Sunday Post

For all the times we've gnawed on our mothers' faces...

Russian soldiers resigning from the army put a dent into the fabrication that there are no Russian soldiers in Ukraine:

Some Russian soldiers are quitting the army because of the conflict in Ukraine, several soldiers and human rights activists have told Reuters. Their accounts call into question the Kremlin's continued assertions that no Russian soldiers have been sent to Ukraine, and that any Russians fighting alongside rebels there are volunteers.

Evidence for Russians fighting in Ukraine – Russian army equipment found in the country, testimony from soldiers' families and from Ukrainians who say they were captured by Russian paratroopers – is abundant. Associates of Boris Nemtsov, a prominent Kremlin critic killed in February, will soon publish a report which they say will contain new evidence of the Russian military presence in Ukraine.

Until now, however, it has been extremely rare to find Russian soldiers who have fought there and are willing to talk. It is even rarer to find soldiers who have quit the army. Five soldiers who recently quit, including two who said they left rather than serve in Ukraine, have told Reuters of their experiences. 

One of the five, from Moscow, said he was sent on exercises in southern Russia last year but ended up going into Ukraine in an armored convoy.

"After we crossed the border, a lieutenant colonel said we could be sent to jail if we didn't fulfil orders. Some soldiers refused to stay there," said the soldier, who served with the elite Russian Kantemirovskaya tank division. He gave Reuters his full name but spoke on condition of anonymity, saying he feared reprisals.

He said he knew two soldiers who refused to stay. "They were taken somewhere. The lieutenant colonel said criminal cases were opened against them but in reality – we called them afterwards – they were at home. They just quit."

Russia's President Vladimir Putin has repeatedly denied that Moscow has sent any military forces to help rebels in eastern Ukraine, where clashes and casualties persist despite a ceasefire struck in February. Putin's spokesman has derided such allegations by NATO, Western governments and Kiev. 

Officials say that any Russian soldiers fighting in Ukraine are "volunteers," helping the rebels of their own free will.

Eight Macedonian police officers were killed by Albanian extremists:

Macedonia said on Sunday its police had wiped out a group of ethnic Albanian "terrorists" in a day-long gun battle that left at least 22 people dead at a moment of deep political crisis in the former Yugoslav republic.

NATO, which dragged Macedonia from the brink of civil war in 2001, called for a "transparent investigation" of what went on when heavily armed police entered a mainly Albanian neighborhood in the northern town of Kumanovo before dawn on Saturday.

The government said eight police and 14 members of an "armed group" had been killed in the ensuing gun battle, describing the gunmen as former rebel commanders from neighboring Kosovo, which broke from Serbia in war in 1999 and inspired an ethnic Albanian insurgency in Macedonia two years later.

Kim Jong-Un reportedly had a missile fired:

North Korea said on Saturday it had successfully test-fired a ballistic missile from a submarine, a step that would mark significant progress in the secretive state's military capabilities. 

It could pose a new threat to South Korea, Japan and the United States, which have tried to contain North Korea's growing nuclear and missile strength, military experts said.

I suppose that is preferable to hearing re-heated anti-Western propaganda.

The Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact: another part of history Putin would rather people remember differently.


There's no liar like an old liar:

Cuban President Raul Castro paid a call Sunday on Pope Francis at the Vatican to thank him for working for Cuban-U.S. detente — and said he was so impressed by the pontiff he is considering a return to the Catholic church's fold.

Damn you, global warming!

South Dakota was the centre of weather extremes Sunday, with a tornado hitting a small town on the eastern side of the state and more than a foot (30 centimetres) of snow blanketing the Black Hills to the west.

It was among several Great Plains and Midwest states in the path of expected severe weather. At the same time, a tropical storm came ashore in the Carolinas and wintry weather also affected parts of Colorado.

Convicted and unrepentant terrorist Omar Khadr was freed on bail and all the popular press has for him are Justin Trudeau soft-ball questions:




Patrick Brown, not the anointed favourite Christine Elliott was,  has won the PC leadership:

After a long, hard winter of campaigning, the Ontario Progressive Conservatives have selected Patrick Brown as the man to lead the party’s renewal.

The MP for Barrie beat out Christine Elliott on her own turf, winning the 5,292 votes necessary in ridings across Ontario. Of the 10,583 electoral votes available, Brown took 6,543 to Elliott’s 4,040, or nearly 62 per cent.

He said he wants to lead “the party Ontario deserves: a progressive conservative party” and the province “can’t afford another decade of this Ontario Liberal government.”

And now, Happy Mothers' Day to all mothers. You've earned your brunch!

V-E Day

 

Seventy years ago, with a clear moral directive and great fortitude, ordinary men achieved the extraordinary and ended a war started by one of history's worst tyrants.

Let them and their sacrifices never be forgotten.

He saved Europe before he saved the Enterprise.

Portraits of the Russians who fought one tyrant while under the thumb of another.

"Katyusha" wasn't just a rocket. In Hebrew, too.

The memories of a Canadian veteran who drove a tank in North Africa:

Gordon MacKay crouched on a battlefield in North Africa one night, cradling a fellow soldier in his arms.

His comrade, a 16-year-old with blonde hair, had been hit by German fire — a bullet in his shoulder and two more in his abdomen — and would not live to see the sun rise. As he watched this brief life ebb away, MacKay, just 23 or 24 at the time, knew that it was too late even to inject a morphine syrette for any relief. Instead, he offered what faint comfort he could, holding the youngster’s head and telling him that help was coming, that he’d been hit bad, but that he’d be alright.

He told the boy that his parents would know all about him, that MacKay would be around if he needed help. He told him he loved him.

And then the boy said “Good night, mom,” and died.

In the 70 years since that night, MacKay, 94, has been reluctant to talk about it. His first close encounter with wartime death, it churns up all kinds of distressing memories that he’d prefer were left undisturbed; he’d rather think about the many good times he had during his 28 years with the army. He doesn’t now recall the soldier’s name, or whether in fact he ever knew it. “When someone was killed, you didn’t want to know his name,” he says. “If I knew his name, I felt I’d have to find his parents. But there were already people who did that job. I knew what that was like, and I didn’t want to do it.”

Yet that night was an exceptional one for MacKay, who as a 16-year-old in peacetime had lied about his age to join the army, primarily because the country was waist-deep in a Depression and he needed work. The army offered food, clothing and shelter. It told him where to go and what to do and when, and it gave him a paycheque. “It was something to do,” he says. And two years later, in 1939, when Canada went to war, he was excited for the opportunity to do some actual soldiering.

But as his battlefield companion drew his last breath that night and others arrived to retrieve the body, MacKay underwent a transformation. He suddenly realized that war was useless, and he didn’t want to be there anymore. “It was bad,” he says. “He was even younger than me.”

But he also understood for the first time that it was vitally important that he and others like him were there, and that he must persevere. It ceased being simply a job; it was now a duty with a purpose.

Mrs. Vera Lynn.

Mid-Week Post

You're looking for the mummy's tomb.

To turn left, go to page six.

To turn right, go to page eight.


After decades of Tory rule, Alberta votes in the NDP:

The NDP has won its first majority government in Alberta by toppling the Progressive Conservative colossus that has dominated the province for decades and driving leader Jim Prentice from public life.

The New Democrats, under leader Rachel Notley, swept all 19 constituencies in Edmonton on Tuesday and made significant inroads in previously barren NDP territory in Calgary, Lethbridge and rural Alberta. ...

The NDP, a party that had never won more than 16 seats, captured 53 seats to secure a majority in the 87-seat legislature.

The Wildrose party took second place with 21 seats and will form the official Opposition, while Prentice and his battered PCs were relegated to third with 10 seats.

Liberal Leader David Swann and Alberta Party Leader Greg Clark were also elected. One riding was undecided as PC incumbent Linda Johnson and Anam Kazim of the NDP finished in a tie.

It was a crushing defeat for the Tories, who had steered the ship of state since 1971 — longer than any party anywhere in the country.

 
Businesses are so confident in the NDP that they are preparing to leave:

Canadian oil and gas shares tumbled and the country's main stock index hit a one-month low on Wednesday after the left-wing New Democratic Party surged to power in the oil-rich province of Alberta on promises that included energy industry reforms. 

"Even now our inboxes are filling with messages expressing something between disbelief and dismay," analyst Andrew Bradford of Raymond James brokerage said after the party won an election on Tuesday to end 44 years of Conservative rule.

New Democrat Premier-elect Rachel Notley offered conciliatory words after her party swept to crushing victory, capitalizing on anger over the impact of the drop in oil prices on government programs.

The NDP is expected to be less accommodative of the energy industry and its Alberta oil sands operations, the target of heavy environmental criticism. Alberta is the largest source of U.S. oil imports. 

In her victory speech, Notley moved to assuage oil-industry worries, saying she would work "to build Canada's energy sector so we build bridges and we open markets instead of having a black eye."

She proposes a review of energy royalties, tighter environmental regulations and reduced support for some pipeline projects such as TransCanada Corp's controversial Keystone XL project. She also promises to raise corporate tax rates by 2 percentage points to 12 percent.

The front page of the Globe and Mail newspaper said the election "changes everything Canadians think about Alberta," while pundits on Twitter suggested the outcome was as unlikely as socialists taking power in Texas.

Financial analysts focused on the potential hit on the oil industry, which already has been stung by slumping prices.

"Companies will need to take money out of Alberta and spend more in British Columbia, and more in Texas," said Benoit Gervais, a portfolio manager at Mackenzie Investments.

Jim Prentice has stepped down:

Alberta Premier Jim Prentice, who led his Conservative party to a stunning election defeat on Tuesday, said he will resign as party leader with immediate effect and also quit his seat.

Alison Redford was a wreck and Jim Prentice had too much baggage.  It is no surprise, therefore, that Albertans would commit suicide vote for the NDP.


Andreas Lubitz, the pilot who flew the doomed Germanwings Flight 9525 into the French Alps killing one hundred and fifty people, practised descending hours before the flight:

The co-pilot of Germanwings Flight 9525 appears to have practiced sending the jetliner into a deadly descent on another flight, just two hours before he intentionally crashed it into the French Alps, investigators said Wednesday.

The revelation appeared to support the theory that the Germanwings crash was not only deliberate but premeditated. It came in a 30-page interim report from the French accident investigation agency BEA.

 See! Culture does matter:

The protest against a new sex-education program in Ontario schools continues with no sign the provincial government is ready to revisit the controversial curriculum.

Parents opposed to the new curriculum on cultural and religious grounds are staging a boycott, pulling their children out of school and holding rallies. The protest is centred mainly in Metro Toronto, where CBC News reported more than 40,000 kids were absent on Monday.

Andrew Morrison, a spokesman for the Ontario Ministry of Education, said pockets of absences have been reported in other communities, including London, Windsor and Ottawa, but had no figures.

Not everyone opposed to the new program is keeping their children out for the whole week.

“Today we’re not doing protest,” Christine Liu of the recently formed Parents Alliance of Ontario, told Yahoo Canada News on Tuesday. “Among the Chinese community we’re only doing protests for one day in May but we will do protests in September in a bigger scope.

Chinese-Canadians may be back in stronger numbers in September if the Liberal government doesn’t alter the curriculum to reflect parents’ concerns, she said. 

(Sidebar: strangely enough, this article avoids the MUSLIM word in much the same way Islamist apologists blame Pamela Gellar for being alive.)

Utterly stunned that political multiculturalism is an apparent failure, leftists are at a loss to understand why they can't persuade unassimilated immigrants into letting over-paid teachers convince their kids that they may be five different genders, something they don't care or think about.

In case one is in doubt about what the revised curriculum actually says...

Well, as long as these kids aren't learning math or anything.


Four Afghan men will be hanged for their part in the mob killing of a woman:

Four Afghan men were sentenced Wednesday to death by hanging over the filmed mob killing in downtown Kabul of a young woman falsely accused of burning the Qur’an, a case that horrified the country and showed the dangers women face in the conservative society.

But the family of the 27-year-old woman, a religious scholar named Farkhuna, immediately denounced the verdict as unfair as the judge dropped charges against 18 men for a lack of evidence. Judge Safiullah Mojadedi sentenced eight others to 16 years in prison. Nineteen police officers accused in the case will be sentenced Saturday, their verdicts publicly announced the next day.

Savages.


I guess money means nothing:

The first of three votes on a natural gas benefit offer worth over $1 billion has been unanimously rejected by a First Nation on British Columbia's northwest coast.

All of the more than 180 eligible voters at a meeting in Port Simpson stood up to oppose the plan to build a liquefied-natural-gas pipeline and terminal in their territory, said Lax Kw'alaams band member Malcolm Sampson.

Pacific NorthWest LNG, which is mostly owned by Malaysia-based oil and gas giant Petronas, has applied to build an export terminal on Lelu Island, just south of Prince Rupert at the head of the Skeena River.

Residents have raised concerns over the project's environmental impact, citing the site's problematic location and the threat it poses to the watershed.

"Why would you build an LNG plant right at the mouth of the Skeena River?" said Sampson, who spoke at Tuesday's meeting. "There of all places."

Sampson said the $1.15-billion offer in benefits over 40 years was not discussed at all during the meeting, which took place in a school gym so packed that some band members had to stand outside.

The pretenses of piety notwithstanding, one is at a loss to explain what can supplant that one billion dollar offering.


And now, a woman begs for rescue online:

Employees at a Pizza Hut in Florida were praised on Wednesday for helping rescue a customer who wrote a message in her online pizza order that she was being held hostage and needed someone to call 911, authorities said.

The note led to the arrest of Ethan Nickerson, 26, who used a large knife to hold his girlfriend and their three children hostage, said Highlands County sheriff's spokeswoman Nell Hays.

The Pizza Hut employees "not only saw something but they acted on it," Hays said.

Cheryl Treadway, 25, was a regular customer at a Pizza Hut in Avon Park in central Florida, which took seriously her plea in the comments section of an online order on Monday.

"Who would have thought of that?" Hays said.

After deputies arrived at the house, Nickerson surrendered peacefully. Treadway and the couple's three children, ages 1, 5 and 6, did not appear seriously harmed, authorities said.

For A Tuesday

A merry Cinco de Mayo to all y'all...


David Menzies shares video footage of the terrorism attack in Garland, Texas:




 The Alberta election is underway.


Videos showing the faces of special operations forces were pulled after worries of reprisals:

A series of videos distributed by the Prime Minister's Office, some of which showed the faces of the country's special forces soldiers, were abruptly pulled offline early Tuesday in an embarrassing security breach.

The videos, on Stephen Harper's official 24-Seven feed, were taken during his recent whirlwind trip to Iraq and Kuwait, where the travelling media were lectured and asked to sign undertakings that they would not publish images of the elite JTF-2 troops who provided security and conduct a myriad of secret operations around the world.

The request, made of out fear of reprisal by Islamic State terrorists, was honoured by journalists and photographers, but it appears one of Harper's videographers filmed some soldiers in the background during an interview involving Defence Minister Jason Kenney.

There are other instances of JTF-2 members being clearly visible, hovering near the prime minister.

Several videos were pulled offline.

 
Unbelievable.


I say tax Justin Trudeau seventy-five percent of his inherited money:




Omar Khadr may be going nowhere:

Any hopes Omar Khadr had of tasting freedom for the first time in almost 13 years were dashed Tuesday when an Alberta justice said she wanted more time to consider whether he should be released on bail.

Court of Appeal Justice Myra Bielby said she would decide Thursday whether to grant the federal government's request to keep him behind bars despite a lower court order that he be freed.

I'll believe it when I see it.


Mohammad Shafia, who killed his former wife and three daughters, is reportedly intimidating other prisoners:

The Montreal man serving a life sentence for killing his wife and three teenage daughters intimidated other prisoners to the point that one asked to be put in isolation, a Senate committee has heard.

Psychologist Robert Groves, who worked in Kingston Penitentiary, testified Monday before the national security and defence committee hearing on security threats facing Canada. He said he met with one particular non-Muslim inmate who went to great lengths to avoid Shafia.

"It turned out that he felt so intimidated by Shafia and some of his lieutenants, that he chose to give up his relative freedom of movement on the range in the general population for a much more restricted life on a social isolation range," Groves said.

"He could no longer come to see me. I had to go to his cell on the isolation range. He advised me that confinement was worth it to avoid the hassle of dealing with 'the Muslims'".

After his first-degree murder conviction in 2012, Shafia took on a religious leadership role at the Kingston Penitentiary — the onetime maximum-security prison — organizing Friday prayers when the sole Imam permitted to minister to inmates in Canada was not available, according to Groves.

"This man was obnoxious in manner, demanding of the Protestant and Catholic chaplains, and generally offensive," he said.

"The normally pleasant atmosphere associated with the Muslims gathering for prayers was absent. Inmates on the same range as Shafia who came to see me expressed fear of him."

Groves said he was surprised to find Shafia leading the religious gathering Friday given that he had shown little remorse for the 2009 killings.

 
I guess the bullying just never leaves you.


News from North Korea:

North Korea decries the report that it is a sponsor of terrorism:

The "Commission for Human Rights in North Korea", a non-governmental human rights body of the U.S., released a report on April 27.


The report claimed that the DPRK is backing and dealing with the terrorist organizations and "states sponsoring terrorism" in Mideast and is involved in direct terrorism such as cyber attack on the Sony Pictures Entertainment of the U.S. It urged the U.S. administration and Congress to re-list the DPRK as a "sponsor of terrorism."


The report is no more than a conspiratorial document that does not deserve even a passing note as it was cooked up by a U.S. individual organization which is unknown to the international community in a bid to gain its political clout. But the DPRK cannot but take a serious note of the U.S. moves in the light of the fact that the commission echoed the assertion of the U.S. hard-line conservative forces calling for ratcheting up pressure upon the DPRK now that the relations between it and the U.S. are at rock bottom.


Lurking behind the moves of the "Commission for Human Rights in North Korea" to make public the report and build up public opinion on it is its sinister purpose to tarnish the image of the DPRK by branding it as a "sponsor of terrorism" now that the U.S. has failed to "demonize" it over the "nuclear and human rights issue".


Whenever the DPRK-U.S. relations and the situation got strained, the Republican Party and other conservative forces in the U.S. desperately called for re-listing the DPRK as a "sponsor of terrorism" since its removal from the list of "sponsors of terrorism" in 2008.

One wonders if some leftist hack put this out.


American feminists ignore the "war on women" in North Korea:

Would it be too much for Gloria Steinem to ask North Korea to investigate and prosecute the rapists in its ranks? After all, Steinem’s Feminist Majority has been outspoken on the subject of sexual assault in the U.S. armed forces. The organizer of Women Cross DMZ, Christine Ahn, has denounced “sexual violence by U.S. servicemen” in South Korea, even suggesting that it’s a greater threat to South Korea’s civilian population than North Korea’s nuclear weapons. (This is a hyperbolic falsehood, as I can testify from my four years as an Army prosecutor and defense counsel in Korea. If anything, the U.S. Army’s extreme sensitivity to bad publicity and political pressure causes it to overcharge alleged sexual assaults. Alleged assaults were overwhelmingly soldier-on-soldier; relatively few involved Korean victims.)

(Kamsahamnida)


So a koala walks into a hospital....

But Wait! There's More!

There usually is...


The government has filed an appeal to keep convicted terrorist Omar Khadr in prison:

Granting bail to former Guantanamo Bay prisoner Omar Khadr while he appeals his war crimes conviction in the United States threatens the entire system of international prisoner transfers, the federal government argues in new court filings.

The claim comes in material filed late Monday as part of Ottawa's 11th-hour attempt to block Khadr's release from prison — which could come as early as Tuesday evening.

"A lack of clarity in the international transfer process may jeopardize the system as a whole," the government states in documents obtained by The Canadian Press.

"(Khadr's) release unsettles the foundation of this system by introducing uncertainty and a lack of control over the manner in which Canadian offenders' sentences are enforced."

Despite having presented no such evidence at his bail hearing, the government also now argues that allowing Khadr out — given his long incarceration — presents a risk that is contrary to the public interest.

Yes, about that:

Canadian prisoner Omar Khadr told interrogators he was an al Qaeda terrorist and described pulling the pin of a grenade that killed a U.S. soldier in Afghanistan, a prosecutor told Khadr's war crimes tribunal on Thursday.

Oh, dear. This must be embarrassing:

A parent-led campaign to keep children home from class in protest of Ontario's new sexual-education curriculum gained early traction on Monday as the province's largest school board reported tens of thousands of absences.

Ryan Bird, a spokesman with the Toronto District School Board, said 34,762 elementary school students were absent on the first day of the campaign, which was largely organized through Facebook. That's more than double the 14,191 absences recorded last Monday.

At least one of the city's elementary schools had an absentee rate of more than 90 per cent, Bird said. Thorncliffe Park Public School was reporting that 1,220 of its 1,350 students were not in class, he said, adding that about 100 parents had turned up to stage a protest outside the building.

The money shot starts at 3:05:




The US State Department responds to a report that it denied entry to an Iraqi Catholic nun who lectures on the human rights abuses of ISIS:

The State Department is apparently trying to cover up an embarrassing, politically damaging, and possibly discriminatory act. In an e-mail sent to me on Thursday, Kathryn Fitrell, press-unit chief of the Office of Policy Coordination and Public Affairs with State’s Bureau of Consular Affairs, requested that I revise the text of my National Review article on the denial of a visitor visa to Sister Diana Momeka. I refused, and then on Friday — as the Department honored World Press Freedom Day — the Bureau contacted my employer, the Hudson Institute, with the same request. ...

 

In Sister Diana’s account, Mr. Patch offered her a critical insight into the reason she was denied a visa: She was classified as an IDP (internally displaced person), presumably more liable to overstay a visa and settle illegally in this country, although she is employed in Iraq, teaching at the Babel College for Philosophy and Theology, and the temporary nature of the visit she has applied for is vouched for by the prioress of her community, as well as by a member of Congress and others. 

 

 The order of Dominican sisters to whom she belongs says, and I believe them, that their only member to resettle in the United States did so in 2012 — that is, before ISIS — and that she had a green card, which means she resettled legally. The Dominican Sisters of Saint Catherine of Siena have an established, 150-year-old presence in Iraq and are committed to helping the remaining displaced Christians of that country. 

 

In citing Sister Diana’s IDP status, Mr. Patch simply articulated the unspoken. But is there yet another explanation for her being blocked by the Erbil consulate general from traveling to Washington for meetings at which she was to report on the situation of Christians in Iraq? She was to be part of a delegation whose other members, representatives of two other religious communities in the region, the Yazidi and the Shia Turkmen, were granted visas. 

 

If Sister Diana’s IDP status was the issue, why were Yazidi IDPs granted visas last October? It so happens that every Christian survivor and eyewitness of ISIS’s religious-cleansing campaign is now an IDP or refugee. 

 

As an articulate, English-speaking Iraqi Christian, who is not only personally a victim of ISIS but also an aid worker with a broad perspective on the suffering of the Christian community there, Sister Diana would make an exceptional witness.

A North Korean refugee recounts her escape from the Stalinist state:

In 1998, her dying father sent her and her brother away. They were supposed to flee to China, but the escape helpers turned out to be human traffickers. Jihyun Park was sold to a Chinese man for the equivalent of 700 euros.

"Officially I was his wife, unofficially I was his slave," she says. Her brother was betrayed and taken back to North Korea. Park's only solace is the birth of her son Chol. Yet mother and son were considered economic migrants in China, and there was no asylum for North Koreans. "There is a reward for anyone who betrays an illegal," says Jihyun Park. "I was turned in by a neighbor." The young mother was taken back to North Korea in 2004, and had to leave her son in China. In her old home country she was condemned as a traitor and thrown into the labor camp at Chongjin.

Park says that women in the camp were forced to work from 4:30 a.m. until late in the evening. They had to plant, till, and harvest the fields with only their bare hands and no shoes, constantly in fear of being beaten, harassed, or sexually abused by the guards. "We weren't treated like humans, not even like animals, it was awful," says Park. A serious leg wound eventually saved her from prison - and today her leg bears an enormous scar, there is hardly a piece of undamaged skin left on it. Camp doctors did not think that the sick woman would ever recover, and they sent her home.

 Read the whole thing.


Seventy years later, veterans of the Second World War return to a country they liberated where they are offered thanks by a still-grateful nation:

Frank Graham had a long war as an artillery private with the 1st Canadian Division, landing in Sicily in August 1943 and fighting his way through Italy and northwest Europe before being wounded just before the end.

"Well, I tell ya, it got so after a while I didn't give a damn anyway," he said. "You take it that way and it don't bother you too much. But if you start worrying, you're gonna be in trouble."

The Dutch, renowned for their appreciation of their Canadian liberators turned out by hundreds at the cemetery, young and old in a display that never fails to move Graham.

"I can't explain it. My heart isn't big enough," he said. "It is such a different feeling when I get in here. I feel like, not at home, but I feel relaxed. I feel myself, mostly. Because that's the way they are."

And now, Grace Lee Whitney, who played Yeoman Janice Rand on Star Trek and who survived alcohol addiction, has passed away:

Grace Lee Whitney, who played Captain Kirk's assistant on the original "Star Trek" series, has died. She was 85.

Whitney died of natural causes Friday in her home in the Central California town of Coarsegold, about 50 miles north of Fresno, her son Jonathan Dweck said on Sunday.

Don't Draw Mohammad... Or Else

A depiction of Mohammad resetting the black stone by Rashid-al-Din-Hamadani (circa 1315).

Two gunmen, one of whom was known to the FBI, opened fire at a contest in which participants had to draw Mohammad. Both were later killed by the authorities.

This is not an unusual event. Salman Rushdie was threatened after publishing The Satanic Verses. There was violence after the Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten published allegedly offensive cartoons of the Islamic prophet by the name of Mohammad. Ezra Levant was condemned by a human rights tribunal for publishing the same cartoons. The American cartoonist, Molly Norris, had to go into hiding. The creators of South Park were threatened for depicting a blocked image of Mohammad. French cartoonists and journalists who worked for Charlie Hebdo were gunned down.

What is news is the pandering to Islamists and the willful suppression of facts and expression by the very people who, if living in a caliphate, would either be silenced or expunged from existence simply for being who they are.

Why, of any religion, leader or ideology, would the popular press and the left wish to defend, without question, Islamism?

Intellectually, one guesses that Islamism is the opposite of what the popular press and the left represent. It is a kernel of truth for what is a mind-boggling puzzle.

But embracing the crocodile does not convince it to never eat one.

Sooner or later, this apologia will seem less and less absurd as it will seem suicidal.

Then there will be no knee-jerk defense of anything.

May 4th

It's the fourth of May today.


Here are thirty-seven Star Wars facts to wonder over.


Now watch as this Star Trek actor explains Star Wars Day:



(Sidebar: now one knows why Tuvok was awesome.)


Now go forth... or something.

Friday Freakout

Thus begins our casual mosey into barbecue season...


Possibly what to make for that season.


Did you know you can celebrate National Hummus Day as well as Mothers' Day in May?


Were these scenes in Star Trek needless or just what the series required? You decide.

Friday Post

For the glorious month of May....


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

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

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

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

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

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

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


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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

(Sidebar: like how Ottawa subsidises failing provinces?)


Cha-ching!

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

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

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

Former Prime Minster Jean Chretien has met with Vladimir Putin:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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


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

Carry on:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

But he already is a freak.


The Yongbyon nuclear reaction may have been reactivated:

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

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

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

Read the whole thing.

 
Hey! Rioting does get results:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

One should not expect any calm, however.


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

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

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

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

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