Civic Duty

O Canada,
what are you doing in Kandahar?

When you live in a pretend democracy, every now and then you have to go out and pretend to vote.

Best wishes to my Canadian friends on the occasion of their civic duty.

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Surprise! Canadian Forces Commander Was A Serial Killer

Col. Russell Williams, Canadian Armed Forces

Like every other day, I suppose, it's been a day of sick news.

An Obama administration task force is now trying to strengthen legislation that would uphold [read: shred] the Constitution by making sure the telecoms don't do anything that might interfere with warrantless government surveillance. This action provides even more [read: less] support for Barack Obama's claim that voters who don't work as hard as possible to support the Democrats are "irresponsible", since their civil rights are so endangered by Republicans.

And Bush's Secretary of Defense [read: Attack], Robert Gates, is still running the Pentagon, and plenty of other Bush cronies are still filling their appointed offices, and virtually all the Bush policies are still in place, although a few things are actually worse now. So it makes perfect [read: no] sense for John McCain to describe Obama as running "the most partisan administration I have ever seen".

Pakistan's Foreign Minister spoke at Harvard University and made the totally [read: scarcely] understandable claim that Iran has "no justification to pursue nuclear weapons."

According to Dawn, Shah Mehmood Qureshi told his Harvard audience:

"Who's threatening Iran? I don't see any immediate threat to Iran."
...
Qureshi also pointed out that Iran was signatory to the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, which Pakistan and India never signed.

“They have an international obligation. They have signed NPT and they should respect that,” he said.

To clarify: India, Pakistan and Israel all have nuclear weapons but have not signed the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, so technically they should not be allowed to have nuclear weapons at all, or nuclear power either.

The United States, which has signed the NPT, acts as if the treaty has been nullified, and uses nuclear weapons against civilians in places like Iraq.

And Iran, which has also signed the treaty and therefore should be allowed to have nuclear power, is being hampered in its pursuit of same by the repeated claim (rejected by the Iranians, and never proven or even partially substantiated by anyone) that Iran is trying to develop nuclear weapons.

The absurdity is compounded by the fact that Iran is threatened by neighbors with nuclear weapons, and also by a rogue state halfway across the world with more nuclear weapons, and therefore the diplomatic [read: propaganda] tack at the moment is to claim that Iran is not threatened.

If it wasn't so sick, I could laugh even harder.

But the sickest laugh of the day comes from Canada, where

The decorated former commander of Canadian Forces Base Trenton, in eastern Ontario, pleaded guilty [on Monday] to all 88 charges against him — including two counts of first-degree murder, two counts each of sexual assault and forcible confinement and 82 break-ins and attempted break-ins.

According to the CBC,

Thousands of explicit photos that Col. Russell Williams took while wearing women's and girls' lingerie show how his sexual obsession escalated from lesser crimes to sexual assault and murder
...
He admitted to police he sought out homes where "attractive young women" lived, targeting those in their late teens to early 30's.

Col. Russell Williams photographed himself wearing lingerie

The Crown said Williams's behaviour was obsessive in the number of break-ins, in the meticulous manner in which he dealt with stolen clothes and in the sheer volume of photos he took and methodically filed.
...
Williams would place lingerie in boxes or bags when he got home. He was so obsessive in his collection of undergarments that he had to burn some of his trophies in a field to make room for more.
...
Williams took thousands of explicit photographs of himself at crime scenes — wearing women's and girls' lingerie, and masturbating on their beds — which he put in a complex file folder system with a date stamp.

The folder system gave a sense of how long Williams was in homes and what he did. He kept a log that stated the nature of the offences and stored evidence of the murders and break-ins on two hard drives. Police found them stored above the ceiling in the basement of his Ottawa home.
...
Crown prosecutor Robert Morrison ... said Williams's repeated sexually obsessive behaviour dates back to 2007 and 2008 — long before he escalated to actual sexual assaults on women — or the eventual murders ... In some of the photos, Williams is in a girl's lingerie, wearing parts of what the Crown said appears to be his Canadian military uniform.

That's the sick part; now for the laugh:

The Canadian media are turning themselves inside out in their attempt to answer the question: "How could  a guy like this rise to a position of power in an organization such as the Canadian military?" The question is more difficult than first appears, because media types and analysts must answer it without admitting any reality into the discussion.

They can't talk about the fact that psychopaths and the military are made for each other, or the obvious reasons why this is so. But I can.

Listen: People who enjoy wielding power over others tend to seek positions in which they can do so legitimately. They become policemen and soldiers and prison guards, and politicians and "news" anchors. The most extreme of these people seek out the most extreme situations, and nothing suits a psychopathic killer better than a job in which he is required to kill people. There is no draft in Canada, so the only people in the military are those who voluntarily decided to enlist.

This photo taken by Russell Williams was used as evidence against him.

Now: Armies seek out people who enjoy wielding power over others, who can live seemingly "normal" lives punctuated by episodes in which they take part in the tearing, shredding, crushing and burning of human flesh -- all for the "noble" cause of spreading liberty and freedom, of course. Those who bring strong administrative skills to the table, who are comfortable giving orders, and who are capable of manipulating large groups of people -- sometimes sending them to faraway lands to kill and die -- are quickly promoted.

In Canada -- just as in the USA -- it is not permissible for media types to say "our country is involved in an aggressive foreign war against people who have never attacked, or intended to attack, us or any of our friends." Instead the coverage starts and ends with the idea that Canadian soldiers are always doing the right sorts of things overseas, giving the little Afghan kids candy bars and so on.

And so we don't get any reality, and we don't get any insight, and we are all left to scratch our heads and wonder: "How could a guy who commanded stuff like that, have gone home and done stuff like this?"

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To catch up on the adventures of Holmes and Watson, who are still trying to crack open the Gareth Williams mystery, click here.

Beyond Sick: Canada Mourns A Fallen Psycho Warrior

The American way of war has come to Canada, and it's incredible what a dose of manure can do, even in the cold!

Here's a case study in the process by which a government can take a menace to society, put him in a uniform, and ship him halfway around the world where he can be a menace to some other society until he gets himself killed there and comes home a national hero.

Either sheer ignorance is sheer bliss, or Daniel Dale of the Toronto Star had to be very, very careful writing the story of Darryl Caswell.

Under the headline "Loved son a family's loss, a nation's hero", and with the sub-title: 'Why didn't he get one more ticket?', Daniel Dale's ode to a national disgrace begins this way:

Darryl Caswell took out a loan to buy his baby, a Honda CBR600RR sport motorcycle painted orange. He didn't spend $13,000 to drive slowly.

At least Daniel Dale is upfront about the fact that Darryl Caswell was just the sort of fellow you'd avoid if you wanted to live a long and healthy life. Unfortunately, some other people were not so lucky.

Near Bowmanville [Ontario], his home-town, and near Petawawa [Ontario], where his Royal Canadian Dragoons were based, Caswell careened through the streets, sometimes in excess of 150 kilometres [93 miles] per hour, seeking thrills, courting danger, "this orange blur," his stepmother says, on dark, small-town nights. Darryl being reckless. Darryl being Darryl.

Darryl being Darryl? Seriously? That's it?

"Careening through the streets" of a small town "in excess of 150 kilometres per hour"? Please!

He was a menace to society. He didn't care if he killed himself.

He didn't care if he killed anybody else, either.

Seriously.

Families of innocent people killed by "thrill-seeking", "death-defying" assholes like Darryl Caswell mourn in every city and town of any size, yet their grief is never immortalized like the grief Canadians are expected to feel for this "national hero".

Seriously.

In the summer of 2006, Caswell got a speeding ticket – another speeding ticket – riding the bike near Peterborough. His superiors, unamused, issued a warning: one more ticket, no more Afghanistan.

Why do they give maniacs tickets for repeatedly driving more than three times the speed limit in a residential area?

Why don't they just throw them away and lose the key, before the maniacs kill somebody?

Because they have a better use for maniacs like Darryl Caswell.

Caswell burned his tires. He put the Honda in storage. At the end of January 2007, he deployed to Kandahar.

Caswell was headed to the war. And that's why his superiors were unamused.

"Caswell's gonna kill somebody", they must have thought. "Let's make sure it's not one of ours."

On the home front, more than a year later, his father is still deep in denial.

"They said, `One more speeding ticket, you won't be able to go on the mission,'" says his father, Paul. "You wonder, why didn't he get one more ticket?"

Paul Caswell, 49, is a conveyor belt inspector and repairman. He has worked for 30 years at Bowmanville's Goodyear plant. He speaks plainly, grieves quietly. But he has questions, "the what-ifs."

He is a father still trying to accept, more than a year later, that his son was in that country on that patrol in that vehicle on that road at that moment.

It couldn't be any other way. Parents who raise maniacs are always in denial.

In 2004, Darryl worked at Goodyear for six months. For a young man who needed speed, factory work was numbingly mundane. He joined the army. Less than three years later, he was in Afghanistan. Less than five months later, his body was transported home.

"Why couldn't I have kept him at Goodyear? Why didn't he want to stay there? Good job for me all these years," Paul says. "Just wasn't for him, all black and dirty. He was doing what he wanted to do, but you ask yourself, `what if?' You hear there was supposed to be a minesweep that day. Minesweep was supposed to go down and clear the path first. But it got behind or broke down or something, so they went anyway. And that's when Darryl hit it, and that was the end of it. You'd think today's technology – you can check out your backyard on Google – why can't they be watching those guys and see when they're burying bombs and stuff?"

Paul now rides the Honda.

And isn't that just perfect?

Darryl Caswell's grieving father -- who apparently hasn't progressed to asking why Canadian troops are occupying a nation halfway around the world, which never attacked Canada, or any other NATO country, and never planned to do so -- now drives his late son's suicide machine.

And he wishes his country could establish 24/7 wall-to-wall surveillance in Afghanistan, so more maniacs like Darryl don't get killed there. Seriously.

Daniel Dale's tale turns to Caswell's brother, Logan, who was celebrating his 12th birthday when he got the bad news about his brother's death in Afghanistan.

The phone rang at the Caswells' comfortable Bowmanville house on June 11, 2007, Logan Caswell's 12th birthday. Trooper Darryl Caswell, Reconnaissance Squadron, 2nd Battalion, Royal Canadian Regiment, had promised his little brother he would call.

"I was waitin' for that call," Logan says. "Waitin' and waitin'..."

But Darryl, 25, was not on the line. The call was not for Logan.

While leading a supply convoy north of Kandahar City, the Coyote reconnaissance vehicle Darryl drove had struck an improvised explosive device. Less than two months before he was to return home, he was dead.

"I just thought to myself, it had to happen on my birthday," Logan says. "I didn't even cry. I just screamed."

It's a horrible thing, and you have to scream with him.

But even as Logan Caswell was screaming, the word was being passed down from Ottawa: "We've lost another psychopath; fire up the tribute machine."

Darryl's body, like the bodies of the 56 Canadian Afghanistan casualties before him, was flown to the military's base in Trenton, then driven west for an autopsy in Toronto. His family trailed the police-escorted hearse to the coroner's office, Paul and his wife, Christine, at their "lowest," Christine says, Darryl's death "finally real," their devastation mitigated only by the throngs of people who lined Hwy. 401 overpasses, wearing red and holding flags, to pay their respects.

For all but two of the repatriation convoys since Darryl's, Paul and Christine have stood on an overpass themselves. They wear red. They hold flags. From above, they watch strangers re-enact their nightmare.

"It's hard when we go, because it brings everything back," says Christine. "But we go because we know what it meant to us."

The military propaganda machine couldn't have better representatives than its very own victims:

Christine, a vivacious 46-year-old with blue eyes and blonde hair, married Paul in 1993. This Saturday afternoon, she wears a red Support Our Troops shirt, three pro-troops wristbands. A heart pendant, pictures of Darryl and Logan inside, hangs around her neck.

The families must go through hell; that's a given. So their pain is assuaged by the most vicious of fiction.

This fiction is a phony salve that leaves a permanent infection on the surrounding communities. And the disease spreads through intense government PR efforts which drive propaganda such as the piece we are now reading.

She can smile, now, when she flips through the Darryl photos she has placed on the coffee table of their family room. ("He loved his turkey and dressing. Darryl was meat and potatoes." "He was small but he was mighty. Strong as an ox." "Him and his dad, boot camp graduation. Darryl loved that photo. They had a special bond.")

She can laugh, now, when she tells Darryl-being-Darryl stories. ("Logan, remember when Darryl chased the chicken?")

"I'm getting to that point where I have a lot of good memories," she says. "I don't cry as much. Logan was getting sick of me crying."

Sick? This is way beyond sick!

Unfortunately, it is becoming more typical all the time.

The death of a soldier is unlike the death of anyone else. Darryl, a life-long daredevil, might well have died pursuing a private adventure. But he died in Kandahar, in a war of choice he deeply supported but millions of Canadians oppose.

A war of choice? Whose choice?

Have we sunk so low that our governments can now start, or join, foreign wars that are opposed -- on solid moral grounds -- by millions of people, yet perfectly ok for those who choose to fight, and who are called national heroes for doing it?

We have, you know. You bet we have.

We have sunk a lot lower than that.

And so the Caswells' loss, so deeply personal, was also both public and political, a subject for introspection and a catalyst, like 96 other soldiers' deaths since 2002, for national introspection. Darryl, their son, was now a national hero. For months, there were plaques to receive, ceremonies to attend, politicians to meet, interviews to do.

Some might be asking themselves questions like, "How long must this go on?"

The answer appears to be "Forever. The endlessness justifies the meaninglessness."

In November, Bowmanville High School honoured Darryl, a graduate, in its Remembrance Day ceremony. In May, a street in a new Bowmanville subdivision was named Darryl Caswell Way. Later in May, his name was added to Bowmanville's cenotaph.

"It's all great," says Paul. "Everybody has just been great. It's a great honour for the town. But it gets to be – we didn't really have a chance to have down time, to grieve normally. We didn't have a whole lot of break, with the town, the media and everything. We tried to be good with the media, get his name out there, let 'em know. But we've gotta get on with our lives, get some normalcy back."

It's all great! It's great for the town to be assosicated with a dead menace to society -- as long as it was a foreign society.

It's great for the family of the dead thrill-seeking menace to be feted all over the place. But enough is enough.

Framed photos of Darryl used to hang throughout the house's main floor. "Too much," says Christine.

They moved the photos to a corner of the basement. They seek a better balance between remembering and forgetting.

"You don't want people to forget about him," says Christine. "He's our son. We don't want anyone to forget about him, or who he was as a person. But we're at a point where we've gotta heal."

I cannot disagree with that sentiment. I only wish Christine knew how true it was.

They really do have to heal -- not just from the loss of their son but from a lifetime of propaganda.

They know nothing. They've been through all this and they still have no clue.

And that's why their government can take advantage of them the way it has.

And that's why they're continuing the tradition.

Three months or so after the phone call, Logan had his room painted in camouflage, a mural of his brother driving the Coyote armoured vehicle on the wall opposite his bed.

Framed photos of Darryl sit on his shelves. Darryl's T-shirts hang amongst his on his rack. Beneath his television, there are the shoot-'em-up video games he and Darryl played for hours, the ones he can't bring himself to play alone.

For several months after Darryl died, Logan slept on the floor in the basement recreation room, near the pool table, or at the foot of his parents' bed. "I have a chair in my room," he says softly, "and all I saw every night was him sitting, playing video games. Creepy. I don't really believe in ghosts, but..."

Creepy is right! This is creepy on a generational scale. And it's so American.

Canadians used to pride themselves on not being Americans, and not being like Americans, either. At least some of them used to.

Canadians used to pride themselves on being peacekeepers. Sorry about that, cold friends! This is the post-9/11 world, you know. You're all Americans now!

The family couldn't handle the rebellious kid but maybe the Army could. And maybe that was a good deal, for them, for a while:

As a teenager, Darryl lived in Bowmanville with Christine and Paul and in Sarnia with his mother Darlene and younger sister Jolene Cushman.

In high school, Christine says, he was sometimes a handful – an angry kid who had trouble following rules he did not create himself. He drank. He skipped school.

But he matured dramatically, perhaps never more noticeably than after he joined the military. "We couldn't believe the change when he completed basic training. ... He was so obedient, so sharp, very disciplined, well-mannered," Paul says. The man whose arms were covered by tattoos, who drove his 14-tonne Coyote so fast his comrades called him "Ricky Bobby," the name of Will Ferrell's deranged NASCAR driver in the film Talladega Nights, now told Christine how to fold laundry.

This is a public service message for parents of unruly teenagers:

See what they can do for your young psycho in Basic Training: they can teach him to act obedient, sharp, disciplined, well-mannered ... and they can even make him fold laundry!

They need to train him in obedience so they can get him to do what they want him to do: go overseas and kill and maim people he otherwise would never have even heard of.

Some soldiers need to be trained to overcome the fear of death. Darryl Caswell apparently wasn't one of them.

Some soldiers need to be trained to overcome the fear of killing. Darryl Caswell apparently wasn't one of them, either.

The Army loves guys like Darryl Caswell. All they had to do was whip him into line, teach him how to fold his laundry, teach him how to obey orders, and ship him out.

The lucky ones come home without the box, of course. Instead they come home physically wounded, or psychologically ruined, or both.

It's a horrific waste of human life; and that's not even counting the damage they inflict!

And all for a lie. Or a pack of lies.

To the end, Darryl thought of himself [...] as a work in progress.

Only in Afghanistan did he "find" himself, he wrote in his last journal entry, dated June 7, 2007. He had not yet shed his "dark shadow," he wrote in an earlier entry; he was not yet able to show people his "true self."

But he was close, he wrote June 7, and closer than ever to being the man he wanted to be. He had a new appreciation for life in Canada and for his family's love. He had a new desire to start a family of his own. He was going to walk the streets of his country with a newfound "sparkle and glow."

"It's like everything I do is new, and my life has been reborn," he wrote. Four days later, it was over.

And now all that remains is the private grief and the public adulation.

Paul says he tries to keep busy to keep his mind off his son. Christine says she thinks about him from morning to night. Too often, she says. A little less and things would be easier.

But a little less is hard. Hwy. 401, 1,500 metres from home, is the fastest route to work. When the weather is nice and she is not running late, Christine takes Hwy. 2 instead. The Highway of Heroes makes her cry.

It really is very sad -- but not in a way this Toronto Star report would ever actually tell you.

One of the comments posted on the Star website got it just about almost right, in one respect, anyway:

My sympathy to the family who lost a loved one. Your son was doing very necessary and noble work in Afganistan. It's hard for Canadians to really understand the work being done in Afganistan because it is not really covered by the media. Thank you to our troops for representing Canada in such a positive way internationally. I'm proud to be Canadian.

There's a nugget of truth in there, and even though it's in nega-talk, it applies to both Canada and the United States:

It's hard for anyone to really understand the war crime in progress in Afganistan because it is not really covered by the media.

So let's take a look at some of the things the media won't tell you:

Afghanistan has never attacked Canada.

Afghanistan has never attacked any NATO country.

The NATO mission in Afghanistan is based on more lies than you can count, even if you start counting as recently as 9/11. But the American subversion of Afghanistan has been going on for almost 30 years.

On July 3, 1979, U.S. President Jimmy Carter signed a presidential finding authorizing funding for a clandestine operation in Afghanistan, which was known as Operation Cyclone, also known as The Bear Trap.

Under Operation Cyclone, Americans working through friendly overseas cutouts recruited the baddest Islamic bad guys they could find, trained them in terror, gave them equipment, money, vicious primitive ideology and logistical support, and infiltrated them into Afghanistan via Pakistan.

Once in Afghanistan, the newly minted Islamic terrorists -- whom we called freedom fighters -- began to stage attacks on the Soviets just across the border. The idea was to lure the Soviets into Afghanistan, and bleed them dry. The devastation of Afghanistan, the incredible cruelty to be inflicted on the Afghan people, the horrible suffering they would endure for decades; none of these were part of the "equation".

The Soviets invaded Afghanistan in December of 1979. And they did terrible damage. Americans made sure the "freedom fighters" remained well-supplied, well-motivated, and well-supported. The Soviets continued to bleed. And the Afghan people continued to suffer.

In 1980, Carter lost his bid for re-election; Ronald Reagan took over in 1981 and opened the spigots. Freedom-fighters everywhere were welcome to unlimited American aid, as long as they were terrorizing communist countries, or countries that bordered communist countries, or countries in which people had heard of communism. The flow of money, weapons, and ammunition into Afghanistan increased dramatically -- and went on for years. And so did the suffering.

If ever America were to move -- hypothetically, of course -- in the direction of positive change, it would necessitate facing up to the reality of the most horrible crimes of our past, and fomenting terrorism surely must rank as one of them. Deliberately luring a second country into invading, occupying and destroying a third country ranks right up there, of course.

Much more has happened since then, of course. The "freedom fighters" we supported stopped being "mujahideen" and became "al Qaeda", and they turned against us, unless maybe they didn't, and either they did things or else they only got blamed for things that other people did. We may never know; but remnants of these Afghan freedom fighters appear to have been used by western intelligence against the Russians in Bosnia and Chechnya, and in other terrorist attacks as well ...

... including the most famous one.

And in October of 2001, without offering the world any evidence implicating Afghanistan in the "terrorist attacks" of the previous month, George Bush attacked Afghanistan, using war plans that were already sitting on his desk as the twin towers disintegrated, and then he dragged NATO into his war crime of naked aggression, and here we stand. All these years later, NATO continues to pound on Afghanistan, and the lie has become: We are needed there until we can stabilize Afghanistan.

But the truth of the matter is that Afghanistan has been a dangerous, unstable, terrorist-infested place for the past 30 years, precisely because the Americans have wanted it that way. The idea that Americans could somehow stabilize Afghanistan is absurd.

But that's ok, because the Americans don't want to stabilize Afghanistan anyway; now they want to own it. And they won't be happy until they do. But that will never happen, which suits them fine, because they are not in this war to win, only to fight. Fighting is more profitable, for those who don't have to do the fighting. And you know who won't have to do any of the fighting.

Instead, the killing and the dying are contracted out to young rebels who can't stand a day without a jolt and a half of adrenaline, to whom life means nothing, especially the lives of others. And when they come home in a box, they become national heroes.

A closing comment from the Toronto Star website encapsulates the insanity that has taken hold of us all, in one way or another:

Lest we forget...

People here disparaging the war against Afghanistan don’t have a clue about the history of the Afghan war-mongers. You have never been invaded by these people. But people who have suffered at the hands of the Moghals or Afghan kings ought to know. Why do you think Canada’s freedom isn’t challenged today? Just imagine if the Iraqi’s or the Taliban’s or any of the Muslim nations had the firepower the west has today, it would all be over for the western world. They would use every conceivable weapon to annihilate this world. That has been seen for 500 brutal years in South Asia. The British did rule south Asia but were never even a fraction as ruthless as the Islamic kings. So we ought to be grateful to these soldiers who are keeping us free for hundred more years to come.

In case you didn't catch the logic, it goes like this:

We have to kill all the people in all the Muslim nations, even though they don't threaten us, and even though they can't threaten us; because if they could threaten us, then surely they would do so.

Such is "progress" in the Great White North.

Once the true north strong and free, now simply martys on the road to hell.

Happy Remembrance Day, O Canada.

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Separatists Hold Canada Inches From Evil

Bushist neocon Stephen Harper and his so-called "Conservative" Party emerged from Canada's federal election Tuesday with another minority government, but in a stronger position than before the election. A record number of Canadians slept through the festivities.

The Conservatives now hold 143 seats, up 16 from their previous 127, but still 12 short of the 155 they would need to ram their evil agenda through the 308-seat Parliament. In other words, a similar gain in the next election would be the end of democracy in Canada -- not that it seems to matter much to the Canadian voting public.

Harper's agenda, which the Conservatives have tried very hard to keep secret, surely includes allowing Canada to be swallowed up by the United States in a North American Union. It's a far cry from the nationalist conservative philosophy which most Canadians think of when they see the "Conservative" banners waving. This discrepancy speaks volumes about the American-style militarization of the Canadian "news" media.

The primary opposition party, Stephane Dion's Liberals, lost 19 seats to fall to 76. The Liberals have been standing firm against some of Harper's policies, but caving in on others. It's difficult to imagine that a stronger Conservative government and a weaker Liberal opposition could lead to anything other than an increasingly Bush-style government, with Harper and his henchmen railroading more and more unpopular policies through a mostly stunned Parliament, even though they only have a minority.

And yet, in the few minutes of Canadian television coverage I managed to catch, I heard a pundit wondering, "whether Harper will now change his approach to Parliament, which some critics have described as bullying".

It's "news" American-style: They don't get it. They don't get it on purpose. They're paid to not get it.

Of the remaining 89 seats -- just 12 of which would spill Canada over the neocon brink -- 50 were won by the Bloc Quebecois, led by Gilles Duceppe, which represents the nationalist-separatist sentiments of mostly-rural French-speaking Quebec. It is altogether fitting and proper that people who don't even want to be part of Canada should stand in the way of Canada becoming part of the US.

Two of the remaining 39 seats were won by independents, and the other 37 were taken by the New Democratic Party, which opposes virtually everything the Conservatives stand for, most notably Canada's participation in the war crime in Afghanistan. For all their strenuous opposition, the NDP gained only seven seats -- a pittance in light of the Liberal losses.

Given Harper's record over the past few years, it is impossible to look at these results -- with the Liberals declining, the NDP not gaining much, and the Conservatives gaining more seats than any other party -- especially in view of the record low turnout -- without wondering, "What is wrong with the Canadian people?"

But the answers are quite obvious, and they're just about the same as the answers to the question I ask myself much more often, namely: "What is wrong with the American people?"

• Too much propaganda and not enough education
• Too much trivia and not enough reality
• Too much pro sports, and pro religion, and sports as religion, and religion as education, and not enough civics, or politics, or foreign news, or domestic news
• Too much short-term self-interest and not enough concern for the rest of the world or the future
• Too much blind trust in the government and established media, and too little time or respect for the people who are actually telling the truth
• And both the electoral system and the system of "governance" are all screwed up
  

But other than that, they're fine.

Really.

Go, Leafs, Go!

Amen.

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Split Indecision: Canada Surges In Multiple Directions Simultaneously

There's a federal election coming in Canada, and the anti-war "third parties" (New Democrats [NDP] and Greens) are gaining ground fast on the pro-war "major parties" (Liberals and Conservatives), according to a recent survey quoted in the Toronto Star's "NDP surge in cities as Liberals languish: Poll".

The Star spins it in a different way, of course, never mentioning that the Conservatives are languishing too, remaining silent on the obvious point that the war in Afghanistan is the major difference between the parties that are surging and the others, and casting the surge of support for the anti-war parties as a threat to the Liberals and a boon to the Conservatives.

To read it in the Star, it's as if too much support for the Greens and the NDP would necessarily lead to a Conservative victory, rather than a Conservative defeat (or, what's more likely, a heavily fragmented minority government).

That's almost the same way they spin it in the US, although in this case it comes with a northern accent.

But the anti-war surge, led by outspoken NDP leader Jack Layton [photo], comes against the backdrop of a long-term American-inflected surge in government militarization, somewhat similar to the English version which was recently described by John Pilger and highlighted by Chris Floyd.

The transformation of Canada has been almost American in style, complete with transparent propaganda from a minority government openly in contempt of the press, the other parties, and the rule of law, presenting a huge increase in military spending as urgently needed for national defense -- against the will and contrary to the needs of the people, who must be propagandized as thoroughly as possible, of course -- and in true American military style, the whole thing is done with the backroom collaboration of the "opposition".

Most recently, the Canadian government announced plans to rent and purchase attack helicopters and drones -- weapons which the government says are necessary for the defense of the country. The drones will defend Canada by flying around Afghanistan. The helicopters will defend Canada by moving Canadian troops around inside Afghanistan.

Never mind that Afghanistan poses no threat to Canada. Never mind that Canada requires no defense against Afghanistan.

And never mind, especially, that the war in Afghanistan would be entirely unjustified, even if the official story of 9/11 were true, which it obviously isn't.

Forget all that. This is the post-9/11 world, which means when our governments say "defense", they really mean "attack". Telling the truth, calling a spade a spade: that's September 10th thinking. We're past that now.

The purchase and rental agreements are part of a massive new spending package sneakily announced in June. Details of the package were made public by virtue of being posted on the government's website late one Thursday night.

The spending package budgets $490 billion to be spent over the next 20 years -- and it was put together by a government that wasn't destined to last three more months in power.

In February, it was announced that the helicopters and drones were essential to the continuation of the Canadian "mission" in Afghanistan.

In true American style, this imperial mission had been criticized "from the left" as being done "on the cheap", so the inevitable commission was set up and it reached the most predictable conclusion: Canada must either spend a lot more money to do it "right" or else abandon the war crime they call a "mission" altogether.

So the Canadian Prime Minister, neocon Bushist Stephen Harper, announced that he would no longer approve an Afghan mission being run "on the cheap", and the "opposition" forced a "compromise" by which the war crime would be continued, but at a much greater burden to the taxpayers.

This was reminiscent of the means by which the most recent bill funding the war crime in Iraq was passed by a supposedly opposition US congress. Bush threatened to veto an increase in funding for medical care for veterans, but the Democrats insisted, and eventually the "two sides" reached a "compromise" under which the war crime would be continued indefinitely with no restrictions on the president but at a greater cost to the taxpayers than previously.

Just as in the USA, there's a level beyond which Canadian national politics is (worse than) a farce, made especially tragic when it's left to "the two party system". So, in many ways, the Canadian election is not about the Conservatives against the Liberals with the third parties in the background. It's about the Conservatives and the Liberals against the third parties.

But the major media are all Conservative with Faux Liberals in pocket, so they will never present an analysis of national politics that runs this way, even though the fault lines are clearly visible. So the voters have to figure it out for themselves.

And therefore, from a foreign policy point of view (and in many other ways) this election will boil down to whether the Canadian people are smart enough to reject the Bush-Harper, Conservative-Liberal, Star-Globe-National Post propaganda surge with sufficient force.

Which surge will win? The stakes are huge and I'm not optimistic.

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Canadian Greens Claim Spot In Televised Debates

There's been an interesting development in Canada, where Blair Wilson [left in photo], an independent Member of the federal Parliament, has joined the Green Party.

And now that the Greens have an MP, they appear to meet all the requirements for participation in the televised debates that will precede the next federal election. (The criteria for inclusion in debates have been established by a consortium of broadcasters.)

Wilson, who represents part of southwestern British Columbia, was elected in 2006 as a Liberal, but resigned from that party about a year ago. He says the environment is now the number one priority in his district and he believes his move to the Green Party will be welcomed by his constituents.

According to federal Green Party leader Elizabeth May [right in same photo],

"With a Green MP sitting in the House of Commons, it will now be impossible to exclude the Green Party from the televised leaders' debates in the next election ... We believe that under all the criteria that have been put forward ... we now have made thoroughly the case that I must be included ... We have established ourselves as a party that cannot be described as fringe ... We are a party whose ideas and policies are now in the mainstream."

As the Toronto Star notes, the exclusion of the Greens is not at all impossible:

The media consortium is due to meet Tuesday and May's fate in the debates could be discussed then.

May herself appears to understand that her spot is not yet confirmed. The Star quotes her as saying:

"If they decide not to allow me in the debates, what they're really doing is telling voters: `Don't take that party seriously.'"

Perhaps, given her position, Elizabeth May can't say it in plain words, but if the national media decide to bar her from the debates, after she and her party have met the criteria the media themselves have established, what they're really saying to the voters is a very Cheney-esque "GFY".

But it makes me wonder: Would Cynthia McKinney be able to get into televised debates against Obama and McCain if she could recruit somebody ... like ... perhaps ... independent Senator Bernie Sanders?

It wouldn't happen.

It couldn't happen, surely.

But it would be a sight for the ages...

And she would wipe the floor with their sorry butts!!

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Good News: Feds Are Tracking Your Border Crossings!

If you travel internationally and return by land, you'll be pleased to know about a newly announced federal weapon in the war on terror -- a program which has already begun recording (and will continue to record) all your land entrances into the US in a database designed to protect the nation from people like you.

You know who you are, don't you? You probably drive a car, or maybe you ride on a bus or a train. You go to Canada or Mexico, for day trips or vacations.

You don't go to Europe or Asia, or the Caribbean, not to mention Australia or New Zealand. You can't afford to travel by plane, and you don't own your own yacht, so you must be up to no good. Or at least that's what we have to assume.

By enabling the government to track when, where and how often you return to the US, the national database will help to protect us from indescribable dangers which can only be averted by enabling the government to track when, where and how often you return to the US.

By keeping this data over a long period of time and mining it aggressively, the government will be able to identify the dangerous people who cross the border often, or seldom, or at the same time every day, or at different times every day. This sort of analysis works best with a massive collection of data, so you will be very happy to hear that this is exactly what they're building.

Fortunately, the information gathered by border inspection officers and stored in this national database will be kept for at least fifteen years, so we can all be confident that the enormous effort devoted to data collection and storage won't be wasted -- instead the data-mining opportunities will be maximized.

Fortunately as well, the information in the database will not be selfishly hoarded by the federal government; on the contrary, it could be made available to foreign governments trying to decide whether or not to let you in, corporations trying to decide whether to hire or fire you, and/or law enforcement officers trying to decide whether or not you're an unlawful enemy combatant. These provisions will help keep us safe from hazards so awful I'd prefer not to describe them.

Furthermore, you'll be thrilled to know that the newly announced federal program is not a violation of your right to privacy. You actually have no such right, and you never did.

So don't worry about it -- just enjoy!

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In Canada, A Parliamentary Jihad Against Corruption

The bogus rhetoric of the bogus War on bogus Terror has reached stunning new lows in Canada, where an investigation by a parliamentary ethics committee looking into corruption allegations against former Prime Minister Brian Mulroney has been described as a "jihad".

CBC reports:

Mulroney spent four hours before the committee on Dec. 13 and admitted to taking $225,000 in cash from [German-Canadian businessman Karlheinz] Schreiber after his time in office for lobbying efforts abroad in the late 1990s.

The former prime minister has apologized for that lapse of judgment [sic], said Mulroney's spokesman, Robin] Sears, but adds that the business arrangement wasn't illegal or unethical.

Schreiber, however, maintains that he paid Mulroney $300,000 to lobby the Canadian government for a light-armoured vehicle plant known as the Bear Head project. He also says that the two reached their working arrangement on June 23, 1993, two days before Mulroney stepped down as prime minister.

The line in question came about because Mulroney -- who apparently lied to the committee in December -- has refused to appear for a second round of questioning. It's more dangerous now that the committee has heard other witnesses and his deception has been exposed. So instead of allowing the long-overdue pursuit of justice to proceed, Mulroney has set his spokesman on the attack, like so:

"This has been like a 15-year jihad against Mulroney and his family by his enemies — led by Mr. Schreiber and enabled by some in the media," Sears told CBC News earlier in the day.

So there you have it; it's a holy war, waged by international enemies.

Committee vice-chair, NDP MP Pat Martin, was swift to condemn the spokesman's choice of words, saying the comment was "shameful," "goofy" and trivializes the "international crisis of jihad."

Au contraire, Mr. Martin. It trivializes the international crisis of political corruption. And if this is what the global jihadis are out to expose, then they just got my vote!

A Short Discourse On Military Recruiting And Freedom Of Speech

If recruiters tell your kids packs of clever lies to get them to sign up for some kill-or-be-killed, that's their right.

It's too bad for the kids, of course, but if they're lucky they won't be killed; they will simply be brainwashed and dehumanized, forced to commit the most heinous acts imaginable, and then sent home to live the rest of their lives with post-traumatic stress.

But what happens to your kids is no concern of the recruiters. They don't care. They don't have to care. They're simply exercising their freedom of speech.

But if a city council passes a resolution condemning those recruiters for the lies they tell and the lives they ruin, that's not freedom of speech at all; it's treasonous. It's despicable. And it deserves to be punished.

So if lawmakers in state and national capitals choose to retaliate against the city for trying to protect its young people, that's their right; they're only exercising their power of the purse.

If they want to deprive the kids in that city of funding for their lunches, that's their right. And if they want to deprive that city's policemen of funding for their equipment, that's their right, too.

These are not only their rights but also their duties. After all, they must do what they were elected to do -- even if it means getting your kids killed in pursuit of global empire.

So let the little bastards starve! Let the cops call for their backup with tin cans and string!

But let us never disrupt the greatest killing machine ever built.

San Jose Mercury News:

A pre-dawn confrontation broke out this morning in Berkeley between peaceniks and pro military groups, more than 12 hours before the City Council [meets to consider rescinding] its statement telling the U.S. Marines they're unwelcome [...]

Sacramento-based Move America Forward and a handful of other pro-military organizations are set to have several hundred protesters in front of council chambers starting at 5 a.m. [...]

Move America Forward is already unhappy with what council members are not planning to do - rescinding four other items the council passed that are seen as a swipe at the Marines. Those items asked the city attorney to investigate whether the Marines are violating city law prohibiting discrimination based on sexual orientation; urged people to 'impede' the recruiting work of the Marines in Berkeley; and gave Code Pink a free parking space and sound permit to protest once a week in front of the recruiting station.

The proposal by council members Betty Olds and Laurie Capitelli to rescind the item sending the Marines a letter asking them to leave is No. 25 of 28 items on tonight's agenda, and could come up for debate near midnight. What's more, pro-military supporters will have to sit through another item likely to make them seethe: urging Canada to provide sanctuary for U.S. military war resisters. [...]

"This violent reaction of the pro-war forces shows how threatened they are by a small group of people working against recruitment," [Code Pink activist Zanne] Joi said. "They claim the Marines fought for our freedom of speech, and how dare we use our freedom of speech against them."

CNN:

The pro-military demonstrators were met by anti-war protesters who had camped out overnight, setting the stage for a dramatic showdown late in the day when the City Council is to discuss whether to revoke its previous vote.

"Their treasonous action, especially at this time of war right now, is not acceptable," said Mary Pearson, a spokeswoman for the group Move America Forward.

"It's very, very important for everyone to stand united ... to give our Marines and all of our military the greatest respect and honor that they deserve."

Before the sun was even up, about 300 demonstrators -- both pro-military and anti-war -- were already standing toe-to-toe in downtown. Many traded jeers and sneers.

"Code Pink doesn't stand for us," one sign said, held by a man in military fatigues. Signs held by anti-war activists read, "End the War" and "Bring the troops home now."

The City Council is to meet at 7 p.m. PT on whether to take back its previous measure urging the Marine recruiters to leave town.

Evil In Your In-Box? Thank The Pentagon

The Pentagon's new internet propaganda campaign is in full swing, and wow! Is it ever vicious!!

It comes in the form of an anonymous viral email. I got it from a close relative.

He wasn't saying "Wow, is this ever screwed up!" And he wasn't saying "Hey this is cool, pass it on."

But, as you can see from the text of the message, his passing it on indicates his approval.

Here's the text of the message. Hold your nose and grab a barf bag before continuing:

Subject: Fwd: She tells it like it is!

I don't know who wrote it but they should have signed it. Some powerful words. This woman should run for president.

Written by a housewife from New Jersey and sounds like it! This is one ticked off lady.

Are we fighting a war on terror or aren't we? Was it or was it not started by Islamic people who brought it to our shores on September 11, 2001?

Were people from all over the world, mostly Americans, not brutally murdered that day, in downtown Manhattan, across the Potomac from our nation's capitol and in a field in Pennsylvania?

Did nearly three thousand men, women and children die a horrible, burning or crushing death that day, or didn't they?

And I'm supposed to care that a copy of the Koran was "desecrated" when an overworked American soldier kicked it or got it wet? Well, I don't. I don't care at all.

I'll start caring when Osama bin Laden turns himself in and repents for incinerating all those innocent people on 9/11.

I'll care about the Koran when the fanatics in the Middle East start caring about the Holy Bible, the mere possession of which is a crime in Saudi Arabia.

I'll care when these thugs tell the world they are sorry for hacking off Nick Berg's head while Berg screamed through his gurgling slashed throat.

I'll care when the cowardly so-called "insurgents" in Iraq come out and fight like men instead of disrespecting their own religion by hiding in mosques.

I'll care when the mindless zealots who blow themselves up in search of nirvana care about the innocent children within range of their suicide bombs.

I'll care when the American media stops pretending that their First Amendment liberties are somehow derived from international law instead of the United States Constitution's Bill of Rights.

In the meantime, when I hear a story about a brave marine roughing up an Iraqi terrorist to obtain information, know this: I don't care.

When I see a fuzzy photo of a pile of naked Iraqi prisoners who have been humiliated in what amounts to a college-hazing incident, rest assured: I don't care.

When I see a wounded terrorist get shot in the head when he is told not to move because he might be booby-trapped, you can take it to the bank: I don't care.

When I hear that a prisoner, who was issued a Koran and a prayer mat, and fed "special" food that is paid for by my tax dollars, is complaining that his holy book is being "mishandled," you can absolutely believe in your heart of hearts: I don't care.

And oh, by the way, I've noticed that sometimes it's spelled "Koran" and other times "Quran." Well, Jimmy Crack Corn and -- you guessed it -- I don't care!!

If you agree with this viewpoint, pass this on to all your E-mail friends. Sooner or later, it'll get to the people responsible for this ridiculous behavior!

If you don't agree, then by all means hit the delete button. Should you choose the latter, then please don't complain when more atrocities committed by radical Muslims happen here in our great Country! And may I add:

"Some people spend an entire lifetime wondering if they made a difference in the world. But, the Marines don't have that problem" -- Ronald Reagan

I have another quote that I would like to add AND......I hope you forward all this.

"If we ever forget that we're One Nation Under God, then we will be a nation gone under." Also by Ronald Reagan

One last thought for the day:

In case we find ourselves starting to believe all the Anti-American sentiment and negativity, we should remember England's Prime Minister Tony Blair's words during a recent interview. When asked by one of his Parliament members why he believes so much in America, he said: "A simple way to take measure of a country is to look at how many want in... And how many want out."

Only two defining forces have ever offered to die for you:
1. Jesus Christ
2. The American G. I.

One died for your soul, the other for your freedom.

YOU MIGHT WANT TO PASS THIS ON, AS MANY SEEM TO FORGET BOTH OF THEM. AMEN!

No kidding.

I kept reading the message and reading it again and checking who it came from and checking it again and after a while I thought I was going to puke.

Eventually I settled down and started trying to formulate a proper response.

A good one came to mind almost immediately.

GFY

But that wouldn't have been very wise, considering the circumstances.

It expressed my emotional reaction precisely, but lacked educational value.

So I tried again:

OMG! One MF lie after another! GFY!!

This was more educational but insufficiently spiritual, I thought.

So I gave it another whirl.

How dare you? How dare you??

Your country has killed at least a million people in Iraq. None of them ever did anything to you. None of them ever did anything to any of you until you bombed their cities to smithereens, invaded their country and destroyed everything except the oil fields. And now your government is trying to steal oil worth at least a hundred trillion dollars from the survivors of your invasion. How dare you?

How dare you use the Holy name of Jesus Christ while trying to make mass murder and grand larceny seem righteous?

The leaders of your country have told hundreds and hundreds of lies in order to "justify" that war, so they could implement a plan they published even before Bush even became president! This war has nothing to do with 9/11; it is murder and torture for profit and power and nothing more. And you, and everyone else who forwarded that email, are expressing your approval of mass murder, wanton destruction, and vicious torture -- by sending out this rant about how little you care!

Thou shalt not kill. Do you remember this? Thou shalt not steal. Thou shalt not covet. Thou shalt not bear false witness. Thou shalt not take the name of the Lord thy God in vain. Did they forget to teach you these things in your "church"? Well guess what? I don't care!

I have news for you. Jesus Christ did not die for people like you. He died for those who would follow Him, who would love their neighbors as themselves, who would repent their sins and ask for forgiveness, who would make restitution for their wrongs, who would bow down before their Holy Father and beg for mercy.

But not this! Surely, the Sinless One did not suffer and die to absolve you from this.

May God have mercy upon your mortal soul.

It seemed I was moving in the right direction, and another draft might be in order.

So I tried again:

Dear Dad,

We never talk about politics anymore, at your insistence, so I guess you must have been thinking of somebody else yesterday when you forwarded me the email from an "Angry Woman". But now that you have injected politics into our relationship, I feel bound to speak honestly.

That email was the vilest propaganda I have ever seen, and I was profoundly saddened to see it -- let alone to see that it had come from you.

For the record, the FBI has no hard evidence against Osama bin Laden pertaining to the attacks of 9/11, nor do they list him as a suspect in those attacks. On the contrary: all the official allegations about 9/11 remain unproven. The official investigation was an obvious whitewash, undeniable signs of inside complicity are everywhere, and fresh ones keep popping up. The official story of 9/11 holds no water at all. We talked about this once and I thought you understood.

But that doesn't even matter in this case because nobody anywhere has any evidence connecting Saddam Hussein or Iraq with the 9/11 attacks. Indeed, we now know that all the reasons given for the invasion and continuing occupation of Iraq were lies -- crafted by consultants who were paid millions of dollars of our money for their services, and told by people who have been coveting Iraq's oil for decades.

Lies! All lies!! I am not in the mood for any more lies. So let me tell you a few more truths:

The United States has invaded and occupied a defenseless country that never harmed us and never even threatened us. Our actions there have caused the deaths of at least a million people (so far), most of whom were only trying to live their lives -- many of them in desperate conditions -- when we arrived. We have destroyed their hospitals, ruined all their infrastructure, kidnapped innocent people and taken them away to be tortured. We've started up death squads; we've fomented a civil war; and even though the "surge" is supposedly "working", we're still bombing residential neighborhoods in the middle of the night.

Can you imagine? How would you feel if Mexico attacked Canada and Canada retaliated by invading the United States? Suppose the Canadians mounted a campaign of "Shock and Awe", bombed our cities to smithereens, then invaded and decided to stay forever. What would you do? How would you feel?

I'd like to think you'd at least sympathize with the resistance. I'd like to think that as a younger man you'd have been a leader of the resistance. But then I guess all sons like to think heroic thoughts about their dads.

Most Iraqis want us out. For this, they are called terrorists; for this they are shot and bombed and kidnapped and tortured; without reason, without remorse, without recourse, and seemingly without end.

Why? Because Iraq has at least a trillion barrels of oil, and the Bushes and their backers want it. It's that simple. They've "invested" hundreds of billions of our dollars and thousands of our lives trying to pull off the grandest larceny ever -- not for our profit but for theirs. They have told countless lies to do it and ruined countless innocent lives in the process. Do you really support this?

The email you forwarded -- to me and (apparently) all your other family and friends -- even invoked the Holy names of God and Jesus Christ in an attempt to make mass murder for profit and power appear righteous! Talk about disrespecting your religion!!

You still go to church, right? What do they talk about every Sunday? Do they ever mention glorifying God the Creator? Do they ever talk about following in the righteous ways of the Prince of Peace? Do they ever say "Love your neighbor"?

Thou shalt not kill, Dad. Thou shalt not steal. Thou shalt not covet. Thou shalt not bear false witness. Thou shalt not take the name of the Lord thy God in vain. Have we forgotten all that?

I do not believe torture and murder please our Creator, and I do not believe Jesus Christ died on the cross so we could commit horrific crimes on Earth, rant about how we don't care about them, and still go to Heaven.

In my church we are taught that the only way to Heaven is to follow Jesus Christ: to repent your sins, to make restitution to those you have wronged, to humble yourself before God and pray for mercy. Apparently in your church they do things differently.

But enough about the Church; let's talk about the State.

The email claims to have been written by an angry woman from New Jersey, but it bears all the fingerprints of cold and calculating men from the Pentagon. Several months ago, they announced their plans to use the internet to spread their "version" of reality, and the writing is exactly their style, so it looks like this is one of the ways they decided to do it.

They want you to forward it; they want to start fights; they want to tear the country apart. And they are relentless.

So I expect you will receive similar messages in the future. That's how the propaganda merchants work. That's how they always work. They are spending our money to spread vicious lies, and they are tricking you into helping them -- for free!

It causes me immense pain to know that you and some of your friends have been used to transmit such a hideous message, and, with all possible respect, I ask you to think carefully about deleting such messages in the future, rather than forwarding them.

I still can't decide which one to send, if any. But I've posted all four responses in the hope that one or more of them may be useful to you, if and when somebody you love sends you the Pentagon's newest mind-control virus...

... and to get the evil out of my system!

Consumer Advocates Suggest Giving Cash, Not Gift Cards

I can still remember how puzzled I was when I received my first Gift Certificate. I nodded and smiled at the explanation I was offered, but somehow I couldn't quite accept the notion that this paper in my hand was "just as good as money", with the obvious exception that it could only be spent in one place.

When I was a teenager, aunts and uncles would say "We didn't know what to get you, so we bought you a gift certificate so you could choose for yourself!"

I'd hold my tongue rather than asking the obvious question: "If you knew you didn't know what I wanted, then what made you think you knew where I would want to get it?"

"It's just as good as money," they would say, and I would somehow restrain myself from adding, "But it lacks the thing that makes money useful!"

And even though I could see as a young child that gift certificates were stupid, their attraction has grown ever stronger, and now you can buy an electronically encoded Gift Card from almost anywhere.

But why would you?

In Canada, a major media report is actually informing its readers that cash makes a better gift than a gift card.

Can you imagine!

The Consumers' Association of Canada is recommending that shoppers give cash instead of buying gift cards, which often go unused or come with many restrictions for their recipients.

"We recommend you forget about it completely and use cash," CAC spokesman Bruce Cran said.

One recent study in the United States reaffirmed other reports that consumers are losing out to retailers, estimating that 25 per cent of all gift cards go unused. Best Buy Co., for example, reported a profit of $43 million US from unused cards last year. Limited Brands Inc. recorded $30 million US in 2005 revenue because of unredeemed cards.

Why give big retailers all that free money?

Bruce Cran was right: Forget about it completely! Don't make an unnecessary trip to an unnecessary store to buy an unnecessary gift care that would put unnecessary restrictions on your intended recipient!

Don't think, "We didn't know what you wanted but we knew where you'd buy it".

Think, "We wanted you to be able to choose where to spend this!"

Canadians spent $1.8 billion on gift cards in 2006, and the amount is forecast to exceed $3 billion this year.

What's wrong in Canada? Are their brains all frozen?

The consumers' association has received numerous complaints about gift cards, which often have unexpected expiry dates, restrictions on cash-back services and administrative fees, Cran said.

Unexpected expiry dates? Restrictions? Administrative fees? Beautiful! This is all much more complicated -- and apparently much more lucrative -- than the old-fashioned gift certificate scam which I found so appalling as a kid.

So smarten up out there, will ya?

Thanks to those who do, and a very Merry Christmas to all my friends and readers -- indeed to all sentient beings!

... and to all your friends and relatives, too, of course!

When Will We Ever Learn? Airstrike Kills Civilians In Iraq, Pentagon Denies Everything

The Americans brought more democracy to the Middle East on Sunday.

An American raiding party went on a hunting expedition in a dangerous area of Baghdad and ran into "unexpected resistance."

So they called for some air support before they turned tail and fled. They never did find the guy they were looking for, but they ran into some more "unexpected resistance" on the way out.

And when it was all over they had killed 18 civilians and injured another 50 (more or less, depending on your sources).

So they announced the deaths of 49 "terrorists" (or "militants") (or "criminals") -- and not a single American or Iraqi civilian casualty.

But you'd never guess all of this -- you'd never guess any of this -- if you only read the headlines. In almost every case the military got the headline they wanted.

Here's the story, piece by piece, assembled from the fragments that lurk behind those headlines, with emphasis added:

The Attack

AP

Backed by air power, U.S. forces targeting militants believed to be responsible for the kidnapping of two coalition soldiers raided the main Shiite district in Baghdad on Sunday. ... Iraqi police and hospital officials said helicopters and jet fighters bombed buildings during the 5 a.m. raid in the sprawling district ... Several houses and stores were damaged.

Sattar Raheem and Aseel Kami for Reuters:

Clouds of black smoke rose from Sadr City, a sprawling slum of some 2 million people in northern Baghdad, as sirens wailed, heavy gunfire echoed and U.S. attack helicopters circled above.

Christian Berthelsen in the Austin-American Statesman

U.S. forces engaged in an hours-long gunbattle with militants during an early morning raid in the Shiite Muslim district of Sadr City on Sunday, killing as many as 49 people in what would be one of the highest tolls for a single operation since President Bush declared an end to active combat in 2003.

AP

The U.S. military said troops staged early morning operations in Sadr City, a stronghold of the Mahdi Army militia that is loyal to radical Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr....

The military statement said only that the raids were targeting "criminals believed to be responsible for the kidnapping of coalition soldiers in November 2006 and May 2007."

It did not provide more details but said there was not evidence of civilian casualties.

AFP:

the military said ... the clashes ... erupted when troops were attacked by gunfire and rocket propelled grenades.... The US military said troops were drawn into fighting after they launched a raid to seize their high-value target in Sadr City...

Xinhua:

During the house to house searches in the area on Sunday, the troops encountered attacks from militiamen armed with machine guns and rocket propelled grenades from nearby structures, according to the statement.

The US troops fired back and called in aerial support, killing 39 militants, it said.

AFP:

"Responding in self-defence, coalition forces engaged, killing an estimated 33 criminals," the statement said, adding that air support was then called in and killed another six. Ten more were killed as US forces withdrew, it said.

Christian Science Monitor

Mr. Abdel-Karim, a resident of Sadr City, said he saw 10 US Stryker combat vehicles arrive in his neighborhood at about 10:30 p.m. local time Saturday. He said they were quickly attacked by militiamen in the area prompting a fierce fight that lasted nearly 10 hours.

Several loud explosions could be heard across the capital at about 6:30 a.m.

He said several homes, neighborhood power generators, and at least 25 cars were badly damaged in the fighting.

Bill Van Auken for WSWS

An Iraqi police source ... was quoted by the Al Jazeera news agency as saying that the raid was launched, apparently in retaliation, after a US vehicle was struck by a roadside bomb.

The accounts that have emerged thus far suggest that the attempts by US troops to move into the neighborhood in the pre-dawn hours provoked unanticipated resistance, including small arms fire and rocket-propelled grenades. The ground forces responded by calling in air strikes...

Xinhua:

While leaving the targeted area, the troops clashed again with another group of militants after they were attacked by a roadside bomb followed with gunfire, killing 10 more other militants, it added.

No Civilian Casualties?

Xinhua:

The US military said that its troops have killed up to 49 "criminals" in a raid on Baghdad's eastern neighborhood of Sadr City early on Sunday.

"Collation [sic] forces estimate that 49 criminals were killed in three separate engagements during this operation," the US military said in a statement.

Sattar Raheem and Aseel Kami for Reuters:

The U.S. military said it had no confirmation of any civilian casualties.

Alissa J. Rubin of the New York Times:

The military said it did not believe there were any civilian deaths as a result of the fighting.

AFP:

US military spokesman Major Winfield Danielson told AFP there were no civilian casualties and no reports of American losses. ...

"I can say that we don't have any evidence of any civilians killed or wounded. Coalition forces only engage hostile threats and make every effort to protect innocent civilians," said Danielson.

AP

"I don't yet have details on the number of terrorists killed, but I can say that we don't have any evidence of any civilians killed or wounded," spokesman Lt. Justin Cole said in an e-mail. "Coalition forces only engage hostile threats and make every effort to protect innocent civilians."

He said aircraft were used but was not more specific.

Yes, Civilian Casualties!

Christian Science Monitor

in what has become a classic pattern of events in the aftermath of similar operations in Sadr City, both witnesses and officials from Mr. Sadr's movement who live in the area gave a different death toll and version of events.

Salah al-Okaili, a Sadrist parliamentarian, said at least 10 people were killed and 62 wounded, most of them civilians. Another resident, Rahim Abdel-Karim, said funerals for 15 people killed in the operation were held in the area.

State-funded Al Iraqiya television gave a toll of 10 killed and 30 wounded, adding that most of those killed were civilians. It showed footage of women wailing and slapping their faces at funeral processions. The Associated Press said it had photos and video footage of dead and wounded children from the operation.

Christian Berthelsen in the Austin-American Statesman

A freelance correspondent for the Los Angeles Times said he saw the corpses of a woman and two small children.

Among the wounded were an 8-year-old and an 11-year-old boy, who were interviewed in their beds at Imam Ali hospital by the Times. Another man said his 1½-year old son was killed, as well as a neighbor's son the same age.

Steven R. Hurst of the AP via ABC News:

An uncle of 2-year-old Ali Hamid [photo] said the boy was killed and his parents seriously wounded when helicopter gunfire pierced the wall and windows of their house as they slept ...

Relatives gathered at Sadr City's Imam Ali hospital where the emergency room was overwhelmed with bloodied casualties. The dead were placed in caskets covered by Iraqi flags. ...

The U.S. military said it was not aware of any civilian casualties, and the discrepancy in the death tolls and accounts of what happened could not be reconciled.

Sattar Raheem and Aseel Kami for Reuters:

Local hospitals said they had received 12 bodies and 65 wounded, including eight women and children.

The bodies of the two slain toddlers, one in a diaper, lay on blankets in the morgue of Imam Ali hospital in Sadr City, where doctors tended to wounded men, some elderly, and boys, Reuters Television footage showed.

In a house where one of the children lived, a man pointed to bloodstained mattresses and blood-splattered pillows, choking back tears as he held up a photo of one of the dead.

AFP:

Medics at four hospitals confirmed 17 dead, including a boy and a girl...

Pictures taken by an AFP photographer showed grieving relatives carrying off the bodies of dead for burial and dozens of wounded being treated by emergency hospital staff.

One resident stood crying over the coffin of a young boy, while other residents pointed to blood-stained mattresses they said were the result of an air strike from an American helicopter. ...

Alissa J. Rubin of the New York Times:

Two cousins, Murtada Saiedi, 8, and Ali Saiedi, 11, were walking home at 6:15 a.m. after buying fresh samoun for their families. Samoun is a triangular bread beloved by Iraqis for breakfast.

“I was holding the samoun in my arms in a big bag,” said Ali Saiedi, adding that he was taking the bread home for his eight siblings and his parents. “Then I heard a big sound and I tried to run, I wanted to reach my home, but I couldn’t.

“And then when I woke up, I was here,” he said, as he lay in a bed at the Imam Ali Hospital with bandages on his arms from shrapnel cuts.

His cousin, Murtada Saiedi, in the next bed, would not speak. He winced as he shifted his weight in the bed and looked up silently at his father and uncle, who were leaning over the child. The doctor had just come by to say that he thought Murtada might have some internal bleeding.

Canadian Press

A local resident who goes by the name Abu Fatmah said his neighbor's 14-year-old son, Saif Alwan, was killed while sleeping on the roof.

"Saif was killed by an airstrike and what is his guilt? Is he from the Mahdi Army? He is a poor student," Abu Fatmah said.

Sattar Raheem and Aseel Kami for Reuters:

Police and witnesses said [the raid] claimed the lives of many civilians. ...

Two of the victims were toddlers, Reuters Television pictures showed.

Alissa J. Rubin of the New York Times:

An official at the hospital, Abu Ibrahim, said an elderly woman whose midsection had been nearly severed by shrapnel died Sunday evening, bringing the total dead at the hospital to 16. There were 38 wounded who were admitted to the hospital, he said. Officials at a second hospital in the neighborhood reported one dead and two wounded.

Canadian Press

Associated Press photos showed the bodies of two toddlers, one with a gouged face, swaddled in blankets on a morgue floor. Their shirts were pulled up, exposing their abdomens, and a diaper showed above the waistband of one boy's shorts. Relatives said the children were killed when helicopter gunfire hit their house as they slept.

AP

Relatives gathered at the Imam Ali hospital as the emergency room was overwhelmed with bloodied victims and the dead were placed in caskets covered by Iraqi flags.

"The 14-year-old child of my neighbor called Saif was killed by an airstrike and what is his guilt? Is he from the Mahdi Army? He is a poor student," said a local resident who goes by the name Abu Fatmah.

He apparently was referring to 14-year-old student Saif Alwan, whose uncle said was killed while sleeping on the roof, wearing a white robe. The uncle added that Saif's mother and father were seriously wounded.

Fatmah said many of the casualties were people sleeping on the roof to seek relief from the hot weather and lack of electricity.

BBC:

"We were waking in the morning and all of a sudden rockets landed in the house and the children were screaming," [Reuters] quoted a woman as saying.

An official loyal to Moqtada Sadr said the attack was "simply barbaric".

"Most of those killed and wounded were women, children and elderly men which shows the indiscriminate monstrosity of the attacks on this crowded area," Abdul-Mehdi al-Muteyri told Reuters news agency.

But the US military denied civilians had been killed.

Alissa J. Rubin of the New York Times:

The episode highlights the difficulty of determining the facts after military operations, especially ones involving firefights in which much happens quickly. The military said the reason so few bodies were taken to hospitals was that the militants picked up the bodies of their own people to prevent American soldiers from gaining intelligence about them.

In cases where Iraqi casualty numbers are far higher than American numbers, the American military sometimes says the discrepancy is a result of exaggeration by Iraqis.

The Target

Xinhua:

the military said that six suspected militants were killed during the raid that targeted a Special Groups member specializing in kidnapping operations.

Sattar Raheem and Aseel Kami for Reuters:

A U.S. military official said the target of the raid was suspected of involvement in the kidnapping of "coalition force members and other foreigners" in May this year and last November. The official did not say whether he had been captured.

Canadian Press

The raid on the dangerous Shiite slum was aimed at capturing an alleged rogue militia chief, one of thousands of fighters who have broken with Muqtada al-Sadr's mainstream Mahdi Army. The military did not say if the man was captured. He was also not named.

Sattar Raheem and Aseel Kami for Reuters:

"The operation's objective was an individual reported to be a long-time Special Groups member specializing in kidnapping operations. Intelligence indicates he ... has previously sought funding from Iran," the U.S. military said in a statement.

AFP:

"The operation's objective was an individual reported to be a long-time Special Groups member specialising in kidnapping operations," a statement said...

"Intelligence indicates he is a well-known cell leader and has previously sought funding from Iran to carry out high profile kidnappings," the statement said.

Christian Berthelsen in the Austin-American Statesman

U.S. officials said the raid did not capture or kill its target ...

AFP:

Danielson said the targeted individual had not been killed or captured during the clashes...

High Profile Kidnappings

Sattar Raheem and Aseel Kami for Reuters:

A U.S. army translator was kidnapped last October, and in May three U.S. soldiers and five Britons -- four security contractors and a civilian -- were abducted in two incidents.

Xinhua:

A US military spokesman said in an earlier statement that the cell leader was believed to be behind kidnappings of coalition force soldiers, including one in May this year.

A US patrol was ambushed on May 12 in south of Baghdad. Four soldiers and an Iraqi translator were killed, and three soldiers were missing. The body of one was found later that month but the other two remain unknown.

Christian Science Monitor

The military gave no details about the kidnap victims, apart from the dates they were abducted – this May and last November.

Three US soldiers were kidnapped in an Al Qaeda stronghold south of Baghdad in May. The body of one was found later that month but the other two are classed as missing and captured. Al Qaeda has claimed responsibility for the abductions.

The same month, the five Britons were abducted in the Iraqi capital in an attack blamed on Mahdi Army militants.

A US Army translator of Iraqi descent was kidnapped in Baghdad on Oct. 23 last year when he went to visit relatives. His family said he was taken by the members of the Mahdi Army.

Special Groups

Sattar Raheem and Aseel Kami for Reuters:

Special Groups is U.S. military jargon for rogue Mehdi Army units they say receive funding, training and weapons from neighboring Iran.

AFP:

"Special Groups" is a US term for what it says are secret Shiite cells which wage acts of "terrorism" in Iraq with the financial and military backing of Iran's elite Revolutionary Guards units.

Xinhua:

The Special Groups are Shiite militia extremists funded, trained and armed by external sources, specifically by Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps Quds Force operatives, according to the US military.

Bill Van Auken for WSWS

“Special Groups” is a category invented by the US military authorities, meant to describe those in the Shia areas who are perceived as an opposing the American occupation. The Pentagon has used this jargon to portray the resistance as the work of “rogue” elements directed, trained and armed by Iran.

AFP:

The US military has regularly targeted Sadr's Mahdi Army militia, which dominates in Sadr City and is accused by the Americans of widescale criminal activity and sectarian killings of Sunnis.

Sadr, whose movement is the most powerful popular force in Iraq, declared a six-month freeze on militia activities in August, including a halt to attacks on US-led troops.

But his political bloc pulled out of the Shiite alliance that leads Iraq's coalition government in September following a boycott by his six ministers in April, further upsetting Iraq's already fractured political landscape. ...

US forces have welcomed the Sadr freeze but continue to target fighters who it says have broken away from the main Mahdi Army and formed special groups allegedly aided by Iran.

Context And Reaction

Sattar Raheem and Aseel Kami for Reuters:

The Iraqi government protested against a raid by U.S. forces in Baghdad on Sunday in which the military said 49 gunmen were killed in fierce fighting, but police and witnesses said claimed the lives of many civilians. ...

Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki protested about the "excessive force" against civilians in the Sadr City raid in his weekly meeting with General David Petraeus, the U.S. commander Iraq, government spokesman Ali al-Dabbagh said in an interview with CNN's Late Edition.

Iraqi officials have criticized the U.S. military in the past for operations that have resulted in the loss of civilian life, especially the use of air strikes in built-up areas.

Bill Van Auken for WSWS

The carnage in Sadr City erupted in the context of intensified US attacks throughout Iraq. Just a day earlier, US troops raided neighborhoods in the southern city of Diwaniyah, supposedly in search of leaders of the Mahdi Army, the militia loyal to Shia cleric Moqtada al-Sadr. US attack helicopters were called in and fired on the area, destroying at least five homes. The US military reported detaining 30 people in the raid, while again claiming that the bombardment caused no civilian casualties.

On October 11, US air strikes against a home in Samarra killed 34 people, including nine children, one of the deadliest such attacks to be acknowledged by the US military since the 2003 invasion.

Canadian Press

Iraqi government spokesman Ali al-Dabbagh said all the dead were civilians.

Al-Dabbagh said on CNN that Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, a Shiite, had met with the U.S. commander in Iraq, Gen. David Petraeus, to protest the action.

Christian Berthelsen in the Austin-American Statesman

Sunday's fighting follows incidents in recent weeks in which U.S. forces killed 15 civilians in an attack on alleged leaders of al Qaeda in Iraq, and Western private security contractors shot and killed unarmed Iraqi civilians, inflaming anti-U.S. sentiment.

In Parliament on Sunday, Iraqi officials discussed the possibility of placing restrictions on U.S. military operations in Iraq when it negotiates the terms of the U.N. resolution that authorizes the U.S. presence here. The resolution comes up for its annual reauthorization before year's end.

AFP:

"What happened today in Sadr City is part of a series of conspiracies led by the US against the Sadrists. Sadrists who are always demanding the exit of the occupier," said Sadr MP Saleh al-Igaili.

"The Sadrists condemn the barbaric action and hold the Iraqi government and the occupier responsible for the attack.

"The occupier's declaration that it killed 49 criminals is a lie. The occupier's forces actually killed only 10 and wounded 62, but most of them were children and women," he said.

Canadian Press

An Iraqi military spokesman, Brig. Gen. Qassim al-Moussawi, said the government would ask the Americans for an explanation of Sunday's raid and stressed the need to avoid civilian deaths.

The government has issued mixed reactions to the raids and airstrikes, particularly those that have targeted Sunni extremists.

U.S. troops backed by attack aircraft killed 19 suspected insurgents and 15 civilians, including nine children, in an operation Oct. 11 targeting al-Qaida in Iraq leaders northwest of Baghdad.

Al-Maliki's government said those killings were a "sorrowful matter," but emphasized that civilian deaths are unavoidable in the fight against al-Qaida in Iraq.

Christian Science Monitor

"People are very angry at the silence of the Iraqi government over these unprovoked actions by the US military," said Mr. Okaili, the Sadrist parliamentarian.

On Sunday, hundreds of local residents, wailing and chanting "There is no God but Allah," carried wooden coffins through the streets.

Bill Van Auken for WSWS

On Saturday, US troops also raided and ransacked the headquarters of the Iraqi Islamic Party (IIP) in Baghdad, leaving it in a shambles. The IIP, which is the largest Sunni party in Iraq, is led by Iraq’s Vice President Tareq al-Hashemi.

Al-Hashemi has provoked the ire of both Iraqi Prime Minister al-Maliki, and the US occupation authorities in recent weeks with his highly publicized visits to crowded detention camps, where predominantly Sunni prisoners have told him that they are innocent, have been arrested without charges and have been subjected to torture.

The United Nations humanitarian mission in Iraq recently released a report estimating that there were some 44,000 detainees in Iraqi or US custody as of last June—a total that had increased by at least 10 percent just over the previous two months as a result of increased US raids. No doubt this prison population has grown sharply since then.

The UN report cited “widespread and routine torture and ill-treatment of detainees.”

“In addition to routine beatings with hosepipes, cables and other implements,” the report states, “the methods cited included prolonged suspension from the limbs in contorted and painful positions for extended periods, sometimes resulting in dislocation of the joints, electric shocks to sensitive parts of the body; the breaking of limbs; forcing detainees to sit on sharp objects, causing serious injury and heightening the risk of infection; and severe burns to parts of the body through the application of heated implements.”

AP

Mourners tied wooden coffins onto the tops of minivans while a plume of black smoke rose in the background.

Bill Van Auken for WSWS

Meanwhile, one of Washington’s principal Iraqi collaborators and an architect of the US-imposed regime declared in a television interview that the American intervention has brought only “chaos and instability.”

Feisal Amin Istrabadi, who resigned in August as Iraq’s deputy ambassador to the United Nations, told NBC News Friday that “there is no Iraqi government,” only an “appearance of institutions.”

Istrabadi, a US-born lawyer who was a leading figure among the exile circles promoting a US invasion and later played the key role in drafting Iraq’s interim constitution, blamed the catastrophe confronting Iraq on Washington’s drive to hold early elections in which the population was pushed to support competing ethno-religious-based parties.

“What did we accomplish, exactly [with] this push towards an appearance of institutions ... merely an appearance?” he asked. “Except that an American politician can stand up and say, ‘Look what we accomplished in Iraq.’ When in fact, what we accomplished in Iraq over the last three years has been chaos and instability.”

Christian Berthelsen in the Austin-American Statesman

The White House declined to comment on the clash.

What Does It Mean?

Among other things, this event shows how much the American military respects the wishes of the Iraqi Prime Minister and his supposedly sovereign government.

It also shows that the tactic of bombing residential areas -- killing hundreds of innocent people in the hope of eliminating just one bad guy -- is still American policy, just as it was in Korea, just as it was in Vietnam, just as it has been in Somalia, and in many other places before and since.

Canadian Press

The sweeps into Sadr City have sent a strong message that U.S. forces plan no letup on suspected Shiite militia cells despite objections from the Shiite-led government of al-Maliki, who is working for closer cooperation with Shiite heavyweight Iran.

Bill Van Auken for WSWS

There is growing evidence that the use of air strikes against the Iraqi people has grown considerably since the military “surge” ordered by the Bush administration at the beginning of the year, even as it goes largely unreported by the US media.

The US Air Force posts daily accounts of its operations, listing between 50 and 70 “close-air-support missions” each day. According to a survey by the Associated Press, the number of bombs dropped by US war planes on Iraq increased fivefold during the first six months of 2007, compared to the same period a year earlier. The Air Force has for the first time this year deployed powerful B1-B bombers in Iraq, capable of carrying up to 24 tons of bombs.

This increasing use of air power inevitably entails a growing toll in terms of civilian dead and wounded, referred to by military officials a “collateral damage.” The study of excess Iraqi deaths published in the authoritative British medical journal Lancet a year ago estimated that 13 percent of all violent deaths in Iraq were caused by US air strikes. The report’s authors estimated that these strikes were responsible for fully 50 percent of the violent deaths of children under the age of 15.

The increasing use of such air power—and the indiscriminate bloodshed that it entails—is a measure of the growing crisis of the American occupation and the Pentagon’s fears about the demoralization and disintegration of US ground forces in Iraq. The deliberate aerial bombardment of crowded civilian neighborhoods—a war crime—is designed both to further terrorize the Iraqi population and cut the number of US casualties.

Headlines

I mentioned headlines. Now that you know what's in the articles, look at some of these headlines:

Reuters : U.S. military says kills 49 in Baghdad raid

ABC : US: Raid of Baghdad's Sadr City Kills 49

AFP : US forces kill 49 in Baghdad Shiite stronghold

Xinhua : US troops kill up to 49 in Baghdad's Sadr City

Washington Post : US: Raid of Baghdad's Sadr City Kills 49

BBC : US raid kills Iraqi 'criminals'

Canadian Press : U.S. forces kill 49 militants in Sadr City; Iraqis report civilians killed

Christian Science Monitor : US targeted Iran-tied group in raid

AP : US: Raid of Baghdad's Sadr City Kills 49

AP : 13 Said Killed As U.S. Stages Iraq Raid

Citizen (Zambia) : 10 killed in clashes with US in Baghdad Shiite bastion

Malaysia Sun : Criminals and civilians killed in Iraq operation

Austin-American Statesman : U.S., Iraq differ on toll after Sadr City raid

New York Times : Confusion on Deaths After Fighting in Sadr City

WSWS : US raid on Baghdad’s Sadr City leaves many dead and wounded

Gulf Daily News : Toddlers killed

When Will We Ever Learn?

Thirty-five years ago an airstrike on civilians was captured in a photograph which appeared on the front pages of newspapers everywhere and became world-famous within 24 hours.


It changed the nature and the intensity of the anti-war movement overnight. And some of us thought it had changed humanity forever. What did we know?


That little girl lived. But this little boy died. And you won't see his photo on the front page of any newspaper, let alone all of them.

What's it going to take this time?

~~~

Read more about airstrikes on civilians, from Chris Floyd:
Rain of terror in the U.S. air war in Iraq