Ladies and Gentlemen, Start your Conspiracy Theorizing

In the words of Dana Carvey's Church Lady "Isn't that convieeeenient?"
One must ask age old detective's question: Qui bono?

Jeez, Don't Tell Stockboy!

There's a bi-partisan bill in the House of Representatives that the Harperites are going to hate.

"HR 5843, cosponsored by Reps. Ron Paul (R-TX) and William Lacy Clay (D-MO), would eliminate all federal penalties, including arrest, jail time, and civil fines, prohibiting the personal use and possession of up to 100 grams of marijuana."

This is the first time in 24 years a decriminalization bill has been introduced.

Wouldn't it be just perfect if, as the US turns itself around 180, it starts introducing some of the progressive changes the Cons and NDP saw fit to discard in order to chuck out the Libs.

The Cons' copycat crime bill

Tories are copying U.S. crime laws that failed, expert says

2.3 million Americans behind bars
"The Harper government is embracing tough-on-crime policies even as the United States backs away from similar approaches that have produced record levels of incarceration, huge costs and racialized prisons, says an American expert on sentencing policy.
"We've had this get-tough movement for three decades now," says Marc Mauer, head of the Sentencing Project, which promotes reforms in sentencing law and alternatives to incarceration."If that's the best way to produce safety, we should be the safest country in the world, and clearly that's not the case."

Mauer's observations are relevant because the federal Tackling Violent Crime Act echoes the punitive approach to crime adopted in the U.S.
The Harper government pushed the bill through even though crime rates in Canada are falling and are now at their lowest level in 25 years."

You know, we used to know better.

Here's a page written by the head of Corrections Service of Canada, in Sept 2000 :

"HTTP Error 404 - Not Found
In an effort to serve you better, we have redesigned the Correctional Service of Canada website. As a result, many of our webpage addresses have changed and some links may be unavailable.
Date Modified: 2008-01-04"

Well, never mind, as it happens I already have my own copy of it :

"American politicians have often found it in their self-interest to use fear of crime as a strategy to win elections, by promising to wage war on crime.
It is ironic that in the United States, as in Canada, crime rates have been declining since 1991. However, by waging war on crime they have managed to double their prison population without making the United States a noticeably safer society than Canada. We would do much to advance the public interest if we can better manage the fear of crime than our American neighbours."

Currently one out of every 100 US citizens is behind bars.
Americans spend $44 BILLION a year on corrections -- six times more than they do on higher education.

Cross-posted at Creekside

Everything old is new again

When Democrats complained about Republican dirty tricks in the 1972 campaign they were labelled as whiny liberals who just couldn't handle hardball politics. Then Woodward and Bernstein blew the lid off of what White House-sponsored criminals like G. Gordon Liddy(1) and Donald Segretti (2)were really up to on behalf of Richard Nixon and the Republicans and people wanted Nixon's head. Only his resignation and Gerald Ford's willingness to choose peace and quiet over justice kept his crooked criminal ass out of prison.

Its a good thing that kind of thing is no longer tolerated by the Justice Department and the U.S. Attorneys. I mean, crimes committed for the purpose of intimidating political opponents, like torture and rampant corruption, are the sort of things we expect to see in third-world tinpot dictatorships, right?

Fun fact footnotes!
1. G. Gordie's fondest childhood memories include listening to radio broadcasts of speeches by Hitler that "made me feel a strength inside that I had never known before" a lasting effect of which being that even today "at assemblies where the national anthem is played, I must suppress the urge to snap out my right arm."
2. Segretti's protege in the 1972 campaign was none other than College Republicans honcho Karl Rove. Segretti was also the co-chair of John McCain's presidental campaign in Orange Country, Calif., in 2000 - further proof of McCain excellent judgement.

TASER™ News

Judge orders 'Taser' removed from autopsies.

"A judge ruled today that the Summit County Medical Examiner must change her autopsy findings to remove all references to the Taser stun gun as a contributing cause of death in the cases of three men who died during encounters with law enforcement officers.

The decision by visiting Judge Ted Schneiderman, released late this morning after a four-day trial in [Ohio] Common Pleas Court last week, stated that there is ''simply no medical, scientific or electrical evidence to support the conclusion that the Taser . . . had anything to do with the death of Dennis S. Hyde, Richard Holcomb, or Mark D. McCullaugh.''

Schneiderman, quoting passages from [medical examiner, Dr. Lisa J.]Kohler's autopsy report on McCullaugh, stated that his death ''shall be ruled undetermined and any reference to death by 'asphyxia due to the combined effects of chemical, mechanical and electrical restraint,' as well as any reference to 'homicide' due to 'multiple restraint mechanisms with beating and anal penetration' shall be deleted from both the death certificate and the Report of Autopsy.''

Anal penetration? Is that in the manual?

"Lawyers for Taser, relying on a ''multiple number of experts . . . in the area of sudden and unexpected death while law enforcement attempted to obtain custody provided overwhelming credible medical and scientific evidence to support their positions,'' Schneiderman's ruling stated."

Dr Stanbrook at the Canadian Medical Association Journal, however, deigns to disagree.
From Tasers in medicine - an irreverent call for proposals : (pdf, sorry)

"In this issue, we call your attention to an emerging and increasingly popular medical device: the taser. It may strike you as odd to hear tasers described as medical devices. Tasers are probably more familiar to you, depending on your point of view, as a valuable tool for subduing criminals and safeguarding the lives of law enforcement personnel, or, alternatively, as a potentially lethal weapon being deployed with wanton disregard for public safety. The latter perspective has possibly been inflicted on society by the media, which has an annoying habit of publicizing when someone dies after being exposed to a taser discharge."

Noting TASER™'s litigious nature and propensity for using researchers who "occasionally neglect to mention their participation on TASER International’s medical advisory board or board of directors" in "suing a researcher for publishing scientific results critical of tasers in a peer-reviewed journal and a medical examiner for the “error” of listing taser exposure on a death certificate as the cause of death", Matthew B. Stanbrook MD PhD, Deputy Editor, Scientific, CMAJ, writes :

"Only cynics would observe that tasers nevertheless appear to be the leading risk factor associated with sudden death due to excited delirium"

and

"Obviously, no one is better suited to instruct a qualified physician, coroner or specialist in forensic pathology on how to determine the cause of death than advisors to a corporation with a vested interest in the device being critiqued."

The Vancouver coroner's investigation into the death of Robert Dziekanski should be starting any day now.
I do hope the delightfully sardonic Dr Stanbrook is invited . Go.

Cross-posted at Creekside

...anal penetration...?

Pedestrian Safety Program . . . .

For more on this exciting new pedestrian safety program, check out The Onion . . . .

(Cross-posted from Moving to Vancouver)

UN Urges Biofuel Investment Halt

Of all the things that might have happened to make the Harperites invest even more in bio-fuels this might be number one.

"The UN's new top adviser on food has urged a freeze on biofuel investment, saying the blind pursuit of the policy is "irresponsible".

Sure as sunrise the Harperites will harden their commitment to bio-fuels now.

John Baird will take the lead.

If Stevie has let him out of the bathroom yet.

Gross Incompetence and Dereliction of Duty

The former commander of US forces in Iraq, General Ricardo Sanchez, is now retired.

Guess what? He wrote a book.

Guess what? He accuses the Bush administration of "gross incompetence and dereliction of duty.”

Guess what? Major national media in the US will completely ignore it.

Thinking Americans have become enured to their major national media ignoring or belittling stories that damn the Bushites. A little criticism is OK but when someone credible comes along, even someone the media once eagerly pursued for their opinion, and makes an accusation as serious as this it can be considered as sure as sunrise that it will be ignored.

Our national media has been slow in catching on to the new paradigm but they're catching up fast.

Harper Kills Off CAIRS

"The federal Conservatives have quietly killed a giant information registry that was used by lawyers, academics, journalists and ordinary citizens to hold government accountable.

The registry, created in 1989, is an electronic list of every request filed to all federal departments and agencies under the Access to Information Act.

Known as CAIRS, for Co-ordination of Access to Information Requests System, the database allowed ordinary citizens to identify millions of pages of once-secret documents that became public through individual freedom-of-information requests over many years.

But in a notice last week to civil servants on the Treasury Board website, officials posted an innocuous obituary: effective April 1, 2008, "the requirement to update CAIRS is no longer in effect."

Harper accountability in action.

Damn ! ! ! !

From Reuters today:

U.S. rejects Canadian's "child soldier" defense
Fri May 2, 2008 3:44pm EDT - By Jane Sutton

MIAMI (Reuters) - A Canadian captured in Afghanistan at age 15 can be tried for murder in the Guantanamo war crimes court, a U.S. military judge ruled in rejecting claims that he was a child soldier who should be rehabilitated rather than prosecuted.

Canadian prisoner Omar Khadr, now 21, is charged in the Guantanamo court with throwing a grenade that killed a U.S. soldier during a firefight at a suspected al Qaeda compound in Afghanistan in 2002.

His military lawyer, Lt. Cmdr. William Kuebler, had argued in February hearings at the Guantanamo naval base that Khadr was a child soldier illegally conscripted by his father, an al Qaeda financier. He urged the judge to drop the charges, which carry a maximum penalty of life in prison.

The judge, Army Col. Peter Brownback, issued a ruling on Wednesday agreeing with prosecutors' position that the law authorizing the Guantanamo trials contained no minimum age.

Brownback's ruling clears the way for Khadr to be tried in the special tribunals created by the Bush administration to try non-U.S. captives it considers "unlawful enemy combatants" outside the regular civilian and military courts.

Kuebler called the ruling "an embarrassment to the United States" and said Canada would share in the embarrassment if it allows its citizen to be tried at Guantanamo. He said Khadr would be the first child soldier tried for war crimes in modern history.

What is the chance that members of bushco will face war crimes charges?

Not as good as Khadr being found guilty in this kangaroo court is my bet . . . .

(Cross-posted from Moving to Vancouver)

Winning Hearts and Minds in Iraq

Disney will be building a new theme park on the site of the Baghdad Zoo.

No kidding.

That oughta do it, all right.

Lets Have an Election

Let's be done with all the palaver, prevarication, posturing and pontification.

Its time for an election.

Its time to let the people give Harper his majority and let him get on with the job he's set for himself.

It doesn't matter much anyway.

Globally we're approaching a convergence threshold that is going to make the possibility of creating a new progressive democratic state all but impossible so we might as well bite the bullet and give the place over to the Harperites.

Cries of "Duce, Duce" being heard again in the streets of Rome and threats of violence toward political opponents of the new Berlusconi regime is just the beginning.

What the planet is facing in the coming years, climate change, mass migrations, food and water shortages, tightening borders etc etc will create fertile ground for regimes that are more authoritarian not less, more militaristic not less, more repressive not less.

Get drunk and stay drunk.

Happy May Day

Today most of the world is celebrating May Day, also known as International Workers' Day, an international celebration of the social and economic achievements of the labour movement. Countries not officially celebrating it today include Canada, South Africa, and the United States, but ......Hello, what's this then?

U.S. West Coast ports closed by worker protest.

May 1 (Reuters) - Ports along the U.S. West Coast, including the country's busiest port complex in Los Angeles, shut down on Thursday as some 10,000 dock workers went on a one-day strike to protest the war in Iraq, port and union officials said.

Twenty-nine ports from San Diego to Washington state that handle more than half of U.S waterborne trade ground to a halt, but shipping experts said the economic costs of the walk-out would be limited. Paul Bingham, an economist with Global Insight, which tracks container volume and congestion at U.S. ports, said labor officials had alerted shippers and carriers.

The International Longshore and Warehouse Union said some 10,000 workers joined the anti-war protest, spurred in part by its belief that big shipping companies are profiting from the war.

"Longshore workers are standing down on the job and standing up for America," said ILWU International President Bob McEllrath. "We're supporting the troops and telling politicians in Washington that it's time to end the war in Iraq"

Way to go, ILWU! Happy May Day.

Stevie's Wet Dream May Yet Come True

Wouldn't this make Stevie happy!

"Pentagon officials are quietly considering a significant change in the war command in Afghanistan to extend U.S. control of forces into the country's volatile south."

Dear Leader would be able to surrender Canadian forces to US control and duck responsibility for what happens to them.

Perhaps Angela Merkel already had wind of this and decided that sending money to be wasted was better than sending blood and sinew to be wasted.

Pot = Kettle = Black . . . .

Please let this democratic primary season be over soon.

"Royalty in Waiting" Billary's rhetoric is getting to be a bit much.

The problem is the masses she appeals to believe her BS.


Compliments of McClatchy today:

Clinton blasts Bush for not stopping a project Bill OK'd
Steven Thomma | McClatchy Newspapers - April 30, 2008

INDIANAPOLIS — Hillary Clinton loves to tell the story about how the Chinese government bought a good American company in Indiana, laid off all its workers and moved its critical defense technology work to China.

It’s a story with a dramatic, political ending. Republican President George W. Bush could have stopped it, but he didn’t.

If she were president, Clinton says, she’d fight to protect those jobs. It’s just the kind of talk that’s helping her win support from working-class Democrats worried about their jobs and paychecks, not to mention their country’s security.

What Clinton never includes in the oft-repeated tale is the role that prominent Democrats played in selling the company and its technology to the Chinese. She never mentions that big-time Democratic contributor George Soros helped put together the deal to sell the company or that the sale was approved by her husband's administration.

_______________


Here’s how she told it a few weeks ago at a union meeting in Washington:

“A Chinese company bought the company, called Magnequench, and they wanted to move the jobs to China. The people in Indiana protested, did everything they could to convince the Bush administration that this was a terrible mistake. Couldn't even get a hearing,” she said.

“The jobs went to China, but so did the technology. And now the United States military has to buy the magnets we need for the smart bombs we invented from China,” she said as the union members booed.

Here's the complete story:

In 1995, General Motors decided to sell the Indiana-based Magnequench to a Chinese-American consortium.

The consortium included:

* San Huan New Materials and Hi-Tech Co, a company owned by the Chinese Academy of Sciences;
* Onfem Holdings, a company controlled by the State Nonferrous Metals Industry Administration in the Peoples Republic of China;
* Soros Fund Management, headed by George Soros;
* The Sextant Group, founded by Archibald Cox Jr.;

Soros, of course, is the wealthy investor who has contributed vast sums to Democratic candidates and liberal causes.

He’s given more than $250,000 to Democratic campaign committees, tens of thousands to individual Democratic candidates and about $2.5 million to the liberal group Moveon.org, according to Federal Election Commission records.

He’s also contributed to Hillary Clinton’s Senate campaign and to Obama’s Senate and presidential campaigns. He contributed to Republican Sen. John McCain’s first presidential campaign, in 1999, when McCain was running against Bush for the Republican nomination.

Politics as usual.

Also as usual, the big losers are the USian public who get the opportunity (?) to choose from "Bad" or "Worse" . . . .

(Cross-posted from Moving to Vancouver)

Pixie Dust

I wonder if this technique can be made to work for intangibles like integrity or intelligence.

If it does lets get a few crates shipped up to Parliament Hill and sprinkled into the House over the railing.

On a more serious note it does appear to be a fairly major medical breakthrough.

Another form of extraordinary rendition

Canada's secret spy days are over : CSIS chief, said at a "recent and closed CIA-sponsored Global Futures Forum conference of international security services in Vancouver"

"Public terrorism trials are changing the way government spies operate, says Canada's spymaster, Jim Judd.
As a consequence of the fight against global Islamic terrorism, an increasing number of open-court criminal prosecutions in Canada, the U.S. and Europe have, at their genesis, information collected by shadowy secret agents rather than police officers.

Prior to 9/11 and in several cases since, most of those detained for suspected terrorist links in Canada were immigrants or refugees and the government conveniently relied on immigration laws and security certificates to quietly deport them to their countries of origin or hold them in custody.

But the alleged terrorist activities of Ottawa's Momin Khawaja and the "Toronto 11" -- all Canadian citizens awaiting trial in the first of Canada's post-9/11 terror prosecutions -- must be heard in open courts, where the prosecution's evidence is subject to the rigours of defence counsel scrutiny and the rules of evidence."

"The rigours of defence counsel scrutiny and the rules of evidence."
Judd refers to this as the "judicialization" of what has "traditionally been considered covert government information".

OK, hold that thought a moment - I'm coming back to it.

Yesterday, in The Lesson of the Arar inquiry : Keep it under wraps, Pogge wrote about Mr. Abdelrazik, a Canadian citizen fingered by CSIS and arrested "at our request" in Sudan five years ago, where he alleges he was beaten while in custody, and frequently visited by CSIS.

In 2004, Sudan cleared him of all allegations that he was a terrorist or a member of al-Qaeda and released him. They further offered to fly him home but Canada obstructed the deal. !!!
A few months later, Mr. Abdelrazik was then bundled off back to prison for another five months after suggesting he wanted to make his case to the prime minister.
Now released a second time, he remains trapped in Khartoum, his health failing, his family back here in Montreal.

And here's the perfect Catch 22 : He can't fly home because he's on a no-fly list and he can't go by land or sea because Canada continues to refuse him a passport.

From the G&M, who, to their eternal credit, put this on their front page yesterday :

"[Abdelrazik's lawyer] says the similarities with Mr. Arar's case are compelling. In both instances, a Canadian citizen is fingered by CSIS as a terrorist suspect. In both cases, no charges are laid in Canada. In both, the person is arrested and imprisoned abroad. In both, Canadian officials say there is little that they can do because the person is in the country of their other citizenship."

In both, he might have added, there were allegations of torture and examples of extraordinary callousness on the part of government officials. His lawyer calls it "another form of extraordinary rendition".
The G&M article does a fine job detailing the blatant ass-covering, Lib and Con, that appears to have formed the bulk of Foreign Affairs' concerns regarding Mr. Abdelrazik over the past five years. Just like with Arar, CSIS didn't want him to come back to Canada to embarrass them.
As CSIS chief, Jim Judd oversaw both cases.

POGGE asks for the second time now : How many more of them are there out there?

May 16, 2007, Day seeks security powers

"Anti-terror measures would restore `preventive arrests’ and help CSIS spies overseas
The federal government plans to try to revive the extraordinary anti-terror police powers of "investigative hearings" and "preventive arrest" as part of a series of major security initiatives."

"Preventative arrest" allows police to arrest without charge and judges to penalize without trial, people who the authorities fear might commit future terrorist offences.

"The government also says it will expand the ability of Canada's spy agency – the Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS) – to do covert foreign intelligence gathering abroad.
The two police powers slated for revival were killed by the opposition parties in a parliamentary vote in February.
In an appearance yesterday before the House of Commons public safety committee, Public Safety Minister Stockwell Day indicated he has drafted a bill to reinstate those powers."

The bill is still pending, and as noted here, now also enjoys the support of the Liberals.

So when CSIS chief Jim Judd laments for the CIA the late great days of publicly unacknowleged extaordinary renditions, those pre-'judicialized' days unsullied by the "rigours of defence council scrutiny and rules of evidence", just remember it's because they're planning on bringing those days back.

Cross-posted at Creekside

Urgent message - We will send you $40,000

Calgary Grit gets an email from a Nigerian prince :

December 2, 2005

Dearest Candidate,

Good morning, how are you and your family? I hope fine. Please, I am sorry to bother you with my problem.
Please know that it's not by mistake I am contacting you but by the special grace of God. My name is Stephen Harper and I am the leader of the Conservative Party.

The Conservative Party has $ 9.1 million in its bank account which is destined to be used for advertising in the election campaign. However, the evil Commissions of Elections Canada is watching us closely and is not permitting us to spend more than our $ 18.3 million limit.

In order to free this money for spending on the election advertising, I need your assistance. I wish to transfer $ 40,000 to your election account. But first you must give me a wire transfer form so that I can take the money out of your account as soon as it send you the money....

Go. It's brilliant : the Con's In and Out scheme in a nutshell.

Future collectible...

"Free Tibet" flags

that are

"Made in China"

BBC

Creekside

"Batter Up . . . . "

From today's Globe and Mail:

Report: Clemens had relationship with country star

Associated Press - April 28, 2008

NEW YORK — Roger Clemens had a decade-long relationship with country star Mindy McCready that began when she was a 15-year-old aspiring singer and the pitcher was a Boston Red Sox ace, the Daily News reported.

Clemens's lawyer, Rusty Hardin, confirmed a long-term relationship but told the newspaper it was not sexual.

"He flatly denies having had any kind of an inappropriate relationship with her," Hardin said. "He's considered her a close family friend. ... He has never had a sexual relationship with her."

_______________


The newspaper said Clemens sent cash to McCready to help her with legal issues and reached out to her when she was in jail last year in Tennessee.

The 32-year-old McCready was sentenced last September for violating probation from a 2004 drug arrest and was released from jail last Dec. 30. The violation occurred in July when McCready was accused of scuffling with her mother and resisting arrest at her mother's home in Fort Myers, Fla. She still must serve two years' probation.

McCready had a No. 1 single in 1996 with "Guys Do It All the Time." (No reference to the above photo of Clemens and unknown playmate, we're assuming. - Ed.)

Sounds like there's lyrics to a hit country song in there somewhere . . . .

(Cross-posted from Moving to Vancouver)