Canada : Getting around our own principles

From "A History of Hypocrisy" by Regan Boychuk, in the Literary Review of Canada :

"In the 1980s, Canada was instrumental in creating and supporting the UN Working Group on Involuntary Disappearances, and in 2007 the Canadian delegate to the UN Human Rights Council reaffirmed that those responsible for enforced disappearances should not go unpunished. Nonetheless, as Human Rights Watch reported in 2006, Canada also worked aggressively to dilute key provisions of an international treaty on forced disappearances:

"To their disgrace, the United States and Russia strongly opposed the [treaty] effort, not least because each had begun using forced disappearances itself …
Canada contributed to this shameful opposition, not because it is known to forcibly “disappear” people, but apparently because Prime Minister Martin, eager to improve relations with the United States that had been strained under his predecessor, decided to run interference for one of his neighbor’s unsavory practices."

Despite the efforts of the U.S. and Canada, the text of the International Convention for the Protection of All Persons from Enforced Disappearance—modelled after the UN Convention against Torture—was approved by the General Assembly in December 2006. Seventy-two countries have since signed it, neither the U.S. nor Canada among them. "

Mr. Boychuk then cites the 74 CIA flights made through Canada since 9/11 and Foreign Affairs department spokesman Rodney Moore's 2006 statement that "whether any particular rendition is lawful would depend on the facts of each individual case".

A depressingly familiar Canadian refrain, this public purporting to support progressive principles on the international stage while working secretly behind the scenes to prop up regressive American interests conflated with our own. More recent examples include our non-commitment commitment to Kyoto and our backroom watering down of the provisions against the use and manufacture of clusterbombs.


Professor Barry Cooper, friend to PM Harper, Senior Fellow at The Fraser Institute, and creator of a slush fund at the University of Calgary which accepted monies from Alberta oil and gas companies to help finance Tim Ball and his anti-Kyoto Friends of Science group, doesn't much care for Mr. Boychuk's essay on Canadian complicity in the history of torture.
After dismissing it as "smug, and wholly predictable, anti-Americanism", Prof. Cooper complains, "In contrast, one might consider the [ancient] Greeks" - no, I'm not kidding! - and complains that instead:
"Mr. Boychuk accepts the sentimental definition of the United Nations, namely inflicting severe pain or suffering."

Yes, do let's look at something entirely else instead, Prof. Cooper.
Asshat.
If we do not accept that we have been complicit and blind to that complicity, we will never learn how to stand on our own principles.

Dona Cadman statements "doctored"

Late breaking....

According to the PMO's office, Conservative candidate Dona Cadman's widely circulated statements regarding the Cons alleged attempt to bribe her now deceased husband Chuck Cadman with a $1M insurance policy have been "doctored".

Following weeks of Ethics Committee chair Con Art Hanger immediately adjourning every single ethics committee meeting rather than permit a motion calling for an independent investigation into the Cadman affair, the PMO's office privately hired two investigators to determine the authenticity of Dona Cadman's following statements. :

"Chuck was really insulted,” she said in a telephone interview with The Globe yesterday. “He was quite mad about it, thinking they could bribe him with that.” “They had the form there. Chuck just had to sign."

While the independent investigators never once used the expression "doctored" in their reports and were not available to the press for questioning, Con MP James Moore expressed annoyance at being questioned about it at the press conference he called to answer questions about it.

"Why is anyone still talking about it?" he said. "We just confirmed this afternoon that Dona Cadman's statements were doctored. Case closed"


Political hacks remain divided as to why the Cons have resurrected an incriminating scandal everyone else has long since forgotten about, but the emerging concensus is that it's because the Cons are stupid short-sighted opportunistic ratfuckers who just make shit up as they go along with no regard for the future consequences of their actions.


Correction : We posted earlier today that the Cons issued a statement to the effect that Dona Cadman's statements were doctored when evidently it was actually a journalist's taped conversation with Harper that was at issue. We apologise for any confusion.

Support Iraq war resisters in Canada

UPDATE : PASSED -137 Yeas to 110 Nays

Motion to "immediately implement a program to allow conscientious objectors and their immediate family members...to apply for permanent resident status and remain in Canada; and...the government should immediately cease any removal ordeportation actions...against such individuals."

Sgt. Corey Glass has had his application to stay in Canada rejected and now faces deportation, making him the first Iraq war resister to be deported from Canada. He could be deported as soon as June 12.

Today at 3 p.m., parliament will vote on a motion to support U.S. Iraq war resisters in Canada.

The NDP motion calls on the Government of Canada to stop deportation of those who refuse to fight in Bush's illegal war. All three opposition parties have indicated their support, but then again there has been that business of sitting on hands when it's time to vote.

Anyone who didn't heed Laura's call to arms yesterday can still phone or send along a little note to their MP telling them you expect them to show up and support the motion. Use your inside voice.

Tell them you want the Government of Canada to
• rescind the deportation order against Corey Glass
• stop supporting Bush's illegal war in Iraq
• vote to allow war resisters to remain in Canada

Click here to find your M.P.'s contact info.

As Laura says :"
It is very painless! You can say something like "I live in ____ and I'd like to leave a message for _____." (Sometimes the first person who answers has to transfer you to someone else.)
Then say "I'm calling to urge ______ to _____."
The person on the other end is always friendly and will say nothing more than "thank you for calling, I'll pass on your concerns".
You don't even have to leave your name if you don't want to."

And don't forget to cc Steve :

Prime Minister Stephen Harper
phone 613.992.4211 or email pm@pm.gc.ca

'I Wish I Had the Taliban as My Soldiers'

A refreshingly frank Spiegel interview with Afghan President Hamid Karzai, bearing no resemblance whatsoever to the crap we read in the Canadian media.

SPIEGEL: Some of your closest aides are suspected of stealing land, drug smuggling and having illegal militias, among them respected governors and police chiefs. Your attorney general, Abdul Jabar Sabet, just named a few of them, including the governor of Nangarhar. Why do you still protect these people?

Karzai: I am not protecting anybody. We are trying to govern Afghanistan and bring peace and stability. I know about the problems with the police. The international community finally agreed after two years of very intense and angry negotiations that the police are a problem and in the middle of 2007 they began to work with us. The checkpoints on the roads, for example, were developed during the years of the Soviet invasion, a time when the country became lawless and each local commander set up his own checkpoint to collect money.

SPIEGEL: During the Taliban times there were no checkpoints at all.

Karzai: That was the best aspect of the Taliban. They did a lot wrong, but they also did a few things right. I wish I had the Taliban as my soldiers. I wish they were serving me and not people in Pakistan or others. When we came back to Afghanistan, the international community brought back all those people who had turned away from the Taliban …

SPIEGEL: … you mean the brutal commanders who fought in the civil war …

Karzai: … who then became partners with the foreign allies and are still paid by them today for their support. It is not always easy for me to find a way that can enable Afghanistan's administration to function.

SPIEGEL: Dirty deals are still necessary for the stability of Afghanistan?

Karzai: Absolutely necessary, because we lack the power to solve these problems in other ways. What do you want? War? Let me give you an example. We wanted to arrest a really terrible warlord, but we couldn't do it because he is being protected by a particular country. We found out that he was being paid $30,000 a month to stay on his good side. They even used his soldiers as guards …

continued....

Also from Spiegel : Why NATO troops can't deliver peace in Afghanistan :
"Last year, 1,469 bombs exploded along Afghan roads, a number almost five times as high as in 2004. There were 8,950 armed attacks on troops and civilian support personnel, 10 times more than only three years earlier. One hundred and thirty suicide bombers blew themselves up in 2007. There were three suicide bombings in 2004."

The Pornography of Power

Journalist Robert Scheer on his new book "The Pornography of Power: How Defense Hawks Hijacked 9/11 and Weakened America"

From a rough transcript of an interview on Democracy Now :

AMY GOODMAN: The Pornography of Power—why pornography?

ROBERT SCHEER: Because it’s not the real thing. It’s a trick. It’s like—I liken it to a lap dance. You know, you’re promising something that doesn’t exist. They’re promising security. These defense contractors, lobbyists, politicians, they pretend they’re dealing with real issues in the world, and they’re not. They’re just getting your money, and they’re deceiving you."

"I say, we had a situation where Bush vetoed an extension of child healthcare that would have involved $7 billion, OK? That’s two subs that we don’t need that are built every year. Alright? We have the F-35, an airplane that’s a $300 billion program. Why do we need new planes? The F-22, a $65 billion program. So we are wasting trillions of dollars on this old-fashioned defense budget that benefits Boeing, benefits Lockheed. Everyone knows it’s a scam. Everyone knows there is no military function for this, there’s no national security. And what happened is they got a license to steal. 9/11 was their license to steal."

"The irony now is that when these defense hawks—when they challenge my book and they say, "Well, of course, we don’t need these submarines to fight al-Qaeda. They don’t even have a rowboat. And of course we don’t need, you, now, new stealth bombers to fight al-Qaeda. But there’s the China menace."
The irony is here, China is financing our arms development. They are charging us interest to lend us money to build weapons ostensibly to attack them, and they’re laughing up their sleeve. They know this is a joke."

"Imperialism doesn’t pay. You know, here in California, I’m paying, what, $4.40 for gas, and we have seized the second-biggest pool of oil in the world? And we’re now paying—you know, the price of oil has gone up six-fold since George Bush has been president, and you want to tell me imperialism pays?
So I think the failure of the neoconservatives really is the failure of the imperial model. The Germans learned that. The French learned it, the English. Everybody in the world knows old-fashioned imperialism does not pay for the average person. It pays for Halliburton. It pays for, you know, Exxon. But it doesn’t pay for the taxpayer."

Interesting that Scheer nearly dedicated his book to Richard Nixon, who, he said, "was a horrible man, and he killed a lot of people and should have been tried for war crimes. But the fact is that Richard Nixon was the enemy of the neoconservatives."

China goes to Gitmo

NYT : Terrorism and the Olympics

"After 9/11, China declared its own war on terror in Xinjiang, but Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International have documented that this often has targeted Uighurs who are completely nonviolent.
[Uighurs are Turkic farmers inhabiting the Xinjiang region]

Unfortunately, the Bush administration has largely backed this Chinese version of the war on terror. Indeed, a Department of Justice report this month suggests that American troops softened up Uighur prisoners in Guantánamo Bay on behalf of visiting Chinese interrogators. The American troops starved the Uighurs and prevented them from sleeping, just before inviting in the Chinese interrogators."


The author also has a blog where he notes :
"What irks me is the Bush administration backing the Chinese Communist Party as it uses the “war on terror” as a cover to go after those moderate Uighur dissidents who favor more autonomy or religious freedom but oppose any violence. The Bush administration listed the “East Turkistan Islamic Movement” as a terror organization in the aftermath of 9/11, apparently as a “thanks” to Beijing for its help in cracking down on terror financing."


"Thanks" : China leaned on Pakistan, Pakistan made promises, Pakistan is no longer keeping them.

All of which leaves me wondering what Canada's Gitmo deal is with the US, the one wherein we are the last country in the world to press for release of a Canadian child-soldier held there since his 15th birthday.

Yesterday Khadr's US military lawyer William Kuebler stated that the judge hearing Omar Khadr's case, was abruptly dismissed, after he "threatened to suspend the case unless prosecutors turned over key evidence to the defense lawyers".


In April Maxime Bernier stood beside Condi Rice in Washington and announced it would be "premature to comment about the legal process right now and appeal process because they’re still ongoing. And what we will do is we’ll do -- and I received also assurances that Mr. Khadr has been treated humanely."

"And what we'll do is we'll do --" a little suppressed thought hiccup there from Max. I wonder what he stopped himself from saying.

Spin Doctors Without Borders....again

As noted by Dana at the Beav, a mere three days after the G&M reported:
Safe-injection site in B.C. wins court protection

"North America's only sanctioned safe-injection site for drug addicts won a major court victory Tuesday, thwarting any chance of the federal Conservative government closing it down"

Tony Clement announced at the House of Commons Standing Committee on Health that he will be asking Justice Minister Rob Nicholson to appeal the BC Supreme Court's decision "as soon as possible".

Kady O'Malley live-blogged the committee hearings in her own inimitable way today, noting that :
"It occured to me as I was scurrying back from the foyer that this is the *second* meeting this week where the only witness on hand to defend the government’s policy on a controversial issue is an import from the United States—and not just the U.S., but the United States of Right-Wing Think Tanks."

Ah yes - Colin Mangham.
Colin Mangham is "director of research" for the Drug Prevention Network of Canada, an offshoot of , wait for it , the Drug Prevention Network of America, headed up by Calvina L. Fay of Drug Free America, Save Our Society From Drugs, and Drug Watch International, dedicated to "combating the drug legalization movement globally". DPN of Canada lists her as an "honorary board member" who has "served as an advisor to President Bush on drug policy".
Rounding out the board of our very own 'war on drugs' Canadian clonetank is past president ReformaTory Randy White and REAL Woman Gwen Landolt as current VP, plus a couple of Scientology's Narconon graduates.

Back to Kady : "Dr. Colin Mangham, who huffs and puffs over the "bad science" and sloppy journalism behind support for the program...[snip]...At one point, he mentions in an offhand way that he’s a graduate of UBC, but his accent is glaringly American. Not that there’s anything wrong with that, of course.
He then goes into a rant about how people who support InSite, including some in this very room, are, in fact, part of a larger movement towards drug policy reform. He demands that "elected representatives" stop these "activists." By this point, there are hisses and catcalls coming from the visitors’ gallery."

"Bloc’s Christiane Gagnon : does he have any data to support his contention that the vast quantity of research that supports harm reduction policies is worthless?
Well, no, not exactly. He provided a “second opinion” on research produced by other people, to “critique” it, just like a first year university student would do."

Our score so far : 22 positive peer-reviewed studies in favor of InSite published in prestigious scientific journals versus one "second opinion" from a promoter of the wildly successful and universally admired US 'war on drugs'.

So why am I still worried?

Update : Wow! Four posts on this at the Gazetteer from Ross, who is incidentally a scientist, a peer-reviewed scientist.

It's either Sensenbrenner or Mr.Mustard in the Library

Days after an internal probe by the Clerk of the Privy Council Office Kevin Lynch failed to determine the source of the Naftagate leak, James Travers at The Star reported that "Multiple sources say the Canadian note questioning the Democrat frontrunner's public promise to reopen NAFTA was leaked from the Prime Minister's Office" to Frank Sensenbrenner, a Republican who worked at the Canadian embassy in Washington.

Now Sensenbrenner's father, James, introduced the notorious U.S. Patriot Act as chair of the U.S. House Judiciary Committee, but just how did his son Frank appear in our midst?

"[Frank] Sensenbrenner was introduced to senior embassy officials by Gerry Chipeur, a Calgary-based lawyer who was once legal counsel to the Reform and Canadian Alliance parties, the antecedents of today's Conservative party.

Chipeur, a dual citizen who headed the Republicans Abroad Canada, also has deep ties to the evangelical community in both countries and prominent U.S. Republicans, including Kansas Senator Sam Brownback.

The entrée of Sensenbrenner into Canadian diplomatic circles was forged at the Republican National Convention in New York in 2004, where members of the Canadian embassy and Conservative officials such as Day, Chipeur, Alberta MP Jason Kenney and John Reynolds, co-chair of the Tory 2006 election campaign, all attended.

Sensenbrenner had cut his political teeth in Canada, attending private college in the Toronto area and attending early Reform party conventions where he first befriended those in then-leader Preston Manning's inner circle.

The push to get him on the payroll came particularly from Day, sources said, when he took over the Western Hemisphere Travel Initiative file, the name given to the Republican move to require all Canadians crossing the U.S. land border to carry passports or secure driver's licences."
~ Tim Harper at The Star

I had no idea Day, Kenney, and Reynolds attended the U.S. Republican National Convention but I can't say I'm surprised. This old boys network is already so 'deeply integrated' they can't imagine what's taking the rest of Canada so long to catch up.

Frank Sensenbrenner has since denied having a role in the leak of the Canadian consular memo.
So due to that internal Privy Council Office probe which protects the Cons from having to answer any difficult questions, we're back to Mr. Mustard in the Library again.

Cleavage-gate.

yeah, you were awesome too baby ... hey, did i leave some shit there last night? ***

BT Stephen Taylor is pleased that this whole sordid business of biker chicks and microphones allegedly planted in the seams of mattresses is now solidly behind us :

"By clearing the deck of the Bernier issue, the Prime Minister’s office will construct a narrative of promptly dealing with issues of substance and holding the line on fabrications from the opposition...Today was a bad day for Conservatives, but it represents an opportunity for the government move forward on its agenda without this distraction."

Yeah! - "moving forward", "constructing a narrative", "promptly dealing with issues".

So what have you got for us?

Ottawonk, from whom I pillaged the above pic and ***, notes that according to this Government House Leader page, next week is "Sound Economic Management Without a Carbon Tax Week", tastefully accompanied over at the ReformaTory homepage with this pic.

Oh. So it's Business as Usual with Funny Hats Week vs boobs then, is it?

I dunno, Mr Taylor, but I'm gonna hafta go with Cleavage-gate here. Boob stories always have more legs.

Ottawonk - wicked funny on this - Go

The truth is out there

"The 9/11 Truth movement is really distinguished by a kind of defiant unfamiliarity with the actual character of America's ruling class. In 9/11 lore the people who staff the White House, the security agencies, the Pentagon and groups like PNAC and the Council of Foreign Relations are imagined to be a monolithic, united class of dastardly, swashbuckling risk-takers with permanent hard-ons for Bourne Supremacy-style "false flag" and "black bag" operations, instead of the mundanely greedy, risk-averse, backstabbing, lawn-tending, half-clever suburban golfers they are in real life.

It completely misunderstands the nature of American government -- fails to see that the old maxim about "the business of America is business" is absolutely true, that the federal government in this country is really just a lo-rent time-share property seasonally occupied by this or that clan of financial interests, each of which takes its 4-year turn at the helm tinkering with the tax laws and regulatory code and the rates at the Fed in the way it thinks will best keep the money train rolling.

The people who really run America don't send the likes of George Bush and Dick Cheney to the White House to cook up boat-rocking, maniacal world-domination plans and commit massive criminal conspiracies on live national television; they send them there to repeal PUCHA and dole out funds for the F-22 and pass energy bills with $14 billion tax breaks and slash fuel efficiency standards and do all the other shit that never makes the papers but keeps Wall Street and the country's corporate boardrooms happy. You don't elect politicians to commit crimes; you elect politicians to make your crimes legal. That is the whole purpose of the racket of government."

~Matt Taibbi, in an adapted excerpt from his new book, The Great Derangement, at Alternet

Followed up in comments by 724 howls of outrage and counting...

His sweeping ad hominem attack on the Truthers notwithstanding, his point is well taken : the real conspiracy has always been right out there in the open.

h/t Croghan at Bread 'n Roses