People Keep Saying Mass Shootings Only Happen in the US
December 3, 2015 Leave a comment
They’re wrong. Mass shootings are more likely to occur elsewhere.
Markets, Freedom, and Truth
December 3, 2015 Leave a comment
They’re wrong. Mass shootings are more likely to occur elsewhere.
June 28, 2013 3 Comments
The RCMP is acting like an occupying army in High River.
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Governments invariably use emergencies to extend their powers and subject the citizenry to greater abuse. Natural disasters are no exception.
High River was devastated by the flood. The entire town was evacuated.
It has been eight days since residents were forced from their home. As the waters recede, people want to return home and see the status of their property.
“No way,” says the RCMP.
High River is effectively under a state of martial law so intense the citizens cannot even enter the town at all. The RCMP set up a roadblock with 30 officers to prevent residents from entering. Dozens of police cars with flashing lights lined the streets menacingly. A spike strip was deployed to cripple the vehicle of any outlaw who dared to enter the town.
But it is not enough for the RCMP to use threats of violence to keep out residents. Some High River residents have firearms in their home, you see. So those homes had to be invaded, and the firearms had to be confiscated.
“People have a significant amount of money invested in firearms … so we put them in a place that we control and that they’re safe,” said one RCMP sergeant.
Oh. They are taking guns to do those owners a favor. See? No problem.
“It’s like Nazi Germany,” says a resident. Yes, it is sort of like that. It’s also sort of like New Orleans and Hurricane Katrina. FEMA confiscated civilian firearms during that disaster in the name of “safety.” That’s the real template for what’s going on here.
This kind of behavior by the RCMP was entirely predictable because of the lessons of Katrina. Memories of the scandals surrounding FEMA’s gross incompetence during Hurricane Katrina’s aftermath informed us how big, bureaucratic government agencies with police powers behave during emergencies. The RCMP is not particularly less malevolent just because they have funny uniforms.
Based on their actions, every level of government involved in the Alberta floods seems desperate to be as incompetent and harmful as FEMA.
The RCMP says they will return the guns to owners “after residents are allowed back in town and they provide proof of ownership.” Something tells me the occupying forces will make it difficult for the gun owners to provide such proof. “Oh, your proof of ownership was destroyed in the flood? That’s a real shame. No gun for you.”
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Premier Redford defended the actions of the RCMP. “I really hope that we can focus on more important matters at hand, like getting 12,000 people back into High River than continue to circulate this story,” she said. She seems to overlook that the government has utterly failed in High River. The more they focus on getting High River residents back to their homes, the longer it is likely to take.
When will residents be able to return home? The RCMP tells us: “People much higher up are going to make those decisions.” That sounds efficient. The mayor of High River says no one can return home until Home Hardware and Shoppers Drug Mart are open.
In a rare moment of sanity, the Prime Minister’s Office said the RCMP should return the guns. By this I think they mean, “Make it possible in theory for the owners to get the guns back.” Since the Minister of Public Safety is in charge of the RCMP, the Prime Minister can essentially just order the RCMP to return the guns immediately. Yet this has not been done.
But the RCMP never claimed it would keep the guns forever. They’ve maintained the pretense that the guns will be returned. But it’s unlikely that process will be easy.
Will every owner get their guns back?
These are the guys the RCMP is so afraid of?
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— Read more at the Calgary Herald, the Globe and Mail, and CBC —
May 1, 2013 1 Comment
William Plotnikov. Remember him? He was a Russian-Canadian boxer from Toronto who converted to Islam, then went to fight with Islamic militias against the Russians. He was killed by security forces in Dagestan last year.
It appears that he may have been acquainted with Boston Bomber Tamerlan Tsarnaev, who was also an amateur boxer. Plotnikov gave Tsarnaev’s name to Russian agents when he was interrogated in 2010. They had communicated online, and it it highly plausible that the two had met at some point, perhaps when Tsarnaev had attended a boxing event in Toronto (where his aunt also lived).
It has been reported that Tsarnaev traveled overseas to fight in Dagestan, but he fled back to the US immediately after Plotnikov’s death. Did Tsarnaev lose his nerve to be a front-line Jihadist after his buddy had been killed?
Even more scandalous is the possibility that Plotnikov and Tsarnaev may have received support and training from Georgian authorities. This is being investigated in Georgia now. The previous Georgian government, which had fought a war with Russia in 2008, was very interested in contesting Russian influence in Dagestan.
Justin Raimondo says: “The Georgian connection points to a classic case of ‘blowback.’ A covert operation conducted against the Russian government, originally, that got out of hand – and came back to bite the hand that fed it.” No joke. The Tsarnaev family received $100,000 in government welfare.
— Read more about this at The Telegraph, Time, Daily Mail, and Izvestia —
March 5, 2013 1 Comment
So I’ve talked to a several people now who were burned bad by Poseidon Concepts (symbol: PSN).
Check out the chart:
I used to own shares in this company, as part of a sub-portfolio of above-average dividend-paying stocks. I sold them September last year, because I anticipated a serious lack of growth from their competition being too intense. The dividend just wasn’t interesting enough to care.
When shares started tanking in November, a concerned friend asked me, “Do you still own PSN?”
“No,” I said.
“That’s good!” he told me, then he showed me the chart. I laughed. I made some small gains and got a dividend out of that. I got out at the right time based mostly on intuition.
And that was before the big reveal — Poseidon had to to write-down $100 million of non-existent revenue from 2012. Trading was halted on Feb 15 and the stock price is $0.27.
I have spoken with some sources close to this fiasco. The most interesting thing I heard was that their Controller was really some sort of “fitness model,” as if that was the source of the problem. This seems like a random frivolous remark. But then again, her Facebook page lends a bit of credence to the idea. And it seems weirdly credible when you consider what happened. I mean, really: $96-$102 million in revenue should not have been recorded as revenue? Out of $148 million… over three quarters? How the heck does that even happen? In any case, somewhere along the way their former CFO Matt MacKenzie committed an epic fail. Someone was either dishonest or incompetent.
Overall, whether it is due to incompetence or fraud, this is a huge scandal. There is now a $700 million lawsuit against National Bank for its sloppy underwriting. Lawyers are lining up to investigate possible fraud. What is the lesson to be learned? Picking stocks is hard and you will often lose. Most people will mostly lose. Forget about the art of financial modeling and valuing companies. Most people have no idea what is really going on at any given company. There might be idiots in charge. There might even be fraud. Think Bre-X. Think Enron. Think PFG.
Think Poseidon.
If even the analysts and even the bank underwriting the company’s stock are clueless, how can you trust anyone?
The answer is: Don’t trust anyone. I like to speculate in high risk stocks, and I have a golden rule: “I am financially and psychologically prepared for any stock I own to fall to $0.” I sleep well at night.