The Black Rod

The 8 victims of a mass murder in a wooded area near an rural Ontario farmhouse have now been identified as members of, or people associated with, the Bandidos motorcycle club -- in Toronto. We do not believe in coincidences. Sooner or later police will have ask whether the killings are related to a national gathering of Bandidos in Toronto just last week. And The Black Rod has learned at least one member of the Winnipeg Bandidos chapter attended the Toronto run. Reporters have been working hard to put names and faces to the eight men found packed into four abandoned vehicles off the No. 401 Highway. The Toronto Star has uncovered a few clues: * The Volkswagen Golf is registered to Luis Manny Raposo. A man with the same name was a known, low-level member of the Bandidos biker gang, and once faced charges in Quebec and accusations of wrongdoing in Ontario. * The Infinity, found with the body of a heavyset man curled in the back cargo area, was leased by a Montreal company to an Ontario ...

* Are the Taliban fighters attacking Canadians in Afghanistan trained in Iraq? * Has NATO actually formed a 27,000 member army to stabilize Afghanistan? * Will Prince Harry be serving in Afghanistan in the Canadian zone? These are a few of the questions we came up with while putting together a primer ahead of the debate in Parliament on Canada's commitment to Afghanistan. The answers might surprise you. - Currently, over 21,000 forces from 21 nations are in Afghanistan. This will increase to an army of 27,000 under NATO control by about August. The United States will provide 16,000 troops, Britain 6,000 and Canada 2300. Canadian Gen. Ray Henault says NATO has agreed it will take at least 10 years to rebuild the basic infrastructure of war-devastated country while overcoming the resistance of drug lords and the fundamentalist Muslim Taliban. In February, Canada took command of a multi-national task force in southeast Afghanistan. Called Task Force Aegis, we are leading a force of ab...

The major press in town was in such a hurry to get Auditor General Jon Singleton and his gumshoes off their backs, that they choked when it came to reporting on his latest presentation to the Legislature. Singleton unleashed two private investigators to find out who leaked his report on the Workers Compensation Board before it was officially submitted Jan. 17th. They sniffed around and concluded the Printing shop was as good a suspect as any. The local T.V. stations and the papers, most of which got a copy of the leaked report, reported as much, with the Freep taking it a step further and getting a strong denial from the Printer. What they all ignored was that Manitoba's chief watchdog didn't bark; he coughed. Look at this timeline in the Auditor's own report: Based on information available, the time period in which an unauthorized release may have occurred was defined to be between January 12 and January 16, 2006. ...comments and details related to the WCB Report (were) ...

While the mainstream papers go ga-ga over Juno host Pamela Anderson and her ta-tas, The Black Rod would like to tip our ha-ha-hat to Citi-TV host Lisa Saunders and her performance at the second-annual Brewno's. The Brewno's, for the few of you who don't know, is Winnipeg's off-the-cuff counter programming to the Juno's. It's held Juno weekend at the Regal Beagle (aka the pub at the Ramada Marlborough Hotel). The lovely-and-talented Lisa sings and plays keyboard in the pop band Arbra Hill. In a rare live appearance, they performed three songs Saturday with Lisa showing she's as comfortable in front of a mike as she is in front of a camera. One song, she announced, was about Robert Latimore. This was not what we expected. The lyrics go something like: "I saw the house/ It was a bloody mess/ I saw the bones/ that rotted on the chair." Funny, we expected something a bit lighter from a band that practices in a lingerie store. ( Whew. Is it hot in here? ...

Psst. They want a debate on Afghanistan. Pass it on. What? It's not a secret? That's what you think. There's more than one secret behind the debate. The first secret was let out of the bag Thursday in a op-ed piece in the Winnipeg Sun by perennial protestor Nick Ternette. He wrote objecting to a letter writer who called anti-war protestors 'pro-terrorist.' But what Ternette wrote next unveilled what the left really thinks about the military involvement in Iraq and Afghanistan, something you won't hear in a debate in Parliament. " for us to support a "puppet" government that would collapse if American and Canadian troops left Afghanistan where "democracy" and the Muslim religion are totally incompatible , is unconsionable ." " Women are oppressed under Muslim law, Muslims who convert to Christianity are threatened with death, gays and lesbians would be stoned if they exposed themselves, and warlords and criminals are in control...

Imagine our surprise to find a story from The Black Rod in the Winnipeg Free Press --- without attribution. Oh, not the attribution part. We've come to expect that whenever we see the FP cribbing one of our stories. The surprise was in seeing which story they scalped. And trying to guess why. Last April, almost one year ago, in an exclusive story , The Black Rod told how a 10-year-old girl witnessed Matthew Dumas fighting with police in a back lane mere minutes before he was shot to death by a police officer on Dufferin Avenue. It was the critical piece of the puzzle to understanding what happened that afternoon and what was going through the minds of Dumas and the police officers chasing him.The Winnipeg Free Press, along with the other mainstream media in Winnipeg, have studiously avoided reporting our exclusive, until now. In a story about the gunning down on Saturday of Leon Dumas, the cousin of Matthew Dumas, reporter Bruce Owen writes: "Matthew Dumas was fatally shot...

It's not every week you get to see the past, the present and the future of news displayed before you. This past week was a rare treat. First, the past... Last weekend, in advance of the third anniversary of the invasion of Iraq, both the National Post and the Globe and Mail carried stories about the sputtering anti-war "movement" in the U.S. The gist of both was that the anti-war campaign had failed to find any traction in the general public, and was driven by leftover hippies who were trying to relive their anti-Vietnam protest days. Those, you may recall, were the glory days of the mainstream media, when anti-war protestors were deified and reporters were applauded for being openly critical of the government and of the military fighting the Communists in Vietnam. Sadly (for the MSM veterans of Vietnam past), there was the present... The next day we saw the proof of the advance stories. Anti-war marches across Canada, the U.S. and Europe drew pathetic "crowds."...

It was just by fluke that The Black Rod caught the strangest interview on television since the days of Pollock and Pollock. While switching channels past the nightly infomercials for Ab-Flex, miracle juicers, and girls just waiting for your call, we landed on Global's daily five minutes with Charles Adler. Catching our eye was his guests---the three candidates for leadership of the Manitoba Consevative Party. Given that he had devoted a segment to them less than a week ago, we wondered why he had them back so soon. Then we wondered why they were doing the whole show in code. Luckily, unlike any other insomniacs or masochists watching, we had a code-book handy so that we were able to decipher the discussion. On the surface, Adler was exploring the positions of his guests on the question of funding private abortion clinics. Ron Schuler had given an interview to The Winnipeg Sun on the topic and Adler had corralled the other candidates to discuss the matter, sort of. Except that it...

The editorial board of the Winnipeg Free Press knew something was wrong. The "race" to replace Stuart Murray as leader of the Manitoba P.C.'s was more than lacklustre. It was downright strange. Instead of using the opportunity to float bold ideas that would attract voters, the contenders were announcing eye-glazing platforms about obscure party rules. The FP even wrote an editorial asking "What gives?" Their first mistake was relying on the newspaper's Legislature reporters to give them a clue. They should know, by now, that if you have questions, you go to The Black Rod. Because we were thinking the exact same thing. What gives? Only, we knew where to go for the answer---the blogosphere. Political reporting is usually peppered with anonymous sources--- Insider Abe spinning here and Backroom Bob spinning there, all on the understanding that their insights are "not for attribution." But if you know where to go on the blogosphere, you'll find a...

They say the first impression is the strongest. And our first impression of Ken Waddell is that he's a scrapper. Which could be fun to watch, given how the race for leader of the Manitoba Tories has been so listless that the Winnipeg Free Press was driven to write an editorial about it. Because his base of operations isn't Winnipeg, his campaign for the leadership of the Manitoba Progressive Conservative Party has flown under the radar of the mainstream media's reporters. But being an unknown to the big media players isn't necessarily a bad thing. It lets you define yourself instead of having them peg you.Waddell threw his hat into the ring two weeks ago, but you'd hardly know it by the amount of coverage he's received within the Perimeter Highway. Maybe there will be more after he formally files his papers tomorrow. Meanwhile, The Black Rod decided to find out more about this farmer/publisher who's challenging two sitting MLA's for the party's top j...