The Accidental Weblog

Tonight on Doc Zone: The U.S. vs Omar Khadr.

I’m not gonna say much about it yet. PVR’s set; more to follow time permitting. Maybe just this, I guess, as preliminaries:

• The Guantanamo detentions are, quite simply, illegal, in so very many ways and in so blatant a fashion that brandishing more precise, legalistic descriptions of why it is appropriate to describe them as such is now a few miles beyond redundant. If you’re curious about those finer points of law (tho’ this is a bit like asking whether flying airplanes into buildings and killing thousands might have been a technical violation of certain miscellaneous civic ordinances—a parallel I use with obvious consideration), do feel free to google habeas corpus, torture, and so on, work it out for yourself. Bodies and persons finding, generally, that the place is about as embarrassing a stain on a western government’s record of human rights and respect for the rule of law as currently exists include HRW and prominent advisers to the UN, among others. The US’ own supreme court has ruled the place isn’t getting habeas corpus even remotely right (gee… seven years without a trial… where do you suppose they get that idea?), and Canada’s supreme court, citing this decision, has ruled Canadian officials have been complicit in human rights abuses violating Canadian, US, and international charters, in participating in the process (CSIS agents interviewed Khadr at Guantanamo, and Canada has turned over documents on Khadr to the US).
• The gentleman who ‘interviewed’ Khadr in procuring the ‘evidence’ the prosecution is to use in his ‘trial’ (note: yes, the scare quotes have their place) has himself said he considered what he did torture. The prosecution, apparently, disagrees.
• Canada is the only country that has not demanded the return of its detainees from Guantanamo. The ever brilliant Stockwell Day has simply said he disagrees with the supreme court’s findings, here. Nice to know. I believe the appropriate phrase here is somethin’ along the lines of: ‘Thank you, Mr. Day; your opinion is noted, and stupid.’

Y’know, I could also write the now standard boilerplate commenting that I really haven’t a whole lot of affection for some of the folk who were running Afghanistan around the time Khadr wound up in US hands, nor am I particularly onboard with some of the friends this kid was running with at 15 years of age (yes, he was also a child soldier at the time of capture… adding a few UN principles to the violations our nations are already on the hook for in this mess). But I figure this should go without saying. The larger and rather more critical point is: if you’d like to argue the West actually has a point to make here about concepts of justice and democracy allegedly being defended in kicking the Taliban outta Afghanistan, it might help our position a bit if, y’know, we actually demonstrated we have some respect for those ourselves.

Anyway. Like I said. 9pm ET this eve. Probably worth watching.

So we do the snap election thing. Get a coupla weeks of campaigning. Phone and doorbell ringing intermittently with candidates and/or the candidates’ volunteers and/or the candidates’ computers calling to request my support… And what do we get?

The same guys. And it’s still a minority. Tho’ a slightly bigger one.

In other words, the sum total of this exercise, after Mr. ‘Oh, no, elections of convenience are baaaad; I’m agin’ em’, honest’ called his election of convenience was: slightly more of the Conservative MPs can now go to the bathroom at once.

Yes, Mr. Still-The-Prime-Minister-Technically-Anyway, we the electorate will grant you and your less continent members this boon…

You’re welcome. Use this power wisely. And we’ll see y’all again in another year or so, I guess.

Sure, you don’t really hear much about active, deliberate political intimidation or voter suppression in Canada. Caging lists, slimy operators calling students tellin’ em’ they’re not allowed to vote if they’re still dependents on their parents’ tax forms, rumours circulating you can’t vote if you’ve got unpaid parking tickets or if your home’s just been foreclosed upon, deliberate operations to jam an opposing party’s phone banks a la New Hampshire… Not the sort of thing you hear about, ‘round here. Nor, for that matter, thugs out to directly intimidate the supporters of rival parties. I mean, what the hell do you think this is, Zimbabwe?

But… erm… then again…

Right. Threatening phone calls and snipped brake lines, ‘cos someone ain’t buyin’ your particular candidate? Nice.

Y’know, if I believed in a hell, I’d reserve a special place there for the assholes who do this kind of thing. Failing that, I guess what I can hope is these lovely pieces of work earn ‘emselves a most memorable jail sentence.

So there’s this other debate tomorrow, apparently. Some Paulson or Pele or Peilin person versus some guy called Biding or somethin’. Anyway, word is, people might be watching, instead of the main event, the Canadian leaders’ debate…

No accountin’ fer taste.

Seriously, the comments in the linked story are sadly true. Here we are, in Canada, sitting on the verge of giving the Harper Conservatives (note: no, not ‘Progressive-Conservatives’… that would be… wrong… very, very wrong…) a majority, and no one so much wants to watch, do they? That whole bit about someone nominating the mayor of Wasilla as their VP candidate, and her bouncing around between, apparently, formidable sound-bite jingoism judo in the Alaska debates at last report, and coming off a bit like a deer in the headlights in an interview with a normally pretty easygoing reporter last week, it’s gonna spur some curiosity about what’s gonna happen there, sure…

Me, I guess I’m gonna do my civic duty and watch the locals do their thing… Y’know… Possibly with Atrios’ comment threads on the US VP thing running on a laptop, so I can at least get the reaction/gist stuff…

Truth be told, yes, I sure as hell do care. Beyond general distrust of the party that gave us Stockwell Day, it mostly comes down to thinking anyone as dedicated as the Harper conservatives to keeping their candidates from actually showing up at candidates’ meetings or talking to the press—to the point they stage manage the fuck outta Hill press conferences and whisk their people into the RCMP-protected holding area to avoid such ugly complications as national reporters asking awkward questions—probably isn’t so likely to do democracy real well. So please, please, please, let’s not give these nutters a majority. Please. Pretty please. You don’t want those assholes to get a majority…

Erm… Sorry… I said that ‘assholes’ part out loud, didn’t I?

Anyway. Yeah. Just reminding folks who vote up here. There’s a couple debates tomorrow. Multitask, if you must.