The week in medias res.
North Korea also tortures
its citizens and, rest assured, China
and Russia will do their best to cover for it:
Syrian intelligence agencies are running a network of torture centers across the country where detainees are beaten with batons and cables, burned with acid and sexually assaulted, Human Rights Watch said in a report on Tuesday.
The state-sanctioned abuses amounted to crimes against humanity that should be investigated by the International Criminal Court, the New York-based campaign group added.
Its report identified 27 detention centers it said intelligence agencies have been using since March 2011 when President Bashar al-Assad's government began a crackdown on pro-democracy protests that have grown into an armed revolt.
Syria's government did not immediately respond to the accusations which have been echoed in earlier reports by the United Nations. …
Russia - an ally of Syria - and China have already vetoed two council resolutions that condemned Damascus and threatened it with sanctions.
Attempting to forge a new image for himself and his country, North Korea’s youthful supreme leader Kim Jong Un is allowing women to wear pants, platform shoes and earrings, making more mobile phones available, endorsing previously banned foods like pizza, French fries and hamburgers — and he’s giving kids free trips to zoos and amusement parks.
The 20-something leader’s focus has been on the younger generation. Following in the footsteps of his late grandfather, the country’s founder Kim Il Sung, he has announcing plans to create a “children’s heaven nation.”
“It’s all part of his image making to imitate a warm, fatherly impression like his grandfather,” said Dong Yong-Sueng, North Korea specialist at Samsung Economic Research Institute.
So people can starve in style, I suppose.
Councillor Adam Vaughan will ask city council next Thursday to approve a ban on bullets and demand that the federal government do the same with handguns.
Vaughan said Tuesday the legislative move follows up on a promise he made to families that have been victimized by gun violence.
"Handguns are made for one thing and one thing only, for killing people and too many people are getting hurt," Vaughan argued.
"I'm tired of tracking whether they are stolen or lost or smuggled; it doesn't matter to me anymore -- (handguns) shouldn't be allowed."
The arrogance and idiocy of this man are just astounding.
I’m sure farmers in western Canada are clinging on to this ignoramus’ every
word.
The illicit firearms market in Canada is driven by both individual criminals and members of organized crime. Criminals require firearms to assist in their criminal endeavours, for personal protection, as well as to demonstrate status as observed in the case of street gang members. The illicit drug market tends to drive the demand for illicit firearms as it is highly competitive, extremely profitable and consequently fertile ground for violent disagreements between and within criminal organizations.
Firearms used by members of criminal organizations must be acquired through illegal means as Canada’s current legal acquisition and possession controls have been largely successful in preventing members of organized crime from purchasing legal weapons.
Ban them if you can find them, Mr. Vaughan.
I wonder why the opinion of the OPP is low. I wonder.....
I wonder why the opinion of the OPP is low. I wonder.....
Muslim extremists continued destroying the heritage of the ancient Malian city of Timbuktu on Monday, razing tombs and attacking the gate of a 600-year-old mosque, despite growing international outcry.
The International Criminal Court has described the destruction of the city's patrimony as a possible war crime, while UNESCO's committee on world heritage was holding a special session this week to address the pillaging of the site, one of the few cultural sites in sub-Saharan Africa that is listed by the agency.
The Islamic faction, known as Ansar Dine, or "Protectors of the Faith," seized control of Timbuktu last week after ousting the Tuareg rebel faction that had invaded northern Mali alongside Ansar Dine's soldiers three months ago. Over the weekend, fighters screaming "Allah Akbar" descended on the cemeteries holding the remains of Timbuktu's Sufi saints, and systematically began destroying the six most famous tombs.
Reached by telephone in an undisclosed location in northern Mali, a spokesman for the faction said they do not recognize either the United Nations or the world court.
"The only tribunal we recognize is the divine court of Shariah," said Ansar Dine spokesman Oumar Ould Hamaha.
"The destruction is a divine order," he said. "It's our Prophet who said that each time that someone builds something on top of a grave, it needs to be pulled back to the ground. We need to do this so that future generations don't get confused, and start venerating the saints as if they are God.”
Yes, they have a spokesman and no, he doesn’t care one bit
what the UN thinks, proving yet again how useless this organisation is.
What does it say about the mind-set of those who cannot
attribute any value to items and
places of spiritual and historical import such as Afghanistan’s Buddhas,
the
Church of the Nativity, the Sphinx
and the pyramids and now ancient sites in Timbuktu? As much as the post-modern
Western apathy and casual ignorance resulting in a form of cultural poverty
might dishearten most, the wilful destruction of these places and things should
not just shock and disgust but move others into action. It’s another blaring
alarm clock slapped off by the willingly sleepy West. Some cultures do not even tolerate their own
and surely won’t tolerate yours.
Well, this is embarrassing:
During the Thursday afternoon debate in the U.S. House of Representatives on the resolution to find Attorney General Eric Holder in contempt of Congress, U.S. Rep. Darrell Issa, R-Calif., quietly dropped a major bombshell into the official record.
The bombshell was a letter containing information about the Fast and Furious scandal, and who knew about it and approved it, as detailed in a series of secret wiretap applications submitted to the Justice Department in March of 2010, fully a year before Holder or anyone else at Justice claimed they knew about the Fast and Furious operation. …
The information that is most damaging to Holder and others at the Justice Department is on page 232 of this entry in the Congressional Record.
A key question concerning the Fast and Furious operation is answered at the outset:
Operation Fast and Furious got its name when it became an official Department of Justice Organized Crime Drug Enforcement Task Force (OCDETF) Strike Force case. The OCDETF designation resulted in funding for Fast and Furious from the Justice Department’s headquarters in Washington, D.C. The Strike Force designation meant that it would not be run by ATF, but would instead create a multi-agency task force led by the U.S. Attorney’s Office. The designation also meant that sophisticated law enforcement techniques such as the use of federal wire intercepts, or wiretaps, would be employed. Federal wiretaps are governed by Title III of the Omnibus Crime Control and Safe Streets Act, and are sometimes referred to as ‘‘T–IIIs.’’ The use of federal wire intercepts requires a significant amount of case-related information to be sent to senior Department officials for review and approval. All applications for federal wiretaps are authorized under the authority of the Assistant Attorney General for the Criminal Division. In practice, a top deputy for the Assistant Attorney General has final sign-off authority before the application is submitted to a federal judge for approval. This deputy must ensure that the wiretap application meets statutory requirements and Justice Department policy. The approval process includes a certification that the wiretap is necessary be-cause other investigative techniques have been insufficient. Therefore, making such a judgment requires a review of operational tactics. Since gunwalking was an investigative technique utilized in Fast and Furious, then either top deputies in the Criminal Division knew about the tactics employed as part of their effort to establish legal sufficiency for the application, or they approved the wiretap applications in a manner inconsistent with Department policies.
This revelation alone is of paramount importance because it lays to rest once and for all the notion that Fast and Furious was merely a local Phoenix ATF sting operation gone bad. That claim is false. The operation received its very name from the Organized Crime Drug Enforcement Task Force (OCDETF), and as such, it had to be fully cleared and approved by officials at the highest levels of government, specifically the Justice Department.
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