Cdn-Firearms Digest Tuesday, February 19 2008 Volume 11 : Number 228 In this issue: deprogamming to disarm civilians Gore's lies Victoria officer grabbed handgun instead of Taser, police confirm Letter: Canadian justice system needs improvements "Editorial: Civilian oversight would serve both the Mounties..." Risks from lapsed wiretap law are disputed- CS Monitor NATO credibility +Kosovo-James Bissett "If global warming gets any worse we'll all freeze to death." ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Tue, 19 Feb 2008 10:12:09 -0600 From: Joe Gingrich Subject: deprogamming to disarm civilians http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,325706,00.html When I was in basic training in 1991(for the second time) at Fort Benning (I was previously in the USCG and its recruit training didn't count for the Infantry) We were handed a questionnaire about disarming American citizens, i.e. would we do it if ordered. Well, to cut to the chase, the W.P. cadets that were training with us thought it was a great idea almost to the man. I think these are these guys now running the battle. - - Alan,3/172 Inf Mt./ USCG (Hope, Maine) Col. Hunt: Alan, thanks for serving. West Point produces generals and presidents not very good junior officers, they take a lot of de-programming. The institution has not learned and is full of hubris and arrogance. ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 19 Feb 2008 10:06:59 -0500 From: "Jules Sobrian" Subject: Gore's lies We are all concerned about the effects of Global Warming and everyone wants to do their part. Al Gore's movie, 'An Inconvenient Truth', was frightening and served as a catalyst for unpresidented golbal spending plans and a series of new laws to reduce emissions. Here's an interesting letter from Al's co-winner of the Nobel price..... Subject: Article by Gore's co-recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize - 'Gore Lied, No One Fried!' Nobel Peace Prize, IPCC, Al Gore Dishonest political tampering with the science on global warming By OnTheWeb: Christopher Monckton Monday, December 10, 2007 Denpasar, Bali - As a contributor to the IPCC's 2007 report, I share the Nobel Peace Prize with Al Gore. Yet I and many of my peers in the British House of Lords - through our hereditary element the most independent-minded of lawmakers - profoundly disagree on fundamental scientific grounds with both the IPCC and my co-laureate's alarmist movie 'An Inconvenient Truth', which won this year's Oscar for Best Sci-Fi Comedy Horror. Two detailed investigations by Committees of the House confirm that the IPCC has deliberately, persistently and prodigiously exaggerated not only the effect of greenhouse gases on temperature but also the environmental consequences of warmer weather. My contribution to the 2007 report illustrates the scientific problem. The report's first table of figures - inserted by the IPCC's bureaucrats after the scientists had finalized the draft, and without their consent - listed four contributions to sea-level rise. The bureaucrats had multiplied the effect of melting ice from the Greenland and West Antarctic Ice Sheets by 10. The result of this dishonest political tampering with the science was that the sum of the four items in the offending table was more than twice the IPCC's published total. Until I wrote to point out the error, no one had noticed. The IPCC, on receiving my letter, quietly corrected, moved and relabeled the erroneous table, posting the new version on the internet and earning me my Nobel prize. The shore-dwellers of Bali need not fear for their homes. The IPCC now says the combined contribution of the two great ice-sheets to sea-level rise will be less than seven centimeters after 100 years, not seven meters imminently, and that the Greenland ice sheet (which thickened by 50 cm between 1995 and 2005) might only melt after several millennia, probably by natural causes, just as it last did 850,000 years ago. Gore, mendaciously assisted by the IPCC bureaucracy, had exaggerated a hundredfold. Recently a High Court judge in the UK listed nine of the 35 major scientific errors in Gore's movie, saying they must be corrected before innocent school children can be exposed to the movie. Gore's exaggeration of sea-level rise was one. Others being peddled at the Bali conference are that man-made 'global warming' threatens polar bears and coral reefs, caused Hurricane Katrina, shrank Lake Chad, expanded the actually-shrinking Sahara, etc. At the very heart of the IPCC's calculations lurks an error more serious than any of these. The IPCC says: 'The CO2 radiative forcing increased by 20 percent during the last 10 years (1995-2005).' Radiative forcing quantifies increases in radiant energy in the atmosphere, and hence in temperature. The atmospheric concentration of CO2 in 1995 was 360 parts per million. In 2005 it was just 5 percent higher, at 378 ppm. But each additional molecule of CO2 in the air causes a smaller radiant-energy increase than its predecessor. So the true increase in radiative forcing was 1 percent, not 20 percent. The IPCC has exaggerated the CO2 effect 20-fold. Why so large and crucial an exaggeration? Answer: the IPCC has repealed the fundamental physical ... the Stefan-Boltzmann equation - that converts radiant energy to temperature. Without this equation, no meaningful calculation of the effect of radiance on temperature can be done. Yet the 1,600 pages of the IPCC's 2007 report do not mention it once. The IPCC knows of the equation, of course. But it is inconvenient. It imposes a strict (and very low) limit on how much greenhouse gases can increase temperature. At the Earth's surface, you can add as much greenhouse gas as you like (the 'surface forcing'), and the temperature will scarcely respond. That is why all of the IPCC's computer models predict that 10km above Bali, in the tropical upper troposphere, temperature should be rising two or three times as fast as it does at the surface. Without that tropical upper-troposphere 'hot-spot', the Stefan-Boltzmann law ensures that surface temperature cannot change much. For half a century we have been measuring the temperature in the upper atmosphere - and it has been changing no faster than at the surface. The IPCC knows this, too. So it merely declares that its computer predictions are right and the real-world measurements are wrong. Next time you hear some scientifically-illiterate bureaucrat say, 'The science is settled', remember this vital failure of real-world observations to confirm the IPCC's computer predictions. The IPCC's entire case is built on a guess that the absent hot-spot might exist. Even if the Gore/IPCC exaggerations were true, which they are not, the economic cost of trying to mitigate climate change by trying to cut our emissions through carbon trading and other costly market interferences would far outweigh any possible climatic benefit. The international community has galloped lemming-like over the cliff twice before. Twenty years ago the UN decided not to regard AIDS as a fatal infection. Carriers of the disease were not identified and isolated. Result: 25 million deaths in poor countries. Thirty-five years ago the world decided to ban DDT, the only effective agent against malaria. Result: 40 million deaths in poor countries. The World Health Organization lifted the DDT ban on Sept. 15 last year. It now recommends the use of DDT to control malaria. Dr. Arata Kochi of the WHO said that politics could no longer be allowed to stand in the way of the science and the data. Amen to that. If we take the heroically stupid decisions now on the table at Bali, it will once again be the world's poorest people who will die unheeded in their tens of millions, this time for lack of the heat and light and power and medical attention which we in the West have long been fortunate enough to take for granted. If we deny them the fossil-fuelled growth we have enjoyed, they will remain poor and, paradoxically, their populations will continue to increase, making the world's carbon footprint very much larger in the long run. As they die, and as global temperature continues to fail to rise in accordance with the IPCC's laughably-exaggerated predictions, the self-congratulatory rhetoric that is the hallmark of the now-useless, costly, corrupt UN will again be near-unanimously parroted by lazy, unthinking politicians and journalists who ought to have done their duty by the poor but are now - for the third time in three decades - failing to speak up for those who are about to die. My fellow-participants, there is no climate crisis. The correct policy response to a non-problem is to have the courage to do nothing. Take courage! Do nothing, and save the world's poor from yet another careless, UN-driven slaughter. The End. Jules ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 19 Feb 2008 09:39:16 -0700 From: Dennis & Hazel Young Subject: Victoria officer grabbed handgun instead of Taser, police confirm Vancouver Sun 2008.02.19 - PAGE: A2 By Rob Shaw Victoria officer grabbed handgun instead of Taser, police confirm http://www.canada.com/vancouversun/news/story.html?id=54725a74-43f0-4cff-99d5-95eaedeee9c9 VICTORIA -- A Victoria police officer who shot and injured a man in 2005 was reaching for his Taser but grabbed his handgun by accident, police confirmed Monday. It had long been speculated that Const. Mike Miller confused his Taser and pistol while struggling with a violent man outside a McDonald's restaurant in Esquimalt on Sept. 10, 2005. But the department had never acknowledged the mistake, even last month when Miller resigned on the day of his disciplinary hearing, because it was a "personnel matter." Miller had been trying to subdue Daniel Hammond, 25, who was reportedly banging on windows at the restaurant and causing a disturbance. An internal investigation concluded Miller drew his Taser from its holster on his left hip, but put it in his right pants pocket so he could handcuff Hammond. But Hammond resisted and ended up wrestling on the ground with Miller and another officer. Miller pulled his firearm from his right holster -- thinking it was the Taser -- and fired into Hammond's stomach, police say. Hammond survived and is suing the police. The version of the Taser gun Miller used was designed to mimic the feel and weight of a Glock pistol, so an officer who trained with a gun would be comfortable with a Taser as well. Victoria police have since purchased different Taser devices that less closely resemble handguns, said interim chief Bill Naughton. Miller's resignation was negotiated to avoid the costly disciplinary process, said Naughton. "I believe that decision was in the best interest of Const. Miller, this department and the public," he said. He admitted Victoria was only going public with details of the case now because B.C.'s police watchdog complained the public had not been given enough information about the shooting. ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 19 Feb 2008 09:41:00 -0700 From: Dennis & Hazel Young Subject: Letter: Canadian justice system needs improvements The Windsor Star 2008.02.19 -PAGE: A7 Canadian justice system needs improvements http://www.canada.com/windsorstar/news/letters/story.html?id=83626a68-9d81-4b54-9488-a3c5a68092b0 I agree with letter writer Rich Tapping. The Liberal party has proved time and time again it is out of touch with most Canadians when it comes to crime fighting. Canadians want and deserve to feel safe in our communities. Most will agree our justice system needs some serious improvement and the revolving door justice should be closed. Too often the rights of criminals are equal or greater than those of the victim. The Liberals under Paul Martin gave criminals in jail the right to vote. What kind of message does that send to hard-working Canadians? Violent repeat offenders break the law and are rewarded by the Liberals with the right to vote while in jail. The Liberals brought us the $2-billion boondoggle gun registry, which promised to make us safer, but has failed miserably in doing so. The registry made trustworthy farmers and target shooters "criminals" overnight if they didn't register their guns but ignored the real problem, which has always been the drug dealers and gang members. It should come as no surprise to voters the Liberals turned their backs on an anti-crime bill, they have been turning their backs on the safety and security of Canadians for over a decade. Pierre Dupont ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 19 Feb 2008 09:43:14 -0700 From: Dennis & Hazel Young Subject: "Editorial: Civilian oversight would serve both the Mounties..." Subject: "Editorial: Civilian oversight would serve both the Mounties and the public;" Vancouver Sun 2008.02.19 - PAGE: A12 Civilian oversight would serve both the Mounties and the public; Statistics about in-custody deaths in B.C. raise questions about the propriety of police investigating themselves http://www.canada.com/vancouversun/news/editorial/story.html?id=dc81a482-c812-4a24-a625-1330f96d7117 According to the Royal Canadian Mounted Police report concerning in-custody deaths between 2002 and 2006, the deceased people "lived, for the most part, high-risk lifestyles. Their decisions resulted in their deaths." That statement, which sounds a lot like blaming the victims, will offer cold comfort to the families of British Columbians who have been shot by RCMP officers in questionable circumstances. And it offers yet more evidence that the RCMP shouldn't be investigating itself. Further, British Columbia, where a number of mysterious shootings have occurred, accounted for 56 per cent of all in-custody deaths between 2002 and 2006, despite the fact that only 33 per cent of all RCMP officers work within the province. The reason for this over-representation is not clear, and it is troubling that the report does not investigate the anomaly further. But various explanations have been proferred, including that the RCMP works more in urban areas in B.C. than in other provinces, that B.C. Mounties are handling more serious crimes than elsewhere, and that this province's officers are younger and less experienced. Whatever the reason, though, it's clear that in-custody deaths are an issue in B.C., and will remain an issue until the province appoints an independent body with the authority and ability to investigate those deaths. This is not to suggest that the RCMP is out of control in B.C. As the report makes clear, in-custody deaths -- which include deaths at the scene and in hospital, as well as those occurring in the cells -- are relatively rare events: While the RCMP incarcerates approximately 200,000 people a year, and arrests and releases many more, the report found a yearly average of 16 in-custody deaths. Further, many people died before being incarcerated, and in 40 per cent of cases, death came as a result of alcohol and/or drug abuse, which suggests that some subjects might well have died whether or not police were present. The report also notes that few deaths occurred in the police cells themselves, and that the RCMP has improved its procedures to reduce the chances of such deaths occurring. That's the good news. The bad news is that being shot by a police officer remains the second most common cause of in-custody deaths, accounting for nearly a quarter of them. Many of these deaths might have been unavoidable if officers themselves were to avoid being killed, but B.C. has experienced some controversial police shootings in the last few years. And while the report states that investigations of RCMP shootings determined that in every case "the use of lethal force against the subject was in accord with statute and RCMP policy," it is those very investigations -- often conducted by another RCMP detachment -- that are the subject of controversy. Indeed, we have heard cases where the RCMP has taken an inordinately long time to investigate its own officers, so long in some cases that internal disciplinary hearings have had to be dropped. We also have heard, in an inquiry into the death of Kevin St. Arnaud, that the RCMP admitted there were inaccuracies in an officer's account of a shooting, but it still concluded he acted in self-defence. The report states that the RCMP welcomes investigations, reviews and inquiries because they might help to prevent deaths, which is "the raison d'etre of the organization." If that is so, then the force must also welcome the development of an independent investigative body, because it could help protect the lives of both RCMP officers and the people they are called to serve. ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 19 Feb 2008 11:02:49 -0600 From: News@sfn.saskatoon.sk.ca Subject: Risks from lapsed wiretap law are disputed- CS Monitor Risks from lapsed wiretap law are disputed http://www.csmonitor.com/2008/0219/p02s03-uspo.html Image & Caption President Bush, in the Oval Office last week with Director of National Intelligence Mike McConnell, urged the US House – in vain – to extend a warrantless wiretapping program. - -Kevin Lamarque/Reuters House Democrats, who let the law expire Saturday, see little danger. Intelligence officials argue the ability to track potential terrorists is impaired. By Gail Russell Chaddock Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor from the February 19, 2008 edition Washington- The White House and Democrats on Capitol Hill each had a hand in letting a temporary wiretapping law expire this weekend, but most of the political fallout is landing on Congress. President Bush had pledged to veto any bill that merely extended the temporary law without resolving the matter of immunity for telecommunications firms that helped the government with its secret eavesdropping program after 9/11. A "patchwork extension" wouldn't give the security needed to protect the nation, Mr. Bush said, and he urged Republican lawmakers to vote against it. House Democratic leaders said they would not be "jammed" by the White House into accepting the Senate version of the bill – which includes the immunity provision – and wanted more time to work out differences with the Senate. As a result, at the stroke of midnight Saturday, the Protect America Act expired. The risk to national security is not yet clear, but the political firefights on both sides of the aisle couldn't be missed. Bush said Thursday that failure to update the Protect America Act will "harm our ability to monitor new terrorist activities and could reopen dangerous gaps in our intelligence." House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, in response, dubbed such talk fear-mongering. The president has authority to continue needed eavesdropping under another law, the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA), she said. Moreover, the authorities granted under the temporary law enacted in August will carry on for a year, she added. To House Democrats, at stake is whether Bush and future presidents are accountable to Congress. "Whether the president is a Democrat or a Republican, they can't act outside the law," said Speaker Pelosi Thursday. The telecom companies can't either, she added. Republicans say House Democrats are putting national security at risk. "Americans sleep easier at night knowing intelligence officials work around the clock monitoring terrorists. But while Americans slept tonight, our intelligence agencies lost a vital tool because of the Democrats' unwillingness to act," said the Republican National Committee, in a statement on Sunday. The matter of retroactive immunity for the telecommunications firms is contentious. Without liability protection – and facing lawsuits seeking billions of dollars in damages – such companies will be "less likely to cooperate" with the government on national-security matters in the future, Bush said Thursday. "This is the Democratic allegiance to the plaintiff's bar," Senate GOP leader Mitch McConnell said Sunday on CNN's "Late Edition with Wolf Blitzer." "They're more interested in seeing [telecom] companies in court than they are seeing terrorists in jail." House and Senate versions of a new eavesdropping law both aim to improve the government's ability to monitor technologies such as the Internet and cellphones. The issue now is how a lapse in the law affects national security. "The problem is what to do with the new tips, and they're coming in all the time," says Rep. Heather Wilson (R) of New Mexico. On Sunday, Director of National Intelligence Mike McConnell said on "Fox News Sunday" that "a warrant means probable cause, which is a very time-consuming process to go through." Moreover, he said, the telecom companies "might be unwilling to cooperate with the lawful requests from the government in the future, without unnecessary court involvement and protracted litigation." Democrats say that if a previously unknown terrorist group must be surveilled, the administration can use existing authorities under FISA. "Under FISA, the attorney general can approve surveillance in minutes. Surveillance can begin immediately, and approval of the FISA court can be obtained within three days," says Pelosi spokesman Nadeam Elshami. Unlike last summer, when Congress first passed the Protect America Act, no backlog of cases exists to slow the process of obtaining surveillance approvals. Pelosi says she has instructed committee chairs to work on resolving differences with the Senate during the one-week presidential recess, which ends Feb. 25. www.csmonitor.com Copyright © 2008 The Christian Science Monitor. All rights reserved. ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 19 Feb 2008 14:54:04 -0600 From: Larry James Fillo Subject: NATO credibility +Kosovo-James Bissett Canada sent our armed forces on a NATO mission in 1998 whose credibility has vanished. Now should we stand behind international law and the UN Charter or violate it and endorse a new Muslim state? Does this affect the credibility of our current or future NATO missions? ================== http://www.canada.com/ottawacitizen/news/opinion/story.html? id=32b1a951-15cf-4193-bff5-af0cb5d3fa90&p=1 ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 19 Feb 2008 20:04:15 -0600 From: Joe Gingrich Subject: "If global warming gets any worse we'll all freeze to death." Global Warming? New Data Shows Ice Is Back Tuesday, February 19, 2008 11:55 AM http://www.newsmax.com/insidecover/global_warming_or_cooling/2008/02/19/73798.html?s=al&promo_code=457E-1 By: Phil Brennan Are the world's ice caps melting because of climate change, or are the reports just a lot of scare mongering by the advocates of the global warming theory? Scare mongering appears to be the case, according to reports from the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) that reveal that almost all the allegedly "lost" ice has come back. A NOAA report shows that ice levels which had shrunk from 5 million square miles in January 2007 to just 1.5 million square miles in October, are almost back to their original levels. Moreover, a Feb. 18 report in the London Daily Express showed that there is nearly a third more ice in Antarctica than usual, challenging the global warming crusaders and buttressing arguments of skeptics who deny that the world is undergoing global warming. The Daily express recalls the photograph of polar bears clinging on to a melting iceberg which has been widely hailed as proof of the need to fight climate change and has been used by former Vice President Al Gore during his "Inconvenient Truth" lectures about mankind's alleged impact on the global climate. Gore fails to mention that the photograph was taken in the month of August when melting is normal. Or that the polar bear population has soared in recent years. As winter roars in across the Northern Hemisphere, Mother Nature seems to have joined the ranks of the skeptics. As the Express notes, scientists are saying the northern Hemisphere has endured its coldest winter in decades, adding that snow cover across the area is at its greatest since 1966. The newspaper cites the one exception - - Western Europe, which had, until the weekend when temperatures plunged to as low as -10 C in some places, been basking in unseasonably warm weather. Around the world, vast areas have been buried under some of the heaviest snowfalls in decades. Central and southern China, the United States, and Canada were hit hard by snowstorms. In China, snowfall was so heavy that over 100,000 houses collapsed under the weight of snow. Jerusalem, Damascus, Amman, and northern Saudi Arabia report the heaviest falls in years and below-zero temperatures. In Afghanistan, snow and freezing weather killed 120 people. Even Baghdad had a snowstorm, the first in the memory of most residents. AFP news reports icy temperatures have just swept through south China, stranding 180,000 people and leading to widespread power cuts just as the area was recovering from the worst weather in 50 years, the government said Monday. The latest cold snap has taken a severe toll in usually temperate Yunnan province, which has been struck by heavy snowfalls since Thursday, a government official from the provincial disaster relief office told AFP. Twelve people have died there, state Xinhua news agency reported, and four remained missing as of Saturday. An ongoing record-long spell of cold weather in Vietnam's northern region, which started on Jan. 14, has killed nearly 60,000 cattle,mainly bull and buffalo calves, local press reported Monday. By Feb. 17, the spell had killed a total of 59,962 cattle in the region, including 7,349 in the Ha Giang province, 6,400 in Lao Cai, and 5,571 in Bac Can province, said Hoang Kim Giao, director of the Animal Husbandry Department under the Vietnamese Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development, according to the Pioneer newspaper. In Britain the temperatures plunged to -10 C in central England, according to the Express, which reports that experts say that February could end up as one of the coldest in Britain in the past 10 years with the freezing night-time conditions expected to stay around a frigid -8 C until at least the middle of the week. And the BBC reports that a bus company's efforts to cut global warming emissions have led to services being disrupted by cold weather. Meanwhile Athens News reports that a raging snow storm that blanketed most of Greece over the weekend and continued into the early morning hours on Monday, plunging the country into sub-zero temperatures. The agency reported that public transport buses were at a standstill on Monday in the wider Athens area, while ships remained in ports, public services remained closed, and schools and courthouses in the more severely-stricken prefectures were also closed. Scores of villages, mainly on the island of Crete, and in the prefectures of Evia, Argolida, Arcadia, Lakonia, Viotia, and the Cyclades islands were snowed in. More than 100 villages were snowed-in on the island of Crete and temperatures in Athens dropped to -6 C before dawn, while the coldest temperatures were recorded in Kozani, Grevena, Kastoria and Florina, where they plunged to -12 C. Temperatures in Athens dropped to -6 C before dawn, while the coldest temperatures were recorded in Kozani, Grevena, Kastoria and Florina, where they plunged to -12 C. If global warming gets any worse we'll all freeze to death. © 2008 Newsmax. 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