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: