Northman's Fury

Some of the No-Fly list's mix-ups are just stupidly funny, but even when the list is used as it was meant to be, and possibly particularly when it is, it shows just how far we've allowed fear to eat away at our society's foundations.

The family of a Montreal man stranded in Sudan for five years because Canada's spy agency suspects he's a security threat denied that he's a terrorist as they made a public plea to the government Tuesday to help bring him home.

. . .

Abdelrazik, who was detained by Sudanese authorities while visiting his mother in 2003, has since been released from jail and has taken refuge in the Canadian Embassy in Khartoum. Abdelrazik, who is a dual citizen of Canada and Sudan, hasn't been charged with any crime in either country.

A look through the comments shows both the good and bad sides of Canadians. A few choice bits from the latter:

No way.
This guy makes me uneasy and sorry.but when we throw in the fact that they are muslims,I get nervous.
I have read a lot on that subject, and again sorry,but they hate us and our religions!
We are nothing more than dogs,even though they deny that little fact.
So why would we believe this guy?
I will trust the governments judgement on this one.
Dual citizenship is being used as tool to bop back and forth from one country to another and for what reasons?
Some explaining to do, and that doesn't seem to be happening.
How do these people afford to do that?
Where does the money come from?
Who is supporting the family?
He is out of Canada and I will assume the governments reasons are enough to keep him out.



(I'll wait for the breaking news when an Air Canada flight gets blown out of the sky...then you gutless whiners can complain about the horrible job CSIS is doing in the investigation).

He better not be on a flight with my family.



There is a reason why this man has been brought to Canada's security list. It doesn't matter what colour or race a person is. If Canada sees them as a threat, I think it's our right to refuse them entry. We have to keep our country safe and sound or Canada will end up like all the other unstable countries. If he was white, born in Canada and lived here all his life and he comes to the attention of our Country as a risk, DON'T LET HIM BACK IN.
Dont be getting all out of shape over my comment because it has nothing to do with race. I want to know my country is very serious about keeping us safe. Innocent or guilty? Why would someone's name keep popping up as a security threat if they are like you and me, a law abiding citizen!!



Also, I dont really feel any sympathy for someone who has suspected connections to Al Qaeda going back to Sudan (post 9/11) to "see his mother" and getting stranded there. If I were a muslim and in Canada with my family I wouldn't hop on a plane to go to visit Iran to "see my brother". It seems a bit suspicous even without CSIS weighing in on the manner and having the guy arrested.

Overall, times have changed. Accept it. Being able to fly on an airplane is not a human right.[ATTENTION ALL MUSLIMS! TRAVELING TO A MUSLIM COUNTRY TO VISIT FAMILY IS SUSPICIOUS! STAY HOME IF YOU KNOW WHAT'S GOOD FOR YOU! - ed]

And one of my personal favourites

Another item that concerns me is the way some posters automatically assume that if you are not supporting his return to Canada that you are a racist, or islamophobic, or whatever. I believe that our government has a reason for acting and responding in the way they are. I do not believe, for even a second, that somehow there is something sinister behind this. There are some things that are just non of our business at this time. I trust our government officials to do whatever is in their power to make things happen legally and diplomatically, but I do not except them to jump through hoops because some lawyer is spouting off.

Yeah, can't imagine why people might think you have some racist or Islamophobic tendencies. As a general rule, if someone starts a sentence saying, "I don't mean this in a racist/Islamophobic way . . .", they're about to say something that falls under both categories.

There's a fair number of comments with the, “I trust our government’s reasons are sufficient”, meme. It always strikes me, coming as I do from a very conservative upbringing, that the same people who say the government can’t be trusted to do anything right, that all government workers are lazy, shiftless, and incompetent, and that any service the government provides can be done far better by the private sector, are always suddenly willing to bestow an almost religious infallibility on the very same government when it comes to matters of security and depriving (other) people of their rights.

"Trust, but Verify". If you don't have controls in place to ensure that people aren't abusing the trust you've put in them, people will ultimately start abusing that trust. And you can bet that's even more the case when the people in question are hardly models of trustworthiness to begin with.

Or how about this little gem?

If this is the same person and he cannot unequivocally dipute otherwise , I am positive I do want him living in Canada.

Because if he can’t prove that he isn’t the guy with the associations and activities some people on the internet claim he is and has, then we’re fully justified in leaving him stranded in Sudan. On a related note, the fact that Iraq couldn’t prove that they didn’t have their non-existent WMD’s is full justification for the invasion and subsequent five-year occupation.

I don’t know why Abousfian Abdelrazik is on the no-fly list and neither do any of the idiots I’ve quoted above. I do know that the government has vastly over-hyped the threat posed by other individuals in the past just to keep the pants-peeing crowd willing to continue to give them the benefit of the doubt in order that they feel a teensy bit safer in their fall-out shelters. I’d note that despite being cleared of all charges, given $10 million, and a full apology from the Canadian government, Maher Arar remains on no-fly lists in the US. Innocence, it seems, is no defence against this sort of discrimination.

If he has done something wrong, arrest him, charge him, put him on trial. Do Something! But follow the rule of law. If he hasn’t done anything beyond make people nervous, let him come back home. Hell, if there is really some reason to be suspicious of him, you shouldn't have any problem keeping an eye on him. I just don’t want to live in a country where all it takes to deprive someone of their rights is somebody pointing the finger of suspicion.

And I, for one, think it would be a great idea if they decided to do so.

The union, which released its letter to Liberal Leader Stéphane Dion on its website on Monday, said urgent net neutrality action is needed in light of recent moves by service providers, including Bell Canada Inc. and Rogers Communications Inc., to limit the speeds of certain internet applications. Dion was called on to take a "clear stand" in support of such legislation.

"These internet service providers are, with little or no public accountability, implementing measures that will discriminate against the use of legal software for legitimate uses. This is unacceptable," wrote NUPGE president James Clancy. "The potential for violations of the privacy rights of users is clear. The continued silence on these matters by the CRTC and the Canadian government violates the trust the Canadian people have placed in our public institutions."

The Tories, needless to say, aren't so hot about the idea.

Prentice had rebuffed earlier questioning by Angus in the House of Commons and said the Conservatives were not in favour of regulating the internet.

"We have a well advanced internet system in this country. It is not publicly regulated," he said in the exchange earlier this month. "At this point in time we will continue to leave the matter between consumers on the one hand and internet service providers on the other."

As one of the commenters on the CBC story put it, "So it's the deep pockets and strong arm tactics of Bell on one hand, and people who have no choice on the other...and that's the way the Tories like it."

While the fat cats may be happy with the way things are, any Canadian that actually pays attention shouldn't be. After all, why pay good money for a certain internet speed that the company your paying all that good money too can just decide to slow everything down when you want to use it for something where the speed is actually important? And that doesn't even get into the whole splicing of content thing.

More to the point, allowing carriers to play around with internet traffic strangles competition and innovation, which is why other parts of the planet are passing North America by. Ian Welsh made this point quite a while back in, "Why Japan is Eating America's Lunch On Broadband".

Broadband access is exactly the same. The US is getting its lunch eaten. As SaveTheInternet points out, they get access that is often 30x faster than the US. As a result they are experiencing innovation - and enjoying applications, that Americans simply don't get. As this WPost story says:

The speed advantage allows the Japanese to watch broadcast-quality, full-screen television over the Internet, an experience that mocks the grainy, wallet-size images Americans endure.

Ultra-high-speed applications are being rolled out for low-cost, high-definition teleconferencing, for telemedicine — which allows urban doctors to diagnose diseases from a distance — and for advanced telecommuting to help Japan meet its goal of doubling the number of people who work from home by 2010.

Oh, and all that speed - costs less too.

Now, ten years ago Japan had slower internet than the US. So they looked to the US to see how to do it - and they saw that the US had open access laws (where in the old days, companies could buy access to the lines at wholesale rates - which is why there was an ISP on every corner in the 90's) and decided they were key.

So they opened up broadband access - mandated that phone and cable lines had to be available to whoever wanted access. As SaveTheInternet points out:

If this quaint idea of “competition” seems familiar, that’s because America invented “open access” policies in the first place. And open access worked for decades to bring lower prices and more choices in long-distance phone service and dial-up Internet access.

The Japanese first adopted open access because they were worried about falling behind us. But under pressure from our own phone and cable monopolists, the Bush administration abandoned open access – and the fundamental protections for Net Neutrality along with it.

Now they’re standing idly by as America drops further and further behind the rest of the world in every measure of broadband progress.

Now here's the thing. What we're talking about is the Republican administration reducing competition. In a competitive market this wouldn't have happened. When you're dealing with a natural monopoly (and phone and cable lines are natural monopolies because driving more than one each to each home doesn't make sense) you have to legislate the market in such a way as to make sure competition exists. The free market can't do its thing if there isn't a market - and in most of the US there isn't a market. You have at best two possible suppliers. Often one. And in many areas - if you want "high" speed - none.

The modern "conservative" fallacy is that free markets means lack of government regulation. That isn't even close to what it means - what it means is a market with many actors, relatively transparent information, and no one actor or group with pricing power, whether through collusion or monopoly.

Switch Republican for Conservative in the above article, and you have the current situation in Canada, (though it remains to be seen if the Liberals will do the right thing on this). The way things are set up now allows for the natural monopolies to strangle competition, and with little or no competition, the drive to improve service or speed becomes non-existant.

Canadians deserve better, and that means making sure that Net Neutrality becomes the law of the land.

Honestly! How are we supposed to convince people that they should allow the police to do whatever the hell they feel like if those damned judges keep reminding folks that they have these things called "rights and freedoms"!

The use of drug-sniffing police dogs in the random search of a southwestern Ontario school and a Calgary bus terminal was unconstitutional, the Supreme Court of Canada ruled Friday.

In a 6-3 decision, the top court ruled that the actions breached Section 8 of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms, which covers what constitutes reasonable search and seizure.

. . .

In Friday's ruling, the Supreme Court wrote that while "a warrantless sniffer-dog search is available where reasonable suspicion is demonstrated," in this case, "the dog‑sniff search was unreasonably undertaken because there was no proper justification."

The court wrote that students' backpacks "objectively command a measure of privacy."

"No doubt ordinary businessmen and businesswomen riding along on public transit or going up and down on elevators in office towers would be outraged at any suggestion that the contents of their briefcases could randomly be inspected by the police without 'reasonable suspicion' of illegality," the court wrote.

Of course, the police aren't happy about this and, as is normally the case when people want their powers broadened, resort to some fear-mongering to make their case.

Karl Walsh, president of the Ontario Provincial Police Association, said he was disappointed by the decision and that the ruling will serve to decrease public safety.

He said officers who are in schools, train stations and bus terminals are there because of a drug problem.

"If you think we have a drug problem or had a drug problem then, we're going to have a big drug problem now," he told CBC News. "Where there are drugs, there are weapons, so essentially what's happened is the safety of our officers and the safety of the public have been placed in increased jeopardy."

You'll note that the only thing the police need to do to conduct these searches is provide justification for them. That doesn't seem to be too high a bar to set, but apparently Mr. Walsh feels that making police accountable for their actions would endanger the police force. Oh, and maybe the public too.

Of course, the whole reason we have the Charter is that when those in authority are not held accountable for their actions, the public's safety is compromised in a very big way. It's good to know at least some people remember that.

Cross-posted to In The House and Senate

Feel proud, Canadians! We now officially have our very own, ridiculously over-hyped terror case!

Remember the Toronto 18, or 17, or maybe 11 now? The guys who were going to blow up Canadian landmarks and behead Stephen Harper? Well, funny story.

Once labelled Canada's first homegrown, Islamist terror plot, the case of the so-called Toronto 18 is quietly melting away.

With yesterday's decision to stay charges against four more of those that it had once labelled dangerous terrorists, the federal government is now admitting that it never had a serious case against almost half of the men and youths charged two years ago.

So far, the Crown has stayed charges against seven of the 18 Toronto-area Muslim males. While technically, that means it could re-lay charges within a year, legal experts call such a move unlikely.

. . .

But what is becoming clear from material that can be revealed is that the alleged plot was never quite as advertised.

Back in June 2006, the overriding sentiment in government and media was that a dangerous attack had been narrowly avoided. The allegations – that Canadian Muslim extremists were planning to behead Prime Minister Stephen Harper, seize MPs and blow up the CBC – seemed unbelievable. But in a post-9/11 world, the unbelievable had, for many, a ring of truth.

Ah, the ring of truth! I mean, who wouldn't believe that there are dangerous Muslims out there plotting to kill us all? So just how bad were these guys?

Other elements of the government's case did not stand up well under scrutiny. The alleged terror training camp turned out to be a hapless adventure in the rain, one where participants spent much of their time in a local doughnut shop and where the ammunition for target practice was apparently provided by one of two paid RCMP informers.

As for the alleged plot to behead Harper, it was apparently derailed because the plotters didn't know how to get to Parliament Hill.

Nor, it seems (according to material released by the Crown), were they exactly sure who the Prime Minister was.

CNEWS doesn't sound too impressed with the evidence either

A defence factum filed with the court suggests only two suspects and police informant Mubin Shaikh knew the true purpose of the so-called training camp, which was to "identify people of skill, physical and spiritual," and not to conduct training.

According to court documents released last month, an alleged terrorist accused of wanting to behead Prime Minister Stephen Harper was lured to the camp on the assumption he was doing some winter camping and was frequently sent on coffee runs to Tim Hortons.

It sure is a good thing our government was prepared to lock these guys away for a couple of years for the rest of our sakes. I wonder if there might have been another motive behind the arrests?

Coming at a time when Parliament was reviewing the 2002 anti-terror law, the arrests bolstered the arguments of those who wanted the more draconian aspects of that legislation kept in place.

Hmmm, indeed.

Cross-posted to In The House and Senate