Friday Post

Rue, Britannia...

Stunned by a fifty-one-point-four percent vote to leave the European Union and horrified that a nation dared to take its matters into its own hands, the world freaks out and wonders what is next for Britain, another failed Pakistani state.

Prime Minister David Cameron, head of the ruling Conservative Party, announced he would step down by October. Speaking to reporters outside his Downing Street office, he said it wouldn't be right for him "to try to be the captain that steers the country to its next destination."

Former London Mayor Boris Johnson, also a Conservative, was the most prominent supporter of the "leave" campaign and now becomes a leading contender to replace Cameron. Johnson said Friday he was "sad" to see Cameron resign but didn't say whether he plans to replace him. ...

The pound suffered one of its biggest one-day falls in history Friday, plummeting more than 10 per cent in six hours on concerns that severing ties with the EU will hurt the U.K. economy and undermine London's position as a global financial centre. Authorities including the International Monetary Fund, the U.S. Federal Reserve and the Bank of England had warned Britain's exit would send shivers through a world economy that is only slowly recovering from the global crisis that began in 2008. Now economists will wait to see if their predictions come to pass.

(Sidebar: markets also dip whenever there are elections. Just pointing that out.)

**

Most Swedes still have a positive impression of the EU. However, this could potentially change if Britain voted "out." In that case, one of the central questions would be whether EU leaders will try to strengthen cohesion by deepening cooperation and focusing on core members, or whether they will loosen the union to allow national governments to have a bigger say. ...

Denmark held a referendum last December, although with a much more limited impact: Danes decided against handing over more powers to the EU. ...

"In many ways, Greece depends on greater burden sharing in a closer-integrated eurozone. But this would likely remain off the cards after Brexit," ...

Orban is planning to hold a referendum in Hungary that could hurt EU cohesion. After last year's influx of refugees into the country, Hungarians will be asked to decide whether the EU should be allowed to resettle refugees despite a lack of consent by national parliaments affected by the decision.

In Hungary, it might not be a clear-cut "in or out" referendum about EU membership that could cause trouble but rather a referendum that is designed to indirectly question Brussels's authority.

From Rex Murphy:

The EU vote is the most dramatic illustration to date of how the “guiding elites” of many Western countries have lost the fealty and trust of their populations. Of the gap between ordinary citizens, facing the challenges of daily life, and the swaddled, well-off and pious tribes of those who govern them, and increasingly govern them with a mixture of moralistic superiority and witless condescension.

But a decade ago, “Euroskeptics” were a slender group, derided by their betters as xenophobes and bigots, a splinter faction of regressive nationalists and illiberal tribalists. That, at least, was the approved version from on high. And from those smug heights, they dismissed with icy contempt the concerns of ordinary people that the “EU project” was draining their national identity, dissolving centuries-old democratic systems, and forcing their submission to an alien, unelected and unaccountable Brussels super-government.

At this point, I think that most Europeans know what the Britons know - that the EU is a failed experiment, a needless geo-political confluence that could have been done without and supplanted with better trade or other agreements. The American experiment worked (though often bloodily) because the parties involved opted to remain united yet unfettered by a central power. No amount of extortion or shaming could turn that into what the EU became.


One's daily chuckle:

Trudeau was booed briefly by a few people in Quebec City on Friday — the province's Fete nationale — about 11 seconds after he began speaking in English about the result of the Brexit referendum in Britain.

And he said Quebec was better.




There is no moral clarity in clearing hospital beds:

The passage of Bill C-14 into law last week ended some of the uncertainty around physician-assisted death in Canada. But on the issue of conscientious refusal by medical professionals, uncertainty remains, particularly for pharmacists, registered nurses and nurse practitioners.

“The bill, which is now legislation, is very silent on questions of conscientious objection,” Joelle Walker, director of government relations for the Canadian Pharmacists Association (CPA), tells Yahoo Canada News.

That uncertainty could result in a situation where different provinces take different approaches to conscientious objection by medical professionals, Walker says.

The new federal law that legalized physician-assisted dying in Canada states that doctors have freedom of conscience on the matter and aren’t required to perform or assist in the provision of the procedure. The rights of other medical professionals aren’t specified in the bill, so their conscience rights have to be extrapolated from that statement.

The ways the right to conscientious objection will be handled could vary considerably across the country, and even among different medical professionals in the same province. 

Physician colleges across the country have all addressed the issue of conscientious objection for doctors, but with varying recommendations and subtle differences in language.

In Alberta, for example, physicians have an “obligation” to give patients a timely referral to doctors who will provide medical assistance in death if they themselves are unwilling to do so. In Nova Scotia, it is “recommended” that doctors do so.

There are reasons, aside from sound moral ones, why a door to euthanasia should never be opened. These so-called suggestions are not that. They are commandments. A doctor may refuse to kill or in any assist in a killing. What are his protections from lawsuits or other actions?

As of this date, none. Indeed, the law cannot even decide how far a doctor can or cannot go.

All for a hospital bed.




Nothing at all do to with Islamic terror:

Abu Sayyaf extremists rejoiced as they watched two Canadians being beheaded in the jungles of the southern Philippines, said a still-shocked Filipino hostage who was freed Friday.

Marites Flor tearfully recalled to reporters the moments when Canadians John Ridsdel and Robert Hall were handcuffed and led away to a nearby jungle clearing to be separately decapitated in April and early this month by the ransom-seeking militants.

She said that Hall, who was killed last week, was her fiance. Ridsdel was beheaded by the militants in April.

"It's so painful because I saw them moments before they got beheaded," Flor told reporters in southern Davao city, where she was flown to meet President-elect Rodrigo Duterte after her release in nearby Sulu province.

"They were watching it and they were happy," she said of the militants, adding that she did not witness the killings.

The cost of China's one-child policy:

The breakdown of that structure began with the imposition of the one-child family rule which was only removed last year. When millions of migrants began leaving family homes in the past three decades to seek work in the cities, many left parents behind. Some 19 million people 65 years and older live alone now in China, and the number will more than double to 46 million by 2050, according to estimates of Yeung and her colleagues. ...

Many elderly, especially in rural areas, don’t have full health insurance or a pension. The government said it has expanded rural healthcare, encouraged private businesses to invest in retirement facilities and more than tripled the number of beds in nursing homes in the past five years. The nation’s top economic planning body allotted 10.8 billion yuan in that period to support the elderly.

More government subsidies will be needed. Only 9 percent of China’s private nursing homes made a profit as of 2015.

At the last census in 2010, 36 percent of men and 22 percent of women aged 25 to 29 weren’t married, twice the level of 2000. In cities, the ratio for unmarried women is even higher at 30 percent, according to Wang at the University of California. ...

China’s divorce rate almost tripled between 2002 and 2014, to 2.7 divorces per 1,000 people, according to the Ministry of Civil Affairs. Newspaper commentators have blamed the rise of social media and dating sites, increased financial independence of women, and regulations that allow quick and cheap divorces.

 
And now, cool down with this video of ice-sculpting a flower.

For A Thursday

In the news...


A gunman was neutralised after shots were fired in a German cinema:

A masked man was shot dead Thursday after entering a movie theatre in southwestern Germany with what appeared to be a rifle and taking several hostages, authorities said. No one else was hurt.

It must be those lax gun laws.




It will cost taxpayers $250 million to bloat the Canada Pension Plan:

The federal government estimates it will cost taxpayers $250 million per year to offset the additional financial burden that expansion of the Canada Pension Plan will eventually place on low-income earners.

You voted for this, Canada.




Speaking of wastes of money:

Ontario’s soon-to-be-defunct standalone pension plan cost taxpayers at least $16 million over the past two years, according to government estimates and public accounts.

Based on the numbers available, it’s likely the figure was closer to $20 million. The money was spent on research and to start setting up the Ontario Retirement Pension Plan and the “administration corporation” that was supposed to run it.

Premier Kathleen Wynne says the program will be “wound down,” but could not estimate how much the ORPP has already cost taxpayers.

Instead, starting in 2019, all Canadian workers will pay about $7 more a month into the Canada Pension Plan. Had the ORPP gone ahead, Ontarians without a workplace pension plan would have paid at least double that on a sliding scale geared to their income.

And:

An investigation into money laundering at gas stations and laundromats that began two years ago in southern Brazil has since mushroomed into a wide sweeping corruption scandal, creating a national soap opera that has enthralled Brazilians as it reaches into the upper echelons of the country’s political and corporate elites. ...

The fallout has included the recent impeachment of President Dilma Rousseff and the arrest of dozens of senior politicians and business leaders. But also caught up in the tumult are hundreds of millions of dollars managed by some of the world’s biggest investors, including Ontario Teachers’ Pension Plan, one of Canada’s biggest and most respected publicly funded pension funds.

China's organ trade still continues:

According to the report, the entire organ-harvesting enterprise is controlled by the state, with the intimate involvement of China’s military and security apparatus. The report exposes the Chinese government’s efforts to enforce a systemic cover-up of the whole thing. It is an industrial-scale enterprise involving the trafficking of tens of thousands of organs intended for transplant every year — at least 15 times as many as claimed in official government statements.

Gutmann’s 2014 research had settled on a “best guess” that 65,000 Falun Gong practitioners have been slaughtered for their organs over the past several years. The new report’s primary research findings, gathered from hospital records, medical journals, whistle-blower accounts and hard-to-hide databases, appears to confirm that those earlier estimates were wildly over-cautious.

 Remember  Trudeau admires China's "basic dictatorship".


Also:

A convicted Islamist terrorist is one step closer to being granted Canadian citizenship, thanks to Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s government.

Trudeau successfully rammed his controversial Bill C-6 through the House of Commons on the last day before summer recess. Now all that’s left is a rubber stamp from the Senate.

The bill repeals a Stephen Harper-era law that enabled the government to strip Canadian citizenship from foreign-born citizens convicted of terrorism.

There's transparent democracy for you.


(Paws up)




A tied decision keeps a lower court ruling on Obama's abuse of authority:

But on Thursday, the Supreme Court disagreed. In a 4-to-4 decision, the justices let stand a lower court ruling that Mr. Obama had overstepped his authority. The decision freezes the president’s actions for the balance of his term, leaving the future of the program — and millions of undocumented workers — in limbo.

Does anyone care to ask why anyone without documentation or approval should skirt authority where someone else would be punished?



And now, drone footage of a church dome. Enjoy:


Byzantine - BigFly from BigFly.fr on Vimeo.

Mid-Week Post

Aahhh, glorious sunshine...

It is rumoured that Jason Kenney will leave federal politics and perhaps run provincially:

Conservative MP Jason Kenney is poised to announce this summer that he will leave federal politics, fuelling expectations that he intends to run a campaign to unite the right in his home province of Alberta.

If I were Jason Kenney, I would leave the cesspool behind and not look back.





Another broken promise:

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau refused to say on Wednesday whether his government will hold an open competition to replace Canada’s CF-18 fighter jets — despite having made it one of his key election promises.

Whip out a solution, Justin.





I'm not seeing a problem here. One event celebrates the entirety of the town, the other only a fraction:

The Pioneers Day parade shuts streets in Steinbach, a rural area known as the bible belt of Manitoba, but the city’s first pride march is being forced on to the sidewalks.

RCMP denied Steinbach Pride a special events permit for its July 9 event, refusing to temporarily close the road it wanted to march along.

“There’s a strong possibility there’s going to be construction on the street at that time, so therefore one of the two lanes will be restricted. We can’t close the street totally because it’s on a Saturday and it’s a busy area,” RCMP Sergeant Joanne Ryll said.

“By all means they can have their march, but they must have it on the sidewalks.”

While the group has agreed to stay off the streets, Michelle McHale, an organizer of Pride March for Equality, said the city closes roads for many other celebrations.

“They just closed the city — on that street we requested — last weekend for Summer in the City,” McHale said, referring to the weekend-long downtown festival.

“There’s a lot of unspoken rules in this community; a public display is important so people can see that you can also be out and okay.”

One could always go to Istanbul (not Constantinople).





Mexico is one of the top oil-producing states in the world. It relies less on renewable energy resources than Canada and the US do. It even uses coal from Texas to fuel coal-fired plants.

How is any of that going to affect the thousands of illegal immigrants having flooded or about to flood Canada and the US?

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, U.S. President Barack Obama and Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto are set to meet June 29 in Ottawa for the first North American Leaders’ Summit in over two years.

Also: from the same woman who was  shamed into not censoring the obvious:

In March, The Daily Signal reported, U.S. Attorney General Loretta Lynch told a Senate committee that “not only has she discussed internally the possibility of pursuing civil actions against so-called ‘climate change deniers’ but she has ‘referred it to the FBI to consider whether or not it meets the criteria for which we could take action.’ ”

I'm sure Mrs. Lynch is glad to see others are hopping on that particular band wagon.





A senate committee urges that Canada take in more North Korean refugees:

North Koreans are subject to arbitrary arrests and detention. Their freedom of movement is restrained, their privacy rights are non-existent and they cannot speak their minds. They live in a country isolated from the world.

About 1,000 North Koreans will defect this year — a dramatic drop from years past due to tightened border security. For those who do escape, their nightmare has just begun.

In these grim circumstances, the Senate Committee on Human Rights urges the government to amend the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act to allow North Korean defectors to qualify for refugee status in Canada.

In the short term, the committee is also recommending that the Minister of Immigration use his powers under the Act to allow the entry into Canada of the most vulnerable North Korean defectors.

It is doubtful that Trudeau will be moved into doing so for the following well-known reasons:

- like his father, Justin Trudeau admires China's dictatorship, something he has said openly. It is doubtful that Trudeau would do anything to irritate China like accepting in North Korean refugees who would testify about North Korea's dictatorship and China's willingness to send North Korean refugees back to a certain death.
- when a member of the Canadian press was attacked by China's foreign minister, Foreign Affairs Minister Stephane Dion did nothing to contradict him nor did he defend the journalist. A middling statement about this matter was made days after. Neither Canada's interests, rights nor its people were defended by either Trudeau or Dion.
-the Trudeau government has made every effort to repeal or blot out what was accomplished under the previous prime minister. It stands to reason that the Tory plan to re-settle North Korean refugees stranding in southeast Asia will not be fulfilled.
-Trudeau made it clear that prioritising religious minorities from ISIS-controlled regions (a fight he withdrew from soon after the election) was "disgusting" even though the majority of migrants from those regions are of one particular group.

Like Israel, North Korean refugees no longer have a "special friend" in Canada.





Aid from the UN is not helping North Koreans at all:

What discourages in-kind aid is the grim reality that 21 years of U.N. aid haven’t solved North Korea’s food crisis, and the other grim fact — that U.N. agencies are still overlooking the real causes of the crisis and blaming weather and sanctions, just as Pyongyang demands of it. And if the aid agencies are so cowed by Pyongyang that they’re willing to lie to the world, what other compromises have they made with the truth?

 

(Kamsahamnida)





I keep saying that sooner or later, North Korea is going to get it right:

North Korea took a significant step Wednesday in the development of a powerful ballistic missile intended to reach U.S. bases in the Pacific, launching one of the weapons about 1,000 kilometres (620 miles) high after five failed attempts in recent months.

The North's suspected Musudan tests worry Washington and its allies, Tokyo and Seoul, because the missile's potential 3,500-kilometre (2,180-mile) range puts much of Asia and the Pacific, including U.S. military bases there, within reach.

Japanese Defence Minister Gen Nakatani said the most recent launch demonstrated a "certain level of capability," and could lead to a further strengthening of North Korea's ballistic missile capabilities that can cover Japanese territory.

Each new test — apparently linked to a command from North Korean leader Kim Jong Un — likely provides valuable insights to the North's scientists and military officials as they push toward their goal of a nuclear and missile program that can threaten the U.S. mainland. Pyongyang earlier this year conducted a nuclear test, its fourth, and launched a long-range rocket that outsiders say was a cover for a test of banned missile technology.

A statement from South Korea's Joint Chiefs of Staff said a suspected first Musudan launch from the east coast city of Wonsan failed. It didn't elaborate, but Japan's Defence Ministry said the missile fragmented and pieces fell into waters off the Korean Peninsula's east coast.

Later Wednesday, the South's military said the North fired another suspected Musudan, which flew about 400 kilometres (245 miles). Seoul didn't immediately classify this launch as either a success or failure.

Japan's Defence Ministry said that its radar analysis found that the missile reached an altitude exceeding 1,000 kilometres (620 miles), which suggests it was a Musudan missile.

"We have to see it as a success," Lee Choon Geun, an analyst at South Korea's state-funded Science and Technology Policy Institute, said of the second launch. "No other (previous) missiles fired by North Korea have ever flown that high."

I said before that I think this woman will be out by Christmas:

One image — a distraught woman, face buried in her hands, on a video screen at a London court hearing.

Other images, from social media, of a seemingly happy life filled with friends and family.

The contrasts involving the woman charged after a dead baby was found in a garbage dumpster in London last week, triggering an urgent police appeal to find the mother, could not be sharper.

The accused is Samantha Richards, 23, a restaurant and bar server from Amherstburg, near Windsor, nearly 200 kilometres away from London where the infant was found in a grocery bag last Thursday.

She is accused of giving birth to an infant in a northeast London home and disposing of the baby’s body. It’s still not clear when the baby died — before, during or after the birth — or how.

Nor is it clear how far along the pregnancy was before the baby was born.

Yet another non-vaccination failure:

A mother who says her baby is hospitalized with whooping cough in Victoria is warning parents who don’t vaccinate their children that there can be consequences for other kids.

(SPOILER)

If the Dark Knight movies have taught me anything it's that Reese and Carter are in Italy, living it up.

We all know this to be true.

You are being watched incognito...

Blustering Peaks

 

... or some such thing...



The Canada Pension Plan will start bloating out in 2019:

Both Canadian workers and their employers will soon be on the hook for higher contributions to the Canada Pension Plan after the federal government reached an agreement with most of the provinces Monday to revamp the program for the first time in nearly two decades.

Federal Finance Minister Bill Morneau said the change means future generations of Canadians will be able to retire in dignity, no matter the state of their finances.

"We have come to a conclusion that we are going to improve the retirement security of Canadians," Morneau said. "We're going to improve the Canada Pension Plan that will make a real difference in future Canadians' situations."

By 2023, an extra $34 a month in pension premiums will mean up to $4,300 more in annual payouts come retirement time for the average Canadian wage earner.

The agreement-in-principle, which only Quebec and Manitoba neglected to endorse, will see an increase in monthly premiums phased in starting at $7 a month in 2019 for a typical worker earning about $55,000.

Once the plan is fully implemented, the maximum annual benefits will increase by about one-third to $17,478.

Mandatory matching contributions will also mean a jump in payroll expenses for employers.

A change to the CPP needs the consent of Ottawa and a minimum of seven provinces representing at least two-thirds of the country's population.

Morneau said Quebec — which has its own pension plan — and Manitoba continue to be part of the process, despite not signing on to the agreement.

 You voted for it, Canada.




PM Trulander promises to embarrass himself and Canada in Ukraine.

#PrayforCanada




Should there be a National Aboriginal Day?

No.

Not only is such a day divisive in this day of identity politics, which should please Big Aboriginal no end, it also serves to underscore the current trend of mediocrity and victimhood as opposed to celebrating all Canadians, whatever their ethnicity, for their contributions to the country.

Heaven forbid that should happen.


Also:

One of three women convicted in a savage killing in April 2006 has been granted a temporary escorted absence from prison to attend an aboriginal healing ceremony, even though she isn’t aboriginal.

Yet another reason why National Aboriginal day should never, ever happen.




Russia insists that Canada not put troops in eastern Europe:

Russia is pushing back against NATO calls for Canada to help lead a new military force in Eastern Europe, describing the measure as “a complete waste of money and resources.”

Because Trudeau is a pu$$y, he won't put troops in eastern Europe (I would be surprised if he did and for a good length of time). Anyone else - like, a real leader, for example - would put in troops just to spite Russia.




Walter Koenig, the original actor to portray Pavel Chekov, comments on the recent death of Anton Yelchin who died in a freak accident this past Sunday:

Walter Koenig, the actor who brought the character of Pavel Chekov to life in the original Star Trek TV series and subsequent films, only met Anton Yelchin once, but it was memorable.

“We spoke on a sound stage for about two hours,” Koenig said in a statement to The Hollywood Reporter. “His reputation as an artist preceded him, however. I knew I was in the presence of a gifted performer.”

Yelchin, 27, was killed early Sunday morning when his Jeep rolled down his driveway, pinning him between the vehicle, a security fence and brick pillar. ...

“What I learned that day was how bright and sensitive he was. I walked away thinking — this is a good person,” Koenig said. “My heart goes out to his mother and father. I know what you’re going through.” (Koenig lost his son, actor Andrew Koenig, to suicide in 2010.)

Oh dear....

And now, as Germans have a vocabulary to express human suffering, they also have a vocabulary to express endearment:

6. Mausbär

The animal terms can combine with each other too. If a mouse is cuddly and cute and a bear is cuddly and cute, just how stinkin’ cuddly and cute is a mousebear?

Danke.

 

On A Monday

A merry summer's day to all y'all...

Just in: the federal government has reached a deal to expand the Canada Pension Plan:

Most of Canada’s finance ministers reached an agreement in principle Monday to revamp the Canada Pension Plan, although Quebec and Manitoba have not signed on to the deal.

Under the agreement, which would go into effect in 2019, an average Canadian worker earning about $55,000 will pay an additional $7 a month in 2019. That would increase to $34 a month by 2023.

Once the plan is fully implemented, the maximum annual benefits will increase by about one-third to $17,478.

Finance Minister Bill Morneau said the deal will improve the CPP in a way that will make a difference to working Canadians.

“We have come to a conclusion that we are going to improve the retirement security of Canadians, we’re going to improve the Canada Pension Plan that will make a real difference in future Canadians’ situations,” he said.

Morneau said Quebec, which has its own pension plan, and Manitoba continue to be part of the process, despite not signing on to the agreement.

You voted to be taxed back into the Stone Age, Canada.




After fourteen Nepalese guards were killed in Afghanistan,  PM Trulander shakes his fist.

Whatever, bacha boy.




A pig's head was allegedly left outside of a mosque in Quebec (I say allegedly because it wouldn't be the first time someone cried "Islamophobia" and was later proven a liar):

A pig’s head left outside a Quebec City mosque is the latest in a string of incidents pointing to a rising tide of Islamophobia in the provincial capital and across Quebec, says a prominent anti-discrimination activist.

Haroun Bouazzi, co-president of the Association of Muslims and Arabs for a Secular Quebec, said there’s a “real fear toward places of religious worship in our society,” particularly mosques.

(Sidebar: I imagine there is also fear in Pakistan where seventy-two Christians were murdered by the Taliban this past Easter or in Nigeria where women are often the targets of murder or kidnapping by Boko Haram, Nigeria's rednecks or in Syria or in India where Hindus are often targets for attacks like the rape and murder of a Hindu student.)

Bouazzi said negative comments about Muslims from politicians, including Quebec City Mayor Régis Labeaume, haven’t helped matters. 

“Politicians play on those fears, unfortunately,” Bouazzi told Radio-Canada on Monday.

(Sidebar: does he mean Obama, Trudeau or Wynne? Or does he mean the censorious Loretta Lynch? One can't put that genie back in the bottle.)

Labeaume recently speculated that Montreal mosques are hotbeds of radicalization.

He has also said Quebec City would favour Syrian families as refugees over single men because they are “less frightening to people,” Bouazzi pointed out.

(Sidebar: that might be because of the rape thing.)

That's a crying shame. It's also a shame when the Church of the Nativity was used as a toilet or when a Hindu temple had a cow carcass strewn about the place.

Go start a candlelight vigil or something.




Speaking of candlelight vigils...

Controversy over gay and lesbian rights flared up on two fronts Monday in a conservative-leaning rural area of southeastern Manitoba sometimes referred to as the province's Bible Belt.

(Sidebar: I see what you did there. But what about the Koran Belt?)

The region's Conservative MP said he would not attend a pride march because of his personal beliefs and two women filed a human rights complaint over the lack of same-sex education in local classrooms.

 
So what?

Finally! Someone who would rather do anything else than watch various members of the sexual alphabet soup gyrate in pink body paint.

Besides, these days the party crowd is a walking target.

What? Too soon?





From the same health minister who promises to clear hospital beds in the next decade:

Health Canada says gay men who have been abstinent for one year can donate blood but one expert says there’s no reason for the waiting period.

The new policy, which was previously an abstinence period of five years, will kick in Aug. 15, Health Minister Jane Philpott announced Monday.

“I think the current limitation of five years is completely unrealistic and basically says to a gay man, ‘You need not ever give blood,’” Dr. Mark Wainberg, director of the McGill University AIDS Centre and former president of the International AIDS Society, tells Yahoo Canada News. “A better improvement, actually, would be to say to a gay man, we’ll accept your blood.”

This position is supported by medical research that indicates modern-day testing methods can catch contaminants in the blood supply. Other countries have shortened or removed their ban without any measurable effect on the risk levels of their blood supply, according to several studies. 

“The testing is so sensitive now,” Dr. Wainberg says. “It’s so ultra-sensitive that the blood supply is being tested by the most modern approaches imaginable. We haven’t moved with the technology.”

The ban on blood donations from men who have sex with men came at a time when testing technology was less sophisticated, Dr. Wainberg says, and when gay and bisexual men did make up the majority of people with HIV and AIDS. With better testing technology, less stigma around the disease, and more understanding of HIV/AIDS we can have guidelines that focus on excluding donors with behaviours like multiple sexual partners or injection drug use instead of disallowing donations from large groups of people, Dr. Wainberg says.

There are reasons why blood donated by gay men is banned from blood banks, as there are reasons why blood from people who have travelled to areas where malaria and the Zika virus are common. And though the above article referenced an Australian study done in 2010 concerning blood donations by gay men, the Australian Red Cross Blood Service makes it clear that anyone who has had sexual contact, same-sex or otherwise or has had a fling with someone who has lived overseas, cannot donate in a period of twelve months.

But if Dr. Wainberg and Health Minister Philpott would jab themselves with a needle previously used by an allegedly celibate gay man, then I suppose it should be alright for everyone else.




North Korea warns an American missionary not to criticise it:

North Korea said Monday it won't negotiate to release arrested American citizens if a former detainee doesn't stop using what it called slanderous language about the North.

American missionary Kenneth Bae, who was freed by North Korea in 2014 along with another imprisoned American, has written a book about his detention and given media interviews in which he described the treatment he received. Bae had been serving a 15-year sentence with hard labour for alleged anti-state activities.

North Korea's official Korean Central News Agency described Bae as a "filthy object" and a "Judas" who betrayed the North's humanitarian gesture. It also accused the U.S. government of supporting critics of North Korea like Bae to arouse hostility toward the North.

North Korea is extremely sensitive about any criticism of its leadership and political system. It is known to hold two other Americans for alleged espionage, subversion and other activities.

 For that, I would take out billboard space.




Speaking of socialist failures...

In the last two weeks alone, more than 50 food riots, protests and mass lootings have erupted around the country. Scores of businesses have been stripped bare or destroyed. At least five people have been killed.

This is precisely the Venezuela its leaders vowed to prevent.

No kidding:

A retired Japanese admiral says President Obama’s strategy to neutralized China’s territorial claims to a man-made reef in the South China Sea are almost entirely meaningless — and may actually serve to embolden the communist regime.

And now, a feel-good story:

A Canadian Lowe's store recently hired a man who was having difficulty finding a job because of a brain injury and a support dog.

 

Lowe's Canada took to social media to announce that it had brought on staff an inseparable pair, and had even made a custom vest.

Once again, dogs bring out the best in humanity.

Saturday Post

Dellen Millard and Mark Smich have been convicted of coldly luring out and murdering Tim Bosma:

Grieving relatives of an Ontario man killed after taking two strangers on a test drive three years ago broke into smiles and tears of relief Friday as the two men were found guilty of first-degree murder, setting off a wave of celebration that rippled through the courthouse and out onto the street.

Gasps rang out in the Hamilton courtroom as the jury announced the convictions of Dellen Millard, 30, of Toronto, and Mark Smich, 28, of Oakville, both of whom had pleaded not guilty to the murder charges.

Cheers erupted moments later as Bosma's family members, including his widow, Sharlene Bosma, walked out of the courtroom to a crowd of supporters. "We won!" one supporter said, a sentiment that was echoed by several others.

(Sidebar: I don't how cheering is a dignified way to react to the conviction of two soulless ghouls for the brutal taking of life of one's spouse but I guess I'm just not with it.  They still get to take in oxygen at the taxpayers' expense until they are paroled.)

People who don't get to take in oxygen, everyone else:

Bill C-14 was given royal assent less than two hours after senators voted 44-28 to accept the controversial legislation, which limits the right to assisted dying to those whose natural death is "reasonably foreseeable."

The Senate had amended the bill to include those who aren't terminally ill, but the Commons voted Thursday to reject the change.

Rather than kill the bill outright or insist on the amendment and bounce it back to the Commons once again, a majority of senators gave up Friday and accepted the government's version of the bill.

Look for the following: with hospital beds clearing, a larger and more entrenched bureaucratic class making healthcare decisions for Canadians, no new medical breakthroughs (the Netherlands and Belgium have radical euthanasia laws and very little to offer in the field of medicine and have been quick to use euthanasia for reasons other than pain) and more liberalised laws that will kill anyone.




The Canada Pension Plan, along with other government-run pension plans, is an enormous waste of workers' hard-earned money and is designed only to give autocrats more power over people:

Finance Minister Bill Morneau will meet with his provincial counterparts in Vancouver on Monday, and a plan to expand the pension plan will be at the top of the agenda. Some premiers, notably Ontario’s Kathleen Wynne, have been pushing to boost benefits, which is only possible with an increase in premiums paid by workers and employers.

“I don’t believe that the minister of finance has made a case based on evidence as to why we need to take such a drastic step of increasing everybody’s cost across the board in order to get a benefit in the future,” Raitt said in an interview with Chris Hall on CBC Radio's The House.

Morneau has promised to reach an agreement on a CPP enhancement by year’s end, and Wynne signalled in a separate interview with Hall Friday that there now appears to be a consensus among the provinces, after a period of wrangling.

“I am more optimistic. It’s a different moment than it was even a few weeks ago, there is more of a potential for some success,” she said, adding she would be willing to ditch her plan to launch an Ontario retirement pension plan if a CPP deal is achieved.

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said Thursday that he wanted to ensure “Canadians are going to be able to afford the things they need in the present while ensuring retirement security for as many people as possible.”

But Raitt called it a solution looking for a problem.

“Canada ranks above everybody else in being prepared for retirement,” Raitt said, citing a recent OECD study. “We have all kinds of other vehicles to allow for savings other than the traditional pensions that are set aside,“ she said, noting that many other financial products, including equities held in an RRSP, often deliver a better rate of return than funds invested in the CPP.

The former Conservative cabinet minister said Finance Canada itself has found that Canadians are in good shape for retirement, with 83 per cent of households on track for a comfortable retirement.

"If we’re dealing [with] a cohort of only 17 per cent, figure out who it is, and then develop those tools specifically for those cohorts to have them save for the future,” Raitt said, citing a McKinsey study commissioned by the last government.

The maximum CPP payout stands at $1,092.50 per month, although the average payment is closer to $500 a month.

PM Trulander attempts to sound tough against a country he said openly that he admired and which communist dictator his father supported:

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau wants to establish closer relations with China but, citing human rights and governance concerns, won’t rush into a free trade agreement with the superpower.

China's human rights record against its own people and North Korea was never a secret. When Trulander said he admired China, it was returning North Korean refugees to North Korea where they would face a certain death, it was persecuting Christians and other dissidents and its environment was virtually unlivable for any being, human or otherwise.

No one can believe that this move was motivated by Trulander's understanding of the political machine in China (or Russia, for that matter) or by anything resembling altruism. That's not how Pierre's son operates.




Veterans have risked their lives so that others may live in security and freedom.

Veterans have also banded against one leader for another who treats them far worse.

From Rex Murphy:

The truth is that remedying Blindheim’s situation would be easy and would come at little cost to the government. Trudeau should grant this old and honourable soldier the peace of a dignified and cared-for departure. He should demonstrate a little of those “Canadian values of caring and respect” that decorate so many of his public speeches. And he should do it before Canadians pay tribute to the fallen on Canada Day. Otherwise, those tributes will be as hollow and vain as the wind that stirs and brings no rain.

Belgium charges three men for plotting terrorist acts:

Belgian prosecutors charged three men with terrorism offences on Saturday following overnight raids that took place amid heightened security in Belgium and France due to the Euro 2016 soccer tournament.
Three months after Islamist bombers killed 32 people in Brussels, police searched dozens of houses across the country and arrested 12 people the night before Belgium's Euro 2016 game against Ireland.

Nine of them were released after questioning but three Belgian nationals identified as 27-year-old Samir C., 40-year-old Moustapha B., and 29-year-old Jawad B., were charged with "having attempted to commit a terrorist murder and for participation in the activities of a terrorist group", the federal prosecutor's office said in a statement.

Some media reports said the suspects had planned attacks against fans watching the Euro 2016 games in Brussels, and had possibly been targeting Saturday afternoon's Belgium vs Ireland match. 

Russian track-and-field athletes have been banned from the financially-strapped Rio de Janiero Summer Olympics and Putin does not like it one bit:

Russian President Vladimir Putin has spoken out against the IAAF’s decision to uphold an international ban over his country’s track and field federation that would bar it from sending athletes to the upcoming Rio de Janeiro Olympics.

“Of course that is unjust and unfair,” Putin said in a Friday news conference. "There are universally recognized principles of law and one of them is that the responsibility should be always personified - if some of the members of your family have committed a crime, would it be fair to hold all the members of the family liable including you? That is not how it's done."

The IAAF voted unanimously Friday to extend its ban after it found that “the deep-seated culture of tolerance (or worse) for doping” had not been changed since the ban was instated in November.

If Putin doesn't like something, he will just invade another country.




Exterminate! Exterminate!

A crafty robot was able to escape the clutches of scientific research and make a dash for freedom outside a research lab in Perm, Russia on Tuesday.

Убивайте Доктора!

Also: Isaac Asimov's Three Laws of Robotics, something Skynet has ignored.




A professor in Saskatchewan wants to fix what she calls "food swamps":

Many people have heard of food deserts — low-income communities where there is limited or no access to healthy food sources. But Rachel Engler-Stringer, a professor at the University of Saskatchewan, is also concerned about "food swamps" — areas where the convenience stores far out number healthy food stores.

Engler-Stringer spoke to CBC Radio's Saskatoon Morning about the harms of food swamps in Saskatoon and what can be done about them.

Engler-Stringer said Saskatoon food swamps are throughout the downtown core area, up Idylwyld Drive, and in the 33rd Street area of Saskatoon.

"In part because of where the arteries are, so where the larger streets are, and so the sort of commercialization neighbourhoods, we find in Saskatoon our lower income areas of the city have a much higher proportion of unhealthy food sources," Engler-Stringer said.

Yes, about that:

"Since 2011, the Federal Government has spent almost $500 million to improve food store access in neighborhoods lacking large, well-stocked grocery stores," according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA). "States and local governments have also launched programs to attract supermarkets or improve existing stores in underserved areas. For example, the Pennsylvania Fresh Food Initiative has provided $30 million of public funds (matched with $117 million of private investment) to help address limited store access in underserved urban and rural areas throughout Pennsylvania." 

The theory was simple: poor people simply lacked easy access to healthy food options. If you put fruits, vegetables, and whole grains in front of them, they would soon be singing the praises of Michael Pollan, too. And voila: no more obesity epidemic in these neighborhoods. 

But of course things didn't work out that way. As many business owners in these neighborhoods and other food-desert skeptics have pointed out, the problem wasn't that they simply hadn't thought to offer more wholesome items. The problem was that these items just didn't sell. You can lead human beings to Whole Foods, but you can't make them buy organic kale there.

Australian researchers decant some rather old beer:

An 18th century shipwreck has given some thirsty Australian researchers the opportunity to enjoy beer just like they made it 220 years ago.

Described as tasting “light and fresh,” the batch of beer goes by the name Preservation Ale and is sure to have beer aficionados green with envy. 

The unique beer recipe was made possible after researchers at Queen Victoria Museum and Art Gallery successfully cultivated a live yeast sample taken from a beer bottle recovered from a shipwreck, ...

Divers salvaged the vintage beer bottle in the early 1990s from the Sydney Cove trading vessel, which sunk off the coast of Australia in the year 1797. The ship was carrying a wide selection of trading goods from Calcutta to Sydney when it sank to the bottom of the ocean floor.

At 220 years old, the organic yeast recovered from the salvaged bottle may be the oldest specimen in modern existence. 

The sample used to create the unique beer gives it a taste consistent with the historic brewing practices used all those years ago, according to museum conservator David Thurrowgood.  

“Possibly the wreck has now also given us the world’s only known pre-industrial revolution brewing yeast,” he said.

“It is genetically different to hundreds of yeast species it has been compared to from Australia and around the world.”

And a merry Father's Day to all y'all.