Excited Delirium

Stories about Excited Delirium, the Shock Economy and a little fiction here and there.

Category Archives: police

London Ontario: Home of the Intolerant

London, Ontario has done what no other city could do:  be the first city in Canada to boot Occupiers from public property.

What a shame.

The question that will be on everyone’s minds:  what’s next?

Truth be told, I wasn’t sure about the claim to occupy in this small south-western Ontario town, but the reality is this:  those that run the city keep pushing ahead with boondoggles that are going to (a) break the election promises of Joe Fontana and (b) keep wasting taxpayer dollars.

So, in answer to my own question, ‘what’s next’:  we have to continue to send the message that this kind of waste and crony capitalism is unacceptable.

#occupywallstreet grows while MSM misses the message

A massive union in the US – the New York Transit Workers Union – has just voted to join the massive and growing protests related to #occupywallstreet in New York.

This after there were voices saying that the NYPD may stop the violent arrests of protesters as the anti-Wall Street movement grows.

I’ve seen a few comments about the #occupywallstreet campaign, but the most obvious effort has been with Keith Olbermann, who of course, has been the only ‘mainstreamer’ to comment on the lack of commentary on the situation:


What do you think?

Is the protest being ignored?

New Market Models

We desparately need a discussion about new market models that will actually work in the wake of the post-20th century debt crisis.

Greece, Spain, Ireland, Portugal and now maybe even the US all teeter on the brink of economic ruin in the wake of debt piled on debt piled on debt.

When defaults are finally declared, the resulting cost spiral will inflate the price of everything from shoes to corn to electricity to books to wheels for your car.  The shock may be moderate at first, but eventually we’ll all have fewer dollars in our pockets just as we try to survive.

Most of this debt has been accumulated for one thing:  the security state.

The security state consists of several expenditures:

  • to finance the act of unnecessary wars;
  • to fund the monitoring and control of all people with baseless crimes so that fees and levies can be imposed at a whim; and to
  • to punish and incarcerate citizens when these most basic crimes exceed a even more basic level of tolerance according to our dictators.

In Canada, we’re spending anywhere from $50 to $100 billion PER YEAR on the security state and military infrastructure, and yet we’re officially only fighting in one ‘war’ (Afghanistan).  Why are we wasting so much money – OUR taxpayer dollars – on something that’s so incredibly unproductive?

Iceland seems to have gone in the right direction by telling bankers and the IMF to go F*** themselves.

Ultimately, we need a new approach to new market models.

Eric Blair of alt-market.com interviews Brandon Smith in this piece on Alternative Markets at Activist Post where he shares some of these ideas. The basic definition of an alternative market:

… it is essentially any method of trade outside the establishment-controlled economy. It could be based on the barter of goods and skills, or the proliferation of precious metals to break our dependence on the fiat dollar (or Federal Reserve Note), etc. It could be a network of people across a county or state, or, an agreement between two friends.

And some thoughts about why alternative markets are labeled as underground or black markets around the world:

They are desperate, and I do mean DESPERATE, to keep us from developing our own private economies. If we are successful, we will no longer be in the position of dependency on the dollar or the sham economy. When it implodes, we will be relatively unfazed, and certainly not tearing each other apart. Meaning, their rationalization for martial law goes straight down the drain. The thought of that possibility really pisses them off…

But would alternative markets be enough when our governments are out of control, paying their friends and military buddies off with our money?

Probably not.  So we will also need a Declaration of Debt Independence.  It’s a basic concept that’s about to catch on like wild fire as everyone who’s not in control feels the effects of ‘austerity measures’:  you write into your Constitution (assuming you have one) that the government is not allowed to issue debt exceeding a certain percentage of your GDP (which should be redefined to capture the cost of environmental degradation and other borrowing from future generations), but to also identify that no government would ever be allowed to spend more than 3 or 5% of their GDP on defense, security and military spending (I would also suggest that this include prisons and other forms of incarceration).

At no point should any citizen’s government be borrowing money from bankers when they should be living within their means.  We should be investing in services for our children, not borrowing from their future in a failing effort to cork our insatiable desire for crap.

Public budgets should be for public good:  education, health, parks, trees, the environment, investment in the future, regulation and a sturdy and reliable justice system.

Another alternative market model would be extremely feasible if we owned the Internet, but we’re at risk of losing that too under the guise of security, protection from make-believe hackers and terrorists and porn sharks and other freaks that apparently lurk on every digital corner.  At some point in the future, we should expect the ‘Wild Internet of the West’ to be shut down in favour of a controlled Internet that’s no more illuminating and accessible than TV is today.

This would take a lot of work but more importantly, money.  I’ve been advocating some form of fund-raising effort for some time and would still be at the front of the line if someone were to say they were ready as well.

I can’t do it alone.

If we move on any of the above – and we really have to – hard times will be on their way, but we must stop living beyond our means and we have to shake off the bonds that are being placed our basic rights to communicate, participate and emancipate our day-to-day lives.

So … who’s on board?

Toronto G20 Use of Agent Provocateurs

This goes in the ‘no s7!t’ pile of obvious conclusions about what happened last year during the G20 conference in Toronto, but it’s still worth reporting to the general public that what went down last year was just plain wrong.

Once again, we see that fascism is alive and well in Canada and 40% of our fellow citizens voted for this!

MayDay 2011: Alice Klein of NOW Toronto Encourages Us to Shake Off Cliches

Alice Klein wrote a piece in NOW Toronto this past week encouraging all of us to accept the fact that in this election, the stakes are extremely high and that the game has definitely changed.

She reminds us that it’s not about voting your passion, but voting for that party that will unseat the Conservative government and push them out of as many ridings as possible.

She’s behind Project Democracy, but there are other projects as well (copied from the Project Democracy site):

  • Avaaz The campaigning community bringing people-powered politics to decision-making worldwide
  • Lead Now Brings generations of Canadians together to take action for our future and hold politicians accountable.
  • Swing 33 Donate strategically in 33 ridings to defeat Harper.
  • Pair Vote – Vote Swapping Support your preferred party while also stopping Harper
  • Catch 22 Campaign A grassroots effort to help defeat the Conservative government in 22 key ridings.
  • The Environment is my Voting Issue Facebook Group An action-oriented Facebook group aimed at holding politicians accountable for their votes on environment issues.
  • Department of Culture A community of Canadian artists, arts professionals and cultural workers concerned about ensuring the social and cultural health and prosperity of our nation in the face of a Federal Government that is aggressively undermining Canadian values.
  • Fair Vote Canada – On August 1, 2000, a group of concerned citizens formed Fair Vote Canada (FVC) with the aim of building a nationwide campaign for voting system reform. We envisioned FVC as a multi-partisan, citizen-based campaign bringing together people from all parts of the country, all walks of life and all points on the political spectrum. Today FVC has members in all provinces and approximately 20 local and regional chapters.

Project Democracy is exciting because it focuses on helping voters get up to date polling data related to their riding.  In many ‘strategic voting’ ridings, the past favours the Liberals, but since the Liberals are sliding in the polls, should we really be electing someone from the past or someone from the future?  I’ve signed up for their email to get riding updates, so I’ll post more information as it comes to my in-basket.

Finally, I can’t repeat this often enough:  you can contact pretty much any riding and help them with calls, even if you’re not from that area.  Human voices are substantially more valuable to campaigners as opposed to those awful ‘robo-calls’ and they remind voters that this is an election about the future of all people in Canada.  Of course, consider your riding and the ridings that are immediately around you as opposed to those that are across the continent!

Harper: “Don’t Shoot, We Surrender”

Stephen Harper has surrendered Canadian sovereignty to the Americans.

What’s that?  Where was all the fanfare and declarations about it?

That’s right … there were none.

A couple of weeks ago, the “Harper Government” has surrendered Canada’s sovereignty in the event of civil emergencies.  In essence, Steve has bought himself a back-up plan for when Canadians get really pissed off and decide to get rid of ‘the Harper Government’.  All he has to do is click a button and American troops (and likely a lot of Blackwater goons) come storming across the border to save his butt.

Feedback from the Council of Canadians sums it up nicely:

“It’s kind of a trend when it comes to issues of Canada-U.S. relations and contentious issues like military integration. We see that this government is reluctant to disclose information to Canadians that is readily available on American and Mexican websites,” said Stuart Trew, a researcher with the Council of Canadians.

Trew said there is potential for the agreement to militarize civilian responses to emergency incidents. He noted that work is also underway for the two nations to put in place a joint plan to protect common infrastructure such as roadways and oil pipelines.

“Are we going to see (U.S.) troops on our soil for minor potential threats to a pipeline or a road?” he asked.

Trew also noted the U.S. military does not allow its soldiers to operate under foreign command so there are questions about who controls American forces if they are requested for service in Canada. “We don’t know the answers because the government doesn’t want to even announce the plan,” he said.

Why is our government silent on this huge step in relations between the US and Mexico?

When Stephen Harper always talks tough about sovereignty against those pesky Ruskies way up north, why are American troops or mercenaries on Canadian soil not a concern?

Must See: CBC “You Should Have Stayed At Home”

On most occasions, it’s hard for me to take sides with the CBC – what with the constant injections of pop-polls from loaded organizations like the QMI Agency and interviews with hacks from the Globe or elsewhere – but on Friday night, they nailed it.

Their Fifth Estate show ‘You Should Have Stayed At Home‘ showcases the brutality and stupidity of Canada’s security and police state and demonstrates that Canada – yes, Canada – is not alone in the battle to win democracy for its citizens.

Yes, it is that basic.

We have lost the right to assembly and innocent people are being held in jail to this day simply because they exposed the billions of waste that went into the G20 summit.

And this is under a Conservative minority.  I shudder to think of what life would be like with a majority.

It took Egyptians 3 decades and Libyans more than 4 decades to get rid of their dictator.

How long before we get rid of ours?

Prison Kickbacks: The High Cost of Harper’s Security State

I want a secure state, not a security state.

Stephen Harper is promising us a security state.  Billions wasted on prisons.  Tough on crime and criminalizing everything.  Fake crime stats.  Lots of military infrastructure.

This story tells us a lot about the future of Stephen Harper’s security state.  It tells us that anyone will be and can be bought.  When a judge can be bought in exchange for sending prisoners to private institutions, how do you protect yourself?

Story below.  Original link here.

Ex-judge who jailed kids for kickbacks convicted

Mark Ciavarella guilty of racketeering; He and another Pa. judge took $2M for funneling inmates to youth detention centers

(AP)

SCRANTON, Pa. – A former juvenile court judge was convicted Friday of racketeering in a case that accused him of sending youth offenders to for-profit detention centers in exchange for millions of dollars in illicit payments from the builder and owner of the lockups.

Luzerne County ex-Judge Mark Ciavarella, 61, left the bench in disgrace two years ago after prosecutors charged him with engineering one of the biggest courtroom frauds in U.S. history by using juvenile delinquents as pawns in a plot to get rich.

Federal prosecutors accused Ciavarella and a second judge, Michael Conahan, of taking more than $2 million in bribes from the builder of the PA Child Care and Western PA Child Care detention centers and extorting hundreds of thousands of dollars from the facilities’ co-owner. Ciavarella insisted the payments were legal and denied that he incarcerated youths for money.

A federal jury in Scranton returned a mixed verdict, convicting Ciavarella of 12 counts, including racketeering and conspiracy, and acquitting him of 27 counts, including extortion. The guilty verdicts related to nearly $1 million that the builder paid to the judges.

Ciavarella was expressionless as the verdicts were being read.

Prosecutors alleged Ciavarella and Conahan plotted to shut down the dilapidated county-run juvenile detention center in 2002 and arrange for the construction of the PA Child Care facility outside Wilkes-Barre.

Ciavarella, who presided over juvenile court, sent youths to PA Child Care and later to its sister facility in western Pennsylvania while he was taking payments from Robert Mericle, a prominent builder and close friend of Ciavarella, and Robert Powell, a high-powered attorney who co-owned the youth lockups.

The judge, known for his harsh and autocratic courtroom demeanor, filled the beds of the private lockups with children as young as 10. The Pennsylvania Supreme Court dismissed thousands of juvenile convictions issued by Ciavarella, saying he ran his courtroom with “complete disregard for the constitutional rights of the juveniles,” including the right to legal counsel and the right to intelligently enter a plea.

His rough treatment of youths — whom he often had handcuffed and shackled — did not figure into his corruption trial, which focused on the payments from Mericle and Powell. But prosecutor Gordon Zubrod told jurors in his closing argument that Luzerne County’s juveniles were indeed victimized by Ciavarella — that he had used them as “pawns in a scheme to enrich himself.”

Ciavarella had leverage over Powell because Powell needed the judge to send youths to his heavily mortgaged detention centers, Zubrod said.

Taking the stand in his own defense, the former judge acknowledged to jurors that he failed to report the payments on his tax returns and hid them from the public, but he denied any plot to take kickbacks or extort money.

Ciavarella told jurors that he thought he was legally entitled to Mericle’s money, calling it a “finder’s fee” for introducing Mericle to Powell. He insisted he took no further steps to make sure that Mericle got the contract to build the detention centers, saying that Mericle was hired by Powell because he was the low bidder.

The former judge pointed to a 2008 conversation — secretly recorded by Powell while he was wearing a wire for the FBI — in which he told Powell and Conahan: “I had nothing to do with it, other than Rob Mericle coming to me and saying, `I want to do this for you.’ He came to me. I didn’t go to him. … Never in my wildest dreams did I ever think that it was illegal.”

Ciavarella also denied to the jury that he extorted Powell, who had testified for the prosecution that he was forced to pay the judges nearly $600,000 after they agreed to send juvenile delinquents to his new lockup. The payments were disguised as rent on a Florida condominium owned by the judges’ wives.

Ciavarella testified that it was Conahan who made the arrangements with Powell. He said Conahan told him that Powell had agreed to pay them $15,000 a month for 60 months to lease the waterfront Florida property. Prosecutors scoffed at that explanation, questioning why Powell — a successful trial lawyer and businessman — would be so foolish as to pay nearly $1 million in rent on a condo he could have purchased outright for less than $800,000.

The defense also said that Ciavarella had no idea that Powell separately was sending cash stuffed in boxes to Conahan. There was “a back-room deal going on between Mike Conahan and Bob Powell, and Mark Ciavarella had no idea what was occurring,” defense attorney Al Flora told the jury.

After the verdicts were announced, prosecutors sought forfeiture of $997,600 that Mericle paid Ciavarella, and the jury was considering whether to order it.

“A criminal should not be able to keep his ill-gotten gains,” Zubrod said. “If he has assets he has been hiding, we will find them.”

Luzerne County paid Powell’s company more than $30 million between 2003 and 2007 to house juveniles at PA Child Care and Western PA Child Care. The county could have built its own juvenile center for about $9 million.

Ciavarella and Conahan initially pleaded guilty in February 2009 to honest services fraud and tax evasion in a deal that called for a sentence of 87 months in prison. But their plea deals were rejected by Senior U.S. District Judge Edward M. Kosik, who ruled they had failed to accept responsibility for their actions.

A federal grand jury in Harrisburg subsequently indicted the judges on charges of racketeering, fraud, money laundering, bribery, extortion and tax offenses. Conahan pleaded guilty to a single racketeering charge last year and awaits sentencing.

Serious Questions About “Citizen’s Arrest” and Canadian Policing

I find it disturbing that the changes to the Criminal Code in Canada were put forward by Olivia Chow, the NDP MP from Trinity-Spadina.

At first glance, the legislation seems to make sense.  Olivia Chow is from an urban riding and there are hundreds of corner stores just like the one that David Chen, the man who’s now famous for making a citizen’s arrest, runs.  These people become voters and donors, both of which are critical to one’s political survival.

It seems very reasonable that if a repeat offender comes into my store, I should be able to ‘arrest’ this person and hold him on the spot.

Until what?

Until the police come?

Aren’t the police supposed to be there in the first place to help with this kind of activity?

Why aren’t they there to help out Canadian citizens in need?

And why are we re-writing the Criminal Code to give them a further excuse to not show up to a crime scene?

Here’s the REAL question that’s bugging me:  Why are we changing the rules to basically enable vigilante justice?

Now, here’s an even BIGGER question: what’s the point of paying about one-third of my property taxes to a police force that’s no longer doing the job it’s supposed to be doing?  If I’m a stupid tool of a member of the public that believes the myth of ‘smaller is better’ when it comes to public affairs, this is powder for my flint and provokes me to ‘Tea-Party Rage’ when it comes to other myths of waste and fat that exists in City Halls across the country.

And the BIGGEST question of them all:  if we’re enabling vigilante justice, aren’t we just another small step from ‘privatizing’ the enforcement of our legal rights?

This is a frightening development for those who enjoy a free and liberal Canadian environment, where people believe they can walk the streets without having to fear our ‘security’ forces (note:  no longer police forces).

And just to top it all off:  what’s truly frightening about this evolution in Canadian legal and criminal society is that this change was brought about by an NDPer.

What a shame.

Project Censored Top 25 List of 2010

I would add unprecedented G20 arrests in Canada as one of the biggest stories.

That said, here are the 25 stories from Project Censored:



In Guantánamo, the notorious but seldom-discussed thug squad, officially known as the Immediate Reaction Force (IRF), deployed by the US military remains very much active. Inside the walls of Guantánamo, the prisoners know the squad as the Extreme Repression Force. In reality, IRF is an extrajudicial terror squad, the existence of which has been documented [...]



A little more than a year before he was fired on June 23, 2010, for making potentially insubordinate remarks in a Rolling Stone profile, General Stanley McChrystal was appointed by President Barack Obama as commander in charge of the war in Afghanistan. He had been formerly in charge of the Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC) [...]



The North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) has become history’s first global army. Never before have soldiers from so many states served in the same war theater, much less the same country. At the eighth anniversary of the United States’ invasion of Afghanistan, the world is witness to a twenty-first-century armed conflict waged by the largest [...]



India’s 1.2 billion citizens are to be issued biometric identification cards. The cards will hold the person’s name, age, and birth date, as well as fingerprints or iris scans, though no caste or religious identification. Within the next five years a giant computer will hold the personal details of at least 600 million citizens, making [...]



Speaking in advance of the climate summit in Copenhagen, Rajendra Pachauri, the United Nation’s leading climate scientist, warned that Western society must enact radical changes and reform measures if it is to avoid the worst effects of climate change. Pachauri, chair of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), told the Observer that Western society [...]



Charter schools continue to stratify students by race, class, and sometimes language, and are more racially isolated than traditional public schools in virtually every state and large metropolitan area in the country. Charter schools are often marketed as incubators of educational innovation, and they form a key feature of the Obama administration’s school reform agenda. [...]



On April 24, 2009, US Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner hosted meetings with finance ministers from the world’s top economies to discuss increased oversight of the global financial system in the wake of the meltdown. The meetings preceded semi-annual gatherings of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and World Bank in Washington, DC. The April G20 meeting [...]



Chevron’s 2008 annual report to its shareholders is a glossy celebration heralding the company’s most profitable year in its history. Profits of $24 billion catapulted Chevron past General Electric to become the second most profitable corporation in the United States. The oil company’s 2007 revenues were larger than the gross domestic product (GDP) of 150 [...]



Nanotech Particles Pose Serious DNA Risks to Humans and the Environment Personal products you may use daily and think are harmless—cosmetics, suntan lotion, socks, and sports clothes—may all contain atom-sized nanotech particles, some of which have been shown to sicken and kill workers in plants using nanotechnology. Known human health risks include severe and permanent [...]



In October 2009, under great pressure from the United States, the government of Spain decided to limit its own jurisdiction in cases of genocide and crimes against humanity, thus closing one of the last windows of accountability for the most serious crimes committed by the most powerful nations on Earth. Under international law, such crimes [...]

Archive for the Category ‘Top 25 of 2011’


Around midnight on December 2, 1984, the citizens of Bhopal, India, a city of over 500,000 people in central India, were poisoned by approximately forty tons of toxic gases pouring into the night air from a largely abandoned chemical insecticide plant owned by the US-owned Union Carbide Corporation (UCC). The long-predicted gas leak at UCC [...]



Several contentious issues still plague the US government and their version of the events of September 11, 2001. Those in political power along with media elites would like to see the ongoing grassroots debates surrounding unanswered 9/11 questions and discrepancies disappear, despite the mountains of evidence that suggest that American citizens were told little about [...]



President Obama’s decision to increase military spending this year and in the future will result in the greatest administrative military spending since World War II. This decision is being made in spite of continued evidence of extreme waste, fraud, abuse, and corporate welfare in the military budget. At the same time, spending on “non-security” domestic [...]



Cuba was the first to come into Haiti with medical aid when the January 12, 2010, earthquake struck. Among the many donor nations, Cuba and its medical teams have played a major role in treating Haiti’s earthquake victims. Public health experts say the Cubans were the first to set up medical facilities among the debris [...]



The H1N1 virus has spawned widespread panic and fear throughout the world. However, upon closer examination, many of the claims made by the World Health Organization (WHO) seem to be based on weak and incomplete data. The Atlanta-based Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has created and used data to grossly exaggerate the need [...]



In a continuous flow of money, American tax dollars end up paying members of the Taliban and funding a volatile environment in Afghanistan. Private contractors pay insurgents with the hope of attaining the very safety they are contracted to provide. Concurrently, US soldiers pay at checkpoints run by suspected insurgents in order to get safe [...]



The Human Sciences Research Council of South Africa (HSRC) has released a study indicating that Israel is practicing both colonialism and apartheid in the occupied Palestinian territories. The HSRC commissioned an international team of scholars and practitioners of international public law from South Africa, the United Kingdom, Israel, and the West Bank to conduct the [...]



On World Environment Day, June 5, 2009, Peruvian Amazon Indians were massacred by the government of Alán García in the latest chapter of a long war to take over common lands—a war unleashed by the signing of the Free Trade Agreement (FTA) between Peru and the United States. Three MI-17 helicopters took off from the [...]



Resource exploitation in Africa is not new, but the scale of agricultural “land grabbing” in African nations is unprecedented, becoming the new colonization of the twenty-first century. State violence against Kenyan indigenous pastoralists and Nigerian civilians in oil-rich regions has heightened, leaving thousands dead as the military burns whole communities to the ground and police [...]



Despite national legislative health reform, health care in the US will remain dismal for many Americans, resulting in continuing deaths and personal tragedies. A recent Harvard research team estimates that 2,266 US military veterans died in 2008 due to lack of health insurance. The figure is more than fourteen times the number of deaths suffered [...]

Archive for the Category ‘Top 25 of 2011’


At a covert forward operating base run by the US Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC) in the Pakistani port city of Karachi, members of an elite division of Blackwater are at the center of a secret program in which they plan targeted assassinations of suspected Taliban and al-Qaeda operatives inside and outside Pakistan. The Blackwater [...]



Agents of the US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) are holding thousands of US residents in unlisted and unmarked subfield offices and deporting tens of thousands in secret court hearings. “If you don’t have enough evidence to charge someone criminally but you think he’s illegal, we can make him disappear.” Those chilling words were spoken [...]



Following in the steps of its predecessor, the Obama administration is expanding mass government surveillance of personal electronic communications. This surveillance, which includes the monitoring of the Internet as well as private (nongovernmental) computers, is proceeding with the proposal or passage of new laws granting government agencies increasingly wider latitude in their monitoring activities. At [...]



The US military is responsible for the most egregious and widespread pollution of the planet, yet this information and accompanying documentation goes almost entirely unreported. In spite of the evidence, the environmental impact of the US military goes largely unaddressed by environmental organizations and was not the focus of any discussions or proposed restrictions at [...]



Nations have reached their limit in subsidizing the United States’ military adventures. During meetings in June 2009 in Yekaterinburg, Russia, world leaders such as China’s President Hu Jintao, Russia’s President Dmitry Medvedev, and other top officials of the six-nation Shanghai Cooperation Organisation took the first formal step to replace the dollar as the world’s reserve [...]

What are yours?