August 2004 Archives

I haven't been posting as much lately and I've decided to turn it into a full blown vacation from blogging. Sorry I didn't let you know sooner. Nothing serious. Just need a break and a chance to get reorganized and reoriented.

I'll be back. I'll leave it to you to decide whether that's a threat or a promise.

Apparently the CIA has decided that even George Bush's doctrine of pre-emptive invasion doesn't go far enough. Now it's possible to retroactively justify an invasion based on science fiction.

Having failed to find banned weapons in Iraq, the CIA is preparing a final report on its search that will speculate on what the deposed regime's capabilities might have looked like years from now if left unchecked, according to congressional and intelligence officials.

The CIA plans for the report, due next month, to project as far as 2008 what Iraq might have achieved in its illegal weapons programs if the United States had not invaded the country last year, the officials said.

The new direction of the inquiry is seen by some officials as an attempt to obscure the fact that no banned weapons ? or even evidence of active programs ? have been found, and instead emphasize theories that Iraq may have been planning to revive its programs.

As with the stories that surfaced earlier this week about recent FBI counterterrorism activities, the first thing that occurs to me is to wonder why these people have time for this. Don't they have a real War on Terror™ to fight?

The second thing occurs to me is to wonder why the phrase "if left unchecked" applies. What exactly is "unchecked" about twelve years of sanctions and the four months of UN inspections prior to the invasion that could have continued if Bush hadn't told the inspectors to get out of the way so he could bomb the place?

A former UN weapons inspector named Charles Duelfer replaced David Kay as the head of the Iraq Survey Group back in January. Kay has since publicly stated that the pre-war claims of the threat posed by Iraq were bogus and that the CIA was simply wrong. Mr. Duelfer, it seems, will try to suggest that the agency wasn't wrong it was just ahead of its time.

Duelfer also said that having failed to locate weapons stocks, he was refocusing the hunt to determine what the Iraqi regime's intentions had been.

"We're looking at it from soup to nuts, from the weapons end to the planning end to the intentions end," Duelfer said in March.

Next thing you know they'll be justifying the invasion because Iraq actually did have soup and nuts. Which only confirms my suspicion: Canada's next.

This is just pathetic.

Link courtesty of Body and Soul.

It's become evident today, if it wasn't already, that the presidential campaign unfolding south of the border will look a little different than the last one. Kerry has suddenly taken a more confrontational attitude. He's doing what I think many Democrats wish Al Gore had done in 2000: calling the Republicans and their allies out on the smear campaign.

The following is from a speech Kerry gave today to the International Association of Fire Fighters (via Josh Marshall).

Over the last week or so, a group called Swift Boat Veterans for Truth has been attacking me. Of course, this group isn?t interested in the truth ? and they?re not telling the truth. They didn?t even exist until I won the nomination for president.

But here?s what you really need to know about them. They?re funded by hundreds of thousands of dollars from a Republican contributor out of Texas. They?re a front for the Bush campaign. And the fact that the President won?t denounce what they?re up to tells you everything you need to know?he wants them to do his dirty work.

And digby points to an article in Salon which has the Kerry campaign directly challenging the book which is the companion piece to the SBVT's ad campaign.

The Kerry campaign has told Salon that the publisher of "Unfit for Command," the book that is at the center of the attack on Kerry's military record by the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, is retailing a hoax and should consider withdrawing it from bookstores. "No publisher should want to be selling books with proven falsehoods in them, especially falsehoods that are meant to smear the military service of an American veteran," said Kerry campaign spokesman Chad Clanton. "If I were them, I'd be ducking under my desk wondering what to do. This is a serious problem."

This is from digby's comments.

...the character of the author of Unfit For Duty has been called into question and numerous facts contained within the book have been fully exposed as false, most recently in an article today in the Washington Post. Regnery Publishing, despite its Republican ties, should do the right thing and withdraw this book.

I added the WaPo link.

Rather than try to ignore the gutter politics and rise above it, which I think is what Gore tried to do four years ago, Kerry is confronting it. He's not playing the same game -- he's gone so far as to criticize MoveOn for running an ad that questions Bush's service record even though MoveOn's ad contains nothing untrue -- but he's not rolling over either. This is what he has to do. Karl Rove has gotten away with a lot and in part I think it's because his opponents have been surprised every step of the way by how nasty his methods could be. No one's surprised anymore. And Kerry, who's known for being patient and for being a strong finisher, doesn't appear to be panicked or anxious. He's picking his spots and then fighting back.

I like it. Not that Kerry is my hero, but I think he'll be a serious improvement over Bush. Right now, frankly, I'll take what I can get.

Further reading: The American Prospect recently published an article about Regnery Publishing, publishers of Unfit for Command. The article is titled Hillary Was Right, a reference to Hillary Clinton's famous remark about a vast, right-wing conspiracy. Maybe she was. I didn't realize how many of these authors all worked for the same publisher.

It turns out John Kerry has some credibility in fighting terrorism. Perhaps moreso than George. W. Bush. And while the Republicans keep saying that Kerry is running away from his record in the Senate, they may be sorry they brought that up because this makes a fairly compelling story.

Two decades ago, the Bank of Credit and Commerce International (BCCI) was a highly respected financial titan. In 1987, when its subsidiary helped finance a deal involving Texas oilman George W. Bush, the bank appeared to be a reputable institution, with attractive branch offices, a traveler's check business, and a solid reputation for financing international trade. It had high-powered allies in Washington and boasted relationships with respected figures around the world.

All that changed in early 1988, when John Kerry, then a young senator from Massachusetts, decided to probe the finances of Latin American drug cartels. Over the next three years, Kerry fought against intense opposition from vested interests at home and abroad, from senior members of his own party; and from the Reagan and Bush administrations, none of whom were eager to see him succeed.

By the end, Kerry had helped dismantle a massive criminal enterprise and exposed the infrastructure of BCCI and its affiliated institutions, a web that law enforcement officials today acknowledge would become a model for international terrorist financing. As Kerry's investigation revealed in the late 1980s and early 1990s, BCCI was interested in more than just enriching its clients--it had a fundamentally anti-Western mission. Among the stated goals of its Pakistani founder were to "fight the evil influence of the West," and finance Muslim terrorist organizations. In retrospect, Kerry's investigation had uncovered an institution at the fulcrum of America's first great post-Cold War security challenge.

The article provides more details on both BCCI and the resistance Kerry ran into in his attempts to follow through on his investigation. As the pullquote suggests, some of that resistance came from his own party and he pursued this case at some risk to his own political future.

As the presidential campaign enters its final stretch, Kerry's BCCI experience is important for two reasons. First, it reveals Kerry's foresight in fighting terrorism that is critical for any president in this age of asymmetrical threats. As The Washington Post noted, "years before money laundering became a centerpiece of antiterrorist efforts...Kerry crusaded for controls on global money laundering in the name of national security."

Make no mistake about it, BCCI would have been a player. A decade after Kerry helped shut the bank down, the CIA discovered Osama bin Laden was among those with accounts at the bank. A French intelligence report obtained by The Washington Post in 2002 identified dozens of companies and individuals who were involved with BCCI and were found to be dealing with bin Laden after the bank collapsed, and that the financial network operated by bin Laden today "is similar to the network put in place in the 1980s by BCCI." As one senior U.S. investigator said in 2002, "BCCI was the mother and father of terrorist financing operations."

Second, the BCCI affair showed Kerry to be a politician driven by a sense of mission, rather than expediency--even when it meant ruffling feathers. Perhaps Sen. Hank Brown, the ranking Republican on Kerry's subcommittee, put it best. "John Kerry was willing to spearhead this difficult investigation," Brown said. "Because many important members of his own party were involved in this scandal, it was a distasteful subject for other committee and subcommittee chairmen to investigate. They did not. John Kerry did."

Do you think Fox News will bring this up?

A couple of days back I was somewhat hard on the FBI for wasting resources on political protesters instead of searching for real terrorists. I wasn't hard enough. Go read Absit Invidia to find out why it takes 8 agents to deal with one Quaker in Colorado and why the Quakers are considered to be a "criminal extremist organization". Actually he won't explain why, exactly. There is no adequate explanation.

Cross-posted at the E-Group.

There's an interesting article in today's National Post that reports on a committee of MP's and Senators that was thrown together in a rush just as Parliament was winding down for the election.

An unprecedented unofficial committee of senators and MPs is travelling the globe in an inquiry that could dramatically increase Parliament's ability to act as a watchdog over spying and domestic operations by Canada's security intelligence agencies.

In response to increased intelligence gathering under tough new anti-terrorism laws following the 2001 attacks in the United States, the interim committee on national security is investigating, among other things, the possibility of a law that would give MPs and senators groundbreaking access to classified intelligence information.

Because Parliament was dissolved last May for the June election, a Cabinet order was required authorizing the committee to receive government funding for at least $150,000 in travel and other expenses to visit Washington, Australia and the United Kingdom through the summer and fall to investigate parliamentary and congressional oversight of intelligence agencies in those countries.

Given recent events, I'm not sure that any of the three countries named provides the best possible example. Haven't all three admitted that their intelligence on Iraq was flawed? Isn't there at least grounds to question whether intelligence was politicized? That said, I don't have any better solution at hand and I'm glad the issue is at least being raised and examined. I just wish a strategy wasn't being put together in the same rush as the legislation which authorized all this "increased intelligence gathering" in the first place.

With a rushed mandate to report to Prime Minister Paul Martin and deputy prime minister Anne McLellan by Parliament's resumption in October, House leaders for all parties had to agree to the formation and funding of an interim unofficial committee to meet the tight deadline without formal parliamentary approval.

The committee was created in such a hurry it was unable to arrange the services of a parliamentary clerk and support staff before it began work. Liberal Senator Colin Kenny, the committee's co-chairman, used his personal credit card to pay for his share of travel expenses to Australia.

I'm not sure that inspires a lot of confidence.

Kenny assures us that this isn't a reaction to the Maher Arar case or to the possibility that the more aggressive methods of our spooks may pose a threat to Canadian civil liberties, but I think that's spin. I think PM the PM wants to have something in place before the Arar inquiry finishes up and Justice O'Connor starts taking people to task.

Kenny does point out an issue worth thinking about.

"One of the dilemmas that parliamentarians are going to have to consider very carefully is the trade-offs that will have to be made if they do have access to classified information and their ability then to comment publicly about things," Mr. Kenny said.

MPs and senators on any new oversight committee would have to swear an oath of secrecy like Cabinet ministers to gain access to classified information.

And given our own Canadian ability to complicate matters, there's this:

The Commons side of any joint Commons-Senate committee would also include at least one Bloc Quebecois MP, which could raise security concerns because of the party's separatist goals.

Um, what? Separatists don't believe in security? Or civil rights? Are they more likely to violate an oath of secrecy?

The article points out that CSIS is the only intelligence agency with real oversight in the form of the Security Intelligence Review Committee (SIRC) and runs down the list of others who may be watching us.

Other departments and agencies involved in security intelligence include the Communications Security Establishment, a top-secret organization that monitors telephone, wireless and radio communications; the RCMP, whose powers have been expanded under the post-9/11 Anti-terrorism Act; the Foreign Affairs department; and the new Canada Border Services Agency.

Gee, is that all? It's way past time they took a look at this.

Back in May I was in high dudgeon about, among other things, Digital Rights Management (DRM) and how it would allow the entertainment industry to "nickel and dime us to death".

In the entertainment industry's vision of the perfect future we would no longer buy content, we would only rent it. Embedded DRM technology in one form or another would limit our ability to transfer files, would put a cap on the number of copies we could make even for archival or backup purposes and in the long run, would even limit the number of times we could play or view a file.

A couple of days ago The Register, in its usually cheeky style, took a look at a report on copyright and DRM issued by the US Congressional Budget Office and found evidence of exactly what I was raving about. Quoting from the report:

DRM technology has the potential to enable copyright owners to engage in differential pricing - that is, to charge a price for their creative work that varies on the basis of the particular use(s) made of that work.

And The Reg's comment:

Differential pricing excites the copyright holders enormously. One-time party CDs, or CDs that only play on your birthday, or stop playing after a week, or higher prices for higher bitrates are variations on the same theme. All are touted as packaging innovations to allow, for example, the music industry to repeat the vinyl to CD shift.

Packaging innovations and consumer choice are all well and good but what happens if the industry moves to limit the choices consumers have? Right now I can pay for a CD once and play it until I'm sick of it. But DRM gives the industry the ability to put limits on all the packaging options. As I wrote above, it creates the possibility that you'd never be able to buy your favorite music; you'd only be able to rent it for a limited time. And I fear that's exactly what they'll do if they're allowed to get away with it. Who's going stop them?

Again from The Reg on the CBO report:

The authors acknowledge, in the first sentence that, "Historically, U.S. copyright law has sought to balance private incentives to engage in creative activity with the social benefits that arise from the widespread use of creative works." But from then on, the elusive animal called "social benefits" fails to make another appearance. The remainder of the 50 page report is concerned with maximizing economic goals. Was this by accident or design?

Good question.

Stirling Newberry at the Blogging of the President wrote a thoughtful piece on copyright in which he quoted from the Constitution of those United States.

To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries;

We've strayed pretty far from that. As Stirling writes later in the post:

... corporations want to charge rent on long gone works by long dead people. That is, the right which it is both unconstitutional to enforce, and which is least promoting of "the Arts and Sciences"

He suggests that we stop calling it Intellectual Property and start calling it Intellectual Capital. I'll let you follow the link if you want to see why.

Technology has threatened the old business models on which the entertainment industry has grown but that's not really new. It's happened before and despite the wailing and gnashing of teeth from industry lobby groups, they've usually ended up better off than ever. But this technology may force us to decide whether we're going to reverse the trend of recent decades towards longer copyright terms and weigh how much importance we place on the progress of the arts as opposed to the corporate bottom line. Lately I'd say the bottom line has been winning most of the battles.

I've ranted before in this space about people who claim that "Bush hatred" is some irrational hysteria which is without foundation or precedent. Kevin Drum at Political Animal has a pointed comparison with the treatment Clinton received from the right. It's a short post so I'm not going to extract anything. Just go read.

Boy, howdy we sure got us a War on Terror™ going on now. With the terror alert level still sitting at orange for New York City and Washington, DC, those crack FBI agents are on the job. Following up on leads supplied by local law enforcement officers they're questioning people who may have an interest in demonstrating in New York at the end of month and who may be up to no good.

So while the Bush administration continues to warn everyone that Al Qaeda is intent on striking, the feds big score is a few protesters with misdemeanor records in Missouri.

In the case of the three young men subpoenaed in Missouri, Denise Lieberman, legal director for the American Civil Liberties Union in St. Louis, which is representing them, said they scrapped plans to attend both the Boston and the New York conventions after they were questioned about possible violence.

The men are all in their early 20's, Ms. Lieberman said, but she would not identify them.

All three have taken part in past protests over American foreign policy and in planning meetings for convention demonstrations. She said two of them were arrested before on misdemeanor charges for what she described as minor civil disobedience at protests.

Prosecutors have now informed the men that they are targets of a domestic terrorism investigation, Ms. Lieberman said, but have not disclosed the basis for their suspicions. "They won't tell me," she said.

Emphasis added. Dissent is terrorism. And you probably thought that was just hyperbole.

The FBI would like to assure everyone that their only concern is the possibility of violence and that "chilling" anyone's free speech is the farthest thing from their minds.

The unusual initiative comes after the Justice Department, in a previously undisclosed legal opinion, gave its blessing to controversial tactics used last year by the F.B.I in urging local police departments to report suspicious activity at political and antiwar demonstrations to counterterrorism squads.

What constitutes "suspicious activity" at a demonstration? Being there? How else to explain why two guys previously guilty of misdemeanor civil disobedience are suddenly on a terrorist watch list?

Can anyone who has his knickers in a knot about the possibility that John Kerry fudged some of the details surrounding a short time he spent in Cambodia 35 years ago explain why that's a more important issue than this is? With all the talk of impending attacks, don't these guys have some real terrorists to find?

Meanwhile little brother Jeb has found a new way to help make sure that Florida stays solidly behind big brother George.

State police officers have gone into the homes of elderly black voters in Orlando and interrogated them as part of an odd "investigation" that has frightened many voters, intimidated elderly volunteers and thrown a chill over efforts to get out the black vote in November.

The officers, from the Florida Department of Law Enforcement, which reports to Gov. Jeb Bush, say they are investigating allegations of voter fraud that came up during the Orlando mayoral election in March.

Officials refused to discuss details of the investigation, other than to say that absentee ballots are involved. They said they had no idea when the investigation might end, and acknowledged that it may continue right through the presidential election.

Oddly the people being investigated are predominately black and elderly, i.e. likely to vote for Kerry and easy to intimidate. Imagine that.

If you're concerned that all this has left domestic law enforcement officers in America overworked and stretched too thin, never fear. The fellow George Bush recently tapped to take over as the Director of Central Intelligence has a plan to provide reinforcements.

Rep. Porter Goss, President Bush?s nominee to head the CIA, recently introduced legislation that would give the president new authority to direct CIA agents to conduct law-enforcement operations inside the United States?including arresting American citizens.

The legislation, introduced by Goss on June 16 and touted as an ?intelligence reform? bill, would substantially restructure the U.S. intelligence community by giving the director of Central Intelligence (DCI) broad new powers to oversee its various components scattered throughout the government.

But in language that until now has not gotten any public attention, the Goss bill would also redefine the authority of the DCI in such a way as to substantially alter?if not overturn?a 57-year-old ban on the CIA conducting operations inside the United States.

So, you see, the FBI and local officials won't be alone in their war against protesters and people likely to vote Democrat.

Anybody But Bush.

Hat tip to Just a Bump in the Beltway for the two NYT links.

Back in May, the New York Times took a look at its coverage of the runup to the Iraq war, and particularly of the matter of whether Iraq had the stockpiles of special weapons that the White House claimed, and decided it hadn't done as good a job as it might have. While the paper acknowledged its errors, in the end it wasn't a very satisfying mea culpa. No one really took responsibility and certainly no one was fired. It was more along the lines of a collective "oops, sorry 'bout that, we'll do better next time". Then the subject all but faded away.

Today it was the turn of the Washington Post and this mea culpa doesn't fare much better. The article acknowledges that the administration's claims made page one while the stories that were sceptical of those claims were, for the most, buried in the back if they were published at all. While the NYT blamed the eagerness for the scoop, the WaPo blames the wealth of stories to be covered and details to be tracked. While Bob Woodward confesses to falling prey to "groupthink", Leonard Downie, the Executive Editor, doesn't think any shortcomings on the paper's part are that big a deal.

"People who were opposed to the war from the beginning and have been critical of the media's coverage in the period before the war have this belief that somehow the media should have crusaded against the war," Downie said. "They have the mistaken impression that somehow if the media's coverage had been different, there wouldn't have been a war."

Emphasis added. Matthew Yglesias responds:

What did he get into journalism for if he doesn't think it matters whether or not the news is being covered well?

Matthew has more, but that question pretty well sums it up.

These are arguably the two most influential newspapers in the world. If their coverage of something as important as the debate on whether or not to go to war really doesn't make any difference, what does that say about the role of the media? Maybe Izzy Asper was right and it really is all about selling soap.

If the Executive Editor of the Washington Post really feels that what he's doing makes no difference, wouldn't he make more money writing advertising copy? Apparently that's all he's really doing anyway.

The battle of the candidates' service records rages on south of the border. The Swift Boat Veterans for Truth (SBVT) are attacking Kerry, McCain is criticizing them for playing dirty and now WorldNut Daily is smearing McCain. None of them are getting a link from me. Melanie at Just a Bump in the Beltway suggests that maybe the SBVT issue has about run its course but then there's this from Josh Marshall:

I just saw a preview of a study that finds the Swift Boat ads quite effective among independents in raising doubts about John Kerry's war record. And that suggests that Karl Rove will want to send more money toward the group running the ad.

Much of the enmity towards Kerry is because he returned from Vietnam and spoke out against the war and spoke frankly about what he'd seen there. At the Bump link above you'll find the full text of a short op-ed written by four vets and published originally at Salon. It talks about the lasting damage this smear campaign might do.

'Swift-Boat Veterans for Truth' (a group without a single member who actually served in combat with Kerry) is attacking Kerry for, among other things, telling the truth about his war. If they succeed, hundreds of thousands of young soldiers and Marines will find it that much more difficult to tell their difficult stories -- whether heroic, tragic, barbaric, or all three -- when they return from Iraq and Afghanistan. So that another generation of veterans will not be rent by the difficult choice between living with a lie and feeling shamed for telling the truth, we ask you: do not listen to those who would distort a brave man's struggle. They pursue their own sad grudges and the paltry gains of partisan fervor, and if they become the loudest voice of "truth," all veterans will sustain the wound.

Judging by my referral list, there are a number of you who are anxious for the latest news on Paul Champagne. By way of context, here's my last post on the subject which described how Champagne had set up the deal that allowed a paper pusher at the Department of National Defence to rake in millions of taxpayer dollars. Now it seems that the feds and Hewlett Packard are combining forces to see that justice, of a sort, is served.

Computer giant Hewlett-Packard and the federal government have joined forces to sue a former Department of National Defence bureaucrat and his wife, alleging the couple stole at least $107 million in Canadian taxpayers' money using a phoney invoice scheme nobody detected for a decade.

Hewlett-Packard Canada Inc. and the Attorney-General of Canada made the allegation of theft in a lawsuit they have filed against Paul and Stephanie-Anne Champagne, who are now living in an oceanfront mansion in the Turks & Caicos.

In documents filed in the Ontario Superior Court of Justice, H-P Canada and the federal government are suing to recover total losses exceeding $160 million, including the $107 million allegedly pocketed by the Champagnes and deposited into single and jointly controlled Bank of Nova Scotia accounts.

As well, the company and government are seeking $16 million in punitive damages from the couple, millions more to pay for the probe into the scheme and a court order to force the Champagnes to reveal how they spent the $107 million and help auditors trace assets they have bought since the scheme allegedly began in 1994.

This is the first I've heard that Champagne's wife was involved but I guess it shouldn't be a surprise. She would have to have known something was up when her husband, a mid-level bureaucrat earning $58,000 a year, kept buying her homes worth millions.

His home in the Caribbean is worth $2.1 million. His Ottawa residence, now worth more than $1.4 million, is in an exclusive gated community and has tennis courts, a gym and a pool.

His home in Hudson, Fla., is on a golf course development and also has a pool. He also launched a company, Green Gables Custom Homes Ltd.

The article provides a brief summary of the scam but you might find my previous post lays it out a little more clearly.

Champagne and his lawyers have 60 days to file a statement of defence. Meanwhile:

A voice message at the Champagne residence Tuesday said the couple "is unavailable right now." Nobody returned the telephone call.

Maybe they weren't calling the right house.

Via Josh Marshall, here's an update on the investigation into allegations of corruption in the UN oil-for-food program from the New York Times.

Paul A. Volcker, the former chairman of the Federal Reserve who heads a United Nations-appointed panel investigating charges of corruption in its oil-for-food program in Iraq, said yesterday that he would need at least $30 million, a staff of 60 and probably another year to determine whether United Nations officials took bribes or engaged in other corruption while administering the huge relief program.

I'm surprised that Volcker is even that specific when you consider that he still doesn't have the key evidence.

Mr. Volcker said his panel had not yet received the original list of oil vouchers supposedly awarded to diplomats and United Nations officials, which was published by an Iraqi newspaper several months ago. Nor had he determined how his panel would vet such documents to see if they were forgeries, he said.

I doubt that anyone is surprised to find out Saddam was skimming money off the program, but the real controversy is over the accusations that UN officials and diplomats were involved. As Josh Marshall points out in his post, the only documentary evidence to support that was supposedly discovered by Ahmad Chalabi and his Iraqi National Congress and they still won't give it up. And since Chalabi currently has other business to attend to, it could be a while before he gets back to this.

Marshall also notes that nowhere in the story does it mention the source of the allegations against UN officials. It was written by Judith Miller. Perhaps she's just a bit shy about mentioning Chalabi as a source these days.

Cross-posted to the E-Group.

For a while there it looked like Abdullah Almalki wouldn't be available to testify at the Arar inquiry. After being imprisoned in Syria for two years, where he claims he was tortured, the dual Syrian-Canadian citizen was released in the spring and then put on trial as a security threat. No sooner was he acquitted on that charge then he was told that he would have to fulfill compulsory military service in Syria.

Today's reports don't make it clear why Syria has had a change of heart on that, but Almalki is now back in Canada. It's obviously excellent news for him and it's also good news for those of us who hope that the Arar inquiry will shed as much light as possible on this whole strange business.

Almalki, like Arar, was named as being part of an Al Qaeda cell plotting to blow up government buildings in Ottawa by Abou El-Maati, who was also detained in Syria. El-Maati subsequently disavowed the story, saying that he, too, was tortured and simply told his interrogators what they wanted to hear so the torture would stop. (One thing that's never been made clear in the stories I've read is whether El-Maati volunteered the names of Arar and Almalki, both acquaintances of his, or whether the Syrians fed the names to him and he simply agreed.)

It's a virtual certainty that Almalki's presence as a witness will be requested by the inquiry and given his public accusations that the RCMP was involved in his detention, it seems likely that he'll be only too happy to comply.

At last report, public testimony wasn't likely to resume until late October or November. There's been nothing new reported on that and the schedule on the commission website isn't promising even that much. I'll keep an eye on it.

Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean they're not out to get you

Got your mobile phone switched on? If so, then somewhere there is a stranger who knows where you are. The electronic networks that link us together in so many convenient ways also peer into our lives even when we don?t realise it.

That's from the introduction to a BBC Radio 4 program on the erosion of privacy in the electronic age. You can view a transcript, or listen with RealPlayer (the file includes the last few seconds of the previous segment so be patient). The program discusses a number of different ways that technology is allowing both governments and commercial enterprises to learn more about us than we might like and to store and search that information for their own purposes. If the mobile phone example didn't get to you maybe you'll share the concern of Caoilfhionn Gallagher, a lawyer with a civil liberties group who was asked about her current concerns regarding monitoring technology.

The first one would be a very high tech new x-ray system that?s been developed and it?s being rolled out across the UK. And essentially what it involves is a virtual strip search. And people are unaware that it?s happening, which is of course the problem with a lot of these technologies ? that while people?s rights are being invaded, they?re actually unaware of it, which is extremely unusual. But it?s a virtual strip search without any of the safeguards that accompany a traditional strip search.

Feel safer now?

As the program points out, the development of technology has increased the tension between the enthusiasm of both business and government to use whatever tools are available on the one hand, and the concerns of average folks that their privacy is being slowly nibbled away on the other. 9/11 has, of course, thrown that tension into stark relief.

Europe has already passed more stringent protections than the US in the form of a Data Protection Act. I believe Canada is somewhere in the middle. But the issue is far from settled no matter where you live because the technology keeps developing as do new applications for the various types of information it collects.

As a topical example, consider this from today's Globe and Mail:

Police Chief Julian Fantino is calling for the automatic collection of DNA samples from all suspects arrested in connection with a crime after a recent DNA match led to charges against a man in a vicious sexual assault earlier this summer.

The Criminal Code says the collection of DNA evidence is allowed only upon conviction, but Chief Fantino said yesterday that expanding those rules to include individuals placed under arrest could lead to "quicker" convictions using "much more powerful evidence."

Police arrested an Aurora man yesterday. In June, a 17-year-old Toronto woman was badly beaten, raped and then tossed into a dumpster. ...

The chief said the break in the case came when police made a match between DNA collected from under the victim's fingernails with a sample from her alleged attacker collected after an unrelated robbery conviction last month.

It's not surprising that Fantino would lobby for this both because he's Fantino and because, as I've said before, law enforcement tends to lobby for whatever measures will make its job easier and needs to be reminded that making police work easier isn't the organizing principle of our justice system. That principle is the protection of the rights of citizens.

DNA is still a very new technology and we don't know all the implications it represents. But we do know that your DNA is about as private as it gets - it's your own, unique biological code. And we also know that it can be replicated and transferred which means it could be planted as evidence among other potential abuses.

The argument I can hear in my mind's ear from Fantino and from the proponents of other technologies is that if I have nothing to hide, I have nothing to fear. The lawyer previously quoted in the BBC transcript dealt with that.

... the implication of the theory of nothing to hide, nothing to fear is that privacy is a right which protects the guilty; privacy is a right which protects [a murderer] rather than a right which protects the average, ordinary, law-abiding member of the public. But I think that that rationale is deeply flawed and that the average law-abiding citizen does have much to fear actually from privacy invasion ? not because the citizen intends to do anything wrong or has done anything wrong, but I think that the state should assume that all individuals have nothing to hide unless it has a specific compelling reason to believe otherwise.

Just as we're innocent until proven guilty, we each have a right to privacy unless there is "a specific compelling reason" otherwise.

But wait, you say, DNA is a beneficial technology. I'm sure Guy Paul Morin is thankful it's a technology that was available to clear his name. And that's the problem. Many of the technologies under discussion have useful applications as well as intrusive ones and that's where the tension comes from. That's why I'm sure we'll be struggling with this issue for years to come.

Give the Beeb a listen if you're inclined. It touches on a number of technologies and angles I haven't gotten into here. It even dredges up Sun Microsystems CEO Scott McNealy's famous line: "You have zero privacy, get over it." Not to put too fine a point on it, Scott McNealy can bite me.

This has been Monday night geek blogging because more and more these geeky technology issues are affecting our mundane lives.

PS: Since I've harped so often on the perils of Internet Explorer, I would be remiss if I didn't let you know that Microsoft has released XP Service Pack 2 to manufacturing. It's not available for download immediately, but XP users will want to keep an eye out for it since it's free and it's supposed to offer, among other goodies, more secure versions of IE and Outlook Express. Unless you've already switched to Mozilla or Opera in which case I'm guessing you don't want to switch back. Works for me. (Incidentally the article I linked to places the download at between 80 and 100 MB. I've read elsewhere it may be much larger. Forewarned is forearmed.)

Via Josh Marshall, the Houston Chronicle is reporting that an arrest warrant has been issued by the Iraqi government for Ahmad Chalabi on charges of counterfeiting.

The warrants, issued Saturday, accused Ahmad Chalabi of counterfeiting old Iraqi dinars -- which had been removed from circulation following the fall of Saddam's regime last year, [Judge Zuhair al-Maliky] said.

Ahmad Chalabi appeared to have been hiding the counterfeit money amid other old money and changing it into new dinars in the street, he said.

Police found the counterfeit money along with old dinars in Ahmad Chalabi's house during a May raid, he said.

Warrants is plural in that quote because a second warrant has been issued for Ahmad's nephew, Salem Chalabi, who is head of the tribunal responsible for the trial of Saddam Hussein.

Salem Chalabi was named as a suspect in the June killing of the Haithem Fadhil, director general of the finance ministry.

Neither of the Chalabis was available for comment since they're currently "out of the country". I don't where they are, but I'm pretty sure Ahmad isn't in Jordan. He's already been sentenced to 22 years there for bank fraud.

More has emerged in recent days about the treatment of detainees at Camp Xray in Guatanamo Bay where the American military has been holding suspected terrorists. It had already become public knowledge that many of those held had nothing to do with terrorism and were basically sold into captivity for a $5,000 reward, just as many held by the coalition in Iraqi prisons had done nothing wrong.

Digby has been doing the heavy lifting and has lengthy posts here and here. What's striking is the parallel between the treatment of prisoners at Gitmo and at Abu Ghraib. It certainly blows the "few bad apples" theory out of the water because the common denominator isn't a few MP's or interrogators. The common denominator is Major General Geoffrey D. Miller who oversaw prison operations at Gitmo until this past April when he took over responsibility for the POW Camps in Iraq. His involvement in Iraq, however, goes back to last September when he submitted a report on interrogation methods there. It was shortly after that report was submitted that the worst of the abuses began at Abu Ghraib.

The abuse of detainees is just one more story that will continue to be prominent in the media no matter how much Karl Rove might like it to sink out of sight. Yesterday's Washington Post featured a story about a former army reservist who served at Abu Ghraib. He reported the abuse he witnessed to his superiors while he was still serving. He has since made a videotaped statement to two Republican congressmen who serve on the House Armed Services Committee and they don't sound too inclined to let the story drop.

"Responsibility for this goes way, way up the line," beyond the seven soldiers charged, Bartlett said Friday.

That's from Rep. Roscoe G. Bartlett (R-Md.).

One of the stories that digby points to reports on documents unsealed as a result of the first legal action involving Camp Xray to reach an American courtroom. I have to believe there will be more.

Cynics like me have long maintained that the motivation behind the timing of the handover of power to the interim government in Iraq was to get that country out of the headlines before the serious campaigning got under way in the US presidential election. For a while there it seemed like it might be working, since we've had to dig a little harder lately for news from Iraq. (Although Jeanne at Body and Soul did a pretty thorough summary yesterday.)

But Iraq may yet dominate the headlines again.

Rebel Cleric Calls for Uprising as Clashes Erupt in Najaf

The radical Shiite cleric Moktada al-Sadr called for a national uprising against American and coalition forces today as a two-month truce between Mr. Sadr and the United States military appeared to collapse.

In Baghdad and Basra, the largest city in southern Iraq, insurgents loyal to Mr. Sadr prepared for clashes with American and British troops.

But the heavy fighting appeared to be mainly in and near Najaf, a Shiite holy city and Sadr stronghold 100 miles south of Baghdad. An American Marine helicopter was shot down in Najaf this morning, although the crew was reported rescued.

Later, insurgents attacked an American convoy with a rocket-propelled grenade and small-arms fire near Najaf, killing one soldier and wounding five, all from the 13th Corps Support Command, the United States military said.

Seven insurgents were killed and 22 were wounded, the military added.

Each side blamed the other for the apparent breakdown of the truce, which comes less than two weeks before a national political conference that Mr. Sadr has said he will not attend.

The article notes that al-Sadr is a "polarizing figure" in Iraq who doesn't enjoy unanimous support, but it also notes that "he can unquestionably bring thousands of armed men into the streets."

The link comes via Melanie at Bump who calls this "EXTREMELY bad news." Given the news that Swopa at Needlenose pointed to last night, it may be worse than that.

Iraq's top Shiite cleric, Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani, has heart trouble and is being treated by a team of specialists, one of his aides said Thursday.

"He canceled all his meetings for last week and a group of Iraqi cardiologists are looking after him," Hamed Khafaf told Reuters. He said it was the first time Sistani, 73, had experienced heart problems.

Sistani has wide influence over the country's majority Shiites and has been a leading voice of moderation in postwar Iraq, which has been plagued by violence and instability since a U.S.-led invasion toppled Saddam Hussein last year.

Sistani is supremely influential among Iraqi Shiites and as Swopa writes:

Whatever his ultimate personal goals for the country might be, he's been the only player in the political drama who's thought about more than just grabbing as much power for himself as soon as possible.

In the event of Sistani's death or incapacitation, he would be replaced by one of three senior ayatollahs. But there could be at least a brief opportunity for al-Sadr to try and assert himself and gain more support. This could get a lot bloodier.

I think it's always a good sign when an article on American politics starts out with my favorite quote from Theodore Roosevelt.

To announce that there should be no criticism of the president, or that we are to stand by the president, right or wrong, is not only unpatriotic and servile, but is morally treasonable to the American people.

And what's the criticism of the president to which this author wishes to give voice?

George W. Bush is no conservative, and his unprincipled abandonment of conservatism under the pressure of events is no statesmanship. The Republic would be well-served by his defeat this November.

Oh dear.

The author is William Bryk, about whom I know nothing other than that he appears to be what I always understood an old-fashioned principled conservative to be. And he certainly has no use for George W. Bush. Along the way he manages a few shots at other people as well. Congress, the editors of the Wall Street Journal and neo-conservatives in general get their share of criticism here but he really doesn't like George W. Bush. Actually he doesn't appear to be too fond of Bush's father either.

The article provides a clear summary of the author's view of what it means to be conservative, takes the Bush administration apart on fiscal policy and civil liberties, then finishes up with foreign policy.

Today, the administration insists we can be safe only by compelling other nations to implement its vision of democracy. This used to be called imperialism. ...

This neo-conservative policy rejects the traditional conservative notion that American society is rooted in American culture and history?in the gradual development of American institutions over nearly 230 years?and cannot be separated from them. Instead, neo-conservatives profess that American values, which they define as democracy, liberty, free markets and self-determination, are "universal" rather than particular to us, and insist they can and should be exported to ensure our security.

This is nonsense. The qualities that make American life desirable evolved from our civil society, created by millions of men and women using the freedom created under limited constitutional government. Only a fool would believe they could be spread overnight with bombs and bucks, and only a fool would insist that the values defined by George W. Bush as American are necessarily those for which we should fight any war at all.

There's more on the folly of the Iraq war and you certainly can't accuse the man of mincing words. He closes with:

Anything beyond the limited powers expressly delegated by the people under the Constitution to their government for certain limited purposes creates the danger of tyranny. We stand there now. For an American conservative, better one lost election than the continued empowerment of cynical men who abuse conservatism through an exercise of power unrestrained by principle through the compromise of conservative beliefs. George W. Bush claims to be conservative. But based upon the unwholesome intrusion into domestic life and personal liberty of his administration and the local governments who imitate it, George W. Bush is no conservative, no friend of limited, constitutional government?and no friend of freedom.

It's a good read. It provides ample evidence that there are lots of reasons to oppose Bush that don't involve irrational hysteria. And the author never once bashes the French, mentions Howard Dean's scream or talks about what John Kerry eats for lunch on the campaign trail. In today's climate that makes it a rare and shining example of political commentary.

Hat tip to Absit Invidia.

Cross-posted to the E-Group.

When I last posted on this it was to report that public testimony in the inquiry had been delayed until the middle of September. There was a little matter of several thousand documents to review as well as "national security concerns" to consider.

It's now been announced that public testimony will be further delayed, possibly until late October or November. In the interim Justice O'Connor intends to deal with all of those national security concerns at once. One of the things he's waiting on is word from the Attorney General since there was a new wrinkle added to the Canada Evidence Act in the wake of 9/11.

Justice Dennis O'Connor is especially concerned about anti-terrorism measures in the Canada Evidence Act that bar him from disclosing any ruling on the need to keep documents secret to protect national security.

Under legislative changes made after terrorist attacks on the U.S. on Sept. 11, 2001, such decisions can't be revealed unless the attorney general or a federal-court judge allows it.

Pretty slick, eh? If there's a ruling that states we're not allowed to know something, then we're not allowed to know about the ruling either. It keeps us from finding out how much is being kept from us. And we can't challenge or even criticize a decision we don't know about. It sounds like a good way to keep those in authority from being held accountable but can someone explain how it makes us safer?

I tend to agree with the good Justice.

"On their face, the breadth of these provisions clearly detracts from the transparency of the inquiry," Justice O'Connor said, in a decision released Thursday.

"Indeed, the provisions do not appear to sit well with the whole idea of a public inquiry," he said.

Arar's lawyers want to see a constitutional challenge mounted but in the interests of expediting this particular case O'Connor has opted to simply request a blanket waiver from the Attorney General for purposes of the inquiry. I understand his decision but I'd like to see the constitutional challenge go forward as well. I'd like to see those activist judges I've heard so much about get activist all over this.

O'Connor's plan now is to finish processing all the documents and to hold in camera hearings with CSIS, the RCMP and the government's lawyers starting on Sept. 13 with an eye to getting all of these concerns out of the way before public testimony resumes. Arar and his lawyers will be barred from these proceedings but the public interest will be represented by Ron Atkey, a former head of the Security Intelligence Review Committee (CSIS' civilian oversight body) who was appointed as a friend of the court with a particular responsibility for rebutting the government's arguments and keeping things as transparent as possible. I'm all for that.

There's one other newsworthy item that has emerged in recent days. You may recall that after Arar's return to Canada and his public statement about what happened to him, there was a series of leaks to the press suggesting that he really was a terrorist. These culminated in an RCMP raid on the home of Juliet O'Neill, an Ottawa Citizen reporter.

Now we learn that prior to that raid, there were probes into two of those leaks initiated by the Privy Council Office.

Newly disclosed documents reveal that employees of several federal agencies were grilled during a three-week period last fall about what they knew concerning television and newspaper stories on the Arar affair.

... Records obtained by The Canadian Press through the Access to Information Act show the RCMP investigation was preceded by two government-led probes that tried to find the source of leaks to Ms. O'Neill and CTV News reporter Joy Malbon.

... In the internal probes, questions were put to members of the RCMP, the Canadian Security Intelligence Service, Foreign Affairs and the Solicitor-General's Department (since renamed Public Safety) in response to Privy Council Office requests.

... It is unclear whether leads uncovered during the government-ordered probes prompted the RCMP to launch its criminal investigation on Nov. 20.

Fran?ois Jubinville, a Privy Council Office spokesman, said the internal inquiries were discontinued once the police force decided "to take the matter into its own hands."

'Taking the matter into its own hands' is, of course, a euphemism for creating one of the biggest controversies involving freedom of the press Canada has seen in decades. All concerned on the government side maintain that the probes didn't lead directly to the raid and the RCMP most certainly acted on its own, without government interference. Ms. O'Neill remains unimpressed.

"How dare they turn my life upside down and threaten me with criminal prosecution carrying up to 14 years in prison, a threat which has not been withdrawn to this date?" Ms. O'Neill said.

"On the contrary, they have accused us of stymieing their investigation while we are defending my rights and freedom of the press in court. It's an abuse of power."

There's nothing in any of the articles I've read to suggest that the leakers have been discovered and dealt with. But it wouldn't surprise me to learn that there have been developments there too and we're simply not being told. At this point I don't imagine it would be too difficult to find someone in this mess who believes that it's a matter of national security to prevent us from knowing which of the spooks in our employ can't tell the difference between hard, reliable evidence and the fruits of torture.

Of course I'm speculating. But isn't that one of the problems with excessive secrecy? When we know we're being kept in the dark, we speculate.

All's fair in love, war and software development

From time to time I've ranted about the way that the concept of intellectual property has been warped over time. To quote myself:

... patents and copyrights were created with the long term public interest in mind in the first place. That short-term monopoly was meant to provide the creators with an incentive to fully develop their ideas to a point where they were useful and valuable before they finally ended up in the public domain. But somewhere along the line the public interest faded from view and the monopoly became an end in itself.

One of the best examples of this is the software patent. A software developer who wants to protect his work can already avail himself of copyright. But the use of patents to try and protect small portions of code, algorithms or even abstract concepts has become so common it's an industry in itself. If you think that's an exaggeration, read on. This article provides a clear explanation of how this can stifle innovation and prevent competition in an industry that is becoming an increasing part of our daily lives. The author relates what he was told by a software engineer who sat in on a lecture by one of the lawyers working for the company which employs him.

The lawyer went on to explain that since what was important was the monopoly, it was necessary not only to patent the way we were doing things, but also to think laterally, and patent all the ways other people might do them as well, not so that we could actually do these things ourselves, but so we could prevent others from doing them.
...
Patents on software often appear completely counterproductive - by monopolising a technique, a patent can simply ensure that the technique is never used. Rather than making money, a patent can cause the death of an otherwise promising technology, and this is frequently the aim of patents held by owners of threatened technology.

There's nothing illegal in this but it certainly contradicts the original spirit of intellectual property law as well the "laws" of the free market. By monopolising enough techniques, the patent holder can ensure that anyone wishing to enter the market in competition with him is either prevented, or must incur high enough costs in patent royalties that the competing product won't be at all competitive in price. The patent holder can gain a monopoly on a market simply by the judicious use of the smaller monopoly represented by the patent.

The software engineer in the article works for a company that got "taken to the cleaners" in a lawsuit because it had failed to register patents to protect the product it had sold for years. Another company did and without enough evidence of prior art to support its claims, the first company had to pay. That prompted the company to put its engineers together with a lawyer and start building a patent portfolio of its own.

So a colleague and I sat down for a few hours one afternoon, and tossed off six fairly straightforward ideas, of the sort that any competent worker in our field might come up with. The lawyer was delighted, but insisted on splitting one of our ideas in two, so then we had seven patents being filed in our names.

Having got into the swing of things, we sat down for a couple of hours again the other day, and tossed off another 10. So far they have all been accepted and filed by the firm's lawyers, which on a time-per-patent basis puts us well in front of Thomas Edison, who I believe previously held the record.

Since we receive a bonus of $8000 per patent, if all goes well we'll share well over $150,000. And there seems no reason we can't keep this game up indefinitely. We should be able to manage around 50 a year, and this nice little earner will see the mortgage paid off in no time.

Meanwhile, the firm spends between $50,000 and $200,000 on legal fees and filing fees for each patent, so we've created over $1 million worth of employment for our legal friends. This is money that the company can't spend on research and development, but there you are.

A bonus of $150,000 and $1 million worth of legal work created, and not one line of code written or one bit of value added to an actual product. What's wrong with this picture?

Union green-lighted at Quebec Wal-Mart

A Wal-Mart store in this Quebec city may become the first store of the retail giant to be unionized, after the Quebec Labour Relations Board accredited a union there to represent the workers.

The Quebec Federation of Labour announced the accreditation today. The store in Saguenay, 200 kilometres north of Quebec City, has about 180 employees.

"The union represents the large majority of the store's employees," said Marie-Josee Lemieux, president of the union local with the United Food and Commercial Workers.

"We hope that Wal-Mart will accept this decision and negotiate a labour contract with the union."

I hope so, too. I'm not a big fan of Wal-Mart. In fact, I won't shop there and one of the reasons is the rabidly anti-union stance the chain has taken.

The world's largest retailer is expected to fight this ruling, the union conceded Monday.

No surprise there.

Wal-Mart officials couldn't be reached for comment.

No surprise there, either.

The Columbia Journalism Review has a blog called The Campaign Desk which specializes in analysis of campaign coverage during this election year. Susan at Suburban Guerrilla points to this story about an informal poll taken by John Tierney of the New York Times who asked a couple of questions of his press colleagues at the Democratic convention.

The obvious question concerned who would be a better president and the choice was overwhelmingly Kerry over Bush. But the second question was more interesting. Tierney asked them:

[W]hich administration they'd prefer to cover for the next four years strictly from a journalist standpoint?

More than half the reporters who answered voted for Bush.

As anyone who has been a journalist for longer than about six minutes knows, it's the prospect of four years of boredom, not the prospect of a president they would never vote for, that strikes terror into the hearts of news hounds.

To me that presupposes a short memory on the part of these journalists. Remember Whitewater? Monica Lewinsky?

There's simply no way that a Kerry administration would be boring. The Republicans just wouldn't stand for it.

The search string is:

Jimmy Carter's middle name

Earl.

You're welcome.

If you put quotes around "middle name", you'll get better results. Teach a man to fish...