For a Monday

Quite a bit going on today ...





Happening now, the same population that doesn't give a sh-- that its government is planning on resurrecting the execrable Section 13, shutting down social media in time for the election and can't define genocide if their lives depended on it also can't prioritise important events over stupid basketball games nor can it keep track of its children and stop shooting one another:

Lost children and dehydrated fans are some of the issues first responders say they are dealing with as a sea of fans awaits the arrival of the Raptors in downtown Toronto.

Fire district chief Stephan Powell says firefighters are dealing with about a dozen calls for dehydration in the packed Nathan Phillips Square outside city hall.

Powell says fans gathered to celebrate the new NBA champions should stay hydrated and leave the crowded areas if they are not feeling well.

Toronto police Const. Jenifferjit Sidhu says several children have been separated from their parents during the parade.

**

On a day of celebration in Toronto for the Raptors NBA victory, police in the city have alerted the public about a shooting at Nathan Phillips Square, with multiple people injured, at the heart of the event.

When the Roman Empire fell, the people at that time were just as dull.





From the most "transparent" government in the country's history:

The Senate’s defence committee will finally get an answer on Monday over whether Vice-Admiral Mark Norman will agree to testify over the circumstances around his controversial prosecution.

But it may be too late, as the Senate committee is facing a deadline crunch with the chamber set to rise for its summer break later this week. The Conservative deputy chair of the committee has said it is no longer possible to conduct the study as originally envisioned, in part because the government side won’t agree to extend meetings past this week.

**

Embattled Liberal MP Joe Peschisolido continues to claim he has never been involved in a controversial legal service known as a bare trust agreement and that he did not participate in a secretive transaction completed by his law firm in 2011 that might have helped an alleged “drug boss” from China launder money in a Coquitlam, B.C., condo deal.

But Global News has identified another 2011 bare trust land deal in Surrey, B.C., that directly connects Peschisolido’s legal services to another client from China named in a “transnational money laundering” investigation at a Richmond casino, according to legal filings and B.C. Lottery Corp. documents.

How the rule of law works in Canada:

The BC Prosecution Service says it won't pursue a charge of uttering threats against the man who sparked a political firestorm when he attended an event during Prime Minister Justin Trudeau's state visit to India last year.

The prosecution service says it has directed a stay of proceedings for Jaspal Atwal on a charge unrelated to Trudeau's state visit.

Atwal's lawyer Marvin Stern said in May 2018 that a charge of uttering threats was laid against his client following an alleged argument in April.

Atwal was convicted of trying to kill an Indian cabinet minister during a visit to Vancouver Island in 1986, but has said he has since renounced terrorism.

It's just an economy:

With each passing day that the new NAFTA deal isn’t ratified by the governments of the three participating countries, Canadian businesses grow more nervous — and with good reason.

Business doesn’t like uncertainty, and uncertainty hovers over this new deal.

Appearing on Global News’ The West Block this past weekend, Goldy Hyder, president of the Business Council of Canada, told host Mercedes Stephenson that because of the political partisanship that is sure to engulf Canada and the United States on the eve of elections in both countries, there is an ongoing concern the deal may not be ratified.

  
Yes, NDP, you punish those cancer patients:

The NDP says it's willing to withhold federal healthcare funding for provinces with barriers to abortion.

"In order for the provinces to get money they need to comply with the Canada Health Act," said party spokesperson Melanie Richer.

"The NDP will enforce the Canada's Health Act to make sure that the provinces make medical and surgical abortion available in all parts of the country, without barriers."

The pledge came out of the NDP's 2019 election platform, released on Sunday during the Ontario NDP's convention in Hamilton.

That's some nice chemotherapy you have there. It would be a shame if someone deprived you of it because someone was a petty lunatic with an abortion fixation.





Why are we trading with this country?:

China is murdering members of the Falun Gong spiritual group and harvesting their organs for transplant, a panel of lawyers and experts on Monday as they invited further investigations into a potential genocide.

Members said they had heard clear evidence forced organ harvesting had taken place over at least 20 years in a final judgement from the China Tribunal, an independent panel set up by a campaign group to examine the issue.

** 

Three decades ago, days after the Chinese government’s brutal crackdown on pro-democracy protesters at Tiananmen Square, Vancouver-based immigrant-services organization SUCCESS issued a joint statement with other community groups condemning the violence. It called on China to follow the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and engage in peaceful negotiation.

Recently, on the 30^th anniversary of the massacre, the non-profit — which has a $50 million budget and become one of the largest social-service agencies in Canada, providing help with settlement, language training, employment, seniors care and housing — did nothing to mark the occasion.
Its silence did not go unnoticed.

Kenneth Tung, a former chair of SUCCESS and member of the Vancouver Society in Support of Democratic Movement, said he would like to have seen the organization tap into its roots and put out a “simple” statement urging China to allow its citizens to enjoy the freedoms we enjoy in Canada.

“In the last few years, there’s been more (human rights) violations — going backwards,” he said. “I wish the board of SUCCESS sees that too.”

**

China redoubled its support for Hong Kong leader Carrie Lam on Monday after days of protests against a planned extradition bill, and a source close to Lam said Beijing was unlikely to let her go even if she tried to resign.

Lam's attempts to pass a bill that would allow people in Hong Kong to be extradited to China for trial triggered the biggest and most violent protests in decades in the former British colony, now under Chinese rule.

As the crisis entered its second week, demonstrators and opposition politicians braved intermittent rain to gather near the government's offices and urge her to kill the bill and quit.

The upheaval comes at a delicate time for Chinese President Xi Jinping, who is grappling with a deepening U.S. trade war, slowing economic growth and regional strategic tension.

(Sidebar: this trade war.)

** 

International students from China and Hong Kong in South Korea are clashing over print posters supporting the extradition protests in Hong Kong.

Commenters on an online forum for Chinese-speaking students say mainland Chinese students pulled down posters from bulletin boards at Sogang University in Seoul, the Korea Times reported Thursday. 

The move, if confirmed, could be a violation of free speech principles observed on Korean campuses.

**

A decade after leaving her family behind to flee North Korea, the defector was overwhelmed with excitement when she spoke to her 22-year-old son on the phone for the first time in May after he too escaped into China.  

While speaking to him again on the phone days later, however, she listened in horror as the safe house where her son and four other North Korean escapees were hiding was raided by Chinese authorities. 

“I heard voices, someone saying ‘shut up’ in Chinese,” said the woman, who spoke on condition of anonymity to protect her son’s safety. “Then the line was cut off, and I heard later he was caught.” 

The woman, now living in South Korea, said she heard rumors her son is being held in a Chinese prison near the North Korean border, but has had no official news of his whereabouts. 

At least 30 North Korean escapees have been rounded up in a string of raids across China since mid-April, according to family members and activist groups. 

It is not clear whether this is part of a larger crackdown by China, but activists say the raids have disrupted parts of the informal network of brokers, charities, and middlemen who have been dubbed the North Korean “Underground Railroad”.

This North Korea:

A biography of North Korean leader Kim Jong-un has revealed fresh details of the privileged but cloistered childhood that paved the way to his tyrannical rule.

According to The Great Successor: The Secret Rise and Rule of Kim Jong Un by Washington Post journalist Anna Fifield, Kim’s lonely early years were spent in walled luxury compounds with 15ft iron gates in the capital Pyongyang and at the family beach home in the coastal city of Wonsan.

His father, Kim Jong-il, then the regime’s leader, ensured he had Super Mario video games, pinball machines and more gadgets than any European toy store. He watched Ben-Hur, and Dracula and James Bond films in private cinemas.

Young Kim was obsessed with model planes and ships but also had a real car his father had modified for him to drive when he was seven — and a Colt.45 pistol that he wore on his hip when he was 11.

“The boy grew up thinking he was special,” said Fifield. His eighth birthday was spent in a black suit and bow tie as deferential high-level officials offered him bouquets of flowers.

(Kamsahamnida)





Poland has every right to be "defensive":

U.S. agreement with Poland to send 1,000 extra troops to the country is a defensive measure needed for its security, the U.S. ambassador to Warsaw said on Monday, replying to accusations from neighbouring Russia that the move is aggressive.

U.S. President Donald Trump’s pledge last week to dispatch the troops to Poland was a step sought by President Andrzej Duda because of past Russian aggression against Poland and to help solidify his country’s ties to the West.

Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov was quoted as saying by Russian news agency RIA last week that Washington’s move probably reflected “aggressive” intentions.