* abortion / partial birth abortion, when human life begins? What is wrong with advising that a woman receive both sides of the debate information through counselling when she seeks an abortion?

* gay marriage / adopton / impact on family, if any? Impact on children?

* immigration/refugee policies that seems to be simply out of control -- and why should people who have never contributed to the health care dollars in Canada be able to come in, even as undocumented and potentially criminal aliens, access health care, welfare, taxpayer paid lawyers, and whatever else our Charter of Rights Without Responsibilities has provided?

* high crime rates asssociated with certain immigrant and native groups, (in addition to our home-grown thugs) -- which we're not allowed to talk about but everyone affected knows and talks about it (National Post, A-4, June 3, 04, "Youth gang 'epidemic' predicted" which mentions, Asians, natives, blacks/white mixed gangs, biker gangs--See article below this.) There are several articles on immigrant crime groups allowed into Canada by our government.

* government promising contributions to day care -- after it has taken so much money from families that mothers must leave their children to go out to work--government meddling in the economy and the family to the detriment of the best interests of children

* security in the face of terrorist threats which our government denies is of concern / funding for security forces and the military to protect Canadians -- not people elsewhere -- Canadians

* fill in the rest -- your favourite not-to-be-discussed items

Almost half of Canada's 6,760 youth gang members work for or with established organized crime groups in drug trafficking, extortion, prostitution, car theft and other criminal enterprises, according to the country's first-ever report on youth gang activity.

[. . . . ] More than one-third of British Columbian youth gang members were Asian. Black youths made up more than a third of gang members in Ontario and half in Quebec. In Nova Scotia, gang membership was split roughly between black and white youths.

In a nod to Canada's racial diversity, it found more than one-third of the country's youth gangs are of mixed ethnicity. Provincially, 51% of Ontario's gangs are of mixed race, followed by 46% in British Columbia.

"It's less stereotypical," a knowledgeable gang source said. "You could have a white kid as a member of the Crips."

Police have also found increased recruitment of female members in the predominately male world of street gangs. This is especially true in B.C., where females make up 12% of the province's gang population, as well as Manitoba (10%) and Saskatchewan (9%)

Canada's diamond industry is vulnerable to infiltration by Eastern European mobsters who could corrupt skilled foreign workers to steal or smuggle the valuable gems, according to a classified RCMP report and organized crime experts.

The September, 2003, intelligence report, obtained by the National Post, estimates business and government can expect to lose more than $200-million worth of profits and royalties from diamonds each year to organized crime.

[. . . . ] In Russia, diamond mines record losses as high as 30%, largely due to a culture of corruption that has grown out of the depressed economy, said Sergeant Perry Nickerson, an RCMP expert in Eastern European organized crime.

[. . . . ] "As Canada's diamond industry expands, so do the opportunities for infiltration by organized crime," it reads. "There is no doubt that known major organized crime groups and/or criminals are active in the NWT [Northwest Territories]."

Smuggled diamonds sold on the black market have been used to fund brutal wars in Africa -- particularly in Sierra Leone -- and to finance migrant smuggling rings, the drug and weapons trade and terrorist groups.

Like many Canadians, I recently learned of your [Jean Chretien's] coming visit to Iran as a representative of a Calgary-based oil company. It is reported that the purpose of your trip is to conclude a deal with the Iranian government on behalf of this firm.

I write to congratulate you.

Your failure to ensure justice was served in the case of my mother, Zahra Kazemi -- who was murdered by the Iranian regime while you were prime minister -- has apparently paid off: You are now most welcome in Tehran.

Last June, my mother was arrested without cause by agents of the Iranian government, who then beat and tortured her to death. No doubt, you remember the case and so are well-informed of the systematic violations of human rights that take place in Iran, as well as the circumstances that surround the killing of my mother.

And yet, knowing this, you are off to shake hands with representatives of the Islamic Republic of Iran, the executioners who less than a year ago had my mother murdered.

[. . . .] Stephan Hachemi, Montreal.

[. . . . ] Recently, we have been treated to yet another of the Times's bouts of editorial soul-searching, this time over its Iraq coverage. But while The Times can fret about nuances in Middle East news, it obviously does not blush at printing environmental alarmism as irrefutable fact. According to Verlyn Klinkenborg, an editorial writer at the Times who reviewed the forthcoming deluge, "We are well past the threshold of inevitable change and on the cusp of climate destabilization."

Put it this way. Which of the Times's reports is more plausible: that Saddam had weapons of mass destruction, or that we are on the brink of massive climate destabilization?

Nor does Mr. Klinkenborg express the slightest trace of skepticism toward the books he reviews, even though they are penned by a group of UN time-servers, cranks and professional alarmists.

Can it be that The Limits to Growth, one of the wrongest books of all time, is to be updated yet again? The 1972 tome claimed -- among myriad ominous predictions -- that we would run out of gold in 1981, mercury in 1985 and zinc in 1990. In 1992, it was revised to suggest that, OK, we were a little out, but now we know when the needles will go to empty. [. . . . ]

Prime Minister Paul Martin is promising to resign if he doesn't keep his promises. Just don't hand him that promise in writing and ask him to sign, because that's illegal in Canada.

Most Canadians would be surprised by section 550 of the Canada Elections Act, which says that during a campaign, "No candidate shall sign a written document presented by way of demand or claim made on him or her ... if the document requires the candidate to follow a course of action that will prevent him or her from exercising freedom of action in Parliament, if elected, or to resign as a member if called on to do so by any person or association of persons."

(New Brunswick, Nova Scotia and Prince Edward Island impose similar restrictions on provincial candidates.)

While this law does not prohibit parties and candidates from issuing their own written commitments, it does restrict them from signing pledges put forward by citizen groups. For example, a candidate who signs a promise to work to eliminate for-profit health clinics would be breaking the law if the promise is construed as restricting the MP's freedom after June 28. [. . . . ]

MONTREAL - For many Canadians, the words "corporate welfare" and "Bombardier" go hand in hand. The company is one of Canada's top recipients of direct and indirect government aid, not just from Ottawa but also from Quebec, Ontario and the U.K.

Yesterday, Conservative Party leader Stephen Harper suggested those kinds of dollars could be a lot scarcer if his party forms the next government, in exchange for broader corporate tax cuts.

While some companies may welcome that trade-off, it wouldn't work so easily for Bombardier.

The company assembled its jet-building business by buying financially strapped manufacturers, including Ottawa's Canadair, after governments spent billions cleaning the books.

It has received $400-million for research and development from Ottawa to develop planes.

Ottawa's export finance arm has financed billions of dollars of sales to airlines with loans and guarantees; it's now one of the few financing options still open to them for their jets.

Then there's the CF-18 maintenance contract the government of Brian Mulroney awarded Bombardier despite a superior bid from a Winnipeg firm.

The perceived slight was one of the grievances that led to the creation of Mr. Harper's old Reform Party.

Setting the CF-18 deal aside, the fact is that government aid is an integral part of Bombardier's success.

In fact, chief executive Paul Tellier has been spreading the message for months that even more public dollars are needed if Canada wants a viable aerospace industry [ . . . . ]

Of course, if Canada doesn't come through, Mr. Tellier can apply a little political pressure of his own and threaten to make the jets in a place that is more willing to pony up, such as Britain.

LAKE AUDY, Man. - After a long, bitter battle, federal agencies are set to embark on their latest jihad against rural communities and the property rights of farmers and ranchers. Cloaked in the dubious veil of environmental protection, the soon-to-be-implemented Species at Risk Act (SARA) further centralizes control of our countryside in Ottawa.

SARA comes on the heels of a deeply unpopular program of habitat enforcement by Fisheries and Oceans Canada (FOC), which three years ago expanded its regulatory regime on the Prairies and right across the country. SARA and the federal Fisheries Act are two of Canada's most draconian pieces of environmental legislation. Together, they have the potential to stop rural development in its tracks.

Section 35 of the Fisheries Act reads: "No person shall carry on any work that results in the harmful alteration, disruption, or destruction of fish habitat." The Act defines fish habitat as "spawning grounds and nursery, rearing, food supply and migration areas on which fish depend directly or indirectly in order to carry out their life processes." A literal reading of this makes all our landscapes fish habitat, since rain falls everywhere and ends up in streams. Even man-made drainage systems are included. Consequently, the Act empowers FOC to regulate any and all human activities.

This may not mean much in Eastern cities, but enforcement is creating a regulatory nightmare across the fertile working belt of the southern Prairies. On March 11, for instance, the Regina Leader-Post reported that the "Fish Police" had charged three workers in Saskatchewan's highways department with endangering habitat. If providing infrastructure like safe highways becomes a crime, Canada's breadbasket will grind to a halt.

A key provision in SARA reads: "No person shall damage or destroy the residence of ... an endangered species." The word "residence" implies that these creatures live in little houses. But mobile species like birds and butterflies range across wide swaths of territory in many different regions. The whooping crane migrates between Texas and northern Alberta. What makes up this bird's "residence"? Who knows? In practice, all the people beneath its flight path are subject to the whims of bureaucrats who care little about their ability to make a living.

[. . . . ] These types of laws may have some applicability on Crown land, but on privately owned land they are counter-productive. SARA makes it a liability to have an endangered species on your property and hinders participation by landowners in conservation programs.

[. . . . ] As more and more Americans become obsessed with their weight, the news media are responding with an abundance of stories about food and fat.

But there’s more to the fat story than just giving the public more news they can use. While most people — fat, thin or somewhere in the middle — probably regard their weight as their own business, some anti-corporate activists have seized upon America’s worries about weight to launch a campaign against the companies that produce the food that feeds us all. They argue that the fattening of America is less the result of poor personal choices than poor behavior by U.S. businesses, and that the “obesity epidemic” can best be cured through a diet of new taxes, more regulations, and a flood of lawyer-enriching lawsuits.

So how successful were these radical activists at getting their agenda taken seriously by the major media?

[. . . . ] Here are a few recommendations for better, less biased coverage in the future:

First, news organizations must do a better job of investigating and reporting the agenda and track record of advocacy groups such as CSPI, and not falsely present them as sources of objective and unbiased information. [. . . . ]

Second, fairness requires that when outside groups criticize big business, journalists strive to include in their story an appropriate response from either the targeted corporation or an industry association. We found a number of stories in which the critics enjoyed a three-to-one, four-to-one or even greater advantage over business spokespersons. [. . . . ]

Finally, while it is easy for reporters to build stories around activists’ demands for more government intervention, it is important to balance those demands with a recognition of the principles and benefits of America’s free market system. Without government lifting a finger, consumers will inevitably reward companies that provide the most desirable products for the best price, and any businesses that fail to meet the public’s expectations will be punished in the marketplace. That’s as true for the food business as any other, but that truism was lacking in most of the media coverage we examined over the past year.

SAN FRANCISCO (Talon News) -- Federal Judge Phyllis Hamilton ruled on Tuesday that the Partial-Birth Abortion Ban Act is unconstitutional and infringes on a woman's right to choose.

The challenge was brought by the Planned Parenthood Federation of America. The ruling applies to all of the approximately 900 Planned Parenthood clinics and their doctors, who perform virtually half of the 1.3 million abortions performed each year in the United States.

[. . . . ] Justice Department attorneys argued the procedure is inhumane, causes pain to the fetus, and is never medically necessary, "blurring the line of abortion and infanticide."

In fact, the Justice Department had been denied access to the medical records of patients of Planned Parenthood Clinics, by the judge who ruled that the abortion records were irrelevant and would violate the privacy of patients even if their names were removed. The Justice Department was seeking the records in order to force the abortion doctors to make their point that the procedure can be medically necessary to prevent injury to women.

The procedure, commonly referred to as partial-birth abortion and by medical organizations as "intact dilation and extraction," is defined as a procedure in which a fetus is partially delivered alive and a physician performs "an overt act that the person knows will kill the partially delivered living fetus."

[. . . . ] The Middle East is home to a gridlocked array of highly repressive governments, with their attendant secret police and highly controlled economies. To survive, people must as a rule make terrible compromises--just as they did in the U.S.S.R.--built around the institutions of dictatorship, and reinforcing those same repressive (and terror-promoting) institutions.

Baathism in Syria, for instance, doesn't just mean you must say only nice things about dictator Bashar Assad; it can also mean you are strong-armed into informing on members of your own family. Authoritarianism in Egypt doesn't just mean that Hosni Mubarak gets to be president for more than two decades; it also means that if you push for real elections you can end up in prison. Clerical rule as practiced in Iran doesn't just give the ayatollahs a hand in politics, it arms them with a global terrorist network and the power to smother an entire generation of young Iranians who would like them gone.

The issue, which should have figured even larger than it did in the debate over war in Iraq, was always how to change this dynamic. The experience of the modern world--in Asia, Latin America and the former Soviet Union--suggests that liberalization can indeed become contagious--though it might take more than 15 minutes, or even more than a year. [. . . . ]

Rio de Janeiro — At the end of the second major Brazilian prison riot in less than two months, police entered a Rio de Janeiro jail Tuesday and found 38 dead inmates, some of them beheaded, and body parts stuffed in the trash.

The killings at the Benfica detention centre during a three-day rebellion came just five weeks after 14 inmates were killed and mutilated in another prison riot — prompting outrage among human rights groups and renewed calls for an overhaul of a prison system long criticized for inhuman conditions.

[. . . . ] The uprising began Saturday when detainees broke through the prison's main gate. As police intervened, inmates attacked and grabbed officers' guns. They took 26 guards and staffers hostage.

The riot ended Monday night when police agreed to inmates' demand to separate prisoners belonging to different gangs.

One prison guard taken hostage was shot and killed as he tried to escape— though there were conflicting reports whether he was shot by inmates or by police who mistook him for a fleeing prisoner.
Investigators suspect rival gangs, who routinely run drug trafficking operations from inside Brazil's prisons, used the chaos of the uprising to settle scores.