“It seems to me that those who have tried to make the rebel cause the Christian cause have no shame. All those who are heart and soul with the rebels have made a clear cut choice between the things that are Caesar’s and the things that are God’s. They are on the side of property rights against human rights.”
–Morley Callaghan, Canadian author, writing during the Spanish Civil War as a Catholic in support of the Republican cause. The Vatican notably took the opposite side, and still does.
From the Halifax News, some important information about the difference between Canadian privacy law and that of our neighbors to the south–a difference that is now being eroded due to the push for “deep integration”:
Individual privacy is best protected in Canada and under threat in the United States and the European Union as governments introduce sweeping surveillance and information-gathering measures in the name of security and border control, an international rights group said in a report released yesterday.
Canada, Greece and Romania had the best privacy records of 47 countries surveyed by London-based watchdog Privacy International. Malaysia, Russia and China were ranked worst.
Both Britain and the United States fell into the lowest-performing group of “endemic surveillance societies.”
“The general trend is that privacy is being extinguished in country after country,” said Simon Davies, director of Privacy International. “Even those countries where we expected ongoing strong privacy protection, like Germany and Canada, are sinking into the mire.”
Gol-dang, if that Osama isn’t the most talkative spook or the most animated corpse you’ve ever seen. Now that everyone is talking about his death (thank you, Beni!), he has to pipe up via audiotape and claim that the rumors of his demise are premature…
Most of the 56-minute tape dealt with Iraq, apparently al-Qaida’s latest attempt to keep supporters in Iraq unified at a time when the U.S. military claims to have al-Qaida’s Iraq branch on the run.
The tape did not mention Pakistan or the assassination of Benazir Bhutto, though Pakistan’s government has blamed al-Qaida and the Taliban for her death on Thursday. That suggested the tape was made before the assassination.
Or by someone who isn’t in fact Osama.
This is hardly the first time we’ve seen an impostor being fobbed off as him. Or heard one, come to that. Apparently, since we aren’t overly familiar with his voice (are you? I’m not), and all Arabic-speakers are supposed to sound alike to our western ears, we are meant to take it on faith that if a Pentagon “expert” says it’s him, it must be him. Never mind that the Pentagon has had a problem with Arabic translations, since it refuses to let perfectly qualified gay people do the job even in the face of an acute shortage.
So…how are we to know if this latest “Osama” is, in fact, the real Osama? Or, come to that, if any of the rest of them were?
The operation to bring three hostages out of FARC territory in Colombia is now on. This afternoon, military helicopters left Venezuela for Colombia, bearing the Red Cross logo to signify that this is a humanitarian mission.
And of course, it was a great day for two faithful campaigners who didn’t stop working for this moment:
Chavecito and Colombian senator Piedad Cordoba go over a map to see what path the rescue ‘copters will take.
An intriguing David Frost interview from last November, shortly after a failed assassination attempt on Benazir Bhutto, who was killed today in Rawalpindi, Pakistan:
At 6:13 in this video, she mentions an “Omar Sheikh, who murdered Osama bin Laden” (italics mine).
…and neither does he, nor any of his lackeys, have the slightest concept of a little thing known as reading comprehension.
Think Progress has ferreted out the real source of Dubya’s antipathy to embryonic stem cell research–a total misinterpretation of an improbable scenario from Aldous Huxley (read aloud to him, of course, by one of his loyal flunkies, since Dubya can’t be bothered to bestir himself):
Sadly, this was a foregone conclusion:
Meanwhile, Dubya still thinks Musharraf is the world’s best democrat. Right up there with Alvaro Uribe of Colombia. Surprise, surprise.
George Stroumboulopoulos, host of CBC’s The Hour (he never introduces himself as “your host”, always, endearingly, as “your boyfriend”) interviews Chris Hedges, author of American Fascists:
Hedges makes the interesting and useful point that the reason Canada doesn’t have a fundie-dominionist problem is because we still have some semblance of a social safety net. He observes that fascism takes hold when there is prolonged instability and insecurity in a country. His only fault, as far as I can see, is that he doesn’t see it is already happening in the United States.
John McCutcheon tells the story of his ballad and the dedicated band of German followers it won him.
