Mid-Week Post

Your middle-of-the-week refreshment ...




It's like there is a wave of impatience and irritation against China's favourite hand puppet (at least he was their favourite hand puppet until that whole 'failure to do what it asked' thing):

The Canada Growth Council, a free market advocacy group, has launched a series of billboards throughout southern Ontario aimed at convincing voters not to vote for Justin Trudeau and his Liberals.

“Would I hire this person that doesn’t keep any promises and has two ethics violations?” spokesman Derek Robinson said of Trudeau.

The group is running two different billboard messages at 38 locations in the GTA as well as the Hamilton/Niagara area.

Was it something he tried to say?




Well, it's not like he has ducked out in a cowardly manner before:

Justin Trudeau is being accused of hiding from some upcoming federal election debates, as he refuses to commit to attending the first debate.

On September 12th, a debate sponsored by Macleans & Citytv has already confirmed Scheer, Singh, and May as attendees.

However, Trudeau has not yet committed to attending.

So far, the Liberals have only committed to attending the two official debates in October.


Another debate – centred around foreign policy – will be taking place October 1st. Both Scheer and May have committed to attending, but Trudeau & Singh have not.

Aside from the fact that it is his job to answer questions from the public he serves (even if he is going to be coddled by the bribed press), it's another part of a pattern for Justin - a coward who thinks that service is beneath him.

Why Wynne was eventually voted out of office:

The Ontario Liberal cabinet approved more than $450,000 in enhanced severance packages for two top staffers in the premier’s office days after the party lost the 2018 election.

Details about the severance paid to former premier Kathleen Wynne’s top aides, Andrew Bevan and Mary Rowe, were released to The Globe and Mail under a Freedom of Information request.

Greedy b@$#@rds, the lot of them.

Also:

In a nutshell, Liberal Environment Minister Catherine McKenna pledged in June that the carbon tax would never go higher than $50. Because polls show that around two-thirds of voters oppose the tax, the $50 cap was a promise she and other ministers repeated at least three times.

But last month, the Liberals nominated a high-profile and vocal environmentalist, Steven Guilbeault, in a Montreal riding – a man who had earlier and forcefully said $50 a tonne was nowhere near high enough to encourage ordinary Canadians to change their use of fossil fuels enough to lower our country’s emissions.

Then this past weekend, McKenna herself failed to rule out a jump in the tax after it reaches the $50 level in 2022, despite her earlier assurances. The minister’s latest remarks – that the tax might have to go higher – drew praise from Guilbeault who called it “a very good thing” and added that the “price should reflect the cost of climate change to society.”

This carbon tax:

Ontario is taking its fight against the federal carbon tax to the country’s top court.

Environment Minister Jeff Yurek says the province is asking the Supreme Court of Canada to overturn a decision from Ontario’s Court of Appeal that found the carbon pricing scheme is constitutionally sound.

The Progressive Conservatives say the carbon charge is an illegal tax and a violation of the Constitution because it allows the federal government to intrude on provincial jurisdiction.

Scrap the damn thing because it is based on junk science and the greed of a reckless government.




The bigger question should be why hasn't this been implemented all across the country ages ago?:

Bill 21 is stretching that compromise right to the breaking point, however. The idea that Quebec’s restrictions on minority rights are a “provincial issue,” and that this explains their absence from the federal scene, is rather belied by the fact that Trudeau is running his campaign as much against Ontario Premier Doug Ford and his various budget cuts as he is against Scheer. If Alberta had instituted Bill 21 — which it wouldn’t, but if it had — we would be looking at a very different federal campaign. Liberals would hold it up as evidence of shameful, intolerable intolerance, and they would have a point.

Can it really be a purely “provincial issue” when a government uses Section 33 of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms to impose restrictions on minority rights that the prime minister considers “unthinkable”? What’s the point of national unity if it means keeping shtum on such a fundamental question of individual rights and freedoms? Federal leaders utterly deplore the restrictions — fine. Voters should ask them what exactly they intend to do about them.

If Canadians truly believed in personal liberty (as opposed to personal license), there would be a lot of different things going on. This was never about people choosing to affect a religious garb or talisman nor is it discriminatory measure. This is a stop-gap measure. Because people became lazy and refused to live and defend the culture they grew up, instead choosing to embrace the ridiculous and demonstrably false ethos of political multiculturalism, they are now being subsumed by cultures that don't care how cute urban liberals think gay cabaret is or that Western civilisation is why we have telecommunications, indoor plumbing and basic civil rights. The thumb-in-the-eye burqas (which stem from a misogynist culture - where are those feminists, by the way?) aren't just reactionary; they will be mandatory. Decades too late to the "stop this before it gets too big" party, the government, simultaneously afraid of giving offense and being overwhelmed by less timid cultures that just won't blend in, pretends that it is banning visible signs of belief to be egalitarian.

I'm afraid that the move is just too transparent.




Let the turfing begin!:

Despite the lobbying, and criticism from a former Canadian ambassador to Beijing and the province’s Liberal opposition, Cardy’s Progressive Conservative government announced Monday it will, in fact, end the school system’s contract with Confucius.

The province said it would immediately cancel the cultural lessons delivered in elementary and middle schools. It’s allowing language courses to continue in high schools until 2022 to comply with the contract the previous government signed with the organization.

The minister cited reports he’s received from several parents about the institute restricting or distorting discussion of China, including teachers barring talk about the Tiananmen Square massacre or insisting Taiwan was part of the People’s Republic.

One class had a map that clearly indicated that China did, in fact, include Taiwan, he said.
It reminded the minister of a past life with the National Democratic Institute, a U.S.-based democracy-promotion agency. In the early 2000s, Cardy witnessed up-close China’s rapidly growing sway in Nepal and Cambodia.

“I was concerned when I saw that same playbook being operated here in Canada, and our school system being used as a conduit for extending that influence.”

If teachers and parents focused on students' studies instead of their feelings and the fifty genders alleged to exist (gender is a grammatical construct, by the way, but I digress ...), this wouldn't be an issue now:

Math scores continue to fall as more and more Ontario elementary school students struggle to meet provincial standards, according to the latest standardized test results released Wednesday.

Education Minister Stephen Lecce called the results “disappointing.” He said the province will embark on a curriculum rewrite and in the meantime invest $55-million in schools this year to train educators and expand online tutoring for students.

Results from the province’s Education Quality and Accountability Office (EQAO) showed that the proportion of Grade 3 students who meet provincial standards on math tests has also dropped, to 58 per cent from 61 in the 2018-19 academic year.

The number of Grade 6 children who met provincial standards dipped to a record low in the 2018-19 academic year: fewer than half – 48 per cent – met the provincial standard in math, a decline of one percentage point from the previous year and two percentage points lower than three years ago. (The provincial standard is equivalent to a B grade.)

The EQAO said research has shown that for students in those grades, their basic math skills are stronger than their ability to apply those skills to a problem or think critically to find an answer.

(Sidebar: governments aren't fond of voters who think critically.) 

The government is always an impediment:

Why does most of Africa stay poor while other parts of the world prosper?

People blame things like climate, the history of colonialism, racism, etc.

But I say Senegalese businesswoman Magatte Wade gives the right explanation: too many rules.

"Once you hire someone, good luck getting rid of them for any reason," Wade complains. Her government must approve every firing.

"Then the tax code is so complicated... worth at least two or three truckloads of paper."

Wade started a lip balm company. Some of her ingredients are not made in Senegal, so she imports them. To "protect" Senegalese manufacturers, the government makes importing ingredients expensive.

"Some have a 70% import tariff on them!" she says.

President Donald Trump now threatens similar taxes on imports from China.

In Africa, people sometimes escape such taxes by paying bribes. We hear a lot about African corruption.

"People complain about corruption as if corruption is a root problem," says Wade. "I say no. Corruption is a natural consequence of stupid, senseless, idiot laws."

That could very well be a chicken-or-the-egg argument (without stupid people, would the government have to step in and develop over-reaching laws?) but Miss Wade is spot-on. Corruption at every level, especially at the government level, is why there is massive poverty and unrest.

It's time for Japan and South Korea to get it together and realise where their real troubles lie:

Japan formally downgraded its trade status with South Korea on Wednesday in a move that will put further strain on a crumbling bilateral relationship in which everything from cultural exchange and tourism to security cooperation is now in jeopardy.

** 

First, identify the problem. While the U.S. sees mostly a convergence of national interests between South Korea and Japan by virtue of the growing North Korea threat, the reality is very different. 

Current South Korean leaders subscribe to an ideology of pan-Korean ethno-tribalism. “Common bloodline comes before alliance,” as a former South Korean president said. 

The Kim Jong Un regime views domination of the wealthier South — a magnet to the people of the oppressive, immiserated North — as the sine qua non to its long-term regime preservation. The North Korean Constitution defines “the final victory of the revolution,” a not-so-subtle reference to the North’s emergence as the sole de facto and de jure Korean state.

Many, if not most, Koreans in the South and the North view Japan as an unrepentant former oppressor. They resolutely believe Japan was historically inferior to Korea in culture and material wealth until a dramatic program of modernization in the late 19th century. Deep is Korean condescension against Japan, exacerbated by a collective inferiority complex as manifested in South Korean President Moon Jae-In’s remark, “We will never again lose to Japan,” following Japan’s announcement of restrictions on exports of chemicals that are crucial to South Korea’s semiconductor industry.

Second, be positioned to predict Korean ploys — for example, the “Korean comedy of errors” that was the first summit between Moon and Kim in April 2018. This feel-good moment was designed to mislead the U.S. into believing that through summit pageantry President Trump can induce Kim to part with his nuclear programs. Kim would win a political cover against future provocations and more time to build the bomb, and Moon would score a political victory by disarming the South Korean public under the illusion of peace.

Be also aware of Japan’s initiatives and responses that are adverse to U.S. interests. Japan is neither a passive party nor an innocent victim vis-à-vis the Koreas. The Japanese, too, view Koreans through the lens of condescension as overly-emotional and stubborn. For example, Japan in recent years has claimed that the South Korean government has been “moving the goalposts,” reneging on agreements and demanding apologies from the Japanese government. Seldom, if ever, is the point made that key Japanese officials effectively have denied their predecessors’ landmark apologies with inflammatory acts as well as obfuscatory and revisionist statements of their own.

(Kamsahamnida)

Language can be quite a tricky thing at times:

Upon arriving in Japan in 1549 to convert the natives to Christianity, it is not surprising that St. Francis Xavier ran into communication difficulties. While he was positive overall about the Japanese people, he came up with a remarkable theory about their language. He found communication so challenging that he wrote of his belief that the Japanese language had been planted by the Devil in order to stymie Christian missionary work.

A country of devil-tongued natives? I wonder what embarrassing communication mishap was preying on his mind the day he wrote that letter?

There are plenty of candidates for the element of Japanese study that could have driven St. Francis over the edge: kanji; the lack of a grammatical subject; kanji; the special humble and polite forms of address; more kanji; the lack of clear differentiation between present and future tense; and even more kanji.

But my theory is that it was not the structure of the Japanese language per se, but the confusing (to outsiders) way it is used. Japanese have made an art form of white lies and well-meaning pretences every bit as deep as the tea ceremony. Some social interactions cannot simply be slurped down with milk and two sugars. They must be ritually cleansed, rotated, sipped, rotated again, sipped and appropriately admired … and ritually wiped clean.

And now, what was found in the HMS Terror:

First pictures from inside the HMS Terror, part of the doomed Franklin Expedition, show tidy rows of crockery, neatly stowed storage lockers — even a propeller sitting solidly in place as if ready for a head of steam.

“Overturned armchairs, thermometers on the wall, stacked plates, chamberpots, washbasins — often in their correct position,” said Ryan Harris, one of a team of Parks Canada underwater archaeologists probing the secrets of the British warship lost around 1848 while searching for the Northwest Passage.

“We were able to see an incredible array of artifacts.”

Cool.