OISE Professor accused of pedophilia-related crimes to have preliminary hearing in two weeks

There hasn't been much information in the news about the upcoming trial of Ben Levin, the former Ontario Deputy Minister of Education under Kathleen Wynne who was indicted for numerous child pornography and other offenses involving minors.

But one of the detectives involved with the case confirmed for me today that Levin, who at the time of his arrest was a Professor at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education (OISE), is scheduled to have a preliminary hearing starting on Wednesday, November 26 at the courthouse at 1000 Finch Avenue West in Toronto.

Levin's preliminary hearing is expected to last three days, at which time the court will hear a great deal of evidence about his alleged involvement in procuring child pornography and allegations about his arranging to commit sexual assault, as was described in his indictment. The judge at the hearing will determine if the evidence presented merits the next step of proceeding to trial.

For those familiar with the environment and culture guiding the institution where Levin was a professor, that someone of such high standing there would be in such a predicament comes as less than a total shock. OISE is the same place that, only a few short weeks after Levin's arrest, co-sponsored a symposium for teachers of young children where the keynote speaker postulated, without genuine scientific evidence, that adult sexual attraction to children is a natural phenomenon.

Considering that culture, the crimes of which Levin stand accused seem to be a natural, logical progression.

Regardless of the outcome of the Levin trial, hopefully the focus will shift to what bizarre, inappropriate dogmas are being taught at OISE. We need to be careful to determine whether that place responsible for the education of our children's educators is actually a place from which our children need protection.

Poll says Canadians think justice system is too lenient, so Liberals, NDP and the CBC say Canadians must be reeducated

In a move that is entirely typical of the delusional arrogance of Canada's leftist political establishment, their response to a poll indicating that a majority of Canadians have lost confidence in the justice system is not to fix the system but to want to reeducate the pubic to be satisfied with it.

An internal study conducted by the Justice Department and obtained by the Canadian Press  "concludes the public believes victims are too often ignored in the justice system, and that prisons do a poor job of rehabilitating offenders."

The Conservative government has committed to introducing legislation to impose tougher mandatory sentences for crimes such as sex offenses against children and for the system to place more importance on the right of victims. But Opposition critics in the NDP and Liberal parties, as well as some federal bureaucrats argue that declining rates of crime in some areas mean that Canadians need to be "educated" about the virtues of the existing system.

These opposition critics probably do not live in crime-ridden areas of Toronto, however one or two may represent areas of Vancouver where during elections, junkies are reportedly given sandwiches   and are bussed to polling stations with instructions to cast a vote for a particular candidate.

Remarkably, in its usual effort to spin the news to its own biases, the CBC reported this story as "Canadians think fix for courts lies in education, report says" implying it it is not a small number of politicians and bureaucrats and CBC wonks who think that, but the majority of Canadians who in fact hold the opposite view.

This CBC headline implies the exact opposite of the study's conclusion

Montreal child kidnapper Chiheb Battikh was affiliated with Muslim Association of Canada and other Islamist organizations

The kidnapping of a 3-year old child in Montreal on December 19 was well covered by the media. 

On the other hand, the main suspect Chiheb Battikh’s Islamist background and his role within the Muslim Brotherhood local infrastructure have gone unreported since his arrest.  Point de Bascule presents a list of organizations run by Battikh that we have been able to identify so far.

Amsterdam's red-light area: Legalising prostitution hasn't prevented organised crime

Amsterdam, often hailed as the sex mecca of Europe, is to have a major facelift. After 12 years of legalised window brothels, attracting hordes of customers from all over Europe, politicians, police, citizens and even many of the prostitutes themselves are admitting that state-sanctioned prostitution is a failed social experiment. 

Given almost ten years of evidence that criminal gangs control the red-light area of De Wallen, the local council has announced plans to clean it up in an attempt to transform the reputation of the city. Out will go at least half of the window brothels, sex shops and cannabis cafés and in will come more museums, restaurants and art galleries. 

Immigration Minister Kenney attempts to expedite deportation of foreign criminals

And naturally The Opposition wants to keep criminals here, since that is a major part of their support base

Crime and (inadequate) punishment in Canada

This interview of Immigration Minister Jason Kenney by Sun Media's Brian Lilley provides some important information about proposed immigration reforms intended to make it easier to deport foreign criminals.



Brian's post on "Prisoner Justice Day" is worth reading too, pointing out some of the strange hypocrisy the media perpetrates in its disregard for the rights of the victims of crime.

Is Tides Canada scamming Canadian taxpayers?

It sure looks like it:



Researcher Vivian Krause has more at the Financial Post

And more about Krause's ongoing battle with Tides Canada here

h/t BCF

Latest news from the Nortel show trial

So here's the deal: three former Nortel executives are on trial for fraud for allegedly engineering results that would give the company profits, triggering bonuses for them

But here are the problems the charges put forward by an RCMP White Collar Crimes unit that that has managed to get only one major conviction (the obviously guilty Garth Drabinsky) in the unit's history, and the theories of a prosecution that makes Inspector Clouseau look like Sherlock Holmes.

The three executives were way down the list of people who would get bonuses for the profitable periods. The three of them combined received less than ten percent of some individual former Nortel executives and Board members over the same period.

The Nortel Board and auditing firm Deloitte, which was paid about $10 million a year for auditing Nortel's books, all approved of the transactions that the executives on trial are accused of having made fraudulently. By definition, you can't do something transparently and with auditors' approval and commit fraud.

If indeed these transactions were fraudulent, then one of the unanswered mysteries of the Nortel Show Trial is the question of why the Board and Auditors who approved the transactions aren't also on facing the same fraud charges.

The answer seems obvious. The spectacular collapse of Nortel last decade had a devastating affect of the Toronto Stock Exchange and thousands of investors, many who lost fortunes while large investors like some of the Public Service Unions were able to force Nortel to pay them money at the expense of private individual investors.

The mob was screaming for blood, and so scapegoats were needed. The Board are part of the Bay Street old boy network, too well conected to go after. The sacrifice to the mob therefore came in the persons of Former CEO Frank Dunn, CFO Douglas Beatty and Controller Michael Gollogly.

In today's Ottawa Citizen, James Bagnall explains more of the illogical arguments and inconsistencies put forward by the prosecution:


The Crown has alleged this activity was directed by Nortel’s top three financial executives — Frank Dunn, Douglas Beatty and Michael Gollogly — in order to smooth out Nortel’s progression to steady, maintainable profits. Crown prosecutor Robert Hubbard added that Nortel management in January was expecting a loss in the first quarter of 2003.

He also maintains that management engineered earnings in order to trigger executive and other bonuses.

Nevertheless, to transform a fourth-quarter profit into a loss seems not only counter-intuitive, but contrary to the incentives in place for management. Indeed, the financial motivation for Nortel’s executives would have been to direct Harrison NOT to solicit new entries that created the quarterly loss.


UPDATE (Feb 1): Today The Ottawa Citizen's report discusses how the Crown's first witness actually helped make the defence's case. It also elaborates on how the Crown doesn't seem to understand the issues that it is prosecuting.

Anti-G20 activist sentenced to jail for eating children after luring them to her gingerbread house

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Well, not really. She just looks like the sort that would do that (Warning: Graphic Image)

G20 protest ringleader Amanda Hiscocks says she has no respect for the legal system, and her supporters demonstrated that in spades Friday, throwing a Toronto courthouse into chaos for nearly two hours before the accused was jailed for 16 months.

..Judge Budzinski, who repeatedly interjected during her address, suggested Ms. Hiscocks was hypocritical to denounce elitism while advocating a method of protest that violently invaded public space and silenced opposing views.  “The group itself [was] becoming an elite and taking over the city… Violence distracted from any legitimacy in the message,” he said of the G20 riots.

Here is Amanda Hiscocks' statement she prepared to be read at her sentencing.

She is a volunteer coordinator at the University of Guelph’s Ontario Public Interest Research Group. The various Canadian University so-called "Public Interest Research Groups" are bodies that students are, with the complicity of radical-dominated, professional paid student union leaders, forced to fund. The Public Interest Research Groups are hotbeds of fanaticism that celebrate violence and demonstrate little regard for democratic values.

But this most foul, strange and unnatural...

The crime wasn't murder, but there was something rotten and foul smelling about this shocking incident in which, as The Smoking Gun reveals, you'll see a line never before recorded in a police report.

Things going on..

Canadian universities partner in religious discrimination

Want to help make criminals rich? Keep supporting idiotic drug prohibition policies. It worked great for alcohol in the 1920's

The campaign to get Bert and Ernie to marry fails to recognize they aren't humans..they're puppets!