TORONTO, OTTAWA — The civilian appointed to lead Canada's national police into a new era of accountability revealed Friday he was among the secret group of bureaucrats who had met to censor findings of the Maher Arar report.
“I was certainly involved in the process leading to that decision, but that decision was a decision taken by government,” RCMP Commissioner William Elliott, wearing a business suit, told reporters after the RCMP's change-of-command ceremony. He was referring to work he had done while serving as an associate deputy minister to Public Safety Minister Stockwell Day.
And Day, being the arrogant, feckless ass that he is, sent his spokespuppet out to say this:
A spokeswoman for Mr. Day, the past and current boss of Mr. Elliott, said “senior officials from various departments” decided to block out the passages before the government signed off on the recommendations.
I guess his momma never asked him the obvious question: "would you jump off a bridge just because the rest of the kids were doing it?" Or maybe she did and his answer was "yes".
Welcome to the new RCMP brought to you by the new government. I'll bet you feel safer already.
News agency Reuters has been forced to admit that footage it released last week purportedly showing Russian submersibles on the seabed of the North Pole actually came from the movie Titanic.
Insult to injury:
The mistake was only revealed after a 13-year-old Finnish schoolboy contacted a local newspaper to tell them the images looked identical to those used in the movie.
Reuters has admitted that it took the images from Russian state television channel RTR and wrongly captioned them as file footage originating from the Arctic.
RTR had also used the footage to illustrate stories about the North Pole expedition, but it is thought as library footage, and it never claimed it was actually of the flag-planting.
The pictures were first broadcast by RTR when the Russians were still several hours away from the North Pole.
Reuters distributed a package of clips that included the scenes from Titanic, alongside computer animations and footage of ships on the surface at the North Pole.
In its piece on the subject, two of the four Reuters pictures were from the Titanic filming.
The Bush administration has so utterly failed in its handling of the Iraq war and the resulting, growing tensions in the region, that it has decided to cede diplomatic control to the UN.
After reviewing its Iraq policy last winter, the White House committed to boosting diplomatic efforts in the region. But Washington has failed to win significant new cooperation from any of the countries bordering Iraq -- Iran, Jordan, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, Syria and Turkey. In Egypt last week, Rice met with the "six plus two" nations, an informal alliance of the six sheikdoms in the Gulf Cooperation Council plus Egypt and Jordan, but the only tangible result was a Saudi offer to explore opening an embassy in Baghdad.
"Regional diplomacy has turned out to be only lip service," said Chas Freeman, a former U.S. ambassador to Saudi Arabia. "We have failed to create circumstances for political reconciliation and unity in Iraq. And we have not taken the next step to engage with Iraq's neighbors to support a process that produces that result."
U.S. efforts to directly enlist Iranian support in Iraq have also suffered setbacks. Since May, Ryan C. Crocker, the U.S. ambassador to Iraq, has twice held formal talks with Iranian ambassador Hassan Kazemi Qomi in Baghdad, but State Department spokesman Sean McCormack said Thursday that this new dialogue -- the first public contact between the two nations in 28 years -- has so far yielded no positive results.
The new resolution passed on Thursday would see the UN not only taking on a larger humanitarian presence in Iraq but would have that body try to clean up the diplomatic mess that Bushco has made due to its view of itself as the prime architect of reshaping the region in its own image:
After the 2003 invasion, many of Iraq's neighbors, including Saudi Arabia, called for a regional forum under U.S. or U.N. auspices. But Washington did not want to legitimize Tehran and Damascus by engaging in diplomatic talks, Arab officials said. More recently, the Bush administration has sought to tap regional assistance and resources, they added, but with too little credibility and limited time left in Bush's term to meet critical goals.
The Bush administration took the same stubborn, non-negotiating course with North Korea until that country finally retaliated by testing a long range missile last summer to get some attention. Then suddenly, US/North Korean talks were back on. This is a clan of neocons that seems to prefer crises to steady and direct diplomacy. That's "hard work", apparently.
After sending Colin Powell to lie to the UN Security Council about Iraq's so-called WMD and the ridiculous notion that unleashing John "bull in a china shop" Bolton to the UN to try to strong arm the institution to do what the neocons wanted both failed, it's quite something to see Bushco finally surrendering to the UN. However, there are always at least two sides to situations like this. Bushco may see this handover of power to the UN negotiators as a way to escape ultimate responsibility for what does happen in Iraq, Iran and beyond - which to me is the more likely reason for relinquishing control.
As one who also covers American politics and the battles between congress, the White House and organizations like the ACLU over claims of executive privilege wrapped in the mantra of national security, I have to say that Canada's system appears to place us light years ahead when it comes to demanding and getting transparency in these types of cases (although sometimes these victories can take a very long time to be realized). That type of regime of secrecy cannot and will not be tolerated in this country, as much as Stephen Harper's paranoid Conservative government wishes to make it so.
I recently had the occasion to reread the Reader's Digest 2006 interview with Stephen Harper, Man With a Plan, in which he was asked about the comparisons made between him and Bush. Note his cluelessness:
RD: Are there comparisons that offend you?
Harper: Yes. The Bush comparisons offend me. And not because I have any kind of personal dislike of George W. Bush. I don’t. It’s that the comparisons generally are not thoughtful. Bush has SUVs in his motorcade, and I have SUVs in my motorcade—“Ha ha, he’s just like George Bush.” Well, of course, this is actually the decision of the RCMP, and I’m sure George Bush didn’t pick out the cars in his own motorcade either. That kind of thing bothers me because it’s just a stereotype designed for polemical purposes.
No, Steve, you're compared to Bush because of your love of absolute control and as these new Arar inquiry revelations show us, that hammer you like to bring down on the Canadian people by fighting against things that might embarrass security or other officials implies a twisted sort of reasoning that is well beyond what most Canadians ought to find acceptable.
One would think that, when it comes to ensuring the safety of all Canadians, allowing us to finally see the inner workings of CSIS and the RCMP and how they contributed to an innocent man being tortured would be considered to be an absolute necessity so the same behaviour will never be repeated again. We cannot rely on our security agencies to police themselves, obviously, and as the interviewees point out, the current oversight regime is "fractured".
The Harper government's attempt to cover that up serves no one except those who prefer to remain complicit in such human rights abuses. That was the bottom line in arguing that these documents remain censored. The revelations do not pose a threat to our national security. Not revealing those portions however had the potential to enable CSIS and the RCMP to continue ignoring their own, very serious problems.
In the inquiry report, RCMP officials seemed to be tripping all over themselves to claim that they hadn't worked with the CIA prior to 9/11 - as if that was a good enough excuse to not understand how the CIA operates. And of course we now know that CSIS knew about the CIA's extraordinary rendition (torture flights) practices and still either naively trusted the CIA or just didn't care enough to ensure a Canadian citizen's rights would be protected. The official line seems to be that the CIA just pulled a fast one of Canadian security officials who supposedly had years of experience. How can that possibly be justified and what kind of prime minister would choose to cover that up?
Harper needs to be reminded at every turn that he works for the Canadian people, not his own interests or those of people who have the power to place our lives in jeopardy.
As Alex Neve said, keep the pressure on your MPs and government officials by letting them know that we will not put up with this subversion of our right to know the facts. We will not allow Harper to operate as Bush Lite.
At 11:02 am, Nagasaki Christianity was boiled, evaporated and carbonized in a scorching, radioactive fireball. The persecuted, vibrant, faithful, surviving center of Japanese Christianity had become ground zero.
And what the Japanese Imperial government could not do in over 200 years of persecution, American Christians did in 9 seconds. The entire worshipping community of Nagasaki was wiped out.
"Basra's residents and militiamen view this not as an orderly withdrawal but rather as an ignominious defeat," according to a report by the Brussels-based International Crisis Group (ICG) on Basra published in June. "Today, the city is controlled by militias, seemingly more powerful and unconstrained than before." [...] The outlook for the two million people in Basra, Iraq's second largest city, is not good. According to the ICG report, violence in the city has little to do with sectarianism or anti-occupation resistance but involves "the systematic misuse of official institutions, political assassinations, tribal vendettas, neighbourhood vigilantism... together with the rise of criminal mafias that increasingly intermingle with political actors."
- Bush...press conference...Iran...blah blah blah...yawn. This was the highlight:
Bush downplayed reports from Tehran that al-Maliki and Ahmadinejad appeared warm and friendly, including pictures of the two men smiling and holding hands as they appeared at a news conference.
"You want to be cordial with the person you're with. You don't want to be duking it out," said Bush, who jokingly posed in a boxing stance at his podium. "I'm not surprised there's a picture showing people smiling."
Just call him Boxer Guy
- Meanwhile, Darth Cheney has reportedly been pushing for "airstrikes at suspected training camps in Iraq run by the Quds force...according to two U.S. officials who are involved in Iran policy." Another handy WH leak to put more pressure on Iran, no doubt.
The paradox of American policy in the Middle East — promoting democracy on the assumption it will bring countries closer to the West — is that almost everywhere there are free elections, the American-backed side tends to lose.
Lebanon’s voters in the Metn district, in other words, appeared to have joined the Palestinians, who voted for Hamas; the Iraqis, who voted for a government sympathetic to Iran; and the Egyptians, who have voted in growing numbers in recent elections for the Islamist Muslim Brotherhood. “No politician can afford to identify with the West because poll after poll shows people don’t believe in the U.S. agenda,” said Mustafa Hamarneh, until recently the director of the Center for Strategic Studies at the University of Jordan. Mr. Hamarneh is running for a seat in Jordan’s Parliament in November, but he says he has made a point of keeping his campaign focused locally, and on bread-and-butter issues. “If somebody goes after you as pro-American he can hurt you,” he said.
It takes inane optimism to see victory in Afghanistan
This war against the Taliban is part of a post-imperial spasm. The longer it is waged, the graver the consequences [...] Iraq is post-imperialism for fast learners, Afghanistan for slow ones. [...] In the provinces, the Americans are running a guerrilla army out of Bagram, trying to kill as many "Taliban" or "al-Qaida" as possible, while the British heroically re-enact the Zulu wars down in Helmand. Neither takes any notice of President Hamid Karzai, whose deals with warlords, druglords, Iranians and Taliban collaborators are probably the best hope of stabilising Afghanistan when the foreign occupation is over. But since that is claimed by Britain to be virtually never, the only certainty is a rising tempo of insurgency.
Newly released portions of the Arar Inquiry report which had previously been censored - apparently to protect CSIS, the CIA, the FBI and the RCMP - show that Canadian security officials knew that information they relied on that damned Arar to a one year stay via "extraordinary rendition" in a Syrian jail had been obtained through the use of torture and that he most likely would be tortured as well.
The Globe and Mail offers the following summary but you can read the documents here (.pdf file - the previously censored material is highlighted by bold text).
Newly declassified findings of Judge O'Connor's report indicate a host of foreign agencies shoulder the blame for what happened:
• Investigating Mounties had no experience in dealing with the CIA before 2001, but a relationship began to develop after the Sept. 11 attacks that year.
• As anticipated, information from abroad – likely the statements by Mr. El Maati* – found its way into Canadian searches and interviews conducted in January, 2002. "When applying for search warrants, Project A-O Canada relied on information obtained from a country with a poor human rights record." The report adds that "no assessment was made of the reliability of that information."
• In the fall of 2002, the information was still being treated as credible. "In September 2002, the RCMP filed an application for a telephone warrant … [it] referred to [Ahmed Abou El Maati's] confession to the Syrians that he undertook pilot training at the request of his brother and that he accepted a mission to be a suicide bomber by exploding a truck bomb on Parliament hill."
• Even though the RCMP was made aware that the confession was extracted by "extreme coercion," they insisted that it was "still accurate and continues to be true." In this period, RCMP investigators had heard of Mr. El Maati's complaints of torture but dismissed them as "damage control" and asserted the confession corroborated their earlier investigation of him.
• It was the CIA that sent questions to Canada about Mr. Arar when U.S. border guards arrested him in October, 2002. The CIA, which sent him to the Middle East in shackles aboard a leased Gulfstream jet, appears to have been driving the process to send Mr. Arar to Syria.
• Canadian officials were knowledgeable about the U.S. practice of "rendering" suspects to harsh interrogations third-countries. "I think the U.S. would like to get Arar to Jordan where they can have their way with him," one CSIS official wrote in an email on October 10, 2002 – two days after Mr. Arar was quietly sent to that country, and on to Syria, for questioning.
• CSIS visited Syria once Mr. Arar was in custody and came back with the impression that officials there "looked upon the matter as more of a nuisance than anything." He remained jailed there for nearly a year.
(* Truck driver Ahmad Abou El Maati, just two months after 9/11, “confessed” in Syria to plotting a truck bomb attack in Canada at the behest of his brother, who is still considered a fugitive al-Qaeda suspect.
The truck driver has since returned to Canada, uncharged, and recanted his statements as purely the product of torture. He has also expressed regret that he was forced into naming Canadian associates of his, including Maher Arar, including saying that he saw the telecommunications engineer in Afghanistan in the early 1990s.)
It shouldn't come as a surprise that Canadian intelligence agencies knew about the CIA's "extraordinary rendition" practices since that program was authorized by Clinton in 1995. But, for the RCMP to expect that a warning it sent out with the supposed intel it had on Arar would cause the CIA not to act without its permission shows how incredibly naive Canadian officials chose to be in this case.
Again, members of Project A-O Canada had little experience or training to assist them in handling the information-sharing challenges confronting them. This was a new environment for them. For example, they had never dealt with the CIA. As observed by the Assistant Criminal Operations (CROPS) officer, with “A” Division, Inspector Garry Clement, the CIA had a lot more latitude than law enforcement agencies when it came to the war on terror. Project A-O Canada was dealing with American agencies that were more sophisticated in matters of national security and might not always play by the rules Project members would expect.
Considering the CIA's shady reputation and history of illegal, covert activities - including projects like MKULTRA in Canada - one would think the average Canadian intelligence official would know better than to trust the CIA to do everything above board.
To suddenly feign surprise, after providing information on Mr Arar that was false and that was known to have been coerced via the torture of El Maati (a fact which, as the newly revealed portions reveal, was not presented to the judge who handled the telephone warrant in this case) truly rings hollow.
There is definitely enough blame to go around and while Bush repeated again during a press conference today that that the US does not torture, anyone with any knowledge of the CIA's history should have known better than to believe that Mr Arar - or anyone in CIA custody - would be safe.
The judge who ordered the release of these censored passages should be applauded for shedding ever more light on exactly how these ugly covert actions operate because, as much as the Bush administration bloviates about its so-called respect for human rights, the reality is painfully obvious: they'll do anything if they think it will advance the "war on terror", even if that means siding with people and other governments who use torture.
And the Democrats certainly don't get a free pass on this issue either, some of whom helped pass the Military Commissions Act - enabling prosecutorial immunity for CIA torturers - and further eroding legal rights by enabling the passage of the FISA bill last week. The heavy-handedness of the US government is institutional.
This isn't over yet. US officials must be held accountable.
ISLAMABAD: A decision whether or not to impose a state of emergency in the country hangs in the balance and is expected any time, high-level sources told Daily Times.
“It is now a matter of days,” said a senior Muslim Leaguer close to the president. “The president’s kitchen cabinet deliberated on the issue last night and his advisers pressed him to impose emergency in view of the current political situation in which certain unexpected decisions on various constitutional petitions including the one related to his uniform are expected,” he added.
The kitchen sink had no comment.
I jest, but this is deadly serious for Pakistanis as they stand to lose their civil rights if Musharraf does declare martial law. His back is up against the wall with his refusal to step down as army chief (an issue that has plagued him since he came into power); increasing pressure to go after al Qaeda in the north with rumblings from the US that it will launch unilateral strikes in the region even as it tries to get the Afghan and Pakistani governments to work it out in a "peace jirga" (which Musharraf has backed out of at the last minute); the political and violent repercussions from the bombing of the Red Mosque; his mishandling of the suspension of the country's chief justice; not to mention the many assassination attempts made against him - among other issues.
Of course, the most dangerous aspect of all of this is that Pakistan is a nuclear state. Perhaps the Bush administration saw this move coming when it recently decided to make a nuclear deal with India (.pdf file of the agreement). (Apparently, the Times of India refers to Musharraf as "Mush", which he may soon be if he makes this move.)
Pakistani hardliners are less than impressed with all of the rhetoric coming out of DC and the '08 election race - a la Obama saying he was willing to bypass Pakistan's sovereignty, if necessary, to go into Pakistan's tribal areas. Obama's comments are apparently being seen by some Democrats on Daily Kos as being a good thing: "If Pakistan Captures Bin Laden Now, Can Obama Take Credit?" is the naive question being asked as Musharraf uses statements like Obama's to justify imposing martial law:
Under Pakistan's constitution, the head of state _ the president _ may declare a state of emergency if it is deemed that the country's security is "threatened by war or external aggression, or by internal disturbance beyond" the government's authority to control.
How any Democrat could claim this is some sort of victory for Obama is beyond me.
Their reappearance aims to revive a party that helped enliven politics from 1963 to 1988 with an absurdist take on Canadian affairs. The party says it picked a rhino as its mascot since, like politicians, the animal is thick-skinned, slow-moving and dim-witted. Among its planks was flattening the Rockies, banning guns and butter since both killed, and improving higher education by building taller schools.
Behind their latest antics, however, they say they're drawing attention to some serious issues. Mr. Salmi says the $1,000 deposit required by the federal Elections Act is a deterrent for lower-income Canadians, and violates the Charter.
"It's a de facto economic means test that discriminates against the poor," said Mr. Salmi, a Montreal resident who has sought office on nine previous occasions, several of them in British Columbia. (Mr. Salmi has legally changed his name to Sa Tan, so his challenge in Federal Court reads Sa Tan against Her Majesty The Queen.)
The Rhinoceros Party last ran in a general federal election in 1988, fielding 74 candidates. None was elected, and the nascent groups say they're intent on matching that abysmal performance. [...]
What they've promised
A dam on the St. Lawrence to make Montreal the Venice of North America;
A tax on milk to finance the appointment of Rhino followers to a new Ontario senate;
A 400-kilometre fishing limit to be drawn offshore in watercolour, to make sure the fish could see it and stay inside the Canadian boundary;
A Guaranteed Annual Orgasm through a network of regulated brothels;
To repeal the law of gravity (promised by Rhinos in 1984);
A proposal for free trade with the United States: "Trade Frank Zappa for Pierre Berton, Kermit the Frog for Lorne Greene, and we were prepared to put Anne Murray on the bargaining table."
The Rhino Party also declared that, should they somehow actually win an election, they would immediately dissolve and force a second election.
Michel Rivard once went on TV (during free air time given to political parties) and stated: "I have but two things to say to you: Celery and Sidewalk. Thank you, good night."
A British Columbia splinter group proposed running a professional dominatrix for the position of party whip, renaming "British Columbia" to "La La Land", moving the provincial capital, and merging with the Progressive Conservative Party so as "not to split the silly vote."
I don't know about you but I know who I'm voting for now when the next election rolls around.
- Columnist Paul Jackson provides comic relief. Rob Anders = "rock star"? What else can you expect from a man who believes this:
I've contended for some time if Harper can win a majority, and he will, he will become a beloved PM of our nation, and will be able to hold the job for as long as he wants.
- With rumblings that Harper will soon shuffle his cabinet (code words for finally dumping the useless Gordon O'Connor) Steve at Far and Wide claims to have an exclusive on what the new cabinet will look like. (h/t penlan)
- Can someone please tell me why Canada cannot secure the release of Omar Khadr - the only known Canadian known to be held in Gitmo? Via The Independent:
The families of five former British residents incarcerated in Guantanamo Bay for up to five years were celebrating after learning the men could finally be coming home within months.
The end of their ordeal was in sight after the Government formally requested the release of the five men, who had been living legally in the UK before they were picked up abroad by the American authorities.
All nine British nationals held in the notorious military base in Cuba were returned to this country by 2005, but Tony Blair had refused to intervene on behalf of another group of men legally resident in this country before their detention. Gordon Brown, the Prime Minister, announced a change of heart and raised the subject in talks last week with President George Bush. He was encouraged by signs that the White House is moving towards closing the camp. David Miliband, the Foreign Secretary, and Jacqui Smith, the Home Secretary, have written to Condoleezza Rice, the US Secretary of State, to ask for the men's release.
Our gutless, heartless Conservative government refuses to do absolutely anything to help Khadr as other countries' detainees are going home. Write to your MP and demand action. This has gone on long enough.
US President George W. Bush charged Monday that Iran has openly declared that it seeks nuclear weapons -- an inaccurate accusation at a time of sharp tensions between Washington and Tehran.
"It's up to Iran to prove to the world that they're a stabilizing force as opposed to a destabilizing force. After all, this is a government that has proclaimed its desire to build a nuclear weapon," he said during a joint press conference with Afghan President Hamid Karzai.
But Iran has repeatedly said that its nuclear program, which is widely believed in the West to be cover for an effort to develop atomic weapons, is for civilian purposes.
Asked to provide examples of Tehran openly declaring that it seeks atomic weapons, White House officials contacted by AFP said that Bush was referring to Iran's defiance of international calls to freeze sensitive nuclear work.
Looks like they'll have to cook up a newly forged Niger yellowcake letter to make that one fly.
- Meanwhile, some young Iranian cyclists have been very busy riding across Europe, the UK and the US as part of their "Miles For Peace" campaign. Perhaps if warmongering westerners actually saw real-life Iranian people besides Ahmadinejad, they might think about the repercussions of possibly bombing Iran. Then again...history has proven otherwise, hasn't it?
...same as the old RCMP boss:
