April 2004 Archives

U.S. Use of Depleted Uranium Weapons Causes Dangerous Rise in Radiation Level in Iraq

Canadian research centers have reported that during the war against Iraq the U.S. military used depleted uranium (DU) weapons which caused the radiation level to rise at least 300 times above normal, and the weapons caused similar effects in Afghanistan.

U.S. troops have recently begun removing contaminated topsoil in Iraq, taking it to an unknown location.

Scientists believe the next generation of children of citizens of both countries exposed to DU will suffer from higher rates of birth defects and cancer.
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The most disturbing circumstance was observed in the U.S. occupied base in southwestern Baghdad in the Auweirj district. It is close to the international airport and hosts one of the largest coalition bases around Baghdad, occupying the operational headquarters of the Iraqi Special Republican Guard. The area was subject to considerable aerial bombing and rocket fire prior to the coalition ground forces' arrival followed by several ground skirmishes along the main routes to the international airport and western entrances to the city.

Departing the coalition-occupied base was a long, a steady stream of tandem-axle dump trucks carrying full loads of sand, heading south away from the city. Returning from the south was a second stream of fully loaded dump trucks waiting to enter the base. As the team passed the base?s main entrance, the gates were opened to reveal bulldozers spreading soil while front-end loaders were filling the trucks that had just emptied their loads of soil (silt and sand). The arriving trucks were delivering loads of sand into the base while the departing trucks were hauling away the base?s topsoil.

The method of topsoil removal and replacement at U.S.-occupied bases, living facilities, and administrative buildings is mechanically resuspending tons of potentially contaminated particulate. The dust clouds are lofting above and spreading over the entire area -- 5,000,000 residents in Baghdad alone. It is also exposing thousands of U.S. military personnel and the many frequent foreign visitors including NGO staff, reconstruction crews, business and trade delegates, and diplomatic and foreign service employees.
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The situation in Afghanistan is worse, with tests showing even higher levels of radiation than Iraq.

Via Suburban Guerilla.

Arar accuser says he was tortured

Months before the Syrians locked up Maher Arar, he was fingered as a terrorism suspect by a Canadian acquaintance.''During my detention and torture by the Syrians I was forced to divulge everyone I knew. This included Mr. Maher Arar,'' says Ahmad Abou El-Maati, a Toronto truck driver first arrested in November, 2001, and released from a series of Middle East prisons just a few weeks ago.

Mr. El-Maati says that shortly after his arrest he placated his torturers by falsely confessing to a bomb plot targeting Ottawa, and by falsely implicating others, including Mr. Arar, according to an affidavit he wrote after returning to Canada last month.

...The six-page affidavit Mr. El-Maati swore to just two weeks ago marks the first time he has told his story publicly, and it is written in support of his application to tell it in greater detail at the inquiry.

Mr. El-Maati is slated to appear tomorrow at hearings into who will get standing to appear at the Arar inquiry. In his affidavit, Mr. El-Maati, a Kuwaiti-born Arab and devout Muslim who has lived in Canada since 1981, says events began in earnest on Sept. 11, 2001. On the day hijacked airplanes smashed into the World Trade Center, he says Canadian Security Intelligence Service agents approached him and "indicated to me they would stop the [immigration] sponsorship of my Syrian wife." Then, "CSIS harassed and prodded me and made my life so miserable and made it clear my wife and I would never be together."

CSIS, he says, had already been bothering him for months, but this was the final straw. He says he was thus pushed to go to Syria, which he flew to in November.

He says RCMP or CSIS agents questioned him in the Toronto airport and also put a spy on the plane. Then, "upon my arrival in Syria on November 12, 2001, I was immediately detained."

In a post on the subject, BruceR at Flit describes El-Maati as a "legit suspect" and suggests that as a result of the confession, all Canadian officials did was add the names of Almalki and Arar to a list of potential suspects which was subsequently passed on to American spooks who took it from there. But since he remains free and has never been charged with anything, why was El-Maati a legitimate suspect? At whose request was he detained in Syria? And how did the map of Ottawa found in a truck driven by El-Maati, which he claims was last seen in the hands of the RCMP, end up in the possession of his Syrian interrogators?

I guess we can add these to the list of outstanding questions that already beg for answers. How did the lease bearing Maher Arar's signature end up in the possession of the American officials who questioned him in New York? And if Canadian spooks weren't complicit in Arar's detention, why were they in such a hurry to leak reports to the press that suggested he was guilty of something while doing so only on the condition of anonymity?

I think the degree of involvement on the part of Canadian agencies remains very much an open question, one we can hope will be answered by the inquiry. But that inquiry has hit a roadblock.

Ottawa trying to hold back documents from Arar inquiry

Maher Arar says he is concerned he may never see most of the evidence at the public inquiry that's looking into his arrest and deportation to Syria.

Lawyers for the federal government are objecting to Arar's involvement in hearings to decide whether some documents remain secret.
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Lorne Waldman, Arar's lawyer, says "the public information that has been made available to date raises the very grave and serious question of whether the Canadian government, and in particular the Canadian security services, are involved in contracting out torture, in violation of Canadian and international law."

The answers may be contained in some of the thousands of pages of documents the commission has sought from 10 government departments and agencies, including the RCMP and the Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS).

But Marlys Edwardh, Arar's co-counsel, says her client may never see most of those documents.
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The government of Canada can ask the inquiry's commissioner Justice Dennis O'Connor to declare any evidence secret on the grounds its publication could harm national security, national defence or international relations.

O'Connor will make those decisions in secret, at times with only government lawyers present.
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But Arar's lawyers are also concerned that even if O'Connor rules that information should be made public the attorney general can always apply to the Federal Court to stop the release.

Even if "mistakes were made" in this case, it would be better to admit them and to demonstrate that they won't be repeated than to keep the evidence secret in the name of "national security", and keep us in the dark. Suggesting that we should simply trust our governments and law enforcement agencies to learn from their mistakes rings pretty hollow when confronted with what we know so far. This looks like one more indication that the War on Terror™, which has been used to justify everything from the invasion of Iraq to legislation that's profoundly undemocratic, is being botched.

To the person who arrived at this blog after plugging the following search string into google:

Does Canada government use mental torture on it's on citizens?

Thanks for stopping by.

I'm off on one of my short trips. There will be nothing new here until later on tomorrow at the earliest.

There's always the blogroll. I've added a few new ones recently. Have fun.

In his current Globe and Mail column, John Ibbitson has some advice for Paul Martin on how to repair that pesky US-Canada relationship. I was particularly interested in his last suggestion, not so much because of the merits of the idea itself but for what Ibbitson seems to reveal about his own attitude towards democracy.

Finally, the time has come for Ottawa to propose the next major advance in free trade. We need to eliminate controls on the movement of workers between the two countries. Free trade in goods has enriched both nations; free trade in labour will accelerate that virtuous cycle.

Human skills are more valuable than physical goods. The tariff on human skills known as the work visa keeps Canadians from exploiting opportunities in the American labour market. The inability of American workers to fill Canadian jobs leads to labour shortages and reduced productivity here. The same people who were afraid of opening the Canadian market to American goods will fear an open market in talent. Their arguments on this front are as unfounded as their arguments against the free-trade front proved to be.

Mr. Martin should let Mr. Bush know that, assuming there is a Liberal government after the next election, he would like to enter into formal negotiations toward a labour-mobility agreement. This is another subject on which neither leader may be able to breathe a public word. But that's no reason not to get started right away.

Ibbitson seems to think that the only issue to examine when it comes to the free trade agreement is the economic bottom line. Aside from the fact that the "enrichment" he points to hasn't been distributed all that evenly, I'd like to point to the fact that there are other problems with NAFTA. It holds the corporate right to make a profit above national sovereignty and the right of the people in a democracy to determine for themselves what kind of a society they want. And I would submit that it's precisely because too much of the negotiations were done in secret, away from the public eye and without a public debate, that this happened.

So why does John Ibbitson hate democracy? And why is a journalist, whose job is normally to shine a light on dark spaces, encouraging our PM to make public policy behind our backs?

Yesterday James at Hewmon.com posted about the effects being felt from the Liberal economic policies of the nineties when Paul Martin was Finance Minister and slew the deficit. (Cross-posted at the BlogsCanada E-Group.)

In particular, James drew attention to the increased debt load carried by university and college graduates as a result of higher tuition fees and wondered, quite rightly, how many are giving up on the possibility of higher education because the cost has put it out of reach. He also noted that with decreased support for families, and cuts and tighter restrictions on access to programs such as Employment Insurance, stress levels among workers have risen along with hours worked, while "family time" has decreased and some have decided against having families at all.

Today in the Toronto Star, James Travers calls attention to what may well be another result of the manner in which Martin chose to defeat the deficit: the federal government is paying $6.5 billion dollars in consulting fees. Yes, that's billion with a 'b'. That figure has risen by $2 billion since 1994.

One wonders, as Travers himself does, how much of that is a result of the drastic cuts made to the civil service during Martin's tenure in finance, when he essentially told other ministers what their reduced budgets would be and left it to them to determine what to cut. (See Murray Dobbin's Paul Martin: CEO for Canada? for a fairly concise review of how Martin went about balancing the budget.)

Certainly it's true that some expertise is only needed occasionally and it may be more efficient to bring it in when needed rather than pay to have it "on staff". But sometimes identifying savings of that nature can require time and and careful thought. When cuts are made in a crisis atmosphere, time and thought are considered luxuries.

From Travers:

But a $6.5 billion habit speaks to dependency, not to the judicious application of expert support. It warns that the bureaucracy is losing its know-how and corporate memory as well as its will to make decisions without the don't-blame-me safety net consultants provide for civil servants.

Equally damaging, so much money spent on so much departmental and backroom advice breeds the cosy deals that distance politicians and governments from citizens when the details ooze into headlines.

But there's a larger issue here. Martin is widely thought of as being a competent fiscal manager -- the guy that balanced the federal books where so many before him had failed. But running a country is far more complex than running a corporation and the goals are different. The effects of decisions can take years to work their way through "the system". We're now seeing some of the effects of Martin's approach to managing the country and some of it looks more and more like short term gain for long term pain.

Updated in a new post. All is not as it seems here.

Ontario to get tough on 'bad employers'

The Ontario government is promising tougher enforcement of labour laws in the province, including the pursuit of fines of up to $500,000 to crack down on what Labour Minister Chris Bentley calls ''a few bad employers'' who fail to pay salaries, overtime or benefits.

His promise, which was announced yesterday along with an end to the 60-hour workweek, drew critical reactions from two different camps.

Len Crispino, president of the Ontario Chamber of Commerce, said the increased enforcement of the Employment Standards Act will hit businesses with unnecessary additional bureaucracy when only a few employers are in violation of the legislation.

Excuse me? We're not talking about new laws or new bureaucracy here. We're talking about enforcing the laws that are already on the books. If there's some bureaucracy involved in enforcing the law, I'd like to know how it can be described as "unnecessary" when there's a possibility that employees are being cheated out of what's rightfully theirs or made to work in unsafe conditions (see later in the article where it discusses increased inspections of "high risk" workplaces). I wonder if Mr. Crispino feels there are other laws on the books that we shouldn't bother enforcing because the bureaucracy involved is just too onerous or whether his concern is limited to those that might inconvenience employers.

"The issue is not as blatant and as difficult as people might say," [Crispino] said.

But how do we know if we don't look into it?

As an example of the unenthusiastic enforcement of the law, Mr. Bentley said: "Last year, there were 15,000 claims against employers and only one prosecution was started. Beginning today, enforcement is back in style."

Diplomats slam Blair on Mid-East

More than 50 former British diplomats have signed a letter to Tony Blair criticising his Middle East policy.

The 52 ambassadors said it was time for the prime minister to start influencing America's "doomed" policy in the Middle East or stop backing it.

They told Mr Blair they had "watched with deepening concern" as Britain followed the US lead in Iraq and Israel and called for a debate in Parliament.

...One of the people behind the letter, former British ambassador to Libya Oliver Miles said: "A number of us felt that our opinion on these two subjects, Iraq and the Arab-Israel problem, were pretty widely shared and we thought that we ought to make them public."

On Iraq he added: ""We do think that through lack of planning and through a misunderstanding, a misreading of the situation, we have got ourselves into an extremely difficult situation."

The prime minister is urged to sway US policy in the Middle East as "a matter of the highest urgency".

"We feel the time has come to make our anxieties public, in the hope that they will be addressed in Parliament and will lead to a fundamental reassessment," said the letter, sent to Reuters.

...BBC News Online's World Affairs Correspondent Paul Reynolds said: "The list of names includes many former ambassadors in the Middle East and the publication of the letter shows that their frustration at Iraqi and Middle East policy has broken into the open.

...The 52 diplomats urged Mr Blair to use his alliance with Mr Bush to exert "real influence as a loyal ally... If that is unacceptable or unwelcome, there is no case for supporting policies which are doomed to failure."

...The ambassadors accuse the US-led coalition of having "no effective plan" for Iraq after the war and an apparent disregard for the lives of Iraqi civilians.

...They condemn Mr Bush's decision to endorse an Israeli plan to retain some settlements in the West Bank as an illegal and one-sided step - and criticise Mr Blair's public support for the move.

"Our dismay at this backward step is heightened by the fact that you yourself seem to have endorsed it, abandoning the principles which for nearly four decades have guided international efforts to restore peace in the Holy Land," the diplomats said.

Translation: If Bush doesn't stop acting like such a bloody fool, cut and run.

I believe there are currently 12,000 British troops in Iraq, but the loss of those boots on the ground would mean a lot more than just spreading the American troops even more thinly than they already are. Blair is the only semblance of serious international support that Bush has left. Without British support, there's no more pretending that it's a multilateral effort.

I don't really know how much influence the Foreign Office has in British politics but I think it's considerably more than our Foreign Affairs department has in Canada. And I suspect Tony Blair is feeling his neck right about now. I'll bet Karl Rove isn't impressed either.

From a Globe and Mail article today:

The Canadian Food Inspection Agency quietly changed its import rules last Friday to permit a wider range of meat products to be shipped from the United States.

In light of that you mind find this interesting (via Bump).

The U.S. Department of Agriculture has pressured its veterinarians into falsifying official documents for as long as 20 years, former agency veterinarians told United Press International.

The allegations come as a current USDA veterinarian and an attorney representing federal veterinarians have made similar charges about existing internal practices at the agency's Food Safety and Inspection Service.

The veterinarian -- who requested anonymity because of feared repercussions from the agency -- and the attorney, Bill Hughes of the National Association of Federal Veterinarians, allege the present FSIS management takes retaliatory actions against veterinarian inspectors who do not obey orders from superiors to sign certificates that falsely assert certain food items are safe for export.

These so-called export certificates declare a food item has been prepared in accordance with the safety inspection requirements of foreign countries. In some cases, Hughes and the veterinarian charge, even though food items may violate those export requirements, veterinarian inspectors still are expected to sign the documents.

Former veterinarians said the practice has been condoned in the agency for up to 20 years.

"We signed export certificates almost daily ... without ever verifying their accuracy," Tom D'Amura, a veterinarian who spent 12 years with the agency before leaving in 2000, told UPI.

"It probably still goes on," D'Amura said, and added he maintains contact with current USDA veterinarians.

So what's for dinner?

Huge Crowds in Washington for Abortion-Rights Rally

Hundreds of thousands of abortion rights supporters rallied Sunday in the nation's capital, protesting the policies of the Bush administration and its conservative allies and vowing to fight back in the November election.

...Organizers asserted that the marchers numbered more than a million, in what they said was a clear demonstration of political clout.

"I think that after September 11, the American people are valuing life more and we need policies to value the dignity and worth of every life," she said. "President Bush has worked to say, let's be reasonable, let's work to value life, let's reduce the number of abortions, let's increase adoptions. And I think those are the kinds of policies the American people can support, particularly at a time when we're facing an enemy and, really, the fundamental issue between us and the terror network we fight is that we value every life."

Now I know that quote was in the story because I followed the link from Daily Kos and read it. But I went back a few minutes ago and while much of the story reads as it did the first time I saw it, this particular quote is gone. There's no longer any mention of Karen Hughes in the story. It's possible that some of the original copy was edited to make room for subsequent additions to the piece, but I find it interesting that such a newsworthy quote was cut.

Update:
You can see Hughes' comments in this transcript of Late Edition with Wolf Blitzer at CNN.

It seems to me the response to the heightened threat of terrorism we perceive in Canada since 9/11 has largely mirrored the American response without the War on Terror™ rhetoric. The solutions put forward all involve heightened security, more investment in the armed forces, more centralized intelligence databases and legislation designed to grant more authority to law enforcement and government with too little attention paid to the possible invasions of privacy and infringement of civil rights that these measures may represent.

If we've largely avoided the more polarizing effects of George Bush's "you're with us or you're with the terrorists" public representation of the problem, we certainly seem to have bought into the assumption that it's "us vs. them" and all we can do is hunker down and prepare for the never-ending war that Bush has declared. But if the only solutions we have feed into the war mentality, then doesn't never-ending war become a self-fulfilling prophecy?

The Wrong Debate on Terrorism
by Richard A. Clarke - former head of counterterrorism at the National Security Council and author of Against All Enemies: Inside America's War on Terror.

The last month has seen a remarkable series of events that focused the public and news media on America's shortcomings in dealing with terrorism from radical Islamists. This catharsis, which is not yet over, is necessary for our national psyche. If we learn the right lessons, it may also prove to be an essential part of our future victory over those who now threaten us.

But how do we select the right lessons to learn? I tried to suggest some in my recent book, and many have attempted to do so in the 9/11 hearings, but such efforts have been largely eclipsed by partisan reaction.

One lesson is that even though we are the world's only remaining superpower ? as we were before Sept. 11, 2001 ? we are seriously threatened by an ideological war within Islam. It is a civil war in which a radical Islamist faction is striking out at the West and at moderate Muslims. Once we recognize that the struggle within Islam ? not a "clash of civilizations" between East and West ? is the phenomenon with which we must grapple, we can begin to develop a strategy and tactics for doing so. It is a battle not only of bombs and bullets, but chiefly of ideas. It is a war that we are losing, as more and more of the Islamic world develops antipathy toward the United States and some even develop a respect for the jihadist movement.

I do not pretend to know the formula for winning that ideological war. But I do know that we cannot win it without significant help from our Muslim friends, and that many of our recent actions (chiefly the invasion of Iraq) have made it far more difficult to obtain that cooperation and to achieve credibility.

What we have tried in the war of ideas has also fallen short. It is clear that United States government versions of MTV or CNN in Arabic will not put a dent in the popularity of the anti-American jihad. Nor will calls from Washington for democratization in the Arab world help if such calls originate from a leader who is trying to impose democracy on an Arab country at the point of an American bayonet. The Bush administration's much-vaunted Middle East democracy initiative, therefore, was dead on arrival.

We must also be careful, while advocating democracy in the region, that we do not undermine the existing regimes without having a game plan for what should follow them and how to get there. The lesson of President Jimmy Carter's abandonment of the shah of Iran in 1979 should be a warning. So, too, should we be chastened by the costs of eliminating the regime of Saddam Hussein, almost 25 years after the shah, also without a detailed plan for what would follow.

Other parts of the war of ideas include making real progress on the Israel-Palestinian issue, while safe-guarding Israeli security, and finding ideological and religious counter-weights to Osama bin Laden and the radical imams. Fashioning a comprehensive strategy to win the battle of ideas should be given as much attention as any other aspect of the war on terrorists, or else we will fight this war for the foreseeable future. For even when Osama bin Laden is dead, his ideas will carry on. Even as Al Qaeda has had its leadership attacked, it has morphed into a hydra, carrying out more major attacks in the 30 months since 9/11 than it did in the three years before.

But the acknowledgement in the first part of his article that it's a war of ideas that calls for more than just "bombs and bullets" is an approach that has seemed all too conspicuous by its absence, at least on the part of many in positions of leadership. The hard core "terrorists" represented by bin Laden and his immediate followers are probably beyond negotiation. But how many people does that group really represent? What is it they're fighting for? And why aren't we spending more time trying to understand the answers to these questions?

Clarke ends his piece with this:

We all want to defeat the jihadists. To do that, we need to encourage an active, critical and analytical debate in America about how that will best be done. And if there is another major terrorist attack in this country, we must not panic or stifle debate as we did for too long after 9/11.

But even if you're inclined to say I'm being cynical with that, how about allowing for the possibility that people are flocking to the obvious solutions at hand, the ones that are comfortable, instead of doing the hard work involved in really thinking about the problem even if that means confronting some things that aren't so comfortable?

Link via Just a Bump in the Beltway.

And by way of taking a closer look at the issues, Ian Welsh of Tilting at Windmills wrote a thoughtful piece a while back called Understanding Osama. It was also cross-posted at The Blogging of the President.

Mulroney criticizes Liberals' handling of Khadrs

Mr. Mulroney delivered a high-energy speech, taking repeated shots at the record of the federal Liberals, including their recent handling of the Khadr family's return to Canada.

Mr. Mulroney said the situation was just one of the ways the Liberals have hurt U.S.-Canada relations.

He criticized "the limp and pathetic manner the Liberal government handled the case of the Khadr family, intimates of Osama Bin Laden ... some of whose members have taken up arms in support of terrorism, and yet are welcomed back to Canada with open arms.

"Imagine the signal that these images send to the White House and the civilized world," he told an audience of about 600 people.

Since he's one of the most unpopular Canadian politicians in living memory, I would add that Mulroney should really reflect back on both the mood and events in this country in the period immediately following his departure from politics. If being wildly unpopular with the Canadian public, merely being suspected of criminal wrong-doing and being regarded by at least a significant portion of the population as being a traitor to this country were sufficient grounds to have one's citizenship stripped, then Brian Mulroney might well be a man without a country today. So where would he like to draw that line?

Paul Wells points us to the latest example of the Liberal party's dedication to its principles. A woman in a BC riding who has been campaigning for the Liberal nomination since January has been asked to step aside so the riding association can parachute in a "star" candidate. And what a star candidate he is. Yes, "he".

Leaky condo advocate Carmen Maretic has been asked to withdraw from the Liberal nomination in the New Westminster-Coquitlam riding ? to make way for IWA leader Dave Haggard.

Back in December I wrote a post that dealt in part with a sweetheart deal between a union and a multinational taking advantage of Gordon Campbell's privatization of long-term health care facilities in BC. Long story short: the union was IWA Local 1-3567 and the title of the post was The race to the bottom.

As it turns out, there were quite a number of deals like this in which this local was only too happy to help multinational companies turn decent paying jobs with good benefits into jobs that were marginally better than working at the local McDonald's. And while Haggard publicly referred to 1-3567 as a "rogue local", according to this article he spent two years delaying and dissembling so that this kind of activity could continue. Finally, after pressure from other labour organizations, the Canadian Labour Congress imposed sanctions on the IWA.

The CLC sanctions mean that for the foreseeable future, IWA-Canada representatives will lose their vote on the CLC's executive board and on executive boards of the various federations of labour across the country. IWA-Canada will also be prohibited from participating in CLC and other labour "fed" committees, educational programs and conferences.

The CLC imposed the sanctions after an IWA local signed yet another sweetheart deal with a private contractor in defiance of a CLC directive calling on the union to "cease and desist from further voluntary agreements related to Bill 29 in British Columbia."

And along the way, Haggard also managed to earn the enmity of his more traditional constituents: forest industry workers.

Three weeks into a strike by 8000 logging and sawmill workers, IWA Canada President Dave Haggard stood alongside BC Premier Gordon Campbell and a spokesman representing the Forest Industrial Relations - a company representing the 61 coastal forest companies involved in the dispute - and agreed to a government back-to-work order.
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The presidents of two large Vancouver Island IWA locals were quoted in local newspapers, "We were all but blind sided by a decision made by IWA national president Dave Haggard to agree to sit down in mediated talks with Forest Industrial Relations -- the bargaining unit for coastal forest companies -- and if no progress is made, mediator Don Munroe will have the right to impose a decision."

The IWA national leadership seems to have done everything in its power to exclude the membership from discussing and deciding how to fight back against the employers' demands for concessions.

By agreeing to the back-to-work deal, it can be sure that concessions will be imposed on its members - and there will be no opportunity to fight back.

Now even if you aren't particularly fond of organized labour, isn't it fair to say that the job of a union leader is to represent the interests of his members rather than those of the employer?

So. Let's review. Paul Martin wants to overcome the democratic deficit by asking a candidate who has been campaigning on the ground in a riding since January to step aside so the riding can acclaim someone who's being parachuted in out of the blue. Martin wants to encourage women to run for Liberal positions by brushing aside a woman to hand the nomination to a man. He wants to strengthen democracy by having voters send to the House of Commons someone who, in a union leadership position, earned the wrath of his own members and sanctions from the CLC, the national governing body of labour unions. And our Prime Minister wants to make the preservation of our health care system a priority while acclaiming for nomination someone who has been busy assisting multinationals in making a profit out of our publicly funded system to the detriment of the very people he was supposed to be representing.

Have I got all that right?

Iraq: UN Panel Launches Inquiry Into Tainted Oil-For-Food Program

The United Nations has formally launched an inquiry into charges the oil-for-food program in Iraq was abused by UN staff and a wide range of others. The UN Security Council called on all states to cooperate with the probe, which is headed by a prominent former U.S. official, Paul Volcker. But there is doubt about how much support will come from those council states that have been closely linked to improprieties in the program.
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The inquiry got under way yesterday after the Security Council passed a resolution calling on UN officials, member states, the U.S.-led coalition, and Iraqis to cooperate.

UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan named Volcker, the former chairman of the U.S. Federal Reserve, to head the panel. The two other members are Richard Goldstone, a former chief prosecutor for UN criminal tribunals, and Mark Pieth, a Swiss legal expert who specializes in money-laundering issues.
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Allegations of improprieties had circulated for several years. But they were revived earlier this year following a report in Baghdad's "Al-Mada" daily.

The newspaper published what it said was a list of contracts, awarded by Iraq's State Oil Marketing Organization (SOMO), allocating large amounts of crude oil under Hussein's regime to about 270 foreign dignitaries and organizations. The allocations would have entitled the beneficiaries to collect a commission on the sale of the oil by middlemen.

The list of contract beneficiaries quoted by "Al-Mada" includes the head of the UN oil-for-food program, Benon Sevan. He has repeatedly denied any wrongdoing.

The credibility of the investigation is inevitably going to depend partly on documentary evidence taken from Ba'ath party files dating from the time of the sanctions. But if I'm not mistaken, these files are now in the grubby little hands of Mr. Chalabi and his cronies, who aren't letting anyone else at them. Chalabi knows perfectly well that the documents give him the dirt on any number of potential rivals within Iraq. For the really paranoid, Chalabi's possession of these documents also opens up the possibility that he might seed the evidence with forgeries to discredit rivals, if real documents cannot be found for this purpose. At any rate, here as in so many other areas, the appearance of propriety matters as well as the substance.

All of this raises legitimate concerns about evidence tampering and also selective treatment of the evidence. Remember that Chalabi has an angle here, and the some of the first rivals for him to face down are rivals at the U.N. who don't seem especially keen on the Pentagon's favourite Iraqi.

The U.S. administrator in Iraq, L. Paul Bremer, deliberately put the brakes on an investigation by the Iraqi Governing Council into allegations of $10 billion in bribes, kickbacks and smuggling at the U.N. oil-for-food program, lawmakers were told.

The 2-month delay caused by needlessly putting the audit contract out for tender may have allowed the loss of vital evidence, Claude Hankes-Drielsma, an adviser to the U.S.-appointed council told the House National Security Subcommittee, led by Rep. Christopher Shays, R-Conn.

Bremer told the Iraqis "he would not release funds ... to meet the cost of the investigation unless the work was put out to tender," Hankes-Drielsma said Wednesday, despite the fact that KPMG -- the firm selected by the council's finance committee -- was acknowledged world leaders in forensic auditing and had sent a team to Baghdad.
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"Time is of the essence," said Hankes-Drielsma. "Evidence can and may be lost," he added, describing how one vital document had been rescued from destruction by fire or water by a conscientious civil servant. Many documents were destroyed when government buildings were looted in the turbulent weeks that followed the U.S. capture of Baghdad, but more sinister forces were also at work: Hankes-Drielsma said, "I expect shredders are working round-the-clock at this very moment."

He would not speculate as to Bremer's motives in delaying the probe, beyond saying that it was an example of Bremer's "high-handedness," but a source close to the investigation told United Press International, "There can be no legitimate cause for delay, given the importance of this issue to Iraq and the whole world. The only reason must be that they did not want the report out before the handover (of power to an interim Iraqi authority, on June 30th)."
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The finance committee, which hired Hankes-Drielsma, is led by the controversial former exile Ahmed Chalabi, a fact which caused some Democrats to raise questions about the timing and origin of the recent round of charges.

"I understand that the allegations ... come from one source which may have an interest in preventing the United Nations' involvement in Iraq," said Rep. Carolyn Maloney, D-N.Y. The U.N. special envoy to Iraq, Lakhdar Brahimi, recently recommended that the Iraqi Governing Council, on which Chalabi sits, should be dissolved after the June 30 handover.

And anything that gives Chalabi leverage makes it more likely that he'll end up in a position of power in Iraq, which strikes me as a recipe for continued violence.

Arar family sues government for $400M

Maher Arar and his family are suing the Canadian government for $400-million, according to the National Post.

The suit claims authorities breached Arar's charter rights and were guilty of racism when they pursued an investigation into his alleged extremist links in 2002.

The court filing contains several allegations, including negligence, negligent investigation, defamation, false imprisonment, assault and abuse of public office.

Other parties named in the suit include CSIS, the RCMP and Foreign Affairs department officials in Syria and in New York.

The family says the authorities employed illegal and unconstitutional means to conduct a biased investigation on the basis of unreliable information.

A Syrian-born Canadian citizen, Arar is seeking $50 million in damages and $20 million in punitive damages, as well as unspecified special damages, interest and costs, the newspaper reported. Eleven family members including his wife, Monia Mazigh, are seeking $30 million each in damages.

Licence to infringe on rights

Members of Parliament are getting ready to vote on a new and controversial bill. The proposed Bill C-7, Public Safety Act, has passed its first two readings and has been reviewed by the Senate. The bill as described in its introduction is: "An Act to amend certain Acts of Canada ... in order to enhance public safety."

This bill is offensive because it proposes to suspend due process in our legal system under the pretext of security. If this bill is approved, security agencies would have unprecedented executive power. With just a signature, government ministers and their delegates would be able to amend certain acts on the advice of a security agency. With no one to challenge their decisions, the checks and balances of our system would be diminished significantly. This should be a concern to everyone.

The bill contains 23 parts covering a wide range of previously enacted legislation. To give you an idea of its scope, acts such as Air Transport Security Authority Act, Environmental Protection Act, Exports and Imports Permit Act, National Defence Act, Pest Control Products Act, Marine Transportation Security Act and others are affected.

The proposed bill gives ministers and their delegates extended and concentrated powers. The respective minister and his or her delegates will have the unchecked authority to "make an interim order if the minister believes that there is a significant (security) risk." The ministers and their delegates are granted powers to arbitrarily and unilaterally circumvent a piece of existing legislation based on assessments conducted by security agencies that cannot be challenged.

We've known about the Maher Arar story for months. It now looks as though Arar's case is but one facet of a story that involves the imprisonment and torture of three men, and an almost unprecedented raid on the home of a journalist, all because the first of the imprisoned men provided a bogus confession under torture. There are a host of unanswered questions and some of them involve the same law enforcement agencies that are being empowered by this bill. The inquiry into the Arar case isn't even under way yet and the Liberal government wants to grant itself and these same agencies even more draconian powers, and grant them in a way that leaves everyone involved unaccountable.

For example, the current Personal Information Protection and Electronic Document Act was set up to protect the privacy of individuals and their personal information. But with this bill, the responsible minister and his or her delegates can use personal information for reasons of "national security" without setting any safeguards or defining what that term means.

The Canadian Bar Association issued a warning that the proposed bill "would take Canada down the road toward a police state." The International Civil Liberties Monitoring Group asserts, "the proposed new power would turn all Canadians into suspects." The Canadian Arab Federation argues this bill offers "intrusions on privacy and violations of rights this society does not need." The Coalition of Muslim Organizations believes this act combined with the controversial C-36 Anti-Terrorism Act "represents a significant threat to civil rights, democracy and the rule of law."

I was struck by the same coincidence that caught the attention of the author of an unsigned National Post editorial. Yesterday the Globe and Mail reported on this bit of Liberal strategy:

Liberal Party pollsters were in the field last week asking Ontarians whether they were "more or less likely to vote for the Conservative/Alliance if you knew they had been taken over by evangelical Christians."

And yet, playing right into the Liberals' election strategy of demonizing the CPC as a bunch of hard-line "extremists" ... certain media outlets have already begun to play up the social conservative angle. Yesterday, in an article headlined "Religious Activists Set to Run for Conservatives," The Globe & Mail reported that the candidacies of the Canada Family Action Coalition's Peter Stock, the Promise Keepers' David Sweet and the Christian Legal Fellowship's Michael Menear have "led to warnings that the party not push a moral-values agenda as it tries to show a moderate face for the coming election campaign."

Why anyone would assume that three out of 308 candidates would dictate the Conservatives' election platform -- any more than dozens of socially conservative Liberal MPs set the government's policies -- is beyond us.

What the Liberals have done here is known as push-polling. The real purpose isn't to honestly guage public opinion. The question has been framed in such a way as to plant a particular idea in the public consciousness whether it's true or not, though it's obviously more effective when there's some element of truth the question can play on.

There is irony here. According to the first of the Globe articles linked to above, another element of the Liberal strategy is to paint Harper as a politician with a very "American style". This from David Herle and the Earnscliffe Disinformation Group, who appear to be doing their best impression of Karl Rove and the Mighty Wurlitzer (aka the Republican slime machine). It's going to be an interesting election. That's not necessarily a good thing for our democracy but it suggests we'll have plenty to blog about.

As for the Post challenging the Globe on possible bias, I love it. That's the way it should work.

... comes from Paul Wells:

So you've got a Cabinet rift over a strategy to settle an invented constitutional crisis by selling a non-existent reform with a useless referendum.

Margaret Wente on the UN

In reality, the oil-for-food program was one of the larger rip-offs of all time. Under the UN's nose, Saddam Hussein skimmed off billions. He sold oil to friendly firms at deep discounts, which then resold it for huge profits. They paid him kickbacks of 10 per cent. He also paid inflated prices (in return for more kickbacks) for inferior food and medicine. That was easy, because Saddam's regime had the power to approve all the suppliers. He spent some of the proceeds on bigger palaces and fleets of new Mercedes for his goon squads. He also paid out generous bribes to foreign friends, friends who were politically connected and opposed sanctions or military action against Iraq.

It's now estimated that Saddam stole at least $5-billion, money that was meant to feed hungry Iraqis and save sick babies. He made another $5-billion from smuggled oil. The biggest victims of this massive fraud were the Iraqi people.

The extent of the corruption is common knowledge in Iraq, where the program is derisively known as "oil for palaces." And it is a rude wake-up call for people who imagine Iraq would be better off under UN administration.

Spoils of War (via Atrios)

The spoils of war add up to more than capturing expansive palaces and luxury cars. As Marketplace reporters have discovered, not all of the $22 billion being spent to rebuild Iraq is going where it should. Who's watching the money as it streams through Baghdad? Just about no one, and bribes and black marketeering are rampant, witnesses say. A leading anti-corruption group claims as much as 90 percent of U.S. money spent in Iraq is being lost to corruption. From Halliburton subsidiaries charging double for gas, Iraqi officials and Arabic translators unrestrained from pocketing millions of dollars, or even members of the interim governing Council accusing each other of taking tens of millions in bribes. Trouble is, the root of the problem can't be found anywhere near the Green Zone. Try the White House, and Capitol Hill, where oversight of Iraqi construction crews and U.S. contractors like Halliburton has only just begun to be assigned? more than a year after the war began.

Fables of the Reconstruction

As the situation in Iraq grows ever more tenuous, the Bush administration continues to spin the ominous news with matter-of-fact optimism. According to Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, Iraqi uprisings in half a dozen cities, accompanied by the deaths of more than 100 soldiers in the month of April alone, is something to be viewed in the context of "good days and bad days," merely "a moment in Iraq's path towards a free and democratic system." More recently, the president himself asserted, "Our coalition is standing with responsible Iraqi leaders as they establish growing authority in their country."

But according to a closely held Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA) memo written in early March, the reality isn't so rosy. Iraq's chances of seeing democracy succeed, according to the memo's author?a U.S. government official detailed to the CPA, who wrote this summation of observations he'd made in the field for a senior CPA director?have been severely imperiled by a year's worth of serious errors on the part of the Pentagon and the CPA, the U.S.-led multinational agency administering Iraq. Far from facilitating democracy and security, the memo's author fears, U.S. efforts have created an environment rife with corruption and sectarianism likely to result in civil war.

Provided to this reporter by a Western intelligence official, the memo was partially redacted to protect the writer's identity and to "avoid inflaming an already volatile situation" by revealing the names of certain Iraqi figures. A wide-ranging and often acerbic critique of the CPA, covering topics ranging from policy, personalities, and press operations to on-the-ground realities such as electricity, the document is not only notable for its candidly troubled assessment of Iraq's future. It is also significant, according to the intelligence official, because its author has been a steadfast advocate of "transforming" the Middle East, beginning with "regime change" in Iraq.

Link via The Agonist.

Family coalition seeks halt to hate law

Proposed legislation that would extend hate-law protection to Canada's gays and lesbians should be suspended because its big proponent ? NDP MP Svend Robinson ? is an "admitted thief," a family coalition says.

"The process of amending the Criminal Code of Canada must be beyond reproach," said Charles McVety, president of the Canada Family Action Coalition.

"It is problematic to have criminal laws written by a legislator who, by his own admission, is guilty of socially destructive grand theft," McVety said yesterday.

... in a hard-hitting news release yesterday, the coalition argued the legislation should be shelved.

"Since the legislation was drafted by an "admitted thief" the bill itself comes into question," the news release stated. "The integrity of the legislative process of Canada must be upheld."

The coalition also argues that Robinson's admissions that he's been suffering severe stress and emotional pain is another reason the proposed law should not be passed.

"Such admissions bring into question the integrity of the frame of mind that conceived and drafted Bill C-250," the coalition said.

The problem that opponents to legislation like this have is avoiding the appearance that their opposition is based on intolerance rather than principle. I think the CFAC just shot themselves in the foot.

Hat tip to the babble discussion board for the link.

User fees outweighed Tory tax cuts: study

The benefits to Ontario families of the tax cuts imposed by the Conservative government between 1995 and 2003 were outweighed by higher user fees during the same period, a new study suggests.

The study, to be released Monday by the Ontario Confederation of University Faculty Associations, is a clear warning to the current Liberal government as it struggles to balance the books without raising taxes.
...
The study found a typical single-parent family with two children and annual income of $38,000 in 2003 was paying $1,490.43 less in income taxes than in 1995, when the Conservatives were first elected.

But the average Ontario household was paying $1,831.14 more in user fees and property taxes in 2003, the study found.

A family of four with one full-time university student and an annual income of $54,000 - roughly the Ontario average - was paying $4,059.46 in additional user fees in 2003, including $2,465 more for tuition, than in 1995. But that same family was only saving $1,439.80 in lower taxes, the study found.

Compensating for lower taxes through higher user fees is detrimental because it doesn't distinguish between families with different income levels, the study warns.

Telcos passing off cellphone charges as a tax

Canada's cellular industry will pocket nearly $1 billion in 2004 from a special systems "access" or "licensing" fee that wireless consumers believe ? and are regularly being told ? is a mandatory government charge.

Only it isn't mandatory at all, nor, as many are led to believe, is the $6.95 that appears on every mobile phone bill being passed along to a government body, such as Industry Canada or the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission.

"Nobody is required to charge a $7 access fee," says Ian Angus, a telecommunications consultant and president of Angus TeleManagement Group in Ajax. "It's fake. It's a method of doing a rate increase that doesn't look like a rate increase."

One industry insider said the fee is the result of one company making the move and the others quickly following. "Somebody always has to go first, nobody's working together," he said.

"Our concern was misinformation to consumers," says Earl Hoeg, director of spectrum management operations at Industry Canada.

In response, Industry Canada tried to get the carriers to put the following statement on every customer invoice: "System Access Fees are neither required nor collected by the Government."

The statement went on to say that carriers' licence fees are paid to the government for use of radio spectrum, but that they shouldn't be directly linked to customers. "Industry Canada encourages consumers to seek the best value from among the competing service providers that have been licensed," the statement concluded.

The carriers were furious over the government's proposal. Telus called it "inappropriate meddling" and an "unwarranted intrusion," not to mention a blatant attempt by Industry Canada to overstep its responsibilities. The company said competition will deal with the issue.

We're still waiting.

Rogers simply said the fees are common practice throughout North America so the department should just mind its own business. Microcell said Industry Canada didn't have the jurisdiction. Bell said its messaging to customers is accurate, and besides, claimed the cost of printing new text on its invoices would be ? get this ? a "considerable expense." It didn't define considerable.

Facing stiff resistance from the industry, the department backed off. Instead of requiring a statement on invoices, it took a less invasive approach. From now on, a wireless carrier is breaching its condition of license if it tells its customers that the system access fee or licensing charge they're paying is being collected on behalf of Industry Canada.

The Telus agent was direct: "It's through the CRTC... it's a monthly fee everyone would have to pay." Is it collected for the government? "That's right, we're collecting it for the CRTC."

Similar comments came from Microcell. "Our provider in Canada has to charge that fee. It's a government charge," the agent said. "The CRTC is asking us to charge that amount to our customers. It's government regulations basically."

Nafta Tribunals Stir U.S. Worries

After the highest court in Massachusetts ruled against a Canadian real estate company and after the United State Supreme Court declined to hear its appeal, the company's day in court was over.

Or so thought Chief Justice Margaret H. Marshall of the Massachusetts court, until she learned of yet another layer of judicial review, by an international tribunal.

"I was at a dinner party," Chief Justice Marshall said in a recent telephone interview. "To say I was surprised to hear that a judgment of this court was being subjected to further review would be an understatement."

Any Canadian or Mexican business that contends it has been treated unjustly by the American judicial system can file a similar claim. American businesses with similar complaints about Canadian or Mexican court judgments can do the same. Under the Nafta agreement the government whose court system is challenged is responsible for awards by the tribunals.

"This is the biggest threat to United States judicial independence that no one has heard of and even fewer people understand," said John D. Echeverria, a law professor at Georgetown University.

"When we debated Nafta," Senator John Kerry of Massachusetts, now the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee, said in 2002, "not a single word was uttered in discussing Chapter 11. Why? Because we didn't know how this provision would play out. No one really knew just how high the stakes would get."

Senator Kerry spoke before the tribunal rulings concerning the Massachusetts and Mississippi judgments. He offered his comments in connection with legislation he had offered to limit the jurisdiction of the tribunals. His amendment was rejected by the Senate.

Abner Mikva, a former chief judge of the federal appeals court in Washington and a former congressman, is one of the three Nafta judges considering the Mississippi case. He declined to discuss it but did offer his perspective on Chapter 11.

"If Congress had known that there was anything like this in Nafta," he said, "they would never have voted for it."

Similar tribunals existed in other trade agreements even before Nafta.

"Bilateral investment treaties went both ways," said Todd Weiler, a Nafta expert at the University of Windsor Law School in Canada, "but in practice there weren't that many Barbadians or Nicaraguans investing in the U.S."

But there is substantial Canadian and Mexican investment here. That means, judges and legal scholars said, that the tribunals have the potential to upset the settled American constitutional order.

"There are grave implications here," Chief Justice Ronald M. George of the California Supreme Court said in an interview. "It's rather shocking that the highest courts of the state and federal governments could have their judgments circumvented by these tribunals."

The Globe and Mail is reporting on the speech Paul Martin gave in Toronto this afternoon. This was previously touted as a major policy speech concentrating on Martin's top five priorities. From the actual text (which carries the usual "Check against delivery" disclaimer):

Five areas we will pursue as overriding priorities.

These: ? health care, learning, Canada?s aboriginal peoples, our communities large and small, and our role in the world ? are areas in which quite simply we must break new ground.

Parts of it seemed to be lifted almost straight out of the speech he gave at CFB Gagetown on Wednesday which I wrote about here. Take this for example:

Our approach to Canada?s security must reflect this altered reality. Canada?s presence in Afghanistan has all the hallmarks of the new type of operation that the Canadian Forces will be expected to lead.

It?s a multilateral mission aimed at reviving a failing state for humanitarian reasons but also so as to deny it to terrorists. Elements of defence, diplomacy and development are woven tightly together in the fabric of the mission. This will serve as the model for Canada?s involvement in the international crises of the future.

But the absence of international consensus must never condemn us to inaction.

Nah.

Unless this is the first stop of the day on your rounds of the Canadian blogosphere, you probably already know that Jim Elve, the head honcho at BlogsCanada, has been served with a cease and desist order by the Government of Canada. But in case this is your first stop (in which case, thank you very much) here's the gist:

Ever since launching BlogsCanada last August, I've been waiting for the Government of Canada (GoC) to tell me that they don't like the way this site looks so much like the main GoC site.

Last Thursday, there was a knock on my door and a friendly fellow from Canada Post had a registered letter for me. The letter was from a lawyer with the Department of Justice (DoJ) acting for the Treasury Board.

The Government of Canada has requested that I cease and desist from what they contend is reproducing the Government of Canada's corporate signature, the Canada wordmark and the Common Look and Feel layout.

A close study of the GoC site will reveal that the government's web designers have actually been pretty creative. Whoever thought of presenting information in multiple columns instead of just having one big column across the whole screen was certainly having a particularly good day. (But don't tell the newspaper industry.) And all those button thingies and hyper link thingies -- that's pretty nifty stuff, eh? And you can click on them and they do things or take you places, too. And using red and green, I mean, that's pretty creative, isn't it? I guess the rest of us may as well just shut down, because everything we could do short of presenting a single column of static information in plain old black has already been done by the government and we can't use any of it.

Seriously, as someone who's in the software development business, even though it's not (yet) web development, I feel qualified to weigh in on the GoC's Look and Feel claim. It's crap. It's also dangerous. There's no more certain way to stifle creativity and innovation then to allow frivolous claims of copyright like this to stand. For one thing, should the GoC win, you can bet that others will be lining up to sue them in turn for every bit of Common Look and Feel that the government web developers didn't invent. And I've spent enough time on the internet to be able to say with certainty that there's nothing truly original on that site.

Unless we want to hasten the day when software development in general is a monopoly, or at least a business that no one can get into without the very deep pockets necessary to pay royalties on everything, or lawyers to defend constant lawsuits, or both, these kinds of frivolous patent and copyright claims need to be shut down. Otherwise every Windows developer can be sued by Microsoft. Then Microsoft can be sued by Apple. And Apple can be sued by Xerox and everyone else is out of business.

Then I suppose you could use your computer as some kind of exotic, information age planter. Of course, you laptop users will be out of luck on that score too.

When we discuss science, creativity and intellectual property it's become common to use the old cliché that today's creators "stand on the shoulders of giants", i.e. they're building on the accomplishments of those who came before. Common though it may be, someone needs to say it to the mental midgets at the Department of Justice. Maybe somebody ought to send them a registered letter. Or did they copyright that, too?

Paul Martin has been talking endlessly about "restoring Canada's place in the world". As recently as yesterday he was saying that Canada needs to take more of a leadership role in helping to solve problems in other countries. Some of his plans may take a while to bear fruit, but at least he can take comfort in the fact that Canada has just received some much-needed international recognition.

Canada is on a list of countries believed to deport terror suspects to states that torture prisoners, violating international law.

A study by the worldwide advocacy group Human Rights Watch specifically cites the case of Canadian Maher Arar, who was tortured in Syria before being released without charge.

Although Arar was deported to Syria by the United States, it is alleged the Americans were acting on information received from Canadian security and intelligence agencies and perhaps with their approval.

It concludes that diplomatic assurances ? where one country promises another that it will not use torture on an extradited suspect ? have no value: "The Arar case reinforces Human Rights Watch's concern that diplomatic assurances may be used to return persons suspected of having information about terrorism-related activities to countries where torture is routinely used ... to extract such information."

That violates international law, the group concludes in a 39-page report titled, Empty Promises: Diplomatic Assurances No Safeguard against Torture.

Martin ... said it was unrealistic to expect the Americans ? or the Canadians for that matter ? to totally give up the right to deport citizens to a third country, and this was not among Canada's demands.

Bush Endorses Sharon's Withdrawal Plan

President Bush this afternoon embraced a new Israeli policy toward the Palestinians, applauding a unilateral Israeli withdrawal from Gaza and declaring that Israel can keep some of the occupied West Bank permanently and that Palestinian refugees would not have the right to return to Israel.

In an appearance with Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon and in an exchange of letters to be made public later today, Bush accepted essentially all of what the Israeli leader had sought. The move substantially changes U.S. policy toward the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, softening the American objection to Israel's settlements and dropping a reluctance to dictate terms of a final peace settlement.

"In light of new realities on the ground, including already existing major Israeli population centers, it is unrealistic to expect that the outcome of final status negotiations will be a full and complete return to the armistice lines of 1949, and all previous efforts to negotiate a two-state solution have reached the same conclusion," Bush said. "It is realistic to expect that any final status agreement will only be achieved on the basis of mutually agreed changes that reflect these realities."

Bush also rejected a Palestinian "right of return" to Israeli territory as part of any final settlement. "It seems clear that an agreed, just, fair and realistic framework for a solution to the Palestinian refugee issue as part of any final status agreement will need to be found through the establishment of a Palestinian state and the settling of Palestinian refugees there rather than Israel," he said.

From the post at Whiskey Bar on the subject:

The net result of this nasty little backroom deal won't just be further violence and random butchery in the territories and in Israel proper. It's also going to contribute to the progressive degeneration of the war against terrorism into the war against the Arabs -- if not the war against the entire Islamic world. The line in front of the Al Qaeda recruiting office is going to get a little bit longer; the struggle to stabilize a rebellious Iraq is going to become a little harder, and a future in which a large part of a major American city disappears in a nuclear firestorm is going to become a little more likely.

But the worst thing about this neocon smash-and-grab job is that it's probably irreversible. In the loopy world of the "special relationship," a presidential statement like this is regarded as the equivalent of a treaty with Israel ("Ratification? We don't need no stinkin' ratification!") It's a commitment that can't be walked back by any subsequent administration -- not without triggering the mother of all battles with the America Israel Political Action Committee and its various assets and instrumentalities on Capitol Hill.

So there you have it: George W. Bush, the accidental president, has now locked the United States into permanent, full-fledged support for the creation of an apartheid Israel -- complete with bantustans. And even if Bush gets the pink slip in November, there doesn't appear to be a damned thing John Kerry can do about it, even if he wanted to, which I strongly suspect he would not.

Billmon has more. Anything I would add right now would be obscene and counter-productive anyway.

PM the PM gave a speech today at Canadian Forces Base Gagetown in New Brunswick. This probably isn't news to you since pretty much every Canadian media outlet is reporting on it. Most of the reporting is on the spending announcements that aren't news because they're repeats of old announcements, and on the decision to deploy 600 Canadian troops and 200 air force personnel to Afghanistan until summer 2005 after the current 1,700 Canadians who are there come home in August.

I went looking for the actual text of the speech on the Government of Canada website because I spotted something in the CTV article that I wanted clarification on.

Canada?s role in Afghanistan has all the hallmarks of the new type of operation the Canadian Forces will be expected to lead: it?s a multilateral mission authorized by the United Nations and led by NATO; undertaken at the invitation of the Afghan government, and aimed at reviving a failing state, for humanitarian reasons and at the same time ensuring that it cannot be used as a base of operations for terrorists.

Elements of defence, diplomacy and development are woven tightly together as part of the mission. The Canadian Forces, for example, provide the security that, in turn, allows organizations like Canada?s International Development Agency to support Afghanistan?s election process and democratic development.

This ?3-D? approach ? the integration of diplomacy, defence and development ? will serve as the model for Canada?s involvement in international crises in the future ? crises that will take many forms. For instance, multilateralism is clearly our preferred approach to resolving international crises. But the absence of international consensus must never condemn us to inaction.

Far too often in recent times, countries that could have stepped forward as leaders in times of crisis failed to do so. Far too often they?ve felt that it was not their responsibility and have looked to others to do the job. And far too often we have seen the tragic consequences that result from the failure of the international community to act on the principles that form the very basis of the United Nations Charter.

As Lt. General Romeo Dallaire has taught us, all countries have a responsibility to ensure that the genocide is never again repeated. We must take this responsibility to heart.

Canada must be a strong advocate for intervention to protect the security of nations and those who live within their borders. We must continue to seek ways to strengthen our multilateral institutions, particularly the United Nations. And, most importantly, we must be leaders in global responses to crises.

These remarks are being delivered with the crisis in Iraq serving as a backdrop. In that case we saw one nation, the United States, decide that the "international community" wasn't acting quickly enough or aggressively enough. So the White House put together its own "Coalition of the Willing" and acted outside the UN. In the process I think it's fair to say that the ability of the UN, NATO and the international community to act in everyone's best interests was damaged, not strengthened. And damaged badly if you ask me. A year later that coalition is falling apart while Iraq spirals more and more out of control. And now the UN is being asked to take on more responsibility in a situation it didn't ask for or create and really can't control.

I don't think Martin can have it both ways here, although trying to have things both ways seems to be a trade mark of his administration thus far. If Rwanda is the example he wants to draw attention to, then do so in a context of determining how existing multilateral institutions could have handled things better. But talking simultaneously about acting outside the auspices of the UN defeats the purpose and weakens the very institution that Martin claims to want to strengthen.

Of course maybe portions of this address are intended for an audience south of here. If this is Martin's way of telling the Bush administration that Canada will be available for the next posse that forms to go off in search of "the evil doers", then the PM has some 'splainin' to do. International consensus on the justification for intervening, and the right way to go about it, is exactly what's needed. Otherwise future missions have the potential to do exactly what the invasion of Iraq has done - make matters worse.

Negroponte Is Expected to Be Picked for Iraq Post

President Bush is expected to select John D. Negroponte, a veteran diplomat and current United States representative to the United Nations, as ambassador to Iraq once sovereignty is given over to a government in Baghdad on June 30, administration officials said Tuesday.

From 1981 to 1985 Negroponte was US ambassador to Honduras. During his tenure, he oversaw the growth of military aid to Honduras from $4 million to $77.4 million a year. According to The New York Times, Negroponte was responsible for "carrying out the covert strategy of the Reagan administration to crush the Sandinista government in Nicaragua." Critics say that during his ambassadorship, human rights violations in Honduras became systematic.

Negroponte supervised the creation of the El Aguacate air base, where the US trained Nicaraguan Contras and which critics say was used as a secret detention and torture center during the 1980s. In August 2001, excavations at the base discovered 185 corpses, including two Americans, who are thought to have been killed and buried at the site.

Records also show that a special intelligence unit of the Honduran armed forces, Battalion 3-16, trained by the CIA and Argentine military, kidnaped, tortured and killed hundreds of people, including US missionaries. Critics charge that Negroponte knew about these human rights violations and yet continued to collaborate with the Honduran military while lying to Congress.

John Kerry, Senator and presumptive Democratic presidential nominee, has an op-ed in the Washington Post about Iraq (via Body and Soul). It doesn't leave me hopeful that the situation will improve much any time soon. The article is called A Strategy for Iraq and the strategy seems to consist of trying to re-engage the international community, and particularly the UN, in an effort to renew the momentum towards Iraqi self-government as well as bring in more "boots on the ground" to improve security. But Kerry's approach and language still makes it sound like it's all about America and her mission and that's where he loses me.

This morning, as we sit down to read newspapers in the comfort of our homes or offices, we have an obligation to think of our fighting men and women in Iraq who awake each morning to a shooting gallery in which it is exceedingly difficult to distinguish friend from foe, and the death of every innocent creates more enemies. We owe it to our soldiers and Marines to use absolutely every tool we can muster to help them succeed in their mission without exposing them to unnecessary risk. That is not a partisan proposal. It is a matter of national honor and trust.

There was a point about midway through the piece where I almost stopped reading.

Moving forward, the administration must make the United Nations a full partner responsible for developing Iraq's transition to a new constitution and government. We also need to renew our effort to attract international support in the form of boots on the ground to create a climate of security in Iraq. We need more troops and more people who can train Iraqi troops and assist Iraqi police.

We should urge NATO to create a new out-of-area operation for Iraq under the lead of a U.S. commander.

Still asking for help, but only on your terms. I suspect the reaction of many to that kind of suggestion will continue to be "you broke it, you bought it".

Alcock backs away from sponsorship claims

Treasury Board president Reg Alcock has admitted he was wrong when he claimed a new audit has revealed that the cost of the sponsorship scandal was much less than reported by the auditor general.

"I made a mistake," Alcock said Monday.

Alcock says misspending closer to $13 million

Treasury Board President Reg Alcock says the sponsorship scandal cost Canadians much less than the $100 million quoted in the auditor general's report.

Alcock, appearing Sunday on CTV's Question Period, said the figure for misspending of government money in a follow-up audit by Ernst & Young will be closer to $13 million.

"The problem in government is lousy management systems, lousy financial information systems and people couldn't track what's gone on," Alcock said.

When work is awarded for political reasons, there is no honest effort to get competitive prices and no concerted effort to ensure we're getting value for the money paid. We'll never know how much this practice has cost us, but I'll bet it's a hell of lot more than $13 million.

Alcock wants to try and sell us on the idea that once we've identified only those transactions that weren't properly documented, with all the 'i's dotted and 't's crossed, then we're done. This is a blatant attempt to minimize the problem and throw it back at the bureaucracy without ever addressing the fact that all these jobs, even those that pass the paperwork test, went to Liberal-friendly companies. And that doesn't pass the smell test.

And this is the guy who's now President of the Treasury Board?

Khadr mother, son back in Canada

A mother and her paralysed son - members of a family that has been linked to Al Qaeda - returned to Canada today, bringing the controversy over their reputed ties to the terrorist network back with them.
...
The Khadrs' return to Canada was arranged in part by Ottawa - a move immediately condemned by Conservative foreign affairs critic Stockwell Day as "outrageous."

Foreign Affairs spokesman Sameer Ahmed said the government contacted the Pakistani government and facilitated the Khadrs' one-time-only exit visas because "we have a responsibility to ensure that Canadian citizens can return to Canada."

Another government spokesman has said taxpayers weren't paying for the Khadrs' return, and the family instead used their own funds.

However, Day said the government's actions have "insulted" many Canadians.

"Many Canadians are insulted that our citizenship could be diminished in this way," said Day after the Khadrs' arrival.

"Mrs. Khadr on national television not long ago claimed to be a close associate of Osama bin Laden, claimed to embrace the views of Al Qaeda - views which focus on the extermination of Jews, the killing of peace-loving Muslims and attacking democracies," said Day, referring to the woman's comments on CBC-TV's The National earlier this year.

"This whole thing is outrageous - that she (Mrs. Khadr) would be accorded the full rights of Canadian citizenship when she and her family . . . have been involved in the training fields and the killing fields of Al Qaeda."

Maybe allowing the Khadr family to return to Canada today is the price Canadians have to pay if we want to have any rights left tomorrow.

From the Washington Post:
Briefing on Al Qaeda Included Specifics

The classified briefing delivered to President Bush five weeks before the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks featured information about ongoing al Qaeda activities within the United States, including signs of a terror support network, indications of hijacking preparations and plans for domestic attacks using explosives, according to sources who have seen the document and a review of official accounts and media reports over the past two years.

The information on current threats in the briefing, titled "Bin Laden Determined to Strike in U.S.," stands in contrast to repeated assertions by national security adviser Condoleezza Rice and other Bush administration officials as recently as this week that the document is primarily historical and includes no warning or threat information.

It's a common complaint among Bush's critics that the media haven't been doing their job. They haven't followed up on stories that would be damaging to his administration, they've acted like press agents and repeated White House spin as if it's news and generally given the crew at 1600 a free ride in many ways. But unless I miss my guess there's a pent up desire among a lot of journalists to get off the reservation. To put it bluntly, Bush and his crew have pissed off a lot of people.

There's no story that provides the media with better cover for turning on the White House than 9/11. If they're ready to start being real reporters again, I'm certain there are a lot of people in the intelligence, law enforcement and military communities, as well as within the administration itself, who will line up to leak embarrassing documents and tell embarrassing stories. Some of them are already talking to anyone who will listen but the stories aren't getting the attention they deserve. If this meme that the White House was negligent in the months before 9/11 really sticks, we could soon be watching the Bush presidency unravel before our eyes because every other scandal that's simmering in the background might also break wide open.

I hope John Kerry has his act together.

Paul Wells caught the press napping and The Middleman picked up on it. PM the PM has done a fairly major reshuffling of top civil servants. The most interesing of the changes is probably this one:

Martin appoints Alberta economist

Prime Minister Paul Martin has named to the senior ranks of the finance department an Alberta economist who advocates the expansion of private delivery of health services and opposes the growth of federal cash transfers for health to provinces.

The appointment of University of Alberta economist Paul Boothe as an associate deputy minister of finance was buried in a list of bureaucrats Martin shuffled Thursday in his first major realignment of top mandarins.

Boothe, who served for two years on secondment as deputy finance minister in Saskatchewan, was a member of the team Premier Ralph Klein named in 2002 to draft the Alberta government's response to a report on health care by former federal Conservative finance minister Don Mazankowski.
...
Boothe said in his response to the Mazankowski report that changing the way the public health-care system is funded would be one of the biggest challenges facing Canada as the system's demands outpace government financing.

Mazankowski's report called for new ways to fund the system and Boothe agreed, adding in a subsequent report: "We also have to look at using a new mix of providers, a combination of public, private and non-profit partners, to deliver services effectively."

Boothe, director of the University of Alberta Institute for Public Economics, confirmed in an interview those were his arguments at the time and referred to a current essay he published through the C.D. Howe Institute for his most recent views.
...
It summarizes four major recent studies into the health-care system, including Mazankowski's inquiry and the federal Romanow Commission.

Boothe and Carson conclude the paper by saying billions of dollars worth of federal health-care commitments first outlined in the 2003 budget are "clearly unsustainable" and urge Ottawa to resist provincial demands for more money.

"Probably the most important thing a future prime minister could do to encourage a sustainable health system is to resist any further provincial demands for federal transfers for health care," the essay says. "It may be that, until voters are faced with a clear choice -- more health care versus less education or other important public services -- lasting health reform will remain beyond our grasp."

According to an Ipsos-Reid poll released today, Canadians reject private sector funding of or involvement in key public services.

Canadians somewhat agree or strongly agree that:

• ?Canada's public services should be delivered by public sector workers accountable to elected representatives and the public, not by corporations accountable to shareholders? (84%)


• ?Canada should rebuild its public infrastructure, such as hospitals, schools, highways and water systems, through direct public investment and not through public-private joint ventures with corporations? (75%)


• ?Canada's health care system should exclude corporations that operate for-profit, and instead rely solely on public and not-for-profit health care providers? (64%)

This stands in stark contrast to the policies advocated by the federal and some provincial governments, which have been actively pursuing public-private partnerships (P3s) and selling-off public assets.

A couple of days ago I applauded the voters of Inglewood, California when they rejected a bid by Wal-Mart to build a superstore without an evironmental review or public hearings. Since National Review editor Jay Nordlinger has taken it upon himself to give the good folks of Inglewood a bit of a public scolding in the LA Times (via Political Animal), I thought I'd take a closer look at Nordlinger's remarks. Let's start with his title:

Voting 'No' on Low Prices and Good Jobs

The question on Tuesday's ballot in Inglewood was whether to allow the retailer to obtain building permits without a public hearing or environmental impact study.

Wal-Mart wields its power for just one purpose: to bring the lowest possible prices to its customers. At Wal-Mart, that goal is never reached. The retailer has a clear policy for suppliers: On basic products that don't change, the price Wal-Mart will pay, and will charge shoppers, must drop year after year. But what almost no one outside the world of Wal-Mart and its 21,000 suppliers knows is the high cost of those low prices. Wal-Mart has the power to squeeze profit-killing concessions from vendors. To survive in the face of its pricing demands, makers of everything from bras to bicycles to blue jeans have had to lay off employees and close U.S. plants in favor of outsourcing products from overseas.

Of course, U.S. companies have been moving jobs offshore for decades, long before Wal-Mart was a retailing power. But there is no question that the chain is helping accelerate the loss of American jobs to low-wage countries such as China. Wal-Mart, which in the late 1980s and early 1990s trumpeted its claim to "Buy American," has doubled its imports from China in the past five years alone, buying some $12 billion in merchandise in 2002. That's nearly 10% of all Chinese exports to the United States.

Internal audit now under court seal warned top executives at Wal-Mart Stores three years ago that employee records at 128 stores pointed to extensive violations of child-labor laws and state regulations requiring time for breaks and meals; audit of one week's time-clock records for 25,000 employees found 1,371 instances in which minors apparently worked too late at night, worked during school hours or worked too many hours in a day;
...
several current and former Wal-Mart employees confirm in interviews that violations of state law on child labor and breaks are recurring problem at many understaffed Wal-Mart stores;

Critics like to contend that Wal-Mart workers live "paycheck to paycheck"; that's not true.

Wal-Mart grocery workers typically make less than $9 an hour.
...
By the company's own admission, a full-time worker might not be able to support a family on a Wal-Mart paycheck.

As to health insurance, 90% of Wal-Mart employees have it. Fifty percent of those get it through the company, according to a spokesman; the rest get it through their parents (they may be teenagers), through Medicare or some previous employer's plan (they may be semi-retired), through their spouses ? wherever. The point is, they're covered.

Wal-Mart makes new hourly workers wait six months to sign up for its benefits plan and doesn't cover retirees at all. Its deductibles range as high as $1,000, triple the norm. It refuses to pay for flu shots, eye exams, child vaccinations, chiropractic services and numerous other treatments allowed by many other companies. In many cases, it won't pay for treatment of pre-existing conditions in the first year of coverage.

It is an ongoing affront to organized labor that Wal-Mart remains nonunionized. The United Food & Commercial Workers has a whole department devoted to Wal-Mart ? to targeting it, unionizing it. The UFCW campaigns as though its very existence, as a union, depended on this effort's success. So far, Wal-Mart workers have turned them down...

From their first day on the job, Wal-Mart employees are advised to avoid unions and to report any organizing activities to their supervisors.

"If a union got in here, every benefit we've got could go on the negotiating table, every one of them," says a man identified as Russell, a veteran employee, in a video shown to new hires. "Unions will negotiate just about anything to get the right to have dues deducted out of paychecks. You see, they need big money to pay union bigwigs and their lawyers."

Company policy prohibits any union talk in work areas, and organizers say they routinely are asked to leave stores. The retailer sought, and last year received, a court order keeping organizers out of all of its stores in Arkansas. The state Supreme Court nullified the order in July.
...
... dozens of times in the last four years, attorneys for the National Labor Relations Board have claimed that the company infringed on the supermarket union's legal right to organize.

Although some of those claims have been thrown out, others have been upheld by administrative law judges, who have ruled that Wal-Mart illegally influenced employees with offers of raises, promotions and improved working conditions just before they were to vote on whether to join a union.

Judges also have found that Wal-Mart illegally implied that workers could lose benefits such as insurance and profit sharing if they unionized.

What's more, managers illegally confiscated union literature, threatened to close down a store if workers voted to join the union, fired several union supporters and failed to promote others, according to rulings from Minnesota to Florida.

I hope it's not too McCarthyite to suggest that those who despise Wal-Mart are the very ones who may not be so crazy about the United States tout court.

Chris at Explananda draws our attention to this Globe and Mail editorial urging Paul Martin to get off his butt and announce that he'll meet with the Dalai Lama over China's objection.

The government is dragging its feet because it fears the anger of China, which opposes letting the Dalai Lama even come to Canada, let alone meet the Prime Minister. Beijing regards the Dalai Lama as a dangerous "splittist." As the Chinese embassy in Ottawa put it recently, "He is now engaged in activities aimed at splitting China and undermining national unity."

Ottawa should view these warnings for what they are: the fulminations of an insecure regime trying to cover up its shameful record of repression in Tibet. Since the Chinese takeover of Tibet in 1951 by the forces of Mao Zedong's Communist China, Beijing has done everything in its power to suppress the religious and ethnic identity of the mountainous region.
...
Mr. Martin has been trying to persuade Canadians that his government is different from Jean Chr?tien's. One way is to take a firmer line on human rights in China. Under Mr. Chr?tien, Ottawa tried to ingratiate itself with Beijing in hopes of winning business in China's booming markets. Human rights took a back seat. Mr. Martin could signal a change by making it clear that, while Canada wants good relations with China, it will never mute its voice because of commercial concerns.

This should be a no-brainer. Trade with China may be valuable, but so is holding on to our dignity. If the Chinese want to maintain the stupid lie that their conquest of Tibet was all for the good, let them do that in their own controlled press. Our Prime Minister should either stand up to the Chinese or resign.

The general point here is that smaller actors need to start taking responsibility for some of the things that we wish the U.S. would do, like promoting democratic values and so on. We've waited long enough for the U.S. to get its act together. It hasn't, so it's time to get to work.

According to the Tibet lobby, more than half the members of Parliament -- 159 in all -- have signed a letter calling on Mr. Martin to involve himself in starting a dialogue over Tibet.

The votes are in and the decision just so happens to coincide with taking the high road, restoring Canada's place in the world and overcoming a democratic deficit. So how about it, Mr. Prime Minister?

Tech heavyweights explain how to destroy the Internet

A group of tech celebs gathered on Capitol Hill this week to brief Congressional aides on how Congress and the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) can, and probably will, make a complete mess of the Internet in about a year's time.

At issue are likely revisions to the 1996 Telecommunications Act and FCC regulations, which, thus far, have managed to do scant violence to the Net. Unfortunately, changes now being contemplated, urged by telecomms and media behemoths and their lobbyists, may soon alter that happy state of affairs. Broadband users are particularly at risk, because they enjoy little of the consumer choice available to dialup users. One can connect to a phone line and reach any of hundreds of dialup ISPs. Broadband users have no such luxury.

The deregulation scam

FCC Commissioner Michael Copps, who fought FCC Chairman Michael Powell's effort to ease regulations preventing the colonization of America's airwaves and print media by a handful of cartels, understands the crucial difference between deregulation and freedom.

"Entrenched interests are already jockeying to constrain the openness that has been the Internet's defining hallmark, and they are lobbying the FCC to aid and abet them," Copps declared.

"They claim all they are advocating is a deregulated environment where the market can reign supreme. But in reality, they are seeking government help to allow a few companies to turn the Internet from a place of competition and innovation, into an oligopoly. Power over the Internet would then reside with the network owners, who could use choke-point power to constrain consumer choices, limit sources of news and information and entertainment, undermine competitors, and quash disruptive new technologies."

The Internet must remain device and technology neutral, and open, Copps warned. To illustrate, he pointed out that 35 years ago the phone company restricted the devices that could be attached and confined them to its own kit, using the excuse of ensuring quality of service. And then the FCC created a right of attachment, allowing consumers to hook up any device to the network so long as it caused no harm, and spawned dramatic growth in scores of industries. A similar regulation is needed for broadband Internet access, he hinted.

The internet has grown so quickly, and offers so much diversity, because it's not controlled by a few companies who get to manage everything to maximize profit. Obviously some companies would like to put a stop to that.

Want a quick analogy? Imagine the only choice you have is between Fox News and CNN. That's what the internet will be like if the market reigns supreme, because that's what the media would be like if the market reigned supreme. Oh, wait.

Via Suburban Guerrilla.

U.S. courts war opponents for Iraq force (Via Bump)

The United States has asked more than a dozen countries that did not take part in last year's invasion to join a new international military force to protect United Nations operations in Iraq, U.S. State Department officials said.

Such a proposal would be critical to persuading the U.N. to return after two massive suicide attacks against its Baghdad headquarters last year, and enlist nations that opposed the war because it lacked the imprimatur of the world body.

Washington has approached France, which led opposition to the war in Iraq, as well as India, Pakistan and other nations that were reluctant to join the U.S.-led coalition that invaded Iraq, U.S. and European officials said. The list includes "a good global mix," said a U.S. State Department official familiar with the proposed force.

No Arab countries or neighbours of Iraq are on the list; NATO ally Turkey is notably absent.

Officials in the Prime Minister's Office in Ottawa were unable to confirm or deny last night whether a request had been made for Canadian troops, the Star's Susan Delacourt reports.

Some countries have made "favourable noises," while others have asked for time to "do some homework," the U.S. State Department official said. "For the most part, no one has slammed the door in our face."

Later that same day:

Canada doesn't have troops for Iraq

Canada is unlikely to participate in an international force to protect United Nations employees in Iraq because military resources are tapped out, Prime Minister Paul Martin suggested today.

The United States has reportedly asked more than a dozen countries to participate in such an effort, which is seen as a crucial step in the fragile transition to an Iraqi-led government later this year.

But Canada hasn't been approached for help and apparently isn't offering any.

"It would be very, very hard for us to respond to such a request in a substantial way at the present time," Martin said after meeting local leaders in a small shoreside town in the eastern Gaspe peninsula.

"We've had a very, very heavy involvement in Afghanistan, one that will be continuing. We have taken on a role in Haiti. And our forces are stretched very, very thin."

I dare say it would be a politically unpopular move to commit Canadian troops to any kind of involvement in Iraq under these circumstances. But it would also create an awkward situation for Martin if he had to refuse the request only weeks before his recently announced summit with President Bush. So he's grabbed the chance to get himself off the hook before the question actually gets asked. Is Team Martin finally learning to play defense?

Afghan Warlord's Troops Storm Province, Governor Flees

Forces of a northern strongman overran the capital of a remote Afghan province Thursday, the interior minister said, in a burst of factional violence undermining the authority of U.S.-backed President Hamid Karzai.

Troops loyal to ethnic Uzbek warlord Abdul Rashid Dostum swept into Maymana, the center of Faryab province, some 260 miles northwest of Kabul, on Thursday morning, Interior Minister Ali Ahmad Jalali said.

"Today, at 10 o'clock, militia troops loyal to General Dostum entered Maymana city," Jalali said. "They have control of the city."

Jalali said there were no reports of casualties, but Dostum aides said guards had fired on a crowd, killing four, as Gov. Enayatullah Enayat was rushed to an airport.

Fighters swarming in front of the offices of the Kabul-appointed governor fired into the air and threw rocks at the building, the minister said.

"What General Dostum has done is against all military rules and the constitution of Afghanistan," Jalali told a news conference.

The fighting was bad news for Karzai, and sure to lead to deep concern in Washington over the future stability of Afghanistan, just as American forces are facing a surge of violence in Iraq.

Consistent all along on sponsorship, Martin says

Prime Minister Paul Martin came close Wednesday to justifying federal advertising practices during the 1995 Quebec referendum.

His comments on a campaign-style swing through Quebec were a far cry from his recent declaration that saving Canada never justified the means used.

Asked about suggestions that the Liberals violated Quebec's referendum law by mass-purchasing $8-million worth of billboards, Mr. Martin said the government was determined to save Canada.

?I think that clearly our country was in a crisis,? he said. ?And I don't think that one bends the rules ? and I don't think one has to bend the rules.

?But the fact is we were going to win that battle. And I don't think we are going to back down against anybody who would challenge the unity of our country.?

He pointed out that then-Quebec premier Jacques Parizeau also engaged in questionable practices that should be examined.

You'd think he would hurt himself talking out of both sides of his mouth like that.

Martin sounds like Chuck Guité here. We were at war, and it was urgent and we had to bend the rules. But no one has yet explained how the missing hundred million had anything to do with the urgency or the importance of the goal. Were the ad agencies going to turn down the work if they didn't get obscenely high commissions? Were they going to reveal to the separatists that the federal goverment was conducting a top-secret advertising campaign? Has it occurred to these idiots that top-secret and advertising are mutually exclusive?

Unless of course ensuring that ad executives drive Porsches and wash their lunches down with expensive wines is a requirement for saving a country. Yeah, that must be it.

Credit where credit's due: the title was inspired by J. Kelly Nestruck's comment to this post. The source of the original quote is, of course, William Lyon Mackenzie King. He was a Liberal, too. Hmmm.

Inglewood Voters Reject Wal-Mart

A bid by the world's largest corporation to bypass uncooperative elected officials and take its aggressive expansion plans to voters failed Tuesday, as Inglewood residents overwhelmingly rejected Wal-Mart's proposal to build a colossal retail and grocery center without an environmental review or public hearings.

With all votes counted Tuesday evening, 4,575 Inglewood residents had voted in favor of Wal-Mart's plan, while 7,049 had voted against it.
...
The company had spent more than $1 million on its campaign, and opponents had warned that if the company won, residents throughout California should gird for similar battles.
...
The question on Tuesday's ballot in Inglewood was whether to allow the retailer to obtain building permits without a public hearing or environmental impact study. Many community leaders and Inglewood city officials, except the mayor, said the measure would set a dangerous precedent for cities nationwide by preempting local control over the development process and circumventing environmental review of large projects.

"They want to be the big gorilla and not even offer one banana," Assemblyman Jerome Horton (D-Inglewood) said Tuesday. "Clearly, this is a test site for Wal-Mart to determine if they can go from city to city to city, preempting state law and local building and safety codes?. I think everyone should prepare for a full frontal attack from Wal-Mart."

Via Steve Gilliard.

John Dean thinks George W. Bush should be impeached. And impeachment is a subject that Dean knows something about. In an interview with Bill Moyers which will air this evening to coincide with the release of Dean's new book called Worse than Watergate, there is the following exchange:

BILL MOYERS:
Let me go right to page 155 of your book. You write, quote, "The evidence is overwhelming that George W. Bush and Richard B. Cheney have engaged in deceit and deception over going to war in Iraq. This is an impeachable offense."

JOHN DEAN:
Absolutely is. The founders in the debates in the states-- I cite one. I cite one that I found -- I tracked down after reading the Nixon impeachment proceedings when-- Congressman Castenmeyer had gone back to look to see what the founders said about misrepresentations and lying to the Congress. Clearly, it is an impeachable offense. And I think the case is overwhelming that these people presented false information to the Congress and to the American people.

Via TalkLeft.

Poisoned?

Four soldiers from a New York Army National Guard company serving in Iraq are contaminated with radiation likely caused by dust from depleted uranium shells fired by U.S. troops, a Daily News investigation has found.

They are among several members of the same company, the 442nd Military Police, who say they have been battling persistent physical ailments that began last summer in the Iraqi town of Samawah.

"I got sick instantly in June," said Staff Sgt. Ray Ramos, a Brooklyn housing cop. "My health kept going downhill with daily headaches, constant numbness in my hands and rashes on my stomach."

A nuclear medicine expert who examined and tested nine soldiers from the company says that four "almost certainly" inhaled radioactive dust from exploded American shells manufactured with depleted uranium.

This Yellow Times article states that at least 75 tons of DU was "unleashed" on Iraq during the war and I'm willing to bet that estimate is low. Meanwhile, a study completed in 2001 that might have increased pressure on the American and British militaries to stop the use of these weapons was suppressed.

It seems ironic when you consider that the original justification for the invasion was that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction and was prepared to use them.

Initial link via The Agonist.

PM plays the waiting and dating game

The Martin government is giving growing consideration to delaying an election until the fall as the window for a spring vote closes amid weak polling numbers.
...
"We're trying to make it clear that we are governing," a senior Liberal said yesterday. "If an election opportunity arises, we may take it, but our first priority is to govern and govern well."

At a press conference yesterday in Southern Ontario, Mr. Martin was asked three times about election timing and, in each instance, left the impression that he does not intend -- at least for now -- for the campaign to begin imminently.

"We'll call the election when we call the election. But until that time . . . we're going to deal with the priorities of the country," he said. "Our priority is to govern."

I don't agree with everything in this Jeff Simpson piece from today's Globe and Mail but Simpson's got one thing right: Martin needs to get his butt back to Ottawa and govern instead of bouncing from one place to another talking about governing.

And am I the only who thinks that "We'll call the election when we call the election" sounds an awful lot like "When you have a proof then it's a proof"?

The song for the day is from the Lovin' Spoonful: Did You Ever Have To Make Up Your Mind?.

Don at Revolutionary Moderation is lamenting the fact that as soon he published an email address on his site, he received an invitation to assist a nice Nigerian woman in liberating a large sum of money. In other words, he put a mailto link on his site and promptly got spammed. How does that happen? Spiders. They're programs, also known as user agents, that crawl through web pages looking for mailto links and properly formatted email addresses. What other types of character strings contain '@' and '.' with no spaces?

There's at least one way to slow them down, if not stop them. Encode the email address as HTML character entities instead of normal characters. The web browser will still display the address properly since displaying HTML is what browsers do. And a mailto link will function properly as well. But unless the spider has been written to check for HTML entities instead of normal characters, it'll crawl right on through. I have no doubt the spammers will catch on and we'll need a new trick before long, but meanwhile this one's worth a try.

If you go to this page, you can type in your normal email address and click a button to get the equivalent encoded in HTML character entities ready for copying and pasting. Kudos to West Bay Web Internet Publishing for providing the service. I'd tip my hat to whomever directed me to this, but I honestly can't remember how I found it.

A few days ago I blogged the story of the Canadian Recording Industry Association's setback in its attempt to prosecute individuals who have been file sharing on the internet. In comments to that post I stated that we should be on the lookout for pressure to change Canada's copyright laws as a result. Sure enough.

Prime Minister Paul Martin used a star-studded event kicking off Edmonton's Juno Awards celebrations to promise to protect Canada's recording industry from free music downloading over the Internet.

On the heels of a court ruling letting Internet users to continue getting music for free, Martin vowed Friday that his Liberal government won't allow Canadian recording artists to suffer from copyright infringement.

"We are not going to let an industry that is so important to this country, so important to our ability to tell our stories and sing our songs to the rest of the world, be jeopardized," he said.

"Let's understand something -- the Canadian music industry is the second most important music industry in the world. It's an important part of our sovereignty and an important part of our economy."

He wouldn't be specific about what the government plans to do, saying he doesn't want to jeopardize a likely appeal. But he noted the Commons committee on copyright is looking into the issue.

Federal Heritage Minister Helene Scherrer yesterday promised to plug the hole in Canadian law allowing people to legally download songs off the Internet without paying. Scherrer's announcement won loud applause from an audience of Canadian music industry types at yesterday's Juno Awards opening ceremony at City Hall, which also featured a staged "surprise" appearance from Prime Minister Paul Martin.

"As minister of Canadian Heritage, I will, as quickly as possible, make changes to our copyright law," said Scherrer yesterday.

In an age of computer games, DVDs, a million channels, etc. there is simply a lot more competition for the consumer's entertainment dollar. And there's a music industry that feels it's better to keep the prices for its product unreasonably high and spend the profits on lawyers and lobbyists instead of on the effort necessary to develop a sustainable business model in an age of technological change. The entertainment industry never seems to learn. It fought radio and that ended up being good for business. It fought cassette tapes and they ended up being good for business. It fought the VCR and VCRs ended up being good for business. But for some reason it's deemed easier to presume your customers are criminals and lobby for corporate welfare and stricter laws than to embrace the technology and figure out how to use it.

The whole concept behind copyright in the first place was to encourage creativity and innovation for the good of everyone, for the good of society, not just for the benefit of creators. The idea was that by granting a limited term monopoly to the creator, it would encourage the development of an idea to a point where it was useful, and that when the limited term was up the idea would enter the public domain for the enrichment of all, for the benefit of the commons.

Now the only thought seems to be maximizing royalties on copyrights that are increasingly owned by corporate entities, not by the original creators, and the commons be damned. The lobbyists have succeeded in the US where copyright terms have been extended to a ridiculous degree and where fair use rights are under increasing pressure. Watch the same thing happen here. The tip-off is when Scherrer says she'll move "as quickly as possible". In other words, she doesn't have to think about what needs to be done or what kind of balance to strike between private and public interests, she has an industry lobby group to tell her what to do.

If I'm wrong about what's soon to happen, I'll be happy to admit it.

Update: Almost forgot. A tip of the hat to the folks at the babble discussion board for the first two links.

I'm not the only blogger on the move. Chris at See Why? is now the Scaliwag-in-Chief at a new group blog called Explananda. Drop by and say hello. Tell them I sent you. Not that anything special happens if you do, but it seemed like the thing to say.

Naomi Klein is in Baghdad and brings us up to date on the latest efforts of the Coalition Provisional Authority to bring democracy to Iraq.

At the end of March, building on his Order 39 of last September, Bremer passed yet another law further opening up Iraq's economy to foreign ownership, a law that Iraq's next government is prohibited from changing under the terms of the interim constitution. Bremer also announced the establishment of several independent regulators, which will drastically reduce the power of Iraqi government ministries. For instance, the Financial Times reports that "officials of the Coalition Provisional Authority said the regulator would prevent communications minister Haider al-Abadi, a thorn in the side of the coalition, from carrying out his threat to cancel licences the coalition awarded to foreign-managed consortia to operate three mobile networks and the national broadcaster."

The CPA has also confirmed that after June 30, the $18.4bn that the US government is spending on reconstruction will be administered by its embassy in Iraq. The money will be spent over five years and will fundamentally redesign Iraq's most basic infrastructure, including its electricity, water, oil and communications sectors, as well as its courts and police. Iraq's future governments will have no say in the construction of these core sectors of Iraqi society. Retired rear admiral David Nash, who heads the Project Management Office, which administers the funds, describes the $18.4bn as "a gift from the American people to the people of Iraq".

He appears to have forgotten the part about gifts being something you actually give up. And in the same eventful week, US engineers began construction on 14 "enduring bases" in Iraq, capable of housing the 110,000 soldiers who will be posted here for at least two more years. Even though the bases are being built with no mandate from an Iraqi government, Brigadier General Mark Kimmitt, deputy chief of operations in Iraq, called them "a blueprint for how we could operate in the Middle East".

The US occupation authority has also found a sneaky way to maintain control over Iraq's armed forces. Bremer has issued an executive order stating that even after the interim Iraqi government has been established, the Iraqi army will answer to US commander Lt General Ricardo Sanchez. In order to pull this off, Washington is relying on a legalistic reading of a clause in UN security council resolution 1511, which puts US forces in charge of Iraq's security until "the completion of the political process" in Iraq. Since the "political process" in Iraq is never-ending, so it seems is US military control.

In the same flurry of activity, the CPA announced that it would put further constraints on the Iraqi military by appointing a national security adviser for Iraq. This US appointee would have powers equivalent to those held by Condoleezza Rice and will stay in office for a five-year term, long after Iraq is scheduled to have made the transition to a democratically elected government.

There is one piece of this country, though, that the US government is happy to cede to the people of Iraq: the hospitals. On March 27 Bremer announced that he had withdrawn the senior US advisers from Iraq's health ministry, making it the first sector to achieve "full authority" in the US occupation.

I'm told that green is a calming colour. Is it working?

Note to bloggers: The wheels fell off my plan to track all the inbound links to individual posts. If complete information is out there, I haven't been able to find it. I'll look at the trackbacks I've got on the old site, but I'd only implemented trackbacks a while ago and as James Bow noted, that wasn't working consistently anyway. (That should be one problem I've left behind.) If you want a new archival link for anything in particular, let me know and I'll dig it out. I'll be reviewing the archives anyway, as I have time, just to make sure everything imported properly, though it looks good so far. And the old blog still stands for the moment, so links won't rot for a while yet.

If I'm on your blogroll and you maintain it manually, expect an email tonight or tomorrow with a link suitable for copying and pasting. That much I can do. But for a little while I'm going to bask in the glow of having a new home. And I promise I won't move again anytime soon.

Powell admits his Iraq intelligence flawed

U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell has acknowledged that the "most dramatic" part of his presentation to the United Nations making the case for war on Iraq was based on flawed intelligence.

Powell also said he hoped a commission investigating the U.S. intelligence on Iraq's alleged weapons of mass destruction would reveal how the CIA ended up depending on unreliable sources for key evidence he used to argue for war.

The acknowledgement about alleged mobile chemical arms laboratories could further hurt the credibility of the Bush administration, also under fire in an election year for failing to stop the September 11 attacks.

The United States justified its first preemptive war by accusing Iraq of amassing illegal arms and invaded last year without explicit U.N. approval and over the objections of many allies.

In February, 2003, Powell made a major presentation of the U.S. case against Iraq at a special session of the U.N. Security Council, where he said the United States had several sources showing mobile chemical weapons laboratories.

But on Friday, the top American diplomat said the evidence on the trailers has been shown to be shaky.

"Now it appears not to be the case that it was that solid. But at the time I was preparing that presentation it was presented to me as solid," Powell told reporters on a flight home from a trip to Europe.

The article describes this as "the most straightforward acknowledgement from the Bush administration that the information was probably wrong." Powell has shown a tendency to stray just a little bit off the reservation recently. Of all the major White House administration figures, he may have been the one with the most credibility on the international stage. Those days are gone but if the rumours of his departure from the administration even if Bush wins a second term are true, I look forward to his memoirs. I won't take anything he says at face value but I'll bet it'll be an interesting read.

Updated to add the link on Ahmed Chalabi, courtesy of The Agonist.

I'm off on a quick trip. There will be nothing new here until later on tomorrow, but I'd like to leave you with a question about something that's puzzling me.

Why is the Liberal party so intent on building a cult of personality around someone who appears not to have that much personality in the first place? Or is that just me?

OK, that's two questions. See ya.