Omar Khadr to cop a plea?

Between a rock and a hard place, he really has very little choice.

Khadr stated the obvious last July: "How can I ask for justice from a process that doesn’t have it?"

The presiding officer at his kangaroo-court "trial," Col. Patrick Parrish, has indicated shocking bias from the beginning, as I've observed before. There is no justice to be had when doctored evidence is blithely introduced by the prosecution with a wink and a nod from this "judge." Had Khadr been convicted, which was almost inevitable with the judicial cards stacked so obviously against him, he would, almost certainly, have been sentenced to life in prison.

Meanwhile, we know by now the attitude of the Harper government towards its brown-skinned citizens. There would be no assistance from that quarter. The government has fought strenuously against the very notion. Indeed, the plea deal is likely to put Stephen Harper in a very delicate position (although National Post correspondent John Iveson thinks the Tories might manage to eke out a win).

This shameful deal has nothing to do with justice, everything to do with politics and coercion. The bottom line? Khadr has had to cut his losses. The result is that a child soldier, tortured and then railroaded, will do even more time in prison. Another triumph of the American justice system--and Stephen Harper's politics of exclusion.

UPDATE: Guess who's standing up for Khadr's rights?

Land for peace

Once again, Israel is willing to give up peace for a little more land.

Meanwhile, within Israel proper, the destruction of Bedouin villages and the displacement of its inhabitants continues, in this case to make way for a reforestation project sponsored by the Jewish National Fund.

Warning: the use of terms such as "ethnic cleansing" and "apartheid" is to be avoided, as they are considered to be examples of "the new anti-Semitism™." Please employ "urban renewal" and "reclamation initiative," respectively.

UPDATE: (October 16) Just another day on the West Bank. Might I suggest the term "deforestation" in this instance? [H/t Alison]

The odour of rotting justice [updated]

...is emanating once again from Toronto. But it's getting more intense, and the smell should stink in the nostrils of every citizen of Canada.

Alex Hundert, an anarchist arrested for G20 actions before a single demonstrator was even on the street, is back in jail. As many readers will know, he was out on bail when he was re-arrested by seven police officers for speaking on a university panel. Allegedly this was a breach of previous bail conditions that forbade his attendance at political demonstrations. An evidently brain-dead justice of the peace--no legal training is required for these patronage appointees--agreed with the cops, and he was jailed over Thanksgiving.

At a new bail hearing this week, he was told he would be freed, but only upon several new conditions, including (pay close attention here, Canada) no expressing political views in public, including in the media. He said no to that, and as of this writing he's behind bars.

Not that the corporate media give a damn about this obvious breach of what used to be our Charter rights. As of this writing, the news about Hundert has appeared in all of two places: Rabble.ca and the Vancouver Media Co-op.

How does one explain this veritable news blackout? Not being a conspiracy buff, I put it down to corporate groupthink and pure cynicism. But it's very odd: we don't even know the name(s) of the minor functionary (ies) who stripped this Canadian citizen of his constitutional rights without even the formality of a trial.

"The subject who is truly loyal to the Chief Magistrate," says the Globe & Mail masthead, "will neither advise nor submit to arbitrary measures." But sitting by silently rather than reporting such measures seems A-OK with the editors of the shiny new magloid, recently purged of its progressive columnists. And it's fine with every other mainstream paper, TV and radio station in the country, including the Toronto Star and the CBC. What gives?

Meanwhile, our intrepid Speech Warriors™, who have stood up stoutly in the past for neo-Nazis and raving homophobes, seem to have suddenly contracted a collective case of laryngitis. Funny, that. Here's a "real court" (well, sort of) explicitly ruling that a citizen is not permitted to state political views publicly, on pain of jail. Not a peep.

And where are the normally garrulous Speechy columnists? You there, Jonathan? What about you, Ezra? Mark? Want a crack at this?

No, didn't think so.

Worse, there hasn't been a word as yet from the Canadian Civil Liberties Association. What's up with that, Nathalie?

First they came for the anarchists....Well, I am not an anarchist, but I'm prepared to stand with Alex Hundert against a corrupt justice system that has now torn up the Charter of Rights, and a complaisant media that is turning a blind eye to it. And it is the civic duty of every Canadian citizen to do the same--before the dutiful little robots now running things turn their bleary gaze on the rest of us.

[Big h/t to pogge, and one to Orwell's Bastard]

UPDATE: (October 15) Quite a few developments. The Toronto Star has taken notice, and on the Speech Warrior™ front, Jay Currie and Mark Steyn have lined up against Hundert's bail conditions. Better late than never, given that the initial outrage--being breached for participating in a university panel discussion--attracted no notice when it took place a week ago.

Nathalie Des Rosiers, President of the Canadian Civil Liberties Association, has now stepped forward as well. The bail conditions are "only aimed at silencing speech," she says, and plans to write a letter to the Attorney General of Ontario in protest. And we now know who the Justice of the Peace is: Inderpaul Chandhoke, whose education is listed here as "other," and who has sat on the bench for more than three decades.

The Star also reports that Hundert has accepted his bail conditions, contrary to the initial reports referenced above.

Meanwhile, in another part of the forest, the Crown has dropped charges against another hundred or so G20 protesters, including 90 demonstrators from Quebec, due to "lack of evidence."

Stay tuned.

[H/t readers Steve C. and k_z]

UPPERDATE: More on why Hundert is now out on bail after initially refusing the bail conditions. The explanation isn't pretty:

Less than 24 hours after refusing to sign outrageous bail conditions which included not expressing political views in public and non-associations intended to further isolate him, Alex Hundert was forced to consent to his release.

On the night of Wednesday October 14th, Alex was told by the security manager at the Toronto East Detention Centre that he had to sign the bail conditions or face solitary confinement in “the hole”, without access to phone calls or writing paper. He was put in solitary confinement after an initial confrontation with correction staff where he resisted initial attempts to make him sign. He was denied the right to call his lawyer, and told that if he didn’t sign now, they would revoke the bail offer and he would be held in solitary confinement until his eventual release from prison.

Coerced into signing these conditions, Alex was thrown out of Toronto East and left to find his own way home to his sureties’ house. The prison authorities forced him into a position where he could potentially be accused of further breaching his bail. Alex is now back on house arrest with an enforced curfew, with non-associations with co-accused and members of SOAR, AWOL, NOII and other community organizers. He also has the additionally imposed restrictions of no direct or indirect posting to the internet, no assisting, planning, or attending any public meeting or march, and no expressing of views on a political issue. [emphases added]

Do we finally have enough to declare Toronto a human rights-free zone?

Humanity at its best

...as the world pulled together and freed 33 trapped Chilean miners.

Go ahead, say you weren't moved today, even to tears. I dare you.

International follies

Stephen Harper's campaign for a Security Council seat, lost with a little help from his friends, is now dust. But let's let the Schadenfreude wear off. This is no gloating matter.

Harper has succeeded in making Canada look ridiculous in the eyes of the world, not least by petulantly blaming a domestic Opposition leader for his defeat, rather than the self-evident failings of his foreign "policy." But we should be angry about it, not merely gratified by his abject humiliation. He represented us to the world, after all: and now we Canadians are all wearing the mantle of his international ineptitude.

I put the word "policy" in quotation marks, because there has never been a Conservative foreign policy as such: there is no evidence of coordination, planning, or the nuances that go into over-all strategic thinking. It's been all chest-thumping dogmatism, the kind of Rob-Fordian straight talk that makes anyone with the slightest sense of tact cringe with embarrassment.

Whether it's ignoring Africa (when he isn't cutting off African aid), advancing flawed maternal health schemes, giving uncritical support to Israel's bellicose adventures in Lebanon and elsewhere, setting well-respected international aid agencies adrift based upon trumped-up charges of "anti-Semitism," and even at the eleventh hour refusing to address the UN's 57-nation Organization of the Islamic Conference, while offering delegates bottles of maple syrup and a look at a real Mountie, Harper has blundered and bumped into things on the world stage ever since he was elected in 2006. The results were entirely predictable, and had nothing whatsoever to do with Michael Ignatieff.

But let's not romanticize Canada's role before our hapless Prime Minister fumbled his way into the international limelight. Yes, we had a more enlightened view of foreign aid, our troops were relatively well-respected as peacekeepers, and we played a role as honest broker here and there. But we have never hovered angelically above the fray.

Some folks look back at the days of Lester B. Pearson with a kind of reverence. Not I. Pearson allowed American nuclear missiles to be stationed on Canadian soil. Earlier, he had dutifully played his role in Canada's junior partnership with the US, supporting the latter's rapid nuclear arms build-up, while striking certain "independent" positions that mattered far less in geopolitical terms.

His successor, Pierre Trudeau, kept those missiles on hand for a further five years, and continued to preside over Canada's active complicity in the war in Vietnam, which had begun under Pearson. A few hand-waves towards Cuba were outweighed, I would argue, by our substantial shipments of materiel for use against Vietnamese peasants, two million of whom were killed in that conflict. We supplied the Americans with everything from napalm and weapons guidance systems to green berets. (Indeed, we had been a loyal American ally from the beginning, playing an active role in subverting the 1954 Geneva Accords.)

We should also not forget that it was the Liberals, not the Harper Conservatives, who mired us in the unwinnable war in Afghanistan. And if our role in the UN is now pro-Israel, the truth is that it was substantially so before Harper as well.

The Liberals are and have always been the kinder, gentler face of Canadian self-interested Realpolitik. Especially under Ignatieff's shaky tutelage, the "Opposition" has favoured almost every Conservative international position, whether it was a cozy deal with the genocidal Colombian narco-state, the continuing Afghanistan debacle, or strong support of Israel's aggressive policies in the Middle East: Ignatieff, once reluctant to join the choir, eventually came around.

Had the Liberals been in power, could we have sweet-talked our way onto the Security Council? Possibly, by being less offensively blunt, and deploying that well-known Liberal discursive technique whereby all parties in a dispute are persuaded to see them as allies. But would we observe very much concrete change in terms of international relations? Colour me very sceptical indeed.

Harper blew it spectacularly. We can all see that. But let's not create the myth of an pre-Harper Golden Age of saintly international diplomacy. It was anything but. And if Ignatieff's Liberals come to power, don't expect a post-Harper one to begin.

Harper's Surprise Musical Salute to Chilean Minors

In what his advisers describe as a "bold and historic foreign policy gesture from Canada's most internationalist Prime Minister EVER", Prime Minister Steven Harper made a surprise visit to a Santiago daycare centre in order to perform a musical greeting for Chilean minors.

To All BT's: Get Yer UN Talking Point Here!

So before our conservative friends recover from their shock and get their talking points from Hivemind Central, let's guess what they're going to say about Canada's humiliating rejection by the United Nations.

From respected middle power

...to laughingstock.

Way to go, Cowboy Steve. You've made your country proud.

Tea Partiers--not racist enough!

"On August 28, when Glenn Beck, Sarah Palin, and anywhere from 300,000-700,000 whites publicly sucked up to racist blacks, black critics claimed to hear an “echo” of Jim Crow and slavery."

[H/t: who else?]

Iran: the show must go on

Sakineh Mohammed Ashtiani isn't out of the woods yet.

She's the person condemned to be stoned to death by the mad mullahs currently running Iran. While the sentence has been on hold (not commuted), and some believe that the authorities will show Iranian mercy by merely hanging her, the rule of what remains of law in that country has suffered another setback.

In Iran Solidarity's words:

Sakineh Mohammadi Ashtiani’s son, Sajjad Ghaderzadeh, and lawyer, Houtan Kian, were arrested along with a German journalist and photographer in Tabriz on 10 October 2010 at 1900 hours local time. The security forces raided the lawyer’s office where an interview was taking place and arrested all four.

Their whereabouts are currently unknown and no news has been received of their situation since the arrests. It is known they were arrested given that at the time of the raid, one of the journalists was on the phone speaking with Mina Ahadi, Spokesperson of the International Committee against Stoning and International Committee against Execution. The four have not returned home or to their hotels since; the Islamic regime has confirmed the arrest of the two journalists.

Please visit Iran Solidarity and sign the open letter (there's a moderation queue).

A very interesting take on all this, by the way, which will not be to everyone's taste, may be found here.

France's racial politics defended

In a letter to the Ottawa Citizen, French ambassador François Delattre tries to put a happy-face mask on his country's neo-Vichyist policy of racial purification--the rounding up and deporting of Roma. Much of his letter is protesting Ujjal Dosanjh's statement of the obvious (the newest Nobel laureate in literature, Alvaro Vargas Llosa, has some choice words on the same subject) but this paragraph in particular deserves our attention:

France has been at the forefront to raise awareness of the plight and the suffering of the Roma in Europe by bringing this issue on the European Union's agenda. France's goal is to have the EU properly fund much-needed economic, educational and social initiatives and thereby improve the Roma's living conditions while promoting their integration within the EU. Indeed, France is currently a leading contributor to the $4.15 billion (Cdn.) allocated to Romania by the European Union annually.

If you follow the Dosanjh link, above, you will see what the French government means by "integration." It amounts, in fact, to the sequestration of racial undesirables in patrolled ghettoes. The current forced deportations are just ramping up this ugly recrudescence of Vichy politics.

But the disingenuousness of M. Delattre doesn't stop there. France hasn't so much put this matter on the EU agenda as forced the issue with its racialist policies. And the mention of Romania can only be seen as deliberately misleading.

Romania is not the homeland of the Roma people, as the ambassador seems to be suggesting. The two names have utterly different origins. The name "Romania" goes straight back to the Roman Empire and the formation of Roman Dacia. Daco-Romanian is a Romance language, related to Italian. The Romani language, spoken by the Roma, is Indo-Aryan.

Roma in Romania comprise 2.5% of the population. It is true that Romania is the country of origin of many of France's deportees, but so is Bulgaria, where Roma are the third-largest ethnic group, at 4.7%.

French President Nicolas Sarkozy is himself an immigrant, from Hungary, where hatred of Roma is widespread: Roma are currently the favourite scapegoats of the neo-Nazi Jobbik Party. He was, as it turns out, caught in a lie, claiming that Roma were not being singled out for expulsion when they had, in fact, been deliberately targeted. The French police, of course, have been on the job for some time--nothing new there.

The Ambassador, it must be said, was simply doing his job. But it's a dirty one.

Obama reveals his powers

But personally, I wish he'd just go back to the teleprompter.

UPDATE: No wonder terrified Republicans are calling for his death.

[H/t Enormous Thriving Plants]

What is Copygate and what does it mean?

A new phrase has been coined in the climate wars. Copygate refers to the alleged plagiarism of material in the Wegman Report. For those not familiar with the Wegman Report, it was a report to the US Congress dealing with the Hockeystick Controversy produced by Dr. Wegman, a renown statistician. It has since been alleged that of the 96 page Wegman Report, 35 pages were plagiarized. Not good for a report from an Academic.

Now, apart from the point that Dr. Wegman appears to try to pass himself off as an expert in fields where he has little to no expertise, would plagiarism impact the results of the Wegman Report? I would say not (although there may be other surprises hidden in the Wegman Report). So why the big deal!

In my opinion it depends on your view of the stolen e-mails from the CRU. Consider the released e-mails from the CRU. The only think that they show for certain is that some scientists don't think well of those who criticize them. The same with the alleged plagiarized part of the Wegman Report. All it really shows is that some people like to sound more knowledgeable than they are (although granted that the repercussions in academic circles are much more serious for plagiarism than they are for saying mean things).

However the interesting point here is how people are going to react to the two incidents. Consider, there is nothing in the stolen e-mail that show any wrongdoing at all. Instead, it is said that they show a pattern that makes people mistrust the science associated with AGW. If that is the case, then shouldn't a plagiarized document cause you to hold a similar view about the science of the deniers side? Keep in mind that the Wegman Report is one of the few actually published works that criticize some aspect of AGW.

For myself, I don't think that the stolen e-mails reveal anything that damages the science of AGW. And I don't see that if there is plagiarism in the Wegman Report it will change the results. But it is amusing that there is a lot of pretzel twisting going on in certain circles to allow people to hold the two positions that some e-mails taken out of context is devastating, but real academic dishonesty is a minor incident. Pass the popcorn and some turkey; I suspect there is going to be a lot of wailing and screeching in the next while.

Hat Tip to John Mashy and Deep Climate for the truly monumental work this took!

Empire : What future for 'Greater Israel' ?

Part one of a discussion on the deadlocked peace process between Israel and Palestine, the politics behind the expanded settlements, the diminishing likelihood of a two-state solution, and more with Avraham Burg, former head of the Israeli parliament and former chairman of the World Zionist Organization; Avi Schlaim, Prof of International Relations at Oxford; and Ian Black, Mid East editor for The Guardian.

Think you can predict the positions taken by the former chairman of the World Zionist Organization? Bet you can't.

"What we do in the occupied territories is a simple pure colonialism.

When will public opinion in Israel be ripe for dismantling the settlers' militia? The way to do it and to support any prime minister to go for it ... it will happen when Israelis feel they have something to lose and they are not ready to sacrifice their future and the future of their children for a tiny messianic eschatological minority."

Part Two follows.

A Spaniel in the Wok

I was too young during the peak of Elvis Presley's career and too old to care about Kurt Cobain; their deaths didn't mean much to me. But I remember where I was when John Lennon was killed.

Toronto the unjust

To all my friends from Toronto: really, I'm just indulging in a little synecdoche. I love your fair city, honestly I do. But an evil spirit has descended.

The latest outrage is sending Alex Hundert back to jail for allegedly violating his bail conditions--by speaking on a panel at a university event. (How does one become a Justice of the Peace these days? Passing Grade Six? Joining the Conservative Party? Working on the Rob Ford campaign?)

Free speech in Toronto is dead. No doubt we'll be hearing from this guy any minute now. On second thought, don't hold your breath.

A bit of grim reading for the holiday, which nevertheless seems to strike the right note, especially in the light of the recent Supreme Court of Canada ruling:

The press of the Spoon River Clarion was wrecked,
And I was tarred and feathered,
For publishing this on the day the
Anarchists were hanged in Chicago:
"l saw a beautiful woman with bandaged eyes
Standing on the steps of a marble temple.
Great multitudes passed in front of her,
Lifting their faces to her imploringly.
In her left hand she held a sword.
She was brandishing the sword,
Sometimes striking a child, again a laborer,
Again a slinking woman, again a lunatic.
In her right hand she held a scale;
Into the scale pieces of gold were tossed
By those who dodged the strokes of the sword.
A man in a black gown read from a manuscript:
"She is no respecter of persons."
Then a youth wearing a red cap
Leaped to her side and snatched away the bandage.
And lo, the lashes had been eaten away
From the oozy eye-lids;
The eye-balls were seared with a milky mucus;
The madness of a dying soul
Was written on her face--
But the multitude saw why she wore the bandage."

--Edgar Lee Masters, Spoon River Anthology

[H/t CathiefromCanada]

There they go again

Terrified passengers on a London-bound flight froze in their seats as a crazed man ran through the aisle of the Qantas jet screaming: 'You will all die!'

Praying and yelling in a foreign language, the man threatened to kill himself and the passengers on the fully-laden jet several hours after it took off from Melbourne to fly to London via Hong Kong.

Wait, hang on a second:

'He was praying in what was believed to be Hebrew and yelling out that he was going to kill himself and all the passengers would die,' said Helen, who had been sitting in Premium Economy.

Hebrew?

Ah.

Back to regular programming shortly.

Or not.

[H/t]

Stuff from the world of climate science

A couple of points to start your long weekend.

First, probably very few remember the National Academies of Science hearing into climate reconstructions. In it a Dr. Wegman produced a report critical of Dr. Mann's paleoreconstruction. Well, after a lot of digging by volunteers, it turned out that there are a number of significant errors in the Wegman report. How significant? Well, George Mason University seems to be taking it seriously. My hat's off to John Mashey and Deep Climate for their digging. It will be interesting to see how this goes. Of course if they exonerate Wegman, I will claim that it was all a whitewash, I've seen how its done!

The second is a presentation from the TED talks. If you are not aware of these talks, they are very good and there is something in there to interest anyone. I found this one to be an interesting look at economic futures and global warming.

A good weekend to everyone and (unless you are a turkey) a good time to be thankful for what you / we have.

Liberals: "caving like spineless jellyfish"

So much for parliamentary privilege supremacy.*

The Conservative government stonewalls; the Liberals go along; and Speaker Peter Milliken's historic ruling on the ancient right of Parliament to send for documents and records is tossed into the dustbin of history.

Here's NDP MP Bill Siksay's motion. Here's Kady O'Malley's liveblog of what the Liberals did to it.

This extract, in which the star character is that serviceable trained seal Wayne Easter, is my favourite:

The real question, as far as Easter is concerned, is where the committee goes from here: back to the House to have the speaker rule, as was the case with the detainee documents? Or do they find "another approach," and see if there's "any good will on the part of the government" to "make the system work." Uh, is that a trick question?

Wow. Easter was actually serious with that last bit -- at least, as far as eating up time until he could announce that the minutes of the Procedure and House Affairs committee have been published, and lo and behold, there to his wondering eyes do behold that motion from Yasmin Ratansi to look at guidelines for testimony from exempt staffers. So basically, the Liberals are going to pretend that they're not caving like spineless jellyfish. [emphasis added]

They can pretend not to be coalition partners with the Conservatives too. But this little slice of political life tells a different story. The Librocons score once again, the Canadian democratic deficit widens further, and this probably won't even make the evening news.

[H/t]

____________
*While this is a matter of parliamentary privilege, the doctrine of parliamentary supremacy is specifically what is at issue here.

Toronto the insane

By the time G20 arrestee Gary McCullough has his next court date in December, he will have spent six months locked up without bail for no other reason than the police and courts are unable to admit they should never have arrested him in the first place.

Picked up in a pre-G20 police sweep back in June, police admitted within hours of his media-sensationalized 'terrorist' arrest that he had nothing to do with G20 but the illegal search and seizure of his vehicle turned up a crossbow among his tools, albeit properly secured in a carrying case, so he was charged with "possessing a weapon for a dangerous purpose".

Toronto police Const. Hugh Smith :

"It's lawful to have them in your possession … but with close proximity to the summit, we are going to relate it, you know, to the G20 and the safety. So there was more than enough to arrest."

Exactly what "dangerous purpose" do they expect to prove here?

He has threatened no one.

He owns a crossbow because he hates guns and carries it for protection from bears on his rural property.

He was in Toronto to get his car window fixed.

He had all his remaining possessions loaded into his car because someone burnt his rural house down and he is currently rebuilding it.

At his court appearance yesterday, the judge proclaimed the schizophrenic McCullough unfit to stand trial following his months in solitary confinement for his own protection after he was beaten up by other prisoners. The judge has ordered a third psychiatric assessment and remanded him to a psychiatric hospital.

Is this for his own good? No it isn't. At his bail hearing in August, Justice of the Peace Paul Kowarsky displayed an extraordinary lack of understanding of rural life :

"I see no sense that he had to bring all the items for the sole purpose of being in Toronto and running an errand." In denying bail, the justice added: "The inference is he carried all these items for a purpose dangerous to the public."

I fail to see how yet another psychiatric assessment of McCullough will get the just ice system off the hook for persecuting an innocent man for six months.