Mid-Week Post

 

Your mid-week fish fry ...




All Justin has to do is point out how many pipelines were built, how many Canada-friendly trade deals he has made, how many private sector jobs there are and how Canada is taken seriously on the world stage and how he made all of that possible.

But no:

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau used Ontario Premier Doug Ford as a boogeyman in a rallying speech to Liberal candidates in Ottawa on Wednesday morning that will likely set the tone for the coming election campaign.

I don't recall Doug Ford embarrassing the nation in India.

Does anyone else?

Miss "Sunny Ways" needs to vilify anyone in one of the two provinces that truly hold any power in Canada because his experience as a snowboard instructor has left him woefully unprepared for the mantle of true leadership.

That's a lot of apologising for something that supposedly never happened:

Liberals have quashed a move to publicly investigate allegations the Prime Minister’s Office tried to “muzzle” two former ambassadors to China, even as Foreign Minister Chrystia Freeland was making private efforts to apologize.

Controversy has been swirling around whether the government improperly pressured David Mulroney and Guy Saint-Jacques, now private citizens, over what they could say publicly about a deteriorating Canada-China relationship. Their comments have not always been uncontroversial — Mulroney recently recommended, for example, that Canadians avoid non-essential travel to China.

None of this would be necessary if China wasn't a global octopus that smuggled people into countries or oppressed the masses or stole industrial secrets or infiltrated universities:

Look out for colleagues rummaging through others’ desks.

Beware spies who could exploit your divided national loyalties, greed or ego.

And monitor foreign visitors at all times, especially last-minute additions to tour groups.

These are among the tips outlined in an extraordinary manual drafted by the FBI for universities and other research facilities in the U.S., warning about the threat of economic and scientific espionage by China — and advising how to combat it.

As Canada grapples with how to counter Beijing’s meddling here, the American document — called China: The Risk to Academia — recommends a level of alertness that seems almost a throwback to Cold War days.

And it is aimed at a milieu — university and college campuses — where academic freedom and openness are sacrosanct, and government interference usually spurned. Those institutions have also, though, been welcoming tens of thousands of students and scholars from China in recent years.

You can take $600 million but you can't provide one scrap of evidence that this guy is promoting "hate speech" (a term so broad that it is meaningless):

A Saskatchewan People's Party of Canada (PPC) candidate is defending comments in support of the use of "hate speech" he made recently on social media.

Some groups say they fear the comments could incite violence.

"Our country could use more hate speech, more offensive comments, more 'micro-aggressions', more violation of safe spaces with words and more critical thinking," Cody Payant wrote on his Facebook page and Twitter account on July 16. 

"Words are not violence and when we don't have them to debate and articulate our thoughts when communicating, then all we have left is guns," he added.

This cherry-picked screed can be interpreted thusly: a country so brain-washed into thinking that any word disapproved of by the protected oligarchy needs to hear more things that the ruling classes disallow because this country was not founded on tyranny and should not end that way.




Elizabeth Wetllauffer is a serial killer and no amount of money will fix that or prevent future murders from happening.

But I repeat myself:

Ontario must increase funding and staffing at the province's nursing homes to help prevent future serial killers from harming the most vulnerable, the final report into former nurse Elizabeth Wettlaufer's crimes recommends. 

And nursing homes must limit their use of temp agency nurses and improve how medication is stored and tracked.

It's time to arm Asian countries that aren't China:

North Korea on Wednesday fired several unidentified projectiles off its east coast, South Korea’s military said, less than a week after the North launched two short-range ballistic missiles into the sea in a defiance of U.N. resolutions.

Observers say the launches were aimed at ramping up pressure on the United States to make concessions as the two countries are struggling to resume diplomacy on the North’s nuclear weapons program.

India rules that the Islamic quicky divorce is no longer legal:

Muslim men instantly divorcing their wives without explanation has been made illegal in India.

The parliament voted overwhelmingly in favour of the Muslim Women (Protection of Rights on Marriage) Bill, with 303 for and 82 against, drawing accusations of government interference in a community matter.

It makes “triple talaq” — in which a husband can annul a marriage by saying the Arabic word for divorce three times — punishable by three years in prison.

But Wait! There's More!

Often, there is ...




For a party that claims it has nothing to hide, it sure is doing a lot of thwarting:

The federal opposition parties have failed in their bid to use a rare summer committee hearing to press for an investigation that would force top officials and the foreign affairs minister to explain the Liberal government’s China policy in detail.

Conservative critic Leona Alleslev says such an investigation would have shed light on Liberal efforts to end Canada’s deepening diplomatic row with China, which has prompted two former diplomats to accuse the government of improper arm-twisting.

David Mulroney and Guy Saint-Jacques told The Globe and Mail newspaper last week there was a partisan undertone to a request from a civil servant that each connect with Global Affairs Canada for briefings before speaking publicly about the government’s handling of the China file.

The House of Commons foreign affairs committee met today to discuss an opposition request to look into the allegations.

The Liberals hold a majority on the committee, so at least one of their number would have had to vote with the opposition for an inquiry to go ahead. None did.

Insecure little Justin talks smack behind people's backs like the cheerleader b!#ch queen he always wanted to be in high school:

I’ve been saying for sometime now that campaigning against Doug Ford is a major part of the Liberal re-election strategy. And it’s not just to win seats in Ontario, but anywhere they think they can run against Ford’s unpopularity, real or perceived.

The tactic isn’t so much about winning over Conservative voters who might be turned off by Ford. In fact, I think all the Ford bashing could galvanize Conservative support.

This is a tactic aimed at trying to get as many progressive and left-wing voters inside the Liberal tent as possible. The Conservative vote is pretty solid. Several polls have shown that those planning to back Andrew Scheer and the Conservatives are the least likely to change their minds between now and October 21.

Making Ford the bogeyman is all about scaring NDP and Green voters into backing the Liberals.

If that tactic works, the problem isn't necessarily that Justin is persuasive enough but that the voters are stupid.

I mean, this is the moron who told everyone that budgets balance themselves.


Also - well, obviously:

“Justin Trudeau promised us that he’d be different, but what we got was a prime minister that says the right thing in public, and does another behind closed doors,” Turtle said to CTV News.

“When Indigenous communities want to work with Trudeau—on issues from clean water to community safety—we get a condescending Prime Minister that’s willing to pose at ceremonies, but not willing to take action to make people’s lives better. Like millions of others, I’m tired of being let down,” Turtle continued to say.

But you left yourself susceptible to this sort of trickery just like the other communities who don't care about the issues but can't wait to be flattered.

(SEE: hands, shake; babies, kiss; parades, attend; costumes, wear)




Today in "not inspiring confidence" news:

The Canadian Forces’ mission to Latvia has been dogged with complaints of harassment and unprofessional behaviour, prompting the military to send an investigator to the country to get to the bottom of the problems.

The investigation, launched last year, focused on the behaviour of staff in the civil-military co-operation or J9 section of Canada’s Task Force Latvia and was the result of a complaint alleging harassment and unprofessional conduct.

The probe discovered that some staff openly mocked the senior leadership in Canada, circulated negative cartoons about the military’s gender advisor assigned to the mission, and conducted a “whisper campaign” against an incoming commanding officer.

There was a “culture of withholding information” and “members of the J9 section were habituated to unprofessional comments in the presence of junior officers and NCMs (non-commissioned members),” according to a March 2018 report by Lt. Col. Jeremy Fountain, who was sent to Latvia to investigate and interview staff members. Postmedia obtained the report under the Access to Information Act.

Might one suggest that a military should worry about, you know, military things instead of how diverse the transgender gunless battalion is during sensitivity training?

**

How does a guy even hack into a system and get access to private information? Launching an investigation now seems more like closing the barn door after the horse has run off and really very much like an election ploy:

Finance Minister Bill Morneau said Tuesday that the federal government is looking into the Captial One Financial data breach, which affected about six million Canadians.

“I’ve already spoken with the head of the Office of the Superintendent of Financial Institutions. I’ve asked him to start an investigation into this issue,” Morneau said.


“We’re going to continue to protect the privacy of Canadians. It’s something we’ve both focused on both in Canada and internationally,” he added.

“It’s an ongoing and important challenge.”

Way to take a stand, Ralphie!:

Public Safety Minister Ralph Goodale says Canadians will have to wait until after this fall’s federal election to find out whether Chinese tech giant Huawei can provide equipment for the country’s next-generation 5G wireless network.

Subsidies? Because no one was smart enough to fight Trump on the tariffs on aluminum in the first place?:

The federal government has now spent nearly $200 million to subsidize steel and aluminum companies using a fund originally designed to spur cutting-edge innovation, drawing criticism from policy experts for what they call a misuse of funds.

Ottawa has funnelled $194.9 million into various steel and aluminum producers and manufacturers through the so-called Strategic Innovation Fund (SIF), created under Prime Minister Justin Trudeau in 2017.

The most recent expenditures, announced late last week, include $20 million for an expansion of Gerdau Ameristeel’s Ontario facilities, and $16 million for Tenaris Algoma Tubes to upgrade its operations in Sault Ste. Marie and Calgary. Ottawa has promised as much as $2 billion in support to steel and aluminum companies — $250 million of which will come from the SIF — as a way to cushion any financial damages incurred by companies as a result of retaliatory tariffs levelled by Ottawa against U.S. President Donald Trump in July 2018. Those tariffs have since been dropped.

Ontario premier Doug Ford makes good on his promise to allocate proper funding for students with autism:

Ontario Premier Doug Ford’s government is now doing what it should have done in the first place on the issue of public funding for treating autistic children.

Children, Community and Social Services Minister Todd Smith said Monday the Progressive Conservative government will scrap its original plan and consult with experts to develop a new one by spring.

Its budget will be $600 million annually, double the original funding, based on the needs of autistic children.

In the interim, the existing funding model will be maintained.

Scratch a liberal, find a racist every single time:

Nice. And you are having a conversation about who is racist? Wow. https://t.co/nWtMkdsPgL

— Nikki Haley (@NikkiHaley) July 30, 2019

On the Korean Peninsula

If Trump wanted to fix both China and North Korea, he should add more tariffs and sanctions every time China coddles its buffer state:

Chinese President Xi Jinping promised to foot the bill for the completion of a bridge between North Korea and China when he visited Pyongyang last month, the Asahi Shimbun reported Monday quoting sources. 

Construction of the bridge across the Apnok or Yalu River between the border towns of Sinuiju in North Korea and Dandong on the Chinese side started in 2011. It was nearly complete in 2014 but never opened for traffic because Pyongyang demanded money from Beijing for an access road and auxiliary facilities.

Chinese engineers have been conducting field surveys since late June, right after Xi's visit to Pyongyang, the Japanese daily added. 

The sources said China has paid about 1.8 billion yuan for the bridge and will pay some 2.5 billion yuan more.

Uh, North Korea, for your information:

Earlier this month, a bridge in Harbin city that cost 1 billion yuan to make collapsed killing 3 people. 

But as many as six bridges have collapsed across China since July 2011, and most have been attributed to poor construction and overloading, according to The Telegraph.

 

 

 

That's an excellent question:

 

President Moon Jae-in vowed to break down the outdated Cold War order that has pitted South Korea, the U.S. and Japan against North Korea, China and Russia. Many supporters were delighted, but South Korea's regional neighbors interpreted it as a pledge to distance itself from Washington and Tokyo. Instead of giving Seoul any brownie points, that only encouraged China and Russia to ride roughshod over it. How much longer will Moon stay silent?

 

As long as he remains in office.

 

That's how long.

 

 

 

 

South Korea has been a functioning economy and a democratic state since the Eighties. It has earned its place among free and prosperous nations: 

U.S. President Donald Trump is pressuring the World Trade Organization to stop classifying Korea, China and other countries as "developing," which has given them some trade privileges he now considers unfair.

In a tweet littered with even more capital letters than usual, Trump said Friday, "The WTO is BROKEN when the world's RICHEST countries claim to be developing countries to avoid WTO rules and get special treatment. NO more!!!" 

He added, "Today I directed the U.S. Trade Representative to take action so that countries stop CHEATING the system at the expense of the USA!" 

At the time of the WTO's launch in 1995, developing countries risked losses by joining, so they were granted special status. Once recognized as developing economies, they could enjoy more lenient rules. 

When Korea joined the OECD in 1996, it was asked to declare itself an advanced country, but its decided to retain its developing status for fear of damage in the agricultural sector. But it relinquished its rights as a developing country in areas other than agriculture at the WTO.  

Now that decision is coming back to haunt it. Trump cited G20 and OECD member nations as prime examples of countries that need to stop being treated as developing economies by the WTO. They include Korea, Mexico and Turkey. 

The U.S. has set four criteria for the WTO to stop granting developing status to a country. The first is OECD membership or application to join the rich countries' club. Second is G20 membership. Third is a per-capita GDP over US$12,056 a year. And fourth is accounting for more than 0.5 percent of global trade. 

Korea meets all four of those criteria.

Anything With a Changing Title Can Only Be a Scam

But don't take my word for it:

On June 17, the House of Commons passed a motion declaring a National Climate Emergency.

Firstly, there is no such thing as a “national” climate emergency. Climate change is global, not national, and Canada’s contribution to global CO2 emissions is a minuscule 1.6 per cent. Here are the answers to some questions that will help you assess whether there’s really a “climate emergency.”

Apocalyptic projections of rapid sea level rises are driving municipal and provincial governments on both our east and west coasts to implement “sea level rise plans” that include sterilizing waterfront from development, building sea barriers and even buying out and destroying homes that are deemed vulnerable. So just how fast are sea levels rising? Here again the NOAA provides the answer. Despite all the calamitous rhetoric, the NOAA states that sea levels “continue to rise at the rate of about one-eighth of an inch (3.2 mm) per year.” At that rate, a house built 10 feet above sea level today would still be 9 feet 7 inches above sea level 40 years from now.

Read the whole thing.


Also:

Everything that Desrochers and Reed cautions can go wrong with wind and solar power went wrong in Ontario under the 15-year regime of the Dalton McGuinty and Kathleen Wynne Liberal governments.

They ignored advice from their own experts that they didn’t have to raise prices for wind and solar power as high as they did to achieve the government’s goals.

They made the energy grid less efficient when they demanded wind and solar power had to be purchased first, ahead of other energy sources.

This resulted in absurdities like dumping green hydroelectric power in favour of wind and solar, or paying wind and solar developers to not produce electricity.

They failed to appreciate that wind and solar have to be backed up by more reliable forms of energy, because they can’t provide base load power to the grid on demand, since the wind doesn’t always blow and the sun doesn’t always shine.

In Ontario, the Liberals opted for natural gas — a fossil fuel — for this purpose, ironically culminating in their gas plants scandal, which cost the public $1 billion and led to the jailing of a top government aide for illegally destroying records.

Doesn't Bernie Sanders Have a Gimmick for This?

This:

Oncologists in Montreal and across Canada are alarmed by a chronic shortage of three essential cancer drugs, and in the case of one of the medications, do not know when it will become available again.

The scarce drugs, all delivered intravenously to patients, are Vinorelbine, approved by Health Canada for non-small lung cancer and metastatic breast cancer; Leucovorin, used to decrease the toxic side effects of two other chemo drugs; and Etoposide for lung cancer, malignant lymphomas and testicular cancer.

Dr. Gerald Batist, director of the Segal Cancer Centre at the Jewish General Hospital, said the lack of Leucovorin is the “tip of the iceberg.”

“It is a drug we commonly use, so its absence is serious,” Batist wrote in an email to the Montreal Gazette. “We are missing an even more important drug in Etoposide for the same reasons and for many months. Last week we learned that another important drug called Vinorelbine is on back order, and a new Canadian producer is being sought.”

The most serious shortage involves Vinorelbine, with no projected date for when supplies will resume.

Whither Bernie?

It's Just An Economy

Maybe Justin can run on this:

Canadians will likely enter a fall election with the new North American free trade deal hanging in the balance, as Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said Monday he's not rushing to ratify the pact in the face of U.S. political differences.

The Democrat-controlled U.S. House of Representatives began its five-week summer break on Monday without introducing a ratification bill — a scenario Trump and his cabinet worked hard to avoid.

The Democrats want changes to the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement, or USMCA. They want to change provisions on labour, the environment, patent protection for drugs and enforcement, and have by all accounts been working hard with Trump's trade czar Robert Lighthizer to move forward.

"We recognize that there is a difficult partisan context in Washington right now between the Democrats and the Republicans. We have said from the very beginning that we would keep pace with the American process on ratification of the new NAFTA accords," Trudeau said at an event in Vancouver.

"But we will do that in line with the American process when it picks up again this fall."

Ever-ticking political clocks in both countries mean U.S. lawmakers — with one eye towards Trump's 2020 re-election bid — won't be in a position to take even the most tentative steps forward on the deal before the start of Canada's federal election campaign, which is set to begin by mid-September at the latest.

Canadians head to the polls on Oct. 21.

He can blame that "mean, old" Trump while still expecting him to pressure China to release Canadian nationals.

That should work.

The Law Is a Fool

Euthanasia is already legal in Canada and will be used more openly as a way to rid the crumbled healthcare system of excess elderly whose savings no longer benefit the government.

Why bother listing recommendations to prevent further murders of the elderly (something that should have been stopped ages ago) at this point?:

Only when Wettlaufer confessed to the murders – and to trying to kill four other vulnerable people in her care, and assaulting two others – did her deadly crime spree, carried out silently with lethal insulin injections, come to light.

It sent her to prison, with no chance of parole for 25 years.

Missed or overlooked long before then, however, were early warning flags, including a firing months into her first job at a northern Ontario hospital, suspicions of drug abuse and theft and, tellingly, another firing by the Woodstock home where she killed seven people, only to go on to another home in London where she found her final victim.

Some of the answers are expected, finally, Wednesday, with the final report due out of a public inquiry into Ontario’s long-term care system that was called in the fallout of Wettlaufer’s crimes.

Recommendations to improve the long-term care system are expected. But it will be up to the province – whose oversight has been found lacking before – to decide how it will apply the report to a long-term care system many say is desperately under-funded and under-staffed.

Wettlaufer didn't kill her elderly charges because of money. She did so because she had no respect for life in its advanced stages. No money will cure a social ill like that.

Delusions

One would think that with so much practice lying, there would be proficiency.

Nope:

With the Opposition demanding answers on reports that the Trudeau PMO tried to silence two Canadian diplomats from speaking about policy towards Communist China, Justin Trudeau was asked about it during a press conference.

His response?

“I can confirm that the PMO did not direct that to happen.”

Interesting.


“did not direct.”

The same wording Trudeau used as tried denying the SNC-Lavalin PMO Scandal ...

To wit:

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau confronted allegations of political interference by his office on Thursday, saying he did not “direct” Jody Wilson-Raybould when she was justice minister and attorney-general to abandon the criminal prosecution of a Montreal corporate giant.

Cutting and pasting is not working for Justin at all.


Also - if British Columbians believe anything Justin says, the only thing that they are "getting" is screwed:

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau says British Columbia will play an important role in the upcoming federal race as a province led by a progressive government when so many others have swung to the right. ...

“Here in B.C. you really matter, you’re a province of people who get it,” he said.

British Columbia is led by a New Democrat government under Premier John Horgan but Trudeau made no mention of his New Democrat challengers at the federal level.

Conservative governments have been elected in several provinces since the Liberals took power in Ottawa, including Ontario’s Progressive Conservatives under Doug Ford last year and Alberta’s United Conservatives under Jason Kenney in April.

Because the latter ran on the platform of life-saving oil not being stymied by land or by sea. Horgan did not.

Some people want to destroy themselves.


And - do these guys "get it", too?:

Attorneys general from Alberta and Ontario say they will discuss the timeline of the different legal challenges launched against the federal carbon tax when they meet in Saskatoon today.

The two justice ministers will be joined by their legal teams and their counterparts from New Brunswick and Saskatchewan.

For a Monday

 

It's just money:

For two decades, concerns have been circulating in government over the usefulness and transparency of a program that allows former governors general to make expense claims on the public dime for the rest of their lives, according to a briefing note prepared last fall for Prime Minister Justin Trudeau.

Documents obtained through an access-to-information request to the Privy Council Office also disclose for the first time the internal guidelines for the program — guidelines which were only established in 2012, despite the program existing since 1979. The documents confirm that each former governor general is allowed to claim up to $206,000 per year, an amount not publicly released but reported by the National Post last year based on confidential sources.

The expenses are on top of the $143,000 annual pension (rising over time) that goes to every former governor general, and on top of the multi-million dollar start-up grant each one gets to create a charitable organization. ...

“The fact (Rideau Hall) is not subject to the Access to Information Act and that there has not been systematic reporting on program expenditures has contributed to the perception that the program lacks basic transparency,” the note continues.

Much of the briefing note is redacted on the justification it describes deliberations among government staff.

It's probably none of the taxpayer's business, anyway.




"Guests" leave at the end of the day:

As reported by the Vancouver Sun, since 2015 the Trudeau Liberal Government has implemented a massive surge in the number of ‘guest workers,’ and foreign students. They have increased the number of ‘international mobility program’ workers (aka cheap foreign labour guest workers) by a shocking 400% in just 3 years.

Now, the government is bringing in 400,000 foreign students, and 250,000 ‘international mobility workers’ PER YEAR. By contrast, 70,000 ‘guest workers’ were brought in under the Conservatives in 2015, and 200,000 foreign students were brought in in 2015.



It's mostly the latter:

It’s a perfect storm — and “fact-checking” could well be at the eye of it. Done carefully and dispassionately fact checking is a chance for journalists and their outlets to showcase an unbiased perspicacity. Done lazily or gratuitously or selectively, it’s a fearsomely efficient way to embarrass themselves and reveal serious institutional flaws.

Why would a bribed press of journalistic hacks expend five minutes worth of intellectual effort ascertaining something when they are convinced that they are the ones who have the right to shape a narrative?




Another problem with unelected judges:

Labelling a wine from the West Bank as a “Product of Israel” is misleading and deceptive, a Federal Court judge declared Monday in a ruling that tosses the politically charged file back to federal officials for a decision.

The decision — the latest twist in a three-year-old dispute over whether bottles from the Psagot Winery and Shiloh Winery in the West Bank can be characterized as coming from Israel — means the Canada Food Inspection Agency must decide anew how the wines should be labelled.

The agency initially stripped the wines of the label in July 2017 after a formal complaint, but then reversed course shortly afterward following an outcry from some Jewish groups.

None of the parties and interveners in the case considered the West Bank to be territory of the state of Israel, which means the labels are fundamentally inaccurate, the Federal Court ruling noted.

Had he been smuggling people in his former country, he would be an organ donor by now:

A Vancouver man accused of being involved in an elaborate operation that may have helped smuggle hundreds of Chinese migrants across the Canada-U.S. border by exploiting lax oversight at an international park pleaded guilty to several offences Monday, just before his trial was set to begin.

Michael Kong, 62, wore a red jumpsuit and leg shackles and when B.C. provincial court Judge Patrick Doherty asked whether he was pleading guilty to four of the seven counts of human smuggling of which he’d been accused, he answered, “Yes.”

In a twist, however, court heard one of the outstanding counts was still in dispute and may yet proceed to trial. Federal Crown prosecutor Ryan Carrier said that the Canada Border Services Agency was working to arrange travel for a key witness who lives in China.

A sentencing hearing for Kong won’t happen until that outstanding count is resolved, perhaps in a few weeks.

If they did not plan to infiltrate or even to defect, perhaps they only wanted to eat:

South Korea returned three North Koreans who crossed the maritime border aboard a fishing vessel at the weekend, an official at Seoul's defence ministry said on Monday.

North Korean fishing boats often breach the inter-Korean maritime frontier or go adrift towards the South.

South Korean authorities intercepted the ship that crossed the border on Saturday because a white towel was tied to its mast in a potential sign that those on board might want to defect, the official said.

The sailors said during questioning they used the towel to prevent any clash with other ships and had gone off course by mistake and wanted to return home.

"We've concluded that there was no indication any of the three sailors had intended to infiltrate," the official said, requesting anonymity due to the sensitivity of the matter.

The South Korean military handed over the sailors and the ship to North Korean authorities at the sea border on Monday afternoon, the official said.

There has never been a case for communism, Catholic or otherwise, ever:

Had Communists restricted themselves to propaganda, they would have failed before taking power rather than 70 years afterward. The Bolsheviks murdered 2,691 Russian Orthodox priests, 1,962 monks, and 3,447 nuns in 1922 alone. Dettloff obliquely admits Communists persecuted religious people “at different moments in history” - apparently the Marxist equivalent of “some people did something.” In reality, Communist persecution of the Church was near-universal. The same cycle unwound in Spain, Hungary, Albania, North Korea, and Xi Jinping's China. Its boot has fallen on the necks of such luminaries as Cardinal Mindszenty, Blessed Fr. Jerzy Popiełuszko, and an obscure Polish priest named Karol Wojtyla.

Before taking Christian lives, the Communists took their property. Lenin wrote secretly in 1922 that the Politburo must use the Bolshevik-inspired famine as cover to “confiscate all church property with all the ruthless energy we can still muster.” He understood, better than Christians, that without property the Church has no earthly self-defense. Wealth gives its holder agency – which is to say, liberty.

Dettloff attempts to reassure his readers that Communists will only despoil “the rich,” not common people. Abolishing private property does not mean the Red Guard will confiscate “the kinds of things an artisan or farmer might own” but only “the kind of private property that most of us do not have”: businesses, capital goods, etc. This assumes that universal human rights depend on one's class. It overlooks the sacking of Church property, the only opulence most peasants ever saw – property that was truly preserved in common for scores of generations.

More importantly, it again ignores the blood-soaked pages of Communist history. Stalin sent soldiers door-to-door to confiscate all food, utensils – even pets – before starving six million Ukrainians to death in the Holodomor. Had Dettloff been writing 100 years ago, he may be deemed gullible. But with a century of history to draw on, it is hard for Dettloff – a Ph.D. candidate at the Institute for Christian Studies – to plead ignorance.

Yet in his telling, “Catholics and communists have found natural reasons to offer one another a sign of peace.” Dettloff's cites as proof the fact that numerous Communist organizations (all of which he helpfully links for America readers) allow Christian fellow travelers to work toward Marxist ends,“Christians have been passionately represented in communist and socialist movements around the world,” and some Marxist leaders were former seminarians. (Was Josef Stalin less murderous because he was once an Orthodox seminarian, or Khrushchev because he memorized virtually all four Gospels?)

This is rather like the seductress who estranges a man from his family, then boasts about her connection to his ex-wife. Marxism lured Catholics away from the Christian faith into a false religion.

The Roman Catholic Church's unbroken teaching condemns all forms of Marxism and Communism. Pope Pius XI wrote in Quadragesimo Anno that “no one can be at the same time a good Catholic and a true socialist.”

“See to it, Venerable Brethren, that the Faithful do not allow themselves to be deceived!” he wrote. “Communism is intrinsically wrong, and no one who would save Christian civilization may collaborate with it in any undertaking whatsoever.”

Sunday Post

 

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

Say hello to Paul Thoppil, assistant deputy minister for the Asia-Pacific over at Global Affairs Canada (universally shortened, in Ottawa, to “GAC,” pronounced “gack” and followed with an obligatory apologetic chuckle). He’s the guy who’s been working the phones lately, reaching out to retired Canadian diplomats and reminding them that it’s an election year.

“In this time of high tension and in an election environment, we all need to be very, very careful,” McCallum’s predecessor David Mulroney told the Globe, paraphrasing a call he received last week from Thoppil.

I want to emphasize that the specifics of Thoppil’s counsel to Mulroney were quite low on the scale of jackboot oppression. He just wanted Mulroney to call in for a briefing on Ottawa’s current China policy before mouthing off to reporters. Or rather, Thoppil may or may not have wanted Mulroney to call in, but his boss’s boss’s bosses at the Prime Minister’s Office sure did: “He said … ‘I’ve been asked by PMO: before you comment on aspects of China policy, it would be good if you called in and got the latest from us on what we’re doing,’” Mulroney told the Globe, again paraphrasing Thoppil.
Mulroney, who can be high-strung, declined the advice and promptly picked up the red glowing Fife-and-Chase-Phone from its handy cradle on the desk of his home office. The Globe’s intrepid reporters soon learned that Thoppil had made a similar call to yet another former Beijing envoy, Guy Saint-Jacques.

The PMO and Chrystia Freeland’s office were left, not really to deny any part of Mulroney’s account, but to couch it in the most anodyne terms. Nobody was forbidding Mulroney from speaking, they insisted, and I’m sure it’s true. He can say what he likes. They just hoped he’d get a second opinion. The way Michael Wernick hoped Jody Wilson-Raybould would get a second opinion—or a third, or a sixteenth, or however many it took until she finally guessed the right answer—on SNC’s eligibility for a deferred prosecution agreement.

As for the mention of “an election environment,” well, that’s familiar too, isn’t it. Wilson-Raybould testified that a majestic procession of Liberals, from Justin Trudeau on down to Ben “Be Careful When Using My Name” Chin, kept mentioning upcoming Quebec and federal elections to her when advising her on the finer points of prosecutorial style. Because if there’s one thing that comes to mind when you think of a fair trial, it’s constant reminders that the party in power must not lose.

There’s at least one more element of the Thoppil calls that rings a bell. That’s the spectacle of a normally non-partisan official picking up the old phone for a chat with key opinion-makers about government policy. You’re way ahead of me, aren’t you: That is, indeed, what Daniel Jean did when, as Justin Trudeau’s foreign-policy advisor, he telephoned reporters to speculate about an Indian government plot to embarrass Trudeau by—I’m still not sure about this part—declining to block the Trudeau government’s invitation of a convicted attempted murderer to a dinner?

My favourite comments in this whole business come from Saint-Jacques, who notes that one reason it’s hard to align his comments with the government’s policy is that he can’t tell what the government’s policy is. I had the same reaction: If there’s a number people can call to understand Justin Trudeau’s thinking on the regime in Beijing, can we please have it? Because I note that the Prime Minister hasn’t given a speech detailing his thoughts on the matter lately. And the increasingly reclusive Chrystia Freeland, whose public comments on this file and just about every other one have been more and more gnomic in recent months,  restricts herself to exquisitely tailored comments on the specifics of the Meng Wangzhou extradition and the detention of Michael Kovrig and Michael Spavor.

Wells has succinctly outlined a pattern of behaviour one has seen from this government since it started to lie to the population in an official capacity.

The Liberals do something wrong. They are not adept at covering up things so they warn people not to say anything, even resort to some emotional blackmail to achieve silence. When that doesn't work, they deny anything of the sort occurred, call the opposing party a liar and then try to deflect and bury the embarrassing item. They also remember to keep their fool yaps shut and read only what has been carefully written on cue cards lest they make the situation of their own design even worse.

Aside from utter immorality of these proceedings, is anyone tired of this juvenile incompetence?




It's just money:

The federal government is giving nearly $1 million to the Mi'kmaw Economic Benefits Office to increase employment and economic opportunities in Cape Breton's First Nations communities.

Federal Justice Minister David Lametti made the announcement in Membertou, N.S., on Saturday morning on behalf of Atlantic Canada Opportunities Agency Minister Navdeep Bains.

Alex Paul, MEBO's executive director, said word of the $999,114 in funding over three years is "fantastic news."

"We're very, very happy and consider ourselves very fortunate to have this continued support from ACOA, and certainly having a few years of funding committed to us … allows us the luxury to plan and roll out some of the activities that we want to do."

Bernie Sanders, who went to the former Soviet Union for his honeymoon, has an amazing campaign stunt at the expense of Canadian patients:

U.S. presidential candidate Bernie Sanders says he will be joining a group of diabetics to buy cheaper insulin in Ontario on Sunday.

The Vermont senator tweeted that the high cost for insulin has put the lives of American diabetics at risk and he will be joining the group in Windsor, Ont., as they purchase the vials for a fraction of the price.

Typically, a vial of insulin Type 1 diabetics need to regulate their blood sugar costs about US$340 in the United States, roughly 10 times the price in Canada.

Sanders has long targeted pharmaceutical companies for the cost of prescription drugs, and he made a similar medication trip to Canada in 1999.

Multiple trips from Americans heading to Canada for cheaper insulin has raised concerns about its supply in Canada, despite insulin tourism being relatively small scale.

A recent letter from 15 groups representing patients, health professionals, hospitals, and pharmacists urges the federal government to safeguard the Canadian drug supply.

What happens when you don't elect judges and when you rely on witch doctors:

An Eastern Ontario father who molested his 14-year-old daughter in 2016 has been found not criminally responsible because he was “suffering” from sexsomnia at the time.

His daughter had just moved back in with her father only for him to molest her in her bedroom at night.

The father, 39, was found not criminally responsible for sexual assault, touching for a sexual purpose, and touching a child for a sexual purpose after two psychiatrists concluded he had sexsomnia.

Ontario Superior Court Justice Michel Z. Charbonneau recently delivered his ruling after also hearing evidence of a sleep study that showed the father became sexually aroused while sleeping. (The electroencephalogram, or EEG, indicated he was asleep during the sexual activity, thereby eliminating any possibility that he was faking it, L’Orignal court heard.)

It’s not the first time he’s been in criminal court. He pleaded guilty for trying to have sex with a sleeping woman back in 2003.

Trump does not preside over a rat-infested major American city, moron:

The Baltimore Sun editorial board lit up President Trump Saturday night for his Twitter tirade against its city and Rep. Elijah Cummings, the powerful Democrat who represents Maryland’s Seventh District.

Cummings, the chair of the House Oversight Committee, has over the last two weeks both authorized subpoenas for senior White House staffers’ communications and ripped into acting Homeland Security chief Kevin McAleenan over the conditions of the government camps for migrants at the southern border.

Trump responded Saturday morning shortly after a Fox News segment showed piles of trash in Baltimore, tweeting: “Rep, Elijah Cummings has been a brutal bully, shouting and screaming at the great men & women of Border Patrol about conditions at the Southern Border, when actually his Baltimore district is FAR WORSE and more dangerous. His district is considered the Worst in the USA,” adding, “Cumming [sic] District is a disgusting, rat and rodent infested mess. If he spent more time in Baltimore, maybe he could help clean up this very dangerous & filthy place.”

Baltimore officials and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, a Maryland native, rebuked the president’s comments about the district, where 55 percent of residents are African-American, before the Sun criticized Trump at length.

“It’s not hard to see what’s going on here,” wrote the paper. “The congressman has been a thorn in this president’s side, and Mr. Trump sees attacking African American members of Congress as good politics, as it both warms the cockles of the white supremacists who love him and causes so many of the thoughtful people who don’t to scream.”

Oh, yes - do throw about those accusations of white supremacy. Those sorts of lies distract people from the fact that a politician elected numerous times represents a major American city infested with vermin that can carry disease.

This is the same country that has been caught stealing industrial secrets. One must forget that:

The lab works in a wide range of biomedical fields. Qiu is known for helping develop ZMapp, a treatment for Ebola virus that was fast-tracked through development during the 2014–16 outbreak in West Africa. She has repeatedly been honored for her work on that project, including with a Governor General’s Innovation Award last year.

“While I was there [Qiu] was always highly regarded as a scientist,” says Plummer, adding that he was “shocked and puzzled” when he heard she was being investigated. “She maintained connections with China, but as far as I knew she was a regular Canadian scientist.”

Cheng, Qiu’s husband, also worked as a biologist at NML. And both researchers held adjunct faculty positions at the University of Manitoba in Winnipeg. It says it has terminated their positions and reassigned their students as a result of the investigation.

Neither Qiu nor Cheng could be reached for comment.

The development comes at a sensitive time for relations between Canada and China. In December 2018, Canada arrested Chinese Huawei executive Meng Wanzhou at the request of the United States. In retaliation, China has arrested two Canadian men on espionage charges and sentenced a third to death for drug offenses.

It also comes as the U.S. National Institutes of Health (NIH) has raised concerns that some grantees have failed to disclose ties to China and other nations, or improperly shared confidential information. 

The concerns have led several universities to oust researchers who are ethnic Chinese and return grant funds to NIH. The crackdown has raised concerns among the Chinese American community of racial profiling. In Canada, the nation’s Security Intelligence Service has long warned of state-sponsored espionage, and in 2014, the Canadian government alleged that China was behind a cyberattack on Canada’s National Research Council.

Also: 

China’s central government has intensified its crackdown on Christianity in recent months by pressuring local government officials to keep a count on the number of citizens who believe in God and to monitor them, according to a new report.

Who believes in Jesus? Raise your hands.

Ladies and gentlemen, Mrs. Russi Taylor:

(Paws up)

(Insert Title Here)

(Insert own witty remark here)




Canada's back ... getting the Americans, who have ZERO stake in this, to defend Canadians from Justin's favourite country:

U.S. lawmakers in the House of Representatives are being asked to condemn the “abusive” imprisonment of two Canadian men in China.

China imprisoned former Canadian diplomat Michael Kovrig and entrepreneur Michael Spavor in December, little more than a week after the RCMP’s arrest of Huawei executive Meng Wanzhou in Vancouver on an American warrant.

The U.S. wants to extradite Meng and prosecute her for allegedly lying to banks to avoid U.S. sanctions on Iran.

The motion introduced in the lower house of the U.S. Congress praises Canada for upholding the rule of law in arresting Meng.

The motion also calls for the immediate release of Kovrig and Spavor and for “due process” in the case of a third Canadian, Robert Schellenberg, who had a previous prison sentence for drug smuggling upgraded to death earlier this year.

The motion will be sent to the House Committee on Foreign Affairs before the full House votes on it later.

First of all, condemnations do nothing.

So there's that.

Secondly, when Justin's dad and then Justin openly praised the Third World dictatorship that is China, Canadians should not only have blinked but swore to keep him from office and then dismantle the Trudeau legacy in a manner that would have been hurtful and humiliating for Justin and the rest of his disgusting family but emotionally satisfying for everyone else.

Only then could the country heal.

But, oh noooooooo ...


Also:

Black-clad demonstrators rallied in Hong Kong’s airport on Friday, filling the arrivals hall of one of the world’s busiest terminals as the city braced for another weekend of potentially combustible protests.

Activists also signaled that despite objections from the police, they would continue with plans for a Saturday rally against mob violence in Yuen Long, a district near the mainland Chinese border where last weekend a group of men attacked people in a train station and on nearby streets.

That attack on Sunday, which left at least 45 people injured, was apparently meant to intimidate the protesters who have been holding demonstrations in the city for weeks. But the men, many of whom were masked and dressed in white T-shirts, also lashed out at train passengers who had no apparent connection to the demonstrations.

The police — who failed to stop the mob, and initially made no arrests — have since detained 12 people in connection with the train station attacks, including some accused of having connections to the criminal gangs known as triads. The authorities have said they object to the Yuen Long rally on Saturday because of the risk of clashes, with tensions running high between pro-democracy protesters and residents of the district’s villages, who are more conservative and supportive of the establishment.

The prospect of more violence this weekend poses another challenge for Carrie Lam, Hong Kong’s embattled chief executive, who is under pressure from Beijing to restore order in the semiautonomous Chinese city. On Sunday, hours before the mob attack, protesters defaced the Chinese government’s main offices in the city, in a direct rebuke of the Communist leadership in China.

Dividing a county is what the Liberals do best:

Anyone looking for a sneak preview of the Liberal campaign against Conservative leader Andrew Scheer in the upcoming fall election can simply look to the West.

In an attempt to fend off a challenge from Jason Kenney’s United Conservatives, the Alberta NDP kept a laser focus on social issues, painting Kenney and his party as reactionaries on abortion and gay rights. The tactic led to some miserable days for UCP candidates and staffers but, ultimately, it didn’t work.

A simple explanation of what the Liberals have done since 2015 to keep Canada a functioning economy would be sufficient to win voters.

As the Liberals have done nothing to keep this country afloat, they will resort to bribing the press, lying to the public and painting their enemies as American or whatever adjective seems fit these days for the emotionally retarded and the paranoid electorate that puts them into office.




When Obama told Prime Minister Dmitri Medvedev that he would have more "flexibility" after the election, no one made a sound. When presidential candidate Mitt Romney declared that Russia was a global threat, everyone had a good laugh.

Now, nearly four years after Hillary Clinton blew the election she was supposed to win (according to the chattering classes), the attempt to unseat Trump with a new Red Scare falls disastrously flat:

The Democratic-led U.S. House Judiciary Committee asked a federal court on Friday for access to grand jury evidence from the Mueller probe that lawmakers say they need to determine whether to begin impeachment proceedings against President Donald Trump. ...

Mueller testified on Wednesday in back-to-back hearings that Democrats hoped would focus public attention on Trump’s alleged misconduct and boost support for an impeachment inquiry. But his halting and reticent performance changed few opinions, leaving House Democrats to accelerate a congressional probe that could take months to bear fruit.

People who don't know how to turn off their cell phones are furious that the police frantically search for children:

Canada’s provincially controlled Amber Alert system has led to abducted children going home.
It’s also meant a loss of sleep for potentially millions of people who have been woken up by the shrill alarm that goes with it, leading to a growing call for the system to be overhauled.

It was only a year ago that the Canadian system changed to make it mandatory that all alerts must go out on all devices. So far this year Ontario has had six alerts, five of which ended with the abducted child being returned home. A sixth led to an arrest, but only after a 41-year old Toronto-area man was charged in the death of his 11-year-old daughter.


But for all its successes, middle-of-the-night alerts have led to 911 operators being besieged by angry callers furious at being woken up.

“There was one person, in particular, who called repeatedly,” said Const. Allyson Douglas-Cook of the Toronto Police. “He was quite frustrated and he called back again to express his displeasure and frustrations and ultimately the fact that this Amber Alert, by waking him up at that time of the night, had apparently ruined his life.”

What an @$$hole.

From the Most "Transparent" Government in the Country's History

Why, the Liberal government is as open as a Russian government willing to assist in locating black boxes of an aircraft they shot down:

Irving’s president briefed top federal officials on the company’s plans to sue Postmedia after the news organization asked questions about potential problems with the multi-billion dollar Arctic and Offshore Patrol Ship program, according to newly released documents.

The Liberal government has tried to distance itself from Irving’s actions, with procurement minister Carla Qualtrough saying she wished the firm hadn’t threatened Postmedia with legal action in March after the government shared with it a reporter’s questions about potential problems with welds on the new vessels.

But documents obtained by Postmedia show Irving briefed Qualtrough’s top officials at Procurement Canada, including Deputy Minister Bill Matthews, as well as bureaucrats at the Department of National Defence, about the company’s legal strategy a little more than an hour after Irving’s lawyer threatened the news organization with a lawsuit.

**

Export Development Canada says an independent review has cleared its personnel of any wrongdoing after a claim that its staff turned a blind eye to bribery and corruption in a 2011 transaction involving SNC-Lavalin.

(Sidebar: I'm sure.)

**

The federal government has stalled on a plan to break one company’s monopoly on a lucrative Atlantic fishery by awarding part of the quota to an Indigenous group, after a disastrous attempt last year that led to an investigation by the federal ethics watchdog.

**

Blacklock’s Reporter has found that the Canada Infrastructure Bank – which was created by the Trudeau government – has “compiled a blacklist of ‘negative reporters’ faulted for unflattering coverage of its work.”

Additionally, the Infrastructure Bank listed reporters who were positive and should be contacted again, obviously to have some puff pieces written.

**

Ever since Justin Trudeau told a “Ladies Night” fundraiser in 2013 that he admires China’s “basic dictatorship” the Liberal leader has been teased and mocked for the comments.

The mocking isn’t funny anymore as Canadian lives are on the line in China and Trudeau’s government is starting to imitate the regime in Beijing by trying to silence critics. Two former senior diplomats have come forward to say that officials called to ask them to stop contradicting the government in public on China and to “get with the program.”

That would be fine if either David Mulroney or Guy Saint-Jacques were still employed by the government but they aren’t. They are former diplomats now living out their lives as private citizens and offering their expertise on China to the media when asked.

The two have commented on the detention of Michael Spavor and Michael Kovrig, detained by China on trumped up charges. They have also commented on the deteriorating relations caused by the arrest of Huawei executive Meng Wanzhou last December, the incident that led to the arrests of Spavor and Kovrig.

There is no doubt the former bureaucrats know what they are talking about. Mulroney served as Canada’s ambassador to China from 2009-12 while Saint-Jacques served from 2012-16.

In reports by the Globe and Mail, both men describe the calls as odd and out of place.

“Especially having served in China and knowing how they try to control messaging there,” Saint-Jacques said.

Both men were called by Paul Thoppil, an assistant deputy minister at Global Affairs Canada.

The pair of former diplomats told the Globe that Thoppil told them straight up that the push for one voice on China was coming from the prime minister’s office.

“He wanted me to know that PMO just wanted him to relay the hope that we could all speak with one voice to support the strategy of the government,” Saint-Jacques said.

“People in Ottawa don’t invoke PMO frequently or lightly. It is done to intimidate and obtain compliance,” Mulroney said.

 
With all of these moments of democratic openness, is it a wonder that no one likes any of them?:

Canadians are almost twice as likely to say they’re angry or pessimistic towards the federal government, as opposed to feeling satisfied or optimistic, according to Nanos Research analyst Nik Nanos.