News roundup, 25 Feb 2025

- Healthcare workers are subject to protections under the Geneva convention in times of war, whereby they are supposed to be protected from attacks and permitted to continue their work. The IDF don't seem to think those rules apply to them; as of last month over a thousand healthcare professionals had been killed by them (comparable to the total number of Israelis killed in the October 7 attacks). 22 hospitals had been more or less destroyed as well. Over 500 doctors were taken prisoner; some of them now report that the Israelis subjected them to what their American friends like to call "enhanced interrogation techniques". Sadly, it's almost certain that the perpetrators will not be punished. And if they are, it will probably be a punishment based on vengeance rather than actual justice.

- A resolution before the UN General Assembly condemning Russia's invasion of Ukraine passed by 93 to 18 with 65 abstentions; the US voted along with Russia against the resolution. Meanwhile Ukraine has expressed willingness to pay protection money to ol' Don in the form of critical minerals.

- Danielle Smith's Minister of Infrastructure, Peter Guthrie, has resigned in protest of his own government's procurement policy, including problematic and potentially criminal insider deals with private healthcare companies.

- On the other side of the border, 21 civil servants, including engineers, data scientists and product managers, who had been seconded to Elon Musk's Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), have also resigned, saying that the Muskrats' Silicon Valley-inspired "move fast and break things" approach threatens to "dismantle critical public services" and create a privacy nightmare.

- Doug Ford's cop son-in-law is facing charges under the Police Act for insubordination, discreditable conduct, and breach of trust for leaking inside police information. Apparently confidential information about a sexual assault case was leaked to the victim; while this is easy to sympathize with it could very well make it harder to get a conviction in the case.

- A man who stood outside near the courthouse where serial killer Jeremy Skibicki was being tried and hurled abuse and threats at friends and relatives of the victims has pleaded guilty to uttering threats in that and another incident.

- Green Party candidates in Ontario's upcoming provincial election in the constituency of Kitchener-Conestoga, as well as in Waterloo where NDP incumbent Catherine Fife is running again, have called on their supporters to cast a tactical vote for the NDP in order to try to keep the Tories from winning those seats.

- Last month police were called to remove a pilot from a Southwest Airlines Boeing 737 that he was about to attempt to fly from Savannah to Chicago after a TSA agent noticed that he appeared to smell of alcohol. I daresay this was not a good career move.

News roundup, 11 March 2024

- Israel's claim that the UN agency for Palestinian refugees (UNRWA) included Hamas militants apparently is based partly on "confessions" made when agency employees were subjected to what the Brits like to call "in-depth interrogation". In response, Canada is restoring funding to the agency after previously suspending it based on Israel's allegations. Meanwhile the US airdrop of aid supplies to Gaza appears to have actually caused more civilian deaths, as the parachutes on the aid packages failed to open. 

- Pope Francis has raised more than a few eyebrows with his suggestion that Ukraine should have “the courage to raise the white flag” and negotiate an end to the war with Russia. The most charitable interpretation is that he's viewing the conflict in pragmatic terms and has concluded that Ukraine can't win in the long run (which may well be true), but even by those criteria it's a questionable recommendation, since if Ukraine simply surrenders, rather than tying the Russians down in a long drawn-out guerilla conflict, Russia might possibly be motivated to have a go at someone else like Georgia or, much worse, the Baltic states. On the other hand, a drawn-out guerilla war would sap Russia's resources and make them less of a threat to the rest of the world (much as in the case of their attempt to conquer Afghanistan almost half a century ago). It'd be nice if there were a better role for Ukraine to play than as Europe's sacrificial anode, but that is the world we live in I guess.

- Manitoba Premier Wab Kinew remains popular with the electorate; a recent poll gives him a 63% approval rating, up six points since the last poll.

- Sarah Guillemard, the former Tory MLA for Fort Richmond, says that she was sexually assaulted by an "older former MLA" several years ago.

- Naheed Nenshi has made it official - he's off and running for the leadership of the Alberta NDP.

- At least 50 people were injured, 13 seriously enough to require hospitalization, when a Boeing 787 Dreamliner operated by the Chilean carrier LATAM Airlines suffered a sudden loss of altitude on the Sydney to Auckland leg of a flight to Santiago. The airline attributed the incident to "a technical event during the flight which caused a strong movement", though no more details about the cause were made available.

- Mahikan Bus Lines, a partnership owned by several First Nations and based in The Pas, has purchased a bus terminal in Brandon that had been mothballed following Greyhound's departure from the Canadian market a few years ago. 

- Joe Biden made it through his State of the Union address, described by David Shribman as "the most important speech in his political career", without any major gaffes. The same cannot be said for the response to the speech from rookie Republican senator Katie Britt, which was ridiculed by friends and foes alike.

- Donald Trump has posted a bond in the E. Jean Carroll case in order to be able to appeal the decision, after Judge Lewis A. Kaplan refused his request for a delay.

- The number of unclaimed dead bodies is on the rise in Ontario. According to the province's Office of the Chief Coroner, 1,183 bodies went unclaimed last year, compared to 983 in 2022 and 438 in 2019.

British troops may face war crimes trials

Maybe there's a smidgen of justice out there somewhere:

A number of British military interrogators may face war crimes charges after members of their unit filmed themselves while threatening and abusing Iraqi detainees at a secret prison near Basra, the high court heard today.

The men have been referred to the Director of Service Prosecutions (DSP) after an investigation considered whether they had breached the International Criminal Court Act, which prohibits war crimes.

From the Guardian.

US conducted research on torture -- report

Physicians for Human Rights reports that the Bush administration conducted research on "enhanced interrogation techniques" with human subjects:

In the most comprehensive investigation to date of health professionals’ involvement in the CIA’s “enhanced” interrogation program (EIP), Physicians For Human Rights has uncovered evidence that indicates the Bush administration apparently conducted illegal and unethical human experimentation and research on detainees in CIA custody. The apparent experimentation and research appear to have been performed to provide legal cover for torture, as well as to help justify and shape future procedures and policies governing the use of the “enhanced” interrogation techniques. The PHR report, Experiments in Torture: Human Subject Research and Evidence of Experimentation in the ‘Enhanced’ Interrogation Program, is the first to provide evidence that CIA medical personnel engaged in the crime of illegal experimentation after 9/11, in addition to the previously disclosed crime of torture.

This evidence indicating apparent research and experimentation on detainees opens the door to potential additional legal liability for the CIA and Bush-era officials. There is no publicly available evidence that the Department of Justice’s Office of Legal Counsel determined that the alleged experimentation and research performed on detainees was lawful, as it did with the “enhanced” techniques themselves.

Source (h/t escherichiacola at ontd_political). If this is true, it marks, not so much a new level of barbarism for the US, as a return to an old one...

Speaker to rule on government's conduct in detainee scandal

Speaker Peter Milliken will rule shortly on whether the Cons are in contempt of Parliament:

Either Thursday or next week, House Speaker Peter Milliken will rule on whether Stephen Harper’s Conservative government is in contempt of Parliament.

If Mr. Milliken finds in favour of the opposition parties that made the claim, then thousands of pages of heavily censored documents could be made public, showing whether the government and armed forces knew they were sending detainees to be tortured in Afghan jails.

If he rules in favour of the government, an already powerful executive will grow yet more powerful.

“It’s huge,” said Errol Mendes, a professor of law at University of Ottawa and constitutional expert. Centuries of precedent dictate that Parliament is supreme in holding the government to account, he observed.

“If the Speaker rules against the opposition motions, it would not be too hyperbolic to say we have changed our system of governance,” he maintained. “The executive would no longer be accountable to the House of Commons.”

From the Globe. To my mind this seems like a pretty clear case, despite the Cons' protests about "national security" (which, as I've said before, most likely means Harper's job security). There's a complication, though:

Mr. Milliken’s word is not the final word. Technically, he will rule only on whether the government appears to be in contempt. If he finds against the government, a parliamentary committee will thrash out the issue, and the matter will be brought back to the House for a final vote.

Rather than release the material, the Conservatives could force an election by making that vote a matter of confidence in the government.

The question then becomes, how would an election arising from this play out? Stay tuned.

The latest twist in the detainee scandal

Richard Colvin, the diplomat who says he warned the government that detainees were being tortured, is being barred from discussing material that could corroborate his story:

Franz Kafka would have been proud to have penned an episode from Tuesday's Afghan detainee hearings where the government sought to undermine testimony from one of its own civil servants.

The catch, for the civil servant, is he can't talk about information the government has censored. Even if it could vindicate him.

As readers will know, the Harper government has censored diplomat Richard Colvin's email records and won't even let the Military Police Complaints Commission see the unredacted versions. This is the civilian-run watchdog charged with reviewing Canada's record on Afghan detainees.

Just before a couple of prickly exchanges take place (transcript below), Department of Justice lawyer Alain Préfontaine argues Mr. Colvin did not provide clear warning to Ottawa in 2006 that Canadian-transferred detainees were at serious risk of abuse. Using the censored version of the email records, the government lawyer says Mr. Colvin's warnings weren't that urgently or sharply worded.

Defending himself, Mr. Colvin says the censored portions of his emails bear out his assertion that he offered significant warnings. He is barred from speaking about these blacked out passages, however.

Source. Let's hope the public doesn't forget this come election time.

Detainee scandal update

While we're waiting for a retired judge hired by the Tories to determine if the documents that a majority of Parliament has demanded can be safely released, the Cons have released 2600 highly redacted pages of material. A few interesting things have emerged:

The newly disclosed reports include an incident in 2006 in which an Afghan soldier strikes a bound prisoner in the back of the head with a rocket launcher; a nudge-and-wink admission by one Canadian soldier that Afghan counterparts “don’t necessarily follow our policies on detainee handling if you know what I mean”; and allegations by one soldier being treated for post-traumatic stress that detainees handed over to Afghan authorities were taken behind a building and executed.

All of the incidents are deemed unfounded by military investigators, but the documents also show a disturbing trend of front-line soldiers and senior military officials keeping their own police investigators in the dark and even threatening them at a time when sensitivity to how Canadians treat and handle their Afghan detainees was at its highest.

In January 2008, for example, the Canadian Forces Provost Marshall reports that a military policewoman was grabbed by two unknown assailants at Kandahar Airfield as she was leaving the shower one night. They “grabbed her arms, pushed her against the shower wall and told her: ‘MPs mind your own business.’“

Even after the troubled Canadian detainee transfer system was first exposed in mid-2007, there was a “preference to keep MP (military police) from advising and investigating rather than adopting a transparent and proactive approach,” according to a Feb. 27, 2008 report by Provost Marshall Capt. Steve Moore.

From the Star. Nothing to see here, move along. Equally interesting is this:

An apparent slipup in the federal government’s censoring of Afghan detainee documents shows Ottawa is using its black marker to hide potentially embarrassing information, a military and information law expert says.

Under pressure from opposition parties, the Harper government made public 2,600 pages of heavily censored records on the detainee controversy this week. It insisted that civil servants, not Conservative staff, decided what to keep secret – only withholding information judged to be injurious to national security.

But in one instance, a description of rebellious activity by detainees is apparently blacked out in one portion of the 2,600 documents but inadvertently disclosed in another section. It’s presumably the result of diverging censorship decisions by separate officials.

The sentences in question describe how detainees began testing and challenging their Canadian captors in early 2008. Prisoners are held in a short-term Forces detention facility before being transferred to Afghan authorities.

Oopsie. What's interesting about this is that it's pretty hard to see why this should have been redacted; it's not going to help your average Taliban dude. In other words, to nobody's surprise, stuff is being redacted that doesn't relate directly to matters of security (except perhaps Stephen Harper's job security).

A new wrinkle in the detainee scandal

Looks like it may implicate the Liberals as well:

A Canadian diplomat with extensive experience in Afghanistan says she raised the possibility that detainees transferred from Canadian to Afghan custody were at risk of torture back in 2005.

But Eillen Olexiuk says her concerns were ignored.

She tells the CBC she arrived in Afghanistan in 2002 and was second in command at the Canadian Embassy in Kabul.

Ms. Olexiuk says she told the Liberal government in power at the time that the transfer agreement didn't do enough to protect detainees.

She said Canadian officials didn't monitor detainees after the transfer, and that left detainees vulnerable once they were in Afghan hands.

From the Globe. Unfortunately, this may reduce the likelyhood that any high-ranking officials will be prosecuted, since it will diminish the Liberals' enthusiasm for a public inquiry.

Looks like the Cons knew trouble was coming...

... unfortunately, they did not respond by stopping the detainee transfers but by planning how to spin the issue:

Prime Minister Stephen Harper downplayed revelations of a "contingency plan" to deal with accusations that prisoners handed over to Afghan authorities were tortured.

As first reported by CBC News on Monday, Canadian officials started drafting a plan on how to deal with accusations that prisoners in Afghan custody were being tortured as early as March 2007 — months before allegations of prisoner abuse at the hands of Afghan authorities first appeared in the media.

Source. The more we see, the more it looks like a lot of top officials (military officers, senior civil servants, cabinet ministers, and maybe the PM himself) ought to be facing war crimes trials. Whether they will, of course, is another question.

The detainee scandal just got worse

What, you might ask, could be worse than Canadian officials handing prisoners over to people who are likely to torture them? How about handing prisoners over with the expectation that they will be tortured and provide them with information they want?

Until now, the controversy has centred on whether the government turned a blind eye to abuse of Afghan detainees.

However, Attaran said the full versions of the documents show that Canada went even further in intentionally handing over prisoners to torturers.

"And it wasn't accidental; it was done for a reason," he said. "It was done so that they could be interrogated using harsher methods."

Source. If this is true, it's no wonder the government is so desperate to avoid having to turn the documents over to Parliament...

Harper wants to shut down Parliament again

The guy has no shame:

The Conservative government plans to shut down Parliament for two months, until after the Vancouver Winter Olympics, the Prime Minister's Office announced Wednesday.

The announcement triggered immediate condemnation from opposition MPs who labelled the Conservative government's move an "almost despotic" attempt to muzzle parliamentarians amid controversy over the Afghan detainees affair.

Prime Minister Stephen Harper's spokesman, Dimitri Soudas, said the government sought the suspension to consult with Canadians, stakeholders and businesses as it moves into the "next phase" of its economic action plan amid signs of economic recovery.

"This is quite routine but it is also important to give Canadians an overview of where we will be taking the country over the next little while," Soudas told CBC News from Ottawa.

From the CBC. I wonder what his motivation could be? Oh yeah...

Opposition parties have already warned that prorogation would disrupt the inquiry of a parliamentary committee looking into accusations that the government ignored warnings about the torture of Afghan detainees. Strategically, prorogation also prevents question period criticisms from the opposition parties during the Olympics.

Seriously, how much of this crap can he be allowed to get away with?

How are the Cons going to get out of this mess?

Perhaps by proroguing Parliament again:

Rumours swirling around Ottawa suggest the Conservative government is thinking of shutting down Parliament until after the Olympics, killing some of its own bills but also ending the discussion of Afghan detainees that is nibbling away at Tory popularity.

“I have heard that from some of the public servants,” Liberal House Leader Ralph Goodale said Monday of a potential prorogation. “The word they are getting is ‘get ready to clear the decks. Anything that needs to get done before a parliamentary session ends, get it done.' ”

Conservative staff members said they also have received hints that a prorogation may be in the offing. But a spokeswoman for Government House Leader Jay Hill said his office “won't indulge the Hill rumour mill.”

The rumours suggest that Parliament would return in March, when the Games are over, with a new budget that could be used to provoke an election.

Source. Hopefully the electorate will begin to tire of this soon...

The Afghan torture scandal -- the plot thickens

Looks like another confidence vote could be in the works:

OTTAWA -- MPs headed off for their Christmas break Friday discussing the unmerry possibil­ities of everything from a court battle to a confidence vote that could bring down the Conservative government over the Afghan detainee issue.

The House of Commons adjourned late Thursday leaving a political cliff­hanger. The opposition parties voted to force the government to release all documents related to the detainees file -- uncensored -- to a parliament­ary committee. The parliamentary law clerk backed up the move, underlining the primacy of the chamber over laws passed by the government.

But a string of cabinet ministers dismissed the parliamentary motion, saying laws governing the classifica­tion of certain documents will govern their release. "We follow the law and the law is very clear that if there are elements of security, elements that could affect the security of our sol­diers or civilians, then information will be protected," Trade Minister Stockwell Day said Friday.

Justice Minister Rob Nicholson add­ed: "Officials have and will continue to provide all legally available infor­mation, and officials are following the laws that Parliament has passed."

It leaves the country potentially in the grips of another constitutional melee over which body should reign: Parliament or the government.

One NDP source said the Commons might be forced to rule the govern­ment in contempt of Parliament, which would eventually entail a con­fidence vote.

From the Winnipeg Free Press.

"Interro-Gate" continues to haunt the Cons... but to what effect?

Well, General Walter Natynczyk now admits that at least one prisoner handed over to the Afghan authorities was tortured, The pressure for an inquiry is growing, so on the surface it least it would appear that the Cons are in a bind. But are they? Bruce Anderson certainly thinks so:

A while ago, I wrote that there would need to be more evidence to corroborate Mr. Colvin and a process by which that information came to light, in order for this issue to create political consequences. Both of those conditions have been met, and while Copenhagen, Christmas and the Olympics will all give breathing space to the government, the government is now faced with a risk-filled dillemma.

If an inquiry is inevitable, they should avoid looking as though they were dragged kicking and screaming into it. If they gamble that stonewalling will work, they may lose that gamble, and look like they cared too little about doing the right thing to safeguard the international honor of Canada.

On the other hand John Ibbison thinks there will be no long-term consequences for the government:

Objectively, the abuse of Afghan detainees is hugely important. Canadian soldiers and officials might have been complicit in violating the Geneva Conventions. Their political masters were cavalier, at best, or negligent, at worst, in how they handled the matter. Heads should roll.

But politically, this is an issue that doesn't resonate outside Ottawa. The revelations haven't moved the polls. The Liberals are in what is turning into typical disarray. Firing Mr. MacKay is the one thing Mr. Harper could do that would undermine his own party while helping to unify his opponents.

You think Stephen Harper is nuts?

I wonder. Ibbitson's article rings true in a lot of ways; the government can stonewall for quite a while, and as Anderson concedes, the timing of this is potentially quite convenient for Harper and his cronies, with first Christmas and then the Olympics as convenient distractions. But contrary to what Ibbitson implies, we're now seeing polls suggesting that Canadians don't believe the government's claims that they knew nothing of what was going on. How much effect this will have on people's voting intentions remains to be seen, though. And Michael Ignatieff hasn't got a whole lot of credibility on this issue either:

To defeat evil, we may have to traffic in evils: indefinite detention of suspects, coercive interrogations, targeted assassinations, even pre-emptive war.

He wrote that five years ago, in the New York Times.

Canadians mad at Cons... but not prepared to do anything about it

So given that 51% of Canadians believe Richard Colvin's reports of our government's complicity in torture, not to mention that 75% of Canadians are embarrassed about our the Cons' inaction on climate change, one would think that this should show itself in people's voting intentions. Shouldn't it?

The federal Conservatives continue to hold a 10-point lead — stable for nearly one month — over the Liberals, a new EKOS poll suggests.

The poll, commissioned by the CBC and released Thursday, suggests the Conservatives would have the support of 36.9 per cent of eligible voters and the Liberals 27.1 per cent.

The NDP would follow at 15.3 per cent, the Green Party at 11.4 per cent and the Bloc Québécois at 9.4 per cent, according to the poll.

While the Conservatives continued to hold the lead in voter support, approval of the government's direction dropped among those polled in the last week.

EKOS conducted the poll between Nov. 11 and Nov. 24.

From the CBC. So, fellow Canadians, what the frig is wrong with you?

US officials may face charges in Spain

For facilitating torture, no less:

A Spanish court has agreed to consider opening a criminal case against six former Bush administration officials, including former Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, over allegations they gave legal cover for torture at Guantanamo Bay, a lawyer in the case said.

Human rights lawyers brought the case before leading anti-terror judge Baltasar Garzon, who agreed to send it on to prosecutors to decide whether it had merit, Gonzalo Boye, one of the lawyers who brought the charges, told The Associated Press on Saturday.

The ex-Bush officials are Gonzales; former undersecretary of defense for policy Douglas Feith; former Vice President Dick Cheney's chief of staff David Addington; Justice Department officials John Yoo and Jay S. Bybee; and Pentagon lawyer William Haynes.

From the Independent, via Pride for Red Dolores in this babble thread.

Dershowitz on torture: "Hey, it worked for the Nazis!"

Crazy as it sounds, that's pretty much what Dershowitz is saying here:

There are some who claim that torture is a nonissue because it never works--it only produces false information. This is simply not true, as evidenced by the many decent members of the French Resistance who, under Nazi torture, disclosed the locations of their closest friends and relatives.

Via babble. I can't help thinking there's a wee bit of an irony in Dershowitz, who jumps up and down and screams "anti-Semitism" the moment someone criticizes his beloved Israel, citing history's most notorious anti-Semites as exemplars of how to extract information from suspects. Of course he includes the obligatory line "I am personally opposed to torture", but then he seems to contradict himself here:

The members of the judiciary committee who voted against Judge Mukasey, because of his unwillingness to support an absolute prohibition on waterboarding and all other forms of torture, should be asked the direct question: Would you authorize the use of waterboarding, or other non-lethal forms of torture, if you believed that it was the only possible way of saving the lives of hundreds of Americans in a situation of the kind faced by Israeli authorities on the eve of Yom Kippur? Would you want your president to authorize extraordinary means of interrogation in such a situation? If so, what means? If not, would you be prepared to accept responsibility for the preventable deaths of hundreds of Americans?