Q & A with Mr.Bin Laden and Mr. William Elliott

Last October, RCMP Commissioner William Elliott addressed a meeting of security intelligence peeps about Canada's current terrorism environment :

"As far as Al-Qaeda is concerned, Canada is the enemy.
We recall Osama Bin Laden’s famous communiqué to America’s allies in November of 2002, in which he asked:

“Why are your governments, especially those of Britain, France, Italy, Canada, Germany and Australia, allying themselves with America in its attacks on us in Afghanistan? This is injustice. The time has come to settle accounts. Just as you kill, so you shall be killed; just as you bomb, so you shall be bombed. And there will be more to come.”

To answer Mr. Bin Laden's question, here's David Rothkopf, Bill Clinton's Deputy Undersecretary of Commerce and former managing director of Kissinger Associates, from Empire : Superclass, posted here on Saturday (mark 18:31) :

"If there were no oil in the Middle East, the United States wouldn't care about the Middle East, it wouldn't care about Israel, it wouldn't care about Palestine, it wouldn't care about social development in Iraq, it wouldn't care about the Taliban. If there were no oil and the interests who benefit from that oil and advocate for that oil, and who have done so and who have shaped American policy over the course of the past 70 years as a consequence of that oil, are big businesses."

Call me crazy, Mr. Elliott, but I think not helping the US occupy a country for oil bidness would go some distance towards not attracting unwanted attention from Mr. Bin Laden and his new friends here at home.
Back to Elliott's address :

Canada does suffer an image problem with some Americans as a safe haven for terrorists. We must work to overcome that perception ... demonstrate a more proportional and comprehensive commitment to not only fighting terrorism but to advancing our shared security interests more broadly.

I note that this year the RCMP’s strategic priority of “Terrorism” will be expanded to “National Security” which is consistent with this broader objective.

More criminal prosecutions for terrorist offences would certainly be one step to enhancing security relations with the United States.

And just where are we going to find "more criminal prosecutions for terrorist offenses" for the benefit of the US?
Junkies rebranded as terrorist financiers for the war on drugs.

Put succinctly, Canadian criminals and Canadian drug users keep Afghan and Pakistani heroin traffickers in business and contribute to the continuation of a serious threat to the West, and to Canada and Canadian interests.

Proving such linkages in court would mean that drug couriers and their associates could face terrorism financing charges. That would help send a strong message to the world [aka the US] that we are serious about prosecuting accomplices to terror.

Perhaps it also explains why someone decided to send a strong message to the RCMP in BC to stand down from its presser with Insite one month later.

Elliott wraps up with a pitch for an expanded RCMP "capacity to conduct and support extraterritorial investigations" in national security:

I believe the time has come for law enforcement to be even more active in the realm of national security. We need greater capacity to put more terrorism cases before the courts and more terrorists in jail.

And voilà! - Project Samosa. Hope our new alleged terrorists appreciate their important role for us in "enhancing shared security relations with the US".
I know Osama Bin Laden does.
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Who muzzled the RCMP on Insite?

Paul Wells today on the bogus “academic” argument against Insite and the muzzling of RCMP's attempts to fix their earlier support of it.

"The only “research” the Harper government is prepared to rely on, as it fights Insite all the way to the Supreme Court, was not research; was secretly bought and paid for with federal tax dollars; contradicts the actual research; has been disowned internally by the police force that bankrolled it; and would have been disowned publicly by that police force if somebody at the RCMP’s highest ranks or outside it hadn’t put the kibosh on."

In December RCMP in BC were set to hold a presser to acknowledge :

"an extensive body of Canadian and international peer-reviewed research reporting the benefits of supervised injection sites and no objective peer-reviewed studies demonstrating harms.” As well, [Chief Superintendent] Harriman said the RCMP would admit that “reviews” commissioned by the force, which contested the centre’s research, “did not meet conventional academic standards.”

Then BC's RCMP Deputy Commissioner Gary Bass called it off on orders from ??? who exactly?

John Geddes wrote the original piece on Friday about federal RCMP or higher up interference at Maclean's, already linked by Pogge and The Jurist, and today Wells is writing to get some traction on an issue that, regardless of what anyone's opinion of Insite may be, clearly points to government data fudging. Where the hell is the rest of the media on this?

Comments under both Wells and Geddes are running to the nuancy "oh well, research, who can tell what's true?" and "who said the government interfered?"variety.
Well, you can tell a couple of things about one of those RCMP commissioned reports, written by Dr. Colin Mangham, and how government figured in them.

Flashback : In May 2008, Tony Clement, then Health Minister, turned up at the Standing Committee on Health intending to combat Insite with one doctor in tow - Colin Mangham, "Director of Research" for the Drug Prevention Network of Canada.

The Drug Prevention Network of Canada is a member org of the Canadian government's National Drug Prevention Advisory Committee and an offshoot of the Drug Prevention Network of the Americas, dedicated to "combating the drug legalization movement globally".
The current president of DPNCanada is also on the board of DPNAmericas; the Canadian vice pres is Gwen Landolt of REAL Woman. Rounding out the board of our own Canadian clonetank is founder and past president ReformaCon MP Randy White, plus a couple of Scientology Narconon graduates.
"Honorary board member" Calvina L. Fay of Drug Free America and Save Our Society From Drugs is touted as having "served as an advisor to President Bush on drug policy".
Yeah, war on drugs!

So did Clement's Dr. Maugham have any data for the Health Committee in 2008 to support his contention that 22 independent research papers in support of Insite were worthless? No, he was just offering an opinion, a "critique".

Cathie was on this back in 2007 with the publishing of Mangham's "critique". The new wrinkle is that someone muzzled the RCMP on coming clean about it.
Now who do we know that has made a career out of muzzling civil servants again?
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Insite under seige again

In May last year the B.C. Supreme Court gave the supervised-injection site, Insite, a constitutional exemption to stay open without a federal exemption from drug laws. Also known as : provincial dibs.

Over the next three days, Canada's Attorney General and Minister of Health will attempt to overturn that ruling in the B.C. Court of Appeals because their neanderthal ideology prevents them from acknowledging that Insite's clients are actually real people with a right to healthcare.

A very good doc from The Fifth Estate does not make that mistake : Staying Alive
Neither does this piece, with accompanying slideshow, from the Vancouver Courier.

So will we be hearing from your government's expert panel of scientologists and US War on Drugs shills again this time ? Or are you just gonna stick with your "angel defence"?

A Department of Justice lawyer in court today argued that : "Making drug-related laws unconstitutional because they are difficult for drug addicts to obey would be "capitulation" along the lines of changing arson laws to accommodate pyromaniacs."

Or "capitulation" along the lines of changing your high horsie sensibilities to accommodate "not necessarily opposing safe-injection sites for illegal drugs in Quebec" .
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Tony Clement and his angels of death

Federal Health Minister Tony Clement spouted off against Vancouver's supervised injection site at the Canadian Medical Association conference today.
Tony, who isn't a doctor and doesn't even play one on TV very well, once defended his opposition to Insite and his very slippery 'slippery slope' argument by saying that he believes he is "on the side of the angels."

Really? Whose angels are those, Tony? You mean these ones? :
Vancouver Sun : "Clement said an expert panel commissioned by the federal Health Department last year found that Insite has had no impact on reducing the transmission of blood-borne illnesses such as HIV/AIDS"

You mean that "expert panel" of scientologists and US War on Drugs shills whose "research" you tabled at the Health committee on harm reduction?

I remember watching that particular committee meeting, Tony. You brought along one doctor as a witness. He admitted he hadn't done any research. Commitee members and people in the audience were laughing. Laughing, Tony. Surely you haven't forgotten.


Many, many, many, many, many, many, many bloggy takedowns for Tony today, but let's hear from Dr. Thomas Kerr, of the B.C. Centre for Excellence in HIV/AIDS at St. Paul's Hospital. Noting that Clement is "highly selective" in his facts, and stating that his information is based on articles that haven't been subjected to a peer review [How does one go about peer reviewing scientology after all?], Kerr said :

"It's just a real pathetic manipulation of data."

"You find evidence pointing clearly to Insite as doing what it is supposed to do. Of course it's working."
"Who do you want to believe? Do you want to believe published articles in the New England Journal or Lancet, do you want to believe the World Health Organization or do you want to believe Tony Clement?
It's embarrassing."

Well exactly.

Besides, everything you need to know about Tony's ethical position on Insite is right here in the G&M :

"Health Minister Tony Clement says his government will not necessarily oppose safe-injection sites for illegal drugs in Quebec even though it will appeal a court decision allowing a similar facility in British Columbia."

Yeah. That would be what Accidental Deliberations pointed out is the "first do no harm to the Conservatives" principle of ethics.

h/t Cathie from Canada who first exposed Tony's dubious panel of expert way back in May 2007.