spiderleaf – Page 8 – Progress Pond

Breaking!!! Spider’s Canuck day thoughts

Hey there BTribbers, long time no see. Sorry I’ve been gone so long, I know you all must have missed me 🙂 but I’ve been quite sick & not capable of staring at a computer screen, let alone typing. But never fear, I’m feeling much better and am inspired on this lovely Canuckian Day to venture back onto the net and share some thoughts before I head outside to enjoy the sunshine, some Alexander Keith’s Pale Ale & fireworks…

I’ve already spread some snark on the site this morning so really, what’s left but a diary and beer? 😉
What does it mean to be Canadian? Tribe34 posted a wonderful diary expressing an opinion that I share, but that’s never stopped me from being redundent and wasting precious diary space before… 😉

so here goes nothing (sorry, no refunds, I can’t be held accountable if you happen to disagree…):

Peace. Justice. Equality. Tolerance. Education. Health. Environment. Diversity.

Those words say it all for me. It is at the core of every Canadian’s being; right, left or centre. When you start with those words as a given, the attitudes and policies naturally flow from there.

Kyoto, conservation, recycling… Hell yes… we have all been into the wilderness (i.e. at least going to someone’s cottage for a long weekend or to an apple farm on a school trip 🙂 & we want to keep our trees, lakes and animals in a nice state. We only inhabit about 80% of the second largest country in the world & driving 30 mins in any direction from our cities gets you into nature. Our cities also have plenty of green space and parks… we bitch and moan in winter, but come summer we are all off to the outdoors 🙂

As an example of this our Crime Stopper alerts for cripes sake in the Maritimes are about Moose hunting & Saturday morning news on the CBC isn’t complete without a cute animal story.

In terms of diversity.. we are so inter-married, pluralistic and diverse in the big cities (i.e. T-dot, Montreal, Vancouver, Ottawa) that it would be literally mentally painful to maintain a hostile or bigotted world view.

Which leads us to separation of church and state… we actually still have an official government holiday on Good Friday, but we are firmly against the church or religion inserting itself into state affairs. We have so many different religions and ethnicities in our country that who’s would we pick? It would be madness to allow religion into our political and moral process! Madness I tell you!

Hence.. same sex marriage.

We oppose war. Our military is trained for peacekeeping. We proudly wear the blue berets of the UN & get upset when we don’t live up to our obligations to foreign aid and stabilization. We as a country were firmly against the Iraq war, yet we saw Afghanistan as a rightly fought war and are committed to bringing peace to a country so ravaged by conflict for decades.

Do you remember the scene in Bowling for Columbine where Moore asks the teenagers in Windsor if people should have automatic government health care if they are sick & her look and answer was one of pure bewilderment as to why on earth someone would even ask that question… that pretty much sums it up for me… of course everyone should be provided health care as a basic human right.

I could go on and on, but I’m really itching to go outside so I won’t. But I wish everyone on earth a Happy Canada Day today and I hope you are all as lucky as we are to live in a wonderful, diverse & progressive country.

Peace & a Happy Independence Day to my hubby and all the other Yanks on the site… hopefully you can re-take your country from the imperialists again soon!

Fisk: We are all complicit in these vile acts…

In keeping with the recent on-slaught of GOP pro-torture propaganda as Armando has been documenting & the DSM lack of controversy by the sheeple in the US press; Robert Fisk weighs in with a piece in the Independent yesterday.
We are all complicit in these viles acts of torture – but what can we do about it?

We are all complicit in these vile acts of torture – but what can we do about it? If our government uses information drained out of these creatures, it is we who are holding the whips.

I still have my notes from a man who knew all about torture, a Druze friend in the 1980s, during the Lebanese war, pleased with himself because he’d just caught two Christian militiamen trying to plant a car bomb on the Beirut seafront. “I saw two Phalangists over there. I knew who they were. They had a bomb in their car. I called the PSP [Walid Jumblatt’s Progressive Socialist Party] and they took them off for questioning.” What happened to them? “Well, they knew what would happen to them; they knew there was no hope. They were questioned here for a couple of days and then they were taken up to Beit Eddin.”

Ah, Beit Eddin, one of the prettiest villages in Lebanon, the palace of the Emir Bashir the Second, site now of one of the country’s finest music festivals – run by Jumblatt’s glamorous wife Nora. But Beit Eddin was different in the 1980s. “The guys are always told that they are going to die, that there’s no point in suffering – because they are going to be killed when they’ve talked,” my Druze friend told me. “There’s a center. They don’t survive. There are people there who just press them until they talk. They put things into a man’s anus until he screams. Boiling eggs, that sort of thing. They kill them in the end. It’s only a few days and it’s all over. I don’t really like that sort of thing. I really don’t. But what can I do?”

It’s a good question again now. What can we do? What can we do when an American president dispatches “suspects” to third countries where they will be stripped, wired up, electrocuted, ripped open and tortured until they wish they had never been born? What can we do with a prime minister – ours – who believes that information from torture victims may be of use to us and may be collected by us? How can we clean our hands when we know that men are being subject to “rendition” through our own airports? Doesn’t a policeman have the right to go aboard these CIA contract jets that touch down in Britain and take a look at the victim inside and – if he believes the man may be tortured – take him off the plane?

What do we do indeed. What can we do when assholes at Powerline, on Faux, in the Congress, on the airwaves, infecting millions, are justifying and grotesquely embracing torture as the new black? The hip thing to wear. The patriotic stance?

The backlash has begun of course… can we withstand it and breakthrough with the truth… have so many truly become so desensitized that torture can even be spoken of as a matter of degrees…

I started thinking about this more seriously in the beautiful little town of Listowel in Co Kerry… I was handed a flyer by a bearded man in the audience. “Who was on board the CIA-chartered plane Reg No N313P that landed in Shannon on 15 December 2003 en route from Iraq?” it asks.

Now, a little fact-checking suggests that the Tralee anti-war group got the details right. And planes have also gone in the other direction – to Uzbekistan and Egypt and other countries where Geneva Conventions – already disregarded by the lads and lassies in charge of Guantanamo and Abu Ghraib – are used as lavatory paper. In Uzbekistan, they boil “suspects” in fat. They take out their nails. In Egypt, they whip prisoners and sometimes sodomize them. In one Egyptian prison complex a local human rights group found that guards forced prisoners to rape each other. But no friendly Garda walks up to find out who’s aboard at Shannon. The Irish government will not investigate these sinister flights. Outside, Irish eyes may be smiling. But they won’t be allowed a peek into these revolting aircraft.

….

And as we all know – and Saddam’s torture boys were also experts at this – prisoners’ families can be brought to prisons to be beaten, raped and sodomized if the inmate still refuses to talk. With all this are we now complicit. As long as we send men off to this physical hell, we have the electrodes in our hands; we are the torturers. As long as our government accepts information drained out of these emasculated creatures, it is we who are pulling out the fingernails; it is we who are holding the whips.

Mind you, our American friends are already, it seems, dab hands at smearing prisoners with excrement and beating them and – given the evidence I’ve heard from a prisoner who was at Bagram in Afghanistan – sticking brooms up men’s anuses, and, of course, just killing them. Thirty prisoners have now died in US custody. I don’t believe in the few bad apples line. It’s happened on far too great a scale. And how do we excuse all this filth? How do we excuse ourselves for this immorality? Why, we say Saddam was worse than us.

Saddam had women raped; he shot them down into mass graves. He was much worse. But if Saddam’s wickedness has to be the tuning fork against which all our own iniquities are judged, what does that say about us? If Saddam’s regime is to be the moral compass to define our actions, how bad – how iniquitous – does that allow us to be?

Saddam tortured and executed women in Abu Ghraib. We only sexually abused prisoners and killed a few of them and murdered some suspects at Bagram and subjected them to inhuman treatment in Guantanamo and sent others off to be boiled and fried and killed off by our “friends” without the embarrassment of being present. Saddam was much worse. And thus it became inevitable that the symbol of Saddam’s shame – Abu Ghraib – subsequently became the symbol of our shame too.

Indeed.

How shameful that Durbin is under attack for logically stating the obvious… We shouldn’t even be in the same league as Saddam, or Stalin, or Hitler… let alone discussing how much worse they were than us as if that makes it okay.

Keep the pressure on the MSM and applaud those who report the news fairly and frequently… those who recognize the importance of this to democracy.

Torture of any form is wrong. And those who do it or sanction it are guilty of a crime.

Opposed to same-sex marriage? Answer the question then.

I have always been a supporter of human rights for all. And that does mean all… including gays. I mean really, who the hell am I to tell someone else what to be attracted to sexually? Who made me God? … which leads me to God… is it so much to ask, really, truly, to leave him out of it when discussing basic human rights that are codified in law for all citizens of a country? You do live in America (or Canada as the case may be for me) right? Separation of powers and all… or did you skip school that day?

With that preamble, on to my question after the flip.
Soooo….

What exactly does two women or men being married have to do with my marriage of 11 years? How exactly will this undermine my fantastic relationship with my husband?

Seriously, I want an answer because this has been a flippant non-argument used by opponents of two people who happen to be of the same sex enjoying the same rights and status as me and mine.

Shouldn’t I be more concerned with some other woman coming along and having an affair with my man? Isn’t that much more logical? Or is it that by legalizing gay marriage all of a sudden my husband & I would turn gay? Or that more of our kids would be “indoctrinated”? That makes no sense, you either are or you aren’t (or you’re a bit of both, but whole other story) so I really don’t get it. Somebody help me out here please.

Or is it that if gay marriage was legal all those “closet” homosexuals will all of a sudden come out and reduce the dating pool? Is that it? No… it couldn’t be.

Hmmm… so that leaves religion.

I’m not going to engage in a religious debate because it is a personal thing. Yup. That’s right. My religion is personal and none of the business of the State. The State takes care of making sure we are all equal and free & we take care of our own lives and those of our family and neighbours. And if you choose not to accept homosexuality because of your religion then that’s fine. If you want to write about it, or go on talk radio.. totally cool too. Freedom of speech and all.

But…

You have no right to impose your religious views into my life or the lives of others. Marriage is not something that one religion owns (nor those of non-religious belief). Therefore, no one religion or group of people can declare that “marriage is sacred”. Nope. It’s timehonored for sure, but sacred… by which religion? People were getting married back in the day in non-Christian or Muslim countries as well…

Long story short… answer the question please. No one has yet and I’ve asked quite a bit over the years.

GBCBT

The end is nigh for me. I can’t take it anymore. The navel gazing. The infighting. The diaries on ratings abuse. The focus on things I don’t want to talk about. The flame war with Armando. The refugee crisis…

Ya know, all the usual stuff.

So I say to you BooTribbers: pay more attention to the shit I want to pay attention to or I’m outta here. For serious.

Basically, my point is you need to… pay more attention to me. Even when I don’t post anything you can still talk about me and the things I think are worthwhile ya know, it’s just plain rude not to… like the price of tea in China & Oui’s latest lyrical posting & if Anamolous will give me another 4 or not.

And finally, stop being so serious people… whatever happened to the art of the snark in these parts??

Boo hoo, so long Boo, you lost a precious poster who was wronged repeatedly without anyone even knowing it. Adios, au revoir, have a good life.

….

Okay, you got me… maybe not for serious… it is Saturday and since I don’t garden I figured I’d spend some time spreading snark on the site. 😉

So what would your GBCBT look like? And how’s the weather in your neck of the woods?

I always wanted to be the Professor; not Mary Ann

It pains me to do this. It almost makes me physically ill to wade into this battle that I’ve only observed from the sidelines.. it was too ugly, too raw, too quick to degenerate into name calling. But I feel so hurt by all of the anger and misunderstandings and the mass exodus on the site that I will add my voice.

I am going to leave all the he said/ she saids behind though and tell you a little bit about me & in the process what I feel about what has transpired on dkos these last couple of days (maybe, I can’t be tied down to a point… I’m warning you all up front).

When I was a little girl growing up I always wanted to be the Professor, not Mary Ann. Or Tarzan, not Jane… surprize, suprize, I know for all those who have encountered me on this site or in real life… but I digress.

[on the flip]
I was raised my a single mom who was brought up Ukrainian Catholic. She had shame instilled in her from the beginning. She married an abusive, alcoholic at age 20 & had me 9 months later. My father threatened to put me out on the street at age 13 so I could pay my own way. Luckily my mother was still strong enough to take me out of that situation at a young age.

But the pattern continued for her. She was/ is paranoid schizophrenic and could not hold down a job. She was forced to live off of disability, student grants and her boyfriends. Not all of her boyfriends were nice guys. I was never abused, but my mother was. The one constant though was her sense of self worth & she instilled that it me as well. Throughout all of the abuse I never thought once that she deserved it. I thought they were all complete fucking assholes and told her repeatedly. But the one thing she got trapped in was being forced to use her sexuality to get her out of tricky situations with domineering men. It didn’t always work, but sometimes she was able to calm them down. That left a mark on me. The mark of knowing what women must do sometimes to survive. It is not something to be taken lightly.

All that aside, I was raised to recognize that I am a complete equal to men. It never even occured to me that someone would think I was not. I didn’t give two shits about cheerleading, or cooking, or sewing, I wanted to read & climb trees and play hockey. But I also loved my Barbie collection & Sweet Valley High. The point of this is that while I wanted to be what I wanted to be, other girls wanted to be what they wanted to be. And that was cool. To each her own.

When I hit age 17 all of a sudden I was attractive. And attracted a lot of attention. I never dressed for it though, mini skirts just really aren’t very practical when you’re a tomboy. I was never ashamed of my looks, in fact, over time, I learned to embrace them and learned to live with increased attention from men when I was not looking for it. And that’s the operative point here… when I was not looking for it.

I am in the ad world and I frequently encounter clients who make non-PC remarks, but I have come to expect it from the nature of the business I am in and the age of my (mostly male clients). I counteract it when I can, or when it crosses a line, but for the most part I have come to accept that males are wired slightly differently and react to visual stimuli in a different way than women. Most men get aroused watching porn or looking at SI Swimsuit edition. Most women do not react the same way to seeing visual images that are not right in front of them.

Which brings me to the Pie fight ad. Did I find it offensive… me personally? Not really. I am subjected to that type of visual of women in my work on a daily basis (one of my former clients was a beer company… need I say more)… and I really think that sex is beautiful and women can be really hot. But what I was offended by was it’s placement on a site that is a community of diverse compatriots. Not all women feel as I do and when you are trying to foster a spirit of unity and intellectual debate, placing an ad of two scantily clad women smothering themselves in pie on the homepage is really not conducive to that.

My mother would have taken offense. And probably not come back to the site. Especially after the host dismissed her concerns and confusion… and frankly, potentially her entire life’s struggles and pain, because he personally did not find it offensive.

Why? Because it is a male fantasy we, as females, are forced to look at while we engage in “intellectual” debate with our supposedly equal male compadres. What would the men on the site feel if they were forced to look at two men rolling around in speedos while discussing politics? Probably about the same… except, you don’t see that every day of your lives like women do. It cuts even deeper when you finally realize there is no escape from it — even on a site like dkos. It’s sad.

This was a safe haven for progressives & a valuable initiation point for disseminating the liberal message to the masses and our elected representatives. But we need to respect and cherish eachother. Yes, we all go too far in our rhetoric. Nature of the blogging beast. But it takes a big person to admit they were wrong. And I’m talking to everyone here, not just Markos. He was way wrong, as were all the other chauvanistic posts, but so were some of those from the other side who painted all men with one brush and wouldn’t give an inch. Everyone is human after all.

ps – I am not leaving since I really have no cause to… nobody pays attention to me anyway.. except for Armando every once in a while… 😉

Pro-Canada = terrorist according to DA

Hey,

I am not a lumber jack or a fur trader,

and I don’t live in an igloo or eat blubber or own a dog sled,

and I don’t know Jimmy, Sally or Suzie from Canada although I am certain they’re really really nice, uh.

I have a Prime Minister not a president.

I speak English and French, not American,

and I pronounce it about, not a boot.

I can proudly sew my country’s flag on my back pack,

I believe in peace keeping not policing, diversity not assimilation,

and that the beaver is a truly proud and noble animal.

…

I AM CANADIAN

from a Molson Commercial – IAM.ca

Better ’round us all up now eh? We must truly hate America because we love Canada. And that means that we are terrorists.

Sound ridiculous? Well that’s the argument a DA in PA is making against a high-school student who, it is alleged, was planning to bomb his high school.

[follow on the flip]
From today’s Toronto Star:

His name is Travis Biehn, a teenager transplanted from Newfoundland to Pennsylvania’s upper-middle-class Bucks County.

But two radically different portraits of the 17-year-old have emerged.

According to an aggressive media campaign abetted by the district attorney’s office in the Philadelphia area, he is a dangerous young man who was intent on blowing up his high school — because he didn’t like Americans.

To his family, friends, some classmates and his lawyer, he is a bright, techno-savvy prankster who is being tried publicly because he was proudly wearing an “I am Canadian” T-shirt when he was arrested.

One thing both sides can agree on — Biehn is in trouble and remains in custody, facing serious charges of making terroristic threats and possessing an incendiary device.

Police found some of the components that could be used to build a bomb in his bedroom, but not all the components for such a device, even though the district attorney is quoted as saying he had enough material to level the house.

It has raised the question as to whether Biehn is being accorded the same rights guaranteed an American or is being overly demonized because he is not from this country.

…

“They are clearly playing the anti-American card and trying him in the media,” said Biehn’s lawyer, William Goldman. He accused Bucks County District Attorney Diane Gibbons of breaching professional ethics by outlining the case and cooking up motives to local reporters before she received any information that could be used in Biehn’s defence.

The Central Bucks School District superintendent, Robert Laws, told reporters two students had stepped forward and told authorities the accused had bragged that he knew how to make bombs and planned to use them.

Gibbons also said the boy’s parents were unco-operative when their home was searched, and then told reporters in Pennsylvania: “He apparently has made it clear that he does not like America and that he would prefer to be in Canada.”

…

The anti-American link apparently stems from the T-shirt Biehn wore during a court appearance Friday, which sported a number of pro-Canadian slogans. Travis’ mother, a hockey player, brought the shirt back for her son after playing in a tournament in Canada.

The shirt carries slogans familiar to any Canadian. [see above for the contents of the tee]

…

What is wrong, Goldman said, is the anti-American card being played in the media by the county’s district attorney, resulting in a headline in The Allentown Morning Call which read: “DA: Teen bomb suspect hates U.S.”

He was wearing the T-shirt because he was wearing it under a dress shirt when taken into custody on Thursday evening, Goldman said.

“He was wearing the same outfit, right down to his drawers,” he said. “I respect the institution and when I go to court, I want to have my clients appropriately dressed. But when he’s apprehended at night, held overnight and marched into court by 8:15 a.m., there is no time to put a suit and tie on him.”

He also denied Biehn’s parents were unco-operative.

“We have a constitution in this country and it says you have the right to remain silent and you have the right to counsel. That’s all they did,” he said.

…

Laws told the Morning Call he understands the boy had made anti-American remarks to students.

Goldman said no such evidence has come to his attention.

Still, the newspaper reported on the weekend: “The 17-year-old Bucks County boy charged with having bomb-making equipment in his bedroom and threatening to blow up his school is a Canadian who hates Americans, prosecutors say.”

J.D. Mullane, a Bucks County Courier Times columnist, wrote: “It’s easy to mock school administrators who enforce extreme `zero tolerance’ policies by expelling kids caught with nail clippers and other `dangerous’ contraband.

“But few of us will ever deal with a character like Travis William Biehn.”

The county prosecutor says Biehn scrawled a bomb threat on a school bathroom wall on May 27, then drew a teacher’s attention to it.

However, Goldman says, the threat was washed off before police were called.

“We don’t know whether we’re dealing with a right-hander or a left-hander,” he said.

Holy fuck. Was he a threat? Who the hell knows at this point, they certainly don’t seem to have much evidence. But it truly frightens me that jingoism would go this far in the land of the free. The kid was wearing a fucking I AM CANADIAN t-shirt & that now means he hates Americans and wants to kill them?

Well better invade now since most Canadians have one of them there shirts too. I don’t since I’m not a big fan of wearing brands on my clothing, but after this, hell yeah I’m going to buy one. And I might just wear it the next time I cross the border too.

Pro-Canada = Al Qaida. Holy fuck, that’s just insanity and pretty damn dangerous for the future of the world and the US.

(one little aside of snark… and you wonder why the rest of the world might not be too keen on ya’ll these days…)

*disclaimer. I don’t really love Canada. I am married to a Yank. Please don’t arrest me… I look ghastly in ‘Gitmo orange’…

UK soldiers face War Crimes trial- how far up will it go?

This investigation & potential charges by the British Military of British soldiers and their commander is a major development in the War in Iraq on the other side of the pond. While the US government stonewalls and refuses to completely investigate how high up the chain of command the abuses go, the UK gov’t is now under increasing pressure to do so… at home & abroad.

The ICC also has an investigation into British War Crimes during Iraq and with the release of the Downing Street Minutes the case grows ever stronger.

[more on the flip]
The story so far:

Up to 11 British soldiers and officers are under investigation for alleged war crimes over the death of an Iraqi civilian in British custody, The Independent on Sunday can reveal.

Military lawyers are considering the charges as part of a major inquiry into allegations that members of the Queen’s Lancashire Regiment beat Baha Mousa, a hotel worker, to death in September 2003. As the IoS disclosed last week, the officers include the regiment’s commander, Col Jorge Mendonca, 41, who has been warned he could be tried for allegedly failing to control his troops effectively. There is no allegation that he took part in any abuse.

At least four QLR members, thought to be privates and NCOs, face specific charges of murder and abuse over Mr Mousa’s death from heart failure and asphyxia, allegedly due to multiple injuries, on 15 September 2003. But alongside another seven soldiers and officers, the four alleged assailants also face wider war crimes charges.

….

Army sources yesterday indicated there was disquiet throughout the service at the charges…. He said many soldiers suspect these charges were considered only after the court martial of three soldiers in February, for abusing alleged Iraqi looters at Camp Breadbasket, led to criticism that no one above the rank of corporal was charged.

I agree that it is a terrible and demoralizing decision to take when you charge your own soldiers with War Crimes. But if the crime fits the charge, it is necessary to maintain order, standards and always keep human rights at the forefront. But you have to charge the officers and the decision makers if the problem is systemic, which it most certainly is in the US and it seems the UK as well.

No one is above the law and “just following orders”, at any level of responsibility, is unacceptable.

Another eight Iraqis arrested with Mr Mousa are preparing to sue the UK after claiming they were systematically abused and tortured by British troops. Another detainee, Khifah Taha, was also hospitalised and narrowly escaped death after suffering acute kidney failure allegedly as a result of a sustained beating while in British custody.

Army prosecutors and the Attorney General, Lord Goldsmith, are under intense legal and political pressure to investigate properly Mr Mousa’s death, after the High Court ruled last December the UK had broken the Human Rights Act by failing to prevent his death or prosecute his alleged assailants quickly.

The ICC is concurrently investigating the British government for its conduct during the War on Iraq.

The UK is facing a formal investigation by the International Criminal Court in The Hague over allegations that the UK broke international law in Iraq by using cluster bombs in urban areas and by attacking power stations. The ICC is also studying war crimes claims based on the Mousa case and the deaths of other Iraqi civilians.

The ICC has written formally to the Ministry of Defence, asking for comments on allegations raised in a detailed legal dossier submitted by the British legal group PeaceRights, and earlier complaints by the Athens Bar Association.

I stand behind this investigation and I sincerely hope that it is not limited to the rank-and-file. It is most likely much easier for the International community to pick the UK to start the War Crimes process on Iraq. They don’t have the same stature as the US in terms of pure military & economic might (although the economic might is tenuous at best thanks to W), Blair is in trouble politically, they’re part of the EU, people still remember their colonial days and they are signatories to the ICC.

But Bush, Rumsfeld, Cheney, Wolfowitz, Feith, Tenet et al should be very very nervous anyway. Their time will come when the case is airtight and their ‘buddies’ like Blair start leaking to save their own asses.

I am a firm believer in global human rights standards and global accountability. This is a small planet and we are all responsible for its and eachothers well being. We cannot evolve to an equal and free reality if the countries with the highest ideals betray them without consequence whenever convenient or in self interest. That is why the neo-cons break my heart. I grew up believing in the ideals that were America… and I was born in Canada.

On a more positive note: Today is UN Peacekeeper Day. As a Canadian I think quite fondly of the Blue Helmets that blurs nationality and brings hope to those in war torn regions. Let’s say thank you to them today and celebrate the good the military can do as well as condemn the evil.

Action: Help the US Conscientious Objectors in Canada

If you are not familiar with the case of Jeremy Hinzman a US soldier who deserted to Canada when his unit was about to be deployed to Iraq…

His claim for refugee status was denied by Canada’s Immigration & Refugee board and he has now appealed to Federal Court to stop his deportation back to the States.

[more on the flip]
About Jeremy Hinzman:

Hinzman enlisted for four years in November 2000 to earn financial support from the military for a university degree.

He became a crack infantryman but gradually came to believe that taking part in offensive military operations would violate his personal beliefs.

During a stint in Afghanistan, his request for permanent non-combative status as a conscientious objector was rejected.

The Canadian refugee tribunal ruled that Hinzman would face due process in the U.S. that did not amount to persecution, even if he did end up in jail for deserting.

If his Federal Court challenge is denied, Hinzman would face immediate deportation to the U.S.

If you are interested in more of his personal story and belief, please visit his website.

Amnesty International has recently taken up his cause:

In a decision taken at Amnesty’s international office in London, the organization said it considered Hinzman “to have a genuine conscientious objection” to serving as a combatant in Iraq.

“Accordingly, should he be imprisoned upon his return to the United States, Amnesty International would consider him to be a prisoner of conscience,” the group said in a statement.

The designation is important, at least symbolically, because it will raise awareness of the issue and put public pressure on American authorities, said Gloria Nafziger, a refugee co-ordinator with Amnesty’s Canadian section.

“People would write letters to the U.S. government asking that he be released and stating their objection to his imprisonment,” Nafziger said.

“We have varying degrees of success when we take that position.”

Hinzman’s lawyer Jeffry House said Amnesty’s decision cuts to the core of the case.

“It means that if the Canadian government sends Jeremy back to imprisonment in the United States, it will be complicit in a serious violation of human rights,” House said.

“Amnesty recognized that a deeply held ethical refusal to kill other human beings cannot justify a jail term, however powerful the country which proposes to do so.”

This case is an important test for Canada in this new age of the global “war on terra”. Canada recognized the Iraq war was illegal and as such should be accepting conscientious objector’s who are refusing to fight and kill in an illegal & immoral war. If Jean Chretien was still PM it would be almost a given. But Paul Martin has made it clear he wants to improve relations with the US (read Bush) and if he can throw a few soldiers back across the border to placate Bush while keeping Canada autonomous on other issues, he most likely will. I don’t necessarily disagree with the diplomatic angle, but I cannot countenance this action based on my deeply held beliefs. This man is not a criminal. He stood up and said he could not kill.

From a Democracy Now interview with him shortly after his last hearing in December:

JEREMY HINZMAN: Well, before the hearing even commenced, we had our hands tied a bit. As you have stated, the solicitor general of the Canadian government intervened in our case, and that’s only done in about 5% of cases. Anyway, they raised the issue that they felt that the legality of the war in Iraq was irrelevant to our refugee claims. So, we were unable to argue that in any way.

AMY GOODMAN: Explain what that means.

JEREMY HINZMAN: Well, basically, they said whether the war is legal or whether it’s illegal, it’s irrelevant to what you are trying to do here. Which, I mean, I would argue is pretty ludicrous, because that was almost my entire rationale for coming here in the first place.

AMY GOODMAN: So, what did you do?

JEREMY HINZMAN: We still argued our case. I mean, we — every day we see things happening in Iraq of an atrocious nature, and I think based upon how often they’re occurring, it’s clear that they are not merely anomalies, but that they’re systemic, and we tried to illustrate that through both submitted evidence and then also a former marine staff sergeant, who took part in the Iraqi war testified in my hearing.

AMY GOODMAN: That was Jimmy Massey?

JEREMY HINZMAN: Correct.

AMY GOODMAN: Jimmy Massey, who was also on Democracy Now!, talked about the killing of unarmed civilians in Iraq?

JEREMY HINZMAN: Correct. He spelled that out in the case. It was very powerful. You could hear a pin drop in the room when he was giving his accounts of what happened. I think it made an impression on the — well, Canada in general, but the hearing officer in particular. And then it’s one thing if we say all of this stuff is happening in Iraq, or if it’s illegal, but if you actually see the face of what happened over there, it’s a lot more powerful.

Canada cannot have it’s cake and eat it too. Either the war was illegal and we support the human rights of all, including soldiers, or we don’t and we should send our troops to Iraq asap. This is another Vietnam for Canada and as much as Martin wishes Hinzman and others will just go away, they won’t. There are estimates between a few dozen and hundreds of deserters in Canada as I type. They are waiting for the outcome of Hinzman’s case before coming forward and requesting status. We let them stay during Vietnam and we must do so again.

Action: Contact Prime Minister Paul Martin & Justice Minister Cotler and ask them to heed Amnesty’s decision and to allow all conscientious objectors to stay in Canada (you might want to thank them for continuing to stand on principles that are dear to Canadians and all concerned with human rights by refusing to go to Iraq and by recently announcing increases in foreign aid in the new budget & for sending troops to Darfur).

The Right Honorable Paul Martin (Prime Minister of Canada) – pm@pm.gc.ca

The Honourable Irwin Cotler (Minister of Justice & Attorney General) – webadmin@justice.gc.ca

Finally, you may want to CC Jack Layton & Gilles Duceppe, leaders of the opposition NDP & Bloc Quebecois to ensure this issue is brought up on the floor of the Commons during Question Period.

Jack Layton – jack@fed.ndp.ca

Giles Duceppe – ducepg1@parl.gc.ca

Cult of Personality: the GOP

Or why we keep banging our heads against the wall.

The GOP has a monopoly on hero worship.

Through the use of imagery, pulpits and media since Reagan, they have succeeded in painting their leaders as demi-gods/ heros/ righteous & compassionate folks. A majestic landscape, sweeping music, red white and blue rippling in the wind, the Republican in a crisp, but casual shirt talking to ‘ordinary folk’, laughing with children, saying all the words that have been focus group tested to instill a sense of protection, comfort & ‘common sense’ with the masses.

And with George W. Bush they created a masterpiece. The boy-King, the president who talks to the Lord.

I’ve been watching the types of reactions by ‘average Americans’ to various scandals on tv, in LTE, comments & posts on blogs, talk radio, etc. and a common theme emerges.

They refuse to believe that it happened. End of story. No more argument. And the rationale, if ever given, is that this person (Usually a member of the Bush admin, one of the lunatic far-right, radical judges, Limbaugh/ O’Reilly or a Ralph Reed type) is a good man and would never have anything but the purest of intentions. Blind faith rears its ugly head.

This is brainwashing at its best. If there is no room for error, ever, than what type of person is capable of carrying that weight? This is where fundamentalist religion enters the picture.

We all went to school. Most of us to public school where we read the same books, worked from the same textbooks and learned about history. Unless something is fundamentally fucked in the Bible belt schools (other than just Evolution), everyone should be at about the same level of basic education. So where does the deification come from?

I know that American mythology has a lot to do with the thinking that sometimes allows intelligent, free thinking liberals to impart more hero worship to figures like Jefferson or Lincoln than perhaps they warrant… true leaders and thinkers for sure, but they were not without fault and as such were only human. This perhaps influences and enhances the religious influence that has most recently come to the forefront of American politics.

How can a person ignore their own education and common sense to allow blindly the creeping influence of the State on privacy rights, the decimation of the economy, and the reality of their own pocketbook? To continue to swallow the lines and the lies whole and spit them back at those who disagree.

It is to blindly & religiously believe that your party/ leader alone is benign and will not use the instruments of control against you and yours.

I trust no one implicitly. Power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Pretty much across the board. To believe otherwise you must believe the person you are trusting is uncorruptable & of the purest of hearts and the strongest of morals… but then that begs the question: How do you ever truly know the soul of another? The dark secrets they hide. The influences around them and how strong they are to resist? You can’t unless you believe the person is endowed with God-like qualities and therefore will always take the high road.

Or as they would have to believe:

God’s Ambassador on Earth, a Chosen one, a Good, pure Born-Again here to help bring on the Rapture.

The brain of the fundamentalists and all too many supposedly rational people has been propagandized to believe in the Cult of Personality that is the GOP.

Only way to keep the crazies at bay is to hammer the truth back at them each and every day. And to not give an inch. Bush is the President, he isn’t God or his messenger. This is America not Iran.

Sy Hersh: "The unknown unknowns of the Abu Ghraib scandal"

Today’s Guardian brings another reminder from Seymour Hersh that we are letting the Bush Administration off the hook on Abu Ghraib and it brings into stark relief the necessity of keeping this fight going. Yes, Gonzales has been confirmed, Bush re-elected, but it is still your America too. And we all have a right & obligation to keep the pressure on, demand justice for those “rendered” and incarcerated without due process or Geneva protections around the world.

It’s been a year since Abu Ghraib and what do we know?

The abuse continues unabated. One Commanding Officer has been reprimanded & she claims she’s the patsy. Many, many others have been let off the hook. Message heard loud and clear: Pentagon & WH doesn’t care. Few bad apples and all that.

Hersh revisits Abu Ghraib and tells us that there are many things that we still don’t know yet that he does.

[on the flip]

It’s been over a year since I published a series of articles in the New Yorker outlining the abuses at Abu Ghraib. There have been at least 10 official military investigations since then – none of which has challenged the official Bush administration line that there was no high-level policy condoning or overlooking such abuse. The buck always stops with the handful of enlisted army reservists from the 372nd Military Police Company whose images fill the iconic Abu Ghraib photos with their inappropriate smiles and sadistic posing of the prisoners.

….

There is much more to be learned. What do I know? A few things stand out. I know of the continuing practice of American operatives seizing suspected terrorists and taking them, without any meaningful legal review, to interrogation centres in south-east Asia and elsewhere. I know of the young special forces officer whose subordinates were confronted with charges of prisoner abuse and torture at a secret hearing after one of them emailed explicit photos back home. The officer testified that, yes, his men had done what the photos depicted, but they – and everybody in the command – understood such treatment was condoned by higher-ups.

What else do I know? I know that the decision was made inside the Pentagon in the first weeks of the Afghanistan war – which seemed “won” by December 2001 – to indefinitely detain scores of prisoners who were accumulating daily at American staging posts throughout the country. At the time, according to a memo, in my possession, addressed to Donald Rumsfeld, there were “800-900 Pakistani boys 13-15 years of age in custody”. I could not learn if some or all of them have been released, or if some are still being held.

A Pentagon spokesman, when asked to comment, said that he had no information to substantiate the number in the document, and that there were currently about 100 juveniles being held in Iraq and Afghanistan; he did not address detainees held elsewhere. He said they received some special care, but added “age is not a determining factor in detention … As with all the detainees, their release is contingent upon the determination that they are not a threat and that they are of no further intelligence value. Unfortunately, we have found that … age does not necessarily diminish threat potential.”

The 10 official inquiries into Abu Ghraib are asking the wrong questions, at least in terms of apportioning ultimate responsibility for the treatment of prisoners. The question that never gets adequately answered is this: what did the president do after being told about Abu Ghraib? It is here that chronology becomes very important.

[snip – go read the article, it’s classic, haunting, detailed, Hersh (not as long as his New Yorker pieces & he excerpts the story of the tatooed soldier from “Chain of Command”)]

Three days later the army began an investigation. But it is what was not done that is significant. There is no evidence that President Bush, upon learning of the devastating conduct at Abu Ghraib, asked any hard questions of Rumsfeld and his own aides in the White House; no evidence that they took any significant steps, upon learning in mid-January of the abuses, to review and modify the military’s policy toward prisoners. I was told by a high-level former intelligence official that within days of the first reports the judicial system was programmed to begin prosecuting the enlisted men and women in the photos and to go no further up the chain of command.

[all emphasis mine]

Abu Ghraib alone should have brought down this Administration. No WMDs and an illegal war should have brought them down. Maybe it’s religious fervor that will finally do it… but only if we keep the pressure on all of these important issues.