DancingSamurai.ca

If only the US (and Canada) did the same, we wouldn’t have jails full of people who perhaps make dumb decisions but never harmed others. And we could focus on treating addiction as the medical problem it is, instead of as a criminal one.

Via The Spectator:

A controversial new law decriminalizing the possession of small amounts of heroin, marijuana, cocaine and other illicit substances was quietly slipped on to the statute books in Mexico today.

Apparently I’m not alone in thinking the situation of Mr. Abdelrazik is Kafkaesque. In a recent ruling, Federal Appeals Court Judge Zinn had some stern words to say about the Harper government’s treatment of this Canadian citizen (quote via Dawg’s Blog; read the whole Judgment) :

I have found that Canada has engaged in a course of conduct and specific acts that constitute a breach of Mr. Abdelrazik’s right to enter Canada. Specifically, I find:

(i) That CSIS was complicit in the detention of Mr. Abdelrazik by the Sudanese authorities in 2003;
(ii) That by mid 2004 Canadian authorities had determined that they would not take any active steps to assist Mr. Abdelrazik to return to Canada and, in spite of its numerous assurances to the contrary, would consider refusing him an emergency passport if that was required in order to ensure that he could not return to Canada;
(iii) That there is no impediment from the UN Resolution to Mr. Abdelrazik being repatriated to Canada – no permission of a foreign government is required to transit through its airspace – and the respondents’ assertion to the contrary is a part of the conduct engaged in to ensure that Mr. Abdelrazik could not return to Canada; and
(iv) That Canada’s denial of an emergency passport on April 3, 2009, after all of the preconditions for the issuance of an emergency passport previously set by Canada had been met, is a breach of his Charter right to enter Canada, and it has not been shown to be saved under section 1 of the Charter. (68)

I agree with the respondents that a Court should not go further than required when fashioning a remedy for a Charter breach: Doucet-Boudreau v. Nova Scotia (Minister of Education), [2003] 3 S.C.R. 3. In this case, the applicant is entitled to be put back to the place he would have been but for the breach – in Montreal. (68)

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Yes, the Nuremberg  Defence.  Covered on CNN of all places:

Human rights organizations reacted angrily Thursday to the Obama administration’s announcement that CIA officials would not be prosecuted for past waterboarding and other harsh interrogation tactics.

[...]

The attorney general promised that officials who used the controversial interrogation tactics would be in the clear if their actions were consistent with the legal advice from the Justice Department under which they were operating at the time.

Another nail in the hope that Obama would make significant changes… (see previous comments)

(via Dawg’s Blog)

I have only peripherally followed the latest outbreak of violence between Israel & the Palestinians, and as always, both sides likely deserve criticism. And as a conflict that has been ongoing for decades, there are no easy solutions.

However, banning discussion of the state of Israel’s actions at Universities in Ottawa, and playing the  ‘anti-Semitic’ card as Ignatieff has done, is not going to help the situation. A National Post editorial (gee, I can’t believe I’m quoting the National Post, again…)

Michael Ignatieff states “IAW singles out one state, its citizens and its supporters for condemnation and exclusion, and it targets institutions and individuals because of what and who they are–Israeli and Jewish.”

This is unfair and completely untrue. The organizers of Israeli Apartheid Week are committed to freedom of speech and to working against all forms of oppression, including Islamophobia, anti-Semitism and other forms of racism or discrimination based on religion, nationality, gender or sexual orientation. Israeli Apartheid Week judges Israel by the same standards as all other states, in terms of violations of international law and human rights abuses. These accusations of anti-Semitism are designed to shut down discussion of Palestinian rights by blurring the boundary between criticism of the State of Israel and attacks on the human rights of Jewish people.

More at that article. H/t to Dawg’s Blog.

Playing a little catchup today, with a mishmash of links:

• Michael Geist puts out some facts to face the media industry propaganda machine in his video “Putting Canadian Piracy in perspective” (also covered on BoingBoing)
• The Globe and Mail put out an article about a focus group’s advice on how to spin the war in Afghanistan to make it more palatable to Canadians. I would love to write a whole article on this but have been trying to cut back on my bogging so suffice to say: I’m disgusted.
  

  The Harper government has been told to stop referring to “fighting terrorism” and the Sept. 11 attacks, and to banish the phrase “cut and run” from its vocabulary if it is to persuade a skeptical public that the military mission in Afghanistan is worth pursuing.

• A few blogs are discussing the latest health developments south of the border, namely that the US Surgeon General was prevented from releasing medical information that was contrary to Republican political ideology. Can anyone say Lysenko?
  

  President Bush’s first surgeon general charged today that administration officials prevented him from providing the public with accurate scientific and medical information on such issues as stem cell research and teen pregnancy.

• I also found a great looking Canadian tax tip site. Some great basic information + calculators.

This interesting quote came to me via the Anonymous Liberal:

I wonder how long it will take America to recover from George Bush’s uniquely blinkered and self-righteous brand of ineptitude? In the past five years he’s demonstrated to the world that we don’t know how to win a modern guerrilla war. He’s demonstrated that we don’t understand even the basics of waging a propaganda war. He’s demonstrated that other countries don’t need to pay any attention to our threats. He’s demonstrated that we’re good at talking tough and sending troops into battle, but otherwise clueless about using the levers of statecraft in the service of our own interests. If he had set out to willfully and deliberately expose our weaknesses to the world and undermine our strengths, he couldn’t have done more to cripple America’s power and influence in the world. Beneath the bluster, he’s done more to weaken our national security than any president since World War II.

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The no-fly list that has been an unmitigated disaster south of the border is in the works for Canada. The idea is straightforward enough — intelligence agencies circulate a list of names and date of births of suspected terrorists for extra screening at airports, usually resulting in the named persons being unable to fly on an airplane.

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This article highlights one of the reasons why I find international politics to be so depressing. Never mind international, domestic politics. There’s so much revisionism and convenient disregard for history that it’s mind-boggling. We are at war with Eurasia; we have always been at war with Eurasia, etc.
(via Sivacracy.net)

Also from Sivacracy, a video montage showing how Arabs have been portrayed in western media. (Also available on YouTube).

In other news, I just saw Syriana the other night. That has got to be one of the most depressing and cynical views of American foreign policy I have seen yet. I highly recommend it, but don’t expect a feel-good Hollywood movie.