Comment of the Week

Speaking, I believe, of American affairs in general, although he may also have had pretty-face Justin Trudeau's scandal-plagued government in mind, or perhaps Thereason May's botched Brexit Britain, Theodore Beale writes:

The level of unmitigated stupidity and total lack of foresight on every side is simply astonishing. Even if you don't believe in God, you'd do well to pray, because neither science nor politics is going to get anyone out of this.

And as an atheist, I do support the advice to pray. It will surely light at least a small flame of hope.

Amazon, Book Burning, Jews, a Treasonous Western Elite, and the New World Order

Ron Unz, has a piece today, documenting evidence of corporate book burning: specifically, Amazon's engagement in the general corporate war on free speech. The piece starts well enough:

As most are surely aware, the last year or two has seen a growing crackdown on free speech and free thought across the Internet, with our constitutionally-protected First Amendment rights being circumvented through the agency of monopolistic private sector corporations such as Facebook, Twitter, and Google. Although as yet our government has not gained the power to ban discordant views nor punish their advocates, anonymous tech company censors regularly take these steps, seemingly based upon entirely opaque and arbitrary standards which lack any power of appeal. No one really knows why some individuals are banned or “de-platformed” and others are not, and surely this looming uncertainty has imposed self-censorship upon hundreds of individuals for every publicized victim who receives an exemplary punishment..

Unz then goes on to document several recent cases in which Amazon has burnt books, shoved them down the memory hole or otherwise made them unavailable to the significant portion of humanity that has come to rely on Amazon.com as the world's largest book distributor.

But Unz soon goes off on a theme he has often raised before; namely the evil influence of Jewry on American society.

The ADL ranks as one of our most formidable Jewish activist organizations, and according to media accounts it has been playing a central role in efforts to censor “hate speech” on leading Internet platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, and Google’s YouTube. So it seems very likely to have also been behind Amazon’s recent purge, especially once we discover the nature of some of the more significant books now banned.

I am not sure what to make of this. When Unz warms to the theme of Jewish malfeasance, his allegations are so inflammatory as to make one wonder about his intention. Is it to incite the kind of anti-Semitism that promotes Jewish community adhesion, or is it, rather, the honest view of a sensitive person of Jewish descent appalled by the history of Jews exploiting those among whom they live.

My own assumption is that it is the latter, although, I think it is a counterproductive and therefore unwise. There are plenty of Jewish sons-of-bitches, some of them in America very powerful. Moreover, there can be no doubt that are Jewish religious fanatics who are racial supremacists who encourage the kind of brutal extremism that motivates the relentless drive to expel Palestinians from their own homeland. But the broad implication that most Jews throughout dispersed among the Western nations are fundamentally disloyal to those among whom they dwell is seems to me not only unfounded, but must inevitably undermine the loyalty of Jews to the communities in which they live.

In fact, the death of the Christian West as a unique and powerful civilization is due, I maintain, not to Jewish manipulation, however, massive the Jewish role in the death of Christendom has been, but to the treason of the Western elites, overwhelmingly, people of non-Jewish extraction. Book-burner -in-Chief, Jeff Bezos of Amazon.com, for example is no Jew. Western non-Jewish elites have themselves trashed Christianity, and now believe in nothing much beyond money, sex and power, which means getting along by going along with whatever the Money Power demands, even if that means genociding your own people and trashing your own nation.

Indeed, the future of the Western nations would have been assured had Western elites adopted the ethnocentrism of Jews, however brutal that impulse has proved to be in Palestine today*.

 ———
* As I have argued elsewhere, since the Jews have successfully stolen Palestine, the plight of the Palestinians would best be relieved by finding them a new homeland, perhaps in Sinai, a land without a people that could readily accommodate the a people without a land, the transfer of population to be financed by the Western nations that supported the creation of the Jewish state of Israel in Palestine.

Related: 
Voice of Europe: Amazon’s modern day ‘book burning’ campaign against conservative authors
Russia Today: The West's Rejection of God Will End in Misery and Terror - Solzhenitsyn's Prophetic 1983 Warning
Russia Today: The Growing Effeminacy of the West Will Lead to a More Authoritarian State

Canada's Pretty-Face Leader to Face the Chop?

Loyalty is a basic ingredient of party politics, and the long domination of Canadian politics by the Liberals Party of Canada reflects the party's tradition of strict party discipline.

Thus, as former Prime Minister Jean Chrétien said when his leadership was questioned by the Liberal rank and file, "I am the Leader. What can they do?" To which question the answer is nothing — so long as the Liberals lead in the polls.

But when the polls turn, or an election is lost, Liberals make short shrift of the leader. Thus of Liberal leaders past, the last three, Martin, Dion, and Ignatieff, all were gone within months of an election loss.

Now, seven months before an election, the polls have turned against Trudeau. What to do? Boot the pretty boy for someone able to think their way out of a paper bag.

The technical grounds for a prime ministerial defenestration are today once again concisely set forth by Andrew Coyne. The truly sordid, indeed grossly evil, character of those whose actions have brought Justin Trudeau to a deserved final public appearance on the scaffold are set forth in this National Observer article, accessible today without a subscription by way of Bourque.org.

And

A further aggravating circumstance is that this was not a classic case of pure bribery. SNC knowingly enabled and overlooked monstrous tyranny and abuse. The company cannot pretend it was unaware of Gaddafi's vicious cruelty while expensing his son Saadi Gaddafi's prostitutes, lavish lifestyle, and showering him with millions of dollars a year. The company financed his soccer aspirations and sponsored his team despite widespread reports that, just a few years earlier, his bodyguards had opened fire on soccer fans for booing a referee favouring him. Between 20 and 50 were killed in the ensuing chaos.Then there was Bashir al-Rayani, a professional soccer coach who challenged Saadi Gaddafi in 2005, only to disappear shortly before his bludgeoned body was dumped near his home. According to witnesses, al-Rayani was last seen alive at Gaddafi's seaside villa. And still, the reported gusher of cash to Saadi from SNC-Lavalin never stopped. After the revolution, Saadi Gaddafi was charged with this murder, but acquitted at trial in 2018. From the Lockerbie bombing of the 80’s, to the prison massacres, the disappearances, the tortures and football killings, the systemic rape of young girls in the 2000’s, the blood trickled down through the decades, even through its brief years of Western “rehabilitation” after 9/11.

And why has Trudeau risked everything for SNC? 

According to bourque: 

SNC-LAVALIN IS LOOKING TO LAND A BIG DEAL

A deal that would be impossible for a company either convicted or on trial for bribery and corruption. And what's in it for Trudeau. LOL. Corruption is as Canadian as maple syrup, and the Trudeau Foundation is always open for donations.

Related:
Financial Post: Only a criminal trial will reveal whether SNC-Lavalin’s corruption infected the government, too

OECD: OECD will follow Canadian proceedings addressing allegations of political interference in foreign bribery prosecution
CBC: OECD 'concerned' by allegations Trudeau interfered in SNC-Lavalin case
Georgia Strait: Let's not kid ourselves—Justin Trudeau has been the MP for SNC-Lavalin for a very long time

US Democrat Calls Obama a Pretty-Faced Murderer Who Caged Kids

In the struggle for political power, it is rarely useful to deploy the unvarnished truth. But occasionally, for whatever reason, the truth will slip out, as when US Congresswoman Ihlan Omar described fellow Muslim and African, Barack Obama, as the brutal and ruthless person he actually is.

Minnesota Rep. Ilhan Omar ripped former President Barack Obama in an interview published Friday, belittling his “pretty face” and saying his agenda of hope and change was an illusion. She cited the “caging of kids” at the Mexican border and the “droning of countries around the world” on Obama’s watch — and argued that he wasn’t much different from President Trump “We can’t be only upset with Trump,” the freshman firebrand told Politico Magazine. “His policies are bad, but many of the people who came before him also had really bad policies. They just were more polished than he was,” Omar said. “And that’s not what we should be looking for anymore. We don’t want anybody to get away with murder because they are polished. We want to recognize the actual policies that are behind the pretty face and the smile.”

Why Religion Matters in the Age of Science

Here’s why a wise Darwinian need find no conflict between religious faith and pursuit of scientific truth. Indeed, it is a statement of why a wise evolutionist can be, and perhaps always should be, an exponent of religious faith:

Without a religious dimension, a commitment to human freedom is likely to be attenuated, too weak to make sacrifices in its name. Europe’s political elites especially, but its citizens as well, believe in freedom and democracy of course, but they are reluctant to put the “good life” on hold and put lives on the line when freedom is in need of a champion — in the Balkans, the Sudan, Darfur or, in the Middle East. The good of human freedom, by European lights, must be weighed against the risk and cost of actually fighting for it. It is no longer transcendent, absolute. In such a world, governed by a narrow utilitarian calculus, sacrifice is rare, churches go unattended and over time the spiritual capital that brought forth all that we know as the West is at risk of being lost. Let me name five things that might turn the tables and perhaps, even begin to, if I was so bold to suggest, revive Europe. First, coming to grips with its unique place in world history and renewing the importance and source of those original ideals. Second, some comprehension that culture matters and Europe’s culture has been the most formative for Western-Christian civilization, what used to be termed, Christendom. Third, accepting the social, political, economic and especially military responsibility of a great continent, now more and more united. Fourth, realizing the too evident demographic realities and Islamization and stepping up to reverse them so as to avoid an eventual Eurabia. And finally, and most critically in my estimation as a Christian, sparking the second great Reformation, spiritually such that there is a wider recognition of transcendence and a moving of the spirit of God across the whole continent from the western most shores of Portugal, Ireland and Britain to the eastern most steppes of Russia. I pray every day for such transformation and reawakening. Ted Malloch: The New Dark Age of European Progressivism

This statement draws urgent attention to the role of religion in determining the fate of civilizations. What it asserts is that religious faith, where it exists, through its influence on the behavior of both individuals and organizations alters the prospects for survival of human groups, whether they be families, tribes, or nations.

Evolutionists such as Richard Dawkins who deride religion because it is based on propositions that are inconsistent with scientific truth make a mockery of their own claimed scientific expertise. There is no reason why a religious faith should be based on literal scientific truth any more than nursery rhymes, fairy tales or epic poetry should be based on literal scientific truth. In fact, religion, like  nursery rhymes, fairy tales or epic poetry, would have little appeal without an element of the supernatural. What matters, from a Darwinian perspective, is how faith, or for that matter nursery rhymes, fairy tales, or epic poetry, serves to shape individual and group behavior.

In abandoning Christianity, the West has abandoned belief in absolute values of right and wrong for the Humean proposition that "honesty is the best policy but the wise knave will take advantage of every exception." In fact, the condition of the post-Christian West, indeed the anti-Christian West, is even worse than that. Today, far from considering it knavish to be relentlessly self-serving, many consider it stupid to be otherwise. We know where that led the Soviet Union, but benighted rulers in the West unhesitatingly lead in the same direction.

That is not to say that all religions are equal. Some religious beliefs can no doubt be highly detrimental to human group survival, the Ebionite heresy, for example, which eschewed marriaged and child raising. There is little reason to doubt, however, that much of what has been best in Western civilization was the work of Christians and often inspired by religious ideals.

Gerald Butts Offers Serpentine Explanation for Quitting as Trudeau's Brain

Asked by Liberal MP, Randy Boissonnault, during Wedenesday's Parliamentary Justice Committee hearing why he quit his job as the Prime Minister's Principal Secretary, Gerald Butts offered this gem of snake-like obfuscation:

I think I was put in a position where I had to ask my colleagues to fight another colleague over accusations a colleague was making, and I think that put the prime minister in an impossible position given the nature of our friendship.

Which interpreted, means:

I was put in a position = 

Justin wanted this.

I had to* ask my colleagues to fight another colleague =

I persuaded various cabinet minsters to make snide comments about then Justice Minister and Attorney General, Jodie Wilson-Raybould, with the intention of making the obdurate bitch resign from cabinet, thereby making way for some malleable tool who would follow directions and tell the Director of Public Prosecutions to drop the prosecution of SNC-Lavelin on charges of bribery and corruption, as conviction would have detrimental consequences for the Prime Minister.

over accusations a colleague was making =

The accusation being the fully justified objections that Jodie Wilson-Raybould had addressed to the Prime Minister and others, concerning efforts by Butts, the Head of the Civil Service, the Minister of Finance, the Deputy Minister of Finance, the Prime Minister's legal advisers, and the Prime Minister himself to interfere in the independent action of the Attorney General and the Federal Prosecution Service concerning the ongoing prosecution of SNC-Lavalin on charges of bribery and corruption. 

and I think that put the prime minister in an impossible position given the nature of our friendship =

It would have been totally out of character for me to have instigated the campaign of vilification against Jodie Wilson-Raybould without the Prime Minister's knowledge and approval, therefore, as a longtime close friend of the Prime Minister I am resigning to create the impression that the whole dirty scheme was entirely my own idea and carried out contrary to the commitment of the Prime Minister (if any) to the rule of law, even when the application of the law causes him a massive pain in the arse.

———

* Note the reference to compulsion: "I had to." In other words, what Butts did appears to have been something contrary to his own judgement of what was right, and must, therefore, have been ordered by the Prime Minister.

Related:

CBC: SNC-Lavalin loses bid for judicial review of prosecution decision

Make Trudeau a Drama Teacher Again

Related:
TOP 5 WORST Things Trudeau Has Done As Prime Minister

Craig Murray Reviews the UK Government's Account of the Skipal Poisonings and Finds It Largely Absurd and Obviously False

Craig Murray, dissident former UK Ambassador, titles his latest review of the Skipal poisonings:

Pure: Ten Points I Just Can’t Believe About the Official Skripal Narrative 

Why he uses the word pure, I'm not sure, but as I recall from a history of the Victorian era, a means whereby poor city dwellers might earn a living was to collect dog shit, which they could sell for a shilling a bucket to tanneries, where it was used it to cure skins being made into leather. This useful commodity was known in the trade as pure. My assumption, therefore, is that Murray's use of the word pure indicates his view of the composition of the "official Skripal narrative."

In any case, Murray's provides a well informed examination of ten significant aspects of what he describes as a dark business. 

Governments play dark games, and a dark game was played out in Salisbury which involved at least the British state, Russian agents (possibly on behalf of the state), Orbis Intelligence and the BBC. Anybody who believes it is simple to identify the “good guys” and the “bad guys” in this situation is a fool. When it comes to state actors and the intelligence services, frequently there are no “good guys”, as I personally witnessed from the inside over torture, extraordinary rendition and the illegal invasion of Iraq. But in the face of a massive media campaign to validate the British government story about the Skripals, here are ten of the things I do not believe in the official account.

Murray's review is both informative, and  in a macabre way, amusing. 

The very first person to discover the Skripals ill on a park bench in Salisbury just happened to be the Chief Nurse of the British Army, who chanced to be walking past them on her way back from a birthday party. How lucky was that? The odds are about the same as the chance of my vacuum cleaner breaking down just before James Dyson knocks at my door to ask for directions. There are very few people indeed in the UK trained to give nursing care to victims of chemical weapon attack, and of all the people who might have walked past, it just happened to be the most senior of them!

Of particular interest are points considered rarely if at all by other commentators, Murray, for example,  points out the suggestive connections that Sergei Skripal had with the BBC, the British foreign intelligence service, MI6, and the creators of the anti-Trump Russian dossier.

In conclusion, Murray states:

I do not know what happened in Salisbury. Plainly spy games were being played between Russia and the UK, quite likely linked to the Skripals and/or the NATO chemical weapons exercise then taking place on Salisbury Plain yet another one of those astonishing coincidences. What I do know is that major planks of the UK government narrative simply do not stand up to scrutiny. Plainly the Russian authorities have lied about the identity of Borishov and Petrov. What is astonishing is the alacrity with which the MSM and the political elite have rallied around the childish logical fallacy that because the Russian Government has lied, therefore the British Government must be telling the truth. It is abundantly plain to me that both governments are lying, and the spy games being played out that day were very much more complicated than a pointless revenge attack on the Skripals.

The Character of Mr. Trudeau's Closest Associate

It tells much of a man, the kind of people he seeks to have around him. This week, Canadians saw something of the quality of the man said to be not only the Prime Minister's closest friend, but until the week before last, the Prime Minister's Principal Secretary.

That man is Mr. Gerald Butts, and he came to public view while giving evidence, at his own request, before the Parliamentary Justice Committee. Here's one person's take on his character:

Mr. Butts ... was unctuous, slippery, flattering beyond bearing. Has he ever met a person for whom he doesn't have the highest regard and admiration, with whom he isn't friends, who isn't of the most sterling reputation and unassailable character.  He has not.  Christie Blatchford, NaPo, March 7, 2019

Not, perhaps, a personality best suited to advise a willful, inexperienced and none too bright leader. And surely not the best man to serve as the as the Prime Minister's whisperer.*

For the Liberal Party of Canada, the choice seems clear: drop Trudeau or lose in October by a landslide. The Conservatives, presumably, are rooting for Trudeau.
———
* In Ancient Rome, a slave would continuously whisper ‘Remember you are mortal’ in the ears of victorious generals as they were paraded through the streets after coming home, triumphant, from battle.

The Truth That Justin Trudeau's "Brain," Did Not Mean to Tell

Gerald Butts, former Principal Private Secretary to Prime Minister Trudeau, testifying before the Parliamentary Justice Committee to address charges that the Prime Minister's Office had improperly interfered in the work of the former Attorney General, opened with the words:

I can assure all members of this committee that I will tell the truth.

Oh good oh, now we can be confident of learning the unvarnished truth.

Butts then continued:

I would like to acknowledge that we are on the ancestral lands of the Algonquin people.

Wow! From a Prime Minister with a former Principal Secretary so sensitive to First Nations sensibilities, how could it be true, as alleged by the father of former Justice Minister and Attorney General, Jody Wilson-Raybould, the first First Nations person to serve in the Federal Government, that Justin Trudeau had kicked said Attorney General in the teeth?

In fact, from such a source, it seems hardly worthwhile to consider the specifics of his testimony. The guy is all spin and groveling flattery. But one thing he makes absolutely clear is that, in his view, government is not about facts and logic, but about ends. To the desired and predetermined ends, all facts and logic must be made to conform. And if that effort to create the Prime Minister's own reality does not at first succeed, then there must be meetings, and more meetings, and consultations, text messages, pressure even, and perhaps some interference in the course of justice, until the bullshit ultimately baffles brains. No wonder then that the Prime Minister's brains seem to be made of mush.

Clearly many liberals want out of this mess, and in particular, want new leadership. In 2015, after failed attempts by Martin, Dion, and Ignatieff, Trudeau, the man with the looks, the name, and the trendy SJW agenda, swept the liberals to power. But the promise far exceeded the performance, and in the wake of LavScam, the Libs face the possibility of a near wipe-out in the forthcoming fall election, their standing in the polls falling by the day. The sooner Trudeau steps aside to make way for a steady hand and level head at the helm, the better.

For the Conservatives, exactly the opposite consideration holds. The multi-balls-up Trudeau is their best hope of power under the leadership of the very pleasant and ineffectual-seeming Andrew Scheer. In the coming weeks, we may expect, therefore, to see the Tories offering little more than half-hearted criticism of Trudeau. Indeed, they must surely be hoping to see Gerald Butts, the PM's erstwhile brain, back at the PMO filling the PM's ear with soothing flattery and dreams of endless power.

Related:

Macleans: Paul Wells

... Taken together, Butts’s testimony adds up to a portrait of a governing inner circle that would not ever take a “no” from a director of public prosecutions as final. They would not ever take Jody Wilson-Raybould’s refusal to correct the prosecutor as final. They could not believe an important decision could be made in a week and a half. They could not, themselves, manage a cabinet shuffle in a much longer span of time, except by making a mockery of its central strategic imperative. And they can provide no evidence for the jobs claim that, to this day, Gerald Butts still uses to browbeat anyone who would disagree with the government’s behaviour throughout this saga. This was Team Trudeau’s best day since the saga began, because at least it featured somebody close to the Prime Minister speaking in complete sentences in a setting outside a campaign rally or a space-exploration news conference. I still found very little of it encouraging. ...

And this:

Trudeau's offer of Indigenous Services to Wilson-Raybould like 'asking Nelson Mandela to administer apartheid'

And this:

NaPo: Andrew Coyne

More than once in the course of his testimony to the Commons justice committee Gerald Butts said that he was not there to call anyone names or to cast aspersions on the character of Jody Wilson-Raybould. Which is why the prime minister’s former principal secretary confined himself to depicting her as sloppy, closed-minded and unco-operative, while heavily implying the former minister of justice and attorney general of Canada was a serial fabulist who said nothing to anyone about attempts to interfere with her authority over criminal prosecutions until after she was shuffled out of her “dream job” in January. Otherwise he might have gotten really nasty. ...

And this:

NaPo: Colby Cosh

...The government has tried to explain its belabouring of Wilson-Raybould as being perfectly appropriate. She was supposed to verrrry carefully consider the fate of 9,000 SNC-Lavalin jobs and a head office in Quebec, and then consider it again, and then consider it again. Butts tells us that they weren’t looking for a particular politically convenient answer, mind you.  They just stayed after her to keep reconsidering the answer she kept giving, explicitly or implicitly. They reassured her at every turn that the decision was hers. And then they got rid of her and made it someone else’s. ...

T


How much more punishment will the Liberals absorb before ditching Trudeau?

Danes Reject Race Replacement by Mass Immigration

Denmark, like all the Euro majority nations, has a below replacement fertility rate, yet in recent years, the country has had a substantial influx of refugees and immigrants. Danes, the people whose ancestors have inhabited Denmark for dozens of generations past, have thus, like other European-majority nations, been in the process of replacing themselves with people from elsewhere.

But apparently Danes have now opted to abandon this suicidal path. Instead, they have decided to require interlopers, whether refugees or economic migrants, to return whence they came. As a consequence, it may be expected that the population of Denmark will in the immediate future decline. However the absence of migrants will have many economic consequences including a rise in wages as labor competition is reduced, and a decline in housing demand and hence house prices. The consequence of these changes will be earlier and easier household formation, and likely, therefore, a rise in the birth rate until the population either stabilizes, or resumes growth through multiplication of the indigenous people of the country.

Thus, as the Voice of Europe reports:

In the future, the focus will be on sending migrants back to the third world – instead of “integrating” them. The focus will be shifted from integration to the return of refugees to their home countries whenever possible, said Peter Poornima, the Danish People’s Party’s group leader in Folketinget when the agreement was presented last autumn. The settlement also means that criminal migrants will be placed on a deserted island, that the so-called integration subsidy is reduced, that the number of family reunions for migrants will be limited, that residence permits as a rule becomes temporary and that it will be easier to withdraw permits and refrain from extending them. The package of legislation is the result of a settlement between the right-wing government and the Danish People’s Party. Together, the parties have a majority in Parliament. However, the Social Democrats will also vote for the changed rules. According to the Danish Minister of Finance Kristian Jensen, Denmark will no longer have a system in which “refugees become immigrants”.

So contrary to the policy of  the great majority of the Euro nations, the Danes have opted to continue their own race. There must be a few drops of Viking blood in Danish veins yet.

About Carbon Dioxide: We Got One Thing Right

A while ago we wrote several posts about the ongoing rise in atmospheric concentration of carbon dioxide. We said nothing about the impact this human-caused change in the chemical composition of the atmosphere might have on climate, as most people seem already to have a more definite opinion on that question than most of the rather small number of people somewhat familiar with the facts. But we did say, what is much less widely discussed or even recognized as a public policy issue, that rising carbon dioxide concentration would have a large impact on the biosphere, for the following reason:

... plants extract carbon dioxide from the atmosphere by diffusion. Assimilating atmospheric carbon dioxide by diffusion entails a challenge because, if there is a path for the carbon dioxide to diffuse from the atmosphere to the plant cell, there must, unavoidably, be a path for the loss of water by vapor diffusion from the plant cell to the atmosphere. This means that plants exchange water, which is usually in limiting supply, for carbon. Moreover, the rate of exchange depends directly on the concentration gradients of the two gases between plant cell and atmosphere. Therefore, if the atmospheric carbon dioxide concentration rises, the amount of carbon fixed by plants in exchange for the water available also rises.

This effect is greatest where plant growth is most severely restricted by drought. Much of Southern Africa, and particularly the Sahel, a broad belt of mixed shrubs and grasses to the South of the Sahara desert, is a severely water-limited habitat. By promoting carbon assimilation and hence plant growth in such water-limited habitats, rising atmospheric carbon dioxide concentration can have a big impact on ecosystem structure. That is because:

... some plants respond more vigorously to rising carbon dioxide concentration than others. Particularly responsive are woody species of arid habitats such as the Australian outback, the Sahel to the immediate south of the Sahara Desert, and the South American Savanna. This means that rising carbon dioxide concentration is changing the species composition of plant communities and thereby changing the composition of the animal communities that depend on the plants for food and shelter. The extent and significance of these changes has thus far, received barely any attention, but they will become increasingly obvious as the atmospheric carbon dioxide concentration continues its accelerating rise.

And has it ever become increasingly obvious. Or so it has been reported by scientists from the UK's Herriot Watt University. Put shortly, what they claim to have found is that almost 8,000 sub-tropical African plant species from an estimated total of about 23,000 species could become extinct within the next few decades.

Wow. Maybe we should be taking the CO2 thing more seriously.

Trudeauphobia

IPSOS Poll:
Most Canadians Want Trudeau Out
And 85% want a police investigation.

As Justin Trudeau informs the world that he is "still reflecting" on whether  Jody Wilson-Raybould  (the just resigned Justice Minister) can remain in the Liberal caucus, another senior female minister, Treasury Board President Jane Philpott, resigns from the cabinet of Mr. Feminist, as the Prime Minister was contemptuously labelled by a female MP, last week.

Thus the Prime Minister's support at the highest level of the Liberal Party seems to be seriously eroding. Will others go? Unless Trudeau goes first, others surely will. The reason? Short-term pain for long-term gain. Since Trudeau's corruptionist balls-up over SNC-Lavalin, the Liberal Party of Canada has gone from a slim lead in the polls as the October general election looms closer, to a seven percentage point deficit. Better, then, so some must surely be calculating, to quit the cabinet now in the hope of being reinstated under a new leader with a chance of recouping lost ground, than sticking with a sinking ship.

So who's next. Or will the Liberals weakly  follow the lead of Mr. Feminist, the Imposter and Phony-in-Chief as he has been rudely named, on a near certain journey down the tubes.

Maclean's: Paul Wells — Justin Trudeau, Imposter The story a few Liberals were telling privately, in the early hours after Jody Wilson-Raybould delivered her extraordinary testimony to the Commons justice committee about the endless procession of men who tried to make her cancel a criminal trial for SNC-Lavalin, was that she just didn’t get it. The former attorney general is a nice enough sort, the story went, but she doesn’t really understand the way the world works. The whole point of amending the Criminal Code to provide for deferred prosecution agreements (DPAs) was to make that option—a sort of negotiated fine in lieu of a trial for fraud and bribery—available to SNC-Lavalin. And if the option was available, why not use it? Jobs were at stake. Elections were at stake. Elections, plural, for Pete’s sake. First an election in Quebec last autumn, then a federal election this autumn. So you could drag SNC through the mud of a court trial, long after the individual executives who actually did any frauding and bribing had fled the company, for what? To visit punishments upon everyone else in the company? To maybe scare it out of Montreal for good? To endanger the jobs of thousands of fine upstanding Quebecers and other Canadians? On the eve of elections? Plural? All of this was just so obvious to everyone who leaned on Wilson-Raybould, it was said privately. What the heck was she missing? Why didn’t she get it? If it’s any comfort to the former attorney general, at least she can rest assured that she’s not the only person who didn’t get that blindingly obvious fix-the-Criminal-Code-to-suit-SNC-Lavalin-and-save-jobs-and-Liberal-hides connection. Because also out of the loop were the people of Canada. And if we were out of the loop, it’s because Justin Trudeau and his apparently inexhaustible supply of yes-men worked hard to keep us uninformed. Long story short, the government of Canada was telling one story to itself and another to Canadians. To themselves, they said they were protecting jobs. To the rest of us, they said they were getting tough. A government that indulges in that much sustained double-talk clearly thinks it has something to hide. It’s being disingenuous. It’s being phony. And since the lot of them never stop calling themselves #TeamTrudeau on Twitter, I guess we can, without fear of contradiction, say the Prime Minister of Canada has been the phony-in-chief. Read more

Related: 
NaPo: Trudeau gets a lesson in politics and principles
Canspeccy: Justin Trudeau, the Worst Canadian Prime Minister Since Pierre Elliot Trudeau

Quote of the Day:
Andrew Coyne: Monday morning the Prime Minister was musing aloud whether Jody Wilson-Raybould, having resigned from cabinet and laid bare the sordid inner dealings that make up the SNC-Lavalin affair, should be allowed to remain in caucus. By Monday afternoon, with the resignation of Jane Philpott, the question was whether he would still be allowed remain as prime minister. Read more

Newspaper Headline of the Week

Justin Trudeau’s disgrace is like watching a unicorn get run over For Canadian liberals, or indeed any of us who cling to outdated ideas such as good governance and liberal democratic values, it was like watching a unicorn get flattened by a lorry. Earlier this week, Canada’s undeniably gorgeous, halo-bound Liberal prime minister, Justin Trudeau – proud feminist, defender of minority rights, advocate for transparency, inclusivity and decency, and prince of the one-armed push-up– was morally eviscerated over four-hours of astonishing testimony by his own former attorney general and justice minister, Jody Wilson-Raybould – a woman of great integrity and a rare Indigenous Canadian cabinet minister. Read more

And here's another headline that gets to the point:

NaPo: Andrew Coyne: A Few Heads on Pikes Would Fix Things

Related:
Ottawa Citizen: MacDougall: SNC scandal is leaving a mark

... Stripped of its ability to straight-up buy influence, SNC returned to good old lobbyist shoe leather. The public registry is littered with SNC contacts with senior Trudeau officials over the past couple of years. To be clear, this is their absolute right. But it doesn’t mean it was right for Trudeau to acquiesce and give the company its preferred legal remedy, one, as it turns out, for which the company wasn’t eligible. This ineligibility is what formed the basis of the Sept. 4, 2018, decision by Kathleen Roussel, the director of public prosecutions, to decline an offer of remediation to SNC. Roussel could not consider the wider economic impacts of SNC’s troubles in her decision-making. For her part, Wilson-Raybould agreed, refusing to overrule Roussel’s decision. This refusal explains the three-month campaign within government to pressure Wilson-Raybould to change her mind. What should have been a final decision from Canada’s attorney general in September was continually revisited until December at the request of Trudeau’s office, Finance Minister Bill Morneau’s office and, we found out last week, the Clerk of the Privy Council. ... Read more

NaPo: Rex Murphy: The Trudeau virtuecrats come tumbling down
Mclean's: Andrew MacDougall: It’s time for Justin Trudeau to put his cards on the table

While Trudeau Tries Selling Canadians on the Virtues of Corruption, Five Former Attorney's General Call for a Police Investigation

Justin Trudeau and his palace guard have repeatedly claimed that prosecuting Québec-based engineering firm SNC Lavelin for bribery and corruption (including according to press accounts, the provision of whores, nude dancers, pornography and airline tickets for the delectation of Saadi Gadhafi, son of murdered Libyan dictator, Muammar Gaddafi) is contrary to the public interest, since it would, um, well discourage SNC Lavalin from engaging in similar bribery and corruption when seeking further work abroad.

SNC-Lavalin paid for the debauchery of Gaddafi's son while in Canada The Londoner: A report by Montreal’s La Presse newspaper says that SNC-Lavalin allegedly paid for a sex-filled trip across Canada for the son of the late Libyan dictator Muammar Gaddafi. “Naked dancers, porn movies and many, many, many prostitutes,” the story states.

The argument is that without the bribes, jobs would be lost. But whose jobs? Mostly, SNC Lavalin operates abroad and of those it employs abroad few are actually Canadian. So why should Canadians care?

Then there's the sob story from the Prime Minister's supporters about the poor suffering share-holders of SNC, poor sods, for whom not buying prostitutes for the worthless progeny of foreign dictators would mean lesser returns on their investment. What's more, failing to satisfy the apparently gross appetite of the likes of Saadi Gaddafi no doubt hurts the domestic white slave trade. 

So, no, let corruption blossom. 

Source: Canada — so pure: pure corruption-free blue. According to
perception. A perception our glorious leader wishes to change

Except, might not their heretofore reputation for stainless integrity be of value to Canadian firms seeking government contracts in at least a few countries? Are there no ruling elites that wish to uphold a reputation for honest dealing? In which case, isn't the prosecution of SNC Lavalin for bribery and corruption abroad a net positive for Canada?

So, apparently, some former Canadian Attorneys General seem to think. Indeed they're calling the cops on Trudeau. 

Related: 

Canadian Press: Former MUHC manager pleads guilty in SNC-Lavalin bribery case

Michelle Rempel, Calgary MP, Consigns Fake Feminist Trudeau to the Garbage Can of Canadian Political History — Brilliant:

Bourke Poll: 51% Want Wilson-Raybould As Interim PM

Bourque Poll: If Trudeau resigns or steps aside, should Jody Wilson-Raybould become interim PM & leader of Lib Party ?

 Most say "Yes."

Related: 

Toronto Sun: EDITORIAL —This mess is now a matter for the RCMP

Maclean's: The moral catastrophe of Justin Trudeau

What do you expect, when you elect a leader whose hero was the Communist Tyrant, Fidel Castro?

Justin Trudeau's Eulogy to Fidel Castro: “Fidel Castro was a larger than life leader who served his people for almost half a century. A legendary revolutionary and orator, Mr. Castro made significant improvements to the education and healthcare of his island nation. “While a controversial figure, both Mr. Castro’s supporters and detractors recognized his tremendous dedication and love for the Cuban people who had a deep and lasting affection for “el Comandante”. “I know my father was very proud to call him a friend and I had the opportunity to meet Fidel when my father passed away. It was also a real honour to meet his three sons and his brother President Raúl Castro during my recent visit to Cuba. “On behalf of all Canadians, Sophie and I offer our deepest condolences to the family, friends and many, many supporters of Mr. Castro. We join the people of Cuba today in mourning the loss of this remarkable leader.”

These are not the words of a man who respects the rule of law. They are the words of a wannabe tyrant.

Leader of the Opposition, Andrew Scheer: Trudeau Must Resign

LavScam: Former Attorney General Speaks

Toronto Sun: Canadian press: OTTAWA

Former justice minister Jody Wilson-Raybould says she came under relentless pressure — including veiled threats — from Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, his senior staff, the top public servant and the finance minister’s office to halt a criminal prosecution of Montreal engineering giant SNC-Lavalin. And she says she believes she was shuffled out of the prestigious justice portfolio to veterans affairs in January because she refused to give in to it. Wilson-Raybould made the stunning and detailed accusations in testimony Wednesday before the House of Commons justice committee, breaking three weeks of silence on the affair that has rocked the government, prompting her resignation from cabinet and the departure of Trudeau’s most trusted adviser. ...

Toronto Sun: LILLEY: Wilson-Raybould drops a bomb on Trudeau

Jody Wilson-Raybould says Justin Trudeau personally and directly pressured her to intervene in the prosecution of SNC-Lavalin, citing not only jobs but also the Quebec provincial election and his own electoral fortunes as reasons to cut the company a sweetheart deal. In a meeting on Sept. 17, 2018 with the PM and his top civil servant, Michael Wernick, Wilson-Raybould said the two men not only raised the issue of jobs being lost if SNC-Lavalin were to be convicted or leave Montreal, they also pointed to Trudeau’s own political future. “I am an MP in Quebec, the member for Paineau,” Trudeau told Wilson-Raybould. Senior officials in the PM’s office pushed her to give SNC-Lavalin what they wanted because the Liberal Party needed to make sure it was re-elected. “We can have the best policy in the world but we need to get re-elected,” Wilson-Raybould quoted Trudeau’s senior advisor, Mathieu Bouchard, as saying. Wilson-Raybould said she didn’t find discussion about jobs inappropriate but said political discussions crossed the line. ...

Or to paraphrase, screw the rule of law, these guys own us, the Liberal Party of Canada has received hundreds of thousands of dollars from SNC Lavalin, and there's more cash where that came from.

Related:

LavScam, Continued Coverage

We now have it from the Clerk of the Privy Council, the highest public servant in the land, that Canada's former Attorney General, Jodie Wilson-Raybould was, indeed "pressured,"  though without avail, to abort the prosecution of Québec-based engineering giant, SNC Lavalin, for bribery and corruption. As Andrew Coyne notes in the National Post, this fact raises some interesting questions as to what was supposed to happen next, had the soon to be demoted Attorney General caved to the pressure:

... As we have been discovering in recent days, in fact all sorts of pressure was applied to the former attorney general, Jody Wilson-Raybould — by the prime minister, by his officials, by the clerk — to politicize the prosecution of SNC-Lavalin. They just didn’t call it that, at least until now. Leave aside the legal and ethical considerations. I’m just interested in how they thought this would work. Suppose she had bowed to the “appropriate pressure” of the prime minister and his people and ordered the director of public prosecutions to drop all charges against SNC-Lavalin and negotiate a remediation agreement in their place. What would she, and they, have done when the DPP informed her this was not lawful, as the company had not met the conditions the law requires for her to enter such negotiations, having neither voluntarily disclosed its alleged wrongdoing, nor admitted corporate responsibility for it, nor made reparations to the people it had allegedly defrauded? Or when the DPP pointed out that the professed reason for SNC-Lavalin to be granted such leniency, the jobs that would allegedly be lost in Quebec, is expressly precluded by the same law? Or when she resigned rather than carry out an order she considered unlawful? Did they not think this would cause something of, I don’t know, a stir? Did anyone think this through? Suppose the DPP had not resigned, accepting instead this unprecedented assault on her prosecutorial independence, not to say her professional judgement. How was she supposed to negotiate a remediation agreement, if the endpoint – that SNC-Lavalin was to be let off on all charges — had already been decided? What bargaining leverage would she have? And how would anyone in government have explained all this when, as the attorney general is legally obliged to do whenever she gives instructions to the DPP regarding the “initiation or conduct” of a prosecution (assuming this even applies to the present situation), she made the order public? What reasons was she supposed to give? “I am overturning the prosecutor’s decision to proceed with charges of fraud and corruption against SNC-Lavalin because it will cost jobs in a province where we need to win seats, in an election year?” Did they not think this would cause something of, I don’t know, a stir? Did anyone think this through? Or never mind the public, or the prosecutor: how did they think they were going to explain it to a judge, whose consent is also legally required for any remediation agreement? But then it hit me. The answer, surely, is for the attorney general to talk to the judge. Or maybe the prime minister should, or one of his people. Not to direct him, of course: that would be wrong. But just to explain the context, if you will. The policy objective, after all, is to spare SNC-Lavalin from being convicted of a crime, owing to the serious disruption to its business model that would result if, merely because it had a history of bribing people to win public contracts, it were to be prevented from bidding on public contracts. Does it really matter, in pursuit of that overriding objective, whose independence has to take a hit: prosecutorial or judicial? I realize this suggestion will shock some people. Probably the same people were shocked when the allegation first surfaced that the prime minister’s people had tried to get the attorney general to interfere in the prosecution of a company that had given hundreds of thousands of dollars, legally and illegally, to the Liberal Party. But over time, the mind adjusts. Subtler voices came to the fore, explaining why the pressure the prime minister’s officials were at that time still denying was in fact entirely proper, an elegant and sophisticated solution to a difficult problem. ...

Under the Westminster model of government, civil servants, are generally assumed to be non-partisan, working with whichever party happens to be elected government to fulfill the government's program. As David Akin of GlobalNews reports, however, the present head of the Public Service of Canada, David Wernick appeared, during his testimony before the House Justice Committee, to be distinctly biased in a pro-government way and even somewhat wacky in his comments about the pressures that were brought to bear on former Canadian Attorney General Jodie Wilson-Raybould with the aim of causing her to abort the SNC Lavalin prosecution for bribery and corruption.

“I’ve worked very, very closely, for three years, on almost a daily basis with the current government, the current cabinet and the current Prime Minister’s Office,” Wernick said. “In my observation, in my experience, they have always, always conducted themselves to the highest standards of integrity.” Whoa, sunshine, back up just a bit there. Justin Trudeau is the first and only prime minister in our history to have been found to have broken a federal law while in office and that law was an ethics law. How’s that for “highest standards of integrity”? Moreover, the current ethics investigation into this whole Wilson-Raybould matter is the fifth ethics investigation of a Trudeau cabinet member since 2015. Now this fifth investigation may come to nothing, but, so far, the office of the ethics commissioner is four-for-four in finding ethics violations.

Related:

Toronto Sun: MARIN: SNC-Lavalin affair goes to the core of our democracy

Macleans: Welcome to Canada’s House of Cards

Meantime: CBC: Mark Norman's defence team targets Trudeau, Butts with subpoenas

The Greatest American Constitutional Crisis Since the Civil War

By Conrad Black

American Greatness, February 21, 2019: The most immense and dangerous public scandal in American history is finally cracking open like a ripe pomegranate. The broad swath of the Trump-hating media that has participated in what has amounted to an unconstitutional attempt to overthrow the government are reduced to reporting the events and revelations of the scandal in which they have been complicit, in a po-faced ho-hum manner to impart to the misinformed public that this is as routine as stock market fluctuations or the burning of an American flag in Tehran.

For more than two years, the United States and the world have had two competing narratives: that an elected president of the United States was a Russian agent whom the Kremlin helped elect; and its rival narrative that senior officials of the Justice Department, FBI, CIA, and other national intelligence organizations had repeatedly lied under oath, misinformed federal officials, and meddled in partisan political matters illegally and unconstitutionally and had effectively tried to influence the outcome of a presidential election, and then undo its result by falsely propagating the first narrative. It is now obvious and indisputable that the second narrative is the correct one.

Read more