KABUL — The number of Afghan civilians killed in armed conflict rose 40 per cent last year to a record 2,118 people as the Afghan war turned increasingly bloody, the United Nations said in a new report Tuesday.
The report said insurgents were responsible for 55 per cent of the deaths, but that United States, NATO and Afghan forces killed 829 civilians, or 39 per cent. Of those, 552 deaths were blamed on air strikes.
Support the troops - either bring them home, or set them up keeping the peace. Lets stop killing civilians and be peacekeepers again.
OTTAWA — Amnesty International has written an open letter to Prime Minister Stephen Harper calling for the repatriation of Canadian Omar Khadr from the U.S. military prison at Guantanamo Bay.
"While the responsibility for closing Guantanamo Bay in a manner consistent with international human rights requirements rests with the U.S. administration, other countries should assist and cooperate in that effort," the letter states.
The human rights organization plans to deliver a petition signed by 50,000 Canadians to Harper today, asking the Conservative government to bring Khadr home.
The letter urges Harper to make three Guantanamo-related concerns a topic of discussion with U.S. President Barack Obama when he visits Ottawa Feb. 19 and to tell him that Canada is ready to participate in solving the problems.
"We urge that you immediately make a request to U.S. government officials for the repatriation of Omar Khadr to Canada, where his case will be dealt with under Canadian law in a manner that recognizes his status as a child soldier," the letter says.
Khadr was 15 years old when he was charged in the death of U.S. Sgt. Christopher Speer during a 2002 firefight in Afghanistan. He has been held at Guantanamo ever since.
Bullets in the brain
The Telegraph [UK]: Doctors at a hospital near Gaza are almost overwhelmed by the number of Palestinian children needing treatment for bullet wounds to their heads. Dr. Yahia, a professor of neurosurgery who has worked in both the United States and Britain, believes that the bullet was shot from close range... 'I can't precisely decide whether these children are being shot at as a target, but in some cases the bullet comes from the front of the head and goes toward the back, so I think the gun has been directly pointed at the child'... 'We've had one child with two bullets in the head and nowhere else,' he said. 'We think that this shows something.'
First, the depression promises to be worse than most analysts have
been predicting. It hasn't yet hit Canada full-bore. It will. The fact
that the U.S. appears to be re-embracing trade protection only
underscores the point.Second, neither the governing
...
Conservatives nor the opposition Liberals seem to understand the
seriousness of this crisis. Rhetoric notwithstanding, both parties
appear to think they are dealing with a problem that will go away in
two years and allow the world to return to business as usual.
Yet the government remains grudging. Much of the $12 billion in planned infrastructure spending is contingent upon dollar-for-dollar matching by provinces and municipalities. If they can't come up with their deemed share, it's not clear whether the federal money will be spent.
The unemployed got enough in the budget to win Harper Liberal support, but not enough to help the 58 per cent of jobless Canadians who don't qualify for employment insurance.
...Yet for Ignatieff's party, the fixation on deficits is driven less
by ideological commitment than desperation. During their last 13 years
in government, the Liberals shredded most of the social safety net they
had once helped to construct.Their only significant achievements
over this time were their decision not to go to war against Iraq and
the elimination of the federal deficit.In fact, even the
latter may be an exaggeration. It's arguable that the deficit problem
was solved less by good government than by the worldwide reduction in
interest rates and a renewed global appetite for Canadian raw materials.
... voters are now less likely to support the government because of the budget.
... 69 per cent say they still blame Mr. Harper for causing an unnecessary
political crisis late last year when he should have been focusing on
the economy.
...When asked to name the top three beneficiaries of the budget, large
corporations showed up most often. Poor Canadians and older/retired
Canadians were seen as those benefiting the least.
The MP said there would be some Liberal positioning on the issue, but that more individuals were leaning toward letting the government live than pushing to defeat it.
In testimony collected from residents of the village of Khuza'a by
the Observer, it is claimed that Israeli soldiers entering the village:
• attempted to bulldoze houses with civilians inside;
• killed civilians trying to escape under the protection of white flags;
• opened fire on an ambulance attempting to reach the wounded;
• used indiscriminate force in a civilian area and fired white phosphorus shells.
If the allegations are upheld, all the incidents would constitute breaches of the Geneva conventions.
The
denunciations over what happened in Khuza'a follow repeated claims of
possible human rights violations from the Red Cross, the UN and human
rights organisations.
The witnesses said the farmer was killed while checking his farm.
Reports of usage in Gaza: The Los Angeles Times reported January 12 that 20 homes burnt, one women killed and several injured from the use of WP in Gaza writing:“One landed in my kitchen and caused a fire,' said Zohair Mohammed abu Rejila, 35. 'I went to put it out, but another one landed on Mayar, my baby daughter. It was like a block of fire, a piece of plastic on fire. When I knocked it off her, it exploded and out came this heavy white smoke with a very bad smell.' http://www.latimes.com/news/printedition/asection/la-fg...story
Al-Jazeera TV reported on its use for several days between December 29-January 9 and aired footage of several civilian victims of white phosphorus bombs showing characteristic burns. One teenage girl, Jamila Al-Habash, had both of her legs amputated and an interview with Dr. Raed Al-'Areeny from Al-Shaifa Hospital explained the need for amutation because of the WP adherence to and reaction with soft tissues penetrating even to the bones.
Footage released also show the characteristic images of shelling in neighborhoods with WP http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UVY4NUKowzg http://english.aljazeera.net/news/middleeast/2009/01/20....html http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vq-b_40IKfs On January 12, 2009, Human Rights Watch issued a report demanding Israel stop using WP (http://www.hrw.org/en/news/2009/01/10/israel-stop-unlaw...-gaza)
Dr. Hassanen told IMEMC over the phone that doctors are witnessing burns and disfigured bodies of victims, adding that the injured are arriving with a powder on their skin. On Saturday, Human Rights Watch (HRW) urged the Israeli Army to stop using White Phosphorus in its artillery shells against the Gaza Strip. Researchers of HRW said that they observed white-phosphorus use on January 9th and January 10th near Gaza City and Jabalia,.
Using this type of artillery, in this manner is banned by international humanitarian law, the group added. The shells are capable of burning human flesh right down to the bone and are capable of setting structures, fields and other civilian facilities on fire. The group added that using these kind of shells against one of the most densely populated areas in the world causes magnified harm, and called on Israel to stop using these shells.
"In briefings senior [Israel Defense Forces] officers conducted for foreign diplomats, they admitted the shelling to which IDF forces in Jabalya were responding did not originate from the school," Gunness said. "The IDF admitted in that briefing that the attack on the UN site was unintentional."
He noted that all the footage released by the IDF of militants firing from inside the school was from 2007 and not from the incident itself.
On the ground, in Gaza, hospital, medics, civilian areas and homes, school, universities and mosques are including in the Israeli shelling and in the so-called self defense.
This angry message was to remind the world of the Nazi Holocaust and of the promise made by the international community to never allow another Holocaust to happen, while this promise is being broken by the same people whose ancestors were victims of the Holocaust.
Already we see tensions increasing in the region. Damascus has pulled out of third-party talks with Tel Aviv and Arab anger has been mounting not just at Israel, and not just at America, but also at their own regimes which have collaborated with Washington.
Some Israelis have started to realise their government's flawed approach. While 81 per cent of Israelis support the military campaign, a poll has showed only 39 per cent believe it will succeed in removing Hamas or reducing violence.
An editorial in Haaretz, an Israeli daily, even went so far as to label Israel "the region's bully".
Barack Obama, the US president-elect, remains silent as Israel kills Palestinians with impunity. In his silence he expresses his complicity.
OTTAWA–Constitutional experts and opposition parties yesterday
condemned Prime Minister Stephen Harper's plan to fill every empty
Senate seat in advance of his government's possible defeat in the new
year.
Constitutional scholar Desmond Morton called the move a
scandal in view of the precarious position of Harper's minority
government.
"He has the power to do it, but he shouldn't have the gall," said Morton, a professor emeritus at McGill University.
"I
think it's more in keeping with the principles of parliamentary
democracy that a potentially lame-duck administration should not make
appointments," said constitutional scholar Ned Franks.
Harper
will name the new senators before Christmas – likely in one fell swoop
– in a move his office says will bolster the chances of eventual Senate
reform, but opposition critics called a hyper-partisan power grab.
"It's
outrageous," said New Democrat MP and reform critic David
Christopherson (Hamilton Centre), whose party advocates abolishing the
Senate. "I can't believe that the Prime Minister is just literally
giving Canadians the finger."
Read more of the article at the link above.
If Ignatieff's idea of leadership is to provide confidence for the Harper government as his first act, he could be dooming himself to a short and unhappy career at the helm.
The Liberals would then wear the Harper record on the economy as their record. And while the Conservatives are bound to include some stimulus measures in the budget, there is no way that Harper and Flaherty are going to propose the overhaul of the Canadian economy based on very extensive public investments. And that is what the country needs.
Much though Ignatieff may wish to avoid it, he faces a clear choice. If he keeps Harper in power, it will be Harper who will hold the strong hand. He will determine the date of the next election, and he could well go on to win it. Meanwhile, the NDP, the Bloc and the Greens will feel deeply betrayed if Ignatieff dumps the coalition and allows Harper to remain in power.
At a date, not of his choosing, Ignatieff would go on to face the electorate, squeezed between the Conservative base vote on the one hand and the one third of the electorate already inclined to support parties other than the Liberals and the Conservatives on the other.
For Ignatieff, the WLMK option is a chimera. "A friend to all is a friend to none," Ignatieff could say if he comes to his senses, that is if Aristotle hadn't already said it.
To date, Bob Rae is showing a much clearer understanding of the lay of the political land than is his former roommate.
Click the link above - read the whole post
Both know only too well just who Stephen Harper is and what he would do to the country should he ever achieve a majority.
With no mandate to do so, he would dismantle the work of three generations of Canadians in building a decent, if far from egalitarian, society.
He would, for starters, gut and or sell off the CBC.
He would repeal the Canada Health Act and open the Medicare system to massive privatization and balkanization.
He would, as quickly as he could, further gut the spending powers of the federal government with more destructive and ill-considered tax cuts for the wealthy and for Canada's corporate welfare bums.
He would rapidly devolve power to the provinces, balkanizing the country and its egalitarian approach to social programs.
Our foreign policy would be made in Washington and our energy and environmental policies would be made in Alberta. More billions would be poured into making our military a war-fighting adjunct to the U.S. war machine. (If you think Obama is going to dismantle the American Empire, think again.)
None of this will ever be part of a Harper election platform. But it is what he would do.
Some federal travellers can't seem to get to London, England, for less than $6,000, even though economy seats were available for $1,000 to $2,000. In our analysis of 60,000 travel records over four years, we found $18,000 flights to Australia, $7,000 flights to Paris, $11,000 flights to Indonesia and $8,000 flights to Switzerland.
By contrast, travel surveys show businesses are reducing costs by choosing more economical flights. At least one other government, Alberta, has shown more care with taxpayer dollars. For example, the Alberta environment minister and an aide spent $3,200 each to fly to Bali for a United Nations conference on climate change last year. The former federal environment minister, John Baird, took a $10,920 flight to the same conference. Three political aides and two bureaucrats joined him at similar rates. Total airfare was $61,000.
Canada may be the first industrialized country to fall into political
crisis as a result of the global economic recession. Could this crisis
involve the suspension of our democratic institutions?
So here's the story so far:
In the last parliament Harper was a bully, pushing around opposition parties and forcing them to support his agenda.
The Harper Government introduced a new culture of secrecy and
centralized control. No more press conferences, and Cabinet Ministers
are muzzled
Harper broke his own election law by calling the last election.
Attempted to bankrupt the opposition parties by introducing a motion to eliminate voter subsidies to political parties. Debate on Party Financing
Attempts to dehumanize Quebec sovereigntists. Debate on including the Bloc Quebecois in the coalition
Demonizes the opposition. Debate on the Ethics/Constitutionality of Coalition-Forming
In this light, perhaps proroguing Parliament should be viewed as a
dictatorship in function, since the PMO would remain in power and in
control of the Government while the opposition is shut out and
Parliament closed. Debate on the Ethics/Constitutionality of Prorogation
This may be the end of the Harper reign. The Conservatives want power
and as long as Harper could deliver, they supported him, even if it
meant biting their tongue about some of the more outrageous moves. But
he blew it - he misjudged the opposition and the troops will turn on
him just like they did to Kim Campbell when she blew it with the “face”
ads. Hatred is not a family value, but it characterizes a lot of
Conservative politics.
"Today’s families have spoken loud and
clear – we need action on the economy right now. Action to create jobs,
to protect your pension and retirement, to build the green economy of
tomorrow. Stephen Harper didn’t act.
That’s why the
New Democrats have joined with the other opposition parties to put
forward an alternative government – a coalition for real change.
How
does Stephen Harper respond to this global economic challenge? He locks
the doors of Parliament so he can desperately cling to power.
Now
you and I can send a strong message to Stephen Harper. Change is coming
– and even Mr. Harper must respect the majority of Parliament and the
majority of Canadians." - Jack Layton
The Governor General has decided to prorogue parliament until Jan 26, 2009.
In this time, Stephen Harper has said he will ask the opposition parties for input toward economic issues. The Conservative aim is to put together a budget for the end of January. However, considering their record, it is hard to believe that whatever they come up with won't be full of things that will be bad for Canadians and that the opposition parties cannot stomach.
Canada needs an economic boost NOW, not 7 weeks from now. This delay is going to make Canada seem even more unstable in the eyes of the world and will hurt our economy.
We can also be sure to see Harper's Conservatives spend our tax dollars lying to us in ads and statements over the next 7 weeks. Their propaganda machine will be in full force.
The Governor General has locked the doors of parliament and the doors of democracy in Canada. This is indeed a sad day for parliamentary democracy.
I urge you all to keep up the fight for democracy and truth in Canada. Keep up the letter writing campaign. Maybe if enough people protest to the Governor General, she will re-open parliament and let us get on with democracy and the urgent needs of this great country.
Just to be clear, what I mean by the shock doctrine, as you know, is the use of crisis to push through unpopular pro-corporate policies. This bundling of a whole package of policies: denying the right of public sector workers to strike, the attack on public financing of political parties, with the economic program - that is what failed, and people were offended by the opportunism of it.
This is what so many of us were worried about during the election - the context of a Tory victory in an economic crisis, because we know that there is this pattern of using an economic crisis to push through policies that were nowhere during the campaign.
...
... what I find most exciting about what is going on right now - beyond
just getting rid of Harper, which is exciting in and of itself - is
that we have this opportunity to show what proportional representation
(PR) would look like, because all of this talk that this is a coup is a
joke.
...To me the best case scenario that could come out of this is, one,
you get the coalition, and, two, the NDP uses this moment to really
launch a national discussion about why we need PR and that that becomes
one of the things that comes out of this crisis.Now, they don't have the mandate for that right now, but we could
come out of this with a national referendum on proportional
representation. People might actually like it, which would be really,
really exciting....
The way in which public financing for political parties has been
...
presented in the press is "oh the politicians, they just got mad when
they went after their money," right? This is another key point that I
think is somewhat related to the issue of proportional representation.
We need to be talking about our political process here, and the issue
of public financing for political parties in elections is key to
protecting and deepening democracy in Canada, and for keeping it out of
corporate control. It is not for nothing that the Tories are attacking
that. They see attacking public financing of political parties as a way
to entrench their power.So, what is exciting about this political moment, and how people can
get involved, is that this is building on that. The political parties
caught up with the grassroots movement that was happening anyway with
those initiatives like voteforenvironment.ca, Department of Culture, and people like Murray Dobbin
who have been making these arguments pretty steadily outside of the
political parties. Now it is happening, and it is happening thanks to
Stephen Harper and his extraordinary arrogance and over-reaching. We
can't lose this moment.I just want to emphasize this point: If even through smart tactics,
Harper pulls this off, if he prorogues Parliament; if the Governor
General lets him get away with it; if the Liberals lose their nerve
over Xmas, then the Harper we will have in January will be a deeply
chastened Harper.What everybody agrees with is that he made a massive error, that he
massively overreached, and his own party, his own base agrees with
that. Worst case scenario we dodged a bullet here. Best case scenario,
we leverage his overreach, his attempt to use a crisis to push through
his ideological pro-corporate agenda to have a deeper democracy in our
country, and to prevent forevermore a situation where a party with 35
per cent of the vote is government.
Every Member of Parliament will be denied their vote. Every Canadian
will be silenced because this House will not be permitted to speak . We
will have a Conservative government without legitimacy at the time of
an economic crisis. That doesn’t have to happen because this is a
remarkable moment in Canadian history. The opposition parties acted
together, with a common goal, to give hope back to Canadians and help
them to come through these difficult economic times. For the first
time, the majority of the parties chosen by the people set aside their
differences for the welfare of everyone.
The majority of Members of Parliament - the people’s representatives
- have set aside their differences for the good of Canada, and for the
good of every Canadian. This is a time of hope. Tonight, only one party
stands against the welfare of the Canadian people. On Monday, two
leaders of the proposed coalition sent Her Excellency, the Governor
General, a letter making it crystal clear that the majority of Members
of Parliament no longer have confidence in this Conservative
government. Nothing we have heard tonight changes this fact. Tonight,
Mr. Harper had an opportunity to chart a new course - to accept some of
the ideas we have been putting before him. But he did not. And tonight
we are announcing that if it pleases Her Excellency, we will arrange
that every New Democratic Member of Parliament will indicate
individually and together - formally - a lack of confidence in this
government.
A new government is possible, and ready to serve. A new kind of
government with a new kind of politics is ready to serve. One that will
put the economy and working families first. Thank you very much."
The former NDP leader, who helped negotiate Monday's deal between
the New Democrats and the Liberals with the support of the Bloc
Québécois, said Harper also lied when he said the three opposition
leaders refused to sign their agreement in front of a Canadian flag
because Gilles Duceppe, a Quebec sovereigntist, objected.
In fact, there were at least two flags present at Monday's signing
ceremony, as well as a painting of the Fathers of Confederation.
Broadbent said Harper is conducting a "shameful operation" by trying
to turn certain defeat in the House of Commons into a national unity
crisis.
"I'm concerned I have a prime minister who lies to the people of
Canada and knows it," Broadbent said. "It's one thing to exaggerate.
It's another to deliberately tell falsehoods."
The former NDP leader also accused Harper of lying about the details
of the proposed coalition, including his charge that the Bloc Québécois
is a formal partner and that six Bloc MPs would be offered Senate
positions under the coalition government.
The Bloc has said it will support the Liberal-NDP coalition for 18
months in the House of Commons, but none of its members will sit in a
cabinet led by Stéphane Dion as prime minister and a Liberal as finance
minister.
"They make it up," he said of Harper's Conservatives, who have been quick to label the proposal a "separatist coalition."
"They lie. They pay people to destroy things."
He said Harper was betraying the honourable legacy of past party
leaders by continuing to delay a confidence vote in the House of
Commons. The prime minister pushed back the confidence motion brought
by the opposition parties until next Monday and could delay a vote
indefinitely by proroguing Parliament.
"I had, my predecessors had a sense of integrity. Bob Stanfield, a
Conservative, Joe Clark, a Conservative, had a sense of integrity,"
Broadbent said.
"They would have done the proper thing. If we lost the confidence, then we would accept that and have to resign."
Layton ridiculed the Conservatives over the issue Sunday night at an Ontario NDP event in Toronto.
"It's entirely possible the Conservative party is recording what I'm saying here right now," Layton told the partisan audience. "Here's what I have to say to the Conservative party tuned in: 'good riddance to you!' "
