Friday, July 31, 2009, Vol. 4, No, 36 — 187
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Mike Thompson is the editorial cartoonist for the Detroit Free Press. His work has won numerous honors, including The 2002 Overseas Press Club Award for cartooning, the national 2000 Society of Professional Journalists Sigma Delta Chi Award, the 2000 National Press Foundation Award, the H.L. Mencken award and the national Women in Communications Clarion Award. Thompson, who also draws for USA Today on a rotating basis, has had his work reprinted in such publications as Time, Newsweek, Forbes, The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal. In addition, his cartoons have been featured on CNN, C-SPAN, the NBC "Today" show and the Fox News Network. Thompson began his career as contributing cartoonist for The Milwaukee Journal and later worked as staff cartoonist for the St. Louis Sun and the Copley Illinois newspapers before joining the Free Press in November 1998.
Friday, July 31, 2009
True North Perspective
Vol. 4, No. 36 (187)
'Not one of us can be confident,' says the Montreal Gazette, 'that the heedless, remorseless, relentless bureaucratic juggernaut won't come after us next.'
True North Perspective is on a working holiday. A necessary working holiday to make time for updating our organization and to raise funds that are vital to our success of providing our growing number of readers in Canada and throughout the world with our unique service. Our plan was to limit publication to past issues only but there are some stories that break through despite our resolve.
The tragedy of the CSIS is one of them.
Former CSIS director Jim Judd and other apologists like Wesley Wark, an anti-terrorism and security expert at the University of Toronto, and David Harris, a lawyer and former chief of strategic planning for the CSIS, argue that since 2001 life has become more complicated for our spies.
What everyone is missing (except their victims) is that the CSIS is entirely incapable of fulfilling its mandate. The government of Pierre Elliot Trudeau founded the CSIS when it became as clear as garbage at the dump that the Royal Canadian Mounted Police Security Service (RCMP SS) was out of control.
The Achilles heel of the new CSIS was that many of the old guard of the RCMP SS opted to move over to the CSIS and hired staff that fit the former's sense of narrow prejudice, lack of imagination, and psychopathic personalities.
I know these words sound harsh but they are light in the minds of innocent Canadian victims of the CSIS who have been subjected to the systematic psychological torture studied and practiced with impunity by the CSIS.
Those who delight in this kind of activity don't have the intelligence and imagination to protect Canada from terrorists. They are, in fact, terrorists themselves, in federal government pay.
There is nothing to rescue in the CSIS. There are no new laws that will improve it. The CSIS is a rogue bureaucracy with a deep-rooted contempt for their political masters taught by their RCMP SS mentors. Keep your head down, hold on tight, eventually all the publicity exposing our ruthless incompetence will blow over and we'll go back to business as usual.
That's their motto. Like crooked businessmen they keep one set of books for the like of the Security and Intelligence Review Committee and another in which they record their dirty work that is fully contrary to their mandate and to the letter and spirit of our experiment in democracy.
On the ground they kept secret their corruption from succeeding Directors General like Jim Judd.
Like it's predecessor, the RCMP SS, the CSIS needs to be shut down. But don't add the 2,500 or so to the unemployment rolls. Assign them to tree planting in the summer and forest harvesting in the winter. Always under strict supervision because this collection of the worst that Canada has to offer would corrupt our country's silviculture and take down our forestry industry with them.
The CSIS is out of control. It needs to be disbanded. A brand new security service must be established from the ground up. Free of the old. With members drawn from the best, not the worst that our country has to offer.
Meanwhile, see you next week with our fourth summer 2009 edition of True North Perspective.
Take it easy but take it.
Looking forward
Carl Dow
Editor and Publisher
True North Perspective
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Carl Dow, True North Perspective, Station E, P.O. Box 4814, Ottawa ON Canada K1S 5H9.
July 29, 2009
Editorial
MontrealGazette.com
What exactly does the Canadian government have against Abousfian Abdelrazik? The government must answer that question clearly, or stop treating him like an alien leper instead of the Canadian citizen he is.
He was arrested on a visit to his native Sudan in 2003 and imprisoned for six years under horrendous conditions on charges that he is a terrorist operative connected to Osama bin Laden's infamous Al-Qa'ida network. He vigorously denies all accusations and no persuasive evidence has been cited to support them. And yet, he says, he was tortured and starved during his imprisonment and the brutality of his jailers was compounded by callousness and indifference to his fate from Canadian authorities.
By his account, agents of Canada's intelligence service, CSIS, laughed off his pleas for repatriation and joked about his plight. Recently revealed documents show that Canadian authorities were informed by the Sudanese that Abdelrazik was liable to be "disappeared" but showed no concern about that grim prospect.
Even after CSIS and the RCMP acknowledged two years ago that they had failed to unearth any hard evidence in support of the terrorist claim against him, the Canadian government, far from coming to his aid, tried to keep him from coming home, on a variety of pretexts. At first the line was that he couldn't pay his airfare back home, but when supporters ponied up for his ticket he was denied travel documents on grounds that he was still on the infamously arbitrary United Nations no-fly list. His way home was finally cleared by a Federal Court ruling that his citizenship rights were being grossly violated.
With fanatical stubbornness, Ottawa continues to stand in the way of Abdelrazik's return to normal life. The government is now refusing to help him get off the UN terror list, and continues to treat him as a suspect. It has been suggested that he appeal to the UN on his own, but no one has ever been struck from the list without support from a home government. Foreign Affairs Minister Lawrence Cannon has refused him a hearing.
We've said this before and we'll say it again: If the government can treat one citizen this way with impunity, it can treat any citizen this way. Not one of us can be confident that the heedless, remorseless, relentless bureaucratic juggernaut won't come after us next.
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By Geoffrey Dow
Managing Editor, True North Perspective
It looks as if the Great Garbage Strike of 2009 is just about over (well, technically it was a strike by Toronto's outside municipal workers, which include day-care workers, those who maintain pools and parks, etcetera) and so this morning I decided to take a stroll along Dundas Street West, between Beaconsfield and Brock and record the filth and chaos to which this city's citizens have been reduced. For those of you beyond the bounds of the Centre of the Universe, Toronto has been without garbage pick-up for more than a month — and what a month it's been! (In truth, my fellow-citizens have risen to the occasion with a quiet, civilized pride and dignity that's left me proud to live in this city; the mess was not nearly so bad as the negative publicity would have us believe.) — 438 words plus photos.
The short story, The Old Man's Last Sauna, a groundbreaking love story, in the Friday, April 24 edition of True North Perspective, concludes the collection titled The Old Man's Last Sauna, written by Carl Dow. On Friday, April 17, you'll find O Ernie! ... What Have They Done To You! The series began Friday, February 20, with Deo Volente (God Willing). The second, The Quintessence of Mr. Flynn, Friday, February 27. The third, Sharing Lies, Friday, March 6. The fourth, Flying High, Friday, March 13. The fifth, The Richest Bitch in the Country or Ginny I Hardly Knows Ya, Friday, March 20. On Friday, March 27, One Lift Too Many, followed by The Model A Ford, Friday, April 3. The out-of-body chiller, Room For One Only, Friday, April 10. The series closed Friday, April 24, with the collection's namesake The Old Man's Last Sauna, a groundbreaking love story. All stories may also be found in the True North Perspective Archives.
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Ottawa author Randy Ray and his co-author Mark Kearney of London, Ont. have published their ninth Canadian book, The Big Book of Canadian Trivia, which is now available in stores and on the authors' Web site at: TriviaGuys.com.
The latest Ray-Kearney effort is best described as a "greatest hits" book that contains the best Canadiana from their previous eight books, plus a considerable amount of new material.
In one big book readers will find all the trivia and facts about Canada they need to know: there are stories of important Canadian artifacts and history including what became of Canada's World War II spy camp.
All regions and provinces are covered, as well as important Canadian figures like John Molson, Elizabeth Arden and Russ Jackson.
If that isn't enough there will also be pieces explaining whatever happened to such Canadian icons as the last spike, labour leader Bob White, hockey tough guy Dave "The Hammer" Schultz, the first skidoo, swimmer Marilyn Bell and the first Tim Hortons donut shop.
Some items are "classics." Others are little known facts. Approximately 25% of the material has never before appeared in print.
This fascinating Big Book brings together for the first time in one package the most notable facts and trivia from the archives of the trivia guys' collection.
The Big Book of Canadian Trivia is published by The Dundurn Group of Toronto.
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Prolific best-selling Ottawa author and publicist Randy Ray has developed a website to promote his publicity services, which he offers to authors, publishers and companies. Mr. Ray has helped many clients get their message out across Canada on CTV, CBC Radio, CH-TV, A-Channel and Global TV, and in the Globe and Mail, Toronto Star, Ottawa Citizen, Ottawa Sun, Halifax Herald and many Ottawa-area weekly newspapers. Mr. Ray's web site is: www.randyray.ca. He can be contacted at: (613) 731-3873 or rocket@intranet.ca.
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If you have any problems with accessing the newsletter or problems with your computer, send an email to Carl Hall chall2k5@gmail.com , and he will be more than happy to assist you.
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Archives
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Carl Dow, Editor and Publisher
Geoffrey Dow, Managing Editor
Yvette Pigeon, Associate Editor
Benoit Jolicoeur, Art Director
Ian Covey, Director of Photography
Carl Hall, Technical Analyst and Web Editor
Randy Ray, Manager, Business and Publicity
Contributing Editors
Alex Binkley
Anita Chan, Australia
Rosaleen Dickson
Tom Dow
Bob Kay
Randy Ray
David Ward
Harold Wright
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