Omar Khadr trial a travesty of justice, says Dallaire

The Guantanamo Bay trial of Omar Khadr was a perversion of justice that delivered a major blow to children’s rights, says Gen. Romeo Dallaire, an outspoken advocate for child soldiers.

And, worse, he says, Canada was a silent partner in the proceedings.

“The jury that delivered that 40-year sentence went overboard,” he said. “They seemed to be living in a bubble that had lost contact with the whole context of human rights.”

The decision, on a crime committed on the battlefield when Khadr was 15, was negated by a previously agreed plea bargain. Khadr, now 24, will serve one more year in U.S. custody, and diplomatic notes say Ottawa would “favorably consider” his transfer to Canada for the remainder of an eight-year sentence. In exchange, Khadr agreed to plead guilty to war crimes charges including murder.

But Dallaire, who witnessed the Rwanda genocide and has led an international campaign to eradicate the use of child soldiers, said that Canada had also “acquiesced” in the military trial — which denies normal rights of due process — “in response to the panic that 9/11 created.”

And he said, the trial has also damaged an optional protocol to the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, which forbids the recruitment of children under 18.

“It’s affected the credibility of any Canadian or American who is arguing for the application (of the protocol), and I would extend that to anybody in the developed world who is trying to stop child soldiers from being treated in a less than fair way,” Dallaire said in an interview in Toronto, where he was launching his book, They Fight Like Soldiers, They Die Like Children. Last week he created a website called ZeroForce.org, appealing to youth worldwide to join the quest to end the use of children in war.

But he said that the Khadr trial could undermine progress, including the International Criminal Court’s ability to prosecute war criminals for recruiting child soldiers, some 250,000 of them now fighting worldwide, many forced into brutal militias where they are drugged, tortured and beaten into killing to order.

Dallaire, a Liberal senator, said he was introducing legislation “to change our criminal law, immigration law and security law in order to apply the conventions of the optional protocol that we signed 10 years ago but have not applied.”

But in the U.S., he added, President Barack Obama has also damaged the rights of child soldiers with a recent announcement that he would allow military aid to Yemen and three African countries that make substantial use of them in spite of a new law that was passed in Congress.

“We’ve never seen such setbacks in the advancement of the protocol,” Dallaire said.

But in spite of the disappointments, the struggle to end recruitment and rehabilitate surviving child soldiers is a long one, akin to the fight against slavery, he pointed out: in developing countries with young populations, hundreds of thousands forced into battle, and those who are demobbed are likely to end up as fighters in new and devastating wars.

Don’t Take Receipts !

Health

Bisphenol A coats 40% of store receipts

August 2, 2010

NANCY J. WHITE

Toronto Star

 

Bisphenol A, the controversial chemical that Canada banned from baby bottles, may be coating the sales receipt you take at a store’s cash register.

In a study by a U.S. environmental group, 40 per cent of receipts collected from major U.S. retailers, supermarkets, food chains and gas stations contained BPA, known as a hormone-disrupting chemical.

The total mass of the chemical found on the 36 collected receipts was 250 to 1,000 times greater than the amount of BPA typically found in a can of food or that leaches from a BPA-based plastic baby bottle, according to the report by the Environmental Working Group in Washington, D.C.

“Our point is that 60 per cent of the receipts had no BPA or very insignificant traces. This is one exposure that’s easily fixed. Retailers can easily make the transition to BPA-free paper,” says Anila Jacob, a senior scientist at EWG.

Receipts from Canadian stores would likely provide similar results, says Janelle Witzel, program manager at Environmental Defence Canada. Previous BPA testing of food cans and plastic baby bottles found comparable levels between Canada and the U.S., she says.

Studies suggest that low doses of BPA can interfere with the endocrine system, possibly contributing to such adverse health effects as cancer, reproductive problems, diabetes and hyperactivity.

Scientists are not certain how much BPA from receipts would get into the body. “BPA could stick to the skin of the hand and be absorbed or it could be ingested if the person touches food,” says Jacob.

In the EWG study, researchers found that some of the BPA on a receipt could be rubbed off with a lightly moisturized wipe. “It’s not tightly bound,” explains Jacob.

In the U.S. study, receipts containing BPA were obtained from at least one outlet of such major retailers as Safeway, Chevron, KFC, McDonald’s and Whole Foods.

Receipts from the supermarket chain Safeway showed BPA from all three outlets visited and had among the highest concentrations: 20.7, 20.6 and 41 milligrams on the receipts.

Of the three McDonald’s restaurants, one receipt showed only a trace amount and the other two had 13.3 and 9.07 milligrams.

At McDonald’s Canada, communications manager Stephanie Sorensen says that the thermal paper used here for its receipts does not contain BPA.

Thermal paper, widely used for receipts, prescription labels and airline tickets, is coated with a dye and a chemical, such as BPA or an alternative, that acts as a developer when heat from the printer is applied, producing the black print on the receipt.

Retail workers and cashiers may be particularly concerned about BPA exposure from receipts since they frequently handle the paper through the day. Jacob suggests they speak to their employers about switching to non-BPA paper.

Since BPA is used as a hardening agent in some plastic and in the liners of food cans, Jacob recommends limiting contact when you can.

Don’t take receipts if you don’t need them and never give one to a young child to handle. She suggests keeping an envelope that a cashier can simply slip the receipt into.

After taking a receipt and before eating, she recommends washing your hands with soap and water – not alcohol-based sanitizers. “There’s some evidence they might increase the BPA penetration into the skin,” says Jacob.

Whats the charge officer?

A Shakespeare man had to be taken to hospital after a round of target practice backfired.
Perth OPP say Monday night, two men in their 20′s were shooting a rifle at a propane tank, just northeast of the village.
One of the shots hit, causing the tank to explode.
Pieces of the cylinder flew back at the men, injuring one of them.
He was taken to Stratford General where he was treated and released.
The investigation is on-going, no word yet if any charges will be laid.

BMXers are local heros

BMXers foil downtown purse snatching

Their first instinct was to give chase. In the moments after the suspect grabbed the woman’s purse, the five teens quickly took to their bikes and began a short but fevered pursuit. The group of young BMXers even had the presence of mind to alert police to the crime.
Read the good story here http://tiny.cc/u6ugy
I especially liked the part where the police chief took the boys to the Dairy Queen for an ice cream cone. 

Omnibus bills subvert our legislative process. The end of Canadian Democracy

Canadian budget implementation acts, such as the one passed by the Senate late Monday night, have morphed from short bills dealing with minor items mentioned in the budget speech to enormous omnibus bills that go way beyond what is mentioned in the budget. They now make profound changes to many unrelated aspects of administration and policy. Parliament cannot study them properly.

Between 1995 and 2000, budget implementation acts averaged 12 pages in length. From 2001 to 2008, they averaged 139 pages. In 2009, the two acts added up to 580 pages – 32 per cent of Parliament’s legislative output that year. The 2010 Budget Implementation Act, Bill C-9, contains 883 pages of varied and unrelated legislative provisions. It could form close to half the pages of Parliament’s legislative output for 2010. These omnibus budget implementation bills subvert and evade the normal principles of parliamentary review of legislation.

In far too short a period, the House and Senate finance committees examining C-9 had to inform themselves and vote on changes and innovations to taxation and other financial measures. They had to consider amendments to the laws governing pensions and the Federal-Provincial Arrangements Act. They had to examine a Canada-Poland agreement on social security, a proposal to eliminate Canada Post’s monopoly over mail to be delivered outside Canada, provisions to permit credit unions to act as banks, and legislation permitting to sell off much of AECL. Other provisions of C-9 permit fundamental changes to the environmental review process.

This is only a few of the topics in C-9. Many of these sections have little if any relationship to the budget – they should have been presented to Parliament as stand-alone bills and examined by the appropriate specialist committees.

Read the rest of the story here  Globe and Mail

G20 police ‘yanked’ off prosthetic leg: amputee

Simon Wilson and Colin O’Connor for National Post

John Pruyn, a Revenue Canada employee, was at the G20 protests in Toronto when he was told to “move” by police. Pruyn, who only has one leg, says he was unable to stand up fast enough to avoid arrest.

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Kenyon Wallace, National Post · Tuesday, Jul. 6, 2010

Toronto — A 57-year-old amputee says he was “brutalized” and “humiliated” by police patrolling the G20 summit when they confiscated his prosthetic leg, labelled it a “weapon” and ordered him to “hop” into a paddy wagon.

John Pruyn, a Revenue Canada employee from Thorold, Ont., was in Toronto on June 26 with his wife and daughter to participate in the peaceful Canadian Labour Congress march and rally.

In the early evening, Mr. Pruyn and his 24-year-old daughter, Sarah, were sitting on the lawn of the provincial legislature — the so-called “designated speech area” — waiting to meet Mr. Pruyn’s wife, Susan, from whom the pair had become separated during the afternoon march.

At the same time, a line of police began advancing on the crowd of protesters, most of whom Mr. Pruyn says were simply relaxing on the grass.

“The police came up to us and said, ‘Move!’ so I tried to get up,” said Mr. Pruyn, who lost his left leg above the knee 17 years ago in a farming accident.

“I fell back down and my daughter yelled out, ‘Give him time. He’s an amputee.’ I guess the police thought I was taking too long … then all of a sudden the police were on top of me.”

Mr. Pruyn claims his head was kept on the ground by an officer digging a knee into his left temple while other officers yanked at his arms.

“One of them was yelling, ‘You’re resisting arrest’, but I wasn’t resisting anything. I couldn’t move.”

He says police then ordered him to start walking, but when he informed them that he couldn’t get up because his hands were cuffed behind his back, an officer grabbed his prosthetic leg and “yanked it right off.”

“Then he said, ‘Hop!’ but I told them I couldn’t because it hurts for me to hop on my right leg,” Mr. Pruyn recalled. “Then the cop said, ‘OK, you asked for it’ and two officers grabbed me under my armpits and dragged me away from Queen’s Park towards the police vans.”

Mr. Pruyn says five Toronto police officers then arrived and carried him the rest of the way, threw him on the ground and allegedly “gave me kicks and little punches and saying I was resisting arrest and that I had a weapon.”

“None of that was true. I had no weapons or anything like that.”

Toronto Police spokeswoman Meaghan Gray said the force would not respond to any allegations made by individuals.

“Certainly if anyone feels they’ve been mistreated by police officers, they can file a complaint either with the Toronto Police Service or the Office of the Independent Police Review Director,” she said.

After waiting for close to three hours in the back of a paddy wagon, Mr. Pruyn says he was transferred to a bus and taken to the temporary detention centre, where he was given a wheelchair and remained handcuffed in a cell for the next 27 hours. His daughter was also arrested.

He says he shared the space with another man in a wheelchair who was paralyzed on one side of his body and who had trouble using the portable toilet in the cell. The man begged for access to a regular washroom but his pleadings were ignored.

“Eventually he ended up soiling his pants and they let him sit there with his pants wet all that time,” Mr. Pruyn said, adding that he was given one styrofoam cup of water, a processed cheese sandwich and no phone call. No one interviewed him or told him why he was being held, he said.

“I had no idea where they were,” said Susan Pruyn, who made frantic calls to police during the weekend. “John had been asking to make a phone call so at least I would know where he was.”

Mr. Pruyn and his daughter were released late the following day without charge. While he was given back his prosthetic leg, he says police kept $33 he had in his pocket, his walking sticks and his glasses, which will cost $500 to replace.

“It was surreal. I couldn’t believe it,” Mr. Pruyn said, adding that he hasn’t yet decided whether to file a formal complaint. “I feel like I’ve been brutalized.”

Mr. Pruyn’s claims came the same day the Toronto Police Services Board announced the launch of an independent civilian review of police tactics during the G20 summit.

Board chairman Alok Mukherjee made the recommendation yesterday during a hastily called meeting at Toronto Police headquarters that quickly devolved into a shouting match between board members and dozens of citizens angry over a perceived lack of public involvement.

“We don’t trust the Police Services Board, who has very close ties to the police, to make the decisions for us,” downtown resident Vanessa Brustolin yelled at board members amid cries of “Shame! Shame!”

Toronto Mayor David Miller says the review is the “appropriate” way to look at systemic issues that may have arisen during policing of the G20. “Based on what I saw personally, I think the police did a tremendous job like I’ve said repeatedly,” he said. “My understanding is that police used lawful powers they had, I think since Confederation.”

More than 1,000 people were arrested during the G20, most of them charged with breach of peace and later released. Several people remain behind bars and are awaiting trial.

National Post

Canadian Please

A Lost Generation

View in full screen
A palindrome reads the same backwards as forward. This video reads the exact opposite backwards as forward.  Not only does it read the opposite, the meaning is the exact opposite…

This is only a 1 minute, 44 second video and it is brilliant.   Make sure you read as well as listen…forward and backward.

This is a video submitted in a contest by a 20-year old.   The contest was titled “u @ 50″ by  AARP. This video won second place. When they showed it, everyone in the room was awe-struck and broke into spontaneous applause.  So simple and yet so brilliant. 

Great News,but good luck with that.

JUNE 17, 2010
ALEX ATAMANENKO MOVES TO BAN HORSE MEAT FOR HUMAN CONSUMPTION
OTTAWA – New Democrat Agriculture Critic, Alex Atamanenko (BC southern Interior) tabled a Private Members Bill (C-544) yesterday that would effectively shut down the slaughtering of horses for human consumption in Canada.
“The fact is that drugs which are prohibited for use during the life of any animals destined for the human food supply are routinely being administered to horses,” said Atamanenko. “It is irresponsible for Canada to allow the sale of meat from horses as a food item when they have never been raised in accordance with the food safety practices required for all other animals.”
Atamanenko points to the inexpensive, easily available and widely used anti-inflammatory drug, phenylbutazone (bute), as one example of what is quite likely to be prevalent in horsemeat. Bute is a known carcinogen and its use is illegal in any animal that enters the food supply.
“It is more likely than not that the vast majority of horses will have been administered bute, or ‘horse’s aspirin’ as it is commonly called,” said Atamanenko.
According to Atamanenko, at least fifty per cent of the horses being slaughtered in Canada are imported from the US where horse slaughter has been banned. The meat is then sold to markets in Europe. There are no regulations in the US to prevent horse owners from administering banned substances because horses are not regarded or treated as food-producing animals.
Under pressure from the European Union (EU), Canada is set to introduce a new ‘equine passport’ system to track the health history and medical treatments of horses arriving at slaughterhouses, including those from the States.
Atamanenko believes that it will be impossible for CFIA to verify data in these passports and expects to see a high incidence of inaccurate records.
“Many in the US believe it should be our job to verify information from US horses since Canada is the only one slaughtering them for human consumption,” concluded the Atamanenko. “It’s a stretch to think that information on hundreds of thousands of unwanted horses that were never raised to be food, will be complete or accurate.”
For more information: Office of Alex Atamanenko, 613-996-8036

C-544

www2.parl.gc.ca

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