Gitmo: "Torture? What torture?"

Impossible, one might have thought, but the creature sitting in judgement over Canadian citizen Omar Khadr has disgraced himself still further. Col. Patrick Parrish may as well move right on to the sentencing phase, sparing us all this on-going farce of a "trial."

Here is what this monstrous individual has just ruled is not torture:

At Bagram, [Omar Khadr] was repeatedly brought into interrogation rooms on stretchers, in great pain. Pain medication was withheld, apparently to induce cooperation. He was ordered to clean floors on his hands and knees while his wounds were still wet. When he could walk again, he was forced to stand for hours at a time with his hands tied above a door frame. Interrogators put a bag over his head and held him still while attack dogs leapt at his chest. Sometimes he was kept chained in an interrogation room for so long he urinated on himself.

--

A few months after Omar Khadr arrived at Guantanamo Bay, he was awakened by a guard around midnight. "Get up," the guard said. "You have a reservation." "Reservation" is the commonly used term at Gitmo for interrogation.

In the interrogation room, Omar's interviewer grew displeased with his level of cooperation. He summoned several MPs, who chained Omar tightly to an eye bolt in the center of the floor. Omar's hands and feet were shackled together; the eye bolt held him at the point where his hands and feet met. Fetally positioned, he was left alone for half an hour.

Upon their return, the MPs uncuffed Omar's arms, pulled them behind his back and recuffed them to his legs, straining them badly at their sockets. At the junction of his arms and legs he was again bolted to the floor and left alone. The degree of pain a human body experiences in this particular "stress position" can quickly lead to delirium, and ultimately to unconsciousness. Before that happened, the MPs returned, forced Omar onto his knees, and cuffed his wrists and ankles together behind his back. This made his body into a kind of bow, his torso convex and rigid, right at the limit of its flexibility. The force of his cuffed wrists straining upward against his cuffed ankles drove his kneecaps into the concrete floor. The guards left.

An hour or two later they came back, checked the tautness of his chains and pushed him over on his stomach. Transfixed in his bonds, Omar toppled like a figurine. Again they left. Many hours had passed since Omar had been taken from his cell. He urinated on himself and on the floor. The MPs returned, mocked him for a while and then poured pine-oil solvent all over his body. Without altering his chains, they began dragging him by his feet through the mixture of urine and pine oil. Because his body had been so tightened, the new motion racked it. The MPs swung him around and around, the piss and solvent washing up into his face. The idea was to use him as a human mop. When the MPs felt they'd successfully pretended to soak up the liquid with his body, they uncuffed him and carried him back to his cell. He was not allowed a change of clothes for two days.

--

While he was at Guantanamo, Omar was beaten in the head, nearly suffocated, threatened with having his clothes taken indefinitely and, as at Bagram, lunged at by attack dogs while wearing a bag over his head. "Your life is in my hands," an intelligence officer told him during an interrogation in the spring of 2003. During the questioning, Omar gave an answer the interrogator did not like. He spat in Omar's face, tore out some of his hair and threatened to send him to Israel, Egypt, Jordan or Syria — places where they tortured people without constraints: very slowly, analytically removing body parts. The Egyptians, the interrogator told Omar, would hand him to Askri raqm tisa — Soldier Number Nine. Soldier Number Nine, the interrogator explained, was a guard who specialized in raping prisoners.

Omar's chair was removed. Because his hands and ankles were shackled, he fell to the floor. His interrogator told him to get up. Standing up was hard, because he could not use his hands. When he did, his interrogator told him to sit down again. When he sat, the interrogator told him to stand again. He refused. The interrogator called two guards into the room, who grabbed Omar by the neck and arms, lifted him into the air and dropped him onto the floor. The interrogator told them to do it again — and again and again and again. Then he said he was locking Omar's case file in a safe: Omar would spend the rest of his life in a cell at Guantanamo Bay.

If you have the stomach for it, read the whole thing.

This is how the applicable UN Convention defines torture:

[A]ny act by which severe pain or suffering, whether physical or mental, is intentionally inflicted on a person for such purposes as obtaining from him or a third person information or a confession, punishing him for an act he or a third person has committed or is suspected of having committed, or intimidating or coercing him or a third person, or for any reason based on discrimination of any kind, when such pain or suffering is inflicted by or at the instigation of or with the consent or acquiescence of a public official or other person acting in an official capacity.

The US and Canada are both signatories. So much for international law.

I hope I shall be forgiven my momentary fantasies: Harper and Obama in the dock at The Hague, while in some unknown country the bestial Col. Parrish is worked over like the wounded fifteen-year-old kid he has already condemned.

Charity Begins At Home. And Ends There.

A lesson in Christian charity from the Shaidle household; why waste money on dying ragheads - when you can Spend It On MEEEE!

That's Right, sez Right Girl , somewhat more succinctly.

Fuck ‘em.

Instead, Wendy asks that if you have any change left over after you've subsidized Half A Pint of Bitter, you can send her money to buy herself a nice new computer. That way she can keep up her OTHER site - the one where she doesn't beg quite so much because she's explaining how YOU TOO can become a rich and successful blogger like her.

Block that metaphor!

"Unless and until we know what the [independent expert] finds on the hard drive (if anything), this alleged fishing expedition may turn out to have been a wild goose chase."

More Catholic than...

Mirabile dictu! The folks at St. Joseph's Parish in Ottawa are supporting the Capital Pride march on August 29.

What, tolerance squeezing through the door of the Catholic church? Not so fast. Big Blue Wave's SUZANNE is MASSIVELY pissed, and she's ratted them out to the Archbishop.

Should be interesting.

The outer limits

As suggested by Lawrence Martin in today's Globe & Mail, the next victim of the Harpershchina appears to be the president of the Canadian Radio-television Telecommunications Commission. Konrad von Finckenstein is reportedly on his way out; his 2ic Michel Arpin has already been shown the door.

Their crimes against the people? Not dutifully clearing the way to give a "must carry" licence to Fox News North that would force cable companies to include it in local programming.

"You can’t have the Prime Minister handing out radio and TV licences," splutters Ian Morrison of Friends of Canadian Broadcasting. Oh, no?

I can hear Harper echoing a distant predecessor: "Just watch me."

What would the new compulsory programming consist of? Perhaps we've already had a foretaste or two. Sun TV News is an initiative of Quebecor’s Pierre Karl Péladeau, whose father was an admirer of Adolf Hitler.* He's joined by Harper's former communications director Kory Teneycke, who once expressed the hope that marijuana activist Marc Emory would be gang-raped in a US prison.

You don't need a weatherman to tell which way the wind blows. Under Teneycke's watch, a major Canadian newspaper has openly called for the mass extermination of Tamil refugees. Meanwhile a major television network had no problem mainstreaming white supremacist and neo-Nazi Paul Fromm.

The times they sure are a-changin'. What's next--a mysterious fire in the Peace Tower?

_____________
*Péladeau senior liked the man's "iron will and discipline," and kept a bust of Mussolini on his desk. He created a bit of a storm in 1990 by saying that "Jews take up too much space." His hero, of course, had a solution for that.

Enema of the people

The Harpershchina purge of the public service appears to be gathering momentum. Here's a portrait gallery of some of the disappeared, no doubt airbrushed out of official photographs by now.

[H/t Sister Sage]

Nostalgie de la boue

France has begun to round up and expel its Roma inhabitants. Ethnic cleansing, of course, is an old tradition in that neck of the woods.

But so far, at least, no major French newspaper has called for their outright murder.

BT Bingo: "Rape the Vets" Edition

The grownups among us understand that no Canadian government in the last quarter century has been principle-based. The game, as we all know, is to loudly assert a passionate commitment to the Noble Cause of the Day - the Environment, Our Troops, the Elimination of Child Poverty - with an eye on the polls, while quietly pursuing a more pragmatic agenda. The trick, of course, is managing when events in the real world bring to light the yawning crevasse between the Ringing Proclamation of Principle and your actual practice.

New York mosque TOTM

"In fairness, we've been building 'ground zeros' near Iraqi mosques since March 2003."

--Jason Mustian

Solidarity: save the Willow Pond Bed and Breakfast

My libertarian friend Peter Jaworski of the Western Standard just brought this story to my attention--perhaps the most direct confirmation of anti-statist libertarian fears that one could imagine. This is a case of malicious meddling by petty Ontario officialdom that beggars belief.

As readers will note, the matter touches Peter directly. For the crime of having a conference at his parents' place in the country--one that has taken place annually without incident for nearly a decade--the latter are now facing possible mega-fines in the vicinity of $50K. Never mind that this was a get-together that would be of scant interest to most of us on the left: charging the Jaworskis for allowing it to take place is an obvious infringement of the Charter right to assemble, and a fight-back is essential. Give the family a hand:

The Jaworskis are expected to appear before the Ontario Court of Justice at 605 Rossland Road East in Whitby, Ontario on the 28th of September at 2 p.m in courtroom #103. They are working on setting up a blog (www.willowpondbb.wordpress.com) to draw attention to their plight, and have put together a legal defence fund to help pay for their legal fees.

There are some issues that require solidarity across the usual political crevasses. This is one. Make a contribution, give shout-outs where you can, and send polite emails to Clarington Mayor Jim Abernethy and to the Jaworski's councillor, Gord Robinson Charlie Trim.

Stephen Harper's war on knowledge

Andrew Coyne outdoes himself in Maclean's today.

I am put in mind of the following account, which, although highly dubious historically, coming as it does from a hostile commentator, is instructive if only because it illustrates a certain familiar mindset:

[W]hen a Christian called John informed the local Arab general that there existed in Alexandria a great Library preserving all the knowledge in the world he was perturbed. Eventually he sent word to Mecca where Caliph Omar ordered that all the books in the library should be destroyed because, as he said "they will either contradict the Koran, in which case they are heresy, or they will agree with it, so they are superfluous." Therefore, the books and scrolls were taken out of the library and distributed as fuel to the many bathhouses of the city. So enormous was the volume of literature that it took six months for it all to be burnt to ashes heating the saunas of the conquerors.

We aren't there yet, and the folks at the National Library can breathe easy for now. But it's easy to imagine some eminence grise (Guy Giorno?) advising King Stephen I, "Anything contradicting Conservative Party doctrine is heresy; anything consistent with it but not issued by the PMO is superfluous." In fact, isn't that happening as we speak?

[H/t Vanity Press]

Compassionate conservatives [updated]

A commenter at Jay Currie's place has the final solution to the Tamil refugee problem.

UPDATE: (August 17) The Toronto Sun supports the slaughter option: "Lock and load would be our approach." [H/t reader Kev.]

Why does Harper hate our troops?

Another blow struck against our veterans.

The Conservatives' program of euthanasia continues. They don't seem to grasp the point: what good are watchdogs if you insist on putting them down when they bark?

[H/t Cathie From Canada.]

Just the facts.

This is a follow-up to No dogs? Then leash your child, please.

In order to change the designation of a park, with regard to allowing dogs within or not, at least 25 householders within a certain distance of the municipal recreation facilities must present a petition to the City of Ottawa councillor for that area and the By-laws and Regulations Services staff.

The information received is confidential and staff will not release the names nor the addresses of the individuals who signed the petition.

A notice was posted at Sandy Hill park with regard to the request to a change of designation, to ban dogs.

This change was not initiated by City employees. Whatever your personal feelings are regarding the petition presented, whether you support it or oppose it, please do not direct anger towards the staff who are ensuring that the process is handled in accordance with regulations.

Emails and faxes are effective ways of indicating your view and reasons; be succinct, coherent and respectful please. Again, there's no purpose served by being abusive.

Here again is the information; if you put dogs/Sandy Hill park in the subject line, that is helpful and efficient.

Christine Hartig, By-laws and Regulations Services, City of Ottawa, K2G 5K7. Please email or fax your comments to her before September 3, 2010: christine.hartig@ottawa.ca, fax 613.580.2179

More information about City of Ottawa regulations regarding animals.

Ideological seepage at CTV

A neo-Nazi joins the talking heads on Conservative Television News, with the familiar message: "None is too many."

[H/t Big City Lib]

UPDATE: (August 16) Anti-Racist Canada directs us to a solid article in the National Post by the unblinkered Joseph Brean, and gives us a little backstory on "free speech activist" Paul Fromm.

The Deadly Threat of So-Called "Moderate" Muslims

A favourite complaint of Muslim-baiters is the argument that moderate Muslims are not sufficiently outspoken in their criticism of radical Islam. Since most of them confine their reading to their own tiny daisy-chain of like-minded blogs, and limit their interaction with Muslims to screaming at them at demonstrations, I've always wondered just what sort of gesture they were demanding.

Not, apparently, this one.

No dogs? Then leash your child, please.

It has come to my attention that a long-standing usage of a section of Sandy Hill park in Ottawa (behind the community centre) could be terminated because petty and intolerant individuals want dogs banned from that area. They (whoever they are) have applied for a regulation change.

It would be just as petty and intolerant of me to speculate that those who initiated this application process are irresponsible parents who take their children to public recreational facilities and expect city employees to watch out for them.

You know the type. On planes, they let their child kick the back of your seat until you stand up and ask him (or her) to please stop, at which point the parents will glare at you for curbing their little darling's freedom. They take their children into washrooms or change rooms and let them run about bothering everybody. In restaurants, they don't use the opportunity to educate their children about courtesy and good manners, assuming other customers won't pay attention to their kids' whining, banging or screaming since they've become inured to such behaviour.

The playground and wading pool (summer use) area of Sandy Hill park is clearly delineated and it excludes dogs, for hygienic and safety reasons. In the other section, canine companions with their people are allowed off-leash within the perimeter. When soccer and other games are scheduled, the players' need for the field is usually respected.

There are very few such areas available in the neighbourhood, for dogs and their people to socialize. For those without vehicles (dogs are not allowed on public transportation) Sandy Hill park is well frequented meeting spot. There are many dogs who live nearby; their people are highly responsible in scooping up after them on the streets and in the parks where dogs can enter.

I have no vindication to score and no benefits to lose as my child no longer finds playground equipment exciting nor do we share our lives with a canine buddy - but I do enjoy the practical beauty of that park when invited to walk there with friends and their doggie companions.

I strongly object to a regulation that would exclude dogs from Sandy Hill park, and if you also find such change regressive, please express your opposition to:

Christine Hartig, By-laws and Regulations Services, City of Ottawa, K2G 5K7. Please email or fax your comments to her before September 2, 2010: christine.hartig@ottawa.ca, fax 613.580.2179

The Mayor was an anti-Semite

Today I find myself agreeing wholeheartedly with Bernie Farber of the Canadian Jewish Congress: no official recognition for Charlotte Whitton, please.

Whitton was best known as the eccentric Mayor of Ottawa in days of yore, who once brought a cap-gun to a Council meeting and fired it off at councillors. She was also lightening-fast with a well-placed quip. At a gathering of mayors all wearing their ceremonial chains of office, the Lord Mayor of London noticed that she was wearing a rose on her chest. "If I smell your rose, will you blush?" he asked her. "If I pull your chain, will you flush?" she responded.

It was only when I read None is Too Many that I discovered a darker side to this woman, which Farber has rightly noted. Whitton played an instrumental role in barring Jewish refugees--children, in fact--from Canada when they were fleeing the Nazi gas chambers.

B'nai Brith, playing the contrarian, disagrees with Farber--a little to my surprise, I must say, since they are well-known these days for finding "anti-Semitism" under every bed. Says Ruth Klein, of BB's League of Human Rights, "the very fact that she had these prejudices is something that has to be remembered. It has to be noted, and it has to be commented on."

Something to be remembered, certainly--but surely not to be commemorated.

I'd call for a little consistency here. A once-respected and decorated aboriginal leader, David Ahenakew, lost his honour, his reputation and the Order of Canada because of a few poisonous words uttered when he didn't know a microphone was on. But nothing he ever did or said led directly to the deaths of the people he disliked.

Whitton's biographer Patricia Rooke refers to her virulent anti-Semitism as a "foible." That seems rather the wrong word to describe a hatred running so deep that Jewish children died because of it. She has her place in history: let's leave her there and move on.

Small dead animal

I but take note of this Saskatchewan news story, and mean nothing by it.

Neither rain, nor snow, nor sleet, nor hail...nor the IDF

Good on you, CUPW.

They dare call it treason

Treason, n. 1. a crime that undermines the offender's government. 2. subversiveness, traitorousness (disloyalty by virtue of subversive behavior). 3. treachery, betrayal, perfidy (an act of deliberate betrayal).

To be accused of treason is no laughing matter. Nor should it be the stuff of cheap polemics. But the t-word has now entered the yokel lexicon: a new riff on the old demonization game.

Consider my frequent commenter Roger Smith of Burnaby, BC, who socks here as "Peter O'Donnell," "Jolly Old Saint Knickerless," and even "Yokel with Pitchfork 427903." In response to those of us concerned that fellow-citizen Omar Khadr is facing a squad of kangaroos in Gitmo after our own government successfully fought to deny him his Charter rights, this individual had the following to say:

In the moral sphere, you seek complicity with the recent murders of American aid workers under the spurious (if outrageous) charge of spreading Christianity, when you sign up to support Omar Khadr. I think such public declarations of support for Al Qaeda and the Taliban amount to treason, given that we are engaged in a war against them. It's really only because the war is contained and not likely to be lost on our soil that these normal laws do not apply, or shall I say, are not being applied. But the government of Canada would be quite within its legal rights to arrest the lot of you for treason.

Then there's Maria Nunes, aka Dodo, who at this point truly sets the blogospheric benchmark for thick. Refusal to watch an anti-Islamic video at her place and then tell everybody you know about it, she says, "is treasonous....at least in my books." (Dodo has books? Who knew?)

One doesn't have to be a flag-waving patriot to take offence at this drivel. But it's not just a matter of being offended: as citizens, we cannot allow this sort of thing to stand. Those old enough to remember Joe McCarthy wrapping his pudgy body in the American flag will know what I mean: all sorts of organizations like AWARE sprang up; citizens were set upon by others in a rising crescendo of hysteria possibly satirized by The Invasion of the Body-Snatchers ("Search the house for pods"). People lost their businesses and careers, were denounced, shunned and ruined. A mere accusation was enough.

It's no surprise that elements on the Right are now trying to rehabilitate McCarthy. Witch-hunting is fine sport, just so long as you don't run the danger of being hunted yourself. It's classic power-tripping, and it isn't a video-game: real people get hurt in this exercise of sado-politics, and we can't let it happen again. Being falsely accused of treason is obviously defamatory, and there are civil remedies, but this may not be sufficient to thwart a growing political lynch mob.

Thus far, even the Harper government has managed to avoid an overly-casual use of the t-word. But as the PM continues to primp his base, there is no guarantee that this sort of thing won't find its way into Tory talking-points, especially if the practice spreads. We need to nip this in the bud, pronto, or it's back to the future: "I am not now, and have never been, a member or supporter of al-Qaeda."

Decent citizens of this country, proud Canadians all, should rightly ask: Who is subverting the rule of law by proposing to abolish the presumption of innocence and establish guilt without trial based upon religion and/or race? Who is truly guilty of undermining Canadian values and institutions by so doing? Who, in short, are the real traitors among us? And what are we going to do about it?

Under the niqab

The recent controversy about niqabi allegedly being permitted to board aircraft without showing ID was, of course, invented or at least inflated by Tories eager to stimulate their pitchfork-wielding base. Here is one representative offering from the Winnipeg Sun--the unthinking, reactive mental junk food upon which that base thrives. And here's another, from the ever-risible David Harris.

It seems to me, however, that much of the anger expressed across the land has arisen because the women in question are (supposedly) being given a pass when the rest of us have to suffer through the boarding process: compelled to semi-strip, being felt up by CATSA guards, having newer and ever-dumber demands made of us. On my last trip, I dutifully put my laptop in a separate bin, removed its protective sleeve and placed the computer on top of it. "No!" barked a CATSA minion. "The computer has to be separated from the cover! They can't be in contact!"

You know, that sort of thing.

Words like "arbitrary" and "capricious" don't even get close to the truth of today's airport experience. So anyone who has submitted to these ritual humiliations merely in order to get from point A to point B is likely to displace his or her frustration in an instant if it appears that someone else is getting a break.

If this is the case, I think we're looking at the matter in the wrong way. The question here is: why do any of us have to show ID when boarding a plane?

As indicated in the benighted articles referenced above, most people simply assume that "security" is involved. But hold on a minute. If your person, your cabin baggage and your luggage have already been found to be entirely free of weapons and explosives (not to mention toothpaste and shampoo in too-large amounts, or nail-scissors), why is my security on the flight enhanced by knowing that the woman sitting next to me is really Aisha and not her sister Mayyadah (or Nancy, for that matter)?

Unless the police are tracking a fugitive (who, if managing to board, would have nothing in his or her possession that could pose a threat in any case), what is the purpose of all this ID-checking--when you get your boarding pass, and then again when you've passed through security? If I'm missing something obvious, and I may well be, perhaps this can be cleared up in the comments. A necessary evil? Or just more security theatre?

Yokels with pitchforks (2)

One particularly obnoxious commenter at Jay Currie's redoubt has accused me of using code in a recent post of mine: "yokels with pitchforks," he avers, means "Westerners."

Not so.

One counter-example? Lowell Green and his dittoheads, right here in Ottawa. An even better counter-example? Toronto, the centre of the universe, Toronto the sophisticated, Toronto the liberal, appears set to elect arch-yokel Rob Ford as its next mayor.

The Right may find itself in a bit of a bind over this one. How can it continue to slag Toronto when the place will likely soon be run by a mouth-breather like Ford? The man is everything the pitchfork crowd loves--sufficiently nyekulturny, in fact, to satisfy the most discerning bumpkin.

I, bigoted against Westerners? Utter nonsense. Tommy Douglas was a Westerner, as were the working-class heroes of the Winnipeg General Strike. The On to Ottawa Trek was a western protest movement. The CCF got its start out there. All the Western provinces but Alberta have had NDP governments. So this false grievance-mongering by the commenter--about whom I shall have more to say anon--is fairly wide of the mark.

But anti-intellectual, boorish knuckle-draggers? That's a different story. They do not, however, form a "community" by themselves. They are ubiquitous and toxic. Every place and time has had 'em, unfortunately: heretic-hunters, illiterates, idiot-proud know-nothings, flat-earthers, xenophobes, homophobes, anybody-o-phobes. The duty of all citizens is to rise up and counter this tide of brutishness with firmness and vision: to be intolerant, in a word, of intolerance.

This is not, by the way, another call to arms in the so-called "culture wars." As is the case with a battle of wits, a culture war is not a war at all when one side is virtually unarmed. Instead, it is a call for reason and good judgement. And in this post, gentle Westerners, I am talking to the good people of Toronto--even if some of you, for whatever reason, "think this post's about you."

Conservative College: August 12 Lecture Schedule

Anthropology 204: Professor Wendy "Buy Me Meds and a Computer Instead of Wasting Money on Haiti" Sullivan explains that "in cave man days", it was the women that used to hunt because women excel at "killing for flesh", and therefore shouldn't be working.

Anne - OR IMAN?? The Islamonazification of PEI !!

In a transparent effort to brandish the mailed fist of Islam in the face of God-fearing Christian Canadians, radical Islamists are now threatening to build a Mega Mosque in the very heart of Canadian confederation - Charlottetown, PEI, a mere jet flight away from Ground Zero in Manhattan.

Zapped!

Taser International gets a well-deserved jolt:

"The petitioner’s alternative argument before me was that the Study Commission Report’s conclusion that conducted energy weapons have the capacity to cause death was patently unreasonable and unsupported by any credible evidence.

"I find no merit in this submission. It is quite clear to me that there were presentations made to the commissioner by medical experts and others to the effect that such weapons can cause serious harm and even death in exceptional circumstances."

Jenny Paycheck

shows you how it's done in 2010.

UPDATE: (August 11) Oh, well, good while it lasted (h/t reader Mandos). Remember that the original Johnny didn't really quit his job either.

The Gitmo Kanga-ruse

Sitting in judgement on Canadian citizen and former child soldier Omar Khadr, Colonel Patrick Parrish wears his colours brightly on his sleeve. This latter-day Roy Bean has demonstrated bias from the get-go: he's plainly of the "first the trial, then the hanging" school of the American Wild West.

As the presiding officer at Khadr's drumhead "trial," Parrish replaced Col. Peter Brownbank, who had fallen afoul of the military powers that be for allowing too many defence motions (e.g., permitting the defence to have access to the evidence).

Parrish quickly proved more pliable: he immediately moved to ban photographs in court that Khadr's defence counsel at the time, Lt. Commander Bill Kuebler, considered vital evidence. Kuebler was blunt, when asked why Parrish had so ruled: "Because they show he's innocent."

It didn't seem to pose a problem for Parrish, however, that the prosecution had already introduced doctored evidence against Khadr.

More recently, Parrish continued to show his shocking bias. As I noted at the time:

Khadr is blind in one eye and has shrapnel in both. He has been suffering grievously of late, but no qualified medical assistance has been available to him in Gitmo. Parrish casually dismissed defence objections to his having to wear goggles while being transported to the court in a windowless van, and threatened to run the proceedings in Khadr's absence. Yesterday afternoon, Khadr was in court, in obvious physical pain.

It should be no surprise to anyone, therefore, that Parrish has now ruled that the prosecution may introduce statements made by a 15-year-old boy under torture. "Tainted evidence" doesn't begin to cover this: "putrid" would be more apt. Parrish's very presence in a courtroom perverts the notion of justice. He is a disgrace to his office.

But he will have his way. And Stephen Harper and his minions, who have been praying for this moment to arrive, will be delighted.

This isn't a trial in any recognizable sense: it's a judicial lynching. "We're just embarrassing ourselves by being here," said Khadr, who appears to be the only realist in the room while the sordid farce plays itself out. His counsel Dennis Edney tries to remain optimistic, but he's faltering at this point (and who can blame him):

"It's our intention and our hope during this trial to shame this judge -- which may be impossible," Edney said. "We hope we can shame the jury so they can really get a true picture of what Omar stands for."

Good luck with that. Parrish is already twisting the hemp in his hands. And our own Prime Minister is part of the mob.

Shaking down Greenpeace

Free speech warrior Ezra Levant figures he has found a way to shut Greenpeace up.

Why prosecute just the kids who hang banners off buildings, asks Ezra over at KoryMedia, when a little lawfare in the form of a novel use of the Criminal Code provides for punishing the Greenpeace senior execs.

First, Greenpeace must be redefined as a "criminal organization" :

A criminal organization is defined as one whose main activity is the “commission of one or more serious offences that, if committed, would likely result in the direct or indirect receipt of a material benefit, including a financial benefit, by the group.”
Break and enter, for example, is considered a “serious offence.”

To be convicted under Section 467.1, the crime organization’s leaders don’t need to know the exact details of the offences being committed, or even the identity of the people involved.

The list of factors for courts to consider includes the repeated use of a name (Greenpeace banners always feature their logo); the receipt of a benefit (Greenpeace always fundraises off their stunts); and repetition of these activities (almost a half-dozen times in the past two years).

Last year Mr. Levant wrote a book of anecdotes detailing the use of such "legal mechanisms as weapons" called Shakedown. But his much-vaunted commitment to free expression has always been curiously one-sided.

(h/t Waterbaby by email)

A Short Pictorial History of Communism

It's funny how life writes its own script. Last year Mrs. Dr. Balb and I took a month and tootled around the Mediterranean - and it was only when we got back that we realized we had effectively done a Tour of the Peoples of the Book, from the Vatican to the Blue Mosque to the Great Synagogue of Brussels.

This year we did a month of wandering around the Baltic. When we went back to our journals and photos and looked for this year's theme, our unwitting, retrofitted leitmotif surprised us once again - The Rise and Fall of Communism.

Sleepers

(DawgNews, Ottawa, August 9). A number of Conservative sleeper agents have been discovered in the House of Commons. Known collectively as the "Liberal Caucus," and led by Russian-American ex-pat Michael Ignatieff, most have now been returned to their party and are currently being debriefed in the Langevin Block. Ignatieff, however, is presently a fugitive, fleeing by bicycle.

"We suspected it all along," said Paul Dewar, foreign affairs critic for the NDP. "It seemed almost strategic the way they'd fold at the slightest opportunity, never press an advantage, support the government in key votes dozens of times."

Dewar noted that the Liberals had ended up opposing pay equity, defending the genocidal Colombian regime, hyping the Alberta tar sands and even arranging to lose a crucial vote on maternal health. "They just never seemed to have a principle they thought was worth defending," said Dewar. "Now we know it was more than simple opportunism and incompetence."

Liberal Gerald Kennedy said re-joining the Conservatives "would take some getting used to," but Bob Rae was more positive, saying that "it's not really much of a change for us, frankly, although it's a little embarrassing." He looked forward to working more openly with PM Stephen Harper, calling the latter "a leader for the times," and noted that there would be "no election in the foreseeable future. No way. That's not how we roll."

Some outraged constituents across the country have demanded resignations and by-elections. "We were tricked," said David Emerson, 64, a Vancouver businessman. But Harper's Chief of Staff, Guy Giorno, strongly defended his party's actions. "It's not like they were ever meant to be a real alternative," he said, "but people voted for them anyway. Nobody forced them to." Welcoming the agents in from the cold, he said, "Never mind 'crossing the floor.' We seek unity, not division."

What remains a mystery is how the agents were finally exposed. Some have speculated that the time was ripe. "After the long-form census, the Afghan detainee cover-up, the G-20 and the unreported criminals stuff," said former broadcaster and now Conservative Senator Mike Duffy, "we realized we could pretty much get away with anything. I figure the government deliberately blew its own cover. No need for it anymore."

His colleague Pamela Wallin agreed: "Honesty is the best policy," she said. "We've had a good run, but you really can't fool all the people all the time."

Off with his head

Our country needs an election. We've crossed the line. Pre-scientific mediaeval primitives are running the government, and they're wrecking our home and native land. Magic thinking has trumped science, a crude far-right ideology subbing for spells and potions. Real scientists get purged; real mathematicians resign. And real people are getting hurt.

Unlike the case a few centuries ago, millions of Galileos are now railing impotently against our sovereign, who has decreed that the sun orbits the earth. King Stephen I enjoys, however, the fervent support of yokels with pitchforks who can see this for themselves every day. They don't need a telescope to know which way the sun goes.

Killing the long-form census is like excising a portion of the brain in order to induce amnesia. In medicine, that would be called criminal malpractice. In politics, it's malfeasance. Vandalism. Our Supreme Ruler has all the destructive urges of a foul-tempered little boy in a sandbox. There will be serious consequences for ordinary folks, but the King will just put up a few more portraits of himself. He must be thanking his angry old testament God that the Liberals put the hapless Iggy-Jiggy in charge, a man without a discernible principle, position or plan, presently munching barbecue and pretending to be what he isn't.

All taxes are bad taxes, says the King, but he has no difficulty looting the treasury to pay for the continued stimulation of the population's reptile brain.* $9 billion for a brand new prison system to warehouse unreported criminals; another $9 billion for jet fighters (with an untendered contract), no doubt in case we have to go to war over Hans Island; $1.2 billion to finance that dry-run for police state politics, the G-20; and a few million more to produce a voluntary long-form census of no statistical value.

Even some on the Right are asking a few of the proper questions, summarized here as WTF? WTF? WTF? WTF?

A creationist with anger issues heads up Science and Technology, a mendacious statistical illiterate is in charge of the now-headless StatsCan, and another creationist, as noted, is planning to build prisons to house invisible felons. And a crude, loud-mouthed thug has now been appointed House Leader to shriek and bully any dissenting plebs into silence.

If it weren't for the harm done to our country, including the legitimation of unrestrained police violence in Toronto and the loss of our corporate memory, we might allow ourselves to be mildly amused by a government that resembles, policy-wise, a mash-up of the Keystone Kops and the Inquisition. But our foreign policy has become an embarrassment, and our domestic policy is in tatters. Ministers routinely interfere with arms-length agencies, or attempt to exile Canadian citizens,(claiming "royal prerogative" with entirely straight faces), while the King padlocks Parliament--or just tells it to go fly. The man who laughs has simply not yet heard the terrible news.

It's nothing less than our civic duty to run this horrific gang of subliterate hoodlums out of office, by any means necessary and as soon as possible, to get the hands moving clockwise again. We're in serious trouble, folks, and it's time for the craven politicians of the Opposition to gird their loins.

Here's one post-modernist who suddenly has a hankering for a swift return to the rule of law and the security of statistics and the scientific method. (Somewhere my late father and sparring-partner, a rationalist to the end, is smiling.) I'm not just angry; I'm terrified. And I happen to believe that a majority of my countrymen and women are feeling the same way about now.

Get off that stupid bicycle, Iggy. Help end this waking nightmare. As for the rest of us, who says we can't pick up a torch or a pitchfork ourselves when the occasion demands?
_______________________
*"Lacking language, its impulses are instinctual and ritualistic. It's concerned with fundamental needs such as survival, physical maintenance, hoarding, dominance, preening and mating. " Sound like anyone you know?

Identity politics: IOKIYAC

From the horse's, er, mouth:

It's...extremely problematic that Judge Walker is a practicing homosexual himself. He should have recused himself from this case, because his judgment is clearly compromised by his own sexual proclivity. The fundamental issue here is whether homosexual conduct, with all its physical and psychological risks, should be promoted and endorsed by society. That’s why the people and elected officials accountable to the people should be setting marriage policy, not a black-robed tyrant whose own lifestyle choices make it impossible to believe he could be impartial.

--Tim Wildmon, president of the American Family Association

Mmm...K. How quickly the dyed-in-the-wool opponents of identity politics can take a U-turn. Funny how that works. From now on, may we demand that Catholic judges recuse themselves when pedophile priests are brought before them? Black judges, when affirmative action is challenged?

And then there's that so-called mosque (actually a Muslim cultural centre) to be built in New York, not at Ground Zero, but two blocks away. Never mind: a Muslim is a Muslim. Just don't build any Christian churches anywhere near the Alfred P. Murrah Building in Oklahoma City. Fair ball?

Trickle up economics

From self-proclaimed former economic hitman, 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 "policing" the rest of the world and handing out massive bonuses to the same banksters who wrecked the joint.

Trickle up economics, I believe it's called.

Equality before the law comes to California

Margaret Somerville, the Islamists and assorted so-con bloggers won't like this.

Which alone makes it worth celebrating.

Holocaust-denial defended

...at a prominent conservative blogsite.

First it was frequent commenter "john begley," claiming that Jews ran up the Holocaust numbers to get higher reparations out of the Germans. (Hardly a word against this obscene comment was recorded from the regulars at Jay's place. But the side-stepping and fancy dancing were something to behold.)

Now it's Gerry T. Neal's turn:

"Holocaust denial" is in many cases, a defense mechanism on the part of people of German background in response to post-WWII German bashing. It is a shield to protect Germans against anti-German racism far more often than it is a sword to attack the Jews. It is not good history but it is not the sin Dr. Dawg makes it out to be either.

Umm...OK. Confronted by real anti-Semitism, your first response is to defend it by claiming it's merely defensive in nature. Whatever, Gerry.

Taking a brief respite from continual Muslim-bashing, Jay's regulars are beginning to let us know what we knew already: anti-Semitism is, and always has been, a disease of the Right. And, for the record, that Right includes the social-conservative, religious agenda of the Islamists. Amazing that they haven't joined forces with the small army of homophobes and anti-choicers who infest the starboard side of the blogosphere. If the latter could only give up their xenophobia, they might help create an electoral bloc to be reckoned with.

By all means, keep fighting for free expression but against minarets and burqas, Jay. And go on denouncing criticism of Israel by progressives as "anti-Semitic" while the real thing gets a continual pass at your house. But, if I might gently suggest, the Whitman defence only works for poets.

Stockwell Day, crime shopper

Doris' cheery crime shoppers philosophy on prisons seems to be : If you build them, they will come.

According to Shockwell Doris and JusticeMin Rob Nicholson yesterday, we're going to need more prisons to deal with the "alarming" increase in "unreported crime" ... that was last reported six years ago.

Well, you can see their point, can't you? If more people aren't reporting crimes, then unreported crimes must be going up and we're going to need somewhere to put all them unreported criminals!

And why aren't people reporting those crimes? Via The Jurist :

"(A Statistics Canada) analyst said the No. 1 reason given by individuals for not calling the police about a crime is that they believe it was not serious enough. Only two per cent said they feared retribution, and one per cent said they felt the police may be biased.

Statistics Canada reported in their last General Social Survey (GSS) that an estimated 34% of Canadians who are victims of crime still aren't reporting the crime to police, including: - an estimated 88% of sexual assaults; - an estimated 69% of household thefts, and - and (sic) estimated 67% of personal property thefts."

Kady advises us that Doris is basing his claims about unreported crime on the 2004 International Crime Victimization Survey.
Three years ago I had a look at that survey. Here are some of the more buckety questions in it :

Under Spousal violence : "Puts you down or calls you names to make you feel bad"

Under Stalking : "Sent you unwanted email messages"

Under Property Damage : "During the last 12 months did anyone deliberately damage or destroy any property belonging to you or anyone in your houshold, including a window or a fence?"

Puts you down? Unwanted emails? Broken fences? Holy crap! Build more prisons!

Meanwhile back in the real world, here's the reported 2004 Statscan crime stats from the year Doris is still bleating about. Yup, going down since 1991. And if I may be so rude as to bring up something a bit more current, like for instance this year's report : crime still going down.

Deal with it, Doris.

Conservative illiteracy

Kate McMillan's place is good for a laugh through the yawns once in a while. Here's one of her guest bloggers, EBD, snorting with indignation about Errol Mendes' column in the Ottawa Citizen yesterday. First, Mendes:

What the government can't do, if it does not want to torture Canadian democracy, is to force public servants to develop and promote policies they do not accept as in the interests of Canadians, and then pretend the public service is fully supportive of the ideologically driven policies.

Then Kate's comprehension-challenged assistant:

Yes, you read that right: it's up to public servants to decide whether they will accept or not accept the policies of an elected government, and they have a right to determine whether or not a particular policy is "in the interests of Canadians."

Actually, old chap, I did read it right. And Mendes is spot on: it is immoral to seek advice from public servants and then misrepresent that advice to the public. Some of us knew perfectly well that Tony Clements was telling porkies about the "support" he allegedly received from StatsCan on the long-form census, but it took the resignation of Munir Sheikh to drive that home to Canadians in general.

Ask for advice from those who have expertise: take it or not. You're the gummint. But don't lie about the people who gave it to you. And then make feeble attempts to jam your lie down the memory hole.

PS: To satisfy your clinical curiosity, be sure to read the comments. They never disappoint.

WikiLeaks vs Project Vigilant - the end of privacy

WikiLeaks' mandate is to make public those documents purposely hidden by information gatekeepers. Their goal is justice through transparency and, as Julian Assange recently put it : "I enjoy crushing the bastards".
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At the other end of the scale you have snitch hackers like Project Vigilant - logo on left. According to Andy Greenburg at Forbes, the 600 member organization "monitors the traffic of 12 regional Internet service providers and hands much of that information to federal agencies." Its roster includes members from NSA and DARPA.
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Project Vigilant Director Chet Uber announced Sunday that he was the guy who convinced one of PV's researchers, the hacker Adrian Lamo, to inform the federal government about Bradley Manning's alleged part in leaking to WikiLeaks the U.S. Apache helicopter footage of the killing of civilians and two journalists in a Baghdad suburb -what we now know as the Collateral Murder video -after Manning spilled his guts to Lamo in an online chatroom.

"In June, Uber said he learned from Lamo's father that the young researcher had identified Manning as the video's source, and pressured him to meet with federal agencies to name Manning as Wikileaks' whistleblower."

It was Uber who then contacted the U.S. Department of Defense and the U.S. Air Force Office of Special Investigation on behalf of Lamo.
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What an amazing coincidence, eh? - that 22 year old intelligence officer Bradley Manning should happen to spill his guts to a member of Project Vigilant in a chatroom .
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But how can Project Vigilant(e) legally harvest info off the internet about the rest of us?

"...because the companies (the Internet Service Providers, or ISPs) included a provision allowing them to share users' Internet activities with third parties in their end user license agreements (EULAs), Vigilant was able to legally gather data from those Internet carriers and use it to craft reports for federal agencies.
A Vigilant press release says that the organization tracks more than 250 million IP addresses a day and can "develop portfolios on any name, screen name or IP address."

So although there are some safeguards on what info the US government can collect about you - remember the stink about TIA and TIPS? - a private sector organization like Project Vigilant can take over that job for the government.
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In the comments below the Forbes article, Chet Uber takes issue with Greenberg over his use of the word "employee" to describe the Project Vigilante "volunteers", and says "BBHC Global (which certainly has an interesting website ) is an NGO classified as a "Not Just for Profit" entity".
Uber is also a founding member of InfraGard. According to its website, IfraGard :

"is a partnership between the FBI and the private sector. InfraGard is an association of businesses, academic institutions, state and local law enforcement agencies, and other participants dedicated to sharing information and intelligence to prevent hostile acts against the United States"

What absolutely amazes me here is that a lot of people went absolutely ballistic when WikiLeaks revealed to them what their governments are up to, and yet it's apparently just fine with them when the info is going the other way and government surreptitiously outsources the collecting of private information about them to.
Their motto seems to be : Knowing about your government - bad; your government knowing about you - good.
This is surely the total acceptance of living in a surveillance society - when you are willing to defend not only that surveillance, but your own complete ignorance of what it consists of.
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Meantime, best have another look at that end user licence agreement you signed with your ISP.
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Monday night update: Greenwald : Project Vigilant and the government/corporate destruction of privacy

Thursday update : Greenwald retracts : Re-visiting Project Vigilant.

PV probably all bs, including influence on Lamo.

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Update 2 : A commenter at Creekside : Jugiter Viglio? What, they couldn't summon sufficient eternal vigilance not to have a spelling mistake in their own logo?

Critical Government Functions Outsourced

I've watched as the Harper government dismantles our environmental monitoring and management programs, abandons the concepts of food and water security, quietly dismantles Health Canada's capacity to protect health standards, undoes the Parks Act, cripples its own data collection and analysis, deregulates transportation safety, and generally abandons any notion of regulatory limitation on revenue generation.

But this is going too far.