And the Rest of It

A bit going on ...




It's an election year!:

Conservative Leader Andrew Scheer says he would overcome legal objections to building new petroleum pipelines by fast tracking any cases right to the Supreme Court.

Scheer has long been critical of the Liberal government for spending $4.5 billion to buy the Trans Mountain pipeline when legal challenges gave private company Kinder Morgan Canada cold feet about proceeding with the expansion.

Scheer says Ottawa has to invoke federal jurisdiction to get important projects built but he has not until now explained what that would mean in practice.

Why? Did she wear blackface?:

A candidate for the People's Party of Canada in southeastern New Brunswick who says the "threat" of Islamism "overrunning our nation" is what inspired her to seek election, is facing criticism by two newcomer organizations for comments they say are racist.

Nancy Mercier, who is running in the riding of Beauséjour, says on her campaign website that she's an interfaith pastor and naturopath, not a politician.

But she's worried about the "frailty of our freedoms" and believes Canada needs "a stronger leadership that will do politics differently, which includes, putting Canadians and Canada first."

"We don't want terrorism, basically," she told CBC News. "We want people that are going to come that have values that, you know, we're going to remain safe in our communities."

Mercier contends "radical" individuals "who don't agree with the way that we do things" and are "not afraid to tell us," are already living in New Brunswick and across Canada.

How is Islam a race and how is it not responsible for the murder of Christians and Yazidis?




Things are at a stand-still in Israel:

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, seeing his chances of outright victory slipping as the final votes from this week’s election were counted, called Thursday for a power-sharing agreement with his chief political rival — who promptly shot him down.

Benny Gantz, head of the centre-left Blue and White party, said he was open to the idea of unity government as long he was at the top of it.

Netanyahu had rejected the idea of a unity government throughout the campaign, but he invited Gantz to “meet me today” soon after Blue and White was shown to have picked up another parliamentary seat, giving it a 33 to 31 seat edge over Netanyahu’s ruling Likud Party with 97 percent of the vote recorded.

“During the elections, I called for the establishment of the right-wing government,” said Netanyahu in a statement. “Unfortunately, election results show that this is not possible. Therefore, there is no choice but to form a broad unity government that is as wide as possible.”

In televised remarks later, Gantz stopped short of agreeing to meet with Netanyahu but expressed openness to the idea of a unity government, with himself as its head.

If the UN had been defunded and China economically crippled, as should have happened by now, people in North Korea would not be starving:

North Korea’s crop production this year is expected to drop to its lowest level in five years, bringing serious shortages for 40% of the population, as a dry spell and poor irrigation hit an economy already reeling from sanctions over its weapons programs, the United Nations said on Thursday.

In its latest quarterly Crop Prospects and Food Situation report, the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) said the poor harvest of the country’s main crops, rice and maize, means 10.1 million people are in urgent need of assistance.

“Below-average rains and low irrigation availability between mid-April and mid-July, a critical period for crop development, mainly affected the main season rice and maize crops,” the FAO said. The report didn’t disclose detailed estimates of production by volume.

North Korea has long struggled with food shortages and a dysfunctional state rationing system, and state media has in recent months warned of drought and other “persisting abnormal phenomena.”

No, they struggled with communist dictators using food as a means of control.