for Justin right now.

Whether this means fundamental change in how Canada is run anyone's guess.

This might explain why people do the stupid things that they do.




The scandal that just won't die:

Finance Minister Bill Morneau said on Wednesday that deferred prosecution agreements (DPA) have been used “successfully” in countries around the world, calling it an “appropriate legislative approach.

Oh, so getting your company friends off the hook justified booting Jody? Is that it, Bill?




This must be embarrassing:

A study by Noah S. Diffengaugh and Marshall Burke of Stanford University claims that global warming is increasing global economic inequality.


They claim that for some countries like India, Brazil, and Nigeria, climate change has reduced their GDP per capita by 31%, 25%, and 29% respectively compared to what it would have been in a baseline scenario.

However, they had an interesting finding when it came to Canada.


Compared to the baseline, climate change has boosted Canada’s GDP by 32%.

That is quite interesting, because McKenna always claims that ‘the scientists’ back up her fear-mongering.

Carbon taxes are a money grab by wealthy white liberals who use fabricated disasters to frighten a population and are ultimately the cause of poverty and inequality.

But don't take my word for it.




Corruption in Quebec?:

Quebec’s ethics commissioner has announced she is opening an investigation into Economy Minister Pierre Fitzgibbon regarding assets he allegedly holds in private companies.

The investigation is to look into whether the minister broke conflict of interest rules and whether he properly declared those assets, commissioner Ariane Mignolet said Tuesday in a release.

Mignolet said she is opening the probe on her own initiative.

Two crazy people are fighting over garbage one party actually brings into his country:

The president of the Philippines says if Canada doesn’t take back tonnes of trash within the next week he will “declare war” and ship the containers back himself.

Filipino media outlets report that Rodrigo Duterte made threats Tuesday about dozens of shipping containers filled with Canadian household and electronic garbage that has been rotting in a port near Manila for nearly six years.

For some reason the popular press still refers to Joshua Boyle as a former hostage just as it refuses to be blunt about who killed three hundred and twenty people in Sri Lanka:

The trial of former hostage Joshua Boyle has been adjourned until Friday morning, by which time his estranged wife's lawyer is expected to have filed an application that could suspend the Ottawa case for years and open up the possibility of a Jordan application. 

Boyle, 35, has pleaded not guilty to 19 charges, including assault with a weapon, sexual assault and forcible confinement, and is being tried by a judge alone. Most of the charges involve his estranged wife, Caitlan Coleman.

Boyle was charged a few months after the couple returned to Canada in October 2017 with the children they had while being held captive for five years in Afghanistan and Pakistan.

On April 17, Judge Peter Doody ruled that Boyle's defence can introduce evidence that he and Coleman engaged in "prior acts of consensual anal intercourse, consensual vaginal intercourse from the rear, sexual acts involving ropes and consensual biting as acts of sexual play." Doody added the evidence would be general in nature and not include significant details about any one act.

(Sidebar: this is Justin's friend, by the way.)




Somebody did something and now an honourable man is dead:

The family of one victim who died in Sunday's bomb blasts in Sri Lanka say his actions helped save lives. Ramesh Raju stopped a man with a backpack from entering the Zion church full of worshippers. If the attacker had entered there would have been many more casualties.

A large white poster hangs outside Chrishanthini Ramesh's house in the town of Batticaloa on Sri Lanka's east coast. 

On the left is a photo of a man smiling into the camera. He's wearing a grey shirt and has a moustache. 

His name is Ramesh Raju. He was a father, a husband, a building contractor, and he was just 40 years old.

If Trump had the wontons, he would withdraw from the UN that has allowed sexual violence to go on in Rwanda and other places in Africa, the Middle East and North Korea:

The United Nations Security Council adopted a resolution condemning sexual violence in warfare, but only after language on a woman’s right to “reproductive health” was removed to avert a veto by the anti-abortion Trump administration.

The resolution, put forward by Germany, aims to improve access to services for women and girls who are victims of sexual violence during conflicts and calls for commissions of inquiry and fact-finding missions to investigate allegations of violations and abuses of international human rights law.

It passed Tuesday with 13 votes in favour and abstentions by Russia and China.

(Sidebar: of course they did.)

Killing off rape babies won't change the fact that you did not stop rape in the first place, UN!




Speaking of North Korea:

North Korean leader Kim Jong-un's sister Yo-jong arrived in Vladivostok, Russia on Monday ahead of her brother's arrival for a summit with Russian President Vladimir Putin later this week. ...

Kim will likely ask for help from Putin after a summit with U.S. President Donald Trump in February collapsed without easing international sanctions.

 

And that, ladies and gentlemen, is why Kim is being awfully chummy with Putin. The talks between the US and North Korea didn't fail because Trump was obstinate (though he, like many Americans, refused to see that communists are g-d- liars). Kim had his hand out and the US did not want to give in.

 

 

Also:

The government removed a reference to applying “maximum pressure” on North Korea and stopped short of explicitly claiming ownership of the Russian-held islands off Hokkaido in an annual foreign policy report released Tuesday.

The concessions are apparently aimed at easing diplomatic tensions as Prime Minister Shinzo Abe attempts to resolve long-standing issues with both countries while he is in office.

In its Diplomatic Bluebook 2019, the Foreign Ministry said North Korea has not taken any substantive steps to give up its nuclear weapons and ballistic missiles despite repeated calls to do so from the international community.

But the ministry used less condemnatory language than it did in last year’s report, which said Japan was working closely with countries including the United States to “maximize pressure on North Korea by all available means,” as its growing arsenal posed an “unprecedented, grave and imminent threat.”

Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga said the language used in the report was chosen after taking into consideration “significant developments” on North Korean nuclear issues, such as the two summits between leader Kim Jong Un and U.S. President Donald Trump.