Creekside: MPs move to block extradition of Prince of Pot

Yesterday in the House of Commons, an MP from each of the Cons, the NDP, and the Libs stood up in succession to present petitions signed by 12,000 Canadians asking Justice Minister Rob Nicholson not to sign extradition papers that would deport Marc Emery to the US to serve a five-year sentence for selling marijuana seeds online. Emery was busted in 2005 by Canadian police acting on behalf of the U.S. DEA.

Scott Reid, CPC :

“Marc Emery’s activities, the ones for which he is being extradited, involve selling viable marijuana seeds over the Internet. It is worth noting that these activities were approved by Health Canada’s referral of medical marijuana patients to his seed bank. Canadian courts in ruling on this subject have ruled that a $200 fine is an appropriate punishment for this kind of activity as opposed to extradition to a country where he can face potentially life imprisonment.”

Libby Davies, NDP :

“Mr. Emery or any Canadian should not face harsh punishment in the U.S. for selling cannabis seeds on the Internet when it is not worthy of prosecution in Canada. I think people see it as a question of Canadian sovereignty.”

Ujjal Dosanjh, Lib : ”

It appears to me that we have assisted a foreign government arrest a man for doing something that we wouldn’t arrest him for doing in Canada. As a former premier and a former attorney-general, I sense a certain degree of unfairness in the process.”

Kudos to all three of you.

Flashback :DEA Administrator Karen Tandy, 2005 :

“Today’s DEA arrest of Marc Scott Emery, publisher of Cannabis Culture Magazine, and the founder of a marijuana legalization group, is a signficant blow not only to the marijuana trafficking trade in the U.S. and Canada, but also to the marijuana legalization movement.

Emery and his organization had been designated as one of the Attorney General’s most wanted international drug trafficking organizational targets.”

Fast forward to Michael Ignatieff, yesterday :

“If I had to tell you as a parent or as someone who has spent his whole life working with young people, the last darn thing I want you to be doing is smoking marijuana,” the federal Liberal leader said. “I want you to be out there digging a well, digging a ditch, getting a job, raising a family … doing stuff, instead of parking your life on the end of a marijuana cigarette.”

Holy Reeeeeeefer Madness! Gosh, thanks, Dad.

“Given the things we need to do together, that’s what I think,” he said, adding that legalizing marijuana would create problems in dealings with the U.S. because the drug would remain illegal there.”

Bingo!

Except it isn’t. It’s been decriminalized in one quarter of US states since Emery was busted. Are we really going to throw Emery to the US just to suck up to the surviving worshippers of Nancy Reagan?

Bonus : Tonight’s deadline for Steve’s clueless foray into the interactive intertubes approaches. The most frequent suggestion out of nearly 3800 entries was “Legalize marijuana”. Expect Steve to pass on this one nonetheless. I’ll be back for it later.

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Creekside: Dear Frank

In your last go round with whitewashing government complicity in torture, it took you 16 months to determine that even though :

1)CSIS and the RCMP “mistakenly” advised Egyptian and Syrian authorities that Canadian citizens Ahmad El Maati and Abdullah Almalki were “associated with Al Qaeda” and an “imminent threat to public security” and a “confessed terrorist” and that El Maati was “involved in a plan to commit a terrorist act in Canada”, resulting in

2)El Maati being subjected to “electric shock to his hands, back and genitals, and sleep deprivation while being subjected to excruciatingly painful stress torture for days on end”, and that subsequently

3)CSIS fired off a handy list of questions to be put to them,

you ultimately determined in your report that :

“I found no evidence that any of these of these officials were seeking to do anything other than carry out conscientiously the duties and responsibilities of the institutions of which they were part.”

and

“It seems inevitable, in the struggle against terrorism that mistakes of various kinds will be made.”

After which the government redacted “about 20% of your findings from the public document for national security reasons.”

So, really, Frank, who gives a fuck what you think this time round?

Yours truly,
Alison

When you write to Mr Iacobucci , I strongly advise sending Fern’s letter instead.
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Creekside: Breaking News – Some Bullshit Happening Somewhere

Totally useless up-to-the-minute coverage of some meaningless bullshit story that will keep you jacked up and tranquillized at the same time.

“I’m just some fucking guy …”

Ta rah to The Onion

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Creekside: Laurie Hawn’s “gold standard”

On CBC radio’s The House this morning, Laurie Hawn, Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of National Defence and the lead government MP on the Special Committee on the Canadian Mission in Afghanistan, said that his government had fixed the faulty Afghan detainee agreement they had inherited from the Liberals and then made the following statement about the current treatment of Afghan detainees :

“Our detainee arrangement is the new gold standard. Taliban prisoners are treated like gold.”

Well so much for the U.S. State Department’s 2009 report on Afghan human rights then :

“Human rights organizations report local authorities tortured and abused detainees. Torture and abuse methods included … beating by stick, scorching bar or iron bar, flogging by cable, battering by rod, electric shock, deprivation of sleep, water and food, abusive language, sexual humiliation and rape.”

This is Laurie Hawn’s “gold standard”.

We should just “move on” he said, backed up by a sound clip from Afghan occupation promoter Terry Glavin, who deemed the parliamentary Afghan committee’s attempt to get documents necessary for their work “a kangaroo court”.

Hawn also repeated his favorite little chestnut about “some Taliban being hit with a shoe”.
Does ex-Canadian Air Force Lieutenant-Colonel Laurie Hawn not realize what a real disservice this statement is to the Canadian troops who have not only documented abuses but refused to hand over prisoners that they were convinced were just going to be killed?

This is why we can’t “move on”. Despite reports like the 2009 US State Dept report, the Cons are still in denial and refuse to release even independent human rights reports to the parliamentary committee charged with oversight of our “mission” in Afganistan.
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h/t Croghan at Bread and Roses for The House link.
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Creekside: BC Greenwash and Wear

Environmental activist Tzeporah Berman of Forest Ethics presents BC Premier Gordon Campbell with a “green award” at the Copenhagen climate conference in December 2009.

The previous month Campbell hired Berman on to his “Green Energy Advisory Task Force”.

Last May Berman actively supported Campbell’s re-election citing his “environmental leadership”.

This is the same Gordon Campbell who supports the Grizzly bear hunt and open-cage fish farms, the Gateway Pacific and twin Enbridge pipelines running from the Alberta tar sands to Kitimat, the proposed revoking of the moratorium on off-shore drilling, coalbed methane development, the gutting of the BC Environment ministry, and the privatization of BC rivers for run-of-river hydro projects.

Berman is executive director of Power Up Canada which promotes those privately owned run-of-river projects, which, under Gordon Campbell, forces the publicly-owned BC Hydro to buy power from them at exorbitant higher-than-market rates while being prohibited from developing its own green energy initiatives.

Today, 19 private power producers, including 14 run-of-river projects, were awarded agreements in BC, with 28 more expected by the month’s end.

On February 13th, Greenpeace International announced it was hiring Tzeporah Berman as director of its global climate and energy campaign.

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Creekside: Steve reaches out to Youtube world

Methinks Mr Soudas better get himself a coupla sockpuppets up there pretty damn quick or Steve will be spending next Tuesday night talking about legalizing weed, why Soudas’ vid is so crap, and um, testicals.

h/t Kady, who has a couple of questions of her own about the appropriateness of Google gifting free Youtube facetime to Steve while registered as a federal lobby group.
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Creekside: Security theatre of the absurd

Given that the Cons blocked the Military Police Complaints Commission from receiving documents on the Afghan detainees :

“Canada’s former top military police officer, retired navy captain Steve Moore, advised he had documents that he wanted to turn over to the inquiry, however Mr. Moore and his lawyer had to sign a pledge preventing them from passing the documents to the inquiry.”

and redacted the docs they did allow :

“This is what the Bravo Company, 2nd Battalion Princess Patricia’s Canadian Light Infantry Battle Group sergeant wrote in June 2006 about the Afghan detainee who was beaten up:

“We then photographed the individual prior to handing him over, to ensure that if the ANP did assault him, as has happened in the past, we would have a visual record of his condition.”

but this is what the government sent to the Military Police Complaints Commission:

“We then photographed the individual prior to handing him over (redacted).”

and also sandbagged the Parliamentary Afghan committee by threatening and muzzling witnesses:

“The federal government is blocking diplomat Richard Colvin from giving documents to a special House of Commons committee investigating Afghan torture.
Justice Department lawyers have told Colvin – through the Foreign Affairs department – that they do not accept the view that testimony before Parliament is exempt from national security provisions of the Canada Evidence Act.
Violating Section 38 of the Canada Evidence Act can be punishable by five years in prison.”

before finally shutting parliament down altogether to shut everyone up about it ….

who could possibly pretend to believe they will now freely hand over those very same docs to retired Justice Iacobucci?

Answer : The Libs.
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Creekside: Driving under the influence of Helena Handbasket

Rahim Jaffer, ex-Reform/Alliance/Con MP, anti-drug crusader, hubby to federal Con cabinet minister Helena “hell hole” Guergis :
Busted for driving at nearly twice the legal speed limit, cocaine possession, flunked the breathalyzer

Drunk driving and cocaine charges reduced to “careless driving”.
Sentence : $500 fine.

Jaffer after sentencing: “I took full responsibility for my careless driving.”

That is just so Con.
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Creekside: Iacobucci Sandbagging redux

On Friday Justice Minister Rob Nicholson announced the government was appointing Frank Iacobucci, a former Supreme Court judge with no legal hold over them, to determine what documents pertaining to the Afghan detainee issue could be released without compromising national security, national defence, and/or international relations. The scope and terms of Iacobucci’s appointment are not known and he will report directly to Nicholson.

A number of bloggers have already weighed in on Iacobucci’s suitability to the task. Steve at Far and Wide in particular points to Iacobucci having already previously agreed to omit information – at the Minister’s request – from the public version of his October 2008 inquiry into the illegal renditioning of three Canadian citizens, Abdullah Almalki, Ahmad el-Maati, and Muayyed Nurredin to Syria and Egypt where they were tortured before being deemed innocent.

In light of Prof. Amir Attaran’s explosive allegations on CBC that Afghan detainees were handed over to Afghan authorities with the precise purpose of having them tortured, and tonight’s news that CSIS was involved in the interrogation of Afghan detainees, it’s worth looking at what was omitted from Iacobucci’s 2008 report.

What was included in the initial report was bad enough ;
In September 2001, the RCMP described Mr. El Maati to Syria and Egypt as an Al Qaeda associate and an “imminent threat to public security”
CSIS decribed him as “involved in the Islamic Extremist movement” and “an associate of an Osama Bin Laden”
They then shared his travel plans with the CIA who passed them on.
Mr. El Maati was detained in Syria for two months and Egypt for two years, where he was tortured with electric shock to his hands, back and genitals, and sleep deprivation while being subjected to excruciatingly painful stress torture for days on end.
In 2003, CSIS sent Egypt a “statement of concern” about Mr. El Maati should he be released from custody.

Iacobucci said he could not stress sufficiently that these three must “be presumed innocent of any wrongdoing.”

The omitted part that Steve alludes to was released just two weeks ago as a supplement :
In June 2002, CSIS agents advised Egyptian authorities that El Maati was involved in a plan “to commit a terrorist act in Canada”. They did not say, and maintain they could not have known, that this “confession” was derived from his torture in Syria.
In December 2002, CSIS went to Egypt with a list of questions “to which it wished to obtain answers.”

While we the public were prevented from seeing this latest information till two weeks ago, Justice Iacobucci knew it all along and sought to have it made public. And yet in his summation to his 2008 report he still concluded :

“The inquiry did find that the three men were tortured in foreign prisons and that the mistreatment may have “resulted indirectly from several actions of Canadian officials.”

but that :

“I found no evidence that any of these of these officials were seeking to do anything other than carry out conscientiously the duties and responsibilities of the institutions of which they were part.”

And that, as I said at the time, is the most damning part of all.

I offer this blogpost just to run to ground the discussion on Iacobuccu’s suitability as a beard for the Cons. In truth, I’m with Pogge and Eugene Forsey here – Nicholson can talk to anyone he likes – it doesn’t matter. Parliament has demanded the documents. The Cons are currently in contempt of Parliament. Ultimately they must be forced to give the documents up. It’s the law here.
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Creekside: Rights and Democracy : “Canada’s credibility is at stake”

The International Federation for Human Rights has denounced the Cons “political interference” at Rights & Democracy :

G&M :

“The federation, an umbrella group of 155 human rights organizations operating in more than 100 countries, also slammed the government’s choice of Gérard Latulippe as the troubled agency’s new president.

It said Mr. Latulippe “does not have the moral authority to lead an organization like Rights & Democracy” given his past statements about the potential for Muslim immigrants to breed homegrown terrorism, his support for capital punishment and his opposition to same-sex marriage.”

Naturally this will not cut any ice with Steve or Lawrence Cannon who appointed Latulippe, because the International Federation for Human Rights is on the NGO Monitor’s shitlist, NGO Monitor being the Israeli think tank that appears to be currently determining Canada’s foreign policy decisions in the Mid East.

NGO Monitor does not care for the federation’s use of the terms “occupied Palestinian territories” or “crimes against humanity” when describing Israeli military or government actions, despite the IFHR’s accompanying condemnation of the roles played by Syria and Iran.

NGO Monitor probably also doesn’t like the fact that B’telem and Al Haq, the two NGOs at the centre of the Cons recent sacking of R&D and the bêtes noires of the organization’s newly-stacked pro-Israel board majority, are distinguished and valued members of IFHR.

“Canada’s credibility is at stake,” the federation said in a news release, citing support for B’telem and Al Haq and calling for an independent investigation.

Note to Steve : World stage! World stage!
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Creekside: “Thou Dustiness Command”

Friday Update : After 68 days of careful deliberation and a mere 48 hours after its inclusion in the throne speech, “thou dustiness” gets binned, having succesfully served its purpose of providing an amusing distraction from the other dust collecters in the speech.

According to this poll at CBC, most do not think two months off were required to consider recalibrating the gender neutrality of the national anthem.

O Canada

Our home and native land

True patriot love

Thou Dustiness command

“Thou Dustiness” is doubtless responsible for the idea of a National Monument to the Victims of Communism in the throne speech in addition to the dust bunnies under my bed.

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Creekside: Speech from the Throne 2010 – “Now and For the Future Markets”

Creekside: Speech from the Throne 2010 – “Now and For the Future Markets”

Creekside: The Cons – All Israel all the time

Two days ago Jason Kenney’s communications director Alykhan Velshi tweeted that Con MP Tim Uppal from the inquiry panel at the Canadian Parliamentary Coalition to Combat Antisemitism will be looking for unanimous all-party approval when he introduces a motion to condemn the use of the word ‘apartheid’ as applied to Israel in the House of Commons this week :

“That this House considers itself to be a friend of the State of Israel; that this House is concerned about expressions of anti-Semitism under the guise of “Israeli Apartheid Week”; and that this House explicitly condemns any action in Canada as well as internationally that would equate the State of Israel with the rejected and racist policy of apartheid.”

Apartheid Week.
While I suspect that Uppal and friends would still condemn the protest even if the name was changed to Israel Not Very Nice This Week, Antonia Zerbisias at The Star pointed out :

“The moment that Israel is generally recognized as an apartheid state is the moment when the boycotts and divestments begin in earnest. Which is why Israel must fight to keep the label out of the language surrounding the Jewish state.”

Here’s the UN’s definition of apartheid. You can make up your own mind whether it fits :

United Nations International Convention on the Suppression and Punishment of the Crime of Apartheid,Article II[1] :

For the purpose of the present Convention, the term ‘the crime of apartheid’ shall apply to the following inhumane acts committed for the purpose of establishing and maintaining domination by one racial group of persons over any other racial group of persons and systematically oppressing them:

a. Denial to a member or members of a racial group or groups of the right to life and liberty of person
i. By murder of members of a racial group or groups;
ii. By the infliction upon the members of a racial group or groups of serious bodily or mental harm, by the infringement of their freedom or dignity, or by subjecting them to torture or to cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment;
iii. By arbitrary arrest and illegal imprisonment of the members of a racial group or groups;

b. Deliberate imposition on a racial group or groups of living conditions calculated to cause its or their physical destruction in whole or in part;

c. Any legislative measures and other measures calculated to prevent a racial group or groups from participation in the political, social, economic and cultural life of the country and the deliberate creation of conditions preventing the full development of such a group or groups, in particular by denying to members of a racial group or groups basic human rights and freedoms, including the right to work, the right to form recognised trade unions, the right to education, the right to leave and to return to their country, the right to a nationality, the right to freedom of movement and residence, the right to freedom of opinion and expression, and the right to freedom of peaceful assembly and association;

d. Any measures including legislative measures, designed to divide the population along racial lines by the creation of separate reserves and ghettos for the members of a racial group or groups, the prohibition of mixed marriages among members of various racial groups, the expropriation of landed property belonging to a racial group or groups or to members thereof;

e. Exploitation of the labour of the members of a racial group or groups, in particular by submitting them to forced labour;

f. Persecution of organizations and persons, by depriving them of fundamental rights and freedoms, because they oppose apartheid.

Last Thursday MMP Peter Shurman put forward a similar motion condemning Israeli Apartheid Week to the Ontario legislature, where it purportedly received support from all parties, including Cheri DiNovo of the NDP.
Shurman :

“I move that in the opinion of this House, the term “Israeli Apartheid Week” is condemned as it serves to incite hatred against Israel, a democratic state that respects the rule of law and human rights, and the use of the word “apartheid” in this context diminishes the suffering of those who were victims of a true apartheid regime in South Africa.”

This would work better for Shurman had many Israelis and South African leaders who once lived under apartheid in South Africa not already offered their opinion that Israel does practice apartheid.
Back to Shurman :

“In fact, the values of Judaism and of Israel were bedrock values for the foundation of Canada, and those values from Judaism and from Israel date back over 3,000 years – all to say that if you’re going to label Israel as apartheid, then you are also calling Canada apartheid and you are attacking Canadian values.”

Canada does indeed have its own apartheid problems which is why we have not signed on to the above UN Convention on Apartheid nor the UN Declaration on Aboriginal Rights.

But Shurman’s Canada = Israel equation just echoes last week’s “An attack on Israel would be considered an attack on Canada” from Junior Foreign Affairs Minister Peter Kent, and this government’s determination to defund and muzzle any Canadian NGOs which have had the temerity to suggest that the slaughter and oppression of Palestinians should not go unremarked upon in Canada.

Very good discussion as to the fairness and efficacy of using the word apartheid in comments over at Pogge’s.

But why are the Cons pushing so hard on this?
Because it’s a perfect issue with which to divide the opposition. The Con base will just agree to the McCarthyite motions en masse; some Libs and more particularly the NDP will tear each other apart over it while risking being smeared as anti-Semitic to their ridings by the Cons if they refuse to give preference to Israel over the rights of Canadian citizens.

Stinks, doesn’t it?
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(Edited for spelling and clarity)
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Update, 1pm : Well, that was quick. Iggy goes the HarperCons one better via

Skdadl : Ignatieff condemns fellow citizens, defends foreign government
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Creekside: 2010 Olympics spawns a further armouring of NAFTA

Well, colour me surprised. Who could have guessed that security arrangements for the 2010 Olympics would spawn a further militarization of North America and U.S.-Canada security integration?

G&M :

Canada and U.S. authorities are talking about extending cross-border security measures that were implemented for the 2010 Olympics in Vancouver and were to end with the closing of the Winter Games.
The joint patrols [RCMP and the U.S. Coast Guard] will end with the Paralympics but spokesmen from the two agencies said yesterday legislation that would allow joint maritime policing on a permanent basis is on the agenda of both the U.S. and Canadian governments.”

That’s just an Olympic rebranding of Bill C-60, the amusingly named Keeping Canadians Safe (Protecting Borders) Act, tabled in Parliament in November.

The Cons actually sidelined C-60 when they prorogued Parliament, but as The Library of Parliament helpfully points out, not passing parliament didn’t prevent its implementation during the Games because C-60 is but the legislative arm of the earlier Security and Prosperity Partnership inspired Shiprider Projects and the Canada-US Framework Agreement on Integrated Cross-Border Maritime Law Enforcement Operations signed in May 2009 by Canadian Minister of Public Safety Peter Van Loan, and the US Department of Homeland Security Secretary Janet “9/11 terrorists entered the US from Canada” Napolitano.

Fun quote from that 2009 signing :

Van Loan said the pact shouldn’t be viewed as Americans encroaching on the jurisdiction of Canada because it’s a joint effort.
“Because of the integration of our North American economies … effective management of the border is essential to the health of both of our countries’ economies.”

At the time we were advised that the Canadian border proved an unmanageable obstacle to the US ability to pursue bad guys into Canada, conjuring up memories of old movies in which a car chase ends in an obligatory squeal of tires and a cloud of dust before a government road sign that reads “You are now entering ….”.
It was always crap of course as even Stockwell Day acknowledged back in October 2006 that “U.S. agents carry out investigations in Canada without the knowledge or approval of the Canadian government” but we just retroactively approve them anyway.

C-60 seeks to embed part of that practise into Canadian law. Clause 11 :

“In the course of an integrated cross-border operation, every designated officer is a peace officer in every part of Canada and has the same power to enforce an Act of Parliament as a member of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police.”

In every part of Canada. Same power as the RCMP.

The Library of Parliament page on C-60 also advises that passing C-60 will necessitate changes to “the Criminal Code, the Customs Act, the Export and Import Permits Act, the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act and the Royal Canadian Mounted Police Act.”
I’ll bet.

Then there’s that big fat Homeland Security Olympic Coordination Center in Bellingham built to augment NorthComm’s bi-lateral Civil Assistance Plan, which already “allows the military from one nation to support the armed forces of the other nation during a civil emergency.”

The collaboration of “40 U.S. federal, state and local agencies, including military intelligence groups, the navy, national guard, air force, coast guard” and assorted Canadian security agencies was mandated to “specifically co-ordinate the U.S. response to any terrorist attack or domestic emergency during the Winter Games.”

They’d like to extend that now too.
Well we knew that.
As the FBI Special-Agent-in-Charge announced back in Sept. 2008 :

“This facility will provide a strategic response platform to facilitate critical response efforts during the Olympic Games and beyond.”

And beyond. We’ve now reached ‘and beyond’.

h/t Dave : Told ya so.
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Creekside: Max for PM? You betcha!

Creekside: Rights and Democracy gone rogue

Go, Paul Wells!

A good overview of the Rights and Democracy debacle : Paul Wells from Maclean’s, Chris Selley from the National Post, Payam Akhavan who recently quit the R&D board of directors, and David Matas who was reappointed to the board in November after having previously served on it from 1997 to 2003.

The Cons’ attempts to align Canadian policy with that of the far right in Israel began with their 2006 support for Israel’s invasion of Lebanon and the seige of Gaza and their boast of being the first country to cut off aid to Palestine for democratically electing the ‘wrong’ government. It continued with the banning of George Galloway from Canada, the defunding of KAIROS and UNRWA, the political flyers insinuating that the Libs are soft on anti-Semitism, and the establishment of the orwellian Canadian Parliamentary Coalition on Combating Antisemitism.

A week ago the media reacted with astonishment when Junior Foreign Affairs Minister Peter Kent told a Toronto publication that “an attack on Israel would be considered an attack on Canada,” despite the fact there is no military treaty between Canada and Israel to back that up.

Hey guys, wake up. This is not the first time he has said this. Peter Kent on his own website, July 2009 :

“We have only one policy on Israel and that is to stand with the only true democracy in the Middle East. We have, as you know, proclaimed many times Canada’s position that an attack on Israel would be considered an attack on Canada.”

An attack on Rights and Democracy or even just on plain old democracy, not so much.

Kudos again to Paul Wells and also Dr. Dawg for all their stellar investigative journalism here.

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Creekside: Another NATO airstrike; another 33 dead civilians

AP : “NATO forces confirmed in a statement that its planes fired Sunday on a group of vehicles that it believed contained insurgents who were about to attack its forces, only to discover later that women and children were in the cars.

The strike hit three minibuses that were driving down a major road in the mountainous province. There were 42 people in the vehicles, all civilians, Bashary said.

“We are extremely saddened by the tragic loss of innocent lives,” NATO commander Gen. Stanley McChrystal said.

McChrystal also sent along his regrets six days ago when 12 civilians including 6 children were killed by two NATO-fired rockets which missed their intended target by 300 meters, and still more regrets the following day for five more civilians killed in another NATO airstrike.

McClatchy’s reports that Operation Mushtarak (translation : Operation Together) is all just “a trial run” for “the next big combat mission” in Kandahar this summer, described by ISAF officials as “the big prize for both the Taliban and the coalition”:

“Coalition officers describe the Marjah operation, now into its second week, as a “confidence builder” for Kandahar now that extra troops for Afghanistan have been committed.”

And what is the point of this “confidence builder” for “the big prize” again?

Journalist and historian Gareth Porter at The Real News Network :

“In my view this offensive has to be viewed as more of an effort to shape public opinion in the United States than to shape the politics of the future of Afghanistan.”

It’s propaganda, explains Porter, to sell the American people on the idea that when the inevitable negotiations with the Taliban for US withdrawal are held in 16 to 18 months, it will look at home as if the US is negotiating from a position of strength.

Saving face – that’s what all these civilians and soldiers are dying for now.
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Creekside: Duffy and Greene do Triumph of the Swill

Senator Mike Duffy’s covering email for the above Con fundraiser : “Thank you for taking a few minutes during this busy time to reinvigorate our Canadian pride, by listening to the Conservative story – Canada’s story. Our athletes’ success on home soil makes us think about the Conservatives incredible track record of historical firsts.”

Cue Senator “Nance” Greene Raine : “In fact, with the proper training and preparation, all Canadians can achieve their goals, much like the goals Conservatives have achieved in history … and with our strong leader, Canada will continue to compete with the world’s best.”

Own that Odium!

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Creekside: A plea from the People of the Talking Snake

On the February cover of The Catholic Register, the Church of the Talking Snake makes yet another desperate public plea to jetison their charitable status so that they can pay taxes just like everyone else :

“It is astonishing and sad that Liberal Leader Michael Ignatieff is advocating that Canada fund overseas abortions, charged Toronto Archbishop Thomas Collins.

Collins released a statement on Feb. 4 in response to Ignatieff’s public calls for the government to include contraception and abortion funding as basic components of a new foreign aid strategy to improve maternal and childhood health.”

Well, actually Iggy only said he wouldn’t support any new foreign aid changes from Harper that would limit access to them, but hey – these are minor details when you’re launching a campaign to get your fair share of recognition from Revenue Canada.

Collins : “There are so many other steps that can be taken to promote maternal and child health throughout the world.”

Archbishop Collins went on to suggest instead “clean water, food and immunization”, measures which have at best an uncertain track record in preventing the spread of AIDS/HIV and STDs and the birth of yet another child you can’t feed.

So far, attempts to determine whether Harper is about to reverse 30 years of Canadian foreign policy funding support for access to contraception and safe abortion have proved fruitless. The Talking Snake couldn’t have done better himself.

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