samkorn's blog

Syrian president Bashar Assad repeatedly blames the massacres of his people on "terrorists", even as his army continues to indiscriminately shell and bombard Syrian population centres, and armed thugs loyal to his regime kill civilians almost at will.

Official United Nations sources put the death toll in the year-old Syrian uprising at more than 9,000, which includes hundreds of innocent women and children. Two-hundred thousand terrified Syrian civilians have already been displaced from their homes, and 30,000 have fled for their lives to neighbouring Jordan, Lebanon, and Syria. Over 1,000,000 Syrians are facing the imminent threat of hunger and starvation.

In order to stem the tide of people trying to leave the country, Syrian soldiers have apparently planted landmines along border areas, which will likely result in even more fatalities.

In a recent American television interview with Barbara Walters, President Assad pretended there was nothing of any substance really going on in Syria, denied any wrongdoing and claimed that anybody who would kill his own citizens must be "crazy".

Terrorism is defined as being the use of force or violence by a person or group against people or property with the intention of intimidating, co-ercing, causing terror and fear, for ideological and/or political reasons.

Hence, by his own admission and by definition, Bashar Assad, his cohorts and his military have either gone completely mad and/or are committing what seem to be vile acts of terror against the Syrian populace.

Who, therefore, are the REAL terrorists in this tragic situation? Well, if it walks like a duck, looks like a duck, and quacks like a duck, then....

Re: "B.C. Woman Arrested for 18 Year-old Ontario Child Abduction Case"; The Gazette: Dec.2, 2011




Congratulations are NOT in order for Canadian Police who, only after receiving a tip from the Missing Children's Society of Canada, were finally able to arrest Patricia O'Byrne on Vancouver Island for having kidnapped her baby daughter from Toronto in 1993.

That O'Byrne was able to hide in plain sight for 18 years, while she worked for the government under an assumed identity and selfishly raised the child without it's father, suggests that Canadian law enforcement doesn't take parental kidnappings committed by mothers very seriously. Hardly any time, therefore, is spent by Canadian cops investigating such cases.

Also at fault for such family ordeals, which almost always leave an indelible mark on the kidnapped children not to mention other family members, is the apparent inability of the Canadian justice system to come down hard on kidnapping mothers. While sentencing fathers to some serious jail time if convicted of such a crime, Canadian crown prosecutors and criminal court judges rarely apply the same criteria to women, and almost always let offending mothers off with only the proverbial slap on the wrist.

Only when women are finally treated EQUALLY to men by our revered justice system and given similar prison sentences, will deterrence be established and this awful crime be nipped in the bud. Perhaps Ontario justice officials now handling this case in Toronto should take a long, hard look at Canadian legal jurisprudence established in Quebec in 2001, when a Montreal man was sentenced to a 6-year jail term for having kidnapped his son for 17 years.

Canadian women have always clamored for equality with men in all walks of life; let's finally give them a taste of equal justice for heaven's sake!

Quebec's outspoken and litigious Anglo-rights crusader, and the English community's so-called knight in shining armour, seems to have been knocked off his trusty white charger by a mere legal technicality.

Almost 15 years after violently assaulting pedestrian Wayne Johnson in a local road-rage incident on December 21, 1996, Montreal lawyer and former Alliance Quebec president, Brent Tyler was finally disbarred by the Quebec Bar Association.

Ironically, Tyler's disbarment stems NOT from his resulting 1997 criminal conviction for assault, but rather from a recent and minor procedural issue of not completing required legal refresher training.

Nevertheless, it would be somewhat surprising if Mr. Tyler's 1996 assault victim doesn't derive some measure of "schadenfreude" at this latest bit of news about his former adversary. For all we know, Mr. Johnson might even feel a well-deserved, final sense of closure about the entire matter.

In the meantime, however, it looks as if Montreal and it's surrounding English and ethnic population will just have to find themselves a new and unblemished champion to fight their ongoing legal battles against those unjust and discriminating Quebec language laws.

Re: "Fight for Justice"; Montreal Gazette; July 16, 2011.


It's no wonder that some of the 1,600 fraud victims of the $130 Million Mount Real Ponzi scheme feel that they have been neglected by the media - and the justice system.

Vincent Lacroix of Norbourg and Earl Jones, after extensive media coverage into both stories, have long already been tried, convicted and sentenced to jail terms for defrauding thousands of other Quebec investors. The 9,200 Norbourg fraud victims have already begun to receive financial compensation from the AMF, or Authorite des Marches Financieres of Quebec for their losses. The Earl Jones investors already have a class-action lawsuit authorized and underway against Earl Jones and his bank, RBC (Royal Bank of Canada).

Yet, it has taken over two and a half years just to have a Quebec Court judge hear, in June of 2011, the merits of a civil class-action lawsuit against Mount Real Corp. and several other co-defendants.

And what about possible criminal charges against CEO Lino Matteo, executives and financial planners of Mount Real Corp.? Well, you can certainly forget about that, at least for the immediate time being. The RCMP (Royal Canadian Mounted Police) has said that they have not opened an investigation into Mount Real's "bankruptcy" in 2005 because of the "compexity of the case." When contacted in the past, neither the SPCUM (Montreal Police) nor the Surete du Quebec (Quebec Provincial Police) were aware of having any ongoing files with respect to the Mount Real case either.

Is all of this a de facto admission that white-collar crooks are smarter than the cops, or simply that the police are incompetent in such cases? Or is the real reason for police inaction in the Mount Real file more insidious; could these criminals possibly have friends in high places, to whom they have perhaps made political party or other financial donations?

Nonetheless, the incredible length of time it seems to be taking to get...

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As Syrian President Bashar Assad continues to torture and kill his citizens, including children, the best that Canada and the U.S.A. can come up with are delicately-worded suggestions of possible sanctions,the diplomatic equivalent of a slap on the wrist.

Whereas the United States has previously actively advocated for regime change in Egypt and Libya, it hasn't even come close to doing the same for Syria, citing "strategic interests" in the area. Canada is, as usual, echoing official U.S. rhetoric on the matter.

Could the real reason behind official Canadian and American foot-dragging on Syria be that we might have skeletons of our own hiding in our closets? Would it possibly have anything to do with the American program of "Rendition", where enemy combatants and possible terror suspects were illegally flown to Syria and other like-minded countries? There they would be aggressively interrogated by local proxies using any means necessary, including torture, to extract information vital to U.S. and Western interests.

A good case in point is Ottawa's Maher Arar who, with the help and tacit approval of Canadian authorities, was intercepted in the U.S. and flown by the Americans to Syria, where he was imprisoned and tortured for one year. Cleared of any wrongdoing later in Canada, Arar was eventually awarded $10 million in damages by the Canadian government.

The fact that Canada and the U.S. continue to idly stand by and sit on the fence while these terrible events unfold in Syria (Human Rights groups estimate that 1,300 Syrians have been killed so far), is both scandalous and shameful.