Khalil Dolaimi, President of the Defense Committee in Iraq
February 5, 2006
هيئة الإسناد للدفاع عن الرئيس صدام حسين ورفاقه وكافة الأسرى والمعتقلين في العراق
Defense and Support Committee ofPresident Saddam Hussein, his Comrades and all P.o.W.s and Detainees in Iraq. (ISNAD)
albasrah.net
PRESS RELEASE
Lawyer Khalil Dolaimi – President of the Defense Committee for President Saddam Hussein, his Comrades and all detainees in Iraq – announced that the American authorities have denied all the lawyers their right to meet with their clients. This act violated the provisions of the Geneva Conventions, International and Humanitarian Laws. President Saddam and his comrades are detained in very bad conditions. They are denied their rights to a fair and impartial trial. Moreover, they have been recently denied access to their defense lawyers.
We appeal to the whole international community to put pressure on the U.S. administration in order to release the kidnapped President – Mr.Saddam Hussein and his comrades- to withdraw the invading forces from Iraq and to restore back the status quo ante the 9th of April 2003.
Lawyer
Khalil Dolaimi
President of the Defense Committee in Iraq
February 5th, 2006
P.O. Box 841073 Amman, 11181 Jordan
Phone ; 00962(06)5166679 & Fax : 00962(06)5166679
شبكة البصرة
الاحد 6 محرم 1426 / 5 شباط 2006
يرجى الاشارة الى شبكة البصرة عند اعادة النشر او الاقتبا
Sunday, February 5, 2006
press release, saddam
bad bad syria
US blames Syria for not protecting embassies
The United States blamed Syria on Saturday for not protecting the Danish and Norwegian embassies that were torched by protesters angered about the depiction of the Prophet Mohammad (PBUH) in cartoons. ... “The United States condemns in the strongest terms the burning of the Danish and Norwegian embassies in Damascus, Syria today, which also damaged the Chilean and Swedish embassies,” White House spokesman Scott McClellan said.
“The government of Syria’s failure to provide protection to diplomatic premises, in the face of warnings that violence was planned, is inexcusable,” ... The US State Department has told the Syrian ambassador that Syria must protect all foreign embassies and citizens in Damascus from attack, ...
Saturday, February 4, 2006
from russia with love
Putin and Bush speeches: What a difference!
Some key words from the State of the Union adress by George Bush on Tuesday evening are 'rage,' 'enemies,' 'battlefield,' and 'hatred'
On one side, a President preaching pragmatism and harmony in international relations, showing a track record on internal policy which is second to none. In the opposite camp, more Bushspeak in the State of the Union address, which has become a masturbatory practice aiming to produce a mass collective orgasm of self-righteousness.
The key elements of President Putin's discourse on Tuesday morning were respect for international law, international relations based on a non-discriminatory basis, honouring the right of the integrity of fellow members of the international community, and an internal policy based on responsibility, pragmatism and competence.
Some key words from the State of the Union adress by George Bush on Tuesday evening are “rage”, “enemies”, “battlefield”, “hatred”, “fear”, five key words which ably summarise the policy of the Bush regime.
One might expect a President of the United States of America to focus his State of the Union speech on...the state of the union. Not so Bush, who took just a few seconds to launch into a misguided discourse about how important the USA's “leadership” in the international community is to defend the nation.
By stating this, George Bush pits his country against, and not with, the international community because this community is based upon the notion of brotherly relations as equals, nobody asked for a bullying Big Brother to “lead” them.
Not surprisingly, practically the first statement in this speech is September 11th, 2001. Despite this outrage against humanity, there is no mention of the thousands of innocent civilians in other countries murdered by the armed forces of which George Bush is Commander-in-Chief, no mention of the targeting of civilian infra-structures with his military hardware, no mention of the widespread practice of torture, the concentration camps, the disrespect for international law.
Instead, what we get from George Bush is absurd, puerile statements such as: “At the start of 2006, more than half the people of our world live in democratic nations. And we do not forget the other half – in places like Syria, Burma, Zimbabwe, North Korea and Iran...”
For the information of Mr. Bush “places like” Iran do not set up concentration camps in foreign lands, “places like” North Korea do not invade sovereign nations outside the auspices of international law, “places like” Syria do not use weapons of mass destruction against civilians, “places like” Zimbabwe do not lie at the UNO and “places like” Burma (Myanmar Republic for those who know what they're talking about) do not invade their neighbours, wire up people's testicles with electrodes, sodomise prisoners and set dogs on them.
If this is spreading freedom and democracy to protect the good people of the United States who voted for such practices, then the Bush regime has created a chasm between its people and the rest of the world, and let us describe this policy accurately, for what it is: it is a unilateral policy of aggression which purports to set the United States of America above the rest of the international community in a position where Washington does what it likes, when it likes and as it likes, syphoning off or controlling the resources of the international community for its own benefit.
This is not the discourse of an equal, loved and respected member of any community. It is the discourse of a pariah state, one whose arrogance and self-righteousness long ago clouded its vision and which will eventually be its downfall because it is cloaked in hatred.
A fitting epitaph to the Bush regime is the fact that many Latin Americans are striving to create the awareness in the international community that being “American” is not the same as being from the USA. After sullying the name of his country, after lying to his people and the international community, after disrespecting international law, George W. Bush has managed to make hundreds of millions of people ashamed to call themselves “Americans.”
“Places like” this have a name.
bush's daddy
Another Republican President wanted to spy on Americnas
(and Bush's daddy was involved)
saudis, tired of bush
Bush 'not sole agent for reform': Saudis
RIYADH (AFP) - Members of Saudi Arabia's Shura (consultative) Council said the kingdom was initiating reforms of its own volition and U.S. President George W. Bush should stop acting as if he were the "sole agent for reform" in the world.
"Saudi Arabia is the country that has been most responsive to demands for reform in the region, but reform, under the leadership of King Abdullah, is not linked to calls from the United States," Mohammad al-Zalfa told AFP.
"We don't want the U.S. president to ask the kingdom every now and then for a statement of account of what it did on reform," he said after Bush called on allies Egypt and Saudi Arabia to expand political reform. ...
"We urge President Bush and his administration not to interfere as if they were the sole agents for reform in the world." ....
chirac, anti american internet
Fear of an American Internet
Markus Dettmer and Marcel Rosenbach
France is hoping to protect Europe from the growing influence of US Internet companies like Google by creating a rival state-backed search engine. ...
Even if it's not clear when exactly French President Jacques Chirac blew his stack, he certainly decided at some point that enough is enough. But it wasn't the prospect of cutting European Union farm aid that got him riled up, nor was he railing against rogue states and threatening them with France's ageing nuclear arsenal. No, the target of Chirac's ire this time was much more nefarious: American dominance of the Internet. ..."There is the threat that tomorrow, what is not available online will be invisible to the world." ...
ralph klein, comedian
Ralph the comedian
Who else? Klein named Alberta’s funniest person
BILL GRAVELAND The Canadian Press
CALGARY — From dinosaur farts to eastern creeps and bums—Albertans like to laugh at what is truly Ralph’s world.
The affable, sometimes controversial Alberta premier is often the target of editorial cartoonists, who like to paint him as a likable buffoon. And apparently that’s just fine in Alberta.
As part of a project marking Alberta’s centennial, a non-profit group called the Cheers Project Humour Language Society on Friday named Ralph Klein the funniest person in Alberta in the last 100 years.
It’s not at all clear, however, that Klein means to be funny when he shoots from the lip.
As mayor of Calgary, he gained national attention by blaming "eastern bums and creeps" for being a strain on the city’s resources and for an escalating crime rate.
Regarding global climate change, Klein suggested in a speech in 2002 that it was just as likely that "dinosaur farts" caused the Ice Age.
On the chances of being infected by mad cow disease, the premier once said, "You would have to eat 10 billion meals of brains, spinal cords, ganglia, eyeballs and tonsils" to get it. Then he pretty well dared the Japanese to prove him wrong.
"I would offer $5 billion to have a Japanese person to come over here and eat nothing but Alberta beef for a year and if he gets mad cow disease I would be glad to give him $5 billion — make it $10 billion Canadian," he said.
Klein also once suggested that Alberta would give "a bus ticket to Vancouver" to destitute people so they could exploit the more generous social assistance of British Columbia. ...
jesus and free speech
What Would Jesus Do?
Remi Kanazi
Picture this: A cartoon of Jesus, with his pants down, smiling, raping a little boy. The caption above it reads “Got Catholicism?” Or how about a picture of a Rabbi with blood dripping from his mouth after bludgeoning a small Palestinian boy with a knife shaped like the Star of David—the caption reads “The Devil’s Chosen Ones.”
I wonder if people around the world would just consider this free speech? Of course, some would condone or agree with one, two or all three, while others would say “it’s free speech,” although they “find it offensive and in poor taste.” But do you honestly think media outlets such as the BBC, Le Monde, or any media outlet in Copenhagen would pick up these cartoons? The outrage would begin instantly and advertisers would pullout. Yet, those in Denmark and their supporters around Europe call it freedom of speech to have a cartoon of the prophet Mohammed—who is not supposed be depicted to prevent idolatry according to clerical interpretation of the Koran—with a turban shaped like a bomb on his head.
The double standard the West has set for the rest of the world is disgusting. We live in a foolish bubble where we think we are free to say or do whatever we want without consequence. I remember watching Saturday Night Live when Sinead O’Connor ripped up a picture of the Pope. The furor was enormous, which led to NBC receiving a 2.5 million dollar fine by the Federal Communications Commission. Imagine if it was a picture of Jesus—the US Congress would have made the Teri Schiavo intervention look like a joke.
Where are the pictures of the dead soldiers, the dead women and children in the Western media? Some governments won’t allow it and other media outlets just fear the backlash. When I need journalistic honesty, I have to turn to Al Jazeera, why is that? One cannot even deny the Holocaust in Europe, question 9/11 in America (unless you want the Ward Churchill treatment), but the West claims they’re all about free speech.
It is no coincidence the Israeli/Palestinian conflict is grossly pro-Israeli. It is no coincidence that you never heard the full quotes of Iranian president Ahmadinejad’s comments on Israel and the Holocaust—no matter the basis. And it is no coincidence that Arab analysts who are against the war in Iraq, the occupation of Palestine, and America’s “war on terror” are insufficiently represented in the European press.
So what are Muslims to do? Violence is out of the question—that would be “an overreaction.” So why not boycott? That would be a mistake as well, according to the European Justice Commissioner Franco Frattini who stated, “Calls for boycotts or for restraints on the freedom of the press are completely unacceptable.” What Frattini meant to say is that Muslims should choose capitalism over faith. Maybe the European Union will clarify through a cartoon—Mohammed selling the Koran for ten bucks in a Danish pawn shop. But boycotting is a friend of the West. However, they more conveniently title it “sanctions.” I’m sure we all remember the 500,000 Iraqi women and children that died because of the UN boycotts on Iraq after the first Gulf War.
Is Europe is willing to continue this new trend against boycotts? Will the European community call on Israel to show Paradise Now in non-independent theatres? It’s the only way to stop the boycott of Palestinian freedom of speech. Will the European Union resume aide to the Hamas-led Palestinian government tomorrow? Since Hamas’ call for the destruction of Israel is protected under the clause of freedom of speech and the group stopped suicide attacks 18 months ago, it only seems logical.
If Denmark, Norway, France, Germany and the rest of Europe believe in the freedom of speech, it should include all instances and all religions. These nations are carelessly defending their hypocrisy and reinforcing the double standard that alienates Muslims and desecrates the Muslim faith, under the guise of free speech. I guess only one question remains for small Norwegian Christian newspapers like Magazinet that reprinted the cartoons: What would Jesus do?
tory skeltons
Flaherty owes money to Ontario Tory party
ROBERT BENZIE
Debt left from leadership bid
New MP touted for Harper cabinet
The man touted as a possible finance minister in Stephen Harper's government owes the Ontario Progressive Conservative Party as much as $64,000, the Toronto Star has learned.
us and their border
Canada dismisses U.S. border wall
Canada has no interest in a new U.S. initiative to study building a security wall along the border, officials said on the weekend.
U.S. to use air patrols along Montana border
The United States will be using Blackhawk helicopters and planes along the Montana border with Alberta and Saskatchewan to watch for terrorists, drug-runners and illegal immigrants. ...
Canadian officials had little comment about the U.S. plan. "Canada recognizes that every country has the right to protect its borders," said ...Canada Border Services Agency.
US to fingerprint millions of foreign visitors
Officials from the department of homeland security claim that the collection of biometric data poses no threat to legitimate travellers.
saddam, us backed crimes
Defending Saddam Hussein
KANWAL TARIQ HAMEED
4 February 2006
A BAHRAINI lawyer has joined the defence team of former Iraqi president Saddam Hussein, but says he is boycotting court hearings until the trial is held in an independent international court where safety is guaranteed to all involved.
... represent the former Iraqi ruler to fight what he called "modern-day imperialism" - accusing the US and UK of deciding people are criminals and orchestrating legal proceedings to prove it.
Mr Burshaid also believes Saddam is innocent ... In fact, he claimed the incident was started by an American-backed insurgency. ..."But anybody who says he is not must do so in a real court, ... everything must be proved. "A real judge must file a real decision." ...
a sham to justify a verdict that has already been decided and alleged that the US and UK promised to free Saddam if he stopped insurgents operating in Iraq - which he said proved they are not interested in an "honest" trial.
"The British and Americans recently made an offer to Saddam Hussein," he said. "They said: 'If you go and stop the (civil) war in Iraq we can release you and we don't want anything from you.' ... "Up until now he has refused - he said that when he is on television he will tell them to make more war because everything there is for Iraqi people and not for outsiders who have stolen oil, stolen everything from this people. ... "Now everything is destroyed in Iraq. ... "Other companies come into Iraq to make business for Americans and British. "This Iraq must be for its own people, not for other people." ...
Judge Abdel Rahman then refused the lawyers' request for more time to prepare their defence, ... "He wants to hurry, finish this case and hurry to punish Saddam Hussein, but this is not fair. ...we must take the case outside Iraq to the International Criminal Court - like (former Yugoslav President Slobodan) Milosevic and others - because there is safety ...
"Arabic people, international people, Islamic people want the facts. ... "There are many people who do bad things. Why are they not making a case against them? They have also stolen money, stolen the country (Iraq). This is the situation for the Americans and the British ... "We do not follow these two countries and make bad things in our countries.
"British and Americans want something and they make the law accordingly." ... He claimed the newly appointed judge was biased because he is a Kurd from Halabja.
Mr Burshaid accused foreign powers of being implicated in other events that took place in Iraq - not just the Dujail incident. ... Among them is the Halabja massacre, in which an estimated 5,000 civilians were reportedly killed by poison gas. ... He also slammed the lack of an investigation into the murder of two of Saddam's lawyers in November last year. ...
"There are two kinds of people - those who know what I mean about a real international court for all human being's rights and those who don't know anything and say Saddam Hussein is a killer and must be killed without a court." ... Mr Burshaid's decision to represent Saddam ... his belief that the former dictator should be given a fair trial. ...
al-jazeera succeeding
Al-Jazeera Succeeding Under Pressure
Dahr Jamail
DOHA, Qatar, Feb 3 (IPS) - Its foreign bureaus were bombed by U.S. warplanes, it is banned from reporting from four Middle East countries - and Al-Jazeera is only growing in popularity.
... tragic path has led to the success of Al-Jazeera since its launch in November 1996. Its difficulties have also been its success; the ban from reporting in Iraq, Iran, Saudi Arabia and Algeria has done nothing to reduce a fierce loyalty from more than 40 million viewers.
The Al-Jazeera bureau in Afghanistan was bombed by U.S. warplanes in 2001. During the invasion of Iraq, U.S. tanks shelled Al-Jazeera journalists in a Basra hotel. Shortly after, its office in Baghdad was hit by a missile from a U.S. warplane; correspondent Tareq Ayoub was killed.
Al-Jazeera reporters have been detained by U.S. forces and placed in prisons in Iraq and Guantanamo Bay in Cuba. It has weathered verbal attacks from U.S. defence secretary Donald Rumsfeld and from government officials in many countries in the Middle East.. ...
anthrax, got it right or wrong
US man charged over anthrax letters
A man accused of mailing hundreds of anthrax hoax letters, including one to George Bush, the US president, has been arrested. The arrest came two days after he was charged with threatening to use a weapon of mass destruction.
america and the slurs
Tit for tat: U.S. and Venezuela trade expulsions and slurs
In a new low for U.S.-Venezuelan relations, populist president Hugo Chavez has ordered a U.S. naval attaché out of the South American country, accusing him of talking up the idea of a military coup.
Meanwhile, U.S. Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld compared Chavez's rise to Hitler's.
With Navy Cmdr. John Correa under an expulsion order in Caracas, the Bush administration responded on Friday by giving a Venezuelan diplomat, Jenny Figueredo Frias, 72 hours to leave the U.S.
In a speech on Thursday, Chavez accused Correa of encouraging Venezuelan military officers to consider overthrowing his government, and of passing secret information from such officers to the Pentagon.
It was unclear how seriously to take the charges. Chavez has often accused the Americans of plotting against him. But encouraging coups against leftist regimes has been a staple of U.S. policy in Latin America. Chavez survived an attempted coup in 2002.
Also on Thursday, Rumsfeld shared his thoughts about the Venezuelan leader with reporters in Washington.
"We've got Chavez in Venezuela with a lot of oil money," he said. "He's a person who was elected legally, just as Adolf Hitler was elected legally, and then consolidated power, and now is, of course, working closely with Fidel Castro and Mr. [Evo] Morales and others. It concerns me."
Chavez was to be in Cuba on Friday to meet with Castro and receive an award. He has styled himself a leader of the continent's recent crop of left-leaning regimes, including that of Bolivia's Morales, that country's first indigenous president.
Friday, February 3, 2006
as long as it isn't the us
Alberta wants India to join its oil sands strategy
Feb 3, 2006
Jeffrey Jones
CALGARY, Alberta (Reuters) - Alberta welcomes plans by Indian state oil companies to invest $1 billion in the Canadian province's burgeoning oil sands sector, as long as they also join efforts to study processing options for the heavy crude, the provincial energy minister said on Friday.
"We have been open to investment," Alberta Energy Minister Greg Melchin said. "As long as it doesn't detract from what the Alberta and Canadian objectives are, then that certainly could be satisfactory."
Faced with a frenzy of investment that could triple oil sands output in the next decade, the Alberta government is working on a strategy to integrate development with processing and refining in hopes of preventing a glut of raw crude.
Melchin met this week with a delegation of Indian energy officials charged by their government to search out new foreign reserves to help fuel one of the world's fastest-growing economies.
The delegation leader, M.S. Srinivasan, secretary of the Ministry of Petroleum & Natural of the delegation, told Reuters that state-run firms, such as Oil and Natural Gas Corp. and Indian Oil Corp. Ltd., aim to spend $1 billion on early-stage oil sands projects over the next year.
"Our objective in Alberta is to not just be raw resource extractors," Melchin told reporters. "So if this works for India, how does it also work for Alberta? How do we upgrade that so it's not just bitumen? Do we have an opportunity?"
Melchin said he gave the same message to Chinese state oil firms, which made a handful of oil sands investments in 2005.
Bitumen is the tar-like crude that encases the sand granules in northeastern Alberta's Athabasca oil sands region.
It is extracted and mixed with lighter hydrocarbons to be sold directly into the market, or "upgraded" at large processing plants into light oil, which refineries use to make gasoline and other petroleum products.
Some developers, such as Imperial Oil Ltd., have warned that plans to build too many multibillion-dollar upgraders will be harmful to an industry already pressured by a severe construction labor shortage.
However, expectations for a sharp increase in production amid tight world supplies of conventional crude mean Alberta must keep processing options on its agenda, Melchin said.
"We only produce a million barrels a day out of the oil sands today. If in a decade we're at three million, no one wants bitumen -- there are not enough canoes in the world to patch up just with bitumen," he said. "You've got to have something to get to more of an end-use product."
Long before Alberta's oil sands were developed on a mass scale for energy, native Canadians used the gooey crude to seal canoes.
bush, after canada's oil
Fri Feb 3, 2006
Tom Doggett
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President George W. Bush could get closer to his goal of cutting U.S. dependence on Middle East crude -- but it won't be his futuristic plan to run cars on fuel made from wood chips or hydrogen that will do the trick.
It's Canada.
Bush laid out a plan in his State of the Union speech earlier this week to slash crude imports from the Middle East 75 percent by 2025, replacing the oil with alternative fuels at home.
But yet-to-be released numbers from the U.S. Energy Information Administration, the analytical arm of the Department of Energy, show that crude from Canada's Alberta oil sands will help cut U.S. Mideast oil dependence by half in two decades.
When Bush called for the cut in his speech he was targeting the current forecast of 6 million barrels per day of Mideast oil in 2025, hoping to cut it down to around 1.5 million barrels a day.
New estimates the EIA plans to release later this month predict America's Mideast imports will be 3 million barrels a day in two decades, an EIA official told Reuters.
The new data will show U.S. oil imports from Canada surging to 2.7 million barrels a day in 2025 from 1.6 million barrels currently. About three out of four of those barrels will be from Alberta's oil sands, where record oil prices have created a boom in investment.
There is debate within the agency on whether the United States could take all of Canada's oil sands production, which the EIA estimates will be 3.2 million barrels a day in two decades.
"If (the United States) receives it all, which we don't have in our forecast, it could reduce even more our dependence on the Middle East" oil supply, the EIA official said, speaking on condition of anonymity.
But other countries are interested in Canada's oil sands too, which could stymie the forecasts.
India, which is searching for crude supplies to feed its growing economy, said this week its oil companies would invest $1 billion over the next year to develop Canada's oil sands.
"Asian markets have shown a lot of interest (in Canadian oil sands), the EIA official said. "It's not a slam bang that we'll take it all."
About 95 percent of Canada's estimated 179 billion barrels of proven oil reserves are oil sands deposits in Alberta, according to the EIA.
Oil sands contain deposits of bitumen, a heavy, viscous oil. Once extracted, lighter hydrocarbons must be added to the bitumen so it can flow through pipelines.
Upgraders then process the bitumen into "synthetic crude." In general, it takes about 1.16 barrels of bitumen to make 1 barrel of synthetic crude, the EIA said.
allan rock, pulls out
Yet another contender quits Liberal race
OTTAWA (Reuters) - Former cabinet minister Allan Rock has become the fourth prominent contender to pull out of the race to lead the Liberal Party in the wake of last week's election loss, newspapers reported on Friday.
hamas, smart, women vote
RAMALLAH, West Bank -- Pollsters now say that the secret to Hamas' victory in Palestinian elections was support from women, who voted in record numbers. One reason was Hamas' army of women campaigners - veiled university students knocking on doors and promising housewives a better future.
pooh and the queen to party
Alan Hamilton, London
February 03, 2006
IT will be like finding a golden ticket to Willie Wonka's chocolate factory. But instead of oompaloompas and the horrid Veruca Salt, there will be Bob the Builder, Noddy, Postman Pat, Mr Happy, Mary Poppins, the Big Friendly Giant, Paddington Bear, the White Rabbit and many more, including, of course, Harry Potter.
Winnie-the-Pooh celebrates his 80th birthday this year, and so does the Queen.
To celebrate both her longevity and the worldwide success of British children's literature, the Queen is inviting 2000 children aged between 4 and 14 to a summer party in her own back garden at Buckingham Palace on June 25.
There may not be Wonka chocolate bars, but there will be a picnic created by Jamie Oliver and a 75-minute stage show to be broadcast live on the BBC featuring not only some of the best-known characters from children's fiction, but also the real JKRowling and the real Sophie Dahl, granddaughter of the BFG's creator. The palace press conference was surreal, with Paddington Bear and the Queen of Hearts sitting among sober-suited reporters, all watching a video of Bob the Builder on his mobile phone accepting a contract from the Queen to build a stage for the party.
He's got until June so, unlike most builders, he'd better not disappear for weeks to another job.
For the event, the palace garden will be transformed into a fantasy world featuring characters and scenes from the best-loved children's fiction. A palace official said: "The Queen was keen that her birthday should not be seen as a jubilee, so we have been looking for new and original ways of engaging all ages."
There is a serious purpose behind the celebration: to encourage literacy among children.
Chris Meade, director of Booktrust, said: "We are in a golden age of children's literature, and this seems a fantastic way of putting it in front of children."
martin, proud and good-luck
Outgoing Prime Minister Paul Martin said he’s proud of his accomplishments in two years as prime minister.(JONATHAN HAYWARD / CP)
.... Martin said he hopes to do some international work, possibly for the United Nations, and to continue working to advance the quality of life for aboriginal Canadians.
Among his accomplishments as prime minister, Martin cited:
•The Kelowna accord, a $5-billion agreement with the premiers and aboriginal leaders on aboriginal health, housing and education.
•A $41-billion deal with the provinces to revitalize the health-care system.
•A $5-billion program to create a national daycare and early learning program.
•A multibillion-dollar transfer of cash to municipalities to help pay for roads, sewers and other projects.
But big chunks of Martin’s prime ministerial legacy will likely be quickly dismantled by Harper.
Martin’s legacy as finance minister, however, promises to be more enduring. Martin boasted that the country’s enviable economic strength and huge budget surpluses makes Canada unique in the world.
dryden, one game to another
Dryden ponders leading Liberals Former hockey star gains backers
Feb. 3, 2006
OTTAWA—Ken Dryden's first big fight in federal politics was for a national child-care system. Now many fans of the old goalie are hopeful his second big battle will be for the leadership of the Liberal party. ... But Dryden, 58, says he's not ready to make any decisions.
you go fight
You want a war? Then you go fight it
Jan. 27
The military is having problems enlisting new recruits. Our brave men and women in the armed forces are serving tour after tour in war zones (Iraq, Afghanistan), facing death every day, yet 57% of Americans at home approve of a new war. Where are these brave people, husbands, wives, sons and daughters? I don't see them getting in line and being the first to enlist in the face of this new threat. Please don't let somebody else fight, kill or die for you. Do the honorable thing; stand behind your own words and enlist. Your nearest recruiting center is waiting with open arms.
JAIME TERRAZAS
Sherman Oaks, USA
hopes for humanity
Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, from those who are cold and are not clothed. The world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children.
Dwight D. Eisenhower
canadian aid
Canada gives most to Afghanistan, aid official says
02 Feb 2006
Afghanistan gets more bilateral aid from Canada than any other country, a development official says. .... It's funding work that includes removing mines, helping facilitate elections, destroying heavy weapons, and improving the lives of rural dwellers through financial programs, particularly ones that target women.
us doesn't like our border
Canadian border worries American officials
Feb. 2, 2006
WASHINGTON (CP) — U.S. officials said they're slightly more worried about the border with Canada than Mexico when it comes to terrorists crossing into the United States.
"My impression is that perhaps our border with Canada has, to some degree, been of a bit greater concern than that with Mexico," John Negroponte, director of national intelligence, told a U.S. ...
U.S. politicians agreed late last year to study the "use of physical barriers" along the northern border, something business groups call absurd. ...
no toking, amsterdam signs
Amsterdam selling new 'no toking' signs
democracy
Democracy Isn't For Our Friends Only
Robert Fisk
Oh no, not more democracy again! Didn't we award this to those Algerians in 1990? And didn't they reward us with that nice gift of an Islamist government -- and then they so benevolently canceled the second round of elections? Thank goodness for that!
True, the Afghans elected a round of representatives, albeit they included warlords and murderers. But the Iraqis last year elected the Dawa party in Baghdad, which was responsible -- let us not speak this in Washington, D.C. -- for most of the kidnappings of Westerners in Beirut in the '80s, the car bombing of the (late) emir and the United States and French embassies in Kuwait.
Now, horror of horrors, the Palestinians have elected the wrong party. They were supposed to have given their support to the pro-Western, corrupt, absolutely pro-American Fatah, which had promised to "control" them, rather than to Hamas, which said they would represent them. And, bingo, they have chosen the wrong party again.
Result: 76 of 132 seats. That just about does it. What are we to do with people who don't vote the way they should?
In the 1930s, the British would lock up the Egyptians who turned against the government of King Farouk. Thus they began to set the structure of anti-democratic governance that was to follow. The French imprisoned the Lebanese government, which demanded the same. Then the French left Lebanon.
But we have always expected the Arab governments to do what they were told.
So today, we are expecting the Syrians to behave, the Iranians to kowtow to our nuclear desires (though they have done nothing illegal) and the North Koreans to surrender their weapons (though they actually do have them, and therefore cannot be attacked).
Now let the burdens of power lie heavy on the shoulders of the party. Now let the responsibilities of people lie upon them. We British would never talk to the Irish Republican Army. But in due course, Gerry Adams came to take tea with the queen. The Americans would never speak to their enemies in North Vietnam. But they did. In Paris.
No, al-Qaida will not do that. But the Iraqi leaders of the insurgency in Mesopotamia will. They talked to the British in 1920, and they will talk to the Americans in 2006.
Back in 1983, Hamas talked to the Israelis. They spoke directly to them about the spread of mosques and religious teaching. The Israeli army boasted about this on the front page of the Jerusalem Post. At that time, it looked like the Palestine Liberation Organization was not going to abide by the Oslo resolutions. There seemed nothing wrong, therefore, with continuing talks with Hamas. So how come talks with Hamas now seem so impossible?
Not long after the Hamas leadership had been hurled into southern Lebanon, a leading member of its organization heard me say that I was en route to Israel.
"You'd better call Shimon Peres," he told me. "Here's his home number."
The phone number was correct -- proof members of the hierarchy of the most extremist Palestinian movements were talking to senior Israeli politicians.
The Israelis know well the Hamas leadership. And the Hamas leadership know well the Israelis. There is no point in journalists suggesting otherwise. Our enemies invariably turn out to be our greatest friends, and our friends turn out to be our enemies.
How terrible to speak with those who have killed our sons. How unspeakable to converse with those who have our brothers' blood on their hands. No doubt that is how Americans who believed in independence felt about the Englishmen who fired upon them.
It will be for the Iraqis to deal with al-Qaida. This is their burden. Not ours. Yet throughout history, we have ended up talking to our enemies.
We talked to the representatives of the emperor of Japan. In the end, we had to accept the surrender of the German Reich from the successor to Adolf Hitler. And today, we trade happily with the Japanese, the Germans and the Italians.
The Middle East was never a successor to Nazi Germany or Fascist Italy, despite the rubbish talked by President Bush and British Prime Minister Tony Blair. How long will it be before we can throw away the burden of this most titanic of wars and see our future, not as our past, but as a reality?
Surely, in an age when our governments no longer contain men or women who have experienced war, we must now lead a people with the understanding of what war means. Not Hollywood. Not documentary films. Democracy means real freedom, not just for the people we choose to have voted into power.
And that is the problem in the Middle East.
birds drunk, really
Alcohol, not avian flu, contributed to the deaths of 40 songbirds in Vienna last month, Austrian veterinarians have found.
Experts initially feared the birds were killed by bird flu. However, tests showed their livers were damaged from intoxication. They were all been found with their necks broken after flying into windows across the city.
The livers of the birds resembled those of "chronic alcoholics," Sonja Wehsely, a spokeswoman for Vienna's veterinary authority, told Austrian television on Thursday.
The birds apparently got tipsy gorging on fermented berries.
Alcohol from the rotting berries may have caused the birds to become disoriented and fly into the windows, she said.
It's estimated 100 million birds die each year across North America after crashing into glass office buildings.
danish boycott
Thursday 02 February 2006
The Danish prime minister has invited foreign ambassadors to a meeting on Friday to discuss a growing international row over a series of cartoons depicting the Prophet Muhammad. ... The dispute over the images, first published in September in Denmark, then again in January in Norway, has prompted a boycott of Danish and Norwegian products by Muslims. ... Earlier this week he also refused to apologise for the cartoons, saying the newspaper had not intended to upset Muslims.
7th grader and secret service
R.I. School Essay Brings in Secret Service
Feb 02WEST WARWICK, R.I.
The Associated Press
The Secret Service is investigating a seventh-grader who wrote a school essay that authorities say advocated violence against President Bush, talk show host Oprah Winfrey and others.
The boy's homework assignment for English class was to write what he would do on a perfect day. In addition to the president and Winfrey, the boy wrote that violence should be directed at executives of Coca- Cola and Wal-Mart, police and school officials said.
"His perfect day would be to see the destruction of these people," Schools Superintendent David Raiche said.
The Secret Service investigation is ongoing, but the essay may have been a "cry for help," said Thomas M. Powers, resident agent in charge in Providence. Threatening the president is a felony, he said.
Authorities would not identify the boy or his teacher or release a copy of the essay. He was not arrested, police Detective Sgt. Fernando Araujo said.
"It wasn't any detailed, minute-by-minute plan," Araujo said. "It didn't meet the criteria for a criminal charge."
The boy has been temporarily barred from school, but as a mental health rather than disciplinary precaution, Raiche said.
Thursday, February 2, 2006
does saddam deserve, fair trial
Saddam trial judge sentenced to life in jail in absentia
February 1, 2006
According to sources within the Jordanian group of lawyers defending Saddam Hussein at the alleged Dujail massacre trials in Baghdad, presiding judge Rauf Rashid Abd al-Rahman had been formerly sentenced in absentia to a life sentence by the Baathist government.
Lawyers for the ousted president have filed a motion to have the judge replaced citing obvious bias and zealotry against his former adjudicators.
He has a biased agenda and he is setting it, the lawyers set.
Just the latest in what has become a farce and mockery of justice.
afghanistan five years later
Mike Whitney
February 1, 2006
Five years after toppling the fanatical Taliban, Hamid Karzai is expected to sign an agreement for economic assistance with more than 60 donor countries. The Afghanistan Compact is just the latest of many plans to restore security to the war-torn nation and revive the fragile economy. It is a poignant reminder that the Bush administration’s promises to rebuild the country and establish democracy have never been realized.
Afghanistan has been a policy disaster from the get-go. The country is ravaged by war and unemployment, security beyond the capital of Kabul is virtually nonexistent, and malnutrition rates are higher among children anywhere other than sub-Saharan Africa. Now, Karzai, who has seen his funding from the US consistently slashed year after year, must take his begging bowl to the world community; asking for the crumbs they can spare to bandage his failed-state together.
Afghanistan excels in one thing alone; the production and export of opium, a booming business which now provides 90% of the world’s heroin.
Is this what Bush had in mind when he promised Americans to rebuild and democratize the battle-scarred country; a modern-day drug-colony, occupied by legions of indifferent volunteers who rarely venture beyond their US controlled compounds?
His promise of a Marshall Plan was similar to all of Bush’s promises; just more hot air hissssssing from a punctured tire.
After overthrowing the Taliban Bush made this commitment to the people of Afghanistan:
"We know that true peace will only be achieved when we give the Afghan people the means to achieve their own aspirations…We're working hard in Afghanistan. We're clearing minefields. We're rebuilding roads. We're improving medical care. And we will work to help Afghanistan to develop an economy that can feed its people without feeding the world's demand for drugs…By helping to build an Afghanistan that is free from this evil and is a better place in which to live, we are working in the best traditions of George Marshall. Marshall knew that our military victory against enemies in World War II had to be followed by a moral victory that resulted in better lives for individual human beings."
"Marshall Plan?" "Building roads?" "Improving medical care?" "Developing the economy?"
Bush’s penchant for hyperbole has not been lost on the Afghani people.
"The new Afghan government promised us new schools, clinics, water pumps, but it has done nothing at all. People are so disappointed. At least the Taliban would grade the roads, build madras’s, while this government has done nothing," said Nyamatullah, Zabul tribal leader.
"Nothing at all" is a fitting summary of the Afghanistan failure. The Bush administration had no intention of rebuilding or democratizing the country, rather the full thrust of the American effort has been to paper-over the obvious deficiencies of the policy with glowing media reports. The western media has done an impressive job in convincing the American people that progress is being made in Afghanistan when, in fact, the country continues to languish in destitution and chaos.
On a recent trip, Secretary Rumsfeld said that Afghanistan was "a model" of a growing democracy.
"A model"?
The majority of the new Afghan Parliament is comprised of warlords and ex-Taliban fighters reintegrated into the system by a reconciliation program endorsed by the United States. This has weakened the central government and ensured that the countryside has remained under the control of the regional warlords. American puppet, Karzai has no power beyond the capital and must be protected by 40 to 50 U.S. paid bodyguards at all times.
Is this Rumsfeld's model of democracy?
Secretary of State, Condoleezza Rice is equally disingenuous in her praise of Afghanistan’s strides towards democracy:
"The transformation of Afghanistan is remarkable but incomplete, and it is essential that we all increase our support for the Afghan people."
There’s been no "transformation" of Afghanistan. As the New York Times reports, "Afghanistan does not have a viable economy. Its government is largely reliant on foreign aid (while) it struggles with an insurgency"…… "The country of 25 million people has some of the worst economic and health indicators in the world. 6 million people rely on food aid, 80% of the people are illiterate, and there is virtually no industry."
In the last year the resurgent Taliban have increased their attacks, further destabilizing areas in the south and prompting President Karzai to publicly announce that he would provide amnesty for Taliban chieftain Mullah Omar.
Have him "get in touch" if he wants to talk peace, Karzai said.
Karzai’s remarks show us how far we have come from the swagger and bravado of George Bush who promised to capture Omar "dead or alive"? Now even the closest colleagues of Bin Laden are being granted amnesty in an effort to quell the violence.
What does that say about the administration’s claim that "We will never deal with terrorists"?
Afghanistan is Bush’s dystopia, a failed narco-state run by American puppets, Islamic fundamentalists and human rights abusers. The corporate media has done the American people a grave disservice by characterizing this drug-dependent settlement as a burgeoning democracy. Nothing could be further from the truth. The Karzai regime has no popular mandate and will vanish in the first hours after the American occupation ends.
And, it should end immediately.
Like Iraq, American troops have become the impetus for hostilities; the focus of blame for the country’s grim predicament. The recent incident of American servicemen burning the corpses of dead Taliban soldiers has only exacerbated the tensions that naturally exist between native Muslims and their Christian occupiers. The cultural divisions, and the violence they incite, are the inevitable upshot of the imperial project.
The invasion of Afghanistan was sold to the American people by a silver-tongued executive and a battery of public relations fraudsters. 5 years later we can see that all the hype about "democratic revolution" and "liberation" was just baseless twaddle. The country is a basket-case and "ranks among the half-dozen poorest countries in the world"…. "with the highest level of malnutrition in the world at 70%." (Jim Lobe)
This is Bush’s definition of success; endless bloodshed surrounded by grinding poverty.
The Bush administration will never rebuild Afghanistan. In fact, they are ideologically opposed to "nation building" as a waste of revenue that can be siphoned off to multinational corporations. So, too, they are against any form of governance that does not conform to the economic diktats of the central banks and their satellites at the IMF, World Bank, and the Federal Reserve.
Afghanistan illustrates the shortcomings of a foreign policy that depends entirely on war to achieve its objectives. Neither peace nor security can be achieved under occupation. America needs to withdraw its troops so that sovereignty can be restored, order can be reestablished, and the long march towards economic recovery can begin.
Wednesday, February 1, 2006
another american lie
U.S. fired on Canadian diplomats without warning, envoy says
Canadian officials dispute the U.S. version of an event in Iraq and insist that American soldiers fired without warning on a consular vehicle carrying four Canadian diplomats, CBC News has learned.
embedded reporting
really how different is this than the american reports who are embedded with the us military or published propaganda by bush ...
lonely battle for iraqis
Iraqis fight a lonely battle for democracy
Whatever your view of the war, you should embrace today's election
Michael Ignatieff, a contributing writer for the New York Times Magazine and author of 'The Lesser Evil: Political Ethics in an Age of Terror
Sunday January 30, 2005
The Observer
The election in Iraq is without precedent. Never, not even in the dying days of Weimar Germany, when Nazis and Communists brawled in the streets, has there been such a concerted attempt to destroy an election through violence - with candidates unable to appear in public, election workers driven into hiding, foreign monitors forced to 'observe' from a nearby country, actual voting a gamble with death, and the only people voting safely the fortunate expatriates and exiles abroad.
Just as depressing as the violence in Iraq is the indifference to it abroad. Americans and Europeans who have never lifted a finger to defend their own right to vote seem not to care that Iraqis are dying for the right to choose their own leaders.
Why do so few people feel even a tremor of indignation when they see poll workers gunned down? Why isn't there a trickle of applause in the press for the more than 6,000 Iraqis actually standing for political office at the risk of their lives?
Explaining this morose silence requires understanding how support for Iraqi democracy has become the casualty of the corrosive bitterness that still surrounds the initial decision to go to war. Establishing free institutions in Iraq was the best reason to support the war - now it is the only reason - and for that very reason democracy there has ceased to be a respectable cause.
The Bush administration has managed the nearly impossible: to turn democracy into a disreputable slogan.
Liberals can't bring themselves to support freedom in Iraq lest they seem to collude with neo-conservative bombast. Anti-war ideologues can't support the Iraqis because that would require admitting that positive outcomes can result from bad policies. And then there are the ideological fools in the Arab world, and even a few in the West, who think the 'insurgents' are fighting a just war against US imperialism. This makes you wonder when the left forgot the proper name for people who bomb polling stations, kill election workers and assassinate candidates - fascists.
What may also be silencing voices is the conventional wisdom that has been thrown over the debate on Iraq like a fire blanket - everyone believes that Iraq is a disaster; hence elections are doomed. As I was told by one European observer, all that remains is the final act. We are waiting, he said, for the helicopters to lift off the last Americans from the roofs of the green zone in Baghdad. For its part, the Bush administration sometimes seems to support the elections less to give the Iraqis a chance at freedom than to provide what Henry Kissinger, speaking of Vietnam, called 'a decent interval' before collapse.
Beneath the fire blanket of defeatism, everyone - for and against the war - is preparing exit strategies. Those who were against tell us that democracy cannot be imposed at gunpoint, when the actual issue is whether it can survive being hijacked at gunpoint.
Other experts tell us how 'basically' violent Iraqi society is, as a way of explaining why insurgency has taken root. A more subtle kind of condescension claims that Iraq has been scarred by Ba'athism and cannot produce free minds. All this savant expertise ignores the evidence that Iraqis want free institutions and that their leaders have fought to establish them in near-impossible circumstances.
Consider the Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, who demanded democratic elections in 2003. Since the beginning, Sistani has refused either to ratify US occupation or to legitimise Shia extremism. In the face of incessant provocation, he has marginalised men of violence. His aides have been assassinated, but no calls to massacre the Sunnis or the occupiers have been issued.
Or consider the Kurds, who put aside their infighting, produced a common slate for the elections and kept their peshmergas from seizing Kirkuk and thus saved the country from a civil war.
Finally, consider the moderate Sunnis, who have joined the Allawi government and risked the fury of the Sunni insurgents.
The defeatism of Washington think-tanks and newspaper editorials misses a simple point: the only displays of political prudence and democratic courage have been by the much-despised Iraqis, not their supposedly all-seeing imperial benefactors. Since we lack the grace to admit that Iraqis have shown more wisdom and courage than we have, we don't trust that wisdom and courage to save Iraq now.
The Bush administration knows that, while its mistakes have cost it any real influence in Iraq, its historical reputation will depend on whether freedom takes root there. Already the revisionists are working over the facts: the best way to write the history in advance is to shift the blame onto the Iraqis themselves. Those who opposed the war collude with this revisionism in advance by giving up on the Iraqis and this, their only chance of freedom.
Let us have the decency to support people who are fighting for a free election, and let us have the honesty not to blame them for our own incompetence if they fail. There is still no reason to assume they will.
source
washington post cartoon
uproar to some, offensive to some, but take it with a grain of salt ...
The letter from the four-star generals and admirals reads in part:
We were extremely disappointed to see the editorial cartoon by Tom Toles on page B6 in the January 29th edition. Using the likeness of a service member who has lost his arms and legs in war as the central theme of a cartoon is beyond tasteless. Editorial cartoons are often designed to exaggerate issues--and your paper is obviously free to address any topic, including the state of readiness of today's Armed Forces. However, we believe you and Mr. Toles have done a disservice to your readers and your paper's reputation by using such a callous depiction of those who have volunteered to defened this nation, and as a result, have suffered traumatic and life-altering wounds... ...While you or some of your readers may not agree with the war or its conduct, we believe you owe the men and women and their families who so selflessly serve our country the decency to not make light of their tremendous physical sacrifices.
As the Joint Chiefs, it is rare that we all put our hand to one letter, but we cannot let this reprehensible cartoon go unanswered.
reprint 'cause it happens all over the worldOffending Cartoons Reprinted
European Dailies Defend Right to Publish Prophet Caricatures
Molly MooreWashington Post Foreign ServiceThursday, February 2, 2006
PARIS, Feb. 1 -- Newspapers across Europe reprinted cartoons Wednesday ridiculing the prophet Muhammad, saying they wanted to support the right of Danish and Norwegian papers to publish the caricatures, which have ignited fury among Muslims throughout the world.
and then there was this one a couple years back:
Cartoon Angers Officials, Families from Coast to Coast