Friday Post

For the first of November ...




It's called "plausible deniability" and it can be used for anything ranging from incompetence to outright corruption:

A Wilfrid Laurier professor who created a controversial guide for Muslim voters using federal funds did so without the knowledge of her funder, a spokesman for the federal agency says.

Andrea Matyas told the Toronto Sun that the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC)  — the federal research funding agency that promotes and supports postsecondary-based research — had no prior knowledge of the Canadian Muslim Voters Guide being created and was “not consulted” in the development of the document.

Matyas said SSHRC provided Zine a $24,923 Partnership Engagement grant for a “Mapping the Canadian Islamophobia Industry” project, not for the Voter’s Guide. ...

The Toronto Sun revealed a week ago that the guide — released three days before the Oct. 21 election — was put together by Jasmine Zine — a professor of sociology and Muslim studies — and graduate students Patima Chakroun and Shifa Abbas.

The guide’s cover stated at the time that it was supported by a SSHRC grant — the $24,923 Partnership Engagement grant she got last September.

Zine, who also received an $80,339 SSHRC grant in 2009 to research Canadian Muslim youth post 9/11, gave Conservative Leader Andrew Scheer a series of failing grades in her 34-page guide for allegedly associating with far-right Islamophobic figures, for opposing the M-103 motion and the anti-Israel Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement and for proposing immigration policies that “compromise asylum seekers.”

Her guide claims that re-elected Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has been subject to “Islamophobic hate campaigns” and suggests his blackface antics are OK because of his public stance against Islamophobia.

So the government's excuse for this clearly extremist drivel isn't malice but stupidity.

Okay then.




Why shouldn't the RCMP honour an extradition treaty with a friendly neighbouring country and why shouldn't it share details pertinent to a criminal investigation with another law enforcement agency?:

Lawyers for Huawei executive Meng Wanzhou maintain there is an “air of reality” to allegations the RCMP shared details of her electronic devices with the Federal Bureau of Investigation despite new affidavits from Mounties denying the claim.

The allegation is a key part of the defence’s argument that the RCMP, Canada Border Services Agency and FBI conspired to conduct a “covert criminal investigation” at Vancouver’s airport on Dec. 1, 2018, illegally detaining and questioning Meng and seizing her devices before she was formally arrested.

The Crown denied that Mounties shared details of Meng’s phones, laptop and tablet with the FBI at a British Columbia Supreme Court hearing in early October, prompting a judge to order several officers to produce affidavits on the topic.

 
One can see that this is leading to freeing Meng Wanzhou because that is what China wants.


Also - just get Justin to testify on their behalf. What could go wrong?:

Paying bribes to obtain lucrative Libyan construction contracts was once the business model for a division of SNC-Lavalin, prosecutors said Thursday as the fraud and corruption trial of a former employee of the engineering giant got underway.

Sami Bebawi, 73, faces eight charges including fraud, corruption, laundering proceeds of crime, possession of stolen goods and bribery of foreign officials. The case involves contracts tied to the Libyan dictatorship of Moammar Gadhafi.

Bebawi was charged in 2014 and has pleaded not guilty.

Is this fossil still around?:

Many times the Liberal had little support in our part of the country, long before what Chretien says is “the so-called crisis on energy.”

(Sidebar: this Chretien.)

In fact, it’s kind of normal. That’s it.

Hang on to your seats. Chretien is just warming up in the bullpen. He meanders and the dots don’t always connect.

The former Liberal PM says people exaggerate. At $100 oil all is well, at $50 oil “it was not your fault but it’s certainly not the fault of Trudeau either.”

Then Chretien says those two words. He says oil is a problem because of the “tar sands.”

Chretien says he’s very proud of the “tar sands” but the problem of oil and pipelines has nothing to do with Justin Trudeau.

As was astutely pointed out in the comments section, tar is synthetic but oil is not.

So there's that.




Abolish teachers' unions:

Public elementary teachers in Ontario have voted 98 per cent in favour of a strike should it become necessary.

The Elementary Teachers’ Federation of Ontario is calling the result of the vote an “overwhelming” mandate from its 83,000 members.

The union filed for conciliation last month, saying bargaining with Premier Doug Ford’s Progressive Conservative government had reached a virtual standstill.

High school teachers and teachers in the English Catholic system are also holding strike votes, with results expected in the next couple of weeks.

Well, then, South Korea, boycott them and start arming yourselves big-time:

Leading Chinese travel agencies still do not sell any package tours to Korea since an unofficial Chinese boycott of Korean service and goods that started in late 2016. The boycott was triggered by Korea allowing the U.S. to station a Terminal High-Altitude Area Defense battery here whose powerful radar Beijing fears.

China International Travel Service, one of the country's largest tour agencies, offers no tours to Korea, and neither does Ctrip, China's biggest mobile travel app. One travel industry insider said, "Large Chinese travel agencies are being prevented from selling package tours to Korea. Individual travel is allowed, but group tours are prohibited by tourism authorities."

To stop the boycott, the Korean government agreed on Oct. 31, 2017 not to join in the U.S.-led missile defense shield, prevent more THAAD batteries from being stationed here, and refrain from forging a closer trilateral defense alliance with the U.S. and Tokyo. China in turn signaled it would lift the boycott. 

At the time, the Korean government said the THAAD dispute had been resolved, but Chinese retaliation continues today. 

(Sidebar: this China.)

Power through vindictiveness.


Also - very Mao!:

(source)

How is that Singapore thing working out?:

North Korea launched two projectiles into the East Sea from South Pyongan Province on Thursday afternoon, the regime's 12th missile test this year. 

"We detected two unidentified short-range projectiles the North fired towards the East Sea from Sunchon, South Pyongan Province" at around 4:30 p.m., the Joint Chiefs of Staff here said. 

Sunchon is on the west coast, and they flew about 370 km at an altitude of some 90 km. The JCS said they were probably a North Korean version of the Army Tactical Missile System (ATACMS) or rounds from a super-large multiple rocket launcher.

The Japanese Defense Ministry said they "appeared to be ballistic missiles."

Also - now this is useful:

The US House of Representatives has passed a bill to offer up to $25 million in reward for reporting violations of its sanctions, including those imposed against North Korea, according to the Voice of America on Friday.

The bill amends existing laws to expand the State Department’s reward program, which is limited to reporting on terror-related activities, to information on breach of sanctions by the US and the UN.

Oh, you just realised that welfare doesn't work?:

Welfare spending will increase 35.4 percent in next year's fiscal budget. During the three years of the Moon Jae-in administration it has grown by W52 trillion, which is the same as during the previous two administrations' combined. Due to the failure of Moon’s “income-led” growth policy, the actual amount of money the bottom bracket of wage earners make has declined, so the number of households that receive welfare payments has grown 24 percent over the last three years to 10.27 million. The government has made people poorer and is now having to pay them public money to make up for it. That is how Latin American and South European countries have gone bankrupt, and the same could happen to Korea.