A Post Like This Doesn't Happen That Often

You know, on a leap-day ...




Currently happening  - but ... but ... that UN seat!:

Thirteen Canadians who work with an Alberta-based humanitarian organization are among 15 people detained in Ethiopia, the charity said Saturday.

Canadian Humanitarian said a group of 10 Canadian volunteers, three Canadians on staff, and two Ethiopian staff members were in custody in the African country on allegations they were practicing medicine without permission and had dispensed expired medication.

The charity disputes those allegations.

 
I'm sure Justin will figure this out the way he did those two Canadian guys in Chinese prisons.

Oh, wait ...




That's okay. Richard Decarie can just run as an independent and show the useless Tories what happens when you try to lose to the village idiot:

The Conservative Party has released a “final list” of candidates approved to run in the leadership race, and Richard Décarie is not on it.

Décarie had prompted outrage last month after he went on national TV and said that in his view being gay is a choice, among other inflammatory remarks. His comments were strongly condemned by many Conservative MPs and leadership candidates including Peter MacKay, Erin O’Toole, Marilyn Gladu and Rick Peterson.

The Conservative Party’s leadership nomination committee interviewed Décarie on Thursday, which indicates he had fulfilled everything else needed to enter the race, including a $25,000 fee and 1,000 signatures from party members. (To stay on until the final ballot, he would have needed to pay a further $275,000 and collect 2,000 more signatures by March 25.)

Not that this matters because Justin's Chinese bosses will never allow another election.


But, then again, they have much bigger problems at the moment.




Wow. People totally have that coronavirus thing under control:

South Korea saw the number of the novel coronavirus cases surpass 3,100 with 17 deaths on Saturday afternoon, with the coming days until early March considered a watershed for the country’s efforts to contain community spread of the deadly virus.

As of Saturday afternoon, the number of infections climbed by 813 - the biggest spike in a single day since the first case was reported in late January -- to 3,150, with most cases confirmed in Daegu and North Gyeongsang Province, according to the Korea Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Of the newly identified cases, 657 cases, or 80 percent of the total cases, were reported in the country’s southeastern city of Daegu. Some 79 were from North Gyeongsang Province surrounding Daegu and 15 each from Seoul and Busan.  

Meanwhile, seventy-six countries have put South Korea on a restricted entry list.


Also - I'll just leave this right here:

In rural China pigs are valued possessions and sleep in the living room. That's why hundreds of members of a Catholic charismatic group from New York State had to go into isolation for a hitherto unknown respiratory disease in April 2003. A doctor from Sars-riddled Guangdong province went to a wedding at the Metropole Hotel in Hong Kong, where he managed to infect 16 other guests with rooms on the same floor, including Kwan Sui Chu, an elderly lady staying there for one night. She flew home to Toronto and died, her death being attributed to a "chest infection". Her son Tse Chi Kwai went to Scarborough Grace Hospital and, as is traditional in Canada, was left on a gurney in Emergency for 12 hours exposed to hundreds of people. Lying next to him was Joe Pollack, who was being treated for an irregular heartbeat and whose wife wandered around the wards and came across an 82-year old man from a Catholic charismatic group. Mr Pollack, Mrs Pollack, the octogenarian charismatic and his wife all died, and their sons infected at least 30 other members of their religious group plus a Filipina nurse, who flew back to Manila and before her death introduced Sars to a whole new country.

The fellow with the irregular heartbeat, the Catholic charismatics, the Filipina nurse: none of these people went anywhere near rural China. They didn't have to. They were like Lincoln in that photograph: the Catholic charismatics from New York State didn't know the infected doctor from Guangdong was, metaphorically, standing next to them.

**

Italian authorities say the country now has more than 1,000 coronavirus cases and 29 people infected with the strain known as Covid-19 have died.

The head of Italy’s civil protection agency said during a news conference that the total number has reached 1,128. Officials also reported eight more deaths in the previous 24 hours of people with the virus, bring Italy’s total to 29.

Civil protection chief Angelo Borrelli said 52% of the people who tested positive for the virus in Italy are being isolated in their homes and not sent to hospital.

** 

Uh-oh:

The Vatican moved on Friday to dismiss speculation that Pope Francis was anything more than “slightly unwell” as the 83-year-old Roman Catholic leader cancelled official audiences for the second day.

The Vatican has not specified what the pope is suffering from.

**

A middle-aged patient in Washington state became the first person to die from the 2019 novel coronavirus inside the United States, officials said on Saturday as they announced additional cases and declared a state of emergency there.

**

North Korean leader Kim Jong Un oversaw military drills on Friday, state media KCNA said on Saturday, a rare public outing amid efforts to prevent an outbreak of the coronavirus in the isolated country.

North Korea has not confirmed any cases of the virus, but state media said a month-long quarantine period had been imposed for people showing symptoms and "high-intensity" measures were taken including reinforcing checks in border regions and at airports and sea ports.

I suspect the problem there to be quite bad but one will never hear of it. 

**

She's not saying that you should panic but, yeah, you should probably panic:

And now, Patty Hadju is escalating the warning, telling Canadians to stockpile food and medicine, as reported by the Canadian Press:

“Health Minister Patty Hajdu is encouraging Canadians to stockpile food and medication in their homes in case they or a loved one should fall ill with the novel coronavirus, despite the relatively low risk of contracting the disease in Canada. 

It’s good advice for any potential crisis from a viral outbreak to power outages, she said Wednesday. 

“It’s good to be prepared because things can change quickly,” she said.“It’s really about, first of all, making sure that you do have enough supplies so if someone in your family becomes ill, if you yourself become ill, that you have what you need to survive for a week or so without going outside.”

So, we’ve gone from “no threat,” to “stockpile food and medicine.”

There's someone who doesn't deserve a pension.

**

It's just an economy:

With the viral outbreak spreading to more countries, the price of oil has dropped precipitously as global demand weakens even further.

That has sent shares tumbling for oil giants like Exxon and Chevron while smaller producers with idling rigs continue to slash jobs.

 

I'm sure this can easily be resolved:

With protests stalling Canada’s railways, shipping companies on the St. Lawrence seaway say they’re ready to help move vital goods, but high water levels, controlled by a major dam, are keeping them at the dock.

From the most corrupt government ever re-elected:

According to Parole Board of Canada documents obtained by Global News, four out of the five convicted terrorists released from prison in 2019 have not changed their beliefs and still pose public safety risks.

The terror convicts still believed to be radical are: Pamir Hakimzadah, who travelled to Turkey to join ISIS, Carlos Larmond who was part of an ISIS cell in Ottawa and his associate Suliman Idris Mohamed, and Kevin Omar Mohammed, who joined al-Qaeda in 2014.

Since 2016, terrorists have faced lax sentences of seven years or less according to the Public Prosecution Service of Canada. These sentences are even shorter when taking into account credit for time in custody and other factors. 

For example, Hakimzadah was convicted of leaving Canada to participate in the activity of a terrorist group on Feb 28, 2019, but was only sentenced to six months in prison and released on June 28, 2019. 

**

An internal government report has predicted that Canada will have to deal with surge of “climate refugees” in the near future.

For the record, Canadians aren't "colonisers" or "settlers". They are tax-paying citizens whose absence from the non-island that is Canada would mean starvation for the non-First Nations":

Yet, our ancestors came here from around the world, often with nothing at all, and built this country up into an advanced industrial nation.


Building on the legal and philosophical foundations of Western Civilization, our ancestors built Canada into a country that was able to put a tremendous effort into some of the world’s most historic conflicts, including our amazing contribution in World War Two against the Axis powers, when – despite our small population – we became a manufacturing powerhouse and sent hundreds of thousands of troops to fight for freedom.

Yet, despite all the amazing contributions of our nation, those in power and in the academic elite are trying to denigrate and delegitimize it all.


Their key tool in that delegitimization is the term ‘settler.’

Apparently, we are expected to believe that every Canadian – except Indigenous People – is a ‘settler’ in Canada. Whether you were born here, whether you immigrated here, whether you were a refugee, apparently we are all nothing but ‘settlers.’


That is total bullshit.

Canadians are not settlers. We are Citizens.