For a Friday

Quickly now ...




Britain is out of what is still a bad idea:

More than three and a half years after Britain voted to leave the European Union (EU), Brexit has finally happened.

At midnight Brussels time on Friday, British flags were removed from EU offices, and the EU flag was lowered on the British premises, marking the nation’s official departure from the EU and ending its 47-year membership.

Never forget that petty little people are tying up the government, preventing it from addressing the nation's business, because of a loss in 2016:

The Senate narrowly rejected Democratic demands to summon witnesses for President Donald Trump’s impeachment trial late Friday, all but ensuring Trump's acquittal in just the third trial to threaten a president's removal in U.S. history. But senators pushed off final voting on his fate to next Wednesday.

The business of the Canadian government is not to do everything in its power to prevent a virus that has killed 259 people from entering the country or quarantine the infected or contain it or even hold to account a government that has been less than truthful about this virus and its nature and origins from the beginning but to exert its unimpeachable power over a citizenry that knew what the government was planning and did nothing about it:

The absolute gist of the situation has only three elements. Mr. Levant wrote a book critical of the Liberal government. He advertised it via billboard and lawn signs. (For the unwary, it is a feature of publishing a book that it be advertised, and, surprisingly, even a book criticizing a government). 

Elections Canada wrote to him that he thereby “contravened the (Canada Elections) Act … having incurred over $500 on elections advertising expenses.” 

So he’s summoned, under threat of penalty, to come to Elections Canada and explain himself to two of its investigators, to tell why he did not “register” his book. Many thoughts occur. Here are a couple. 

Can anybody give the name of any other book, ever, which has been the subject of an investigation by Elections Canada? 

Is Elections Canada starved for actual work? 

Is this “investigation” (the scare quotes are necessary here) a Canadian analogue, via Alice in Wonderland and The Friendly Giant, of the American saga of “Russian collusion?” 

When will PEN Canada, defender of authors and journalists, take up the banner for Mr. Levant? 

**

I’m sure none of this will deter the prime minister’s ego-driven campaign for a seat on the UN Security Council. Besides making the already fraught Aboriginal consent issue even worse by adopting UNDRIP, he courted popularity with the UN’s notoriously anti-Israel membership by voting in favour of a motion condemning that country as an “occupying power.” Many observers believe his decision to send our troops on a high-risk and dysfunctional UN mission to Mali was another tactic to gain support for his Security Council membership.

Canadians should be outraged that their prime minister and his government hampers the country’s ability to carry out nationally important projects, betrays long-standing international allies and risks the lives of our troops to secure a powerless seat on a dysfunctional international organization.

(Sidebar: they should be but won't because pot and killing old people are priorities for Canadians.)

**

Sen. Lynn Beyak should be suspended again without pay, the Senate's ethics committee recommended Friday.

Beyak's colleagues ousted her from the upper chamber temporarily last spring after condemning as racist several letters she had posted to her website.

The Ontario senator had published letters supporting her view that some Indigenous people had had positive experiences in residential schools, which the Truth and Reconciliation Commission concluded caused generations of First Nations, Metis and Inuit children to suffer abuse and alienation.

Some of the letters went beyond that, suggesting Indigenous people or their cultures are inferior.

Beyak's suspension ended automatically when Parliament was dissolved for the federal election last fall.

(Sidebar: I'll just leave this right here.)



When one's government has these as priorities, one simply cannot ask for a new government.

One is well past that point.




Canadians support abortion not because they have thoroughly considered the issue, not because they have weighed it carefully in their minds and certainly not because the act is a moral, medical, political or economic good. They support it for the same reasons that they do nothing about their totalitarian government, the carbon tax, killing the elderly and disabled and drugs - they don't care about anything else but themselves:

 A vast majority of Canadians believe abortion should be illegal in the third trimester of pregnancy, from 28 weeks onward. But if a fetus could be grown in “biobags,” how might we feel about abortions even in the second, between 14 and 28 weeks?

Why? Does the baby magically become human at that point or it's tough to kill someone whose cries in a hospital hallway could end up in a sticky legal intervention?

But Wait! There's More!

Often, there is ...




That's not what they said a week ago:

The World Health Organization declared the outbreak sparked by a new virus in China that has spread to more than a dozen countries as a global emergency Thursday after the number of cases spiked more than tenfold in a week.

See. How hard was that?

Then again, the WHO also thought that North Korea had a stellar healthcare system, so ...


Not to worry. The Canadian government has everything under control ... -ish:

The government is sending a plane for the nearly 200 Canadians stuck under quarantine in Wuhan, China, but when that will happen and how those passengers will be dealt with when they arrive is still uncertain.

Health Minister Patty Hajdu said the government is working with Chinese officials to determine when Canada can send a flight for the Canadians, but she said it’s a difficult logistical challenge.

“We don’t have the information yet, so I am not going to stand here and give Canadians misinformation,” she said. “We are flying a non-commercial flight into a new country that is under quarantine, that has some very strict protocols on where planes can land.”

Oh. You mean that you have no idea what you are doing?

Right.

The same government that is scrambling to get idiot nationals out of China (being in China just isn't worth the money) is also saying with the mouth on its other face that this coronavirus (the one spreading faster than SARS - the other illness from China. Two cases were reported in Italy.) is nothing to worry about knows full well that it has been caught with its pants down.




The Canadian government can't manage to restrict flights from China, quarantine the possibly infected or even rustle up one of Justin's jets to bring back Canadian passport-holders but it can mimic China in its early Maoist days:

In a video released on social media, Levant recorded the absurd and disturbing proceedings, where the government agents wouldn’t even tell him the complaint against him. They had Levant in to supposedly ‘defend himself,’ but wouldn’t tell him who the complainant was, wouldn’t tell him who the complainant was, and wouldn’t give him any details. They wouldn’t even show him the documents alleging a complaint against him.

**

Yesterday an advisory panel released a report entitled, “Canada’s Communications Future: Time To Act”, citing” a “crisis in news.” It recommends all media content services fall under the Act and regulation by the Canadian Radio Television and Telecommunications Commission.”

These advisors are typically partisan hacks, never mind their claims of nonpartisan independence (e.g. Michael Wernick).

Given the fact that Prime Minister Justin Trudeau spent $130,000 trying to bar conservative journalists from covering this past election, and has announced his intention to regulate and censor Canadians’ social media, this is both unsurprising and extremely dangerous for the future of democracy in Canada.

(Merci)




Richard Decarie should run as an independent:

Décarie is backed by a veteran team of social conservative organizers — including Brad Trost and Russ Kuykendall — who plan to use Décarie’s network in Quebec to make him a serious contender for the leadership. In the 2017 leadership race, Trost finished a surprising fourth out of 14 candidates, surpassing many higher-profile candidates such as Michael Chong, Kellie Leitch, Lisa Raitt and Steven Blaney. But after Décarie appeared on national TV and claimed that being gay is a choice, he was roundly condemned by other leadership hopefuls, and many senior Conservatives called for him to be disqualified. “It is an unacceptable perspective for a mainstream party,” said Kory Teneycke, a former senior aide to both Stephen Harper and Doug Ford, in a CBC appearance shortly after Décarie’s comments. “My view is he should not be allowed to run. There has to be a line somewhere…. Nobody wants to be in a party that’s defined by bigotry.” (Members of Teneycke’s consultancy firm are working for leadership candidate Peter MacKay, though Teneycke says he’s staying neutral in the race.)

Any major party that would tow the utterly false line of lifestyle choices being innate and worth pandering to in some delusion that doing so equals managerial competence is not worth supporting.

Not that this country will ever see another election.

Justin's Chinese bosses simply wouldn't allow it.




And people said that there would never be a slippery slope:

As Canada is set to extend medical aid in dying to people who are not necessarily about to die naturally anyway, an expert panel of clinicians and ethicists is recommending the new law not exclude people whose only medical condition is a mental disorder.

Take a pay-cut:

In fact, the education changes the government wants are not driven by Ford’s imagined personality traits, but by the need to modestly constrain education spending and a desire to ever so slightly modernize a school system that is fiercely resistant to change.

To some it’s extremely distasteful to even consider money when talking about children’s education. That’s the kind of thinking that got the province into the financial mess it’s in today. For years, education spending rose sharply even while enrolment declined. That’s not sustainable.

Fat chance of that coming to anything:

The Opposition has voted to pass a Conservative motion calling for the Auditor General to investigate the Liberals $186.7 billion infrastructure plan.


The motion followed a report by the Parliamentary Budget Officer that had revealed the new plan “does not exist,” despite the government having allocated a massive amount of taxpayer money for it.

Despite Liberal opposition, the motion passed, with 166 voting yes, against 152 who voted no.

Not out of the woods, as they say:

Firefighters will struggle to contain deadly fires as soaring temperature and strong winds stoke the threat of more blazes across Australia‘s east coast, authorities said on Friday.

Since September, Australia has been battling bushfires that have killed 33 people and an estimated 1 billion native animals, while 2,500 homes as more than 11.7 million hectares (117,000 sq km) across Australia’s most populous states has been burned.

With temperatures across New South Wales (NSW) and Victoria states set to approach 40 degrees Celsius (104 degree Fahrenheit) on Friday, authorities said several fires could spread despite recent efforts by firefighters to remove flammable fuels.

I'm sure those arsonists did not help.

Mid-Week Post

Your custard-centre of the work-week ...




Don't worry. The Canadian government has everything under control.

Because priorities and planning and stuff:

Laws vary from province to province, but generally, a health official can legally command that someone comply with the order, for example, by forcing them to stay in their home and not allow visitors, he said.

“The powers can be quite far-reaching,” he explained.

“They can issue warrants to get people arrested if they’re not compliant with orders to isolate themselves. They can force people to be immunized. They can force people to take medication.

“And in rare cases, these are enforced by court orders.”

More frequently, though, patients with possibly communicable diseases are put in “isolation” at a hospital or choose to isolate themselves at home, he said.

And how has that worked?:

Just like that, more than 1,000 people on three flights from China walked into Canada without medical screening.

And there are plans to bring more Canadians home ... at some point:

Speaking with reporters from Parliament Hill on Wednesday, Foreign Affairs Minister Francois-Philippe Champagne said the government is working out the logistics as to how and when to bring home Canadians who want help leaving the country, and has a plane lined up to do so.

And they don't have to be screened or quarantined because if they were sick, they would simply wear a huge sign around their necks.

Everyone knows that.

Right?:

“Of course people are concerned — why wouldn’t people be concerned,” Mike Ryan, executive director of the World Health Organization’s health emergencies program, said Wednesday.

The WHO refused to call China's coronavirus a global concern because they're all about honesty and action.

Meanwhile the death toll (if one can believe the Chinese) has risen. Any vaccine (a notoriously slow process in rationed healthcare Canada) is at least a year out.


Not to worry. Everything is under control because priorities:

Someone needs to tell that to the heads of a school board that encompasses several cities north of Toronto, after they issued a condescending letter to parents chastising them for their concerns.

“While the virus can be traced to a province in China, we have to be cautious that this not be seen as a Chinese virus,” writes Juanita Nathan, a trustee who is chair of the York Region District School Board, and Louise Sirisko, director of education, in a joint letter. “Those who are afflicted or are potential transmitters are not just people of Chinese origin.”

Hear, hear.

Don't castigate the Chinese for the viruses they smuggled out of Canada or their unhealthy habits or their opacity or their unwillingness to co-operate or the other illnesses that originated in China and have killed thousands or millions.




It's just money:

In a little-noticed government news release last week, Industry Minister Navdeep Bains announced a gift of $50 million to MasterCard to help them set up shop in Vancouver.

**

For example, on June 12 2017, Freeland’s limo log shows a 495 km trip . However, on June 12 2017, Freeland’s flight records indicate that she flew to Montreal to participate in the 2017 Conference of Montreal. It’s a roughly four hundred kilometer round trip in a car - Ottawa to Montreal and back. This means Freeland’s chauffeur driven car drove to Montreal without her, only to drive her around while she was there, just to drive back without her, while she flew both ways.

**

The Liberals are looking to New Zealand and Scotland to learn how future budgets could be focused less on national wealth and more on personal happiness.

While traditionally budgets have focused on broad economic figures, like unemployment and gross domestic product, the Liberal could soon spend more time on questions like how much time you spend with your kids, your level of trust in government and, fundamentally, whether you’re happy.

The Romans used to call that bread and circuses.

Canadians would vote for nothing less.

**

A new report by the Fraser Institute shows that any province can force other provinces and the federal government to renegotiate the constitution.

In what will be a welcome report to Alberta Premier Jason Kenney and Saskatchewan Premier Scott Moe, the Fraser Institute made a particular note of equalization payments—finding that the payment system could be restructured.

Speaking to the Fraser Institute, Professor Rainer Knopff stated, “If Alberta charts the correct course, it can bring otherwise reluctant governments to the table to discuss fiscal federalism.”

Equalisation payments are welfare. There should be no welfare.




If you are arguing that carbon is a pollutant, you have already lost:

Maritime Iron's hopes of winning provincial approval for its proposed high-emissions iron plant appear to hinge on a federal exemption mechanism that doesn't exist.

Premier Blaine Higgs said Ottawa giving the plant a special pass will "absolutely be the decision-maker" in whether it will be allowed to add 2.3 million tonnes of greenhouse gases to New Brunswick's emissions.

Higgs said if the federal government recognizes that the plant will reduce emissions globally even while increasing them provincially, "we should be good to go," citing what he said was a similar exemption given to a liquefied natural gas plant in British Columbia.

He said his government has been working with the federal government on that possibility.

But the B.C. plant has not received any such federal exemption and there is no mechanism for Ottawa to grant one so a province can get around its own provincial emissions targets.

Also - the hypocrite premier of BC concedes to a court ruling:

Premier John Horgan has linked the battles over two major pipeline projects through British Columbia, saying once the legal fight is over, court decisions should be respected.

Horgan said Wednesday he accepts that the Trans Mountain pipeline expansion has been approved by the courts after the province’s recent defeat at the Supreme Court of Canada.

Earlier this month, the court denied British Columbia the right to regulate the contents of the pipeline. The expansion project would increase the amount of heavy oil shipped to B.C. from Alberta and mean more tanker traffic off the coast of B.C.

“Personally, I am not enamoured with the prospect of a sevenfold increase in tanker traffic in the Strait of Juan de Fuca and the Salish Sea, but the courts have determined that the project is legitimate and should proceed. That’s the Trans Mountain pipeline in the south and I acknowledge that and I respect that,” he told a news conference.

A government panel said this:

A government-appointed panel is calling for the end of advertising on the CBC while also recommending streaming giants like Netflix and Amazon be mandated to contribute to creating Canadian content.

What do you expect from a country that votes according to who will give it drugs?:

A Canadian arrested at Sydney airport on the weekend when a white substance, alleged to be methamphetamine, was found in the lining of his suitcase joins a growing list of recent Australian drug smuggling arrests linked to Canada.

I'm sure it's nothing to be concerned with:

The aging early-warning system charged with detecting incoming threats to North America cannot identify and track long-range Russian bombers before they are close enough to launch missiles at the continent, according to a senior Canadian military officer.

For a Tuesday

Quite a bit going on ....




How is that self-reporting thing working out?:

• B.C. has its first presumptively confirmed case of coronavirus
• A Toronto man is first Canadian to contract the novel coronavirus and his wife is presumed to be the second
• Health officials in Ontario are investigating 11 other people suspected, but not confirmed, to have the virus.
• 106 people in China have died — most in and around Wuhan — from the novel coronavirus and the total number of confirmed cases has nearly doubled since Monday, from 2,835 to 4,515.

**

A number of Toronto schools and universities are taking precautionary measures after reports that parents of students shared the same flight as a Toronto man who was diagnosed with coronavirus. 

**

Niagara Health is screening patients at all of its sites for the novel coronavirus after it investigated a possible infection at St. Catharines hospital Monday.

The Ministry of Health and Long-Term Care said the tests of that patient — who The St. Catharines Standard has confirmed is a Brock University student who had recently been to the Wuhan region of China where the virus originated — were negative.

In a statement issued late Tuesday, Dr. Karim Ali, director of infectious diseases at Niagara Health, said any patient who meets the two basic screening criteria — respiratory symptoms and travel to China — will be tested for the virus which has killed at least 106 people in China.

The statement did not say how many patients, if any, are currently being screened or how long screening will take.

(Sidebar: thanks for that transparency.)

**

Countries on Wednesday began evacuating their citizens from the Chinese city hardest-hit by an outbreak of a new virus that has killed 132 people and infected more than 6,000 on the mainland and abroad.

China's latest figures cover the previous 24 hours and add 26 to the number of deaths, 25 of which were in the epicenter of Hubei province and its capital, Wuhan. The 5,974 cases on the mainland were a rise of 1,459 from the previous day. Dozens of infections of the new type of coronavirus have been confirmed outside mainland China as well.

**

At least 126 Canadians stuck in quarantined areas of China are asking for the government’s help to get home, as the coronavirus continues to spread.

And there they should stay because who goes to a communist countries with lax health standards and a penchant for smuggling viruses?




If these "experts" feel that way, then they can house these would-be patients:

But will the restrictions be effective in China? Bogoch says it’s still too early to tell.

“I don’t think anyone can look you in the eye and tell you with a straight face whether or not this will work or will not work, because we’ve never seen anything like this before,” he said.

Bogoch said the restrictions could slow the epidemic down and reduce the risk of transmission outside of the most heavily affected areas.

Well, this must be embarrassing:

The U.S. Attorney’s Office announced today that the Chair of Harvard University’s Chemistry and Chemical Biology Department and two Chinese nationals have been charged in connection with aiding the People’s Republic of China. 
 
Dr. Charles Lieber, 60, Chair of the Department of Chemistry and Chemical Biology at Harvard University, was arrested this morning and charged by criminal complaint with one count of making a materially false, fictitious and fraudulent statement. Lieber will appear this afternoon before Magistrate Judge Marianne B. Bowler in federal court in Boston.

Yanqing Ye, 29, a Chinese national, was charged in an indictment today with one count each of visa fraud, making false statements, acting as an agent of a foreign government and conspiracy. Ye is currently in China. 

Zaosong Zheng, 30, a Chinese national, was arrested on Dec. 10, 2019, at Boston’s Logan International Airport and charged by criminal complaint with attempting to smuggle 21 vials of biological research to China. On Jan. 21, 2020, Zheng was indicted on one count of smuggling goods from the United States and one count of making false, fictitious or fraudulent statements. He has been detained since Dec. 30, 2019.

(Merci)




But I thought that Xi was bigger than Jesus:

President Xi Jinping said on Tuesday that China was sure of defeating a "devil" coronavirus that has killed 106 people, but international alarm was rising as the outbreak spread across the world.

Our Lord: cured more things than Xi ever will.

Peace was never an option:

While Israeli leaders have welcomed Trump’s long-delayed plan, Palestinian leaders had rejected it even before its official release, saying his administration was biased towards Israel.

The absence of the Palestinians from Trump’s announcement is likely to fuel criticism that the plan tilts toward Israel’s needs rather than those of the Palestinians.

 

Don't worry. Justin will find some friends for those positions:

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has been warned that more than 200 senior jobs need filling across the federal government, including dozens in key leadership and oversight roles in different Crown corporations, commissions, agencies and embassies.

Marching in a pervert parade has never produced any competent leaders but has alienated voters:

O’Toole announced he was entering the race on Monday by video, joining up as a presumptive front-runner alongside MacKay, a former Nova Scotia MP. While describing MacKay as a friend, O’Toole attacked the former cabinet minister’s politics, saying he’d make the Conservative Party of Canada more centrist as a member of the “left side” of the Tory movement.

Marching in a parade of people who already hate you isn't at all centrist.




It's just money and a ton of secrecy:

The federal government rang up more than $1.4 million in legal costs during the failed prosecution of retired vice-admiral Mark Norman.

Revealed this week by Justice Minister David Lametti in a written response to a question from the official Opposition Conservatives, the figure is the first to put any kind of dollar amount to the high-profile and politically charged case.

Lametti did not provide any further details about the costs — including whether the figure included the cost of covering Norman’s legal fees, which the government has said it would pay.

“To the extent that the information that has been requested is protected by solicitor-client privilege, the federal Crown can only reveal the total legal costs related to the case,” Lametti wrote in response to the question from Conservative MP and leadership contender Erin O’Toole.

And the Rest of It

How many civil service jobs do these kids think will be available?:

Wondga taught 18 French immersion kindergartners at Edmonton’s Oliver School last year. This year, 24 are enrolled and interest continues to climb.

“Parents want their children to learn languages. They want them to have what they didn’t have and they want them to experience new things at school.”

Like civil service jobs.

Their parents weren't survivors of the Great Depression.




Guys, guys - can't you wait for China's coronavirus to kill off your elderly?:

As the federal government moves to revise the law on assisted dying, new survey results suggest most Canadians support medical help to end suffering even when a natural death is some time away.

I'm not sure how a number under two thousand is a majority but whatever.




No more federal funding for post-secondary institutions:

Convicted terrorist and multi-millionaire Omar Khadr will be featured as a keynote speaker at a respected Canadian university.

Khadr is scheduled to speak at an event on children’s rights hosted by Dalhousie University on February 10, 2020.

He can talk about how he orphaned Christopher Speer's children.




How is that Singapore thing working out?:

While a North Korean deadline for the United States to soften its stand on denuclearization talks passed uneventfully over the New Year, state media and propaganda efforts have been focusing on the prospect of a long confrontation with the United States.

Optimism that two years of contacts between leader Kim Jong Un and U.S. President Donald Trump would usher in a new age, and related hopes for economic improvement after decades of deprivation, appear to have faded.

Instead, the government has been hard at work in recent weeks using state media, propaganda posters, and performances to warn the public of a bumpy road ahead under U.S. and international pressure.

Kim is ramping up paranoia in his starving people. 

**

North Korea has named as its new foreign minster a former senior army officer with little experience in dealings with the United States, in a possible indication it will take a harder line with Washington in stalled nuclear negotiations.

The new post for Ri Son Gwon was disclosed Friday in a Korean Central News Agency dispatch that said he attended a reception for foreign diplomats in Pyongyang on Thursday. South Korean and other outside media previously reported North Korea had recently informed foreign diplomats in Pyongyang of Ri’s job.

Stop being obtuse, Japan:

The Japanese government rejected on Tuesday a protest by South Korea against the reopening of the National Museum of Territory and Sovereignty in Tokyo.

“Foreign people unhappy about it should come to see it. There’s nothing fabricated,” said Seiichi Eto, minister in charge of territorial issues, at a news conference, referring to the museum.

On Monday, the South Korean foreign ministry said Seoul “strongly” protested the expansion of the museum, and urged its closure.

The museum has displays related to the Takeshima Islands in Shimane Prefecture.

Seoul claims that the islands, located in the Sea of Japan, are an integral part of South Korean territory. They are called Dokdo in South Korea.

If you ask the Russians, the Holodmor never happened. The Ukrainians were fasting for swimsuit season:

“The words of Vladimir Putin are a complete distortion of historical truth. We give it a very direct name, it is an ideology, it is a kind of post-Stalinist revisionism,” Duda told the Financial Times. “Some claim that this is propaganda-based hybrid warfare…. Some experts claim that Putin’s words are used for the purpose of internal propaganda. For us, it doesn’t make a difference. For us, what matters is that this historical lie is being spread around the world. And we can absolutely not accept this.” 

The Polish president has been upset by Putin’s assertion that Poland voluntarily colluded with Nazi Germany and was partly to blame for the war.

Yes, some Poles did participate in murdering people while others did not.

And the Holodmor happened.




Trump participated in the largest yearly march the press never covers - until that day:

U.S. President Donald Trump called it his “profound honour” on Friday to be the first president to attend the annual anti-abortion gathering in Washington called the March for Life.

Oh, dear:

The cataclysmic eruption of Italy’s Mount Vesuvius in the year 79, as described by the Roman official Pliny the Younger, killed thousands in towns along the Gulf of Naples, including in the prosperous community of Herculaneum, where hundreds of skeletons would be discovered centuries later buried in ash.

Now, new research has shed more light on the gruesome way they died. Their flesh may not have been “vaporized” and turned to ash by the superheated flow of hot gas and volcanic matter roaring down the mountain, as previously thought.

Rather, they more likely were “baked” and suffocated by toxic fumes, according to a team of British and Italian scholars.

How interesting:

A famous Egyptian mummy‘s “voice” has been heard for the first time in 3,000 years after researchers recreated the long-dead priest’s vocal cords using modern 3D-printing technology.

Scientists used three-dimensional scans to map the mummy’s entire vocal tract, then re-created it using a 3D printer. They used an artificial larynx to run air through the synthetic vocal cords, creating a single vowel sound in the dead Egyptian’s voice, according to findings published in the journal Scientific Reports.

There Are More Organised Circuses Than This One

Getting good and hard the government we deserve:

The Department of Public Works released an internal report that claims there is cronyism in the hiring process. A number of unnamed employees have complained to an ombudsman over what they believe to be preferential hiring and sweetheart appointments for members of management’s family, bordering nepotism according to Blacklock’s Reporter.

Andre Latreille, the department’s mental health ombudsman wrote, “Many employees are afraid to speak openly about their situation in the workplace.” he added, “The confidential meetings helped them to explore potential situations.”

The number of managers that have been demoted for misconduct remains unknown but Latreille wrote in his 2019 Annual Report To The Deputy Minister, “Based on feedback from the ombudsman and on other information, senior management decided to terminate the acting assignments of employees in positions of authority because of conduct considered inappropriate by subordinates.”

Amongst the complaints listed are “favouritism, unfairness and lack of transparency in staffing” in department offices nationwide, he said: “Various employees across Canada expressed their frustration regarding staffing decisions that lacked transparency. Employees perceive favouritism in staffing, while others have even reported nepotism.”

**

Canada slid to its lowest level in at least a decade on a global index of corruption, driven down by the SNC-Lavalin Group Inc. scandal, a new report shows.

The country was ranked 12^th of 180 countries on Berlin-based Transparency International’s 2019 Corruption Perceptions Index, an annual worldwide list from least corrupt country to worst issued Thursday. Canada ranked ninth in 2018 and sixth in 2010.

Also:

The Teck Frontier proposal is one of the largest oilsands mines ever proposed in Alberta, and the federal cabinet has until the end of February to decide whether the project will be approved.

“If the decision is made by the federal government either to delay or cancel the Teck project, I can see this province going ballistic and I think that’s going to be a real stab in the heart of the province,” said Jack Mintz, president’s fellow at the University of Calgary School of Public Policy.

“It’s actually going to be a really interesting test of their policies because they do believe in responsible resource development, so the question is, does this fall into the category of what they believe in?”

Struggling to get something, anything, done before people figure out that there is more productive roadkill than the government:

Deputy Prime Minister Chrystia Freeland is urging opposition parties to support an updated free trade deal “without undue delay,” as the Liberals seek to notch an early victory under their weakened minority government.

Yes, about that:

NDP leader Jagmeet Singh wants a thorough review and debate in Parliament of the new NAFTA agreement before deciding if the deal gets his party’s support. 

 
Let them fight.




Yes, Canada, let Iran squirrel you around:

Iran said it had asked the U.S. and French authorities for equipment to download information from black boxes on a downed Ukrainian airliner, potentially angering countries which want the recorders analyzed abroad.

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau of Canada, which lost 57 of the 176 people killed in the crash, said Iran did not have the ability to read the data and he demanded the cockpit and flight recorders should be sent to France. Kiev wants the recorders sent to Ukraine.

The U.S.-built Boeing 737 flown by Ukraine International Airlines was shot down in error by Iranian forces on Jan. 8 during a period of tit-for-tat military strikes that included the killing by the United States of a senior Iranian general on Jan. 3.

Tehran, already embroiled in a long-running standoff with the United States over its nuclear program, has given mixed signals about whether it would hand over the recorders.

Free markets do this, not governments that see bogey-men where none exist:

In their election platform, the Liberals pledged a reduction in “some of the highest prices in the world” at the expense of telecom companies that are “among the most profitable in the developed world”.

It was a soft target – pummelling unpopular telcos by offering savings of nearly $1,000 to the average family of four, based on 2018 prices.

It is inconvenient then, that the market has already done its work by reducing prices. Unlimited plans from Rogers, Telus and Bell currently offer 20GB at maximum speed for $75, down from $95 – a reduction close to the government’s 25 per cent target.

Meanwhile, the Tories are either backing off or jumping head-first to see who will lead a party that cannot defeat the village idiot:

And if there is anything that even his critics and supporters can agree on, it’s that Stephen Harper was always a shrewd and calculating operator. Why any of them think a political return would be a shrewd move likely to improve Harper’s lot in life is baffling.

**

Manitoba MP Candice Bergen is seriously looking at launching her own bid for the Conservative leadership, a change of heart that comes after three high-profile candidates decided last week not to run.

Bergen had told reporters earlier this month that she wouldn’t be running for leader, in part because she already has a busy job as Opposition House Leader — a particularly important role in a minority parliament where every vote is subject to negotiation.

But after Jean Charest, Rona Ambrose and Pierre Poilievre all announced over the past week that they would not be entering the race, Bergen changed her mind and is gauging support, according to a source with direct knowledge of the situation. The decisions of Ambrose and Poilievre in particular caused Bergen to take another look.

“The field just became very small very quickly,” said the source, who would only speak on condition they weren’t named. “Circumstances have changed.” The source said Bergen has not yet made a final decision.

There is some brightness in this era of darkness.

Justin's fattest cheerleader has not been rewarded for her toadying:

Amid what CBC is calling ‘negative audience feedback,’ Rosemary Barton is being dropped from ‘The National’.

We Don't Have to Trade With China

We traded with China and all we got was this lousy coronavirus, gulaged nationals and the Liberals:

The fraud charges facing Meng in the United States must be hypothetically replicable in Canada with sufficient precision as to warrant Meng’s extradition to face the music in New York. Meng’s lawyers argue that the charges facing Meng in the United States do not meet that standard. The 13 counts against Meng — fraud, wire fraud and conspiracy — as outlined in a warrant issued last August, relate to Huawei’s meticulously documented exertions in end-running U.S. sanctions on Iran, going back more than a decade.

But those sanctions differed from Canada’s Iran sanctions, so it comes down to complicated questions about fraud, and it’s all wonderfully complex and intriguing.

But reasonable people will understand fraud as a vice involving dishonesty, trickery, sleight-of-hand, swindling and related varieties of self-dealing monkey business, and each of these have in their way contaminated the public debates about Meng’s case. Those debates are inextricably bound up in the matter of Beijing’s barbaric retaliatory kidnapping and imprisonment of diplomat-on-leave Michael Kovrig and entrepreneur Michael Spavor, along with a variety of costly trade reprisals and threats of more punishments to come.

The culpability of quite a few yesteryear Liberal party big shots in giving Beijing every impression that these sorts of strong-arm tactics would work in Canada is at issue as well, or at least it should be. We are expected to believe, for instance, that Jean Chrétien, John Manley and Eddie Goldenberg, in relaying Beijing’s ransom demands — the crudest being a “prisoner exchange,” Meng for Kovrig and Spavor — are sage and wizened statesmen whose advice is offered in a public-spirited way, in the national interest. After all, we’re talking about a former prime minister, a former deputy prime minister, and Chrétien’s former chief of staff.

The charade here is that Jean Chrétien has been a senior skid-greaser in the China trade racket ever since he resigned in 2003, and he currently serves as a trusted counsel with Dentons LLP, which serves as the public face of the Chinese corporate law conglomerate otherwise known as Beijing Dacheng. Manley is a senior adviser with Bennett Jones LLP and a director of Telus Corp., which is up to its eyeballs in Huawei gear and is quaking at the thought of Huawei being properly barred from Canada’s 5G internet roll-out on national security grounds. Bennett Jones’ clients roster includes several of Beijing’s ministries, agencies and state-owned enterprises, and the firm’s “co-head of government affairs and public policy practice” is none other than Eddie Goldenberg.

The prisoner-exchange remedy they’ve proposed relies on some heretofore undisclosed assurance from Beijing that indeed the two Mikes would be surrendered if only Prime Minister Justin Trudeau would hornswoggle from Justice Minister David Lametti an unseemly intervention on Meng’s behalf of the sordid kind he failed to procure from Jody Wilson-Raybould in the SNC-Lavalin affair.

The gambit also relies on Canadians believing Beijing’s propaganda contrivance to the effect that U.S. President Donald Trump got us into this mess and Canada is acting as his lickspittle for going along with what is actually a venal Trumpist trade-war subversion of the U.S. justice system to the purpose of injuring the interests of Huawei for purely mercantile reasons.

A crude iteration of this formulation appeared on placards outside Holmes’ courtroom on Monday. “Free Ms. Meng. Equal Justice!” “Bring Michael home! Trump stop bullying us!” Setting aside the question of which of the Michaels the protesters were content to leave locked away in a Chinese dungeon, it turns out that the placard-bearers had no idea what they were doing there. They’d been paid by someone known to them only as “Joey,” or alternatively by “a representative of China.” Some got $100. Others got $150. The play-acting protesters appear to have been convinced they were supposed to be extras in a music video. ...

It was not only because of the opaquely structured firm’s shadowy associations with Beijing’s vast surveillance-and-espionage apparatus that U.S. intelligence agencies, and even Canada’s intelligence agencies, were sounding the alarm. Huawei was skirting sanctions in Iran, drawing Canada into a vortex of possible pain. We were warned, but Ottawa thought it would be clever to take advantage of the United States’ national-security vigilance in curtailing Huawei’s liberties south of the border. So Canada went out of its way, with red carpets and subsidies, to luxuriate in Huawei’s research investments north of the border.

So it takes quite some cheek for Canada to beg American help and to demand solidarity from Canada’s European allies in standing up to Beijing when our own foreign affairs minister, François-Philippe Champagne, refers to the persecution of Kovrig and Spavor as mere “consular cases” that should not interfere with deepening Canada’s trade relationship with China. And Environment and Climate Change Minister Jonathan Wilkinson is pleased to issue all the requisite permits to the China National Offshore Oil Corporation to drill for oil in the Flemish Pass Basin. And the trade delegations come and go, and Trudeau sends warm wishes to the Chinese Communist Party’s United Front Work Department front groups in Canada as they celebrate 70 years of Communist rule in China, and on and on.

Why would any country stick its neck out for us if we’re not even willing to stick up for ourselves?

Ask Justin and his coffers.

I'm Sure It's Nothing to Be Concerned About, Redux

The same government that expects this:

The federal government is instead focused on having international travellers flying into Toronto, Montreal and Vancouver who are experiencing flu-like symptoms self-report to border officers, Tam said.

Cannot reconcile this:

For the second time in 17 years, Canada’s largest city has become this country’s ground zero in the fight to contain an outbreak of a newly identified organism that is spreading worldwide.

A Toronto man in his 50s was confirmed Sunday as Canada’s first presumed case of the rogue virus known as 2019-nCov, a coronavirus that surfaced in the Chinese city of Wuhan on New Year’s Eve. Officials are urging calm as they work to contain the illness in Canada and rapidly trace passengers who were seated within a two-metre radius of the man, who was already experiencing symptoms when he boarded his transoceanic flight home to Toronto.

The man said during airport screening that he’d been in the province where the virus originated and had a “mild cough,” but was allowed to go on his way, Dr. Theresa Tam, head of the Public Health Agency of Canada, said Monday.

**

Canada’s first presumptive case of the novel coronavirus has been officially confirmed, Ontario health officials said Monday as they announced the patient’s wife has also contracted the illness. Meanwhile, 19 cases are under investigation in the province.

And sure as hell won't explain this:

In what is a very disturbing revelation, it has been revealed that Dr. Xiangguo Qiu, her husband Keding Cheng, and some students from China, were removed from Canada’s Level 4 virology lab in Winnipeg, Manitoba.

**

In a table-top pandemic exercise at Johns Hopkins University last year, a pathogen based on the emerging Nipah virus was released by fictional extremists, killing 150 million people.

A less apocalyptic scenario mapped out by a blue-ribbon U.S. panel envisioned Nipah being dispersed by terrorists and claiming over 6,000 American lives.

Scientists from Canada’s National Microbiology Laboratory (NML) have also said the highly lethal bug is a potential bio-weapon.

But this March that same lab shipped samples of the henipavirus family and of Ebola to China, which has long been suspected of running a secretive biological warfare (BW) program.

Also:

The actual information presented at the conference, featuring Health Minister Patty Hadju and Dr. Theresa Tam, Canada’s chief public health officer, can be summed up concisely. The patient, a man in his 50s, had recently returned to Toronto from China. He was showing symptoms while on the flight to North America, but still got through the enhanced screening in place at Pearson International Airport. He went home and, a day later, to hospital, where he was immediately isolated. The various public health agencies have been communicating well, the patient is isolated at Toronto’s excellent Sunnybrook Health Sciences Centre, biological samples from the patient are being immediately analyzed, with results expected by Monday, and public health officials are working quickly to identify and contact anyone who was sitting near the man on the transoceanic flight. The patient is, by all accounts, doing well in hospital. His family members are being monitored.

It all sounds reassuring. That was certainly the point of the entire exercise. “The risk (to the broader public) is low,” was the unofficial slogan of the entire event. But the reassuring words about co-ordination and communication can’t hide the awkward truth — the “system” the officials were so cheerfully describing didn’t work. A man flying back from an epidemic hot zone — and who was actively symptomatic upon arrival at an airport that was on the alert — was screened by officials who were fully aware of the danger … and who then let him into the country.

That’s the failure here. That’s the issue of concern. Everything else that happens afterward — the immediate isolation of the patient, the rapid testing of his samples, the strong communication among health agencies — is nice but not the point. Lauding the emergency response after a preventable incident rings hollow when the point is to avoid the emergency in the first place.

That didn’t happen here, and it probably can’t. We have to be realistic. Any system that relies on honestly and self-reporting by people with a strong reason to lie (in this case, to get the hell back into Canada) isn’t going to be 100 per cent effective. That’s not the government’s fault. The grim truth is that what we know so far about this still-unnamed virus suggests that it’s going to be difficult to contain, if not impossible. The Chinese experience so far shows that it can spread rapidly. The precise rate has yet to be determined, but experts currently estimate that every infected person infects approximately 2.5 other people, though it’s important to note that that’s a mathematical average, not a real-life certainty for each individual case. More concerning is the fact that patients afflicted with the Wuhan virus are apparently contagious before they present any symptoms. For perhaps as long as days.

Let that sink in. People can be infecting others before they realize they themselves are sick.

Uh, no.

There are a lot of things the government can do to get ahead of this. One thing they can do is remove their heads from their bottoms. The next thing they can do is restrict flight from China, quarantine anyone who was anywhere near affected people, set up more stringent controls at airports and penalise those non-self-reporting people you know damn well could be incubating this.

Never Again

 

If people meant it, there would be no more genocides.

Alas ...

“‘This is Auschwitz,’ they answered. ‘You will never get out, but you are lucky you were selected to work. Those who were not — look over here, see the chimney, that long chimney with smoke coming out? They are already burning.’

**

The Auschwitz concentration camp is known worldwide as a symbol of terror, genocide and the Holocaust. It was the largest Nazi concentration camp; more than 1.1 million people were murdered there between 1940 and 1945.

On Jan. 27, the world will mark the 75th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz. Several of the remaining survivors of the camp will make the very difficult trek to the place where some of the most heinous acts of the 20th century occurred.

The survivors will gather there to give voice to Luba, Sara and Chaya and the other silenced millions of Holocaust victims.

**

The non-commissioned officer was Franciszek Gajowniczek. When the sentence of doom had been pronounced, Gajowniczek had cried out in despair, "Oh, my poor wife, my poor children. I shall never see them again." It was then that the unexpected had happened, and that from among the ranks of those temporarily reprieved, prisoner 16670 had stepped forward and offered himself in the other man's place. Then the ten condemned men were led off to the dreaded Bunker, to the airless underground cells were men died slowly without food or water.  ...

Two weeks passed in this way. Meanwhile one after another they died, until only Fr Kolbe was left. This the authorities felt was too long; the cell was needed for new victims. So one day they brought in the head of the sickquarters, a German, a common criminal named Bock, who gave Fr Kolbe an injection of carbolic acid in the vein of his left arm. Fr Kolbe, with a prayer on his lips, himself gave his arm to the executioner. Unable to watch this I left under the pretext of work to be done. Immediately after the SS men with the executioner had left I returned to the cell, where I found Fr Kolbe leaning in a sitting position against the back wall with his eyes open and his head dropping sideways. His face was calm and radiant."

**

Dear brothers and sisters! Because she was Jewish, Edith Stein was taken with her sister Rosa and many other Catholic Jews from the Netherlands to the concentration camp in Auschwitz, where she died with them in the gas chambers. Today we remember them all with deep respect. A few days before her deportation, the woman religious had dismissed the question about a possible rescue: “Do not do it! Why should I be spared? Is it not right that I should gain no advantage from my Baptism? If I cannot share the lot of my brothers and sisters, my life, in a certain sense, is destroyed”. 

 From now on, as we celebrate the memory of this new saint from year to year, we must also remember the Shoah, that cruel plan to exterminate a people — a plan to which millions of our Jewish brothers and sisters fell victim. May the Lord let his face shine upon them and grant them peace

From unimaginable cruelty to kindness:

“The Canadians were like the first figures in a good dream,” one of the women told The New Yorker later that same month. “Our emotion was so intense that we stood motionless, completely dazed,” DuFournier wrote. “We were still too dazed to believe that we might be exchanged,” said Allaire.

Even decades later, the intensity of that moment, of seeing the Canadians and knowing they were saved, stood out, said Helm, who interviewed many survivors, who have since died, for her book.

“I thought it was a dream,” one of the women told Helm. “Really, I did not believe it. It was surreal. We went forward and we saw the soldiers … and they cried when they saw us. When I saw them crying, I began to think it was real.”

The Canadians helped the women into their trucks. There were about 30 of them in Kerr’s rig. One of them had been a nurse. The Nazis had charged her with giving aid to a downed pilot. She’d been in the camp for eight months and she told Kerr how lucky she was to have survived. “She said … they gassed 500 people before you fellows arrived today.”

I'm Sure It's Nothing to Be Concerned About

Quite ...




Let's start with the way-back machine:

SARS, or Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (characterised by fever, coughs, muscle pain, lethargy and other flu-like symptoms) is a zoonotic respiratory that has been traced to bats in China. The initial outbreak in China in November 2002 and July 2003 resulted in 774 deaths. The first known case of SARS in Canada was on February 23rd, 2003. The patient - an elderly woman named Kwan Sui-Chu - died of SARS on March 5th. SARS eventually spread to 257 people in Ontario. Health officials, complete unprepared for this or any other outbreak, responded in a slow, haphazard way.

Despite what is being insisted now, the SARS outbreak was poorly handled and few effective measures are being enacted now.

How can one tell?

Because the government is involved.

The same government that insists that it can ably handle the new coronavirus coming out of China (more on that later) as it handled SARS is totally on top of this:

The Canadian government is rolling out information rather than surgical masks and thermal scanners to try to keep the country safe from a virus that has already killed more than two dozen people in China and left hundreds more sick.

The World Health Organization on Thursday chose not to declare a global health emergency because of the disease even as China quarantined more territory around the city at the heart of the outbreak, Wuhan, to prevent its spread.

(Sidebar: way to hold China to account, WHO!)

Even as Chinese officials were scrambling to contain this outbreak and five people were being monitored for the coronavirus in Quebec, Canada's chief medical officer was playing down the chances of an outbreak here.

"While we are aware of incidents under investigation, we have no reports of any confirmed cases of this new coronavirus in Canada," Dr. Theresa Tam said during a technical briefing with reporters. "The risk of an outbreak in Canada remains low."

Yes, about that:

Ontario health officials have announced that a “presumptive” case of a new coronavirus has been discovered in Toronto, which, if confirmed, would mark the first instance of the illness in Canada.

That's how SARS happened in the first place and the same authorities that insisted it could handle anything that came its way left people waiting outside in wintry weather running basic fever checks on every single person who walked into hospitals.

Self-reporting? Is that what people who walk into Canada (which they are allowed to do) will be keen on?


This fresh incompetence comes on the tails of previous incompetence and/or treason:

Scientists from Canada’s National Microbiology Laboratory (NML) have also said the highly lethal bug is a potential bio-weapon.

But this March that same lab shipped samples of the henipavirus family and of Ebola to China, which has long been suspected of running a secretive biological warfare (BW) program.

China strongly denies it makes germ weapons, and Canadian officials say the shipment was part of its efforts to support public-health research worldwide. Sharing of such samples internationally is relatively standard practice.

But some experts are raising questions about the March transfer, which appears to be at the centre of a shadowy RCMP investigation and dismissal of a top scientist at the Winnipeg-based NML.

“I would say this Canadian ‘contribution’ might likely be counterproductive,” said Dany Shoham, a biological and chemical warfare expert at Israel’s Bar-Ilan University. “I think the Chinese activities … are highly suspicious, in terms of exploring (at least) those viruses as BW agents. “

**

DISTURBING: Chinese Researcher & Students Removed From Canada's Only Level 4 Virology Lab (Where Ebola & Deadly Pathogens Are Held) After Possible "Policy Breach". https://t.co/qvETNWWA1R

— Spencer Fernando 🇨🇦 (@SpencerFernando) July 15, 2019

 

So -whose bright idea was it to let China handle these Biblical plagues in the first place?


Also - yeah, that's why they're doing that:

North Korea has banned foreign tourists and closed borders temporarily as Wuhan coronavirus spreads rapidly. 

The outbreak, which has killed three people in China so far, seems to have scuppered North Korea's hopes of earning hard currency from Chinese visitors to a brand-new ski resort town and other facilities it is frantically building.

Seollal

A merry Seollal and Year of the Rat to all y'all.

Mid-Week Post

The plastic straw for your tropical drink ...




From the most corrupt and least transparent government ever re-elected:

In a laughably weak statement showing the messed up attitude of Canada’s foreign policy elites, the Liberal foreign minister Francois-Philippe Champagne says Canada’s “leverage” is “the international community.”

Would this be the international community that ignores the prime minister's calls, holds our nationals hostage, plays keep-away with black boxes and steam-rolls over us during trade negotiations?

In order for Champagne to utter this, he needs to believe this himself. This inflated and entirely undeserved sense of importance is the reason why Justin is chasing a UN seat and why Canada thinks it can out-maneuver the US.


Also - members of plutocracies look out for one another:

SNC-Lavalin Inc. has recruited a former Bombardier executive who oversaw key asset sales to oversee the engineering and construction firm’s strategic transformation.

Louis Veronneau will take on the new role of chief transformation officer, which includes possible divestments and reducing costs. The mergers and acquisitions specialist led negotiations to sell Bombardier’s majority stake in the C Series to Airbus, a stake of its rail division to the Caisse de depot et placement du Quebec and its Downsview site in Toronto to a pension fund.

Because jobs.





I'm sure it's nothing to be worried about:

Just as the global outlook brightens, Canadian households have gone wobbly, forcing the Bank of Canada to reassess its outlook.

The trade wars haven’t calmed enough to offset the loss of Canada’s primary economic engine for the past decade. The result is a weaker short-term outlook that could prompt the central bank to cut interest rates if current conditions persist.

But not yet.

Governor Stephen Poloz and his deputies left the Bank of Canada’s benchmark interest rate unchanged at 1.75 per cent on Jan. 22, even as they dropped their outlook for near-term economic growth.

Policy-makers slashed their growth forecast for the fourth quarter to 0.3 per cent from 1.3 per cent, and predicted that growth in 2020 will fall short of the economy’s non-inflationary speed limit, which was revised higher to two per cent.

Why invest in a country that is broke?





Harper had an opportunity to crush the CBC and did not take it:

Others who believe in CBC “truth” say Ottawa should merely reform the public broadcaster, maintain public funding but remove its ability to accept private advertising. David Skok, the editor-in-chief of The Logic, an online news site, said recently that “The CBC is no longer simply a broadcaster. It is a platform for truth in journalism.” In a letter this week to his subscribers, Skok referred to the CBC’s importance to Canada’s “collective truth.”

There is no such thing as Canada’s collective truth. A ban on advertising on CBC does not change the principle. The government has no business in the newsrooms of the nation.

"What is truth?" Pontius Pilate once  asked.

But he helped kill Jesus, so ...




These guys don't appear to be comprised of gelatin or pure douchiness:

The social conservative wing of the Conservative Party looks set to have at least one flag-bearer in the leadership race, as former party staffer Richard Décarie is collecting signatures and has a network forming behind him.

“All the so-cons are mobilizing behind me because I’m the only candidate who is running that actually represents their values,” Décarie said on Tuesday.

**

Sloan confirmed that he had, indeed, answered this questionnaire, and when asked if he was wary of standing by anti-abortion policies, considering some believe Scheer’s stance on abortion may have cost him votes that led to his loss to Justin Trudeau, Sloan seemed unfazed.

“The lesson I took from Andrew Scheer is avoiding the issue is impossible,” Sloan told Global News. “You can’t just say that abortion won’t be an issue. Things can and will be brought forward. So I say bring on the discussion, bring on the debate, bring on the votes.”

We shall see as Canadian politicians are nothing short of disappointing.





Well, they tried it and it didn't work.

Besides, who needs a loony in the south when they have a more belligerent loony in the north?:

South Korea‘s first known transgender soldier pleaded to be allowed to continue serving after the military decided Wednesday to discharge her for undergoing gender reassignment surgery.

It was the first time in South Korea that an active-duty member has been referred to a military panel to determine whether to end his or her service due to a sex reassignment operation. South Korea prohibits transgender people from joining the military but has no specific laws on what to do with those who have sex reassignment operations during their time in service.

What could go wrong?:

China’s deadly coronavirus may have the same death rate as Spanish flu, an expert has warned.

Deaths from the new virus rose to 17 on Wednesday with hundreds of cases now confirmed, increasing fears of widespread contagion.

What? No international indignation?:

Gunmen in Iran shot dead a commander of the hardline Basij militia who was an ally of Qassem Soleimani, the senior Revolutionary Guards commander killed in a U.S. drone strike in Iraq, the official news agency IRNA reported on Wednesday.

Sadly, there are some who do not believe in even now:

In the years immediately following the war the tattoo kept inviting questions; people simply didn’t know what it meant, even in Israel, he said.

“At first, say 20 years after the war, all Holocaust survivors and especially prisoners of Auschwitz were not talking at all (of their experiences),” he said.

“We were not talking because people didn’t believe … that what we are telling is true.”

Ladies and gentlemen, Mr. Terry Jones: