CBC Power & Politics on the Oslo massacre, at noon Friday, edited:

Evan Solomon: This raises again the spectre of international terrorism.

Stockwell Day: As recently as July 8th in Norway there was a dragnet for al-Qaeda suspects related to the Manchester bombing. Whether this group is tied to them we don’t know . . .

Solomon: A suspect has now been arrested. This looks like a multiple series of attacks that are going on. Now remember Norway did have a small number of troops in Afghanistan.

It’s a very very fluid situation but it does raise all sorts of security issues about — this is a hackneyed phrase but on a day like this it suddenly has new poignancy — the war on terror.

We don’t know who’s taken credit for this, or responsibility for this attack, but if indeed it is al Qaeda, if indeed it is an extremist act that has any connection to what’s happened in Afghanistan, how do we square that with what the PM said at the end of our mission there that Afghanistan and what’s going on there is no longer a threat to global security?

Stockwell Day: Well the level of training that was going on in Afghanistan was extreme in exporting terror.

[Stock goes on about our accomplishments in Afghanistan] In Canada we’ve had the Toronto 18. Security has to be #1.

Solomon: The profile of these extremists . . . Somalia — these are the places where extremists take root.

Stockwell Day: The single reason for this type of terrorism . . . this type of terrorism will continue . . . and we hope to be able to limit it through the 21st century . . .  is the result of extreme lunatic insane ideological teaching and it happens whether the people involved are from poor areas or wealthy areas. Don’t forget Osama bin Laden himself was a multi-millionaire growing up in Saudi Arabia in a very, very wealthy family. The Toronto 18 were all in good financial shape. Many of this extremist al Qaeda type extremist lunatic ideology that is even being bred in the US — these are coming from people who are not disaffected by poverty. This is the result of an insane extreme religious teaching and I encourage those within the broader community to reach out to extremists within their own community and they’ve got to get the message out to the young people that they are being told lies — that the afterlife for them is not what they’re being promised.

Thank you, Doris.

BBC: Scores killed in Norway attacks

A massive bomb blast shattered buildings in the capital Oslo, killing at least seven people. Then a gunman rampaged through a youth camp run by the ruling Labour Party, killing 84 people. On Saturday police continued combing the island as a number of teenagers were still missing, feared dead.

Norwegian media identified the man as Anders Behring Breivik, 32. Police charged him for the island massacre and the Oslo bomb blast.

Police said the man was answering questions and they described him as a right-wing Christian fundamentalist.

The Americans who gathered outside the White House and at Ground Zero last night, waving their inevitable flags to celebrate the death of Osama bin Laden, were touching in their desire to see an end to the nightmare that has been made of their lives and their country in these last nine-and-a-half years. Not so Stephen Harper in his statement on the subject, which was as cynical as one would expect.

He was right, of course, when he said that “Bin Laden’s death does not end the threat of international terrorism.” International terrorism existed long before Bin Laden made the scene, as anyone who remembers the Baader-Meinhof Group or the Japanese Red Army or the Munich Massacre can attest. For that matter, much American foreign policy of the last century-or-so could be described as international terrorism, though those partyers last night would not like to think so.

Then Harper added, “this does remind us why Canadian Armed Forces personnel have been deployed to Afghanistan: to deny Al Qaeda, and organizations like it, the use of Afghanistan, where the 9/11 attack was conceived and planned.”

But — also of course — Bin Laden denied responsibility for the attacks. And even if you suppose he was lying, the fact is the Taliban offered to cooperate in prosecuting Bin Laden provided the U.S. presented some evidence of his involvement. The U.S. didn’t feel like it, and invaded instead. Puppy-dog-like, Canada tagged along.

Oh well. If Bin Laden’s purported killing yesterday (we won’t be seeing the body, so I suspect we’ll have to take the US’s word for that, too) puts an end to our adventurism in Afghanistan, and to the winnowing of civil liberties that Americans have been subjected to since 2001, I’ll celebrate too. There are still a lot of bad guys out there — like the ones who knew 9/11 was coming and did nothing about it (except to try to profit from it on the stock market). They have yet to be brought to justice. And then there’s the vexing question of Building 7.

But for a pair of wars that have been largely showbiz from the start, this “happy ending” is perfect. Or at least it is for those touchingly credulous people on the streets last night.

By Alison@Creekside

Five times convicted fraudster Bruce Carson – currently under RCMP investigation for influence peddling and illegal lobbying of Indian Affairs to obtain a water filtration contract that would have netted his 22-year old fiancee, Michele McPherson, 20% of sales — was granted a secret security clearance in 2006 by some “low level staffer,” just so he could be Harper’s “main player “and “point man” on the top secret and sensitive Afghanistan file.

“. . . starting in 2007, Carson was a regular participant in daily telephone briefings on Afghanistan involving senior officials from departments such as foreign affairs, defence, RCMP, justice and corrections. ‘It was evident to all the departments that he was the main player, Harper’s point man on the file,’ said one source familiar with the briefings. ‘He was given the most sensitive file to work on.’”

So while Stockwell Day was braying in the House in 2007 that even to question the treatment of detainees was tantamount to treason, a convicted felon was briefing his Correction Services Canada inspections team in Afghanistan “on a daily basis” and possibly figuring out what to do about Corrections Canada requests for boots suitable for “walking through blood and fecal matter on patrol or in the prison”.

“While Harper has a national security adviser, it was left to Carson, chief policy analyst, to stickhandle the Afghan file on a daily basis. His focus was usually on how the mission was being communicated here in Canada rather than on developments in the field, the source said.”

Ah yes, putting a happy face on war crimes:

“Canadian diplomats in Afghanistan were ordered in 2007 to hold back information in their reports to Ottawa about the handling of the prisoners, say defence and foreign affairs sources. The instruction — issued soon after allegations of torture by Afghan authorities began appearing in public — was aimed at defusing the explosive human-rights controversy, said sources who spoke on the condition of anonymity.

“The controversy was seen as ‘detracting from the narrative’ the Harper government was trying to weave around the mission, said one official. ‘It was meant to put on a happy face,’ he added.

“The instruction was passed over the telephone by senior officials in the Privy Council Office.”

Impolitical says: “Incompetent leadership . . . left the highest, most sensitive affairs of Canada in Bruce Carson’s hands without the proper security clearance” But I think Harper knew exactly why he wanted the felon they called ‘The Mechanic.”

By the way, how is the more recent stickhandling of the Afghan detainee documents progressing, 16 months after they were demanded by Parliament?

March 3, 2011: Secret Afghan documents could be ready in two weeks, say Liberals (a month ago).

So, while the Cons have been stonewalling on handing over the Afghan detainee documents to our duly elected members of Parliament,  some unelected convicted felon buddy of Harper’s was the Afghan file “point man” during the time in question.

Unbelievable.

By Alison@Creekside

Speaking to his fellow members of the Subcommittee on International Human Rights last week at a meeting which heard that the situation for Afghan women has considerably worsened over the last two years, Lib MP Mario Silva recounted his own conversations with women’s groups in Afghanistan this past June:

“They told us when they were young, they had full freedom in terms of education, they didn’t have to wear the head scarf, they could go out in public without any problem. It was more restricted with the Taliban but they did have more progressive attitudes towards women some time ago. So I think when we in the West say we have to be culturally sensitive to them and it takes time — I think that is a false argument.”

He stated that that all the womens groups told him that concessions to the Taliban were won on the backs of women, that they strongly opposed the Karzai government, and that continued Canadian presence in Afghanistan was important to them.

The only witness Tuesday was Reverend Majed El Shafie of the Christian Toronto-based human rights group, One Free World International. He testified that while working in Afghanistan four years ago, he was able to connect with local human rights orgs and individuals through their networks. In the last four years, however, and specifically in the last two, reports indicated the human rights situation is much deteriorated, so in June he returned with a delegation that included Silva.

El Shafie outlined three main issues.

Number one – the severe abuse and shocking punishments meted out to women, abetted and sanctioned by the new 2009 laws passed by the Karzai government before the last election.

Number two – Boy play or “bacha bazi” — sexual slavery in which boys are dressed up to dance as girls and afterwards whoever pays the most gets to rape the boy. Members of the government take part, says El Shafie, and some boys are raped six to eight times a day, including by the police if they complain. He has video.

Number three – Persecution of 25 Afghans converting to Christianity, including calls for their deaths by members of parliament, backed up by Karzai’s spokesman, the deputy secretary. El Shafie tabled the document authorizing them being stoned to death.

He recommended future Canadian aid be tied to preconditions on human rights improvements.
Although he testified that “our support of Karzai and the corruption of his family is what is negatively affecting our image” to the Afghan people, he made a passionate plea for Canada not to abandon them, to stay on in Afghanistan.

The committee met hours before the defeat of the Bloc motion condemning the Conservative government’s extension of the Afghanistan mission without a parliamentary vote.

There is a notable lack of partisan party bickering on this seven member committee – possibly because a majority of them also work together on the Steering Committee of the Canadian Parliamentary Coalition to Combat Antisemitism (CPCCA). Scott Reid is Chair of both, Mario Silva is Vice Chair of both, and Irwin Cotler and David Sweet are members of both. So the Steering Committee of the CPCCA holds a majority on the human rights committee.

This also perhaps explains why human rights abuses perpetrated on Palestine/Gaza do not show up anywhere on their radar. Rather unusual for a human rights committee, no?

CBC: “The Canadian Forces have for years arrested children suspected of working with the Taliban and handed them over to an Afghan security unit accused of torture.

The document, obtained under an Access to Information request and marked ‘secret,’ shows that Defence Minister Peter MacKay was briefed on the topic of juvenile detainees in Afghanistan March 30.”

UN General Assembly Security Council, Children and Armed Conflict, April 10, 2010:

“Approximately 110 children have been detained by the Afghan National Directorate of Security and international military forces on charges related to national security, including their alleged involvement or association with the Taliban or other armed groups. Access to detention facilities continues to be difficult and information on children detained by pro-Government forces remains limited.

The use of harsh interrogation techniques and forced confession of guilt by the Afghan Police and NDS was documented, including the use of electric shocks and beating . . . . Available information points to sexual violence as a widespread phenomenon.”

Electric shocks, beating, forced confessions, sexual violence.

You can see how the Con/Lib/Bloc Afghan detainee panel — all sworn to secrecy and finally convened in July seven months after it was ordered in the House and charged with going through all those binders on detainees that Laurie Hawn is leaning on — is going to take a really really long time to get around to releasing any hint of this, if ever.

At which point, MacKay will probably issue one of his “there was a problem but we already fixed it” missives and point out that Afghanistan is a sovereign country whose torture facilities are solely responsible for the treatment of the children we hand over to them. Especially as we now apparently actively solicit Canadian industry support for the CIA-backed NDS.

In the Afghan Committee on Oct 20, 2010, Parliamentary Secretary for National Defence Laurie Hawn remarked the NDS is “probably one of the better institutions in Afghanistan” and asked the Afghan ambassador if there was anything Canadian private industry could do to help them out.

The publication ban on Project Samosa, the RCMP’s latest salvo in the war on terror, has the media scrambling to get unnamed sources and security experts to augment and substitute for accounts of court proceedings. By a happy coincidence for war on terror fans, this allows for far more pants-pissingly terrorfying conjecture than mere straight news would allow.

So far, “sources” have told one security expert, an ex-RCMP and CSIS operative quoted at CTV, that the accused:

1) “would have targeted the Parliament buildings and Montreal’s public transit system with bombs”
2) “that the ringleader went to Afghanistan and to Pakistan to receive training”
3) “some of their suspected accomplices could be in Iran or in Dubai”
4) “were assembling components for one or more bombs and had raised money for al Qaeda and the Taliban”
5) “the ringleader was about to take a trip abroad, maybe to deliver the money himself”

This last is the reported reason for the arrests. After a year of watching them:

“Police say a terror attack was likely still months away when they pounced on the plot, but they moved because they feared the men were about to start sending money to other terrorists in Afghanistan.”

Last I heard, “terrorists” in Afghanistan were already rolling in US tax dollars and drug money, but whatever.

A year ago the Star ran an excellent piece on the media’s relationship with their “sources” in the Arar case when he was the terrorist du jour: Learning from media mistakes in Arar case

Canadian Press journalist Stephen Thorne quoted an official source who linked Arar to “a suspected member of Osama bin Laden’s Al Qaeda terrorist network.”

Robert Fife, CanWest’s Ottawa bureau chief, “cited an anonymous official who described Arar as a ‘very bad guy’ who had received training at an Al Qaeda base and that intelligence received from Syria had helped the CIA avert an attack on the U.S. embassy in Ottawa.”

Craig Oliver at CTV News was “offered a photograph of Arar training in a camp in Afghanistan” Oliver: “The source wanted me to use the information without showing me the photograph. That was a very solid source . . . This experience has made me more skeptical . . . I knew these people very well.”

Ottawa Citizen‘s Juliet O’Neill was fed a story headlined “Canada’s dossier on Maher Arar: The existence of a group of Ottawa men with alleged ties to Al Qaeda is at the root of why the government opposes an inquiry into the case.”

Even after Arar’s return to Canada, “Robert Fife was once more the vehicle that Canadian and U.S. intelligence officials used to inform the public that they were ’100 per cent sure’ that Arar trained at an Al Qaeda camp in Afghanistan.”

Some of these reporters have since stated they were used and have apologised to Arar; some have not. The point is they were all used to disseminate false information from anonymous government and police sources to the public. Something to bear in mind when “sources” are once again where we will be getting most of our information on this newest batch of alleged terrorists, given it will likely be months if not years before they go to trial.

One of the Wikileaks war logs released yesterday contained a friendly fire report filed by the 205th RCAG U.S. military unit which states four Canadian soldiers were killed and seven other Canadians and an interpreter were wounded on Sept. 3, 2006, when a fighter jet dropped a guided bomb on a building they occupied during the second day of Operation MEDUSA [bracketed explanations mine]:

At 030414Z Sept 06 received SAF[small arms fire] & RPGS from sawtooth building. returned fire 1x GBU [Guided Bomb Unit] dropped on it.

Sawtooth building is heavily damaged. only 4x sections remain standing. no activity observed. Casualties 4x CDN KIA [Killed in action] 4X CDN WIA [Wounded in action].

This was later updated to 4 dead and 7 wounded Canadians:

At 030419Z Sep received SAF and RPG fire on op, a total of WIA in these hour 7x CDN, and 4x CDN KIA and 1x WIA interpreter
Attack on: FRIEND

Type : Friendly Fire …. Category : Blue-Blue …. Affiliation : FRIEND

At the time the Canadian military reported that the four Canadian soldiers died in battles with Taliban forces. CBC got official clarification of that last night from Jay Paxton, spokesman for Defence Minister Peter MacKay:

Anyone think the Americans just casually inflate their friendly fire reports? And what about the “guided bomb unit” in the US report? Do the Taliban have fighter jets now?

Meanwhile, at a “media availability” on Monday morning, Foreign Affairs Minister Lawrence Cannon was blindsided with questions on the publication of the Wikileaks war logs. Echoing U.S. National Security Adviser James Jones, Taliban Larry said:

“Our government is concerned obviously that operational leaks could endanger the lives of our men and women in Afghanistan.”

Cannon then went on to repeat several times that the “leaked American documents” have “nothing to do with Canada.”

Okay then.

Asked by the G&M if the leaks indicate the government has “misled the Canadian public,” Lawrence replied that they have been very “transparent” and besides, ministers regularly go before the parliamentary Afghanistan committee.

Ahem. Didn’t your government just shut down parliament entirely earlier this year in part to stop that very committee from doing its job, Larry? Is this Afghan committee not the very place from which the word “redacted” assumed its prominent position in the news ?

Meanwhile, over at the Pentagon . . .

Pentagon still reviewing records, but so far finds no threat to U.S. security

“An ongoing Pentagon review of the massive flood of secret documents made public by the WikiLeaks website has so far found no evidence that the disclosure harmed U.S. national security or endangered American troops in the field, a Pentagon official told NBC News on Monday.”

PS: Gotta love Laura Lynch on CBC’s “As it Happens.” She asked Julian Assange whether his release of the war logs was “criminal” and weren’t things “better now under Obama.”

Obama — that would be the guy who just ordered up a 30,000 troop surge for a war that is already costing $7-billion a month to retake Kandahar. Assange called her questions “naive.” I thought that was unnecessarily charitable.

The Sun:

“The Tories’ house leader Jay Hill told QMI Agency the government has not agreed to allow members of the Bloc to review confidential documents related to the transfer of Afghan detainees.”

Haven’t said no; haven’t said yes.

“Bloc MPs would ‘have to swear allegiance to Canada and the Queen’ if they want access to sensitive information, said Manitoba Tory MP James Bezan. ‘If they are not prepared to do that, then I don’t see any way that we can give them the documents,’ he said.”

Take it away, M. Duceppe… (h/t Maclean’s)

 
I’m really fed up with the Cons’ sly frogbashing and the anglo media ignoring the Bloc altogether unless it’s to remind everyone of how the Bloc was part of the really scary coalition to replace Steve. Gosh, looking back on it, how terrible for Canada that would have been.

As someone who watches parliamentary committees on a regular to sporadic basis, I can tell you that many issues concerning social justice and individual freedom would get scant airing in committee if not for the dogged and fearless determination of Bloc committee members to ask hard questions of witnesses and not dither away their time scoring meaningless political points like our friend Bezan here. And they don’t take any crap from anyone.

Would they were a federalist party; I’d probably vote for them.

Below: Daphne Eviatar of Human Rights Watch is interviewed as she leaves the courtroom on Day 1 of Obama’s first big pretrial for a military commission into the possible terrorist actions of a 14-year old. Terrible sound, I know, but well worth it for her explanation of how after Khadr has been tortured to confess at Bagram, the “clean team” comes in and tries to elicit the same “confessions” under friendlier conditions so that the new clean confessions will be admissible in court.

 
A word about Khadr’s confessions under torture. According to Eviatar, FBI agent Robert Fuller

elicited from Khadr the identification of another Canadian, Maher Arar, who Khadr during interviews by Fuller claimed was training with al Qaeda operatives at a training camp at a time that, it later turned out, Arar was actually at home in Canada.

Shortly after Fuller reported the identification of Arar to the government, Arar was apprehended at JFK airport and rendered to Syria for interrogation there.

FBI agent Fuller also got Khadr to confess to throwing a grenade at US forces.

Well so much for confessions elicited via sleep deprivation, denial of pain medication, stress positions, being forced to urinate on himself and being used as a human mop, being terrorized by barking dogs, and being threatened with rape and torture. Khadr’s defence team has only been allowed to interview three of Khadr’s 30 interrogators at Bagram and Gitmo, two of whom admit the 15-year old Khadr was threatened with rape.

In the vid above Eviatar also mentions no one knowing what the rules are. This is because Secretary of Defense Robert Gates only signed off on and issued the 2009 Manual for the Military Commissions Act on Wednesday night, 12 hours before the pretrial began, meaning that no one involved had time to read it beforehand and consequently no one knew what the rules were. After a four hour adjournment to read it, now they can’t agree on whether or not the US Constitution applies.

Mike Berrigan, deputy chief defense council : “We don’t know what the law is.”

You don’t really have one, sir. That’s why it’s called a kangaroo court — it leaps over the law to a foregone conclusion. That’s the whole point.

Your government announced on Friday that it needs more powers to combat terrorism.

Justice Minister Rob Nicholson: “These provisions are necessary to protect our country from the threat of terrorism.”

A redo of the panicky, now-defunct Anti-terrorism Act of 2001, the new Combating Terrorism Act includes preventive arrest and forcing people to testify at secret hearings about terrorist acts that might happen in the future, and if you don’t like it you can go to jail for up to a year with a judge’s option to extend.

There are more safeguards included this time round — you can have a lawyer! at any time! — which will only allow the Libs to go along with it so as not to be painted as soft on terrorism. Mark Holland, the Liberal critic for Public Safety and National Security, is already looking to cave.

The argument in favour of anti-terrorism legislation is that criminal law only deals with crimes already committed. What to do about those who feel that crimes perpetrated by the state against their people require a response like blowing things up?

The argument against it is . . . well, let’s look at how they’re doing with the laws they’ve already got. From the April 1st Ottawa Citizen:

“The federal government case against Ottawa terror suspect Mohamed Harkat appears to have suffered a significant blow Wednesday when a document was introduced in court showing that Abu Zubaydah, once considered a master terrorist and 9/11 mastermind, actually had nothing to do with the attacks.

“Even more surprising, the document, which quotes U.S court filings declassified last week, shows that Zubaydah, once believed to be one of the top leaders in al-Qaeda, was not even a member of the terrorist group.”

The unfortunate Abu Zubaydah got waterboarded 83 times in the US, coughed up Harkat’s name, and the Canadian government obligingly held Harkat for 3 1/2 years.

A clue about the reliability of Abu Zubaydah’s “testimony” might have been found in his confession to terrorist acts committed after his imprisonment, but sadly, no, it wasn’t.

Abdelrazik? “Closely associated” with the same hapless Abu Zubaydah.

Result? Abdelrazik was tortured, then exiled in Sudan for six years. He’s still on the UN’s 1267 terror list, and the Canadian government has frozen his bank account and he can’t work.

Help him get off that list? Blow me, said Minister of Public Security Peter Van Loan and Minister of Foreign Affairs Lawrence Cannon.

Maher Arar — the first inkling for many of us that something had gone terribly wrong.
Adil Charkaoui — in custody 21 months, now free.
Hassan Almrei — in custody for eight years, now free.
Mahmoud Jaballah — in custody for six years, now free.
Mohammad Mahjoub — in custody for seven years, freed, requested return to jail in 2009 to protest bail conditions worse than jail.
Benamar Benatta – rendered to US for 5 years
Ahmad El Maati, Abdullah Almalki, Muayyed Nureddin

And then there’s the ever-expanded definition of what constitutes terrorism.

According to Jason Kenney’s “infandous” Mr. Velshi, George Galloway’s proposed visit to Canada last year to give a speech entitled “Resisting war from Gaza to Kandahar” was sufficient for him to brand a sitting British MP on tour in the US “a terrorist supporter.”

Nothing about these vile clowns inspires any confidence in their wanting to accrue more secretive powers to their already abused arsenal of abominations.