Tradgedy Narrowly Averted

QR 77 Radio in Calgary is reporting that a dangerous sex offender that the RCMP warned the public about on October 10,2010 is now sought in the kidnapping of a ten year old girl from a Calgary shopping mall last night. From the QR77 website:

Warrants issued in kidnapping case
Kelly Turner
2/25/2011

Calgary police say several arrest warrants have been issued for a man who has a history of violence and sexual offenses against females between the ages of 10 and 42. The warrant is in connection with the kidnapping of a 10-year-old girl from Deerfoot Mall. It happened Thursday when she became separated from her dad around 6:30 pm. She was approached by a man who said he was a police officer and accused her of shoplifting. The offender picked up the victim and carried her to his vehicle. A short time later, he drove to a nearby Mcdonald's in Airdrie, and the girl managed to call 911. Canada wide warrants have now been issued for 43 year old John Francis Dionne of Linden, Alberta. He is charged with kidnapping, child abduction, assault, robbery and impersonating a police officer.

Here is the October 10, 2010 article from the Calgary Sun that warned the public about John Francis Dionne. An excerpt here:

RCMP Sgt. Patrick Webb said it’s rare for police to issue such warnings when an offender is released but given his past that includes a conviction for sexual assault, felt the need to warn people.

“These are not done lightly and only when there is a risk to re-offend,” he said.

“If we believe there’s the potential for re-offending and we’re worried about the victimization of people, we feel they should be advised.”

Dionne, 43, was charged after his accuser, a drug-addicted former prostitute, said she was picked up in Calgary’s East Village on Oct. 28, 2008 and was driven outside the city where he forced himself on her for 10 hours.

During the trial, however, the victim recanted and said she lied about being raped.

Mounties said Dionne has a history of violence and sexual offences against females between the ages of 10 and 42 and has recently been diagnosed as HIV positive.

Dionne is white, 5-foot-11, 170 lb. with blue eyes and brown hair and drives a 1992 blue Dodge Caravan with Alberta licence plate NAE 434.

Webb said police won’t be able to keep tabs on him at all times and are making the public aware because of the potential risk.

You will notice that a description of this monsters van along with the licence plate number is included in the article.

What is not included in the text of the QR77 piece is some very disturbing details of how this went down last night. This man was pulled over by RCMP while he had the kidnapped child with him in the front seat. In fact he was issued with a moving violation ticket and sent on his way!!

This raises serious questions about either the competence of the officer involved or the effectiveness of the computer system used to track and flag sex offenders.

To be fair, the child was not yet reported missing when the traffic stop was made and apparently the child was too terrified to say anything to the police officer when he issued the moving violation.

On the other hand, it appears this POS was using the same van the public was warned about last October.

Thank God this innocent little girl is back safe with her family and not a tragic statistic, despite our law enforcement system.

Something more substantial needs to be done about these sick bastards.

When the Nuance Hits the Fan

One of the hallmarks of the left is a self professed capacity for nuance. Us lesser beings are judged to possess inferior discernment betwixt reality and bullshit...right and wrong...because we lack nuance.

The narrative downplays common sense and glorifies complexity. The thing is that the left , through the nuance doctrine, seeks to complicate easy solutions and exacerbate small problems.

This will go through the fan.

Syncro

Jane Taber; Did Conservative Attack Ads Contribute to Egyptian Unrest...Yes! Yes! Yes?

I will be the first to admit that my periodic attempts at blogging in no way qualifies as journalism.

That said, one would think that self professed professional journalists would have a rudimentary understanding of paragraph structure.

Case in point:

Stephen Harper and Michael Ignatieff face off against each other in the Commons Monday for the first time since the Conservatives pulled their nasty attack ads against the Liberals offline and as the situation in Egypt worsens.

The Opposition Leader and his MPs will focus their Question Period efforts on the “Conservatives’ bad spending choices and the billions being spent on corporate tax breaks,” according to a senior Ignatieff official.

Is it just me or is the first paragraph poorly constructed? I suppose it isn't if one believes nasty Canadian attack ads and Egyptian unrest are somehow linked. To Jane's credit she does get back to the Egyptian issue a few paragraphs down.

In addition, the Liberals will demand the government be more clear in its language about the state of play in Egypt. They want the Prime Minister to state that “there needs to be a peaceful transition to free and fair elections,” the Ignatieff official said.

NDP Leader Jack Layton will lead off on the issue as well. “Obviously we’ll also be looking for a stronger Canadian response to the situation in Egypt,” an NDP official said.

I sure hope Harper doesn't say something nasty whilst being clear and stronger.

Syncro

Locked in The Trunk of a Car

It's not just a Tragically Hip tune....it's a way of life...

Apparently, Said Jaziri, picked up on Gord Downie's riff:

U.S. border guards got a surprise when they searched a Mexican BMW and found a hardline Muslim cleric - banned from France and Canada - curled up in the boot.

Said Jaziri, who called for the death of a Danish cartoonist that drew pictures of the prophet Mohammed, was being smuggled into California when he was arrested, along with his driver Kenneth Robert Lawler.

The 43-year-old was deported from Canada to his homeland Tunisia in 2007 after it emerged he had lied on his refugee application about having served jail time in France.

Of course there's more:

His fire and brimstone sermons and rabble-rousing antics catapulted him into the public eye during his short tenure as imam at a Montreal mosque.

He branded homosexuality a disease and led protests over cartoonist Kurt Westergaard's illustrations poked fun at Islam and were published in a Danish newspaper in 2006.

He also caused anger when he campaigned for a bigger mosque to accommodate Montreal's burgeoning Muslim population.

Anyways.....A little Tragically Hip...

Morning broke out the backside of a truck-stop
End of a line a real, rainbow-likening luck stop,
Where you could say I became chronologically "fucked up"
Put ten bucks in just to get the tank topped off
Then I found a place it's dark and it's rotted

It's a cool, sweet kinda place where the copters won't spot it
And I destroyed the map, I even thought I forgot it, however,

Everyday I'm dumping the body
It'd be better for us if you don't understand
Even better for me if you don't understand (Yuh)


Syncro

Sukuki Slyly Slithers Sideways

David Suzuki, noticeably absent from the Cancun climate confab, has surfaced today with this Torstar piece. He opens thusly:

In a recent article on CBC’s website, political commentator Scott Reid wrote that I don’t “give a damn” about the United Nations Climate Change Conference in Cancun, Mexico.

Reid, who was former prime minister Paul Martin’s communications director, is correct that I was “fed up and had little time for Cancun, assuming the political will to respond to the pressing threat of climate change at this forum was all but nil.”

So Dr. Suzuki is "fed up" and has "little time" for climate conferences when he recognizes the political winds are not blowing his way. But isn't Global Warming/Climate Change/Global Climate Disruption the most important issue of our time?

But there’s nothing that concerns me more than the threat of climate change and the necessity of world leaders to deal with the crisis. I’ve just seen the futility of trying to get our current government to act in any meaningful way at the UN talks, and I agree with David Suzuki Foundation staff that our efforts are better placed elsewhere.

So it is the most important issue of our time but you and the staff at your foundation have chosen to concentrate your efforts elsewhere? Define elsewhere. Of course Dr. Suzuki never clearly defines "elsewhere" but what he does say gives a clue.

In Canada, though, we can accomplish more by working with municipal and provincial governments, and with thousands of concerned citizens, than trying to get the federal government to act on global warming. Our work around clean-energy solutions and other ways to resolve climate issues — and help steer Canada toward the emerging clean-energy economy — is more in line with initiatives such as Ontario’s plan to phase out coal power and create incentives to attract clean-energy technologies, B.C.’s implementation of a carbon tax that increases over time, and the City of Vancouver’s bold Greenest City initiative.

Of course, that’s not enough to confront a global problem like climate change, but if leadership is lacking at the top, we must build from the ground up.

I do give a damn about the UN climate talks. I only wish our government did.

Never mind, Carry on.

Syncro

The Mathematically and Morally Challenged Montreal Gazette

With Quebec Premier Jean Charest weathering a storm of controversy surrounding allegations of corruption ranging from judicial appointments to construction contracts it isn't surprising that an online petition calling for his resignation is gaining strength.

Other unsurprising news includes this editorial response from the Montreal Gazette.


An online petition demanding the resignation of Jean Charest is an amusing novelty. And so it is spreading, and the number of signatures is growing, with the same "viral" speed shown by various previous amusing Internet novelties: cute kittens, funny ads, "Hail Mary" pass videos, droll examples of the Photoshopper's art, and Quebec's own "Star Wars Kid." The petition is about as meaningful as all that nonsense, too. "

Quebecers should be careful what they wish for. The political landscape, from left to centre (there is no electoral right in Quebec) is not exactly studded with prominent potential successors jostling for a chance to solve our problems. Better the devil you know ... "

We wonder, too, how many of those who are signing the petition bothered to vote in the last election.

So the MG position is that this petition is silly, meaningless, there is no other leadership alternative and it's probably signed by yahoos who don't bother to vote.

Really? This led me to wonder how many naive folks have signed the petition but that information is nowhere to be found in the body of the Gazette piece. What I did find was It seems it has garnered over 174,000 + signatures since Monday.

Now let's compare that to the coverage by The Montreal Gazette regarding another recent online petition, specifically, Canadians Against Proroguing Parliament.

Frustration with and anger at Stephen Harper’s decision to prorogue Parliament spilled from the Internet onto the streets Saturday, as tens of thousands of demonstrators gathered at rallies across Canada.
..........


The decision to prorogue Parliament, the second in just over a year, sparked a backlash, especially online, where a Facebook group opposing the move grew to include more than 211,000 members.

..........


It was White’s Facebook group, Canadians Against Proroguing Parliament, that got the protest ball rolling and has attracted more than 211,000 members since Harper announced his decision on the second-last day of the year.


The tone of the two pieces are definitely different but putting that aside let's just do the math. The most recent piece by the Gazette failed to mention any numbers regarding the Charest petition while the total of the CAPP petition was noted twice in the same article.

The Charest petition has garnered nearly 175,ooo signatures in four days from a presumed population of 7.5 million Quebec citizens. In contrast the CAPP petition accumulated 211,000 signatures in a little over three weeks from a presumed pool of 36 million Canadians.

That said, would anybody care to speculate on which petition is more significant?

Syncro

Dalton McGuinty...Our Very Own Earl Hickey

This from the Torstar:

Whatever storms Dalton McGuinty had to weather inside the Legislature on Tuesday, there was another one waiting when he left work: high winds caused part of a construction wall at Queen’s Park to collapse on top of the premier’s car.

The storm that damaged McGuinty’s hybrid lashed the city Tuesday night with wind gusts of at least 50 kilometres an hour.

Karma can sure be a busy bitch.

The cause of the recent fire which ravaged a warehouse being used by Neil Young has been identified as one of the singer/songwriter's classic cars, authorities have announced.

The offending vehicle, a 1959 Lincoln Continental, had been converted into a hybrid by Young in an effort to promote fuel efficiency.

In a statement (via BBC News), Young has admitted the fire was down to human error. He said, "The wall charging system was not completely tested and had never been left unattended. A mistake was made -- it was not the fault of the car."

Syncro