Saturday, December 31, 2022
And the Rest of It
China has been so trustworthy up until this point:
China has been accused of withholding COVID data as it emerged it has shared fewer than 1,000 COVID virus samples with the international scientific community over the past month, the Telegraph can reveal.
U.S., British and other countries’ health experts are worried that China’s “secretive” approach means they will have to introduce their own testing regimes to detect and protect against the emergence of any new variant.
Over 60% of Ukrainian evacuees who fled from their homes to Japan following Russia's invasion in February are unemployed despite the majority of them seeking jobs, a recent survey by the Nippon Foundation showed.
Of the 60.9% of the 750 respondents who said they do not have jobs, 58.4% said they are looking for employment, while of the 39.1% who have found jobs, 79.5% worked part-time, according to the two-week online survey conducted from late November.
Asked about their level of Japanese language skills, often a requirement for working in Japan, only 17.3% said they have a basic, conversational level of Japanese, while 46.9% said they mostly do not speak or understand the language.
Also:
Ukrainians have also dismantled a statue of the 18th-century Russian empress Catherine the Great from Odesa.
The move is part of an effort of “de-Russification” amid Russia’s war in Ukraine. It includes pulling down monuments and renaming hundreds of others to honour its own artists, poets, soldiers and independence leaders, including heroes of the war.
Look for a war in the new year:
North Korea fired three apparent short-range ballistic missiles on Saturday to cap a record-breaking year of launches as leader Kim Jong Un looked set to conclude a key ruling party meeting on the countries' policy for 2023.
Japan's Defense Ministry said the missiles all traveled about 350 kilometers, hitting a maximum altitude of 100 km before falling into waters of the Sea of Japan outside Japan's exclusive economic zone, which extends 200 nautical miles (370 km) from its coast.
Tokyo strongly protested the latest launches, part of what it said were a series of recent actions by North Korea that "threaten the peace and security of Japan, the region and the international community."
South Korea's military condemned the firing of the three short-range ballistic missiles, adding that they had been fired from Chunghwa county in North Hwanghae province, the Yonhap news agency reported.
"Our military will maintain a solid readiness posture based on capabilities to respond overwhelmingly to any North Korean provocations," the South Korean military said.
Your Legal System and You
Watch your back, Canada:
Randall McKenzie, 25, of Kingston, and Brandi Crystal Lyn Stewart-Sperry, 30, of Hamilton, were charged Wednesday with first-degree murder in the death of OPP Const. Grzegorz Pierzchala.
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If Pierre Poiliviere is the bad guy because he pointed out that we are a few corpses short of Chicago, then he isn't the problem. You are:
Toronto police have said three 13-year-olds, three 14-year-olds, and two 16-year-olds allegedly swarmed and stabbed a 59-year-old man in the downtown core in mid-December and he later died in hospital.
Getting the Economy You Voted For
Happy new year, Canada!:
The Canadian Taxpayers Federation (CTF) has sounded the alarm about five incoming tax hikes in 2023.
Tax hikes will include a carbon tax increase, an alcohol escalator tax, hikes to Employment Insurance and more, according to the report New Year’s Tax Changes.
“Tax hikes will give Canadians a hangover in the new year,” said CTF federal director Franco Terrazzano.
“Canadians can’t afford gas or groceries and the government is making things worse by hiking taxes.”
The Canada Pension Plan will see increases of up to $225 for employers, meanwhile Employment Insurance contributions will go up about $50 for workers and $70 for employers.
On average Canadians can expect to pay payroll taxes of up to $4,756 a year beginning next year.
“The federal government is raising the basic personal amount for income taxes. However, because of the payroll tax hikes, anyone making $40,000 or more in 2023 will pay higher federal income-based taxes than in 2022,” the CTF explained in a press release.
Two carbon tax hikes will also be in effect. The federal carbon tax will go up by 14 cents per litre of gas beginning on April 1, 2023 costing households up to $847 with rebates taken into account.
**
“As you staff your office and implement outreach and recruitment strategies for federally appointed leadership positions and boards, I ask that you uphold the principles of equity, diversity and inclusion,” reads Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s mandate letter to Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland, which repeatedly uses those words.The same words are repeated in mandate letters to all of the other cabinet ministers.The Liberals’ newly released Indo-Pacific Strategy, which is mainly meant as a response to an increasingly belligerent Beijing, is also rife with these keywords.“The benefits of inclusive social, economic and environmental efforts will have a multiplier effect throughout the region and in Canada,” reads the document.
(Sidebar: what are the anti-semites who plan on banning free speech saying about David Horowitz?)
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The current prime minister’s campaign, amounting to a kind of jihad, to destabilize the nation and create the world’s first “post-national state” proceeds on many levels. Among them, as I have previously catalogued, are a burgeoning national debt, a series of repressive bills making their way through parliament (C-4, C-11, C-12 and C-18), a prohibitive and unnecessary carbon tax, the deliberate destruction of the energy sector, the impending rollout of digital ID surveillance technology, and the notorious invoking of the deeply flawed and inappropriate Emergencies Act to deal with the Truckers’ Freedom Convoy protesting the vaccine mandates. This last travesty was compounded by the government’s striking a Commission of Inquiry in which it set its own terms and appointed its own Commissioner.
PM Justin Trudeau’s declared purpose of protecting Canadians’ health via the vaxx mandates by, among other initiatives, attacking the Truckers as violent, racist, and homophobic was a false-flag operation. As constitutional lawyer Leighton Grey persuasively argues, Trudeau’s “ultimate goal, which the COVID-19 pandemic helped governments like Trudeau’s to advance,” is nothing less than “total surveillance and corresponding control of human populations.” ...
In Canada, the three branches of government — the executive, the legislative and the judicial — are not rigidly distinct. The checks and balances system of the American Constitution (though it is eroding in the U.S.) does not pertain here. The executive and legislative functions of the Canadian government are often spliced and interlaced, while the judicial branch was supposed to enjoy a strong measure of independence. In practice, we have a jolly threesome cavorting in political cabrioles of indissoluble meldings.
Indeed, the judiciary now regards itself as the de facto framer and not merely the interpreter of laws. Former Supreme Court Justice Rosalie Abella referred to herself and her colleagues as “the final adjudicator of which contested values in a society should triumph.” As Bruce Pardy cogently writes, “The Supreme Court has read the Charter over its 40-year life largely through an ideologically ‘progressive’ lens, slowly transforming what was drafted as a roster of autonomy rights into a mandate for collective values, group rights and the priorities of the expansive managerial state.”
With the judiciary having sold its vaunted integrity to the executive branch and willfully forfeiting the humility of legislative self-limitation, then the rule of law, the principle of due process, and the balancing of evidence are perverted, transmuting into an arm of state power and resulting in the virtual death of democratic governance. We have seen this happening recently in Brazil where a corrupt Supreme Court judge is responsible for restoring a convicted criminal to the presidency. We have seen it happen just now in Arizona where a Superior Court judge ruled against gubernatorial candidate Kari Lake’s airtight case regarding obvious electoral malfeasance, thus establishing a rogue governor in office.
And we see it happening as a matter of course in Canada — in “[d]ecisions from around the country,” as Pardy documents — where the judiciary has become an enforcer for the Liberal government, a development that does not seem likely to change. When the last resource for the rehabilitation of justice has been abrogated or, to use the Federal Court’s own term, rendered “moot,” we know the country is lost. The three branches of government have effectively become one, which is the very definition of tyranny.
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And who handed these kids these devices instead of making them do something productive?:
Successive years of educational disruptions, shutdowns, home isolation, and massive experiments in remote teaching have radically altered the terms of engagement. Most teachers and a good many parents are trying to reach a whole generation of kids hooked on cellphones and exhibiting all the signs of a new clinical condition – TikTok Brain.
Identified gaps in student learning, psycho-social impacts, and academic achievement setbacks are now more visible from province-to-province in Canadian K-12 education. What’s less recognized and largely unaddressed is the profound impact of students’ near-total fixation with cellphones and complete absorption in cyberworlds.
It Was Never About a Virus
We should know that by now:
Here's what the contractor must do for PHAC:
- Establish keyword algorithm to track vaccine hesitant conversations on social media
- Identify participants and influencers
- Target indigenous people and millennial males particularly
- Get hands on 3 years of historical data
**
The Office of the Privacy Commissioner (OPC) said on Dec. 29 it was unaware of a Public Health Agency of Canada (PHAC) program to collect vast swaths of online data from Canadians to understand vaccine hesitancy and then target the individuals with tailored messaging to try to change their minds.“I am not aware of any interactions between our Office and PHAC on this specific initiative,” said OPC spokesperson Tobi Cohen in a statement.“We remind all institutions that the Privacy Act protects personal information even when it is publicly available, and that institutions are not allowed to collect personal information that is not directly related to an operating program or activity.”The Epoch Times reported on Dec. 29 that PHAC has awarded a contract to social media intelligence collection firm Pulsar Platform to gather and analyze data on Canadians who are vaccine-hesitant.Pulsar is a British company that PHAC says has a Canada-based research function.Using this data, PHAC intends to build a messaging campaign that will specifically target certain groups it calls “communities of interests,” such as “indigenous peoples and millennial males.”Afterwards, the consultant Pulsar will again collect data to measure the impact of the campaign.The influence operation will not be the first, with PHAC having earlier conducted a “Fall Booster Campaign” on social media, the performance of which Pulsar as the new consultant has been tasked to assess.
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- Dr. Kathryn Edwards, a member of Pfizer’s data safety monitoring board (DSMB), was previously a paid adviser to Pfizer. DSMBs are supposed to be independent, and aren’t if members have previous relationships with the company
- German autopsies found “highly unusual tissue inflammation” in people who died shortly after getting the jab, and investigators suspect the inflammation observed would be fatal. They also found spike protein in the tissues of the deceased, but not another key part of SARS-CoV-2. This suggests the actual virus was not part of the problem; the only possible source of the spike protein was the jab
- Data from the German health insurance provider BKK, which covers about 10.9 million Germans, show 2.05% of COVID jab recipients sought medical care after their jab
- The largest German statutory health insurance dataset, which encompasses 72 million Germans, show massive increases in sudden and unexpected deaths after the COVID jabs rolled out
- December 13, 2022, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis petitioned the Florida Supreme Court for a statewide grand jury investigation of crimes and wrongdoing committed against Floridians related to the COVID-19 jabs. He also established an independent Public Health Integrity Committee to analyze and assess federal health guidance before they’re implemented in Florida
Spain will require all air passengers coming from China to have negative COVID-19 tests or proof of vaccination, the government said Friday.
Canada doesn't want to get the memo:
As the United States and other nations impose new mandatory COVID-19 testing rules on travellers of flights originating in China, Canada is choosing instead to watch and wait.
"Not effective", the "experts" say.
Last week public health authorities in South Africa confirmed that a new Covid-19 variant of concern had been detected in that country. The variant– named Omicron by the World Health Organization — has now also been detected in other countries, including Canada.
The Government of Canada has recently announced that, as a precautionary measure, they will be implementing enhanced border measures for all travellers who have been in the Southern Africa region — including South Africa, Eswatini, Lesotho, Botswana, Zimbabwe, Mozambique, and Namibia— within the last 14 days before arriving in Canada. These measures will continue until at least January 31, 2022.
Foreign nationals who have travelled in any of these countries within the previous 14 days will not be permitted entry into Canada.
Justin doesn't have any bosses in Africa.
It's Not Optimism If You Don't Know Or Care That You're Driving Over a Cliff
Resolutions are what we make (or should make) each day.
We resolve to do and be better in our lives.
What does it say about a people incapable of a moment's self-reflection or situational awareness? What does it say about a nation glad to kill its elderly, its mentally and physically ill, its unwillingness to give to charity and its love of money-wasting tyranny?
This is what dissonance looks like:
Only one Canadian in five has a New Year’s resolution, according to a poll. ...
Four out of five really think that nothing bad will happen to them.
Good luck buying food.
Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI
For me, he was one of the greatest men the Roman Catholic Church has ever produced. Those of us who loved him understood what the media constantly got wrong: He was not a liberal or a conservative. He was an orthodox Catholic who did what he was supposed to do as a bishop, cardinal and then pope. He defended the faith from novelties. He understood that while secular society is in constant flux, the church’s role is to stand firm on eternal teachings.
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Wednesday, December 28, 2022
Mid-Week Post
Your post-Christmas Day minute of reflection ...
No matter how incompetent, wasteful, rude, insulting, bigoted, presumptuous and sycophantic the government is, Canadians will still vote it in.
This is why you should never wonder what they will do when the interest payments become too high and they have to walk away from their houses:
As the Liberal government moves to increase a number of taxes in the coming year and fears of a recession continue to grow, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau is warning Canadians that 2023 will be “tough.”
I'll stop one right there. We are already IN a recession.
**
If we stopped subsidising things, people would have enough money to do what they wanted or needed to with their own money.
But that just makes sense, so ... :
According to Innovation, Science and Economic Development Canada (ISED), in 2018 almost half of Canadian households with an annual income of $30,000 or less did not have access to high-speed internet at home. Research has found some low-income people that do have an internet connection end up sacrificing things like food and medication in order to afford it.
Experts say investments in expanding subsidy programs and public internet access are essential to getting those in urban areas connected.
**
I assure you that Justin was thinking something else altogether:
A Florida gun designer was shocked to discover his primitive single-shot gag gun landed on the Canadian government’s list of firearms to ban in the country.
“Butt Master” designer and sole owner Mark Serbu commented on the creation’s “absurd” inclusion in Canada’s controversial legislation to curb gun violence Thursday on “Tucker Carlson Tonight.”
“This is hilarious, it’s awesome,” Serbu said. “But then you look on official Canadian documentation and you see ‘Butt Master’ and it’s like, how could they be so inept to do that?”
Serbu created a single “Butt Master” 23 years ago, which is still in his possession in Tampa. The one-of-a-kind firearm is listed in Bill C-21’s November amendment of firearms to be banned in Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s bid to combat mass shootings.
The government has to get money somehow:
Canadians who were caught violating federal COVID-19 quarantine rules racked up at least $15 million in fines this year, according to the Public Health Agency of Canada, but it’s not clear how much of that will actually be paid.
The agency provided data to the House of Commons in the fall in response to a request from Conservative MP Eric Duncan.
Duncan did not respond to a request for comment.
Do you want Lysenkoism?
Because this is how you get Lysenkoism:
Scholars at Montreal’s Concordia University are planning to trace and counter what they say is colonialism in physics, which they describe as a “social field” rather than one of “pure knowledge.”
The project’s website says the initiative “explores ways and approaches to decolonize science, such as revitalizing and restoring Indigenous knowledge, and capacity building.” It also aims to develop “a culture of critical reflection and investigation of the relation of science and colonialism.”
As reported by The College Fix, “Decolonizing Light” is led by Concordia associate professor Tanja Tajmel, who also serves as a special advisor to the dean for equity, diversity and inclusion. Tajmel’s bio on Concordia’s website notes that “her main interest lies in investigating the politics of STEM education and how STEM education and STEM discourses impact social (in)equity.”
Fifteen other people are working on the project, including Concordia associate professors Louellyn White and Ingo Salzmann, who are co-investigators.
Never send a quack to do a real doctor's job:
This holiday season, help prevent Fetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorder (FASD) by providing support for the pregnant people in your life. Here’s how : https://t.co/FgKOtA5PSa pic.twitter.com/T1LjBgDHL7
— Dr. Theresa Tam (@CPHO_Canada) December 23, 2022
Also - what a real doctor should do:
On Dec. 14, Mark Lacy, a Christian doctor in New Mexico specializing in infectious diseases, joined by the Christian Medical & Dental Associations, sued the state on grounds that the law violates the First Amendment’s guarantees of free speech and religious liberty.“Suffering patients need care and sound medical treatment, and they must trust their physicians to care and not kill,” Lacy declared in a prepared statement. He said the New Mexico law, by compelling doctors to offer a path to a practice that violates their convictions, turns them into “mere instruments executing state mandates.”But Lacy and the medical providers who share his objections on grounds of faith or ethics are up against a tide of progressive public opinion, especially in the establishment media, that pooh-poohs such objections as trivial. An unsigned Dec. 21 editorial in the Albuquerque Journal, which has consistently supported the New Mexico law, asked, “How hard is it for a doctor to tell a patient, ‘I don’t believe suicide is the answer, and I can’t be part of it, but you have a right to know your options and I can refer you to another physician.’”
Whatever.
Canadians will simply ask their lazy politicians to pretend to fix these problems and then get used to never travelling:
I’ve never seen anything like this at Pearson Airport in Toronto.
— Devin Heroux (@Devin_Heroux) December 27, 2022
A mass of humanity and luggage upon arrival. pic.twitter.com/VfOOYxSoWA
When will these guys get off the hook?:
Murder charges have been filed against two people who were arrested after an Ontario Provincial Police office was gunned down.
Court documents show Randall McKenzie, who is 25, and Brandi Crystal Lyn Stewart-Sperry, who is 30, both face one count of first-degree murder.
I'm sure it's nothing to be concerned with:
Bank of Japan policymakers saw the need to keep ultralow interest rates but discussed growing prospects that higher wages could finally eradicate the risk of a return to deflation, a summary of opinions at their December meeting showed.
Their increasing attention to mounting inflationary pressures could keep alive market expectations the BOJ will phase out dovish Gov. Haruhiko Kuroda's massive stimulus when he steps down in April next year.
"Price rises are accelerating not just for goods but for services. … There's a chance Japan's inflationary momentum is heightening," one member was quoted as saying in the summary, released Wednesday.
Prime Minister Fumio Kishida has said that he expects the next general election to come before a possible hike in taxes that has met resistance from the public and is intended to fund his unprecedented expansion of defense spending.
"We will be asking the people to take on an extra burden starting at an appropriate time between 2024 and 2027,” Kishida said in an interview with satellite broadcaster BS TBS late Tuesday. "We are going to decide on the start date, but I think there will be an election before then.”
Kishida has unveiled plans for a 60% increase in defense spending over five years after many in Japan have been spooked by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, rising tensions around Taiwan and developments with North Korea’s missile program. The move marks a historic change for a country with a pacifist Constitution that has capped its military spending at about 1% of gross domestic product for decades.
We don't have to trade with China:
Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi defended what he said was his country’s position of impartiality on the war in Ukraine on Sunday and signaled that China would deepen ties with Russia in the coming year.
Wang, speaking by video to a conference in the Chinese capital, also blamed America for the deterioration in relations between the world’s two largest economies, saying that China has “firmly rejected the United States’ erroneous China policy.”
China has pushed back against Western pressure on trade, technology, human rights and its claims to a broad swath of the western Pacific, accusing the U.S. of bullying. Its refusal to condemn the invasion of Ukraine and join others in imposing sanctions on Russia has further frayed ties and fueled an emerging divide with much of Europe.
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Inside the mortuary of a top hospital in China’s fifth-most populous city of Guangzhou, dead bodies have been piled on the floor since the refrigerated chambers reached capacity. Elsewhere, long lines of cars waiting with bodies to be cremated have formed outside several morgues in the southwestern municipality of Chongqing.
Up north in China’s capital, there were so many corpses that cold stores at state-run food companies have been turned into temporary storage facilities for dead bodies.
The grim scenes emanating out of China in recent days, which were shared by witnesses who spoke to The Epoch Times, are reminiscent of the desperation from nearly three years ago, when COVID-19 first erupted in the country. As the rest of the world learned to live with the virus, the regime held steady to its communist-style campaign known as “zero-COVID,” which aimed to eradicate the disease through a mix of massive lockdowns, intrusive surveillance, and mandatory testing—despite the heavy economic, humanitarian, and psychological toll.
Then, following nationwide unrest in November, the regime abruptly made a U-turn, relaxing the zero-COVID policy in early December. The reversal was made without forewarning or the announcement of measures for a graduated retreat from the policy.
Since then, the virus has ripped through the vast population, who have been ill-prepared for its sudden surge and, after nearly three years of zero-COVID restrictions, lack natural immunity to weather the outbreak.
The country is now in crisis with its health systems and frontline services overrun and overwhelmed. Judiciary and law enforcement facilities have shuttered due to widespread infections. Pharmacy shelves have been stripped bare. Hospitals, which are stretched and vastly understaffed, have tried to hire back retired workers in their efforts to keep up with the influx of COVID patients.
The devastation has continued to unfold despite Beijing’s assurance on Dec. 27 that it’s “fighting a prepared battle.”
“The Chinese Communist Party is all about politics,” Chinese historian Li Yuanhua, who lives in Australia, told The Epoch Times. “It never cares about people’s livelihood.”
What the regime is doing now, he said, is to quickly achieve herd immunity through mass infections, so that the country can revive its faltering economy.
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House Republicans have released a document which reveals the U.S. government funded a Chinese Military Research Institute where a coronavirus scientist and general by the name of Zhou Yusen announced February 24,2020 that he’d already developed a COVID vaccine.
Vanity Fair published that three scientists they consulted felt that General Zhou would have had to have the genetic sequence in November to possibly develop a vaccine so fast. The official date China admitted to knowing the COVID sequence was Jan. 11, 2020.
(Sidebar: they're not the only ones hiding the truth.)
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Why, it's like the Japanese don't trust the Chinese for some reason:
Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida announced Tuesday that Japan will tighten border controls for COVID-19 by requiring tests for all visitors from China starting Friday as a temporary emergency measure against the surging infections there.
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Japan will tighten its border controls for travelers from China on Friday, as the latter nation is seeing a surge in COVID-19 infections, Prime Minister Fumio Kishida said Tuesday.
The announcement, which marks the first time Japan has tightened its borders since foreign tourists were allowed to enter without restrictions in October, pours cold water on expectations of an influx of Chinese tourists over the Chinese New Year period, which begins Jan. 22.
Kishida’s abrupt announcement comes only a day after news that China will scrap its quarantine for incoming travelers from Jan. 8, one of the country’s most significant steps since it effectively abandoned its two-year “zero-COVID” policy.
All travelers from China, including Japanese citizens and returning foreign nationals living in Japan, as well as those who have been to China within the previous seven days will be tested for COVID-19 upon their arrival in Japan. Those who test positive will be required to quarantine at designated facilities for seven days.
The quarantine period for those who test positive is expected to be seven days if they have developed symptoms. For those who are asymptomatic, the period will be shortened to five days if they test negative on the fifth day, according to the health ministry.
The number of flights from China will also be limited to guard against a sudden increase in COVID-19 infections in Japan, Kishida told reporters at the Prime Minister’s Office. Arrivals from China, Hong Kong and Macao will be limited to four airports: Narita, Haneda, Kansai International and Chubu.
I'm sure that when or if Justin comes back from his holiday, he will admonish whichever Asian group offended his bosses.
Also:
Italian health authorities will begin testing all arrivals from China for Covid after almost half of the passengers on two flights to Milan were found to have the virus.
And:
Nearly 90 percent of Canadians support creating a registry of foreign agents, according to a new survey, conducted after Ottawa announced plans to consult the public on establishing such a registry amid growing concerns of foreign interference from China, Russia, and other authoritarian states.
Couple that with another chance for China to rig an election.
On the Korean Peninsula:
South Korean military officials say North Korea has flown five drones across their mutual border.
The "unmanned aerial vehicles" violated South Korean airspace in the border areas around Gyeonggi province, said the country's joint chiefs of staff.
One drone flew all the way to the northern edge of the capital, Seoul, before returning across the border.
Jets and attack helicopters were deployed, but 100 rounds fired from helicopters failed to shoot them down.
A South Korean military official said they had since lost track of all the drones, but that they were no longer in flight.
**
South Korea sent drones across the border into North Korea for the first time on Monday, an unprecedented tit-for-tat military move after Kim Jong Un’s regime dispatched five unmanned aerial vehicles into its air space.
The Kogi State Polytechnic students were said to have been ambushed on Friday, at Ago Jinadu Axis, in Akoko, noted for crimes especially kidnapping.
No fewer than four students, said to be returning home for the yuletide, were reportedly abducted by gunmen, suspected to be bandits, along the Akunnu-Ajowa road, in Akoko area of Ondo State.
God never asked us to compromise or surrender:
"Just over two weeks ago, a Muslim man was accused of harassing young Christian women at a Forefathers Orthodox Church in Beit Sahour near the city of Bethlehem. Soon after, the church was attacked by a large mob of Palestinian men who hurled rocks at the building while congregants cowered inside. Several of the congregants were injured in the attack.
The Palestinian Authority, responsible for security in the area, did nothing.
In October, unidentified gunmen shot at the Christian-owned Bethlehem Hotel after a video on social media associated the hotel with a display that included cardboard cutouts of a Star of David and a Menorah. ...
No arrests were made in connection with the shooting.
Perhaps the greatest shock to the community came in April when the Palestinian evangelical pastor, Johnny Shahwan, was arrested by the Palestinian Authority security forces on charges of 'promoting normalization' with Israel. ...
In January, a large group of masked men carrying sticks and iron bars attacked Christian brothers, Daoud and Daher Nassar, on their farm near Bethlehem. The Palestinian courts have been working to confiscate the farm that has been owned by the family since the Ottoman Empire."
**
Among those who offered an opinion, a solid majority, 68 percent, said traditional Christian faiths should not be forced to “compromise their traditions and beliefs to align with liberal ideology around topics like marriage, transgenderism, and critical race theory.”
However, nearly one-third, 32 percent, said they should.
It might have to do with the uncontrolled border situation:
Texas Governor Greg Abbott appears to have celebrated Christmas this weekend by ensuring that two busloads of migrants would be left in the cold outside of Kamala Harris’s residence.
Then don't allow them in, especially knowing full well that they will not be employed or housed.
Saturday, December 24, 2022
May Your Hearts Be Light
Indeed:
I tweet this video every year at Christmas because it’s beautiful and the acoustic reverb is soul stirring. Merry Christmas, may your heart be light. 🎄❤️📯 pic.twitter.com/DHVyp0PS2e
— (•_•) (@AsTheWorldBurnz) December 23, 2022
In the Bleak Early Winter
Get rid of Hamas and things will be fine:
Gaza is run by the Islamist Hamas group. Citing security concerns, Israel restricts the movement of people and goods and maintains a naval blockade of the densely-populated coastal strip, where unemployment and poverty are high. Egypt also maintains some restrictions along its frontier with the territory.
"I got a permit, but neither my wife nor my son did, therefore, I won't be able to travel and enjoy Christmas in Bethlehem, the birthplace of Jesus," Majed Tarazi said. He is not related to Suhail, the YMCA director.
For journalist Samer Hanna, the situation is reversed. He has been denied permits for the last 15 years on security grounds, while his wife and two children can travel.
"They get upset when they go and I am not with them, and if they stay here because of me, they still wish they could go to the West Bank or Jerusalem," Hanna said.
Even though Bethlehem is only a 90-minute drive away, the travel ban has prevented him from reconnecting with extended family and friends in the West Bank.
"It is a big problem when I see people from all over the world going to Bethlehem easily and I can't travel with my family," he said.
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Without any prior notice, government authorities bulldozed the church and homes of 200 Christians in Islamabad, the capital of Pakistan, leaving them homeless. "The timing is particularly concerning, coming so soon after costly and devastating floods, and with winter already here and temperatures plummeting." — The Centre for Legal Aid, Assistance and Settlement, November 26, 2022.
108 Medieval and early modern Armenian monasteries, churches and cemeteries, between 1997 and 2011, have already experienced "complete destruction," according to Caucasus Heritage Watch. "[N]ew satellite imagery....showed how a monastery, more than 700 years old , was destroyed, then re-erected as a mosque. — theartnewspaper.com, November 25, 2022, Azerbaijan.
"There has been a marked uptick in religiously motivated attacks by Palestinian Muslims on Christians in Bethlehem..... The Palestinian Authority, responsible for security in the area, did nothing." — Israel365.com, November 21, 2022.
"I want to burn Christianity ... we have incinerators and holocausts like Hitler, a lesson from history.... I swear to Allah we will cause chaos and kill the non-believers.... Whoever is not happy, a bullet in their head, I don't want a single person alive who would oppose Sharia." — Tarek Namouz, 42, a barber shop owner in London who, on seven separate occasions, sent £25,000 to ISIS fighters in Syria, Daily Mail, December 15, 2022.
"We will escalate the war against you until you submit to Islam... Our desire is to kill you or be killed, for we are martyrs before Allah, so submit or run from us." -- Message on social media addressed to "the Mozambican crusader army," it also targeted Christians and Jews, whom it offered "three choices: submit to Islam, pay tax [jizya], or accept endless war." — Zitamar News; November, 18, 2022, Mozambique
"Even when an abducted girl is found by police she will not be returned to her family. Instead she is sent to a Women's refuge centre that is meant to be impartial but is corruptible. Muslim rapists or their friends gain access to these protective centres and threaten to kill the girl and her family unless she states she willingly married the Muslim man.... Christian children are bullied in school and even killed for their faith. This prevents Christian families sending them to school which perpetuates levels of illiteracy. .... Provincial Curriculum text books caricature and demonize Christians and other minorities." — British Asian Christian Association, November 27, 2022, Pakistan.
It's A Cult
Make no bones about it:
“Pregnant people”. The absolute state of intellectual discourse today.
— Viva Frei (@thevivafrei) December 22, 2022
It’s interesting how the media can identify what a woman is under certain circumstances, but not others. https://t.co/YKIpM0s9eM pic.twitter.com/y3OgKeB4vZ
Country Used to Snow Panics When It Sees It
It's not "climate change".
In places like Windsor, Ont., where a blizzard warning was in effect Friday evening, Kimbell said the worst was likely over — though blowing snow was expected to continue. But in parts of Quebec, he said, the worst may be yet to come.
“The very southwestern part of Ontario, the worst is gone, but it’s going to continue to be nasty for some time, for another 12 hours or so. In places like the Eastern Townships of Quebec, no, the worst hasn’t even started yet. It’s about to start any time now,” he said late Friday afternoon.
The number of power outages across Quebec rose steadily for much of the day, with winds reaching 100 kilometres per hour in some parts of the province, snapping power lines and downing trees. By 5 p.m., the number of Hydro-Quebec customers without power had declined slightly to around 340,000, including more than 80,000 customers in the Quebec City area.
Try fixing the aging infrastructure instead of letting the government run bar tabs.
Public Schools Don't Care About Your Lawsuits
They stopped caring about education years ago.
Stop sending your kids to them.
There are other ways to educate your kids:
After four months of an Ontario school district saying it can do nothing about a shop teacher wearing giant prosthetic breasts to class, a parent’s group has obtained legal representation in a bid to force administrators to establish some kind of guidelines on teacher attire.
Your Idiot Government and You
The robber-barons are completely clueless:
Cabinet yesterday wrote numerous loopholes into Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s promised crackdown on foreign real estate speculators. “We’ll crack down on the predatory speculators that stack the deck against you,” Trudeau said in an August 24, 2021 campaign speech. “No more foreign wealth parked in homes that people should be living in.”
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Taxpayers will lose billions with a federal waiver on Canada Student Loan interest payments, new figures show. The Department of Employment said interest charges since 2016 totaled $3.38 billion: “This measure is targeted at making loan repayment more affordable.”
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The Government of Canada is so secretive its own employees must file Access To Information requests to retrieve records, says the largest federal public service union. The Public Service Alliance in a submission to Parliament said documents should be made public as a matter of course: “We are concerned.”
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Justin banned twenty-eight percent's guns because the idea of them is scary to him:
The typical gun owner in Canada has a rifle or shotgun, enjoys camping and shoots for sport or food, says in-house research by the Department of Public Safety. “They are worried about the public’s view of firearms owners,” wrote researchers.
And now the douchebag is on holidays.
Blacklock's Reporter Names the Parliamentary Press Gallery In Lawsuit
Blacklock’s managing editor today named the Parliamentary Press Gallery in an Ontario Superior Court lawsuit. It follows the December 2 eviction of Tom Korski from the National Press Building, a Gallery first.
The lawsuit states the Gallery executive committed “breach of contract, breach of duty of good faith and breach of the duty of honest performance.” It seeks $224,000 in damages, costs and “a declaration that the defendant breached the Gallery constitution.”
“The Gallery’s conduct is reprehensible and constitutes a breach of the duty of good faith and the duty of honest contractual performance,” wrote counsel Jessica Kuredjian of Cassels Brock & Blackwell LLP of Toronto. The Press Gallery has not yet filed a statement of defence.
Documents to be submitted in Superior Court show over a six-month period the executive of the press association compiled a list of grievances from the same three of 313 members of the Gallery: Emilie Bergeron and Michel Saba of Canadian Press and freelancer Hélène Buzzetti, a former Gallery president.
Blacklock’s was denied permission to speak to complaints at a Board hearing and was twice denied permission to read written complaints discussed by competitors at closed-door meetings. Korski was locked out of his office for alleged “serious misconduct.” Counsel Kuredjian wrote Superior Court the allegations “do not meet the definition of ‘serious misconduct’” in the Gallery’s own bylaws.
“In particular the complaints as alleged did not involve any threatening of physical or psychological harm to any members of the Gallery or materially interfere with the ability of other Gallery members to perform work for which Gallery membership is required,” wrote Kuredjian. “To the contrary.”
Numerous reporters, photographers and editors worked alongside Korski “for years and in some instances over a decade without Korski’s conduct materially affecting their ability to perform work for which Gallery membership is required,” wrote Kuredjian.
Complaints were that Korski “was impolite,” “frightened a complainant for no particular reason” and “made a complainant nervous for no particular reason.” Records show other complaints were that Blacklock’s staff posted a tweet critical of Canadian Press committee coverage, listened to English-only audio feeds from the House of Commons, called Freelancer Buzzetti an “idiot,” once propped open a newsroom door during the pandemic and tore a piece of paper “in a theatrical gesture.”
Gallery President Guillaume St-Pierre of the Journal de Montréal was accompanied by an armed constable in serving the December 2 eviction notice. The eviction was approved following a closed, half-hour Board meeting on November 15 attended by President St-Pierre, John Tasker and Rachel Hanes of the CBC, Luigi Della Penta of Global News, Catherine Levesque of the National Post, Boris Proulx of Le Devoir and Mia Rabson of Canadian Press.
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