statism watch

The Local.de
May 15, 2009

A Saudi Arabian inventor has filed for a patent on a potentially lethal science fiction-style human tracking microchip, the German Patent and Trademark Office (DPMA) told The Local on Friday.

But the macabre innovation that enables remote killing will likely be denied copyright protection.

“While the application is still pending further paperwork on his part, the invention will probably be found to violate paragraph two of the German Patent Law – which does not allow inventions that transgress public order or good morals,” spokeswoman Stephanie Krüger told The Local from Munich.

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Canada appears to simply be falling in line with an international consensus that, when it comes to cameras (and many other things), you’re a slave and you have no rights. But it’s for your safety and has nothing to do with power. Really.

Flashback: Guardian reporter detained for taking picture of sea near Bilderberg conference | Police seizures of cameras prompts B.C. complaint | Police erased cellphone video of fatal shooting, witness alleges | Pre-Olympic transit ads encourage citizen surveillance | UK: Calling the police to account for anti-photography law | Australian Citizen Journalist Charged for Filming Police under Anti-Terror Law | Charges laid after Winnipeg street blocked off for hours

CBC News
May 15, 2009

A Genie Award winning documentary filmmaker claims his rights were violated by Winnipeg police, who confiscated his camera while he was filming in the city on Wednesday.

John Paskievich was filming a documentary just north of the downtown core, on Gertie Street, when four officers confronted him, he said. They asked him to stop taping, and then confiscated his camera when he didn’t comply, he said.

They also detained him and frisked him, according to Paskievich.

“This is Canada. If you’re on a public street you have every right to film what’s going on. It’s the law,” he said. “What they’ve done is just wrong.”

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Flashback: U.S. troops will have big impact on Afghan mission: Canadian commander | Obama adds another brigade to Afghanistan troop surge | Canada, allies will never defeat Taliban, PM says | Cost of Afghan mission jumps to $11.3-billion | Afghanistan victory unlikely, says DND manual | New Canadian commander in Afghanistan welcomes U.S. troop influx | Tories seek extra $331-million for Afghan mission | Obama eyes 3 more brigades for Afghanistan | Canadian military acquiring new helicopters, drones

Colin Freeze, Globe and Mail
May 15, 2009

KANDAHAR, Afghanistan — After being gone for years, war choppers are coming back, in force, to the skies of southern Afghanistan.

“We’re bringing in plenty of firepower,” U.S. Col. Paul Bricker told a group of reporters yesterday, as his new 3,200-soldier aviation brigade formally took over from a smaller, 500-soldier group that had arrived in Afghanistan early this year. “They’ve never had much of a combat aviation brigade in the south,” Col. Bricker said, following the transfer-of-command ceremony.

Touted as a potential “game changer” for the NATO forces faced with a growing insurgency, more than 100 U.S. Apaches, Blackhawk, transport and medical-evacuation helicopters have arrived in Kandahar in recent weeks.

Col. Bricker said his 82nd Combat Aviation Brigade, which includes paratroopers, amounts to the first manifestation of a U.S. military influx into Afghanistan’s south, as promised by President Barack Obama. Thousands more soldiers and dozens more helicopters are still coming.

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Flashback: Guardian reporter detained for taking picture of sea near Bilderberg conference

Charlie Skelton, The Guardian
May 15, 2009

Charlie Skelton is now being followed by the police and still hasn’t done much more than eat a club sandwich. Global secret cabals have no sense of humour

Now I’ve got too much to report.

I’ll talk later about the strange secret circus of limousines, blacked-out windows, sirens, helicopters. No time to relate being detained for a SECOND time, for the crime of being half a mile from the Bilderberg hotel gates trying to take “arty” photographs of limousine wheels as they whisked past. Doing so little wrong that I was doing it while standing next to three policemen who were fine about it. Until the call came through on the radio and the motorbikes and squad cars squealed around me like a bad dream. I’ll tell that story later. I have to talk now about what just happened.

But before I begin, please believe me when I say: I haven’t gone nuts. I really haven’t. Nine times seven is 63 and the capital of Italy is Rome. I know what I know. And I know that I’m being followed. I know because I’ve just been chatting to the plainclothes policemen I caught following me. As absurd as it sounds, I’ve just “made my tail”.

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Related: Head of RCMP unit that framed Arar promoted to Assistant Commissioner | Entrapment becoming standard procedure for police | Detective denies framing subordinate for drug theft, trial hears | RCMP destroyed evidence, charges dismissed in second torture case for officers | RCMP destroyed evidence, court stays impaired-driving charges against Mountie | Three Toronto cops to stand trial on corruption charges | RCMP Investigates, Clears Self of Wrongdoing in Case of TASERed Inuvik Girl | 2nd Mountie sues RCMP over sex crime probe | Police corruption preliminary probe ends | Perjury: Is it different for cops? | Toronto police, corrections officers arrested in connection with grow-ops | Crown complained of lack of Toronto police support in drug squad case | CBC releases Toronto drug squad probe report | Report details RCMP agent offences shielded by new law | Accused RCMP officer says force acted too late against him in sexual assault case

Betsy Powell, Toronto Star
May 15, 2009

Prosecution of officer gets special watchdog

The attorney general has taken the rare step of appointing a former judge to “monitor and provide advice” in the case of a veteran Ontario Provincial Police sergeant charged with attempting to influence the outcome of a sex assault case involving flamboyant entrepreneur Frank D’Angelo.

Former judge and integrity commissioner Coulter Osborne will report to chief prosecutor John Ayre, who is also assistant deputy attorney general, “to ensure that there is a meaningful and effective process as this case moves through the courts,” said Brendan Crawley, spokesman for the Ministry of the Attorney General.

While no one could recall such a drastic step ever being taken in this province, bringing in such a legal heavyweight to overlook the case made a clear statement about the seriousness of the implications for Ontario’s justice system.

OPP Sgt. Mike Rutigliano, 49, is charged with conspiring to obstruct justice in the sexual assault prosecution of D’Angelo, acquitted last month of sexually assaulting a business associate’s daughter in a hotel room near Yorkdale shopping mall. The trial lasted one day.

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