"Canadians are fed up with the soft approach to crime that has been taken for so long. They want their government to get tough on criminals and send a clear message that violence will not be tolerated in our communities ...I believe that violent offenders deserve more than a slap on the wrist. People who commit serious crimes deserve a harsher penalty than sitting back and enjoying the comforts of home."
Problem is what kind of minimum sentence do you give to a guy who commits a random act of violence and then dies in the shoot out.Also See:
Also See:
Among other things, O'Connor's report found:
With the help of ally Hugo Chavez, the country kicked-off an effort to revitalize the 116-member NAM organization and transform it into a force countering U.S. predominance in the world.
Despite the usual American jingoist reporting on the conference as being a rogues gallery of Americas enemies, that is far from what NAM was and is historically. It acted as a third way between competing Imperialisms during the Cold War. And today its revival will insure that the US. cannot act as the sole Imperialist superpower.
Cuban President Fidel Castro, right, met United Nations Secretary General Koffi Annan in a Havana hospital room on Thursday. (Juventud Rebeld/Associated Press)
And while declaring democracy to be a universal value, the movement said no one country or region should define it for the whole world. The leaders mentioned Venezuela and Cuba in particular as they asserted the right of all countries to determine their own form of government. The statements, many of which contain veiled criticisms of the U.S., were to be approved by unanimous consent after another round of speeches Saturday night by leaders of the Nonaligned Movement.
“No one in the Nonaligned Movement thinks that the United States is responsible for all the problems, but many think that it is for some,”
Raul joined numerous U.S. foes who said a bellicose America had made the world more dangerous.
“The United States spends one billion dollars a year in weapons and soldiers,” he said. “To think that a social and economic order that has proven unsustainable could be maintained by force is simply an absurd idea.”
Many demanded that the United Nations take action against U.S. veto power in the security council. “The U.S. is turning the security council into a base for imposing its politics,” Iran's President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad complained. “Why should people live under the nuclear threat of the U.S.?”
The document supports Iran's position while encouraging Iran to continue cooperating with the International Atomic Energy Agency. North Korea Parliament leader Kim Yong Nam claimed his communist nation “would not need even a single nuclear weapon if there no longer existed
U.S. threat,” and said U.S. financial sanctions have “driven the situation into an unpredictable phase.”
U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan agreed that the security council must be more responsive to less powerful countries. “The Security Council must reform, for the sake of the developing world, and for the sake of the United Nations itself,'' Annan told the Nonaligned leaders. “The perception of a narrow power-base risks leading to an erosion of the U.N.'s authority and legitimacy, even, some would argue, its neutrality and independence. I have in the past described this as a democracy deficit.”
The Nonaligned Movement was formed in 1961 to establish a neutral third path in a world divided by the United States and the Soviet Union. Cuba last hosted the group in Havana 27 years ago.
The world has changed dramatically since then, but Annan said its collective mission is more relevant than ever: promoting democracy, protecting human rights and developing civil societies. Many leaders said their group will be stronger with Fidel Castro as the movement's president, but it's unclear whether the 80-year-old Castro will recover enough from intestinal surgery to guide the group for the next three years until Egypt takes over.
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Cuba
The 37-year-old watched friends torn apart by bombs and shredded by gunfire. More agonizingly for a proud warrior, he saw foreign soldiers seize control of the farmland where he grew up. Hundreds of insurgents had dug trenches to defend Panjwai District, but they ran away when confronted with an onslaught of air power and a grinding advance by the Canadians and their allies, who declared victory in the battle yesterday.
"The Taliban will continue their fight for Panjwai," the fighter said.
