April 24, 2006: #3

The House of Commons resumes sitting today.


Military

Four Canadians soldiers in Kandahar killed

Cpl. Matthew Dinning of Richmond Hill, Ont., a member of 2 Mechanized Brigade Group in Petawawa, Ont.

Bombardier Myles Mansell, a native of Victoria and a member of the Victoria's 5th Field Regiment.

Lt. William Turner, a native of Toronto. Turner, a reservist and an employee at Canada Post's Edmonton mail sorting plant, recently served on the staff of Edmonton's Land Force Western Headquarters.

Cpl. Randy Payne of CFB Wainwright, Alta.

A response to "The Liberals sent them there as peacekeepers" posted by tangle2foot, Apr. 22, 06

They were sent there as part of the war on terror within a NATO mandate. The "war on terror" sure sounds like peacekeeping to me.

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

http://www.wsws.org/articles/2001/oct2001/can-o16.shtml

Excerpt:

Canadian Prime Minister Jean Chretien announced October 7 [2001] that the Canadian Armed Forces will join the US war against Afghanistan. The announcement came only hours after US and British warplanes began bombing Kabul and other Afghan cities. [....]

US: A Cautionary Tale R. Emmett Tyrrell, Jr., 4/13/2006

"In 1942, when all Americans recognized that we were at war, the press was more disciplined..... Yet now our enemies know about our propaganda in Iraq and plans being made for bombing Iran."

And Canada's press? What support? I tend to hear (particularly the CBC) talk as if our military were not military men in a war, but "peacekeepers" on a "peacekeeping" or "reconstruction" mission; then there is mention of "bodybags" and a tone that says "Bring the troops home". War requires our troops be supported in that war.



Prince Harry, now in army, insists on front-line mission AFP, 23 April 2006, posted by Tinsnips


Bomb toll underscores role played by reservists -- A carpenter and a postal worker were among the four Canadian troops killed ........

Role of reservists questioned after deaths -- 'We're just as capable,' second in command says Adrian Humphreys; with files from Chris Wattie, NatPost, Apr. 24, 06

"When I signed up, I figured I'd be sandbagging flooded rivers in northern Ontario -- not getting into a firefight in southern Afghanistan."

Finance

Spread risk around the world -- You need a good mix of countries to be truly diversified Eric Kirzner and Richard Croft, Financial Post, April 24, 2006

[. . . . ] If you are interested in the China connection, there is the iShares China 25 Index Fund (FXI/NYSE) that mimics the FTSE/Xinhua China 25 index. [. . . . ]

It is a highly concentrated index: The top five holdings -- China Mobile, Petro China, China Petroleum and Chemical, CNOOC and China Construction Bank -- represent a little over 40% of the fund.

Which are government companies or so closely associated with the Chinese government as to be an arm of the government?



Money laundering laws lax: Watchdog Sandra Gordon, CP, Apr. 16, 06

OTTAWA — [....] Canada has fallen behind global standards and must get things cleaned up by next year, says a briefing note to Finance Minister Jim Flaherty from the head of the Office of the Superintendent of Financial Institutions. [. . . . ]

Fintrac said last November it had unearthed more than $2 billion in suspicious financial transactions — including $180 million linked to the financing of terrorism — over the previous year.

Search: `white label ATMs' , gems, gold, and diamonds , privacy laws


Controlling Interest: Who Owns Canada? Diane Francis, speech to the Empire Club, 1986

The Globe and Mail book reviewer wrote-"Diane Francis specializes in unravelling the complicated net of corporate ownerships in Canada. In what she describes as a 'Private-sector, One-woman Royal Commission, she has studied corporate concentration in this country and makes it clear she doesn't like what she finds." [....]

Thirty-two families and five conglomerates control about one third of the non-financial corporate wealth of this country. Five banks control eighty per cent of the deposits on hand in the country, the financial assets in other words, the important ones, and their boards of directors are populated by members of these thirty-two families and five conglomerates, so they also have a very indirect control sometimes over the banking business and the banks in the past, as we have known, have acted often like open-ended slush funds for these tycoons whenever they wanted to make a takeover.

Search: an economy characterized by bandits and robber barons , Peter and Edward Bronfman , And then we have good old K.C. Irving , moving to Bermuda
An oldie, but still of interest.

Twenty years later? See Frost Hits the Rhubarb/News Junkie Canada
Search: Irving LNG St John

17 Jul 2005: Irvings LNG, Port, Nuclear Power .......
9 Aug 2005: Late Tour -- "Canada's Irving Oil and Spain's Repsol"
23 Aug 2005: ******* again, in the Maritimes -- LNG & $$$
23 Nov 2005: France eyes oil-rich Atlantic seabed, Drug Bust, ACOA / Atlantic ... "tax advantage"



‘21 banks aided [Nigerian General] Abacha’s money laundering’ Sam Ovu-Eleonu, Monday, Apr 17, 2006, via newsbeat1

Out of 23 banks investigated in 2000 by the Financial Services Authority in United Kingdom in connection with the money laundering activities of late head of state, General Sani Abacha, it is now known that 15 of them were found to have aided the deal. Also in Switzerland, six banks out of 19 investigated were indicted over the same deal. [. . . . ]

The banks, he said connived with politicians to stash away stolen funds, aiding money laundering and other financial malpractices through under-cover banking transactions where the identities of the banks were concealed. [. . . . ]

Search: a two-day anti-money laundering seminar organised by UBA Plc in Lagos



Mining

The Oil Rush -- How high-tech prospectors are trying to squeeze fuel--and fat profits--out of the earth while transforming the petroleum market By Marianne Lavelle, 4/24/06

[. . . . ] The Canadian sands yield fossil fuels nearly identical to those hidden below the drifting sands of the Middle East. But this mother lode lies in a unique geological formation just 500 miles north of the U.S. border, and it won't surrender its treasure without a lot of labor, vast amounts of energy, and oceans of water. It costs more to wrest a barrel of oil from the ground here than virtually anywhere else in the world.

What's happening in Canada today may be just the start of a new chapter in the world's long love affair with oil. Global demand, particularly in China and India, is outstripping supply--an imbalance that has been painfully evident as pump prices climb toward $3 a gallon (box, Page 50). Even the optimists agree that the era of "easy oil" is over. Political risk hovers over most conventional reserves, held by the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (including trouble spots like Nigeria and Venezuela) and Russia. So the United States is turning to new possibilities--the largely untapped resource of "unconventional oil" in North America. [. . . . ]

Search: The Shale Solution , Tapped out? , The Coal Play , Carbonated.




Quality or Quantity

Jonathan Kay: Confessions of a 'crunchy con' NatPost, Apr. 24, 06

Dreher's central thesis is that conservatives have focused so much energy on fighting big government that we've lost track of the ways that unbridled consumerism has eroded the quality of our lives. [. . . . ]

Immigration & Security

Tailor, 73, jailed 22 months in desperate-refugee scam -- Pleaded guilty in 2005 to 11 counts each of influence peddling and conspiracy Sue Montgomery, The Gazette, April 21, 2006

[Franco] Macaluso pleaded guilty in September 2005 to 11 counts each of influence peddling and conspiracy to defraud the government in a well-orchestrated scheme that ended with 11 Montrealers being charged in 2004 - including Yves Bourbonnais ["the judge"], a member of the Immigration and Refugee Board Appeal Division.

Bourbonnais has been suspended from his post and is to go to trial Sept. 12 on 97 charges, including breach of trust, defrauding the government and obstruction of justice. [. . . . ]

Tigers use canadian charities as 'fronts' -- Montreal Tamil office raided; files, CDs, flag seized Stewart Bell and Adrian Humphreys, National Post, Apr. 18, 06

A "secret" RCMP intelligence report says the Tamil Tigers terrorist group has been using Canadian non-profit cultural organizations to raise money and spread propaganda.

The report, which says the Tamil Tigers "maintain ties" with several such groups in Canada, follows revelations police have raided the Montreal office of the World Tamil Movement as part of a terror financing investigation. [. . . . ]

Security risks still in Canada. 3000 criminals, possible terrorists avoid deportation Allison Hanes and Stewart Bell, Apr. 17, 06

Mr. Mohammad neglected to mention he was convicted in the fatal hijacking of an Israeli airliner when he arrived in Canada in 1987.
]
Once his past as a terrorist for the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine caught up with him a year later, Canadian officials initiated deportation proceedings on the grounds he had entered the country under false pretenses.
But 18 years on, Mr. Mohammad is still here.

His [Mahmoud Mohammad Issa Mohammad's] latest bid to avoid removal argues it would be "cruel and unusual" to send the ailing 62-year-old sufferer of migraines, prostatitis, diabetes and high cholesterol to Lebanon, where Palestinians often have difficulty accessing health care. [. . . . ]

We should care? Kick him out!



Listening in on the enemy -- Exclusive: Canada's master eavesdroppers Stewart Bell, National Post, Apr15, 06

[. . . . ] This climate-controlled room in a government building in south Ottawa is the brawn of the Communications Security Establishment, the federal agency charged with defending Canada in ways that are as formidable as they are unknown.

From its headquarters near the Rideau River, the CSE operates a vast electronic eavesdropping system that works with allies in the United States, the U.K., Australia and New Zealand to analyze intelligence on foreign adversaries.

A civilian branch of the Department of National Defence, the CSE specializes in "signals intelligence," or SIGINT, which means searching out, intercepting and analyzing electronic communications around the world that relate to threats to Canada's security. [. . . . ]

That changed in December, 2001, when Parliament passed the Anti-Terrorism Act, which allowed the CSE to listen in on foreign intelligence targets even if those communications had one foot in Canada. [. . . . ]

Search: Canadian Forces Information Operations Group



Siblings plead guilty in immigration scam AP, April 11, 2006

TACOMA, Wash. (AP) -- Four siblings accused of recruiting at least 130 people to pose as spouses for Vietnamese nationals pleaded guilty to what federal prosecutors described as one of the largest immigration marriage scams in the Pacific Northwest.

Foreign clients were paying $10,000 to $30,000 each to obtain visas through the phony marriages, according to the U.S. attorney's office.

The siblings _ two brothers and two sisters _ along with a boyfriend of one of the women, offered their recruits $500 to $1,500 to fly to Vietnam, where their expenses were paid for a few weeks, officials said. There, the recruits would pose for pictures with the clients and write love letters that were shown to immigration officials. [. . . . ]

Multiculturalism, IRB, Vietnamese Immigration via Philippines, Vietnamese Asian & Other Criminal Gangs in Canada




Hooking up the Left -- `Tides’ come in on immigration rallies Judi McLeod, April 10, 2006

[....] Tracking Tides and its contributions to leftist causes, www.FrontPageMagazine.com wrote, "In all, Tides has distributed more than $300-million for the Left. These funds went to rabid antiwar demonstrators, anti-trade demonstrators, domestic Islamist organizations, pro-terrorists legal groups, environmentalists, abortion partisans, extreme homosexual activists and open border activists."

Now the "Tides" is coming in on the illegal immigration movement. [. . . . ]

RCMP raids Tamil support agency in east-end Toronto

Lorne Gunter: Putting Sri Lankan lives ahead of Canadian votes -- Harper's move to ban the Tamil Tigers shows this government is different April 24, 2006

On Saturday, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police raided two Toronto-area offices of the World Tamil Movement (WTM). The buildings -- one in downtown T.O., the other in suburban Scarborough -- were sealed off from the public while Mounties were inside. Eventually, investigators hauled off box after box of documents.

The Toronto raids came just 10 days after one on the WTM's Montreal bureau. And that came just two days after the new Conservative Cabinet had added the Tamil Tigers -- formally known as the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) -- to Canada's list of banned terror organizations.

The Conservatives' treatment of the Tigers may be the best example yet of how different they are from the previous Liberal government. [. . . . ]

Search: purchased with nearly $1-million raised by Tiger front groups in Canada , a key source of computer expertise , observed workers taking documents to a Montreal garbage dump