Friday Post

For the glorious month of May....


It appears the NDP  may acquire some seats in the Alberta election:

But the over 40 year reign of the PCs in Alberta could come to an end on May 5, if recent polls are any indication. The NDP, under new leader Rachel Notley, are putting in a real challenge to Premier Jim Prentice.

The latest poll from EKOS Research, which randomly sampled 721 Albertans between April 25 and 29 and released on April 30, suggests the NDP could sweep the province.

In a dramatic change from the results of the last Alberta provincial election in 2012, when the Wildrose Party offered the biggest challenge to the PCs, about 42 per cent of Albertans intend to vote for the NDP, according to the EKOS poll.

Twenty-three per cent of voters intend to cast a ballot for the PCs and 21 per cent for the Wildrose

In 2012, the PCs won a majority government and the NDP only received about 10 per cent of the province’s votes.

I'll fondly remember the days when Alberta was a functioning province.


My advice: stop equalisation payments and watch Quebec burn from a distance:

Anti-capitalist protesters clashed with police in Montreal on Friday night, with authorities firing off tear gas in an attempt to disperse them.

The several hundred demonstrators were taking part in the annual May Day protest.

Police declared the demonstration illegal shortly after it began because organizers did not give the route beforehand.

Earlier in the day, thousands of demonstrators took to the streets of Montreal and elsewhere in the province in peaceful protests to mark International Workers Day.

Those demonstrations focused primarily on big banks and the Quebec Liberal government's cost-cutting measures.

Alexa Conradi, president of the Quebec Federation of Women, said the Couillard government hasn't taken into account any of the proposals presented by social groups.

"Instead, what it's doing is causing cuts to education...in public services, in health care and in the regions." she said. "A lot of these services are absolutely essential to maintaining a degree of equality in our society."

(Sidebar: like how Ottawa subsidises failing provinces?)


Cha-ching!

The proponent of a liquefied natural gas plant on British Columbia’s north coast is offering more than $1-billion to obtain the consent of a First Nations community, a groundbreaking proposal that could establish the new price for natural resource development in traditional aboriginal territories.

In a province where resource projects have stalled and sometimes foundered over aboriginal opposition, the tentative deal between the Prince Rupert-based Lax Kw’alaams band and a joint venture led by Malaysia’s state-owned Petronas sets a new benchmark for sharing the wealth from energy extraction.

If approved by band members, the agreement will transfer roughly $1-billion in cash to the Lax Kw’alaams band over the span of the 40-year deal, while the B.C. government is putting more than $100-million worth of Crown lands on the table. For the 3,600 members of the Lax Kw’alaams community, the total package works out to a value of roughly $320,000 per person.

Former Prime Minster Jean Chretien has met with Vladimir Putin:

The Harper government wants to know what former Liberal prime minister Jean Chretien said in his meeting Thursday with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Moscow.

And Defence Minister Jason Kenney said he hopes Chretien delivered the same message the Conservatives always send these days to the Russian leader — get out of Ukraine.

The reports by Russia's news agency that Chretien met Putin in one of his palaces near Moscow on Thursday appeared to catch the Conservatives off-guard.

The meeting was a slap to the government of Prime Minister Stephen Harper, which has moved to politically isolate the Russian leader, blaming him for the unrest in Ukraine and Russia's annexation of Crimea last year.

"I haven't been briefed on what happened. I'm not sure if Mr. Chretien has chosen to brief our mission in Moscow. We would be curious to know what was discussed," Kenney said during a symposium on Canada's security relations with the European Union.

"All I can tell you is that the government of Canada has taken whatever opportunity we've had in meeting Mr. Putin, such as Prime Minister Harper's brief encounter with him at the margins of the G20 in Melbourne, to be very clear about our insistence that Russia get out of Ukraine.

"We would hope that Mr. Chretien would have taken — availed himself — of the opportunity to convey the same message."

As Chretien has never at any time put Canada in the forefront, his meeting with Putin is no doubt self-serving and humiliating to Canada.


Russia backs Iran and Iran backs the Houthis who have stormed through Yemen.

Carry on:

Russia criticized Western and Arab members of the U.N. Security Council on Friday for paying "lip service" to humanitarian needs in Yemen after the council was unable to agree on a Russian-drafted statement calling for pauses in fighting to allow delivery of aid. 

In the latest sign of increasing tensions between Russia and the West, who are already at odds over Syria and Ukraine, Russian U.N. Ambassador Vitaly Churkin said his three-paragraph statement on Yemen was met with a "procrastination reaction."

"I was prepared to drop a reference to (a call for) an immediate ceasefire, just at the very least they need to have periodic humanitarian pauses to facilitate the delivery of humanitarian supplies, they couldn't even agree to that," Churkin said after closed-door consultations on Yemen.

It seems that Kim Jong Un will not be going to Russia after all:

Kim Jong-un, the North Korean leader, refused an invitation to visit Moscow to mark the Soviet Union's victory in World War II because Russia refused to meet Pyongyang's demands for special treatment for the young dictator. 

A spokesman for the Kremlin announced on Thursday that Mr Kim had "decided to stay in Pyongyang" due to "internal issues".

The North Korean leader's snub to Vladimir Putin, the Russian president, apparently came as a surprise to Moscow, which only hours earlier had indicated that preparations for Mr Kim's first overseas visit since he inherited the country in December 2011 were well under way. 

South Korea's Chosun Ilbo newspaper reported that Mr Kim opted to remain in Pyongyang because Russia "refused to comply with the North's request for special treatment, given that there will be several other foreign dignitaries at the event. 

"Without top-grade security, Kim would inevitably have become a freak show for the global press", it added.

But he already is a freak.


The Yongbyon nuclear reaction may have been reactivated:

Recent satellite images suggest that North Korea's five-megawatt reactor at its main Yongbyon nuclear complex may have resumed operations. ...

Published on April 30, a report by Dr. David Albright and Serena Kelleher-Vergantini from the Washington-based Institute for Science and International Security (ISIS) said the imagery showed several "signatures" of low-level activity. Last year, the institute said the nuclear reactor at Yongbyon - seen as North Korea's main source of weapons-grade plutonium - appeared to have been partially or completely shut down, possibly for renovations.

38 North, a program of the US-Korea Institute at the School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS) of Johns Hopkins University, said in a recent report they estimated that Pyongyang currently possesses anywhere between 10 to 16 nuclear weapons, and is able to put these weapons on top of at least medium-range missiles, which are able to hit most targets in Japan and South Korea.

Read the whole thing.

 
Hey! Rioting does get results:

City State’s Attorney Marilyn Mosby says Freddie Gray received his critical injuries in Baltimore police custody and has charged all six officers involved in his death. ...

Bystanders then began recording the arrest, watching as Gray was placed in the police van. The prosecutor faults the three arresting officers for not properly restraining or seatbelting Gray in the van, calling his arrest illegal to begin with.

“Lt. Rice, Officer Nero and Officer Miller failed to establish probable cause for Mr. Gray’s arrest, as no crime had been committed by Mr. Gray,” Mosby said.

The van made its first stop at Baker Street, where Gray was removed, put in flex cuffs and leg shackles and, again, not properly restrained. It is here prosecutors believe he was injured.

“Following transport from Baker’s Street, Mr. Gray suffered a severe and critical neck injury as a result of being restrained, handcuffed, shackled by his feet and unrestrained by his feet inside the Baltimore Police Department wagon,” she said.

That van stopped again at the intersection of Mosher and Freemont Street. The driver got out and observed Gray, but gave him no medical aid—and Gray still wasn’t in a seatbelt. The van made a third stop at Dolphin and Druid Hill Street, where Gray said he couldn’t breathe and asked twice for medical attention.

“However, despite Mr. Gray’s request for a medic, both officers assessed Mr. Gray’s condition. At no point did they restrain Mr. Gray per BPD general order, nor did they render or request medical attention,” she said.

The van then headed to North Avenue and Pennsylvania, where it stops to pick up Donta Allen. At that time, Gray was already unresponsive, according to Mosby. The officers did not get him medical help; he was still not properly secured in the van. Finally, the van drove to the Western District Police Station, where officers first removed the other prisoner from the van, before realizing that Gray had stopped breathing and was now in cardiac arrest.

As no other prisoner was reported injured,  how ever did Mr. Gray get hurt?

If anything, Mr. Gray was neglected, something for which there should be a reckoning.

One should not expect any calm, however.


One might be prompted to singularly call out Pakistan for its savagery but one would be mistaken:

A child has just been born and nobody looks happy - not even his parents. His tiny body is still smeared in blood. The newborn cries incessantly, and so does the teenage mother. The baby weighs only 3,500 grams and is around the size of the palm of a large hand. And that's when the mother's trembling hands reach the child's frail neck. She closes her eyes and presses her thumb against the child's throat. She strangles him. A child who arrived in the "civilized world" some 45 minutes ago, must now leave it. The nurse puts the child's corpse in a plastic bag and takes it out of the clinic. ...

According to the Edhi Foundation, a Pakistani welfare organization, more than 1,100 newborns were murdered and dumped in garbage bins last year. The organization says it collected the figures only from the country's big cities, and the number could be much higher nationwide.

"A six-day-old child was burnt to death. We also found the corpses of babies who had been hanged, or who had been partly eaten by animals," Anwar Kazmi, a manager at the Edhi Foundation, told DW.

"I can never forget one incident. A woman left a child in front of a mosque hoping that somebody would adopt him. But the cleric of the mosque ordered the people to stone the child to death. I saw the mutilated and torn body of the child myself," he recalled.

For A Thursday

For this, the last day of April...


While the Vietnamese celebrate the fall of Saigon, Canadians of Vietnamese descent rally to remember victims of communism:

Canada’s minister of state for democratic reform told a crowd of Vietnamese Canadians gathered to commemorate the inaugural Journey to Freedom Day that opposition to the prominent downtown site planned for a memorial for the victims of communism was “shameful” and that the controversial monument will get built.

“It is shameful that the Liberals and the NDP have come out against building this monument at this site, and it is shameful that some in the media have done the same. This is a worthy project, it is the right thing to do, and under the strong leadership of Prime Minister Harper, we will build this monument,” Pierre Poilievre told more than 500 people at a rally on the downtown site chosen for the monument across from the Supreme Court and fronting onto Wellington Street.

If it is any consolation, victims of communism and Islamism have been ignored for years.


Uh, no. It's too damn expensive to run a factory in Ontario. That unions are greedy political machines is just coincidence:

General Motors says it will cut about 1,000 positions from its Oshawa, Ont., manufacturing operations this year as the company plans to spend billions of dollars to boost its U.S. operations.

Well, this must be embarrassing:

Freddie Gray, whose death triggered Monday’s rioting in Baltimore, may have intentionally tried to injure himself in a police van, according to another prisoner in the vehicle, the Washington Post reported late Wednesday night.

The Post said the unidentified prisoner, who was separated from Gray by a metal partition and could not see him, reportedly said he heard Gray “banging himself against the walls” and believed he “was intentionally trying to injure himself.

The prisoner’s statements were contained in an investigative document obtained by the paper, which said it was unclear if there was any additional information to support the theory.

Gray, who is black, was arrested April 12 after he ran from police. Officers held him down, handcuffed him and loaded him into the police van. While inside, he became irate and leg cuffs were put on him, police had said. At some point, he suffered a severe spinal injury and was unconscious when the van arrived at a police station.

God forbid anyone should wait until an inquiry could be completed.

To think, all those cars were burned for nothing.

Oh, wait! They were burned for nothing!



As the May 5th election draws closer, the Tories get desperate:

With the provincial election less than a week away, the Progressive Conservatives appear to be taking a sharper tone in attacking their rivals.

The PCs say the NDP would turn its back on the energy industry by promising a review of royalties paid by oil and gas companies.

If the NDP do make gains in Alberta,  it is very possible that it will undo Alberta's economic success.

Not that Premier Prentice hasn't tried or anything.


If one ever forgets that pro-abortionists lack brains, let these examples remind one:

A topless protester of the radical feminist group Femen interrupted a news conference by Quebec’s culture minister at the National Assembly on Thursday afternoon.

The protester shouted “No to Bill 20!” and “My uterus, my priority!” before being taken away by security guards.

**

Yep.

No smarts escape from their lips.


And now, a puppy with hiccups because puppy with hiccups:

Mid-Week Post

Tomorrow is the official deadline of letting those damn highway robbers steal your money filing one's tax returns.


Kim Jong-Un had fifteen senior officials executed:

North Korean leader Kim Jong Un ordered the execution of 15 senior officials this year as punishment for challenging his authority, South Korea's spy agency told a closed-door parliament meeting on Wednesday.

A vice minister for forestry was one of the officials executed for complaining about a state policy, a member of parliament's intelligence committee, Shin Kyung-min, quoted an unnamed National Intelligence Service official as saying.

"Excuses or reasoning doesn't work for Kim Jong Un, and his style of rule is to push through everything, and if there's any objection, he takes that as a challenge to authority and comes back with execution as a showcase," Shin said. ...

South Korea's spy agency also expected Kim to travel to Moscow this month to attend an event marking the end of World War Two in Europe, although there was no independent confirmation of the plan, Shin said after the spy agency briefing. 

North Korea has not booked a hotel in Moscow for Kim's stay, but the country's embassy was equipped to accommodate its leader, Shin said, quoting the spy agency official. 

The visit would be Kim's first overseas trip since he took power in 2011 after the death of his father.

Russia has said Kim would attend the May 9 event marking the 70th anniversary of the war's end in Europe, although officials in Seoul have cautioned that there was no official confirmation from the North.

One wonders if there is a slow-burn plan to eliminate the younger Kim.

Also:

Women also suffer the worst cruelties in North Korea’s prison camps. A woman named Kim Hye-sook told the U.N. Commission that “the women who worked in the mines of Political Prison Camp No. 18 feared assignment to the nightshift, because guards and prisoners preyed on them on their way to and from work and rape them.” Another witness “reported that the guards of Camp No. 18 were especially targeting teenage girls.” A former guard told of “how the camp authorities made female inmates available for sexual abuse to a very senior official who regularly visited the camp,” and that “[a]fter the official raped the women, the victims were killed.” A former guard at Camp 16 told Amnesty International that “several women inmates disappeared after they had been raped by officials,” and concluded “that they had been executed secretly.” Indeed, the Commission found violence against women to be pervasive in North Korean society ...

A must-read.


The Nigerian army has rescued nearly three hundred girls and women:

More than 200 schoolgirls abducted from their school dormitories by Boko Haram militants last year are not among the nearly 300 girls and women rescued in an army operation on Tuesday, an army spokesman said.

Nigeria's army said it had rescued 200 girls and 93 women on Tuesday during a military operation to wrest back the Sambisa Forest in the northeast from the militant group.

"The troops rescued 200 abducted girls and 93 women," Colonel Sani Usman told Reuters in a text message. They were not, however, from Chibok, the village from which more than 200 girls were abducted in April 2014, he said. 

"So far, they (the army) have destroyed and cleared Sassa, Tokumbere and two other camps in the general area of Alafa, all within the Sambisa forest." 

Boko Haram's action in Chibok caused an international outcry, and the group's six-year insurgency has seen thousands killed and many more abducted.

Diplomats and intelligence officials said they believed at least some of the Chibok girls were being held in the forest about 100 km (60 miles) from Chibok, although U.S. reconnaissance drones failed to find them. 

The rescued girls and women will be screened on Wednesday to determine whether they had been abducted or if they were married to the militants, one intelligence source told Reuters.

A miracle in Nepal:

Twenty-two hours after the massive earthquake that demolished buildings and killed more than 5,000 people in Nepal, a 4-month-old boy was rescued from the rubble. 

 
The boy, named Sonit Awal, was buried under the rubble of his family’s house in Bhaktapur, near Kathmandu, when it collapsed during Saturday’s earthquake. According to a story in local newspaper Kathmandu Today, translated by the Guardian, rescuers tried until midnight to extract the baby from bricks and other debris that had fallen on him during the quake, but were unsuccessful. The next morning, after the child’s father said he heard the baby crying throughout the night, the rescue team returned, and by 10 a.m. Sunday, it finally pulled the child to safety.

Sonit Awal was alive and, the paper reported, found free of injuries after a visit to Bhaktapur hospital. Bhaktapur was one of the areas hardest hit by the earthquake that, as of Wednesday, had killed more than 5,000 people in Nepal. Several rescue teams have been deployed to the densely-packed residential community — where mostly brick-and-wood houses and apartment buildings collapsed under the pressure — and they continue to pull survivors like Sonit from the wreckage.

 
Embarrassed that someone has actually read the sex education program partially developed by a convicted child pornographer, Ontario Premier Kathleen Wynne offers up a weak compromise she hopes will bury the issue faster than one can say "deleted e-mails":

The premier of Ontario says parents opposed to the province's updated sex-ed curriculum will "have to agree to disagree" with her government on the new document, which some critics argue is not age appropriate.

Oh, dear. How embarrassing:

Hillary Clinton’s presidential run is prompting new scrutiny of the Clintons’ financial and charitable affairs—something that’s already proved problematic for the Democratic frontrunner, given how closely these two worlds overlap. Last week, the New York Times examined Bill Clinton’s relationship with a Canadian mining financier, Frank Giustra, who has donated millions of dollars to the Clinton Foundation and sits on its board. Clinton, the story suggests, helped Giustra’s company secure a lucrative uranium-mining deal in Kazakhstan and in return received “a flow of cash” to the Clinton Foundation, including previously undisclosed donations from the company’s chairman totaling $2.35 million. ...

The reason this is a politically explosive revelation is because the Clinton Foundation promised to disclose its donors as a condition of Hillary Clinton becoming secretary of state. Shortly after Barack Obama was elected president in 2008, the Clinton Foundation signed a “memorandum of understanding” with the Obama White House agreeing to reveal its contributors every year. The agreement stipulates that the “Clinton Giustra Sustainable Growth Initiative” (as the charity was then known) is part of the Clinton Foundation and must follow “the same protocols.” 

It hasn’t.

Giustra says that’s because Canada’s federal privacy law forbids CGEP, a Canadian-registered charity, from revealing its donors. A memo he provided explaining the legal rationale cites CGEP’s “fiduciary obligations” to its contributors and Canada’s Personal Information Privacy and Electronic Disclosure Act. “We are not allowed to disclose even to the Clinton Foundation the names of our donors,” he says. 

On Saturday, responding to the Times story, Maura Pally, the acting CEO of the Clinton Foundation, issued a statement echoing this assertion: “This is hardly an effort on our part to avoid transparency–unlike in the U.S., under Canadian law, all charities are prohibited from disclosing individual donors without prior permission from each donor.” 

(Sidebar: ah, yes, it's always Canada's fault. But wait...)

Canadian tax and privacy law experts were dubious of this claim. Len Farber, former director of tax policy at Canada's Department of Finance, said he wasn't aware of any tax laws that would prevent the charity from releasing its donors' names. "There's nothing that would preclude them from releasing the names of donors," he said. "It's entirely up to them."

 
Just in time for Mothers' Day:

A woman who was caught on video smacking her teenage son around after he threw objects at Baltimore police said she was just trying to protect him.

The video showing Toya Graham slapping her 16-year-old son went viral on social media and won her widespread acclaim, including from the city's police commissioner.

She was dubbed "mum of the year" by many on Twitter.

"I'm a no-tolerant mother. Everybody that knows me," Ms Graham told CBS News.

"He gave me eye contact. And at that point, you know, not even thinking about cameras or anything like that," the single mother of six said.

Ladies and gentlemen, Mr. Bill Withers.

On A Monday

To start with...


On Sunday, an earthquake measuring 7.8 on the Richter Scale has killed over four thousand people and destroyed national treasures in Nepal:

As the death toll from Nepal's devastating earthquake climbed past 4,000, aid workers and officials in remote, shattered villages near the epicenter pleaded Monday for food, shelter and medicine.

Help poured in after Saturday's magnitude-7.8 quake, with countries large and small sending medical and rescue teams, aircraft and basic supplies. The small airport in the capital of Kathmandu was congested and chaotic, with some flights forced to turn back early in the day.

Buildings in parts of the city were reduced to rubble, and there were shortages of food, fuel, electricity and shelter. As bodies were recovered, relatives cremated the dead along the Bagmati River, and at least a dozen pyres burned late into the night.

Conditions were far worse in the countryside, with rescue workers still struggling to reach mountain villages two days after the earthquake. ...

Nepal's Home Ministry said the country's death toll had risen to 4,010. Another 61 were killed in neighbouring India, and China's official Xinhua News Agency reported 25 dead in Tibet. At least 18 of the dead were killed at Mount Everest as the quake unleashed an avalanche that buried part of the base camp packed with foreign climbers preparing to make their summit attempts.

At least 7,180 people were injured in the quake, police said. Tens of thousands are estimated to be left homeless.

As with any tragedy, there are always morons who seek to capitalise on it.

Case the first:

Emilie-Anne Leroux said that while other countries have pulled out all the stops to get their citizens home, she and other Canadians haven't received so much as a phone call from officials despite having registered as being in Nepal.

Leroux, who is in Nepal working for the International Organization for Migration, says that's left some people feeling neglected and "very panicky."

"I feel like they haven't reached out any type of support or help," she said from the UN House in the capital city of Kathmandu, where a handful of Canadians have been staying and helping to co-ordinate aid efforts.

"It's just frustrating — compared to the Australian Embassy, who have booked hotels, picked up people at their apartments, helped them get their (stuff) out and fly them home if they want to, I think the Canadian government is showing a very poor example of how much it cares for its citizens who choose to work abroad for development."

Nicholson said consular officials are trying to get into the country to help, but they are having difficulty getting in.

"We have an honourary consul I know has been working on this consistently since this tragedy has taken place, (and) we're making every effort to bring in consular officials as well," Nicholson said.

"They have made two attempts to land at the airport in Kathmandu and on both occasions they have been turned away, but we are determined we are going to get them there."

Foreign Affairs said there are 462 Canadians registered as being in Nepal, but cautioned that's only an estimate because registration is voluntary.

Leroux, 28, was trying to get back to Canada to be with her father, who is having heart surgery, when the earthquake hit. The airline could only rebook her on a flight Wednesday and she can't afford an earlier, pricier ticket.

Case the second:

Following the suspicious death of Freddy Gray, angry citizens exhibited their displeasure by smashing things and hurling things at a woman in a wheelchair:

A shocking video of Saturday’s violent riots in Baltimore, Maryland show an individual shielding a handicapped woman caught in the sights of a mob throwing bottles, trash cans, and other objects at random bar patrons.

As Mr. Gray's death apparently comes at the hands of the police and not a random person (the latter not being a matter of concern in the slightest), one wonders if the problem can ever be settled with authorities that allow this:

“It’s a very delicate balancing act, because while we tried to make sure they were protected from the cars and the other things that were going on, we also gave those who wished to destroy space to do that as well. And we work very hard to keep that balance and to put ourselves in the best position to deescalate, and that’s what you saw,” said Mayor Rawlings-Blake.

Yes, the mayor of Baltimore gave a carte blanche for people to smash things and riot.

There is no need to put anyone's trust or tax money into systems that go out of their way to fail the populace.



White House party where Obama thinks he is witty and never faces any real criticism.

Insert own "Nero fiddled while Rome burned" joke here.


All the more reason to commemorate:

Hanoi has issued a stern rebuke to Ottawa after the Canadian senate passed a bill commemorating the arrival of tens of thousands of "boat people" who fled after Saigon fell to the communists 40 years ago.
Vietnam's foreign ministry said it had summoned the Canadian ambassador Friday to lodge a formal complaint about the move, which dubs April 30 "Journey to Freedom Day".
Communist forces captured Saigon, then the capital of the US-backed South Vietnam regime, on April 30, 1975, marking the end of decades of conflict and triggering a mass exodus of refugees.
Hundreds of thousands of people linked to the South Vietnamese regime fled the country in rickety boats, many drowning along the way.

Western countries including the US, France, Australia and Canada collectively accepted some one million South Vietnamese refugees.

In communist Vietnam, April 30 is celebrated as "reunification day" and the country is preparing for an elaborate event this Thursday to mark four decades since the end of the war.

The Canadian senate's move was "completely wrong" said foreign ministry spokesman Le Hai Binh according to a statement posted on its official website.

The bill "distorts the history of national liberation and unification of the Vietnamese people", he said in a statement, adding that Vietnam "resolutely opposes" the move.

"This is a backward step in the relationship between the two countries, adversely affecting the growing ties between Vietnam and Canada and hurting the feelings of Vietnamese people as well as a great part of the Vietnamese community in Canada," Binh said.

The Canadian bill was proposed by a senator of Vietnamese descent. The senate is controlled by Canada's ruling Conservatives.

I don't remember anyone judging Vietnam for being a Third-World communist hellhole where people are arrested.

Why celebrate that?

Also:

A National Capital Commission advisory committee had specific and continuing concerns about the location and design of the controversial Memorial to the Victims of Communism, documents obtained by the Citizen show. ...

Finally, the language for the commemoration “should be more inclusive, evoking oppression instead of communism, which would be more relevant over time,” the committee said.

Yes, we wouldn't want to cloud the issue by mentioning communist mass murders or anything.

This image of starving North Korean children is too specific and too visible. Let's make it more vague and completely out of view.

Israel launches an airstrike on the Syrian border:

Israel's military said Sunday it launched an airstrike on its border with Syria after spotting militants carrying a bomb in the Israeli-held Golan Heights.

The military said it carried out the strike after troops saw "a group of armed terrorists" approach the border with an explosive intended to target Israeli troops. It said that Israeli aircraft "targeted the squad, preventing the attack."

None of this going to seem funny when you have a bomb strapped to your chest:

One of the three East London schoolgirls who left the UK to become 'jihadi brides' in Syria has confirmed that she is now living in the Islamic State - by tweeting a picture of chicken and chips.

Amira Abase, 15, left Bethnal Green with Shamima Begum 15, and Kadiza Sultana, 16, in February, and is believed to be living in the Syrian city of Raqqa.

Now, nearly two months after her departure, Amira has shared a snippet of life in the Islamic State - posting an online photo of her enjoying a takeaway dinner with another teenage 'jihadi bride'

 

Russian bikers must be appalled that they can't sweep into Poland with great ease:

Polish border guards on Monday blocked 10 nationalistic Russian bikers loyal to President Vladimir Putin from entering Poland as part of a ride to commemorate the Red Army's victory over Nazi Germany 70 years ago.

The bikers — who have stirred controversy with their support for Russia's annexation of Crimea — approached the Polish border from Belarus on Monday morning and spent about three hours being questioned and searched by the Polish border guards before they were turned back.

"These people will not cross into Poland," Dariusz Sienicki, a spokesman for the regional border guards said.

And now, the value of friendship:

Each day, 18-year-old Xie Xu, standing at just 1.73 metres tall and weighing 75 kilos, helps bring his 19-year-old friend Zhang Chi from their dorms to school nearby. Xie also helps carry his friend from class to class and often helps with tasks such as washing his clothes. 

The pair struck up their incredible friendship when they became students at Daxu High School, situated in the northern province of Jiangsu. 

The vice headmaster at the school says Xie Xu's dedication has helped inspire other students around him: 

"The story of the two students is so inspiring and touching. They aren't family, but [Xie] has been doing this for three years. He's the most beautiful student", he said to a local media outlet.
 

"With their assistance, Zhang has never missed out on one single class" 

Zhang Chi suffers from muscular dystrophy, a genetic condition that causes the body's muscles to weaken and causes life long disability. Despite the difficulties the two face, they are both top students at the school. 

For A Thursday

(insert witty remark here)


This glowing report on Ontario's budget forgets not only that Wynne has not been ousted but that she has already wasted taxpayer dollars and is instituting cap-and-trade taxes as well as taxes on beer:

Ontario's path back into the black won't include slashing and burning as the Liberal government believes it can eliminate its $10.9-billion deficit with a scalpel rather than a hatchet — a penny a beer bottle the only new tax to be introduced.

The $131.9-billion budget introduced Thursday by Finance Minister Charles Sousa pledges to balance the books through a combination of targeted savings and a dependence on a steady economic growth.

It contains no major spending cuts and no new personal or corporate tax increases, which is what many experts had predicted.

So it's not Canada's politics that the Americans love:

According to Global News, almost four times as many U.S. citizens as normal dumped their citizenship in March. The reason is an obscure regulation that forces Americans to fill out a Foreign Bank Account Report if they have an account abroad that totals over $10,000 in a year, according to the Wall Street Journal. While income earned abroad is mostly exempt from U.S. taxes, the penalty for not filling out the necessary paperwork can equal up to 50 per cent of the value of the account. In 2010, the U.S. passed FATCA, a law forcing Americans abroad to turn over banking information, and started going after people who weren’t reporting their money.

 

Rest assured Obama doesn't care:

President Barack Obama revealed Thursday that U.S. drone strikes in Pakistan inadvertently killed an American and an Italian, two hostages held by al-Qaida, as well as two other Americans who had leadership roles with the terror network.

(SEE: Stevens, J. Christopher; survivors, Fort Hood; Foley, James; folks, random; Armenians)



Well, this must be embarrassing:

As the Russians gradually assumed control of Uranium One in three separate transactions from 2009 to 2013, Canadian records show, a flow of cash made its way to the Clinton Foundation. Uranium One’s chairman used his family foundation to make four donations totaling $2.35 million. Those contributions were not publicly disclosed by the Clintons, despite an agreement Mrs. Clinton had struck with the Obama White House to publicly identify all donors. Other people with ties to the company made donations as well.

It's a good thing people are getting so worked up about cakes:

Depraved militants fighting for the Islamic State in Syria have brutally stoned two gay men to death only seconds after they were photographed embracing and 'forgiving' them.

The shocking images were taken in ISIS-held territory in the province of Homs and show the two accused men being savagely executed by up to four jihadis.

Huge, bloodthirsty crowds are seen in the desert clearing where the group of executioners made a display of hugging the blindfolded couple and telling them they were forgiven of their 'sins', before pummeling them to death with hundreds of fist-sized rocks. 

B@$#@rd:

He killed them. And then he took their photos and sent them to their father.

A relative of a woman and three children murdered this week in Saskatchewan said their killer took pictures of the bodies and sent copies to the children's biological father before taking his own life.
Tim Funk, a cousin of Latasha Gosling, said Steve O'Shaughnessy was the woman's boyfriend and that he was emotionally abusive, controlling and jealous.

Gosling, 27, was separated from her husband, but not officially divorced, and had been with O'Shaughnessy, 23, for the last couple of years, Funk said.

The husband often went to visit his three kids: Jenika 8, Landen, 7, and Janayah, 4. They had been living most recently with Gosling and O'Shaughnessy in a rented mobile home in Tisdale, a town of 3,200 northeast of Saskatoon.

The boyfriend "didn't like it at all" when the husband came around, Funk said.

On Tuesday, the husband received the gruesome photos in a text sent to his cellphone, said Funk. It was the day before the husband's birthday.

O'Shaughnessy "sent them to him as a birthday gift."

Funk said the husband called Mounties, who found the bodies early Wednesday in the mobile home.

China warns that its vassal state (TM- OFK) of North Korea could double its nuclear arsenal by next year:

The Chinese estimates of Pyongyang's nuclear production, relayed to U.S. nuclear specialists, exceed most previous U.S. forecasts, which range from 10 to 16 bombs currently, said the report, which cited people briefed on the matter. (...)

Early this month, U.S. Admiral William Gortney, commander of the U.S. Northern Command and North American Aerospace Defense Command, said the U.S. military believes North Korea has the ability to miniaturize a warhead and mount it on a ballistic missile, although there had been no tests.

I'm not sure why China would warn anyone because altruism is not in its nature. Its valuable buffer state might rock the proverbial boat for any nation-states that might give a damn about a loose North Korean cannon, though.



Watch as nature explodes:

Chile's Calbuco volcano has erupted for the first time in 43 years, prompting an evacuation of 1,500 people from the nearby town of Ensenada.

The volcano, which has been inactive since 1972, spilled a huge ash cloud into the skies above southern Chile before a second eruption hours later.