What's A Little Corruption Between Friends?

We are a banana republic without the bananas:

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said he will encourage the provinces to implement 10 days of paid sick leave per year as Canada deals with the COVID-19 coronavirus pandemic. This according to CP24.

Establishing paid sick leave meets a key demand from New Democratic Party Leader Jagmeet Singh. This appears to be a trade off, sick days in exchange for the NDP's support for a motion to limit sittings and votes in the House of Commons through the summer.

**

The federal government’s emergency-response benefit was originally pitched as a buffer for employed people who lost their jobs because of the pandemic and lockdown.

But thousands of Canadians on welfare and disability benefits are also receiving the $2,000-a-month payments, prompting a patchwork response from the provinces — and widely varying incomes for recipients across the country.

For some provincial governments, the little-known social assistance version of the Canada Emergency Response Benefit (CERB) has even meant a sudden windfall, courtesy of Ottawa.

Welfare and disability benefits recipients are only eligible for CERB if they made $5,000 in work income over the previous 12 months, and have lost most or all of that due to the pandemic. Sill, those who receive it are often making more than they were before.

**

Government efficiency at its best:

Federal 1-800 centres have improved their rate of dropped calls by not answering the phone. The president of Shared Services Canada, the federal IT service, said an undisclosed number of jobless callers seeking benefits received endless busy signals: “The call would never get dropped, it would just never get answered.”

**

On Friday, it was revealed that the Liberal Party was taking wage subsidy cash from the taxpayer wallet, along with the New Democrats and the Progressive Conservatives.

 

While addressing why his wealthy political party was taking taxpayer dollars, Trudeau said: "We know families across the countries depend on the jobs they do to pay groceries, pay for the rent... This is going to be an important part of the economy bouncing back, and that's what we're focused on."

Even for Trudeau, this is an awful answer and a complete deflection.

As I Was Saying Before

Yes, well ... :

If, indeed, Ontario and Quebec should slow down their relaunches because the coronavirus is not going away in those provinces, the attitude seems to be that the rest of the country should stay in some kind of solidarity lockdown whether they need to or not.

A sort of “We’re all in this together!” gesture. No thanks.

On Friday, New Brunswick Premier Blaine Higgs announced his province is moving to the third phase of it’s relaunch.

Effective immediately, New Brunswickers can expand social contact to include family and friends, although indoor socializing should be restricted to 10 or fewer people.

“Non-regulated health care professionals, including acupuncture and naturopath businesses, can reopen.” So can barbers, hairstylists, nail parlours, tattoo artists and spas.

Next Friday, gyms can reopen, as can swimming pools, yoga studios, saunas and water parks. And youth sports leagues can resume. All of those, though, with social distancing and sanitizing rules, of course.

Why not? New Brunswick only ever had a total of 121 cases of COVID-19, no deaths. And there is now just one active case.

If, as Higgs promises to do, the province continues widespread testing and contact tracing, why shouldn’t it reopen?

Why, it seems that sensible measures were taken and that is why the proverbial curve  has flattened.

Interesting.


Also:

Japan’s state of emergency is set to end with new cases of the coronavirus dwindling to mere dozens. It got there despite largely ignoring the default playbook.

No restrictions were placed on residents’ movements, and businesses from restaurants to hairdressers stayed open. No high-tech apps that tracked people’s movements were deployed. The country doesn’t have a centre for disease control. And even as nations were exhorted to “test, test, test,” Japan has tested just 0.2 per cent of its population — one of the lowest rates among developed countries.

Yet the curve has been flattened, with deaths well below 1,000, by far the fewest among the Group of Seven developed nations. In Tokyo, its dense centre, cases have dropped to single digits on most days. While the possibility of a more severe second wave of infection is ever-present, Japan has entered and is set to leave its emergency in just weeks, with the status lifted already for most of the country and Tokyo and the remaining four other regions set to exit Monday. ...

Experts consulted by Bloomberg News also suggested a myriad of factors that contributed to the outcome, and none could point to a singular policy package that could be replicated in other countries.

Nonetheless, these measures still offer long-term lessons for countries in the middle of pandemic that may yet last for years. ...

Although political leadership was criticized as lacking, that allowed doctors and medical experts to come to the fore — typically seen as a best practice in managing public health emergencies. “You could say that Japan has had an expert-led approach, unlike other countries,” Tanaka said. ...

If a deadlier second wave does follow, the risk factor in Japan, which has the world’s oldest population, remains high. The country has speedily approved Gilead Sciences Inc.’s remdesivir and is now scrambling to allow the use of still unproven Fujifilm Holdings Corp.’s antiviral Avigan. There are calls for the country to use the time it has bought itself to shore up its testing and learn in the way its neighbors did from SARS and MERS.

Why, it looks as though Japan was proactive and not stunted, timid or hesitant.

Unlike certain countries north of the United States one might be familiar with.

An Inconvenient Truth

From this:

“There were (two) patients who were dead in their beds,” the source added. “Their deaths had not been recognized. There were patients who had fallen on the floor. There were patients who hadn’t had any basic care for a number of days, diapers that hadn’t been changed for three or four days, excrement that was covering their skin and patients who hadn’t been fed.

**

Mary Carr of Pinecrest Nursing Home says there have been no changes at the 65-bed facility since her last update on Friday. Since an outbreak was declared on March 20, the facility has endured the loss of 28 residents due to COVID-19 complications. A spouse of a resident also died due to COVID-19, according to the Haliburton, Kawartha, Pine Ridge District Health Unit.

 
To this:

Military personnel sent to nursing homes in Ontario have observed shocking conditions, including “blatant disregard” for infection control measures, mistreatment of residents and a level of care described as “horrible,” according to documents obtained by Global News.

Canadian Armed Forces teams deployed to five of the province’s worst-hit long-term care homes to help control COVID-19 have raised concerns about each of the facilities, describing the care as ranging from below best practices to “borderline abusive, if not abusive” and worse, the documents show. ...

The soldiers reported witnessing cockroaches, flies, rotten food, as well as residents left in soiled diapers or crying out for help for lengthy periods, the documents allege. At one facility, residents had not been bathed in weeks, they said.

Staff at a Brampton nursing home allegedly recorded a Taylor Swift Dance Video showing them dancing through the facility, passing between areas deemed infected with COVID-19 and area that were uninfected without wearing any protective equipment, the documents claimed.  ...

The report released by the Ontario government gave failing grades to the Hawthorne and Eatonville care homes for improper Infection Prevention and Control measures as recently as May 24.

Now about that:

Military sources tell Global News that the letter warning Minister @BillBlair's office was sent May 14th. I have a copy of the letter dated May 14th. Public Safety has just called me to say they did not receive a copy until May 22nd. Have asked for date on their letter...

— Mercedes Stephenson (@MercedesGlobal) May 26, 2020

Already there are calls for the government - the same one that launched Canada into the COVID-19 mess that it is in now - to take over nursing homes (as if that would help here: One of Canada's largest long-term care operators is owned by a federal Crown corporation) but that misses the larger moral point and that is this: we have devalued all human life and paid only the merest lip service to the compassion we ourselves are supposed to possess. We act as though kicking the can down the road and outsourcing the care we are supposed to have for one another supplants for actual concern.

The universe does not forget what we do here today.




(Merci)

Isn't It Time to Punish China?

What more does it have to do to the world before we tire of these antics?:

The United States should stop wasting time in its fight against the coronavirus and work with China to combat it, rather than spreading lies and attacking the country, the Chinese government's top diplomat Wang Yi said on Sunday.

(Sidebar: shut up, Wang.)

**

Since early 2020, China has been doubling down on its already extreme suppression of religious freedom, and the Covid-19 outbreak has done nothing to curb the Chinese Communist Party's (CCP) enthusiasm. If anything, the virus outbreak has served as an excuse to crack down even more on freedom of religion.

In February, for instance, officials came to inspect whether a church in Henan province was implementing lockdown instructions, but, according to one church member interviewed by Bitter Winter, "seeing some bible verses written on a blackboard they said, 'China is the land of the Communist Party, and we are not allowed to hold religious beliefs'". The officials then "smashed everything in the venue and left, locking the door..."

**

Hong Kong police fired tear gas and water cannon to disperse thousands of people who rallied on Sunday to protest against Beijing’s plan to impose national security laws on the city. 

In a return of the unrest that roiled Hong Kong last year, crowds thronged the Causeway Bay shopping area in defiance of curbs imposed to contain the coronavirus. Chants of “Hong Kong independence, the only way out,” echoed through the streets. 

To Communist Party leaders, calls for independence for the semi-autonmous city are anathema and the proposed new national security framework stresses Beijing’s intent “to prevent, stop and punish” such acts.

Japan, We Have A Deal For You

We have oil we need to pass on to you.

Forget Justin. He can't tell you apart from his Chinese bosses:

For Japan, which relies on imports for virtually all of its oil, lower prices are positive for the economy and stimulate economic activity, working similarly to tax cuts, according to Tomomichi Akuta, senior economist at Mitsubishi UFJ Research and Consulting.

“But the negative impact of cheap oil prices is large for Japan, which relies heavily on the manufacturing industry,” Akuta said.

The nation paid ¥7.98 trillion for oil over the course of fiscal 2019, amounting to about 3 million barrels of crude per day at an average price of $67.82 a barrel, according to calculations by The Japan Times based on trade data issued by the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry.

If prices hover around $30 per barrel for this business year, which started in April, Japan might theoretically shave off more than ¥1 trillion in annual crude import costs — which could help shrink the goods trade deficit posted in each of the past two years.

Theoretically, that would put downward pressure on the prices of energy and manufactured goods, helping push up consumption and making travel cheaper.

But the benefits of cheaper prices to households and businesses would likely be limited, as oil demand has already fallen more than 10 percent due to requests from the government for people to adopt what it calls a “new lifestyle.” That new lifestyle includes telecommuting, even with the lifting of the state of emergency in 39 prefectures earlier this month, and in three more prefectures in the Kansai region on Thursday.

The lockdown won't last forever ... at least not in Japan.

 

"...as if a handful of voices suddenly cried out in anguish and suddenly no one cared."

An act of vandalism in Calgary:

 The black spray paint on the French portion of the stop signs in the Mission neighbourhood cover “arrêt,” which is French for “stop.”

I'll just leave this right here:

 

And this:

In November 2010, Trudeau told a Quebec television show that he was tired of Albertans running the country and that, whether it was Jean Chretien or Brian Mulroney, Canada is better off when Quebecers are running the country.

"Canada isn’t doing well right now because it’s Albertans who control our community and socio-democratic agenda. It doesn’t work," Trudeau said in French to interviewer Patrick Lagace on the Tele-Quebec program Les francs-tireurs (The Straight Shooters).

Lagace then asked Trudeau if he thought Canada was "better served when there are more Quebecers in charge than Albertans?"

Trudeau replied: "I’m a Liberal, so of course I think so, yes. Certainly when we look at the great prime ministers of the 20th century, those that really stood the test of time, they were MPs from Quebec… This country – Canada – it belongs to us."

This stop sign is written in Cyrillic. How will people know to stop?

This stop sign is written in Khmer. Now what are people going to do?

How Interesting

We've coddled generations to the point where their very brains are wrapped in cotton.

Earlier generations weren't so spoiled and they still survived:

Collective crises can sometimes have paradoxically positive effects on children, building character as much as destroying it.

Skeptical? Perhaps it’s time to re-read the classic longitudinal study "Children of the Great Depression.” Written by sociologist Glenn Elder, it mined data first collected in a study of 167 adolescents living in Oakland, California, in the 1930s. This cohort, born in 1920 and 1921, went from the prosperity of that decade to the economic calamity that followed it.

The study amassed staggering amounts of data on every single individual, their other family members, their psychological profile, their household income and expenditures, and social lives. Subsequent researchers tracked the kids into their 60s and beyond.

Elder’s contribution was to actually do something with the material that viewed these lives over the long run. He coded and analyzed the information that had been gathered, comparing different cohorts by measures such as social class and the economic hit sustained by the family. Then he compared how these experiences ran through these individuals’ lives as they grew up and started families of their own.

Many of these children directly experienced the ravages of the Great Depression: Parents lost jobs, families lost social status and downward mobility was commonplace, though some families largely escaped unscathed. Those not so fortunate tried, often unsuccessfully, to adapt: Mothers often took on jobs outside the house to help make ends meet, for example, while fathers took on menial work well below their training.

These changes drove additional shifts: Many girls assumed significant responsibilities within the home in their mother’s absence, while boys sought to work at part-time jobs. All of this was accompanied by want, deprivation and even hunger on a scale that most contemporary Americans would find unthinkable.

At the time, conventional wisdom held that these experiences would scar children for life. One psychoanalyst from the 1930s cited the "devastating effects of the breakdown of morale in parents,” and predicted that this generation would suffer permanent anxiety, fear, discouragement and loss of confidence. Simply put, they would never fully recover.

But that’s not what actually happened. Yes, Elder found that these children who grew up amid economic deprivation — defined as a loss of household income of 35 percent or more — carried the scars of their childhood. For example, they were more likely to exhibit anxieties about their social status and they worried more about the opinion of their peers than children who didn’t experience the same deprivation.

But what was far more striking about Elder’s findings was the fact that economic deprivation was correlated with greater success. As the boys in the study became men, they moved up the occupational ladder more quickly and aggressively than their more fortunate counterparts; they also took advantage of educational opportunities more readily as well. While this effect was most pronounced among middle-class children, working-class boys exhibited some of these same patterns.

The fate of the girls was different, though no less interesting. As they reached adulthood, girls from deprived backgrounds tended to gravitate toward careers as housewives — a function, Elder speculated, of the roles they had assumed in childhood. But in general, these same women tended to marry men from a higher social class than women who had escaped the worst of the Great Depression. This was a kind of success, at least by the sexist standards of the 1950s.

Finally, both men and women who sustained deprivation as children exhibited higher scores on psychological tests that measured resilience, determination and self-confidence. They also tended to be less defensive. Finally, they reported greater contentment and happiness later in life.

Facts Are Only Important If One's Government Isn't Already Crammed With Liars

Just .. wow ... :

The Department of Canadian Heritage admits it garbled a historical “fact” in a report to Parliament. Minister Steven Guilbeault tabled the claim Black people had a presence in Nunavut dating back 400 years. They didn’t: “You can’t pick and choose facts.”

From the party of blackface.

Fredrick Douglass, the esteemed Inuit social reformer - according to the Liberals.

But Doesn't Venezuela Already Have Oil?

Socialism - is there anything it can't ruin?:

The first of five tankers loaded with gasoline sent from Iran reached Venezuelan waters late Saturday, expected to temporarily ease the South American nation’s fuel crunch while defying Trump administration sanctions targeting the two U.S. foes.

It's Just Corruption

Indeed:

The federal government has taken new steps to make it easier for international students and other temporary foreign residents to receive emergency benefits, another sign of Ottawa’s determination to disburse the payments quickly and widely.

Such short-term immigrants need only give their word they have a valid work permit or have applied for a renewed one to obtain the Canada Emergency Response Benefit (CERB), says a memo sent this week to staff vetting the claims.

Good luck with that crackdown, guys.


Also:

From the Most Corrupt Government Ever Re-Elected

There are simply no words:

Brian Jones criticized Justin Trudeau in a column approved by his editors.

But then Justin Trudeau got very, very angry with his editors.

So they fired Brian Jones.

Because pleasing Justin Trudeau is required if they want that sweet, sweet bail-out cash from Justin Trudeau. https://t.co/sUtceQ761K

— Ezra Levant 🍁 (@ezralevant) May 23, 2020

 

Don't hurt Justin's precious feelings ... if you know what's good for you.

**

Despite warnings from national security experts that Canada needs a strategy to deal with hostile foreign takeover attempts post-coronavirus, Finance Minister Bill Morneau won’t say whether the government will consider keeping new rules in place after the economic crisis ends.

I guess that's not important, eh, Bill?

Also:

The coronavirus pandemic and the Chinese regime’s behaviour throughout are driving home the need for Canada and other Western allies to start “decoupling” from the country, says Canada’s former ambassador to China.

At the same time, David Mulroney warns the regime is using global focus on the pandemic to “demolish” its one country, two systems deal on the governance of Hong Kong.

(Sidebar: this Hong Kong.)


**

According to a recent report, “Farmers, growers and producers need to tap into current agricultural support programs to help with the fallout from COVID-19 before any more money can flow from the Liberal government, federal Agriculture Minister Marie-Claude Bibeau says.”

Keep in mind, Bibeau isn’t talking about new programs, she’s claiming that existing programs – the ones in place before the CCP Coronavirus Crisis – are enough.


Meanwhile, in almost every other possible area, the Liberals are massively expanding government support.

(Sidebar: ahem ...)

Compared to many others, farmers have received a paltry amount of government help, despite how important agriculture is to our nation.

**

The Canada Revenue Agency may withhold tax refunds for a year or more, a federal judge has ruled. The decision came in the case of a business denied a GST refund after auditors decided to review the company’s books: “This is for the Minister to decide.”

**

How generous!:

The OAS pension is a monthly payment available to those aged 65 and older who meet the Canadian legal status and residence requirements. OAS can be deferred for up to 60 months (five years) after age 65, in exchange for a higher monthly amount of 0.6 per cent for every month, up to a maximum of 36 per cent at age 70.

OAS is taxable and the current maximum monthly payment is $614. The OAS pension is subject to a “claw-back” based on income, such that in 2020 it is repaid at a rate of 15 per cent when net income (before certain adjustments) is above $79,054, and is fully eliminated once income is more than $128,137.

Why Are We Still Locking Down Entire Countries?

Before one begins, here are a few basic facts about the coronavirus:

Coronaviruses are viruses with ribonucleic acid (RNA) for genetic material. The common cold (which, to date, has no cure) is one such RNA virus. The strain being discussed here is COVID-19. It is caused by SARS-CoV-2. It causes upper respiratory infections. It is spread through personal contact. Sneezes, coughs or touching a surface with the virus on it could spread the virus. There are several symptoms of this particular coronavirus: coughing, shortness of breath, fever, headaches, muscle pains, nausea and diarrhea. In the worst cases, the coronavirus can cause respiratory failure and what is called a cytokine storm when an infection causes one's immune system to flood the bloodstream with inflammatory proteins called cytokines which can kill tissue and damage organs. As the virus is new, there is no immunity yet to it. Most of the infection cases are of people who over sixty-five years old, have diabetes, high blood pressure or cardiac and respiratory problems. This is not to say that younger patients without pre-existing health problems are not affected. The measures considered to be effective in not getting the coronavirus include distancing one's self from others, hand-washing, cleaning surfaces well and wearing protective garb such as gloves and masks. It is now believed that patients are not infectious after eleven days.

The virus originated in China, more than likely a laboratory, and could have been spreading since October 2019.

The first reported case of the coronavirus was on January 27th, 2020. The patient came from Wuhan, China.

Canada did not seal its border with the United States until after March 17th despite strenuous objections from health minister Patty Hajdu and Trudeau, both of whom believed that closing the border and stopping flights from other countries (which have not been stopped) were ineffective measures and would only cause social discomfort. It should be noted that neither are medical or scientific professionals.

A debate on Canada's preparedness, particularly the stockpile of masks and other protective garb, and Trudeau's offering China sixteen tonnes of protective garb, has been a subject of heated yet stifled discussion.

As of this writing, there have been 85,091 confirmed cases, 34,933 active cases, 43,705 recovered persons, 1,537,404 tests (out of a population of 37 million) and 6,453 deaths. Nunavut is the only territory that has no infections or deaths whereas Quebec has suffered the lion's share of coronavirus deaths at 62%.

Considering these facts, after nearly three months of forced isolation, isn't it time to re-consider the strategy that did not result in fewer deaths, fewer hospitalisations, the re-introduction of Canadian-manufactured medical equipment and pharmaceuticals, better and more widespread testing and no shutting down of the economy?

Did it even work?:

Michael Levitt, a Stanford University professor who correctly predicted the initial trajectory of the pandemic, sent messages to Professor Neil Ferguson in March telling the influential government advisor he had over-estimated the potential death toll by "10 or 12 times".

The Imperial College professor's modelling, a major factor in the Government's apparent abandoning of a so-called herd-immunity policy, was part of an unnecessary "panic virus" which spread among global political leaders, Prof Levitt now tells the Telegraph.

Prof Levitt, a British-American-Israeli who shared the Nobel prize for chemistry in 2013 for the "development of multiscale models for complex chemical systems", has said for two months that the planet will beat coronavirus faster than most other experts predict.

"I think lockdown saved no lives," said the scientist, who added that the Government should have encouraged Britons to wear masks and adhere to other forms of social distancing.

"I think it may have cost lives. It will have saved a few road accident lives - things like that - but social damage - domestic abuse, divorces, alcoholism - has been extreme. And then you have those who were not treated for other conditions."

Indeed, the American experience echoes the British one. More suicides and suicide attempts were reported than previously. Didn't anyone ask if the lockdown could be gradually lifted to avoid these deaths?

But did the lockdown prevent overwhelming the healthcare system with coronavirus cases?

In some cases, mostly in hot zones like China or Italy, hospitals were overwhelmed with patients. However, that hasn't been the case everywhere. Although the US has more testing and therefore more coronavirus patients, a hospital ship and even hospitals in Dallas saw few or no patients. In Canada, people were warned to stay away from emergency rooms which has led to a rise in unrelated coronavirus deaths or conditions.

So how did infections rise in some places? With churches and schools shut, most workplaces closed and only stores and other services deemed essential, how did store-workers get sick? Could shoppers not monitored for infection and not wearing protective garb have spread the virus? Weren't these measures initially balked at by the Liberal government not enforced in private businesses?

It is suggested that the more elderly the population and the fewer sanitary measures taken daily, the higher risk for the spread of the coronavirus. Couple that with no to little protective garb, lackadaisical and untimely testing ("Be caring", Doctor? To what end? It will take weeks to test and weeks for the virus to exhibit the first symptoms), and one has higher infections where other regions are seeing fewer infections.


While the United States and Europe are cautiously re-opening, Canada remains quite tentative. Canadians were glad to tow the line when the weather was cold but now would rather not. It seems that they were willing to follow the rules when it suited them, not because they were logical.


Inconsistency and hesitance has been Canada's game plan since January when firm evidence of the virus was well-known. The infection rate has not lowered in some places and the economy will crater out a lot sooner than one thinks.

Hasn't it occurred to anyone to draw up a new plan?

And the Rest of It

Frightening the easily fooled is what the Liberals do:

Conservative Party of Canada leadership candidate Leslyn Lewis has issued a letter slamming the Liberal gun ban.

In the letter, Lewis notes how the ban is all about “preying on the fears of parents and concerned Canadians,” while doing nothing to actually fight gun crime.

 A snowboard instructor convinced an entire country to hide from a virus that the Chinese spread.

What is the greater danger now - illegal guns or letting such imbeciles vote?



Of course there will be taxes. They will simply be hidden. That's all:

Finance Minister Bill Morneau yesterday vowed he will not increase taxes to pay for the largest deficit in Canadian history. Morneau set no new date for a financial report to Parliament after cancelling a planned March 30 budget due to the pandemic: “We have no plan to raise taxes.”

Normally, Liberals jump at the chance for an expensive and pointless inquiry:

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau won’t commit to a federal inquiry into the recent Nova Scotia shootings, even as the province’s premier continues to say it’s up to Ottawa to take the lead in examining the tragedy.

Nova Scotia’s premier said this month he would not initiate a public inquiry into the shooting rampage that claimed 22 lives last month, saying the province is waiting to see what Trudeau’s government decides.

Stephen McNeil is a useless @$$hole.




The party system in Canada has failed its citizen. It is nothing more than a collection of mouth-breathing tribes.

It is time for Members of Parliament to run as independents:

Just a day after an Ontario judge overturned the Conservative Party’s disqualification of Jim Karahalios from its leadership race, the party has once again disqualified him.

Ontario Superior Court Justice Paul Perell quashed the party’s initial disqualification of Karahalios because the decision was made by a subcommittee that didn’t have the authority to do so.

However, the decision left open the possibility of the party’s 18-member leadership election organizing committee (LEOC) taking up the matter and choosing to disqualify Karahalios through the proper means. LEOC met on Thursday and decided to do exactly that.

What is it with Canadians smuggling drugs into Australia?:

Canadian drug smugglers were caught trying to exploit the COVID-19 pandemic by mailing methamphetamine to Australia hidden in care packages of coronavirus protection equipment.

Two shipments of face masks and large bottles of hand sanitizer were caught at an Australian mail sorting facility with the highly addictive street drug hidden inside, border guards said.

A package mailed from Canada was inspected in Sydney on May 6. Its label said it contained medicine and clothing, but inside agents found boxes of medical masks and bottles of hand sanitizer.

They're like people!:

At first, a Belgian man thought the noise coming from his outdoor planter was pesky pigeons. Turns out, it was Europe’s largest owl — four of them.

One of the world’s largest owls, the Eurasian eagle owl, set up camp in Jos Baart’s third-storey apartment planter. Since the mother owl’s three gigantic chicks hatched, they’ve taken to watching TV through the window with their new landlord.

In video footage shared by Dutch nature show Vroege Vogels (or Early Birds in English), the huge, fluffy chicks can be seen standing at attention in a row, eyeing the television screen over Baart’s shoulder.

Crime Is More Effective With Better Spelling

I have seen more grammatical and spelling errors in online posts written by people who are allegedly English-speaking adults (don't get me started on cohesive writing) than anywhere else.

Errors such as incorrect or lack of capitalisation, pluralising things with an apostrophe and an S, using "that" instead of "who" when referring to people, using "less" instead of "fewer" when speaking of countable nouns, the lamentably far-too-common misuse of your/you're, there/their/they're ...

It all drives me mad. These errors stand out so much that it is hard to get to the matter of what was written.

This bane leads me to this:

Mississippi investigators found the words “Bet you stay home now you hypokrits” spray-painted on the parking lot of a Holly Springs church that burned down early Wednesday morning, a month after the church had legally challenged the city’s stay-at-home orders.

Yes, I suppose that they will now that you have razed their house of worship to the ground for no reason.

Would the beginning of the sentence be better had it started with a noun or pronoun? Is a comma before the misspelled insult too much to ask for? 

After gathering evidence, how will the police apprehend the suspects? Will the (allegedly) guilty parties be given a simple spelling quiz and released only if passed?

It's a start.

Wow, Canada Totally Has a Handle On This Coronavirus Thing

When will Canadians go into hiding again?:

Clues are piling up about how governments plan to battle a second wave of the novel coronavirus in the face of a population weary of lockdowns.

“There’s an overwhelming sense internally that people won’t take to a second lockdown,” said the official in the Ontario government. “One thing is for certain we need to give the public some freedom or they won’t accept even basic limits.”

Oh, we wouldn't want that, would we?


Also:

Certainly, many Canadians seem antsy about taking steps toward something approaching normal: in a survey of 2,000 Canadians released this week by Carleton University researchers, 79 per cent agreed it’s more important “to minimize avoidable illness and death” than restart the economy prematurely, while 21 per cent expressed a preference for “getting the economy going again,” even if it means more sickness and death.

It's this sort of "journalism", this intellectually and morally dishonest screed-writing that makes people sour off of the bribed press and livid when they have to bail out publications.

Stop depicting people who want to restart the economy as callous and insensible. The entire country has forced everyone into house arrest without doing anything solid to prevent further infections and deaths like stopping all flights from China, the hot zone of this virus, sealing the border, enforcing quarantines for the possibly infected, moving all medical equipment and pharmaceutical production back to Canada where it belongs, maintaining a stockpile of protective equipment (and not lying about it), demanding the wearing of gloves and masks while on errands and  - most crucially - firing the incompetent and partisan mouthpieces who have had more interest in defending China than they have in making some hard decisions that might offend that paper dragon.

What has been accomplished in this nearly three-months long imprisonment? Many elderly people have died alone. People in urgent need of heart operations have died. Even the newly stalwart breed of store-workers have been getting ill or dying.

How long will the economy be shut down because people don't want to re-evaluate what has worked and what hasn't?




Canadians are like children who think that money magically appears:

By a 2 to 1 margin (64% to 36%), Canadians want governments to spend whatever is required to rebuild and stimulate the economy, even if it means running large deficits for the foreseeable future, rather than reduce spending and get the budget deficit in control, even if it means a slower recovery.

Enjoy being Venezuela, Canada.




That doesn't sound like you have nothing to hide:

During a meeting of the government operations committee, NDP MP Matthew Green asked Tam if she had advised the government on the emergency national medical stockpile being underfunded.

Then, stunningly, Hajdu interjected, blocking Tam from answering and saying it was ‘confidential.’

Patty Hajdu will resign to "be with family" and then take a lucrative position with a Chinese company.

Calling it now.




The government is crammed to the rafters with craven, money-grubbing scum:

Facing a significant drop in donations during the COVID-19 pandemic, the federal Liberal, Conservatives and New Democratic parties have all applied for the Trudeau government’s wage subsidy.

**

Blanchet’s obvious disinclination to have anything to do with Conservative Leader Andrew Scheer, and his equally obvious “at-homeness” with Trudeau, is the Liberals’ security blanket. What else has allowed the Liberals to upend the venerable traditions of Parliament and go on a spending spree that isolates their administration as the Imelda Marcos of modern democracies? ...

Now Blanchet, as leader of the Bloc and messiah of a broken Canada, is no friend of the Canadian Parliament. His sleep must be a playground of dreams for the day when Ottawa’s Parliament is no more; that, separatism triumphant, the Canada we have known for a century and a half, and the Parliament which has been its instrument and protector, are both shells of their former glory.

So what does he do, what arrow does he draw from his tactical quiver, to bring Trudeau to heel on the Bloc’s latest demands? What menace can he present to the prime minister, what scourge so fearful, that Trudeau must succumb to his, Blanchet’s, pleadings?

Well, (can the Sergeant-at-Arms do a drumroll, please) here it is:

“The Bloc Québécois is threatening to support a resumption of in-person sittings of the House of Commons five days a week if the Trudeau government doesn’t agree to a number of demands.”

Do what he wants or you will all have to go back to work?

Unbelievable.

From the Most Corrupt, Opaque and China-Pandering Government Ever Re-Elected

Canada's closeness to China began with Pierre Trudeau and his love for Mao Tse Tung , the dictator who presided over the bloodbath that was the Cultural Revolution and a famine that claimed at least forty-five million lives.

The relationship turned lucrative with Liberals who outlasted the elder Trudeau and gushing with the younger Trudeau who in 2013 declared his undying love for China's "basic dictatorship" to throngs of pasty, white liberal women who would never be on the receiving end of Chinese men buying consorts as North Korean women are.


Leap ahead (see what I did there?) to 2020.

China is desperate to get out of the spotlight. Questions about the coronavirus it may have known about since October 2019, its own death toll, its silencing of critics, destruction of samples, its hoarding of personal protective equipment and profiting off of the virus have made it unpalatable to Western nations that once used cheap Chinese labour. Without Canada gladly standing in its corner, China would have felt very lonely indeed.

Now China faces another obstacle: its grip on Hong Kong, the rebel province that has been resisting it for years:

Hong Kong’s democracy activists have long warned that mainland China is eroding the liberties that have made the city unique. China’s security apparatus routinely imprisons people for demanding the rights they are guaranteed under the country’s own constitution, and the spectre of the city falling under a security law written by Beijing created alarm in Hong Kong. Activists said it amounts to the biggest incursion by China into Hong Kong since the city’s handover from Britain.

“It will make Hong Kong like mainland China,” said Emily Lau, a pro-democracy politician in the city. She warned that it threatens to “take away our freedoms, rule of law and personal safety.”

Once again, as with its rigorous defense of China's role in spreading the coronavirus, Canada offers a spirited defense of it:

As for the rest of us, the seven-point annexation manifesto finally presented on Friday at the third session of the 13th National People’s Congress in Beijing leaves no “let’s wait and see” pretext available, and Canadian Foreign Affairs Minister François-Philippe Champagne’s predictably robotic and empty utterances about “dialogue” count for nothing. It’s done.

(Sidebar: this.)

Canada's role on the world stage has been greatly diminished on the world stage since Trudeau assumed office in 2015 (his wasteful quest for a seat at the UN seems like a fool's errand and opposition against his getting that seat comes from the most unlikely sources - cheers) so it is doubtful anyone even heard what Champagne had to say (just like they didn't hear him say thank you to Taiwan but I digress ...).

Now that China has Hong Kong, will it hang onto it?

Though China is buying mines in Canada and possibly oil in Texas, those are not indications that China's economy is roaring. The virus is spread over the world has hit China quite hard, so hard that it will not set a target for economic growth this year:

China made a rare decision not to set a target for its economic growth for 2020 due to uncertainties about the impact of the coronavirus.

That doesn't sound like a country whose economy is in full swing.

Militarily, China is stretching itself. It has been called a "paper tiger" because though it might seem that it has amassed a massive army and has plenty of weapons, it cannot deploy either of these on the scale that the US can.

With China gradually about to burst, is its actions towards Hong Kong swatting a pesky nuisance or a show of power to ward off suspicion?

Well, That's Interesting

But, thanks to an exclusive investigation into consulting contracts, we know that five months before Trudeau cancelled the new jets for the Snowbirds, the government was searching for advice on how to keep the aging jets in the sky. The information comes from a December 2017 Request for Procurement taken directly from the government contracts website seeking vendors to engage with and offer advice on how to maintain the CT-114 Tutor fleet beyond 2020.  

The contract admits aviation mechanics have been “cannibalizing” ten CT-114s to keep the others in the air.  

The contract has a strong secrecy clause. Liberals didn’t want the media finding out they were never going to upgrade the CT-114s before the information was made official: 

“Canada requires Participants to NOT reveal or discuss any information or documentation to the Media regarding the J85-CAN-40 Propulsion Group Sustainment (PGS) Program during this Industry Consultative process. If Participants receive a question from the Media, Participants are to direct the Media to contact the PSPC Media Relations Office”  

The secrecy clause worked. Canadians didn’t find out about the Liberal plan to keep CT-114s flying until 2030, until the news broke May 2018, five months after this contract for advice was posted.   

The Forgotten People

Canada has made it a point to forget about the Yazidis.

Now, investigators have put together a case against the people who nearly wiped them out:

This was Hajji Abdullah, a religious judge at the time and labeled one of the architects of the militant group’s enslavement of Iraq’s Yazidi religious minority, who rose to become deputy to IS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi. He’s believed to be the late al-Baghdadi’s successor, identified only by the pseudonym Abu Ibrahim al-Hashimi al-Qurayshi.

A group of investigators with the Commission for International Justice and Accountability is amassing evidence, hoping to prosecute IS figures for crimes against humanity, war crimes and genocide -- including Hajji Abdullah.

Hajji Abdullah was previously accused of involvement in the slave trade, most notably in a wanted poster circulated by the U.S. setting a $5 million bounty on his head. But his prominence in the creation and oversight of the slave trade has never been spotlighted.

“IS fighters didn’t take it upon themselves to rape these women and girls. There was a carefully executed plan to enslave, sell, and rape Yazidi women presided over by the highest levels of the IS leadership,” said Bill Wiley, executive director and founder of CIJA. “And in doing so, they were going to eradicate the Yazidi group by ensuring there were no more Yazidi children born.”

CIJA shared some of its findings with The Associated Press. The group, through IS documents and interviews with survivors and insiders, identified 49 prominent IS figures who built and managed the slave trade, as well as nearly 170 slave owners, including Western, Asian, African and Arab fighters. These also include top financiers, military commanders, local governors and women traders, many of them from the region neighboring the Yazidi community’s villages.

Why Don't You Do It?

Seriously?:

While parents need to figure out what works best for their own unique situations, taking on the role of a teacher isn’t expected or necessarily beneficial, said Kristina Llewellyn, a social development studies professor at the University of Waterloo.

“We don’t want parents having to take on the burden, thinking they’re responsible for all those learning outcomes,” she told Global News.

But they are.

Parents are the primary educators. That has always been their responsibility and it always should be.

Why do they outsource every aspect of their children's lives to people who never answer calls or respond to e-mails?

If the teachers complain that reviewing children's homework would be a burden, well, that's a red flag right there.

What could be the reason for that deflection?


Also:

As a pragmatic, short-term move, keeping the schools closed for the current school year was the right thing to do. There is not enough to be gained educationally to open them for just a few weeks before summer break. That’s the point Ford should have made this week, and he should also have taken the opportunity to begin the challenging task of reassuring parents.

A Decision Expected In the Meng Wanzhou Case

Freedom day for the Huawei executive:

The British Columbia Supreme Court will release a key decision next week in the extradition case of Huawei executive Meng Wanzhou.

The court says Justice Heather Holmes will release on Wednesday her ruling on the issue of so-called double criminality.

More to come.