The Black Rod

An Afghan athlete is bringing home a medal from the Beijing Olympics to the amazement and delight of his countrymen. You can bet that there wasn't a soul in Afghanistan who thought their Olympians had even a chance for a medal. They had no training facilities, no professional coaches, no funding…in short, no hope. In July, the only female on the Afghan team disappeared from a training facility in Italy, amid fears she had been kidnapped. Nineteen-year old Mehboba Ahdyar surfaced a week later in a phone call to her parents. She was abandoning her dream of running the 800 and 1500 metre races in the Olympics, she said, and she was going to seek asylum in Norway. The fear of being murderd by Muslim fanatics when she returned home had grown too great. But the team perservered, and when they get home, they'll have with them Afghanistan's first ever Olympic medal. On Wednesday, 21-year-old Rohullah Nikpai captured the bronze medal in the 58-kg Taekwondo competition by defeating h

Taman Inquiry Commissioner Roger Salhany took time out from his rush to judgement to get into an argument with the lawyer representing one of the tribunal's main targets -- where he tipped his hand to how he's going to write a part of the final report. You didn't see that in the mainstream media, nor did you read how Salhany shared a joke with Gene Zazalenchuk, the lawyer for Crystal Taman's family, about her death. So read on. Salhany was supposed to be listening to final submissions to the Inquiry on Wednesday, but he had other things on his mind; he wanted to get home to Ontario. So after hearing from Commission counsel David Pacicco and Taman representative Zazalenchuk, Salhany started speeding up the process with the remaining lawyers. Don't read passages of evidence, just give me the reference and I assure you I'll read them later, he told them. "I don't want to continue in the parking lot on Friday", he quipped to the lawyer for East. St. Pa

The Taman Inquiry is the latest Manitoba show trial to stain the halls of justice in the province. They come with all the trappings of a court--a judge, a prosecutor, and evidence. But the verdict has been decided well in advance and the witnesses are cherry-picked to "prove" the verdict. And since the proceedings are non-adversarial, the accused don't get to present a defence. A conniving body of reporters, columnists and editorialists legitimizes the dog-and-pony show by pretending the inquiry is a legitimate and honest search for truth and not the fraud that it is. The verdict in the Taman Inquiry was written before a single witness took the oath to tell the truth. The commissioner was going to decide that if the East St. Paul police, and particularly then-chief Harry Bakema, the Winnipeg police, and special prosecutor Marty Minuk had done their jobs properly, Derek Harvey-Zenk would have been convicted of drunk driving causing death and would have gone to

They came for their pound of flesh, scales and carving knives in their fists. And when Derek Harvey-Zenk refused to give it to them, they left howling for blood. Winnipeg Sun columnist Tom Brodbeck thundered: "Harvey-Zenk could have at least shown some remorse yesterday When asked by commission counsel if he'd like to say a few words about any aspect of the tragic event -- you know like "I'm sorry," or "I feel so badly for Crystal's family" -- he said: "No." No? What do you mean, no? You killed someone's wife, mother, daughter, sister, cousin and all you have to say is "No?" I've seen more remorse from a piece of bark." Winnipeg Free Press columnist Gordon Sinclair oozed: "The truth, as they say, might have set him free. Instead he claimed, unconvincingly, to be a victim of memory loss. But, he can't blame memory loss for forgetting to do the right thing. And say "sorry"." Certainly Brodbeck a

Move over Mattie, you've been replaced. Matthew Dumas is so yesterday . Manitoba's aboriginal "leadership" has a new poster boy. He's perfect, with all the requisites and more. He's aboriginal, criminal, stupid, and dead. And connected to a saint. Tuesday the usual suspects called a joint news conference to announce their collective embrace of twenty-six-year-old Craig McDougall. The youth (their word) was shot to death by Winnipeg city police 45 minutes before sunrise Saturday morning. Police say he had a knife in his hand and refused repeated demands to put it down. The aboriginal brain trust says he had a cellphone and kept talking to his girlfriend even after being shot. It will be interesting to see which version is true. But to the the assorted Indian chiefs it doesn't matter. What matters is they have a new cause celebre to attack the police with. They tried, but couldn't get any traction with car thief Michael Langan who died after being tasere

We have to admit that our decapitation story isn't as good as the Greyhound Bus decapitation story that broke Thursday. But its still damn good---and it's a scoop. Do we have your attention? The investigation into last weekend's mysterious abduction in the 500 block of College Avenue is a homicide investigation. Winnipeg police have been told the still missing, still unidentified abductee had his throat cut to the extent he was almost beheaded, his head hanging on by a thread. The street was awash with blood when an ambulance got to the scene after a call to police that somebody was seen being stuffed into the trunk of a car. An 18 year old "man" was charged Monday with Assault Causing Bodily Harm and Forcible Confinement. Expect the charges to be upgraded once a body is found. The current accused has the same name (and age) as the founder of Bassment Records, a local hip hop and rap record label, who is better known by his street name, Big Fun. Bassment Records i