June 12, 2006: Various

Convicted bureaucrat implicates eight officials in fraud Paul Samyn, CanWest News Service / Winnipeg Free Press, June 07, 2006

OTTAWA - A convicted ex-Health Canada bureaucrat has pointed the finger at eight senior department officials, alleging they were all involved in the multimillion-dollar funding fiasco at a native treatment centre in Manitoba.

In an sworn affidavit filed in Manitoba Court of Queen's Bench, Patrick Nottingham claims staff at Health Canada's headquarters and in Manitoba played key parts in the scandal involving the Virginia Fontaine Addictions Foundation (VFAF). [....]

Nottingham convicted of defrauding the federal government of more than $1.1 million over a nine-year period is currently defending himself against a civil suit Ottawa launched following the October 2000 revelation that 70 staff of the treatment centre north of Winnipeg took a Caribbean cruise at taxpayers expense.

In November, Nottingham pleaded guilty to one count of fraud over $5,000 and one count of influence peddling as part of a massive RCMP probe into VFAF staff and Health Canada. He was sentenced to two years of house arrest in exchange for his testimony against the alleged ringleader of the VFAF fraud.

Those named in Nottingham's affidavit include not only an assistant deputy minister, but also top financial and administrative officials at Health Canada. [....]

Sharon Burnside: Press freedom is your freedom -- Why should the Prime Minister socialize with the journalists who write about him and his government? Or to slightly misquote my acerbic and beloved late mother-in-law, "What good does that do him or them?" The Star, Jun. 10, 2006. 01:00 AM


Salim Mansur: We Muslims have work to do June 10, 2006

Muslim Canadians, as Muslims elsewhere in Western societies, have felt increasingly besieged for some time now, both from outside their community and from within.

This sense of isolation, of being misrepresented and misunderstood, will inevitably deepen as the full story unfolds of the arrests of 17 Toronto-area Muslims on terrorism charges.

But whose fault is this? Let us, Muslims, be brutally honest.

We have inherited a culture of denial, of too often refusing to acknowledge our own responsibility for the widespread malaise that has left most of the Arab-Muslim countries in economic, political and social disrepair. [....]

Douglas Fisher: Young Trudeau a cruel chameleon June 11, 06
http://
www.ottawasun.com/News/Columnists
/Fisher_Douglas/2006/06/10/1624990.html

There are three topics the authors unfortunately deal with only slightly: His relationship with his mother and her social relations with English Canadians; his romantic and sexual associations with women; and how he, a healthy young man in the army reserves, managed to evade overseas service during the war and instead leave for Harvard in 1944 despite a desperate shortage of infantry, including in Trudeau's own regiment, which precipitated the conscription crisis of 1944-45.

The big blank about Trudeau's war service ties in with something else historians of World War II will have to explain: The federal government's incompetent intelligence when it came to monitoring domestic threats to Canada. Not only did Trudeau speak boldly at public meetings, opposing Canada's participation in the war, his own files reveal him to have been the key philosopher and planner of a secret group dedicated to breaking up the federation.

How were he and his secret cohorts able to avoid arrest and internment? Their intentions, after all, far exceeded anything in the mind of Montreal's mayor, Camillien Houde, who was interned for most of the war. [....]

Lorrie Goldstein: Terror at the CBC

[....] is the CBC insane?"

"A lot of people in this country think so, Mr. bin Laden."

"I see, evil spawn of Satan. So, let me get this straight. We storm the CBC's headquarters, overpower their security staff and are now holding hundreds of their employees hostage and threatening to blow up their building and all these infidels care about is whether there are any women in our group, so they will not be politically incorrect if they refer to us as 'gunmen'?"

"Uh, yes, Mr. bin Laden. That about sums it up."

Sean Patrick Sullivan: Harper meets with Muslim community leaders

[....] It's unclear what may result from the meeting. Fatah said parliamentary secretary Jason Kenney attended and was assigned to follow up with the group.

Muslim professors in the poltical sciences from the University of Western Ontario and University of Toronto also attended, as did a representative of the Canadian Council on American-Islamic Relations.

Also there were Raheel Raza, author of Their Jihad is Not My Jihad, a condemnation of Islamic extremism, and a representative of Muslim Association of Chinese Canadians [Uyghurs/Uighurs, I think.].

Second day of protests in N.B. at Atlantica economic conference June 10, 06

On Saturday, about 400 people - including labour unions, members of political parties, environmentalists and women's activists - gathered for a rally inside a local hockey rink before marching through the city's streets. [Those groups seem to get together on a number of issues ... almost as if orchestrated.]

The protesters are opposed to the idea of creating an economic zone known as Atlantica, which would include the Maritimes, Quebec and New England.

[....] Critics have also worried that Atlantica would see the U.S. economy swallow up Canadian identity, and that it could diminish the ability of Canadian governments to control policies such as the minimum wage.

Senator Mike Forrestall has died

A lifelong Conservative, Forrestall was elected to the Commons six times between 1965 and 1984.

He was defeated in the 1988 election, but was named to the Senate two years later by then Prime Minister Brian Mulroney.

Forrestall focused on military and security issues in the Senate, serving as vice-chairman of the defence committee.

Joan Bryden: Volpe swipes back at Ignatieff -- The gloves are off and this article gives policy position differences of contenders. "Volpe cast himself as the victim of a "smear" campaign and lashed back at Ignatieff for suggesting the donation scandal has "caused reputational damage" to the party." Jun. 11, 06



Two Editorials On Western Delusion

Captain's Quarters: The Associated Press reveals the key to the "homegrown" terrorist profile: "Most suspects in Canada plot from suburbs". -- and here June 09, 2006 -- Here for the full article
http://
www.captainsquartersblog.com
/mt/mt-cqtb.cgi/7166

[....] The accused conspirators come mostly from places like the United Arab Emirates, Egypt and Somalia. All have names common in Riyadh or Damascus like Saad, Abdul, Fahid and Mohammed. All are practicing Muslims. Most have been in Canada for only a few years. All sported traditional Muslim beards and requested Qurans when arrested. All but two are teens or in their early 20s.

The Investors Business Daily editorial, Sanctuaries of Terror, gets more specific about the sources of the Islamist impulse:

Time and time again, the mosque connection shows up in plots against Western targets. Yet authorities remain reluctant to do much about it. Why?

In fact, almost half the suspects in the Toronto terror plot worshiped at the same mosque. But Toronto police tried to dismiss any religious motivation. ...

There is much more.





Malaysia's Mahathir warns World War 4 looming -- "A new world war involving nuclear weapons may have already begun" AFP – June 7, 2006, via CNEWS Forum, DickRambone2006, 6/09/2006 19:50:30

"I went to Iran myself ... and the Iranians seem to be very determined that they will defend their country. They will not give in nor will they give up their right to do research in nuclear material," he said.

"They will fight back and I believe that they have the capacity to inflict damage on whoever attacks them."

Mahathir said without providing evidence that he had read reports of up to 14,000 suicide bombers being trained in Iran.

"They will not confine themselves to Iran. We will not know where they are and as we have seen, people who are desperate and angry will not be very particular about whom they attack," he said.

Peter Spiegel: Indonesia Tells the U.S. It Has an Image Problem -- Rumsfeld gets an unusually blunt lecture on the war on terrorism from a key ally Times Staff Writer, June 7, 2006

JAKARTA, Indonesia — This nation's defense minister warned Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld on Tuesday that Asia's Muslims increasingly believed the U.S. was trying to use its economic and military power to dictate terms for carrying out the war on terrorism, a perception that risks alienating the very countries the Bush administration needs as allies.

In unusually blunt language after an hourlong meeting here with Rumsfeld, Juwono Sudarsono said some Muslim nations saw the U.S. as a threat to global stability, and he suggested the administration should allow national governments to come up with their own strategies to deal with Islamist extremism.

[....] President Bush's Proliferation Security Initiative, a pact in which nations agree to share information on potential trafficking of unconventional weapons material on the high seas.

Senior U.S. officials traveling with Rumsfeld said they had explained to Indonesian leaders that the initiative was merely an agreement on principles, not a binding alliance. But Sudarsono said Jakarta remained concerned that the program, which Indonesia promised to study, would violate the nation's sovereignty. Indonesia's coastal waters are among the most heavily used by weapons traffickers. [....]

Indonesia next week is scheduled to release radical Muslim cleric Abu Bakar Bashir, the alleged spiritual leader of Jemaah Islamiah. He has served less than three years in prison in the Bali bombings. [....]

So ... house arrest for a single murder would be par for the course, then?



A price comparison ISP's / VOIP

Internet connection and pricing -- might be worth checking uplink and anne mc_m who gave an url to test speed



The following came through a friend; I have no link.

CAIR UPSET ABOUT E-MAIL

Well. what do we have here. Looks like a small case of some people being able to dish it out, but not take it. Let's start at the top. The story begins at Michigan State University with a mechanical engineering professor named Indrek Wichman.

Wichman sent an e-mail to the Muslim Student's Association. The e-mail was in response to the students' protest of the Danish cartoons that portrayed the Prophet Muhammad as a terrorist. The group had complained the cartoons were "hate speech." Enter Professor Wichman. In his e-mail, he said the following:
"Dear Moslem Association: As a professor of Mechanical Engineering here at MSU I intend to protest your protest.

I am offended not by cartoons, but by more mundane things like beheadings of civilians, cowardly attacks on public buildings, suicide murders, murders of Catholic priests (the latest in Turkey!), burnings of Christian churches, the continued persecution of Coptic Christians in Egypt, the imposition of Sharia law on non-Muslims, the rapes of Scandinavian girls and women (called "whores" in your culture), the murder of film directors in Holland, and the rioting and looting in Paris France.

This is what offends me, a soft-spoken person and academic, and many, many, many of my colleagues. I counsel your dissatisfied, aggressive, brutal, and uncivilized slave-trading Moslems to be very aware of this as you proceed with your infantile "protests."

If you do not like the values of the West -- see the 1st Amendment -- you are free to leave. I hope for God 's sake that most of you choose that option. Please return to your ancestral homelands and build them up yourselves instead of troubling Americans.

Cordially, I. S. Wichman, Professor of Mechanical Engineering"

Well! As you can imagine, the Muslim group at the university didn't like this too well. They're demanding Wichman be reprimanded and mandatory diversity training for faculty and a seminar on hate and discrimination for freshman. How nice. But now the Michigan chapter of CAIR has jumped into the fray. CAIR , the Council on American-Islamic Relations, apparently doesn't believe that the good professor had the right to express his opinion.

For its part, the university is standing its ground. They say the e-mail was private, and they don't intend to publicly condemn his remarks. That will probably change. Wichman says he never intended the e-mail to be made public, and wouldn't have used the same strong language if he'd known it was going to get out.

How's the left going to handle this one? If you're in favor of the freedom of speech, as in the case of Ward Churchill, will the same protections be demanded for Indrek Wichman? I doubt it.