Global Maritimes – Jim Lahey Go Vote Video

Trailer Park Boys’ Jim Lahey Go Vote Video: Tells students to vote in the 2011 Election – He’ll buy you a shot
Actor John Dunsworth has done a video with Saint Mary’s University to tell students why they’re wasting their opportunity to vote in the 2011 Canadian election.
Nick Logan, Global Maritimes: Saturday, April 16, 2011

HALIFAX, N.S. – Stupid kids aren’t going to vote, so why bother trying.

But, young people could have a lot of power if they actually did go to the polls on Election Day.

That’s the message Saint Mary’s University Students Association (SMUSA) and the Canadian Alliance of Student Associations (CASA) hope to get out with an online campaign featuring celebrity Canucks.

SMUSA leaders wanted a truly prominent East Coaster to drive home the “Students Need to Vote” message with a whole lot of force.

So, who better than a foul-mouthed raging drunk from the “trailer park” to do the job?

Enter John Dunsworth, formerly known as Jim Lahey on Showcase’s “Trailer Park Boys.”

“Man, you guys could have a little of political weight if you put your little check mark on the day at the ballot box,” Lahey slurs.

“You wouldn’t have to worry about lowering tuition fees. You could say ‘Lower the damn tuition fees!” and they’d do it.”

This, before he goes on to bribe students with a Jägerbomb, a shot of Jägermeister and Red Bull, to vote.

Student association president Matt Anderson says the whole production was put together in a matter of hours.

Anderson only contacted Dunsworth a couple of days after the student association’s vice-president randomly bumped into the actor at a downtown Halifax restaurant.

“Jim went above and beyond the call of duty, got us a cameraman (Mike Swain). All we needed to do was write a script for him… And he went nuts, he went all out.”

Dunsworth, brought his own freestyle performance to the 1 min 30sec video, filmed on the SMU campus late Wednesday evening and posted it to YouTube around midnight.

If the clip goes viral, Anderson says, both Dunsworth and Swain agreed to work with SMUSA again.

“We’re using Facebook as best we can,” Anderson says of their efforts to get the video viewed by students from coast to coast.

Other Canuck celebrities such as Rick Mercer and George Stroumboulopoulos have said their piece online for studentsneedtovote.ca.

WARNING: The following video made independent of Global News and contains language that may be offensive to some.

Global Maritimes – Seafood producers more concerned for Japan than exports

Seafood producers more concerned for Japan than exports
Despite Japan being a big client for Nova Scotia seafood, east coast processors and producers won’t feel the effects of last week’s disaster for some time.
Nick Logan, Global Maritimes: Thursday, March 17, 2011

HALIFAX, N.S. – With five per cent of Nova Scotia’s seafood exports going to Japan, processing companies are keeping a close eye on the country’s recovery.

It’s not the bottom line they’re concerned with, the safety of friends and colleagues is priority number one.

Local seafood processors won’t feel the effects of last week’s disaster for some time, if at all.

It’s too early to tell what effect the disaster will have on sales of fish and shellfish products, but that won’t be felt for some time, says the senior manager of Louisbourg Seafoods in Glace Bay.

The company sends about 100,000 pounds of snow crab to Japan each year, Derrick Kennedy says.

He anticipates an effect on the industry, but Louisbourg doesn’t usually begin shipping to Japan until September.

“There’s no doubt that when our snow crab season is open, the Japanese are in buying lots of product,” he explains. “If that slows, that could have a negative impact on the market price.”

The Department of Fisheries and Aquaculture isn’t prepared to speculate how the situation will affect the province.

Nova Soctia exported $38 million of seafood products to Japan in 2009 – primarily lobster, crab and herring – but the department’s communications director Celeste Sulliman says the United States imported $510 million of fish and seafood that same year.

“We know how important this resource industry is,” she says. “The seafood industry (in Nova Scotia) has seen ups and downs and they’re a very resilient bunch.”

One of the region’s largest producers, Clearwater Seafoods, saw only moderate delays in shipments at the end of last week when planes were backlogged coming into Tokyo-Narita airport following the earthquake.

CEO Ian Smith says he was “surprised” how little business has been affected. “It’s business as usual.”

Japan can’t survive without food coming in.

The Japanese Ministry of Health says the country relies on imports for roughly 60 per cent of the food it requires to feed its population of 126 million.

If there is some sort of disruption to air and sea service, Smith assures there are back up options to get shipments into the country.

Tokyo isn’t the only gateway Clearwater and other exporters use: Cargo can be diverted to Osaka, Kobe and cities further south if need be.

There are some freight restrictions heading into Japan and travelling domestically, by road and rail, within the country.

Some air carriers have opted to cancel flights to Narita International Airport or have limited cargo shipments to emergency medical supplies but even those limitations are starting to ease.

“The fear is,” Mike Wolthers says, “it’ll get stuck and not get through customs, not be able to be handled.”

Exporters like Wolther’s employer, Kintetsu World Express, need to keep tabs on electricity powering the cold-storage facilities where their product is headed.

The Japanese government has ordered rolling blackouts to cope with the loss of electricity from infrastructure damage and the nuclear reactor shutdowns.

Global Maritimes: Have you met Mr. Big?

Have you met Mr. Big?
RCMP used an intricate undercover investigation technique to catch Jason MacRae, but most Canadians have
Nick Logan, Global Maritimes: Wednesday, March 2, 2011

RCMP investigating the murder of Paula Gallant waited more than four years for her husband to confess his crime.

While Jason Wayne MacRae admitted to strangling his wife to death Dec. 27, 2005, it wasn’t through any desire to atone for his crime.

It was an undercover officer that got the 37-year-old Halifax man to say he killed Gallant in the basement of her house and left her body in the trunk of her car.

“Over time,” Crown Attorney Denise Smith told reporters, “MacRae was led to believe he was part of a crime syndicate and ultimately confessed his crime to undercover officers, unbeknownst to their true identity as police.”

“Mr. Big” is an RCMP sting technique, involving an undercover officer(s) posing as a crime boss or gang member, convincing the suspect to detail or brag about transgressions, often murder.

A “target” does so hoping to show loyalty or gain trust, says criminologist Kouri Keenan.

Some even think Mr. Big will help rid them of their problems.

Keenan, a PhD student at Simon Fraser University’s School of Criminology, analyzed 81 cases where Mr. Big brought about a confession, for a study he co-authored with SFU professor Joan Brockman.

Most criminals – for that matter most Canadians – have never heard of this scenario, but that’s because it wasn’t until 2000 that the Supreme Court of Canada ruled publication bans covering Mr. Big could only remain in place for a period of one year after the preliminary hearing.

Mounties used Mr. Big to get MacRae’s admission, even a re-enactment of how he murdered his 36-year-old wife.

It was only revealed Wednesday in Nova Scotia Supreme Court, in the agreed statement of facts.

Two years ago an undercover officer gained the trust Penny Boudreau, of Bridgewater, N.S., and convinced her to reveal every detail of how she murdered her 12-year-old daughter, Karissa, in Jan. 2008.

The technique, Keenan says, is used when police lack sufficient evidence to charge a suspect and other investigation methods have failed.

He explains Mr. Big “tells (them) ‘We can make your criminal problems disappear, however, only upon verification of the details of your story.’”

The Mounties have to be convincing and will go to great lengths to ‘play the part,” even orchestrating staged kidnappings, beatings or “feigned murders.”

Questions have been raised in the past about the validity of confessions obtained this way.

Keenan assures this technique is not entrapment.

“It’s a post-offence undercover investigative technique… looking into a crime that has already occurred.”

Any crime committed at the behest of Mr. Big, won’t be used as evidence against the target.

In 2000, a Manitoba judge raised concerns that a target – Clayton George Mentuck – was vulnerable to suggestion because of his financial situation and the promise of money.

Mentuck, accused of murdering teenager Amanda Cook, bought into the ploy and at one point said he killed the girl.

He later recanted and denied this, trying to get out of the staged crime ring.

But an undercover officer, Keenan says, eventually convinced Mentuck to admit to the crime saying both of them “were on the line” with the crime boss.

Justice Allan MacInnes acquitted Mentuck, saying “the police must be aware that as the level of inducement increases, the risk of receiving a confession to an offence which one did not commit increases, and the reliability of the confession diminishes correspondingly.”

The description of events Mentuck gave weren’t much different than what was already known from the media.

In approximately 25 cases he examined for Keenan and Brockman’s study, RCMP lacked sufficient evidence to “corroborate” the confession.

“Wrongful convictions are an unfortunate, but very real consequence of our criminal justice system. It’s imperative we implement policies to limit the likelihood of eliciting a false confession,” says Keenan.

He says any confession police obtain using Mr. Big should be reviewed by a false-confessions expert.

Kouri Keenan’s study with Prof. Joan Brockman is titled Mr. Big: Exposing Undercover Investigations in Canada.

Global Maritime: Egypt’s ‘litmus test’

Egypt’s ‘litmus test’
Friday, February 4, 2011
Professor John Measor is an expert on the Middle East.

Global News recently spoke with John Measor about the violent to the protests in Egypt. Before joining the faculty at SMU this academic year, Dr. Measor completed studies at the Institute of Arab and Islamic Studies at the University of Exeter.

He will participate in a live online question-and-answer session with Global News on Friday afternoon, as the world waits to see what transpires on the 11th and, possibly, most crucial day of protests.

What do you expect to see happen on Friday?

It’s the litmus test for the regime. In some ways, I will be surprised if it survives tomorrow. Maybe it will be in power for a couple of days after that, but if the protests tomorrow are as large or larger – the regime will have lost.

This will be a fundamental change across the region no matter what happens. Either the demonstrators will be absolutely crushed, and that will have to be dealt with, or some change will come about — which will have immense implications for the entire region.

Global Maritimes Storm Blog – Day 2

Keep following the @globalmaritimes storm blog today as we cover further delays, cancellations and cleaning up the mess http://ow.ly/3OmVd