Ouch.

Globe & Mail:

A former government employee has been sentenced for her role in one of Canada’s most serious cases of passport theft.
Toula Blanas, 27, was sentenced on Friday to 5� years for dealing with blank Canadian passports, and two years, to be served concurrently, for breach of trust.
[…]
Ms. Blanas, who worked in the passport office in Scarborough, was accused of stealing 246 blank passports, which were being sold on Toronto streets for the bargain price of about $1,000 apiece.

Now, let’s see…. 5 1/2 years, with a release at around the one third point of time served… around 20 months.
So… about $12,300 a month, take home.

The New York Post is reporting that a joint US-Italian investigation has cleared US military personnel in the death of an Italian secret service agent who was escorting terrorist collaborator-journalist Giuliana Sgrena after her purchase from Iraqi “captors”.

The car was about 130 yards from a checkpoint when the soldiers flashed their lights to get it to stop. They fired warning shots when the car was within 90 yards of the checkpoint, but at 65 yards, they used deadly force. Calipari was killed and Sgrena wounded.

Via Powerline

If you’re like me, and get a sense that border surveillance on the US-Canadian prairies is more illusion than reality, you’re not wrong.;

A scathing new report by the union representing Canada’s customs agents suggests bad policy and slow police response have turned the country’s border into a sieve easily exploited by criminals.
The leaked document, which was prepared last week for a Senate committee reviewing security at entry points across the country, reiterates longstanding union demands for an armed presence at the border. Appended to the report is a list, compiled by the Canada Border Services Agency, of 116 ports of entry and distances to the nearest law enforcement detachments.
Nearly half are at least 25 kilometres away, with most rural ports located 50 kilometres or more from the closest police station.
“It stands to reason that distance between a police detachment to a customs port is not a perfect marker for police response time,” the Customs Excise Union report acknowledges.
“But it does highlight challenges posed by distance and, in some examples, clearly illustrates that even if a police cruiser could travel at high speed with its siren on, response times are beyond minutes and span into hours.”

There’s a reason he chose the words “even if”.

I do so love it when people open a link to my blog with such enticing provocative commentary…
April 11 Update:
Warren Kinsella subpeonaed by Commons public accounts committee.;

“I found it fairly amusing,” said Bloc MP Benoit Sauvageau, who tabled the original motion to hear from the Liberal insiders.�
“They’ve probably got the country wrong or the time in history,” he said of their requests to negotiate their appearances before the committee.

�

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Update: To the friends of Warren Kinsella – the best friend Chuck Guite ever had – who are stopping by. This is the reason the thin-skinned Librano has directed you to this post. (which links to a story of World Health Organization workers being attacked for attempting to bring relief to Angolans.)
Warren has been outed as a pro-pollution chemical industry lobbiest in a post lower on the page titled “Whorin’ Warren”. He doesn’t like it very much, and true to the testosterone-challenged technique he is famous for – chooses to misrepresent the content of this post instead.
What a pussy you are, Warren.
Globe and Mail;

The Ontario government came under attack yesterday for allowing an influential Liberal Party strategist to attend a cabinet meeting just days after he was hired to lobby against proposed environmental legislation that would impose stiff penalties on polluters.
Progressive Conservative Bob Runciman asked Premier Dalton McGuinty why Warren Kinsella was allowed to attend the meeting on March 23, nine days after he signed on to help the chemical industry fight legislation that Mr. Runciman says is now at risk of being watered down.
“Do you not see a massive conflict of interest here?” the Tory MPP asked during Question Period.

---

Original post, and link unchanged below.
Is there a point where we are allowed to stop feeling sympathy for these people, seal off the borders and just let nature take its course?

Senator Norm Coleman has dragged Kofi Annan out of the saloon and back into the street;

The Volcker report did not “exonerate” Annan, as many have claimed; to the contrary, it pointed the finger directly at him. Indeed, one member of Volcker’s committee, Mark Pieth, made that point loud and clear: “We did not exonerate Kofi Annan.”
With that in mind, I reiterate my call for Annan’s resignation.

More here: “Volcker did his level best not to connect the dots”

Former national security adviser Sandy Berger (under Clinton) is going to plead guilty today to having made an “honest mistake” in going to the National Archives and shoving notes and classified documents down his pants, into his jacket and briefcase and then losing a whole lot of them.
James is rounding up reaction.

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.