statism watch

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CBC News
May 19, 2010

There was an exercise in democratic protest on the front lawn of the Ontario legislature on Wednesday – literally.

A couple of hundred fitness buffs held a mass workout on the front lawn to show their displeasure with the government’s new harmonized sales tax. They say it will add to the cost of gym memberships and discourage people from living healthy lifestyles.

Gym owner Andy Soumbas spearheaded the protest. “When [the government] announced they were going to do an exemption on the HST on fast food that really stirred something in me,” he said.

Last fall the Liberal government held a news conference at a Tim Horton’s outlet to announce it was exempting fast food meals under $4 from the tax

Soumbas says adding eight per cent to the cost of fitness memberships and kids recreation programs “is really promoting obesity,” he said.

About 12,000 people signed a petition asking that the HST be removed from fitness memberships.

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Apparently Sarkozy has forgotten those other old French values: Liberté, égalité, fraternité.

Related: French government prepares total ban on full Islamic veils | Niqab gets 2nd Quebec student expelled | US Airline Security Moves to Known Threat Descriptive Profiling | Australia to fingerprint, face-scan visitors from Muslim nations | US implements travel profiling: Tougher air screening for ’security-risk’ countries | Hutterite driver’s licence photo appeal rejected | Hutterites press fight vs. licence photos | Alberta Hutterites need enhanced driver’s licence photos: top court | India to issue all 1.2 billion citizens with biometric ID cards | Police will use new device to take fingerprints in street, vendors say face scanning next | Interpol wants facial recognition database to catch suspects

Lizzy Davies, The Guardian
May 19, 2010

Despite warnings move could be anti-constitutional, French president gives it his full backing

Nicolas Sarkozy defended his ambition to impose a total ban on women wearing the full Islamic veil today, despite warnings that such a move could be anti-constitutional and socially incendiary.

As interior minister Michèle Alliot-Marie presented the bill to the French cabinet, the president reiterated his determination to crack down on a garment he considers to have no place in a secular society committed to women’s rights.

“We are an old country anchored in a certain idea of how to live together. A full veil which completely hides the face is an attack on those values, which for us are so fundamental,” he told his ministers. “Citizenship has to be lived with an uncovered face. There can therefore be absolutely no solution other than a ban in all public places.”

The rightwing government is determined to push through legislation for a total ban and hopes to make it enforceable by spring of next year. Declaring that “no one can wear a garment in public which is aimed at hiding their face”, the bill approved by the cabinet today envisages fining any woman in a niqab or burqa 150 euros.

As an alternative or possibly supplementary measure, they could also be made to take a course in the values of French citizenship. Husbands or partners who make women wear a full veil face a fine of 15,000 eurosor a year in prison.

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Recall that banks in Toronto have already been hosting drills with militarized police.

Related: RBC firebombed as protest, group claims | Militarized police integrate with private security for G20 Toronto concourse drill

Bruce Campion-Smith, The Toronto Star
May 19, 2010

OTTAWA — The firebombing of an Ottawa bank has stoked fears of violence at the upcoming Toronto summit of G20 leaders but police officials are vowing they’ll be ready.

Still, bank officials say they’re looking at stepping up security and may even shut down branches in Toronto’s downtown core if rowdy protesters pose a risk to staff and customers.

All this comes after the group that claimed responsibility for setting a Royal Bank of Canada branch aflame Tuesday said they’ll be taking their protest to the G8 and G20 gatherings next month.

The attack on the bank branch in the upscale Glebe neighbourhood was captured on video, which was later posted on the web along with a message that takes aim at the Royal Bank of Canada.

A group calling itself FFFC faults RBC for sponsoring the Vancouver Olympics on “stolen indigenous land” and for being a “major financier” of Alberta’s tar sands, which it calls one of the most “destructive” industrial projects in the world.

“The games in Vancouver are now over, but resistance continues. An RBC branch can be found in every corner of Kanada,” reads the message from the group.

“The G8/G20 ‘leaders’ and bankers are meeting in Huntsville and Toronto to make decisions that will further their policies of exploitation of people and the environment. We will be there,” the message reads.

Ottawa Constable Jean-Paul Vincelette confirmed the bank attack was arson but declined to say anything about the video or the claim of responsibility.

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Reuters
May 19, 2010

German Chancellor Angela Markel, spooking investors on Wednesday by saying the euro was in danger, urged speedy action to stop market “extortion” and said the EU needed a process for “orderly” insolvency of members.

Recommending tough moves against “notorious deficit sinners” in the euro zone, such as withdrawing voting rights, the German leader told parliament in Berlin: “Above all, what’s necessary is to develop a process for an orderly state insolvency.

“With that we would create an important incentive for euro zone member states to keep their budgets in order.” Germany shocked financial markets on Tuesday by taking an apparently unilateral initiative involving an immediate ban on naked short-selling of euro government bonds and on related transactions in credit default swaps (CDS).

The country’s financial regulator also banned naked short sales of shares in Germany’s 10 leading financial institutions.

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Kate Schneider, News.com.au
May 19, 2010

US scientists are warning that radiation from controversial full-body airport scanners has been dangerously underestimated and could lead to an increased risk of skin cancer – particularly in children.

University of California biochemist David Agard said that unlike other scanners, the radiation from these devices is delivered at low energy beam levels, with most of the dose concentrated in the skin and underlying tissue.

“While the dose would be safe if it were distributed throughout the volume of the entire body, the dose to the skin may be dangerously high,” Dr Agard said.

“Ionizing radiation such as the X-rays used in these scanners have the potential to induce chromosome damage, and that can lead to cancer.”

Of further concern is that a failure in the device — like a power or software glitch – could cause an intense radiation dose to a single spot on the skin.

The warnings come ahead of the planned rollout of the scanners in Australia next year as part of the Federal Government’s crackdown on airport security.

David Brenner, the head of Columbia University’s Centre for Radiological Research, says the concentration on the skin — one of the most radiation-sensitive organs of the body — means the radiation dose is actually 20 times higher than the official estimate.

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