Saint Joan of Arc

Bonne Jour de Fete!


The patron saint of France, captives and the Women's Army Corps has often been maligned (yes, maligned) as some sort of feminist heroine.


She wouldn't be so feted if they heard this:

“About Jesus Christ and the Church, I simply know they’re just one thing, and we shouldn’t complicate the matter.” 

Support for an Israeli carpenter AND the Church doesn't sit well with the perpetually affronted and stupid.


And now, a song from the late great Edith Piaf that encapsulates Saint Joan of Arc's  mission and purpose.

The World Is Taking Crazy Pills (Pt. 7)

The Eastern European version.


Maybe it's because he's stupid:

But there's "smart" like Obama, and then there's "smart" like, well, the rest of us. Obama's gaffetastic appearances lately makes one wonder if we should redefine the idea of intellectual acuity and place the president in a separate category. ...


Poles and Polish-Americans expressed outrage today at President Obama's reference earlier to "a Polish death camp" - as opposed to a Nazi death camp in German-occupied Poland.

"The White House will apologize for this outrageous error," Foreign Minister Radek Sikorski tweeted.  Sikorski said that Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk "will make a statement in the morning. It's a pity that this important ceremony was upstaged by ignorance and incompetence."

The president had been trying to honor a famous Pole, awarding a Presidential Medal of Freedom to Jan Karski, a resistance fighter who sneaked behind enemy lines to bear witness to the atrocities being committed against Jews. President Obama referred to him being smuggled "into the Warsaw ghetto and a Polish death camp to see for himself."

It's not like Obama cares what happens to Poland. He wouldn't have gotten rid of the defense shield if he did.

From Russia, with shameful accommodation:

With the west expelling Syrian ambassadors, Russia and China now find themselves hard pressed to continue justifying their obstructionism. The world is probably not going to intervene in Syria militarily, but isolating Assad and anyone who stands with him is a definite possibility. A blockade is not out of the question, nor is establishing no-fly zones. But ground troops - even to create a "humanitarian corridor" - is not in the cards nor is any massive intervention to overthrow Assad.

How important is Syria to Russia now? What can excuse their defense of Syria?

The Day of the Face Palm

No, what is taboo is not letting some special-interest group push you into flavour-of-the-month political causes:

Something significant is happening in the province of Ontario.

Ontario's Liberal government did an about face and is now telling publicly funded Catholic schools that they must allow their students to call anti-homophobic clubs "gay-straight alliances".

The change in the Liberal government's new anti-bullying bill — the Accepting Schools Act — is part of a government initiative to create a "safe and accepting climate" in all schools.

It's not only a bold move by premier Dalton McGuinty, but an indication that it's no longer taboo for Canadian politicians to proactively support gay rights.

Find a politician who doesn't support mandatory gay pride days or who thinks that both the federal and provincial governments have no place in forcing religious schools, bodies or persons into accepting and affirming under great penalty things they find unacceptable.


This was never about protecting minority rights; it was about elevating them. When you have students completely unprepared for the workforce, forcing sexual identity group-think (which will only make the handful of confused, messed-up kids stand out and not blend in, I might add) into schools is the last thing you need.


Tip: flood the mandatory gay-straight alliances with a ridiculous ratio (which they already will, I assure you) of fifty to one straight/gay people and watch this Freedom Ride of Nothing melt into embarrassed irrelevance.

Suspicious Package Redux II

The police are looking for a suspect, Luka Rocco Magnotta, whom they believe may have something to do with the dismembered body parts mailed to various persons, including Tory party headquarters.

Oh No

Sad news: Jim Unger, the artist of the incredibly funny Herman comics,  has passed away. He was seventy-five.

The Land of the Morning Calm

Haven’t blogged about them in a bit.

Doing business with North Korea is not paying off the way the South Koreans would like:

South Korean businesses have suffered losses of up to ten trillion won (US$8.3 billion) from the cutbacks in inter-Korean economic cooperation under the Lee Myung-bak administration, figures show.

The losses taken by South Korean firms are fives times the 1.8 trillion won (US$1.7 billion) North Korea’s estimated losses. The results show an unintended effect of Seoul’s May 24 sanctions, which were meant to punish North Korea economically for the shooting death of a tourist at the Mt. Kumkang resort, the sinking of the Cheonan warship, and the shelling of Yeonpyeong Island. North Korea has offset these losses with increased cooperation with China. …

According to Unification Ministry figures, some 319 of the 1,106 companies involved in inter-Korean economic cooperation, or 28.8%, have shut their doors since the Lee administration took office in 2008.

Chung Yang-geun, chairman of the Committee to Promote Inter-Korean Economic Cooperation, said an independent study in March 2011 showed more than 400 of the 1,017 participating businesses, or 39.3%, as either having closed down or being out of contact. Thirteen of the 32 business operating in the Mt. Kumkang tourism zone, or roughly 40%, have also closed down.

Lee Jong-hong, vice chairman of the council of businesspeople working in the Mt. Kumkang zone, said an independent study found the 32 businesses there suffering losses of 208 billion won through the end of May after investing a total of 134 billion won.

“With the government providing loans for just 12 billion won, which is 9% of the investment, we’re having a tough time keeping the businesses going,” Lee said.

Unification Ministry exchange and cooperation bureau director Hwang Bu-gi said the government had never encouraged businesses to take part in economic cooperation projects in the first place.

“These economic cooperation efforts with North Korea were the participants’ own responsibility,” Hwang said. “They have to bear that risk.”

But Ahn Gyo-sik, former chairman of the Kumkang businesspeople’s council, said the businesses invested after receiving government approval for their North Korea efforts, including tourism at the resort, and ended up suffering losses after the government blocked their efforts.

“The risk occurred because of changes in government policy, not any kind of management errors from the businesspeople themselves,” Ahn said. “The government owes them compensation.”

The government is partially subsidising trade with a country it must put sanctions on because it is communist, war-like and completely untrustworthy. South Korean businesses aren’t taking crazy pills at this point; they’re taking stupid pills.

That’s one theory:

A reunified Korea would be capable of joining a select group of countries with a per-capita income of over US$30,000 and a population of 80 million, some pundits believe. …

To reach that level, Korea would have to rely far more than it does now on domestic consumption and reduce its dependence on exports. Domestic consumption accounts for 70 to 80 percent of the U.S. and Japanese economies. "If the economy gets bigger due to a growth in the population, it would become less vulnerable to external shocks despite trials and errors as it pursues innovative steps," said Kim Hyung-joo at the LG Economic Research Institute.

But a unified Korea would have a long road ahead boosting per-capita GNI to $30,000, since North Korea's was a mere $720 or 1/20 of the South’s last year. Even in the case of unified Germany, it was not until the mid-2000s for the index to reach that level again even though the gap was much smaller. The per-capita income of East Germany was around one-third of West Germany's before reunification.

"We could end up mired in problems without ever nearing the $30,000 per-capita GNI level if we fail to prepare for reunification," said Yoon Chang-hyun at the Korea Institute of Finance.

Korea needs to bolster its capital reserves for reunification, develop its industrial base and take other economic preparatory steps, as well as strengthening diplomatic efforts for such a scenario, pundits said.

The experience of reuniting communist East Germany and relatively capitalist West Germany has not been a smooth and easy one due to high costs, monetary disparity, poor infrastructure and concepts on capitalist societies such as property rights.  How does a society like the North Korean one which has languished for decades under Stalinist and backward rule flourish and merge into the South Korean one, and this is assuming China is willing to give up its favourite buffer state? This is why South Korea had better have a plan B, C, D and possibly E.

And now, words like Korilla and Porkinator should rev up your tastebuds:

In early May in front of the New York Maritime Museums along the Hudson River in Manhattan, dozens of people were queuing up in front of a tiger-striped truck. Bearing the name Korilla BBQ, it offers a peculiar fusion cuisine and is run by three second-generation Korean-Americans.

Edward Song, who majored in finance at Columbia University, and his two friends offer Porkinator, a taco made with pork and kimchi, and Wonder Bird, a taco with chicken and kimchi. Korilla BBQ has over 18,000 followers on Twitter.

Korean cuisine was first introduced to the U.S. by first-generation Korean immigrants, and now their children are having fun reimagining it. Many of these successful second-generation Korean cooks are young, business-minded graduates of prestigious universities. They strictly try to approach Korean food from American point of view and reinvent it to appeal to the taste of local people.

(kamsahamnida)

Just Stop

There are times people should know when to keep their fool mouths shut.

This is one of those times:

Six weeks ago a former staff member serving in an entry-level position did not follow our protocol for providing information and guidance when presented with a highly unusual patient scenario. Planned Parenthood insists on the highest quality patient care, and if we ever become aware of a staff member not meeting these high standards, we take swift action. Within three days of this patient interaction, the staff member’s employment was ended and all staff members at this affiliate were immediately scheduled for retraining in managing unusual patient encounters. Today opponents of Planned Parenthood are promoting an edited video of that hoax patient encounter.”

“Recently, opponents of Planned Parenthood conducted hoax patient visits with hidden video cameras and are now using edited videotapes to promote false claims about our organization and patient services. In highly unusual and scripted scenarios, hoax patients sought services related to sex selection.”

[...]

Planned Parenthood condemns gender bias but refuses to condemn sex-selection abortions or say their centers will deny them.

“Gender bias is contrary to everything our organization works for daily in communities across the country. Planned Parenthood opposes racism and sexism in all forms, and we work to advance equity and human rights in the delivery of health care. Planned Parenthood condemns sex selection motivated by gender bias, and urges leaders to challenge the underlying conditions that lead to these beliefs and practices, including addressing the social, legal, economic, and political conditions that promote gender bias and lead some to value one gender over the other.”

How about, for the pure, refreshing honesty of it all, Planned Parenthood just comes out and admits they do what they do for the Benjamins? They’ve been caught lying about sexual abuse, mammograms and are now on record as supportive of a backward cultural practice which just further exposes their disgusting hypocrisy. You would think as a multi-billion dollar industry, they would have learned to keep their mouths shut a little better.

Suspicious Package- Redux

A human foot mailed to Tory party headquarters may have connections to a body in Montreal:

Two human body parts mailed to Ottawa — a left foot sent to the Conservative Party of Canada headquarters and a left hand found at a Canada Post terminal — came from Montreal and have "some link" to the discovery of a torso in the Quebec city, police confirmed today.

Both body parts mailed to Ottawa were sent from a fake Montreal address, Ottawa police say, and Montreal police will now lead the investigation into the hand and foot.

The hand and foot will also undergo testing at a Toronto forensics laboratory but could now be moved to Montreal, police say. The torso, which police said is from a Caucasian man's body, is undergoing tests in Montreal.

RCMP in Montreal are set to reveal more information about a suspect in the torso case. Police also said that suspect knew the victim whose torso was found.

The left foot was discovered Tuesday after Ottawa police were called to the Conservative Party of Canada headquarters at 130 Albert St.

A party spokesman told CBC News the package was brought to Prime Minister Stephen Harper's campaign manager Jenni Byrne. She examined the package after it was opened, he said, but called police when she saw the blood and smelled the odour.

"Conservative Party staff are very upset and disturbed by what happened yesterday. It was such a horrible odour I'm sure many of us will never forget it," said Fred DeLorey, director of communications for the party.

The hazardous materials unit was called in and the coroner soon confirmed the package contained a human foot that was somewhat decomposed.

While investigating the foot, police found a second body part in a package at a Canada Post terminal at Riverside and Alta Vista drives in south Ottawa.

Major Crimes Staff Sgt. Bruce Pirt said the foot was delivered through Canada Post and conceded it is possible it was sent as a "gruesome message".

The foot was decomposing, Pirt added, but he would not say whether the foot belonged to a male or female.

The grisly discoveries in Ottawa and Montreal continued to garner reaction on Parliament Hill Wednesday as questions surround the circumstances of the body parts.

"It's certainly an unusual development and it's not even insofar as homicides go. It's quite an unusual circumstance," said Public Safety Minister Vic Toews.

Canada Post didn't notice anything?


More to come.

Let's Withdraw From the UN- Redux

Western countries expel Syrian diplomats after (yet another) massacre:

Western powers expelled Syria's envoys on Tuesday in outrage at a massacre of 108 people, almost half of them children, and peace envoy Kofi Annan urged President Bashar al-Assad to halt the bloodshed as "a tipping point" had been reached.

The killings in the town of Houla drew a chorus of condemnation from around the world, with the United Nations saying entire families were killed in their homes on Friday, some by army tanks and others probably by pro-Assad militia.

"Bashar al-Assad is the murderer of his people," French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius told Le Monde. "He must relinquish power. The sooner the better."

U.S. State Department spokeswoman described an "absolutely indefensible, vile, despicable massacre against innocent children, women, shot at point blank range by regime thugs."

U.N. peacekeeping chief Herve Ladsous, whose monitors are in Syria, contradicted the Assad's government assertion that the killings were carried out by terrorist gangs.

"Part of the victims had been killed by artillery shells, now that points ever so clearly to the responsibility of the government. Only the government has heavy weapons, has tanks, has howitzers," Ladsous told reporters, adding:
"But there are also victims from individual weapons, victims from knife wounds and that of course is less clear but probably points the way to the (pro-Assad) shabbihas, the local militia."

The United States, France, Britain, Canada, Germany, Italy, Spain, Australia and Bulgaria gave Syria's envoys hours or days to leave their capitals in a coordinated move meant to isolate Assad further diplomatically.

Does anyone think Assad cares what they think? If I were a bloodthirsty madman, would I care that Kofi Annan, who stood by and did nothing during the Rwandan massacres, wagged his finger at me?


What a moral, political and global failure this all is.

The World Is Taking Crazy Pills (Pt. 6)

Europeans are not our betters in any respect:

A doll billed as a "real retard" found its way into stores in Gothenburg in western Sweden on Thursday, prompting strong reactions about a campaign meant to draw attention to the treatment of people with disabilities. "Treat her like a real retard," reads the packaging of the doll, created by the Gothenburg Cooperative for Independent Living (Göteborgskooperativet för independent living – GIL). "She doesn't swear, have sex, drink, or poop. So much better than a normal retard."


According to the group, a non-profit which provides personal assistants to people with disabilities so they can live independently, the doll is meant to stimulate thinking about how people think about and treat disabled people in Sweden. "Most often people say things like, 'Oh, it's so great that you buy your own food!'. It makes you feel like you're seen like a total idiot," GIL's Anders Westgerd said in a statement.

Maybe I am looking at this the wrong way. I thought it was insulting, childish and not at all how I would treat people with legitimate disabilities.


I guess I'm just not European enough.



(with thanks)

Let's Withdraw From the UN

China and Russia sit permanently on the Security Council, North Korea chaired the nuclear disarmament committee, Iran had been guaranteed a seat on the commission for women's rights and now Zimbabwe's Robert Mugabe is the UN leader for tourism:

Will the UNWTO’s festivities promote better times for the people of Zimbabwe — battered and impoverished  as they are, due to decades of Mugabe’s thuggish rule? Well, the UNWTO is a UN organization that includes North Korea and Syria, as well as Zimbabwe, among its members; and seated on its 32-member governing board are such tourism-challenged regimes as those of Zimbabe, Russia, Saudi Arabia and Iran. Don’t get your hopes up.

Cry Havoc! Let Slip the Dogs of War!

These dogs of war.


And a few cats of war.


(paws up)

The Graying of the Population

Read this:

A child-free picnic was held in Montreal Saturday by people who have chosen not to have children and are reaching out to others who made the same decision.

Pierre Dubuc took part in the event at Lafontaine Park in Montreal's East End.

Dubuc and his wife Gerarda Capece made a choice not to have children eight years ago.....

"On a Saturday morning, she was just relaxing and watching TV, and she turned to me and said 'You know what, this would be impossible with kids, you know, having kids around'," he said.

Capece said the couple enjoys the company of children — but not all the time.

"I have nephews, I like to play with them but I also like to give them to their mother and go home, you know?," she said.

Capece says people have questioned her decision, asking her who will take care of her when she gets old, but she said she's confident her social circle will help out.

Now read this:

Canadians have new insight into what our nation looks like, as new data from the 2011 Census became available this morning.

And we're looking pretty grey.

For the first time in history, the number of people getting ready to retire is higher than the number of people who are entering the workforce, an expected side-effect of aging baby boomers.

According to Statistics Canada, seniors (aged over 65) account for 14.8 per cent of all Canadians, up from 13.7 per cent in 2006.

I'm sure the Japanese weren't worried, either:

The result is that Japan is being severely pinched at both ends of the age spectrum. The numbers are stark in their ominous simplicity:

1. The number of Japanese children under 15 has declined for thirty consecutive years, from 24% of the population to its current 13%. Japan now has less children than it did a century ago, in large part to the forty million abortions it has suffered since it legalized the practice under the Eugenic Protection Law in 1949. Due to the strong government push for women to enter the workforce in response to the economic downturn, fully 70 percent of single Japanese women now say they do not want to be married. The Japanese “business first” mentality sees having a child as a career-ending decision.
2. The number of people over 65 has increased for sixty consecutive years, from a mere five percent of the population in 1952 to its current 23%, and is projected to increase to 43% by 2050. Japan is currently the oldest nation in the world, with an average age of 45, and this will increase to an incredible 60 years old by 2050.
3. Thus, Japan has the greatest percentage of people over 65 of any nation in the world, and the lowest percentage of children under 15 of any nation in the world.

The combination of a shrinking young population and an exploding elderly population inevitably has profound economic implications.

To begin with, there are less and less workers supporting more and more retirees. In 1950, there were ten Japanese workers supporting each retired person. Now, there are just 2.5 workers supporting each retiree, compared to China’s 8:1 ratio. By 2050, each Japanese worker will have to support one retired person, the lowest worker:retiree support ratio in the world.

The inverted Japanese population pyramid (more elderly than young) also means far more pension and health care spending. Baby boomers are retiring now, and by 2025, 70% of government spending will be consumed by debt service and social security spending.

At the other end of the spectrum, less young people means less workers, which means less tax-derived income for the government. More spending plus less tax revenue means an increase in the public debt.

Nothing New Here

Not the support for it, not the activism, not the denial, not the moral dissonance:





It's the same old dance.


De-fund these people and vote out their political supporters now.


(with plenty of thanks)

Sisterhood, ASSEMBLE!

There are Slut Walks for this sort of thing, you know:







(with thanks)

Impressions of the Omar Khadr Episode of The Source

Quickly now...


Dr. Michael Welner has spent over five hundred hours reviewing pertinent material, interviewing staff and actually interviewing Omar Khadr, the radical jihadist who murdered American medic Christopher Speer in 2002.


That he had seventy-three reasons why Omar Khadr should not be released, including failure to understand why he was detained, no remorse and ability to use the popular press and site the Geneva Convention at will (which a real child soldier could not do) blew my mind. That Khadr called a black American servicewoman a "slave" and a "b---h" should give everyone an idea of how Khadr - and other Islamists- see blacks and women.


The Canadian government cannot make the mistake of taking this monster back in.

This Man

Christopher Speer was born on September 9th, 1973. He was from Albuquerque, New Mexico. He married his wife, Tabitha, and had two children. He was a medic with the Delta Force team. On July 21st, 2002, he was awarded the Soldier's Medal for saving two children caught in a minefield.


He died on August 6th, 2002 of wounds received from a grenade thrown by a terrorist.



You may have heard of him.

Suspicious Package Sent to Tory Party Headquarters

A box containing a human foot was sent to Tory party headquarters in Ottawa:

The Ottawa Citizen is reporting that a suspicious package delivered to the Conservative Party of Canada's headquarters in Ottawa appears to be a human foot.

Reports note that more than a dozen emergency vehicles and the haz-mat team arrived to investigate the package left at 130 Albert St after the package was only partially opened by a receptionist before being deemed suspicious.

There are also reports that at least one Conservative staffer felt nauseous in the office.

Two men in white jumpsuits and masks were seen exiting the building around 1:45 p.m. pushing a large barrel.

Both the Tories and the police are refusing to confirm the box's contents.

"A suspicious package was sent to our office," Conservative Party spokesman Fred DeLorey told the Globe and Mail.

"The Ottawa police are investigating.  All questions should be referred to them."

More to come.

When Science Isn't Settled

Always take "the-end-is-nigh" stuff with a grain of salt:

Noted paleoanthropologist Richard Leakey predicts skepticism over evolution will soon be history.

Not that the avowed atheist has any doubts himself.

Sometime in the next 15 to 30 years, the Kenyan-born Leakey expects scientific discoveries will have accelerated to the point that "even the skeptics can accept it."

"If you get to the stage where you can persuade people on the evidence, that it's solid, that we are all African, that colour is superficial, that stages of development of culture are all interactive," Leakey says, "then I think we have a chance of a world that will respond better to global challenges."

Leakey, a professor at Stony Brook University on Long Island, recently spent several weeks in New York promoting the Turkana Basin Institute in Kenya. The institute, where Leakey spends most of his time, welcomes researchers from around the world dedicated to unearthing the origins of mankind in an area rich with fossils.

His friend, Paul Simon, performed at a May 2 fundraiser for the institute in Manhattan that collected more than $2 million. A National Geographic documentary on his work at Turkana aired this month on public television.

Now 67, Leakey is the son of the late Louis and Mary Leakey and conducts research with his wife, Meave, and daughter, Louise. The family claims to have unearthed "much of the existing fossil evidence for human evolution."

On the eve of his return to Africa earlier this week, Leakey spoke to The Associated Press in New York City about the past and the future.

"If you look back, the thing that strikes you, if you've got any sensitivity, is that extinction is the most common phenomena," Leakey says. "Extinction is always driven by environmental change. Environmental change is always driven by climate change.

Man accelerated, if not created, planet change phenomena; I think we have to recognize that the future is by no means a very rosy one."

Any hope for mankind's future, he insists, rests on accepting existing scientific evidence of its past.

"If we're spreading out across the world from centres like Europe and America that evolution is nonsense and science is nonsense, how do you combat new pathogens, how do you combat new strains of disease that are evolving in the environment?" he asked.

Yes, about that:


Though the debate is often framed as evolution versus Creationism,one must remember that the Theory of Evolution is still a theory no matter how emphatically stated that the science is or will be settled. Its leaps of evolutionary logic not withstanding, Dr. Leakey unfortunately forgets that extinction can also be, quite sadly, at the hands of a modern species of Homo that has wiped out the Beothuk and the Japanese whose near possible extinction has very little to do with environmental changes. Skin cultural is superficial? Stages of cultural development are interactive? Isn't skin colour biological? Aren't cultural aspects at odds with other cultural aspects?


Not seeing the loose ends tied up here.


 

The World Is Taking Crazy Pills (Pt. 5)

The Australian version.


I don't know if it's the sun or the sharks or the fact that there are tons of poisonous animals but there are some bizarre things going on Down Under.


Hug-a-Migrant Day:

Thousands of caring Sydney citizens will gather at Parliament House on June 23 for “Walk Together”, part of a nationwide hugging ceremony intended to make everyone feel good about “asylum seekers, refugees, new arrivals and other migrants”. As the Welcome to Australia website explains: 

“While some of us have strong opinions about policies to do with asylum seeking, refugees and migration, we believe that the most effective way of creating social and policy change in this area is to facilitate opportunities for authentic relationships to be …” 

It keeps going like that. Nothing makes the caring left feel more virtuous than a pointless gesture of goodwill towards asylum seekers. 

This must strike your average Afghan or Iranian seeker of asylum as a curious circumstance. Throw several thousand dollars at Middle Eastern people smugglers then throw your passport in the sea as you approach Australian territory; end result, public servants from Balmain demonstrating on your behalf outside of a parliament you’ve never heard of. 

Strangely, it doesn’t matter how much evidence is compiled that many asylum seekers are a little on the dodgy side, beginning with their widely-observed tactic of arriving without any identification. Asylum seekers are the caring left’s moral superiority patches, which is why the Labor government moved towards softer asylum seeker policies following Kevin Rudd’s 2007 election.

What, exactly, is hugging supposed to accomplish anyway? Hugging wouldn't have fixed Hilali. That guy is immensely unhuggable. I would advise against it.



I heard sharks hug with their mouths.


Moving on....



Just gross:

The latest from our warmist-in-chief:


Climate change campaigner Tim Flannery says mercury tooth fillings should be removed from corpses before they are cremated …
 
Prof Flannery said undertakers should be required to remove the fillings and families also could request it.
 
“You just need a pair of pliers,” he said.
 
“It is a $2 solution.”

It's a form of cannibalism and that it is attached to a "green" cause only makes it more disgusting.



Bullying? In the workplace? Aren't adults supposed to deal with this?

The aim of the review is to look at the nature, causes and extent of workplace bullying and consider proposals to prevent bullying cultures developing in the workplace and help individuals who have been affected by bullying to return to work.

(with thanks)