WIKILEAKS - Canadians let down by first batch of U.S. Diplomatic files

The publication by WIKILEAKS of that first batch of U.S. Diplomatic files occurred on Sunday. Anticipation in Canada had been very keen, and our two major television news channels - CBC and CTV were giving hourly updates throughout the weekend. The disappointment here was huge when we learned on Sunday afternoon that Hilary and her State Department hirelings rarely discuss us. One columnist, contributing to the online magazine BACK OF THE BOOK drove the nail through the board when he sniffed that the docs are dull because "none feature the American ambassador calling Jean Chretien or Stephen Harper a douche bag, or anything else likely to titillate Ottawa." WIKILEAK cache slim on Canadian content, so far. Just before midnight on Sunday I checked the CBC News poll which asked the question "Should Wikileaks publish sensitive U.S. diplomatic files?" A whopping 84 per cent said YES? Does this suggest that Canucks have an appetite for the BIG issues of the day? Not a chance! The YAHOO news ticker recorded that the death of the ancient actor Leslie Neilson generated more stories here than did the WIKILEAKS document dump.
CBC News polled Canadians on the immanent release by WIKILEAKS of secret U.S. State Department cables. This screen shot was made at 11:45 PM November 28. There had been 64,995 unique votes [no multiple voting] and 84% were in favour of Internet publication.

So what did we learn from the Sunday document dumping? Well those of us who care about the machination's of the Fascist government in Beijing, learned a few things about China's illicit support for Iran's nuclear missile program. (A sampling of documents below). In February of 2010 Hilary Clinton's department sent warnings to the Chinese government that it was monitoring Chinese sales of critical components, such as missile gyroscopes. One of the offending firms named in the cable is "Hong Kong 4 Star Electronics Ltd." which is the H.K. registry of a Chinese company, 4 Star Electronics Ltd., located two hours from Shanghai. Another Chinese company named is "VibTel Industrial Co. Inc." A report commenting on what the cables indicate the Chinese are doing, written by CNN's David de Sola is here, with video. Since WIKILEAKS in under heavy attack today, and you cannot get through, I am posting the documents quoted by CNN:
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These two messages, SECSTATE, WASH D.C. to AMEMBASSY, BEIJING and AMEMBASSY MOSCOW are both dated February 2010. They detail the web of companies and nations involved (Russia, China and Malaysia) in providing Iran with the missiles it needs to throw a nuclear weapon and "rain fire down upon the Israeli Satan". Now that WIKILEAKS has revealed that virtually every nation in the region wishes the U.S.A. to destroy Iran's nuclear program, the U.S., Israel and Saudi Arabia should cooperate and get the job done.
These documents show how the U.S. and China play the game. The U.S. informs Beijing that another illicit sale of war material has been detected, and requests that the regime investigate itself. Beijing responds coyly with a request for more information.
A photo of the latest generation of surface to surface missile being deployed in Iran. The Persians are getting perilously close to being capable of making good on their threat to annihilate the State of Israel and all of its citizens.

I noticed that Sunday's dumping of documents by WIKILEAKS included a packet from the U.S. Consulate in Vancouver. I am planning to go through those soon. Who knows, maybe something juicy worth sharing here.

A BROAD STRATA OF SOCIETY - We're all terrorists!

I love this. We are all now so sensitive to Muslim sensitivities, that journos even strain to get the spelling correct when quoting the terrorist war cry - "Allahu akbar!" Back in the day it was rendered simply "Allah akbar". He's got a catchy name too - Mohamed O. Mohamud.

In response to yesterday's bulletins about Mohamed O. Mohamud, the so-called "Christmas Tree bomber" in Portland, Oregon, MICHELLE MALKIN today offers a pungent assemblage of something we in Vancouver rarely get to see... the mug shots of the Bad Boys and Bad Girls who commit heinous acts. In the criminal matter at hand, the perfunctory profile of those who seem committed to perpetrating large scale acts of terror in the U.S.A., Michelle plays with the irony of it all. EVERYBODY is surveilled, EVERYBODY is body scanned, EVERYBODY is a suspect until the real Muhammad or Muhammadine detonates, or impacts or immolates.


Way back in June of 2006 Ms. Malkin picked up on the squeamishness of Canada's RCMP who used the term BROAD STRATA OF SOCIETY to describe the composition of a terror cell. The Mounties always talk funny. They often call the criminal under arrest a "gentleman" and often refer to themselves as "members"... as in "The gentleman had his girlfriend's severed head in his hands when he was confronted and taken into custody by one of our members."
... A gallery of members of the 9/11 strike team who knocked out New York's Twin Towers + 1, levelled a wing of the Pentagon, but failed to destroy Mr. Bush's White House. This is NOT an official Law Enforcement poster. It is satire, and credit for this display of wry humour goes to Photoshop artiste David Lunde.

Ms. Malkin offers some interesting commentary on the now infamous "Broad Strata of Society", who are persistently trying to defeat U.S. Homeland Security. Check out her Nov. 27th article and updated rogue's gallery.

The War in Afghanistan - Let's Cut the Crap, Shall We?

A police constable from Milton, Ontario allows an Afghan police trainee to admire a Canadian manufactured assault rifle. Mr. Harper has decided to extend "the Mission" past 2011, but he assures us Canadian personnel will only be ...heh, heh, training the Afghanis. No more combat pay for the Mounties. No more risk of suicides in barracks and lawyers engorging themselves on PTSD claims.

James Fergusson recently put his balls in the cross-hairs of the Americans who control the orbiting PREDATOR and REAPER drone aircraft which target and eliminate Taliban guerrillas. He visited Chak, a town "just 40 miles" southwest of Kabul which is garrisoned, taxed and administered by the Taliban - less than an hour jeep drive to where Canadians have been training the other Afghanis to march and salute their national flag. In his exclusive report published in the British newspaper THE INDEPENDENT he has plenty to reveal and it will only take five minutes of your time to read. My favorite anecdote records the personal best of a Taliban commander who destroyed 81 NATO gasoline tanker trucks in a single night ambush.

The Chinese are plenty busy in Afghanistan.... busy scooping up the rights to natural resources. Selling small arms ammunition, grenades and unguided rockets to the Taliban is just a sideline for Beijing. The real money is in metals and minerals. The Associated Press has an interesting story this week of an ancient site which archaeologists are rushing to excavate, because its sitting on six million tons of copper, and the Chinese have the exclusive right to scoop and run. It will only take you another five minutes to read CHINESE MINE IN AFGHANISTAN . Mes Aynak is only 20 miles south of Kabul. The Afghani National government has deployed 1,500 police to guard the Chinese mine site, as heavy equipment is starting to arrive. That is 1,500 cops trained at the $$ expense of Canadian taxpayers, folks. A regiment of cops has been mobilized to protect a Chinese government investment in strategic metals. Why, you may wonder, don't the Chinese deploy their own security force in Mes Aynak, as many Western resource companies do worldwide? Why should we Canadian taxpayers train, arm and fund the weekly payroll for the security zone around the Chinese mine? Because we are suckers, and always have been. The Copper King and the Crocodile. 1,500 Afghan police are deployed to patrol a security zone around a single Chinese mine site in Afghanistan.

Ottawa dubs KABUL "a calmer area" - and silly media parrots the sticky ministerial handout.

Canadian reporters are desperately scrambling to fall into step with the latest iteration of a Tory Afghanistan policy. The snippet exhibited in yellow above, is taken from a CBC web site. (The story is developing so fast today, that a link is worthless here.) Mr. Harper's plan for an orderly retreat is shredded.... literally. Establishment historians (UC and UT careerists) - thirty years from now, will find that very sensitive file heavily "weeded". Mr. Harper has decided to employ a variant of America's early Vietnam War strategy, which saw the American MACV posturing as an advisory force, but in actuality "kicking Charlie's ass" when the CBS camera boys were not looking. Yesterday a Harper henchman, termed "an official spokesman" by gullible reporters, was sucking and blowing about the new "Mission" plan - to reduce the Canadian Expeditionary Force to 950 uniformed bodies - 750 cops, and 200 clerk typists, cooks, etc. I guess that means the "iconic" Tim Horton trailer and coffee mama's will have to fall back to Kabul.

Colonel Geoff Parker was blown up in Kabul earlier this year. Not only was he Canada's highest ranking officer killed by Afghan guerrillas, he was Canada's 145th death in this WAR. How much armour will we transfer from Kandahar to Kabul to protect the "training" mission? No fricking way is Renfrew of the Mounted going to sport around a kill zone like Kabul in a Toyota RAV.

So let's get this straight... when our boys were getting their asses chewed off a few years back, the public was, with good reason, outraged. So to reduce the mauling, our government placed a RUSH order (cost plus bribes) for South African armoured vehicles, and hired Ukrainian Antonov aircraft to lift our Leopard tanks into A-Stan, for a whopping $$$1,000,000 per flight - so that "our troops have everything they need to get the mission done". Now we are pulling out the infantry, the armour and the drones... and we are going to leave our boys and girls naked in Indian country???!!! Not a fricking chance. Mr. Harper, you can lie to your Tory Faithful but don't lie to us. You are offering this stuff up out of political desperation, and the pity is we don't have a patriot like Stauffenberg joining you at the map table. Everything about this war, oops "MISSION," has been kept SECRET. The number of Canadian wounded and maimed, the number of Canadians who gave up army careers (1000 plus) rather than be sent to Afghanistan, the number of enemy we have have killed and wounded, and the true dollar cost of this, the greatest federal boondoggle.

THE U.N. GRAPHIC WHICH EMBOLDENED THE HARPER GOVERNMENT : UPDATE DEC. 27, 2010

This is the confidential UNITED NATIONS graphic which helped convince Prime Minister Steven Harper to commit nearly 1000 Canadian cops to an extended "mission" in Afghanistan. The map purports to show the national capital Kabul in a "low risk" area. As my article points out, with examples, Kabul is not a low risk zone, and some Canadians federal cops are going to be sent home in plastic bags as the "incidents" accumulated in 2011- 2013. The WALL STREET JOURNAL which published this map today, has a full explanation on why this graphic is so deceptive. - WSJ Story.

Mr. Harper Still Wants to Play War - Happy Remembrance Day!

Well ram a stick up my ass and call me a sucker! Thanks a lot Mr. Harper. I really believed you would keep your word, and pull the Canadian Forces out of Afghanistan in 2011. You are just the liar your political enemies say you are. Just a low down liar. And you compound the lie by announcing your decision during Remembrance Week! What a bastard you are. To use Remembrance Week, when we as a nation traditionally set aside our political views, to take one day to mourn our war dead... you know that the media and the political parties will stand down, loath to upset the greying Legionnaires, because this is their week. What a rotten trick. If there was ever a time RPC should rise again and kick some Tory balls, this would be it. But since the Tory Lawyers, Harper's lawyers, squat on the rights to the REFORM and "ALLIANCE" brands, that just won't happen.

Thanks a lot for humiliating us Stephen. This is the most egregious about-face since Chretien reneged on his GST promise. I was one of those citizen suckers with the SUPPORT THE TROOPS magnet on my car and wearing the YELLOW RIBBON ball cap to the shopping mall. I was a fool who engaged students and friends with positive, practiced homilies about "The MISSION," refusing to admit what it really is, a rotten, hopeless WAR. A war we sacrificed hundreds of lives and $$billions of dollars in taxes for, because you play politics, day after bloody day. You know not the concept of SHAME.

"If I die in a Combat Zone, box me up and send me home." They have not "fallen". They are obliterated. Maple wrapped, but not ready for a closeup, these Canadians died because Mr. Chretien thought he could sell A-Stan as a "Just Cause" and Mr. Harper thinks it plays well to aging Canadians who have no values at all, but like to think they do. One of Canada's best writers, Carol Shields wrote: "We cannot live without our illusions." It's too true!
For a healthy dose of reality read Canadian Forces casualties in Afghanistan on Wikipedia.


I'm giving thought to posting in the Blog photos of what obliterated Canadian soldiers look like. Ever since the C.E.F. went to France in 1915 the media have cooperated with the censors on NOT publishing photos of our dead. I think it's time that changed. We are also not allowed to see what Afghanis look like when they've been torn up by Canadian rifles, 20mm canon and claymores. That too must change. As of November 2010 A-Stan is no longer a Canadian "Mission". It is Mr. Harper's WAR. Chretien started it, but Harper owns it now. I would dislike sitting with a lying Tory constituency organization in the run up to the next Federal election. I wouldn't want to be saddled with selling Stephen's shit. It is has taken one titanic Tory lie to convert me to the anti-war movement. We can best support our troops by repudiating the scoundrel in Ottawa, and supporting any candidate but a Tory.

These four middle aged Afghan women were stuffed into army uniform and assembled for a "Photo OP" in Kabul, Sept. 23, 2010. Notice the NATO soldier in the background. HER embarrassment is so excruciating she turns her face away from the camera. Notice the masks carved into the wooden wall. The photographer who composed this photo has a great sense of the ironic.

The face of the Afghanistan guerrilla. This man will fight until he is dead or crippled. He does not waste time comparing his combat pay to regular wages. He doesn't lose sleep over the fact that he will never receive medals or a monthly pension. He hates the NATO invader and will kill him, or his sons will pick up the Kalashnikov and finish the job for him. He has many friends, including the Chinese, the Pakistanis and the Iranians. He is never alone in his beliefs and he is not on a "Mission" governed by strict "rules of engagement". He is a warrior fighting for what he values. He has already won.

Now I will post this unhappy piece and go to the TV to watch the memorial service at 11AM.

Dogs of War - improvements to early 21st Century Lethality

DOGS OF WAR - a British S.A.S. NCO in England (face digitally masked) demonstrates a HALO descent with special trained camera dog. The dog is trained to run into Taliban bunkers and ambush points to sweep their position with a head mounted video camera. Officially eight dogs have been shot and killed by Taliban irregulars but the attrition rate of on the dogs is probably higher.

A fascinating story in THE GUARDIAN today. All the scrapers are copying and pasting it to their own sites, but you can read the original story (here) HALO jumping (High Altitude Low Opening) is a technique used predominantly in special operations for inserting spies, saboteurs or elite combat teams into hostile territory. Is there any part of Afghanistan that isn't hostile?

The Austrian version of dog insertion by HALO drop. The dog is of course on pressurized oxygen and is also given a thermal vest to prevent its core temperature from falling. There is not doubt that Canada has been sharing in the dog/man HALO experiment, but we will not be informed lest it become a domestic political issue.

Now for you Gameheads who found this Blog article by keyword searching "HALO," the video game. Here is an amusing photo I scraped. Source unknown.

VANCOUVER RECORDS IT'S FIRST CRYONIC SUSPENSION "PATIENT" - July 2010 - Mother frozen in hospital and shipped to Cryonic Suspension facility

Canada's governments have a long history of blocking debate on Cryonic Suspension - the freezing of whole bodies or heads of people who hope for resuscitation in the distant future. Our only exposure to the concept is Hollywood movies and the popular cartoon series FUTURAMA. The permafrost of Canadian public opinion (cheered on by Funeral Industry lobbyists) have prevented a few well intentioned Cryonics Societies from taking root and thriving here. Why so many years of mocking these groups?
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Cryonics have been satirized in this country for decades. Humour columnist Gary Lautens of the Toronto Star set the tone way back in 1964 when he advised prospective volunteers for Cryogenic suspension "Let me know if the light really goes out when you close the refrigerator door, eh?" Then an urban myth arose in 1967 claiming that Walt Disney had been "frozen". Not true, but the mockery grew intense. If memory serves, even CBC comedians Wayne and Shuster got in on the act. Funeral Directors nationwide enjoyed the joke. Well the real story today is that a few Canadian believers in the concept are refusing to be thwarted.

Vancouver Milestone - B.C.'s First Cryonic Suspension patient- July 9, 2010
At 1:30 AM July 3rd a Vancouver woman was found slumped in front of a PC. Perhaps she was surfing the Net as we all do late at night. Her husband phoned 911 and she was rushed to the Emergency at a nearby hospital. At 12 Noon she was moved to the ICU and given a brain scan. At 6:30 PM a physician pronounced her dead... and that ending was the start of a new life. The life of a long term cryonic "patient".

The quoted price was US$28,000, with an initial deposit of US$1250 required to set complex procedures in motion. This unplanned case (the family has never been a member of any Cryonic Society) was an imposition on the American Cryo-support team because they had to assemble on the July 4th long weekend holiday. The Vancouver family paid the initial deposit with a PayPal account and engaged the services of a cooperative Funeral Director. (The Funeral Industry is very hostile to the whole concept of cryonics.) The balance of the $28,000 fee was paid by bank transfer.

The patient's son, accompanied by the Funeral Director, were waiting in a room adjacent to the ICU until hospital staff declared his Mom legally dead. They rolled in a temporary coffin containing almost 80 pounds of dry ice, and removed her from the hospital. A few hours later she was sealed inside four body bags, each inside the next, and transferred to a sheet metal box. An additional 120 pounds of dry ice was added. The metal box was nested with thick Styrofoam sheeting inside an outer case made from West Fraser Plywood. The lady was stored until the Funeral Director could get the necessary paperwork from the U.S. Consulate. Properly sealed with a Customs declaration the coffin was transported to YVR on July 7 and loaded aboard a Delta Airlines flight to Detroit on July 8. The patient was entrusted to perpetual care in the U.S. because there is no service offered anywhere in Canada. Cryonic Suspension is outlawed here and all the Law permits is the transfer of a loved one to a foreign storage facility. Technical details on the suspension process can be read at the Cryonics Institute website. They trumpet this case as their "98th patient".
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This is the Cryogenic storage facility in the Michigan where British Columbia's first Cryogenic storage patient is resting. MRS. X died on July 3, 2010 in a Vancouver I.C.U. and was flown to Detroit on July 8. Her son arrived at the facility on July 9 and witnessed the two day produre as his mother was cooled and finally frozen for perpetual storage. The procedure cost - US$ 28,000.

Vancouver Cryonic Milestone -The transfer completed, the staff of the Cryogenic support team display the empty transfer case, custom built to Cryogenic standards, by a Vancouver Funeral Director. Note the Yellow label "HUMAN REMAINS" and "YVR".

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Vancouver Cryonic Milestone - A Cryonic Institute staff member displays the transfer case, shipped from YVR Vancouver, B.C. The patient's body was carefully preserved in 200 pounds of dry ice, resting inside four rubber body bags, a sheet metal coffin, Styroifoam and a plywood outer case.
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The CREMATION, INTERMENT AND FUNERAL SERVICES ACT (2004) outlaws the selling or even promotion of Cryonic services in this British Columbia. A local funeral business will be prosecuted if it even displays brochures on the premises. The ACT can be read here.
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The only advocacy for Cryonic services in Canada is undertaken by the few societies which exist here. The largest group meets in Toronto. Here in British Columbia the concept is totally thwarted and the Funeral Industry is ever vigilant. From time to time elected officials issue "Comfort Letters" to assure Cryonics advocates that their government is not picking on them. Here is an example signed by Minister Rich Coleman in 2002.
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POURING PEOPLE DOWN THE SEWER - COMING SOON TO "ECO-FRIENDLY" CITIES... PERHAPS YOURS

I have examined plenty of ghastly imagery in my time ... "horrors of war" footage, targets of assassinations, monstrous mutilations of clan enemies, and charred chunks of suicide bombers. All of it is repugnant and reprehensible. My reaction to atrocity is often sadness or outrage but even natural carnage becomes objectionable when men fail to show compassion. That was certainly the case when a series of photos which showed me bodies of Haitian earthquake victims being hauled to a landfill mixed with building rubble. Bucket loaders had scooped up corpses and concrete and poured them into dump trucks with no attempt to offer a moment of dignity for the dead, most of whom must have been very spiritual in life.

I had similar feelings of outrage last week as I read a story in the DAILY MAIL about growing interest in a chemical reduction process to get rid of human remains - a gruesome process known as RESOMATION. The cynical attempt of some to sell this outrage as an an "eco-friendly," progressive service to the public, is an insult to the intelligence of anyone who still has a caring bone left in their body. I haven't been this disturbed about callous trends in the Funeral Industry since my first reading of "Behind the Formaldehyde Curtain," extracted from Jessica Mitford's investigative book THE AMERICAN WAY OF DEATH.

You can read the entire DAILY MAIL article (here) or you can settle for all the "Who cares anyway!" responses to the piece which arose next day. Just tickle Uncle Google with a few key strokes and he'll point you to them.

Three grinning funeral "Directors" demonstrate an American version of a Resomation system. I would imagine their first exports will be to Mexican drug cartels, some of which are already know to dissolve their opponents in 45 gallon drums.

A human volunteer lays his body in stainless steel RESOMATION tank which will reduce his body to a bucket of sludge in less than two hours. Unlike the ceramic bathtub destroyed when it was used to dissolve a rival drug dealer's corpse in an episode of BREAKING BAD, this engineered process is guaranteed to destroy thousands of bodies maintenance free.

This bucket holds the sludge recovered after dissolving two large pigs. Dissolving a human being produces half as much sludge, but more guilt than any of us should be willing to bear.
You can watch a slide show of the process demonstrated (here). No, the company is not a subsidiary of I.G. Farbenindustrie. It's a proud American firm named CYCLEDLIFE.


THE FUNERAL INDUSTRY FLIES UNDER JUDICIAL RADAR

CANADIAN CRIMINAL CODE - "Dead Body"
"Section 182 (b) Every one who improperly or indecently interferes with or offers any indignity to a dead human body or human remains, whether buried or not, is guilty of an indictable offence and liable to imprisonment for a term not exceeding five years. R.S., c. C-34, s. 178."

This section of Canada's Criminal Code usually gets trotted out when gang bangers or other outlaws burn or scatter the bodies of people they've murdered. It's about time it was amended to deal with "Resomation" and other processes which may be concocted to make people vanish without trace, as they do in George Orwell's allegory of a world where living memory, identity and history disappear.

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Too many people seem to have come to the conclusion that life has no purpose or meaning. They are not burdened with a sense of responsibility, they feel no loyalty to a community, they have no personal goals, romance is a humbug, Art does not move them, reading is a bore, even raw pornography doesn't stir their flesh. Sadly they chose to forgo the 1.2 children that was their due. Since they have a sneaking suspicion no one will come to their funeral anyway, cremation has become the 'send off' of choice. Almost 75% of "the departed" in Greater Vancouver are now disposed of in the crematoriums. East Asian families are now permitted to burn their dead on an open air pyre located beside the Fraser River.

I have a passion for the past and I often share news of fresh archaeological discoveries with my son. We agree that human remains should be treated with dignity and respect. Always. When we examine the burial practices of past cultures we notice an emphasis on something of the eternal in the human spirit. Love, for instance, is an expression of the eternal and a recognition that we are not simply clever animals residing at the top of a food chain. When for instance we find human remains which have been carefully interred in a fashion which documents love in perpetuity (as below) we have to question our own resolve to do what is fitting and proper. "Would I do any less for those I love?"

The B.C. Government will punish any property owner who discovers aboriginal remains and fails to accord those remains their lawful due. It is very strange that respect for our own dead continues to erode and that we may reach a point where traditional burial and the provision for perpetual care disappears from our culture.

Although the family relationship of these adolescent remains are in dispute - a brother/sister, or a bonded couple, there is no denying the fact that their burial ceremonial was invested with a degree of love and loyalty that is rarely matched in our own time. I am overjoyed that their bodies were not left exposed to the jackals or the vultures, because their embrace is a promise that something of human existence, and our individual lives, is eternal. We can count on it.

The Final Word: My thanks to Sandy Chang, a student in Burnaby, B.C. who drew my attention to a Japanese book called THE CATALOGUE OF DEATH which includes a section on plans or current practices for disposing of the unwanted dead. This illustration (from the Taiwan edition of the book) shows how Swedes are getting the job done. The human sludge is not washed down the drain but instead used for garden fertilizer. I like how the machine has an earth friendly" recyle" logo.