Sunday, December 29, 2019

For a Sunday





I'm sure these acts of violence are not related to whatever people think that they are related to:

Two people are dead after a gunman opened fire at a church in Texas.

A spokesperson for the Fort Worth Fire Department told reporters police received a report of a shooting at West Freeway Church of Christ in White Settlement just before 10 a.m. Sunday.

He said three patients were transported to hospital in critical condition — including the person believed to be the shooter.

This shooter:



 

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An intruder with a large knife burst into the home of a Hasidic rabbi in a New York suburb Saturday, stabbing five people just as they were gathering to light candles for Hanukkah, officials and a witness said.

It was a terrifying scene, the officials and witness reported, saying that the violence occurred at about 10 p.m. as numerous people were celebrating Hanukkah at the home of the rabbi, Chaim Rottenberg, in Monsey, which is in an area with a large population of ultra-Orthodox Jews.

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The London Metropolitan Police said Sunday that it is investigating after anti-Semitic graffiti was discovered on a synagogue and several store fronts in the Hampstead area.

The Star of David, the symbol of Jewish identity, and "911" were spray-painted on store fronts in the Hampstead and Belsize Park area and on the South Hampstead Synagogue, according to images shared by Oliver Cooper, a Conservative councillor for Hampstead. "911" refers to a conspiracy theory casting blame on Jewish people for the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.

Maybe global warming or mental illness are to blame.




Rachel Notley wants to take another bit of the electoral apple:

In the last five years, Rachel Notley has gone from third-party leader, to government leader to Opposition leader, but says she will try again for Alberta's top job in 2023.

The reason, she says, grows from the steady drip of broken promises, half-truths, no-truths, gaslighting and self-dealing from Premier Jason Kenney and the governing United Conservatives.

"There's no way to critically oppose this (government) to make it better. We just need to change this," said Notley in a year-end interview.

"We need to take back our province and get it back on track. I'm a leader and so that's what I've committed to do."

I'll just leave these right here: 

With dry conditions and dozens of blazes already burning across Alberta, Premier Rachel Notley said Tuesday her government’s decision to slash the wildfire budget by $15 million this year won’t impact the province’s firefighting efforts. 

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Alberta’s unemployment rate rose half a percentage point compared to last month, reaching 7.3 per cent.

Calgary’s unemployment rate is now the highest among Canadian cities at 7.6 per cent, while Edmonton’s sits at seven per cent.

Premier Rachel Notley was discouraged to hear the latest job numbers.



If the NDP take Saskatchewan, the most merciful thing one could do to that province is nuke it from orbit:
Saskatchewan’s premier and Opposition leader are heading into an election year and looking to dig into each other’s political bases.

Voters are to go to the polls in the fall in what will be the first provincial election for Premier Scott Moe as Saskatchewan Party leader and for the NDP’s Ryan Meili, both of whom came to power through leadership contests.



Politicians need to listen to each other on unity, says Nova Scotian toady:

Canada’s politicians have to listen to one another to address economic rifts that could hinder national unity, Nova Scotia’s premier says, as he adds his voice to calls for changes to the federal government’s fiscal stabilization program.

“I worry that the country has an East-West feel to it which is not a healthy thing for Canada,” Stephen McNeil said in a recent year-end interview with The Canadian Press.

I hope Alberta cuts you off, you Carrie Lam clone.




Speaking of Carrie Lam ... :

Citing a letter from a young Hong Konger appealing for people "not to believe the Communists", Taiwan President Tsai Ing-wen said on Sunday the island's democratic way of life was at risk from the danger China posed to Taiwan.

The months of anti-government protests in Chinese-ruled Hong Kong have taken centre stage in Taiwan ahead of the Jan. 11 presidential and parliamentary elections, with Tsai in particular warning Taiwan would be next if it gives into Chinese pressure and accepts Beijing's rule.

Speaking at a televised presidential debate, Tsai read excerpts from a letter she said she received from a young person in Hong Kong. She did not name the person nor say when the letter was written.

Tsai read from the letter: "'I ask that Taiwan's people not believe the Chinese Communists, don't believe any pro-Communist official, and don't fall into China's money trap.'"

I have been saying that for ages. 


Also:

But that was then. Now, it would seem, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has taken it on as his own great idea. Put another way, if you thought that after everything that has happened, Canada’s China policy had been finally expunged of the creepy influences exerted by such disgraced Chrétien-era fixtures as John McCallum, you thought wrong. It’s as though McCallum is back, and he’s now writing Trudeau’s scripts.

You would never know it from the headlines. “Canada to U.S.: Don’t sign China deal until Canadians released.” “Trudeau says he asked U.S. to stall China trade deal until Canadians released.” “Trudeau asks U.S. to not sign China trade deal until Spavor, Kovrig are released.” And on and on.

But that’s not what Trudeau actually said, which was buried in most accounts of his cheery banter with the peppy hosts of the morning show Salut Bonjour on Quebec’s TVA network, in French, just before he jetted off to Costa Rica for the holidays. It was this: “We’ve said that the United States should not sign a final and complete agreement with China that does not settle the question of Meng Wanzhou and the two Canadians.”

That’s not just a pathetic Hail Mary effort to persuade Donald Trump’s White House to stall a “trade war” armistice to correct a half-a-trillion-dollar imbalance with China on behalf of diplomat-on-leave Michael Kovrig and entrepreneur Michael Spavor — the two Canadians nabbed in a hostage-diplomacy kidnapping and imprisonment only days after Meng, chief financial officer for Beijing’s “national champion” telecom giant, was apprehended on a U.S. Justice Department warrant in Vancouver. Nor is it just a suggestion that Trump somehow cut Meng Wanzhou some undeserved slack, for no benefit to the United States.

It’s also almost word for word what McCallum said after Trump claimed last December that he could somehow finagle the U.S. Justice Department’s retreat from its efforts at prosecuting Meng on charges of bank fraud and evading U.S. sanctions on Iran, if it would sweeten the American deal in the China trade talks. Said McCallum at the time: “We have to make sure that if the U.S. does such a deal, it also includes the release of our two people.”

The arrest of Kovrig and Spavor was the first retaliatory act in a series of aggressive, costly, rule-flouting extortions Beijing has exacted from Canada over the past year, including massive damage to the agricultural sector and constant threats of further punch-ups.

Trump’s admission that he would be pleased to capitulate from the principle of judicial independence in Meng’s case was not just a profound embarrassment to Chrystia Freeland, our Foreign Affairs Minister at the time. McCallum’s enthusiastic public endorsement of it was an act of mutiny against Freeland, who had been loudly asserting that Canada’s adherence to the rule of law might sometimes mean keeping legal faith with democracies like the United States and upsetting cold-blooded tyrants like China’s Xi Jinping.


And:

 China’s Commerce Ministry has “proactively dealt with” trade frictions with the United States this year, it said on Sunday after an annual work conference. 

The ministry has implemented the decisions of the central government and “resolutely safeguarded the interests of the country and the people”, it said in a statement on its website.

I call horse pucky on that.




How is that Singapore thing working out?:

North Korea has opened a high-profile political conference to discuss how to overcome “harsh trials and difficulties,” state media reported Sunday, days before a year-end deadline set by Pyongyang for Washington to make concessions in nuclear negotiations.

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After Washington dismissed the North’s Dec. 31 deadline as “artificial,” North Korea warned this month that it was entirely up to the Trump administration “what Christmas gift it will select to get.” ​This month, it conducted two ground tests at its missile engine test site to bolster what it called its “nuclear deterrent​.”



Hey, Emmanuel, do you remember when you and your girlfriend, Justin, were braiding each other's hair and calling Trump names behind his back?:






And now, spreading the universal cheer of drinks:

Another fruit-based beverage, sujeonggwa gets a kick from the cinnamon, fresh ginger and dried persimmons with which it’s brewed. The drink has been around for about a millennium, and for the last century or so, it’s been linked to the New Year, according to the Encyclopedia of Korean Seasonal Customs. Koreans serve this booze-free “cinnamon punch” at the end of a meal, sprinkled with pine nuts and sometimes other touches like citrus peel or lotus petals. 




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