Peaceniks and border guards!

Dear Readers:

Well folks, the peaceniks, tree huggers  and animal rights protectors are at it again!

Belkis Wille, of Human Rights Watch, said her group would not oppose the deployment of made-in-Canada light armoured vehicles to Saudi Arabia ...., as long as that country promised NEVER TO USE THEM! 

The Canadian government, under Justin Trudeau, however, has signaled it expects the Canadian-made vehicles could be used by the Saudis to wage their military intervention in Yemen. The office of Foreign Affairs Minister Stéphane Dion referred questions about transfers of Canadian-made armoured vehicles to Yemeni forces to the Department of Global Affairs. The department did not immediately respond.

 In response to all this rhetoric, we here at Allan's Perspective would urge the Saudi Government to adopt a reasonable approach and to once and for all state whether they are willing to shape their foreign policy and military deployments according to Canadian guidelines or not!!!!

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While we're on the subject imposing our values on other countries: China’s foreign ministry is trying to soften the angry remarks made by its leader in Canada, inviting journalists to cross the Pacific to see the country for themselves. (Human Rights Watch Canada calls China “an authoritarian state” that, under current President Xi Jinping, has “unleashed an extraordinary assault on basic human rights and their defenders.”)

Foreign Minister Wang Yi on Wednesday called a Canadian reporter “full of prejudice against China and arrogance” for asking about the country’s human-rights record. Shaking a pen in anger, Mr. Wang called the question “totally unacceptable,” saying the best judges of China’s human rights are Chinese people themselves. “Please don’t ask questions in such an irresponsible manner,” he said. (His remarks in Ottawa made global headlines as a sign of China’s unwillingness to brook any discussion of the way it treats its own people, a record that includes jailing critics, barring Muslims in certain areas from wearing beards and heavily censoring speech, particularly online.)

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And it's not just humans who are getting a raw [sic] deal in China: The Yulin Dog Meat Festival results in the slaughter of thousands of dogs, which are then served in the restaurants og this city in south China.

An international campaign to halt the killing keeps growing each year. Millions in Canada, the U.K. and the United States have signed petitions calling for China to end the festival, which is scheduled to start this year on June 21. (This dog thought he was going out for dinner, when all along he was actually going to BE dinner!)

Yet it not just foreign activists who are working to stop China's dog meat trade. There are now millions of pet owners in the world's most populous country, and many are appalled by Yulin's continuing celebration of the eating of dog meat and by the uncertain manner in which the meat is obtained.

Unlike South Korea, another Asian country where dogs are consumed, China does not have any large-scale dog-breeding farms. A four-year investigation by Animals Asia, an advocacy group, found no evidence of such breeding facilities. "The vast majority of so-called "meat dogs" are in fact stolen animals and strays," says the group's 2015 report.

Theft of dogs is rife in Beijing and other cities as well as in the countryside. According to news reports, organized gangs often use poison darts to sedate and then steal pets and stray dogs.

Repeated attempts to contact the Yulin city government and dog restaurants in the city were unsuccessful. In the past, however, the festival's supporters have defended themselves by questioning why killing canines for meat is any different than killing cows, pigs or other livestock. "It's a fair question," said Violet, who is a vegan. But she says there are reasons beyond animal welfare to end China's dog meat trade.

HEY, WAIT A MINUTE FOLKS, I ALWAYS THOUGHT IT WAS CATS THEY LIKED  OVER THERE .............., or is that just a North American thing?

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And now we go from dogs and cats to chickens!

Kim Kardashian has died – and it is most certainly a case of fowl play.  Of course, the Kim in question was actually a chicken belonging to noted Kardashian lampooner Bette Midler.

The singing legend, farming enthusiast and reality TV lover, revealed to PEOPLE at Wednesday's New York Restoration Project's Spring Picnic that she has quite a few "chickens" at her home in upstate New York.  "There's a whole flock of them" she said, "and the one named Kim died of a yeast infection last week!"

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AND FINALLY:
Along the U.S.-Canada border, an invisible but hardening wall rises!

 

By William Marsden 

 

STANSTEAD, Quebec — For some folks living in a cluster of small towns straddling the U.S.-Canada border here, life could not feel more comfortably secure.
Six Canadian and U.S. checkpoints service the 2½ -mile stretch that cuts through the villages of Derby Line and Beebe Plain in Vermont and the town of Stanstead in Quebec. Street cameras, satellite and sensor surveillance, vehicle patrols and the occasional thumping helicopter overhead ensure that residents can’t budge without someone watching.

But the heightened security is a sign of the times that doesn’t sit well with all of the residents in these once close-knit cross-border communities tucked into the northern highlands of the Appalachian Mountains.
“It’s a pretty pain in the ass is what it is,” said Patrick Boisvert, 75, a machinist in Beebe Plain with a mathematics degree from St. Michael’s College in Vermont.
Surveillance has grown stricter and more intrusive all along the 3,900-mile contiguous U.S. border with Canada since Sept. 11, 2001, creating a continent-wide gulf that many argue reflects a political parting of ways, as well — American conservatism vs. Canadian socialism, as defined by Canada’s universal health care, maternity leave, tough gun laws, and subsidized day care and higher education.

But the burden borne by the Vermont-Quebec communities is unique. Residents linked by marriage, blood relations and, in many cases, dual citizenship are now separated by an invisible but hardening wall. Neighborhoods that once shared schools, sports facilities, doctors and churches in a kind of free-flowing human commerce have retreated to their own sides of the border.
Nowhere is the divide more apparent than along the 620-yard stretch of Highway 247 — called Canusa Street in Vermont and Rue Canusa in Quebec — where Boisvert has lived all of his life.
On Canusa, the border runs east-west more or less right down the middle of the street. Drive on the north side, going west, and you are in Canada. Drive east and you are in the United States.

Along this 620-yard stretch of Highway 247, called Canusa Street in Vermont and Rue Canusa in Quebec, the border runs more or less down the middle of the street. On the north side, you are in Canada. On the south, you are in the United States. (William Marsden)

 Boisvert said that when he was a child, his best friend was a Canadian who lived across Canusa Street. “So, hell, we were back and forth across that road 100 times a day. We didn’t think about it. Border? What border? And now this s--- that’s going on.”

What Boisvert means is that every time he or his wife cross the street or drive off on an errand, they have to report in at the U.S. or Canadian border posts. It’s the same for all 23 families on the street.
The border stations are close by, but often there are lines. The fine for not checking in is a steep $5,000 and/or two years in jail on the U.S. side and 1,000 Canadian dollars on the Canadian side. And there’s no escaping the surveillance, he said.
Louise Boisvert said she no longer visits her Canadian neighbor Mylène.
“If we are going to talk to each other, she stands on her side, and I stand on mine,” she said. One time, “there was some sort of little domesticated rat that was following Mylène around over there, and she came over, she had her passport in her hand, and she said, ‘There’s this rat, and I think it’s somebody’s pet.’ She wanted to find the owner. But she had to go and report and come over here and then she was going to have to go to the Canadian side to report back. . . . I don’t know what happened to the rat.”
Metal gates now block the north-south streets that once connected Derby Line and Stanstead. In at least two cases, the border runs through homes, restricting access to back yards and forcing owners to seal off doors. The Haskell Free Library and Opera House famously straddles the Derby Line-Stanstead frontier. A row of flowerpots denotes the border traversing the street that leads to the front door, which is in the United States. Most of the rest of the building is in Canada. Inside, black tape tracing the border runs diagonally through the children’s section.

Here the border rules fall away. Canadians and Americans are permitted to access to the century-old brick building without having to check in with the border guards. Children enchanted by Peter Pan find their own version of Neverland.
Dual citizenship is common — a result of marriages and also the fact that many Canadians were born just across the border at the hospital in Newport, thus acquiring U.S. citizenship.
Where these people opted to live often reflects the divergent political and social paths the two countries have chosen.
Laurie Dubois immigrated to Canada from Vermont in 1971, when her mother married a Canadian. Now she and her American husband operate a small cross-border business engraving tombstones. The area’s granite quarries are a mainstay of the economically struggling region.
She said she would like to move back to the United States, because “Americans are more friendly,” but stays because of Canada’s social safety nets, particularly its universal health care.

[Everything you ever wanted to know about Canadian health care]

“It covers a lot of stuff that my husband deals with,” she said. “He has a heart problem, and he has an ileostomy. He has kidney problems.”
For Louise Boisvert, Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders “is our babe” because he wants to bring Canada’s subsidized higher education, single-payer universal health care, higher minimum wage and paid maternity leave to the United States.
“It’s time we started looking after our citizens,” she said.
But her husband says Sanders is “delusional” if he thinks the United States will adopt universal health coverage.
“I don’t think you can change it,” he said. “Everything is too entrenched.”
With each generation, memories of a closer cross-border community have faded. Sylvain Matte, 43, is an engineer and machine designer who lives up the street from the Boisverts on the Canadian side.
He notes that he has had casual exchanges — barbecues and drinks around a bonfire — with his American neighbors, but nothing that approaches real friendship.
“For me, it’s normal,” he said of the street.
His 18-year-old daughter, Vladimire, added that she had an American friend when she was small, but not anymore.
“Americans are different,” she said. “I can’t really put my finger on why, but they are.”

https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/the_americas/along-the-us-canadian-border-frayed-ties-and-daily-hassles/2016/05/31/133230cc-241b-11e6-b944-52f7b1793dae_story.html?ref=yfp