A tail dragging romp through the swamps of the world
"I thought that if the RCMP didn't tell me I couldn't do it, I inferred that I could do it," Mr. Shaikh testified.Lawyers for Canada's first underage convicted terrorist argued in court Friday that without Mubin Shaikh, assigned by CSIS and paid by the RCMP, there would have been no terrorist conspiracy at all.
He did not make bombs or buy guns. Nor did he advocate doing so.
He did not threaten to kill anyone, did not call for holy war, did not pledge allegiance to Osama bin Laden.
He did not even badmouth Canada's military efforts in Afghanistan.
"Under the anti-terror legislation, the government doesn't need to prove an accused terrorist took part in or even knew about a specific plot.Oh well, the kid definitely qualifies then.
All it has to prove is that he knowingly participated in the activities of a terrorist group and contributed either directly or indirectly to anything "enhancing" its abilities."
"I don't believe that (he) is a terrorist," he said outside the courtroom.And yet under "our system", if the kid's lawyers are not successful in overturning his conviction by a sole judge, the kid could get ten years for, as Hysperia remarked in comments at the time, "something that someone else might have been doing without his knowledge.".
"I don't believe he should've been put through what he was put through, but that's our system."
Shaikh said he did not believe that the defendant was aware of the group's violent plans."
...the talk was mostly of systems that didn't work and the nameless minions who simply couldn't help themselves... Most of the talk was of the models and the market. The dismissal of human agency is ironic, but also predictable. /snip/ Just as financial markets in the United States privatize profits and socialize losses, Davos and other conferences like this privatize success (by chalking it up to individuals) and socialize failure (by blaming it on large systemic problems).Voila, human nature on the large scale. Don't we all try to take credit for our brilliant successes, but fob off our failures on the obvious difficulties and opponents that prevented better performance?
Businesses is not vulnerable in the same way, and should &^%(&^! well admit and accept blame.
Quelle surprise!
It appears his plan is to let stevie wallow through the next couple of years and take the blame for the crappy economic situation. After he garners strength and name recognition he can "ride to the rescue" of Canada.
Photo Credit: Reuters
"President Barack Obama is right. It's time to set aside childish things.
Specifically for Canada, that means an end to that coalition..."
"For the sake of preserving the public's respect and belief in the integrity of that process, I believe it is important to reassure them on this matter."Statistics released by the Office of the Police Complaints Commissioner in November showed that 106 municipal police officers were guilty of misconduct between Oct. 1, 2006, and Oct. 1, 2008. That's about, um, one per week.
"It would have helped if Obama had the courage to talk about what everyone in the Middle East was talking about. No, it wasn't the US withdrawal from Iraq. They knew about that. They expected the beginning of the end of Guantanamo and the probable appointment of George Mitchell as a Middle East envoy was the least that was expected. Of course, Obama did refer to "slaughtered innocents", but these were not quite the "slaughtered innocents" the Arabs had in mind.
There was the phone call yesterday to Mahmoud Abbas. Maybe Obama thinks he's the leader of the Palestinians, but as every Arab knows, except perhaps Mr Abbas, he is the leader of a ghost government, a near-corpse only kept alive with the blood transfusion of international support and the "full partnership" Obama has apparently offered him, whatever "full" means. And it was no surprise to anyone that Obama also made the obligatory call to the Israelis.
The friendly message to Muslims, "a new way forward, based on mutual interest and mutual respect", simply did not address the pictures of the Gaza bloodbath at which the world has been staring in outrage. Yes, the Arabs and many other Muslim nations, and, of course, most of the world, can rejoice that the awful Bush has gone. So, too, Guantanamo. But will Bush's torturers and Rumsfeld's torturers be punished? Or quietly promoted to a job where they don't have to use water and cloths, and listen to men screaming?"
"When the guns become completely silent, and the full scope of the killing and destruction becomes known, to the point where even the most self-righteous and sophisticated of the Israeli psyche's defense mechanisms are overcome, perhaps then some kind of lesson will imprint itself on our brain. Perhaps then we will finally understand how deeply and fundamentally wrong our actions in this region have been from time immemorial - how misguided, unethical, unwise and above all, responsible, time after time, for fanning the flames that consume us.
We must speak to the Palestinians : Instead of ignoring Hamas at this time, we would do better to take advantage of the new reality that has been created by beginning a dialogue with them immediately, one that would allow us to reach an accord with the whole of the Palestinian people. We must speak to them and begin to acknowledge that reality is not one hermetic story that we, and the Palestinians, too, have been telling ourselves for generations. Reality is not just the story we are locked into, a story made up, in no small measure, of fantasies, wishful thinking and nightmares."
Canada's creepy one-time speech writer for George Bush on talking to Hamas, Reuters :
"U.S. analyst David Frum said talking to violent men was "an invitation to more violence." He wrote: "Advocates of talks with terrorists often present themselves as pragmatists. Not so. They are guided by unstated biases and pure wishful thinking."
As the famous anarchist "Red" Emma Goldman may or may not have said: "If I can't dance, I don't want to be in your revolution"
There are few things more popular in Second Life than music and dancing. After all, in a virtual universe, we are all young and fit and we can all dance like the genetically cross-bred children of Martha Graham, Fred Astaire, Alvin Ailey, Bill 'Bojangles' Robinson and Gypsy Rose Lee. But while we dance, we talk, and as often as not, we talk politics.
And you can't dance without music, whether it's the hot salsa of Los Gatos, the sunny folk-funk of Richard Maynard-Langedijk, the brooding, country-flavored power-pop of Calliope's Radio or even the off-beat satirical stylings of Billy Bob Neck -- it's all here.
The proceeds from this album will go to aid Netroots Nation in Second Life in its efforts to support progressive politics through online activism, networking, advocacy and work on behalf of progressives running for elected office. We are grateful to the artists for the donation of the their inspiration, creativity and hard work. And to you, the listener for contributing to this worthy cause.
Special thanks to all the artists who contributed, Gen. J.C. Christian, Jillan McMillan, Jane2 McMahon, Rocky Torok, Michele Migrish, Jackson Street Books, and all the regulars at Cafe Wellstone, the Lonely Yak and the Red Zeppelin.
Check out the website:http://www.nninsl.org/
The Revolution Will Be Streamed
1. So Glad - Richard Maynard-Langedijk
2. My Strange Love - Brian Lillie and the Squirrel Mountain Orchestra
3. Super Evil - Spoon Spatula
4. Arianara - Los Gatos
5. Hank Paulson's Blues - The Black Tie Martini Club
6. Gimme a Job - the Extras
7. Jesus: The Anti-Rap - Billy Bob Neck
8. Endless Night - Richard Ainslie
9. Zumbro Valley - Zathras Afarensis
10. One More (Land of Beginning Again) - Katherine King Segal & Charlie Brown
11. Watcha Gonna Do? - Golgotha
12. Rachel's Song - Scott & Michelle Daiziel
13. Samba Do Sueno - Pete Siers & Los Gatos
14. Darker, Longer - Calliope's Radio
(Shhhhhh, don't tell the Yanks that the first and last tracks are by Canadians)
The Official George W. Bush "Days Left In Office" Countdown:0 Days
0 Hrs 0 Min 00.0 Sec
"In the square of the city, in the shadow of a steeple,by the relief office, I'd see my people,As they stood there hungry, I stood there whistling,This land was made for you and meThere was a big high wall there that tried to stop me;The sign was painted, it said 'Private Property'But on the other side, it didn't say nothing,That side was made for you and me.Nobody living, can ever stop meAs I go walking that freedom highwayNobody living can ever make me turn backThis land was made for you and me"
Scientists have found that the pleasure women get from making love is directly linked to the size of their partner’s bank balance.
They found that the wealthier a man is, the more frequently his partner has orgasms.*
“Women’s orgasm frequency increases with the income of their partner,” said Dr Thomas Pollet, the Newcastle University psychologist behind the research.
Labour MP Sir Gerald Kaufman, friend to both David Ben-Gurion and Yasser Arafat, speaking in the British House of Commons :
"My grandmother was ill in bed when the Nazis came to her home town of Staszów. A German soldier shot her dead in her bed. Madam Deputy Speaker, my grandmother did not die to provide cover for Israeli soldiers murdering Palestinian grandmothers in Gaza.
The present Israeli government ruthlessly and cynically exploit the continuing guilt among Gentiles over the slaughter of Jews in the Holocaust as justification for their murder of Palestinians. The implication is that Jewish lives are precious, but the lives of Palestinians do not count.I suppose the Jews fighting for their lives in the Warsaw Ghetto could have been dismissed as militants."
An extraordinary contrast to the mealy-mouthings of Harper and Iggy.
What has your MP said? Write to 'em with a link to Kaufman's speech.
Update : YOUNGFOX CANADA: Take a walk through Gaza
KRISPY KREME CELEBRATES OBAMA WITH PRO-ABORTION DOUGHNUTS
Washington, DC (15 January 2009) – The following is a statement from American Life League president, Judie Brown.
"The next time you stare down a conveyor belt of slow-moving, hot, sugary glazed donuts at your local Krispy Kreme you just might be supporting President-elect Barack Obama's radical support for abortion on demand – including his sweeping promise to sign the Freedom of Choice Act as soon as he steps in the Oval Office, Jan. 20.
"About a third of those killed in Gaza have been children ... out of the 1,000 total killed as of Wednesday. Around 1,550 of the 4,500 wounded have also been children according to figures from the UN, which says the number of children killed has tripled since the ground operation began.
But the horrifying proportion of this war, a third of the dead being children, has not been seen in recent memory. About half of Gaza's residents are under 15.
The public's shocking indifference to these figures is incomprehensible. A thousand propagandists and apologists cannot excuse this criminal killing.
They did not die because they were used as human shields or because they worked for Hamas. They were killed because the IDF bombed, shelled or fired at them, their families or their apartment buildings. That is why the blood of Gaza's children is on our hands, not on Hamas' hands, and we will never be able to escape that responsibility."
"The Foreign Ministry has created a special task force to prepare for the aftermath of the Israel Defense Forces' Gaza operation. The team will submit proposals for two of the army's main concerns - Iran and Hamas taking control of Gaza's postwar reconstruction, and the harm the offensive might cause to Israel's image abroad.
The ministry hopes to avoid a situation similar to the one in southern Lebanon after the 2006 Second Lebanon War. There, Iran sent hundreds of millions of dollars to Hezbollah to transfer to families whose homes had been destroyed, burnishing the militant group's reputation among the population.
Israeli officials believe after the fighting stops and foreign journalists are allowed entry into the territory that negative sentiment toward Israel will only grow as the full picture of destruction emerges.
The task force's preliminary recommendations highlight the need for Israel to project two kinds of messages abroad. The Arab world must receive a deterrent message indicating Israel will not accept a reality in which its civilians have to endure rocket fire.
The Western world, however, must be presented with the message that despite the scale of destruction rained on Gaza, Israel is a democratic state with a similar worldview to countries in Europe and the United States."
Still, Foreign Ministry officials are convinced that these public relations efforts will not suffice to restore Israel's image and will need to be backed up by diplomatic progress with the Palestinians."
"The United States administration plans to cut about $1 billion from the balance of its loan guarantees to Israel because of its investments in the settlements.
Israel has used about $4.4 billion of the $9 billion in loan guarantees extended by the U.S. in 2003.
The loan guarantees arrangement specifies that the U.S. will reduce the guarantees by the amount the Israeli government spends on settlements in the West Bank. The U.S. embassy in Tel Aviv monitors that spending and the administration informs Jerusalem of the amount it is holding back from the guarantees."
William Devereux Zantzinger, whose six-month sentence in the fatal caning of a black barmaid named Hattie Carroll at a Baltimore charity ball moved Bob Dylan to write a dramatic, almost journalistic song in 1963 that became a classic of modern American folk music, died on Jan. 3. He was 69.
In 1991, The Maryland Independent disclosed that Mr. Zantzinger had been collecting rent from black families living in shanties that he no longer owned; Charles County, Md., had foreclosed on them for unpaid taxes. The shanties lacked running water, toilets or outhouses. Not only had Mr. Zantzinger collected rent for properties he did not own, he also went to court to demand past-due rent, and won.
He pleaded guilty to 50 misdemeanor counts of deceptive trade practices, paid $62,000 in penalties and, under an 18-month sentence, spent only nights in jail.
Information on Mr. Zantzinger’s survivors was unavailable. Though he long refused interviews, he did speak to the author Howard Sounes for his book “Down the Highway: The Life of Bob Dylan” (2001) , telling him of his scorn for Mr. Dylan.
“I should have sued him and put him in jail,” he said.
Too conservative for Canada?
By BILL TIELEMAN - January 13, 2009
Imagine where a Canadian politician who held the following positions would fit in our political system:
This politician opposes legalizing same-sex marriages.
He has no problem with citizens owning handguns - but proposed limiting their purchase - to one per month.
This politician wants to send thousands more troops to Afghanistan - and to keep them there for years instead of withdrawing them in 2011.
He thinks Robert Gates, U.S. President George W. Bush's Secretary of Defence, has done an excellent job in the Iraq war.
The politician is willing to restrict late-term abortions for women and admits he's not sure at what point a human being gets human rights.
So who did he choose to deliver a prayer before a major political event?
A controversial fundamentalist Christian pastor who has called abortion "a holocaust" and who campaigned in California for the successful Proposition 8, which bans gay marriages.
This politician has described government-run public health care as "an extreme" that leads to high taxes and is "wrong" while supporting private health insurance as the best option.
And despite saying that he has done more than anybody to "take on lobbyists and won" - this politician just appointed one to a top position.
So, where would you place this politician on the Canadian political scene?
An elected representative with these policies that are so obviously way out of line with Canadian mainstream values and popular opinion would likely lead a fringe party far to the right of Conservative Prime Minister Stephen Harper, with little hope of political success.
But in the United States - his name is President-Elect Barack Obama.
_______________Just make sure that you don't get caught up in next week's Obama-mania and miss the fact that the new American president is in many ways far more conservative than any of Canada's political leaders.
Men's bra stimulates otome (girlish) side in men
Kanta Ishida / Yomiuri Shimbun Staff Writer
Asuka Masamune is a high school kendo champion. Everyone acknowledges he is a cool, good-looking guy and a truly manly man. But he has another self, a side that cannot help being attracted to cute and otome-like, or girlish, things.
"strongly condemned the ongoing Israeli military operation in Gaza, which had resulted in massive violations of human rights of the Palestinian people, and demanded the occupying power, Israel, to immediately withdraw its military forces from Gaza".
"the end to the launching of the crude rockets against Israeli civilians that resulted in the loss of 4 civilian lives and some injuries"
"MARIUS GRINIUS (Canada), speaking in an explanation of the vote before the vote, thanked the Palestine delegation for its consultations, but said the draft text still failed to clearly recognize that rocket fire on Israel had led to the current crisis. It also used unnecessary, unhelpful and inflammatory language.
Canada therefore called for a vote and would vote against the resolution."
"Concerning us, we want the immediate and complete withdrawal of Israeli forces from Gaza and the lifting of the unjust siege on Gaza that has led to the current situation.
Our other request is the opening of all border crossings including the Rafah border crossing.
We, with an open mind, will deal with any initiatives and decisions based on these three requests.
Therefore, we will not accept any negotiations for a truce in the light of and under the pressure of a military campaign and siege.
Let the military campaign stop, let the Israelis withdraw, and let the rights of our people be admitted to, let them recognize our rights to live without a siege and closed border crossings, just like other humans, then we are ready to discuss a truce, just like we did before.
We will not accept a permanent truce, because it will take the right of resistance from the Palestinian people. The resistance is against occupation and military campaigns and therefore as long as occupation exists, resistance will too…"
"The resolution wholly failed to acknowledge Hamas's continual rocket attacks on Israel that brought about the current crisis, and ignored a state's legitimate right to self-defence," a spokesperson said in an email." [apparently without irony]
"A four-month ceasefire between Israel and Palestinian militants in Gaza was in jeopardy today after Israeli troops killed six Hamas gunmen in a raid into the territory. Hamas responded by firing a wave of rockets into southern Israel, although no one was injured.
Ehud Barak, the Israeli defence minister, had personally approved the Gaza raid, the Associated Press said. The Israeli military concluded that Hamas was likely to want to continue the ceasefire despite the raid."
"Canada remains deeply concerned about the ongoing hostilities ... and encourages all diplomatic efforts to achieve an immediate, sustainable and durable ceasefire. But first and foremost, Hamas's rocket attacks must stop so that a ceasefire can be realized."
"... anti-Israeli sentiment is really just as a thinly disguised veil for good old-fashioned anti-Semitism"
Just last month in Washington, members of the federally appointed bipartisan Commission on the Prevention of Weapons of Mass Destruction Proliferation and Terrorism made it clear that for sheer scariness, nothing could compete with what they had heard in a series of high-level intelligence briefings about the dangers of Pakistan’s nuclear technology going awry. “When you map W.M.D. and terrorism, all roads intersect in Pakistan,” Graham Allison, a Harvard professor and a leading nuclear expert on the commission, told me. “The nuclear security of the arsenal is now a lot better than it was. But the unknown variable here is the future of Pakistan itself, because it’s not hard to envision a situation in which the state’s authority falls apart and you’re not sure who’s in control of the weapons, the nuclear labs, the materials.”
• • • • • • •
The Pakistani nuclear program owes its very existence to the government-endorsed and government-financed subterfuges of A. Q. Khan, who then turned the country into the biggest source of nuclear-weapons proliferation in atomic history. And while Khan may be the most famous nuclear renegade in Pakistan, he is not the only one. Soon after Kidwai took office, he also faced the case of the eccentric nuclear scientist Sultan Bashiruddin Mahmood, who helped build gas centrifuges for the Pakistani nuclear program, using blueprints Khan had stolen from the Netherlands. Mahmood then moved on to the country’s next huge project: designing the reactor at Khushab that was to produce the fuel Pakistan needed to move to the next level — a plutonium bomb.
An autodidact intellectual with grand aspirations, Mahmood was fascinated by the links between science and the Koran. He wrote a peculiar treatise arguing that when morals degrade, disaster cannot be far behind. Over time, his colleagues began to wonder if Mahmood was mentally sound. They were half amused and half horrified by his fascination with the role sunspots played in triggering the French and Russian Revolutions, World War II and assorted anticolonial uprisings. “This guy was our ultimate nightmare,” an American intelligence official told me in late 2001, when The New York Times first reported on Mahmood. “He had access to the entire Pakistani program. He knew what he was doing. And he was completely out of his mind.”
"The UN put the Palestinian death toll at 758, of whom it said 42% were women and children – 60 women and 257 children. Around 3,100 Palestinians have been injured.
Three Israeli soldiers were killed bringing the Israeli death toll to 13, of whom three were civilians."There is no safe space in the Gaza Strip – no safe haven, no bomb shelters, and the borders are closed and civilians have no place to flee," said a report from the UN office for the coordination of humanitarian affairs. It said three quarters of Gaza's 1.5 million people had now been without electricity since Sunday, and 800,000 Gazans had no running water.
"The UN relief and works agency, by far the largest humanitarian agency in Gaza, suspended its operations yesterday, after Israeli forces opened fire on a UN-contracted convoy collecting food aid from the Erez crossing in north Gaza. One man was killed and two others injured. Later , a marked UN convoy of two armoured vehicles was hit by Israeli troops when they stopped to try to recover the dead body of a Palestinian UN staff member during a scheduled three-hour ceasefire."
"15,000 Gazans are sheltering in UN schools because they have been forced to flee their homes in the face of the Israeli air and ground offensive, or even ordered out by Israeli troops. The UN has opened 27 of its schools as shelters."
"UN: IDF officers admitted there was no gunfire from Gaza school which was shelled ... all the footage released by the IDF of militants firing from inside the school was from 2007 and not from the incident itself. "
"Liberal leader echoes Tory government, blames Hamas for `organizing, instigating rocket attacks'
"Federal Liberal Leader Michael Ignatieff says Israel is justified in taking military action to defend itself against attacks by Hamas from the Gaza Strip.
"Canada has to support the right of a democratic country to defend itself," he told reporters in Halifax yesterday after speaking to a forum of business leaders on the economy.
"Israel has been attacked from Gaza, not just last year, but for almost 10 years," Ignatieff said. "They evacuated from Gaza so there is no occupation in Gaza."
Good advice and excellent alternative recommendations to be found there."Modern Western armies, like those of Israel, the US, and Canada, think of information as part of warfare. They expend tremendous time and resources mobilizing support for their violence. They do this by controlling information, disallowing independent journalists (as Israel is doing), using embedded journalists, and running a massive public relations machinery designed specifically to deliver arguments and propaganda for the foreign press and for foreign consumption.
There is a special machinery just for Canadians, and a special strategy to sell war in Canada. There was one for the Iraq war, there is one for the Afghanistan war, and one for Israel's wars as well. What is so unusual about the media environment today is that all this expense, all this media machinery, can be circumvented by anyone in its target audience by the simple click of a mouse. So click away."
