statism watch

Flashback: Federal website changes undermine Iraq resisters: critics | Canadian Parliament votes again to let U.S. war resisters stay | War resister Kimberly Rivera gets 11th hour stay from deportation | U.S. war resister gets temporary stay of removal | Resisters of a ‘dumb’ war | Kenney’s comments prejudice hearings for war resisters, critics say | U.S. war resister, mother of 3 must leave Canada | Federal government orders U.S. war resister deportedAnother U.S. War Resister to be deported | U.S. War Resister ’surprised’ deportation order stayed | National Day of Action as Protesters Urge Vote to Let War Resisters Stay | U.S. deserter feared torture orders | Early U.S. war deserter ordered deported | U.S. army war resister’s deportation sparks outrage | U.S. war resister Corey Glass granted stay of deportation order | U.S. deserter wins appeal | MPs vote to give asylum to U.S. deserters, Tories say no | U.S. soldier who fled to Canada ordered deported

The Canadian Press
September 17, 2009

Kennedy tables legislation that would amend immigration law to allow foreign soldiers who desert based on ‘sincere moral, political or religious objection’ to stay in Canada

A Liberal MP has introduced a private member’s bill aimed at letting American “war resisters” stay in Canada.

Gerard Kennedy’s bill would allow foreign military deserters — or those who refuse mandatory military service — to stay in Canada if their action is based on “sincere moral, political or religious objection.”

MPs have already voted twice to support war resisters, but that was through motions that are not binding on the government.

Mr. Kennedy’s bill would be binding because it would amend the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act.

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“Today, however, analysts pointed out the decision would help Obama secure Moscow’s co-operation on a possible new sanctions package against Iran…” It does seem this is a response to today’s Israeli sabre-rattling.

Flashback: Israel ‘will attack Iran this year’ if West does not cripple Tehran with sanctions | Netanyahu: We may be forced to attack Iran | Proposed Missile Shield seen as Provocation by Russia | Neo-cons still preparing for Iran attack | Russia threatens to ’strike’ Poland in wake of U.S. missile plan | Cheney Considered False Flag Operation to Justify War with Iran | US scales up covert destabilization efforts in Iran, continues funding ‘al-Qaeda’ | Israelis ‘rehearse Iran attack’ | Israeli official says attack on Iran ‘unavoidable’ | Bush ‘plans Iran air strike by August’ | U.S. Navy starts exercises in Gulf waters | U.S. National Intelligence Estimate: Iran stopped nuclear weapons work in 2003 | Cheney Orders Media To Sell Attack On Iran | U.S. sending third aircraft carrier to the Middle East | US aircraft carriers in Persian Gulf | Investigative Reporter Seymour Hersh: US Indirectly Funding Al-Qaeda Linked Sunni Groups in Move to Counter Iran | Former CIA Officer – US Plans Nuclear Attack On Iran

Luke Harding, Ian Traynor, the Guardian
September 17, 2009

US president shelves scheme in Poland and Czech Republic, citing new intelligence on threat from Iran

Barack Obama has abandoned the controversial Pentagon plan to build a missile defence system in Europe that had long soured relations with Russia.

In one of the sharpest breaks yet with the policies of the Bush administration, Obama said the new approach would offer “stronger, swifter and smarter” defence for the US and its allies. He said it would focus on the threat posed by Iran’s short- and medium-range missiles, rather than its intercontinental nuclear capabilities.

Obama announced the reversal officially at a news conference today. “This new approach will provide capabilities sooner, build[ing] on proven systems to offer greater defences to the threat of attack than the 2007 European missile defence programme,” he said.

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If this guy is really privy to the plans of the defence establishment in Israel, then what’s their problem? Didn’t they kill enough people in January, testing out their white phosphorous and flechette weapons on Palestinian civilians? Even if you don’t want to take Iran’s word that they’re trying to develop a civilian nuclear energy program, one can always turn to the collective judgement of the American intelligence establishment, which published a report in December 2007 stating that Iran halted its nuclear weapons program in 2003 and, if they had restarted it back then, wouldn’t be able to enrich enough uranium for a bomb until 2010-2015. As the Telegraph rightly pointed out in August 2008, Iran’s real secret ‘weapon’ is economic: Not bombs, but their massive oil and cash reserves, allowing it to exist as a counterbalance in the region to the global financial system. Iranian self-sufficiency is the real ‘threat’ to the world reserve currency and Israeli dominance in the middle east. Warfare is economic. The rest of the posturing is a sideshow.

Flashback: Netanyahu: We may be forced to attack Iran | Neo-cons still preparing for Iran attack | Cheney Considered False Flag Operation to Justify War with Iran | US scales up covert destabilization efforts in Iran, continues funding ‘al-Qaeda’ | Israelis ‘rehearse Iran attack’ | Bush ‘plans Iran air strike by August’ | U.S. Navy starts exercises in Gulf waters | U.S. National Intelligence Estimate: Iran stopped nuclear weapons work in 2003 | Cheney Orders Media To Sell Attack On Iran | U.S. sending third aircraft carrier to the Middle East | US aircraft carriers in Persian Gulf | Investigative Reporter Seymour Hersh: US Indirectly Funding Al-Qaeda Linked Sunni Groups in Move to Counter Iran | Former CIA Officer – US Plans Nuclear Attack On Iran

Damien McElroy, The Telegraph
September 17, 2009

Israel will attack Iran’s nuclear facilities before the end of the year if the West has not launched an attempt to destroy the regime with crippling sanctions, a former senior defence official has claimed.

Ephraim Sneh, Israel’s deputy defence minister until 2007, said a nuclear-armed Iran was an unacceptable threat to Israel. No Israeli government could put its faith in President Barack Obama’s efforts to bring Tehran to the negotiating table over its nuclear programme, he said.

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Coming as it does on the heels of the bodybag story, something seems a little odd about the reporting on this outbreak as an outbreak, especially since public health officials in the area report that really there has been a steady trickle of cases (and clusters of cases) since the spring. An outbreak in the newly elected chief of the AFN’s community? Possible misrepresentation of its severity by the CMAJ, which has already issued dire warnings that the vaccine may arrive too late? Musing that this heralds the arrival of flu season? One could hardly put together a better campaign to stampede people towards the vaccine. Just… odd. Who knows what will happen this fall?

Flashback: Health Canada apologizes for body bags delivered to First Nations for H1N1 outbreak | Ottawa sends body bags to First Nations communities for flu battle | Swine flu death rate similar to seasonal flu: expert | Manitoba launches $47M swine flu plan for mass vaccination centres | Swine flu unlikely to become superbug | Flu scare a boon to body-bag sales | Swine flu: How scared should we be? | Top Epidemiologist Slams Swine Flu Fearmongering | Swine flu ‘related’ to 1918 pandemic virus – survivors exhibit resistance | Did leak from a laboratory cause swine flu pandemic? | Manitoba First Nations declare swine flu state of emergency | WHO declares swine flu pandemic, no change in Canada’s approach | Manitoba First Nations, health system straining under flu outbreak | Lessons of 1976: swine flu, fear, mass vaccinations, wasted millions | Researchers unlock secrets of 1918 flu pandemic

Caroline Alphonso, Globe and Mail
September 17, 2009

Most of the H1N1 cases have been mild and treated with Tamiflu, doctor in Tofino says, but two required hospital trips

An influenza cluster that sickened more than 100 people in a remote native community on Vancouver Island – home to the newly elected national chief of the Assembly of First Nations– is being described as Canada’s first H1N1 pandemic outbreak for the fall’s flu season.

The virus disproportionately affected aboriginal people in the spring, and the most recent cluster not only signals the toll it could take on natives but also that the flu season may have arrived early in Canada.

Ahousaht First Nation, north of Tofino and the home of recently elected AFN chief Shawn Atleo, saw the virus infect roughly 10 per cent of its population late last month. The local chief’s one-year-old grandson was so ill, he could barely breathe.

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Health Canada is now spinning this as a perfectly ordinary move to build up First Nation’s medical supplies prior to the onset of winter. Never mind the body bags came in a kit of ’swine flu’ supplies. Never mind that (as the article below states) First Nations communities remain accessible by air for delivery of supplies during the winter. Nevermind reports that body bag sales are through the roof in preparation for potential disaster come Autumn. And by way of reassurance, Canada’s chief public health officer mentions that scouting for a mass morgue was part of pandemic planning? Could someone be any more insensitive to the history of First Nations in Canada since European contact?

Flashback: Ottawa sends body bags to First Nations communities for flu battle | Swine flu death rate similar to seasonal flu: expert | Manitoba launches $47M swine flu plan for mass vaccination centres | Swine flu unlikely to become superbug | Flu scare a boon to body-bag sales | Swine flu: How scared should we be? | Top Epidemiologist Slams Swine Flu Fearmongering | Swine flu ‘related’ to 1918 pandemic virus – survivors exhibit resistance | Did leak from a laboratory cause swine flu pandemic? | Manitoba First Nations declare swine flu state of emergency | WHO declares swine flu pandemic, no change in Canada’s approach | Manitoba First Nations, health system straining under flu outbreak | Lessons of 1976: swine flu, fear, mass vaccinations, wasted millions | Researchers unlock secrets of 1918 flu pandemic

CBC News
September 17, 2009

Wasagamack Chief Jerry Knott shows reporters in Winnipeg the body bags sent to his community.

Health Canada has apologized for sending more than two dozen body bags to a Manitoba First Nation in preparation for a possible swine flu outbreak.

“We regret the alarm that this incident has caused,” said a statement issued late Thursday afternoon. “It is important to remember that our nurses are focused entirely on providing primary health-care services under often-trying circumstances.”

But the apology only cites the bags sent to the Wasagamack First Nation. Manitoba First Nations chiefs said the bags — which arrived this week with a shipment of hand sanitizers and face masks — also arrived in God’s River First Nation.

Earlier Thursday afternoon, Jim Wolfe, director of First Nations and Inuit Health for Manitoba, issued his own apology and took the blame.

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Native elders rightly ask if the Federal government knows something they don’t.

Flashback: Manitoba launches $47M swine flu plan for mass vaccination centres | Swine flu unlikely to become superbug | Flu scare a boon to body-bag sales | Swine flu: How scared should we be? | Top Epidemiologist Slams Swine Flu Fearmongering | Swine flu ‘related’ to 1918 pandemic virus – survivors exhibit resistance | Did leak from a laboratory cause swine flu pandemic? | Manitoba First Nations declare swine flu state of emergency | WHO declares swine flu pandemic, no change in Canada’s approach | Manitoba First Nations, health system straining under flu outbreak | Lessons of 1976: swine flu, fear, mass vaccinations, wasted millions | Researchers unlock secrets of 1918 flu pandemic

Bruce Campion-Smith, Richard J. Brennan, Toronto Star
September 17, 2009

Native leaders enraged after dozens distributed to areas in H1N1 fight

OTTAWA–Federal health officials are scrambling for answers after native communities were shipped dozens of body bags as part of Ottawa’s preparations for the onslaught of the H1N1 flu virus.

The disturbing news was taken by some as a grim prediction of the coming pandemic and undercut the message from federal health officials that most healthy Canadians have little to fear from the flu virus.

And it ignited a firestorm of protest from opposition politicians and native leaders, who have been outspoken in their concern that Health Canada has not done enough to prepare communities there for a possible pandemic.

“We asked for funding so we can get organized and to ensure medicine, hand sanitizers and other preventative kits were in place, but instead we are shocked to receive these body bags,” Chief Jerry Knott, of the Wasagamack First Nation, located north of Winnipeg, said in a statement.

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