If This Country Was Serious About Tackling Terrorism ...

The terrorists who took down Air India 182 would be in prison:

When the Toronto-based tech company Tucows Inc. discovered it was providing domain registration services to the Pakistani Taliban, it immediately contacted the RCMP for guidance.

Days later, it was still waiting for a response.

By Tuesday, it had waited long enough and took action on its own, disabling the website’s domain.

 

Doing the job the RCMP would not do.

** 

An Abu Sayyaf terror suspect linked to the beheadings of two Canadians has surrendered after being wounded in a battle in the southern Philippines province of Sulu.

Separatist commander Anduljihad Susukan was taken into custody in the city of Davao, the Associated Press reported. Wanted for at least 23 murders, six attempted murders and five kidnappings, he led a network whose members are affiliated with ISIL. The island-hopping group began in the 1990s with funding from Al-Qaeda, and has been at simmering conflict with the state ever since, using kidnapping as one of its main weapons.

 

These @$$holes:

She spent “nine agonizing months” writing letter after letter to government agencies, Thomas says, but they received no concrete response, “aside from the occasional auto reply confirming receipt of my emails, and a snarky letter from the Defence Department saying I had the wrong department.” In the meantime, she says, Ottawa’s “bumbling and inaction” gave the kidnappers “the time they needed to sharpen their swords.”

“I’m not a politician, nor scholar, and don’t pretend to know how one government engages another government, especially regarding crimes of this calibre, but I do know that our government literally did the least they possibly could to help my brother and the other hostages,” her post continues. “Sadly, in hindsight, I see that Trudeau, [Global Affairs Minister Stéphane] Dion, the RCMP, and all other government offices involved in this file were in waaay [sic] over their heads and too focused on their single, incomplete thought—’We don’t pay ransom’—to have a plan, a strategy, or even any kind of template from which to work.”

As for Trudeau’s promise to “pursue those responsible for these heinous acts and bring them to justice, however long it takes,” Thomas says “his words mean nothing and are of cold comfort.”

 

And he still hasn't.

"WAAAAAAAAH!"

 ... cried the buffoon who won't account for the money she lost and talks about the Canadian population behind its back:

Infrastructure Minister Catherine McKenna says new measures must be taken to protect Canadian politicians from threatening behaviour.

Her comments come after police launched an investigation this week into an incident at her office as well as reports that two other Ottawa-area politicians also faced threats recently.

 

But you weren't threatened, were you Barbie? He merely shouted a string of swear words at your assistant (because you weren't at work).

How long does this worthless Barbie doll think that she and her unimpeachable colleagues can ignore the electorate - having only cuss words as its recourse - before it snaps?

From the Most Corrupt and Inept Government Ever to Resume the Task of Ruining Canada

Sometimes, people bring heart-ache on themselves:

Cabinet borrowed more than a half-trillion dollars in 120 days, according to the Department of Finance. No date has been fixed for tabling of a 2020 federal budget: “There will need to be a sharp turn; temporary measures will have to be temporary.”

** 

The Trudeau government gave $20 million to a venture capital investment company that the Liberal Heritage Minister Steven Guilbeault advised.

Canadians must realise that they are economic engines for a plutocracy and nothing more.

They can easily be replaced. 

(Cue anti-Americanism in five, four ...):

Conservative MP Michelle Rempel Garner assured she quarantined for the mandatory 14 days upon returning from the United States, where she was based for a significant part of the COVID-19 pandemic.

During the latest meeting of the federal COVID-19 parliamentary committee on Wednesday, many people on social media were surprised to see Rempel Garner sitting in a seat in the House of Commons in Ottawa.

That’s because in April, the Toronto Star reported that Rempel Garner was working remotely from Oklahoma, U.S., since the beginning of the pandemic. At the time, she said the travel was due to an “unexpected and urgent private personal matter”.

Oklahoma is where her husband and stepchildren live.

Since then, there had been no indication that the Conservative MP had returned to Canada … until her appearance in the House.

 

To wit:

So far in 2020, the prime minister has logged 48 personal days, while in 2019 he took a startling 91 days off or nearly 25% of the year.  

 Meanwhile, out of the 225 days that have passed since January 1, 2020, Trudeau has spent over 21% of them not at his desk.

 

But only a Trudeau can be a lazy @$$hole and still get paid for it.

Why should he still get paid? I don't know.

 

Also:

During one of his many “interactions” with his local Safeway clerks, did Mr. Davis ever inquire where they lived? Unless they happened to be independently wealthy and grocery-store-clerking as an amusing hobby, it was almost certainly not within 30 miles of the area where he himself presumably lives and does his shopping. (I have no idea where Mr. Davis currently resides, but his official bio lists his birthplace as West Vancouver, a wealthy suburb whose average single-family home price was nearly $4 million in 2017.) It is literally, physically impossible to live in metro Vancouver on a minimum-wage job — yes, even with unions! Of course, 70% of British Columbia’s workers don’t benefit from union protections, and they are in even worse shape. While Vancouver’s living wage — the salary required to meet the basic needs of a family of four — is $19.50 an hour plus benefits (actually a drop from last year), the minimum wage lags far behind at $13.85 an hour. “The checkout person may not share your level of affluence,” but if you’ve been paying the tiniest shred of attention to the people around you, Mr. Davis, then you know that they know that you know that they are barely surviving. By the time I left the city last year, storefront after storefront in my own neighborhood — the comparatively more “affordable” area near Commercial Drive — was shuttered due to labor shortages. Workers simply couldn’t afford to live in the city on the wages paid by a typical retail job.

 

Canadians are better than the Americans, though, because Americans.

 

 

The argument for supporting conservative-in-name candidates is that they have a better chance of being elected than ones whose focus is social (yet one could argue also fiscal given that many social issues have a fiscal element to them). That is not often the case but when a conservative-in-name only candidate is elected, he ends up being a disappointment that can still rely on the support of people who insist on performing the same experiment again but with different results:

In 2017, Brad Trost, a favourite among social conservatives, dropped off the ballot after the 11th round of voting. That outcome has commonly been explained as most of Trost’s support shifting to Scheer, which propelled the latter to clinch the leadership. But the numbers tell a different story.

After the 11th round, Trost’s votes were redistributed. Scheer was then trailing Maxime Bernier. Turns out that 40 per cent of Trost supporters simply fell off the ballot — because they defected rather than rank another contestant. Red Tories did likewise in the final round of voting: 25 per cent of O’Toole supporters did not rank either Scheer or Bernier on their ballots.

As ballots dropped, the total number counted per round decreased. That increased Scheer’s share of the vote artificially in key ridings. Contrary to popular belief, he did not actually receive the majority of next-choice support from any candidate who dropped off the ballot.

Expect similar voting behaviour from social conservatives this time around. MacKay is likely to lead after the first round, shy of the threshold of 50 per cent needed to win outright. Once votes for Sloan and Lewis are redistributed after the first and second rounds, the number of votes counted will decrease as uncompromising social conservatives decide not to rank either O’Toole or MacKay.

If defections repeat as they did in 2017, the effect will be that MacKay’s support will increase during each round of voting — without having to capture the second or third choices from social conservatives. That is, MacKay does not need the support of social conservatives to win, provided his share of the vote is sufficiently high in those ridings where social conservative votes drop off.

 

A vote for McKay simply assures more Liberal policies under a different banner.

This is why there should be more independent candidates. The party system has created tribes to which people are loyal and will vote accordingly. Only individuals can act as representatives of voters' wishes.

Wow. People Totally Have a Handle On This Coronavirus

Canada now has (as of this writing) 9,025 deaths.

 

The same government that went out of its way not to give medical workers the personal protective equipment they needed will not "seamlessly" hand over welfare from printed money it can't afford to waste:

Employment Minister Carla Qualtrough made assurances on Wednesday that the federal government would smoothly funnel millions of Canadians from its key COVID-19 financial aid program into employment insurance, as a major end-of-month deadline looms.

Qualtrough said people currently tapping into the Canada Emergency Response Benefit (CERB) would be transitioned into EI “seamlessly and without benefit disruption.” She reiterated claims that the EI program is prepared to handle an influx in recipients, who will need to be transitioned from CERB at the end of August.

 

This Carla Qualtrough: 

Qualtrough is in charge of the department whose public servants concluded they were not capable of delivering the program and who, according to the government, recommended that WE Charity was the only group capable of delivering it.

She told the ethics committee that she did not know until the proposal was scheduled to come before cabinet on May 5 that it was WE Charity that was being recommended to run the program.

She also said she did not know the distinctions between the WE Charity’s various entities that were being named to administer the program and added that while she believes both Trudeau and Morneau should have recused themselves from the talks, she accepts their apologies for not doing so.

Yep. Seamlessly.

 

Let's not forget this:

Cabinet could have “picked better words” to discourage cheats under a $60 billion pandemic relief program, Employment Minister Carla Qualtrough said yesterday. A draft bill to jail scofflaws would not be retroactive, she said: “I hear you.”

Also:

A deepening rift between Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and his finance minister about coronavirus spending is also fuelled by disagreements over the scope and scale of proposed green initiatives, three sources familiar with the matter said.

 

Quebec is special:

Quebec health authorities say 19 people died from COVID-19 in a Montreal-area seniors residence last spring, but 10 of the deaths are only being reported today because of a delay in transmitting data.

**

Nineteen-year-old Florence Lachapelle was among hundreds of Quebecers who tried their hand at planting seeds and harvesting produce this summer, replacing migrant workers who were unable to leave their countries because of the COVID-19 pandemic.

And while Lachapelle spent long days working the fields on François D’Aoust’s farm in Havelock, Que., too few other Quebecers took up the call to help the province’s struggling agricultural industry.

Despite a recruiting drive by the provincial government in April, the lack of labour this season has forced farmers to cut production or leave food rotting in the fields.

 

As Quebec well knows, there are always carrots and sticks to apply to its little CERB-collectors and illegal migrants. 

From the most opaque and greedy government ever re-elected:

A Québec firm awarded an untendered ten-year federal contract to supply pandemic masks says it is “proud to be working with the Government of Canada”, but would not disclose who owns the company. AMD Medicom Inc. of Montréal was awarded a $382 million contract to supply Canadian-made masks though it had no factory in Canada: “We have nothing further to add on this topic.”

**

A company owned by former Québec Liberal MP Frank Baylis has received almost $700,000 in federal funding this year including contracts for a pandemic ventilator “not approved in any jurisdiction”, according to Department of Health records. MPs yesterday questioned the arrangement: “Friends are doing just fine.”

 

(Sidebar: do you remember this guy?)

 

 

More coronavirus cases could overwhelm the healthcare system that is reputedly the envy of the world but really only to leftists, repeat the original bleaters:

Canada is planning for a fall peak in coronavirus cases, followed by a number of smaller waves, in a possible worst-case scenario for the COVID-19 pandemic this fall, officials said at a briefing Friday.

Ahem:

Doctors are sounding alarm bells over what they see as a growing trend of people with serious and life-threatening illnesses avoiding hospitals during the novel coronavirus pandemic.

The panic caused by the mouthpieces of this pandemic is paralleled with some rather appalling treatment from the "front-line" workers and nurses (some, but perhaps not all, of whom see this only as a job and not a vocation, hence their sh---y treatment of patients - I know whereof I speak on this). Cap this off with some patients from hell and that veneer of "compassionate universal healthcare' comes off like a Chinese hubcap.

I believe that parents should have been questioning the entirety of the education system instead of expecting the same over-fed teachers to look after their kids while the former are at work.

People have to resume their normal lives. I appreciate that people are concerned with infections but the more I read on this matter, the more I get the sense that teachers expect to return with few restrictions on their curricula and even fewer parents questioned the quality of the education they saw their children receive.

The military still notes problems in the warehousing of the elderly:

The Canadian Armed Forces says minor problems remain in some Ontario long-term care homes they were deployed to earlier in the COVID-19 pandemic.

But critics say this does not mean the homes have a clean bill of health.

The military’s concerns outlined in a report dated Aug. 4 and released Friday include worker skills and standards of practice in the seven nursing homes.

The reports attributes many of the problems to inexperienced staff who were quickly pressed into service in the homes during the pandemic.

Ontario called in the military to seven homes that struggled to deal with COVID-19 outbreaks starting in April.

Weeks later, the Forces said they observed cockroach infestations, aggressive feeding that caused choking, bleeding infections, and residents crying for help for hours.

 

But the liquor stores were still open, so ... 

Let them fight?:

The lawsuit was filed July 6 in the Ontario Superior Court of Justice in Toronto by Aylmer, Ont.-based Vaccine Choice Canada and seven individuals. The legal action is a challenge under Canada's Charter of Rights and Freedoms to the country's pandemic response measures, including compulsory face masks, the closure of businesses and the enforcement of physical distancing. 

The plaintiffs are suing the governments of Canada and Ontario, the City of Toronto, senior politicians, a number of local Ontario health authorities, health officials and the CBC over their response to the pandemic. 

The suit states that the closure of businesses to prevent the spread of the virus was "extreme, unwarranted and unjustified," that self-isolation measures imposed on individuals were "not scientific, nor medically based nor proven" and that the mandatory wearing of face coverings in some public spaces imposes "physical and psychological harm."

The lawsuit alleges that the measures violate Sections 2 (right of association), 7 (life, liberty and security of the person), 8 (unlawful search and seizure), 9 (arbitrary detention of enforcement officers) and 15 (equality before and under the law) of the charter. 

"The measures ... are further not in accordance with the tenets of fundamental justice in their overbreadth, nor are they justified under S.1 of the charter in that they are demonstrably justified in a free and democratic society," the lawsuit states. 

 

What Is It That We Need China For Anyway?

 We don't need it but the Canadian plutocracy does:

The Department of Public Works paid $8,625,000 to Deloitte Inc. to manage shipments of pandemic supplies from China, according to records. Staff in a Memorandum To The Minister said they had no choice due to “extreme urgency”.

Bullsh--.

Canada needed those supplies. It still does.

But when Justin's bosses demand ...

**

Canada’s consulate in Shanghai took Canadian companies to tech giant ByteDance’s offices this week, the company behind the controversial app TikTok and its Chinese equivalent.

An invitation went out for the event recently, with Canadian companies offered the chance to visit ByteDance’s Shanghai offices. The company developed TikTok, a social media app where users can create and share short videos, but there have been privacy concerns about the company’s products.

**

The secrecy shrouding the much-delayed Foreign Investment Promotion and Protection Agreement (FIPA) with China makes it hard for experts, let alone average Canadians, to figure out what benefits this country will see from the deal. ...

Critics of the agreement, such as Gus Van Harten, an Osgoode Hall law professor who has written two books on investment treaties, raise several key objections:

• Canadian governments are locked in for a generation. If Canada finds the deal unsatisfactory, it cannot be cancelled completely for 31 years.
• China benefits much more than Canada, because of a clause allowing existing restrictions in each country to stay in place. Chinese companies get to play on a relatively level field in Canada, while maintaining wildly arbitrary practices and rules for Canadian companies in China.
• Chinese companies will be able to seek redress against any laws passed by any level of government in Canada which threaten their profits. Australia has decided not to enter FIPA agreements specifically because they allow powerful corporations to challenge legislation on social, environmental and economic issues. Chinese companies investing heavily in Canadian energy will be able seek billions in compensation if their projects are hampered by provincial laws on issues such as environmental concerns or First Nations rights, for example.
• Cases will be decided by a panel of professional arbitrators, and may be kept secret at the discretion of the sued party. This extraordinary provision reflects an aversion to transparency and public debate common to the Harper cabinet and the Chinese politburo.
• Differences between FIPA and the North American Free Trade Agreement may offer intriguing loopholes for American lawyers to argue for equal treatment under the principle of Most Favoured Nation.

 

Thanks, Steve. 

This is the country that owns us now:

Two patients in China that recovered from COVID-19 months ago tested positive for the coronavirus again, raising concern of the virus’s ability to linger and reactivate in people who it previously infected.

A 68-year-old woman in the central Chinese province of Hubei, where the novel coronavirus first surfaced in December, tested positive on Sunday, six months after she was diagnosed with COVID-19 and recovered. Another man found to have contracted the disease in April after returning from abroad tested positive in Shanghai on Monday but hasn’t shown any symptoms.

(Sidebar: it's a good thing that these people can fly into the country any time they want.)

**

Two cities in China have found traces of the new coronavirus in imported frozen food and on food packaging, local authorities said on Thursday, raising fears that contaminated food shipments might cause new outbreaks.

A sample taken from the surface of frozen chicken wings imported into the southern city of Shenzhen from Brazil, as well as samples of outer packaging of frozen Ecuadorian shrimp sold in the northwestern Xi’An city, have tested positive for the virus, local authorities said on Thursday.

I'll just leave this right here:

Canadian inspectors intercepted nearly 900 food products from China over concerns about faulty labels, unmentioned allergens and harmful contaminants that included glass and metal between 2017 and early 2019, according to internal federal records.

The document provides an inside look at imports from China that caught the attention of officials for appearing to fall short of Canadian standards — from gum balls with "extraneous" metal, to three-minute chow mein that contained an insect, to spicy octopus flagged for a "non-specific hazard."

**

Lawyers for Meng Wanzhou say evidence used by the United States for the Huawei executive’s extradition is “unreliable and defective” and should not be considered by a Canadian court.

Documents released Friday ahead of a hearing scheduled for September include evidence that Meng’s lawyers argue proves the U.S. left out key facts about communication with HSBC about Huawei’s operations in Iran when requesting Meng’s extradition from Canada to stand trial for fraud charges.

Yes, about that:

An HSBC banker concluded that Huawei's business dealings in Iran were "above board" after a meeting with company CFO Meng Wanzhou, whose representations turned out to be "deceitful" and put the bank at risk, a Canadian government lawyer said in court submissions released on Friday.

Compare this b!#ch to this fellow:

His arrest Monday morning at his home was the highest-profile detention under a new national security law that took effect in the semi-autonomous Chinese territory on June 30. He has not been charged but was held for 36 hours on suspicion of colluding with a foreign country or entity. He was released on bail.

Lai, 71, said he was worried he could be sent to the mainland, where the legal system has fewer protections. His fears were allayed when he realized that the officers were not speaking in Mandarin, the mainland Chinese language.

“I kind of settled down a little bit because? I knew that I wouldn’t be sent to China at least,” he said.

Canada wouldn't hesitate to send Jimmy Lai back if China had asked.

The Story So Far ...

 The scandal that the Liberals would rather voters forget:

WE Charity — the organization under scrutiny for a now-cancelled deal to deliver a federal student volunteer grant program — is now registered to lobby the federal government and has retroactively registered more than 60 communication reports for contacts with public office holders since early 2019.

(Sidebar: how convenient.)

** 

WE Charity suddenly discloses dozens of previously-secret lobbying conversations with Trudeau government.

— pierrepoilievre (@PierrePoilievre) August 13, 2020

 

 **

No! Not its real estate:

 WE Charity is scaling back its operations, making dozens of layoffs in Canada and the United Kingdom, while also looking to sell some of its real estate holdings in Toronto.

The charity has been embroiled in a political controversy since the Trudeau government chose it to run a now-abandoned student-volunteer program.

 

I'll just leave this right here:

Nestled deep in the narrow bylanes of south Kolkata, Nirmal Hriday provides a sanctuary to the destitute. Opened in 1952, two years after Mother Teresa formed the Missionaries of Charity—an order of nuns that has an international presence today—Nirmal Hriday provides shelter to 100 inmates as of now.

Originally an abandoned Kali temple, Mother Teresa converted it into the home for the poor with the help of some Indian officials.

  

That was the property dealing of a real charity.

**

The New Democrats are joining the Conservative party in asking the federal lobbying watchdog to investigate whether the embattled WE Charity organization engaged in “improper lobbying” ahead of the Liberal government’s decision to award the charity a sole-sourced contract to administer a student volunteer grant program.

On Friday, NDP ethics critic Charlie Angus tweeted a letter containing the request to Lobbying Commissioner Nancy Belanger dated Aug. 10, four days before WE Charity told MPs it registered with the federal registry of lobbyists.

“I wrote to her … for an investigation because the more we learnt about (WE’s) government activities, the more concerning it became,” Angus said on Friday.

“We need an investigation here.”

 

Just like with SNC-Lavalin? 

 

That's why this won't sink Trudeau. 

Even if Canadians cared, the plutocracy is so entrenched and protected that nothing short of a civil war will wrest that power from its claws.

 

There Is A Reason Why Some People Are Considered To Be Cranks

 Indeed:

“Gradually I became more and more aware of this horror outside,” says Barrett, a dream researcher at Harvard Medical School. “At first it seemed like a war or riot or some conflict between people, but then it settled into being like the Black Death, like the plague in Europe.”

Barrett makes art from her dreams and when she woke the next morning she made an image of a Medieval plague doctor wandering through a landscape of abstracted COVID-19 particles. It’s the cover of Pandemic Dreams, her new book about what our “supercharged dream lives” are telling us about our unconscious responses to the COVID-19 calamity.

Barrett has been collecting pandemic dreams through an online survey since March. Nearly 4,000 dreamers worldwide have submitted more than 9,000 dream reports. SARS-CoV-2, the unromantic pathogen that causes COVID-19, is the star of many, “literally, or in one of its metaphorical guises,” Barrett writes. Invisible monsters. Morgues and evil morticians. Tarantulas crawling through mail slots. Giant grasshoppers with vampire fangs and bugs, lots of bugs. Swarms of bees and hornets, armies of cockroaches, masses of wriggling worms. “Lots of tiny entities that cumulatively could harm or kill you makes a perfect metaphor for COVID-19,” she writes.

 

I knew a woman who was a teacher during the Blitz. She would relate stories of leading students away to shelters during bombing raids, of fine shards of glass embedded in people's faces and bombs creating vacuums that would suck air out of children's lungs.

A lot of stress then yet people still managed to carry on.

Now, we have professional fear-mongers and stupid parents instilling fear into their little marriage-savers instead of reviewing the facts and calmly explaining to their children what they have to do and why.

Kids freak out because their elders do.

People rely on incompetent governments to feed and clothe them and make all the decisions for them.

This is why we have fearful, panicky idiots and self-righteous Karens who explode in often violent anger over the angle or presence of a mask.

It's awful to know that there is a market for this fear.

 

A Word On the Assumption

 

 

A brief history of this doctrine:

The belief in the corporeal assumption of Mary is founded on the apocryphal treatise De Obitu S. Dominae, bearing the name of St. John, which belongs however to the fourth or fifth century. ...

**

On 1 November 1950, Pope Pius XII defined it as dogma in the apostolic constitution Munificentissimus Deus. The origin of the feast day is not known but it was celebrated in Palestine before the year 500.

 

So there's that.

 

That this feast day happened to coincide with the end of the Second World War and the reading of the day mentions a great red dragon bent on consuming the Earth not unlike China ...

 Well, one can glean from that what one will.

I'm Sure It's Nothing to Be Concerned With

The federal government has revealed that the Canada Revenue Agency was recently hit by two cyberattacks, compromising thousands of accounts linked to the agency's services. 

The agency confirmed on Saturday that as of Aug. 14, about 5,500 accounts had been affected by the separate attacks but that the breaches are now contained. The CRA's My Account, My Business Account and Represent a Client services were affected in the incidents. 

"The CRA quickly identified the impacted accounts and disabled access to these accounts to ensure the safety and security of the taxpayer's information," CRA spokesperson Christopher Doody wrote in an email.

"The CRA is continuing to analyze both incidents. Law enforcement assistance has been requested from RCMP and an investigation has been initiated."

 

 

On the Korean Peninsula

 A lot going on ...

 

 

A merry Gwangbokjol to all y'all.

 

 

How magnanimous:

Severe flooding caused by intense monsoon rains have prompted North Korean leader Kim Jong Un into an atypical response that may signal a dire situation in the isolated country amid the coronavirus pandemic.

 

These floods:

Severe floods in North Korea have killed at least 22 people and left four others missing, according to the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies.

In a statement citing figures from North Korean officials, the IFRC said the floods have also caused widespread crop damage, intensifying economic concerns in a country that already suffers chronic food shortages.

The North's state-run Korean Central News Agency reported Friday that nearly 40,000 hectares of crops have been damaged and 17,000 houses destroyed or inundated. "Lots of roads, bridges and railway sections [were] broken, a dam of a power station gave way and there was other severe damage in various sectors of the national economy," the KCNA report said.

** 

Part of North Korea's Yongbyon nuclear complex may have been damaged as the Kuryong River overflowed its banks, according to the website 38 North at Johns Hopkins University on Wednesday.

The website warned that flood waters reached the pump houses that send cooling water into the 5 MW nuclear reactor there, which could at least mean that it had to be shut down.

 

 

If it makes one feel better, one's government can declare that suing veterans, especially ones who have lost limbs, is the right thing to do:

The Defense Ministry on Monday announced that a soldier's salary will rise to W963,000 a month by 2025 as part of measures to make military wages more compatible with Korean society. That will require the related budget to be raised from the current W2 trillion to W3 trillion. One of President Moon Jae-in's campaign pledges when he ran for office in 2017 was to raise soldiers' pay. Already it doubled from W197,000 in 2016 to W405,000 in 2018, and Moon now plans to more than double that again.

Moon has also pledged to shorten the mandatory military service from 21 months to 18 months next year. As a result, Korea's 620,000 standing troops will fall to 500,000 by 2022. The number of soldiers was set to decline anyway due to Korea's low birthrate. Yet no matter how sophisticated weapons are, a military's strength is fundamentally determined by the number of foot soldiers. One study shows that 260,000 to 400,000 soldiers would be necessary just to stabilize the situation in case of an emergency in North Korea. The mandatory conscription period needs to be increased to maintain troop numbers, but the government is experimenting with the opposite.

Last month, a North Korean defector was captured seven times on military surveillance equipment as he escaped back to the North, but the military was completely unaware of his return until North Korea's state-run media broadcast it because nobody had been watching the screens. The shortened conscription period and boosted soldiers' wages are enticing offers for young voters and parents. But it has to be doubted whether that will do the country's defense any good.

 

Also - photos of the North Korea some would rather one not see.

 

 

Uh-Oh

Satellite imagery suggests recent flooding in North Korea may have damaged pump houses connected to the country’s main nuclear facility, a U.S.-based think-tank said on Thursday.  

Analysts at 38 North, a website that monitors North Korea, said commercial satellite imagery from August 6-11 showed how vulnerable the Yongbyon Nuclear Scientific Research Center’s nuclear reactor cooling systems are to extreme weather events.

The Korean peninsula has been hammered by one of the longest rainy spells in recent history, with floods and landslides causing damage and deaths in both North and South Korea.

Located on the bank of the Kuryong River about 100 km (60 miles) north of North Korea’s capital, Pyongyang, Yongbyon is home to nuclear reactors, fuel re-processing plants and uranium enrichment facilities that are thought to be used in the country’s nuclear weapons programme.

The five-megawatt reactor - believed to be used to produce weapons-grade plutonium - does not appear to have been operating for some time, and an Experimental Light Water Reactor (ELWR) has not yet come online, but such flooding in the future would likely force a shutdown, the 38 North report said.

“Damage to the pumps and piping within the pump houses presents the biggest vulnerability to the reactors,” the report said. “If the reactors were operating, for instance, the inability to cool them would require them to be shut down.”

 

To wit:

According to the Soviet participants of the Post-Accident Review Meeting in Vienna severe violations made by the personnel of the Unit 4 of the Chernobyl NPP on 25-26 April 1986 were the main reasons of the Chernobyl accident. As especially serious violations were named the following:  

-operation of the reactor at a very low operative reactivity surplus (ORS),  

-conducting of the experiment by the power below the level provided for test, 

 -blocking of the protection system relaying on water level and steam pressure in steam

-separators,  

-blocking of the protection system relaying on shutdown signal from two turbogenerators, 

 -connection of all the main circulating pumps to the reactor,

-switching off the emergency core cooling system (ECCS). 

Also:

@Thaeyongho confirms what's been clear the past 30 years: #DPRK uses carrot-and-stick strategy to tame its adversaries & engages in talks to buy time & money with which to build more bombs & missiles. And #KimJongUn's fake outreach in 2018 was already planned in 2016. https://t.co/jk3FZwb5T8

— Sung-Yoon Lee (@SungYoonLee1) August 13, 2020

 

Mid-Week Post

 

Your central focal point of the week ... 

From the most corrupt and money-grubbing government ever re-elected:

When questioned at a parliamentary ethics committee, the minister responsible for the Canada Student Service Grant could not say how much of the $30 million advanced by the government to the WE organization had been repaid since the charity organization pulled out of the deal to run the federal program.

“We can share that … $30 million has been released to the organization through the contribution agreement. I was not aware of how much money has been returned,” Bardish Chagger, Minister of Diversity, Inclusion and Youth, said Tuesday to House of Commons ethics committee members

.

This is thirty million dollars, not thirty, Baggish.

Can't you count or don't you want to? 

 

More:

Clerk of the Privy Council Ian Shugart was in the hot seat for the latest ethics committee meeting probing the government’s now-cancelled decision to have WE Charity manage the federal program.

Shugart said the internal issues within WE Charity — such as their finances in the wake of COVID-19, resignations among their board of directors and a governance structure that the organization itself has described as "more complicated than it needs to be" — were not considered.

"Those issues, with respect to the WE Charity Foundation, were not raised in the subsequent briefing and to my knowledge, they were not flagged as material for the examination of the ability of WE to deliver the program," Shugart said.

Instead, Shugart said the due diligence Prime Minister Justin Trudeau had requested focused on "the ability of the organization to deliver the program" as it relates to issues such as Canada's official languages, the regional reach of the organization, and its ability to contact Canadians who are "typically harder to access," such as "disadvantaged" people.

He went on to say that, had he known then what he knows now about WE Charity, a further probe of the organization's finances and governance structure may have been a good call.

 

It's your job to inquire about all transactions, stupid.

**

The prime minister’s office and the finance minister’s both office refuse to say if Chief of Staff Katie Telford’s husband ever communicated with them since he became senior vice-president at a major private mortgage company that is now running the government’s commercial rent subsidy program.

** 

The WE Charity says it has so far repaid the bulk of the money it received for the now-cancelled agreement with the government to run a student volunteer program.

The group has returned $22 million out of the $30 million handed out by the government when that deal was signed, and is waiting on the government to accept the remaining $8 million, a spokesperson for the WE Charity said in a statement.

“When WE Charity and ESDC signed the Canada Student Service Grant contribution agreement, WE Charity received a transfer of funds into a protected account to pay eligible expenses. WE Charity never accessed those funds,” the organization said.

“WE Charity has repeatedly communicated to ESDC the desire to return the remaining funds as soon as the government is able to accept the transfer.”

 

It's like they didn't even need that money! 

**

This must be embarrassing:

Dodgy Minister accidentally admits she directed staff to follow up on Kielburger proposal after secret meeting with WE. pic.twitter.com/VUlkITezrD

— pierrepoilievre (@PierrePoilievre) August 12, 2020

 

And where is Justin in all of this?

The public servant, not private citizen, has been keeping a lower-than-usual profile save to remind everyone how much faith he has in Bill Morneau but would just like to have Mark Carney handy just in case.

Also - a list, though hardly comprehensive, of the Liberals' contempt for their willing subjects.

 

 

What is Blanchet's motivation?:

Bloc Quebecois Leader Yves-Francois Blanchet says Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, Finance Minister Bill Morneau and Katie Telford, the prime minister’s chief of staff, must resign.

If they do not, he vows to try to force an election this fall.

Blanchet’s remarks on Wednesday came as the House of Commons is set to return for one of its four scheduled summer sittings amid the coronavirus pandemic, which also comes as the government is engulfed in controversy over the WE Charity scandal.

 

Does he need $omething $pecial to avoid thi$? Is he wary of what the NDP might do? Does he know that the Tories are rudderless at the moment? 

Would a fellow Quebecker actually take aim at the Trudeau dynasty and their legacy of grift?

 

 

Proof-positive that Mary Dawson is not fit to hold any office:

Mary Dawson, retired ethics commissioner, yesterday described the Prime Minister as a man with a good heart who doesn’t mean to breach the Conflict Of Interest Act. Testifying at the Commons ethics committee, Dawson said she opposed harsh penalties for any MP found to break the law: “There are different levels of badness.”

 

Stupid b!#ch, this @$$hole attempted to justify suing disabled veterans.

On your scale of badness, where would that rate?

 

 

No, Franky, transparency would be not hiding being in hock to China. Being moral would be not having any dealings with China. You're just a scumbag:

Foreign Minister Françoise-Philippe Champagne has refinanced $1.2 million in Bank of China mortgages with the National Bank of Montréal. Champagne in a federal filing said his debts to the People’s Republic bank were paid in full by August 10: “I feel very transparent.”

Well, obviously:

The Public Health Agency that failed to stockpile pandemic supplies had poor management of information technology systems, says an internal audit. “IT is central to almost every aspect of Health Canada and Public Health Agency business,” wrote auditors.

Also:

The Trudeau government dished out nearly $150 million in taxpayer dollars on COVID-19 test kits that did not work, the Department of Health admitted yesterday.

According to Blacklock's Reporter, the Department of Health, the "Spartan Cube," funded by the government and designed by Spartan Bioscience Inc., "successfully detected positive samples only 47 percent of the time using samples tested in three different provinces."

The test kits were given the $149 million green light on March 27. By May 1, the National Microbiology Lab in Winnipeg reported that the kits were testing poorly.

"This device will no longer be authorized for sale," said staff in a memo. "No distribution is allowed. The Cube is authorized for research use only."

The company was given high praise by Prime Minister Justin Trudeau at his daily press conferences, telling reporters on March 20 that Spartan was among the "many businesses" that stepped up during the pandemic's starting phases.

Industry Minister Navdeep Bains also praised the company's potential, with the government hoping that the biomedical company would be able to design tests that would be used nation wide.

 

 

Why would the Canadian government help Chinese dissidents?:

The Chinese attack on democratic freedoms in Hong Kong is not just an issue of foreign affairs but one that directly endangers every Canadian citizen as well, according to Hong Kong democracy advocates.

The special parliamentary committee on Canada-China relations heard Tuesday firsthand accounts from four activists of being beaten, abused, threatened and targeted by Chinese actors for their advocacy of democracy in Hong Kong amid an increasingly aggressive global power campaign by Beijing.

**

Hong Kong democracy activists and human rights groups warned Canadian MPs that time was running out to help people in the territory as China uses new national security legislation to clamp down on human rights in the city.

MPs heard the testimony just one day after the arrest of Jimmy Lai, owner of the Apple Daily Hong Kong’s largest pro-democracy newspaper.

 

Have the two Michaels been freed yet?

 

Also:

It has been more than six-hundred days since China snatched our fellow countrymen, Michael Korvig and Michael Spavor. A few weeks ago, China charged these two Canadians with "espionage and subversion of the State" without any concrete evidence.

Ironically, just three years ago, Chinese Premier Li Keqiang exalted Sino-Canadian relations by calling it the "golden age" of bilateral engagement. So what went wrong?

The short answer is that China is a bully who has never taken Canada seriously under the leadership of Justin Trudeau. The fact is that Canada’s international image and influence have steadily declined for the past five years. 

It's just money:

A Winnipeg MP is looking to convert the Canada Emergency Response Benefit into a permanent fixture.

Winnipeg Centre MP Leah Gazan tabled a motion in the House of Commons to convert CERB into a permanent guaranteed liveable basic income.

“COVID-19 has demonstrated that we do have the resources. We must ensure all individuals in Canada can thrive in dignity and that means making investments to ensure basic human rights for all,” she said.

** 

The federal government on Tuesday sought to clarify requirements under its $80-billion wage subsidy, amid criticism that the program is overly complicated for businesses to apply for.

Revenue Minister Diane Lebouthillier announced the creation of a new calculator aimed at helping small business owners determine their eligibility for the Canada Emergency Wage Subsidy (CEWS) program, which pays a portion of wage costs for businesses struck by the COVID-19 pandemic. A number of other private accounts have released their own calculators in recent days to assist business owners with the application process.

 

 

It doesn't matter how many people are waiting for heart operations. First thing is first:

A class-action lawsuit could be brought against the New Brunswick government for allegedly limiting abortion access in the province.

Also killed in a clinic:

A Red Deer doctor died Monday after being attacked inside an examination room at a walk-in clinic in the central Alberta city.

Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden has picked his nurse-maid vice-presidential candidate:

Phony Kamala Harris NEVER stood a chance! pic.twitter.com/BOsu9w3bxN

— Brigitte Gabriel (@ACTBrigitte) August 11, 2020

 

Offering some gentle advice for Miss Harris is former vice-presidential candidate, Sarah Palin. Out the gate, the familiar vitriol and the denial of it.

Liberals/leftists are spite, hateful, ignorant, arrogant, insecure and will probably try to off themselves when Trump wins in November.

Weak, insecure people with paranoia complexes do things like that. 

Just shoot the SOB:

A young boy is dead following a shooting that took place in Wilson, North Carolina on Sunday.

A man allegedly ran up to the five-year-old while he was playing and fatally shot him in the head.

Cannon Hinnant was reportedly playing on the street outside of his father's house when their 25-year-old neighbour Darius N. Sessoms ran at the child, pulled out a handgun and shot him according to The Blaze.

 

Wow, People Totally Have A Handle On This Coronavirus

Trusting a stupid and craven plutocracy to safeguard one's health is like asking a cat nicely not to eat your budgie.

Good luck with that:

A Trudeau-appointed contractor who was tasked by the government to ship masks has failed to ship any. This came in spite of the contractor being awarded $382 million by the Trudeau government.

The government awarded this contract to Medicom—a Montreal-based company who do not have any factories in Canada, according to Blacklock's Reporter.

"To date the Public Health Agency has not received surgical masks from Medicom’s Canadian production facility," said a Public Health Agency spokesperson. 

 

Don't forget the name Frank Baylis. And don't forget that masks were never received.

More: 

The Office of the Procurement Ombudsman yesterday said it is investigating inaccurate federal claims in the awarding of a $382 million contract to a Québec pandemic mask supplier. The Public Health Agency falsely claimed the contract followed competitive bidding, and under-reported the true value of the deal by nearly $300 million: “The Ombudsman is always interested.”

 

 

Well, as long as they weren't arresting people blockading railroads:

A video has gone viral on social media that appears to show a masked Victoria police officer attempting to apprehend a young woman by choking her before dragging her to the ground.

These are the same people who gave us the Chernobyl disaster:

On Tuesday, Russia became the first country to declare a coronavirus vaccine ready for use in thousands of its citizens.

The Americans are clearly to blame:

In the space of just a short number of days, between August 1st and August 4th, a total of 18 flights landed in Canada carrying someone who ended up testing positive for the CCP Virus.

Disturbingly, according to reports, the government isn’t even directly telling people to get tested.

“Passengers are not notified directly by federal public health authorities to get tested, though the government acknowledges those onboard affected flights “may have been exposed to COVID-19.””

This is reminiscent of when the Liberal government claimed they had ‘strong screening’ in place at airports, only for Canadians to discover that was a lie, and provincial governments had to step in.

 

Yes, but you voted to be fleeced and ultimately ruined, so ... :

The Canadian restaurant industry faces losses of up to $20 billion as more people plan to work from home in the future and food-buying habits change, a new study shows.

** 

Every urban hotel in the nation is operating at a loss this summer, the Hotel Association of Canada yesterday told the Commons industry committee. Lobbyists said the industry is so hard-pressed insurers have warned they will be denied coverage by year’s end: “It’s just bad everywhere.”

The Police Investigate Climate Barbie's Hurt Feelings

 "WAAAAAAHHH!" she explained:

Ottawa police are investigating a man who filmed himself last week launching into a hateful and invective-laced diatribe outside Ottawa Centre MP Catherine McKenna’s constituency office.

McKenna, standing outside the same office on Monday, called the incident “unacceptable” after the man spewed vitriol and misogyny at a staffer who answered the door of the minister’s Catherine Street consituency office and informed him the office was closed to the public due to COVID-19 concerns. McKenna said while she welcomed “vigorous debate,” the escalating harassment and abuses “have to stop.”

 

This "abuse":

  

 

This Catherine McKenna:

In the video McKenna is seen talking to two observers at a bar in St. John’s, Newfoundland informing them that repeating something loud enough is a good strategy to get others to believe it.

“But you know, I actually gave them some real advice. I said that if you actually say it louder, we’ve learned in the House of Commons, if you repeat it, if you say it louder, if that is your talking point, people will totally believe it,” claims McKenna.

**

In early June, Blacklock’s Reporter had a story about how a whopping 20,000 infrastructure projects subsidized with federal tax dollars have no evidence to prove they are even real:

“Parliament’s Budget Office can find no evidence of 20,000 projects subsidized with billions in federal tax dollars. Infrastructure Minister Catherine McKenna’s department would not document where funds were spent, the Commons government operations committee was told: “I don’t have proof that they exist.””

This has led to people demanding answers from the government, and particularly from Catherine McKenna, considering she is in charge of the department.

As a result, #WheresTheMoneyCatherine is trending.

 

Climate Barbie will not be badgered!

 

Also - cowardly fruit-loop blames MP Pierre Poilievre's line of questioning (also known as doing his job) for Climate Barbie's sadz:

During a CBC segment, ignorant Liberal MP Adam Van Koeverden actually tried to blame Pierre Poilievre for someone yelling at McKenna’s office.

Do you and Chris Bittle hide in the same places?

 

And the Rest of It

 Yep ...

 

Had this been Canada, the population would have been reminded that they experienced a devastating explosion differently.

And they would be glad to accept that explanation:

Lebanon’s prime minister announced that his government has stepped down from their roles after weekend-long protests by the public due to the Beirut explosion last week.

In a national address to the public on August 10, Hassan Diab, now-former prime minister of Lebanon, said that the government has resigned to support people who want “real change.”

 

Also wanting change, Belarus:

Belarus’ authoritarian President Alexander Lukashenko warned Monday that the opposition protesters who challenge the official vote results extending his 26-year rule will face a tough crackdown, deriding them as “sheep” manipulated by foreign masters.

Dozens were injured and thousands detained hours after Sunday’s vote, when police brutally broke up mostly young protesters with tear gas and flash-bang grenades. Rights activists said one person died after being run over by a police truck — which the authorities denied.

 

 

I'm sure China will step right up for that:

There is a huge gap between the funds needed to fight the coronavirus pandemic and funds committed worldwide, World Health Organization chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said on Monday.

 

Mass was celebrated in the city of many martyrdoms and a second nuclear payload:

A Catholic mass was held at Nagasaki’s Urakami Cathedral early Sunday morning on the 75th anniversary of the U.S. atomic bombing of the city.

The mass, attended by 250 Catholics and others, started at at 5:30 a.m., with the chiming of bells.

The cathedral was rebuilt after the original one was destroyed by the bombing Aug. 9, 1945.

During the mass, priest Daichi Miyahara talked about a woman who kept praying for others until her death even though she was suffering strong pain due to radiation from the bombing.

“We confirm again our determination to strengthen our solidarity with the world further in this milestone year,” Miyahara said.

In case of historical revision:

 

Just hours before the radio broadcast of Emperor Hirohito’s announcement to the Japanese people that their government had accepted the military’s unconditional surrender in World War II, a coup d’etat was being hatched with one of the aims being to steal the master records and stop the airing at all costs.

What Is It That We Need China For?

This is what the Chinese communist government does to its own people:

Chinese Vice Premier Hu Chunhua recently asked the governors of each province in China to make sure the sown areas of agricultural crops would not shrink and crop yield won’t be reduced this year.

At a food security meeting held in Beijing on July 27, he warned that governors would be punished if they failed to uphold the promise, including with dismissals.

And when Chinese leader Xi Jinping visited northeastern Jilin Province on July 22, he told the local government to treat grain production as a priority task.

The top officials’ emphasis on food supplies raised questions about whether China is facing a severe food shortage this year.

 

Why does this sound familiar? 

 

 

Cheats and thieves:

Hundreds of millions of U.S. taxpayer dollars went to Chinese companies from the Paycheck Protection Program (PPP), which was designed to help small businesses survive during the pandemic, according to a new report.

A review of public PPP loan data by consultancy firm Horizon Advisory found that $192 million to $419 million in loans were given to more than 125 Chinese-owned or -invested companies operating in the United States. Many of the loans were substantial, with at least 32 Chinese-owned firms receiving more than $1 million under the program, totaling between $85 million and $180 million, it found.

The recipients included Chinese state-owned enterprises, companies that supported Beijing’s military development program, firms identified by the United States as national security threats, and media outlets controlled by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), the report said. Many were based in critical industries such as aerospace, pharmaceuticals, and semiconductor manufacturing. These are sectors that the CCP has slated for aggressive development to achieve global dominance, with the goal of supplanting competitors in the United States and other countries.

 

Like Canada, for example.

 

 

I wouldn't let the Chinese military complex inject me with poison: 

Saudi Arabia will soon begin Phase III clinical trials on around 5,000 people for a COVID-19 vaccine developed by China’s CanSino Biologics Inc, a Saudi health ministry spokesman said on Sunday.

The West ignored the massacre at Tienanmen Square. Why think that anything would change?:

On Monday, Hong Kong police arrested media tycoon Jimmy Lai and raided his flagship newspaper offices, the highest-profile case yet against the city’s democracy activists under a national security law that has fueled U.S.-China tensions.

Lai was shown handcuffed as he was taken away by officers from his home on August 10. When a reporter asked Lai for his views on the arrest, he answered: “What views do I have? They want to arrest me.”

**

Canada’s largest-circulation Chinese-language newspaper recently rejected a full-page ad criticizing the new Hong Kong national security law and one of the law’s Canadian supporters, raising new concerns about a pro-Beijing slant in Chinese-Canadian media.

A loose collection of 40 or so pro-democracy activists had been willing to spend $3,000 to purchase the spot in Sing Tao, a newspaper half-owned by Torstar, the Toronto Star’s parent company, said two of the activists.

 

Then use the Toronto Star as the bird cage liner it actually is. 

 

Also - where are the statue removers on slave and child labour?:

Chinese textile firms are increasingly using North Korean factories to take advantage of cheaper labor across the border, traders and businesses in the border city of Dandong told Reuters.  

**

The coronavirus pandemic is forcing India’s children out of school and into farms and factories to work, worsening a child labor problem that was already one of the most dire in the world.

 

 

What Can Go Wrong Here?

 (SEE: history, don't know, condemned, repeat):

Chicago Rep. La Shawn Ford, a Democrat, is calling for the abolition of history classes and the removal of “current history books” because history, he says, causes White Privilege and racism.

Speaking with local leaders in Evanston, Chicago last week, the Democratic representative proposed the plan to develop a more “inclusive” curriculum—one that doesn’t lead to White Privilege—and abolish all current history books.

“Today, I’m calling for the abolishment of history classes in Illinois. We’re concerned that current school history teachings lead to White Privilege and a racist society,” Ford said.

 

Or students can learn about the appalling parts of North American history and draw comparisons between the brutality experienced by past generations and the freedom enjoyed today.

But that would be self-reflective.