An Apres-Cinco de Mayo Post

Too much celebrating ...




Oh, dear ... :

The plane that burst into flames while making an emergency landing at a Moscow airport, killing 41 of the 78 people on board, was without radio communications because of a lightning strike, Russian news media on Monday quoted the pilot as saying.

A flight attendant said there was a sharp flash soon after takeoff Sunday evening from Moscow’s Sheremetyevo Airport as the plane headed to Murmansk.

Some of the 37 survivors were seen on video carrying hand luggage as they plunged down an inflatable slide from the plane’s forward section, raising questions about whether grabbing their baggage might have impeded an evacuation in which every second could separate life from death.

Shell until there is nothing left or this will simply continue:

Gaza militants fired hundreds of rockets into southern Israel on Sunday, killing at least four Israelis and bringing life to a standstill across the region in the bloodiest fighting since a 2014 war. As Israel pounded Gaza with airstrikes, the Palestinian death toll rose to 23, including two pregnant women and two babies.

The bloodshed marked the first Israeli fatalities from rocket fire since the 2014 war. With Palestinian militants threatening to send rockets deeper into Israel and Israeli reinforcements massing near the Gaza frontier, the fighting showed no signs of slowing down.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu spent most of the day huddled with his Security Cabinet. 

Late Sunday, the Cabinet instructed the army to "continue its attacks and to stand by" for further orders. Israel also claimed to have killed a Hamas commander involved in transferring Iranian funds to the group.

If I were Trump, I believe my response would be - "Go to hell." :

Canada is leaning on the United States to help settle a dispute with China, which has started to block imports of vital Canadian commodities amid a dispute over a detained Huawei executive.

In a sign of increasing frustration at what it sees as a lackluster U.S. response, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau's government is signaling it could withhold cooperation on major issues.

China has upped the pressure on Canada in recent weeks over the arrest of Huawei Technologies Co Ltd Chief Financial Officer Meng Wanzhou, arrested last December on a U.S. warrant. It halted Canadian canola imports and last week suspended the permits of two major pork producers.

After Meng's Vancouver arrest, Chinese police also detained two Canadian citizens.

Beijing is refusing to allow a Canadian trade delegation to visit, forcing officials to use video conference calls as they try to negate a major threat to commodity exports.

With no cards to play against China without risking significant economic damage, Canada has launched a full-court press in Washington, which is negotiating its own trade deal with Beijing.

The results have been meager.

Quelle surprise.

Not only does Justin talk smack about Trump behind his back, he expects the Americans (not the Americans tanking our oil industry, among others) to come in and save Canada.

Way to show leadership there, Justin. Get the Americans to fight your favourite country for you.

What a weakling.

Also:

U.S. President Donald Trump dramatically increased pressure on China to reach a trade deal by announcing on Sunday he would hike U.S. tariffs on $200 billion worth of Chinese goods this week and target hundreds of billions more soon.

When all else fails, blame the guy who has been out of office for the past four years:

It turns out, Stephen Harper was more popular at this same point in his tenure as PM than Trudeau is.


As recorded by Angus Reid, Justin Trudeau’s approval rating is at 28%. Trudeau has been in office for about 42 months.

When Harper had been in power for 42 months, he had a 34% approval rating.


In fact, Trudeau’s numbers in the last 10 months have put him below where Harper was at that time.

So, Justin Trudeau is attacking someone who was more popular than he was.


Trudeau’s disapproval rating is also a stunning 67%, far above where Harper’s was at a similar time.

This raises serious doubts about Trudeau’s ‘attack Harper’ strategy, and the fact that all he has left is desperate attacks on his predecessor only goes to show how badly Trudeau has failed.

The scandal that just won't die:

... as University of British Columbia law professor Mary Ellen Turpel-Lafond, a former judge, told CPAC following Butts’ testimony to the justice committee, “Mr. Butts’ evidence was problematic in terms of the rule of law, because when an attorney general makes a decision, you do not push the attorney general to hire outside legal counsel to tell you how to administer the law … obviously they were pushing her to hire someone else because they didn’t like her opinion.”

Exactly. It’s hard to believe Trudeau and Butts don’t understand this.

Butts destroyed his own credibility.

If he truly believed and acted in the best interests of his friend, Justin, there would be no need to resign.

He was caught pushing Jody and thought that he would fall on his sword to preserve the perch he had been occupying in near secrecy.




The carbon tax is the Liberals' last attempt to line coffers where taxing the middle-class and marijuana failed:

While Saskatchewan’s Court of Appeal has sided with Ottawa on the constitutionality of the carbon tax, Jason Kenney says Canadians will soon be weighing in with their ballots.


The fall federal election will be “an opportunity for Canadians to say that they don’t want busy-body politicians telling them how to live their lives and taking more money out of their pockets,” said Kenney, who was sworn in as Alberta’s premier on Tuesday.

**

Saskatchewan Premier Scott Moe says the province is going to continue challenging the federal carbon tax through the courts, and that ultimately, Canadians will be called to take a stand either way in the upcoming federal election.

“What we are doing and what we will continue to ensure that we do every day is use every tool in our tool box to actually block this Trudeau a carbon tax that is being imposed on us, because quite simply, it doesn’t work here in Saskatchewan. It doesn’t reduce emissions,” Moe told the Roy Green Show on Saturday.

Wait - people who are not depending on the taxpayers to survive are being kicked out?:

A family from Austria has been ordered out of Canada, and must leave this week, after running afoul of immigration rules.

They hope to be back, but it'll be at least a year before they can return to Cape Breton, where they've sunk their life savings into a home and farm.

Reinhard and Romana Fugger have invested nearly $500,000 after buying and improving a rural property in Grand River, Richmond County, in 2015.

They say a local man, Frank Eckhardt and his company F.E. Property Sales, facilitated the property purchase and promised easy immigration to Canada.

The Fuggers say that help never came.

"We find this property and we think we can do this in an easy way, because we have the information before that it is not hard, maybe easy, to immigrate here," said Reinhard Fugger.

Eckhardt's company website, hosted in Germany and aimed at Europeans, advertises property sales and "new settler consultation."

The Fuggers say they found out after they got here that they paid more than the property was worth.

They paid $160,000 to Eckhardt's lawyer for 4.5 hectares of land with a small summer cottage. The property value was assessed at $82,000 at the time.

Real estate records show that most properties in the area sell for 1.5 times the assessed value, but the Fuggers paid 1.95 times the value.

The couple say they assumed that was because Eckhardt and his lawyer were being paid to help them with immigration.

 
The immigration system is bullsh--.




Cultural Marxism has infiltrated nearly every aspect of Western society. It has has either ignored or attempted to diminish the devastating effects of communism, the failed economic system that forces its victims to embrace the thing that killed them.

That is why it gets a free pass:

This is a country that has gone from a standard of living higher than Canada’s to one that sees people starving due to government policy, opposition politicians arrested and those fighting for basic necessities shot in the streets.

Yet, defenders of communism will tell you that it just hasn’t been done properly yet.

Wrong, communism always ends this way.

From the former Soviet Union to China, Cuba, the East Bloc or today’s Venezuela, each and every time it leads to oppression and violence.

Communism is responsible for the deaths of an estimated 65 million people in China, 20 million in the former Soviet Union, 2 million in Vietnam, 2 million in Cambodia and the list goes on and on.

So last week, when communist flags showed up on the grounds of the Ontario legislature, why did it take me, writing about the flags and the accompanying guillotine to get any stories about it.

Yes, you read that right, people carrying communist flags — the old hammer and sickle variety — showed up at Queen’s Park with a guillotine and no one else reported on it until I did.

Communist thuggery is clearly more chic, I suppose.


Also:

After the Nazis retreated from her town in Soviet Ukraine in 1944, 21-year-old Yelena Markova was convicted of treason and sent to the infamous coal mines of Vorkuta above the Arctic circle. 

Although people were crushed almost every day beneath the one-tonne carts of coal her crew was hauling, Ms Markova survived and after Joseph Stalin's death was cleared of any wrongdoing. So was her father, who had been shot in the great purge of 1937-8. 

But the tragedy that she and 20 million other Gulag prisoners suffered is at risk of being forgotten. Nearly half of Russians aged 18 to 24 have never heard of these repressions, and 70 per cent of the population now views Stalin positively, according to recent polls. 

In response, the Gulag history museum in Moscow has turned the stories of Ms Markova and three other survivors into a graphic novel meant to fight young people's ignorance of this dark chapter of the country's history.

Although the initial print run funded by donations is only 1,000 copies, the museum is in discussions with library and bookstore chains to publish and distribute the Survivors book across Russia. 

A page from the graphic novel. (source)

And now, remembering the Battle of the Atlantic:

Canada's longest military engagement during the Second World War — was remembered at a ceremony in Halifax on Sunday morning.

Hundreds of people in uniform along with members of the public took part in the commemoration at Point Pleasant Park.

This year marks the 75th anniversary of HMCS Athabaskan — a vessel that was torpedoed in the English Channel resulting in the deaths of 128 people.

"It's a lot of memories, a lot of sad memories when you think of all those people who lost their lives, you know, the futility of war," said retired captain Earl Wagner.

Wagner, 95, served in Canada's Merchant Navy during the Second World War. He joined the battle in February, 1941.

(Paws up)