Beyond the Border War on Drugs

Seven months after Steve and Barry signed off on Beyond the Border last year, agreeing to improve cross-border investigations and share more info on Canadian travelers with Homeland Security, US AG Eric Holder explained to the Northern Border Summit that while Canada and the US already had an "excellent relationship" on  "cooperation in criminal investigations and prosecutions", " certain sentencing laws – and information sharing policies and practices – should be updated." 


Uh-oh, I wrote at the time, here comes Operation Doobie - the source of Steve's hardon for "spending hundreds of millions of dollars of taxpayers dollars on prison building, in order to impose a mandatory minimum term of six months in jail for anyone who grows more than six pot plants" - and this in a country that overwhelmingly supports decriminalization if not outright legalization.


Well, it would appear Operation Doobie has now entered the building.

There are a number of curious things about the Whitehouse National Northern Border Counternarcotics Strategy, January 2012, which I'll get to in a minute, but basically it calls for more info sharing from ISPs :

  "It is imperative that Canada and the United States work together to expedite the sharing of information from electronic communication service providers; and share information necessary to lay the foundation for intercepting internet and voice communications under their respective laws in a timely manner." (Pages 33-34)

Plus greater integration of Canada and US law enforcement agencies in Border Enforcement Security Task forces (BESTs) and the 15 Integrated Border Enforcement Teams (IBETs), including FBI, ICE, CBP, USCG, CBSA, RCMP, DEA, OPP, etc etc. Mention is made of the coordinating duties of the DEA and FBI offices located in Ottawa, Vancouver, and Toronto.

And more tech. Lots and lots more tech : thermal cameras, license plate readers, unmanned aerial vehicles, mobile and remote video surveillance systems.

Naturally this is reported in the US media as being about keeping Canadian marijuana out of the US, however small potatoes we might be compared to the US Mexico border :

"Agents seized about 9,470 pounds of marijuana along the northern border in fiscal 2011, according to Customs and Border Protection statistics, less than 1 percent of the roughly 2.4 million pounds seized along the southwestern border."

Ok, now for those curious bits ...

It really is all about pot.

"Marijuana is the most widely abused illicit drug in the United States and Canada. 

Marijuana and Ecstasy remain the most significant Canadian drug threats to the United States. While still responsible for significant social harm and public health and safety consequences at the individual and community levels, methamphetamine (meth) and heroin pose much lesser threats to each country, as evidenced by case reporting and limited northbound and southbound seizures." 

See now I would have thought meth and smack were a greater threat than pot but apparently that's just me.

However if I was trying to justify expanding internet spying or spending billions to further integrate Canadian law enforcement under DEA and Homeland Security, then I guess I'd pick a viable target like potheads over the junkies in the DTES.

In the report, various Canadian ethnic groups are held responsible for grows and labs - Vietnamese, Italian, Irish, Indian, eastern European, plus the Hell's Angels and FN border reservations - but then the report elsewhere undercuts its own message by noting that the prevalence of reported drug use - cannabis, cocaine or crack, speed, Ecstasy, hallucinogens (excluding salvia) or heroin - is down slightly in the US and down a whopping 14.5% in Canada from 2004 to 2009.

Aside from its considerable preoccupation with pot, the report states that "Canadian-produced meth currently poses a limited threat to the United States" and "the vast majority of cocaine that crosses the U .S .–Canada border is northbound into Canada". 

Plus ""Vietnamese Transnational Crime Organizations, in some cases with ties to Canada, have moved their indoor marijuana grow activities to the United States in an effort to decrease transportation costs and limit the risk of seizure associated with smuggling marijuana across the Northern border."

So ... drug use down, meth no biggie, cocaine flows north, and pot grows moving stateside. 

So what, aside from the danger posed by people staring raptly at their hands while eating a shitload of cookie sandwiches, has any of this got to do with integrating the border again?

Back to the National Northern Border Counternarcotics Strategy :

"During the November 9-10, 2010 Cross Border Crime Forum Ministerial, the four co-chairs, the Attorneys General for the United States and Canada, the Minister for Public Safety and the Secretary of DHS ... officials underscored the importance of a shared vision for border security and highlighted progress made by the United States and Canada over the past year to safeguard the critical resources, infrastructure, and citizens of both nations, focusing on streamlining information sharing and enforcement efforts and enhancing the ability of both countries to identify and respond to a wide range of threats."

Safeguard the critical resources of both nations? Are we still talking about pot here?
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Monday night update : Via Greenvie at Bread & Roses, a great piece comparing SOPA to the war on drugs :
Stonekettle Kitchen : SOPA, PIPA, Good Intentions and the Road to Hell
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Harper's Angels

In 1973 the federal LeDain Commission called for the end of marijuana prohibition, and since then public opinion polls show a majority of Canadians of all ages and political stripes from right across the country agree.

How we doin' with that?

In 2010, nearly four decades later, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police handed Canadian pot activist Marc Emery over to the entirely discredited US War on Drugs machine to serve a five year prison sentence in Mississippi for selling seeds through the mail in Canada.

According to StatsCan, over 75,000 Canadians were busted for pot last year (56,870 for simple possession plus another 18,256 for trafficking or distribution), a 14% increase over 2009.

Steve's new Safe Streets and Communities Act- Bill C10, aka the Minimum Sense on Marijuana Bill, will introduce mandaTory sentences for possession :

• Six months mandatory jail time for growing six pot plants.
• Nine months mandatory jail time for passing a joint harvested from just one plant grown in the privacy of your own home if you are a renter.

In BC, where support for ending the doobie prohibition is currently running at 73%, the main beneficiary of the Cons Dumb-on-Crime Agenda is the Hell's Angels with their estimated $6-billion annual organized crime drug industry.
They must be thrilled that Steve is going to chill amateur grower competition for them, driving up prices and profits. They should look into making him an honorary member.
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New mandaTory minimum sense on marijuana

Dan Gardner blasts the Cons' proposed 'war on drugs' mandatory minimum sentences for growing pot :

• Six months mandatory jail time for growing six pot plants.
• Nine months mandatory jail time for passing a joint from one plant grown in the privacy of your own home if you are a renter.

I assume this represents the Cons' attempt to 'harmonize' Canadian policy within the security perimeter deal, or as US AG Eric Holder put it in his "Beyond the Border" speech : the need for "certain sentencing laws" to be "updated".
This, even as more than a dozen US states are currently repealing mandatory minimum sentences.and reducing sentences.


Besides, notes Gardner, they don't even deliver what they promise :

"The standard argument in favour of mandatory minimum sentences is that they deliver certainty. ... 

But mandatory minimums don't actually do away with discretion.

They merely transfer it from judges, by restricting their ability to choose the sentence, to prosecutors, who choose the charge. The system is still ambiguous, uncertain, and unpredictable. It's just ambiguous, uncertain, and unpredictable in a different way."

From the discretion of judges to the better nature of prosecutors. 
What could possibly go wrong?
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h/t Pogge
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Update :  Terry Milewski, CBC : Texas Conservatives reject Harper's crime plan
'Been there; done that; didn't work,' say Texas crime-fighters
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The Conservative Dumb-on-Crime Agenda

CBC : Crime rates in Canada lowest level since 1973

"Canada's national crime rate has been on the decline for the past two decades and has reached its lowest level since 1973, according to Statistics Canada. The total volume of crime, representing nearly 2.1 million Criminal Code incidents, fell five per cent in 2010 from the previous year, said the federal agency. The Crime Severity Index also dropped six per cent to its lowest point since 1998."

And if you go to the original you can hover over the arrows for specifics.

But holy crap - look at that big red arrow showing the increase in drug offences! That's terrible!
... hover ... hover ... OK, never mind - it's just that stupid marijuana bullshit again - due to get appreciably worse with the Cons new dumb-on-crime bill :

CBC : New pot laws could overwhelm BC jails, as anyone convicted of growing six plants will get a six-month minimum sentence .

Meanwhile over at StatsCan  : The crime severity index from 1999 to 2009:

Tabatha Southey wonders why a government that "defends its new sentencing laws as necessary, despite the fact that crime is down, with the statement that they're “not governing on the basis of the latest statistics” " ie facts, is nonetheless happy to pay $90,000 a day to outside consultants brought in to look for them.
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Feds mistake motor oil for heroin, jail granny for 12 days

There's just so much wrong with this news story about Canada Border Services Agency arresting and jailing a 66 year old woman for 12 days for trafficking, possessing and importing heroin because their swab-test of a jar of motor oil in her vehicle incorrectly identified it as heroin. Why wasn't she allowed a phone call? Why did it take 12 days to get a lab report? But the explanation from CBSA spokesy Lisa White is the weirdest :

"CBSA officers are trained to look for clues or multiple indicators before referring someone for secondary inspection. CBSA officers consider many factors, including previous infractions, countries visited, nervousness, etc., in assessing who or what might be a risk. When CBSA officers suspect a possible presence of narcotics, a field test will be conducted. These may include narcotic identification tests, spray tests and detector dogs."

OK, but as subsequent testing revealed no trace of heroin at all, what "clues" tipped you guys off?
That she had no prior record? That she was a retired Girl Scouts administrator on her way to a regular bingo game? 

Reading the many comments desperately attempting to absolve CBSA below the Winnipeg Free Press article - that it was her own fault for having an unmarked jar of motor oil in her vehicle, that perhaps her son-in-law had heroin on his hands when he gave her the jar of motor oil that subsequently tested for no heroin, that heroin does look like motor oil after all, that maybe she was a mule doing a test run, that the CBSA are just doing their job - you realize the extent to which the terr'rists really did win and that this is how we wound up with Steve.
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Prince of Pot's US prosecutor: "Our pot policy is dangerous and wrong"

Friday, Sept 10 Update : Sentenced. Five years.

In a guest column in the Seattle Times last Friday, the former US attorney who indicted Marc Emery in 2005 for selling pot seeds over the internet wrote :

"The U.S. war against marijuana has failed and actually threatens public safety and rests on false medical assumptions. Our marijuana policy is dangerous and wrong .... the law has failed, the public is endangered, no one in law enforcement is talking about it and precious few policymakers will honestly face the soft-on-crime sound bite in their next elections."

This includes our own homegrown cowards, principally Minister of Justice and Attorney General of Canada Rob Nicholson, who had Marc Emery, a Canadian citizen, deported to the US in May to serve a five-year sentence that will begin next week.

As Lib MP Ujjal Dosanjh put it back in March when he joined forces with Con MP Scott Reid and NDP MP Libby Davies to present petitions from 12,000 Canadians in the HoC asking Justice Minister Rob Nicholson not to sign extradition papers :

"It appears to me that we have assisted a foreign government arrest a man for doing something that we wouldn't arrest him for doing in Canada."

The rhetoric from the DEA at the 2005 bust was absurd :

"Emery and his organization had been designated as one of the Attorney General's most wanted international drug trafficking organizational targets.

Today's DEA arrest of Marc Scott Emery, publisher of Cannabis Culture Magazine, and the founder of a marijuana legalization group, is a significant blow not only to the marijuana trafficking trade in the U.S. and Canada, but also to the marijuana legalization movement."

In a letter to his wife Jodie yesterday, Emery remarks on the importance of getting supporters to write to Public Safety Minister Vic Toews and the US DoJ for the Saturday Sept 18th Marc Emery Support Day. I don't care if you don't smoke pot - I don't smoke pot - but write a letter or support a rally on Sept.18th. I'll stick up a reminder then.

History, ironically aided by his former prosecutor, is already moving to vindicate Emery. Too bad he still has to serve the time so that Canada can continue to suck up to the phony US War on Drugs.

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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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Three Amigos Summit : Protecting corporations from the people

In his Counterpunch article Three Amigos Summit : Sleepwalking Through the Minefield, author John Ross relates a story not covered up here : Mexican government use of ex-RCMP to pin the murder of a US journalist by Mexican authorities on a Oaxaca social activist.

After American journalist Brad Will was gunned down while filming a violent clash between government and anti-government forces in 2006 in Oaxaca, the US Congress stipulated that 15% of $1.4-billion Plan Mexico Merida Initiative war on drugs money flowing from the US to Mexico would be subject to Mexico stemming human rights abuses that have left thousands dead. Only 15%.
This is the presumed reason why, despite front-page photographs of five plainly identified Oaxaca politicians and police officers firing on Will and the protesters, federal prosecutors have instead framed one of the protesters, Juan Manuel Martinez, who has since been languishing in jail awaiting trial.

Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, Mexico's National Human Rights Commission, Physicians for Human Rights, Committee to Protect Journalists, and the family of Brad Will have all called for his release and the arrest of the government gunmen.

CPJ :

"On July 26, the following headline appeared in Mexico's daily Milenio newspaper:
"Canada: Will assassinated at point-blank range."
Soon, similar headlines followed. The stories focused on a recent report by three Canadian investigators that sustains conclusions made by the Mexican authorities in the case of Bradley Roland Will. The government-commissioned report has sparked controversy for echoing the findings of Mexican authorities, whose investigation has been heavily questioned by local and international human rights groups and the Will family for being politicized and riddled with irregularities."

In fact it was not an independent investigation from "Canada" at all, but rather three ex-RCMP hired by the Mexican government, apparently to bolster its claim to that endangered 15% in aid prior to the Leaders Summit. A thorough debunking of the so-called RCMP report which praised the Mexican state's version of events while slagging the slain Brad Will, and the report itself, here and here.

Ironically, ten days later at the Leaders Summit in Mexico, as noted by John Ross :

"in the spirit of the Security & Prosperity Partnership, Stephen Harper offered a $15 million Royal Canadian Mounted Police program to train Mexican police chiefs."

The people of Oaxaca are protesting the exploitation and environmental destruction of the over 80 mining concessions granted to transnational companies, most of them Canadian. :

"Mexican Secretary of the Economy figures reveal that more than 70% of all mining exploration, development and production projects in Mexico are owned by Canadian corporations. Canadian mining companies have benefited from legal reforms that the Mexican government adopted in order to accommodate NAFTA and draw foreign investment."

Good to know the SPP is still protecting its corporate citizens from the people.
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Homeland Security's reefer madness

In an interview on NPR, assistant commissioner Michael Kostelnik of U.S. Customs and Border Patrol explains why the Department of Homeland Security has five weaponless Predator drones patrolling the Canada-US border :

"routinely we have small helicopters they come and drop hockeybags full of B.C. Bud - a very lethal type of hydroponically grown marijuana."

Lethal marijuana.

Ok, to be fair, he did also mention that library that straddles both countries...
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The Cons new tough-on-window-dressing-crime bill

Bill C-15, an amendment to the Controlled Drugs [and Uncontrolled Growth of the Prison Industry] Act, guarantees, among other travesties, automatic jail time for people who grow and sell five marijuana plants.
Believe it or not, this is an improvement over what the Cons originally proposed - jail time for just one plant -until the Bloc and NDP managed to leverage it up to five plants in the Committee on Justice and Human Rights, where 13 0f the 16 expert witnesses called spoke against the new bill.

There's a lot of old US War on Drugs bullshit here, endorsed by the Libs and Cons just as the US begins to repudiate it.

From today's Hansard, HoC :

"California, New York, Michigan, Delaware, Massachusetts are all repealing their mandatory minimum sentences with other states considering the same.

Counsel to the United States House of Representatives committee on the judiciary, Eric Sterling, stated emphatically his decision to promote mandatory minimum sentences in the United States was probably "the greatest mistake of my entire career over 30 years in the practice of law".

What the Americans found was that the goal of the legislation to reduce drug use failed. The goal of safety in the communities failed. The goal of raising the prices of drugs and lowering the purity failed. The goal of reducing organized crime failed."

Yesterday in the HoC, Keith Martin, Lib, asked why we can't "decriminalize simple possession, for example, of marijuana and allow people to have a couple of plants"?

Indeed. People receiving sentences of two years less a day will wind up in the already overcrowded provincial prisons. What to do? What to do?

The Canadian Bar Association, as quoted in the HoC :

"We believe the Bill would not be effective, would be very costly, would add to strains on the administration of justice, could create unjust and disproportionate sentences and ultimately would not achieve its intended goal of greater public safety."

Libs will have to suck it up hard to vote for this one on Monday, as they party with the Cons like it's 1969. The NDP and Bloc will vote against it.

Scott has a round-up of the Liberal blogger revolt against it; Jennifer at Runesmith is organizing an email campaign. Go, you Liberal bloggers!
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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.

The SPP is dead - Long live the SPP

Robert Pastor, chair of the 2005 Council on Foreign Relations task force "Building a North American Community" (now available in book form and co-authored by John Manley) and author of the book "Toward a North American Community" says the Security and Prosperity Partnership of North America is dead.

It was killed, he tells us, by the timid incremental approach of its policy makers who tried to fly the SPP below the radar of public opinion, thereby arousing their deepest suspicions.
Right wing fears of Mexican immigrants and a North American Union combined with left wing fears of unfair labour practices to create 'a perfect storm' of public alarm that scuttled its chances of success.

So that's it then - it's been nailed to its perch pining for the fjords since last April. It's kicked the bucket, shuffled off this mortal coil, run down the curtain and joined the bleedin' choir invisibile.
THIS IS AN EX-SPP!!

Well ok then.

In other totally unrelated news just this week :

1) the U.S. is leaning on Mexico to privatize its state-owned oil consortium PEMEX

2) Saskatchewan has followed BC in introducing the Enhanced Driver's Licences demanded by Homeland Security for admission to the U.S.

3) U.S. Assistant Secretary for the Bureau of Economic, Energy, and Business Affairs Daniel Sullivan is calling for greater energy integration and enhanced energy supply routes between the U.S. and Canada, praising the benefits of "benefits of market-based free trade agreements" to "enhance energy security throughout North America".

4)Avi Lewis and Linda Carlsen on Democracy Now discuss "re-armouring NAFTA" : Plan Mexico, the $400 million regional cooperation security initiative that introduces a greater US military presence into Mexico under the guise of lending aid for the war on drugs.

5) The U.S. Navy has reactivated gunboat patrols off the coasts of Latin America to "send a strong signal to all Navies operating in the region".

You see we don't care what you call it : SPP, deep integration, the Monroe Doctrine, Manifest Destiny. We don't care. Really. Call it whatever you like.

Spin Doctors Without Borders....again

As noted by Dana at the Beav, a mere three days after the G&M reported:
Safe-injection site in B.C. wins court protection

"North America's only sanctioned safe-injection site for drug addicts won a major court victory Tuesday, thwarting any chance of the federal Conservative government closing it down"

Tony Clement announced at the House of Commons Standing Committee on Health that he will be asking Justice Minister Rob Nicholson to appeal the BC Supreme Court's decision "as soon as possible".

Kady O'Malley live-blogged the committee hearings in her own inimitable way today, noting that :
"It occured to me as I was scurrying back from the foyer that this is the *second* meeting this week where the only witness on hand to defend the government’s policy on a controversial issue is an import from the United States—and not just the U.S., but the United States of Right-Wing Think Tanks."

Ah yes - Colin Mangham.
Colin Mangham is "director of research" for the Drug Prevention Network of Canada, an offshoot of , wait for it , the Drug Prevention Network of America, headed up by Calvina L. Fay of Drug Free America, Save Our Society From Drugs, and Drug Watch International, dedicated to "combating the drug legalization movement globally". DPN of Canada lists her as an "honorary board member" who has "served as an advisor to President Bush on drug policy".
Rounding out the board of our very own 'war on drugs' Canadian clonetank is past president ReformaTory Randy White and REAL Woman Gwen Landolt as current VP, plus a couple of Scientology's Narconon graduates.

Back to Kady : "Dr. Colin Mangham, who huffs and puffs over the "bad science" and sloppy journalism behind support for the program...[snip]...At one point, he mentions in an offhand way that he’s a graduate of UBC, but his accent is glaringly American. Not that there’s anything wrong with that, of course.
He then goes into a rant about how people who support InSite, including some in this very room, are, in fact, part of a larger movement towards drug policy reform. He demands that "elected representatives" stop these "activists." By this point, there are hisses and catcalls coming from the visitors’ gallery."

"Bloc’s Christiane Gagnon : does he have any data to support his contention that the vast quantity of research that supports harm reduction policies is worthless?
Well, no, not exactly. He provided a “second opinion” on research produced by other people, to “critique” it, just like a first year university student would do."

Our score so far : 22 positive peer-reviewed studies in favor of InSite published in prestigious scientific journals versus one "second opinion" from a promoter of the wildly successful and universally admired US 'war on drugs'.

So why am I still worried?

Update : Wow! Four posts on this at the Gazetteer from Ross, who is incidentally a scientist, a peer-reviewed scientist.

Just Say No! to The Quagmire on Drugs

Ever since pot "Just Said No!" to me many years ago, I haven't kept up on The War on Drugs news much, other than to note that at best it appears to be a gigantic federal money laundering racket in those countries which have embraced it. I had rather assumed that along with giving women the vote and widespread acceptance of the benefits of bathing, legalization of marijuana was just one more benchmark in the long march toward civilization that we would eventually get around to.

While I'm not aware of Health Minister Tony Clements' position on female emancipation and personal hygiene, he recently announced an upcoming $64M federal anti-drug program, presumably to better align Canadian policy with the spectacularly corrupt and utterly ineffective US War on youth, blacks, hispanics and the poor Drugs program.

The UN recently reported that Canada has the highest use of marijuana in the industrialized world, clocking in at 16.8%, with over half of the population supporting decriminalization as laid out in the LeDain Commission 35 freakin years ago. The Toronto Star :

"In 2003, the Liberal government introduced a bill to decriminalize possession of less than 15 grams, making it subject to a fine but no criminal record.

The move caused immediate criticism in Washington. It warned Ottawa that if the bill passed, Canadians would pay for it at the border with increased security checks and lengthy delays.
In 2004, Conservative leader Stephen Harper said he opposed decriminalization but that "we can look at fines rather than jail terms for possession under five grams."

When the Tories came to power two years later, however, they killed the Liberal bill.
"Are they kowtowing to the U.S.? Almost certainly," says [Ottawa lawyer Eugene] Oscapella.

From an article on how the war on drugs is undermining western security, Misha Glenny writes in The Washington Post :

"British Columbia is now home to the greatest number of organized-crime syndicates anywhere in the world (if we accept the U.N. definition of a syndicate as more than two people involved in a planned crime). According to B.C. government statistics, the production, distribution and export of B.C. Bud, highly potent marijuana grown in hothouses along the province's border with the US, accounts for 6 percent of the region's gross domestic product. It now employs more Canadians than British Columbia's traditional industries of mining and logging combined.

The majority of the province's criminals remain passive hippie types for whom the drug is a lifestyle choice. But as Brian Brennan, the chief investigator for the drug squad of the RCMP told me, the marijuana trade is threatening to turn nasty as British Columbia's Hells Angels, one of the best-organized criminal syndicates in the world, moves in on the action.

An avalanche of B.C. Bud rolls southward into the United States every day, dodging U.S. customs in myriad imaginative ways. But as the Hell's Angels and other syndicates get stronger and their control over the port of Vancouver tightens, the ability of U.S. and Canadian authorities to monitor the border becomes ever weaker."

BC as a snow bound banana republic.

Reading US editorials like this, I can better appreciate why Americans respond to the news that you come from British Columbia with praise at how well you speak English.

Over in the Netherlands, where civilization seems to be on a more secure footing and possession isn't a criminal offence, consumption is only 6.1%.

Oscapala again in the Toronto Star : "This shows that criminal law does not prevent people from using marijuana, nor does legalization make people use it."

Well exactly.

Spin Doctors Without Borders

CathiefromCanada is furious with Canadian Press for publishing, without comment, a report critical of Vancouver's safe drug injection site written by a group who opposed Insite even before it opened its doors.
As Cathie points out, the CP headline "New report suggests Vancouver's safe-injection site a failure" gives undeserved credibility to what is basically ideological tripe.

The Drug Prevention Network of Canada is an offshoot of , wait for it , the Drug Prevention Network of America. It is headed up by Calvina L. Fay of Drug Free America, Save Our Society From Drugs, and Drug Watch International, dedicated to "combating the drug legalization movement globally".
An advisor to Bush on drug policy issues, you may have heard her on the news recently proselytising against the medical use of marijuana for cancer patients. Yeah! - War on drugs!

But let's have a look at the Board of Directors for the Canadian branch of DPNC :
~ Randy White - Reform and Alliance Party MP for 12 years, right up until he went public with the idea of using the "notwithstanding clause" to prevent the passage of SSM and that was the end of him - too hot for Harper.
~ Gwen Landolt - VP of REAL Women of Canada. Thanks for all your fine work fighting Status of Women Canada. I especially liked your argument that shelters for battered women are discriminatory because there aren't comparable shelters for battered men.
~ a couple of graduates from the Scientology Narconon Program, now working as drug counsellors...

OK, that's enough of that - you get the idea.
Rather than writing and commissioning social policy, these people should be stranded on a desert island until they have properly mastered the art of playing a conch.