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Thomas Paine

To argue with a person who has renounced the use of reason is like administering medicine to the dead.

Monday, December 7, 2009

Hiding bad news is standard procedure

Hiding bad news is standard procedure
The Richard Colvin saga sounds much too familiar. Many departments of the government are studded with manifold incidents of a similar nature that violate our purported Canadian values. In my experience, most such violations are hidden from public eyes because the lid is capped at a very early stage.

People's jobs and livelihoods and careers are at stake in bringing issues of violations of rights, transparency, accountability, integrity and ethics to the public forum. Richard Colvin's courageous stand is commendable if for nothing else than placing public service values above self interest. Not surprisingly, he is facing a smear campaign -- he is said not to be a credible witness, with no proof provided of his lack of credibility.

Abuse of prisoners in Afghanistan has been common knowledge. I was told by one of my colleagues -- a political officer at our embassy in Kabul -- that his e-mails alerting Foreign Affairs headquarters about potential abuse of transferred detainees in Afghan prisons were ignored. One of Canada's former envoys also confirmed abuse in Afghan prisons was known since 2001.

Under such circumstances, the Canadian foreign affairs and defence departments' decision in favour of the unconditional hand-over of detainees to Afghan security forces involved questionable judgment. Or was it lack of intelligence gathering and analysis of the context?

None of these provide defensible grounds for the way the detainee issue was handled.

Food and Water Watch: Help Us Push Monsanto’s Bill!! 
 A new bill in the senate proposes to irradiate and chemically treat more of our food in the name of “food safety" This week, Senator Dianne Feinstein introduced the “Processed Food Safety Act,” which advocates for danerous technologies like irradiation as a cure-all.. 

Marlerblog - Food poisoning outbreaks and litigation 
The hidden link between factory farms and human illness  
Optimum Nutrition : Raw Food Diet-Vet Sense  
Cat food irradiation banned - Oz 

The Man Who Was Really There 
The case of Al-Qaisi v. The American Military Forces in Iraq is a terrible window into just a few of the millions of lives our stupid and cruel adventure has wrecked in that country. We came across the lawsuit, which Al-Qaisi filed in October in a federal court in Virginia, randomly while searching the electronic docket system for another case. It is a quixotic, conspiratorial, and hopeless narrative, filed without the aid of lawyers by a man whose mind appears to have been ruined by the violence unleashed by the Shiite thugs that we handed his country to after turning it into shit. But Al-Qaisi's Kafka-esque odyssey, told in a humane and engaging voice, also offers a memorable glimpse of the brutal nightmare we conjured in his homeland. We've outlined his tale below, but we strongly urge you to read the entire document for yourself 

UEA Climate Scientist: “possible that…I.P.C.C. has run its course”
http://www.prisonplanet.com/uea-climate-scientist-%e2%80%9cpossible-that%e2%80%a6i-p-c-c-has-run-its-course%e2%80%9d.html#comment-653122

Climategate Explained by JFK & Eisenhower
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5xvMLZBgJKs&feature=player_embedded

CRUtape™ Letters and “Post-Normal Science”
http://emelks.wordpress.com/2009/12/06/crutape%e2%84%a2-letters-and-%e2%80%9cpost-normal-science%e2%80%9d

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