Paul S. Graham

Alanna Makinson is VP External, University of Manitoba Students Union. Following the June 13, 2009 Winnipeg Walk for Peace, she spoke on the negative impact of the war in Afghanistan and increased military spending on post-secondary education in Canada.

Makinson says that Canada is the fifth most expensive country in which to obtain a post secondary education. Inadequate public funding, rising tuition and increasing living costs are deterring working class, poor and aboriginal people from pursuing post-secondary education.

The cumulative education debt currently born by students and graduates is a staggering $13 billion. At the same time, governments are saying there is no money to relieve this burden.

“How,” asks Makinson, “does Canada justify spending $18.9 billion on the military last year alone?” She says that the federal government’s plan to increase military spending by $12 billion over the next five years is evidence of a misplaced priority. “One year of military spending,” says Makinson,” could eliminate all student debt in Canada.”

Makinson condemned increases in military research at the expense of funding for science and humanities research and term this trend a threat to human rights and academic freedom.

Yves Engler is the author of The Black Book of Canadian Foreign Policy. He spoke in Winnipeg, June 13, 2009, at the conclusion of the 28th annual Walk for Peace, on the need to reorient Canadian foreign policy. Engler’s proposals include:

• Abolition of Canada’s secretive Joint Task Force 2 commando unit
• Pulling out of NATO
• Reducing Canada’s burgeoning military expenditures by 10 per cent annually for up to 10 years
• Pulling out of Afghanistan immediately
• Reorienting Canadian foreign policy to serve the needs of the majority of Canadians rather than the interests of Canada’s business and military elites

Good stuff!

The spam that usually greets me with my morning coffee was enriched by a message from folks calling themselves Republicans for Ignatieff. The National Enquirer style, screaming ALL CAPS subject line REPUBLICANS FOR IGNATIEFF PRAISES MICHAEL IGNATIEFF FOR DEFENDING GEORGE W. BUSH IN RECENTLY-DISCOVERED AUDIO CLIP had me chuckling even before I opened the email.

The site creators deserve top marks for zeroing in on issues that would make a lot of Canadians nervous about supporting the Liberals in the next federal election, specifically Iggy’s (unconvincingly recanted) support for the U.S. invasion of Iraq, acceptance of targeted assassinations, pre-emptive wars and torture, his (Iggy-as- outsider-meme) admiration of things American and his enthusiasm for Alberta oil sands development.

Breathlessly, the site proclaims:

Now more than ever America needs a Canadian Prime Minister we can count on. A Canadian Prime Minister who knows us. A Canadian Prime Minister who loves us. Michael Ignatieff is the best choice for Canadian Prime Minister.

The site creator’s attempt to contrast Ignatieff’s unabashedly pro-American posture with Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s flimsy record of independence from U.S. foreign policy is unconvincing:

Although the current Canadian Prime Minister is a conservative, he has challenged the United States on the Arctic, he is charting Canada’s own course in the Americas, and he has failed to demonstrate a deep emotional connection to America like Michael Ignatieff.

But, the satire is quite rich.

My questions are:

1. Who is behind this site?

2. Who are they targetting?

A “whois” search gives the anonymous site creators a post box in Cocoa, Florida. Therefore, it could be anybody. I doubt the Republicans have anything to do with it, simply because I doubt they care whether we elect a Tory hawk or a Liberal hawk.

Are the New Dems behind it? It is in their interests to remind soft social democrats of what they would be getting if they permitted their disgust with Harper to drive them into the Liberal tent. Still, I doubt the New Dem spinsters are behind this: it’s too funny.

What about the Tories? Could this be their attempt to shore up the NDP vote and thereby weaken the Liberals at the polls?

Or is it just the work of goofy guys and gals with too much time on their hands?

I dunno. But I thank whoever is behind this for raising the spam bar.

Canadians are a death-denying lot. Perhaps because we are hardwired to avoid death for as long as possible, we spare no expense to make sure our corpses appear ready to leap out of the casket and we have no shortage of euphemisms to avoid saying someone is dead.

So what are we to make of Bill C-384 – “An Act to amend the Criminal Code (right to die with dignity)”? In one short page, it sets out amendments to the Criminal Code of Canada that will allow doctors to assist in the suicides of terminally ill patients who request it. With minimal safeguards against abuse, and no direction as to the means of dispatching the suicidal patient, it is chilling to think that this bill is even under consideration.

People with chronic disabilities are a growing sector of the Canadian population with a reason to be suspicious of the euthanasia crowd. The widespread sympathy expressed for Robert Latimer after he killed his severely disabled daughter, Tracy, in 1993 proves that too many able-bodied Canadians are willing to make lethal judgments about someone else’s quality of life.

Therefore, it is no surprise that the Council of Canadians with Disabilities opposes Bill C-384. While voluntary doctor-assisted suicide is not the same thing as murdering a disabled child without her consent, its passage would legitimize euthanasia and promote it as an acceptable response to illness and suffering. Over time, we can well imagine, euthanasia could come to be promoted by cash-strapped governments as a cost-efficient therapy.

Read the CCD’s news release, below. Read Bill C-384. Read the entrails of a chicken, if you must. But give it some thought and act accordingly.

While one may wish for the right to end one’s life, simply because “IT’S MY LIFE, DAMMIT!”, Bill C-384 should not be the legal vehicle for that last ride into the sunset.

Council of Canadians with Disabilities (CCD) Opposes Bill C-384

Winnipeg—The COUNCIL OF CANADIANS WITH DISABILITIES (CCD) believes that everyone who supports disability rights should oppose Bill C-384 which would legalize euthanasia and assisted suicide and put Canadians with disabilities at risk! CCD is a national human rights organization of persons with disabilities working for an accessible and inclusive Canada.

C-384, the private member’s bill to legalize euthanasia and assisted suicide in Canada received its first reading last month. Bill C-384 was introduced by the Bloc Québécois Member of Parliament – Francine Lalonde. This is Lalonde’s third attempt to legalize euthanasia and assisted suicide in Canada.

Bill C-384 legalizes euthanasia by amending section 222 of the Criminal Code and it legalizes assisted suicide by amending section 241 of the Criminal Code. “Called the “Right to Die with Dignity” Act, this bill threatens the lives of Canadians with disabilities. Its selling points are the notions of “dignity,” and “suffering.” However, the bill never explains what these terms mean. How do we measure dignity? What is suffering?” states Rhonda Wiebe, Co-Chair of CCD’s Ending of Life Ethics Committee. These terms are based more on social values than scientific ones, but this bill proposes that a “medical” and “legal” solution be the remedy for people whose lives are not “dignified” and who “suffer.”

“Living without dignity and suffering are common misperceptions that able-bodied Canadians have about the lives of their fellow citizens with disabilities. Bill C-384 does nothing to protect those who find themselves socially devalued in these ways,” states Dean Richert, Co-Chair of CCD’s Ending of Life Ethics Committee.

Social support and meaningful involvement in the community are more important for the well-being of people with disabilities than the severity of their disabilities. Assisted suicide is not a free choice as long as they are denied adequate healthcare, affordable personal assistance in their communities, and equal access to social structures and systems.

Pepsi versus Coke meets Republican versus Democrat

by Anthony J. Hall, Professor of Globalization Studies, University of Lethbridge

Just as fresh revelations keep oozing out about the broad extent of the international criminality perpetrated by the regime of the former US president, Canada is becoming the main site of a corporate-driven effort to re-brand George W. Bush as a legitimate political pundit. On May 29 Mr. Bush joins Bill Clinton on the stage of the Metropolitan Toronto Convention Centre in an event hosted by the TD Financial Group and several other sponsors. The hosts include the Calgary-based Bennett Jones law firm, the global accounting giant Ernst and Young, the Toronto Board of Trade as well as the Toronto-based Globe and Mail newspaper.

The Clinton-Bush gig in Canada’s biggest metropolis is happening about a month after the former president “tested the waters” as a public speaker by addressing an audience of 1,400 executives of mostly Texas-based oil conglomerates in an event hosted by Calgary’s Chamber of Commerce. Bush’s luncheon address was accompanied by the protests of several hundred demonstrators who advanced the case that there is a huge body of evidence already in the public domain that should be sufficient to prohibit Bush from entering Canada or, failing that, to necessitate his arrest on Canadian soil. In a widely published article, which I introduced in early March at an invited lecture at the University of Winnipeg, I outlined the legal and political terrain underlying Bush’s first major public foray outside the United States. That paper, which has proliferated widely on many Internet sites, is entitled “Bush League Justice: Should George W. Bush Be Arrested in Calgary Alberta and Tried for International Crimes?”

My academic intervention was one part of a larger collective effort aimed at advancing the case that the international crimes of George W. Bush and many of his ministers and advisers have been so obvious and gigantic that citizens must mobilize globally to insist that the rule of international criminal law should be made to prevail over the rule of force and political expediency. Many of the core legal principles awaiting enforcement are those that coalesced in the course of the Nuremberg War Crimes Tribunal. Its chief prosecutor, the renowned US jurist Robert Jackson, initiated the proceedings in 1945 by insisting that humanity’s future depended on removing “immunity for practically everyone concerned in the really great crimes against peace and mankind.” No longer could “so vast an area of legal irresponsibility” be “tolerated” because “because modern civilization puts unlimited weapons of destruction in the hands of men.”

Read more: George Bush and Bill Clinton Do Toronto (PDF)

In response to the reported slaughter of 25,000 Tamil civilians last week, members of Winnipeg’s Tamil community held a candle light vigil at the Manitoba Legislative Building in Winnipeg on May 17, 2009. At the vigil, they prayed for peace and called upon the Canadian government to do more to prevent further bloodshed in Sri Lanka. Here are some highlights from video I shot.

Question: What do you call a government that

1. refuses to defend the constitutional rights of a Canadian, imprisoned as a child and tortured by the Americans in Guantanamo Bay and refuses to repatriate another Canadian trapped in a kafkaesque nightmare in Sudan
2. refuses to allow war resisters to remain in Canada, despite two resolutions passed by the House of Commons to that effect
3. plans to bring back draconian national security laws including preventive detentions of people alleged on the basis of secret charges to be planning terrorist activity
4. continues to detain immigrants on the basis of secret evidence
5. imposes a no-fly list on Canadians that is compiled on the basis of secret allegations and against which there is no effective appeal
6. continues to fight a war in Afghanistan against the will of the majority of Canadians while barring critics and welcoming war criminals
7. shamelessly promotes an environmental disaster known as the Alberta tar sands despite the wishes of Canadians for environmental sustainability
8. considers its leader to be above the law, as demonstrated by the Cadman affair
9. protects former Tory Prime Minister from facing the Criminal Code of Canada with its flawed from the get-go Mulroney-Schreiber inquiry
10. prorogues Parliament to avoid facing a vote of confidence and certain defeat at the hands of a Parliamentary coalition representing two-thirds of Canadians who voted in the last election

Answer: Dangerous. Absolutist. Menacing. A subversive force that is undermining democracy in Canada. Thugs in blue sweaters. A government that must be defeated and sent packing as soon as possible.

Last month, I posted an Al Jazeera video shot in the aftermath of the March 22nd dawn raid on the town of Kunduz, Afghanistan, by troops believed to be U.S. Special Forces that left five Afghan men dead. The townspeople claimed the men were unconnected to the insurgency and that some were killed as they slept. The Americans claimed they were killed in a firefight after they responded to a demand for surrender with gunfire.

Kunduz is no stranger to murder or to U.S. Special Forces. Following the Siege of Kunduz in November 2001, three thousand captured Taliban fighters were packed into sealed containers and loaded onto trucks for transport to Sheberghan prison. When the prisoners began shouting for air, Northern Alliance soldiers fired into the trucks, killing many of them.

Witnesses say that when the trucks arrived and soldiers opened the containers, most of the people inside were dead. They also say U.S. Special Forces re-directed the containers carrying the living and dead into the desert and stood by as survivors were shot and buried.

This atrocity is described in Afghan Massacre: the Convoy of Death, a documentary produced and directed by Irish filmmaker Jamie Doran.

Fast-forward to 2009 — a new report by the Institute for War and Peace Reporting provides chilling, compelling and credible evidence that the March 22, 2009 American raid on Kunduz, Afghanistan was cold blooded murder. Read on.

IWPR Probe Challenges US Account of Kunduz Killings

Findings suggest five men killed by US forces in counter-insurgency operation had no extremist connections.

By IWPR reporters in Kunduz (ARR No. 319, 16-Apr-09)

An IWPR investigation has challenged the American military’s account of a recent raid by its forces on a town close to the border with Tajikistan, in which a number of men were either killed or taken away for questioning.

Over the past few weeks, local and international media reports have speculated about the motive for the March 22 dawn attack on Imam Sahib and the identity of those killed and detained.

The United States military has insisted that its forces stormed what it describes as a militant stronghold in Kunduz. It claims the troops battled insurgents, killing five and detaining four. But an IWPR probe, based on extensive interviews with local people, questions key aspects of the US army’s version of events.

The principal IWPR findings suggest the five men killed had no connection with extremists and cast doubt on the American claim that the victims had opened fire on the troops. Reporters’ enquiries indicate that only one of those killed owned a weapon and that two were asleep when they were shot.

It was the middle of the night, about 3.30 am, when the two Chinook helicopters landed in Imam Sahib, residents told IWPR, and approximately 60 soldiers zeroed in on a compound belonging to the mayor of the town, Sufi Abdul Manan. They blew in the gate, and then, equipped with night-vision goggles and guns with silencers, advanced into the courtyard and surrounded a guesthouse where visitors to the town often stayed, locals claim.

I was awoken by the sound of these large helicopters and saw Americans approaching the gate of the guesthouse,” said the owner of a fuel station nearby. “They had things on their helmets. I hid, so I could not be seen. I heard a sound from shots – like a ‘phhht-phhhht’.”

A baker in an adjoining compound said,

I could not see anything, but I heard a big bang, I think it was the Americans blowing up the gate.

Townsfolk say there were nine men in the guesthouse that night. Judging by the position of the bodies, seen by an IWPR reporter in an amateur video shot by a local right after the incident, the soldiers shot two men as they lay sleeping in their beds: Hassan Jan and Almed Imam.

Residents say the former made tea for guests and enjoyed listening to his music in the garden; while the latter, a long-time resident of the guesthouse, did some cleaning and washed vehicles parked inside the compound.

The soldiers also shot the mayor’s driver Obaidullah, who – from the video evidence – appeared to be trying to run away, and the mayor’s bodyguard, Nasrullah, along with his cousin Naqibullah, who had been living in the guesthouse for several weeks while he looked for a job in Imam Sahib, locals say.

They insist Nasrullah was the only one of the victims to possess a gun – his Kalashnikov was registered with the local authorities and was used to protect the mayor.

We were in a room near the courtyard of the guesthouse, and we could hear the shots – those ‘phhht’ sounds of guns with silencers,” said the mayor. “We could hear Nasrullah, my bodyguard, who was probably standing in front of the gate to our house. He was begging the Americans not to enter, he kept saying ‘there are women and children there.’ Then there was another shot, and we did not hear Nasrullah any more.”

Article continues . . .