Wednesday, July 26, 2023

Mid-Week Post

Your middle-of-the-week smoothie ...


 

Oh, do you really think so, Canada?:

Two in three Canadians think the amount they pay in income taxes is too high and fewer than one in four Canadians believe the federal government spends on the right priorities. ...

Other findings include that two in three Canadians recognize that increased government spending contributes to inflation.

“Not only do Canadians find that the Trudeau government spends too much, but they also find that it spends unwisely,” said Renaud Brossard, senior director of communications at the MEI, in a statement. “This seems to indicate a disconnect between the Department of Finance and the people whose money is entrusted in its care.”

 

Remind me again who and what you voted for:

A new survey conducted by TD Bank Group shows that nearly 60 per cent of Canadian parents are concerned about their children’s financial future, primarily due to the impact of inflation and the prevailing economic uncertainties in the country.

According to the survey published on Wednesday, an overwhelming majority of surveyed parents (89 per cent) believe that their confidence in their children's financial future would improve if their kids gained better financial knowledge before their teenage years.

The survey also found that 66 per cent of parents are not highly confident in their children's current financial knowledge.

In the survey, 60 per cent of parents admitted that they had made mistakes with finances during their childhood, with the majority attributing these mistakes to a lack of financial education at that time.

 **

Canadians questioned in Privy Council research “almost all had a negative opinion” of cabinet’s management of the economy, says an in-house report. Disclosure of cabinet polling follows Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland’s complaints of “gloom and doom and the talking down of Canada.”


You voted for these morons:

Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Finance Chrystia Freeland crowed on Wednesday about Canada’s inflation rate dropping to 2.8% in June.

“Canada’s plan to bring down inflation is working,” she wrote on Twitter alongside a graphic showing the country’s inflation rate leading the G7 and being its lowest since March 2021.

But citizens were not buying it, with some calling for Freeland to resign.

“Food prices have increased by over 9%, translating to a nearly 20% increase in two years, the fastest growth in more than 40 years,” one person commented.

“Mortgage interest costs have also significantly increased, rising over 30% in the past year due to the Bank of Canada’s attempts to control inflation,” they added.

Add in rent jumping 5.8% in the past year, and that adds up to a gaping hole in many people’s pocket.

Others pointed to the increased costs of energy and labour adding fuel to the inflation fire.

“Great job, but not at all,” one user responded. “You know inflation will come back stronger in this second half, leaving us with a significant hurdle in 2024, most likely a slowdown in the economy.

“Oil prices are down, but supply cuts made months ago will be reflected during winter,” he added.

**

The City of Toronto says it has designated more than 200 shelter spaces for asylum seekers, responding to the rising numbers of refugee claimants sleeping on the streets, which the mayor has called a crisis.

A press release from the city says it has secured rooms at two hotels and a city emergency shelter for 212 asylum seekers.

Last week, Toronto Mayor Olivia Chow secured unanimous approval on a motion to designate the spaces during her first council meeting as the city's leader, with officials revealing that the number of asylum seekers in Toronto's shelter system grew by 500 per cent in 20 months.

The city says the spaces would in part come from the $97 million in federal funding recently earmarked for Toronto to help its overstretched shelter system cope with the high numbers of refugee claimants who are unhoused.


Oh, that just happened, did it?

**

The federal government’s plan for a net-zero electricity grid by 2035 faces considerable regulatory, technical, and supply chain challenges, according to a new report, and Alberta Minister of Affordability and Utilities Nathan Neudorf said the cost to Albertans will be extreme.
“We are at a critical point in history where the global energy market is changing and energy supply needs to be addressed. Demands for reliable, sustainable energy are higher than ever, and we need our system to evolve to meet these demands in a responsible way,” said Mr. Neudorf in a July 19 statement.
He said the federal government’s plan “risks imposing exponential costs on consumers in Alberta and Canada.”
The report that Mr. Neudorf’s statement referenced was released by the Public Policy Forum on July 19. The report, “Project of the Century: a Blueprint for Growing Canada’s Clean Electricity Supply—And Fast,” suggests electricity demand is forecast to double by 2050, which would necessitate supply growing “an astounding two to three times today’s volume.”
“According to this report, the cost to Canadians of a net-zero grid by 2035 is well over one trillion dollars. Alberta’s share of that will be much higher than our proportion of the Canadian population since we won’t be able to onboard stable base load renewables in such a short period of time,” said Mr. Neudorf.
He indicated that the Conference Board of Canada has estimated the cost of Ottawa’s expedited clean electricity transformation at $1.7 trillion. Mr. Neudorf said that’s almost the size of the entire Canadian economy in 2023.

(Sidebar: the world cannot live without fuel. The pipe dream of running vehicles on batteries made with Congolese child labour or with minerals minded in Taliban territory is not just farcical but cruel. It is slavery under the banner of virtue which will only end with a crippled eighteenth century economy.)



Priorities:

Cabinet commissioned in-house research on banning federal funding to any Canadian organization “unaccepting of LGBTQ individuals,” records show. A Privy Council report also discussed preferential funding for Pride communities like LGBTQ scholarships: ‘They questioned why the process to normalize and protect LGBTQ communities was not moving faster.’

 

 

The government isn't looking for skilled workers. They are looking for replacement Liberal Party voters:

Announced last month by Sean Fraser, Canada’s immigration minister, at the Collision 2023 tech conference, the new special work permit is for foreign workers who already have obtained an H-1B visa in the U.S. The visa is generally designated for professional-level occupations in fields like engineering, mathematics and business administration, among others.

There are currently about 600,000 workers in the U.S. that hold an H-1B visa.

The new permit, which cost $155 to apply for, will allow individuals to live and work in Canada for up to three years and bring their family members with them. The permit won’t be revoked if workers quit their job or are laid off, which is a different approach from the H-1B visa, which requires workers to find a new job within 60 days or leave the country.

 

Now, what happens when these interlopers realise that things are financially better in the US?



"Let's legalise it," they said.

"No problems, " they said:

Accidental marijuana poisoning of kindergartners has worsened under legalization, according to records. The Department of Health acknowledged “the rise in pediatric cannabis poisonings” since Parliament legalized marijuana in 2018: “This is largely driven by children younger than five.”

 


Israel simply doesn't care about Justin:

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau says he is not currently planning to join the American president in inviting his Israeli counterpart for a visit.


Not that Netanyahu cares, Justin.



We don't have to trade with China:

William Majcher is accused of helping the Chinese government identify and intimidate a person.

Police say he is from Hong Kong and used his network of Canadian contacts to get intelligence or services that benefited the People’s Republic of China. 


(Sidebar: he's getting bail, by the way.)

**

Kenneth Ingram Marsh, a B.C.-based private investigator and former commander of an RCMP international organized crime unit, has been named as a co-conspirator in the allegations along with former Mountie William “Bill” Majcher.

Few specifics about the case are known, but it allegedly involved the targeting of an individual for intimidation on Canadian soil. On Friday, the Canadian Press named Marsh as a second man involved in the case based on Majcher’s charge sheet, but did not identify him as a retired Mountie.


A few things:

- the RCMP, retired or not, is for sale

- the government is not unaware but (at least) tacitly allowing this to go on. It certainly has a scapegoat that might be utilised to avoid yet another costly and embarrassing inquiry

- the Chinese have a foothold in more than just the diaspora (SEE: for sale)

**

A newly released document shows intelligence officials have been tracking China's attempts to meddle in Canadian affairs for more than one-third of a century.

The February 1986 intelligence report warned that Beijing was using open political tactics and secret operations to influence and exploit the Chinese diaspora in Canada.

It said China was using new and potentially more potent techniques to accomplish these goals.

**

Friends of China may be spreading pro-Beijing propaganda to “pollute the general media” in Canada, warns a Department of Public Safety briefing note. Cabinet is reviewing a proposal to mandate public disclosure of advocates acting on behalf of the Chinese Communist Party: “Information could be disseminated by Canadians who may not be fully aware.

**

“The Government of Canada has a standing offer for commercially available and pre-existing satellite imagery with a company called China Head Aerospace Technology Co. (HEAD Aerospace), which has been added to the U.S. Department of Commerce Entity List,” said a June 13 question period note, as first reported by Blacklock’s Reporter.
HEAD Aerospace was founded in 2007 with headquarters in Beijing, and subsidiaries in Hong Kong, France, and the Netherlands, according to the company’s website.
The Department of Natural Resources hired HEAD Aerospace for satellite images of Canadian forests on Jan. 16, according to Blacklock’s Reporter.
About a month later on Feb. 24, the U.S. Commerce Department added HEAD Aerospace to its Entity List, blacklisting it, among other companies, as a threat to national security.

“These additions are based on information these companies significantly contribute to Russia’s military or defence industrial base and are involved in activities contrary to U.S. national security and foreign policy interests,” the Commerce Department said in a notice titled “Addition Of Entities To The Entity List.”
**

Oh, Japan, you know that China is not to be trusted:

China has proposed three-way vice-foreign ministerial-level talks with Japan and South Korea, diplomatic sources said Sunday, a move Tokyo views as underscoring Beijing’s enthusiasm for a three-nation summit this year, the first in four years.

China’s top diplomat, Wang Yi, made the proposal when he met with Japanese Foreign Minister Yoshimasa Hayashi in Jakarta on July 14, even as the two countries are at odds over Tokyo’s plan to release treated radioactive water from the crippled Fukushima nuclear complex into the sea around this summer, the sources said.

Usually, a summit between Japan, China and South Korea is held following working-level and foreign ministerial-level talks.

Japan has also notified South Korea, which assumes the rotating chair of the next trilateral summit, of China’s stance on resuming a three-way dialogue, the sources said.

The deterioration of ties between Japan and South Korea, coupled with the impact of the coronavirus pandemic, has prevented the three neighbors from holding a trilateral summit since the last session in December 2019.

But with Tokyo-Seoul ties significantly improving, Prime Minister Fumio Kishida and South Korean President Yoon Suk-yeol agreed in March on the importance of holding a three-way dialogue as soon as possible.

Wang, a member of the Political Bureau of the Communist Party of China Central Committee, had also said at the opening of a forum on trilateral cooperation held in China on July 3 that the three countries should “create an atmosphere for the early resumption of leaders meetings.”

A senior Japanese Foreign Ministry official said the latest attitude of China “shows it has become positive toward three-way dialogue” with the neighbors, considering its position in global affairs and its domestic economy.

**

Cabinet hired pollsters to survey Vancouver’s Chinese-Canadian community on its “current relationship with China” but made no mention of alleged election fraud by foreign agents. The in-house research by the Privy Council Office was disclosed yesterday: “Many believed there needed to be greater representation of Chinese-Canadians at the federal level.”


(Sidebar: Canada means nothing to these interlopers.)


As opposed to what everyone else said:

In a survey of over 7,000 Asian Americans, only about 20% had a favorable view of China, with Sino-U.S. tensions weighing on even those who count themselves among the large Chinese diaspora living in the U.S.

That compares with the 78% who said they had a positive view of the U.S. in the Pew Research Center survey released Wednesday, while more than half see the U.S. as the leading economic power of the next decade. About 52% of respondents had an unfavorable opinion of China, while 26% were neutral.

Only about 4 in 10 Chinese Americans see China in a positive light, with 15% holding a very unfavorable view of the country, more than the rates for people with Indian (10%), Vietnamese (5%) and Japanese (4%) heritage. A share of 20% saw China in a somewhat unfavorable light. Meanwhile, just 3 in 10 Chinese Americans hold positive views of the U.S.


It was never about a virus:

Cabinet budgeted millions for a vaccine passport program to 2026 though the World Health Organization has declared the pandemic is over. A Department of Health memo said funding was needed to support federal measures “as needed going forward.”

**

“We do expect there to be a lot of underreporting,” said Dr. Celia Lourenco, acting associate assistant deputy minister with Health Canada, during a Federal Public Sector Labour Relations and Employment Board hearing on July 13.
The official approved the COVID-19 vaccines currently on the market in her previous role as director-general of the Biologic and Radiopharmaceutical Drugs Directorate in the department.
Dr. Lourenco said this underreporting is a “well-known fact,” because health-care professionals may not report the adverse events, or patients may not report it to a physician.
“It doesn’t get reported to the regulator, so that’s a common problem,” she said, adding that the phenomenon exists across countries.

Particularly with this.
**
**
Quarantine hotels cost taxpayers more than a third of a billion according to new figures, the highest disclosed to date. Expenses were the equivalent of more than $17,000 for every traveler given shelter for 72 hours: “Costs associated with this program included lodging, meals, security, traveler support and transportation.”
**

After years of smearing such claims as “conspiracy theories,” the left-wing New York Times has admitted that the “official” data on deaths caused by Covid was overcounted by at least 30 percent.

Citing data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the NY Times states that a third of “Covid deaths” were actually caused by “something else.”

The newspaper admits that large numbers of people who died while testing positive for the virus had Covid listed as the cause of the death even though it didn’t kill them.

Many of the deaths, however, were found to be listed as caused by Covid even if the person hadn’t been tested for the virus.


Some people are, well, special:

Before the sun broke through the sky Monday morning, members of a Manitoba First Nation planned to start a critical month-long search in a good way.

Spiritual advisers were to lead a pipe ceremony in Minegoziibe Anishinabe while a sacred fire was to be lit near where potential graves of children forced to attend residential school may be.

The sacred fire is expected to burn for the entirety of the estimated four-week-long excavation of an area underneath the Catholic church where 14 anomalies were detected using ground-penetrating radar last year.

“This allows for a trauma-informed, spiritually and culturally sensitive approach to the work that we have to do in the community,” Chief Derek Nepinak said before the ceremony.

Monday is about ensuring elders, survivors and intergenerational survivors of the former Pine Creek Residential School are provided support before ground is expected to be broken Tuesday.


Bull. Sh--.

**

Mounties say after a yearlong investigation into potential unmarked graves detected in a western Manitoba First Nation, they have not found any evidence pointing to criminal activities.

Minegoziibe Anishinabe, also known as Pine Creek First Nation, requested the RCMP launch an investigation after it found 14 points of concern underneath the Catholic church in the community last year using ground-penetrating radar.

RCMP say in a release that officers interviewed community members, conducted surveys and followed up on other leads.

Investigators were unable to uncover evidence that showed a crime occurred related to what was detected at the site.

The community is set to begin excavating the area underneath the Our Lady of Seven Sorrows Catholic Church on Monday.

Mounties say if anything is located in the dig that may be related to criminal activity, officers will continue with the investigation.

**

Canada has accused itself of genocide for the most part. Only a handful of dissident ‘deniers’ like me continue to point out that the claims of children being forcibly torn from their mother’s arms is not supported by the thousands of Indian Residential School enrollment forms, signed by parents. On the forms is a spot for designating the child’s family’s religion — which is typically filled in with Roman Catholic (R.C.) or Anglican. Rarely blank. Meaning, the families had chosen Christianity some time ago and they wanted their children to continue learning in that religious tradition. So, no forcible indoctrination either.

Likewise, the claim that thousands of children died or mysteriously disappeared at Indian Residential Schools, as claimed by Knowledge Keepers, elders or former residential school students does not jive with documented records from the government, Indian Agents, school records and provincial death certificates.

Following the money is why this trail is tightly documented. Schools were funded by the government based on the child’s whereabouts. If at school, the annuity money came to the school. If at home with the family or band, the money went there. If deceased, the money stopped.

Several digs have taken place where self-described survivors had remembered or ‘just knew’ there were dozens of people buried in forgotten places. A reported instance is that at the then-named Charles Camsell Indian Hospital in Edmonton in operation from 1945 to 1996. The facility treated Indigenous Tuberculosis (TB) patients from across northern Canada. The architect in charge of present-day development on the property was deeply moved by the Kamloops Indian Residential School discovery of the claimed 215 unmarked graves. Thus, he paid for excavation services at the Charles Camsell sites that Ground Penetrating Radar had indicated as possible burial grounds. There were 13 digs followed by another 21. Only refuse and detritus was found.

Unfortunately, when no bodies are found, people who strongly believe that Indigenous people were secretly buried in unmarked graves only wonder where else the bodies would be buried, rather than reviewing the documented evidence of death and burial certificates and concluding that there are no missing children. These show where the persons were buried — typically at the person’s home reserve or sometimes in a local community graveyard. ...

Unfortunately, with “Two-Eyed Seeing” and Indigenous ways of knowing, there is typically a reliance on a certain individual, or a few, who have the unique insights or who carries certain sacred traditions forward. These people are held in high regard by their communities, of course. But there is no way to independently verify anything that the individual says, remembers or claims to be true, no matter how venerated they may be within their own community. This is known as Indigenous science and is part of Canadian government policy now. With the adoption of the UN Declaration of the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP) this methodology is slated to become more prevalent and to affect all laws and processes in Canada.

Thus, regarding allegations of criminal activity related to graves said to be under the floor of the Our Lady of Seven Sorrows Roman Catholic Church on the Minegoziibe Anishinabe (Pine Creek First Nation) reserve, the RCMP issued a statement that they had not found evidence of criminality associated with the site after a year-long investigation, but that they would continue working with the band as they begin excavations under the floor of the church on July 24, 2023.

**

Canadians need to be made aware of the ways in which non-governmental organizations (NGOs) are interfering in Indigenous participation in Canada’s natural resource sector.

These organizations — which are almost all foreign entities with Canadian branches — hire activists and promote misleading commentary about Canada’s oil and gas sector and First Nations’ interest in development. These organizations, which include the Sierra Club, Stand Earth, World Wildlife Federation and Tides Foundation, have garnered a great deal of sympathetic attention from the national and international media.

But in my experience in northern British Columbia, there are dozens of NGOs funded by both government and interest groups that actively befriend Indigenous communities, groups and urban organizations with the goal of using the community’s political capital to block and stall the development of Canada’s natural resources, particularly the oil and gas sector.

Canada’s unwillingness and inability to prevent interest groups from interfering in and blocking natural resource development harms Canada’s international standing among our energy starved democratic allies and stops us from opening new markets for our energy products.

These campaigns, which extend to our mining, fishing and forestry sectors, have undermined the livelihoods of thousands of everyday Canadians. Locally, the turmoil caused by these interventions has ripped apart relationships within and between Indigenous and non-Indigenous communities. When the projects are halted, these intruders leave the north and return to their comfortable lives in the southern cities, leaving Indigenous communities to deal with the lasting damage. These biased NGOs have torn apart countless families and friendships in order to impose their views on communities.

**

Months after the first calls to search a Manitoba landfill were voiced, a local MP has lodged a written submission to the United Nations.

Leah Gazan, MP for Winnipeg Centre, filed her submission to the UN’s special rapporteur on the rights of Indigenous Peoples on July 19, asking for international oversight into what she said was a failure by the provincial and federal governments. This comes after a decision not to search for the remains of two Indigenous women, which led to the blockade and eventual reopening of the Brady Road landfill.

This Leah Gazan:

**

A Senate committee yesterday recommended federal action to ban “Residential School denialism.” Senators did not define the term. Hate speech has been a Criminal Code offence in Canada since 1970: “Some individuals deny the negative effects on generations of Indigenous peoples.”



Identifying oneself as an aircraft on a tiresome and partisan survey is a marker of a "fascist dialogue":

Academic researchers condemned students’ irreverent and offensive responses to an LGBTQ survey, claiming the pushback indicates “fascist ideologues” are “living ‘inside the house’ of engineering and computer science.”

In an article for the Bulletin of Applied Transgender Studies, academics from Oregon State University wrote about their shock at receiving sarcasm and mockery in response to their research into undergraduate LGBTQ students studying in STEM fields. 

The team claimed 50 of 349 responses to their questionnaire on the topic contained “slurs, hate speech, or direct targeting of the research team.”

Labeling them “malicious respondents,” they adapted their project to examine how the joke responses “relate to engineering culture by framing them within larger social contexts — namely, the rise of online fascism.”

The result was the paper titled, “Attack Helicopters and White Supremacy: Interpreting Malicious Responses to an Online Questionnaire about Transgender Undergraduate Engineering and Computer Science Student Experiences.” ...

According to the article, when the “malicious” subjects were asked to fill out demographic data, “12 respondents (24%) indicated their gender as being related to a helicopter or aircraft” ranging from an “Apache Attack Helicopter” to a “V22 osprey.”

In the section declaring one’s disabilities, responses ranged from claiming to be “illiterate” to lamenting “My country is run by communists,” or even declaring that identifying as transgender is a disability in itself due to “the inability to come to terms with biological reality.”

One respondent claimed to identify as a gift card as their gender.



The little movie that could:

“Sound of Freedom” is an artistic story, but also a business one, and it reveals the changing nature of the film industry. After Disney dumped the project, it was eventually picked up by Angel Studios, a new player most famous for producing “The Chosen,” a massively successful streaming series on the life of Jesus, which is now in its third season, with a fourth coming next year.

“The Chosen” can be watched for free, and has been funded by donations from faithful viewers. It’s no community theatre YouTube video, but film-making of the highest Hollywood production standards, with much better writing.

Angel Studios is advancing a new approach to artistic patronage, which is the way great art — and poor art — has been produced down the centuries. The creative corruption of the big Hollywood studios, stuck in the rut of making ever more lavish cartoons for middle-aged children whose imaginations ceased developing in elementary school, has meant that serious patrons of the arts need to be sought elsewhere.

**



People are awful:

The Famous Five — Emily Murphy, Henrietta Muir Edwards, Nellie McClung, Louise McKinney and Irene Parlby — were early advocates for the rights of women and successfully spearheaded the 1929 “persons case” which recognized women as “persons” under British law.

For that, they are rightly celebrated and honoured across Canada as early, ground-breaking feminists.

Among many posthumous honours, for example, there are statues erected to them in Ottawa, Calgary and Winnipeg.

But the Famous Five were also racists, elitists and their support of eugenics — a popular and widely accepted theory among social reformers at the beginning of the 20th century — meant they advocated the forced sterilization of thousands of people in Canada, many of them Indigenous.

**

After being hospitalized for five months at three different institutions, her husband was finally strong enough to return home in June, albeit with a feeding tube. His only nourishment is a special prescription diet of ISO-Pro that Starkey picks up at their local pharmacy.
The first time she went to get it, the formula was not covered by the Régie de l’assurance maladie du Québec. The second time it was. The third time it was partially subsidized. The pharmacy told Starkey she had to call RAMQ to sort things out.
But when she tried to explain the situation in English to the public servant who answered the phone, he refused to listen.
“He said: ‘I don’t have to speak to you in English, speak French.’ And I said: ‘I can’t speak enough for you to understand me or me to understand you.’ He said: ‘Then go get somebody.’ I said: ‘I can’t, I’m alone,’” Starkey recounted. “I said: ‘Is there nobody there who can speak to me in English?’ And that’s when he hung up on me.”
It wasn’t that the civil servant at the end of the line wasn’t capable of speaking English.
“He spoke English like you and I. He had no accent, anything,” she said. “He wouldn’t let me speak any English. He just kept cutting me off.
“At the end, I said: ‘We were guaranteed (English) for medical things.’”
**
The Newfoundland and Labrador Supreme Court has sided with the Pierre Elliott Trudeau Foundation in its bid to have a sexual harassment case heard in Quebec.

**

To be clear - the choice is always abortion and the buyer is right:

Here’s the story: Shortly into the pregnancy, Pearson received a cancer diagnosis, and made the decision she would deliver the little boy in her womb early in order to begin a pharmaceutical regimen. The buyers however, didn’t want to pay top dollar for a premature baby, so they demanded he be “immediately terminated.” When Pearson refused the abortion, the couple threatened to sue; when she offered to adopt the child, they ordered her to present a death certificate. When Pearson delivered the baby, under California’s surrogacy laws the men were permitted to withhold medical care (which they did), and the little boy ultimately died. Of the tragedy, Pearson’s uncle said this:

They’d [buyers] rather watch (or rather they won’t be around) their baby die than allow it to be saved as best as possible and given to a family.

**

Yeah, whatever, Modi:

Narendra Modi, India’s prime minister, pledged to punish a mob after viral video footage showed them stripping two Christian women and parading them naked around a village in the state of Manipur, sparking outrage.

The attack included the gang rape of one of the women, who have become known as “the daughters of Manipur”.

“The guilty will not be spared. What has happened to the daughters of Manipur can never be forgiven,” Mr Modi told reporters.

Without referring to the violence directly, he urged the heads of state governments to ensure the safety of women and said the incident was “shameful for any civilized nation”. He added: “My heart is filled with pain and anger.”

The incident occurred the day after violent scuffles between the majority Hindu Meitei and minority Christian Kuki-Zo communities in the region of Manipur, which is led by the ruling Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party. Ethnic violence in the north-eastern state has killed at least 120 people, most of them Kuki.

Opposition parties have previously accused Mr Modi of choosing to stay silent on the violence.

The 26-second footage was filmed two months ago but but has only emerged now because an internet blackout was imposed in the state. In it, the mob can be seen molesting and assaulting the two women as they are led towards an empty field.



But no one even remembers that there was a Korean War:

Bill Black still gets letters and cards thanking him and other Canadian veterans for their service in the Korean War.

Quite a few of those notes from South Koreans have arrived lately at the Korea Veterans Association, where Black is president of an Ottawa chapter, as the 70th anniversary of the armistice in that conflict approaches.

More than 26,000 Canadian Armed Forces were deployed to assist South Korea after it was invaded by North Korea in 1950 and 7,000 more followed to help with peacekeeping after the armistice was signed on July 27, 1953.

Black was part of the peacekeeping contingent. He worked on a navy destroyer assigned to patrol South Korean waters and says it remains an honour to have served.

"We take pride in what we accomplished there, all of our Canadian veterans who served in Korea take pride," the 89-year-old Canadian veteran says.

"We sort of slap ourselves on the back that we were there to contribute, to aid them."


As you should. 

It was everyone else who let you down.



Why I like dogs:

A stray dog in Lebanon rescued an abandoned baby girl that was left to die in a trash bag, a report says.

The dog was seen carrying the bag by a passerby who heard the newborn baby's cries coming from inside, Arab News reported.

The bruised infant, who is believed to have only been a few hours old, was taken to hospital for treatment in Tripoli, per the outlet.

The child was described as being in a "serious but stable" condition. No further information is known about her health and the circumstances of her abandonment.

Images purportedly of the injured child have circulated on social media, with many people expressing sympathy for the infant.

Authorities are investigating the incident, and the baby will be put in an orphanage if no one offers to adopt her.

Social media users also hailed the dog as a hero. "The dog has much more humanity, kindness, cunning, and intelligence than some satanic mutants in human form," wrote one.

Ghassan Rifi, a journalist in Tripoli, said that the baby was left in a non-residential area where there are lots of stray dogs.

"Is it possible that whoever dumped her wanted to get rid of her by letting the dogs eat her in this area infested with stray dogs, and that she was saved by that man who happened to be there by chance?" Rifi said, according to Arab News.

But in any case, "the dog that dragged her was more humane in the face of the brutality and criminality of the one who threw her," Rifi said on Twitter.



Posted by at
Labels: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

No comments:

Post a Comment

Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom)