The Galloping Beaver

Abdelrazik is another Arar

2008-07-24T03:28:00.000-07:00

Remember Abousfian Abdelrazik, the Canadian/Sudanese imprisoned and allegedly tortured in Sudan for two years at Canada's request? Sudan found him innocent of terrorist charges in 2004 and offered to fly him back to Montreal but Canada declined so Abdelrazik is now living in the lobby of the Canadian embassy in Khartoum. Yeah that guy.

Canada feared U.S. backlash over man trapped in Sudan

Senior [Transport Canada] intelligence officials warned against allowing Abousfian Abdelrazik, a Canadian citizen, to return home from Sudan because it could upset the Bush administration, classified documents reveal.

"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," intelligence officials say in documents in the possession of The Globe and Mail.

"Continued co-operation between Canada and the U.S. in the matters of security is essential. We will need to continue to work closely on issues related to the Security of North America, including the case of Mr. Abdelrazik," the document says.

The "Security of North America".
Drop Steve and David a line : pm@pm.gc.ca and Emerson.D@parl.gc.ca

CSIS issues a clarification

2008-07-24T00:01:00.000-07:00

- Hey, it wasn't us who conducted interviews with a sleep-deprived Omar Khadr.

Canadian Security Intelligence Service - 2003 Interviews with Omar Khadr - Media Coverage
Ottawa, July 21st, 2008

"Information relating to interviews of Omar Khadr by the Canadian Security Intelligence Service CSIS and the Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade (DFAIT) were recently released to Mr. Khadr’s legal counsel, following rulings by the Supreme Court of Canada in May 2008, and by the Federal Court of Canada in June 2008.

Following the public release of this information by Mr. Khadr’s lawyers, there has been much national and international media coverage pertaining to these interviews. Much of this coverage has focussed on video footage of Service interviews conducted with Mr. Khadr in February 2003.

Mr. Khadr was questioned by CSIS in 2003 about individuals - including those linked to the Al Qaeda organization - who may pose a threat to the security of Canada and its interests. CSIS interviewed Mr. Khadr to collect threat-related information and intelligence and did not discuss consular issues with him, as this is not CSIS's role.

During the recent media coverage of this issue, some factual errors have been reported by certain media outlets. Specifically, select media outlets have claimed that Mr. Khadr had been mistreated by U.S. authorities - including via sleep deprivation - prior to those 2003 interviews with CSIS. This is simply not accurate. In fact, it should be clear that CSIS had no information to substantiate claims that Mr. Khadr was being mistreated by U.S. authorities in conjunction with the CSIS interviews in 2003.

Furthermore, the allegations which subsequently surfaced regarding sleep deprivation were in relation to a 2004 interview in Guantanamo Bay with Mr. Khadr, an interview in which CSIS was not a participant."

Over to you, DFAIT.

Cross-posted at Creekside

Bastards ! ! ! !

2008-07-23T16:42:00.000-07:00

Why is this not at all surprising based on previous US actions?

Per Reuters this evening:

U.S. rejects outside probe of Canadian sent to Syria
Wed Jul 23, 2008 6:18pm EDT - By James Vicini

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. Attorney General Michael Mukasey said on Wednesday he had rejected a request from lawmakers that an outside special counsel investigate the case of a Canadian taken off a plane in New York and sent to Syria, where he says he was tortured.

Mukasey said under questioning at a House of Representatives Judiciary Committee hearing that he did not believe that a special counsel was warranted "at this time."

Maher Arar, a Syrian-born software engineer, was taken into custody by U.S. officials during a 2002 stopover in New York while on his way home to Canada and then deported to Syria because of suspected links to al Qaeda.

Arar says he was imprisoned in Syria for a year and tortured. His case has become a sore spot in U.S.-Canada relations.

_______________

Rep. William Delahunt, a Democrat from Massachusetts, cited testimony last month that U.S. officials may have sent Arar to Syria, rather than Canada, because they knew of the likelihood of torture.

"If that doesn't trigger need for a special prosecutor, I can't imagine what would," he said.

Mukasey said U.S. officials received assurances from Syria that Arar would not be tortured. "Sending him to Canada could have posed a threat to our country," Mukasey said, adding that sending him to Syria was "safer."

'TENDENCY TO COVER UP ITS CRIMES'

Maria LaHood, an attorney for the Center for Constitutional Rights in New York, which represents Arar in the United States, replied, "Sending Maher to Syria instead of home to Canada was certainly not safer for him, and did nothing to make the United States safer."

She said, "The tendency of the Department of Justice to cover up its crimes is exactly why an outside prosecutor is needed."

The title of this post says it all . . . .

(Cross-posted from Moved to Vancouver)

TASER™ Saves Lives Inc. - Victim #21

2008-07-22T23:49:00.000-07:00

A man was TASERED™ and then pronounced dead in hospital after more than five police cars with at least eight officers attended a citizen's call in Winnipeg today, bringing the total of TASER™ related deaths in Canada to 21.
Very few details and no citizen videos are available so far.
A Winnipeg police spokesperson said : "... at this point it's too early to tell if the cause of death had anything at all to do with the electronic control device."

Police in Winnipeg recently received 50 more TASERs™ which are classed in the same intermediate force category as pepper spray.

In other TASER™ news :

"RCMP officers who went to Poland to talk to people close to Robert Dziekanski seemed focused on finding negative things about him, says one of those interviewed.

"What kind of person was he, was he a drinker, drug user? Was he aggressive?" she said through a translator. "Most questions were to expose him as not a nice human being -- not to find out what kind of person he really was."

This fits in with some Vancouver news articles on Dziekanski that came out following the release of Paul Pritchard's incriminating video :

" the decrepit, $77-a-month flat Dziekanski shared with his alcoholic partner ... a five-year jail term for robbery when he was a teenager ... tumultuous common-law relationship ..."

Oh well then.

Cross-posted at Creekside

Logic, the Blogging Tories and Omar Khadr

2008-07-22T19:59:00.000-07:00

A busy weekend this side of the pond and I was at a bit of a loss for material for a blog post --once again it is JimDandy to the rescue as David lights the fuse on the bomb of Teh Stoopid that is the Blogging Tories and their maximum supremo numero uno Stephen Taylor.

Taylor says:

As a conservative, I have for the most part found intellectual solace in logic on issue tracks where my bleeding-heart friends usually hug the emotional left rail. The broad-arching free markets help rise more people out of poverty than knee-jerk social and emotional reaction to give hand-outs to sustain a substandard of living is but one example where cold right-wing logic is a better and more constructive end that short-sighted albeit well-meaning emotionalism. I have always believed that right-wingers act upon what they know to be true, whereas left-wingers act upon what they feel to be true.

Logical?

The conservative movement?

Surely, you jest!

We are talking here about the same people whose shrieking hysteria about gay marriage is based on nothing any more well-considered than "My pastor said teh gays make baby Jebus cry," a deepseated prejudice that "homos are icky" and that if two lesbians want their relationship legally recognized by the state and a wedding at the Unitarian Church, it somehow means that their own marital bliss is endangered and that the Catholic Church will be forced to host gay weddings resembling drag queen festivals.

The same people who think that their religious tomfoolery belongs in biology classes.

The same people who think that just because a handful of cranks and crackpots publish some crap on a blog or self-publish a book denying global warming, their arguments are of equal weight to those made by the overwhelming majority of scientists in peer-reviewed journals.

Need I go on?

These paragons of logic are the same people who want to cut taxes while the country is involved in a costly war with no real end in sight and while the government still has a massive debt to pay off.

These are the guys who, in every election, tell a few gory anecdotes to scare the rubes and promise "to get tough on crime and fight the rising tide of lawlessness" despite the fact that the crime rate has gone down more or less continuously since the 1970s.

These sensible and reasonable people are the ones who seem to see Islamofascistcommie terrorists under the bed and are suspicious of anyone slightly brownish.

The same chuckleheaded Leave-It-to-Beaver wannabes that think because their next door neighbor eats curry or pad Thai instead of pot roast on Sunday, and the bank teller has an unfamiliar accent, that multiculturalism is ruining the country.

The conservatives in Canada, as in most countries are all about emotions: Fear of the new and foreign and grief for the old and familiar.

To parse Taylor's egregious overstatements more closely, let us look at this gem:

"The broad-arching free markets help rise more people out of poverty than knee-jerk social and emotional reaction to give hand-outs to sustain a substandard of living is but one example where cold right-wing logic is a better and more constructive end that short-sighted albeit well-meaning emotionalism. "

Yes, because as we all know providing people who have no food and no money with the means to stay alive is really just cruel. Those knee-jerk social and emotional reactionaries at Unicef and the World Food Program are just prolonging misery in the third world. Don't those starving kids know that big corporations have every right to own the DNA patterns of corn seed? Don't those people with AIDS in Africa know that drug companies need to make a bigger profit than last year and can't just sell drugs at slightly above cost to the needy? Better to let them starve, sicken and die and be done with it and let the magic hand of the market take care of things. You know, the same markets that kept coal miners on starvation wages until they died of black lung in North America before they were unionized and the evil well-meaning emotionalist do-gooders managed to get things like child-labor and workplace-safety laws passed.

Conservatives who seem to think the Adam Smith's Wealth of Nation is the first and last word on the beauty of laissez-faire capitalism would do well to remember that before he wrote it, Smith authored The Theory of Moral Sentiments. While Smith was a dour, persnickity Scots academic who prized independence, prudence and propriety, and by today's standards a bit of a prude, his theory of morals was based on sympathy and benevolence was ranked among the most valued virtues.

Logic?

You keep using this word, Stephen. I don't think it means what you think it means.

Stephen's original post deals with how Omar Khadr, the notorious teenage threat to western civilization who has now spent a third of his life in Guantanamo Bay must not be allowed back into the country. About how the Prime Minister should not intervene and bring him back to Canada, because he faces very serious charges and we just don't repatriate Canadians who fall afoul of the law in foreign countries.

Taylor:
"But, let’s go to first principles. Omar Khadr doesn’t himself deserve to be released from jihadi limbo at Gitmo and tried before an American court."

How about the first principle of "innocent until proven guilty" or the right to habeas corpus and a timely trial?

However, as individuals who are defending a society based upon key values such as due process, presumption of innocence, and the rule of law, we deserve it.

And so does young Mr. Khadr. We all deserve due procress - equality in the eyes of the law and all that, you know. Small problem though, Stephen, due process should have kicked in when he was captured as a child of 14 -- five years ago, but the United States government decided that the Geneva Convention was "quaint" and just didn't apply to them and that they could just make up the rules as they went along. Khadr is accused of throwing a grenade in a firefight in Afghanistan that killed an American soldier. While it is all a bit murky whether he actually did so, I would expect anyone big enough to heft a grenade or a rifle could probably be reasonably expected to do so if the place they were staying, which is alleged to be an Al-Qaida base, was suddenly overrun by foreign troops. The American soldiers in question were, after all, shooting at Khadr. I think self-defense could certainly be argued as could his being a valid, if underage, prisoner of war. If killing enemy combatants on the battlefield is murder, he could be judge guilty of that, but I think calling it a war crime is stretching the definition a bit.

Khadr’s present threat does not manifest itself in his illiberal hatred of our culture, it rests instead in the extent to which we are to make our own values malleable in order rationalize our understandable but illogical emotion.

Good grief, I agree with Stephen Taylor -- somebody mark the day on the calendar. The blind squirrel has found a nut - those who give up liberty for security get and deserve neither. But then, as if to prove himself blind, he bring the whole thing back and dumps it in the lap of the "Eeeeevul Libruls"

There is inconsistency on the Liberal side too, of course. Khadr was captured, interrogated and held under approval from the previous Liberal administrations. For them to demand his return, shows intellectual dishonesty and absurd emotionalism.

Or it could show that new information has come to light regarding the fact that the boy was being tortured, that the previous governments had no reason to think he would be held indefinitely, or simply that they are willing to admit that they made a mistake and would like to see it corrected. But of course admitting mistakes is not something neocons are really able to do for some reason.

Khadr should not be returned to Canada, as we do not simply return Canadian citizens to Canada when they run afoul of the law in the United States. However,
to complete this logical loop, Khadr must face the law in an American court. With both US Presidential candidates calling for the closure of Guantanamo, Prime Minister Harper would be wise to call for Khadr to face American due process.

Yes, it would be wise for the Prime Minister to call for Khadr to face due process, if such a thing existed instead of the current kangaroo court system faced by Gitmo inmates. And we regularly bring Canadians imprisoned in foreign countries back to Canada.

Some background on the "due process" and this case can be found here. There is plenty to digest, but in terms of the system faced, this bit is enlightening:

The Supreme Court heard on March 28, 2006, a challenge to George W. Bush's power to create military commissions to put Guantanamo prisoners on trial for war crimes (cf. the profile of Salim Ahmed Hamdan in "related cases"). On June 29, 2006, the Supreme Court ruled that the US President exceeded his authority in establishing the military commissions at Guantánamo Bay. The Court also ruled that the commissions violated U.S. military law and the Geneva Conventions.
A controversial new bill was passed by the US Senate and the House of Representatives in late September 2006.
The Military Commissions Act, which is heavily criticised by human rights organisations- allows terror suspects to be tried by military tribunals rather than civilian courts- gives defendants a legal right to see evidence and a (limited) right to counsel- forbids "serious" breaches of the Geneva Conventions, such as torture, in the course of interrogation procedures- gives the president the authority to "interpret the meaning and application of the Geneva Conventions"- allows for hearsay evidence in trials of terror suspects.
Furthermore, the new legislation prohibits any person from invoking the Geneva Conventions or their protocols as a source of rights in any action in any US court.
The new bill entered into force following signature by the President in October
2006.

So given the cold, hard facts in the cases, namely that due process as it is understood by reasonable people anywhere in the western democracies will not be visited upon the unfortunate Mr.Khadr, and given that he says we all deserve due process etcetera, Stephen chooses to jump off the bridge of logic into the river of fear and concludes that we don't dare bring one our own citizens home to face due process, but that we should abandon them to a kangaroo court system in a country that has repudiated the rule of law and its own adherence to international treaties and acceptable conduct. A country that tortured Khadr while he was still a child and continues to hold hundreds without charge and dubious recourse to the courts. Interesting choice.

Logic?

You keep using this word, Stephen. I don't think it means what you think it means.

Crossposted and expanded from the Woodshed

Vacation... finally!

2008-07-21T22:22:00.000-07:00

We're getting out of here for a while. It's been a busy two years and a break has finally presented itself. We're taking it.

To most of those who really know me they'd accuse me of a bus man's holiday. We're taking our boat from Maple Bay to northern Vancouver Island to visit old friends. 34 feet of exclusion and solitude. And perhaps a few moments of dealing with the reality of navigation. (Actually, a lot of them, but that's the reality, and the responsibility, of being in a vessel on the water.)

We will be doing 6 knots. Period. That's our new reality. Sometimes we may be going slower. Tides can do that to you.

Who cares?

We're out to have some fun, take a bunch of pictures and perhaps, (FSM willing) catch a few fish. As much as we're looking forward to that what we're really looking forward to is what we're not going to get: newspapers, contracts, emails, phone calls and threats from the city that we were watering on the wrong day.

We're leaving and we're not coming back until we're thoroughly tired of some of the friends who helped us along in life. In fact, Cheryl wants to visit one of her bridesmaids. (There's a story you need to hear.)

Co-bloggers, it's all yours.

Readers, we'll see you when the days get shorter and the fog rolls in.

Growing in California

2008-07-21T19:38:00.000-07:00

How medical marijuana is transforming the pot industry.

California now has more than two hundred thousand physician-sanctioned pot users and hundreds of dispensaries.

Since 1996, when a referendum known as Proposition 215 was approved by California voters, it has been legal, under California state law, for authorized patients to possess or cultivate the drug. The proposition also allowed a grower to cultivate marijuana for a patient, as long as he had been designated a “primary caregiver” by that patient.

In 2003, the California State Legislature passed Senate Bill 420. The law was intended to clear up some of the confusion caused by Proposition 215, which had failed to specify how patients who could not grow their own pot were expected to obtain the drug, and how much pot could be cultivated for medical purposes. The law permitted any Californian with a doctor’s note to own up to six mature marijuana plants, or to possess up to half a pound of processed weed, which could be obtained from a patients’ collective or coöperative—terms that were not precisely defined in the statute. It also permitted a primary caregiver to be paid “reasonable compensation” for services provided to a qualified patient “to enable that person to use marijuana.”

The counties of California were allowed to amend the state guidelines, and the result was a patchwork of rules and regulations. Upstate in Humboldt County, the heartland of high-grade marijuana farming in California, the district attorney, Paul Gallegos, decided that a resident could grow up to ninety-nine plants at a time, in a space of a hundred square feet or less, on behalf of a qualified patient. The limited legal protections afforded to pot growers and dispensary owners have turned marijuana cultivation and distribution in California into a classic “gray area” business, like gambling or strip clubs, which are tolerated or not, to varying degrees, depending on where you live and on how aggressive your local sheriff is feeling that afternoon.

Most researchers agree that the value of the U.S. marijuana crop has increased sharply since the mid-nineties, as California and twelve other states have passed medical-marijuana laws. A drug-policy analyst named Jon Gettman recently estimated that in 2006 Californians grew more than twenty million pot plants. He reckoned that between 1981 and 2006 domestic marijuana production increased tenfold, making pot the leading cash crop in America, displacing corn. A 2005 State Department report put the country’s marijuana crop at twenty-two million pounds. The street value of California’s crop alone may be as high as fourteen billion dollars.

In the past five years, an unwritten set of rules has emerged to govern Californians participating in the medical-marijuana trade. Federal authorities do not generally bother arresting patients or doctors who write prescriptions. Instead, the D.E.A. pressures landlords to evict dispensaries and stages periodic raids on them, either shutting them down or seizing their money and marijuana. Dispensary owners are rarely arrested, and patient records are usually left alone. Through trial and error, dispensary owners have learned how to avoid trouble: Don’t advertise in newspapers, on billboards, or on flyers distributed door to door. Don’t sell to minors or cops. Don’t open more than two stores. Any Californian who is reasonably prudent can live a life centered on the cultivation, sale, and consumption of marijuana with little fear of being fined or going to jail.

Marvellous, worth the read.

Shorter Korn Kob Kory

2008-07-21T12:42:00.000-07:00

on repatriating Omar Khadr:

"Nyah nyah nyah nyah nyah

The Libs did it fir-rst and so

we're just following the-em

Nyah nyah nyah nyah nyah"

A rousing display of independent foreign policy analysis from "the genius behind Corn Cob Bob, the ethanol lobby's mascot with the corncob head"

Fox News does education...

2008-07-21T12:30:00.000-07:00

But apparently they can't spell it. And as the Huffington Post points out, Fox News has a bit of trouble with geography too.

h/t Think Progress

You want a mouse? THIS is a mouse!

2008-07-20T17:36:00.000-07:00

I know at least one blogger who is going to think this is very cool. Found this in the cabin at Cap'n Dyke, Lesbian Pirate Queen & Rogue Blogger, where we proudly serve as the Canukistani member in The Mound.

Nuri al-Maliki backs Obama

2008-07-20T09:29:00.000-07:00

The prime minister of Iraq has made his choice. Of the two ideas for continuing the US occupation of Iraq, (Obama - depart within 16 months; or, McCain - stay forever) Nuri al-Maliki is clearly siding with Obama.

Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki told a German magazine he supported prospective U.S. Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama's proposal that U.S. troops should leave Iraq within 16 months.
In an interview with Der Spiegel released on Saturday, Maliki said he wanted U.S. troops to withdraw from Iraq as soon as possible.

"U.S. presidential candidate Barack Obama talks about 16 months. That, we think, would be the right timeframe for a withdrawal, with the possibility of slight changes."

There was another little nuance in Nuri's interview with Der Spiegel. (emphasis mine)

Asked if he supported Obama's ideas more than those of John McCain, Republican presidential hopeful, Maliki said he did not want to recommend who people should vote for.

"Whoever is thinking about the shorter term is closer to reality. Artificially extending the stay of U.S. troops would cause problems."

What Nuri is suggesting is that if the US stays in Iraq any longer it is under false pretenses. (Notwithstanding the fact that the reason they are there in the first place is the result of false pretenses.)

The White House said on Friday President George W. Bush and Maliki had agreed that a security deal under negotiation should set a "time horizon" for meeting "aspirational goals" for reducing U.S. forces in Iraq.

That statement is sufficiently vague as to mean US troops could effectively stay in Iraq forever.

"The Americans have found it difficult to agree on a concrete timetable for the exit because it seems like an admission of defeat to them. But it isn't," Maliki told Der Spiegel.

That would be the line used by negotiators in the Bush administration, and may well be a factor among those who would like the whole thing to end but hesitate to view the whole thing as a total waste, but it is overshadowed by the fact that the Bush administration has lost on so many fronts in Iraq that setting an exit date for US forces isn't really going to change much. And the Bush administration, as dday at Hullabaloo points out, wasn't in Iraq to win.

Regardless of Maliki's motives, this is a total rejection of the McCain conservative position on Iraq. They never wanted to "win," they wanted to stay. And they are being told they have to leave.

It's not defeat the conservative camp is so worried about, (but you can expect to hear a lot from them in the future on that subject if Obama ascends to the presidency), it's the loss of a colony they can't stand.

The Iraq adventure had nothing to do with winning or losing. The Cheney faction had not even considered losing. They really believed that they had the upper hand militarily and that the whole thing would be a three-week overrun of a weak opponent, a mild looking occupation to get things running, the American way, the insertion of a tame government under the guise of purple-fingered democracy, colonial supervision of everything and the exploitation of Iraq's primary and very valuable natural resource. And of course, much like the British did in India, (something the Cheney faction never bothered to look into), the colony (and the resource) would have to be protected from avaricious neighbours and other greedy buggers who might be inclined to steal or even make a deal for what was now rightfully the property of the Bush administration and its sponsor, Big Oil.

It was all very neat and tidy. If it seems overly simplistic, the reality is, the Cheney faction never planned for anything else. There was no occupation plan, no contingency planning and the timetable never went beyond On this date we start pumping oil, pay for our little invasion and we'll all continue to drive Hummers and Escalades down to the corner store.

It was all made evident when, after the Cheney faction paraded their stooge on the deck of USS Abraham Lincoln to announce Mission Accomplished, the Bush administration has twice issued strategy changes to deal with an insurgency they never even considered in their ramp up to invasion. When Bush stood and crowed that major combat operations had ended in Iraq the US military had lost 140 people killed. Since then the number has risen to 4125.

Iraq's "democracy" is a mess and oil production, over five years into the economic colonization, is still struggling to achieve a fraction of its potential output. The US is mortgaged to the hilt and is viewed around the globe as something akin to a hungry shark in kiddies wading pool.

Defeat? That would be the least of America's problems. But that's all you'll hear about from the Cheney faction in the next few months.

UPDATE: Nuri al-Malaki is now saying he was misquoted and the translation was wrong in Der Spiegel.

Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki did not back the plan of Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama to withdraw U.S. troops from Iraq and his comments to a German magazine on the issue were misunderstood, the government's spokesman said on Sunday.

It was all in the translation.

Ali al-Dabbagh said in a statement that Maliki's remarks to Der Spiegel were translated incorrectly.

Yup.

Translation: This is your supreme leader. You withdraw those comments and find a way to make it look like a reporter's mistake or I'll cut off your money faster than a moron can choke on a pretzel.

The colonialism continues.

Thanks to co-blogger West End Bob for the heads up.

At the going down of the Sun, and in the morning...

2008-07-20T06:33:00.000-07:00

With condolences and respect to the family and friends of Corporal James Hayward, 2nd Battalion, Princess Patricia's Canadian Light Infantry. Killed due to enemy action.

Did you know this? I didn't know this.

2008-07-19T01:46:00.000-07:00

It's why I try to read Bouphonia, particularly on Fridays.

I know it's wrong to kick someone when they've already gone down, but being as Mitt Romney is a Republican he'll accept that it's the conservative version of fair play. (That being considerably different from fairness and sportsmanlike conduct.)

So, it seems the Mittster, when he was hanging about the "corner office", (Massachusetts is egalitarian in that it is one of the few states not to have a governors mansion), tried to make some hay in the political sunshine by being the first state to accept that "marriage" is a secular arrangement and a commitment between two people who wish to share their life, love and resources with each other - regardless of whether they are of the opposite sex or not. In other words, Mitt fully embraced gay marriage.

Good on Mitt, you say. Massachusetts may have a wanker as a governor (then), but at least he has his head screwed on properly.

Not so fast. Apparently the Mitt was playing fast and furious with the law. When he decided that all people should be treated equally, he also shut down the border.

It took a different governor, Deval Patrick, to be precise, to sort out what Mitt had done. Patrick is a Democrat and has a long CV, which includes service in the Clinton administration, as a champion of equal rights.

So, what is it that Mitt did?

Glad you asked.

Mitt invoked a forgotten law that was enacted in 1913 and has roots as far back as 1843. It prevented couples from out-of-state from acquiring a marriage license in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. (Did I spell that right?)

In short, after our pal Mitt signed legislation that effectively wiped out restrictions on who could marry, he contacted every county, city, borough and village and reminded them that the only people they could issue a marriage license to were the good citizens of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts.

So said that law.

If a couple was from out-of-state they would probably have to go to that blank space which always seems to appear at the top of US weather maps and which is responsible for nasty snowstorms, low-fat cheese and a chain of donut shops selling really shitty coffee.

But that 1913 law had not been enforced for, well, decades. One of the reasons is that legal experts believe that it was enacted to prevent couples taking advantage of the 1843 anti-miscenegation law which allowed (Hang on! The ride gets good from here!) interracial marriage.

Why would Massachusetts (did I spell that right?) do such a thing? Well, to protect their own people - that's why.

You see, some of those Southe'n gentlemen were none to keen on those negros and persons of color actually marryin' or co-habitatin' and they proposed a Constitutional amendment to prohibit interracial marriage.... forever!

That, by the way, was the late Seaborn Roddenberry of Georgia.... a Democrat. The ugly part of his proposal was to invoke the "One Drop Rule" which meant that if a person had any non-Caucasian blood in them, they would be prohibited from marrying.

In Mitt's case, however, it seems the veneer on his actions was that he was worried that the counties, cities, boroughs and villages would suffer an influx of applications from... gawd forbid! New York City!!

So, Mitt Romney, who wanted really, really bad to be preznit, tells us all that as governor of the Commonwealth of Massachusets he invoked an old law, couched in exreme racism,and that he's your man .... ok. well maybe Vice man.

I don't think so.

By the way, has anybody seen or heard from the Mittsters sons?

Since daddy has nothing in the way of a country to save, I guess the lads are in the recruiting process.

Makes me feel are warm and fuzzy.

And, don't worry Mitt. Someone is there fixing your mess.

One million served

2008-07-18T20:52:00.000-07:00

In March a CNN report advised that seven years after 9/11, less than 1% of U.S. daily flights carry armed federal air marshals.

The Transportation Security Administration denied the report and began an investigation into who leaked the info to CNN, calling it a national security leak.

Then it placed the CNN reporter on the no-fly list.

And in this way the US terrorist watch list eventually reached one million names, according to the ACLU, who call it a waste of time and resources.

Paul Craig Roberts : "It's worse than that. What the “watch list” or “no-fly list” is doing is training Americans to submit to warrantless searches, to abandon their constitutional rights, and to submit to humiliation by thugs and bullies."

Yes. They are being acclimatized to what they know is merely bureaucratic bullying. Are we paying attention?

You'd almost think someone laid a trap

2008-07-18T16:28:00.000-07:00

I don't know if you could pay somebody enough to suck in the entire AGW denier community this way. (Yes. They are a community. With no science to back them up, they share an ideology. The only thing different among them is the breed of pony they wish for.)

First, you get this tripe from Michael Asher:

The American Physical Society, an organization representing nearly 50,000 physicists, has reversed its stance on climate change and is now proclaiming that many of its members disbelieve in human-induced global warming. The APS is also sponsoring public debate on the validity of global warming science. The leadership of the society had previously called the evidence for global warming "incontrovertible."

[...]

The APS is opening its debate with the publication of a paper by Lord Monckton of Brenchley, which concludes that climate sensitivity -- the rate of temperature change a given amount of greenhouse gas will cause -- has been grossly overstated by IPCC modeling. A low sensitivity implies additional atmospheric CO2 will have little effect on global climate.

Paper? Really?! On a forum?!!!

That's not a paper! That's some loony writing a blog. For one thing, here's the disclaimer on his so-called "paper". (The original colour of the disclaimer is maintained for flavour)

The following article has not undergone any scientific peer review. Its conclusions are in disagreement with the overwhelming opinion of the world scientific community. The Council of the American Physical Society disagrees with this article's conclusions.

We'll get back to Lord Monkton of Brenchley in a moment.

In the meantime, first out the blocks to jump all over this, (between cheeseburgers, fries and diet cola), is none other than the Doughy Pantload.

Oh... oops! Jonah didn't do enough background. But then, Jonah doesn't do background. And while he usually dances around this kind of stupid fuck-up, he was forced to admit that he actually misled his readers.... because of this from the American Physical Society.

The American Physical Society reaffirms the following position on climate change, adopted by its governing body, the APS Council, on November 18, 2007:
"Emissions of greenhouse gases from human activities are changing the atmosphere in ways that affect the Earth's climate."

An article at odds with this statement recently appeared in an online newsletter of the APS Forum on Physics and Society, one of 39 units of APS. The header of this newsletter carries the statement that "Opinions expressed are those of the authors alone and do not necessarily reflect the views of the APS or of the Forum." This newsletter is not a journal of the APS and it is not peer reviewed.

At that you'd think everyone else would notice that Jonah got his diapers pulled down and would have steered well clear of this topic.

Apparently not.

And apparently there aren't a lot of retractions, with the exception of Goldberg's, flying around out there.

Then Gavin noticed something about Lord Monkton of Brenchley.

As if that weren’t enough, Lord Monckton is a British upper-class loony who, when not financing and publishing phony scientific papers, falsely claims to be a member of Parliament.

Of course a few bloggers north of the 49th grabbed the initial bit of Asher's nonsense and Monkton's faux-paper, but the whole thing having been dispatched by the APS as total bullshit, you know they'd retract or correct right away. Right?

Apparently not.

China does anti-terrorism (In pictures)

2008-07-17T21:44:00.000-07:00

If you haven't already seen this, it's worth the look. China carried out an exercise called "Great Wall 5" in early June to put their emergency services and para-military police through a series of drills prior to the 2008 Olympic Games.

Here are a couple of the more interesting samples.

That would be your typical, run-of-the-mill, surface to air missile system.

Hang on. It gets better.

I can hardly wait for Vancouver 2010.

Kuebler suggests that Harper grow a pair

2008-07-17T12:35:00.000-07:00

Gitmo trials rigged , says Omar Khadr's US military lawyer :

"He's not going to get a fair trial," Kuebler told The Canadian Press from his office in Washington, D.C."
Military commissions aren't designed to be fair. They're designed to produce convictions."
Harper could pre-empt the hearing by asking Washington to send Khadr -Guantanamo Bay's lone western detainee and also its youngest - back to Canada, Kuebler said.
"I hope that the prime minister of Canada finally decides to stand up and act like a prime minister of Canada and protect the rights of a Canadian citizen."

Algeria managed it. Algeria. Also Saudi Arabia, Pakistan ...
But we won't. Why? Apparently because the charges against Khadr are serious :

"Mr. Khadr is accused of very serious things," the prime minister said last week. "There is a legal process in the United States. He can make his arguments in that process."

"We can't ignore the serious charges Mr. Khadr is facing," [PM's new spokesweasel Kory] Teneycke said. "The proper forum for determining his guilt or innocence is a judicial process not a political process."

"Eugénie Cormier-Lassonde, spokesperson for Canada's department of foreign affairs, says Khadr faces "serious charges ... includ[ing] murder, attempted murder, conspiracy, material support for terrorism, and spying, all in violation of the laws of war."See, apparently Canada just doesn't do the "serious things" ourselves.

Sure, we're ok for the non-serious stuff, like making apologies to First Nations and promising aid to Africa that we don't deliver, but when it comes to the really serious things like torture and illegal kangaroo courts - well, we leave that stuff up to the Serious People : Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld - people who can't travel outside their own country without triggering war criminal proceedings.

Gates and CondiRice are on record as wanting Guantanamo shut down, McCain and Obama have vowed to close it, and US Supreme Court has ruled against it three times in as many years.
As Kuebler recently said of Harper : "He can stop taking his orders from the Bush administration and stop being the last leader of a Western country to subsidize a failed process in Guantanamo Bay."

But Harper is not a leader, so Lt.-Cmdr. William Kuebler, a conservative Republican in the U.S. Navy who most definitely does have a pair, is doing his best to fill in for him.

Cross-posted, more or less, at Creekside

Yeah...

2008-07-16T21:05:00.001-07:00

...this is going work out just fine and dandy:

OTTAWA - The federal government has warned bidders on a high-profile reconstruction project in Afghanistan that they will largely be responsible for their own security, raising the prospect that private security firms will form the first line of defence against the Taliban.

The Harper government announced last month that the refurbishment of the Dahla Dam will be one of Canada’s “signature” projects in Kandahar province. Canada has promised to invest as much as $50 million over three years to repair the long-neglected dam and its irrigation system, which supplies most of the farmers in the province.

First, you'll be lucky to even find bidders, given the way things are going over there.

Second, the insurgents have, in recent weeks, demonstrated a capacity to overrun fortified NATO positions and breach prisons meaning your defences around the dam project will have to be very robust.

Third, related to number two, NATO's version of robust includes access to fast air, artillery, mortars, main battle tanks, armoured fighting vehicles, and the most heavily armed and protected soldiers the world has ever seen. Last I heard, mercenary companies weren't putting in orders for LAV III or Warrior. If the insurgents really start to move against the dam, NATO may just end up protecting the mercs, who protect the contractors, who may or may not repair the dam.

Fourth, after Iraq...what on Earth makes you think that a contractor-merc mix is not going to end up in a shitload of scandal?!

Iran...will they or won't they?

2008-07-16T13:45:00.000-07:00

If you believe the US, Iran apparently has a missile that can hit Europe.

The Pentagon said on Tuesday that Iran has the ability to launch a ballistic missile capable of hitting sections of eastern and southern Europe.
Air Force Lt. Gen. Trey Obering, director of the Missile Defense Agency, told reporters he believes Iran now has a missile with a range of 1,250 miles, but he declined to say whether the weapon has been test-fired.

Whether it's true or not is irrelevant. The only thing that matters is whether the US will use this as a justification to attack Iran. Why they even need to come up with justifications at this point, is beyond me. Nobody'll believe them anymore. Those American and Israeli citizens (and there international fan club) who think Iran should be attacked really need no evidence of anything.

Will they actually do it? I don't know. I certainly think that Israel and the US could pull off an air campaign of some sort but not much more. Sure, Israel has some geographic obstacles in its way, but they could probably find ways around them. And the United States obviously has the capacity to bomb any place on the planet.

As far as odds go of it actually happening, Gwynne Dyer gives it 6 to 1 they won't, but that assumes a certain rationality on the part of the belligerents. Other hopeful indicators vaguely suggest elements in the US military including the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs and Secretary of Defense may balk at an attack order:

When a reporter asked Gates if Fallon's departure "means we're going to war with Iran," the secretary called the idea "ridiculous." But he didn't leave it at that. He began his own campaign of public remarks stressing the importance of a peaceful resolution of the challenge posed by Iran's nuclear program. As he had at West Point, Gates held fast to the administration's basic stance—"all options are on the table"—but he drained the pugnacity of the claim with Fallon-like flourishes. "We need to figure out a way to develop some leverage...and then sit down and talk with them," Gates said in mid-May. "There is no doubt that... we would be very hard-pressed to fight another major conventional war right now." Admiral Mullen sounded a similar note when he recently told a television journalist in Israel that he was "very hopeful" that the US could avoid a conflict with Iran, which he evaluated as "a very significant challenge."

...

From one point of view the answer seems obvious. It is too late. With the exception only of the neoconservative faithful, every close observer of the American–Iranian standoff says that the administration's threats are empty, that the United States does not have the military resources, or the political support at home, or the agreement of allies abroad, to carry out a full-scale air attack on Iran's nuclear infrastructure, much less to invade and occupy the country. Two of the skeptics, Gates and Mullen, are running the Pentagon, and their cautioning remarks, only a step this side of insubordination, would seem to make attack impossible.

That said, I wouldn't bet on the US military doing anything but follow orders. So, regardless of odds which cannot be known other than in rhetoric based conjecture, IF an attack does occur, the outcome depends on two related variables.

First, the scale and nature of the attack, and second, the Iranian response. It seems to me there is a spectrum of scenarios ranging from simple to complex.

At the simple end of the spectrum, a US/Israeli attack is limited to a few buildings as in Osirak, 1981 or more recently, Syria it is possible Iran will respond in proportion. An Iranian response might involve doing little more a speech or two about the ineffectiveness of the US and Israel. Oil production facilities would still be intact and so would the Iranian state. The US/Israeli leadership could claim they destroyed whatever nuclear capacity they try to convince the world Iran has, wingnuts would cheer, and McCain might win an election. An escalation by Iran at this point would simply invite more attacks by the US/Israel, and Iran may choose to avoid this for reasons of self-preservation. They might also see it as bait, inviting retaliation, in order to give the US/Israel some sort of justification for really hitting them hard.

The scale of attack/level of response scenario gets much riskier as it grows more sophisticated. At the deep end, the attack would be engineered to utterly destroy any Iranian capacity to pursue a nuclear programme by either destroying every research institution in the country, or the state infrastructure that supports it. At this end of the spectrum, the Iranian leadership would rightly see an existential threat. In this scenario, the only thing that can be certain is that the price of oil will know no upper limit, and all bets off as far as ultimate outcomes.

Somwhere in the middle rest various combinations of military and oil options. Iran could simply increase support insurgencies in Afghanistan, Iraq, Palestine, and S. Lebanon, or turn off the oil spigots for day, week or month, or some combination thereof in response to some intermediate US/Israeli action.

It really is not possible to determine what might happen outside of a few generalisations about oil price and decreased regional security. For us in Canada the worst scenario would mean the loss of a significant number of Canadian soldiers in Afghanistan, as well as the rapid onset of a Peak Oil scenario as the availability of oil took a sudden exponential decline. What a fascistic goon like Mr. Harper would attempt to do with a situation like that, is anyone's guess.

Privatizing Torture . . . .

2008-07-16T12:34:00.000-07:00

What great news!

bushco wants to continue hiring private contractors to interrogate suspected terrorists!

Perfect.

Capital idea!

Per Reuters today:

White House threatens spy bill veto over interrogation
Wed Jul 16, 2008 - By Randall Mikkelsen

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The White House threatened to veto legislation on Wednesday that would bar CIA contractors from interrogating suspected terrorists, in the latest debate over treatment of detainees in the U.S.-declared war on terrorism.

The White House issued the threat in a notice to Congress as the Democratic-controlled House of Representatives began considering a broad measure to authorize funding of U.S. intelligence activities for the 2009 fiscal year.

_______________

The bill contains many provisions "that conflict with the conduct of intelligence activities," the White House budget office told Congress. "If (the bill) were presented to the president, the president's senior advisors would recommend that he veto the bill."

The contractor provision was the first objection listed by the White House.

CIA Director Michael Hayden has acknowledged that outside contractors were used to conduct some interrogations in the agency's detention program for suspected terrorists, which has been widely condemned for harsh techniques that critics say amount to torture.

He told Congress in February he believed contractors helped conduct "waterboarding," the fiercely condemned simulated drowning technique that he acknowledged using on three al Qaeda suspects.

_______________

But the White House said prohibiting contract interrogators could deprive the program of necessary questioning skills and expertise.

"Such a provision would unduly limit the United States' ability to obtain intelligence needed to protect Americans from attack," it said.

Well, this news should make harperco ecstatic!

After all, now Omar Khadr can be questioned by the likes of Halliburton, KBR and Blackwater USA.

How great is that ? ? ? ?

Stephen "Commodus" Harper and Canada

2008-07-16T11:34:00.000-07:00

(h/t Edstock and Dr. Dawg)

They love killing foreigners in Texas

2008-07-16T11:12:00.000-07:00

This is from The UN Wire and MSNBC

UN court demands Texas stop executions of Mexican citizens

The UN's highest court has demanded that Texas stay the executions of Mexican nationals on death row. Against the advice of the federal government and despite demands from the Hague, the state of Texas has refused to review the case of Jose Medellin and others, prompting Mexico to issue an appeal. The U.S. Supreme Court has ruled that President Bush lacks the legal authority to force Texas to comply with the World Court's judgment.

At hastily convened hearings last month, Mexico argued that the United States is defying a 2004 International Court of Justice order to review the cases of 51 Mexicans sentenced to death by state courts.

That order was based on the Hague-based court's finding that the condemned prisoners had been denied the right to help from their consulate following their arrest.

Then there's Canadians with similar problems, and Stevie, who just doesn't care.

What I'm doing this weekend

2008-07-16T07:45:00.000-07:00

and you should be too, is going to the Netroots Nation conference in Austin, Texas with all the other liberal bloggers. But since I can't get to Texas, I'll be attending in Second Life. Where we will be streaming all the panels and avoiding the Texas heat. In fact, I will be screening some movies in Second Life as part of the festivities. On Thursday night, I'll be showing The Corporation and on Sunday night to help folks wind down, Duck Soup. All at the fabulous Marxist-Lennonist Party Headquarters, The Red Zeppelin. And did I mention that it is all totally FREE! And that we are all young, thin and good-looking in Second Life? Really, what the hell are you waiting for?

"Epsilons don’t really mind being Epsilons”

2008-07-16T06:36:00.000-07:00

It seems that not only is John Derbyshire intent on challenging Doug Feith for the title of "Stupidest Fucking Guy on the Planet," he wants your kids to be in contention for the prize too.

Commenting on Barack Obama's sensible, reasonable suggestion that America's children should study a second language, preferably Spanish since there so many Spanish-speaker in or coming to America, the Derb riffs thusly:

Obama's idiotic suggestion that all our kids should learn Spanish is, amongst other things (this is multi-dimensional stupidity) an illustration of educational romanticism run amok. The cold fact is that absent exceptional circumstances — the most common of which is, total immersion at a receptive age — not many human beings can learn another language. Oh, you can learn enough to stumble along and get by on a trip abroad, but if you can attain fluency in a language not your own, without those exceptional circumstances, you are an unusually smart and gifted person. (For my own sad track record, see here.)

Now, I'll admit that my own track record is not much better than Derbyshire's. I failed to learn French in high school and university, where I also failed to learn Spanish. In over a decade in Japan, I still only speak enough to order dinner, give the cab driver directions and get my face slapped - though can understand a good deal more. I do however know that the reason for this is mostly laziness and lack of effort on my part- how do I know this? Because virtually everyone I know well in Tokyo speaks at least two languages better than I do. All the people in my office, all my expat friends and their bilingual spouses, all the people I met in Hong Kong who speak three languages before finishing their coffee in the morning, to say nothing of all the English speaking Quebecois and French speaking Montreal Anglo's I've met -- they didn't all grow up in a multilingual environment, certainly my wife and the hundreds of advanced Japanese speakers of English I've met didn't. They learned the language the hard way, they studied it as adults.

My wife aside (and presumably Derb's aside since he married a Chinese woman who obviously has infinite patience) they can't all be exceptional, nor can the entire populations of China, India, Africa and Europe, most of whom speak more than one language. Derb even manages to undermine his own argument

The pointlessness of foreign-language learning is obscured for English-speakers by all those foreigners we meet who have good English. (Scandinavians are especially humiliating in this regard.) We should remember, though, that (a) the foreigners we meet are mostly smart upper-middle-class types who travel a lot (try finding an English-speaker on a Paris street), and (b) the whole world is bathed in English, so that if you are born in, say, Finland, and want to do anything with your life more ambitious than running an autobody shop in Ylikiiminki, you can't help but learn some English, and (c) for teenagers the world over, English is cool.

We will leave the obvious arrogance in stating that doing anything more interesting than running a body shop in Ylikiiminki requires English (if this is the case, it is only because Americans refuse to learn other languages) and grant him the point that English is the most prevalent language on the Internet and in international business, while pointing out that it is not the only language and that lots of people make a good living as translators and interpreters because of that. The world is bathed in English because of the preponderance of American pop-culture overseas -- those same Holllywood movies and rock songs that Derb and his fellow are convinced are created by multiculturist terrorist-sympathizing commies out in California. That is what makes English "cool" to teenagers.

In addition to all those Europeans, Africans and Asians, what about other countries in Derb's backyard? According to the most recent Canadian census (as summarized in this Wikipedia entry) while Canada is officially a bilingual nation, only 17.5 percent of us speak both language well enough to be considered bilingual, though 35 percent speak a language in addition to French or English. Damn that multiculturalism, eh Derb? How dare all those immigrants remember their native languages, keep using them and teach them to their kids? How dare they not abandon the poetry of cursing in Chinese or German or Russian, the passion of arguing in Italian or Spanish or making love in French? How dare they not abandon the buffet that you can't get into for a bland plate of good old American without any regional dialects or diction? Those people over in the corner that are whispering in foreigner are talking about you Derb, and they aren't saying anything nice.

But that's not all! Nosiree Bob! Not content to try to put the kibosh on kids learning to speak foreign, Derb would like to make sure almost every child is left behind!

Obama suffers from the fallacy — extremely common among high-IQ lefties — that everyone else is just as smart as he is, or could easily be made so with a few educational reforms. In fact, below some cutoff point, which I'd guess at around minus one standard deviation in IQ (that would encompass sixteen percent of the population), education beyond the three R's is a waste of time, and foreign-language instruction a total waste of time.

While it's nice of Derb to admit that Obama is a smart guy - he did teach constitutional law at a college level after all - I am a little concerned that he doesn't think people need an education beyond how to read the instructions on the condom box or work the ATM. Yeah, and at what age do we decide that little Johnny, Janey, Juan, Lateesha, Ngyen or Fritz isn't among your 16 percent Derb? 18? 13? 5? or do they need to be born into a nice white middle class family in a good school district to go learn more than the three R's?

We won't even go into the philosophical arguments in favor of learning for its own sake, how the pursuit of knowledge is the highest calling of mankind, beauty is truth and truth, beauty yadda, yadda, yadda. We won't bother to speculate at length how a magazine like National Review that fancies itself THE bastion of conservative intellectual thought could employ someone so profoundly anti-intellectual (my guess: "he wore a clean suit to the interview and had that dah-ling British accent") or how the recent crop of writers there seem to think a classical allusion means quoting from the first three Star Wars movies. Nope, we will pursue none of this at length.

We will simply wonder aloud why he wants to deny anyone not in his mythical 16 percent the chance to learn about music, art, science, history, literature, higher math and philosophy? Could it be that his extended education include the reading of Brave New World?

And a massive tip of the hat to David over at JimDandyGoodness for braving the stupid to come up with this gem

crossposted from The Woodshed

The problem with world stage...

2008-07-15T22:16:00.001-07:00

...is that the entire world becomes your audience. And the world sees you for the sadistic monster you are, Stephen Harper. You've shamed this country. You are a sadist and a coward of the worst order. I would even use the word traitor, not only to this country as you sell us out down the river, but to all that is good in the human race.

This is not politics. This is sick.