This takes me back to my childhood.

A new post at Angry in the Great White North considers what the notion of “property rights” means in Canada, and wonders why we bother prosecuting theft.

As the court ruled, ‘Thou shalt not steal’ has no legal force upon the sovereign body. But that power is jealously guarded.
When you or I take something, we’re freelancing. Stealing is a federal monopoly in this country.
If you want to be a thief, you need to be a member of the federal civil service.

I think we always knew, deep down, that this was true.

Whois Tim Tierney?

In skimming this review of the JRS book mentioned in the previous post, I stumbled on this amusing passage on the effects of globalization on the American west, from a British perspective;

The modern world has sucked the populations out of such rural, pre-industrial and pre-high-tech communes. The same is true in the broad plains of Nebraska, where only the two cities of Omaha and Lincoln survive …

Only the two cities survive?

and where rural folk are resigned to driving 75 miles to a supermarket.

As though supermarkets abounded in the pre-globalization rural American plains states.

If they can pay for the petrol.

To our intrepid British book reviewer – if one lives 75 miles from the closest grocery store in this part of the world, there’s a pretty good chance that your “petrol” is purchased 500 gallons at a time and stored in tanks in the same yard alongside a million bucks worth of farm equipment. (46% of Nebraska is rangeland).
At current fuel prices in the US, a 150 mile round trip to the “supermarket” in a diesel 3/4 ton pickup will cost around $25, and you’re probably hauling cattle or picking up parts anyway, in which case the cost is tax deductable.

These are not pleasant sights and, so far, only a few regions have found a way to cope with this implosion. And the Wal-Mart revolution marches on.

Oddly enough, there are 5 Wal-Mart’s in rural Nebraska – apparently parked out in the bald prairie, with no population to support them.

Cosh has an obituary for a moment of lost opportunity.

Telegraph

A crowd of 600 Afghan clerics gathered in front of an historic mosque yesterday to strip the fugitive Taliban leader Mullah Mohammed Omar of his claim to religious authority, in a ceremony that provided a significant boost to the presidency of Hamid Karzai.
The declaration, signed by 1,000 clerics from across the country, is an endorsement of the US- backed programme of reconciliation with more moderate elements of the Taliban movement that Karzai has been pursuing ahead of the country’s first parliamentary elections, due in September.

Angry In The Great White North digs into the qualifications of Jack Mitchell, the expert used by the Globe and Mail to analyze the Grewal tapes.

Jack Mitchell is the owner of Computer Audio Engineering in Albuquerque, New Mexico. In an interview I found, he definitely sounds like he knows what he’s talking about (even if the interviewer didn’t — an “FFT” is a “Fast Fourier Transform” — a way of depicitng sound content as a spread over frequencies instead of a spread over time). On the other hand, he proudly lists the American College of Forensic Examiners as as his only professional forensic certification.
If the ACFE home page looks a bit cheesy, you’re not the only one to notice.

It’s a mail-order diploma racket.
MK Braaten kindly informs us in the comments, that you too can become a member of the American College of Forensic Examiners!

A heads-up from a friend and businesswoman – if you have questions regarding taxation in Ontario, you might think twice before calling the province for answers. Call the Canadian Federation of Independant Business, or your own private tax advisor. There is suspicion that some tax questions have been tagged by the department and can shortlist your business for an audit.

Plato’s Stepchild;

Canadian accountants Guardians of Accounting Standards have decided – – if I understand their October 2004 Strategic Document (cue Gustave Holst Planets soundtrack) correctly — to move to International rather than US Generally Accepted Accounting principles.
Hmmm.
Velly intevesting
I am sure it is mere coincidence that David Herle of Earnscliffe was involved with polling accountants.

The missing portions of the Grewal Tapes

Via commentor Majere

Have they got a deal for you!

To qualify for the program, candidates must meet the following requirements:

Have worldwide net assets of at least $800,000 CAD accumulated through their own endeavours;

Have successfully operated, controlled or directed a business;

Undertake to make a passive investment of $400,000 CAD for a five-year term (or limit your down payment through the Desjardins Golden Plan).
[…]
The mandatory $400,000 CAD deposit is invested in a term note guaranteed by the Government of Qu�bec. A significant portion of the interest earned on the investment is paid out to eligible Qu�bec corporations in the form of grants. In this way, investors contribute to the economic development of society and to job creation.
[…]
If you do not wish to liquidate your assets to come up with the $400,000 CAD mandatory deposit, the Desjardins Golden Plan is the ideal financing plan for you. Thanks to the plan, you can:

Limit your down payment to as little as $120,000 CAD and still meet all the requirements of the Immigrant Investor Program in order to obtain Canadian citizenship;.

La la la la, I can’t hear you, la la la la….

Complete with carp as fat as birch trees.
Though, I must admit to some confusion. Why would the Americans go to all the trouble of invading Iraq to steal their oil, if they could have just sucked it away from underneath with no one but a few villagers the wiser?
(More here)
via NoSpeedBumps

Bloomberg;

The Trade Bank of Iraq on Tuesday issued the country’s first credit and debit cards, from Visa International Inc., at a ceremony in Baghdad.
Visa cards were given to cabinet ministers, government officials and financial professionals, the bank said. Bank Chairman Hussein al-Uzri presented the first card to Adel Abdul Mehdi, one of two vice presidents and a former finance minister.
The bank said it would issue 30,000 Visa cards in Iraq by the end of the year. The company also plans to install the country’s first network of automated teller machines, which would enable cardholders to withdraw Iraqi dinars or U.S. dollars from their accounts.

Cue MSM: “Not just a “quagmire”, but a quagmire run on credit.”
Via OTB

Capt John Heinrichs sends along this info on the Hechler & Koch used in the Mayerthorpe RCMP murders, in response to comments.
1. Military rifles can be semi-automatic (one round per trigger pull) or select-fire (semi-auto and automatic fire). The latter are illegal in Canada, except for owners of such weapons prior to the Firearms Act of c.1965. The ban also covers the parts which can convert a semi-auto to select-fire.
2. Previous to our current weapons, the C7 (rifle) and C9 (light machine gun), the Canadian Army used the FN C1 (rifle- semi-auto) and FN C2 (light machine gun- select-fire). While there were cosmetic differences between the two, functionally they were the same. Except for one part in the trigger mechanism: by exchanging the part installed in the C1 for the part installed in the C2, the C1 became a select-fire weapon. Your commentators in the HK91 post were referring to this type of part switching. It was possible because the FN rifle was designed originally as a select-fire weapon. The Canadian Army decided the automatic function was useless in a rifle as the soldier would have difficulty controlling the FN on full auto. FN then redesigned the relevant part for the C1, making it semi-auto only.

Continue reading →

Can anyone confirm if this is Belinda Stronach’s personal cell phone number?
416-464-4641
(Oh, and if you’re outraged that a telephone number for a Liberal minister seems to have been leaked, you may register your complaints here.)
Exciting news! – Blackberry!

Mark Steyn in the Washington Times;

As the grotesque charade Mr. Voinovich and his Democrat chums have inflicted on us demonstrates, all the so-called “multilateralists” require is that we be polite and deferential to the transnational establishment regardless of how useless it is. What matters in global diplomacy is that you pledge support rather than give any. Thus, John Bolton would have no problem getting nominated as U.N. Ambassador if he were more like Paul Martin.
Who? Well, Paul Martin is prime minister of Canada. And in January, after the tsunami hit, he flew into Sri Lanka to pledge millions and millions and millions in aid. Not like that heartless George W. Bush back at the ranch in Texas. Why, Prime Minister Martin walked along the ravaged coast of Kalumnai and was, reported Canada’s CTV network, “visibly shaken.” President Bush might well have been shaken, but he wasn’t visible, and in the international compassion league that’s what counts.
So Mr. Martin boldly pledged $425 million in Canadian tsunami relief. “Mr. Paul Martin has set a great example for the rest of the world leaders” raved the LankaWeb news service.
����
You know how much of that $425 million has been spent so far? Just $50,000 — Canadian. That’s about $40,000 in U.S. dollars. The rest isn’t tied up in Indonesian bureaucracy; it’s back in Ottawa. But, unlike horrible “unilateralist” America, Canada enjoys a reputation as the perfect global citizen, renowned for its commitment to the U.N. and multilateralism.
����
And on the beaches of Sri Lanka that and a buck will get you a strawberry daiquiri. Canada’s contribution to tsunami relief is objectively useless and rhetorically fraudulent.

“I don’t care why. Yer gittin’ a ticket anyway.”

Globe & Mail ;

The Conservatives want the Liberals to move up Thursday’s budget vote to Monday so that Alberta MP Darrel Stinson can vote before his scheduled operation.

Stinson is MP for Okanagan Shuswap, in British Columbia. But you know, put a cowboy hat on, and us westerners all look alike.

(I spotted this catch on another blog last evening, but damned if I can remember where)