"Sudan will be your Guantanamo" CSIS told Abdelrazik

Abousfian Abdelrazik spoke out this morning about his exile, his torture, the false charges against him, the harrassment of his dying Canadian wife and her family by CSIS before he returned to Sudan to care for his ailing mother in 2003.
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He could identify by sight, he told us, the Canadian agents who questioned him while he was in captivity in Sudan, including the one who told him "Sudan will be your Guantanamo" and that he was never coming home.
He describes being interrogated in Sudan in 2008 by Foreign Affairs parliamentary secretary Deepak Obhrai, who questioned him about Osama bin Laden and what he thought of Israel.
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I watched it on tv.
Paul Koring, Dr. Dawg, and Kady were there.
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There's a sense in which this case is more important than that of Maher Arar in terms of how Canadians, at least Muslim Canadians, can expect to be treated by our government, and whether CSIS can legitimately be said to be under anyone's control any more.
There was no US middleman here, no wiggle room in which Canadian intelligence agencies could claim to have been overpowered or misled or shut out of the proceedings by US security forces.
This one is all ours.
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In the meantime, Abdelrazik is still on that 1267 UN blacklist : he cannot work, he cannot receive money or medical attention, he cannot fly, he cannot receive gifts.
He is currently an exile in Canada.
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UPDATE : "NDP foreign-affairs critic Paul Dewar called on the government to launch a public inquiry even more far reaching than the judicial probe into the imprisonment and torture in Syria of Maher Arar. ... there was no middle man," Dewar said.

Deepak Obhrai is currently away in Asia.

Kady liveblogs the Twitterdome

Kady O'Malley liveblogs an afternoon at the Manning Networking Conference and Exhibition 2009 to amusing effect.
Y'all remember the Manning Centre for Building Democracy for Cons, right?

On this the third day of workshops about the importance of successful social netwonking, the afternoon's event naturally featured Blogging Tory Stephen Taylor struggling with technical difficulties in a failed attempt to set up his PowerPoint presentation on how to Simplify the Message :

"Ask your readers, 'Are you mad?' Assure them: 'We are too.' "

Personally I never doubted it for a moment.

The other panelists were two Republicans from the McCain campaign who apparently shared their tips on the extraordinary success they managed to pull off for McCain.
And twittering. Lots and lots of twittering.
There was of course also a shooting gallery. . .

GO.

Cross-posted at Creekside

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Spin Doctors Without Borders...again

As noted by Dana below, a mere three days after the G&M reported:
Safe-injection site in B.C. wins court protection

"North America's only sanctioned safe-injection site for drug addicts won a major court victory Tuesday, thwarting any chance of the federal Conservative government closing it down" ,

Tony Clement announced at the House of Commons Standing Committee on Health that he will be asking Justice Minister Rob Nicholson to appeal the BC Supreme Court's decision "as soon as possible".

Kady O'Malley live-blogged the committee hearings in her own inimitable way today, noting that:

"It occured to me as I was scurrying back from the foyer that this is the *second* meeting this week where the only witness on hand to defend the government’s policy on a controversial issue is an import from the United States—and not just the U.S., but the United States of Right-Wing Think Tanks."

Ah yes - Colin Mangham.
Colin Mangham is "director of research" for the Drug Prevention Network of Canada, an offshoot of , wait for it , the Drug Prevention Network of America, headed up by Calvina L. Fay of Drug Free America, Save Our Society From Drugs, and Drug Watch International, dedicated to "combating the drug legalization movement globally".
DPN of Canada lists her as an "honorary board member" who has "served as an advisor to President Bush on drug policy".
Rounding out the board of our very own 'war on drugs' Canadian clonetank is past president ReformaTory Randy White and REAL Woman Gwen Landolt as current VP, plus a couple of Scientology's Narconon graduates.

Back to Kady :

"Dr. Colin Mangham, who huffs and puffs over the "bad science" and sloppy journalism behind support for the program...[snip]...At one point, he mentions in an offhand way that he’s a graduate of UBC, but his accent is glaringly American. Not that there’s anything wrong with that, of course.
He then goes into a rant about how people who support InSite, including some in this very room, are, in fact, part of a larger movement towards drug policy reform. He demands that "elected representatives" stop these "activists."
By this point, there are hisses and catcalls coming from the visitors’ gallery."

"Bloc’s Christiane Gagnon : does he have any data to support his contention that the vast quantity of research that supports harm reduction policies is worthless?
Well, no, not exactly. He provided a “second opinion” on research produced by other people, to “critique” it, just like a first year university student would do."

Ok, our score so far : 22 positive peer-reviewed studies in favor of InSite published in prestigious scientific journals ... versus one "second opinion" from a promoter of the wildly successful and universally admired US 'war on drugs'.

So why am I still worried?

Cross-posted at Creekside

Update : Wow! Four posts on this at the Gazetteer from Ross - who is, incidentally, a scientist, the peer-reviewed kind, the kind who does his own research.