Mid-Week Post

Your mid-week spot of pleasure ...




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

In a searing letter to Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, a Conservative senator demands that “Canadians have a right to know” details of the government’s settlement with now-retired Vice-Admiral Mark Norman. 

“If you had the gall to give over $10 million to Omar Khadr . . . presumably you have paid Vice-Admiral Mark Norman, a dedicated servant of our country, even more,” writes Quebec Senator Jean-Paul Dagenais in his Canada Day missive. 

Justin can't worm his way out of the scandals he is currently mired in. He is hoping that this is the last he has heard of Vice-Admiral Mark Norman.

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Federal Conservatives and New Democrats are accusing the Liberal government of cronyism following a media report claiming that the majority of recent judicial appointments in New Brunswick have had connections to Intergovernmental Affairs Minister Dominic LeBlanc.

“Once again, the Trudeau Liberals have been caught red-handed abusing the power of their offices to reward their rich and powerful friends,” Conservative Leader Andrew Scheer said Tuesday in a statement. “When it comes to Justin Trudeau and the Liberals it has always been about who you know, not what you know.”

Canada is back ... getting the Americans to do the fighting for it:

Canadian officials have received confirmation that U.S. President Donald Trump raised the matter of the two Canadians detained by China during a weekend meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping, according to a government source.

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 “I would like to caution the Canadian side against being too naive,” said Geng.“First, it shouldn’t be so naive as to believe that asking its so-called ally to pressure China will work. China is a country with the rule of law and the judicial authorities handle cases independently. China’s judicial sovereignty brooks no interference. 

Added Geng, “Second, it shouldn’t be so naive as to believe that its so-called ally will earnestly pursue a Canadian agenda. They will only pay a lip service, at best. The matter is, after all, between China and Canada.”

Two things: first of all, Justin's oleaginous toadying to China has not endeared him to it because communist China, like the Borg, is a consummate user and not an ally. Secondly, China, through its pet, Geng, is warning Canada off of the US, the only country at the moment China would rather not fight if it could avoid it.

Either way, Justin looks like an enormous pansy and not an actual player on the world stage as once we were.


Also - if Canada had a leader who was clever and bold, it would simply offer its meat to any other Asian country but China.

But noooooo:

The assumption of Canadian agricultural producers is that the Chinese are behaving in a strategic fashion — blocking Canadian products in order to teach Canada a lesson over Meng but also to create space in the market for increased American imports. “That’s how the Chinese operate. I’ve always found it’s never one thing — it’s very strategic,” said the chief executive of one large Canadian exporter.

The impasse has left the Trudeau government looking more than a little sheepish. The prime minister said he raised the issue with Xi in a brief two-minute encounter at the G20 but there is “more work to do.”

No kidding.

And - yes, Britain, do as you're told:

China pressured London police to arrest Tiananmen protester, says watchdog. https://t.co/8SJ6fMyw8z

Shao, who escaped Hong Kong before its handover to China in 1997, told the Observer: “I expected so much more in a democratic country.”

— Arthur Kimes (@ComradeArthur) July 2, 2019

 

Does anyone remember how Trump's stepping into North Korea was going to change everything?:

North Korea’s mission to the United Nations accused the United States on Wednesday of being “more and more hell-bent on hostile acts” against Pyongyang, despite President Donald Trump wanting talks between the two countries.

In a statement the mission said it was responding to a U.S. accusation that Pyongyang breached a cap on refined petroleum imports and a letter that it said was sent on June 29 by the United States, France, Germany and Britain to all U.N. member states urging them to implement sanctions against North Korea. 

“What can’t be overlooked is the fact that this joint letter game was carried out by the permanent mission of the United States to the U.N. under instruction of the State Department, on the very same day when President Trump proposed for the summit meeting,” the statement said. 

Trump became the first sitting U.S. president to set foot in North Korea on Sunday when he met leader Kim Jong Un in the Demilitarized Zone (DMZ) between the two Koreas. The pair agreed to resume stalled talks aimed at getting Pyongyang to give up its nuclear weapons program. 

The North Korean U.N. mission said the June 29 letter to U.N. member states “speaks to the reality that the United States is practically more and more hell-bent on the hostile acts against the DPRK, though talking about the DPRK-U.S. dialogue.”

Also - the breach occurred because Moon does not hold border security as a priority:

The government on Wednesday rejected all suspicions of a cover-up in connection with last month's undetected arrival of a North Korean boat at an east coast port, even though it acknowledged a "grave mistake" in securing the border and reprimanded top military commanders.

The government has been under fire following revelations that the military failed to detect the small wooden boat carrying four North Koreans until it traveled all the way to the port of Samcheok, about 130 kilometers away from the eastern sea border, and a civilian alerted police about it on June 15.

Fueling the criticism were allegations that the military gave an incorrect account of what happened, including saying the boat was found in the "vicinity" of the port, not at the port, sparking widespread suspicions that it tried to cover up the border security failure.

"The investigation into the case found a failure in the military's surveillance operations and a failure in appropriately informing the public of the case," Defense Minister Jeong Kyeong-doo said during a news conference to announce the results of a weekslong investigation into the case.

Then get that count, Doug:

In an interview on Global News Radio 640 Toronto on Tuesday, Ontario Premier Doug Ford stood by his government’s estimate of the backlog for autism support services, but also said the province needs to “get a handle on the exact count.”

The premier’s comments came days after The Globe and Mail reported the findings of an internal review of the government’s changes to the Ontario Autism Program, conducted by PC MPP Roman Baber.

Those findings, obtained by Global News, addressed the government’s claim that 23,000 children in Ontario are waiting for autism therapies and supports. That 23,000 figure is “unverified and is likely inaccurate,” Baber wrote in his report.

Asked on The Kelly Cutrara Show whether he stands by that number and believes it is accurate, Ford said he doesn’t believe his government spread any misinformation about the wait list, but then refrained from providing a number during the interview.

“I believe … since we’ve opened up a few more programs it’s actually going to be a little higher, but I’m not going to quantify any single number right off the top of my head,” Ford said on The Kelly Cutrara Show. “I can’t tell you the exact number.

“There seems to be numbers flying all over the place from the experts to other organizations. So we need to get a handle on the exact count.”

Were the veterans asking for two to three weeks more than what the government was willing to give?:

The long delays many veterans face when applying to the government for assistance for service-related injuries has reached a new milestone.

Former service members have long been promised that the vast majority will know within 16 weeks whether they are eligible for financial compensation or medical treatment.

But Veterans Affairs Canada says the average wait time for initial applications is now twice as long — 32 weeks — as requests for assistance outpace the department’s ability to process them.

But I thought that legalising prostitution was supposed to stop all sorts of problems:

Amsterdam’s first female mayor launched plans on Wednesday to overhaul the city’s red-light district and its window displays in a bid to protect sex workers from gawking tourists.

In what would be the most radical revamp of the sex trade there since the Netherlands legalized prostitution nearly two decades ago, Femke Halsema suggested stopping the practice of sex workers standing on display in window-fronted rooms entirely.

She said changes were needed because of social shifts, including the rise of human trafficking and an increase in the number of tourists visiting the district and using their phones to take and post pictures of the women.

Two women engineered the death of an innocent third-party. Watch the usual suspects freak out:

An Alabama district attorney said Wednesday she is dropping the manslaughter charge against a woman who lost her fetus when she was shot during a fight.

Marshae Jones was arrested last week after a grand jury concluded she intentionally caused the death of her fetus by initiating a fight, knowing she was pregnant.

Jones was five months pregnant when 23-year-old Ebony Jemison shot her in the stomach during a December argument over the fetus’ father, authorities said.

Jemison was initially charged with manslaughter, but a Jefferson County grand jury declined to indict her after police said an investigation determined Jones started the fight, and Jemison ultimately fired in self-defense. Jones, 28, was indicted by the same grand jury and arrested.

What the Taliban destroyed, someone must repair:

Hundreds of items were brought to Kabul from Hadda decades ago, but many of them were systematically smashed by the Taliban in the first months of 2001. Members of the museum staff surreptitiously collected and stored the fragments, but they sat untouched for years in the museum’s basement. Three years ago, a team of foreign and Afghan experts began working to restore them.