This week in Canadian foreign policy

Military Police Complaints Commission told that military police had no idea what happened to Afghan prisoners after they were handed over to Afghan authorities, follow-up not part of job description.

Sweden, Finland, Iceland and Canadian indigenous peoples are excluded from Cannon's Arctic summit.

Steve's G8 maternal and child health initiative fails to include support for family planning issues including contraceptives and abortion, putting it at odds with the other G-8 countries and drawing a rebuke from Clinton.

The Ethics Commissioner reports that Israel is the top destination of choice for MPs seeking junkets abroad paid for by outside organizations.
Embassy Mag : "In almost every instance, the visits were organized and paid for by the Canada-Israel Committee."

Former Con, now Liberal, Trade critic Scott Brison tabled an amendment to the Canada-Colombia FTA, requiring the country with the worst human rights record in the western world to carry out its own annual human rights assessments -- after the deal is approved and not as a precondition. This is expected to win sufficient Liberal votes to get it passed.
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A plea from the People of the Talking Snake

On the February cover of The Catholic Register, the Church of the Talking Snake makes yet another desperate public plea to jetison their charitable status so that they can pay taxes just like everyone else :

"It is astonishing and sad that Liberal Leader Michael Ignatieff is advocating that Canada fund overseas abortions, charged Toronto Archbishop Thomas Collins.

Collins released a statement on Feb. 4 in response to Ignatieff's public calls for the government to include contraception and abortion funding as basic components of a new foreign aid strategy to improve maternal and childhood health."

Well, actually Iggy only said he wouldn't support any new foreign aid changes from Harper that would limit access to them, but hey - these are minor details when you're launching a campaign to get your fair share of recognition from Revenue Canada.

Collins : "There are so many other steps that can be taken to promote maternal and child health throughout the world."

Archbishop Collins went on to suggest instead "clean water, food and immunization", measures which have at best an uncertain track record in preventing the spread of AIDS/HIV and STDs and the birth of yet another child you can't feed.

So far, attempts to determine whether Harper is about to reverse 30 years of Canadian foreign policy funding support for access to contraception and safe abortion have proved fruitless. The Talking Snake couldn't have done better himself.

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"Good Morning, Afghanistan"

On Sunday hundreds of Afghan students and protesters shouted slogans against the US, Nato and Afghan government and burned an effigy of the President Obama during a rally in Kabul before attempting to storm the parliament building.

- updated below -

Eric Margolis : Take poor Hamid Karzai, the amiable former business consultant and CIA "asset" installed by Washington as Afghanistan's president. As the U.S. increasingly gets its backside kicked in Afghanistan, it has blamed the powerless Karzai for its woes and bumbling.

You can almost hear Washington rebuking, "bad puppet! Bad puppet!"

The U.S. government has wanted to dump Karzai, but could not find an equally obedient but more effective replacement. There was talk of imposing an American "chief executive officer" on him. Or, in the lexicon of the old British Raj, an Imperial Viceroy.

Washington finally decided to try to shore up Karzai's regime and give it some legitimacy by staging national elections in August. The UN, which has increasingly become an arm of U.S. foreign policy, was brought in to make the vote kosher. Canada eagerly joined this charade.

No political parties were allowed to run. Only individuals supporting the West's occupation of Afghanistan were allowed on the ballot.

As I wrote before the election, it was all a great big fraud within a larger fraud designed to fool American, Canadian and European voters into believing democracy had flowered in Afghanistan. Cynical Afghans knew the vote would be rigged. Most Pashtun, the nation's ethnic majority, didn't vote. The "election" was an embarrassing fiasco.

Ironically, the U.S. is now closely allied with the Afghan Communists and fighting its former Pashtun allies from the 1980s anti-Soviet struggle. Most North Americans have no idea they are now backing Afghan Communists and the men who control most of Afghanistan's booming drug trade."

Scott Taylor : "Spending millions of dollars to stage elections — and run-offs — to exercise a democratic process to appoint a U.S. puppet hasn’t fooled the Afghan people.
It’s time we stopped fooling ourselves."

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The National Post reports a poll this morning showing Support for Canada’s role in Afghanistan has fallen below 50%.

Wesley Wark, Munk Centre : "Good news stories -- good news stories could change their opinion."

Independent : "At 6.30am Helmand time today, the words "Good Morning, Afghanistan" boomed forth from the first British Forces radio station in the country.

DJ Dusty Miller mimicked Robin Williams's greeting this morning."

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Oct 28 Update : [h/t Pogge at Bread 'n Roses]

NY Times : Brother of Afghan Leader Said to Be Paid by C.I.A.
That would be Ahmed Wali Karzai, alleged drug lord and fixer of the Afghan election, on the CIA payroll for the last eight years. In what sounds like a scene out of the movie Traffic, brother Karzai is said to finger rival drug lords to the DEA and then take over their territories.

Also :

"The agency pays Mr. Karzai for a variety of services, including helping to recruit an Afghan paramilitary force that operates at the C.I.A.’s direction in and around the southern city of Kandahar, Mr. Karzai’s home."

Isn't that what we used to call Al Qaida?

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Malalai Joya on Democracy Now [h/t Waterbaby]:

"You know, my people call him “Small Bush” in Kandahar province, this brother of Hamid Karzai.
And this was the main project of the CIA in Afghanistan, that under the banner of women rights, human rights, democracy, they occupied my country. They imposed these terrorists, blood and creed of the Taliban, on my people. And also they changed my country to the center of drug."

Meanwhile the similarities to Viet Nam continue. Wherever the CIA goes, the drug trade follows.

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Newspeak comes to Foreign Affairs

Embassy Mag : "Gender Equality", "Child Soldiers" and "Humanitarian Law" are Axed from Foreign Policy Language

With subtle strokes of the pen, it appears the Conservative government has been systematically changing the language employed by the foreign service and, as a result, bringing subtle but sweeping changes to traditional Canadian foreign policy.

In an email communication obtained by Embassy, staff at the Department of Foreign Affairs express concern about frequent changes being made to commonly used terms, particularly where such changes are not consistent with accepted Canadian policy.

Rewriting Canadian foreign policy without going through parliament.

"International humanitarian law" has been replaced by "international law"

WTF?

IHL is about Geneva Conventions : war, casualties, the limiting thereof.

Take out "humanitarian" and we're talking the laws of the sea, trade law, border stuff.

No humans rights or massacred civilians here. Take that, International Criminal Court! You too, UN.

Doubtless our partners in the Canada-Israel Homeland Security pact will be gratified to learn of our new position on human rights in occupied territoriesopen air prisons.

In fact, a source close to Foreign Affairs told Embassy that the Prime Minister's Office had once tried to change Canada's official position on the ICC to essentially state that Canada does not support the ICC, it tolerates it.

"Gender equality" is now "equality of men and women"

What are we talking here - height? Number of arms and legs?

Back in the 90s we figured out that sex is biological; gender is both political and socially constructed and gender-based violence is not just about your junk.

"References to gender-based violence are removed," the Foreign Affairs email states, muttering darkly about the influence of certain conservative women's groups. Hi, Gwen!

Canada, previously a pioneer in the fight to bring gender equality into the human rights agenda, is apparently back to cocks and cunts.

"Child soldiers" is now "children in armed conflict."

We're obviously talking toddlers in swaddlin' clothes here and we are most definitely not talking child soldier Omar Khadr. Again, Canada pioneered protection for child soldiers in international humanitarian law at the UN, but that was before we became the last government on planet Earth to offer our passive support to what goes on in Gitmo.

Go read.

Foreign Affairs is pushing back. Good for them.

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h/t Waterbaby

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The dark side of Canadian foreign policy

The Black Book of Canadian Foreign Policy

by Yves Engler , Fernwood Publishing

A 2007 poll that Engler cites found "84% of Canadians believed Canada played a positive role on the world stage while 10 percent felt it was negative."
Being peacekeepers is a big part of the Canadian national identity.

We are at pains to differentiate ourselves from US corporate colonialism and we are pissed with Steve for his Cold War era mongering and his nonsense about "putting Canada back on the world stage." We never left, we say.

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In his new book to be launched May 3, Engler asks us to take another look at that mythology of Canadian foreign policy in dozens of countries in South America, the Middle East, Caribbean, Africa, and Palestine.

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Via The Dominion, a book review at Canuck Media Monitor.

The entry on Colombia [as the Cons shepherd the Canada-Colombia Free Trade bill through the House] :

"Colombia Canada's closest ally in Latin America is the country that has consistently had the worst human right record in the Western Hemisphere.

In 1997, Ottawa initiated a re-write of Colombia's mining code.
CIDA worked on it with a Colombian law firm and the Canadian Energy Research Institute (CERI). The proposals became law in 2001 and offered a familiar list of goodies to mining corporations: the weakening of environmental and labor laws, reduced royalties paid to the government, tax exemptions, and added years to mining concessions.

In the resource sector, the link between profiteering and massive human rights abuses, especially forced displacement, is very obvious. Colombia's population of internally displaced persons (3 million as of 2008) is second only to that of Sudan. Engler described how two Canadian companies, BFC Construction and Agra-Monenco, contributed to human rights violations in northeastern Colombia:

"With $18.2 million from EDC [Export Development Canada] the companies' Urra dam submerged over 7,400 hectares, including old-growth forest as well as the
lands and homes of 411 families, all of whom were without individual legal land titles, only having collective indigenous land rights. About 2,800 people were forcibly resettled to make way for the Canadian companies' project and a further 70,000 people were directly impacted. Predictably the community resisted the dam. According to Amnesty International, six indigenous people protesting the project were killed and ten additional members of the community were disappeared by paramilitary and guerrilla forces."

When Canada opposed a 2007 UN General Assembly declaration on the rights of
Indigenous people, it was not only facilitating the ongoing dispossession of indigenous peoples in Canada. It was protecting Canadian companies that have trampled on the rights of indigenous peoples around the world."

Chile? We sided with the US to cut off IMF funds to Salvador Allende but after the 1973 coup, endorsed sending Pinochet $95 million of IMF funds. By 1978 direct investments by Canadian companies in Chile totaled $1 billion.

Iran? We tried to sell them nuclear power.

Iraq? Them too.

Colombia we can still do something about. Go.

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