The Outrage that Got Away

Just after the latest Assad 'killing his own people' farce, a real outrage did take place. It was roundly ignored in western media because, very obviously, the good guys, or the Moslem extremists we're backing in Syria,  did it. They made a video record of their attack and they very obviously targeted a defenseless 'enemy' civilian population.

 What we saw of the massacre was 'given out' as 'payback' of some kind for the alleged  'atrocities' done by the Assad regime when it liberated our 'poster city' for western-based Jihad in West Aleppo.  Even that latter point failed to mention that those 'victims' were involved in another of the Assad regime's - 'move them instead of maim them' population swaps - the main reason why any Jihadis weren't carried out (some were) .

These 'victims' were  pro-regime people who had been besieged, for 3 years,  by AlNusra/AQ/ISIS forces in their Idlib town,  being swapped for a an anti-Assad population being moved to rebel held areas. And many of them - including children - failed to make the swap.

The following post is graphic - although President Trump wouldn't find many of these dead babies beautiful, - or worth a humanitarian bombardment of somebody.  It should be required watching for moral relativists like Nicky Haley.

By way of a follow-up  Caution graphic pix

My second favorite p'leece force has got itself in the news again. This time for gunning-down some teen-aged run-amok. And then tasering the corpse to make sure the threat had been eliminated. Mind you, he had been warned.

On a good day this would be another tooth-sucker. However this particular incident - videoed by onlookers - made the front page. It might have been because most of the shift manpower congregated on the streetcar taken over by the 'violent youth'. Or it might have been the nine shots in two separate volleys that downed the perp. Or it may have been the fact that he was all alone, armed with a small knife and inside the streetcar yards from the nearest cop. Or it might have been the subsequent events. But the story has some legs.

Video of the incident

Naturally his righteousness the Chief of P'leece, the estimable Bill Blair, was in front of the microphones almost right away, as were the head of the police 'union' Mark 'Puggli' Pugwash and former and currently-serving coppers, like the accused, tried and reinstated son of a former Chief of P'leece Bill McCormick. The initial 'doing his dooty' meme was displaced with 'suspended with pay pending investigation' meme and segued into a charge of second degree murder for the poor cop who did the shooting.

Billy had it all well in hand however, looking at the possible charges under the P'leece Act and all and  getting the internal examination underway. He selected a retired judge to take the lead. But that man had to step down when the dead man's family objected to the Judge's ties to the Police Department's legal firm. Another retired Judge has since taken up the investigation. Chief Bill is waiting to see what happens.

Meanwhile the Provincial ombudsman announced that he was getting into the act with an investigation of his own. A couple of days after that he was in the media claiming to have been threatened by a policeman from a region abutting Toronto. Turns out the policeman he named didn't do it. But some other policeman from the Durham force had. Apparently he'd set up a social media account in his fellow cop's name and gone ahead and threatened the ombudsman. Needless to say the chief of that department couldn't release the name because he had an investigation going on about that. But he has that all well in hand, too.

And just the other day the Special Investigations Unit, which laid the murder charge, was in the papers claiming that there was a culture of non-cooperation at Metro Police encouraged, they believed, by the disinterest of his Nibs the Chief. Seems that Police don't like incriminating themselves or each other any more than the average crook. Even if they are well-paid and  get to sport fire arms in public. I'm wondering if the SIU was considering why 19 other officers stood by to witness the shooting without apparently, doing anything. That schoolyard fight witnessing is a hard thing to shake.

The public also got a thumbnail sketch of the legal lion who sticks up for the poor coppers before the bench of justis. Peter Brauti is the kind of lawyer most people could only wish they'd get. But he has access, through the police, to information  other lawyers only wish they could get. He's very good at his job, very few Toronto police have been convicted of anything. 'Going for the gold' , as opposed to negligence, or manslaughter, or a number of lesser charges on this one, just means it's more likely the cop won't be convicted.

 In one of the more stupid developments, some Tory pol came up with the notion that if every front line cop had a taser, they wouldn't need to shoot anybody. Although the logic of that escapes me, given the current story, somebody is willing to throw about $2 billion in new spending into a negative trade deficit to keep the elves at the Tommy Swift Electric Cannon Corporation of America in Dunkin' and Donuts. Needless to say the Chief thought the idea was brilliant.

The finest little P'leece Service money can buy maintains, and continues.

It's a Nutty Old World

The Canadian News was monopolized by a story that began with somebody's foot being mailed to a political office in Ottawa. The next day the postal department headed-off what turned out to be a hand, in the mail to a different political office. Then the headless, limbless torso of a body turned-up in a suitcase put out for garbage pick-up. Since then, the story has morphed into the world-wide (Europe at least) manhunt for a fugitive porn-star cum (no pun intended) artist, who allegedly video-taped himself murdering and dismembering a 'pal' in his apartment. The victim was to-day identified as a nice-guy university student of Chinese extraction who was looking 'for a friend'. His friend, the killer, is being described as someone very closely related to the great lord Beelzebub. He's also managed to make himself go 'poof', allegedly leaving Canada by air shortly after the murder and disappearing from the radar screen due, we are told, to the possibility that he has created multiple identities for himself and can change his appearance with some facility. That he doesn't have a proverbial pot to piss in, is, apparently, no impediment to his ability to get around and get away.

As an update: the killer was arrested while using the facilities of an internet cafe in Germany to keep up with his facebook following.  The latter, we learn, are a growing number  who see the gender-confused 'prawduct' of modern society as a 'troll model'. The cafe manager 'saw through' his disguise - ie recognized him from news posts, and called the police. The police were, it is reported, taken in by his denials - (keine deutsche spreche?)- but he finally 'fessed-up'. He was flown back to Canada on a military aircraft and is now undergoing intensive counselling. In sidebar, a teacher was fired for showing the u-tube vodeo of the murder/dissection to his civics class in a lesson about how to treat, or not treat, other people.

Bizarre as that might be,  is an even better story coming out of Miami this week where an apparently 'decent human being' (according to his family) reportedly got 'hepped-up' on some new style 'acid' and, after stripping naked while making his way home, assaulted and ate the face of a homeless individual he encountered, who was sleeping on a bridge. Numerous passers-by witnessed the attack and eventually police showed up. They ordered the man to stop feeding but after he refused and 'growled' at them, they shot him, and then shot him again whan he resumed eating. The assailant died, the assailed is reported to be a candidate for facial replacement surgery - having lost most of the skin on his forehead, his nose, his eyelids and lips. It was only the apparent  lack of a decent shave that saved the lower part of his face.

More mundane was the reported massacre of more than 100 people including a large number of women and children in a place called Houla in Syria.  Within  minutes of the occurrence the world press was laying the killings at the door of Bashir Assad, describing how the army had been shelling the area. It later turned out that the majority of the dead had been killed up close by gunshot. The notion of the Syrian army shooting civilians while under a barrage of friendly artillery fire seemed a little out of whack. Then the killings were laid at the door of 'government militia' who can, apparently, better stand the shelling whilst killing the innocent. An eyewitness, a little lad who drenched himself in his dead brother's  blood and avoided detection by the killers, when asked who did it, he responded, 'Why are you asking me that? Everybody knows who did it."

Since the intial reports,  at least three 'dissonent' ones are reporting the dead weren't shiite Arabs, but rather Armenian Christians and others aligned with the Assad government and  the killers now might well be the anti-government 'free Syria' forces. The UNHRC is calling for an investigation.

FARC,  the almost-defunct 'terrorist' organization in Colombia, recently released the French reporter they had taken 'hostage' when they ambushed a group of Colombian military engaged in a "peaceful" drug lab take-down operation a month ago. The release was accomplished in a village where the people seemed to be happy and  supportive of FARC - or all looped-up on the local 'medication'. A Colombian ex-senator and the IRC were on hand to take the 'victim' under protection. Notable in its absence was the Colombian military, which has stage-managed so many other such 'rescues'  and 'releases'. It will be interesting to find out if the 'hostage' bad mouths  his captors now that he's free, as has been the 'de rigeur' exercise on such similiar cases. Colombia is well on its way to having one of the world's premier fighting forces that American money can buy, it's certainly of a quality to-day to be able to make FARC permanently defunct. Then all the 'illegal' drug trade can stop. Unless those FARC are like the Taliban.

We were told this week that President Obama, as part of his duties has assumed the mantle of  'killer-in-chief' of the United States of America. In his duty as chief protector of America, we are told, he meets with his advisory staff and vets all those, world-wide, who are targeted for extinction due to their 'threat to  ___________'  (fill in the blank). What we weren't told was how somebody gets on the list, and how many times these targets have been acquired and attacked. Taking it on faith -  it's 'all good', clean, kills and totally necessary - otherwise it wouldn't be done, see? 'Legs Diamond' running 'Murder Inc' was  a crime, the President's-class world-wide version is a 'necessity'.

The High cost of Plantation

An article in the Toronto Star yesterday caught my attention, it was titled "Funeral Homes Subsidizing Services for the Poor". Being the altruist that I am and having gone through the funeral process fairly recently, this act of corporate largesse just grabbed me. But I'm working on the principle that nothing makes a funeral home sadder than to sit empty, and any funeral is better for business than no funeral.

It seems that local funeral homes in Toronto are 'up against the wall', cost-wise, in providing a ]decent] funeral for the 'poor', for less than $5 500. They want the City to up the basic rate for a 'paupers' funeral from $2 208 to cover that amount. Last year they claim to have 'lost' millions on the 1 600  'freebies' they 'had to' give those who died while on social assistance, or disability pensions.

Needless to say, most of those funerals were of the 'full service' type because there were 'family' involved. I'm making an assumption here, but I'd guess none of the 'family involved' were in a position to actually pay anything toward the costs themselves?

So what's included? Because the family must be  'respected'  here. "Most get pickup, embalming, a particleboard casket covered by grey cloth with white rayon interior, a service, clergy honorarium, a hearse, “lead car” and limo for family, and burial or cremation." If the cost for that is $5 500 + tax, then the $13 000 paid for a recently deceased relative must have been increased by more than double - the extra costs of 'viewing', 'deluxe' coffin and a grave liner.

Under legislation,  municipalities are "allowed"  to cover these costs with 80% being supplied by the province. This for families who are "unable to bury a loved one as they would like".

Strikes me that one of the effects of  'poverty' is not being able to do a lot of things you would like. But having a funeral 'show' for an indigent family member, on the public tick, I don't think should be one of them. I guess the same problem of not having the foresight to realize that you can't not work and expect the grocery man to drop a load at the door, carries over into the realization that we are all finite and the day will come when our carcass, or dear old dad's,  must be disposed.  That a whole 'family' (for I'm making an assumption that this wouldn't get done for the sake of a surviving parent, brother, sister or cousin) couldn't work together to bury their dead, is a sad commentary on to-day's world. But then, if they did that, they'd probably get charged the going rate. The costs of those 'basic' funeral services, which aren't available to the paying public, would be heftily inflated. If somebody else is going to pay for it, why volunteer? And I don't think the funeral industry is being too altruistic either.

One thing most funeral directors in business aren't, is stupid. That variety don't stay in business long. So I'm imagining that, like many businessmen who 'give to charity', funeral homes put some of those 'operating expenses' over to those who can pay, or as a 'business expense' against taxes, or maybe a bit of both. I would also imagine that, depending on location, some funeral homes would get more of the 'pauper' trade than others. And the subsidy, then, would constitute a business hardship, in terms of a lack of higher 'regular' rates than those funeral homes get, who only bury the well-heeled. So the problem wouldn't be industry-wide, or equitably distributed.

Why, then, the necessity for government involvement? The funeral business has a number of internal organizations to which individuals can belong, and for a number of purposes. Why don't they fund an insurance plan to cover those increased basic costs for the few (?) affected? Just because the government undertakes to provide the necessities of life to those unable to do so for themselves doesn't make it a logical follow-up that government should provide the industry standard in funerary practices too. 'Bury the dead' is a corporal work of mercy enjoined on all, but in our neo-pagan society this religious tenet has been parlayed into a social event, with concommitent opportunities for the ultimate 'show', which, in the industry, is the icing on the monetary cake. Poverty defines a limit on the amount of that

The government shouldn't be in the business of providing more than the 'paupers' funeral'. If  'the family'  want more, they should plan for it, and save for it or, as so many others do, go into debt for it.