» Archive: December 2003
Old News
A few items that I meant to post last week:
Times Union: "An American lieutenant colonel pleaded guilty to beating an Iraqi detainee and threatening to kill him during an interrogation, but will be fined and allowed to retire rather than face a court-martial, the military said Saturday."
Toledo Blade: "Without notification to foreign media outlets, the immigration and customs people are arresting, detaining, and deporting journalists arriving here without special visas. This is so even when they come from nations whose citizens can stay for up to 90 days without a visa if they are arriving as tourists or on business. If that threatening form of registration is not enough, members of the press arriving without the visas, which no one told them they needed, are treated like criminals, handcuffed as they’re marched through airports, photographed, fingerprinted, and their DNA taken."
Hampshire Gazette: "Nowhere was Rumsfeld's vision of a corporate-dominated department more evident than in his initial choices to run three military services: Secretary of the Air Force James Roche, a former vice president at Northrop Grumman; Secretary of the Navy Gordon England, a former executive at General Dynamics; and former Secretary of the Army Thomas E. White, who came from Enron."
Independent: "Saddam Hussein told his American interrogators that Iraq never had weapons of mass destruction, claiming that they were an invention of the US government to justify an invasion, it was reported last night."
Brazil rejected the FTAA three months ago
EFE News Service: "Some 98 percent of the 10 million Brazilians who took part in a symbolic referendum rejected Brazil's participation in a hemisphere-wide free trade area."
That was on September 19th. How did I manage to miss it?
It probably helped that none of the major news outlets reported it.
Easing Saddam's Conscience
Washington Post: "An explicit purpose of Rumsfeld's return trip in March 1984, the once-secret documents reveal for the first time, was to ease the strain created by a U.S. condemnation of chemical weapons."
The Age: "Claims that US troops captured Saddam Hussein have been challenged by reports that he was discovered only after Kurdish forces had taken him prisoner."
Paul Martin Time.ca Sued?
If you haven't heard, Paul Martin has threatened to sue PaulMartinTime.ca. The latter is a parody of Martin's official campaign site; they're saying we took their intellectual property. Canadian copyright law, it turns out, is much more strict than it is in the US. Parody has much less protection.
If we take it to court, it'll be a matter of setting the future precedent for cases like ours.
There's a press release about the threats, and I also wrote a more personal account of how they threatened us with various shades of lies and innuendo.
In any case, our site got some media attention out of the deal, including a Canadian Press article.
Mostly, I'm happy that the site is getting mainstream attention.
Against genocide in general, but for it in particular
It turns out that Don Rumsfeld actually went to Iraq twice, once in 1983, and again in 1984. The work Rumsfeld did in 1983 of beginning a rapprochement between Reagan and Saddam was detracted from by a strong State Department condemnation of Iraqi use of chemical weapons in the Iran-Iraq war. Schultz told Rumsfeld to explain to Saddam [warning: PDF] that the Reagan administration did not actually, really have any serious objections to, like, exterminating Iranian troops like cockroaches with poison gas. It was just a general, unspecific blanket condemnation of that sort of thing, you know, to keep up appearances. Sort of like when the US was against genocide in general but didn't really mind so much the one conducted in Indonesia against hundreds of thousands of leftists in 1965. So, Saddam should feel comfortable about Reagan's desire to continually improve bilateral Reagan-Saddam relations at a pace of Saddam's choosing, and not be put off by the unfortunate but necessary pro forma condemnations of him as a war criminal issued at silly old Foggy Bottom.
Charter Challenge to be heard in B.C. Supreme Court
The suit brought by the Office and Professional Employees International Union and supported by Citizens for Public Power will go ahead this week at the Supreme Court in Vancouver. The case takes aim at two pieces of legislation that privatized one third of B.C. Hydro and restructured the Crown Corporation. Please come down to the week-long hearing at the courthouse (at 800 Smithe Street in downtown Vancouver on December 15, 16, 17, 18 and 19) to show your support for a publicly owned and operated electricity system.
This comes on the heels of a seven-per-cent increase next year and a two-per-cent hike in 2005 as announced by the BC Liberal government. While BC does have some of the lowest rates in North America this increase is not warrented nor needed. BC Hydro has been profitable, and in some years very profitable. The official line that the increase will cover the updating of infrastructure really holds no water. They could have used the yearly profits to maintain the system all along.
Look for more increases as Accenture (of Enron fame) continues to take hold of BC Hydro.
173 to 1
173 yeas, one nea. That was the voting record on December 8th when the United Nations General Assembly voted on a comprehensive test ban treaty resolution(details).
On a resolution sponsored by Japan that called for compliance with the program to eliminate Nuclear forces by those nations participating in the 2000 Nuclear Non Proliferation Treaty (including the US) two countries voted no: America and India.
Prevention of an arms race in outer space: 174 yeas, 0 neas, four abstentions. The abstentions came from the United States, and three US client states.
Paul Martin Time
Launched on the day Paul Martin becomes Prime Minister, PaulMartinTime.ca aims to be a "comprehensive, independent source of news, analysis, and discussion about our new Prime Minister."
I'm particularly a fan of the Martintrospection Blog, where people can write as Martin in the first person, and attempt to understand why he makes the policy that he does.
(Disclosure: I've done a lot of work on this site.)
Bush vs. Bush
Comedy Central has Gov. Bush debate Pres. Bush, to good effect. (Requires RealOne player)
Florida Orange Juice: Made With Slave Labour [tm]
For nine months, The Palm Beach Post explored the roots of modern-day slavery. Reporters and photographers traveled to destitute Mexican villages, crossed the desert with a smuggler, rode across the U.S. with illegal immigrants, found new claims of slavery, uncovered rampant Social Security fraud, and found that Florida's famous orange juice comes with hidden costs.
Corporate Land Grab in BC
Legislation was passed on three environmental bills, secretly creating a land grab to the highest bidders...[Working Forest Act] opens up most all land to resource development and extraction...Combined, these acts ["Significant Projects Streamlining Act" and "Parks And Protected Areas Statutes Amendment Act"] will which see full scale resort development in public parks...The govt. will now allow directional drilling in public parks, but will not measure the impact this has on parks.
COPE (current municipal party) Organizer Nathan Allen:
"[Significant Projects Streamlining Act] legislation would enable the province to override local processes, allowing for deals to be made without any public transparency and without being subject to Freedom of Information legislation."
Spending Limit
Incoming prime minister Paul Martin justified Tuesday's $700-a-plate Bay Street fundraiser by saying his party is desperate for funds and must cash in before Liberal legislation bans such corporate sponsorship. (CP)Hahahaha! Martin broke every spending limit the Liberal party had on leadership races, burning through over $10 million--almost as much as the Liberals spent in the last federal election. That, for a leadership "race" that was a sure thing, thanks to Martin's lock on riding associations. Short on cash? Hardly.
Blue Gold
Maude Barlow and Tony Clarke: "We are taught in school that the Earth has a closed hydrologic system; water is continually being recycled through rain and evaporation and none of it leaves the planet’s atmosphere. Not only is there the same amount of water on the Earth today as there was at the creation of the planet, it’s the same water. The next time you’re walking in the rain, stop and think that some of the water falling on you ran through the blood of dinosaurs or swelled the tears of children who lived thousands of years ago. While there will always be the same amount of water, we can render water unusable for ourselves and for the planet."
And, they estimate, demand will exceed supply by 56% in 2025.
CBC Interview
Yesterday, I was interviewed on CBC Halifax's Main Street about the Dominion. You can listen to the interview [8MB, MP3, 8.5 minutes] online.
Pensions Fund the Military
Did you know that the 16 million Canadians who contribute to the Canada Pension Plan (CPP) are funding the development of cluster bombs, land mines, missiles, tanks, and other weapons delivery systems used in Iraq, Afghanistan, and wherever the US invades next. (Neither did I.)
$2.55 billion has gone from the CPP directly to military contractors.
More information from the Coalition to Oppose the Arms Trade.
They didn't report, but you can decide
Counterpunch: Toronto Globe and Mail Kills Review of "The Politics of Anti-Semitism
The Proclamation of Baghdad
Our military operations have as their object the defeat of the enemy, and the driving of him from these territories. In order to complete this task, I am charged with absolute and supreme control of all regions in which British troops operate; but our armies do not come into your cities and lands as conquerors or enemies, but as liberators. Since the days of Halaka your city and your lands have been subject to the tyranny of strangers, your palaces have fallen into ruins, your gardens have sunk in desolation, and your forefathers and yourselves have groaned in bondage. Your sons have been carried off to wars not of your seeking, your wealth has been stripped from you by unjust men and squandered in distant places.-- Lieut. General Sir Stanley Maude, shortly after the occupation of the city by British forces in 1919.
Unite the Right Merger Approved
The Progressive Conservative Party, Canada's oldest party, has just approved a merger with the Canadian Alliance, with 90 per cent of the Tory delegates in favour. This comes only a day after the Alliance members voted 96 per cent in favour of the merger. A lawsuit filed against the merger by David Orchard and 22 other Conservative party members was put down.
Project Plowshares
Project Plowshares has a lot of information about Canadian involvement in the US arms industry, and "security" policy overall.
Embedded in Iraq
Last week, CBC TV ran a documentary entitled Deadline Iraq: Uncensored Stories of the War (lots of material on the web site). It features interviews with a number of journalists who were embedded with American armed forces, along with some footage that I'm guessing didn't make it on the evening news.
It's well worth watching. And you can watch it online, here.
World AIDS Day
The anonymous author of the Body and Soul weblog has a great post about World AIDS Day that pulls together a lot of important material.
I was struck by the following passage, from an NYTimes article by Nicholas Kristof:
Even now, some governments in Central America choose to let their people die rather than distribute cheap generic AIDS drugs, which would save more lives but might irritate the U.S. And now America is trying to make it more difficult for these countries to use generic drugs.But the rest of her comments are well worth reading and rereading.
That's why I decided to write about the Free Trade Area of the Americas, or F.T.A.A., not from Miami, where the negotiations were under way this week, but from rural Guatemala. Here it's easier to appreciate the stark choice that we Americans face: Do we want to maximize profits for U.S. pharmaceutical companies, or do we want to save lives?
Turkey
In Iraq, Bush posed with a fake thanksgiving turkey.
Subscribe or Donate!
You can now buy a subscription to the Dominion, and help us out with a donation.
Harper's on the Edge
Paul Ford built the radical, new version of the Harper's Magazine website.
Plenty of good ideas over there to steal for the Dominion. And they're turning it into an open source content management system too, which means I'll one day get to use it. Cool.
Martin's Cuts
Jim Stanford: "Canada was not alone in balancing its budget. Eighteen OECD countries balanced their budgets during the late 1990s almost as quickly as Canada, but with a fraction of the damage to public programs and infrastructure. Federal program spending declined far faster and far deeper during the Martin era than in any other major industrial economy - even those starting out with larger deficits and debts."