"Pro-lifer" : Just another name for "terrorist"

Randall Terry, founder of Operation Rescue, responded to the gunning down of Dr. George Tiller in his church today by saying he "reaped what he sowed."

From Kos : "The alleged assassin, Scott Roeder, was an active member of Operation Rescue. On an Operation Rescue website called Charge Tiller (which in the last 30 minutes or so has been taken down), there's this comment, posted on Monday, September 3, 2007, by a Scott Roeder from Kansas, almost certainly the same Scott Roeder alleged to have assassinated Tiller:

"It seems as though what is happening in Kansas could be compared to the "lawlessness" which is spoken of in the Bible. Tiller is the concentration camp "Mengele" of our day and needs to be stopped before he and those who protect him bring judgement upon our nation."

McClatchy : Suspect supported killing abortion providers, friends say
"I know that he believed in justifiable homicide," said Regina Dinwiddie, a Kansas City anti-abortion activist. Roeder also was a subscriber to Prayer and Action News, a magazine that advocated the justifiable homicide position, said publisher Dave Leach, an anti-abortion activist from Des Moines, Iowa.

"Pro-lifer" is just another word for "terrorist" .

.

Canadian media : Lapdogs vs watchdogs

An opinion piece in yesterday's Star, Learning from media mistakes in the Arar case, castigates the Canadian media for its role in uncritically passing on anonymous government leaks intended to vilify Maher Arar in the eyes of the Canadian public, both before and after he was exonerated.
As author Mariam Sheibani states : The irony in Arar's case is that while the government vehemently refused to disclose information on the basis of national security confidentiality, public officials routinely divulged selective fragments of "classified" information to reporters :

"In November 2002, Canadian Press journalist Stephen Thorne quoted an official source that linked Arar to "a suspected member of Osama bin Laden's Al Qaeda terrorist network." The reference was to Abdullah Almalki, who we now know, thanks to the Iacobucci inquiry, is also innocent of all such allegations.
Looking back, Thorne realizes he was being used to smear the men."

"Many of the leaks were strategically timed to detract from increasing media and public scrutiny about the potential complicity of Canadian agencies in Arar's detention and torture. For instance, soon after then prime minister Jean Chrétien declared that he would intervene to bring Arar home from Syria, Robert Fife, CanWest's Ottawa bureau chief, ran a story on the front pages of several newspapers that cited an anonymous official who described Arar as a "very bad guy" who had received training at an Al Qaeda base. Fife also noted that intelligence received from Syria had helped the CIA avert an attack on the U.S. embassy in Ottawa.
Justice O'Connor noted that "the apparent purpose behind this leak is not attractive: to attempt to influence public opinion against Mr. Arar at a time when his release from imprisonment in Syria was being sought by the government of Canada, including the prime minister."

"In October 2003, Canadian government officials falsely stated that Arar had said he was not physically tortured, and proffered incriminating information that officials claimed Arar had confessed to. Unnamed officials also told Craig Oliver at CTV News that Arar was only released because he had given information to the Syrians about Al Qaeda and about other Canadians suspected of terrorism activities. Oliver later explained that he felt the story was credible because his sources were senior officials in two different government departments.
Nonetheless, years after the Arar inquiry's report, he apologized to Arar in person for running the story."

Following Arar's national news conference on his return to Canada, a sympathetic public was demanding an inquiry. Then just days later :
"On Nov. 8, 2003, the Ottawa Citizen's Juliet O'Neill ran a story headlined "Canada's dossier on Maher Arar: The existence of a group of Ottawa men with alleged ties to Al Qaeda is at the root of why the government opposes an inquiry into the case."

"Near the end of December 2003, Robert Fife was once more the vehicle that Canadian and U.S. intelligence officials used to inform the public that they were "100 per cent sure" that Arar trained at an Al Qaeda camp in Afghanistan."

I'll stop there before I wind up quoting the whole thing.

The stated purpose of the piece is to warn the press against relinquishing its role of independent watchdog in favor of becoming merely a lapdog purveyor of leaked government propaganda, but what I took away from it was the realization that none of these public service leakers of strategic falsehoods have ever been called to account for their attempts to ruin a citizen's life in the service of their government. Presumably they are still secure in their work behind the scenes, dripping the poison of the day into the public discourse via a mostly complicit and largely uncritical media.

One last quote from Sheibani:

"Many journalists, such as Jeff Sallot and Haroon Siddiqui, have been pointing to the need for a public debate on how to ensure such mistakes are not repeated.
According to Siddiqui, whereas the government has been "put under the microscope by two eminent judges ... only the media continues to escape detailed public scrutiny."

This scrutiny is imperative, especially given that similar leaks occurred in the media coverage of the cases of Abdullah Almalki, Ahmad Elmaati and Muayyed Nureddin – three Canadians who were detained and tortured at the same Syrian jail, and recently exonerated by the Iacobucci inquiry. Leaks also continue to appear in coverage of security certificate detainee Adil Charkaoui's case and that of Abousfian Abdelrazik, a Canadian citizen currently being held in Sudan."

And so it goes ...
.

Canada Pension Plan corporate welfare

The Star : "Four top executives of the Canada Pension Plan Investment Board pocketed nearly $7 million in bonuses this year despite losing $24 billion of taxpayers' money in bad investments, according to the board's annual report released yesterday. Their investments lost 18.6% of their value. "

Plus as NUPGE reports, "they are due another $7 million in long-term awards that will be paid out over the next three fiscal years."

This is on top of their salaries, of which Dennison's is almost $½-million a year, compared to Stephen Harper at $315,400 a year and the average CPP retirement benefit for Canadians at around $6000.

CPP Investment Board chair Robert Astley explains that the size of these bonuses ... wait for it ... "enables us to compete for talent within the private sector world of capital markets."

.

Hard to believe, isn't it?

I mean, as Canadians we have millions of our hard-earned dollars invested for us by CPP in war profiteers like Halliburton, Raytheon, Northrop Grumman, and Lockheed Martin, not to mention Monsanto, Walmart and the US tobacco industry, and yet somehow the CPP comes up short.

You would think the war on terra would pay better, and not just to CPP CEOs.

Say, whatever happened to those Principles for Responsible Investing CPP proudly signed onto with the United Nations Environment Programme Financial Initiative (UNEPFI)? Are cluster bombs and land mines mentioned on there somewhere?

.

Saturday Update from Progressive Economics : The tortoise and the Hare

"Before the CPP Investment Board was created, Canada Pension Plan savings were invested entirely in government bonds. Canadians were told that we could make higher returns on these savings if they were invested in the stock market and in private investments instead.

Out of interest, I calculated what these returns would have been if the initial investment had been left in government bonds and if these funds and all the further net transfers to the CPPIB had been reinvested in long-term government of Canada bonds at their yield for each year since 1999.

These calculations show that leaving these investments in long-term bonds would have earned about $36.5 billion over the past decade: $13 billion more (and 50% higher) than the CPP Investment Board earned."

We'd have been better off both ethically and financially if public pensions had continued to be invested in public debt.

.

The National Post is having another one of its "Iran Eyes Badges for Jews" moments

You remember that one, no?

This time round the headline goes : Toronto Pride organizers ban anti-Zionist group
By Joseph Brean, National Post

"Queers Against Israeli Apartheid (QuAIA), an anti-Zionist protest group that made corporate sponsors squirm by flying banners at last year’s Toronto Pride parade, has been banned this year, along with any other group that would advance a political agenda.
“We will be very much more careful this year. We will make sure that we have a presence to ensure that people don’t slip into the parade,” Pride Toronto executive director Tracey Sandilands said today.

Her announcement came with a warning to grand marshall El-Farouk Khaki not to use his ceremonial position as a pulpit to promote an anti-Israeli boycott.

Frank Dimant, executive vice-president of B’nai Brith Canada, today called for disciplinary action against Mr. Khaki, a founder of the national support group Salaam: Queer Muslim Community, because he spoke to a QuAIA event on the weekend."

Yeah, whatever, Frank.


But what's this? In the comments section below the NaPo article, Pride Co-Chair Mark Singh shows up :

"In response to concerns about political messaging in the Pride Parade, Pride Toronto released a statement outlining its position on this issue. This article incorrectly claims that Pride Toronto has banned political messages from the Pride Parade. [snip]

We have asked the National Post to correct the inaccurate statements in this article to no avail.
We invite any who are concerned to read the statement posted in the Press Room of our website (www.pridetoronto.com)
Mark Singh
Co-Chair
Pride Toronto"

followed a few comments further on by a letter copied from Pride director Tracey Sandilands, source of the quotes for NaPo mischief :

"WE WILL NOT BE TAKING SIDES IN ANY POLITICAL ISSUE AND WILL NOT BE BANNING ANY GROUP that participates within the boundaries of the laws of Canada and our anti-discrimination policy. [snip]

Also, at no time in our interview did I say anything about ‘warning' El Farouk.
I would appreciate it if you could amend this before final publication.

Regards
Tracey Sandilands,

Executive Director

Well that would seem clear enough.
However, undaunted by requests from both a Pride Co-Chair and the Pride director he interviewed that his bogus article be fixed - and the picture gracing the front page of the Pride Toronto website clearing showing the "End Israeli Apartheid" banner, NaPo reporter Joseph Brean replies in his own comment section that he stands by his article :

"I am the author of this article. It was my decision, approved by editors, to use the term "ban" to mean that QuAIA, which marched in last year's parade, will not be permitted to do so this year.
[snip]
Anonymous accusations that this article, which presents comment from people on all sides of this issue, is "false" and that I am "intentionally spreading lies" are silly and wrong."

So there you have it - accusations from the source of his interview that his article is "false" are "silly and wrong".


Well done, NaPo. Some traditions die hard, don't they?

Bring on the Transparent Badges for Atheists !
.

h/t Rabble, Mycroft in comments at the NaPo article, and the divine Ms Z posting at BreadnRoses, who promises a column on this at The Star tomorrow.
.
Update : From Antonia Zerbisias column today, as promised.

"So it's pretty rich when the language of gay oppression is used against Toronto's Pride parade, to be held June 28, by another group that purports to champion human rights.
Especially a group that is openly aligned with anti-gay rights Christian fundamentalists such as Charles McVety, Canada's most vocal lobbyist against same-sex marriage, and John Hagee, who claimed God sent Hurricane Katrina to stop "a homosexual parade."
This is what happened last week when B'nai Brith issued a news release asserting that the gay community's "agenda" was being "hijacked by anti-Israel agitators."

So Napo got caught out carrying some editorial water for Dimant. Somehow I suspect this is not over.
.
Antonia also blogged the background story : Banner Day
.

The Canada-US border : thicker but fuzzier

For all the wringing of hands in the national press about how US security concerns are resulting in a "thicker Canada-US border", scant attention is paid to how that border is also getting blurrier, unless to repeat government assurances that it is not.

Case in point is yesterday's announcement of the Shiprider program, signed Monday by Public Safety Minister Peter Van Loan and Secretary of Homeland Security Janet Napolitano - an agreement "designed to increase border security by allowing the RCMP and the U.S. Coast Guard to team up and ride in each others' vessels during border patrols."

Van Loan said the pact shouldn't be viewed as Americans encroaching on the jurisdiction of Canada because it's a joint effort between both countries.
And he stressed that security and trade between the two countries can be mutually beneficial.
"Because of the integration of our North American economies ... effective management of the border is essential to the health of both of our countries' economies," said Van Loan.

According to former diplomat Paul Frazer, Canadians shouldn't be alarmed by the prospect of foreign officers policing Canada's waters.
"It's not a one way kind of operation," he told CTV's Power Play from Washington on
Tuesday.
Frazer stressed that the new plan is a quid-pro-quo deal for Canada.
"You will have Canadian authorities aboard American boats, going into American waters, and the reverse coming into Canadian waters."

Right. That sounds fair : the flea will ride on the elephant and then the elephant will ride on the flea.
A couple of points not covered by our enthusiastic media but clearly stated in the agreement :

COMMITTED to the prevention, detection, suppression, investigation, and prosecution of any criminal offence or violation of law related to border enforcement including, but not limited to, the illicit drug trade, migrant smuggling, trafficking of firearms, the smuggling of counterfeit goods and money, and terrorism

based on joint Canada-United States threat and risk assessment and coordinated with existing cooperative cross-border policing programs and activities.

That seems rather ... broad, considering that any "integrated cross-border maritime law enforcement operation" may also continue "on land" and include "aerial support".

But where it gets weird is the section called Information Sharing.
Info is not to be "further shared" with "a non-participating government agency or a foreign country" without "the consent of the participating agency sharing the information" ... "unless the use or further sharing is required by its domestic laws" or there are "exigent circumstances".

Exigent circumstances.

All of which is merely fleshing out the details of last year's Canada-US pact allowing cross-border military activity , following the disclosure two years earlier that 30% of FBI agents operating in Canada do so without the knowledge or approval of the Canadian government.

Well now we have yet another agreement to legalize the decline of Canadian sovereignty.
.

Indefinite detention : "Twenty minutes into the future"

In the late great dystopian tv show Max Headroom, whenever a crime was committed, suspects were arrested, profiled, and then the most likely perp was sentenced via a big spinning wheel of "consequences" on the tv game show that had replaced the courts.

Canadian content : Hey, David Emerson, how's your "one security perimeter" Project North America coming along?

.

Jason Kenney takes another shot at equating leftists with Nazis

Some use of Israel was required...
Haaretz , May 25, 2009 :

A "new anti-Semitism" that emanates from an alliance of Western leftists and Islamic extremists is more dangerous than the "old European" form of Jew-hatred, Canada's minister of citizenship, immigration and multiculturalism said as he wound up a four-day trip to Israel Sunday.

"The existential threat faced by Israel on a daily basis is ultimately a threat to the broader Western civilization," said Jason Kenney, explaining the staunchly pro-Israel positions of his government, led by Conservative Prime Minister Stephen Harper.

"It's a threat that comes from profoundly undemocratic forces that don't have the same conception of human dignity or freedom, and which abuse Israel as a kind of representative of the broader West and Western liberal-democratic values," said Kenney. "I also very acutely understand the nature of the new anti-Semitism, and I think it's even more dangerous than the old European anti-Semitism."

What a load of toadying opportunistic crap.

What's dangerous, Jason, is your government's new rebranding of anti-Semitism - one that seeks to conflate criticism of Israel with hatred of Jews, thus making a mockery of all genuine struggles against anti-Semitism.

Israel is not criticized for being a Jewish state; Israel is criticized for war crimes.


Jewish Canadians Concerned about Suppression of Criticism of Israel
.

Dear aspiring "terrorist" doodz :

and particularly those of you suffering from schizophrenia :

If some felon in the pay of the FBI offers you $50,000 and a chance to ride around in his car with some explosives and a Stinger missile, just say no, ok?

Thanks in advance.
.

Gordon Campbell to "axe the tax" ?

When Gordon Campbell won the BC election by 4% of the vote a scant 10 days ago, the headline at DeSmogBlog read : "Carbon Tax Wins : Cheap Politics Loses"

Just prior to the election, David Suzuki appeared on the front page of the G&M warning of dire consequences "If Liberal Leader Gordon Campbell goes down because of [the NDP's] axe the tax campaign".

G&M again : "Environmentalists vow to punish NDP for plan to dismantle B.C.'s carbon tax"
"The David Suzuki Foundation, the Pembina Institute and Forest Ethics jointly stated that "thousands of jobs in the green economy will be lost, and the province will lose its position as an environmental leader if the (first North American carbon) tax is dropped."

From the webpage of Plutonic Power, environmental activist Tzeporah Berman chimed in : "There is no question that environmentalists should be punishing the NDP..."

The environmental movement promptly blew up between "environmental" supporters of Campbell and his useless carbon tax, versus those like Raif Mair and Alex Morton who argued that the rest of Gordo's environmental policies included the privatizing of BC rivers in the run-of-river goldrush, open-cage fish farms, the end of the 35-year oil-tanker moratorium, Enbridge pipelines running across BC from Alberta to Kitimat to deliver tarsands oil to foreign markets, coalbed methane development, offshore oil drilling, and the return of grizzly bear trophy hunting.
Group 2's ideas, you will not be surprised to learn, did not get the same solid rotation afforded Gordo by his endorsers at the G&M and Canwest.

Whatever. The damage was done and Gordo the environmental premier got his 4% win.

So it's a bit much to read in yesterday's Province that with the election under his belt, Gordo is now considering "axing the tax" himself in favour of the US cap-and-trade system :

"Campbell now says he might strangle his own carbon-tax baby in the cradle.
In one of the great under-reported stories of the B.C. election, Campbell revealed the carbon tax will be reviewed in 2012 and might be frozen in place at 7.24 cents per litre of gas and not rise any further.

But wait: Isn't the whole point of a carbon tax to keep jacking it up every year until people stop burning those evil fossil fuels? Even Campbell's own climate-change adviser, economist Mark Jaccard, says the tax must rise to 24 cents a litre and higher over a decade and beyond to be effective.
But Campbell told me that may not be necessary, if cap-and-trade does the same job
anyway.

The irony here is that this is exactly what NDP Leader Carole James was arguing when she promised to scrap the carbon tax in favour of cap-and-trade.
She was vilified for doing it while Campbell was hailed as some kind of visionary."

Suckered again by Liberal "environmentalists".
.

The Vancouver 2010 Olympic Toke

What an absolutely spliffy design :

"Suzanne Reeves, the Vancouver organizing committee's director of communications for the Olympic torch relay, said she has taken the torch across the country and people's faces light up when they get the chance to hold it.
The torch officially is meant to resemble the lines left behind by skiers and skaters on snow and ice."

...lines left behind by skiers and skaters...?

The design is a joint collaboration between VANOC and Bombadier. I wonder how many other budding designs were weeded out before they potted this one.

.