OTTAWA -- Justice Minister Irwin Cotler nominated two women Tuesday to fill Supreme Court vacancies.

Justice Rosalie Abella, a human rights expert, and Justice Louise Charron, a francophone Ontarian raised in Ottawa, will be vetted in a new parliamentary screening process to start Wednesday.

[. . . . ] The Conservatives have long been pushing for parliamentary hearings similar to the congressional grilling prospective Supreme Court judges get in the United States.

But the mechanism to be used this week is a far cry from those politically charged proceedings.

Cotler is expected to field questions about the candidates from a panel of MPs and legal experts. The panel is strictly advisory and will issue a non-binding report.

A more permanent system of vetting nominees will be devised after the next two judges are appointed. [my emphasis]

[. . . . ] But ideology until now has been more or less taken for granted: It was expected that any appointee would subscribe to the approved pieties and the expansive view of the state's role that has come to dominate the law schools and the courts in recent decades. The vetting process was to screen for any outriders who might threaten the liberal consensus.

But this is the first time I can recall that a judicial appointment has been used as a political weapon, in the most partisan sense of the word. Ms. Abella is so far out of the mainstream, even among liberal jurists, that her appointment can only be seen as a deliberate provocation. Even allowing for the inability of certain Liberals to conceive that their views might in fact be controversial -- for that presumes the existence of differences of opinion -- the choice of such a polarizing figure, at such a delicate political moment, cannot have been accidental. [. . . . ]

THE FEDERAL government plans a sweeping examination of potential terrorist threats to federal politicians and judges, The Canadian Press has learned. Officials have ordered an independent review to identify security gaps in and around the cluster of Ottawa buildings that house parliamentarians, senior judges and their staffs.

The goal is to produce "threat and risk analyses" that will assess the "levels of vulnerability and protection" at federal sites in the national capital, an overview of the project says.

[. . . . ] The glaring security lapse also came at a time when U.S. security officials were concerned about a possible terrorist attack in the weeks leading up to the Democratic National Convention in July.

[. . . . ] Despite the concerns, authorities do not believe the container carried any weapons of mass destruction, such as a radioactive dirty bomb, and did not pose a national security risk for either Canada or the United States.

Though they will not admit it publicly, police sources said they believe the crate was carrying drugs.

Authorities refuse to say where the container came from or what shipping line carried it.

AN undercover Sun reporter has exposed chilling security blunders — by smuggling a fake bomb on to a jet carrying more than 220 British holidaymakers.

ANTHONY FRANCE used bogus references to get a job as a baggage handler.

He then took the “bomb” unchallenged into the hold of the Thomas Cook 757-200 at Birmingham International Airport.

This is his story: [. . . . ]

[. . . . ] "It was huge," said Const. Michelle Hallam. "The guys describe it as two football fields ... you couldn't see from one end of the grow operation to the other."

More than 6,700 hundred marijuana plants were discovered growing on the remote bush property located northwest of Port Hardy on the northeast tip of Vancouver Island. After investigating the grow operation for weeks, RCMP officers from all over the north island moved in on the site Sunday morning. Two men were arrested and firearms and three guard dogs were seized.

The logistics of growing the 6,700 plants, moving them to the site and maintaining and protecting them until they were ready for harvest were all strong indications of a sophisticated organization with access to both money and manpower. "The size is definitely consistent with organized crime," Const. Hallam said. [. . . . ]

[. . . . ] Niagara police and CBSA officials confirmed that three handguns were seized -- two of them loaded and the third empty -- along with spare ammunition clips and an undisclosed quantity of bullets.

All of the powerful, semi-automatic guns were being carried with him and not packed in his luggage, officials said.

Officers would not speculate on the 25-year-old Scarborough man's motive, but the seizure raises the prospect that criminals in Scarborough may be re-arming after aggressive anti-gang and anti-gun operations by the Toronto Police Service.

[. . . . ] The man had memorized the names and numbers of two Toronto lawyers and instructed agents to call them in succession after his arrest, a source said.

Last week, Canada's police chiefs warned street gangs were the next generation of organized crime. Two weeks earlier, Montreal police admitted that Ste. Catherine St. and St. Laurent Blvd. had become battlegrounds in a turf war between street gangs over drugs. Meanwhile, a series of late-night shootings and stabbings left Montrealers wondering whether they're in the midst of a crime wave. Gazette columnist James Mennie explored downtown with those who work after midnight. This is what he saw. [. . . . ]

ST-CONSTANT, Que. - Two homes and a boat were destroyed by fire early Tuesday after police said Molotov cocktails were thrown in the boat. [. . . . ]

[. . . . ] For instance, why shouldn't anyone, parent or otherwise, be able to deduct from their income taxes their financial support for an officially recognized, world-class athlete?

Likewise, corporations willing to subsidize such athletes directly should be allowed to do so. [. . . . ]

DAKAR - Former Liberian president Charles Taylor sold conflict diamonds to known al-Qaeda operatives that may have been used to finance the Sept. 11 attacks on the United States, according to a confidential report from the UN-backed war crimes court in Sierra Leone.

"It is clear that al-Qaeda had been in West Africa since September, 1998, and maintained a continuous presence in the area through 2002," says the document, produced by the office of prosecutor David Crane.

[. . . . ] Mr. Taylor, who has so far eluded trial on charges he aided a rebellion against the government of Sierra Leone in 1991, is at the centre of the intricate relationship between al-Qaeda and Sierra Leone's Revolutionary United Front rebels.

According to U.S. officials quoted this month in the Boston Globe, Mr. Taylor extorted protection money from al-Qaeda operatives, among them Ahmed Khalfan Ghailani, a Tanzanian national who was arrested last month in Pakistan. [. . . . ]

A radioactive "dirty" bomb detonated at the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach could cause a $34-billion loss to the nation's economy, according to researchers at a two-day symposium that focused on the economic impact of terrorism.

The scenario was one of many discussed by experts Saturday at the conference, which was hosted by USC's new Center for Risk and Economic Analysis of Terrorism Events.

Researchers from about a dozen universities and think tanks debated the potential costs, including the effect a radiological attack would have on the nation's power grid, the impact on transportation if bridges in Seattle were destroyed and the progress of U.S. efforts to upgrade port security. [. . . . ]

"The Coast Guard has to learn new things it has never learned, like a live boarding of a hostile ship," Shatz said.

Clark Abt, who runs a social and economic policy research and consulting firm, said it was imperative that the United States pay for overseas scanners to detect nuclear weapons before they reach the U.S. coastline.

"The Coast Guard and Customs are used to drugs, . . . .

"Containers are missing [connecting with] sailings to be inspected," said White, who studied inspections at Singapore's port. "Ships don't wait for containers."

TORONTO -- Terrorists would have easy pickings at hundreds of Ontario university labs and businesses with radioactive materials on hand, the Radiation Safety Institute of Canada says. The danger is materials could be placed on subways and in malls to spook the public, Fergal Nolan, chief executive of the Toronto-based institute, told a legislative committee updating Ontario's Emergency Management Act.

[. . . . ] Nolan said Ontario companies are among the world's biggest manufacturers of radioactive materials for medical use -- chemicals, gases and devices that in the wrong hands, could cause harm.

[. . . . ] The Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission is doing safety audits at 40 universities because "there is a lot of concern," Nolan added.

"Saudi al Qaeda activist Adnan al Shukrijumah suspected of Mexican connections is subject of search. DEBKA-Net-Weekly first exposed al Shukrijumah on Nov. 7, 2003 as sought by US and Canadian authorities of filching radioactive material from McMaster University for assembling a dirty bomb."

Mahmoud Mohammad Issa Mohammed who took part in the deadly assault on an El Al passenger plane in Athens in 1968; . . . .

Mohammad was convicted in Greece in 1970 for the 1968 attack on an El Al jetliner in Athens, in which an Israeli man was killed. He was released and deported to Lebanon a year later as part of a hostage exchange.

Using a false name, Mohammad gained landed immigrant status in Canada a year ago, and although immigration officials were alerted to his true identity before he arrived, on Feb. 26, 1987, he slipped through security at Pearson International Airport in Toronto.

Canadians will be madder than hell after they read Stewart Bell's shocking account of how the Canadian Government has allowed Sihk, Tamil and Islamic terrorists to come into our home and turn it into a safe house for international terror.

Bell, who writes for the National Post and is Canada's leading reporter on national security and terrorism, has taken on the courageous task of warning Canadians about the terrorists living amongst us. This has stirred up a real hornets' nest. He has been threatened by many who don't like his message and has been branded as anti-Islamic by the Canadian Islamic Congress. Such is the fate of those who say what others are afraid to say.

Bell's litany of terrorist incidents around the world involving Canadian terrorists is long enough to qualify Canada for membership in the Axis of Evil. The most infamous are: the 1985 Air India bombing; the 1991 assassination of Indian Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi; the 1993 World Trade Centre bombing in New York; the 1993 assassination of Sri Lankan President Ranasinghe Premadasa; the 1995 blast at the Egyptian embassy in Islamabad; the murder of 58 tourists in Egypt in 1997; the 1997 truck explosion in Sri Lanka that killed 100; the bloody Bali night club bombings in 2002; and the 2003 attack on the housing compound in Riyadh.

Bell provides many examples of terrorists who took advantage of liberal immigration and refugee policies to enter Canada. A few of the most notorious bogus refugees include: Manickavasagam Suresh, the Canadian leader of the Tamil Tigers; Mahmoud Mohammad Issa Mohammed who took part in the deadly assault on an El Al passenger plane in Athens in 1968; Essam Marzouk, who trained the bombers of the U.S. Embassies in Kenya and Tanzania in 1998; and Ahmed Ressam, the wannabe Millennium LA airport bomber, who was caught at the Port Angeles border trying to sneak into the U.S. with a carload of explosives.

[. . . . ] According to Bell's diagnosis of the problem, "CSIS and the RCMP have been effective at monitoring the activities of terrorist groups operating in Canada, but they have been unable to put them out of business, in large part because their political masters have not given them the tools they need to do so." . . . .

Bell names the prominent politicians who he feels have contributed to the terrorist problem. He contends that former Prime Minister Jean Chrétien never really recognized the seriousness of the terrorist threat. The best evidence of Prime Minister Chrétien naivety was the way he was so easily manipulated into putting in a good word with Pakistan Prime Minister Bhutto to get Ahmed Khadr released from prison in Pakistan.

While the Sikh and Tamil homeland wars are troubling enough, Bell worries most about al-Qaeda-style radical Islam because it preaches and practices "violence without limits" and "serves not only a strategic purpose, but fulfills the will of God." To Islamic terrorists, chemical, nuclear and biological weapons are "the bigger, the better." He observes that "their hatred arises from centuries-old grievances and their aim is long term: a world under the rule of Islam, the one true faith." Scary!

(08-21-2004) - Governments throughout Mexico and Central America are on alert as evidence grows that al-Qaida members are traveling in the region and looking for recruits to carry out attacks in Latin America - the potential last frontier for international terrorism.

The territory could be a perfect staging ground for Osama bin Laden's militants, with homegrown rebel groups, drug and people smugglers, and corrupt governments. U.S. officials have long feared al-Qaida could launch an attack from south of the border, and they have been paying closer attention as the number of terror-related incidents has increased since last year.

The strongest possible al-Qaida link is Adnan G. El Shukrijumah, a 29-year-old Saudi pilot suspected of being a terrorist cell leader. The FBI issued a border-wide alert earlier this month for Shukrijumah, saying he may try to cross into Arizona or Texas.

In June, Honduran officials said Shukrijumah was spotted earlier this year at an Internet cafe in Tegucigalpa, the capital of Honduras. Panamanian officials say the pilot and alleged bombmaker passed through their country before the Sept. 11 attacks on the United States.

U.S. Attorney General John Ashcroft in May singled out Shukrijumah as one of seven especially dangerous al-Qaida-linked terror figures wanted by the government, which fears a new al-Qaida attack. A $5 million reward is posted for information leading to his capture.

[. . . . ] Officials worry the Panama Canal could be a likely target. In 2003, boats making more than 13,000 trips through the waterway carried about 188 million tons of cargo.

Earlier this month, the United States and seven Latin American countries - including Argentina, Chile, Colombia, the Dominican Republic, Honduras, Peru and Panama - carried out a weeklong anti-terror exercise aimed at protecting the canal.

In South America, U.S. officials have long suspected Paraguay's border with Brazil and Argentina as an area for Islamic terrorist fund-raising. Much of the focus has fallen on the Muslim community that sprouted during the 1970s, and authorities believe as much as $100 million a year flows out of the region, with large portions diverted to Islamic militants linked to Hezbollah and the Palestinian militant group Hamas.

The more immediate concern is Mexico, which shares a porous, 2,000-mile border with the United States and is the home to widespread organized crime.

[. . . . ] Concerns increased this summer about whether Mexico was doing enough to screen international visitors after a 48-year-old South African woman arrived in Mexico with a passport that was missing several pages and then waded across the Rio Grande into Texas.

Farida Goolam Mahamed Ahmed was arrested July 19 while trying to board a flight in McAllen, Texas. She pleaded innocent Friday to immigration violations and was under investigation for links to terrorist activities or groups. Court testimony indicated she traveled from Johannesburg on July 8, via Dubai, United Arab Emirates, to London, then to Mexico City on or about July 14. The countries she traveled through do not require South Africans to have visas.

HALIFAX (CP) - It took three days for Canada's national police force to be told that a suspicious shipping container was missing from a Halifax pier last spring.

The theft of the boxcar-size crate in mid-April and the delay in reporting it initially sent shivers through senior ranks of the RCMP, Canada's lead federal agency in the war on terrorism.

The delay "was more than enough time" for a potential terrorist to drive the container up to -and possibly over -the U.S. border, said a senior RCMP source, who spoke to The Canadian Press on the condition of anonymity.

Compounding the problem, customs officers with the Canada Border Services Agency couldn't say exactly when the huge, metal container was stolen -only that the theft happened some time between April 10 and April 20.

The glaring security lapse also came at a time when U.S. security officials were concerned about a possible terrorist attack in the weeks leading up to the Democratic National Convention in July.

The container has yet to be found. [. . . . ]

"We found out about it through the back door," the source said. Given the heightened state of security at Canada's ports, "we would have expected (customs) to notify us the moment it was (reported) missing."

Senior Mounties were furious because a special task force that included the RCMP, the Canada Border Services Agency, military police and Halifax Regional Police was set up at the port in 2003 to prevent this kind of oversight.

Highlights

* Organized crime exploits marine ports, airports and land border areas to smuggle contraband and people into Canada.

* In some instances, the exploitation of marine ports and airports by organized crime involves either the corruption of existing employees or the placement of criminal associates into the port work forces to facilitate criminal activities.

[. . . . ] In the Atlantic provinces, the Ports of Saint John and Halifax have been connected in the past to smuggling attempts.

[. . . . ] Outlook

* Due to the large volume of commercial traffic, the major container ports of Canada remain vulnerable as conduits for contraband entering Canada; in some instances criminal elements influencing or operating within the ports will aid in the smuggling.

* Canada’s airports will continue to remain vulnerable to criminal exploitation and infiltration particularly at the major international airports that receive frequent flights from either source or transit countries for various types of contraband, such as illicit drugs.

* Organized crime will continue to exploit both the large volume of land commercial and traveler movement between the U.S. and Canada to smuggle commodities, currency and people in both directions. As well, organized crime will exploit the less-monitored areas between the designated customs ports of entry.

In the 1990s, before Hong Kong was reverted from British to Chinese control, millions of residents were looking to relocate. . . .

One such immigrant was Lee Chau Ping, a notorious drug trafficker who is known as the Ice Queen. In 1992, after police raided her labs and one of her safe houses, the Ice Queen got on a plane headed for Canada. Not thinking that the Canadian government would let her stay, [former Royal Hong Kong Police Chief Detective Inspector Sandy Boucher] assumed the Ice Queen had headed oversees to wait for the heat on her gang to die down a little. So he was shocked when an RCMP officer told him she had been granted landed immigrant status.

“I said, ‘It can’t be – she’s got a criminal record. I know she’s known to Canadian authorities.’”

But apparently, Lee Chau Ping – who posed as a businesswoman ready to invest $170,000 in a Chicken Delight franchise in a tiny town in northern Saskatchewan – had slipped under the radar. And Brian McAdam, the immigration control officer at the High Commission in Hong Kong, soon learned that other criminals had too.

“I discovered that these Triad people (members of secret Chinese organized crime fraternities that have ties to members of the Hong Kong business community) were regulars at getting visas to visit their families or go on holidays as the case may be, and yet clearly on the file was intelligence information identifying who they were.”

McAdam was puzzled as to how known criminals were able to get into Canada, but a little bit of digging turned up connections between the Triad members and officials working inside the Canadian embassy. In fact, according to McAdam, High Commission staff was on the receiving end of expensive gifts, cocktail parties, yacht trips and visits to the casinos in Macau. [well known for gambling--sorry, that's "gaming", isn't it?]

[. . . . ] The man told W-FIVE that the corruption at the High Commission was a “fairly open secret” among Hong Kong’s middle class. He said Triad members, including “famous businessmen, solicitors, legislators (and) accountants” used to invite embassy staff to the races and lavish parties.

[. . . . ] The source told W-FIVE he was never aware of the exact price for a Canadian visa, but he estimated the entry cost for a Triad member’s family would be in the neighbourhood of $500,000 HK. And he said the corruption was far and wide within the embassy. “Without help from insiders it won’t work. … It takes more than one person in the High Commission to get the job done, not just one single person – there must be big, big scandal behind it all.”

[. . . . several names mentioned here, including RCMP Cpl. Robert Read -- check Google for him; you'll learn much more. ]

And Read wasn’t the only member of the RCMP to be shut down by the force. In 1993, Staff Sergeant Jim Puchniak requested permission to go to Hong Kong to conduct a full investigation, but he was told by the RCMP liason officer at the mission, Inspector Gary Lagamodiere, that doing so would upset the High Commissioner.

[. . . . ] But [RCMP Cpl.] Read appealed his dismissal, and in 2003, the RCMP’s External Review Committee issued a scathing indictment over the handling of the Hong Kong affair. In its decision the committee wrote the “the RCMP was walking on eggshells whenever it conducted an investigation into activities at a Canadian mission abroad and basically restricted to what the Department of Foreign Affairs was willing to allow it to investigate.

[. . . . ] While the report clearly vindicated Read, the RCMP has refused to reinstate him – a decision he is fighting in Federal Court. But because he never got the investigation he wanted into the Canadian High Commission in Hong Kong, questions about the depth of the corruption and political interference there will probably never be answered. Both John Higgenbotham, the Canadian High Commissioner in Hong Kong from 1989 to 1994, and RCMP Superintendent Giuliano Zaccardelli – people who may be able to lend some perspective to the unanswered questions -- refused to be interviewed by W-FIVE. . . .