I’m unlikely to be able to follow this closely, so follow Jason on Twitter (@JDTalley) and Pete (@peteeyre) if you haven’t already. Also, tracking the #MHD tag on Twitter is a way to get the news, especially if the boys go silent.

From Jason’s tweets, reverse-chronological:

1. We will now be escorted into a new holding area. This time it’s the U.S. government. 16 minutes ago
2. Reinforcements have been called. Homeland Security vehicle is now blocking MARV. 19 minutes ago
3. U.S. Border Guard told @peteeyre to stop recording or his camera would be confiscated. 21 minutes ago
4. Now we are getting hassled by U.S. Border Guards in Detroit. #MHD 23 minutes ago
5. Canadian border guards are tossing our motorhome again. I just cleaned it. about 2 hours ago
6. We’re in the no man’s land between Detroit and Windsor, Canada… on accident. Wrong turns suck. about 2 hours ago

Gak.

The American Heritage Dictionary, among other definitions, suggests that a border is “The line or frontier area separating political divisions or geographic regions; a boundary.”

"Warning! State border!" -- sign at Devín, on the Slovak side of what was once the officially-impassible border between Republik Österreich and Československá socialistická republika

I’ve heard about these border things, but I’ve never actually seen one.

I got to thinking about this because the Motorhome Diaries crew (agorist comrades Jason Talley and Pete Eyre) just got stopped and searched and denied passage across one of these “border” things. From the reports, it sounds like the “border” in question was one dividing two political entities which call themselves “United States of America” and “Canada”.

Huh. These borders things sound a bit dangerous.

I offer a few alternate definitions for your consideration:

bor-der (bôr’dər) n.:

1. An imaginary line near which organized criminals in and out of uniform may stop, search, kidnap, cage, shoot, rob or otherwise harm peaceful people without consequence.
2. An imaginary line representing a place at which two or more tyrants agree to stop killing, raping, maiming and robbing each others’ slaves, the better to continue enslaving and stealing from their respective territorial thralls.
3. An imaginary line marking zones of exclusivity for legalized privilege in the forms of taxation, regulation, reporting duties, “law” enforcement, subsidy, etc.

Dangerous indeed. Stay away.

Anyone else have their own definition for “border”? Let’s hear ‘em in the comments!

Victoria must pay tethered teen $30,000

Friday, November 28, 2008

VICTORIA – Willow Kinloch has been granted half of the $60,000 she won in a lawsuit after being tethered in Victoria police cells, with the payment of the rest hinging on an appeal of her case by the City of Victoria.

The city had applied for a stay, or suspension, of payment until the appeal is heard, perhaps sometime next spring. But Justice Mary Saunders of the B.C. Court of Appeal ruled Thursday that Kinloch is entitled to $30,000 now.

Kinloch’s case dates to 2005 when she was 15. A B.C. Supreme Court jury came up with the award earlier this year following a decision that officers had violated Kinloch’s charter rights.

Kinloch had been picked up by police in the downtown area for being drunk and was taken to police cells.

She spent about an hour screaming and banging on the walls before two officers tried to take her home to the apartment she shared with her mother.

The apartment intercom was broken and officers wouldn’t let Kinloch yell up to a window, so she was brought back to the police station. She did not want to return to a cell, and police described her as uncooperative. She ended up being bound at the ankles, tethered and left in the cell for four hours.

Kinloch is now in Thailand.

Here’s to hoping Ms. Kinloch is safe, given the unrest in Thailand at the moment.

See also:
The further education of Willow Kinloch
Victoria, BC citizenry to pay $60,000 to brutalized teen (includes video)

Sorry to inform you, friend, but it’s gonna be a tough road. I refer you to Canada’s Citizenship Act, section II(9)1(a):

Renunciation of citizenship

9. (1) A citizen may, on application, renounce his citizenship if he

(a) is a citizen of a country other than Canada or, if his application is accepted, will become a citizen of a country other than Canada;

(b) is not the subject of a declaration by the Governor in Council made pursuant to section 20;

(c) is not a minor;

(d) is not prevented from understanding the significance of renouncing citizenship by reason of the person having a mental disability; and

(e) does not reside in Canada.

Part of this section, which was enacted in 1975, is intended to conform with the provisions of the 1961 Convention on the Reduction of Statelessness (available at my Renunciant Resources page above), which came into force in 1975 and to which Canada is a State party, specifically Article 7 §1(a):

If the law of a Contracting State permits renunciation of nationality, such renunciation shall not result in loss of nationality unless the person concerned possesses or acquires another nationality.

Or, translated into my own terms:

A slaveowner may transfer ownership of a slave to another slaveowner; manumission is not permitted.

I believe that my correspondent intends to leave Canada at some point, but unless she obtains citizenship someplace else first, Canada will not allow her to sever the bond and become stateless. As far as I know she’s not a citizen elsewhere, so Canada will continue to treat her as its subject no matter how many times she renounces, unless she can show a different passport.

Fortunately, she has some European ancestry in the family tree, and there might even be a living grandparent to provide justification for any of the (disappearing) “reclaiming ancestral citizenship” programs available around the continent.

If that doesn’t work, the only paths available to bailing on Canada are taking up residence someplace else and going through the waiting period for naturalization there, or finding one of the (disappearing) “economic citizenship” programs available around the world. Gonna cost you either way, though.

Attendees came from Slovakia, the Czech Republic, Poland, Belarus, Ukraine, Turkey, and Slovenia.

Instructors/organizers/facilitators came from the USA, UK, Switzerland, France, Malaysia (more on him later!), Slovakia and Canada.

A grand time was had by all. These photos are mostly from student presentations during the camp’s final evening.

The quality is often poor, unfortunately. My camera does a rather poor job indoors, and has a slow shutter speed so there’s plenty of blurring, which can sometimes be amusing

UPDATE 27 May 2009: I have moved the photos to Photobucket.

Police appeal $60,000 court award to Victoria teen tied to jail cell door

VICTORIA — Victoria police are appealing a court decision awarding $60,000 to a Victoria teen who spent four hours tied up in a padded cell and tethered to the cell door.

My previous post on the topic, with video: Victoria, BC citizenry to pay $60,000 to brutalized teen

Delivering baby deer lands man in hot water

MONCTON, N.B.–A man who delivered a baby deer in New Brunswick after watching a truck kill its mother is now under investigation for potentially breaking the law.

[...]

Under New Brunswick law, it is illegal to take an orphaned animal home and care for it without a permit. Depending on the outcome of the investigation, Van-Til could face charges under the Fish and Wildlife Act.

Officials said Van-Til should have called the Department of Natural Resources or the RCMP at the start and let them handle the matter.

From The Globe and Mail:

No charges called for in report on taser death

17 June 2008

Vancouver — Police have finished their investigation into the death of Polish immigrant Robert Dziekanski and forwarded a report to the Crown that does not call for any criminal charges in the matter, said a spokesman for the integrated homicide investigation team that conducted the probe.

Mr. Dziekanski died last October after being tasered by Mounties when he began acting erratically in the international arrivals area of Vancouver airport. Corporal Dale Carr said it will be up to the Crown to decide whether charges are warranted. Such charges might be laid against the officers involved in the confrontation, police have suggested.

“It’s the full, entire investigation. It’s completed, done,” said Cpl. Carr. A Crown spokesman said the office is reviewing the report.

Related, with video: Justice, truth and accountability for Robert Dziekański

Instead, some commentary and some links.

Despite that the taser’s manufacturer, Taser International, claims with all sorts of paid experts and government shills to back them up that the device isn’t dangerous, people keep dying after being hit with tasers. The site Truth … Not Tasers is keeping a list, which currently runs to 345 in the US and Canada alone.

In the cases where internal police inquiry or survivors’ lawsuits force the issue, it’s now verboten to talk about the taser as having been a cause of death. The manufacturer has begun pursuing lawsuits against medical examiners who issue reports stating that the electric shocks delivered by the devices were contributory factors. Chilling effect, anyone?

Taser X26, jasonesbain @ flickr

The new term for the condition that kills people in police custody who have been subjected to 50,000-volt “non-lethal” discharges is “excited delirium“. One will note that the postmortem diagnosis of “excited delirium” seems to occur only in victimsthose who died after being shocked.

Apparently the theory that jolting a person with an electrical discharge might affect their cardiopulmonary performance just doesn’t matter when the jolts are being administered by the State’s clown-suited agents.

The deaths are really only the smallest portion of the abuse that’s going on here, though. Police are being encouraged to use the taser to “get control” of situations in which a suspect is being less than cooperative. Those I’ve read about include ones in which suspects failed to immediately respond to an order, struggled while being held in painful (and sometimes dangerous) restraint positions and holds, or simply seemed to be acting a bit “off”. And the rapid escalation from things like not behaving “properly” at traffic stops to the application of electroshock control seems to be increasing rapidly.

I have no faith whatsoever in the United Nations, but it’s worth quoting that its Committee Against Torture in 1997 “was worried that the use of TaserX26 weapons, provoking extreme pain, constituted a form of torture, and that in certain cases it could also cause death, as shown by several reliable studies and by certain cases that had happened after practical use.”

And now the links. These are a few of the sites that are chronicling the taser story on a day-to-day basis, and quite instructive.

• Truth … Not Tasers
• Taser Times
• Excited-Delirium.com

From the Nanaimo Daily News:

Judge says Mountie created confrontation

26 May 2008

A Nanaimo provincial court judge, in dropping a charge against a local man of assaulting police, instead blamed a Nanaimo Mountie for creating the violent confrontation.

The decision was handed by Judge Allan Gould on Monday in staying charges of assault police and uttering threats against Shane Owen, 48.

RCMP in riot gear, courtesy of Rob Maguire @ flickr

On Nov. 25, 2005, Owen was walking down the street when the officer, who told the court that Owen had committed no offence but didn’t look right, decided to question him.

Owen told the officer to leave him alone, gave a Nazi salute and swore at him. Gould said that a more experienced officer would have “spoken in kind” to Owen and gone on his way. A Supreme Court of Canada decision states that only when there is reasonable suspicion of a crime can police force someone to comply with their requests.

Gould said the officer then “hounded” Owen into the behaviour that led to the charges. The officer’s actions were “akin to Chinese water torture” and his actions escalated the situation, said Gould, though he also said that Owen’s actions in part brought the unwanted attention on himself. Other officers attended what became a brawl and Owen was subdued with a Taser, batons and pepper spray.

Owen was then held in custody, “to which he should not have been subjected in my opinion,” said Gould.

The editors of the Daily News chimed in with a ponies-and-kittens puff piece on behalf of the cops, which after stating “The constant focus on the death of Dziekanski, tragic as it was, distracts the police from doing their jobs.”, concludes with appropriate obeisance and genuflections:

But the cops are such an easy scapegoat that many people forget to check their facts.

Of course there are the few misguided and even criminal police officers, similar to workers any profession.

But these are the vast minority.

In reality, keeping everyone safe is a tough job.

The least we can do is show these people some respect.

Well Mr. Owen’s own personal stormtroopers didn’t seem too distracted now, did they?“Sieg Heil!” isn’t respectful enough, I suppose.