Writing that you’re “setting aside a bottle of expensive champagne to be opened and consumed at the moment of the vegetable’s expiry.” in response to a reader’s email seems a little over the top – particularly if you’ve just declared the “utter obnoxiousness of Terri Schiavo’s ‘defenders'” . As for obnoxious responses, I’m not sure what he expected, after his descriptions of “AHHHHH! WAAAAAAA!” Terri and her “dessicated cakehole”.
Ordinarily I enjoy Colby’s writing, and generally agree with him on substance in most issues. In this case I think he might have been wiser to begin and end the religious aspect of this debate with the “I’m not a Catholic” disclaimer and leave it at that.

James notes an item questioning how this could happen;

A Czech tractor driver died under eight tons of manure in a bizarre accident that has baffled his employers, local media reported. The 34-year old man, identified only as Martin T, suffocated after the load fell on him while he was dumping it in a field near the western Czech city of Karlovy Vary, news Web Site www.novinky.cz reported Sunday. “It absolutely beats me how this could happen,” said Vladimir Erps, chief of the company employing the victim. “The truck is operated from the tractor cabin, using hydraulics. There was nothing for him to do under the truck, but it’s tough to blame him now that he is dead,” the news site quoted him as saying.

I know someone who was killed doing this, in what I suspect was the same manner. The truck’s hydraulics were functional, but the control levers to engage them were not. Thus, the box had to be raised by activating the hydraulics from under the truck. As it did, the weight of the sliding load caused the truck to suddenly move forward (the brakes were defective or disengaged) and he was crushed beneath the rear wheels.

Roger Simon has an Oil-For-Food investigation scoop;

The committee has been interviewing Pierre Mouselli, a businessman in Paris who was Kojo’s business partner. Their relationship started in 1998 when then 45-year old Mouselli met young Kojo (then 23) at a Bastille Day Party in the French Embassy in Lagos, Nigeria. Mouselli, who has been a cooperative witness and is not under investigation himself, has told the committee numerous interesting things, which deserved to be followed up, They include:
1. Previously unrevealed private meetings between Kojo and two separate Iraqi Ambassadors to Nigeria, arranged by Mouselli in or about August 1998. At these meetings Kojo presented the business card of Cotecna, which subsequently won the lucrative oil inspection contract for Oil-for-Food. Cotecna had previously been blacklisted from doing business in Nigeria for alleged arms trafficking.
2. A trip in September 1998 by Mouselli and Kojo to the Non-Aligned Nations Movement Conference in Durban, South Africa during which they traveled with the Secretary General’s entourage and later had a private lunch with Kofi Annan. In Mouselli’s view, the purpose of the lunch was to make the Secretary General aware of the various business dealings in which he and Kojo were engaged, in order to get the Secretary General’s “blessing”. It was Mouselli’s understanding at the time that Kojo had previously discussed the Iraqi Embassy visits with his father, though he does not recall specific statements regarding the UN inspection contracts.

Stay tuned.
March.29 update – Roger Simon is perusing the report.

Kofi Annan is depressed.

KOFI ANNAN, the United Nations secretary-general, is said to be struggling with depression and considering his future. Colleagues have reported concerns about Annan ahead of an official report this week that will examine his son Kojo�s connection to the controversial Iraqi oil for food scheme.
Depending on the findings of the report, by a team led by the former US Federal Reserve chairman Paul Volcker, Annan may have to choose between the secretary-generalship and loyalty to his son.
[…]
American congressional critics of the UN are already pressing him to resign over the mismanagement of the oil for food programme, and even his supporters have been dismayed by the scandals on his watch, including the sexual abuse of children by UN peacekeepers in Congo.
One close observer at the UN said Annan�s moods were like a �sine curve� and that he appeared near the bottom of the trough.

What the hell. Time to insert a feeding tube.
Just so it can be pulled later.
More on the report out tomorrow. Also – don’t bother looking for this report on either the CBC or CTV websites…
(Don’t forget Friends Of Saddam – your one stop shopping center for Oil-For-Food updates.)

1,600 vehicles entered Canada in 2004 and didn’t bother stopping for Customs. To deal with the problem, the federal government is closing RCMP detachments.

James Rosczo made a tactical error when he committed suicide after killing four young RCMP officers in Alberta two weeks ago. He should have simply gone back to his house, cleaned his guns, and proclaimed his innocence when the inevitable arrest came.
In the Canadian justice system, where serial murdering sociopaths are released back into society, rapists who kidnap,beat and torture teenage girls get 7 years (and identity protection from the court), and plane bombing terrorism investigations take 20 years and end in acquittals – James Roszco probably stood a better than even chance of walking away a free man.

After Vitor began revealing the unusual list of Liberal party donaters, obtained through their searchable database, Elections Canada has responded – by making it nearly impossible to use.
Update – Bound By Gravity is busy with a work around. If you’re techie inclined at all, pop by and see what you can help with.

Now I’m angry.
ABC News:

A senior U.S. military official tells ABC News he believes the investigation into the fatal shooting of an Italian intelligence officer by U.S. troops in Iraq will ultimately prove the officer’s car was traveling in excess of 100 mph.

After three major wars, Saddam Hussein’s negligence towards the country’s infrastructure, and two years of damage by roadside devices and carbombings, Iraq still has better highways than we do in Saskatchewan.

Rusty Shackleford has new images that Italian TV is stating are Giuliana Sgrena’s car. (Earlier photos turned out to be unrelated, so some caution is being exercised. Nonetheless – if it turns out to be genuine, the story becomes even more ridiculous than first thought.

If this is the car then it would contradict earlier reports that Sgrena’s rescuers had used a truck. If accurate, the condition of the car would also directly contradict the story told by Sgrena in which she claimed 300-400 bullets were fired, one of which hit Italian secret-service agent Nicola Calipari.

Several photos here.

Guardian;

Sgrena told colleagues the vehicle was not travelling fast and had already passed several checkpoints on its way to the airport. The Americans shone a flashlight at the car and then fired between 300 and 400 bullets at if from an armoured vehicle. Rather than calling immediately for assistance for the wounded Italians, the soldiers’ first move was to confiscate their weapons and mobile phones and they were prevented from resuming contact with Rome for more than an hour.

Full story here.
UPDATE – it turns out that the car pictured was only tangentially related to the original kidnapping. LGF unravels the whole mess, created by a misleading AP video.

If you watch the Associated Press video linked above, you’ll see a medium shot of this car, changing to a closeup, as the voice-over says, “Coalition forces fired on a vehicle that was approaching a checkpoint at a high rate of speed.”

A day or so after Paul Martin ended his dithering on missile defense to settle on “flop”, a pair of left-leaning local radio announcers were discussing the potential consequences to US – Canada relations. With the border opening to live cattle again in doubt, and other trade disputes still bogged down, one of them mused that the relationship had changed.

“I don’t think the US is our best friend anymore”

The other agreed. I waited for the discussion to procede to the next logical step.
Well…?
And…?
Yet nothing more was said. The sentence left hanging as a conclusion, the topic changed and soon they were on to sports or something. The question I was waiting for was never asked.
Who is Canada’s “next best friend”?

A Montana court has granted an injunction to R-CALF, keeping the US-Canadian border closed to Canadian cattle. It’s unlikely that any appeal will be heard prior to the scheduled March 7th opening.
Is the decision the result of Paul Martin’s botched BMD fiasco? No – but the oncoming freight train of Bush administration indifference to Canadian grievances will be.
Condoleezza Rice has deferred her visit and Paul Martin can’t get his calls returned. Martin’s flip flopping support for missile defense reminds me about something that David Frum wrote in his book “The Right Man”;

Then Arafat made what may someday be reckoned as the most fateful miscalculation of his career. On January 5, 2002, Israeli naval forces intercepted a Gaza-bound merchant ship loaded with fifty tonnes of arms from Iran. Arafat hastily sent Bush a letter denying any involvement in the shipment. Probably Arafat did not even intend his denial to be interpreted literally; he may have written it as a social form, like the phrase I regret in a letter declining an invitation to a wedding or a dinner party. If so, Arafat sorely misunderstood his man. Bush does not lie to you. You had better not lie to him.

I’m beginning to wonder if Paul Martin has just been confined to his compound on 24 Sussex.

This article won’t bring any surprises for anyone familiar with Islamic terrorism, but it’s not often you hear a Saudi admit it.

Countering the assertion of many in American academia, a Saudi official said extremist teachings, not poverty or unemployment, are the root causes of terrorism in the kingdom, the homeland of billionaire Osama bin Laden and 15 of the 19 Sept. 11 hijackers.
At a news conference in Riyadh, Labor Minister Ghazi Al-Gosaibi blamed the spread of terrorism on the “indoctrination that teaches young people they can kill justifiably” and training in Afghan camps, reported Arab News, an officially sanctioned Saudi newspaper. […] “I am not aware that somebody has been driven to terrorism simply because he could not find a job.”

Well, unless they’re in Quebec, and used to work for Wal-Mart. (Wal-Mart Store recieves bomb threats) Though, this may also be due to indoctrination of a leftist form of fantasy ideology known to some as Militant Unionism;

The union representing workers at Wal-Mart’s only unionized store in North America say they are going to continue trying to negotiate a first contract, even though the store is being shut down.
[…]
Henri Masse, the president of the Quebec Federation of Labour, said they still have a right to have a collective agreement imposed by an arbitrator.

Masse added that successful arbitration with a closed Wal-Mart store was likely to serve as a jumping off point for talks with Eatons, Woolco and Canadian Airlines.
See also: Colby’s perplexedness.

First rule of union negotiation in the “big leagues” – never forget that you’re just another pin in the map.

There’s a new sacred cow backing out of the government truck. With pre-Medicare generations slowly passing into history, and Canadians fully indoctrinated with the belief that the words “commodity” and “right” are interchangable, it’s time to ramp up the process. And so, we welcome a new generation to the concept that “free babysitting” is a societal responsiblity.
I can see how this could work… by the time these babies of 2005 graduate into the work force, the cost of government will have rendered taxation obsolete – Canadians will just go directly from government birthing room to daycare to school into the service of the state, with their basic needs provided and ….
You know… that sounds kinda familiar.

Alternate headline: “It Takes A Thief”.
How deliciously ironic to think that a chronic abuser of Canada’s ludicrously lax immigration and deportation policy has finally bitten the hand that unleashed it.
And Brent Colbert has some interesting finds on Citizenship and Immigration Committee chairman Andrew Telegdi’s past in student politics.

(The Chevron – University of Waterloo, circa 1974)

Version One –CNN, January 11:

Investigators said he may have been driven by a desire to avoid returning to Iraq.
Andres Raya was scheduled to report back to Camp Pendleton, near San Diego, on Sunday after a weekend leave.
Instead, police said, he went out with a semiautomatic rifle and drew officers into an ambush outside a liquor store in Ceres, a town of about 35,000 next door to his hometown of Modesto.
Raya’s mother told the Modesto Bee that her son “came back different” from his last assignment, which included service in western Iraq’s insurgent hotbed of Falluja.
“In speaking with family, they conveyed to us that their son did not desire to return to Iraq,” said Lt. Bill Heyne, a spokesman for the Stanislaus County Sheriff’s Department.
[…]
A statement from Camp Pendleton said Raya was on weekend liberty when he was killed. The Marine Corps is assisting police with the investigation, the statement said.
Raya was a driver in the 2nd Battalion, 4th Marine Regiment — an element of the 1st Marine Expeditionary Force, much of which is serving in Iraq.
According to the Marines, he had been awarded the National Defense Service Medal, the Global War on Terrorism Expeditionary Medal, the Global War on Terrorism Service Medal and the Navy and Marine Corps Sea Service Deployment Ribbon.

Version Two – Modesto Bee, Jan.15:

The 19-year-old Marine who gunned down two police officers was a Norte�o gang member who plotted a deadly attack on police, not a veteran suffering the stress of war, investigators said Friday.
A toxicology report shows that Andres Raya was high on cocaine Sunday night when he shot and killed 39-year-old Sgt. Howard Stevenson and severely injured officer Sam Ryno, 49, outside George’s Liquors on Caswell Avenue.
Information presented at a Friday news conference contrasted sharply with the image that police and Raya’s family initially portrayed of the young man, that of a traumatized soldier who snapped and committed “suicide by cop.”
“The easy answer to this would be to blame it on Iraq,” said the lead investigator, Lt. Bill Heyne of the Stanislaus County Sheriff’s Department.
But he said an investigation into Raya’s background showed that he harbored violent tendencies and an anti-government attitude long before he went to war.
Raya, a lance corporal who worked as a Humvee driver, did not engage in combat during seven months in Iraq, Heyne said. But Raya saw a fellow Marine suffer a leg injury when a bomb exploded under a vehicle in his convoy.
Raya bragged to Marine buddies that he had bought an SKS rifle in Modesto and left it with one of his “boys.” It was capable of carrying 30 rounds of high-powered ammunition. When they asked Raya why he needed the weapon, he replied that a 7.62-caliber round could penetrate a cop’s armor, Heyne said.

A pizza succeeds where strippers failed…Toronto Star:

Sgro’s decision to step aside came only hours after the Toronto Star obtained a copy of an affidavit in which pizza shop owner Harjit Singh claims Sgro pressed him to supply food and workers for her campaign last spring. Singh, a father of three facing deportation from Canada, alleges in the sworn affidavit filed in the Federal Court of Canada in Toronto yesterday that when word of his arrangement with Sgro started to leak out, Sgro suddenly reneged on the deal and last month ordered his arrest and removal from Canada “to save her job.”
[…]
It was recently revealed Alina Balaican, a 25-year-old stripper from Romania, was granted a ministerial permit to stay in Canada after she volunteered on Sgro’s election campaign. Balaican’s husband has told the Star that people with immigration problems flocked to Sgro’s campaign office during the election. Sgro’s problems are the focus of an investigation by federal ethics commissioner Bernard Shapiro, who is probing claims that she dispensed favours to Singh and Balaican and allegations that she had senior advisers doing campaign work while on the government payroll.

Kevin Libin’s take.
Not much fear that this development will affect the special trips of Canadian immigration officials to recruit Librano supporters in northern Sri Lanka.

[deputy foreign minister] Mr. Warnapala suggested that Tamils have already disproportionately taken “full advantage” of Canada’s immigration system.
Protocol demands that he bite his tongue when Prime Minister Paul Martin visits Sri Lanka next week, he said. But, if asked, he will express his government’s point of view that Tamils have been extended special preference because of “pressure groups associated with the LTTE operating in Canada, particularly in Toronto and Scarborough.”
[…]
Militant expatriate Tamils are aggressively lobbying Canadian officials, he said, and Ottawa should be careful not to interlope into divisive political issues at a delicate time.
Jim Karygiannis, a Liberal MP from Scarborough, is in the northern part of Sri Lanka on a self-directed mission to ensure that aid is being distributed there.
While not taking anyone to task in particular, Mr. Warnapala said it would be wrong for outsiders to become embroiled in the internal politics of his country. The two have made attempts to put aside their differences during the tsunami crisis.
“We don’t want people to interfere and upset the balance we have created in the last 13 days. We don’t want anybody to make political capital out of that,” he said.
Most of Canada’s 200,000-plus Tamil population fled the war between the Sinhalese-dominated government forces and the LTTE.

The Liberals have sent more visa officers to the country deal with an anticipated surge in applications.

The UN’s Margareta Wahlstrom, aka “United Nations Deputy Emergency Relief Coordinator and the Secretary-General’s Special Coordinator for Humanitarian Assistance in Tsunami-afected countries” – (yes, this is her title) is calling all psychiatrists;

“Counselling is the key thing as people have lost everything — children, family, shelter… which is why the UN will launch these appeals,” she said after visiting Sri Lanka’s southern region of Galle.

And after the psychiatrists arrive, then what? Why – family planning, that’s what. Lifesite;

“The United Nations Population Fund, the UNFPA, is calling for US $28 million in donations to re- establish ‘reproductive health services,’ in the Tsunami-stricken regions of Indonesia, Sri Lanka, and the Maldives, according to a UNFPA press release published Thursday.”

As expected, the Diplomad is inside-reporting on the job.

Seeing these UNocrats perched at the table, whispering to each other, back-slapping, shaking hands, they seemed like a periodic reunion of old cynical Mafia chieftains or mercenaries who run into each other in different hot spots, as they move from one slaughter to another, “How are you? Haven’t seen you since Bosnia . . ..” As the hours wore on, however, and I nervously doodled in my note pad, shifted in my chair, looked at my watch, and thought about all the real work I had to do that evening, I decided that, no, labeling them mafiosos or mercenaries was much too kind. They seemed more to be the progeny resulting from a mating between a mad oracle and a giant carrion-eater. They were akin to some sort of ancient mythical Greco-Roman-Aztec-Wes Craven-Egyptian-bird-god that demands constant sacrifice and feeding, and speaks in riddles which only it can solve. Yes, I decided, the UNocrats are great hideous vultures, roused from their caves in the European Alps and in the cement canyons and peaks of Manhattan by the stench of death in the Turd World. They leisurely take flight toward the smell of death; circle, and then swoop down, screeching UNintelligble nonsense. They arrive and immediately force others, e.g., the American tax payer, to build them new exclusive nests in the midst of poverty, and make themselves fat on the flesh of the dead. My friends, allow The Diplomad to present to you The High Priest Vulture Elite (HPVE).
These genuinely repulsive, arrogant creatures survive only because the world’s rich countries, the non-Turd World, allow them, too. We in the First World find it politically impossible to reveal their pronouncements as the cant they are. For many in Europe and among the New York Times crowd, helping maintain these mad vultures substitutes for genuine action, “The UN is on the job!” In addition, for many senior bureaucrats and minor politicians, there is always the hope that if they play the game right, they, too, can join the High Priest Vulture Elite: We see the ranks of the HPVE full of Scandinavians and leftist Americans, and the occasional pompous Euro-Brazilian, all of whom parlayed mediocre domestic careers of lip-biting humanitarian symbolism into well-paying tax-free sinecures in the HPVE.

Well, with oil-for-food finally buried, we knew they’d be on the prowl for new bodies.

The Diplomad has several good entries on the tsunami disaster relief, there’s no point linking to a single one. Just read all the way down. This bit though, cuts to the chase – in response to criticism of the US by former British International Development Secretary Clare Short that “Only really the UN can do that job, It is the only body that has the moral authority.”;

Do I really need to say anything more? “Only really the UN can do the job?” We have US C-130s flying in and out here dropping off heaps of supplies; US choppers arrive today; USAID is doing a knock-out job of marshalling and coordinating US and local resources to deliver real assistance to real people. The Aussies have planes and troops delivering stuff; even the Indians have goods on the way. The UN? Nowhere to be seen. OK, I’m not being fair. Last night they played host to a big “coordination” meeting of donors to announce that the UNDP has another large “assessment and coordination team” team arriving. Our USAID guys, who’ve been working 18-20 hrs/ day, came back furious from this meeting saying everybody would be dead if the delivery of aid waited for the UN to set up shop and begin “coordinating.” The UN types are upset with the US, Ms. Short, dear, not because we’re undermining them but because we’re showing them up as totally inept.

Which reminds me – any word yet from our Canadian 12-member “reconnaissance team” ?