Last call ...

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Nominations close at midnight tonight

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First Round Voting open now to April 14th

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Since when did Canada become bff with the Center for Strategic and International Studies?

They're the other "CSIS" - the Washington neocon thinktank most famous up here for a 2007 meeting in Calgary on their North American Future 2025 Project to implement the SPP, and more specifically this quote from project director Armand Peschard-Sverdrup :

"It's no secret that the U.S. is going to need water. ...
It's no secret that Canada is going to have an overabundance of water.
At the end of the day, there may have to be arrangements."

Two days ago Foreign Affairs Minister Lawrence Cannon gave a speech at the CSIS Washington headquarters on "enhanced co-operation" in "our shared Arctic interests", noting that "20% of the world's oil is estimated to be in the Arctic".
Last week Alberta Energy Minister Rob Renner was there to tout Alberta's tar sands :

"The world is looking for leadership on climate change and Alberta is taking that opportunity."

Heh. That's pretty funny, Rob.

From their website :

"The CSIS Canada Project is dedicated to the study of Canada and the Canada-United States relationship, and to analyzing the process of deepening North American integration that is transforming them both and establishing the new dynamics of a continental economy."

"bff "
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The Canada-Colombia Free Trade Agreement - A licence to kill

I'm trying to imagine how well it would go down in Canada if we passed a law providing for a token fine to be paid - on a purely voluntary basis -whenever the government combined with Canadian corporations to murder union workers. Not too well I think.

So why are we again considering promoting this behavior from the over 20 Canadian mining and oil and gas operations already in Columbia, including Nexen, Enbridge, Petrominerales, Coalcorp and Vancouver's B2Gold?


In July 2007 Steve stood next to President Uribe of Colombia and proclaimed it would be "ridiculous" to refuse to enter a free trade agreement with Columbia based on the latter's abysmal human rights record - a record which is even worse in 2008 than it was in 2007.

In November 2008 Steve and Uribe shook hands on the Canada-Colombia Free Trade Agreement.
Coincidentally this was the same month the world heard about high-ranking Colombian army officers involved in “false positives” - the execution and dressing up of civilians as FARC guerrillas and claiming they were killed in combat in order to collect a body count bonus.

On March 26, 2009, the Canada-Columbia Free Trade Agreement passed first reading in the House as Bill C-23.



Some notes from the excellent MAKING A BAD SITUATION WORSE -
AN ANALYSIS OF THE TEXT OF THE CANADA-COLOMBIA FREE TRADE AGREEMENT

Canadian Council for International Co-operation
Canadian Association of Labour Lawyers
Canadian Labour Congress
Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives

• Extrajudicial executions by security forces : 2007 - 330; 2004 to 2006 - 220; 2003 - 130 ; 2002 - 100.


• 270,675 people have been forced to flee from their homes in the first quarter of 2008 - the highest rate of internal displacement since 1987


• 1,015 people have disappeared over the past year – more than four times the total for 2007 and a 1300% increase over 2005. According to the Prosecutor’s Office, members of the country’s armed forces are suspects in more than 90% of the cases it is investigating.


• Fewer than 1% of Colombian workers enjoy the right to collective bargaining, hampered by the introduction of anti-union legislation
• Over 60% of the more than 3 million internally displaced people in Colombia have been forced from their homes and lands in areas of mineral, agricultural or other economic importance.
• As of October 2008, more than 60 parliamentarians – most of whom are part of President Uribe's governing coalition in Congress… were under formal or preliminary investigation for their suspected links to paramilitary groups..., several have either pleaded guilty or have been found guilty of association with paramilitary groups, electoral fraud, murder, and the organizing, arming and financing of paramilitary groups.”

In Feb. 2008, Daniel García-Peña, VP of the leftist opposition party in Colombia came to Canada and explained why a free trade agreement would be "very negative for Canada and Colombia." :

"Canadian companies would be attracted to Colombia for all the wrong reasons, namely to take advantage of the country's weak labour, human rights and environmental laws. Many companies will come to bypass the laws Canada has and take advantage of Colombian standards, which are much lower. In many ways [this could] promote the exploitation of workers."
Furthermore, Mr. García-Peña says, a trade deal could destroy the livelihoods of many small Colombian farmers by flooding the market with subsidized agricultural imports. "The small peasant farmer would be unable to compete with the cheap imports of food," he says. "[This] would wipe them out."
Those who would benefit, he says, are the large agro-businesses in Colombia that would buy up the land of destitute farmers for the production of biodiesel, palm oil and beef for export.
Worst of all, Mr. García-Peña adds, these large agro-businesses have ties to the paramilitary squads at the heart of the ongoing rights abuses and violence in the South American country."

Please join NDP MP Peter Julian in sending Michael Ignatieff a note asking him to do some credit to his former reputation as a human rights activist : IgnatM@parl.gc.ca
Top Ten Reasons Why Canada Should Cancel Harper's "Free Trade" Deal With Colombia.
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Homer's Odyssey on Twitter

Ithacarulerdotcom

Back home! Who r all these random dudes?
5 minutes ago, from web

Wrecked the boat. Totaled. Everybody dead. FAIL
two year ago, from web

Hot singing chicks! KTHXBAI!
two year ago, from web

Circe is hot! All my bros turned into pigs! LULZ!
three year ago, from web

Just saw a dude with one eye!
four year ago, from web

Continued ...

lmao! Eric Alt at holytacodotcom roxxors the boxxors!
props - arborman at BnR
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Afghan marital rape law being ... revised

CBC : "Foreign Affairs Minister Lawrence Cannon said he was informed Sunday by his counterpart in Afghanistan that a new family law, which critics say legalizes marital rape, has been halted and will be revised."

You can just imagine how that conversation went ...
~Look, what you people do behind closed doors is your business but we've got an occupation to run here and it's based on our soldiers dying so your grateful little girls can go to school. It's bad enough 75% of them get forced into marriage between 5 and 15 to old geezers to pay off family debts but you can't be passing laws saying it's ok to rape 'em as well ...
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Lunney is a loonie ...

Con MP Gary Goodyear, Minister of State for Science and Technology, startled everyone two weeks ago with his peculiar Lamarckian view of evolution:

"We are evolving every year, every decade,” Mr. Goodyear said on the television program. “That's a fact, whether it is to the intensity of the sun, whether it is to, as a chiropractor, walking on cement versus anything else, whether it is running shoes or high heels – of course we are evolving to our environment."

Canadian Alliance/Con MP for Nanaimo-Alberni James Lunney was deeply offended at the subsequent derision heaped on his fellow chiropractor and gave him a rousing defence in the HoC on Thursday :

"Any scientist who declares that the theory of evolution is a fact has already abandoned the foundations of science. For science establishes fact through the study of things observable and reproducible. Since origins can neither be reproduced nor observed, they remain the realm of hypothesis. ... I am prepared to believe that Darwin would be willing to re-examine his assumptions. The evolutionists may disagree, but neither can produce Darwin as a witness to prove his point."

Ooooh, smackdown!

Naturally, the creationists will be producing God to prove their point any day now.

No Word yet on God's opinion of how high heels and cement fit into it.

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Canada as a northern banana republic

Good opinion piece in the Star from Jim Travers today : The quiet unravelling of Canadian democracy.
It's not often one reads in the press about our slow slide towards becoming a northern banana republic and I can't remember the last time anyone mentioned the quiet coup perpetuated on an unwitting electorate by Canada's premier paramilitary organization or the failure of our three main parties to address it.

To Jim's points I would add the following three conditions that also qualify Canada for banana republic status :

The Security and Prosperity Partnership
Rumours of its demise have been greatly exaggerated and mostly by its fans. A government assisted corporate plan to free up the movement of capitol and labour without public participation or oversight within a militarized North America, it has scarcely received mention since the last big Three Amigos bunfest. Yet on Thursday Public Safety Minister Peter Van Loan appeared before the public safety committee to announce some princely sum in the millions "towards further implementation of the SPP".

Dispensing with the bother of elected representation
In addition to the first-past-the-post electoral system in which only a handful of votes in a few swing ridings actually count, there is the matter of both the prime minister and the leader of the opposition holding office by fiat. Harper dissolved parliament rather than face an election and Iggy was just simply crowned after the Liberal Party executive voted last year not to give the actual rank and file members of the Liberal Party the vote.

Media concentration
Canadians are more likely to know the names of Sarah Palin's grandchildren than they are to know that they probably got this news from just three Canadian media corporations.

Banana republic stuff - all of it.

Travers' column previously noted today by Jennifer, Chrystal, and Chet.
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Canada denies passport to Abdelrazik

April 3, 2009
Department of Justice Canada
DFAIT Legal Services Unit

Dear Mr. Hameed:

Re: Mr. Abousfian Abdelrazik request for an emergency passport

Pursuant to Section 10.1 of the Canadian Passport Order the Minister of Foreign Affairs has decided to refuse your client's request for an emergency passport.

Sincerely,
Donna Blois,
Council


Previous DFAIT corespondence on Abdelrazik :

July 13, 2005
Odette Gaudet-Fee, senior Foreign Affairs official in Ottawa,
To David Hutchings, head of the Canadian embassy in Khartoum:

"I wish I had a magic wand and make this case go away ... I find it unethical to hold him like this in limbo with no future, no hope and all because ...

Obviously I cannot address the issue of the no-fly list "

May 2005
Odette Gaudet-Fee :

"[Mr. Abdelrazik] has reached the end of his rope, he has no money, no future, very little freedom and no hope. Should this case break wide open in the media, we may have a lot to explaining to do."

April 2008
Sean Robertson, Director of Consular Case Management
Foreign Affairs :

"Since October of 2003, the government of Canada has provided a high level of consular assistance and support to Mr. Abdelrazik"

April 30, 2008
Transport Canada :

"Transport Canada and other senior Government of Canada officials should be mindful of the potential reaction of our U.S. counterparts to Abdelrazik's return to Canada as he is on the U.S. No-Fly List and the Department of Treasury's Specially Designated Nationals and blocked Persons."

March 2008

"Deepak Obhrai, the junior foreign affairs minister, met Mr. Abdelrazik at the embassy.
Mr. Abdelrazik said they quizzed him about why he came to Canada in the first place and asked about his views on Israel."

Very good summation of Abdelrazik's plight on yesterday's The Current
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Skdadl says if you send Abousfian Abdelrazik a message of support at projectflyhome@gmail.com , he'll definitely get it.

And while you're at it, send Foreign Affairs Minister Lawrence Cannon a fucking cluebat :
Telephone: (613) 992-5516 ... Fax: (613) 992-6802
EMail: CannoL@parl.gc.ca .
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Torture intelligence - it all hinges on the word "knowingly"

When I read the media accounts of the public safety committee testimony on torture on Tuesday and Thursday, I'm not at all sure they watched the same proceedings I did.

Big hullaballoo on Tuesday following CSIS lawyer Geoffrey O'Brian's testimony before the public safety committee that Canadian intelligence agencies would make use of information obtained by torture from foreign agencies in the "one-in-a-million" eventuality that "lives were at stake". In fact, said O'Brian, who has been with CSIS since its inception in 1984, "we would be bound to do so."

Under further questioning from aghast committee members, he admitted that agencies often "have no idea under what conditions info received from foreign agencies is obtained" and "just because a country has a questionable or even abysmal human rights record does not mean info received from them is necessarily extracted by torture".

That would be the old don't ask don't tell Syria defence. CSIS Director Jim Judd used it back in November 2006 to defend using Syrian intel on Maher Arar.
So are we still trading info with Syria and Egypt? Yes we are, but now "with caveats".

The committee members pressed on : "What Canadians want to hear is that we do not condone the use of information derived from torture."

O'Brian : "I would love to give you a simple answer. The simple answer is that we will never use info from torture. I cannot say that because recipients of info do not know how that info was obtained. I can say we do not knowingly" - and he stressed this again -"knowingly use info extracted by torture."

Huge stink in the Star, G&M, and CBC.

Today CSIS Director Jim Judd and Public Safety Minister Peter Van Loan appeared before the public safety committee. Judd :

"I think it's unfortunate that Mr. O'Brian may have been confused in his testimony. He will clarifying that via a letter to this committee. I know of no instance where such information has been made use of by our service."

and

"He [O'Brian] ventured into the hypothetical. In the past we used information received obtained by torture. Such information is not to be relied upon. We've changed our policies. Our policy now is under no circumstances do we condone the use of torture for any reason."

He went on to explain that the intelligence agencies are directed in this by the federal government.
Ok that seems pretty straight forward, right?

Next up - Minister Van Loan, from whence intelligence agencies are directed, responding to MP Mourani - italics mine :

"We do not condone the use of torture in intelligence gathering and our clear directive to our law enforcement agencies and intelligence services is that they are not to condone the use of torture, practice torture, or knowingly use any information obtained by torture."

Uh -oh. There's that "knowingly" again.
And here's the relevant quote from O'Brian's "clarification" letter - again, italics mine :

"I wish to clarify for the committee that CSIS certainly does not condone torture and that it is the policy of CSIS to not knowingly rely upon information that may have been obtained through torture."

So we're pretty well back to O'Brian's "knowingly" on Tuesday again, aren't we?
Which is that because we can claim to have no clue how the info we get is obtained, we're free to go ahead and use it.

I'd also like to point out that the RCMP got a completely free ride here in the media coverage.
In his opening statement to the commitee on Tuesday, RCMP spokesman Gilles Michaud rejected the use of information obtained by torture as unreliable but explained in regards to the RCMP's use of intelligence obtained from foreign agencies :

"I want to be clear here - there is no absolute ban on the use of any information by the RCMP."

Uh huh.
O'Brian caught shit for losing control of the spin for a moment, and that's all that happened here.
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Stand By Me - International version

Playing For Change. Across several continents in the universal language:

Beautiful!

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