Steve's Mission Statement

DAVID PUGLIESE : "Canada's defence strategy for the next 20 years will be based on speeches by Prime Minister Stephen Harper and Defence Minister Peter MacKay given Monday in Halifax.

In a highly unusual move, the Conservative government will base its entire future rebuilding of the Canadian military on Mr. Harper's 10-minute speech and Mr. MacKay's 700-word address. No actual strategy document has been produced, nor will be produced, according to government and defence officials."

Asked about when the actual Canada First Defence Strategy was going to be released, Jay Paxton, Mr. MacKay's press secretary replied: "It is a strategy that you heard enunciated by the Prime Minister and Minister MacKay."...snip..."As such, the speeches are the strategy."

Accidental Deliberations : "For those who held out hope that the Cons' brand of cult conservatism would stop at a mere Stephen Harper portrait gallery, matters have managed to get worse. From now on, Canada's national defence strategy consists of parsing the Glorious Leader's prophetic vision of Canada Firstness."

Operation Enduring Steve.

RCMP strip details from Dziekanski airport TASER™ report

Missing from the RCMP report :
1) Dziekanski's name
2) the name and rank of the officer who fired the TASER™
3) the name of his supervisor
4) details about the duration of the firing
5) the number of times the weapon was used in stun mode
6) whether Dziekanski was armed
7) a written summary of the incident
8) "assessments as to whether use of the TASER™ helped the RCMP either "avoid use of lethal force" or "avoid injuries to subject or Police."

CP : "In a letter accompanying the form, the RCMP says it invoked exemptions under the Access to Information Act to protect the privacy of the person stunned and to guard confidences about the force's investigations and weapons."

"To protect the privacy of the person stunned"
I can't find the italics italic enough for that statement.

RCMP Commissioner William Elliott, the man brought in to clean up (the image of) the RCMP, said in March, "Our motivation is not to avoid criticism or controversy by exercising our discretion one way or the other, but to strike an appropriate balance between sometimes competing interests like privacy and the public's right to know."
CP : Insp. Troy Lightfoot, an RCMP spokesman, said that internal analysis of the forms concluded the painful weapons were being used correctly.


In 2004 Robert Bagnell was killed almost instantly after being shocked by a Vancouver police Taser.
CTV :

"Engineering firm Intertek tested the two weapons fired during the Bagnell incident. Their research found while one Taser performed within a normal electrical output, the other was 30 times higher.
Taser International, a U.S. stun gun manufacturer, later disputed Intertek's test results. Since then, the two Bagnell Tasers were sent to the Canadian Police Research Centre in Ottawa for further examination. That was two years ago.

Victoria Const. Mike Massine, considered one of Canada's foremost police experts on stun guns, says Tasers are not tested by police. "I'm assuming (Tasers) are tested at the factory," he said. "We don't have the mechanism to do that."

Intertek's data came as a surprise to Federal Liberal Party safety critic Ujjal Dosanjh.
"If they've known about this and have done nothing -- that is absolutely wrong," Dosanjh said."

Today, Dosanjh and TASER™ chairman Tom Smith will both testify at the BC inquiry into TASER™ use.

It's worth remembering that none of these inquiries would be happening at all had not Paul Pritchard of Victoria first recorded Dziekanski's murder and then stood his ground and hired a lawyer to reclaim the recording from the RCMP after they told him it might be several years before they would return it.

Previous to Pritchard's YouTube going worldwide, the RCMP were already covering their tracks, muttering darkly about the likelihood of Dziekanski being a drug mule and how the officers were forced to use stun guns because the room was crowded with airline passengers.

So much, Mr. Elliott, for your "appropriate balance between competing interests like privacy and the public's right to know".

Bush, Harper : "Criticism of Israel is anti-Semitic"

Some criticism of Israel is anti-Semitic: U.S.
By RON KAMPEAS, JTA
Thursday, 17 April 2008

"WASHINGTON — The Bush administration has taken the ground-breaking step of identifying some virulent criticism of Israel as anti-Semitism, as it warns that anti-Jewish attitudes and incidents are on the rise worldwide.

“Anti-Semitism has proven to be an adaptive phenomenon,” the report said. “New forms of anti-Semitism have evolved. They often incorporate elements of traditional anti-Semitism. However, the distinguishing feature of the new anti-Semitism is criticism of Zionism or Israeli policy that – whether intentionally or unintentionally – has the effect of promoting prejudice against all Jews by demonizing Israel and Israelis and attributing Israel’s perceived faults to its Jewish character.”

U.S. diplomats and other officials will be expected to take their cues from this forceful language in how they deal with political groups and individuals overseas.

“I hope this keeps it on the radar screen and lets other governments know that the U.S. sees this as an important issue that needs to be taken seriously,” LeGendre said."

And right on cue.....

Criticism of Israel is anti-Semitic, Harper says
MIKE DE SOUZA, Canwest News Service
May 9, 2008

"Some of the criticism brewing in Canada against the state of Israel, including from some members of Parliament, is similar to the attitude of Nazi Germany in the Second World War, Prime Minister Stephen Harper warned yesterday.
"I guess my fear is what I see happening in some circles is (an) anti-Israeli sentiment, really just as a thinly disguised veil for good old-fashioned anti-Semitism, which I think is completely unacceptable," Harper said in an interview with CJAD radio."

Steve takes the Bush message of "some criticism of Israel" and uses it to bash "some members of Parliament".
I suppose we can expect rather more of this since we signed that "Homeland Security Pact" with Israel in March.

H/T Lagatta at Bread 'n Roses for the CannedWest link.
Lagatta says : "I wonder if people who criticise Canada's mistreatment of its Aboriginal population are "anti-Canadian"? "

RCMP TASER™ 82 year old man in hospital bed

Three Kamloops RCMP officers say they "really had no other choice" but to TASER™ an 82 year old man lying on his back in a hospital bed three times in the torso. The patient was delirious from lack of oxygen and wielding a 3" pocketknife.

As Cpl. Scott Wilson explained, he had "a deadly weapon in his hand".

What, you couldn't have disarmed him with a friggin blanket? There's three of you! He's 82! He's lying on his back! He has pneumonia!
Presumably the RCMP consider the potential risk of harm from blankets to be prohibitively high when compared to TASERS™.

Cpl. Scott Wilson : "We could not deploy our … pepper spray, because we could potentially contaminate the entire hospital."
OK, so it's either the pepper spray or the TASER™ then. That's it. No "other choice". No other method of handling the situation.

"He made comments to us that the guy in the next bed might be dead," Wilson said, adding that, because the man had a knife, officers thought they could potentially be dealing with a murder."
Oh please. Know what would have made this lame bit of spin even remotely defensible? If one of the three of you had gone to check on this potential murder victim, who was sleeping soundly in the next bed.

How did police ever handle this sort of situation before there were TASERS™?

Steve and Sandra and Grover

And here's the article : Harper's 'nation of shopping centres'

"Tom Flanagan, Prime Minister Stephen Harper's longtime confidant and former chief of staff, is delighted at the Conservatives' success in "tightening the screws on the federal government" to dramatically reduce its significance in the daily lives of Canadians.
The Conservatives' three budgets have left Ottawa financially incapable of offering any new national social program like affordable housing, higher education or day care. Although overall spending went up, mostly on the military, measures were taken to deplete revenues to the point future governments' hands will be tied unless they raise taxes or run deficits, both prescriptions for political suicide.

Flanagan is impressed that Harper managed to execute his stealthy revolution in Canadian public policy with barely a whimper from the public. But that, too, was the strategy according to the University of Calgary professor and Reform party founder.

"Part of the execution of the plan was that there would be conservatives attacking him, like John Williamson (of the Canadian Taxpayers' Federation) and Gerry Nicholls (Harper's successor as head of the far-right National Citizens' Coalition). That's extremely useful, to have that kind of pressure there, berating the prime minister for not doing enough."

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 have my own copy :
"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.

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 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?

"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.

Emma the Embryo

Middle-aged People Effing Up

Our story so far...
Bill C-10, aka McVety's 'Young People Effing' Bill, the film tax-credit legislation to block government funding of any film which might offend the delicate sensibilities of Canadian Heritage officials, sails through the House because no one really reads these effing things apparently. Off it goes to the Senate where someone who actually does read these things says, "Eff me! Hang on a sec" and proposes an amendment. The amendment causes it to go back to the House for a confidence vote because it's about money, whereupon the Libs have to vote to pass it rather than risk precipitating an election which would feature Con campaign ads like this :

"Stephane Dion wants to spend your hard-earned tax dollars on movies like Young People Effing. Is this how you want your government to spend your hard-earned tax dollars?"

causing voters right across Canada to turn to one another and ask, "What the fuck is "effing"?
G&M link

Happy May Day, ILWU!

In most of the world today, May Day, or International Workers' Day, is an international celebration of the social and economic achievements of the labour movement. Countries that do not celebrate it today include Canada, South Africa, and the United States which is the birthplace of May Day......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."

Fuckin' A and a Happy May Day to you, ILWU.