statism watch

In a recent interview with Jesse Brown on the technology show Search Engine, Ontario privacy commissioner Anne Cavourkian described the RFID cards as a ‘privacy nightmare’.

Flashback: RFID passport security defeated in minutes | Saskatchewan adopting US-mandated ID card, to include RFID chip, facial recognition | Drivers licences with chips spark heated debate | Ontario Privacy Czar Worried about High-Tech Licences | North American ID card in the works through SPP

CBC News
March 16, 2009

New driver’s licence will be accepted instead of passport at land crossings

Quebec Premier Jean Charest showed off his “smart” driver’s licence near the Canada-U.S. border on Monday as his province became the first in the country to issue the new border-friendly licences.

Quebecers who sign up for the enhanced licences will be able to use them instead of their passports at land and water crossings when the U.S. government brings in more strict security measures in June.

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Note that when Simon Johnson, below, says that ‘everyone’ will get this new money plucked seemingly from the boughs of trees, he doesn’t mean you. He means international banks – which will then lend it to you, get you further into debt, and clean up on your assets (which decidedly do not grow on trees).

Flashback: IMF emergency fund is doubled to $500bn, Northern Rock bank granted $14bn bailout | Gordon Brown seeks sweeping reforms to give IMF global ’surveillance role’ | Kissinger Calls For New International System Out Of World Crises | Jim Flaherty Urging Greater Federal, International Control over Canadian economy | IMF may need to “print money”, act as “world’s central bank” as crisis spreads

Edmund Conway, The Telegraph UK
March 16, 2009

The International Monetary Fund is poised to embark on what analysts have described as “global quantitative easing” by printing billions of dollars worth of a global “super-currency” in an unprecedented new effort to address the economic crisis

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Flashback: Officer injured in Taser demonstration

CBC News
March 16, 2009

A police officer who was mistakenly hit in the head by a stun gun suffered seizures, Canadian doctors reported on Monday.

The officer was in his 30s and previously in good health. He was hit by a Taser shot meant for a suspect involved in a police chase, Dr. Richard Wennberg and coauthors from Toronto Western Hospital and the University of Toronto reported in the Canadian Medical Association Journal.

“Until now, most reports of Taser-related adverse events have understandably concentrated on cardiac complications associated with shots to the chest,” the study’s authors said in their case report.

“Our report shows that a Taser shot to the head may result in brain-specific complications. It also suggests that seizure should be added to the list of Taser-related adverse events.”

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This journal would not be shocked to discover in three days that the Quebec police had seeded the crowd with provocateurs… the timing of the ‘anarchists’ arrival seemed a little convenient, and they’ve been caught doing it before. And kudos to the Globe for reporting on the overall tenor of the protest while other publications focused on the violence of an isolated group of individuals.

Flashback: Quebec police admit agents posed as protesters | Undercover cops tried to incite violence in Montebello: union leader | Officers never posed as protesters: Quebec police

Andre Picard, The Globe and Mail
March 16, 2009

MONTREAL — The 2009 edition of Montreal’s annual anti-police brutality demonstration ended relatively peacefully and relatively early.

But there were still several hours of cat-and-mouse manoeuvres by protesters and police through the city’s downtown streets, all manner of projectiles fired at police – including flares, bricks and cucumbers – an estimated 200 arrests, and wire-to-wire live media coverage before the frustratingly predictable showdown wrapped up at sundown.

The event was organized by the Collective Opposed to Police Brutality.

The group said it was protesting against “racial and social profiling” by police and charged that Montreal police were routinely violent with street people, those with radical political views and visible minorities.

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+1 for direct action

Flashback: Pakistani police attack opposition march for independent judiciary

Chris Brummitt, Associated Press
March 16, 2009

ISLAMABAD – Pakistan agreed today to reinstate a fired chief justice, a move that will help defuse a political crisis that has sparked street battles and raised fears of instability in the country at a time of surging Islamist violence.

Opposition leaders and lawyers had vowed to stage a sit-in at the parliament until Iftikhar Chaudhry, known for his independence, was reinstated. The capital has been barricaded and scores of extra police brought in amid fears of violence.

In a dawn address to the nation that capped a night of high drama, Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani announced Chaudhry would be sworn in next Saturday, the day the current chief justice was due to retire.

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