Saturday Post

 

Did he ever really leave?:

Among the 60 people who gathered at a downtown Ottawa hotel for a day and a half this month to discuss the Liberal government's campaign for re-election was Gerry Butts, the senior adviser and close friend of Justin Trudeau who left the Prime Minister's Office five months ago in the midst of Trudeau's painful spring.

In February, Butts stepped away because his presence — and the suggestion that he was somehow involved in inappropriately pressuring the former attorney general — threatened to be a drag on the government's ability to pursue its mandate. From the outside, Butts was able to mount his own defence against Jody Wilson-Raybould's accusations.

The return of Butts (who was widely credited with helping to define the Trudeau Liberal message and narrative in the first place) might reassure Liberals who valued his contribution to the 2015 campaign and the first three-and-a-half years of the Trudeau government.

Because Justin is as eloquent as a drunken turtle with its mouth taped shut.

Who is running Canada today, Justin - the Americans, the Chinese or Butts? 




Why not release his name?: 

A federal labour board has upheld the 2015 firing of a Canada Revenue Agency employee who worked next to the Calgary airport and wrote frequent Twitter and Facebook posts that “appeared to glorify the Boston Marathon terror bombing, celebrate the deaths of NATO military personnel, and cheer the downing of aircraft.”

The ruling, handed down May 16 but published online Friday, took the unusual step of anonymizing the man’s name after adjudicator Bryan Gray determined the former employee, who practices Islam and immigrated from Afghanistan in 1999, had already experienced racism in his day-to-day life.

“I accept the submissions of his representative that this decision, if it is published with his full name, could significantly increase the risk of this racist treatment being exacerbated,” he wrote.

The former employee, called A.B. in the ruling, lasted only ten days at the Canada Revenue Agency in January 2015. He worked in a call centre located on the grounds of Calgary airport, connected to the airport terminal by an indoor walkway.

Who vets these people?




Consider in Canada that this pervert would be wandering about:

Jeffrey Epstein, the rich businessman who served time more than a decade ago for soliciting a minor for prostitution, will await trial, on charges of sex trafficking dozens of underage girls, from behind bars.

A judge denied Epstein’s request for bail on Thursday. If convicted, Epstein, who pleaded not guilty, could spend the rest of his life in prison. ...


Here’s how jail-time exemptions work in Canada:

You’re likely familiar with conditional sentences. That’s when you’re convicted of an offence that carries a sentence of less than two years’ imprisonment and, rather than sending you to a provincial jail, the court orders you to carry out your sentence in the community — with conditions. That’s a type of sentence usually reserved for people who don’t pose a safety risk.

Another option is an intermittent sentence, occasionally referred to publicly as weekends in jail. In purely time terms — meaning the ratio of time spent in jail versus time spent out of jail during a prison sentence — that’s probably closest to what Epstein served when he was allowed out for 12-hour stretches most days. However, in Canada, this type of sentence is only for people who face 90 days or less in jail. ...

 


There was a time when seizing a British ship meant serious trouble:

Two British oil tankers were seized by Iran’s Revolutionary Guards in the Strait of Hormuz on Friday night, in a major escalation of tensions in the Gulf.

The British-flagged Stena Impero had been en route to Saudi Arabia, but abruptly changed course and began sailing towards the Iranian island of Qeshm, data relayed by maritime tracking services showed.

The 30,000-tonne ship “went dark”, meaning its transponder was turned off, at 4.29pm UK time and nothing has been heard from her or her 23 crew since.

A second oil tanker, the British-operated, Liberian-flagged Mesdar, was intercepted by the Guards about 40 minutes after the course shift by Stena Impero, and was held for some time before being allowed to resume navigation.

Consider that protesting in Russia could mean enduring a beating from police. In Canada, no one would bother because they are lazy:
 

More than 10,000 people took to the streets of Moscow on Saturday to protest against the exclusion of most opposition-minded candidates from an election for the Russian capital’s legislature. 

Election officials barred around 30 candidates, mostly opposition-leaning, from running for the 45-seat legislature on the grounds they failed to garner enough genuine signatures from voters to qualify. 

The barred candidates say they have secured the required number of signatures, but that they had been excluded because they were challenging the control over the legislature exercised by those loyal to President Vladimir Putin. 

Police said around 12,000 people took part in the protests, while opposition groups said the figure was higher. Local authorities gave permission for the protest to go ahead, and there were no reports of any arrests.

The boss of an anime studio, burned due to arson, cannot explain what happened:

Many victims of an arson attack on a Japanese animation studio were young with bright futures, some joining only in April, the shaken company president said on Saturday, as the death toll climbed to 34.

Thursday’s attack on Kyoto Animation, well known for its television series and movies, was the worst mass killing in two decades in a country with one of the world’s lowest crime rates.

It was all the more poignant because of the young age of many of the victims when Japan has one of the world’s oldest populations.

Many of the victims were young women, company president Hideaki Hatta said.

“Some of them joined us just in April. And on the eighth of July, I gave them a small, but their first, bonus,” he said.

“People who had a promising future lost their lives. I don’t know what to say. Rather than feeling anger, I just don’t have words,” Hatta said.

Fifteen of the dead were in their 20s and 11 were in their 30s, public broadcaster NHK said. Six were in their 40s and one was at least 60. The age of the latest victim, a man who died in hospital, was not known and names have not yet been disclosed.

Authorities on Saturday issued an arrest warrant for 41-year-old Shinji Aoba on suspicion of arson and murder, NHK said.

But Trump could not bring his country and North Korea together:

US President Donald Trump said Friday he remained at the ready to help South Korea and Japan solve their lingering dispute over World War II-era forced labor that has blighted their trade ties.

After South Korea's high court ordered Japanese firms that used forced labor to compensate victims, Tokyo in early July restricted exports of chemicals vital to Seoul's world-leading chip and smartphone industry in an escalation of their decades-old row.

Also - any excuse not to sit at the table, eh, North Korea?:

North Korea on Saturday claimed that Japanese export restrictions targeting South Korean companies are politically motivated and aimed at getting more votes in an upcoming election.

Japan has tightened regulations on exports to South Korea of three critical industrial materials in an apparent retaliation over last year's South Korean Supreme Court rulings that ordered Japanese firms to compensate victims of forced labor during Japan's 1910-45 colonial rule of the Korean Peninsula.

The North's official Korean Central News Agency said Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe has the sinister intention of creating a favorable political climate ahead of the elections for the upper house of Japan's parliament on Sunday.

And - this is the margin for good childcare - getting fed:

Collective farms and factories rated “level three” or higher all operate their own childcare centers. 

Smaller factories or enterprises usually have their own childcare centers, but employees can send their kids to local centers. Full-time housewives generally take care of their children at home, making it easier to send them to kindergarten.

“[These women] hire childcare providers to look after their children at home rather than sending them to childcare centers. This ensures the kids avoid any issues that arise from being with other children, and allows the mothers to have more control over what their kids eat,” the source said. “Wealthy families tend to hire private childcare providers instead of sending their kids to state-run centers.”

The preference by many North Koreans for home childcare is based on a number of factors. While the source conceded that state-run and private providers offer similar services and that the state-run centers are more professional, home-based services allow providers to focus on a single child at a time.

“Regular childcare centers don’t provide anything except for diapers, so parents provide the milk, glutinous rice flour, rice and snacks for the children,” a source in North Pyongan Province reported.

This means that parents have to shell out more money to pay for food and other necessities. Parents pay up to 100 yuan – a substantial sum. However, the source said that many parents see it as a necessity.

She suggested that the rise in preferences toward home-based childcare services is due to North Korea’s recent economic difficulties. Parents need all-day childcare services because they are working from dawn until dusk.

(Kamsahamnida) 




And now, fifty years ago, human achievement hit its highest point.

Literally:

In total, it’s estimated that it took approximately 400,000 scientists, engineers, and technicians to make Apollo 11’s mission a success.