Canada At The Forefront

Canada, demonstrating its newly admirable resolve to place itself on the world stage as a moral arbiter when such positions are clearly required, is now working alongside key allies to excite the lax and disinterested attitudes of the United Nations to bestir itself to recognize which of its appointees to various UN committees represent embarrassingly bad decision-making.

Perhaps France and the United States felt that aiding Syria through their support, to be elevated to membership on UNESCO's committee in November, would be an encouraging factor for the Syrian regime to turn itself around and be more responsive to the needs of its people. That clearly has not resulted, through Syria's membership on the committee that oversees conventions and recommendations, the mandate including investigating alleged human rights abuses.

Can we all just pause a moment to reflect on the utter absurdity of Syria's representative to the committee engaging in deep introspection while weighing issues relating to human rights abuses involving countries other than Syria? It does, in fact, reflect the real-time situation of a Sudanese general heading the Arab League observer mission in Syria, who had once been an integral part of his country's mission to destroy Darfur.

"The situation in Syria challenges UNESCO's basic constitutional objectives, in particular to further respect for justice, for the law and for human rights and fundamental freedoms", informs a letter signed by Canada's deputy ambassador to UNESCO, and 13 counterpart-members from the U.S., Britain, Qatar and other concerned countries.

UNESCO's executive board is expected to "respond to (international) appeals for concerted action to address the egregious human rights situation in Syria. Syria participates in the examination of cases involving human rights violations. In view of the current situation in Syria, the Executive Board must review the participation of Syria."

At the time of Syria's appointment, it received the unanimous consent of members of the UN cultural agency's executive board, even while the regime was brutally cracking down on Syrian demonstrators. Handy for the Syrian regime to be part of such an august UN body, demonstrating to one and all its dedication to preserving and honouring human rights, internationally and right at home as well.

"Canada has been on the forefront of most worthwhile initiatives to keep gross violators accountable", said UN Watch executive director Hillel Neuer, lauding Canada's pursuit of justice. Hear, hear.

First Nations Self-Funding

The Canadian public is hugely sympathetic to the plight of Canada's First Nations peoples. Who wouldn't be, given their desperate straits? Lives of squalor and utter boredom, addiction, violence, ill health and misery. And of course, when it becomes a blame contest between the government and Indian bands there's just no contest. Government is always at fault, inadequate to the task, and the aboriginals long-suffering and their rights continually violated.

Ask any Indian chief, and you'll get affirmation of that, with few exceptions. One exception is sitting in the Senate, but he isn't held in too high regard by most of his counterparts. Attawapiskat made the news in an explosive story of heart-wrenching need, that families were attempting to cope with inadequate housing, lack of potable water, freezing conditions with the onset of winter living in portables, tents, with no indoor plumbing facilities.

And the chief of that geographically isolated community who, along with her band council has denied that she and they could possibly be accused of failing their community. A huge amount of federal money has been transferred to Attawapiskat via their band council, and there doesn't appear to be any reliable record-keeping to account for the disbursement of those funds, to explain the situation that caused the housing emergency.

Chief Theresa Spence's life partner was tasked with the job of overseeing and allocating funding and keeping track of what came in and what went out. But there is nothing concrete to audit. There are no records. So the federal government, shocked at the lack of accountability, appointed an outside auditor. Whom Chief Spence has locked out of the reserve, ragingly indignant at the 'paternalistic', autocracy that confronts her band.

She is supported by The Assembly of First Nations and its National Chief, Shawn Atleo. For if there is anything truly fundamental to First Nations' needs, it is that they be recognized as an independent nation, fully capable of administering their own affairs. Just send money. More of it, far more, than has been and is being transferred to date. And the rest will simply fall into place. No more dysfunction, addiction, abandoned children, health catastrophes, and housing faults.

And there was Chief Spence, addressing the Economic Club of Canada, and posing for television cameras in Ottawa, after attending the Crown-First Nations meeting meant to initiate a new dialogue and path to co-operation to assist in forging a new way ahead for Canada's First Nations with the agreement and assistance of the federal government. Giving Chief Spence the opportunity to tell the Economic Club:

"We have nothing to hide. We believe this decision is not legitimate and the third-party management is meant to take control, silence and punish my community and serve as a warning to other First Nations."

This, from an unabashed, entitled aboriginal leader whose own and her council's inability to balance the needs of her community with ample funding has led to the community's functional collapse. She and they oversaw the construction of the now-mouldy, unlivable houses.

Attawapiskat Chief Theresa Spence said Wednesday a federal decision to impose thirdparty management on her reserve has cut off funding for nearly a month. Photograph by: Chris Wattie, Reuters, Ottawa Citizen With Files From Thandi Fletcher, Postmedia News

She and they administered not only the cash flow transfers from the federal government but the millions received from the Victor diamond mine owned and operated and located on handsomely leased band territory, which also gives employment to a number of band members, and which has funnelled $325-million in contracts through band-operated companies since 2006.

Her band receives revenues between $200- to $300-million annually for a total population of 2,800, with an on-reserve population of 1,929. Oh, and 345 dogs and 80 cats. That's quite the revenue stream for a relatively small population base. Yet the reserve is short of basic necessities, so much so that the emergency caused the Red Cross to airlift humanitarian supplies to the suffering people of Attawapiskat.

And although Chief Theresa Spence should logically have a lot of explaining to do, she doesn't feel she has. And since her tactic in response to the government's expressed need-to-know has been typical of most such show-downs between the Crown and First Nations, representing a position of offence rather than defence, the cringe-making public display shrinking government's resolve and stimulating Chief Spence to ever increasing accusations escalates.

"Great riches are being taken from our land for the benefit of others, including the governments of Canada and Ontario. They receive huge royalty payments and we receive so little. Herein lies the real problem affecting First Nations - the ability to develop communities with no financial basis," complains Chief Spence.

Welfare-addicted, incapable of being practical in recognition that in geographic isolation there will be no opportunities to advance the interests of First Nations, and nothing positive will be achieved. On the other hand, there is justice and merit in the claims of Grand Chief Atleo when he states: "True partners would design a way forward together and would form a shared vision of how resources development occurs in this country."

Land claims must be settled, finally. They are long overdue for settlement to remove the historical grievances and honour past promises. And when that happens, a fair and just division of the proceeds of resources development must take place. And government should be prepared, on behalf of the people of Canada wishing to do the right thing for the First Nations of Canada, to loosen the apron strings and finally permit First Nations to be fully independent.

Then they will be accountable to themselves, for themselves. And as such they should be in the position of self-funding all the reserves that they keep insisting must be kept and sustained where they are, in honour of their heritage.

Remembering ... Forgotten

The gentleman will please remember that when his half-civilized ancestors were hunting the wild boar in Silesia, mine were princes of the earth. Judah Benjamin, in reply to a taunt by a Senator of German descent.

None could have been more greatly taken by surprise and mortally offended than secular Jews in civilized, cultivated Germany - who considered themselves more affected and deeply steeped in modernity and creative energy and intelligence by their venerated generations of German citizenship than their Jewish heritage - to discover that they were regarded as mere Jews, fit for nothing but eradication by the Third Reich.

Their steep complacency at having attained acceptance at the highest levels of German society, academia, political life and wealth would be shattered by the reality of the military-political juggernaut that would overtake Europe and reach out to Asia, enveloping as it progressed, the near east and North America.

The intellectual vastness and social connections to the master race admitted of a moral certainty of racist exceptionalism that excluded Semites from the stellar genetic superiority of the Aryan race of supermortals.

You call me a damned Jew. My race was old when you were all savages. I am proud to be a Jew. John Galsworthy, Loyalties, Act. II.

Hungarian and Czechoslovakian Jews considering themselves culturally superior to Polish and Italian Jews never imagined their countries would accept that they were dross too, to be disposed of summarily along with their Latvian, Ukrainian, Bulgarian and other European countries' Jewish counterparts.

The massive round-up, degradation, humiliation, scorning, enslavement in ghettoes and death-camps located around Europe with infamous names like Auschwitz, Sobibor, Treblinka, with their slave labour, their medical experiments, their punishments and starvation rations, their gas chambers and chimneys puking the dark detritus of burnt bodies in a ghastly parody of orderly convention, bespoke the Nazi ideal of eradicating the impediments to the attainment of human perfection.

The Jews are among the aristocracy of every land; if a literature is called rich in the possession of a few classic tragedies, what shall we say to a national tragedy lasting for fifteen hundred years, in which the poets and the actors were also the heroes. George Eliot, Daniel Deronda

The quietly determined theatre of extermination became a subterranean affair of cleansing the world of a plague, a dread scourge of those posing as human whose subhuman facade had been revealed by Nazi ideology that wallowed in the worship of pride, pursued perfection, and visualized a very exclusive and choice Utopia. The very physical characteristics of the perfect Nordic male would effectively have excluded the German chancellor.

And the Jews, en masse, no offence, merely acknowledgement of the most appalling inferiority soiled by genetic traits betraying their unworthiness of sharing the air, the water and other precious natural resources, were specifically chosen, in their totality, for annihilation, to make the world of the truly entitled by nature and inheritance, a better place.

Who hateth me but for my happiness?
Or who is honoured now but for his wealth?
Rather had I, a Jew, be hated thus,
Than pitied in a Christian poverty.
Marlowe, The Jew of Malta

One might think that a collective representing the world's religious leaders would seek to intervene. They did not, presumably on the presumption that God would look after His own. The saving grace being that a small but noted number of religious and their laity took it upon their consciences and moral certainty to act on their own to save whom they could among Jews.

Suavity toward the Jews! Although you have lived among them, it is evident that you little understand those enemies of the human race. Haughty and at the same time base, combining an invincible obstinacy with a spirit despicably mean, they weary alike your love and your hatred. Anatole France, The Procurator of Judea

As in medical science, when an anomalous, sinister, threatening bacteria or virus emerges to threaten humanity as a horrible existential pandemic, all scientific and technological means must be harnessed toward the imperative of destroying the threat to the well-being of humanity's continued existence...

And, since time immemorial Jews, with their strange religion insisting on an especial status with their Maker, and exhibiting typically hideous traits offensive to others already held a tradition of suspicion and rejection, there was little problem in reaching international consensus that Something Must Be Done.

When people talk about a wealthy man of my creed, they call him an Israelite; but if he is poor they call him a Jew. Heinrich Heine

If my theory of relativity is proven successful, Germany will claim me as a German and France will declare that I am a citizen of the world. Should my theory prove untrue, France will say that I am a German and Germany will declare that I am a Jew. Albert Einstein

That 'something' emerged as an exquisitely planned and executed genocide. So expertly dedicated to its task, it succeeded in destroying resources to the military deeply engaged in challenging and overcoming resistance to German fascism's indomitable need to conquer the world and to dominate it for at least a thousand years.

And while it hampered the military, it succeeded in its exemplary mission to rid the world of a menace. The Jews sacrificed for the salvation of world civilization.

A hopeless faith, a homeless race,
Yet seeking the most holy place,
And owning the true bliss . . . .
Or like pale ghosts that darkling roam,
Hovering around their ancient home,
But find no refuge there.
John Keble, The Christian Year: Fifth Sunday in Lent

The tradition of a two-millennium-old story of sacrifice and redemption repeated. World Jewry has never recovered its numbers. The Jewish population of Israel, established post-war as the traditional homeland of the Jews, and considered by Jews to be its only safe haven on Earth, is now roughly reflective of the numbers that perished in the Holocaust.

And Israel shall be a proverb and a by-word among all people. Old Testament: 1 Kings

The invidious scourge of ethnic hatred known as anti-Semitism lives on, succeeding once again in the temporary wake of post-Holocaust remorse. The world and its affairs returned to normalcy.

Still on Israel's head forlorn,
Every nation heaps its scorn.
Emma Lazarus, The World's Justice

Sacred Reserve System

Well, the much-anticipated meeting between the Crown, represented by Prime Minister Stephen Harper and a generous two-handfuls of Cabinet Ministers facing sweetly and concernedly off with several hundred First Nations chiefs, has taken place. Yesterday afternoon, outside the doors of the old Ottawa City Hall on Sussex Drive, now part of External Affairs, a small and vocal crowd of protesters held signs that read: "Respect First Nations". This government most assuredly does.

The Prime Minister delivered an opening address that was conciliatory and empathetic to the ongoing plight of Canada's aboriginal peoples. Shawn Atleo, National Chief of the Assembly of First Nations seemed to feel that the Prime Minister was speaking a language beyond his comprehension. And doubtless Stephen Harper strained to come to terms with the language of grievance and ongoing demands that Chief Atleo spoke at the meeting. A meeting of like minds it was not, exactly.

Atleo said Wednesday."> None of the steps agreed on this week between the Crown and First Nations can be taken in isolation, Assembly of First Nations National Chief Shawn Atleo said Wednesday. (Adrian Wyld/Canadian Press)

The Prime Minister promised "creative ways, collaborative ways, ways that involve consultation between our government, the provinces, and First Nations leadership and communities ... ways that provide options within the (Indian) Act, or outside of it, for practical, incremental and real change". For his part, Chief Atleo stated: "..the proof of our commitment will begin tomorrow, and in the weeks and months ahead demonstrating that this time, this generation of leaders, will not fail to make the changes we all know are urgently needed."

Roughly 400 chiefs attended the meeting out of a total of 600 across the country, although only half of those present were able to crowd into the meeting room. The issues of private property on reserves, encouraging residents to feel a sense of personal responsibility and exert themselves to protect and take care of that property because of a personal investment would be a decided step forward. The issue of quality education for First Nations children is of paramount importance. The very viability of that sacred reserve system should come under closer scrutiny.

Did anyone address the critical issue of reserves existing in isolated geographic fly-in areas with no opportunities for employment, and that isolation and tedium of unemployment creating the ennui of lifelessness made tolerable by alcohol and drugs? Including the expense of supporting such an unrealistic system, along with the failures implicit in that system? Did they discuss the violent crime incident of on-reserve aboriginals at 7,108 per 100,000 people as compared to off-reserve statistics of 953 per 100,000 individuals?

That past failings, a paternalistic, European end view and disrespect for native culture would be re-visited is a given. And demands for government to opt out of band and First Nations governance, leaving decision-making and funding allocations entirely to the ongoing discretion of band councils, for certain. There's the division between the hundreds of chiefs represented by the Assembly of First Nations and the federal government, in a nutshell.

For the former it is the demand for more money and unequivocal control of everything and anything relating to First Nations affairs. For the latter it is accountability, the government wishing, logically and naturally, to know where and how the funding is being allocated and how it is increasing the quality of life for those it is meant to be used for.

Cutting The Deficit

So "respect" will do it. That's an encouraging take. Public service salaries take up over half of all government spending, and as such, as an issue, destined to become a major controversy as the Government of Ontario under Premier Dalton McGuinty takes tentative steps to back away from its former eight years of free spending.

"I'm hoping that the foundation of respect and collaboration and measurable progress that we have laid during the first eight years puts me in a good position so when I go to my teachers, my doctors,my nurses and everybody else in the public sector and say 'listen folks, we need to do this' ... I'm hoping they'll receive that with an open mind", explained Premier McGuinty; no guile intended, but much gullibility evidenced.

They are 'his' folks; 'his' doctors, nurses, teachers, whatever. He bought their loyalty with our tax dollars. The tax extracted by law from low-wage-earners, middling-income earners, and part-time employees, all of whom ultimately benefit from the services available in a once-wealthy province now reduced to wheedling and begging the federal government for equalization pay-outs.

In those same eight years that Dalton McGuinty ruled and misruled this province much occurred. In the sense that many people became unemployed and as a result were no longer able to pay taxes. Thousands upon thousands of well-paid jobs disappeared. People found themselves unemployed and under-employed, doing work that lifted them above the drowning line, just.

Welfare is costly to the treasury, as are all those other needful social services to keep people just beyond desperation. And with less taxes being gathered there is less, far less to expend. Therefore, those who gained so much through union contracts that were ultra-generous, to keep the peace between government and public-sector unions, should now feel grateful enough for their gains to eschew demands for further entitlements.

More job cuts coming in the province as the federal government begins to tighten its fiscal belt and has tasked its government departments to find billions in cost 'savings'. Costs can be reduced by reducing the workforce. We've been through that before in our usual boom-and-bust financial cycles. One supposes Ontario isn't doing too badly with unemployment now standing at 7.5%

But Ontario has a $16-billion deficit to trim. "It's simply not possible to reduce spending without addressing salary expenditures", Premier McGuinty explained. Speaking salaries, the province's teachers now earn on average over $82,000 annually. Doctors earn on average between $376,000 and $407,000 annually. That's pretty rich remuneration in anyone's book of entitled professionalism.

Salaries alone for the province's 25,000 doctors amount to an $10-billion annual bill. Sid Ryan, president of the Ontario Federation of Labour, however, representing frontline hospital workers who labour under the high-paid doctors, is not impressed on behalf of his union members. "Then to turn around to frontline workers and say 'you've got to moderate your demands'. That's not on."

Shrinking revenue and massive debts the servicing of which amounts to an annual $10-gasp-billion? And Ontario plans to have wiped out its deficit by when?

(M.E.H.)

The ripples within society of an individual imbued with huge trust and respect betraying both and in the process horribly victimizing the vulnerable, leaving the public reeling with disbelief, are profound. Two women dead, after having been tortured and raped. And a number of women reliving the nightmares they were exposed to, bound and gagged, forced to provide entertainment for a warped sexual madman, degraded and left to somehow recover their self-worth.

Not to mention those touched by the depredations of a thief of their emotional security, dignity and privacy who stealthily entered the homes of long-time neighbours and took away the loot of conquest in underwear, pleasing a mind contorted by sado-masochism. That it was not only women whom he lusted after, but young girls whose underwear he sought to satisfy his convoluted sexual urges simply represented him more hideously.

Former Colonel Russell Williams was that elite member of the Royal Canadian Air Force charged with escorting and flying high-placed dignitaries and even royalty to various destinations as part of his duties, as an exalted military man whose future spread wider than an eagle's wings soaring over the Rockies. While he was base commander at CFB Trenton, he disported himself by shadowing, and awaiting his opportunity to strike, women whom he took by surprise and force, and shackled to his warped sexual fantasies.

Two of those women, Jessica Lloyd and Marie-France Comeau, were forced by this ultra psychopath to undergo unspeakable acts of violence and pain. Their final suffering disposition was to be murdered, while Col. Russell went on to plan other, follow-up atrocities, cavorting gruesomely through innocent peoples' lives. One of the lives he danced through on a more permanent basis was his wife for whom he does appear to have felt some residual and genuine responsibility and affection.

With her, after his arrest on a widely assorted number of criminal counts - including two first-degree murder charges, was an arrangement whereby her financial interests, integrally allied with his, as dual householders and all that would accrue through their marriage covenant through sharing his financial fortunes - the man legally surrendered his main assets to her possession. To free her from the eventuality of legal proceedings, anticipating that his victims might seek financial justice for their pain and suffering and ignominious experience at his pathological deviant hands.

Mary Elizabeth Harriman (her name protected under a court order to assure her privacy) took her own steps thereafter to distance herself from the predations of her husband, by seeking a divorce, and by seeking to protect her financial interests through being co-named along with him in a suit seeking damages for pain and humiliation and never-ending nightmares. Those victims of Russell Williams who have filed lawsuits claim that in anticipation of being held partially accountable, Ms. Harriman unethically, immorally, illegally took steps to shield her finances.

Ms. Harriman's lawyer was given firm instructions to request a publication ban and sealing order to protect her privacy on her divorce application which she intended to file. Ontario Superior Court Justice Jennifer Mackinnon compassionately granted the request. A judgement that was challenged by two news media entities, one a private newspaper, the other a public radio/television entity. Both contending that the public had the right to know details that might be of public interest, given the notoriety of the crimes committed and pending legal suits.

On appeal, however, that ruling was overturned through Ontario's highest court by Justice David Doherty who stated that "Purely personal interests cannot justify non-publication or sealing orders. The personal concern of a litigant, including concerns about the very real emotional distress and embarrassment that can be occasioned to litigants when justice is done in public, will not, standing alone, satisfy the necessity branch of the test."

The appeal court chose not to accept the claims of a psychiatrist who argued that Ms. Harriman had been more than sufficiently "harassed" by the news media, the psychiatrist's judgements held to be "characterized as speculation and presumption". The judge felt that there is "no reason to think that any publicity arising from the divorce proceedings will come remotely close to the publicity that surrounded Williams' criminal proceedings."

And so, a public that in all likelihood is not all that interested now, in the distance of time, about the whys, wherefores, whens and hows of the divorce proceedings between a convicted serial sexual sadist-murderer and his wife, will be entitled nonetheless to have the details that such proceedings will reveal. Ms. Harriman, through her continued and obdurate attempts to protect herself from public scrutiny and her assets from legal proceedings has managed to arouse an interest that would likely otherwise not exist.

The Door Is Open

"The Iranian leadership has failed to restore international confidence in the exclusively peaceful nature of its nuclear program. We will not accept Iran acquiring a nuclear weapon. Iran has so far had no regard for its international obligations and is already exporting and threatening violence around its region."

And this is how Germany, France and England, through Prime Minister David Cameron, Chancellor Angela Merkel and President Nicolas Sarkozy have explained their unprecedented move to impose what they claim will be truly sweeping sanctions against Iran, along with a crippling oil embargo. Duly warned, the Islamic Republic of Iran cannot be surprised, just ragingly disgruntled.

But that just happens to be their usual characteristic response to anything coming out of the West. Hardly surprising since just about anything coming out of the West is denunciatory and inflammatory toward an honourably innocent theocracy that wishes nothing more than to present the kindly and humanitarian face of Islam to the world. Misunderstandings do occur with amazing regularity.

From On High did Ayatollah Ali Khamenei receive word that it is Iran's just due and destiny as a powerful nation among nations, and to the greater glory of Islam, to become a nuclear power. And what is a nuclear power without the ownership of nuclear warheads? Who, which reckless country with a death wish of their own, would dare attack, let alone threaten a country that owns nuclear weaponry?

Six United Nations resolutions have been ignored by Iran in the world's frantic attempts to have the country cease its uranium enrichment. "The door is open to Iran to engage in serious and meaningful negotiations about its nuclear program" - to no avail. The European Union stands united in its determination to enact "strong measures" to effectively demonstrate the "cost of a path that threatens the peace and security of us all".

The current oil-supply contracts exported from Iran to the EU-member countries and primary users like Italy, Greece and Spain who depend so hugely on that energy is set to expire on July 1. After which time no further agreements to import Iranian oil, a huge loss to Iran's treasury, would take place. Iran would have none of it. They undertook to cut off exports immediately. Snub them, they snub back.

The pain that will be experienced not just in Iran with the loss of its customary clients, and the need to sell its oil elsewhere, albeit at bargain-basement prices by potential clients who will take advantage of the opportunity to squeeze the country in its time of desperate need - will also be felt elsewhere, as the world and the EU seeks other sources to supply their energy needs.

Freezing financial assets held throughout Europe by the Iranian Central Bank will further erode the country's fluidity, and panic Iranians who see the value of their currency and savings evaporate before their very lapsed expectations. Despite the travails that others than Iran will suffer as a result of these emergency and required steps, there is an immense upside.

A bankrupt Iran will have to choose between continuing its defiant nuclear program and feeding its population. It will be forced to shut off its funding pipeline for Hezbollah, Hamas and Syria. Syria, its sole Arab ally in the Middle East is in desperate existential straits. Hezbollah and Hamas may become rather impatient with a source that can no longer fund them, although for Hezbollah in particular illicit drug trading has taken up the slack.

And should Iran feel itself forced to back up its threats by closing the Strait of Hormuz, it may yet bring down upon itself the muscular metal wrath of the United States, Britain, France and Israel. A persuasive argument to back off, at the very least. If one were dealing with rational, intelligent human beings.

Which is most definitely not the case, with the ruling Ayatollahs.

Splitting The UN

The Arab League has finally called in the United Nations Security Council to settle a rather vexing problem of an Arab dictator slaughtering his own. And they, despite their purported collective authority, have been unable to persuade President al-Assad of Syria to cease and desist. They're divided but united. Like the United Nations Security Council itself; united in their concern, divided by Russia and China holding back.

"Syria rejects the decisions taken which are outside an Arab working plan, and considers them an attack on its national sovereignty and a flagrant interference in internal affairs", huffed a Syrian official for television broadcast. Explaining succinctly enough why the Arab League peace plan cut no ice with the Syrian Alawite regime.

The Arab League had, a mere two days earlier, reached a grudging consensus to extend their observers' presence for another month. Despite the weight of the criticism that it has done absolutely nothing to halt the violence. And Sudanese General Mohammed Ahmed al-Dabi, the head of the observer mission is quick to assure that both the Syrian security forces and armed opposition groups are guilty of violence.

And lest any question the veracity of his observations and the positive impact of the observer mission in Syria, "...When the delegation arrived, there was clear and obvious violence. But after the delegation arrived, the violence started to lessen gradually." That's his rosy take on the situation, absolutely rejected by the Syrian opposition forces, of course, and questioned by the Arab League.

So much so that the Gulf Cooperation Council, comprised of Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Qatar, Bahrain, Oman and the United Arab Emirates have announced they are pulling their observers out of Syria. Leaving a rift between the Arab states about how best to manoeuvre President Assad toward stepping down and halting the bloodshed. And now, the Arab League has called upon the United Nations to step forward and mount an operation to relieve the situation.

Russia, in defence of its long-time alliance with Syria, has rejected any interference by NATO or the UN Security Council. It has sent an aircraft carrier to its base on the Mediterranean at Tartous, to demonstrate its solidarity with embattled Syria. And it has decided to sell to Syria for its airforce, Yak-130 warplanes capable of deploying air-to-air and air-to-surface missile arsenals.

Syria has used ground forces and armoured equipment in its ongoing battles with Syrian military defectors and rebel cities with their revolting demonstrators up until now. It has not used aircraft in attacking the defences of the protesters. Russia is offering Syria the opportunity to bring these neat little deadly aircraft into the picture. Where previously there would have been no need nor reason for a NATO-imposed air embargo, this move introduces another dimension.

On the other hand, with the Arab League having determined that they could no longer anticipate any kind of authority over President al-Assad, having called in the United Nations to deal with the intransigent, dangerously implacable dictator, where does this leave Russia? Willing to poke its metal-clad finger in the unblinking eyes of the Arab League?

Genocide And Justice

It is truly amazing. That people simply do not feel they have done anything to be ashamed of. That they've done nothing wrong, nothing that offends human decency. They were doing what they conceived of as their duty. To something. And that something would be other than humanity. They are brazen in their denial of having taken part in an event so gruesomely horrible that people flinch at the very idea that anyone might have lived through it and take up a normal life.

It is also strange how many people who have been involved in atrocities in far-off countries seem to gravitate to Canada; from mass murderers fleeing the scene of their participation in ethnic cleansing activities in war-torn countries like Germany, Cambodia, Bosnia, Sri Lanka and Rwanda to commanders of rebel armies in places like Somalia, responsible for the violent deaths of countless people. If not they, then their families, seeking sanctuary.

Finally, after intolerable delays where clever lawyers doing the bidding of their desperate clients utilize all the legal options at their disposal at various levels of court jurisdictions and exhausting appeals, we do manage eventually to rid ourselves of the scourging presence of sadistic murderers. Like Leon Mugesera whose legal manoeuvrings, claiming his human rights would be impinged upon and calling on mercy he denied others to exhort Canada to refrain from extraditing him to his native Rwanda.

His countless appeals exhausted, he left family and friends to return to face justice in his homeland. "It had reached the point that it was no longer someone exercising his rights but an abuse of the process. The most recent events have been a headache for Rwandans and it will be a huge relief to all of us when he's here", explained Martin Ngoga in a telephone interview from Rwanda.

Rwanda's minister of foreign affairs had her own words for the return of someone who had advocated for and encouraged Hutu majority Rwandans to ferociously and bloodily turn without compassion on their Tutsi compatriots in an orgy of mutilation and massacre. In 1992 Leon Mugesera, an academic and politician of influence made a speech inciting the slaughter of minority Tutsis.

He claimed refugee status in Canada and settled in as a permanent resident until his status was revoked and he was ordered deported in 1996. He has fought the Canadian legal system, using the legal system to do so, since then. Should anyone wish to avail themselves of details; time, place and horrors as the events unfolded, they might wish to read Senator Romeo Dallaire's "Shake Hands With the Devil", recounting his experiences in Rwanda as the Canadian General tasked with heading the UN's peacekeeping mission at the time.

REUTERS/Jeremiah Kamau/files An estimated 250,000 refugees fled Rwanda in 1994. Jean Leonard Teganya lived in Zaire, Kenya and India before settling in Canada in 1999.

And now we've another candidate for removal from Canada to Rwanda: Jean Leonard Teganya, an ethnic Hutu whose father is a convicted Rwandan war criminal, deemed complicit in genocide. He too has a connection to the hideously revolting human catastrophe that took place in his native country. He too pleads for mercy, to be allowed to remain in Canada after a Federal Court Judge questioned whether it was safe to return him to Rwanda.

In 1994 Mr. Teganya was a medical intern at Butare University Hospital. Where 200 Tutsi patients, staff and moderate Hutus were butchered. Tutsi patients were handed over to marauding militiamen. In a 100-day-period the Hutu majority had managed to extinguish the lives of over 800,000 Tutsi Rwandans. Mr. Teganya fled Rwanda for asylum in Canada after spending time in Zaire, Kenya and India.

The Immigration and Refugee Board of Canada queried him as to how it was he remained interning at the hospital while the ethnic 'cleansing' was ongoing. He wished to complete his internship, he responded. Logical, if unimpressive. The IRB declared him ineligible for refugee status, believing him to be complicit in crimes against humanity or war crimes.

"This justification is not reasonable in the context of the Rwandan horror. Although he claims that he did not participate actively in the massacres, the panel ... is entitled to ask itself whether the claimant's passivity in the face of the massacres is not equivalent to endorsing the policies and methods of the party in power.

"The panel is entitled to ask itself why the presence of the claimant on the campus did not seem to concern the extremists, who pursued their dirty work for several weeks." Mr. Teganya has made repeated appeals to the Federal Court of Canada and won a new hearing in 2003, with a like conclusion. Appealing again, the Federal Court sided with the IRB, and a subsequent appeal turned down.

After Mr. Teganya was ordered deported for complicity, Rwandan war crimes prosecutor General Martin Ngoga was asked about the case by a Rwandan reporter: "Much as it is a matter still within Canadian jurisdiction, and subject to further appeal, it is a positive step in our collective endeavour as [a] community of nations to deal with every detail that would help bring perpetrators of genocide to justice and deny them safe haven anywhere in the world."

Advocating Genocide - Denial Follows

PA Mufti Denies He Called to Kill Jews
by Elad Benari

The principal Palestinian Authority’s religious leader, the Mufti Muhammad Hussein, denied on Sunday that he advocated for genocide of Jews in a speech two weeks ago.

At an event marking the 47th anniversary of PA Chairman Mahmoud Abbas’ Fatah movement, Hussein said that the killing of Jews by Muslims is a religious Islamic goal. The event was broadcast on PA TV, translated by the Palestinian Media Watch (PMW) research organization and presented on its website.

He cited the Hadith (Islamic tradition attributed to Muhammad) saying that “the Hour [of Resurrection] will not come until you fight the Jews. The Jew will hide behind stones or trees. Then the stones or trees will call: ‘Oh Muslim, servant of Allah, there is a Jew behind me, come and kill him.’”

PMW’s documentation of the remarks was widely redistributed on Israeli news outlets on Sunday, such as the newspaper Israel Hayom, which published the comments on its front page, and Army Radio which discussed them on its flagship morning talk show.

Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu also responded to the harsh comments and asked the Attorney General’s Office to open an investigation into them. Netanyahu said that the comments were “a serious crime that all nations must condemn.”

The Mufti, however, is now denying that he called for genocide of Jews. According to a report on Channel 2 News, Hussein told an Egyptian media outlet that “sentences were cut from my speech.” He added that “Islam calls for respect of all human beings. I am amazed that these comments were attributed to me.”

Last week, Turkish Islamic scholar Adnan Oktar made a scorching response to the claim by the Mufti. During his nightly talk show on the A9TV satellite television channel, Oktar clarified that there is no source in the Koran that calls for murder of the Jews -- and no justification for it.

“You can go nowhere by bloodshed. All will inflict affliction upon you if you shed blood; you will simply be on a downward spiral of bloodshed,” he warned. “Pull yourselves together. I address those who advocate murder. Jews are the descendants of prophets -- Allah pre-destined them as Jews,” he emphasized. “They live as Jews. The Koran refers to them as the People of the Book... one cannot simply go and kill them.”

Tags: Palestinian Authority ,Palestinian Media Watch ,Incitement ,Islam

As published online at Arutz Sheva, 23 January 2012

We Have A Problem

Narcotics theft has always been an issue, little doubt about that. Just as smuggling proscribed narcotics by notorious drug cartels and independent drug pushers alike has forever afflicted society. There is a huge amount of illicit money to be made by the audacious who scheme to foil authorities.

From false compartments in vehicles to store the drugs and smuggle them across borders, to small submarines to smuggle narcotics by water across international boundaries, or passing through Customs using elderly or infirm 'mules' to deflect suspicion. Caught at airport inspections those who attempt to transport drugs claim they had no idea what they were carrying....

And then there is the old trick of people being issued prescription drugs, visiting a number of doctors to have their prescriptions doubled and tripled, so the excess can be sold on the black market. And armed robberies from pharmacies.

And now it seems that addictions experts and police are increasingly realizing that between the manufacturers, the pharmaceutical houses and the supply chains before the drugs get to the pharmacies, they're being pilfered in huge amounts.

Wholesalers and distributors are seeing their stores of prescription narcotics lost from the supply chain in huge numbers. Hundreds of thousands of doses of OxyContin, morphine and other narcotics turning up on the black market eager for opioid painkillers leading to an epidemic of prescription-narcotic addiction. And sometimes death, as well, increasingly making its mark on society.

Theft and robberies are one issue, but they're now appearing at the low end of the scale. Further up, representing far more diversions from legal sales are the drugs that go missing from importers and manufacturers with products to the value of millions appearing on the street.

"These are the most tightly regulated and controlled drugs - the manufacturers and providers have very tight responsibilities and obligations to guard them. that's quite disconcerting, that this stuff quite massively seems to be disappearing, and the rate of theft and losses has increased so dramatically. It's quite hard to imagine how that happens." Benedikt Fischer, addictions expert, Simon Fraser University

But it is happening. In 2010, licensed dealers representing producers, distributors and wholesalers had over 85,000 tablets missing through break and enters. Another 73,000 tablets were lost in transit. And under 4,000 were attributed to pilferage by employees. The street price at minimum for one tablet of Oxycontin is about $40.

The combined black market value from pharmacies and licensed dealers amounted to a loss of roughly $18.5 million in 2010. Canadians represent the world's second-largest consumers of opioid painkillers per capita. Addiction and fatal overdoses have accelerated in the past several years. Fatal overdoses now represent a greater number of deaths than drowning, in Ontario alone.

Health Canada reports: "Of course it is a concern. Any report of loss and theft is a concern to us." Health Canada is tasked with inspectors visiting facilities to examine security measures, issuing change orders when deemed necessary. Any suspicious activity noted is reported to police. Wholesalers have strict security measures, keeping controlled substances in vaults and restricting access.

Among licensed dealers about 45,000 doses of morphine and 79,000 of codeine disappeared as a result of break-ins, pilfering and other losses. "This isn't some trivial problem. We're now looking at a problem that is a major source of disease and death. These drugs are killing a lot of people", cautioned Prof. Fischer.

Baffling Politics

The slate of Republican candidates for the run for the presidency of the United States leaves the impression that the country produces more than its share of righteous windbags whose hypocrisy should leave the electorate cringing in fear, but evidently does not.

The baffling human reactivity to the accusations being flung around by those whose own conduct and values are so lacking in morals and ethics leads an outsider to imagine that if the world continues to depend on the power of the sole remaining global security agent, we're in big trouble.

The social mandate, political position and financial and international relations stances of the two political parties are so diametrically opposed to one another you can only wonder how it is possible for a nation to be so divided against itself and as such so poisonously unwilling to compromise for the greater good of the country?

When, among the candidates, one man stands out as trustworthy, representing decency and integrity, yet is incapable of moving the voters, and demonstrates he is not quite capable of living their perceived reality, the feeling is he represents the best of an unworthy lot.

Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney's firm discipline seems to stand out among the motley crew vying for the final vote elevating them to candidacy. They seem like shallow poseurs, flaunting their fundamentalist Christian credentials. Yet, he seems to the people who have the power to elevate him, to be passive and lacking the passion and anger they seek.

They rally around a demagogue, descended from a position of power, ultimately rejected as unworthy, put out to pasture, then resurrected by his ambition. For a political party that has its feet wallowing deep in the mire of religious fundamentalism, it seems to matter more that Romney practises an outlier Christianity than that Newt Gingrich is a serial Lothario.

The Tea Party prefers the roue to the man of integrity and faithful reliance. "I will show passion and from time to time perhaps a little energy - as I feel it in my heart. But I am a person of sobriety capacity, steadiness. And I think that's what you need in the White House."

Undeniably. Rationally those characteristics are precisely what an electorate wishing intelligent and just representation should be looking for. But they reject him.

For being a Mormon, and therefore less of a 'true' Christian than someone who casually breaks his marriage vows while damning others who do likewise, portraying himself as a superior and exceptional candidate, withal. It is not New Gingrich whose behaviour is despicable, but the questioning of the news media, inviting him to explain the disparity between his demeanor and his values.

In South Carolina, a conservative state, 45% of voters selected Newt Gingrich to represent their futures as opposed to 20% who made a decision for Mitt Romney. Both candidates are representatives of the financial elite and the establishment class. One has gravitas aplenty, the other lacks any vestige of humility.

What is astonishing to the outsider looking in is the willingness, even eagerness of the public to rally to the social, economic and political polarization of America.

Iran The Righteous

The USS Abraham Lincoln, a nuclear-powered aircraft carrier capable of deploying 90 aircraft, passed through the Strait of Hormuz and entered the Gulf without incident Sunday. Photograph by: Gabriel R. Piper, U.S. Navy Via Getty Images, The Daily Telegraph

Well, the Islamic Republic of Iran, its leading Ayatollahs, the grand Ayatollah, the Republican Guard, the head of the Navy and the Army must be steaming. After all, how often must they warn their detractors, their enemies, the belligerent nations that irritate the hell out of them that they are fed up and they just won't take this incessant carping and demanding any longer. And warn them to stay out of their territory.

Iran believes it has the right to conduct itself as it will, as a sovereign country, respected (and feared) throughout the Middle East and further afield as a leading power with an undoubted glorious history now being revisited courtesy of the Iranian Revolution and the legacy of the Grand Ayatollah Sayyed Ruhollah Musavi Khomenei, the man who changed the world, and put the Satanic America in its place.

How often must they revisit their warning to the enemy? Admiral Habibollah Sayyari, in command of the Iranian navy, gave fair and due warning that the Strait of Hormuz would be closed should the U.S. and their lackeys not cease and desist. It would be done, he said sagaciously, "As Iranians say, it will be easier than drinking a glass of water."

And did not General Ayatollah Salehi, commander of Iran's armed forces threaten "full force" should any of America's carriers return to the region's waters? "We don't have the intention of repeating our warning, and we warn only once", he said darkly. Impossible to misunderstand the sinister threat behind those words. Shudder-inducing.

But the nuclear-powered USS Abraham Lincoln aircraft carrier passed through the channel entering the Gulf on Sunday, right on cue, with its 90-aircraft deployment capability. Accompanied by HMS Argyll, a British Royal Navy frigate, along with a warship from the French navy, an American guided missile cruiser, and two destroyers from the U.S. navy. Quite the flotilla.

They joined the American carrier USS Carl Vinson which has been in the region for months, so there are two such American aircraft carriers now in the American fleet present in the area. Double jeopardy, so to speak. For each one of those carriers holds a complement of fighter aircraft enjoying greater striking power than the entire Iranian air force.

Pause here for rational thought. Officials believe the balance of forces facing Iran would logically convince the country how rashly self-destructive it would be to tempt fate by launching attacks by warships or land-based anti-shipping missiles. Either of which would be handily countered with carrier-based aircraft.

Overlooking the fact that they are entirely rational in their thought processes, whereas the Grand Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, in the finest tradition of obeying Islam's Koranic commands, and feeling rather proud of the Exercise Noble Prophet of the recently-held naval exercise in the Strait of Hormuz, believes implicitly that such an event would hasten the reappearance of the Hidden Imam to welcome the apocalypse in benefit of Iran The Righteous.

The New Islamists

The Tahrir Square protests are swiftly approaching a year's anniversary. Now that is hard to believe. Hard also to believe that so many Egyptians were swept up in the passion of the protests that millions were said to have come out all over Egypt, to pack the streets in a madness of revolutionary zeal. Despite which it was difficult to conceive that President Hosni Mubarak, the official face of Egypt for three decades would resign.

But he did, and since then the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces has comprised the government. For a year they have simply continued representing the interests of Egypt. Governing just as President Mubarak had, for the most part. The sole difference is that the Muslim Brotherhood and the Salafists which had been officially disbarred from taking any public office are now officially recognized.

That is a huge difference. As is the fact that the country's first democratic elections without the usual fraudulent component have just been concluded. The result being that the two Islamist parties swept the polls. Together they will represent fully three-quarters of the elected representatives in the Egyptian Parliament. The Muslim Brotherhood received over 47% of the vote, the Al Nour party 25%. As expected, as predicted, in fact.

Of a total of 498 seats in Parliament, 235 will be filled by Muslim Brotherhood representatives, and 121 by the Salafist party. Whatever is left will represent over 50 new political coalitions, the youth, the unions, the liberals. The secularists, the liberals and trade unionists and students were the backbone of the revolution, representing those who began the protests and brought out the millions of Egyptians to insist on a better Egypt.

"For now, the people will give the Muslim Brotherhood the chance. But it will be very difficult for them to achieve anything that the people want. I am optimistic, in the long term. whether it is Islamist or not, the parliament will have to give the people what they have been fighting for, and if SCAF does not give up its power then there will have to be a revolution against the military ruling class."

He is an optimist. A young man of 31. Hoping for a better future. More affordable food and fuel, and employment opportunities in a country a long way from recovering its economic stability. Of the country of 80 million people, 60 million are said to be under the age of 30. And they are hugely unemployed. The Muslim Brotherhood will now be very difficult to dislodge should young people think they are capable of repeating their protest miracle.

The Brotherhood has spent over a half-century building itself into an organized political force. It spent many decades giving aid to the poor of the land- and any other Muslim country where it established itself and where the poor were oppressed and suffering. The Muslim Brotherhood has the trust of so much of the electorate because it was they who provided health clinics, schools, food, and shelter for the poor. While teaching their brand of Islam.

"The elections happened in the context of extreme violence and oppression. The record over the past year is just as bad as it was under Hosni Mubarak. The military ruling class still has the guns, and they don't shy away from beating women in the streets in front of cameras. But these elections weren't rigged. We can't do anything but respect the results."

It will be left for now for the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces and the Muslim Brotherhood to perform their slow and dignified dance of accommodation, one with the other. The Muslim Brotherhood has no wish to frighten away foreign investors. Just as they patiently groomed the Egyptian electorate to trust them, they will refrain from unsettling the international community.

It might be said that the Egyptian portion of the Arab Spring was a moderate success. Other oppressive regimes in the Middle East and the far East have viewed what occurred in Egypt, and the result was that they've become if anything, more repressive. There is Syria, Bahrain, Iran, Lebanon, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Yemen, for example; no loosening of constraints there.

Russia and China too have taken heed. Battening down the hatches of any supposed freedoms. While the White House is "reaching out" to the reality of the new Islamists.

Picking Up The Trash

Space debris is already a big problem, and threatening to get so much worse that engineers are now sizing up the possibility of sending tow trucks into orbit to clean up the heavens. Photograph by: iStockphoto, Thinkstock

We humans do have an irresolvable problem of junking up our atmosphere. As well as our geography. We produce junk and then discard it. With amazing regularity. Whether we leave all that junk, including human feces, in the Himalaya, covering the slopes of the mountains, littering the majestic Mount Everest with discarded oxygen tanks, food wrappings, plastic bottles and containers, tents or anything else fatigued adventurers cannot manage to haul back with them, we degrade our environment.

Mount Everest – more than 2,500 people have reached the summit since Edmund Hillary in 1953. Photograph: Desmond Boylan/REUTERS

Expeditions have been mounted with all their climbing gear intact, the participants determined to clear out as much detritus off the mountainsides as possible. A Nepali environmental group has petitioned the government in Kathmandu to enact new legislation to make it mandatory to have portable toilets at camp sites.

Clean-up crews have done a credible job of cleaning up messes left behind by doughty expeditioneers unconcerned by what they leave behind. But the solution, they claim, is not clean-up after the fact, but insisting that litter not be tolerated to begin with. Standards should be well understood to begin with.

European Space Agency Since the Sputnik soared into orbit 1957, there have been thousands of launches into space. But close to 95% of the man-made objects now in orbit are debris, which includes a growing collection of defunct satellites rocket boosters and chunks of metal. Debris from in-orbit explosions and collisions account for more than half the catalogued man-made objects in orbit. This artists’ image is based on actual data. However, the objects are shown at an exaggerated size

And now attention is turning to outer space. Actually, it has long since turned in that direction with the realization that there could conceivably be great harm to our interests with the floating trash that consists of man-made bits of junk filling up the atmosphere. Communications satellites, for one, are threatened by the constant barrage of junk whipping past in space. Size matters, but given the speed at which items travel in space, even small pieces of metal are capable of great damage.

The Canadian Space Agency has been forced to take precautionary measures on a number of occasions to protect Canada's $500-million Radarsat satellites, thrusting them out of the way of potential collisions. Some of the debris results from missile tests, rocket launches and mid-orbit collisions, and the prevalence of near-misses is increasing. A problem on the increase, and one that must be dealt with.

It is estimated that over 16,000 chunks of debris, from the size of baseballs to refrigerator-size are whipping about our planet. That includes everything from dead satellites to rocket boosters, to tools accidentally dropped into space by astronauts. The sheer numbers of junk circulating in space lead to what scientists term a "cascade effect", with one collision causing bits to break off larger pieces of junk, creating even more in circulation and increasing the numbers of collisions.

With each collision the fragments become smaller, but even the very small ones can be the cause of catastrophic collisions. That area of space roughly 800 to 1,000 kilometres above Earth is considered one of the most vulnerable, since it is where satellites monitor the environment and military operations. It is full of satellite traffic, and with a great concentration of space junk.

An estimated 16,000 pieces of junk are now circulating in space, according to data from the European Space Agency. That's large pieces; that number does not include hundreds of thousands of smaller pieces of debris which travel at inconceivable speeds of thousands of kilometres an hour. The U.S. Strategic command now regularly issues alerts warning of objects on track for collision.

There are alerts going out almost every other week warning of space trash heading for a Canadian satellite. Rocket stages remaining in the space as a result of space launches, looking like "giant gas cans" have the reputation of being especially troublesome, since they are capable of retaining enough fuel to explode on contact with an obstacle.

The world's telecommunication satellites responsible for maintaining the world's cellphones and televisions in operational mode are located 36,000 kilometres above Earth in what is considered to be geostationary orbits, "parked" in orbit, appearing to be stationary. When they've outlived their usefulness they are boosted several hundreds of kilometres into further space, into "graveyard" orbits.

Some satellites plunge back to Earth, and mostly they land in the Pacific Ocean, if we're lucky enough. Some make their fiery re-entries far from human habitation. The bus-sized European earth observation satellite Envisat, due to retire in 2013 hasn't enough fuel to be boosted into graveyard orbit, and if it is hit by space junk it could shatter into a waterfall of space junk.

Leading the scientists who worry about all these scenarios to consider the practicality and feasibility of launching robotic service vehicles into space whose purpose it would be to mechanically collect and sweep up the circulating space trash that poses such grave hazards.

We All Asked Where Are The Bodies

As a society we are still grappling with the horror that represents a legacy of casual disinterest in the fate of women addicted to drugs and alcohol, working the streets to pay for their needs. Prostitutes are beneath and beyond the concern of society, let alone those whom we task with the security and safety of society's deserving. Prostitutes who have the additional burden of representing First Nations girls and women, drug-addicted and alcoholism-prone need not apply.

So, over a period of years, even while various police forces were gathering information - not of their own initiative, but information that was thrown at them by concerned citizens of the netherworld that the missing women represented - and amassing a hefty file of allegations too gruesome to quite believe, albeit with the ring of truth allied with evidence and witness reports, nothing was done. Nothing of any substance, that is.

It was as though hardened law enforcement agents who had witnessed and cleaned up from the worst that humanity could possibly inflict upon the helpless and the vulnerable, just gave a metaphorical shrug and forged on to the next case, preferring not to linger overlong on the one that kept cropping up time and again with ever more disturbing tales.

Major crimes investigators were very well aware of the reputation of the pig farm owner Willie Pickton. They had been informed he was murdering women, he was disposing of their bodies by dismembering them, by flailing them, by chopping them up, and satisfying himself with his exploits by retaining mementoes that obviously afforded him pleasure after the fact.

What made them refrain from undertaking a serious investigation? Surely not any kind of sympathy for a truly loathsome character. Indifference to the possibility that prostitutes were being targeted by a mass murderer? Might that be possible? An RCMP corporal had been assigned to investigate Pickton's stabbing of a prostitute in 1997.

The man had brought a prostitute to his squalid Port Coquitlam farm from Vancouver's Downtown Eastside. He refused later to pay for her services and an altercation took place. He handcuffed her. In the struggle that ensued she grasped a filleting knife and managed to slash his throat. He took that knife and returned the compliment. She managed to escape and flagged a car down on the highway, before collapsing.

She was revived at a hospital emergency room, then treated in hospital. On completion of the investigation, Staff Sgt.Mike Connor wrote: "Given the violence shown by Pickton toward prostitutes and women in general, this information is being forwarded to your attention should you have similar offences", distributing his report to police forces across the Lower Mainland. But the attempted murder charge was dropped, because the victim was a heroin addict.

Over the following years the file on Willie Pickton grew. Women told their tales to Staff Sgt. Connor; those who survived, telling him about those who had not. Then a man called Crime Stoppers about someone with the name of "Willie" who was slaughtering prostitutes. Willie had claimed he could dispose of bodies by putting them through a meat grinder. The man called again claiming that Willie was responsible for a horde of missing women.

"Even at this stage of the investigation, given what I knew of Pickton, I felt this person certainly could have been responsible for attacks on other prostitutes. I was not absolutely convinced on the homicides, as like most investigators of the time period, we all asked where are the bodies. Even though I was sure Pickton was capable." Staff St. Connor

One woman who wasn't slaughtered by Pickton, a friendly associate, had informed police she had picked up a prostitute with her friend Pickton. And later, at his pig farm, she had seen him skinning the woman's body inside his barn. "There was no doubt in my mind that Pickton and Ellingsen (the woman friend of Pickton's) were involved in the murders of prostitutes", Staff St. Connor wrote in documents used at the inquiry.

"It was suggested by some members [that an undercover operation on Ellingsen] would be a waste of time and money. That she was 'crazy', cocaine addicted and hallucinated and what she saw was actually a pig hanging in the barn and not a human ... There was a difference of opinion as to whether the information [was] reliable enough for the investigation to continue."

It did not. Staff Sgt.Connor was promoted and pulled from the case. He did ask for a secondment back to the investigation, but his request was denied. And Willie Pickton went on pursuing his killing spree unmolested by the short arm of the law. Until he was arrested, in 2002. And eventually found guilty of murder. He is suspected of having murdered 26 women altogether.

The inquiry into the investigation is proceeding.

Wallowing In Conspiracy Theories

We're led to believe that our intelligence agencies were alerted to the presence of a home-grown spy feeding information to a foreign source long before he was apprehended. Informed by someone in the know, with reliable contacts that because a suspect had been singled out for especial attention in the belief that he had engaged in espionage he was fed misleading, inaccurate information once his activities were detected.

To sour the source, the information that was transmitted was also geared to eventually alert the receiving agents that something was not quite right. That the intelligence they were receiving was suspect. And, that being the case, they would be led to suspect or to wonder whether any of the previously-received information, that which was relayed to them before Canadian intelligence became aware of the leaky source, would also become suspect.

So it's a game of counter-intelligence to counter-act the possible harm done through the original handover of classified data to a foreign source. There is certainly nothing new in all of this; most countries engage in espionage and counter-espionage. The game is an old one and always afoot. The goal is to enrich one country's knowledge of the other's activities and secrets, be they military, political or industrial.

Some countries are more adept at this kind of covert activity to give them advantages over the nother, than are other countries, and engage in it as a passionate pursuit. There are times when the information gained could be critical to the very survival of a country, as during a war situation. But when two countries engage in cool diplomacy, distrusting one another and imputing to each other malign purpose, things can get nasty.

In the case of Canada revealing the presence of a home-based spy in our midst, feeding classified information to a foreign entity, presumably Russia, there are many doubters. Those with a background in international relations and diplomacy as academics view such incidents with a jaundiced eye when they interpret them to have been occasioned through the exigencies of self-serving politics.

So that, Canada's current government has its skeptical critics, citing an ideological-based mistrust of Russia among the current crop of government ministers as an strictly political one, blown out of all proportion to reality for those same political purposes. Classifying Russia as a potential enemy, renewing the cold war, where there is no practical rhyme nor reason to do so.

But the fact is there are real tensions between Russia and the West, not the least of which is that country's support for regimes that do pose as a threat to peaceful international relations. Russia is not alone in that; it has a giant partner in China, in that regard. And Russia is also antagonistic to Canada's Arctic sovereignty claims; both countries are eyeing the future accessibility of natural resources deep in the ocean floor.

It was Russia that planted a flag of ownership on the ocean floor, long before it could prove its geological connectivity to parts of the Arctic seabed also claimed by Canada. And while it's true that Canada has been blowing the hot steam of belligerency in a political way to persuade Canadians to support an expensively-armed military, it is also true that its sovereignty must be defended.

While Russia claims ownership of the undersea oil-and-gas deposits and rich mineral deposits extending from the Lomonosov Ridge, that long range reaching from Ellesmere Island to Siberia, new scientific geological studies are anticipated to reveal Canada's claims of ownership. That data will be presented to the UN's agency responsible for approving offshore territorial claims in reflection of the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea.

Russia is adept at espionage, as has been proven time and again, when its diplomats have been courteously escorted out of a country they have been placed within to pursue diplomatic ties, while they have simultaneously been engaged in the subterfuge of ferreting out information not officially cleared to be shared. Canada is somewhat less adept at similar enterprises, and perhaps less interested in pursuing them.

Unlike Great Britain, engaged in its own efforts to extract from Russian sources classified information that is felt to be of interest to Britain. And whose famed spy agency was not itself immune to the most clumsy of tactics when it was revealed by Russia that British agents had used an electronics-infused fake rock in its Moscow-located tactics several years ago; then denied, now sheepishly admitted.

But it is also questionable to assert as some academics have done that "The Canadian government is stuck in a Cold-War mentality ... We now have a Cold War lite", accusing the current Conservative-led government of wallowing in conspiracy theories.

Islamist Fictions

Can't win for losing in Islamist states. And most certainly Pakistan and Afghanistan qualify for that designation. Both tribal cultures informed by fundamentalist Islam orthodoxies. And each represents a breeding ground for jihadists. Both countries resent and detest any kind of foreign presence on their sacred soil. Understandable, to a degree, since both have a long history of centuries of occupation.

They remain institutionally, and their populations for the most part as well, highly resistant to the presence of foreign elements. It is anathema to them to think of the presence, above all, of foreign troops, most particularly non-Islamic foreign troops, on their soil. Afghanistan has accepted the presence of foreign troops, its Western-supported government appealed for their presence.

For the purpose of helping the current conglomeration of the Northern Alliance with their fractious and greedy and violent war lords in the current 'democratically-elected' parliament struggling against the resurgent Taliban, the pseudo-scholars of Islamism who had presided over the misery that was latter-day Afghanistan in friendship with al-Qaeda.

As for Pakistan, which had armed and trained and protected and given haven to the Afghan Taliban, and which is now itself locked in an existential struggle against its own Taliban and its Haqqani network of fiery-fierce Islamist fanatics, it has always been eager to grasp at foreign aid funding of its military in recompense for its promised alliance against terrorism. Which it stokes and supports.

And now Pakistan is prepared to impose tariffs on routes that NATO, with its ISAF program in Afghanistan, uses to supply its troops. The U.S. has re-commenced its Taliban-command-deadly drone strikes, and the Pakistan ISI and military, still sizzling with rage over the successfully surreptitious entry of the U.S. into Pakistani air space, demands some form of punishment.

While taking billions of funding annually from the U.S. treasury in support of the corrupt Islamist military and the secret intelligence network, the embattled and fearful Pakistani government, to appease both, stands prepared to enact hefty tariff fees on its purported allies transiting the country with supplies for its ISAF mission. Canada, caught with circumstances where it is repatriating its own equipment post troop recall home, will be paying millions.

And for its part, Afghanistan unofficially conducts its own war of malignant attrition with the foreign forces that remain on their soil, with four French soldiers killed by Afghan soldiers on the week-end, causing France to announce its withdrawal. The United States, desperate for its own withdrawal from that sinkhole of misery, keeps fantasizing that Afghan forces they are helping to train finally being capable of defending themselves with the withdrawal of NATO.

Foreign military personnel have become very closely acquainted at a degree of separation of necessity with their Afghan counterparts. Both entities have found ample reason through observation and joint operations to view one another with suspicion and contempt. Fate has thrown them temporarily together, and as professionals they must work out their differences.

Increasingly, however, Afghan soldiers have begun to demonstrate just how incendiary the situation is. While foreign troops are busy training them in the finer points of precision military professionalism to make of them a decent fighting force, they are turning their deadly weapons on those trusting foreign troops, killing them in discrete numbers.

Initially attributed to the infiltration of the Afghan troops and police by factions of the Taliban, the realization has set in that it is not the Taliban, but ordinary Afghans working as soldiers and police who are simply expressing their jihadist credentials in destroying the lives of foreigners who continue to exhibit the gall to present themselves where they are not wanted.

Contaminating the sacred soil of an Islamic country by their presence. The foreign military which would love nothing better than to decamp completely, and the sooner the better, are informed by their political and diplomatic superiors that they are obligated to do their utmost for the advancement of the interests and the future of Afghanistan.

And, of course, the constant eruption of attacks are simply an inconvenience that must be tolerated. The international community of the Western, non-Islamic world is present in an Islamic country to save it from the predations of another Islamic nation which has designs upon it, but which insists it is reliably on board with the aspirations of the West to destroy terror.

Severe Irreversible Damage

She was one of those shooting stars. Suddenly appearing in the firmament of elite athletes. Blazing her way to recognition and fame with the admiration of those who witnessed her skill and determination to push the boundaries of human endeavour and our binding relationship to the Earth we live upon through the force of gravity.

By all accounts she excelled at what she did best. Because what she did best was something that inspired her to keep on testing herself. "That's when we're the happiest", she told an interviewer, talking about her life and her husband's life as extreme sport enthusiasts. Winter sport was their passion, and this is what they lived for.

"...It's what our lives are, is being on the hill. And there's a reason for that, it's amazing, it's where we met, it's where we play, we live ..."

Who could argue with that? Her husband, during that interview about X Games contests, and the togetherness of snowmobiling that they so clung to, added: "And hopefully where we'll die." That struck a chord with Sarah Burke, and she repeated what her husband, Rory Bushfield had said: "And where we'll die."

And this is precisely what the pioneering superpipe skier did.

This is most certainly not what she meant to do. She was attempting a flat spin 540, something she had done countless times before. Only this time something went dreadfully wrong. She fell. She hit her head. That led to a disastrous outcome. A ruptured vertebral artery where blood was no longer supplied to her exuberantly adventurous brain.

She went into cardiac arrest then and there. And while the artery was surgically repaired later, it was too late for Sarah Burke. No mere band-aid surgery could repair the morbid trauma her brain had sustained. Which was "severe irreversible damage to her brain due to the lack of oxygen and blood after cardiac arrest."

Young, beautiful, bold and talented. A life crammed with excitement and satisfaction in what she did. And very much dead.

Back to article Sarah Burke, a fearless competitor who shaped her sport

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