Quagmire update

CBS, Nov 10, 2010, :

"The U.S. military has destroyed hundreds of Afghan civilian homes, farm houses, walls, trees and plowed through fields and buildings using explosives and bulldozers in war-torn Zhari district, a practice that has begun to anger Afghan villagers.

The much anticipated third phase of the Kandahar campaign, called Operation Dragon Strike ...

"You bulldozed some of my trees, they're blocking the canal, now we can’t get water to the orchard," Haji Jilal, a frail, weathered Afghan farmer with a white beard said.

In an effort to clear paths heavily mined by the Taliban, soldiers employed a weapon called a MICLIC, an acronym for Mine Clearing Line Charge. In one thunderous, ground-shaking boom, the weapon clears a path 300 feet long and wide enough for a tank. Breland said his company commander, Cpt. Mike Gold, had used 16 MICLICs in one day. "When Cpt. Gold clears a road he clears a road," he said. "It's clear."

Gold said that in order to clear a safe path for the troops, there was no choice but to destroy Afghan property."

Nearly four years earlier and a few miles to the southwest, the nearly identical tale :

NYTimes, Jan. 13, 2007

"The road that cuts through the heart of Panjwai district here tells all that is going wrong with NATO's war in Afghanistan.
To fight their way into this area and clear it of Taliban insurgents, NATO troops bulldozed through orchards, smashed down walls and even houses, and churned vineyards and melon fields to dust.
Now NATO countries are championing the thoroughfare as a $5 million gift to local people.
“They bombed our orchards and fields and we have nothing now,” said Hajji Abdul Wahab Kutaisi, 65, a farmer from Pashmul. “They made a road through my land.”

Meanwhile Steve chose Remembrance Day to announce from Korea on what we've all been saying for years now : We're staying in Afghanistan till 2014 - in a "training capacity".

NDP Paul Dewar immediately said it would require a vote in parliament but the Libs said they didn't agree.

"That’s a discussion that needs to be had with all the parties after the government tells us exactly what it’s doing. But in principle, I don’t think it’s absolutely necessary,” said Bob Rae, Liberal foreign affairs critic."

Of course not. Because there was never any doubt of it, was there, Bob?
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Libby Davies - in perspective

"Why should the Arabs make peace? If I was an Arab leader I would never make terms with Israel. That is natural: we have taken their country. Sure God promised it to us, but what does that matter to them? Our God is not theirs. We come from Israel, it's true, but two thousand years ago, and what is that to them? There has been antisemitism, the Nazis, Hitler, Auschwitz, but was that their fault? They only see one thing: we have come here and stolen their country. Why should they accept that?"

~David Ben Gurion, Prime Minister of Israel, to Nahum Goldmann, President of the World Jewish Congress, in 1956
The Jewish Paradox, p. 99. Grosset & Dunlap (1978).

"Uh ... '48. I mean, it's the longest occupation in the world but I'm not going to argue numbers - it's too long, right? This is the longest occupation in the world and people are suffering."

~ NDP Deputy Leader Libby Davies to blogger/interviewer David Katz, answering the question : "When do you believe the occupation in Israel started - '48 or '67?" at a rally protesting Israel's assault on the aid flotilla to Gaza

"The central remark causing the uproar was that Israel had been occupying Palestinian territory since 1948. This is factually correct. In the 1948 Israeli War of Independence (known to the Palestinians as the ‘Nakba’) more than 750,000 Palestinians were forced to leave what later became the State of Israel. They have never been allowed to return. Much of the land that these people left had been designated by the United Nations Partition Plan of 1947 as Palestinian territory," IJV-C spokesperson Haiven explained.

But pointing out this fact is not tantamount to denying Israel’s right to exist. Says Haiven, "Historians (including Israeli scholars like Benny Morris), governments and individuals all over the world acknowledge that Israel seized Palestinian territory in 1948 (and again in 1967) and expelled the Palestinian residents. Nevertheless, the prevailing consensus is that Israel has the right to exist within the territory it was occupying at the end of its War of Independence (the so-called ‘Green Line’.) Even the PLO has conceded this point."

~Independent Jewish Voices Canada condemns what it calls a “feeding frenzy” around NDP Member of Parliament Libby Davies, June 16, 2010.

By comparison, the noosemedia coverage of Steve and Bob Rae and Thomas Mulcair - all three parties! - condemning Libby Davies has shifted its focus from lawfare to strawfare.
The greater point here is : do we want our parliamentarians speaking their minds, or do we want them carefully tailoring their remarks to conform to Steve's bizarre and bullying framing of contentious issues like Palestine? Because if we let Steve away with that, we have already lost.
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Libby Davies gets smeared

G&M : Harper wants NDP to fire deputy Libby Davies for criticism of Israel

CBC : Calls for NDP MP to resign after Israel comments

Star : Libby Davies in hot water for anti-Israel comments

What a complete load of bollocks.

We expect this kind of shoving to the front of the line to defend Israel from imaginary threats from Harper but what's your excuse, Bob Rae? Rae :

To deny the state of Israel's right to exist

Except she didn't.

and to propose an international campaign of boycotts, divestments and sanctions against a legitimate member of the world community for over 60 years

And she didn't do that either.

Bob, don't you at least have staff who can do a modicum of research for you into what Libby Davies actually said before you try to outsteve Steve on Israel? Your behavior actually proves her point made in the vid below that people are afraid to even discuss this for fear of being branded anti-Semitic.

That she should be required to apologise for this at all, much less be threatened with being fired, is, to turn Rae's own words against Libby back on him :

to reveal a level of hostility and ignorance that is truly breathtaking

Watch it for yourself ...



Layton defended Libby on Power Play tonight and she stood beside him in the House today. Good because the NDP have not shown much courage on the issue of Palestine.
Libby Davies has nothing to apologise for.

More from Cliff at Rusty Idols.

Chairman Braun before the Rights and Democracy committee.

The Rights and Democracy chair, vice-chair, and two board members got their say before the Foreign Affairs committee today.

The main problem, said Vice-Chair Jacques Gautier, is that too much power accrued to the former now deceased chair Remy Beauregard, and the organization also lacked transparency, accountability, and oversight and just did not follow the rules.

Item : In the past few weeks, the new recalibrated R&D board has hired 1)the law firm Borden Ladner Gervais, 2)the security firm Groupe Sirco, 3)the auditing firm Deloitte and Touche, 4)the PR firm Prima Communications, and 5)a new CEO.

Item : "Under current rules, the agency is required to call for tenders for contracts worth more than $10,000; must seek at least three tenders; and justify the choice “taking into account the price, the services offered and their quality."

NDP Paul Dewar was annoyed docs had not been supplied to the committee as requested. Were these contracts for more than $10,000?
After considerable prodding from Dewar to the effect that it was just not credible that an acting president have no idea what five contracts handed out under his watch might be worth, Vice Chair and interim President Gauthier eventually answered: Yes. Certainly more than $10,000.
Dewar : And were they tendered?
Gauthier : Um, no.

Oh dear.
But no worries. A week ago Chairman Aurel Braun recommended a bylaw change which would exempt the R&D president from having to follow those rules when "engaging agents, consultants and advisors."
Probably will need to be backdated to cover these five contracts from back in January and February though. And would this not in itself constitute the dreaded "accruing more power and control to the president"?

Chairman Aurel Braun's largely incoherent answers bore little relevance to the questions put to him but did at every opportunity inveigh against past R&D funding given to Al Haq in the West Bank, Al Mezan in Gaza, and B'Tselem in Israel, which he called "terrorist organizations which pretend to be human rights orgs". Al Haq, according to Braun, is a front for terrorists and also money has gone to the UN High Commission for Human Rights, and this is apparently anti-Israel and a bad thing. War crimes were mentioned, he said, and other things "not within the conscience of the Canadian people."

Libs Bob Rae and Bernard Patry and Bloc Johanne Deschamps both try to nail this anti-Israel business down, pointing out that the Israeli NGO B'Tselem is universally respected by virtually every government in Europe and the Israeli army, but as Board member and B'nai Brith lawyer David Matas pointed out while advising the committee to read his book - presumably Aftershock: Anti-Zionism and Antisemitism - "the Palestinians are called civilians but they throw stones."

Honourable mention for skating around in circles as far away from the puck as possible goes to Con Peter Goldring in collaboration with former Con candidate, missionary, and R&D board member Brad Farquhar. Goldring asked about political party development - some countries have 40 or 50 parties! - and how about Haiti, huh? Haiti has a serious lack of understanding about how democracy works. Farquhar was more than happy to answer at length a question having nothing whatsoever to do with the issue at hand. What is an election platform? he asks rhetorically. "In Tajikistan we had to teach them how to go out and doorknock and they weren't sure they were even allowed to do that. The transition from a former totalitarian state to a democratic state ... . We brought people from Bolivia to help in Haiti..." Oh look - time's up!

Overall the board's statements were remarkably short on the "documented facts" they kept insisting were their only concern despite the fact they hadn't brought any, not counting Matas' book. Braun charged that 46 out of 48 R&D staff who signed a letter calling for the resignations of board members were possibly coerced into signing it in exchange for a "rushed collective agreement". Much was made of the fact the board was not advised of the collective agreement. Mention was made of a contract awarded to a past R&D employee. Braun blamed the staff for the break-in and the stolen computers. The one thing none of them much wanted to discuss was Tuesday's gong show editorial written by the fifth R&D board member Marco Navarro-Genie not present at the meeting today.

Grisly blow-by-blow ably live-blogged by Kady.
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Canada-Peru Free Trade Agreement

Bill C-24 the Canada-Peru Free Trade Agreement received royal assent last week.
By neatly avoiding the controversy that has temporarily stalled the Colombia-Canada FTA, Canadian mining companies in Peru now have the legal standing to challenge the few Peruvian laws standing between them and the 45 million hectares of the Amazon opened up to them by Peruvian President Alan Garcia.

Council of Canadians Stewart Trew : "About 50% of resource extraction in Peru is carried out by Canadian companies."

Earlier this month 30,000 indigenous protesters blocked roads, rivers and railways to force the repeal of Garcia's new laws opening up its oil, gas and forestry resources to foreign investors by privatizing community land plots and ignoring aboriginal rights to their land. A 10,000-acre African palm plantation to produce biofuels displaced the local inhabitants Garcia contemptuously referred to as "garden watchdogs". Garcia has also "framed privatization of the Amazon as a means of fighting drug traffickers".
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Protests. Massacres. Police in helicopters gunning down Indians. 24 police killed on the ground. Accusations of the government burning the bodies of unknown numbers of protesters. Prime minister resigns, president apologizes. Score one for the Indians.

Ben Powless from Six Nations Ontario was there.

Aside from a mention in the Senate as they ratified Bill C-24, Canada's official response to date has been to issue a travel advisory :

Minister of State for the Americas Peter Kent : "

"There were no Canadian companies involved or affected, so the linkage that folks might make shouldn't be made, because our free trade agreement and this tragedy don't have any obvious or visible connections."

Liberal Foreign Affairs critic Bob Rae :

"The killings and dispute were internal matters for Peru. This isn't about the free trade agreement, let's not confuse things here."

UBC political science professor Maxwell Cameron :

"We're in exactly the same position as the U.S. [The US-Peru FTA was implemented this February] - that is that this agreement is designed to foster particularly Canadian investments, and Canadian investors are going to operate, and do operate in exactly this area and many other areas where there are conflicts. To have an agreement like this come out at the same time that there's a major massacre certainly no one would say that's good."

Well, no one but Stockwell Day :

"These agreements will help increase prosperity, help provide better working conditions, and improve environmental management."

According to Export Development Canada, over 30 Canadian companies operate in Peru. Canadian companies expected to "increase prosperity, provide better working conditions, and improve environmental management" in Peru include Petrolifera, Teck Cominco, Barrick Gold, ScotiaBank, SNC Lavalin, Dessau Soprin and Sandwell.

This might be a good time to mention that Canada has not signed the UN Declaration of Indigenous Rights.
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Related : The Black Book of Canadian Foreign Policy
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