Omar Khadr, the "James Bond of Jihad", is granted bail.

National Post : "One way or another, Omar Khadr will soon be a free man.

On Friday, moments after judge J.M. Ross of the Court of Queen’s Bench of Alberta granted the 28-year-old Toronto native bail from an Edmonton-area jail pending appeal of his war crimes conviction in the United States, the government announced — as predictably as day follows night — that it would appeal."

The government did not argue that Khadr posed any danger to Canada but rather that his release would show disrespect for the US justice system.  You know - this justice system.

It's difficult for those of us who are relatively sane to appreciate the pants-pissing opportunistic hysteria Omar Khadr apparently provokes in those who are not.

Two years ago, the office of Public Safety Minister Vic Toews tacked a few additional "terrorism" charges onto Omar Khadr's Canadian file that were not in his original conviction, based on a *confession* written by the prosecution at the discredited Guantánamo Bay military tribunal :

"Ottawa’s file on Omar Khadr contains faulty information based on a memo prepared by a senior policy analyst for Public Safety Minister Vic Toews ... Among other things, the government alleges the late terrorist mastermind Osama bin Laden was an accomplice of a 15-year-old Khadr, and that the Canadian citizen killed two Afghan militia men.

You following along here?  -  the Canadian Public Safety Minister says Osama bin Laden was the accomplice of a 15 year old!

“Mr. Khadr engaged U.S. military and coalition personnel with small-arms fire, killing two members of the Afghan militia force. He threw and/or fired grenades at nearby coalition forces, resulting in numerous injuries to them.”

Presumably the Ministry of Public Safety's laughable embellishments were garnered from Ezra Levant's appalling book, The Enemy Within: Terror, Lies, and the Whitewashing of Omar Khadr, published the previous year in 2012. Some selections : 

Levant describes the 16-year-old GWOT political prisoner as "the James Bond of Jihad", "the biggest, smartest, most deadly fish in a pond teeming with the most vicious, depraved men on Earth", "a degenerate Agent 007," and a “psychopathic” “degenerate” “gangster,” “deranged … every bit as demented as Paul Bernardo, Canada’s infamous schoolgirl serial killer” who "gave himself a licence to kill Americans and Jews." 

He wrote that Khadr's - as yet still unproven in any reputable court - act of throwing a grenade was part of his plan to rise to the top of AlQaida and become the "biggest, most brutal Godfather ever" and the "top dog of terror".

It's unhinged. 

How, as Boris is wont to ask, did we ever allow ourselves to be governed by such vile, vindictive, tawdry, incompetent, opportunistic fools?

More from Montreal Simon and Thomas Walkom

The silver lining for Khadr is that upon his release, after the government has exhausted all legal means of betraying common decency, he will be living with his lawyer Dennis Edney.

I know -you've seen Edney's 2010 speech before as I like to post it once a year as a reminder of what actual common decency looks like. 

Edney : 

"We cannot rely upon governments or others to help us make society better. Each and every one of us has to be our own leader."

Saturday Update : 
In their attempt to deny him bail, Dept. of Justice lawyers declined to make a case in court that Khadr is either a flight risk or a public safety risk. 

Lautens : Harper vs Omar Khadr - You Can't Get What You Don't Argue.

"Instead, they tried to argue that Canadian law - including his right to fundamental justice under the Charter of Rights and that most ancient human right in British jurisprudence, habeas corpus - didn't apply to Omar Khadr because of our treaty with the USA."

The judge didn't buy it.
Canadian Cynic : "Sadly, the Harper Gov't is in the enviable position of having a bottomless public treasury to keep funding stupid, doomed appeals."
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Harper's Perps with Perks #15

Welcome Vic Toews to Stephen Harper's Perps with Perks for "giving patronage a bad name", as Dan Lett wrote in the Winnipeg Free Press two days ago, .

Appointed to the Queens Court by Justice Minister Peter MacKay in March last year eight months after leaving the Cons cabinet, Toews - a former Justice Minister, Public Safety Minister, and head of the Treasury Board - has spent his time on the Manitoba bench making his presumed future appointment to the Supreme Court of Canada next year a tad more tricky for the Cons. 

"Toews has had his wages garnisheed under an order from a Quebec tribunal for failing to pay thousands of dollars in back rent on a Gatineau condominium.

Toews claimed he did not pay the back rent because he could not understand the tribunal's order and supporting documents, which were written in French."

I'm guessing not recognizing a court order as a legal document is not a strong supporting argument for appointing even a former Attorney-General of Canada to the Supremes.

As to possible conflict of interest guidelines he transgressed last year while lobbying as an employee of his wife's company on behalf of a First Nation he dealt with while in cabinet, and a subsequent court case which revealed his wife allegedly received $50K in compensation, a court official explained to CBC on behalf of Toews :

"As a sitting judge, it would not be appropriate for Justice Toews to comment on your inquiry."  

Quite. Pity though because he's usually so lucid. Here he is three years ago defending his online surveillance bill C-30, the Protecting Children from Internet Predators Act, a bill which amusingly mentioned neither children nor predators aside from in its title :


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Fakers

Fake F-35 mock up cockpit from Lockheed Martin for DefMin Peter Airshow MacKay to hold $47,000 presser in to announce purchase of 65 Lockheed Martin stealth fighters in 2010.
Tony Gazebo and Rona Ambrose attending.



Fake citizenship ceremony in which half of the participants were actually Citizenship and Immigration Canada staff passed off as new Canadians on Sun News Network





Fake lake, the $57,000 part of a $1.9 million display for the 2010 G8/20 summit, concerning which I asked some more questions earlier today.

Fake G8 border infrastructure slush fund that splashed $50M around Tony Gazebo's riding for gazebos and flower pots miles away from the border, and incidentally increased his vote margin win from 26 votes in 2006 to almost 11,000 in 2010.

Fake protesters made up of Conservative party interns and staff sent out by the PMO to heckle Justin Trudeau on the lawn of the House of Commons as he gave a presser announcing "new measures to increase transparency in the HoC." 

Fake apology to First Nations

Fake election phone calls, live and automated, presumably originating from the Cons' CIMS data base, either being obnoxious while pretending to be from an opposing party or advising voters their polling station had moved or closed.

Fake Jobs Grant from the same people who thought it was a super idea to grant businesses a 15% wage reduction pass NOT to hire Canadians. This new idea, which doesn't exist yet despite a recent Hockey Night in Canada ad blitz at $95,000 a pop, would again subsidize business while rolling back $300M from the provinces should they agree to hell freezing over.

Fake Commander-in-Chief shtick while surveying Alberta flood damage, and good lord, he's wearing fucking wings.
Unsurprisingly reminiscent of Bush photo op surveying Katrina.  Mr. Dress Up's spox explained it was "in tribute to the military".  
See Boris : last paragraph.

Fake CIDA "not", crayoled in at Bev Oda's request above the signatures of CIDA dept heads, making it look as if they, not she, had gutted KAIROS' funding from CIDA. After initially fudging about it, eventually she fessed up.
Meanwhile over in Israel, Jason Kenney told the Israelis he'd done it for them, then retracted it when he got back to Canada.

Fake security at the G20. $1-billion and 19,000 police unable to prevent a few black bloc from rioting but as protests wind down on the last day, kettling without first giving the crowd a chance to disperse nets many shoppers, media, and people returning home from work in the largest police bust in Canadian history. Public Safety Min refuses to divulge origin of command for police state crowd control exercise.

Fake 'red menace' scare. 
Steve, Airshow, MacKay, and PMO staffers make ridiculous remarks about bravely staring down Russian bombers in the Arctic. Meanwhile Canadian Forces are participating with those same Russian bombers in a Canada/US/Russia exercise in joint air traffic coordination in the Arctic. 
aka Fake justification for purchase of 65 F-35s.

 Fake "Protecting Children from Internet Predators Act", which made no mention at all of child pornography because up to an hour earlier this bid to require internet service providers to give police your name, unlisted phone #, and IP address without a warrant was called the Lawful Access Act.

Steve's fake outrage at Lib/NDP/Bloc coalition proposal - with separatists! and socialists! - following the 2011 election.
Following the 2004 election, Harper himself proposed a Con/NDP/Bloc 'cooperation' with those same separatists and socialists to unseat the minority Libs.
In 2000, a proposed coalition of the Bloc, Alliance, and PC parties sought to make Stockwell Day Prime Minister of Canada.

Fake 'grassroots' website Ethical Oil
Alykhan Velshi left a six figure job with Steve's gov to relaunch Ezra Levant's Ethical Oil  -"mooching off free Wi-Fi at coffeehouses and wearing flip-flops” - after which he returned to the PMO fold. Con Resource Bureau-connected webserver Go New Clear hosts Ethical Oil, Jason Kenney, Joe Oliver, Kathryn Marshall, etc.

Faked support for abolishing StatsCan long census. 
MP Maxime Bernier claimed "thousands" of complaint emails per day during 2006 census, all unfortunately deleted, vs. the 22 recorded "expressions of concern" sent to StatsCan. 
When Tony Gazebo falsely claimed StatsCan support for abolishing long census, StatsCan chief Munir Sheikh at left resigned in protest.

Fake smaller government

The Cons' 2012 budget proposed slashing 19,000 positions from the federal public service over five years, but added more than 34,000 between 2006 and 2012 - a 14% increase.                                                                                            Additionally, a 2011 CCPA study discovered a shadow public service: "Over the past five years, federal personnel outsourcing costs have risen 79% ... and remain above $1 billion a year."

Fake emergency preparedness
"It's really just posing," Alberta Fire Chiefs Assoc. Pres. said, singling out fed politicians like SafetyMin Vic Toews showing up to "help out" Alberta flood victims after Cons' 2012 budget slashed federal funding for the Joint Emergency Preparedness Program. "They can just stay in Ottawa. They got in the way."

Fake "cooperation" with Elections Canada, including stonewalling on EC reports of election fraud 3 days before election,  'reviewing' Poutine logs at Responsive Marketing Group before EC, cutting their budget, taking 3 months to not provide EC with witnesses, delaying promised election reforms, and in the words of Judge Richard Mosley : generally engaging in "trench warfare". 


Dr. Dawg sees much of this as Conservative theatre.

I think they're just fakers always hoping not to get caught.

Feel free to add your own "faker" suggestions and links in comments - updating as they come in.

Video version on Youtube 
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