23/11/07, Mark Landler, Sweden Turns to a Promising Power Source, With Flaws

MALMO, Sweden — Steadying himself on the heaving foredeck of an inspection ship recently, his face flecked by spray, Arne Floderus pronounced it a good day for his new offshore wind farm.

[photo John McConnico for The New York Times, Arne Floderus, the project manager of one of the world’s largest wind parks, which was built by the power company Vattenfall.]

A 30-mile-an-hour wind was twirling the fingerlike blades of a turbine 380 feet above his head. Around him, a field of turbines rotated in a synchronized ballet that, when fully connected to an electrical grid, would generate enough power to light 60,000 nearby houses.

“We’ve created a new landmark,” said Mr. Floderus, the project manager of the $280 million wind park, one of the world’s largest, which was built by the Swedish power company Vattenfall.

The park, in a shallow sound between Sweden and Denmark, testifies to the remarkable rise of wind energy — no longer a quirky alternative favored by environmentalists in Denmark and Germany, but a mainstream power source used in 26 nations, including the United States.

Yet Sweden’s gleaming wind park is entering service at a time when wind energy is coming under sharper scrutiny, not just from hostile neighbors, who complain that the towers are a blot on the landscape, but from energy experts who question its reliability as a source of power.

For starters, the wind does not blow all the time. When it does, it does not necessarily do so during periods of high demand for electricity. That makes wind a shaky replacement for more dependable, if polluting, energy sources like oil, coal and natural gas. Moreover, to capture the best breezes, wind farms are often built far from where the demand for electricity is highest. The power they generate must then be carried over long distances on high-voltage lines, which in Germany and other countries are strained and prone to breakdowns.

In the United States, one of the areas most suited for wind turbines is the central part of the country, stretching from Texas through the northern Great Plains — far from the coastal population centers that need the most electricity.

In Denmark, which pioneered wind energy in Europe, construction of wind farms has stagnated in recent years. The Danes export much of their wind-generated electricity to Norway and Sweden because it comes in unpredictable surges that often outstrip demand.

In 2003, Ireland put a moratorium on connecting wind farms to its electricity grid because of the strains that power surges were putting on the network; it has since begun connecting them again.

In the United States, proposals to build large wind parks in the Atlantic off Long Island and off Cape Cod, Mass., have run into stiff opposition from local residents on aesthetic grounds.

As wind energy has matured as an industry, its image has changed — from a clean, even elegant, alternative to fossil fuels to a renewable energy source with advantages and drawbacks, like any other.

“The environmental benefits of wind are not as great as its champions claim,” said Euan C. Blauvelt, research director of ABS Energy Research, an independent market research firm in London. “You’ve still got to have backup sources of power, like coal-fired plants.”

Mr. Blauvelt publishes an annual report on wind energy in which he discusses its flaws. People in the industry would accuse him of propagating myths, he said. Now, the criticism is more tempered.

“One of the big problems with wind is that people tend to get hyped up about it, very emotional,” Mr. Blauvelt said. “The difference is that the arguments are becoming more rational.”

None of this is to say that wind power has peaked. On the contrary, Mr. Blauvelt figures the industry is adding capacity at a five-year compound annual growth rate of 26.3 percent. That is faster than hydroelectric power in its early days and twice the recent growth rate of nuclear energy.

The United States, which is considered a pioneer in wind, added more generating capacity in 2006 than any year on record. With 11,575 megawatts, the United States is the world’s third largest wind country, after Germany and Spain, and it is adding more capacity than any other.

Among new countries with significant wind capacity are Britain, Canada, Italy, Japan and the Netherlands.

“What we’re seeing is a second wave of countries, which are starting to invest more heavily,” said Christian Kjaer, the chief executive of the European Wind Energy Association in Brussels.

He said wind energy would benefit from two parallel trends: rising oil prices and a global push to tax carbon-dioxide emissions. “It’s very good way of hedging against volatile oil prices and potentially volatile carbon costs,” Mr. Kjaer said.

In Germany, where 20,000 wind turbines generate 5 percent of the electricity, advocates say wind will be critical to meeting the government’s goal of generating at least 20 percent of all power from renewable methods by 2020. But the industry’s growth is slowing for a variety of reasons.

Germany is running out of places to put the turbines because of restrictions on the location and height of the devices. And rising raw material prices are making wind farms more expensive to build.

“Under the current circumstances, Germany’s climate protection targets are not achievable,” said Hermann Albers, the president of the German Wind Energy Association.

Open land is not a problem in the United States, but wind parks have faced resistance, particularly in scenic locales near the shore. A private developer, Cape Wind, wants to erect 130 turbines in Nantucket Sound, off Cape Cod. It has drawn protests from some well-connected locals, including the Kennedy family.

Cape Wind said it hoped to obtain all the necessary permits by next year, which would enable it to be up and running by 2011. “It’s been a long road,” said Mark Rodgers, a spokesman for the developer.

For a socially conscious society like Sweden, wind turbines exert a fashionable appeal.

Today, they account for less than 1 percent of Sweden’s electricity generation. But the government wants to increase annual wind power production to 10 terawatt hours, or 10 trillion watt hours, by 2015 from less than 1 terawatt hour now (the park off Malmo will produce a third of a terawatt hour).

Vattenfall hopes to develop an even larger off-shore park in the Baltic Sea, between Sweden and Germany. In all, the government has identified 49 sites that are suitable for wind parks.

Sweden has historically invested little in wind projects because it has two reliable sources of energy, nuclear and hydro, which each supply roughly half its power. And because hydro is renewable, Sweden already does well on the environmental balance sheet.

But these energy sources have their vulnerabilities: hydro, to low water levels; nuclear, to technical breakdowns. The Swedish government has also pledged not to build any new nuclear power plants.

“One of the key energy priorities for Sweden is to establish a third leg of energy production,” said Anders Nyberg, political adviser in the Ministry of Enterprise, Energy and Communications.

Of course, Sweden does not need to build wind parks to get wind power. It could simply buy more surplus wind power from Denmark, which it uses, as does Norway, to pump underground water into elevated reservoirs. The water is later released during periods of peak electric demand to drive hydroelectric stations.

In this way, hydro acts as a form of storage for wind energy — addressing one of wind power’s biggest shortcomings. Sweden’s strength in hydro makes it a good candidate for greater development of wind power, according to analysts.

Sweden is subsidizing wind power through “green” certificates, which favor the use of renewable energy. The small extra cost is passed on to consumers.

While Swedes staunchly support wind energy, they are as susceptible to the not-in-my-backyard opposition as people elsewhere. For years, residents opposed the wind farm near Malmo, known as Lillgrund, particularly after the builders obtained permission to raise the height of the towers. But the campaign to block the project failed.

Still, Mr. Floderus said the process took far too long, and Vattenfall is urging the government to speed up the approvals next time.

As his inspection ship followed a zigzag course through a field of 48 turbines, Mr. Floderus pointed to Malmo’s two other landmarks, visible in the distance: Oresund Bridge, a 10-mile engineering marvel that connects Malmo with Copenhagen, and the Turning Torso, an eye-popping 54-story skyscraper designed by the Spanish architect Santiago Calatrava.

Soon, Mr. Floderus said, the whirling blades of the Lillgrund wind turbines would take their place alongside those landmarks as symbols of the modern age.

22/11/07, Spiegel, Nuclear Exaggeration

November 22, 2007, Matthias Schulz

Part 1: Is Atomic Radiation as Dangerous as We Thought?

A mounting number of studies are coming to some surprising conclusions about the dangers of nuclear radiation. It might not be as deadly as is widely believed.

[photo DPA The explosions at Hiroshima and Nagasaki (pictured) were devastating. The resulting radiation illnesses, though, weren't as bad as expected.]

Wearing mosquito helmets on their heads and radiation dosimeters on their belts, Clemens Woda and his three Russian colleagues drive past a bored-looking guard leaning nonchalantly against a meter-high fence. The truck moves past a yellow warning sign reading "radioactivity" and into the restricted zone. Inside, the streets and fields show the effects of years of abandonment and are overgrown with tall reeds. The area hugging the swampy banks of the Techa River has been unpopulated for decades.

The group reaches Metlino, a ghost town that was evacuated in 1956. A weather-beaten grain silo protrudes into the sky. The scientists take soil samples and, wearing rubber boots, wade through the mud over to a Russian Orthodox church in a depressing state of disrepair. One of them climbs the bell tower, hammers at the wall and slides a brick into his bag. The brick will be used as evidence.

Woda, who works for the GSF Research Center for Health and the Environment, located in the town of Neuherberg near Munich -- Europe's largest radiation protection institute -- is currently involved in an exciting investigation. As part of the EU's "SOUL" (Southern Urals Radiation Risk Research) project, Woda and his team are exploring the region where the Soviets once manufactured the explosive material for their first atomic bomb.

The Siberian factory was called Mayak ("beacon"). Workers from the gulags laid railroad track and built a "closed city" for 17,000 people, cooling towers and a radiochemical plant. The first nuclear reactor went online in 1948 and was soon producing weapons-grade plutonium for Soviet dictator Josef Stalin. The giant weapons laboratory did not appear on any map.

A consensus in the West has been reached about what happened next. Soviet nuclear scientists stand accused of having irradiated the environment and of otherwise poisoning the surrounding area. The result, it is said, has been thousands of cancer deaths and myriads of deformed children. Indeed, this autumn, Mayak (of which not a single historic photo exists to this day) celebrated a gruesome anniversary. In the fall of 1957, a tank filled with 80 tons of nuclear waste exploded. According to an eyewitness, a "strange, bright red fog" rose several thousand meters into the air. "In the winter," says the eyewitness, "I would have terrible headaches and nosebleeds, and I almost went blind."

The consequences of the 1957 nuclear accident in Siberia were "far more serious" than Chernobyl, the German television network ARD recently reported. "Most of the pupils in my class died of cancer," says Gulchara Ismagilova, who was 11 at the time.

[inset

CASES OF NUCLEAR DISASTER inset:

On Aug. 6 and 9, 1945, the US dropped atomic bombs on the two Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. More than 86,000 survivors were studied. So far, only 777 of them have died as a result of radiation poisoning.

On April 26, 1986, a reactor at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant melted down. Forty-seven clean-up workers died from radiation poisoning. Nine children died from thyroid cancer. Experts estimate that up to 4,000 may subsequently die from the long-term results of radiation.

On October 10, 1957, the graphite core of the nuclear reactor at Windscale caught fire, releasing radioactive contamination. The fallout across northern Europe was, according to new calculations, much larger than previously thought. The final death toll is expected to reach 240.

The East German company Wismut AG mined uranium ore from 1947 to 1990. Miners were largely unprotected and inhaled radioactive radon. some 59,000 people have been examined. So far, 1,221 people have died from complications resulting from radiation, most of them from lung cancer.

end of inset]

But what really happened? That's what the team of Bavarian physicists have traveled to Siberia to find out, and that's why they are taking soil samples and packing bricks into their bags. They are also looking at other important pieces of evidence from the secret nuclear complex. "The employees there were examined with a dosimeter, sometimes once a week, and required to provide urine samples," says GSF researcher Peter Jacob. The results of the tests were documented in more than 7,000 health records encased in gray cardboard folders. "An invaluable archive," says Jacob.

There are even kidneys and livers of workers who died at the site. Preserved in paraffin, they are kept stored next to frozen vials of blood at the Biophysical Institute of Osyorsk. Russian doctors are also collecting hair samples from those workers still alive today along with teeth that have fallen out. The samples are then sent to Germany; 200 teeth are already on file. Once analyzed by the GSF's state-of-the-art laboratories, the scientists will have radiation profiles for each person who worked at the nuclear plant. The project receives €6.8 million in grant money from the EU.

Despite this wealth of material, the task is a difficult one. Mistrust of the operators of Mayak runs deep. According to environment organization Greenpeace, 272,000 people were harmed at the facility and in the surrounding area. Even in the town of Muslyumovo, 80 kilometers (50 miles) away, "one in two adults are infertile, and one in three infants are born with deformities," a Greenpeace report says.

[photo Alexander Ulanovsky / GSF researchers collecting bricks near the Soviet plutonium factory at Mayak.]

As deeply disturbing as these claims are, the tests in no way bear them out. Indeed, a number of project groups at the GSF center near Munich are doing their best to determine just how many people fell victim to the radiation pollution at Mayak. Their conclusions? The horrors of Mayak are much less extensive than believed.

There is no doubt that the workers at this plant east of the Ural Mountains performed dangerous work. Enveloped in a permanent atmosphere of fear -- with intelligence agents in black coats constantly hurrying through the hallways -- about 150 men would lift the warm, spent fuel elements from the reactors and carry them to the radiochemical plant.

There, in a long brick building, workers, including many women, sat in a dimly lit environment and placed the encrusted rods into nitric acid, triggering a process that allowed them to remove the weapons-grade plutonium. While the same work was performed with remote-controlled robotic arms in the West, the Soviet workers were not even given masks to wear. There was nothing to stop plutonium gases from entering their lungs.

And yet the amount of health damage sustained by these workers was astonishingly low. The GSF study has examined 6,293 men who worked at the chemical plant between 1948 and 1972. "So far 301 have died of lung cancer," says Jacob. "But only 100 cases were caused by radiation. The others were attributed to cigarettes."

The second large, but as yet unpublished study by the GSF scientists also offers surprisingly low mortality figures. The subjects in this study were farmers who lived downstream from the nuclear reactors, in 41 small towns and villages along the Techa River. From 1949 to 1951, waste material from the plutonium production -- a bubbling toxic soup -- was simply poured into the river untreated. As a result, highly radioactive elements such as cesium 137 and strontium 90 were deposited in the river's sediments. The riverbanks became radioactive.

Part 2: Atomic Dangers or Doomsday Folklore?

A report warning of the dangers was sent to Moscow in 1951. A series of X-ray tests was conducted, and police officers were assigned to guard the river. "We could only see the river through barbed wire or from a small wooden bridge," says a former resident. By 1960, 22 villages had been evacuated.

[photo AP A Soviet technician checks a child for radiation near Kiev in Ukraine following the Chernobyl disaster.]

From the standpoint of Russian citizens' groups, which are currently suing for compensation in the courts, these official steps were half-hearted. In their view, the plant management committed "atomic genocide" against the ethnic Tatars living in the area.

But as the analyses show, even this accusation is exaggerated. The US National Cancer Institute (NCI) studied 29,873 people who lived along the Techa between 1950 and 1960. According to the NCI scientists, only 46 deaths came about due to radiation exposure.

The German researchers now know why the death rate was relatively low. Although the Techa was abused as a nuclear waste dump, the abuse was not as severe as the rumor-mongers would have us believe. "The Techa farmer most heavily exposed to the radiation received a dose of only 0.45 Gray," explains Jacob. By comparison, a lethal dose of radiation, which causes fever, changes in the composition of the blood, irreparable damage to the body and death within two weeks, is 6 Gray.

The findings hardly jive with the popular image of the atom as evil incarnate. Nightmarish scenarios of lingering illness and birth defects on an apocalyptic scale populate nightmares. In West Germany, the moral and political self-image of an entire generation arose from its battle against radiation, from "no nukes" protest marches to facing off against police water cannons at the Brokdorf nuclear power plant to sit-ins in front of Castor rail containers of reprocessed nuclear waste.

This hard-line stance was partly rooted in history. On Aug. 6, 1945, a US bomber dropped an atomic bomb code-named Little Boy over Hiroshima. The bomb detonated at an altitude of 600 meters (about 2,000 feet), directly above the center of the city and the resulting fireball, generating temperatures in excess of 5,000 degrees Fahrenheit, swept away all of downtown Hiroshima, killing 140,000 people. Three days later, a second atom bomb was dropped over Nagasaki, killing 70,000.

The more recent meltdown at the reactor in Chernobyl in 1986 reminded the world of the dangers of the atom. The incident was referred to as "nuclear genocide," and the press wrote of "forests stained red" and of deformed insects. The public was bombarded with images of Soviet cleanup crews wearing protective suits, bald-headed children with cancer and the members of cement crews who lost their lives in an attempt to seal off the cracked reactor with a concrete plug. Fifteen years after the reactor accident, the German newsmagazine Focus concluded that Chernobyl was responsible for "500,000" deaths.

[photo AFP The Sellafield nuclear plant in England was the site of a devastating fire in 1957.]

Was all this just doomsday folklore? There is no doubt that large sections of the countryside were contaminated by the accident in the Ukraine. In the ensuing decades, up to 4,000 cleanup workers and residents of the more highly contaminated areas died of the long-term consequences of radiation exposure. But the six-figure death counts that opponents of nuclear power once cited are simply nonsense. In most cases, they were derived from vague "extrapolations" based on the hearsay reported by Russian dissidents. But such horror stories have remained part of the nuclear narrative to this day.

In fact, contemporaries who reported on the Chernobyl incident should have known better. Even in the 1980s, radiobiologists and radiation physicists considered the media's doomsday reports to be exaggerated.

And their suspicions have become a virtual certainty today. Groups of researchers have set up shop at all of the sites of nuclear accidents or major nuclear contamination. They work at Hanford (where the United States began producing plutonium in 1944), they conduct studies in the English town of Sellafield (where a contaminated cloud escaped from the chimney in 1957), and they study the fates of former East German uranium mineworkers in the states of Saxony and Thuringia. New mortality rates have now been compiled for all of these groups of individuals at risk. Surprisingly, the highest mortality rates were found among the East German mineworkers.

In Hiroshima, on the other hand, radioactivity claimed surprisingly few human lives. Experts now know exactly what happened in the first hours, days and weeks after the devastating atomic explosion. Almost all of Hiroshima's 140,000 victims died quickly. Either they were crushed immediately by the shock wave, or they died within the next few days of acute burns.

But the notorious radiation sickness -- a gradual ailment that leads to certain death for anyone exposed to radiation levels of 6 Gray or higher -- was rare. The reason is that Little Boy simply did not produce enough radioactivity. But what about the long-term consequences? Didn't the radiation work like a time bomb in the body?

To answer these questions, the Japanese and the Americans launched a giant epidemiological study after the war. The study included all residents of Hiroshima and Nagasaki who had survived the atomic explosion within a 10-kilometer (6.2-mile) radius. Investigators questioned the residents to obtain their precise locations when the bomb exploded, and used this information to calculate a personal radiation dose for each resident. Data was collected for 86,572 people.

Today, 60 years later, the study's results are clear. More than 700 people eventually died as a result of radiation received from the atomic attack:

- 87 died of leukemia;
- 440 died of tumors;
- 250 died of radiation-induced heart attacks.
- 30 fetuses developed mental disabilities after they were born.

Such statistics have attracted little notice so far. The numbers cited in schoolbooks are much higher. According to Wikipedia, the online encyclopedia, 105,000 people died of the "long-term consequences of radiation."

[photo DPA Miners in an East German uranium mine were heavily exposed to radon.]

"For commendable reasons, many critics have greatly exaggerated the health risks of radioactivity," says Albrecht Kellerer, a Munich radiation biologist. "But contrary to widespread opinion, the number of victims is by no means in the tens of thousands."

Especially surprising, though, is that the stories of birth defects in newborns are also pure fantasy. The press has repeatedly embellished photos of a destroyed Hiroshima with those of deformed children, children without eyes or with three arms. In reality, there hasn't been a single study that provides evidence of an elevated rate of birth defects.

A final attempt to establish a connection is currently underway in Japan. The study includes 3,600 people who were unborn fetuses in their mothers' wombs on that horrific day in August 1945. But it too has failed to furnish any evidence of elevated chromosomal abnormality.

In Germany, where nuclear fears have coalesced with the fear of dying forests and mad cow disease into a general psychosis of threat, the degree of concern over nuclear radiation remains high. To this day, some are so fearful about the long-term effects of fallout from Chernobyl that they refuse to eat mushrooms from Bavaria. Even 20 years ago such behavior would not have made sense.

Officially 47 people -- members of the emergency rescue crews -- died in Chernobyl from exposure to lethal doses of radiation. This is serious enough. "But overall the amount of radiation that escaped was simply too low to claim large numbers of victims," explains Kellerer.

The iodine 131 that escaped from the reactor did end up causing severe health problems in Ukraine. It settled on meadows in the form of a fine dust, passing through the food chain, from grass to cows to milk, and eventually accumulating in the thyroid glands of children. About 4,000 children were afflicted with cancer. Less well-known, however, is the fact that only nine of those 4,000 died -- thyroid cancers are often easy to operate on.

"Chernobyl was certainly a catastrophe," says GSF spokesman Heinz-Jörg Haury. "But it was also distorted and exaggerated."

Still, there is no doubt that radiation poisoning remains ominous and highly dangerous. It is also still something of a puzzle to researchers. Stalin's old weapons plant at Mayak is, in that sense, a goldmine for researchers. It is the equivalent of a laboratory containing thousands of well-documented cases.

"Russian doctors have accumulated a huge store of knowledge in Mayak," explains Haury, "which is why everyone wants to go to Siberia now."

Plans are already underway for the next expedition.

Translated from the German by Christopher Sultan

Brasil Oil

15/11/07, All this and oil too, Source.
17/11/07, 'Deus pode ser brasileiro', Source.
20/11/07, Lula: está provado que Deus é brasileiro, Source.


15/11/07, All this and oil too, (Back).

God may indeed be Brazilian after all.

WHEN Francisco Suares, a Portuguese explorer, wrote home to his brother in Lisbon about Brazil's natural bounty in 1596, he declared himself “ashamed to write it, fearing that I shall not be believed.” And so it remains today. Brazil's forests are bigger than anywhere else's. Its soil is so fertile that some trees grow to full maturity quicker than people do. Beneath the soil lie huge mineral deposits that are raw material for China's double-digit growth. Brazil is already on its way to becoming an alternative-energy superpower. And as if to prove a popular saying that “God is Brazilian”, it now seems that there are billions more barrels of oil than previously thought lying beneath deep waters off the country's coastline.

Just how many billions is unclear, but Petrobras, Brazil's state-controlled oil company, announced earlier this month that it reckons the Tupi oilfield contains between 5 billion and 8 billion barrels. That may not quite yet put Brazil in the same league as Venezuela and Saudi Arabia, as Dilma Rousseff, President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva's chief of staff who also chairs Petrobras's board, excitedly proclaimed. But the higher estimate would make the Tupi field alone equal to all of Norway's reserves. It contains light crude, which is less expensive to refine and therefore worth more. And there may be other big deposits to be found nearby.

José Sergio Gabrielli, Petrobras's chief executive, refuses to speculate about how big an oil power Brazil might become. But he does concede that there is the potential for many more discoveries on the scale of Tupi—which itself is the world's second-biggest strike in 20 years, after Kazakhstan's 12 billion-barrel Kashagan field, discovered in 2000.

Most of Brazil's oil comes from the Campos basin, in the waters off Rio de Janeiro. It is typically found at depths of 1,000-2,000 metres below the seabed. Below that lies a huge layer of salt, at some points more than a mile thick. This stretches both north and south to the hitherto less prolific basins of Espirito Santo and Santos. It is below the salt, in the Santos basin, that Petrobras discovered Tupi. The company has also found “sub-salt” oil in Espirito Santo, although it has not yet assessed the scale of this. Mr Gabrielli believes that the two basins have yielded relatively little oil to date not because it is not there, but because it lies deeper underground, below the salt.

Tupi's oil will be hard to extract. Petrobras is a world leader in deep-water oil production, but Tupi is farther down than any of its existing fields. Drilling through the salt layer and the hard rock beneath brings further technical difficulties. The first test-well alone cost $240m. Moreover, there is a shortage of skilled labour and equipment throughout the oil industry at the moment—although Mr Gabrielli says Petrobras can transfer staff and resources from other projects if necessary.

Despite these caveats, it is reasonable to assume that Brazil's economy and currency will get a boost when the oil starts flowing, it is hoped, in 2010. The discovery might also tip the balance of power in South America further in Brazil's favour. Already self-sufficient in oil, Brazil is now likely to become a significant exporter. That may reduce the clout of Venezuela's oil-rich president, Hugo Chávez, in the region. As if to underline this, Petrobras announced on November 13th that it was pulling out of a joint venture in Venezuela.

Brazil's drive towards oil self-sufficiency follows the opening up of the industry to foreign investment in the 1990s, when the government also floated some 40% of Petrobras's shares on the stockmarket. Britain's BG Group has a 25% stake in the Tupi field, and Portugal's Galp Energia holds 10%.

The government followed up the announcement of the Tupi field by withdrawing neighbouring blocks from an auction of exploration rights due later this month. That might signal rising petro-nationalism. But it also looked prudent, since those blocks may be worth much more as more becomes known about Tupi.

Amid the euphoria, which included an instant leap of 26% in Petrobras's share price, came suspicion about the timing of the announcement. Less than a week after it was made, the company announced a poor set of results, with operating profit down 22% compared with the same quarter last year.

Petrobras has also faced mounting difficulties in supplying natural gas to thermal power plants, especially since its fields in Bolivia were quasi-nationalised last year. Some see the Tupi announcement as an attempt to distract attention from this. “It is like throwing a second ball onto a football pitch when the game is going against you,” says Alexandre Marinis of Mosaico, a political consultancy.

Electricity rationing under the previous government in 2001-2 helped Lula to win office. One solution now would be to raise the price of gas, but officials are worried that this would feed into inflation, and jeopardise the scope for further cuts in interest rates. Mario Pereira, an energy consultant, reckons that the risk of electricity shortages should wane after 2008, if Petrobras completes a planned liquefied natural-gas terminal on time.

That may be a big if. Lula and Ms Rousseff, a former Trotskyist who is sometimes touted as a potential presidential candidate for the ruling Workers' Party, were keen to associate the government with Petrobras's strike. But the oil may not start flowing until after the next presidential election in 2010. Energy may be an electoral headache rather than a boon for the government, if not for the country.


17/11/07, 'Deus pode ser brasileiro', (Back).

'THE ECONOMIST' REPERCUTE DA DESCOBERTA DO CAMPO DE TUPI.

A REVISTA BRITÂNICA The Economist publica reportagem nesta semana sobre a descoberta do campo de petróleo do Campo de Tupi, na Bacia de Santos. O texto ressalta os recursos naturais brasileiros para ironizar. Aproveita o ditado popular para dizer: "Deus pode mesmo ser brasileiro, afinal".

"As florestas do Brasil são maiores do que as de qualquer outro. Seu solo é tão fértil que algumas árvores chegam à plena maturidade mais rápido do que as pessoas. Debaixo de seu solo há enormes depósitos minerais que são a matéria prima para o crescimento chinês de dois dígitos. O Brasil já está no caminho para se tornar uma superpotência da energia alternativa", lista a revista. "E como se provasse o dito popular de que `Deus é brasileiro', agora parece que há bilhões de barris de petróleo a mais do que se pensava antes sob as águas profundas da costa brasileira", diz a reportagem.

A Economist observa que a exata dimensão do novo campo ainda é desconhecida, mas que se as estimativas da Petrobras estiverem corretas, já seria maior do que todas as reservas da Noruega e representam a segunda maior descoberta de petróleo no mundo em duas décadas. Reforço na economia. A reportagem relata as dificuldades técnicas para a extração do petróleo de Tupi, debaixo de uma grossa camada de sal, mas afirma:

"É razoável assumir que a economia brasileira e sua moeda terão um reforço quando o petróleo começar a fluir, como é esperado, em 2010".

"A descoberta pode também mover a balança de poder na América do Sul mais ainda em favor do Brasil", diz o texto. " Já auto-suficiente em petróleo, o Brasil deve agora se tornar um exportador significativo. Isso pode reduzir a influência na região do rico em petróleo presidente da Venezuela, Hugo Chávez", avalia. A revista comenta, porém, que "em meio à euforia", houve suspeitas sobre o momento escolhido para o anúncio da descoberta da Petrobras.

"Menos de uma semana depois, a companhia anunciou resultados financeiros ruins, com um lucro 22% mais baixo comparado com o mesmo trimestre do ano anterior", diz o artigo. A revista observa ainda que a Petrobras também enfrenta "crescentes dificuldades para suprir gás natural às usinas termelétricas, especialmente desde a quase-nacionalização dos seus campos na Bolívia, no ano passado".

"Algumas pessoas vêem o anúncio sobre o campo de Tupi como uma tentativa de desviar a atenção sobre isso", diz o texto.


20/11/07, Lula: está provado que Deus é brasileiro, (Back).

BRASÍLIA - Durante cerimônia de assinatura de um protocolo de intenções entre a Companhia Vale do Rio Doce e a empresa coreana Dongkuk Steel Mill para a construção de uma siderúrgica no distrito de Pecém, no Ceará, o presidente Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva que 'Deus é brasileiro'.

- Eu tenho dito sempre, desde a descobertas da Petrobras, que está ficando provado que Deus é brasileiro - afirmou Lula, pedindo que Deus permita que ele inaugure a nova usina até o final de seu mandato.

A unidade deve produzir cerca de 2,5 milhões de toneladas de placas de aço. O investimento previsto é de aproximadamente R$ 2 bilhões. Devem ser gerados dois mil empregos diretos na produção de aço e minério de ferro no local.

Durante a cerimônia, Lula incentivou também o aumento da produção de aço no país e fez uma comparação com a China. Segundo ele, os chineses produzem cerca de 450 milhões de toneladas de aço por ano e o Brasil apenas 30 milhões, tendo o mesmo potencial que a China.

- Não podemos ficar vendo os chineses aumentarem sua produção para 600 milhões de toneladas de aço e nós ficarmos nos 40 milhões. Temos que fazer mais investimentos para aproveitar o nosso potencial - disse.

(Back).

AR4 Synthesis Report

17/11/07, Elizabeth Rosenthal & Andrew C. Revkin, U.N. Report Describes Risks of Inaction on Climate Change, Source.
14/11/07, Climate change panel too slow to react?, Source.
16/11/07, Andrew C. Revkin, A 4th Climate Warning. Anyone Listening?, Source.


17/11/07, Elizabeth Rosenthal & Andrew C. Revkin, U.N. Report Describes Risks of Inaction on Climate Change, (Back).

VALENCIA, Spain, Nov. 16 — In its final and most powerful report, a United Nations panel of scientists meeting here describes the mounting risks of climate change in language that is both more specific and forceful than its previous assessments, according to scientists here.

Synthesizing reams of data from its three previous reports, the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change for the first time specifically points out important risks if governments fail to respond: melting ice sheets that could lead to a rapid rise in sea levels and the extinction of large numbers of species brought about by even moderate amounts of warming, on the order of 1 to 3 degrees.

The report carries heightened significance because it is the last word from the influential global climate panel before world leaders meet in Bali, Indonesia, next month to begin to discuss a global climate change treaty that will replace the Kyoto protocol, which expires in 2012. It is also the first report from the panel since it was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in October — an honor that many scientists here said emboldened them to stand more forcefully behind their positions.

As a sign of the deepening urgency surrounding the climate change issue, the report, which was being printed Friday night, will be officially released by Secretary General Ban Ki-moon on Saturday.

The full report was embargoed from news organizations until Saturday. But drafts have been circulating for weeks, and descriptions of its findings began to appear on Web sites and in news agency reports on Friday. Bush administration officials held a news conference to discuss the report but insisted that their comments be withheld until after its official release.

“This document goes further than any of the previous efforts,” said Hans Verolme, director of the World Wildlife Fund’s Global Climate Change Program. “The pressure has been palpable — people know they are delivering a document that will be cited for years to come and will define policy.”

The previous three sections, released between February and April, focused on one issue at a time: the first on science, the second on how the world could adapt to warming and the third about how countries could “mitigate,” or reduce the greenhouse gases produced.

This fourth and final assessment — the so-called synthesis report — seeks to combine lessons from all three. Its conclusions are culled from data contained in the thousands of pages that were essentially technical supplements to the panel’s previous publications. How that data is summarized and presented to the world is a powerful guide to what the scientists consider of utmost importance at the end of a five-year process, offering concrete guidelines for policy makers.

“You look to a synthesis report to provide clarity, to clarify what was obscure in previous reports,” said Michael Oppenheimer, a climate scientist at Princeton University. “Now, how can we take these findings and formulate a policy response that’s quick enough and big enough?”

While drafts of the panel’s reports are written by panels of scientists, the language is reviewed and often altered by delegates from 130 governments who meet before their final approval and release. Those negotiations took place here this week, and were often contentious, with the United States, China and India raising many objections, said scientists who spoke on condition of anonymity because they are not allowed to publicly refer to any countries by name.

The scientists and country representatives who had flocked here this week to participate in negotiations on the final wording applauded as the panel’s chairman, Rajendra Pachauri, declared the panel’s years of work concluded, just after 10:30 p.m. on Friday.

Even though the synthesis report is more alarming than its predecessors, some researchers believe that it still understates the trajectory of global warming and its impact. The I.P.C.C.’s scientific process, which takes five years of study and writing from start to finish, cannot take into account the very latest data on climate change or economic trends, which show larger than predicted development and energy use in China.

“The world is already at or above the worst case scenarios in terms of emissions,” said Gernot Klepper, of the Kiel Institute for World Economy in Kiel, Germany. “In terms of emissions, we are moving past the most pessimistic estimates of the I.P.C.C., and by some estimates we are above that red line.”

The panel presents several scenarios for the trajectory of emissions and climate change. In 2006, 8.4 gigatons of carbon were put into the atmosphere from fossil fuels, according to a study in the proceedings of the National Academy of Science, which was co-written by Dr. Klepper. That is almost identical to the panel’s worst case prediction for that year.

Likewise, a recent International Energy Agency report looking at the unexpectedly rapid emissions growth in China and India estimated that if current policies were not changed the world would warm six degrees by 2030, a disastrous increase far higher than the panel’s estimates of one to four degrees by the end of the century.

While the United States, Saudi Arabia and China tried to change the text in order to play down the consequences of global warming, developing nations — which will bear the initial brunt of climate change — were much more forceful than at previous meetings in opposing these efforts, one scientist who was in the negotiating room said.

"I suspect that will continue,” he said. “As they feel more and more threatened by the sea and the storms they will insist that, as one of them put it, ‘We do not want this report to be warm and fuzzy when the reality is cold and risky,’ or something like that,” he said.

One novel aspect of the report is a specific list of “Reasons for Concern.” It includes items that are thought to be very likely outgrowths of climate change that had been mentioned in previous reports, like an increase in extreme weather events.

But it for the first time includes less likely but more alarming possibilities, like the relatively rapid melting of polar ice. Previous reports focused more on changes the scientists felt were “highly likely.”

“This time, they take a step back and look at the totality,” Dr. Verolme said. “Saying it is less likely to occur, but if it does we are fried.”

One such area is the future melting of ice sheets in Greenland and western Antarctica. In earlier reports, the panel’s scientists acknowledged that their computer models were poor at such predictions, and did not reflect the rapid melting that scientists have recently observed. If these areas melt entirely, seas would rise 40 feet, scientists said. While scientists are certain that the sheets will melt over millennia, producing sea-level rises, there is now evidence to suggest that it could happen much faster than this, perhaps over centuries.

“In my view that would make it not just difficult, but impossible to adapt successfully, some of my colleagues would say catastrophic,” said Dr. Oppenheimer. “If they say that it’s possible that melting could occur in centuries leading to meters of change, that’s a headline.”

This final report also puts more emphasis on the ripple effect of small degrees of temperature change, some of which are already being seen, such as species extinctions and loss of biodiversity.

“A relatively modest degree of warming — one to three degrees — spells a lot of trouble and I think that was not clear in the previous report,” Dr. Oppenheimer said. He said part of the reason for the lack of clarity was that governments had “messed around” with the language and structure of the report during the approval process.

This time around, the consequences of different degrees of climate change will be better laid out so that the ministers who meet in Bali next month will understand the options and the consequences of inaction. “This should light a fire under policy makers,” Dr. Oppenheimer said.


14/11/07, Climate change panel too slow to react?, (Back).

Diplomacy and peer reviews make for reports that can lag the science.

VALENCIA, Spain - They are seen as the gurus of global warming, and their reports are accepted almost as the gospel of climate science. Esteem for the panel of scientists was immortalized when it shared this year's Nobel Peace prize.

But experts and the scientists themselves acknowledge the reports are conservative and have a poor track record of predictions.

As the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change meets in this Mediterranean coastal city to finish its fourth report in two decades, it must decide whether it will produce a fifth.

"Next year would complete 20 years of the IPCC," said chairman Rajendra Pachauri. "That clearly is a point where we should carry out deep and detailed introspection on what we have achieved, what we could have achieved further, and how we might be able to ensure achievement in the future."

The future of the panel, which shared the Nobel with former Vice President Al Gore, is an agenda item at the weeklong meeting that wraps up Saturday with the release of its latest climate change assessment.

The panel, a loose organization of more than 2,000 scientists who submit their own research and review the work of others, has issued extensive reports on global warming every five or six years since it was created under the auspices of two U.N. bodies. Each report includes a brief Summary for Policymakers, which is approved by government representatives.

Driven by peer reviews

The assessment reports have won accolades as the most authoritative compilation of climate science available, largely because of the rigorous process of peer review. Even if the data produced by different researchers may conflict, the science is deemed to be solid.

But its thoroughness is also a shackle that condemns it to lag behind the latest research. It usually takes the collaborative efforts of dozens of IPCC authors about two years to compile a report and takes at least a year for a scientific paper to be reviewed.

In its assessment this year, the IPCC has reported with near certainty that human activity is causing temperatures to rise and changing weather patterns. Sea levels are rising, storms are growing more fierce, deserts are spreading and glaciers are melting, it said. The panel predicts that millions of poor people will suffer from hunger, thirst, floods and disease unless drastic action is taken. But it also says the tools are available, or soon will be, to greatly slow global warming, soften the impact and help nations adapt to changing conditions.

As grim as that may look, the reality may be much worse.

"We need to understand that the worst impacts in the report may not in fact be the worst that will happen, or the worst that appear possible," said Peter Altman, the climate policy project manager for the National Environmental Trust, a Washington lobby.

"What's in the report now is scary enough. But in most of the predictions the IPCC has made, just about everything is happening faster and more intensely than we thought," he said. "This issue is not being overstated. If anything, it is being understated."

Think tanks cite shortfall

A joint report this month by two U.S. security institutes said they compared predictions of climate change by the panel and other researchers in the last two decades with changes that actually occurred, and found the scientists had consistently fallen short.

Part of the reason was the lack of data, but it also could be that the scientists shied away from controversy and wanted to avoid being discredited as "alarmists," said the paper by the Center for Strategic International Studies and the Center for a New American Security.

The scientists see their caution as a strength rather than a shortcoming.

"The process tends to lead to a fairly conservative outcome," said Bert Metz, one of the IPCC's lead authors, because the scientists will wait for verification of research before pronouncing a possible trend.

"By not using an alarmist or advocatist tone, you in the end gain much more credibility," said Metz, of the Netherlands Environmental Assessment Agency.

The World Wide Fund for Nature, or WWF International, which is invited with other environmental groups to observe IPCC meetings, agrees the IPCC process is cumbersome and late.

"Climate change is going faster than our worst-case scenarios of five or six years ago," said WWF's climate specialist Hans Verolme.

Still, he said, it would be difficult for the panel to issue more frequent reports to try to keep pace with the research without sacrificing its scientific integrity. "I wouldn't know how to speed up the process," he said.


16/11/07, Andrew C. Revkin, A 4th Climate Warning. Anyone Listening?, (Back).

It was the culmination of an extraordinary meeting on the human-changed atmosphere. For three days, scientists had described how a buildup of long-lived gases emitted by burning fuels and forests would, if it continued, raise temperatures, raise seas and disrupt weather patterns important to agriculture, water supplies and wildlife.

As the conference concluded, a leader of the group, Michael McElroy of Harvard, stood and said this: “If we choose to take on this challenge, it appears that we can slow the rate of change substantially, giving us time to develop mechanisms so that the cost to society and the damage to ecosystems can be minimized. We could alternatively close our eyes, hope for the best, and pay the cost when the bill comes due.”

That was June 1988. Dr. McElroy’s statement was the kicker on my first long story on global warming, which ran on the cover of Discover magazine a few months later.

That year also saw the birth of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Tonight in Valencia, Spain, the panel completed the final summary section of its latest review of what is known, possible and still a mystery about how human activities are influencing Earth’s climate and what we might do about it.

This was the fourth such review since 1990. Progressively over that span, the panel’s reports have raised the likelihood that people, mainly by burning billions of tons of coal and oil, have been the main force responsible for global warming since 1950 and that a lot more warming, coastal retreats and shifting weather are in the offing under business as usual. (In the bargain we get some plankton-harming ocean acidification, something not anticipated originally).

The rituals surrounding the release of these reports have always been the same. Around 10:30 p.m. local time on Friday in Valencia, according to my colleague Elisabeth Rosenthal, applause rang out when Rajendra K. Pachauri, the chairman of the panel, declared the fourth assessment completed after government officials approved the wording in a final concluding document. (There’ll be more applause in early December in Oslo when he and others snag half of the Nobel Peace Prize for nearly 20 years of painstaking, unpaid, exhausting, contentious work.)

As they always have, news services began describing the embargoed findings earlier in the evening, prodded by environmental campaigners and some scientists who hoped the results would inspire diplomats preparing to gather next month in Bali for the latest round of climate-treaty talks. Industry-backed groups issued their own news releases playing down the notion that new climate perils had been identified.

On Saturday governments will issue formal statements, each seeking to spin the findings to suit its own agenda and needs.

But the central question remains largely as it was posed by Dr. McElroy 19 years ago: Will the world’s leaders and citizens act on the basis of this building picture of a world sent into environmental flux by human actions, or choose to wait for some future round of research to clarify things a bit more?

In the meantime, the world is heading toward nine billion people, all seeking comfort and security and prosperity. A broad range of experts, within and outside the I.P.C.C., agree that sufficient energy to enable such progress (without overheating Earth) will come only with a mix of more efficient use of fossil fuels and fundamentally new energy technologies that do not influence the climate.

In essence, this challenge reflects a question I posed on Nov. 9, in a post called “What Does the Present Owe the Future“? As you can see from reader comments, there is no easy answer.

Many of the scientists involved with this marathon effort have spent more than half their lives trying to clarify what may come from what Roger Revelle, in an understated line, described in a 1957 paper as a “large scale geophysical experiment.”

In an e-mail exchange during a break in the proceedings today, Stephen H. Schneider, a Stanford University climatologist who has been in the climatology trenches since long before I quoted him in that 1988 article, put it this way (while declining to discuss the still-embargoed report): “The world learns slowly, so we keep moving forward haltingly, with backsliding, and do the best we can.”

(Back)

Robert Dziekanski

16/11/07, Mark Hume, Video stirs troubling questions on tasers, Source.
16/11/07, Globe Editorial, The taser death of Robert Dziekanski, Source.
15/11/07, Adam Radwanski - So, what else is on?, Source.
15/11/07, Cynthia Yoo & Rafal Gerszak, Transcript of Dziekanski's final encounter, Source.
16/11/07, Rod Mickleburgh, The tragic amateur video tells the whole story - or does it?, Source.
15/11/07, Vídeo mostra imigrante sendo morto por choque no Canadá, Source.
17/11/07, Jurek Baltakis, Eulogy, Source.
17/11/07, RCMP falsehoods on Dziekanski's death, Source.
17/11/07, Rod Mickleburgh, There was one person who tried to help, Source.
19/11/07, Patrick Brethour, B.C. Mounties face growing public outrage, Source.
17/11/07 & 19/11/07, RCMP Commissioner's Statement - Incident at Vancouver Airport, Source.
20/11/07, Patrick Brethour & Justine Hunter & Marjan Farahbaksh, 'Vacuum' sparks B.C. taser inquiry, Source.
Watchdog rejects spin charge against RCMP, Jonathan Woodward, 19/11/07, Source.


16/11/07, Mark Hume, Video stirs troubling questions on tasers, (Back).

Analyzing a fatal confrontation with man who seemed a threat to no one.

VANCOUVER — When four RCMP officers strode into the arrivals area at Vancouver International Airport to deal with a disruptive traveller, they came armed with a variety of weapons and were guided by the National Use-of-Force Framework used to train police across the country.

Within minutes, however, the guidelines meant to help police maintain order with minimum risk to themselves and the public had not prevented Robert Dziekanski, a 40-year-old Polish immigrant, from ending up on the floor in the throes of death.

A disturbing video of that incident, shot by Paul Pritchard of Victoria, has become international news since it was released Wednesday, and it is raising troubling questions about a police decision to use force against a man who seemed to be threatening no one.

A taser was used to shock Mr. Dziekanski about 24 seconds after the police arrived, although he appeared to offer no resistance to the officers, raising his hands and backing away a few steps.

"It's pretty disturbing," Neil Boyd, a professor of criminology at Simon Fraser University, said of the video that gives the public a stark look at an RCMP takedown that went wrong.

Prof. Boyd, who has studied the use of tasers by police, says he has never seen anything like it in his career. And he doubts police will be able to justify what they did.

"Unless there's some remarkable explanation, it would seem to be a use of force that was inappropriate to the circumstances," said Mr. Boyd, who believes that tasers are a reasonable option in many scenarios.

"I think we could all imagine circumstances in which the police officer is not directly threatened and yet the use of a taser may be appropriate. I think that that would be a fairly small number of circumstances, however."

He said that faced with a hardened criminal, for example, police might well be justified in using a taser even if the suspect wasn't threatening officers, but was simply backing away from them.

"I'm trained to think that there's always another side and perhaps we haven't heard the other side. So I do want to issue that caveat. It's going to be important to hear from the police.

"But on the face of it, it's difficult to see why that particular approach was taken, as opposed to a range of other approaches that would have required much less force, given the number of police officers involved and what the person was actually doing, or at least appeared to be doing," he said.

Prof. Boyd said there should be a national inquiry into the use of tasers by police that should examine not only the lethality of the weapon itself, but also the procedures that guide officers in using force.

Currently, police departments across Canada, including the RCMP, rely on the National Use-of-Force Framework as a guide to training officers in how to respond to potentially dangerous situations.

The framework calls on police to assess a situation quickly, and then use an escalating series of responses, depending on the actions of the subject with whom they are dealing.

According to a paper by the Canadian Association of Chiefs of Police, passive resistance can trigger a soft physical response, which might involve an officer placing a hand on someone's shoulder, or putting them in handcuffs. A subject who offers active resistance, by backing away, running or hiding, can be met with hard physical control, which could involve joint locks, punches or strikes with open hands.

It is only when a subject becomes "assaultive," however, that the framework calls for the use of intermediate weapons, such as the taser or pepper spray.

Mr. Dziekanski backs away from police a few steps after raising his hands and dropping them. He is then zapped with a taser, and police pin his writhing body to the floor. Minutes later he is dead.

*****

Use of force

In 1999, representatives from police departments across Canada gathered at the Ontario Police College for a three-day conference to develop a national model to help train officers in the use of force.

The result was that Canada became the first country in the world to forge a National Use-of-Force Framework. Since then, it has been used to guide police officers in responding to potentially dangerous situations, such as the one RCMP faced at Vancouver International Airport when calls came in about a traveller throwing furniture in the arrivals area.

In training manuals, the National Use-of-Force Framework is illustrated graphically as a series of interlocking circles meant to depict the wide array of situations police officers might face, and guide them in choosing the appropriate responses.

Circles were chosen because police wanted to get away from a linear progression of options, which would have restricted officers.

Guidelines

This chart has been adopted as the National Use-of-Force Framework for training police officers across Canada on how to assess situations and decide what level of force to use.

There are three circles. The inner one represents the person police are facing. Police are supposed to observe the situation, then assess, plan and act. The next circle represents the subject's behaviour. And the outer circle is the appropriate officer response.

Reading this, you would see that if the officer's presence is enough to make the subject compliant, then the situation is dealt with.

If the subject shows passive resistance, the officer can use tactical communications - ordering him to do something - or empty-hand techniques, such as placing a hand on his shoulder. If the subject shows active resistance, soft- impact weapons can be used, and if he is combative, they can use hard-impact weapons - which would include the taser.


16/11/07, Globe Editorial, The taser death of Robert Dziekanski, (Back).

The taser death video that was being broadcast around the world yesterday is a source of shame and disgrace for Canada and for its national police force.

The RCMP can seek to justify police actions all they like. They can argue that the four officers who tasered a Polish man at Vancouver International Airport on Oct. 14 were just following procedures.

They can argue that we don't know for sure his cause of death, and that tasers are safe. They can argue that the video is only one piece of evidence and that people should wait for the results of an inquest before forming their judgments. They can say all of that, but the killing of Robert Dziekanski will be seen only one way: as the summary execution of an innocent man for the crime of being disoriented, for not understanding, for being a stranger.

The video, which was shot by Victoria resident Paul Pritchard, is almost impossible to watch for its tragic inevitability. It's like watching a snuff film. But apart from police, there is some humanity in it. A woman in the video responds in a way the situation called for. She seems to understand that this is a person in distress. She approaches Mr. Dziekanski gently, opening a hand to him. She attempts to communicate with him. A man's voice is also heard on the video trying to calm Mr. Dziekanski, saying, "There's nothing wrong ... It's okay." These two citizens were responding as human beings, offering help to someone in need.

At one point, Mr. Dziekanski seems to be organizing chairs to keep an automatic door from closing. At another, he throws something. He's upset. No wonder.

Think about what he had been through that day. He had flown for the first time in his life. He first travelled five hours by bus in Poland and another 10 by plane to reach Vancouver. He arrived in a strange country where no one spoke his language and waited for several hours to meet his mother. She was outside the baggage area, which is secure. He did not realize this, and waited in the secure area for her. He could not make himself understood. After hours of waiting he was clearly frustrated, agitated. Who wouldn't be?

Then the police arrived. Here were four members of ostensibly one of the finest police forces in the world, and what did they do? This is where the video is so critical. Everyone can now see they had a whole range of options.

Did they pause for even a moment to assess the situation? Did they question the civilian witnesses who had been trying to calm and provide aid to the man only moments earlier? Did they gesture for him to calm down? Or sit down? No, they already knew what they were going to do.

This man was not armed. He was in the arrivals lounge of an international airport. There is no place on Earth where police would be less likely to encounter an armed man. Nor, as an autopsy showed, was he drugged or drunk. Nor was he violent; he did not resist police or confront them. He was a man in distress, a man who needed help.

But help was not on offer. The ordinary people who were present left matters to the experts. But these experts, four police officers who were armed with guns and a taser, who were wearing body armour, who were wearing the proud uniform of the Mounties, confronted the lone, upset, lost Polish visitor and immediately tasered him with a 50,000-volt shock.

Mr. Dziekanski collapsed screaming and writhing to the floor. He was not resisting arrest. He was in agony. What did Canada's finest do next? At one point someone yells, "Hit him again." Mr. Dziekanski was tasered at least once more. The four officers piled on the man. One placed his knee on Mr. Dziekanski's neck. Soon the writhing stopped. He was unresponsive. He may already have been dead.

Public Safety Minister Stockwell Day yesterday ordered a review of the use of tasers as a result of this outrageous and tragic incident.

He is correct to do so. All that is wrong with tasers is in plain view in this video. The officers didn't attempt any interaction with the man. They didn't try to negotiate. They didn't make calming gestures. They didn't have to. They had their tasers with them, and lost their humanity.

Tasers were never intended to be an alternative to those values the RCMP cite in their published "commitment to communities," values such as "compassion" and "respect." They were meant to be an alternative to the use of firearms, and live ammunition would never have been justified — indeed, would never have been used — in this situation. To have done so would have been viewed as an extrajudicial killing. How is the use of a taser in this case really any different?


15/11/07, Adam Radwanski - So, what else is on?, (Back).

By his own admission, Stephane Dion hasn't yet bothered to watch the ghastly footage of Robert Dziekanski's fatal tasering. As for Gordon Campbell, he's seen "part" of it, but hasn't "had a chance to see the whole tape."

Forgive me for asking an obvious question, but, um, why the hell not? The world is watching footage of an unarmed foreigner who posed little threat being brutally, fatally taken down by Canadian police - and neither the leader of the federal opposition nor the premier of the province in which it happened is taking the time to watch the video himself?

I know that scandals from the early '90s are more interesting, but when something is being described (not entirely unreasonably) as Canada's version of Rodney King, you'd think it might warrant full attention.


15/11/07, Cynthia Yoo & Rafal Gerszak, Transcript of Dziekanski's final encounter, (Back).

Vancouver — Voice off camera: Computer's on?

Voice off camera: What language do you speak?

Muffled responses, comments off camera.

Voice off camera: Just look at his face!

Voice off camera: There's 300 people coming in...coming in.

Muffled comments off camera.

Voice off camera: He did it. He almost threw the chair through the window to get out. Look at it. Look...

Muffled voices talk excitedly off camera.

Mr. Dziekanski paces the whole length of the secure arrivals area, walking back to the entrance doors.

Dziekanski: Breathing deeply. I'm going to break this desk. Is this going to continue?

Muffled voices off camera.

Voice off camera: Is there anybody at the door?

Voice off camera: I can't believe he's ... out!

Voice off camera: Nobody's here...from security.

Muffled voices off camera.

Voice off camera: Just five minutes before ...comes down with 300 people on it...

Dziekanski: Holding and waving a small wooden fold-up stool at the entrance door, speaking in Polish. I'm going to break windows. I'm going to break this window here.

Voice off camera: ...something's wrong with him.

Voice off camera: ... is Russian. He speaks Russian.

Voice off camera: Is that what he's speaking? I don't even know what he's speaking.

Voice off camera: What language do you speak?

Voice off camera: He doesn't speak English...

Voice off camera: Russian? Russian?

Muffled voices off camera.

Voice off camera: Ruskian? Nope.

Dziekanski: Mr. Dziekanski holds and waves a small wooden fold-up stool in the entrance doors. I will not allow them.

Voice off camera: There's nothing wrong! There's nothing wrong...it's okay.

Voice off camera: We need a Russian interpreter. We need someone to open the arrivals area...

Dziekanski: Still holding the stool in the entrance doors, I'm going to report on you and the rest of them.

Voice off camera: Calm down.

Dziekanski: Fine, fine. Takes a breath. We'll see.

Woman walks over to Mr. Dziekanski, motioning to him, holding out her hand.

Woman: Calm down. She motions to him, holding out her hand in order to communicate with him.

Dziekanski: Still holding stool, pacing in the entrance doors,. Get away. Get away.

Muffled voices off camera.

Dziekanski: Swears.

Muffled voices off camera.

Woman : Motioning to Mr. Dziekanski. Calm down please.

Woman tries to communicate through the clear glass partition, with Mr. Dzienkanski who has gone into the arrivals area.

Dziekanski: (Inaudible)

Woman: ....Excuse me...I know I know...

Mr. Dziekanski and the woman speak through the partition, nodding and motioning.

Woman walks back away from partition.

Muffled voices off camera.

Voice off camera: Look! He's got a computer...

Mr. Dziekanski throws some laptop or computer on to the glass partition.

Voice off camera: Whoa.

Voice off camera: Right in front of the cops too.

Voice off camera: Jesus Christ.

Mr. Dziekanski holds up an electric equipment and attempts to throw it.

Voices off camera: No no no.

Mr. Dziekanski puts down the equipment rather than throwing it.

Two airport security officer come to the entrance doors and Mr. Dziekanski comes to the doors to meet them.

Voice off camera: He speaks Russian and nobody can help him...You need a Russian interpreter here to calm him down. Cathay's coming down in five minutes.

Voice off camera: ...Russian interpreter.

Voice off camera: ...Can you call Customs and tell them to stop it....

Voice off camera: He is so scared...just leave him.

Voice off camera: Why are the police not here? We called security, we called the police.

Voice off camera: Calm down, calm down please.

Camera turns to police.

Dziekanski: Mr. Dziekanski screams. Police! Police!

Police speaks to him and points. They motion him to inside and they point to a spot on the ground and they encircle him.

Dziekanski: What are you doing? An RCMP officer points at him. There's nothing here .

An RCMP officer shoots him with a Taser.

RCMP officer: Get down, get down!

Dziekanski: (Screams as he falls to the ground)

Police fire two more Taser blasts.

RCMP officer: Get a Taser.

RCMP officer: Put your hands up.

RCMP officer: Get him down, get him down!

Dziekanski continues to struggle, scream

Security guard: Operations…(unintelligible)

Dziekanski: Oh, no! It's pinching.

Four RCMP officers pin Mr. Dziekanski as they restrain him.

Dziekanski: Bandit!

Pritchard: Jesus.

RCMP officer: Get his knees, right…

Pritchard: How is he still fighting them off?

Off-camera: Noboby knows why. He speaks Russian. Nobody knows why. No rhyme or reason.

Pritchard: Prime footage for my home videos.

Pritchard: He's unconscious…I heard him say Code Red.

Pritchard: I've only got three minutes of footage, three minutes of memory, three minutes of memory left.


16/11/07, Rod Mickleburgh, The tragic amateur video tells the whole story - or does it?, (Back).

VANCOUVER — Is a video the whole truth and nothing but the truth?

In the case of Rodney King, a jury decided that it was not, and four members of the L.A. Police Department were acquitted of beating Mr. King, despite vivid amateur video footage showing police raining blow after blow on the helpless black man.

Now, we have the taser shot heard round the world.

Wherever the truly disturbing video of Robert Dziekanski's final, writhing moments has been seen, outrage over the swift decision by the RCMP to taser the agitated Pole has been swift and graphic.

Paul Pritchard's recording of the tragic incident that led to Mr. Dziekanski's death last month at Vancouver International Airport shows the whole, sad story. Or does it?

In a CBC radio interview yesterday, Mr. Pritchard confessed he had two completely different reactions to what happened. On video, much of the episode seems to unfold in an eerie calm. Yet, at the time, as an eyewitness, Mr. Pritchard felt the situation was anything but serene.

"In fact, the original interviews and my statements were the complete opposite," he recounted. "Our opinions of him [Mr. Dziekanski] were: Here's a man, he's distraught, he's throwing things and he's yelling in a foreign language.

"Believe me, I was 100 per cent on the police side up to this point. As far as I was concerned, the cops came in and they did their job. ... I remember the cops running in there, and I thought there was this aggressive behaviour."

Then, reminiscent of the coach who doesn't want to comment on the game until he's seen the film, Mr. Pritchard saw what his video camera had recorded. It totally changed his view.

"Not until I got the footage back and I took some time to go through it again [did I realize that the atmosphere] was so calm. Bone-chilling calm. ... I can see it live in front of me. There was no need to use the taser. They had time. ... It was a complete misuse of the taser. It didn't need to be done."

Does what he feels now override what Mr. Pritchard experienced while the incident was taking place, before he took a look at the now-famous video? Do videos trump eyewitness accounts? What is one to believe?

Despite their clarity, videos do not record tension, emotions or accumulated anxiety. Nor do they provide context or background.

That is exactly what the RCMP will be focusing on as they try to justify to millions of appalled viewers why four of their officers decided in a matter of seconds that the only way to corral Mr. Dziekanski was to taser him, pin him roughly to the ground, and taser him again.

The Mounties have already downgraded the video from "evidence vital to the investigation" - their description when they initially refused Mr. Pritchard's demand to return it - to "only one piece of evidence," now that the footage is in the public domain.

When a coroner's inquest is eventually called many months from now, police experts will have had time to examine the video in minute detail with their own particular spin.

It's a safe bet that their view of the same piece of video that has led to the RCMP's current vilification will clash with the public's perception. Not everyone agrees that the camera never lies.

The only certainty is that Mr. Dziekanski should not be dead. His fatal tasering was merely the final piece of a tragic series of events, in which everything that could go wrong, did.

From his confused airport wanderings without anyone seeming to take notice, to the role of Canadian immigration processors who kept him for hours, to the failure of airport officials to connect his frantic, waiting mother with her distraught son, to the lack of an interpreter, to the hapless efforts of airport security to defuse the situation, it was all a nightmare.

If even one of these failures had not occurred, Mr. Dziekanski would be alive today. He would be relishing his fresh start in Canada with his mother, Zofia Cisowski, who had sacrificed everything to bring him here.

Instead, Ms. Cisowski is left to tearfully sift through her son's luggage for mementoes of what was to be their happy life together in Canada. And Mr. Dziekanski's last view of Canada was an airport floor.


15/11/07, Vídeo mostra imigrante sendo morto por choque no Canadá, (Back).

BBC Brasil - Polonês morre depois de incidente com policiais em aeroporto

Autoridades no Canadá divulgaram um vídeo que mostra os últimos momentos de um imigrante que morreu em um aeroporto depois de ser atingido por um taser, uma arma que dispara choques elétricos, operada por policias. O polonês Robert Dziekanski, de 40 anos, tinha acabado de chegar ao aeroporto internacional de Vancouver, vindo de sua terra natal na tentativa de emigrar para o Canadá, quando se envolveu em um incidente com policiais.

A rede de TV canadense CBC, principal canal de televisão do país, divulgou o vídeo do incidente, filmado por um passageiro que se encontrava nas proximidades. O incidente está sendo investigado pela polícia, representantes do aeroporto e por um legista.

O vídeo mostra Dziekanski, agitado, no setor de alfândega, antes do aparecimento da polícia. Ele aparece respirando e suando em profusão, andando de um lado para o outro e atraindo a atenção das autoridades alfandegárias. Pouco depois ele joga objetos ao chão e lança uma mesa dobrável sobre um janela de vidro. As imagens mostram a aproximação dos policiais e o momento em que os oficiais usam a arma de choques elétricos contra o imigrante.

As imagens mostram ainda Dziekanski caindo no chão, aos gritos e sofrendo convulsões. Os policiais então disparam a arma novamente, imobilizando a vítima. Momentos depois, uma voz grita "código vermelho", alertando para uma emergência médica. Ele foi pronunciado morto no local pelas equipes de emergência. A autópsia não encontrou sinais de drogas ou álcool no corpo da vítima.

Segundo a CBC, Robert Dziekanski chegou ao Canadá por volta das 4 horas da tarde (horário local). Ainda não se sabe porquê o imigrante saiu da alfândega apenas depois da meia-noite. O polonês vinha da Europa para morar no Canadá com a mãe, residente na província de British Columbia. Um porta-voz da polícia canadense, Dale Carr, disse que "o vídeo é apenas uma das provas do caso e o público deve esperar pelos resultados da investigação".

O caso causou grande discussão no Canadá sobre o uso de tasers. As armas emitem descargas de Ondas T, que paralisam o atingido, interrompendo a comunicação do cérebro com o corpo. Apesar de consideradas não-letais, a arma já causou pelo menos 18 mortes no Canadá desde 2003, segundo a CBC. Segundo um relatório da Anistia Internacional de 2004, mais de 70 pessoas já foram mortas nos Estados Unidos adepois de tingidas por um taser.


17/11/07, Jurek Baltakis, Eulogy, (Back).

'People become good by doing good,' Dziekanski believed.

Jurek Baltakis is one of the leaders of the Kamloops Polish community. He has known Zofia Cisowski, the mother of Robert Dziekanski, since shortly after she arrived in the British Columbia interior. Today at 11 a.m. he will deliver this eulogy at a public memorial service held at the Kamloops Funeral Home.

In Kamloops we have very small Polish community, so we are all very close and know each other well. Last four weeks brought us closer than ever before.

Unfortunately we did not have a chance to meet and welcome a new member of our community. As a new Canadian immigrant, Robert made only as far as Vancouver airport, possibly going to the history books as a shortest live Canadian immigrant ever.

Robert was born 40 years ago in Bielawa, midsize town, southwest of Poland. As a young boy, he moved with his mother to much larger town, Gliwice, where Zofia could find better job to support him. Life for single mom was not that ease in Poland at that time.

In Gliwice, he graduated the technical high school as the miner. This was a very popular occupation in Gliwice, which is famous for pit coal mining sector. After upgrading his trade he enjoy working on construction before immigrating to Canada.

Like I said before, I did not have a chance to meet Robert, but in last four weeks I learn a few amazing stories about his life.

Just imagine yourself, you are leaving Canada and going to some unknown country 9,000 km away. You have only three small suitcases. What would you take with you? Tough decision, is it not?

Not for Robert. He stuffed one suitcase with some clothes and gifts for relatives and two suitcases full of geography books, atlases and magazines like National Geographic.

As Zofia is saying, he was the geography freak. He knew the names of major rivers, lakes and capitals on every continent on the Earth. And you know what? He was buried with two front pages of National Geographic. One of them was showing Poland, and the other beautiful B.C. Two weeks ago when Zofia said her final goodbye to Robert, she brought these two pages so he can make his last trip to eternity and remember that he was a Polish-Canadian.

One more thing which comes to my mind is Robert's love to his mom.

He always remembered about Zofia's birthday, names day (European tradition) and nice postcards from every trip he went on. Not only his handwriting was one of a kind, as you will see on the slide show, but the content was very nice and thoughtful. Just take look on the last page of the memorial card.

This is from the postcard Robert sent to his mom, Zofia:

"Ludzie staja sie dobrzy poprzez praktykowanie dobroci, rzadko sie zdarza czlowiek dobry z natury. Dobroc istnieje wcale nie po to by z niej korzystac. Dobroc nie moze wyplywac ze slabosci tylko z potegi." Gliwice, 26/07/2006 Translation of Robert's notes to his mom:

"People become good by doing good; it is rare that a person is good by nature alone.

Goodness does not exist so one can make use of it. Goodness does not flow from a place of weakness but one of power."

Just from the quotations he wrote to Zofia, I can say that Robert would be a great Canadian citizen and we would be all very proud of him.

Now I would like to make the small experiment here: " Wszyscy ktorzy mowia po Polsku prosze podniesc prawa reke do gory." [Put your right hand up.]

I can see that most of you are confused and cannot follow simple instruction. Looks like you do not understand Polish.

This is how Robert felt for over nine hours at the airport. Lost, confused, thirsty and hungry and ignored by all.

I made the same trip over 20 years ago. Two small children, Maria and me. We arrived at Vancouver airport tired and our hearts pounding. We were so uncertain and afraid. Fortunately people from immigrants services welcome us and help us at the Vancouver and Kamloops airport. They were like guardian angels for us.

Robert was not so fortunate. The airport services have failed him and Zofia. There were no guardian angels or any other helpful human beings working there to prevent this tragedy. Our everyday Canadian kindness was missing there.

In closing, let Robert's spirit live on in each of you. Love your mother, father, family and friends as Robert loved Zofia and his family. Let your love reach out to Zofia and the rest of Robert's family.

In Robert's words, "It is rare that a person is good by nature alone. People become good by doing good."

Today when you leave here, do something good. And tomorrow, when you get out of bed, make it your first choice to do something good. And every day after that, do good things.

People become good by doing good, Robert said. You become good by doing good. Be good people.


17/11/07, RCMP falsehoods on Dziekanski's death, (Back).

Canadians cannot believe a word the RCMP have to say over the taser death of Robert Dziekanski. The cruelty of the response by four Mounties to the Polish man's plight is a shocking example of police inhumanity. The disinformation campaign waged later can only further harm the reputation and credibility of the force. How, when an RCMP spokesman stands up in the future and calmly gives a version of events involving a member, can he be trusted?

What is clear is that in the aftermath of the Oct. 14 tasering at Vancouver International Airport, RCMP spokesman Sgt. Pierre Lemaitre provided a version of events to the public that contrasts sharply with what was captured on the now world-famous taser death video.

Witnesses said Mr. Dziekanski wasn't a threat to anybody, but Sgt. Lemaitre told CBC Television that police arrived and, despite efforts to calm him, were met aggressively and confrontationally by Mr. Dziekanski. “The officers were using gestures saying, you know, relax, relax, put your hands on the desk there where the computer was taken; to no avail, [he was] still throwing things around,” said Sgt. Lemaitre.

He gave a similar account to the Vancouver Sun: “The officers tried to speak to him, tried to calm him down, but he continued to throw things around and yell and scream.” The police spokesman also told a CTV reporter that “he was pounding on the windows behind us, he was throwing chairs.”

The video shows Mr. Dziekanski rearranging furniture, and throwing something earlier on, but not as the four officers approached him. Instead, he raised his hands and moved away a few steps. He gave the appearance not of posing a threat but of exhibiting resignation. There is no evidence on the video of any attempt to negotiate with the man, or to calm him in the few seconds before he was hit with 50,000 volts.

The first taser blow left him immediately convulsed and screaming on the floor. Sgt. Lemaitre's claim that the taser “didn't seem to have any kind of effect on him” is laughable. The officer also said that “even after the handcuffs, he continued to fight.” That is the RCMP's stated justification for tasering Mr. Dziekanski again, and putting pressure on what Sgt. Lemaitre claimed was his “shoulders.” The video shows Mr. Dziekanski writhing, not fighting, before he was hit again with the taser, and reveals that pressure was placed not on his shoulders but on his neck, with a knee.

Without the video, shot by Paul Pritchard, it would have been the word of four Mounties against those of a few civilian witnesses. Now, the entire world knows how the RCMP callously misread and brutally dispatched a distressed and exhausted man from Poland.

A charitable interpretation of the statements made by Sgt. Lemaitre would be that he did not have all the information, or was himself duped by officers involved in Mr. Dziekanski's killing. Then again, it may be that Sgt. Lemaitre was complicit in an attempt to whitewash the affair. Only the RCMP know the truth. Don't expect a straight answer.


17/11/07, Rod Mickleburgh, There was one person who tried to help, (Back).

The entire planet is now weighing in on the needless death of Robert Dziekanski.

That's thanks to the laudable decision by Paul Pritchard to challenge the RCMP's refusal to return his raw, gripping video of the fatal airport tasering and then release it to the public.

The result has been an unprecedented, international black eye for a country that likes to think of itself as a kinder, gentler place than you-know-who south of the border.

Yet, as Mr. Rogers (yes, that Mr. Rogers) was fond of reminding his young charges, there is always some good to be found in the blackest of situations.

At the airport, that good came in the person of Sima Ashrafinia.

She was right there when Mr. Dziekanski began his erratic behaviour. Rather than cower or call for police, Ms. Ashrafinia reached out to him with compassion.

Even when he threw a small chair against the thick glass that separated them, she did not back away.

Instead, using hand gestures learned from communicating with deaf members of her family, Ms. Ashrafinia tried to calm the confused, frightened visitor. It seemed to work.

At least until the police arrived.

When she watched the chilling video footage of Mr. Dziekanski's fate despite her best efforts to help him, tears rolled down her cheek.

Her actions are a reminder that not everyone at the airport treated Mr. Dziekanski as a problem or a nuisance. Sima Ashrafinia treated him as a human being.

Lest we forget

During his sad, desperate quest to join his mother for a new life in Canada, Mr. Dziekanski suffered one tragic indignity after another. Time after time, the system failed him.

I look forward to someone having the grace to establish a permanent memorial at the airport to ensure that the death of this lost, innocent traveller is never forgotten.


19/11/07, Patrick Brethour, B.C. Mounties face growing public outrage, (Back).

Residents acting 'very aggressively' toward national police force in wake of airport taser death.

VANCOUVER — A wave of public anger about the death of Robert Dziekanski is washing over the RCMP in the Lower Mainland, with upset Canadians berating officers at the airport and at the nearby Richmond detachment – and even throwing eggs at one police cruiser.

Deputy Commissioner Gary Bass, commanding officer for the RCMP in British Columbia, told The Globe and Mail that members of the public have been acting “very aggressively” toward officers since Mr. Dziekanski's death a month ago.

The 40-year-old Polish man died within minutes of being tasered repeatedly at Vancouver International Airport, where he had spent hours wandering in a vain search from his mother. Four officers, responding to a report of a man with erratic behaviour destroying property, entered the international arrivals area in the early morning of Oct. 14, and tasered Mr. Dziekanski less than 30 seconds later.

A bystander captured the episode on digital video, with the disturbing 10 minutes of footage showing Mr. Dziekanski screaming and writhing before being pinned down and handcuffed, and then lapsing into unconsciousness. The public release of that video last week has sparked controversy around the world, particularly in Poland, whose ambassador called the RCMP's actions “unsuitable under the circumstances, even excessive.”

Deputy Commissioner Bass disclosed Sunday that the four officers involved in the incident – one a relatively senior corporal, the other three with one to three years' experience – were reassigned to office duties two days after the Oct. 14 incident, in part to guarantee their personal safety. “They're doing work that doesn't require them to be in front-line duties,” he said.

Such a move is not standard practice, he said, but was judged to be a prudent step. “In this case, obviously, the amount of public reaction to the incident is of concern to us, including the fact that there have been a lot of very negative reaction to the members – all the members – at Richmond, very confrontational. So, it's essentially for two reasons. It's for the officers' own safety, as well as, you know, to address the concerns that are being voiced.”

RCMP Commissioner William Elliott, in a statement issued Saturday, offered the force's condolences on the day a memorial service was held for Mr. Dziekanski in Kamloops, where his mother lives. Commissioner Elliott went on to write that he had been avoiding comment during an active investigation. “I recognize, however, that the RCMP cannot provide effective policing services without the support of the communities we serve and I am concerned that growing misperceptions are eroding the public's confidence in the RCMP.”

There have not been any physical confrontations between members of the public and RCMP officers, said Deputy Commissioner Bass, but many Canadians have been repeating critical comments from media reports including a Globe editorial last Friday that said Mr. Dziekanski's death amounted to a “summary execution.”

Staff Sergeant Ken Legge, of the RCMP's staff relations representative program, said he had not heard of any such incidents elsewhere in the country, adding that the reassignment of officers involved in a death-in-custody is “not abnormal.”

Deputy Commissioner Bass issued a separate statement on Saturday offering his condolences to the Dziekanski family, on behalf of the B.C. division. He also said in the statement that the Ontario Provincial Police have been asked to provide an “external and independent view” of the investigation by the Integrated Homicide Investigation Team (IHIT).

There have also been internal discussions about whether to continue using tasers, Deputy Commissioner Bass said. “We've talked long and hard about that,” he said, adding that the short-term choice came down to a complete ban or a continuation of current policy because any intermediate step would require extensive training.

The IHIT investigation is one of several inquiries launched in the wake of Mr. Dziekanski's death, with the B.C. coroner and the chairman of the Commission for Public Complaints Against the RCMP each conducting examinations of the matter. The federal Public Security department also has a review under way, the Canadian Police Centre will launch a new study of taser technology and procedures, and British Columbia has asked the B.C. Association of Chiefs of Police to examine the appropriate use of tasers.

But Murray Mollard, executive director of the B.C. Civil Liberties Association, said none of these reviews are by an independent body with the power to assign blame.


17/11/07 & 19/11/07, RCMP Commissioner's Statement - Incident at Vancouver Airport, (Back).

The death of Mr. Robert Dziekanski on October 14, 2007, was tragic. The RCMP wishes to once again extend our deepest sympathy and condolences to his family.

Although a number of representatives of the RCMP have made themselves available to the media, there is a perception that the RCMP has been silent since the airing of the disturbing video images earlier this week.

I have not made a public statement before now as I felt that the best course of action was to let the investigations underway proceed so that we could all benefit from an independent determination of the facts.

I recognize, however, that the RCMP cannot provide effective policing services without the support of the communities we serve and I am concerned that growing misperceptions are eroding the public's confidence in the RCMP.

I would like to make clear that this incident is being treated very seriously by the RCMP, up to and including by me as Commissioner.

Many questions are being asked about what happened on October 14 at the Vancouver International Airport and there are a number of independent processes underway to examine, in detail, exactly what occurred.

Immediately after Mr. Dziekanski's death, an investigation was initiated by the Integrated Homicide Investigation Team in British Columbia. This team includes experienced investigators from the RCMP as well as members of the New Westminster, Port Moody, Abbotsford and West Vancouver police services.

The scope of this investigation includes everything that happened from the moment Mr. Dziekanski boarded his plane in Poland to come Canada.

Investigative teams will be interviewing witnesses as well as individuals from a number of domestic and international authorities.

An independent observer from the Commission for Public Complaints Against the RCMP (CPC) has been involved from the outset and is being provided complete access throughout the investigation.

The CPC has also announced its own independent investigation. Information about the CPC investigation is available at www.cpc-cpp.gc.ca .

In addition, the B.C. Coroner's office will be conducting an inquest.

The RCMP fully supports these investigations and is anxious to learn as much as possible about this tragic event.

For the time being, the four RCMP officers directly involved in the events of October 14th , 2007, have been assigned to other duties. The RCMP has also undertaken an examination of our policies and procedure relating to conducted energy weapons, commonly called "TASERs" and will be providing a report to the Minister of Public Safety. We will further consider our policies and procedures in light of the findings and recommendations flowing from the investigations currently under way.

Based on the information available to date, the RCMP remains of the view that "TASERs" are effective law enforcement tools and are safe in the vast majority of cases. When properly deployed they result in overall injury reduction when dealing with the arrest of violent individuals.

Many comments we have received seem to suggest that the use of a TASER is never justified based on the likelihood of inflicting serious injury or death. In fact, our experience and that of other police services over the course of many years and thousands of incidents, as well as existing research, have shown that deploying a TASER is often the fastest and safest way to gain control of an individual. We and other police services teach our officers that it is less likely to cause serious injury than other tactics.

We believe that further research, particularily with respect to Conducted Energy Weapons and excited delirium, is needed and we welcome yesterday's announcement that the Canadian Police Research Centre has been asked by the Canadian Association of Chiefs of Police to conduct further work in this area.

The RCMP recognizes the video images recently made public are disturbing for anyone who sees them. We do not, however, believe that it is appropriate to draw conclusions based on these images alone. This serious event deserves a comprehensive and complete examination and we are confident that the processes underway will provide the proper basis on which to make conclusions and to determine appropriate action.

William J. S. Elliott, Commissioner


20/11/07, Patrick Brethour & Justine Hunter & Marjan Farahbaksh, 'Vacuum' sparks B.C. taser inquiry, (Back).

Attorney-General launches full-scale probe into airport incident: Premier extends apology to Polish man's grieving mother.

VANCOUVER and VICTORIA — British Columbia is launching a full-scale inquiry into the death of Robert Dziekanski at the hands of the RCMP, saying the authorities have failed to tell the public how a 40-year-old Polish man emigrating to live with his mother instead ended up dead on the floor of Vancouver's airport.

Attorney-General Wally Oppal said the government was forced to call a public inquiry after it became clear various authorities - including Vancouver airport, the RCMP and Canada Border Services Agency - were not providing useful answers about what went wrong.

"There was a huge vacuum of information there," Mr. Oppal said. "We all viewed that horrible video, and the circumstances, and I think it's safe to say we were waiting for some kind of appropriate answer from the authorities and nothing was forthcoming at all. ... The public deserves answers."

Mr. Dziekanski died within minutes of being tasered repeatedly at Vancouver International Airport a month ago, where he had spent hours wandering in a vain search for his mother, Zofia Cisowski.

They never found each other. Four officers, responding to a report of a man with erratic behaviour destroying property, entered the arrivals area on the morning of Oct. 14, and tasered Mr. Dziekanski less than 30 seconds later. A digital video of the encounter flashed around the world last week, with the disturbing 10 minutes of footage showing Mr. Dziekanski screaming and writhing before being pinned down and handcuffed, and then lapsing into unconsciousness.

Premier Gordon Campbell did not directly criticize the RCMP or others yesterday, but offered Mr. Dziekanski's grieving mother a public apology. "I'm glad to apologize for what took place," the Premier said, promising to phone Ms. Cisowski by tomorrow.

"This is a human tragedy. My heart goes out to his mother, to his family, to his friends," Mr. Campbell said.

"It's not something anyone in British Columbia, frankly, ever would have anticipated happening."

The province has yet to define the terms of the inquiry, but in a statement released yesterday, said that the review will be examining taser use immediately.

The inquiry will also examine the circumstances of Mr. Dziekanski's death and how Vancouver airport deals with foreign passengers, although those portions may be delayed in deference to the continuing homicide investigation.

The RCMP declined to comment on Mr. Oppal's criticism, but Staff Sergeant John Ward said the force - including the four officers involved in the incident - would co-operate fully with the inquiry. The CBSA could not be reached for immediate comment. In a prepared statement, the Vancouver airport said it would also co-operate fully.

Paul Levy, the airport's operations vice-president, said the airport authority has been sharing all the information it has with the public.

The tape of Mr. Dziekanski's death has created a furor both in Poland and Canada, with the RCMP reporting over the weekend that several of its officers in the Lower Mainland have been accosted by members of the public, including one incident in which a police cruiser was pelted with eggs. Mr. Campbell said he understands public frustration, but urged British Columbians to remember that the police put themselves in harm's way every day. "It's a very difficult job."

Solicitor-General John Les, who last week refused to launch any additional inquiries, said yesterday the public inquiry is the best way to answer the public's questions, but initially stopped short of offering an apology, saying he wanted to find out more details first.

After the Premier apologized, Mr. Les offered his own condolences.

NDP public safety critic Mike Farnworth said Mr. Les's slowness to apologize is more evidence that the Solicitor-General should resign, after fumbling the issues of gang violence and Mr. Dziekanski's death. Mr. Campbell rejected that call, and criticized the opposition for injecting politics into the debate over the Polish man's death.

Mr. Les, along with Mr. Campbell, continued to reject calls for a moratorium on taser use.

Recent public inquiries in B.C.

1993: An inquiry probing the B.C. government's purchase of MacMillan Bloedel shares and its decision to allow the company to log trees in Clayoquot Sound found no conflict of interest.

1993: The Vancouver police chief resigned after an inquiry found that, as the most senior officer on duty, he failed to adequately report the police jail beating of Richard Alfred Mountain.

1994: An inquiry into the case of the convicted killer Danny Perrault, who escaped from jail and committed a brutal rape, found that B.C. corrections officials placed more emphasis on Mr. Perrault's welfare than on public safety when they transferred him to a minimum-security jail.

1996: An inquiry into whether a charity linked to the provincial New Democratic Party improperly funnelled bingo funds into NDP coffers dragged on for five years and was finally halted in 2001 by the Liberal government.

2007: An inquiry is examining the death of Frank Joseph Paul, a drunken homeless man who was arrested by Vancouver police and later dragged from jail and dumped in an alley.

Compiled by Marjan Farahbaksh.


Watchdog rejects spin charge against RCMP, Jonathan Woodward, 19/11/07, (Back).

B.C. Civil Liberties Association says public misled by RCMP Taser report

An RCMP watchdog has dismissed a civil rights group's complaint that the Mounties "misrepresented the facts" surrounding the death of Polish immigrant Robert Dziekanski, even as the force continues to receive e-mails accusing it of "lying."

The Commission for Public Complaints against the RCMP will instead follow up an internal complaint into whether officers followed proper procedures, according to a letter from its chairman, Paul Kennedy.

"They said our complaint was moot," said B.C. Civil Liberties Association executive director Murray Mollard, whose organization filed the complaint on Tuesday.

The RCMP misled the public the day Dziekanski died, and an "astounding" video of the death tells a very different story, said Mollard.

He said that as it stands now, there is no guarantee anyone will examine whether the police "spun the story" to curry favour with the public.

RCMP spokesman Cpl. Dale Carr said officers relayed what investigators knew at the time.

"We've been outright called liars," said Carr of e-mails he'd received from the public. "But a liar is someone that has one piece of information and says something else. We were giving the information we knew at the time. That's not a lie."

On Oct. 14, Dziekanski was planning to start a new life in Canada, but became agitated after spending 10 hours in the Vancouver International Airport.

Police Tasered the 40-year-old and then wrestled him to the ground, where he died minutes later.

The morning after the incident, Sgt. Pierre Lemaitre told a Sun reporter that three police officers tried to reason with Dziekanski, but instead he "continued to throw chairs around" despite efforts to calm him.

Lemaitre also said that discharging the Taser was a "one-shot deal," and that after Dziekanski was on the ground, face-up, officers put weight only on the man's shoulders, as per police procedures.

But an explosive video of the event taken by bystander Paul Pritchard shows that there were four officers and that one of them deployed the Taser only about 25 seconds after giving brief instructions to Dziekanski, who did not speak English.

The video does not show Dziekanski resisting or throwing anything after police meet him -- instead, he appears to walk away with his hands up. Police Taser Dziekanski twice, and the officers pile on top of him, appearing to put pressure on his torso and head as he lies face-down.

Dr. John Butt, who co-authored recommendations on Taser usage for B.C.'s police complaints commissioner two years ago, said the video shows police didn't live up to their own standards.

"I don't believe they followed the recommendations," he said in an interview. "You need to have a period of assessment before you pull out the Taser. You need to keep away from people's necks and chests."

The officer's actions increased the chance of a person asphyxiating, especially when he is in an "excited" state, said Butt. But "there's nothing wrong" with using the Taser twice, he said.

Lemaitre couldn't be reached for comment Sunday.

Carr couldn't say whether what investigators told the public was drawn largely from the officers' own "duty to account" statements, which were taped hours after the incident and later transcribed. The officers must give "duty to account" statements, but have the option to stop cooperating with investigators after the fact, he said.

"They're under no obligation to talk to the investigators. But they did," he said, adding that the officers gave formal statements but that he would not release them.

The RCMP initially withheld Pritchard's video because they didn't want the officers or other witnesses to see it and change their statements, said Carr. (Police gave the video back to Pritchard after he took the matter to court.)

The four RCMP officers have been assigned to other duties, RCMP Commissioner William Elliott said in a statement Saturday. "The RCMP fully supports these investigations and is anxious to learn as much as possible about this tragic event," Elliott said.

jwoodward@png.canwest.com

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