Eyes On The World

Did A Blonde Blogger Inspire Trump’s Air Strikes on Syria?

2017-04-10T13:33:00.004-07:00

A red panda carrying her cub.

2017-03-19T23:35:00.001-07:00

A red panda carrying her cub.

Freedom of the Press

2017-03-18T05:15:00.004-07:00

...When we allowed 80% of our press to be owned by three groups of non-resident billionaires,primarily to advance their business interests

John Cleese added,

‏ @bydy2

@JohnCleese While the free press hides the truth, it's the satirical press who use 100% true stories. Where did it all go wrong?

Trump's Pet Nazi

2017-03-16T17:03:00.003-07:00

Trump's Pet Nazi

Sebastian Gorka DrGVerified account

@SebGorka

Deputy Assistant to the 45th American President Irregular Warfare Strategist Author of DEFEATING JIHAD

Washington, DC

Top Trump Adviser Sebastian Gorka Denied A Report That He Belongs To A Nazi-Allied Group

... he is a member of and took an oath of loyalty to a Nazi-allied group.

On Thursday, The Forward reported that Gorka is a member of Historical Vitézi Rend, a far-right Hungarian group that had ties to the Nazi party from the World War II era.

The US State Department says the Vitézi Rend was “under the direction of the Nazi Government of Germany.” But Gorka reportedly belongs to a “reconstitution of the original group on the State Department list, which was banned in Hungary until the fall of Communism in 1989,” according to The Forward.

There are currently two groups in Hungary that claim to be the legitimate heirs of the original Vitézi Rend, and Gorka, according to the group’s leader, is a member of the Historical Vitézi Rend.

Link: https://www.buzzfeed.com/talalansari/sebastian-gorka-report?utm_term=.rykEj55vR#.dwgM7JJjG

Nature Photos

2017-03-02T04:29:00.001-08:00

If winter comes, can Spring be far behind?" ~ Percy Bysshe Shelley,
Ode to the West Wind
Hiroshige

Is Jeff Sessions an hypocrite?

2017-03-01T22:32:00.005-08:00

Sessions was pretty adamant about truth and obstruction of justice in the case of Bill Clinton...

Political Commentators

2017-03-01T22:24:00.000-08:00

Arc De Triomphe From Above, Paris

Urban Photography

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Paris Spectacular Boulevards And Architecture

Photography by: Zsolt Hlinka

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Source: http://onebigphoto.com/arc-de-triomphe-paris/

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Arc De Triomphe From Above, Paris

2017-03-01T20:22:00.001-08:00

Arc De Triumphe From Above, Paris

Urban Photography

Tags:

aerial

france

paris

SNOWY OWL

2017-03-01T14:42:00.001-08:00

0:02

SNOWY OWL in China? Yes, every year a few can be seen in winter in Inner Mongolia. This one a juvenile.

Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde

2017-03-01T13:00:00.000-08:00

Lion and Cub

2017-02-28T19:48:00.001-08:00

Elfi Oladele

2017-02-28T16:38:00.002-08:00

‏Verified account @PlayOverwatch

[SCIENCE] Meet Efi Oladele—winner of the Adawe Foundation's genius grant for her achievements in AI and robotics

http://blizz.ly/EfiOladele pic.twitter.com/LpUbAWS4gs

“It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it.” - Aristotle

Principles for Mindful Living:

2016-12-21T21:31:00.003-08:00

‏@mindfulive

7 Principles for Mindful Living: http://buff.ly/23wDqlG

Philippines president Rodrigo Duterte personally killed criminals

2016-12-21T21:29:00.002-08:00

Philippines president Rodrigo Duterte says he personally killed criminals

Controversial leader – who has endorsed extrajudicial executions of drug offenders – says he killed to show police officers ‘if I can do it, why can’t you?’

Rodrigo Duterte has announced he personally killed suspected criminals when he was mayor of his home city of Davao in the Philippines, cruising the streets on a motorcycle and “looking for trouble”.

The country’s president made the comments in a speech late on Monday night as he discussed his campaign to eradicate illegal drugs, which has seen police and unknown assailants kill around 5,000 people since he became president on 30 June.

“In Davao I used to do it personally. Just to show to the guys [police officers] that if I can do it, why can’t you,” he was quoted as saying by AFP, talking of his two decades as mayor of the southern city of 1.5 million people.

“And I’d go around in Davao with a motorcycle, with a big bike around, and I would just patrol the streets, looking for trouble also.

“I was really looking for a confrontation so I could kill.”
The former mayor was nicknamed “Duterte Harry”, after the fictional and ruthless police inspector played by Clint Eastwood, for his support for vigilante death squads that killed hundreds of suspected criminals.

Duterte previously has both denied and acknowledged his involvement in the Davao death squads.
Since taking his bloody anti-crime campaign to the nation level, he has been criticised by the United States and United Nations, whose concerns have drawn only angry rebukes.

“If they say that I am to stop because of the human rights and guys … including Obama, sorry, I am not about to do that,” Duterte said in English during his speech at the presidential palace this week.
Duterte has a better relationship with US president-elect Donald Trump, who he said had praised his war on drugs during a phone call this month. This was not confirmed by Trump’s team.

As president Duterte has publicly encouraged civilians to kill drug addicts and said he will not prosecute police for extrajudicial executions. But he has also said he and his security forces will not break the law.

In October Duterte compared himself to Adolf Hitler and said he would be “happy to slaughter” three million drug addicts.

He later apologised for the Hitler reference but said he was “emphatic” about wanting to kill the millions of addicts.

Since his election, police have reported killing 2,086 people in anti-drug operations. More than 3,000 others have been killed in unexplained circumstances, according to official figures.
Often masked assailants break into homes and kill people who have been tagged as drug traffickers or drug users. Human rights groups have warned of a breakdown in the rule of law with police and hired assassins operating with impunity.

A report by the Guardian in October cited a senior officer in the police force who claimed he led one of 10 special operations teams, each with 16 members, tasked with killing suspected drug users, dealers and criminals.

The officer claimed the hit squads are composed of active police officers and that the murders are conducted in such a way as to make them appear to be perpetrated by “vigilantes” to deliberately obscure police involvement and preclude investigation.

The report was later denied by the chief of police. Duterte has insisted police are killing only in self-defence while gangsters are murdering the other victims.

But he has also said he will not allow any police officers to go to jail if they are found guilty of murder in prosecuting his war on crime.

Agence France-Presse contributed to this report

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/dec/14/philippines-president-rodrigo-duterte-personally-killed-criminals

One Stolen Gun's Path of Destruction in Chicago

2016-12-21T21:26:00.001-08:00

A Glock used in five shootings that killed two people sits at the Homan Square police facility June 9, 2016, in Chicago.

(Armando L. Sanchez / Chicago Tribune)

One gun's journey — 42 bullets fired, 2 killed, 5 wounded

Gun Stolen from legal owner...

The story of the Glock's journey from safe to shoebox comes at a tumultuous time for Chicago as homicides spike to levels unseen in the city for two decades. Chicago police say the proliferation of guns plays a key role in the seemingly endless cycle of violence, particularly in impoverished pockets of the South and West sides.

As police battle the glut of firearms, the Glock illustrates the devastation — both human and financial — that a single gun can leave behind.

The Glock was what police call a gang gun, passed among its members as needed. Its devastation — unusual for one firearm in a year's time — was spread over a significant stretch of the South Side.
Guns get to Chicago in many ways.

In so-called straw purchases, those with a firearm owner's identification card can carve out a niche business buying guns in Illinois for felons barred from owning weapons because of their criminal records. Another option lies a few miles away over the border in Indiana, where gun shows require no background checks.

A study in 2015 by the University of Chicago Crime Lab found 60 percent of the newer guns recovered from gang members had come from out of state — half of those from Indiana. In separate interviews done at Cook County Jail, gun offenders said gangs sometimes tapped members to make buying trips.

"All they need is one person who got a gun card in the 'hood and everybody got (a gun)," the study quoted one inmate as saying.

For now, the Glock's journey has ended at the Homan Square police facility on the city's West Side. Sealed in a Manila envelope, it is stored on a metal shelf in the department's mammoth gun vault, a secure, fenced-in area that includes tens of thousands of guns taken off the street by police over the years.

Read More @ Source:
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/ct-chicago-violence-gang-gun-met-20161007-story.html

George W. Bush Weighs in on the Election

2016-10-31T19:14:00.001-07:00

Last Week Tonight with John Oliver: Brexit Anthem

2016-06-20T03:17:00.001-07:00

Link: https://youtu.be/Z3GdgBXUAqg

Wax sculpture of Hitler on his knees sells for $17.2million

2016-06-19T19:22:00.002-07:00

Wax??? This is old news but the "wax factor" just dawned on me..

Consider a diamond-encrusted platinum skull by artist Damien Hirst has been sold to an investment group for the asking price of $100 million, a spokeswoman for Hirst's London gallery White Cube said on Thursday.

The skull, cast from a 35-year-old 18th century European man but retaining the original teeth, is coated with 8,601 diamonds, including a large pink diamond worth more than four million pounds in the centre of its forehead.

Maurizio Cattelan's wax and resin sculpture of a diminutive Hitler on his knees is titled 'Him'

The artwork, completed in 2001, fetched $17.2million at Christie's auction
Cattelan, known as the art world's resident prankster, has created sculptures of historical figures like JFK and Pope John Paul II
His fully-functional toilet cast in solid gold will be installed in Guggenheim bathroom this summer

By Afp and Jessica Chia For Dailymail.com

Published: 8 May 2016

A statue of Hitler on his knees was auctioned for a record-setting $17.2 million on Sunday, the most for any work by Italian art world prankster Maurizio Cattelan.

The wax and resin statue titled Him, called 'one of the most shocking and disquieting works of art to have emerged in the post-war era', had been expected to fetch between $10million and $15million at the Christie's auction in New York's Rockefeller Plaza.

The previous record for a work by 55-year-old Cattelan was $7.9 million for a statue featuring a wax statue of himself peeping out of a hole in the floor.

The artwork 'Him', depicting Hitler on his knees in prayer, fetched $17.2million today at a Christie's auction in midtown New York. It is artist Maurizio Cattelan's most expensive work thus far

Him, which was completed in 2001, disrupts the viewer's expectations with its size. From behind, the statue appears to be that of a young boy praying, while the all too recognizable face creates an unsettling contrast

Him, which was completed in 2001, disrupts the viewer's expectations with its size.

From behind, the statue appears to be that of a young boy praying, while the all too recognizable face creates an unsettling contrast.

Cattelan, who considered destroying the piece of work several times, said: 'Hitler is pure fear; it’s an image of terrible pain. It even hurts to pronounce his name. And yet that name has conquered my memory, it lives in my head, even if it remains taboo.

'Hitler is everywhere, haunting the specter of history; and yet he is unmentionable, irreproducible, wrapped in a blanket of silence.

'I’m not trying to offend anyone. I don’t want to raise a new conflict or create some publicity; I would just like that image to become a territory for negotiation or a test for our psychoses.’

The statue sparked controversy in 2012 when it was installed in a former Warsaw ghetto, where thousands of Jews died under Nazi rule.

Some accused the work of belittling the suffering of Jewish victims, while others saw the piece as a reflection on evil and its many forms.

Maurizio Cattelan (pictured) is known as the art world's resident prankster and provocateur

The controversial artist is known for taking on big names such as John F. Kennedy, cast in one sculpture lying in a coffin, while the famous La Nona Ora (The Ninth Hour) shows Pope John Paul II being crushed by a meteor.

But Cattelan shrugs off claims he is a provocateur, saying: 'I actually think that reality is far more provocative than my art.

'I just take it; I’m always borrowing pieces — crumbs really — of everyday reality.

'If you think my work is provocative, it means that reality is extremely provocative, and we just don’t react to it.

'Maybe we no longer pay attention to the way we live in the world… We are anesthetized.’

Cattelan declared he would retire after his landmark 2011 retrospective at the Guggenheim Museum in New York, where his work was strung from the ceiling into the atrium, leaving the galleries empty.

The 55-year-old made headline news in late April after it was revealed a new site-specific work would be installed at the museum.

Titled America, Cattelan will be installing a fully functional toilet, cast in solid gold, at the Guggenheim for the use of its patrons.

He is known for taking on big names such as John F. Kennedy and Pope John Paul II. Pictured, his Guggenheim retrospective in 2011, which left the galleries empty as his work hung from the ceiling

Civilian access to military-style weapons.

2016-06-19T01:53:00.001-07:00

Sales spike but Colt is in bankruptcy???

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Robert Lewis <buddhha4@gmail.com>
Date: Sat, Jun 18, 2016 at 4:48 AM
Subject: Grenade Launcher?
To: Robert Lewis <buddhha4@gmail.com>

Wait for one of these home grown crazies to get some g's

Javier Zarracina/Vox

The AR-15 is a military-style rifle that civilians can use

Don't tread on my rights...

The AR-15, a trademark owned by Colt but applied to wide range of near-identical guns from different manufacturers, is a civilian version of the M16, a weapon designed for military combat in Vietnam. It's very difficult for civilians to own an M16. The gun can shoot up to three bullets in a single burst, and older versions were fully automatic, meaning they keep firing as long as you hold the trigger. As such, the gun is strictly regulated by the National Firearms Act, the 1934 law that restricted the possession of machine guns. The AR-15, though, is semiautomatic — you have to pull the trigger for each bullet — and so has no such restrictions.
Since 2009, gun manufacturers have preferred to call these guns “modern sporting rifles,” a name that conjures up hunters in the woods rather than soldiers shooting at the enemy. But even enthusiasts agree that the AR-15 doesn’t shine while hunting. It’s better at killing people than it is animals.

So there’s another name for AR-15s and guns like them: assault weapons. While exact definitions of the term vary, it typically means a military-style weapon adapted for civilian use, with modifications that can make it more lethal. This graphic shows some of those modifications:
And since the federal assault weapons ban expired in 2004, AR-15-style rifles and similar guns, including the gun that Orlando shooter Omar Mateen used, have become astronomically popular.

The more you try to ban the AR-15, the more popular it gets

The federal assault weapons ban, which went into effect in 1994, banned the sale of AR-15-style guns and high-capacity magazines. It was the first example of a phenomenon that’s driven the AR-15’s popularity for two decades: The more gun owners fear their guns will be taken away, the more assault rifles they want to own.
As Congress debated the assault weapons ban in 1993, production of assault rifles soared, according to a 2004 report from the University of Pennsylvania:
Even while the ban was in effect, barring the production of certain kinds of assault weapons, gun manufacturers got around it by creating new “postban” models of guns that went by different names.
Olympic Arms began selling a version known as the PCR — “politically correct rifle ” — that lacked a threaded barrel and a bayonet lug, two of the features Congress objected to. Colt stopped making the AR-15, but it made the Colt Match Target, which looks pretty similar.
This has happened at the state level, too: California has an assault weapons ban, but entrepreneurial gun manufacturers have found ways to modify the AR-15 to get around it.
The 1994 assault weapons ban banned the AR-15 by name, including identical versions made by other manufacturers. So as calls to ban the AR-15 intensified this week, some gun defenders argued that the Sig Sauer MCX that Mateen used wasn't an AR-15 at all due to slight technical differences. (Orlando’s police chief, John Mina, initially described the weapon as an AR-15. Reviews of the gun from before the Orlando shooting often compare it to AR-15-style weapons but also highlight the ways in which it differs from standard AR-15s, such as firing several calibers of bullets.)
That's unlikely to convince anyone whose real concern is civilian access to military-style weapons. But when it comes to writing precise legislation, those differences matter, which is one reason the movement to protect guns has seized on them.

Obama’s election made the AR-15 and other assault weapons a lot more popular

Gun manufacturers started making more AR-15s again after the assault weapons ban expired. They became more popular as part of a trend for military-style weapons, in part because they’re endlessly customizable.

But sales didn't really take off for four more years, until President Barack Obama was elected in 2008, when gun sales of all kinds began to soar.

Smith and Wesson manufactured nearly 10 times as many M+P15s, its AR-15 equivalent, in 2008 than in 2006. Their output tripled again in the next year. By December 2012, when the AR-15 became the focus of a debate after the Newtown shootings, there were about 3.8 million AR-15s in circulation in the US, Slate’s Justin Peters estimated.

Then, for a brief moment after the Newtown shootings, additional gun control in the US seemed possible. Obama called for new gun control legislation, including a renewal of the federal assault weapons ban. Connecticut, New York, and Maryland expanded their own state bans.

And sales of AR-15s went nuts. Retail stores doubled or tripled prices in the first months of 2013, finding that desperate gun owners, worried the weapons would be banned, would pay.

The more popular the guns get, the harder it becomes to actually ban them. There are so many AR-15s now owned in the US that gun aficionados argued in summer 2013 that the market was saturated. That means that if a new assault weapons ban, like the 1994 version, grandfathered in guns that people already owned, there would still be millions of AR-15s available in the US. A buyback could get some of those guns off the street, but it would also be expensive.

Still, AR-15 owners are still outnumbered. Assault rifles are a tiny slice of the more than 300 million guns in circulation in the US. The majority of Americans don’t own guns at all, and the majority of Americans favor stricter gun laws.

But the rush to buy AR-15s every time a politician mentions gun control illustrates why the National Rifle Association has so much political clout. Its 5 million members care deeply about their guns, a combination of campaign money, political power, and a single focus that gun control supporters don't have.

The other hurdle to banning AR-15s: the Supreme Court

Assault rifles aren’t the only weapon of choice in mass shootings: The Virginia Tech and Charleston mass shootings were tragic and traumatizing, and the shooters in each only used handguns. But they get special attention both because those weapons formerly were banned and because the number of mass shootings appears to have risen since the assault weapons ban expired.

Between 1984 and 1993, according to the 2004 University of Pennsylvania study on the assault weapons ban, there were 15 mass shootings that killed at least six people or wounded at least 12. Assault weapons were used in only six of these shootings, but those shootings killed and injured more people than the other nine combined.

Mother Jones, which tracks mass shootings that meet specific criteria, counts 46 mass shootings since 2004, when the assault weapons ban expired. Of those 46 shootings, 14 featured assault rifles, including Newtown, Aurora, and San Bernardino.

And assault rifles appear to be becoming more popular among mass shooters. In 2015, five of the seven mass shootings Mother Jones logged featured a shooter carrying an assault rifle.

In the wake of Newtown, a few states did tighten their gun laws, including bans on AR-15s. The Supreme Court might soon have to weigh in on whether those bans are constitutional.

A case against Maryland’s assault weapons ban is making its way through the courts, and in the most recent development, the Fourth Circuit sent that case, Kolbe v. Hogan, back for stricter review at the trial court level. Two conservative justices seemed very skeptical that banning the AR-15 was constitutional.

The reason the Fourth Circuit judges cited was from District of Columbia v. Heller — the 2008 decision that found a constitutional right to own a handgun for self-defense — which included a line saying that, constitutionally, “dangerous and unusual” weapons could still be prohibited.

The AR-15 is certainly dangerous. But it isn’t necessarily unusual. If there were nearly 4 million AR-15s in the hands of American gun owners in 2012, before the Sandy Hook-induced panic, there are almost certainly more now. The specter of a federal ban could make them more popular still.

So the AR-15 is caught in a cycle. The more it’s used in high-profile mass shooting cases, the more people want to ban it. The more people want to ban it, the more AR-15s are sold. And the more AR-15s are sold, the harder it becomes to create a ban that would be able to stop the next tragedy.

Correction: A previous version of this article misstated the year the National Firearms Act was passed.

It took a newspaper columnist 7 minutes to buy an AR-15
Donald Trump just outlined a plan to profit personally off a Trump administration

"What’s going on in Syria is collective, multilateral madness"

2016-03-11T02:45:00.001-08:00

x

Middle East Eye ‏@MiddleEastEye 24 Nov 2015

"What’s going on in Syria is collective, multilateral madness," writes @DavidaHearst http://ow.ly/V1Bkl pic.twitter.com/WsrRGTHjfe

“Frankfurt School” philosopher Herbert Marcuse, the godfather of cultural Marxism

2016-03-03T02:46:00.000-08:00

Keynesian Claptrap—— Why The State Is Waging War On Savers And Cash

by Claudio Grass • March 1, 2016

Photo via cronachelodigiane.net

“Frankfurt School” philosopher Herbert Marcuse, the godfather of cultural Marxism

The cultural Marxists have adopted the advice of the philosopher Herbert Marcuse, who is really the “godfather” of cultural Marxism. He preached that free speech is really a tool of oppression because it leads to critiques of “utopia,” by which he meant communism. This is where all the vicious crackdowns on campus free speech come from: the cultural Marxists will say that they are doing the morally-correct thing to censor speech by conservatives or libertarians, for such speech may be critical of their ideology.

Link: http://davidstockmanscontracorner.com/keynesian-claptrap-why-the-state-is-waging-war-on-savers-and-cash/

New Canadians no longer have to intend to live in Canada

2016-03-02T13:41:00.002-08:00

Buy a house in Vancouver and return to China to make more money...this isn't going to help address the housing affordiblity crisis in Vancouver ....

This article is from the South China Morning Post - International edition

PUBLISHED : Wednesday, 02 March, 2016, 5:26am

UPDATED : Wednesday, 02 March, 2016, 3:24pm

Citizenship revamp: New Canadians no longer have to intend to live in Canada

Trudeau government’s ‘total reversal’ of Tory policy also slashes residency requirements and gives credit for time spent as visitors or students

Ian Young in Vancouver
ian.young@scmp.com

BIO

Ian Young is the SCMP's former International Editor. A journalist for more than 20 years, he worked for Australian newspapers and the London Evening Standard before arriving in Hong Kong in 1997. There he won or shared awards for excellence in investigative reporting and human rights reporting, and the HK News Awards Scoop of the Year. He moved to Canada with his wife in 2010 and is now the SCMP's Vancouver correspondent.

Most Popular

Dragon dancers perform during a Chinese New Year Parade through Vancouver’s Chinatown on February 16. Photo: Xinhu

When Canada’s new Liberal government last week unveiled its sweeping rollback of the ousted Conservatives’ citizenship crackdown, much of the focus was on the decision to remove terrorism as grounds for revoking dual citizenship.

But the amendments also carry huge implications for anyone who simply heads back to their country of origin after obtaining a Canadian passport. This modern phenomenon of reverse migration is one that has been thoroughly embraced by tens of thousands Hong Kong and mainland Chinese immigrants alike, to varying degrees of legality.

The changes, for the most part, put things back the way they were in 2014.

Canada's Immigration Minister John McCallum says dual citizens should be treated no differently than native-born sole-citizenship Canadians. Photo: Reuters

The proposed amendments to the Citizenship Act, unveiled last Thursday, remove the requirement that new citizens must intend to live in Canada after obtaining citizenship. According to the government, the intent-to-reside provision “created concern among some new Canadians, who feared their citizenship could be revoked in the future if they moved outside of Canada”.

[Previously,] citizenship was harder to obtain and easier to lose; now it’s easier to obtain and much harder to lose

Immigration lawyer Richard Kurland

The proposals also shorten the period of physical presence required of new citizens to three years (1,095 days) out of the previous five, compared to four years out of six under the Tories; allow periods of non-permanent presence in Canada – for instance, time spent as a student, temporary worker or even a visitor – to be credited among those three years (albeit up to a maximum of one years’ credit, with each full day of non-permanent residency counting as half a day); and shrink the age band for applicants who must pass language tests, from 18-54, compared to 14-64 previously.

Canadian income-tax-filing requirements have been retained, although reduced to three years out of the five years prior to seeking citizenship, in keeping with the new residency rule. In a further supplemental move required as a result of the new non-permanent-resident time credit, a rule requiring 183 days of presence in Canada in four out of six years is also scrapped.

Vancouver immigration lawyer Richard Kurland

“The government is keeping its commitment to repeal certain provisions of the Citizenship Act, including those that led to different treatment for dual citizens. Canadian citizens are equal under the law. Whether they were born in Canada or were naturalised in Canada or hold a dual citizenship,” Immigration Minister John McCallum said in a statement.

Removing the intent-to-reside-in-Canada rule represents a major switch in thinking, although actual enforcement of rules about intent has been patchy at best. For instance, Quebec’s Immigrant Investor Programme for millionaire permanent residents requires a stated intent to live in the French-speaking province - but that hasn’t stopped about 90 per cent of QIIP applicants from moving elsewhere in Canada (mainly Vancouver). It’s hard to prove false intent at the time a residency statement is made, and the Canadian Charter guarantees freedom of movement.

Vancouver immigration lawyer Richard Kurland said he supported the changes, which represented “a total reversal” from the approach of the Tories, under whom “citizenship was harder to obtain and easier to lose; now it’s easier to obtain and much harder to lose”.

The removal of the intent-to-reside provision was “hands down, slam-dunk” the most significant change, Kurland said. He said the previous “exposure to revocation” of citizenship under the intent rule would have “hung over [new citizens’] heads, forever”.

A Canadian passport has become “easier to obtain and much harder to lose” under new rules, according to immigration lawyer Richard Kurland.

“It’s the difference between sleeping soundly … [versus] knowing that at some day in the future, over decades to come, the state may intrude on your life and decide that you did not have the intent to be Canadian,” he said.

Kurland had lobbied the previous Tory government of prime minister Stephen Harper to introduce the pre-citizenship tax-filing requirement, and he said he was happy to see it retained under the Liberals’ Justin Trudeau as a “non-partisan” policy element.

There are estimated to be almost 300,000 existing Canadian citizens in Hong Kong, most of them returnee immigrants whose decision to head back to the SAR is perfectly legal and will remain so under the new rules.

Yet illegally evading Canada’s pre-citizenship residency requirements has become an industry that caters to some sectors of the wealthy Chinese community. The biggest immigration fraud in Canadian history involved Xun “Sunny” Wang, a Vancouver-area immigration consultant who specialised in helping rich Chinese fake their presence in Canada as permanent residents, in order to later obtain citizenship. Wang’s clients were actually living and working China, but had him doctor their passports and forge various documents to create the illusion that they were in Canada instead. Jailed in October for seven years, Wang helped cheat immigration rules for at least 1,200 clients, who paid him C$10million in the process.

*The Hongcouver blog is devoted to the hybrid culture of its namesake cities: Hong Kong and Vancouver. All story ideas and comments are welcome. Connect with me by email ian.young@scmp.com or on Twitter, @ianjamesyoung70 .

Source: http://www.scmp.com/news/world/article/1919566/citizenship-revamp-new-canadians-no-longer-have-intend-live-canada?utm_source=&utm_medium=&utm_campaign=SCMPSocialNewsfeed

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Funnies

2016-02-26T00:47:00.001-08:00

“It’s alive! Alive!!”

“The killer had to be a man. Not only is the knife still bloody—it wasn’t even put in the sink.”

A Sense of Wonder

2016-02-21T20:37:00.000-08:00

“A knowledge of the existence of something we cannot penetrate, of the manifestations of the profoundest reason and the most radiant beauty, which are only accessible to our reason in their most elementary forms—it is this knowledge and this emotion that constitute the truly religious attitude; in this sense, and in this alone, I am a deeply religious man”
- Albert Einstein

A brief history of gravity, gravitational waves - Albert Einsein

2016-02-13T02:15:00.001-08:00

A brief history of gravity, gravitational waves and #LIGO: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/speaking-of-science/wp/2016/02/11/a-brief-history-of-gravity/ …

Eyes On The World

Did A Blonde Blogger Inspire Trump’s Air Strikes on Syria?

Did A Blonde Blogger Inspire Trump’s Air Strikes on Syria? - Peter Diekmeyer

Did A Blonde Blogger Inspire Trump’s Air Strikes on Syria? - Peter Diekmeyer

A red panda carrying her cub.

Freedom of the Press

Trump's Pet Nazi

Top Trump Adviser Sebastian Gorka Denied A Report That He Belongs To A Nazi-Allied Group

Nature Photos

Is Jeff Sessions an hypocrite?

Political Commentators

Paris Spectacular Boulevards And Architecture

Photography by: Zsolt Hlinka

Arc De Triomphe From Above, Paris

Arc De Triumphe From Above, Paris

SNOWY OWL

Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde

Lion and Cub

Elfi Oladele

Principles for Mindful Living:

Philippines president Rodrigo Duterte personally killed criminals

One Stolen Gun's Path of Destruction in Chicago

One gun's journey — 42 bullets fired, 2 killed, 5 wounded

George W. Bush Weighs in on the Election

Last Week Tonight with John Oliver: Brexit Anthem

Wax sculpture of Hitler on his knees sells for $17.2million

Civilian access to military-style weapons.

The AR-15 is a military-style rifle that civilians can use

The more you try to ban the AR-15, the more popular it gets

Obama’s election made the AR-15 and other assault weapons a lot more popular

The other hurdle to banning AR-15s: the Supreme Court

"What’s going on in Syria is collective, multilateral madness"

“Frankfurt School” philosopher Herbert Marcuse, the godfather of cultural Marxism

Keynesian Claptrap—— Why The State Is Waging War On Savers And Cash

by Claudio Grass • March 1, 2016

New Canadians no longer have to intend to live in Canada

Citizenship revamp: New Canadians no longer have to intend to live in Canada

BIO

Funnies

A Sense of Wonder

A brief history of gravity, gravitational waves - Albert Einsein