Peace, order and good government, eh?

RIP Pierre Berton

Writer Pierre Berton dead at 84

Canadian author and broadcaster Pierre Berton, one of the country's most recognizable and beloved figures, has died at age 84, a Toronto hospital said today.

Berton died earlier in the day, said a spokeswoman for Sunnybrook hospital. She wouldn't divulge the cause of death, but the CBC reported he died of heart failure.

Berton had a long and varied career, publishing more than 40 books, working as a newspaper columnist, Maclean's magazine editor, and as a broadcast personality. In every role, his trademark humour and iconoclastic take on the world was evident - as was his trademark bow tie, bushy white sideburns and dramatic cloaks.

I think Berton did as much as anyone to popularize Canadian history. He'll be missed.

The best we could do on short notice

I hope George W. Bush will make allowances for the fact that we've only had a couple of weeks to prepare for his first visit to Canada as President. That's hardly enough time to do a proper job of rolling out the welcome mat.

The Toronto Coalition to Stop the War, one of many city-based groups heading to the capital, planned to roll out a so-called "unwelcome mat" for Bush ? a giant carpet-turned-protest-sign.

Organizer Dylan Penner called Bush a "war criminal" and said the protesters oppose what they consider Canada's complicity in the U.S. president's policies.

And while we're on the subject of props:

Toronto City Councillor Olivia Chow also turned up for the preparations, which included the loading of a four-and-a-half-metre effigy of Bush that protesters intended to encourage people to beat.

For the benefit of any American visitors, Olivia Chow is married to Jack Layton, the leader of the New Democratic Party which is Canada's most left leaning national party.

And speaking of Smilin' Jack:

NDP Leader Jack Layton has issued a rally cry to anti-Bush protesters through "demon-dial." Layton yesterday defended his bid to draw demonstrators to Parliament Hill through an automated voice-mail message. Thousands of residents in the Ottawa area received his call to join him in demonstrating against the U.S. president.

"I'm calling to ask you to join me and other New Democrats to say no to Bush's arms race, no to the weaponization of space and no to Bush's Star Wars," Layton said in the message.

The NDP leader defended his "fundamental right" to protest and denied the move shows disrespect for the visiting dignitary. Layton will also be addressing the afternoon crowd today.

It looks like it'll be a busy day. Students against Bush at the University of Ottawa rally at 11 am. There's a major demonstration planned for noon and another one, variously described as a rally and a candle light vigil, scheduled for 5 pm.

The anti-war organization No War is organizing a mass demonstration in Ottawa on Parliament at 5 p.m. for Tuesday. Government officials expect tens of thousands to attend the rally. NDP Leader Jack Layton and Independent MP Carolyn Parrish are among those who speak at the rally.

And folks in Halifax are already warming up for Bush's appearance tomorrow:

The Halifax Peace Coalition will hold a mock trial of Bush for war crimes under Canada's Crimes Against Humanity and War Crimes Act on Tuesday evening at 5:00 p.m. in Victoria Park. A rally is also planned for Bush's Wednesday visit to the city, but details are not complete.

And activities are planned in other venues too.

Protests are expected in two dozen other Canadian locations as well, including Halifax, where demonstrators will picket near Bush's speech at an immigration museum on the city's waterfront Wednesday.

Toronto, Montreal, Calgary and Vancouver will also be the scene of protests.

I hope this is enough to demonstrate our enthusiasm. Never let it be said that Bush doesn't evoke strong feelings in Canadians. Why I, myself, would have baked a cake but trust me, no one wants that.

Now to be serious for a moment. A Canadian group called Friends of America commissioned a poll of Canadian attitudes towards Americans for the occasion. You can view the results here in PDF format. Aside from the fact that 71% of the respondents identified the U.S. as Canada's "closest friend", to me the most interesting result is this:

Almost 3/4 of Canadians (73%) agree with the statement, "Opposing the policies of President Bush is not the same as being anti-American"

Works for me.

To serve and protect. Our reputation, that is.

It sure is nice to know that the RCMP thinks it appropriate to allow an innocent Canadian citizen to rot in a Syrian jail to avoid causing ... embarrassment?

On Friday last Justice O'Connor, who's heading the commission of inquiry into Maher Arar's deportation and confinement, released over 1,000 pages of RCMP documents. They're heavily redacted but they still tell a story.

The RCMP seems to feel its new relationship with its counterparts in the U.S. is extremely important. But what it amounts to is: they tell the Americans everything they know, the Americans keep them completely in the dark and the Mounties then disavow all responsibility. Interesting relationship¹.

"The cooperative relationship between the RCMP and its foreign partners regarding the ongoing campaign against terrorism is of the utmost importance. However, once the RCMP has provided information to its partners, the resulting dissemination/actions concerning this information is beyond our control," states a "secret" Nov. 15, 2002, briefing to [RCMP Commissioner] Zaccardelli.

A separate memo to the RCMP liaison officer at the Department of Foreign Affairs, dated Oct. 18, 2002, stated: "RCMP investigators have maintained an open line of communication with it's (sic) Canadian and American partners. All available information obtained by Project A-OCANADA team has been shared with (censored)."

But the sharing of information seems to have been pretty one-sided².

One document, marked ?secret,? describes how the RCMP believed in October, 2002, that Mr. Arar was to be sent to Canada, only to be told by a foreign affairs official that it was believed he would be deported to Syria.

?Upon hearing this, the (officer in charge) of the project and his lead investigators became concerned,? part of the document reads before being blacked out.
...
There were discussions about sending investigators to New York to interview Mr. Arar. Investigators sought clarification from U.S. authorities about why Mr. Arar was arrested, and the Mounties also demanded to know whether Mr. Arar would be allowed to proceed to Canada.

No answers were given, according to a briefing note compiled for the RCMP commissioner.

In fact, it seems Canadian investigators were never told anything.

It's also revealed in these documents that Arar wasn't a central figure in any ongoing RCMP investigation³.

The RCMP regarded Maher Arar as nothing more than a "peripheral" figure or "potential witness" in their terrorism investigations...

But if that's all Arar represented, and they had no proof of any wrongdoing on his part, why were they so reluctant to assist in his release³?

In late October, 2002, Mr. Arar's lawyer, Michael Edelson, submitted a formal request to the Mounties for assistance in having him released from custody in Syria.

More than two weeks later, after the request was filtered through several bureaucratic layers within the RCMP, Mr. Edelson was turned down flat.

In fact when public pressure on the government to secure Arar's release started to build, the RCMP went into full damage control mode¹.

An April 30, 2003, briefing note to RCMP Commissioner Giuliano Zaccardelli says any intervention could be a "potential embarrassment."

Cited in the memo was the case of Ahmed Said Khadr, an Egyptian-Canadian believed to be an Al Qaeda financier who was released from custody in Pakistan after Chr?tien intervened.

"The intervention of the PM has been raised (in Khadr case) on a number of occasions in an attempt to embarrass the government," the note says.

Was it the poor government's reputation they were concerned about? Or their own¹?

Dozens of e-mails and memos also talk about "media strategy," urging no confirmation of an RCMP probe into Arar and noting the deportation could reflect poorly on the force.

As I said, isn't it nice to know that while a Canadian citizen is imprisoned in a Syrian jail our national police force, who have already admitted they don't have sufficient evidence to charge the guy with jay walking, are worried about media strategy?

The last time I posted about this we'd learned enough to make the RCMP look incompetent. They'd violated their own policies in sharing information without the proper holds, they'd guaranteed the reliability of information which turned out to be unreliable and they'd been caught flat-footed by Arar's arrest and couldn't scrape together enough money to get members of their task force down to New York.

But now they look worse than incompetent. Now they look so infatuated with their new role as superspooks that they don't care whose life they screw up as long as they can avoid negative publicity.

Part of Justice O'Connor's mandate is to suggest a better mechanism for monitoring the RCMP and for dealing with complaints against the force. I imagine it would be outside of that mandate to suggest that the Mounties be pulled back out of the intelligence business altogether, but it's not outside my mandate and that's exactly what I'm suggesting.

Let's go back to the situation the MacDonald commission recommended in the eighties and separate law enforcement on the one hand from intelligence and ?national security? on the other. Maybe if the Mounties go back to being just law enforcement officers they'll place a higher value on due process and the rights of citizens than on their media strategy.

Sources:
1. Arar Deportation Surprised RCMP - Toronto Star
2. RCMP didn't know about Arar deportation - Globe and Mail
3. Mounties warned against release of Arar - Globe and Mail

Cross-posted at the E-Group

Wal-Mart watch

Trapper John at Daily Kos is congratulating Wal-Mart on their timing. The retailer has bowed to pressure from the Chinese government to allow the employees in the Wal-Marts in that country to unionize. Given the way unions in China operate, that doesn't mean what it would here in North America.

Wal-Mart didn't really want to deal with the Chinese unions, toothless as they are, because doing so could increase the chance of unionization in other countries with real unions. But the Chinese government, which gets along with Wal-Mart just fine, wanted the company to work with their house unions -- the more workers in official unions, the less chance of a real free trade union movement developing in China. So Wal-Mart waited to cave until the holidays, allowing them to get good press in the US for "working with unions" at a time of year when good PR is critical for a retail operation, while conceding nothing in the US and losing no advantages in China.

But that's OK, Trapper. The real action right now is in Canada, specifically in Saquenay, Quebec.

Wal-Mart workers in Saguenay, about 250 kilometres north of Quebec City, begin Monday to try to negotiate a first contract with the retail giant. Last summer, the union scored a major success when the store became North America's only unionized Wal-Mart.

As the story notes, there will be a lot of people watching this. It's one thing to simply declare that the store is unionized. It's quite another to actually negotiate a collective bargaining agreement and make it stick.

Analysts say as much as certifications are important, securing a collective agreement is the ultimate goal.

"The success or failure of the bargaining there will have an impact on the rest of the country," Robert Hebdon, a McGill University labour market relations professor, said of the Saguenay talks.

He suspects the company will resist even the most modest union proposals, to forestall a bandwagon effect from employees watching across the country.

"Workers are taking a chance right now for what at this stage is just a trickle (of unionization efforts)," said Hebdon.

"It's not going to be a flood until the unions can deliver."

Wal-Mart racheted up employee fears when it suggested the Saguenay store could close because it was losing money. Observers have said this statement was designed as a warning to employees elsewhere.

And as an indication of what "elsewhere" might mean, the article provides a summary of union efforts involving Wal-Mart across Canada.

Quebec:

• Saguenay: Negotiations resume Nov. 29 on first collective agreement at only certified Wal-Mart in North America.


• St-Hyacinthe: Quebec labour board expected to decide on Dec. 13 whether store to become second certified union store in Quebec.


• Longueuil: Application for certification under review by labour board. The Quebec Labour Relations Commission issued an order in September compelling Wal-Mart to stop interfering with unionization efforts at the store.


• Others: Unionization efforts proceeding at about nine other unidentified locations.

Saskatchewan:

• Weyburn: Saskatchewan Court of Appeal overturns lower court ruling, upholds labour board's decision forcing Wal-Mart to turn over documents to union. Company may appeal to Supreme Court.


• North Battleford: Awaiting resumption of hearings regarding certification application.


• Moose Jaw: Union applies for successor rights for a Wal-Mart in Moose Jaw. Hearing pending.

British Columbia:

• Surrey, Terrace, Dawson Creek, Fort St. John, Quesnel, Kamloops, Langford: Wal-Mart challenges union application and vote of vehicle service workers at seven locations. Votes sealed pending hearings in December.


• Quesnel: Labour board in May 2003 permits union to address Wal-Mart employees.


• Terrace: Union appeal pending on dismissal of union application after labour board determines not enough workers signed cards.

There's been talk in the U.S. about allocating $25 million of AFL-CIO funds towards a drive to organize Wal-Mart stores. I would imagine the American labour movement will be watching events in Saquenay very closely over the next little while.

Are you on drugs? You might be soon.

Back in August, Ian Welsh drew our attention to a report from the Orwellian named President's New Freedom Commission on Mental Health. This august group proposed making mental health screening a routine part of physical examinations for both adults and children. And in the case of the latter, it would be mandatory and wouldn't require parental consent.

After providing some relevant quotes and background material, Ian summed it up rather nicely:

Let's put it together. The government will screen kids in school and adults during routine examinations - people who didn't go looking for mental health help. If it's determined that they are mentally ill, they'll be treated with drugs that cost a great deal more than generics and may or may not be safer.

This is another way to subsidize drug companies. I don't want to trivialize mental health issues, and certainly we want people to get the help they need. But this does smack of coercive drugging of vulnerable populations with drugs that could have side effects much worse than the some of the problems they're treating.

Sound like a conspiracy theory? Guess what?

Congress Funds Psychological Tests for Kids

One of the nation's leading medical groups, the Association of American Physicians & Surgeons (AAPS), decried a move by the U.S. Senate to join with the House in funding a federal program AAPS says will lead to mandatory psychological testing of every child in America ? without the consent of parents.

When the Senate considered an omnibus appropriations bill last week that included funding for grants to implement universal mental health screening for almost 60 million children, pregnant women and adults through schools and pre-schools, it approved $20 million of the $44 million sought, Kathryn Serkes, public affairs counsel for AAPS, told NewsMax.
...
Last September, AAPS lifetime member Rep. Ron Paul, M.D., R-Texas, tried to stop the plan in its tracks by offering an amendment to the Labor, HHS, and Education Appropriations Act for FY 2005. The amendment received 95 ?yes? votes, but it failed to pass.

According to Serkes, Paul is now mulling offering stand-alone legislation in the next session to once again try and get a provision for parental consent.

The federal bill on its face does not require mandatory mental health testing to be imposed upon states or local schools, explained Serkes.

However, the HHS appropriations bill contains block grant money that will likely be used ? as is often the case with block funding ? by the various states to implement mandatory psychological testing programs for all students in the school system.
...
Officials of the AAPS decry in the measure what they see as ?a dangerous scheme that will heap even more coercive pressure on parents to medicate children with potentially dangerous side effects.?

One of the most ?dangerous side effects? from antidepressants commonly prescribed to children is suicide, regarding which AAPS added, ?Further, even the government?s own task force has concluded that mental health screening does little to prevent suicide.?

While I was googling around looking for other sources on the story, I came across a piece by Phyllis Schlafly at Town Hall in which she expresses the same concerns.

"State-of-the-art treatments" will result in many thousands of children being medicated by expensive, ineffective, and dangerous drugs. The long-term safety and effectiveness of psychiatric medications on children have never been proven.

The side effects of suggested medications in children are severe. They include suicide, violence, psychosis, cardiac toxicity, and growth suppression. Several school shooters, such as Eric Harris (Columbine) and Kip Kinkel (Oregon) had been on antidepressants or stimulants when they committed their crimes.

The validity of much scientific research has lost its credibility because the Food and Drug Administration has allowed the pharmaceutical industry to withhold data not favorable to their products and because people in the pay of the pharmaceutical companies are the ones recommending medications.

But I had to laugh at this, from early in the piece.

Like most liberal big-spending ideas, this one was slipped into the law under cover of soft semantics.

Liberal, Phyllis? This is the Bush adminstration you're talking about and it's the GOP that's in control of both houses of Congress. Don't go blaming liberals for this one.

I guess it really is the War on Some Drugs™. Here's hoping this is an idea that doesn't catch on in Canada.

Jay Allen appreciation day

If you've bounced over here from Bump, thanks for dropping by. And thanks to Melanie. But the real credit goes to Jay Allen who's developed an excellent plug-in for Movable Type and made it available for free. (Though he does have a tip jar. That's a hint.)

I would heartily recommend that anyone running a version of MT that's compatible should take a serious look at MT Blacklist.

Eyewitness blogging

Kevin Sites is the videographer who was in that Fallujah mosque last week when a young American Marine shot and killed an unarmed, wounded Iraqi. Sites also has a blog and he's written his own account of the incident in the form of an open letter to the troops with whom he's embedded: Open Letter to Devil Dogs of the 3.1. It may be as close to an unfiltered account as we'll get.

Via Daily Kos, where it's reported that Sites' account has also been published in the New York Times.

It's hard to have respect while you're stifling the urge to vomit

Preston Manning, who once was leader of the Reform Party and leader of Her Majesty's Official Opposition, had an op-ed in last week's Winnipeg Free Press. There are a number of things in it that I might take issue with, but there's one in particular that deserves comment in light of recent events.

Manning's thesis is that George Bush's recent election victory represents "realities" that Canadians can't afford to ignore, and so he offers a four part prescription for Canada's response. This is item number three:

3. Respecting cultural conservatism.
One of the amazing things about the recent U.S. elections was the numbers of American electors who told the exit-pollsters that "moral values" -- not the state of the U.S. economy or the war in Iraq -- were the determining factor in how they cast their vote. In every country, "values" are deeply rooted in culture and, for the majority of people in both Canada and the United States (there are polls which clearly establish this), in religious convictions. We in Canada have tried to ignore this reality in our domestic political discourse and in our relations with other countries less secular than our own. We can no longer afford to do so, particularly in dealing with our closest neighbour.

Methinks Mr. Manning had best be a lot more specific about exactly what it is he wishes we had more respect for, and exactly what it is he suggests we do to take into account the fact that other countries are "less secular" than we are. If he wants me to have anything but contempt for the group responsible for this, he has a lot of explaining to do.

The Washington Post yesterday published a magazine ad supplement, bought by religious right groups, that is one of the most bigoted homophobic things I have ever read. I am astonished the Post would print this filth.

In it you learn things like the fact that sexual orientation isn't genetic. Why? Because if it were genetic it would have to be passed by gay parents who don't have kids! Putting aside a number of holes in that theory, there's the more general scientific point about recessive genes. My point is that this filth isn't even scientifically correct, and the Post is publishing it. I didn't realize the Post had no problems publishing junk science targeting minority groups. Huh.

What's more, the entire publication is based on race-baiting. It is CLEARLY written for the black community in an effort to piss them off against the gays. Funny, but you'd think the Post would have a problem with a scientifically invalid publication whose sole intent was to enrage one minority community against another. But no.

Oh, and it gets better. The publication informs you that gays die at the age of 41. Yep, all of us. What they don't tell you is that this little "study" was conducted by Dr. Paul Cameron, an anti-gay nutjob who has even been disowned by the religious right (let alone he was thrown out of various medical associations). But does the Post have a problem publishing junk science that suggests that certain minority groups are inferior to others? Not at all!

That's from John at AMERICAblog and his post includes links to the actual magazine supplement in pdf format. I read enough to confirm that this steaming pile of crap is exactly as John describes. It distorts science, and invokes the memory of Martin Luther King, Jr., in a blatant attempt to drive a wedge between blacks and gays, to turn one minority against another.

There is a hard core of American "cultural conservatives" who are so certain of there own moral superiority, and so full of contempt and hatred for those of whom they disapprove, that they have no qualms about using the most underhanded and contemptible tactics in the service of their agenda. These are people that the Bush administration panders to. And there are enough of them, and with enough financial resources, to be able to purchase a sixteen page supplement in the Washington Post and get the Post to publish this crap.

You want me to respect this, Preston? It's not gonna happen. And if you're standing up for this kind of nonsense and suggesting that Bush's bare majority in the recent election means that such as these are deserving of respect and should have any kind of influence at all on Canadian society, government policy or public discourse, then you risk losing any respect you may think you're entitled to.

I should add that I know plenty of people of faith who would be as disgusted with this as I am and I have yet to hear any of them suggest that Canada needs to be "less secular."

Hat tip to Captain Flynn for the link to Manning's column.

In other news, my capacity for righteous indignation seems to be returning.

Speechless, for now

I'm not on an official hiatus, I just don't seem to have a lot to say right now. But if there's one thing you can count on it's that sooner or later the idiots in charge of this world will do something that leaves me irate rather than depressed.

Meanwhile I'm teaching myself PHP. It says something about the state of the world when fussing with syntax and hunting for bugs is more fun on a rainy Saturday afternoon than trying to be snarky about current events.

Happy now?

Let the bells ring! Let the birds sing! Let the crowds cheer! Well, some crowds anyway.

Fox News cleared for Canadian TV

The Fox News Channel will soon be coming to Canadian digital TV.

The CRTC, Canada's broadcast regulator, announced today that the right-wing, all-news channel can be carried by Canadian cable companies on digital.

So, do you think this will stop all the claims that the CRTC are a bunch of commies intent on censoring free expression and enforcing political group-think?

Probably not.

Personally I don't have cable television so I'll have to continue to get along without a regular dose of Bill O'Reilly. I'll try and bear up under the strain.

A sign of things to come?

While Canadian bloggers continue to sound the alarm over the possibility that our own government may move ahead with some really bad proposals concerning copyright, U.S. legislators are poised to demonstrate how much worse it can get.

The American entertainment industry is lobbying hard to get Congress to push through a comprehensive piece of legislation during the current "lame duck" session. I guess they're in a hurry because they don't want anyone to look too closely.

The Senate might vote on HR2391, the Intellectual Property Protection Act, a comprehensive bill that opponents charge could make many users of peer-to-peer networks, digital-music players and other products criminally liable for copyright infringement. The bill would also undo centuries of "fair use" -- the principle that gives Americans the right to use small samples of the works of others without having to ask permission or pay.

The bill lumps together several pending copyright bills including HR4077, the Piracy Deterrence and Education Act, which would criminally punish a person who "infringes a copyright by ... offering for distribution to the public by electronic means, with reckless disregard of the risk of further infringement." Critics charge the vague language could apply to a person who uses the popular Apple iTunes music-sharing application.

The bill would also permit people to use technology to skip objectionable content -- like a gory or sexually explicit scene -- in films, a right that consumers already have. However, under the proposed law, skipping any commercials or promotional announcements would be prohibited. The proposed law also includes language from the Pirate Act (S2237), which would permit the Justice Department to file civil lawsuits against alleged copyright infringers.
...
The entertainment industry has been lobbying hard for quick Senate passage during the lame-duck session, with opponents gearing up for a tough fight.

Hollywood's involvement has even irked the American Conservative Union, which holds considerable sway with conservative Republicans in Congress. The ACU plans a major print ad campaign this week to oppose the bill, mainly because some provisions would require the Justice Department to file civil copyright lawsuits on behalf of the entertainment industry.

"It's just plain wrong to make the Department of Justice Hollywood's law firm," said Stacie Rumenap, ACU's deputy director.

While digital technology certainly poses a challenge to the established entertainment industry, the proposals put forward both in Canada and in the U.S. go far beyond meeting that challenge. The industry wants to take advantage of the situation to entrench its ability to monopolize content and enlist everyone from the government to ISPs as copyright cops.

And we lose, not just as consumers but as citizens. We lose as consumers because the corporations will be free to find ways to ensure that we pay more for content because we're not buying it anymore, we're just renting it and paying for it again every time we access it. We lose as citizens because legislation like that proposed here puts the corporate right to profit above even the individual's right to free expression.

Nice work if you can get it, eh? Pay a creator the minimum you can get away with for the copyright to something, then sit back and collect a royalty every single time someone accesses it. Forever. Throughout the universe. With the onus for enforcement on the ISP and the government and any accused infringer treated as guilty until proven innocent.

That's the direction we're heading in.

How about capital punishment for corporations?

Yesterday I suggested that corporations persist in misbehaving because they just don't pay a high enough price for their misdeeds. Here's a case in point. And I should hasten to add that I'm in no way equating the misbehaviour of Lexmark with this. Union Carbide makes Lexmark's arrogance look like small potatoes.

The worst industrial disaster in history occurred in 1984 in Bhopal, India.

It was caused by the accidental release of forty tons of methyl isocyanate (MIC) from a Union Carbide pesticide plant located in the heart of the city.
...
The MIC leak began shortly after midnight on December 3, 1984. The vapors killed more than 2,000 people outright and injured anywhere from 150,000 to 600,000 others, some 6,000 of whom would later die from their injuries.
...
Investigations have revealed that many safety procedures were bypassed and the standard of operations in the Indian plant did not match those at other Union Carbide plants. It was also alleged that these safety procedures were wilfully toned down as a part of "cost cutting operations" at the Indian plant that Union Carbide was involved in at that time. Recent documents that surfaced during a compensation claims case involving New York Federal District revealed that Union Carbide frequently exported "untested technology" to the Indian plant.

Union Carbide denies these allegations on its website dedicated to the tragedy.

UC agreed to pay $470 million in damages in an out-of-court settlement in 1989, though that doesn't end the story. Warren Anderson, UC's CEO at the time, is still a wanted man in India.

UC sold its Indian division in 1994 and four years later handed responsibility for the site back to the Indian government. In 2001, UC became a wholly owned subsidiary of Dow Chemical who maintain that the $470 million is the sum total of their responsiblity. Which brings us to the present day.

Thousands of Indians around Bhopal remain at risk of poisoning 20 years after a major disaster in the city, an investigation by the BBC has revealed.
...
Union Carbide India Limited was responsible for cleaning up the site.

But thousands of tonnes of toxic waste are still stored inadequately nearby, poisoning the town's water supply.

We took a sample of drinking water from a well near the site.

It had levels of contamination 500 times higher than the maximum limits recommended by the World Health Organization.

The local people who drink this water every day are exposing themselves to a substantial chemical hazard associated, over time, with liver and kidney damage.
...
But there are still thousands of tons of toxic waste on the abandoned and dilapidated site, lying in piles exposed to the weather.

We found pools of mercury lying on the ground, skips full of poisonous material and in some sheds, chemical waste in bags that was still highly dangerous.
...
When it rains - especially in the monsoon season - rainwater washes these chemicals into puddles, streams and eventually into the ground water.

The original incident may have been, technically speaking, an accident since obviously Union Carbide didn't intend for this to happen. But there's evidence here that UC's cost-cutting measures and lax safety standards were contributing factors. That makes this negligence at best. And there's no excuse I can think of for the way they've washed their hands of the aftermath and walked away. If it was up to me, Union Carbide would have two choices: clean up this mess and properly compensate the victims or have its corporate charter revoked.

Update:

Edited to remove incorrect usage of the word "mitigating". Shame on me.

Score one for democracy

Judge criticizes secrecy of raids

The reasons behind RCMP raids of the office of the Ottawa Citizen and the home of its reporter, Juliet O'Neill, should not have been kept secret, a judge has ruled.

A court order to seal the detailed reasons for the national security raids in January violated the constitutional guarantees of a free press, freedom of expression and the public's right to an open court system, Ontario Superior Court Judge Lynn Ratushny ruled yesterday.
...
Ratushny quashed the sealing orders and ordered that some of the secret information be disclosed to lawyers for the Citizen and O'Neill, who are in a protracted legal battle to have the search warrants declared invalid and have items seized from the reporter returned.

In her 24-page decision, the judge said the RCMP and justice of the peace Richard Sculthorpe committed significant failings in their handling of the sealing orders.

The raids took place because the Citizen published a story written by O'Neill based on leaked documents concerning the Maher Arar case. It's never been clear whether the RCMP was trying to keep secrets, find the leaker, or both. There's more in this post, and this one, from last January.

This may put us one step closer to finding out the whole story behind Arar's detention and imprisonment. It may also add ammunition to the upcoming review of Bill C36 and other legislation which was pushed through in the wake of 9/11.

Works for me.

Intruder Alert!

Why do companies think they can get away with treating their customers like nameless "consumers" who only exist to serve the purposes of the almighty corporation?

Spyware charge levelled at Lexmark

Allegations have been swirling around an online newsgroup this week that printer manufacturer Lexmark has been installing spyware on its customers' computers.

Reports on the comp.periphs.printers Usenet newsgroup claim that Lexmark has been planting spyware on its customers' PCs in the form of undocumented software that monitors the use of its printers and silently reports back to a Lexmark-owned company website.

One user said that after initially denying the allegations, Lexmark acknowledged installing tracking software that reported printer and cartridge use back to the company for survey purposes. He claimed that Lexmark said no personal data was taken by the program, and that it was impossible to identify anyone by it.

The article goes on to point out that the software includes a registration step that captures your name and the serial number of your product. The program embeds itself in the Windows registry and quietly sends information back to a Lexmark International website in Kentucky.

Even if the program doesn't currently capture personal information, wouldn't it be nice if the installation process informed you what the program would do? Wouldn't it be even better if you had the option to cooperate or turn this feature off? And who's to say that the software couldn't be modified to supply more specific data in the future? Or that someone with malicious intent couldn't figure out how to use this for other purposes?

Sadly, I'll have to add Lexmark to the list of companies I stay as far away from as possible. Companies pull this crap because they don't pay a sufficiently high price for bad behaviour. We need to work on that.

Legislation by lobby group

The standing committee on Canadian Heritage has issued an updated report on recommendations for changes to Canadian copyright law. When I read this Globe and Mail article on it last night, I bookmarked it so I could come back to it when I had time to write a good long rant about it. It turns out I don't need to.

Captain Flynn has a post up that explains some of the problems with the committee's recommendations, as well as providing links to other bloggers who have also addressed the issues, provided links to source material and supplied recommendations for actions to take and petitions to sign. Taken together all of these bloggers do a good job on the potential chilling effect the recommendations of the committee could have on free expression on the internet. But there's another issue here as well.

I did a fairly long post back in May that was based in part on reports about what the committee was looking at. And I suggested at the time that our politicians were giving too much weight to the recommendations of lobby groups whose primary interest is in finding more ways for copyright holders to nickel and dime us all to death. I wasn't surprised to see this in the Globe and Mail article.

Michael Geist, who holds the Canada Research chair in Internet and e-commerce law at the University of Ottawa, and Howard Knopf, a Canadian copyright lawyer and director for the Center for Intellectual Property at the John Marshall Law School in Chicago, have sharply condemned the proposals. Mr. Geist blames "an amazing lobby job" by the recording industry, and Mr. Knopf calls it a "travesty [and] an exercise in hyperbole."

Emphasis added. I'm going to sound like a broken record but I don't care. The original purpose of copyright was not just to protect the creators and ensure their ability to profit from their creations. That was a short term goal in service of a long term purpose: to encourage innovation and creativity in ways that would ultimately enrich all of us. But our own government seems determined to follow the lead of others in perverting that idea by making copyright solely about lining the pockets of those who own copyrights, even when the owners weren't the creators and the owners' intentions directly contradict those of the creators.

It's almost laughable that these recommendations are coming from a group whose primary concern is supposed to be Canadian heritage. Apparently their goal is to ensure that heritage is really just a commodity suitable for monopolization. And our freedoms and our right to privacy are for sale.

Remembrance Day

I swiped the image from sean incognito who also has a poem and a link for you.

Things that make you go hmmm

If you look over to the terror alert indicator at the right, you'll notice that Bert is alone. It's a week after the American election and suddenly the Orange alert for areas in New York and Washington is over.

Federal authorities lowered the terror alert status for areas around financial institutions in New York, Washington and northern New Jersey, saying Wednesday that additional security precautions had reduced the threat.

So it took them three months to take these additional security precautions and it all just happened to come together immediately after the election.

These guys are amazing, aren't they? Or would shameless be a better word?

From the ridiculous to the truly ridiculous

Breaking news: Bush plans to name White House legal counsel Alberto Gonzales as his next Attorney General. Gonzales was one of the key players in preparing memos advising the president that flushing the Geneva Conventions down the toilet would be perfectly acceptable. Those memos are pivotal in the chain of events that led to the torture of prisoners at Gitmo and Abu Ghraib.

Is anyone still expecting a more moderate George Bush in his second term?

Update:

Via Daily Kos, here's a little speculation on possible fallout from this by Steve Soto at The Left Coaster.

You can also be sure that hooking Gonzales up as AG in a second term to serve alongside Rummy will be the final straw in pushing Colin Powell out the door. Given how shocked various GOP senators were in seeing what transpired at Abu Ghraib, and knowing how upset even John Warner is at being stonewalled by the Pentagon and the White House over his requests for information on Abu Ghraib, it's easy to see how the Democrats can form alliances with GOP moderates to strongly fight any Gonzales nomination to the highest law enforcement post in the land.

If John Warner and Lindsey Graham are that concerned about the Abu Ghraib debacle, and if John McCain shares Colin Powell's revulsion at the trashing of the Geneva Convention protocols and what it means for American POWs from here on out, how can any of these three vote for the architect of that legal doctrine to be our AG?

So Abu Ghraib may end up front and centre at the confirmation hearings and moderate Republicans may have to re-evaluate their all-or-nothing loyalty to Bush's agenda.

Works for me.

Relax. The war's over.

Apparently while we weren't looking the War on Terror™ was waged to a successful conclusion, at least if U.S. Attorney General John Ashcroft's resignation letter is any indication.

The objective of securing the safety of Americans from crime and terror has been achieved

I realize we should be striving to avoid name-calling and trying to understand the other's point of view and all, but sometimes you have to call a spade a spade. John Ashcroft is nuttier than a tin of Planter's peanuts.

Rumour has it he's being considered for the Supreme Court where he can help secure the safety of Americans from hordes of crazed gays looking to commit criminal matrimony.

As Atrios would say, oy.

I wonder if this will catch on

If you've spent a lot of time in the blogosphere you've probably heard of Friday Cat-blogging. Jordan MacVay, a Canadian living in Malaysia, may be starting a new tradition: Wednesday Frog-blogging.

Don't get over it

It was inevitable that there would be accusations of electoral fraud following last week's American election. Both sides laid the groundwork to lay accusations against each other. And it was also inevitable that the side that lost would be yelling the loudest.

Shaula Evans at BOP has a long list of links to articles exploring anomalies and people exploring the possibility that the election was stolen.

I do agree with Atrios:

... irregularities and questionable results are not necessarily "proof" of "fraud" and "proof" that the "election was stolen. " If people want this issue to be taken seriously they need to stop thinking that any of the information floating around right now - and yes, I've seen it all multiple times - provides proof of any such thing. Yes, legitimate questions have been raised, but I fear people on "our side" have started to confuse the legitimate questions with the answers to those questions they've imagined. I'm fully ready to believe that everything was corrupt in Florida, Ohio, and elsewhere, but thinking and knowing are different things entirely.

Some on the Democratic side may be tempted to claim that it's all evidence of a massive Karl Rove Conspiracy™. Maybe. And it could also be a combination of mistakes, glitches and, yes, fraud on the part of local, independent actors.

Some on the Republican side will be tempted to write the whole thing off as more whining from Loser Democrats™. I can already hear the refrain that followed the 2000 election: get over it.

Wrong. When Susan at Suburban Guerrilla, using nothing more than her web browser, can find evidence of 73,000 more votes cast than there are registered voters in a single Ohio county there's evidence of a serious problem whether it's through incompetence or malicious intent.

The debacle in Florida in 2000 left a lot of Americans lacking faith in their own democratic process. If anything, the long list of problems and questions that are surfacing will make that even worse. If you're inclined to tell Kerry supporters to calm down and don't be so quick with the accusations, fine.

But if you're tempted to tell people they should just stop whining and get over it, then you're obviously no fan of democracy. Every one of these problems needs to be investigated and resolved. The push for printed audit trails on electronic voting machines and the proper enforcement of software certification standards needs to continue.

If the deep divisions in American society are ever going to heal, then one basic step that needs to be taken is to restore Americans' faith in their own democratic process. And that shouldn't be a partisan matter.

Housekeeping

The problem of the page not refreshing properly after a comment is submitted seems to be solved. I didn't do anything so I have no idea why it's solved, but there it is. Maybe the Movable Type fairy visited overnight.

I did have occasion to wander through the MT configuration file. There's lots of interesting stuff in there including lots of warnings like DON'T CHANGE THIS SETTING UNLESS YOU KNOW WHAT YOU'RE DOING!

Okay, okay. I've been told.

Update:

I hate intermittent problems.

This might start something

The Ottawa Citizen is reporting that the CRTC will soon rule on the latest application to bring the Fox News Channel to Canada. One of the stumbling blocks was the original license granted to FNC in conjunction with CanWest, a Category 2 license which required 35% Canadian content. CanWest has recently informed the CRTC that there are no plans to proceed with that proposal which may now clear the way for the "uninterrupted foreign service" FNC has applied for this time around.

This is interesting:

Documents obtained through access to information show CRTC staff actually made that decision about a month ago. A 10-page draft was written, but apparently the content is top secret -- it's completely censored.

A CRTC spokeswoman wouldn't divulge any more information, but said the choice would be made public "by the end of the month."

We could tell you now but we'd have to kill you? But this is even more interesting:

In another document, CRTC staff discuss the possibility of attaching conditions prohibiting distribution of abusive content similar to those imposed on Arab network al-Jazeera. Resulting recommendations are blacked out, however.

When the al-Jazeera application was granted it caused quite the uproar in some circles. But the conditions attached are so onerous it's unlikely that anyone will ever carry it. I wrote about this back in July and it seems the CRTC may be about to make me look like something of a prophet.

We're about due for another campaign to promote the Fox News Channel in Canada. I wonder if the CRTC will consider the same kinds of monitoring and restrictions on their bias content.

Now if you'll excuse I'm going to go out and get a pair of earplugs before the rush starts. The howls of protest will be deafening.

It's a bit late now, Gilles

In a move that managed to anger Canadians of all political stripes, rookie Bloc MP André Bellavance got into a public row with veterans in his riding when he refused to become personally involved in getting Canadian flags to them for their Remembrance Day ceremonies. It was a dumb thing to do both personally and politically and since then both Paul Martin and Stephen Harper have made a point of coming to the rescue for those veterans in a very public way. Now comes word that Bloc leader Gilles Duceppe has flip-flopped had a change of heart.

Bloc decides to give flags to war vets

The Bloc Qu?b?cois reversed itself yesterday and promised to send Canadian flags to insulted Quebec war veterans after all.

Bloc Leader Gilles Duceppe said rookie MP Andr? Bellavance's decision not to provide flags to the Royal Canadian Legion branch in Richmond, Que., was misunderstood and politically exploited.

It would have been smarter to have Bellavance himself announce this "reversal" in policy. Now it just looks like the party leader trying to do political damage control. Which of course is exactly what it is.

Testing

The DNS change seems to have kicked in. Let's see if I can post.

All systems seem to be go, but if you notice anything hinky I'd appreciate an email. There's an email link at the top of the sidebar on the right and I've tested that.

Update:

If you post a comment and it seems as though nothing happened, hit the Refresh button to reload the page. Comments are going through. I've seen this problem before and I'm trying to remember what I did to solve it.

Service may be spotty for a bit

I'm in the process of moving the site to a new host. There may be a little bit of weirdness for a day or two. Or three.

But I'll be back. Hey, Arnold said that and look what it did for him.

It pays to check around

Both the Globe and Mail and the CTV website are running stories about a report issued by Fintrac, the government agency that monitors money laundering. Both stories are attributed to Canadian Press but there's a definite difference. The Globe's version carries this headline:

Money-laundering up sharply, report says

The CTV headline isn't quite as sensational:

Police find more money laundering in Canada

As it turns out, CTV's headline is also more accurate which becomes obvious about three paragraphs in when you hit the following section, not a trace of which appears in the Globe and Mail:

But that doesn't necessarily mean Canada is becoming a haven for international criminals cleaning the proceeds of their crimes, adds the head of the Financial Transactions and Reports Analysis Centre.

Rather, the fledgling agency is doing a better job of tracking money laundering, its director Horst Intscher said Thursday.

"I would tend to think we're getting better at discerning it, partly because we have more information sources and partly because we have more experience and we've sharpened our tools,'' said Intscher.

"There may be increases happening, but (more crime) is not the conclusion I'd draw.''

But it's the conclusion you'd draw if you relied solely on the Globe for your news.

Curious.

Not a good sign

MSF Stops Activities in Iraq

Amman/New York, November 4, 2004 - Doctors Without Borders/M?decins Sans Fronti?res (MSF) is closing its programs in Iraq. The international humanitarian organization took the decision in view of the extreme risks currently run by aid workers in the country. Given the still considerable humanitarian and medical needs of the Iraqi people, the decision was reached with a great degree of regret and sadness.

Due to the escalating violence in the country, MSF considers it no longer acceptable to expose its staff to the serious risks that apparently come with being associated with an international humanitarian organization.

?It has become impossible for MSF as an organization to guarantee an acceptable level of security for our staff, be they foreign or Iraqi,? says Gorik Ooms, General Director of MSF in Belgium. ?We deeply regret the fact that we will no longer be able to provide much needed medical help to the Iraqi people.?

I've always had the impression that these folks don't scare easily. This suggests that conditions in Iraq continue to deteriorate.

The link above is to the press release at the MSF site. There's also a CBC story on this.

All your words are belong to us

Paul Wells has a post up concerning a news release issued by The Periodical Writers Association of Canada. It seems the group is in contract negotiations with Canada's largest media conglomerate, CanWest Global, and is just a tad upset at the employer's demands. I can't imagine why.

According to the contract, creators will give the media giant "the right to exclusively use and exploit the Content in any manner and in any and all media, whether now known or hereafter devised, throughout the universe, in perpetuity."

Apparently this isn't a joke. Nor is this:

PWAC is also taking issue with a clause that demands freelancers waive "in favour of CanWest and its assigns, all 'moral rights.'" Moral rights defend the creator's right to have their name attached to their work, and to not have it edited in a way that changes its meaning.

So in the world according to CanWest, if you're a writer selling to them you have no assurance that they won't a) change the meaning of your work and make it appear that it's what you intended to say or b) fail to credit you entirely. You're just a cog in the grand media machine. Be thankful you get paid at all.

This is further evidence that the original point of the way we protect intellectual capital* is lost on the very people who are gaining more and more control over it. The point is no longer to protect the creators and it's certainly not to protect the long term health of the commons. The point now is to protect the interests of those with the deepest pockets.

* Yes, I've adopted Stirling Newberry's meme.

Update:

I misunderstood. The contract described above isn't a proposal from CanWest, it's a contract that's already in use. Straight Goods got wind of this, contacted our largest media company, and got this response:

"I determined that the form that you emailed to me is indeed a form that is used by CanWest," said Geoffrey Elliot, Corporate VP for CanWest. "It's not the only form that is used with freelancers, but it does reflect company thinking. We are a multimedia company and we need to be certain that we can use content across all our media platforms. A freelancer who does not like the contract may choose not to write for CanWest."

Of course if CanWest continues to gobble up the competition, pretty soon a freelancer won't have much choice.

It looks like it's a done deal

Kerry concedes to Bush

Democratic Senator John Kerry has called President George W. Bush to concede the U.S. election.

Kerry ended his quest for the White House with a call to the president around 11 a.m. ET.

"Congratulations, Mr. President," Kerry reportedly said in the conversation that lasted less than five minutes.

But Kerry also told Bush that the nation was too divided and that we "really have to do something about it."

Bush agreed with the Massachusetts senator, who he called a worthy, tough and honourable opponent.

Bush may have agreed on the phone, but his record suggests that he won't be doing anything to unite the country any time soon. He's welcome to make a liar out of me, of course.

I'm surprised at the result and frankly I fear for the U.S. and for all of us. But at the same time there have been signs for the last year and a half that something is happening in American politics. The American right has spent 30 years and hundreds of millions of dollars building a massive infrastructure designed to amass and consolidate power. The left has only recently begun to get organized on the same scale but it's begun and my gut tells me that the people at the centre of that movement aren't about to roll over. Maybe it's just wishful thinking on my part but I don't think the real fight is over yet. For now I'll leave you with part of a post that Steve Gilliard wrote at two o'clock this morning.

It's as simple as this: we have to continue to fight. If Bush wins, and they're starting to call it for him in Ohio, we do not walk away, we do not quit and we do not surrender.

Whether that's marching, or in court or in the next election cycle, we learn from our mistakes, and there is no Nader to blame this time, and move on.

And Kerry did his best, just like we all did. But sometimes your best will fall short. Remember, Nixon won in a landslide and he was was gone in two years.

I don't know what happened. Whether there was chicanery or not. I can't say. I watched it like you did. But we did our best.

Now, we build.

Not lookin' so good after all

As I write this, several of the major media outlets have called Ohio for Bush putting his Electoral College Vote at 269. When they call New Mexico for him, which looks likely, it'll put him over the top.

Fox News is reporting problems in a number of locations.

Even if President Bush or Sen. John Kerry emerges the undisputed victor Tuesday night, it's clear that lawsuits over everything from physical assault to election fraud will abound in the coming days.

I'm surprised at the Bush victory. And do I have to add that I'm not pleased? It's going to be a really long four years. Longer still for some of our American friends.

Lookin' good

A cruise around the American blogosphere suggests that turnout in today's election is quite high. That favours Democrats. We live in hope.

From Stirling Newberry at BOP:

Expect Kerry on the high side of reasonable expectations.

He'll need it. The margin of victory, in Electoral Votes, needs to be convincing enough to allow things to move forward despite the inevitable legal challenges. But so far, so good.

No-fly list not cleared for takeoff

Public Safety Minister Anne McLellan was quick to assure Tom Ridge, the American responsible for the Department of Homeland Security, that Canada would be happy to compile it's own "no-fly list" of people suspected of being too scary to allow on an airplane. She even promised to share the information with the Americans and vowed that if Canadian legislation would prevent that, then the legislation would be changed.

But even though she got Bill C7 passed, which gave the government the right to demand passenger information from the airlines (among other scary items), apparently things still aren't going smoothly.

A Canadian version of the U.S. no-fly list that infamously had folksinger Cat Stevens deported and Ted Kennedy hassled at airports is running into legal turbulence.

Plans for a home-grown edition of the U.S. list banning suspicious passengers from airplanes are being buffeted by uniquely Canadian concerns, says Transport Minister Jean Lapierre.

"It's not in place at all," Lapierre told The Canadian Press in an interview.

"There are so many legal considerations. . . We are promising to work on it - but while respecting the Canadian Constitution."

Legal hurdles include the guarantee of free mobility in the Charter of Rights and Freedoms, and federal privacy laws that limit distribution of personal information.
...
The problems are being sorted out between the Transport, Justice, Public Safety, and Immigration departments, as well as the RCMP, CSIS and Canada Border Services Agency.

"There are many questions worth asking - about how we put it in place, what are the criteria, who will be on it," Lapierre said.

"It's a challenge."

No kidding, Jean. But don't you think it was worth asking those questions before promises were made? And before a bill like C7 was passed?

But it seems we have more practical concerns here as well. The government has no idea what this is going to cost or how it's going to be handled when someone who's on the list turns up at an airport.

The air transport association has asked that police be available to deal directly with those who turn up on the list.

Lapierre painted a colourful scenario to illustrate that point.

"And if bin Laden shows up at the counter?" he asked rhetorically.

"When . . . the woman sees her computer screen flashing, what does she do? Does she grab you by the throat and arrest you?"

There is an implied question in the article that I think is rhetorical.

Officials must also determine who will foot the bill.

I think we know who foots the bill in the end. We always do. And since these fools appear to have no idea what they're doing, we could end up paying plenty for a system that either never works properly, or that gets shot down as unconstitutional the first time there's a legal challenge.

To be clear, I'm hoping it turns out to be unconstitutional. I just think it would be a hell of an idea if they settled that point before doing anything else.

The Lancet report revisited

Last week there was a flurry of media stories, and blog posts, in response to news of a study to be published by the British medical journal The Lancet that had used a combination of interviews on the ground in Iraq and statistical methods to show that as many as 100,000 Iraqi civilians had been killed as a direct result of the Coalition invasion.

Fred Kaplan, no fan of the current White House administration, took a close look at the actual study (pdf format) and found it wanting. As one example he quotes this line from the paper:

We estimate there were 98,000 extra deaths (95% CI 8000-194 000) during the post-war period.

Kaplan then writes:

Readers who are accustomed to perusing statistical documents know what the set of numbers in the parentheses means. For the other 99.9 percent of you, I'll spell it out in plain English?which, disturbingly, the study never does. It means that the authors are 95 percent confident that the war-caused deaths totaled some number between 8,000 and 194,000. (The number cited in plain language?98,000?is roughly at the halfway point in this absurdly vast range.)

This isn't an estimate. It's a dart board.

Kaplan's criticism of the study's methods and results doesn't stop there and he makes a pretty convincing case that the results as originally reported may well be exaggerated. He ends by citing the Iraq Body Count site, as I did towards the end of my own post on the subject.

There is one group out there counting civilian casualties in a way that's tangible, specific, and very useful?a team of mainly British researchers, led by Hamit Dardagan and John Sloboda, called Iraq Body Count. They have kept a running total of civilian deaths, derived entirely from press reports. Their count is triple fact-checked; their database is itemized and fastidiously sourced; and they take great pains to separate civilian from combatant casualties (for instance, last Tuesday, the group released a report estimating that, of the 800 Iraqis killed in last April's siege of Fallujah, 572 to 616 of them were civilians, at least 308 of them women and children).

The IBC estimates that between 14,181 and 16,312 Iraqi civilians have died as a result of the war?about half of them since the battlefield phase of the war ended last May. The group also notes that these figures are probably on the low side, since some deaths must have taken place outside the media's purview.

So, let's call it 15,000 or?allowing for deaths that the press didn't report?20,000 or 25,000, maybe 30,000 Iraqi civilians killed in a pre-emptive war waged (according to the latest rationale) on their behalf. That's a number more solidly rooted in reality than the Hopkins figure?and, given that fact, no less shocking.

I hope Kaplan's right. In this context 30,000 killed may be no less shocking than 100,000 killed, but it's still a significantly better outcome. But the IBC figures depend on press reports and the people responsible for those figures are themselves sceptical that they have a true picture.

Iraqbodycount.net, a website which collects accounts of Iraqi civilian deaths reported by two separate media sources, said yesterday the toll was between 14,181 and 16,312, but admits that the spreading violence in Iraq, which has made it all but impossible for journalists to move around safely, has undermined its method.

Ironically enough, that same Independent story notes that even while IBC is indicating conditions make it more difficult for them to report accurately, British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw is now moving closer to endorsing IBC's figures because they look good in comparison to the Lancet study.

The Independent also reports this:

The Pentagon is collecting figures on local casualties in Iraq, contrary to its public claims, but the results are classified, according to one of the authors of an independent study which reported last week that the war has killed at least 100,000 Iraqis.

"Despite the claim of the head of US Central Command at the time, General Tommy Franks, that 'We don't do body counts', the US military does collect casualty figures in Iraq," said Professor Richard Garfield, an expert on the effects of conflict on civilians. "But since 1991, when Colin Powell was head of the joint chiefs of staff, the figures have been kept secret."

So the Pentagon may well have far more accurate information than any other source. But it'll be decades before that becomes known, if it ever does.

The Independent link is courtesy of Melanie at Bump.

The Kaplan link is courtesy of Matthew Yglesias who posted a followup today and gets the last word. In discussing the humanitarian justification for the invasion, Matthew writes:

...the Lancet study really is devastating on this point. It makes it very hard to say how many civilians have died as a result of the war, and for various reasons I think it's likely much closer to 8,000 than to 100,000, but a well-conceived charity venture doesn't wind up killing the people it was supposed to help.