Adbusters: The largest student protest in the history of Canada

from a quebec blogger site via adbusters...

The largest student protest in the history of Canada is taking place. The premier of the Canadian province says that the police violence used against the uprising is keeping the public safe. The images you are about to see say otherwise.

also this...

On march 22, 2012. Many thousands of students marched the streets of montreal in opposition to tuition hikes. The sheer amount of people was just astounding...

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Canada and the UK "get" accountability, why doesn't the U.S.? The sad case of Mahar Arar

item...

The British soldiers who killed 13 Catholic demonstrators in Northern Ireland during "Bloody Sunday" nearly four decades ago committed "unjustified and unjustifiable" killings of unarmed and innocent victims and then lied about it, a fact-finding investigation concluded Tuesday after a 12-year hunt for the truth.

More than 1,000 Londonderry residents applauded, hugged and cried outside city hall as the long-awaited verdict was announced live on a huge television screen. They had campaigned for 38 years for the victims — originally branded as Irish Republican Army bombers and gunmen — to have their good names restored and the guilt of the soldiers proved beyond doubt.

"Unjustified and unjustifiable. Those are the words we've been waiting to hear since January the 30th of 1972," Tony Doherty, the son of one Bloody Sunday victim, told the crowd to cheers. He was one of dozens of relatives who took turns declaring the innocence of lost loved ones to the crowd as the TV screen displayed black-and-white portraits of each of the 13 dead and 15 wounded.

"The victims of Bloody Sunday have been vindicated, and the soldiers of the Parachute Regiment have been disgraced. Their medals of honor have to be removed!" Doherty declared to more cheers.

In London, British Prime Minister David Cameron said the investigation — based on evidence from 921 witnesses, 2,500 written statements and 60 volumes of written evidence — demonstrated that the soldiers' shooting into the crowd protesting the internment without trial of IRA suspects was "both unjustified and unjustifiable."

item...

Canada will formally apologize on Friday [26 January 2007] to software engineer Maher Arar, who was deported to Syria by U.S. agents after Canadian police mistakenly labeled him an Islamic extremist, and offer him C$10 million ($8.5 million) compensation, according to media reports.

Arar, who says he was repeatedly tortured during the year he spent in Damascus jails, had initially sued Ottawa for C$400 million, a figure he later cut to C$37 million. CBC Television said the settlement would be for C$10 million, while CTV said Ottawa would also pay Arar's C$2 million legal bills.

Prime Minister Stephen Harper will make a statement on the case at 12:15 p.m. (1715 GMT).

The affair tarnished the reputation of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police and strained Canada's relations with the United States, which has kept Arar on a security watch list even though Ottawa insists he has no links to terror groups.

CTV said Harper was likely to criticize Washington's stance, something which could prove useful politically. Critics regularly accuse Harper's Conservative government of being too close to President Bush.

"I think it (the settlement) is wonderful because it will hopefully put this thing behind Mr. Arar and he can live his life now like a normal Canadian," Paul Cavalluzzo, lead counsel for an official probe into the affair told CTV.

"He suffered severe economic -- and most importantly -- psychological damage as a result of what occurred to him."

but, in the case of mr. arar and the u.s., as glenn laments, accountability is still a very foreign concept...

The Supreme Court today denied a petition of review from Maher Arar, the Canadian and Syrian citizen who was abducted by the U.S. Government at a stopover at JFK Airport when returning to Canada in 2002, held incommunicado for two weeks, and then rendered to Syria, where he spent the next 10 months being tortured, even though -- as everyone acknowledges -- he was guilty of absolutely nothing. Arar sued the U.S. Government for what was done to him, and last November, the Second Circuit Court of Appeals upheld the dismissal of his lawsuit on the ground that courts have no right to interfere in these decisions of the Executive Branch. That was the decision which the U.S. Supreme Court let stand today, ending Arar's attempt to be compensated for what was done to him.

[...]

By stark contrast [to Canada], the U.S. Government, which played a far more active role in his abduction and rendition to Syria, has never apologized to Arar (though individual members of Congress have). It has never clearly acknowledged wrongdoing (the only time it even hinted at this was when Condoleezza Rice called U.S. conduct in this case "imperfect" -- you think? -- and generously added: "We do not think this case was handled as it should have been"). In fact, it continuously did the opposite of providing accountability: in response to Arar's efforts to seek damages from the U.S. Government, the U.S. raised -- under two successive administrations -- a slew of technical arguments to persuade American courts not to hear his case at all, including the argument that what was done to Arar involved "state secrets" that prevented a judicial adjudication of his claims. The U.S. even continued to ban Arar from entering the U.S. long after it was acknowledged that he had done nothing wrong, thus preventing him for years from appearing before Congress or in the U.S. to talk about what was done to him. Indeed, after the Bush administration spent years arguing that courts were barred from hearing Arar's case on the ground of "state secrets," the Obama administration embraced those same arguments and then urged the Supreme Court not to hear his appeal.

tonight's focus in the mba class on leadership that i'm teaching in the summer session is on accountability... where are the role models...? patético...

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And how about that economy that's rising from the ashes?

i was - not by choice - watching cnbc's kudlow report yesterday... good lord, what a collection of self-important gasbags...! if they weren't fulminating about the "death tax," they were pounding the drums for just how rosy things are starting to look for the economy and how obama's stimulus package had absolutely NOTHING to do with it... i finally had to leave the room... just one of the many, many reasons my tolerance level for u.s. television is measured in nanoseconds...

look for yourself and see how long you can hold out...

meanwhile, reality, in its usual annoying fashion, insists on making its presence felt...

U.S. Unemployment Rate Rises to 26-Year High

Employers keep slashing jobs, undermining signs of progress in the economy, and making clear that the job market remains in terrible shape.

then this from the la times...

Even as the nation's economy begins clawing its way out of the worst recession in 60 years, there are growing signs that this recovery could come with an unsettling twist: The wheels of commerce may begin to turn again without any substantial boost in jobs.

Not only is the national unemployment rate, now 9.4%, likely to climb into double digits later this year, but it is also expected to remain there well into 2010, economists say. That would prolong the misery of the unemployed, squeeze retailers and other businesses, and add millions of dollars in government costs and lost productivity. It could even threaten the recovery itself.

a guy in my class asked me on tuesday night how long he could expect to be out of work (he was laid off from a local casino about four months ago)... not wanting to sugarcoat the truth, i told him that he should expect at least another year and perhaps longer... amazingly enough, he's actually begun to consider emigrating to canada, an idea i told him might not be a bad one...

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Forn turists...? We don't need yer stinkin' money...!

Overseas arrivals to the U.S. have declined 11% this decade, to 23 million in 2007 from 26 million in 2000. Travel is the world's largest industry, currently worth $5 trillion, and it is growing 6% a year. It employs almost a quarter of a billion people. And yet the U.S. is missing out on this wonderful human commerce.

we're not only missing out on the commerce... encounters with folks from other countries are a wonderful way to expand your own horizons...

i find it hugely enjoyable to engage with visitors from other countries in the u.s... i can learn a little bit about their country and their impressions of mine, or even steer them to something worthwhile not mentioned in their guidebooks... yes, i have the great pleasure of living part-time outside of the u.s., a daily opportunity to soak in another culture, but my geographically and culturally-challenged fellow citizens could benefit greatly by rubbing shoulders once in a while with people from other countries... too bad we make it so damn hard...

how so, you may ask...?

American arrogance. The United States is a crass, greedy and rude host.

To start, we treat foreigners as criminals until proved otherwise.

These are the 29 countries whose citizens may visit the U.S. without a visa: Andorra, Australia, Austria, Belgium, Bermuda, Brunei, Canada, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Iceland, Ireland, Italy, Japan, Liechtenstein, Luxembourg, Monaco, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Portugal, San Marino, Singapore, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland and Britain. It's a near lily-white list. The rest of the world's people -- all 5 multicolored billion of them -- are suspect. And overseas, they know the U.S. thinks that.

Canada, by comparison, accepts nonvisa visits from citizens of more than 50 countries. The European Union exempts all EU-member nations, plus another 43 countries, including South Korea, Brazil, Chile and Mexico. So it's easier for a Mexican citizen to visit Europe than the United States.

and getting a visa...?

[T]he visa process involves going in person to a U.S. Embassy or consulate for an interview. And as the woman in Belize learned, there are no refunds if your visa application is rejected. Why are people turned away? Scruffiness, unsuitability, past contributions to Greenpeace or general ickiness. Read the State Department guidelines -- visitors must satisfy consular officers that they deserve to enter. But consular officials do not have to explain reasons for rejection, and they don't.

A colleague of mine has a business in Brazil, and one of his investors conceived the idea of taking his family to Walt Disney World. This wealthy businessman, who could buy a whole hotel in the U.S., never mind hotel rooms, flew to Sao Paulo, paid $500 ($100 a person) to apply for a visa, and patiently spent an hour answering questions. Two weeks later he was turned down. The letter suggested that he reapply ($500 more, please!) but, surprise, he took his family to Europe. Brazilians don't need visas to enter the EU.

The nonrefundable U.S. visa application fee recently went up to $131. Luckily for many visitor wannabes, their currencies are climbing while the dollar is shredding. Unluckily for us, we're too busy protecting the homeland from supposedly scurrilous foreigners to let them in. Until we change our official and unofficial attitudes toward the world, 5 billion people will pass us by.

a year and a half ago, i was verbally assaulted on a street in sofia, bulgaria, by a gentleman (and i use the word loosely) furious over the fact that i, as a u.s. citizen, was able to enter his country and to walk the streets of his capital city without a visa while he was unable to obtain a visa to the united states to visit his daughter... how could i argue...?

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Could this be one of the reasons Canada put Israel on its watch list?

speaking of israel and torture watch lists...

juan cole...

It is a perfect time for the Israeli government to commit a war crime on the miserable civilians of the Gaza Strip. The US primary season has created a news blackout on US television about foreign news (apparently the public of the world's sole superpower is not estimated by corporate news executives to be able to handle more than one story). So most Americans will never even know that the Israelis have cut off fuel to Gaza's power plant, depriving tens of thousands of people of electricity.

I sympathize with Israeli civilians who have been subjected to illegal bombardment by Hamas. But one has to ask whether the Olmert government has behaved toward Gazans in such a way as to try to achieve peace. And even if military action were justified, it is only legitimate for the Israelis to punish Hamas fighters doing the firing.

Just a reminder that electricity is life and death for some people. And another reminder that the children of Gaza, who I suspect are 2/3s of the population, haven't done anything wrong, to be punished by this blockade...

[...]

Here is what wikipedia has to say about the Fourth Geneva Convention of 1949. Note that "protected persons are just non-combatants, i.e. innocent civilians such as children, women and unarmed or injured men:

Article 33. No protected person may be punished for an offence he or she has not personally committed. Collective penalties and likewise all measures of intimidation or of terrorism are prohibited.

Pillage is prohibited.

Reprisals against protected persons and their property are prohibited.

Under the 1949 Geneva Conventions collective punishments are a war crime. Article 33 states: "No protected person may be punished for an offense he or she has not personally committed," and "collective penalties and likewise all measures of intimidation or of terrorism are prohibited."

By collective punishment, the drafters of the Geneva Conventions had in mind the reprisal killings of World Wars I and II. In the First World War, Germans executed Belgian villagers in mass retribution for resistance activity. In World War II, Nazis carried out a form of collective punishment to suppress resistance. Entire villages or towns or districts were held responsible for any resistance activity that took place there. The conventions, to counter this, reiterated the principle of individual responsibility. The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) Commentary to the conventions states that parties to a conflict often would resort to "intimidatory measures to terrorize the population" in hopes of preventing hostile acts, but such practices "strike at guilty and innocent alike. They are opposed to all principles based on humanity and justice."

Additional Protocol II of 1977 explicitly forbids collective punishment...

note on protocol II...

As of 14 January 2007 it had been ratified by 163 countries, with the United States, Israel, Iran, Pakistan and Afghanistan and Iraq being notable exceptions. However, the United States, Iran and Pakistan signed it on 12 December 1977 with the intention of ratifying it.

A number of the articles contained in both protocols are recognized as rules of customary law valid for all states, whether or not they have ratified them.

hmmmm... israel has neither signed nor ratified... go figure...

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Canada wussies out

as i posted the other day, canada placed both the u.s. and israel on a torture "watch list..." needless to say, it caused a lot of huffing and puffing in the rarefied air of the upper echelons of both governments, forcing canada to backpedal...

The Canadian foreign minister has apologised for including the US and Israel on a list of states where prisoners are at risk of torture.

Maxime Bernier said the list, which formed part of a manual on torture awareness given to diplomats, "wrongly includes some of our closest allies".

Mr Bernier insisted the manual was not a policy document and did not convey the official views of his government.

The listing was criticised by the US and Israel, who demanded it be changed.

"We find it to be offensive for us to be on the same list with countries like Iran and China. Quite frankly it's absurd," said the US ambassador to Canada, David Wilkins.

A spokesman for the Israeli embassy in Ottawa, Michael Mendel, said the Israeli Supreme Court was "on record as expressly prohibiting any type of torture".

"If Israel is included in the list in question, the ambassador of Israel would expect its removal," he added.

yeah, maxime, we can plainly see you're trying to save face, but, the fact is, the u.s. and israel weren't put on that list by mistake and we all know it... furthermore, i suspect that we were put on the list with a full understanding of the consequences, and an official policy prepared for when the shit hit the fan, as everyone knew it would... regardless of the underlying motivation, mr. foreign minister, i greatly appreciate the service that your country has done for mine by calling worldwide attention to just how criminal our official behavior and that of our "closest ally," israel, has become...

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When Canada puts its southern neighbor on a torture watch list, we've sunk pretty low

this is shameful...

[Canada] has put the U.S. prison at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, on a watch list for torture.

[...]

The list includes Syria, Iran, Afghanistan, and China. But surprisingly, it also included the United States, Guantánamo, and Israel.

It notes specific "U.S. interrogation techniques," which include "forced nudity, isolation, and sleep deprivation." The U.S. has repeatedly denied allegations by international groups that it tortures prisoners captured in places like Afghanistan and Iraq. However, U.S. officials have refused to comment on the Canadian list.

But international observers say they are heartened by the specificity of the Canadian list. Alex Neve of Amnesty International says he is surprised that Canada would risk offending allies by naming countries that potentially torture prisoners.

"These are countries where, sadly, the record is clear -- torture and ill treatment happens," said Neve.

But it appears that Ottawa may have had second thoughts about being so explicit. After the documents were released as evidence in a court case relating to Afghan detainees, the government tried to get them back. Sources say that Ottawa apparently wanted to black out sensitive parts that may anger allies.

tough noogies, canada... the cat's out of the bag, and i have to say, i'm heartened that you folks in the great white north have enough integrity to put us on the list in the first place...

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"Instead of a presumption of innocence and of a public trial, we start with a presumption of guilt and of a secret trial”

from the nyt via raw story...

Defense lawyers preparing for the war crimes trial of a 21-year-old Guantánamo detainee have been ordered by a military judge not to tell their client — or anyone else — the identity of witnesses against him, newly released documents show.

[...]

Defense lawyers say the order would hamper their ability to build an adequate defense because they cannot ask their client or anyone else about prosecution witnesses, making it difficult to test the veracity of testimony.

The order, the documents show, followed a request by military prosecutors who said they feared terrorist retaliation against witnesses who appeared at Guantánamo proceedings.

[...]

Mr. Khadr’s military defense lawyer, Lt. Cmdr. William C. Kuebler of the Navy, said that while he has been given a list of prosecution witnesses, the judge’s decision requires him to keep secrets from his client and that he would ask Colonel Brownback to revoke the order. He said it treated Mr. Khadr as if he had already been convicted and deprived him of a trial at which the public could assess the evidence against him.

“Instead of a presumption of innocence and of a public trial,” Commander Kuebler said, “we start with a presumption of guilt and of a secret trial.”

[...]

In an interview, Brig. Gen. Thomas W. Hartmann, a senior official in the Pentagon’s Office of Military Commissions, said that the commission system was open to scrutiny from news organizations and human rights groups and that the order was necessary to protect the lives of witnesses.

“The system is designed to be open,” General Hartmann said. “But there are certain things that simply must be protected.”

i beg to differ... the system is NOT "designed to be open..." it may be easy to say those words, but the facts don't support them...

Joshua L. Dratel, a lawyer in New York who represented another detainee prosecuted for war crimes, described such orders as an Orwellian effort to hamstring defense lawyers while making it appear that detainees are rigorously represented.

“It is ‘1984,’” Mr. Dratel said. “No system in the United States would operate this way.”

Some legal experts said while the identities of witnesses were shielded on rare occasions in American courts, an order applying to all witnesses in a case would be exceptional.

Such an order “would be very, very unusual” in a civilian court, said James A. Cohen, a Fordham University law professor, adding that he knew of no blanket order protecting the identities of all witnesses in a case.

mr. khadr's defense attorney sums it up...

In an e-mail message on Oct. 11 to the judge and the prosecutors, Commander Kuebler argued that it was notable that the entire discussion of whether witnesses would be permitted to shield their identities was being conducted without anyone in the public or the press able to observe the arguments.

“The manner in which this is being dealt with (i.e., off the record, via e-mail),” he wrote, “creates an added level of difficulty by making it appear that the government is trying to keep the secrecy of the proceedings a secret itself.”

the "justice" system of the united states of america, circa late 2007...

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"Bush has destroyed half a century of good will among NATO allies"

juan cole reflects on not counting 20,000 brain-injured iraq troops as casualties and the destruction of u.s. credibility in the foreign policy arena...

Whoever is responsible for this disgusting travesty is an automatic candidate for Keith Olbermann's "Worst Person in the World." My guess is that the trail will lead back to Donald "its not a guerrilla war" Rumsfeld and Richard Bruce "most prominent traitor in American history" Cheney. Gregg Zoroya of USA Today reports that 20,000 US troops who served in Iraq and Afghanistan and suffered brain injuries were never classified as wounded by the Pentagon and are not included in the official statistics for the wounded issued by the Department of Defense. Although some of the under-reporting of this condition could be inadvertent, the scale of it strongly suggests an underlying policy.

Former Canadian Prime Minister Jean Chretien says that it was among the great victories in his life that he stood against US pressure to join in the Iraq War.

Uh, the purpose of a wise and mature US foreign policy is to avoid close allies ending up speaking like that. Bush has destroyed half a century of good will among NATO allies, most of whom now think they are better off not following Washington's lead. Leaders who threw in with Bush, like Aznar of Spain and Berlusconi of Italy, have been ushered off the political stage by enraged publics. As someone who grew up when the US (and its currency) was respected by most Europeans and other North Americans, I am sad to see the way W. has debased our position and humiliated our country.

the full quote from professor cole that headlines this post is, "Bush has destroyed half a century of good will among NATO allies, most of whom now think they are better off not following Washington's lead..." i don't think that's necessarily a bad thing... the u.s. sorely needs more countries who are willing to chart their own course and exert their influence on US for a change... our massive arrogance balloon is way overdue for a pricking...

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The Military Commissions Act: "not designed to be fair; it's designed to produce convictions"

i took myself to a movie yesterday afternoon, lions for lambs, starring tom cruise, robert redford, and meryl streep... its tagline is, "what do you stand for?" a totally relevant question as we watch our country and our precious constitution being systematically lobotomized... following events as closely as i do is not a recipe for lightheartedness anyway, but i felt unusually glum after seeing this film... now, the morning after, i see nothing to mitigate the gloom...

Unique to the tribunal system that is governed by neither U.S. criminal law nor the Uniform Code of Military Justice, the commissions allow liberal use of classified evidence that a defendant doesn't get to see and protective orders that shield the identity of witnesses, interrogators and informants.

Defense lawyers for the terrorism suspects contend that the deck is stacked against them in preparing their cases. They say the administration officials running the tribunals can hide critical information and helpful testimony from the defense.

The extent to which the government can thwart defense preparation became apparent last week just 36 hours before the Thursday arraignment of Canadian war-crimes suspect Omar Khadr. His Navy lawyer, Lt. Cmdr. William C. Kuebler, learned then that the commissions' hierarchy had known for five years of a U.S. government employee who was an eyewitness to the 2002 firefight in Afghanistan in which Khadr is accused of having thrown the grenade that killed a U.S. Special Forces medic.

The eyewitness' account contradicts the government version of events and could exonerate Khadr of the war crimes with which he is charged: murder, attempted murder, conspiracy, spying and material support for terrorism.

"They weren't going to tell us who he was or how to get in touch with him or where he was," said Kuebler, who has been lobbying the Canadian government to demand repatriation of his client so he can be tried "in a legitimate system."

"This is a process that's not designed to be fair; it's designed to produce convictions," Kuebler added.

my every waking moment is a prayer for restoring our constitution and the rule of law, and virtually every waking moment i see no real movement toward that end...

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The North American Future 2025 Project and The Security and Prosperity Partnership of North America

brought to you by the governments of canada, mexico, and the united states, and your good friends at the center for strategic and international studies...

the executive summary [PDF]...



the project...



the u.s. government portion of the project is called The Security and Prosperity Partnership of North America and has its own website... the key players in the u.s. effort - michael chertoff, condolleeza rice, and carlos gutierrez - are listed in this org chart [PDF]... (click on image for full-size version...)



just take a few moments to absorb what's being proposed... then sit back and wait for september which is when the final report will be presented to congress...

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Still more on Omar Khadr

jeralyn at talkleft pointed me to this piece from the june 23, 2005, toronto star...

Canada's only known detainee in Guantanamo Bay is 18-year-old Omar Khadr. Documents filed in a Canadian court this week included two psychiatric assessments that concluded the teenager has a serious mental disorder and is at a high risk for suicide.

Khadr is the second youngest son of Ahmed Said Khadr, who was considered before his death in 2003 to be Canada's highest-ranking Al Qaeda financier with close ties to Osama bin Laden.

Omar Khadr was 15 when he was shot three times and captured at a suspected Al Qaeda compound in Afghanistan in July 2002, following a gun battle with U.S. troops.

In February, his U.S. lawyer told reporters the teenager had been used as a human mop to clean urine on the floor and had been beaten, threatened with rape and tied up for hours in painful positions at Guantanamo Bay.

that would explain the low affect described in my earlier post...

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More on the dismissal of charges against Khadr

we need to keep reminding ourselves that these people are human beings like us, with faces, feelings, and mothers who love them...



This is a photo of Omar Khadr,
taken before he was imprisoned,
handed out by his mother Maha
Khadr following a news conference
in Toronto on Feb. 9, 2005.
(AP Photo)

i posted on this as it was breaking, before i got my hands on the story of the reasons behind the dismissal...

The chief of military defense attorneys at Guantanamo Bay, Marine Col. Dwight Sullivan, said the ruling in the case of Canadian detainee Omar Khadr could spell the end of the war-crimes trial system set up last year by Congress and President Bush after the Supreme Court threw out the previous system. The ruling immediately raised questions about whether the U.S. will have to further revise procedures for prosecuting prisoners, leading to major delays.

[...]

The judge, Army Col. Peter Brownback, said he had no choice but to throw the Khadr case out because he had been classified as an "enemy combatant" by a military panel years earlier — and not as an "alien unlawful enemy combatant."

this is a tragedy of epic proportions... he spends five friggin' years in guantánamo, he's exposed to whatever horrors that place can dish out, his development is arrested, and he's probably suffering from serious emotional and mental distress... just read this and tell me if the lack of emotional affect strikes you as that of an emotionally healthy young man...

Khadr — who according to his former military attorney, Marine Lt. Col. Colby Vokey has the emotional age of a 16-year-old after five years imprisonment — seemed oblivious to the ruling. Khadr calmly watched the judge throw out the case — looking not at Brownback but at a computer screen at the defense table that showed a live TV broadcast of the proceedings. Khadr could see himself on the screen.

how very sad and how similar to jose padilla... what in god's name happens to them there...?

affect
n. (ăf'ĕkt')

1. Feeling or emotion, especially as manifested by facial expression or body language: “The soldiers seen on television had been carefully chosen for blandness of affect” (Norman Mailer).

and, after all THAT, they're gonna KEEP HIM THERE...!

But Omar Khadr, who was 15 when he was captured after a deadly firefight in Afghanistan and who is now 20, will remain at the remote U.S. military base along with some 380 other men suspected of links to al-Qaida and the Taliban.

this is totally and completely outrageous...

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Stick a kid in Gitmo at 15, hold him without trial for 5 years, and then dismiss the charges?

this makes me violently ill... grief...? anger...? how does somebody respond to something like this...?

A military judge has dismissed charges against Canadian detainee Omar Khadr, saying the matter is outside the jurisdiction of the military tribunal system.

Khadr, a Canadian who was 15 when he was captured in Afghanistan, and a Yemeni accused of chauffeuring Osama bin Laden had faced terrorism charges Monday under a reconfigured military tribunal system that critics say remains unconstitutional.

as of this posting, no reason for the dismissal of charges was given...

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Starting a beautiful weekend with dark headlines

it's a cool, fresh, breezy, late-summer early morning here in buenos aires with those brilliant blue skies and intense sunshine that, for me, are the city's hallmark... i wish the headlines measured up...

Gonzales, Mueller admit FBI broke law

The nation's top two law enforcement officials acknowledged Friday the
FBI broke the law to secretly pry out personal information about Americans. They apologized and vowed to prevent further illegal intrusions.

Pentagon struggles to find fresh troops

Faced with a military buildup in Iraq that could drag into next year,
Pentagon officials are trying to identify enough units to keep up to 20 brigade combat teams in Iraq. A brigade usually has about 3,500 troops.

The likely result will be extending the deployments of brigades scheduled to come home at the end of the summer, and sending others earlier than scheduled.

Afghanistan's 'Hard Mission' Slips Away

A Canadian parliamentary panel has taken an unvarnished look at the war in Afghanistan and concluded that it is a "hard mission" that is slipping out of control. The legislators fault heavy-handed U.S. tactics for alienating the population and an inadequate NATO commitment to pacify the country.

Is the Bush surge already failing?

The president just gave a rosy assessment of his plan, but insurgents have adapted and Iraqis continue to be slaughtered.

Killing U.S. Troops Slowly

Some Bush administration officials have expressed shock at the mistreatment of Iraq War veterans at Walter Reed and other medical centers. But this scandal has many antecedents, including the neglect shown to many veterans who served in Vietnam and in the first U.S. war with Iraq.

and then there's the low comedy of dear leader...

Bush deflects Chavez's verbal attacks

President Bush refuses to be goaded into a war of words with Venezuela's Hugo Chavez, who is answering the president's five-country trek through Latin America with taunts of "Gringo go home."

Bush is trying to spread a message of U.S. compassion for the region and ignore Chavez, who blames U.S.-style capitalism for poverty and inequality in Latin America.

"U.S. compassion for the region..." now THAT'S a hoot... remember, george, all the people you are trying to get to swallow that lie watched how "compassionately" you handled katrina, how "compassionately" you are treating iraqis, the "compassionate" care that detainees are receiving in your custody, and the "compassionate" health care returning veterans experience under your leadership... like us, they know that the words that pass your lips do so minus any semblance of the truth...

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I think Canada gets it

and what, precisely, would be the problem that the u.s. has with this fundamental right...?

"The overarching principle of fundamental justice that applies here is this: before the state can detain people for significant periods of time, it must accord them a fair judicial process."

- CHIEF JUSTICE BEVERLEY McLACHLIN, of Canada, in a ruling striking down a law that allowed the indefinite detention of terrorism suspects.

other than that the bush administration is intent on destroying civil liberties and creating a totalitarian state...

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Environmental damage as a crime against human rights

and, if anybody would be impacted by the u.s.-led worship of materialism and arrogant disregard for the environment, it would be the inuit...

A delegation of Inuit is to travel to Washington DC to provide first-hand testimony of how global warming is destroying their way of life and to accuse the Bush administration of undermining their human rights.

The delegation, representing Inuit peoples from the US, Canada, Russia and Greenland, will argue that the US's energy policies and its position as the world's biggest emitter of greenhouse gases is having a devastating effect on their communities. Melting sea ice, rising seas and the impact on the animals they rely on for food threatens their existence.

The Inuit's efforts to force the US to act are part of an unprecedented attempt to link climate change to international human rights laws. They will argue before the InterAmerican Commission on Human Rights (ICHR) that the US's behaviour puts it in breach of its obligations. "The impacts of climate change, caused by acts and omissions by the US, violate the Inuit's fundamental human rights protected by the American Declaration of the Rights and Duties of Man and other international instruments," the Inuit argued in a letter to the ICHR. "Because Inuit culture is inseparable from the condition of their physical surroundings, the widespread environmental upheaval resulting from climate change violates the Inuit's right to practice and enjoy the benefits of their culture."

more power to 'em...

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