Forget about genocide in Darfur...

Or whether Iran gets nuclear weapons... the European Union has bigger fish to fry.

-- BRUSSELS, Belgium -- The European Commission said Tuesday it will take Finland to court again — and ask for it to pay a €2 million (US$2.8 million) penalty, plus daily fines — for failing to ban chewing tobacco in the Swedish-speaking Aland Islands.

European regulators said all oral tobacco — whether chewing tobacco or snus — is dangerous because it contains "particularly large quantities" of cancer-causing chemicals.

Only Sweden has an exemption to an EU ban on the smokeless tobacco called snus that is usually stuck under the upper lip.

Taliban Jack channels Dirty Harry

Sure Jack... you kick him while he's down, he's an easier target... but where's the sport in that?

-- OTTAWA -- “What effectively has happened is the gift of a majority government has been given by that party (the Liberals) to Mr. Harper.”

“It's going to be very symbolic to watch our members rise in the House — willing to put their jobs, their principles, their commitments on the line — and then to watch the official opposition sit it out.”

Uh, Jacko... you're confusing "symbolic" with "opportunistic" and, more to the point, "totally ineffective."

But hey... the show must go on.

Calling Big Brother

In today's geeky, gadget filled world... you can run, but good luck with that hiding thing.

For teenagers and 20-somethings, who are fond of sharing their comings and goings on the Internet, youth-oriented services like Loopt and Buddy Beacon are a natural next step.

Sam Altman, the 22-year-old co-founder of Loopt, said he came up with the idea in early 2005 when he walked out of a lecture hall at Stanford.

“Two hundred students all pulled out their cellphones, called someone and said, ‘Where are you?’ ” he said. “People want to connect.”

If G.P.S. made it harder to get lost, new cellphone services are now making it harder to hide.

And yeah... I disabled GPS on my phone, shortly after I got it.

Ontario Liberals have a theory...

Bringing private schools under the aegis of the public system would be a bad thing.

The controversy began Wednesday at a Burger King in Montreal's ethnically diverse north end, where a 14-year-old Pearson student was hit by an ice cube tossed by a group of girls from Henri Bourassa.

It seems to me... that the more you encourage people to stay in their own little worlds... the more you tend to foster that "us and them" mentality.

For example, here's a couple of schools in Quebec that are apparently populated mostly along racial lines... and it's starting to look like a war zone

The girl, who is white, has admitted to reacting with a racial slur.

A group of about 15 girls, most of them black, later jumped the student and her friend, punching and kicking her repeatedly in a park. Her beating was filmed and posted on YouTube.

The best solution is one system... of justice and education... for everyone.

Or the inevitable result will be enmity and chaos.

Here's how Dalton's Liberals...

Have been improving health care in Hastings, Northumberland and Prince Edward Counties...

The South East Local Health Integration Network says it is on target to compile a comprehensive list of residents in need of a family physician and to have it operational by the spring.

To date, however, the list hasn't moved past the planning stage.

Lemme see if I understand what's going on here... they're thinking about compiling a list of people who don't have a family doctor. Apparently though... that's a pretty tough nut to crack.

Yeah... we're still talking about making the list.

Brenda Snider, manager of volunteer services with Volunteer and Information Quinte, said she is still "very interested" in working on the project. Though the interest is there there have been difficulties in organizing a meeting among the interested groups due to scheduling conflicts, she said.

"We're just waiting for a meeting," Snider said. "I think it's very, very important that we all sit down and see what can be done."

Thank you very much, Premier McSlippery.

Technorati Tags: Dalton McGuinty, Local Health Integration Network, fiberal smoke and mirrors

Live by the sword...

Die like a dog in the street.

-- TORONTO -- A convicted drug dealer gunned down on a busy residential street in the middle of the day was once investigated for involvement in the murder of Riverdale teen Jane Creba.

Boateng had just finished visting a friend at the Don Jail on Broadview and Gerrard on Sunday when he was confronted on a nearby street and shot in the chest.

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RELATED: Where's my National SUV Registry?

A 19-year-old was run down and killed after an early morning confrontation between two groups in an airport-area bar and grill spilled out into a parking lot.

"It appears that this guy was run down intentionally," said Sgt. Paul Lobsinger of traffic services. "The deceased stands in front of the vehicle, and the guy makes a conscious decision to run him over."

The victim has been identified as Mark Shaba of Etobicoke.

Gagan Deep Singh, 25 of Mississauga, has been charged with impaired driving causing death, criminal negligence causing death, and fail to stop after an accident causing death.

Now who wouldn't be impressed...

By the latest feeble Fiberal tactic...

If the Liberal amendment were to be approved by Parliament, the government would fall and an election would be triggered.

However, it looks like the amendment has been carefully crafted to ensure that the Liberals will be the only party supporting the amendment, guaranteeing the government won't fall just yet.

Thank you, Stephane "You can't get there from here" Dion.

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RELATED: There's blood in the water...

The morning of Aug. 31, 1987, the chief organizer for the federal Liberal youth in Quebec called a press conference in Montreal to announce publicly what Grits everywhere were saying in private -- John Turner was a lost cause as party leader and should resign.

"Canadians have never followed weak, indecisive and inconsistent leaders," the organizer said. "We have to save the party."

That organizer was Denis Coderre, one of the Liberal MPs now stoking the fires of discontent threatening to engulf the Liberals' latest master of misfortune, Stephane Dion.

No one has called a press conference yet to demand Dion's resignation for "weak, indecisive and inconsistent" leadership, but don't rule it out.

The Brothers Grimm...

Would be very proud of Naomi Wolf...

I further reminded her that the Bush Administration would be leaving in fewer than 460 days never to return.

With this in mind, I asked her if she honestly believed that she and the other authors I mentioned would be arrested and imprisoned. Naomi Wolf did not want to answer my question.

She began by talking about Germany in 1931-1932...

Technorati Tags: Naomi Wolf, leftbot lunacy, inconvenient truth

We could try using volunteers...

From Greenpeace instead... but I'm not sure how that'd work out... (well, actually I am).

-- AFGHANISTAN -- Canada's diplomats in Kabul and visiting high-value targets like Prime Minister Stephen Harper are protected by a group of heavily armed gunmen hired by Saladin Security, a British firm with a long history of secretive and clandestine operations.

Similarly... that Liberal Party sponsored experiment with flower-toting employees... had some rather grisly consequences.

Department of Foreign Affairs officials in Ottawa are tight-lipped about the deal struck with Saladin, whose gun-toting employees provide perimeter security, operate checkpoints, serve as bodyguards and form a heavily armed rapid-reaction force designed to move quickly to thwart an attempted kidnapping and rescue survivors of suicide attacks or car-bombings in Kabul.

As for journalists using the very loaded words, "secretive and clandestine", well... that'd be part of keeping the folks they're guarding... what's the word I'm looking for here?

Oh yeah... alive.

It's a war zone folks... suck it up.

Technorati Tags: Saladin Security, Foreign Affairs, suckass political correctness

Neutral is such a vague word

Following in the footsteps of France... Switzerland leans towards tightening up it's immigration policy.

-- GENEVA -- A nationalist party rode an anti-immigrant wave Sunday to the best showing of any party in parliamentary elections since World War I, while the Greens made gains by appealing to environmental concerns, according to projections.

It looks like we're not talking baby steps here either.

In one of the most bitter political campaigns in memory in this usually tolerant Alpine nation, the Swiss People's Party called for a law to throw out entire immigrant families if a child violates national laws.

So, who are these guys and what kind of weight are they throwing around here?

The party became the largest in Switzerland four years ago under the leadership of charismatic billionaire Christoph Blocher.

It was projected to win about 28.8 per cent of the vote, or 62 seats in the lower house -- the largest share of seats any party has won since Switzerland's proportional voting system began in 1919.

Gonna be some sweet deals...

On housing... in North Waziristan.

-- PESHAWAR, 21 October 2007 (IRIN) -- After over a week of fierce fighting in and around the town of Mirali, in Pakistan's tribal North Waziristan Agency, lying along the country's mountainous north-western border with Afghanistan, some semblance of normal life is returning slowly.

But the majority of the 80,000 people who have fled Mirali and areas around it as a result of the latest fighting have still not returned, according to the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan (HRCP) in the neighbouring North West Frontier Province (NWFP).

Perhaps Osama miscalculated a little when he called for jihad on Pervez Musharraf.

If you're gonna back a guy into a corner, maybe you should pick on someone who doesn't have his own military juggernaut on 24/7 combat alert.

The Pakistan military closed off roads leading into North Waziristan at the height of fighting, effectively cutting off the area from the rest of the country.

Pakistan army spokesman Major-General Waheed Arshad said 200 people had been killed in the clashes, including 45 soldiers and 150 militants. There has been no official estimate on the number of civilian casualties.

And it looks like Pervez is more than a little ticked off.

"We have seen plenty of fighting in our lifetimes, but never anything like the aerial bombardment of the last week."

"Waziristan is no longer a place where one can safely bring up children," said farmer Mohammad Arshad.

Geez... I'll have to keep that in mind.

Technorati Tags: Pervez Musharraf, North Waziristan, payback is a bitch

Great news for Albertans

Coming soon to a suburban neighbourhood... near you.

-- CALGARY -- Canada's youngest convicted multiple murderer could qualify for a rarely used optional sentence when she learns her fate in southern Alberta this week, nearly three months after being found guilty of slaughtering her parents and little brother.

The girl, who turned 14 in prison on Sunday and can't be identified, may be a candidate for the Intensive Rehabilitative Custody and Supervision sentence (IRCS).

Part of the Youth Criminal Justice Act, it's designed to be an alternative for serious, violent offenders and would break up her sentence between the young offender centre, a forensic psychiatric hospital, a group home and finally back into the community.

I'm sure you remember this poor little princess...

When her five-week trial concluded in July, a jury took only a couple hours to find her guilty on all three counts of first-degree murder in the stabbing and slashing deaths of her mother, father and eight-year-old brother in their suburban Medicine Hat home in April 2006.

Because she was only 12 at the time of the killings, she faces a maximum sentence of 10 years, with no more than six spent in custody.

There is no minimum sentence.

Hey ladies...

Are you looking for a unique educational opportunity?

-- RIYADH, Saudi Arabia -- King Abdullah laid the cornerstone Sunday for a new coed science and technology university the government hopes will attract students from around the world.

KAUST will be the first public university in the kingdom to educate both male and female students.

Of course, none of the female students will be allowed to drive a car to get there... so there had better be some kickass public transit too.

Saudi Oil Minister Ali al-Naimi, who was in charge of developing KAUST, said the university will look beyond national borders to become "an international university that extends its hands and opens its doors to all talented scientists, distinguished researchers and promising students from the kingdom and from all the countries of the world."

It was not immediately clear whether the two sexes would attend classes side-by-side or be separated into groups.

No word yet either, on whether the school cafeteria will be serving bacon and eggs.

Technorati Tags: KAUST, halal menu, RIYADH, Saudi Arabia

By this time next year, these scummers...

Will be begging to be tasered...

The government is to consider allowing staff at young offenders institutions in England and Wales to use batons to control children as young as 15.

Staff are currently allowed to use them only against those aged 18 and over but that policy is to be reviewed.

It seems "suckass political correctness" is allowing the tail to "wag the dog" in British institutions.

Hopefully... that's gonna change.

Glyn Travis, assistant general secretary of the Prison Officers Association (POA), told BBC Radio Five Live that officers often got hurt.

"The injuries vary from broken noses, compressed fractures of cheekbones, fractured eye sockets, ears being bitten off, pens being shoved through people's faces, slashes," Mr Travis said.

Colin Moses, national chairman of the POA, added: "What we want is the deterrent to defend ourselves and defend those in our charge.

"And currently we have no deterrent to intervene."

In one case, staff had to intervene when a group of teenagers was trying to kick an inmate to death.

Of course, we have to have the obligatory "root causes" argle-bargle.

The director of the Howard League for Penal Reform said prisons had created their own problems by keeping young people cooped up indoors without exercise.

"I sympathise with [prison] staff, but they've got to try talking to the children. They've got to increase the activities inside the prisons."

Hey, I'm good with that... how about a daily program of turning big rocks into gravel?

Let's do it for the children.

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RELATED: Young offender, my ass...

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LAST WORD: A kinder, gentler world... for some

In the staff room, we relaxed with fresh fruit, fresh brewed coffee, croissants (still warm from the oven), and fresh pastry.

Everyone agreed on the need for more spending on education. More teaching assistants, more smaller classes, more free nutritious food, and, of course, more administration to oversee this all, are this weeks final solution.

After we all agreed to spend more other people’s money, we settled into a nice discussion on good retirement locations in rural ontario, those quite places that are so pleasantly far from Toronto.

Technorati Tags: taser, tonfa stick, suckass political correctness

Bad news for smack addicts...

And their Taliban overlords.

-- KABUL, Afghanistan -- U.S.-led coalition soldiers and Afghan forces killed about 50 militants in two days of major fighting near a Taliban-controlled town in southern Afghanistan’s poppy-growing belt, officials Saturday.

Musa Qala has been in control of Taliban fighters ever since and is in the heart of the world’s largest poppy-growing region.

Boy... I sure hope this doesn't have a major impact on the leftbot sponsored safe-injection sites.

U.S. Gen. Dan McNeill, the commander of NATO forces in Afghanistan, said this week that the Taliban fund between 20% and 40% of their militant operations through opium poppies.

Afghanistan is the world’s largest producer of opium, the main ingredient in heroin.

We don't want anyone to miss their daily fix.

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RELATED: A little less Ecstasy...

For your Toronto teen.

An Ecstasy ring has been smashed after police raided a Scarborough home yesterday, seizing 2 million pills in a massive drug haul that could be worth up to $40 million.

The seizure from the Pipers Green Ave. home in the McCowan Rd.-Finch Ave. E. area is almost equal to all of the Ecstasy that Toronto police seized last year.

Shi Yan, 31, Ma Wei Qion, 29, Jian Yao Quan, 20, Wu Shu Qiang, 37, all of Toronto, and Ling Wan Shan, 50, of Brooklyn, N.Y., face numerous narcotics-related charges.

Technorati Tags: Musa Qala, opium poppies, heroin

You call it the Land Titles Registry

Hazel Hill and the Six Nations Confederacy label it "criminal acts by the Crown."

-- OSHWEKEN, ONT. -- On Wednesday, provincial negotiator Murray Coolican told Confederacy representatives that it is illegal for the recently created Haudenosaunee Development Institute to extract concessions or payments from private landowners.

You think you actually own the land your house sits on? Maybe you shouldn't be taking that for granted.

Developer Mr. Corrado called the Coolican statement "encouraging," but said he would have preferred it to come from Premier Dalton McGuinty or Aboriginal Affairs Minister David Ramsay.

"We'll see if they put their money where their mouth is and they defend land titles."

Sure... because Dalton has been such a standup guy about about aboriginal terrorism in the past, huh?

If you're gonna dream... it may as well be in technicolour.

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FROM THE COMMENTS:

"The Indian Act should be amended so that no aboriginal can ever hold legal title to any property since they may choose to sell it against the wishes of their progeny a hundred years hence."

Here's another shocker...

Sane people sometimes have a problem working for crazy people...

Iran's chief negotiator with the West over Tehran's nuclear programme, Ali Larijani, has resigned.

Mr Larijani had differences with the president over how to proceed with the negotiations, correspondents say.

Apparently Mr Larijani is more concerned about Tehran being turned into a puddle of blackened, smoking, molten glass... than appeasing Madman Ahmadinejad's invisible friend, the "Hidden Imam."

Mr Larijani has favoured further negotiations with the West over Iran's uranium enrichment programme, as opposed to the president's more hard-line approach, our correspondent says.

Which is code for, "How far away do I have to move my family... in order to clear the imminent lethal strike zone?"

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LAST WORD: If Iran wants to be dealt in...

They better make sure they've got the chips.

“The United States joins other nations in sending a clear message: We will not allow Iran to have a nuclear weapon.”

David Makovsky, a senior fellow at the Washington Institute who moderated a panel discussion before and after Mr. Cheney’s speech, said the vice president also seemed to draw a new red line when, instead of saying it is “not acceptable” for Iran to have a nuclear weapon, he said the world “will not allow” it.

“The first is a condition,” Mr. Makovsky said. “The second is a commitment.”

Technorati Tags: Ali Larijani, nuclear weapon, flat, black, glows in the dark

And awkward, lumbering Hagrid...

Had a bit of a problem with debilitating substance abuse.

-- NEW YORK -- British author J.K. Rowling has outed one of the main characters of her best-selling Harry Potter series, telling fans in New York that the wizard Albus Dumbledore, head of Hogwarts school, is gay.

Speaking at Carnegie Hall on Friday night in her first U.S. tour in seven years, Rowling confirmed what some fans had always suspected -- that she "always thought Dumbledore was gay."

The woman's already made, what... $1.12 billion dollars... but she's just gotta keep bangin' on the pump handle? Sheesh.

Apparently though... what a character in a much-loved children's book does with their genitals... is a pretty big deal to some folks.

The audience reportedly fell silent after the admission -- then erupted into applause. Rowling, 42, said if she had known that would be the response, she would have revealed her thoughts on Dumbledore earlier.

Technorati Tags: J.K. Rowling, Albus Dumbledore, suckass political correctness

We're gonna have a party!

"We'll celebrate it by stealing each other's money, flushing it down the toilet -- then screwing Liona Boyd!"

Slaughter in Surrey

I was sure glad to hear the other day... about the dropping homicide rate across Canada.

-- SURREY, B.C. -- An RCMP homicide team was investigating a mass murder Friday night with up to six people dead in an apartment building.

"We're looking at perhaps a very dramatic homicide scene with as many as six dead," said Sgt Morrow.

We're no Johannesburg... but apparently some folks from BC are looking to "kick it up a notch."

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UPDATE: Well... it doesn't look like an accident

-- SURREY, B.C. -- The RCMP says the six people found dead in a Surrey, B.C. apartment Friday are all males and the incident does not appear to have been a random act of violence.

Corporal Dale Carr of the integrated homicide investigation team told a news conference outside the building Saturday that the victims appear to have been targeted.

He described the scene as grisly and said the team is still trying to identify the victims.

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FROM THE COMMENTS:

"I used to live there and my wife was the neighbourhood police contact for "Blockwatch". We never had any crime in our neighbourhood, and my wife complimented the young RCMP Constable on their good work."

"He said, ruefully, that the reason for the lack of petty crime in our area was that one of the houses at the end of our street was home to one of the biggest EI gangs in the Lower Mainland and criminal elements knew better than to try any activities on their turf."