June 2005 Archives

There seems to be some discussion around the internets about the possibility that Michael Ignatieff will not only run for parliament but take a run at the Liberal leadership.

My own position on that is that no purported expert in international affairs who continues to take Bush's rhetoric about spreading democracy at face value gets my support. For anything. Ignatieff wants to place Bush's foreign policy in Iraq in the context of Jeffersonian ideals. The most generous interpretation I can put on that is that he hasn't been paying attention.

George Bush alluded in his recent speech to the American strategy of "flypaper", or attracting the terrorists to one location so they can be fought abroad rather than on American soil.

And we fight today because terrorists want to attack our country and kill our citizens, and Iraq is where they are making their stand. So we'll fight them there, we'll fight them across the world, and we will stay in the fight until the fight is won. (Applause.)

Let's get past the obvious untruths about that particular statement and unpack the concept of the flypaper strategy itself. The strategy calls for the United States to send their armed forces to another country (in this case, Iraq) in order to create an alternative target in which terrorists can operate, and to battle those terrorists using every weapon in their immense arsenal.

Does this strike anyone else as incredibly offensive? Are American lives so precious that the Bush administration has the right to turn another country into a terrorist hell hole just to protect U.S. citizens? Isn't this just the concept of the human shield writ large?

"Yeah, sorry about your dead wife and kids there, Abdullah, but look at it this way: my family is still happy and healthy and shopping at the local mall. Doesn't that really make it all worthwhile?"

Thousands of Iraqi men, women and children have been slaughtered so George Bush can say he is protecting Americans. What staggering arrogance. What appalling cowardice.

Well, of the morning at least. In the wake of last night's passage of the equal marriage legislation in the House of Commons, Philip Qua wrote in a diary at Progressive Bloggers called The Morning After Queer Marriages:

I asked my wife if she stilled loved me, the answer was yes.

Once again I've been too busy to post for a while and for reasons that will actually be explained here when I get some time.

But meanwhile there's a Globe and Mail article that I would have liked to have dealt with at length. Fortunately there's Timmy the G, this time writing at the E-Group. His post title says it for me: Betrayed.

Why is Tom d'Aquino running this freakin' country?

It has long been known that U.S Republicans and reality have not really been on speaking terms since the Eisenhower administration left office. But it looks like Donald Rumsfeld might be opening tentative talks with reality as he makes a new assessment about the insurgency in Iraq, admitting it could take up to 12 years to defeat the insurgents.

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld said Sunday he is bracing for even more violence in Iraq and acknowledged that the insurgency "could go on for any number of years."

Defeating the insurgency may take as long as 12 years, he said, with Iraqi security forces, not U.S. and foreign troops, taking the lead and finishing the job.

The assessment comes on the heels of the latest Associated Press-Ipsos poll showing public doubts about the war reaching a high point -- with more than half saying that invading Iraq was a mistake.

The top U.S. commander in the Middle East appealed for public support of the soldiers and their mission. "We don't need to fight this war looking over our shoulder worrying about the support back home," Gen. John Abizaid told CNN's "Late Edition."

In a deadly week for U.S. forces, an ambush on a convoy carrying female troops killed four Marines, including at least one woman. At least 1,735 members of the U.S. military have died since the war started in March 2003, according to an AP count.

On Sunday, bombings in Mosul and elsewhere in Iraq killed at least 38 people.

Rumsfeld, making the rounds of the Sunday talk shows, said insurgents want to disrupt the democratic transformation as Iraqi leaders draft a constitution and plan for elections in December to choose a full-term government.

"I would anticipate you're going to see an escalation of violence between now and the December elections," the Pentagon chief told NBC's "Meet the Press." And after then, it will take a long time to drive out insurgents.

"Insurgencies tend to go on five, six, eight, 10, 12 years," Rumsfeld said on "Fox News Sunday."

"Coalition forces, foreign forces are not going to repress that insurgency. We're going to create an environment that the Iraqi people and the Iraqi security forces can win against that insurgency," he said.

Ah, the Vietnamization Iraqification phase of the war, complete with stern military commanders warning the civilians to shut up and support the war regardless of facts on the ground. Well, I did say Rumsfeld's talks with reality were tentative, but let's play along with him for a moment and forget about the past failures of this policy. How is it working so far in Iraq?

Jim Elve, the proprietor at BlogsCanada, has often encouraged political parties to make better use of blogs. I believe he's said in the past that every candidate should have a campaign blog and use it. But he's also warned that having the candidate himself do the blogging could pose a problem.

Enter Laurie Hawn, past and future candidate for the Conservatives. In a post on health care published this morning he drops this little gem on us:

Okay everyone, hands up all who think that the Duty National Socialist Leader, Jack Layton, would put himself at the back of the queue if he (or his wife) needed an MRI. I didn't think so.

If Hawn had an employee doing the blogging for him, he could distance himself from this example of poor judgement (to say the least). Since his name is on the post, he gets to wear it.

Somebody really needs to hire Jim and pay him a lot of money as a consultant. He seems to know what he's talking about.

Hat tip to the Idealistic Pragmatist.

Cross-posted at the E-Group (where it ought to earn me some brownie points).

The Globe and Mail brings us up to date on Microsoft's plans for Windows 2000. If you're already using XP you can ignore this. But if, like me, you use 2K and like it you may want to know this.

Canada names Iraq ambassador

Canada has named John Holmes as its new ambassador to Iraq, a move that Ottawa says marks an important step in re-establishing diplomatic ties with the war-torn nation.

Mr. Holmes, currently ambassador to Jordan, will keep that position while also serving as the non-resident representative to Iraq, Foreign Affairs Minister Pierre Pettigrew said Wednesday.

?The appointment of a non-resident ambassador represents an important step in the re-establishment of Canada's diplomatic representation in Iraq,? Mr. Pettigrew said.

Updated. Please see below.

It's interesting that I had to follow a link at an American blog to an American newspaper to find a story about Hydro One that quotes mainly Canadian authorities.

A Flicker Away From a Blackout
Canadian Engineers Say Rare Glitch Suggests Ongoing Threat to Power Grid

TORONTO -- At 4:15 p.m. on May 27, the lights flickered across Ontario.

Subway cars in Toronto rolled to a stop while safety signals were reset. Pizza oven doors flew open on the ground floor of the city's landmark CN Tower. Cement and steel plants paused while machinery was restarted. Tens of thousands of computers automatically shut down and rebooted.

Hydro One, the Toronto-based electric utility, quickly issued a press statement seeking to reassure the public that the utility's "equipment protection worked as designed to isolate the fault."

In fact, the situation was much more tenuous. The power blip involved an extremely rare, still unexplained failure of two protection systems, according to internal documents of the utility, reports to oversight agencies and eight engineers. The eight are part of a group that has been on strike since June 6. By their accounts, the failure brought the region's power grid to the verge of a blackout like the one that struck on Aug. 14, 2003, plunging 50 million people in the United States and Canada into darkness.
...
Two outside experts cited by the strikers confirmed their concerns. "This had the potential of cascading into a big blackout," said Puttaveeraiah Prabhakara, an electrical engineering expert in Toronto who has written standards for electrical grid protection that have been adopted worldwide.

The symptoms "were indications of a weak system," said Claudio Canizares, a power systems specialist at the University of Waterloo in Ontario. "This is a serious concern."

I recall that August, 2003 blackout vividly. I was in Ontario's cottage country at the time and had a really interesting 180 km. drive home through areas where the traffic lights were down. Some people don't do four-way stops well at all.

A search at Google News on "Hydro One" yields lots of stories about the ongoing strike but nothing on this story except this Washington Post article. Don't you think the possibility of another problem on the scale of August, 2003 should be news?

If I've missed something I'll be happy to stand corrected.

Update:

That Washington Post story seems to have started something. From the Toronto Star:

Hydro One officials, while acknowledging the May 27 blip occurred during a routine maintenance job at a Milton switching yard, disputed claims that a blackout almost plunged the province and the eastern United States into darkness.

"It was an unfortunate operator error. We're certainly not happy about that. It shouldn't have happened and there's a more detailed investigation taking place right now," said Peter Gregg, the utility's vice-president of corporate communications.

He blamed the striking workers for "scaring Ontarians into thinking because they're on strike somehow the system is vulnerable and it's absolutely not true."

There's a bit of he said/she said in this story. Gregg's explanation for the blip is basically operator error. Nothing to see here, move along. The union continues to claim there's potential for a serious problem.

[Union engineers] claim the failure of the protection systems led to two other massive power lines ? one to the Trafalgar yard, the other to the Claireville yard ? to also shut down.

There have been several Canadians on the witness stand at the Arar inquiry in recent weeks who were in positions of influence during Arar's imprisonment. From John Manley to Bill Graham to then-ambassador to Syria Franco Pillarella, all of them have claimed that they had no reason to really believe that Arar was in danger of being tortured in that Damascus prison. It's as if they were more concerned about extending the presumption of innocence to Syria than to a Canadian citizen who had been imprisoned without charge.

But finally late last week someone said what needed to be said.

Update: Aaaaaand we're back
If you can see this update, you're looking at the new version of the site. Welcome back, even though it's not you that went anywhere.

Thanks, Yoshi. That was pretty painless.

Original post
This site is moving later on tonight and it's an operation that requires a change in the name servers. For those of you who don't speak geek, that means that starting around midnight (Eastern) you may be looking at an obsolete copy of the site. So if you're tempted to comment, you'd best hold that thought lest your wit and wisdom be lost to posterity.

And at some point we may even disappear entirely. But we'll be back. Same URL, same bookmark. Sunday evening at the latest, I'd say. And I'll put out the virtual welcome mat when we're safely settled into our new home.

Have a good weekend.

Many conservatives bemoan the existance of labour unions, citing the cost to business owners and consumers thanks to higher wages and benefits that unionized workers receive. Personally, I have never understood the animosity, given the role of unions in expanding the middle class and making our consumer society possible, but hey, that's just me. Still, I wonder how anti-unionists would feel if they were one of the serfs working for Wal-Mart?

Wal-Mart officials in Cross Lanes told employees on Tuesday they have to start working practically any shift, any day they?re asked, even if they?ve built up years of seniority and can?t arrange child care.

Store management said the policy change is needed to keep enough staff at the busiest hours, but some employees said it appears to be an attempt to force out longer-term, higher-paid workers.

I can't imagine how such a heartless policy could be put in place. Oh wait, meet one of the local managers, appropriately named John Knuckles.

?We have many people with set schedules who aren?t here when we need them for our customers,? said John Knuckles, a manager at the store, which is located in the Nitro Marketplace shopping center and employs more than 400.

?It is to take care of the customers, that?s the only reason,? he said.

Workers who have had regular shifts at the store for years now have to commit to being available for any shift from 7 a.m. to 11 p.m., seven days a week. If they can?t make the commitment by the end of this week, they?ll be fired.

?It shouldn?t cause any problem, if they [store employees] are concerned about their customers,? Knuckles said.

You folks with children, families, other commitments like "your life" can piss off. We've got cheaply made goods to push, here, people!

Several single mothers working at the store have no choice now but to quit, said one employee, who would not give her name for fear of retribution.

?My day care closes at 6 and my baby sitter can?t work past 5,? said the employee, a mother of two who has been a cashier for more than three years. Neither of the services is available over the weekends, she added. ?I have to be terminated; I don?t know what I?ll do.?

?Wal-Mart is supposed to be a family-oriented company, but kids don?t matter,? the worker said.

Along with the ?open-availability? policy, the store is requiring all floor employees to learn how to run cash registers, several employees said. They suspect this is an attempt to brace for the departure of many of the employees who now work as cashiers.

When announcing the new policies, store managers said they expected to lose about 60 people, according to another employee who asked not to be named.

?They said sales were down so much, they had to make a change,? the worker said. ?The past year they?ve really been nitpicking? longer-term employees, who are paid more.

?A lot of people were mad and there were women crying ? it?s just terrible,? said the worker, who has been at the store six years. ?I?ve put up with a few things, but this has got to be the worst thing I?ve seen them do.?

Well if sales were down, I suppose they could use that as justification for their feudal employment policies, but it seems Wal-Mart is still able to turn a profit.

Wal-Mart Stores Inc., the world's largest retailer, and discount rival Target Corp. posted fourth-quarter profits that beat Wall Street expectations, despite heavy discounting that defined the holiday season.

Wal-Mart reported on Thursday a 16.2 percent increase in profits for the November-January period, beating Wall Street projections by a penny a share. Its earnings for the full year topped $10 billion for the first time.

Wage slavery is alive and well and thriving in America Inc. I think the former Wal-Mart employees in Jonquiere are fortunate to be shut of that place.

The British press doesn't seem to have gotten the memo telling them that the war in Iraq is old news and no one's really interested any more.

US lied to Britain over use of napalm in Iraq war

American officials lied to British ministers over the use of "internationally reviled" napalm-type firebombs in Iraq.

Yesterday's disclosure led to calls by MPs for a full statement to the Commons and opened ministers to allegations that they held back the facts until after the general election.

Despite persistent rumours of injuries among Iraqis consistent with the use of incendiary weapons such as napalm, Adam Ingram, the Defence minister, assured Labour MPs in January that US forces had not used a new generation of incendiary weapons, codenamed MK77, in Iraq.

But Mr Ingram admitted to the Labour MP Harry Cohen in a private letter obtained by The Independent that he had inadvertently misled Parliament because he had been misinformed by the US. "The US confirmed to my officials that they had not used MK77s in Iraq at any time and this was the basis of my response to you," he told Mr Cohen. "I regret to say that I have since discovered that this is not the case and must now correct the position."

Mr Ingram said 30 MK77 firebombs were used by the 1st Marine Expeditionary Force in the invasion of Iraq between 31 March and 2 April 2003. They were used against military targets "away from civilian targets", he said. This avoids breaching the 1980 Convention on Certain Conventional Weapons (CCW), which permits their use only against military targets.

The Electronic Frontier Foundation has published a legal guide for bloggers.

Whether you're a newly minted blogger or a relative old-timer, you've been seeing more and more stories pop up every day about bloggers getting in trouble for what they post.

Like all journalists and publishers, bloggers sometimes publish information that other people don't want published. You might, for example, publish something that someone considers defamatory, republish an AP news story that's under copyright, or write a lengthy piece detailing the alleged crimes of a candidate for public office.

The difference between you and the reporter at your local newspaper is that in many cases, you may not have the benefit of training or resources to help you determine whether what you're doing is legal. And on top of that, sometimes knowing the law doesn't help - in many cases it was written for traditional journalists, and the courts haven't yet decided how it applies to bloggers.

It covers legal issues surrounding blogging from the point of view of American law. However, it might well be worth a look by bloggers in Canada and other countries.

I have always admired the people who work for groups like the American Civil Liberties Union and the Canadian Civil Liberties Association. They constantly stand by their philosophical ideals and put aside their personal feelings to protect the rights of everyone including dregs like the the American Nazi Party who they know would snuff out the same rights for millions in a heartbeat. I'm sure there are many times, after a day of representing some of their clients, that CLU staff want to go home and shower with Lysol.

During his or her lifetime every thinking person is going to experience a collision. A head on collision that occurs when your practical gut reaction collides with your philosophical ideals. It usually isn't pretty. We have had some of those collision points lately. One of them for me is certainly the Karla Homulka situation. But that's a story for another day. Another of my collision points concerns our now infamous Khadr family.

The Khadrs are Canadian citizens who have not been convicted of any crime in this country. At the same time there seems to have been a rather systematic abuse of their rights as Canadians. So far as I have been able to determine, most of the Khadr family has spent most of their time as Canadian citizens living outside the country seemingly returning to this country only when they need it for something like safe haven or free medical treatment.

Members of the family were put on a federal government watch for allegedly "losing" too many Canadian passports. They are admitted associates and supporters of international criminals. Ahmed Said Khadr certainly seems to have lied to government officials about his activities. One son is still being held in Guantanamo Bay as a terrorist although that hardly qualifies as an ironclad indictment.

Now 25 year old Zaynab Khadr is arguing that the terrorist related information the RCMP claims to have found on her notebook computer seized at Pearson airport on her return to Canada was not hers and was there when she bought the computer used seven months earlier. And audio tapes of alleged terrorist activities, also seized, belonged to her father and she didn't know what was on them.

It also appears that finding evidence of a Khadr family contribution to this country would likely require prowess with a microscope. Yet they are Canadian citizens and as such are entitled to all the rights that entails. Which is where the collision occurs because my practical gut reaction is that it would be a good idea for the government to seize their passports, strip them of their Canadian citizenship and deport the entire family to Pakistan, Afghanistan or any other country that would take them.

The situation of the Khadr family serves to highlight the situation of another Canadian family - the Arars. I'm sure if I'm incorrect in anything that follows pogge will offer corrections.

In contrast to the Khadr family, the Arar family, to the best of my knowledge, has spent most of their time, vacations aside, in Canada. They have worked here, paid taxes here and raised their children here. In short they have participated in and contributed to Canadian society just like the rest of us. The citizenship rights of the Khadr family are sacrosanct yet Maher Arar's rights of Canadian citizenship seem to have been abrogated on little more than a whim.

At best, the Khadr family appears to mean Canada no good. At worst, the Arar family's most serious offence seems to be an error in judgement in booking a flight that required them to change planes in New York City. I would be willing to make a small wager that members of the Khadr family don't make that mistake.

This situation reeks to high heaven. The federal government needs to stop hiding behind national security and bureaucratic stalling and explain to Maher Arar and the rest of us why the Khadr family are first class citizens in this country and he is a second class citizen. I really want to see Ann McLellan stand up and offer that explanation.

As for a job with the Canadian Civil Liberties Association. please don't offer guys. I'm not at all sure I'm a big enough human being to do what you do.

Updated: To repair broken link

[Note: This has been post-dated so it will stay at the top for a few days. New content will slide in underneath.]

Some of you may have noticed that I'm not exactly keeping up a torrid pace around here. Hard as it may be to believe, the people to whom I have financial obligations simply refuse to accept "I was busy blogging" as an excuse for not having the requisite funds at the appropriate time.

Since I happen to know a few other bloggers who, for a variety of reasons, also have trouble maintaining a frequent posting schedule we've decided to try something not exactly new and different. This is now a group blog.

In the days ahead, watch for posts from Jonathan Dursi, mahigan and Timmy the G. More snark for your money. And I'll still throw in the occasional bit of blather myself.

This should be fun. And now I don't have to feel guilty when I get lazy and slack off get too busy to post every day.

London-Fanshawe MP Pat O'Brien, who recently left the Liberal party in protest at their intention to pass same-sex marriage legislation, has announced that he and another unnamed Liberal MP are now prepared to vote against budget legislation and possibly bring the government down unless that same marriage legislation is delayed. The CBC story at the link has the numbers that demonstrate how tight the vote could be.

But what does O'Brien think he's accomplishing?

Military performs first gay wedding

HALIFAX ? Two men were married at the chapel on the Greenwood base in May, in what's being called the military's first gay wedding.

Lt.-Cmdr. David Greenwood, the base's head chaplain, said a sergeant and a warrant officer were married May 3 in front of about 45 guests.

"This couple had been waiting a very long, long time," said Greenwood, declining to give their names because he hadn't asked for permission.
...
Greenwood said the ceremony was relaxed and low key, and there was no dry eye in sight when the couple signed the marriage documents.

There has been a lot of eye rolling in the conservative blogosphere regarding the media coverage on fundamentalist Christians who won Conservative Party nominations in eight ridings.

Let them whistle through the graveyard all they want. I'm much more comfortable being very concerned about what is going on in the CPC.

There is a growing movement in this country to push Christian beliefs into the public sphere, and its chosen vehicle is the Conservative Party of Canada. All of us should be concerned by this trend.

Why is this an issue? Good question.

I've been watching the reactions to Thursday's Supreme Court decision regarding the government monopoly on health care with some interest, which probably isn't surprising. As background for anyone who missed it here's the original Globe and Mail report on the ruling.

In a narrow 4-3 ruling, the court said that prohibitions on private insurance are invalid since the public system has failed to deliver medical in a timely, reliable way.

Once the rich start buying their services outside the public system, they resent paying taxes to support it.

They press for, and usually win, tax reductions, leaving inadequate funds for the public system.

As the public system deteriorates, it ends up serving only the poor ? who have little clout with governments.

Politicians don't mind letting the poor sleep on the street, so they aren't likely to mind if the poor lack timely access to hip replacements.

The Supreme Court has breathed new life into the privatization campaigns of right-wing think tanks.

Expect to hear lots more from the Fraser Institute, whose ideas are just as unpopular with Canadians today as they were a week ago, but who now have four judges backing their cause.

... the judicial activists on the Supreme Court of Canada have given the rest of us their own public policy Vietnam: in their cloistered arrogance, they wish us to believe that destroying Medicare will save it.

Kinsella would have us believe that our world changed abruptly on Thursday but that's simply not true. What happened is that a situation whose foundation was laid a long time ago finally found its way into a Supreme Court session which is the only way that Supreme Court judges will have the opportunity to make a ruling.

A decade ago the Chrétien government with Paul Martin as Finance Minister abruptly slashed transfer payments to the provinces. That left the provincial governments, who are responsible for the delivery of health care, scrambling to make up the sudden revenue shortfall. You can certainly argue that in the face of burgeoning debts and deficits the federal government had to act, but I can argue that they cut too quickly and without thought as to how it would affect social programs like health care and education. Ten years later we're still seeing the consequences of those cuts rippling through the system.

Since then we've had a much ballyhooed report from Roy Romanow on how to repair and improve our health care system. And since that report was issued Romanow and others have repeatedly expressed their frustration at the way governments at all levels are dragging their feet about implementing his recommendations and keeping the commitments they've made. While the provinces are quick to demand more money, and take credit for saving health care when they win some concession out of the feds, they're as guilty as the feds at not making good on their commitments.

So don't blame the judges. They didn't create the problem and when they defend the individual against the government they're doing exactly what we pay them to do. And don't look to the judges to solve the problem because they can't.

And that's why I think it's a mistake for those who support single payor health care to dwell on the subject of so-called judicial activism. It shifts the debate away from where it needs to be. It shifts the focus away from governments and politicians who are responsible for the current state of affairs and who are the only ones who can do anything about it. Of course that means they'll have to stop playing politics with the issue and get down to the admittedly difficult job of actually doing something about it. But that's what we pay them for.

And by the way, if I thought the Supreme Court was actually agreeing with the Fraser Institute I'd be shouting "We're doomed! Doomed, I tell you!" as loudly as anyone.

Tucked away at the bottom of a Globe and Mail article that mainly concerns a new development at the Arar inquiry - to be addressed in a later post - is this interesting item.

... federal Information Commissioner John Reid released a report yesterday stating that bureaucrats are using delays as a strategy to thwart release of information that should be public.

Justice Minister Irwin Cotler, who promised last year to reform the Access to Information Act to make it easier for the public to learn about government activities, has been backtracking on that promise, Mr. Reid said.

The Martin government seems to want to increase secrecy and weaken the act, he said.

Chamber sees red ink

Canada's largest business group has launched a new attack on the Liberal-NDP budget amendment, calling it an irresponsible "flip-flop" that will only add to out-of-control spending and make a federal deficit more likely.

In a toughly worded letter to Ralph Goodale, the Finance Minister, the Canadian Chamber of Commerce urges the Liberals to reinstate promised tax cuts and issue a fiscal update to clarify the government's financial status.

Without such action, the country's overall economic health and reputation among international investors will continue to suffer, the chamber warns. "To say that program spending is out of control would be an understatement," states the letter sent to Mr. Goodale yesterday. "It is time for the government to take the steps necessary to put Canada's fiscal reputation back on track."

The Chamber of Commerce maintains the deal is financed in part by eliminating or delaying corporate tax cuts pledged in the budget, even though Mr. Goodale and Mr. Martin have talked recently about the importance of tax reduction.

The chamber also lamented the multi-billion-dollar spate of government spending announcements since the budget was introduced, complaining that debt reduction has taken a back seat and that running a deficit is now a real danger.

Any additional surplus revenue should be used to shrink taxes and not be "squandered on piecemeal spending increases," the chamber of commerce said in its letter.

Would this be a good time to again draw attention to a report that indicated corporate profits are at a record high and corporations are already sitting on piles of cash?

I happen to think we have some serious economic times ahead and it would be useful to have a realistic discussion about how to deal with it. But it's difficult to take these people seriously when they ignore reality and just make shit up when they've already had significant tax cuts, executive compensation is outrageously high compared to everyone else and corporations are sitting on more money than they know what to do with.

In a column in today's Ottawa Sun Greg Weston uses what we've been learning about the RCMP's involvement in the Maher Arar case, along with some other examples of dubious behaviour, to argue that there's a serious problem with the force and that it might be time to take a close look and even issue some pink slips. There's one point in his piece where he gets the timing wrong in a way that actually weakens his case.

Weston writes:

The week before Arar returned home, the RCMP raided the home of reporter Juliet O'Neill, sending a chill through every journalist covering the case.

The raid on O'Neill's home and office took place on Jan. 21, 2004. By that time, Arar's version of events had long since been made public and pressure was already building for a public inquiry. More to the point, I think, by that time we'd already been treated to a number of media stories that quoted anonymous sources telling us what a dangerous terrorist Maher Arar was.

It was the substance of those anonymous reports that made it such a surprise when it was finally revealed that in the eyes of the RCMP, Arar was never more than "a peripheral figure or potential witness." And it was the timing of that raid, the conflict between Arar's account and those anonymous smears and the growing suspicion that Canadian officials may have been complicit in the imprisonment and torture of an innocent man that made the raid look more like a coverup than an attempt to safeguard national security.

In case it's not obvious, I agree with Weston's point. The other examples he raises deserve a good look, too. Part of Justice O'Connor's mandate in the Arar inquiry is to recommend a better accountability mechanism for the RCMP. I hope his final report doesn't end up gathering dust on a shelf somewhere because it's increasingly obvious that the existing mechanism - the Commission for Public Complaints - doesn't begin to get the job done.

Cross-posted at the E-Group.

Suddenly it seems that certain folks are awfully interested in my reading habits. If you turn out to be working for CSIS I'm going to be really upset.

Number of books I own: Hundreds. If you think I'm going to count them, you're nuts.

Last book I bought: I bought two at the same time: Speaker For The Dead and Xenocide by Orson Scott Card. If you're interested, start at the beginning with Ender's Game.

Last book I read: Speaker For The Dead. Once they're in the house I have trouble resisting the temptation.

5 books that mean a lot to me: I'm glad it's phrased this way. If it was "5 favorite books" or "5 books that mean the most to me" I'd probably still be suffering from analysis paralysis. As it is, I'll give you five that come quickly to mind for a variety of reasons.

The Essays of E. B. White taught me that a good writer can write about almost anything and make it interesting. Even plumbing. Abject apologies to those who really do find plumbing interesting.

I read Lord of the Rings the first time when I was about 13 or 14. It was a revelation. I was already a science fiction fan but this opened up a whole new universe.

I was fairly young the first time I read Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand. I devoured it, felt a rush of blood to my ego and thought I'd discovered truth. It wasn't too long after that I sat down to read it again. I got part way through and thought "What was I thinking? She's not even that good a writer". Ah, well. They can't all be gems. But I guess this is the one that taught me to look beyond a really seductive argument - to take it apart and see what it really said. And then to admit that I got sucked in.

Pennies, Off a Dead Man's Eyes is actually a short story in a collection by Harlan Ellison called Over the Edge: Stories From Somewhere Else. Maybe it was just the timing but this story really got me thinking about race, prejudice and bigotry.

The Whole Earth Catalog. Maybe you had to be there. It was about possibilities, about thinking in different ways and trying different things. The books, authors and ideas that the catalog led me to would make an interesting list in and of itself. I spent hours and hours with this thing.

Oh, look. That's five already.

I tag:
Kevin Brennan
Jim Elve
Mark Francis
Melanie Mattson
Ian Welsh

Oops:

Since Mark had already been tagged, I'll add Scott Tribe. And if he's already been tagged and I missed that one, too, I'm going to go live in a cave somewhere. But I'm taking a flashlight so I can finish Xenocide.

In his testimony on Monday at the Arar inquiry Bill Graham, who was Minister of Foreign Affairs during the entire period of Maher Arar's imprisonment, indicated that he had no reason to believe that Arar was being tortured by the Syrians. That doesn't pass the smell test.

The CBC reported it this way:

Defence Minister Bill Graham said Monday he had no reason to believe Maher Arar was being tortured in Syria based on what he knew at the time.

Mr. Graham said he had a ?general knowledge? of Syria's human-rights record at the time of Mr. Arar's detention but was unaware at that time of his detention whether Mr. Arar was being tortured there.

?There was no question that I knew that Syria's human-rights record was not in any way anything like our own, and I wouldn't have known of specific acts of torture and things like that, I wouldn't have been that familiar with it but I had no illusions that these people were going to conduct themselves the way that we would expect a western democracy would do it,? Mr. Graham said.

In testimony late last week Gar Pardy, who was head of consular affairs at the Department of Foreign Affairs at the time, testified that he had reason to believe Arar was being mistreated and that he made his opinion known.

A former Foreign Affairs official says reports from Canadian diplomats made him suspect that Maher Arar might have been undergoing mistreatment by his captors while in Syria.
...
Pardy said there was some indication from the Canadian consul in Damascus that Arar had been mistreated.

"I did not need [the consul] to tell me his suspicions as to whether or not serious abuse or torture had taken place. It's something I deal with on a daily basis," said Pardy.

Pardy also says his colleagues and his superiors, including politicians, knew about his assumption.

"Yes, both horizontally and vertically that would have been the case," he said.

And an e-mail in [August, 2003] from one of Pardy's colleagues, says Pardy doesn't believe the torture allegations.

Pardy told the inquiry he thought any public confirmation of torture could have harmed Arar's case with the Syrians.

In August 2003, Canada's ambassador to Syria, Franco Pillarella, wrote that an upcoming visit with Arar would give the Canadian government an opportunity to "rebut the charges of torture."

Graham also testified that had he and his colleagues known of Arar's mistreatment they would have been more "energized" in their efforts to secure his release but it might not have made a difference. That would suggest they weren't as "energized" as they might have been.

Yes, I'm parsing words pretty closely here. That communcation from Pillarella was written while Arar was still in Syrian custody. This is the same guy who was quite happy to sit with the Syrians to be briefed on the results of Arar's interrogation so he could keep CSIS and the RCMP informed. He was more interested in playing Spy vs. Spy than in being an ambassador.

It looks to me as though even before Arar was released and had the opportunity to tell his story, foreign affairs was already circling the wagons and preparing to play defence. Instead of working to get him released, they were looking for opportunities to justify his continued detention and their own inability to get him out.

Graham also indicated that he was fighting a "misconception" on Syria's part that Canada didn't want Arar back and couldn't figure out where that idea could possibly have come from. Maybe he should have asked his own ambassador.

There's been a lot of activity at the inquiry in the last ten days or so but I thought this particular bit of dissembling deserved to stand on its own.

Cross-posted at the E-Group.

In keeping with the new rule, I don't have much to say yet on the portions of tapes and transcripts that Gurmant Grewal is feeding to the media. If this is supposed to be evidence of a crime, then all of the evidence should long since have been turned over to an objective third party.

Mark at Section 15 has an interesting post on the legal aspects of the situation. And it would appear that Buckets of Grewal intends to follow things as closely as anyone. I'll defer to them for now.

But I do see an opportunity for someone here. Since it appears that Grewal has been surreptitiously recording his conversations since he was knee-high to a corrupt politician, someone could probably ensure a comfortable retirement by becoming his exclusive audio tape provider. I would suggest conducting the negotiation in complete silence by passing slips of paper back and forth across the table. You can't be too careful. And do it in a fairly dark room. He may know how to operate a camera, too.