In Today’s Christian Science Monitor, December 29th, 2009

THE GIZA STRIP, CAIRO

On Sunday, more than 1,000 international activists from 42 countries around the world descended on Cairo to kick off the Gaza Freedom March, a humanitarian convoy and media spectacle organized by US activist group Code Pink.

(The Code Pink Group is peaceful and non-violent)

The plan was to take buses from Cairo to the Egypt-Gaza border post at Rafah, where they would cross in to Gaza to mark the one-year anniversary of the devastating 22-day Israeli campaign against Hamas, which killed more than 1,400 Palestinians and 13 Israeli soldiers.

Organizers say they knew getting into Gaza would be the hard part, so they made sure to check and double check their arrangements with Egyptian authorities. That didn’t stop Egypt from closing the border post and forbidding the activists from driving across the Sinai Peninsula, keeping them from even getting near it.

Much like the humanitarian supplies they were intent on delivering, Gaza Freedom Marchers say they too have been caught in the siege on Gaza. Unable to protest the blockade from within the territory, they have protested it from here. The result has been a tense confrontation between American and European left-wing activism and a repressive police state engaged in a rigorous four-year-long crackdown on critics of the regime of Hosni Mubarak.

Medea Benjamin, an American citizen, cofounder of the antiwar group Code  Pink, and one of the march organizers, says she and 50 other US nationals were “beaten up” by Egyptian police when they went to the US Embassy in Cairo to attend a previously scheduled meeting with embassy staff on Tuesday morning.

They went to deliver a letter of support from Sen. John Kerry (D) of Massachusetts, says Ms. Benjamin, but instead were “dragged, pulled, and manhandled” on the pavement by Egyptian police. The group was then detained inside a pen made of metal fences. Benjamin got away and ultimately met with US diplomats, but other protesters were held for six hours.

“The use of force was unbelievable,” she says.

On Sunday, 300 French nationals met at the French Embassy, where they were scheduled to board a chartered bus to drive to the Rafah border post. When they learned that there were no buses, and that Egyptian authorities were barring them from driving past the Sinai town of Al Arish, “we immediately decided to block the street,” says Kauff Alain, a protester from Strasbourg, France.

That street is Sharia Mourad, a major eight-lane thoroughfare in the Cairo district of Giza that is home to the Cairo Zoo, Cairo University, the French and Saudi embassies, and the Four Seasons Hotel, among dozens of other landmarks.

Between 250 and 300 French protesters blocked traffic there for an estimated three hours, turning Giza’s gridlock into an even bigger grind and provoking the wrath of Egyptian police. The protesters were corralled onto the sidewalk in front of their embassy and surrounded by two rows of several hundred baton-wielding riot police who held them there for two days.

“They told us, either you go to the sidewalk in front of your embassy, or we are going to do something to you,” says Loubna Amar, a demonstrator from Lyons, France, who was let out of the makeshift pen on Tuesday morning.

Protesters slept on the sidewalk next to the busy eight-lane road for two days, and say few were allowed to leave to get food or use the toilet. Left with few options, they say all 300 had to use a single bucket on the curb as a bathroom.

“What Egypt has done to us here, this is collective punishment,” says Amar. “We started to call this the Giza Strip.”

So what is next for the Gaza Freedom Marchers? Benjamin says they will march, of course. Or more accurately, walk: “We’re organizing a walk. We’ll go all the way to Rafah.”

This post is published with a sense of sadness and despair

The coming western defeat in Afghanistan is the result of hubris, arrogance and a disregard for other cultures and other viewpoints. We thought we could just march in and impose a brand new ideology, philosophy and attitude on the part of a people we have never understood fully and probably never will.

Our cavalier attitude toward torture, our embrace of violence as a method of solving problems and our desire to get things done quickly, undercut all the efforts at improving Afghan society.

(The same applies to the overall “War on Terror”, by the way.)

Disorganization, lack of a coherent strategy and cynical motives cost us the support of the Afghan population.

Canada’s General Hillier delighted in calling the Taliban “scumbags”. By doing that, he showed his ignorance and lack of understanding of matters that were outside his sphere of knowledge.

He received no rebuke from his political masters, who were and remain equally misguided.

NATO leaders relied on a military solution, which was sure to fail, as it has almost always failed in the past.

The United Nations Security Council went along with the nonsensical approach and its reputation has been blackened along with the reputation of Canada and the rest of the western world.

Now a highly respected analyst and historian, who teaches at an American Military School, has laid it out in blunt terms.

His assessment is a confirmation that those of us who have for many years opposed the American-U.N.-NATO approach have been right and the warmongers have been wrong.

The following article is condensed from today’s Miami Herald.

No reason for optimism about war in Afghanistan

He goes even further to say that Obama knows this war is unwinnable, and that the surge is meant to provide political cover in advance of a full U.S. withdrawal before the 2012 election.

Johnson sees it as the same “cynical exit strategy” devised by Richard Nixon and Henry Kissinger to get American forces out of Vietnam.

Obama wouldn’t be the first U.S. president to let domestic political concerns affect his military moves abroad, but he certainly campaigned as a different kind of leader.

According to Professor Johnson, the cost of the surge in American lives and dollars will be high, even if we stay only 18 months. And the mission of banishing al Qaeda forever from that region seems far-fetched, relying as heavily as it does on cooperation from Pakistan and competence from Afghanistan’s armed forces.

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Considering the loss of life, the vast expenditures and the further destruction of Afghan society…being right is very very cold comfort.

The sadness of Peter Kent

I’ve written about Peter Kent before on this blog. Peter is a former colleague of mine from my days at CTV’s W5.

Later on he was a news anchor at CBC when I worked there.

I had a lot of respect for Peter as a journalist.

Now of course, he’s a politician.

Stephen Harper made him the Junior Minister for Foreign Affairs…and I’ve developed some doubts about whether or not Peter has been able to maintain his integrity intact.

Recently, I’ve discovered another blog which has published some interesting analysis of Peter’s political ideology and in turn sheds light on Stephen Harper’s government.

It’s called this-on-that and is well worth a look.

This report appeared once in The Toronto Sun…even military personnel were concerned.

OTTAWA — A new report has surfaced that suggests an Afghan detainee might have been mistreated while in Canadian Forces custody.

Global National reported Thursday night that a military police sergeant says not only was an Afghan detainee mistreated and kept for days in a tiny cell that reached intolerable temperatures, but that superiors ignored warnings.

In an interview with the Military Police Complaints Commission, Sgt. Carol Utton said an order in the spring of 2007 halted detainee transfers. One prisoner was still in custody, in a walled compound on the base with eight cells designed to hold prisoners no more than 96 hours.

(n.b. Harper shut down the Military Police Commission shortly after this testimony)

Utton said the temperature reached 60 C in the cells. The soldiers tried to help him with bottles of frozen water, but the prisoner screamed and yelled.

However, Ottawa headquarters initially wouldn’t allow the prisoner to be released and ignored warnings about conditions in the cells, Utton said.

“We felt (Ottawa HQ) didn’t care,” Utton told the commission. “Nobody in Canada gave a crap.”

Defence Minister Peter MacKay’s office said the Global National report was the first they had heard of the incident and they’ve asked the defence department for more information.

elizabeth.thompson@sunmedia.ca

Ms. Thompson picked the report up off Global National News worth watching. It really puts the lie to MacKay’s denials.

It has been a harrowing time. My pride in being Canadian has been shattered.

A friend just told me he’s taking the flags off his backpacks.

Still, although the truth about Stephen Harper is in, the jury is still out.

Who are we really?

Women and men of principle are few and far between in this world, but at least we know now that in that group – there is a Canadian.

And it isn’t Mr. Harper.

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Richard Colvin does us proud. 

He acted on principle…not because he is a so-called “whistle-blower” – he’s not. We’re proud because he did his duty as a loyal public servant.

He puts me in mind of the American Colonel, who worked as the senior prosecutor at Guantanamo Bay.

A principled Gentleman.

Morris Davis, a retired Air Force colonel who was chief military prosecutor at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, showed courage and respect for democratic principles when he resigned rather than follow orders to use evidence obtained through torture.

Our Canadian Diplomat Richard Colvin is such a man.

It has become apparent that the government of Canada, in its reaction to Colvin’s testimony - has failed us.

Some have suggested that public concern about the possibility of our government being complicit in torture is a waste of time. It has also been suggested that it’s difficult to prevent torture, especially if the perpetrators are determined to carry it out.

That may be true…the Kandahar provincial governor…Assadullah Khalid maintained a secret torture chamber on his own property, near the Canadian military base. (The governor was kept in power by our government, even after it became known that he engaged in torturing his own people – some of whom had been handed over by us.).

Mr. Colvin had warned his superiors about this. He warned Ottawa that we were handing over prisoners – some of whom were completely innocent – to jailers who would subject them to brutal treatment or cause them to simply disappear.

Our government failed to act promptly and as a result we as a nation may very well have become complicit in acts of torture.

When a government and its representatives know about torture or even suspect the possibility of it and do not at least make an effort to prevent it, then they are complicit. That is a fundamental tenet of both international and domestic Canadian law.

It’s called being an accessory to a crime, whether it’s before or after, makes little difference.

In wartime, when government officials turn a blind eye to warnings that torture may be happening to persons you have arrested and handed over to a third party, it’s a war crime.

To then lie about it and deny it, is an affront to the people ruled by that government. It’s an affront to each and every one of us.

Richard Colvin has been called a “Whistle-blower”.

That’s a misnomer. It’s important to remember that he did not seek nor did he want the spotlight foisted on him after news of his detainee torture concerns seeped out.

He was subpoenaed by Canada’s Military Police Complaints Commission – a judicial body, which was probing the allegations. After the Harper government shut down the Commission and fired its head, Colvin reluctantly responded to a summons by a parliamentary committee studying the issue.

In any case, it’s now clear, thanks to Colvin, that our government – or certain individuals within it – may well come under the heading of criminal. I say “may”.

We don’t know that for sure, however, because other servants of the government have censored all documents and reports concerning torture and in doing so have rendered them worthless.

That could well be called  tampering with evidence.

The government itself says that the censorship was imposed to avoid a threat to national security and/or to protect our soldiers in the field.

That – according to some insiders – is patent nonsense.

So – what to do?

One course of action now would be to turn all uncensored materials over to a select group of Supreme Court Justices and have them rule on the admissibility of the materials.

The question arises however…does this government trust our Supreme Court Justices to be alert to any harm that might result from publication. (This is after all, a political exercise by Mr. Harper and really has nothing to do with national security).

The behaviour of our government over this issue – so far at least – has been obstructionist and arrogant; it has been a profound insult to the Canadian people and its parliamentary institutions, which in fact do represent a majority of the country’s voting population.

Not only did Mr. Harper shut down the Military Police Inquiry, he also shut down the Parliamentary Inquiry by ordering his people not to show up. It’s apparent that we and our elected representatives have permitted Mr. Harper to exercise a form of dictatorial rule. That must stop.

But who knows…there’s an outside chance that Mr. Harper does have a compassionate heart after all.

Can Stephen Harper Become One Of Us?

Perhaps in the new year, Mr. Harper himself will recognize that his obstructionist approach has been wrong and will move to correct it. He could, for example, appoint that blue ribbon panel of those Supreme Court Justices to review the question of document censorship.

If he were to do that, he would instantly become more like the rest of us: fair-minded and decent…maybe even a little humble.

His only problem then – would be – how to deal with those officials who may be found to have lied to Canadians.

But I fear he’ll take the political low road once again.

To save face, he may very well do to Parliament what he did to the Military Police Complaints Commission and to the Parliamentary Committee - - Try to shut it down and call an election.

Mr. Harper could do that but I’m confident he would not win a majority; but one thing is certain – this story is not going away.

As a famous American baseball player once said - “It aint over till it’s over.”

postscript: and just for fun, take a gander at this