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Great White North

Appointing more women and minorities 'produces better government'

2015-12-05

Just look at Detroit, Baltimore, all those urban paradises. [CA.NEWS.YAHOO] Jean Augustine recalls looking around the rooms of meetings she used to be in and sometimes realized she was the only minority person present. Augustine was the first African-Canadian woman to be elected to the House of Commons, representing the riding of Etobicoke-Lakeshore from 1993 to 2006. “I just didn’t see the diversity of my own life reflected in the institutions and organizations I had been appointed to,” Augustine told Yahoo Canada News. That’s an issue the Liberal government says it wants to tackle — by boosting the number of women, minorities and aboriginal people in the hundreds of appointments it will make to agencies, boards and Crown corporations (ABCs). Olivier Duchesneau, a spokesman for Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, told The Canadian Press recently the process would be “open, transparent and merit-based.” In addition, the party has pledged to create an independent body to make recommendations for positions, including new senators. “It’s who you know and who put your name in the hat,” explains Augustine, who also served as minister of state for multiculturalism and the status of women and was parliamentary secretary to then-prime minister Jean Chretien from 1994 to 1996.

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Great White North

Ex-Canadian PM sought support of terrorist group

2007-02-21

Paul Martin solicited the support of the terrorist International Sikh Youth Federation in his failed bid for the federal Liberal leadership in 1990, The Vancouver Sun has learned. Martin made an impassioned speech to the ISYF's national convention in which he said he was honoured to "meet friends who share the same belief in this country, the same belief in peace, the same preparedness to defend themselves." At the time of Martin's spring 1990 speech, the ISYF had already been identified as a terrorist group by the Canadian Security Intelligence Service. Four in the group had been convicted in B.C. of the attempted assassination of a visiting Indian politician. Other B.C. members had met with a young would-be assassin who shot newspaper publisher Tara Singh Hayer in 1988. The Martin speech came two years after then Conservative external affairs minister Joe Clark warned Canadian politicians to steer clear of the federation, the Babbar Khalsa and the World Sikh Organization because of terrorist links. The ISYF was banned in Canada in June 2003 by the Liberal government of Jean Chretien.

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Caribbean-Latin America

And now, the Latino Jihad

2006-05-29

By Mark Steyn Four years ago, The Economist ran a cover story on the winner of the Brazilian election, the socialist leader Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva. It was an event of great hemispherical significance. Hence the headline: "The Meaning Of Lula." The following week, a Canadian reader, Asif Niazi, wrote to the magazine: "Sir, The meaning of Lula‚ in Urdu, is penis." No doubt. It would not surprise me to learn that the meaning of Chavez, as in Venezuela's Hugo Chavez, in Arabic is similarly situated. An awful lot of geopolitics gets lost in translation, especially when you're not keeping up. Since 9/11, Latin America has dropped off the radar, but you don't have to know the lingo to figure out it clearly doesn't mean what it did five years ago at the Summit of the Americas in Quebec City. In April 2001 I spent a pleasant weekend on the Grand Allee inhaling the heady perfume of Surete du Quebec tear gas and dodging lumps of concrete lobbed over the security fence by the anti-glob mob. The fence itself was covered in protest bras hung there by anti-Bush feminist groups. "VIVA" said the left cup. "CASTRO" said the right. On another, "MA MERE" (left) "IS NOT FOR SALE" (right). 48D, if you're wondering how they got four words on. I'm not much for manning the barricades and urging revolution, but it's not without its appeal when you're stuck inside the perimeter making chit-chat with the deputy trade minister of Costa Rica. That was the point: hemispheric normality. As the Bush administration liked to note, the Americas were now a shining sea of democracy, save for the aging and irrelevant Fidel, who was the only head of government not invited to the summit. But, other than that, no more generalissimos in the presidential palace; they were republics, but no longer bananas. When Mr. Bush arrived, he was greeted by Canada's Jean Chretien. "Bienvenue. That means welcome," said the prime minister, being a bit of a lula. But what did Bush care? He was looking south: That was the future, and they were his big amigos. THEN SEPTEMBER 11 happened. And the amigos weren't quite so friendly, or at any rate helpful, and Mr. Bush found himself holed up with the usual pasty white blokes like Tony Blair and John Howard, back in the Anglosphere with not an enchilada in sight. And everyone was so busy boning up on Shari'a and Wahhabis and Kurds and Pushtuns that very few of us noticed that Latin America was slipping back to its old ways. Frank Gaffney's new book War Footing is sub-titled Ten Steps America Must Take to Prevail in the War for the Free World and includes, as one might expect, suggestions for the home front, the Middle East, the transnational agencies. But it's some of the other chapters that give you pause when it comes to the bigger picture - for example, he urges Washington to "Counteract the reemergence of totalitarianism in Latin America." That doesn't sound like the fellows Condi and Colin were cooing over in Quebec. Yet, as Gaffney writes, "Many Latin American countries are imploding rather than developing. The region's most influential leaders are thugs. It is a magnet for Islamist terrorists and a breeding ground for hostile political movements. The key leader is Chavez, the billionaire dictator of Venezuela, who has declared a Latino jihad against the United States." Chavez's revolutionary mentor is Fidel Castro and the new kid on the block has been happy to pump cash infusions into the old boy's impoverished basket-case. "Venezuela," writes Gaffney, "has more energy resources than Iraq and supplies one-fifth of the oil sold in America." In 1999, when Chavez came to power, oil was under 10 bucks a barrel. Now it's pushing $70. And, just like the Saudis, Chavez is using his windfall in all kinds of malign ways, not merely propping up the elderly Cuban dictator but funding would-be "Chavismo" movements in Peru, Bolivia, El Salvador, Paraguay, Ecuador. And Chavismo fans are found way beyond the hemisphere. Senor Chavez was in London last week as a guest of the mayor, Ken Livingstone. The Venezuelan President said Bush was a "madman" who should be "strapped down," and Blair was an "ally of Hitler" who should "go to hell." WHAT ELSE does a Euroleftie need to know before rolling out the red carpet? Last year, the British MP George Galloway was in Syria to see Baby Assad and gave a pep talk to Araby's only remaining Ba'athist regime: "What your lives would be if from the Atlantic to the Gulf we had one Arab union - all this land, 300 million people, all this oil and gas and water, occupied by a people who speak the same language, follow the same religions, listen to the same Umm Kulthum. The Arabs would be a superpower in the world... Hundreds of thousands are ready to fight the Americans in the Middle East, and in Latin America there is revolution everywhere. Fidel Castro is feeling young again. Brazil, Argentina, Uruguay, Bolivia, Ecuador, Chile are all electing left-wing governments which are challenging American domination. And in Venezuela, the hero Hugo Chavez has stood against them over and over and over again." At first glance, an Islamo-Chavismo alliance sounds like the bus-and-truck version of the Hitler-Stalin pact. But it's foolish to underestimate the damage it could do. As Gaffney points out, American taxpayers are in the onerous position of funding both sides in this war. The price of oil is $50 per barrel higher than it was on 9/11. "Looking at it another way," writes Gaffney, "Saudi Arabia - which currently exports about 10 mbd - receives an extra half billion dollars every day." Where does it go? It goes to Saudi Arabia's real principal export: ideology - the radical imams and madrassahs the Saudis fund in almost every corner of the world. What to do? Gaffney proposes Americans switch over to FFVs (flexible fuel vehicles). He's right. The telegram has been replaced by the e-mail and the Victrola has yielded to the CD player, but aside from losing the rumble seat and adding a few cup-holders, the automobile is essentially unchanged from a century ago. AFTER 9/11, Bush told the world: You're either with us or with the terrorists. But an America that for no reason other than its lack of will continues to finance its enemies' ideology has clearly checked the "both of the above" box. It's hardly surprising, then, that the other players are concluding that, if forced to make a choice, they're with the terrorists. Muslim populations in the Caucasus and western China pose some long-term issues for Moscow and Beijing but, in the meantime, both figure the jihad's America's problem and it's in their interest to keep it that way. Hence, Russo-Chinese support for every troublemaker on the planet, from Iran's kooky president to Chavismo in America's backyard. The meaning of Chavez in just about any language is "opportunity."

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Great White North

Canadian special forces were involved in Iraq rescue

2006-03-26

While Canadians rejoiced at the news that two of their citizens were rescued from captivity in Iraq, some were surprised to learn Canadian special forces were involved in the mission and curious as to how many troops are on the ground. Prime Minister Stephen Harper told reporters Thursday that a handful of Canadian troops have been stationed in Iraq since the beginning of the U.S.-led invasion and occupation, which is still widely unpopular at home. But he insisted the special forces who helped rescue Canadians James Loney and Harmeet Singh Sooden, along with Briton Norman Kember, were in Iraq only temporarily with the express goal of obtaining the hostages' release. The former Liberal Party government declined in 2003 to join the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq unless it came under the U.N. umbrella, and many Canadians have been critical of U.S. methods in Washington's war on terror. Foreign Affairs Minister Peter MacKay said about 20 Canadian troops and other personnel were in Iraq working quietly since shortly after the kidnappings of the Christian Peacemaker Teams workers on Nov. 26. "We were there with our very best," he told The Globe and Mail for Friday editions. "We had everyone fully engaged in this operation from day one." The Royal Canadian Mounted Police, intelligence officers and diplomats were also involved, he said. "Canada should not (be) and is not passive when it comes to its own citizens and the protection of their lives," MacKay said. It is believed that members of Canada's elite and secretive Joint Task Force 2 were also involved, but the government would neither confirm nor deny this. Harper did confirm Thursday, shortly after the men were rescued, that an unspecified number of Canadians have been embedded with coalition forces since the beginning of the war. "I'm not free to say anything more than that because this involves national security," he said. He denied Canadian troops were involved in the war, however, saying: "Any involvement that Canada has had on the ground in this particular matter was obviously targeted simply at the issue of Canadian hostages." Canadian Defense spokeswoman Lt. Morgan Bailey told The Associated Press on Friday that only a handful of Canadian troops were on the ground in Iraq. She said one soldier is serving with a U.N. assistance team helping to draft a new constitution and coordinate humanitarian operations; three other Canadian soldiers are on an exchange with British forces. "They do their normal job, only with the British unit," she said. "If their job is to be an engineer, they would do that job with the British." But she declined to say whether there were special forces in Iraq. "It's our policy not to speak about special operations abroad," she said. In March 2003, when Parliament was debating whether to send troops to Iraq - some Conservatives believed it was imperative to help the Bush administration remove Saddam Hussein from power - several MPs said special forces had secretly been on the ground in Afghanistan, though Prime Minister Jean Chretien's government denied it. Some Canadians were also surprised to learn that a dozen troops had been embedded with British and U.S. troops during the invasion of Iraq, in what are known as training exchanges. Eric Walton, foreign affairs critic for the Green Party of Canada, said he didn't think most Canadians would oppose Canadian Forces in Iraq to help their own. "My feeling is, you don't need permission for a rescue mission, if it's in and out," Walton said. "But the issue I have a problem with is the way the invasion occurred, against international law, and I think Canada should have taken a stand and pulled its troops out of those exchanges." John Pike, a defense analyst and director of GlobalSecurity.org, a military policy think tank in Alexandria, Va., asked: What's the big deal? "It would seem to me that the scandal would have been if they hadn't been there," Pike said. "The lives of Canadian nationals were at stake. If there had been no Canadians involved in this and it had come to grief, then the outrage would have been: `You allowed trigger-happy American cowboys to kill our people.'" He said it is common for countries to send their special forces quietly to train in live combat situations, as the experience is invaluable. "I certainly have the sense that there is a much larger special operations presence in Iraq than is widely understood," Pike said. "This type of combat experience is precious."

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Iraq

Steyn: Down with stability

2006-03-23

Three years ago, in the weeks before the invasion of Iraq, it fell to the then prime minister of Canada to make the most witless public statement on the subject by any G7 leader. "Your president has won," Jean Chretien told ABC News in early March 2003. So there was no need to have a big ol' war because, with 250,000 American and British troops on his borders, Saddam was "in a box." "He won," said Mr. Chretien of Bush. "He has created a situation where Saddam cannot do anything anymore. He has troops at the door and inspectors on the ground... You're winning it big." That's easy for him to say, and committing other countries' armies to "contain" Iraq is easy for him to do. A quarter million soldiers cannot sit in the sands of Araby twiddling their thumbs indefinitely. "Containment" is not a strategy but the absence of strategy - and thug states understand it as such. In Saddam's case, he'd supposedly been "contained" since the first Gulf War in 1991, when Bush Sr. balked at finishing what he'd started. "Mr. President," Joe Biden, the Democrat Senator and beloved comic figure, condescendingly explained to Bush Jr. in 2002, "there is a reason your father stopped and did not go to Baghdad. The reason he stopped is he didn't want to be there for five years." By my math, that means the Americans would have been out in spring of 1996. Instead, 12 years on, in the spring of 2003 the USAF and RAF were still policing the no-fly zone, ineffectually bombing Iraq every other week. And, in place of congratulations for their brilliant "containment" of Saddam, Washington was blamed for UN sanctions and systematically starving to death a million Iraqi kids - or two million, according to which "humanitarian" agency you believe. The few Iraqi moppets who weren't deceased suffered, according to the Nobel-winning playwright and thinker Harold Pinter, from missing genitals and/or rectums that leaked blood contaminated by depleted uranium from Anglo-American ordnance. Touring Iraq a few weeks after the war, I made a point of stopping in every hospital and enquiring about this pandemic of genital-less Iraqis: not a single doctor or nurse had heard about it. Whether or not BUSH LIED!! PEOPLE DIED!!!, it seems that THE ANTI-WAR CROWDS SQUEAK!!! BUT NO RECTUMS LEAK!!!! A NEW study by the American Enterprise Institute suggests that, aside from the terrific press, continuing this policy would not have come cheap for America: if you object (as John Kerry did) to the $400-600 billion price tag since the war, another three years of "containment" would have cost around $300 billion - and with no end in sight, and the alleged death toll of Iraqi infants no doubt up around six million. It would also have cost more real lives of real Iraqis: Despite the mosque bombings, there's a net gain of more than 100,000 civilians alive today who would have been shoveled into unmarked graves had Ba'athist rule continued. Meanwhile, the dictator would have continued gaming the international system through the Oil-for-Food program, subverting Jordan, and supporting terrorism as far afield as the Philippines. So three years on, unlike Francis Fukuyama and the other moulting hawks, my only regret is that America didn't invade earlier. Yeah yeah, you sneer, what about the only WMD? Sorry. Don't care. Never did. My argument for whacking Saddam was always that the price of leaving him unwhacked was too high. He was the preeminent symbol of the September 10th world; his continuation in office testified to America's lack of will, and was seen as such by, among others, Osama bin Laden: In Donald Rumsfeld's words, weakness is a provocation. So the immediate objective was to show neighboring thugs that the price of catching America's eye was too high. The long term strategic goal was to begin the difficult but necessary transformation of the region that the British funked when they cobbled together the modern Middle East in 1922. THE JURY will be out on that for a decade or three yet. But in Iraq today the glass is seven-ninths full. That's to say, in 14 out of 18 provinces life is better than it's been in living memory. In December, 70% of Iraqis said that "life is good" and 69% were optimistic it would get even better in the next year. (Comparable figures in a similar poll of French and Germans: 29% and 15%.) I see the western press has pretty much given up on calling the Ba'athist dead-enders and foreign terrorists "insurgents" presumably because they were insurging so ineffectually. So now it's a "civil war." Remember what a civil war looks like? Generally, they have certain features: large-scale population movements, mutinous units in the armed forces, rival governments springing up, rebels seizing the radio station. None of these are present in Iraq. The slavering western media keep declaring a civil war every 48 hours but those layabout Iraqis persist in not showing up for it. True, there's a political stalemate in Baghdad at the moment, but that's not a catastrophe: if you read the very federal Iraqi constitution carefully, the ingenious thing about it is that it's not just a constitution but also a pre-nup. If the Sunni hold-outs are determined to wreck the deal, 85% of the Iraqi population will go their respective ways creating a northern Kurdistan that would be free and pro-western and a southern Shiastan that would still be the most democratic state in the Arab world. That outcome would also be in America's long-term interest. Indeed, almost any outcome would. In 2002, Amr Moussa, Secretary-General of the Arab League, warned that a US invasion of Iraq would "threaten the whole stability of the Middle East." Of course. Otherwise, why do it? Diplomats use "stability" as a fancy term to dignify inertia and complacency as geopolitical sophistication, but the lesson of 9/11 is that "stability" is profoundly unstable. The unreal realpolitik of the previous 40 years had given the region a stability unique in the non-democratic world, and in return they exported their toxins, both as manpower (on 9/11) and as ideology. Instability was as good a strategic objective as any. As Sam Goldwyn used to tell his screenwriters, I'm sick of the old clich s, bring me some new clich s. When the old clich s are Ba'athism, Islamism and Arafatism, the new ones can hardly be worse, and one or two of them might even buck the region's dismal history. The biggest buck for the bang was obvious: prick the Middle East bubble at its most puffed up point - Saddam's Iraq. YES, IT'S come at a price. In the last three years, 2,316 brave Americans have given their lives in Iraq, which is as high as US fatalities in Vietnam - in one month, May 1968. And, if the survival of Saddam embodied the west's lack of will, the European-Democratic Party-media hysteria over the last three years keeps that question open. But that doesn't change the facts on the ground. Instead of relying on the usual ineffectual proxies, Bush made the most direct western intervention in the region since General Allenby took Jerusalem in the Great War. Now on to the next stage.

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Great White North

Liberals around Martin seek scapegoats for campaign gone astray

2006-01-24

Canadian election update, with predictable seething, back-stabbing and ankle-biting by angry partisan liberals. Congratulations to the Canadian electorate and good luck to incoming PM Stephen Harper! With Paul Martin's hopes for a second mandate in tatters Monday night, and Liberal party recriminations well underway, the Liberal leader's closest advisers were indignant at suggestions they might be responsible for a campaign gone wrong. I? We? Are you mad? Certainly not! Never that! Absolute nonsense. They've long blamed the Jean Chretien administration for the sponsorship scandal that dragged them down throughout their 25 months in office. Now, the news media and the RCMP are the latest additions to their black list. Oooooo...they have a List. Does Shipman know about this? Scary. Martin's senior aides are privately fuming at the Mounties' decision to abandon a standard no-comment policy right in the middle of an election campaign. Liberal election strategy was knocked off kilter by the RCMP's stunning - and very public - announcement of a criminal probe into alleged insider trading at the Finance Department. "And we woulda got away with it too, if it weren't for those meddling loudmouth Mounties...who do they think they are, cops or somethin'?" The RCMP equivalent of a perp walk ... And advisers accuse the media of an obvious bias in favour of Stephen Harper's Conservatives. They say Liberal promises - such as a $4-billion plan to reduce tuition - went virtually unreported while the Conservatives scored a daily hit with their announcements. "How many Canadians have even heard about our tuition plan?" one senior Liberal sobbed into a mug of Molson's lamented. This like a bad scene from "The West Wing", when the staff has to fly somewhere and whines on the plane for days about their pet projects... But many within Liberal ranks feel no sympathy for those complaints, saying Martin's campaign was dysfunctional from the start. He hammered away on the Kyoto accord without putting forward a plan to meet its clean-air targets. He talked about national unity but offered no new ideas for bringing the country together. He used same-sex marriage and abortion to paint the Tories as rabid right-wingers - while conveniently ignoring the dozens of his own MPs who sided against his policy. The press spent eight weeks pointing out those glaring inconsistencies while ignoring many of Martin's attacks - or worse, dismissing them as fear-mongering. One Liberal MP said his leader should have projected a more positive and prime ministerial message by focusing on his economic platform. What are we doing talking about the notwithstanding clause?" one he asked rhetorically Monday. "One-third of your caucus voted against same-sex marriage - so get off your high horse." Liberals are also wondering why they delayed so many of their policy announcements until the second half of the campaign. The strategy was supposed to unfold like this: draw attention to Harper's weaknesses before Christmas, and kill any momentum he might have had by unrolling Liberal promises in January. It didn't quite work out that way. "We began our campaign after Christmas and, by then, it was over," said one well-connected Liberal. "We were constantly on the defensive, constantly reacting to Harper's announcements." But of all the things that grated on Liberal nerves, one thing reined supreme. Many of the Chretien-era Liberals who helped the party win three majority governments say they were essentially forced to the sidelines. "I have never been so disconnected from party headquarters in any campaign in my life. And it's the same story across the country," said the Quebec operative. "They pushed aside our most experienced organizers and replaced them with young guns who didn't know their butts from their elbows." Of course, the Chretien-era Liberals were radioactive from the Gomery scandal. One of the country's best-known Liberals used more diplomatic language to express the same grievance. He said the party must now reach out to the hundreds of grassroots organizers who were sidelined during - and after - Martin's leadership run. "In this campaign we had 60 per cent of our people sitting on their hands," he said. "We need to reunite the big Liberal family." One longtime Quebec organizer spent Monday working the phones, co-ordinating rides to polling stations - and planning the ouster of Martin or, at the very least, his entourage. "We have to clean house," said the party operative, who asked not to be named. "This campaign was one bungle after another."

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Home Front: WoT

Gitmo detainees charged with war crimes

2005-11-08

Five foreign terrorism suspects at the U.S. military prison in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, have been charged with war crimes and will face military trials, bringing to nine the number charged at Guantanamo to date, the Pentagon announced on Monday. Two of the five "enemy combatants" facing charges are from Saudi Arabia, the Pentagon said. The other three are from Algeria, Ethiopia and Canada. Nearly 500 detainees are being held at the Navy prison in Cuba. The charges were announced just hours after the Supreme Court said it would decide whether President George W. Bush has the power to create military tribunals to put Guantanamo prisoners on trial for war crimes, an important test of the administration's policy in the war on terrorism. The five suspects face charges ranging from murder to attacking civilians, the Pentagon said. The Canadian, a teen-ager, is accused of killing a U.S. soldier in Afghanistan. No dates have been set for trials of the five by U.S. military commissions, which critics have said do not give detainees the same rights as civilian courts. Hundreds of other detainees held at Guantanamo, most of them arrested in Afghanistan and many held for more than three years, have not yet been charged. The Guantanamo facility opened in January 2002, just months after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on the United States. The Bush administration has come under strong international criticism, including from the International Committee of the Red Cross, for holding prisoners for years without charging them. The administration counters that the terror suspects do not have rights guaranteed under the Geneva Conventions. The Pentagon on Monday identified the five charged as Ghassan Abdullah al Sharbi and Jabran Said bin al Qahtani of Saudi Arabia, Sufyian Barhoumi of Algeria, Binyam Ahmed Muhammad of Ethiopia and Omar Khadr of Canada. Khadr, a Canadian who recently turned 19 years old, was just 15 when he was sent to Guantanamo and is accused of killing a U.S. soldier in Afghanistan and with attempted murder. The other four are charged with conspiracy to commit murder, attacks on innocent civilians, destruction of property and terrorism. Barbara Olshansky, an attorney with the Center for Constitutional Rights who has represented Khadr and other Guantanamo prisoners, called it shocking that the charges were announced on the day the Supreme Court said it would review the legality of military tribunals. "The fact that they've seen fit to designate people for trial by military commission when the very constitutionality of the tribunal is up before the Supreme Court just evinces the most blatant disdain for the judicial branch and the separation of powers principle," Olshansky said. Khadr is the son of suspected al Qaeda financier Ahmed Said Khadr, who was born in Egypt and jailed in Pakistan in 1996 for alleged involvement in an Egyptian Embassy bombing before being freed at the request of Jean Chretien, Canadian prime minister at the time. The elder Khadr was killed in a 2003 shootout with Pakistani security forces at an al Qaeda compound. The four detainees charged earlier include Australian David Hicks, two Yemenis and a Sudanese. Hicks' trial, put on hold last year because of federal court rulings over Guantanamo, is set to resume on Nov. 18. Dates have not been set for trials of the other three men. Spurning a request by U.N. human rights investigators, U.S. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said last week that the United States would not allow them to meet with detainees at Guantanamo. Rumsfeld also told a Pentagon news conference that prisoners at the naval base were staging a hunger strike that began in early August as a successful ploy to attract media attention. The military said last week that 27 detainees were engaging in the hunger strike, including 24 receiving forced-feedings. But detainees' lawyers estimated that about 200 were taking part and that the strike was a protest of the prisoners' conditions and lack of legal rights.

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Home Front: WoT

US charges five Guantanamo detainees with war crimes

2005-11-08

Five foreign terrorism suspects at the U.S. military prison in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, have been charged with war crimes and will face military trials, bringing to nine the number charged at Guantanamo to date, the Pentagon announced on Monday. Two of the five "enemy combatants" facing charges are from Saudi Arabia, the Pentagon said. The other three are from Algeria, Ethiopia and Canada. The charges were announced just hours after the Supreme Court said it would decide whether President George W. Bush has the power to create military tribunals to put Guantanamo prisoners on trial for war crimes, an important test of the administration's policy in the war on terrorism. The five suspects face charges ranging from murder to attacking civilians, the Pentagon said. No dates have been set for trials of the five by U.S. military commissions, which critics have said do not give detainees the same rights as civilian courts. Hundreds of other detainees held at Guantanamo, most of them arrested in Afghanistan and many held for more than three years, have not yet been charged. The Guantanamo facility opened in January 2002, just months after the September 11, 2001, attacks on the United States. The Bush administration has come under strong international criticism, including from the International Committee of the Red Cross, for holding prisoners for years without charging them. The administration counters that the terror suspects do not have rights guaranteed under the Geneva Conventions. The Pentagon on Monday identified the five charged as Ghassan Abdullah al Sharbi and Jabran Said bin al Qahtani of Saudi Arabia, Sufyian Barhoumi of Algeria, Binyam Ahmed Muhammad of Ethiopia and Omar Khadr of Canada. Khadr, a Canadian who recently turned 19 years old, was just 15 when he was sent to Guantanamo and is accused of killing a U.S. soldier in Afghanistan and with attempted murder. The other four are charged with conspiracy to commit murder, attacks on innocent civilians, destruction of property and terrorism. Barbara Olshansky, an attorney with the Center for Constitutional Rights who has represented Khadr and other Guantanamo prisoners, called it shocking that the charges were announced on the day the Supreme Court said it would review the legality of military tribunals. "The fact that they've seen fit to designate people for trial by military commission when the very constitutionality of the tribunal is up before the Supreme Court just evinces the most blatant disdain for the judicial branch and the separation of powers principle," Olshansky said. Khadr is the son of suspected al Qaeda financier Ahmed Said Khadr, who was born in Egypt and jailed in Pakistan in 1996 for alleged involvement in an Egyptian Embassy bombing before being freed at the request of Jean Chretien, Canadian prime minister at the time. The elder Khadr was killed in a 2003 shootout with Pakistani security forces at an al Qaeda compound. The four detainees charged earlier include Australian David Hicks, two Yemenis and a Sudanese. Hicks' trial, put on hold last year because of federal court rulings over Guantanamo, is set to resume on November 18. Dates have not been set for trials of the other three men. Spurning a request by U.N. human rights investigators, U.S. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said last week that the United States would not allow them to meet with detainees at Guantanamo. Rumsfeld also told a Pentagon news conference that prisoners at the naval base were staging a hunger strike that began in early August as a successful ploy to attract media attention. The military said last week that 27 detainees were engaging in the hunger strike, including 24 receiving forced-feedings. But detainees' lawyers estimated that about 200 were taking part and that the strike was a protest of the prisoners' conditions and lack of legal rights.

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Great White North

Are U.S. tourists making a political statement?

2005-10-26

From the Calgary Sun. Why is tourism from the U.S. at a 25-year low this summer? Some have blamed the rise in gasoline prices. But that doesn't make sense. Travelling from city to city within the U.S. is often a longer drive than heading up to Canadian cities like Toronto, Montreal and Vancouver, all close to the border. More to the point, the sharp drop in tourism was measured in August -- before hurricane Katrina spiked gas prices. Some have blamed the strengthening Canadian dollar, saying it has eroded Canada's economic attraction to Americans. But that doesn't make sense, either. The Canadian dollar is worth roughly 85 U.S. cents today. Last October, it was 81 U.S. cents (and it was 84 U.S. cents last November). Is an extra cent or two really the reason we have the lowest tourism from the U.S. in a generation? If the dollar is the reason, then one would have expected to see this tourism drop last year -- because between October 2003 and October 2004, the Canadian dollar rose from 76 cents to 81 cents -- a bigger jump than in the past year. And in the year before that, the Canadian dollar positively leapt from 63 cents to 76 cents, or 13 cents in just one year. How can a three- or four-cent rise in the Canadian dollar over the past year be to blame for falling U.S. tourism, if an 18-cent rise in the previous two years didn't flatten tourism? The obvious answer is that American tourism wasn't hurt by gas prices or currency fluctuations. It was killed by something else that Americans are thinking about when it comes to Canada in the past year. Gee -- what could that be? Could it be that Paul Martin's policy of unrestrained anti-Americanism has had an effect? Could it be some Americans -- not all, but certainly enough to cause August's 5.9% drop -- have made a political statement with their vacation plans, just like they have stopped drinking French wine? Granted, Jean Chretien was anti-American, too. But not with the same bellicosity as Paul Martin. Chretien didn't threaten to divert oil exports from the U.S. to its hostile rival, China, as Martin did. Chretien was sullen toward the U.S. but he was predictable. Martin started as prime minister claiming to be pro-U.S., stating support for continental ballistic missile defence. Then, at the last minute, he did a spectacular about-face, embarrassing the U.S. as it was trying to build international support. True, Chretien was against the war in Iraq. But it was Martin who turned his opposition into a negative attack ad in the 2004 election, smearing the war as an aggressive and hostile venture. Was his target Stephen Harper or George W. Bush? Liberal strategists might claim privately that anti-Americanism is just a campaign trick for domestic political consumption, a way of appealing to NDP voters and demonizing the Conservatives. But Americans are noticing. Their media certainly noticed when Carolyn Parrish denounced George Bush, and wasn't removed from the Liberal caucus until she later committed the only unpardonable sin in the Liberal party, denouncing Martin himself. It's a little rich for Canadian officials to complain about a drop in U.S. tourism, after the spectacle of official anti-Americanism. As retaliations go, a drop in tourism is about as gentle as it gets. But if Martin and company start acting out their threats to interfere with Alberta's oil exports to the U.S., don't be surprised if Condoleezza Rice responds with something a little tougher than a drop in tourism -- say, a one-hour "security inspection" of every Canadian truck crossing the border.

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Great White North

Canadian PM apologises for scandal

2005-04-22

Canada's embattled Prime Minister Paul Martin has made a rare, nationally-televised address to apologise for a corruption scandal within his Liberal Party. The scandal hit headlines when an auditor-general's report found millions of dollars in a national unity fund had been diverted to Liberal-friendly advertising firms to promote federalism in Quebec following the narrow defeat of a separatist referendum in the French-speaking province. The scandal outraged the public when it was uncovered in 2002 and contributed to the Liberal Party's loss of its majority in parliament after federal elections last June. Calling it an "unjustifiable mess", the prime minister on Thursday pledged to call an election within 30 days of an inquiry report on the scandal. "Those who are in power are to be held responsible, and that includes me. I was the minister of finance and knowing what I have learned in the past year, I am sorry that I was not more vigilant," Martin said. "Those who have violated the public trust will be identified and will pay the consequences." Martin was finance minister under then-prime minister Jean Chretien when the corruption was alleged to have occurred.

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Great White North

Canadians Gearing Up for New Election

2005-04-21

Canadians may be dreading another election so soon after last year's vote but with the government effectively shut down by a corruption scandal in the prime minister's party, they will likely go to the polls again in June. The opposition Conservatives are set to call a no-confidence vote within weeks, intent on toppling Prime Minister Paul Martin's minority government by seizing on public disgust over his Liberal Party's corruption scandal. A successful motion in the House of Commons would dissolve the government and give candidates 36 days to campaign. Martin stunned political observers by announcing late Wednesday that he would address Canadians in a nationally televised broadcast on Thursday regarding the corruption scandal and the paralysis in Parliament. Though Martin had hoped to delay new elections until he sealed some key legislation, such as legalizing gay marriage and establishing a national child-care program, debate in the House has become so rancorous and reckless in recent days that the government has ground to a virtual halt. "They see the writing on the wall. We are going to have an election, that's why they're running around like chickens without heads in Ottawa," said Nelson Wiseman, associate professor of political science at the University of Toronto. "With Gomery having been so explosive, of course the Conservatives are smelling blood." John Gomery is the federal judge overseeing an inquiry in Montreal about allegations of kickbacks and money laundering by the Liberals under Martin's predecessor, former Prime Minister Jean Chretien. Wiseman said the motion to sink the government likely would be introduced May 19, triggering an election for June 27. Rest at link.

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Great White North

Scandal anger mounts in Canada

2005-04-10

As sensational revelations continue to pour out of a Canadian government corruption scandal enquiry, public anger is mounting across the country against the governing Liberals. The larger question will be whether that anger will translate into calls for a new election less than a year after Canadians last went to the polls. On Thursday explosive testimony from the previous week, by an advertising executive, was released for the first time, when the judge presiding over the public enquiry lifted a publication ban. The enquiry is investigating how millions of dollars were paid by the Liberal government in the late 1990s to advertising firms in the province of Quebec, after Canada's auditor-general concluded that little or no work was performed and the money was largely unaccounted for. 'All the way to the top' Under the leadership of the former Liberal Prime Minister, Jean Chretien, the so-called sponsorship programme was supposed to promote national unity in the primarily French-speaking province. According to the allegations released on Thursday, Jean Brault, the owner of the Groupaction advertising agency at the centre of the scandal, claimed that illegal campaign contributions worth millions of dollars were also channelled back to the Liberal party through an intricate system of false invoices and cash payments. And at the end of the week, a Groupaction employee alleged that some orders to the advertising agencies came directly from the Canadian prime minister's office. Mr Chretien, who has already appeared before the enquiry, denies any wrongdoing. His successor, Paul Martin, told the enquiry that although he was the country's finance minister at the time, he knew almost nothing about the programme and the missing millions. Tantalising ban Mr Martin, came to office vowing to get to the bottom of the scandal. But with each new revelation, public anger with the government seems to grow. The opposition parties will be trying to gauge just how disaffected Canadians are with the Liberal's teetering minority government in the days ahead The story was made all the more tantalising by the surreal sight of a media chomping at the bit, but being unable to report any details for several days, because of Justice Gomery's publication ban, imposed because he felt it could prejudice a future criminal trial. Instead Canadians heard such phrases as "explosive revelations considered so damaging they could topple the government" blaring out from their nightly TV news, without any details. No smoking gun Kady O'Malley, a journalist for the Ottawa parliamentary newspaper The Hill Times, says the media may have got carried away and become a victim of its own hype. "You've got to wonder whether journalists' imagination were going a little crazy as they imagined colour photos of Paul Martin handing over big bags with dollar signs on them to Groupaction," she said. "While there's definitely a lot of meat there and new things we didn't know before, the testimony generally supports what we've heard already." Ms O'Malley also believes the opposition parties did not get the one piece of evidence they were looking for. "If they thought there was a smoking gun linking the current prime minister, they were probably disappointed." she said. 'Soap opera' The part of Canada where the scandal has been the number one issue for political debate is French-speaking Quebec, because that is where all the alleged corruption took place. As most of the testimony has been in French it has been virtually treated as a ghoulish nightly TV soap opera by many in the province. After all, the sponsorship programme was introduced to quell the separatist sentiment that led to a 1995 Quebec referendum that came within a hair's breadth of choosing secession from the rest of the country. Benoit Dutrizac is a TV presenter for the French-language station Tele-Quebec. He said people in the province are disgusted by what they are hearing from the public inquiry. "To see all this quarrelling and money being wasted, I think they're really fed up with all this cheating and lying." Separatism 'waning' Mr Dutrizac said people in the province are also upset about how they might now be perceived by the rest of Canada. "Canadians from other provinces probably see Quebeckers as opportunists, liars and thieves. That hurts me. I'm sure that Quebeckers see these French-speaking witnesses at the enquiry every day and feel embarrassed." The Canadian media has even been debating whether the scandal will lead to renewed anti-federalist sentiment in the province. But Mr Dutrizac says that separatist sentiment is declining, despite the scandal. "The last time I checked about 40% of Quebeckers wanted a new deal with Canada," he said "But frankly, nobody cares about that any more really. I think people want to hear real solutions to real problems." Meanwhile the slightly more unreal world of Justice Gomery's public enquiry continues. He is expected to make his final report in November. It may however look like a crumpled footnote, if Canadians end up going to the polls between now and then. A glimmer of hope?

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