Rouleau Commission public hearings end with a week of bullshit

While Americans were giving thanks at the end of last week, Canadians were giving thanks for the end of the public hearings of the Rouleau Commission of inquiry into whether the Liberal government of Canuckistan was justified in invoking the never-before-used Emergencies to quell the Freedom Convoy protests of last February. 

As reported in Walt's first post on this subect, the public fact-finding hearings began six weeks ago with the Parade of the Snowflakes. The week before last saw the Parade of the Minions -- the Commissioner of the RCMP and assorted deputies and secretaries of the Privy Council (Americans read: Cabinet) Office and the Prime Minister's Office. Most of them were shady-side-of-50s females so smitten with Blackie McBlackface that they would say or do anything, anything to protect him from harm -- physical or political.

This past week was the big finale, the Parade of the Ministers: the Honourable William Bliar (President of the Privy Council and Minister of Emergency Preparedness) [Seriously? Ed.]; the Honourable Marco Mendacious (Minister of Public Safety); the Honourable Omar Algebra (the Saudi-born Syrian-Canadian Minister of Transport); and the Honourable David Lamentable (Minister of Justice [sic]).

The semi-finalist was the fragrant and Honourable Chrystia Freeland (Minister of Finance and Deputy Prime Minister). At right is a note from Ms Freeland, tendered in evidence. What does the handwriting tell you about her?  

The star attraction though, the big finish on Friday, was Emperor Trudeau II, his own self. Those who expected him to wilt under questioniong about his decision -- and it was his alone -- to order the most sweeping suspension of Canadian civil liberties since the October Crisis of 1970 (his father was prime minister then) were deeply disappointed.

Not only did he deny doing anything wrong, hinting that the "worst" might have happened had he not invoked the Emergencies Act, but he proclaimed himself "serene" -- confident that he could and would do the same again if he thought it was the right thing to do. That's exactly what Canadians are afraid of!

The lawyers refrained from questioning Mr Socks about his whereabouts at the height of the peaceful demonstration, so as not to draw attention to the fact of his hiding at a cottage somewhere in the hills north of Ottawa. Nor did they press him on his characterization of the protesters as a "tiny minority with unacceptable views." 

They did, however, ask him if he was wrong to call unvaccinated people names like "racists" and "misogynists". He denied having done so. Those epithets were uttered in a September 2021 appearance on La semaine des 4 Julie (a Québec talk show), in which Junior said, "We all know people who are a little hesitant (about vaccination), and we're going to try and convince them, but there are also people who are fiercely opposed to vaccination; who don't believe in science, who are often misogynists, who are often racist as well."

In his testimony to the Commission, M Trudeau said that "using protests to demand changes to public policy is something that I think is worrisome." How about that! Doesn't every protest have as its object the changing of public policy?

Now it falls to the Honourable Mr Justice Paul Rouleau -- a Liberal appointee and former Party apparatchik -- to decide whether the Liberal government's decision to invoke the Emergencies Act was lawful. We'll let Agent 3 pick up this thread later today.

Trudeau to establish special court for Canuck protesters

Note from Ed.: Our legal beagle has just sent in the following report, of so startling a nature that we are posting it immediately, without receiving independent confirmation. Corrections may follow. Or not. As the case may be.

Blackie McBlackface, Prime Minister of All Canuckistan, and "Public Safety" Minister Marco Mendacious are about to announce that in light of the failure of the police and provincial courts to deal effectively (read: convict) with the freedom-loving truckers protesting in Ottawa and elsewhere, they will establish a new federal court, to be known as the Court of the Red Star Chamber.

Although the new court will not be bound by the niceties of the Criminal Code or common law, it will not able to impose the death penalty. However, it will have the power to employ "enhanced interrogation" (read: torture) to deal quickly and efficiently with anyone expressing (or even holding) unacceptable (read: anti-liberal) views.

The first two judges nominated by Mr Socks are the Hon. William Blair, Chief of the Toronto Police "Service" at the time of the G20 riots and currently unemployed (read: out of his depth as Minister of Emergency Preparedness), and Peter "Moves" Sloly, Chief of the Ottawa Police until his resignation on Monday.

It is expected that the new court will leap into inaction later today, in order to gain the advantage of surprise. Said Judge Blair, "Nobody expects the Red Star Chamber!"

The United States Department of Justice (sic) is said to be following this interesting development closely.

How our governments gull us into supporting unjust, unwinnable and STUPID wars

"Gull" is defined in Ed.'s Annadales's English Dictionary as "v.t. To make a fool of; to trick; to mislead by deception". Gulling the voters is a black art practised since time immemorial by politicians throughout the world. Abraham Lincoln said, "You can fool all the people some of the time, and some of the people all the time, but you cannot fool all the people all the time." But he and his successors have mostly succeeded in fooling most of the people most of the time.

This is particularly true when it comes to persuading peace-loving people that making war is in their best interests. Walt believes that most people would prefer not spend their fortunes and lives and fortunes waging war, not to kill or be killed. But our so-called leaders -- Obama, Bush, Harper, Clinton, Nixon, Johnson, Blair, Cameron, Harper (choose the one(s) you've been gulled into voting for -- tell us doing so is in the national interest, which means in our best interests. Total bullshit, but most of the people buy it, most of the time.

The sad thing is, they get away with it -- with sending our boys (and girls and "others") where they themselves would never go, with spending your (not their) tax dollars by the billions -- so easily. How do they do it? Here's a quote from Reichsmarschall Hermann Göring:

Naturally, the common people don't want war; neither in Russia nor in England nor in America, nor for that matter in Germany. That is understood. But after all, it's the leaders of the country who determine the policy, and it's always a simple matter to drag the people along whether it's a democracy, a fascist dictatorship, or a parliament, or a communist dictatorship....

Voice or no voice, the people can always be brough to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country greater danger. It works the same way in any country.

Herr Göring said that in 1946, shortly before he was sentenced to death by hanging for crimes against humanity. The quote appears at p. 215 of Jon Krakauer's Where Men Win Glory (Doubleday 2009), which Walt recommends highly.

Where Men Win Glory is the story of Patrick Daniel "Pat" Tillman, RIP, killed by members of his own platoon on 22 April 2004 while on patrol in eastern Afghanistan. Before enlisting in the US Army, Corporal Tillman (he was promoted posthumously from the rank of Specialist) was a football player, who had a pretty good run in college ball and then in the NFL. He walked away from this $3.6-million NFL contract because he was deeply troubled by 9/11, and felt a strong moral obligation to join the fight against al-Qaeda and the Taliban.

In other words, he was gulled by Bush II, Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld and all the others who dragged America into the Muslim civil wars for the sake of... of what? Oil? Bringing civilization and democracy to the heathens? Or... what?

When Mr. Tillman signed on, the US military and its propagandists (Hello, Jim Wilkinson!) tried to make Tillman an inspirational emblem for their "Global War on Terror", but he refused to do any media interviews. Soon after beginning his first tour of duty in Iraq, the scales fell of his eyes. He openly declared the war was "illegal as hell". The more he saw of the American invasions of Iraq -- the "battle" of Nasiriyah, for instance -- and Afghanistan, the more disgusted he got, but he was determined to finish his three-year hitch as matter of duty and honour. Sadly, an inexperienced and trigger-happy US Ranger ended his life.

But did the US military's propaganda machine relent? Nooooooo! At first, the Army told credulous reporters that Corp. Tillman had been killed by enemy fire. It wasn't until 28 May 2004 that the Pentagon notified his family that he had died as a result of a friendly fire incident. The family and other critics allege that the Department of Defense delayed the disclosure for weeks out of a desire to protect the image of the US armed forces and portray Corp. Tillman as a hero of a just war.

In Chapter 33 of Where Men Win Glory, we read:
The White House was frantic to come up with something to divert attention from the deadly quagmire that Iraq had become, precisely as Osama bin Laden had gleefully forecast. The president [Bush II] was facing an increasingly tough campaign to win a second term in the White House, the election was barely six months away, and his approval ratings were plummeting. When Tillman was killed, White House perception managers saw an opportunity not unlike the one provided by the Jessica Lynch debacle thirteen months earlier....

Following Tillman's death, there was nothing to prevent the Bush administration from using his celebrity to advance its political agenda. [Jim Wilkinson's successors] wasted no time in concocting a narrative about Tillman that they hoped would distract the American public in the same way that Wilkinson's fable about Lynch had....

While he was alive, Tillman had been the object of tremendous public fascination, and White House officials guessed that selling him as a fallen war hero would send the media into an orgy of adulatory coverage. They were not disappointed.

Well, the Bush Wars in the sandpits of Iraq and Afghanistan are over. It's hard to say who won, but not so hard to say who list -- the people of America and the other members of the "Coalition of the Willing". And the American wars of empire (or oil, or whatever) didn't really end. They only morphed into the Obama War against terrorism, another "just war" to bring the benefits of civilization and democracy to the benighted... wait, didn't I write that before? Yes, we've seen this movie before -- there actually is a made-for-TV movie: The Tillman Story -- and we'll see it again... and again... until we listen to real leaders like Ron Paul and refuse to be gulled any more!

"I told you so" - Former British PM says Islamic extremists are dangerous

British readers may remember the Rt. Hon. Tony Blair, the UK's first "New Labour" prime minister. Other things "new" about Mr. Blair were "new age" and -- believe it or not -- "new bullshit". For it was he, aided and abetted by Peter Mandelson and Alastair Campbell, who led Notsogreat Britain into the Iraq debacle.

How did they persuade the British people and parliament to support the American invasion of Saddam Hussein's sandpit? Why, by declaring Saddam a dangerous Islamic extremist -- EXTRA-dangerous, in fact, because he possessed "weapons of mass destruction" (WMDs) which could hit Britain 45 seconds, turning it from a stinking pile of rubbish into a flaming pile of rubbish.

"45 seconds"... turned out to be a wee bit of an exaggeration. In fact Saddam was as bereft of WMDs as the Americans were of any strategy to exit the Iraq quagmire, and you know the rest of the story. People started calling the British PM "Tony Bliar", and he had the smarts to hand over to poor old Gordon Brown, who was in due course turfed out.

No matter. The terrible trio -- Blair, Mandelson and Campbell -- have all gone on to bigger and better (?) things. Yesterday, Britain. Today, Europe. Tomorrow, the world ??? See "Are Tony Blair and Peter Mandelson edging towards world domination?" in the online edition of today's Grauniad.

As part of Mr. Bliar's grand strategy of self-promotion -- that's where Campbell comes in, as the PR advisor -- Tony got himself appointed "special ambassador" to the Middle East. His self-proclaimed goal was to Draw All Faiths Together (DAFT), getting Jews, Christians and Muslims to bury the hatchet... in the ground rather than others' heads. So far he has accomplished, errr, nothing.

Why is it that? Well, in a speech given in London yesterday, Mr. Bliar said the problem is "the threat of Islamic extremism". He didn't say anything about WMDs or "45 seconds", but warned Western leaders they must "take sides" in places like Syria and back "open-minded" groups. Hmmm. Open-minded Muslims. Open-minded Jews. Perhaps Tony can tell us where to find such people? "Moderate Islamists" and "moderate Zionists" are oxymorons!

A further problem is that before you can have a "conversation" with the "moderates", you have to deal with the extremists. How to do that? You won't be surprised to learn that the prime minister who led Britain into Iraq is recommending military intervention in Syria!According to Mr. Bliar, the West will pay a "very heavy price" for not doing so.

The former PM told the BBC that the opportunity to create "an optimistic solution" is being missed. He argued the West had a "responsibility but also an interest" in making sure the "huge struggle" was "resolved in the right way.... Above all, we have to commit. We have to engage." [Sounds like making wedding plans, doesn't it? Ed.]

Mr. Bliar said he understood the UK's reluctance not to take military action, but would have pushed for the imposition of no-fly zones had he still been in office two years ago. "I know what the difficult consequences are of intervention, but if you look at Syria you see the consequences of non-intervention, and non-intervention there is something for which we will pay a very heavy price."

Walt has obtained a copy of Mr. Bliar's speaking notes, which appeared to be a photocopy of a speech he gave in March of 2003, with "Iraq" and "Saddam Hussein" crossed out and "Syria" and "Basher [sic] Assad" substituted.

Perhaps the agent who sent us the material was just pulling Walt's leg. What is certain is that we've seen this movie before. And we know how it ends. Lifetime pct .983.

An arsehole with an arsenal... more or less?

Walt is no bleeding-heart, let's-all-make-nice gun control advocate. I confess to a certain youthful fascination with firearms, often in combination with white-and-reds cocktails and loud music. Playing Tchaikovsky's 1812 Overture on a stereo cranked up to "Mother" and supplying your own cannon-fire -- shotgun blasts will do nicely -- to augment the finale is an experience exhilirating to the point of being aphrodisiacal.

Such things should be done, though, out in the back 40... not in crowded cinemas. A Jamaican salute to the New Year or other holiday isn't cool if innocent bystanders get hurt or killed.

Which brings me to the Aurora Massacre, the reason why Walt has been MIA the last couple of days. I have been trying to think of something cogent and witty to say. I have failed.

What kind of mind, what kind of personality says to itself: I think today I'll go take in a flick, maybe blow away a dozen or so of those damn ordinary people, just to see what it feels like.

That's if there is a mind, a sentient human being applying some kind of thinking process to the concept. Which is doubtful. Did James Holmes really think this through? The facts revealed so far would seem to suggest he did.

He spent weeks ordering and receiving an arsenal of weapons. Somehow, somewhere he acquired the suit of body armor and other colour-coordinated accessories. Not to mention all the D-I-Y work required to booby-trap his apartment so as to take out a few law enforcement officers and perhaps himself in one final Götterdammerung. The last part is speculation, which brings us back to pondering what he had in mind.

If anything. The argument will surely be advanced that the man is sick, sick, sick. Out-to-lunch insane. Totally gonzo and not in the amusing way. That's what "progressive thinkers" always say. There are no bad people, just people who are "depraved on account of they're deprived" as Stephen Sondheim wrote.

Maybe James Holmes was attacked by a bat in his childhood. Maybe he was so under the influence of mind-altering substances that he saw it as his duty to blow away all the creatures in the bat-cave of a cinema. Who knows?

Nobody knows except James Holmes. And you can bet he's been advised by every attorney he's talked to to keep his mouth shut. Let us guess... yeah. This is a case where silence is going to be the best possible defence. Let the shrinks pick his orange wig all they like. What conclusion could they reach other than that his cheese done slipped off his cracker, just like that Percy Wetmore in The Green Mile.

End result? Holmes spends a few years in the laughing academy until another set of shrinks decide he's not a threat any more, and then they turn him loose. I hope they let us know where and when that happens.

As for making it a little harder for the average deranged American to get his hands on anything more powerful than a cap gun, don't count on anything happening anytime soon. The NRA is way too powerful. Besides, as Toronto police chief Bill Bliar would say, this is just another "isolated incident".

Call for tenders - paint and related products

Calls continue for an inquiry into the actions (and inactions) of the police during the G20 summit in Toronto at the end of June. Toronto police and their allies (who came from 1000s of miles away -- kind of reminds you of Afghanistan!) are accused of both not doing enough to prevent the vandalism and violence or of using excessive force on 100s of innocent bystanders, in other words doing too much.

In response, the Premier of Ontario, Dalton McGuinty, first said there would be no inquiry. Then Toronto police chief "The Bill" Blair said the police would conduct an "internal review". In other words, they would investigate themselves.

This announcement was, for some reason, greeted with scepticism. Remarks like "couldn't find a blackberry in a saucer of milk" were heard. So now the Special Investigations Unit has been called in. That's the provincial body -- staffed by cops, ex-cops, crown lawyers and such -- whose mission is to exonerate the police of any misconduct in cases where civilians wind up in hospitals or morgues as a result of police actions.

But some people will never be satisfied. Protesters continued to demand a civilian investigation. So now the Toronto Police Services Board, to which the police are supposedly accountable, has announced its own "independent review", to be conducted at a later date, by person or persons unknown, with a mandate to be announced ... errrr ... later.

Expressions of interest are invited for the supply of several thousand gallons of whitewash for use by the three (and counting) inquiries. Bids should be sealed in a plain brown envelope (approx. 2.5" x 6") addressed to "Justice, Queen's Park".

Footnote: The TPSB, in a display of back-pedalling which would make a champion cyclist green with envy, has added that it only has jurisdiction over the Toronto police, so anything done by the Ontario Provincial Police, the RCMP, the Montréal police, the Regina police [that's enough police. ed.] won't be looked at.

Canadians love their cops

OK, here's the straight poop on the riot in Toronto on G20 weekend.

Some have objected to my use of the word "riot", but there were thousands of cops and fewer thousands of demonstrators/protesters/rioters in the streets, over 900 arrests, over a million dollars in property damage, burning police cruisers...the lot. If that isn't a riot, what is it?

The G20 leaders and some invited guests (like the president of the great state of Malawi) met in Toronto this past weekend to resolve the problems of the world: recession, fat cat bankers, "maternal health" (read: abortions for Africans) and so forth.

They were invited by Canadian Prime Minister "Call me Steve" Harper, presumably to get even with Toronto for not electing a single Conservative MP to sit in the rows of trained seals behind him in the House of Commons.

Toronto's leftie mayor, David Millertime, and rightie police chief, Bill "The Bill" Blair [you have to be British to get that - ed.] warned that there'd be trouble, but no-one listened, except to decide that maybe now would be a good time to beef up security.

So over a billion Canadian taxpayers' dollars was spent to bring cops in from all over Canada -- as far away as the Northwest Territories -- for an all-expenses-paid weekend in the Big Smoke.

And of course there were toys for the boys:

• shiny black storm trooper outfits straight out of Star Wars
• gas masks to be donned when the world leaders spoke [really? ed.], and
• brand new cannons -- water and sound, the use of the latter being blocked by court order just before the fun began

Some construction work was done too. An old film studio was converted into a temporary "holding facility" -- i.e. a jail -- capable of housing 500 protesters/anarchists/innocent bystanders. And a Really Big Fence was built around several downtown city blocks, either to keep the residents in or keep the rabble out.

The Fence is central to this story. Just before the storm broke, the police announced that anyone approaching within 5 meters (about 16 feet) of the fence could be stopped and asked for ID, searched...and arrested if they didn't comply.

On being questioned about their authority for this, "The Bill" told the media that these powers had been confirmed by the Ontario government a few days earlier, in a secret Order-in-Council which would be gazetted (government-speak for "published") next month. Deputy Police Chief Eric Cartman said, "Don't question my authoritie!" [Are you sure about this? ed.]

It turns out that ... errrr ... there was no such law or regulation on the books. Never was. The cops lied about that. Caught in the lie through the efforts of the Canadian Civil Liberties Association and the media, "The Bill" now says, in effect, that it was better for the public to think the cops had extraordinary powers of arrest, even though they didn't. In other words, the end justified the means.

Here's a quote from this morning's Globe and Mail column by Adam Radwanksi.

"Not only did Dalton McGuinty’s Liberals place limits on civil liberties without telling anyone – but they also then washed their hands as police misrepresented and misused their new powers.

"It’s a glaring abdication of responsibility, reflective of a government overly content to give police carte blanche even in the most volatile situations."

Why would the Ontario government -- and the federal government which was ultimately responsible for this fiasco -- let the police be a law unto themselves? Let me give you two answers.

First of all, the government of Ontario has no policies or principles. The Premier, Dalton McGuinty -- who it is rumoured recently turned down the lead role in a remake of Father Knows Best -- has yet to have Idea One about what a government should or should not do. So he does what "staff" (i.e. the bureaucrats in Queen's Park) tell him is good to do.

That's not the same as "the right thing to do", in spite of his parrotting of this phrase to defend the new Harper Sales Tax. Another case in point: the recent flip-flop over whipping the LGBTQ sex-ed agenda on 8-year-olds in Ontario schools. See Walt's blog, passim.

Reason Two. The plain truth is that our governments -- federal, provincial and municipal -- are afraid of the police. Why else would they spend ten times more than has ever been spent before on defending a city which didn't want the damned summit against a "security threat" which became a self-fulfilling prophecy?!

The whole riot could have been avoided by holding the Big Powwow in a more appropriate place. La Ronge, Saskatchewan, would have been a good choice. Walt lived not far away, once upon a time. Nice lake there. They wouldn't have had to build a fake one...inside a downtown building. But nooooo....

"There's gonna be trouble!", the cops told us. "Better give us more arms, and lots more boots on the ground. Oh yeah, and more power too. When we say 'Jump!', those pinko queer protesters better ask 'How high?" And so it came to pass.

We are left with the disturbing image of what has been called "a police state". Canada is not a police state like China or Zimbabwe. But it is a state which is over-policed.

Let us not kid ourselves that the boys and girls in blue can do no wrong. They can...and they do. Cops are bullies. It's the nature of the beast. The kids at school who wanted to be hall monitors or prefects are the same ones who grew up to be cops.

The police love their authority. They revel in it. They wallow in it. They delight in pushing people around. And unless they get called on it -- perhaps by the inquiry which ought to follow the events of this weekend -- it will just get worse and worse. Don't expect the G20 riot to be the last.

FOOTNOTE: A reader writes in New Canadian English to say that only $122 million was spent on beefing up the police presence. Whether it was $122 million or ten times that amount is beside the point. A small fortune was spent needlessly and Toronto still got trashed. Ed.