Wednesday, July 29, 2020

Mid-Week Post




The nougaty centre of the work-week ...




Oh, what fun was had yesterday watching Justin's new scandal become messier and messier!

The story so far:

The contract Ottawa signed with WE Charity allowed the group to receive all of the money to administer the Canada Student Service Grant upfront, with the organization getting $30-million out of a potential $43.5-million before the contract was cancelled.

The contract shows that WE’s arrangement to run the program to pay student volunteers took effect weeks before cabinet approved the program on May 22. The deal, which the government called a contribution agreement, was released through the House of Commons finance committee on Monday.

The government first announced the contract on June 25, but it was cancelled on July 3 amid conflict-of-interest accusations against Prime Minister Justin Trudeau. The deal called for all the money to be paid to WE by July 2. The charity said Monday it received $30-million on June 30, but will refund all the money. “The details of repayment are presently being worked out with the government,” WE said in a statement.

**


On March 25, Craig Kielburger called me to ask that I resign from the board of directors of WE Charity. It was clear that there was a breakdown in trust between the founders and me as the board chair. WE is a founder-led organization and Marc and Craig Kielburger hold significant power in the organization. As I was not going to be able to discharge my oversight duties, I opted to resign immediately. In an accelerated process, the remainder of the board of directors was replaced, but for one Canadian member and two U.S. board members, in early April. I was not on the board at that time, and therefore cannot speak to the circumstances of their replacement.

**

Four times in a row, Conservative Finance Critic Pierre Poilievre asked the Kielburger bros whether they had their law firm investigated reporters Jesse Brown and Jaren Kerr, who had both done substantial reporting on WE.

It was a simple question, with a simple yes or no answer.

Either they did have their lawyers surveil reporters, or they didn’t.

And yet, each time they were asked, four times in a row, they refused to give a clear answer.

(Sidebar: Pierre Poilievre is a bulldog with a taste for simpering, frightened soy-boy untruths.)

**


The Kielburger brothers say the WE organization they built up “like a small little house” as teenagers is facing financial ruin because of controversy over a federal government student volunteer program.

If I interpret this self-serving statement correctly, it's the government's fault that your "charity" (it cannot, in all seriousness, still be called that without referencing the purchase of prime real estate and the obvious grift of those in power of the second largest country in the world) is in the mess it's in and you're simply innocent do-gooders in all of this?

Wow ...

It's hard to ignore this:

A We Charity-run program promising jobless students up to $5000 for volunteerism would have seen “very few” students get $5000, the Commons finance committee was told yesterday. Marc Kielburger, co-founder of the charity, said actual payouts would have been as little as a third the size of what cabinet promised: “Volunteering can be a fantastic way to build skills.”

(Sidebar: like grifting.)



Now, certain embarrassed parties and their pathetic lackeys are keen on shutting down the inquiry before it gets bigger and more implicating:



**
The NDP sided with the Liberals and voted against a motion that would have required all Liberal cabinet members to “disclose whether they had knowledge of relationships between Trudeau, other top Liberal officials and WE prior to the cabinet’s decision to award the grant program to WE, and disclose whether they, their families, or relatives have any WE connections.”





It's just money:

The Department of Foreign Affairs yesterday faulted staff at Canadian missions overseas for sloppy bookkeeping, awarding contracts to themselves and selling laptops in a garage sale. Ongoing audits of missions follow the 2017 discovery of a fraud ring at the Canadian embassy in Haiti: “The audit found deficiencies.”



What is it that we need China for anyway?:

The Beijing Centers for Disease Prevention and Control (CDC) announced that one COVID-19 patient, a 53-year-old woman, had become infected after having dinner with a friend from Dalian who was an asymptomatic carrier.

The virus has now been confirmed by authorities to have spread from Dalian to nine other cities in four provinces and one directly-governed municipality.

A city of about 6.9 million in northeastern China, Dalian has launched a series of strict rules to prevent the spread of the virus. But locals became disgruntled at authorities’ haphazard implementation and fought with medical staff and each other.

(Sidebar: wow, China really has a handle on this virus it spread across the globe. I'm sure one is relieved to hear that the company associated with the Chinese military is helping Canada to develop a "vaccine" for it.)

**

It might have something to do with the fact that Justin has been trying to replace the US with China as a major trading partner (just like North Korea):

Financial deception is part of a Chinese master plan, according to Carson Block, founder and chief investment officer of Muddy Waters Capital. He says China is waging an undeclared economic war against the West.

“This system whereby they protect frauds that list in the United States, and raise capital from U.S. investors, I think is one leg of a capital markets strategy. That is one leg of this undeclared economic war,” Block said. ...


Where Canada is more vulnerable than the United States, Rosen argues, is due to the accounting standards it followsinternational ones that use “current value accounting.” This method is more easily abused, as companies can apply overly rosy assumptions, such as the likelihood of revenue collection or price appreciation of an asset—as opposed to recording it at cost, according to the U.S. standard, the Generally Accepted Accounting Principles (GAAP).

**

Canada is not at all interested in protecting anyone from China's influence:

Not only is the group extensively persecuted in China, it is a major target of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) on Canadian soil as well, and in a myriad of ways, writes journalist Jonathan Manthorpe in his 2019 book “Claws of the Panda.”

“Falun Gong is high on the list of the CCP’s targets in Canada,” the book states.

**

Scheer said Canada must stand with Falun Gong practitioners to condemn the “human rights abuses and crimes of such despotic regimes as the one in Beijing.” 

“The Chinese Communist Party must stop its illegal widespread surveillance, arbitrary detention, imprisonment, and torture of Falun Dafa practitioners and other religious minorities,” he said in a statement on July 20.

 

**

Tong Xiaoling, China’s consul-general in Vancouver, told a Chinese-language radio program in Vancouver this week that pro-democracy activists in Canada who criticize the new security law enacted in Hong Kong are trying to foist their views on people who support Beijing’s move. Her interview was broadcast over Monday and Tuesday.

(Sidebar: no, that's called sharing one's opinion. You wouldn't understand because individualism is anathema to you.)



Unable to dance around the issue any longer, the feds promise to have an inquiry into the mass shooting in Nova Scotia:

Bowing to public pressure, the federal and Nova Scotia governments agreed Tuesday to scuttle their plans for a joint review into the April mass shooting that claimed 22 lives and instead establish a more rigorous and transparent public inquiry.

Time and money are expected to be wasted.



How interesting:

Primary schools and daycare centres have not been major sources of coronavirus transmission, according to an analysis of the international evidence released as two of Canada’s largest provinces prepare to unveil their back-to-school plans.

A Canadian review of 33 studies across 16 countries found that young children – particularly those under the age of 10 – are less likely than teenagers and adults to spread coronavirus.

With children, “we don’t see these superspreader events that we see in other congregate settings [involving] adults,” said Sarah Neil-Sztramko, a researcher at McMaster University in Hamilton and one of the authors of the review. “Even in cases where a symptomatic child has gone into a setting and has had close contact with a number of children … they don’t seem to transmit it to the other kids. We see that fairly consistently across the reports that we found.”

When cases of COVID-19 were identified in elementary schools and child-care centres, the virus was most often introduced by and spread among adults, she added.




How morally dead Canada is:

A pro-life billboard with a picture of a preborn baby was recently vandalized after being displayed at a Catholic church in Lambton, Ontario. A security camera showed a darkly dressed figure douse the larger-than-life billboard with gasoline and then burn it.

**
The more shocking numbers are those of “perceived burden on family, friends, or caregivers” (34%) and “isolation or loneliness” (13.7%). This suggests that one driving factor behind hundreds of assisted suicides, if not thousands, is the impression that people want them out of the way rather than help support the sick. That’s not just an impression, actually — it’s the reality in Canada’s health-care system.



Tuesday, July 28, 2020

On the Korean Peninsula

How can this go wrong?:

North Korea leader Kim Jong Un said his country’s hard-won nuclear weapons were a solid security guarantee and a “reliable, effective” deterrent that could prevent a second Korean War, state media reported Tuesday.

Kim’s comments before war veterans marking the 67th anniversary of the end of the 1950-53 Korean War again show he has no intention of abandoning his weapons as prospects dim for resuming diplomacy with the United States.






Though many are quick to point out how Trump burned the toast on this, consider that the current South Korean government's involvement is much more pernicious:

It never fails to amaze me how senior officials and nominees in the Moon administration can’t be bothered read the sanctions or obtain competent legal advice before advancing their grand plans to circumvent them. For whatever reason—the fear of a latent threat, Stockholm Syndrome, ethnonationalist affinity, political opportunism, financial greed, or ideological sympathy—Moon Jae-in’s cabinet is desperate to break sanctions designed to disarm a psychopath who killed his own half-brother, along with countless North Koreans (and now, Syrians), and who wants better ways to kill more of us. What Moon wants to bail Kim out from is precisely the pressure that it’s U.S. policy to create, to persuade Kim to choose between his weapons of mass destruction and the survival of a regime that is a scourge on its subjects. The U.S. and South Korea may be nominal allies, but their North Korea policies are in direct conflict.

As Donald Trump has proven in his usual fashion—though inadvertence and ineptitude—there is no win-win between the United States and North Korea. In our zero-sum struggle to slow a global metastasis of proliferation, Moon has chosen sides, and we are not the side he has chosen. Do you want to ask why the alliance between the United States and South Korea is falling apart? There’s a lot you could blame Trump for. Just don’t forget to blame Lee In-young, and his boss, too.

**

You can blame Trump for plenty, including the decline of our alliance with Korea. But you can’t blame him for Im Jong-seok, Lee In-young, and the rest of the Chondaehyop Alumni Association who are now in a perfect position to paralyze and undermine our North Korea policy and consequently, to endanger our own national security. But yes, pity poor Moon Jae-in. How did all these pro-North Korean, anti-American extremists, ex-terrorists, and convicted felons get themselves appointed to his cabinet? When the autopsy of the alliance is written, we can devote many chapters to Trump’s missteps, and to his gratuitous slights and outrages against a proud people. Just don’t forget to explain the futility of any American president—be it Trump, Clinton, or Biden—building an alliance with any government run by the Chondaehyop Alumni Association.




An official at the Korea Semiconductor Industry Association told the Nikkei that that “even if Japanese restrictions revert to what they were before July 2019, companies that have decided to use something else are not going to switch back.” Kim Sang-jo, Moon's chief policy secretary, crowed that “one day, our materials industry will have developed and we'll be able to say, 'Thank you Mr. Abe!'”

Every study of sanctions warns that target governments will respond by trying to reduce dependence and vulnerability. The Japanese government must recalculate the costs and benefits of such actions because that natural inclination to remove pressure points undermines the strategy of Japan’s most successful businesses. Nothing would seem to be further from promoting Japan’s real national security.





We May Never Know His Motive Or His Name

A teenager arrested in a counter-terrorism operation in Kingston last year pleaded guilty to terrorism on Tuesday.

The youth, who was 16 at the time and cannot be named because he is a minor, pleaded guilty to five charges, including facilitating terrorist activity.

The plot involved a bombing that was to be conducted for the so-called Islamic State, the Crown told the court.

But the terrorist operation was infiltrated by an undercover informant working for the FBI, which tipped off the RCMP.

He also admitted to possession of an explosive substance with intent to endanger life and counseling another person to detonate an explosive.


(Sidebar: do note how the Americans informed the RCMP. Why look into terrorist acts or mass shootings?)


Alright Then. Don't Get Paid

Everyone of them railed against online teaching (which would ultimately limit the number of those in tenure) and have nothing but support for the government that failed to manage the pandemic:

Five U of T unions and the UTFA launched a petition called “U of T’s Reopening Plan is NOT Safe Enough. We Need to Take Fall 2020 Online.” As of Monday, its third day online, it had garnered more than 1,000 signatures.

“We believe that in-person teaching is normally the most effective, valuable form of pedagogy; however, it cannot come at the cost of community safety,” the petition says. “Until the time that community safety can be ensured, we must perform whatever work we can remotely.”


Store-workers continued working in the same stores where professors and instructors went mask-less and glove-less.

What? No ounce of caution?

But I suppose that is alright for the more blue-collar of our brethren.


Also - me fail English? That's unpossible!:

The English department at a public university declared that proper English grammar is racist.

Rutgers University's English department will change its standards of English instruction in an effort to "stand with and respond" to the Black Lives Matter movement. In an email written by department chairwoman Rebecca Walkowitz, the Graduate Writing Program will emphasize "social justice" and "critical grammar."

Walkowitz said the department would respond to recent events with "workshops on social justice and writing," "increasing focus on graduate student life," and "incorporating ‘critical grammar' into our pedagogy." The "critical grammar" approach challenges the standard academic form of the English language in favor of a more inclusive writing experience. The curriculum puts an emphasis on the variability of the English language instead of accuracy.

"This approach challenges the familiar dogma that writing instruction should limit emphasis on grammar/sentence-level issues so as to not put students from multilingual, non-standard ‘academic' English backgrounds at a disadvantage," Walkowitz said. "Instead, it encourages students to develop a critical awareness of the variety of choices available to them [with] regard to micro-level issues in order to empower them and equip them to push against biases based on ‘written' accents."

Additionally, the department said it will provide more reading to upper-level writing classes on the subjects of racism, sexism, homophobia, and related forms of "systemic discrimination."

Leonydus Johnson, a speech pathologist and libertarian activist, said the school's change makes the racist assumption that minorities cannot comprehend traditional English. Johnson called the change "insulting, patronizing, and in itself, extremely racist."