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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Bill C-51 - Conservative 'values'

Uncanny resemblance, isn't it?  Your 'values' not looking too good at the moment, Mr Blaney.

Having rushed the 62 page omnibus anti-terrorism bill C-51 through Parliament, the Cons are now demanding it be rushed through committee as well. They wanted to restrict expert testimony to three Public Safety Committee meetings - with one of them taken up entirely by Public Safety Minister Steven Blaney - but a successful NDP committee fillibuster has now ratcheted it up to eight .

Among the expert witnesses proposed by the NDP are former Supreme Court Justice Frank Iacobucci (Almalki, Abou-Elmaati, and Nuredinn inquiry) and former associate Chief Justice of Ontario Dennis O'Connor (Arar inquiry).

Now why wouldn't the Cons want to hear from them?

A report in the Ottawa Citizen yesterday details new documents on how in 2001 the RCMP talked up Ottawa's Abdullah Almalki to the CIA and Syria as a terrorist threat despite having been given CSIS intelligence to the contrary.

An RCMP memo, dated Sept. 5, 2001, generated after a meeting with Canadian Security Intelligence Service officials, said that “CSIS have not uncovered information that would lead them to believe the subject (Almalki) is doing something illegal.”

On Oct. 2, 2001, the RCMP sent a fax to its liaison officers in Islamabad, Rome, Delhi, Washington, London, Berlin and Paris, reporting that CSIS had described Almalki as an “important member” of al-Qaida. Days later, the RCMP liaison officer in Rome sent letters to agencies in several countries, including Syria, labelling Almalki as an “imminent threat” to Canada’s national security.

After Almalki was arrested and was being tortured in Syria, the RCMP helpfully sent along three pages of questions for them to ask him.

One of the provisions of Bill C-51 allows government departments to share private information more widely. 

Maher Arar was likewise renditioned to Syia and tortured based on bad RCMP intel and then RCMP Commissioner Zaccardelli and CSIS Asst Director Jack Hooper tried to cover it up.

Hill Times Oct 2, 2006 : CSIS didn't want Arar returned to Canada

"In May and June 2003, the Canadian government intended to send a letter to Syria indicating that it spoke with "one voice"–seeking the powerful support CSIS and the RCMP–to call for Mr. Arar's release. But according to Justice Dennis O'Connor's report, CSIS "was uncomfortable" with a statement in the letter that there was "no evidence" that Mr. Arar had links to al-Qaeda. The agency argued "very strongly" against a letter that it saw as sending the wrong message to U.S. authorities.

"CSIS wanted to make it clear to the Solicitor General that there was 'political jeopardy' in signing a joint letter and that bringing Mr. Arar back to Canada was going to be a political 'hot potato' with American authorities," Justice O'Connor wrote in the report, which cleared Mr. Arar.

Justice O'Connor also revealed in his report that CSIS, "for reasons of its own, preferred that Mr. Arar not return to Canada." While DFAIT drafted its letter to argue for Mr. Arar's release in June 2003, Jack Hooper, assistant director of operations for CSIS, called an assistant deputy minister at DFAIT to explain why it opposed the return of Mr. Arar. CSIS feared that if Mr. Arar returned with a public story of torture it could "impair" deportations from Canada to Syria, according to the report."

Sure, let's give these guys a freer hand to operate in secret without oversight.

Perhaps the committee should hear from Mr. Arar. 

As he points out, if C-51 were in place when he was in Syria, it could have been used legally to prevent his return to Canada. 

A week ago former Prime Ministers Jean Chrétien, Paul Martin, Joe Clark, and John Turner plus five former Supreme Court Justices, three former Ministers of Justice, four former Solicitors General of Canada, and three former SIRC committee members expressed their dismay with the bill in a G&M editorial pointing out Justice O'Connor's recommendations following the Arar inquiry had not been implemented. They called for greater oversight at a minimum.

In the House on Tuesday, Harper termed Thomas Mulcair's calls for greater oversight and a full review of evidence "ridiculous" :

"I would urge the committee to study the bill as quickly as possible in order to ensure the adoption of these measures to ensure the security and safety of Canadians."

while Blaney "slammed Mulcair for 'attacking the credibility' of CSIS officers".

"These people respect the law, and I call on him to present arguments, and not lies to defend his position."

Greg Fingas provides excellent C-51 links and a column in the Leader-Post on "the risks of allowing CSIS to self-assess the scope of Canadians' Charter rights under C-51". 

From Stephen Lautens : For those of you keeping score at home (updated April 20, 2015) :

UPDATE : DAMMIT JANET! : FASCIST C-51 : FEET ON THE STREET TIME!

and Reddit hub on planning Canada-wide protests.

Friday update : Open letter to Parliament: Amend C-51 or kill it
  A letter from over 100 Canadian law professors. Clear concise objections.
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I don't think you're supposed to say that out loud

On April 29, 2014, General Petraeus, former director of the CIA and commander of NATO forces in Afghanistan and Iraq, gave a talk on "leadership skills" in the "global war on terror" to members of the National Guard, some of whom had served in Iraq and Afghanistan. 

He was introduced by the Treasurer of North Dakota [bold : mine]

"Good evening. My name is Kelly Schmidt and I'm the Treasurer for the state of North Dakota.  It is my pleasure to have spent the day today with retired General David Petraeus. David and I have been out in the western portion of North Dakota where we have shared with him the challenges that we've been facing to help make our nation and our world an energy independent country so that you and your fellow officers and enlisted folks never have to go over there again in order to fight for the oil that we all need."

Ten days later on Parliament Hill, Commander Dress Up and Gov. Gen. David Johnston paid tribute to the 40,000 Canadian soldiers who took part in the 12-year Afghanistan conflict in a National Day of Honour.
Harper hailed the end of Canada’s military mission in Afghanistan as a “significant milestone in the fight against global terror.”

Currently - eleven years after the US invaded Iraq, a country with a secular leader and almost no "jihadis" - ISIS, a jihadi group so extreme it has been denounced by Al Qaeda, is marching on Baghdad as the Iraqi army flees before it.

Iran has sent units of its Revolutionary Guard to Iraq to help defend Baghdad.
The President of Iran : "The Islamic Republic of Iran will apply all its efforts on the international and regional levels to confront terrorism.”

And so it goes .

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Trickle up economics

From self-proclaimed former economic hitman himself, John Perkins.

In North America we've mostly been ok with this stuff happening to the rest of the world but gradually we are seeing more of it come home to roost. The Gulf spills, Katrina, the tar sands, the G20 fiasco, the increasing gap between rich and poor.

My brother just got back from a holiday in the States. The parks are untended, he said, no one is grooming the trails so they're growing back in again, and did I know that in some states schools are open less than six months of the year now to save money?

I was just reading about it in the New York Times, I said. They're also shutting down public transit systems and streetlights and libraries and auctioning off police helicopters to save money, but somehow there's still billions in tax dollars available for the GWOT and "policing" the rest of the world and handing out massive bonuses to the same banksters who wrecked the joint. Trickle up economics.

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