statism watch

Flashback: Harkat challenge of security certificate goes to court | Almrei security certificate struck down | Government will review ‘anti-terror’ security certificates: Van Loan | Judge eases restrictions on Harkat | CSIS bungled second terror case | Canadian Courts don’t buy word of government | CSIS forced to ‘reveal’ info on secret source in Harkat case | Judge orders recall of CSIS witnesses in Harkat case for potential perjury, obstruction | Tories aim to bring back anti-terrorism provisions | Lawyers slam CSIS on phone recordings | If released, security detainee Almrei to be surveilled, wiretapped, and GPS-tracked | Feds ordered to share evidence with defence in Harkat security case | More secrecy added to already secret process | Charkaoui set to fight new security certificate law | The New Security Certificate: Rushing injustice through the Senate | New security certificates issued | Court puts security certificates in limbo

CBC News
February 1, 2010

An alleged al-Qaeda sleeper agent emphatically denied running a safe house for Afghan fighters in Pakistan as he recounted his flight from his native Algeria to eventually seek refugee status in Canada.

Mohamed Harkat, 41, took the stand Monday at a Federal Court hearing examining the validity of a rarely used security certificate against him.

The former Ottawa gas attendant and pizza delivery man has been in legal limbo — charged with no crime but under threat of deportation — for seven years on secret evidence that is largely barred from Harkat or the public.

Two of the principal links to terrorist support networks that have been alleged against Harkat involve a Peshawar safe house and claims of ties to Ahmed Said Khadr, a known associate of Osama bin Laden and the late father of Omar Khadr.

Harkat flatly denied both.

“Your honour, I never worked for Khadr or went in his office” in Peshawar, Harkat told Justice Simon Noel, adding he “never met” Khadr at the time.

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So in other words, a cellphone ban is effectively nothing more than a tax grab.

Flashback: Cellphone fines up to $500 for Ont. drivers start Monday | Hands off: Cellphone driving ban approved | Ban-happy Ontario accused of ‘Big Brotherism’ | Ontario limits car phone use | Turning Toronto into a nanny state | McGuinty considers banning use of cellphones while driving

Associated Press
February 1, 2010

A new U.S. insurance industry study has found that state laws banning the use of hand-held devices to make calls or send text messages while driving have not resulted in fewer vehicle crashes.

The study, released Friday by the Highway Loss Data Institute, examined insurance claims from crashes before and after such bans took effect in California, New York, Connecticut and Washington, D.C.

The organization found that claims rates did not go down after the laws were enacted. It also found no change in patterns compared with nearby states without such bans.

Adrian Lund, the group’s president, said the finding doesn’t bode well “for any safety payoff from all the new laws.”

Six states and the District of Columbia ban talking on a hand-held device for all drivers, while 19 states and the District of Columbia ban texting while driving, according to the Governors Highway Safety Association.

The Highway Loss Data Institute, an affiliate of the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety, said its findings “don’t match what we already know about the risk of phoning and texting while driving” and said it is gathering data to “figure out this mismatch.”

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Seems Dr. Jones has been obfuscating the effects of expanding cities on observed temperature rises at climate stations. Fred Pearce has another, longer article here that goes into further detail on the issue, in particular “that 49 of the Chinese meteorological stations had no histories of their location or other details. These mysterious stations included 40 of the 42 rural stations. Of the rest, 18 had certainly been moved during the study period, perhaps invalidating their data.”

Flashback: Natural water vapour largely responsible for Global Warming: NOAA, NASA | Canadian scientist says UN’s global warming panel ‘crossing the line’ | Manufactured ‘Science’: Another IPCC Scientist Reveals How UN Scientists talked about ‘trying to make IPCC report so dramatic that US would just have to sign Kyoto Protocol’ | Glacier scientist: I knew data hadn’t been verified | UN wrongly linked global warming to natural disasters | The IPCC glacier meltdown: More global warming fraud exposed | Taxpayers’ millions paid to Indian institute run by UN IPCC climate chief | Climategate: A 2,000-page epic of science and skepticism — Part 2 | Climategate: Al Gore lies | Climategate: A 2,000-page epic of science and skepticism — Part 1 | If Climategate Is No Big Deal, Why Are Questions About It Met With An Armed Response? | Climategate: Investigations into climate fraud fixed | ‘Independent’ United Nations panel to examine Climategate evidence | Bombshell UN Climate Documents Reveal Planned “End Run” Around National Sovereignty | Climategate: Global Warming scientists placed under investigation | Latest Climategate revelation: Climate change data dumped | Climate change: this is the worst scientific scandal of our generation | Obama’s ‘Science Czar’ John Holdren Friend of Climate Deception Lab | “Climategate”: Peer-Review System Was Hijacked By Warming Alarmists | Top Climatology Lab Hacked, E-Mails Reveal Biased Science | Al Gore Set To Become First “Carbon Billionaire” | Al Gore’s Inconvenient Truth sequel stresses spiritual argument on climate, downgrades CO2 threat | IPCC Crushes Scientific Objectivity, 91-0 | What happened to global warming? | IPCC case for global warming melts on multiple fronts | More defects, exclusions in key climate warming data are uncovered | Climate change complacency `global suicide pact,’ UN told | Obama Science Advisor Called For “Planetary Regime” To Enforce Totalitarian Population Control Measures | Washington Post Meteorologist: A Skeptical Take on Global Warming | Global warming is the new religion of First World urban elites | Warming oceans mean less cloud cover | Global Warming or Global Cooling? A New Trend in Climate Alarmism | Counterpoint: Climate skepticism for beginners | E-mails indicate EPA suppressed report skeptical of global warming | Polar bear expert barred from conference by global warming advocates | Global warming alarmists out in cold | Revealed: Antarctic ice growing, not shrinking | Scientists warn global warming accelerating | Top Japanese Scientists: Warming Is Not Caused By Human Activity | IPCC caught with false figures, doubt cast on accuracy of global temperature record

Fred Pearce, The Guardian
February 1, 2010

Key study by East Anglia professor Phil Jones was based on suspect figures

Phil Jones, the beleaguered British climate scientist at the centre of the leaked emails controversy, is facing fresh claims that he sought to hide problems in key temperature data on which some of his work was based.

A Guardian investigation of thousands of emails and documents apparently hacked from the University of East Anglia’s climatic research unit has found evidence that a series of measurements from Chinese weather stations were seriously flawed and that documents relating to them could not be produced.

Jones and a collaborator have been accused by a climate change sceptic and researcher of scientific fraud for attempting to suppress data that could cast doubt on a key 1990 study on the effect of cities on warming – a hotly contested issue.

Today the Guardian reveals how Jones withheld the information requested under freedom of information laws. Subsequently a senior colleague told him he feared that Jones’s collaborator, Wei-­Chyung Wang of the University at Albany, had “screwed up”.

The revelations on the inadequacies of the 1990 paper do not undermine the case that humans are causing climate change, and other studies have produced similar findings. But they do call into question the probity of some climate change science.

The apparent attempts to cover up problems with temperature data from the Chinese weather stations provide the first link between the email scandal and the UN’s embattled climate science body, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, as a paper based on the measurements was used to bolster IPCC statements about rapid global warming in recent decades.

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Flashback: UK: Tony Blair attempts to shift focus to Iran as ‘global threat’ at Iraq war inquiry | Iran admits jailed protesters were beaten to death | Iranian commanders assassinated, Iran fingers Western intelligence | IAEA members question Iran nuclear intel authenticity | US military could strike Iran, but at what cost? | Another War in the Works | Iran to allow nuclear site inspection | Iran plays into Obama’s hands with disclosure of nuclear facility | UN approves nuclear ‘disarmament’ resolution | Tens of thousands march in Iran | Obama scales back missile defence shield in Europe | Israel ‘will attack Iran this year’ if West does not cripple Tehran with sanctions | Brookings Publication mentions possibility of ‘Horrific Provocation’ to Trigger Iran Invasion | Blast at Iranian mosque raises tensions in run-up to presidential election | Netanyahu: We may be forced to attack Iran | Proposed Missile Shield seen as Provocation by Russia | Neo-cons still preparing for Iran attack | Russia threatens to ’strike’ Poland in wake of U.S. missile plan | Cheney Considered False Flag Operation to Justify War with Iran | US scales up covert destabilization efforts in Iran, continues funding ‘al-Qaeda’ | Israelis ‘rehearse Iran attack’ | Israeli official says attack on Iran ‘unavoidable’ | Bush ‘plans Iran air strike by August’ | U.S. Navy starts exercises in Gulf waters | U.S. National Intelligence Estimate: Iran stopped nuclear weapons work in 2003 | Cheney Orders Media To Sell Attack On Iran | U.S. sending third aircraft carrier to the Middle East | US aircraft carriers in Persian Gulf | Investigative Reporter Seymour Hersh: US Indirectly Funding Al-Qaeda Linked Sunni Groups in Move to Counter Iran | Former CIA Officer – US Plans Nuclear Attack On Iran

The Daily Mail
February 1, 2010

The U.S. has retaliated to what it sees as Iran’s growing missile threat by deploying a land and sea-based missile shield to protect American allies in the Gulf, officials said.

Barack Obama is dispatching land-based Patriot defensive missile installations in Kuwait, Qatar, UAE and Bahrain, as well as keeping two U.S. Navy ships with missile defence systems in and around the Mediterranean.

Officials said the move is aimed at deterring an attack by Iran, but it is likely to dramatically increase tensions between the U.S. and Iran after negotiations failed to persuade Tehran to open its nuclear installations to international controls.

A senior administration official told the New York Times: ‘Our first goal is to deter the Iranians. A second is to reassure the Arab states, so they don’t feel they have to go nuclear themselves.

‘But there is certainly an element of calming the Israelis as well.’

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Flashback: Could Greece drag down Europe? | Greece To Enforce Mandatory Swine Flu Vaccinations | Police and farmers clash in Greece, militant group attacks police station | Greek protesters seek European support | Amnesty: Disproportionate Police Force Used Against Peaceful Greek Demonstrators | Greek Police Battle Mourners, Memories of Dictatorship after Student Shooting

Aoife White, Associated Press
February 1, 2010

Warns it will call for extra action if Athens doesn’t make progress getting its deficit under control

The European Commission said Monday it will demand tougher measures such as new taxes and cutbacks if Greece doesn’t make progress getting its ballooning deficit under control.

Greece’s budget crisis and worries that it won’t be able to pay back debt have shaken the European Union and its shared currency, the euro, which has slid in value recently. It has also intensified speculation that other EU nations might have to bail Greece out if it risks default.

Greek and European officials say that they are confident that the country will manage to curb its budget gap and that a financial rescue won’t be necessary.

EU Economy Commissioner Joaquin Almunia said Monday that the EU executive believed Greece’s “ambitious” targets to fix its budget crisis “are achievable although surrounded by risks.”

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