statism watch

But conspiracies don’t exist… right? RIGHT? Especially not in the hallowed halls of government.

Sinclair Stewart, Colin Freeze, The Globe and Mail
December 9, 2008

NEW YORK/TORONTO — U.S. officials assured lawyers for Maher Arar in 2002 that their client was safely detained in a New Jersey holding cell, even though the government was about to put him, in the middle of the night, on a CIA plane bound for the Middle East, a U.S. appellate court was told Tuesday.

David Cole, Mr. Arar’s lawyer, repeatedly told a panel of 12 judges that the 37-year old Canadian citizen was the victim of an “intentional conspiracy,” one that reached to the highest levels of the U.S. Justice Department and the Federal Bureau of Investigation.

Mr. Cole said the end run around the law was made specifically to “outsource torture.”

“It was a patently illegal removal,” he said. “They intentionally conspired to keep him out of court.”

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CBC News
December 9, 2008

Questions to would-be police and firefighters about their sexual practices and drug use are fair, but the way the lie-detector test was purchased doesn’t meet city standards, according to a review.

The Halifax Regional Municipality has completed a study of the polygraph test given to prospective firefighters, police and some other municipal workers who handle sensitive personal information.

Dan English, the HRM’s chief administrative officer, said Tuesday the study concluded that the test is necessary and the personal questions should be allowed.

The pre-employment testing service, however, wasn’t tendered and was awarded to a company run by off-duty police officers.

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Diana Zlomislic, Toronto Star
December 9, 2008

Chemicals commonly found in food wrapping, makeup and baby powders are having a gender-bending effect – feminizing male populations of wildlife and humans, a scientific report reveals.

“This research shows the basic male tool kit is under threat,” says author Gwynne Lyons, a former health adviser to the British government.

Humans and wildlife have been exposed to more than 100,000 new pollutants in recent years.

Lyons’ report draws on more than 250 studies from around the world, examining the effects of hormone-disrupting chemicals. The gender-bending chemicals include many pesticides and phthalates, which make hard plastics more flexible and cosmetics easier to apply.

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Kirk Makin, Globe and Mail
December 9, 2008

Growing chasm between civil libertarians and interests of law enforcement agencies

When Ontario Provincial Police Constable Brian Bertoncello spotted a rented SUV being driven sedately along a Northern Ontario highway at precisely the speed limit on Oct. 24, 2004, it immediately set off his internal radar.

Switching on his flashing lights, Constable Bertoncello brought the vehicle to a stop. “It’s very rare that you get somebody driving directly on the speed limit,” he explained later.

The officer’s suspicions grew as he questioned the nervous-looking occupants of the vehicle, Bradley Harrison and Sean Friesen, who had driven non-stop from Vancouver.

Constable Bertoncello proceeded to rip open two boxes in a storage compartment at the back of the SUV – uncovering 35 kilograms of cocaine with a street value of between $2.4-million and $4.6-million, and launching a major Charter of Rights case that will reach the Supreme Court of Canada today.

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Gloria Galloway, Globe and Mail
December 9, 2008

OTTAWA — A group of influential foreign-affairs experts wants Prime Minister Stephen Harper to develop a close friendship with president-elect Barack Obama and forge deeper ties between Canada and the United States.

The belief that Canada should not get too close to its giant neighbour is the “mantra of elites,” and most Canadians do not share such fears, says a blueprint for engagement between the two countries [Ed. note: Written by 'elites'] that was released yesterday by the Canada-U.S. Project.

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Derek Gatopoulos, Associated Press
December 9, 2008

ATHENS — Police fought running battles with mourners Tuesday after the funeral of a teenager whose shooting by officers set off waves of rioting that have sent Greece’s already unpopular government reeling.

Opposition socialist leader George Papandreou called for early elections, saying the governing conservatives were incapable of defending the public from rioters.

The government has a single-seat majority in the 300-member parliament and opposition parties blame hands-off policing for encouraging the worst rioting the country has seen in decades.

“The government cannot handle this crisis and has lost the trust of the Greek people,” Mr. Papandreou said. “The best thing it can do is resign and let the people find a solution … we will protect the public.”

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It just doesn’t get much balder than this. The international press are announcing world government and nationalization strategies while we sleepwalk our liberty away. When you and your family are owned by debt, surveilled, and regulated to within an inch of your life in the future, will you at least be able to say that you spoke up about it? That you got involved in the discussion, pro or con? The most dangerous thing about the centralization of power, whatever its efficiencies may be in a command and control setting, is that no matter how benevolent the intentions of any new system of international governance, it lacks the safeguards, the firewalls that the borders of nation-states naturally provide to imperial or tyrannical aspirations. While one country may go rogue, others are insulated by their cultural and institutional traditions. This will not be the case under ‘global governance’, a weasel term this site has derided in the past.

Strobe Talbott, advisor to the Managing Global Insecurity report and President of The Brookings Institute as noted in the article below, declared in 1992 that “In the next century, nations as we know it will be obsolete; all states will recognize a single, global authority. National sovereignty wasn’t such a great idea after all.” This commentary continues to be reflective of the Fabian cast of mind that has so seized our formerly democratic institutions. The spin on this article is that it may take quite some time yet – but it is worthwhile considering that, in light of recent calls for vast discretionary powers to be handed to global monetary institutions, incremental steps in this direction will have real consequences, too, and there needs to be a viable political resistance so that this agenda does not sail through unopposed.

Gideon Rachman, Financial Times
December 8, 2008

I have never believed that there is a secret United Nations plot to take over the US. I have never seen black helicopters hovering in the sky above Montana. But, for the first time in my life, I think the formation of some sort of world government is plausible.

A “world government” would involve much more than co-operation between nations. It would be an entity with state-like characteristics, backed by a body of laws. The European Union has already set up a continental government for 27 countries, which could be a model. The EU has a supreme court, a currency, thousands of pages of law, a large civil service and the ability to deploy military force.

So could the European model go global? There are three reasons for thinking that it might.

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