Privacy, Tyranny

Canada telecoms disclose private customer information without warrant; Feds ask over 1.2 million times a year

“I’m not disputing that there are times when there is no time to get a warrant — life is in danger” -Chantal Bernier

Feds ask Canadian telecoms to disclose private customer information 1.2 million times a year, docs show

Steve Rennie
Canadian Press: April 30, 2014

OTTAWA — The federal government asks Canadian telecom companies for private customer information about 1.2 million times each year, documents released Tuesday by the federal privacy commissioner’s office show.

It is unclear how many of those requests are made without a warrant. But figures provided to the office in late 2011 show wireless telecom companies complied with the government’s requests for customer data at least 784,756 times.

However, the actual total is likely even greater, since only three of nine telecom companies told the commissioner’s office how many times they granted the government’s requests for customer data.

The numbers came to light Tuesday as Canada’s acting privacy commissioner revealed that telecom companies have refused to disclose how often they release confidential customer information to the federal government without a warrant.

Chantal Bernier, the interim privacy commissioner, said her office has repeatedly asked telecom companies to disclose statistics and the scope of warrantless disclosure of data, but to no avail.

“I’m not disputing that there are times when there is no time to get a warrant — life is in danger,” Bernier said.

“What we would like is for those warrantless disclosures to simply be represented in statistics so that Canadians have an idea of the scope of the phenomenon.”

Bernier said the companies have only provided her office with aggregate data, which shows how many times the telecom industry as a whole gives the government customer information without a warrant.

(read the full article at Financial Post)

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Drugs

New Rob Ford Drug Video Confirmed; Rob Ford Takes Leave

The Globe and Mail: Apr. 30 2014

A second video of Toronto Mayor Rob Ford smoking what has been described as crack cocaine by a self-professed drug dealer was secretly filmed in his sister’s basement early Saturday morning.

The clip, which was viewed by two Globe and Mail reporters, shows Mr. Ford taking a drag from a long copper-coloured pipe, exhaling a cloud of smoke and then frantically shaking his right hand. The footage is part of a package of three videos that the drug dealer says he surreptitiously shot around 1:15 a.m., and which he says he is now selling for “at least six figures.”

The footage comes to light weeks after Mr. Ford embarked on a re-election campaign styled on the importance of second chances and forgiving mistakes. Nearly a year ago, the mayor thrust himself into worldwide infamy when another drug dealer, Mohamed Siad, tried to sell another video of the mayor allegedly smoking crack to media outlets in Canada and the United States. At the time, the mayor denied using the drug, only to later admit that he had smoked crack cocaine in a “drunken stupor” and that he was not an addict.

Since then Mr. Ford has been filmed numerous times in public appearing erratic and acting impaired. In each instance, the mayor has admitted to drinking, but never to using drugs. A few weeks ago when asked directly if he was continuing to use drugs, Mr. Ford said: “You guys ask stupid questions.”

Approached at City Hall Wednesday evening, Mr. Ford declined to respond to questions about the video. Shortly after The Globe confronted Mr. Ford, his lawyer said the mayor was going to take a break from campaigning.

In one of the clips shown to The Globe and Mail Wednesday, the mayor rapidly shifts his weight back and forth on the spot, talking into his cellphone and his right arm swinging at his side. When the camera pans around the room, a man that looks like Alessandro “Sandro” Lisi, the mayor’s former driver who has been charged with drug dealing and extortion, can be seen in the background. Mr. Ford’s sister, Kathy, who has admitted in media interviews to being a drug addict, is sitting in front of her brother. In the last of three clips, Mr. Ford is holding the pipe and speaking to his sister.

(Read the full story and see more pictures at The Globe & Mail)

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Tyranny

Egypt judge sentences 683 to death in another mass trial

By Associated Press: April 28, 2014

MINYA, Egypt — A judge in Egypt on Monday sentenced to death 683 alleged supporters of the country’s ousted Islamist president, including the Muslim Brotherhood’s spiritual leader, the latest in mass trials that have drawn international condemnation and stunned rights groups.

The same judge also upheld the death penalty for 37 of 529 defendants sentenced in a similar case in March, though he commuted the rest of the sentences to life imprisonment.

Still, the 37 death sentences — which can be appealed in a higher court — remain an extraordinarily high number for Egypt, compared to the dramatic trial in the wake of the 1981 assassination of President Anwar Sadat, when only five people were sentenced to death and executed.

Among those convicted and sentenced to death on Monday was Mohamed Badie, the Brotherhood’s spiritual guide. If his sentence is confirmed, it would make him the most senior Brotherhood figure sentenced to death since one of the group’s leading ideologues, Sayed Qutb, was sentenced and executed in 1966.

In announcing the 683 death sentences for violence and the killing of policemen, Judge Said Youssef on Monday also said he was referring his ruling to the Grand Mufti, the nation’s top Islamic official — a requirement under Egyptian law, but one that is considered a formality. It does, however, give a window of opportunity for a judge to reverse an initial sentence.

Both Monday’s and the March trial are linked to deadly riots that erupted in Minya and elsewhere in Egypt after security forces violently disbanded sit-ins held by Brotherhood supporters in Cairo last August. Three policemen and a civilian were killed in those riots.

Hundreds were killed as part of a sweeping campaign against supporters of former president Mohammed Morsi, ousted by the military last July. The removal of Morsi — a year after he was elected — came after millions demonstrated against his rule, demanding he step down for abuse of power.

After Monday’s ruling, which followed a single session in the case held last month, Sarah Leah Whitson, the executive director of Human Rights Watch’s Middle East and North Africa Division, said the defendants were not given the chance to properly defend themselves. The proceedings went on without the judge even verifying that the defendants were present, she said.

“The fact that the death sentences can be appealed provides little solace to hundreds of families that will go to sleep tonight facing the very real prospect that their loves ones could be executed without having an opportunity to present a case in court,” she said. “There is no more serious violation of the most basic right of due process and the right to a fair trial than that.”

(read the full article at Vancouver Sun)

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Health/Environment

Giant Chinese 3D printer builds 10 houses in just 1 day (VIDEO)

RT:April 27, 2014

A private company located in eastern China has printed ten full-size houses using a huge 3D printer in the space of a day. The process utilizes quick-drying cement, but the creators are being careful not to reveal the secrets of the technology.

China’s WinSun company, used a system of four 10 meter wide by
6.6 meter high printers with multi-directional sprays to create
the houses. Cement and construction waste was used to build the
walls layer-by-layer, state news agency Xinhua reported.

“To obtain natural stone, we have to employ miners, dig up
blocks of stone and saw them into pieces. This badly damages the
environment,” stated Ma Yihe, the inventor of the printers.
Yihe has been designing 3D printers for 12 years and believes his
process to be both environmentally friendly and cost-effective.

“But with the 3D printing, we recycle mine tailings into
usable materials. And we can print buildings with any digital
design our customers bring us. It’s fast and cheap,” Yihe
said.

(read the full article at RT)

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Banksters, Corporate Welfare

The Canadian Housing Bubble Puts Even The US To Shame

Zero Hedge: April 27, 2014

Since the bursting of the first US housing bubble in 2007, one of the primary explicit goals of the Fed has been to reflate the very same housing bubble (whose pop, together with the credit bubble, nearly wiped out the western financial system) as housing, far more than stocks, is instrumental to the “wealth effect” of the broader population (as opposed to just the 1%).

Sadly for the Fed, instead of recovering previous highs, median housing prices (not to be confused with the ultraluxury high end where prices have never been higher) have stagnated and are now in the downward phase of the fourth consecutive dead cat bounce, curiously matching a like amount of Fed monetary injection episodes.

But while the Fed has clearly had a problem with reflating the broader housing bubble, one which would impact the middle class instead of just those who are already wealthier than ever before thanks to the Russel 200,000, one place which not only never suffered a housing bubble pop in the 2006-2008 years, but never looked back as it continued its diagonal ‘bottom left to top right’ trajectory is Canada. As the chart below shows, the Canadian housing bubble has put all attempts at listening to Krugman and reflating yet another bubble to shame.

Here is the Globe and Mail’s take:

The gap between the average price of a home in Canada and the United States widened to a record level in the first quarter of this year, contrary to what economists would have expected, according to Bank of Montreal’s chief economist Doug Porter.

 

Average Canadian home prices were 66 per cent above average U.S. prices during the first three months of this year, he says. (Note: these are prices for existing houses and condos, not those that are newly constructed).

 

“The main takeaway is that, contrary to all expectations, the Canadian housing market has just kept on rolling in 2014 even as the U.S. housing market has  paused for breath (after a steep climb out of the dungeon),” he writes in a research note. “Put it this way, how many pundits a year ago were calling for Canadian home prices to rise faster than their U.S. counterparts in any single measure?”

 

It’s worth noting that there are many problems with comparing average Canadian home prices to average U.S. home prices, not the least of which is that average prices themselves can be highly misleading. Mr. Porter is aware that it’s not an apples-to-apples comparison.

 

“Some may quibble that this doesn’t take the exchange rate into account, but even adjusting for the Canadian dollar leaves a 50 per cent price gap,” he writes.

(read the full article at Zero Hedge)

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Tyranny

Two Paris cops charged with raping Canadian tourist

AFP: April 27, 2014

Two elite French police officers were charged Sunday with raping a Canadian tourist in their Paris headquarters in a case that has sent shock waves across France.

Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve said in a statement sent to AFP that the two officers would “face the full consequences” if they were found guilty.

Four policemen were taken into custody after the 34-year-old woman filed a complaint saying she had been raped in the police headquarters overnight Tuesday.

Two of the members of the elite BRI unit that fights gang crime were charged overnight, a source close to the investigation said, after the other two were released on Saturday.

The interior ministry said Sunday that three of the men had been suspended, including one who was released but who was not charged.

(read the full article at Yahoo)

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Geopolitics/War

Afghan government finds ‘illegal foreign detention facilities’ run by American and British forces

Afghan Panel Claims to Find Secret Prisons

By Azam Ahmed and Taimoor Shah
New York Times : April 26, 2014

KABUL, Afghanistan — A commission appointed by President Hamid Karzai to investigate detention facilities run by American and British forces in southern Afghanistan claimed Saturday to have uncovered secret prisons on two coalition bases, an allegation that could not be immediately confirmed but that was likely to further complicate relations between the Afghan government and its allies.

“We have conducted a thorough investigation and search of Kandahar Airfield and Camp Bastion and found several illegal and unlawful detention facilities run and operated by foreign military forces,” said Abdul Shakur Dadras, the panel’s chairman.

Mr. Dadras offered no evidence to support his assertion, though he promised to release more details after presenting his report to Mr. Karzai.

Lt. Col. J. Todd Breasseale, a spokesman for the Defense Department, wrote in an email, “Every facility that we use for detention is well known not only by the government of the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan, but also by the I.C.R.C.,” a reference to the International Committee of the Red Cross, a nonpartisan organization that provides humanitarian care for victims of conflict.

The International Security Assistance Force, or I.S.A.F., as the coalition is known, said in a statement on Saturday that it was “aware of their investigative team looking into the detention facilities in Kandahar and Helmand and we are cooperating fully with the investigation on this matter.”

The accusations are the latest salvo in a dispute over the detention of Afghans by foreign forces. The issue reached a climax early this year, when the Afghan government released from the former American prison at Bagram dozens of prisoners the coalition claimed had killed American soldiers.

Before that, the transfer of the prison itself called attention to the deteriorating relationship between the Afghans and their American allies in a public way.

The Americans have accused the Afghan government of using the issue to score political points. The Afghans say the foreigners have unfairly imprisoned people without credible evidence and insist that they run all detention facilities in the country.

Mr. Dadras said that his team was sent to the southern provinces of Kandahar and Helmand to review the prisons on two coalition bases, Kandahar Airfield, run by the Americans, and Camp Bastion, run by the British.

He said his team reviewed the number of prisoners as well as the details of their detention. The issue at Camp Bastion has been aired before. The British military must abide by rules that prohibit the transfer of prisoners to facilities where torture is believed to occur. For now, that concern is unresolved, and the sites where these detainees are held by the British forces could be the locations Mr. Dadras is referring to.

In Kandahar, the details are less clear. American forces are allowed to detain combatants seized on the battlefield for up to 96 hours before turning them over to the Afghan government. It was unclear whether Mr. Dadras was referring to such detainees or whether his commission had uncovered evidence of prisons that were illegally holding Afghans.

Early on Saturday, a coalition helicopter crashed after it malfunctioned in Kandahar Province, killing five service members. The coalition did not release the nationalities of the soldiers. Britain’s Defense Ministry said that the helicopter was British and confirmed that all of the dead were as well, according to The Associated Press.

(read the full article at New York Times)

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Banksters, Corporate Welfare, Tyranny

World Leaders Pave the Way for a Corporate Coup d’Etat: How to Stop the Trans-Pacific Partnership

Abby Martin and Anya Parampil
Media Roots: April 25, 2014

Negotiations for the world’s biggest trade deal have been conducted in total secrecy over the last four years. What’s worse, the deliberations are being held between multinational corporations and world leaders that are paving the way for a global corporate coup.

The Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP) consists of twelve Pacific Rim countries: Australia, Brunei, Chile, Canada, Japan, Malaysia, Mexico, New Zealand, Peru, Singapore, Vietnam and the US.

Over 600 corporate advisors are consulting on the TPP to establish an international court tribunal made up of corporate representatives, which could supercede the sovereignty of countries involved and override existing laws. But despite the drastic implications this deal could have concerning everything from food safety to pharmaceutical costs, a stunning new report by Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting (FAIR) reveals that neither ABC, CBS, nor NBC have even so much as mentioned the TPP since Obama’s State of the Union address in February of 2013.

Given the magnitude of this so called “free trade” agreement and the corporate media’s blacking out of the issue, it’s important to look back at some of Breaking the Set’s coverage of the TPP.

First, Kevin Zeese, co-founder of It’s Our Economy, explains why the mainstream media has ignored the story and calls the TPP a ‘privatization’ of state owned enterprises.

Kevin Zees on the TPP Corporate Coup d’Etat

***

Breaking the Set explains how the media distracted citizens in order to allow Congress to sneakily introduce a measure to put the TPP on a legislative fast track, an undemocratic move that undermines public debate.

How Bridgegate Distracted America from TPP Fast Track

***

Margaret Flowers, Organizer for Popular Resistance, discusses why fast tracking the TPP is so dangerous to the democratic process, and why everyone should care about this trade deal.

How You Can Stop the TPP: Say No to Fast Track!

 ***

Then, Abby interviews legislative representative of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters, Mike Dolan. Dolan breaks down the content of the TPP chapter released by Wikileaks and explains how the legislation will affect global citizens.

Mike Dolan on Dangers of TPP Fast Track

***

(read the full article at Media Roots)

Learn more at:

www.stoptpp.org

www.exposethetpp.org

https://www.citizen.org/TPP

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Health/Environment, Original

Is Canada’s Temporary Foreign Workers Program increasing measles outbreaks?

AlternativeFreePress.com

There are more than 340,000 temporary foreign workers currently in Canada, many are doing jobs which unemployed Canadians are certainly qualified to do, such as cleaning hotel rooms, flipping burgers or working a cash register. It’s clear that Canada’s Temporary Foreign Workers Program is keeping wages low and Canadians unemployed. However, slightly less clear is the answer to the following question… Is abuse of the Temporary Foreign Workers Program increasing Canadians odds of catching the measles?

The number of temporary foreign workers has drastically increased over the past decade and many of them are from the Philippines where there is about 20,000 cases of measles already this year. Many media reports have linked recent Measles outbreaks in Canada & the USA specifically to the Philippines. One such example from The Star in February of this year reads, “a widespread outbreak in the Philippines that reportedly killed more than two dozen children last year seems to be slowly spreading to Canada.”

The Star article goes on to say “It is the sixth imported case of measles in Canada so far this year, all linked to visits to the Philippines.”

The Public Health Agency Of Canada says that indigenous measles was eliminated from Canada and the last endemic case of measles was reported in 1997. They confirm that “measles cases in Canada in recent years have been due to importation from endemic regions, some resulting in outbreaks”.

While the link is certainly not conclusive, since 2006 Harper and his so-called Conservatives have ensured the number of temporary foreign workers coming to Canada has skyrocketed, and the number of incidents of measles has also increased. In 2005 Canada had only 0.02 incidence of measles per 100,000 people and in 2006 it was only 0.04 per 100,000. 5 years later the numbers are much higher with 0.29 per 100,000 in 2010 and 2.17 per 100,000 in 2011 when Quebec experienced a large outbreak. To be fair, 2009 did see only 0.04 cases per 100,000 but The Public Health Agency of Canada has issued a warning that there have been a higher-than-usual number of measles cases in Canada since the start of 2014.

People like to blame the outbreaks on people who choose not to vaccinate. This is misguided blame, unless the unvaccinated person traveled to the Philippines or another endemic region. Anyone traveling to the Philippines should strongly consider vaccination before travel because of the high rate of infection. That said, vaccination does not guarantee immunity, keep in mind that health officials admit the MMR vaccine is not effective in at least 10-20% of the population, so even vaccinated people traveling to the Philippines have a significantly increased risk of catching the measles. In fact, based on current infection rates, a fully vaccinated person in the Philippines has a higher chance of infection than a person lacking vaccination in Canada.

How much has Canada’s Temporary Foreign Workers Program increased the number of measles outbreaks? A specific answer is unknown, but with the high percentage of Canadian & US measles cases linked to the Philippines, perhaps it’s a question we should be asking.

Written by Alternative Free Press
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Drugs

1 Step Forward 2 Steps Back: Medical Marijuana ILLEGAL in Washington State

MMJ Now Illegal In Washington State. Yes, Washington State.

By Canna Law Blog : April 25, 2014

The Washington State Court of Appeals just held that medical marijuana activity (even patient cultivation in the home) is illegal under current State law.

The long road to this disappointing decision began a couple of years ago when an access point (essentially a medical outlet for medical marijuana patients) and an advocacy group sued the city of Kent in an effort to block the city from implementing a zoning ordinance that would essentially prohibit collective gardens, both commercial and home grows. The case made its way through King County Superior Court (which upheld Kent’s ban) and eventually reached the Washington State Supreme Court. The Supreme Court issued an emergency stay of the Kent ban but ultimately decided to send it back down to the Court of Appeals for a full decision on the merits.

[…]

The Court of Appeals not only upheld the City of Kent’s ban, it also ruled that operating a medical marijuana collective garden or access point constitutes criminal activity. We fully expect city attorneys in those cities opposed to cannabis will use this Court of Appeals decision to shut down or prevent collective gardens and access points.

We feel for our friends involved with medical cannabis in Washington State. We do not read this Court of Appeals decision as having any impact on recreational marijuana in Washington.

(Read the full article at Canna Law Blog)

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