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Thursday July 24, 2008
Sense, scents, and the almighty buck
1) Plain ordinary horse sense about 9/11 ... 2) Too many police actions don't make sense ... 3) Obama gets weird in Berlin ... 4) France's workers hot under (white) collar at profiteers
1) Plain ordinary horse sense about 9/11:
This is an orange
We
all know an orange when we see one, and even what it smells like. But
when three massive buildings topple, one after another, in exactly the
same free fall - that's three historical firsts - many of us depend on
others to tell us what happened, and our olfactories just up and die.
911 and Al Qaeda
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2) Too many police actions don't make sense
Winnipeg police chief calls youth's death a 'tragedy'
David
Chartrand, president of the Manitoba Metis Federation, said he was
worried officers may have reacted differently because the youth was
Metis.
No kidding, eh? The Canadian Press reports:
The
mother ... was visited by police in the middle of the night after he
was Tasered by officers, but wasn't told of his death until the next
day, says the president of the Manitoba Metis Federation.
"They just showed up and advised her to see if they could get a picture of Michael," David Chartrand said Thursday.
"She shared, not knowing why, only to find out the next day they were going to come tell her they killed him."
Everybody's
busy trying to find a good reason why the cops didn't bother to tell
the mother her son was dead. But was it a case of mistaken identity,
perhaps? Did the police zap him because they thought he was someone
else? Did they need time to get their stories straight?
Well, I
can dream up a likely scenario too. He was being followed by unnamed
persons in a vehicle - why, because he was a native kid and assumed to
be up to no good? - and the police went after him with no evidence
of his having done anything other than possibly try to avoid the people
who were following him. Did the police shine a light in his eyes so
that he couldn't see who was approaching him? If he had a knife for
protection, wouldn't he have pulled it out thinking the people who had
followed him were going to attack him?
It will all be the word of the police now, and they will back one another up. Already they "are satisfied"
Langan was the culprit who smashed the car windshield - but on what
evidence? The word of the unnamed people who fingered him? They don't
seem to be saying whose prints they found on the broken windshield.
They
are looking into the possibility that video cameras on the nearby
virology lab on Arlington may have captured the incident as it unfolded.
But they don't say whether it's the attempted theft incident or the Tasering incident they're hoping to find on film. If it's the latter, I imagine they're feeling a bit nervous.
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From the Nugget:
Did OPP Commissioner Julian Fantino court near-disaster when he threatened Mohawk ... It's
time for Premier Dalton McGuinty to examine the attitudes toward native
protesters that are being fostered throughout the province's legal
system. The premier hasn't helped matters any with his categorical
support for Fantino's actions.
Indeed he has not. If you think Fantino should be fired for breaking the law, here's where to write, phone or fax.
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RCMP charge Cdn. customs officer in drug ring bust
The plan never materialized the RCMP said, but charges have been laid in relation to it.
Never materialized, this
time. And you think there's a war on drugs?
Do you wonder how many
people go into law enforcement nowadays because they see it as an
opportunity to either kick some serious butt and/or strike it rich?
Bernard Brie, the big cheese at the Canada Border Services Agency says: "I can certainly not give you assurance that it won't happen again" (Canwest)
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Gun use up - Sask. RCMP have fired guns as much in last two months as all last year
This
year there have been three separate incidents where Mounties have shot
individuals, with a man killed on the White Bear reserve and another
man injured in Southend in June ... In each, the victim reportedly was
carrying a weapon they refused to drop.
The last guy was said by an onlooker to be carrying a knife and walking away from the police, and they shot at him three times.
The
man had recently spoken with the RCMP because he had reported a stereo
stolen out of his boat and had found an injured woman on a road near
Prince Albert, Kennedy said.
"He was apparently in the cop shop for the last two days," he said.
There's
obviously more to this story than meets the eye, and once again, let's
hope it's not going to be only the word of the police as to why the man
was being chased in the first place.
====================
3) Obama gets weird in Berlin
Obama draws crowd of 200,000 in Berlin
"The
walls between races and tribes; natives and immigrants; Christian and
Muslim and Jew cannot stand. These now are the walls we must tear
down," Obama said in a speech covered live on German and US television.
That's funny, he didn't say anything like that when he was in Israel. In fact the New York Times reports that he cooed:
...
that if elected president he would not pressure Israel to accept
concessions with Palestinians that would compromise security for
Israelis.
Maybe
he lost his sense of reality when he saw how large his audience was,
and just couldn't stop himself from waxing wildly oratorical. Gee,
Berlin's ancestors turned out for Hitler like that too.
For obvious reasons, he wasn't a big hit in Ramallah:
"They
are all the same," said Amjad Badran, a shop owner on Manara Square.
"The American policy hasn't changed in the last 50 years. All the
American presidents have supported Israel. Besides, he won't be elected
because he's black. At the end of the day, it's the Senate and the
Congress who determine U.S. policy, and they are affected by the
Zionist lobby."
And he didn't rule out war with Iran.
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4) France's workers hot under (white) collar at profiteers:
Waving
banners with slogans like "There is life after work" and "I refuse to
give my life to shareholders," members of two white-collar unions
expressed their anger over plans by the president, Nicolas Sarkozy, to
ditch the ten-year experiment that handed French employees the most
advantageous working hours in Europe. (Scotsman)
Makes
sense. They've nailed the problem. It's all about the shareholders
squeezing out every last drop of profit. Is this the beginning of the
revolution? Let's hope it spreads to the sweatshops as well.
yayacanada
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