Monday Post

To wit...


Good luck with that:

Alberta's New Democrats launched the post-Tory period of provincial politics Monday with a throne speech announcing bills to ban corporate and union political donations and to increase taxes on large corporations and the wealthy.

The bills follow through on promises made in last month's election campaign which ended with Rachel Notley and the NDP toppling a nearly 44-year-long Progressive Conservative dynasty.

Yes, about that:

If energy companies are skittish about investing in Alberta, they’re welcome to set up shop next door, Saskatchewan’s economy minister said Wednesday.

Bill Boyd said he’s been watching the political debate in neighbouring Alberta over the newly elected NDP government’s plans to review oil and gas royalties.

Boyd said he’s been hearing “a fair bit of concern” from companies at the Global Petroleum Show, a massive exhibition in Calgary this week with some 50,000 attendees from around the world.

“During this period of time where there’s some degree of instability, I think they’re a little bit worried as to what may eventually transpire,” he said in an interview.

“A little bit more serious than that, though, is they are certainly pulling back in terms of investment. I don’t think new investment decisions are going to be made until that climate is known.”

As I said, good luck with that.



Or maybe it has something to do with the fact that Paul Watson is a fraud:

Paul Watson, a Canadian environmentalist and star of a reality television show, says Canada has effectively barred him from returning to the country since his passport was seized three years ago by German authorities.

Surely not!

The family advocate for First Nations families dealing with Child and Family Services is devastated after her first week on the job, working for the Assembly of Manitoba Chiefs. 

The assembly created the position of family advocate to respond to mounting concerns about children in the care of CFS in Manitoba. More than 10,000 children are in care and roughly 90 per cent of them are aboriginal. ...

While Morgan said she believes the solution to the child welfare system involves revamped legislation, she also sees that current legislation allows for some actions to be taken that aren't happening at the moment. For example, she said she is skeptical about whether full investigations are conducted before a child is removed from a home. She also has not seen evidence of preventative measures being pursued.  

"Prior to this role I worked in the area of restorative justice and I would see how many children would come through our doors as a result of being in CFS care, and knowing what I've learned over the years and all of these intricacies of residential school effects, I, as a First Nations person, didn't want to look back 30 years from now and be here in this place and time, knowing that this was going on and I didn't do anything about it," Morgan said. 

The conclusions of an inquiry into Phoenix Sinclair's death, a child who did not attend any school, residential or otherwise, because her parents killed her and the CFS did not stop it:

Throughout her five years, Phoenix was in the care of the child welfare system for the first few months of her life, and again, for a time, at age three. She was shuffled between the homes of Kematch, Sinclair, his sisters, and his friends Kim Edwards and Rohan Stephenson, never attending daycare, nursery school, or any community programs. When Kematch and her new partner, Wesley Mackay, moved her from Winnipeg to Fisher River and then killed her, nobody knew she was missing, except the boy who saw her die. 

Meanwhile, at least 13 times throughout her life, Winnipeg Child and Family Services received notice of concerns for Phoenix’s safety and well-being from various sources, the last one coming three months before her death. Throughout, files were opened and closed, often without a social worker ever laying eyes on Phoenix.

Let's just blame things on residential schools and call it a day.


 
Greece is an unbelievable financial black-hole and I have no idea why anyone would want to be saddled with it:

Greece and its creditors hardened their stances on Monday after the collapse of talks aimed at preventing a default and possible euro exit, prompting Germany's EU commissioner to say the time had come to prepare for a "state of emergency".

Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras ignored pleas from European leaders to act fast. Instead he blamed creditors for Sunday's breakdown of the cash-for-reform talks, the biggest setback in long-running negotiations to unlock aid. He said his government had a responsibility to defend Greece's dignity and would resist demands for further pension cuts.

"It is not a matter of ideological stubbornness. It has to do with democracy," said the 40-year-old leftist, who was elected on a pledge to end austerity.

(Sidebar: I think one can see a problem here.) 

Oil is  keeping Putin afloat:

Some of the world's most powerful oil executives will attend Russia's top investment show next week, once again helping the organizers shrug off a meager turnout from other leading Western industrialists and bankers.

Many CEOs and chairmen from major U.S. and European firms withdrew from last year's St Petersburg International Economic Forum because of tensions tied to Russia's annexation of Crimea and a separatist war in eastern Ukraine.

The political environment has calmed and a shaky ceasefire holds in Ukraine, but Western sanctions remain in place and most Western business chiefs have again decided to skip what used to be a key event in the international corporate calendar.

However, for the second year running, oil executives are showing up regardless, with the heads of BP, Royal Dutch Shell and Total flying into the home town of President Vladimir Putin.

BP's review of world energy supplies, published this month, estimated that Russian oil and gas reserves had jumped above 100 billion barrels for the first time, climbing to some 103 billion from 93 billion in the last review in 2013. This put it sixth in the global reserves league table.

Such an abundance makes it economically vital for major energy firms to maintain healthy ties with Moscow.

Why worry about Ukraine or downed jets?

A North Korean soldier crossed the heavily mined no-man's land to defect to South Korea:

A North Korean soldier has made a rare bid to defect to South Korea by crossing the demilitarised zone (DMZ) separating the two countries.

The teenager walked up to a South Korean guard post in Gangwon province's Hwacheon county around 8.00am local time (23.00 GMT) after walking across the world's most heavily militarised border.

No gunfire was exchanged as the soldier approached guards and expressed his wish to defect, officials from the South Korean Defence Ministry said.

"We've confirmed his will to defect after he reached our guard post," a ministry spokesman said.

The soldier was taken into custody and an investigation has been launched by South Korean officials.

More than 1,000 North Korean soldiers defect to the South every year, although it is rare for anybody to attempt to cross the heavily mined DMZ.

More about North Korean defections here.

Why Israel should withdraw from the UN:

Israel issued a report on Sunday arguing its 2014 Gaza offensive was lawful, a move aimed at pre-empting the release of findings of a U.N. war crimes investigation that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu scorned as a waste of time.

The 277-page report, which cited Israel's internal probes and statements from Western leaders backing its right to self-defence, suggested the Netanyahu government hoped to defuse criticism from the U.N. Human Rights Council (HRC) inquiry in advance. 

Deeming the HRC biased, Israel boycotted its investigators as it did those from the council who looked into its 2008-09 Gaza offensive. That HRC inquiry accused Israel of war crimes. 

Launched last July after a surge of cross-border rocket fire by Hamas and other Palestinian armed groups, Israel's 50 days of shelling, air strikes and ground incursions in the congested enclave killed more than 2,256 Palestinians, including 1,563 civilians, a U.N. report said in March.

Sixty-seven Israeli soldiers and six civilians in Israel also died in the conflict. ...

In public remarks to his cabinet, Netanyahu again accused Hamas of hiding behind civilians by deliberately operating in Gaza's crowded districts.

"Whoever wants to continue with baseless blaming of the State of Israel, let them waste time reading the report by the U.N. commission. We, for our part, will continue protecting our soldiers. They will continue protecting us," he said.

And now, a blind Irish cat defies the odds by climbing a mountain:




To all those who say that blind Irish cats can't climb mountains, I say to you: Stevie did!

A Post, For It Is Friday

Just in time for the week-end...


What Bill C-24 actually says:

This enactment amends the Citizenship Act to, among other things, update eligibility requirements for Canadian citizenship, strengthen security and fraud provisions and amend provisions governing the processing of applications and the review of decisions. ...

Amendments to the security and fraud provisions include

(a) expanding the prohibition against granting citizenship to include persons who are charged outside Canada for an offence that, if committed in Canada, would constitute an indictable offence under an Act of Parliament or who are serving a sentence outside Canada for such an offence;

(b) expanding the prohibition against granting citizenship to include persons who, while they were permanent residents, engaged in certain actions contrary to the national interest of Canada, and permanently barring those persons from acquiring citizenship;

(c) aligning the grounds related to security and organized criminality on which a person may be denied citizenship with those grounds in the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act and extending the period during which a person is barred from acquiring citizenship on that basis;

(d) expanding the prohibition against granting citizenship to include persons who, in the course of their application, misrepresent material facts and prohibiting new applications by those persons for a specified period;

(e) increasing the period during which a person is barred from applying for citizenship after having been convicted of certain offences;

(f) increasing the maximum penalties for offences related to citizenship, including fraud and trafficking in documents of citizenship...

(Sidebar: the language is important. The bill talks of granting citizenship, not of whether one is born in Canada.)

Making this claim misleading:

“It’s a huge step back,” Paterson said to Yahoo Canada. “England, 800 years ago, banned exile and eight centuries later, here we are bringing it back. Exile is something that was practiced back in medieval times when they didn’t have proper criminal justice systems and the rule of law – we don’t think that that’s appropriate, we think that if people are committing various offences it should be enough to deal with them through our Canadian criminal justice system.”

Paterson is referring specifically to the revocation elements of the new bill, which gives the government discretion to strip the citizenship of anyone convicted of terrorism or treason – provided they have or are eligible dual citizenship. Although the bill – referred to by the federal government as the Strengthening Citizenship Act – was tabled last February, it didn’t go into full effect until this week.

Related: what the Magna Carta actually says:

+ (39) No free man shall be seized or imprisoned, or stripped of his rights or possessions, or outlawed or exiled, or deprived of his standing in any other way, nor will we proceed with force against him, or send others to do so, except by the lawful judgement of his equals or by the law of the land. 

+ (40) To no one will we sell, to no one deny or delay right or justice. 

(41) All merchants may enter or leave England unharmed and without fear, and may stay or travel within it, by land or water, for purposes of trade, free from all illegal exactions, in accordance with ancient and lawful customs. This, however, does not apply in time of war to merchants from a country that is at war with us. Any such merchants found in our country at the outbreak of war shall be detained without injury to their persons or property, until we or our chief justice have discovered how our own merchants are being treated in the country at war with us. If our own merchants are safe they shall be safe too. 

* (42) In future it shall be lawful for any man to leave and return to our kingdom unharmed and without fear, by land or water, preserving his allegiance to us, except in time of war, for some short period, for the common benefit of the realm. People that have been imprisoned or outlawed in accordance with the law of the land, people from a country that is at war with us, and merchants - who shall be dealt with as stated above - are excepted from this provision.

Is there a due process of law in ISIS-run nations?



Don't think this wasn't all in the cards:

A decision from a U.S. circuit court Friday gives a major boost to Omar Khadr’s appeal of his five convictions by the contentious military commission in Guantanamo, says his Edmonton lawyer.

The District of Columbia court dismissed as legally flawed a conviction against another Guantanamo detainee, an al-Qaida recruiter also tried under the military commission system created under former U.S. president George W. Bush.

The court ruled that the conspiracy conviction of Ali Hamza al-Bahlul is invalid because the conspiracy offence is not an internationally recognized war crime. Military commissions only have jurisdiction to try internationally recognized war crimes.

Similar arguments have been made in the Khadr case.

He admitted to killing Christopher Speer. He never denied it.

There is no justice system, only a legal one.


As I was saying:

A veteran in St. John's says a judge in provincial court in St. John's asked him and his service dog to leave small claims court because he didn't recognize the dog as a service animal.

Shawn Lewis, who served with the Canadian Armed Forces in Bosnia, Croatia and Serbia in the 1990s, said he was told to leave the courtroom when he arrived with his registered service dog Missy, who helps him cope with post-traumatic stress disorder.

"I'm not willing to roll over on this anymore," Lewis told reporters Friday. "I'm tired of the confrontation and the harassment in regards to having a service dog."

"I don't have a visible disability but that doesn't give anybody the right to — especially upon presenting credentials — to say I can or cannot have access to public spaces."

A Somalian man is arrested for his role in kidnapping Amanda Lindhout:

Almost seven years after the overseas hostage-taking of former journalist Amanda Lindhout, the RCMP have arrested and charged a Somalian man with the crime.

Lindhout and photographer Nigel Brennan were seized by young gunmen near strife-torn Mogadishu, Somalia, in August 2008. Both were released on Nov. 25, 2009.

The Mounties say Ali Omar Ader, a Somalian national, faces a criminal charge of hostage-taking for his purported role as a negotiator.

He was arrested Thursday in Ottawa. The RCMP say Ader, 37, had been in town for a few days but the national police force would not reveal how he arrived in Canada.

You're going to need a bigger boat:

New footage has been released of one of the largest great white sharks to have ever been captured on camera – the monstrous, more than 20-foot-long creature known as Deep Blue, GrindTV reports.

The enormous predator, which calls Mexico’s Guadalupe Island home, was featured last year by the Discovery Network where part of the tagging effort that involved researcher Mauricio Hoyos Padilla can be found.

This week, Hoyos posted new footage of the same shark to Facebook, under the title, “I give you the biggest white shark ever seen in front of the cages in Guadalupe Island… DEEP BLUE!!!”

(source)

And Now For Something Completely Different

Indeed....


This dog isn't angry. He's just very, very disappointed.

And here are the pictures to prove it:

(source)

Once more, dogs prove that they are man's best friend:

A service dog becomes a local hero after jumping in front of a bus to protect his blind owner.

The golden retriever named Figo and his owner, Aubrey Stone, who is visually impaired, were crossing a street in Brewster, N.Y. on Monday morning when a school bus carrying children rushed toward them.

At the scene, witnesses said the dog jumped in front of the moving vehicle. 

“The dog took a bit of a blow,” Brewster Police Chief John Del Gardo told Journal News. “And he did not want to leave her side. He stood right with her. He was there to save her.”

A baby koala remains with its mother even during surgery:

A six-month old koala named Phantom was in his mother’s pouch when they were struck by a car on a highway west of Brisbane, Australia, according to the Australia Zoo Wildlife Hospital.

Remarkably, baby Phantom — who weighs only 420 grams — wasn’t injured during the accident but his mother, Lizzy, suffered a collapsed lung. 

In an incredibly touching turn of events, Phantom clung to his mother, never leaving her side as she underwent surgery at the hospital.

During the entire operation, the baby koala tightly cuddled his unconscious mother.

It's always good to have lighter news in a world that is both confusing and chaotic.

Thursday Post

One more thing...


Doctors of the Germanwings pilot accused of killing himself and one hundred and fifty-three others did not the pilot's health matters to his employer:

Fearing he was going blind, the co-pilot who slammed a Germanwings jet into the Alps took sick days at work, upped his dosage of an antidepressant, and reached out to doctors, but they didn't tell his employer they thought he was unfit to fly because of German privacy laws, a French prosecutor said Thursday.

Marseille prosecutor Brice Robin presented new details of his criminal investigation into the case after meeting in Paris with many grieving relatives of the 150 people who died on the Germanwings flight co-piloted by Andreas Lubitz.

The March 24 crash, blamed on Lubitz, has put a spotlight on possible mental health issues involving flight crews.

Robin announced he was handing over his initial inquiry to three investigating magistrates who will try to determine who — if anyone — can be brought to trial in an involuntary manslaughter case in which the main culprit died in the crash.

The news came as families have just started to receive the remains of their loved ones for burials in the coming days and weeks.

The investigation so far "has enabled us to confirm without a shadow of a doubt ... Mr. Andreas Lubitz deliberately destroyed the plane and deliberately killed 150 people, including himself," Robin told reporters.

Investigators say Lubitz locked the pilot out of the cockpit and flew the plane into a French mountainside after having researched suicide methods and cockpit door rules and practiced an unusual descent.

In a new development, Robin said information from Lubitz's tablet PC showed he had also investigated vision problems, and "feared going blind," which would have ended the 27-year-old's aviation career.

Lubitz, who had a history of depression, had seven medical appointments in the month before the crash, including three with a psychiatrist, and had taken eight sick days off work, Robin said. Some of the doctors felt Lubitz was psychologically unstable, and some felt he was unfit to fly, but "unfortunately that information was not reported because of medical secrecy requirements," the prosecutor said.

Unelected judges have decided what can be considered marijuana:

The Supreme Court of Canada has ruled unanimously that medical marijuana can be legally consumed in products such as cookies, brownies and teas, a decision that "outraged" the federal government but elated the baker at the centre of the case.

Federal regulations had previously stipulated that authorized users of physician-prescribed cannabis could only consume dried marijuana.

But the high court said in a 7-0 decision on Thursday that limiting medical consumption to dried pot infringes on liberty protections under the Charter of Rights and Freedoms.

Alright. Let Aaron Driver be charged with conspiracy to take part in terrorist activities as well as rape and murder:

The head of the Manitoba Association for Rights and Liberties says 23-year-old ISIS supporter Aaron Driver should be charged or released from jail immediately.

Driver has been in custody for a week and RCMP are seeking a peace bond as they fear he will participate in terrorism, but so far no charges have been laid. 

But that's what concerns civil rights advocates.

"It should shock every Canadian citizen that this is possible or that is being done," Corey Shefman told CBC News.  ...

"I cannot comment on what he might or might not do, or what he has or hasn't done. But I do know he hasn't been charged with a crime and yet he finds himself behind bars without his freedom and no reason he has officially been presented with," Shefman said. 

He wanted to join ISIS. If Mr. Shefman is adamant that Mr. Driver be charged, start there.



Good:

An Ottawa taxi driver will no longer be allowed to work for his company and his taxi licence has been suspended after he refused to move for an ambulance and went on an expletive-laden rant, all captured in a video posted to YouTube.

The Fur has the video up (NSFW, as they say).



Sm'algyax is a dialect of the Tsimshin language. As of 2006, there were only 640 Tsimshian speakers in Canada. There are more Korean speakers in British Columbia than there are native Tsimshin speakers.

And yet, as of next school year, students in Prince Rupert will be required to learn Tsimshin:

Starting in September, all Prince Rupert, B.C., students enrolled in Kindergarten through Grade 4 will be required to learn Sm'algyax, the language of the Tsimshian First Nation.

The language program has been available at two of the district's schools for the past decade, but it will now expand to every primary classroom in the city.

And one thought the francophone oligarchy was problematic.



Ladies and gentlemen, Sir Christopher Lee:

Mid-Week Post

The intermission of the work-week....



How embarrassing:

CBC News has "ended its relationship" with Power & Politics host Evan Solomon, CBC editor in chief Jennifer McGuire said in a note to staff.

The note came after the Toronto Star published a report claiming that Solomon had brokered art deals involving people whom he also dealt with as a journalist.

 Once again, the Toronto Star knocks down the pegs that the government will not. How sad is it that the Red Toronto Star is dismantling the CBC?



Two Russian ships track Prime Minister Stephen Harper:

Two Russian frigates shadowed HMCS Fredericton and tracked its course while Prime Minister Stephen Harper was on board today.

The vessels were spotted mid-morning, after Harper and his wife, Laureen, spent the night on board the Canadian frigate in the Baltic Sea.

 
Should one be looking out for polonium pellets?



The Senate should have been reformed in 1867:

The Auditor-General of Canada used a very large hammer to strike some flies in his investigation of senators’ expenses.

Five lead auditors plus “many other staff within the Office of the Auditor-General of Canada” examined more than 80,000 expense items for 116 past and current senators over a two-year period, from 2011 to 2013.

Headline-grabbing indiscretions and mistakes notwithstanding, the haul of the allegedly guilty in the A-G’s report is rather small. This conforms to a long pattern of A-G reports going back many years on various issues: They are astringent with praise and long with condemnation.

Thirty of the 116 senators were found to have done something possibly wrong or something that might warrant further inquiry.

Nine of the 30, Auditor-General Michael Ferguson recommended, should have files referred to the police. Upon examination of the incomplete information made public by the A-G and the senators’ responses, the sums at issue were not large and the senators’ prima facie explanations not implausible.

Here are the nine potentially guilty parties.

How embarrassing.

In case one forgot:

The scandal-plagued Senate has a cheerleader in Justin Trudeau after the Liberal leader said he wouldn't abolish the chamber because it's to Quebec's gain over other provinces to keep the lights on.

"We have 24 senators from Quebec and there are just six from Alberta and British Columbia. It's to our advantage," he told a French newspaper.

White people in the First World have too little to do:




Look- real rape cultures no one wants to talk about:

Gloria Steinem must have had her first reservations about “Women Cross DMZ” when the march’s organizer was outed as a North Korean apologist, and reporters began to ask her uncomfortable questions about North Korea’s war on women. Since then, Steinem has had to duck questions about the regime’s rape and murder of female prisoners, the endemic and unpunished rapes of North Korean women by its soldiers, and the infanticides and forced abortions this regime inflicts on North Korean refugee women and their babies. Steinem dismissed calls to speak up for North Korea’s millions of vulnerable women as “a bananas question.”

**

The upcoming annual conference of the National Organization for Women does not list ISIS or Boko Haram on its agenda. While the most recent Women’s Studies annual conference did focus on foreign policy, they were only interested in Palestine, a country which has never existed, and support for which is often synonymous with an anti-Israel position. Privately, feminists favor non-intervention, non-violence and the need for multilateral action, and they blame America for practically everything wrong in the world.

(Kamsahamnida)

 

A bombing at the temple at Karnak was thwarted:

Militants tried to attack the ancient temple of Karnak in southern Egypt on Wednesday, with a suicide bomber blowing himself up and two gunmen battling police. No sightseers were hurt in the thwarted assault, but it suggested that Islamic extremists are shifting targets from security forces to the country's vital tourism industry.

Culture matters:

A High Court judge has enraged child protection experts after saying that “cultural context” should be taken into account when investigating allegations of parental child abuse. ...

The father denied ever striking his son “with a belt or otherwise” but said he would give him a “slap or a tap”. He claimed: “this was not to slap [him] badly but to keep him disciplined.”

The man’s wife said she had seen him slap their son twice - as well as seeing him push and shout at their son.

But Mrs Justice Pauffley said: “I do not believe there was punitively harsh treatment of (the boy) of the kind that would merit the term physical abuse. Proper allowance must be made for what is, almost certainly, a different cultural context.

“Within many communities newly arrived in this country, children are slapped and hit for misbehaviour in a way which at first excites the interest of child protection professionals.”

(Sidebar: how much do you want to bet she wouldn't be lenient had the couple been anything but "ethnic"?)

People thought Randal Dooley's abuse was "cultural", too.

 

And who could forget Phoenix Sinclair.

And now, this is a real thing:

Here are 7 confiscated weapons that I know every one of y’all knew you couldn’t take on a plane. ...

3. A friggin’ Kinglon Batleth

Just... wow...

(From here)

Shooting Dogs

Have you seen the film, "Shooting Dogs"?

Sure you have.

Taking place in the backdrop of the genocides in Rwanda, the film tells the story of a priest and a writer  trapped in a school with thousands of refugees who face certain death once the Belgian UN peacekeepers leave.

Without giving away too much (if one has not seen it- and one must), the Belgian captain asks the priest if he can do something about the dogs eating the massacred corpses at the school's gates. Angrily, the priest snaps that the captain should do something about preventing corpses in the first place.

And now we have this:

Women raped and impregnated by terrorist captors are being denied overseas help to get abortions because of federal red tape in the US government. ...

The 42-year-old federal law forbids US aid money being used for abortion “as a method of family planning or to motivate or coerce any person to practice abortion.” 

So the problem isn't that abortion will kill off Yazidi offspring, that "women's healthcare" is just a euphemism for abortion or that ISIS is essentially a large rape gang that targets women and children and should therefore be vapourised, it's that the Americans are big, old meanies for not funding abortion to begin with.

This is further evidence of the insanity and moral disconnect of the left. It is easier, it seems, to attack a Western democracy than it is a roving band of child rapists. Plus, one gets the support for abortion, too.

Let's forget about those dogs feasting on cadavers at the gates.

A Post For Monday

What lovely weather we're having!



Does Stephen Harper want to lose the election?

Prime Minister Stephen Harper has agreed to a G7 commitment to deep cuts in carbon emissions by 2050 — with an eventual stop in the use of fossil fuels by the end of the century.

The call for a low-carbon footprint will "require a transformation in our energy sectors," Harper said Monday at a news conference in Germany, following the two-day G7 summit.

"Nobody's going to start to shut down their industries or turn off the lights," he said. "We've simply got to find a way to create lower-carbon emitting sources of energy — and that work is ongoing."

Canada and Japan blocked attempts at a stronger statement on binding greenhouse gas reduction targets, according to The Canadian Press sources who saw a working draft of the G7 communiqué, which was released today as the summit wrapped up.

"We emphasize that deep cuts in global greenhouse gas emissions are required with a decarbonization of the global economy over the course of this century," the G7 leaders said in their final communiqué.

First of all, how is carbon- of which a good deal of things on Earth are made- a pollutant? It isn't. Calling it a pollutant is a ploy and an obstructive one especially if your lucrative oil sands are seen as a source of pollution by some wealthy players here and abroad.

Stephen Harper is playing a stupid game in attempting to appease these groups and individuals. Even those who buy into the ideology are motivated by money. Harper's best bet is to support the economy, not satisfy the whims of the naive or duplicitous.



How embarrassing:





Culture matters:

The Department of Foreign Affairs says it is assisting two Canadians barred from leaving Malaysia, amid reports that the pair could be charged after allegedly posing naked atop the country's highest peak.

I would leave them there. These people aren't Zahra Kazemi or Kevin Garratt. They're idiots who think rules do not apply to them.

How shocked they must be to find out that they do.

Once again, political multiculturalism is a fallacy embraced by largely ignorant dilettantes who believe that prior sanctimony absolves them from proper conduct or even shame. It is more absurd than believing nudity would cause tectonic plates to move.



Get stuffed, Mulcair:

Prime Minister Stephen Harper is being urged to take advantage of an audience with Pope Francis this week to seek a formal apology for the role the Roman Catholic Church played in Canada's residential school disgrace.

NDP Leader Tom Mulcair says the timing of Harper's visit to the Vatican is fortuitous, coming just one week after the Truth and Reconciliation Commission called on the pope to travel to Canada to issue an apology.

Mulcair says Harper should ask Pope Francis if he'd be willing to do so.

 
Maybe the pious political masses should apologise for foisting outmoded socio-cultural delusions on the majority that will not only be expensive but also futile and smack of paternalistic racism just so it can keep the victimhood industry alive. God forbid aboriginals should adapt to the twenty-first century. If they have big-screen TVs and SUVs, they already have and this forced march exercise is pointless.



Obama does not want ISIS defeated:

Ten months since the start of the American-led intervention against ISIS in Iraq, President Obama said today that the United States does not have a "complete strategy" to defeat ISIS and stem the group's rise in Syria and Iraq. 

I'll call it again. The man who walked away from reporters after half-heartedly announcing James Foley's death to play golf does not want ISIS, the Islamist group that rapes children, murders Christians and Yazidis, destroys artefacts and controls much of Syria and Iraq, defeated:

"Like the Islamic State, Iran has also built an impressive capacity to operate on several fronts at once and display the strength of its logistics," the note states. "Iran has not only provided arms and money to the Iraqi and Syrian governments, it has also supplied military force, and it has done so in a way that is likely to ensure its influence in the region at least for as long as the Islamic State survives."

For this reason, Iran might not want to completely extinguish ISIS in Iraq and Syria, according to former US Army intelligence officer Michael Pregent.

Pregent told Business Insider in April that, while Iran wants to preserve its proxies' control over Baghdad and Damascus, Iran has something to gain from allowing ISIS to continue operating in some other areas. 

As long as ISIS survives, Iran can claim that their allies in both countries are the only thing preventing a jihadist takeover, which ensures Tehran's hold on Baghdad and Damascus and provides Iran a degree of international support for their allies in both countries.

A de-stabilised Middle East and a destroyed Israel might be a good day's work for the Lazy Man in the White House.



And now, why children should be made to wash their hands and things about STNG movies you might not know.

Sunday Post

But first, a sermon from the Reverend Elron McKenzie.



If this lasts until October, we are not just up a particular creek but will be without a canoe, as well:

Canada's left-leaning New Democratic Party (NDP) has taken a slim lead in popular support ahead of a general election scheduled for October, while support for the Conservative government is flat, a public opinion poll said on Friday.

The Ekos survey showed, however, that the NDP, which has never held power federally, does not have enough backing to form a stable government by itself and would likely have to work with another party.

The world is silent because the Palestinians have a better public image than a functioning democratic state in the Middle East does:

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Sunday criticized what he described as the world's "silence" over recent rocket attacks from the Gaza Strip, drawing a quick response from his country's closest ally, the U.S.

Netanyahu, speaking at his weekly Cabinet meeting, said he hadn't heard anyone condemn three rocket attacks from Gaza over the past two weeks. The rockets caused no damage, nor any injuries.

"It will be interesting to see if this silence continues when we use all our strength in exercising our right to defend ourselves," Netanyahu said. "It should be clear: the hypocrisy that is sweeping the world will not chain our hands from defending the citizens of Israel."

 
The Palestinians are attacking Israel again. It must be summer.


Unless someone is prepared to shoot down a Russian fighter jet, tough talk on Russia's invasion of Ukraine amounts to nothing:

The leaders of Germany and the United States hammered home a tough line on Russia Sunday as they kicked off a G7 summit dominated by crises in Ukraine and Greece. ...

Merkel said later that Moscow should stay out of the G7 "community of values" for now over its actions in Ukraine. 

"There is a barrier at the moment and I can't really see how it can be overcome," she told German public broadcaster ARD.

The Japanese and Canadian leaders had Saturday made a point of visiting Kiev on their way to Germany to voice support for Ukraine's embattled leaders, as government troops again traded fire with pro-Russian rebels in the east.

(Sidebar: that's nice. How does that stop Putin?)

Doing what needs to be done:

 

Rev. Majed El Shafie was born Muslim, then converted to Christianity and became a pastor. For that, he was imprisoned in Egypt and tortured before making his way to Canada.

 

He now helps other refugees escape Islamic tyranny.

His latest efforts involved traveling to ISIS held territory, then buying enslaved Yazidi girls and smuggling them to freedom.

El Shafie talks about how he barters for these girls using goods these so-called "Islamic" fighters want, such as whiskey.

Hashtags and other bits of moral preening just don't work.

Your "carbon tax" update:

Myth 1: Carbon taxes and cap-and-trade are effective means of lowering industrial greenhouse gas emissions.

Demonstrably, they are not.

Norway has the world’s oldest, most sophisticated carbon tax. Government researchers concluded 13 years ago this tax, introduced in 1991, has not significantly lowered emissions.

Carbon taxes are ineffective for the same reason the world’s largest cap-and-trade market -- Europe’s decade-old Emissions Trading Scheme -- is ineffective.

Politicians cave in to political and economic pressure exerted by major emitters, led by giant energy and industrial corporations, and grant too many exemptions from carbon pricing, destroying its effectiveness.

Carbon pricing raises our cost of living. It doesn’t lower emissions.

Cap-and-trade -- a stock market in emissions trading -- which Premier Kathleen Wynne is imposing on Ontario, has been particularly vulnerable to political corruption, fraud and organized crime in Europe.

British Columbia’s carbon tax, which returns the money it raises through income tax cuts, is better, but ineffective. It will reduce B.C. emissions by three megatonnes annually by 2020. China emits that every 2.5 hours.

And now, an interactive map detailing the second most spoken languages in the world.

Friday Post

For the first week-end of June...


In case we forget:





How fitting that on National Donut Day, Tim Hortons puts its foot in it:

A U.S.-based lobby group called ForestEthics pressured Tim Hortons to rip up an advertising contract they had with a Canadian pipeline company. And Tim Hortons agreed.

Tim Hortons has no problem doing business in OPEC dictatorships They have stores in Kuwait. In the United Arab Emirates. In Qatar. In Oman. Those are all dictatorships. Tim Hortons happily takes their money.

But they think Canadian oil and gas workers are too unethical.

Oops.



Remember- an unelected judge in Ontario ruled that an aboriginal girl could forgo proven modern medical treatments for something akin to boiled wheat grass:

Not with a bang but a whisper, Ontario’s three political parties quietly collaborated to pass a bill abolishing the right of teenagers with unwanted homosexual or transgendered feelings from seeking psychotherapy.

Carry on.


Somewhat related: keeping the Victim Industry alive.



Hot on the heels of her friend's three prison sentence, Ontario Premier Kathleen Wynne spends taxpayer money trying to whitewash a sex education program no one likes:

The Ontario Liberal government has launched a $1.8 million ad campaign claiming to inform people about the revised sex-ed curriculum set to be rolled out this fall, but pro-family advocates say it’s actually a whitewash of a controversial program opposed by thousands of parents.

In a way, it should come as no surprise:

President Obama and his administration continue to support the global Islamist militant group known the Muslim Brotherhood. A White House strategy document regards the group as a moderate alternative to more violent Islamist groups like al Qaeda and the Islamic State.

How does one determine how moderate an Islamist is- by counting the number of hacked-off heads?

One can air-lift him into a pool of hungry sharks:

A Pakistani man accused of plotting bomb attacks on the U.S. consulate and other buildings in Toronto was ordered out of Canada on Friday following a process his lawyer denounced as a farce.

Jahanzeb Malik, who will not contest the decision, is now expected to be deported within the next several weeks.

And now, how sometimes people can be wrong about delicious things:

When "cheeseburger" was first mentioned in the October 1938 article, it was in a long list about the "whimsy" of California eateries. Then, nine years later in May 1947, the Times revisited the fad, writing, "At first, the combination of beef with cheese and tomatoes, which sometimes are used, may seem bizarre." But luckily, their intrepid reporter could see the bigger picture. "If you reflect a bit, you’ll understand the combination is sound gastronomically."