Toronto mayor Rob Ford crack scandal, Somalis own the evidence

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LayZie G.;986693 wrote:

I kid not..here is a clip from lastnight's show...

 

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Canceled after one episode, lmao!!

[Cadale]

Rageedi the best Mayor in the world lmao

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Rob Ford fitness consultant a convicted steroid trafficker, banned from coaching in Canada

 

 

A trainer who consulted with Rob Ford as recently as Tuesday night on a health “game plan” was convicted in the U.S. for steroid trafficking and is currently in the midst of a 12-year ban from coaching in Canada for administering steroids.

 

The Toronto mayor has repeatedly said he is working with a team of health professionals following his admission of smoking crack while in a “drunken stupor.” Ford has not specified what that team includes other than to say it includes advice about his weight and he is not in an alcohol treatment program. Ford’s criminal lawyer, Dennis Morris, has said the mayor is spending up to two hours a day exercising, has revamped his diet and has received support from a medical doctor.

 

Valerio Moscariello, the owner of Team Body Pro Athletics, tweeted a picture Tuesday night of himself in the gym with Ford with the captions: “Toronto Mayor Rob Ford joins forces to get in shape with “Teambodypro.com” and “#teambodypro Toronto mayor Rob Ford killing him on cardio today! Man on a mission.”

 

On Instagram he said: “Putting Toronto mayor Rob Ford through a Valerio workout. The BodyPro training system!!!” The posts were deleted not long after he was contacted by the media. He deleted his entire Twitter and Instagram accounts later Wednesday.

 

The tweet was sent out under Moscariello’s alias “Valerio Mosca,” the name he uses with the Team Body Pro Athletics website, the bodybuilding supplement company Mutant Nation and on several socia media accounts including Facebook Youtube, Twitter and Instagram.

 

However, Moscariello’s full name is used several times in various pages of Team Body Pro Website and in other Internet postings.

 

Responding to an email from the National Post asking about the steroid conviction and coaching ban, Moscariello wrote: “It was a joke picture and has been blown up for no reason. I do wish him luck. I should not have posted a joke picture like that I didn’t realize what this caused. I’m sorry. I wish [the] mayor luck on his journey.”

 

He declined to directly answer any questions about the conviction and ban and did not confirm if the relationship with Ford is ongoing.

 

However, in an earlier telephone interview Wednesday, Moscariello was enthusiastic about training the mayor, who was sweating it out on a treadmill the night before, weighing in at 336 pounds.

 

“He’s got the discipline and he’s got the drive. I really think he can lose the weight, but he has to give it his all. I want him to give me 100%, not even just 99%. Without 100% I won’t take him on. But if he gives me 100%, if he comes to the gym, I’ll beat him up [through a rigorous workout]. I’ll beat him up until he can’t take anymore,” Moscariello told the National Post.

 

“With Rob, I think the problem is what he eats. He’s on the go, he’s here and there and he doesn’t eat what he should. If Rob eats proper food, he will change. But you need to do this every day. Every day.” No amount of working out can make up for poor food choices, he said.

 

“You are what you eat.

 

“You’d be amazed how agile he is. He knows how to move 300 pounds around easily.”

 

The mayor’s office, which is undergoing a massive shuffle after Monday’s council vote to strip Ford of much of his budget, did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

 

Moscariello is also linked to the Ford’s office through aspiring bodybuilder Jerry Agyemang, who Ford hired as a driver earlier this month. Agyemang is also a member of Mutant Nation, winning its “Monthly Mutant of the Month” in October 2011. He is also featured in pictures on the body supplement company’s website.

 

Agyemang was previously a security guard at City Hall.

 

Moscariello since-deleted Twitter reveals that he was speaking of training Ford as early as November 16. He referenced training the mayor in a conversation with Canadian porn actress Nikki Benz.

 

“What times are your show? I’m calling Mr. Ford now,” Moscariello said to Benz on Twitter last Saturday.

 

“Yo, @TomayordFord, come to Whiskey A GoGo tonight. @ryanmclane and I have shots of Remy Martin waiting for you. #416,” Benz’s verified account responded.

 

“You seriously want me to bring him? I just started training him,” Moscariello responded.

 

Benz appeared at the Whiskey A Go-Go on November 14, 15 and 16, according to the adult nightclub’s webpage [Warning: link includes nudity].

 

There is no indication the mayor took up the invite.

 

 

Drug charges

 

Moscariello pleaded guilty to possession with the intent to distribute anabolic steroids in October 2005, according to United States Attorney for the District of Nevada.

 

“Valerio Moscareillo, age 31, of Toronto, Canada, pleaded guilty in August to the felony offense. He admitted to unlawfully possessing 27 units (270 cc) of anabolic steroids, Schedule III controlled substances, and to operating a website at []www.juiceworld.com], that was accessible to the general public for the purpose of distributing these anabolic steroids,” a November 1, 2005 press release said.

 

“In February 2005, U.S. Postal Inspectors tracked a steroid distribution operation to the defendant’s residence in Henderson. In June 2005, law enforcement officers executed a search of the residence and seized a quantity of anabolic steroids, including Primobolon Depot, Deca Nadrolone Decanoate, and Trenbolone Acetate. They also seized “buy-owe” sheets, materials such as small bottles and syringes consistent with the repackaging of these substances, and approximately $16,000 in cash.”

 

He was sentenced to five months in federal prison and three years of supervised release. The press release said he was in immigration custody for a removal hearing.

 

In January 2010, Moscariello received a 12-year ban from Canadian sport for administering steroids to national-level boxer Amanda Galle of Mississauga. Galle received a two-year ban.

 

“His 12-year sanction means that he is ineligible to participate in any sport at any level and in any role. This prevents him from coaching, training or competing, and restricts competitive athletes from associating with him as a coach or trainer,” the Canadian Centre for Ethics in Sport (CCES) said in a press release.

 

The CCES is an independent body “responsible for the implementation and management of Canada’s Anti-Doping Program,” according to its website.

 

Moscariello told the CCES he “mistakenly injected Galle with deca-durabolin, a steroid that he used personally.”

 

Moscariello is described by the CCES as a “conditioning coach, personal trainer and nutritional consultant.”

 

According to his Instagram account biography, “Mosca” is a “Mutant Sponsered athlete Trainer of champions owner of Teambodypro.com have trained with 4 Mr.Olympians the best bodybuilders in the world.”

 

Team Body Pro is heavily linked to bodybuilder Jay Cutler, a four-time Mr. Olympia. His last title was in 2010. Moscariello describes him as a “good friend” and Team Body Pro has sponsored Toronto events starring Cutler.

 

 

According to its website, Team Body Pro was founded in June 2009.

 

“Would you like to work with TeamBodyPro? We are professionals who can build you a proper diet and give you a proper training program designed just for you and your sport,” the website says.

 

Team Body Pro says it has worked with bodybuilders Cutler, Phil Heath, Dexter Jackson and Ronnie Coleman. It sells a variety of clothing on its website for up to $100.

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Cadale;986792 wrote:

Rageedi the best Mayor in the world lmao

The jokes are just writing themselves at this point lol

 

 

[Safferz]

Great analysis of media coverage and framing of the Ford crack scandal from Africa is a Country:

 

Rob Ford and Canada’s “Somali Problem”

 

 

No matter where in the world you are, by now you have likely heard about Toronto mayor (to some a human trainwreck) Rob Ford and the infamous video in which he appears to smoke crack cocaine while making racist and homophobic remarks.

 

Like many right wing populists, Ford’s racial insensitivity is, for a certain segment of his supporters, part of his blue collar “down home” appeal. (Of course, like many politicians of his ilk, Ford isn’t actually blue collar at all.) Whether intentionally or not, however, Ford’s critics are also guilty of racism. In their attacks against the mayor, they have played on the prejudice against Somalis that is prevalent in Toronto and other major Canadian cities

 

Fleeing civil war, over 55,000 Somali refugees, arrived in Canada between 1988 and 1996, more than doubling the country’s Somali population. More than half of these new arrivals settled in Toronto, many in the high rise apartment buildings on Dixon Road—now often referred to as “Little Mogadishu”—where the Ford crack video was allegedly shot. There are also significant Somali populations in cities such as Edmonton, and in my hometown of Ottawa.

 

What followed is, regrettably, a familiar story: Alarmist media reports about the “swarms” of Somalis arriving on Canadian shores. A small segment of the Somali community, mostly young men, responding to their socio-economic marginalization by becoming involved in ethnicity-based criminal gangs. Media sensationalism and police profiling which exaggerated the scope of Somali criminality. And lastly, but most of all, the age old truism that, when presented with a group of people who look, speak, and think much differently than we do, many of us tend to fall into the seemingly comforting embrace of stereotyping and prejudice. It is difficult, here, to pull apart cause and effect.

 

I feel the need, at this point, to admit my own complicity. When I was in eleventh or twelfth grade a number of new students, many of Somali background, arrived at my high school. Faced with an unfamiliar group that we couldn’t immediately understand, some of my friends and I succumbed to stereotyping. One day, a friend who was particularly adept at impressions saw a group of Somali students loudly mocking one another for wearing counterfeit brand name clothing and turned it into a comedy bit. I soon joined in. We would walk up to one another in the halls and, sucking our tongues between our teeth, make a show of examining one another’s polo shirts, jackets, backpacks. “Yo, dis is fake!” we would shout in exaggerated accents, sometimes snapping our limp index fingers against the side of our hands for effect. “This is the fake one!”

 

As racism goes it was mild, Saturday Night Live sketch type racism, but it was racist all the same. I’m completely ashamed of it. Our youthful shenanigans, however, didn’t begin to approach the ugly, biting racism that I frequently heard directed at Somali Canadians: A friend who is normally a big fan of hip-hop dismissed my recommendation that he check out K’naan by saying, “Isn’t he a f*cking Somalian?” An inebriated older acquaintance who encountered Somalis frequently in his work referred to them as “chocolate covered q-tips.” And all of this is before we get to the structural and institutional racism faced everyday by Somali immigrants and refugees.

 

A 2011 article in Taki’s Magazine, titled “Canada’s Somali problem” provides an extreme example of such attitudes, which are nevertheless more widespread that one would like to believe. In a few paragraphs, the author manages to invoke nearly every stereotype commonly affixed to Somali Canadians, painting them as khat-chewing, female genital mutilating criminals sucking at the government teat all the while destroying Canadian society from the inside. She concludes with the following: “No offense, guys, but we’d rather you stuck with murdering your own kind—and doing it somewhere else.”

 

All of which brings me back to Rob Ford. The first newspaper to report the existence of the crack cocaine video this past May was The Toronto Star. (The Star article followed an earlier report on the website Gawker.) The Star justified its decision to publish the allegations against the mayor on the grounds that the information was in the public interest. By doing drugs and getting “mixed up” in “the underworld of Toronto,” Ford had “opened himself up to blackmail.” His actions “called into question his judgment, his state of mind, his health.”

 

All of this is true. A look at the text of the original Toronto Star article, however, reveals something more insidious. The sub-headline of that article reads: “A video that appears to show Toronto’s mayor smoking crack is being shopped around by a group of Somali men involved in the drug trade.” The article goes on to use the descriptor ‘Somali’ so many times that, a few weeks later, the paper felt compelled to print an apology.

 

And it wasn’t only The Star. Time and again, in the weeks that followed the allegations against mayor—in the news, on social media, and in conversation—the ethnicity of those supposedly in possession of the crack video came up in way that it simply wouldn’t have if Ford’s drug dealer friends had been, say, Irish.

 

In short, I think that many of the people who claim to be disturbed by the fact that Rob Ford does drugs are, on some level, actually disturbed by the fact that Rob Ford (allegedly) smokes crack with Somalis in Little Mogadishu.

 

If the Ford video showed him snorting powder cocaine in the back of a fancy restaurant with white guys in nice suits (which, incidentally, Ford is now also alleged to have done) would people still think that it was as big a deal? (I am reminded here of André Boisclair, a Québec politician who admitted snorting cocaine while a provincial cabinet minister and was subsequently elected leader of his party.)

 

Would the initial reports of Ford’s illicit activities have been as alarming had they not been accompanied by the photo (above) of a glassy-eyed, red-faced Ford posing with three young black men? (Those shopping the video provided the photo, which shows Ford with three accused gang members, one of whom was later murdered, to Gawker and The Star. It remains the visual most closely associated with the crack allegations. The video itself is in the hands of the Toronto Police and has not, as of yet, been made public.)

 

Would the violence allegedly linked with attempts to recover the video before it became public be of more concern if those affected were less “typical” crime victims? If the public wasn’t already conditioned to think, on some level, that shootings and assaults were “the kind of thing that happen” in Little Mogadishu, and to Somali Canadians, anyway?

 

Of course none of this is to say that Ford is even a little bit in the right. And the attempts by Ford and his city councilor brother, Doug to evade accusations about the mayor’s activities by painting those making them as racists have been transparent and self-serving.

 

Make no mistake about it, though. Racism against Somali Canadians is a real problem. It is present not only on the right, but the left as well. And it is playing an important role in conditioning the public response to the mayor’s actions.

 

As someone is hopefully telling Rob Ford right now, the first step is admitting you have a problem.

[DoctorKenney]

I really do feel sorry for Somalis living in Toronto. I've been to Toronto more times than I can count, and I do have family and friends living there.

 

And the racism against Somalis in Toronto is unreal. Even the ones who don't openly proclaim their racism, harbor their hatred for Somalis deep-down.

 

Even the Jamaicans, who are statistically far more violent than Somalis and who have higher crime rates than Somalis, look their noses down at Somalis and treat them like they're inferior. It's unbearable. This is why many (not all) Somalis subconsciously choose to only associate with fellow Somalis, as a defense mechanism. Whether you choose to admit it or not, it's the reality.

[Safferz]

Rob Ford may have offered $5,000 and car for ‘crack video’: new police documents

 

Toronto Mayor Rob Ford may have offered $5,000 and a car to two men trying to sell a video of him smoking what appears to be crack cocaine seven weeks before the video was revealed in the media, according to newly revealed portions of a police document.

 

Toronto police were in the midst of a large drugs-and-guns probe targeting an alleged street gang when secretly recorded conversations led investigators to believe Mr. Ford may have not only known an incriminating video of him existed, but also tried to buy it.

 

New allegations from a large police investigation also claim:

 

- One of the men suspected of peddling the “crack video” of Mr. Ford said he also had pictures of the mayor “doing the hezza,” usually used as a slang term for heroin;

 

- Alleged gang members said they were not afraid of the mayor turning them in to police because they had pictures of him “on the pipe”;

 

- The mayor’s close friend and occasional driver, Alexander Lisi, used purported influence over police as leverage in dealing with a gang, saying if he didn’t get his way ‘the mayor would put heat on Dixon,’ which was the gang’s territory;

 

- The mayor’s cellphone was stolen while he was at a crack house after late-night calls were made arranging a drug delivery “because Rob Ford wants some drugs;”

 

- Lisi exchanged marijuana to an alleged gang member for the return of Mr. Ford’s stolen phone;

 

- Mr. Ford appears to have been set up by drug dealers who filmed him consuming drugs knowing it could be valuable, raising the spectre of blackmail;

 

- A man involved with alleged drug dealers said they ”love and respect Rob Ford” but also “have Rob Ford on a lot of ****ed up situations” so the mayor’s friends should be careful.

 

 

The newly released portions of a sworn police affidavit filed in court is the clearest explanation yet of how Mr. Ford became entwined in an explosive and elaborate police probe that eventually led to him being stripped of most of his powers by city council.

 

It offers key missing pieces of the puzzle of why police pored over the minutia of Mr. Ford’s life when he was never charged.

 

The impunity felt by alleged drug traffickers and potential blackmail might explain why police took the allegations so seriously and highlight how Mr. Ford’s personal proclivities could impact his political role and made the mayor’s office vulnerable.

 

The allegations are contained in newly revealed portions of an immense summary of a police probe into Mr. Ford and Lisi; the accuracy of the sworn affidavit has not been tested in court.

 

The summaries of wiretap evidence, that the Crown unsuccessfully fought to keep private after a legal challenge from the media, including the National Post, was previously blacked out when the affidavit, called an Information to Obtain, was revealed on Oct. 31. The Post has not independently verified the police claims.

 

The new allegations are surprising and important — even after Mr. Ford’s outlandish antics made headlines around the world and pushed him into pop culture notoriety through late-night comedy routines and Internet memes over his crack use, “drunken stupors,” and lewd commentary.

 

The mayor could not immediately be reached for comment.

 

 

Read the rest here.