May 2008 Archives

We should be building up archives of cases like this one, where it is clear that the judgement of intelligence and/or police agents in many Western countries is affected, often adversely, by the (forgive me) paradigm shift many were ordered to make after 9/11. Even police agents -- like the RCMP and the FBI -- were encouraged to think of counterterrorism as their new priority, their new context, which has meant in practice that many previously well-trained criminal investigators have begun to behave more as though they were intel people, looking for "actionable intelligence" that could be used "pre-emptively," than as investigators looking for solid evidence that could be taken forward to a successful prosecution.

There is a difference. Any innocent may have actionable intelligence, and I mean to return to this problem in a post about Omar Khadr and the other members of the CSIS Seven (my count so far). Criminal investigations are much more disciplined (or are supposed to be), and don't head down the road to abuse and torture anywhere near so obviously.

Here I wish only to note the collateral damage to the intelligence of our police, our investigators of crime, many of whom seem to have leapt with enthusiasm, too much enthusiasm, at the chance to do something as sexy as counterterrorism. That panicked macho delusion is all I can think of that would explain a story like this:

I'm going to indulge myself and do some Robben Ford tonight. This first one is an instrumental called Indiana Blues.

There's another one below the fold.

Photo courtesy of Wikipedia

NAFTAgate seems to have legs after all. No cleavage -- sorry -- but legs.

From Tim Harper at the Washington bureau of the Toronto Star:

WASHINGTON–Frank Sensenbrenner, the one-time Young Republican fundraiser now at the epicentre of a scandal over a leaked Canadian memo which wounded Democratic presidential front-runner Barack Obama, was always a poor fit at the Canadian embassy.

The ambassador, Michael Wilson, didn't want him there.

The diplomatic corps on Pennsylvania Ave. didn't want him there and ultimately were so distrustful of the son of a right-wing Republican congressman, they muttered that they wanted his door left open so they could hear who he was talking to.

But officials in Stephen Harper's office wanted him there and Public Safety Minister Stockwell Day particularly wanted him there, based on Sensenbrenner's long links, dating back to school days, with the former Reform party, the precursor of today's government in Ottawa.

It wasn't the first time a partisan posting trumped diplomacy at a Canadian mission, but his appointment was rare in that he seemed to work under the radar, having won the post by telling his buddies in Ottawa that he could do a better lobbying job of Congress than the diplomats already there.

Now, there was a time when there was some truth to that last bit, given who Daddy is, or was:

Jim Sensenbrenner, chair of the powerful House Judiciary Committee before Democrats took control of Congress in 2006, is a hawk on immigration and authored the Enhanced Border Security Act of 2002. He was also the man who introduced the U.S. Patriot Act.

Aside: Imagine where we would all be right now without the U.S. congressional elections of 2006. It is too horrible to contemplate.

But back to the main plot. Here is James Travers' original report on the detective work that led him to Sensenbrenner and on the curious failings of Kevin Lynch's Privy Council Office report, released last Friday, on the leaked diplomatic memo. Here also is Susan Delacourt's enumeration of the interesting questions raised by this affair. And my rant about neocon brats follows on the turn.

I rarely take issue with my fellow Poggers, much less the grand fromage hisself. But when our esteemed pogge started a now quite vigorous discussion of climate change and the environment by pointing out that emphasis on a carbon tax was deeply misleading because after all, there's also cap-and-trade, I cringed. I found it unfortunately ironic—in opposing the reductionism of just repeating the “carbon tax, carbon tax” mantra over and over, he seems to have ended up starting a discussion that takes for granted the almost equally silly “Carbon tax or Cap-and-trade?” as the only relevant question.

I think they both suck. Or at least, while there may be some point to either, neither of them makes a serious foundation for environmental policy.

I'm sure others will have a lot more to say concerning Maxime Bernier's resignation as Minister of Foreign Affairs following his biggest gaffe yet. I just wanted to take the opportunity to repeat my proposal for a campaign slogan. Because aside from all the other things we can find to criticize about this government, they have to be the most incompetent bunch of clowns this side of George W. Bush and company.

If this poll (that's a .pdf) commissioned by the Pembina Institute is going to get some attention in the media (hat-tip to Scott Tribe in last night's comments) and be used as political ammunition then lets's deal with it. It should be easy because there are only two questions and neither of them dealt with any alternatives to a carbon tax.

What I take away from it is that people recognize that reducing our GHG emissions won't happen without cost and that they're prepared to pay that cost where necessary. But that doesn't mean that people overwhelmingly prefer tax shifting to any other mechanism. If you want their opinions on the alternatives, you actually have to present the alternatives.

I've been expecting this.

NDP Leader Jack Layton's opposition to a carbon tax shows he's more interested in hurting the Liberals than helping the environment, says Green Party Leader Elizabeth May.

"We need to act on the climate crisis, and a carbon tax is a litmus test of whether a party is serious about it or not," May told CTV's Question Period on Sunday.

May called cap-and-trade a "right-wing, free-market approach" -- although she conceded her party supported it on a sectoral basis.

All of this certainly serves to highlight how completely ridiculous what passes for politics in this country has been in recent days.

Say hello to Big Luther Kent. Here he is fronting Robi Zonca and band. There's no extra charge for the crowd noise. Ambience, baby. When Kent leans over briefly, you can even see the drummer. This is called Sick and Tired.

No, that's not all. There's more on the flip. (I point that out because I don't usually do that but I probably should.)

Ottawa ordered to give Khadr interrogation documents

The Supreme Court of Canada has ordered the federal government to hand over information to alleged terrorist Omar Khadr that it gleaned from interrogation sessions that Canadian agents held with him in 2003.

Now 21, Mr. Khadr's U. S. war-crimes trial is scheduled to begin later this year. His lawyers are seeking the material in order to prepare his defence.

The 9-0 decision – signed simply "by the Court" – said that Mr. Khadr is entitled to any records of the interviews, regardless of what form they are in. It stated that he must also be given any information that Canadian authorities have given to their US counterparts as a direct consequence of conducting the interviews.

...

In its ruling, the Supreme Court specifically instructed the Minister of Justice and Attorney-General of Canada, the Minister of Foreign Affairs, the Director of the Canadian Security Intelligence Service and the Commissioner of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police to "produce to a judge … unredacted copies of all documents, records and other materials in their possession which might be relevant to the charges against Mr. Khadr."

The court said that the judge "shall consider any privilege or public interest immunity claim that is raised, including any claim under Ss. 38 et seq. of the act, and make an order for disclosure in accordance with the reasons for judgment."

Since IANAL, I'm still processing this news, which briefly lifted me right out of my chair and sent the chair and the kitties flying. No question that it is a fine thing, although not being a lawyer, I don't quite get the part about all those docs still needing to be run past yet another judge for claims of privilege or "public interest immunity." (I take it that that is the Canadian version of "national security.") So I'm still a bit nervous.

But I am very proud of our judges so far. I am very grateful to Lt-Cmdr William Kuebler, Omar Khadr's U.S. military lawyer, who took Mr Khadr's claims to the Supreme Court and who testified so helpfully before the Commons subcommittee, as I am to Senator Romeo Dallaire for speaking once again to principle rather than panicked or cynical politics.

Never doubt, though: to certain people I could mention -- ok, off the top of my head, Stephen Harper, Jason Kenney, and Pierre Poilièvre -- this is going to look like yet another offence from those dreaded "activist judges."

But look at the decision, guys: 9-0. Bluster that, Attack Puppy.

Marlies putting their faith in Pogge

(I cannot tell a lie. That title [mine, not the Star's] is total plagiarism on my part, a straight steal from friend k'in at Bread and Roses. Me, I don't know nuthin' about hockey -- I signed on here for baseball.)

No, I don't mean that word. You know I don't mean that word -- this is a family site, and I am a nice Canadian lady. I don't mean fascism, either, not today, anyway, and I don't mean feminism for the moment, although we shall revisit that one shortly. So many good F-words, so little time.

I shouldn't make fun of the FBI. They have given me endless hours of entertainment, much as have the RCMP and CSIS. I mean, they are all just so cute when they fall over their own feet or get their feet stuck in their mouths or actually shoot selves in the foot, especially when that gets them a visit to a judicial inquiry or the Supreme Court.

And it's not even the FBI I'm talking about -- well, it is, but they're not the F-word that we know is really threatening Freedom and the North American Way of Life. No, that word would be f*l*f*ls, as we learned last November:

Like Hansel and Gretel hoping to follow their bread crumbs out of the forest, the FBI sifted through customer data collected by San Francisco-area grocery stores in 2005 and 2006, hoping that sales records of Middle Eastern food would lead to Iranian terrorists.

The idea was that a spike in, say, falafel sales, combined with other data, would lead to Iranian secret agents in the south San Francisco-San Jose area.

It appears that the FBI have not abandoned this line of counter-terrorist strategy. They've just decided to delve a bit deeper, to go after the gateway condiments and vegetables that might lead to f*l*f*ls, in anticipation of terrorist attacks at the Republican National Convention in Minneapolis, 1-4 September, rumoured to be planned at this very moment by subversive vegetarians:

Carroll, who requested that his real name not be used, showed up early and waited anxiously for Swanson’s arrival. Ten minutes later, he says, a casually dressed Swanson showed up, flanked by a woman whom he introduced as FBI Special Agent Maureen E. Mazzola. For the next 20 minutes, Mazzola would do most of the talking.

“She told me that I had the perfect ‘look,’” recalls Carroll. “And that I had the perfect personality—they kept saying I was friendly and personable—for what they were looking for.”

What they were looking for, Carroll says, was an informant—someone to show up at “vegan potlucks” throughout the Twin Cities and rub shoulders with RNC protestors, schmoozing his way into their inner circles, then reporting back to the FBI’s Joint Terrorism Task Force, a partnership between multiple federal agencies and state and local law enforcement. The effort’s primary mission, according to the Minneapolis division’s website, is to “investigate terrorist acts carried out by groups or organizations which fall within the definition of terrorist groups as set forth in the current United States Attorney General Guidelines.”

Carroll would be compensated for his efforts, but only if his involvement yielded an arrest. No exact dollar figure was offered.

Y'know, the FBI's JTTF is sort of a big deal. And paying agents provocateurs for procuring arrests, sheer numbers of arrests, not convictions, is -- how can I put this? -- crooked (we used to call that illegal). You might almost think that someone was trying to discourage legal peaceful protests by decent and noble citizens of a democracy (however many lentils and chickpeas they might have consumed), mightn't you? That could never happen in Canada, of course.

I actually mean to write something serious about the FBI and even worse things as they apply to Canada -- to some members of the Canadian government and to some agents of our government -- the DoJ's Inspector General's report into FBI involvement in and observation of detainee treatment at Guantanamo Bay and in Afghanistan and Iraq having been published this week. The report is long and troubling and obviously not the whole truth, but it still tells us a whole lot, if only by implication. I started tracking discussion of it at emptywheel's place, where I also learned of the killer vegans. See also this efficient summary from the Washington Post.

Sorry for the quick post and run. Hopefully others will be able to pick up on this and run with it. It appears new copyright legislation is imminent (again).

From Cory Doctorow at Boing Boing:

URGENT: Canadian DMCA about to come down again -- blitz your MP, the PM, and Minister Prentice now to save us from US-style copyright rules!

Word on the street is that Canadian Industry Minister Jim Prentice is about to try to shove the Canadian version of the US's failed Digital Millennium Copyright Act through Parliament very soon, and very fast. He made plans to do this before, and the overwhelming public outcry caused him to shelve them, but now he figures we're all distracted and we'll let him get away with it (especially since he's made a couple of cosmetic changes to the bill that he'll use to show how much he really, really cares about us poor Canadians, rather than the US government and entertainment companies who are giving him marching orders).

The Tories promised that they wouldn't do any more treaty-law without public consultation, but Prentice stalwartly refuses to have any public consultation on his plans, despite outcry from industry (he's the Minister of Industry, remember?), artists' groups, library groups, educator groups, and public interest groups. He just keeps on ploughing ahead with his half-baked plan to follow the US off the same stupid copyright cliff it leapt off of in 1998 when it passed the DMCA, a law which has done nothing to reduce infringement, but which has screwed up libraries, competition, and education, and has led to lawsuits against tens of thousands of ordinary citizens.

Also see Michael Geist:

Prentice's DMCA Deception

With only two weeks left in the House of Commons calendar until the summer recess (technically the House could sit for an additional two weeks but few expect that to happen), Industry Minister Jim Prentice is likely to introduce his new copyright bill next week or during the first week of June. While Prentice continues to claim that he is actively working on a bill that meets the needs of creators and consumers, the talk in Ottawa is that the bill is done. The DMCA provisions that generated so much opposition last December are still there as Prentice is seemingly unwilling to take a stand against the U.S. pressure by siding with Canadian business, consumers, and education groups.

Again, sorry for the drive by post but it's busy season here at the Gopher Ranch.

Canada's Attack Puppy has a new cause to yap about bring to our attention.

Conservative MP Pierre Poilievre says he wants the federal government to step in and prevent Ontario from funding sex reassignment surgery.

"I will write the minister of finance, Jim Flaherty, to seek assurance that federal health transfers should go only to vital health care treatments and not to the McGuinty sex-change program," said Mr. Poilievre, the MP for Nepean-Carleton.

The surgery is already covered by Alberta, British Columbia, Manitoba and Saskatchewan, said Laurel Ostfield, spokeswoman for the Ontario Ministry of Health and Long-Term Care.

It's Sunday morning on a long weekend. Have another cup of coffee. This is Bela Fleck and the Flecktones with Zona Mona.

The players in these two clips are in a band called Lil' Stevie and the Westsiders and they're having a CD release party. The vocals are handled by Sugar Ray Norcia who normally fronts a band called Sugar Ray and the Bluetones. At this point I have no idea what I was looking for when I found these, but here you go. This is called I Could Have Loved You.

And here's a slow blues called Black Night.

This is the weirdest story -- but then, stories about talks between the Cheney/Bush administration and the Saudi royals are always the weirdest stories, mainly because we always know that not a single word that anyone approaching sanity is going to be able to publish can possibly come close to the horrifying private truths of that exceptionally sick symbiosis.

I mean, it's sort of cute to learn that the White House kindergarten teacher is presuming to inform the grown-ups of the world press that what all of humanity is panting to be reassured about is Americans and their frikken cars:

Earlier, the White House press secretary, Dana Perino, told reporters aboard Air Force One on the way here from Jerusalem that Mr. Bush was asking for increased production so that American consumers could get some relief at the gasoline pump.

“Clearly, the price of gas is too high for Americans and it is causing a hardship for families with low income,” she said. “We do count on the OPEC countries to keep adequate supplies out there so the president will talk with the king again about that.”

But that's not the strangest thing about that NYT report. Scroll down to the very last, oddly buried sentence:

In exchange, the White House said, the United States will help the Saudis develop civilian nuclear power, as well as new infrastructure to safeguard its energy supplies.

Run that by me again? What's wrong with that sentence? Let us count the ways.

This has been another edition of simple answers to simple questions.

But don't you be insulting Rottweilers. They're highly intelligent animals. Unlike Jason Kenney.

In previous discussions regarding Green Party leader Elizabeth May, I've argued that to be consistent with her own public statements she would have to advise at least a large number of the candidates in her own party to stand down in the next federal election. May has stated that job one for the present is to defeat Stephen Harper and everything else takes a back seat to that. To be consistent with that and to avoid splitting the vote, the Green Party would have to withdraw from any riding already represented by one of the other opposition parties and from any riding where one or another of those parties appeared to be the most likely to defeat a Conservative incumbent. I don't think that leaves much.

The headline on this CBC article reads:

Canada losing moral standing over treatment of Omar Khadr: Dallaire

The occasion was Dallaire's testimony before a parliamentary committee on international human rights and he was expressing his profound concern over Canada's failure to press, at every opportunity, for the release of Omar Khadr from detention in Guantanamo Bay.

In a testy exchange with Conservative MP Jason Kenney, Dallaire suggested by failing to treat Khadr as a child soldier, Canada has sunk to the moral equivalent of terrorists.

Wikipedia defines it thusly:

...a software or hardware product which is announced by a developer well in advance of release, but which then fails to emerge, either with or without a protracted development cycle. The term implies unwarranted optimism, or sometimes even deception...

Asked about when the actual Canada First Defence Strategy was going to be released, Jay Paxton, Mr. MacKay's press secretary, replied: "It is a strategy that you heard enunciated by the prime minister and Minister MacKay."

"It is not a 'document' like a white paper -- it is the vision delivered today for long-term planning for the CF," he added. "As such, the speeches are the strategy."

I’m not a vegetarian. I’m not even in principle against eating domesticated animals, much less raising them for milk or eggs. But the way things are done nowadays is a grotesque blot on our civilization. The old deal was roughly “You get to live better than a wild animal, well fed, out of danger from other predators, sheltered, with attempt made to keep you free of disease and parasites; in return in the end we get to eat you.” It wasn’t a bad deal—it’s not like nothing ever eats wild animals. But that deal is disappearing; for most animals now the deal is “You get to live in a horrific concentration camp in fear and pain largely unable to move, for a very short but anguished life, and then we eat you.” That’s evil. I was particularly reminded by this article about myriad chickens treated even worse than our laughable standards allow, which contains what I find an absolutely emblematic quote:

"We are obviously not going to launch a prosecution based on unsubstantiated video," District Attorney Larry Morse III told the Modesto Bee after the MFA expose.

But enough about me. Big Walter Horton was also known as Shakey. This is Shakey's Blues.

And this is Big Mama Thornton. Rock Me.

A year ago today, the worker bees here at the POGGE Institute (entirely independently funded) awoke to the news that our fearless leader had been ambushed two days before by a distractedly aimed vehicle and was imprisoned in a medical facility that hadn't been able to figure out for a bit who he was exactly, a quandary we understand and empathize with profoundly, although it was a little frustrating at the time.

The boss was shattered, and for a time we all felt kind of shattered too. It was strangely hard to write anything while pogge was so badly shook up, even though we knew we should be filling in for him, soldiering on and all that stuff. Until we knew that he was bouncing back, this was a tongue-tied place, and we weren't the only ones. Himself has many friends across the internets, especially at Melanie's (evolving) place and at the Flu Wiki. People turned up there and here just to spin their wheels for a while because we were all so ... well, whatever we were.

You might have noticed that there is a happy ending to this story. The boss has been back for some months, more and more often writing anything that comes into his pretty little head any time he feels like it, just as if he owned the place (which he does). It's humbling, I tell you, deeply humbling.

Anyway, Boss, you know that we're glad you're back. There was such a stillness in our messages to each other for a time. You mean so much to us all. Welcome home.

Yesterday I took Israel's ambassador to Canada to task for what I felt were statements unbecoming of a diplomat and of his country's representative to the Canadian people. After reading this I suspect that Stephen Harper isn't likely to agree with me.

Some of the criticism brewing in Canada against the state of Israel, including from some members of Parliament, is similar to the attitude of Nazi Germany in the Second World War, Prime Minister Stephen Harper warned yesterday.

And speaking of lessons, our Prime Minister has aptly demonstrated the correct way to deal with free speech. We don't need legislation and human rights commissions to deal with unwanted public utterances. If people are saying things we don't like — say, for instance, criticizing a government's policies — we simply bully them into silence. No matter how scurrilous the attack needs to be to get the job done.

Our own Minister of Foreign Affairs, Maxime Bernier, has certainly qualified for the Foot In Mouth Award in recent weeks but it appears there are other, more seasoned diplomats who also don't know when to stop talking.

Israel's ambassador says he is concerned that the growing number of Muslim Canadians might cause a shift in this country's Middle East policy.
...
Alan Baker, Israel's ambassador in Ottawa, said Muslim communities have had an impact on the foreign policies of such countries as France, and he is concerned Canada might follow.

"The question is, how do you treat the results of this fact? Do you expect from these greater numbers that they will absorb themselves into Canadian society as Canadians or that they'll try to push Canadians to adopt their own values and principles? And this is the gist of the problem," Mr. Baker said in an interview.

A tip of the hat to Wallace McLean at CopyrightWatch for bringing this (pdf alert) to our attention. The second link points to a letter written by the Copyright Board of Canada and involves a joke that's ultimately based on a folk tale that dates back to at least the time of the Brothers Grimm. The brothers in question, sadly, passed away roughly a hundred and fifty years ago. As nearly as I can make out, the Copyright Board of Canada is taking the position that the default status of a work is that it's subject to copyright even if the material it's based on is clearly in the public domain, the creator of the work is unknown and no one has claimed ownership. Even in that circumstance, a fee of $150.00 is payable for the non-exclusive use of said work and the Board will be happy to collect that fee for use at the Board's discretion.

Does this apply to figures of speech and acronyms as well? Does this mean that it will cost me $150.00 to tell the Copyright Board of Canada that I think their concept of copyright is fubar?

Sue Foley's back with another instrumental. This is called Hooked On Love.

And this is Duke Robillard. Gee I Wish.

Secrets are a way of life with our Republican-lite Conservative Party. Public scrutiny is their enemy, and today, they struck at the heart of that enemy with the elimination of the CAIRS program.

OTTAWA–The federal Conservatives have quietly killed a giant information registry that was used by lawyers, academics, journalists and ordinary citizens to hold government accountable.

The registry, created in 1989, is an electronic list of every request filed to all federal departments and agencies under the Access to Information Act.

Known as CAIRS, for Co-ordination of Access to Information Requests System, the database allowed ordinary citizens to identify millions of pages of once-secret documents that became public through individual freedom-of-information requests over many years.

But in a notice last week to civil servants on the Treasury Board website, officials posted an innocuous obituary: effective April 1, 2008, "the requirement to update CAIRS is no longer in effect."

A spokesman for Treasury Board confirmed Friday that the system is being killed because "extensive" consultations showed it was not valued by government departments.

The consultations concluded "the valuable resources currently being used to maintain CAIRS would be better used in the collection and analysis of improved statistical reporting," said Robert Makichuk.

Not valued by government deaprtments, eh? Funny, the system was booming when this was written in 2002 by Anne Brennan, then the Director of the Information and Security Policy Division of the Government Operations Sector:

The new CAIR system became operational on June 1, 2001. Since that time, the number of requests registered in CAIR has doubled from the number registered the previous year. Your cooperation and efforts in making the CAIR system a success are greatly appreciated.

Of course, Stephen Harper, renowned information control freak, wasn't in power back in 2002 was he? Funny how government accountability, such an obsession for the Cons in the old days, has become so out of fashion today.

But ultimately, who cares if government departments valued CAIRS anyway? It wasn't for them, it was for the public, so the Con spin scores a classic right-wing double play: it is both outright dishonest and downright bizarre.

This is interesting.

It looks like our right wing brethren are going to have to accept that we have 2500 "Taliban Jacks" deployed in Afghanistan.